From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 28 17:58:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA02585; Sat, 28 Aug 1999 17:58:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 17:58:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908282158.RAA02585@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #351 TELECOM Digest Sat, 28 Aug 99 17:58:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 351 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Cisco To Spend $7.4B To Buy Cerent and Monterey Networks (Tad Cook) Re: My Phone Makes False 911 Calls!!! (Tad Cook) Re: Canada's Yak Plan and Canadian Telco System in General (Tony Toews) Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) (Dan Johnson) Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) (A. Argyriou) Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) (Jon D. Loo) Re: Domain Names (Joey Lindstrom) Ads For Pat (Joey Lindstrom) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Cisco To Spend $7.4B To Buy Cerent and Monterey Networks Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 11:44:56 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) John Stahl wrote: > It seems that Cisco is buying another pair of companies, one of which > is a company named Cerent, for which they will shell out $6.9 billion, > that has pulled in less than $10 million over the course of the last > six months -- and lost $29 million in the process! > Wonder from whom these corporations get their info of the companies > they target for take over? I know of some ocean front property in > Phoenix they can buy, real cheap. > I guess when they want to get into another segment of the telecom/data > market, the simplest and easiest way is to buy someone with the > technology. But let's not get ridiculous with the stockholder's > money! Actually they are not handing over nearly $7 billion, they are offering an equivalent value of hyper-inflated Cisco stock. Acquisitions make sense for companies whose stock has been wildly inflated by the market frenzy associated with anything internet. Currently the market value of Cisco's stock is a staggering $220 BILLION dollars, and on Friday's close was trading at a lofty 111 times earnings. Often when stocks involved in the so-called "internet" bubble trade at such inflated levels, it makes a lot of sense for the company to trade a small portion of its holdings to acquire other companies. This is why you have seen Amazon buying up other companies at a fast clip. It doesn't make sense for them to sit on large corporate stock holdings if they can enhance value by trading a small portion of their stock to acquire other firms. Remember, they are not spending stockholder cash, they are trading stock that they DIDN'T sell to stockholders. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com Seattle, WA ------------------------------ Subject: Re: My Phone Makes False 911 Calls!!! Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 12:01:21 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Cortland Richmond wrote: > If you get 9 off hooks in a row, a space, then one off hook, > space and one off hook, it will be seen at the Central Office as a > pulse dialed 911. A space? Meaning it is a full on-hook? (I am assuming this because the other state mentioned was off-hook) No, the C.O. might see a dialed digit, followed by an on-hook, followed by another series off off-hooks. Try taking your phone off-hook, dialing a digit, then putting it on-hook, then taking it off-hook and dialing a digit. The Central Office does not see these two events as related. In order to accept incidental pulse-dialing, the Central Office needs to see a full off-hook state, deliver dialtone, then see a series of ON-hooks approximately 50 ms long interrupted by approximately 50 ms OFF-hooks between each on-hook state. If it arrives at the C.O at an approximate rate of 10 pulses per second, followed by (I think) several hundred ms of OFF-hook inter-digit time, then it should complete the call. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com Seattle, WA ------------------------------ From: ttoews@telusplanet.net (Tony Toews) Subject: Re: Canada's Yak Plan and Canadian Telco System in General Organization: Me, organized? Not a chance. Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 19:41:29 GMT Raymond D. Mereniuk wrote: >> While I generally don't care for government ordered monopolies and >> other bureacratic nightmares I feel the CRTC (Canadian Radio and >> Telecommunications Commission) has done a decent job of regulating the >> telephone industry. We do have competition in long distance. Although >> I choose not to use any carriers as Telus, my provincial telco, has >> quickly matched, or near matched, the competitor's rates. > I believe you are missing the point. We still do not have real > unregulated telephone competition in Canada and we pay big-time > because of that. My main point is fairly simple. Here in Canada we have a well run telephone system with a minimum of problems. The telephone system, from my perspective, works and works reliably and efficiently. If I have a problem or question and want to talk to a human there is a minimum of voice response options and I get through to a human within a minute or two. It may cost a little more, although Ian Angus would disagree and various points about the exchange rate may or may not be valid, but I will happily pay a premium for good quality service where the employees are reasonably happy and efficient at their jobs. If, OTOH, rates are driven so low that the employees are grossly underpaid and are of correspondingly low quality who don't care, then I don't want that telephone system. > The Canadian Telcos have done such a good job > lobbying (corrupting) the CRTC and the powers that be in Canada > that Canadians feel good about the shaft they are receiving. Then we agree to disagree. > The Canadian Telcos have done no significant cost-cutting to enter > this supposed age of competition. I'll let Ian's previous replies stand for this. > I figure the Canadian Telcos should be forced to cut their cost > structure to maintain their profitability in a time of competition rather > than lobbying (corrupting) the Canadian government and the CRTC > for permission to milk more money from their residential > subscribers. Whereas I disagree. The telephone system is reasonably priced. I'm paying about $500 to $700 per month on my various phone bills. Between my Yellow Page advertising, various lines, Internet access and long distance I feel I have much more to complain about that most people. > I don't intend to insult anyone here with my rant but I get that funny > feeling everytime I sit down after I get my telephone bill. BTW I should point out that I'm mostly to the right on the political spectrum. I don't like many things about unions and so on. Just thought I'd point out that I'm no left wing, pinko NDPer. Tony Toews, Independent Computer Consultant Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm VolStar http://www.volstar.com Manage hundreds or thousands of volunteers for special events. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) From: panoptes@iquest.net (Daniel W. Johnson) Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 22:54:32 -0500 Jonathan D Loo wrote: > If a company has a trademark and this trademark existed prior to the > registration of a domain name, this company should have no trouble > acquiring the domain name even if the domain name registrant refuses. One problem with this: Trademarks apply to specific product fields. A music company with the trademark "Apple" can't touch a company that wants to use (and register) that as a trademark for something other than music. (Of course, the second company needs to be careful that its products aren't useful for music.) A game company that registers the trademark "AD&D" for one of its products can't keep insurance companies from using that as a term for one of their products. So, what would you have happen if companies with the same word trademarked in different fields want the same domain name? Daniel W. Johnson panoptes@iquest.net http://members.iquest.net/~panoptes/ 039 53 36 N / 086 11 55 W ------------------------------ From: anthony@alphageo.com (Anthony Argyriou) Subject: Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 07:45:50 GMT Organization: Alpha Geotechnical Reply-To: anthony@alphageo.com kim@aol.com (Kim Brennan) wrote: > There is no suburb to move to on the internet, > unless you consider proprietary services like AOL's. AOL is a suburb like West Oakland is a suburb. There's some really nice houses, and some decent people, but ... Suggesting AOL (or any of the other proprietary services) as a refuge from the over-commercialization of the internet is a pretty ridiculous idea. There's a lot of non-commercial internet out there, and there is nothing inherently wrong with trying to make money on the internet. The real problem is intrusiveness of the process, and the (anti-capitalist) abuse of the law to obtain unfair advantages Going to the Avery Dennison case -- I think that AD would have a case for infringement if the domain avery.com had been taken -- .com means commercial, and Avery is a well known brand (Avery labels). Most reasonable people would expect to find Avery Labels at avery.com. However, .net and org mean something else, and avery.net doesn't imply Avery labels at all. What's needed is a judge who will say that .net and .org don't get the same kind of trademark protection as does .com. Anthony Argyriou ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 04:51:11 EDT From: Jonathan D Loo Subject: Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) In article TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response: > For the information of Jonathan Loo and others who seem to feel that > if a company has a trademark or copyright all they have to do is just > shut down someone else's website and take the name away from them, you > cannot just take someone's name like that. They cannot take over the domain *unless* the trademark was registered *before* the domain name was registered, if I recall correctly. > Columbine was the fault of the Internet and all the gun dealers and > bomb-makers therein while conveniently ignoring the fact that high > school can be hell for some kids, and that after all the taunting and > tormenting they had to take because they were gay the two at Columbine > eventually broke from the pressure; I suppose we might as well now > pick on guys who choose names for their sites that only an idiot would > confuse with that of a major corporation. I didn't know they were Gay. Was this in the news? If yes then I must have missed something. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, I guess you must have missed something. Many papers did not mention it at all; others chose to not make an issue out of it. I do not intend to either. By the way, you do not spell it with an upper-case 'G' ... it is not a proper noun, it is an adjective. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 00:54:46 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Re: Domain Names On Fri, 27 Aug 1999 18:30:33 -0400 (EDT), TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I note you say 'controls will be > enforced on the users' rather than controls being enforced on the > companies which are swarming all over the place. How nice. Yes, by > all means, let's keep the users in their place and not offend our > new residents; why who knows, they may take the hint and go back to > their storefronts and stay off the net. I welcome anyone on this net > as long as they are willing to follow the existing rules and trad- > itions which have long been in place here. > As to who 'owns the internet' I suggest it is 'owned' by the persons > and institutions who support its traditional role over the first > couple decades of its existence; a medium for the exchange of ideas > and knowledge; a way for people to communicate freely without the > restrictions and sanitizing imposed on their ideas and speech so > common in the mainstream media. Some have supported that role by > financing the 'backbone'; others have supported it by making their > computers available for free or at cost to the public who wish to > use them. Still others have supported it with their creativity and > knowledge shared freely with everyone. In short, anyone who wasn't here in the 80's, when the internet was a cool and groovy place, should be made to take a back seat and allow "the old timers" to continue to set the rules, with no input from us at all. Well, thank you very much, Pat. Who "owns" the internet? A lot of people "own" the internet, or at least small pieces of it. I "own" some of it: I've got four servers hooked up to an ADSL line and have about a dozen websites, plus email, RealAudio, etc. In this respect, I "own" more internet than you do. Yet you would have me sit back and allow you to set the rules for me? No thanks -- I get a vote too. Let's get something straight here. The internet was originally built by the US Department of Defense and all the other organizations that decided to link in, ie: mostly educational institutions, military bases, etc. The pricetag was enormous. It was their (collective) decisions to basically leave things free and open that created the "traditions" that you've mentioned. The users of the 'net at that time didn't have a big convention and decide how things would work - they just evolved haphazardly. Nobody climbed a mountain and returned with two stone tablets labelled "The Ten Internet Commandments". I can understand why people pine (no pun intended) for the "good old days". But those days are gone. As Denis Leary would say, "Life sucks, get a f***ing helmet." Deal with it and focus on doing whatever you can to make your corner of the internet a good place. And, indeed, you do an admirable job there. I guess what I'm venting about here, Pat, is the near-constant corporate bashing that goes on here. Yes, there are some companies on the 'net who are not nice netizens -- I'd rank Geocities at the top of this list. But the whole "American spirit" is to vote with your wallet -- or in this case, with your mouse. Don't like Geocities sites? Don't visit 'em or use a pop-up killer. Case closed, move on. Pat, as much as it may gall you and the other old-timers here, these companies have every right to do what they're doing, and every right to carve out their little niche on the 'net. If we don't like what they're doing, nobody's forcing us to visit their sites. I hear lots of bitching about having to register to read articles on some New York newspaper's website. Aw, shucks. I guess we should campaign for a new law to force these companies to provide us with the latest news free of charge without registration. I mean, after all, it's our right -- we were here first, after all, and they're just a bad ol' corporation and a Johnny-come-lately to boot. It costs money to maintain such a website. BIG money. They've gotta pay reporters to go out and get stories, they've gotta pay wire services for copy that they don't generate themselves, they've gotta pay for bandwidth, servers, and someone to mash it all into the website on a daily basis. Somebody pays the bill, and unlike the "good ol' days", that somebody isn't an educational institute with a massive budget allocated for expensive toys. They expect to earn a profit, and rightly so. Personally, I'm not too worried about having to register to use their website. But on the other hand, I find it easier to just surf on over to www.cnn.com or one of the other great free news sites on the internet. CNN gives me one banner ad at the top of each page, and I don't have a problem with that at all. It's inobtrusive, and occasionally one will interest me to the point where I'll actually click-thru the damned thing. And that's how CNN makes their money, and thus can continue bringing me their excellent free service. Sometimes I'll click-thru an ad not because I'm interested in the advertised product, but because I haven't clicked-thru for a few days and figure I owe them the 12 cents or so they'll collect. One good turn deserves another, after all. The "good old days" of the internet were a something-for-nothing proposition for a great many of the netizens involved. In turn, they'd use the resources they had at their disposal and, in turn, would build something useful with them (ie: the TELECOM Digest). But somebody had to funnel those resources into the 'net in the first place. Those days are gone, gone, and gone. Dang it all. We can moan and bitch, or we can adjust and move on. > Geocities has supported the net by tossing popup ads in the face of > everyone who visits them. Many companies have supported the net by > snooping on everyone who comes to visit them. Quite a few newcomers > have supported the net by conducting one scam after another, or > flooding us with unwanted email. All very net-like and traditional, > wouldn't you say? Well, you probably would say so if you had only > been around here for the last five years or so, but believe me, > that is *not* what the net is about, or how it was intended. What was "intended" and what "is" are two different things. Tough cookies (again, no pun intended). Yes indeed, there are a bunch of rotten bastards on the 'net these days. Kinda like in real life, no? The nirvana days are gone, get used to it and find creative ways to deal with it. The clock isn't gonna roll back (well, 'cept for those poor buggers with non-Y2K compliant machines, that is ...) > Regards whether or not corporate support is needed and whether or > not the net could survive without it, all I can say is are people > around here really that hard-up financially? I certainly support > the growth of the *user-base* on the internet. I certainly support > the improvements in connectivity we have seen in the past few years. And who should pay for this? Would you prefer that the users pay $100/month for a 28.8K dial-up account? Because without the big companies, that's exactly what we'd be facing. > cents per click-through. A web site called 'Topica' has offered me > five hundred dollars for my mailing list, can you believe that? I > would get about 25 cents for each of you guys. I suppose I could buy a > new computer and improve my network connectivity. We all want the net > to grow and prosper, right? In actual practice, when my rent comes > due every Thursday and its two weeks before the next ITU grant > installment arrives and the post office box has produced only very > slim pickings for several weeks, it *is* tempting. But no thanks, > the net means a little more to me than that, and I wish it did to > you as well. PAT] Pat, if "Topica" is willing to pay you 25 cents for my email address, you HAVE MY EXPRESS PERMISSION to sell it to them. It's not much, but I'm willing to "pay" for my TELECOM Digest (at least in a small, small way) by having to deal with a bit more spam. I wonder how many others here would be similarly willing to offer up their email address for this? Maybe Pat could find several buyers, each of whom would pass along 25 cents for our email addresses. If he was successful, he wouldn't need sponsorship anymore - the TELECOM Digest would be a self-financing operation. The net means a lot to me, too, Pat, and I'm not trying to denigrate you or your efforts or your vision of what the net should be. But I live in 1999 and have to deal with things as they are, not how they used to be. Sure, it'd be nice to go back to those old days, but it ain't gonna happen. My favourite author, Robert Heinlein, said it best: "TANSTAAFL", or "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Maybe you should consider moving away from voluntary donations, and asking all Digest subscribers to (perhaps after a free two-week trial to see if they like it or not) toss in a MANDATORY subscription fee of, say, $5/year. IIRC (and my memory's fuzzy here), you mentioned you had a subscriber base of about 4000 - that translates to $20,000/year, and I for one would pay that $5. But I also would have *NO* problem whatsoever with you putting a CNN-style banner ad on the website, and/or a text ad at the bottom (or top) of each Digest, or whatever it takes to help pay the bills. If you went too far, and pulled a Geocities on us, I'd likely stop subscribing - so it's a precarious balance. But I think just about everyone here knows that the Digest puts a financial burden on you, and would not only be ok with you going for a bit of advertising revenue, but would in fact encourage you to do so if you put the question to them. From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom Email: Joey@GaryNumanFan.NU or joey@lindstrom.com Phone: +1 403 313-JOEY FAX: +1 413 643-0354 (yes, 413 not 403) Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU "Bend the rules, but don't break them." --Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Babylon 5 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I never said you had to be here in the 1980's. I said you are welcome (let me repeat myself) *if you support the traditional role of the net as it was used during all those years*. Obviously, not everyone could be around in the 1980's; I daresay many of the people who have become millionaires on the net at the expense of the rest of us probably were not even born by then (smiling, but with teeth bared as I smile). Whenever you were born, hatched, dropped out of a tree or whatever is unimportant. How many computers and peripherals you own is unimportant. What you choose to do with them is unimportant. When you choose to come into an *existing community* how you choose to conduct yourself *is very important*. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, and all that. I never said you do not get any say-so or had to take a back seat. I never claimed the rules of the net were part of the Ten Commandments or any similiar thing. What I think I said was in essence that the internet was around for many years; there were lots of people here -- many of whom unfortunatly have fled in disgust in recent years -- and that we all had various mutual agreements as to how things would be done. We had a delightful little community, or in your words, a 'cool and groovy place' and it all worked out just fine. When newcomers arrived, they were given copies of FAQ's dealing with 'netiquette' and other issues. We said to them 'this is what we are doing here, and how we do it. Would you like to be part of our community?' One of the important, cardinal rules was that we shared without question or hesitation our knowledge in the areas in which we were specialists. We never wrote down our rules and we never had lawyers to enforce them because it was thought unnecessary. I can now look back in hindsight of course and say look at the mess that has become of things as a result. To this day I blame Timothy Berners-Lee for not slapping a very strong, very heavy-handed copyright on all his work involving the web, effectively making the misuse we have now impossible. But of course he did not do that because the web was *his* contribution to our community. Poor innocent Tim ... he just puts it in the public domain, like all of us here used to do. Imagine any of the commercial sites that have infested the net in recent years putting any of their stuff in the public domain. Far from it ... instead, their attitude has been to hell with your netiquette, to hell with your traditions, to hell with your plans, to hell with your goals, to hell with your sharing amongst yourselves; we are here now and we are taking over and you will damned well do as you are told or else leave. If we have to, our lawyers will force you to comply. This is now ours, it is not yours any longer. Your rules have all been revoked, under the assumption we choose to respect the legitimacy of any of them to start with. Find me a single one of their websites which does not post their set of rules, their prohibition against copying any of their material, all their 'Ten Commandments' enforced by thier legal beagles. >"I would have no problem with you putting a banner ad on pages or > selling my name" ... Maybe you wouldn't, but I surely would. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 01:00:16 -0600 Reply-To: "Joey Lindstrom" Subject: Ads For Pat In regards to my last post, how many of you would be ok with the idea of Pat including a banner ad or two on the TELECOM Digest website in order to pay some of his expenses, and/or text ads within the Digest itself? Don't clutter the Digest or the newsgroup with your responses, send them via email to: adsforpat@interocitor.net I'll tally 'em up over the next week and post the results here. From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom Email: Joey@GaryNumanFan.NU or joey@lindstrom.com Phone: +1 403 313-JOEY FAX: +1 413 643-0354 (yes, 413 not 403) Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU "If you offer someone a body part to slit, make certain it doesn't have a major artery." --Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Babylon 5 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wish you would not do that, and I must ask that no one respond. There are various reasons why it cannot happen here: One, it would be in contravention of my grant from ITU, which was explicitly provided as a way to keep the Digest free of advertising. Two, it would be insulting to those people who have given gifts at one time or another to help fund the Digest and keep it non-commercial. Three, it would be insulting to the special friends of the Digest who have given extraordinarily to assist such as Mike Sandman, Paula Pettis and others unnamed who have been placed all these years on the page of sponsors, and have remained there making no special demands for space, time or mention. Four, it would be an imposition on MIT which provides me excellent connectivity, a tremendous amount of disk space and a great deal of personal latitude. Sites in .edu are not to have advertising and I do not intend to impose on them in that way, nor do I think they would even allow it, but I am not going to bother inquiring. I suspect their allowance of advertising here could jeopardize some aspects of their own organization. Five, it would be inappropriate for a site in .org to carry advertising. I would not want to continue as an .org, which would mean changing the domain to .com, and having to deal with those problems. Furthermore, you should note that 'telecom-digest.org' is *merely an alias* which points to massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives. Its physical property is zero, it has no physical location. Therefore, see again my fourth objection, above. It would Six, it would be a conflict of interest to carry advertising while attempting to editorialize about the advertisers. What telco do you know of that would advertise here given my disposition and that of many of the writers here? What sort of messages could ever appear here in the future that were not clouded by suspicion based on the presence of the advertising? I see no way it would work at all without a lot of people getting getting victimized in the process. And by the way, they don't pay twelve cents per click-through. How about two cents? I have tolerated this to a limited extent in areas like /news and /postoffice where the ads have been a 'take it or leave it' proposition and I felt the good for this site outweighed the bad, and where I have no personal involvement in or profit from the click-throughs ... but no click- throughs in the Digest proper. So please don't even consider it. Thank you. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #351 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 29 21:07:10 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id VAA16339; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:07:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:07:10 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908300107.VAA16339@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #352 TELECOM Digest Sun, 29 Aug 99 21:07:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 352 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Why Do 66 Blocks Have That Name? (Roy Smith) Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service (Alan Gore) Re: How I Block Cookies (Ron Donnell) GSM Phone With "Privacy Indicator"? (David Wagner) Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (J.F. Mezei) The Trouble With the Newcomers (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: roy@endeavor.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) Subject: Re: Why Do 66 Blocks Have That Name? Organization: New York University School of Medicine Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 18:04:57 -0400 Jim Van Nuland wrote: > It's a coincidence. As you've stated, the A-, B- and sometimes C- > batteries were of whatever voltage was needed for the particular vaccuum > tubes. > Note that AAA, AA, A, C, and D cells are all 1.5 volts (except that the > NiCd of the same sizes are 1.2 or 1.25. So the cell letters are physical > sizes, and only approximagely, voltages. A little nomenclature here ... A "cell" is a single anode-electrolyte-cathode unit. The actual voltage depends on the chemistry of the cell. Carbon-zinc and alkaline dry cells are both about 1.5 volts. A NiCd (Nickle-Cadmium) is about 1.2 volts. A lead-acid wet cell (as found in a car battery) is about 2.25 volts. All sorts of more exotic special-purpose cells (Silver-Mercury, Lithium-Metal-Hydride, etc) each have their own charateristic fully-charged cell voltage. The AAA, AA, A, C, D, etc designations all denote form-factor, i.e. physical dimensions, and location/shape/and polarity of contacts. There's also a "half AA" size, which is the same diameter as a AA cell, and half the length. The only place I've ever seen them used is in some computer motherboards for clock power (Apple used to like them in the Mac-II series). In theory, at least, I suppose you could build a (sealed!) lead-acid cell in a "D" shape, and then you'd have a 2.25 volt D cell. A "battery" is, by definition, an assembly of two or more cells. For example, a standard "12 volt" car battery is 6 lead-acid cells in series, each one producing 2.25-ish (I'd have to look up the exact number) volts, for a total of about 13.6 (or is it 13.8?) volts when fully charged. A 90 volt "B" battery would be a stack of 60 1.5 volt dry cells in a single package. The package is typically a paperboard box, so it's easy to open, and if you do so, you'll find exactly that inside. A 9 volt transistor battery is a stack of 6 cells inside. If you carefully open one up by prying or cutting the metal skin apart, you'll find a stack of 6 flattish cells, wired in series. ------------------------------ From: agore@primenet.com (Alan Gore) Subject: Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 22:12:27 GMT Organization: Software For PC's Jonathan D. Loo wrote: > A search on Companies Online (http://companies.lycos.com) reveals there > indeed are many offices in many states and it is not clear which is the > correct office. This one looks promising: Thanks for the references. It's something else I can try. agore@primenet.com | "Giving money and power to the government Alan Gore | is like giving whiskey and car keys Software For PC's | to teenaged boys" - P. J. O'Rourke http://www.alangore.com ------------------------------ From: Ron Donnell Subject: Re: How I Block Cookies Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 15:55:21 -0700 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Alan Boritz wrote (emphasis added in 4th line): ... > Keep in mind, though, that regardless of whether you allow web sites > to write to cookies.txt, a rogue web site operator can read anything > stored there (like passwords, preferences, etc.), unless if you've > upgraded to a version HIGHER THAN 4.51 (see Netscape tech note at > http://help.netscape.com/kb/client/981231-1.html). Not to be picky, but I think it's worth noting that according to the web page cited: > The Cookie Monster bug affects all existing versions of Netscape > Navigator (2.x through 4.x) on all platforms up until 4.51 when > it was fixed. So if you have 4.51, as I read it, you are OK w.r.t. this cookie threat. Ron Donnell ------------------------------ From: David Wagner Subject: GSM Phone With "Privacy Indicator"? Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 23:34:17 +0000 I've heard that some GSM cellphones have an "encryption indicator" that shows what level of encryption you're using. Any leads? In particular, I'd like to be able to tell whether my conversation is using A5/1 (the strong encryption algorithm), A5/2 (the weak one), or is sending in cleartext. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks! David Wagner, daw@cs.berkeley.edu ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service Date: 29 Aug 1999 01:13:08 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 02:41:29 -0400 (EDT), jloo@polaris.umuc.edu allegedly said: > On InfoSeek (http://infoseek.go.com) the following is listed as an > address for MCI: > Bernard J. Ebbers > Chief Executive Officer > MCI WorldCom, Inc. > 515 East Amite Street > Jackson, MS 39201 I'd try this one first. WorldCom started in Jackson, Miss. North Shore Technologies Corporation http://www.NorthShoreTechnologies.net 815 Superior Ave. #610, Cleveland, OH 44114-2702 216.619.2NET 888.480.4NET Host of the Forum for Responsible & Ethical E-mail http://www.spamfree.org I am the president and sole shareholder of NSTC. Thus, I feel comfortable saying that my opinions do represent the official opinions of the company :) ------------------------------ From: J.F. Mezei Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 21:49:41 -0400 Anyone want to bet that Bill Gates will somehow succeed in claiming he invented the Internet ? After all, Microsoft convinced Deloit & Touche to broadcast ads stating that it was Microsoft that ushered in the information age. My sister is doing a documentary and asked me if the internet started with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 :-( :-( She couldn't beleive me when I told her it started well before PCs existed. By the way, shouldn't the title not be "20th" Birthday ? If one considers that the MAC-OS began in 1984, even though its predecsoors, the LISA (and the XEROX test systems before) were the originators, the the birthdate of the Internet should really the time when the *inter*net began, and not Arpanet. Right ? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 22:24:45 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: The Trouble With the Newcomers Sorry, but in the last issue there was not enough time or space to answer Joey Lindstrom as completely as I would have liked. I will try to finish my response now. Joey Lindstrom wrote: > Let's get something straight here. The internet was originally built > by the US Department of Defense and all the other organizations that > decided to link in, ie: mostly educational institutions, military > bases, etc. The pricetag was enormous. It was their (collective) > decisions to basically leave things free and open that created the > "traditions" that you've mentioned. The users of the 'net at that time > didn't have a big convention and decide how things would work - they > just evolved haphazardly. Nobody climbed a mountain and returned with > two stone tablets labelled "The Ten Internet Commandments". You are completely correct. At least you seem to agree with me that the founding organizations and people made some decisions in how they wanted things to be here, 'free and open', creating the traditions. You are also correct that there is nothing in the law or otherwise which sustains those traditions. Unfortunatly, in their short-sighted way, they saw no reason to nail things down, and now it has all been stolen. That should be a lesson for us the next time any of us create something new: set the rules in stone. Sad, but truly needed. > I guess what I'm venting about here, Pat, is the near-constant > corporate bashing that goes on here. Yes, there are some companies on > the 'net who are not nice netizens -- I'd rank Geocities at the top of > this list. But the whole "American spirit" is to vote with your wallet > -- or in this case, with your mouse. Don't like Geocities sites? Don't > visit 'em or use a pop-up killer. Case closed, move on. If it were just that easy, it would be great. Trouble is, there is more than meets the eye with your simplistic approach. > Pat, as much as it may gall you and the other old-timers here, these > companies have every right to do what they're doing, and every right to > carve out their little niche on the 'net. If we don't like what > they're doing, nobody's forcing us to visit their sites. You make it sound as though Mr. Tiny Little Netizen has a web site and he supports it by offering a couple things for sale. When someone comes to his virtual shop, he sells whatever. If I do not like what he sells or what he promotes, I vote with my mouse and do not go back. You make it sound as though I want to drive him away, which I do not. The purpose of the web is to openly share with the community and if necessary, use some advertising or commmercial activity to support your work, not the other way around where you come here to sell things and have nothing to offer in exchange. Read the newspapers as they encourage businesses to start web sites. They don't say, go start a web site and make the world a better place by a process of sharing and learning. No, what they say is, you had better set up a web site cause there are millions of netizens out there you can hustle with your goods and merchandise. There is gold to be made on the net. There are all sorts of demographics to be created. I will suggest the original intention of the founders -- and thus far we agree who they were -- and the first couple decades of netizens to follow were to have an open access, easily available pool of educational and research resources. Notes of Tim Berners-Lee from fifteen years ago seem to suggest he concurred with that basic idea and expanded/improved on it with the idea that everyone could very easily link to everyone else. If you agree with those goals and ideas, then welcome! We don't care if you have a major computational center on your premises, two or three computers and a dozen peripherals attacked to the wire, a small laptop computer like myself, or if you go down to the public library and use their terminal each day. Bring your ideas, your resources, your abilities and let's do it! If you want to learn, and share and exchange on this great big party line, then join the rest of us who have been doing it for years. But now come the ones you say have 'every right' to be here and they say, "Well we did not come here to share and exchange at all. We came here just to sell things. We don't share our stuff, we sell it." I suggest they came to the wrong place. The ones with 'every right' don't seem to have much concern about netiquette (spam, privacy violations), and say they will set the rules henceforth. Not only am I free to move my mouse as I please, I am also free try and do everything in my power to avoid their email, usually unsuccessfully. I suggest they came to the wrong place if that's their goal. The ones with 'every right' see me try to dodge their email and so instead of respecting the wishes of those who do not want to receive it -- you know, some sort of old fashioned thinking which says 'I am the newcomer here, I would like to learn how to work along with these people instead of offending them right off the bat' -- they devise better and more crafty schemes to make sure their mail gets through to me anyway. If you were a newcomer in a community, real or virtual, would you start right out by being an affront and offense to everyone you met or would you at least try the old customs and traditions first and see how well you could blend in? Some of them might be amazed to find out how well received they would be if they put up a single dinky web page with something of value to the community overall and in a casual way discussed the business they are in and what they have for sale rather than 'welcoming' you to their site by immediatly demanding registration, warning you against trying to pull any funny stuff and then tossing a bunch of ads right in your face. Some welcome, eh? I suggest the net has never worked that way in the past, and although I am amenable to compromise and considering change, I don't like having all my goals and dreams ripped off either. Perhaps they came to the wrong place. > I hear lots of bitching about having to register to read articles on > some New York newspaper's website. Aw, shucks. I guess we should > campaign for a new law to force these companies to provide us with the > latest news free of charge without registration. I mean, after all, > it's our right -- we were here first, after all, and they're just a > bad ol' corporation and a Johnny-come-lately to boot. They are under no obligation of the sort. None of us are under any legal or moral obligation to deposit things on the net for the benefit of others. But if we choose to enter an existing arrangement where 'tradition' or founder's choice of operation or whatever dictate certain ways of doing things, then we do have an obligation to work within the existing procedures. If they are unwilling to deposit things on the net for the benefit of others at no charge -- and that is their perfect right -- then let me suggest perhaps they are in the wrong place. That is how we do it here. Regards your 'bad ol corporation' sarcasm, let me just say that it has been my experience at least, that in any scenario, virtual as on the web or as real as a skyscraper office building in downtown Chicago, most large corporations are not reluctant or hesitant at all to toss existing tradition, rules and moral codes of behavior down the nearest sewer when it meets their needs. It certainly should not come as a shock they want to do it here on the net also. > It costs money to maintain such a website. BIG money. Bologna. Most corporate web sites are grossly over-valued in terms of 'what it costs' to maintain them. Please do not become an apologist for the crowd which likes to say 'those terrible hackers broke into our site and now it is going to cost us millions of dollars just to repair the damage. ' That joke was old a few years ago. > They've gotta pay reporters to go out and get stories, they've gotta > pay wire services for copy that they don't generate themselves, They already have those people, remember? They've been putting out a print publication for over a hundred years. > they've gotta pay for bandwidth, servers, and someone to mash it all > into the website on a daily basis. That would be an additional expense, however I would be more impressed if they charged it off from the profit they are making already and treated it as a marketing expense for their existing product. Perhaps some of their print advertisers would be interested in simple, unobtrusive, inoffensive messages at the site to help offset their costs. > Somebody pays the bill, and unlike the "good ol' days", that > somebody isn't an educational institute with a massive budget > allocated for expensive toys. I dare say most of them have massive budgets, and some of the commercial sites would put the smaller educational sites on the net to shame when it comes to 'toys'. > They expect to earn a profit, and rightly so. No, not rightly so. Go back again and read the first paragraph about the founders, the intentions, the tradition and all that ... I guess really you are providing the best answer I could make for my own argument here. They came to the net to make a profit. Not to share, not to learn, not to contribute to the world, *but to rip off the net and make a profit*. In that sense, what makes them better than any spammer you would complain about, except they are more sophisti- cated in their approach. If you came here to make a profit at the expense of the rest of us, or just to gather demographics and increase your customer base, I suggest you came to the wrong place. That never has been our goal or purpose here before. Joey, you would be among the first to complain about unwanted spam in your mailbox, and that's fine. But why is cluttered up bandwidth along with the repressive rules they would like to enforce on the whole net not as equally offensive to you as a cluttered mailbox? Spam is spam, whether it comes in the form of unwanted email for some commercial product or service or whether it comes in the form of registration to receive further spam or in the form of banners you click on to receive spam? The point is, most commercial sites are not present here to share. They are here to take. They are here to sell, and profit at the expense of everyone else. That is not what the net was built for, and it is why I suggest that maybe they are in the wrong place. > I find it easier to just surf on over to www.cnn.com or one of the > other great free news sites on the internet. CNN gives me one banner > ad at the top of each page, and I don't have a problem with that at > all. Then sometime perhaps you should try http://telecom-digest.org/news since I don't give you any banner advertisements at all in the areas I directly control such as the audio news headlines, the quick news summary, or the secondary page of about a hundred headlines each day you can click on. A few of the suppliers there do put banner ads on their individual pages which I have no control over, but their work is decent enough that I live with it. If you have no problems with one banner ad at the top of a page, then I doubt you will have any problems with the same news and no banner ads at all. > It's inobtrusive, and occasionally one will interest me to the point > where I'll actually click-thru the damned thing. And that's how CNN > makes their money, and thus can continue bringing me their excellent > free service. Precisely, and that is what makes cnn.com such a fine credit to the net. I have CNN's video newscast at http://telecom-digest.org/news/CNNTV.html and I have no problem at all with the little *12 second* blurb on the front or the *30 second* blurb on the end of the ten minute video which they update around the clock. After they first started that feature, I was the one that had to call Atlanta (they operate their web site out of Turner Broadcasting facilities there) to tell them they had their .ram file pointed at the wrong thing a few times but they have it all in pretty good working order now. > The "good old days" of the internet were a something-for-nothing > proposition for a great many of the netizens involved. In turn, they'd > use the resources they had at their disposal and, in turn, would build > something useful with them (e: the TELECOM Digest). But somebody had > to funnel those resources into the 'net in the first place. See above. It was not all one-sided something-for-nothing as you suggest. Some gave money (are you saying that is everything?) and some contributed time, resources and knowledge, which apparently is the 'nothing' side of your illustration. > Those days are gone, gone, and gone. Dang it all. We can moan and > bitch, or we can adjust and move on. But they are only 'gone' because the newcomers have chosen to make them 'be gone' while substituting their own version of how things should be in their place. I do not accept their authority for doing so. Remember, you are dealing now with sites who firmly hold the position no more sharing, no more learning, just selling and demographics collecting. Not a little sharing, some selling on the side to support it and collecting some demographics that we might better improve our site, but rather, no sharing, lots of selling, and demographics that we might better screw the netizens. I'll choose to moan and bitch, thank you, my underlying thesis being perhaps they came to the wrong place. I'll make the perfectly outlandish suggestion that when you go into a commmunity, set in its ways perhaps, with no rule of law governing its traditions, you might at least try to make friends instead of enemies. They might try reading Dale Carnagie's book 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' and then try to set up their web sites. But you see, they are not here looking for friends, they are not here looking to learn anything except how many credit cards you have in your purse and what your credit line on them is and what makes you tick, the better to sell you whatever. Isn't it too bad when on the front page of Tribute to the Telephone a message has to appear saying 'this is not a commercial site, we have nothing to sell, we do not want to buy anything', the default these days being the exact opposite of course. If all it took was moving my mouse, that would be great. But in reality the toll has been much, much higher. If you run a mailing list of any size these days, half of it bounces because the end site 'does not allow spam'. If you want to start a web site, better clear the name you intend to use with Corporation X's attorney first. If you are going to write about some topic or speak about it, have you made certain Corporation Y will allow that sort of speech. Government restrictions and hassles on the net are worse than ever before. And when it comes to pure, unadulterated ignorance, nothing can match a newspaper reporter writing about the net. > And who should pay for this? Would you prefer that the users pay > $100/month for a 28.8K dial-up account? Because without the big > companies, that's exactly what we'd be facing. I dispute those figures. I would like some proof of it. This sounds a lot like 'our web site cost us a million dollars to fix the last time a hacker broke into it.' Nonsense! > The net means a lot to me, too, Pat, and I'm not trying to denigrate > you or your efforts or your vision of what the net should be. But I > live in 1999 and have to deal with things as they are, not how they > used to be. Sure, it'd be nice to go back to those old days, but it > ain't gonna happen. It certainly won't happen as long as Internet Society continues to hold meetings with large business interests in which netizen or other public participation is forbidden even though taxpayer money is used to fund it. You knew of course they flatly refuse to allow any netizen reporters to attend. Ronda Hauben was kicked out when she tried to go to one of the sessions. Oh, they allow the {New York Times} to attend of course, because they can count on the story getting out the way they want it. Their explanation for how they can use government money yet keep the meetings closed to the public? Well you see, there are foreign business interests present and many of them have always been accustomed to doing business secretly without anyone watching, and they would be offended if they were required to obey American laws and customs on open meetings and all that. They literally had the gall to use that explanation for why the 'average netizen' is not welcome at their meetings. I do not know if that was before or after they put the mocking comment on their web site that, 'the internet is for everyone' ... everyone willing to be choked with cookies, demographiced and spied on, that is. Even though I asked -- I thought nicely -- to have a link from their site to http://internet-history.org they won't do it. I suspect they sort of wish the net of the past would vanish and no one would learn about it at all. The net of the future is all people need to know about. > My favourite author, Robert Heinlein, said it > best: "TANSTAAFL", or "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". > Maybe you should consider moving away from voluntary donations, and > asking all Digest subscribers to (perhaps after a free two-week trial > to see if they like it or not) toss in a MANDATORY subscription fee of, > say, $5/year. IIRC (and my memory's fuzzy here), you mentioned you had > a subscriber base of about 4000 - that translates to $20,000/year, and > I for one would pay that $5. That is heresy. I have no intention of it at all. Maybe you should consider moving away from being an apologist for the rotten things and way things are in now and consider how to restore the net. Heresy! Not only is it heresy it is very fuzzy thinking indeed. How, precisely would I prevent -- if I wished to do do -- people from reading the messages on Usenet, or Compuserve or anywhere I post them? Maybe I could cut Usenet out of the feed. Lord knows the newspaper you would have no trouble registering with has never tossed anything there for open, free discusssion, why should I any longer? I could discontinue providing the Digest as part of the library at the Compuserve telecom special interest group since I doubt that Universal gives CIS members any free movies to look at. How would I prevent people from looking at the web site and http://telecom-digest.org/latest-issue or http://telecom-digest.org/TELECOM_Digest_Online if they wished? I have the answer! I could put up terms and conditions on the web site, forbid any linking or any peeking, track down the offenders and have an attorney sent them a nasty letter when I caught them doing it. Oh, I almost forgot about those two sites which mirror the archives; well, the lawyers can put a stop to that easily enough, and anonymous FTP can be shut down easily also. Then, by God, you will pay me the mandatory five dollars or do without! You see, you are missing the point, Joey. You are assuming they landed here intending to be nice and good netizens and all that, when there was no such intention behind their arrival. They came here to pick you clean. Do you remember the story of the 'Great Train Robbery'? The train stops suddenly and a half-dozen masked men come swarming into the car full of passengers. One of them announces in a no-nonsense tone of voice, "We are going to rob all the women, and rape all the men". A tough, very masculine voice from somewhere in the car says indignantly, "Hey! You can't do that!" To which someone else replies almost gleefully, "You shut up! They can do anything to us they want to!" And so it would seem with the lastest passengers to board the internet train ... they can do anything to us they want to. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #352 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 29 22:57:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id WAA20234; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 22:57:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 22:57:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908300257.WAA20234@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #353 TELECOM Digest Sun, 29 Aug 99 22:57:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 352 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Administrivia: Issue 352 Marked Incorrectly (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (Lisa Hancock) Re: Domain Names (Jonathan D. Loo) Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) (Andrew) Re: Domain Names (Phil Howard) Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? (TandemTal@aol.com) Re: Is This Real? $60/Month Unlimited LD Calling (Tim Smith) Toll-Free Payphones Surcharges and UCE (Jonathan) Re: Weird Wrong Number (Adam H. Kerman) Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service (Alan Boritz) Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay (Jonathan) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Administrivia: Issue 352 Marked Incorrectly Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:00:00 EDT Some readers inadvertently recieved issue 352 with a subject line saying it was 351. Archives copy has been corrected. If you got on that was incorrectly labeled, please pencil it in correctly. Thanks. PAT ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: 29 Aug 1999 03:26:54 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS Ahh, the INTERNET. If I hear one more person say the Internet is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I'm gonna scream! Yes, the Internet is definitely here to stay and will be a big part of our future. But forgive me for being cynical, but IMHO, the Internet has a long way to go, both technologically and legally, before it meets the many dreams and claims of its supporters. A lot of work remains. I see the development of the automobile and the many problems it created as comparable. By the late 1930s, the automobile was sufficiently technologically developed to be easily usable by the masses and people were buying lots of cars. But traffic jams and lots of highway fatalities became a serious problem and remains so to this day. Have we learned anything from this (pushing new technology too fast)? I don't think so. While the growth of the Internet offers many benefits, it has also created many social problems, and opened up old ones that were once solved. Let's look at some of the issues and ask ourselves how much is really being _accomplished_ to solve them: At the turn of the century, the growing country and technological change created opportunities for dangerous fraud. The government passed food and drug regulations to protect the people. Mail and banking fraud laws were passed. Copyright and pornography laws were passed. Yet today's Internet is exempt, either legally or effectively, from many of those laws. Internet proponents seem to applaud this great openness, but the past experience shows the problems that develop. It does not cost me any money if someone sends me an advertisement via the US Mail. (The post office actually makes money from bulk mailers despite the discounts.) But the ten or so junk email messages I get every day, most of which are obvious scams or pornographic, DO cost me money through forcing me to wade through them online while the meter is running, and add my host's cost to store them on disk and bandwidth. Clearly they should be illegal, yet every day they still keep a comin'. Both myself and my employer spend money to buy virus protection software to protect our computers from sabotage. Thanks to the Internet, a criminal can now break into my home and steal from me or seriously vandalize my property from the comfort of his or own living room. I don't consider this a good thing, but most people seem to shrug it off. How reliable is the Internet? How often are we online and get disconnected in the middle of a session? How often does an error message come up for whatever reason -- site not responding, site not found, Java script error? How good is response time? (As Dave Barry put it: whole continents can emerge from the ocean in the time it takes to get a web page response; the Internet does not run at the speed of light but rather the speed of the division of motor vehicles.) Ok: are we willing to entrust our personal banking transactions to this kind of reliability? I sure as h--- won't. Say you're transferring money or paying a bill and the system crashes in the middle. Did it go through? If you re-enter it, will it end up paying it twice? How do you know what happened? What about the cost? As an individual, I'm paying $25 each month for Internet services, plus $15 for a dedicated computer phone line. Now, frankly, to me that $40 every month is an _entertainment_ expense. Do I get any benefits out of it? Well, I've been on Usenet for about six years and occassionally I've learned useful technological or product information. Is it worth $40 every month for the useful stuff? No, no way whatsoever. Remember, Usenet is only as good as the people who post to it, and many people, though well intentioned, are grossly inaccurate. (Very often I've seen someone post some technical advice only to be completely contradicted by someone else warning that the advice was dangerous! Everything I read on Usenet I take with a big grain of salt.) As to the value of product web pages: A lot of work is needed. Many sites are horribly designed and seem to show off their graphics library (while I wait) rather than provide useful information. Despite the supposedly ability of the computer to be always up to date, many sites provide outdated information. (One organization never bothered to post its abbreviated summer hours.) My employer has also provided me with Internet service at my desk. I use it. Someone walking by would think I was doing work related stuff as there'd be lots of computer related stuff on my screen. But a closer look would show that it was 1950s computer stuff, not exactly relevent to my job. (We no longer use an IBM 1401.) I wonder how few people at my employer actually use the Internet for work related stuff. I know at least one guy who does porn. One woman is into guinea pigs. Sports scores are very big. Beyond the expense of T-1 service, installing Netscape and adequate bandwidth to every desktop, how many man-hours are being lost, at my employer and others? (News headline just today: First Union Bank fires workers for doing online porn.) Anybody and everybody can put up a web page and say anything they want on it. In a Democracy, that's supposed to be a good thing. If I stood on a street corner to hand out my own printed manisfesto, that is my Constitutional right. How many people will read my work and give it credence is another story. If I want a publisher to distribute it, I'd better have something worthwhile and not harmful or illegal so the publisher and bookstores don't get sued. But on the Internet, I can put up bomb making directions. I can put up bogus medical informaton. I can even sell medications and circumvent long established safety rules. Years ago society learned it was necessary to maintain the public safety. Have we forgotten that? The old protections aren't there and haven't been replaced. Your local drugstore likely will be careful in what medicine they give you because (1) it would be illegal otherwise and (2) they don't want you to sue them. You get sick from Internet advice or drugs and what is your recourse? Some years ago the computer BBS was a big deal. It had a lot of hype too, this wonderful new way of exchanging information and meeting new people. (Turned out the "new people" was actually a very small group, often the same ones on every BBS in town, repeating the same arguments.) The Internet certainly has FUTURE _potential_ benefits. But for all the hype about "e-commerce" you'd think we've landed in Emerald City of Oz. No muss, no fuss, everything is perfect. Never leave the front of your computer, yet food and clothing will magically appear. The world doesn't and will not work that way. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 23:46:38 EDT From: Jonathan D Loo Subject: Re: Domain Names In article it was written: > Pat, if "Topica" is willing to pay you 25 cents for my email address, > you HAVE MY EXPRESS PERMISSION to sell it to them. It's not much, but > I'm willing to "pay" for my TELECOM Digest (at least in a small, small > way) by having to deal with a bit more spam. I wonder how many others > here would be similarly willing to offer up their email address for > this? Maybe Pat could find several buyers, each of whom would pass > along 25 cents for our email addresses. If he was successful, he > wouldn't need sponsorship anymore - the TELECOM Digest would be a > self-financing operation. Whoever is reading this, I expressly refuse to allow you to sell or harvest my e-mail address. If someone sends me unsolicited bulk e-mail then on occasion I complain to their upstream. So don't do it. > Maybe you should consider moving away from voluntary donations, and > asking all Digest subscribers to (perhaps after a free two-week trial > to see if they like it or not) toss in a MANDATORY subscription fee of, > say, $5/year. IIRC (and my memory's fuzzy here), you mentioned you had > a subscriber base of about 4000 - that translates to $20,000/year, and > I for one would pay that $5. Which means you will have to take it off UseNet. I read it on UseNet and so do a very large number of other people. Do you really want to take it off of net news? Your circulation will shrink. I would not, however, object to small, *on topic* ads being appended to the end of each message *with the moderator's approval* and only if the ads are neither cross-posted nor multi-posted. Sort of like a banner ad. For some reason I thought that Pat was subsidized either by a university or by some international organization like the UN. I guess that I was wrong. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The principal sponsor of this Digest is the International Telecommunication Union, which is a specialized agency of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. They have partially funded the Digest for several years. Network resources have been provided for several years by the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT which also provides space for the web site telecom-digest.org and network resources are also provided by iecc.com whom most of you know as John Levine. In addition, Mike Sandman has provided substantial funding at one time or another as have others. In addition, smaller gifts are provided in amounts deemed appropriate by Friends of TELECOM Digest. Where your confusion has arisen, Jonathan, I suspect is from the message appearing here a couple days ago by myself which was another in the corporation-bashing series. One of the Canadian readers, Joey, mistook the message as a complaint from me that I wanted more money, and he responded with suggestions on how to obtain it, more money, that is, by becoming a commercial web site. That was not really the point of the message or others in the series, but I do appreciate his kind thoughts, just as I appreciate your concern, Jonathan. Ummm, you *are* concerned, right? Anyone who was willing to pay me twenty-five cents would be allowed to take Joey's name and email address in vain as if somehow they needed my mailing list to do that and could not simply read it for themselves from the header of each message of his I post here. I'm glad to see you have more sense than that, and have forbidden that sort of cheap pandering on this fine Internet of ours. PAT] ------------------------------ From: andrew@3.1415926.org (Andrew) Subject: Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) Date: 29 Aug 1999 19:10:44 GMT Organization: MaTech Anthony Argyriou (anthony@alphageo.com) wrote: > There was a recent case where Avery-Dennison was overturned on appeal > to get avery.net and dennison.net, which were held by a company which > creates vanity e-mail and web addresses. (So John Q. Avery could get > johnq@avery.net for a vanity e-mail, and http://www.avery.net/johnq > for a vanity web address.) Some strange legal reasoning. : http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/trade082499.htm I just bought avery-dennison.com (I just couldn't resist:) These thugs tried to take avery.net and dennison.net from their rightful owner and they couldn't be bothered to secure avery-dennison.com !?!? (they own averydennison.com). Andrew [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Be sure and let us know the day you get sued, raided by the FBI or whatever. I'll try to put in a good word for you with the judge. PAT] ------------------------------ From: NOSPAM@intur.net (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: Domain Names Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 19:12:06 GMT On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 00:54:46 -0600 Joey Lindstrom (Joey@GaryNumanFan.NU) wrote: > In short, anyone who wasn't here in the 80's, when the internet was a > cool and groovy place, should be made to take a back seat and allow > "the old timers" to continue to set the rules, with no input from us > at all. The opportunity exists to create a virtual or shadow network that is just what the internet was back then (I was there from 1986). The big question is, if it was setup, would it become popular? The next big question is, if it became popular, would that be good or bad? However, ultimately, it doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe because most people realize that with appropriate actions on their own part, like pressing the "d" key more often, they can make the internet be for them just what they want it to be. > Who "owns" the internet? A lot of people "own" the internet, or at > least small pieces of it. I "own" some of it: I've got four servers > hooked up to an ADSL line and have about a dozen websites, plus email, > RealAudio, etc. In this respect, I "own" more internet than you do. > Yet you would have me sit back and allow you to set the rules for me? > No thanks -- I get a vote too. Who "owns" the radio spectrum? Obviously this question isn't exactly the same as asking who "owns" the internet, but it can raise many like issues. > The "good old days" of the internet were a something-for-nothing > proposition for a great many of the netizens involved. In turn, they'd > use the resources they had at their disposal and, in turn, would build > something useful with them (ie: the TELECOM Digest). But somebody had > to funnel those resources into the 'net in the first place. > Those days are gone, gone, and gone. Dang it all. We can moan and > bitch, or we can adjust and move on. I don't recall having to pay for any of it back then. My employers and their funding agencies paid for it. The only real differences between then and now are that the funding structure is different (and more diverse), there are more people who wouldn't know what to do with a clue if they got one for free, and some more cracking going on (but probably in proportion to the growth). > What was "intended" and what "is" are two different things. Tough > cookies (again, no pun intended). Yes indeed, there are a bunch of > rotten bastards on the 'net these days. Kinda like in real life, no? > The nirvana days are gone, get used to it and find creative ways to > deal with it. The clock isn't gonna roll back (well, 'cept for those > poor buggers with non-Y2K compliant machines, that is ...) The net was our window into a subset of the world. Now the window is larger and we can see the whole world. Now we don't like what we see. Don't blame the window for what you see on the other side. Phil Howard KA9WGN phil@intur.net phil@ipal.net ------------------------------ From: TandemTal@aol.com Subject: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 22:59:06 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Press Release for Domain names which may break the current record for price paid for domain name: http://www.prweb.com/releases/1999/prweb9042.htm Link To SPLASH page on these domains at this time: http://www.communication-services.com ------------------------------ From: tzs@halcyon.com (Tim Smith) Subject: Re: Is This Real? $60/Month Unlimited LD Calling Date: 29 Aug 1999 17:31:37 -0700 Organization: Institute of Lawsonomy Al Iverson wrote: > You're interested in a service that was advertised to you via > unsolicited email? [signs they are not legitimate, deleted] Yeah, it sounds like a bad idea to give that specific company any money, and giving spammers in general money seems to be a bad idea. However, in many cases, I believe when something like this is spammed, the spammer is a reseller of some possibly legitimate service, so the real question for the original poster should be "can this kind of thing be for real?", and if the answer is yes, then "how can I find a non-spamming reseller?". >In article , mxs159@cwru.edu wrote: >> I received an email message about a "new plan" which claims to provide >> unlimited LD calling for $60 a month ... >> For families like mine where $100 LD bills are common (even with less >> than 9c per minute avg. plans), this of course sounds like a good yet >> believable deal, considering the ferocity of the competition out there. I'm guessing from your 9c/minute rate that your long distance is mostly intrastate, since interstate rates much lower than that can be found. If most of the calls are to people that are in the same general area, check to see if your phone company has a reasonable "foreign exchange" service. With a FX service, you get a second line at another central office, and they run a dedicated circuit from that office to your local office, and from there to your second phone. The cost for this depends on the distance, not on the amount of usage. If your distance is not too great, that might save you some money. E.g., someone where I work is just a few miles outside the local calling area for all her relatives, and got an FX line for around $20/month to get into that area. Mine is around $130/month to get into a city about 80 miles away by land. Heywood Jaiblomi wrote: > In Canada, I think I have an even better deal for my business. LD > calls in country are 35 cents per ten minute period day or nite. That > works out to 171 hours a month (or more than one solid week) before I > would hit the $60 mark. (assuming I am making mostly long calls No (assuming Canadians have 100 Canadian cents per Canadian dollar): (60 $) * (100 c/$) * (10 min/35 c) * (hr / 60 min) = 28.57 hr. Tim Smith ------------------------------ From: Jonathan Subject: Toll-Free Payphones Surcharges and UCE Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 10:41:50 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com As I understand it, if you call a toll-free number from a pay phone, the folks you call must pay a 35 cent fee to the pay phone owner. Much unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE, or "spam") advertises a toll-free number. By calling that number from a pay phone you anonymously cause them to incur a 35 cent charge. Is this correct? Is this a legal, ethical way to dissuade spammers? How can you ensure that you're calling a spammer's toll-free number, not some other number a vindictive person advertised for the exclusive purpose of bringing misery on an innocent person? ------------------------------ From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Re: Weird Wrong Number Organization: Chinet - Public Access since 1982 Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 05:08:11 GMT Bill Levant wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Reader's Note: Hi, Dense, welcome to the Digest. I > think this is a reference to the urban legend about the guy who falls > asleep after a date, wakes up in the tub missing a kidney. Pretty > loose, though. WJL] > Well I guess so. I had never heard that particular story before. It was the plot of the first episode of "Law and Order" broadcast on NBC. (It wasn't the pilot, which wasn't aired for several weeks.) > Don't try anything smart like that again or I will have to get one of the > several attornies on retainer here at the Digest to order you not > to read this column any longer. PAT] Shouldn't you use attorneys who are out of braces? But I guess the ones with straightened teeth can really put the bite on you. ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 07:42:26 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , agore@primenet.com (Alan Gore) wrote: > Adam H. Kerman wrote: >> Not to mention time and aggravation. Why haven't you cancelled your >> MCI service? You'd stand a better chance of getting it resolved if you >> send written protests to the managers of each facility that billed you >> incorrectly. If that doesn't work, write to the president of MCI. If >> that doesn't work, file a written complaint with your state public >> service commission and file a consumer fraud complaint with your >> state's attorney general. I doubt you'll successfully resolve anything >> over the telephone. > The main reason we haven't canceled is that I think, perhaps > irrationally, that my chances of resolving this are better if I remain > a customer. Once I drop off, they can forget about me completely if > they want to. Write to MCI? The company carefuly arranges things so > there is no way to contact them by snailmail. You call the 800 number, > which refers you to other 800 numbers, each connected to offices in > different states and which do not communicate with each other. You're wasting your time, Adam. MCI doesn't give a damn about you, or whether you're a customer or not. On the other hand, American Express does the same thing, and will keep on charging you back for the double-billing, whether you show them proof that it's legitimate or not, as long as they get a response from MCI. Don't forget, Amex partnered with MCI early on to sell MCI service under the American Express name (used to be known as "Express Phone"). Do this: 1. Find another long distance carrier with reasonable rates (easy to find, since MCI is one of the most expensive). Get them to reimburse you for the PIXC change (easy to do). 2. Have your local phone company put a PIXC freeze on all of your lines for intra- and inter-lata long distance (after switching to your new carrier). 3. File a complaint with *your* state attorney general (not Federal), charging that MCI has double-billed you for telecomunications services, refuses to correct the error, continues to try to collect the charges for service after being made aware that the charges are not legitimate, and request an investigation to determine if they have similarly *defrauded* (be sure to use that word) other customers in your state. 4. Watch your Amex bill for charge-backs and keep witholding the original amount (don't add surcharges for legal expenses, you have to sue separately for those). Follow the rules (usually printed on the back of credit card statements) in every respect for witholding amounts from the credit card issuer. Bottom line, force Amex to keep charging the amount back to MCI, and file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission *against Amex* if they refuse. > In any case, we have never had a problem with MCI's phone service > itself -- just with this one instance of double billing when we > switched over from cash to Amex payment. Our LD usage is quite high, > and almost all of it is internatinal. Is there any other company that > can get us to Europe for 9 cents a minute? Almost ANY LD company will be cheaper than MCI. Keep in mind, though, that MCI is probably charging you for ring-no-answers, so they're probably eating up the economy of the low per-minute rate with some fraud. This is not generally a problem with AT&T, who can monitor the real status of international calls. You should have no problem finding a carrier who can give you a switched-access WATS package with attractive pricing. > I have also tried the writing-to-officials route on one occasion > before we went with MCI, when our AT & T service was slammed by a > fly-by-night company in Easton, PA. I wrote to the FCC, the > Attorneys-general of both AZ and PA. That approach turned out to be > completely worthless. I got a form letter from each agency saying our > complaint had been received, then nothing. The Attorney General may not get MCI to stop hounding you, but you need to file a formal complaint (always send it certified) so they have something to work with. Certain kinds of complaints can't be ignored (for long, at least). You can also get a local TV station to get involved, if they have someone who covers this sort of thing, and they'd love to get their hands on a criminal complaint that the Attorney General decided to ignore. > Fortunately on that > occasion, it was the slammer who claimed I owed them money, so I > simply refused to pay and invited them to sue us. After going through > several months of havingg the company call us at five a.m. screaming > into our ears, they gave up on us. Or maybe they simply went broke, > since I never heard of the company again. If MCI gets a collection agent after you, you can do one of two things: 1. File a criminal harrassment charge against the agency for harrassing you by telephone. or 2. Get the agency's address and contact info and bill them for "consulting services." $500/hour in one-hour increments should be good for a start. Send the first invoice with a letter (certified, of course) stating that since they contacted you initially, you will assume their agreement with the terms of the contract, etc., etc. You can actually have some fun with it, depending upon how stupid the agency is (sounds like the last one was a group of budding rocket scientists). [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder if I could get MCI to buy some banner ads here in the Digest? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jonathan Subject: Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 10:12:15 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com >> I... prefer to pay my bill at the nearby local store in cash... >> new sign... *all* in-store bill payments would cost >> an additional $3.00. The real issue here is the handling of cash. If Sprint receives more than a modest amount of cash, they incur substantial costs -- they need special cash handling procedures, double custody rules, their insurance becomes very expensive, they may be required to engage an armored car service, and at some point their insurance company may require them to install a secured cashier's station with bulletproof glass etc. >> SprintPCS... pays a 2% to 3% surcharge to credit card companies >> cash payment... Cash... no such hit on the company's revenue. > But there is overhead... the clerk's time... Sprint probably pays less than 1% to its credit card company, because of high average invoice, high volume, and relatively low loss rates. On a typical $50 bill, that's maybe a 50 cent fee. It costs Sprint at least 30 cents to process each check. > What about paying by mail? Don't they let you mail a check with your > bill, like most other companies? That would be more efficient. So would electronic banking or automatic debit. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two problems here. First of all, no > clerk I know of is paid (or valued at) anywhere close to $50 per > hour. But Sprint PCS stores don't really have "clerks" - the people at their counter are primarily salespeople, and also handle all sorts of customer problems. The opportunity cost of one of these people -- given that they can only put a fixed number out there, and must recruit continuously to have even a minimal staff -- is easily $50/hour. > So if a $7 per hour clerk riffles credit card papers all day long or > endorses checks all day long or counts cash and puts it in a cash > register all day long, what is the difference? PAT] The credit card papers are never touched after the initial sale -- they're just bundled up for ninety days, and then discarded. The cash has be kept in some secure manner until it is delivered to a bank and counted again, and it poses a significant security risk. If you think that Sprint PCS's profits are exorbitant, buy some of their stock - it's traded as PCS, and closed on Friday 8/29/99 at 59.50. They lost $1.17 billion (before extraordinary items) in the six months that ended in June 1999. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know, I bet I could get Sprint to buy some banner ads here also, especially when they find out that MCI is considering buying some. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #352 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 29 23:07:29 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id XAA20753; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 23:07:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 23:07:29 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908300307.XAA20753@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #353 TELECOM Digest Sun, 29 Aug 99 22:57:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 353 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Administrivia: Issue 352 Marked Incorrectly (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (Lisa Hancock) Re: Domain Names (Jonathan D. Loo) Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) (Andrew) Re: Domain Names (Phil Howard) Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? (TandemTal@aol.com) Re: Is This Real? $60/Month Unlimited LD Calling (Tim Smith) Toll-Free Payphones Surcharges and UCE (Jonathan) Re: Weird Wrong Number (Adam H. Kerman) Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service (Alan Boritz) Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay (Jonathan) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Administrivia: Issue 352 Marked Incorrectly Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:00:00 EDT Some readers inadvertently recieved issue 352 with a subject line saying it was 351. Archives copy has been corrected. If you got on that was incorrectly labeled, please pencil it in correctly. Thanks. PAT ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: 29 Aug 1999 03:26:54 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS Ahh, the INTERNET. If I hear one more person say the Internet is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I'm gonna scream! Yes, the Internet is definitely here to stay and will be a big part of our future. But forgive me for being cynical, but IMHO, the Internet has a long way to go, both technologically and legally, before it meets the many dreams and claims of its supporters. A lot of work remains. I see the development of the automobile and the many problems it created as comparable. By the late 1930s, the automobile was sufficiently technologically developed to be easily usable by the masses and people were buying lots of cars. But traffic jams and lots of highway fatalities became a serious problem and remains so to this day. Have we learned anything from this (pushing new technology too fast)? I don't think so. While the growth of the Internet offers many benefits, it has also created many social problems, and opened up old ones that were once solved. Let's look at some of the issues and ask ourselves how much is really being _accomplished_ to solve them: At the turn of the century, the growing country and technological change created opportunities for dangerous fraud. The government passed food and drug regulations to protect the people. Mail and banking fraud laws were passed. Copyright and pornography laws were passed. Yet today's Internet is exempt, either legally or effectively, from many of those laws. Internet proponents seem to applaud this great openness, but the past experience shows the problems that develop. It does not cost me any money if someone sends me an advertisement via the US Mail. (The post office actually makes money from bulk mailers despite the discounts.) But the ten or so junk email messages I get every day, most of which are obvious scams or pornographic, DO cost me money through forcing me to wade through them online while the meter is running, and add my host's cost to store them on disk and bandwidth. Clearly they should be illegal, yet every day they still keep a comin'. Both myself and my employer spend money to buy virus protection software to protect our computers from sabotage. Thanks to the Internet, a criminal can now break into my home and steal from me or seriously vandalize my property from the comfort of his or own living room. I don't consider this a good thing, but most people seem to shrug it off. How reliable is the Internet? How often are we online and get disconnected in the middle of a session? How often does an error message come up for whatever reason -- site not responding, site not found, Java script error? How good is response time? (As Dave Barry put it: whole continents can emerge from the ocean in the time it takes to get a web page response; the Internet does not run at the speed of light but rather the speed of the division of motor vehicles.) Ok: are we willing to entrust our personal banking transactions to this kind of reliability? I sure as h--- won't. Say you're transferring money or paying a bill and the system crashes in the middle. Did it go through? If you re-enter it, will it end up paying it twice? How do you know what happened? What about the cost? As an individual, I'm paying $25 each month for Internet services, plus $15 for a dedicated computer phone line. Now, frankly, to me that $40 every month is an _entertainment_ expense. Do I get any benefits out of it? Well, I've been on Usenet for about six years and occassionally I've learned useful technological or product information. Is it worth $40 every month for the useful stuff? No, no way whatsoever. Remember, Usenet is only as good as the people who post to it, and many people, though well intentioned, are grossly inaccurate. (Very often I've seen someone post some technical advice only to be completely contradicted by someone else warning that the advice was dangerous! Everything I read on Usenet I take with a big grain of salt.) As to the value of product web pages: A lot of work is needed. Many sites are horribly designed and seem to show off their graphics library (while I wait) rather than provide useful information. Despite the supposedly ability of the computer to be always up to date, many sites provide outdated information. (One organization never bothered to post its abbreviated summer hours.) My employer has also provided me with Internet service at my desk. I use it. Someone walking by would think I was doing work related stuff as there'd be lots of computer related stuff on my screen. But a closer look would show that it was 1950s computer stuff, not exactly relevent to my job. (We no longer use an IBM 1401.) I wonder how few people at my employer actually use the Internet for work related stuff. I know at least one guy who does porn. One woman is into guinea pigs. Sports scores are very big. Beyond the expense of T-1 service, installing Netscape and adequate bandwidth to every desktop, how many man-hours are being lost, at my employer and others? (News headline just today: First Union Bank fires workers for doing online porn.) Anybody and everybody can put up a web page and say anything they want on it. In a Democracy, that's supposed to be a good thing. If I stood on a street corner to hand out my own printed manisfesto, that is my Constitutional right. How many people will read my work and give it credence is another story. If I want a publisher to distribute it, I'd better have something worthwhile and not harmful or illegal so the publisher and bookstores don't get sued. But on the Internet, I can put up bomb making directions. I can put up bogus medical informaton. I can even sell medications and circumvent long established safety rules. Years ago society learned it was necessary to maintain the public safety. Have we forgotten that? The old protections aren't there and haven't been replaced. Your local drugstore likely will be careful in what medicine they give you because (1) it would be illegal otherwise and (2) they don't want you to sue them. You get sick from Internet advice or drugs and what is your recourse? Some years ago the computer BBS was a big deal. It had a lot of hype too, this wonderful new way of exchanging information and meeting new people. (Turned out the "new people" was actually a very small group, often the same ones on every BBS in town, repeating the same arguments.) The Internet certainly has FUTURE _potential_ benefits. But for all the hype about "e-commerce" you'd think we've landed in Emerald City of Oz. No muss, no fuss, everything is perfect. Never leave the front of your computer, yet food and clothing will magically appear. The world doesn't and will not work that way. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 23:46:38 EDT From: Jonathan D Loo Subject: Re: Domain Names In article it was written: > Pat, if "Topica" is willing to pay you 25 cents for my email address, > you HAVE MY EXPRESS PERMISSION to sell it to them. It's not much, but > I'm willing to "pay" for my TELECOM Digest (at least in a small, small > way) by having to deal with a bit more spam. I wonder how many others > here would be similarly willing to offer up their email address for > this? Maybe Pat could find several buyers, each of whom would pass > along 25 cents for our email addresses. If he was successful, he > wouldn't need sponsorship anymore - the TELECOM Digest would be a > self-financing operation. Whoever is reading this, I expressly refuse to allow you to sell or harvest my e-mail address. If someone sends me unsolicited bulk e-mail then on occasion I complain to their upstream. So don't do it. > Maybe you should consider moving away from voluntary donations, and > asking all Digest subscribers to (perhaps after a free two-week trial > to see if they like it or not) toss in a MANDATORY subscription fee of, > say, $5/year. IIRC (and my memory's fuzzy here), you mentioned you had > a subscriber base of about 4000 - that translates to $20,000/year, and > I for one would pay that $5. Which means you will have to take it off UseNet. I read it on UseNet and so do a very large number of other people. Do you really want to take it off of net news? Your circulation will shrink. I would not, however, object to small, *on topic* ads being appended to the end of each message *with the moderator's approval* and only if the ads are neither cross-posted nor multi-posted. Sort of like a banner ad. For some reason I thought that Pat was subsidized either by a university or by some international organization like the UN. I guess that I was wrong. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The principal sponsor of this Digest is the International Telecommunication Union, which is a specialized agency of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. They have partially funded the Digest for several years. Network resources have been provided for several years by the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT which also provides space for the web site telecom-digest.org and network resources are also provided by iecc.com whom most of you know as John Levine. In addition, Mike Sandman has provided substantial funding at one time or another as have others. In addition, smaller gifts are provided in amounts deemed appropriate by Friends of TELECOM Digest. Where your confusion has arisen, Jonathan, I suspect is from the message appearing here a couple days ago by myself which was another in the corporation-bashing series. One of the Canadian readers, Joey, mistook the message as a complaint from me that I wanted more money, and he responded with suggestions on how to obtain it, more money, that is, by becoming a commercial web site. That was not really the point of the message or others in the series, but I do appreciate his kind thoughts, just as I appreciate your concern, Jonathan. Ummm, you *are* concerned, right? Anyone who was willing to pay me twenty-five cents would be allowed to take Joey's name and email address in vain as if somehow they needed my mailing list to do that and could not simply read it for themselves from the header of each message of his I post here. I'm glad to see you have more sense than that, and have forbidden that sort of cheap pandering on this fine Internet of ours. PAT] ------------------------------ From: andrew@3.1415926.org (Andrew) Subject: Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) Date: 29 Aug 1999 19:10:44 GMT Organization: MaTech Anthony Argyriou (anthony@alphageo.com) wrote: > There was a recent case where Avery-Dennison was overturned on appeal > to get avery.net and dennison.net, which were held by a company which > creates vanity e-mail and web addresses. (So John Q. Avery could get > johnq@avery.net for a vanity e-mail, and http://www.avery.net/johnq > for a vanity web address.) Some strange legal reasoning. : http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/trade082499.htm I just bought avery-dennison.com (I just couldn't resist:) These thugs tried to take avery.net and dennison.net from their rightful owner and they couldn't be bothered to secure avery-dennison.com !?!? (they own averydennison.com). Andrew [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Be sure and let us know the day you get sued, raided by the FBI or whatever. I'll try to put in a good word for you with the judge. PAT] ------------------------------ From: NOSPAM@intur.net (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: Domain Names Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 19:12:06 GMT On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 00:54:46 -0600 Joey Lindstrom (Joey@GaryNumanFan.NU) wrote: > In short, anyone who wasn't here in the 80's, when the internet was a > cool and groovy place, should be made to take a back seat and allow > "the old timers" to continue to set the rules, with no input from us > at all. The opportunity exists to create a virtual or shadow network that is just what the internet was back then (I was there from 1986). The big question is, if it was setup, would it become popular? The next big question is, if it became popular, would that be good or bad? However, ultimately, it doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe because most people realize that with appropriate actions on their own part, like pressing the "d" key more often, they can make the internet be for them just what they want it to be. > Who "owns" the internet? A lot of people "own" the internet, or at > least small pieces of it. I "own" some of it: I've got four servers > hooked up to an ADSL line and have about a dozen websites, plus email, > RealAudio, etc. In this respect, I "own" more internet than you do. > Yet you would have me sit back and allow you to set the rules for me? > No thanks -- I get a vote too. Who "owns" the radio spectrum? Obviously this question isn't exactly the same as asking who "owns" the internet, but it can raise many like issues. > The "good old days" of the internet were a something-for-nothing > proposition for a great many of the netizens involved. In turn, they'd > use the resources they had at their disposal and, in turn, would build > something useful with them (ie: the TELECOM Digest). But somebody had > to funnel those resources into the 'net in the first place. > Those days are gone, gone, and gone. Dang it all. We can moan and > bitch, or we can adjust and move on. I don't recall having to pay for any of it back then. My employers and their funding agencies paid for it. The only real differences between then and now are that the funding structure is different (and more diverse), there are more people who wouldn't know what to do with a clue if they got one for free, and some more cracking going on (but probably in proportion to the growth). > What was "intended" and what "is" are two different things. Tough > cookies (again, no pun intended). Yes indeed, there are a bunch of > rotten bastards on the 'net these days. Kinda like in real life, no? > The nirvana days are gone, get used to it and find creative ways to > deal with it. The clock isn't gonna roll back (well, 'cept for those > poor buggers with non-Y2K compliant machines, that is ...) The net was our window into a subset of the world. Now the window is larger and we can see the whole world. Now we don't like what we see. Don't blame the window for what you see on the other side. Phil Howard KA9WGN phil@intur.net phil@ipal.net ------------------------------ From: TandemTal@aol.com Subject: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 22:59:06 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Press Release for Domain names which may break the current record for price paid for domain name: http://www.prweb.com/releases/1999/prweb9042.htm Link To SPLASH page on these domains at this time: http://www.communication-services.com ------------------------------ From: tzs@halcyon.com (Tim Smith) Subject: Re: Is This Real? $60/Month Unlimited LD Calling Date: 29 Aug 1999 17:31:37 -0700 Organization: Institute of Lawsonomy Al Iverson wrote: > You're interested in a service that was advertised to you via > unsolicited email? [signs they are not legitimate, deleted] Yeah, it sounds like a bad idea to give that specific company any money, and giving spammers in general money seems to be a bad idea. However, in many cases, I believe when something like this is spammed, the spammer is a reseller of some possibly legitimate service, so the real question for the original poster should be "can this kind of thing be for real?", and if the answer is yes, then "how can I find a non-spamming reseller?". >In article , mxs159@cwru.edu wrote: >> I received an email message about a "new plan" which claims to provide >> unlimited LD calling for $60 a month ... >> For families like mine where $100 LD bills are common (even with less >> than 9c per minute avg. plans), this of course sounds like a good yet >> believable deal, considering the ferocity of the competition out there. I'm guessing from your 9c/minute rate that your long distance is mostly intrastate, since interstate rates much lower than that can be found. If most of the calls are to people that are in the same general area, check to see if your phone company has a reasonable "foreign exchange" service. With a FX service, you get a second line at another central office, and they run a dedicated circuit from that office to your local office, and from there to your second phone. The cost for this depends on the distance, not on the amount of usage. If your distance is not too great, that might save you some money. E.g., someone where I work is just a few miles outside the local calling area for all her relatives, and got an FX line for around $20/month to get into that area. Mine is around $130/month to get into a city about 80 miles away by land. Heywood Jaiblomi wrote: > In Canada, I think I have an even better deal for my business. LD > calls in country are 35 cents per ten minute period day or nite. That > works out to 171 hours a month (or more than one solid week) before I > would hit the $60 mark. (assuming I am making mostly long calls No (assuming Canadians have 100 Canadian cents per Canadian dollar): (60 $) * (100 c/$) * (10 min/35 c) * (hr / 60 min) = 28.57 hr. Tim Smith ------------------------------ From: Jonathan Subject: Toll-Free Payphones Surcharges and UCE Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 10:41:50 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com As I understand it, if you call a toll-free number from a pay phone, the folks you call must pay a 35 cent fee to the pay phone owner. Much unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE, or "spam") advertises a toll-free number. By calling that number from a pay phone you anonymously cause them to incur a 35 cent charge. Is this correct? Is this a legal, ethical way to dissuade spammers? How can you ensure that you're calling a spammer's toll-free number, not some other number a vindictive person advertised for the exclusive purpose of bringing misery on an innocent person? ------------------------------ From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Re: Weird Wrong Number Organization: Chinet - Public Access since 1982 Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 05:08:11 GMT Bill Levant wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Reader's Note: Hi, Dense, welcome to the Digest. I > think this is a reference to the urban legend about the guy who falls > asleep after a date, wakes up in the tub missing a kidney. Pretty > loose, though. WJL] > Well I guess so. I had never heard that particular story before. It was the plot of the first episode of "Law and Order" broadcast on NBC. (It wasn't the pilot, which wasn't aired for several weeks.) > Don't try anything smart like that again or I will have to get one of the > several attornies on retainer here at the Digest to order you not > to read this column any longer. PAT] Shouldn't you use attorneys who are out of braces? But I guess the ones with straightened teeth can really put the bite on you. ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 07:42:26 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , agore@primenet.com (Alan Gore) wrote: > Adam H. Kerman wrote: >> Not to mention time and aggravation. Why haven't you cancelled your >> MCI service? You'd stand a better chance of getting it resolved if you >> send written protests to the managers of each facility that billed you >> incorrectly. If that doesn't work, write to the president of MCI. If >> that doesn't work, file a written complaint with your state public >> service commission and file a consumer fraud complaint with your >> state's attorney general. I doubt you'll successfully resolve anything >> over the telephone. > The main reason we haven't canceled is that I think, perhaps > irrationally, that my chances of resolving this are better if I remain > a customer. Once I drop off, they can forget about me completely if > they want to. Write to MCI? The company carefuly arranges things so > there is no way to contact them by snailmail. You call the 800 number, > which refers you to other 800 numbers, each connected to offices in > different states and which do not communicate with each other. You're wasting your time, Adam. MCI doesn't give a damn about you, or whether you're a customer or not. On the other hand, American Express does the same thing, and will keep on charging you back for the double-billing, whether you show them proof that it's legitimate or not, as long as they get a response from MCI. Don't forget, Amex partnered with MCI early on to sell MCI service under the American Express name (used to be known as "Express Phone"). Do this: 1. Find another long distance carrier with reasonable rates (easy to find, since MCI is one of the most expensive). Get them to reimburse you for the PIXC change (easy to do). 2. Have your local phone company put a PIXC freeze on all of your lines for intra- and inter-lata long distance (after switching to your new carrier). 3. File a complaint with *your* state attorney general (not Federal), charging that MCI has double-billed you for telecomunications services, refuses to correct the error, continues to try to collect the charges for service after being made aware that the charges are not legitimate, and request an investigation to determine if they have similarly *defrauded* (be sure to use that word) other customers in your state. 4. Watch your Amex bill for charge-backs and keep witholding the original amount (don't add surcharges for legal expenses, you have to sue separately for those). Follow the rules (usually printed on the back of credit card statements) in every respect for witholding amounts from the credit card issuer. Bottom line, force Amex to keep charging the amount back to MCI, and file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission *against Amex* if they refuse. > In any case, we have never had a problem with MCI's phone service > itself -- just with this one instance of double billing when we > switched over from cash to Amex payment. Our LD usage is quite high, > and almost all of it is internatinal. Is there any other company that > can get us to Europe for 9 cents a minute? Almost ANY LD company will be cheaper than MCI. Keep in mind, though, that MCI is probably charging you for ring-no-answers, so they're probably eating up the economy of the low per-minute rate with some fraud. This is not generally a problem with AT&T, who can monitor the real status of international calls. You should have no problem finding a carrier who can give you a switched-access WATS package with attractive pricing. > I have also tried the writing-to-officials route on one occasion > before we went with MCI, when our AT & T service was slammed by a > fly-by-night company in Easton, PA. I wrote to the FCC, the > Attorneys-general of both AZ and PA. That approach turned out to be > completely worthless. I got a form letter from each agency saying our > complaint had been received, then nothing. The Attorney General may not get MCI to stop hounding you, but you need to file a formal complaint (always send it certified) so they have something to work with. Certain kinds of complaints can't be ignored (for long, at least). You can also get a local TV station to get involved, if they have someone who covers this sort of thing, and they'd love to get their hands on a criminal complaint that the Attorney General decided to ignore. > Fortunately on that > occasion, it was the slammer who claimed I owed them money, so I > simply refused to pay and invited them to sue us. After going through > several months of havingg the company call us at five a.m. screaming > into our ears, they gave up on us. Or maybe they simply went broke, > since I never heard of the company again. If MCI gets a collection agent after you, you can do one of two things: 1. File a criminal harrassment charge against the agency for harrassing you by telephone. or 2. Get the agency's address and contact info and bill them for "consulting services." $500/hour in one-hour increments should be good for a start. Send the first invoice with a letter (certified, of course) stating that since they contacted you initially, you will assume their agreement with the terms of the contract, etc., etc. You can actually have some fun with it, depending upon how stupid the agency is (sounds like the last one was a group of budding rocket scientists). [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder if I could get MCI to buy some banner ads here in the Digest? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jonathan Subject: Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 10:12:15 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com >> I... prefer to pay my bill at the nearby local store in cash... >> new sign... *all* in-store bill payments would cost >> an additional $3.00. The real issue here is the handling of cash. If Sprint receives more than a modest amount of cash, they incur substantial costs -- they need special cash handling procedures, double custody rules, their insurance becomes very expensive, they may be required to engage an armored car service, and at some point their insurance company may require them to install a secured cashier's station with bulletproof glass etc. >> SprintPCS... pays a 2% to 3% surcharge to credit card companies >> cash payment... Cash... no such hit on the company's revenue. > But there is overhead... the clerk's time... Sprint probably pays less than 1% to its credit card company, because of high average invoice, high volume, and relatively low loss rates. On a typical $50 bill, that's maybe a 50 cent fee. It costs Sprint at least 30 cents to process each check. > What about paying by mail? Don't they let you mail a check with your > bill, like most other companies? That would be more efficient. So would electronic banking or automatic debit. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two problems here. First of all, no > clerk I know of is paid (or valued at) anywhere close to $50 per > hour. But Sprint PCS stores don't really have "clerks" - the people at their counter are primarily salespeople, and also handle all sorts of customer problems. The opportunity cost of one of these people -- given that they can only put a fixed number out there, and must recruit continuously to have even a minimal staff -- is easily $50/hour. > So if a $7 per hour clerk riffles credit card papers all day long or > endorses checks all day long or counts cash and puts it in a cash > register all day long, what is the difference? PAT] The credit card papers are never touched after the initial sale -- they're just bundled up for ninety days, and then discarded. The cash has be kept in some secure manner until it is delivered to a bank and counted again, and it poses a significant security risk. If you think that Sprint PCS's profits are exorbitant, buy some of their stock - it's traded as PCS, and closed on Friday 8/29/99 at 59.50. They lost $1.17 billion (before extraordinary items) in the six months that ended in June 1999. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know, I bet I could get Sprint to buy some banner ads here also, especially when they find out that MCI is considering buying some. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #353 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 30 02:32:03 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id CAA28586; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 02:32:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 02:32:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908300632.CAA28586@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #354 TELECOM Digest Mon, 30 Aug 99 02:32:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 354 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (John De Hoog) Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (Steve Winter) Re: Toll-Free Payphones Surcharges and UCE (Steven Lichter) Will AT&T Join the 5-Cents-per-Minute Crowd? (Monty Solomon) Satellite Phone Company Latest to File For Bankruptcy (Monty Solomon) Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers (Satch) FCC Filing in Opposition to AT&T Termination of 500 Service (J. Carpenter) FCC Sets Wiretap Rules For Digital Phones (Monty Solomon) Re: Weird Wrong Number (Mark Brader) Re: Weird Wrong Number (Adam H. Kerman) Re: Wierd Call (Alan Boritz) Re: Traceroute on Telephone Circuits (Adam Sampson) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John De Hoog Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 12:57:27 +0900 Organization: Wonmug's World Lisa Hancock wrote, > ... forgive me for being cynical, but IMHO, the Internet has a long > way to go, both technologically and legally, before it meets the > many dreams and claims of its supporters. A lot of work remains. This is true, but in no way lessens the enormous potential. > It does not cost me any money if someone sends me an advertisement > via the US Mail. (The post office actually makes money from > bulk mailers despite the discounts.) But the ten or so junk > email messages I get every day, most of which are obvious scams > or pornographic, DO cost me money through forcing me to wade > through them online while the meter is running, and add my host's > cost to store them on disk and bandwidth. Clearly they should be > illegal, yet every day they still keep a comin'. On the other hand, there's very little you can do about the junk mail, but much you can do about the junk email. Thanks to some simple filters on my local POP server, I only see about one junk email post a day at most. > Both myself and my employer spend money to buy virus protection > software to protect our computers from sabotage. Thanks to the > Internet, a criminal can now break into my home and steal from me or > seriously vandalize my property from the comfort of his or own > living room. I don't consider this a good thing, but most people > seem to shrug it off. The virus protection software, SPAM filters, encryption and other technologies are effective and getting more so every day. Just think of them as the equivalent of the locks on your home and car. > How reliable is the Internet? How often are we online and get > disconnected in the middle of a session? How often does an error > message come up for whatever reason -- site not responding, site not > found, Java script error? How good is response time? People are already switching over to faster bandwidth alternatives. Javascript errors are not the fault of the Internet per se. The technology is still young but improving fast. > Ok: are we willing to entrust our personal banking transactions > to this kind of reliability? Maybe not yet, but before long the reliability won't be so different from that of the ATMs you use without thinking. Already I've been shopping on line for a few years and have yet to run into a problem. I've even had my money refunded a couple of times. > What about the cost? As an individual, I'm paying $25 each month for > Internet services, plus $15 for a dedicated computer phone line. Now, > frankly, to me that $40 every month is an _entertainment_ expense. Do > I get any benefits out of it? I don't know about you, but here in Japan I pay ten times that for a dedicated Internet connection; yet it's worth every yen. As a translator in the telecommunications field, I use my Internet connection to perform research quickly that would have required going to a specialized library a few years ago, or would have been impossible altogether. I'm also able to receive work from clients electronically and return it in file format via the Internet. I can work from my home or anywhere else, just about. The savings in travel and shipping costs, as well as time, are enormous. > My employer has also provided me with Internet service at my desk. I > use it. Someone walking by would think I was doing work related stuff > as there'd be lots of computer related stuff on my screen. But a > closer look would show that it was 1950s computer stuff, not exactly > relevent to my job. Back when I worked in a company we had other ways to waste time -- trying to shoot rubber bands onto ceiling hooks, and reading audio magazines. The Internet is going to make the whole idea of such companies obsolete eventually. People sitting at desks with time on their hands is certainly not the fault of the Internet. > Anybody and everybody can put up a web page and say anything they > want on it. In a Democracy, that's supposed to be a good thing. > If I stood on a street corner to hand out my own printed manisfesto, > that is my Constitutional right. How many people will read my > work and give it credence is another story. If I want a publisher > to distribute it, I'd better have something worthwhile and not > harmful or illegal so the publisher and bookstores don't get sued. Great, let the publishers decide what we get to read. I used to be in the position to make such decisions, so I know a little about the process. I think we're a lot better off without that particular filter on information. > But on the Internet, I can put up bomb making directions. I can put > up bogus medical informaton. I can even sell medications and > circumvent long established safety rules. Years ago society learned > it was necessary to maintain the public safety. Have we forgotten > that? The old protections aren't there and haven't been replaced. > Your local drugstore likely will be careful in what medicine they give > you because (1) it would be illegal otherwise and (2) they don't want > you to sue them. You get sick from Internet advice or drugs and what > is your recourse? The protection is your own common sense. If you wouldn't buy medicine from someone on a street corner, don't buy it from a Web site. > The Internet certainly has FUTURE _potential_ benefits. But for all > the hype about "e-commerce" you'd think we've landed in Emerald City > of Oz. No muss, no fuss, everything is perfect. Never leave the > front of your computer, yet food and clothing will magically appear. > The world doesn't and will not work that way. I think people are more aware of the problems, and more realistic about the real potential, than you give them credit for. John De Hoog, Tokyo http://wonmug.com ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 04:33:02 GMT Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com J.F. Mezei spake thusly and wrote: > Anyone want to bet that Bill Gates will somehow succeed in claiming he > invented the Internet ? Nope, Al Gore has already staked that claim. Bill ain't gonna mess with Al Gore. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering Listed at http://www.thepubliceye.com as SELLCOM New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.comstuffit (Steven Lichter) Date: 30 Aug 1999 04:03:38 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Toll-Free Payphones Surcharges and UCE In the past I have done what you are asking as have others; Pat has posted them most of the time. I have been blasted for the same reservations you are having, but if you call the phone number listed on the spam and it appears to be clealy the type of trash the spammer has been spilling; such as great money maker and so on your can be sure that you have reached the spammers mailbox which is what most of them use, go for it. Look at my signature and you will see how I feel about spam. I get junk mail at a E-mail address that I have not posted on in years and it has no access to Web sites as many spammers say they are replying to your request. I guess if they put that they feel what they are doing if ok, since they can claim you asked for the trash or scams then it is okay to call them. In article , Jonathan wrote: > Is this correct? Is this a legal, ethical way to dissuade spammers? > How can you ensure that you're calling a spammer's toll-free number, not > some other number a vindictive person advertised for the exclusive > purpose of bringing misery on an innocent person? Apple Elite II 909-359-5338. Home of GBBS/LLUCE, support for the Apple II and Macintosh 24 hours 2400/14.4. OggNet Server. The only good spammer is a dead one, have you hunted one down today? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Telephone Spamming via 800 numbers to an internet email spammer is a perfectly acceptable way of handling the problem. I believe the technique was first perfected here in this Digest about 1992-93, and since then I've seen it discussed about the net in various newsgroups occassionally. The 'inquiries' made of Jeff Slaton and his 'services' several years ago cost him many, many thousands of dollars in phone bills. If an 800 number gets spammed which is not that of the spammer (i.e. he misentered it in his messages) and an innocent person gets spammed on the phone, then their complaint is, I believe, with the spammer and not with the net. Just as a large company which misprints its toll-free number then has to settle with the victim of the misprint, likewise a spammer will need to settle with anyone who gets his calls accidentally. Unlike Jeff Slaton, who I believe took responsibilty for his phone service, I suspect many modern spammers are using answering services (automated or otherwise) where they simply 'rent' the toll-free number month by month and pay the charges. In all probability when payback time arrives, they split, leaving the answering service holding the bag. Its a shame the answering service has to find out the hard way the type of customer they were dealing with. I think perhaps there will be another issue of the 'TELECOM Digest Toll Free Business Directory' issued one of these days soon, for your convenience in shopping with the fine merchants on the net who have sent you unwanted email. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 17:11:27 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Will AT&T Join the 5-Cents-per-Minute Crowd? By Bloomberg News Special to CNET News.com August 29, 1999, 1:30 p.m. PT AT&T, will introduce new products and services tomorrow, and analysts said it may match the 5-cents-a-minute plans offered by rivals MCI WorldCom and Sprint. The company may also update investors on its outlook for the second half, analysts said. Because of some investors' concern about how decreasing long-distance rates may affect revenue and profits, AT&T shares have dropped 26 percent since peaking at 64.31 in January. http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,41054,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 17:12:45 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Satellite Phone Company Latest to File For Bankruptcy By Reuters Special to CNET News.com August 27, 1999, 4:40 p.m. PT NEW YORK--ICO Global Communications, which is building a satellite communications network, filed for bankruptcy today, becoming the latest casualty in the nascent satellite phone industry. ICO filed for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, according to court documents. ICO's move follows by just two weeks the bankruptcy filing of rival Iridium World Communications. http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,41036,00.html ------------------------------ Subject: Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers From: satch@concentric.nospam.net (Satch) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 04:24:33 GMT Organization: SBC Internet Services Allegedly ptownson@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) said on 28 Aug 1999 in the following: >> And who should pay for this? Would you prefer that the users pay >> $100/month for a 28.8K dial-up account? Because without the big >> companies, that's exactly what we'd be facing. > I dispute those figures. I would like some proof of it. This sounds > a lot like 'our web site cost us a million dollars to fix the > last time a hacker broke into it.' Nonsense! I also dispute those figures. I remember when there was no Internet, when electronic mail was provided by networks of Telebit modems running uucp and unix sendmail. Services offered electronic email and later news for far less than $100/month for a dialup account. (Indeed, that was in the days of blazing-fast 2.4 kilobit/s modems.) Fido-based systems were even cheaper, usually "free" (donation recommended to keep it around, about $15-20 per *year*) and provided information sharing of consistantly high quality. CompuServe -- or should I say Micronet -- was $20/month plus usage. I remember some heavy months when my bill would hit the ceiling of $300/month, particularly when I was trying to trace down enough information to raise the flag on the bad hard drive in the IBM PC AT back in '85. Ditto the Byte Information Exchange (BIX). Anyone remember The Source? Then there was ARPAnet, in the 70s. Fun. Our government paying propeller-heads to play. The return on that investment have been paid back many times over, judging from the way commercial enterprise has taken to the Internet like a duck takes to cool, clear water. The figures make sense only when there is a pure profit motive involved. I know people who provide Internet services -- even tier one services -- at prices that let them live comfortably but not necessarily at the Caddy -a-week level. Not all business people view it that way. Conclusion: the $100/month figure is overblown, perhaps by a factor of two. -- _____ __/satch\___________________________________________________ Satchell Evaluations, testing modems since 1984 Computationally addicted since 1970. Advertisement on request. "The only good mouse-trap is a hungry cat" -- Satch ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 23:30:37 -0400 From: Jeffrey J. Carpenter Subject: FCC Filing in Opposition to AT&T Termination of 500 Service In case AT&T Easy Reach 500 service customers are interested in filing their own comments with the FCC on the termination of the service, my comments can be viewed at: www.pobox.com/~jjc/att-500-complaint.pdf Jeffrey J. Carpenter P.O. Box 471 Glenshaw, PA 15116-0471 Phone: +1 218 837-6000 Fax: +1 310 914-1716 Email: jjc@pobox.com Web: http://pobox.com/~jjc/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 17:08:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Sets Wiretap Rules For Digital Phones By Bloomberg News Special to CNET News.com August 27, 1999, 5:15 p.m. PT The Federal Communications Commission issued technical requirements today that telecommunications companies must meet to comply with a federal law permitting wiretaps of digital phone conversations. The agency adopted six of nine specific requirements on the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation's 'wish list.' Interim requirements set up by the Telecommunications Industry Association must be met by June 30, 2000, and the six standards spelled out today must be met by Sept. 30, 2001. http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,41037,00.html ------------------------------ From: msbrader@interlog.com (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: Weird Wrong Number Date: 30 Aug 1999 01:04:23 -0400 Bill Levant wrote: >> I think this is a reference to the urban legend about the guy who >> falls asleep after a date, wakes up in the tub missing a kidney. Adam Kerman writes: > It was the plot of the first episode of "Law and Order" broadcast on NBC. According to , the first episode broadcast was a *different* story of medical crime; the kidney episode, "Sonata for a Solo Organ", came late in the first season. I happened to catch a rerun of it on A&E the other day; it was about a kidney theft, but the circumstances did not conform to the UL. ObTelecom: on "Law & Order", the police are often use the characters' telephone LUDs, which I have heard them expand as Local Usage Details. This term, which I haven't heard elsewhere, sounds as though it relates to billing of local calls, a concept which is happily foreign to me here. Of course I realize that modern switches could log all calls whether they need to for billing or not, but anyway, am I right that LUD basically relates to billing, and is the term used outside of New York? Mark Brader "When laws are outlawed, only outlaws will have laws." Toronto, msbrader@interlog.com -- Diane Holt My text in this article is in the public domain. ------------------------------ From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Re: Weird Wrong Number Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 04:45:10 GMT Organization: @Work Internet powered by @Home Network Heh. This was hardly funny enough that it needed to be repeated. There's been too much weird stuff from some guy named Kerman in the last few Digests. On Sun, 29 Aug 1999, Adam H. Kerman wrote: > Bill Levant wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Reader's Note: Hi, Dense, welcome to the Digest. I >> think this is a reference to the urban legend about the guy who falls >> asleep after a date, wakes up in the tub missing a kidney. Pretty >> loose, though. WJL] >> Well I guess so. I had never heard that particular story before. > It was the plot of the first episode of "Law and Order" broadcast on NBC. > (It wasn't the pilot, which wasn't aired for several weeks.) >> Don't try anything smart like that again or I will have to get one of the >> several attornies on retainer here at the Digest to order you not >> to read this column any longer. PAT] > Shouldn't you use attorneys who are out of braces? But I guess the > ones with straightened teeth can really put the bite on you. ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: Wierd Call Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 19:17:49 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , James Gifford wrote: > mbusse@midway.uchicago.edu wrote: >> I tend to get a lot of random calls where people just hang up when >> one answers. (Most of which, I assume, are people wardialling, or >> something similar) >> The other day, I actually decided to call one of them back. The >> number was (773) 847-8495. When you call it, it rings for a while, >> then a recorded voice says "Thank you." >> Does anyone have any idea what the heck this might be? > Um, do you still have both your kidneys? :) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Call me dense I guess. I don't get it. PAT] I think the second author was making a vague reference to a very old Urban Legend that AOL'ers are constantly "discovering" and forwarding via email to as many people as they can, as if they were terrified that people would really do such a thing. You've never heard of the kidney pirate legend? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Unfortunatly (or perhaps fortunatly) no I have not heard it, but then I do not spend much time reading chain letters originating at AOL. I guess I should try to keep more up to date. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 15:00:59 +0100 From: Adam Sampson Subject: Re: Traceroute on Telephone Circuits Reply-To: azz@gnu.org > I was wondering if there is any commercially available product that allows > me to trace the route of telephone calls I make. [...] It is very easily > done on computers when tracing the route to other servers/computers ip > addresses. I doubt it. The classic Unix "traceroute" program (of which the Windows version you refer to is a rip-off) works by [ab]using the IP "time-to-live" feature; any IP packet that gets sent out has a "time-to-live" value in the header which gets decreased by one for each host it passes through. When the TTL reaches 0, it gets bounced back to the host that sent it with an error. Traceroute simply sends out packets with TTL=1, TTL=2 and so on, printing the hosts from which the error responses came, until it gets a reply from the host the packet was addressed to. I don't know any way of doing anything analogous to this on the phone network (at least without working for the telco). Adam Sampson azz@gnu.org ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #354 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 30 15:36:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id PAA25148; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:36:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:36:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908301936.PAA25148@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #355 TELECOM Digest Mon, 30 Aug 99 15:36:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 355 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #197, August 30, 1999 (Angus TeleManagement) AT&T One Rate 7 Cents; Family Plan (Monty Solomon) AT&T Wireless "Customer Service" Discussion (Lauren Weinstein) MUD (was Re: Weird Wrong Number) (Danny Burstein) Public Coast Stations - Marine Operators (Forrest Nelson) Re: Toll-Free Payphones Surcharges and UCE (Joel B. Levin) Re: Water Amplifies Electricity? (Tad Derx) This Week's Poll Question (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 10:39:03 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #197, August 30, 1999 ************************************************************ * * * TELECOM UPDATE * * Angus TeleManagement's Weekly Telecom Newsbulletin * * http://www.angustel.ca * * Number 197: August 30, 1999 * * * * Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by * * generous financial support from: * * * * AT&T Canada ............... http://www.attcanada.com/ * * Bell Canada ............... http://www.bell.ca/ * * Lucent Technologies ....... http://www.lucent.ca/ * * MetroNet Communications ... http://www.metronet.ca/ * * Sprint Canada ............. http://www.sprintcanada.ca/ * * Telus Communications....... http://www.telus.com/ * * TigerTel Services ......... http://www.citydial.com/ * * * ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Sprint to Launch Local Service in Toronto ** Date Proposed for New Toronto Area Code ** Telebec Files for 50-Cent Payphone Charge ** Videotron Expands Business Local Service ** Forum Releases Voice-on-Web Spec ** Number Portability Expands in Greater Toronto ** AT&T Offers Call Routing ** Mondex Cash Card Relaunched in Quebec ** E-Billing Venture Plans January Start-Up ** CANARIE Plans Networking Workshop ** Newbridge Acquisitions Aim at IP Market ** Nortel Buys Periphonics ** Cisco Pays US$7 Billion for Optical Transport Start-Up ** Excel Plans Web Banking ** New Executives at Call-Net, Sprint ** CRTC Senior Personnel Changes ** Financial Reports Eicon Hummingbird Newbridge ** How Reliable Is the Network? ============================================================ SPRINT TO LAUNCH LOCAL SERVICE IN TORONTO: Sprint Canada will begin offering local telephone service to residential and business customers in Toronto on Wednesday, September 1. ** Sprint Canada's parent company, Call-Net Enterprises Inc, has scheduled a special meeting of shareholders for October 14, 1999. The meeting is legally required following the demand by a group which owns 13% of the company's voting stock. DATE PROPOSED FOR NEW TORONTO AREA CODE: The Canadian Numbering Administration has asked the CRTC to approve March 5, 2001, as the implementation date for a second area code, and mandatory 10-digit local dialing, in Toronto. The request reflects the unanimous recommendation of the industry-wide 416 NPA Code Relief Planning Committee, which met on August 18. ** The latest forecasts indicate that all possible prefixes in 416 will be in use by the third or fourth quarter of 2001. TELEBEC FILES FOR 50-CENT PAYPHONE CHARGE: CRTC Public Notice 99-19 seeks comment on Telebec's application to raise the charge for local payphone calls to 50 cents. Comments are due September 24. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/internet/1999/8045/03/pn99-19.htm VIDEOTRON EXPANDS BUSINESS LOCAL SERVICE: Videotron Business Network has expanded its business local service to the Montreal-area communities of Longueuil, Saint-Jean-sur- Richelieu, and Pont-Viau. FORUM RELEASES VOICE-ON-WEB SPEC: The Voice eXtensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) Forum, which has 61 member companies, has released a preliminary specification for VoiceXML, designed to add voice-enabled services to the World Wide Web. For more information, see the VoiceXML website. http://www.voicexml.org NUMBER PORTABILITY EXPANDS IN GREATER TORONTO: Bell Canada says Local Number Portability will be available on or about September 24 in Brampton, Ontario, and October 8 in Ajax- Pickering and Oakville. AT&T OFFERS CALL ROUTING: AT&T Canada now offers Intelligent Call Processing, which routes calls to distributed call centers based on customer-supplied data. MONDEX CASH CARD RELAUNCHED IN QUEBEC: Mondex Canada has launched a new trial of its cash card in Sherbrooke region in Quebec. Participants will receive a new version of the card that also functions as a debit card. E-BILLING VENTURE PLANS JANUARY START-UP: The Bank of Montreal's Cebra e-commerce unit says its Electronic Post Office project, which delivers bills to consumers by e-mail, will launch in January. The project, sponsored jointly with Canada Post, has been in trials since June 1998. CANARIE PLANS NETWORKING WORKSHOP: CANARIE will hold its fifth annual Advanced Networks Workshop, "From Information Highway to Information Main Street," in Toronto November 29- 30. For information and to register, go to www.canarie.ca. NEWBRIDGE ACQUISITIONS AIM AT IP MARKET: Newbridge Networks is paying $350 Million to acquire total ownership of two IP networking affiliates: TimeStep Corp. (Kanata, Ontario) which supplies IPSec security products, and Northchurch Communications (Andover, Massachusetts), which makes IP edge routers. NORTEL BUYS PERIPHONICS: Nortel Networks is paying US$436 Million to acquire Periphonics (Bohemia, New York), which makes interactive voice response systems. Periphonics has 900 employees and annual sales of US$142 Million. CISCO PAYS US$7 BILLION FOR OPTICAL TRANSPORT START-UP: Cisco Systems is acquiring Cerent, a California-based supplier of optical network equipment, for US$6.9 Billion. Two-year-old Cerent has 287 employees and current revenue of about US$100 Million a year. EXCEL PLANS WEB BANKING: Long distance provider Excel Communications, a unit of Teleglobe, plans to offer its U.S. customers banking services over the Internet. NEW EXECUTIVES AT CALL-NET, SPRINT: ** Maggs Barrett, formerly Executive Vice-President and COO of ACC Telenterprises, has been named President of Call- Net Technology Services Inc., replacing Phil Bates. (See Telecom Update #194) ** Janet Thompson, previously Sprint Canada's Senior VP, Majors and Marketing, is now President, Enterprise Marketing Sales and Service. CRTC SENIOR PERSONNEL CHANGES: ** Susan Baldwin, Executive Director Broadcasting, leaves that position on August 30 to undertake a special assignment for the Commission. She will be replaced by Jean-Pierre Blais in an acting capacity. ** Peter Vivian, Executive Director Telecommunications, will leave the Commission at the end of the year. No replacement has been named yet. FINANCIAL REPORTS: ** Eicon, a Montreal-based software maker, recorded profits of $10.3 Million for the year ended June 30, up from $6.6 Million the previous year. Sales rose 47% to $176 Million. ** Hummingbird Communications of Toronto reports record revenues of $42.5 Million for the quarter ended June 30, a 24% increase. Net income before one-time charges was $8 Million, up 10%. ** Newbridge Networks profits for the quarter ended August 1 were $47.3 Million, a 33% increase, on record revenues of $495 Million. HOW RELIABLE IS THE NETWORK? In the September issue of Telemanagement, available this week, Ian and Lis Angus examine lessons of the July fire in a Bell Canada Toronto switching center and conclude, "Five Nines Isn't Enough." Also in Telemanagement #168: ** "Lack of Support Killed Telecom User Group," by CBTA Chairman Gary Bernstein ** "Business Long Distance Rates: Still in Free Fall," by John Riddell To subscribe to Telemanagement call 1-800-263-4415, ext 225, or visit http://www.angustel.ca/teleman/tm.html. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at http://www.angustel.ca/update/up.html 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to majordomo@angustel.ca. The text of the message should contain only the two words: subscribe update To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to majordomo@angustel.ca. The text of the message should say only: unsubscribe update [Your e-mail address] =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER: All contents copyright 1999 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 225. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ============================================================ ------------------------------ Reply-To: Monty Solomon From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T One Rate 7 Cents; Family Plan Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 13:27:55 -0400 http://www.att.com/press/item/0,1193,630,00.html AT&T Delivers Simplicity And Savings With Two New Plans BASKING RIDGE, N.J. AT&T today announced two new offers that will make communications simpler and more affordable for consumers: a long distance plan with a single low per-minute price good all day, every day, and a wireless program that gives families unlimited calling to each other. "Life is hectic; communicating should be easy," said Gene Lockhart, president of AT&T consumer services. "With this kind of value, there's no need to watch the clock or dial around." The new long distance offer, AT&T One Rate 7 Cents, lets consumers make interstate long distance calls from home anytime 'day or night' for seven cents a minute with a monthly fee of $4.95 if the company also handles their residential local toll calls. If not, the monthly fee is $5.95. The wireless offer, AT&T Family Plan, enables up to five family members to make unlimited wireless calls to each other and unlimited wireless calls to their landline phone at home when they call within their Family Calling Area and purchase one of several options for wireless calling. "We want to extend the freedom of wireless calling to every family member," said Dan Hesse, president of AT&T Wireless Services. "No other wireless carrier offers this kind of value to today's families." AT&T One Rate 7 Cents AT&T said the freedom to call anytime at a low rate is a big draw for consumers. Its research shows more than one-third of all consumer long distance calling occurs between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. weekdays, when competing plans charge rates as high as 25 cents a minute. The company pioneered simple pricing with the introduction of AT&T One Rate for residential landline calling, and AT&T Digital One Rate for wireless calling. More than 23 million AT&T consumer customers are currently subscribed to one of AT&T's One Rate plans. The company said it was able to introduce this offer due to current and major anticipated reductions in access fees from the Federal Communications Commission -- the costs long distance companies pay to local telephone monopolies to complete a call. AT&T has always passed on savings from access reductions to consumers. AT&T Family Plan The Family Plan is designed to keep family members connected even when they're not together. Its unique feature is that family members can make unlimited wireless calls to each other and to their home telephone anytime, as long as they're within their Family Calling Area. This gives them the ability to stay in touch and coordinate their activities as they move around town. Plan members can receive these benefits by selecting one of three wireless calling options: 60 minutes of non-family calling for $24.99 a month 400 minutes of non-family calling for $49.99 a month 600 minutes of non-family calling for $69.99 a month. The minutes included in the packages are designed for calls to non-plan members and are in addition to the unlimited calling features of the Family Plan program. The Family Calling Area is the geographic area where families typically live, work, commute and play on a regular basis. At least one member must choose either the $49.99 or the $69.99 plan and all members must have Digital multi-network phones. As an added bonus, the family will also receive a seven-cent rate on domestic interstate long distance calls from their home phone with no additional monthly fee. The plan makes it easy to stay in touch throughout the day with all the benefits of wireless communication, including safety, security and the ability to coordinate hectic schedules while on the go. AT&T Family Plan is available tomorrow in most AT&T Wireless Services markets. It will be available in New York and newly acquired AT&T Wireless Services markets by the end of the year. Interested consumers can call 1-800-IMAGINE for more details. About AT&T AT&T (www.att.com) is the world's premier provider of voice and data communications, with more than 80 million customers, including businesses, government and consumers. AT&T runs the world's largest long-distance network and the largest wireless network in North America. The company is a leading supplier of data and Internet services for businesses and the nation's largest direct Internet service provider to consumers. AT&T also provides local telephone service to a growing number of businesses. Editor's Note: AT&T Chairman and CEO Mike Armstrong will host a conference call for financial analysts at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Reporters are invited to listen in to the broadcast by calling 800-230-1096 from the U.S., and 612-288-0337 from outside the U.S. The call will be rebroadcast for 72 hours beginning at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. To listen to the rebroadcast, call 800-475-6701 from the U.S. or 320-365-3844 from outside the U.S., and entering the access code 467323. AT&T Chairman and CEO Mike Armstrong will join Gene Lockhart, President, AT&T Consumer Services, and Dan Hesse, President, AT&T Wireless Services, to discuss these offers in a two-way conference call for reporters 11:00 a.m. Eastern time today. The call-in numbers for that call are 800-260-0712 (U.S.) or 612-332-0342 (outside the U.S.). An audio rebroadcast of the 11:00 a.m. conference call will be available from 2:00 p.m. Eastern time today for 72 hours. To listen to the audio rebroadcast, U.S. callers can dial 800-475-6701 and enter access code 467773. Outside the U.S., the rebroadcast is available by dialing 320-365-3844, and then entering the access code 467773. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 99 10:54 PDT From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: AT&T Wireless "Customer Service" Discussion Greetings. Over in the alt.cellular newsgroup, I've recently been posting some detailed materials regarding the remarkably confused situation concerning very negative AT&T Wireless rate plan changes, and the incredible problems with getting correct information about these plans from their customer service reps. Rather than repeat the whole sordid story here, it might be easier for interested persons (including both current AT&T Wireless subscribers and persons who have been considering that choice) to read my latest item via the DejaNews URL: http://deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=518519782 You can use the "Thread" command at DejaNews to see associated messages. If you're unable to obtain the message there, feel free to contact me and I'll be glad to e-mail you a copy. Thanks much. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren@vortex.com Moderator, PRIVACY Forum --- http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Host, "Vortex Reality Report & Unreality Trivia Quiz" --- http://www.vortex.com/reality ------------------------------ From: dannyb@panix.com (Danny Burstein) Subject: MUD (was Re: Weird Wrong Number) Date: 30 Aug 1999 07:53:13 -0400 In msbrader@interlog.com (Mark Brader) writes: > ObTelecom: on "Law & Order", the police are often use the characters' > telephone LUDs, which I have heard them expand as Local Usage Details. > This term, which I haven't heard elsewhere, sounds as though it > relates to billing of local calls, a concept which is happily foreign > to me here. > Of course I realize that modern switches could log all calls whether > they need to for billing or not, but anyway, am I right that LUD > basically relates to billing, and is the term used outside of New > York? NYC area calls used to be counted as "message units". If you made a call in yuor own borough, or parts of the nearby ones, your call was "one message unit" and was untimed. If your call was a bit farther, it started off as two or three or four ... and continued clicking away message units every minute or so. Note that you did _NOT_ get a listing of these actual calls on your "regular" phone bill, but rather just got a count of the message units used (and were billed accordingly). You could, however, request a copy of your "message unit detail", abbreviated as a "MUD" sheet. And since they were generally poor quality computer-output-microfilm onto poor quality thermal or "stabilized photo" paper, they were pretty muddy and hard to read. Oh, of course there was a charge for this ... and the listing was _not_ complete. You got times and numbers of your "multi-message-unit" calls, but only a count of the single ones. Anyway, that was the 60s and 70s. As the 80s rolled around, the listing switched over to a direct printout, and complete details (i.e. all answered numbers) were phased in. So if you ask today, you'll get (almost) everything. And this material goes back a couple of months online, and much, much, longer in archived records. And the name has slowly changed from "MUD" to "LUD". (Kind of like how "6th Avenue" has been renamed "Avenue of the Americas") Oh, btw, the info now recorded by the switch includes busies and hangups, even though these won't be on your printout. And there's also the _incoming_ call info which you, as a regular customer, won't be able to get. (How far back this goes is a very touchy subject and no one has given an authoritative statement on that). Incidentally, this is about to get a _lot_ , (depending on your point of view) worse or better ... In order to comply with the Federal mandate under CALEA, the telcos are going to keep much, much, more info ... _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Forrest Nelson Subject: Public Coast Stations - Marine Operators Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 10:13:21 -0700 Does anyone have information about who or which telecommunications carrier provides these services these days. I would like to place a shore to ship call. I can remember the old days when you called the operator and asked for the "marine operator". In particular I would like to know who in Western Washington waters. Thanks, J. Forrest Nelson, RCDD Sparling, Inc. jfn@sparling.com *e-mail 206-667-0578 *direct 206-667-0501* fax http://www.sparling.com ------------------------------ From: levinjb@gte.net (Joel B Levin) Subject: Re: Toll-Free Payphones Surcharges and UCE Organization: On the desert Reply-To: levinjb@gte.net Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 07:13:40 GMT In , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Telephone Spamming via 800 numbers to > an internet email spammer is a perfectly acceptable way of handling > the problem. I believe the technique was first perfected here in this > Digest about 1992-93, and since then I've seen it discussed about the net > in various newsgroups occassionally. The 'inquiries' made of Jeff > Slaton and his 'services' several years ago cost him many, many > thousands of dollars in phone bills. ...] This is not always the case. Some of the 800 answering services which spammers frequent are flat rate per month (or perhaps flat rate plus a fee per customer roped in). An example (of a number I saw repeated in several posts) comes from a thread I started in the email abuse newsgroup: 1-800-242-0363 belongs to an outfit called Digitcom. Each spammer gives a different "extension". As one poster replied in , > The number you quote is one of a few toll-free numbers for Digitcom > Nationwide Services, a no-fuss no-muss $20/month voicemailbox service. No > sense in trying to run up the spammer's costs, they're only going to pay > $20/month. This protectsa the spammer from huge toll-free bills due to > rabid anti-spammers calling up the number to complain. This has happened > to my job's company twice as I was the victim of some spammer who I had > spanked pretty hard. Out and out fraud. > Digitcom seems slow to respond although I once got a kill. I have a > feeling Digitcom might be more concerned with their bottom line and might > be black hats. > I routinely send a complaint to "abuse@digitcom.net". It doesn't bounce, > but they don't reply. Hope this helps. /JBL Nets: levin/at/bbn.com | "GO TO JAIL. Go directly to jail. Do not pass or jbl/at/levin.mv.com| Go. Do not collect $200." or levinjb/at/gte.net | ARS: KD1ON | -- Parker Brothers [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If Digitcom or other companies like that are willing to pay the costs of the service, that's fine with me. *Someone* is going to get a phone bill, and if things get bad enough for Digitcom and others of that kind that they can no longer afford to give flat rate $20 per month service to spammers, then it may be they have to discontinue that sort of service. It is not up to you and I and others reading this to worry about *who pays the bill*. Our task is to keep those bills coming to them, month after month; great big hellish, humongous, outrageous bills for 'toll-free' service asking to be removed from their mailing lists and asking for more information about their products and services. If Digitcom gets hit with a massive bill for 800 phone service in the million dollar per month range for several months in a row, as happened to a couple others we know about, I feel certain they'll take action of their own initiative to deal with their flat rate customers who are causing the problem. So, it is a little round-about, but the results will be the same. Remember, you must *never* harass anyone by telephone. It is illegal. Make certain that you have something legitimate to discuss with the spammer, such as being removed from the list, or getting information. Do not cause their telephone to ring and then remain silent. Do not make threats or give abuse. Just because calling them from a payphone renders their ANI worthless or causes them to get an extra surcharge on their phone bill, don't feel that you have an obligation to call them from your home or office. Its not your fault how the telephone system is designed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tad Derx Subject: Re: Water Amplifies Electricity? Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 07:48:49 -0500 Organization: Netcom I am afraid I can't address the issue of hydro amplification, although I am very interested in what someone has to say about it. I can ,however, address the "full gallon". When "Hams" operate at the max. allowable power, we are said to be running a "full gallon". This would be 1 kiliwatt (2k p.e.p.). Please fill me in on any revelation that comes out of hydro amlification. Tad John Warne wrote: > At 04:13 AM 8/24/99 -0400, Pat wrote: >> Water conducts electricity quite well and in fact amplifies it to some >> extent. > OK, I'll bite -- please send details of water amplification of > electricity. > I've heard of Hams running "a full gallon." Guess this is what they mean. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 03:24:58 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: This Week's Poll Question The poll question for this week asks what type of phone service you have at home. Do you have wireline only, wireless only, both wireline and wireless, COCOT / payphone service or no home phone service at all. To vote, to http://telecom-digest.org/vote.html Last week's poll asked how you answer your phone at work. The results were: 60 percent answer your business phone with your name only. 20 percent answer with company and/or department name and personal name. 11 percent answer by saying just 'hello' or similar. 7 percent answer with the company name only. 2 percent answer with your department name only. Another choice was answering by saying the number or extension that had been reached. No one chose that answer at all. Thanks for participating. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #355 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 30 16:17:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id QAA27300; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 16:17:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 16:17:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908302017.QAA27300@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #356 TELECOM Digest Mon, 30 Aug 99 16:17:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 356 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Hotmail Accounts Exposed to All - Huge Security Failure (Monty Solomon) Beepers to Go Silent (Mike Pollock) Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Pay (M. Aakesson) Re: Sprint PCS Customer Service Enhancements (Leonard Erickson) Re: International Calls & CIDs (David Charles) Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service (Jason Fetterolf) Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service (Dave Garland) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply-To: Monty Solomon From: Monty Solomon Subject: Hotmail Accounts Exposed to All - Huge Security Failure Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:05:52 -0400 http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/21490.html by Declan McCullagh and by James Glave 8:05 a.m. 30.Aug.99.PDT A catastrophic security flaw in Microsoft's Hotmail service that was exposed over the weekend allowed anyone to read the private correspondence as well as impersonate the accounts of about 50 million subscribers. The breach was finally closed Monday at around 9 a.m. PDT, when Hotmail restored access to legitimate subscribers. The bug appears to have affected every customer of what Microsoft says is "the world's largest provider of free Web-based email." The significance of this security breach is that it was available to anyone with a Web browser . Most security vulnerabilities on the Internet require in-depth knowledge of Unix or Windows NT language, technical knowledge that the average Web user does not know. Between 8:30 and 9 am PDT, Microsoft pulled the plug on large portions of the entire Hotmail site, rendering it unreachable for millions of subscribers. During that period, the only access to Hotmail accounts could be made through illicit means -- by those who had access to a simple code that had spread wildly on the Net through the weekend. That was about 12 hours after the company was notified of the security hole. But users already logged in to their accounts -- or someone else's -- could continue to send, receive, and delete email. Around 9:30, sections of Hotmail began to slowly come back online. By that time, people without Hotmail accounts could connect to the site's homepage. Users with accounts configured to remember their password, however, received this nhelpful message: "ERROR: Cannot open UserData file". As of 10:15 a.m., Microsoft engineers, led by Mike Nichols in Redmond, Washington, had managed to fix that problem, too, and users could log in normally again. Yet there still was no reference to the problem anywhere on either the Hotmail or MSN sites. Microsoft could not be reached for comment Monday morning, so questions as to why the gaping security hole was left open for at least 24 hours and probably longer could not immediately be answered. The exploit worked this way: Any Web page that contained a short, simple code visible on most browsers as a type-in form -- was able connect to a Hotmail server simply by typing in a user name without requiring a password. By early Monday, copies of that HTML code were posted on hacking-related Web sites. The Hotmail exploit apparently took advantage of a bug in the start script that processed a login session between a Web browser and a server. One site where the problem surfaced was at 2038.com, which Network Solutions shows registered to Moving Pictures, a group based in Sweden. Erik Barkel, the contact associated with that domain, could not be reached for comment. As of about 8:30 a.m. that site redirected to a Web page promoting a marketing company. The managers of that company said they had nothing to do with the redirect. "It's just a point[er] put there by a person who's trying make a joke," said Anders Herlin, business development manager at Abel and Baker. "We haven't had the slightest idea why. "All I know is we do not want to be associated with it," said Herlin. "We are a fairly new company. Maybe someone wanted to cause us harm." But the code quickly spread to dozens, if not hundreds of sites. A Swedish newspaper, Expressen , reported the bug in its Monday editions. The bug let anyone log into a Hotmail account without typing a password. "We know nothing about [the individual who tipped us]. It was anonymous," said Christian Carrwik, one of two Expressen reporters who broke the news. "It has been circulating for a couple of days." Expressen said Microsoft was alerted very early Sunday morning. This is only the most recent Microsoft security gaffe. Redmond admitted earlier this month that its MSN Messenger instant messaging client can accidentally disclose Hotmail account passwords. Even if the password is supposedly deleted from a computer, someone else could still view it if they knew the proper keystrokes. Last week, Wired News reported a bug in tens of millions of Microsoft Windows computers that lets an attacker take control of a PC by sending an email message. Lindsey Arent contributed to this report. Copyright 1994-99 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved. ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: Beepers to Go Silent Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:36:16 -0400 Organization: It's A Mike! By Shu Shin Luh Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 27, 1999; Page E01 About 40,000 voice-paging subscribers in the Washington region will lose their beeper service at 5 p.m. today when Conxus Communications Inc. shuts off its nationwide voice-paging service, Pocketalk. As many as 80,000 customers nationwide will be affected. Conxus, based in Greenville, S.C., informed its customers and resellers Monday -- just five days' notice -- that the company is shutting down, three months after filing for bankruptcy protection. Most customers have been notified, according to a recorded message at Conxus headquarters. But some, like car salesman Kenny Solomon in Lanham, say they weren't aware of the situation until their local paging companies contacted them. Janice Dunbar, office manager for Quick Page and Cellular of Largo, suspects that many more Pocketalk customers are still in the dark and will be in for a rude awakening this afternoon. Since Conxus rolled out its Pocketalk service in 1997, the company has primarily resold its portable voice-mail service through paging companies nationwide. Most of these resellers are also vendors of other numeric paging and cellular services. Phone calls to Conxus's Greenville headquarters were answered by an automated system that didn't allow people to leave a message or speak with a customer service representative. The recorded message advises subscribers to call paging companies to arrange for alternative service, adding that Conxus "will be unable to take any customer service calls, faxes and e-mails at this time." Industry analysts said yesterday that Conxus's case delivers a painful lesson to the wireless telecommunications industry. Consumer interest in Pocketalk following its introduction two years ago has dissipated. What's left is a network "that wasn't cost-effectively meeting consumer demand," said Darryl Sterling, an analyst for the Yankee Group, a Boston-based telecommunications consulting firm. The Pocketalk service was available in Dallas, Fort Worth, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago and parts of South Florida. No other companies have voice-paging services that work with the Motorola system Conxus used, Motorola Inc. spokesman Ken Countess said. And now, resellers, who were notified by Monday, are dealing with the fallout. "The phone rings like crazy," said Sherry Kim, manager of I.D. Communica- tions in Greenbelt. I.D. Communications has about 150 Pocketalk customers and many are furious, she said. Kim left a message for all of her Pocketalk customers last week, offering a $10 rebate for customers who want to trade in Pocketalk pagers and subscribe to a new paging service. She estimates her store will lose several thousand dollars on trade-ins and refunds to customers who paid in advance. Customers who switch services will have to get new numbers, adding another layer of frustration. Atlantic Paging and Cellular President Romy Singh said that as of yesterday about 100 of his firm's 1,000 Pocketalk customers have switched to new services. He's expecting more to respond tomorrow when the service officially switches off. Some customers have asked local resellers whether Motorola would reimburse them for their pagers. Countess said Motorola is reviewing whether it will offer any compensation to the abandoned Pocketalk subscribers. There's little consolation for Pocketalk customer Richard Betty, president of marketing firm Da Vinci Management Group, based in Laurel. He spent all week contacting his clients to let them know his pager won't work after today. But there are several thousand potential clients and contacts who have received his marketing materials with the defunct pager number and can't easily be reached. Betty estimates he'll have to spend about $1,000 to reprint literature, business cards and company letterheads. Staff writer Sarah Schafer contributed to this report. Pocketalk Talk If you're a Pocketalk subscriber, you can: Contact the local paging company from which you got the service. The paging company might be offering trade-in deals and rebates. Check with Motorola at 1-800-548-9954 (available from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.). Motorola manufactures the Pocketalk devices. The company might be able to direct you to alternative paging services. ------------------------------ From: marcus.akesson@no_spam_please.home.se (Marcus AAkesson) Subject: Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 11:54:18 GMT Organization: Chalmers University of Technology On Fri, 20 Aug 1999 13:30:36 -0400, E. Cummings wrote: > Perhaps there are other TELECOM Digest readers who simply prefer to > pay some or all of their bills in cash for personal reasons (yes, I > have credit cards for emergencies) and agree that this "bill payment > surcharge" is inappropriate. Let's hope it isn't a trend. If any > readers are SprintPCS customers, I would encourage them to voice this > concern to a SprintPCS manager. Please explain to me (I'm not familiar with the US banking system) why You would want to pay a bill by cash, card or mailing checks. Don't you have banking services? Collect all your bills and send them to your bank for payment when due? Pay bills with Internet banking? I'm curious! Marcus [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Marcus, what you suggest about gather- ing up all your bills and sending them to the bank for payment is not a widely practiced thing in the United States. Most people do pay by check, credit card or cash. A small number have begun to use the Internet for that purpose. There is wide-spread suspicion in the United States as to how well 'having the bank do it' would work out. Many are afraid of clerical errors by the bank and/or Internet services. PAT] ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Sprint PCS Customer Service Enhancements Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 01:00:48 PST Adam H. Kerman writes: > Leonard Erickson wrote: >> Some companies (like the local cable company) use bulk mailing >> permits rather than metered mail for sending bills. > No. "Bulk Mail" means pre-sorted mail of any class, as contrasted with > mail entered at single-piece rates. There are various presorted > First-Class rates in addition to Standard Mail (A) [formerly presorted > Third-Class]. Check the permit imprint indicia to see what class was > used. First-Class should say "First-Class Mail" or "Presorted > First-Class Mail". If it says "Bulk Rate", "Standard", or "Nonprofit", > it was sent as Standard Mail (A). > Bulk mail may be paid with permit imprint, meter stamp, or > precancelled stamp. First-Class or Standard Mail (A) may be paid with > meter stamps. If you have at least 200 pieces or 50 pounds, you can > use a permit imprint even if you are paying at single-piece rates. > If your cable company really used Standard Mail (A) to send you a bill > or an invoice, that is illegal and you should complain to your postal > inspector. Bills and statements MUST be mailed as First-Class. I just checked a current mailing, and it *does* say "Presort First Class US Postage PAID". But I'm fairly sure that a few years back they *were* using a bulk permit, inasmuch as I don't recall "First Class" appearing in the little box. >> So I've gotten "you have 10 days to pay" notices the day before they >> are due. And since there's no postmark on the bulk mail items, it's >> useless to try proving anything. > If there is a postmark, notice is as of the date on the postmark. If > there is no postmark, notice is as of the day you received it in the > mail. That's not what the "pay or else" notices say. > Your municipality may require something similar of the cable > company. Without that postmark, the due date is counted from the date > YOU received it. Not that I know of. The cable company seems to do turn-offs based on the date marked on the letter, not when it was mailed, much less when it was delivered. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: d_c_h@my-deja.com (David Charles) Subject: Re: International Calls & CIDs Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 16:52:11 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. In article , steven@ primacomputer.com (Steven) wrote: > It depends if the boys at the telephone companies on each end have > learned to properly implement the age old SS7 standard. There are some > places where they have and you get Caller ID no problem. Otherwise it > will give you "unavailable". Sometimes the miscommunication will end > up giving you some bogus CLI, 0,000000,1,etc. This can sometimes give > you a clue as to what network it was coming from, but I wouldn't count > on it. > In article , NOtakmel@stratos. netSPAM says: >> I assume that it's impossible to show the names on CID when a call is >> foreign origin but at least will it show something useful? Will it at >> least tell me it's an international call? There are several reasons why caller ID is not available on some international calls apart from incorrect SS7 implementations, some technical and some regulatory. Some of these are: - Caller ID is not supported in the originating network (either in general or at the originating local exchange). - A signalling system somewhere on the route does not carry caller ID. - The number provided by the originating network does not have international significance and has been discarded by the outgoing international gateway.(e.g. a toll free number dialable only in the country concerned) - The originating network is incapable of providing a meaningful number (what is considered meaningful may vary) - Provision of caller ID on outgoing international calls is prohibited by the law of the originating country. - Presentation of the particular number is prohibited by the law of the originating country. I would consider it correct not to display any information (other than the "Unavailable" message) if the presentation indicator received at the destination local exchange indicates Unavailable, particularly for international calls. It is likely that any number supplied would be meaningless or misleading. The only exception would be if some information could be obtained from other sources. I do not think that there is any significant greater technical problem in supplying names on international calls than other long distance calls (assuming both originating, terminating and and any transit networks support this) however regulatory obstacles are likely to be greater. Furthermore this feature is not widely supported so it is likely that the originating networks for most international calls would not support it. David Charles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 10:58:32 -0400 From: Jason Fetterolf Reply-To: jason@itw.com Subject: Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service Organization: Apollo Concepts Adam H. Kerman wrote: >> Not to mention time and aggravation. Why haven't you cancelled your >> MCI service? You'd stand a better chance of getting it resolved if you >> send written protests to the managers of each facility that billed you >> incorrectly. If that doesn't work, write to the president of MCI. If >> that doesn't work, file a written complaint with your state public >> service commission and file a consumer fraud complaint with your >> state's attorney general. I doubt you'll successfully resolve anything >> over the telephone. (Alan Gore Responded:) > The main reason we haven't canceled is that I think, perhaps > irrationally, that my chances of resolving this are better if I remain > a customer. Once I drop off, they can forget about me completely if > they want to. Write to MCI? The company carefuly arranges things so > there is no way to contact them by snailmail. You call the 800 number, > which refers you to other 800 numbers, each connected to offices in > different states and which do not communicate with each other. There are high quality, low cost, international-focus carriers available that will let you have "casual access" to their network, so that you can dial their 101xxxx code and then get superior rates to "Europe" or wherever else you may call, and you can have your primary "PIC" as MCI, so that MCI still thinks that you are their customer. Then, when you have resolved you MCI issue, the chosen carrier can be your primary PIC so that you can elminate dialing the extra digits. See next comment for details. > In any case, we have never had a problem with MCI's phone service > itself -- just with this one instance of double billing when we > switched over from cash to Amex payment. Our LD usage is quite high, > and almost all of it is internatinal. Is there any other company that > can get us to Europe for 9 cents a minute? Absolutely. There are, in the least, several high quality companies that give *better rates* to Europe...and *better customer service*. One good example is Star Telecom, mainly a wholesale carrier of international traffic. Their main customers are ALL 12 of the top 12 US carriers, as well as many other foreign carriers. Recently, then have set up commercial division to give retail customers the opportunity to get wholesale rates. Some examples: 7.9 cpm to UK, 12 cpm to Germany; all with no minimums, no fees, and 6 sec billing, 24hrs a day (dedicated rates are even lower). When you say 9 cents/min to Europe, what country(ies), specifically are you talking about? Anyway, there is no reason to continue using MCI's network, and also get abused by them. There *are* carriers out there that will give you the attention that you deserve, but MCI is not one of them, nor are the others in the "Big 3". Take the time to research other carriers that care about you. An independent telecom agent can give you a good start. Feel free to contact me for more details. Jason Fetterolf Apollo Concepts Telecom Consulting 610-406-0444 ------------------------------ From: dave.garland@wizinfo.com (Dave Garland) Date: 29 Aug 99 22:43:28 -0600 Subject: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service Organization: Wizard Information Jonathan D. Loo wrote: > I suggest you send your complaint to both addresses, by U. > S. registered mail, return receipt requested. The best > response to postal letters is obtained if you use registered > mail with return receipt. In the US, "certified mail" serves much the same purpose at far less expense. It provides for proof of delivery (return receipts) without the expense of handling the mail as if it contained diamonds/negotiable securities/cash. In either case, don't be surprised if the return receipt has a rubber stamp saying "MCI MAILROOM" or some such. It is possible to endorse such mail "deliver to addressee only", but if it's addressed to the President/CEO it probably won't get delivered at all. Dave dave.garland@wizinfo.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #356 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 31 04:04:15 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id EAA21790; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 04:04:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 04:04:15 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908310804.EAA21790@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #357 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Aug 99 04:04:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 357 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: International Calls & CIDs (Mark J. Cuccia) BellSouth/PageNet IPS Outages (Rick Prelinger) Re: Water Damage To Phone (Leonard Erickson) Re: Canada's Yak Plan and Canadian Telco System in General (Ian Angus) Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (Steve Winter) Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (Willis H. Ware) Re: GSM in the US (Kim Brennan) Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service (Alan Gore) Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service (Joseph Singer) Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Pay (G. Wollman) Re: Death of GSM in Washington D.C. (Fred Goldstein) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:43:14 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Re: International Calls & CIDs > I assume that it's impossible to show the names on CID when a call > is foreign origin but at least will it show something useful? Will > it at least tell me it's an international call? First, I'm going to be speaking from a "North American" perspective. So, by "international", I'm going to be referring to calls from one country-code to another country-code, rather than for calls between the US and Canada (or any other intra-NANP call - calls within the NANP, country-code +1, but between two different 'countries'). Also, I'm thinking in "POTS-like" systems - i.e. not some PBX or ISDN set-up. You mention the "names on CID" when a call is foreign origin: If you want to know the "name" associated with the originating line, that usually requires a "backwards-lookup" by the called-end switch or signaling point (node) querying a database or switch/signaling node from the calling-end (or something close to the calling-end). Within the NANP, many LECs which provide their own "calling-name" databases are now entering into reciprocal agreements to share calling-name data on calls between those LECs. Also, some smaller (independent) LECs or CLECs might be contracting with a "host" LEC in the area to store "calling-name" info in that "host" database. Now, calling-name data delivery, made possible by the "backward lookup" query of a calling-name database, can only be available IF some form of calling-number ID is sent forward on that call set-up. Depending on the SS7 interconnection arrangements between the various LECs (or CLECs or PBXs or Wireless providers, etc) within the NANP, as well as the inter-exchange (Long Distance) carriers, I am usually able to get some form of Calling-Number delivery to my caller-ID boxes/displays, on calls from within the US, as well as on calls from Canada. And Canadians can usually get my number as well. But remember that the US and Canada are part of the same country-code, +1, the North American Numbering Plan, with a "fixed" ten-digit "national" number. On calls from _OTHER_ country codes, on a "regular POTS, non-ISDN" type of set-up, I have always gotten "unavailable" or "out-of-area". However, I have heard that on certain PBX systems or ISDN set-ups, depending on the carriers involved and interconnection arrangements, that Calling-Number display _IS_ possible. I think that the full "worldwide" number (including country-code) is also displayed. And, I have also heard _others_ tell me that they have gotten full "worldwide" number display (including country-code) on calls from outside of the NANP even on "POTS, non-ISDN" lines. But on those PBX/ISDN set-ups, I don't know if "intra-NANP" calls will display the country-code '1'. On most caller-ID boxes for use in the US, the display portion is _FIXED_ to display ten-digits: XXX-XXX-XXXX. Note that I don't use 'NXX-NXX'. The LED/LCD part of the display for the first digit of the area code and the first digit of the central-office code must present any possible digit '2' thru '9', true... but that also means that ANY decimal digit is possible from the format of the LCD's! And I have gotten some telemarketing calls which have shown up as "000-000-0000". Also, note that the display part has a "fixed parsing" of the digits, including the 'dashes' between the area code and central office code - and the central office code and the line number. And, there's no way to display my own country-code '1' as well as the ten-digit NANP number. International Caller-ID for inbound calls to the NANP for these types of boxes could confuse callers as to the true origin of the call! If a "worldwide" number (including country-code) is a total of ten-digits, it would "appear" as an intra-NANP call. It might also be possible for worldwide numbers greater than ten-digits that the number could display truncated at ten-digits. Either way, it could cause problems if BellSouth (my own LEC) would try to query their own (or some other reciprocal) name-database based on those ten-digits! I assume that "other" (non-NANP) countries with numbering plans of variable parsing of the digits in their national number, as well as a variable of the number of digits in their national number, might have standards for more "flexible" caller-ID transmission and display boxes. Also, in parts of the world where there are a lot of geographically smaller countries than the US or Canada, where there is more frequent calling between those countries (i.e. within Europe, Asia or Latin America), that some form of "international" Caller-ID standards prevail, with flexible methods of transmission and display, due to the variables (mentioned above) within the individual national numbering plans. I don't know if the ITU has been working at some from of worldwide standard for international/worldwide caller-ID. I assume that they have. But even if the technology becomes widespread in the US or Canada, it may be some time before the "general public" would request such capable service from their LECs, due to the large number of already embedded "NANP-only" caller-ID boxes in place! Of course, when some customers upgraded from "number-only" Caller-ID to NAME with Number Caller-ID from their local telco, many of the earliest manufacture number-only boxes wouldn't display ANYTHING, not even the NUMBER! The loop-signaling for name-with-number was completely different from the loop-signaling for number-only on the final end of the delivery. But many customers who upgraded probably just realized that their old number-only boxes were now _completely_ obsolete, and just threw them out. But how many US or Canadian customers are necessarily going to invest in a new "fully" compatable Caller-ID box (for number, name, Call-Waiting Display or even Call-Waiting-DELUXE controls, AND international inbound compatability), just for a few rare occasions when they might get some incoming calls from outside of the NANP! MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 22:52:29 -0700 From: Rick Prelinger Subject: BellSouth/PageNet IPS Outages I'm a recent subscriber to Bell South Wireless Data's Interactive Paging Service, as resold through PageNet. This network was formerly known as RAM Mobile data before BellSouth purchased it. In theory it's a great service for many people's needs: numeric paging, email and alpha messaging are all channeled to a two-way wireless pager that roams seamlessly through most major U.S. urban areas. It is a premium service, and when it works it's addictive, and considerably easier to deal with than carrying around a laptop or even a wireless Pilot. The problem is reliability. In the last few weeks the network has been out almost every day for a minimum of an hour to a maximum of eleven hours. Customer support reps have offered a variety of stories, including a fire at an MCI switch in California; a glitch that affects all pagers whose access numbers begin with 877 (every PageNet IPS pager falls into this category); software updates; and more. One of the problems is that lost messages frequently go into a black hole and aren't necessarily transmitted later on. Since no one at BellSouth or PageNet has much to say that makes sense, I wonder whether any knowledgeable Digest readers can illuminate what's happening, and perhaps offer an estimate as to when the situation might improve. This ought to help readers decide whether to subscribe to the service, and those who are subscribers decide whether to continue. With thanks, Rick Prelinger Prelinger Archives P.O. Box 30944, New York, NY 10011 USA Office: +1 212 633-2020 / Fax: +1 212 255-5139 Home: +1 415 682-7304 footage@panix.com ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Water Damage To Phone Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 01:09:54 PST Organization: Shadownet blCHURRObergman@earthlink.net (Bruce Bergman) writes: > For an On-hook phone, you have 48V DC, which is also current-limited. > 48V DC is usually innocuous, I used to touch both - and + busbars > occasionally, and with not even a tingle if my hands were dry. Now, > placing anything metallic across them right at the batteries is NOT a > good idea (BIG sparks!!!), but a human beings' internal resistance is > (usually) high enough to get away with this. And the ring voltage > never gets to the handset whether it's on- or off-hook, the only > hazard there is component failure from excessive moisture (by > immersion). Oh? Trust me, 48v *will* get your attention. The easiest way to learn this is to forget to disconnect the phone line from an internal modem card in a PC and then grab the card to pull it out. Those pointy little bits of wire on the backside of the circuit board *will* dig in enough it get past the dead surface layers of skin and into the nice *wet* and conductive dermal tissues. Result? The shock makes your hand *jerk* and since the cord prevents the card from coming all the way out, you rip *long* gashes on your hand and bleed all over the circuitry. The good news is that the "blood offering" seems to make most computers "get well". :-) Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: ianangus@angustel.ca (Ian Angus) Subject: Re: Canada's Yak Plan and Canadian Telco System in General Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 16:13:35 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. > I agree with Mr. Mereniuk. The exchange rate is a function of all the > trade of goods and services that takes place between two > countries. > The cost of local phone service isn't affected by international trade. Yes it is -- very directly. To keep local telephone networks working and growing, carriers must invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year in new equipment, upgrades, etc. Canadian carriers buy switching and transmission equipment in a North American or global market. They pay the same prices as their U.S. counterparts -- perhaps more, because they don't buy as much. And when they raise the money they need to buy equipment, pay employees, etc, they have to go to North American money markets, where they pay the same interest rates as U.S. carriers -- again, perhaps more, because they are smaller. The impressive thing is that DESPITE the unfavorable exchange rate, Canadian telephone service is still a price-leader in North America. Ian Angus Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 23:42:11 GMT Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) spake thusly and wrote: > J.F. Mezei spake thusly and wrote: >> Anyone want to bet that Bill Gates will somehow succeed in claiming he >> invented the Internet ? > Nope, Al Gore has already staked that claim. Bill ain't gonna mess > with Al Gore. Ahem ... Pat ... When I spelled "AlGore" as one word it was intentional. Don't you listen to Rush? :-) Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering Listed at http://www.thepubliceye.com as SELLCOM New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No, sorry, most days I do not get an opportunity to listen to Rush. Anyway, Al Gore is a correspondent here in the Digest. Haven't you read his messages? He is probably going to deny being the same one, for security reasons and all that. So what exactly is AlGore Rythym? Is that the little dance he does as part of his song and dance about the internet? To the readers, yes, Steve's message said AlGore and without real- izing it was just a tyographical error I made it Al Gore. Sorry. PAT] ------------------------------ Reply-To: willis@rand.org Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: Mon, 30 Aug 99 13:52:52 PDT From: Willis H. Ware Pat: With regard to many of these postings that recite incomplete, misleading, or erroneous facts about the Internet and its predeceesor ARPANET, have a look at this new book which lays out the history, the people, and the funding in complete and correct detail. Iventing the Internet Janet Abbate MIT Press ISBN 0-262-01172-7 Willis H. Ware Santa Monica, CA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Professor Abbate's book is one of the links provided at http://internet-history.org for your review. Another book on the same topic is {Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet} written by Michael and Ronda Hauben. Excerpts of this latter book are not only linked at the above history site but are also in the Telecom Archives here. Now and then I print those excerpts in the Digest. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kim@aol.com (Kim Brennan) Date: 31 Aug 1999 03:10:57 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: GSM in the US >> network, losing the advantages of GSM. > Which are? (Aside from being able to keep one's existing phone, that is.) > And what about the advantages of Sprint CDMA -- such as being able to > roam on other Sprint PCS systems? Keeping one's existing phone is the least of it. The fact is with GSM, the phone is the SIM card. What most cell phones are is simply a handset with GSM. You can interchange handsets, and you still have the same "phone", just like changing handsets at your house still is the same "phone." GSM roaming is broader than Sprint PCS's roaming. The Sprint Spectrum local coverage is larger than the planned local coverage of Sprint PCS. To me, there was no advantage to Sprint PCS, and the court settlement was completely worthless to me. I've moved to Bell Atlantic Mobile for the next year (I'm not thrilled by their rates, or coverage, but it was the next closest to the GSM coverage I used to have.) When GSM returns to Washington DC, I'll go back to GSM. Kim Brennan (kim@aol.com) Duo 2300c, PB 2400, VW Fox Wagon GL, Corrado SLC, Vanagon GL Syncro http://members.aol.com/kim Duo Info Page: http://members.aol.com/kim/computer/duo ?'s should include "Duo" in subject, else they'll be deleted unread. ------------------------------ From: agore@primenet.com (Alan Gore) Subject: Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 02:44:35 GMT Organization: Software For PC's Jason Fetterolf wrote: > When you say 9 cents/min to Europe, what country(ies), specifically are > you talking about? I get 9c to Germany and Switzerland, if I call on Sundays. agore@primenet.com | "Giving money and power to the government Alan Gore | is like giving whiskey and car keys Software For PC's | to teenaged boys" - P. J. O'Rourke http://www.alangore.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:27:19 -0700 From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: MCI Worldcom Residential Customer Service Mon, 30 Aug 1999 10:58:32 -0400 Jason Fetterolf wrote: > There are high quality, low cost, international-focus carriers available > that will let you have "casual access" to their network, so that you can > dial their 101xxxx code and then get superior rates to "Europe" or > wherever else you may call, and you can have your primary "PIC" as MCI, > so that MCI still thinks that you are their customer. Then, when you > have resolved you MCI issue, the chosen carrier can be your primary PIC > so that you can elminate dialing the extra digits. See next comment for > details. A web site that I've found quite helpful in deciphering the various rates of different carriers is They give rates of dial one carriers as well as 101XXXX carriers. Even with dialaround carriers you can get pretty decent rates if you learn to avoid the tricks of carriers such as Telecom USA (101-0220 and 101-0321) and you'll also find carriers that will give you a break if your calling is in the off peak time periods. World Exchange has a dialround plan that will give you 9 cents/minute 24/7 with decent international rates. They also have an off peak (7p - 7a) plan that will give you 5 cents/minute during that time period and also will give you really good rates to the UK of ~7¢/minute during the offpeak with other good rates such as Israel for 13 cents/minute. World Exchange also offers a plan which you pay a monthly fee (which includes the USF charge.) Besides World Exchange there are lots of others listed. Some have different USF and PICC fees. Some plans don't have *any* PICC or USF fees! Joseph Singer Seattle, Washington USA [ICQ pgr] +1 206 405 2052 [voice mail] +1 206 493 0706 [FAX] ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay Date: 31 Aug 1999 01:24:10 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Marcus AAkesson wrote: > Please explain to me (I'm not familiar with the US banking system) why > You would want to pay a bill by cash, card or mailing checks. Don't > you have banking services? Collect all your bills and send them to > your bank for payment when due? Pay bills with Internet banking? Marcus, Unlike in most of Europe, in the US there is no wide-spread inter-bank (or postal) mass-market funds transfer -- what I believe in Sweden you would call ``Giro''. (This should not be surprising, considering that the US has more banks, trust companies, and credit unions than the entire rest of the world put together.) Bills are printed, not on a standardized wire-transfer form, but on a form of the payee's devising, which is returned along with the payment whether by cash, check, or money order. (I receive six bills each month: Boston Gas, Boston Edison, Bell Atlantic, Cablevision, Ford Credit, and Commerce Insurance. Each one looks entirely different from the others.) With the multiplication of bills needing to be paid, and the conversion of most other payments to private transfers between borrower and lender banks, this has placed a substantial strain on the check-clearing system. Last year, the Federal Reserve System (which operates clearinghouses for member banks) seriously started encouraging major bill generators to offer customers automatic bill payment. This service operates through the same clearing system, but eliminates the physical piece of paper which must be handled and transported from bank to clearinghouse to bank. My impression is that the uptake has been very slow, because most customers don't particularly trust their utility companies to automatically debit the correct amount, or fear that it will happen at an inopportune time with respect to the customer's bank balance. Internet banking has just begun to take off. Most such services offer a bill-payment option, but very few payees are set up to receive payments electronically -- mostly large national creditors like Ford Motor Credit, GMAC, MBNA, and the like. As a result, these services generally end up putting a computer-printed check in the mail. (Only this way, the bank gets the benefit of the float, rather than the customer!) For some people, however, the ability to schedule bill payments in advance and then forget about them is worth the added expense (lost interest plus a monthly fee, typically about $4). Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same wollman@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 18:10:27 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Death of GSM in Washington D.C. Robert Berntsen sez, > You (Arthur Ross) seem to express feelings not facts. CDMA is not > "far-superior" to GSM. It is perhaps a little bit better, technically, > but much worse overall because of the political situation for the > CDMA. In addition, the scattered frequency plan of USA makes cellular > networks harder to make there than in other part of the world. Adding > CDMA in Europe would be a step backwards, as the new UTMS standard is > even better and now including the whole world. Frequency allocations differ on both sides of the puddle, of course. VHF and higher frequencies are considered "line of sight" so except for satellite allocations, it was considered okay to have them different. Nobody thought about hand-held roaming radios back at the Atlantic City WARC in 1949 when the basic outlines of today's VHF/UHF bands were set up, or even later when the higher bands were allocated. GSM wasn't designed to "drop in" to existing analog systems, as CDMAOne and US TDMA were. Since cellular operators got no additional frequencies here, they needed a system that could be phased in, a fraction of their channels at a time. And IS-41 compatible. Before GSM, Europe's various analog systems were incompatible and had limited deployment; in the USA, AMPS was universal and interoperable, making the handsets cheap. JanC >> Also: unlike CDMA, there are no licensing strings attached to GSM. You are kidding, of course. Or are you all just unaware? GSM is covered by lots of "intellectual property". The various manufacturers cross-license each other for their own respective rights, but j-random startups can't just come along and build it. I think Qualcomm gets the rights as part of its deal with Ericsson, so there might *finally* be a GSM/CDMA dual-mode radio. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #357 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 31 04:51:15 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id EAA23335; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 04:51:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 04:51:15 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908310851.EAA23335@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #358 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Aug 99 04:51:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 358 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Ads For Pat (Joey Lindstrom) Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? (Judith Oppenheimer) More Comments About Battery Types (E. Cummings) Re: More Comments About Battery Types (Isaac Wingfield) Re: Public Coast Stations - Marine Operators (Alan Boritz) Re: Traceroute on Telephone Circuits (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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Joey Lindstrom Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 06:19:17 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Re: Ads For Pat On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 17:58:04 -0400 (EDT), editor@telecom-digest.org noted in response to my posting: >> In regards to my last post, how many of you would be ok with the idea >> of Pat including a banner ad or two on the TELECOM Digest website in >> order to pay some of his expenses, and/or text ads within the Digest >> itself? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wish you would not do that, and I > must ask that no one respond. There are various reasons why it cannot > happen here: A few people did anyways. I'll respect your wishes and not post the results-so-far, except to say that there seems to be a wide variety of opinion on the matter -- I got one really nasty letter from a guy saying he'd never, ever in a million years accept advertising here, and another nice one from someone saying "hey, great idea, wish I'd thought of it!" and several at various points on the spectrum in-between. It was interesting, to say the least. Thank you to all who responded (even those who screamed a bit, heh heh!), it was most illuminating. You can stop sending those responses now. :-) Anyways: Your original message then went on to outline six different reasons why you couldn't accept advertising. The first five are, individually, reason enough to drop the idea as a practical thing (although I should point out that there are a *LOT* of .org sites out there that are purely commercial). But: > Six, it would be a conflict of interest to carry advertising while > attempting to editorialize about the advertisers. What telco do you > know of that would advertise here given my disposition and that of > many of the writers here? What sort of messages could ever appear here > in the future that were not clouded by suspicion based on the presence > of the advertising? > I see no way it would work at all without a lot of people getting > getting victimized in the process. And by the way, they don't pay > twelve cents per click-through. How about two cents? I have tolerated > this to a limited extent in areas like /news and /postoffice where > the ads have been a 'take it or leave it' proposition and I felt the > good for this site outweighed the bad, and where I have no personal > involvement in or profit from the click-throughs ... but no click- > throughs in the Digest proper. I can understand and respect your view. It is, after all, your baby, to run as you see fit. I'd like to address two points you make by telling you of my experience with one web-advertising company. I'm not a shill for them so I won't name them, we'll call them "Acme" for now. Anyways, "Acme" has a web-banner program that works like this: 1) You sign up. 2) You place their piece of HTML on your homepage (or multiple pages if you like). 3) This HTML will cause THEIR server (not yours) to serve a pseudo-random ad to each surfer that hits your page. 4) You are not paid for "impressions" (the simple serving of the ad), only for click-throughs. If the viewer clicks through, then doesn't buy anything, it doesn't matter -- you still get paid. The rate of pay is INDEED 12 cents per click-through. If you're a high-volume site and can guarantee a certain number of monthly impressions, this number rises to 17 cents per click-through. But I get 12 cents on my low-traffic site. I average about 700-1000 visitors per month and I've been signed up with this program for about four months now. I just got my first cheque (they don't issue cheques until your balance hits $20 or more) about two weeks ago, averaging about 1 click-through per hundred impressions. In regards to your editorial freedom, the beauty of this particular ad program is that YOU control the sponsors that can advertise on your site. I, for example, do a bit of web-hosting on the side, so it wouldn't be bright of me to allow web-hosting companies to advertise on my site. So I disable that particular category, using their online customization tool. I can bar any particular CATEGORY of company, or any particular company by name, from advertising on my site, and that causes Acme's servers to serve DIFFERENT ads instead. If it can't find an ad to display (many sponsors want their ads shown only during certain dayparts, or on certain types of sites, etc.), it displays a public-service message instead (ie: "Please Give To The Heart & Stroke Foundation" or somesuch) -- you don't get paid for click-throughs on these. So, hypothetically speaking, if you did decide to avail yourself of this particular program, you could easily bar *ALL* telecommunications companies (ie: no AT&T, no Sprint, etc.) from advertising on your site, which would remove the conflict-of-interest. Or allow them all indiscriminately. If someone from AT&T surfed your site, saw their own ad, and saw a criticism of AT&T in a Digest, well, they're perfectly free to demand that their ads no longer run on your site - and you won't suffer any consequences because other ads will take their place. You could therefore say what's on your mind without worrying about any repercussions because there wouldn't be any (and what, really, are the chances of someone from AT&T surfing to EVERY site signed up with Acme to see which ones are bad-mouthing AT&T?). There might remain some impression on newcomers that, because they've seen AT&T ads, they shouldn't badmouth AT&T... but, we're all a bunch of grumpy ol' farts and it wouldn't take long before they'd see that we *ALL* badmouth AT&T from time to time. OK, not all of us, but you get my drift. :-) I admit I'm arguing for the sake of arguing at this point, since you're dead set against the whole idea, and that's fine. I just wanted to point out that there are a few non-agressive, well-behaved advertising programs out there if only you look for 'em. I regard advertising as "a necessary evil" in society and would prefer to reward outfits like Acme for being at least a LITTLE bit civic-minded (ie: they handle all those public-service ads I mentioned on their own, nobody pays 'em for it), unlike spammers who begin their unsolicited messages with "thank you for inquiring about our product" when I did no such freakin' thing. :-) I'm the kinda guy who has a sign on his mailbox saying "no flyers" (note: Canada Post doesn't deliver 'em anymore, they're delivered by private companies now) and if a flyer appears in my mailbox, I will go out of my way NOT to do business with that company. There are acceptable limits, and those companies who stay within those limits get my trade. Lastly, I want to address a point you made in an earlier post - there seems to be an ever-dwindling number of people willing to put their software into the public domain. This was a huge shock to me this past January when, reluctantly and for reasons I won't delve into but which were many and varied, I chose to run my servers using Windows NT instead of Linux. WOW! Not only is NT itself absurdly expensive, but everyone who writes software seems to think that I'm a high-powered executive working for a fast-moving company with gobs and gobs of money to spend. One company, which makes a web-based email interface, wanted me to give them $6000 for a non-crippled version of their product. $6000, in US currency. I don't GROSS that much in four months working! And this wasn't even a mail server, it was just an INTERFACE to a mail server that I still had to provide! In fact, I wound up finding very, very little "free" software - the whole public-domain thing doesn't appear to have caught on in the Windows world. I *STILL* haven't found a decent "sendmail.exe" that doesn't cost at least $130US!! Alas. I'd like to close this, then, with some kudos for a couple of companies (where'd all the individual software writers go? It's all COMPANIES now!) that did provide me with free software. Some, obviously, would prefer that I "upgrade" to their more-expensive solutions, but mine is a small, small little operation and I'm happy with the free stuff thankyouverymuch. :-) Anyone considering these types of products is cordially invited to check 'em out. Real Networks -- lets you download their "Basic" RealServer software free of charge. It can handle up to 25 simultaneous connections. If you want more, you have to upgrade to one of a large variety of upgrade levels. The next step up from free is their $600 "Basic Plus" server which gives you ... wait for it ... 40 simultaneous connections. Yep, the first 25 are free but the next 15 cost you $40 apiece. :-) RealServer is *THE* way to serve streaming content, though, and being able to do so for free is awfully darn nice. www.real.com Vintra Systems -- they market a $350 POP3/IMAP4 mail server that seems fairly advanced. But this is a major upgrade from their previous version, which is no longer supported. That previous version can be downloaded and installed free of charge, so long as you don't expect anything like actual SUPPORT. :-) I'm using it, it seems fairly solid, some good spam filtering controls, handles multiple domains (even though their website claims it doesn't), etc. A tad inefficient, but again, it's a small operation and it doesn't overtax my server box, and I'm extremely happy with it. www.vintra.com ActiveState -- for their Win32 PERL interpreter which hooks into IIS4 (Microsloth's web server) and seems to handle every Perl script I throw at it (which, admittedly, ain't much). Completely free of charge. www.activestate.com From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom Email: Joey@GaryNumanFan.NU or joey@lindstrom.com Phone: +1 403 313-JOEY FAX: +1 413 643-0354 (yes, 413 not 403) Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU You know America is getting absurd. Washington's blaming Hollywood, Hollywood's blaming Washington, and the rest of us are so zoned out on "Hard Copy," "ER," and that new pizza with the cheese in the crust that we don't even give a shit where we're headed anymore. -- Dennis Miller [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think Real Networks is a fine company. As you may have noticed, I rely extensively on their player and production tools at this site. Almost all the services I use for my audio news feeds have adopted the Real Networks standards. I have given more thought also to banner ads and I was asked by someone at the Ad Council if I would consider placing their public service ads on the web site. I might do that; I am not sure yet. You may have noticed, if you use http://telecom-digest.org/radio.html that the continuous audio feed of news on a 24/7 basis fills its free spaces between news reports with Ad Council messages. I like those people and the socially responsible web sites they promote, so I am inclined to maybe display their banners. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 12:25:34 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? IMHO neither of these domain names, Communications-Services.com and the .net version, is all that fabulous. But as a practical matter, in both the sale of toll free numbers and domain names, it's been my observation that proactive sales efforts are generally fruitless (although I like the auction model.) Numbers and domain names get their value when someone wants them. 1 800 TICKETS only became worth $1M + 6% stock, when that offer was made. Until then it was only worth $20,000, or $80,000, or the various other offers that were made, and rejected, over the years leading up to the $1M purchase. There are other methods to place a practical value a number. 800 PRODIGY outperforms 800 numeric by 25%, over a 24 hour longer period of time. The vanity is also credited with increased customer retention that can be measured.* This sales and retention performance has an increased revenue value to the company -- a percentage of that increased revenue, over X period of time, is one way to place a dollar value on 800 PRODIGY. I'm not aware of any similar measurement scenarios yet developed by which one could place value on a domain name. But there is my original favorite for brand name vanities, which would be similar for brand name domain names. For those brand names (Coke etc.) that have been valued by the financial-wiz powers that be, take that value: say theoretically $5B. (This is valuation of the brand name only, based on its recognition levels.) Now make that same brand perform. Make it interactive and transactive (800 or .com). Worth $5B as a cardboard mannequin, what's it worth as transportation, front door, concierge, and cash register? Of course, there are other factors to consider, such as point of sale. Marlboro is another very valuable brand, but its point of sale is face-to-face, not by phone (or internet, for that matter.) 1 800 MARLBORO rings to Marlboro customer service - perhaps a money saver in thwarting periodic complaints against the company, but definitely not a revenue center. So the value of the Marlboro interactive versions, above the value of the static brand, is adjusted accordingly. Back to the original posting, it's ballsy, but not likely to be productive. Judith Oppenheimer http://icbtollfree.com http://800consulting.com http://whosells800.com 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 *The Prodigy scenario is real, based on actual activities, and a subsequent interview we did with them a few years ago. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Please explain this to me: if a company decides to move onto the net and set up a web site, and they see that they name they want is taken, they frequently just claim the existing user is a 'squatter' and rip off the name. This is especially true if they have money for attorney fees and the small web site does not. They sometimes put heavy legal pressure on the registrar to take the name and give it to them instead. There were a couple hundred instances in 1998 where the registrar 'adjudicated' these disputes in favor of the company who wanted the name versus the netizen who already was using it. Then if it was not given up voluntarily, the site was simply disconnected until some different name was decided upon (and paid for, of course.) I am wondering if that sort of thing happens with 'vanity' phone numbers as well. Let's say some individual has a number that is needed by a large company because it spells their name, or the number has some signficance to them, etc. Are there many instances of them just applying very heavy legal pressure on the RespOrg to assign the user some other number and give them the one they want? I know it happens occassionally with telcos and regular numbers. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 18:53:59 -0400 From: E Cummings Subject: More Comments About Battery Types At 09:07 PM 8/29/99 -0400, was written: > A "battery" is, by definition, an assembly of two or more cells. For > example, a standard "12 volt" car battery is 6 lead-acid cells in > series, each one producing 2.25-ish (I'd have to look up the exact > number) volts, for a total of about 13.6 (or is it 13.8?) volts when > fully charged. A 90 volt "B" battery would be a stack of 60 1.5 volt > dry cells in a single package. The package is typically a paperboard > box, so it's easy to open, and if you do so, you'll find exactly that > inside. A 9 volt transistor battery is a stack of 6 cells inside. If > you carefully open one up by prying or cutting the metal skin apart, > you'll find a stack of 6 flattish cells, wired in series. A few corrections to Jim Van Nuland's post on batteries: Jim failed to mention the fairly new super-slim "AAAA" alkaline battery (mostly used in laser pointers as far as I've seen) that's the same length and voltage of a "AAA" cell. In addition, there's an "N" cell that's about the same diameter of a AAA cell but about half the length. These have been used in some cameras and some very small electronic devices for well over 20 years. Intriguingly, if you disassemble a 9V zinc-carbon battery, you'll find exactly what Jim described: a stack of six flattish cells. But if you disassemble a good-quality alkaline (i.e. duracell) 9V battery, instead you'll find a sausage-link of six (6) "N"-sized cells inside that can be easily clipped apart and used in lieu of expensive "N" cells at about 1/5 the price! I have a small device that uses N cells and have been saving quite a bit over the years using this technique! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:27:18 -0700 From: Isaac Wingfield Subject: Re: More Comments About Battery Types druggist@p0b0x.c0m (Shalom Septimus) wrote as part of the thread entitled Re: Why Do 66 Blocks Have That Name: > I once had a radio that used a 7.5-volt A battery (for tube filaments) > and a 90-volt B-battery (for Vbb, aka plate voltage). I never actually > saw the batteries in question, nor was I ever able to get the radio to > work on AC notwithstanding the fact that you could plug it in, so I no > longer have that unit. > A batteries, if I understand it correctly, had no specific voltage (or > size!); that was just the designation for anything that powered the > filaments. Ditto B batteries. > Now I wonder if C-cells were so named for Vcc (grid bias), which in > those circuits that required them was around 1.5 volts? Or was this a > coincidence of two different naming schemes? "A", "B", and "C" were just designations and, as you surmise, had no relation to the voltage they provided, physical size, or much else. Sometimes, rechargeable lead-acid batteries were used for filament supplies; in fact, that's why second-generation tubes ran on 6 (actually 6.3) volts -- batteries of that voltage were becoming available because they were used in automobiles. When schematics began to be annotated, the letters "a", "b" or "c" were added to the "V" for "volts" to show from which battery a certain voltage originated. "Vbb" meant the voltage at the "B" battery itself, while "Vb" meant a voltage (frequently at the anode or plate of a tube) derived from the "B" battery e.g.through a resistor or transformer. Isaac Wingfield Project Director isw@ictv.com ICTV Vox: 408-364-9201 14600 Winchester Blvd. Fax: 408-364-9300 Los Gatos, CA 95030 ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: Public Coast Stations - Marine Operators Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 22:46:42 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , Forrest Nelson wrote: > Does anyone have information about who or which telecommunications > carrier provides these services these days. I would like to place a > shore to ship call. I can remember the old days when you called the > operator and asked for the "marine operator". In particular I would > like to know who in Western Washington waters. Only one in the US, as of 10/6/99. AT&T is getting out of the high-seas phone service and shutting down it's public coast stations. They got into a little trouble with the FCC, though, since they didn't bother notifying all of their customers and didn't allow their customers sufficient time for the FCC to act upon their request to terminate service. The FCC made them go back and do the due diligence bit again, though during the course of 8 months AT&T kept giving customers incorrect information about when the service was shutting down, with different termination dates, all without first obtaining the Commission's approval. The FCC finally granted AT&T's request as of 8/6/99, to be effective 60 days later. You can read the order at http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/International/Orders/1999/da991567.txt To give you a perspective on what high-seas service costs, here's a piece from the FCC's order: "AT&T currently charges $15.39 to initiate a High Seas Service call, with a three-minute minimum. AT&T charges $5.13 for each additional minute. If the call is to terminate at a telephone connected to the U.S. public switched network (PSTN), AT&T imposes an additional charge of $1.78 for the first three minutes and $.60 for each additional minute. In contrast, air time for INMARSAT-based services range from $2.20 to $3.50 per minute with no surcharge for connection to the U.S. PSTN. "AT&T, for example, charges $2.50 per minute for its SeaCall INMARSAT service. These differing charging systems make it difficult precisely to compare the cost of satellite-based and HF-based services. Additionally, satellite-based transmissions are less affected by atmospheric conditions than HF radio transmission, so users of satellite-based services will in many cases receive better quality communications than users of HF services. In any event, the Commission has made it clear that the mere fact that an alternative service costs more than the discontinued service, or requires customers to purchase additional equipment, does not render the alternative service nonviable as a substitute." ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Traceroute on Telephone Circuits Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:55:14 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) EdLeslie@EDU.YorkU.CA (Ed Leslie) wrote: > Anyway -- back to the topic at hand -- at that time I wondered *why* > the Telcos did not have a special "tone" or "signal" which could be > sent from the originating end which would cause all the "switches" > along the path to "freeze this call" so that it could not be > "disconnected" while the trace took place. They obviously have > something simliar now -- if you call 911, the 911 operator can "freeze > the call" and prevent you from disconnectiing. There isn't any special signal that can be sent by the called party to "freeze" the route back to the caller. This can only work on 9-1-1 because it is a separate trunked network using CAMA or TSPS trunks, just like a telco operator has. When you dial 9-1-1, the call does not proceed through the public switched network, it goes to a 9-1-1 trunk originating in your CO, directly to the call taker. On a TSPS or CAMA trunk, the called party cannot hang up and drop the circuit if the operator does not hang up. In addition, the operator can send a TSPS rering signal back to the originating CO which directly rings the calling party's line. BUT ... in most modern 9-1-1 systems with selective routing, this capability has been lost. That is because with CO and municipal boundaries overlapping, the call actually proceeds from the originating CO toward a 9-1-1 selective routing switch, where the call is transferred to the appropriate PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point). Because of this transfer, the answering operator has actually lost the Called Party Control that they used to have. In this type of system, which predominates these days, when they hit re-ring to signal a caller who has hung up, what actually happens is that the captured number of the calling party is autodialed on a regular POTS line. If the caller has gone off hook again, that's tough. The 9-1-1 call taker gets a busy. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com Seattle, WA ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #358 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 31 14:34:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA12536; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 14:34:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 14:34:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908311834.OAA12536@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #359 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Aug 99 14:34:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 359 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson More Hotmail Problems; Why Not to Trust Web Mail (Monty Solomon) Re: The D Stands For Dissappointing (Ryan Tucker) Re: Fed Smooths Way for Electronic Banking (Ryan Tucker) Re: Selective Calling Rate Change (Bell Atlantic) (Jack Dominey) Re: Toll-Free Service Physical/Logical Terminations (Ryan Tucker) Re: BellSouth/PageNet IPS Outages (Alan Boritz) Re: BellSouth/PageNet IPS Outages (Joseph Wineburgh) Help Needed - Audio Problem on Phone Line (briang@bellatlantic.net) 800 Number Does Not Connect (was Toll-Free Payphones (Doug Terman) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:16:49 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: More Hotmail Problems; Why Not to Trust Web Mail Forwarded to the Digest, FYI: Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 18:22:33 -0400 From: Declan McCullagh Subject: FC: More Hotmail problems; why not to trust Web mail [A comedy of errors. A roughly 12 hour lag from the time when the Hotmail backdoor was first reported to the time the servers were pulled for the first non-fix is hardly doing well by users. In fact, MS sent out a press release about the problem before actually fixing it. Hushmail, anyone? --Declan] http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/21490.html Hotmail Accounts Still Exposed by Declan McCullagh and by James Glave 8:05 a.m. 30.Aug.99.PDT No sooner was one catastrophic security flaw closed Monday -- one that exposed millions of Hotmail accounts to prying eyes -- when another one appeared. The net result: As of 2 p.m. PDT, Hotmail account holders remain in jeopardy of having their email messages read, as well as being impersonated in email. [...] http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/21498.html Want Security? Forget Web Mail by Declan McCullagh 12:50 p.m. 30.Aug.99.PDT By now you've likely heard of Microsoft's devastating Hotmail security gaffe, which exposed the naked contents of millions of personal email accounts for the perusal of the world's voyeurs. Well, get ready for the disturbing verdict from security experts: These sorts of security holes -- gaping maws, really -- are inevitable. [...] POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ ------------------------------ From: rtucker+from+199908@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: The D Stands for Dissappointing Reply-To: rtucker+replyto+199908@katan.ttgcitn.com Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 05:37:34 GMT Organization: Time Warner Road Runner - Rochester NY In , Grover C. McCoury III spewed: > Yep, this is an important issue with cable modem. You share the pipe > with all your neighbors. More subscribers in your neighborhood will > most likely mean less bandwidth for you to use. You're doing the same with DSL, it's just that your neighborhood is a lot bigger for this calculation. You don't think you have a direct pipe to "The Internet", do you? It's oversold somewhere along the chain between you and whichever networks you're connecting to, which is the major bottleneck in most circumstances. I get a good 500-600kB/sec through my cable modem from local hosts (e.g. my provider's stuff), but once I get beyond that, things go progressively downhill -- I'm lucky if I get 300-400kB/sec or so. And from what I've seen of xDSL, it's not any better. Nothing is, and nothing will be unless you start talking dedicated pipes to the main backbones ;-) Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ President, TTGCITN Communications Box 92425, Rochester NY 14692-0425 Please keep public threads public -- e-mail responses will be ignored. ------------------------------ From: rtucker+from+199908@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: Fed Smooths Way for Electronic Banking Reply-To: rtucker+replyto+199908@katan.ttgcitn.com Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 17:21:21 GMT Organization: Time Warner Road Runner - Rochester NY In , Joey Lindstrom spewed: > OK, am I misreading this, or does this mean that, up until now, US > banks have not been able to offer full-service banking on the > internet? It seems that being able to get an account statement would > be one of the most basic functions of such a service, and I've been > able to get that from the CIBC for the last couple of years, with no > legal impediments (it just took 'em that long to get the system > working to that point!) You can get *AN* account statement online, but not *THE* account statement. At least with my bank, what I get in the mail once a month is *THE* official account statement, and what I get online is merely an unofficial transcript. Also, if I bounce a check or do something else that requires notification, I get the notification in the mail, not via e-mail. Now, I'm a real proponent of doing as much as possible electronically (only place I use cash is at drive-thru windows, some diners, and the company cafeteria), but I still do like having an official, printed, account statement from the bank each month. How else am I supposed to sit at a diner somewhere balancing my checkbook at 2am? ;-) -rt Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ President, TTGCITN Communications Box 92425, Rochester NY 14692-0425 Please keep public threads public -- e-mail responses will be ignored. ------------------------------ From: look@my.sig (Jack Dominey) Subject: Re: Selective Calling Rate Change (Bell Atlantic) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 17:13:15 GMT Organization: The Maynard G. Krebs Memorial Work(!?)station Reply-To: look@my.sig In , Daniel Meldazis wrote: > A CLEC that would complain to the FCC or the NJ Board of Public > Utilities that BA rates are too much of a bargain for their customers > would be laughed at. You can imagine the argument, "Bell Atlantic > charges too little for their service. Please make them raise their > rates." More likely, BA does not want to, for whatever reason, > continue to provide the service. So they will make modifications to > the structure and pricing until either no one takes the service or the > few customers left will be grandfathered. Unless BA is providing the > service below their cost, there is not much other carriers can do. "Below their cost" might be the answer to the puzzle here. If the CLECs had demonstrated to the PUC's satisfaction that the particular service were priced below cost, couldn't the PUC order a rate hike? Note that I don't consider this a particulary likely explanation, just a possible one. Jack Dominey "Apparently I'm insane. domineys(at)mindspring.com But I'm one of the happy kinds!" [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This was, however, precisely the argument given a number of years ago when AT&T and MCI were always at each other's throats in court. At a time when they were about a tenth of a cent or so per minute apart in their rates, with MCI always coming in slightly less per minute than AT&T, the deal was whenever AT&T would lower its rates, MCI would lower theirs also. It was about as low as it could go at the time, really rock bottom pricing where MCI was making almost nothing when they tried to stay that fraction of a cent less than AT&T. Finally, AT&T shaved still another cent or two off of the per-minute rates, and had MCI followed suit, in order to keep them still 'less expensive' than AT&T, it would have meant (at that point in time) they were losing money on long distance. MCI was absolutely furious with this prospect, and went to first to the FCC and then to court claiming that AT&T was once again being 'predatory' and trying to drive them out of business. They asked to have AT&T forced to raise its rates by some small amount, 'in order that we can stay in business and make a small profit also.' You see, instead of simply selling their own product for a fair price and using things like good customer service to tide them over, their whole thing was to continue to somehow stay 'less expensive' than AT&T no matter what. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rtucker+from+199908@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: Toll-Free Service Physical/Logical Terminations Reply-To: rtucker+replyto+199908@katan.ttgcitn.com Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:58:50 GMT Organization: Time Warner Road Runner - Rochester NY In , Mark J. Cuccia spewed: > Particularly if a particular 800/888/877 number can be answered in > multiple locations depending on the time-of-day / day-of-week, > and/or location of the calling party, and/or traffic volume within > the long-distance carrier or volume of calls to that company - and > all on the SAME toll-free number. AT&T offers a service where you can have them balance incoming toll free traffic between different POTS numbers. For example, the example I've heard of has two call centers on opposite sides of the continent. During normal operation, they're alternated between the east coast and west coast centers equally. Also, it's fairly easy to adjust the "mix" -- for example, if the west coast falls into the ocean, it'd be a simple matter to reroute all calls to the east coast, potentially automatically. I'm assuming it'd be fairly easy to share ACD data with AT&T to have things balanced based on available agents automatically. Also, I'm assuming other carriers have this capability as well. Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ President, TTGCITN Communications Box 92425, Rochester NY 14692-0425 Please keep public threads public -- e-mail responses will be ignored. ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: BellSouth/PageNet IPS Outages Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 08:19:47 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , Rick Prelinger wrote: > I'm a recent subscriber to Bell South Wireless Data's Interactive > Paging Service, as resold through PageNet. This network was formerly > known as RAM Mobile data before BellSouth purchased it. In theory > it's a great service for many people's needs: numeric paging, email > and alpha messaging are all channeled to a two-way wireless pager that > roams seamlessly through most major U.S. urban areas. It is a premium > service, and when it works it's addictive, and considerably easier to > deal with than carrying around a laptop or even a wireless Pilot. > The problem is reliability. In the last few weeks the network has > been out almost every day for a minimum of an hour to a maximum of > eleven hours. Customer support reps have offered a variety of > stories, including a fire at an MCI switch in California; a glitch > that affects all pagers whose access numbers begin with 877 (every > PageNet IPS pager falls into this category); software updates; and > more. One of the problems is that lost messages frequently go into a > black hole and aren't necessarily transmitted later on. > Since no one at BellSouth or PageNet has much to say that makes sense, > I wonder whether any knowledgeable Digest readers can illuminate > what's happening, and perhaps offer an estimate as to when the > situation might improve. This ought to help readers decide whether to > subscribe to the service, and those who are subscribers decide whether > to continue. Try calling someone at Bellsouth Wireless Data at their corporate headquarters in Woodbridge, NJ. If they don't have an answer, no one will. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Wineburgh Reply-To: Subject: Re: BellSouth/PageNet IPS Outages Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:07:18 -0400 I am currently a Blackberry subscriber. Blackberry uses the BellSouth Wireless Data network (which I suspect is the same network you are on), and I can say I haven't really noticed any prolonged 'outages'. What I do notice is that from time to time, I receive a 'burst' of a few messages at a time, which leads me to believe that the network has some type of 'store and retry' feature in that when you are out of range the network stores the message until you get back into a covered area. One of the things they NEVER billed the unit as was a pager. The network is inherently different than a traditional paging network, which I was aware of going in to it, so I live with the 'brownouts'. My expectation was never to be able to do real-time transactions, it was merely to be able to receive (and reply) email when away from my desk as they arrived. All in all a fairly good deal for $40/month (includes rental of unit). In summary, it sounds like they may be mis-representing the service. If you want a true paging service, go with SkyTel. They have a traditional & 2-way paging network with guaranteed delivery and are the BEST out there. I have NEVER lost a message yet. In addition if you are out of a coverage area and are expecting messages, you can call an access number and retrieve your messages that way. The only difference is SkyTel has limits on the usage - You start out at $20/month for alpha, but once you get over 50k characters in a month you pay... I don't have any hooks into either company other than I like the services they offer. Good luck and let us all know how you make out! #JOE ------------------------------ From: Brian G. Subject: Help Needed - Audio Problem on Phone Line Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:22:19 GMT I have low audio on my three phone lines. In fact, they sound somewhat muted. Here's what I have and what I've done so far. What else can I do? Bell Atlantic says the lines test ok at the network interface device. I'm not sure what meter they used to determine that but they did use a meter of some sort. I do know I'm 23k from the DMS-100 central office and there is some copper pair gain technology on my loops. My house wiring is brand new. All runs are CAT 5. I did split the 4 pairs of each run into 2 RJ14s at each faceplate. I have 4 analog dial tones and 1 ISDN line. The lines are run to about 8 jacks but only six 2500 sets and three ksu-less AC powered sets connected. The low audio is common across all sets but the 2500 sets are a little better. The ISDN line is connected to a Gandalf Terminal Adapter. The house terminals are just 66 blocks. Does that lower audio quality compared to other type of blocks? The cross-connects are traditional 26 gauge wire. Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. bg ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 07:47:31 -0400 From: Doug Terman Subject: 800 Number Does Not Connect (was Toll-Free Payphones) Our worthy Editor wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If Digitcom or other companies like > that are willing to pay the costs of the service, that's fine with > me. *Someone* is going to get a phone bill, and if things get bad > enough for Digitcom and others of that kind that they can no longer > afford to give flat rate $20 per month service to spammers, then it > may be they have to discontinue that sort of service. It is not up to > you and I and others reading this to worry about *who pays the > bill*. Our task is to keep those bills coming to them, month after > month; great big hellish, humongous, outrageous bills for 'toll-free' > service asking to be removed from their mailing lists and asking for > more information about their products and services. If Digitcom gets > hit with a massive bill for 800 phone service in the million dollar > per month range for several months in a row, as happened to a couple > others we know about, I feel certain they'll take action of their own > initiative to deal with their flat rate customers who are causing the > problem. So, it is a little round-about, but the results will be the > same. Dear Pat, I don't think Digitcom is paying any whopping bill. I called the Digitcom 800-242-0363 number through my switch and watched the call progress on the monitor. A call to this number ***does_not_connect***. However, you hear a recorded operator saying, "Please enter the extension number." So I entered 2222. I then received a recorded voice prompt saying, "please record your message." I did a little heavy breathing. The recorded voice then said, "Thank you for calling. Good bye." At_no_time_did_the_call_ever_connect. So Digitcom is not connecting the call, but playing back a recording on what is probably a DID line, grabbing digits and, presumedly recording your message. I've seen this happen before on an American Airlines Advantage toll-free number where the call doesn't connect until a warm body actually picks up the phone. I believe Delta Airlines and Micro$oft 800 numbers operate in an identical manner. Doesn't seem "legal" to me, but if there's an agreement between the carrier and the subscriber (Digitcom), then there's no injured party. The question then is, is this legal and if so, just how can the rest of us with "toll free" numbers get away with the same scam? Doug Terman Operations Manager Antilles Engineering, Ltd. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If it is happening the way you say, I do not think it is legal. 'Legal' of course to a large customer of telco with special arrangements is different than 'legal' where smaller customers are concerned, but I cannot imagine any telco giving them (as part of their contract) unlimited connects at no charge in the way you say until the point when a live person answers, which of course in the case of Digitcom would be never. It might be very interesting to discuss your findings with the RespOrg for the number and the telco servicing it, and see if they were aware of exactly how the customer (Digitcom in this case) had things 'wired' on their end. Really, a very interesting conversation I think. I believe a toll charge is due as soon as some communication starts, even if the commuication merely consists of being asked to hold for an available agent, don't you? Certainly if a message is left for someone who has 'stepped away from their desk' or who has 'been in a meeting all day' (isn't that always the case with Sprint reps!) there should be a charge for a completed call. Why don't some of you kind people go find a big stick, and stir up the pot a little; let's see what floats to the top, if anything. Fun time for all!! PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #359 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 31 16:40:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id QAA18199; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 16:40:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 16:40:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908312040.QAA18199@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #360 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Aug 99 16:40:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 360 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Inventing the Internet", Janet Abbate (Rob Slade) Re: Traceroute on Telephone Circuits (Charles B. Wilber) Re: VISA Authorizations (Barry Koester) Re: Dialing "Blocked" US 1-800, 888, 877 Numbers From Canada (P. Robinson) Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Pay (Paul Robinson) Re: Info About an International (US/EU) GSM Setup Needed (Steven) Re: My Phone Makes False 911 Calls! (Tad Cook) Re: Satellite Phone Company Latest to File For Bankruptcy (J.F. Mezei) Re: Phone Company List? (Leonard Erickson) Re: GSM Phone With "Privacy Indicator"? (Ted Byfield) Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) (L. Erickson) Finding the Power Online: Buying Batteries (Monty Solomon) Kidney Legend (was: Weird Call) (Tad Cook) Re: The D Stands For Dissappointing (Barry Margolin) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 10:44:08 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "Inventing the Internet", Janet Abbate Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKINVINT.RVW 990709 "Inventing the Internet", Janet Abbate, 1999, 0-262-01172-7, U$27.50 %A Janet Abbate %C 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1399 %D 1999 %G 0-262-01172-7 %I MIT Press %O U$27.50 800-356-0343 fax: 617-625-6660 www-mitpress.mit.edu %P 264 p. %T "Inventing the Internet" Buried midway through the introduction comes the statement that the author has chosen to focus on a select group of topics in order to support her own view of the most important social and cultural factors of the Internet. The intent of the book, therefore, is complex. The text must examine a technical development, identify social hypotheses, and present arguments from the historical record to buttress those theories. Chapter one starts out by asserting that the most celebrated of the ARPANET's technical innovations was packet switching. Certainly packet switching is a core concept in all discussions of modern data communications. Unfortunately, Abbate does not display the merits of the idea with sufficient clarity, never dealing with issues of traffic differences between voice and data, only tangentially mentioning circuit switching, and clouding the deliberation with factors more properly related to routing. There is also an evident lack of familiarity with basic technical processes. In addition, the author states that the ARPANET was the proving ground for packet switching, ignoring the contribution of demonstrably much more widely used networks such as Datapac and Transpac. Furthermore, looking back to the introduction we find that the social aspect we, as readers, are supposed to note is how technologies are socially constructed. Other than the fact that technical people talk to each other, nothing significant seems to be presented along this line. Finally, the extensive citations of works in the bibliography appeared to support the scholarship of the work, until I noted that the most interesting points tended to be those referring to private interviews and materials written relatively long after the fact. The content of chapter two alternates between descriptions of political and managerial machinations of those involved in the early development of the ARPANET and mentions of layered protocol modeling. Early users and usages are discussed in chapter three, but the text swings between acknowledging and denying user development. Internetworking is introduced in chapter four, but protocol layering is not re-examined even though it is at this point that the concept becomes important. Chapter five starts with a generic debate about the need for, and interests against, standards, but then spends most of the time reviewing X.25 and the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model, with little relevance to the Internet. Having meandered through about ten years in the first five chapters, chapter six leapfrogs twenty, racing from the military ARPANET into the academic Internet and finally into the present commercial Internet. The trailblazing work of BITNET, Usenet, and even Fidonet is given only token mention, and the description of the World Wide Web seems to completely misunderstand how hypertext contributed to the use and popularity of the net, stressing colour images rather than integration of function. Despite the collation of a wide variety of source materials, and the presentation of a number of events not commonly cited, this book fails as both history and social commentary. Too many major occurrences are dismissed too quickly to confer a full understanding of the development of the Internet. The cultural points Abbate tries to make are either too subtle to come across to this uncultivated geek or are unremarkable and trite. (The closing statement that the net's strengths lie in adaptability and participatory design is surely not news to anyone with the slightest knowledge of Internet history.) Mostly, though, it appears that Abbate's lack of comprehension of the technical aspects of the net ensures a failure to understand significant historical and social factors as well. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999 BKINVINT.RVW 990709 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com [After a tragedy] no one will let me pay -- even for my own meal! [...] Is this the modern equivalent of sending a casserole? - GD http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ Date: 31 Aug 1999 10:14:24 EDT From: Charles.B.Wilber@Dartmouth.EDU (Charles B. Wilber) Reply-To: Charles.B.Wilber@Dartmouth.EDU (Charles B. Wilber) Subject: Re: Traceroute on Telephone Circuits Tad Cook wrote: > There isn't any special signal that can be sent by the called party to > "freeze" the route back to the caller. This can only work on 9-1-1 > because it is a separate trunked network using CAMA or TSPS trunks, > just like a telco operator has. When you dial 9-1-1, the call does > not proceed through the public switched network, it goes to a 9-1-1 > trunk originating in your CO, directly to the call taker. On a > TSPS or CAMA trunk, the called party cannot hang up and drop the > circuit if the operator does not hang up. In addition, the operator > can send a TSPS rering signal back to the originating CO which > directly rings the calling party's line. In our case, calls are routed to the E-911 PSAP (Public Service Answering Point) over ISDN PRI trunks, not CAMA or TSPS. The PSAP operator does not have the ability to "freeze" the line. If the calling party hangs up, the connection is lost. However, due to the enhanced features available with E-911, the operator does get a display of the calling party's number and street address, making it a simple matter to call the reporting party back or to send emergency response personnel to the scene if necessary. Charlie Wilber Telephone Systems Manager Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire ------------------------------ From: Barry Koester Subject: Re: VISA Authorizations Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 07:17:38 -0500 Organization: EnterAct L.L.C. Turbo-Elite News Server No one wants to hear this, but it is your responsibility to know your own balance. You do this by keeping track of it in a register. I know that when you write a check more than your balance you are actually committing fraud. I don't know if the same would hold with a debit card. Joey Lindstrom wrote in message news:telecom19. 335.4@telecom-digest.org: > On Tue, 24 Aug 1999 00:42:22 -0400 (EDT), Steven J Sobol wrote: >> On Sat, 21 Aug 1999 21:50:27 -0700, mdesmon@us-one.net allegedly said: >>> I think that depends on your bank. I've done that a few times before >>> when I didn't track my balance correctly and the bank would treat it >>> like a bounced check. They would honor the Visa and ATM transactions >>> and then charge me a returned check fee of $29. >> That's what my bank does too ... They can't *not* honor the >> transaction after the merchant was given an approval. That's the >> thing. Honoring the transaction and charging the NSF charge is, in my >> opinion, the correct thing for the bank to do in this case. ------------------------------ From: rfc1394a@aol.com (Paul Robinson) Date: 31 Aug 1999 03:28:13 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Dialing "Blocked" US 1-800, 888, 877 Numbers From Canada In article , Keelan Lightfoot writes: >> Does anyone know of a (legal) way to access such 1-800, 888, and 877 >> "US only" toll free numbers from Canada? > Dialing 1-880-xxx-xxxx instead of 1-800-xxx-xxxx works for 800 > numbers. There is a charge, though, (For me -- a BC Tel customer -- I > believe it was a 16 cent connection charge.) > I have encountered the numbers to use for 888 and 877 before, but do > not remember what they were. I believe they are using the rest of the 88x codes for "caller pays" calls to toll-free numbers, e.g. 880 for 800 881 for 888 882 for 877 883 for 866 884 for 855 (Probably when they exhaust 866, a week after it opens.) etc. Paul Robinson Formerly PAUL@TDR.COM, TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM etc. ------------------------------ From: rfc1394a@aol.com (Paul Robinson) Date: 31 Aug 1999 03:28:04 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay In article , E. Cummings writes: > SprintPCS has just instituted a $3.00 fee on*all* customers who > prefer to pay their bill in cash in person. I have never heard of a > company with thousands of retail locations charging its > customers an extra fee for simply paying their bill in person -- even > if it's on time or in advance. Well, maybe not a 'company' but I've heard of the practice elsewhere. I received in the mail Wednesday a bill from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles advising me that the registration fee on one of our family's automobiles is $27 or $54 for two years, when paid by mail (and may be paid by any of the 4 major bank credit cards, too), or I can pay it in person, by toll-free phone or -- I kid you not -- over the Internet at their website www.dmv.state.va.us, but using in person, phone or Internet costs $28.50 or $57 for two years, meaning they are charging an additional $1.50 for each year for non-mail transactions. Paul Robinson (formerly PAUL@TDR.COM among others.) ------------------------------ From: steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) Subject: Re: Info About an International (US/EU) GSM Setup Needed Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:49:58 +0800 Organization: Prima Computer When you get to the UK sign up with Orange and get an LS-2000. Steven In article , tbyfield@panix.com says: > If anyone can make specific recommendations about handsets, economical > carriers and/or calling plans, and pointers to sites with good, > salient info for a cellphone newbie, I'd be very grateful. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: My Phone Makes False 911 Calls! Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:42:00 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) I wrote: > In order to accept incidental pulse-dialing, the Central Office needs > to see a full off-hook state, deliver dialtone, then see a series of > ON-hooks approximately 50 ms long interrupted by approximately 50 ms > OFF-hooks between each on-hook state. If it arrives at the C.O at an > approximate rate of 10 pulses per second, followed by (I think) > several hundred ms of OFF-hook inter-digit time, then it should > complete the call. Actually it should be a total time per pulse of 100 ms (10 pps) with approximately 60% break, 40% make. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com Seattle, WA ------------------------------ From: J.F. Mezei Subject: Re: Satellite Phone Company Latest to File For Bankruptcy Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 21:35:45 -0400 Monty Solomon wrote: > NEW YORK--ICO Global Communications, which is building a satellite > communications network, filed for bankruptcy today, becoming the > latest casualty in the nascent satellite phone industry. So, that leaves Gobalstar that is not yet bankrupt. What exactly is going to happen? Can the satellites already in orbit be re-used for other purposes? Do these satellites have other sources of revenue or are they dedicated to telephony? I find it very interesting that three consortia planned to launch a whole bunch of satellites, and the economics seem to bad that the second one is filing for bankrupcy before their satellites are all launched. Shouldn't the three companies merge their satellite assets and just remarket the services under their respective names? ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Phone Company List? Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 02:22:16 PST Organization: Shadownet vickiesfsd@netscape.com writes: > Does anyone know where a list of ALL the phone companies (with contact > information) can be found if there is such a thing? Well, a list of all the companies is easy. Just drop by the TRA web site (www.trainfo.com?) and grab a copy of the NNAG for the current month. One of the included files is a list of all the phone companies. Contact info is going to be a problem. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 09:54:15 -0400 From: Ted Byfield Subject: Re: GSM Phone With "Privacy Indicator"? David Wagner wrote: > I've heard that some GSM cellphones have an "encryption indicator" > that shows what level of encryption you're using. Any leads? According to the user manual, the Bosch 718 worldphone warns you when you try to make a call using a network that doesn't support encryption. I haven't seen the warning, though, so can't give any precise details -- e.g., whether that's poorly phrased or it warns you when you accept a call over same. there's no mention of speci- fying the encryption level. (Many thanks to the people who helped with my US/EU GSM question!) Cheers, Ted ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 01:58:33 PST Organization: Shadownet Jonathan D Loo writes: > If a company has a trademark and this trademark existed prior to the > registration of a domain name, this company should have no trouble > acquiring the domain name even if the domain name registrant refuses. Except for the fact that the same trademarked name is allowable if the companies compete in different areas. Thus "Apple computer" and "Apple Music" had no conflict until Macs got music capability. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:13:07 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Finding the Power Online: Buying Batteries Forwarded to the Digest, FYI: by Adam C. Engst Online commerce is growing all the time, but a recent experience shows just how far we have yet to go. Like good little technogeeks, Tonya and I own a cellular phone and a camcorder. However, unlike really good little technogeeks, we haven't replaced the perfectly functional cell phone and camcorder that we've had for several years now. Both work fine for the minimal uses we require of them, and as much as technolust does kick in whenever I see a friend with a tiny cell phone that can also receive email or a digital camcorder that puts ours to shame in a package a tenth the size, we've resisted buying new models for the sake of having the latest and greatest. http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-494.html#lnk3 ------------------------------ Subject: Kidney Legend (was: Weird Call) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:36:02 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Unfortunatly (or perhaps fortunatly) no > I have not heard it, but then I do not spend much time reading chain > letters originating at AOL. I guess I should try to keep more up to > date. PAT] This is a great legend, detailed in several of the Urban Legend books by contemporary folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand. For a good telling of it, see: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blkid.htm?pid=2733&cob=home or: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney2.htm Tad Cook tad@ssc.com Seattle, WA ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: The D Stands for Dissappointing Organization: GTE Internetworking, Cambridge, MA Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 20:17:07 GMT In article , Ryan Tucker wrote: > Nothing is, and nothing will be unless you start talking dedicated pipes > to the main backbones ;-) And even then, those backbones are shared among all the customers with dedicated pipes and the residential customers of that backbone ISP. We (tier-1 ISPs) try hard to prevent congestion on our backbone circuits, but we occasionally miss. There's a segment of our backbone that's been waiting since March to get additional bandwidth, but due to various mistakes (some on the part of the telcos we ordered from, and some due to our own errors) it's going to be a few more weeks before it's available. And if your data has to traverse one of the public NAPs it will probably hit an enormous traffic jam. Why do you think the Internet is so cheap compared to traditional telecommunications? Why can you make an international phone call using a simple piece of software on your PC without paying per-minute charges? On a normal long distance call, you're reserving bandwidth on circuits all along the way, and someone has to pay for the fact that that bandwidth isn't available to others for the duration of your call, whether you're talking or not. On the Internet you just send your packets into the ether, and if there's bandwidth available they'll get to the other end. We size our pipes so that most of the time everything makes it through, but most protocols are designed to take occasional losses in stride (if every 1,000th packet in a voice call were lost, you probably wouldn't even notice the blips, and applications that need precise data, like file transfers, use protocols that automatically resend lost packets). Barry Margolin, barmar@bbnplanet.com GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA *** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups. Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #360 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 31 17:54:36 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA21553; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 17:54:36 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 17:54:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199908312154.RAA21553@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #361 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Aug 99 17:54:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 361 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? (Joseph Wineburgh) Re: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) (Greg Skinner) Re: Paying to Pay (was Re: SprintPCS Surcharge) (Paul Robinson) Two Letter Abbreviations (Art Knight) Modem-to-Modem Connection Help (Carla Decker) Filing Complaint/Lawsuit Against Bell-Atlantic (Mike Mansfield) Re: Satellite Phone Company Latest to File For Bankruptcy (John Nagle) Gat Agreement (Brent) Re: Water Damage To Phone (Steve Winter) Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (Steve Winter) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Joseph Wineburgh Reply-To: Subject: Re: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:23:09 -0400 From what I have seen, the toll-free arena is much more stable in that there is an 'owner' of the number with it's respective resp-org, and there needs to be an agreement made on the part of the current owner for anything to happen. This simply does not seem to be the case when it comes to the 'internet'. Sure the domain is registered and sure there's an 'owner', but it seems to me that it is MUCH easier to weasel the domain away from it's current owner. There are many similarities in the two arenas to compare, but the one place where the 'internet' falls over is that as long as the 'corporation' that wants a domain has Money and Lawyers, they will most likely succeed. I have never seen it happen to that extent on the toll-free side. #JOE [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Judith Oppenheimer would disagree with your assessment, and she has seen her share of Money and Lawyers, as her message explains, which is printed next in this issue. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 14:52:54 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: Re: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Please explain this to me: if a company > decides to move onto the net and set up a web site, and they see that > they name they want is taken, they frequently just claim the existing > user is a 'squatter' and rip off the name. This is especially true if > they have money for attorney fees and the small web site does not. ... > I am wondering if that sort of thing happens with 'vanity' phone > numbers as well. Let's say some individual has a number that is needed > by a large company because it spells their name, or the number has > some signficance to them, etc. Are there many instances of them just > applying very heavy legal pressure on the RespOrg to assign the user > some other number and give them the one they want? I know it happens > occassionally with telcos and regular numbers. Pat, a fairly significant share of ICB's consulting business is remedying exactly this sort of situation. (We call it lost and stolen number retrieval.) RespOrg's falsify LOA's (Letters of Authorization); they do "emergency RespOrg changes." Large companies send legal letters threatening accusations to the FCC if compliance (cheap or free number transfer) is not forthcoming. Companies file FCC claims aimed at forcing settlement which would include the number they want. We recently helped a small marketer get a restraining order against a top-three RespOrg that was repeatedly submitting fraudulent LOA's to the SMS Help Desk (operating on some level, we're pretty sure, at the behest of a much larger marketing competitor.) We had another case this year where a very small business ported her number into one of the top three carriers, only to find it removed from her account and ringing to a much larger customer, within the same week she ported it in. She didn't come to me until eight months later, but luckily she'd kept good records. Working backward through the paper trail, we were able to get the executive offices of the carrier to return the number to her. In the interim, she'd spent months dealing with supposedly helpful reps pretending to help her. When I first got the case, I received a letter from one of the carrier's regulatory lawyers, advising me that the number removal may have been improper, but they would raise the question of whether this woman was a broker, if she pursued its return. (This same attorney claimed not to know that even were the number properly removed from her account, it could not be reassigned by them to another customer, but rather had to go to spare for 'first come first serve', first.) I've got two cases currently of users being approached by Fortune 500's to purchase their numbers. In both cases the numbers are in use and have been for years, and are not available for sale. After friendly conversations culminating in "thanks but no thanks", both clients received threats, one inferred verbally, the other overt in writing, of being reported as brokers, if they didn't release the numbers. In one case, the lawyer also went directly to the RespOrg (a smaller one); accused the subscriber of being a broker, and asked the RespOrg to reassign the number to the potential buyer. To the RespOrg's credit, it told the lawyer to take a hike. Both potential buyers have since backed down from their threats. One has resumed its attempts to buy the number amicably. I could go on and on ... for the most part, we resolve thefts by working within the operational mechanisms of subscriber rights and RespOrg obligations ... if a theft cannot be resolved (the number has already been moved to a third RespOrg who is under no obligation, and in fact has no right, to cooperate), we help ascertain from whom to seek compensation, and in what manner. Theft attempts are often resolved simply by revealing the bully as an 'Emperor with no clothes'. In the case of the restraining order, we got the project after a judge told my client's lawyer, in essence, 'Of course XYZ carrier can take the number, they own all the phone numbers!' -- and sent the lawyer packing. This was obviously a judge who still used a rotary phone. We armed the lawyer with statutory hierarchical documentation of actual number 'ownership', from the NANP on down; tariff documentation; documentation pertaining to RespOrg obligations and subscriber rights; etc. And then spent a number of nights, he being in California (we're in New York), coaching him by phone how to argue it. At the next court visit before the same judge, the restraining order was obtained. So the answer to your question -- yes, it happens all the time. Judith Oppenheimer http://icbtollfree.com http://800consulting.com http://whosells800.com 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 ------------------------------ From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Subject: Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) Date: 31 Aug 1999 13:32:26 -0700 Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com In article , Anthony Argyriou wrote: > Going to the Avery Dennison case -- I think that AD would have a case > for infringement if the domain avery.com had been taken -- .com means > commercial, and Avery is a well known brand (Avery labels). Most > reasonable people would expect to find Avery Labels at avery.com. > However, .net and org mean something else, and avery.net doesn't imply > Avery labels at all. What's needed is a judge who will say that .net > and .org don't get the same kind of trademark protection as does .com. It's not clear from NSI's registration policies that .com means commercial. In fact, they encourage people to register the same name in .com, .net, and .org, no matter what the use of that name might be. One can argue the merits of such a policy, but the result is that it's not so easy to say .com is for commercial entities any more. gregbo gds at best.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wouldn't it seem likely that if the registrar received payment for each instance of a name being registered they would encourage as many cross registrations as possible? Isn't it somewhat like telco's desire to sell you whatever cross listings you want in the phone book and a big ad in the yellow pages as well? Maybe a good rule for the future would be there will only be one single fee charged per applicant -- wherever and however they get placed -- and any sort of cross-domain registration such as an entry in both .com and .org require special approval. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rfc1394a@aol.com (Paul Robinson) Date: 31 Aug 1999 03:28:09 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Paying to Pay (was Re: SprintPCS Surcharge) In article , dannyb@panix.com (Danny Burstein) writes: >> Credit cards aren't affected. It does not say that you may *only* >> accept cash. You are free to accept anything you wish. It just says >> that if US currency is presented, it *must* be accepted. > Again, this is a common misconception. Walk over to your local Fedex > office. The vast majority of them will _not_ accept cash. What the requirement is that if you owe someone money in a debt, they must accept Federal Reserve Notes (currency) for payment on that debt or the debt is extinguished. Phone companies get around this by billing you *in advance* for local phone service; if they are not collecting for previous services they could refuse to accept currency. However, long distance charges *are* a debt (you owe it for something that you used before you paid for it) and as such, if they refused to accept curreny for it you would be able to not have to pay it. A refusal to accept payment in currency extinguishes the debt. Since a purchase of future delivery service from Federal Express is not a debt, FedEx can refuse to accept currency payments. If, however, you were paying them for a bill on an account for services already rendered, that is a different matter. Simple rule of thumb: If you're paying for something to be supplied in the future they can refuse to accept currency, if it's a payment for something supplied in the past they cannot (or they lose the ability to collect). Paul Robinson (formerly PAUL@TDR.COM, TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM etc.) ------------------------------ From: Art Knight Subject: Two Letter Abbreviations Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 12:07:13 -0500 Patrick and Mark, The designation NT is a hangover from the former name of Northwest Territories, and another is YK for the Yukon. The new one is supposed to be a combined designation. Art Knight, Project Manager - Y2K C. & I. S. Department Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg, Manitoba R3E 0T3 Ph. (204) 787-7848 Fax(204) 787-2855 e-mail: artk@hsc.mb.ca ------------------------------ From: Carla Decker Subject: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 14:36:20 -0400 Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, TN I have a project where I need to be able to connect two PCs together using two modems over a telephone cable that *DOES NOT* have dial tone. I also need to use RAS & DUN to take care of a requirement for TCP/IP. Here's my configuration: PC <-----> Modem <------------------> Modem <-----> PC RAS 9600 No Dial Tone 9600 RAS SVR Client The configuration is dictated, and not negotiable. I can get the configuration to work using Hyperterminal. Unfortunately, Hyperterminal doesn't give me TCP/IP capabilities. When I try to use RAS, I can't get the RAS Server to answer. Any suggestions would be most helpful! Thanks, Carla deckerch@ornl.gov ------------------------------ From: Mike Mansfield Subject: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit against Bell-Atlantic Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 16:22:34 -0400 I am looking for other disappointed customers interested in a group complaint against Bell Atlantic price gouging practices. Recently Bell Atlantic increased the price of the so-called "Selective Calling Service" by a factor of 10 or more. Yes, you are reading correctly. The same service is going to cost TEN TIMES more that it did in the past. Selective Calling Service used to give you 20 hours a month of calls to another nearby area, less than 11 miles away, for a a flat $2.00 per month ($1.99 to be exact). Starting this September the EXACT SAME SERVICE will cost $21.27 per month. This service was instituted to correct pricing injustices that would punish residential customers with unreasonably high rates for calls near home. Now Bell Atlantic is changing tactics and obviously gouging its customers. Shouldn't the Board of Public Utilities in New Jersey be involved in this and put a limit to such predatory tactics? If you are a voter in New Jersey you can do something to prevent such outrageous acts of irresponsible corporations. It's apparently far worse than that. Selective Calling is not regulated by the Public Utilities Board, for whatever reason. If that is true, Bell Atlantic discovered the opportunity to gouge thousands (if not millions) of customers. The New Jersey rating areas are very funny. A call to a place 14 miles away may be a LOCAL call. But a call to a closer place, only 7 miles away, may be a TOLL call. Selective Calling was invented to partially correct such (obvious) injustices. For whatever reason, the service fell through the regulatory cracks and is not subject to the Tariff Rules. I know enough about phones to know that it doesn't cost them a penny to offer this service. It's just a "rating gimmick" and now they are finding an opportunity to gouge the public even more. But I don't know enough about Regulatory Issues to know whether the State could/should control the tariffs for such a service; and whether the Public can take Legal Action against a Utility that is obviously using 'predatory' pricing practices. On a parallel vein, I seem to remember that AT&T tried to offer this service when they started offering local service in the state of New Jersey a few years ago. But they could not offer it because Bell Atlantic would not provide them with requisite information. I believe that AT&T had even filed a formal complaint at that time. If the above is correct then the current TENFOLD increase by Bell Atlantic would constitute clearly an anti-competitive act that might even violate Federal statutes. Any good lawyers out there reading this? Mike Jack Dominey wrote: > In , Daniel Meldazis > wrote: >> A CLEC that would complain to the FCC or the NJ Board of Public >> Utilities that BA rates are too much of a bargain for their customers >> would be laughed at. You can imagine the argument, "Bell Atlantic >> charges too little for their service. Please make them raise their >> rates." More likely, BA does not want to, for whatever reason, >> continue to provide the service. So they will make modifications to >> the structure and pricing until either no one takes the service or the >> few customers left will be grandfathered. Unless BA is providing the >> service below their cost, there is not much other carriers can do. > "Below their cost" might be the answer to the puzzle here. If the > CLECs had demonstrated to the PUC's satisfaction that the particular > service were priced below cost, couldn't the PUC order a rate hike? > Note that I don't consider this a particulary likely explanation, just > a possible one. > Jack Dominey "Apparently I'm insane. > domineys(at)mindspring.com But I'm one of the happy kinds!" ------------------------------ From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: Satellite Phone Company Latest to File For Bankruptcy Date: 31 Aug 1999 21:31:09 GMT Organization: Netcom J.F. Mezei writes: > So, that leaves Gobalstar that is not yet bankrupt. > What exactly is going to happen? Can the satellites already in orbit > be re-used for other purposes? Do these satellites have other sources > of revenue or are they dedicated to telephony? Iridium will probably be refinanced in some way. It's up, it works, it just cost too much and the handsets are too big. When Iridium was designed, it wasn't considered a liability that you had to be outdoors to communicate and that the handset weighed about two pounds. Land-based cellular wasn't expected to grow as fast as it did. Nor was airtime expected to drop in price so fast. John Nagle ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:26:25 -0700 From: Brent Subject: Gat Agreement Hi there, I am looking for any information concerning the above mentioned 'Gat Agreement'. I will be very grateful if you could help me. Thank you. Captain Corrupt ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Water Damage To Phone Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:28:08 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) spake thusly and wrote: > Oh? Trust me, 48v *will* get your attention. The easiest way to learn > this is to forget to disconnect the phone line from an internal modem > card in a PC and then grab the card to pull it out. Those pointy little > bits of wire on the backside of the circuit board *will* dig in enough > it get past the dead surface layers of skin and into the nice *wet* and > conductive dermal tissues. > Result? The shock makes your hand *jerk* and since the cord prevents > the card from coming all the way out, you rip *long* gashes on your > hand and bleed all over the circuitry. That sounds more like an IQ test. It is a good idea to disconnect all power sources from a PC before messing with the hardware. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering Listed at http://www.thepubliceye.com as SELLCOM New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, it is a good idea to do it, but a lot of people never bother. They'll just swap one card for another or make what they feel is a 'minor' adjustment or change to the chips or the solder trace without pulling the plug. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. PAT] ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:30:55 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com TELECOM Digest Editor queried in response to a note from steve@ sellcom.com (Steve Winter): > So what exactly is AlGore Rythym? Is that the little dance he does > as part of his song and dance about the internet? I believe that it is some dance he does with the trees or whatever, or maybe the gentle rocking of a canoe in a flooded area :O) Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering Listed at http://www.thepubliceye.com as SELLCOM New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Aren't you glad we have a fine outstanding man like that -- in line for the White House and all -- leading our net in its growth and development as the century draws to a close? Imagine where the net would be without his leadership and his exhuberance for the net of the 21st century ... why we might still be doing things like they were done in the 1980's. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #361 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Sep 1 05:10:26 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id FAA14196; Wed, 1 Sep 1999 05:10:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 05:10:26 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199909010910.FAA14196@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #362 TELECOM Digest Wed, 1 Sep 99 05:10:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 362 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! (Lisa Hancock) Re: Call Re-routing Hardware Wanted (James Baker) Re: Satellite Phone Company Latest to File For Bankruptcy (Tony Pelliccio) Call Notes won't record forwarded calls (Frank Provasek) Re: 800 Number Does Not Connect (was Toll-Free Payphones) (Art Kamlet) Re: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? (Russell Blau) Re: BellSouth/PageNet IPS Outages (Steven J. Sobol) MyLine Announcement (Marina Chang) Cable v DSL (was: The D Stands for Disappointing) (satch@concentric.net) Bell System Property (Al Gillis) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Internet's 30th Birthday! Date: 1 Sep 1999 00:06:33 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS >> many dreams and claims of its supporters. A lot of work remains. > This is true, but in no way lessens the enormous potential. There IS enormous _potential_, but the value of that potential to the end user is limited by the problems. Until the problems are worked out, users may be hesitant. Further, given the level of technology today, these problems should be solved. I don't agree with some of your perceptions. > On the other hand, there's very little you can do about the junk mail, > but much you can do about the junk email. Thanks to some simple > filters on my local POP server, I only see about one junk email post a > day at most. I have no control over the filters my ISPs use on their systems. I know they have them, and I know spam still gets through. Pat (the moderator) demonstrated that some filters are blocking legitimate message traffic. In any event, purchasing, installing, and maintaining such filters is an expense _I_ directly or indirectly must pay. Why the $#@*! should I pay money, on a NEW environment, to protect myself from cheats and frauds? As a new enviroment still being constructed, we should have built in legal safeguards. (No one ever mails me any of the kind of stuff in spam since the US Post Office postal inspectors would arrest them.) > The virus protection software, SPAM filters, encryption and other > technologies are effective and getting more so every day. Just think > of them as the equivalent of the locks on your home and car. Again, this is a cost out of MY pocket. And I deeply resent the need for it as well. (By the way, I now have to use a security bar to lock my car and I don't like that either.) > People are already switching over to faster bandwidth alternatives. > Javascript errors are not the fault of the Internet per se. The > technology is still young but improving fast. Slow response time is a function of many factors. First of course is the initial connection from desktop machine to service provider. Second is the speed of the service provider's equipment to route messaging. Third if the speed of the provider's connection to the backbone. Fourth is the connection of the remote server's connection. Fifth is the speed of the remote server itself. If any one of these components gets jammed by traffic or is down for whatever, you will have delays. I pick up a voice telephone, dial the call, and will reach my party. The reliability of the basic POTS telephone system is now essentially 100%. The reliability of reaching and maintaining a USEABLE connection with a remote site has a long way to go. > Back when I worked in a company we had other ways to waste time -- > trying to shoot rubber bands onto ceiling hooks, and reading audio > magazines. The Internet is going to make the whole idea of such > companies obsolete eventually. People sitting at desks with time on > their hands is certainly not the fault of the Internet. Yes, we used to (actually still do on occasion) shoot rubber bands. But my employer's cost in wasted rubber bands is far, far less than its cost in providing all of us fancy PCs, an internal network, and outside connections. (Remember, we have a service staff now to support all that equipment and software. Upgrading from Windows 3.1 to Win 95, testing for Y2k compatibility, and other changes were costly and took time.) Seems an awfully big expense just to look at web pages of guinea pigs. > Great, let the publishers decide what we get to read. I used to be > in the position to make such decisions, so I know a little about the > process. I think we're a lot better off without that particular > filter on information. That's the way the system has worked for years. There are benefits to that in terms of protection for private individuals for libel and slander, and spread of dangerous information. I don't want to see the country return to the lawless anarchy of the old west of the 1800s. Laws and social principles were developed in response to lots of shootings and other nasty stuff. > The protection is your own common sense. If you wouldn't buy medicine > from someone on a street corner, don't buy it from a Web site. Many people are not educated enough to safely make their own decisions. Why even bother to have an FDA at all then? ------------------------------ From: jbaker@halcyon.com (James Baker) Subject: Re: Call Re-routing Hardware Wanted Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 16:47:00 -0700 Organization: WinStar NorthWest Nexus In article , Jon Solomon wrote: > I am looking for a peice of hardware which will do the following: > Answer the line, say "press 1 for a, 2 for b, 3 for c" > and then route the call to a number based on what was pressed. Check out solopoint (www.solopoint.com). They make a two line device that is supposed to be able to do what you ask. I have an older model that I use as sort of a "follow me" service with different forward-to numbers based on time of day. Hope this helps. James Baker Seattle, WA jbaker@halcyon.com ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Satellite Phone Company Latest to File For Bankruptcy Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 23:08:45 GMT In article , jfmezei.spamnot@videotron.ca says: > Monty Solomon wrote: >> NEW YORK--ICO Global Communications, which is building a satellite >> communications network, filed for bankruptcy today, becoming the >> latest casualty in the nascent satellite phone industry. > So, that leaves Gobalstar that is not yet bankrupt. > What exactly is going to happen? Can the satellites already in orbit > be re-used for other purposes? Do these satellites have other sources > of revenue or are they dedicated to telephony? How much you want to bet they sell data services off those orbiting chunks of metal? == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ From: Frank Provasek Subject: Call Notes Won't Record Forwarded Calls Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 18:10:56 -0500 Organization: Netcom I am in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, and last week I subscribed to Southwestern Bell's "Call Notes" since it would answer even if I have the line tied up on the Internet. Nights, my work phone is forwarded to my home phone in case of emergency. After several days of what seemed to be important calls on my caller ID but no messages ... I called the work number while forwarded to my home. Instead of my voice, callers hear "Welcome to Southwestern Bell Call Notes ... Please enter the number you are calling or redial" The callers, of course, enter my work number, and are told that there is no Call Notes account for that number. In any case they cannot leave a message. Thinking that the phone company had something set up wrong, I was told by the service department that it was NORMAL. That call notes is set up on a PER LINE basis, and that if I wanted call notes for the business number, I needed to subscribe for that number also. I had a $20 answering machine which, of course, recorded the messages either direct to my number or forwarded. It seems to me that any phone call that makes MY phone ring, whether called direct, long distance, or forwarded from another number should be answered by Call Notes if I am not able to pick up the phone. Is this quirk common in other parts of the US? Seems like since the local Telcos market both forwarding services and message services so aggressively, and never mention that the message service will not take a message from an incoming call that has been forwarded, that this would affect a lot of customers. Needless to say, Call Notes has been cancelled from my line. Frank Provasek ------------------------------ From: kamlet@infinet.com (Art Kamlet) Subject: Re: 800 Number Does Not Connect (was Toll-Free Payphones) Date: 31 Aug 1999 18:39:34 -0400 Organization: InfiNet Reply-To: kamlet@infinet.com In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If it is happening the way you say, > I do not think it is legal. 'Legal' of course to a large customer > of telco with special arrangements is different than 'legal' where > smaller customers are concerned, but I cannot imagine any telco > giving them (as part of their contract) unlimited connects at no > charge in the way you say until the point when a live person answers, Who is to say the service subscriber of that 800 number really wants a live person to answer all calls? Simple 800 logic for any sort of IN ght start with seeing where the call comes form. If from the east coast or west cost, the call would be routed to live operators, but if from the hinterlands, they might want to route to an answering machine. Or consider a service provided only during daytime and never on Sunday. At night or Sundays the call might be routed to a recording to call back during daytime or Mon-Sat. Now any telelphone company offering that service would surely charge for playing that recorded annoucement. Whether the ANI is also provided is a matter of the particular service features offered. For 800 services, quite a bit of network work is done whether live people answer of not. Putting a "Dial 1 for obnoxious service, and 2 for generally obnoixious service" can be provided either by the 800 number phone company provider or by the end customer. If provided by the phone company (as a clue whether to route the call to Chicago or San Bernadino, for example) I'll bet there is a charge built into the service. > I believe a toll charge is due as soon as some communication starts, > even if the commuication merely consists of being asked to hold for an > available agent, don't you? Certainly if a message is left for someone Even if Press One for Dumb Service announcement. Art Kamlet Columbus, Ohio kamlet@infinet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Therefore, *someone* is getting the bill, or maybe it is more accurate to say some telco somewhere is getting a traffic report on it all, in order to better negotiate the terms with their customer. So, just keep the pressure up until someone gets the word. Your calls to the spammer inquiring about the product or asking to be removed from the list are not just falling off into outer space somewhere. The traffic is being noted, and whether or not the spammer gets a bill (the first, preferable course of action) or his 800 service provider is getting the bill (an equally good choice) or a telco somewhere is questioning why is end-user X seeing all this traffic being handled in this way, is not of concern to you, the long-suffering netizen. You just keep pushing the envelope in that direction. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 15:46:00 -0700 From: Russell Blau Subject: Re: Is $5,000,000.00 US Enough for These Domain Names? Organization: My Deja Email (http://www.my-deja.com:80) Judith Oppenheimer wrote: > Numbers and domain names get their value when someone wants them. 1 > 800 TICKETS only became worth $1M + 6% stock, when that offer was > made. Until then it was only worth $20,000, or $80,000, or the > various other offers that were made, and rejected, over the years > leading up to the $1M purchase. Good point, Judith. I can recall a similar example. When I went to Harvard many years ago, I worked on the college radio station, WHRB-FM. There was a small technical college down the street which also had a radio station, with the call sign WTBS-FM. How much was either of those call signs worth? There certainly was nobody beating down the door at WHRB asking to buy our call letters. But there was a guy named Turner down in Atlanta who owned a television station, and who decided that "TBS" would be just the right name for his broadcasting empire. Well, you can figure out the rest of it -- MIT's radio station got new call letters and lots of nice new equipment, while we got to be proud of our old, traditional call sign (and our old, inherited studio equipment). No amount of marketing or publicity by MIT created the value of their call sign; it arose by serendipity because someone else decided it had value to *him*. ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: BellSouth/PageNet IPS Outages Date: 31 Aug 1999 22:52:35 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:07:18 -0400, jwineburgh@chubb.com allegedly said: > In summary, it sounds like they may be mis-representing the > service. If you want a true paging service, go with SkyTel. They have > a traditional & 2-way paging network with guaranteed delivery and are > the BEST out there. I concur. Their products are way above the equivalents from PageNet's, and even though, up until this year, PageNet SurePage was a private-label version of Skytel's SkyWord Plus, SurePage STILL didn't offer all the features SkyWord Plus does!! (PageNet has finally started building their own two-way network, and this may have changed ... I haven't been a PageNet customer since March 99.) > I have NEVER lost a message yet. In addition if you are out of a > coverage area and are expecting messages, you can call an access > number and retrieve your messages that way. The only difference is > SkyTel has limits on the usage - You start out at $20/month for alpha, > but once you get over 50k characters in a month you pay ... Depends on the package. Mine is 10K. > I don't have any hooks into either company other than I like the > services they offer. I do (in the interest of full disclosure). I'm a SkyTel reseller ... But also a very happy user of their services. North Shore Technologies Corporation http://www.NorthShoreTechnologies.net 815 Superior Ave. #610, Cleveland, OH 44114-2702 216.619.2NET 888.480.4NET Host of the Forum for Responsible & Ethical E-mail http://www.spamfree.org I am the president and sole shareholder of NSTC. Thus, I feel comfortable saying that my opinions do represent the official opinions of the company :) ------------------------------ From: Marina_Chang@gstworld.net (Marina Chang) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 15:58:31 -0700 Subject: MyLine Announcement GST MyLine Services to Transition to TeleSpace September 1999 Dear MyLine Customer: GST has been carefully evaluating its business lines to sharpen its focus on its core telecommunications products: local telephone service, enhanced data services, Internet and long distance. As a result, we have decided to divest ourselves from MyLine and have come to an agreement with TeleSpace, Inc. to continue your service and customer support. TeleSpace is the operations arm of AmericomUSA, the original developer of MyLine. As such, Telespace is committed to the product and its development, as well as maintaining your support both through this transition and into the future. Once the changeover has been completed, you will receive customer support and invoices from Telespace. Your current MyLine rate plan will remain the same. Telespace's customer support numbers are 805-542-8500 or 1-800-775-4765. Final GST MyLine invoices will be sent on August 28, September 8, or Se ptember 18, depending on which billing cycle you are in. Other GST services wi ll not be affected by this change and will continue as normal. If you have any qu estions regarding this transition, please contact GST Customer Service at 1-800-541-6316. GST is proud to have introduced you to MyLine and pleased that you have found it to be an effective communications tool. We look forward to servicing yo ur business in other areas and introducing you to next generation telecommunications products as they develop. ------------------------------ Subject: Cable v DSL (was: The D Stands for Disappointing) From: satch@concentric.nospam.net (Satch) Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 02:04:00 GMT Organization: SBC Internet Services Allegedly rtucker+replyto+199908@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) said on 28 Aug 1999 in the folloing: >> Yep, this is an important issue with cable modem. You share the pipe >> with all your neighbors. More subscribers in your neighborhood will >> most likely mean less bandwidth for you to use. > You're doing the same with DSL, it's just that your neighborhood is a > lot bigger for this calculation. You don't think you have a direct pipe > to "The Internet", do you? This argument has been going on for the past few weeks in comp.dcom.modem.cable (and a less lengthy thread in comp.dcom.xdsl). This is fast turning into a religious war, I'm afraid. That said, I want to rebut a couple of your assumptions. First, the structure of DSL and cable modem service is considerably different; this has more to do with deployment details than anything else. For two-way cable systems, the coax cable plant serves a neighborhood, with signals to and from the neighborhood coax carried over fibre optic links. These links are in turn aggregated at the head end for the cable system, where the demark is one or more TCP/IP-over-Ethernet ports. This is then routed onto a backhaul to the Internet in some manner. (I've heard that @home maintains its own backbone network that peers to other backbone providers, but that's second-hand info and I don't entirely trust it. Lurkers?) The coax plant shares one or more downlink channels and one uplink channel to service an entire neighborhood. This means that, something akin to an asymetric Ethernet, the media sharing starts at the pole. In xDSL, and most particularly G.lite ADSL, there is a dedicated channel between the CPE and the DSLAM at the central office or remote terminal. The system feature tables I've seen have the output of the DSLAM appearing on an ATM network, where a virtual circuit is established between the DSLAM and the brouter. The output of the brouter then routed onto a backhaul to the Internet in some manner. Media sharing starts at the DSLAM, via an ATM network. Unlike cable, in which a single TCP/IP connection occurs, the ATM network can route a single channel to any of a number of ISPs before it's converted to TCP/IP-over- Ethernet. Thus the ATM network is the ONLY shared resource, and the possiblity for multiple parallel ATM networks is always a possibility. So your assertion that "with DSL ... [y]ou share the pipe with all your neighbors" is mostly incorrect. You only share the ATM network, and that network may be as long or as short as the ILEC deems is necessary. Indeed, the network may live only in the central office, with the CLECs colocating equipment in the CO to complete the connection. It gets more interesting when you talk about colocated DSLAMS owned by CLECs. COVAD, for example, follows this model for providing competing DSL service. They tie directly to the local loop, bypassing any ILEC DSL equipment. With cable modems, I'm stuck with whatever policy the incumbant ISP has instituted for cable service. This BY CONTRACT will be the situation for at least the next two years. With DSL, I'm not beholden to the ILEC's ISP for service for the forseeable future. If I don't like the policies of the ILEC ISP, I can move to another ISP with more compatible service offerings. _____ __/satch\___________________________________________________ Satchell Evaluations, testing modems since 1984 "The only good mouse-trap is a hungry cat" ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:02:32 -0700 From: Al Gillis Reply-To: alg@teleport.com Subject: Bell System Property Well, sort of. Recently my wife found two small key chain telephones for me. Not so unusual, you might think. But these two are modeled after early Bell System Princess telephones. One is pink, the other is a light brown and they are about one inch long and a half inch in height and depth. They have "rotary" dials and seem to be pretty accurate replicas. They even have the "flat" panel on the front and rear of the plastic case. On the bottom they say "The Princess phone" with Princess written in the script style they used to advertise this model. Also on the bottom it says "It's little, it's lovely, it lights!". Does anyone know how many different colors there were in this line of give-away trinkets? Or about when the Princess telephone was first introduced? I would guess this keychain would have been given away as a promo during the introduction of this product. Thanks! Al [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Princess phones were first introduced about 1960-61. The small town of Crown Point, Indiana was converted to dial service from manual in 1961 or 1962 and the telephone trucks in the area serving Gary/Crown Point/Hobart had advertisments on the side of them saying 'Go dial in style! Order a Princess phone from the business office today.' Then below a picture of the phone was a notice that 'telephone will operate satisfactorily in manual service; dial on phone will commence operating with conversion to dial service on xx/xx/61 (or whatever date it was). Don't wait, order one of these NEW telephones today. You might check in the Tribute to the Telephone section at this site for more specifics. Review the advertising of those days, as well as other details: http://telecom-digest.org/tribute PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #362 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Sep 1 06:34:10 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id GAA16109; Wed, 1 Sep 1999 06:34:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 06:34:10 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199909011034.GAA16109@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #363 TELECOM Digest Wed, 1 Sep 99 06:34:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 363 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson US-British Cyber-Spy System Puts Euro Countries on Edge (The Old Bear) Call Routing Using Caller ID - Like the Yo-Yo (nishka@my-deja.com) Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers - Rebuttal (Andy Berry) Re: Why Do 66 Blocks Have That Name? (The Old Bear) Re: Why Do 66 Blocks Have That Name? (Derek Peschel) Re: Gat Agreement (David Devereaux-Weber) Re: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help (Daryl Gibson) Re: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help (Reed) Re: Help Needed - Audio Problem on Phone Line (R.V. Waldren) Re: Two-Letter Abbreviations (J.F. Mezei) Re: International Calls & CIDs (Ed Ellers) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 01 Sep 1999 00:09:52 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: US-British Cyber-Spy System Puts Euro Countries on Edge Pat: A few years back, there was a discussion in the TELECOM Digest about the practicality/impracticality of recording and surveilance of all of the telecommunications generated by the public. I recall that the consensus was that it would be difficult but not impossible if one were willing to commit the resources to it. Well, the following item was just forwarded to me by a friend. I am unfamiliar with the credibility of the quoted source, but other readers of TELECOM Digest may find this item of interest and worthy of discussion. Regards, Will The Old Bear ---------- begin included text ---------- Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 20:18:06 -0500 Friends, Below is my {Los Angeles Times} column from August 16, 1999. This is being sent out now because I was in Italy at the time this column came out. As always, please feel free to pass this around, but please retain the copyright notice. Best, Gary gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu Monday, August 16, 1999 DIGITAL NATION U.S.-British Cyber-Spy System Puts European Countries on Edge By Gary Chapman Copyright 1999, The Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved ROVERETO, Italy--It felt like there was a new Cold War developing at a conference here last week on computers, networks and international security, only this time the adversaries are the United States and Europe and the field of conflict is cyberspace. The revelation last year about the collaborative electronic eavesdropping system developed by the U.S. National Security Agency and British intelligence agencies, a system known as Echelon, has become a huge topic of discussion in Europe. The Echelon system can and does intercept "all e-mail, telephone and fax communications" in Europe, according to a report delivered last year to the European Parliament, and further investigations revealed that this capability also covers Australia, New Zealand and other countries. The report's author, Steve Wright, director of Omega Foundation, a British human rights group, was here last week and summarized his investigation into Echelon. "The Echelon system forms part of the U.K.-U.S.A. system but unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, Echelon is designed for primarily nonmilitary targets: governments, organizations and businesses in virtually every country," states Wright's report, "An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control," (available on the Web at http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc.htm). The report was prepared for the European Parliament's Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) group. Its release in early 1998 shocked European government leaders. The chief piece of news that angered European politicians and business executives was the allegation that Echelon data intercepts are used for economic intelligence, and that the U.S. and British governments pass on this information to private companies for competitive advantage in trade talks, financial deals or contract negotiations, Simon Davies, head of Privacy International in London and another participant in the conference, wrote in an Aug. 4 commentary piece in The Times. This is a particularly sensitive and explosive allegation, as Britain is a member of the European Union and therefore must abide by EU laws and treaties, one of which, the Maastricht Treaty, is specifically aimed at leveling the playing field in EU commerce. Also worrisome is that the "special relationship" between the U.S. and British governments could allow each country's intelligence agency to rely on the other to circumvent national privacy laws, according to Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. When the National Security Agency is prohibited from certain kinds of domestic surveillance, it may get the information from its British counterparts, and vice versa. The STOA report produced a firestorm of controversy in Europe, but got very little attention in the United States, something Wright attributes to the fact that throughout 1998 the U.S. news media was saturated with the scandal in the White House. The European Parliament took the unprecedented step of holding hearings on Echelon in September of last year, just about the time our impeachment hearings were getting underway. A common response among many people confronted with the news about Echelon is incredulity -- how on earth could any organization intercept all the telephone calls, e-mail and faxes of several hundred million people? How could that volume of information be processed or analyzed? Immense banks of intelligence agency supercomputers search for keywords that are part of electronic "dictionaries," according to reports on Echelon. These dictionaries include words or phrases that are of interest to intelligence analysts, and are used to filter the Niagara-like flow of data into the system. Of particular concern to civil liberties and privacy activists is that these digital dictionaries reportedly contain the names of organizations such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace. A great deal about Echelon and electronic surveillance in Europe is unknown, because the NSA is one of the most secretive organizations in the world -- it was once known as "No Such Agency." The British government, with its Official State Secrets Act, has even more powers of secrecy than the U.S. government. Consequently, the European Parliament and individual European governments are demanding that U.S. and British intelligence agencies hand over information about Echelon and implement mechanisms of accountability. In the U.S., an investigation into Echelon has been initiated by an unexpected critic: Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), one of the congressional leaders of the impeachment movement against President Clinton. Barr is apparently such a foe of the federal government that he is taking on the federal intelligence agencies, organizations not accustomed to being challenged by Republicans. A member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Barr arranged for the panel to demand information on Echelon from the NSA, which, for the first time in its history, refused to turn over information and documents, citing attorney-client privilege. Barr is expected to initiate hearings on Echelon sometime in the near future. Ironically enough, Barr's extreme conservative views and his well-known style of fiery rhetoric have alienated longtime advocates of civil liberties who might otherwise be supporters of this investigation. The prospect that all e-mail, faxes and telephone calls in Europe may be under surveillance has led to a significant increase in the market here for digital encryption products. But the U.S. government still seems intent on limiting the export of the strongest encryption techniques available. Both the House Intelligence Committee and the House Armed Services Committee recently reversed a trend toward relaxing encryption export controls and revised such legislation already passed in other House committees. Thus from a European point of view, the U.S. government appears to be committed to spying on European citizens, companies and organizations, but is also bent on preventing Europeans from buying strong protections against such spying. Organizations such as the NSA and Britain's MI5 were set up to provide intelligence on military adversaries, but there are relatively few of those left. The new domain of cyberspace has unlimited potential for surveillance and intelligence gathering, unless citizens intervene and demand democratic accountability of institutions left around from the Cold War. Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu. ------------------------------ From: Nishka Subject: Call Routing Using Caller ID - Like the Yo-Yo Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 00:35:29 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Hello All! I was all set to try and track down a Yo-Yo for a poor man's call routing system. Unforunately the people who made the Yoyo discontinued it. I think the product was before its time. In any event, I'm looking for something that will read a caller ID number (area code and prefix) and route that call to either ring my phone, or go to a specific computer based voice mailbox without ringing the phone first. Here are a few examples: 1. The telemarketer. I don't want to talk to them (who does?) so whenever I get a 'caller ID unavailable' I'd like that to go straight to either a voicemail box on the PC or my answering machine. End of story :). 2. Calls with the area code and prefix for my town. I live in a small town with only one dial prefix. I'm also involved with a few boards and commissions locally. So I'd like the call to come in and have those numbers route to my phone first, and then a special voice mailbox if I'm not. 3. Specific friends - Let's say I have to meet up with somebody. They can call me, and get a message just for them to let them know where I'm at. So these are the kinds of things I'm looking to do. I'd say the most improtant thing would be routing unwanted calls from the telemarketers directly to the voicemail without ever ringing the phone. They always interupt my dinner, and after listening to unsoliciated sales calls at work, I'm not in the mood in the evening :). ------------------------------ From: Andy Berry Subject: Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers - Rebuttal Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 20:16:39 -0500 Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas Pat, I "joined" the internet in the summer of '94. I remember the pre-ppp, Netscape, Eudora, etc. days when I telnetted into a unix box and used pine (I can't think of the name of the prog that was pure command-line that came before pine), trn, lynx, gopher, etc. I believe I am ahead of the "newcomers", albeit not by much. I will make one assumption during this article: Everyone pays for their own bandwidth, including the big pipe backbone stuff. It is my feeling the "commercial" users only cost us time, as in lag, measured in ms. This "gross" cost (it nets out to positive, see below) probably doesn't add up to an hour in a year with a 56k modem. Therefore, I have no beef with the purely commercial folk that choose to shill their goods on the net. I am talking about the legit folks, not spammers, scammers and the like. With the probable exception of a lack of centralization of information sources (no more gopher and archie, you have to go to more web sites), I don't see where people like "us", the "information users" of the net have suffered. In fact, one could argue that with the commercialization, information has blossomed. i.e. If I am buying a new car, I just go over to carmaker.com and check out the options. The net benefit to my time therefore increases, greatly increasing my productivity, not to mention not wasting natural resources, and countless other benefits. Is carmaker.com "using" the net to sell more cars? Sure he is. Am I subjected to major hassles of schilling to look at cars? Not really, and I'll say it again, my net productivity increases. Your ideas and mine don't much differ. While you would just go back to the "old days", I would welcome our new netizens with open arms ... and a tight leash. Andy B. ------------------------------ From: oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear) Subject: Re: Why Do 66 Blocks Have That Name? Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 22:56:04 -0400 Organization: The Arctos Group - http://www.arctos.com/arctos Bruce F. Roberts writes: > The "A" battery was the low volt cell, usually 6 volts, in an > antique radio circuit. If you recall the cylindrical 6 volt batteries > with brass, knurled nuts that was much like an old "A" battery. The > "B" cell was the high volt battery, usually 90 to 135 volts. We'll, I'm not *that old* but do remember being fascinated by books on radio in my poor, under-funded school library in the 1950s -- about how to build radio equipment in the 1930s. Bruce is right about the "A" power souce being 1.5 to 6 volts to heat the filament of the vacuum tubes, the "B" source being 90 volts up for the "plate voltage" across the tube -- and, in some designs, a third low voltage called the "C" voltage was used to provide a bias on the grid of the vacuum tube, controlling the flow of electrons from the cathode to the plate. Of course, I wanted to build these things but nobody still stocked triode vacuum tubes with four-pin bakelite bases by the 1950s. Gosh, I thought, those kids in the 1930s were sure lucky to be able to build *simple* projects which only required about a dozen components and which one could easily understand the theory of operation. Now I watch my son swap circuit boards in a computer without a clue about what magic is performed by the board, let alone by the chips mounted on it. BTW, I have no idea whether the "A" filiment voltage source has anything to do with the "A" of a battery model number. For all I know, it has as much to do with the A-A1 control leads for the hold circuits on old telco key set systems. Cheers, Will The Old Bear ------------------------------ From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (Derek Peschel) Subject: Re: Why Do 66 Blocks Have That Name? Date: 1 Sep 1999 05:06:30 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle In article , Art Kamlet wrote: > One of the languages I used was supposed to be an improvement on Algol > 58 or one of its predecessors: MAD. (Michigan Algorithmic Decoder, > but I suspect it was named first, and the acronym filled in later.) > Instead of if ... then it used Whenever .... Otherwise > abbreviated as W\R O\E Are you sure the middle characters are backslashes? I thought they were apostrophes. I think there was an E\L abbreviation too, which is good because it's a whole lot shorter than END OF CONDITIONAL is. > it much better than Fortran. It ran initially on an IBM 704, > then a 709 and by the time I moved out of that area, it was moving > to a really new, fast 7090. > Any MAD folks left? Not me ... MAD was way before my time. I'm just interested after the fact. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Is that where {MAD Magazine} got its > name also? What about MAD Cow Desease? LOL ... PAT] No, _but_ (and this is why I'm replying) the MAD compiler would apparently print out a picture of Alfred E. Neuman in certain circumstances (if the program had many, many errors, I think). This feature was eventually removed from the compiler. At least that's how I heard the story. Derek ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 23:36:22 -0500 From: David Devereaux-Weber Subject: Re: Gat Agreement Brent wrote: > I am looking for any information concerning the above mentioned > 'Gat Agreement'. I will be very grateful if you could help me. Brent, I believe you are interested in the General Agreement on Trade and Tarrifs, or GATT. Do a web search on GATT and you will find thousands of hits. For example, take a look at: http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&kl=XX&stype=stext&q=title%3AGATT David Devereaux-Weber, P.E Network Engineer Division of Information Technology The University of Wisconsin-Madison djdevere@facstaff.wisc.edu http://cable.doit.wisc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:00:21 -0600 From: Daryl Gibson Subject: Re: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help Try the at-sign, as indicated below. Telephone Number Modifiers for RAS The following telephone-number modifiers are used to help get an outside line on some telephone systems. The comma (,) causes the dialing to pause briefly (two seconds for most modems) before continuing. Example: 9,555-1234. The "9" is used on some telephone systems to get an outside line. The comma inserts a pause before dialing the telephone number. You can use as many commas as needed to create a longer pause before the telephone number is dialed. The at sign (@) waits for extended silence before continuing. This symbol causes the modem to listen to silence for five seconds. If a five-second silence has not been detected within the period predefined in the BIOS S7 register of the modem (the default is 50 seconds), the modem disconnects. If five seconds of silence are detected, the modem continues dialing the dial string. Example: 9@555-1212 Carla Decker asked: > I have a project where I need to be able to connect two PCs together > using two modems over a telephone cable that *DOES NOT* have dial tone. > I also need to use RAS & DUN to take care of a requirement for TCP/IP. > Here's my configuration: > PC <-----> Modem <------------------> Modem <-----> PC > RAS 9600 No Dial Tone 9600 RAS > SVR > Client > The configuration is dictated, and not negotiable. I can get the > configuration to work using Hyperterminal. Unfortunately, Hyperterminal > doesn't give me TCP/IP capabilities. When I try to use RAS, I can't get > the RAS Server to answer. Any suggestions would be most helpful! > Thanks, > Carla deckerch@ornl.gov ----------------------- DARYL R. GIBSON ------------------------- (801)378-2950 (801)489-6348 drgibson@du2.byu.edu drgibson@drgibson.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- MURPHY'S LAWS OF COMBAT 27. Remember, a retreating enemy is probably just falling back and regrouping. ------------------------------ From: Reed Organization: None whatsoever Subject: Re: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 20:02:52 -0600 Sounds like what you need is a "null modem DUN". Take a look at http://www.mindspring.com/~kewells/net/ and see if what he has there is what you want. --reed ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Help Needed - Audio Problem on Phone Line From: R.V. Waldren Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 00:25:36 GMT You need to check the audio level at the D mark then you know if it is your problem or Bell Atlantic. Test the line by putting a jack and 2500 set at the D mark. Brian G. wrote in : > I have low audio on my three phone lines. In fact, they sound > somewhat muted. Here's what I have and what I've done so far. What > else can I do? > Bell Atlantic says the lines test ok at the network interface device. > I'm not sure what meter they used to determine that but they did use a > meter of some sort. I do know I'm 23k from the DMS-100 central office > and there is some copper pair gain technology on my loops. > My house wiring is brand new. All runs are CAT 5. I did split the 4 > pairs of each run into 2 RJ14s at each faceplate. I have 4 analog > dial tones and 1 ISDN line. > The lines are run to about 8 jacks but only six 2500 sets and three > ksu-less AC powered sets connected. The low audio is common across > all sets but the 2500 sets are a little better. The ISDN line is > connected to a Gandalf Terminal Adapter. > The house terminals are just 66 blocks. Does that lower audio quality > compared to other type of blocks? The cross-connects are traditional > 26 gauge wire. ------------------------------ From: J.F. Mezei Subject: Re: Two Letter Abbreviations Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 21:36:48 -0400 Art Knight wrote: > Patrick and Mark, > The designation NT is a hangover from the former name of Northwest > Territories, and another is YK for the Yukon. The new one is supposed > to be a combined designation. Not sure how this originated. But early this year, I contacted Canada Post on this subject. Their response was basically: YK remains for Yukon. NT will apply to both the northwest territories and Nunavut territories. Therefore, no new code for Nunavut. Postal codes for areas now in Nunavut continue unchanged with the "X" prefix applying to both Northwest Territories and Nunavut territories. (Ok, so now this is present, not future ...) Northwest Territories still exist. (Essentially the area between the eastern Yukon border and Hudson's Bay, and Nunavut being mostly all the off-continent islands.) (But Nunavut does include parts on the western shores of Hudson's Bay). ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: International Calls & CIDs Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 22:29:47 -0400 Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > But how many US or Canadian customers are necessarily going to > invest in a new "fully" compatable Caller-ID box (for number, name, > Call-Waiting Display or even Call-Waiting-DELUXE controls, AND > international inbound compatability), just for a few rare occasions > when they might get some incoming calls from outside of the NANP! Why couldn't the telcos simply insert the foreign calling number *as text* in the caller name field? Obviously that wouldn't help those with only calling number display -- and it would be tricky for those who capture incoming numbers on a PC -- but at least existing Caller ID name display units would provide the calling number. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #363 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Sep 1 15:58:34 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id PAA04227; Wed, 1 Sep 1999 15:58:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 15:58:34 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199909011958.PAA04227@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #364 TELECOM Digest Wed, 1 Sep 99 15:58:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 364 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Ranking of Telecom Engineering Undergraduate Programs (Michele Traquena) Re: Domain Names (David Esan) Re: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit Against Bell-Atlantic (Joseph Wineburgh) Good Voice Server to Use With Siemens PBX? (Frederic Faure) Re: Phone Company List? (Jeremy Greene) Re: Call Routing Using Caller ID - Like the Yo-Yo (Alastair) Re: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help (Joseph Wineburgh) Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay (A Boritz) Re: Gat Agreement (Bob Goudreau) Re: Certified Telecom Professional? (Joseph Wineburgh) DSL Versus Cable (Kevin DeMartino) Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers - Rebuttal (John Nagle) Re: Going to Hell (Without a Handbasket) (bonomi@newsguy.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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: michele.traquena@us.pwcglobal.com (Michele Traquena) Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 10:38:54 -0500 Subject: Ranking of Telecom Engineering Undergraduate Programs Patrick, I'm working on a project where I am trying to find a ranking of the top Telecommunications Engineering Undergraduate programs in the US and I saw your name on the Tele.com website. I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction? Any assistance would be much appreciated. Thank you. Regards, Michele Traquena PricewaterhouseCoopers MCS [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: People with information on this feel free to write direct to Michele with their comments. PAT] ------------------------------ From: davidesan@my-deja.com (David Esan) Subject: Re: Domain Names Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 14:36:43 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. I found this in the local paper and thought it might be of interest. Thomas shoots for sky in cyberspace His new big-money idea: Ask $25 million for bundle of more than 1,500 Internet addresses. See more at: www.rochesternews.com/0901domains.html David Esan Veramark Technologies desan@veramark.com ------------------------------ From: Joseph Wineburgh Reply-To: Subject: Re: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit Against Bell-Atlantic Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 10:01:31 -0400 I'm not sure where you live exactly, but you might want to call back and get a different rep's story. I am in western Morris County and my selective calling exchange is Morristown. I just got off the phone with Bell and even though I had to ask twice in some cases, confirm what they said, etc. I did manage to get what I believe is the correct info. I ended up canceling my 'selective calling' because I don't think I'm anywhere near the 8 hours at this point, and the package I'm on has free weekends. One inconsistency, though between what you got out of them and what I got. They stated the charge was only increasing from $3 and change to $5 and change -- which differs with the $21 they quoted you. The hours they quoted are the same -- from 20 to 8. I also inquired as to the additional minute charges and they stated that they were to remain at 1c/min. after the 8 hours. You might want to look at one of their other 'local toll' packages instead. The last time I checked they had one for maybe $50/month for unlimited calling within the LATA (973, 908, 201, 732). I don't remember what the plan was called, but this might suit your needs and give you added benefits as well depending on your calling patterns ... #JOE ------------------------------ From: ffaure@bigSPAMGAZETTAIDAMEfoot.com (Frederic Faure) Subject: Good Voice Server to Use With Siemens PBX? Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 14:29:38 GMT Organization: What? Me, organized? Reply-To: ffaure@bigSPAMGAZETTAIDAMEfoot.com Hello, We're located in Europe, and currently use a Siemens 100E/118 ISDN, along with a Discophone 3000 MV Junior that handles up to two simultaneous access to the voice server. While the PBX works great, the voice server is unreliable (some msgs left in a user's voice mailbox aren't accessible, the date when msg are left is stimes wrong, etc.) Are there good brands of voice servers you could recommend? What about PC-based + Dialogic-type voice card solutions? Thanks for any tip, FF. ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Greene Subject: Re: Phone Company List? Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 05:15:07 -0400 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. wrote in message news:telecom19.346.11@ telecom-digest.org: > Does anyone know where a list of ALL the phone companies (with contact > information) can be found if there is such a thing? You could go to nanpa.com and download the lists of Feature Group B and Feature Group D carriers. This is not all phone companies, but it is all the facilities-based long-distance companies (I think). Contact info is included. Of course, this is probably NOT the contact they would want Joe Blow to be calling with a billing complaint. -Jeremy ------------------------------ From: Caller ID Subject: Re: Call Routing Using Caller ID - Like the Yo-Yo Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 13:16:11 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Take your pick from some of the programs on my site -- several will do what you want. Alastair In article , Nishka wrote: > I was all set to try and track down a Yo-Yo for a poor man's call > routing system. Unfortunately the people who made the Yoyo discontinued > it. I think the product was before its time. > In any event, I'm looking for something that will read a caller ID > number (area code and prefix) and route that call to either ring my > phone, or go to a specific computer based voice mailbox without ringing > the phone first. Computer Caller ID FAQ : http://www.cloud9.u-net.com/callerid.htm ------------------------------ From: Joseph Wineburgh Reply-To: Subject: Re: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 09:53:06 -0400 If you were using modems with 'leased line' jacks, or a 'line simulator' in between the modems which supplies voltage, ringing, etc. this might work. You might be better off just using a null modem cable or parallel cable to directly connect the PC's together and use one of the popular 'sync' software programs. One other thought -- POTS lines are quick and dirty. Order two and connect the modems. It's a local call (read: free). Good luck! #JOE ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: SprintPCS Surcharge Not Just For Late Payers - All Must Pay Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 07:22:57 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , Jonathan wrote: >>> I... prefer to pay my bill at the nearby local store in cash... >>> new sign... *all* in-store bill payments would cost >>> an additional $3.00. > The real issue here is the handling of cash. If Sprint receives more > than a modest amount of cash, they incur substantial costs -- they need > special cash handling procedures, double custody rules, their insurance > becomes very expensive, they may be required to engage an armored car > service, and at some point their insurance company may require them to > install a secured cashier's station with bulletproof glass etc. Oh, pulleeez, you're breaking our hearts. Any company who provides public services that require payment rolls the expenses of handling cash into their operating expenses. If they hadn't planned on some customers paying cash, and how to insure that their employees weren't stealing from them, they should turn off the lights and send everyone home. The deal is the deal (for the cost of service). Nickeling and diming customers with surcharges with no increase in services providing is simply dishonest. It's one of the reasons why I won't do business with Sprint for ANY services. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 13:58:27 EDT From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Gat Agreement David Devereaux-Weber wrote: > Brent wrote: >> I am looking for any information concerning the above mentioned >> 'Gat Agreement'. I will be very grateful if you could help me. > I believe you are interested in the General Agreement on Trade and > Tarrifs, or GATT. Do a web search on GATT and you will find thousands > of hits. You will probably also be interested on the GATT's successor, the World Trade Organization, whose home page is http://www.wto.int . Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: Joseph Wineburgh Reply-To: Subject: Re: Certified Telecom Professional? Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 14:07:57 -0400 Not sure if anyone had found this one yet: http://www.ctinstitute.com/ #JOE ------------------------------ From: Kevin DeMartino Subject: DSL Versus Cable Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 14:31:00 -0400 In V19 #362, Satch , explained the difference between cable and DSL with respect to sharing of channels: > The coax plant shares one or more downlink channels and one uplink > channel to service an entire neighborhood. This means that, something > akin to an asymetric Ethernet, the media sharing starts at the pole. > In xDSL, and most particularly G.lite ADSL, there is a dedicated > channel between the CPE and the DSLAM at the central office or remote > terminal. Currently, sharing does occur for DSL in the backhaul section of the network. Specifically, channels must be shared between the central office and the ISP, which can result in bottlenecks. However, the technology exists to eliminate these bottlenecks. An optical fiber can support data rates approaching 1 Tb/s (1000 Gb/s). Lucent Technologies has a product line called WaveStar that can support data rates up to 400 Gb/s over a fiber. A data rate of 1 Tb/s has been experimentally demonstrated. With this technology, a single fiber can carry all the DSL data between a local central office and an ISP interface at a tandem/toll office without sharing channels. For example, suppose there are 10,000 subscribers attached to a CO each operating at a data rate of 10 Mb/s. In this case, the aggregate data rate would be 100 Gb/s, which can be carried by a single fiber. I'm not trying to trivialize the problems of transporting and switching high data rate signals in the backhaul section of the network. I don't have any cost estimates for backhaul upgrades. However, upgrading the local loop is a much more formidable task than upgrading the backhaul network. There are thousands of local loop lines for every backhaul line. In many places the cable backhaul network (the feeder cables) has been upgraded from coax to fiber. Distribution cables are still coax with data channels that are shared by many users. This arrangement is referred to as hybrid fiber-coax (HFC). Currently, HFC systems can provide higher data rates than DSL systems. However, DSL systems potentially have higher aggregate capacities than HFC systems. With backhaul upgrades and some local loop upgrades, DSL capabilities can be expected to surpass HFC capabilities within the next several years. Of course the cable companies don't have to stand pat. They can counter DSL upgrades by deploying fiber in the distribution portion of their networks. Kevin DeMartino Dynamics Research Corporation ------------------------------ From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers - Rebuttal Date: 1 Sep 1999 18:36:19 GMT Organization: Netcom TELECOM Digest Editor writes: Lindstrom writes: > I disagree. The purpose of the web is to provide a graphical and > easy-to-use interface to various services available on the internet, > all centralized into one client (as opposed to needing a suite of > clients to accomplish the same goals). The purpose of the internet > itself is to provide a robust way for computers to share resources and > communicate in real time and that could, theoretically, withstand a > nuclear attack. Anything over and above that, this idea of a community > of sharing, is something that the netizens of yore invented as a sort > of internet "culture". > I can state with fair certainty that this was NOT on the minds of the > people who originally plunked down the dosh to finance this thing. Actually, having been there near the beginning, I can say that ARPA's main motivation, once the ARPAnet started working reasonably well, was to find some way of getting their research contractors to work together, and for ARPA to manage them more easily. The "culture of sharing" was fostered by ARPA, which was paying for most computer R&D work at the time. The technology wasn't actually used much in the military world until the early 1980s, when BBN won the AUTODIN II contract. There were some earlier ARPANET-like nets within the intelligence community, using, of all things, Pluribus IMPs. But the ARPAnet was up for well over a decade before the technology was deployed militarily. Today's Internet is financed by its customers. Basically, your $20 or so per month pays for the ISPs, the POPs, and the backbone. Much content is advertising-supported, but as with telephony, the subscriber supports the underlying service. >> But now come the ones you say have 'every right' to be here and >> they say, "Well we did not come here to share and exchange at all. >> We came here just to sell things. We don't share our stuff, we >> sell it." That's OK, but they don't own the thing. They're just providing content. You don't have to look at their content. And they have no right to force it on you. Spam is already illegal in several US states, and that probably will grow. No way are spammers providing any substantial financial support to the Internet. Most spammers are tiny operations. Mostly they steal resources by using the systems of others without authorization for mail forwarding using faked headers. There really aren't that many spammers, either. There are only a few hundred active spammers at any one time. They're annoying out of proportion to their numbers because of the amplifying effect of bulk mail programs. Realistically, spam could be stopped as effectively as junk fax has been by suitable legislation. There are legitimate attempts to make the Internet advertiser- supported, and they're the free services with advertising, such as Hotmail and GeoCities. Those are the advertising throwaways of the Internet. There are the "portal sites". There are the proprietary- gimmick people, like RealNetworks and ICQ. But you don't have to use any of that stuff. John Nagle [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, I have never had any complaints at all about Real Networks. I think they have excellent products and excellent customer service. In addition to their G-2 player, I also use their Real Producer, Real Slideshow, and RAENCODE software. I am thinking however that in cases like http://telecom-digest.org/news I should redesign the pages there to be compatible with Windows Media Player as well. I do not know how right now, but am trying to learn about it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@newsguy.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Going to Hell (Without a Handbasket) Date: 1 Sep 1999 08:41:14 GMT Organization: Not Much In article Bill Levant wrote: >> For the benefit of persons who have never gone to Hell or been through >> Hell, it is a tiny little rural community about 30 miles north and >> west of Ann Arbor, Michigan. > There is also a Hell on Grand Cayman Island. So named because of > eroded coral or limestone (I forget) formations that look like ... > well ... Hell, minus the flames. > That one doubtless has a better climate than Michigan, but they sell > the same assortment of tacky T-shirts and miscellaneous tchochkes; > there's also a Cayman government post office that puts a Hell postmark > on the overpriced postcards sold next door. Trivia note: there are communities (many are not incorporated munici- palities), in nearly every state in the U.S. Something like 47 of them. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had not realized there were that many places one could go to Hell in the United States. I knew about Chicago of course, but not the others except for the one in Michigan. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #364 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Sep 1 21:01:21 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id VAA15821; Wed, 1 Sep 1999 21:01:21 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 21:01:21 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199909020101.VAA15821@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #365 TELECOM Digest Wed, 1 Sep 99 21:01:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 365 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters (TELECOM Digest Editor) Echelon (Lauren Weinstein) Re: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit Against Bell-Atlantic (Lisa Hancock) Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers (Greg Skinner) Re: Two Letter Abbreviations (Mark Brader) Re: Call Notes Won't Record Forwarded Calls (Victor R. Pirozzolo) Re: Death of GSM in Washington D.C. (Marcus AAkesson) So What Are Vint Cerf and Esther Dyson up to Now? (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 1 Sep 1999 19:22:34 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters For whatever else one might say disparagingly about them, they certainly know how to build a first class corporate center. Their project in Overland Park/Leawood, Kansas is something you will have to see in order to fully grasp and appreciate. Overland Park is a Kansas suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, situated sort of southwest of the city itself. It sits about a mile west of the Missouri/Kansas state line, with the smaller community of Leawood to its east, and actually on the state line itself. The population of Leawood is about twenty thousand people, while Overland Park, its larger neighbor to the west has about 129,000 residents. In a four block area between the two communities, from 115th Street to 119th Street along Nall Avenue and extending westward for about a half-mile into the town of Overland Park at Glenwood Avenue is the new location for the Sprint World Headquarters Campus, as it is being called. Construction began in 1996 for this project, and is now largely finished. Some remaining work will go on the rest of this year and next. Instead of putting it together a building at a time as might be expected, Sprint made the decision to erect it all at one time. The result of their decision to put it all together at the same time is this: 1200 construction personnel 40 superintendents from J.E. Dunn Construction Co. 50 architects and engineers 20,000 square feet for office space used by the on-site clerical and professional employees involved in the construction process. The end results of the past three years of construction at the site are these: 4 million square feet of office space. 22 buildings, only one more than 4 stories tall. The single building which will be taller is a bell, clock and carillon tower, in the center of the campus. 200 acres of land, from Nall Avenue on the east to Glenwood Avenue on the west, between 115th and 119th Streets. 60 percent of the grounds are devoted to 'green space', i.e. 4000 trees, a 7-acre lake, and two outdoor athletic fields. The main 'street' within the campus is 'Sprint Parkway'; its total length is 1.8 miles, as it loops from one end to the other and circles back again to near it starting point. 16 covered garages for employee parking. 10 large, major fountains through out the area. 1 auditorium, seating several thousand persons for special events. 1 glass enclosed arboretum or 'winter garden' for receptions and other events. 1 each of these: technology center, travel center, fitness center, child care center/nursery school, and other special service centers, fine dining establishment, dry cleaners, gift shop, and general purpose retail store, all for use by employees only. Oh, yes, a jogging trail as part of the outdoor sports area. 'Several' newsstands, delicatessans and short- order quick food places for employees. Sprint has about 8000 employees in the Kansas City area at the present time, in several office buildings. They intend to consolidate these at the new location and in addition, move approximatly 6000 employees into the area from other locations around the USA. Several hundred people are being hired as 'service employees' to attend to the campus now being completed. Employees have started moving into the new campus and will continue to do so at the rate of about 200 at a time from now until sometime in the year 2001, when the last of the 'finishing touches' to the campus will be complete. In total, Sprint will have by their estimate 14,500 employees located in the new center at the end of 2001, but planners for the project have stated that given assumed increases in the number of persons employed by Sprint as the company expands its activities, it is realistic to assume an additional 2000-3000 'newly hired' employees of the company may simply begin their employment at the campus itself in the next three to five years, meaning the 'population' may likely be about 16-18 thousand by 2002-03. As all this is taking place of course, realtors and existing business establishments in the comparatively small town of Leawood right across the street (total population less than 20,000) are having a field day of their own, and Overland Park is rather pleased with it also. Even the mere presence of about 1500 people day after day for the three years construction has been going on has done quite well for the local economy as you might suspect. Bill Esrey, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sprint issued this statement recently: "As Sprint prepares to move into its new corporate campus, I want to express our wholehearted thanks to everyone in the metropolitan Kansas City area. We are especially grate- ful to the government and civic leaders we've had the pleas- ure to work with in the City of Overland Park and throughout the metropolitan area. As a result of their assistance, Sprint will soon have a facility that will fulfill the needs of our growing national and international company. "The corporate campus allows us to bring employees together in a pleasant, productive and technologically state-of-the art environment that encourages an unprecedented level of collaboration and teamwork. It will serve as a showcase as we host business associates from around the globe. We hope it will be seen as one of the many outstanding landmarks of Greater Kansas City. "The campus opening comes as Sprint celebrates 100 years as a company firmly rooted in mid-America, including more than half-a-century as a proud member of the metropolitan community. This is a great way to begin yet another chapter in our long and valued partnership with the people of Greater Kansas City. "After the construction fences come down, we look forward to presenting the Sprint corporate campus as a place that all our fellow citizens can point to with pride." ===================================== Mr. Esrey's comments about '100 years as a company' are based not on the origin of what we have traditionally called 'Sprint' which began in the mid-1970's but are calculated with the aquisition of United Telephone Company as part of the forumla. United does indeed go back to the late 1800's as a local telephone company in many parts of north and central Kansas. It was purchased a couple years ago by Sprint to become Sprint's local service component. If you happen to be around the Kansas City area, you should definitly plan to go by and look at the place. I do not think any company has come close to this much opulence for its headquarters facility in the past. Microsoft is certainly lovely, but Sprint now runs a very close second place, or perhaps in the opinion of many even usurps Microsoft. You'll need to give it a year or two for the trees, lake, wetlands and other open space to begin to fully develop and assume their roles in it, and of course the construction fences will be around for another year or so also. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Sep 99 13:56 PDT From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Echelon Greetings. The report regarding "Echelon" cited in a recent TELECOM Digest (claiming that all e-mail, fax, and telephone communications in Europe are monitored) has been floating around for awhile. There are a number of reasons to suspect its level of accuracy. First off, it was not really a technical report -- it largely restated assertions and rumors heard from other often unsubstantiated sources. Why would the report do this? Because it's been a football for political infighting within the European Union, and has been used by various persons and groups to attack each other for political advantage. As for the actual issue of what/how much is actually being monitored ... Whenever someone tells you that "all" of anything is happening, that's a good time to be a bit skeptical. It's like taking multiple choice tests in school--one useful trick is to assume that the probability of the "all" or "never" answers being correct is lower than for the other choices! On the domestic side, remember that the amounts of traffic involved are vast. Much of it never leaves local areas. Is it really practical--or economically feasible--to monitor it *all* as the report claims? Even the call to the house down the street or the pizza parlor down the block? And even if you could, what would you *do* with all that data? Even with today's technologies, the processing and/or storage requirements would be incredibly vast. What's by far the most likely scenario is that domestic traffic is monitored on a highly targeted basis, through local or remote wiretaps or similar means. This is pretty much in line with what one would expect under existing laws. The international side is a bit more complicated. There has long been a great deal of credible evidence relating to significant broad monitoring of international circuits, and the laws relating to this area are significantly less clear and tend to allow much more latitude than in the purely domestic cases. This could include situations where one party or the other of the call is located in the country where the monitoring is taking place, or in some cases could involve a third country where international traffic is in transit through that country's telecommunications infrastructure. The probability of any given circuit being monitored is likely to vary based on the particular countries involved, the number of circuits available between those countries, and other similar factors. None of this qualifies as news -- read "The Puzzle Palace" from years ago. While the technical capabilities for monitoring have increased over the years, so has the volume of total traffic, both domestic and international. The transition from satellite to fiber has had both positive and negative impacts on such capabilities. But one way or another, there are only finite resources that can be allocated to such efforts, and it is probably safe to assume that such resources are at any given time directed to where it is felt they can provide the most useful information, however that is being defined by the entities involved. Interested readers might wish to check out the PRIVACY Forum Archive for more discussion on this and related topics. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren@vortex.com Moderator, PRIVACY Forum --- http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Host, "Vortex Reality Report & Unreality Trivia Quiz" --- http://www.vortex.com/reality ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit against Bell-Atlantic Date: 1 Sep 1999 21:28:16 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS > I am looking for other disappointed customers interested in a group > complaint against Bell Atlantic price gouging practices. > Recently Bell Atlantic increased the price of the so-called "Selective > Calling Service" by a factor of 10 or more. You need to be more specific about the background of this service. I presume you mean Bell Atlantic-New Jersey. > Selective Calling Service used to give you 20 hours a month of calls > This service was instituted to correct pricing injustices that would > punish residential customers with unreasonably high rates for calls > near home. I checked the Trenton NJ directory and found no mention of this service. Could you describe what specific town this was offered and what mileage band it covered? Was there a particular service territory this was suited for? When did it first come out? For calls for 1-10 miles, the tolls vary by time-of-day, but are pretty reasonable, about the same as message unit charges in the Philadelphia area. Depending on the area, the phone company does often offer discount plans. However, most cost far more than $2 a month (depending on what the plan offers. I know of one plan that is $2 more but only gives one additional exchange for free instead of message units.) > Shouldn't the Board of Public Utilities in New Jersey be involved in > this and put a limit to such predatory tactics? In the past, the state PUC would definitely be involved. However, certain services, and this may be one of them, have become deregulated, and the company may charge whatever it wants. That's what competition is all about. Perhaps another company serving your area may have a more attractive plan. > If you are a voter in New Jersey you can do something to prevent > such outrageous acts of irresponsible corporations. Again, it depends on the circumstances if this is "outrageous" or "irresponsible". My local convenience store charges two to things times the price of the supermarket for certain items. Is that "irresponsible" or just plain old business? And it may not be under the power of the PUC. With phone company deregulation comes competition. I preferred the old system to prevent problems such as yours, but public policy is going the opposite way. The policies may be the result of the US Congress or FCC. > It's apparently far worse than that. Selective Calling is not > regulated by the Public Utilities Board, for whatever reason. If that > is true, Bell Atlantic discovered the opportunity to gouge thousands > (if not millions) of customers. > I know enough about phones to know that it doesn't cost them a penny > to offer this service. It's just a "rating gimmick" and now they are > finding an opportunity to gouge the public even more. If they can charge more for a service but fail to do so, they are losing money from their point of view. If more customers are making calls and talking longer, it will cost them more physical plant to support such calls. > But I don't know enough about Regulatory Issues to know whether the > State could/should control the tariffs for such a service; and whether > the Public can take Legal Action against a Utility that is obviously > using 'predatory' pricing practices. There are several issues here. Either the service is regulated or it is not regulated. If it is regulated, the PUC has to approve the change. If not regulated, then Bell can charge whatever it wants, just like my convenience store can charge whatever it wants. If Bell is in fact making so much money, then the principle of economic competition are such that newcomers will come in for a piece of the pie. > On a parallel vein, I seem to remember that AT&T tried to offer this > service when they started offering local service in the state of New > Jersey a few years ago. But they could not offer it because Bell > Atlantic would not provide them with requisite information. Again you need to be more specific. Was it AT&T offering local service at all, or just this specific service class? What exactly "requisite information" did AT&T need that Bell didn't provide? ------------------------------ From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Subject: Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers Date: 1 Sep 1999 15:01:55 -0700 Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com I would just like to make some comments regarding the commercial use of the Internet. One can make arguments as to whether or not the "spirit" of the net is violated by commercial use. As it turns out, there were plenty of commercial uses of the net, long before the WWW became popular. Some of these uses were experimental (e.g. MCI mail gateways); some were part of the general order of business (e.g. con- sumer product information provided by computer manufacturers); others just "happened" (e.g. people offering items for sale or trade on .market or .forsale newsgroups). So one can make the argument that commercial use of the net is nothing new. In 1992, a bill signed by Rep. Boucher allowed NSFnet to exchange traffic with other networks that provided services that were felt to enhance NSFnet in some way. This bill indirectly made it legal for NSFnet to communicate with commercial networks. Thus, the Internet was "opened" to commerce. Most people would agree that spam and other forms of unsolicited email are an annoyance. However, this, like other things, is nothing new. I was getting unsolicited email back in the early 80s, from chain letters that were going around the net (endlessly, it seemed ... the same one kept coming back with more addresses). It is also true that certain communities have been accused of poor netizenship throughout the history of the net; a prime example is how popular it was to bash PSUVM users shortly after Penn State gave undergrads access to BITNET (and thus, their email or netnews would find its way around the net). In the interests of full disclosure, I'll say that I am biased in favor of commercial enterprise on the Internet, as that is how I make a living. I have tried it both ways; I have worked for research groups and commercial companies. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. There is as much of a "business" in the academic/ research computing arena as there is in any commercial company; the rules of the game are different, but the goals are the same. There is even considerable overlap of players -- I'll note that more than a few of the researchers I worked with had lucrative commercial sidelines, and they were able to use their commercial involvements to their advantage in winning contracts and/or research grants. I don't think it is possible or appropriate to divide the Internet into the noncommercial "saints" and the commercial "sinners". Things just aren't that simple. I hope that we can find ways for all users of the Internet to interact with each other. gregbo gds at best.com ------------------------------ From: msbrader@interlog.com (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: Two Letter Abbreviations Date: 1 Sep 1999 17:43:31 -0400 J.F. Mezei writes: > Not sure how this originated. But early this year, I contacted Canada > Post on this subject. Their response was basically: > YK remains for Yukon. I hope they didn't say that! The postal abbreviation for the Yukon is YT. (It is, I think, the only province or territory in Canada whose domain under .ca doesn't match its postal abbreviation; that *is* .yk.ca.) > NT will apply to both the northwest territories and Nunavut > territories. Therefore, no new code for Nunavut. Annoying, isn't it? Up till now, the postal abbreviations have been useful for non-postal purposes, but now we have to invent NU when we want to distinguish the territories and convert it to NT for mailing things there. > Northwest Territories still exist. (Essentially the area between the > eastern Yukon border and Hudson's Bay, and Nunavut being mostly all > the off-continent islands.) (But Nunavut does include parts on the > western shores of Hudson's Bay). Well, that's a bit rough; Nunavut includes somewhat more mainland and less of the islands than the above would suggest. There should be a map at , or check the Canada map in an up-to-date North American road atlas (even though Nunavut cannot be reached from anywhere else by road). Mark Brader, Toronto | "No flames were used in the creation of msbrader@interlog.com | this message." -- Ray Depew My text in this article is in the public domain. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 17:01:46 -0400 From: Victor R Pirozzolo Reply-To: victor@snet.net Subject: Re: Call Notes Won't Record Forwarded Calls Frank Provasek wrote: > Instead of my voice, callers hear "Welcome to Southwestern Bell Call > Notes ... Please enter the number you are calling or redial" The > callers, of course, enter my work number, and are told that there is > no Call Notes account for that number. In any case they cannot leave a > message. I'm a switching tech for SNET (part of SBC) in CT. When someone dials your work line, and it forwards home, then onto the voice mail system the ID of the orginally called number is presented to the voice mail system. In this case, it is your work number. The voice mail system looks for a mailbox associated with this number and finding none, plays the system's generic greeting. Think of it this way ... You call someone, thiy're not at their desk so they are forwarded to the secretary ... the secretary is away from her desk ... her phone rings 3 times then goes to the voice mail system ... the call needs to go to the mailbox of the original person, not the secretary as you want to leave a message for the ORIGINALLY called person ... NOT the secretary ... therefore the system will give you the greeting of the original party. In your case, what's known as a "bridged" or "alias" mailbox needs to be set up; this allows two numbers to use one mailbox ... then your calls will be answered correctly ... they may possibly also have an alternate voice mail "hub" number which will used the redirected number (RDN) rather than the originally called number (OCDN). This setup would the cause the call to seek out the mailbox for your home number. Victor ------------------------------ From: marcus.akesson@no_spam_please.home.se (Marcus AAkesson) Subject: Re: Death of GSM in Washington D.C. Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 23:32:00 GMT Organization: Chalmers University of Technology On Sun, 29 Aug 1999 18:10:27 -0400, Fred Goldstein wrote: > GSM wasn't designed to "drop in" to existing analog systems, as > CDMAOne and US TDMA were. Since cellular operators got no additional > frequencies here, they needed a system that could be phased in, a > fraction of their channels at a time. Actually, GSM is phased in a Mhz at the time here in Sweden, by reallocating bandwidth from the analog NMT-900 system, which is being closed altogether in 2000-12-31 GSM does not overlay an analog system though, but you can decide on a per-channel (200KHz) basis. Marcus ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 20:38:30 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: So What are Vint Cerf and Esther Dyson up to Now? Silly me ... here I sat for a few months thinking that if only they were gently probed now and then, the folks at the Internet Society and ICANN might deign to look down their noses and speak to the rest of us, and tell the people they claim they represent (when they have meetings with government officials and others) exactly where things are at. But alas, no such luck. I guess I will have to do their talking for them, or rather, let some of their personal email do their talking. I have several emails in my possession forwarded to me by Gordon Cook which he thinks you will find most enlightening. I think so, too. These are emails between Vint Cerf and others in the clique sent over the past three months or so, discussing ICANN financing and other details. Remember now, these are the folks who will explain with religous fervor to whoever wants to listen that unless netizens are willing to tolerate e-commerce, we won't have e-anything. I'll send it all out as a special mailing in just a few minutes. I am working on it now. You might call it 'the email that Vint Cerf and Esther Dyson had wished you didn't see.' But alas, now it is going to be all over the net, so you can draw your own conclusions from the correspondence, and Gordon Cook's annotations. Watch for it in the Usenet c.d.t. group in about an hour, and invite your friends to check it out also. The mailing list should be getting their copies over the next couple hours also. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #365 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 2 05:08:12 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id FAA01145; Thu, 2 Sep 1999 05:08:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 05:08:12 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199909020908.FAA01145@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #366 TELECOM Digest Thu, 2 Sep 99 05:08:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 366 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Net's First Civil War (Jay Fenello) Re: So What are Vint Cerf and Esther Dyson up to Now? (Garrett Wollman) Re: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit Against Bell-Atlantic (Mike Mansfield) Ever Seen 999-888-7777? (John S. Maddaus) Re: Echelon (Kim Brennan) Re: Echelon (Darryl Smith) Re: Cable vrs. DSL (was: The D Stands for Disappointing) (John McHarry) Next Generation Enterprises (A. Subramania) Last Laugh! Hidden Cameras in Bathrooms and More! (info@stockseekers.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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 02 Sep 1999 00:44:33 -0400 From: Jay Fenello Subject: The Net's First Civil War ICANN vs. NSI The Net's First Civil War Copyright (c) 1999 Jay Fenello -- All Rights Reserved Over the last couple of weeks, a war has erupted over the very future of Cyberspace. Not only have diverse organizations like Ralph Nader's CPT and Americans for Tax Reform gotten involved, but Congress has held two hearings, and launched an investigation into possible collusion at the Justice Department, and illegal fundraising by the Clinton administration. To most casual observers, this appears to be a spat between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI). In actuality, much, much more is at stake. The story begins with the phenomenal success of the Internet. What was once a sleepy, little research experiment funded by the U.S. Government, the Internet has grown to become a world-wide frontier of freedom, ideas, education, entertainment and commerce. Along the way, the informal processes used to govern the Internet became obsolete. And when governments and organizations tried to address the issues that required world-wide decisions, they realized that no-one was in charge! To address this situation, a couple of alternatives were possible. One involved getting legislation passed in over 200 countries throughout the world! Not very likely, and certainly not very efficient. Instead, the Clinton administration proposed a U.S. based, non-profit corporation to assume the management of the coordinated technical functions of the Internet. This new organization would use "flow down" contracts that would specify every right and obligation for anyone wishing to use the Internet. Last year, Commerce decided that ICANN was to be this organization. It has been embroiled in controversy ever since. On the other side of this debate is NSI. NSI was the recipient of a government Cooperative agreement, and had the exclusive rights to register all domains in the .com, .net, .org and .edu Top Level Domains (TLDs). And while most people consider NSI an unfair monopoly in dire need of some competition, there was no such consensus about how to devolve their monopoly. From ICANN's perspective, NSI is administering TLDs which belong to the public, TLDs that are under ICANN's control. In other words, ICANN is claiming superior ownership rights in *all* domain names. ICANN's version of competition is to contract the administration of *their* TLDs to the lowest bidder, and to strictly license all domain name resellers, all while forcing Netizens to agree with some very heavy-handed policies in the process. From NSI's perspective, they have built a business around registering domain names, and they have built certain Intellectual Property rights in their client information and in their brands. For ICANN to claim superior rights on behalf of the "public" is simply an attempt to confiscate their property without just compensation. NSI's version of competition involves new TLDs being introduced by ICANN, with competition between TLDs based on price and service as the result. This, in a nutshell, describes the public fight. And it highlights two very different futures for the Internet. In one, ICANN owns/controls the assets underlying the Internet -- the domain names, the IP addresses, and the protocol numbers. This can be equated with a top-down, regula- tory approach to Internet Governance. In the other, private ownership/control is coordinated through a "consent of the governed" approach to Internet governance. Individuals and organizations continue to own their respective Internet resources, and *choose* to interconnect based upon rules that are derived from a bottom-up consensus process. That's what this debated comes down to -- public ownership vs. ownership, Socialism vs. Capitalism, the rights of the state vs. the rights of the individual -- and it's not like we haven't explored these concepts before! In many ways, the virtual world is simply a reflection of our real world. Attempts to bring order to the chaos of cyberspace are exactly the same as attempts to bring order to the real world. The Internet is the Internet because it embraces certain concepts -- freedom, private ownership, personal choice. The decisions we are about to make may change all of this. Let's hope we choose wisely. Respectfully, Jay Fenello President, Iperdome, Inc. 404-943-0524 What's your .per(sm)? http://www.iperdome.com "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Let's hope we are given a chance to choose at all ... but I do not think we will be. I do not think Internet Society/ICANN is going to ever ask community opinion on anything to do with our future. Its not their style. I'll grant you, not every netizen is competent to participate in the decision-making, and there are a large number who don't even care. But you'd think they might have at least opened a single Usenet group for discussion, gave a very well publicized web site address where a synopsis of the whole situation could be followed, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 00:10:23 EDT From: Garrett Wollman Subject: Re: So What are Vint Cerf and Esther Dyson up to Now? Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > ... Esther Dyson had wished you didn't see.' But alas, now it is > going to be all over the net, so you can draw your own conclusions > from the correspondence, and Gordon Cook's annotations. Given Gordon Cook's well-known loserhood I think it unlikely that any useful conclusions can be drawn. I would put him in the same category as Jim Flaming^WFleming (and did, for that matter: I send mail from, to, or CC'd to both directly to /dev/null). Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same wollman@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would be reluctant to send anyone -- other than straight spam from well-known spam sources -- to /dev/null without at least glancing at it. That may be cutting off your nose just to spite your face. Even dumb people, or people who flame a lot say important things now and then. But, suit yourself if you do not want to read any of it or have to think about it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike Mansfield Subject: Re: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit Against Bell-Atlantic Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 02:52:03 GMT Joseph Wineburgh wrote: > One inconsistency, though between what you got out of them and what I > got. They stated the charge was only increasing from $3 and change to > $5 and change -- which differs with the $21 they quoted you. The hours > they quoted are the same -- from 20 to 8. I also inquired as to the > additional minute charges and they stated that they were to remain at > 1c/min. after the 8 hours. First Remark: Bell Atlantic did NOT quote the $21 for the "Selective Calling Plan". Their marketeers are much smarter. They only quoted the inrease of the "basic monthly charge" (sic) from $1.36 to $3.36. I had to do the calculation MYSELF using the "hidden" minute data: Before Now Basic Monthly Charge 1.36 3.36 Central Office Charge 0.63 0.63 20 Hour Charge 0.00 17.28 [ = (20 - 8) x 60 min x $0.024 / min ] Total 1.99 21.27 New Price / Old Price = 21.27 / 1.99 = 10.68, more than TEN times higher!!! Bell Atlantic marketeers (correctly) guessed that most customers would not bother to calculate the HUGE additional cost, $17.28, which results from the DECREASE of the allowable hours from 20 down to 8. Second Remark The rate thet they quoted for the SHORTEST distance (1-10 miles) was 2.4c/min for each additional minute after the first 8 hourts. Who stated that the additional minute charges are 1c/min after the eight hours? They either misquoted it or they lied. You may want to obtain this quote from them in WRITING and then hold them to their written word. Mike ------------------------------ From: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net (John S. Maddaus) Subject: Ever Seen 999-888-7777? Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 04:40:58 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net While monitoring call setup traffic at our location, we were somewhat surprised to see several inbound calls with the Q.931 calling number set to 999-888-7777. This number was sent by the CO to the PBX confirmed. All my sources tell me this is a bogus number that could have resulted from a mis-translation in the CO (U.S. West in the southwest) or was in fact altered by persons or equipment unknown during the call setup process. None of these sources has actually seen this exact sequence before. My first question is has anyone come across this number as a factory default for LEC or IXC equipment in the past, or perhaps as a test number used by switch techs for debugging purposes? Secondly, can someone possibly explain in more detail the mis-translation suggestion I received? Thanks in advance, John S. Maddaus Merlin Communication Systems Telecom Fraud and Security Consulting jmaddaus@usa.net ------------------------------ From: kim@aol.com (Kim Brennan) Date: 02 Sep 1999 05:18:41 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Echelon Laren Weinstein counters the propaganda by stating: > As for the actual issue of what/how much is actually being monitored I believe it is a well known fact that NSA monitors the cross-Oceanic cables (on any calls coming from the US to a foreign country and any calls coming from a foreign country to the US.) From my vacation house in West Virginia,I can see the huge radar dishes near Sugar Grove which are one of the reported monitoring stations of the Echelon project. Those dishes are pointed to the EAST (not to the south as I would expect for Geosynchronous satellite monitoring). The Sugar Grove station is the "Naval Security Activity" group by the posted signs. And (annoyingly) there isn't any cell phone coverage for a couple of miles north and south of the base and antenna installation (analog or digital). Once I get up on top of the mountains above the station, I can pick up analog coverage. That's the sum of what I know. There is more that I have read, but do you believe all you read? Kim Brennan (kim@aol.com) Duo 2300c, PB 2400, VW Fox Wagon GL, Corrado SLC, Vanagon GL Syncro http://members.aol.com/kim Duo Info Page: http://members.aol.com/kim/computer/duo ?'s should include "Duo" in subject, else they'll be deleted unread. ------------------------------ From: Darryl Smith Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 17:49:48 +1000 Subject: Re: Echelon G'Day, > Greetings. The report regarding "Echelon" cited in a recent TELECOM > Digest (claiming that all e-mail, fax, and telephone communications in > Europe are monitored) has been floating around for awhile. There are > a number of reasons to suspect its level of accuracy. Yes, but Australia has oficially acknowledged that it does exist. Or at least there are newspaper reports stating that australia oficially acknowledges that it does exist ... Anyway from Australia and New Zealand you can monitor the downlink communications from maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the world. Darryl Sydney, Australia ------------------------------ From: mcharry@erols.com (John McHarry) Subject: Re: Cable vrs. DSL (was: The D Stands for Disappointing) Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 01:01:14 GMT On Wed, 01 Sep 1999 02:04:00 GMT, satch@concentric.nospam.net (Satch) wrote: > So your assertion that "with DSL ... [y]ou share the pipe with all > your neighbors" is mostly incorrect. You only share the ATM network, Pipes is pipes. ;>) ------------------------------ From: Algappan Subramania Subject: Next Generation Enterprises Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 22:26:23 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Reply-To: as23@acsu.buffalo.edu Dear Colleague: Greetings. We wish to bring to your attention a conference on next generation enterprises that SUNY Buffalo and IEEE Computer Society will be jointly presenting on April 28-29, 2000. We invite you to come to Buffalo and participate in the conference. You are invited to submit papers to the conference. Please refer to the conference website for more details and the Call for Papers. We summarize some of the highlights of the conference including the conference website address below. Please do get in touch with us if you have any questions. Best Regards R. Ramesh & H.R. Rao (SUNY, Buffalo) & Gabriel Silberman (IBM, Toronto) General Co-Chairs: AIWoRC 2000 ****************** CALL FOR PAPERS ****************** SUNY at Buffalo & IEEE Computer Society Present AIWoRC'00 : An Academia/Industry Working Conference on Research Challenges CONFERENCE THEME : Next Generation Enterprises: Virtual Organizations and Pervasive/Mobile Technologies DATE & VENUE : APRIL 28 - 29, 2000, BUFFALO, NY CONFERENCE WEB-SITE: http://www.som.buffalo.edu/isinterface/AIWORC/ IN COOPERATION WITH : ACM (SIGMOBILE), INFORMS, Association for Information Systems (AIS), itech, and Information Systems Frontiers: A Journal of Research and Innovation (published by Kluwer) CORPORATE SPONSORS: Bell Atlantic, Sun Microsystems, Empire State Development, Delaware North Companies and IBM Center for Advanced Studies, Canada CONFERENCE KEYNOTES: Dr. Patrick Bergmans: Director, Xerox Research Centre, Europe and Professor of Computer Science, University of Gent, Belgium Dr. Pallab Chatterjee: Senior VP and CIO, Texas Instruments and Member, National Academy of Engineering Dr. John Gage: Chief Science Officer, Sun Microsystems, and Panel Member National Academy of Sciences Dr. Kevin Kahn: Intel Fellow and Director Intel Architecture Labs IMPORTANT DATES: November 1, 1999: Submission of a brief abstract December 1, 1999: Paper and tutorial submissions January 15, 2000: Author Notification February 15, 2000: Camera-ready copy SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE SENT TO: Professor R. Ramesh General Co-Chair - AIWoRC'00 School of Management SUNY at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645-3245 Fax: (716) 645-6117 E-mail: rramesh@acsu.buffalo.edu ------------------------------ From: info@stockseekers.com Subject: Last Laugh! Hidden Cameras in Bathrooms and More! Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 02:52:44 GMT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: After the evening full of debate and hostility we've experienced, I thought the following would do us all some good. Robert has an exciting web site he wants us to visit. PAT] Hey whats up, this is Robert. About three3 months ago I started three hidden camera sites, for two reasons. 1: To prove that I could put a camera anywhere I wanted to; 2: To prove that people wanted to see this type of material. Well, the success of these sites has been great. We have signed up OVER 500 members and each site has had OVER 780,000 visitors in just three months! And with all that we have only three membership cancellations! I think our record speaks for itself, but dont take my work for it ... try one or all for your self. Hidden Pix http://www.hiddenpix.net Hidden Cams http://www.hiddencams.net Real Hidden Cams http://www.realhiddencams.com Due to recent legal changes I was forced to remove the free tour area from the sites but I have enclosed a small sample of of the material you will get as a member. All sites contain 100% original material. Best, Robert [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sorry Robert, I am not able to show the sort of picture you sent along as an example of your work; it won't fit in well in this family-oriented Digest. Are you sure it was for legal reasons that you got rid of your free samples, or because there were too many people showing up for a free peek that would not stick around long enough to hand over their credit card number? Oh, Robert ... what do you think about all the commotions on the net lately regarding the allegations against ICANN and the counter- charges leveled at NSI? Exciting to read, isn't it! Not as exciting I am sure as your perfectly divine web site, but then not everyone would have the sophistication and ability to maintain a site like yours. Who wants to bother with a bunch of old boring email and memos when they could be watching guys doing 'it' who they thought they were in secret. But you have a good time with your web site while it lasts; who knows, in six months or a year it might be gone completely the same as this one and others that do not meet the requirements for the net of the future. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #366 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 2 16:43:32 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id QAA22193; Thu, 2 Sep 1999 16:43:32 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 16:43:32 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199909022043.QAA22193@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #367 TELECOM Digest Thu, 2 Sep 99 16:43:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 367 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers (David Esan) Re: The Net's First Civil War (Greg Skinner) Re: Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters (Brent Laminack) Re: Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters (Bruce Larrabee) Re: Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters (Bruce Wilson) Re: Ever Seen 999-888-7777? (David Charles) Multi Phone List Dialer (ktjensen@juno.com) Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) (Steven) Re: Bell System Property (L. Winson) Teletype Plant Torn Down (L. Winson) Wireline/Landline to Wireless Migration (Baratunde Thurston) Re: Good Voice Server to Use With Siemens PBX? (Chris) Re: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit Against Bell-Atlantic (Joseph Wineburgh) Nicotra Air Pressure Monitoring (Dave Carpentier) Re: GSM in the US (Ed Ellers) Webcams Hit Fox News (Satch) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: davidesan@my-deja.com (David Esan) Subject: Re: The Trouble With the Newcomers Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 16:10:25 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. The discussion of the newcomers changing the net, violating our rules and traditions, reminds me of the reaction of old immigrants to new groups of immigrants. Every group that has moved to another country has been changed by that country, and views newcomers as a threat, and are abhorred by the behavior of the newcomers. In fact, the same behavior was done by the old immigrants when they first arrived, but is conveniently forgotten. For example, thirty years ago, a massive emigration of Soviet Jews began. I began to hear complaints about the new immigrants from the local Jewish population: "They are clannish." This from a group of people who created synagogues and social clubs based on the city or district from which they came. "They are criminals." Conveniently forgetting Bugsy Siegel, Moe Cohen and Meyer Lansky among many others. "They only speak Russian." Particularly funny from people who are conversing in Yiddish. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the trickle of immigrants became a massive flow. And today I hear the old-timers making the same complaints about the newcomers. Strangely, when I go to a party, I can almost date the time of arrival of the immigrants. The longer they are in the US, the more American they become. Clothes, body language, humor, eating habits all change. The same is quite true of the internet. I've been here 16 years, so I qualify as an old-timer. And yet you make the same complaints as immigrants have for years. "They are criminals" -- forgetting that spam has been on the internet for as long as I can remember. Remember the famous "Hello I am a poor student... " letter. It wasn't sent to each mailbox, but I saw it in every single newsgroup I read. "They don't speak our language." Of course not, neither did we. We had to learn what the abbreviations were, invent our own, invent emoticons (which didn't even have a name then). We had to learn that caps were shouting, and rot13 was a good thing for bad things. And just as foreign languages have been enriching for English, so newcomers will enrich the language of the net. The internet will survive, just as America has survived all its immigrants from the Pilgrims on. The exchange of ideas is not dying but increasing. I think the S/N ratio is probably the same as before, its just there is so much more information being passed that it seems like there is more noise. The internet, like America, will change and improve from its immigrants. It will be different than what we knew, but it will be better. David Esan Veramark Technologies desan@veramark.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for a great point of view on this troublesome topic. Your positive thinking is refreshing. PAT ------------------------------ From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Subject: Re: The Net's First Civil War Date: 2 Sep 1999 10:20:30 -0700 Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Let's hope we are given a chance to > choose at all ... but I do not think we will be. I do not think Internet > Society/ICANN is going to ever ask community opinion on anything to > do with our future. Its not their style. I'll grant you, not every > netizen is competent to participate in the decision-making, and there > are a large number who don't even care. But you'd think they might > have at least opened a single Usenet group for discussion, gave a > very well publicized web site address where a synopsis of the whole > situation could be followed, etc. PAT] There are actually several newsgroups and mailing lists where this debacle is being discussed, such as: alt.domain-names.disputes alt.domain-names.registries comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains misc.legal.computing net.internet.dns.names net.internet.dns.policy com-priv domain-policy ifwp nanog Also, ICANN has its own site (www.icann.org) from which you can find mailing lists and web forums that they maintain. gregbo gds at best.com ------------------------------ From: brent@cc.gatech.edu (Brent Laminack) Subject: Re: Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters Date: 2 Sep 1999 09:21:57 -0400 Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology I just got back from a contracting job at Sprint's new World Headquarters, and thought I'd share some first-hand observations. I was one of the first people in the door of the first group that moved into the first building, known as "building 11". The space is indeed first-class. Two-toned Brick exteriors, windows, etc. The bit about "largely completed" is very wrong, though. The first building is being moved into under a temporary certificate of occupancy. i.e. about half the building is still being finished. Elsewhere on campus I counted no fewer than 12 construction cranes. Some buildings and parking garages haven't gotten above the foundation yet. Sprint apparantly had about 56 separate locations in the greater Kansas City area. Only about 3 of these they actually own. The rest are leased. I don't doubt that even with the class A space, the pay-back time will be very short. The interior of the space is a bit disappointing, though: Huge cube-farms. Dilbert would be proud. Row after row of tan cubicles. It was mind-numbing. Also the first week there the network connection from building 11 to the Sprint data center in Dallas sucked. It has since been much improved. The internal phone system seems to be a large Nortel Meridian. Hope this is of interest. Brent Laminack (brent@cc.gatech.edu) ------------------------------ From: larb0@aol.com (Bruce Larrabee) Date: 02 Sep 1999 12:15:16 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters There is also tremendous concern -- by employees and local residents -- about the traffic congestion ... now THAT should be a sight to behold. Pat, I think if you check your history books, you'll find that United purchased Sprint, not the other way around as you reference. Bruce Larrabee [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One of them purchased the other, and after various name changes and other things the whole conglomeration became known as 'Sprint'. Regards the traffic at 119th and Nall, you are quite correct. It is a sight to behold, even at this early stage with 'only' a couple thousand people (construction workers and early Sprint employees) coming and going. Cars backed up for what seems like miles in all directions. Imagine when all fourteen thousand of them are there. The small town of Leawood which sits on the east side of Nall Avenue and the larger community of Overland Park which occupies two of the four corners at 119th Street as well as two of the four corners of the intersection at 115th Street have disputed among themselves exactly who should be responsible for what. Sprint put up the money to widen Nall Avenue with an extra lane in each direction. The northbound lane would be on the Leawood side of the street but would require closing or rerouting one of Leawood's streets (I think 117th) which hits Nall (and now stops at that point with the construction of the Sprint thing where it used to go through into Overland Park). I think the town of Leawood feels a bit imposed upon by the whole thing; Overland Park is collecting all the tax money from Sprint and taking all the glory; Leawood is getting all the traffic congestion and the prospect of fourteen thousand people driving down all their side streets trying to avoid the lights at 115th and 119th on Nall. Geographically, physically, Sprint's complex is much closer to Leawood than it is to Overland Park, which spreads out much to the south and west of the Sprint complex; it sits only across the street from Leawood. PAT] ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 02 Sep 1999 12:56:11 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters Help me out here, Pat. It's been way too long for me to be sure, but it seems that Sprint might've originally been a joint venture between United and GTE, with United taking it over from GTE. (I can't even remember, from the old days of PC Pursuit, what "Sprintnet" was before it became "Sprintnet.") [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am a little fuzzy on the details also. My point was mainly that people think of Sprint as a come-lately entry into long-distance telecom, and that is true, it has been around a quarter century or so. They get to call themselves a century old only because of mergers and buyouts, etc with other firms that are in fact that old. But it sure has come a long way from the days of being the telecom department for the Southern Pacific Railroad, hasn't it, and for that matter, a long way from the days of free modems if you signed up for long distance service. Remember that promotion, and how some guys here were going to sue them when they got cheated on the new toys they were promised? Hey, if any of you who used that promotion are still around and reading this, whatever was the final outcome? PAT] ------------------------------ From: d_c_h@my-deja.com (David Charles) Subject: Re: Ever Seen 999-888-7777? Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 13:09:31 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. In article , jmaddaus@NO_SPAM. usa.net wrote: > While monitoring call setup traffic at our location, we were somewhat > surprised to see several inbound calls with the Q.931 calling number > set to 999-888-7777. This number was sent by the CO to the PBX > confirmed. All my sources tell me this is a bogus number that could > have resulted from a mis-translation in the CO (U.S. West in the > southwest) or was in fact altered by persons or equipment unknown > during the call setup process. None of these sources has actually > seen this exact sequence before. My first question is has anyone come > across this number as a factory default for LEC or IXC equipment in > the past, or perhaps as a test number used by switch techs for > debugging purposes? Secondly, can someone possibly explain in more > detail the mis-translation suggestion I received? As it has been confirmed that the number was sent by the CO I presume that there is a protocol trace showing it available. This could give more information about the source of the number. The Q.931 calling party number IE contains a number of fields in addition to the number digit, including Screening indicator, Numbering plan identifier and type of number. If the screening indicator indicates "user-provided, not screened" or "user provided, verified and failed" then the number was sent by an ISDN PABX (or terminal) and may be incorrect -- in these cases the misconfiguration is in the originating PABX. Obviouisly in this case it would be necessary to know the real source of the calls to take this further. If, however, it indicates "user provided, verified and passed" or "network provided" then the public network at the originating end should ensure its accuracy. One guess as to a possible cause if it is "network provided" is that the calls originate at a PABX which is sending a Calling party number that is failing screening by the public network; in this case according to some specifications the network should pass on the default number for the access (which would normally be the main number). Possibly someone has misinterprated this as "a default number" and configured an obviously wrong one, or has simply forgotten to configure it. It may also be useful to check the Numbering plan ID and Type of number fields to ensure that the number is not in a different numbering plan (e.g. private), although for such a distinctive number I would think this unlikely. David Charles ------------------------------ From: ktjensen@juno.com Subject: Multi Phone List Dialer Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 14:50:07 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. I have a few questions about software I am searching for. I have tried many products but none will do this. It sounds like a standard telemarketing, message reminding type application so I wonder why it just has not been implemented: 1. I have a non-voice modem. I would like to just dial and then pick up the phone line (like you can do with the built in phone dialer for Windows 95). 2. I need a software product that allows import and export of Address Book data? I am trying to use the Windows standard Address Books as much as possible, with the phone data. 3. I need to keep dialing a list of phone numbers and skip if either no answer or busy, then loop around and start again until I have contacted all persons on the list. 4. If I need a Voice Modem can you suggest a brand that works well? 5. I need to cause the software to dial, then if answered by a voice, to leave a voice message, after no sound is heard for two or three seconds? Maybe I need a macro tool that does this, but I would rather use a software that can do this already. ------------------------------ From: steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) Subject: Re: Domain Names (was Re: Son of 'Name That Domain' Contest) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 19:31:14 +0800 Organization: Prima Computer How many of these hijacked domain are there? Who makes the defintive decision on them? Is it NSI, do they have to act on a court order? Why doesn't someone just setup their own DNS to replace the one that has been immorally tampered with. Granted few people would use it at first, but as more people because aware of the problem they might consider switching. Steven In article , jloo@polaris.umuc.edu says: > In article TELECOM Digest Editor > noted in response: >> For the information of Jonathan Loo and others who seem to feel that >> if a company has a trademark or copyright all they have to do is just >> shut down someone else's website and take the name away from them, you >> cannot just take someone's name like that. > They cannot take over the domain *unless* the trademark was registered > *before* the domain name was registered, if I recall correctly. ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Re: Bell System Property Date: 2 Sep 1999 17:07:06 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS I understand the Princess phone keychains are now a collectible. They did make lots of them over the years and not just at the introduction of the set. ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Teletype Plant Torn Down Date: 2 Sep 1999 17:22:10 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS Pat, I picked this up from alt.folklore.computers . Perhaps you could add some comments to it since you're in the area ... > During the past several weeks, most of the remaining portions of the > Teletype factory on Touhy Avenue in Skokie IL have been demolished; these > portions of the factory were incorporated into the Village Crossing > shopping center, and were used as an indoor service court for the stores, > and as parking ... [snip] (There was an extensive discussion about the Teletype ASR 33 in that newsgroup recently, too, including comments on maintenance and hooking it up to a modern computer.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am no longer in the area, but when I was in the area I was in the Village Crossing shopping center on various occassions, and years before Village Crossing I had been in the Teletype complex. It was sad to see it go, and I can tell you that in the 1960's and 1970's no one ever would have imagined the time would come when there would not be Teletype; neither would there be a Bell System or a Western Union. Mark Cuccia has collected a lot of history on Teletype and its role in telephony in the first half of the century. Some of it is in the Telecom Archives. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Baratunde Thurston Subject: Wireline/Landline to Wireless Migration Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 18:10:10 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. I am looking for recent (past four months) news, commentary, reports and other info on the migration of phone use from wireline to wireless. Any suggested sources, websites, editorials, etc? Thanks, BRT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You might begin with the search engines located at http://telecom-digest.org/search where you will find a few resources for searching not only the back archives of this Digest but numerous other web resources. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Christopher W. Boone Subject: Re: Good Voice Server to Use With Siemens PBX? Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 08:10:47 -0500 Organization: Clear Channel-Dallas (KDMX/KEGL) Engineering Department Get Siemens Phonemail (made originally by ROLM) ... it can't be beat and SHOULD work with the 100E .. if Siemens is on the ball. Chris Frederic Faure wrote: > We're located in Europe, and currently use a Siemens 100E/118 ISDN, > along with a Discophone 3000 MV Junior that handles up to two > simultaneous access to the voice server. While the PBX works great, > the voice server is unreliable (some msgs left in a user's voice > mailbox aren't accessible, the date when msg are left is stimes wrong, > etc.) > Are there good brands of voice servers you could recommend? What about > PC-based + Dialogic-type voice card solutions? ------------------------------ From: Joseph Wineburgh Reply-To: Subject: Re: Filing Complaint/Lawsuit Against Bell-Atlantic Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 09:42:38 -0400 I see now where you got the $21.27 from. I didn't think of it that way, since I don't use more than maybe an hour or two for the month (unless I'm working from home, in which case the company picks up the tab). That is a rip-off! Screw them -- Now I'll just put my LD on for local toll as well! The issue about the 1 or 2.4c/min after running over the 8 or 20 hours; Now it IS mileage sensitive in that they look at how far the 'area' you have selective calling to is from your CO (didn't used to be -- that's where the penny a minute came from -- they were just yes-sirring me as I foolishly asked a leading question). The range I got through my follow-up call was anywhere from 4.8/min (Netcong to Morristown) on down to 2.4c/min (Netcong to Ramsey). So you are correct that they did not give me the correct info, although I have NO confidence that the info they just gave me on my follow-up call was correct, but it doesn't really matter at this point. Interesting note -- The gal I just spoke with out of the Tennessee call center (love the accent) said that my plan was NOT cancelled, even though that's what I called to do yesterday! What a bunch of screwballs!!! Again -- take a look at the 'unlimited' packages -- for $50 you get the whole LATA! If I used the phone that much, that's the plan I'd have. BTW - If you do end up filing suit, let me know, someone I know (who does not get the Digest) was just as outraged (if not more so) with the increase. #JOE ------------------------------ From: Dave Carpentier" Subject: Nicotra Air Pressure Monitoring Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 09:22:06 -0400 Organization: Thunder Bay Internet As part of my job duties at a local telco, I eng/program/install devices related to the Nictotra Systemi "Nida" remote air pressure monitoring system for telecom cables. I'm looking forward to contact with anyone else involved in this. (For the curious, the Nida system uses field mounted sensors to measure air pressure in underground telecom cables -- usually 300pr and up in our case -- and triggers alarms/etc when the air pressure drops below a set amount, signifying a leak in the cable, with the intention of repairing the problem before customer outages.) Dave ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: GSM in the US Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 16:00:46 -0400 Kim Brennan (kim@aol.com) wrote: > Keeping one's existing phone is the least of it. The fact is with GSM, > the phone is the SIM card. What most cell phones are is simply a > handset with GSM. You can interchange handsets, and you still have the > same "phone", just like changing handsets at your house still is the > same "phone." That's fine within a country -- it means that you can switch phones by moving the SIM card, rather than having to call customer service, though this seems a dubious advantage to me. But when you go to Europe (or elsewhere outside North America) you still can't use the same GSM phone that you use here, unless you happen to have bought a special phone that works on the bands in use in the country you're visiting (*and* has regulatory approval in that country, don't forget). That means that the SIM card is only usable if you buy or lease a phone in that country to put the card in. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 14:49:44 GMT From: satch@concentric.nospam.net (Satch) Subject: Webcams Hit Fox News Organization: SBC Internet Services After seeing your post, Pat, about Robert's web site, I thought it would be interesting to the group here to know that Fox News had one of their "debates" between a Web Cam "amateur" and her sponsor and a a couple of stuffed shirts (and bras). Lively debate in the typical Fox News free-for-all format that yields lots of smoke and flame but not much else. When Fox plays up the issue for entertainment value, it's hit the mainstream, I believe. The result of the debate? What you'd expect: nothing. _____ __/satch\___________________________________________________ Satchell Evaluations, testing modems since 1984 "The only good mouse-trap is a hungry cat" [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Doesn't Robert have a great website! I know the people he victimized -- although he would probably prefer we use some other word to describe it -- probably all had a great laugh out of it also when they found out later, possibly via Robert's website, that someone had been watching them. Unfortunate, isn't it that we can't even go to the bathroom in peace and quiet any longer without first having to inspect all the air ducts, tiny cracks in the wall and places where the plumbing pipes enter the room to be sure an all-seeing electronic eye is not hidden there somewhere. A bit later today, I have another special mailing going out with more interesting details about ICANN/ISOC and their plans for the net of the future. Mike Roberts wrote a vigorous protest to it all which he sent to Gordon Cook, so to show that the email presented yesterday was not falsified or taken out of context, today I will present the entire letters. Be sure and have them handy if you wish to respond directly to Mr. Roberts. You'll have to do it that way since he said he would not reply in Gordon Cook's forum. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #367 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Sep 3 03:26:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id DAA13889; Fri, 3 Sep 1999 03:26:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 03:26:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199909030726.DAA13889@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #368 TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Sep 99 03:26:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 368 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Alameda County's 911 Problem (Tad Cook) Local Loop Responsibilities (kstone@cohesive.com) 999-888-7777 (?) and NANP-Expansion (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: Ever Seen 999-888-7777? (Mark Brukhartz) Re: Echelon (David Wagner) Re: Echelon (Lauren Weinstein) Re: VTech DSS (takmel@stratos.net) Re: Call Routing Using Caller ID - Like the Yo-Yo (Caller ID) Re: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help (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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Alameda County's 911 Problem Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 20:42:31 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Published Thursday, September 2, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News Alameda County's 911 Problem Officials Take Steps to Decrease Pick-up Time By Renee Koury Mercury News Staff Writer A NEW Alameda County Grand Jury report criticizes the county's emergency medical response system for what it calls "extreme" delays in picking up 911 calls. In a survey of 47 counties in California last January, Alameda County posted the longest answering time for 911 calls. Here are questions and answers about the survey and the county's response. Q Who did the survey and what did it find? A The survey by Public Safety Network of Oxnard tallied the time it took dispatchers to answer all 911 calls in January in 47 counties that use Pacific Bell phone service, including Alameda County. For statistical purposes, they counted only 90 percent of the calls as being representative. In Alameda County, the survey found that of about 46,000 calls to 911 in January, 90 percent were answered within 25 seconds of when the phone began to ring -- the worst rating of all the counties. Q Does that mean all calls took 25 seconds to answer? A No. It only means that all calls fell within a 25-second range. Q Is 25 seconds really so long? What did the grand jury say about it? A The grand jury took it very seriously. Though calls were answered within 25 seconds, the state guideline for medical emergencies is just 10 seconds. A few seconds can make a difference of life or death in some medical emergencies such as heart attacks, said Karen Friedman, the grand juror who chaired the jury's health committee. The jurors were also concerned because Alameda County was the worst in the state. The grand jury said: "It is obvious that delays in Alameda County are extreme, unacceptable and should be decreased." Q How much worse was Alameda County than the other counties? A First, the report didn't name the other counties, identifying them only with numbers. But the county with the second-worst rating posted a 19-second answer time for 911 calls. Most counties did better. In fact, only four counties posted delays above 12 seconds, including Alameda County, and 18 were under the 10 seconds recommended by the state. Q Has the system been monitored since the January survey? A Yes, Alameda County showed an improvement in March when 911 calls were answered within 18 seconds, the second worst in the state. Q Is the 911 response time equal for all parts of the county? A No. Each city and the unincorporated areas have their own 911 answering system, which some officials say may be part of the problem. Officials suspect the poor rating may be because of the fact that Oakland has had problems with under-staffing of its police dispatch center and phones at times weren't being answered as promptly as desired. Officials say that could have brought down the rating for the whole county. Q Is it possible to find out what the response time is in my city? A Cities report they don't have their own statistics, though some have done spot surveys of other aspects of emergency calls, such as how long it takes for an ambulance to get dispatched once a call is received. In Fremont, a dispatcher's survey found that during a one-year period, the average time between when a 911 medical call was answered and the time the fire station bells were ringing for a paramedic was just 8.8 seconds. Q What happens when you call 911? A In an unincorporated area, the sheriff's department answers. In most cities, including Fremont and Oakland, the call goes to the police department's dispatch center which sends the call to the fire department if it's a fire or medical emergency. The fire department alerts an ambulance company while it sends out paramedics in a medical case. Union City contracts to use Fremont's system and Newark has one dispatch center for police, fire and paramedics. Q Did the grand jury determine why there can be a wait for getting a 911 answer? A Not exactly. But the jurors did identify some possible weaknesses. They noted that there are 18 different "answering points" in Alameda County, meaning that there are 18 different dispatch centers where 911 calls go, generally one for each city and the unincorporated areas. The jurors noted there is "no single authority or oversight" for the dispatch centers, "no agreed-upon standards for handling medical emergency calls by dispatchers" and "very limited data on the total time of a 911 call." The county's Emergency Medical Services Agency lacks authority over the individual cities' primary 911 call centers. Q Is the county taking any action? A Yes. The county's Emergency Medical Services Agency is proposing to hire Public Safety Network of Oxnard to assess the situation throughout the county, including how long it takes between the time of the 911 calls and the time help arrives. Such a report would break out how long it takes for each of the county's 911 dispatch centers to answer the phone, allowing officials to narrow down where there might be problems. The county is also looking at the feasibility of establishing three regional dispatch centers to handle all fire and medical calls so that these won't have to be filtered first by police departments. And the county must file a response to the grand jury's findings by the end of October. Q What did the grand jury recommend? A That the county contract with an independent agency to collect and evaluate data on the total time of 911 calls, that the county appoint a "911 Czar" to have authority over the county's dispatch systems, and that the city of Oakland work on decreasing its response times to conform to the state's 10-second guideline. Contact Renee Koury at rkoury@sjmercury.com or (510) 839-5321. ------------------------------ From: kstone@cohesive.com Subject: Local Loop Responsibilities Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 03:15:24 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Reply-To: kstone@cohesive.com The nature of my work is such my employer has generously offered to install a T1 to my home for telecommuting. The rub however is that I have already inspected the premise wiring and there only two pairs being fed to the house. For the T1 and the house phone I need at least one more pair. Who bears the cost of bringing the additional pair in from the street the LEC (GTE) or the customer. I have no problem trenching to the street if necessary but I doubt if I can lay cable to the nearest aggregation point wherever it is. Any thoughts appreciated. Kevin Stone [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I believe it is always the responsibility of the telco to provide the necessary wiring at least up to the point of demarc, wherever that be on the side of your house, in the basement, etc. However, the situation may not be nearly as dire as you describe it. Often times an experienced technician can find a pair or two or three in a cable nearby with no trouble at all. I am reminded of a case of my own a few years ago. Two of the three phone lines at the premises were full of static; in terrible condition. The third was okay. A telco guy is out there looking at it and says to me, 'those pairs are not much good, but there are not any other spare pairs in the cable. I am going to call the 'cable guys' and have them look at it. ('cable guy' meaning some other telco outside plant worker). I asked him how long would the service be out. "I dunno," he said, "they will come by later and look at it." I of course envision this long, somewhat major project of putting in new lines. About two hours later, a different phone guy sticks his head in the door and says, "well, you should be working now". And I was ... I asked him how it got fixed so quickly, and his response was, more or less, "well, about a block down the street is an 'arial' and I took the 'drop' from there and opened the 'multiples' in the basement of (address of a store on the corner) and swapped you over there ..." I guess I looked a bit wide-eyed in amazement at his ready explanation, and he saw my expression. He added, "see, you are not a phone man for twenty years like me, or you would have known about that ... I can always find a pair when I want one ..." and he proceeded to describe how he had went up on the 'arial' (the telephone pole about a block away), swapped something there, then at the place on the corner took me off of 'the underground' and put me on the pole. "Then they swapped you out in the office when I c alled them and told them to ..." This guy happened to know I was the editor of this Digest and he chided me in a kidding way saying, "You and those readers of yours, you just *think* you know telephones. Me, I am a telephone man, for twenty years now." Then to rub it in a little he added, "let's face it, a real man would know how to find a couple of spare pairs in the cable when he needed them ..." This guy was also a CB radio enthusiast from years earlier and I reminded him we used to say the same thing in essence, that 'a real man would know how to peak his radio and make it sound good instead sounding like pooh ...' He liked that ... He said he had worked first for Illinois Bell, then for awhile for AT&T, and now Ameritech, " ... and I've never left the same office I work out of ... as long as they keep paying me I don't care what they call themselves." I told him he earned his pay that day on my case of trouble. You did not mention how the two pairs you do have coming in now are reaching you, if they come from overhead or underground, etc. If you get the right phone guy out there he will have your third pair up and running in almost no time. If it is underound, they may 'snake' through the existing conduit; if it is overhead on a pole they will do something else. Is telco suggesting to you there is 'nothing they can do' or that they want you to dig a hole for them, etc? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 17:16:34 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: 999-888-7777 (?) and NANP-Expansion FYI, there presently can be _NO_ such NANP ten-digit number 999-888-7777, or for that matter, there is _NO_ ten-digit NANP number of the N9X-NXX-xxxx format. There are _NO_ such three-digit area codes with a middle digit of '9'. That N9X format is being "reserved" for future expansion of the ten-digit format of the NANP, which some say might be necessary by 2007! Expansion plans are still being discussed by the various industry forums and have _NOT_ been finalized yet. And, from what I see being discussed, I do _NOT_ like many of the options. I just don't see how the NANP can "gracefully" expand its numbering capability from virtually all of the various plans being discussed by the "INC". James Bellaire first posted what I think would be the MOST LOGICAL method of expanding the capacity of the NANP (going to a 4-digit NPA code) for an eleven-digit NANP number (twelve digits if you include the leading +1 country-code for World-Zone-1, the country code of the NANP) - James first explained it here in TELECOM Digest about two or three years ago. Linc Madison has expanded on what James Bellaire proposed... see Linc's proposal at his webpage: http://www.lincMad.com/future.html Both James Bellaire and Linc Madison's plans are based on the fact that N9X is reserved for "future (but not yet finalized) expansion" of the NANP, and an expansion which would include a permissive dialing period... by expanding the current area codes from three-digits to four-digits, by INSERTING the '9' between the current first and second digits of the current three-digit area codes: 212 for NYCity would become 2912 312 for Chicago would become 3912 504 for New Orleans would become 5904 225 for Baton Rouge would become 2925 416 for Toronto would become 4916 etc. Since the N9X ranges of codes are _NOT_ being assigned, there would be no "presently" existing three-digit 291, 391, 590, 292, 491, etc. codes that the expanded four-digit codes would conflict with. Also, there would be a period of permissive dialing (six-months? one-year? longer?) where one could be reached with either the old NPA code (212 for New York City), as well as with the expanded NPA code (2912). When the expanded format would become MANDATORY, then there would be available ten possible 212X four-digit area codes available for assignment. BUT REMEMBER, all of the above is JUST A THEORY, since the industry still hasn't finalized anything. But, IMO (and in others' opinions, TOO), this appears to be the most LOGICAL AND GRACEFUL method of expanding the NANP number. MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: Mark.Brukhartz@wdr.com (Mark Brukhartz) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 20:31:12 -0500 Subject: Re: Ever Seen 999-888-7777? Ameritech does not rigorously check calling numbers delivered over ISDN PRIs. Unless they began checking within the last three years. When placing outside calls, our Meridian PBX passes the number of the calling extension to Ameritech. Due to a software bug, our Meridian PBX generated unassigned numbers for calls placed from internal-only extensions. Ameritech's Lucent 5ESS switch accepted the bogus numbers and passed them on to the call recipients. I discovered this by calling home from a storeroom telephone. My home caller ID showed the area code and exchange of my office and internal extension of the storeroom telephone. Most curiously, the caller name was of another firm! The number belonged to a staff attorney at a car rental company. The Lucent 5ESS was probably running current software when I saw this behavior. It's the switch serving the Lucent Technologies / Bell Labs Indian Hill facility in Naperville, Illinois. The 5ESS switch was and still is under development at that facility. We no longer have internal-only extensions from which to place calls, and we have upgraded our PBX software to a version which may fix the unassigned calling number bug. I can no longer easily test Ameritech. The 5ESS software will certainly be upgraded to fix this once some thief uses it for fraudulent purposes. One could, for example, place modem calls to sites which validate calling number ID, or enable new charge cards through automated "call from your home number" systems. Mark ------------------------------ From: David Wagner Subject: Re: Echelon Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 01:27:35 +0000 In article , Lauren Weinstein wrote: > Greetings. The report regarding "Echelon" cited in a recent TELECOM > Digest (claiming that all e-mail, fax, and telephone communications in > Europe are monitored) has been floating around for awhile. There are > a number of reasons to suspect its level of accuracy. > First off, it was not really a technical report -- it largely restated > assertions and rumors heard from other often unsubstantiated sources. I respectfully disagree. Much of what is in the report is surprisingly well substantiated, and all in all, I found the report to be a conservative statement of the likely technical capabilities of Echelon. For much recent information on Echelon that substantiates the Echelon report, see, e.g., _Secret Power_, _Spycatcher_, the ABC trial, etc. Also, there have been other "leaks" that substantiate the report, including the inadvertent leak that the telephone companies in Britain cooperate with the GCHQ, with massive lines running from major telephone switching centers to the GCHQ carrying copies of interesting traffic. And so on. There are (at least) two important areas of disagreement that do remain amongst Echelon-watchers: (1) Does the NSA use voice recognition? (2) How seriously does the NSA take the prohibition on intercepting data on US citizens? In both areas, the report was unexpectedly conservative: it reported (IMHO) only what it could provide strong evidence for. For instance, the report did _not_ claim that the NSA has voice recognition capability, even though there is some credible evidence that they do (see, e.g., Mike Frost's revelations). (And even if the NSA doesn't have voice recognition, they probably have speaker recognition.) Regarding interception of domestic conversations, the agencies (apparently) seem to care most about international traffic, so you should assume that the SIGINT equipment is set up to intercept as much international traffic as possible. Nonetheless, such a setup will still capture large quantities of domestic traffic, and this effect should not be ignored. Also, note that the NSA believes that it is allowed to intercept any calls where at least one participant is a foreigner or on foreign soil, even if the other caller is a US citizen. There have been some serious and credible allegations that the NSA and the GCHQ used to swap information on each other's citizens when necessary, to evade this law. This is an area of some controversy, and again, the report took a more conservative stance here than (IMHO) was strictly necessary. Finally, there are also serious `process and procedure' concerns. When Congress asked the NSA for its interpretation of when _it_ thinks it is allowed to intercept domestic conversations, the NSA refused to answer, claiming attorney-client privilege! I find this telling; some elements at the NSA are clearly doing everything they can to avoid oversight. I feel that there are very legitimate concerns here, and I'm surprised to see them downplayed. Maybe you haven't read some of the more recent sources on Echelon (i.e., post- Puzzle Palace) -- I must admit that they are somewhat hard to find. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Echelon Date: Thu, 02 Sep 99 19:25:05 PDT From: Lauren Weinstein David Wagner writes: > Actually, much of what is in the report is surprisingly well > substantiated, and all in all, I found the report to be a conservative > statement of the likely technical capabilities of Echelon. I disagree. Most of it was a simple rehash of old material which has been around for many years, reworded and spun for maximal political impact, with lots of speculation thrown in (as if they were facts) for good measure. I saw little genuinely new material of any note. > For much recent information on Echelon that substantiates the Echelon > report, see, e.g., _Secret Power_, _Spycatcher_, the ABC trial, etc. > Also, there have been other "leaks" that substantiate the report, > including the inadvertent leak that the telephone companies in Britain > cooperate with the GCHQ, with massive lines running from major telephone > switching centers to the GCHQ carrying copies of interesting traffic. > And so on. These reports all feed off of and quote each other. Their number says nothing whatever about their accuracy. Language like "massive" gets tossed around all the time, with nothing to back it up. However, to the extent that there is monitoring, the key word (which you used) is "interesting"--a far cry from "everything." > e.g., Mike Frost's revelations). (And even if the NSA doesn't have > voice recognition, they probably have speaker recognition.) Given the current state of the art, I'd say that it is reasonable for some limited speech recognition to be done on a keyword trigger basis, but the error rate for untrained speakers in a telephone environment (for other than very limited vocabularies) will tend to be very high. However, it may well be an aid, when deployed on specific, targeted circuits. Again, a far cry from "all communications." > Regarding interception of domestic conversations, the agencies > (apparently) seem to care most about international traffic, so you > should assume that the SIGINT equipment is set up to intercept as much > international traffic as possible. Nonetheless, such a setup will still > capture large quantities of domestic traffic, and this effect should > not be ignored. The only place where there would be a likely "contamination" of international traffic with purely domestic traffic might be in some cases of 3-way/conference calling. Otherwise it's a pretty clearcut distinction, assuming we consider a call between the U.S. and an international destination to be an international call. A purely domestic call, by definition, is one where no party to the call is on foreign soil. > Also, note that the NSA believes that it is allowed to intercept any > calls where at least one participant is a foreigner or on foreign soil, > even if the other caller is a US citizen. Such calls have long been considered to be international calls in the arena under discussion. > Finally, there are also serious `process and procedure' concerns. When > Congress asked the NSA for its interpretation of whether _it_ thinks it is > allowed to intercept domestic conversations, the NSA refused to answer, > claiming attorney-client privilege! I find this telling; some elements > at the NSA are clearly doing everything they can to avoid oversight. This is all old stuff, complicated by the number of national security directives that come into play. In any case, it's a well known aspect of the situation from the past and not new info. > I feel that there are very legitimate concerns here, and I'm surprised > to see you downplaying them. Maybe you haven't read some of the more > recent sources on Echelon (i.e., post- Puzzle Palace); I must admit that > they are somewhat hard to find. I do manage to keep pretty well up-to-date. A lot of what's floating around is just fantasyland material that is politically skewed -- in fact most of it is politically spun, one way or the other. That doesn't change the actual underlying facts, however. My point was that the Echelon report is mainly a rehash of a lot of old information and accusations, some of which have long been known to be true, and a great deal of which are just blown out of proportion for clearly political purposes within the European Union. It's my belief that there are enough new, serious, immediate privacy issues to deal with without being diverted by political rhetoric trying to masquerade as new revelations. I'd be glad to continue this discussion over in the PRIVACY Forum ... --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren@vortex.com Moderator, PRIVACY Forum --- http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Host, "Vortex Reality Report & Unreality Trivia Quiz" --- http://www.vortex.com/reality ------------------------------ From: NOtakmel@stratos.netSPAM Subject: Re: VTech DSS Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 21:11:07 GMT Organization: NetSet Internet Services, Inc. On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 17:50:00 GMT, Dave O'Shea wrote: > Sound quality is good, range is as good as any 900mhz system I've > used. They also replaced a handset that I dropped, gratis. My only > gripe is that the buttons are smallish, and the volume level isn't > quite up to par in a noisy environment. Sorry for the late reply and thanks for your info. I went ahead and bought VT-1721 but returned it. I might have gotten a bad unit but it had this annoying noise in the background that sounded like someone else speaking. I'll look around. FWIW, is DSS good *only* for *range* or for *security and range?* ------------------------------ From: Caller ID Subject: Re: Call Routing Using Caller ID - Like the Yo-Yo Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 22:14:21 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. In article , Nishka wrote: > I was all set to try and track down a Yo-Yo for a poor man's call > routing system. Unforunately the people who made the Yoyo discontinued > it. I think the product was before its time. Take a look at some of the programs on my site -- something like Katalina's VoiceGuide will probably do more tha you want. Alastair Computer Caller ID FAQ : http://www.cloud9.u-net.com/callerid.htm ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Modem-to-Modem Connection Help Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 15:52:31 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Joseph Wineburgh wrote: > If you were using modems with 'leased line' jacks, or a 'line > simulator' in between the modems which supplies voltage, ringing, > etc. this might work. Proctor & Associates makes several line simulators that will give standard ringing, dialtone and even CID on one model. You scan see them at www.proctorinc.com, or call 425-881-7000. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com Seattle, WA ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #368 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Sep 3 05:15:24 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id FAA17475; Fri, 3 Sep 1999 05:15:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 05:15:24 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199909030915.FAA17475@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #369 TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Sep 99 05:15:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 369 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: My Phone Makes False 911 Calls! (Peter Corlett) Re: Canada's Yak Plan and Canadian Telco System in General (Tony Toews) Re: Call Notes Won't Record Forwarded Calls (Herb Stein) Re: Cable vrs. DSL (was: The D Stands for Disappointing) (Herb Stein) Re: Sprint's Fantastic New World Headquarters (Dan Srebnick) Re: The Net's First Civil War (Mark Crispin) Re: The Net's First Civil War (J.F. Mezei) Business Week Breaks Silence on ICANN (Jay Fenello) Iridium Names Restructuring Team, CFO Resigns (Monty Solomon) Re: Bell System Property (Michael Muderick) Re: Teletype Plant Torn Down (Herb Stein) Hotmail Hackers (Monty Solomon) Re: Safety Requirements For Telephone Lines (Karl Pospisek) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: abuse@verrine.demon.co.uk (Peter Corlett) Subject: Re: My Phone Makes False 911 Calls! Date: 2 Sep 1999 19:52:58 GMT Organization: B13 Cabal Tad Cook wrote: [ Pulse dialling ] > Actually it should be a total time per pulse of 100 ms (10 pps) with > approximately 60% break, 40% make. The exchange doesn't seem to care too much, as long as the signalling isn't ambiguous. I've always lived in cities rather than rural areas, so my phone lines are usually clear and don't have to go through miles of rotting copper. (My V90 modem typically claims over 50k for connections, for example.) So, as far as I'm concerned, the capacitance and resistance of the line is a lot better than the exchange is designed for, and thus can play things out of spec, knowing that the exchange expects skewed signals. For example, a friend modified his telephone to send faster pulses. He got it up to 20Hz before the switch complained. The break/make ratio doesn't seem to matter too much either. I'm sure people can't manage exactly 60/40 when tapdialling, for example, but it still works. I recall being at the BT Museum in London, the day before it closed, where I got to play with their restored equipment. The centrepiece was a working Strowger exchange, with various restored telephones attached to it which could call each other, or call various recorded lines. For example, dialling 846 ("TIM") gave a recorded message on the history of the Speaking Clock. Another exhibit was a battered, and slightly broken A/B payphone. In good tradition of British phoneboxes, the cashbox had been broken into and emptied. It was not however full of postcards offering "personal services", unlike every other phonebox in London. I tried to make a call. It demanded 2d. This was a problem, since 2d coins left circulation about 30 years ago. Then I had flasbacks to various COGs on uk.telecom, and tapdialled 846. Hey presto, the Speaking Clock. At last, I could do some phreaking and not feel guilty about it. Apparently the Strowger switch makes a different sound when a call has been tapdialled against being dialled mechanically, although I couldn't hear this because the payphone screened me from the exchange sound. The exchange workers would know which payphone you were in and could act appropriately if need be. ------------------------------ From: ttoews@telusplanet.net (Tony Toews) Subject: Re: Canada's Yak Plan and Canadian Telco System in General Organization: Me, organized? Not a chance. Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 05:59:54 GMT ianangus@angustel.ca (Ian Angus) wrote: > The impressive thing is that DESPITE the unfavorable exchange > rate, Canadian telephone service is still a price-leader in > North America. As well as a population one tenth the size of the U.S in a land mass much larger. Those links between the bigger Canadian cities stretch much longer than the ones down south. Yes the price of long distance is pretty high up in the Yukon, NWT or Nunavut but down below, even in a small town or on Vancouver Island it's pretty darned decent. Tony Toews, Independent Computer Consultant Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm VolStar http://www.volstar.com Manage hundreds or thousands of volunteers for special events. ------------------------------ From: herb@herbstein.com (Herb Stein) Subject: Re: Call Notes Won't Record Forwarded Calls Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 03:54:56 GMT In article , Frank Provasek wrote: > Instead of my voice, callers hear "Welcome to Southwestern Bell Call > Notes ... Please enter the number you are calling or redial" The > callers, of course, enter my work number, and are told that there is > no Call Notes account for that number. In any case they cannot leave a > message. That is certainly NOT the case in St. Louis. Calls forwarded from my home line to my cell phone will get picked up by the cells CallNotes. Herb Stein The Herb Stein Group www.herbstein.com herb@herbstein.com 314 215-3584 ------------------------------ From: herb@herbstein.com (Herb Stein) Subject: Re: Cable vrs. DSL (was: The D Stands for Disappointing) Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 03:51:49 GMT I'd like to hear Al Varn