From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 7 11:12:40 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id LAA08669; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 11:12:40 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 11:12:40 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611071612.LAA08669@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #601 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Nov 96 11:12:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 601 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New Phone Advertising (Scott Robert Dawson) Pac Bell "Service" Anecdote (Eric C. Weaver) Weirdness in Switch Programming? (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: New Virus Warning (Tim Dillman) Re: New Virus Warning (neil@asiaonline.net) Re: Clocking For T1 Circuits (Kenneth A. Becker) Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? (Rahul Dhesi) Data Encryption on Modems (Dale Robinson) Re: AT&T Announces New Tariff in Boston Globe (Marty Tennant) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: New Phone Advertising Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 06:57:21 GMT Organization: InterLog Internet Services Reply-To: srdawson@interlog.com Hi! In today's {Globe and Mail} (Canada's Corporate, oops, sorry, I mean _National_ Newspaper), 6 November 1996, there is a rather detailed article about the new Northern Telecom screen phones (Vista 350, vith associated 'visual call-waiting' and other ADSI services), that were tested in London and Sherbrooke earlier this year and are now being rolled out across the Greater Toronto Area and the Communaut' Urbaine de Montreal. Headline: Ads, scores and more coming to a phone near you Subhead: Bell Canada launches interactive service By Lawrence Surtees Telecommunications Reporter TORONTO- Bell Canada has launched its "smart phone" service, Direct Access, that allows businesses to advertise on telephone screens and customers to shop, bank, scan the news -- even check their horoscope -- on a beefed-up phone. The Direct Access services are free to any of the phone company's customers, provided they have Touch Tone service on their normal phone line and a special Vista 350 screen phone. Customers may buy, rent or lease to own the Vista 350 phone, which sells for $295. Bell, the country's largest telephone company and a unit of Montreal-based BCE Inc, has more than seven million customers in Ontario and Quebec. The Vista 350 phone, which is made by Bell Canada's sister company, Mississauga-based Northern Telecom Ltd, is needed to use the service because of its eight-line electronic screen and extra keys. Those keys allow users to access information and to use arrow keys -- called "cursors" -- to scroll through information displayed on the screen. The phone also has a built-in modem to automatically call Bell's computer, which provides the the Direct Access services, such as lottery results, daily horoscopes and sports scores. It also has a built-in speaker to listen to pre-recorded messages from advertisers or service providers without lifting the handset. The interactive service, which allows customers to retrieve a variety of information from advertisers and service providers, is touted as turning an ordinary telephone into a home information centre. It also opens up a new world for local and national advertisers through its so-called "QuickAds". The Direct Access service allows businesses to store their messages on Bell Canada's computers, which, in turn, transmit the ads to the screens of subscribers' telephones when the phone is not in use. Advertisers can choose how many customers they want to reach and in what areas. "Unlike other forms of media, our service allows businesses to choose which neighbourhoods they want to reach based on postal codes," Carlos Panksep, Bell's associate director of new business oppurtunities, said in an interview. The Direct Access service also provides an advertiser with detailed records of how many times their service or message is seen, providing instant market research data. Customers also have the ability to select which ads they would like to receive, or to block out the ads altogether. The screen modules on the Vista 350 phones are removeable, allowing them to be replaced with upgraded versions. Bell is already thinking of a version that can be connected to a printer, which would allow customers to select and print junk mail that they choose to receive. "We see the service as a more targeted alternative to direct mail," Mr. Panksep said. Bell has also adopted a form of usage charge that advertisers will pay based on the actual number of times their message is viewed. The cost of advertising to Direct Access customers will range from 0.5 to 1.5 cents per person per day. But advertisers can also make use of the interactive component of the servoce, which allows customers to use the phone to immediately connect to a company to obtain more information or to order a product or service. Bell also announced partnerships yesterday with several major Canadian companies that will provide a variety of interactive services to consumers through Direct Access: *Royal Bank of Canada is using the service to offer more comprehensive home banking services than provided on conventional phones or ATM treminals, including access to current foreign exchange prices. *Canada Trust Co. is offering its customers access to daily mutual fund prices. *Cineplex Odeon Corp. is providing access to its film listings and ticket order service. *The Sports Network (TSN) is using the phone service to send the latest sports news and scores. *And Environment Canada provides the latest weather forecasts for any city selected. "The key to business in the 21st century is to be open for business any time, anywhere for the customer, and [this] helps us deliver on that promise," said Wendy Wynn, vice-president of direct banking at Royal. This service is based on the popular CallMall service introduced by New Brunswick Telephone Co. Ltd. and first tested under the "screen talk" name in Saint John in late 1992. The success of that venture led the phone company and Northern Telecom to create a joint venture, New North Media, to market the interactive service. Bell Canada's introduction of Direct Access follows a trial earlier this year in London, Ont., and Sherbrooke, Que. The interactive services on Direct Access are initially available in Toronto, London, Montreal and Sherbrooke and will be rolled out across the rest of Bell's territory next year. Scott Robert Dawson Genetics is fun, but srdawson@interlog.com _my_ family is defined by love... http://www.interlog.com/~srdawson/scothmpg.htm ------------------------------ From: weav@a.crl.com (Eric C. Weaver) Subject: Pac Bell "Service" Anecdote Date: 7 Nov 1996 13:27:04 GMT Organization: Fondue Forks for Everybody Sent one of my assistants up to San Francisco to check an ISDN line at a music venue where we had a show planned a few nights hence. Line didn't work. Called P*B priority repair to get somebody on scene and find, test and tag the line at the demarc. The appointment was for 9:00 AM. With my assistant waiting all morning, the tech showed up at 12:30 PM, found the problem, checked the line and all was well. Many phone calls to the ISDN maintainence group had ensued during the 3.5 hours he waited around, they were quite apologetic but didn't seem to have any control over the dispatching of technicians. When P*B tries billing the venue for $75 for the service call, they'll have a nasty surprise coming back to them. Is Pac*Bell just falling into a pit, or what? Eric C. Weaver Chief Eng. KFJC 89.7 Foothill College Los Altos Hills CA 94022 ------------------------------ From: cgordon@worldnet.att.net Subject: Weirdness in Switch Programming? Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 06:21:00 +0000 I've got "Busy Transfer" and "Alternate Answer" on my office line (630-832-xxxx); they are both set up to transfer calls to my cellular (630-253-xxxx) which has voicemail with paging. This gives me one-number reachability at a good price. (The two features cost 75 cents/month each, and the cellular voicemail is only $4.95) This has worked well for several months. But today I was expecting a call, and I didn't get it. So I called them. Turns out they were calling, but they were getting a recording: ("[SIT] The area code or number you have dialed is invalid.") The problem was with the forwarding; calls rang at the office just fine but when I wasn't there they forwarded to this recording. I dialed the cellular direct and it connected properly. The Ameritech repairs operator says that this was caused by "The area code change". (Which one? I dunno, we change an area code every couple of weeks around here. Anyway.) She says that the switch needs to be told to dial 1+AC+number even if the destination is in the same AC as the number being forwarded. Thing is, since the office line just changed from 708 to 630 while the cellular has always been 630, the switch should _already_ have been programmed that way. Apparently this problem only shows up if the destination is cellular. Can someone elaborate on this? They did get the programming fixed up pretty quickly (once I called, OTOH how long was it screwed up before I noticed?) so it wasn't a big problem. But this has got to be one of the ten worst things to do to a business line! Gordon S. Hlavenka cgordon@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Nov 96 09:13 EST From: Tim Dillman <0006540276@mcimail.com> Subject: Re: New Virus Warning -- [ From: Timothy J. Dillman * EMC.Ver #3.2 ] -- Found this on our intranet. Sounds like it is a virus to be taken seriously (at least the Department of Defense thinks so). SUBJECT: Malicious code in counterfeit PKZip program. Security Bulletin 9526 DISA Defense Communications System June 12, 1995 Published by: DDN Security Coordination Center (SCC@NIC.DDN.MIL) 1-(800) 365-3642 DEFENSE DATA NETWORK SECURITY BULLETIN The DDN SECURITY BULLETIN is distributed by the DDN SCC (Security Coordination Center) under DISA contract as a means of communicating information on network and host security exposures, fixes, and concerns to security and management personnel at DDN facilities. Back issues may be obtained via FTP (or Kermit) from NIC.DDN.MIL [192.112.36.5] using login="anonymous" and password="guest". The bulletin pathname is scc/ddn-security-yynn (where "yy" is the year the bulletin is issued and "nn" is a bulletin number, e.g. scc/ddn-security-9428). The following important advisory was issued by the Automated Systems Security Incident Support Team (ASSIST) and is being relayed unedited via the Defense Information Systems Agency's Security Coordination Center distribution system as a means of providing DDN subscribers with useful security information. Automated Systems Security Incident Support Team Bulletin 95-24 Release date: 8 June, 1995, 6:45 AM EDT (GMT -4) SUBJECT: Malicious code in counterfeit PKZip program. SUMMARY: Files falsely identified as being updates to the popular PKWARE Inc., PKZip utility contain malicious code. The files are being distributed on various network (Internet) and dial-up BBS systems. BACKGROUND: PKZip is a DOS shareware data compression utility. The counterfeit PKZip file is named either PKZ300B.ZIP or PKZ300B.EXE, and contains malicious code that can cause hard drives to be re-formatted. According to PKWARE, Inc., when the PKZ300B.EXE self extracting executable is run, all data on the hard drive is lost. The malicious code contained in the PKZ300B files is not a computer virus, i.e. it does not have the capability to automatically spread and infect other systems or files. IMPACT: All data on PC hard rive is lost when the corrupted program is executed. RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS: Do not download and/or execute any file named PKZ300B.EXE/ZIP. The most current release of PKZip from PKWARE Inc., is PKZ204G. exe which is available via anonymous FTP from pkware.com (IP 198.137.186.90) in the /pub/pkware directory. If you have a copy of the counterfeit PKZip utility, please contact ASSIST as soon as possible. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 11:03:39 HKT From: neil@asiaonline.net Subject: Re: New Virus Warning > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This message has been floating around > the net for awhile. I am not at all sure how authentic it is. It seems > to me I heard someone say it is completely bogus, but far be it from > me to say that authoritatively. Caution would be urged in examining it > I suppose. PAT] Pat, the PKZIP300 trojan has been around for a good couple of years, though the warning has only been around since early 1995 according to F-Prot (www.datafellows.com). As it's a trojan rather than a virus, it's very rare and not much of a threat. It's also easily spotted and cleaned by most AV software. I think the heavy use of caps and exclamation marks give the message away as bogus. That plus the suggestion that your modem speed could have any relevance to the behavior of a virus. neil ------------------------------ From: kab@hokab.hobl.lucent.com (Kenneth A. Becker) Subject: Re: Clocking For T1 Circuits Date: 7 Nov 1996 13:44:15 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies, Holmdel, New Jersey Reply-To: kab1@lucent.com In article , Bob Izenberg wrote: > Our regional telco isn't providing clocking on local area T1s. > The Ascend Pipeline 130s that we use on some of our circuits need a > stable clocking source and can't provide it themselves. One of our > options, which some will no doubt advocate, is forgetting all about > the P130s in favor of another vendor ... we're doing that. In the > meantime, I'd like to hear from anyone who's providing a clock source > for devices that need it but cannot derive it from the data line to > which they are connected, or from an internal source. To answer your question more information is needed. For example: You state that your telco isn't supplying clock for the T1's you're using. Silly question #1: Are your T1's coming from a switch (i.e., 5ESS or what have you)? (Case 1) If so, the telco's got a bigger problem - all of their T1's and such will be slipping around, giving FAX's a bad time, and so forth. The next possibility in line (Case 2) is that the T1's you're using are being carried around on DS3's or SONET links and the equipment doing the MUX/DMUX operation isn't synchronizing the T1's to network clock. This is not an unusual situation. The implication of that scheme is that whatever clocking a T1 has when it gets inserted into the pipe is the same clocking it gets when it gets removed from said pipe. This sounds like your case. Let's suppose, for the moment, that you're in case 2 above. Basic point: Somehow you are going to have to set up a timing chain with sources and receivers for >>all<< your T1's in your network. Some piece of equipment, somewhere, is going to be your timing master. All of your other equipment will time from that. Note that the timing chain does >>not<< have to be a single star pattern with the timing master in the center and the rest spread out around it; timing can go into one piece of equipment. The T1's leaving that equipment are now timed and can be used to time other equipment downstream. Just to make things a little more complicated for you, note that almost all synchronized equipment has >>two<< timing inputs, a primary and a secondary. The idea is that if one timing source goes away the equipment should automatically switch to the other, keeping the T1's healthy. Now, where to get master clock? Let's go through things in sequence. 1) The telco. Contrary to popular rumor and the occasional failure in the telco CO, >>all<< telco CO's in the US are timed from Boulder, CO, where the US's master timing sources live. Note that Boulder supplies the timing for the GPSS (Global Positioning Satellite Service); many BOC's and what have you retrieve the clock signals from the GPSS and use it to time their gear. Whatever; you can ask the telco to give you a timed T1 from any 1/0 DCS (Digital Cross-Connect System). They can take a single (or lots, if you've got tons of money) T1, route it through a DCS (where it will get the DCS's idea of proper timing) and then back through the pipe that was moving your data in the first place. You can then use the timing from the receive T1 pair to time your one of your pieces of equipment. This equipment will then be your timing master. The T1's from your master can then be used to time the rest of the equipment in your network. If you want to play it safe, you create a second timing master in some other physical location in the same way and use the T1's from that timing master to be the "secondary" timing source for the rest of your network. Note that the telco will charge you additional for the privilege of having a timed T1. I note from your letter above that your equipment doesn't take timing from the input T1's. That doesn't sound right; at least one or more T1's should be useable to synchronize the master clock in the gear. Well, suppose that your master clock wants to have a dedicated T1, or 64kb/s Composite Clock, or 2.048 MHz BSRF, or some other "common" timing signal. Contact Spectracom, Inc. They make these nifty blue boxes ($100 or so apiece?) that will take in a T1, 64K Composite Clock, 2.048 MHz BSRF, or what have you, and dump out the signal that you need to time your gear. It's probably cheaper to do this than to replace your equipment. There are probably other companies that make equivalents; I just haven't run into them yet. Next timing source: 2) Some kind of stable oscillator. The cheapest is to run out and get a >>good<< signal generator; you're probably talking a couple of grand here. The "right" way to do it is to go to Lucent or Telecom Solutions and buy one of their stand-alone timing references. Stratum 3 or 3E should do it for you. Cost? I haven't priced them, but I think it's in the $5000 - $20000 range. If you go the cheap route, you'll probably need one of those Spectracom boxes in addition. If you go the Lucent or Telecom Solutions route you won't need anything additional. If you have a serious ton of money you can go out and get a Rubidium or Cesium atomic clock; that, however, is probably overkill. Then there are (3) inventive solutions. One fellow I know was having similar problems timing his network and didn't like the money the telco was going to charge him for that timed T1. He discovered, however, that there was a PBX located in his building that was connected, through T1's, to the local CO switch. Switches >>are<< timed; therefore, so was that PBX. He took the liberty of running a T1 from that PBX through the building to where his equipment was placed, and in short order had a multi-state network timed properly. I hope the above gets you started. Kenneth A. Becker DACS Engineering Lucent Technologies ------------------------------ From: Rahul Dhesi Subject: Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? Date: 7 Nov 1996 13:28:43 GMT Organization: a2i network > I do not know of any that charge per actual hit. PAT Now you do. From our new rate schedule: Monthly charge for exceeding scaled hits: $5 per 50,000 excess scaled hits/day in units of $5. Monthly charge for exceeding megabyte volume: $50 per 50 excess megabytes/day in units of $50. It's not as bad as it sounds, since some number of hits and megabytes are included in the base rate. Rahul Dhesi hostmaster & postmaster a2i communications network operations Rahul Dhesi "please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 21:34:06 -0900 From: Dale 'Cat' Robinson Subject: Data Encryption on Modems G'Day, I've been asked for an opinion on dial-up security. With the OS we use (Unisys CTOS), we only have three options as far as I can see: Callback. Bnet Node Access Checker. Modems with built-in data encryption (DES). Callback ~~~~~~~~ Has security problems. Bnet Node Access Checker ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A piece of software which looks at the "calling" system to see if they are authorised to perform different functions. I guess it would be possible to bypass it by pretending to be a "trusted" node. Modems with built-in DES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Absolutely no experience with these. Can anyone tell me how secure this option is? Does it affect data transfer? I realise that key management might be a pain, having been involved in loading keys on a reguilar basis. My prior experience has been Racal line encryption boxes. Which worked very well, except when power dropped! Cost would stop us from using this as an option. Any comments would be appreciated! Thanks in advance, Dale 'Cat' Robinson ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Nov 1996 09:39:49 -0800 From: Marty Tennant Reply-To: marty@sccoast.net Organization: Low Tech Designs, Inc. Subject: Re: AT&T Announces New Tariff in Boston Globe > On October 31, 1996, AT&T filed with the Federal Communications > Commission a Transfer Service Fee of $0.55 per call. The Transfer > Service Fee applies to all completed interstate calls and calls to > interstate and international Directory Assistance when the customer > transfers to the AT&T network from a Local Exchange Company network. Pat, I understand that this fee applies only if you are not a presubscribed AT&T customer making the calls. Notice it does not apply to intralata calls. In the cases where dual PIC has not been implemented, as required by the new law, the only way to get on the AT&T network for intralata calls is to dial the 10288 code. That's why AT&T sent out all those stickers. AT&T is doing this because they claim that these casual callers are more expensive to bill, because they have to obtain billing information from the LEC. This is a result of the lack of billing agreements between AT&T and the LECs since AT&T started doing their own billing. The West Virginia PSC denied AT&T's request to implement this same scheme for intrastate, interlata calls. They knew that many carriers were _encouraging_ people to dial their 10XXX code, and didn't want people to get the impression that all carriers added such charges. AT&T is not the only big carrier implementing such surcharges for casual calling. Marty Tennant President Low Tech Designs, Inc. Georgetown, SC ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #601 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 7 18:17:33 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id SAA19932; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 18:17:33 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 18:17:33 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611072317.SAA19932@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #602 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Nov 96 18:17:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 602 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecommunication Service Providers and Law Enforcement (Dale Robinson) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Wes Leatherock) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Ian Angus) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Bill Jenney) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Eric Florack) Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? (Eric Hunt) Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? (J.P. White) The Purpose of "500" Numbers (carickinc@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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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, 07 Nov 1996 21:34:13 -0900 From: Dale Robinson Subject: Telecommunication Service Providers and Law Enforcement While browsing Austel's web site, looking for information on telephone number changes, I saw this document: TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE PROVIDERS & LAW ENFORCEMENT Contents: 1.What are "service providers"? 2.Where does it say that service providers have obligations or responsibilities? 3.What obligations do service providers have? 4.What might happen if these requirements are not observed? 5.What are the law enforcement and national security obligations in particular? 6.What do service providers need to do to meet these obligations? 7.Provision of reasonably necessary help 8.Consulting about plans to introduce new services or new technology 9.Interceptibility 10.Possible Changes to this Framework Basic Information 1. What are "service providers"? Service providers (or more formally, suppliers of eligible services) are, in general terms, organisations or individuals working in the telecommunications industry which/who provide a service by means of a "line link" or facilities which include at least one "line link"; and provide that service to a third party; and are not licensed carriers, that is Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. [[Telstra, Optus & Vodafone are the current telco's in Oz.]] The service can be one that is bought from a carrier and resold without value-adding or it can be a service that uses carrier-provided facilities and substantially transforms them. It is intended as a very broad category that will still be relevant even as new services are developed, so it is not possible to list all the services that fall into the category, but it can include - providers of public switched and leased services; operators of 0055/190 services; [[similar I guess to the USA's 1-900 "services"]] operators of private networks; paging companies; Internet access providers (IAP's); hotel operators providing telephone access for their guests and making a surcharge; providers of public teleconferencing services; providers of EDI services; voicemail bureaux. 2. Where does it say that service providers have obligations or responsibilities? The Australian Government's Telecommunications Act 1991 sets out the framework and rules relating to telecommunications in Australia. It has a number of objectives relating to promotion of new services and enabling participation in the telecommunications industry, and it sets out the Class Licence system. This system is intended to regulate service providers in a "light-handed" way. AUSTEL, the Australian Telecommunications Authority, issues these class licences, so called because they apply to a class of people, not to individuals. There are other sections of this Act that apply to service providers. For law enforcement purposes, three important sections are - section 47 (AUSTEL, carriers and service providers to prevent use of networks and facilities in commission of offences); section 88 (Carriers, suppliers and their employees not to disclose or use contents of communications); and section 209 (Issuing of class licences) . Thus, the basis of these obligations is a law passed by Federal Parliament in 1991. As well, there is the Telecommunications (Interception) Act 1979 which provides for carriers (in this Act that term also includes service providers) to execute a warrant for interception where it is duly served. This will apply to those service providers who carry telecommunications over a section of a network. 3. What obligations do service providers have? The main class licence, The Service Providers Class Licence (SPCL), sets out a number of conditions which include compliance with: technical standards; various Federal acts, such as the Radiocommunications Act 1992 and the Trade Practices Act 1974, requirements relating to fixed radiocommunications links; AUSTEL's directions, for example, about disclosing charges for a service. There are two other class licences as well: the International Service Providers Class Licence (ISPCL) and the Public Access Cordless Telecommunications Service Licence (PACTS). Another licence is currently being drafted: the Carrier Associates Class Licence. 4. What might happen if these requirements are not observed? Breach of conditions means that AUSTEL may declare a service to be unlicensed which would lead to disconnection. 5. What are the law enforcement and national security obligations in particular? These are the law enforcement obligations, derived from section 209 of the Telecommunications Act 1991, from the Service Providers Class Licence - A supplier must - (e) do its best to prevent telecommunications networks and facilities from being used in, or in relation to, the commission of offences against the laws of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory (f) in accordance with AUSTEL's requirements, consult with Commonwealth, State and Territory law enforcement agencies about the supplier's proposals to use new technology in its telecommunications activities or to develop new technology in order to so use it (g) give to officers and authorities of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory such help as is reasonably necessary to - (i) enforce the criminal laws and laws imposing pecuniary penalties (ii) protect the public revenue (iii) safeguard the national security and comply with AUSTEL's requirements in these regards. As well as these definite conditions, there is another consideration mentioned in the Guide to the Service Providers Class Licence - It will be particularly important for a supplier to ensure that its services are capable of being intercepted in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Telecommunications (Interception) Act 1979. In order to ensure that this requirement is observed it will be essential for a supplier to make use of the consultative arrangements at an early stage of the development of proposals. 6. What do service providers need to do to meet these obligations? Service providers need to do, in general terms, two things - 1.provide "reasonably necessary" help to law enforcement and national security agencies, on request. 2.consult law enforcement and national security agencies about their plans to introduce new technology. A brief summary of these obligations is given here, but more detail is available in Telecommunications and Law Enforcement.: For Organisations Providing Telecommunications Services. (It is hoped to reprint this publication). 7. Provision of reasonably necessary help This is an obligation about responding when asked for help. These are examples of the kind of help law enforcement and national security agencies might ask for - information from your customer information base. Perhaps the agency knows a name, a number or an address. It asks for more information about this customer from call charge records; or assistance in tracing a call. Some of the questions that need to be considered if your service is of the kind that might lead to law enforcement and national security agencies asking for help are - is the assistance asked for "reasonably necessary"? what arrangements do you need to have in place so that the information you have about law enforcement agencies' operations is secure? what arrangements do you need to have in place so that you can respond promptly? what is a fair charge to make for providing that help, considering that the charge should be by agreement or on a cost recovery basis? what do you do if a customer asks you if inquiries have been made about him or her? 8. Consulting about plans to introduce new services or new technology Subclause 5(f) of the Service Providers Class Licence, quoted above, places an obligation on service providers that where they are planning to introduce a service based on new technology, they must consult law enforcement and national security agencies about it in case that new service makes it harder for those agencies to fulfil their functions. This obligation requires service providers (and carriers) to take an initiative. It does not apply to new pricing arrangements for existing services, or to new ways of packaging existing services. It could apply, for example, to new kinds of voicemail, new data services, new ways of providing a fax service. Undertaking consultation is not hard. You ring AUSTEL and ask to speak to the Chairman of the New Technology Sub-Committee (NTSC) who is currently Mr John Haydon, General Manager, Industry Affairs, and you will be guided through the process. This group is a sub-committee of AUSTEL's Law Enforcement Advisory Committee (LEAC). Its members are representatives of the law enforcement and national security agencies, and it exists to be the vehicle for consultation about services based on new technology. 9. Interceptibility As mentioned in paragraph 4, a law enforcement or national security agency may obtain a warrant to intercept a particular service and will want you to execute it if it is a service provided by you. As well, the agencies may want you to ensure that the service is technically capable of being intercepted. If this is asked of your service, the principle established by the Federal Government is that the law enforcement agencies must pay you either an agreed amount or, if agreement cannot be reached, what it costs you, that is that you neither make a profit from providing the interception capability nor lose by it. 10. Possible Changes to this Framework Government policy is yet to be finalised for the period after June 1997, when the present carrier duopoly concludes. Dale 'Cat' Robinson ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com (Wes Leatherock) Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 15:25:59 GMT John Stahl wrote: [ ... text deleted ... ] > Could it be that they really want to is charge for every call based > upon distance and time. Perhaps if given their own way, they would opt > to eliminate Flat Rate Service! Of course they do. There has never been any secret about it. We tried it in Oklahoma 10 or 15 years ago and the public and political outcry was so great that the public animus over the issue still haunts Southwestern Bell Telephone. (I was part of the effort ... it was a test to see how well it would fly in Southwestern Bell. The company was relying on studies that showed the majority of customers agreed it was "fair". The only thing is, they hated it with a passion worse than anything else the telephone company did or proposed. This was as true for customers you could prove would save money as for those who would pay more.) Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com wes.leatherock@origins.bbs.uoknor.edu ------------------------------ From: Ian Angus Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 10:54:54 -0500 Organization: Angus TeleManagement Group John Nagle wrote: > This whole thing seems a sort of bogus issue. First, unless > you're out behind some switching concentrator in outside plant, which > is rare, you have a dedicated path to the CO, so contention there > isn't an issue. Unfortunately, that simply isn't true. Telephone companies routinely install line concentrators between the CO switch and customers. The concentrators are in the CO building, but they are not part of the CO switch. So non-blocking switching does not guarantee that every phone can get dial tone simultaneously -- only that those which do get through the line concentrator can get a path through the switch. "Gridlock" can occur when there are unusually long holding time in locations where lines have bneen installed (and priced) on a 4:1 or even 6:1 concentration ratio. IAN ANGUS ianangus@angustel.ca Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca 8 Old Kingston Road tel: 905-686-5050 ext 222 Ajax ON L1T 2Z7 Canada fax: 905-686-2655 ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Date: 7 Nov 1996 16:04:57 GMT Organization: University of South Florida In article , lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) wrote: >> Has anyone considered simply requiring ISPs to be served by choke >> exchanges? It seems to me that choke exchanges were invented to solve >> this very problem (the overloading of trunks from residential prefix >> switches with calls to one or a few high-traffic numbers). Forgive me terribly if I'm missing something here, but isn't this how _all_ SS7 connected exchanges work? The call dies at the originating CO if there's not enough trunkage to handle it, or the target number is busy ... Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us Member of the Technical Staff Junk Mail Will Be Billed For. The Suncoast Freenet *FLASH: Craig Shergold aw'better; call 800-215-1333* Tampa Bay, Florida http://members.aol.com/kyop/rhps.html +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ From: jenney@niktow.canisius.edu (Bill Jenney) Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Date: 7 Nov 1996 06:48:39 GMT Organization: Canisius College, Buffalo, NY 14208 scott miller (smiller@nortel.ca) wrote: > I was under the impression that most local phone access was still > flat-rate. (e.g. free local calls) Does anyone know the ratios of > metered vs. flat-rate phones? Is flat-rate a thing of the past in the > US? Pivotal question! Who has some numbers? Here in NYNEX land, it looks like a metered world at every turn (resi, business, intraLATA, ...) bill j ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 09:18:40 PST From: Eric_Florack@xn.xerox.com (Florack,Eric) Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? In #594, Ian Angus writes to Tony Pelliccio: >> I'm sorry but the LEC's are completely responsible for this mess. Most >> of them never grew beyond the old AT&T manuals. The 4:1 ratio just >> doesn't cut it anymore and it hasn't cut it since the mid 80's and >> every single LEC knew it. > Okay -- now can we expect you to support local rate increases large > enough to pay for expansion of the PSTN to handle 36 ccs/line (60 > minutes/line/hour) of traffic from every telephone? Hi, Ian, Good to 'meet' you. Not to speak for Tony, but you've hit my hot button. Not I ... but you *can* expect me to call -loudly- for the supposed public service commissions to insist on lower or non-existant profit margins within the monopoly that LEC's are, until such expansions are paid for and installed. Consider; If this were a free market situation, this wouldn't even be a discussion, since the LEC's would have to have both the low cost and high traffic ability, to remain competitive. This would be the ideal situation. Tell me, Ian; In a free market situation, when a private company selling wares or services, does not anticipate the needs of it's customers, do their profit margins go down? I daresay they do... and they go down because people leave to go to another company that provides better. The company that does not provide better pays the price for their lack of planning, or incorrect planning.... even to the point of going out of business, or more likely, being bought up, or taken over. In a monopoly situation, however ... (As it is now,) the people have no such choice. All the telco needs to do is sit back and wait for the government to mandate higher prices to keep Telco's profit margins up. Regards to you, /E ------------------------------ From: ehunt@bga.com (Eric Hunt) Subject: Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 09:40:14 -0600 Organization: Lil' Ole' Me In article , Todd L. Sherman wrote: > I was shocked to view the South Fla. Scanning and DX'ing web page, > only to see a NOTICE by the web page author advising its users that > the author's page would be shut DOWN after every 5000 hits, because of > a "pay-per-hit" fee his ISP is suddenly hitting them with! Can you This is a growing "feature" of ISPs. I've seen some do it this way, with a hit-meter, while others monitor the bytes and put like a 5 megabyte a day (made up figure) cap on "personal" web pages. This is to stem the personal publishing tide, IMO, whereby someone puts up something really popular and causes a bandwith bottleneck at the ISP. Most of the time it's something sexual related, but popular political and social sites can also mushroom in popularity and overwhelm an ISP. Eric Hunt ehunt@bga.com (preferred) Austin, TX hunt@metrowerks.com http://www.realtime.net/~ehunt ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 09:25:16 -0800 From: JP White Reply-To: ffv.aerotech@ffvaerotech.com Organization: FFV Aerotech Subject: Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? Todd L. Sherman wrote: > I was shocked to view the South Fla. Scanning and DX'ing web page, > only to see a NOTICE by the web page author advising its users that > the author's page would be shut DOWN after every 5000 hits, because of > a "pay-per-hit" fee his ISP is suddenly hitting them with! Can you > believe this? An ISP is actually charging its users for the number of > HITS to their own pages? Do many OTHER ISP's do this, too? I've > never heard of this before! > [...I do not know of any that charge per actual hit. PAT] Charging 'per hit' is not quite on the money. My ISP allows up to 10,000 hits per month for free, after which they charge $2.00 for each 1000 hits per month above the 10,000. Seems quite reasonable to me, if they have to service a lot of hits and need to 'gear up' their servers, they can't do this for nothing. The person 'enjoying' the benefit of a lot of hits should pay extra don't you think? Or do you think that the extra cost should be divided and bourne by all subscribers (even if they don't have a page at all, and use it as an on-ramp only!) Seems unfair to the average subscriber to ask him to subsidize all the local businesses in the local area! Get the businesses to pay!! They are the ones 'benefiting' if they designed their page correctly. The internet mindset that 'everything should be free' can only work up to a point. Large demands must be paid for, how else is the ISP meant to stay in business? (Last time I checked, ISP's hadn't registered themselves as charitable organizations). JP White Manager Information Systems FFV Aerotech Inc., Mail to : ffv.aerotech@ffvaerotech.com Web : http://www.ffvaerotech.com ------------------------------ From: CARICKINC@aol.com Subject: The Purpose of "500" Numbers Date: 7 Nov 1996 16:13:46 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) Has anyone ever heard of something called a "500" number available from ATT? What is it? Why would someone want one? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: AT&T 500 numbers are sometimes known as 'Follow Me' numbers. They are quite versatile. The owner has a PIN which allows him to program three numbers to which calls will be forwarded. AT&T then looks for him at those three numbers in the order he specifies each time a call comes in. The owner specifies if incoming calls via his 500 number are to be paid for by the caller or if they are to be received collect, in which case he gives out a PIN to the callers allowed to call him via the 500 number with auto- matic reverse charge. It can all be tied to voicemail of the owner's choosing or voicemail provided by AT&T. 500 numbers are basically the same as the older 700 numbers, except that the caller does not need to use the AT&T code 10288 on the front of the dialing string. This service is good for people who travel a lot and are likely to be at various numbers but who do not want to have to give out a bunch of numbers to people likely to call them. The owner simply programs the 500 number to ring at the place he is located at the time. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #602 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 7 19:34:30 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id TAA26364; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 19:34:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 19:34:30 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611080034.TAA26364@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #603 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Nov 96 19:34:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 603 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Govt Alleges United Payphones, Teletek Stock Scam (Tad Cook) Book Review: "NetLearning: Why Teachers Use the Internet" (Rob Slade) Universal Service Debate Online Friday, November 8 (Stephen Messer) Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? (David Richards) Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? (Edward Shuck) Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? (Todd L. Sherman) Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? (Paul Wallich) Re: Help! Need Multi-Fax Receive Software (Robert A. Book) Symplex DR-1 For Sale (Geoff Williams) Re: Problems With Long Distance Directory (Lou Jahn) Top 10 Signs Your Company Has Been Taken Over By BT (Tom Trottier) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Govt Alleges United Payphones, Teletek Stock Scam Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 14:50:03 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Grand Jury Indicts 19 in Vegas Stock Scam LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A federal grand jury has indicted 19 stock promoters, brokers and officials linked to two Las Vegas companies in connection with a multimillion-dollar stock scheme. A 52-count indictment alleges securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. It was issued against five people who at one time held key positions with Teletek Inc. or United Payphones Inc. In a separate 27-count indictment, 14 other people, many of them East Coast stockbrokers and financial consultants, were charged with conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud and, in some cases, money laundering. The racketeering indictment, revealed Wednesday, alleges former Teletek officials Michael Swan, Keith Shwayder and Kevin Orton represented to investors that the company's income was derived from business operations with "no mention of the funding being received from the fraudulent sale of securities." It also said company stock was issued to "assist in bribing stockbrokers to provide fraudulent sources of funds," and investors were not told of "hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income" being provided to Swan or his wife, co-defendant Claudia Higgins. Also named in the 52-count indictment was Steven Wertman, a stock promoter from New York. Some of the bribes were paid to stockbrokers in cash hidden in Federal Express packages. In one instance, Swan is alleged to have had a former secretary deliver $15,000 cash to the husband of a stockbroker at a Las Vegas airport, the U.S. attorney's office said. The indictment said millions of shares of stock were transferred. An employee of Teletek said neither Swan nor Higgins worked for the company and she had not heard of the other three names in the racketeering indictment. William McLucas, the Securities and Exchange Commission's director of enforcement, called the investigation a "major step in law enforcement's intensive ... efforts to address the problem of kickbacks in the securities industry." The indictment said the scheme took place over four years beginning in late 1991. Among the allegations: --Brokers and promoters were bribed with "millions of dollars of cash and stock to sell millions of shares," and officers engaged in insider trading while manipulating the price and volume of the stock. --The companies filed false annual and quarterly reports, registration statements and other public documents. --Company officers laundered proceeds of the scheme, which was carried out in at least 10 states. The indictment said that in December 1991, Swan, who was also president and director of United Payphones, met in Las Vegas with various stockbrokers. It was at this and subsequent meetings, according to prosecutors, that the agreement to bribe brokers in exchange for stock sales was hammered out. The fraudulent activity is alleged to have continued from November 1991 to December 1995, and to have included bribing stockbrokers in Nevada, California, Utah, Colorado, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Illinois and Oklahoma. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 18:33:18 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "NetLearning: Why Teachers Use the Internet" BKNETLRN.RVW 960721 "NetLearning: Why Teachers Use the Internet", Ferdi Serim/Melissa Koch, 1996, 1-56592-201-8, U$24.95/C$35.95 %A Ferdi Serim %A Melissa Koch %C 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472 %D 1996 %G 1-56592-201-8 %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. %O U$24.95/C$35.95 800-998-9938 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com %P 292 %T "NetLearning: Why Teachers Use the Internet" A quote, on page 112, regarding project planning is telling. "From our experience, it takes as much time [to plan an Internet related activity] as any well-thought-out project." In other words, the Internet is no magic panacea for education, regardless of how excited you may be about it. It takes time, it takes work, it takes research, and it takes a thorough knowledge of the net and its tools before you can produce something of quality. Simply sticking the Internet name on will not cover up your deficiencies. The authors of this book should have kept that in mind from the start. Although different in format, this work is very similar to FARNET's "51 Reasons" (cf. BK51RESN.RVW) in style, content, and concept. The material is limited and repetitious, with reiterated stories of email penpals and online research. The details of searching or directed study are almost completely lacking, reinforcing the image of the Internet as a place where learning, if it takes place at all, is completely serendipitous. There is some value in the brief overview of Internet applications, plus marginal notes on Web sites and other resources referred to in the stories. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKNETLRN.RVW 960721 Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca link to virus, book info at http://www.freenet.victoria.bc.ca/techrev/rms.html Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ From: Stephen Messer Subject: Universal Service Debate Online Friday, November 8 Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 14:30:14 -0800 Organization: The Columbia Institute for Tele-Information On Friday, November 8 Federal-State Joint Board Announces its Universal Service Recommendations: 4pm-6pm Join a discussion with Top telecom disscuants to discuss the Joint Federal-State board recommendations on Universal Service. New York, New York -- On July 13, 1995, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM)"... seeking comments on proposals and policy changes to improve ... assistance mechanisms intended to provide funds necessary to promote universally available service at reasonable rates." On Friday, November 8 the results of this effort will be released. Immediately afterwards, from 4pm to 6pm, top academics, industry and government officials who are prominent in the Universal Service arena will convene on-line to initiate a live discussion on the recommendation which will then be opened to the public. The program will be moderated by Professor Milton Mueller of Rutgers University, a noted scholar on the subject. Full text of the recommendation, submissions to the FCC, links to other sites and articles, expert responses, biographies, contact information, and much more will be available. The Virtual Institute of Information will host the discussion. The V.I.I. is an on-line think tank and research library devoted to telecommunications, computing, and mass media. With more than 7,000 links, The V.I.I. has become one of the most comprehensive on-line industry sources. Join in the discussion at : http://www.ctr.columbia.edu/vii/univsvce Among 30 invited discussants are: Eli Noam,Columbia; Greg Rosston,FCC; Fred Gumper, NYNEX; Barbara Cherry,Ameritech; Andrew Blau,Benton Foundation; Jorge Schement,Penn State; Charles Firestone,Aspen Institute; Henry Geller,The Markle Foundation; Albert Vann,NY State Assembly,Telecommuniactions and Energy Committee; Susan Ness, FCC; Steve Wildman,Northwestern; Joe Lubin,AT&T; Monroe Price,Cardozo; and many more ... Stephen Messer The Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, http://www.ctr.columbia.edu/citi The Virtual Institute of Informaiton, http://www.ctr.columbia.edu/vii smesser@claven.gsb.columbia.edu sdm28@columbia.edu Phone: 212-854-4222 Fax: 212-932-7816 ------------------------------ From: dr@ripco.com (David Richards) Subject: Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? Organization: Ripco Internet BBS Chicago Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 16:29:16 GMT Charging by the 'hit' is unfair. A 'hit' is one connection, the server could send one byte or one million. What's being sent (HTML, zip or .jpg) also has little impact on the server. What bogs down a server are lots and lots of hits on small files, or even just a few hits on really big files. The solution is to base overuse policies on 'bandwidth' used rather than connections seen. In article , Todd L. Sherman wrote: > I was shocked to view the South Fla. Scanning and DX'ing web page, > only to see a NOTICE by the web page author advising its users that > the author's page would be shut DOWN after every 5000 hits, because of > a "pay-per-hit" fee his ISP is suddenly hitting them with! Can you > believe this? An ISP is actually charging its users for the number of > HITS to their own pages? Do many OTHER ISP's do this, too? I've > never heard of this before! There has to be some restriction on the amount of traffic users's pages do, lest they clog up the server. For example, Glen Roberts of Full Disclosure is one of our users. His page was mentioned (with URL) on the front page of section 2 of the {Wall Street Journal}. From the day it appeared through today, hits to his web pages made up 20% of the hits to personal home page server, and about 18% of the bytes sent from that server (his pages tend to be smaller than average). > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are some ISPs who count the hits > and say that after a given number of hits in a certain period of time > you will be considered a commercial customer rather than just an > individual user (with the additional costs which applies to company > accounts, etc). I do not know of any that charge per actual hit. PAT] Without a limit you'll end up in a situation like Netcom's a year or so ago, where users had multi-megabyte freeware distributions, huge archives of X-rated images, and other extremely popular material, clogging their public-FTP servers such that nobody could get anything in or out. David Richards Ripco, since Nineteen-Eighty-Three My opinions are my own, Public Access in Chicago But they are available for rental Shell/SLIP/PPP/UUCP/ISDN/Leased dr@ripco.com (312) 665-0065 !Free Usenet/E-Mail! ------------------------------ From: edshuck@best.com (Edward Shuck) Subject: Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? Date: Wed, 06 Nov 1996 00:23:32 GMT Organization: Visual Traffic Reply-To: edshuck@visual-traffic.com One ISP that does what Pat indicates is Best.com (my provider). Details can be had at http://www.best.com. The 5k number seems very small. I need 50k a day to move to commercial rate. Edward Shuck edshuck@visual-traffic.com Visual Traffic http://www.visual-traffic.com Telephone Traffic Analysis/Phreaker & Telabuse Abatement ------------------------------ From: Todd L. Sherman Subject: Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 14:43:28 -0500 On 7 Nov 1996, Rahul Dhesi wrote: >> I do not know of any that charge per actual hit. PAT > Now you do. From our new rate schedule: > Monthly charge for exceeding scaled hits: > $5 per 50,000 excess scaled hits/day in units of $5. > Monthly charge for exceeding megabyte volume: > $50 per 50 excess megabytes/day in units of $50. > It's not as bad as it sounds, since some number of hits and megabytes > are included in the base rate. Not too bad at all, compared to the 5000 hits limit at the other site I mentioned. THAT'S more acceptable, and harder to surpass (your's, that is.) The only people I can see surpassing that would be commercial co's. Todd ------------------------------ From: pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich) Subject: Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? Date: 7 Nov 1996 11:26:41 -0500 Organization: Trivializers R Us In Todd L. Sherman writes: > I was shocked to view the South Fla. Scanning and DX'ing web page, > only to see a NOTICE by the web page author advising its users that > the author's page would be shut DOWN after every 5000 hits, because of > a "pay-per-hit" fee his ISP is suddenly hitting them with! Can you > believe this? An ISP is actually charging its users for the number of > HITS to their own pages? Do many OTHER ISP's do this, too? I've > never heard of this before! > See www.shadow.net for the culprit service. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are some ISPs who count the hits > and say that after a given number of hits in a certain period of time > you will be considered a commercial customer rather than just an > individual user (with the additional costs which applies to company > accounts, etc). I do not know of any that charge per actual hit. PAT] I know of at least one ISP that charges on the basis of the amount of information transferred: the first 60MB or so each month are free, and then a small per-megabyte charge kicks in. Since bandwidth is what ISP's are supplying (and paying people for) it seems only reasonably that at some point they should pass the costs on to the people who generate them. Flat rate is nice in some ways, but usually it means that the smaller users subsidize the bigger ones. paul ------------------------------ From: Robert A. Book Subject: Re: Help! Need Multi-Fax Receive Software Organization: University of Chicago Grad. School of Business Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 21:31:16 GMT Larry Rachman, WA2BUX 74066.2004@compuserve.com wrote: > Does anyone out there know of an off-the-shelf application for a PC > that will collect incoming faxes from several modems (2-16) and print > them to one or more laser printers as they arrive. I've got a client > dependant upon a now-obsolete product called 'jetfax' that turned an > HP laserjet into a fax machine. Now, he needs more, can't get them, > and does't want to replace his two laserjets with a room full of fax > machines. Why can't you just run several "copies" of a standard fax program, each looking at a different modem (i.e., a different COM: port), and have each program configured to automatically print the faxes as they come in? Am I missing something here? It should be legal, by the way, to install multiple copies of the same software on the same machine without buying extra copies. Of course, if you need 16 faxmodems, you might need two machines, so you'd need to buy two copies, but not 16. Robert Book rbook@uchicago.edu University of Chicago ------------------------------ From: Geoff Williams Subject: Symplex DR-1 For Sale Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 15:56:47 -0500 Organization: Thorn Communications Thorn Communications is offering a Symplex DR-1 ISDN Router for sale. If you're interested, please contact us at info@thorn.net, or call (212) 480-3680. Geoff Williams Thorn Communications ------------------------------ Date: 07 Nov 96 13:53:03 EST From: Lou Jahn <71233.2444@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Problems With Long Distance Directory In TD Vol #594 Ken Jongsma mentioned the cost of air time relative to Cellular directory assistance. > It would seem that there is a business opportunity here: The LECs > should be marketing their "genuine" directory services. There is a difference between LandLine and Cellular DA service focus. Efficency as measured by Average Work Time (AWT) of operators, accuracy and provided services are but a few, however, one must remember the Cellular Carriers are "Unregulated" or maybe "less-regulated" versus traditional Landline LECs. AWT is a major focus on traditional LEC DA service. Operator labor generally represents well over 50% of the cost to provide DA service. On Cellular DA services there is far less concern on the operator cost hence AWT as the Carrier captures greater AirTime revenues which offset the additional labor cost with longer AWTs. It is justified under the guise of better "Customer Service". Accuracy: This is major problem and one both the FCC and PUCs must work to relieve. It is not something the Cellular Carrier or their DA provider can fix without RBOC assistance. The basic issue is most RBOCs refuse to license the use of their subscriber listings to Alternate DA providers. Hence the Alt. DA provider uses scanned versions of the White Page directories. These DBs suffer from both scanning as well as Directory Ageing problems. The T/C Act mandates that thr RBOCs provide the listings to CLECs etc, however every RBOC legal team reads the words differently so as to assure they can delay following the law (and hopefully trade-off providing the listings as part of a rate negotiated settlement). Services: Cellular use by its pure nature is different than traditional LandLine telephony. It represents more willingness to pay for discretionary expenditures (mostly due to business write-offs). Hence Cellular DA service finds a greater willingness to pay for call completion and/or for finding "Yellow Page" like category searches - say to find a selected type of resturant near 5th and Vine. Again these types of services take more time than the average AWT for 411 DA (which is approximately 20-22 seconds). Again the longer Air TImes and air-revenue provides some of the economics missing under your basic DA service. Lastly, and as importantly is the cost of Cellular DA versus traditional DA services. The fee for NPA-555-1212 was orginally set under the 1984 ruling and was arbitrarily chosen at the time as 75 cents per call, today most IXC firms charge 85-90 cents per NPA-555-1212 call. At the time this was to cover the transport plus 411 charges. Most 411 subscriber charges are set by State PUCs without regard to the cost of the service. For instance, US West gets 60 cents per 411 call, Bell of PA gets 57 cents per 411 yet NJ Bell must provide 6 free calls and after that only gets 20 cents per 411 call in NJ (35 cents for Business Callers). Most analyst believe that the true cost is in the 50 cents per call range. However, you will have a hard time finding any Cellular Carrier charging similar low rates for Directory Assistance. Most bundle the DA with Call Completion (and do not mention Air Time) to perpetuate the "service" aspect of the delivery. The additional call completion function adds very little to the toal cost - yet sounds complex and the net result are fees that generate Cellular profits from DA while RBOCs suffer losses in providing basic DA. Also - yet to be heard of complaint! The area code confusion and proilferation adds costs to many callers. If you dial 415-5551212 and the area code number/service you need is 408-555-1212, most IXC's still charge the 85-90 cents to your bill. Nobody seems worried of callers lost fee's due to the NANP complexity. This one area the Aternate DA providers fix as they will provide any State any area code from the same Operator Position. Lou Jahn Listing Services Solutions Inc. 609-702-8232 / 609-702-8240 FAX Lumberton, NJ 08048 71233.2444@compuserve.com ------------------------------ From: Tom Trottier Date: 7 Nov 96 16:14:09 MST Subject: Top 10 Signs Your Company Has Been Taken Over By BT 10. That black thing on your desk is referred to as the "tellie" (MCI'ers all have black tvs, I guess); 9. When you miss the plan, someone named Sir screams, "this whole thing is a bloody mess"; 8. Benny Hill replaces Whoopi as the company spokesperson; 7. "God Save the Queen" is the new company motto; 6. 1-800-COLLECT has been changed to 1-800-FERGIE; 5. Tea and Crumpet breaks at 2 and 4 pm daily; 4. That big Christmas bonus is converted to Pounds; 3. 1-800-MUSICNOW sells only Beatle 8-tracks; 2. Bass is on tap in the cafeteria; 1. Lady Di screen savers for everyone! Tom Trottier - tom@act.ca ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #603 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 7 21:10:33 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA06131; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 21:10:33 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 21:10:33 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611080210.VAA06131@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #604 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Nov 96 21:10:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 604 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Clocking For T1 Circuits (Bruce Bartram) Re: Clocking For T1 Circuits (Richard Kenshalo) Re: Help! Need Multi-Fax Receive Software (John Dearing) Re: NYNEX to Adopt Uniform Reach Numbers For Repair Service (N. Andersson) Re: Phone Access/Internet Saturation? (Nils Andersson) Re: Any Cord Switchboards Left in Service? (Lou Jahn) Employment Opportunity (Mark Horning) Developers and Systems Admins Needed For Chicago Area (trajan@megsinet.net) Re: Company-Specific Area Codes in the UK? (Michael Wengler) Re: New Virus Warning (Bob Niland) Re: FCC Decision: Cable Entry Into Telphony (Howard Stapleton) Bellcore Updates Web Page ... Sorta (John Cropper) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network (Paul Robinson) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network (Isaac Wingfield) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: bwb@etl.noaa.gov (Bruce Bartram) Subject: Re: Clocking For T1 Circuits Date: 8 Nov 1996 00:09:29 GMT Organization: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder A few minor notes/corrections on Kenneth Becker's answer. 1) I think the GPS system is timed from the Falcon Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, CO. The timing is a slave system off the US Naval Observatory master site near Washington, DC. http://tycho.usno.navy.mil is a nice set of pages. NIST (formerly NBS) in Boulder, CO keeps a separate master clock system. I expect there is a complete science of keeping the various master clocks in the world all synched. 2) My simple CSU/DSU has a local clock option that I had to use to make my data T1 (17 miles of US West) work. I found that the T1 is carried on a higher multiplex system and I needed to be within 50 ppm or 50 bits/second (I forget which) and the CSU/DSU local clock was spec'ed to be able to do that. Since these boxes were under $ 1k, I'd limit my solutions to about that amount, if the attached equipment is also happy with that level of accuracy. Bruce Bartram bbartram@etl.noaa.gov NOAA Boulder, CO usual disclaimers apply ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 07:34:37 -0800 From: Richard Kenshalo Organization: MTA Subject: Re: Clocking For T1 Circuits Bob Izenberg wrote: > Our regional telco isn't providing clocking on local area T1s. > The Ascend Pipeline 130s that we use on some of our circuits need a > stable clocking source and can't provide it themselves. One of our > options, which some will no doubt advocate, is forgetting all about > the P130s in favor of another vendor ... we're doing that. In the > meantime, I'd like to hear from anyone who's providing a clock source > for devices that need it but cannot derive it from the data line to > which they are connected, or from an internal source. It is hard to believe that the telco can't provide clocking on T1s. If they aren't doing any network synchronization, they can't provide any DDS services or SS7 signaling. If their T1s come from a DACS, there is a good chance they are synchronized to a primary reference. You might inquire again, and simply set your P130s to loop or recovered timing. To answer your question better, there are a number of low (?) cost GPS receivers available these days that provide a primary reference (Stratum 1) synchronization source. FTS-Austron makes a PRR-10, that I use to sync our telco offices in a distributed timing network. Is it possible to purchase your T1s from someone else if you can't provide your own clocking? Richard Kenshalo Matanuska Telephone Association Palmer, Alaska ------------------------------ From: jdearing@netaxs.com (John Dearing) Subject: Re: Help! Need Multi-Fax Receive Software Date: 7 Nov 1996 17:44:31 GMT Organization: Philadelphia's Complete Internet Provider Lawrence Rachman (74066.2004@CompuServe.COM) wrote: > Does anyone out there know of an off-the-shelf application for a PC > that will collect incoming faxes from several modems (2-16) and print > them to one or more laser printers as they arrive. I've got a client > dependant upon a now-obsolete product called 'jetfax' that turned an > HP laserjet into a fax machine. Now, he needs more, can't get them, > and does't want to replace his two laserjets with a room full of fax > machines. Does Practical Perpiherals still make the FaxMe card? It plugged into the left hand font cart slot on a LaserJet II or III and let the printer do double duty as a receive-only Fax machine. They were pretty inexpensive and worked rather well as I recall. Don't know if they ever upgraded them for newer series LaserJets. John Dearing : Philadelphia Area Computer Society IBM SIG President Email : jdearing@netaxs.com U.S.Snail : 46 Oxford Drive, Langhorne PA 19047 (USA) Voice Phone : +1.215.757.8803 (after 5pm Eastern) ------------------------------ From: Nilsphone@aol.com Subject: Re: NYNEX to Adopt Uniform Reach Numbers For Repair Service Date: 7 Nov 1996 18:04:59 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , Dave Perrussel writes: > Many places that have 611 for the number for repair service also have > a seven-digit number (local to those in that particular telco) or an > 1-800 or 1-888 number for those outside the telco. I agree that a local quick dial (611 and its brethren) is fine as long as there is also a POTN (Plain old telephone number) that can be reached from ANYWHERE! 800 and 888 numbers still fail this test, as they cannot be reached from outside the U.S. (The truly telco adept can finesse this by calling e.g. an AT&T access number in the local country etc etc, but nobody should have to depend on this). Note that I can be outside the U.S. and find that some local exchange in the US has a problem! ------------------------------ From: Nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: Phone Access/Internet Saturation? Date: 7 Nov 1996 18:05:02 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , Victor Shvetsky writes: >> minutes I caught at the end, he (the CEO) made the statement that 2/3 >> of the world's population LIVE AND DIE WITHOUT EVER MAKING OR >> RECEIVING _ONE_ TELEPHONE CALL ... 2/3! > Question is, do they really need the phone? I mean, we sure try to > make this ATM-over-Satellite business that would allow us multi-gadget > "multimedia", but if any of you have travelled in areas of "most > population" -- why would they need it when there are more simple > things that will not be there for at least hundreds of years? It is > one thing to provide mobile service to current users, but it is > totally different providing it to people who really have no need for > it YET. > Now, I know it sounds a bit prejudice, it isn't -- like a government- > sponsored billboard in India in front of the McDonald's says - "Say no > to Potato Chips and Yes to Computer Chips". What this global phone for > the masses is like is potato chips -- you can eat them, but is it good > to? Small note: "Chips" or "Potato Chips" in British (and presumably Indian) English = "French Fries" in American English. (U.S. "chips" are "crisps" to an Englishman). >> Given the current population growth rate and the current expansion rate >> of the internet, when will the total population be wired? > Once again, WHY? A fear of losing another Balsac? Why "wiring" the > whole lpopulation? Providing an ability -- maybe, a right -- definitely > not. > Here in Japan, they got this thing, called PHS -- cellular phone only > cheaper. It was such a hit that almost eveyrone is Tokyo uses them > now. The problem is, it REALLY interrupts your lifestyle! How many > of you, eating at the table having a conversation, would suddenly > stop, ignore the person you just asked a question, and turn to someone > else? Sure, on a date maybe! But, with cell phone, it is definitely > TOO much. We flip the phone, cut the current conversation, making > our partner pretend like he/she is not listening (I guess, he/she > might as well be counting the oxygen molecules trying to fill up the > time whle you talk) and start the new one on the phone. > The point is, we take this hype about technology WAY too much. > Technology is great, it should definitely enhance our lives, but > interrupt it? > So, once again -- why WIRE all the masses? Oooh, the paternalism of it all. The truth is much better and much worse than you think. The "need" for anything beyond a very minimum sustenance lies in the mind of the needer, i.e. it is subjective. By this definition, I can "need" almost anything (certainly including a private jet), and so can you, but it is not for either of us to tell the other what he needs. In business, there is a different (but very practical) definition of "need", although the word usually used is "demand". There is a "demand" for anything that a customer is willing to pay for. In extremis, by this definition a starving person does not "need" or at least not "demand" food unless he has money in his pocket. Suggesting that peoples living in poverty do not "need" phones may be true, sort of, in the sense that most of them do not lie awake at night thinking "I wish I had a phone". Suggesting, as you do, that they are better off without them is probably untrue; one of the reasons they are poor is that they live in a subsistence economy (although traditional Western money-based measures of poverty break down entirely when facing a subsistence economy; saying that somebody lives on USD 200 a year says something about his ability to buy industrial goods, but nothing about how well or badly he really lives - maybe he is starving to death, or maybe he can pluck all his food and necessary clothing from a munificient nature with no problems). In reality, what will happen in many poor regions (from fairly "capitalistic" ones to Mainland China) is that the wired telephone stage will be largely skipped, it is cheaper and quicker to use various cellular or cellular-style (DECT e.g. ) technologies that do not depend on stringing wire (copper wire is expensive to install, and makes nice bracelets when polished...) Various companies will offer phone service. In poor areas, the initial customers will be businesses, including small businesses. What proportion of people will bring their phones to the dinner table will depend on their individual choices (not yours, or mine), as it does in the parts of the world that are industrialized of old. The threat of having their privacy interrupted by a phone call (cellular or otherwise) at the dinner table does not weigh heavily on the huddled masses of the world. Nils Andersson ------------------------------ Date: 07 Nov 96 13:53:06 EST From: Lou Jahn <71233.2444@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Any Cord Switchboards Left in Service? Lisa posed the question and as of March of 1995 I can say yes. My firm undertook a review of Telcom Haiti for the World Bank and low and behold they have bank of six cord boards in their toll center. While they have as well a PC based solution, three of the cord boards were still used on high traffic situations (the other three served as parts supply for the three pressed into operation). In addition, they still used the old approach of toll tickets to measure the length and cost of toll calls (mostly going overseas from toll call store front operations run by the telco). You requested the number at a cashier like booth. When the toll operators connected it you were told which telephone booth to use for the call. At the completion the toll operators give the time and rate to the cashier who deducts the true charge from a deposit made when placing the call. Sounds archic against our operations, however when measured against the very poor and limited resources for TeleCom Haiti and the nation, their overall system ran effectively. We even heard the drone of the step-switches operating in one CO basement ... yet mixed with DMS-10s in remote areas their service was quite good considering ot suffered thru an embargo and much more. Lou Jahn Listing Services Solutions, Inc 71233.2444@compuserve.com ------------------------------ From: Mark Horning Subject: Employment Opportunity: Chief Engineer, Telecom Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 19:36:09 -0500 Organization: IPR Reply-To: mhorning@erols.com Job Title: Chief Engineer, Telecommunications Infrastructure Salary Range:$60-$90K Location: East Coast(not NYC), relo package avail. Position Summary: Overall engineering responsibility for outside plant and transmission telecom infrastructure access services. The engineering services include engineering, contractor services, construction supervision, acceptance, chosen technology and network planning. Infrastructure facilities include: fiber optic, wireless, coaxial, and telephone cable systems. This is a new start up venture with parts already in place. If you are interested, please contact me for more information. My firm has been retained by this organization to recruit for this position. There are no fees. Mark Horning Staff-Net 11718 Bowman Green Drive Reston, VA 20190 703-318-4105 FAX 318-9121 Email mhorning@erols.com ------------------------------ From: trajan@megsinet.net Subject: Developers and Systems Admins Needed for Chicago area Date: 7 Nov 1996 03:41:03 GMT Organization: Deja News Usenet Posting Service Recruiting for the following computer professionals: 1) Windows NT Systems Administrator 2) Unix Systems Administrator 3) C/Unix Oracle Developer 4) Oracle DBA You must have at least one year work experience working for a U.S. business or government agency, excellent communications skills, and a willingness to work in the Chicago area. Respond to me at trajan@megsinet.net. You may attach a resume in Word Perfect, MS Word, or text format. ------------------------------ From: Michael Wengler Subject: Re: Company-Specific Area Codes in the UK? Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 15:56:28 -0800 Organization: QUALCOMM, Incorporated; San Diego, CA, USA Heck, the US government has been auctioning radio spectrum ... Why not auction off numbering space? Retire the US national debt that way, augment North Sea oil income in Britain ... ------------------------------ From: rjn@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Bob Niland) Subject: Re: New Virus Warning Date: 7 Nov 1996 17:09:51 GMT Organization: Colorado SuperNet Reply-To: rjn@csn.net Tim Dillman (0006540276@mcimail.com) wrote: > RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS: Do not download and/or execute any file named > PKZ300B.EXE/ZIP. The most current release of PKZip from PKWARE Inc., > is PKZ204G. exe which is available via anonymous FTP from pkware.com > (IP 198.137.186.90) in the /pub/pkware directory. If you have a copy > of the counterfeit PKZip utility, please contact ASSIST as soon as > possible. PKware is now advertising a release 2.5, presumably file name PKZ250x.EXE. Don't assume that any file with a number higher than 204 is a virus vector. Regards, 1001-A East Harmony Road Bob Niland Suite 503 Internet: rjn@sni.net Fort Collins Colorado 80525 USA ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 11:11:36 -0800 From: Howard Stapleton Subject: Re: FCC Decision: Cable Entry Into Telephony An article from Neal McLain in Digest V16 #598 included the following statement in discussing the FCC preliminary decision in a case where Hill City and Bogue, Kansas refused to issue a telecommunications franchise to Classic Telephone: "In most states, telecommunications franchises are issued at the state level." I was under the impression that the majority of states allowed local governments to franchise as a means of receiving compensation for use of public ROW. Can anyone clarify this for me? Howard Stapleton City of San Diego (619) 533-4758 hps@citymgr.sannet.gov ------------------------------ From: psyber@mindspring.com (John Cropper) Subject: BellCore Updates Web Page ... Sorta Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 19:53:41 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Reply-To: psyber@mindspring.com BellCore's monthly update took place on the afternoon of the seventh, with a few surprises, but lacking in other areas ... 313 Michigan: 734 announced as split code for areas outside of Detroit 908 New Jersey: 732 added, but with no info (we already know 5/1/97 and 11/1/97) 201 New Jersey: 973 added, but with no info (we already know 5/1/97 and 11/1/97) 425 Washington: Test number of 425-452-0009 added 253 Washington: Test number of 253-627-0062 added No mention of the test number for 440, the new 615 split (931), nor the 415 (650), 916 (530), or 818 (626). Kinda makes you wonder why some LECs (BA, PacBell, BellSouth) just dump the code info into the public domain at the drop of a hat, while others (Ameritech) are as tight-lipped as BellCore (at times) with the relief information. John Cropper NiS / NexComm PO Box 277 Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 voice: 888.NPA.NFO2 fax: 609.637.9430 mailto:psyber@mindspring.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 21:35:51 -0400 From: Paul Robinson Reply-To: cats8@erols.com Organization: Evergreen Software Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Nils Andersson wrote: > scott miller writes: >> Dial-up data traffic has been getting a free ride on the Telco >> voice network for years. >> That is coming to an end. The question is, who is going to pay? > Nonsense! While the statistics are different, a data link pays the > same per-minute charge (at least) as a voice call. If there was a > per-call charge, this claim might have had some validity, but the > local RBOCs charge per minute, in most cases. Here in Bell Atlantic country, you can get calls in three flavors of charges: (1) Untimed, unlimited calling (residential and centrex only) (2) 10c per call (technically 9.9c per call) untimed (3) 3c for the first minute, 1c each additional minute Our home line was originally on 10c per call (you get 65 calls free) but, because I am sending a lot of faxes while looking for work (I'm currently unemployed), I had to switch to unlimited calling after running up $85.00 in toll charges one month (more than 900 faxes). So not everyone is timed. Paul Robinson (formerly PAUL@TDR.COM) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 09:10:24 -0800 From: isw@hdvs.com (Isaac Wingfield) Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Clayton E. Cramer wrote: > The telcos are doing their best to implement ADSL, but genuine > commercial products are still a few months away from deployment. My > colleagues in our Engineering Department would tell you all about > this, but they are too busy getting the products put together. > If you read the ADSL RFPs from the telcos (as I do), you can tell > that they are very serious about this. If you had read the RFPs for Bell Atlantic's video dial tone service a few years ago (as I did), you could tell that they were very serious about that, too. It was later on that they lost interest, after my company and others had invested large sums of money to develop devices which they wound up purchasing only small quantities of ... Isaac Wingfield Staff System Engineer isw@hdvs.com Hyundai Digital Video Systems Vox: 408-232-8530 3103 N. First Street Fax: 408-232-8145 San Jose, CA 95134 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #604 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Fri Nov 8 10:35:06 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id KAA25157; Fri, 8 Nov 1996 10:35:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 10:35:06 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611081535.KAA25157@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #605 TELECOM Digest Fri, 8 Nov 96 10:35:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 605 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Announcement - Warning to Crypto and Banking Communities (Monty Solomon) Worldwide Interconnects/Installers (Ed Hogan) Re: Typos in Lucent Television Commercials (Bradley Ward Allen) Re: Tennessee Split (Paul Robinson) Re: Tennessee Split (Linc Madison) Re: Plan May Divide Spring Hill, TN (Linc Madison) Re: Plan May Divide Spring Hill, TN (Mark W. Schumann) Re: Pacific Bell/PCS/San Diego (Mike King) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Jim St. John) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: Last Laugh! 666 Exchange and Disgruntled Subcribers (Mike Fox) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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, 6 Nov 1996 03:52:09 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Announcement - Warning to Crypto and Banking Communities Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Begin forwarded message: Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 18:16:37 -0500 From: Ross Anderson (by way of Bruce Schneier) Subject: Announcement - Warning to Crypto and Banking Communities A serious weakness of DES Draft - 2nd November 1996 Abstract Eli Biham and Adi Shamir recently pointed out that if an attacker can induce unidirectional faults in key memory of cryptographic devices, then keys could be extracted quickly. Although their attack is very elegant, it is not practical against many fielded systems. For example, inducing a single bit change in a DES key will cause a proper implementation to return a key parity error. However, when combined with Peter Gutman's recent work on memory remanence, there are two very practical attacks. One of them allows smartcard electronic wallet keys to be extracted with much less expensive equipment than that currently used by pay-TV pirates; the other yields an effective attack against fielded banking security modules. These attacks show that a feature of DES that had long been thought innocuous is actually a serious design error. Introduction In a research announcement of 30th October, Biham and Shamir point out that if a cryptographic hardware module employes EEPROM for key memory only, an opponent who can turn EEPROM values from `1' to `0' with a small controlled probability (e.g., by applying UV light) might cause a test input to be encrypted with a series of keys, each of Hamming distance one from the next in the series, and ending with the all zero key [1]. There are a number of reasons why their attack is not likely to work against real systems. For example, the typical smartcard system has several kilobytes of program code in EEPROM as well as typically two to five DES keys. An undirected stress applied to such a card is more likely to cause a program crash or an uninformative error than to yield a ciphertext encrypted under a key at Hamming distance one from a genuine key. Even if we only had to cause a hundred cards to fail to get a single input for the Biham-Shamir attack, if we needed on average 28 inputs to recover a DES key, then the number of cards required could be O(100^28). The situation is made still worse by the fact that DES keys have odd parity, and a proper implementation will reject a key if any of its bytes has even parity. So one would be reduced to looking for keys at a Hamming distance of two rather than one. It is this objection that inspired the following work. A Modified Attack My idea is to turn the DES key parity problem on its head and enable parity to help rather than hinder the attack. Let us first consider an opponent who can perform directed attacks on the chip. Reading the contents of an EEPROM cell directly is difficult, and people who do it for a living use focused ion beam workstations to modify the chip [2]. However, it is trivial to set an EEPROM cell to the value of your choice if you do not have to read it first; you only need two microprobes. A 10mS 18V pulse from the cell's source to its control gate will do the trick [3]. My modified attack therefore proceeds as follows. Set the first bit of the EEPROM containing the target DES key to 1 (or 0, the choice doesn't matter) and operate the device. If it still works, the keybit was a 1. If you get a `key parity error' message, then the bit was zero. Move on to the next bit; set it to 1 and see if this changes the device's response (from encryption to error or vice versa). This is a practical attack even on chips whose software we do not know in detail, as many smartcard software writers seem to have adopted a convention that the keys are located at the bottom end of the EEPROM memory. It will also work with protocols that use redundancy which we do not understand: we just change each key bit back to its original value. The use of predictable memory addresses for keys is not restricted to smartcards; many banking security modules also keep keys at low memory. I will now describe a related attack that extracts master keys from these modules. An Attack on Fielded Systems In a brilliant Usenix paper [4], Peter Gutman described the mechanisms that cause both static and dynamic RAM to `remember' values that they have stored for a long period of time. A prudent security engineer will ask what the effect of this is in the real world. I looked at an instance of a security module used in banking. This security module has 12 pairs of DES master keys stored in low memory. The device is tamper resistant in that power to the key memory is cut when the box is opened for servicing (this is needed every few years to change the battery). Keys are loaded into the device afterwards in multiple components by trusted bank staff. In this device, which dated from the late 1980's, the key values were substantially intact on power-up. The number of bits in error was of the order of 5-10%. I cannot give more accurate figures as I was not permitted to copy down either the correct master key values, nor the almost-correct values that had been `burned in' to the static RAM chips. I am also not permitted to name the bank at which these modules are installed, and it may not be prudent to name their manufacturer. Nonetheless the crypto community should consider the consequences. If each DES key is wrong by five bits, then the effort involved in seaching for the 10 wrong bits in a double DES key might be thought to be 112-choose-10 operations. Each operation would involve (a) doing a 2-key 3DES decryption of a 64 bit PIN key whose enciphered value is widely known to the bank's programmers (b) in the 2^{-8} of cases where this result has odd parity, enciphering an account number with this as a DES key to see if the (decimalised) result is the corresponding PIN. The effort is 4 times 112-choose-10 DES operations - about 2^50. But it would probably be cheaper to do a hardware keysearch on the PIN key directly than to try to implement this more complex 2^50 search in either hardware or software. However, the bytewise nature of the DES key redundancy reduces the effort by orders of magnitude. If no key byte has a double error, then the effort is seven tries for each even parity byte observed, or 7^10 - about 2^28, which is easy. If there is one key byte with a double error, the effort is 2^38, giving a search of 2^40 DES operations - which is still feasible for an individual. Conclusions I have shown that the key parity in DES enables us to slash the cost of real attacks on both old systems (banking security modules) and new ones (electronic wallet smartcards). I had already mentioned in [5] that a common fault in the driver software for banking security modules was that `key parity error' messages were often ignored rather than copied to the bank's security manager to give warning of an attempted attack. This note shows that key parity is even more serious than that. The nature of DES key redundancy now appears to be a design error; it would have been much better to calculate the redundancy on the whole key. The 16 bit MAC used in the Clipper and Capstone chips is preferable (although as shown in [6], 16 bits may not be enough to prevent some protocol attacks). The lesson for bankers is that existing security modules (and other cryptographic devices) should be destroyed carefully at the end of their working life. The lesson for security engineers is that we should add key redundancy, and the question of whether we can rely on a device's eventual destruction, to the growing list of system parameters that must be (a) explicitly considered during design and (b) examined carefully when the product is being evaluated. Bibliography [1] ``The Next Stage of Differential Fault Analysis: How to break completely unknown cryptosystems'', Eli Biham, Adi Shamir, October 30th, 1996 [2] ``Tamper Resistance - A Cautionary Note'', Ross Anderson, Markus Kuhn, to appear at Usenix Electronic Commerce 96 (19th November) [3] ``Hardwaresicherheit von Mikrochips in Chipkarten'', Osman Kocar, Datenschutz und Datensicherheit v 20 no 7 (July 96) pp 421--424 [4] ``Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory'', Peter Gutmann, Usenix Security 96 pp 77--89 [5] ``Why Cryptosystems Fail'', Ross Anderson, in Communications of the ACM v 7 no 11 (Nov 94) pp 32--40 [6] ``Protocol Failure in the Escrowed Encryption Standard'', Matt Blaze, in Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (2-4 November 1994), ACM Press, pp 59--67 ------------------------------ From: Ed Hogan Subject: Worldwide Interconnects/Installers Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 17:18:49 -0500 Patrick, I hope that this email is not to much of an bother as I am sure that your get all sorts of requests all day long. We manufacture autodialers, X.25 access components, and call bridging equipment. Primarily used in seamless international callback applications for hotel and corporate end-users. We are looking for a list or access to some sort of database that would include PBX dealers/installers/interconnects worldwide. We are in the process of setting up an international dealer network for the installation and maintenance of our equipment. Our customers include AT&T, GlobalOne, Sprint, Kallback, Justice, MTC, Telegroup, and all the major callback providers. The problem is that these are basically marketing companies trying to install technical equipment overseas, we are trying to help them with this network of dealers. We would appreciate hearing from interested parties who wish to be part of our database. Thanks for your help. Best Regards, Ed Hogan, International Sales Manager Immix Telecom phone: 1 954 968 5725 fax: 1 954 968 6527 email: ehogan@immixtel.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Perhaps readers interested in being part of your dealer network will write to you for more information. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bradley Ward Allen Subject: Re: Typos in Lucent Television Commercials Date: 31 Oct 1996 12:57:43 -0500 [Different meanings of spelling and punctuation of (similar-sounding) words, and their misuse] > It's true that you can decode it, but in the meantime your > thought process has come to a screeching halt and the flow of information > is broken. Thank you. I always *knew* there was a reason behind my absolute abhorrence of the misapostrophication of "it is" and "its". Add to this the fact that I myself am rather horrible at grammar and spelling and have a penchant for making lots of new words without a thought, and one can easily understand why I was always confused as to why I got so annoyed by this apostrophe transgression when I myself wasn't so perfect. You finally pinpointed it for me: my thought process has come to a screeching halt and the flow of information is broken. Now I can rest in peace knowing that I'm not being hypocritical when I insult misused "'"s. I think the one thing that allows all the illiterates to misuse apostrophes so much and get away with it from *their* point of view is that they do everything phonetically and don't know of a separate meaning for the various spellings; they must already employ the same facilities parsing same-sounding words in context with reading as in speech, and pay little if any attention to the spelling. Unfortunately, knowledge is a handicap here since the different spellings have distinct meanings which do not cross, and when we see their use we parse according to the distinct meaning automatically since that is what that word is supposed to mean. Someone who interprets it phonetically before parsing may never encounter this; someone who interprets by reading will be predisposed to be hurt by this error. (I always worry this can be used as a tactic against literate people being as proficient at things.) As an aside but related, and oddly related to comp.dcom.telecom (showing how any conversation, let free, will eventually circle to the point where it's once again very relevent to the designated speaking location), I don't talk voice with people often enough to have that voice part of my brain streamlined, and probably send voice correspondence via more of a process of converting between voice and those processes in the brain that convert written word than most high-volume voice corresponders; in any case my voice parsing abilities are generally slower than normal and often make me fumble (however that may be as much due to my odd hearing abilities which make me hear high pitched sounds better and speech worse, causing me ever so many life problems). I'm not sure if that (reading easier than voice) is a handicap that is so particular to me that it can be considered more just my problem or everybody's. This aside may bring up important issues for sociologists to consider if they're ever consulted in providing direction for society's main forms of social contacts in the future, if the Internet somehow takes too much place in a person's life and makes it difficult to speak person to person. (Notice that television is the phonetic version of same wrt this topic). However, people may naturally organize their lives in such a way that this doesn't become a problem. Who knows. E.g., cars more easily damage me than most other people, albeit their horrible unnaturalness, so maybe this is just me complaining about my own general problems of coping; that's what I'm constantly attempting to deduce and get so afraid of. Another thing that might happen is that if many people's voice abilities debilitate, then their person to person interactions will be roughly similar enough that they won't notice any disabilities. Just imagine, all of today's illiterates in the future complaining "God, all these kids, they don't know how to talk! Wy can't they keep up with everything I say?? And why they talk so slowly and convoluted-like?" and the younger generations paying them no mind as usual. BTW, I too saw the errors in the Lucent commercial (I believe a full page ad in the New York Times back cover; since I'm a frequent NYT reader it would be hard for me to miss it (yes, I do hereby attest that I am now full of misinformation (my knowledge of the truth may well have been higher when I read the Santa Cruz Comic News instead))). ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 23:07:54 -0400 From: Paul Robinson Reply-To: cats8@erols.com Organization: Evergreen Software Subject: Re: Tennessee Split Tad Cook wrote: > More Area-Code Splitting Likely in Tennessee, Analysts Say > By Cree Lawson, Nashville Banner, Tenn. > Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News > Industry insiders say that exploding growth in phone numbers will > result in still more new area codes for Tennessee in the next > decade. They predict that the 423 area code in East Tennessee and the > 901 prefix in West Tennessee will reach their usage limits in the next > few years. > New area codes such as 423 are being gobbled up almost as quickly as > they're created. California has nearly exhausted its 501 and 301 > exchanges, both of which were introduced only a few years ago. This should read "510" and "310". I have 301 here in Silver Spring, MD; I think 501 is Arkansas. Paul Robinson (Formerly PAUL@TDR.COM) Evergreen Software Corp [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct; it was a stupid typo- graphical error which got past the editor. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Tennessee Split Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 22:13:13 -0800 Organization: No unsolicited commercial e-mail! In article , tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) wrote: > More Area-Code Splitting Likely in Tennessee, Analysts Say > By Cree Lawson, Nashville Banner; Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News > The group selected the 615 zone by taking the counties in the current > Metro Area Calling sector (all those that border Davidson County) and > adding Dickson, DeKalb and Cannon counties because they have telephone > cooperatives, says Lynn Greer, chairman of the Tennessee Regulatory > Authority. What on EARTH does the fact that they have telephone cooperatives have to do with drawing the line for an area code split? The geographic boundaries are much more sensible WITHOUT Dickson, DeKalb, and Cannon Counties. The split would also be much less confusing, because you could tell people simply, "Local to Nashville = 615, not local to Nashville = 931." Much easier than having to add the caveat about these two extra areas (Dickson and DeKalb/Cannon). > New area codes such as 423 are being gobbled up almost as quickly as > they're created. California has nearly exhausted its 501 and 301 > exchanges, both of which were introduced only a few years ago. Yipes! That should be 510 and 310, not 501 (Arkansas) and 301 (part of Maryland). Linc Madison * San Francisco, CA * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com ------------------------------ From: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Plan May Divide Spring Hill, TN Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 22:18:41 -0800 Organization: No unsolicited commercial e-mail! In article , tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) wrote: > Area-Code Plan Would Divide Tennessee Town > By Cree Lawson, Nashville Banner; Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News > Nov. 5--Life in Spring Hill -- already complicated because the town > straddles Williamson and Maury counties -- will get even more complex > if a new area code splits the community. > That means that by 1999, Spring Hill residents would have to dial 10 > digits and pay long-distance charges just to call across town. > "Hopefully, they can work something out because that would just be > ridiculous," says Spring Hill Mayor Ron Hankins. > Hankins says he already pays long distance to call his Williamson > County home from his office just a few miles away. The issue of the area code split is IRRELEVANT to the issue of toll calling areas. There has never been a single instance in which a local call before an area code split became a toll call due to the split. Not one. If it is already a toll call from one part of Spring Hill to another, it will still be a toll call, and the only difference will be that in one direction you will dial 1-931-NXX-XXXX, instead of both directions dialing 1-615-NXX-XXXX as now. This is a dangerously ignorant piece of reportage. Linc Madison * San Francisco, CA * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In other words, it was a pretty routine day at the newspaper office. :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: Plan May Divide Spring Hill, TN Date: 8 Nov 1996 00:15:02 -0500 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , Tad Cook wrote: > That means that by 1999, Spring Hill residents would have to dial 10 > digits and pay long-distance charges just to call across town. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Every "split" story I have read in the past indicated that the split in question would not create any new toll charges. Is this new in Spring Hill or did the reporter just assume something? Mark W. Schumann | catfood@apk.net | http://junior.apk.net/~catfood | Mike White: the Ralph Perk of the 90s! Draft | Pat O'Malley in '97! ------------------------------ From: Mike King Subject: Re: Pacific Bell/PCS/San Diego Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 21:47:58 PST In TELECOM Digest V16 #594, nilsphone@aol.com (Nilsphone) wrote: >> Ericsson "Flip" Phone to Sell for $149 > Can we get it with the Nokia you showed in San Diego at the RNC? They > have a four-line display, I believe Ericsson only has a two-line > display? [and other questions] I'm afraid I can't answer those questions. You'll want to contact PacBell on those issues, since they wrote the press release. I forwarded it to the Digest for everyone's benefit. --------- Mike King * Oakland, CA, USA * mk@wco.com ------------------------------ From: Jim St. John Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 23:05:02 -0500 Organization: Internet Indiana Reply-To: jim@su1.in.net > Our home line was originally on 10c per call (you get 65 calls free) > but, because I am sending a lot of faxes while looking for work (I'm > currently unemployed), I had to switch to unlimited calling after > running up $85.00 in toll charges one month (more than 900 faxes). I had a nasty surprise with measuered service. I was operating a BBS and moved to a nearby Northern suburb that didn't have as wide of a local calling area. Since I still owned the old house I left one of the old BBS lines in place and set it up to call-forward to the new BBS number so that folks in the Southern suburbs could still call the BBS toll-free. In fact I kept the line in place even after I sold the house since there was no need to even have a phone on it. This was a flat-rate line and I finally decided that since there were no outgoing calls on that line I might as well switch it over to the cheaper measured rate. Well, you guessed it, every call that was forwarded was billed by Ameritech as if it were an outgoing call on that line. Something like $250 worth of measured service in a single month. A call to Ameritech didn't get me anywhere. My argument was that they never mentioned that forwarded calls were billed, even though they knew I had call forwarding on that line, their argument was that I should have asked. A call to the local PUC did get some results though. Eventually they did credit my account and switch it back to flat-rate. jim ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 01:07:56 -0500 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? So the RBOCs are on a bender again. This time, it's PacBell spending a rumored $7 million on a publicity campaign to attack the Internet. (You think the press runs those articles because they suddenly discover "news"?) And Bell Atlantic has also submitted a fairly detailed paper to the FCC to try to justify reclassifying Internet Service Providers (end users of the network) as Interexchange Carriers (contributors of huge subsidies to the local network). They throw partial numbers around like candy; when you get all the numbers together, the story melts away like cotton candy in the rain. To wit: PacBell talks about "$14-15 million" to upgrade the network this year to handle Internet-bound traffic. Lessee, that's about a dollar a phone, in capital improvements. Bell Atlantic suggests that the FCC translate capital to expense by taking 37% per year. Divide by twelve months, and the Internet is costing PacBell a whopping three cents a month per phone! Gee, that'll put 'em out of business soon, no? Perhaps that's why they are doing a direct mail campaign to sell second lines, *with* a free gift of five months of unlimited Internet access on PacBell's ISP subsidiary! (Can you spell "tie-in"?) Bellcore talks about "a billion dollars" over several years, nationally. That's under ten bucks a phone over some years. A quarter a month? I doubt it comes to that. And why is Internet usage different from all other usage? If all blue-eyed people, Spanish-speaking people, short people, or left-handed people were singled out, they'd see the same thing. Internet users who dial up are just users of the phone network. Disregarding the few who nail lines, of course. Telcos are of course always interested in moving towards fully-measured service, German style. Subscribers just don't want it. Now that local telco competition is on the horizon, you'd think that the RBOCs would stop thinking about "fleecing the Ratepayer" and start learning about foreign concepts like "delighting the customer". But that would be too much. A leopard doesn't change its spots just because it goes from the jungle to the desert. But how much does usage really cost, in other terms? Bell Atlantic's FCC filing has partial numbers. They do get around to saying that an ISP's dial-in line, if ANALOG, costs them $75 per month, versus the typical $17/month measured business line rate. And they say that an ISP using ISDN PRI costs them $50/month per channel. Those are based on a stated usage of 608 minutes per day. Now if we generously interpret the $75 as being the cost above the $17, which is doubtful, then $75.00/18000 is still under half a penny per minute. If we take the more typical case, where PRI is $50/channel and they charge $17 (which is a bit low, but BA's PRI rates are among the lowest, at present), then the usage is $33/month, which is under two-tenths of a cent per minute. That's what all of this Internet traffic is costing them, by their OWN numbers! But of course they WANT the FCC to allow them to charge two cents per minute to the ISP. But are they losing money with the current rates? Hell no. After all, in their territories, ratemaking policy always counts the full cost of the call to the caller, not the called party. So the ISP, who makes no calls, is not responsible for the cost of the calls. Thousands of the ISP's subscribers are. And they're paying for thousands of lines. Residence lines are usually flat rate. Almost no place in the US has mandatory timed local calling for residence. But flat rate isn't "free" calling. It simply averages the cost of calls amongst all of the flat rate subscribers. In my case, I pay NYNEX around $20/month for a flat rate calling plan. PacBell is selling lots of second lines to Internet users. That revenue should average up to cover the two-tenths of a cent cost of local calls to ISPs. If it isn't enough, then they should raise the rates. As Ian Angus pointed out, non-blocking switching isn't free. All usage contributes towards certain traffic-sensitive costs, in the switches, and in the inter-switch trunks. That's where the $50-$75/channel comes from, by adding all of those costs together. Telcos aren't charities, and they need to recover their costs, with reasonable markup. But with most Internet users making fewer than 40 hours per month of calls, at .2 cent/minute (18 cents/hour), the cost of building up the phone network to carry Internet access is a whole heck of a lot cheaper than some of the alternatives that people keep proposing. Fred R. Goldstein k1io fgoldstein@bbn.com +1 617 873 3850 Opinions are mine alone. Sharing requires permission. ------------------------------ From: Mike Fox Date: 7 Nov 96 11:27:39 Subject: Re: Last Laugh! 666 Exchange and Disgruntled Subcribers > PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) -- The number of the beast proved unbearable for a > for some people. > So when Oakland County's new 248 area code takes effect in September, > Ameritech Corp. will offer customers with the 666 exchange the option > of a new number. > The option comes after the pastor at the Shepherd Fellowship Church asked > Ameritech for the switch. > For fundamentalist Christians, "666" is the number that designates the > beast. Walker said the church has put up with the exchange since > 1990. When I was travelling in San Francisco this spring, I was flipping through the phone book in the hotel room and saw that every telephone number for a Jesuit college in SF (I don't remember its exact name) is in exchange 666! That exchange probably belongs to their PBX, because I didn't see any other 666 numbers in a quick scan. I guess if they can put up with it, others can too :) Mike ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #605 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Fri Nov 8 11:48:27 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id LAA03402; Fri, 8 Nov 1996 11:48:27 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 11:48:27 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611081648.LAA03402@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #606 TELECOM Digest Fri, 8 Nov 96 11:48:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 606 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MCI One Breaks its 800 Number service (Mike Borsetti) Re: BellCore Updates Web Page ... Sorta (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Scott Miller) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (David Clayton) Re: Tele-Go, How Does it Work? (mreiney@hevanet.com) Re: AT&T Digital Receives no Calls in Orlando; Can Call Out! (P. Streicher) Re: Clocking For T1 Circuits (Eric Elder) Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers (Jeff Colbert) Re: Banks Bullying Credit Unions (John R. Grout) Re: More Good News About Spamming (Dave J. Stott) News Briefs: Ericsson; AT&T; Bell Atlantic (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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: Mike Borsetti Subject: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 06:03:01 -0800 Organization: A customer of Pacific Bell Internet Services Reply-To: mike.borsetti@pobox.com I ordered MCI One, and gave out the "personal 800 number" to selected "VIP" associates. I programmed only one number (my cellular phone, which has voicemail), and the service worked great. If I wasn't in a position to answer my cellular phone, voicemail would pick up and callers could leave a message in the same system where I get all my other messages. A while back I started getting complaints from these people that at times when they called the 800 number they couldn't reach me or my voicemail. A little bit of investigative work determined that MCI -- without telling me -- changed the service so that after about 25 seconds of ringing it would interrupt the call and tell the caller "We're sorry, the party cannot be reached at this time, please try your call later". This happens just a split second before the voicemail has a chance to pick up. Calling MCI customer care was enlightening: the lady interrupted me several times to condescendingly tell me how MCI never designed the service to do what I was using it for, so the fact that now my callers couldn't leave me messages is -- from MCI's standpoint -- just fine. I threatened to cancel service, and she obliged!! A second person was a lot more understanding and told me that he could set the delay to a longer period of 40 seconds, so that my cellular voicemail could have the chance to pick up. The catch: according to him, all lines' delays are overwritten to 25 seconds on a weekly basis! Given the situation, I can see a few options: (1) try to write/call somebody in MCI who knows what's going on (e.g. product manager, director of product management, etc.) and get them to reverse the changes they made to the service. Problem: don't know who that person is or how to reach them. (2) sue MCI for not appropriately warning me of system changes that materially impacted the nature of their service to me. Problem: paperwork associated with this. (3) cancel MCI One and get a 'real' 800 number from another vendor. Problem: look stupid in front of my associates and have them memorize a different number [BTW, any ideas as to the best provider?] Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Mike Borsetti [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, here is a chance to mention my friends at Call Home America once again! :) Not only will they give you an 800 number for $3.95 per month with rates of 24 cents peak and 19 cents off-peak per minute in the continental USA and rates of 45/34 cents per minute for Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (40 cents per minute all times from Canada) they will give you a ten dollar credit to be used on your service as a special promotion now through December 15. They will program it to ring at whatever number you request, although to change where it rings you need to call them. Best of all -- and why else do you think I would run this message? -- they will give *me* a ten dollar credit on my account for each of you who sign up for an 800 number. I get my cellular service from them in addition to having a couple of lines defaulted to them for long distance, so I sure can use the credit. Their service is very good and reliable however. Phone 800-594-3000 to ask for an 800 number. Mention special offer code 'ZREF-9'. Request that the ten dollar referral credit be given to Patrick Townson, Account # 0201355818. They will bill you direct if you provide them with a social security number or they will bill you automatically on one of various credit cards otherwise. I've had service with them for about three years including my cell phone service and find they are very reliable and responsive. Call Home America is part of Frontier Communications. If you otherwise feel like an 800 number for $3.95 per month I will certainly appreciate the credits I get on my bill as a result. Thanks! PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Re: BellCore Updates Web Page ... Sorta Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 09:09:41 -0800 Organization: Tulane University As John Cropper originally titles this, 'Sorta' is right. > BellCore's monthly update took place on the afternoon of the seventh, > with a few surprises, but lacking in other areas ... > 313 Michigan: 734 announced as split code for areas outside of Detroit (permissive/mandatory dates and test numbers still to be announced) > 908 New Jersey: 732 added, but with no info > (we already know 5/1/97 and 11/1/97) > 201 New Jersey: 973 added, but with no info > (we already know 5/1/97 and 11/1/97) (test numbers not yet indicated on Bellcore's webpage) > 425 Washington: Test number of 425-452-0009 added > 253 Washington: Test number of 253-627-0062 added > No mention of the test number for 440, the new 615 split (931), nor the > 415 (650), 916 (530), or 818 (626). There is no further info on Bellcore NANPA's pages regarding the Caribbean areas splitting from 809. Grenada (including Carricou)'s new NPA 473 as well as St.Vincent and the Grenadines' new NPA 784, while mentioned on the webpages, *still* have no permissive/mandatory dates, nor any test numbers. And the 'not yet officially announced' splitting off from NPA 809 of the U.S. Virgin Islands (expected to be NPA 340) and the Turks & Caicos Islands (expected to be NPA 649) aren't yet on Bellcore's New Area Codes webpage. Maybe the individual islands' national/local governments haven't yet officially finalized/approved the plans. Also still *not* yet on Bellcore's pages are the new area codes previously mentioned in the Digest for: Massachusetts - 781 splits from (or overlays on?) 617 Massachusetts - 978 splits from (or overlays on?) 508 South Carolina's second split (along the coastal area?) of 843 from 803. However, the new 724 for southwest Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh) now has dates and test numbers according to Bellcore's webpages. It *will* be an overlay, effective 1 May 1997, but I think that Bell Atlantic had already announced that, including the date. As an *overlay*, its effective date is not a 'permissive' date, but the *mandatory* date. Assignments from this new 724 area code will be *new central office codes and line numbers* which, other than co-existing in the same geographic territory, will have *nothing* to do with existing 412-NXX codes. The test numbers for the 724 overlay to 412 are also indicated on the NANPA webpage: 724-999-1111 724-991-2222 I wonder if both indicated test numbers are correct. You would think that *both* would begin as 724-999 *or* 724-991, but *not* one number with one NXX and the other number with a different NXX; the last four digits of both test numbers are using a 'similar pattern' which would make you think that they would rather both be from the same NXX central office code. Bellcore NANPA has also updated their webpage showing the list of Planning Letters (available at US$ 10.00). The most recently announced ones are: PL-NANP-016 (714 in CA is in 'jeopardy'; so what else is new) PL-NANP-017 (212 in NY - Manhattan - is in 'jeopardy') [I've been told by a NYNEX contact that they are studying whether to make ten-digit local dialing *mandatory* within the NYCity metro area, (without 'requiring' a 1+ on local billed/rate calls) so that they can use the 'wireless overlay' 917 area code for *general use* central office code assignments. Presently, local 'home' NPA calls *might* presently be permissively dialable as ten-digits, but *only with a '1+'*, just like dialing local 'adjacent' NPA calls presently is, as there are some code numbering conflicts. Standard 'home' NPA local dialing in New York City is presently 'straight seven digits'.] PL-NANP-018 Overlay of 412 (PA) PL-NANP-019 Split of 206 (WA) I wonder if the PL regarding Washington State includes the info for *both* new area codes splitting, or if this PL regards only on of the new NPA codes such that a *second* PL (at *another* ten dollars) will indicate the info on the other new NPA code. The two most recently made available PL's regarding a 'jeopardy' situation are only two pages each, and each costs ten-dollars! Also, there is no mention of a PL for 284's split from 809 in the British Virgin Islands. Last month, Bellcore's webpages finally made mention of the effective permissive/mandatory dates for this new NPA code, as well as indicating the test number. The main URL for Bellcore NANPA and Bellcore TRA is: http://www.bellcore.com/NANP, and click away) Maybe next month or in about two weeks, Bellcore NANPA will 'sort-of' update (and correct) their webpages again. 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: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 16:39:02 +0000 From: scott miller Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Reply-To: smiller@bnr.ca Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd. In article , Bill Newkirk writes: > But then I get hit with at least five ads from Bellsouth in the last > month for me to sign up for bellsouthnet and to get additional > phone lines installed at a discount over "normal" so I can dial up the > ISP and leave the line nailed up as much as possible .. and there's > been heavy tv, radio, and print advertising for such services. > It can't be both ways. Sure it can. The Bellsouth people that are flogging their ISP service aren't the same ones running the voice network. They're just trying to run a cost-effective ISP just like all the other ISPs out there, and make a few (unregulated) bucks under the same rules as all the other ISPs. If the phone-guys succeed in changing the access charges, it will affect all ISPs equally, so they don't have to worry about it. > If the cable tv folks were to offer a box with a 10-base-T connector > on it and give me a stable e-mail address, news, etc. for a price, I > would have to consider moving to it. They already know how to get a > lot of data to me, just that the z-tac box we have doesn't have a > network connector on the back ... They're working on it, we're working on it, everybody is working on it. There looks to be a lot of money on the table. My point in previous posts is that if Telcos stay true to tradition, they cannot and will not let anything compromise the stability of basic phone service for the general populace. Maybe they don't care anymore, but I'd bet most Telcos would rather concede some revenue to alternate providers than allow basic service to be affected. ADSL and other new technologies are ways for them to play on both sides of the fence, but I don't think they're about to sacrifice POTS on the Altar of the Internet. Oh, and for you guys who want to set up your ADSL ISP inside the CO, check out http://infoweb.interaccess.com/, and call your local RBOC to lease a couple of Megahertz of bandwidth on some POTS copper. Who knows? They might like to rent out their lines for a few bucks a month, and leave the details (like capital investment) to you ... Scott Miller, in the bowels of Bell-Northern Research (or Nortel or something) smiller@nortel.ca aa438@freenet.carleton.ca ------------------------------ From: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au (David Clayton) Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 10:21:48 GMT Organization: Customer of Access One Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia Ian Angus contributed the following: > "Gridlock" can occur when there are unusually long holding time in > locations where lines have bneen installed (and priced) on a 4:1 or > even 6:1 concentration ratio. Arrrrrrggggghhhh!, can we please stop using this misleading term? The problem is nothing like gridlock, there is no gridlock if the traffic on a road is travelling at full legal speed bumper to bumper and there are no gaps for you to get in from your side street, that is called CONGESTION -- something not unknown to telephony networks I believe. Pat, can you please change the subject of this thread so that this misleading term dies a quicker death? Surely the basic issue is that the nature of use of the *voice* network is changing due to increased Internet use, and the network either has to evolve to accomodate that use, or the use has to change. Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well the thread has just about gone as far as it can anyway, so this would probably be a good time to just close it off. A lot has been said about it in the past several days. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mreiney@hevanet.com Subject: Re: Tele-Go, How Does it Work? Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 02:46:30 -0800 Organization: Hevanet Communications Reply-To: mreiney@hevanet.com Thanks for the input. When I called GTE, they told me that they had discontinued the service in this area and told people to keep the phones. But then they traded service areas. Airtouch continues to service existing accounts, but will not help me at all. Sure would be nice to hear from someone who knows how to program the local base feature. ------------------------------ From: PStreicher@aol.com Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 08:22:02 -0500 Subject: Re: AT&T Digital Receives no Calls in Orlando But Can Call Out! Jeffrey, I don't think my calls were 'cloned' as I have since received a detailed billing statement and there were no calls showing thosed days except the outgoing calls that I made. Would that be a good indication that I was not 'cloned'? Or, while being cloned does it inhibit your receiving calls and then the cloner can make calls at any time later with your nam data? Also, can a digital phone be used for PCS? Or, does one have to purchase a new 'PCS' type phone? You say the same thing happened to you, did you get billed for calls you did not make? Paul Streicher Tampa, Florida ------------------------------ From: Eric Elder Subject: Re: Clocking For T1 Circuits Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 08:45:25 -0800 Organization: Lucent Technologies Reply-To: eelder@mailhost.paradyne.com Bob Izenberg wrote: > Our regional telco isn't providing clocking on local area T1s. > The Ascend Pipeline 130s that we use on some of our circuits need a > stable clocking source and can't provide it themselves. Some long line providers are very careful to asssure that Class 2 clocking is consistent through their networks. Other companies will grab a clock signal from whereever it can get it. Switch providers if you are having clock problems. Also, some digital devices such as the Paradyne DSU's can compensate for an erratic clock. ------------------------------ From: Jeff Colbert Subject: Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers Date: Wed, 06 Nov 1996 16:26:19 -0600 Organization: Earthlink Network, Inc. Reply-To: jcolbert@earthlink.net I could not get AOL to set up an account using the VISA Debit card. It would only work using a real VISA. The tech support people said name and address had to match exactly what was on statement. Also if you strike out three times, you have to re-install the software, according to tech support. Jeff [TELECOM Digest Editor's note: I've never had any trouble getting anyone who otherwise accepted VISA to also accept the VISA Debit card. Actually, from the number on th efront I do not think you can tell the difference, and the logo/design on the front of the card is the same as of of First Chicago's credit card offerings. Plus, since you can have the debit card tied in not only to your checking account but into your line of credit (i.e. credit card) as well, I do not know how AOL would know for sure where the money was coming from; just that they were getting paid each month. PAT] ------------------------------ From: grout@sp55.csrd.uiuc.edu (John R. Grout) Subject: Re: Banks Bullying Credit Unions Date: 06 Nov 1996 21:35:58 -0600 Organization: Center for Supercomputing R and D, UIUC In article jbutz@attmail.com (John J Butz) writes: > The United Teletech Federal Credit Union can no longer accept new > members who are not employed by AT&T, Lucent or Bellcore. This due to > an injunction the banks got against all federally chartered credit > unions. Actually, it was the federally-chartered credit union's NCUA (their equivalent of the FDIC) which imposed that requirement itself in _response_ to a very complicated, and not yet finished, Federal legal decision about the power of Federal regulators to permit federally chartered credit unions (like United Teletech FCU) to admit members who worked at companies unrelated to the original one to which the credit union was tied (since Bellcore and Lucent were spun off by AT&T, they are related and so unaffected by the ruling). In fact, things could even get worse ... the judge is now considering whether or not to force credit unions like United Teletech FCU to eliminate all their _existing_ members whose membership derived from employment by unrelated companies (e.g., for United Teletech FCU, those who weren't employed by AT&T, Lucent or Bellcore when they joined ... of course, if they work for them now, they could rejoin)... here's hoping an appeals court, or Congress, acts to prevent _that_. John R. Grout Center for Supercomputing R & D j-grout@uiuc.edu Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well there always was supposed to be some sort of 'affinity group' involvement in membership in credit unions. The way these things evolve over the years is interesting. I remember well the old 'Telephone and Telegraph Employees Credit Union' here in Chicago. Only employees of WUTCO and AT&T/Bell were allowed to be members. Then one day many years ago they dropped their credit union status and became 'Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association'; still located in the Board of Trade Building; still with the big grandfather clock in the lobby with the Western Union works in the clock. 99 percent of their customers were still employees of IBT or WUTCO locally, but gradually a few 'outsiders' became customers. After many years, in the S&L scandals of a few years ago, they were on the verge of bankruptcy like most S&L's and they were merged into Talman Federal Savings and Loan which then in turn got merged with a bunch of others in the same predicament. The few remaining customers left over from the telephone and telegraph credit union days have a certain category of account number which identifies them as such. I was a customer of Continental Bank in Chicago when Continental went belly-up (the second time!) and the government made First National Bank take over all the individual depositors but not the corporate accounts. My First National account number still reflects after ten years the fact that I am a 'conversion account' brought over from Continental Bank in the middle 1980's. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: More Good News About Spamming From: dstott@juno.com (Dave J Stott) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 16:35:15 EST Here's more good news about the fight against cyber junk. CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Concentric Network Corporation, a leading provider of tailored network solutions for the rapidly growing electronic commerce and Internet/intra net markets, today announced another major victory in its continuing efforts to eliminate spamming. On Tuesday November 5, 1996, Concentric became the first on-line service provider to obtain a permanent injunction prohibiting Cyber Promotions, Inc. and its president Sanford Wallace from sending any unsolicited commercial advertisements via e-mail to its subscribers. .stott ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 07:33:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: News Briefs: Ericsson; AT&T; Bell Atlantic Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Excerpts from Full Closing Bell @ 11/07/96 * ERICSSON LM TELE said it had won an order worth two billion crowns ($303.4 million) for mobile telephony from the U.S.'s AT&T CORP Wireless Services. Ericsson said this was the biggest order that Ericsson has signed with a U.S. buyer for mobile telephony. (Reuters 09:14 AM ET 11/07/96) * After market close, BELL ATLANTIC CORP said it expected to have local interconnection deals with AT&T CORP , MCI COMM Corp and SPRINT CORP before it applies to enter long distance service. Bell Atlantic is planning to apply for long distance in its own region within 90 days of meeting the checklist requirements, and expects long distance approvals by the middle of 1997. In each of Bell Atlantic's six states and the District of Columbia, talks with each of the big three are in arbitration. (Reuters 06:06 PM ET 11/07/96) For the full text story, see http://www.merc.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=469815-7c0 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #606 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Nov 12 11:14:37 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id LAA15799; Tue, 12 Nov 1996 11:14:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 11:14:37 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611121614.LAA15799@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #607 TELECOM Digest Tue, 12 Nov 96 11:14:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 607 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Down For Four Days: No Idea Why (TELECOM Digest Editor) Fred Goldstein Critique of Bell Atlantic ISDN Cost Studies (Monty Solomon) Pay Phone Rates Likely to Rise (spinal@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu) Book Review: "Telecommunications Technology Handbook" by Minoli (Rob Slade) Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? (Tad Cook) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 10:13:17 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Down For Four Days: No Idea Why This is just a short note to let everyone know this site was disconnected for almost four days and so far I have no explanation why. All I know is at MIT someone pulled the plug on Friday in the late afternoon and there was no response from anyone there until Tuesday morning about 9:00 am at which point I got ahold of someone who agreed to fix the problem. At first I had thought the system was down since it would not respond to my attempts to telnet in. I found out this morning it must have been operational all weekend because certain cron jobs ran right on schedule, etc. However there was no access in or out to the rest of the world. The mailqueue is extremely overloaded with thousands of pieces of mail waiting to be delivered out of here to subscribers. This would be issues of the Digest mostly from last Friday. Likewise, the incoming mail is piling in at the rate of a letter every two or three seconds as I write this. Quite of bit of incoming mail was apparently turned away by lcs.mit.edu and returned to the sender when it sat at the gateway here for three days and could not reach this machine. I had no way to reach any of my files or scripts; if I had been able to I would have worked from some other location over the past several days. As of yet, as I said above, there has been no explanation of any sort. As a result, the mail and the Digests will run behind schedule for a few days. Most of the mail received over the weekend will simply not be used at all in an effort to catch up. If you consider it that important, you can resend it I guess, adding to the congestion and backlog even more. :( Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 01:29:45 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Fred Goldstein Critique of Bell Atlantic ISDN Cost Studies Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Begin forwarded message: Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 14:18:06 -0500 (EST) From: James Love Subject: Fred Goldstein critique of Bell Atlantic ISDN Cost Studies ----------------------------------------------------------------- Info-Policy-Notes - A newsletter available from listproc@tap.org ----------------------------------------------------------------- INFORMATION POLICY NOTES November 11, 1996 This is Fred Goldstein's testimony to the Maryland Public Services Commission on the ISDN tariff. It contains a devastating critique of the Bell Atlantic cost study for ISDN pricing. It is rather technical, but I am posting it because of the importance of the critique of the Bell Atlantic's statements regarding the Interent and network congestion. BEFORE THE MARYLAND PUBLIC SERVICES COMMISSION In the Matter of the Residential ) Intellilinq BRI Service Offering ) Case 8730 of Bell Atlantic, Maryland, Inc. ) REBUTTAL TESTIMONY OF FRED GOLDSTEIN ON BEHALF OF CONSUMER PROJECT ON TECHNOLOGY November 5, 1996 PREPARED REBUTTAL TESTIMONY OF FRED GOLDSTEIN Q1. Please state your name and business address, and summarize your professional qualifications. A1. My name is Fred Goldstein. I am a Senior Consultant at BBN Corporation. This testimony does not represent an official position of BBN Corporation. It is prepared on behalf of the Center for the Study of Responsive Law's Consumer Project on Technology. My business address is at BBN Corp., 50 Moulton St., Cambridge MA 02138. I have worked in the telecommunications and data network field since 1977. My experience with ISDN dates back to 1985 when I became Digital Equipment Corporation's voting member of ANSI-accredited Technical Subcommittee T1D1 (later T1S1), which was responsible for producing North American ISDN standards. I am the author of the book "ISDN In Perspective" (Reading MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992) and have taught courses on ISDN for Northeastern University and National Technological University. I have also been a technical leader in BBN's ISDN acitivities as an Internet Service Provider. I hold three patents in the area of Broadband ISDN and Asynchronous Transfer Mode congestion management and switching. Q2. What is your opinion of the Bell Atlantic analysis used to support its residential tariff? A2. The first testimony is that of Stephen A Reisinger [REIS]. The gist of this testimony seems to be that Internet Service Providers place a high load on the network, particularly when they use analog ports. This is not even on point to Case 8730 concerning Residential ISDN rates, except by inference. Reisinger begins [REIS at p. 2/ line 21] by stating that "far fewer R-ISDN lines can be accommodated on equivalent pieces of equipment." This would imply that higher monthly recurring charges (MRCs) should be applied to ISDN. That ISDN MRCs are higher than analog MRCs are not in dispute; the application of measured-service charges to R-ISDN is in dispute. Reisinger then analyzes the incoming traffic to Internet Service Providers, none of whom are eligible for R-ISDN tariffs. He points out congestion that occurs at Central Offices that receive calls. These lines generate essentially zero calls. In his attached Report to the FCC calling for higher charges to be placed on ISPs, he requests that ISPs bear a large multiple of the cost of the additional traffic generated by users calling them. Yet the conclusion he is attempting to draw in Case 8730 is that R-ISDN rates should be metered at a contributory level in order to pay for the same thing. His examples are particularly off point. They mostly concern analog Myersville, had 127 analog lines. The second, Herndon, had 1131 analog lines. Residential ISDN subscribers can not generally call analog lines! They generally call ISPs who use ISDN PRI, which does not use any line unit, or sometimes BRI, which does not use the analog line unit. In fact, his arguments are for increased migration to ISDN. An analog line unit on a 5ESS has a maximum capacity of 512 lines and 64 time slots, or about 3.8 CCS/line if filled [REIS at 11/16]. But ISDN Line Units on a 5ESS have up to 256 time slots [REIS at 13/footnote 8] to serve up to 512 Basic Rate lines, which can have up to 1024 B channels. He states that a load of 8.6 CCS/line will limit an ISLU to 448 lines. This would not be serious even if it were true, but it does not add up. A full ISLU with 512 lines at 8.6 CCS/line generates 4403 CCS. From the Poisson table, this can be served by 149 time slots at P.01 blocking. This is well below the 256 time slot limit. Also, the 8.6 CCS/line number is derived from ISDN experience which is primarily Centrex. Bell Atlantic actively markets ISDN Centrex as a service that provides unlimited calling within the Centrex group. This invites users to "nail" channels. Any tariff that does not provide totally unlimited usage will discourage nailed usage. Since Centrex costs substantially less than Bell Atlantic's proposed rate for ISDN BRI with unlimited use ($249/month), users who plan to "nail" ISDN lines are likely to use their ISP's Centrex service, not R-ISDN. Indeed the testimony of Curt Koeppen [KOEP] seems to contradict Reisinger, where it says, "The typical customer spends an average of 10-40 hours per month on-line."[KOEP at 5/13] While this cannot be directly translated to CCS, it is in line with typical voice usage patterns, not ISDN Centrex. Given that the ISDN line unit has such greater capacity than the analog line unit, it becomes clear that high-traffic data users should be encouraged to migrate to ISDN. Further, since analog dial-in traffic costs far more than PRI dial-in traffic (estimated by Reisinger at $50/month/channel vs. $75/month/channel), ISDN potentially reduces costs at both ends of the connection! Reisinger also argues that ISDN incurs costs by requiring the installation of 64 kbit/sec clear-channel trunks, compared to "56 kb/s trunk" facilities used for voice. While much of the embedded base of trunk facilities is not 64 kbit/sec "clear", most new facilities are. Also, Bell Atlantic proposes charging the same usage rates for calls placed on older facilities, which can use either the speech/audio bearer capability or the 56 kbps data bearer capability. A particularly bad scare tactic occurs in Reisinger's testimony about 911 service [REIS at 16/23]. He supposes that 911 calls would be blocked if 64 analog users simultaneously nailed up calls on the same line unit. Given a small percentage of "nailed" users, this is, of course, extremely improbable! But it would be even more vanishingly improbable on an ISDN line unit, with its larger number of time slots. It should be pointed out that the DMS-100 switch has even more favorable ISDN traffic characteristics. An older-style analog-only Line Concentration Module (LCM) has 640 one-line card slots sharing a maximum of 180 time slots, assigned 30 at a time. An ISDN-capable LCME has 480 card slots sharing a maximum of 480 time slots. This allows non-blocking use of one B channel at a time, or approximately 34 CCS/line total. Robert Terry's testimony is not quantitative; it simply asserts that ISDN should be regulated as discretionary. But he notes that "existing demand for ISDN service is less than 1% of BA-MD's total customer base and is forecast to be about 3% by the end of the decade." This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Higher penetration rates have already been achieved in Germany. BA-MD's application of measured rates to R-ISDN will dramatically suppress demand. The testimony of John Pehta [PEHT] demonstrates various reasons why the MRC of R-ISDN is higher than the MRC of POTS. This is undeniable; however, it does not affect usage costs. He notes that data calls have an average holding time of 20 minutes [PEHT at 13/15], but this is meaningless: The average CCS and average monthly hours of use are what consume traffic capacity. Data calls may be on average longer but they are fewer in number, and thus incur lower call setup costs (including processor usage and Signaling System 7 network utilization). He then states, "Because of the expected additional usage per line for R-ISDN customers, the average concentration ratio for a switch is expected to be 4 to 1 which allows for a switching module/line unit to provide service to only 256 customers." This is based on having 64 time slots per line unit, which is the case for analog line units on a 5ESS. ISDN line units have up to 256 time slots. And the situation on the DMS-100 is even more favorable. He then states that concentration ratios will "move closer to 1 to 1" [PETH at 14 /10], which implies an average ISDN usage of over 500 hours/month. This is more than an order of magnitude above Bell Atlantic's own estimates [KOEP at 5/13]. He then says that one ISDN switching module/line unit has 64 time slots, contradicting Reisinger's testimony. Again the problems he ascribes to ISDN users are in fact problems caused by analog data users. The net cost per minute of an ISDN data call, which I did not see because it is expurgated, is perhaps higher than the cost per minute of an ISDN voice call, due to the use of newer trunks. However, it is probably lower than the cost of an analog voice or voiceband data call, because it avoids the analog line units. The Reisinger-written Report to the FCC [BELL] states that an analog ISP port costs $75/month for its traffic load, versus $50/month for a PRI channel, with an average load of 608 minutes per day. This translates to $.0041 per minute for analog usage vs. $.0028 for PRI audio- bearer usage. Curt Koeppen's testimony[KOEP] seemingly seeks to contradict the other testimonies. He tries to show that Bell Atlantic's proposed tariff is really quite low. This follows from his assertion that the typical user's volume is quite low. This low volume usage is in fact consistent with other telco's experiences. Pacific Bell, for instance, cites in its current ISDN filing before the California PUC (docket A.95-12- 043) requesting a cap on off-peak hour unlimited usage) an average usage of 47 hours/month, which includes some percentage of "nailed" users and a majority of users originating under 20 hours/month. This is the result of a tariff that has unlimited usage except on Monday to Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM. He also cites average Internet and on-line service usage studies in the range of 9.9 to 47.3 hours per month, and says Bell Atlantic's own studies "show that typical residential Internet/On-line usage is only 10 to 40 hours per month" [KOEP at 27]. If this is the case, then why all the fuss about high traffic levels? Koeppen cites the recent Bell South filing [KOEP at 38/11] which caps "flat" rate at 200 hours per month, with 1 cent per overtime minute, as a means to discourage "nailed" users. Bell Atlantic certainly could use a similar mechanism to achieve nearly-flat rates for R-ISDN. This would be more palatable to the residential market. Indeed the Maryland public is so displeased with the possibility of mandatory measured service that legislation was passed to outlaw it. Under Bell Atlantic's proposal, then, users wanting flat rate or even nearly-flat-rate service would be encouraged to use analog lines. Koeppen also uses unsound reasoning in developing contribution margins. He states, "in deriving our margin above direct costs, our cost calculation for usage included only 90% utilization of the package usage allotment."[KOEP at 37/6] Thus someone who subscribes to the 60-hour package is expected to use 54 hours. This is clearly not valid. Subscribers generally do not know ahead of time their exact calling patterns, and Bell Atlantic's proposed rate structure gives positive incentives to buy a larger than necessary Callpack, because the overtime rate does not decline with usage. Thus a 35-hour user might be better off with a 60-hour Callpack, as 15 hours at 2c/minute costs $18/month, versus a $14 marginal cost for Callpack 60 over Callpack 20. A 90- hour user will be better off with Callpack 140 than with Callpack 60, even if all usage is off peak, as the former would cost $60 and the latter ($45+60*.01*30=) $63. Thus the average Callpack will be much less than 90% utilized. Experience also shows that residential users favor predictable, "flat" rates over measured rates, even if the latter are slightly lower. This will cause residential users to favor analog over ISDN, Centrex ISDN over R-ISDN, and larger Callpacks over "optimal" Callpacks that have a risk of overtime. Q3. Does this conclude your testimony? A3. Yes. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ INFORMATION POLICY NOTES is a free Internet newsletter sponsored by the Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP) and the Consumer Project on Technology (CPT). Both groups are projects of the Center for Study of Responsive Law, which is run by Ralph Nader. The LISTPROC services are provide by Essential Information. Archives of Info-Policy-Notes are available from http://www.essential.org/listproc/info-policy-notes/ TAP and CPT both have Internet Web pages. http://www.tap.org http://www.essential.org/cpt Subscription requests to info-policy-notes to listproc@tap.org with the message: subscribe info-policy-notes Jane Doe TAP and CPT can both be reached off the net at P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, Voice: 202/387-8030; Fax: 202/234-5176 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ------------------------------ From: spinal@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu Subject: Pay Phone Rates Likely to Rise Date: 10 Nov 1996 16:15:09 GMT Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas PAY PHONE RATES LIKELY TO RISE FCC denies states' petition to retain regulatory rights on charges By Juan B. Elizondo Jr. Associated Press The Public Utility Commission has lost its bid to retain control over pay phone rates in Texas, a move that could lead to higher prices. The PUC, which regulates the telephone and electric industries in Texas, joined regulators from other states last month in asking the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider an order that could allow pay phone ownres to raise rates throughout the country. Last summer, the Texas commission was all that stood between 50-cent pay phone calls and Texas consumers. The PUC rejected attempts by pay phone operators in Texas to raise rates to 50 cents per call. The agency did allow 25-cent charges for otherwise toll-free calls, except those made to preferred long distance companies. The FCC, in a reconsideration of its order released Friday, denied the states' petition to maintain rate regulation. The commission said the Federal Telecommunications Act approved the year urges deregulation. "We sought to eliminate those regulatory contraints that inhibit the ability both to enter and exit the pay phone marketplace, and to compete for the right to provide services to customers through pay phones," the FCC said in its reconsideration order. The new order makes technical changes but does not continue regulation of pay phone prices. Under the FCC decision, pay phone rates will continue to be regulated for one year after the order is implemented. Rates them will be set by market forces. Janee Bresemeister, a policy analyst for Consumers Union Southwest Regional Office, said the decision could hurt Texans. "This will result in higher prices," she said. Calls to the Texas Pay Phone Association were not returned Friday. A spokeswoman for the PUC said the agency had not reviewed the decision and could not comment. Under federal and state rules, prices for some pay phones could continue to be regulated. Those include so-called "public interest" phones, like those in rural areas, around low-income areas, and near hospitals. From the Austin American-Statesman, Sunday, November 10, 1996. Page B4. spinal@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 04:15:20 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Telecommunications Technology Handbook" by Minoli BKTLTCHB.RVW 960721 "Telecommunications Technology Handbook", Daniel Minoli, 1991, 0-89006-425-3, U$89.00 %A Daniel Minoli %C 685 Canton St., Norwood, MA 02062 %D 1991 %G 0-89006-425-3 %I Artech House %O U$89.00 617-769-9750 800-225-9977 fax: +1-617-769-6334 %O artech@world.std.com bookco@artech.demon.co.uk %P 772 %T "Telecommunications Technology Handbook" The author's stated object, in writing this book, was to write a contemporary text on telecommunications issues. In this objective he only partially succeeded. This is a good thing, since it means that Minoli's work has a classic value, while still being fairly up to date. Thus, this book becomes a broadly based and quite useful reference to all kinds of aspects of telecommunications. Technical details are not lacking, although specialists will want more depth in their particular areas. It is interesting to see that even five years have changed at least the emphasis in some areas: Minoli mentions ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) as a side issue of ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) rather than the reverse which has come to be the current norm. Still, the quality of the content means that this text is by no means out of date. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKTLTCHB.RVW 960721. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associate publications. ============== Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca | "In questions of science, the Institute for rslade@vanisl.decus.ca | authority of a thousand is not Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/| worth the humble reasoning User .fidonet.org| of a single individual." Security Canada V7K 2G6 | - Galileo ------------------------------ Subject: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 02:37:35 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) (I'm wondering what they mean by "peak times" in the article below, since the net is international. Are they talking about charging variable rates based upon your local time? Actually, I wonder sometimes how much slowness is based on one's ISP, how they are configured, and the quality and bandwidth of their connection to the net? I've noticed that my service is much faster at home with seanet.com using a 33.6 kbps modem than it is at Virtual Commons, a local internet cafe that has multiple terminals and a fractional T1 connection. When I access the web sites I am interested in from home, things go pretty fast, but perhaps I am not trying to get into some of the more popular and jammed websites. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com Seattle, WA) Higher Fees at Peak Hours Might Ease Logjams, According to U. Texas Study By Lori Hawkins, Austin American-Statesman, Texas Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Nov. 7--People pay more to make long-distance phone calls during peak times. Soon, Internet surfers may do the same. A team of University of Texas researchers thinks the only way to keep the World Wide Web from becoming the World Wide Wait is to charge more when it's crowded. "If you want to get on the Web during a busy time, you should pay more for it," says Andrew Whinston, a UT business professor who headed the study along with Dale Stahl, a UT economics professor. It may be money well spent for millions of Internet users tired of staring at the "waiting for response" message at the bottom of their screens as their computer connects to a Web site. The five-year study used computer models to simulate the Internet, a global network of computers where at any moment tens of thousands of users may be trying to get through to popular sites. An estimated 30 million people have access to the Internet, and traffic is doubling every nine months. The result is major traffic jams. Pricing, the study showed, would keep users who don't have immediate needs off-line during peak times. Now, using the Internet costs the same whether it's 3 a.m. or 3 p.m. "You've got millions of people online looking for sports scores, stock market reports, news, dirty pictures, you name it," he says. "There's no way to sort out urgent needs from casual needs. If you start charging, there will be a lot more people who are willing to wait for a less congested time." No one knows how much it would cost to cruise in the fast lane. That would be up to Internet access providers, and although most favor the idea, no one has put a clear price tag on it. How busy the Web is depends on where you are and where the site is that you're accessing. Traffic typically begins building after lunch and bogs down from there. A lull usually occurs during dinner hours and builds again throughout the evening. When a big event such as the Olympics or a hurricane occurs, more people squeeze their way online, making traffic jams unavoidable. Tuesday's elections slowed movement as users logged on to check results. The Internet has gotten so sluggish that some universities including the University of California at Berkeley have begun a movement to break away and start a new network. The study showed that investing billions of dollars to add lines with more capacity isn't the answer. "It doesn't make economic sense," Whinston says. "If you introduce pricing, it will take care of itself." At least one Internet user is resigned to the pay-as-you-go system. "I don't like it, but I'm afraid that's what it's going to come to," says Lindsey Allen, a network systems administrator at AMD and an avid home computer user. "It's getting more and more difficult to do anything on the Internet. Sometimes it's so crowded you can't even log on." Allen avoids the crush by logging on late in the morning or late at night. "It's sad, because once we start charging, there will be no return," he says. For pay-as-you-go on the Internet, Whinston likes the phone service model. Users would pay a basic monthly fee for access and a meter would charge them according to when they were online and for how long. The user's Internet browser would say how busy the system is. Users could either get on using a fast connection at a premium price, get on with a slower connection at a cheaper rate or get on when traffic slows. "It would all come down to how much you were willing to spend," Whinston says. For example, downloading the Cable News Network's home page from the Web would cost 0.6 cents with a slow connection during a congested time, or 2.7 cents with a fast connection during a congested time. A fast connection would occur almost immediately, while a slow one could take minutes. Internet access providers say charging according to usage is the best way to support the Net's growth. "The building of the Internet was funded by the government, and the administrative costs have been provided by universities and major corporations," says Ken Jackson, chief operating officer of Illuminati Online, an Austin access provider. "All that has come to a screeching halt. The government is no longer in the business. And somebody's got to pay for it." Now major telecommunications companies like MCI and AT&T are doing the building, and they're going to pass on the expense. "When you start charging, people will start using the Web more efficiently," he says. "It's a simple concept, and it will work." The National Science Foundation and the Texas Advanced Research Agency contributed about $500,000 to the study. To see the full UT study, go to http://cism.bus.utexas.edu -------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I can tell you that from my location here, things have become horrible. Having a 28.8 modem on the line means absolutely nothing. I might as well go back to having a 300 baud modem. All the newcomers with their web pages have turned the Internet into a terrible disaster. I strongly favor what Berkeley is proposing: start an entirely new network and abandon this current one entirely, leaving it to the companies who seem to feel they have to use all sorts of graphics and sounds and other bandwidth/resource-wasting spectacles on their web pages for the benefit of people who like 'surfing the net', which is a category of people I generally dislike anyway. I have to sit here and watch my keystrokes bounce back to me five and ten seconds after I type them thanks to people like that who want to download some gaudy display from someone's web page. I do not think ever in the past the congestion has been as bad as it has been the past year or so. Mail delivery takes absolutely *forever*; there are people getting the Digest as long as a day or two days after it is issued here. I can recall when the entire mailing list was finished in a matter of several hours. Yes, by all means, turn this over to the net-surfers and let's move elsewhere. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #607 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Nov 12 12:12:32 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id MAA22511; Tue, 12 Nov 1996 12:12:32 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 12:12:32 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611121712.MAA22511@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #608 TELECOM Digest Tue, 12 Nov 96 12:12:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 608 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson "Content Inflation" Means Cable Modems Will Beat xDSL (Lawrence Gasman) TIME-97: Final CFP (Mehmet Orgun) Country Code 2 for Canada? (was NANP Needs Clean Up) (Leonard Erickson) Ameritech Questions (Steven R. Kleinedler) Telephone Network Congestion Hype (Monty Solomon) Question For Bell-Owned ISPs (was Re: Internet Gridlocks) (Craig Nordin) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Dave Levenson) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (Albert Pang) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: ldg@cir-inc.com (Lawrence Gasman) Subject: "Content Inflation" Means Cable Modems Will Beat xDSL Date: 12 Nov 1996 10:16:47 -0500 Organization: Mail to Usenet Gateway [ News release reposted from http://www.cir-inc.com/news/netImplications.html ] NEWS RELEASE Communications Industry Researchers, Inc. PO Box 5387 Charlottesville, VA 22905 Contact: Lawrence Gasman (804) 984-0245 (804) 984-0247 (fax) Phone: (804) 984 0245 x 11 http://www.cir-inc.com/ e-mail: ldg@cir-inc.com "Content Inflation" Means Cable Modems Will Beat xDSL in Race for Internet Access, Says New CIR Report Charlottesville, Virginia: Despite the flurry of excitement about digital subscriber line technologies, it will be cable modems that will be bringing broadband content into our homes and offices. So says Internet Implications: What Building the Internet Will Mean for Service Providers and Their Suppliers, a new report from Communications Industry Researchers, Inc., a market research and consulting firm based here. Future broadband content on the Internet will vary from the sublime -- instantaneous walk-throughs of potential vacation spots -- to the ridiculous -- video chats with celebrities -- to the merely useful -- realtime business information. But getting to this content will require access speeds that are orders of magnitude higher than those provided by modems and ISDN terminal adaptors. Today, two separate research programs offer a road forward in the broadband access area. One is digital subscriber line technology, which utilizes existing copper loops and newly developed modulation schemes. The other is so-called cable modems, which are based on hybrid fiber coax (HFC) architectures for local distribution. "The choice between the two programs has been falsely presented as a battle between the telephone companies and the cable companies," says Lawrence Gasman, project director for Internet Implications, "But telcos, such as Pacific Bell, SNET and BellSouth, use HFC architectures too. Scalability is the real issue." CIR's new report notes that today there is little to choose between the digital subscriber line technology and cable modem technology in terms of data rates. Cable modems support 30 Mbps on a single cable television channel, while the most available "flavor" of DSL technology -- Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) -- promises 9 Mbps. However, bottlenecks between the PC and the network in the case of both types of technology and the fact that HFC is a shared bandwidth technology bring down the actual delivery to each home to between 1.5 and 3 Mbps. "Both xDSL and cable modems are extensible, says Gasman, "and both have their place in the short- to medium-term marketplace, but the DSL program will ultimately run out of steam." Internet Implications points out that broadband modem-to-service provider interconnection can be improved by replacing Ethernet with Fast Ethernet, or ATM and the latest versions of DSL promise up to 53 Mbps over short distances. But CIR's study also notes that in the end, fiber has a far greater information capacity than any copper-based system. "The sky's the limit with fiber," claims CIR's Gasman. "With HFC, all you have to do is to have fewer homes per hub or devote more cable channels to data. Or you can make use of new capacity on dark fiber. Taking this approach, you can pump any amount of data you choose into homes or offices." A cynic might point to the fact that a few Megabits per second flowing into a home would be enough to access realtime compressed moderate-quality video and ask why we should bother with order-of-magnitude improvements. But CIR believes this attitude to be naive. It claims that broadband communications will follow a similar pattern to what has occurred in personal computing over the past decade. "Just a few years ago, many of us thought a 386 machine with 4 MB of RAM and a 30 MB hard disk would last us forever. Now there is hardly a serious application that could run on such a machine," says Gasman. "We expect to see something similar happen in the area of broadband access." What CIR is predicting is that for any given access speed, content developers will push the capabilities of the available bandwidth until there is a strong incentive for users to move to higher speeds, just as applications that taxed a 386 caused users to run out and buy 486s and Pentiums. And just as the transformation in the PC market has occurred in a very few years, the requirement for very high-speed access can be expected to emerge rapidly. According to Internet Implications, this requirement will also be accentuated as multiple simultaneous accesses to the Internet occur in homes and small offices. High-speed access to the Internet is only one of many questions addressed in Internet Implications. The report also contains: an analysis and forecast of the development of the Internet backbones; detailed profiles of the strategies of the leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the hardware and software companies that supply equipment for the ISPs; and ten-year forecasts of the growth of the Internet infrastructure. The Table of Contents for Internet Implications is available at CIR's Web site ( or directly at ). It is priced at $7,000 and is also available in HTML and PDF formats. Further details of this study can be obtained from Robert Nolan at 617-484-2077 or . Communications Industry Researchers, Inc., has been in business since 1979. The company publishes market studies and newsletters, and carries out demanding custom market research assignments on the commercial aspects of new communications technologies. # # # # # # # ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 10:47:42 +1100 From: Mehmet ORGUN Subject: TIME-97: Final CFP Reply-To: Mehmet ORGUN TIME-97 Fourth International Workshop on Temporal Representation and Reasoning Daytona Beach, Florida, USA May 10-11, 1997 FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS The purpose of this workshop is to bring together active researchers in the area of temporal representation and reasoning in Artificial Intelligence. Through paper presentations and discussions, the participants will exchange, compare, and contrast results in the area. The workshop is planned as a two day event to immediately precede FLAIRS-97 (Ninth Annual Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Symposium May 10-14; see http://erau.db.erau.edu/~towhid/workshops-97.html and the TIME Web page http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~temporal/index.html for details), or contact the program chairs at {morris,lina}@cs.fit.edu. Workshop participants are also encouraged to submit papers to FLAIRS and attend the conference. TIME-97 will be conducted as a combination of paper presentations, a poster session, invited talks and panel discussions. The format will provide ample time for discussions and exchange of ideas. Submission of high quality papers describing mature results or on-going work are invited for all areas of temporal representation and reasoning, including, but not limited to: temporal logics and ontologies temporal constraint reasoning temporal languages and architectures continuous versus discrete time point versus interval representations expressive power versus tractability belief and uncertainty in temporal knowledge temporal databases and knowledge bases temporal learning and discovery reasoning about actions and events time and nonmonotonism time and constraints time in problem solving (e.g. diagnosis, qualitative physics,...) multiple agents, communication, and synchronization applications To maximize interaction among participants, the size of the workshop will be limited. Accepted papers will be invited for full presentation or a poster presentation. All submissions must be received by December 5, 1996. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent to the first author (or designated author) by February 19, 1997. Prospective participants should submit 5 copies of a 6-8 page paper (indicating the selected areas) to: TIME-97 Program Chairs (Robert Morris and Lina Khatib) Computer Science Program Florida Institute of Technology 150 University Blvd. Melbourne, FL 32901 (407) 768-8000, Ext. 7290 {morris,lina}@cs.fit.edu Electronic submission is also permitted. Send a postscript file via anonymous ftp to: ftp://cs.fit.edu/pub/time97 WORKSHOP HIGHLIGHTS The workshop will be held in world famous Daytona Beach. Warm May Florida breezes will put the participants in the mood for invigorating discussion of issues in temporal reasoning. The technical discussions will be held for two complete days just prior to FLAIRS-97. We are pleased to announce that Mark Boddy and Patrick Hayes will be giving the invited talks for the Workshop. PUBLICATION OF ARTICLES All accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings, to be published by IEEE Press. As well, a selected subset of the papers will be invited for inclusion (subject to refereeing) in a book or in a special issue of a journal. ORGANIZATION GENERAL Chair: Patrick Hayes, University of West Florida PROGRAM COMMITTEE Chairs: Robert Morris and Lina Khatib, Florida Institute of Technology PROGRAM COMMITTEE Frank Anger, University of West Florida, USA Luca Chittaro, Universita' di Udine, Italy Philippe Dague, Universite Paris-Nord, France Jennifer Elgot-Drapkin, Arizona State University, USA Marcelo Finger, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brasil Michael Fisher, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Antony Galton, University of Exeter, UK Michael Georgeff, Australian AI Institute, Australia Malik Ghallab, LAAS-CNRS, France Scott Goodwin, University of Regina, CA Hans Werner Guesgen, University of Auckland, NZ Peter Haddawy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA Howard Hamilton, University of Regina, CA Lina Khatib (co-chair), Florida Institute of Technology, USA Peter Ladkin, Universitaet Bielefeld, Germany Gerard Ligozat, Universite Paris XI, France Rob Miller, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, UK Angelo Montanari, Universita' di Udine, Italy Robert Morris (co-chair), Florida Institute of Technology, USA Bernhard Nebel, Albert-Ludwigs University, Germany Han Reichgelt, University of the West Indies, Jamaica Mark Reynolds, Kings College, UK Maarten de Rijke, University of Warwick, UK Abdul Sattar, Griffith University, Australia Erik Sandewall, Linkoping University, Sweden Andre Trudel, Acadia University, Canada Lluis Vila, University of California Irvine, USA ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Patrick Hayes General Chair Lina Khatib PC Co-Chair Bob Morris PC Co-Chair Howard Hamilton Treasurer Luca Chittaro Publicity Co-Chair Angelo Montanari Publicity Co-Chair Scott Goodwin Organizing Committee Member Fahiem Bacchus Organizing Committee Member David Leasure Organizing Committee Member SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS Sponsorship for TIME-97 is being sought from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society (FLAIRS). SUMMARY OF IMPORTANT DATES December 5, 1996 Submission deadline February 19, 1996 Notification of acceptance April 15, 1997 Camera-ready copy deadline May 10-11, 1997 TIME-97 Workshop May 10-14, 1997 FLAIRS-97 Conference ------------------------------ Subject: Country Code 2 For Canada? (was Re: NANP Needs to be Cleaned Up) From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 21:49:58 PST Organization: Shadownet In comp.dcom.telecom is written: > You have to be careful about assuming anything about dialing methods. > I have a friend from New Zealand who used her NZ calling card to dial > to me. (I cannot remember exactly where she was at the time, but I > believe she was in North America). > When she got her bill in NZ, it said that she had dialed: > She dialed country code 1, area code 514 followed by seven digits. > (Montreal.) > On her bill, NZ Telecom thought she had dialed: > 2514nnnnnnn > And NZ Telecom then interpreted this as country 251 followed by an 8 > digit telephone number beginning with 4. > She was therefore billed for a call to Ethiopia instead of Canada :-( > (251 is Ethiopia) She did manage to get charges fixed when it was > realised that 8 digit phone numbers do not exist in Ethiopia! > However, this has made me think that Canada really has a country code > of "2" instead of the common "1". > Can anyone comment on the use of "2" as a country code for Canada? Not a chance. No country code may start with a a digit or digit sequence that is a valid country code. So any single digit country code means that no other country code can start with that digit. Any two digit country code "locks out" the possibility of a three digit code starting with the same two digits. So if Canada was country code 2, no other country code could start with that digit. What almost certainly happened is that there was an error in recording the digit on the phone company's equipment. They don't generate the bills when you make the call. They just record the number dialed, the start time, and end time of the call, usually on computer tape. Then, later the tapes are read by the computer that generates the bills. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: srkleine@midway.uchicago.edu (steven r kleinedler) Subject: Ameritech Questions Organization: The University of Chicago Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 19:05:59 GMT 1. On their web page, on the page that shows the map of 773/312, why can't they have a real map showing real boundaries? All there is is a not-to-scale drawing of Chicago with a fuzzy clump centered on the Loop. Well, DUH. Is there no existing actual map showing actual boundaries available anywhere? (If anyone does know of such, please post the URL.) 2. A theatre company I'm a part of is in 773. We have voice mail. When I access our voice mail from another phone, and I have to punch # and the 10-digit number. 773-404-XXXX does not get me to our voice mail; I still have to use 312-404-XXXX. When does Ameritech switch over its voice mail box system to accurately reflect the area code? -- And, lest you think I'm being too critical, a nice note: The new 411 service where we can get a directory assistance anywhere in the US (for 25 or 35 cents or whatever it is anymore) is quite a nice deal. (Unless there's plans to jack up the cost ...) This message has been brought to you by Steve Kleinedler. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 00:55:02 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Telephone Network Congestion Hype Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Begin forwarded message: Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 00:42:22 -0500 (EST) From: James Love Subject: Telephone Network Congestion Hype ----------------------------------------------------------------- Info-Policy-Notes - A newsletter available from listproc@tap.org ----------------------------------------------------------------- INFORMATION POLICY NOTES November 4, 1996 Telephone Network Congestion Hype In recent months there have been a rash of reports that the telephone network is suffering congestion from Internet usage. There is much reason to be skeptical of such claims. One reason is that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have more customers than telephone lines -- most ISP's have 10 to 20 residential customers per incoming line -- which makes it impossible for more than 5 to 10 percent of their customers to be connected to the network at one time. Telephone companies are also actively promoting second telephone lines, which are often purchased for use with modems, the putative source of congestion. PacBell, one of the firms complaining the most about Internet users, is now giving away 5 months of free Internet usage to persons who purchase a 2nd phone line. [See: http://www.pacbell.com/ideas-offers/offers/addline/j-second.html] This is a portion of our testimony on this topic in a Maryland PSC proceeding, followed by a note by Roger Bohn that was posted to com-priv on the same topic. jamie BEFORE THE MARYLAND PUBLIC SERVICES COMMISSION In the Matter of the Residential ) Intellilinq BRI Service Offering ) Case 8730 of Bell Atlantic, Maryland, Inc. ) October 15, 1996 PREPARED TESTIMONY OF JAMES PACKARD LOVE on behalf of CONSUMER PROJECT ON TECHNOLOGY Q13. What about network congestion? A13. There is no evidence that ISDN is causing any network congestion. Nor is there much evidence that personal computers are causing network congestion. While it may be the case that lines for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are used heavily at certain times of the day, it does not follow that residential users are causing problems. Telephone networks are fixed cost plants. The cost of the network is determined by the build-out at any given time, regardless of usage. The only "usage" cost is based upon the "build-out" for peak usage. The residential network is built according to certain assumptions regarding usage. The important issue is the proper "capacity" for the system. People who use the Internet as dial-in users don't dial in all at once. They just don't. People have complicated lives. They eat, sleep, go to school, go to the movies, play with their children, and do other things which don't involve the Internet. What do we know about Internet usage? We know that ISPs do not have one line per customer. They have far less than one line. According to responses from ISPs, most firms have between 10 and 20 customers per incoming line. That means simply that only 5 to 10 percent of their customers can be using the service at any given time. If ISPs only have one line for every 10 to 20 customers, then BA has to show that the residential network is build for less than 5 to 10 percent of the customers to be connected at one time. If they can't show that, then they do not have a case for charging for usage. Q14. What about congestion at the ISPs? A14. ISPs, like other businesses, may use lines intensely. That isn't necessarily bad for BA, because BA is selling telecommunications services to the people who make the incoming calls. For example, BA is promoting the sale of second telephone lines. These POTS lines do not generate much in long distance revenue. They are used mostly for teenagers, modems and faxes. When BA sells an apparently profitable POTS line so a consumer can call an ISP, BA is making money on the sale of the residential POTS line. If the residential consumer could not call an ISP, many consumers wouldn't need the second POTS line. The ISP is generating a demand for something that BA sells -- residential lines. Q15. Should ISP's pay higher fees? A15. BA has a practical monopoly in the residential market, and they are also an active ISP. You can't allow BA to discriminate against their rivals in the ISP business. Lots of businesses make intensive use of their lines. Our organization has a PBX, and it is often congested during the day. ISP's should pay the same rates as other businesses pay for their lines. -------------------------------------- Note by Roger Bohn on PacBell's 2nd line promotion to com-priv mailing list. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 16:07:57 -0500 From: Roger Bohn Subject: Re: Sales of second phones, a major profit driver At 1:30 PM -0500 11/4/96, Sean Donelan wrote: > Compared to the doom and gloom studies Bell Atlantic and other RBOCs > published last month about how the Internet is ruining the telephone > network, this quarter's financials statements are positively perky. > Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO > Affiliation given for identification not representation Last Thursday (?) I heard a long story about this "growing problem" on Marketplace, the NPR-carried business news program. The story was, as most are, completely one-sided. It talked about the COST incurred because of longer phone calls, but nothing about the REVENUES. That night I got home and found, in my mail, an aggressive solicitation from: !! Pacific Bell!! for a second phone line. And, as an inducement if you get a second line they offered to throw in: 5 months free, including unlimited usage, on their new Internet service! So obviously their marketing people believe the opposite of what their PR people are saying. To me their PR smells of a standard attempt by a regulated (quasi) monopoly to influence the California regulators. Roger Bohn Rbohn@UCSD.edu University of California, San Diego ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ INFORMATION POLICY NOTES is a free Internet newsletter sponsored by the the Consumer Project on Technology (CPT) and the Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP). Both groups are projects of the Center for Study of Responsive Law, which is run by Ralph Nader. The LISTPROC services are provided by Essential Information. Archives of Info-Policy-Notes are available from http://www.essential.org/listproc/info-policy-notes/. TAP and CPT both have Internet Web pages, http://www.essential.org/cpt, http://www.tap.org. Subscription requests to info-policy-notes to listproc@tap.org with the message: subscribe info-policy-notes Jane Doe TAP and CPT can both be reached off the net at P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; Voice: 202/387-8030; Fax: 202/234-5176. ------------------------------ From: cnordin@vni.net (Craig Nordin) Subject: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs (was Re: Internet Gridlocks) Date: 12 Nov 1996 11:15:56 -0500 Organization: Virtual Networks I would love to find out what the Bell-owned ISPs say about this ISP vs. Bell issue (ISPs said to cause telco gridlock). If they say "no comment" isn't that an indication that they are not as independent as they should be? If they say "we are with the Bell Companies" isn't that just a completely convincing sign that these companies are way too close to their parent organizations? If they say "we are with the ISPs, down with Bell" wouldn't it be amusing and entertaining? Can anyone find any statements made by Bell-owned ISPs on this issue? Jobs - Graphic Arts - Commercial Production -> http://studio.vni.net/jobs/ Virtual Networks Premier Internet Services cnordin@vnii.net Indianapolis Indianapolis Indianapolis Metro http://www.vnii.net/ Indiana Indiana Indiana Washington DC Washington DC Washington DC Metro http://www.vni.net/ Virtual Networks Incorporated Virtual Networks of Indiana, Incorporated ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 16:35:51 GMT John Stahl (aljon@worldnet.att.net) writes: > Could it be that they really want to is charge for every call based > upon distance and time. Perhaps if given their own way, they would opt > to eliminate Flat Rate Service! That is already the case in some areas, and for some classes of customers. If you purchase flat-rate local telephone service, then you are subsidized by somebody else -- especially if you use more of the service than an `average' subscriber of your class. As we move from regulation to competition, the justification of a subsidy paid by one class of users to another becomes more difficult. It is the payers of the subsidy (e.g. business subscribers) who will be able to save money by switching to an access provider who does not collect such a subsidy. The recipients of the subsidy (e.g. residence subscribers) will find that the incumbent LEC will have to charge them more as the subsidy is lost. Pay-as-you-use is likely the way of the future (except in areas where it is currently the way of the present). The right solution to the Internet connectivity issue is to use a non-switched infrastructure (e.g. CATV). Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave Stirling, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 03:58:38 +0000 From: albert pang Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? Organization: Magellan Networks, Nortel, Ottawa, Canada. In article , John Nagle wrote: > In article , scott miller > writes: >> Dial-up data traffic has been getting a free ride on the Telco voice >> network for years. That is coming to an end. The question is, who is >> going to pay? > This whole thing seems a sort of bogus issue. First, unless > you're out behind some switching concentrator in outside plant, which > is rare, you have a dedicated path to the CO, so contention there > isn't an issue. Within the end office, you can run out of switch > capacity on some older switches, although I think this is more of a > problem with 5ESS than Northern Telecom switches. Can someone speak > to this? I don't want to sound too much like a commercial, but check out the following press releases for a possible solution: http://www.nortel.com/home/press/1996c/8_28_96235Internet_Thruway.html http://www.nortel.com/home/press/1996d/11_8_9696331Internet_Thru_Update.html Albert Pang | Global Support Processes | Voice +1 613 723 4204 albertp@nortel.ca | Magellan Networks | Fax +1 613 723 4508 | Northern Telecom (Nortel) | ESN 364 4204 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #608 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Nov 12 14:23:08 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id OAA08069; Tue, 12 Nov 1996 14:23:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 14:23:08 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611121923.OAA08069@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #609 TELECOM Digest Tue, 12 Nov 96 14:22:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 609 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Search Warrants by Fax in Ontario, Canada (Nigel Allen) Book Review: "Personal Communication Systems and Technology" (Rob Slade) O'Reilly/Netcraft Security Test (Ben Parker) UCLA Short Course on "Evolutionary Computation" (Bill Goodin) Help Needed With Answering Machine (John Geddie) Texas PUC Approves Two Splits (Brian Purcell) Re: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service (Michael Wengler) Re: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service (Mark Tomlinson) New Creative Trends in Spamming (Mike Pollock) Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Dale Kramer) Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line (Larry English) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 10:13:51 EST From: Nigel Allen Subject: Search Warrants by Fax in Ontario, Canada Here is a press release from the Attorney General of the province of Ontario. I found the press release on the Canada NewsWire web site at http://www.newswire.ca/ (I should stress that I don't work for the government of Ontario, and I disagree with most policy initiatives of the present government of Ontario. However, I thought that the announcement might be of interest to readers of this newsgroup.) ACCESS BY FAX TO JUSTICES OF THE PEACE WILL BOOST COMMUNITY SAFETY TORONTO, Nov. 7 /CNW/ - Ontario will launch a new service to help police fight crime and protect our communities, Attorney General Charles Harnick announced today. The new service, called telewarrants, will allow police officers across the province to use a fax machine to apply for a search warrant from a justice of the peace. Eventually the service will be available 24-hours per day, seven days a week. At a speech to justices of the peace, the Attorney Gcneral said the telewarrant service is an example of the government's commitment to promoting community safety, and building a swifter, more effective justice system. ``Often the success of a criminal investigation hinges on timely police access to a justice of the peace to apply for a search warrant,'' said Mr. Harnick. ``This new telewarrant service gives police access by fax to a centrally located justice of the peace, when one is not available in person. ``No longer will police investigations be at risk because of difficulty accessing a justice of the peace,'' he added. ``By adopting modern technology in the justice system, we will help police crack down on criminals.'' The telewarrant centre will make a justice of the peace available by fax at all hours of the day or night. Police will fax their request for a search warrant to the centre, where a justice of the peace reviews the application. If it is approved, the justice of the peace then faxes it back to the police. ``The new telewarrant service is one more very important weapon in our arsenal against criminal activity,'' said Chief Trevor McCagherty, president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. ``The front-line police officer in Ontario will benefit from the direct access, soon to be available to them, in obtaining a search warrant. The time saved by our police officers in using the telewarrant service will translate into increased public safety for every citizen.'' The telewarrant service will be phased in, starting in early 1997. It will be accessible to all municipal and regional police services, as well as the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and peace officers working for the Ministries of Transportation, Natural Resources, and Environment and Energy. Search warrants authorize police to enter private property to search for and seize evidence during a criminal investigation. The Criminal Code of Canada requires police officers to appear in person before a judge or justice of the peace to apply for a search warrant. Last year, the Code was amended to allow police to apply for a search warrant by fax, when it is not practicable or possible to get authorization in person from a judicial officer. Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Quebec and the Yukon all have telewarrant services in place. ``Ontarians have the right to feel secure in their own homes and neighbourhoods,'' emphasized Mr. Harnick. ``And safe communities enhance our quality of life, by promoting investment, jobs and economic growth.'' Telewarrants is one of several community safety announcements the government has made during the month of November. Ce document est aussi disponible en franais. For further information: Elaine Thompson, Public Education and Community Relations, (416) 326-2215; Jim Middlemiss, Minister's Office, (416) 326-4443 transmitted over Canada NewsWire 12:10e 07-NOV-96 ------------------- forwarded to the TELECOM Digest by Nigel Allen, Toronto, Ontario ndallen@io.org http://www.io.org/~ndallen/telecom.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually I suspect most police officers here in the USA at least consider the requirement to get search warrants a nuisance they would rather not bother with. Most do not see any reason they should not be allowed to just kick down doors and go anywhere they want without having to bother with any constitutional requirements which protect citizens and their privacy. For a long time now, at least a few years, fax warrants have been available in the USA. True, someone has to appear before a judge and request it, but that is just a formality they go through when necessary. As an example, let's say police come to your door and want to come in. There are a few people around who are brave enough -- but I think the number is growing -- who respond by telling the police to go away and come back with a warrant if they wish to enter. Police officer's response is usually to tell you that you are an a--hole and come in anyway, but if he thinks you are smart and likely to make trouble, then there is a simple way to have a warrant there in a few minutes: Officer calls on radio to the station, and asks assistant state's attorney on duty to prepare a warrant. The warrant is then taken to the judge on duty and signed. It is then faxed out to the 'paper car', a police car which drives around town all day delivering paperwork from one police station/courthouse to another. It arrives on the cellular fax machine in the 'paper car' and that officer delivers it to the officer who has been waiting patiently outside your front door for all of ten minutes or so. You say, "wait a minute; doesn't the idea of obtaining a search warrant via fax through some third-party violate the spirit if not the actual constitutional requirement that a judge be presented with evidence in person and that the judge make a (real! legitimate!) decision whether the police will be allowed to invade this person's space or otherwise harass him?" Well yeah, but that is not how things are done any longer in the United Police States of America. Obviously Canada is not going to be any different. Police officer decides who is a criminal and if you don't like that then you are a criminal also. COCOT phone is available for you and other scum like you to call your smart-mouth attorney and your scummy family and friends between 10-11 am on the second Tuesday of each week; administrative convenience you know. Most police would not let you use the phone at all if the Supreme Court was not in their face all the time about it. Millions of dollars spent on sophisticated communications equipment for law enforcement, yet persons not convicted of anything except maybe calling attention to the chip on a police officer's shoulder cannot get phone calls in any reasonable way at any reasonable price while in jail. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 12:15:16 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Personal Communication Systems and Technology" BKPCSTCH.RVW 960723 "Personal Communication Systems and Technologies", John Gardiner/Barry West (ed.), 1995, 0-89006-588-8, U$59.00 %E John Gardiner %E Barry West %C 685 Canton St., Norwood, MA 02062 %D 1995 %G 0-89006-588-8 %I Artech House %O U$59.00 617-769-9750 800-225-9977 fax: +1-617-769-6334 %O artech@world.std.com bookco@artech.demon.co.uk %P 238 %T "Personal Communication Systems and Technologies" This book is almost more political than it is technical, covering the various competing technologies in the PCS (Personal Communications Systems) fields. Relative strengths of the schemes are discussed, although, since the authors of the individual chapters are mostly adherents of their respective programs, weaknesses aren't dwelt on. Written from a European, and primarily UK, perspective, there are chapters for developments in the North American and Asian markets. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKPCSTCH.RVW 960723. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. ====================== roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ From: bparker@interaccess.com (Ben Parker) Subject: O'Reilly/Netcraft Security Test Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 16:18:37 GMT Organization: Best Effort Co. Reply-To: bparker@interaccess.com === Forwarded Message === On Sat, 12 Oct 1996 15:14:29 -0400, listown@online.ora.com (O'Reilly & Associates ORA-NEWS Owner) wrote: ora-news O'Reilly Product Announcement Free Trial Security Test of Your Internet Site In partnership with Netcraft Ltd., we are offering you a free, one-time security audit of your Internet site. This sophisticated remote probe will reveal how your network looks from the outside world and what its vulnerabilities are. The service comprises a methodical examination of the ports on all of the hosts on your network that can be seen from the Internet. It applies tests for common misconfigurations and security weaknesses in the services you offer to the Internet. THE TEST SUITE The test suite used is continually enhanced and updated in the light of CERT and vendor advisories, Usenet postings, and material from Netcraft's own research. Access to full advisories on the vulnerabilities and support by Internet mail are included in the free trial. BENEFITS OF THIS SERVICE If after having your site tested for free you deem it of value, it is available by annual subscription with tests repeated on a daily or weekly basis or at your instigation. You benefit because: * The Service is automated and repeatable, and can be run every day of the year, or on demand. This continuous service is much more useful than a one time security audit which, although a very good thing in itself, is out of date the next time someone changes a configuration file, or adds a new service to your network. * The tests are performed from outside of your own network and so give a clear picture of what services are accessible to the Internet at large. * You can have the test suite run on demand so that it is part of your working practices. When you or someone you work with makes a change to a configuration, you can run our tests immediately afterwards to check the impact. This can reduce the time taken to rectify excessively secure misconfigurations, such as accidently blocking all external access to a key service. * Our test suite is continually enhanced during the course of the subscription. As we find out about new security weaknesses, either through our own research and experience or from freely available sources such as CERT advisories and Usenet postings, we update the test suite accordingly. HOW TO GET THE FREE TRIAL Send email to Ann Schott, ann@ora.com, to sign up for your free network security trial. In your email include the Class C network number you want tested, your phone number, and your company's main switchboard number. Or fax the information on company letterheaded paper to 707/829-0414, care of Ann Schott. Brian ------------------------------ From: Bill Goodin Subject: UCLA Short Course on "Evolutionary Computation" Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 09:05:00 -0800 On February 19-21, 1997, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Evolutionary Computation: Principles and Applications", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructors are Melanie Mitchell, PhD, Research Professor, Santa Fe Institute; Richard Belew, PhD, Associate Professor, Computer Science, UC San Diego; Lawrence Davis, PhD, President, Tica Associates; and Una-May Davis, PhD, Research Fellow, AI Laboratory, MIT. Each participant receives a copy of the book, " An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms", M. Mitchell (MIT Press 1996), and extensive course notes. This course introduces engineers, scientists, and other interested participants to the burgeoning field of evolutionary computation. Evolutionary computation -- genetic algorithms, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, and genetic programming -- is a collection of computational techniques, inspired by biological evolution, to enhance optimization, design, and machine learning. Such techniques are increasingly used to great advantage in applications as diverse as aeronautical design, factory scheduling, bioengineering, electronic circuit design, telecommunications network configuration, and robotic control. Four of the leading experts in this field present the fundamentals of evolutionary computation which should enable participants to write their own evolutionary computation applications. The course includes detailed descriptions of many applications, as well as how to design genetic algorithms and other methods for problems of interest to the participants. Comparisons of genetic algorithms with other search and learning methods are discussed in the context of the example applications. The last day focuses on identifying promising areas for genetic algorithm optimization, and creating a genetic algorithm that performs well on your optimization problems. Course participants who wish to present a problem on the last day are encouraged to contact Dr. Davis (davis@tica.com; phone [617] 864-2292) prior to the course to determine its usefulness as an example. The instructors hope to use two examples to illustrate the points made on the final day. The course fee is $1395, which includes extensive course materials. These materials are for participants only, and are not for sale. For a more information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu http://www.unex.ucla.edu/shortcourses This course may also be presented on-site at company locations. ------------------------------ From: johngee@nmia.com Date: Tue, 12 Nov 96 10:13 MST Subject: Help With Answering Machine I purchased an AT&T digital answering machine at a garage sale. It didn't have an instruction manual with it, and I need help trying to program it. It is a phone as well, with the handset on the left. On the right are a slide volume control and buttons marked "memo, delete, fwd, stop, repeat, off/on and play." An LED display shows the number of calls received. The only marking that *may* be a model number on the underside of the set is 91EP. If anyone can help by e-mailing me or faxing me the programming instructions, I'd be very grateful. John Geddie E-mail: johngee@nmia.com Fax: (505) 293-2112 ------------------------------ From: bpurcell@centuryinter.net (Brian Purcell) Subject: Texas PUC Approves Two Splits Date: Tue, 12 Nov 96 16:23:46 GMT Organization: Wide-Lite The Texas Public Utility Commission approved two NPA relief plans last week. Splits to the 210 and 817 areas will likely take effect next summer. Here are the details of the approved splits: 210: The San Antonio Metro Exchange (roughly Bexar County) will remain 210. The remainder of the outstate area currently in 210 will be split in half along the Webb County line north of Laredo. 817: The Fort Worth Metro Exchange and Extended Metro Exchanges to the North, West, and South will remain in 817. The balance of the current 817 will be split in half along a line running WSW from Ft. Worth. The new NPAs have been requested from Bellcore and are likely to be assigned by the end of November. Implementation is scheduled for mid-1997 with a four to six month permissive period and an undetermined intercept period. Brian Purcell bpurcell@centuryinter.net ------------------------------ From: Michael Wengler Subject: Re: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 08:34:02 -0800 Organization: QUALCOMM, Incorporated; San Diego, CA, USA Mike Borsetti wrote: > I ordered MCI One, and gave out the "personal 800 number" to selected ... > A while back I started getting complaints from these people that at > times when they called the 800 number they couldn't reach me or my > voicemail. A little bit of investigative work determined that MCI -- > without telling me -- changed the service so that after about 25 > seconds of ringing it would interrupt the call and tell the caller > "We're sorry, the party cannot be reached at this time, please try > your call later". This happens just a split second before the > voicemail has a chance to pick up. ... > (3) cancel MCI One and get a 'real' 800 number from another > vendor. Problem: look stupid in front of my associates and have them > memorize a different number [BTW, any ideas as to the best provider?] 800 numbers are portable, so there's no reason to look stupid! When you seek out another source for your 800 number, tell them you've already got an 800 number and you want them to service it. They will know what to do. Chances are your best deal will come through signing up for both home L.D. service and 800 number from the same company. I had 11.9 interstate w/ 6/sec billing and on my 800 number, 12.9 interstate with 6-second billing, but a 30-second minimum. NO MONTHLY FEE! (Unless my total bill was less than $20 in a month, they slapped a $5 billing fee on top.) That was with Unitel in New Jersey, 1-800-UNITEL7 Its MUCH better than you're going to do with the bigger companies. And paying them NO FEE for a few years makes me wonder why other companies charge a fee and get away with it. And I've had no technical problems ever with this company, 800 number or long distance. Mike Wengler Formerly an agent, but decided to concentrate on my real job. http://www.he.net/~wengler/VoiceNet [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A lot of the carriers are now including a provision in their contract which says you agree that when you give up their service you give up your right to the number as well, or any right to transfer it to a different carrier. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mtdiver@aol.com Subject: Re: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service Date: 10 Nov 1996 23:40:59 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) How does a home 800 number sound FREE OF CHARGE (setup and monthly) with your first two hours of use at $0.01 a minute with NO GIMMICKS from a major LD provider? E-mail me for details! Sincerely, Mark Tomlinson MTDIVER@aol.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So tell us the rest of the story Mark. How much is the charge per minute after the first two hours? Be sure to include all the gimmicks when you write again, okay? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 08:35:50 -0800 From: Mike Pollock Subject: New and Creative Trends in Spamming I don't know if anyone else in the Digest got this, but I'm willing to be a *gulp* guinea pig. <---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> From: starmaker@earthstar.com Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 18:48:31 -0800 To: pheel@sprynet.com Subject: May I Please Have Your Permission ?? You're probably losing a lot of money on your telephone bill (just like I was) and I was wondering if I could e-mail you some free information that could save you hundreds of dollars every year. I now save nearly $5 for every $10 I was spending. No one else who has seriously looked at this idea has saved less than $3 for every $10 they were spending on long distance. That reflects a 30% to 50% savings and that's a lot of money for most Americans, today!. I promise, no obligation. May I e-mail you the free information? I am against SPAM, and am therefore asking you to e-mail me your permission before I send you anything. ________________________________________ IF YOU DO NOT REPLY TO THIS REQUEST, I WILL NOT CONTACT YOU, AGAIN. ________________________________________ Hope to be your friend, A. J. (in North Carolina) <---- End Forwarded Message ----> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How clever. Spam asking permission to send spam. Or I guess you would say spam asking permission to send junk email. Or junk email asking permission to send more junk email. Or something. To answer your question Mike, yeah, lots of people got the above. I personally got my usual two or three copies from 'Friend'. But Mike, I like your second submission today even better. Let's look at it now, shall we? PAT] Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 07:58:04 -0800 From: Mike Pollock Subject: Vote Yes or No for SPAM!! >From our ironic irony department: I recently received this bit of spam calling for a vote on spamming. What 900 number will make the spamming stop? ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- From: "ryan", INTERNET:ryan@bmxi.com TO: (unknown), INTERNET:NOBODY@BMXI.COM DATE: 11/8/96 5:55 AM RE: Message from Internet Sender: ryan@bmxi.com Received: from bmxi.com ([199.75.109.11]) by dub-img-7.compuserve.com (8.6.10/5.950515) id FAA28032; Fri, 8 Nov 1996 05:46:09 -0500 Received: by bmxi.com from localhost (router,SLmail95 V2.1); Fri, 08 Nov 1996 02:46:48 Pacific Standard Time Received: by snappy from somewhere.com (0.0.0.0::mail daemon; unverified, SnappyMail V0.1,alpha 1); From: "ryan" Subject: To: nobody@bmxi.com Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 02:46:48 Pacific Standard Time Message-Id: <19961108024648.bm8704.in@bmxi.com> Vote Yes or No for SPAM!! The hottest issue on the Internet is unsolicited e-mail, affectionately referred to as SPAM. I've heard it said that stopping spam would be an infringement on one's right to free speech as well as freedom of the press. People on the other side say that unsolicited e-mail is an invasion of privacy. Which side are you on???? Most of you are aware of the battles in court (state and federal level) involving this issue. Because of the impact these legal decisions will have on us all I feel it necessary to voice my opinion as I hope you do. I don't know if public opinion can have a bearing on this issue but I intend to find out. I am conducting a survey and hope you will take part. The results of this survey will be published in 2 national publications as well as being posted on the appropriate news groups. The results will also be made available to the management of the online services on the Internet (aol, compuserve, ect. ). If you wish to take part in the survey and wish to contribute to the expense of publishing the results you can do so by calling:1-900-378-8388 a "YES" vote (In favor of unsolicited e-mail) will be recorded by selecting ext .# 1910 a "NO" vote (against unsolicited e-mail ) will be recorded by selecting ext. # 1911 let your opinion be known VOTE-VOTE-VOTE-VOTE-VOTE-VOTE-VOTE-VOTE-VOTE!! You will be charged $2.99 for your call and you must be at least 18 years old to participate. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Snicker: He does not indicate if it is okay for us to stuff the ballot box with repeated votes, but I somehow don't think he would mind; not at $2.99 per call anyway. Really this sort of thing had to happen. So let's all abuse our employer's phone lines to 'vote' on how we feel about others abusing the net. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dale Kramer Subject: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: 12 Nov 1996 13:29:55 GMT Organization: Kramer Concepts Inc. Is there a service that I can use that allows me (in Canada) to call a toll number in the US and then get tied into a line that lets me call an 800 number that can not be normally dialed from Canada? Is there any way at all possible to call a US 800 number from Canada? Dale Kramer kci@vaxxine.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Didn't we have something here not too long ago about a special three digit code used by some telco in Canada for just this purpose? Perhaps someone could contact Mr. Kramer with details. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Larry English Subject: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line Organization: national semiconductor atlanta Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 17:56:08 GMT Suddenly a new feature has appeared on my residential phone line. I noticed that if I'm talking to someone, I can "flash" the hookswitch, make another call [without disconnecting the first call], and then either confer with a second caller until they hang up, or I can flash again and then be talking to both callees. I haven't signed up for this; I definitely do not have [experiments proved this] call waiting; I am not doing anything special to make it happen [like dialing *6x or something]. Can I get charged for trying/using this? What is it even called? 3-way calling? Conference calling? It has also appeared on another phone at a house near me that probably uses the same central office. I don't really even want it -- it makes it hard to be sure when you have really terminated a call, since if you don't hold the hook down long enough, you might be making an accidental conference call. wle. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is known as 'Three Way Calling' and some telcos have begun offering it on a 'per-use' basis as well as by monthly subscription. If you call the telco, you can probably get them to remove it from your line if you don't want it. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #609 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Nov 12 23:02:25 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA04192; Tue, 12 Nov 1996 23:02:25 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 23:02:25 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611130402.XAA04192@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #610 TELECOM Digest Tue, 12 Nov 96 23:02:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 610 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Len Levine Has Heart Attack (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Ian Angus) Re: Ameritech Questions (John Cropper) Re: ADSI Text-to-Audio File Utility? (Jonathan Story) Re: Percentage of Rotary / Pulse-Dial Phones? (Nils Andersson) Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers (Stanley Cline) Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers (Paul Robinson) Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? (Craig Nordin) New E-Mail SPAM Provider (David Richards) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 19:20:49 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Len Levine Has Heart Attack Computer Privacy Digest moderator Len Levine suffered a heart attack in mid-October and after a stay of several days in Columbia Hospital in Milwaukee, WI is now resting at home. I know *just exactly* what he is going through. Recall please that I have had two of them. He has put his digest on hold pending his recovery, which I hope will be soon and complete. He has requested no 'get well/best wishes' email since the volume of email he gets is staggering enough, the same as it is for me. Long time readers will recall that Computer Privacy Digest began as an offshoot of a long discussion on privacy which began here in this Digest several years ago. Dennis Rears founded it, and Len Levine took over the moderation a couple years or so ago. Like Computer Underground Digest which also began as a discussion thread on hacking in this Digest, CPD has become a very popular e-zine on the net. My best wishes to Len Levine for a speedy recovery. I'm sure most of you feel the same way. PAT ------------------------------ From: Ian Angus Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 15:14:31 -0500 Organization: Angus TeleManagement Group Dale Kramer wrote: > Is there a service that I can use that allows me (in Canada) to call a > toll number in the US and then get tied into a line that lets me call > an 800 number that can not be normally dialed from Canada? Is there > any way at all possible to call a US 800 number from Canada? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Didn't we have something here not too > long ago about a special three digit code used by some telco in > Canada for just this purpose? Perhaps someone could > contact Mr. Kramerwith details. PAT] BC Tel offers this, but it is available only in British Columbia. Several long distance carriers *used* to offer it when they had line-side access, but the feature was lost when they converted to trunk (ie "equal") access. It may still be available from some of the smaller line-side resellers -- that would depend on where Mr. Kramer is. Of course the real solution would be for US companies with 800 and 888 numbers to realize that they have potential customers outside of the 50 states. This is a continuing grievance for Canadians, who could dial the 800 numbers if only the companies advertising them would instruct their carriers to allow calls from Canada. It's even worse in other parts of the world -- it's astounding how many computer companies, for example, run ads which are seen world wide, with no method of contact except a US-only 800 or 888 number. IAN ANGUS ianangus@angustel.ca Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca 8 Old Kingston Road tel: 905-686-5050 ext 222 Ajax ON L1T 2Z7 Canada fax: 905-686-2655 ------------------------------ From: psyber@mindspring.com Subject: Re: Ameritech Questions Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 16:27:20 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Reply-To: psyber@mindspring.com steven r kleinedler wrote: > 1. On their web page, on the page that shows the map of 773/312, why > can't they have a real map showing real boundaries? All there is is a > not-to-scale drawing of Chicago with a fuzzy clump centered on the > Loop. Well, DUH. Is there no existing actual map showing actual > boundaries available anywhere? (If anyone does know of such, please > post the URL.) The scale adjustment necessary is so radically different that any attempt on a broad-scale (~200 mi2) map will overstate the actual 312 area. > 2. A theatre company I'm a part of is in 773. We have voice mail. > When I access our voice mail from another phone, and I have to punch # > and the 10-digit number. 773-404-XXXX does not get me to our voice > mail; I still have to use 312-404-XXXX. When does Ameritech switch > over its voice mail box system to accurately reflect the area code? Have you placed a trouble ticket with Ameritech yet? > -- And, lest you think I'm being too critical, a nice note: The new > 411 service where we can get a directory assistance anywhere in the US > (for 25 or 35 cents or whatever it is anymore) is quite a nice > deal. (Unless there's plans to jack up the cost ...) Not really ... on the WWW, several sites do it for you for free (a few of which are sponsored by the LECs) ... John Cropper NiS / NexComm PO Box 277 Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 voice: 888.NPA.NFO2 fax: 609.637.9430 mailto:psyber@mindspring.com ------------------------------ From: jstory@ibm.net (Jonathan Story) Subject: Re: ADSI Text-to-Audio File Utility? Date: 12 Nov 1996 18:44:26 GMT Reply-To: jstory@ibm.net (Jonathan Story) In , fleury@cs.utexas.edu (Damon Erick Fleury) writes: > What I'd like to know is this: Is there any DOS, Unix or Windows > utility in existence that takes a string of text and builds a sound > file suitable to be played to an ADSI-compliant telephone? The idea is > that a PC with a voice modem or a Dialogic card could dial an ADSI > device and leave a message on its screen, by simply playing the encoded > sound file. > Does anyone know of (or sell) such a program? Using the Dialogic APIs, it is quite simple to produce an ADSI sequence (dl_play() in the OS/2 API). However, at least on the OS/2 platform, Dialogic have not produced an API to interpret ADSI tones. ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: Percentage of Rotary / Pulse-Dial Phones? Date: 11 Nov 1996 19:11:44 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , hancock4@cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) writes: > Some localities are converting pay phones BACK to rotary to discourage > drug dealers/prostitutes from using them as beeper points. Why does this make a difference? If you call a service that needs beep tones, I imagine people who use payphones will carry DTMF generators? Besides, this is a horrible trend. Let's observe that phones do not sell drugs, sex or even rock-and-roll, people do. One of the nastier fallouts of the nanny-state (or nanny-govt-regulated- telco or nanny-govt-owned-school) is the trend to assume that anyone under 18 with a pager or a cellphone is a drug dealer. IMHO, these things can be great tools to enhance safety, and be a great convenience for parents and kids. (In Sweden, the developers talk about phone-with-mom-and-daddy-button, i.e. two speed dials plus the equivalent of 911). Nils Andersson ------------------------------ From: roamer1@pobox.com (Stanley Cline) Subject: Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 01:10:05 GMT Organization: Catoosa Computing Services Reply-To: roamer1@pobox.com On Wed, 06 Nov 1996 16:26:19 -0600, someone wrote: > I could not get AOL to set up an account using the VISA Debit card. It > would only work using a real VISA. The tech support people said name > and address had to match exactly what was on statement. Also if you I had AOL some time ago, and had them bill to a Visa check card with no problems at all. However, the American Roaming Network cellular ripoff folks will not take either of my Visa check cards (I have two) nor my perfectly valid BellSouth calling card number. (This is the outfit I have to deal with when using my BellSouth cellular phone in certain areas where awful US Cellular refuses to provide service and I have to roam on the A side.) They have not explained why I am having problems to my satisfaction yet; US Cellular and CellOne have already received more nasty-grams from me after I found this out. Here's a post from misc.consumers describing another Visa check-card problem ... From: roamer1@pobox.com (Stanley Cline) Newsgroups: misc.consumers Subject: Declined VISA Check Card Date: Sat, 05 Oct 1996 21:08:27 GMT Has anyone had a problem with using a VISA check card, and it being declined because it's a "check card" and not a "credit card"? (No need to warn me about the dangers of debit cards, I am perfectly aware of that, thank you.) I tried to get gas at an Exxon gas station about 60 miles away from home; I gave them my VISA check card; the charges were declined (never mind that I KNOW I had more than enough in my checking account to cover a measly $6 charge. I went to an ATM nearby and withdrew cash (plus having to pay an ATM surcharge + my bank's foreign ATM fee) to pay for the gas.) The gas station claims that they do not accept VISA "check cards" -- even though they take VISA "*credit*" cards. I have had *no* problems with this card at any place (including other Exxon stations), so it appears this Exxon may be in trouble with VISA for this. I'm calling both Exxon and my bank Monday to get this little matter resolved ... I want my $2 for ATM withdrawal fees back. A VISA CARD IS A VISA CARD REGARDLESS OF WHERE THE FUNDS COME FROM, RIGHT? (My bank said they were having computer problems that day, so I forgive Exxon. But ARN *still* gripes about my Visa check cards.) Stanley Cline (Roamer1 on IRC) ** GO BRAVES! GO VOLS! mailto:roamer1@pobox.com ** http://pobox.com/~roamer1/ CompuServe 74212,44 ** MSN WSCline1 All opinions are strictly my own! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: On my VISA debit card there is no indication of any kind where the funds come from. They just swipe the card like any other. Although my VISA debit card will function like a Cash Station card as well, it so happens the bank also sent me an ATM card (good for cash machines only). One interesting thing I have noticed is that there seem to be different parameters or guidelines in how the two cards seem to respond to money in one's account. Let us say starting with zero dollars, I make a deposit *to a live teller* of a check for $500. The check will have a three day hold on it during which time the automated service giving my balance over the phone will say 'book balance five hundred; available balance, zero'. Now if I attempt to pay for something with my VISA debit card (on the very same account) it will draw funds from my credit card account in increments of fifty dollars as needed to pay for the purchase because I have 'no available funds' otherwise. But if I go to an ATM machine and take out fifty dollars instead, it will simply take the fifty from the 'unavailable funds' (book balance) on my checking account. Now if I make a deposit to my account via an ATM machine, for some reason the 'hold' is only one day. Also, First National Bank of Chicago has my card coded for something called 'daily limit' and 'overnight limit'. The daily limit is $300 which is more than enough. I have never taken more than $200 in cash from an ATM at one time for any reason. The 'overnight limit' is a curious thing however: let us say the network is down, or the bank's computers are down or for some reason verification of my balance cannot be made by by the ATM I am using. The bank says I can have $100 anyway on my say-so. Now of course there best be $100 there for them to recover when the computer/network connection comes back on line. I have gone into the Mobil station near my house and had them decline my VISA debit card only to hand them my ATM card on the very same account and have it accepted. This comes from the 'I feel like such a fool' department: One night I was walking downtown past an ATM built in the wall on the front of a building and it was going beep-beep-beep. I stopped to look and a message on the screen said 'Do you need more time to make your selection?'. The selections were to make a deposit, make a withdrawal, check 'my' balance, etc. Some fool had walked away without terminating his session ... still logged in. So what did this fool do? Instead of saying yes, give me another minute or so, I said 'no' ... and the ATM terminated the session and tossed 'my' card back out to me. Oh dear ... that was not the desired results, and not having a PIN to go with the card in question didn't help any. Had I said 'yes' the machine would have waited on me patiently while I cleaned out the rest of the poor guy's account. Put it down as a RISK of using ATM's I guess; do not forget to terminate the session and take your card with you, otherwise the next person to walk up may be more nimble with those buttons and have more presence of mind than I did at the unexpected sight of a treasure drove there for the looting. Finally from the bank fraud unit comes this 'do not try it or else' bit of advice about ATMs: Let's say you do not have quite enough money in your checking account to get a check cashed in the conventional way. You are going to get a very large -- more than adequate check the next day, but that does you no good tonight. Using one of your own (at this moment) worthless checks write yourself a loan. Deposit a check payable to yourself in an ATM for some amount of money you know you can cover in the next couple days. Now to the ATM and bank's way of thinking, you have that much money in the bank. As your second transaction ask for cash in about half or less of the amount of the check you deposited. If you have been with the bank for any length of time the ATM will give you the money. In other words, a good thing about ATMs is they do not argue with you the way a human teller would do. It is the same old routine we used years ago of running to the grocery store to cash a small check on Wednesday night against funds we would not have available until we got our payroll check on Friday and then running to the bank on Friday to get the money in our account before the other check we floated got there. It is just that the ATM gives you less arguments about it and no dirty looks. The ATM has no way of knowing if whatever you stuck in the deposit slot was any good or not although the human being who cleans it out the day certainly will, so it is a good -- excellent -- idea to give it an actual check -- even if one of your own made payable to yourself -- and be certain that there will be in fact 'real money' from somewhere in your account by the time wherever you 'made your deposit' gets around to sending it to your own bank a few days later. This works best if you do it on Saturday and no one is even going to look inside the machine for a couple days, let alone process anything. If you do not have money to cover your 'deposit' then expect that ATM card to go on a hot list and get eaten by the next ATM where you try to use it with a 'consult your bank for details' message on the screen. It is *bank fraud*, and I must recommend against it, but it works since no ATM machine will ever be as sophisticated as a bank teller with lots of experience or for that matter a courtesy counter clerk at the grocery store who tries to verify your balance before cashing a check for you. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 21:15:52 -0400 From: Paul Robinson Reply-To: cats8@erols.com Organization: Evergreen Software Subject: Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers Robert J. Niland wrote: > If the spammer uses a TenFreeHour account, sends the spam, and closes > the account before the ten free hours is up Isn't anyone seeing the latest AOL diskette packs? They are now offering FIFTY free hours instead of just ten! Paul Robinson (Formerly PAUL@TDR.COM) ------------------------------ From: cnordin@vni.net (Craig Nordin) Subject: Re: Users Charged For Number of HITS on Their Web Pages? Date: 12 Nov 1996 15:24:44 -0500 Organization: Virtual Networks There is every scheme of charging out there and all of them are better for some people. If you really know what you want, you most likely won't be disappointed. If you offer absolutely unlimited hits/bandwidth, someone is going to come by and take it from you. I can fill up a T1 or a T3 with cheescake pictures in a matter of a few days. If you are just starting out, you may not mind that your web pages are harder to reach than most. You can go to the free web publishing services for this. You may also want service with your web publishing capability. If you want a real person to talk to about your web pages, this is going to cost you more. The Rahul Dhesi method of metering looks like it is meant to discourage extreme use, not bilk a customer. Rahul Dhesi writes: > Now you do. From our new rate schedule: > Monthly charge for exceeding scaled hits: > $5 per 50,000 excess scaled hits/day in units of $5. > Monthly charge for exceeding megabyte volume: > $50 per 50 excess megabytes/day in units of $50. And, if you are conducting business on the Internet, you may find that it is more than worth it to take extra precautions as to availability of bandwidth. If you are paying by the hit, then you have more that you can demand, and logically there is something that the provider can do to get you more bandwidth. What people are paying for the design and building of a good web-brochure or support-center these days, they might as well pay a few dollars more to get access to a T1 or T3 that is not overloaded right from the start. It doesn't mean that every browser sees it quick, just that the web server isn't holding things up. Virtual Networks Premier Internet Services cnordin@vnii.net Indianapolis Indianapolis Indianapolis Metro http://www.vnii.net/ Indiana Indiana Indiana Washington DC Washington DC Washington DC Metro http://www.vni.net/ Virtual Networks Incorporated Virtual Networks of Indiana, Incorporated Jobs - Graphic Arts - Commercial Production -> http://studio.vni.net/jobs/ ------------------------------ From: dr@ripco.com (David Richards) Subject: New E-Mail SPAM Provider Organization: Ripco Internet BBS Chicago Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 01:27:40 GMT Here's the latest offering from a mail-spam hosting firm. The headers were via Interramp but the reply addresses are all forged. Note the Cleveland maildrop and request to _fax_ them a check. 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Please indicate your existing e-mail address below: REAL E-mail address:__________________@______________________ We accept Checks by mail or fax, or Money Order by mail. (Please note: We will no longer be able to accept checks verbally by phone. Cyber-times MUST have a valid signature on file to process your order!) I authorize Cyber-Times to deposit my check for the amount indicated on this form one time only! I agree that if I want to continue this service My check/money order must be received by the 5th of the month to keep my account active. I may cancel my account at any time by contacting Cyber-Times in writing. SIGNATURE:x________________________ DATE:x__________________ **** WE MUST HAVE THIS SIGNATURE ON FILE WHETHER YOU FAX OR ***** MAIL TO CYBER-TIMES BEFORE WE CAN ACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT! PLEASE PASTE YOUR CHECK HERE (If you fax a check, there is no need for you to send the original check. We will draft up a new check, with the exact information from your original check. I authorize Cyber-Times to charge an additional $25 fee if my checks are returned for insufficient or uncollectable funds. Cyber-Times will not be held liable for any claims that I represent in my advertisements or Autoresponder text. SIGNATURE:x________________________ DATE:x__________________ Our 24 hr fax is: (216) 808-1507 If you fax a check, there is no need for you to send the original check. We will draft up a new check, with the exact information from your original check. If you feel more comfortable sending payment through the mail, please send all forms and check to: **Please Note: ALL checks have a 10 day business hold. To get your account setup immediately send Certified Check or Money Order to: Cyber-Times Mail Server 14837 Detroit Ave. Suite135 Cleveland, OH 44107 -------------------------- David Richards Ripco, since Nineteen-Eighty-Three My opinions are my own, Public Access in Chicago But they are available for rental Shell/SLIP/PPP/UUCP/ISDN/Leased dr@ripco.com (312) 665-0065 !Free Usenet/E-Mail! TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well about all I can suggest is that people lean very heavily on interramp.com for allowing this customer (Cyber-Times) to be on their site and that readers of this message do what they can with the fax machine at 216-808-1507 and the voice phone at 216-808-1347. A call in the late evening produced interesting results. My first call reached an answering machine (not voice mail) at the 'desk of Davidson' who was out and invited me to leave a message. I dialed in immediatly on a second line here and got a woman who answered 'hello'. When I asked if it was Cyber Times she said it was. When I called again a couple minutes later the first line was free (the answering machine had probably disconnected) and I got the machine again. The woman who answered did not sound as if she was terribly enthusiastic about about whatever her husband/boy friend/roommate Unintelligible Davidson is doing with this Cyber-Times nonsense. I think she is going to get tired of it pretty soon in fact. Readers around the Cleveland area may wish to have visitation at 14837 Detroit Avenue, Suite 135 and report back on their findings. I suspect Unintelligible is working out of his home and the Detroit Avenue address is just a mail drop. On the phone, it sounded to me as though I might have reached a residence. If you need to fax them anything the lady told me their fax line was working fine, and if you need to speak with them in person, it would appear when the listed number is busy it rolls over to a second line which is answered in person. Uh, you did want more details about the company didn't you? It might be worth 25-30 cents to call in the evening when phone rates are least expensive. Am I correct in assuming all the spam will be forwarded out of Cyber-Times via interramp.com? It may be just one more place to add to your mail filters, i.e. look for interramp.com in the envelope somewhere. His email forwarding service is sort of a clever idea though. Only one site will get the heat that way, and he has made it pretty plain he could care less, which is a shame, because if he were to get a customer who did another kiddie-porn blitz on all 55 million names on his list, paid him with a bogus check and then vanished he would start to care when a few hundred FBI agents kicked in his doors and ripped off all of his equipment, so little they know about anything. Kinda makes you want to play both sides at the same time, doesn't it, then sit back and watch the fun in the Battle of the Bozos. Remember, harassment by phone or fax is illegal. No hacking and no phreaking please! And no dirty tricks either! If someone is good at manipulating puppets on the end of strings it is possible we might all have a great laugh out of this sometime soon watching the FBI bashing the anonymous junk-emailer who never knew what hit him until it was too late. Wheeeeeee! PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #610 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Nov 13 11:41:14 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id LAA21220; Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:41:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:41:14 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611131641.LAA21220@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #611 TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Nov 96 11:41:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 611 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson CFP: ICA3PP-97: Dec 1997, Melbourne, Australia (Mehmet Orgun) Telcos Start Digital Phone Service/Sales Wednesday (Mike Pollock) Re: AT&T Digital Receives no Calls in Orlando; Can Call Out! (J. Rhodes) Florida's 904 Area Code to Split - AGAIN! (Mark J. Cuccia) First California Prefix Lottery (John Cropper) Re: NYNEX to Adopt Uniform Reach Numbers For Repair Service (Mark Schumann) Re: Help! Need Multi-Fax Receive Software (Gary Breuckman) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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, 13 Nov 1996 15:14:30 +1100 From: Mehmet Orgun Subject: CFP: ICA3PP-97: Dec 1997, Melbourne, Australia Reply-To: Mehmet ORGUN ----- Begin Included Message ----- Subject: CFP: ICA3PP-97: Dec 1997, Melbourne, Australia From: ICA3PP-97 Secretary Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 15:11:15 +1100 Sender: mick@deakin.edu.au Please find below the ICA3PP-97 Call for Papers, which will be held in Melbourne, Australia during early December 1997. Your help in distributing this information to others who may be interested would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Mick Hobbs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael J. Hobbs | School of Computing & Mathematics -------------------------------------+ Deakin University Local Organising Committee | Geelong, Victoria, 3217. AUSTRALIA | IEEE 3rd International Conference on | Phone: +61 52 272960 Algorithms and Architectures for | Fax: +61 52 272028 Parallel Processing | Email: ica3pp97@deakin.edu.au ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CALL FOR PAPERS ICA3PP-97 The IEEE Third International Conference on Algorithms And Architectures for Parallel Processing December 8th-12th, 1997, Melbourne Australia THEME: The IEEE Third International Conference on Algorithms And Architectures for Parallel Processing (ICA3PP-97) will be held in Melbourne, Australia, from December 8th to 12th, 1997. The purpose of this conference is to bring together developers and researchers from universities, industry and government to advance science and technology in distributed and parallel systems and processing. Contributions describing original research, surveys and applications including the following areas are solicited: Development and Debugging of Parallel and Distributed Programs Distributed and Parallel Applications Distributed and Parallel Languages Distributed Operating Systems Distributed Shared Memory Distributed Scheduling and Load Balancing High Speed Networks for Parallel Processing Massive Parallel Processing Instruction-Level Parallel Processing Parallel and Distributed Algorithms Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems Parallel Processing on Clusters of Workstations and Servers Parallelizing Compilers Performance of Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems Proposals for tutorial sessions are also solicited. Your proposals should include the lecture outline, assumed background of audience, and vitae of the presenter. Special sessions on current interest topics are also being planned. For further information on these minitracks please refer to the conference web page. CONFERENCE CHAIRPERSON A. Goscinski, Deakin U. PROGRAM COMMITTEE D. Abramson, Griffith U. A. Ananda, National U. of Singapore A. Barak, Hebrew U. of Jerusalem F. Berman, U. of California, San Diego A. Bode, Technical U. of Munich R. Brent, Australian National U. A. Broggi, Universita' di Parma S. Chanson, Hong Kong U. of Sci. and Tech. P. Cheung, The U. of Hong Kong J. Dongarra, U. of Tennessee J. Edwards, U. of Technology, Sydney B. Garner, Deakin U. S. Hariri, Syracuse U. G. Hellestrand, U. of New South Wales K. Hwang, The U. of Hong Kong J. Indulska, Queensland U. R. Iyer, U. of Illinois, Urb.-Champ. Z. Kedem, New York U. T. Kikuno, Osaka U. D. Kiong, National U. of Singapore C. Kintala, Bell Laboratories H. Kobayashi, Princeton U. R. Kotagiri, Melbourne U. J. Liu, U. of Illinois, Urb.-Champ. J. Magee, Imperial College London L. Narasimhan, DSTO Aust. L. Patnaik, Indian Institute of Science C. Polychronopoulos, U. of Illinois Urb.-Champ. P. Prichard, Griffith U. V. Piuri, Politecnico di Milano T. Radhakrishnan, Concordia U. M. Raynal, IRISA France N. Scarabottolo, U. degli Studi di Modena G. Sechi, National U. of Italy B. Shirazi, U. of Texas Arlington M. Singhal, Ohio State U. J. Song, National U. of Singapore S. Srinivas, Dalhousie U. B. Szymanski, Rensselear U. C. Szyperski, Queensland U. of Tech. P. Tang, U. of Southern Queensland S. Turner, U. of Exeter J. Walpole, OGI of Sci. and Tech. K. Watanabe, Shizuoka U. M. Zhou, U. of Elec. Sci. and Tech. of China W. Zhou, Deakin U. W. Zwaenepoel, Rice U. LOCAL ORGANISING COMMITTEE D. De Paoli, Deakin U. R. Dew, Deakin U. J. Guenther, Deakin U. M. Hobbs, Deakin U. P. Horan, Deakin U. P. Joyce, Deakin U. J. Silcock, Deakin U. Y. Yang, Deakin U. W. Zhou, Deakin U. PAPER SUBMISSION: Prospective authors should submit six copies of their full paper to the Conference Secretary. Papers should not exceed 20 pages in length (double spaced, A4 or letter format, 12 point type) including an abstract, all text, figures, tables and references. The authors' names, affiliation, email address, telephone and fax numbers should be on the cover page. ICA3PP97 Secretary School of Computing and Mathematics Deakin University Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia Tel.: +61 52 272647, Fax: +61 52 272454 Email: ica3pp97@deakin.edu.au WWW: http://www.cm.deakin.edu.au/ica3pp97 Papers will be reviewed internationally and authors will be advised as per the dates given below. Please refer to the Web Page for further information. SCHEDULE: Papers due on: 17th March 1997 Tutorial Proposals due on: 17th March 1997 Notification of Acceptance: 18th July 1997 Camera-ready papers due on: 1st September 1997 Registration due on: 15th October 1997 SPONSORS: IEEE Victoria Section, IEEE Computer Society. Deakin University, Faculty of Science and Technology Deakin University. -------------------- Yes, I am interested in ICA3PP 97. Name (including title): Affiliation: Address: Phone: Fax: Email: [ ] I would like to receive further information about ICA3PP 97. Please put me on your mailing list. [ ] I intend to submit a full paper to ICA3PP 97. - Provisional title: - Provisional list of authors: - Presented by: Please indicate and return to Email: ica3pp97@deakin.edu.au ----------------------------- or to ICA3PP97 Secretary School of Computing and Mathematics Deakin University Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia Tel.: +61 52 272647, Fax: +61 52 272454 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 21:14:47 -0800 From: Mike Pollock Organization: SJS Entertainment Subject: Telcos Start Digital Phone Service and Sales Wednesday High Quality Mobile Phone Eyed By HILLARY CHURA AP Business Writer CHICAGO (AP) -- The next generation of mobile telephones promises to bring consumers higher-quality calls, fancier technology and cheaper prices, a consortium of regional phone companies said Tuesday. The new phones use digital technology, which has been around for years but is just getting to the point where millions of callers can use it. PrimeCo Personal Communications said its $199 telephone -- slightly bigger than a large candy bar -- will allow consumers to make clear-sounding calls, receive pages and know who is calling before they pick up. The service will be available in 15 cities starting Wednesday. PrimeCo's advanced digital-wireless system is one of several digital technologies that use signals in which everything, including voices, is converted into the digital language of computers, making greater use of scarce airwave space. The technology, called code division multiple access, has been available since World War II when the U.S. military used it for top secret communications. In addition to Caller ID and allowing callers to check how much they've rung up, the technology alerts PrimeCo customers when their bills reach a certain amount. "We really think we are setting a new standard in terms of quality. When people use our phones for the first time, we can see the surprise," said Ben Scott, PrimeCo's president and chief executive officer, at the unveiling Tuesday in New York. Don't be surprised to hear other companies make similarly enthusiastic claims soon. Omnipoint Corp. soon will enter the New York market with a digital system, and a venture led by Sprint Corp. is expected to announce a multicity launch by the end of the year. Other companies, such as Pacific Bell Mobile Services, Ameritech and AT&T also are launching digital systems. Only a fraction of today's mobile telephones use digital technology, but industry experts expect the number to grow slowly by the end of the century. Predictions, however, are that cellular usage still will outstrip digital usage by about 2 to 1, said analyst Phillip Redman at the Boston-based Yankee Group. He said predicted wireless sales would increase as new consumers are enticed by cheaper, better digital technology that offers more privacy. Digital technology has a built-in encryption for more secure calls. One complaint about cellular technology has been the ease with which people can eavesdrop or tap into other accounts to charge calls to another number. Digital technology isn't problem-free, though. Critics say the devices may interfere with hearing aids, pacemakers and other medical devices. In addition, PrimeCo's telephones may not work from higher floors in buildings. Baby Bells Nynex, Bell Atlantic and U.S. West teamed up with AirTouch, a California cellular telephone company, to form PrimeCo. The phones will be sold Wednesday in the following cities: Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Fla.; New Orleans; Richmond and Norfolk, Va.; Chicago; Milwaukee; Dallas; Ft. Worth, San Antonio, Houston and Honolulu. Austin should be added within a few weeks, the company said. ------------------------------ From: Jeffrey Rhodes Subject: Re: AT&T Digital Receives no Calls in Orlando But Can Call Out! Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:05:53 -0800 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services PStreicher@aol.com wrote: > Jeffrey, > I don't think my calls were 'cloned' as I have since received a > detailed billing statement and there were no calls showing thosed days > except the outgoing calls that I made. That is not a good assumption. Maybe all the cloner wanted was the ability to receive incoming calls. Maybe any outgoing calls haven't been billed yet (roamer clearinghouse overhead delay of up to 30 days). > Would that be a good indication that I was not 'cloned'? Or, while > being cloned does it inhibit your receiving calls and then the cloner > can make calls at any time later with your nam data? The cloner's registration on another switch or paging area will "steal" your current registration and hence "steal" your incoming calls. You both fight for registration by making outgoing calls and reregistering every 15-20 minutes with your current system. > Also, can a digital phone be used for PCS? Or, does one have to > purchase a new 'PCS' type phone? Some digital (and some analog) cellphones are prepared for IS-41 Rev C Authentication and hence will be unclonable. You may need to bring your current digital cellphone in for service to get this feature. If you want 50 cent flat rate roaming, you need to buy a new Digital PCS cellphone. This is the first cellphone that supports a Digital Control Channel (IS-136). All other control channels for digital cellphones are Analog Control Channel (IS-54). N-AMPS is purely analog control channel and analog voice channels, the only digital characteristic is the ability to show alphanumeric canned short messages, but N-AMPS does support Authentication, so this, too, might be considered a "PCS" feature. > You say the same thing happened to you, did you get billed for calls > you did not make? Not yet, but I checked with our Fraud Department and they told me that is not a sufficient indication that you have not been cloned. Maybe your cloner is sitting back waiting for you to take a vacation to Europe and leave your US cellphone off for a couple of weeks. That's when you'll get the bill. Use 'Fraud Prevention Feature" to frustrate your cloner or at least request it temporarally if you intend to be inactive on the air interface for a while. Jeffrey Rhodes at jeffrey.rhodes@attws.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 10:43:56 GMT From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Florida's 904 Area Code to Split - AGAIN! I've heard that there was a public hearing in Tallahassee FL for yet another new NPA in Florida. This will be the second split of 904. Last year, BellSouth and Bellcore had announced that 904 would split, with the new NPA code to be 850, to take effect in permissive dialing in December 1995. However, a few months prior to the split going into permissive dialing, Bellcore and BellSouth changed the new NPA code from 850 to 352. The reason was that the digits 850 were in use as an NXX central office code in the 407 area code and that location would have been in a (permissive) local seven-digit dialing/calling area of some exchanges actually in the 904 area -- and those exchanges in 904 would have been splitting to 850. Thus there was this 'code/dialing conflict'. Also, note that 352 spells out FLA on the letters on the dial. This time, the proposed plans still indicate to use 850 for the new area code, but the eastern/southern region of 904 (including Jacksonville FL) would keep 904, while points west would change to 850 (Tallahassee, Panama City, Pensacola, etc). However, as has been happening with all of these new NPA codes, local and state politics have again come into play. The problem with changing the western portion of 904 to the new code would mean that Tallahassee would have to change their area code. Tallahassee is the state capital. The main state offices seem to be disturbed that changing their area code, including stationery, letterheads, promotional media, advertising, etc. would be too much of a cost to the Florida taxpayers. More details as I get them. This will be the *ninth* area code for Florida! Since 'interchangeable' (NNX format) area codes started to take effect two years ago in 1995, Florida *doubled* their number of NPA codes from four to eight - and each one of the earlier four codes was split! Also NPA code 407 split from 305 only in Spring of 1988, less than ten years ago! Florida was only *one* area code in 1947 when the area code format began, 305. At the time of the original assignments, and for a few years thereafter, all states/provinces with *one* area code were assigned N0X format codes, while all states/provinces with *multiple* area codes were assigned N1X format codes. That was abandoned in 1953 when some of the original N0X states needed to be split! Florida was one of those early N0X states which needed a split. In 1953, the 813 NPA was carved out, and covered Florida's southwestern Gulf Coast area (independent telco territory), but according to NPA Code maps of US/Canada from the 1950's, 813 seemed to extend *noticeably* farther north of the Tampa Bay area than it did in maps from the 1960's and later. Area Code maps beginning around 1960 shows 813 covering from 'just' the Tampa Bay area and southward. It was the only area code in the continental US which was *exclusively* non-Bell. GTE and (Sprint's) United Telco are the only two LEC's (telcos) which have been in the 813 NPA. In Summer 1965, Florida's third area code (904) was carved out of 305. The new 904 NPA covered the Florida panhandle area (northern Florida along the Gulf Coast), all the way east to Jacksonville on the Atlantic Ocean, as well as a few points south of Jacksonville. This remained relatively stable (as did the NANP itself) until the 1980's when there were some additional new area code assignments. Three area codes in the US were split in the first half of 1988, and Florida's 305 split off the state's fourth NPA (407), covering areas north of the Ft.Lauderdale area. Again, things still seemed to be stable until 1995 when NNX format area codes became effective. The 'independent' telcos' 813 area code split off 941 for points south (including Ft.Myers) in May 1995. 305 split off 954 in a small sliver including Ft.Lauderdale, just north of Miami, September 1995 (it was originally going to be an overlay, but there was just too much opposition from the politicians, media, public, competition, etc). In December 1995, 904 first split off 352, covering the Gainesville area, which was also a revamping of the original 850 split. Finally, 561 split off from 407 in May of 1996, covereing a sliver in the southern part of the old 407, which includes West Palm Beach. It has been said that 407 is again in a 'jeopardy' situation. And now, 904 might split again, in a different area, but using the 850 code which was supposed to be the first-choice code in its first split, last year. 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: psyber@mindspring.com Subject: First California Prefix Lottery Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 23:37:03 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Reply-To: psyber@mindspring.com California Public Utilities Commission 505 Van Ness Avenue, Room 5301 San Francisco, CA 94102 CONTACT: Dianne Dienstein November 6, 1996 CPUC - 85 415-703-2423 FIRST PHONE PREFIX LOTTERY FOR CALIFORNIA In probably the largest phone number prefix lottery in the nation, California's first lottery, held on October 23, issued prefixes to 13 companies for 310, 415, and 619 area codes. Nine companies are on a prioritized waiting list and will receive one prefix prior to the next lottery. The 310, 415 and 619 area codes are rapidly running out of phone numbers. Until new area codes can be assigned to the areas now served by them, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has ordered prefixes rationed through periodic lotteries. At the October 23 lottery, the CPUC Telecommunications Division in conjunction with the California Code Administrator allotted 60 percent of the prefixes to companies requesting them for the first time, and 40 percent to companies already serving the areas. O 310 area code - three first time companies applied for 16 prefixes, and four companies already serving that area code applied for seven. Six prefixes were drawn in the lottery. O 415 area code - four first time companies applied for 10 prefixes, and five existing companies applied for 12. Six prefixes were drawn in the lottery. O 619 area code - two first time companies applied for 8 prefixes, and nine existing companies applied for 22. Four prefixes were drawn in the lottery. New area code 562 for the 310 area, new area code 760 for the 619 area, and new area code 650 for the 415 area will open next year. A prefix lottery will be held on the third Tuesday of each month until the new area codes are fully implemented. Prefixes in the 562 area code will be drawn at the next lottery on November 19, and those in the 760 area code will be drawn in January. John Cropper NiS / NexComm PO Box 277 Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 voice: 888.NPA.NFO2 fax: 609.637.9430 mailto:psyber@mindspring.com ------------------------------ From: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: NYNEX to Adopt Uniform Reach Numbers For Repair Service Date: 12 Nov 1996 17:00:05 -0500 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , Dave Perrussel wrote: > nilsphone@aol.com (Nilsphone) wrote: >> One thing which is _very_ wrong with 611-numbers is that you have to >> be right there to make the call. For example, if my wife has a telco >> problem, she calls me about it, since I am more telco-adept than she >> is. Then I call the telco. I might be in another service area/state/ >> country. How do I dial GTE Southern California 611 from Singapore? > Many places that have 611 for the number for repair service also have > a seven-digit number (local to those in that particular telco) or an > 1-800 or 1-888 number for those outside the telco. Then again you have NYNEX. Their 800 number for repair service is accessible from the whole US, but it prompts you to key in a number at which their service rep will call you back. Naturally it will not accept an area code outside of NYNEX's own "service" area. Sigh. I still cannot believe just how horrible NYNEX really is. Mark W. Schumann | catfood@apk.net | http://junior.apk.net/~catfood | Mike White: the Ralph Perk of the 90s! Draft | Pat O'Malley in '97! ------------------------------ From: puma@netcom.com (Gary Breuckman) Subject: Re: Help! Need Multi-Fax Receive Software Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 03:13:10 GMT In article , Robert A. Book wrote: > Am I missing something here? It should be legal, by the way, to install > multiple copies of the same software on the same machine without buying > extra copies. Of course, if you need 16 faxmodems, you might need two > machines, so you'd need to buy two copies, but not 16. Yes, you are missing something. Most windows programs have a problem when you run more than one copy of them. Usually they have an "ini" file that's in a specific place (ie., \windows) that tells the program where to find the other parts of the program, the directory to use for files, etc. Or perhaps they always create work files in the same place, like \windows\temp, regardless of the directory they are installed in. Running more than one copy of the program will result in both copies trying to use the same files, logs, etc. Now if the program can be installed independently in two different directories, will run with separate files, and are't bothered because they don't have exclusive use of the computer while receiving faxes, you might do all right. puma@netcom.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #611 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Nov 13 12:28:00 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id MAA25735; Wed, 13 Nov 1996 12:28:00 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 12:28:00 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611131728.MAA25735@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #612 TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Nov 96 12:28:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 612 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Teleconsumer Hotline Website (markr@idi.net) Re: America Online's Preferredmail Combats Junk E-Mail (Ronda Hauben) Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming (James E. Bellaire) Re: Ameritech Questions (Steven R. Kleinedler) Re: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs (Joe Jensen) Mobile Phone Mayhem! (RISKS Digest via Monty Solomon) Brokerages Fined for Dialing No Call Lists (Tad Cook) Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? (Lars Poulsen) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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, 13 Nov 1996 11:13:00 -0800 From: markr Reply-To: markr@idi.net Organization: Issue Dynamics Inc. Subject: Teleconsumer Hotline Website For More Information Contact: David Baquis, Assistant Director 202/347-7208 tch@teleconsumer.org http://www.teleconsumer.org Consumer Hotline Announces Internet Site for Telecommunications Information Washington, DC, November 1, 1996 -- Information to help consumers better understand the broad new array of communications products and services is now available on the Internet from the Tele-Consumer Hotline, the nations leading source for impartial information on this topic. The Hotline's English and Spanish publications, as well as a function which allows consumers to pose questions or complaints to industry experts or the Hotline's bilingual counselors, can be found at http://www.teleconsumer.org/hotline. The site features an extensive glossary of telecommunications terms and consumer-friendly information and advice on a variety of topics such as: selecting a long distance company; unauthorized switching of long distance companies (known as 'slamming'); and using calling cards. For people with disabilities, the Hotline provides information on topics such as relay services, assistive technologies, equipment distribution programs and special discounts. All of the publications offered on the Hotlines new homepage are also available at no charge to consumers who send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Tele-Consumer Hotline -- P.O. Box 27207, Washington, DC 20005. The Hotline is an independent and impartial education service that has been serving residential consumers since 1984. Its original mission was to assist consumers in the process of selecting a long distance carrier amid the confusion caused by the breakup of AT&T. In the past twelve years, the Hotline has broadened its scope to cover a wide range of communications related issues, assisting more than half a million individual consumers. The Hotline was jointly founded by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), the nations largest consumer advocacy organization, and the Telecommunications Research and Action Center (TRAC), the oldest and largest public interest communications group. In addition to CFA and TRAC, the Hotline's nonprofit board of directors includes representatives from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), Consumer Action (CA) and the Virginia Citizens Consumer Council (VCCC). Financial and technical support from AT&T, Bell Atlantic, MCI, NYNEX, Pacific Bell, SBC and Sprint enable the Hotline to provide its services and publications to residential consumers without charge. ------------------------------ From: rh120@columbia.edu (Ronda Hauben) Subject: Re: America Online's Preferredmail Combats Junk E-Mail Date: 13 Nov 1996 15:07:19 GMT Organization: Columbia University noone@llondel.demon.co.uk wrote: > In article it was written: >> Mike Pollock wrote: >>> DULLES, Va., Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- AMERICA ONLINE today introduced >>> PreferredMail, a new tool that allows members to avoid unwanted junk >>> e-mail, a major source of complaints from online users. >> When does AOL finally do something about junk mail sent by their >> customers (it's totally misleading to speak of "members") to people >> outside of AOL?! I often receive such unwanted advertizing stuff sent >> from an AOL address (some even in German!). > Perhaps the answer is for AOL to change the terms of their '10 hours > free' accounts to either prohibit email outside of AOL on such an > account or to restrict such accounts to a maximum of 25 or 100 emails. > Those wanting more can pay for a full account. It would seem that if AOL is serious about doing something about junk email it would have an AUP (acceptible use policy) for all who use its accounts and would end any account where junk is email is sent out from. That would mean having a place one could report abuse to and acting on the reports. Also, some of the freenets have a way that people can come in as a guest, but they can't send email or post to Usenet. If AOL wants to offer free accounts with no rules attached, those accounts can be to look at their AOL offerings or at Usenet, etc but not to be able to post or send email. There are those who have pioneered responsible ways to make Net access available. Aol has many it can learn from if it wants to be responsible toward the use of Usenet and the Internet. It seems, however, that it basically doesn't care and if that is the case, people on Usenet and the Internet have to figure out how to deal with those online providers who are encouraging and in fact promoting abuse of Usenet and the Internet. Ronda rh120@columbia.edu Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Ronda, they do have a Terms of Service policy at AOL, and you can write to them at 'abuse@aol.com' when you are aggrieved by something one of their members has done. Whether or not it does any good to write, and how effective they are in policing their own members is the question. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 96 10:11 EST From: James E Bellaire Subject: Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming In TD609 Mike Pollock bravely wrote: > I don't know if anyone else in the Digest got this, but I'm willing to > be a *gulp* guinea pig. > <---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> > From: starmaker@earthstar.com > Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 18:48:31 -0800 > To: pheel@sprynet.com > Subject: May I Please Have Your Permission ?? > You're probably losing a lot of money on your telephone bill (just > like I was) and I was wondering if I could e-mail you some free > information that could save you hundreds of dollars every year. > [SNIP] > I am against SPAM, and am therefore asking you to e-mail me your > permission before I send you anything. > ________________________________________ > IF YOU DO NOT REPLY TO THIS REQUEST, > I WILL NOT CONTACT YOU, AGAIN. I received the same 'invitation' at both of my email addresses. About the only thing nice I can say is at least he put my name on the 'To:' line. (Not the usual BCC: method.) And that the headers were a simple pass between his machine and my MX host. > Received: from servo.earthstar.com by iquest.net with smtp Still qualifies as spam though. (Identical unsolicited message to multiple recipiants.) BTW: A.J. - The "You're probably losing a lot of money on your telephone bill" statement is demeaning for regulars in TELECOM Digest. You're not going to get my business by insuling me in your spam ... James E. Bellaire bellaire@tk.com Webpage Available 23.5 Hrs a Day!!! http://www.iquest.net/~bellaire/ ------------------------------ From: srkleine@midway.uchicago.edu (steven r kleinedler) Subject: Re: Ameritech Questions Organization: The University of Chicago Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 15:15:57 GMT In article , wrote: > steven r kleinedler wrote: >> 1. On their web page, on the page that shows the map of 773/312, why >> can't they have a real map showing real boundaries? All there is is a >> not-to-scale drawing of Chicago with a fuzzy clump centered on the >> Loop. Well, DUH. Is there no existing actual map showing actual >> boundaries available anywhere? (If anyone does know of such, please >> post the URL.) > The scale adjustment necessary is so radically different that any > attempt on a broad-scale (~200 mi2) map will overstate the actual 312 > area. No -- we don't need to see the whole 312 area -- we know that the city line is the boundary on the outer edge. I just want to see a map of the jagged line that runs roughly along North, Western, and 35th (Lake Michigan's the fourth boundary). The boundary is really erratic in places, and I thought if *anyone* had a map of it, it'd be Ameritech. >> 2. A theatre company I'm a part of is in 773. We have voice mail. >> When I access our voice mail from another phone, and I have to punch # >> and the 10-digit number. 773-404-XXXX does not get me to our voice >> mail; I still have to use 312-404-XXXX. When does Ameritech switch >> over its voice mail box system to accurately reflect the area code? > Have you placed a trouble ticket with Ameritech yet? It was pointed out to me that we're still in the permissible dialing period and that it will be taken care of by the time it's mandatory. This message has been brought to you by Steve Kleinedler. ------------------------------ From: Joe Jensen Subject: Re: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 08:11:15 -0500 Craig Nordin wrote: > I would love to find out what the Bell-owned ISPs say about this ISP > vs. Bell issue (ISPs said to cause telco gridlock). I would venture to say that the technical folks dealing with the traffic issues relative to ISP access have never talked to the Bell-owned ISPs. For example, in one Bell company I am familiar with, the engineering function isn't in the same state as the internet service provider entity. The long hold time associated with Internet access is a REAL problem. To understand why, you need to understand that the switch is engineered to support specified concentration ratio across the central office, typically somewhere between 4:1 to 8:1. The problem occurs because at the lowest level of the switch where the concentration occurs, the ratio could be 128 customers to 16 switch ports. An example could find the ISP with 8 of the 128 lines in this concentration group. If those lines are continually busy, that would leave only 8 switch ports for the other 120 customers. That turns out to a concentration ratio of 15:1. The other customers can start seeing delays in receiving dialtone or no dialtone at all. To counteract this, the telco must reengineer the switch at the lowest level and spread the "offending" ISP lines across more concentration groups. To offer the same level of service the telco must "deload" the concentration groups so the equipment that had originally support 512 customers may now only support 480 or less. The engineering also costs time and money. What is the long range solution? Get the internet traffic off the voice switch. Both ADSL and cable modems provide a reasonable solution to this problem. The telcos are in a bind. Do they spend the time and money to reengineer the switch only to have the traffic pulled off when new the new technology arrives? I am glad I don't have to answer that question, but as a cableco anticipating offering internet access over cable modems next year, I am certainly willing to help. Joe Jensen Buckeye Cablevision Toledo, Ohio ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 03:13:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Mobile Phone Mayhem! Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Excerpt from RISKS DIGEST 18.60 Date: Thu, 7 Nov 96 17:18:26 -0000 From: "Trevor Warwick INF-SP" Subject: Mobile Phone Mayhem! Another twist on the well known "Cleaner buffs computer room floor and takes down entire site" stories: We recently had some engineers from AT&T in our computer room for three days, working on a PABX which also lives in there. During this period, two of our main Netware servers have been extremely unreliable, crashing several times a day. The AT&T engineers were working near these servers, and we initially thought that they might have been causing the crashes by disturbing some cables. After a few of these unexplained crashes, one of our MIS group noticed that every time he went in to the server room to reboot the dead servers, one of the AT&T engineers was using his mobile phone. So, they were asked to turn their phones off while working in the server room, and the problem has not reoccurred. To test the theory a bit further, the MIS group then took an otherwise unused server, and experimented with using a mobile phone near it. With the working phone being used less than a foot away from the machine, they provoked a crash which corrupted the system disk (and its mirror volume) beyond repair. Trevor Warwick, Madge Networks, Sefton Park, Bells Hill, Slough, England +44 (0)1753 661401 twarwick@madge.com fax : +44 (0)1753 661011 ------------------------------ Subject: Brokerages Fined for Dialing No Call Lists Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 23:35:42 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Brokerages Pay Fine for Dialing Florida 'No Call' Listings By Helen Huntley, St. Petersburg Times, Fla. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Nov. 11--Four big brokerage firms landed in hot water with the state for making cold calls to Floridians on the "no sales solicitation calls" list. Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Paine Webber Inc. and Smith Barney Inc. agreed to pay a combined $33,000 fine and to improve marketing procedures under a settlement announced Thursday with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Florida law prohibits businesses from making unsolicited calls to the 40,000 people who are on the state's "no call" list. Companies that use telemarketing are supposed to purchase the list and check it before placing calls. Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford said the brokerage firms ran into trouble partly because of recent changes in Florida area codes. He said the companies apologized for their mistakes. Crawford said the department is investigating cases in several other industries. He said people on the list should report any unsolicited calls to the department. Residential numbers can be placed on the list for a $10 enrollment fee and a $5 annual renewal fee. For information call (800) 435-7352. ------------------------------ From: lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? Date: 12 Nov 1996 23:47:38 -0800 Organization: RNS / Meret Communications The article which Tad Cook submitted is a typical piece of junk science reporting. The article provides no evidence that the science wasn't also junk. Lori Hawkins says: > The five-year study used computer models to simulate the Internet, a > global network of computers where at any moment tens of thousands of > users may be trying to get through to popular sites. > Pricing, the study showed, would keep users who don't have immediate > needs off-line during peak times. Now, using the Internet costs the > same whether it's 3 a.m. or 3 p.m. If indeed the study was performed exclusively using computer models, the elastic property of the demand (i.e. higher price, less demand) was probably built into the model; thus it can hardly be seen as a result of the simulation. > "If you want to get on the Web during a busy time, you should pay more > for it," says Andrew Whinston, a UT business professor who headed the > study along with Dale Stahl, a UT economics professor. What users "should" pay is a personal opinion, not a scientific result from a traffic engineering study. > Pricing, the study showed, would keep users who don't have immediate > needs off-line during peak times. Now, using the Internet costs the > same whether it's 3 a.m. or 3 p.m. Certainly, there is a price that would keep most users off the net; if you set the price that high, there is no congestion. But what good is it for you that there is no congestion, if you cannot afford to connect? I am reminded of the old saying: "For every problem, there is an obvious, simple solution ... which is usually wrong." What is happening at this time, is that the telephone companies are trying to take over the retail side of the Internet, and turn it into a pay-as-you-go a-penny-a-minute money machine. This will of course mean the end of the Internet as we know it. To this political end, lots of stories are produced to tell the public that the Internet is overcrowded, and will only become usable after we all get to pay a lot more money. The reality is that some parts of the net are congested, other parts have plenty of bandwidth. Those service providers that offer the least expensive service, tend to have the most congestion. So what else is new ? Lots of people complain about being unable to dial in. Well, if you get a busy tone at 9PM, that is not the fault of the Internet ... that is because your local Internet service provider has sold more accounts than he has modems for. Here in Santa Barbara, we have about 5 local ISPs (Internet Service Providers), that I know of (RAIN.ORG, West.NET, Silcom.COM, Impulse.NET, SBCEO.K12.CA.US) plus local dialups for the national providers (AOL, Compuserve, SprintLink, UUNET). The people who use the least expensive providers have always been complaining that they have trouble getting in during "prime time"; I pay two dollars more per month, and I don't think I have EVER gotten a busy signal when I dialed in. Many providers also have insufficient capacity from the local office towards the backbone. The better services have bitten the bullet and upgraded from a single T-1 to a fractional T-3 service. Those who haven't will have users that complain. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I can tell you that from my location > here, things have become horrible. Having a 28.8 modem on the line means > absolutely nothing. I might as well go back to having a 300 baud modem. In order to evaluate such a statement, one would need to know what the path that you are evaluating looks like. I presume that most of your online time is spent in a telnet session to MASSIS.LCS.MIT.EDU; do you know what the path from your terminal to MIT looks like ? Seen from the router that connects my workplace to our ISP, the path to MIT looks like this (using the TRACEROUTE tool): 1: 131.143.4.10 portal.lobby.rns.com. (41 ms) (33 ms) (31 ms) 2: 199.201.128.252 sbc-cmc-gw.silcom.com. (231 ms) (179 ms) (114 ms) 3: 199.201.128.254 sbc-mci-gw.silcom.com. (169 ms) (128 ms) (49 ms) 4: 204.70.49.25 .....Bloomington.mci.net. (121 ms) (225 ms) (358 ms) 5: 204.70.3.129 core1-fddi-1.Bloomington.mci.net. (158 ms) (77 ms) (86 ms) 6: 204.70.1.45 core-hssi-2.Boston.mci.net. (132 ms) (161 ms) (131 ms) 7: 204.70.1.45 core-hssi-2.Boston.mci.net. (236 ms) (340 ms) *** 8: 204.70.2.34 border1-fddi-0.Boston.mci.net. (134 ms) (151 ms) (122 ms) 9: 204.70.20.6 nearnet.Boston.mci.net. (239 ms) (504 ms) (188 ms) 10: 192.233.33.3 ihtfp.mit.edu. (310 ms) (515 ms) (198 ms) 11: 18.168.0.6 B24-RTR-FDDI.MIT.EDU. (574 ms) (166 ms) (345 ms) 12: 18.23.0.15 massis.lcs.mit.edu. (510 ms) (256 ms) (438 ms) ping -s massis.lcs.mit.edu indicates about 5% packet loss. A roundtrip delay from 141-782 milliseconds is noticeable, but not crippling; far better than we endured ten years ago on the ARPAnet. TELECOM Digest Editor continues: > All the newcomers with their web pages have turned the Internet into a > terrible disaster. I strongly favor what Berkeley is proposing: start > an entirely new network and abandon this current one entirely, leaving The value of the network is in the universal connectivity. The current proposal for "Internet II" is essentially a suggestion for reviving the old "Universities-only" ARPAnet, complete with the NSF "Acceptable Use Policy". It is bad policy: A porkbarrel boondoggle. > I do not think > ever in the past the congestion has been as bad as it has been the > past year or so. Mail delivery takes absolutely *forever*; there are > people getting the Digest as long as a day or two days after it is > issued here. How fast we forget ... ten years ago, we felt that a week was an appropriate time for USENET messages to propagate cross-country. Now we are so used to seeing them within minutes of posting, that we complain when there is a delay in delivery. PAT, I think you're barking up the wrong tree, confusing local underprovisioning with a congested backbone. Who is your ISP? My guess is that it's not MCSnet. Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@OSICOM.COM OSICOM Technologies (Internet Business Unit, formerly RNS) 7402 Hollister Avenue Telefax: +1-805-968-8256 Santa Barbara, CA 93117 Telephone: +1-805-562-3158 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Compuserve very kindly provides me with a connection at no charge to telnet to lcs.mit.edu via a local phone number here in Skokie. I shouldn't complain too much or too loudly I guess. I dial into a local number, connect to their network and issue a certain command to then reach MIT or other .edu sites where I am a guest user. But some days it is awfully slow. Essentially, my ISP is lcs.mit.edu and my various other .edu accounts at several sites around the USA. I sometimes use my eecs.nwu.edu account to telnet in which is also a local phone call. I also have an account with iquest.net. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #612 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Nov 13 23:33:13 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA26958; Wed, 13 Nov 1996 23:33:13 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 23:33:13 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611140433.XAA26958@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #613 TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Nov 96 23:33:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 613 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line (Tony Toews) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Tony Toews) Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? (Craig Partridge) Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? (Louis Raphael) Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? (Tim Russell) Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA (Lloyd Matthews) Book Review: "Learning Networks" by Harasim/Hiltz/Teles/Turoff (Rob Slade) Re: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs (Craig Partridge) Re: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs (Bill Sohl) Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming (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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: ttoews@agt.net (Tony Toews) Subject: Re: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 02:15:39 GMT Organization: TELUS Communications Inc. Larry English wrote: > Suddenly a new feature has appeared on my residential phone line. > I noticed that if I'm talking to someone, I can "flash" the hookswitch, > make another call [without disconnecting the first call], and then > either confer with a second caller until they hang up, or I can > flash again and then be talking to both callees. > Can I get charged for trying/using this? I'm sure you ARE! > I don't really even want it -- it makes it hard to be sure when you > have really terminated a call, since if you don't hold the hook down > long enough, you might be making an accidental conference call. Yup. There was a message from our provincial telco telling us about it in our last phone bill. Up here it costs either a monthly fee, the way it was, or on a per call fee, 35 cents if memory serves. I'm currently paying the monthly fee on one of my phone lines because when you need it for business purposes it comes in real handy. But I only use it once a month or less. So now I'm going to drop it and use the per call basis. > [. If you call the telco, you can probably > get them to remove it from your line if you don't want it. PAT] Don't count on that. My impression of the telco consumer level explanation was that now modems and faxes have to wait at least two seconds before making another call. ie, two seconds of hook time otherwise this feature would kick in. So it could be one of those telco switch upgrade features we get "for free" and with no choice. OTOH you could be correct. By complaining maybe they can remove it on a line by line case. Tony Toews, Independent Computer Consultant Jack of a few computer related trades and master (or certified) of none. Microsoft Access Hints & Tips: Accounting Systems, Winfax Pro, Reports and Books at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm ------------------------------ From: ttoews@agt.net (Tony Toews) Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 02:15:45 GMT Organization: TELUS Communications Inc. Ian Angus wrote: > Of course the real solution would be for US companies with 800 and 888 > numbers to realize that they have potential customers outside of the > 50 states. This is a continuing grievance for Canadians, who could > dial the 800 numbers if only the companies advertising them would > instruct their carriers to allow calls from Canada. After all we're a potential market about the size of California! And we don't have much else to do up here in winter! Actually the situation is much better than it was years ago when telco rules wouldn't allow this. I can also recall seeing many ads which stated 800 this for the US but 800 that for one particular state. > It's even worse in other parts of the world -- it's astounding how > many computer companies, for example, run ads which are seen world > wide, with no method of contact except a US-only 800 or 888 number. At least web sites help with that problem. And most post a regular fax number so you can get them that way. But right now there's a small outfit whose information consists of an US only 800 sales number and a fax number. No email or website. I've looked up the phone number via Infoseek and see a somewhat similar name. But there's no answer at that phone number. So as much as I'd like more information on that company's product and I'd likely spend some money on it, I can't. Oh, and no response yet from the fax I sent about a week ago. I guess they don't want my money. Back in the days before the web and newsgroups, at least available in rural Alberta, I used to ask folks in my favourite Fidonet echo's to phone the 800's for me and post their real number. Or if their address was available, and many times it wasn't, I'd try directory assistance. Which now costs. Tony Toews, Independent Computer Consultant Jack of a few computer related trades and master (or certified) of none. Microsoft Access Hints & Tips: Accounting Systems, Winfax Pro, Reports and Books at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm ------------------------------ From: craigp@world.std.com (Craig Partridge) Subject: Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 21:01:30 GMT lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) writes: > PAT, I think you're barking up the wrong tree, confusing local > underprovisioning with a congested backbone. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Compuserve very kindly provides me with > a connection at no charge to telnet to lcs.mit.edu via a local phone > number here in Skokie. I shouldn't complain too much or too loudly I > guess. I dial into a local number, connect to their network and issue > a certain command to then reach MIT or other .edu sites where I am a > guest user. But some days it is awfully slow. Essentially, my ISP is > lcs.mit.edu and my various other .edu accounts at several sites around > the USA. I sometimes use my eecs.nwu.edu account to telnet in which is > also a local phone call. I also have an account with iquest.net. PAT] Another good question to ask is: How many ISPs is PAT going through? For instance, right now, there's a shortage of capacity between SprintLink and BBN Planet (according to the network trouble tickets BBN sends its customers) resulting in a 35% loss rate at certain times of day. Upgrade expected by Sprint in a few days. TCP slows way down in the face of loss. More generally, cross ISP trunking often isn't as good as it should be. Craig ------------------------------ From: Louis Raphael Subject: Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 20:02:02 -0500 Organization: PubNIX Montreal > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I can tell you that from my location > here, things have become horrible. Having a 28.8 modem on the line means > absolutely nothing. I might as well go back to having a 300 baud modem. That's what I hear everywhere, but in all honesty, I can't say that the same is true here. Years ago, telnet'ing from this account to my father's account (at a local university -- but still requiring a detour via the US) was so slow that checking one's mail remotely was excruciating at best. Now, it's passable most of the time. I guess that the connection was really bad *then* ... (RISQnet used to have a fractional T1 for the *whole* province back then!) > All the newcomers with their web pages have turned the Internet into a > terrible disaster. I couldn't agree more. My guess (not supported by a $500,000 study!) is that the biggest and most useless cause of congestion is probably those stupid graphics on web pages -- the ones that nobody looks at anyways. Personally, I still use LYNX most of the time -- and am quite satisfied with it, and with the knowledge that transmitting a page of text requires minimal resources by comparison to a page of graphics. If people voluntarily removed the useless graphics (and they aren't *all* useless - but I would guess that somewhere in the area of 90% are) from their web pages, 'net congestion would probably be relieved almost immediately ... both because of fewer graphics being downloaded, and because a certain category of surfer that "likes to look at the pictures" would become rarer. One would think that the connected would try to increase their available bandwidth by removing such things from their web sites, but bandwidth is cheap enough that they often don't - and that bandwidth doesn't deliver. Possibly, one could also blame the major providers for overselling bandwidth, as compared to what is really available. > Mail delivery takes absolutely *forever*; I've had that happen. I quite often get four-hour notices when mailing certain people nowadays. *That* I find terrible. E-mail is one of the most useful features of the 'net, and one that requires very little in the way of resources -- yet often unusable because of the surfers. It would be good if there were some mechanism for reserving a small percentage of bandwidth for e-mail -- and that's all it would take (remember how much e-mail BITnet could handle on 14.4K lines?). Louis ------------------------------ From: russell@probe.net (Tim Russell) Subject: Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? Date: 13 Nov 1996 08:46:36 GMT Organization: Probe Technology Internet Services tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) writes: > Higher Fees at Peak Hours Might Ease Logjams, According to U. Texas Study > By Lori Hawkins, Austin American-Statesman, Texas > Nov. 7--People pay more to make long-distance phone calls during peak > times. Soon, Internet surfers may do the same. IMHO, this is a bad idea. Just because right now, the peak time is a certain time of the day, doesn't mean it would stay that way once a daytime-based pricing scheme is put into place. What are we going to do, have weekly updates mailed out to everyone on the net with the Peak Time Of The Week? Better is to wait for the RSVP standards to be implemented and get a proper interface to it to the users' desktops. Users would normally use a default "priority", or whatever it's called, and not get charged anything extra. If they're unsatisfied with response times, give them a way to kick up their priority and pay extra for it. As an ISP, billing for this would add extra pain, but, given the proper software integrated from desktop to router, I don't feel it would add a ton. There would have to be a protocol to allow our router to link packets to usernames, standard billing record formats output, etc, but it's nothing that hasn't been tackled before and overcome. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I can tell you that from my location > here, things have become horrible. Having a 28.8 modem on the line means > absolutely nothing. I might as well go back to having a 300 baud modem. Maybe from where you sit, Pat, but not here. Sitting on the MCI backbone, with access to a full T1, I regularly get transfer rates of 45K/second or more to sites all over the net, and I'm sure that's often more limited by the speed of my PC than by net throughput. I would, however, appreciate a way to slow things down when I'm not worried about speed, which is quite often. RSVP would provide that, since it works both ways, allowing me to lower my "priority". One large problem that I often see lies in the inability from the user's point of view to tell whether it's the net on the whole that's slow (i.e. the backbone), the far provider's connection that's swamped, or the far host that's slow. Quite often I receive calls from users asking why the net's so slow, while I'm in the midst of downloading the new version of Internet Explorer at 45K/second or more. Needless to say, since they're at 28,800 bps and noticing slowdowns, while I'm at T1 speeds and seeing none, something else is at work here. I'm not sure what (if anything) can be done about that, but I am convinced that this perception issue is a large part of the "problem", which, truthfully, I can't say I've really seen as yet. Tim Russell System Admin, Probe Technology email: russell@probe.net ------------------------------ From: Lloyd Matthews Subject: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 13:05:56 +0000 Organization: TRW-SIG Sunnyvale Reply-To: lloydm@pop.svl.trw.com I do business in DC and California, and recently got a Sprint Spectrum PCS phone (which currently works only in DC/Baltimore) under the impression that it would be "nationwide by the end of1996." Whenever I call to confirm this, Sprint refers me to some marketing flack or other who all seem to have the party line of "everything will be up sometime in 1997, maybe". Each PCS metropolitan area seems to be its own city-state running its own show on its own schedule, and Sprint HQ in Kansas City doesn't have any sort of summary. Can anyone tell me how to get Sprint's actual plan for service throughout California? Also, PacBell flacks don't seem to have any clue about their PCS service. Does anyone know if it will be GSM and compatible with my Ericsson phone, and when it will be rolled out throughout California? Thanks! Lloyd Matthews (Lloyd.Matthews@trw.com) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:59:46 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Learning Networks" by Harasim/Hiltz/Teles/Turoff BKLRNNTW.RVW 960728 "Learning Networks", Harasim/Hiltz/Teles/Turoff, 1995, 0-262-08236-5, U$35.00 %A Linda Harasim %A Starr Roxanne Hiltz %A Lucio Teles %A Murray Turoff %C 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1399 %D 1995 %G 0-262-08236-5 %I MIT Press %O U$35.00 curtin@mit.edu %P 329 %T "Learning Networks" Devoted to the topic of the use of computer-mediated communication tools for teaching, this book is a rather pedestrian collection of anecdotes and suggestions. While the material is not impractical, it could be inspiring only to those who have no experience with telecommunications tools. This is particularly disappointing in light of Hiltz and Turoff's excellent "Network Nation" (cf. BKNTNATN.RVW). That earlier work has become a classic due to a timeless insightfulness which is completely lacking in the current book. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKLRNNTW.RVW 960728 Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca | Computer user thinks Institute for rslade@vanisl.decus.ca | the machine just works for him Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/| Monkey disagrees User .fidonet.org| Security Canada V7K 2G6 | - virus haiku ------------------------------ From: craigp@world.std.com (Craig Partridge) Subject: Re: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 21:10:35 GMT Joe Jensen writes: > The long hold time associated with Internet access is a REAL problem. > To understand why, you need to understand that the switch is > engineered to support specified concentration ratio across the central > office, typically somewhere between 4:1 to 8:1. An important detail here. How sacred is that ratio? My understanding is that it varies. And in a world where 1 Gb/s data paths are commonplace in boxes and depreciation cycles are going down sharply (I think PACBELL said they're now using five or seven years?), just how horribly expensive is it to upgrade? The broader issue here is that (a) we know that there's plenty of underutilized fiber trunking and (b) that telephone switches, while cutting edge in terms of reliability, aren't near cutting edge on performance. So it would seem that there's plenty of opportunity to spend a little money and get out from under the bandwidth limitations? (I should be clear here I'm talking about local service -- the long lines guys are definitely dealing with cutting edge bandwidth problems -- OC-48c isn't simple). Craig ------------------------------ From: billsohl@planet.net (Bill Sohl) Subject: Re: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 04:08:40 GMT Organization: BL Enterprises Joe Jensen wrote: > Craig Nordin wrote: >> I would love to find out what the Bell-owned ISPs say about this ISP >> vs. Bell issue (ISPs said to cause telco gridlock). > I would venture to say that the technical folks dealing with the > traffic issues relative to ISP access have never talked to the > Bell-owned ISPs. For example, in one Bell company I am familiar with, > the engineering function isn't in the same state as the internet > service provider entity. This still doesn't offer any insight into the paradox that the situation presents ... i.e. the same telco that complains about long holding times has a business unit that is one of the alleged creators of the problem. > The long hold time associated with Internet access is a REAL problem. > To understand why, you need to understand that the switch is > engineered to support specified concentration ratio across the central > office, typically somewhere between 4:1 to 8:1. The problem occurs > because at the lowest level of the switch where the concentration > occurs, the ratio could be 128 customers to 16 switch ports. An > example could find the ISP with 8 of the 128 lines in this > concentration group. If those lines are continually busy, that would > leave only 8 switch ports for the other 120 customers. That turns out > to a concentration ratio of 15:1. The other customers can start > seeing delays in receiving dialtone or no dialtone at all. However, the problems alleged so far have not been dial tine issues, but rather a lack of transmission paths, either intraswitch or iinterswitch. > To counteract this, the telco must reengineer the switch at the lowest > level and spread the "offending" ISP lines across more concentration > groups. That's not reengineering, it is load balancing and should have been done properly in the first place. > To offer the same level of service the telco must "deload" the > concentration groups so the equipment that had originally support 512 > customers may now only support 480 or less. The engineering also costs > time and money. But poor planning upfront doesn't excuse the subsequent need for the load balancing down the road. > What is the long range solution? Get the internet traffic off the voice > switch. That's one possibility, others (eg. non-blocking switches) also exist or are in development. > Both ADSL and cable modems provide a reasonable solution to > this problem. The telcos are in a bind. Do they spend the time and > money to reengineer the switch only to have the traffic pulled off when > new the new technology arrives? I am glad I don't have to answer that > question, but as a cableco anticipating offering internet access over > cable modems next year, I am certainly willing to help. Time will tell; the evolution of the network is truly a wonder to watch. Bill Sohl (K2UNK) billsohl@planet.net Internet & Telecommunications Consultant/Instructor Budd Lake, New Jersey ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 96 20:28 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. [quoting this week's smarmiest spam] >> I am against SPAM, and am therefore asking you to e-mail me your >> permission before I send you anything. ... >> Received: from servo.earthstar.com by iquest.net with smtp Earthstar.com appears to be spam-only, as do the other sites on the same network mailpro.com, primeleads.com, and earthonline, all operating out of a mail drop in Bellevue, Washington. I found that adjusting my router to discard any packets coming from their network 207.14.56 improved my quality of life. Incidentally, have you seen the messages from Sanford Wallace offering to pay anyone with a T1 feed if he can put a spam-generating PC on their network? Pitiful. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - MIT econ prof [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Instead of disgarding their packets, shouldn't you be returning their packets to them, with a few packets of your own saying in effect 'mail from your site is not welecome here' or words to that effect. As it stands now, they are just assuming the users at your site are not interested in the current spam offering and they will continue to send various offerings. Why not be frank and upfront with them about it? You can still automate the process and not have to examine it all when it comes in. One person has suggested that in his mail filter, he is taking all the offending locations and running them through a script that sends back the them the spam along with a short cover note expressing his own disgust. In his note he does allow them to actually him by saying if mail comes from 'postmaster' at that given site he will personally attend to it (one time only, provided it is not still more spam) so that they can get to him from that site should there be legitimate mail ever forthcoming (doubtful). In his script then, he first treats mail from 'postmaster' sending it one way and he then treats mail which falls through to the next level which includes an examination of the site names looking for the offenders, etc. PAT[ ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #613 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 14 01:29:43 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA05769; Thu, 14 Nov 1996 01:29:43 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 01:29:43 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611140629.BAA05769@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #614 TELECOM Digest Thu, 14 Nov 96 01:29:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 614 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Nynex (NY) Improving (Yes, imnsho) "Call Return" (Danny Burstein) Re: Help With Answering Machine (Julie Lumine) Re: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line (Nils Andersson) Re: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line (Mark Brader) Re: Brokerages Fined for Dialing No Call Lists (Steven V. Christensen) Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? (John Higdon) Re: Prison Telephone Revenues (Nils Andersson) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Nils Andersson) Latest Caribbean Scam (Curtis Wheeler) Home 800 Service Clarified (Mark Tomlinson) Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? (Clayton Walker) Re: Florida's 904 Area Code to Split - AGAIN! (Wes Leatherock) Final Version of the NRC Crypto Report is Now Available! (Monty Solomon) Re: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service (Linc Madison) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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, 13 Nov 1996 17:47:34 EST From: danny burstein Subject: Nynex (NY) Improving (Yes, imnsho) "Call Return" When the movie "The Pelican Brief" opened to rave reviews, many people asked how Denzel Washington was able to 'trap' the phone number of the person who called him. (His character punched in a telco code, and he exclaimed "gotcha"). Turned out that in some areas (like NYC), "call return" simply dialed back to the original caller. In others, it first read back (via synthesized voice) the phone number and then offered to dial it. Anyway, NYC is about to do the upgrade. As per a Nynex legal notice 13-nov-1996: Notice of Proposed Tariff for the Introduction of an Enhancement to the Call Return feature of Phonesmart services ... effective November 30, 1996, .. an enhancement to ... Call Return. Presently, when customers dial *69, the call is automatically returned. As of the effective date, depending on central office, when customers dial *69 they will receive an audible announcement of the telephone number, date, and time of the last incoming call. In addition, the customer will have the option of automatic call return by pressing the number "1" to complete the call. If the incoming call is number-blocked by per-call or all-call blocking, the called party will _not_ (emphasis added) be able to identify or return the call by activating the call return feature. *********** Additional notes by db: In roughly half of Nynex territory, this is still an irrelevancy. Calls coming to or from a 1AESS switch do NOT send out caller ID so you can't return calls to them (and they can't do it themselves either.) Also, in some areas of the country the local systems get around blocking by letting you return the call, but NOT showing you the number you've redialed. i.e. your bill will show 555-0000 instead of 555-1212. dannyb@panix.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 13:25:51 -0800 From: Julie Lumine Reply-To: juliel@mtcworld.com Organization: MTC Subject: Re: Help With Answering Machine johngee@nmia.com wrote: > I purchased an AT&T digital answering machine at a garage sale. It > didn't have an instruction manual with it, and I need help trying to > program it. It is a phone as well, with the handset on the left. On > the right are a slide volume control and buttons marked "memo, delete, > fwd, stop, repeat, off/on and play." An LED display shows the number > of calls received. The only marking that *may* be a model number on > the underside of the set is 91EP. If anyone can help by e-mailing me > or faxing me the programming instructions, I'd be very grateful. What I normally do is to get the phone in front of me, call the "AT&T Phone Store", or whatever name/address might be listed on any identifying labels on the phone, get and 800 number for manufacturer's repair, and order a booklet from them. This way, you have all you need for reference ... the more buttons/features, the more you'll need this! Many manufacturers will give them free. ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com Subject: Re: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line Date: 13 Nov 1996 17:27:19 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , Larry English writes: > What is it even called? 3-way calling? Yes indeed. Most telcos charge per month for this, NOT per call, except for normal call charges. Typically, in the US, the telco thinks it knows what is best for you, so when you repeatedly hit the hook switch you get your "second line", then maybe "both", then maybe "first", "second" etc, I am not sure if the algorithm is used everywhere. With call waiting, it is different in that the second call is incoming (it does not seem to matter if the first call is incoming or outgoing). In this case, repeated hook switch hits will typically never bring out "both", on the assumption that the calls are unrelated. (In Europe, and when using cellphones, this works differently, and you typically can hit some number to switch to "first", "second" and "both", and even disconnect "first", "second" and "both". I do not believe this is well standardized. Comments anybody? Regards, Nils Andersson ------------------------------ From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 18:32:48 GMT Larry English (lenglish@atlanta.nsc.com) writes: > Suddenly a new feature has appeared on my residential phone line. > I noticed that if I'm talking to someone, I can "flash" the hookswitch, > make another call [without disconnecting the first call], and then ... Pat responds: > It is known as 'Three Way Calling' and some telcos have begun > offering it on a 'per-use' basis as well as by monthly subscription. Here in Bell Canada land, if you buy three-way calling by the month, it works as Larry describes. But if you don't subscribe and want to use it, then you have to dial *71. This eliminates the hazard that people unaware of having the service might use it accidentally and incur the pay-per-use charge, as Larry has probably done. I do subscribe (though I don't really use the feature often enough to justify it), so I don't know if hookflashing is required in conjunction with *71. I would hope that it is, otherwise three-way calling might be activated accidentally when one is touch-toning through an interactive response system. With Bell Canada, the per-use fee is 50 cents Canadian and the monthly fee is $3 Canadian, each plus taxes (15% in Ontario). The monthly fee may be reduced if other special features are purchased. I think there is a monthly maximum on the per-use fee, twice the subscription fee; at least, that's the way some of the subscription-or-per-use services work. Mark Brader, msb@sq.com, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto ------------------------------ From: chrissv@cat.com (Steven V. Christensen) Subject: Re: Brokerages Fined for Dialing No Call Lists Date: 13 Nov 1996 18:11:25 GMT Organization: pobox.com Reply-To: chrissv@pobox.com In article in comp.dcom.telecom, Tad Cook (tad@ssc.com) wrote: > Brokerages Pay Fine for Dialing Florida 'No Call' Listings > By Helen Huntley, St. Petersburg Times, Fla. > Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News > Nov. 11--Four big brokerage firms landed in hot water with the state > for making cold calls to Floridians on the "no sales solicitation > calls" list. [snip] > Residential numbers can be placed on the list for a $10 enrollment fee > and a $5 annual renewal fee. For information call (800) 435-7352. How does this list differ from the list that phone solicitors are supposed to have, which you can be added by simply asking, "Place me on your 'do not call' list" ? Steven From the desk of: Steven Christensen N9XJY Internet: chrissv@pobox.com ------------------------------ Organization: Green Hills and Cows Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:01:06 -0800 From: John Higdon Subject: Re: Internet Gridlocks Phone Network? dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) wrote: > That is already the case in some areas, and for some classes of > customers. If you purchase flat-rate local telephone service, then > you are subsidized by somebody else -- especially if you use more of > the service than an `average' subscriber of your class. That is way too simplistic. It could very well be argued that under measured plans, those who do not use the phone at all are being subsidized by those who do. The facilities associated with the subscriber drop are absolutely fixed, costing exactly the same with no usage or twenty-four hour a day usage. He who generates no revenue (i.e. makes no calls) is being subsidized by one who pays through the nose. The cost of completing local calls is associated with build-out of plant; there are no incremental, per-call costs. Furthermore, and the Bells are well aware of this, many people get flat-rate service out of "habit" and fear of being charged for local calls, even though the actual traffic is very low. I did a little cost analysis of my own sixteen residential lines and discovered that my flat-rate lines are actually (given the few calls made on them) subsidizing someone else. How? If I had the available measured service option on those lines, my total monthly bill would be considerably LOWER. In other words, telco would be getting LESS money from me for providing exactly the same service if I had measured rather than flat-rate. Making the blanket statement "flat-rate is subsidized by others" sounds like Telco Babble, particularly if everyone is paying the same flat rate. > Pay-as-you-use is likely the way of the future (except in areas where > it is currently the way of the present). The right solution to the > Internet connectivity issue is to use a non-switched infrastructure > (e.g. CATV). In the past, talkpaths were very expensive, requiring a copper pair for each and every conversation. Now, conversations are multiplexed on fiber lines that are almost unlimited in capacity. Adding a few thousand talkpaths means buying some relatively cheap channelization equipment or line cards for switches -- not stringing new cable at great expense. So why, pray tell, should the future be measured rates -- particularly when the incremental cost of completing calls as compared to days gone by has fallen through the floor? I do agree, however, that distributing the Internet through the switched network is a waste and misuse of the technology. That it why my Internet connection is via frame relay. John Higdon | P.O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 | FAX: john@ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | +1 500 FOR-A-MOO | +1 408 264 4407 | http://www.ati.com/ati/ | ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: Prison Telephone Revenues Date: 13 Nov 1996 19:19:18 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , Michael Wengler writes: > In my opinion, separate facilities with separate rules should be used > for people awaiting trial. AT LEAST, those facilities should include > access to telephones on which 800 numbers can be dialed. What's wrong with giving prisoners (of either kind) plain ordinary pay phones? If considered necessary, they could even be wiretapped, I am talking about the freedom to communicate, not the freedom to organize crimes. NOTE: There is a business niche here for a service that would manually or automatically accept collect calls and then let the caller punch in where he really wants to call. Not everybody in the hoosegow has bad credit! Regards, Nils Andersson ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: 13 Nov 1996 19:19:20 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , Ian Angus writes: > It's even worse in other parts of the world -- it's astounding how > many computer companies, for example, run ads which are seen world > wide, with no method of contact except a US-only 800 or 888 number. Right On!!!! The simplest solution for non-NANP countries would be to allow 800 calls, and charge for them. Being that they are preceded with a country code, there should be no confusion. Another (quite compatible) solution is the 880/881 overlay of 800/888, where the call gets charged. This can be used when calling from inside or outside the NANP. (Does it work? Comments anyone?) One catch with both solutions is that 800-numbers would have to be unique within the NANP (i.e. country code 1), not just unique within one country. Thus, they would have to follow the same standards as any other area code (except the ill-fated 700 ...). When Sweden started toll-free numbers (020), I could dial them from the US by dialling normally, 011-46-20-xx xx xx, but after about a year they suddenly disallowed that. I have no idea why. Same issue for other countries with toll-free area codes. Why not simply allow them when coming from another country code? Another issue: What happened with the ITU desision to implement international toll free? How will it work? I asked AT&T and they said they would get back to me, and did not. Will there be a special country code? Regards, Nils Andersson ------------------------------ From: Curtis Wheeler Subject: Latest Caribbean Scam Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:26:39 -0800 Organization: Just Me and My Own Opinions Reply-To: cwheeler@ricochet.net The {San Franscisco Chronicle} and other bay area news souces are warning about another phone scam from the Caribbean. If you want to read about that you can see it on page A17 of the 11/13/96 Chron at http://www.sfgate.com but we all know how they work. My question is -- why do we allow 1+NPA dialing to places like the Domincan Republic? It seems that "not knowing" what you are dialing is the same arguement used against are code overlays, so why do we allow a confusing (to the average Joe) system that allows people to unkowingly dial expensive, overseas calls. I kinda like the 01+country method. At least there is no doubt that I am calling out of the country. I am sure this is not technical -- is it marketing huh? Regards, Curtis ------------------------------ From: mtdiver@aol.com (Mark Tomlinson) Subject: Home 800 Number Clarified Date: 14 Nov 1996 03:44:41 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com In my recent response to the posting by the gentleman who was having problems with MCI ONE, I suggested an alternative. Pat the editor, suggested that I might be hiding gimmicks and/or was not being forthright with the info to the newsgroup. In the interest of good ethics, here's the scoop: The Company: LCI INTERNATIONAL The terms: No terms. The cost: None. No setup fee. No monthly fee. The rate: First 120 minutes are a penny a minute; 25 cents a minute thereafter. Calling area: Continental US Restrictions: None Minimums: None Calling Circles: None Billing intervals: six seconds The "Catch": Must have LCI as primary LD carrier Additional benefits: 1. No cost to switch. LCI pays fee. 2. 90 day switch back gaurantee in writing. 3. Low calling card surcharge (45 cents) 4. Postalized rates (0.19 weekday, 0.14 evening, 0.12 nights/weekends) to anywhere in continental US. 5. First hour on calling card a penny a minute. 6. Eight major holidays where first 30 minutes are a penny a minute. 7. Dial One service-no access codes. 8. 100% digital fiber optic network. No reselling. I hope this clears up any misconceptions on what I was trying to share with the group. If anyone would like to try LCI, I would appreciate hearing from you so I might help get the ball rolling. Remember, this is a NO RISK, NO COST offer to help you save a little hard earned money. You have nothing to lose, and possibly a lot to gain. I look forward to hearing from you! Sincerely, Mark Tomlinson MTDIVER@aol.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks very much for the additional infor- mation about the service. I would also remind everyone that if you get an 800 number from Call Home America (a division of Frontier) then you will get ten dollars credit and **so will I**. They charge $3.95 per month and typical per minute rates for peak and off peak times. It can ring wherever you tell them to set it to ring. You do not need to have their long distance service on any of your lines, however they will try to sell this to you as well. You can reach Call Home America at 800-594-5900. Ask them to apply the ten dollar referral credit to account number 0201355818, which is in the name of Patrick Townson. ... I've used their 800 service and their cellular service (reselling Ameritech in the Chicago area) for some time now and am satisfied with it. Refer to promotional offer ZREF-09. Thanks for the help. The deal from LCI mentioned above also seems to be pretty reasonable. PAT] ------------------------------ From: spinal@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu Subject: Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? Date: 13 Nov 1996 03:53:00 GMT Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I can tell you that from my location > here, things have become horrible. Having a 28.8 modem on the line means > absolutely nothing. I might as well go back to having a 300 baud modem. > All the newcomers with their web pages have turned the Internet into a > terrible disaster. I strongly favor what Berkeley is proposing: start > an entirely new network and abandon this current one entirely, leaving > it to the companies who seem to feel they have to use all sorts of > graphics and sounds and other bandwidth/resource-wasting spectacles > on their web pages for the benefit of people who like 'surfing the > net', which is a category of people I generally dislike anyway. I have > to sit here and watch my keystrokes bounce back to me five and ten > seconds after I type them thanks to people like that who want to > download some gaudy display from someone's web page. I do not think > ever in the past the congestion has been as bad as it has been the > past year or so. Mail delivery takes absolutely *forever*; there are > people getting the Digest as long as a day or two days after it is > issued here. I can recall when the entire mailing list was finished > in a matter of several hours. Yes, by all means, turn this over to > the net-surfers and let's move elsewhere. PAT] In the three years I've been on the Internet, the seven years I've been in telecommunications, and the ten years total I've been in computing, I have never seen anything so slow as the Internet has become, especially in the past month or thereabouts. It now takes me three tries on average to get through to altavista, and that's through a dedicated T3. Up until very recently, I was content with a copy of NCSA Telnet, and maybe Eudora Light, but that was it. Now, it's gotten where 20% (and that's a quite conservative estimate) of web pages, when I load them with Lynx, give me that nasty "Please download a frames/java/insert-your-own-RAM-hogging feature-here capable browser" message. I can't read any unmoderated newsgroups without wading through tens and hundreds of "Make Money Fast" or "Free XXX Site Found" postings. I say one night we go all over the world and replace every copy of Netscape Navigator with NCSA Telnet, and see how many disgruntled users wonder "What happened to that Internet program?" I can't tell you how much it aggravates me when people come to me, the resident computer nerd at my school, and ask how they get on the Internet from their computer at home. I ask, "What Internet Service Provider do you use?" They reply, cheerfully, "America Online." And I say, in a most curteous voice, "Well, to get on the Internet you need an Internet Service Provider." "But I told you, I have AOL!" "Well, to get on the Internet you need an Internet Service Provider." Sometimes, some of the more dense of them will keep at that for several times, until they walk off, bewildered. This year alone, I've had to hang up on three different guys from my school on multiple occasions, late at night, who call me asking how to download and I quote, "Nudies of that Jenny McCarty chick on MTV." And I wonder sometimes why we've been labeled Generation X, the no-good slackers associated with that no-good smutfest called the Internet. Perhaps in five years the trend will have passed, and we can have our old Internet back, where Netscape Navigator and AOL are simply memories. With visions of an Internet to come, Clayton Walker spinal@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I can tell you that when Citizens Band Radio began going -- if you will pardon me -- to hell, we said much the same thing: give it a little time, within a few years it will have gotten back to normal. And indeed, today CB is just as quiet in many areas as it was back in the early 1960's when it was a relatively sophisticated communications tool used by a small number of people. The trouble is, the battle or the war or whatever you want to call it took a lot of very good people in the process. From the middle 1970's to about 1985, CB radio was just a total shambles, having fallen apart rapidly once several million Americans discovered it and started using it. For a decade or so from about 1965-75, it served us very well; really it was the Usenet of that era (as we older netizens remember Usenet in the 1980's). Sometime around 1975 we saw it getting out of control. We saw all the old customs, the gentlemen's agreements being ignored, if the hordes of new people even knew such customs and agreements had existed and served us well for a decade. When the really obnoxious users of CB finally got tired and saw they were not going to Make Money Fast, and all the scammers and spammers of CB were finally 'defeated' -- if you want to phrase it that way -- whole bunches of the fine people we chatted with over the years prior were no where to be found either. True, many of them were by then starting to 'get into' home computers and they found the new (at the time in the early 1980's) service from Compuserve called 'CB Simulator' to be a welcome change of pace, but there were also a large number who just unplugged their radio and put it in the closet to gather dust. I think you will see that happen here on the net also. Now CB radio is mostly quiet except for the all too frequent ignoramus screaming across the entire country with a huge amount of illegal power. The newsgroups of Usenet will still be around several years from now, but you'll see a relatively small amount of traffic compared to today, and much of it will just be nonsensical stuff. The rest of us will have migrated to whatever replaces this medium we are using now, just as we abandoned CB for computers. PAT] ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com (Wes Leatherock) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 03:11:44 GMT Organization: Hotel California BBS Subject: Re: Florida's 904 Area Code to Split - AGAIN! Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > Area Code maps beginning around 1960 shows 813 covering from 'just' > the Tampa Bay area and southward. It was the only area code in the > continental US which was *exclusively* non-Bell. GTE and (Sprint's) > United Telco are the only two LEC's (telcos) which have been in the > 813 NPA. Ten or fifteen5 years ago I was in this part of Florida on vacation, and I was amused to discover that United (not yet part of Sprint) was a "connecting company" in GTE's eyes. Not too long before the GTE operation had been the entirely independent Penisular Telephone Company. Incidentally, a very minor nitpick: I think you meant to say area code 813 was the only area code in the _coterminous_ US which was exclusively non-Bell. Alaska is continental US, too. Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com wes.leatherock@origins.bbs.uoknor.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 03:14:40 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Final Version of the NRC Crypto Report is Now Available! Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Excerpt from RISKS DIGEST 18.60 Date: Fri, 08 Nov 96 15:28:00 EST From: "CRYPTO" Subject: The final version of the NRC crypto report is now available! The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council (NRC) is pleased to announce the availability of its cryptography policy study "Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society". This report was originally released in pre-publication form on May 30, 1996. The final printed version of this report can be obtained from the National Academy Press, 1-800-624-6242 or Web site http://www.nap.edu/bookstore. The pre-publication version and the final printed copy differ in that the printed copy contains an index and many source documents relevant to the crypto policy debate; of course, editorial corrections have been made as well. An unofficial ASCII version of the prepublication report can be found at http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/nrcindex.htm; the official NRC version should become available online in ASCII form in December. In addition, CSTB has been conducting briefings on this report at various sites around the country; if you would like to arrange a briefing in your area, please let us know (cstb@nas.edu, 202-334-2605). [Message from Herb Lin] [I note that when we held a briefing on the West Coast, Herb was surprised to find that a scanned copy of the original report had already appeared on-line, shortly after the draft report had been released. The final version is over 700 pages with all the appendices. But I suspect that an unofficial on-line version of the official report may not be far behind -- despite its copyright. Incidentally, the full report is an extraordinary source of background material. PGN] ------------------------------ From: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 17:28:16 -0800 In article , PAT added: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A lot of the carriers are now including > a provision in their contract which says you agree that when you give > up their service you give up your right to the number as well, or any > right to transfer it to a different carrier. PAT] Isn't that FLAGRANTLY illegal? That should be a nice court case for some lawyer who salivates at the mention of "punitive damages"! Linc Madison * San Francisco, CA * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think it is legal if you agree to it as part of a contract. If there was no contract and later on you wished to change carriers and keep the number, they would be unable to stop you. What I have head is that a lot of people did just that: they got a 'good number' from one carrier then carted it off to another carrier. The first carrier tried to stop it only to have their efforts to 'save their number' thwarted. So now they specifically make it part of their contract; it becomes a matter of contract law rather than tariff or FCC regulation, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #614 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 14 21:32:57 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA10269; Thu, 14 Nov 1996 21:32:57 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 21:32:57 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611150232.VAA10269@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #615 TELECOM Digest Thu, 14 Nov 96 21:33:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 615 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telemarketer Indicted: Posed as IRS Agent! (Tad Cook) Calculating Usage From a Telco "Busy Study" (David Langlois) Pay-Per-Use Services (was Re: Sudden New Feature ...) (Mark J. Cuccia) WIPO Database Treaty -- Sign-on Letter (Craig A. Johnson) 765 Approved for Indiana Relief (James E. Bellaire) Re: Brokerages Fined / Many Are Called - You May Collect (Robert Bulmash) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Telemarketer Indicted: Posed as IRS Agent! Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 14:57:16 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Telemarketer Indicted for Posing as IRS Agent LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A Las Vegas telemarketer has been indicted on charges he posed as an Internal Revenue Service employee to bilk $524,000 from victims in nine states. Brian Bonito was named in a federal indictment Wednesday on 63 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, impersonating a federal employee and aiding and abetting. He was also named in one forfeiture count. Bonito told 13 victims of fraudulent telemarketing operators that their money had been recovered and that he would reimburse them if they made upfront payments for taxes, according to the indictment. He used a number of false names in making the telephone calls, the indictment said. In some cases, he told the individuals the upfront payments had to be made in cash by overnight mail. The incidents, which occurred from Sept. 28, 1995, to March 13, 1996, involved people who "due to age or other condition, were vulnerable to further telemarketing fraud," the indictment said. The victims were from Illinois, California, Tennessee, Utah, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and Nebraska. Bonito is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Nov. 22. ------------------------------ From: David Langlois Subject: Calculating Usage From a Telco "Busy Study" Date: 14 Nov 1996 20:17:08 GMT Organization: Associated Systems Inc. Maybe someone out there can help. I have a "Central Office Subscriber Line Usage Study" from a mid-west Canadian telco (also known as a "busy study") for several lines (both urban and rural). Even though there is a name and number for a contact person, I am having no luck at all in arriving at answers to some of my questions. So hopefully one of you will be able to assist me here. One of the urban studies contains the following information on page 1: DATE HOUR TRKS REQ'D 7-OCT-96 CCS 36 5 O/G PC 6 I/G PC 311.33 OVRL 0 8-OCT-96 CCS 446 22 O/G PC 29.67 I/G PC 440.33 OVRL 15.33 9-OCT-96 CCS 388 20 O/G PC 22.33 I/G PC 402.67 OVRL 4 10-OCT-96 CCS 321.67 18 O/G PC 19 I/G PC 355 OVRL 2 11-OCT-96 CCS 291 16 O/G PC 16.87 I/G PC 369.07 OVRL 4.53 CCS: is a measure of telephone usage. It is expressed in Centrum (hundred) call seconds. There are a maximum of 36 CCS per trunk per hour. To convert CCS to minutes of use, simply divide CCS by 0.6. PC: is peg count and indicates the number of calls completed during the average busy hour. O/G is outgoing. I/G is incoming. OVFL: is overflow and indicates the number of calls that were missed during the average busy hour due to all circuits being in use or busy. Page 2 of the same study has the numbers broken down by date and time (ten 1 hour blocks from 08:00 to 18:00), as follows: 08:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 8-Oct CCS 216 419 434 485 339 272 253 247 200 96 O.G. 2 26 30 33 32 0 29 0 0 1 I.C. 262 414 428 479 368 321 287 276 217 112 OVFL 0 7 11 28 1 0 2 0 0 0 Oct 7, 9, 10, and 11 are also broken down by these ten hourly analyses. *************************** At first glance, these numbers seem to be pretty straight forward. For example, take the CCS for Oct 8 at the hour beginning 10:00 am. A CCS count of 434 equals 723.3 minutes (434/0.6) of usage. There were 30 outgoing calls, 428 incoming calls, and 11 incoming calls received a busy signal. Am I correct in assuming that the average call duration in this hour was 1.58 minutes? (723 minutes divided by 458 calls) This seems to make sense to me until I look at another study for a rural number which doesn't have much traffic. In the rural example there are many instances where CCS is zero even though there is an incoming and/or an outgoing call count. I don't understand how the telco can report an incoming or outgoing call and yet also report that no time was used. If anyone can help, please email me directly at: langloid@magi.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 11:11:25 -0800 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Pay-Per-Use Services (was Re: Sudden New Feature ...) Larry English wrote: > Suddenly a new feature has appeared on my residential phone line. > I noticed that if I'm talking to someone, I can "flash" the hookswitch, > make another call [without disconnecting the first call], and then > either confer with a second caller until they hang up, or I can > flash again and then be talking to both callees. > I haven't signed up for this; I definitely do not have [experiments > proved this] call waiting; I am not doing anything special to make > it happen [like dialing *6x or something]. > Can I get charged for trying/using this? > What is it even called? 3-way calling? Conference calling? > It has also appeared on another phone at a house near me that probably > uses the same central office. > I don't really even want it -- it makes it hard to be sure when you > have really terminated a call, since if you don't hold the hook down > long enough, you might be making an accidental conference call. Larry, you are probably served out of a "digital" office (WECO/Lucent #5ESS or a Nortel DMS) switch, rather than from a WECO/Lucent #1AESS which is not 'digital'. "Per-Use" Three-Way has been available in Louisiana by South Central Bell (now BellSouth) for just over ten years now. For the *longest*, it was only available in #1AESS offices, the non-digital style. From a #1AESS, you can activate it *ONLY* before initiating a call, by dialing *71 (or 1171). This will allow you to 'flash' after the first 'leg' of the call is 'stable', so that you can 'three-way' in a second 'leg' of the call. The charge was about one dollar per call. It could be 'blocked' at the customer's request, if "the kids" were running up a bill! :( If you were in a 'digital' office (#5ESS or DMS), and didn't subscribe to monthly three-way, you were out of luck if you wanted to do a per-use three way. Early this year or late last year, for Louisiana customers, BellSouth began to offer 'per-use' call-return (*69 = 1169) and repeat dial (*66 = 1166), at a cost of 75-cents per use. They also dropped the charge of per-use three-way from $1.00 to 75-cents. *AND* from *digital* offices (#5ESS and DMS), they added per-use three-way, but NOT by *requiring* an initial *71 (1171) to be dialed at the beginning of the entire call setup, but by giving *full flashing privilages* in a stable call! #1AESS 'non-digital' offices still seem to require the use of *71 (1171) prior to placing the call. Blocking or restriction of such per-use features *is* available at no extra cost. But *you*, the customer, must call up BellSouth to 'opt-out'. At least that is how it is in Louisiana, according to La. PSC regulatory tariffs, etc. For most of these 'new' per-use chargeable features, you *can* opt-out and get them blocked/restricted from (POTS) residential or business lines, at no extra charge. At one time, you had to *pay* telco to have PAY-PAY-PAY per call special area code 900 and local prefix 976 blocked from access. But eventually, state and federal regulatory mandated blocking at no extra charge, at the customer's request. Also, the previously unused N11 format three-digit local codes have been used in various parts of BellSouth territory for pay-per-call 'info' lines, provided by a third provider (i.e. your local newspaper or your local cable TV company). In Louisiana, 211 is the code used by the dominant newspaper in each LATA (i.e. the {Times-Picayunne} for the N.O. LATA, the {Morning Advocate} for the Baton Rouge LATA, the {Acadiana Times} for the Lafayette LATA, and the {Shreveport Times} for the Shreveport/Monroe/Alexandria LATA). The call is 50-cents. It *is* blockable from your line at no extra charge, but *you* must call up BellSouth to request blocking. However, BellSouth does block access automatically from its own payphone lines! This includes the 'dial-1 or just say yes' auto-call completion on calls to local (1)-411 directory. From Louisiana, the charge is an extra thirty-one cents each time you use it. I don't know offhand if I can get blocked from my home line, but I don't call local DA that much, and I'd write the number down at the auto-voice-quote, and then hangup. I used to subscribe on a monthy basis to a large number of these 'vertical services', each feature as an individual 'line item' billing charge, but *now* I have BellSouth's *Complete Choice* package, which is a single fixed fee for *all you can stand* of virtually *every* optional service available from your type of serving switch. You can add or delete (mix and match) the features activated on your line, from the entire pool of features available in "Complete Choice" (as long as your switch handles the service), all at a "pay one price". And, depending on your state's tariffs, if capability for a particular 'new' feature is added to your serving switch, you can then add that feature to your line as part of your "Complete Choice" single fixed monthly price. I understand that my serving switch, presently a #1AESS (the "Seabrook" switch in New Orleans, 504-24x) is going to have "Call Waiting Deluxe" later this month. (CWDeluxe is the ADSI-based caller-ID delivery during a CW beep). I don't know if the "Seabrook" switch is being upgraded to a #5ESS (or DMS), or if the ADSI-based features are being loaded into my serving switch, still as a #1AESS. I was told by the Business Office that I can add CWDeluxe to my line, when it is available from my switch, at no extra charge, as this feature is part of the "Complete Choice" package! Of course, I will have to purchase an ADSI type of Caller-ID box, as my current CID-number and name box can't handle CID signal delivery while I am offhook - i.e. ADSI interface. 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: Craig A. Johnson Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 10:59:26 +0000 Subject: WIPO Database Treaty -- Sign-on Letter Pat, Your readers may be interested in this. Craig ===================================================== Interested organizations/companies are invited to sign onto the following letter, which addresses concerns that have been raised regarding a proposed new Treaty concerning access to electronic databases. The Treaty is expected to be discussed at the diplomatic conference in Geneva this December on behalf of the World Intellectual Property Organization. The proposed Treaty grants a new property right to database owners, which does not incorporate a public "fair use" doctrine, or other traditional copyright conventions. Recent analyses of the Treaty by Jamie Love of the Consumer Project on Technology indicates that the Treaty will create a new property right in facts and other data now in the public domain. It would, for example, significantly change the way sports statistics are controlled and disseminated, and also impact the way that stock prices, weather data, train schedules, data from AIDS research and other facts are used and controlled. Jamie writes: The treaty seeks, for the first time, to permit firms to "own" facts they gather, and to restrict and control the redissemination of those facts. The new property right would lie outside (and on top) of the copyright laws, and create an entirely new and untested form of regulation that would radically change the public's current rights to use and disseminate facts and statistics. American University Law Professor Peter Jaszi recently said the treaty represents "the end of the public domain." Copies of the proposed treaty, a federal register notice asking for public comment, and independent commentary can be found at: http://www.public-domain.org/database/database.html Details and analyses on the Treaty can be found on the Web at: http://www.public-domain.org, and CPT's "primer" on the treay and analysis of the impact on sports statistics is available at: http://www.essential.org/cpt/ip/wipo-sports.html Copyright experts J.H. Reichman and Pamela Samuelson say it is the "least balanced and most potentially anti-competitive intellectual property rights ever created." [http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/iip/reisamda.html] Organizations that wish to sign onto this letter should contact Susan Evoy at CPSR, evoy@cpsr.org. Comments on the Treaty are due by Nov. 22, so signatures are requested as soon as possible. ------------------------------------ Commissioner Bruce Lehman Patent and Trademark Office U.S. Department of Commerce Dear Commisioner Lehman: We, the undersigned organizations, are writing to express our concern over the "Draft Treaty in Respect to Databases" to be discussed at the diplomatic conference in Geneva this December on behalf of the World Intellectual Property Organization (the "Treaty"). The proposed Treaty grants a new sui generis property right, which does not incorporate a public "fair use" doctrine, or other traditional copyright conventions. If enacted as proposed, the Treaty will do violence to the long-established practice in the academic and scientific communities of sharing information for educational and research purposes and will commercialize certain information that is and has always been freely available. Section 1.03 of the proposed Treaty claims that current technology allows databases to be reproduced at "practically no cost." This is not true. An online database is a complex system with much underlying structure that the user never sees. Accessing or copying large portions of the database at minimal or no cost is simply not feasible. But, the proposed Treaty would make the use of databases by the public or scientific and research communities even more prohibitive by permitting database owners or vendors to arbitrarily determine what portion of a database can be extracted, used, or reused. Section 1.04 of the proposed Treaty argues that the originality requirement of U.S. Copyright law does not provide sufficient protection for database producers. This statement is curious in light of a long U.S. legal tradition protecting free speech and authorship on the grounds that facts cannot be copyrighted or otherwise removed from the public domain. By creating a new property right for facts, the Treaty will impose regulations on the use of facts -- an idea that flies in the face of American history and values. The twin dangers are that we will now have to pay to buy collections of "facts" in the public domain, which we did not have to pay for before and that monopolies will be sanctioned and created by the Treaty. In other words, the Treaty strikes down "fair use" and extends sui generis protections to public and private collections. Section 1.04 becomes increasingly incomprehensible in light of the Section 10.05 proposal that "Contracting Parties may design the exact field of application of the provisions envisaged in this Article taking into consideration the need to avoid legislation that would impede lawful practices and the lawful use of subject matter that is in the public domain." In order to implement the spirit of Section 10.05, Section 1.04 and its progeny must be discarded. Consider the numerous categories of public information for which only one practical and/or cost effective information source exists. The practical result of the Treaty will be to create commercial monopolies on these public information sources. Examples include telephone directory information, weather data, "official" sports statistics, government data administered under private contracts (such as the Official Airline Guide data) and other similar public information. It is shocking that the United States Government is seriously considering supporting a proposal that will operate to maximize profits to a small number of database vendors at the expense of the public at large without first undertaking a careful domestic review of these concerns. We urge you to examine this issue through Congressional hearings and other meaningful public discussion. Sincerely, Marcy J. Gordon, Esq. 66 Pearl Street #307 New York, NY 10004-2443660 (212)514-9514 mgordon@pipeline.com On behalf of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Audrie Krause Executive Director NetAction 601 Van Ness Avenue, No. 631 San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 775-8674 akrause@igc.org ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Nov 96 11:40 EST From: James E Bellaire Subject: 765 Approved For Indiana Relief The following story was on WRTV 6 Indianapolis on Wednesday, November 13th. (Transcript from www.wrtv.com - from the 6pm news) [AREACODE] STARTING FEBRUARY FIRST CENTRAL INDIANA WILL BE SPLIT INTO TWO TELEPHONE AREA CODES. REGULATORS APPROVED THE MOVE TODAY. UNDER THE PLAN, MARION AND PARTS OF THE SURROUNDING COUNTIES REMAIN UNDER 317. BUT AREAS FURTHER OUT WILL SWITCH TO THE NEW 765 AREA CODE. THE CHANGE IS NEEDED BECAUSE OF THE EXPLOSION IN NEW PHONES LIKE CELLULAR AND FAX MACHINES. THE AREA HAS SIMPLY RUN OUT OF NUMBERS. THE COMMISSION DID APPROVE ONE MAJOR CHANGE. SHELBYVILLE WILL STAY 317 INSTEAD OF BEING SWITCHED TO THE NEW CODE. The 11 o'clock had interviews with residents of Shelbyville who were glad to stay in 317. Community leaders had complained because they wanted to keep their economic ties to Indianapolis. (The 11pm transcript was not available.) The map shown on screen now shows Manilla, Shelbyville, and Waldron left in 317. Other 765 Information: Bellcore has had its 765 page up for a while, with a test number of 1-765-281-6988 announced. 317-281 is currently Muncie Indiana (281-6988 is a non-working number). Ameritech has not put the change on their site yet. But they did put it in their Business to Business phone book for central Indiana. The PUC was not to happy with them for publishing before it was approved, but the next edition of the book will not be out until after permissive has ended next June. It looks like Ameritech made the right move (although Shelbyville is probably in the wrong code in that book). My unofficial summary based on maps displayed on TV and newspapers: Indiana Cities to stay in 317: INDIANAPOLIS and all cities Indy residents may dial as local: Acton, Bargersville, Brownsburg, Carmel, Clayton, Danville, Fairland, Fishers, Fortville, Franklin, Greenfield, Greenwood, Lizton, Maxwell, Mc Cordsville, Monrovia, Mooresville, New Palestine, Noblesville, Oaklandon, Pittsboro, Plainfield, Trafalgar, West Newton, Westfield, Whiteland, Whitestown, Zionsville. Other Exchanges Staying in 317 Manilla, Marietta, Nineveh, Shelbyville, Sheridan, Waldron. All other cities in 317 will move to the new 765 code. (Including Eminence, Martinsville, Paragon.) James E. Bellaire bellaire@tk.com Webpage Available 23.5 Hrs a Day!!! http://www.iquest.net/~bellaire/ ------------------------------ From: prvtctzn@aol.com Subject: Re: Brokerages Fined / Many Are Called - You May Collect Date: 14 Nov 1996 17:10:49 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) writes: > Brokerages Pay Fine for Dialing Florida 'No Call' Listings > Nov. 11--Four big brokerage firms landed in hot water with the > state for making cold calls to Floridians on the "no sales > solicitation calls" list. > Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Paine Webber Inc. > and Smith Barney Inc. agreed to pay a combined $33,000 fine and > to improve marketing procedures under a settlement announced > Thursday with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer > Services. > Florida law prohibits businesses from making unsolicited calls to > the 40,000 people who are on the state's "no call" list. Companies > that use telemarketing are supposed to purchase the list and > check it before placing calls. > Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford said the brokerage firms > ran into trouble partly because of recent changes in Florida area > codes. He said the companies apologized for their mistakes. The above article tells of Florida's move against investment firms, including Paine Webber. I have recently been involved with Paine Webber concerning their violation of *Federal* telemarketing regulations concerning one of our members. To assist others who wish to file an action against Paine Webber, I will freely supply a notorized affidavit. (send SASE to Private Citizen, Inc - PO Box 233 - Naperville, IL 60566; with a note "Paine Weber Affidavit", and a copy of your complaint). The following explains the pertinant circumstances of the violation: If you were solicited at home by a Paine Webber representative, between December 22, 1992 and October 1, 1996 you may be able to collect up to $1,500 from them for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA). Note that the TCPA requires firms making commercial solicitations to residents, to have a `Do-Not-Call' Policy, available upon demand, before they can make such calls. Pursuant to my discussions with Paine Weber management, they have acknowledged that such a Policy was not `available upon demand' until October 1996.. Thus, each tlemarketing call they made to you at home, within the time-frame mentioned above, would likely afford you a cause of action in your state small claims court for $500. (Pursuant to the TCPA, the judge has discretion to award triple damages [$1,500] if the violation is willful or knowing) The affidavit I am making available may assist in showing that `willfullness' and thus allow the possibility of collecting $1,500. For more information about the TCPA see: http://www.russ-smith.com Bob Bulmash Private Citizen, Inc. http://webmill.com/pci/home http://webmill.com/prvtctzn/home ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #615 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 14 22:38:24 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA16364; Thu, 14 Nov 1996 22:38:24 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 22:38:24 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611150338.WAA16364@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #616 TELECOM Digest Thu, 14 Nov 96 22:38:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 616 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson CFP: IDMS'97 - Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems,Telecom (L Wolf) Pin 800 Numbers (was Re: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service) (K. Brown) Re: Plan May Divide Spring Hill, TN (Dale Neiburg) Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA (Nils Andersson) Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA (James L. Olds) Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA (Henry Baker) Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers (Martin Baines) Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Times (Wes Leatherock) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: lars@kom.e-technik.th-darmstadt.de (Lars Wolf) Subject: CFP: IDMS'97 - Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems, Telecom Date: 14 Nov 1996 14:53:17 GMT Organization: TH Darmstadt, KOM Dear Colleague, Please find enclosed a Call for Papers for IDMS'97 to be held September 10-12, 1997 in Darmstadt, Germany. Best regards, Lars CALL FOR PAPERS European Workshop on Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems and Telecommunication Services (IDMS'97) 10. - 12. September 1997 Darmstadt, Germany In Cooperation with ACM SIGMM Gesellschaft fuer Informatik GMD IEEE Computer Society VDE ITG This Fourth International Workshop on Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems and Telecommunication Services follows the successful IDMS workshop held 1996 in Berlin. The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for the presentation, exploration and discussion of technologies and their advancements in the broad field of interactive distributed multimedia systems -- from basic system technologies such as networking and operating system support to all kinds of multimedia applications. Furthermore, we are also looking for work from related areas, including digital library, mobile communication, VR, and software agents. Case studies and papers describing experimental work are especially welcome. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: * High-speed and multimedia networks * ATM networks and applications * Mobile multimedia systems * Multimedia communication protocols * Compression algorithms * Quality of service and media scaling * Resource management * Multimedia operating systems * Synchronization * Multimedia database and storage * Video-on-demand systems, components and architectures * Multimedia programming languages, abstractions & APIs * Development tools for distributed multimedia applications * Multimedia-specific intelligent agents * Multimedia/hypermedia applications and tools, production and authoring * Conferencing * Computer supported collaborative work * Digital libraries * Interactive television * Virtual reality systems IDMS'97 will consist of one day of tutorials and two days of technical presentations in an envisaged single-track. System and tool demonstrations will be possible throughout the workshop. In order to keep the flavor of a "workshop", participation will be restricted to about 100 participants. The proceedings of the workshop will be published in the Springer LNCS series and will be available during the workshop. Selected papers will be forwarded to a special issue of the "Computer Communications" Journal. Information for Authors ======================= The working language of the workshop is English. The submission process of papers will be handled electronically. Detailed description of the electronic submission procedures are available in the IDMS'97 web page http://www.th-darmstadt.de/idms97/ Authors without web access may send mailto: idms97@KOM.th-darmstadt.de requesting electronic submission information. Authors unable to submit electronically are invited to send 5 copies of their full paper to the program chair: Lars C. Wolf Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Information Technology Darmstadt University of Technology Merckstr. 25, D-64283 Darmstadt, Germany Manuscripts Submitted manuscripts must describe original work (not submitted or published elsewhere). The manuscripts must be no longer than 5000 words (including references, tables, etc.), be typed double-spaced, contain an abstract of approximately 300 words, and include title, authors and affiliations. The author who serves as contact person must be marked appropriately. Panels ------ Suggestions for panels which present innovative, controversial, or otherwise interesting ideas are welcome. Send a panel proposal of at most 3 pages including a biographical sketch of the panelist to the general chair. Important Dates =============== Submissions due: 01. March 1997 Notification of acceptance: 15. May 1997 Camera-ready version due: 15. June 1997 General Chair ============= Ralf Steinmetz, Darmstadt U., Germany Email: Ralf.Steinmetz@KOM.th-darmstadt.de Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Darmstadt University of Technology Merckstr. 25, D-64283 Darmstadt, Germany Fax: +49 6151 166152 Program Committee ================= B. Butscher, DeTeBerkom, Germany A. Danthine, U. Liege, Belgium L. Delgrossi, Andersen Consulting, France J. Eberspaecher, TU Munich, Germany W. Effelsberg, U. Mannheim, Germany J. Encarnacao, FhG-IGD, Germany D. Ferrari, U. Cattolica, Italy B. Furht, Florida Atlantic U., USA N. Georganas, U. Ottawa, Canada R.G. Herrtwich, RWE, Germany A. Hopper, U. Cambridge / ORL, UK J.P. Hubaux, EPFL, Switzerland D. Hutchison, Lancaster U., UK Y. Ip, Siemens AG, Germany W. Kalfa, TU Chemnitz, Germany T.D.C. Little, Boston U., USA F. Mattern, Darmstadt U., Germany E. Moeller, GMD FOKUS, Germany K. Nahrstedt, U. Illinois, USA E. Neuhold, GMD IPSI, Germany S. Pink, SICS, Sweden R. Popescu-Zeletin, TU Berlin, Germany V. Rangan, U. California, USA K. Rothermel, U. Stuttgart, Germany J. Schweitzer, Siemens AG, Germany H. Tokuda, Keio U., Japan F. Williams, Ericsson, Germany L. Wolf, Darmstadt U., Germany (Chair) General Information =================== For program information contact the Program Chair. For additional information see World-Wide Web: http://www.th-darmstadt.de/idms97 Local Organization ================== For any details on transportation, accomodation, or any other local arrangements please contact Martin Karsten Email: Martin.Karsten@KOM.th-darmstadt.de (same address as general chair) ------------------------------ From: Keith Brown Subject: Pin 800 Numbers (was Re: MCI One Breaks its 800 Number Service) Date: 14 Nov 1996 14:31:26 GMT Organization: CallCom International Linc Madison wrote in article : > In article , PAT added: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A lot of the carriers are now including >> a provision in their contract which says you agree that when you give >> up their service you give up your right to the number as well, or any >> right to transfer it to a different carrier. PAT] > Isn't that FLAGRANTLY illegal? That should be a nice court case for > some lawyer who salivates at the mention of "punitive damages"! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think it is legal if you agree to it > as part of a contract. If there was no contract and later on you > wished to change carriers and keep the number, they would be unable > to stop you. What I have head is that a lot of people did just that: > they got a 'good number' from one carrier then carted it off to > another carrier. The first carrier tried to stop it only to have their > efforts to 'save their number' thwarted. So now they specifically > make it part of their contract; it becomes a matter of contract law > rather than tariff or FCC regulation, etc. PAT] Pat: This is especially true for anyone thinking of obtaining or currently has a "pin" 800 number (an 800 number that will only connect after a certain number of extra digits "pin" have been added). The reason of course is that thousands of other customers may have the same 800 number, but with a different "pin". I had a gal in Texas call me yesterday (an Excel Rep using MCI) wanting to do just that, until she mentioned that it was a "pin" 800 number. So she decided to obtain a new 888 number instead. Pin 800 numbers tend to offer a higher cost per minute than the usual $0.109 to $0.129 (interstate rate) 800/888 service. 800/888 Service has a lot of features that customers are usually not informed about because of the additional set-up charges or paperwork that has to be submitted. For example; you can block your 800/888 number from certain area codes or regions (thus eliminating unwanted calls from those areas), establish time of day routing (800/888 number will ring in to one phone number, and then ring in to yet another phone number after a designated time period ie. say after 6:00 pm rings in to a phone number in another state). Keith Brown CallCom International URL: http://www.callcom.com ------------------------------ From: Dale Neiburg Subject: Re: Plan May Divide Spring Hill, TN Date: Thu, 14 Nov 96 14:54:00 PST In TELECOM Digest V16 #598, Tad Cook sent in a news item that read in part: > Area-Code Plan Would Divide Tennessee Town > By Cree Lawson, Nashville Banner, Tenn. > Nov. 5--Life in Spring Hill -- already complicated because the town > straddles Williamson and Maury counties -- will get even more complex > if a new area code splits the community. > A plan released by the Tennessee Telecommunications Association would > give Maury and much of the rest of the Midstate a new 931 area > code. Ten counties -- Williamson, Cannon, Cheatham, Davidson, DeKalb, > Dickson, Robertson, Rutherford, Sumner and Wilson -- would keep the > 615 area code. > That means that by 1999, Spring Hill residents would have to dial 10 > digits and pay long-distance charges just to call across town. > "Hopefully, they can work something out because that would just be > ridiculous," says Spring Hill Mayor Ron Hankins. According to my Rand McNally atlas, Spring Hill has a population of less than 1100. Do they really have two COs? I live in Laurel, MD, with a much larger population. Three counties (Prince Georges, Howard, and Anne Arundel) meet in the middle of Laurel; and a fourth (Montgomery) comes doggone close. Now, I live in Howard County, which would normally be in NPA 410. But since we get our service from the Laurel CO in Prince Georges County (NPA 301), our phone number is 301-NXX-XXXX. As far as telco is concerned, our phone is in PG County ... since that's where its card is. Why wouldn't the same approach be used in Spring Hill? Dale A. Neiburg dneiburg@npr.org ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA Date: 14 Nov 1996 20:30:09 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , Lloyd Matthews writes: > Also, PacBell flacks don't seem to have any clue about their PCS > service. Does anyone know if it will be GSM and compatible with my > Ericsson phone, and when it will be rolled out throughout California? Pac Bell is operating 1900MHz PCS/GSM-style in San Diego. They say they will have it in the rest of So Cal by early 1997. Note that the Sprint PCS/GSM in DC is incompatible with the rest of Sprint PCS which uses CDMA, but should be compatible with PacBell. Another question is whether they have a roaming agreement yet, ask them. Let us all know the results. Regards, Nils Andersson ------------------------------ From: James L. Olds Subject: Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA Date: 14 Nov 1996 23:43:01 GMT Organization: Krasnow Institute for Advanced Studies Loyd ... I am currently doing some research into this area ... and I'm not ready to be definitive ... but it does look like the PCS favor that Sprint has in DC/Baltimore is *incompatible* with the PCS flavor they intend to roll out in other cities. Obviously, that's quite a news story in the making and so they are quite right to be waffling on the issue. Cheers, James L. Olds Ph.D. Executive Director, American Association of Anatomists internet:olds@anatomy.org http://www.intr.net/olds ------------------------------ From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) Subject: Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 18:31:07 GMT In article , lloydm@pop.svl.trw. com wrote: > I do business in DC and California, and recently got a Sprint Spectrum > PCS phone (which currently works only in DC/Baltimore) under the > impression that it would be "nationwide by the end of1996." Whenever > I call to confirm this, Sprint refers me to some marketing flack or > other who all seem to have the party line of "everything will be up > sometime in 1997, maybe". Each PCS metropolitan area seems to be its > own city-state running its own show on its own schedule, and Sprint HQ > in Kansas City doesn't have any sort of summary. Can anyone tell me > how to get Sprint's actual plan for service throughout California? > Also, PacBell flacks don't seem to have any clue about their PCS > service. Does anyone know if it will be GSM and compatible with my > Ericsson phone, and when it will be rolled out throughout California? I believe that the DC/Baltimore system is a GSM system, while the rest of the Sprint Spectrum system will be CDMA. Your best nearterm bet in California will be PacBell Mobile, which already has their GSM system operational in San Diego. I believe that BellSouth will also have GSM in some of its areas. http://www.pacbell.mobile.com/ http://www.pactel.com/about/pcs_faq.html http://www.gsmworld.com/ http://www.bellsouthdcs.com/gsmfacts.html http://www.supercall.co.za/gsm/index.html http://www.supercall.co.za/gsm/gsm_sites.html http://www.ericsson.se/WN/wn1-96/two.html Also, contact "GSM North America": (510) 227-3000 (703) 799-7383 ------------------------------ From: Martin Baines Subject: Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 17:02:21 +0000 Organization: Silicon Graphics [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > This comes from the 'I feel like such a fool' department: One night > I was walking downtown past an ATM built in the wall on the front > of a building and it was going beep-beep-beep. I stopped to look and > a message on the screen said 'Do you need more time to make your > selection?'. The selections were to make a deposit, make a withdrawal, > check 'my' balance, etc. Some fool had walked away without terminating > his session ... still logged in. So what did this fool do? Instead of > saying yes, give me another minute or so, I said 'no' ... and the ATM > terminated the session and tossed 'my' card back out to me. Oh dear ... > that was not the desired results, and not having a PIN to go with the > card in question didn't help any. Had I said 'yes' the machine would > have waited on me patiently while I cleaned out the rest of the poor > guy's account. Put it down as a RISK of using ATM's I guess; do not > forget to terminate the session and take your card with you, otherwise > the next person to walk up may be more nimble with those buttons and > have more presence of mind than I did at the unexpected sight of a > treasure drove there for the looting. I have noticed that all of the ATM's in the UK use a simple algorithm to minimise this risk: they give don't give you any money until the very end of the transaction i.e. after they have given you your card back. As most people know not leave until they get their money not many fall into the trap. Of course if all you do is check your account, you could still run into the problem. It rather threw me when I used an ATM in the US, and it ejected money, without giving me the card back. I had got so used to the normal way in the UK it felt wrong. On the subject of different VISA cards: debit vs credit cards, my reading of the VISA contract is that if a vendor displays the VISA logo, they are required to honour *all* VISA transactions regardless of type of card or issuer (subject of course to security validation). I once had a petrol station in France refuse to take my VISA card, as it had a mag strip, rather than being a French style smartcard. I dug my heals in, phoned my issuer (on a mobile phone for the obligatory telecom reference) and gave them hell. They phoned the bank in Franch who would clear the transaction and got them to talk to the service station. In the end they accepted my card -- someone had to hand write a paper slip as they had lost their old fashioned swiper, and I don't think it exactly promoted Anglo-French relations, but it did work! My advice, if you have time create hell until they take your card! Martin Baines - Telecommunications Market Consultant Silicon Graphics, Arlington Business Park, Reading, RG7 4SB, UK email: martinb@reading.sgi.com SGI vmail: 6-788-7842 phone: +44 118 925 7842 fax: +44 118 925 7545 URL: http://reality.sgi.com/martinb_reading/ Silicon Surf: http://www.sgi.com/International/UK/ ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com (Wes Leatherock) Subject: Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 01:22:36 GMT Organization: Hotel California BBS spinal@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Clayton Walker) wrote: > I can't tell you how much it aggravates me when people come to me, the > resident computer nerd at my school, and ask how they get on the > Internet from their computer at home. I ask, "What Internet Service > Provider do you use?" They reply, cheerfully, "America Online." And > I say, in a most curteous voice, "Well, to get on the Internet you > need an Internet Service Provider." "But I told you, I have AOL!" > "Well, to get on the Internet you need an Internet Service Provider." > Sometimes, some of the more dense of them will keep at that for > several times, until they walk off, bewildered. This year alone, I've > had to hang up on three different guys from my school on multiple > occasions, late at night, who call me asking how to download and I > quote, "Nudies of that Jenny McCarty chick on MTV." And I > wonder sometimes why we've been labeled Generation X, the no-good > slackers associated with that no-good smutfest called the Internet. > Perhaps in five years the trend will have passed, and we can have our > old Internet back, where Netscape Navigator and AOL are simply > memories. I've got to say that this attitude (which is certainly not limited to Clayton) is perhaps the biggest reason that computer support -- particularly in-house computer support -- has (often deservedly) gotten such a bad name. As a sort of a sub-computer nerd for my group, I had to learn a great deal of what I needed to know -- and what my users needed to know -- in _spite_ of the so-called support. (Certainly there are exceptions; those are often the folks who pointed me in the right direction to learn something.) Computer support folks have a great deal of knowledge, and it is somewhat puzzling that, given their role, they use this to demean and intimidate users rather than try to help them. Instead of telling them repeatedly they need an ISP, for example, explain to them what AOL is not and why they need something different. I first started using a computer for word processing. I was, I think, pretty proficient on both a typewriter and a teletypewriter. But there is no way I ever though I would understand all the cams and linkages and springs that go into a typewriter. Why would I, or my users, need to know all the esoteric things that computer support people know? It is not something that has ever been part of their experience, and for many people is a violent impediment to the use of their computer, since so much of the documentation and support is put out from the viewpoint of the machine and/or system. Sure, some people get interested in computers and how they work, but this is no more a part of using a computer successfully to perform tasks -- whether word processing or surfing the Internet -- that are useful in and of themselves. There are certainly a lot of computer nerds out there that resent what has happened to "their Internet" now that other than nerds can make use of it. (And, again, I don't mean to single Clayton out, since it's a very common attitude among many people.) Clayton just articulated it very well (and that is commendable; too many posts are so poorly written it's hard to make out what the writer intended). Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com wes.leatherock@origins.bbs.uoknor.edu ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.11 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can see both sides of this and have to say that while I agree with you for the most part, there are times it gets to be ridiculous. I am not just talking about the people who want to know where to find the 'any' key on their keyboard they are supposed to press. I love helping new people get started netting; I don't think much else gives me the pleasure I get from seeing someone become as enthusiastic about computers as I was fifteen years ago. One moderator of a very popular e-zine on the net -- William Pfieffer -- initially learned everything he knew about computers from me. Still, there are times it becomes just so oppressive and backlogged with so much to do in so little time. I get letters from people intended for the Digest who ask questions about things that have been covered here a dozen times in the past dozen years; they want to start the same old threads over again, having never checked any archives, any FAQ, any web pages, etc. Yeah, I love helping the new guys get started, but sometimes I just get a massive headache from it all. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #616 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 14 23:40:04 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA22343; Thu, 14 Nov 1996 23:40:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 23:40:04 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611150440.XAA22343@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #617 TELECOM Digest Thu, 14 Nov 96 23:40:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 617 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Peter Carless) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (John R. Grout) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Bruce Waldman) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Danny Bateman) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Ed Ellers) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Nils Andersson) Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA (Marty Bose) Re: Mobile Phone Mayhem! (David Clayton) Re: Mobile Phone Mayhem! (Nils Andersson) Re: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs (Gerry Moersdorf) Re: Brokerages Fined for Dialing No Call Lists (Robert Bulmash) Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming (Poll Dubh) Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming (John R. Levine) Last Laugh! You Have Been Spammed (Thomas Kroll) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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 Carless Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: 15 Nov 1996 03:37:00 GMT Organization: CADVision Development Corp. Dale Kramer wrote in article : > Is there a service that I can use that allows me (in Canada) to call a > toll number in the US and then get tied into a line that lets me call > an 800 number that can not be normally dialed from Canada? Is there > any way at all possible to call a US 800 number from Canada? > Dale Kramer kci@vaxxine.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Didn't we have something here not too > long ago about a special three digit code used by some telco in > Canada for just this purpose? Perhaps someone could contact Mr. Kramer > with details. PAT] The telco in Canada that was offering the service (for a fee) was BCTel which only operates in the province of British Columbia. From Dale's email address it appears that he lives in the province of Ontario, so this would be of little use to him. One possible solution is a service called Net2Phone. This service allows you to call regular telephone numbers from your PC through the Internet using a microphone and sound card. The company does charge for this service but allows you to call 1-800 numbers free of charge. I did try it, and was able to connect with 800 numbers that were unavailable from Canada, but I found the connection so bad as to be all but useless. You may have a better connection to the Internet and get better results. If you want to explore it further their website is at http://www.net2phone.com/ . ------------------------------ From: grout@sp55.csrd.uiuc.edu (John R. Grout) Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: 14 Nov 1996 06:38:59 -0600 Organization: Center for Supercomputing R and D, UIUC In article nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) writes: > In article , Ian Angus > writes: >> It's even worse in other parts of the world -- it's astounding how >> many computer companies, for example, run ads which are seen world >> wide, with no method of contact except a US-only 800 or 888 number. > Right On!!!! > The simplest solution for non-NANP countries would be to allow 800 calls, > and charge for them. Being that they are preceded with a country code, > there should be no confusion. As has been pointed out before on c.d.t, but not recently, 800/888 numbers have different properties than regular phone numbers. 1. An 800 number can have limited coverage within the USA (a frequent situation) and so could be assigned to different customers in different parts of the USA (I have no figures about how often this happens). 2. An 800 number can forward calls to different offices in different parts of the USA ... the Internal Revenue Service does this, and so does my insurance company, Amica. 3. AT&T pioneered a service which reroutes 800 calls to use cheaper services (e.g., intra-LATA or local) when possible (many national advertisers used to exclude the state in which they operated their 800 service from their national 800 number's coverage pattern to avoid extra toll charges) ... I don't know if the other IXC's offer similar things. John R. Grout Center for Supercomputing R & D j-grout@uiuc.edu Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ------------------------------ From: bwaldman@nyx.cs.du.edu (Bruce Waldman) Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: 14 Nov 1996 05:48:38 -0700 Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci. In article , Dale Kramer wrote: > Is there a service that I can use that allows me (in Canada) to call a > toll number in the US and then get tied into a line that lets me call > an 800 number that can not be normally dialed from Canada? Is there > any way at all possible to call a US 800 number from Canada? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Didn't we have something here not too > long ago about a special three digit code used by some telco in > Canada for just this purpose? Perhaps someone could contact Mr. Kramer > with details. PAT] We have a special prefix in New Zealand to reach USA 800 numbers through Telecom NZ. However it is much cheaper and more efficient to use a USA callback service. Dale might want to try one with Canadian 800 access. He would dial through to the switch in the USA and then enter the USA 800 number. I can provide details as to a supplier. Worked fine for me when I was visiting Montreal last summer, and it was cheaper than a local call from the payphone. Bruce Waldman bwaldman@nyx.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 12:48:38 IST From: Danny Bateman Reply-To: Danny.Bateman@telrad.co.il Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Bezek, the local PTT here in Israel, and until next year, the only long distance (i.e. overseas) provider, allows you to call an 800 number in the US by dialing area code 880 instead. When you call an 800 number in country code 1 (00-1-800-xxx-xxxx) you get a recording stating that you can call an 800 number by using the 880 code instead, at normal call rates to the US. When calling an 800 number with this 880 area code, the following message is heard before it rings: "Access to the number you have dialed is not free of charge outside the US, If answered, you will be charged international direct dialing rates for this call. If you do not want to proceed with this call please hang up now." I don't know how they are going to support the same service for 888 numbers, and what happens if area code 880 is assigned? Danny Bateman Telrad Telecommunications M1 S/W Department Danny.Bateman@telrad.co.il Phone: +972-8-927-3408 Fax: +972-8-927-3487 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think 880 will be assigned. I believe I read here in the Digest (possibly something from Mark Cuccia) saying that 880 was among the 88x codes being reserved? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: Wed, 13 Nov 96 10:24:54 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Didn't we have something here not too > long ago about a special three digit code used by some telco in > Canada for just this purpose? Perhaps someone could contact Mr. Kramer > with details. PAT] Something's being ignored here -- many 800 numbers are either available only in certain regions or are directed to different locations depending on where the call comes from. If the customer that has the 800/888 number doesn't want calls from outside a certain area, should callers from outside the U.S. be able to get around this? And if the 800/888 customer has only defined calling regions within the U.S., where should foreign calls be directed? ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: 13 Nov 1996 17:27:21 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) Either this group or the ... tech group had a discussion. Candidates for use are 880 and 881 (or is it 881 and 882) for 800 and 888 respectively. It is unclear to me if they work, and from where. There is a report about 700, but it _should_not_work_. Another possibility is to use an AT&T access line and an AT&T or local telco credit card (Canadian might be OK, I do not know). Try it all and let us know what works. Sample number to call: 800-223 6177, GTE billing in California. Regards (and awaiting results with baited breath) Nils Andersson ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 04:08:08 -0700 From: Marty Bose Subject: Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA > I do business in DC and California, and recently got a Sprint Spectrum > PCS phone (which currently works only in DC/Baltimore) under the > impression that it would be "nationwide by the end of1996." Whenever > I call to confirm this, Sprint refers me to some marketing flack or > other who all seem to have the party line of "everything will be up > sometime in 1997, maybe". Each PCS metropolitan area seems to be its > own city-state running its own show on its own schedule, and Sprint HQ > in Kansas City doesn't have any sort of summary. Can anyone tell me > how to get Sprint's actual plan for service throughout California? The good news is that most of California will be covered by Sprint PCS by mid 1997; the bad news is that your phone won't work on Sprint's system, since everywhere but the DC area will be CDMA, not GSM. At Sprint PCS's press briefing at PCS `96 there was a mention of eventually converting the DC system over to CDMA, but no timeframe was defined. PBMS's system will be GSM, but they will be (probably) be coming up later than Sprint PCS, and haven't announced their position on roaming. Marty Bose ------------------------------ From: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au (David Clayton) Subject: Re: Mobile Phone Mayhem! Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 07:52:23 GMT Organization: Customer of Access One Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia Monty Solomon contributed the following: > After a few of these unexplained crashes, one of our MIS group noticed > that every time he went in to the server room to reboot the dead > servers, one of the AT&T engineers was using his mobile phone. So, > they were asked to turn their phones off while working in the server > room, and the problem has not reoccurred. > To test the theory a bit further, the MIS group then took an otherwise > unused server, and experimented with using a mobile phone near > it. With the working phone being used less than a foot away from the > machine, they provoked a crash which corrupted the system disk (and > its mirror volume) beyond repair. My GSM phone used to work really well at moving the serial mouse connected to my laptop whenever it was transmitting; it didn't crash it though. Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: Mobile Phone Mayhem! Date: 14 Nov 1996 20:30:06 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , Monty Solomon writes: > To test the theory a bit further, the MIS group then took an otherwise > unused server, and experimented with using a mobile phone near > it. With the working phone being used less than a foot away from the > machine, they provoked a crash which corrupted the system disk (and > its mirror volume) beyond repair. This just illustrates what a lot of us already know: The GSM phones put out crazy amounts of EM-noise. I do not know why; my US style D-AMPS is not _nearly_ as bad as my Euro-GSM phone. Regards, Nils Andersson ------------------------------ From: Gerry Moersdorf Subject: Re: Question For Bell-Owned ISPs Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 14:57:35 -0500 Organization: Applied Innovation Inc. Reply-To: gerry@aiinet.com Craig Partridge wrote: > Joe Jensen writes: >> The long hold time associated with Internet access is a REAL problem. >> To understand why, you need to understand that the switch is >> engineered to support specified concentration ratio across the central >> office, typically somewhere between 4:1 to 8:1. > An important detail here. How sacred is that ratio? My understanding > is that it varies. And in a world where 1 Gb/s data paths are > commonplace in boxes and depreciation cycles are going down sharply (I > think PACBELL said they're now using five or seven years?), just how > horribly expensive is it to upgrade? The current network is build a 64kb funnel called a class 5 office switch, these systems the Lucent 5ESS and Nortel DMS100 proviide the majority of dailtone here in north america, these systems were never designed for data or broadband services and sit between the users (the loops) and that vast unharnessed optical interoffice capacity. These machines must be bypassed for the problem to go away. Telcos realize this and do not want to continue to over build the current switched class 5 system, they want to invest in ATM. Gerry Moersdorf, President/CEO Applied Innovation INC 5800 Innovation Dr, Dublin OH 800-247-9482 ------------------------------ From: prvtctzn@aol.com Subject: Re: Brokerages Fined for Dialing No Call Lists Date: 14 Nov 1996 17:30:35 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , chrissv@cat.com (Steven V. Christensen) writes: > In article in comp.dcom.telecom, > Tad Cook (tad@ssc.com) wrote: >> Brokerages Pay Fine for Dialing Florida 'No Call' Listings >> By Helen Huntley, St. Petersburg Times, Fla. >> Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News >> Nov. 11--Four big brokerage firms landed in hot water with the state >> for making cold calls to Floridians on the "no sales solicitation >> calls" list. >> Residential numbers can be placed on the list for a $10 enrollment fee >> and a $5 annual renewal fee. For information call (800) 435-7352. > How does this list differ from the list that phone solicitors are > supposed to have, which you can be added by simply asking, > "Place me on your 'do not call' list" ? Telenuuisance firms (excluding newspapers) who call Florida residents must first get a copy of the state's no-call list, and purge the numbers thereon from their call lists. The function of the Florida list is thus to notify junk callers, before they call, not to call those who are on the no-call list. Florida's no-call list is somewhat like the service offered by Private Citizen, Inc. on a nationwide basis. It does not require you to notify telemarketers individually, but rather collectively, not to bother you, Before They Call. Bob Bulmash Private Citizen, inc. http:/webmill.com/pci/home http://webmill.com/prvtctzn/home ------------------------------ From: singular@oort.ap.sissa.it (Poll Dubh) Subject: Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming Date: 14 Nov 1996 16:56:53 GMT Organization: Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate In article , John R Levine wrote: > operating out of a mail drop in Bellevue, Washington. I found that > adjusting my router to discard any packets coming from their network > 207.14.56 improved my quality of life. Did the same thing. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Instead of disgarding their packets, > shouldn't you be returning their packets to them, with a few packets > of your own saying in effect 'mail from your site is not welecome here' > or words to that effect. As it stands now, they are just assuming the > users at your site are not interested in the current spam offering and > they will continue to send various offerings. Why not be frank and > upfront with them about it? You can still automate the process and > not have to examine it all when it comes in. No, that's too much work and might be frowned upon as a violation of the Internet Protocol (or a router malfunction/misconfiguration, if you wish). Discarding the packets has the following advantages: -- minimizes work for *your* system (you won't even know they exist[*], other than through news reports); -- clogs up the queue at the sender's end (because all that machine sees is a "host unreachable" condition, which is usually considered a transient failure (unlike "no such domain") for which it is proper to wait a while and try again). [*] Actually, the router collects statistics on the packets it turns down. Since the last reboot, I got 12 packets from 207.14.56.*, 5 from 207.149.8.*, 13 from 38.*.*.* (that's PSI/Interramp, also contributing to my quality of life by being locked out of here). I can live with that kind of load. The only potential drawback is if the IP addresses get reassigned to a site you may want to correspond with. I've brought that to the attention of the people at SprintLink, telling them to be careful what uses these "tainted" addresses are put to in the future. Come to think of it, Calling Number ID might have similar implications for telemarketers' telephone numbers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Nov 96 08:51 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Instead of disgarding their packets, > shouldn't you be returning their packets to them, with a few packets > of your own saying in effect 'mail from your site is not welecome here' > or words to that effect. As it stands now, they are just assuming the > users at your site are not interested in the current spam offering and > they will continue to send various offerings. Why not be frank and > upfront with them about it? You can still automate the process and > not have to examine it all when it comes in. Two reasons: 1) I set up the packet filtering in about 15 seconds, since it just meant adding a single line to my router config file. Mail filtering is harder since at the moment I don't have a mail system that lets me filter all incoming mail based on the sender's IP address or domain. 2) Filtering makes it look to the spammers like my network is down, so they keep retrying, potentially causing congestion and delay in their mail program. I consider that a feature. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - MIT econ prof [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is the latest addition to the crowd. Someone sent me a rather large file making the rounds Thursday in all the newsgroups. It is almost identical to the one printed here a couple days ago operating in Cleveland, Ohio. I am not going to print the whole thing; there is a limit to the amount of time and patience I have for it. Here however are the details you need to know: This is another guy who welcomes spam accounts. He has all the latest techniques in place including fire walls to keeo you from getting to him, etc. He'll sort your incoming mail and like the one in Cleveland, he dares anyone to try and stop him. The header from the message he sent out: --------------------------------- Subject: SEND 15,000 EMAILS PER HOUR!! Xref: news3.idirect.com alt.magic:26784 Path: news3.idirect.com!n2tor.istar!tor.istar!east.istar!news1.hotstar.net!winternet.com!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!nntp.earthlink.net!usenet From: MREMAIL@MREMAIL.COM Newsgroups: alt.magic Subject: SEND 15,000 EMAILS PER HOUR!! Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 22:53:46 Organization: Earthlink Network, Inc. Lines: 155 Message-ID: <566i25$qth@bolivia.earthlink.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: cust27.max22.los-angeles.ca.ms.uu.net Now the guy at idirect.com is who forwarded it to me so don't blame him. Probably it is from earthlink.net. Here are the things which are his claim to fame: ------------------------------- When SoftCell becomes your postmaster you will never lose your e mail addresses, dial-up connection or web site domain ever again. BULLET PROOF WEB SITE DOMAIN 10mg never have your site ripped down again 10 MEG WEB DOMAIN We move your site and transfer or register your domain with internic 5 Meg FLAME PROOF E MAIL BOX We will not except multiple message or unmarked attachments from any user. FIRE WALL Over 70,000 e mail addresses that can not access our server AUTO RESPONDER Easy and fast response Additional provider services: Online secure credit card transactions $35.00 per mo. Shopping Basket $20.00 per mo. Additional Auto responders $15.00 per mo Additional E Mail Accounts $30.00 per mo Additional Web space $10.00 per Mg per mo. Bulk E-Mailing Services E Mail addresses for sale Our addresses are by far the best available on the internet because they are all 75+% deliverable and we never sell the same list to the same type of business twice. We currently have over 7 million active e mail addresses. --------------------------------- Here is the parts you need to know about: Call now for more information: 714-825-4815 F R E E D E M O D O W N L O A D ! ! ! CALL NOW -- MR. EMAIL (DAVID) SoftCell Marketing Inc. CONTRACT IMPORTANT! FAX THIS LEGAL DOCUMENT TO: 714-574-9773 --------------------------- Omitted above are his price list, a long discussion of his features and how they work, etc. I am sure you are disappointed that I did not print it all. Deal with his fax and phone numbers above as you would with any company of whom you wish to make an inquiry. Has anyone noticed none of these creeps give an 800 number any longer? I wonder why? ... I really do not have a lot of time to bother with this one so reports from anyone who does have time will be welcome. It appears he is in southern California somewhere. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Thomas Kroll Subject: Last Laugh! You Have Been Spammed! Organization: Indiana State University Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 20:28:02 GMT David Richards wrote: > Here's the latest offering from a mail-spam hosting firm. The headers > were via Interramp but the reply addresses are all forged. Note the > Cleveland maildrop and request to _fax_ them a check. > What a bunch of wimps!! THIS is SPAM, courtesy of: http://umbc7.umbc.edu/~jstron1/wspam-sketch.html Consider yourselves SPAMMED !!!!! The Spam Sketch From the second series of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" Transcribed 9/17/87 from "Monty Python's Previous Record" by Jonathan Partington (JRP1@PHX.CAM.AC.UK ) Scene: A cafe. One table is occupied by a group of Vikings with horned helmets on. A man and his wife enter. Man (Eric Idle): You sit here, dear. Wife (Graham Chapman in drag): All right. Man (to Waitress): Morning! Waitress (Terry Jones, in drag as a bit of a rat-bag): Morning! Man: Well, what've you got? Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam; Vikings (starting to chant): Spam spam spam spam... Waitress: ...spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam... Vikings (singing): Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Waitress: ...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam. Wife: Have you got anything without spam? Waitress: Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it. Wife: I don't want ANY spam! Man: Why can't she have egg bacon spam and sausage? Wife: THAT'S got spam in it! Man: Hasn't got as much spam in it as spam egg sausage and spam, has it? Vikings: Spam spam spam spam (crescendo through next few lines) Wife: Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then? Waitress: Urgghh! Wife: What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like spam! Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!) Waitress: Shut up! Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Waitress: Shut up! (Vikings stop) Bloody Vikings! You can't have egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam. Wife (shrieks): I don't like spam! Man: Sshh, dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam! Vikings (singing): Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Waitress: Shut up!! Baked beans are off. Man: Well could I have her spam instead of the baked beans then? Waitress: You mean spam spam spam spam spam spam... (but it is too late and the Vikings drown her words) Vikings (singing elaborately): Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam. Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Spam spam spam spam! Back to SPAM ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #617 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Fri Nov 15 11:37:06 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id LAA04224; Fri, 15 Nov 1996 11:37:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 11:37:06 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611151637.LAA04224@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #618 TELECOM Digest Fri, 15 Nov 96 11:36:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 618 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson BT, MCI and Microsoft To Develop Global Intranet Services (Monty Solomon) Nexus Web Site is Now in Beta (John Cropper) Re: New E-Mail SPAM Provider (Dave Keeny) Re: New E-Mail SPAM Provider (Henry Mensch) Re: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line (David Clayton) Re: Plan May Divide Spring Hill, TN (Sander J. Rabinowitz) Re: Ameritech Questions (Nils Andersson) Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? (Tony Toews) Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? (JP White) Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA (John Sullivan) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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, 15 Nov 1996 01:29:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: BT, MCI and Microsoft To Develop Global Intranet Services Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM BT, MCI and Microsoft To Develop Global Intranet Services The new services will be marketed worldwide by BT and MCI and offered by Concert, the existing BT and MCI joint venture global communications company. London, November 13th, 1996--- BT, MCI and Microsoft today said they will expand their alliances to develop a new suite of global intranet services. The new services will be marketed worldwide by BT and MCI and offered by Concert, the existing BT and MCI joint venture global communications company. The portfolio of intranet services, based on open and widely accepted Internet standards, will combine the global networking expertise of BT, MCI and Concert with the leading network and desktop applications offered by Microsoft. This unprecedented global intranet solution leverages the broad strengths of this alliance, including: The Concert managed data networking services, available from more than 800 cities in more than 50 countries, provided by BT and MCI. In addition, Concert InternetPlus Service, the world's first global Internet backbone, this week became operational between the United States and Europe and will support intranet transport for the new intranet service from BT, MCI and Microsoft. Concert InternetPlus Service, Concert Frame Relay Service and other BT/MCI communications services supporting the new intranet service will offer the service-level assurances required to support mission-critical intranet communications. The full range of Microsoft's messaging and intranet platforms, including the recently launched Microsoft (R) Commercial Internet System (formerly known as Normandy), Microsoft Exchange Server and the complementary intranet server products in the Windows NT (R)-based BackOffice (TM) family. The service will also utilize the Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 web browser and exploit the full capabilities of ActiveX (TM) controls. BT, MCI and Microsoft are combining these capabilities in an expansion of their existing alliances to address the rapidly growing intranet market. Demand for intranets, or private internets, is exploding because of the ease with which they enable information to flow within an enterprise and with customers and vendors. According to industry analysts, the total Internet market will be valued at $43 billion by 1999. By this time, products and services associated with building corporate intranets are expected to account for $28 billion -- more than half of the total Internet market. "BT's and MCI's leadership in global communications combined with Microsoft's advanced application software and position in the IT market, provide customers with a solid way forward to benefit from the intranet revolution," said Rupert Gavin, BT's director of Internet and Multimedia Services. "The new intranet service will be particularly appropriate for businesses wishing to form 'community of interest intranets' where there are real benefits to be gained from sharing information with business partners for mutual advantage - but where no one company would want to own or manage the infrastructure." "The obstacle facing our global customers is not in determining if an intranet makes sense, but rather how they are going to build it without losing momentum, and integrate it with their existing complex enterprise environment," said Stephen Von Rump, MCI's vice president of Enterprise Marketing. "We have built intranet applications for hundreds of our customers with locations in the U.S., as both stand-alone networks as well as part of larger enterprise solutions, and now look forward to working with our alliance partners, BT and Microsoft, to extend the benefits of intranets to our customers on a global basis." Cameron Myhrvold, vice president of Public Network Sales, Microsoft Corporation, said: "Microsoft is very excited by the opportunity to work with BT and MCI and exploit the Concert network to deliver the next generation of global intranets. Microsoft products are quickly becoming the popular choice for building intranets, with many of our corporate customers embarking on intranet projects and finding that it revolutionizes the way they work, at extremely low set up cost. This service takes the concept a stage further, making it even simpler to create and maintain intranets. BT and MCI will deliver value added, turn-key intranet solutions to multi-site customers combining Microsoft intranet platforms with the performance, security and global reach of the Concert managed network." BT, MCI, Concert and Microsoft plan to respond to two sets of customer demands. One is for a range of intranet solutions for businesses that want to build and manage their own intranet, making available from a single source all of the software, hardware and communications services necessary to develop secure, reliable intranet applications. The second, to be rolled-out in early 1997, is for a fully managed, network-based intranet service for customers seeking a communications partner that can build and manage their intranet on a global basis. Both intranet service offerings will support a range of intranet applications. For example: * information management tools, including authoring, publishing and web searching; * e-mail and gateways to other mail systems as well as groupware; * project collaboration tools, including private news groups and bulletin boards; * powerful directory facilities; and * software distribution, to distribute and upgrade software programs to employees throughout an organization. "Building on the success of Concert's managed data services, the new intranet service will offer a complete end-to-end intranet solution bringing customers a robust and secure environment on a global scale," said Peter Erskine, president and CEO, Concert. BT is one of the largest and most successful telecommunications companies in the world. It has a market capitalization of more than $36 billion, operations in 30 countries and employs about 130,700 people worldwide. BT's principal activity in the fully competitive UK market is the supply of local, long distance and international telecommunications services, serving over 27 million residential and business exchange lines through a fully modernized and largely digital network. With MCI, the second largest carrier in the US, BT has a one billion dollar joint venture named Concert to create a global network and advanced products and services for multi-national customers. BT also has joint ventures in Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, South Africa, New Zealand, Japan and India. MCI, headquartered in Washington, D.C., provides a full range of integrated communication services to more than 20 million customers. Credited with opening up the U.S. long distance market for competition, MCI is now leading the charge to bring competition to the $100 billion local market, offering American consumers for the first time the freedom to choose their local carrier. With quarterly annualized revenue of more than $18 billion, MCI is one of the largest and fastest growing telecommunication companies in the world. Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day. Concert develops advanced networking services for BT and MCI to market to global companies. Today, Concert's intelligent network platform provides an array of global communications services to 3000 customers. Concert services are available through MCI, BT and 36 additional distributors in North America, Europe and Asia. The Concert network has 6,000 nodes deployed in over 800 cities in over 50 countries. NOTE:Microsoft, ActiveX, BackOffice and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. ------------------------------ From: psyber@mindspring.com (John Cropper) Subject: Nexus Web Site is Now in Beta Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 09:31:37 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Reply-To: psyber@mindspring.com I am now in the process of beta-testing our new web site. The data contained in it is about 75% complete. The URL is: http://www.the-server.com/jcbt2n/nexcomm I have to update some of the links in it, and make a few updates here and there, but it should be up and running full steam by Monday, the 18th, at the very lastest ... (Yes, to all those out there, it means 'no more waiting until the 1st of the month' for updates) John Cropper voice: 888.NPA.NFO2 NiS / NexComm 609.637.9434 PO Box 277 fax: 609.637.9430 Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 mailto:psyber@mindspring.com http://www.the-server.com/jcbt2n/nexcomm ------------------------------ From: Dave Keeny Subject: Re: New E-Mail SPAM Provider Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 09:40:08 +0500 Organization: Telecommunications Techniques Corporation Reply-To: keenyd@ttc.com David Richards wrote: > Here's the latest offering from a mail-spam hosting firm. The headers > were via Interramp but the reply addresses are all forged. Note the [lengthy snip] > TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well about all I can suggest is that > people lean very heavily on interramp.com for allowing this customer > (Cyber-Times) to be on their site and that readers of this message [snip] I would be surprised if Interramp were involved in this, other than being the host for this particular e-mail. Once upon a time, I received an ad from someone who falsified their identity. At that time (Aug '96) Interramp had a published policy which included the following: > * The posting of any advertisement or other commercial solicitation > to any newsgroup or mailing list is strictly prohibited. PSINet > reserves the right to determine whether a post constitutes an > advertisement or commercial solicitation. > * Impersonating another user or otherwise falsifying one's user > name in e-mail or any post to any newsgroup or mailing list is > strictly prohibited. Four days after alerting Interramp, I was received this message: > The account responsible for the spam has been located and terminated. > They had been forging headers and making it difficult to trace them, > but we have finally tracked them down. They went to quite an effort to find the user. I'll send a copy of Mr. Richard's e-mail directly to the person at Interramp who responded last time. If Richard's plans on using Interramp as his e-mail pipeline and they haven't changed policy, this toad will have to find a new pond. Dave [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess that makes sense. If the very responsible ISPs of the net are aware community heat will come down on them, they'll continue to avoid spammers/junk-emailers like the plague. The spammers will keep wandering around looking for a home somewhere and in those cases where an ISP is hospitable to them, then you block those ISPs entirely from reaching your site. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 22:23:42 -0800 From: henry mensch Subject: Re: New E-Mail SPAM Provider Well, I'm not sure it's going to go very far; there's no cyber-times.org registered with the InterNIC. The domain name cyber-times.org is not known to DNS, either. henry mensch / / pob 14592; sf, ca 94114-0592; usa ------------------------------ From: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au (David Clayton) Subject: Re: Sudden New Feature on Home Phone Line Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 09:48:16 GMT Organization: Customer of Access One Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) contributed the following: > Larry English (lenglish@atlanta.nsc.com) writes: >> Suddenly a new feature has appeared on my residential phone line. >> I noticed that if I'm talking to someone, I can "flash" the hookswitch, >> make another call [without disconnecting the first call], and then ... > Pat responds: >> It is known as 'Three Way Calling' and some telcos have begun >> offering it on a 'per-use' basis as well as by monthly subscription. > Here in Bell Canada land, if you buy three-way calling by the month, > it works as Larry describes. But if you don't subscribe and want to > use it, then you have to dial *71. This eliminates the hazard that > people unaware of having the service might use it accidentally and > incur the pay-per-use charge, as Larry has probably done. Just out of interest, in Australia the dominant carrier, Telstra, recently provided "Call Waiting" for free to all customers on compatible exchanges. Since all answered calls cost money here, the telco finally figured out that they get no revenue for busy tone, but with call waiting in use they get a hell of a lot more answered calls, and therefore revenue, for a minor loss in monthly rental, and the customers think that they are getting something for nothing! Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 06:31:44 CST From: Sander J. Rabinowitz Subject: Re: Plan May Divide Spring Hill, TN Dale Neiburg wrote: > According to my Rand McNally atlas, Spring Hill has a population of > less than 1100. Do they really have two COs? That figure may be notably larger, although I don't have exact numbers. If it was based on the 1980 census, it would have been well before the opening of the Saturn Corporation complex, and even in 1990, that facility was just starting. Spring Hill has been expanding ever since, even to the point of annexing additional land for the town. Spring Hill would seem to connected to at least two CO's, due, I think, largely from the county split. To the south, in Maury Co., residents use 615-486 and 615-489 (although a large percentage of both exchanges are reserved/used by Saturn and also for paging systems). To the north, in Williamson Co., residents use Williamson Co. exchanges (i.e., 615-794, 615-791, 615-595, and so on). To a certain extent, the situation is already a mess. Residents desiring to dial over the county line must dial all 11 digits, and is treated by Bell South as a long distance call. I have confirmed this from the pay phone at the local gas station in Thompson's Station, Tenn., which is just north of Spring Hill, and only three miles north of the Maury Co. line. Sandy Rabinowitz, Electronic Data Systems, at Saturn Corporation in Spring Hill, Tennessee. a400@edge.net SANDER J. ("SANDY") RABINOWITZ http://edge.net/~a400 Spring Hill, TN 37174-1195 USA ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com Subject: Re: Ameritech Questions Date: 14 Nov 1996 20:30:05 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (1.10) In article , srkleine@midway.uchicago. edu (steven r kleinedler) writes: > No -- we don't need to see the whole 312 area -- we know that the city > line is the boundary on the outer edge. I just want to see a map > of the jagged line that runs roughly along North, Western, and 35th > (Lake Michigan's the fourth boundary). The boundary is really erratic > in places, and I thought if *anyone* had a map of it, it'd be > Ameritech. I think that much more important than a map is a list of prefixes, including those that change and those that don't. Preferably, the list should be available as machine-readable so that people with large databases can upgrade smoothly. Regards, Nils Andersson ------------------------------ From: ttoews@agt.net (Tony Toews) Subject: Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 05:11:59 GMT Organization: TELUS Communications Inc. Louis Raphael wrote: > I've had that happen. I quite often get four-hour notices when mailing > certain people nowadays. *That* I find terrible. E-mail is one of the most > useful features of the 'net, and one that requires very little in the way > of resources -- yet often unusable because of the surfers. It would be good > if there were some mechanism for reserving a small percentage of bandwidth > for e-mail -- and that's all it would take (remember how much e-mail BITnet > could handle on 14.4K lines?). I'm almost certain that the four hour notice is because the other end's mailer is not ready to receive mail. I test the speed of my email by sending a dummy email to fedex. They have an autoresponder to which you send up to 20 waybill numbers and they email you back all the info they have on those waybill numbers. I usually get a response back within a few seconds. (Thanks Fedex!) I was doing holiday relief for a small community web server nearby. I had to reboot the NT server and for some unknown reason the mail service didn't start. I knew this because I sent the administrator an email telling him what I did when I got home. And I too got the four hour notice so I knew there was a problem. . So once I started the email service a day or two later when I was there next a bunch, well five or ten messages, started coming in from other ISP's, including that message I just mentioned and the mail got through. Tony Toews, Independent Computer Consultant Jack of a few computer related trades and master (or certified) of none. Microsoft Access Hints & Tips: Accounting Systems, Winfax Pro, Reports and Books at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 08:49:24 -0800 From: JP White Reply-To: ffv.aerotech@ffvaerotech.com Organization: FFV Aerotech Subject: Re: Higher ISP Fees at Peak Hours? lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) wrote: > Certainly, there is a price that would keep most users off the net; if > you set the price that high, there is no congestion. But what good is > it for you that there is no congestion, if you cannot afford to > connect? Good point. Charging for peak usage would be like putting a toll charge on all downtown interstates because of congestion. Sure it would cure the congestion problem, but is that the solution we are really looking for? A fourth or fifth lane on the highway makes more sense as a solution. I hate Al Gore's term 'Information Highway', but if we treat the internet like one, then let's just keep expanding the system to meet demand. Whilst expanding real highway's damages the environment by encouraging more traffic, what harm does expanding the internet have? Indeed if the internet can increase the number of telecommuters then it may actually benefit the environment. Let's not place a 'Toll' on the internet, after all a toll is not that different than a tax, and who needs more of that! JP White Manager Information Systems FFV Aerotech Inc., Mailto:ffv.aerotech@ffvaerotech.com Web: http://www.ffvaerotech.com ------------------------------ From: sullivan@interramp.com (John Sullivan) Subject: Re: Sprint Spectrum/PacBell PCS Rollouts in CA Date: Fri, 15 Nov 96 15:54:06 GMT Organization: PSINet A couple points in response to various other msgs in this thread: 1. The reason Sprint has a GSM network in DC and CDMA everywhere else is because the DC network is actually run by a company called American Personal Communications, which won a pioneer's preference license for the DC/Baltimore area. That's why they were up so much earlier than the rest of Sprint. Sprint basically bought out the Washington Post Co.'s 49 percent interest and they decided to use the Sprint brand for marketing reasons. They do indeed waffle on converting the DC network over to CDMA and with good reason. APC hates CDMA, and they have been very successful with GSM. The _last_ think APC wants to do is suddenly tell their 100 thousand plus customers that they all have to dump their phones for new ones just so they can synch up with the rest of the Sprint network. (I have a feeling this is why Sprint suddenly changed the service offering name from Sprint Spectrum to Sprint PCS, but I don't see how that's really going to help. As this thread demonstrates, there is growing confusion among the customer base.) 2. BellSouth does indeed have GSM service in all its major markets -- but this is PCS markets, not its wireline territory. Their PCS coverage is in the Carolinas and the very eastern part of Tennessee. 3. All the currently active GSM carriers in the US are part of the GSM MoU organization and have roaming agreements in place. This doesn't necessarily mean that you can actually roam now, but I've heard reports that you can roam from Sprint into BellSouth and into Omnipoint in New York. The ones that aren't working will be up soon. PacBell said it would take about six weeks or so after launch because they're using a different vocoder and need to do some software upgrades to the base stations to support the other vocoders, etc. By the end of the year or early 97 all this should be worked out and you should be able to roam without too much trouble. 4. Other GSM carriers who are currently active: Powertel which has several cities in the southeast in what is called "soft launch" which means the network is up and running with a limited number of commercial customers but they haven't done their big media blitz and grand opening yet; and Western Wireless, which has networks scattered across the western states. They have Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Portland Oregon, and Honolulu up now. John Sullivan Senior Editor, PCS Week jsullivan@phillips.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #618 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Fri Nov 15 12:29:04 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id MAA09831; Fri, 15 Nov 1996 12:29:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 12:29:04 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611151729.MAA09831@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #619 TELECOM Digest Fri, 15 Nov 96 12:29:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 619 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson More on Pay-Per-Use Features (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming (Peter M. Weiss) Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers (Sir Topham Hatt) Re: BellSouth's Own New " (Wes Leatherock) Computer Telephony Meeting December 4 (Robert Becnel) Questions Regarding Show-N-Tell Development Language (robrich@zippo.com) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Kimmo Ketolainen) Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada (Leonard Erickson) Len Levine's Condition (Eric Florack) Re: Banks Bullying Credit Unions (Randy Miller) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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, 15 Nov 1996 09:56:19 -0800 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: More on Pay-Per-Use Features As I've mentioned in previous articles, I am served out of a #1AESS switch from BellSouth, which handles the 504-24x prefixes (the "Seabrook" switch in New Orleans, which was known as CHestnut-x in the old dialed exchange name days). "Pay-per-use" three-way calling in (most) #1AESS offices can *only* be used by dialing a *71 (or 1171) code at the very beinning of the entire call's 'first leg'. However, from *digital* switches in BellSouth (#5ESS and DMS), BellSouth recently added *full three-way flashing privilages* to ALL (POTS) lines, even to those who didn't subscribe to 'monthly' three-way. In Louisiana, the charge for a 'per-use' three-way call if you don't subscribe on a monthly basis (or don't have the "Complete Choice" pay-one-monthly-price package of custom calling and CLASS features) is 75-cents per-use. Pay-per-use Call-Return *69/1169 and Repeat-Dial *66/1166 for those who don't subscribe on a monthly basis is also 75-cents per-use. I don't know exactly when the "Seabrook" switch is going to be changed from a #1AESS to a digital switch. I have "Complete Choice" on my number, but my parents' number (504-242-xxxx) only has Call-Waiting, and more recently, they added 'touchtone' service (in Louisiana, now only nine-cents a month - that's one penny less than a dime!). All of their phones are 1950's and 60's vintage WECO 500 desk sets, rotary dial, either ivory or beige, to match their color scheme, except that the cordless unit (also ivory) can be switched betwen tone or pulse. Now that they have 'touchtone' service, the cordless base unit has been set to 'tone' dialing, and I can use my Radio Shack battery powered portable acoustic tone-dialer to 'break' initial dialtone from the older rotary phones, when trying to callup radio talkshows from their phone. However, they never did use per-use three-way. Every now and then, I'd set up a three-way call with 1171 or *71, and pay my Dad the $1.00 or 75-cents for those calls when he got the bill. But when the "Seabrook" switch is eventually upgraded to 'digital', pay-per-use three-way will be 'stealthfully' available at any time during a 'stable' call in progress, by a simple flash of the switch-hook. I called up BellSouth's Business Office last night, and requested a free blocking on pay-per-use three-way on their line. They won't be able to dial 1171 or *71 at all anymore, and when our switch is upgraded to a digital office, they won't have that *stealth* pay-per-use three-way with a simple flash of the switch-hook. I explained the situation to my Dad about how people in BellSouth regions served by digital switches who didn't subscribe to monthly three-way have recently been having 'mysterious' pay-per-use three-way charges on their bill. And sometimes, "the kids" are running up rather large bills from such lines doing per-use three way, by simply flashing and adding a third party into the conversation, without any requirement of having to specifically initiate such a call with *71/1171. Other people in the area who don't subscribe to monthly three-way and who are served out of digital switches have asked me about this 'stutter' dialtone if they try to place another call right after hanging up from the first call! I told my Dad that I was trying to keep such confusion about such billings and 'stutter' dialtone off of his service, *before* our switch is upgraded. Also, I found out that in Louisiana, BellSouth POTS residential/business lines *can* have the local directory (1-411) 'auto-call-completion' feature restricted at no extra cost! I had the blocking put onto my number. Now, on those few times a call to local directory is placed 1-411, after the system automatically quotes out the requested listing, the directory switch will simply disconnect, *without* attempting to give the option of "to complete a call to this number for an extra thirty-one cents, just 'dial-1' or 'say-yes' at the tone". Last week, I checked with AT&T about their *up-front* prompt, "Directory Link, which can complete your call for an additional (fifty cents), 'press-1' to accept, 'press-2' to reject". For a few years now, I've been receiving this prompt on calls via AT&T to other NPA's DA/information, when a calling card, (10(10)288+0+NPA+KLondike-5-1212, or via 800-CALL-ATT or 800-3210-ATT. Only more recently, I've been getting this prompt on calls from home to 'foreign' NPA directory placed as 1+. AT&T told me that it *can* be blocked from 1+ access, but they might not necessarily be able to block the "Directory Link" auto-call- completion when I call KL.5-1212 information (via AT&T) in other area codes by billing to one of my Bell or AT&T calling card numbers. I did ask them to block "directory link" on my home number when 1+ access is used. However, I have started to make most of my calls to KL5.1212 via MCI (10(10)222+1+NPA+) recently, as MCI routes me to 'genuine Bell/LEC' inward directory in other NPA's, while AT&T seems to route me to a 'third party entity directory provider' when calling information in other states in the US. AT&T *does* seem to give me genuine Bell/LEC inward directory when calling one in Canada, however. Another rather recent 'pay-per-use' feature now being extended to AT&T's 1+ access (in some areas) is "True Messages". It has been available on AT&T 0+ or 800- access calls (Card, Collect, 3rd-Party billing) for several years now. This is the 'feature' where if a number is busy, or if not answered within a certain number of rings, you get the prompt: "The line is busy" (yes I hear the busy signal! now they don't even let you hear busy), or after an AT&T set number of unanswered rings, "Your party is not answering", follwed by in both cases: "To leave a message, for a charge, using AT&T's True Messages, press pound(#)-123, now". If a number is busy, since more people have Call Waiting these days, I expect that they are in the middle of a 'three-way' call (which in some switches 'cancels' out CW), or they are 'flashing' between two calls in a CW situation, or they are in the middle of 'dialing out' a number themselves (which also 'cancels' out CW until dialing is finished, and their outgoing call has 'cut thru'), or they might have cancelled CW on a fax or modem call. I will attempt to call that number later on. If I shoose to pay to record and have the network *attempt* to deliver a message to a continued busy number, I'll place a *separate* call to some service, even one provided by AT&T, to activate the billing process, and record the message. If a number doesn't answer after a few rings, these days more people have answering machines and voicemail service. Some answering machines pick up after a longer number of rings than others do. Some people have Call Forward on 'no answer' set to a certain number of rings (as I do with my home phone forwarding to my cellular; and my cellular has a voicemail as well). If I know that the person has an answering machine and/or voicemail, or some form of CF-on-busy/no-answer, I will wait for their message or forwarding to speak with someone, if I choose to leave a message. Again, if I wanted to pay for recording and attempted delivery of a message, I'll place a *separate* call to such a service provider. I asked AT&T about 'blocking' "True Messages". They told me that they are experimenting with the prompt on 1+ access calls from POTS lines in some areas. But they could 'flag' my account so that my home line won't have this prompt on 1+ outgoing calls, if they 'experiment' with it in my area. But if I *wanted* the feature, they *could add* it. I probably never will desire it to automatically 'barge-in' on busy/unanswered/intercept calls dialed 1+. I also asked if I could have it blocked on all (AT&T handled) *incoming* calls to my number, as I have CF-busy/no-answer from my home number to my cellular phone, and I have BellSouth Mobility's voicemail ("Mobile Memo") if my cellular is 'busy' or not answered, or off-air, etc. Unfortunately, since the *calling* party might choose to *pay* to deliver a message (via AT&T), they 'must' be automatically be given the "True Messages" prompt, as I was told by the service rep. And it seems that I can't get the "True Message" prompt turned off on any outgoing (10(10)288)+0+ or 800-access calls which I bill to any of my Bell or AT&T calling card numbers. As for those situations (away from my home number and billing to calling card) when I am calling Directory (via AT&T) such as to Canadian NPA's, where I am still getting the "Directory Link" prompt, even though the inward directory is genuine LEC/Stentor, I still can 'press-2 to reject' or just ignore the up-front prompt. And if I get "the line is busy" or "your party is not answering" followed by the "True Messages" request menu on calls I place billed to card, all I will do with touching the '#' button is place a second (sequence) call to that number, or a sequence call to another number altogather, or eventually 'hang up' and try later! I am *not* going to press '1-2-3' after I press the pound (#). As for incoming calls, I have to tell people to *completely ignore* the "True Messages" prompt, and just let the incoming call 'eventually' roll over to voicemail, as my outgoing message 'supes' the connection, dropping the "True Messages" option from the connection, whereupon they will then hear my outgoing message and can leave an incoming one. Unfortunately, some people just hangup, not knowing what is going on, thus not even waiting to reach voicemail. Also unfortunate is how we've read here in TELECOM Digest that in some instances, AT&T's "True Messages" has over-riden the far-end LEC's 'intercept with new number referral' messages, as intercept doesn't really 'supe': inward far-end LEC: "The number you have reached, 205-555-0000 has been changed. The new number is, 334-" AT&T cuts in: "Your party is not answering. To leave a message, for a charge..." LEC: "Please make a note of it. Repeat, 205-555-0000 has been changed to 334-555-" AT&T: "Press #123, now" New features *can* be nice and convenient. But a *flood* of new features, all with their various charges and ideosynchrocies can turn-off valued customers. If a customer doesn't like a new feature which has been THRUST upon them, particularly if they have to *PAY* to use it (such as if they *inadvertantly activated it*, or if they *did deliberately activate* it but *didn't know* what the charge is - or that there even is a charge), there SHOULD be *proper public notification* as well as the opportunity to BLOCK/ RESTRICT/ TURN-OFF such feature (or access to feature), for their account, at NO charge! Most of the time, I just prefer to "Dial-it-myself, and SAVE!" (For those who don't know, "Dial-it-yourself, and SAVE!" was an advertising slogan used in many locations, by Bell/telco throughout the 1960's, when customer 1+ DDD was being more completely phased-in across North America, and Bell wanted to promote that customer dialed toll calls cost less than operator assisted ones). 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 ------------------------------ Organization: Penn State University Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 11:39:11 EST From: Peter M. Weiss Subject: Re: New and Creative Trends in Spamming SPAM is the topic of conversation on at least two public Internet lists: Network-wide ID Full address and list description --------------- --------------------------------- SPAM-L SPAM-L@PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM Spam Prevention Discussion List SPAMAD SPAMAD@INTERNET.COM SPAMAD - Discussion of Unsolicited Advertising Online Pete Weiss at Penn State ------------------------------ From: lr@access1.digex.net Subject: Re: How ISPs Can Protect Themselves From Spammers Date: 15 Nov 1996 15:24:01 GMT Organization: Intentionally Left Blank Martin Baines (martinb@reading.sgi.com) wrote: > I have noticed that all of the ATM's in the UK use a simple algorithm > to minimise this risk: they give don't give you any money until the > very end of the transaction i.e. after they have given you your card > back. As most people know not leave until they get their money not > many fall into the trap. Of course if all you do is check your > account, you could still run into the problem. Actually, IBM's tellers always worked this way. > It rather threw me when I used an ATM in the US, and it ejected money, > without giving me the card back. I had got so used to the normal way > in the UK it felt wrong. Some US tellers now don't even retain the card. You just "dip" or "swipe" it. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At the local 7/Eleven here they have a very limited ATM. All it does is dispense cash in increments of twenty dollar bills, sell postage stamps and provide your balance. You just 'swipe' your card in a slot on the side. PAT] ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com (Wes Leatherock) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 22:43:29 GMT Organization: Hotel California BBS Subject: Re: BellSouth's Own New "COCOTs" Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > "Traditional" telco coin phones had their own dedicated trunks to an > operator's center, as well as their own distinct appearance of > incoming jacks on a manual cord-board, or buttons/lamps on a TSPS > board. Many hotel systems had a similar arrangement. Non-coin POTS > residential and non-PBX business locations came in to the operator on > its own dedicated jacks or buttons/lamps. In more recent times, there were combined trunks from some offices, particularly smaller ones, and coin telephones were identified by a spurt of tone as the operator plugged in. As I recall, the designation strips for these trunk groups were half-white, half-red (white on the top half of the strip, red on the bottom half) to call attention to the fact there were coin stations in the group. (Red strips traditionally identified the dedicated coin trunks.) Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com wes.leatherock@origins.bbs.uoknor.edu ------------------------------ From: becnel@crl.com (Robert Becnel) Subject: Computer Telephony Meeting December 4 Date: 14 Nov 1996 20:59:47 -0800 Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access (415) 705-6060 [Login: guest] ANNOUNCEMENT Contact: Tony Zafiropoulos (314) 537-3959 November 15, 1996 Next Computer Telephony Integration User's Group Set For December 4 on the Hammer Technology Testing Platform for CTI Topic: The program will involve a demonstration of the widely-acclaimed Hammer IT product by Paul Mitchell, Regional Sales Representative of Hammer Technology. This product is a telephony test system designed to meet the complete needs of testing computer telephony and enhanced services systems and applications according to Hammer Technologies. The December event is the rescheduled October event. Date/Time: Wednesday, December 4, 1996; 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM (approx) Location: Bridgeton Trails Library (Rm #1) - 3455 McKelvey Road St. Louis, MO (one block south of St. Charles Rock Road) (see map at http://www.ctitek.com/ctiusers/library_map.html) Cost: None. New members welcomed monthly free of charge. Note: All 1997 meetings will be held on the first Wednesday of the month. ***No meeting scheduled for January 1*** Next meeting is February 5,1997 Robert G. Becnel becnel@crl.com (email) http://www.crl.com/~becnel (www) ------------------------------ From: robrich@supper.zippo.com Subject: Questions Regarding Show-N-Tell Development Language Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 12:57:54 GMT Organization: Zippo Do any developers out there use Show-N-Tell as a development language? If so, could anyone answer any of my following questions? We are using a Rhetorex RTNI 2-T1 card with a 2400 RDSP card and two Brooktrout TR-114 fax cards. We have the problem that for some reason, the RDSP card is returning an unexpected return code error when trying to Send or Receive a fax. This problem is sporatic but once it occurs, it seems as if the problem spreads to all the lines. It doe clear up after a while but will show up again maybe a day later. Also, we just encountered another problem when sending a fax. Occasionally, a line may freeze on a Send Fax powerblock. This is usually just limited to one or two of the lines, leaving the others unaffacted. The only solution to this problem has been to reboot the entire system and re-load the firmware. No errors show up, but the line just remains off-hook on that powerblock with no way to stop the line. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Rob ------------------------------ From: Kimmo.Ketolainen@utu.fi (Kimmo Ketolainen +358 40 555 5508) Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: 14 Nov 1996 18:09:20 +0200 Organization: University of Turku Ian Angus wrote: > It's even worse in other parts of the world -- it's astounding how > many computer companies, for example, run ads which are seen world > wide, with no method of contact except a US-only 800 or 888 number. U.S. 800 and 888 numbers _can_ be dialed from abroad. I suspect most Western European countries have an operator allowing this. All three Finnish (universal access) international operators allow dialing 00 1 800 ... (or with their own access code) for the normal U.S. rate. Kimmo Ketolainen * kk@sci.fi * (www.iki.fi/kk) * +358 40 555 5508 ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Service Wanted to Call US 800 Numbers From Canada Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 23:29:01 PST Organization: Shadownet Dale Kramer writes: > Is there a service that I can use that allows me (in Canada) to call a > toll number in the US and then get tied into a line that lets me call > an 800 number that can not be normally dialed from Canada? Is there > any way at all possible to call a US 800 number from Canada? Why not try using 880? That is, instead of dialing 800-xxx-yyyy, dial 880-xxx-yyyy. For 888 numbers, substitute 881. If it works, you'd be charged LD for at least part of the distance, but it'd otherwise be ok. This dodge *was* created to allow folks outside ITU zone 1 to reach 800 and 888 numbers, but I suspect that it'll work for out of region 800 calls too. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 06:06:34 PST From: Eric_Florack@xn.xerox.com (Florack,Eric) Subject: Len Levine's Condition Pat says: > Computer Privacy Digest moderator Len Levine suffered a heart attack > in mid-October and after a stay of several days in Columbia Hospital > in Milwaukee, WI is now resting at home. I'm very sorry to hear it, and wish him a speedy and full recovery. I can't help but half-jokingly wonder, though, if there isn't something unique about technology conference moderators that makes them prone to such things, given that heart problems are a malady you two share. How have YOU been dealing with it of late? Do the doctors feel your problems are under control, now? Best regards, E [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One thing about Len Levine and for that matter about quite a few of the moderator/e-zine publishers on the net is that they have continued their full time employment while working on their newsgroup/mailing list as best they can otherwise. I don't frankly know how they can do it with the amount of time in a day. I used to do that myself until about 1993, but the volume of mail to the Digest simply became too overwhelming to do this newsgroup any justice at all without devoting someone to it pretty much full time, which turned out to be me. Len is to be commended for taking this as well as he has, and looking forward to getting things back on track at his end. How am I doing, you ask? That's a good question but I'll save the answer for another day. I have faith in myself and what I do here, but there are days when my faith is sorely tested. I am going to have to do *something* to get myself in stable financial condition by the first of the year or else rethink much of my priorities. I think my own two heart attacks came largely from stress, combined with too much food from IHOP and McDonald's. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Randy Miller Subject: Re: Banks bullying Credit Unions Date: Fri, 15 Nov 96 10:31:00 EST Pat writes: > I was a customer of Continental Bank in Chicago when Continental went > belly-up (the second time!) and the government made First National > Bank take over all the individual depositors but not the corporate > accounts. My First National account number still reflects after > ten years the fact that I am a 'conversion account' brought over from > Continental Bank in the middle 1980's. PAT] I thought Continental dumped all their personal accounts to First Chicago because they wanted to concentrate only on "business banking" (How well I remember the checks coming from 1200 West Washington (Follett Corporation) and the fun I had getting them cashed after that incident. They had a legend on them saying "Old Kent Bank, or if desired, Continental Illinois Bank." I had more than enough fun getting McHenry Savings Bank to cash it, especially on a Friday afternoon ;-)) This thread reminds me of a nasty incident I had this past Thursday with First Union of Virginia. Thursday was payday. As I was not going to make it back to PA (where I live, and yes I KNOW I'm crazy for commuting 250/day roundtrip to work, but this is Metro D.C., which while I'll work here, I WON'T live here) to get jerked aound by CoreStates Bank, I figured I'd cash the check at First Union, where my employer has their accounts. I go up to the Annadale branch at lunchtime, and they refused to cash the check on the grounds that there was NO MONEY IN THE ACCOUNT!!! Now Compex is a government contractor (DoD in particular). Having been burned once before by a different contractor when I worked for Naval Research and Development, I raised all sorts of it with Human Resources. Fortunately, the ladies in HR are on the ball: they were on the phone with First Union in about two minutes raising all sorts of hell. It turns out that my employer has payroll set up as a Zero-Based account. The teller at the Annadale branch (new teller, to wit) didn't read her terminal carefully enough. According to Human Resources, I am to expect an written apology from First Union any day for the harm they caused me, as well as Compex Corporation. Being the cynical skeptic that I am, I'll believe it when I see it. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #619 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Nov 18 09:13:26 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA18380; Mon, 18 Nov 1996 09:13:26 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 09:13:26 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199611181413.JAA18380@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #620 TELECOM Digest Mon, 18 Nov 96 09:13:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 620 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson VA Needs a *FIFTH* NPA Soon (John Cropper) Tennessee Orders CLECs to Provide "Own" Directory Assistance (Stan Cline) The AT&T "Transfer Service Fee" (Stanley Cline) Payphone Deregulation (John Stahl) BellSouth's Premature Switch Upgrades (Ed Ellers) Request For Information About IRIDIUM Project (acq001@ps.uib.es) Internet Telephony Trade Association Formed (oldbear@arctos.com) How to Assign an ATM Adapter Card For PC With PCI Bus (Zhu Feng) Catching An Annoying Caller (Derek J Tarcza) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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: psyber@mindspring.com (John Cropper) Subject: VA Needs a *FIFTH* NPA Soon Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 11:34:32 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Reply-To: psyber@mindspring.com From Bell Atlantic: November 13, 1996 Dwindling Pool of Phone Numbers Sparks Need for New Area Code in Northern Virginia Bell Atlantic suggests overlay code to avoid splitting communities ARLINGTON, Va. -- Northern Virginia faces a dwindling supply of telephone numbers which will prompt the introduction of a fifth area code in the state in 1999. The announcement came today following a day-long meeting in Arlington of officials from various segments of the telecommunications industry. "Our reserve of telephone numbers in the 703 area code is diminishing at an astonishing rate," said Hugh Stallard, president and CEO of Bell Atlantic-Virginia. The 703 code, which at one time served the entire state, is now assigned only to telephone customers in Northern Virginia. The shortage is triggered by the explosive popularity of cellular telephones, multiple residential telephone lines, pagers, fax machines and modems. Further demand for numbers is coming from new companies seeking to provide local phone service in Northern Virginia. "At the current pace of growth, we will run out of numbers late in 1999," Stallard said. The '703' area includes the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church, and the counties Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William and eastern Loudoun County (including Leesburg). Of the 761 exchange codes (first three digits of a phone number) available for assignment in the 703 area, only 313 remain. An exchange code can contain as many as 10,000 telephone numbers. Creation of a new area code would, in effect, free up over seven million new telephone numbers. Stallard said he will ask the Virginia State Corporation Commission to consider a new type of "overlay" area code for Northern Virginia, one that would not divide the community geographically. Maryland introduced two new overlay area codes earlier this year. The new overlay area code would follow the same existing boundaries of the 703 code. When all phone numbers in the 703 area are used up, additional phone numbers in the same area would be given the new area code. "We won't have to chop up Fairfax County. Arlington and Alexandria won't be split from Fairfax," Stallard said. He added that the overlay area code would allow all current customers to keep their phone numbers. However, the overlay approach would require a change in the way local calls are dialed. Once it's introduced, all callers would need to dial the full 10-digit telephone number for a local call. Customers in Northern Virginia already dial 10 digits to call locally into the District of Columbia or suburban Maryland. If the overlay approach