From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Jan 2 14:21:42 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id OAA07713; Tue, 2 Jan 1996 14:21:42 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 14:21:42 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601021921.OAA07713@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #1 TELECOM Digest Tue, 2 Jan 96 14:22:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 1 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Happy New Year; Announcements, Administrivia (Patrick A. Townson) Re: Is There an 'Underground Guide' to Cellphones? (yukyuk@ix.netcom.com) Re: Is There an 'Underground Guide' to Cellphones? (David Richards) Re: Absolutely Amazing Free Catalog (Clifton T. Sharp) Re: MFJ vs. Internet Develpoment (Ronda Hauben) Re: MFJ vs. Internet Develpoment (John R. Levine) Re: Digital Global Roaming (Cameron J. Atkins) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Bob Spargo) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (John R. Levine) Telco Wiring Problems in Old Apartment Building (scorpion@phantom.com) Re: Angst and Awe on the Internet - George Gilder Essay (Robert Jacobson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 13:07:38 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Subject: Happy New Year; Announcements, Administrivia I want to welcome everyone to the start of Volume 16 of TELECOM Digest and encourage you to make full use the resources of the Telecom Archives and our 'think tank' of telecom professionals involved with this journal. In the next day or so, I will have the index to last year's Volume 15 completely finished and will send it out to everyone. This will be the usual index of authors and subjects as they appeared in each issue. As most of you know, the past year -- or really two years -- have seen an unrelenting growth in connections to the Internet and subscribers to this and other newsletter/journals. The mailing list here now numbers in the thousands of names, and with this comes a great deal of work merely on mailing list maintainence alone, to say nothing of the usual editorial work. Daily submissions are also coming in at a record pace and I hope no one is offended and everyone understands when I say that it is impossible to even begin considering/printing anything other than a small fraction of what reaches my inbox each day. Most of you were also very understanding when at the first of last year a voluntary subscription donation policy was implemented since this has for two years now been virtually full time employment for me. Although Microsoft and ITU both provide grants, those grants cover only about half the cost involved, and I rely on readers to provide the balance due. The suggested donation is twenty dollars per reader per year. If you sent a subscription last year, I hope you will do so again this year sometime over the next couple weeks as it is convenient for you. If you did not send one last year, please do so this time. The address is: TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL 60076 To bring you up to date on the phones here, the correct phone number to reach me is either 847-329-0571 _or_ 500-677-1616 (preferred). You can reach me by fax at 847-329-0572. Some of you are *still* writing to the Digest at the old address at Northwestern (telecom@eecs.nwu.edu). Please stop using this address immediately. Use ONLY the correct, current email address which is as shown above. Before long, mail sent to nwu.edu will bounce and be returned to you. I was *not* pleased to see Northwestern get beaten in the Rose Bowl yesterday ... but just seeing them there for the first time since I was a little kid was indeed a source of pride. All throughout this area over the weekend there were celebrations, particularly in Evanston directly east of us where the university is located. Anyway, happy new year 1996, and welcome to another time around with your favorite Digest and mine. May we all benefit and learn as we share together here in the next twelve months. Patrick Townson TELECOM Digest Editor ------------------------------ From: yukyuk@ix.netcom.com Subject: Re: Is There an 'Underground Guide' to Cellphones? Date: 02 Jan 1996 07:31:35 GMT Organization: Netcom In peshkin@nwu.edu (Michael Peshkin) writes: > Is there a source for what they don't tell you about cellphones in the > users manual? Like, how to read out and/or program the phone's id > number? Every salesperson knows how to do this, so it can't be too > great a secret. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are various books you can > purchase with information and instructions on programming cellphones. > One example which comes to mind is Bishop. I forget the exact title > of their book but you would find it in some technical book stores. You might also want to check out Some back issues of Nuts and Volts magazine. Damion Thorn usually contributes very interesting articles on cellular. However ... the book "The Cellular Hackers Bible" is one of the best books I've read on the subject. YUK ------------------------------ From: dr@ripco.com (David Richards) Subject: Re: Is There an 'Underground Guide' to Cellphones? Organization: Ripco Internet BBS, Chicago Date: Mon, 1 Jan 1996 07:27:05 GMT In article , Michael Peshkin wrote: > Is there a source for what they don't tell you about cellphones in the > users manual? Like, how to read out and/or program the phone's id > number? Every salesperson knows how to do this, so it can't be too > great a secret. The original Ripco BBS, is going on it's thirteenth year (which can't be bad luck, nothing could be worse luck than the events of May 8, 1990) and carries a full selection of free files on cellular phones and other interesting subjects. The number is 312-528-5020 all modem speeds, full access on the first call. > Why do I want to know? Nothing unethical. I'd like to use a spare > phone as an emergency phone in my other car, sharing a number. (Of > course if both ever got turned on at the same time, they'd probably > disconnect my service, but I can avoid doing that.) Also I'm just > curious what are all the things you can do that they don't tell you > about. Motorola in particular commonly has numerous extra features coded into their phones and pagers, some can be accessed from the keypad/buttons, others require a programming cradle and software. TELECOM Digest Editor then noted in response: > Actually, you can *not* share a number between two phones as you > propose, or certainly not with your level of expertise. The reason > is both phones need to share the same ESN, or electronic serial > number, and that is the one thing which is difficult or usually > impossible to modify ... again, for most people. And the cellular carriers are working on pushing laws that would make changing the ESN a criminal act, even for the purposes of having two phones you own use the same account. Anything that denies them revenue is fraud :-( David Richards Ripco Communications Inc. My opinions are my own, Public Access in Chicago But they are available for rental FREE Usenet and Email dr@ripco.com (312) 665-0065 ------------------------------ From: clifto@indep1.chi.il.us (Clifton T. Sharp) Subject: Re: Absolutely Amazing Free Catalog Organization: as little as possible Date: Tue, 02 Jan 1996 08:06:18 GMT In article ptownson@massis.lcs. mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) writes: > TELECOM PRODUCTS is the name of an interesting sixty page catalog > published about every two months by Mike Sandman. Billing himself as > "Chicago's Telecom Expert" -- which I have no doubt he is -- his > bi-monthly catalog is full of technical reports, short articles of > interest on telephony, and *lots* of illustrations and short blurbs > about things he sells from his shop, which is located in Roselle, IL. I stopped in there one day to buy a headset he sells for the Motorola radios he carries. Email correspondence preceding the "event" suggested that he didn't know whether it would work with my specific model, but he'd be willing to test it. I thought I had read a blurb inviting people to stop by and see his messy but comprehensive selection of stuff, so with the word "messy" in my head I walked into an office area which I thought was quite a neat and efficient use of space. A cute bird announced my arrival quite loudly to a lady nearby, who called Mike in the back room and gave my name; Mike came right out and introduced himself, remembering me from our exchange some days previous. He had to rip open one of those ultrasonically-welded "bubble packs" to let me test the headset, but did so without hesitation. As it turned out, it worked fine and I bought it on the spot. The entire operation from my entry to my exit must have taken ten minutes (nine of it to open that damned package :-), and I walked away quite impressed with the operation and the courtesy of his employees. > His merchandise all seems to be reasonably priced. Most of the prices > in his catalog appear to be average or better than average. I strongly > recommend getting a copy and checking it out. Headsets for the usually inexpensive ham radio equipment I buy generally cost a lot; the headset for my $215 Alinco radio cost me $87. I was very nicely surprised when I walked out of Mike's store with a Motorola headset for $95 (plus a few bucks for a belt clip upgrade; the stock ones Motorola supplies are chintzy). Note that I include the PTT-switchbox-cum-VOX gadget in the price of both. There's a LOT of stuff in Mike's catalog which can be used for things other than telecom equipment; for example, some tiny little Alps switches he carries are used in just about every kind of consumer electronic equipment I've seen, and the deskset keypad repair kits he offers would be perfect for repairing TV remote controls and certain computer keyboards. And there's always that bidet! I'll be going back. Cliff Sharp WA9PDM clifto@indep1.chi.il.us ------------------------------ From: ronda@panix.com (Ronda Hauben) Subject: Re: MFJ vs. Internet Develpoment Date: 1 Jan 1996 23:22:01 EST Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC John Vitiello (jvitiell@ix.netcom.com) wrote: > A question was posed to my class in Regulatory Law and Telecommunications > Policy at grad school. I'm interested in anyone's opinion on the subject. > The question was: > Could the internet have developed if the Bell Sysyem had remained a > monopoly? Yes, and in fact it developed while the Bell System was a regulated monopoly and the regulation of the Bell System was a significant contributing factor in a number of ways to the development of the Internet. > If so how? 1. The availability of leased lines from AT&T long lines was a help to the development of the early ARPANET which was the father of the Internet. 2. The regulatory pressure on AT&T in the mid 1960's led them to support the development of UNIX in 1969 and not only its subsequent development, but then the development of Usenet in 1979. 3. Usenet played an important part in contributing to the development of the Internet. When Usenet pioneers made ARPANET Mailing Lists available to those on Usenet in 1981, this was a step toward making the ARPANET open to others, which helped to support the development of the Internet. The Bell System played an important and supportative role in the creation of Usenet, and Usenet has contributed in many important ways to the development of the Internet. (Usenet has been called the soul of the Internet :) 4. There are several chapters in the netbook "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet" that provide important details of these events. See especially the chapters "On the Early Days of Usenet: The Roots of the Cooperative Online Culture" and "On the Early History and Impact of Unix:Tools to Build the Tools for a New Millenium". Also the chapter "Social Forces Behind the Development of Usenet" gives an overview of these developments. These are available online at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/project_book.html The issue of the Amateur Computerist that we did to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of Unix includes an interview with Berkley Tague of AT&T who describes the automation of AT&T under the pressure of regulatory obligations. The automation that AT&T then undertook in the 1970's and the programming of the 5ESS at AT&T in the late 1970's and early 1980's was a massive programming project and there are indicators that programmers in AT&T supported the development of Usenet because it was helpful to them in their work on large scale programming projects. Thus regulation played an important role helping the development of the Internet, rather than deregulation being helpful. The issue of the Amateur Computerist commemorating 25 years of UNIX is described in my signature and available free via email. It is also available at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/acn/ Ronda Hauben The Amateur Computerist au329@cleveland.freenet.edu vol 6 no 1 Winter/Spring 1994 Celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Unix with interviews with John Lions and Berkley Tague articles on the history of Unix and of Usenet, article on linux etc. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Jan 96 17:21:00 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: MFJ vs. Internet Develpoment Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > [most Internet traffic travels via T1 and T3 leased lines and ... ] > (As I understand it, rates for leased lines did not drop > nearly as much as consumer long distance prices.) Sure they have. Inter-lata leased lines are just as competitive as inter-lata switched service. They technology has changed somewhat, e.g. frame relay and ATM, so you can't quite compare apples to apples. Lacking divestiture I suppose we'd have seen a lot more use of satellite, microwave, and other bypass technologies and fewer leased lines from the telco. > I believe that the "real" cause of the Internet explosion is that the > price of modems and personal computers has dropped dramatically while > the speed and power has greatly increased. No question there, the net would be a lot smaller if modems and routers were $2K and $20K rather than $150 and $2K. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof ------------------------------ From: CAMERON.J.ATKINS@sprintintl.sprint.com Date: Mon, 1 Jan 1996 23:46:57 EST Subject: Re: Digital Global Roaming > Ian Nicholls wrote: >> brister@zip.com.au (James Brister) writes: >>> Do I have any hope of use that phone is the USA? >> No. I don't think GSM is used at all over there. Some companies use a >> digital variant of the Analogue system, which doesn't help you. > Well, you might be able to use your SIM in the Washington DC area. A > Sprint (and someone else) venture just launched PCS1900 service. > PCS1900 is basically GSM at 1900Mhz (there are some "americanization" > aspects such as equal access for long distance). But, you will NOT be > able to use your phone from Australia. There are no commercial arrangements between any of the Australian carriers (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone) to support roaming (whether your own SIM or a "SIM swap") into the US if you have a digital mobile service. Technically it may be possible, but it is usually the abilities of Telco's billing systems to exchange CDRs and the agreed tariffing that are the challenges that present themselves. >>> Could anyone enlighten me as to potential problems? >> When you get back, you might have to pay an arm and a leg through the nose >> for approval to use a foreign phone in Australia. > That's kind of protectionist, isn't it? I mean, all you should have > to do is pay any import duties and you should be done. As far as > getting service with Telstra or OPTUS, you should be able to plug your > SIM (that is registered in a local network) into your phone ... and you > should be done. However, I've heard that the voice encryption (A5 > algorythm (sp?)) used in Europe was blocked in Australia. And, that > a "substitute" encryption method was employed instead. Anybody know > the details? Any telco equipment in Australia must be approved by Austel (Aust. Telecomm. Authority) before it should be used. By virtue of the way GSM phones operate, this is difficult to police though as a rule of thumb you will not get into trouble if you simply purchase a GSM phone overseas that is already marketed within Australia (e.g. Nokia 2110, Ericcson 337, Motorola 8200)- if you believe you may want to sell the phone in the future it is prudent to get the necessary certification that endorses the phone by Austel. To get this you simply approach the local office of any of the phone distributors. This may cost you A$25 thereabouts. However, if you buy a GSM phone o/s (It is bound to be cheaper), you simply plug your local SIM in. A5 is used in Australia. Some developing countries (Am unsure exactly who and do not wish to guess) are prevented from using it due to perceived concerns of providing it where the threat of having it applied for dubious means is a risk. We're a friendly bunch down here! > The GSM networks in Australia generally wouldn't know where the phone > was purchased (or manufactured). Really, all they care about is > whether or not your IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) > and IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers are valid > in it's network. The telcos don't log the IMSI or IMEI at present. The telcos are individually (I know Voda and Optus are for certain) constructing IMSI and IMEI databases that will enable them to validate and track customer phones. The application of this will be similar to what is applied on the AMPS network whereby the ESN is logged on the network customer care/billing system - (i) for the purpose of registering valid local phones and (ii) "locking" out the activation of stolen or lost phones. The ease of re-using GSM phones at present when lost or stolen has been the obvious trigger for such databases. If you want more information, please contact me directly. Regards, Cameron Atkins ------------------------------ From: Bob Spargo Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Date: Mon, 01 Jan 1996 23:53:37 EST Organization: CyberGate, Inc. Reply-To: bspargo@gate.net Rob Hickey wrote: > An interesting article appeared in the {Globe and Mail} (Canada) regarding > the future of PCS. The author, Geoffrey Rowan, appears to cast doubt > on the viability of PCS providers; he maintains that cellular technology > will not be quickly missplaced for the following reasons: > 1) PCS phones cannot compete with cellular phones on price since they are > practically giving away cell phones; This shows a distinct lack of understanding of market economics on the part of Mr. Rowan. Manufacturers are not giving away cellular phones. Their price is being bought down at the retail level by the cellular operator. If the PCS equipment costs less to manufacture (and it will in time) then the buy down will be less, or the same buy down amount will provide a lower end user cost. > 2) PCS air time cannot compete with cellular air time charges since most > cellular companies are not charging on evenings and weekends; I think the basic premise that most companies give away nights and weekends may not be true when considering the lowest rates in the major metro areas. In any event, the money in cellular is made off of air time charges during business hours. Provide a less expensive service during those hours and you will attract business. > 3) PCS phones cannot be practically any more portable than the latest > cell phones; Probably true. Size is predominately determined by the human body (ear to mouth distance) and battery technology. The body isn't going to change but, for a given talk/listen time, the battery capacity (in mA/hr) and size may be able to be reduced slightly with PCS due to lower power drain. > 4) PCS phones will not work in moving vehicles. Don't put money on this. > Mr. Rowan questions why the PCS industry would spend billions in > infrastructure to duplicate services that already exist. After reading your summary of his article, I suspect Rowan is not very familiar with the technology of either service or with the market potential for personal communications services. Having been involved in the embryonic days of cellular from the late '70's through mid '80's, I witnessed similar questioning of the viability of that service. After all, the first phones were close to $3,000 at retail and the cellular operator needed to gross $100/month/subscriber to make any money. If you want to know how those early guys made out check with John Kluge, John Palmer, Wayne Schelle, Craig McCaw and all those others who had the foresight and guts to build those first systems. Bob ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Jan 96 17:15:00 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > ATT and some of the other big boys plan to market nation wide services > which use PCS in some areas and cellular in others. All with the same > telephone. No more roaming, anywhere in the country call in or out for > the standard per minute rate. I call you wherever you are, no extra > charge -- for you or me. Hey, that's just like what A side cellular users in Canada have had for the past decade. (Well, you do pay toll charges, but it's home airtime rates everywhere.) Seems to me that PCS will force a big consolidation in the cellular biz. We're already seeing some of that, e.g. NYNEX and BAMS merging, and AT&T SBC buying up systems all over the place, but once PCS starts being a serious threat, I expect to find cellular systems in medium sized markets eaten by the majors. It'll probably end up with a scenario similar to that for landline phones -- a few big players that dominate all the major markets, and scattered small players in rural areas. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof ------------------------------ From: scorpion@phantom.com Subject: Telco Wiring Problems in Old Apartment Building Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 09:27:05 EST Organization: Phantom Access Technologies, Inc. / MindVox I am in New York, and my telco is NYNEX. The question that I have is where I live there are two buildings that share a inside wall, and other things like hot water and steam. We have a main line that come from a pole, to one of the building's basement. It is 150 - 200 feet from the pole to the building basement. From there the main line splits in to two; one for each building going like 75 feet each direction to each box. These are the old terminal boxes that need a nut wrench to connect the wires. There is a mess in the boxes, a bunch of wires everywhere, so that when telco comes to repair or connect a new service always they break someone else's line. I told them that if this happen again I not going to let anyone go and work in the lines there, and they would have to fix it from the street. Usually when some line is not working, the first thing they say is that the problem is in the basement. I know for a fact that the problem is not there; the problem is where the other telco men are working on the street someplace else. Later they want to come to the building and try to find an empty pair so they can change the line to the other pair. 1) Can I tell the telco NYNEX to put a new box where the main cable enters the basement, just there instead the two boxes, I think one is much better, so all the lines from each building can go in there. 2) Can I make them change the old main line, and put a new from the basement box to the pole or some where else, and what type, can I specify what type and how many wires, thinking of the future like ISDN or something else, I think 100 to 200 pairs is enough, on both buildings are 24 apartments. 3) Right now the main line that is coming to the buildings sucks, in that line are I think ten exchanges none of them offers ISDN or some of the other services like CALL ANSWERING etc, the problem is that the line routes to some place and that place don't support this services, some of the exchanges do, but since they route to that place is no way to get some of the services. Is there anything I can do about it? 4) Is there going to be any charge to the building or that is the telco responsibility. Any ideas, or other things that I can ask them? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are several things which need to be addressed here. First of all, what is *your* relationship to the owner of the property and the apartment buildings? If you are not the landlord or the landlords's representative (i.e. building manager or caretaker) then you will NOT instruct the telco to do anything with those boxes. I've seen a lot of situations such as you describe here in the Chicago area in very old apartment buildings; especially in buildings where there used to be switchboard phone service operated at a front desk many years ago. Generally over the years since, telco has 'wired through' those old basement boxes straight to all the apartments so they do not have to have access to them on any regular basis. Still though, I think if you check applicable tariffs and case law, you will see that telco has easement in the basement; that is, you may not forbid them to enter for the purpose of working on their wires. Even if you are the landlord or the landlord's representative this is probably the case. Telco can be admitted to the basement at anytime in an emergency or at any reasonable hour otherwise. There is also a question of who owns the wire inside the building, what are called the 'house pairs'. Were the house pairs abandoned, or vacated by telco at any time in the past? If not, then your 'demarc' is in a distinctly different location than it would be otherwise. In that case, it is immediatly where the wires enter your apartment and prior to that (unless you are the landlord) you have no right to tell telco they must or must not do anything. If the inside wires or house pairs were at some point abandoned by telco and are now the property of the landlord, then the demarc moves back to where the wires come in the basement from the outside. Now, maybe you or landlord have a right to say something. The trouble is, fifty or seventy years ago when there were lots of buildings being constructed in larger cities and telco was busy wiring everything; installing the old switchboards in apartment buildings, etc. no one ever could have forseen what the future and divestiture would bring. The best course of action now might be to speak with someone in authority who has some responsibility for 'outside plant' at telco and explain what appear to be the chronic and repeated problems with service when work is done in your area. Again, it would help if you are in a position to do some of the bargaining, i.e. the landlord or property owner. It sounds to me like there is probably a severe shortage of pairs in the area (a very common problem in some older inner city neighborhoods) and that to merely get a pair for new service for someone, the installer has to go around to several basements in the area like yours and try to find a couple of good wires he can make into one working pair. Then he has to tell someone in the central office which wires he is using; they have to coordinate it there; somewhere along the line the plant records are inaccurate and need reconciliation; someone else gets accidentally cut off in the process. You have noticed how the wire pairs in your basement box are probably tagged with cryptic information of one sort or another; some of it accurate, some of it woefully out of date. When a new subscriber gets service, the installer has to go to all the other basements in the area to 'open the multiples', that is, to disconnect the wires at that point so someone else won't be able to use the new subscriber's line. It would be of tremendous help if you are in a position as landlord to negotiate the installation of a new terminal box outside the building with all existing inside wires and the inside boxes neatly organized once and for all; all house pairs accounted for and correctly tagged where they are 'wired through' to the new outside terminal, etc. If you are only a tenant, then my sympathies to you. Telco does not care what you think of *their* terminal in the the basement of the building where you live, although they might do something about it if the right person(s) are properly approached. PAT] ------------------------------ From: cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) Subject: Re: Angst and Awe on the Internet - George Gilder Essay Date: 2 Jan 1996 06:04:48 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Seems to me Mr. Gilder has his demons wrong. I haven't noticed a lot of "left-wing Luddites" or "media Marxists" going full out to discredit the Net. I'm not even sure who he means, but the critiques I've seen from social critics have always been tempered with a realization that the Net represents power and its management, like everything having to do with power, is up for grabs. Only a pollyanna would be surprised that this is the case. On the other hand, it looks to this humble observer that it's the media magnates and the far-right crazies who run this Congress, with whom Mr. Gilder is usually very comfortable, who are threatening the Net with the "Three Cs": consolidation, concentration, and censorship. No amount of praise for garage information handiworkers can obscure the fact that it's cats on the right who have everyone's fate clutched tight in their dirty little hands. But they pay the freight for most of the techno-futurists, so it would be pollyannish in its own way to expect any of the contract theorists to call them out. Thanks, Pat, for a chuckle on New Year's. Bob Jacobson [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If George Gilder wishes to respond, I'll certainly appreciate his thoughts. Meanwhile, once again a happy new year to all, and welcome to another volume of the Digest. I really want to work on improving the Digest and the Archives this year, so any of you who can help, PLEASE do so ... your financial assistance is very very important. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #1 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 3 10:17:19 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id KAA13204; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 10:17:19 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 10:17:19 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601031517.KAA13204@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #2 TELECOM Digest Wed, 3 Jan 96 10:17:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 2 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Say NO! to Metered ISDN Service (Francois D. Menard) Compuserve Censors USENET in Europe (Jean B. Sarrazin) *77 and *87 in 860-land (David A. Cantor) Billing Telecom Conference (lmoran@planet.net) More on Canada==>US Caller ID (Mark Cuccia) A Phone Number is NOT a Credit Card! (Mike Wengler) How Do You Tell if Your Phone is Tapped? (Rich Sagall) France Telecom Offers Voice Mail For Publiphones (JeanBernard Condat) Germany: Another Deutsche Telekom Disaster (Juergen Ziegler) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Francois D. Menard Subject: Say NO! to Metered ISDN Service Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 15:14:26 +0000 Organization: Praline Internet This is a copy of a message that I posted in a mailing list of ISP's in Quebec discussing about "metered ISDN services". I would like to collect as many opinions about what I wrote. I would rather have your replies CC'ed to me via email, but I will also watch the follow-ups in the newsgroups. This will cartainly make for an interesting thread. Happy new year! Following up to a message by Dave Collier-Brown , > In my considered opinion, this is merely a tactic to get a metered > service, **any** metered service, into place. I have suggested in > writing to the CRTC that this indicated that Bell is unable to do it's > own required homework in pricing the home service, and that it should > not be permitted to have a metered service to the home in any case. > In fact, the cost to Bell is dominated by call setup (routing), and > is not time-related at all. If they must admit they cannot estimate > their costs, then let them do so and let them base their prices on their > costs, not on a third, irrelevant, factor. I wrote: You are absolutely right ! The day Bell Canada starts to bill ISDN as a metered service, it will be the beginning of the end. SAY NO TO ANYTHING THAT IS METERED. It is on this philosophy (of dedicated / not metered ) that we've built on the Internet, damn it! I pay many K$ a month for the right to say "Bell, Shut up !" If I want to do IPhone, I can do IPhone, if I want to pay for a T1 just for the fun of toying with a packet sniffer, that's my OWN problem. Say Yes to Metered service, and watch the pricing structure of Bell's ATM service. Remember guys, Bell/RBOC's have to keep on making as much money as they are making right now (read more)... Their only problem is that in the months to come, people will stop believing that it costs more to Bell to establish a Comm Link between Montreal and Vancouver than Montreal and Toronto. Hence, people will finally light up and realize that they have been fooled for years. This will be the end of Long Distance tariffs as has been mentioned by the article of the Economist. Remember my message about how the CEO of Bell Canada, has quoted the Economist as saying the the "advancements in telecomm technologies will be the single most economic force shaping the next 50 years" instead of using the real text wich rather talk about the "Death of Distance" as being the single most important econominc force to shape the next 50 years. I tell you, by year 2000, I foresee the gradual disappearing of ALL topologies of Long Distance billing. Everything will soon become "cost to access the network". Start allowing for this cost to be invoiced via a "metered" method and we are ALL shooting ourselves in the feet. I do NOT want to see Bell starting to sell their ATM-Internet (aka Beacon/Sirius) as the UNCONGESTED Internet. Leaving us with what they will refer to as an "inferior and poorly managed T1/T3 based IP-network". Has anyone of you looked at the RSVP IETF draft or what Mr. Huitema in France is working on for IPNG (IPv6). REAL soon!, we'll be able to do "quality-of-service"-based routing and bandwidth allocation. Sure, ATM will be better, but not at the expense of letting us all being shoved-up-in-the-ass a painful METERED-ATM service without doing something about it... The key to all of this is for us to demonstrate that we are capable of doing intelligent bandwidth management ourselves on exinsting network backbones. If Telcos can do it, why not ourselves also ! Our only overhead is a protocol called IP, which soon will be intelligent enough to do QofS (Quality of Service) bandwidth allocation and routing. I admit that this is a little far from the original topic of metered ISDN, but, permit me to make an allusion. This thing about allowing metered services, would be like failing to protect your "(C) copyrights". If you fail, even only once, nobody will render a judgment in your favor in the future. We do not have metered service right now (make an exception of CIR on Frame Relay networks, which is already too much), and we are perfectly cool about this. If we let this happen, that will be our own fault. Once again, our OWN fault. So lets get to work. Francois ------------------------------ Date: 02 Jan 96 08:48:19 EST From: Sarrazin, Jean B <72077.1366@compuserve.com> Subject: Compuserve Censors USENET in Europe Today CNN announced that in response to a request from the German government, Compuserve has disabled access to *all* USENET newsgroups. It seems Compuserve has taken to exercising censorship continent-wide, as CIS USENET access is also scrapped for all their European subscribers. Does Compuserve realise that the German government has no authority over other European nations? Furthermore, Compuserve has made no announcement to its members to that effect. I consider it unacceptable that Compuserve has not only complied to such a feeble attempt from a single European government at controlling Net access and contents, but also penalised a large number of subscribers without explanation or compensation. What is this knee-jerk reaction? What is Compuserve afraid of? As far as I know, the other ISP's in Germany have not been affected. Comments from outside and inside Compuserve are eagerly awaited. Jean B Sarrazin 72077.1366@compuserve.com Amsterdam, the Netherlands [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are confused. You are having a knee-jerk reaction of your own. First, let us understand the correct use of the term 'censorship'. By definition, only the government can censor soemeone. Compuserve is not the government. 'Censorship' is when the government physically stops you from speaking or writing on whatever topics you wish. 'Censorship' is *not* when some private organization or person refuses to collaborate or cooperate with you and assist in your speech-making or printing. No one owes you any printing press or pulpit. If the government -- and they are the only ones who can do it -- forbids you to own a printing press or to use it as you see fit or forces you to remain silent, then you have been censored. If I do not agree to print your messages or allow you to speak on my radio station, I am exercising my freedom of choice. You are still free to go get a press elsewhere and you are still free to exercise your vocal chords all you want. You have not been censored. Compuserve is a private organization. It is not an agency of the government. They pick and select programming they wish to make avail- able to their subscriber-members. They have not censored anything because they are incapable of censoring anything. They cannot forbid you to sit at your computer and peck away at the keyboard to your heart's desire. They cannot forbid you to read any collection or arrangement of pixels on your computer screen that you wish to view. They have said they do not wish to be part of the distribution process of certain 'types' of messages. They are exercising their freedom of choice, their business judgment, just as you are free to exercise yours. You may suggest that the only reason they came to this decision was due to some heavy-handed actions by the German government, and that may be correct, but if it is, then it is the government doing the censoring; not Compuserve. Next, it is my understanding they have chosen only to discontinue the 'alt' groups, *not* Usenet groups. If I stand corrected, please advise me. You might be amazed at how many sites in the USA do not carry 'alt' and in fact only carry a limited portion of Usenet. It is a choice they have made as to how their resources will be allocated. Furthermore, Compuserve like the other online commercial services only began carrying any Internet news groups at all as of about two or three years ago. Where is there something written in stone saying they must continue to carry them? Your argument might have some validity if it were not for the fact that historically, every time a commerical site has connected with Internet for the purpose of the exchange of news, the 'establishment' on Usenet has stunk up the place with flaming which went on and on about the poor calibre or quality of messages coming from the commercial sites. I first began hearing that argument from the 'establishment' here about ten years ago, when Portal Communications in San Jose, California 'came on board' back in 1986 ... the feeling was the net was going to hell in a handbasket 'if those commercial sites and their users are allowed to participate ...' And now you are mad because they are no longer participating, and you refer to them as 'censors' ... Next, my understanding is they only 'pulled the plug' on the alt groups until such time as they have made modifications in their software to selectively allow and disallow the use of some services based on the member's node, or point of connection to their system. I believe it is their intention to arrange the software so that if you call via (let us say) a node or local number in Frankfurt or Berlin, then upon trying to access certain newsgroups you will receive the response, 'you are not allowed to use this service via the node from which your call is originating ...' At first, the gurus there said it was impossible to identify the members in such a way that some could be denied access to portions of the service but not other portions. In other words, either you are a member in good standing and get it all, or you are not a member in good standing and don't get any of it. I, and a couple of others have pointed out to them that indeed, distinctions can be made at both the User-ID level and the node, or local phone number level, and in fact some distinctions are implemented now and have been for a long time. It was pointed out for example that certain members with full service totally free 'house accounts' -- for example, the forum managers -- are unable to dial in via the 800 number. When Compuserve gives someone a totally free account as a 'valued member' of their system, it only adds insult to injury for the free user to dial in on the 800 number as well ... and the attitude of CIS has always been if we give you a free account then at the very least you can pay for the local phone connection to get in. So as a result, User-ID numbers in the block 753xx,xxxx cannot enter via any of the 800 numbers. The software forbids it. So the suggestion was made, fine, then block all 100xxx,xxxx users out of the newsgroup service, but it was pointed out that 100xxx is a relatively new invention. There are lots of European users over the years in the 7xxxxx series, and furthermore it is not unique to Germany. But the BDx (for example BDE, BDF, BDG) and DEx (for example DED, DEF, DEG, DEH) nodes are unique to Germany, as Berlin in the former case and Dusseldorf in the latter case, so what you do is say those nodes cannot have certain services if that is the way the German government feels about it. And you say to those users and the German governnment that Compuserve will not knowingly or willfully deliver to Germany any verboten (I knew I would have a use for that word someday! grin) newsgroups. If a German subscriber wants to call long distance via France or something and get in, there is little Compuserve can do about that of course, but they can cease delivery of 'certain things' to known German locations since regardless of User-ID (i.e. an American visiting in Germany with his 7xxxxx or 102xxx/103xxx account logged in) the Germans don't want it. I understand CIS is now looking at ways to flag the nodes and/or establish specific blocks of User-ID numbers for customers from certain places to identify what CIS will and won't provide. They thought they could not do that; they have been told they could, and now they are working on it. And seriously, I can't blame them for dropping 'alt', although it would be sort of radical if they dropped all of Usenet in the process. Let's face it: the newsgroups on Internet have long been a thorn in the side of the commercial services anyway: they cannot collect money on them the way they do their own forums, etc. They have their own users pretty much under control and collect money from them, then here come the troublesome, flaming users from Usenet to cause them a lot of grief, flooding their postmaster with cranky replies, etc. They need it like we need more heat in July. But you have a way to 'censor' Compuserve in return: you can cancel your membership and go to a service you like better. And that, I think is where this whole thing is going to shakedown over the next couple years: ISP's will decide they do or do not want the alt.sex stuff and the grief that goes with it. They will develop signatures or styles for themselves and quit trying to be all things to all people. They'll quit packing their suitcases to go on a long trip -- a long guilt trip -- everytime some freshman student at a university somewhere accuses them of 'censorship' for not carrying a newsgroup he happens to like reading. And please folks, no cable television analogies and how the cable has to carry Playboy Channel, etc ... Most of us have only one cable provider in town ... we all have dozens of ISP's who want our business. PAT] ------------------------------ From: David A. Cantor Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 00:20:04 -0500 Subject: *77 and *87 in 860-land I've discovered that rejecting calls from callers who block their CLID (*77) and rescinding such rejection (*87) work here in 860-444. However, when entering these codes, I get a normal-sounding ring-back signal (I let them go for five ring cycles) rather than the expected confirmation tones. David A. Cantor +1 860.444.7268 (444-RANT) New London, CT 06320-2639 DCantor@chqsplay.mv.com ------------------------------ From: lmoran@planet.net Subject: Billing Telecom Conference Date: 02 Jan 1996 14:39:55 GMT Organization: Planet Access Networks - Stanhope, NJ Billing Systems in the Telecommunications Industry Conference March 6 - 7, 1996 Washington, DC Sponsored by America's Network magazine Hear from the leaders in the industry: AT&T, Bell Atlantic, US West Communications, NYNEX, Pacific Bell, Bellsouth and many more!!! For more information call: 800-882-8684 or e-mail info@iqpc.com Provide your name, address, phone and fax number ------------------------------ From: Mark Cuccia Subject: More on Canada==>US Caller ID Date: Tue, 02 Jan 96 15:13:00 CST Last night, I received a call from a friend in Whitehorse, YK. (403-668-xxxx) I received the full ten-digit number on my Caller ID box, but for the name part, I didn't get the city (ratecenter) and two letter abbreviation for Yukon. I didn't even get `YUKON', but rather `ALBERTA', all caps, left justified, with eight spaces filling out the remainder of the fifteen character field. (I did get `ONTARIO' spelled out on a call in early December, from 905-842-xxxx). It seems that for Caller-ID with Name, on calls within the BellSouth region (I don't know how calls originating in independent territory but within the BellSouth nine-state area will show) where the number transmits, BellSouth can check its own LIDB database to get the name assoicated with the number. On calls originating in the (continental) US but outside of BellSouth, if the number transmits, BellSouth can get the ratecenter (town) name and state. The state is abbreviated. They are using the NPA-NXX to check some database, probably with info from Bellcore's TRA (Traffic Routing Administration) products/databases. For calls originating in the US, it wouldn't matter whether they used a Routing or a Rating database from Bellcore TRA to check the NPA-NXX. However, Canadian NPA-NXX info is *only* in Bellcore's RATING database/products. Stentor Canada does not participate in Bellcore TRA routing products. You will only find Canadian NPA and province info in the routing products. Information down to the Central Office code (NXX) level for Canadian NPA's *is* in the Bellcore rating materials, which Canada does participate in. The call I received came from the Yukon and not Alberta. Even if Yukon and the Northwest Territories were to get a single but unique NPA code, I wonder what the ID box would say -- Yukon for all calls from that NPA? Northwest Territories? Maybe YK/NWT? If it is spelled out on a max 15 character line, it would say: `YUKON NORTHWEST' And how about calls from Prince Edward Island? Both it and Nova Scotia share the same 902 NPA. Except for maybe political identity, I don't see Prince Edward Island getting its own areacode anytime soon. I haven't yet received any calls from Alaska, Hawaii or the Caribbean since inter-State/LATA CID began. I don't know how these calls would appear if anything other than `out-of-area'. Alaska, Hawaii and the Caribbean do participate in Bellcore's routing products, though. I also haven't (yet) received any calls from outside of the North American Network since CID across state/LATA lines began. The number being available would probably also depend on the originating country and any international carriers. *If* Mexico has any form of CID, I would *guess* that it would show a 52X-XXX-XXXX number. But how will CID number display work with international calls between various numbering plans? Are there yet any standards/specs on this for for non-ISDN lines? I know that many European countries do have Caller-ID type service. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@law.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 14:54:04 -0500 From: wengler@ee.rochester.edu (Mike Wengler) Subject: A Phone Number is NOT a Credit Card! The ten digit phone number is being used as a credit card, but with rules and procedures that are sloppy stupid and slimey by comparison to those used by Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and a host of other credit cards which are voluntarily and knowingly acquired by customers. I knew I was getting credit from the phone company when I got my phone number, but I had no idea that I was getting a credit account for use at "dating" services and other slimey crap. It is high time that telco be held to the same standards as Visa, MasterCard, and Discover when providing a credit and billing service for other companies. Especially on standards of customer entering into the contract. TELCO: DON'T BILL ANYTHING WHICH IS NOT SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED BY CUSTOMER! Failing to hang up is a "low-bandwidth" way to aquire such authorization: try using the standards of Visa, MC, and Discover: real verbal "OK, sounds good" type response to get authorization. I have been following the comedy of billing that is reported in this group when completely random and idiotic services manage to use a local telephone company to bully large charges from "customers." The outstanding conclusions I reach are: 1) The ten digit phone number is being used as a credit card, and local telco is being used as the credit agency, or at least the billing/coll- ections branch of that agency. 2) Rules and practices for such phone number credit activity are slimy, loose and crappy by comparison to the rules and practices for "real" credit cards: Visa, MC, Discover etc. which don't masquerade their credit service behind some other front. I think it is no accident and no coincidence that the billing fraud reported here allegedly committed by ITA, Integratel and others is carried out using phone numbers and not real credit cards. The practices they employ are crap compared to the practices employed on behalf of real credit cards. Specifically, I have been billed on real credit cards after making an 800 number call. In EVERY case, a live human being 1) informed me of the total charge and 2) asked me if I agreed to that. I might further add that in every case another difference exists: 3) I received some real product (airline ticket, clothing, flowers, etc), quite knowingly, as a result of a very consciously entered into transaction. In every case of fraud alleged in this group, the "service" committing the fraud either gave an automatic message informing that there would be a charge, or claimed later that they had done so. The defrauders never bother claiming that you specifically authorized this charge, only that you heard you would be charged and didn't bail out fast enough. Visa has NEVER tried to make me pay a charge because someone announced to me that there would be a charge. It seems to me that they have never suggested even that I pay a charge that I had not explicity authorized. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Pac Bell -- nor any other telco is > being deceptive when they say that calls to 800 numbers are free to > the calling party. Where the *toll charge for the call itself* is > concerned, it is reversed to the called party. In other words, yes > indeed, Absolute Communications did pay for the carriage of your call > in an effort to get you to do business with them. This is no different > than any other 800 number you call; the person owning the number > *does* want to hear from you and agrees to pay for the call. PAT seems to want to defend the slime on technical grounds that the 800 number call is still free, even though the telco bills you for it, citing number of minutes of the call and generally at a time sensitive rate. This is indeed a technicality: the technicality which is apparently behind these lousy practices. If telco delivers the service to me, and telco bills it, any attempt to call that a "free" phone call will fall successfully on telecom nerds ears, but ring oddly in the ears of customers who should not have to learn the whole industry in order to avoid a $100 dating service bill coming with their phone bill. > But when you call an airline for example via their 800 number to > reserve tickets, and you are later billed for same, do you complain > that you thought it should have been free since you called via 800? PAT, uhm, have you been billed for plane tickets by telco? If so, this is a new service I am unaware of, I have invariably been billed on my credit cards after explicity authorizing both the company to issue me the credit card in the first place, and the ticket vendor to charge me an agreed amount in the second place. This difference between a time sensitive charge billed by telco with time on an 800 number being the inventoried item and a plane ticket on Visa is NOT subtle. > There is no doubt at all that many/most of the 'adult oriented' sex > lines operating are run by sleazy people, but in their defense I > must say they are not trying to make you pay for the phone call to > them, they are trying to make you pay for the actions they took in > your behalf. Billed through telco, by the minute. Many sex lines do charge on Visa. This is more honest, as it does require all sorts of consent on the part of the customer which phone number billing through telco does not. > You call any one of several long distance carriers via 800 to use > their direct lines to place your call. Do you complain that because > you dialed 800-CALL-ATT to convey a message or cause some action to > occur that it should be 'free' to you since you dialed 800 and were > told by PacBell there would be no charge for your call? Even though > you dialed 800 at no charge, you expect to pay for resulting services > don't you? Only because I agreed ahead of time to do so! I went through an authorization process to take on a particular long distance phone service which may also issue me a travel card. Integratel and ITA do NOT have that kind of authorization before they make charges. > Every one of the adult oriented lines operating via 800 used Western > Union as their guinea pig: if WUTCO gets to accept calls on a toll > free number, convey information between the caller and others, etc > and charge the same to the telephone bill of the caller, *then so > do we*. And you know what? They are right. Unfortunatly perhaps, > telco has to treat every one of those services at arms-length, even > as they hold their own noses to avoid the stench. The true solution > is for telco to get out of the business of billing for anything but > their own services. PAT] This simply doesn't cover it. Why shouldn't telco just write their standard to say: "credit authorization must include explicit authorization on customers part for the charge. Disputed charges will be returned by telco and you'll have to collect it your own damn self. Company must maintain less than X% billing complaints to continue to receive billing service from telco." I bet this would keep WUTCO and lose the defrauders. C'mon, you know I'm right! > Much of this could be resolved if the IPs would tape record the > first fifteen or twenty seconds of each phone call, during which time > they would make a statement similar to this: > "For billing purposes only, the first few seconds of this call is > being tape recorded. Our records indicate you are calling from the > phone number xxx-xxx-xxxx. If this is correct; if you are of majority age > in the state from which you are calling, responsible for the payment > of the telephone bill for this number; agree to pay $xx per minute/call > for the conversation which follows, and consent to our tape recording > of this billing verification, please press the 'Y' key on your phone > now or speak the word 'yes' ... if any part of the above is not true > then please disconnect now at no charge." (Pause for about five seconds > to listen for keypress or verbal agreement). Automatically disconnect > or proceed, as appropriate. After hearing key press or verbal 'yes' > then system responds, "Thank you. Tape recording is turned off. You > may continue." (At that point caller is cut over to program in progress > or handed off to to the person they will speak with, etc.) Yes, this would be an improvement. But still: 1) not even this level of authorization is required by telco, even though WUTCO with a virtual certainty gets a higher, more explicit approval than this, and they are alleged by PAT to be the camel's nose in the tent here. 2) I still never wanted my phone # to be a credit card, I simply wanted credit with the phone company itself 3) All my legitimate transactions over the phone get billed to actual (not telephone number) credit cards. Mike Wengler ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 17:30:24 -0500 From: rich.sagall@pobox.com (Rich Sagall) Subject: How Can You Tell if Your Phone Line is Tapped I recently read about a phone number this purported to be a way to check and see if your phone is tapped. I am somewhat dubious about the source, so I am asking readers of this list if they know anything about the number. Here's the procedure: Dial 10732-1-770-988-9664 A computer generated female voice recites the number you are calling from, and then says "8". The voice then repeats "0" nine times. According the source, if the voice then says "1" or "2," then your line is clean. Any other number is supposed to mean your line is tapped. Thanks for any information anyone can provide. Rich Sagall, MD Publisher of Interesting! (interesting@pobox.com) and Pediatrics for Parents (pediatricsforparents@pobox.com) home pages http://www.agate.net/~richs/interesting.html and http://www.agate.net/~richs/MMPage1.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We've had this little urban legend (is that what you would call it?) here in the past, but not for a couple of years now. Would someone care to explain what all those zeroes and other digits following the phone number read-out are supposed to mean? Thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: JeanBernard_Condat@email.Francenet.fr (JeanBernard Condat) Reply-To: JeanBernard_Condat@email.Francenet.fr Subject: France Telecom Offers Voice Mail For Publiphones Date: 02 Jan 1996 17:14:16 GMT Organization: FranceNet Paris (France), January 2th, 1996--France telecom have announce the creation of a very interesting and usefull service: a voice mail for publiphone users. If your correspondant is busy, if you are unable to wait for somebody on the phone you can leave a 30-seconds voice mail. The message will be automatically transmit to the called number at the hour given by the caller. The service is simple: when a call don't go right, a little message appear on the digital screen of the publiphone (in all streets in France). You push the green keyboard (PRICE: 5 UTP = 4,05 FF TTC)... and you will be ask by the computer system to leave a 30-second message and the hour at which you will be happy that the message will be deliver. The person called will be re-call four times by the computer system (not between 10 pm and 7 am) and the computer will re-call three new times for voice mail delivery. All the 158,000 publiphones using a phone card will be equiped with this service in the three first months of 1996. France Telecom give a toll free number for more information: 05 15 24 42 (ask for M. Gerard Merveille for calls out of France: +33 1 44 44 88 23). Some years ago, a new service called "3636" was tested in Lyon for the same service. The success of this test was great and all publiphones receive the visits of lovers, sellers, students and other people looking for an hurge telecommunications with other ones not responding. Jean-Bernard Condat Computer Fraud and Security Expert Paris, France condat@atelier.fr ------------------------------ From: juergen@jojo.sub.de (Juergen Ziegler) Subject: Germany: Another Deutsche Telekom Disaster Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 19:58:35 MET Germany, January 1st 1996, the German monopoly telephone company "Deutsche Telekom AG" has introduced a new telephone rate scheme. As the new rate scheme will introduce a hike in local calls (up to 350%), most long distance calls wil have lower rates. As a result of the massive hike of local calling charges, there was a massive media coverage about the unsocial local rates for low income subscribers. But this massive hike of local calling charges was not enough for Telekom. On the first day of the new rate system, Telekom switches charged long distance calls at a higher rate, because these switches did not use the lower holiday rate. After last year's massive phone fraud desaster, the first day of the new rate scheme will be another unforgetable Telekom day. There is not much technical information available about this Telekom flaw, but as one Telekom spokesman mentioned, Telekom switches made by "SEL Alcatel" had a software problem. It was not mentioned, that the same problem happens to be true for the other system in use, which are mainly made by "Siemens". But if SEL Alcatel is to blame for this poor showing, then this is another sour moment for that company. As SEL Alcatel had to slash thousands of jobs last year, it was also mentioned, that SEL Alcatel had to pay more than 30 Mio. DM (approx. $20'000'000) as contract penalties, because they could not deliver switch software in time. Juergen Ziegler * juergen@jojo.sub.de * 77815 Buehl (Baden) * Germany ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #2 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 3 21:05:55 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA13536; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 21:05:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 21:05:55 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601040205.VAA13536@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #3 TELECOM Digest Wed, 3 Jan 96 21:06:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 3 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson CompuServe and Germany (John R. Covert) Re: Compuserve Censors USENET in Europe (Ross E. Mitchell) US West, Regulators and Quality of Service (Peter Marshall) Re: New Canadian Telco Websites (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: Angst and Awe on the Internet (George Gilder) 60Hz Buzz on Phone Line and Modem Problems (Doug Rudoff) RBOC Interconnection Rates (Jonathan McHale) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Sudeepto Roy) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Eric Valentine) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (George Gilder) Re: *66 Works on Ticketmaster Type Numbers? (Eric Valentine) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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, 3 Jan 96 17:29:34 EST From: John R. Covert Subject: CompuServe and Germany This is supposedly the list of what CompuServe shut down in response to the Munich State Prosecutor's office: 66 alt.binaries.* groups alt.homosexual 2 alt.magick.sex[.*] groups alt.motss.bisexual alt.politics.sex 2 alt.recovery.* groups alt.religion.sexuality 130 alt.sex[.*] groups alt.sexy.bald.captains alt.stories.erotic alt.support.disabled.sexuality alt.tv.tiny-toon.sex 3 clari.* groups pertaining to sex and lbg news de.sex de.talk.sex es.alt.sexo 2 fido.* groups with "sex" in their names 6 fido7.* groups with "sex" in their names 15 gay-net.* groups rec.arts.erotica shamash.gayjews slo.sex soc.support.youth.gay-lesbian-bi 2 t-netz.sex groups ucb.erotica.sensual uw.alt.sex.* zer.t-netz.sex I cannot verify the accuracy of this list; it's interesting that alt.revisionism is not on the list, but might be missing because the organization which provided this list wasn't interested in that portion of the problem. Today the German government is denying ordering that these newsgroups be shut down or threatening prosecution (even though they had earlier raided the CompuServe offices in Munich). However, they admit that they told CompuServe that German law required them to monitor the content of the information provided by their on-line service to eliminate anything related to child pornography, revisionism about the holocaust, or other neo-Nazi activity; CompuServe insists that they are not responsible for content and had no choice but to shut down the groups, since they don't have the resources to do the monitoring. They shut them down world-wide, because they don't, at this time, have the technical means to deny access to a portion of their offerings to subscribers only in Germany. Of course, there are hundreds of other internet providers in Germany which still (at the moment) provide access to all of these groups. This access may or may not be by storing the text of the groups on servers owned by those providers, and that may be the key difference. /john [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John provided a relatively 'cleaned-up' version of the list of newsgroup names. I received another version of the list with all sixty-six varieties (like the ketsup people, I guess) of the alt.binaries.* and all 130 of the alt.sex.* groups mentioned above listed by complete name. I am not a prude, God knows I am not a prude, and I think you know I am not a prude ... but that complete listing was rather embarassing, and I frankly would not have printed it here. My thanks to John for summarizing it all much more 'neatly' above. If you wish to see the complete list of verbotin newsgroups, check out a couple other e-journals on the net over the past couple of days. A couple of them eagerly ran the entire list of names, I guess to defiantly show how open-minded and liberal and tolerant they are -- or perhaps just how naughty they can be. All of course were accompanied by the usual 'censorship' and First Amendment arg- uments. Amazing isn't it as Tom Lehrer, the Harvard mathemetician turned comic noted in some of his performances, "the people who enjoy seeing smut never will admit that they like it and enjoy seeing it and reading it ... they always couch it in First Amendment theories ... always in a sort of third person removed approach. They'll never admit to their own prurient interests in the subject matter, preferring instead to blame all the problems on the First Amendment, although they don't quite phrase it that way either." Just think how stimulating and intellectually honest things would be if the people who are making the biggest fusses about Compuserve and the net right now would just openly say 'I like reading and posting to those groups', or 'I like having those groups because seeing others with interests like mine help validate my own behavior'. But oh no ... the First Amendment has to take still another beating. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rem@world.std.com (Ross E Mitchell) Subject: Re: Compuserve Censors USENET in Europe Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 16:15:46 GMT Recently the TELECOM Digest Editor wrote in response to Jean B Sarrazin's note complaining about Compuserve's "censoring" of USENET groups: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are confused. You are having a > knee-jerk reaction of your own. First, let us understand the correct > use of the term 'censorship'. By definition, only the government can > censor soemone. Compuserve is not the government. 'Censorship' is > when the government physically stops you from speaking or writing on > whatever topics you wish. With all due respect to PAT, I know of no source which limits the meaning of censorship to government-imposed censorship. In fact, the film and television industries have long histories of self-imposed censorship. Certainly some of us remember the "network censors" of the early days of television. Further, the word censor is defined in The American Heritage Dictionary as simply "A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable." Censorship itself is defined as "The act, process, or practice of censoring." So while we might agree or disagree that Compuserve's "removal of objectionable" material (i.e. censorship) is ill-advised, I believe it misses the point to argue that this is not a form of censorship at all. Ross Mitchell [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your own definition agrees with *me* ! "A person who is authorized to examine ... and remove ..." Now, what is the *only* entitity in a position to do that to whom we as citizens have little or no recourse? Can you spell G_O_V_E_R_N_M_E_N_T ? The First Amendment addresses what the *government* may and may not do. It says nothing about how individuals and companies may choose to interact with one another. The entire Bill of Rights does not protect individuals from each other; it protects us from the *goverment*. How effective is any attempt at censorship other than the government variety? To put it another way, there are no laws or consitutional provisions against individuals and private organizations imposing *passive* forms of censorship on each other. While I can be and am forbidden to come to your home and take away your printing machinery, the prohibition is against the theft of your property or an assault upon your person. If I steal your computer, I am charged with theft; not with the resulting censorship imposed on you until you obtain a new computer. On the other hand, if I leave you alone and do not molest you or remove your methods of communication **but simply refuse to help you propogate your communication for reasons of my own** then no laws have been broken. You cannot use the word 'censor' with the loose definition you presented. When you do, you cheapen its currency. All last year on the net, the term was 'child porn', and it got used and abused to the point it no longer has any shock value at all. Is the word for this year around here going to be 'censor'? Try it and see if in six months or a year anyone cares one way or the other. Do not ascribe individuals and private organizations making conscious choices in how they interact (or refuse to interact) with each other as 'censorship'. It isn't so. It only becomes censorship when Compuserve removes all the newsgroups and the government responds by saying you *must* subscribe to CIS. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Peter Marshall Subject: US West, Regulators and Quality of Service Organization: Eskimo North (206) For-Ever Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 18:39:36 GMT Forwarded FYI to the Digest: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- REGULATORS CHARGE U S WEST "STONEWALL" U S West Communications tried to "stonewall" official efforts to address its eroding customer service, according to regulators in its home territory. The U S West Regional Oversight Committee (ROC) said the telco's plans were contained in an internal memo instructing company representatives attending an ROC meeting in October not to give regulators a reason to "justify their existence." The ROC consists of regulators from throughout U S West's 14-state service area. Joan Smith, an Oregon regulator and former ROC chairwoman, said the memo reinforced the atmosphere of suspicion between U S West and regulators. "The idea was not to put anything in writing, because if they gave us an inch, we'd take a mile," Smith said. "I guess they think that we [regulators] have horns. Well, we can. But then, so can they." Regulators called the document a public relations black eye for U S West, which is already under fire for its inability to provide prompt primary and secondary phone service. In the Oct. 19 memo, U S West vice president Laura Ford said company representatives should push for internal measurement of customer service performance, rather than accept uniform regulations drafted by the committee. Ford urged the three U S West officials at the ROC meeting to take a "cordial but firm" approach. She emphasized that the regulators not be given "the impression that they should be measuring our service quality," or that they should "be micromanaging our business." U S West was provided a copy of the proposed ROC standards months in advance of the October meeting. However, the company did not offer a written response because it feared that "they [ROC members] might well have their backs up and be loaded for bear by the time we meet with them," according to the Ford memo. ROC members discovered the memo when one of the U S West officials left it behind after one of the meetings. U S West officials said the memo's content had "been blown out of proportion," but defended the premise that consumer reaction is the best indicator of how the company is performing. "Obviously, we're not proud that the memo is out there," said U S West corporate spokesman Dave Banks. "But its overriding message is right. We want our customers to set our customer service standards, because if we don't perform, sooner or later, they're going to walk when they have the opportunity." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 15:31:55 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Re: New Canadian Telco Websites On Wed, 3 Jan 1996, Will Macdonald wrote: > Aren't most on http://www.stentor.ca/ ? > I'm from AGT, our parent company being is at: http://www.telus.com/ http://www.stentor.ca has a clickable map of Canada along with a list of hypertext clickable lines of the Stentor members and two associate members (Northwestel & GTE's Quebec Telephone). Originally, clicking on any of these Stentor member telcos brought you to a brief description of that company, the brief description being located within Stentor's website/server. I've only had access to the Internet since April, and I discovered Stentor's site at that time. At that time, most Stentor member telcos had only brief descriptions within Stentor's site, which could be clicked away from Stentor's map page, while Bell Canada seemed to be the only Canadian telco with a developed Website of their own, which could be clicked away (linked from) Stenotr's map/list at their webpage. Since April, the other telcos of Stentor one-by-one set up webpages of their own, which were hypertext linked from Stentor's map/list. After Northwestel began their own webpage sometime in September, only Newfoundland & Prince Edward Island seemed to be the only Stentor member telcos without webpages of their own- or at least telcos without webpages that were not (yet) hypertext linked to Stentor's webpage map. I did a `netsearch' on Newfoundland and came across their own webpage, which had not (yet) been linked to Stentor's map. (at least not in the past few days). I couldn't find anything for (Prince Edward) Island Tel. Co. when I was `surfing/searching'. I also came across Telebec & Northern Telephone with webpages of their own. These two companies are held by BCE (also the parent company of Bell Canada & holds either the company itself or shares of the parent companies of: Northwestel, Newfoundland Tel, NB Tel, MT&T, and (PE) Island Telco- which is also held in part by MT&T). Telebec & Northern Tel are not members or associates of Stentor on their own. Neither is a member of CITA- the Canadian Independent Telephone Association. But each is a member of their respective provincial independent tel. associations- Northern Telephone is a member of OTA- the Ontario Telephone Association, while Telebec is a member of ACTQ- the letters are for words in French, but I'll give the basic English here- Association of Quebec Telephone Companies. BTW, (GTE) Quebec Telephone is an *associate* member of Stentor. It is *not* a member of CITA, but it *is* a member of ACTQ. Northwestel *used* to be part of CN Telecommunications until about 1988. Back then, it was a member of CITA, until it was taken over by BCE (Bell Canada Enterprises), and thus became an *associate* member of Stentor (Telecom Canada). Edmonton AB (EdTel) was a Canadian `independent' telco (and a member of CITA), but it was taken over by AGT sometime around March 1995. AGT's holding company purchased it from the City of Edmonton. (EdTel was municipally owned). I'm still waiting to see when Ontario Northland Communications gets a webpage. It is a member of CITA, but not of OTA. When I was looking at Northern Telephones webpages, it was stated that toll services in northeastern Ontario were provided by the *provincially* owned Ontario Northland Transportation Commission. NT's service area `seems' as if it had toll switching/transmission services of its own- it has a number of exchanges and Central Office codes in central northeastern Ontario. Ontario Northland Communications has only a handful of local exchanges & NXX codes just north of and just south of NT's exchange operating territory. In some old CITA publications I have, it is stated that Ontario Northland Communications has some Class-4 (and even a Class-3) toll/tandem switches. I would guess that Ontario Northland Communications is part of the provincially owned Ontario Northland Transportation Commission. Maybe Nigel Allen or Dave Leibold could shed some more light on this. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 12:16:28 -0600 From: george gilder Subject: Re: Angst and Awe on the Internet cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) responded to my article which appeared here over the New Year's holiday. > Seems to me Mr. Gilder has his demons wrong. I haven't noticed a lot of > "left-wing Luddites" or "media Marxists" going full out to discredit the > Net. That's because you are not on the pub lists for new book releases. I have received at least 20 books in the last six months making ridiculous arguments that the net widens gaps between the rich and poor, the info rich and info poor, corporate monopolies and consumer rights, that the net invades privacy, pollutes culture, promotes isolation, emits carcinogenic rays, and destroys the sense of community fostered by TV. The endless leftist fears of monopoly, concentration, conglomeration offer new pretexts for the very government regulation that can actually kill the net. The fact is that the net is the enemy of all monopolies, hierarchies, pyramids and power grids of the existing establishment. By attacking the Net, the left allies itself with the old establishments of TV and telephony. The old dinosaurs will continue to copulate, as we see today, but the overall impact of the net is to flatten the landscape, promote equality, and multiply entrepreneurial opportunities. What the left fears is that the net will be too effective in opening opportunities for the poor around the world (bringing a billion Asians into the middle class in ten years), and thus will threaten the cozy nooks and niches of protected and overregulated welfare states of the West. > On the other hand, it looks to this humble observer that it's the media > magnates and the far-right crazies who run this Congress, who [promote] > consolidation, concentration, and censorship. Yes, there are conservatives who have proposed imprudent indecency rules, but Gingrich and Rick White are on their case, and the courts are extremely unlikely to uphold any new restrictions. However, the fears of corporate consolidation and concentration that you voice have led to a Telecom bill that gives the FCC 80 new regulatory functions relating to the net. The law of the telecosm suggests that traffic flows to the least regulated arena. If the left has its way, the Internet will be centered in Asia. Best, gg ------------------------------ From: dougrud@blarg.net (Doug Rudoff) Subject: 60Hz Buzz on Phone Line and Modem Problems Date: 3 Jan 1996 09:14:11 GMT Organization: :noitazinagrO My step-mom's house's phone line has a very loud 60 Hz buzz. Any suggestions on how to get rid of it? It affects modem connections. The 2400 baud modem she has on her computer system can connect, but when I use my Global Village Powerport Gold (14.4 kbaud) I have no luck connecting even when I set it to connect at 2400 baud. Are there any filters that will help? Many thanks. Doug Rudoff dougrud@blarg.net Seattle, WA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 22:14:29 +0900 From: jmchale@gol.com (Jonathan McHale) Subject: RBOC Interconnection Rates Would anyone know where to point me to for information on interconnection access rates RBOC's charge IX's (and others, if available -- e.g. cell operators), and the methods the FCC and State commissions use to determine fairness of such rates? I am studying the evolution of interconnection rules in Japan, and it would be useful to see what we do as a point of reference. Thanks, Jonathan McHale Tokyo ------------------------------ From: sroy@qualcomm.com (sroy) Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 22:50:06 GMT Organization: Qualcomm Incorporated In article , Rob Hickey wrote: > 1) PCS phones cannot compete with cellular phones on price since they are > practically giving away cell phones; Wonder what prompted the author to make this comment. The "free" cellular phones are really heavily subsidized ones which come with a long term (e.g. 3 yr.) service contract. Why wouldn't the same be applicable to PCS? > 2) PCS air time cannot compete with cellular air time charges since most > cellular companies are not charging on evenings and weekends; With the use of emerging digital technologies (CDMA, TDMA etc.), airtime charges should actually be cheaper than cellular phones. Inherrently, these technologies offer higher subscriber capacities. > 3) PCS phones cannot be practically any more portable than the latest > cell phones; Somewhat untrue, I guess. In general PCS phones are more compact and handier than their cellular counterparts -- though these days 'tis difficult to spot much of a difference. Recently at a trade show I noticed a tiny PCS (TDMA) phone from a Japanese manufacturer that would fit the palm. > 4) PCS phones will not work in moving vehicles. Again, wonder why the author would say this. In general, the way I understand it, there's not a vast difference between PCS and digital cellular (except for frequencies, technologies, network topologies to a certain extent etc.). Please post your comments. Thanks, Sudeepto Roy ------------------------------ From: exueric@exu.ericsson.se (Eric Valentine) Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Date: 03 Jan 1996 21:16:52 GMT Organization: Ericsson North America Inc. Reply-To: exueric@exu.ericsson.se In article 5@massis.lcs.mit.edu, Rob Hickey writes: I assume by PCS you mean the PCS that is being licensed around 1.9 Ghz. If so, I'll take a crack at it. > 1) PCS phones cannot compete with cellular phones on price since they are > practically giving away cell phones; They aren't making money on the phones. Sales of cellular and PCS phones are both heavily subsidized. But depending on the economies of scale (e.g based on technology choice etc.) the subsidies may or may not be smaller for PCS phones. The other thing to consider is the feature level of the phones. Same argument as for PCs: if today's PCs are five times faster than ones at the same cost a few years, can you say today's are cheaper? I think so. How about a PCS phone that support Short Message Service or more advanced data services? > 2) PCS air time cannot compete with cellular air time charges since most > cellular companies are not charging on evenings and weekends; Evenings and weekends are not where the cellular companies make their money. That free time is an unused resource and they will be happy to give it away in exchange for monthly subscription and occasional roaming fees. The battleground will be 1) for high end users that use their cell phones a lot during the day and 2) residential wireline replacement markets. For case 2) we should remember that the local phone companies don't charge for airtime either, and they make money. For case 1), you want to provide more services like voice/short message/voice mail packages. Then the high-end guys use their phones a lot more during the day. > 3) PCS phones cannot be practically any more portable than the latest > cell phones; Yes and no. Portability is not just size, it is how long you can use it, and where. Consider battery life. Consider security problems with the legacy cellular systems that can often make it a pain in the ass to use anywhere outside your home service area. A more modern system doesn't have those problems. > 4) PCS phones will not work in moving vehicles. Wrong. He must be talking about cordless phones or maybe field trials for some of the CDMA systems. There is no inherent problem with using PCS 1900 in a moving vehicle unless you try something silly like pico-cells along an expressway, but that will hose an AMPS system too, just from trying to support the handovers. One version of PCS at 1900 is GSM-based and upbanded from 900. It has been working in vehicles for some time now quite nicely, thank you. The same will be true some day for CDMA based systems. > Mr. Rowan questions why the PCS industry would spend billions in > infrastructure to duplicate services that already exist. Because they think they can make a lot of money. The cellular operators made a ton of money and there is no reason to think that the market won't support at least a few more big players (and a lot of small ones in markets that are too small to excite the big guys. Not everyone will get rich. Not nearly. But if you look at where the US is on the cellular penetration curve (still climbing fast) and consider even the possibility of starting to tap into the residential market (think about the synergies with companies like Sprint that could blow off access charges.) > Is there merit to these arguments, and do the same conditions apply in > the United States (given that millions have already been spent on > licenses)? There is merit in the argument that the cellular operators will not all be killed off by PCS. They have a head-start and didn't have to cough up billions of bucks for licenses. Now they will just have to be more responsive and competitive to try to hang on to their market share. Eric Valentine Ericsson Radio Systems ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 11:38:22 -0600 From: george gilder Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" > cellular technology will not be quickly missplaced for the following > reasons: 1) they are practically giving away cell phones; 2) cellular > companies are not charging on evenings and weekends; 3) PCS phones > cannot be practically any more portable than the latest cell > phones; 4) PCS phones will not work in moving vehicles. PCS is not a competitor for cellular; it is a new local loop technology, digital from the gitgo, that offers voice, internet access, mobility, and backhaul over the existing cableTV plant. Using CDMA, PCS will offer high security and bandwidth on demand as well. If the digital acoustics are superior to wireline, it will cut deeply into existing wireline markets.On the basis of their British experience, USWest estimates that they will lose some 30 percent of their market to cable based PCS. PCS will be complementary to cellular; you plug the same handset into your car system for vehicular usage. George Gilder ------------------------------ From: exueric@exu.ericsson.se (Eric Valentine) Subject: Re: *66 Works on Ticketmaster Type Numbers? Date: 03 Jan 1996 20:27:10 GMT Organization: Ericsson North America Inc. Reply-To: exueric@exu.ericsson.se In article 2@massis.lcs.mit.edu, relkay01@fiu.edu (Ron Elkayam) writes: > On Tue, 26 Dec 95 00:02:36 EST, Bill Rubin (rubin@watson.ibm.com) posted: >> But if it will actually work in these situations, I might actually >> consider using it! > It's pointless for heavily-used busy numbers. By the time you get the > ringing, and pick up the phone, the desired line is busy again (and > you'll be told to hang up and wait some more). It's not as if it > reserves you the right to be the next caller (it doesn't). There is an option specified for Automatic Callback that will allow the possibility of the calling line to be "reserved" for the subscriber that ordered the callback. It is problematic when the callback request is queued against a PABX or hunt group since you obviously can't reserve *all* lines going into the PABX. *If* we ever get the function that allows you to receive the number where your call finally ended up (assuming it is a single line, as may be the case for a hunt group) you should be able to order callback against *that* line. Of course, callback queue space is limited and everyone else will figure out the same trick. If you have CLASS ACB, you might try a couple of the numbers above a group number, since they are often allocated in sequence. If it turns out to be the right place, you should have a shot at queuing towards that *one* number and, if the telco has the option turned on, being able to reserve the line for your incoming call. A lot of ifs ... Eric Valentine Ericsson Radio Systems ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #3 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 3 22:02:48 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA17663; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 22:02:48 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 22:02:48 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601040302.WAA17663@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #4 TELECOM Digest Wed, 3 Jan 96 22:03:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 4 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 1996 International Forecasting Conference (Peter S. Chung) SDSL v. ADSL (Peter Brace) Asymetry (ADSL) and Net Access - A Bad Thing? (Rupert Baines) Re: ITA Dating Service Rip Off: Is This a Scam? (Thomas Peters) Re: ITA Dating Service Rip Off: Is This a Scam? (Glen Ecklund) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Andrew C. Green) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: PETER.S.CHUNG@gte.sprint.com Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 19:55:14 -0500 Subject: 1996 International Forecasting Conference Dear Patrick, I am requesting your favor of publishing an attached E-mail in your TELECOM Digest so that all telecommunications professionals could benefit by attending the conference. You have previously published our conference "call for papers" in your Digest last November, 1995. Your kindly gesture of publishing the attached E-mail is most appreciated. Yes, I was a little let down after my alma mater, Northwestern got beat by USC. But it was a jolly good show for NU and the Big Ten conference. Thank you very much, Peter Chung, GTE - 1996 ICFC co-chairperson. *********** Attachment *********** THE 1996 INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS FORECASTING CONFERENCE Timely Agenda Focused on Your Needs The International Communications Forecasting Conference (ICFC) is a professional forum for telecommunications forecasters, demand analysts and planners presenting state of the art information to help them do their jobs better. The annual ICFC provides the opportunity for discussion, presentation, and review of emerging issues as they pertain to telecommunications forecasting and planning, demand analysis, business research and cost analysis. The ICFC is the premier conference dedicated to the Telecommunications Forecasting profession. Why is attending the 1996 ICFC important for you? The ICFC is designed by industry experts specifically for Telecommunications Professionals. The challenge for telecommunications forecasters, planners, and analysts is to respond to the dynamics of our industry by integrating marketing, technology and consumer behavior into companies' tactical and strategic decision making processes. As technological advances and worldwide economic integration render international borders virtually irrelevant for telecommunications end users, we are faced with unprecedented new challenges. Both wireline and wireless service areas now extend beyond familiar regional and national boundaries and most large telcos have become multinational corporations. Nevertheless, business planning requirements must still be based on knowledge of customers, competitors and markets as well as assessments of internal costs and efficiencies. How can customer behavior be understood in an environment of reduced regulation, increasing bypass opportunities, offshore competition and blurring of the distinction among services? The 1996 ICFC is the premier forum for discussion of the forecasting and demand analysis challenges of the 90's and beyond. If you want one cost-effective conference targeted to your needs - this is it! Internationally Known Speakers Reed Hundt, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission Mr. Hundt will speak to the conference on "Competition in the Telecommunications Industry". During Mr. Hundt's chairmanship the FCC is making key decisions regarding industry structure and competition which will effect the US communications industry and markets for years to come. Professor Alfred E. Kahn Dr. Kahn, former Chairman of NY PUC and Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Cornell University, will speak on "Deregulation and Competition in the Telecommunications Industry". Dr. Kahn was a major force behind deregulation in the US transportation sector. Drawing upon his rich experience in both the academic and policy arena, Dr. Kahn always brings an invigorating perspective to a discussion of competitive forces in the US economy. Mr. Peter Huber Mr. Huber, author of the much acclaimed study "Geodesic Network", "Orwell's Revenge: the 1984 palimpsest" and many more will present his ideas on "The Internet and Future of the Telecommunications Industry". Mr Huber has an uncanny ability to predict the interaction of technology with human behavior. Attendees are sure to find Mr. Huber's insights to be rewarding listening. ICFC's Reputation for Quality and Excellence Over the last 13 years, the International Communications Forecasting Conference has developed an outstanding reputation throughout the Telecommunications Industry. This reputation has attracted the highest quality speakers and participants.For this conference we have expanded our participation audience further by inviting and encouraging the participants from IXC, CAP, CATV, Cellular and PCS industries of domestic and foreign countries. Forecasting Conference Outstanding Educational Opportunities The ICFC is the only international training forum for telecommunications forecasters and planners. In addition to the Keynote Speakers, there will be many SPECIALIZED SESSIONS concentrating on the cutting edge of telecommunications forecasting and demand analysis techniques and applications as well as pre-conference TUTORIAL SESSIONS. Typical agenda topics include: - Optimal Calling Packages - LEC Entry into InterLATA Services - Local Loop Competition - Wireline vs Wireless Competition - Internet and Telecommunications - Unbundling and Access Line Forecasting - Market Share Prediction - One-stop Shopping for Telecom Services Networking With Telecommunications Professionals The ICFC provides a unique opportunity to meet your fellow telecommunications forecasters and planners, industry analysts and academics. Conferees will have time during the conference to share notes on forecasting and demand analysis issues and discuss new ideas. Informal outings will be planned in the evenings to encourage further networking, while experiencing the excitement of Dallas. Technology Showcase A highlight of the ICFC is always the vendor exhibits of the latest forecasting and analytical software and information sources that can make your forecasting more effective and accurate. With so many vendors in one place, it is easy to learn about and compare state of the art tools such as: - Geographic-based databases - Statistical analysis and forecasting software - Economic data and market analysis information Services - Demographic analysis and mapping tools Cost Effective Training Examine the many benefits and experiences available to you at the International Communications Forecasting Conference: increasing your professional and technical knowledge; improving your understanding of the globalization of the industry; seeing state of the art forecasting and analytical techniques and tools. When you compare these benefits to other, more costly seminars and training sessions, the ICFC has the most to offer to help you and your company meet the ever changing demands of the future. The low registration fee, discount hotel rates, combined with all the outstanding speakers and features, make the 1996 ICFC your best training value. Because this conference is planned by telecommunications professionals like you, this is the conference that fits your budget and provides the information you need to be more efficient and do your job better! New and Different Challenges The time to plan for the new telecommunications industry is not tomorrow but today. Challenges await that, today, have not been identified. Improve your knowledge of the new environment that is changing our industry and its markets. With the information you will acquire, you will be able to better steer your company's tactical and strategic decisions. The 1996 International Communications Forecasting Conference will enhance your understanding of "Demand Analysis with Competition in the Information Age". What's Included? - Admittance to the General Sessions with Reed Hundt, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission, Professor Alfred E. Kahn, Mr. Peter Huber, plus additional internationally known speakers. - Admittance to the Specialized Sessions, Tutorials and Technology Showcase. - Detailed conference materials, including handouts from the Specialized Sessions. - Opening reception/dinner at the hotel plus 2 lunches, 3 continental breakfasts and coffee breaks. DATES: April 16-19, 1996 LOCATION: Dallas, Texas, USA HOTEL: The Grand Kempinski Dallas Conference Logistics Dallas Texas' cosmopolitan metropolis, also a "Telecom Capital of the World", will be an exciting venue for this important event. The Grand Kempinski Dallas is situated in the North Dallas/Galleria area located off the Dallas Tollway. This provides easy access from the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in only 20 minutes, and from Dallas' Love Field Airport in 15 minutes. There are three major shopping malls nearby, one which is directly across the street. There are over 130 restaurants, nightspots and lounges to provide entertainment. The Grand Kempinski Dallas provides complimentary transportation to any destination within a three-mile radius of the hotel. As a 1996 ICFC attendee, you will receive a special hotel rate of $110 for a hotel room, single or double occupancy plus applicable taxes. The ICFC has negotiated these rates to be in effect three days before and after the conference, so bring the family and visit the Dallas, Texas area. All conference attendees MUST book their rooms DIRECTLY with the hotel by calling 800-426-3135 or 214-386-6000 or by faxing 214-701-0342. Please mention that you are attending the 1996 ICFC and/or Technology Forecasting for the Telecom Industry Seminar to receive the special rate. Schedule Registration opens at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, April 16th. For those who arrive early, there will be a tutorial session in the afternoon. The Conference will open with a reception at the hotel beginning at 6:00 p.m. The 1996 ICFC will conclude at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, April 19th. Conference Registration The early registration fee for the 1996 ICFC is $500 in US dollars or after March 25th a late registration fee of $550. You must register by mail and payment must be by check or money order. Complete registration details are provided below. If you have any registration questions, please call Don Gorman at 610-469-0515. First Name_____________________Last Name_____________________ Company Name & Title_________________________________________ Street___________________________ City_______________________ Prov./State__________Country_____________Postal/Zip__________ Tel__________________Fax______________E-Mail_________________ Check/Money order enclosed_______$500 for early registration _______$550 for late registration FORWARD THIS REGISTRATION FORM ALONG WITH YOUR CHECK OR MONEY ORDER to: ICFC 1996 ATTN: Don Gorman 204 Murray School Road Pottstown, PA 19465 Tel: 610-469-0515 U.S.A. Fax: 610-469-0515 Any Other Questions? Please direct your questions to: Peter S. Chung- GTE, Co-chairperson Tel: 214-718-5491, Fax: 214-718-4299 or -4977 Internet E-mail: peter.s.chung@gte.sprint.com "Dallas Skyline Courtesy of the Dallas Convention & Visitor Bureau" (Sorry: we are unable to show Dallas skyline on-line) ------------------------------ From: Peter Brace Subject: SDSL v. ADSL Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 07:22:26 -0800 Organization: Melbourne PC User Group Inc, Australia Fellow telecomers, Is there really much commercial difference between SDSL and ADSL? And is SDSL likely to have much of an impact on cable rollout? (i.e. is coax/fibre no longer needed?? Interested in opinions ... Peter Brace ------------------------------ From: Rupert Baines Subject: Asymetry (ADSL) and Net Access - A Bad Thing? Date: 3 Jan 1996 23:23:59 GMT There seems to be a widespread opinion amongst digerati that Internet applications require symetric services. I'm not convinced (see below) -- I *like* assymetry -- but I haven't heard many convincing arguments in either direction. I'd love to hear some comments on this! WIRED slagged ADSL on this basis (HYPE list in Nov), Scott Moore posted on it (below), and there is a John Perry Barlow article (http://www.alumni.wesleyan.edu/WWW/Info/JPB.html) that forcefully argues on similar lines. I have been meaning to try to write a response, but haven't quite got round to it ... but here goes a few thoughts: The quote below is from Scott Moore's post before Xmas. >>> 2. SDSL will be marketed as both an internet connect and as >>> videoconferencing. People other than coporations will balk >>> at the cost of the special equipment and special connect >>> rates that videoconferencing will require (remember that the >>> local bells are going to want extra to transport that call >>> to grandma in Chicago). However, because it is short haul, >>> SDSL may take off as an internet connect tool, after which >>> videoconferencing may take off, curiously, when done via >>> computer using it as and encoder/decoder with a cheap ($100) >>> camera. RB>> Huh ?? RB>> Why is SDSL better for Internet access than ADSL ? > Even AT&T is advertising that. It amazes me that there is so much effort > going into asymetric access right now. Cable modems are built assuming that > you want huge downstream with small upstream capacity, which is a model > that applies mainly to sitting passively flipping web pages. But the most > exciting thing about the internet is that it is interactive. All these seem to confuse SYMETRY with INTERACTIVITY. They are not at all the same, and I think it is possible -- even desirable -- for an attractive interactive service to be aymmetric. There are four reasons I suggest, in a vague order of relevance: One is philosophical -- not practical, but is so fundamental it is easy to overlook: Human I/O is assymetric to a huge degree -- your eyes have a bandwidth that could be in the Gigabits/sec, your ears are >1Mbps, and heaven only knows what it would be for taste (food via the net!?), smell, touch (tele-sex ?) not to mention the weirder ones of proprioception or the like. Compare that to the output in terms of position, speech, and the like; shouldn't any system at least try to reflect the user? Secondly is still philosophic but a bit more real. The difference between 'data' and 'information' is heavily related to how much you can discard. I typically subscribe to a few newsgroups, and read a few dozen posts for every response I make. That is an assymetry of ~100:1 -- and it seems an asymmetry we would want to encourage. Obviously it varies with application (see #4), but it still seems that more data flows in than information flows out. There is a word for people who do not respect that asymmetry -- we call it spamming! Third is a consideration of the actual applications: Other than video-conferencing, nearly all are asymetric. Many people watch videos, very few will want (or afford) to produce them at home. Client/server systems predicate an assymetry. Many people access web pages -- fewer host their own at home. I'd like to expand on that: Yes, having a web-server is popular and growing (but still orders of magnitude less content rich than accesses), and I'm sure that 'what's your URL' is indeed the chat up line in Palo Alto bars, and posting pictures of the family at Thanksgiving is lovely, and , and ... that is irrelevant. Arguing from that to a criticism of asymetry is deeply flawed. Those personal home pages may well become ubiquitous, but they will not be located *at home*: they will reside on servers at the ISP -- with reliable 24x7 uptime (does your home PC have that? why?), adequate disk and memory, expensive server software (which is rapidly getting smarter and more complex) etc etc. Oh yes, the ISPs also have very fast *symetric* (T3, OC3, OC12 etc), shared between many users and many accesses, with individuals reaching the ISP on assymetric links. And I think this is true in general: some people will want to host their own sites, but not many, and perhaps they will pay (more) for a symetric service. This probably is true for some SoHo applications, and that is a role for SDSL or HDSL, but in general I really do see the vast majority outsourcing (as they do now with email server, for the same reason). Finally, there is practical experience: Bob Olshansky at GTE Labs has done a lot of work on this in connection with ADSL (see TELEPHONY Nov 94, and many -excellent- ANSI/ETSI contributions), and has reported that logs of *real* internet traffic show an average asymetry of 15:1. There is a wide variation (from <1:1 up to 55:1), but the clear conclusion is that real traffic now, over existing (symetric) lines, is highly assymmetric. In fact, it is even more extreme -- much of that lower speed path is handshakes and flow control from the TCP/IP protocol. That is why ADSL shouldn't get too asymetric (10:1 say?) but does *not* justify any attitiude that "The Internet is symetric, and symetry is required in access to it." What do people think? What have I missed? Comments or suggestions please :) HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! r ------------------------------ From: tpeters@hns.com (Thomas Peters) Subject: Re: ITA Dating Service Rip Off: Is This a Scam? Date: 3 Jan 1996 19:36:21 GMT Organization: Hughes Network Systems Inc. Some thoughts: 1. These sex lines, horoscopes, and even Western Union aren't tariffed services. They are just normal purchases of services which happened to be billed to a telephone account. Therefore normal contract and consumer laws should apply. 2. Until the purchaser understands the terms and agrees to them either explicitly or implicitly, there cannot be a contract or legal obligation to pay. You can argue about what constitutes sufficient disclosure and what constitutes consent, but dialing a wrong number surely does not qualify. 3. I don't see any problem with billing these services to a phone number if everyone is in agreement that they want to do this: information provider, LEC, PUC, and consumer. Of course this means that they have to mention how they plan to bill along with the price and other terms. 4. Intentionally submitting false bills is fraud and a crime. If the LEC knows someone is doing this and keeps doing the billing anyway, they are accomplices. 5. Because these are nontariffed services being billed to the telephone account for convenience, any contract is clearly with the person using the telephone, not with the owner of the telephone. If the owner of the phone refuses to pay, the phone company should bow out immediately, no questions asked. By not doing so they are abusing their position as a public utility. The IP is still entitled to collect money legally owed. Their rights are exactly the same as, for instance, the local furniture store which sells on credit. This means they can try to figure out who really bought the merchandise and sue them. Of course they may have a hard time proving their case, but maybe that is why the furniture store is careful to establish identity and credit worthiness before they hand over the goods :-). Happy New Year, Tom Peters ------------------------------ From: glen@scooter.heurikon.com (Glen Ecklund) Subject: Re: ITA Dating Service Rip Off: Is This a Scam? Date: 3 Jan 96 20:02:43 GMT Organization: Heurikon Corporation shubu@cs.wisc.edu (Shubu Mukherjee) writes: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But you *did* call their number. >> You said so yourself. > Never! :-) Don't jump to conclusions. Never ever did I say that any > where in my posts. We called them ___after___ we received our bill. > Clear? > If you still doubt it, check my previous posts and show me where I > said so. >> we know you called them and how long you were on the line, > Aren't you being a bit judgmental? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well okay ... let's let it pass for now > with my wishes to you for a Happy New Year. PAT] I think I can clear up a misunderstanding here. Shubu mentioned ITA on a different newsgroup. I directed him here, because I had read something about ITA here before. Shubu started this thread. (I know him from my previous job.) Another person, with a previous experience with ITA, responded. He mentioned that he had called their number. PAT seems to have confused Shubu with the other person. All better now? (Glen, who feels like a matchmaker fixing up a spat.) Glen Ecklund Email: glen@heurikon.com Heurikon Corporation Phone: 608-831-5500 8310 Excelsior Drive FAX: 608-831-8844 Madison, WI 53717 USA http://www.heurikon.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 14:40:11 -0600 From: Andrew C. Green Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Rob Hickey writes: > An interesting article appeared in the {Globe and Mail} (Canada) regarding > the future of PCS. The author, Geoffrey Rowan, appears to cast doubt > on the viability of PCS providers; he maintains that cellular technology > will not be quickly missplaced for the following reasons: I used an Ameritech PCS for about fifteen months back in '92 and '93 during a long-term trial, and can make some observations (purely as a semi-itinerant user only, you understand): > 1) PCS phones cannot compete with cellular phones on price since they are > practically giving away cell phones; This strikes me as a marketing angle only; those cellphones have a real cost which is simply being stashed elsewhere (say, in monthly fees), and I would assume that PCS equipment would have to be marketed the same way. > 2) PCS air time cannot compete with cellular air time charges since most > cellular companies are not charging on evenings and weekends; I'm afraid you lost me there; my cellular service charges for evenings and weekends, albeit at a lower rate than peak, and my PCS also charged at those times. If the provider wants to waive it as a marketing thing, fine, they can, and I don't quite see how the technology in use has anything to do with that. > 3) PCS phones cannot be practically any more portable than the latest >cell phones; My Motorola CT2 SilverLink PCS was an ounce or two lighter than the NEC 701 cellphone I bought a couple of years later, and I saw a couple of even lighter PCS models (I've forgotten the brand; I think it's in my files) of about four ounces that were also used in the PCS trial. Sizewise they were proportionally smaller as well, to the point of being just plain fiddly to operate. > 4) PCS phones will not work in moving vehicles. Assuming Mr. Rowan is referring to handoff capability here, the word back then was "Real Soon Now", and I would imagine they now do. In 1992 I had no problems using it in a stationary vehicle, BTW. > Mr. Rowan questions why the PCS industry would spend billions in > infrastructure to duplicate services that already exist. Ah, well, so would I, and so did most people who saw my PCS. They were especially skeptical upon hearing of the reduced range of PCS transceivers and microcells as compared to present-day cells, considering how many transceivers would have to be socked into our infrastructure to provide service. In the limited PCS trial we saw PCS antennas stuck on the front of bars, hung on our local train station roof, embedded in false ceilings of public buildings, etc. > Is there merit to these arguments, and do the same conditions apply in > the United States (given that millions have already been spent on > licenses)? I suppose there's some merit, yes. From a user-level perspective, the most frequently-asked question I hear is simply, "Why do we need PCS when we've already got cellular?" I'm stuck for a short answer myself. Andrew C. Green Adobe Systems, Inc. (formerly Frame Technology) Advanced Product Services 441 W. Huron Internet: acg@frame.com Chicago, IL 60610-3498 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #4 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Jan 4 01:01:39 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA01383; Thu, 4 Jan 1996 01:01:39 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 01:01:39 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601040601.BAA01383@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #5 TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 Jan 96 01:02:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 5 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NPA Question (Thaddeus Cox) Questions On Installing One's Own VoiceMail System (James Trammell) Online List of Area Codes (Francois-Michel Lang) Called 911 After Deer Hit Car (Carl Moore) Small BBS / Host System Wanted (Matt Falenski) Source Wanted For Satellite Mobile Phone (kkush95403@aol.com) Learning About Corporate Telecom Buying? (Daniel Wynalda) 800 Number Abuse Question (Allen Kass) Phone Hacking (Ryan Gingras) [NetWatch]: Regulating I-Phone (Monty Solomon) Re: Anyone Know Who Unibridge is? (Stu Jeffery) ARMIS and Tariff Info on Disk or CD-ROM (Robert P. Daniels) Area Code Pointer (Alan Pugh) Live Voice Over Internet Using Touch-Tone Telephone (Michael Snider) Cellular Phone Compatibility - US/Korea (Daniel E. Jones) GSM Data Transmission - PCMCIA card (Lars Kalsen) Search For Any Radio-Link, Digital Microwawe Software! (visan@ibm.net) Help Wanted, Custom Controls, Wireless Net Drivers, Beta Test (M. Grogan) Shame Telstra Shame (Arthur Marsh) Re: New Phone System Getting Installed (somerville@delphi.com) Seeking Centrex ISDN ISP in Redwood City (H.J. Lu) Re: France Telecom Offers Voice Mail For Publiphones (Richard F. Masoner) Re: Standardization of Voicmail, Fax (Robert Virzi) Re: Absolutely Amazing Free Catalog (The Old Bear) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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, 03 Jan 1996 12:35:40 PST From: Thaddeus Cox Subject: NPA Question A simple question that I have been curious about for a long time: why did small states such as Iowa and Nebraska, who undoubtedly had a pretty small population in 1947 and still do today, get assigned multiple area codes? Does it have to do with the state having multiple non-Bell LECs, as postulated by a friend? Thaddeus Cox - coxt@sparky.oit.osshe.edu ------------------------------ From: trammell@quip.eecs.umich.edu (James Trammell) Subject: Questions On Installing One's Own VoiceMail System Date: 3 Jan 1996 17:20:48 GMT Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept. I want to put a voice mail system in my home. All I really need is a number of touch-tone selectable boxes, say four, and the ability to receive faxes as well. I want someone to be able to call the number and hear the following: (ring) Hello. If you are sending a fax, you may start transmission now. For ABC Services, press 1 (caller can now leave a message) For DEF Inc., press 2 (same as above) For XYZ Corp., press 3 (same as above) For anything else, press 0 (same as above) ... and so on. Does any software/hardware system exist to accomplish this task? Can a PC-compatible or Macintosh be fitted with a hw/sw subsystem allowing it to function in this manner? Thank you, James Trammell trammell@eecs.umich.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A rather good product I sometimes use here for this is called 'Big Mouth'. It has been around a few years, but seems to be a dandy little voicemail system for low volume use. PAT] ------------------------------ From: alufml@fnma.com (Francois-Michel Lang) Subject: Online List of Area Codes Reply-To: alufml@fnma.com Organization: Fannie Mae Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 20:36:21 GMT I have a somewhat outdated online list of area codes that looks like this (in part): 011 [ International Access Code ] 201 Morristown, and Newark, (Northeast) New Jersey 202 Washington, District of Columbia 203 All parts of Connecticut 204 All parts of Manitoba, CANADA 205 All parts of Alabama 206 Seattle, Tacoma, and Vancouver, (Western) Washington 207 All parts of Maine 208 All parts of Idaho 209 Fresno and Stockton, (Central) California Unfortunately, this list is out of date, and doesn't include any of the area codes added in the past two years or so. There didn't seem to be anything of interest in the FAQ. If anyone has a more current list of area codes (in any form), I'd be happy to see one. Thanks! Francois-Michel Lang (202) 752-6067 FAX: (202) 752-5074 alufml@fnma.com ............. Fannie Mae ---- Portfolio Management lang@linc.cis.upenn.edu ..... Dept of Comp & Info Science, U of PA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Watch this space! We will have one very soon now. Yes, I know I said that last week also. The areacode portion of the Telecom Archives is going to be greatly updated and I expect Carl Moore will have this available soon. He was out of town over the holidays, and we are lucky he made it back alive, as he will relate in the next message. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 96 17:05:12 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Called 911 After Deer Hit Car I had to get admitted to someone's home in Michigan to call police after a deer hit the left front fender of the car I was driving. And guess what -- I was advised to call 911. So I did, and a sheriff's deputy came to investigate. The deer was almost hit by the car behind me after hitting the car I was driving. No driver lost control, and no people were injured, but the deer ended up dead at the foot of a driveway off to the left. I was left with a rounded dent in the fender, a dangling left side marker (which no longer worked), a cracked headlight case with a broken low beam, and a piece of fur stuck in the fender. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Fortunatly you got out of it alive and unharmed. Welcome back to the daily routine and 1996. PAT] ------------------------------ From: falensmj@westol.com (Matt Falenski) Subject: Small BBS / Host System Wanted Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 21:31:38 GMT Organization: Classic Industries, Inc. Hi! I was wondering if anyone here could help me out. What I'm trying to find is some sort of a BBS program. It will be used by about ten users total, and should be more of a file-based board. Everything I'm finding is like Renegade, and I dont need anything that fancy, or neat, just something with basic functionality. If you have, or know of something that is small, easy to use, and sort of user friendly, I would appreciate any help! Thanks! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A product which is several years old but does quite well for the purpose you describe is called 'Procomm'. It is also known as 'PC Plus'. It is a nice little terminal/commun- ications package with a host mode which can serve as a small BBS. The version I have is several years old, but I understand they have revised and improved the software recently. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kkush95403@aol.com (Kkush95403) Subject: Source Wanted For Satellite Mobile Phone Date: 3 Jan 1996 23:45:31 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: kkush95403@aol.com (Kkush95403) Magnvox has been providing the hardware and service for a satellite based mobile phone service. I understand that there are several new providers with less expensive equipment (2 to 3 K) instead of 40 K and at a rate of $1.50 per minute. Does anyone know who this is and where I may obtain more information? Thank you, Ken Empire Communications Inc. kkush95403@aol.com 707 545 8300 ------------------------------ From: Daniel Wynalda Subject: Learning About Corporate Telecom Buying? Date: Thu, 04 Jan 1996 00:36:02 GMT Organization: Consultants Connection BBS I've been a long time reader of the TELECOM Digest / on and off. I know alot about the normal topics of this group regarding COCOT's, carriers, tariffs, etc. Recently our family business has expanded to the point that I have 17+ lines and buy various data services. In this process, and in connecting to the internet I've begun to hear many new terms. While I know what a T1 is and how it works, I'm curious as to if there is a location one might look/read to learn about various telecommunication packaging schemes. For example: Since I have 17 phone lines, is there a way I can buy a T1 or something similar that would combine my lines and use the extra bandwidth for data to an alternate carrier? I am lucky enough to live in one of the local areas with competitive phone service. I don't know that I really am looking to save money -- but it would be nice to get upgraded internet service via this bandwidth if it could be used. Any pointers are appreciated. Daniel Wynalda/N8KUD/SYSOP |Consultants Connection BBS | 616-363-6680 danielw@wybbs.wynalda.com |2783 Sandalwood Ct NE | Grand Rapids, MI 49505 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 12:52:04 -0500 From: Allen Kass Subject: 800 Number Abuse Question Pat, I am trying to find out more about the 800 number abuse I have read about. We have a situation where an incoming 800 caller can gain access to our PBX and then turn the call around and go out on one of our outgoing trunks. We were called by AT&T's fraud division yesterday saying that there was an unusually high number of international calls originating from our outbound trunk group. Later we got a call from Cable & Wireless's fraud division saying that they were tracking an unusually high number of calls to one of our 800 numbers from a pay phone in Los Angeles, CA. My question is this: Can a DID call to an extension in our building be turned around inside the switch without our knowledge or assistance? We have an AT&T PBX. Any information would be helpful in understanding this situation and may help us establish a more secure system. As it stands at this point we might be responsible for approx- imatly 3000 minutes of fraudulent international and 800 calls. Thanks, Allen [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This indeed is possible depending on the type of system you have. I recommend you get some security/fraud experts on this immediatly. Many PBX's have a DISA port. This is a thing where a caller from outside dials into your system, and gets a new dial tone. Believe it or not, some companies do not even know that this exists on their PBX; they were never told about it when the PBX was installed, or if they were, they never were told how to change the default password and the importance of doing so. Other times, the security problem comes from a bug in the voicemail system which allows an incoming caller to 'transfer to another extension' and the caller instead presses '9' and transfers to an outside line. You must make certain your voicemail does not allow access to any outside lines or tie-lines if it has the ability to transfer calls to other extensions. Scandalous but true: When AT&T was marketing the Dimension PBX back in the middle 1970's, the local telcos (at least Illinois Bell) were installing it for customers without even telling them a DISA port was on the switch. Well believe me you, the phreaks all knew about it, as well as the default factory passcode which never got changed since no one knew it was there. Here in Chicago, the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad got hit for many thousands in fraud via the DISA, as did Montgomery Ward at their corporate headquarters. With both of them, it was just a local seven digit number which returned dial tone to anyone who called into it. Entering the default passcode followed by a '9' was all it took. Now in the case of General Motors, they also had massive fraud via DISA about the same time, but they had very 'generously' linked incoming 800 numbers to theirs for the benefit of employees traveling on business, etc. so of course their fraud was ten times worse than that of Wards or the railroad. In the case of General Motors, the fraud was so severe that they considered it a good investment of their time to take three or four clerical employees off their regular duties and assign them full time to investigating and tracking the fraud for close to a year. And they called *every single number* they could find to question the people who answered. Perhaps some readers here with very good expertise in this will write to you with specific suggestions if you want their help. But by all means admins, get your boards under control before hackers and phreaks eat you alive ... and they will if they find you are exposed and unprotected. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rgingras@MTS.Net (Ryan Gingras) Subject: Phone Hacking Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 11:59:41 GMT Organization: MTS Internet Reply-To: rgingras@MTS.Net In a normal telephone line what do each of the four wires do specifically? Which ones are the "In" and which ones are the "Out". Ryan Gingras E-Mail: rgingras@mts.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They are all in and out. We don't think of them in that way. Electrical current travels through the line and your telephone is in series with it. The wiring is usually done like this: The red and green wires are usually line 1. On a modular plug they will usually be the two innermost pins, i.e. pins 3 and 4. These two are all you need for a single line phone. The yellow and black wires are line 2 if you have a two line phone. If you have a one line phone of the old fashioned 'Princess' style with a light in the dial powered from a separate transformer then the yellow and black are the power supply for the lamp. Modern 'light in dial' phones use little LED's which are powered from the phone line itself. These two wires (yellow/black/line 2) are located on a modular plug as pins 2 and 5. Now you'll note from what I said above that leaves pins 1 and 6 still to be described. Well, if you look closely, chances are you will find just an empty little slot with no metal connector there on either end of the modular plug, and in the wall box you'll likely find just four little metal contacts sticking out. But on closer examination you will see there is room for a couple more down there also, one on either end. These would be (are) pins 1 and 6, and they are associated with the blue and white wires which you probably don't have in your phone either, unless it is a two or three line phone. Red/green pair one is always used for the phone line. What happens with yellow/black pair two and white/blue pair three depends on the type of phone and the application. Occassionally on old two-line mechanical hold turn-button style phones, the blue/white served as an intercom signalling pair. Occassionally on single line phones where the user wanted absolute privacy, the yellow/black served the 'exclusion switch'; that is, the central office line was brought in first to that particular phone on red/green, sent through a switch on the phone which either passed or cut off service to other phones on the premises 'downline', and then back out on yellow/black to the main terminal box where other extensions on the line got their feed provided the master phone on the front end allowed the connection past that point. For your purposes, I suspect red/green is all you need to bother with. Actually it does not matter; the phone does not know the difference; you can use the yellow/black or some other spare wire you have around there as long as you remain *consistent*. The current flows 'in' through one of the wires and 'out' through the other to use your term, and the switchhook on the phone either allows the current to flow unhindered through the 'loop' and back to the phone company or it diverts the current through the innards of the phone causing a change in what the central office 'sees' on your line. If you find that after hooking it up you are unable to make the touch tone buttons sound, then you have the 'in' and 'out' in your perspective reversed and you should swap them with each other at one end of the line or the other. You also need to make certain that not so much as a tiny strand of wire touches or comes in contact with one of the others. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 02:02:17 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: [NetWatch]: Regulating I-Phone Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Forwarded to the Digest FYI: Begin forwarded message: Date: Tue, 02 Jan 96 16:09:18 EST From: "paige albiniak" To: netwatch@pulver.com Subject: [NetWatch]: Regulating I-Phone Has anyone read Brock Meeks article in the Dec. 18 issue of {Interactive Week} about the FCC imposing a levy on ISPs? The money would be used to finance universal telephone and accompanying services for everyone using a telecommunications network. The levy is specifically aimed at making sure people continue to pay for phone services. Check out the article in hard copy or on Interactive Week's web site at http://www.zdnet.com/~intweek (if it is still there). I think it will get people's attention on this list. I would like to do a story on this as well (which is hard considering the government is shut down) and would really like to get everyone's feedback. Paige Albiniak, Editor Voice Technology & Services News ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 15:53:18 -0900 From: stu@shell.portal.com (Stu Jeffery) Subject: Re: Anyone Know Who Unibridge is? In TELECOM Digest V15 #534, Steve Samler writes: > I understand that they are associated with PCS. A marketing group of > some sort that is charged with promoting PCS. Anyone have an address > or a phone? UNIBRIDGE was formed by a group of LECs to promote the use of their infrastructure and services to support PCS operators, especially the "entrepreneur" bidders (The first of the two Entrepreneur's Auction's started just before Christmas and will resume January 5). UNIBRIDGE is simply a clearing house for the information provided by the member companies. It is intended to make it easier to get information out to the PCS industry. Faith Muri-Brown is the UNIBRIDGE Coordinator. Her office is in Arlington VA at 703-974-4579. The UNIBRIDGE concept is for the PCS operator to lower his capital cost by leasing services and infrastructure from the LEC in his operating area. The offering is access to the LEC switch via "Generic C", which is an interface defined by Bellcore to support WACS, the Bellcore Wireless Local Loop technology. So far, WACS (also known as PACS) has not been widely adopted, but Generic C is being expanded to support CDMA (IS-95) and maybe others. In addition to access to the switch, the UNIBRIDGE concept includes other services from the LEC, such as lease of cell sites, back haul, billing services, etc. The prime customer for UNIBRIDGE are the smaller entrepreneur who are bidding for PCS licenses. There are currently 254 operators bidding in Band C, for the 484 (approximatly) licenses. The UNIBRIDGE members are (or at least were a few months ago) the "Baby Bells", less BellSouth and Southwestern Bell but including GTE. Each LEC has its own offerings and sales staff. Regards, Stu Jeffery Internet: stu@shell.portal.com 1072 Seena Ave. voice: 415-966-8199 Los Altos, CA. 94024 fax: 415-966-8456 ------------------------------ From: robert.p.daniels@ac.com Subject: ARMIS and Tariff Info on Disk or CD-ROM Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 17:21:52 GMT Organization: The Internet Access Company Is anyone aware of companies which compile tariff filings or ARMIS data in electronic format? I've heard a tariff CD-ROM exists but I don't know who manufactures it. Having ARMIS reports in electronic format since I often have to compile data on a holding company level while ARMIS are often filed by state. Please let me know via e-mail. Robert Daniels ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 15:22:00 EST From: Alan Pugh <0003701548@mcimail.com> Subject: Area Code Pointer Could you (or someone else) please post a pointer to a web or ftp site that lists all current U.S. area codes and the states they are in? I've found a couple of sites that let you make queries of an area code for a given city, but nothing that just lists them all. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, you and a couple dozen other people have asked me this in recent weeks. I know this is starting to sound like a promotional advertisement, but *watch this space real soon*. There will be a completely up to date list and an executable script you can run on your own computer. When Carl Moore gets it to me it is going to go out as a special mailing ASAP. PAT] ------------------------------ From: snider@idirect.com (Michael Snider) Subject: Live Voice Over Internet Using Touch-Tone Telephone Organization: Internet Direct, Canada Date: 03 Jan 96 22:44:28 GMT I know there are many products that allow live voice communication over the Internet. But these use soundboards with microphones. I am looking for a product that uses a touch-tone telephone as the input/output device, yet the voice is transmitted over the Internet. I would like to use a DSP board such as a Dialogic board with a telephone attached to it. As you speak into the telephone, I need a product that will take the voice and transmit it over the network (the Internet) to a server housing a similar DSP board which will play the voice back to another caller using a telephone. Does such a product exist? Thanks in advance for any advice. Either respond to this newsgroup or E-Mail me at snider@idirect.com. ------------------------------ From: djones@mwunix.mitre.org (Daniel E Jones) Subject: Cellular Phone Compatibility - US/Korea Date: 4 Jan 1996 02:54:27 GMT Organization: MITRE Corporation, McLean VA I will be transferring to my company office in Seoul, Korea in the near future, and was wondering if a cell phone purchased in the U.S. would work over there. Obviously I would have to sign up for the service with the local Korean carrier. The real question (I think) is whether their system uses the same frequencies, protocols, etc. If anyone knows, please email me at djones@mitre.org. TIA, Dan Jones ------------------------------ From: dalk@login.dknet.dk (Lars Kalsen) Subject: GSM Data Transmission - PCMCIA Card Date: 3 Jan 1996 12:45:31 GMT Organization: Customer at DKnet Hi, and happy new year, I am trying to set some mobile datatransmission via the GSM mobile telephone network. It is working -- but not optimal. I am using af PCMCIA card NOKIA. Normally you send an initialization string for a modem - but what do I send for this PCMCIA-card. If you have any ideas, suggestions or experiences please E-mail. Greetings from Denmark, Lars Kalsen ------------------------------ From: visan@ibm.net Subject: Search For Any Radio-Link, Digital Microwawe Software! Date: 3 Jan 1996 14:52:11 GMT Reply-To: visan@ibm.net I am very interested in any microwawe digital radio-link calculation program, both a professional and share-ware type. Any WEB site, or any FTP site, for search information about digital and analogic Radio-link, and radio-Hop calculation? Any information about this would be appreciated! Thanks in advance. Vicente Sanchez. EB4BSQ. AKA visan@ibm.net SysOp de MERCURIO BBS. MERCURIO BBS- 24H @ 33K6 -HAM&COMMS Data +341 525 8090 - Fax +341 465 9376 ------------------------------ From: ges@oneworld.owt.com (Marty Grogan) Subject: Help Wanted, Custom Controls, Wireless Net Drivers, Beta Test Date: 3 Jan 1996 17:57:17 GMT Organization: One World Telecommunications To the modem community: I have been trying to locate comm drivers specifically designed to solve the problems unique to wireless network modems. Having been unsuccessful, I am resigned to developing them. If you have any such drivers, know of any such drivers or would like to beta test such drivers, please let me know by email. I will try to address any and all glitches that I know about as well as any that I learn of from you. I expect to offer a systems solution that will achieve nearly theoretical levels of reliability. Please send me any "horror stories" about difficulties with such networks. I will need to know about your system configuration and performance requirements, also. In return for your assistance, I will provide you with copies of all software developed and offer whatever advice that may assist with your own situation. Marty Grogan ges@oneworld.owt.com (509) 783-5056 ------------------------------ Subject: Shame Telstra Shame Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 15:44:03 CST From: Arthur Marsh A previous article under this thread in the TELECOM Digest reported concern by hobbyist bulletin board operators at a Basic Carriage Service Tariff filing by Telstra that would result in existing hobbyist bulletin board telephone lines being charged at the Business Service tariff. This would have resulted in an annual line rental of A$274.80 compared to A$139.80 for Non-Business Service. Telstra filed a new tariff proposal, filing number 462 on 21 December 1995, which was not disallowed by AUSTEL on 29 December 1995. The definition of a "Business Customer" in the new Public Switched Telephone Service (PSTS) Tariff section 4.2.2 includes: "(f) a customer that provides information services and operates for a commercial purpose." The phrase "and operates for a commercial purpose" was added in this tariff ammendment and appears underlined in it. AUSTEL will be writing back to people who complained about the previous classification to inform them of the new definition. Arthur Marsh, telephone +61-8-370-2365, fax +61-8-223-5082 arthur@dircsa.org.au ------------------------------ From: ROCKET Subject: Re: New Phone System Getting Installed Date: Wed, 3 Jan 96 11:01:54 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) I have been impressed with Siemens/ROLM telecommunications products over the few years. I have been in the telecom business for about ten years and have worked with all the major players in the PBX arena. I have several ROLM PBX's installed and they are all very reliable and offer excellent CTI integration. Good Luck! ------------------------------ From: hjl@zoom.com (H J Lu) Subject: Seeking Centrex ISDN ISP in Redwood City Date: 3 Jan 1996 09:42:39 -0800 Organization: Zoom.Com Information Services Inc. We are looking for an ISP with Centrex ISDN in Redwood City. The area code is 415. But I have no idea what NXX it will be. BTW, does anyone know how many COs Redwood City is served by and what the NXXs are? Please email me at hjl@gnu.ai.mit.edu. Thanks, H.J. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 13:49:35 -0600 From: richardm@cd.com (Richard F. Masoner) Subject: Re: France Telecom Offers Voice Mail For Publiphones Jean-Bernard Condat wrote: > Paris (France), January 2th, 1996--France telecom have announce the > creation of a very interesting and usefull service: a voice mail for > publiphone users. If your correspondant is busy, if you are unable to > wait for somebody on the phone you can leave a 30-seconds voice > mail. The message will be automatically transmit to the called number > at the hour given by the caller. I've used the MCI version of this service a couple of times in the several years or so it's been available here in the USA. What generally happens, though, is the recipient first hears the computerized "This is MCI with an important message from Ri...." and they hang up, thinking it's a sales solicitation. :-( Richard Masoner ------------------------------ From: rv01@gte.com (Robert Virzi) Subject: Re: Standardization of Voicmail, Fax Date: 3 Jan 1996 20:15:45 GMT Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA In article , Tom Crofford wrote: > Does anyone out there know of any sort of standardization for > voicemail/auto attendant systems? I don't know the current status, but there is/was a standard in the works for voice mail. It was started, if memory serves me correctly, by the voice mail user interface forum. The effort was then trans- mogrified into an ISO effort. The latest report I have is called,"User interface to telephone-based services: Voice messaging applications." It is clearly marked as a draft international standard, so you'll want to get an updated version. (Mine is dated 93-11-05. So is that Nov-93 or May-93?) The alphabet soup on the cover says the source is: ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG9/SWG IV. I can only generate about half those acronyms. Good luck tracking this down. Bob Virzi rvirzi@gte.com Just another ascii character... +1 (617) 466-2881 ------------------------------ From: oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear) Subject: Re: Absolutely Amazing Free Catalog Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 23:02:20 EDT Pat: He has a web site at: http://www.sandman.com for those who want intant gratification and can't wait to see the catalog! :) Cheers, Will The Old Bear [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We're talking of course about Mike Sandman, who bills himself as "Chicago's Telecom Expert" and the marvelous catalog he sends out on request or gives to people who visit his shop at 804 Nerge Road in Roselle, Illinois 60172. His current sixty page catalog is really incredible, and full of all sorts of very interesting telecom stuff. To get a copy, you can go to the above web site or call 708-980-7710. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #5 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Jan 4 04:14:28 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id EAA09449; Thu, 4 Jan 1996 04:14:28 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 04:14:28 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601040914.EAA09449@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #6 TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 Jan 96 04:15:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 6 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Northern Ontario Telephones (was Re: Canadian Telco Websites) (R. Dawson) Send Your Want to Buy Request (Joseph Stephens) Re: Compuserve Censors USENET in Europe (Ross E. Mitchell) Say NO! to Telecom Regulation (was Re: Say NO to Metered ISDN) (Brad Aisa) Re: KSU Needed (michael@no-names.nerdc.ufl.edu) Re: CID Not Passed Via 1-800-CALL-ATT (Arnette P. Schultz) Re: ITA Dating Service Rip Off: Is This a Scam? (Joel B. Levin) Re: ITA Dating Service Rip Off: Is This a Scam? (Mark J. Cuccia) 900 Mhz ... What's The Real Distance? (John Tassi) Re: SMDR Data Available? (D. Ptasnik) Re: SMDR Data Available? (John N. Dreystadt) Re: Price Reduced on Oslin Book "Story of Telecommunications" (D Breneman) DID Modems Wanted (Raymon A. Bobbitt) Last Laugh! Suspected Wrong Domain Name For "Heaven" (Paul Robinson) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: srdawson@interlog.com (Scott Robert Dawson) Subject: Northern Ontario Telephones (was Re: New Canadian Telco Websites) Date: Thu, 04 Jan 1996 06:20:21 GMT Organization: InterLog Internet Services Reply-To: srdawson@interlog.com Mark J Cuccia wrote: > I'm still waiting to see when Ontario Northland Communications gets a > webpage. It is a member of CITA, but not of OTA. When I was looking at > Northern Telephones webpages, it was stated that toll services in > northeastern Ontario were provided by the *provincially* owned Ontario > Northland Transportation Commission. NT's service area `seems' as if it > had toll switching/transmission services of its own- it has a number of > exchanges and Central Office codes in central northeastern Ontario. > Ontario Northland Communications has only a handful of local exchanges & > NXX codes just north of and just south of NT's exchange operating > territory. In some old CITA publications I have, it is stated that Ontario > Northland Communications has some Class-4 (and even a Class-3) > toll/tandem switches. I would guess that Ontario Northland Communications > is part of the provincially owned Ontario Northland Transportation > Commission. Maybe Nigel Allen or Dave Leibold could shed some more light > on this. This puts something I noticed a while ago in a new (not necessarily less murky) light: On my old (1986-87) official government road map of Ontario, the farthest northern settlements on the Hudson Bay seacoast, and in the interior, are marked with a telephone symbol. The key at the side of the map says, REMOTE NORTHERN LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE NETWORK RESEAU TELEPHONIQUE INTERURBAIN DANS LES REGIONS ELOIGNEES DU NORD Telephone Access Point Pointe d'access au telephone On my new map, (1994-95), which I got at the tourist info booth downtown last week, the same settlements are shown without the telephone symbol. They still have their symbols for police, airstrip, medical, etc. These are _all_ of the settlements unconnected by road to the south, although one, Moosonee, on Hudson Bay, is at the end of the Ontario Northland Railway (the famous Polar Bear excursion train). Moosonee is the only settlement on any railway to have a symbol. None of the other settlements with rail-only access have a symbol. These settlements are not just in the northeast either; they go all the way across the North. The waeternmost is Poplar Hill, 300 km north of Fort Frances ON/Internatonal Falls MN- in area code 807 and well west of Thunder Bay. The easternmost is Moosonee itself, north from Smooth Rock Falls and Timmins, in area code 705. I wonder what's changed? Maybe they got satellite phones? Are these the 'ringdown' points that Mark mentioned earlier on? | Genetics is fun, but Scott Robert Dawson | _my_ family is defined by love... | srdawson@interlog.com http://www.interlog.com/~srdawson/scothmpg.htm [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am reminded of calls to a remote town in northern Ontario called Hearst, population five thousand and something back in the 1970's. It was listed as 'other place' in the Bell System Rate and Route tables. Our long distance operator would dial 705+181. Doing so, lo and behold, who would answer but an operator in Sudbury, Ontario. Our operator would then ask to be connected to Hearst, and upon reaching that place would then ask for the local number. You could almost feel the hundreds of miles speeding past as Sudbury plugged in the connection on her board. A very slight hum in the background and a sort of 'chunk chunk' sound as she rang the Hearst exchange, a few hundred miles to the northwest up Highway 11. Presently the operator there would answer by saying 'Hearst!' in a loud voice, and the long distance operator in Sudbury would say 'there is a call for you from Chicago ... go ahead Chicago'. Our long distance operator would ask for the desired two or three digit number, with the operator in Herst no doubt impressed that a call was coming from so far away. Very late one evening, about midnight, a call was placed to Hearst. Sudbury comes on the line, and our operator here asks as usual for Hearst. "Oh," says Sudbury, "is this an emergency call?". No, we said, it was not an emergency. Sudbury's response was, "well if it is not an emergency, I can't call her now. After 10 pm we are not supposed to call her until we give her a wake up call at 6 in the morning. The switchboard is in her home. She is on 24 hour duty with sleeping privileges. If its an emergency I will ring up there, and she or someone in the family will come and answer the board but it might take a minute or two to raise them." We said thanks, but don't wake the operator; it is not essential and the call can be placed tomorrow ... I found out the next day that it was an 'understanding' among the people of Hearst that telephone service operated between 8 am and 10 pm. If it was during the overnight hours, the operator was asleep but would respond under the assumption there was an emergency needing the doctor, the fire brigade or whatever. Lots of small rural areas in the USA had phone service with the same kind of 'understanding' among the townspeople in the early years of this century. No routine calling while the (sole) operator was trying to rest. If a call came in on the switchboard at midnight, the operator would awake from her sleep knowing there was trouble in the village. PAT] ------------------------------ From: felix@houston.net (Joseph Stephens) Subject: Send Your Want To Buy Request Date: 3 Jan 1996 14:48:48 GMT Organization: Houston SuperNet (houston.net) Search Equipment Exchange based in Houston, TX is an infomation service which lists used and unused Telecommunication Equipment such as: PBX, phones, cards, complete systems, maintenance materials and hard to find items. We will list want to buys from end users and dealers on our system for free. If you want to list a want to buy call 1-800-252-5969 ext 27 and talk to Michael Jacobs. Also we are compiling an interconnect directory. If you are an interconect and would like to be listed, please call Michael Jacobs for an input form. If you have any questions regarding Search Equipment Exchange, please call or E-mail root@atchou.com. ------------------------------ From: rem@world.std.com (Ross E Mitchell) Subject: Re: Compuserve Censors USENET in Europe Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 03:09:52 GMT PAT, you are free to ascribe any meaning you want to any word you want. You have decided that the only proper use of the word "censorship" is to describe that which is imposed by the government. That's fine with me. It's just that that's not the way it is defined in the English language, at least as far as the dictionary is concerned. The dictionary, as you well know, is where we record our agreements about the meanings of words. If you make your point by saying "government imposed censorship is..." I have no problem. But, if I use censorship in the broader sense, a sense that includes but does not limit itself to government censorship, please allow that my use, supported by the dictionary, is not improper, regardless of your belief of what the meaning OUGHT to be. Oh, and I hope you won't "censor" this final comment before returning to the topics of the group that you administer so well. Ross Mitchell [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I love it. Go ahead, use it in the 'broader sense', deuces wild, anything goes, come up with an answer that works. I used to know another guy who did this. Whenever a social problem came to his attention, or someone of whom he had high expectations did not live up to his expectations (I seemed to be his favorite victim) his retort would always be that 'freedom *as I know it and define it* in the USA is dead.' Naturally using his definitions, anything could be accounted for. To him, 'freedom' was the ability and willingness to do the right thing in the right place at the right time; everything else was 'license'. Therefore he could kill freedom whenever he felt like it. I used to tear my hair out trying to talk to him. Just remember: in this Digest, words mean what I say they mean. PAT] ------------------------------ From: baisa@hookup.net (Brad Aisa) Subject: Say NO! to Telecom Regulation (was Re: Say NO! to Metered ISDN) Date: Thu, 04 Jan 96 06:07:23 GMT Organization: HookUp Communication Corporation, Oakville, Ontario, CANADA Francois D. Menard wrote: > The day Bell Canada starts to bill ISDN as a metered service, it will > be the beginning of the end. SAY NO TO ANYTHING THAT IS METERED. It > is on this philosophy (of dedicated / not metered ) that we've built > on the Internet, damn it! > I pay many K$ a month for the right to say "Bell, Shut up !" If I > want to do IPhone, I can do IPhone, if I want to pay for a T1 just for > the fun of toying with a packet sniffer, that's my OWN problem. If I use 10K of bandwidth a day to get my email, why should I pay the same price as someone who is pumping 28M per hour over a B channel to the Internet? It makes far more sense to meter utilities, because this is both fair, and provides a reasonable check on demand. Imagine if gas or electricity weren't metered -- people would waste it like crazy, and everyone's rates would skyrocket. But I want _the market_ to decide this question, NOT the arbitrary dictates of a state mandated monopoly, nor the result of a cabinet order, nor the result of a CRTC order. The thing everyone should be objecting to is the vast regulatory bureacracy which stiffles telecom innovation and competition in Canada. Companies in free markets are very sensitive to their customers' needs and preferences. Even when there is only one provider in a certain area, there is the ever looming threat of competition. With today's technology, it should be possible to get bits into and out of the home in any of several different ways. The real answer is abolishing the CRTC and scrapping all telecom regulation. Then, the market can decide the ways in which people want their service. Brad Aisa, Toronto, Ontario, Canada baisa@hookup.net web archive: http://www.hookup.net/~baisa/ "The highest responsibility of philosophers is to serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge." -- Ayn Rand [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Considering the ideas presented in your message, I am not surprised your .signature includes an Ayn Rand quote; or should I say that the other way around: having seen an Ayn Rand quote in your .signature, I am not surprised at the sort of messages you send out to the net. Although sort of strange, she was a pretty nice lady. I have a personally autographed hard cover copy of {Atlas Shrugged}. The book was published while I was in high school (1957) and she was on a tour promoting her (then) new book. She spoke at an assembly program at our high school. I was the pet of the teacher who invited her, so afterward I got to go to dinner with Ms. Rand and Arthur when he drove her to the airport to go on to the next place in her tour. She signed my copy and his also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael@no-names.nerdc.ufl.edu Subject: Re: KSU Needed Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 06:52:52 GMT Organization: University of Florida On Thu, 14 Dec 1995 08:17:06 -0500, you wrote: > I have a Panasonic KSU and I like it a lot. One of my clients needs a > KSU for his new office and I'm suggesting a Panasonic ... > So: I'm looking for people who sell them, either new or USED (at a good > price). > He needs ~6 CO lines, ~12-16 inside extensions, nothing larger than > that and 1-4 feature phones depending on price. The Panasonic is an EXCELLENT recommendation! Completely user programmable, and completely hybrid (can use system phones, or standard single-line telephones... like that pink princess phone in your daughter's bedroom :) ) I now sell ONLY the panasonic line. I can sell NEW, or keep my eyes open for a decent priced USED system. Your friend can call me at: Phone: (904) 332-9370 Fax: (904) 332-9560 Michael P.S. Sorry, but I can't respond via E-mail. I currently only have access to the news groups via a direct access account. ------------------------------ From: Arnette.P.Schultz@att.com Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 12:50:31 -0600 Subject: Re: CID Not Passed Via 1-800-CALL-ATT kevin@mcs.com (Kevin R. Ray) wrote: > I have used AT&T to make local calls to some people that I didn't want > to know who was calling in the past couple of days. I didn't want to > show up as "ANONYMOUS" (*67), so AT&T was my choice. :-) > Using 1-800-CALL-ATT does *NOT* pass along the CID info. > Using 0-NUMBER also does *NOT* pass along the CID info (which I would > think would be an Ameritech problem.) > Almost a month later and they still don't have it right... Not an issue of "getting it right". The FCC ruling does not force carriers of any type (LEC, IXC, Cellular) to implement SS7 in order to support the tranport of CID information (i.e. Calling Party Number -- CPN). It only applies to carriers that use SS7 for call setup already. Operator Service Systems (OSS) are not SS7 capable, so calls that use OSS will not pass CID information. This is true of any calls that route to an OSS (known as OSPS or TOPS by many). The problem is that standards have not been finalized to support OSS SS7. Special signaling is required for operator handled calls, for example for coin collection, and ANSI (T1S1) has not yet finalized the OSS SS7 signaling. So, I am aware of no OSS that supports incoming SS7 -- this is not unique to AT&T. Hence, any call that goes to an operator system (live or robot) will most likely fail to pass CID information, as it is taking a non-SS7 route. Both the cases you sight are routed to OSS for handling (usually via credit card, but other options are available). Also, John L. Wilkerson Jr, jwilkers@freenet.columbus.oh.us, wrote: > My brother in Texas called recently. His number came over with the > name "Texas Call" showing up on the name display. AT&T seems to be > working okay, as well as I can tell. Again, direct dialed calls (e.g. 1+number) placed over AT&T, and most large carriers (IXCs), will follow all SS7 routing and are capable of passing SS7 CPN information used by CID. All that is passed by the IXC is the CPN (number) and associated "presentation status". The trick of adding "Texas Call" is, as far as I know, done by the local switch that is providing the CID service. Arnette Schultz a.p.schultz@att.com ------------------------------ From: levin@bbn.com (Joel B Levin) Subject: Re: ITA Dating Service Rip Off: Is This a Scam? Date: 03 Jan 1996 15:59:37 GMT Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. In article dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) writes: > If calling an 800 number can result in charges to the calling party, > then it is no longer safe to allow the public to call 800 numbers. > How useful is an 800 number if it can only be called from residence > lines? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think you will find however that most > of these funny numbers actually are non-dialable from pay phones. > Whenever I find an 800 number of the kind we have been discussing, ... > But time and again, genuine Bell payphones *never* complete those > calls, even if it is an 800 number, because the information provider > has access to a database of phone numbers listed as being in coin > service. Actually, as John Higdon has made clear on other occasions, an IP who receives realtime ANI also gets a class of service indicator. Any BOC pay phone or any _properly configured_ COCOT line, and presumably PBX or Centrex dial-out trunks show a certain class of service which the IP can refuse service for. With that information available, relying on a database is as unnecessary as it is cumbersome. /J ------------------------------ From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Re: ITA Dating Service Rip Off: Is This a Scam? Date: 03 Jan 1996 22:02:24 GMT Organization: Tulane University > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, the adult/sex IP's out there *claim* > they give ample notification of their charges. They *claim* that if you > remain on the line you do so of your volition and with full knowledge > of the cost of the call, and your consent for billing. Much of this could > be resolved if the IPs would tape record the first fifteen or twenty > seconds of each phone call, during which time they would make a statement > similar to this: > "For billing purposes only, the first few seconds of this call is > being tape recorded. ... now or speak the word 'yes' ... if any part > of the above is not true then please disconnect now at no charge." Pat, knowing the sleaziness of these adult/sex IP's with their 900-like PAY-PAY-PAY-per-call hiding behind 800 with ANI, I'd suspect that even with this method of recording the consent, they would fraudulently `insert' into the recording a DTMF `9' tone (for `Y' meaning `yes'). They've lied before, and they'll lie and cheat again, no matter what safeguards are used. When I use 950 and 1-800 (and soon 1-888) numbers to toll-free/coin-free access the carrier of my choice to make a card-sent-paid toll call, I understand that the 950 or 800 number is free, but to continue via my carrier I must DTMF (or say) my card/account/authorization code. If I were to misdial a particular 950 number, I am not supposed to be charged on the line I am calling from, since I didn't DTMF any valid account. I suppose that the carrier has the number of the line (or trunk) I am placing the 950 or 800 call from since (depending on the carrier) I see that originating number on my card-account bill for calls which were completed. The local telco can bill me for these calls if my account is set up that way, but I am billed for the toll call via the calling-card, and not for the 800 or 950 access, altho' there *is* that nasty calling card surcharge. If anyone visiting me uses my phone line for 800 & 950 access to place a toll call billed to *their* account, then *they* are billed for the call on their account and *not* me. But *I* am not billed anything for this call, even tho' the IXC has *my* telephone number (via ANI) as the originating telephone number. A few years ago, I remember seeing some print-ads for pay-per-call adult/porn services using 800 number, but it stated in tiny print at the bottom something like "2.00 for each half-minute...V/MC/AE". I called one of these 800 numbers from a nearby Telco payphone, and was connected to a recording of a sultry female voice stating that I could have an `exciting' time, by entering my Visa, MasterCard, or American Express card number into a touchtone phone. While I don't like the PAY-PAY-PAY-per-call services (900, 976, etc), at least this method required you to enter a commercial credit card number. They may have even had ANI to determine the originating number, but they billed via the credit card, and not to the originating telephone number via the LEC. Maybe all forms of pay-pay-pay services via 800 numbers should be required to be this way- not just a `press Y if you accept'. If they would want *telco* or a long-distance company to bill for the call, then they could be set up for telco/IXC to do a calling-card verification, just like telco does for its own toll services via 800 numbers. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ From: jtassi@crash.cts.com (John Tassi) Subject: 900 Mhz ... What's the Real Distance? Date: 03 Jan 1996 19:10:44 GMT Organization: CTS Network Services Hello, What is the real distance of 900 Mnz phones? What are the limitations with buildings (walls - dry wall or wood or Metal studs), etc. I would like to use a 900 Mhz cordless outdoors at a range of 500 -> 1500 feet. What other options are there? (besides celular phones). Thanks. ------------------------------ From: davep@u.washington.edu (D. Ptasnik) Subject: Re: SMDR Data Available? Date: 03 Jan 1996 19:43:57 GMT Organization: University of Washington cordones@spacelab.net (Jose Cordones) writes: > As for the delivery time of the SMDR data, it is quite braindead, so > the information is dumped to you some time after the call is > completed. Like I had suspected in my first posting, it seems I will > have to hack an interface compatible with a System phone. Why, you > ask? SMDR is really lousy for the parts where I would like to: > 1. authenticate caller at beginning of transaction. > 2. have more or less real time limits on the phone usage for each user, > and to boot, most users will be remote. This also creates a real problem for small police stations. In order to be compatible with E911, the phone system needs to notify the e911 records center at the moment the call is answered. This notification sends the address and phone number to the police station display. Very expensive dedicated systems are available for large police centers that DO put out SMDR at the beginning and end of a call, and this is captured electronically to initiate the data transmission. Much older systems (1A2) have "A-lead control", an electromechanical event that happens when a phone goes off hook. This can also be captured by e911 systems to trigger the sending of name and address from the central storage site to the local display at the police station. A few police stations have tried some hokey set ups that attach to the handset cord of the telephone being used by the dispatcher. I know of one in particular that was trying to use a yucky and stupid AT&T Merlin phone system for their whole building, and naturally wanted the police dispatchers to use the same sets as everyone else. Here is the idea: When the set goes off hook, the signal is sent that requests the address info. Unfortunately this is so unreliable (not sure why), that each set is also given a little button that manually signalls if the off hook indicator fails. Seems to happen more than 10% of the time. Pretty frustrating for the cops answering the calls. Dave Ptasnik davep@u.washington.edu ------------------------------ From: johnd@mail.ic.net (John N. Dreystadt) Subject: Re: SMDR Data Available? Date: 03 Jan 1996 15:00:22 GMT Organization: Software Services In article , cordones@spacelab. net says: > As for TAPI, TSPI, etc. I had read Intel's homepages and it was of no > help. I now have checked Microsoft's TAPI page and they actually > bother to provide info. From the Intel disinformation part, my > fingers itched to tell you "but I want the computer to control many > lines, not one ..." but I just found a paper (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/ > developr/TAPI/CLTSRV.ZIP) that claims "dispells the belief that TAPI > can't do third party call control and gives a suggestion on how to > impliment both the client and the server TAPI components." The format > seems to be "Power Point Text[?]" and I can't read it, though :-/ > Are there other any advanced books out on TAPI, even if from Microsoft > or Intel? A friend tells me that Apple has a Telephony API, too, but > I don't know any more, at this time. I'll be hunting. Any comments? Look around on the Microsoft area for the PowerPoint Viewer (ppv.exe?). Or talk to your friends and neighbors. This is a freely distributed piece of software that lets you look at PowerPoint presentations. Since I may have to do some TAPI stuff in the future, I would be interested in a followup from you on resources you find. John Dreystadt ------------------------------ From: david.breneman@attws.com (David Breneman) Subject: Re: Price Reduced on Oslin Book "Story of Telecommunications" Date: 03 Jan 1996 20:24:53 GMT Organization: AT&T Wireless Services, Inc. In article haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (James H. Haynes) writes: > I got a flyer the other day from Mercer University Press, the > publisher of "The Story of Telecommunications" by George Oslin. The > price has been reduced from $35 to $28. Maybe this means they are > trying to get rid of the remaining stock. I recommend the book highly > even though it is a mess. I'm interested in knowing in what way it's a mess. Of course, the narrative ends at about 1980, but it didn't seem to be particularly disorganized, which is how I would interpret your comment. Just curious. David Breneman Unix System Administrator IS - Operations AT&T Wireless Services ------------------------------ From: rbobbitt@ramlink.net (Raymon A. Bobbitt) Subject: DID Modems Wanted Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 23:33:31 GMT Organization: RAMLink Internet Access Service Does anyone know of a modem that will answer a DID trunk siezure, collect the digits, report the digits to the serial port and then negotiate the connection?? I am doing this with a PBX now and want to reduce the cost of service. Thanks in advance for any information. Raymon A. Bobbitt One Call Systems Po Box 1091 Ashland, KY 41105-1091 V/F 606-329-9919 rbobbitt@ramlink.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 10:26:34 EST From: One True Church of God Organization: One True Church of God, Incorporated, AMN-SC Subject: Last Laugh! Suspected Wrong Domain Name For "Heaven" On Thu, 16 Nov 95 16:35:53 EST, gbouwkamp@allnet.com submitted a humorous article from an unknown source, containing: Subject: Last Laugh! Usenet and the Path to Salvation > When he was done, she began to stammer, but Saint Peter stopped > her, saying "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do. To register > a complaint, you'll have to send mail to: > status-change-request@godvax.heaven.com > We have a group of cherubim who manage such requests. But don't > send it to: > status-change@godvax.heaven.com > Because that sends it to the whole list! Dear Pat: A domain name ending in .com represents a "commercial" site and I suspect that's incorrect in the context used. A company calling itself "heaven", or even a nightclub or some other such operation, if it had a domain name on the internet, would use such a domain name. But I doubt that if there was a real site such as the purported one in the fictional example, it would use such a domain name. Seriously I doubt {THAT} "Heaven" (the one allegedly upstairs) is a commercial site. International, probably. Or perhaps an organization. At our place, we use the following test address for mail that is supposed to bounce, or where we send flame-bait: not-for-mail@hottest.hell.int Thus I suspect if a "heaven" were existing on the 'net, it would be at an address like "heaven.int". In fact, we wanted to apply for such a thing, but the Internic wants a street address for the owner of a domain name. Pity. Sincerely, His Excellency, The Right Honorable Paul Robinson Divinely Appointed Most High Demigod One True Church of God, Incorporated A Maryland Non-Stock Corporation Incorporated July 14, 1995 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... And as we sat there waiting for our dinner that winter night in 1957, a fifteen year old smart aleck, his teacher who was always expecting too much of him and Ms. Rand, we showed her the rather lengthy review of her new book which had by coincidence appeared the day before in {The Christian Science Monitor}. She sat there for a few minutes silently reading the Monitor's review, occassionally sipping her cocktail and puffing on her cigarette through that long cigarette holder which was her trademark. Arthur also had a drink and cigarette in hand. I was not permitted by law to drink of course, but I smoked cigarettes and did so there at the table with them since smoking a cigarette showed that I was just as sophis- ticated as they. Throughout dinner I would look up occassionally and see her staring at me intently. After dinner, sitting there with coffee she spoke directly to me saying, "Such a smart young man! Too smart to believe in Gott! Why do you believe in Gott?" I guess I was sort of flustered; I did not have an answer, nor was Arthur any help. He held the newspaper up in front of his face pretending to read it so he could hide behind it and smirk without her seeing it. Dominus benedictus. Until tomorrow! PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #6 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Jan 4 13:03:54 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id NAA10352; Thu, 4 Jan 1996 13:03:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 13:03:54 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601041803.NAA10352@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #7 TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 Jan 96 13:04:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 7 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Live! UK Open U Virtual Stadium 10th Jan 5PM GMT (Simon Masterton) Best Way to Add Remote Dialin POP? (Mike Carlson) New Years Day and Netizens Article in Japan (Michael Hauben) BTA Definitions (Eric Nelson) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Joe J. Harrison) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Sean Connery) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (oz@paranoia.com) Call Id -->RS-232 (Mario Guerin) AT&T's Inflexible Sales/Marketing Approach (Michael N. Marcus) Seeking ITU Contact (Tony Perez-Falcon) Federal Crackdown on Cellular Cloning (Clifford D. McGlamry) Is Cellular Cloning Legal? (T. Govindaraj) Re: Compuserve Censors Usenet (Bill Hensley) Last Laugh! Elvisphone Now Available (Van Heffner) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: s.j.masterton@open.ac.uk (Simon Masterton) Subject: Live! UK Open U Virtual Stadium 10th Jan 5PM GMT Date: Thu, 04 Jan 1996 12:08:02 +0000 Organization: Knowledge Media Institute Cochrane/BT gig continues KMi Stadium telepresence events using RealAudio and more; Wednesday 10th Jan 5PM GMT The Open University's new Knowledge Media Institute is hosting a monthly series of on-line interviews with top research personalities, using a medium it refers to as "KMi Stadium". KMi Stadium is billed as an experiment in very large scale telepresence, and aims to host an event with 100,000 attendees by the end of 1996*. The stadium uses a mixture of audio and images, combined with a custom-built software suite based on Sun Microsystem's Java language. A prototype non-Java version is up and running at the following URL (follow the obvious links to 'Stadium'): http://kmi.open.ac.uk/ The next event [January 10th at 5PM GMT] features "Maven of the Month" Prof. Peter Cochrane, visionary propenent of the "office on your arm" and other radical technologies, and Head of Advanced Applications and Technologies at British Telecom Research Laboratories. This event follows the successful KMi Stadium launch on 18th October which featured Henry Lieberman from the MIT Media Lab [available as an on-demand replay from the above URL], and similar events which took place in November and December 1995. Live attendees will have the opportunity to discuss current research issues with the guest speaker in a "talk radio with graphics" format. Visit early to preview the relevant research issues by following the 'info button' links. KMi Stadium will phone you during the event, if required, and your discussion will be broadcast live over the net using RealAudio's live encoder technology from Progressive Networks. You'll need to obtain the RealAudio player from http://www.realaudio.com to listen to the KMi Stadium audio channel. ------------------------------- *100,000 participants??? Yes: by doubling current attendance figures every month, we can do it. The three keys to scaleability are (i) the distributed server environment, (ii) local cacheing of all 'special effects' such as laughter, applause and slide shows, and (iii) a simple hierarchy of moderators and meta-moderators to field audience questions and comments. If you're interested in helping us (particularly experimenting with alpha releases of our linked servers), please contact our Java wizard, Adam Freeman Marc * Prof M Eisenstadt (Director) M.Eisenstadt@open.ac.uk * Knowledge Media Institute http://kmi.open.ac.uk/ * The Open University Tel +44 (0)1908 65 3149 * Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK Fax +44 (0)1908 65 3169 ------------------------------ From: mike@net-quest.com (Mike Carlson) Subject: Best Way to Add Remote Dialin POP? Date: 3 Jan 1996 23:09:33 -0800 Organization: NetQuest Internet Services I am trying to find the best way to add a remote dialin POP. I want to add about 10-20 dialin modems to a site about 60 miles away that can easily access my local server. What I'm basically trying to do is find a way for these remote modems to (transparently) access all of my equipment like it was local to them. (Of course I would like to keep it inexpensive as well ...) A real nice solution would be for the remote site to dial a number local to them, that would place them into my existing modem pool hunt group. The only thing with this is that I would think that I would have to have a remote-forarded line for each number in the remote group that corresponds with one number in my local group. This sounds both messy (I'm dealing with GTE and they have *real* troubles dealing with anything even slightly complex sounding) and costly. The other thing I can think of doing is running frame-relay to the remote POP, and setup a remote modem pool hunt group on a dedicated terminal server, and just route across to my local server. (I would like to go with a T1, but it's too costly at this point ... unless there is some justification for using it over the frame-relay.) If anyone that has done this (or at least the knows about doing this) ;) could let me know the best way to go about this, I would be very grateful! Mike Carlson ------------------------------ From: hauben@sawasdee.cc.columbia.edu (Michael Hauben) Subject: New Years Day and Netizens Article in Japan Date: 4 Jan 1996 06:39:18 GMT Organization: Columbia University Reply-To: hauben@columbia.edu Akemashite Omedetou! Happy New Year. I recently visited Japan to speak at the Hyper Network Conference, Beppu Bay '95. The conference theme was "The Netizen Revolution and the Regional Information Infrastructure." The conference theme was chosen in an attempt to understand what principles would help expand the Internet in Japan. While at the conference, a reporter from the Nishi Nippon Shimbun interviewed me. The article based on the interview about my research and Netizens was published in the Nishi-Nippon Newspaper New Years Day special edition. It was special that it was published in the New Years issue, as it helps to welcome a new era with the new year. I wanted to post about this early in the new year. The Nishi-Nippon Press is located in Fukuoka City, Oita Prefecture. I have seen a rough translation of the article and it seemed to convey the significance of the role Netizens have had in building the Net to be a cooperative communications medium which benefits the larger community. After I get permission, I plan to post an abstract in English from the article. However, if you can read Japanese and have access to the Nishi-Nippon Shimbun, please take a look at the article, and let me know here in this newsgroup (and e-mail if possible) if you have any comments or other thoughts about the article. My e-mail address is hauben@columba.edu Thank you, Michael Hauben Teachers College Dept. of Communications Amateur Computerist Newsletter http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/acn/ WWW Music Index http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/music/ ------------------------------ From: Eric Nelson Subject: BTA Definitions Date: 3 Jan 1996 22:38:01 -0700 Organization: Primenet Can anyone tell me what physical area each BTA corresponds to? Or can someone direct me to a location where I can find the answers. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Joe.J.Harrison@bra0119.wins.icl.co.uk Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 14:45:10 GMT Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" I'm not sure I fully understand the term "PCS 1900" as used in the United States however from what I can tell it certainly sounds very similar to the PCN 1800 Personal Communications Networks already up and running in the UK and other countries. The UK has had traditional analog cellular networks for the last ten years or so, similar to those established in the US. PCN is a relatively new development (both UK PCN networks are less than three years old) but already it most definitely looks like genuine competition to cellular rather than being some kind of wireless alternative for the local loop. The standard is based on GSM but is frequency-doubled to use 1800MHz instead of 900MHz. Otherwise everything works just like GSM, with SIM cards and so on. There is a fair range of handsets available (Eric Valentine was too modest in failing to mention the very nice Ericsson PH237!) though not so much of a choice yet as with analog or GSM units. There is little difference in handset size or battery life though the lower power requirements of PCN mean there is scope to provide more uptime for the same battery capacity as coverage improves. Audio quality varies, at its worst it compares badly with analog and at its best slightly favourably. Moving vehicles are not a problem, although attenuation within vehicles and buildings is of course more significant at 1800MHz. I guess the main question in this thread though is why bother with PCS when there already is cellular? A good start for answering this question is to mention increased cell capacity in densely populated metropolitan areas, and the GSM-style security against scanners and cloners. Naturally the PCN startup operators also invented some good marketing reasons like per-second-billed cheaper calls, cheaper rental, and bundled free items such as voicemail, handset caller-id display, loss/theft/damage insurance. Most PCN users have no idea of the difference between "cellular" and PCN since for plain mobile voice telephony there is none. They wanted a mobile telephone and they bought the one that looked best to them on price. Until recently the inferior PCN coverage and denial of international roaming have meant that traditional cellular could retain its premium charges, but we are now at the point where a PCN v. cellular price war looks inevitable. And oddly -- an early victim of PCN might well be the text pager. The more upmarket PCN phones are capable of SMS (short message service) where 160-byte reliable-transfer text messages can be sent to or originated from the handset. Joe ------------------------------ From: bond@access.digex.net (Sean Connery) Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Date: 4 Jan 1996 10:18:31 -0500 Organization: Universal Export If any of you all can get dc.general outside of the local area there is a lot of talk going on about the new Sprint Spectrum service introduced to the DC/Baltimore area. First widespread nontest market as far as I'm aware of ...?? Seems to be cheaper than cellular and great as long as you don'm mind not being able to leave the DC area (yet). Digital ... voicemail ... CallerID ... messaging. I've been searching the web for info on it but nada! I do have a rate sheet at home I could scan for those who wanted to see it. ------------------------------ From: oz@paranoia.com Date: Thu, 4 Jan 96 07:05:45 CST Reply-To: oz@paranoia.com Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Organization: Overcome by Paranoia exueric@exu.ericsson.se and lotsa other people wrote about: >> 4) PCS phones will not work in moving vehicles. > Wrong. He must be talking about cordless phones or maybe field trials > for some of the CDMA systems. There is no inherent problem with using > PCS 1900 in a moving vehicle unless you try something silly like > pico-cells along an expressway, but that will hose an AMPS system too, > just from trying to support the handovers. One version of PCS at 1900 > is GSM-based and upbanded from 900. It has been working in vehicles > for some time now quite nicely, thank you. The same will be true some > day for CDMA based systems. Well, sorta wrong at least. There is a "technical challenge" that needs to be overcome to make PCS phones operate when moving at high speeds relative to the base station. The Doppler Effect is about 2 1/2 times worse at 1900 Mhz with respect to conventional US-AMPS cellphones. The problem is surmountable, and several solutions have been proposed. As far as "Pico" cells go, the presence of doppler shift can actually make pico cell implemenation easier and more effective. Doppler can be used to identify fast moving users and not hand them off to small cells. Oz ------------------------------ From: Mario.Guerin@HQASD2B.ssc.ssc-asc.x400.gc.ca Subject: Call Id -->RS-232 Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 16:21:08 -0500 Organization: EDS Canada Is there a way to receive Caller ID info using my USR 14.4 data/fax or do I need a Voice/Fax/data Modem. If not can I build something cheap to do it? Thanks, Mario ------------------------------ Date: 04 Jan 96 07:28:35 EST From: michael n. marcus <74774.2166@compuserve.com> Subject: AT&T's Inflexible Sales/Marketing Approach > I was in Sacramento at the time, and needed to know if a call from a > certain East Bay exchange to a certain San Francisco exchange was or > was not a local (untimed) call. Which reminds me of another bit of borderline silliness. In early 1984, shortly after the ATT break-up (the first one), I had to call ATT from my office in Westchester County, NY (914 land) to discuss the 800 account of a client in NYC (212 territory). I called the appropriate 800 number, and reached a group that handles customers in 914. They had no info on 212 customers, could not switch me to the 212 group, could not give me a number that I could call to reach the group, and could not forward a message to the 212 group so I'd be called back. ATT's state-of-the art customer-service computer had been programmed to assume that any call _from_ 914, must be _about_ 914. The only solution was to get in my car and drive across the 914/212 border and call from a pay phone on the other side. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The early years of divestiture, in the middle to late 1980's were an absolute embarassment watching AT&T try to 'sell' things. For the century before, sales had never been a big deal with them; at least not having to convince people to buy things from them. Whatever you wanted, you went to them and got on their terms. Now they have to actually convince you it is in your best interest to deal with them, but they got off to a *terrible* start. Your example above is just one of countless horror stories out of that time period. Totally inflexible, no way to use any creativity or imagination. I remember trying to sign up for AT&T Mail back around 1985 or so. Most of their employees had no idea what it was, and the few who did were never at their desk; always in a meeting or someplace. Countless transfers to someone else who could help me with it; panic stricken responses from employees who would demand to know 'who gave you my number?', unreturned messages left in voice mail, etc. The new breed of telecom people are making their money just by being able to respond in a timely way with accurate information on things. Yesterday I spoke on the phone for about an hour with a fellow in Boston whose company is looking into licensing the MyLine 800 software for resale. (Here in the Digest, I have told you about MyLine many times, but always as it involved a Licensee called 'Call America' on the west coast; I've found their service excellent). As I chatted with this fellow the point that he and I found ourselves coming back to a couple of times was the need -- when/if they begin selling MyLine through their company -- of providing fast, immediate customer service and support. They are considering the possibility of a major marketing thrust for MyLine, i.e. large advertisements in the major business media to try and grab a big share of the 800 number business from other, less flexible carriers. I told him the day those advertisements hit the streets, you want *well-trained*, intelligent, imaginative people on your staff sitting at terminals taking phone calls who are able to turn those numbers up on the spot and fax out basic preliminary operating instructions to the new subscribers. None of this "we will have it on in a couple of days; you will get a user manual in a week or two" nonsense. Those of you who have subscribed to MyLine 800 service at my urging have found it to be an extremely flexible, very powerful package. None of the traditional carriers with their 800 service come close to what MyLine offers. I told the Boston guy, don't screw up! When the typical small business person finds out about MyLine 800, you are going to have his account almost immediatly. Handle those accounts properly and watch the business come your way ... don't screw up! Those last three words and your ability to move fast, in a flexible and imaginative way will put you well ahead of any of the industry giants. By the way, is it true that AT&T has virtually ceased any and all marketing efforts on 500 service? Word coming to me is the program went over like a lead balloon. PAT] ------------------------------ From: RSSCorp@aol.com Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 08:42:23 -0500 Subject: Seeking ITU Contact We would like to consult the ITU white book(s) if at all possible. Can you supply us with an internet address and/or instructions for contacting the ITU? We would appreciate it greatly. Thanks, Cheryl for Tony Perez-Falcon ------------------------------ Date: 04 Jan 96 09:32:50 EST From: Clifford D. McGlamry <102073.1425@compuserve.com> Subject: Federal Crackdown on Cellular Cloning > Is there a source for what they don't tell you about cellphones in the > users manual? Like, how to read out and/or program the phone's id > number? Every salesperson knows how to do this, so it can't be too > great a secret. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are various books you can > purchase with information and instructions on programming cellphones. > One example which comes to mind is Bishop. I forget the exact title > of their book but you would find it in some technical book stores. The semi-offical publication used within the cellular industry is the Curtis NamFax manual published by Curtis Electro devices out of Rocklin, CA. The cost is $185 for the first year, and $85 for subsequent issues. > Why do I want to know? Nothing unethical. I'd like to use a spare > phone as an emergency phone in my other car, sharing a number. (Of > course if both ever got turned on at the same time, they'd probably > disconnect my service, but I can avoid doing that.) Also I'm just > curious what are all the things you can do that they don't tell you > about. Nice try. You have to be able to reset the ESN to do this, and that CAN't be done through the keypad. An interesting article appeared in the Dec 18, 1995 issue of the RCR newsletter. The US Secret Service is taking the first person to court in a criminal case involving the set up and use of "extension" phones (these are the ones everyone wants so they can have a second phone with the same number). Make no mistake, this IS illegal. The enforcement is coming, and pretty soon, there will be a large number of folks in the awkward position of digging through their pockets to pay when the piper shows up at their door! ------------------------------ From: tg@chmsr.isye.gatech.edu (T. Govindaraj) Subject: Is Cellular Cloning Legal? Date: 4 Jan 1996 12:55:28 GMT Organization: Center for Human-Machine Systems Research - Georgia Tech My alarm monitoring company tells me that if I have a cellular phone they can program my alarm system to use that account/number as the link to use to communicate with the monitoring company. As far as I know this is illegal, but the monitoring company guy tells me that it is not. Has anything changed? (As a side note, I see notices in many places in Atlanta advertising something like "two cellular phones, one number." Is it time to call the cops? :-) ) govind T. Govindaraj, +1 404 894 3873, 894 2301 (fax) MIME/NeXTmail welcome. ISyE-0205, Georgia Tech, 765 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0205, USA. Member, League for Programming Freedom (Info from: lpf@uunet.uu.net) http://www.isye.gatech.edu/faculty/T_Govindaraj [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: See the article just ahead of yours in this issue. Some contend cloning is totally illegal while others allow that a best case scenario might be that it is legal under some limited circumstances when the cellular carrier approves of it, if they ever do. My answer: stay away from it. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jan 1996 10:11:41 GMT From: Bill Hensley Subject: Re: Compuserve Censors Usenet Pat: FWIW, I jumped on CompuServe's Usenet service yesterday afternoon to see what the fuss was all about. It apprears to me that most of the alt groups are still accessable; most of the sex-related groups are gone, though. I checked again today, and a What's New item makes reference to "newsgroups that have been deemed pornographic" being blocked. Also FWIW, CIS has announced a series of on-line discussions of cyberlaw issues; the first is tonight at 2100 EST. I'd like to commend you on your response to the subject message. Few people take the time to understand the difference between true censorship and other people and organizations free exercise of _their_ rights; your response makes the distinction very clear. Cheers, Bill Hensley TRW Oklahoma City Engineering Office Bill_Hensley@smtp.rc.trw.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But as you may have read in the past couple of issues, there are some who legitimatly feel we need to use the term in a broader sense, to include any actions which cause someone not to so much to be totally silenced but merely to be inconvenienced to some extent in the propogation of their speech. I do feel the more liberal use of the word 'censor' as debated here yesterday is going to have the effect of muddying up the waters even more than they are already. It is a serious word, and a very serious business; something we need to be very concerned about. It does not help when we have to sort out and argue about the rights of private individuals and organizations to interact with each other as they see fit. Still, our correspondent yesterday raised some good points. If the dictionary is not the supreme judge of what words mean, then I don't know what is. If we cannot rely on our dictionary as he points out, then we are indeed up a creek. I have honestly believed for many years now that ninety -- perhaps ninety-nine -- percent of the troubles and social ills we encounter in the world are due in large part to people **not understanding what each other are saying**. We think we do, but we don't. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 04:00:05 -0800 From: vantek@northcoast.com (VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS) Subject: Last Laugh! Elvisphone Now Available Pat, Thought your readers might find this of some amusement: LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 3, 1996--Consumers will be able to sing, dance and groove with Elvis every time the phone rings. The new ELVIS PRESLEY FIGUREFONE makes its debut at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (WCES) Jan. 5 - 8 in Las Vegas at booth no. 4757 (Telemania/Kash N' Gold), just as the King celebrates another birthday, Jan. 8. When a call comes in, instead of the standard ring, Elvis comes to life as he sings "Jailhouse Rock" (approximately 26 seconds) and moves like only the King can. The incredibly lifelike animation moves the head, arms, torso, legs and feet to the music. The Elvis Presley FigureFone is a 12" authentically sculpted and dressed Elvis figure on stage, complete with guitar and microphone. There's a full feature telephone handset built into the base, which is Elvis' stage. The styling is quintessential early Elvis as he looked in performance in 1956 -- up on his toes and rockin' with his famous trademark facial expression. Produced by Telemania/Kash N' Gold, the Elvis Presley FigureFone will be available in the summer of 1996 and will retail for about $79. The Elvis Presley FigureFone is under license from Graceland. Van Hefner Publisher Discount Long Distance Digest http://www.webcom.com/longdist/ P.S. If there were a Pat Townson phone, what would it do when it rang? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Enlightened Response: Good question ... what would it do? I'll print some responses in a few days if any come in, provided they are not too crude, rude or lewd. Otherwise, I may have to 'censor' them. Like my competitor {The New York Times}, I only print what fits. Send your 1996 love offerings and other tokens of sincerity to my post office box this week and I may be more inclined to print your abuses in this column. And for the last friggin time, PLEASE quit using the telecom@eecs.nwu.edu address. Mail to that address will start bouncing soon. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #7 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Fri Jan 5 15:51:34 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id PAA03213; Fri, 5 Jan 1996 15:51:34 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 15:51:34 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601052051.PAA03213@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #8 TELECOM Digest Fri, 5 Jan 96 15:52:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 8 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Is Cellular Cloning Legal? (Bob Keller) Re: Federal Crackdown on Cellular Cloning (Kevin B. Kenny) More on the 10-732 ANI Number (Mark J. Cuccia) Doppler Shift, was Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Eric Valentine) Newest COCOT "Tricks" (Van Heffner) 500 Numbers - How Much Longer Do They Have? (Stan Schwartz) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 13:04:47 -0500 From: Bob Keller Subject: Re: Is Cellular Cloning Legal? In TELECOM Digest V16, #7, T. Govindaraj asked: > As a side note, I see notices in many places in Atlanta advertising > something like "two cellular phones, one number." Is it time to call > the cops? Pat, appended below is a brief article I recently wrote on the subject which you may or may not care to run in response to the above question. This article was written for publication in Nuts and Volts magazine -- and I believe it did run there -- but I did not sign away any copyrights, so feel free to run it in the Digest and/or put it in the archives if you wish. Bob Keller (KY3R) Email: rjk@telcomlaw.com Law Office of Robert J. Keller, P.C. Telephone: 202.416.1670 Federal Telecommunications Law Facsimile: 301.229.6875 2000 L Street, N.W. - Suite 200 CompuServe: 76100,3333 Washington, D.C. 20036 http://www.his.com/~rjk/ IF CELLULAR CLONES ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE CELLULAR CLONES: (A Critical Review of the FCC Prohibition on Modification of Cellular Unit Electronic Serial Numbers) By Bob Keller (KY3R) Law Office of Robert J. Keller, P.C. Washington, D.C. Among the many rule changes and amendments included in the Federal Communications Commission's recent "re-write" of Part 22 of its Regulations (the section of the FCC rules governing common carrier mobile radio services, e.g., paging, cellular, etc.), is a new Section 22.919 of the Rules. The new regulation, which became effective on January 2, 1995, provides that every cellular telephone must have a unique electronic serial number ("ESN") which may not be modified by any person for any reason after the unit leaves the factory. (See Figure 1 for the full text of Section 22.919 of the FCC Rules.) The stated purpose of the rule is to prevent or reduce fraud that results from the "cloning" (programming a legitimate ESN into a fraudulent unit in order to illegally access a cellular system). But the scope of the regulation goes further and has thus engendered much controversy. No one argues with the proposition that it ought to be illegal to clone cellular phones for the purpose of stealing service or fraudulently accessing cellular accounts. As written, however, Section 22.919 also precludes clearly nonfraudulent uses. It is a violation of Section 22.919, for example, to clone your ESN into a second unit to serve as an "extension" phone, even though you have no intention of using both units at the same time and are willing to pay all usage costs generated by both units. It is also a violation for your own cellular carrier to program the ESN of your broken phone into a loaner unit while repairs are made. Even cellular equipment manufacturers are concerned that the regulation is so narrowly drawn that many design features built into cellular phones are arguably in technical violation. It is not always easy to compose statutes or regulations that include the targeted conduct or situation without also unwittingly encompassing other matters that have nothing to do with the matter at hand. Such problems are frequently addressed after the fact by "interpretation" of the law. The meaning of a proscription can often be viewed in terms of its underlying purpose. Such use of legislative or regulatory history in effect imputes a certain intent to the authors of the law. Should this process not be applied to Section 22.919? Would it not be reasonable to assume that, because the purpose of Section 22.919 is to prevent cellular fraud, the Commission certainly could not have intended by it to proscribe nonfraudulent cloning? Well, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is we don't have to guess at the FCC's intention. All the right questions were put to and answered by the Commission before the regulation was adopted. The bad news is the FCC's answers to those questions make very little common sense. ESN modification and cellular cloning was a hot issue during the rulemaking proceeding in which the current version of Section 22.919 was adopted. There was no argument with the need to adopt legitimate regulatory measures to address cellular fraud, and there was no objection to rules that prohibited the cloning of cellular phones or the modification of ESNs for fraudulent purposes. But commenters specifically urged the FCC not to draw the rule so narrowly that it precluded either modification or "emulation" of ESNs in order to create nonfraudulent "extension" phones. The Commission considered and squarely rejected these arguments, stating: "[T]he ESN rule will not prevent a consumer from having two cellular telephones with the same telephone number .... We note that Commission rules do not prohibit assignment of the same telephone number to two or more cellular telephones. It is technically possible to have the same telephone number for two or more cellular telephones, each having a unique ESN. If a cellular carrier wishes to provide this service, it may." Thus, with the stroke of a pen the Commission gave the cellular carriers an effective monopoly on the provision of cellular extension phones. The third party programmers of extension units, outlawed by Section 22.919, typically charge a flat fee to program the second phone. With the adoption of Section 22.919, however, many cellular carriers have started to offer two or more phones on the same number -- but they are imposing monthly fees in the $17 to $30 range for this optional service. At those rates many users may decide it is better to simply buy a second cellular account -- and the critics say that is exactly what the cellular carriers intend. The Commission also expressly considered and rejected suggestions that the scope of Section 22.919 be narrowed to permit ESN modification by manufacturers and authorized repair centers. The Commission responded to such suggestions as follows: "[C]omputer software to change ESNs, which is intended to be used only by authorized service personnel, might become available to unauthorized persons through privately operated computer "bulletin boards". We have no knowledge that it is now possible to prevent unauthorized use of such software for fraudulent purposes." That shows how far wide of the mark is the Commission's thinking on this whole issue. Can the FCC -- the agency attributed with the expertise in electronic telecommunications matters -- actually believe that by making it unlawful to modify ESNs they will prevent thieves from acquiring the means to do so? Are they really ignorant of how relatively simple (not necessarily inexpensive, but simple) it is to clone an ESN? There is an entire underworld industry for the laundering of stolen ESNs. The footsoldiers set up their sniffing monitors at airports, convention centers, busy highway interchanges, etc., and collect thousands of ESNs off the air from unwitting cellular users. The numbers are programmed into cellular phones and put on the street through a black market network. The units are frequently recognized as fraudulent and deactivated within days or even hours of their deployment, but not before many hours cellular airtime and long distance usage (potentially including extensive international long distance) has been misappropriated. Canceling the fraudulent account is easy -- finding the fraudulent unit and its user is not. The Commission certainly can not believe that such a lucrative operation is going to be hampered in the least by an FCC regulation making it unlawful to modify ESNs. The perpetrators of these cloning schemes knowingly and willingly assume the risk of violating many criminal statutes with potential penalties far more serious than non-compliance with an FCC policy. Section 22.919 can not rationally be excepted to have any significant effect on cellular fraud. It does, however, preclude totally nonfraudulent uses by honest members of the public. It also gives the cellular carriers a monopoly on the provision of cellular "extension" phones. This is a curious ruling for an agency that recently has been using "competition" as a mantra. Over the past few decades the FCC has consistently struck down telephone company tariff provision that precludes a uses of the telephone service that are privately beneficial to the subscriber without being harmful to the network or other users. Arguably, Section 22.919 fails under that test! The final chapter has not yet been written. The Commission received several petitions for reconsideration and clarification of Section 22.919. The matter is still under consideration, and at last report and ruling was anticipated by the end of the year. If the FCC does not adopt significant modifications to the rule, an appeal to federal court may be mounted by some industry players. In the meantime, the regulation remains on the books -- an obstacle to honest users, but an entirely insignificant, if even noticed, "finger shaking" at the crooks. - rjk - ======== Figure 1 ======== 47 C.F.R. Section 22.919 --------------------------------- 22.919 Electronic serial numbers. The Electronic Serial Number (ESN) is a 32 bit binary number that uniquely identifies a cellular mobile transmitter to any cellular system. (a) Each mobile transmitter in service must have a unique ESN. (b) The ESN host component must be permanently attached to a main circuit board of the mobile transmitter and the integrity of the unit's operating software must not be alterable. The ESN must be isolated from fraudulent contact and tampering. If the ESN host component does not contain other information, that component must not be removable, and its electrical connections must not be accessible. If the ESN host component contains other information, the ESN must be encoded using one or more of the following techniques: (1) Multiplication or division by a polynomial; (2) Cyclic coding; (3) The spreading of ESN bits over various nonsequential memory locations. (c) Cellular mobile equipment must be designed such that any attempt to remove, tamper with, or change the ESN chip, its logic system, or firmware originally programmed by the manufacturer will render the mobile transmitter inoperative. (d) The ESN must be factory set and must not be alterable, transferable, removable or otherwise able to be manipulated in the field. Cellular equipment must be designed such that any attempt to remove, tamper with, or change the ESN chip, its logic system, or firmware originally programmed by the manufacturer will render the mobile transmitter inoperative. ========== A Side Bar ========== Section 22.919 in all of its technical detail was adopted in late 1994 and did not officially become effective until January of 1995. The FCC has had a policy prohibiting ESN modification, however, since the earliest incarnation of its cellular regulations. Here is the full text of an FCC Public Notice explaining the policy as it existed prior to adoption of Section 22.919. ---------- PUBLIC NOTICE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION COMMON CARRIER PUBLIC MOBILE SERVICES INFORMATION October 2, 1991 Report No. CL-92-3 CHANGING ELECTRONIC SERIAL NUMBERS ON CELLULAR PHONES IS A VIOLATION OF THE COMMISSION'S RULES It has come to the attention of the Mobile Services Division that individuals and companies may be altering the Electronic Serial Number (ESN) on cellular phones. Paragraph 2.3.2 in OST Bulletin No. 53 (Cellular System Mobile Station - Land Station Compatibility Specification, July, 1983) states that "[a]ttempts to change the serial number circuitry should render the mobile station inoperative." The 1981 edition of these compatibility specifications (which contains the same wording) was included as Appendix D in CC Docket 79-318 and is incorporated into Section 22.915 of the Commission's rules. Phones with altered ESNs do not comply with the Commission's rules and any individual or company operating such phones or performing such alterations is in violation of Section 22.915 of the Commission's rules and could be subject to appropriate enforcement action. Questions concerning this Public Notice should be addressed to Steve Markendorff at 202-653-5560 or Andrew Nachby at 202-632-6450. Bob Keller (KY3R) mailto:rjk@telcomlaw.com Law Office of Robert J. Keller, P.C. http://www.his.com/~rjk Federal Telecommunications Law Telephone 202.416.1670 ------------------------------ From: Kevin B. Kenny Subject: Re: Federal Crackdown on Cellular Cloning Date: Fri, 05 Jan 1996 12:15:07 -0500 Organization: GE Corporate R&D, Manufacturing Technologies Lab Clifford D. McGlamry wrote: > An interesting article appeared in the Dec 18, 1995 issue of the RCR > newsletter. The US Secret Service is taking the first person to court > in a criminal case involving the set up and use of "extension" phones > (these are the ones everyone wants so they can have a second phone > with the same number). Make no mistake, this IS illegal. The > enforcement is coming, and pretty soon, there will be a large number > of folks in the awkward position of digging through their pockets to > pay when the piper shows up at their door! I'm curious. Would it be possible to set up a value-added service to support `extension cellphones?' The idea would be to have THREE phone numbers: the numbers of the two cellphones and the number of the group. When someone calls the number of the group, a machine picks up and places calls, simultaneously, to the two cellphones. The first call to complete wins, and the other call gets dropped. A smart PABX could probably arrange to see that the inbound call doesn't supervise until the outbound call does. Feasible? Kevin ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 09:28:00 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: More on the 10-732 ANI Number Recently I mentioned that the AT&T's special network 10-732 code's ANI number had been changed from 404 to 770, conforming to the split of 404 into a smaller 404 and new 770. I also mentioned that there was also a second ANI number in 10-732 using Pittsburgh's 412 area code, but I didn't know it off hand. 10-732-1-412-369-3106 The Atlanta area number is now: 10-732-1-770-988-9664 ^^^ 770-988 is in Smyrna GA while 412-369 is in Perrysville PA. The 412 number is probably better to use from the Atlanta local (flat rate) calling area (which is probably one of the largest geographically, population-size *and* in number of Central Office (NXX) codes available. Based on what I've been told by friends in the Atlanta area, BellSouth does *not* allow use of 10-XXX (101-XXXX) over-ride calls for calling NPA-NXX codes which are local to the caller. (It is also that way here in Louisiana). 770-988 (previously 404-988) Smyrna is local within the Atlanta area, and therefore, 10-732/101-0732+ (1) 404/770 988-9664 was/is not allowed by BellSouth's exchanges in the Atlanta local calling area. BTW, from my cellular phone, I don't have to insert the `1' between the 10-732 and the (404)/770 or 412 (the cellular system translates the digits entered okay, since I am also using the `end' key). But please note: from both cellular phones *and* POTS landline phones, using a `0' (i.e. 10-732-0+NPA-NXX-XXXX) will route you to AT&T's OSPS operator services if the LEC switch accepts the NPA-NXX code. I have also dialed 1-770-988-9664 and 1-412-369-3106 without the 10-732/101-0732 and also with other 10-XXX/101-XXXX codes. I've *always* received a busy signal. I doubt that there is *anything* locally assigned to these Smyrna GA & Perrysville PA numbers. And using 10-732/101-0732+1+ on *other* ten digit numbers I've dialed *always* routes me to the recording: `You have reached a private network. To complete long-distance calls, you must be authorized by your account team or long-distance sales representative. You may dial 10-288-1 plus the number you desire to call.' MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ From: exueric@exu.ericsson.se (Eric Valentine) Subject: Doppler Shift, was Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Date: 5 Jan 1996 14:47:17 GMT Organization: Ericsson North America Inc. Reply-To: exueric@exu.ericsson.se In article 7@massis.lcs.mit.edu, oz@paranoia.com writes: > Well, sorta wrong at least. There is a "technical challenge" that > needs to be overcome to make PCS phones operate when moving at high > speeds relative to the base station. The Doppler Effect is about 2 Bingo. Got me. I went into it with the mindset of handover overloads which has straightforward solutions, for instance using hierarchical cells. What speeds are we talking about and what is the direct consequence (dropped calls?) of the Doppler shift? Is this a problem in DCS1800 networks (I haven't heard that it is). Eric Valentine ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 02:10:22 -0800 From: vantek@northcoast.com (VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS) Subject: Newest COCOT "Tricks" Pat, I am not quite sure how long this has been going on, but I just found out about it recently. I haven't personally seen any of these COCOT phones locally, but I understand that they are becoming widespread at new installations. It will be interesting to see what MCI and AT&T do to combat this issue ... NATIONAL Jan 4, 1996 (DLD DIGEST) -- MISSING LETTERS? The next time you use a private payphone, look closely ... the newest "trend" in private (COCOT) payphones are phones which have numbers on the buttons, but not the corresponding letters (i.e. 2 = ABC, 3 = DEF, etc.). The reason? Payphone owners are losing so much money from dial-around services such as 1-800-COLLECT and 1-800-CALL-ATT that they have started removing letters from their pushbutton phones so that consumers will not be able to call these services. Most people can not remember which letters correspond with a particular number on a telephone without looking directly at it. Callers wishing to use these alternate collect services usually end-up having to Dial "0" to make the call, which is then handled by an Alternate Operator Service chosen by the payphone owner. These services often have exhorbanant per-minute rates and surcharges, much of which is paid as a commission to the COCOT owner. Van Hefner Editor Discount Long Distance Digest http://www.webcom.com/longdist/ ------------------------------ From: Stan Schwartz Subject: 500 Numbers - How Much Longer Do They Have? Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 21:48:25 -0500 I know we've touched on the subject before, but I finally saw it with my own eyes last weekend, late at night on cable: "Girls are waiting to talk to you ... only $3.99 per minute ... call 1-500-319- ...." How long before I can't dial my AT&T 500 number from most phones in the world? I had an EasyReach 700 number at one time but I dropped it, frustrated that it didn't work in many places (one of them being Rochester, NY, where the LEC (Frontier) didn't see it necessary to upgrade their software to complete 700 calls). I recently moved and I my job requires me to be at different locations. It was very handy to have a 500 number that was programmable and would bounce from location-to-location until it either reached me or hit my voice mail. Even my 66-year-old technologically-impaired mother was able to reach me without having to dial all over the southeast (I cheated with her, though -- I programmed the number into her CO-based Speed-Call-8). If the FCC and BellCore and all parties involved were able to agree on "Free for the call" 800 and 888 services (other threads not withstanding), why couldn't someone force their hand at agreeing to an NPA that would be a "minimal charge" (under $.50 or $1.00 per minute) NPA??? Did they all just shoot each other in the feed again? Does anyone use 700 anymore, or is it permanently tainted? How long before they kill the 400 NPA? Just ranting ... Stan [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At least 500 has something which was missing in 700: the ability to one plus it or zero plus it with differing results. That does allow more flexibility, plus the ability (by zero plussing) to reverse the charges which 700 had also with its pin numbers. But with 700 you always had to add the 10288 part if you were not already a customer of AT&T. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #8 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Jan 9 09:43:02 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA28869; Tue, 9 Jan 1996 09:43:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 09:43:02 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601091443.JAA28869@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #9 TELECOM Digest Tue, 9 Jan 96 09:42:30 EST Volume 16 : Issue 9 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Using the Telecom Archives (TELECOM Digest Editor) Receiving the Digest via Email (TELECOM Digest Editor) Who are ACG and Tel America, Inc? (Bill Price) 800 Number Abuse Question Answered (Allen Kass) Re: 800 Number Abuse Question (Clarence Dold) Re: Compuserve Censors Usenet (Ross E. Mitchell) Fridays are Free With Sprint (Les Reeves) Inter@ctive Week Article About FCC "ISP Tax" (Kevin Mitchell) Forbidden Cellular NXXs (Tony Harminc) Computer Telephony Expo 96 (Palent9999@aol.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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 20:47:36 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Using the Telecom Archives I have received various complaints from people who say getting into the Telecom Archives is quite difficult ... and I agree that it is. We have experimented with the number of simultaneous connections to be allowed with various results. Like everything else about the net these days, it seems traffic to various ftp/web sites has increased tremendously. Originally (meaning when the archives was moved onto this dedicated machine a few months ago) it was set for 25-30 simultaneous connections. This resulted in constant 'busy signals' with users almost constantly being refused connection. The allowable number of connections was moved up to 50 and that alleviated the traffic jam for just a short while but it soon picked up again, so the allowable limit was set at 75. That 75 ftp users at a time limit soon maxed out and again got us to the point of constant busy signals or connection refused to additional users. We would have none the less left it at 75 but that resulted in constant disk activity and a massive degradation in other system performance. It was *s l o w* attempting to do any work at all on this machine with that many users constantly on ftp. Now we are back at 35 users allowed at any one time which provides a compromise I can live with -- I think -- between users wanting files and my ability to work here also. During the past two weeks the system crashed several times. It got so backlogged in stuff and wrapped up in what it was doing that it just completely shut down. There were times that 'uptime' was reporting loads of more than 40. I did not misplace the decimal ... I mean forty. One night just before a crash the load was in excess of one hundred. Right now as I write this, despite the fact that I am the only 'user' on the workstation, the various ftp connections have the load at 1.55 which still slows me down a lot, but I can live with it. There are also people who for whatever reason establish an ftp connection here and then just sit there all day doing little or nothing. Or maybe they are getting the same stalled and sluggish reactions that I am which causes their sessions to go on and on without ever coming to an end. It is hard for me to believe there are that many people demanding so much stuff from the archives, but apparently they are. So in addition to limiting the connections now to 35, a cron job comes along at five in the morning and automatically dumps off all ftp users, so we can start out fresh each day. What you can do: If you get a 'connection refused' message, just keep trying over and over. Bang at it repeatedly until you jump in on a vacant connection. Do not put it aside and come back in an hour; you will get the same all-busy results -- it is almost guaranteed. If it is possible for you to do your ftp connections in the early morning hours, I recommend that. It seems to be least busy in the hours of 5-8 AM Eastern time, probably because the cron job just finished doing a housecleaning. If you can't be up and around at that hour, try running a cron job of your own. You should all have copies of the archives directory which are reasonably up to date. The other thing you can do is make use of the Telecom Archives Email Information Service. This is not just for people without ftp ability; it is for anyone who wants to use it. You can retrieve any number of files as quick as it takes for email to get here, be processed by the TAEIS script and returned to you by email; many times in just seconds, or a minute or two. Every new user who is added to the mailing list gets a copy of the TAEIS help file, and if you don't have one you only need to ask. I do not have any other solution at the present time, but I did want to let everyone know I am aware of the massive logjams that have been occurring when attempting to ftp here. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 21:22:41 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Receiving the Digest via Email Now let me address another problem which has been a thorn in my side for awhile ... the number of complaints which have been coming in from people saying the Digest has not been arriving in a timely way. Some have written to say they have not received it at all for several days at a time. You *should be* getting ten to fifteen issues of the Digest every week. Typically in mid-week, two or three issues in one day is not uncommon as output here. When I have investigated the delivery complaints, time and again I find a mailer daemon for the user in question saying that 'connection refused by xx' or 'service unavailable at xx'. In other words, your site for some reason is saying to my site that you cannot accept the mail at that time, and for whatever reason, everytime this site calls on yours, you are refusing the mail. Another problem is the mailers (yours and or mine) will hang, and eventually time out. If you are not getting the Digest in a regular way as mentioned above (do NOT write two weeks after the fact and ask me if I have published any issues in the past two weeks ... the answer is yes, at least 20-30 issues) then please ask your sysadmin to see if his logs indicate for some reason the mail was bounced. That is not to say there are not possible problems here -- I beleive there are -- but they seem to be very pervasive at times. The other thing is, I honestly do not know what to do when a mailing list becomes as large as this one has. The people near the bottom of a list alphabetically sorted by site name (for maximum speed and effeciency in running sendmail) are always going to be hours away from delivery, and the amount of time required for delivery increases daily as new names are added and sorted into the list. I am typically seeing a net increase of ten new subscribers per day; that is, the number of 'adds' to the list minus the number of 'deletes' removed off the list. At any given time of the day or night here, 24 hours per day, there is always one or more invocations of sendmail running doing delivery of the Digest. Anytime I examine the mailq, I find one or two thousand names there waiting for sendmail to make delivery on. Then maybe sendmail gets cranky and shuts down completely for several minutes to an hour; maybe there is network congestion at other points which cause it to hang or other problems such as the entire system crashing due to the excessive demands on ftp. I have tried breaking the list into smaller pieces and running three or four invocations of sendmail at one time, but that only adds to the overall sluggishness of the machine as sendmail sits there fighting with the ftp users over who is going to get the next machine cycle. :( So if your site name begins with an 'x' or 'y' or 'z' I am sorry that this message may not reach you for eighteen hours after it was written. Those of you who know something of how mailing lists operate know that all the names on the list are inserted into the 'bcc:' so that recipients don't have to sit through screen after screen of subscriber names in the envelope before the actual text starts flowing. Ihave sat here and watched the mailer take upwards of 15-20 minutes just to merely load the 'bcc:' before it started the actual distribution. Like Northwestern, MIT is very generous with me on resources. I can invoke sendmail day and night in massive quantities for all they care and entertain as many ftp connections as possible. But there are technical limits to things, and right now I just do not know where to turn next at resolving some of the lengthy delays many of you are experiencing. I am in this for the long term as most of you know; and perhaps we are just going to have to wait it out until a few million of the newcomers in recent months get tired and/or bored and unplug their computers for good, if they ever do. Someone suggested perhaps a mirror site could be found for the archives to relieve a little of the crunch here, and if anyone wants to do that, let me know. In the meantime, if you write to me about long delays on ftp and long delays on receiving my email, be assured I am seeing all those letters even if I do not write back in response ... mainly because I have no solution at present, and nothing to really say in response other than I am sorry and fully aware of how things are going. PAT ------------------------------ From: BPRICE@MPA15AB.MV.UNISYS.COM Date: 08 JAN 96 18:10:00 GMT Subject: Who are ACG and Tel America, Inc? A friend of my wife has appoached us to sign on with Tel America, Inc. T/A's literature identifies themselves as having some association with ACG, whoever they are. They deny that they are a multi-level marketing operation, but all I've seen in their literature just screams "multi- level" and "scam" to me. They peddle prepaid cards, pagers and paging services, and a business-phone service with 800 numbers through MCI. The business rates seem to be in the $.15/minute range; the card rates seem to be $.33/minute. The cards seem to be bundled with down-line salesman slots: pay $100, get one card and a license to sign up two people; for $300, you get three cards and four licenses; $700, seven cards and eight licenses. They also mention a Voice Mail offering. All that I have said above comes from a brief encounter with some random- looking marketing literature. The literature extols the virtues of their marketing plan, with only scant mention of products and services: this is typical of a scam, though not definitive. They do mention an "LNX 2000" switch as their major asset. T/A gives an address in Oakland, CA. Can anyone report on Tel America and ACG? What's the LNX 2000, and what's it good for? Bill Price "To DO the impossible, you must first THINK the unthinkable." (courtesy Ian Farbrother) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 15:02:35 -0500 From: Allen Kass Subject: 800 Number Abuse Question Answered Pat, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your interest and information about a question that I submitted a week or so back about 800 number abuse. I have really gotten an education in the past few days. Both from yourself, several other readers that have replied and from AT&T and Cable & Wireless. Fortunately, we did find out the "source" of this recent problem. Would you believe that one of our weekend part-timer news department operators was convinced that she should transfer an incoming 800 call to another outside line. The caller posed as another radio station needing a "special feed" and then instructed the operator to transfer his call to a 900 number not once but our SMDR indicates at least 15 separate time using at least four different sets in the news department. The 800 number appears on all the sets in the news department. We have changed all passwords and remote access codes and we have also limited what states (area codes) can call into this 800 number. We have also checked the progamming on all public access phones in the building and removed several features and added restriction to help prevent this from happening again. We have also put out a memo to the entire staff explaining that they are not to transfer any calls outside the building for any reason without the permission of their department head. These people have been explained the problem in great detail so that they can instruct the staffs. Again thanks for all the help and information. Regards, Allen Kass, Chief Engineer WRVQ Radio Q94 Richmond, VA. Voice: 804-756-6481 Fax: 804-755-6077 Email: allenk@richmond.infi.net Home page: http://www.infi.net/~allenk/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite welcome Allen. That is the purpose of my being here day after day; to help educate people on the topic of 'The Telephone Company' and all its manifestations. Stick around and learn some more. All of us, including myself, share through the collected wisdom of the group. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: 800 Number Abuse Question Date: 8 Jan 1996 18:08:54 GMT Organization: a2i network TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > that this exists on their PBX; they were never told about it when > the PBX was installed, or if they were, they never were told how to Every PBX or voicemail system that we install has this ability turned off. It is irresponsible for a vendor to do anything else. If there are digital announcers on the system, we turn the ability off there as well. Some systems have maintenance features that answer the phone after 15 rings, for maintenance access at night. These are password protected, or they are on lines that only rnig under special configurations that we have the customer enable the night we need to get in. Again, it is irresponsible to expose your customers to such a gaping security hole. I know it happens, but I think there is some culpability on the part of the installing company. In our case, we handle the long distance traffic for most of our hardware customers, so I suspect that they would refuse to pay us, if an exposure was our fault. Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - Pope Valley & Napa CA. ------------------------------ From: rem@world.std.com (Ross E Mitchell) Subject: Re: Compuserve Censors Usenet Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 18:41:45 GMT I think it's important to point out, for the record, that I agree that Compuserve has the right to decide what to carry and what not to carry. My argument was only with PAT's requirement for restricting the meaning of the term "censorship" to government-imposed censorship. My own view is that Compuserve's censoring of newsgroups is perfectly appropriate; as a private company it is under no obligation to provide a forum for all points of view. People who disagree are always free to leave the service, as PAT points out. It is interesting to note that when a company does edit material, it leaves itself open to charges of libel when it permits libelous material to remain on its service. This recently happened to Prodigy. The court ruled that since Prodigy had taken on the responsibility of deleting objectionable material, it had also taken on the responsibility of ensuring that what remained did not libel others. This responsibility, as I recall, would not have applied had Prodigy exercised no editorial control, much as the phone companies are not responsible for crimes committed through the use of their services. In the case of Compuserve, I wonder if this rationale could be extended to cover material contained in newsgroups it chooses to continue to carry. Personally, I think they're safe there. Ross Mitchell ------------------------------ From: lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves) Subject: Fridays are Free With Sprint Date: 8 Jan 1996 12:25:54 -0800 Organization: CR Labs Fridays are FREE Sprint has gone nuts. Their beancounters have consumed too much champagne. They are offering a limited time (through 2-27-96) offer that may be just the ticket for you TD readers who lust for the days of free toll calls. The offer is available for all customers (residence or business) who call 800.347.3300 You sign up for Sprint Business Sense, which gives a flat rate of $0.16 / minute. This is a good rate during the day. It is a bit high after 5:00 pm, and many carriers will give you < $0.16 / minute with no strings attached. But wait, there's more. FRIDAYS ARE FREE !! No kidding. Free to anywhere. Anywhere means International anywhere. So, you get a $50 per month minimum bill from Sprint. They limit you to $1000 in *FREE* Friday calling per month. Let's give those beancounters a headache. Sign up now. Les lreeves@crl.com Atlanta,GA 404.874.7806 -- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Les and I discussed this at length on the phone a couple days ago. According to Sprint's literature, they will give you a year of free calls on Friday up to a thousand dollars per month. That works out to $12,000 in calls for $600 (50*12) in charges. The best part is, the $50 minimum per month can be taken out of the free calls on Friday. I am not sure if you have to default one of your lines to them or not. I don't think you do, and as Les points out, both business and residence phones are eligible. So if you like the idea of getting a bill once a month for $50 from Sprint while holding as many of your LD calls as possible for Friday where you have 24 hours once a week for a year to jam them all in, then you should sign up. Indeed, I think Sprint has gone nuts. Is this promotion going to turn out to be another fiasco for them like their 'free fax modem' offer? I would say $11,400 in free calls over a year's time is going to be just that, especially if multiplied by many thousands of new customers. I imagine they are betting that no one user can wrack up a thousand dollars in calls in a month's time on Friday alone. I think if we held over all those hours-long international calls each week and always made them on Friday we could. What would really be the pits for Sprint would be if we used them for nothing at all but Friday free calls, took that thousand in calls each month and cheerfully sent them their required check for $50 in payment. The bottom line is ($12,000 minus $600) = $11,400. I guess Sprint thinks they are going to win on this; that you will be so enamored of their service that you will make calls via their network the other six days of the week as well ... Sign up today: 800-347-3300. Sound enthusiastic, don't ask too many questions or make too many smart comments. Just sign up ... then show them what 'totally free calling' on Friday's is all about for the next year. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Inter@ctive week article about FCC "ISP Tax" Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 16:24:11 CST From: Kevin Mitchell Pat, I found the Inter@ctive week article about the "ISP Tax". The URL is: http://www.zdnet.com/~intweek/print/951218/upfront/doc11.html IMHO, the FCC is up to its usual misunderstanding of what's going on. I don't think that Internet phone service is going to displace real long distance use ... nobody has a terminal hooked up 24 hours a day waiting for a call. It's a novelty. For a long time, most long distance calls will be carried on regular old telephone sets. If the long distance companies are in such danger, and if the true cost of transmitting the spoken voice is really so low, then they should face the competition. Adapt or die. When we read that the FCC must "address the real potential economic impact" on the Bells, we're talking corporate welfare. Which, loosely translated, means that the government takes _your_ money without your consent and gives it to a _profitable_ corporation to allow that corporation to continue to exist where it otherwise might have to adapt to the new reality. Without harming that corporation's precious stock prices. Of course, if all the ISPs go out of business due to this tax, nobody cares. Except, perhaps, the local telco who wants to sell you the same service, priced by the byte. Oh yeah, and the price will be orders of magnitude more than the real costs. Not to mention that the application of this tax is discriminatory. ISPs and their users pay all the appropriate fees under the tariffs. An additional tax burdens the _other_ users of the Internet as much or more than it burdens the IPhone users. Corbitt is so worried about nonmodem phone users, but what about non-IPhone Internet users? And if my ISP leases a T1 from the telco and I make a call with a modem, who _cares_ what kind of information goes across it? All the applicable fees are paid. I'm hoping that the Netizens will rise up as they usually do and let their representatives and the FCC know that they oppose this kind of haphazard, discriminatory, and counterproductive regulation. Kevin A. Mitchell, developer of GIFConverter for the Macintosh Personal: kam@mcs.net http://www.mcs.net/~kam/home.html GIFConverter: kam@kamit.com or kam@kagi.com http://www.kamit.com/gifconverter.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Jan 96 03:39:15 EST From: Tony Harminc Subject: Forbidden Cellular NXXs Some months ago, in reply to a slightly different topic, I mentioned that there are certain CO prefixes that cannot reliably be used as AMPS cellular NXXs. I just came across the list, and since several people had asked me to post it, here it is. The problem in brief is that the FOrward Control Channel (FOCC) data stream begins with an 11 bit "word sync" sequence 11100010010. This sequence is followed by 40 bit words, which encode all sorts of control and addressing information from the central station to the mobiles. It is possible for certain data, when encoded into the 40 bit words, to cause the word sync pattern to appear in the data, and thus possibly confuse a mobile attempting to synchronize on the data stream. Normally this is not a serious problem, since the mobile will quickly realize that it isn't sync'd, and will try again. But if many repeats of the false word sync sequence occur in the data, mobiles will have trouble reliably synching. One way that many repeats could occur is if a certain NXX code used for many mobiles in the area, when encoded in 40 bit format, and combined with other possible control information in the words, contains the word sync sequence. Since many phones with that NXX are likely to be paged if this is their home area, the sequence could be sent out very frequently. I have listed only the NXX and where relevent the thousands digit that cause problems, and not the detailed bit patterns that result. Many of these NXXs are invalid in the North American phone system, but are included for completeness. NXX Thousands digit NXX Thousands digit 175 0 to 9 595 8, 9, 0 176 0 to 9 851 8, 9, 0 177 0 to 9 007 8, 9, 0 178 0 to 9 150 2 179 0 to 9 224 2 170 0 to 9 288 2 181 0 to 9 352 2 182 0 to 9 416 2 663 0 to 9 470 2 664 0 to 9 544 2 665 0 to 9 508 2 666 0 to 9 672 2 899 0 to 9 736 2 800 0 to 9 790 2 909 0 to 9 864 2 568 1 to 7 928 2 070 1 to 7 992 2 339 8, 9, 0 056 2 In summary: usable prefixes 663, 664, 665, 666, 899, 800, and 909 are dangerous with any nnnn suffix, while certain others are OK with some suffixes and dangerous with others. I imagine cellular operators will simply avoid all of them. Note that the devil will never have an AMPS cellphone ... This information is from document RSS 118 (Annex A) "Cellular System Mobile Station - Land Station Compatibility Standard", dated Oct. 22, 1983, published by the DOC in Ottawa. Although it's an old document, I'd be very surprised if this restriction has changed, since the data formats are so fundamental to cellular operation. Tony Harminc ------------------------------ From: palent9999@aol.com (Palent9999) Subject: Computer Telephony Expo 96 Date: 8 Jan 1996 15:28:36 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: palent9999@aol.com (Palent9999) Come to the BIGGEST Computer Telephony Show in the world! ---- 98 hours of seminars ---- 36 hours of Killer App Theaters ---- 263 speakers ---- 341+ exhibitors plus wonder demos from Harry Newton's secret vault ... OVER 70,000 DOLLARS WORTH OF DOOR PRIZES, INCLUDING A BRAND NEW NISSAN 200SX!!! Why another show? Computer telephony is hot, brimming with opportunities for users, resellers, system integrators and entrepreneurs. CT Expo 96 is the fastest-growing computer show in North America. In 1991, we had 67 exhibitors. In 1996, we have over 360. In 1996, we have twice 1995's booth area -- the equivalent of 1070 10' X 10' booths. CT Expo 96 is the only computer show you'll find booths from telecom vendors -- Ameritech, AT&T, Comdial, Fujitsu, Harris Digital, NEC, Northern Telecom, Mitel, Pacific Bell, Rockwell, Toshiba, and Siemens/Rolm. CT Expo 96 is the only telecom show you'll find booths from computer companies -- Apple, Artisoft, Cirrus Logic, Delrina, Force, HP, IBM, Intel, Lotus, Microsoft, Novell, QNX, SCO, Sun, Unisys, and Xircom. CT Expo 96 is the only show you'll find computer telephony companies -- Active Voice, Amtelco, Apex, Bicom, Brooktrout, Dialogic, Diamond, Excel, Mitel, Natural MicroSystems, Parity, Octel, Rhetorex, Stylus, Talx, TRT, and Wildfire. CT Expo 96 is your only chance in 1996 to see this exploding new industry, to hear and to meet with all the industry's experts -- all under one roof. This is a rare opportunity. I urge you to come Visit our web site to fill out a free exhibit hall registration form. For more information, check out www.ctexpo.com or 1-800-999-0345 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #9 **************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 10 16:11:06 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id QAA22250; Wed, 10 Jan 1996 16:11:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 16:11:06 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601102111.QAA22250@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #10 TELECOM Digest Wed, 10 Jan 96 16:11:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 10 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson News Release in TC94-121 (Steve Wegman) News: ISDN Moves To The Burbs (Mike King) Cellular Fraud Suspects Arrested in Santa Fe (Tad Cook) Continuing Poor Service for CO/NY Customers Poughkeepsie (Doug Reuben) Interesting Vanity 800 Number, 1-800-BANTING (Nigel Allen) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Wegman, Steve Subject: News Release in TC94-121 Date: Tue, 09 Jan 96 08:35:00 PST NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Leni Hook 1/8/96 605-773-3201 PUC AND U S WEST AGREE ON DEVELOPMENT PLAN; RATE INCREASE PIERRE, SD -- The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) today approved a Settlement between U S WEST Communications, Inc. (U S WEST) and the Commission staff. The Settlement covers all of U S WEST's South Dakota service territory, except those exchanges previously approved for sale by the PUC. The Settlement received unanimous approval by South Dakota's three Public Utility Commissioners, Chairman Ken Stofferahn, Vice-Chairman Jim Burg, and Commissioner Laska Schoenfelder. It includes $25 million in infrastructure development; a competition-oriented pricing structure; elimination of all touch-tone charges; and a rate adjustment phased in over 36 months. "This was among the most important decisions the PUC has ever made," said Stofferahn, who added, "Every square mile of South Dakota will now have access to the most advanced telecommunications services available anywhere." "Telecommunications is capable of extending telemedicine and distance learning to every South Dakota community," said Stofferahn. "With this $25 million investment, we will do just that," he said. Combined with the current infrastructures of U S WEST, South Dakota's Independent and Cooperative telephone companies, and the South Dakota Network (SDN), this new investment will make it even more possible for emergency, diagnostic, and prescribed care to be administered remotely from a regional medical center to any community where basic health care facilities are located. Regardless of its location, every public school can also use this same infrastructure to enhance classroom education through remote interaction with a regional education center. In addition to the infrastructure development, the Settlement includes a $2 million Distance Learning Initiative for public schools, Distance Learning training grants, a discount for state government to defray a portion of the state's education network costs, statewide deployment of Caller ID and other advanced custom calling features, full replacement of multi-party lines with one-party service, expansion of fiber-optics and local access to the internet. "By investing $25 million in this state for these and other upgrades, South Dakota will enjoy access to leading-edge technologies and all the benefits it may bring," said Stofferahn. U S WEST is a legal monopoly, and by statute allowed to recover its fully allocated cost of service through customer rates. Under traditional regulation, the PUC determines the cost of service and orders the utility to charge exactly that amount. According to Stofferahn, a nationwide movement toward competition requires a new regulatory approach. The Settlement still sets a cost of service based price ceiling for U S WEST, but allows downward-flexing of customer rates to remain competitive. "We have not approved a general rate increase for U S WEST since 1985. This Settlement allows an increase, but with a price ceiling below the cost of service, and a three-year phase-in," he said. The three-phase customer rate adjustment will occur in 18-month intervals, with a maximum price ceiling of $19.35 for basic residential customer rates. The first phase, effective on February 12, 1996, will affect customers in the following ways: Residents living within or close to city limits who do not have touch-tone service will have a monthly increase of $2.45. Residents living within or close to city limits who already have touch-tone service will experience a net monthly increase of 95 cents after elimination of the touch-tone charge. Approximately 30,000 residents receiving touch-tone and one-party service, and who live outside city limits, will experience a net monthly decrease of $2.05 after elimination of the Outside the Base Rate Area (OBRA) and touch-tone charges. Business customers who do not have touch-tone service will have a monthly increase of $2.75 per line. Business customers who already have touch-tone will experience a net monthly increase of 75 cents per line. The second phase adjustment is scheduled 18 months after the first. This adjustment limits the rate increase to not more than $2.10 for all customers who have not reached the $19.35 ceiling. However, the second and third increases will only occur if U S WEST shows clear improvement in its service quality performance. The third phase of not more than $2.10 is allowable under the plan 36 months after the first adjustment, provided that customer rates have not reached the ceiling. Business customers will also experience second and third phase increases during this 36-month period, provided that the business basic rate ceiling of $38.40 is not exceeded. "I firmly believe this plan and its corresponding investment completes the basic infrastructure necessary to meet South Dakota's needs for voice, data and video communications for decades to come," said Stofferahn, who added, "We have accomplished this without including the $25 million investment in the customer's rate base. In other words, this is a U S WEST corporate investment which will not be recovered through basic customer rates." (A copy of the investment plan may be obtained by contacting the PUC.) ------------------------------ From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King) Subject: News: ISDN Moves To The Burbs Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 10:51:50 PST Forwarded FYI to the Digest: Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 10:45:10 -0800 From: Tom Tinnes To: news-list@list.pactel.com NEWS FROM PACIFIC BELL: ISDN Moves To The Burbs Pacific Bell Responds to Major Geographic Shift in User Base FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 4, 1996 For more information, contact Mary Hancock/Pacific Telesis Group 415 394-3620 or mghanco@legsf.pacbell.com As Californians become comfortable in cyberspace, they are asking for more: more bandwidth, more speed and the ability to do more than one task at a time. People everywhere are getting up on the Internet, tuning in to telecommuting from home and dipping their toes into virtual meetings via videoconference. As a result, demand is exploding for ISDN lines that can deliver speed and functionality at a reasonable price -- right to the home. But this technology isn't just on the move. It's moving to the suburbs. In the past ten months alone, Pacific Bell has experienced an amazing 200 percent growth in the number of ISDN lines installed in California. Of 60,000 total lines, nearly 30 percent are located three or more miles away from the nearest ISDN-equipped central office, with the remaining 70 percent concentrated close to central offices in metro areas. Compare that to last year's statistics showing that only 5 percent of installations occurred three miles out, for a 95 percent metro concentration, and a clear geographic shift emerges. Pacific Bell projects that, by the year 2000, more than 70 percent of ISDN lines will be in homes for business or personal use. Customers are continually finding more uses for ISDN, so we're always fine-tuning the product to fit their needs," said Tom Bayless, switched digital services director for Pacific Bell. "In the last year, we've learned a lot about who buys ISDN and how they want to buy it. The cost to bring service to remote users is higher, and their ranks are growing. And unlimited night and weekend usage has driven many to never turn their lines off during those times. These usage trends have proven to be costly. To address this, we've added a penny per minute to our usage charges, while giving customers packages with more features, flexibility and discount options. Our monthly price continues to be the lowest in the country." Of course, the applications are in the driver's seat. When ISDN was first introduced in 1988, the typical user worked for a large business in an urban center and was attracted by the outstanding voice capabilities of ISDN. Lightning-quick call connections, digital-quality sound and the ability to install multiple phone lines on existing twisted copper wires -- all at a significant cost savings for businesses -- attracted corporate customers. But as computer use started to seep into the mainstream, fast access to the Internet and on-line services, efficient remote work solutions, telecommuting and videoconferencing all became possible and accessible at home. Pacific Bell is a nationally-recognized leader in championing ISDN. The company's installation and monthly charges are the lowest in the U.S., and its usage rates are among the lowest. The company's Education First initiative offers free ISDN installation and service to California schools and libraries for two years. Pacific Bell is also aggressively pursuing a special ISDN education access rate from the CPUC offering affordable, predictable usage prices for schools and libraries. Customers wanting to order Pacific Bell ISDN or obtain more information can call 800 4PB-ISDN. Information on the company's ISDN services is also available on the Internet World Wide Web at http://www.pacbell.com. Pacific Bell is a subsidiary of Pacific Telesis Group, a diversified communications corporation based in San Francisco. ------------------ Mike King * mk@tfs.com * Oakland, CA, USA * +1 510.645.3152 ------------------------------ From: Tad Cook Subject: Cellular Fraud Suspects Arrested in Santa Fe Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 23:08:24 PST Suspects in cellular fraud scam arrested in Santa Fe; U S WEST Cellular assists Secret Service in sting SANTA FE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 9, 1996--Acting on information provided by U S WEST Cellular, U.S. Secret Service agents raided a Santa Fe hotel room this morning and arrested three suspects with ties to South America for alleged cellular fraud. Inside the room agents confiscated at least ten cloned cellular phones that had been used over a six-week period to place hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of illegal long distance cellular calls to countries throughout the world. U S WEST Cellular fraud analysts first identified unusually high call activity on several cellular phone numbers in the Phoenix area and determined that most of the calls were routed internationally. Network technicians, using sophisticated network technology, were able to track the cellular bandits as they moved their operation from Phoenix to Tucson, Albuquerque and finally, Santa Fe. `The calling patterns we identified in Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque and Santa Fe were typical of the call sell operations we have seen in other cellular fraud operations,` said Lisa Bowersock, company spokesperson. `Because many of the calling patterns were the same, we were able to determine that a single cellular fraud operation was simply moving its location in hopes of remaining undetected. Little did they know, we were on their trail every step of the way.` Using high-tech radio direction finding equipment, New Vector technicians in Santa Fe pinpointed the source of the fraudulent calls to a motel on Cerrillos Road. Private investigators hired by U S WEST Cellular kept the hotel under constant surveillance until U.S. Secret Service Agents were able to obtain the necessary warrants to search the motel rooms and make the arrests. `The support we received from the Secret Service and 9th Judicial District Attorney's Office in New Mexico was outstanding,` Bowersock said. `If they had not acted when they did, it's possible the suspects would have left town in a matter of hours.` U S WEST Cellular and other carriers that have been defrauded by the same operation are still compiling losses from this particular cellular fraud ring. Confirmed losses have reached $700,000 and are quickly approaching $1 million. `While these cellular bandits set up shop in U S WEST Cellular territory, the numbers used to clone phones and commit cellular fraud were from out of the area so few, if any, New Mexico or Arizona customers were affected,` Bowersock said. `In addition, thanks to proactive anti-fraud efforts by U S WEST Cellular employees, 95 percent of the fraudulent charges were identified before they reached legitimate customers' bills.` Cloning fraud involves the practice of programming stolen cellular phone numbers and electronic serial numbers into other cellular handsets, thus creating a `clone` of the the original cellular phone. Once a phone has been cloned, the cellular bandit is then free to place unlimited calls which are billed to the original account. Cloned phones often are used in `Call Sell` operations in which cellular bandits sell calls to individual users for a flat fee. `U S WEST Cellular takes the theft of cellular service very seriously, and we are aggressively pursuing cellular bandits. This is the first of several significant investigations underway and we can expect more arrests in the near future,` Bowersock said. `U S WEST Cellular has one of the most sophisticated fraud detection programs in the country, and when it comes to uncovering illegal activity, it's not a question of if, it's when.` Once fraudulent activity is detected, U S WEST Cellular turns the case over to law enforcement for further investigation and prosecution. Deliberately altering cellular phones to defraud a cellular company is a federal felony under Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1029, and carrier a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for the first offense. Under the same code, the U.S. Secret Service had primary jurisdiction over cellular fraud crimes. U S WEST Cellular is a division of U S WEST New Vector Group Inc. Based in Bellevue, Washington, New Vector has cellular operations in 12 midwestern, western and southwestern states and serves more than 1,400,000 customers. The company operates 25 Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and 26 Rural Service Area (RSA) cellular systems under the brand name of U S WEST Cellular. New Vector is a subsidiary of U S WEST Inc., a diversified corporation based in Englewood, Colorado. ------------------------------ From: dreuben@interpage.net (Doug Reuben) Subject: Continuing Poor Service for CO/NY customers Poughkeepsie Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 05:25:28 EST After this weekend's dramatic snow event, I'm convinced that US Cellular/Poughkeepsie (00503) is both one of the most incompetant and unsupervised cellular systems in the country This weekend, while driving on Dutchess County Route 21 near Poughkeepsie, NY, I noticed a stranded motorist who had hit a pole and was motioning for help. (For those of you who may not have heard :), we had a pretty bad blizzard in the Northeast, and it extended a good deal inland, even up to Poughkeepsie. ) I stopped, and the guy asked if I could pull him. Since the car I was in was an older rear-wheel drive vehicle with pretty poor traction and control, I suggested that it may not be the best thing to do, but offered to call my dad, who lived down the road a few miles, and have him use our 4-wheel drive vehicle to tow him back onto the road. We agreed, and then I tried to use my Cell One/NY (00025) phone to place a call to the house in order for my dad to come and meet us. Foolish me -- I should have known -- it was a weekend, and no one was on duty at CO/Poughkeepsie, so *of course* something had to go wrong and prevent my phone from working. When I tried to use the B side, I found that the coverage was so poor that I was unable to get a signal, even by moving around a good deal. Eventually, I just drove home and told my dad to follow me, and by the time we got back the motorist had a tow-truck help to extricate him. However, had this been a more serious emergency, or I had been all alone and stuck, I would not have been able to use my carphone to call for help or to be available if someone needed to reach me. And I don't mean not be able to call my dad or AAA (which is bad enough!), but 911 and ALL calls were denied - NOTHING would go through. Frequent readers will know this is NOT the first time that I have posted about this problem. It seems that on a regular basis, roamers from Cell One/NY (aka ATT Wireless) are denied ANY sort of service in the Poughkeepsie system. Specifically, when the Poughkeepsie system "flakes out", CO/NY roamers: 1. Can not place any calls; 2. Can not receive any calls; 3. Can alternately not receive calls AND callers are greeted with "diconnected" or other erroneous recordings; 4. Can use feature codes, but they are not confirmed, or are only confirmed on alternate attempts; 5. Can not dial 911; 6. Can not dial 611; 7. Can not place calls to the Operator or anywhere else. Interestingly, roamers from OTHER systems, besides CO/NY, have no difficulty with most of these. (Although as an interesting aside, all roamers on the NACN, of which CO/Poughkeepsie is now a member, will experience a feature code confirmation failure on every other call. Thus, if I were to roam with my Metro Mobile (aka Bell Atlantic in CT) account into the Poughkeepsie system, and hit *72+10D to forward my calls, the first time I'd get dead air, but the second time I'd receive a confirmation dial tone. The third time would receive dead air, and the fourth time would receive a confirmation dial tone. It may be because they are in such close proximity to each other, but I'd expect the FIRST *72 call or other feature code call I make to receive a confirmation tone on the first try, while the 00503 system *routinely* fails on the first try for nearly all roamers.) What's most infuriating about this situation is that I have been on the phone literally for hours about this with US Cellular and CO/NY, and they keep "solving" the problem, only to find that it returns the next weekend, when of course no one is on hand to experience it -- or remedy it -- immediately. (It happens too during the week, which is when the people from CO/NY first noticed it after a number of reports from myself and other CO/NY customers who were roaming in the area.) Moreover, the problem is sporadic -- it happens sometimes, and then it stops. I've noticed that it usually starts towards early afternoon, and then ends very late at night, usually after 1AM, although these times vary. And it is NOT a coverage problem or a problem with CO/NY, as I am able to place and receive calls on all the other nearby systems. It also does not appear to be a Fraud Protection Feature issue, as this has been going on well before the feature was in use (although the feature may be compounding the problem). Overall, I am becoming very irritated by the apparent inability (or lack of interest) on the part of US Cellular to get this problem resolved once and for all. From the endless and recurring nature of the problem, it appears to me that US Cellular considers this to be rather unimportant and have passively allowed it to drag on for over a year, despite diligent attempts on the part of CO/NY to address the issue and the severity of the problem manifested by the inability to dial such basic emergency numbers like 911. If there are any Cell One/NY roamers who travel to the Poughkeepsie system on a regular basis and have some time, I'd appreciate hearing about your experiences in this market. To my knowledge, all CO/NY accounts who travel to the Poughkeepsie system will potentially be affected by this -- I have tried out 917-855, 914-643, and 718-753 accounts and all have had the same problem. If you do try out 911, please be careful (just see if it goes through). I don't like the idea of making unecessary calls to 911, even if you hang up before they answer, but it may be productive to test those as well. I have tried 911 on our CO/NY accounts while in the Poughkeepsie system, and as noted above, even 911 does NOT work when the system chooses to selectively "act up" for (or more aptly, "against") CO/NY roamers. As a result, I have a hard time convincing my parents to stay with CO/NY when they keep asking "Why won't my phone work?" and "What are we supposed to do in an emergency when the regular phones fail?". The problem is so bad that you can more or less expect your CO/NY phone not to work more often than not. This is not acceptable for people who need to rely upon their cellphone as means to call 911 and other help when their landline phones fails. Hopefully, sooner than later, US Cellular will get their act together and remedy this problem once and for all, although after over a year, I am increasingly discouraged. I'll keep the Digest updated as to developments, and thanks in advance for any responses from other CO/NY roamers who have had or are having similar problems in Poughkeepsie. Doug Reuben * dreuben@interpage.net * +1 (203) 499 - 5221 Interpage Network Services -- http://www.interpage.net, telnet interpage.net E-Mail Alpha/Numeric Local/Nationwide Paging, WWW Fax, and E-Mail<->Fax Svcs [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can tell you that thus far in the month or so I have used it, Frontier Mobile Line seems to have their act together pretty well. I suppose the credit is really due to the supplier here (Ameritech, B carrier) being well organized. An interesting and useful feature here is that in any Ameritech service area throughout the midwest, roaming and call transfer are automatic. Since I go up to Milwaukee now and then, the Frontier people gave me a Milwaukee number for the second NAM in my phone at no additional charge. Although it is also Ameritech, there the carrier code is 00044 instead of 00020 as in the Chicago market. When I have been here in Chicago but set the phone to the Milwaukee number and then dialed the Milwaukee number on my landline phone, without telling them anything, when the Milwaukee number connects, a Frontier recording comes on telling me that 'we are transferring your call to the place where your party is roaming', and the call is transferred immediatly. At Ameritech they told me 'Fast Track is old fashioned; we automatically track your phone all over our region.' No need to use *18 to establish it, however you can use *19 to turn it off as desired in which case you must use *18 if you want it back on again. But Ameritech also said to me that anywhere in their region of five states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio) it is not necessary to use a dual NAM phone 'to avoid romaing charges' since calls are a flat rate of 50 cents per minute when out of your home area. No daily rates or anything like that. So I get to call anywhere in Ameritech's Chicago region (from Michigan City, Indiana in the east to Morris, Illinois in the southwest to the Wisconsin state line in the north, although that is merely the guarenteed coverage range -- it may go further) for 35/18 per minute. If I call or from one of those markets into Chicago or vice versa then I pay 50 cents per minute at all hours. With my Milwaukee NAM turned on, I would pay 50 cents per minute if here in Chicago or other Ameritech area and 35/18 when actually in the Milwaukee coverage area which is roughly the Wisconsin state line on the south to about forty miles north of Milwaukee to the north and nearly to Madison, Wisconsin on the west. To test this out, the other day I took the Greyhound Bus from Skokie up to Milwaukee and monitored the phone conditions as we traveled north on I-94. There was a very strong signal indicated on the phone all the way north. Somewhere around the state line, the Chicago NAM switched into 'Roam-B' mode. I punched in the Milwaukee NAM and got the same strong coverage all the way to downtown Milwaukee. I was only using the short little stubby antenna the entire trip. In Milwaukee I punched *611 and again got an entity answering the phone as 'Frontier Customer Service'. An interesting thing is when calling *611 within 'home' territory (i.e. Chicago NAM when actually in this area and Milwaukee NAM when actually north of the border) always gets me Frontier. Calling *611 when in roaming mode always gets me Ameritech customer service. They're both open 24 hours per day. According to the Ameritech rep I spoke with in Milwaukee, it was 'silly' to bother with a dual NAM if the only intention was to save on roaming charges within Ameritech territory. She said 'we auto- matically find you wherever you are in our five state territory'; and 'at 15 cents per minute days and 32 cents per minute nights (roaming versus home rate differential) it takes a lot of calls to amortize or justify whatever you are paying as a monthly service charge on the second NAM.' I told her I was getting the second (Milwaukee) number as part of my package at no extra charge so any pennies saved were pennies earned. At that point she put my account up on her screen for the first time and her response was 'oh, I see you are a wholesale account.' But guess what Cellular One is doing here: if they don't recognize you as one of their customers, they hand you right over to an outfit called 'Cellular Express' -- (intercept ringing signal followed by a message saying) "you are in Cellular One Chicago territory; we do not recognize you; if you want to make any calls, hang up and then dial star eight six five five ..." 8655 = 'TOLL'. Doing so gets you the Cellular Express Operator who will be glad to help you at the rate of $1.95 per minute plus $1.95 for the call itself, billed to a phone company calling card or major credit card. No carrier pic codes allowed, no free calls to 911 or 800 numbers and certainly no 500 numbers. An interesting thing about Frontier Mobile Line: on long distance calls, one plus defaults to Frontier/Allnet but zero plus defaults to AT&T. The variety of standards for cellular service in the USA is pretty amazing isn't it? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 01:56:04 -0500 From: Nigel Allen Subject: Interesting Vanity 800 Number, 1-800-BANTING Organization: Internex Online (shell.io.org), Toronto, Ontario, Canada The Canadian Diabetes Association has the phone number 1-800-BANTING. It was convenient that one of the discovers of insulin had a seven-letter surname. Frederick G. Banting and Charles H. Best were the scientists at the University of Toronto who discovered insulin. (Two other University of Toronto scientists who played an important role in the discovery were Collip and J.J.R. Macleod.) Nigel Allen ndallen@io.org http://www.io.org/~ndallen/ ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #10 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 10 21:10:28 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA16417; Wed, 10 Jan 1996 21:10:28 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 21:10:28 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601110210.VAA16417@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #11 TELECOM Digest Wed, 10 Jan 96 21:10:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 11 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Jon Steel) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (oz@paranoia.com) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Nirmal Velayudhan) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Mike P. Storke) Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (Robert Ponce) Association of International Teleconsultants (Erik Gundersen) Pacific Bell ISDN Rate Increases - Protest Web Site (David C. Barry, Jr.) Looking to Purchase New Phone System - Help! (Pete Kruckenberg) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: steelj@ecid.cig.mot.com (jon steel) Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Date: 10 Jan 1996 12:17:23 GMT Organization: Motorola Ltd., European Cellular Infrastructure Division Joe.J.Harrison@bra0119.wins.icl.co.uk writes: > There is a fair range of handsets available (Eric Valentine was too > modest in failing to mention the very nice Ericsson PH237!) though > not so much of a choice yet as with analog or GSM units. There is > little difference in handset size or battery life though the lower > power requirements of PCN mean there is scope to provide more uptime > for the same battery capacity as coverage improves. Audio quality > varies, at its worst it compares badly with analog and at its best > slightly favourably. Audio quality in Digital Cellular very rarely depends upon the handset -- it is inherent to the network performance. (Multi-path fading, fringe coverage etc) > Most PCN users have no idea of the difference between "cellular" and > PCN since for plain mobile voice telephony there is none. They wanted > a mobile telephone and they bought the one that looked best to them on > price. Until recently the inferior PCN coverage and denial of > international roaming have meant that traditional cellular could > retain its premium charges, but we are now at the point where a PCN v. > cellular price war looks inevitable. International Roaming is still a BIG limiting factor for PCN networks. You can't roam to what isn't there, and PCN in Europe is very limited. The big development for PCN operators will be the introduction of "Dual Band" handsets. (Both GSM900 and PCN,DCS or whatever you want to call it). > And oddly -- an early victim of PCN might well be the text pager. The > more upmarket PCN phones are capable of SMS (short message service) > where 160-byte reliable-transfer text messages can be sent to or > originated from the handset. Point to Point SMS is NOT exclusive to PCN. This is a core function of the GSM recs and therefore applicable to both types of network. Just trying to straighten a few point out. Cheers, Jon Steel. Senior Cellular Systems Engineer. Northern & Eastern European Operations, Motorola ECID Ltd, Swindon, UK Tel: +44 (0)1793 556698. Fax: +44 (0)1793 423493 Mobile: +44 (0)802 385671 Email: steelj@ecid.cig.mot.com ------------------------------ From: oz@paranoia.com Date: Tue, 9 Jan 96 15:48:26 CST Reply-To: oz@paranoia.com Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Pat, this is technical refutation of a comment that I made based on an article that I read. I hope that you'll publish it ASAP. I'm rather ashamed that *I* didn't spot it. I should have known better. I need to go spit the feathers out now ... Patrick L. Martin wrote: > I have not heard this aspect discussed. I had to think about it a bit and > remembering some old theory from my police radar days recalled that doppler > frequency shift was proportional to the frequency. The higher the frequency > the greater the shift. I found the idea interesting enough that I dug in an > old engineering manual and found the following formulae for doppler > shift in a radar system. > Fs=2FtV/C > where > Fs = frequency shift > Ft = Transmit frequency > V = equals velocity - to be in same units as C > C = speed of light > I beleive the multiple of 2 has to with the reflection of the wave doubling > the shift so I would simplify this to Fs=FtV/C for a point to point shift. > Assuming 1.9 Ghz and 75 mph relative velocity the shift will be about 212 Hz. > Following pasted from my quickly made spread sheet. > 186,000 speed of light miles per second > 669,600,000 speed of light miles per hour > 1,900,000,000 Frequency in hertz > 75 miles per hour relative velocity > 142500000000 fu - numerator > 212.813620071684588 Frequency shift > When I used to work more with radio, frequency tolerances on the order of 0.5 > ppm were pretty normal. At 800 mhz that comes out to about 400 Hz. I doubt > that the indicated 212 hz shift will cause many problems, however, higher > speeds and or higher frequencies will increase the shift in a linear fashion. > I mention higher frequencies because I have seen paper designs of pico cell > systems from 38 to 100 Ghz. > If the math is in error, feel free to correct it. I used your equation and 200 Km/hr and came up with 352 hz, so I have to agree. My comment was based on an article that briefly mentioned the problem. A quick thought back to *my* police radar days made me realize that an X band (~10 Ghz) doppler radar gets audio values based on the _round_ trip doppler. This made your analysis make sense instantly. It _clearly_ has to be something else, but it was a problem with moving vehicles and frequency/time. It is probably something like fade rates at speed and the article author converted that to doppler. I'm glad you spotted this and I've copied Pat on this in the hope that he prints the correct information. > Patrick L. Martin pmartin@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: nirmal@lccinc.com Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 11:05:47 -0500 Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" oz@paranoia.com wrote: > exueric@exu.ericsson.se and lotsa other people wrote about: >>> 4) PCS phones will not work in moving vehicles. >> Wrong. He must be talking about cordless phones or maybe field trials >> for some of the CDMA systems. There is no inherent problem with using >> PCS 1900 in a moving vehicle unless you try something silly like >> pico-cells along an expressway, but that will hose an AMPS system too, >> just from trying to support the handovers. One version of PCS at 1900 >> is GSM-based and upbanded from 900. It has been working in vehicles >> for some time now quite nicely, thank you. The same will be true some >> day for CDMA based systems. > Well, sorta wrong at least. There is a "technical challenge" that > needs to be overcome to make PCS phones operate when moving at high > speeds relative to the base station. The Doppler Effect is about 2 > 1/2 times worse at 1900 Mhz with respect to conventional US-AMPS > cellphones. The problem is surmountable, and several solutions have > been proposed. As far as "Pico" cells go, the presence of doppler > shift can actually make pico cell implemenation easier and more > effective. Doppler can be used to identify fast moving users and not > hand them off to small cells. Ref: Jakes, W.C, 'Microwave Mobile Communications', IEEE Press, 1994 A CW Transmission from a mobile moving at a constant speed 'may be represented as a carrier whose phase and amplitude are randomly varying, with an effective bandwidth corresponding to twice the maximum Doppler shift' of Velocity/wavelength. The envelope of the fading signal is Rayleigh distributed (under some assumptions, which I don't go into here) and the Doppler shift affects the level crossing rate (i.e the rate at which the fading signal crosses a threshold) and the fade duration, which is the duration for which the signal remains below a threshold. This will be double that of a cellular signal (approx) as PCS signals (1.85-1.99 GHz) are roughly double the frequency. The Doppler Shift at 1800 MHz for a 60 mi/hr. mobile is 160 Hz. Hardwarewise, it seems unlikely this could pose a problem, since this is about 8.8*10(-6) % of the carrier. From the point of view of coding, interleaving would take care of fast fades to some extent, insofar as the fade durations are concerned. The traditional method of tackling the fade rate problem would be some form of AGC. CDMA offers the advantage of soft handoffs, and the power control on the reverse link, where under some conditions Rayleigh fading would be compensated for by means of a power control bit updating the mobile Tx power every 1.25 ms. PCS 1900 refers to the PCS system based on the GSM system in North America. Once such system has rolled out in the Washington DC- Baltimore area, and to the best of my knowledge, not too many people are concerned about Doppler Shifts :-) Nirmal Velayudhan Associate Engr. PCS Group LCC, L.L.C. (703) 284 8371 e-mail- nirmal@lccinc.com ------------------------------ From: storkus@heather.greatbasin.com (Mike P. Storke) Subject: Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Date: 10 Jan 1996 00:51:04 GMT Organization: Great Basin Public Access UNIX, Reno, NV In article is written: >> cellular technology will not be quickly missplaced for the following >> reasons: 1) they are practically giving away cell phones; 2) cellular >> companies are not charging on evenings and weekends; 3) PCS phones >> cannot be practically any more portable than the latest cell >> phones; 4) PCS phones will not work in moving vehicles. > PCS is not a competitor for cellular; it is a new local loop > technology, digital from the gitgo, that offers voice, internet > access, mobility, and backhaul over the existing cableTV plant. Using > CDMA, PCS will offer high security and bandwidth on demand as well. If > the digital acoustics are superior to wireline, it will cut deeply > into existing wireline markets.On the basis of their British > experience, USWest estimates that they will lose some 30 percent of > their market to cable based PCS. PCS will be complementary to > cellular; you plug the same handset into your car system for vehicular > usage. > George Gilder I believe you're confusing PCS with cable-modem technology. PCS stands for "Personal Communications Services", and operates at 1.8-2.0 Ghz. It's not quite a replacement as it is an expansion of AMPS capabilities. You ARE correct about many things, though: it IS fully digital from the git-go, and data access (PDAs use PCS to communicate) was built in in the first place. The primary advantage of PCS is the enormous bandwidth available, but the primary disadvantage is the very thing that makes this bandwidth available: the high frequency, which make microwave-related phenomena such as doppler shift and fadeouts doubly frequent and strong (i.e., multipath becomes a much greater factor in the equation). However, due to lack of noise, both on the air itself and in the equipment, power levels can be reduced as well. Unfor- tunately, it turns out you must reduce cell-size in turn, which means more capital outlay, and also means that (primarily) you'll see PCS only in metro (possibly suburban) areas, with ordinary AMPS remaining the primary service in many suburban and likely all rural areas. Mike P. Storke N7MSD Snailmail: 2308 Paradise Dr. #134 Inet: storkus@heather.greatbasin.com Reno, NV 89512-2712 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 10:47:33 -0800 From: Robert Ponce Subject: Re: PCS Faces Rough Road I think that it is a legitimate question as to whether PCS can survive in competition with cellular, not because of technical reasons but because of market reasons. Right now, there are too many competing wireless technologies chasing too few applications -- and more on the way. The FCC's plan to sell off every possible bit of spectrum space created a "Fool's Gold Rush", and I think the whole PCS auction process created the idea that entrepreneurs who missed the cellular boom could now come in and get a piece of the airwaves that they could call their own. But the competition is tough, well capitalized and already making money. The cellular industry will be very difficult to compete with unless PCS finds a different way to attack the market. ANd cellular is not the only competition. THere is SMR (SPecialized Mobile Radio) which are a bunch of frequencies which have been used primarily for trucking and taxi dispatch. Motorola owned most of these licenses a few years ago, and sold them to companies like Nextel (in exchange for equity stakes) with the idea of converting these frequencies into digital cellular. It didn't fly. Nextel found that they couldn't garner the resources for the huge capital outlay required. Ironically, Nextel found a white knight in Craig McCaw, who promptly steered them away from competing directly with cellular, saying "Been there- Done that." Then there are the satellite systems coming on line, such as Motorola's Iridium System, which threaten to push price competition even further in wireless delivery systems. (And Craig McCaw and Bill Gates are reportedly developing a hge satellite project as well.) If you add the competition from packet radio (pager channels that are being upgraded to handle two way, low level communications, such as wireless e-mail), you have a very crowded market for wireless services. Right now, the cellular industry will continue to be the front-runners in wireless communication for some time, because they have the revenue, the customer base, the capitalization and the technical expertise. For PCS or any other wireless technology to be competitive, it has to find a niche of its own. The "killer app" may be the interactive TV/Broad bandwidth Internet access pot of gold that everyone is searching for. ALready DSS has shown that cable TV is vulnerable to a wireless technology that can deliver more, better channels. The problem for satellites is that the delay makes it unsuitable for upstream/downstream communications. If PCS becomes an affordable delivery system for two-way, full motion video, it could fulfil the promise of the "Gold Rush". A final thought on PCS and other wireless technologies: time and technological increases favor wireless over cable and fiber. The costs per subscriber for fiber and cable can only be reduced so far: even though fiber can offer almost limitless bandwidth, the costs to physically deliver it can't be reduced. Those costs increase exponentially in rural areas. With wireless, technological advances continue to bring the delivery costs down, with no additional physical costs. So in the long run, wireless technologies may be the cheapest pipe into the home, as well as the car or jacket pocket. But in the short run, ill-defined market strategies may cannibalize sales and waste a lot of capital on ventures that are not positioned to succeed. An interesting company to watch is Motorola, which has shrewdly hedged its bets and put itself in the center of all the developing wireless technologies. Bob Ponce I-Contact Media Inc. 914 761-4328 Interactive Media Consultants/Content Developers ------------------------------ From: Erik Gundersen <76017.572@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Association of International Teleconsultants Date: 10 Jan 1996 12:54:21 GMT Organization: Explorers' Foundation ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL TELECONSULTANTS (AIT) A professional association for independent telecom consultants, agents, brokers, resellers and service providers world wide. ______________________________________ The telecommmunications industry is undergoing dramatic changes and therefore the non-profit Association of International Teleconsultants (AIT) has been created to promote the interests of its members and the industry as a whole. Deregulation in the US and the UK while most countries in the world have a highly monopolised telecom sector, has provided new opportunities for specialised services such as callback, and numerous new companies quite understandably venture into this fairly uncharted territory, and with these a new breed of telecom consultants with visions of the future has emerged. As we are witnessing a technological revolution while countries prepare to deregulate, changes will accellerate, which creates opportunities as well as pitfalls. There will be new, successful companies emerging, as well as closures. In this environment the AIT was founded on the 4th of July 1995, with aims to: - 1. - be an industry voice, to represent its members and update its members on relevant industry developments and regulations. 2. - increase agents' and consultants' purchasing power, offer new services through the association's corporate members. 3. - organize promotional campaigns on behalf of members, international advertising and Internet exposure, the AIT logo may be used by members - a recognition of quality service. 4. - assist with recruitment and training in cooperation with corporate and individual members and help improve industry service standards and image. 5. - support members in the event of cessation of their activities. Admission for Membership subject to approval. For information about Membership and the AIT Code of Practice, please email: 76017.572@compuserve.com, or fax: +33 68896820 Uploaded Jan 07, 1996 by E. Gundersen, AIT ------------------------------ From: dcbarry@pacificnet.net (David C. Barry, Jr.) Subject: Pacific Bell ISDN Rate Increases - Protest Web Site Date: Tue, 09 Jan 1996 17:16:34 -0800 Organization: My corner of the sky....... If you are a user of Pacific Bell ISDN, or are considering subscribing to PacBell ISDN, you should be aware of some *very* important information. Even if you are not in PacBell land, you may still find this of interest if you follow ISDN issues. Your utility could bve next! On December 21, Pacific Bell filed application A95-12-043 with the California Public Utilities Commision. In short, the application requests very significant rate hikes for all PacBell ISDN users, and would all but end unmetered calling for Home ISDN users. I have created a web site that spells out exactly what the application contains, and what it means to you as consumer. It also contains information on what you as a public citizen can do to help block these proposed hikes. Please visit my protest website: http://www.pacificnet.net/~dcbarry/isdn.html to obtain essential information on this application. I encourage you to register your name and email address so that we can keep you up-to-date on the application as it weaves its' way through the regulatory maze. Please share this information! You might wish to add a line to your .sig referencing the protest pages. Do what you can to spread the word. David Barry email:dcbarry@pacificnet.net homepage: http:www.pacificnet.net/~dcbarry ------------------------------ From: pete@inquo.net (Pete Kruckenberg) Subject: Looking to Purchase New Phone System - Help! Date: 9 Jan 1996 06:32:07 GMT Organization: inQuo Internet (801) 530-7160 We have finally out-grown our current phone system (a Toshiba Perception), and we are looking to purchase a new phone system in the next 60 days. I would like to get input on what phone-system vendors (and possibly models) we should look at to meet our needs. The short list of our requirements is: Handle 400-500 stations (mixed analog and electronic/digital) we currently have 96 analog and 120 electronic/digital in use; Switch ISDN (taking in multiple BRI's or a PRI and sharing them amongst office users); Handle multiple T1's directly (rather than splitting them out with a channel bank); Handle DID lines; Good handling of high-speed modem communications (28.8kb modems); Good integration with PC/Mac (voice-mail management, calls through PC, etc) currently available or soon to be available, probably via Microsoft or Novell "standards"; Some kind of good integration with remote-branch switches (so every station, regardless of the location, is seamlessly reachable via an extension), with remote branches connected via leased lines; Release-line/release-trunk transfer capability (so a call in a remote city comes into the remote switch, conferences in the operator at the corporate office, then releases the leased-line channel when the call is transferred back to an extension at the remote office, rather than using up a channel to the corporate office and one back to the remote office); Integration with Repartee (Active Voice) voicemail system (not absolutely necessary, but would be nice) -- Repartee communicates with our Perception using DTMF to turn MSG lights on and off, etc.; Cool features at the station, like being able to request to not be disturbed, conditionally or unconditionally forward your extension (possibly based on caller ID), leaving a message for the receptionist (out to lunch, in a meeting, out sick), caller ID, display of parked calls, ability to pick up a call ringing or on hold on another extension, conference/forward/park a call, etc, etc, etc.; Hunt groups, etc, etc; Remotely manageable via a serial/telnet/network connection; I would also like to get some suggestions on how to handle one major change that will probably have to happen. Our Perception has an intercom feature, so a user can dial another user's office and immediately talk to them without the dialed user having to pick up. Where this comes in handy most is when a call comes in, the receptionist can find out if someone is in their office within a few seconds, rather than dialing the office, waiting for the person to pick up, etc. One thing we thought is that the receptionist could possibly key in a message (on a keyboard) with the caller's name/id, which would then be displayed on the extension phone's LCD display. This may be more work, but it'd probably be one solution. If the person at the extension doesn't want to answer, the call would go back to the receptionist (it would have to be labelled somehow, so the receptionist would know that it was coming back, and who it was coming back from) after a few rings, and then she could page the person or put the caller into voice-mail. I'd like to get other ideas about how we can make the switch to a new switch without having to add more receptionists, by making them as efficient as possible in transferring calls to extensions (and letting the person at the extension know who is calling). Thanks for your input. This is my first major purchase like this (we're budgeting around $150k for the switch), so I appreciate any and all input on what to look for, what vendors to look at, what to avoid, etc. Any input on books or other literature I should look at would be appreciated. Thanks, Pete Kruckenberg pete@inquo.net ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #11 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Jan 11 15:18:06 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id PAA15207; Thu, 11 Jan 1996 15:18:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 15:18:06 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601112018.PAA15207@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #12 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Jan 96 15:18:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 12 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Snow, Snow, Go Away! (TELECOM Digest Editor) WUTCO `Grams' and LEC Telco Billing (Mark J. Cuccia) Canada Number Portability (Monty Solomon) Satellite Provides Remote Links (Monty Solomon) MCI Starts Charging For Incoming Mail (TELECOM Digest Editor) Telephone Bill Auditing Advice Wanted (Dan Pock) Advice Needed - Bulk Incoming Lines (Brian Kantor) A Question About Inside Wiring Standards (James A. Young) And Now ... For ctrycode.c (Country Code Lookup) (Dave Leibold) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 14:13:10 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Snow, Snow, Go Away! This is directed mostly at our east coast readers who in the past several days have seen the blizzard of their (hopefully) lifetimes ... with snowfall ranging from 'merely' 18-20 inches some places to as must as two feet or more in other locales. Please let us know how it has affected phone service in terms of network traffic congestion, etc. We've seen little else on the television news here in Skokie for the past couple of days except scenes of the folks on the east coast as they dig out; commute by dog sled to their employment, etc. I know it is something you won't forget for years to come, and something you will tell your children and grandchildren about. Memories come rushing into my mind of the 'big one' here, a blizzard which lasted about two days the first week in February, 1967. Before it was over, two feet of snow in some areas with drifts of several feet more in other areas. Traffic was completely snarled; phone service was at a standstill, etc. It started snowing a little on Tuesday night, but no one paid any attention. Wednesday, February 1 brought more snow, but again no one thought anything much of it, but then it did not stop, and snowed throughout the night and into Thursday, at which point it was beginning to be of concern. In those days, the Weather Service was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today in accurately predicting just *how much* snow there would be, nor was any form of disaster recovery plan in effect. People got to work pretty well on Thursday morning even though the snow was coming down but when it did not stop all day Thursday we knew something big was going on. I worked the midnight shift at the University of Chicago phone room at the time on a part-time basis, a couple of nights per week. (I had been there full-time until about 1962 then left but returned for part time work a few years later.) I lived pretty close, just a few blocks away, so I got into work okay that Thursday night but Friday morning brought the real fun times ... As of 7 AM that Friday morning, *none* of the day shift operators had shown up for work. Most of the campus was closed down, but the medical center was going full steam with the problem being most of their employees had not made it in either. Now this was a large phone room; a twenty-one position switchboard actually divided in three parts: nine positions on one side of the room for what was called the 'university board', nine positions on the other side of the room for the 'hospitals board' and three positions at one end of the room for the new 'Computation Center' (where all the new computers were being installed a couple blocks away). Normally in the daytime there were ten or twelve operators on duty and sometimes as many as fifteen. During the overnight hours when the university board and the comp center boards were mostly dead, there was one operator who stayed mostly on the hospital side of the room but would unplug his headset and walk over to the university side and plug in over there when a call came up on that side. So the place was busy on most days. That Friday morning, with half the people in the hospital gone and most everyone on the campus side gone, the board was still very busy; still far too busy for one poor guy working alone left over from the night shift. The supervisor called in about 7:15 and said she could not make it in to work either, and by that time the place was a madhouse with dozens of lights blinking on all positions going unanswered, and me going crazy. She said to get on the public address system and announce several times the following message: "Anyone with any experience in running telephone switchboards please report immediatly to the phone room, 5801 South Ellis, sixth floor." I made that announcement several times over a fifteen minute period and before long there were about a dozen volunteer operators there, all of whom just moved in and started taking calls, etc. When the afternoon shift was due to start a couple of the regular operators arrived and they continued to work with the handful of volunteers still around. About the same time as the afternoon phone operators started arriving the medical center was still struggling along very short handed and the person in charge there announced that for anyone who wished to do so, the cafeteria would be open the rest of the night at no charge for anyone who wanted to eat 'whatever was available' since food supplies (for the public, not the patients) had not arrived that day either. There was a catch though; anyone who stayed to eat could also stay overnight in vacant patient rooms provided they were willing to help take care of the patients overnight. I figured what the heck -- and I 'reported for duty'. My duty was to work in Wyler Children's Hospital and help feed formula to the tiny babies there, some of who were just days or weeks old. I had given bottles to some of the babies which had been prepared by the nurses and I came down the hall to a room where the door was closed but a baby inside squalling like all the others. A sign on the door said not to enter without permission so I asked Nurse what about that one? Sort of grim, she replied to me the orders were 'do not sustain'. And she said to me, 'do you want to see something pretty awful?' My curiosity peaked at that point I said I did, so she said we would go inside. Inside, in an incubator, a little black baby which had been born the day before. It was horribly misformed, with legs and arms sticking out in the wrong places; a misshaped second head which appeared to have no life in it attached crudely, etc. The nurse told me 'the mother checked in through the emergency room with no valid identification; we helped her through labor; afterward she saw the baby and walked out, abandoning it here. The doctors state there is no corrective surgery possible which will save the infant and allow it to live any semblance of a normal life. It will die on its own in the next several hours or at most within a day. We have tried to locate the mother to obtain her permission to do what must be done but the identification she provided us had all wrong addresses, etc.' Later that night after all the babies were asleep and I was getting ready to go to the room I had been given and do the same, I sat in the nursing office drinking coffee and talking to the lady I was working with. I asked her did she ever get so bummed out she felt like just sitting down alone somewhere and crying after some of the things she dealt with day after day there. Yes, she said, she did, but when she felt that way she always realized that, 'if I am sitting off somewhere crying, I cannot be of any help or service to the people the university pays me to help and serve. I cannot be of much help to the patients here if I cannot keep my own emotions in check.' .... Saturday morning I awoke early, and enough of the staff had managed to come in that I was not needed to help with feeding on the morning shift. I went home for the first time in about 36 hours. As I walked past the train station I stopped in to buy a couple of papers and eat at the lunch counter there. A handwritten sign on the door says 'all trains running local with all-stop service today'. The agent was arguing with a man who insisted the payphones must be out of order since he had put in his dime and had not gotten dial tone. When he hung up the dime had not returned. "Just pick up the same phone and stand there a few minutes, sir; the dial tone will come on the line eventually, probably in a couple of minutes ..." In the meantime as he stood there arguing with her, the phone made a clicking sound as supervision *finally* came to the line and returned his dime in the slot on the bottom of the phone. At home trying to call my mother, I waited a couple minutes for dial tone only to misdial her number. I tapped the hook to start over and immediatly realized I was going to wait another minute or two for the next time around on the dial tone. Later that day I had my picture taken by an enterprising fellow who would take your picture with a Polaroid Instamatic Camera standing on top of a ten foot high pile of snow which had been scooped over to the side of the road if you gave him a dollar. I still have that picture around here somewhere since no one now-days would ever believe a pile of snow that big had sat at the entrance to the Museum of Science and Industry parking lot where it exits onto Lake Shore Drive. It was approximatly two months before all that snow had *finally* either melted or been carted off and dumped in the lake. You east coast people are going to see it on the ground at least all the rest of this month and most of next. And when it does finally all melt ... you'll see floods the likes of which usually only occur in torrential summer downpours. Big pools of water at every street corner which the sewers cannot carry off fast enough as you walk with pants legs rolled up, shoes soaking wet, etc. The ground will stay saturated all spring so that the slightest amount of rainfall in the spring will bring flooded basements, more backed up sewers, etc ... watch and see. I found out that same day that an apartment building near where I lived had burned to the ground late Thursday night two nights before. It took a couple minutes to get dial tone to call the Fire Department. After much effort and many delays, the Fire Department got about a block away on a street completely buried in snow and could get no closer. The firemen walked on foot the rest of the way and had to spend valuable time searching in the snow for a hydrant. By the time they were able to drag their hoses through the snow, get them hooked up and get the hydrants turned on the building was mostly gone, with about fifteen families left homeless on that, of all nights. That was our 'storm of the century' now 29 years ago. Lots of stories came out of it (people stuck on CTA busses in high drifts for several hours; one woman giving birth on a CTA bus because it was impossible to get out of the bus and get to a hospital), and I imagine a lot of stories will be heard about the east coast blizzard in the years to come. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 09:13:26 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: WUTCO `Grams' and LEC Telco Billing Last night while on the phone with the local BellSouth business office regarding a minor billing matter (not associated with WUTCO), I inquired if one could still place Western Union Telegrams and bill them to the local telephone bill. I was told that as of Monday 30 October 1995, BellSouth and WUTCO ceased to have a billing contract. The BellSouth service rep was located in Louisiana, and only handled Louisiana accounts, so I don't know if this termination of WUTCO charges billed via BellSouth applies only to Louisiana or to the five-state (former) South Central Bell region or to the entire nine-state BellSouth region. I then called WUTCO's 800-325-6000 number (Telegrams, Cablegrams, money wire transfers, etc) to inquire further. The WUTCO `operator' didn't know for sure about BellSouth, but *did* tell me that WUTCO does *not* bill Telegram charges to telephone numbers in GTE locations anymore. I was told that WUTCO can still bill to (valid) major credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, etc), mail a bill to the customer *directly*, and accept cash payments via *some* WUTCO agents. (Most of the WUTCO agents around here are at neighberhood convenience stores which do money by wire). I asked why WUTCO is getting away from billing via a telephone billing number and was told that there are people who `aren't always paying their phone bills'. This seems a bit strange to me, since there would be those who would ignore a direct bill from WUTCO and people who don't pay their credit card bills. And WUTCO charges (IMHO) seem to be `legit' communications charges when compared to TeleSLIME (900, 976, etc, including PAY-PAY-PAY-per-call charges via 800/ANI). It *might* be that WUTCO finds it more economical to *not* offer billing via the LEC telco. I would assume that WUTCO can reference a Bellcore maintained listing of all US NPA-NXX codes which identify the local telco for that NPA-NXX. WUTCO's database would then indicate whether they had a billing contract with that LEC operating telephone company. I was also told by WUTCO that even for telcos where WUTCO still has a billing contract, that a database is checked to see if the requested billing telephone number is a `restricted' telephone number (payphone, PBX trunk line, PBX extension, Cellular phone number or Cellular system trunk line, customer requested billing restrictions, etc). This is probably the LIDB or similar database containing numbers with Billed Number Screening. Even though few people probably send Western Union Telegrams these days, this loss of WUTCO billing via the LEC is a historical loss, particularly when TeleSLIME/PAY-PAY-PAY-per-call is billing via LEC without even checking a Billed Number Screening database. (There might `always' be a Western Union ... but there is no longer a single Bell Telephone System). MARK J. CUCCIA Phone, Write or Wire: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 02:07:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Canada Number Portability Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Excerpt from Edupage, 4 January 1996 NUMBER PORTABILITY The CRTC has ordered Canada's phone companies to prepare for local service competition by developing a system that allows consumers to take their phone number with them if they change service providers. Phone companies have opposed portability because it serves as an incentive to competition, according to the Public Interest Advocacy Center. The group adds that recent licensing of personal communications services may provide an impetus to portability. (Toronto Globe & Mail, 2 Jan 96 B3) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 02:11:23 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Satellite Provides Remote Links Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Excerpt from Edupage, 7 January 1996 SATELLITE PROVIDES REMOTE LINKS Ottawa-based TMI Communications saw its $500-million MSAT satellite investment start to pay off: the world's most powerful satellite will provide voice and data transmission service throughout Canada, the US, Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America to millions of people in remote areas, including Canadians who live in the 85% of the country outside the reach of cellular phone systems. This mobility comes at a price, however, since handsets with antenna cost between $5,000 and $6,000 and calls are $2.50 per minute (Ottawa Citizen 4 Jan 96 C5) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 13:53:20 -0500 (EST) From: telecom@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Telecom Digest (Group)) Subject: MCI Begins Charging For Incoming Email A subscriber wrote to me recently saying MCI Mail is now going to being charging for incoming mail ... and that would include Digests from the Internet. If it is true, then my sympathies to everyone there. Now might be a good time to consider signing up with one of several good and reliable local ISPs ... people who appreciate your business and will offer you flat rate service. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 05:14:44 -0800 From: nadaniel@earthlink.net (Dan Pock) Subject: Telephone Bill Auditing Advice Needed HELP! I am a full time telecommunications student at DeVry. Working a full time job is killing me and cutting into my studies but I have no choice. I've been thinking about starting a home based business auditing phone bills but I don't study tariffs for another two semesters. Does anyone out there no where I can get started with this? I think the first step is to get training in understanding tariffs but I don't know where to begin. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely yours, Daniel Pock ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 20:54:58 -0800 From: brian@nothing.ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) Subject: Advice Needed - Bulk Incoming Lines I run the University's incoming dial-up data service, consisting now of about 450 Centrex and 1-MB lines each with its own modem and terminal server port. These lines currently enter via a 900-pair terminal that's been in the building since before I started here over a decade ago -- there are in fact 1500 pairs (most of them no longer in use) running into the room from the Pac Bell CO down the road. We use this to provide local call-in modem service. We're looking at doubling the capacity of this facility over the next few years, and I'm interested in finding suggestions for bulk CHEAP incoming service. Right now I pay about $400 to set up a single port -- that includes the line installation, wiring, modem, and one port on a Xylogics Annex-3 terminal server. There's a lot of wire doing it this way, but labor cost is NOT the important factor since student labor is cheap. Unfortunately, we're now getting to the point where the number of modems that need resetting or prodding or just adding new ones is keeping a student pretty much busy all the time. I'd like a more manageable and flexible system if I can get it for not a whole lot more. I've looked at channelized T-1 services. PacBell sez they can supply us with "SuperTrunk" service, but I'm not convinced that's the answer; the price seems higher than plain old Centrex pairs and we've no shortage of entrance facilities. (We use Centrex since the monthly cost is about the same as a 1-MB and installation is $30 cheaper per line.) The old free Digital Entrance Facilities isn't available, our Pac Bell representative says, so we'd have to go with the "supertrunk". In addition, the Xylogics "Remote Annex" terminal server that can do T-1 and still look like what people are used to seeing when they call us is 20 grand (list) for 24 lines. (Anixter, where we USED to buy a lot of things, offered us a whopping 10% discount off list, which seems to me to be a take-your-business-elsewhere sort of price. Besides, they've just finished reorganizing all the personal interaction out of their business; it took me half an hour just to find the salesman we need to deal with for a price quote on this product.) The USR Total Control product looks attractive, but getting technical data on the thing would seem to need intercession of some major diety; all I can get is glossy brochures that don't tell me enough. I'd like suggestions on how to best go about expanding (or refitting) my dialin service -- or confirmation that I'm currently doing it about the cheapest way I can already. These are my tax dollars too, you know. Responses via E-mail, please. I'm too busy to yack on the phone. Brian Kantor Academic Computing Network Operations 0124 University of California at San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0124 USA brian@ucsd.edu ucsd!brian ------------------------------ From: James A. Young <8young@rsvl.unisys.com> Subject: A Question About Inside Wiring Standards Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 11:33:02 GMT Organization: Unisys Corporation In cleaning out my file drawer last night I came across an old brochure from my local telco (US West) about telephone inside wiring standards. The brochure states that each outlet in my home should have separate wires connecting to the demarcation point and sure enough, all the wiring done years ago by the telco does just that. (I'm embarrassed to say that own hanidwork doesn't.) However, I also noticed that a new water meter reading unit installed by the city water department also doesn't conform. They just cut into the middle of one of the existing wires. Is this standard outdated or is the city not doing things quit by the book? Running the wire all the way from the water meter sensing unit to the demarc point would have involved very little extra, about 5 feet of wire and no cutting of existing lines. A second question I was wondering about is should I bother to go back and rewire the outlet I installed? It's been working fine for ten years as far as I know. Jim Young | 8young@rsvl.unisys.com Unisys Corp. | (612) 635-7257 - voice Roseville Software Development Center | P.O. Box 64942 - M.S. 4313 | Roseville, Minnesota, 55164, U.S.A. | ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jan 96 13:09:00 EST From: dleibold@else.net (Dave Leibold) Subject: And Now ... For ctrycode.c (Country Code Lookup) Found a bit of time to review the areacode.c program. Seems it wasn't that hard after all to make a country codes program, mostly inspired by the areacode.c one. These are country codes only ... current as of now. Getting all the area codes within countries will be another can of worms, one which might gag some systems. ------ cut here ----- /* Based on the areacode.c for TELECOM Digest (areacode.c received from Brint Cooper, updated 5 Jan 1996 by Carl Moore) */ #include #include /* ctrycode.c - adapted from areacode.c, originating with AREACODE.MAC (Ver. 1.0 - January 2, 1981 by Kelly Smith; Ken Yap (ken@rochester.arpa) also appears in that program's credits). Compile: cc -O -o ctrycode ctrycode.c Run: ctrycode nnn nnn ... ctrycode displays the country or region assigned to a telephone country code. These country codes may have 1, 2 or 3 digits. This 1996 version was prepared by David Leibold using latest available country code information. Country codes are officially assigned by the International Telecommunications Union and published under their Recommendation E.164 (as of 1996). Bug reports, corrections, comments can be sent to dleibold@else.net. ** Entries must be in sorted order because binary search is used. */ /* add country codes */ char *countrycode[] = { "1 Canada, United States, Bermuda, Caribbean nations", "20 Egypt", "212Morocco", "213Algeria", "216Tunisia", "218Libya", "220Gambia", "221Senegal", "222Mauritania", "223Mali", "224Guinea", "225Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)", "226Burkina Faso", "227Niger", "228Togolese Republic", "229Benin", "230Mauritius", "231Liberia", "232Sierra Leone", "233Ghana", "234Nigeria", "235Chad", "236Central African Republic", "237Cameroon", "238Cape Verde", "239Sao Tome and Principe", "240Equatorial Guinea", "241Gabon", "242Congo", "243Zaire", "244Angola", "245Guinea-Bissau", "246Diego Garcia", "247Ascension", "248Seychelles", "249Sudan", "250Rwanda", "251Ethiopia", "252Somalia", "253Djibouti", "254Kenya", "255Tanzania", "256Uganda", "257Burundi", "258Mozambique", "259Zanzibar", "260Zambia", "261Madagascar", "262Reunion", "263Zimbabwe", "264Namibia", "265Malawi", "266Lesotho", "267Botswana", "268Swaziland", "269Comoros and Mayotte", "27 South Africa", "290Saint Helena", "291Eritrea", "297Aruba", "298Faroe Islands", "299Greenland", "30 Greece", "31 Netherlands", "32 Belgium", "33 France", "33 Monaco", "34 Spain", "350Gibraltar", "351Portugal", "352Luxembourg", "353Ireland", "354Iceland", "355Albania", "356Malta", "357Cyprus", "358Finland", "359Bulgaria", "36 Hungary", "370Lithuania", "371Latvia", "372Estonia", "373Moldova", "374Armenia", "375Belarus", "376Andorra", "377Monaco", "378San Marino", "379Vatican City State", "380Ukraine", "381Yugoslavia", "385Croatia", "386Slovenia", "387Bosnia and Herzegovina", "389The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", "39 Italy", "40 Romania", "41 Switzerland and Liechtenstein", "42 Czech and Slovak Republics", "43 Austria", "44 United Kingdom", "45 Denmark", "46 Sweden", "47 Norway", "48 Poland", "49 Germany", "500Falkland Islands", "501Belize", "502Guatemala", "503El Salvador", "504Honduras", "505Nicaragua", "506Costa Rica", "507Panama", "508Saint Pierre and Miquelon", "509Haiti", "51 Peru", "52 Mexico", "53 Cuba", "54 Argentina", "55 Brazil", "56 Chile", "57 Colombia", "58 Venezuela", "590Guadeloupe", "591Bolivia", "592Guyana", "593Ecuador", "594Guiana", "595Paraguay", "596Martinique", "597Suriname", "598Uruguay", "599Netherlands Antilles", "60 Malaysia", "61 Australia", "62 Indonesia", "63 Philippines", "64 New Zealand", "65 Singapore", "66 Thailand", "670Northern Mariana Islands", "671Guam", "672Australian External Territories", "673Brunei Darussalam", "674Nauru", "675Papua New Guinea", "676Tonga", "677Solomon Islands", "678Vanuatu", "679Fiji", "680Palau", "681Wallis and Futuna", "682Cook Islands", "683Niue", "684American Samoa", "685Western Samoa", "686Kiribati", "687New Caledonia", "688Tuvalu", "689French Polynesia", "690Tokelau", "691Micronesia", "692Marshall Islands", "7 Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan", "800International Freephone", "81 Japan", "82 Korea", "84 Viet Nam", "850North Korea", "852Hongkong", "853Macau", "855Cambodia", "856Laos", "86 China", "870Inmarsat: SNAC service", "871Inmarsat: Atlantic Ocean East", "872Inmarsat: Pacific Ocean", "873Inmarsat: Indian Ocean", "874Inmarsat: Atlantic Ocean West", "875Reserved for maritime mobile services", "876Reserved for maritime mobile services", "877Reserved for maritime mobile services", "878Reserved for maritime mobile services", "879Reserved for maritime mobile services", "880Bangladesh", "886Taiwan", "90 Turkey", "91 India", "92 Pakistan", "93 Afghanistan", "94 Sri Lanka", "95 Burma (Myanmar)", "960Maldives", "961Lebanon", "962Jordan", "963Syria", "964Iraq", "965Kuwait", "966Saudi Arabia", "967Yemen", "968Oman", "969(formerly South Yemen - now 967 after unification)", "971United Arab Emirates", "972Israel", "973Bahrain", "974Qatar", "975Bhutan", "976Mongolia", "977Nepal", "98 Iran", "994Azerbaijan", "995Georgia", "996Kyrgyz Republic" }; char *where(code) char *code; { register int i, codelen, high, low, mid; int strncmp(); char incode[3]; if ((codelen = strlen(code)) > 3) return ("not a valid country code"); strncpy(incode, code, 3); if (codelen < 3) incode[2] = ' '; if (codelen < 2) incode[1] = ' '; low = 0; high = sizeof(countrycode) / sizeof(countrycode[0]); while (low <= high) { mid = (low + high) / 2; i = strncmp(incode, countrycode[mid], 3); if (i < 0) high = mid - 1; else if (i > 0) low = mid + 1; else return (countrycode[mid] + 3); } return ("not a valid country code"); } main(argc, argv) int argc; char *argv[]; { char *where(); if (argc < 2) { printf("Usage: ctrycode nnn nnn ...\n"); printf("This program displays countries for given "); printf("telephone country codes\n"); exit(1); } for (--argc, ++argv; argc > 0; --argc, ++argv) printf("Country code %s is %s. \n", *argv, where(*argv)); } ----------------- cut here ------------ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But readers, you have seen *nothing* yet! ... based on corrections at hand, the areacode file is being polished off, and an entirely different script which has more flexibility and features is coming your way in a day or so ... Country codes and USA/Canada area codes *in one large master file ... Lookups not just by code number, but by any search string you wish to use. It runs using Bourne, requires no compiling, and is very simple to modify with new lines and codes at any time. It will be, I think, the final word on area codes and country codes. When it is ready it will come out as a special mailing and I hope you will consider replacing the areacode script I sent out a few days ago with this vastly improved and enhanced version. Watch for it! PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #12 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Jan 11 22:44:21 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA19343; Thu, 11 Jan 1996 22:44:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 22:44:21 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601120344.WAA19343@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #13 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Jan 96 22:44:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 13 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson BC Tel U.S. 800 Bypass Approved (Dave Leibold) Cellular Phone Called Simon (Andre Groenwald) Illegal Cloning Alleged (Wes Leatherock) Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (Leonid A. Broukhis) Is ISDN Dying Already? (Jim Hornbeck) Re: Doppler Shift, was Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" (William Hawkins) Re: Is Cellular Cloning Legal? (Matt Simpson) Re: Warning: SLC96 Cannot do 28.8 kbps (grendal) Re: Warning: SLC96 Cannot do 28.8 kbps (Dave Van Allen) My ANI is: (Thanks AT&T!) (Les Reeves) Re: Federal Crackdown on Cellular Cloning (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Cellular Fraud Suspects Arrested in Santa Fe (David Norman) Reserving 888 Numbers (Bob Schwartz) Enhanced Full Rate Vocoder (Milind Paranjpe) Re: D3 Channel Bank Question (Bill Benzel) Unusual Radio Promotion (Mike Harpe) Re: Last Laugh! Suspected Wrong Domain Name For "Heaven" (Ed Ellers) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Dave.Leibold@superctl.tor250.org (Dave Leibold) Date: 10 Jan 96 07:25:54 -0500 Subject: BC Tel U.S. 800 Bypass Approved The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved BC Tel's September application to provide a bypass service for U.S. 800 numbers. Telephone subscribers in British Columbia would soon be able to reach American 800 (and probably forthcoming 888) numbers that were previously inaccessible to them. BC Tel's service would allow customers to reach the U.S. 800 numbers for CAD$0.18/minute. The CRTC's approval of the service requires BC Tel to have customers dial a special access code first, then play an announcement warning of the charges to use this service. The customer can then complete the bypass call, or hang up before charges are assessed. During the CRTC application process, Unitel was concerned about the confusion that could be caused when customers are charged for a service that is normally perceived as toll-free. This is the first to my knowledge that a major Canadian telco (i.e. part of the Canadian Stentor group) has started such a service for general use. The now-defunct STN carrier provided an 800 bypass for $0.10/minute. ACC and Sprint Canada have had such services in the past, generally for their business customers. This news was from CRTC's Telecom Order 96-6, as found on the web at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/ Fidonet : Dave Leibold 1:259/730 | Internet: Dave.Leibold@superctl.tor250.org ------------------------------ From: sahfs@iafrica.com (S A Holstein Friesland Society) Subject: Cellular Phone Called Simon Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 11:22:04 Organization: Internet Africa Can anybody please help me in locating the manufacturer of a product named Simon. It is a cellular phone that can handle electronic mail as well as being a personal organizer. Any information about this product will greatly be appreciated since the name and features of the product is all I have. Andre Groenewald S A Holstein Friesland Society SAHFS@IAFRICA.COM ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com (Wes Leatherock) Subject: Illegal Cloning Alleged Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 13:37:00 GMT A story in {The Daily Oklahoman} (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) for Jan. 9, 1996, reports that AT&T Wireless Services has asked for an injunction against an Oklahoma City firm for allegedly cloning a cellular telephone to create an extension. The story, by Oklahoman staff writer Charles T. Jones, says AT&T Wireless Services asked in federal court for a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction against Johnny Meyers, doing business as Safari Communications and Safari Holdings, Inc. According to the story, "The lawsuit alleges Meyers' company 'advertised and solicited' AT&T Wireless customers to have the secret electronic serial numbers of their activated cell phones 'cloned' onto other phones, thus giving them an 'extension' phone." The story says the suit alleges that such unauthorized phones are illegal and deprive AT&T Wireless Services of income. Besides the injunction, the story says, AT&T Wireless Services is asking for attorney fees and any other losses it can prove at trial. The story says The Oklahoman was unable to reach Meyers for comment. Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com wes.leatherock@baremetl.com wes.leatherock@f2001.n147.z1.fidonet.org ------------------------------ From: leob@best.com (Leonid A. Broukhis) Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint Date: 11 Jan 1996 17:35:35 -0800 Organization: Best Internet Communications TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves): > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Les and I discussed this at length on > the phone a couple days ago. According to Sprint's literature, they > will give you a year of free calls on Friday up to a thousand dollars > per month. That works out to $12,000 in calls for $600 (50*12) in > charges. The best part is, the $50 minimum per month can be taken > out of the free calls on Friday. I am not sure if you have to default > one of your lines to them or not. I don't think you do, and as Les > points out, both business and residence phones are eligible. So if Go to http://www.sprint.com/ then to the Business Sense International (which will bring you to http://www.sprintbiz.com/cgi-bin/qfridays.cgi ) and tell us _where_ does it say anything about residence phones. If it sounds too good to be true, it isn't. Leo [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: According to Les, it says nothing about residence phones, but does not specifically exclude them. He says that when he talked to their representative, he was told that 'any phone was eligible if it was used to make business calls'. I presume you have to refer to yourself as a business; is that so hard to do? Are they going to demand that you produce evidence of business telephone service as per local telco records? Here in this area, lots of people work from home as a routine thing and do so with residence service from Ameritech. The bottom line is if you call Sprint at that number and agree to be billed a minimum of fifty per month for long distance calls for one year, you can have up to a thousand dollars per month in free calls as long as you make the calls on Friday. That is 50*12=600 versus 1000* 12= 12,000, a difference of $11,400. Now you can just barely do it on purely domestic traffic at 16 cents per minute. The math adds up like this: That is $230.40 per day if your phone is off hook the entire 24 hours. Based on 4 1/3 Fridays per month that is $997.40 per month. Based on 52 Fridays in the year it is $11,981 for the year, but you have to pay $500 of that, remember. They did say in their advertisment the rates were 16 cents per minute. But instead of all that time spent on domestic calls, why not instead a half dozen or so international calls every Friday of several minutes duration each? Or, a single international call several hours in length one a week ... they are allowing international calls under this plan. I don't think you have to default any lines to them; you can do it by keeping your lines with whatever carrier they are on now (AT&T, smile) and just remembering to prepend 10333 to your dialing string all day on Friday. Seems to me it would be worth remembering to do that if Sprint was willing to give me over eleven thousand worth of service in a year's time. And, there is no where mentioned in their adver- tising that I am aware of any catch about how they will only give Friday Free credit up to the same extent you otherwise use them; i.e. no reference to 'if your bill is $50 for the month we will give you up to $50 in free calls on Friday ....' nothing like that. It says 'we will give you up to $1000 in free calls monthly for calls placed on Friday if you spend a minimum of $50 per month.' It sounds to me like another 'sign up and get a free fax and data modem' promotion -- grin -- the one they lost their shirts on a couple of years ago compliments of Digest readers who signed up in droves, demanding their free fax modems, then stayed on Sprint for a month or so and switched back to wherever they were before. Let's give it a whirl and watch them squirm; a couple thousand Digest readers legally pulling eleven thousand dollars each in traffic through Sprint for a year at no charge. That should give them a swift kick in their bottom line! Readers: if you try to sign up and they say no, or if you do sign up and then they lie about it and claim you don't get all those free calls, let us know. PAT] ------------------------------ From: horn@netcom.com (Jim Hornbeck) Subject: Is ISDN Dying Already? Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 02:49:39 GMT Recently I called Pac Tel to inquire about ISDN service and received a rather cool reception. Since I had understood that they were pushing ISDN prety heavily, I started asking some knowledgable folks at work what was up. They told me that ATT was about to introduce a new compression scheme for data transmission for twisted pairs that would make most current needs for ISDN obsolete. The Telco *expert* was, of course, not there today to answer with any authority. However, others have noticed the chill reception given to inquiries also. What have I missed? Is Ma Bell on the verge of introducing something worth while or is this just smoke? Curious mind(s) want to know. Regards, Jim Hornbeck WA6GHF horn@netcom.com GEnie L.Hornbeck ------------------------------ From: bill@texan.rosemount.com (William Hawkins) Subject: Re: Doppler Shift, was Re: "PCS Faces Rough Road" Organization: Rosemount, Inc. Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 00:25:25 GMT There may be lots of reasons why PCS will grind its face on a rough road, but I'm delighted to hear that it doesn't work in a fast moving vehicle. Ever been behind someone on the highway who gets bad news (or is otherwise distracted from the task of driving)? Bill Hawkins ------------------------------ From: msimpson@service1.uky.edu (Matt Simpson) Subject: Re: Is Cellular Cloning Legal? Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 09:42:29 -0500 Organization: University of Kentucky Computing Center A cloner here (Lexington, KY) was recently arrested and tried. He was cloning phones for people who had legitimate cellular service and wanted a second phone; he was not cloning stolen numbers. According to the news, this was the first time in the country that someone had been charged for that. I saw a headline in the newspaper a couple of days ago saying he had been acquitted. I didn't get a chance to read the article. ------------------------------ From: i@me.me.sra.com (grendal) Subject: Re: Warning: SLC96 Cannot do 28.8 kbps Date: 11 Jan 1996 23:35:43 GMT Organization: Systems Research and Applications Corp. In article , tedwards@Glue.umd.edu says ... > I have now heard of two ISPs in Bell Atlantic territory who got burned > when getting a SLC96 installed to handle their large numbers of phone > numbers. Apparently the SLC96's are incapable of handling 28.8 kbps, > and regularly result in 21 kbps and worse for users. > This sets up the perverse situation where larger regional ISPs have > worse dialup speeds that little Mom-n-pop ones who dialtone over > copper. > Has anyone else heard of this? I imagine there are probably many > large office buildings that might also have SLC96 service which are > similarly "speed impaired." > Of course, we all know 28.8 kbps is a "best case" scenario, but this > is sad for the future of analog dialup net connectivity (hmm - could > it be the RBOCs would use this "feature" to leverage ISDN?) Yo, Thomas, I seem to remember several conversations here regarding modem problems that I thought were caused by SLC services. Yes, indeed, SLC will limit your bandpass sufficiently (4:1) so that only 4800 will be usable. With lousy modems, 2400 is more likely. This (SLC) is most often found in newer suburban develpment areas and older and sparsely populated rural areas. The philosophy is called "pair gain", meaning that digital compression multiplexing (via a lower digital sample rate) allows less copper to be used -- a signifi- cant economic factor in telephone cost. The RBOCs are now reducing ISDN prices to build a market base. Once the RBOCS have converted the entire analog plant to SLC, they will increase ISDN rates and ISDN will be the only way we'll get ANY decent bandwidth. Remarkably clever, eh? By then, the cable companies may be a good alternative and the Telco's will be left with voice. grendal ------------------------------ From: dave@yt1.youtools.com (Dave Van Allen) Subject: Re: Warning: SLC96 Cannot do 28.8 kbps Date: 11 Jan 1996 19:40:11 GMT Organization: FASTNET(tm) PA/NJ/DE Internet kenshalo@anc.ak.net wrote: >>> I have now heard of two ISPs in Bell Atlantic territory who got burned >>> when getting a SLC96 installed to handle their large numbers of phone >>> numbers. Apparently the SLC96's are incapable of handling 28.8 kbps, >>> and regularly result in 21 kbps and worse for users. >> I have heard telecom device providers speaking of this being due to >> robbed-bit signaling occuring over the T-1 feeding the SLCs. This >> doesn't make sense to me, as it would infer that B8ZS coding is also It doesn't make sense to you, because that's not the problem. The line coding is not what is messing up the payload, it the A/D conversion at the switch (prior to feeding the digital hicap to the SLC) and then further, the type of card used at the SLC to convert back to copper to feed your demarc. We reported this problem to Bell Atlantic 18 months ago, and were told we were crazy, that it was "our equipment". The question was then asked why, "I can take "our" equipment, off-site, to my house no less, and get nearly perfect 28.8K connects? What I got was dead-air, and excuses. Today, the same guy at the TAG group humbly tells me this is a "national problem". If your site is fed by a SLC, and there is just ONE A/D conversion at the CO switch, then count on poor 28.8K connects. Most switches are still 90% analog out to copper. When the RBOC's need to extend facilities past copper length, or for other reasons, they normally take the analog side of the switch out- put, pump this to D-4 channel banks, MUX's ec t, and point it all toward a T-3 or Sonet ring. At the far end they "decode" the channels back to analog and deliver them to you on copper. That initial MUX'ing is what causes the problem. High order eliptical filters (9th order according to Bellcore) cut the top-end off sharply at 3050Hz (or thereabouts), phase shift, q-Noise and other by-products are the result. This doesn't affect voice, but it plays hell on data. We tried a test, where we asked Bell for a Digital handoff T-1 with 24 voice, B8ZS ESF channels and we plugged it into a Channel bank to convert back to analog. Result, poor connects. Bell "swore" that this was a complete digital path, NO A/D except at OUR end. Hmmm, weeks later we found out that there WAS an A/D conversion at the switch. Bell said, "well that's the way we ALWAYS do it. We asked for a digital port from the DMS-100 to feed our circuit. Not in the tariff -- you need an HSA (house special assembly) for that. They did it -- guess what? Perfect connects! Nynex is the only (that we could two months ago) RBOC that had a tariffed service that was truly digital -- it goes under the trade name of Flexpath. If you want more reliable 28.8K connects, get an ascend MAX and feed it ISDN PRI, load it up with ascends 28.8K modems and you'll be much happier. BTW, they CAN fix the problem at the SLC -- they just don't see a need to do it. Not fun when you have 500 modems that all get at BEST 26K connects and the puny Internet service provider down the street has a two dozen 'cheeze' modem, built to the CO on copper and they get 28.8K all of time. Try explaining THAT to your (potential) customer. Best regards, *Dave Van Allen - You Tools/FASTNET - dave@youtools.COM - (610) 954-5910 -=-=-=- www.youtools.com - FASTNET(tm) PA/NJ/DE Internet -=-=-=- ------------------------------ From: lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves) Subject: My ANI is: (Thanks AT&T!) Date: 11 Jan 1996 13:38:01 -0800 Organization: CR Labs For those TD subscribers who lament the loss of 1-800-YOUR ANI, AT&T has a couple of numbers for you: 800.532.7486 (Billing info, but ANI readback even if the billing info system is down and you don't have AT&T as your PIC). OR 800.858.9857 (True Rewards, True Reach, or True Lies balance info). ANI works regardless of your LD company. Note: These are ANI readbacks. *67 and other CID issues do not apply. Try it from your Cell Phone! Les lreeves@crl.com Atlanta,GA 404.874.7806 -- 404.875.1273 ISDN Voice 404.875.1274 ISDN data/fax -- ------------------------------ From: mds@access.digex.net (Michael D. Sullivan) Subject: Re: Federal Crackdown on Cellular Cloning Date: 11 Jan 1996 05:17:10 GMT Organization: Wilkinson, Barker, Knauer & Quinn Reply-To: mds@access.digex.net (Michael D. Sullivan) In , Kevin B. Kenny writes: > I'm curious. Would it be possible to set up a value-added service to > support `extension cellphones?' The idea would be to have THREE phone > numbers: the numbers of the two cellphones and the number of the > group. When someone calls the number of the group, a machine picks up > and places calls, simultaneously, to the two cellphones. The first > call to complete wins, and the other call gets dropped. A smart PABX > could probably arrange to see that the inbound call doesn't supervise > until the outbound call does. Feasible? In fact, some cellular carriers with appropriate software offer the ability to have two cellphones (e.g., portable and vehicular, or husband and wife) that can be reached with a single number. The phones actually have different MIN and ESN assignments, but the switch is programmed to hand traffic to the first of the two to answer, more or less. Michael D. Sullivan Email to: mds@access.digex.net Bethesda, MD, USA Also: avogadro@well.com 74160.1134@compuserve.com ------------------------------ From: dnorman@cix.compulink.co.uk ("David Norman") Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud Suspects Arrested in Santa Fe Organization: Brother International Europe Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 11:48:46 GMT I'm perplexed! Surely the mobile telco knows the overseas number dialed. If the recipient of the call were to be visited by the local fraud squad and asked who originated the call, I'm sure a few arrests back in the originating country might lessen people's enthusiasm for "really cheap" inetrnational calls! I may be missing something here, of course (perhaps I'm too honest?) I realise the call may be to a call box (or otherwise untraceable), there may be political/cost implications in following up the recipient (presumably they are innocent themselves?), but surely the call originator is guilty of theft, or receiving stolen goods? I've never seen any comment from mobile telco's about this aspect of fraud. Is it just too difficult, or is being done on the quiet? I guess I must look honest too, 'cause no-one has ever offered me cheap calls on a cloned handset!! (This isn't a request either!) A final observation: here in the UK it isn't illegal to clone a phone (although I think this is being looked at), but it is illegal to misuse the telco's electricity to make a fraudulent call, but this makes it much harder to gain convictions. Dave Norman: dnorman@cix.compulink.co.uk ------------------------------ From: bob@bci.nbn.com (Bob Schwartz) Subject: Reserving 888 Numbers Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 22:43:45 -0800 Organization: BCI Has anyone got advise on how to reserve an 888 number and How to get the best chance at securing the *right* number?? Through an RBOC a Long Distance company or ... Is there a deadline? When will numbers be assigned and any other pertinant information? Please reply to Bob@BCI.NBN.COM Thanks in advance. ------------------------------ From: Milind Paranjpe Subject: Enhanced Full Rate Vocoder Date: 11 Jan 1996 19:26:39 GMT Organization: interWave Corp. Hello all, Does anyone have information on the Enhanced Full Rate vocoder used in PCS-1900 in Washington DC? Milind milind@iwv.com +1 415 261 6200 x170 ------------------------------ From: whb@Op.Net (Bill Benzel) Subject: Re: D3 Channel Bank Question Date: 11 Jan 1996 19:41:18 GMT Organization: OpNet -- Greater Philadelphia Internet Service Raymon A. Bobbitt (rbobbitt@ramlink.net) wrote: > Does anyone know the difference between D3 and D4 framing in a channel > bank?? D3 is 24 channels (one DS-1) and D$ is 48 channels (two DS-1s). Some D4 channel banks are designed to permit "drop and insert" so that you can switch traffic through them. Not all models, however, support this feature. Bill Benzel Fiserv, Inc. Philadelphia whb@opnet.com ------------------------------ From: mike@hermes.louisville.edu (Mike Harpe) Subject: Unusual Radio Promotion Date: 11 Jan 1996 16:10:14 -0500 Organization: University of Louisville, Louisville KY USA WHAS-AM 840 here in Louisville is starting a rather unusual radio promotion that I thought the Digest readers would have some thoughts on ... It's simple ... they are calling pay telephones around town and giving money to people who answer them. Is this a proper use of payphones? How would a COCOT operator feel about this? I would like to hear some opinions. Michael Harpe, Communications Analyst III Information Technology Internet: mike@hermes.louisville.edu University of Louisville (502) 852-5542 (Voice) (502) 852-1400 (FAX) Louisville, Ky. 40292 WWW: http://www.louisville.edu/~meharp01 ------------------------------ From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Suspected Wrong Domain Name For "Heaven" Date: 11 Jan 1996 14:48:28 GMT Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire] In article , One-True@TDR.COM says: > A domain name ending in .com represents a "commercial" site and I suspect > that's incorrect in the context used. > A company calling itself "heaven", or even a nightclub or some other such > operation, if it had a domain name on the internet, would use such a > domain name. But I doubt that if there was a real site such as the > purported one in the fictional example, it would use such a domain name. > Seriously I doubt {THAT} "Heaven" (the one allegedly upstairs) is a > commercial site. International, probably. Or perhaps an organization. That's what I would think too. Actually I've seen some Usenet messages from a user identified as "satan@hell.org" a while back. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #13 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Jan 11 23:20:39 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA22114; Thu, 11 Jan 1996 23:20:39 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 23:20:39 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601120420.XAA22114@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #14 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Jan 96 23:20:43 EST Volume 16 : Issue 14 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Reopening Procedures (Bob Keller) Re: News: ISDN Moves To The Burbs (Fred R. Goldstein) Seminar Presenters Needed (Mark Mitchell) Re: News Release in TC94-121 (Lars Poulsen) Area Code Overlays in Texas Delayed (Edmund C. Hack) Warning to All Net Users (Emmanuel Goldstein) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 21:57:04 -0500 From: Bob Keller Subject: FCC Reopening Procedures Here is the full text of a public notice issued today by the FCC regarding the filing of documents that were due during the shutdown. The bottom line is that anything that came due during the shutdown (or that would have been due today, Jan 11, or will be due tomorrow, Jan 12) may be filed until 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 16, 1996. PUBLIC NOTICE Federal Communications Commission 1919 M St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20554 DA 96-2 January 11, 1996 PROCEDURES FOR THE FILING OF DOCUMENTS THAT WERE DUE DURING THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN OR DURING THE WEATHER EMERGENCY By Public Notice (DA 96-1) released January 5, 1996, the Managing Director announced procedures for the filing of documents that were due to be filed with the Commission during the time that it was closed due to lack of appropriations (December 18, 1995 through January 5, 1996). Due to a weather emergency, the FCC remained closed from January 8, 1996 through January 10, 1996. Another forecasted weather emergency may affect Commission operations on Friday, January 12, 1996. Any documents that were due to be filed with the Commission (at its headquarters, Gettysburg, PA, or Mellon Bank) while it was closed, whether for the budget-related shutdown or the subsequent weather emergency, will be due no later than 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 16, 1996. To this extent, Section 1.4(j) of the Commission's rules, 47 C.F.R. sec. 1.4(j), which would otherwise require such filings on the first business day after a shutdown, IS HEREBY WAIVED in order to facilitate an orderly reopening. Additionally, in light of the inclement weather, filings normally due today or tomorrow (January 11 and 12, 1996) will also be due on January 16, 1996. While parties will have additional time to file at the appropriate location, they are strongly encouraged to tender their documents for filing as early as possible. The Commission will be closed on Monday, January 15, 1996, a Federal holiday. The FCC Headquarters building and the Secretary's office reopened today at 8:00 a.m. and will close at 5:30 p.m. While persons will be admitted to the building before 5:30 p.m., due to the anticipated volume of filings, they may not be able to file documents with the Secretary after 5:30 p.m. See 47 C.F.R. sec. 1.4(f). Documents required to be filed at the Commission's Gettysburg facility and at the Mellon Bank will also be accepted during normal business hours. Documents received at the Commission's headquarters, at Mellon Bank or at the Commission's Gettysburg offices via mail from December 18, 1995 through January 10, 1996 will be deemed filed on January 11, 1996, the first day that the Commission has reopened. This Public Notice affects only due dates for filings with the Commission that were due during the time that the Commission was closed or due on January 11-12, 1996. It does not affect due dates for the filing of other documents and does not affect the effective dates of Commission actions or other events. These matters may be dealt with separately by the Commission or its Bureaus and Offices. Action by the Managing Director. - FCC - -------------------------- Bob Keller (KY3R) mailto:rjk@telcomlaw.com Law Office of Robert J. Keller, P.C. http://www.his.com/~rjk Federal Telecommunications Law Telephone 202.416.1670 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 16:31:36 -0500 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Re: News: ISDN Moves To The Burbs What a hoot. Here's PacBell shilling for a massive rate increase by writing a so-called "news" story in which they just happen to mention one of the reasons why they allegedly require a huge ISDN rate hike. Let's dissect the message. not really news: >NEWS FROM PACIFIC BELL: ISDN Moves To The Burbs > In the past ten months alone, Pacific Bell has experienced an amazing > 200 percent growth in the number of ISDN lines installed in > California. Of 60,000 total lines, Okay, here's a "fact" they're releasing: They've shipped 60k ISDN lines in the past ten months, 200% growth, meaning they had 30,000 and now have 90,000. That's pretty good for an American telco. PacBell *had* taken a leadership position in ISDN, which they are now trying to get out of. (Maybe they want Bell Atlantic to buy them instead of NYNEX?) > nearly 30 percent are located > three or more miles away from the nearest ISDN-equipped central > office, with the remaining 70 percent concentrated close to central > offices in metro areas. That's the key. ISDN Basic Rate loops work to 18,000 feet, more or less. Beyond that you need a Mid-span Repeater (MSR). Adtran is the only maker that I'm aware of, and their price is in the $1k apiece range (list is I think higher, but if PacBell doesn't get a huge bulk discount, their purchasing folks aren't on the ball. Or Adtran is just too cocky with their effective monopoly.) PacBell (rightly, I think) doesn't charge extra for the MSR, since it's their judgement as to where COs go. In the ancient of days, telcos often had "rural" and "suburban" surcharges for lines that crossed a boundary, which was on a map filed with the PUC as part of the tariff. Most states have abolished these for POTS. PacBell applies similar precedent to ISDN. NYNEX, btw, isn't so nice, and probably has more than 30% out of range. So with 30% of 60k lines needing MSR, PacBell has shelled out for around 18k of them, which probably means nearly $20M for Adtran. > Compare that to last year's statistics > showing that only 5 percent of installations occurred three miles out, > for a 95 percent metro concentration, and a clear geographic shift > emerges. Pacific Bell projects that, by the year 2000, more than 70 > percent of ISDN lines will be in homes for business or personal use. There's the problem. They wrongly assumed 5% MSR when preparing their tariff in 1994. They probably based it on Centrex experience, and Centrex is rarely marketed at long-loop customers, ISDN or not. So they are maybe $15M in the hole for unplanned MSRs! This is probably a reasonable justification for raising the monthly ISDN rate by a few dollars, since the average (of MSR and non-MSR lines) ISDN line is probably carrying $300-400 more investment than anticipated. > And unlimited night and weekend usage has driven > many to never turn their lines off during those times. These usage > trends have proven to be costly. Here's where they get tricky. While resi POTS is flat rated daytime, resi ISDN is flat rated *only* after peak business hours (5PM-8AM). A few users have taken advantage of it to *never hang up* during those hours. I personally think that's a bad thing, though POTS users can do it too, 7x24, even with Multilink on multiple V.34-modem lines, and there's no plan to penalize them. ISDN users are being told to pay up. So PacBell is proposing a *20 hour/month* cap on nighttime "flat" usage. This is incredibly small. US West is proposing a *200 hour* cap in its states, has it in some, and was just turned down in Washington. I think a cap like that is eminently reasonable, since a "nailed" call is using resources that are better provisioned as leased lines. But 20 hours is less than a typical teenager talks in a week. That's bad, but it gets worse: > To address this, we've added a penny per minute to our usage charges, Hear this: PacBell proposes charging *double* for ALL calls made on ISDN lines, outside of Centrex! If you have an ISDN telephone set, then calling your next door neighbor will cost you *2 cents/minute* compared to *1 cent* on a measured (business) POTS line, or *0 cents* on a resi POTS line. If you have an Adak, Moto, Gandalf, Adtran IBM or similar ISDN-to-POTS-jack adapter, under the proposed new tariff, you'd better sell it to somebody out of state! What does this do to prevent nailed-call "abuse"? All it does is make two modem calls a *lot* cheaper than one ISDN B channel call, and make ISDN voice almost a non-entity. The net effect is to make PacBell's ISDN an *extremely* undesirable product. This will, of course, take care of their backlog in a hurry! Let's make it clear: US telephone companies, for the most part, *hate* ISDN. PacBell's ISDN Bashers have finally, it seems, taken the front seat over the pro-ISDN faction. Scott Adams was fired, and Dilbert's Boss (the guy with the beard on his kepeleh) now seems to be in charge. While PacBell is *theoretically* subject to competition, there won't be any for most subscribers for *years* to come, if ever. And they know it. PacBell should raise the installation and/or monthly rates to make up for the MSR shortfall, and can reasonably put a cap on free usage to discourage nailed lines. But the proposal to charge double for all calls, except for a 20-hour nighttime allowance, is totally unreasonable, and will leave California's experiment with reasonable ISDN for the history books. Fred R. Goldstein fgoldstein@bbn.com Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc. Cambridge MA USA +1 617 873 3850 ------------------------------ From: msm4174@aol.com (Msm4174) Subject: Seminar Presenters Needed Date: 11 Jan 1996 13:29:44 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: msm4174@aol.com (Msm4174) A major offerer of seminars in Latin America is seeking qualified seminar lecturers in the areas of data communications, information systems, distributed computing, and telecommunications. Seminars are typically two days in length and are held in Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. Openings are available in the May timeframe. Presenters will be paid an honorarium for each day of instruction, plus travel and perdiem. Presenters should have at least 15 years experience in the field and previous experience delivering seminars or major presentations to middle/upper management and senior technical computer and communications professionals. Seminars are given in English, with simultaneous translation into Spanish. Examples of recent offerings include: Analysis and Design of Client Server Systems, Advanced LAN Systems and Technologies, Information Systems Project Management, Cabling and Wiring, Fiber Optic Telecommunications, Distributed Computing, Integrating LANs and WANs. Please send seminar topic ideas and a brief summary of previous work and seminar experience to: Mark Mitchell voice/fax: 503-484-4174 email: msm4174@aol.com ------------------------------ From: lars@spectrum.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: News Release in TC94-121 Date: 11 Jan 1996 09:45:50 -0800 Organization: Rockwell International - CMC Network Products In article Wegman, Steve forwards a press release about an agreement between US West and the South Dakota Public Utilities commission allowing a monthly rate increase of about $6 per line over the next three years. This deal sounds to me like corporate welfare. > The Settlement .... includes $25 million in > infrastructure development; a competition-oriented pricing structure; > elimination of all touch-tone charges; and a rate adjustment phased in > over 36 months. "This was among the most important decisions the PUC > has ever made," said [PUC chairman] Stofferahn ... So they eliminate touch tone charges, but raise the price by a little more than the surcharge they eliminate. In other words: They are really not only keeping the touch tone surcharge but raising it and making it mandatory. In return for this rate boost, they are mandating that US West *must* put in the system upgrade that they were planning to do anyway (because it reduces their cost). > In addition to the infrastructure development, the Settlement > includes a $2 million Distance Learning Initiative for public schools, > Distance Learning training grants, a discount for state government to > defray a portion of the state's education network costs, In addition, they are forcing the telco to donate money to the schools to make up for the money that the state legislature is unwilling to appropriate out of the general tax fund. What a deal ... > statewide deployment of Caller ID and other advanced custom calling > features, ... for which US West will undoubtedly set a monthly price per feature to recover the cost of providing these features. > full replacement of multi-party lines with one-party service, This seems legitimate. There is a cost to upgrading these (rural) customers, and although they will lose the discount they got for living with the (substandard) party-line service, the end result MAY be a net loss for US West. > expansion of fiber-optics and local access to the internet. Whether the wiring is twisted pairs or coax or fiber is largely irrelevant to customers. US West will want to put in massive amounts of fiber in any case, because this is the most cost-effective way to install backbone wiring today. As for Internet access: Is South Dakota an island of the nation with no Internet access? If the telephone company is mandated to provide inexpensive Internet access everywhere, is this not guaranteed to turn Internet access into a monopoly, thus *destroying* the competition that may already exist? > The Settlement still sets a cost of service > based price ceiling for U S WEST, but allows downward-flexing of > customer rates to remain competitive. "We have not approved a general > rate increase for U S WEST since 1985. This Settlement allows an > increase, but with a price ceiling below the cost of service, and a > three-year phase-in," he said. I would bet that the reason they have not approved any rate increases since 1985, is because the cost of providing basic service has gone *down* every year. I believe it is *still* going down. By my perspective, this sounds like an enlightened rate restructuring in a regulated cost-plus monopoly environment, but it is exactly backwards from the claimed position of preparing for increased competition. Here is the way I would suggest that a rate restructuring should be written today: 1) Define a standard basic telephone service: Single-party, touch tone, no CLASS features, and set a price ceiling for it. Require uniform pricing for this basic service throughout the service area. Require that this service be offered throughout the service area. 2) Allow (but do not require) the telco to offer a lower grade of service at a discount. (This allows gradual phasing out of party lines and pulse dialing.) 3) Set the rate for the basic service at the average price of pulse and tone dialing today. (I.e. make the elimination of the tone surcharge revenue-neutral). 4) Remove the linkage of the rate cap to documented costs. 5) Require that the service be provided entirely from within the state (i.e. no moving the repair service trouble desk to Plano, TX or Tijuana, Mexico). 6) Allow competition, but require that anyone offering service in a county must provide basic service everywhere in the county with the capped service rate. (I.e. no cream skimming of the downtown business districts.) 7) Treat Internet access as an unregulated, competitive activity. 8) Require fair terms for interconnects. (This probably needs a LOT of staff work to define. Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@RNS.COM Rockwell Network Systems Phone: +1-805-562-3158 7402 Hollister Avenue Telefax: +1-805-968-8256 Santa Barbara, CA 93117 Internets: designed and built while you wait ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 15:40:12 -0800 From: Edmund C. Hack Organization: CRL Network Services (415) 705-6060 [Login: guest] Subject: Area Code Overlays in Texas Delayed {summarized from news reports here in Houston] The plan by Southwestern Bell to not split the 713 (Houston) and 214 (Dallas) area codes, but to overlay them with new area codes has been delayed by the Texas PUC. A PUC vote had been scheduled to be taken on the plan today, January 11, 1996. The PUC staff and an administrative judge had recommended to the PUC that the overlay plan be approved. The delay is to allow additional public hearings in the suburbs of Dallas and Houston at the end of the month. 713 and 214 would be the first area codes to be overlaid. The vote was delayed after several prominent lawmakers requested the PUC do so to allow more public input. There have been two public hearings on the matter. The first in late December, was in Austin and was mainly attended by lobbyists, although a few private citizens did speak. The notices for this meeting sparked a lot of coverage in the local press in Houston and fired the talk shows into high gear. (Only Houston Lighting and Power is as mistrusted as SW Bell, and we tend to like the gas company.) The 713 area code will run out of numbers in a few months (there are said to be 8 prefixes left in 713 and 12 in 214) and numbers in the new area code (281) have been available on an optional basis for a while. The PUC has had objections to the plan from MCI and other companies that wish to enter the local service market, citing fears that they will not be able to get numbers available in 713 assigned "fairly". Local business have tended to support the overlay, since they would not need to reprint letterhead and other items. The public has tended to oppose the plan and support a geographical split, since the overlay will require a switchover to 10 digit dialing in March. SW Bell said that a "donut" split would need to be resplit in 5 years or so and that an overlay is the best long-term solution. Other suggestions have been made: Move all cellular, pager, fax and data lines to the overlay, freeing large blocks of numbers for use in 713. Release all lines assigned to hunt groups except for the primary number. Do a double geographical split now instead of later. Some civic leaders are opposed to the geographic split, since some of the suburban cities would be in two area codes. Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, has said that the change to ten digit dialing will cost consumers $53 million/year in lost time, assuming time dialed is worth $10/hr. Another objection is that the overlay will make it harder for children to memorize their home phone number. The PUC has also asked SW Bell to determine if there will be a windfall to them from extra directory assistance calls. Commentary: The sudden furor over this is interesting, considering that SW Bell has been publicizing 10 digit dialing and the overlay in phone bill inserts for at least 6-10 months. You do read your phone bill insert don't you? Apparently, most Texans don't. Edmund Hack ------------------------------ From: emmanuel@2600.com (Emmanuel Goldstein) Subject: Warning to All Net Users Date: 11 Jan 1996 23:31:39 GMT Organization: 2600 Magazine - The Hacker Quarterly Our nightmare with PSI has been ongoing since August of 1995. We have tried to be reasonable and have given them every opportunity to respond to us and resolve our problem amicably. They have ignored our letters, phone calls, and email. We have no choice but to bring these unpleasant facts to the widest possible audience -- the net itself -- in the hopes that others will see the way this company is using deception and false promises to lure in customers. It is our wish that nobody else be taken in as we were. So far, PSI has taken nearly $1300 from us and provided absolutely nothing in return. Not only that, but they have stated that they will continue to charge our credit card for an entire year and that we have no choice but to pay them what they demand. It sounds incredible and even unbelievable. But every word is true and we have the evidence to back it up. It started when we saw an advertisement for PSI's ISDN service. ISDN allows fast and reliable connections to the Internet, among other things. There are two ways of connecting to the Internet - by making what is known as a "data call" which connects at 64k and by making an "audio call" which connects at 56k. (Audio calls are also referred to by many as "data over voice".) Some local phone companies, ours included, have slapped a surcharge onto all data calls which make such calls prohibitively expensive for anyone trying to keep a site up 24 hours. The audio calls are billed at normal phone rates, however. This is how the system works throughout the nation. One of the very first things we asked PSI when we contacted them was whether or not they supported data over voice. On two separate occasions we were told that they did. When it became clear that they were offering the service we wanted, we signed a faxed contract. This contract makes no specific mention of speeds and/or configurations that are or aren't supported. The day came to finally hook our site up to PSI and, lo and behold, it didn't work at all. We spent a while trying to figure it out on our end and then we called the technicians at PSI. They consulted with each other for a while and then revealed to us that it was "against company policy" to offer this service. We asked to speak to the person who told them that but they were suddenly unavailable. We asked to be called back. To this day, we have yet to be called back. We demanded to be released from this contract since it was signed under false pretenses and amounted to a bait and switch tactic on their part. Deborah Nicely of the Customer Satisfaction Department promised to get back to us. Several weeks later we received a terse letter from her saying basically that we had signed a contract and that was that. In early December, we decided to try an experiment. We called PSI and pretended to be new customers. We asked the exact same questions we had asked in August, the most important one being: "Do you offer data over voice?" Both times we called, the answer was very clear and exactly the same. "Yes." Hear it for yourself on our website: http://www.2600.com. PSI's printed literature is also misleading, especially if you've already been given the impression that they support 56k connectivity. From one of their advertisements, they define their ISDN service as using "one 'B' channel of the customer's ISDN line (BRI) for LAN integration access at up to 64Kbps." The words "up to" certainly seem to prove that connecting at 56k wouldn't be a problem. We've tried to bring this to PSI's attention so they could do something about it. But they have been completely unresponsive. We've run out of options and now we are forced to make this a public issue. PSI is ripping us off and from what we have seen, we can only conclude that they are doing this intentionally. If you use PSI, consider this carefully. Once they have your money, they treat you very differently from when they are trying to get you as a customer. And if you are considering using PSI in the future, please learn from our mistake, which was believing what PSI told us. We have set up a special PSI mailbox for all suggestions, comments, and complaints concerning this PSI situation. Please let us know if you would like your comments to be public or private and, if public, whether or not you want your name attached to them. The address is psi@2600.com. Fingering this account will also get you the latest update. PSI can be reached at (703) 904-4100, fax (703) 904-4200. However, you are setting yourself up for disappointment if you believe your comments will carry any weight with them. On the other hand, it can't hurt to try. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Have you tried simply telling your credit card company to honor no further charges from them? You are entitled to treat this as a dispute under federal law and refuse payment on your credit card, forcing the card provider to charge it back to PSI for adjustment. Do they have a signature on file for all this? Good luck in getting it resolved. Does anyone from PSI wish to respond? PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #14 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Sat Jan 13 09:05:48 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA08007; Sat, 13 Jan 1996 09:05:48 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 09:05:48 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601131405.JAA08007@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #15 TELECOM Digest Sat, 13 Jan 96 09:05:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 15 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (Les Reeves) Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (Tim Dziechowski) Call for Papers: IVTTA (Voice Technol for Telecommunications) (M. Spiegel) Blizzard of 96 - Phone Service in Northern Virginia (Scott Robohn) Re: TELECOM Digest V16 #12 (John M. Sullivan) Re: SDSL v. ADSL (Jon M. Taylor) Cellular "Customer Service" and Fraud (Greg Vaeth) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves) Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint Date: 12 Jan 1996 10:14:02 -0800 Organization: CR Labs Leonid A. Broukhis (leob@best.com) wrote: > Go to http://www.sprint.com/ then to the Business Sense > International (which will bring you to > http://www.sprintbiz.com/cgi-bin/qfridays.cgi ) and tell us _where_ > does it say anything about residence phones. If it sounds too good > to be true, it isn't. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: According to Les, it says nothing about > residence phones, but does not specifically exclude them. He says that > when he talked to their representative, he was told that 'any phone > was eligible if it was used to make business calls'. I presume you > have to refer to yourself as a business; is that so hard to do? Are > they going to demand that you produce evidence of business telephone > service as per local telco records? Here in this area, lots of people > work from home as a routine thing and do so with residence service from > Ameritech. Pat is correct. I have received much mail from folks who have been told by Sprint that the program is only available to business customers. The truth is that it is a limited time promotion offered in conjunction with Sprint's Business Sense program. Business Sense is targeted at business customers, but not limited to them. You neither need a business line nor a business entity to get the program. I grilled them at length about this point. I have the Business Sense program on two residential lines, and the customer is a person (me). Sprint needs to get their ducks in a row about this. Apparently they have not yet explained the program correctly to all of their employees. > I don't think you have to default any lines to them; you can do it by > keeping your lines with whatever carrier they are on now (AT&T, smile) > and just remembering to prepend 10333 to your dialing string all day > on Friday. I don't believe this is true. They definitely send an order to your LEC to change your primary carrier to 10333. And if you were to change it later on to some other carrier, Sprint would be notified by the LEC of the change. I can't predict what Sprint would do in this situation, but some other carriers I have dealt with immediately cancel whatever plan you were on when you try this. And keep in mind that the Free Fridays offer is only available through the end of February, so you could be unable to get back on this insane plan if you tried to change your primary IXC in the last couple of weeks of February. You *can* use 10333 to make Free Friday intra-lata, intra-state calls if Sprint currently offers this in your lata. I also grilled them on this specific issue, and they assured me that this was the case. This seems rather odd to me since I am pretty sure Sprint excludes these calls on their residential "Sprint Sense" program. But this whole thing seems like Sprint is going to take a tremendous financial bath, so what the heck. Here in Atlanta it costs as much to make a 70 mile intra-lata call on BellSouth as it does to call Kansas, so I will be making a few intra-lata calls on Friday. One last caution about this program. Before you start making your four-hour calls to Gaum on Friday, be sure that your account with Sprint is Business Sense, and that your free Fridays are enabled. I called them today (Friday), and inquired as to the status of my account. I was told that I was indeed on Business Sense, but my free Fridays did not start until *next* Friday. Had I not made that call, this could have been a very expensive Friday. Les lreeves@crl.com Atlanta,GA 404.874.7806 404.875.1273 ISDN Voice 404.875.1274 ISDN Data/Fax [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They may be telling people it is necessary to be a business customer, but I wonder how they would be in any position to define what a 'business customer' is? I would say even if it is necessary to default a line over to them that is not a bad tradeoff. Give them one of your lines you don't use very often -- except on Friday of course! I guess to avoid the aggravation of arguing with them over whether or not residence phones can be included it is better to just mention that you work from home and operate your business there. Les, do you know if there is any minimum length of time one has to be on the program? In other words do you have to stay on for a full year in order to get all the Fridays credited back to you for example? Can you stay on for a month, get four Fridays of free calls and then drop out? PAT] ------------------------------ From: tdziecho@uunet.uu.net (Tim Dziechowski) Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint Organization: PictureTel Corp. Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 01:23:50 GMT In article , leob@best.com (Leonid A. Broukhis) says: > Go to http://www.sprint.com/ then to the Business Sense > International (which will bring you to > http://www.sprintbiz.com/cgi-bin/qfridays.cgi ) and tell us _where_ > does it say anything about residence phones. If it sounds too good > to be true, it isn't. Yesterday I called Sprint's business 800 line and switched my SOHO home business line to Sprint. The salesman asked me if I wanted to switch my residence line too, so I did. It gets better: I only have to pony up $50/month for _both_ lines. So starting next Friday I'll be netsurfing until midnight on one line while my wife calls all her relatives in Colombia, SA. Unless of course, she notices the "conference" button on my AT&T 2-line 9132... ;-( timd@pictel.com (Tim Dziechowski) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Another person wrote to me asking 'what are you trying to do, cause Sprint to go bankrupt?'. Believe me, it would take a lot of people signing up for Free Fridays to make that happen, but it will be fun to see them sit and re-think this crazy promotion after it has been running for awhile. As Les points out, after signing up, be certain to check the next Friday to make sure you are installed on 'Business Sense' before you start making a pig of yourself. In his case, it took until the second Friday after enrollment before Free Fridays started. Don't get caught unaware! PAT] ------------------------------ From: spiegel@din.bellcore.com (Murray F Spiegel) Subject: Call for Papers: IVTTA (Voice Technol for Telecommunications) Date: 12 Jan 1996 21:04:51 GMT Organization: Speech Technology Research Group (Bellcore) Reply-To: spiegel@bellcore.com CALL FOR PAPERS THIRD IEEE WORKSHOP ON INTERACTIVE VOICE TECHNOLOGY FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS APPLICATIONS September 30 - October 1, 1996 The AT&T Learning Center 300 N Maple Ave Basking Ridge, NJ 07920 USA Sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society The conference venue is on 35 semi-rural acres and is close enough (1 hour) for side trips to New York City. Our workshop will be held immediately before ICSLP '96 in Philadelphia, PA, approximately 80 miles from our location. The IVTTA workshop brings together application researchers planning to conduct or who have recently conducted field trials of new applications of speech recognition, speaker indentity verification, text-to-speech synthesis over the telephone network. The workshop will explore promising opportunities for applications and attempt to identify areas where further research is needed. Topic areas of interest: - ASR/verification systems for the cellular environment - User interface / human factors of applying speech to telecommunications tasks - Language modeling and dialog design for "audio-only" communication - Experimental interactive systems for telecommunication applications - Experience in deployment & assessment of deployed ASR/verification systems - Text-to-speech applications in the network - Speech enhancement for telecommunications applications - Telephone services for the disabled - Architectures for speech-based services Prospective authors should submit 1-page abstracts of no more than 400 words for review. Submissions should include a title, authors' names, affiliations, address, telephone and fax numbers and email address if any. Please indicate the topic area of interest closest to your submission. Camera-ready full papers (maximum of 6 pages) will be published in the proceedings distributed at the workshop. Due to workshop facility constraints, attendance will be limited with priority given to authors with accepted contributions. For further information about the workshop, please contact: Dr. Murray Spiegel, Bellcore, 445 South Street, Morristown, NJ 07960 USA Phone: 1-201-829-4519; Fax: 1-201-829-5963; E-mail: spiegel@bellcore.com For full information, visit our web page: http://superbook.bellcore.com/IVTTA.html Send abstracts (fax or email preferred) to: Dr. David Roe IEEE IVTTA '96 AT&T Bell Laboratories Murray Hill, NJ 07974 USA Phone: 1-908-582-2548; Fax: 1-908-582-3306 E-mail: roe@hogpb.att.com SCHEDULE Abstracts due (400 words, maximum 1 page): Mar 15, 1996 Notification of acceptance: May 1, 1996 Submission of photo-ready paper (maximum 6 pages): Jun 15, 1996 Advance registration to be received before: Jun 15, 1996 Late registration cut-off: Aug 30, 1996 IVTTA '96 Evening welcoming reception: Sep 29, 1996 IVTTA '96 Conference: Sep 30 & Oct 1, 1996 WEB PAGE Check our web page for late breaking news and developments: http://superbook.bellcore.com/IVTTA.html REGISTRATION INFORMATION Early registration (prior to June 15, 1996): Day-only: $390 Full: $650 Late registration (Jun 15 - Aug 30, 1996): Day-only: $465 Full: $725 IEEE members: charges are $25 less Additional proceedings: $25 Day-only registration includes all technical sessions, welcoming reception, lunches, snacks, banquet, and a copy of the proceedings. Full registration includes all of the above plus: dinner on evening of arrival, breakfast both days, two nights lodging at the conference center, and use of the center facilities (jogging track, exercise center, pool, etc). WORKSHOP COMMITTEE GENERAL CHAIR REGISTRATION & FINANCE Candace Kamm Dick Rosinski AT&T Bell Laboratories AT&T Bell Laboratories cak@research.att.com rrr@arch4.att.com PROGRAM CHAIRS PUBLICITY David Roe Murray Spiegel AT&T Bell Laboratories Bellcore roe@hogpb.att.com spiegel@bellcore.com George Vysotsky LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS NYNEX Science & Technology David Pepper george@nynexst.com Bellcore dpepper@bellcore.com INTERNATIONAL STEERING COMMITTEE Sadaoki Furui, NTT PROCEEDINGS Matthew Lennig, BNR Jay Naik David Roe, AT&T Bell Laboratories NYNEX Science & Technology Christel Sorin, CNET naik@nynexst.com George Vysotsky, NYNEX ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jan 96 11:53:12 EST From: Scott Robohn Subject: Blizzard of 96 - Phone Service in Northern Virginia As we continue to have more snow dumped on us here in Northern Virginia (Bailey's Crossroad's), I saw Pat's request to keep him updated on how the weather is affecting phone and other network service. So here goes. We've been getting fast busy signals intermittenly all week, especially to the south and southwest parts of Fairfax County. At one point on Tuesday, I'd been trying to call my wife ('S') with no success (fast busy). My colleague lives a mile or two away from the office and we had no problem calling his wife ('D') at home. D kept _gently_ reminding me that it was snowing more and more and that if I got stuck at the office tonight, S would be all alone with the kids. So, D called S on their cell phone and called me on her cordless phone and held two handsets together! Wasn't perfect, but it worked. Way to go, Cellular One. And no, I didn't get stuck that night. Internet access has been a problem, too. Web access and file downloads have been _real_ slow. We have a T1 from this building to a local provider; hardly anyone has been here this week, so I figure it must be everyone snowed in playing with their new Christmas present PCs. Drive safely. Scott Robohn robohns@ncr.disa.mil [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A federal government employee remarked to me that, 'the first scheduled day back to work since the middle of December a month ago, and then it gets cancelled as well from the snow emergency ...' He was at work Thursday, may or may not have made it in Friday, and of course Monday is a legal national holiday, although the federal employee I was speaking with said a lot of his co-workers and himself had been told they could go into work on Monday if they wanted even though the offices would not be open to the public. Quite a few federal people apparently will go in on Monday just to try and organize the mountains of past due work waiting them and prepare themselves for an incredible Tuesday when most will be overwhelmed with members of the public waiting in line for service, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 12:21:46 -0500 From: sullivan@interramp.com (John M. Sullivan) Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! Our Esteemed Moderator wrote: > That was our 'storm of the century' now 29 years ago. Lots of stories > came out of it (people stuck on CTA busses in high drifts for several > hours; one woman giving birth on a CTA bus because it was impossible > to get out of the bus and get to a hospital), and I imagine a lot of > stories will be heard about the east coast blizzard in the years to > come. Oh yeah, we're getting all of those, and it isn't over yet. Most of the above ground portion of the metro system was shut down for a couple days. This was after one train slid into another in the yard a couple of miles from where I live early in the storm and killed the operator. That night around midnight a train on what I gather must have been the last scheduled run got stuck on the tracks with about 200 people on board. They sent a rescue train out to offload the passengers but that got stuck too. They were only about 3000 feet from the next station and some people apparently wanted to walk out, but the crew wouldn't open the doors because they were afraid of people stumbling around snow covered tracks in the dark and getting electrocuted. They ended up being stuck there in the cold and the dark until the Metro authority managed to get a locomotive up to pull them back to the last clear station at around 6:30 the next morning. After that they didn't send any trains above ground at all for a couple days, which effectively cut off the suburbs. We also had a miraculous birth story (seems you can't have a serious storm without one of those). Woman went into labor in Arlington late at night so her husband packed her into the car and tried to make the hospital. The car got stuck in a snowbank, still quite a long way from the hospital, and they started walking through heavy snow in the middle of the night, stopping every few minutes for her contractions. They finally got picked up by a father and son in a pickup truck who actually work at George Washington University hospital and were trying to get in. So they got her to the hospital in time for the delivery and were the heroes of the moment. The whole city was pretty much shut down. Maryland and Virginia were doing a reasonable job of keeping the main arteries as clear as possible -- which frankly wasn't all that clear -- but of course DC has no money, and a lot of the city streets were impassable. The National Guard lent the police dept. 14 Hummers with drivers to get officers around to emergencies, and they even had three armored personnel carriers busting through snow at one point. The mail didn't get delivered for a couple days. Garbage pickups still haven't resumed. Several roofs collapsed. They had to evacuate a nursing home to a nearby hotel when the dining room roof buckled. Fortunately there were no serious power outages. By Wednesday I managed to get into the office (my newsletter was supposed to have gone out on Tuesday -- first time its been late in the two years I've been writing it). They had a couple lanes clear on the interstates, but the merging lanes on the ramps didn't exist anymore. There was just a single plowed channel that dropped you straight into traffic, so cars were lined up WAY back as the driver of the lead car would cautiously inch around the edge of the huge snowbank until he could see (praying all the while that he wouldn't get clipped by something first), and then dart out when it was clear. Most people stayed home Wed. however, so it wasn't bad other than that. Thursday totally sucked. Everyone decided they could no longer justify staying home, and the Federal government re-opened since they'd all been home forever and were chomping at the bit. The roads were indeed passable, but could only handle a fraction of their normal capacity because they mostly had at least one lane still under snow and another that would disappear from time to time as the bank edged out and forced cars over into the next lane. The normal 15 minute drive to work took me an hour and a half and that was by avoiding the interstate entirely and taking back roads. The beltway was a parking lot. One of my managing editors took 5 hours to get in, 2 of which were spent covering two miles on the Dulles Toll Road. Frankly I preferred the snow. (And I got my wish too!) And here's the telecom angle. We never had any trouble with the wireline network, but Thursday when half of Washington spent half the day parked out on the beltway the cellular networks were totally jammed. The aforementioned managing editor couldn't get a call through from the toll road (in Virginia) to our office on the Maryland side at all. He finally managed to get a call through to his house in Virginia and had his wife call the office via Bell Atlantic to tell them where he was. The evening rush was just as bad. I should point out for the "PCS has a rocky road" crowd that I never had any trouble with my Sprint Spectrum phone though. Used it couple of times during the day and the only time I had a problem was when I was trying to call a cellphone on Bell Atlantic Mobile. First time the network just said the hell with it, try again later. The second time it rang the phone but only gave me about three rings before it dropped me with an announcement that the party I was trying to call was not available. I don't follow cellular that much -- is that standard or will it usually let the phone ring until you give up? So anyway now it's Friday and snowing again. Everybody stayed home and the roads are terrible. Part of the beltway is closed because no less than 4 semis are jacknifed in a short stretch known locally as the Rock Creek rollercoaster. All the local airports are closed, a plane slid off the runway at Dulles, but nobody was hurt. It's disaster land all over again! We're only supposed to get another 4-10 inches or so this time, though (See, we've already gotten blase), and I expect we'll be back to normal by Monday. john sullivan sullivan@interramp.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, don't forget Monday is a federal holiday (Martin Luther King Day) and federal agencies will be closed. That will affect some of the 'normalacy' on Monday. I am told some agencies are asking workers who want to come in on Monday to do so to try and organize themselves without a massive crunch from the public. Then what happens on Tuesday? Will it snow again, or will the money run out again? ... PAT] ------------------------------ From: taylorj@ecs.ecs.csus.edu (Jon M. Taylor) Subject: Re: SDSL v. ADSL Date: 12 Jan 1996 00:42:38 GMT Organization: California State University, Sacramento In article , Peter Brace wrote: > Is there really much commercial difference between SDSL and ADSL? AFAIK, ADSL is (as the name implies) asymmetric -- you get much more downstream bandwidth to you than you can send back. It was thought up a couple of years ago when the "interactive TV" thing was all the rage and everyone thought that the future of the information superhighway was 500 home-shopping channels for couch potatos. Now that the extremely rapid growth of the Internet has placed it in the forefront of the datacomm revolution, though, it has become apparent that both downstream and upstream bandwidth are needed in a more equitable balance, and thus we have SDSL. I, too, read the web page where it was claimed that T1/E1 speeds were going to be possible over standard unmodified telco copper wiring with SDSL, but I have yet to hear a detailed explanation of how this is possible without repeaters. > And is SDSL likely to have much of an impact on cable rollout? (i.e. is > coax/fibre no longer needed?? Well, if they can pull off what they claim with SDSL, it would at the very least put off the inevitable task of upgrading the entire worldwide copper phone plant to coax/fiber (and eventually all to fiber). However, even then the laws of physics dictate that you will never be able to cram as much bandwith into a piece of copper wire as you will a glass fiber. Photons are bosons, a class of subatomic particles which can occupy the same space at the same time, and thus can pass though each other without interference (unlike electrons, which are mesons). This means that there is essentially *NO* (theoretical) upper limit on the bandwidth of a glass fiber, because you can send light down the pipe at a huge number of different frequencies and they will not interfere with each other. As long as the equipment at the ends of the fiber can pick out the different frequencies from each other, you have no problems. This is the current bottleneck in fiber-optic networking technologies, because the equipment at the ends of the fiber has to be electronics, which can only switch so fast with current technology. I think that the current upper speed limit is around 10 GBPS, but that may be out of date. Jon Taylor = | ------------------------------ From: gvaeth@netcom.com (Greg Vaeth at General Instrument) Subject: Cellular "Cust. Service" and Fraud Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 17:22:41 GMT Hi, I wanted to relate a few experiences I had recently with my cellular carrier: Week 1: I received a call from customer service confirming receipt of their PIN number mailing and asking if I was ready to activate my PIN. I said, "Wait a minute, your industry has a major theft-of-service problem so you want me to make calling more inconvenient to protect you from revenue loss?" "Oh, no sir," she replied, " This feature is to protect you!" Right, I declined. Week 2 (the day after I returned from Orlando, where I had about 40 minutes of airtime): My wife called me at work to say that she got "number not in service" when she dialed my cellular number. When I called customer service, I was told that my phone had been cloned and the number taken out of service. I was incredulous, thinking I was being punished for declining PIN activation. However, after they told me that someone in Florida cloned my phone, I explained that I made the calls and they reactivated my number. I asked why they had not called me directly, they said that it was not their policy (some other department flags the account, they just take the calls) , but that if I had tried to use the phone the call would have been redirected to customer service!! "So I lose incoming calls and potentially am delayed making an important/emergency call because you "think" I was cloned?" "Sorry, sir, that's our policy." Week 3: I received another call from customer service, this time confirming receipt of their "local security area" service where you have to let them know you're going out of the area so that your phone will work. "Is it optional?", I asked "No sir". I asked to speak to his manager. "Is it optional?", I asked his manager. "Yes it is." I declined. He would give no explanation of why the first guy said it was not optional. Sheesh! I know that fraud eventually costs me in higher rates, but couldn't they be a little more up front about what they're doing? And why is it such a pain in the neck for me when they decide someone else has cloned my phone? Any comments? Regards, Greg [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Any comments? Yes ... for starters, tell your existing carrier they are in violation of their contract with you for causing those interupptions in your service and imposing those special conditions on you after the fact. Close your account with them and go to one of the other carriers such as Frontier, where there are no contracts required and just month by month billing at a less expensive rate. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #15 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Jan 15 17:10:12 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id RAA09669; Mon, 15 Jan 1996 17:10:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 17:10:12 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601152210.RAA09669@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #16 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Jan 96 17:10:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 16 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (David W. Crawford) Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (Glen L. Roberts) Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (Tye McQueen) Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Jodi Weber) Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Shawn Goodin) Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Ed Ellers) Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (John McGing) Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Michael P. Deignan) Re: Blizzard of 96 - Phone Service in Northern Virginia (Lee Winson) Re: Blizzard of 96 (Dave Levenson) Re: Unusual Radio Promotion (Dave Levenson) Re: Unusual Radio Promotion (Ed Ellers) Re: Unusual Radio Promotion (jtassi@cts.com) New India Telecom Mailing List: india-gii (Arun Mehta via Monty Solomon) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: David W. Crawford Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint Date: 15 Jan 1996 12:28:46 -0500 Organization: Woo Studios Ltd. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They may be telling people it is > necessary to be a business customer, but I wonder how they would > be in any position to define what a 'business customer' is? I would > say even if it is necessary to default a line over to them that is > not a bad tradeoff. Give them one of your lines you don't use very > often -- except on Friday of course! I guess to avoid the aggravation > of arguing with them over whether or not residence phones can be > included it is better to just mention that you work from home and > operate your business there. Les, do you know if there is any > minimum length of time one has to be on the program? In other words > do you have to stay on for a full year in order to get all the > Fridays credited back to you for example? Can you stay on for a > month, get four Fridays of free calls and then drop out? PAT] So you tell Sprint, the long distance carrier, which will serve your residence (and under this scheme, Sprint will serve your residence even if you maintain another carrier as the default for 1+dialed calls) that you want business long distance service (Sprint Business Sense) at your residence. Is there a hazard that your LEC (the LEC is involved in the billing of the long distance service, right ?) will reclassify your household phone service from residential line to a more expensive business line ? EndNote: I have a collection of Sprint calling cards; every time I applied, I received a T-shirt and 30 free minutes within US evening calls, plus 'surprise bonuses'. The last 'surprise bonus' was that I could call anywhere within the US for one hour -- on Halloween between 8 and 9pm only -- for free. So I placed a call, but after 20 minutes of 'all circuits are busy' messages I gave up. David W. Crawford [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe that is how they handle calls on Friday; constantly bouncing them back with 'all circuits busy' ... If what Les Reeves says is correct, that a business account with the local telco is not needed, then your question becomes a moot point. If they do bother to verify that, then you have to decide for yourself if the change in your status is warranted or not. PAT] ------------------------------ From: glr@ripco.com (Glen L. Roberts) Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint Reply-To: glr@ripco.com Organization: Full Disclosure Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 17:34:20 GMT lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves) wrote: > Leonid A. Broukhis (leob@best.com) wrote: >> Go to http://www.sprint.com/ then to the Business Sense >> International (which will bring you to >> http://www.sprintbiz.com/cgi-bin/qfridays.cgi ) and tell us _where_ >> does it say anything about residence phones. If it sounds too good >> to be true, it isn't. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They may be telling people it is > necessary to be a business customer, but I wonder how they would > be in any position to define what a 'business customer' is? I would > say even if it is necessary to default a line over to them that is > not a bad tradeoff. Give them one of your lines you don't use very > often -- except on Friday of course! I guess to avoid the aggravation > of arguing with them over whether or not residence phones can be > included it is better to just mention that you work from home and > operate your business there. Les, do you know if there is any > minimum length of time one has to be on the program? In other words > do you have to stay on for a full year in order to get all the > Fridays credited back to you for example? Can you stay on for a > month, get four Fridays of free calls and then drop out? PAT] They told me there was a $50/month usage minimum to qualify for Free Fridays, and that I was limited to $1000/month on Fridays, and that the free calling lasts for a year. I might think they meant $1000/year max not $1000/month max. I signed up and sent them a letter to confirm their statements to me. Links, Downloadable Programs, Catalog, Real Audio & More on Web Full Disclosure [Live] -- Privacy, Surveillance, Technology! (Over 140 weeks on the Air!) The Net Connection -- Listen in Real Audio on the Web! http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~glr/glr.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: $1000 per month does not come close to $1000 per year does it, either in the math or the syntax. Granted, it seems like quite a deal; I wonder how they are going to weasel out of it when the promotion becomes widely known, as has certainly happened by its discussion in this forum. Poor Sprint; they never seem to learn do they? Remember how screwed up their whole operation used to be back in the days right after their original owner (remember, it was named for the outhern

acific ailroad nternal etwork ele- communications service at the SPRR) sold it? You would think that fiasco with the free fax modem promotion a couple years ago would have gotten them wised-up. PAT] ------------------------------ From: tye@metronet.com (Tye McQueen) Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint Date: 14 Jan 1996 01:01:32 -0600 Organization: Texas Metronet, Inc (login info (214/705-2901 - 817/571-0400)) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > The bottom line is if you call Sprint at that number and agree to be > billed a minimum of fifty per month for long distance calls for one > year, you can have up to a thousand dollars per month in free calls as > long as you make the calls on Friday. That is 50*12=600 versus 1000* > 12=12,000, a difference of $11,400. I believe the free calls on Friday are also limited to being less than or equal to the value of calls during that week. This limits your savings to 50% at most. I got this impression from subtle wording in the TV commercials. Tye McQueen tye@metronet.com || tye@doober.usu.edu Nothing is obvious unless you are overlooking something http://www.metronet.com/~tye/ (scripts, links, nothing fancy) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Hmmmm ... anyone else get this impression or actually get told this by a Sprint rep? PAT] ------------------------------ From: jweber@cbnews.att.com Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 13:37:16 EST Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! Pat - On the Sunday and Monday (January 7 and 8) of the heavier blizzard (as compared to what's coming down today), I got the "All circuits are busy" interrupt throughout a good part of each day trying to place calls from 908 to 201 (intraLATA stuff in Bell Atlantic territory). Jodi Weber jodiweber@attmail.com or jweber@cbnews.cb.att.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 07:46:44 EST From: root@proclt.vnet.net (Shawn Goodin) Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! Organization: pro-charlotte gateway, Charlotte, NC Hello from Charlotte, NC! We were on the tail end of the storm -- as a transplanted Northerner (you probably remember me from the Suburban Round Table, and I talked to you earlier this year about Microsoft's phone system), I expected the storm to have some effect on the telecommunications system and the area businesses. As it turned out, while there were some expected delays due to busy circuits on long distance trunks and on cellular, I considered them to be pretty minimal. Charlotte, however, was hit by a one to four inches or so of snow, and an inch or two of ice. In my area, I had maybe an inch of snow and an inch or so of ice, but that is enough to paralyze this city. They don't plow streets here unless it's a significant snowfall (more than six inches). They instead use a mixture of sand, slag (cinders?) and salt to melt any snow/ice. Problem was, it was too cold for salt to be truly effective, and the schools in the Charlotte area were closed from Monday through Friday, with various teacher workdays now rescheduled as make-up days. One of those make-up days is Memorial Day (and this was to be the first year in quite a while for kids to get Memorial Day off. Not this year (again). It was infuriating to see the main thoroughfares essentially clear of most ice/slush/snow, yet still have the schools closed. The issue here is the safety of the kids -- with many secondary and side/neighborhood streets still covered with ice, it was deemed too dangerous for school buses to safely travel (Charlotte-Mecklenburg buses approximately 33,000 students every day). With temperatures this weekend in the 50's, it's expected that everything else out there will melt, and schools will finally reopen on Monday. A much smaller storm came through Thursday night/Friday morning. Lines in the grocery stores were seven or eight carts deep as shoppers prepared for being snowed out another week (grin) despite the forecast of much warmer temperatures for Friday and the weekend. Much of what fell Friday was gone by Saturday afternoon. Wonder what they do with all of that extra bread, milk, and toilet paper. Shawn Goodin -- KD4QGZ Charlotte, NC CompuServe: 76703,1034 root@proclt.vnet.net shawng@vnet.net shawng@pro-charlotte.vnet.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Of course I remember the Suburban Round Table; and there was also the BBS that Herb Zite used to operate as well on the same software; I think his was called the Chicago Round Table. Several sysops used Bill Blue's software which was called the "People's Message System" or PMS for short. That's what we had running on the BBS I maintained for the Chicago Public Library in the early 1980's. I bet it is fun watching their reaction in the south to the smallest little bit of snow, isn't it? We had about four inches here over the weekend and no one thought anything of it at all. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 10:33:47 In article , TELECOM Digest Editor said: > Later that day I had my picture taken by an enterprising fellow who would > take your picture with a Polaroid Instamatic Camera standing on top of a ten > foot high pile of snow which had been scooped over to the side of the road > if you gave him a dollar. You may be thinking of a Polaroid Automatic camera -- Instamatic was Kodak's trademark, even though Motorola had used Insta-Matic as a trademark before them. The Polaroid cameras in 1966 were called the Automatic 100 through the Automatic 104 (not counting the Swinger). These days a dollar wouldn't even pay for the FILM for such a venture! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are probably right. I don't remember what it was for sure. I do remember the next day was Sunday; four or five of my friends and I rode the Illinois Central Suburban Electric Train (now it is called 'Metra') from Hyde Park to downtown Chicago. We got off at the Jackson/Adams station downtown. At the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street next to the Art Institute and directly across from Orchestra Hall was another *huge* mound but in this case some people from the Art Institute had created some marvelous sculptures out of snow on the top of that mound. They took pictures also for anyone who wanted it, standing in the 'doorway' of an Igloo they had created up there. Television was still relatively unsophisticated and remote broadcasts always took a bit of effort to handle, so as always in the alley behind Orchestra Hall was the big semi-trailer truck from Illinois Bell and their crew, with the guys from WTTW/Channel 11 and they were having a snowball fight. Funny, isn't it, how some things from long ago stand out so clearly in your mind. Nothing like that storm since. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 23:18:47 -0500 From: John McGing Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! Reply-To: jmcging@access.digex.net Pat, Just a note from an ex-Chicagoan who delivered his papers during that 1967 storm. I was telling my wife about the evening papers being dropped off at the intersection of Diversy and Austin (I had a four block walk to that intersection). I tied a big box to my flexible flyer sled and pulled the thing to the drop off point and folded my papers and ended up doing two routes. I went from Diversy to almost Belmont, from Austin to Narragansett. Steinmetz HS is in that square, and I tried to shortcut to one of my last customers by cutting across the field there. Bad move. Anyway, I probably delivered papers for six hours that day, I know it was very late and dark when I got back but luckily people did let me warm up and give me warm drinks. At the corner of Diversey and Moody a CTA bus was abandoned and was drifted over; when the city started to come alive the biggest wrecker I ever saw pulled that bus out but Diversey was one lane for days. My customers did get their papers. I delivered all the afternoon papers, the {Daily News, Chicago American, Chicago Today (successor to the American}). Course, you at least did something socially useful but you're also a bit older than me :) BTW, no papers delivered here for four days in a row. ;) John jmcging@access.digex.net Nobody knows the troubles I've seen JOHN.PF on GEnie Team OS/2 .... and nobody cares! http://www.access.digex.net/~jmcging [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had two newspaper routes when I was eleven and twelve years old; I guess 1953 or so. On my morning route I had the {Chicago Tribune} and the {Chicago Sun Times}. I guess I had about fifty customers, and I had three or four who got the {Wall Street Journal}. On my afternoon route I had about a hun- dred customers (some were also morning customers) who got the {Chicago Daily News} and the {Chicago Herald-American}. About a dozen of the afternoon customers got miscellanous stuff; there were three or four for the {Christian Science Monitor} and a couple who got that Polish newspaper, the {Daily Zygoda}. I had a wagon I pushed along with the distributor's name, "Charles Levy Circulating Company" on the side, and a nice warm jacket they gave me to wear with their logo on it. I got paid based on collections. I had to turn in a certain amount to the company, via the driver who brought my stack of papers twice each day. Everything over that was mine. I went around to each customer once a week to get the money for the papers from the week before. I had some who only got the Sunday paper; some who got it every day, etc. Long after I gave up my routes they changed the pro- cedure and started billing for the papers from the office, having the customers remit direct, mainly because so many of the kids were getting their money stolen by guys on the street who would rob them. Oh, I almost forgot! We had {TV Guide} magazine every Wednesday, with television listings starting two or three days later. Those were fifteen cents each and I got a nickle for each one. When I was nine years old I had a {Saturday Evening Post} route, if you remember that weekly magazine founded by Benjamin Franklin. I had about twenty people on my route, and took them their copy every Saturday. They sent the magazines to our house by parcel post to arrive every Thursday or Friday, and I was to deliver them on Saturday unless it was a holiday in which case I could take them around on Friday. Each person paid ten cents at the time of delivery and I sent the company five cents for each copy I sold. "We trust you!" they said in their recruitment ad for sales people. "As long as you promise to pay us for the copies we send and do so, we will send you more copies each week." If you had any left over copies unsold you tore off a portion of the front cover with the date and sent it in with your payment for the rest. {TV Guide} also used kids as independent salesmen for their weekly publication back in those days. I never had that until they finally started doing it through Levy Circulating. Then some kids had that only, but I had it for delivery with the Wednesday newspapers to whoever subscribed. A friend of mine had a Time/Life route. He delivered {Time Magazine} door to door to 'his customers' on one day each week and its com- panion publication {Life Magazine} another day each week. Overall I earned about five or six dollars per week on my newspaper route. When I was younger my {Saturday Evening Post} route brought me about a dollar or two each week. Once a year, Illinois Bell also hired kids to deliver the new phone books and pick up the old ones. I don't remember what they paid, but it was something like ten cents for each new book out/old book returned. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kd1hz@anomaly.ideamation.com (Michael P. Deignan) Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! Date: 12 Jan 1996 17:46:00 -0500 Organization: Ideamation, Inc. The only problems I had with phone service during the Blizzard was I couldn't connect to my Internet Service Provider for several hours. Other than that, if you didn't look outside, you wouldn't have known anything was going on by picking up the phone. That said, let me think back ... I've "lived" through two "great blizzards". The first one occured in February 1978, when we got something like three feet of snow in a 36 hour period. I was 14 years old at the time. I still remember watching John Ghiorse, the Channel 10 weatherman, (who is still alive and well and on Channel 6 today) telling everyone it was "just going to be flurries, an inch or two at most." Well, 7:30am arrived, and I had to leave for school. School was about a mile away from my house, living in Providence, RI, and none of the radio stations had any school cancellations. So, I left the house with my friend Patrick, determined to make it to school. The snow was really coming down hard, and we had a couple inches on the ground as we walked to schoo. By the time we made it to school (close to 8:30), it was pretty clear that this wasn't going to be "flurries". We went inside, only to find all the students who had shown up (about 100 of us) all clustered in the lunch room. It seemed that most of the staff had not shown up, so we couldn't go to our home rooms. After sitting in the cafeteria for what seemed like hours, finally we were told to "go home" at 10 am. Both Pat and I proceeded to walk back home, this time with three or four inches of snow on the ground. It took us another 45 minutes. When I got home, naturally all the weathermen were on the channels talking about the storm. Some of them, being "sensationalist", starting talking "blizzard". Our old standby, John Ghiorse, wasn't calling it a blizzard -- yet. He coldly explained that to have a blizzard you had to have certain conditions met, and while we were on the way there, we were not there yet -- technically. The snow continued. Offices let people out early. Traffic jammed on the highways. People couldn't get off the exit ramps, and others abandoned their cars in the middle of the highway. Roads clogged. Everything came to a stand-still. People were stranded, others braved the walk home. My father, a 14-year veteran of the Providence Police force, walked home from downtown -- about a three mile walk. I went to bed. It was still snowing. When I woke up, we had something like 37 inches of snow. Drifts literally travelled up the sides of houses. Both of our doors were snowed in ... I had to crawl out of a side window to get out of the house and start digging out the doors. After digging for a few hours, I decided to go visit a friend down the street. No problem, I think -- its only one city block away. Yeah. Snow was up to my chest. I walked to Jeff's house, it took me almost an hour to get there. After warming up, I started the trek home. Sometime that first afternoon, some snowmobiles ran up and down the streets, making a compressed trail to walk in. It made travelling easier, but not by much. None of the main streets were plowed. People couldn't get in to work to go plow. My father, who had walked home the day before, couldn't get in to work. The whole state came to a stand-still. People were stranded at firehouses, hospitals, and stranger's homes. Funny, now that I look back, the phones were pretty busy too. You had to wait for a minute or two to get a dial tone. Not that it made much sense to me at the time :-) Eventually things got back to normal. On the third day the major roads in the area were plowed, and we were able to take a sled and go shopping. It was a truely eerie feeling walking down the middle of Smith Street, one of the major arteries running into Providence, and simply having the street crowded with people -- no cars. On the way to the store, we came across several people -- neighbors -- helping a man shovel his car out of the middle of the street -- apparently he couldn't get it off the road, and he got stuck facing towards his house. I remember we had to walk up the snow bank on one side they were shovelling, and over to the other side -- the banks had to be seven feet high. Finally on the fifth day, the catepillars started working their way through our neighborhood. We had huge four or five foot mounds along the side of the road. At intersections they would create four huge mounds on each corner -- these had to be ten feet high. I think we still have pictures around somewhere. They made great snow forts. About seven days later, everything was pretty much back to normal. ... Fade ahead 17 years ... On to the great blizzard of '96. I really wouldn't call this a Blizzard. More like a snow squall. If you want a Blizzard, go to Alaska where the annual snowfall is over 600 inches! Now *THAT* is alot of snow! For this blizzard, things are a bit different. Now I'm thirty, and talk about irony -- I work for the Providence Police Department (dad has long since retired on disability due to getting shot on a drug raid), but not as a cop, instead as Director of MIS. Most people don't realize that Providence is the second largest city in New England, with Boston being the first. Overall, we received 24 inches of snow over a day and a half (Sunday and Monday). We got about 16" by 8 AM on Monday, with another 8" by the time things wrapped up Monday nite. Monday morning arrived, and unlike everyone else, I had to drive to work. Unfortunately, working in Public Safety I didn't get the luxury to stay home. Most people did decide to stay home, though. Probably just as well that they did. Cars on the roads would have gotten stuck, and made clean-up alot harder. Despite the fact that the streets had been plowed sometime during the night, they still had about 4" of standing snow on them. I live in Providence, about a city block from Smith Street (the same from '78) in the same neighborhood I grew up in as a kid. By the time I reached Smith Street, the roads were in decent shape -- I certainly wouldn't have wanted to drive without my Ford Explorer though. I made it to work, with my stop at Dunkin Donuts and all, in less than 20 minutes. Telecom-wise, things held up pretty good. No outages, although the part of the DMS-100 switch the city leases from Nynex did get clogged with calls from people wanting to know when their streets were going to get plowed. By Tuesday, things were pretty much back to normal. Alot of the streets still have standing snow, but are passable. All of the major roads are down to bare pavement. It is snowing right now, but it is going to change to rain (supposedly) and make ice-mountains of everything around here. Overall, I have to say that Providence and the State of RI faired pretty well. I see accounts on the National news about neighborhoods still buried in DC and I think back to the '78 blizzard. I think we faired pretty well for three reasons: 1. John Ghiorse didn't predict flurries. He didn't predict 2' of snow either, but that's beside the point. 2. The bulk of the snow occured on a weekend, and we were well into the snowstorm by the time people had to commute. 3. When commute time arrived people were not at work this time, they were already at home. Welp, that's about it from here. MD ------------------------------ From: turner7@pacsibm.org (Lee Winson) Subject: Re: Blizzard of 96 - Phone Service in Northern Virginia Date: 13 Jan 1996 21:07:30 GMT Organization: PACS IBM SIG BBS In the Philadelphia area, which got 30 inches of snow, phone service remained ok. I had a few situations of busy circuits. No wait for dial tone. On Friday we had a second storm, and my calls from the suburbs to the city couldn't get through on account of busy circuits. The busy circuit recording was irritating since it rang about 6 times before the recording came on. IMHO, whenever telephone circuits get close to capacity for whatever reason, the phone company should announce on radio/TV asking people to defer using the phone for a while. This is prevent busy circuits or no dial tone blocking urgent calls to get through. If lines get really crowded, the phone company should announce that only emergency calls should be made. During storms, there is tremendous phone traffic. Much of it is important -- cancelling appointments, arrangements for transportation, baby sitters, etc. But much of it is social -- people stranded in the house chatting, or people chatting about the storm. If there is enough capacity in the network in a storm to accomodate social chitchat, fine, but not at the expense of delaying dial tone. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Back in the days of step-by-step and panel type central phone exchanges, there were a couple here in Chicago which were notorious for taking a long time to return a busy signal. With luck, if someone's line was busy you got a busy signal then and there. But quite often, it would ring anywhere from one to three or four times and *then* the busy signal would cut in. I think what you were experiencing was it was taking a long time merely to get an available intercept recording circuit. Telco usually does announce on the radio and television about these things. Once about 1950 when I was little, the operators at Illinois Bell went on strike. They called it a 'wildcat strike', meaning the union had not authorized it. The operators were protesting the new automatic dialing. Most offices in Chicago had been converted but there were still two or three manual central offices, and those operators were both hearing (and spreading) unfounded rumors that the company planned to finish the automation and fire all the oper- ators. They all walked off the job for two days, and during that time if you picked up your phone (in a manual central office) or dialed the code to reach that office (from one which had been automated) a recording came on the line immediatly saying 'due to a labor dispute between our employees and the company, we are only able to handle emergency calls at this time. If your call is not an emergency, please hang up now. If it is an emergency, please hold and supervisory person- nell will respond as soon as possible.' Illinois Bell tried to bring in spare operators from other central offices to fill in for the strikers but most of the ladies were afraid to cross the line, knowing they would have to work with the strikers later on. PAT] ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: The Blizzard of 96 Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 15:02:00 GMT Here are one man's observations on the `Blizzard of 96': Here in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City, we got between two and three feet of snow within about 24 hours. Governor Whitman declared a state-wide emergency under which it became illegal to operate a motor vehicle other than for emergency services. (I have not heard of anybody actually being given a summons for driving, but they were ticketing cars which got stuck in the snow.) The emergency in New Jersey was lifted after about 24 hours; in New York, 48 hours. The snow was of the `light and fluffy' variety -- not too hard to shovel, and not particularly destructive to overhead utility lines. There were no widespread power, telephone, or cable TV outages. It was transportation, both public and private, that got hit hard. Rail and bus service nominally operated on weekend schedules, but it was hard to tell that it operated at all. (The New York Subways operated normally, except for those lines which run above ground.) One of our customers operates a fleet of several hundred armored trucks. They stayed off the streets in NJ on Monday. It was their first service outage in decades. Some ATM machines ran out of cash; probably some bank branches would have run out, but they were mostly closed. At the customer's request, we used remote access to their computer systems to re-route scheduled coin and currency shipments for delivery one day late. Several roofs collapsed, mostly flat roofs on large retail and industrial buildings. A fire in an industrial building in Elizabeth, NJ was probably not caused by the blizzard, but the firefighters were surely hampered by the conditions. Injuries occurred in traffic accidents. Heart-attacks occurred as people performed physical work (mostly with shovels) beyond their normal levels. Our COCOTs saw a significant drop in revenue as the public stayed home or indoors. By the third day, revenue was back to normal weekday levels on all but one of our phones. That one (on a drive-up pedestal in Rahway, NJ) came back to life a couple of days later, when the roadway it serves was cleared of snow. Friday, a little more snow (we hardly noticed!) followed by some rain. Today (Saturday), the temperature is supposed to hit 40 in the city, and upper thirties in the 'burbs. We expect some local flooding as the snow begins to melt. Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave Stirling, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 [The Man in the Mooney] ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: Unusual Radio Promotion Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 14:22:10 GMT Mike Harpe (mike@hermes.louisville.edu) writes: > WHAS-AM 840 here in Louisville is starting a rather unusual radio > promotion that I thought the Digest readers would have some thoughts > on ... > It's simple ... they are calling pay telephones around town and giving > money to people who answer them. > Is this a proper use of payphones? How would a COCOT operator feel > about this? I would like to hear some opinions. In many jurisdictions, payphones are not permitted to allow incoming calls at all (war on drugs, or something similar). Even where the law permits, many premises-owners ask that their payphones not be arranged to permit incoming calls. It would seem that this promotion would be of limited value in these areas. As a COCOT operator in NJ, we normally don't permit incoming calls unless the premises-owner specifically requests it (usually only if the payphone is indoors, and is the only phone on the premises) and the local ordinances permit it. Unless incoming calls are permitted, we don't advertise the phone number of the instrument, though we don't take any other action to hide it (e.g. Caller*ID will show the number of a payphone that called you, even if it won't accept your callback). Incoming calls occupy our equipment and produce no revenue. If this occupancy reduces the availability of the equipment to revenue-producing outbound callers, then it costs us. It is for this reason that we reduce the revenue commission paid to the premises-owner if incoming calls are permitted. Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave Stirling, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 [The Man in the Mooney] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Dave, I did not know you were a 'bottom- feeder', as we used to say here in the Digest a few years ago. Surely you remember all those messages; why did you not comment back then, or weren't you in the business then? PAT] ------------------------------ From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Subject: Re: Unusual Radio Promotion Date: 14 Jan 1996 01:31:28 GMT Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire] In article , mike@hermes.louisville.edu says: > Is this a proper use of payphones? How would a COCOT operator feel > about this? I would like to hear some opinions. It's hard to say. The COCOT guys wouldn't like it, but I don't know what they could do aside from disabling ringers. Now if these phones are inside places of business this *might* be considered an annoyance call, but out on the street I don't know of anything forbidding it. ------------------------------ From: jtassi@cts.com Subject: Re: Unusual Radio Promotion Date: 15 Jan 1996 17:45:44 GMT Organization: CTS Network Services We put a pay phone in our teenager's room (this really keeps the phone calls down), and I think he would LOVE IT! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 23:38:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New India Telecom Mailing List: india-gii Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM FYI Begin forwarded message: Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 08:56:01 +0530 (GMT+05:30) From: Arun Mehta Subject: india-gii Announcing india-gii, the list that discusses all issues that impact telecom in India, including policy, practice, problems and issues, as well as events happening in the world that directly impact telecom and the growth of the Internet in India. We are planning a seminar on "Indian Telecom Policy in the context of the Global Information Highway: Opportunities and Threats" on 2-3 March, 1996, in New Delhi. Along with leading Indian experts, it is planned to involve international participants through electronic mail. A. What is the status of telecom in India? How does it compare with that of other countries? B. What is the importance of telecom in India's development? What are we losing on account of the poor state of telecom in the country? C. From the perspective of the users what are: 1. Advantages/disadvantages of a long-distance and satellite commun- ication monopoly; 2. Advantages/disadvantages of the concentration of the roles of service provision, policy formulation and industry regulation in one body. D. Changes needed in Indian legislation such as the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 to cater to today's needs and those of the immediate future. E. Indian legislation vis-a-vis rights to privacy, freedom of expression, etc. in cyberspace. F. Implications of new technologies for Indian telecom, specifically: 1. Low-earth orbit communications (Iridium and the like); 2. Spread-spectrum, packet radio and other broadcast technologies. G. Implications of DOT policies and guidelines, such as: 1. Restrictions on interconnection of networks; 2. License fees. H. Implications of the coming together of telecom and entertainment technologies. To susbcribe, send mail to listserv@cpsr.org, and in the body of the message write: subscribe india-gii Newt Gingrich if that happens to be your name, else whatever your name is ... Arun Mehta, B-69 Lajpat Nagar-I, New Delhi-24, India. Phone 6841172,6849103 amehta@doe.ernet.in a.mehta@axcess.net.in amehta@cerf.net http://mahavir.doe.ernet.in/~pinaward/arun.htm "I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."--Gandhi ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #16 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Jan 15 20:04:34 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id UAA24796; Mon, 15 Jan 1996 20:04:34 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 20:04:34 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601160104.UAA24796@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #17 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Jan 96 20:04:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 17 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: 800 Number Abuse Question (Robert Wolf) Re: Reserving 888 Numbers (Rweiss1954@aol.com) 888 Pre-Reservation (Gary Bouwkamp) 800 Replication - It's Now or Never (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Area Code Overlays in Texas Delayed (Lee Winson) Re: Area Code Overlays in Texas Delayed (Joe Isham) Re: Area Code Overlays in Texas Delayed (Tim Hogard) Re: Illegal Cloning Alleged (Pat Martin) Re: Illegal Cloning Alleged (Robert A. Rosenberg) Re: Fridays Are Free With Sprint (Jonathan Edelson) Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Tom Watson) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Robert Wolf Subject: Re: 800 Number Abuse Question Date: 15 Jan 1996 17:40:39 GMT Organization: Millennium Telecom Allen Kass wrote: > I am trying to find out more about the 800 number abuse I have read > about. The 800 number abuse you referred to is commonly called Toll Fraud, and is a common, but serious problem for American businesses. Toll Fraud is defined as 'The illegal use of telecommunication services by someone outside an organization.' This definition includes calls placed with stolen calling card numbers, the 800 number abuse you described, using voice mail systems to place unauthorized international calls, and stolen cellular service. In 1993 there were 35,000 reported cases of toll fraud, costing industry $5 Billion. How much of a risk does a business face from toll fraud? Consider a small business office that is open 8 AM to 6 PM Monday to Friday. If that office only has ten trunks and they are used for stolen international calls during the 62 weekend hours, the business could be billed $62,000 for that one weekend's activity. Companies with more trunks face a larger potential loss. You may wonder who is responsible for the cost of those illegally placed phone calls. The basic rule that applies to telephone service is that whoever has control of the system that placed the call is liable for the cost of the call. Calls placed with telephone calling cards originate in the network, which is controlled by the company issuing the calling card. That company has the ability to monitor calling card usage, and prevent the card from being used. Therefore, the holder of the calling card is not liable for unauthorized calls billed to the card. However, calls that are placed from a company's PBX are billable to that company, even if the call was originated at a pay phone and merely transferred or forwarded by the PBX to some other location. The major long distance carriers all have clauses in their tariffs stipulating that the company owning or leasing the PBX can monitor its usage and take steps to prevent illegal calls from being placed. In some cases where toll fraud bills have exceeded $100,000 and the billed company has contested the invoice, long distance carriers have sued their own customers to collect the contested bills. The carriers always win those lawsuits. Currently, about 80% of the illegal calls are believed to originate in New York City, although that figure is hard to substantiate. To avoid detection call thieves (commonly called phone phreakers) will place a call to an 800 number in some remote city (like St. Louis), use that telephone system to place a call to some other business in another city (say Seattle). Using that phone system they place a call to a business in Los Angeles, and from that phone system place a call to their ultimate destination in some international location. The most commonly called locations are the Caribbean (809 and 441 area codes), Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Russia, China, Egypt, Pakistan, and India. These calls are stolen for two reasons. First, there is the profit motive. International calls that normally cost an average of $1.50 per minute are sold for a cost of $10 for 20 minutes. Buyers line up a many public phone booths to call the family back home. Second, for a variety of reasons, callers want to place calls that can not be traced back to them. Calls placed from someone else's phone system fill that need very nicely. Historically, calling cards were the first method used to place unauthorized calls. Calling card numbers and pins are stolen by scavenging through trash bins (referred to as dumpster diving) or by watching and listening as someone places a call at a pay phone (called shoulder surfing). After losing hundreds of millions of dollars, the carriers began monitoring card usage, and canceling cards when the usage appeared suspicious. When it became more difficult to use stolen calling card numbers, phreakers turned to the PBX as an alternate means of stealing phone service. In this case, the manufacturers of the PBXs had implemented several phone system features that made this task easy. First, Trunk-to-Trunk Transfer was implemented to enable three party calling with two people outside of the system and also to allow people to forward their phones to a remote number. This feature is at the core of all phone system toll fraud. Without trunk-to-trunk transfer, a phreaker must be on the premises to steal phone service (not too useful). Second, Direct Inward System Access (DISA) was implemented to enable traveling executives and sales people to place calls from remote locations and have them billed to the company PBX at the lower PBX rate. This feature often was safeguarded by an access code and a password. These protections are preinstalled by the system manufacturer and often remain unchanged. Even if they are changed, a phreaker with a war dialer can determine the new password and use DISA to place outbound calls that are billed to the PBX owner. Third, many PBXs select which trunk group to connect to an outbound call by means of a Least Cost Routing table. However, some systems allow a caller to bypass the least cost routing algorithm and manually select a trunk by means of a trunk access code. Similar to DISA trunk access codes are preinstalled and seldom changed. When calling restrictions are embedded in Least Cost Routing tabled, phreakers bypass these restrictions by using trunk access codes. Finally, to simplify the task of performing system maintenance, phone system manufacturers provided remote modem access to the phone system maintenance ports. This allowed their technicians to remotely diagnose system problems and turn system features (such as DISA and trunk-to-trunk transfer) on and off remotely. The system's technician ID and password are almost never changed. Phreakers know these passwords and like the technician can access the system remotely to activate DISA and change the DISA password. Phone mail systems expose businesses to two additional threats of toll fraud. First, if a phreaker learns a mailbox password or finds a mailbox without a password, he can record a greeting that says hello, pauses for 10 to 15 seconds and then says 'Yes, operator, I will accept all third party charges.' Later, the caller can place an operator-assisted third party call billed to that number. When the operator calls the billed number to verify, the pre-recorded message accepts the charge for the call. Second, voice mail systems often come with automated attendant capabilities that instruct the caller to enter the called party's extension. The voice mail system then connects to the phone system to transfer the call. If the caller enters extension 900 the phone system interprets the 9 as a request for 'outside' dial tone and connects the call to the public network. The 00 is a request for an operator assisted call. The caller is able to place an operator assisted international call. The major long distance carriers offer toll fraud protection plans under a variety of names. These plans are all insurance policies that will reimburse a company for some losses. They provide protection under specific circumstances. But, like all insurance policies they define which losses are covered and which are not covered. Before you sign up for any plan, be sure you understand the exclusions. Call accounting programs track each outbound call and record the time the call was placed, its duration, and the trunk used to place the call. Some of these programs also provide toll fraud detection capabilities. If you specify your company's typical calling patterns, it will identify exceptions to the pattern and take some predetermined action such as sounding an alarm or paging someone. Early detection combined with quick action will keep toll fraud loss to a minimum, but will not protect you completely. Although it is important to detect toll fraud quickly, it is even more desirable to prevent it from occurring. Prevention can take several forms, but should include: (1) disabling DISA, (2) disabling trunk-to-trunk transfer if business needs allow, (3) disabling use of trunk access codes, (4) limiting access to the maintenance port. This last point is most important. If phreakers can get into the phone system through the maintenance port, they can undo steps 1, 2, and 3. Toll Fraud is an extensive topic with many facets. The above description is generic and just scratches the surface. A telecommunications consultancy like Millennium Telecom can provide specific information about your particular situation. Robert Wolf member: Society of Telecommunications Consultants Millennium Telecom http://www.keyconnect.com/millennium 818-790-7339 Fax 818-790-7309 Consulting in Voice, Video, and Data Communications ------------------------------ From: rweiss1954@aol.com (Rweiss1954) Subject: Re: Reserving 888 Numbers Date: 15 Jan 1996 11:45:13 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Some IXC's are beginning to take reservations. I heard LCI is beginning to take reservations in February. Reply to me if you need specific information. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 15:49:11 EST From: Gary Bouwkamp Subject: Re: Reserving 888 Numbers In TELECOM Digest V16 #13 Bob Schwartz asked: > Has anyone got advice on how to reserve an 888 number and how to get > the best chance at securing the *right* number?? Through an RBOC a > Long Distance company or ... > Is there a deadline? When will numbers be assigned and any other > pertinant information? Bob, Call your current Resp Org or long distance carrier. The service providers have just finished submitting tapes to the SMS with a list of the 800 "vanity" numbers that their customers have requested replication in 888. These numbers will be marked as "unavailable" in SMS until the FCC has ruled on the legitimacy of vanity numbers. Pre-reservation of 888 numbers will be from 01/24/96 to 02/25/96. This will allow service providers to reduce pent-up demand for toll free numbers before the March 1st rush. Keep in mind that it will be first-come first-served. The high visibility numbers like 888-flowers or 888-the-card would have already been reserved by their owners and marked as unavailable. Of course, this schedule could abruptly change depending on when the FCC issues its pending ruling. Gary Bouwkamp Frontier Communications ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 12:30:25 -0500 Subject: 800 Replication - It's Now or Never From: producer@pipeline.com (Judith Oppenheimer) JANUARY 12, 1996 CONTACT: JUDITH OPPENHEIMER, 212 684-7210 800 REPLICATION - IT'S NOW OR NEVER New York, NY - The deadline is quickly looming for 800 number subscribers to have their 800 numbers replicated in the new 888 area code. Luckily for savvy businesses, while carriers are not publicizing this information, there is one consulting firm that's making sure its clients are protected. According to Judith Oppenheimer, President of Interactive CallBrand, "The telecom industry is offering business 800 users an unprecedented opportunity to replicate -- mirror -- their 800 toll-free numbers in the new toll-free 888 exchange, so that their customers don't reach competitors instead. For example, 1 800 FLOWERS wants to make sure that it will be assigned 1 888 FLOWERS once the new system is in effect." "The problem," continued Oppenheimer, "is that businesses haven't been informed about, or guided through the replication process by their carriers. It's the biggest secret in business communications today. And it could have disasterous results for businesses who miss the opportunity." "1 800 YEARBOOK used to belong to the Baltimore Orioles, and we still get calls, two years later, for the Baltimore Orioles yearbook!" says Mitchell P. Davis, Editor and Publisher of The Yearbook of Experts Authorities & Spokespersons. "Just imagine if someone else got 888 YEARBOOK and put it on tv! We'd have to pay for those calls - and we don't want to delay customers when they're trying to reach the right place. They'll be confused." It appears that only a few industry insiders have made themselves privy to this information. Interactive CallBrand, a consulting and marketing firm specializing in toll-free services, has stayed on top of the facts and ahead of the deadlines by participating at all industry forums. "ICB's given us critical information to protect our 800 numbers during the 888 process", says Jay Carpenter, President of 1 800 SHOP AUTOS. "Even if a non-competitor got the numeric version in the 888 exchange, the cost in misdials and lost business to both companies could be prohibitive. It's a risk we can't afford to take." For More Information Contact: Judith Oppenheimer, 212-684-7210 Judith Oppenheimer, President, Interactive CallBrand A leading source of information on 800 issues. producer@pipeline.com, (ph) 1 800 The Expert, (fx) 212 684-2714 http://www.users.nyc.pipeline.com:80/~producer/ ------------------------------ From: turner7@pacsibm.org (Lee Winson) Subject: Re: Area Code Overlays in Texas Delayed Date: 15 Jan 1996 20:51:21 GMT Organization: PACS IBM SIG BBS Are there any places in the U.S./Canada at present that requires ten digit dialing? How many places have overlay area codes right now? I myself prefer splits to overlays, except perhaps for fax, cellular, beeper, and computer lines -- for those I wouldn't mind always dialing ten digits. Per Edumund Hack's question -- I'd say most people do NOT read their phone bills or their newspaper. When my own area code was split, there was tremendous advance notice in both the media, company advertising (big posters on city buses), as well as inserts; as well as a full one year dual-transition period. But when the transition expired, you'd think no one said a word about it! (One thing did hurt the Bell company -- the problems with PBXs and LD carriers not being able to get through, as well as Bell's own DA giving out the old area code.) ------------------------------ From: jisham@onramp.net (Joe Isham) Subject: Re: Area Code Overlays in Texas Delayed Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 16:27:46 GMT Organization: Eurostation Charles de Gaulle In article , Edmund C. Hack wrote: > The plan by Southwestern Bell to not split the 713 (Houston) and 214 > (Dallas) area codes, but to overlay them with new area codes has been > delayed by the Texas PUC. A PUC vote had been scheduled to be taken on > the plan today, January 11, 1996. The PUC staff and an administrative > judge had recommended to the PUC that the overlay plan be approved. > The delay is to allow additional public hearings in the suburbs of > Dallas and Houston at the end of the month. 713 and 214 would be the > first area codes to be overlaid. Actually, the staff recommendation was to approve the 281 overlay for Houston, but to geographically split 214 and 972. The geographic split would take the Dallas Central Zone exchanges and place them in 214, while the suburban exchanges and the rest of the 214 area would go to 972. > The vote was delayed after several prominent lawmakers requested the > PUC do so to allow more public input. There have been two public > hearings on the matter. The first in late December, was in Austin and > was mainly attended by lobbyists, although a few private citizens did > speak. The notices for this meeting sparked a lot of coverage in the > local press in Houston and fired the talk shows into high gear. Same in Dallas. Dallas mayor Ron Kirk has threatened to sue the PUC if a geographic split is instituted in 214. He seems to want none of those "unglamorous" 972 numbers in his city. But he doesn't seem to understand that with an overlay, there will be 972 numbers assigned in the city of Dallas. The problem, of course, is that the suburban exchanges cover parts of the city of Dallas. > Some civic leaders are opposed to the geographic split, since some of > the suburban cities would be in two area codes. Hasn't The Woodlands has already been in two area codes since the 713/409 split? > Commentary: The sudden furor over this is interesting, considering > that SW Bell has been publicizing 10 digit dialing and the overlay in > phone bill inserts for at least 6-10 months. You do read your phone > bill insert don't you? Apparently, most Texans don't. Hmm. In Dallas, SWB has put nothing into our phone bills about any impending area code split. jisham@onramp.net : Joe Isham, Dallas TX : http://rampages.onramp.net/~jisham/ ------------------------------ From: thogard@inmind.com (Tim Hogard) Subject: Re: Area Code Overlays in Texas Delayed Date: 14 Jan 1996 05:10:48 GMT Organization: In Mind, Inc. Edmund C. Hack (echack@crl.com) wrote: > {summarized from news reports here in Houston] > The plan by Southwestern Bell to not split the 713 (Houston) and 214 > (Dallas) area codes, but to overlay them with new area codes has been > delayed by the Texas PUC. A PUC vote had been scheduled to be taken on > the plan today, January 11, 1996. The PUC staff and an administrative > judge had recommended to the PUC that the overlay plan be approved. > The delay is to allow additional public hearings in the suburbs of > Dallas and Houston at the end of the month. 713 and 214 would be the > first area codes to be overlaid. SWB could not get the Missouri PUC to approve the St Louis overlay so St Louis gets the old area code and the rest of the area gets a 537 or 735 or 573 area code. The PUC's decisions was based on public complaints. I thought it was strange that the PUC decided against the phone company. There is a large electric company that even complained the PUC was owned by SWBell. You know its bad when other monopolies complain. tim http://www.abnormal.com/~thogard GPS, VW and Usenet topics. ------------------------------ From: pmartin@netcom.com (Pat Martin) Subject: Re: Illegal Cloning Alleged Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 02:29:22 GMT In article , wes.leatherock@hotelcal. com (Wes Leatherock) wrote: > A story in {The Daily Oklahoman} (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) for > Jan. 9, 1996, reports that AT&T Wireless Services has asked for an > injunction against an Oklahoma City firm for allegedly cloning a > cellular telephone to create an extension. > The story, by Oklahoman staff writer Charles T. Jones, says AT&T > Wireless Services asked in federal court for a temporary restraining > order and permanent injunction against Johnny Meyers, doing business > as Safari Communications and Safari Holdings, Inc. > According to the story, "The lawsuit alleges Meyers' company > 'advertised and solicited' AT&T Wireless customers to have the secret > electronic serial numbers of their activated cell phones 'cloned' onto > other phones, thus giving them an 'extension' phone." > The story says the suit alleges that such unauthorized phones are > illegal and deprive AT&T Wireless Services of income. > Besides the injunction, the story says, AT&T Wireless Services > is asking for attorney fees and any other losses it can prove at > trial. > The story says The Oklahoman was unable to reach Meyers for > comment. Ooooooh! ATT is up to their same old S*. Probably will cause damage to the network? Patrick L. Martin pmartin@netcom.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: AT&T would like it if anything which deprived them of income (i.e. competitors of any sort) could be declared illegal. One report reaching me says this guy in Oklahoma City is NOT taking it laying down; but rather is pushing hard in return with a countersuit and his own attornies to make certain everyone knows *exactly* what the legalities are. AT&T sometimes has to be reminded that they are just as good at cheating as everyone else they accuse of doing it. Remember how in the early days of the international 'callback services' (where USA dialtone is given to overseas customers after they ring a number in the USA once and hang up) AT&T screamed about being deprived of revenue on that. And truly, they were being deprived. I personally do not think any scheme which involves signalling over the phone network without paying for it is legal. But the point is, all the time AT&T was crying about how this was hurting them, they were busy selling their own brand of 'toll-saver' answering machines; the kind that wait until the fourth ring to answer if it is the first call of the cycle, enabling the owner to hang up without getting charged for a call just to find out he has no messages. Maybe they thought all the people who bought their 'toll saver' answering machines were using them via the MCI network ... and that it okay with AT&T! So if AT&T keeps on pushing this guy in Oklahoma City, someone please ask them what their real problem is .... PAT] ------------------------------ From: robertr@icu.com (Robert A. Rosenberg) Subject: Re: Illegal Cloning Alleged Organization: RockMug (Rockland County NY) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 07:18:06 GMT I hope that AT&T has a tariff for providing Extension Phones. In the absence of such a tariff the "deprive AT&T Wireless Services of income" claim is without basis (you can not deprived of income you have no provision for earning). As to the "unauthorized phones are illegal" claim, the same basis applies. Refusal of a request to provide the service, makes the practice authorized and legal so long as you are not doing anything that would not be allowed if such a service DID exist. Both these points were decided in the case where HBO was suing someone (who had no local cable company in his area) who was using a dish to receive HBO Satellite Broadcasts (this was in the days before they were scrambled). The guy has OFFERED to pay HBO for reception privileges but HBO refused his request. The Judge ruled that he was not stealing anything from them since they did suffer any loss of income (no service to steal/bypass -- no loss of income). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 12:49:42 PST From: Jonathan Edelson Subject: Re: Fridays Are Free With Sprint I am not sure that this is such a crazy promotion. Remember that much of the cost of telephone service is the investment in equipment; it costs almost nothing to carry a call if the capacity is there. Sprint will thus be taking business away from other companies, with little cost to themselves. My only question is how they deal with the local access costs. Jon [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You have a good point. In the very early days of AT&T, but after the patent on the telephone ran out, their goal was to acquire -- and thus control -- as many of the small local phone exchanges as they could. AT&T tried everything they could think of. They'd go into a small town and offer good money to the proprietor of the local telephone exchange. Often times that worked and the guy would sell out. But some of the locals were stubborn; some were community-minded and on general principle opposed to being part of the (then) new and rapidly growing consortium called the 'Bell System'. Some, no matter what the cash offer would refuse it, saying neither they nor the people in their town wanted any part of 'The Bell' ... In fact there were times the pressure became so intense on the small independent telcos to sell out to 'The Bell' that the small guys all formed an association called USITA (The United States Independent Telephone Association). Today, AT&T and USITA are good friends, but not back then. So you were a proprietor of a small local phone exchange, and you turned down the offers made to you by Ted Vail and his associates repeatedly, even as the offering price got higher and higher. Vail's response would be "well, then let's see how much your phone exchange is worth when you can't interconnect with anyone else in the USA ..." and he would cut their interconnection off. Some of the small locals banded together and routed around Bell wherever they could, many associating themselves with GTE's predecessor. (I am talking early 1900's now). Furious with this turn of events, Vail's response was to go right into the same town and set up a competing phone company and either give the service away for *free* or very close to it for several months; as long as it took to put the original guy out of business entirely. Then when the original guy, with all of his customers stolen from him had to file bankruptcy and shut down the phone company, here would come Vail's people again, this time to offer him maybe ten cents on the dollar. This time the guy would sell out, and Bell would let him walk away holding his trousers up with one hand; everything else in his life gone. So indeed, Sprint may have more business saavy then we think. They might think losing several million dollars in revenue over a year or so won't matter since the other carriers will lose all that revenue also every Friday as people pump everything out over Sprint. You are correct; the infrastructure is in place and most of whatever happens from now on is just gravy. They may be hoping everyone who has read this thread to date will come onboard with the same idea in mind: 'Stick it to Sprint! Stick it to Sprint! ...' because if you are busy sticking it to Sprint you can't very well be on the phone via one of the other carriers. And, a certain number of people who decide to stick it to Sprint will eventually decide to stay with them. Remember Vail's game plan back almost a century ago: he knew the locals would sign up with Bell and forget about the other guy. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 14:05:37 -0800 From: tsw@3do.com (Tom Watson) Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! Organization: The 3DO Corporation In article , ptownson@massis.lcs.mit. edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: > This is directed mostly at our east coast readers who in the past several > days have seen the blizzard of their (hopefully) lifetimes ... with > snowfall ranging from 'merely' 18-20 inches some places to as must as > two feet or more in other locales. Please let us know how it has affected > phone service in terms of network traffic congestion, etc. While everyone agrees that big snowy winter storms are a bummer, look on the lighter side. In 1961 here in the San Francisco Bay area (pre Silicon Valley) the headlines for the {San Fransisco Chronicle} on January 15, 1961 (I think that's the date, I could be off a week) was: _Chains Required San Francisco East_. We don't get snow here in the winter much. When we get three inches it is a MAJOR event. It was a nice Sunday, and everyone was out playing in the stuff (including adults). Film was SOLD OUT of every camera store known to man. And you wonder why people live in "earthquake" country ... Tom Watson tsw@3do.com (Home: tsw@johana.com) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: By 'chains required' I believe they were referring to snow chains for automobile tires, things which are mostly forgotten. Is it legal anywhere to put those on your tires now-days? Around here they have been forbidden for years due to the damage they cause the roads. But it used to be many years ago that snow chains were used to enable your automobile tires to get the necessary traction on an icy highway. There were no inter- state highways in those times; roads between communities were just two lanes (one in each direction) and many were in miserable con- dition under any circumstances, let alone a big winter storm. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #17 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Jan 15 23:17:18 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA08696; Mon, 15 Jan 1996 23:17:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 23:17:18 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199601160417.XAA08696@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Bcc: Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #18 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Jan 96 23:17:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 18 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? (John R Levine) Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? (werecat@netcom.com) Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? (Stephen Balbach) Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? (William Brasuell) Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? (Robert I. Sinclair) Re: Telephone Bill Auditing Advice Needed (Bob Schwartz) Re: Warning to All Net Users (psyber@usa.pipeline.com) Re: 60Hz Buzz on Phone Line and Modem Problems (Ray Barker) Re: 60Hz Buzz on Phone Line and Modem Problems (Gerry Wheeler) Re: Learning About Corporate Telecom Buying? (Robert Wolf) Re: A Question About Inside Wiring Standards (John Fricks) Re: Canada Number Portability (Lis Angus) Re: Enhanced Full Rate Vocoder (Sudeep Bhoja) Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (Steven R Kleinedler) Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (TELECOM Digest Editor) He's BAAAACCCKKKK !! - The Return of the Slaton Thing (John R. 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.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: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, 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: Mon, 15 Jan 96 19:44:00 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > Since I had understood that they were pushing ISDN prety heavily, I > started asking some knowledgable folks at work what was up. They told > me that ATT was about to introduce a new compression scheme for data > transmission for twisted pairs that would make most current needs for > ISDN obsolete. ... They're probably referring to ADSL or SDSL, which provide multi-megabit speeds over a copper pair. Like ISDN, they require special equipment at each end of the connection. ADSL provides something like T1 speed in one direction, and 64K or so in the other. SDSL is multimegabit each way. I wouldn't give up on ISDN quite yet. For one thing, ISDN is considerably farther along the learning curve, so you are now starting to see retail ISDN adapters for reasonable prices, and support for ISDN hardware on popular computers. It'll be at least a couple of years before ADSL or SDSL reach anything like that point. Also, adapting an existing phone switch for ISDN is relatively straightforward, since the 64K channels on ISDN match the existing switching channels in modern digital phone switches. I'd think that handling the much larger channels that ADSL and SDSL require would need a lot more work in the switch, and would hence be much more expensive for a telco to provide. Besides, ISDN now does what it does pretty well. 64K or 128K data can be provided at close to POTS rates, either locally or remotely, and is adequate for a lot of networking, and you can use ISDN for voice as well. I see in the papers that the number of second home phone lines is exploding, and I'd think in a rational world that a single ISDN line would serve the vast majority of purposes that otherwise would need two POTS lines. Yeah, faster is nicer (I should talk, I have a T1 in my back bedroom) but at what price? John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof ------------------------------ From: werecat@netcom.com (WereCat) Subject: Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 13:27:43 GMT Some time ago horn@netcom.com wrote: > Since I had understood that they were pushing ISDN prety heavily, I > started asking some knowledgable folks at work what was up. They told > me that ATT was about to introduce a new compression scheme for data > transmission for twisted pairs that would make most current needs for > ISDN obsolete. The Telco *expert* was, of course, not there today to > answer with any authority. However, others have noticed the chill > reception given to inquiries also. Years ago, many years ago, ISDN was introduced. The RBOC's dragged and dragged their feet in making ISDN available. They had too much invested in POTS. Why should they throw out all the investment they made in ISDN for some other technology? Eric ------------------------------ From: stephen@clark.net (Stephen Balbach) Subject: Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? Date: 14 Jan 1996 21:22:04 -0500 Organization: Clark Internet Services, Balt/DC, mail all-info@clark.net This must be in reference to ADSL, it is not new and AT&T Paradyne is releasing a low-cost router which uses ADSL compression. However, it requires the the RBOC have ADSL as a service which none do to my knowledge. Its mostly used on campus networks, or by the RBOC's in thier internal networks when 2-pair is not cost effective they can run 1-pair and use HDSL and achieve T1 speeds. When the RBOC's have invested as much time and money in a ADSL infrastructure as they have in ISDN over the past 10 years, you may see ADSL/HDSL as a threat to ISDN. Stephen Balbach "Driving the Internet to Work" VP, ClarkNet due to the high volume of mail I receive please quote info@clark.net the full original message in your reply. ------------------------------ From: brasuell_bill@tandem.com (William Brasuell) Subject: Re: Is ISDN Dying Already? Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 17:56:41 -0800 Organization: Tandem Computers In article , horn@netcom.com (Jim Hornbeck) wrote: > Recently I called Pac Tel to inquire about ISDN service and received > a rather cool reception. > What have I missed? Is Ma B