From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Oct 3 17:46:36 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA22849; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:46:36 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:46:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910032146.RAA22849@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #451 TELECOM Digest Sun, 3 Oct 99 17:46:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 451 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Toll-Free "Local" Numbers? (Tony Pelliccio) Re: The Bad Witch ICANN (James Bellaire) Re: No Address on TELECOM Digest Posts? (Derek Balling) Re: Where is the True Power? (Ted Byfield) CPSR "Governing the Commons" Conference Writeup (Ted Byfield) Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future (Mark W. Schumann) A Way to Harvest Numbers (David Charles) Re: October 1999 Scientific American Report on High Speed Internet (Satch) Re: Penna PUC Examiner Rejects Bell-GTE Merger (Steven Lichter) Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Javier Henderson) Bill Pfieffer Memorial Site (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: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Toll-Free "Local" Numbers? Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 17:33:43 GMT In article , mlevin@meadhall.com says: > Interesting. I have known for some time (actually, a friend of mine > discovered this) that she can call my 617 area Bell Atlantic Mobile cell > phone from any 617 or 781 area Bell Atlantic payphone for free. Don't > know about COCOTs though. That's interesting -- I think BA has some problems determining rates and charges to cell carrier exchanges. I'm an Omnipoint subscriber in 401 and any BA payhone can call my cellphone without having to pay for it. Most of the COCOT's around here don't even know that most cell exchanges exist. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 11:55:46 -0500 From: James Bellaire Subject: Re: The Bad Witch ICANN At 01:50 AM 10/3/99 -0400, Judith Oppenheimer wrote: > ... Once upon a time a domain name was a secure piece of virtual > real estate that you could confidently build a business on ... > And the people were happy. > Then Network Solutions sought to shore up its assertion of list > ownership by adding revocation to its domain name contract: > Network Solutions (NSI) > http://www.networksolutions.com/legal/dispute-policy.html > Revocation. The registrant agrees that Network Solutions shall have the > right in its sole discretion to revoke, suspend, transfer or otherwise > modify a domain name registration upon thirty (30) calendar days prior > written notice ... Is that all you are going to quote? Why not finish the paragraph! "upon thirty (30) calendar days prior written notice, or at such time as Network Solutions receives a properly authenticated order from a court of competent jurisdiction, or arbitration award, requiring the revocation, suspension, transfer or modification of the domain name registration." The INTENT of adding paragraph 7 was to allow NSI to revoke domains upon court order, non-payment, etc. Although the wording above is loose, the language was added at a time where there were major problems with domain hoarding, and NSI had no way of revoking a domain (canceling the contract). The debate at that time was over individuals registering brand names of companies, therefore making the brand names of the companies unavailable for use by those companies, and making it harder for said companies to attract visitors as the preferred names were long gone. NSI also added the trademark wording at that time as well, and the URL you are quoting? "This file last modified 2/25/98." Hardly new changes. The language you quote does not mean that the domain companies are out to get your domain and sell it to the highest bidder. If that were so, Tim Koogle of Yahoo! would have had me a long time ago! (I heard him talking about TK's law on CSPAN.) James Bellaire @ TK.COM - Registered w/NSI since 02 Apr 1995 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The entire paragraph was not printed all over again because it has been printed here in the past at least a couple times. If the registrars 'accredited by ICANN' intend to only cancel domain names based on the fact that the owner of same has demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to pay for it then the contract should read that way. If they only intend to cancel because a court orders them to do so, then the contract should read that way. No one begrudges them the right to collect their fee, however out- rageous it may be; they do have expensive taste after all, when it comes to flying around the world and holding secret meetings. I'd personally feel better if they spent their money 'in the commmunity' instead of giving it to high-priced saloon-keepers in Santiago and to attornies who originally promised pro-bono representation and then snuck in billings for more than five hundred thousand dollars at the last minute when they discovered Vint Cerf could play MCI-Worldcom for fools a second time around, but that's just my opinion. I cannot sit here and say they should ignore or defy orders of the court regards cancellation or reassignment of domain names either, although for once it would be refreshing if they would take a protective stance regards small individual web site owners and netizens (as in 'the net is for everyone' as they mockingly say) instead of just responding to the highest bidder and the loudest, most obnoxious lawyer. But you see Jim, its not just that the contract allows for cancellation for the perfectly valid reasons of non-payment or in obeyance of court orders. The pertinent parts of the contract have been printed here previously: if all else fails, if they have been paid, if they are unable to get a court order to roust you from your domain name, if they have no valid excuse at all to give, then they do not have to give a valid excuse, they can just take it anyway. This is because ICANN has stated (and now made part of their 'accreditation' process for all registrars) that they do not want any 'messy enforcement problems'. Sometimes people pay their bills on time, and sometimes courts do not rule in favor of large corporations. So what are Vint and Esther to do in a case like that? How can they finish Cerfing the Net if the courts won't always hand over things to them on a silver platter? Thus the 'deuces wild' provision we are forced to sign if we want to be here in the first place: "When we say it is ours, then by God, it is ours. Any reason; no reason. We don't need any reason." Then they complain there has to be some way to correct technical errors by the registrar, etc. Fine, build that in also. What most of us on the net are saying is that a secret meeting in a far-away land where the participants whisper back and forth to each other, and certain unspoken agreements and understandings are reached is not 'reason-enough' for our satisfaction. They insist they 'have no reason and do not need a reason' simply because if the truth were known about their real reasons, they'd have to hang their heads in shame; they've traded the traditions and intentions for the net in exchange for power and influence for themselves. By all means, let's have some 'rogue registrars' please; some that put the net community ahead of their personal self-interests. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 09:10:14 -0700 From: Derek Balling Subject: Re: No Address on TELECOM Digest Posts? Adam Kerman wrote: > Gee. I said I didn't want to discuss spammers' rights. No right > enumerated in statute? The right of your heart to continue beating, > the right to breathe isn't enumerated either. Let's call it a natural > right. I would think those fall under the "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". This so-called "right" to send e-mail is something that spammers have made up. > If you have access to e-mail AND you follow the rules AND you know of > an authentic mailbox, you may send Mail. You may send mail to people who are willing to accept. Just because you pay for your end of the connection does NOT grant you permission to use resources (disk space, bandwidth) on MY end without my permission. > Even a spammer may send Mail; > they simply neglect to follow the rules, such as authentication, terms > of service of their bandwidth providers, the rules of networks they > connect with, and so on. Perhaps a spammer even has a natural right to > use Mail as long as he is properly identified. He can send messages; > he doesn't have the right to expect that other networks will receive > it. To say that I wholeheartedly disagree with this paragraph is an understatement of epic proportions. > I don't see that RFC823 is applicable. But here's a citation from RFC822: > 4.1. SYNTAX > authentic = "From" ":" mailbox ; Single author > / ( "Sender" ":" mailbox ; Actual submittor > "From" ":" 1#mailbox) ; Multiple authors > ; or not sender Let's continue the definitions, shall we? mailbox = addr-spec ; simple address / phrase route-addr ; name & addr-spec addr-spec = local-part "@" domain ; global address local-part = word *("." word) ; uninterpreted ; case-preserved domain = sub-domain *("." sub-domain) sub-domain = domain-ref / domain-literal domain-ref = atom So what does this MEAN? This means that you could, in fact, put "abuse@localhost" in your From address. It fits the definition fine. > The standard makes use of the words "authentic" with the From header, > to identify a single author, and with the Sender header, to identify > the actual submitter. Furthermore, unambiguous language refers to > From, such as "contains the identity", "authenticated machine > address", etc., and similar language applies to Sender. Authentic is just a FIELD TYPE, not a description. On my machine "abuse@localhost" is an authenticated machine entry. I have the following in /etc/aliases: abuse: dredd So on my machine, (localhost), that address is valid. >> No standard also requires me to, by very nature of posting an opinion >> to a public forum, to be also forced to accept e-mail, possibly paying >> for the mere privilege of receiving it without regard as to whether it >> is read or deleted. > At the time you are sending the message, a valid mailbox must appear > in the From header. There is no ambiguity on that point. Fine, and the above meets the ambiguity test. >> What rules? Show me the rules. The RFC's are, for this purpose, "the >> law of the land", and I have yet to find one that explicitly states >> that I must use a functional e-mail address. All I have to use is one >> which complies with the standard, not one that is accurate. > A nonexistent e-mail address in the From header is nonstandard. Your > interpretation is not supported by the clear languange of the > standard. However, any address @ localhost can be "made" valid, which will completely fubar the spammer and still follow the spec. Garrett A. Wollman wrote: >> We're not talking about wheat from chaff on Usenet. We're talking about >> people getting their e-mail addresses harvested from Usenet and then >> flooded with spam because of it. > So fix the spammers, or learn to live with it. I've been posting to > Usenet regularly for the past decade, but the amount of spam I > received which is traceable to Usenet is next to nil. (Hint: the vast > majority comes from poorly-secured mailing-lists.) I wish I had your problem. I posted with an address at an alternate domain on Usenet a couple weeks ago. The ONLY time this address has been made public is Usenet, about a half-dozen posts or so. I've already gotten about 30 pieces of spam in the last week for this address. I far prefer to play within the rules (see the above message to someone else regarding perfectly valid RFC822 addresses that will not work for spam harvesting), and still prevent spam from occurring (or trying). > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Poorly-secured mailing-lists? Well I > hope you were not looking at me when you said that. I think I take > excellent precautions with my list. But I cannot help it if someone > subscribes who secretly is a spammer then when the Digest reaches > them each day it just gets piped through a script which plucks out > all the 'From:' lines and adds them to a file somewhere. PAT] ... or they just scan the archives online each day looking for new issues. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 10:18:38 -0400 From: Ted Byfield Subject: Re: Where is the True Power? gds@best.com (Greg Skinner) wrote: > The previous efforts (AlterNIC, eDNS) failed in part because of the > actions of people like Eugene Kashpureff. However, lack of money was > also a factor, as was opposition from other Internet professionals to > a split root. I just attended the CPSR "Governing the Commons: The Future of the Global Internet Administration" conference in Alexandria (9/23-24), where there was much debate about the viability of alternative/ex- panded root servers -- including from would-be maverick registrars. I won't try to summarize hours of discussion beyond saying that the main fracture in the debate was between the DIY crowd (exemplified by Peter Deutsch of 'archie' fame), who argued that the solution to the current frustration with ICANN/NSI/DoC was to ignore them and to establish/acknowledge alternative DNS authorities, on the one hand; and the 'end of the net, mpeg at 11' crowd, who argued that doing so would cause chaos. Deutsch argued that pragmatism at every level would lead people to shun any authority that was propagating conflicts and name collisions; to which the would-be registrars responded that they had been trying exactly that, but thus far had not been able to propagate their new gTLDs. I must say, of all the bickering and complaining, Deutsch's ebullient DIY approach was a breath of fresh air. To fight ICANN at the level of official acceptance and integration of reform is important -- I'd never suggest that people give up that fight. But I will say that trying to force them to acknowledge and accept any fundamental innovation (e.g., to accept new gTLDs) is a waste of time: the only solution could be a sustained grass-roots effort to acknowledge alternative authorities -- which amounts to no- thing more than configuring systems to refer to one or two more name- servers. Someone -- Karl Auerbach from Cisco, I think -- said he'd been doing so for quite some time, with no problems and much satisfaction. The proceedings of the conference are online, and for anyone who's interested in these questions, they're well worth a look. I particularly recommend the presentations of Tony Rutkowski, Milton Mueller, and Michael Fromkin, all of whom argued more or less that ICANN amounts to little more than a programmatic effort to conflate DNS with intellectual property structures. >> One would be much more productive lobbying for a new, free, >> government subsisted TLD for non-commercial use, or at least the >> blessing to organize a non-profit one. I don't think so. The taxonomic purpose of gTLDs -- to describe the na- ture of the entity -- is dead, over, done. Expanding the gTLD structure would only precipitate yet another feeding frenzy of redundant domain names, and to designate it as strictly noncommercial would require enforcing that limitation -- by whom? According to what criteria? With what forms of redress and appeal? etc., etc., etc. to say nothing of the fact that these taxonomic categories absolutely defy the logic (or, more precisely, lack thereof) of the net, where subjective criteria define what it or isn't appropriate or relevant. To declare a gTLD as 'noncommercial' is a bit like Ben Franklin's proposal to invent a new punctuation mark to designate irony: irony BEGINS here and ENDS here. heh ... yeah, right ... There are two solutions, neither of which will happen: (1) Get rid of gTLDs completely; (2) declare DNS to be fundamentally, forever, and in every way unrelated to, independent of, and unencumbered by intel- lectual property. Anything short of those two measures will fail to solve 'the problem,' which is the need, imposed by the systematic as- pirations of intellectual property law, for 'IP' holders to protect their interests. To establish a new gTLD that's off-limits to IP law would be the equivalent of declaring an 'anything goes' region, where the law simply doesn't apply. Look at John Perry Barlow's 'declara- tion of the independence of cyberspace' for prior art in this regard. Cheers, Ted ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 11:52:56 -0400 From: Ted Byfield Subject: CPSR "Governing the Commons" Conference Writeup Greetings. TELECOM Digest readers might be interested in an article I wrote about the recent CPSR "Governing the Commons: the Future of Global Internet Administration" conference (Alexandria, 24-25 Sept.) I did for _Telepolis_. It's got a pic of an ICANN-GAC organizational chart by Tony Rutkowski, which is definitely worth a peek. ;) Cheers, Ted ------------------------------ From: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future Date: 3 Oct 1999 12:31:56 -0400 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , Satch wrote: > The Cloud IS the silver lining. The Internet and its culture used to > be underground, not in the view of the people. Today, we have the > Vice President claiming to be one of the inventors of the thing! The > Internet has fulfilled its original goal: provide connectivity at low > cost with high survivabiilty. As a person working on ARPAnet back in > 1972 I can look at the end product with quite a bit of pride. [snip] > So you have to make a decision. Do you change the way you do things > to adapt to the change of the Internet to Stage 3? Do you try to > fight it? Do you go on to something else? > This IS depressing. I really don't see it that way. "We" are still the underground. All ICANN can take away is a few of the top-level domain names. If PAT's worst fears are realized -- and that isn't unlikely -- so what? So the noncommercial web sites move out of COM, NET and ORG. We move to US, or to a friendly country domain with well-connected second-level servers, or we carve out a chunk of ORG. So the high-profile names are taken. That's a _good_ thing. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think we should begin that evacuation rather soon, personally. I am now looking into .us to obtain an alter- nate name. It also might be good to begin learning the *number* of the sites you visit as well as their name. It would be good to have as much of this in place as possible as soon as possible (that is, names for your sites with alternate registrars, etc) so that when the real purge gets underway as I believe it will once ICANN has solidified its power and base of operations a bit more most netizens will be able to wave bye-bye to the net as we knew it and continue on with very few interupptions or loss of continuity. PAT] ------------------------------ From: d_c_h@my-deja.com (David Charles) Subject: A Way to Harvest Numbers Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 16:41:16 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I was in the UK recently and saw an advert for a service of the type that would usually be on a premium rate number, but was on an 0870 number. (Calls to such numbers are charged as national calls within the UK and at the normal rate to the UK from elsewhere). This seemed unusual, however I assumed that the service provider received a cut of the termination changes for the calls (as the "free" ISPs in the UK do), and that is how they make their profit. I tried ringing the number, from Ireland, using a pre-paid calling card and received a recorded announcement. This said that the service could not be used on the 0870 number if caller ID was withheld and suggested ringing again without withholding caller ID or ringing a premium rate number to access the service anonymously. I had not withheld caller ID, but it would be unlikely that it would have been delivered on an international call on a pre-paid calling card. I would therefore guess that the real source of income for the service provider may be selling lists of numbers that have called the service for targeted telemarketing. David Charles ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 13:28:38 GMT From: satch@concentric.nospam.net (Satch) Subject: Re: October 1999 Scientific American Report on High Speed Internet Organization: SBC Internet Services Alledgedly jata@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) said on 02 Oct 1999 in the following: > Still, T1 has traditionally been priced for > commercial voice access, which is much more costly and more than most > people can afford for data access. > Er -- I think that the BSTJ article written by the father of T1 (Dixon > Penick of Bell Labs at the time) will show that T1 was initially > developed for multiplexing voice channels between central offices. And your point was? The original purpose of T1 was to replace analog FDM systems with a digital TDM system for multiplexing calls on a trunk line to reduce the cost of carriage of long-distance service. The main advantage of T1 over FDM was that the line is easily and cheaply repeatered with far less degradation of the signal over distance The reference to "commercial voice access" is aimed at the widespread deployment of tarriffed T1 services to provide digital voice trunks to PBX systems, and more recently digital voice trunks to remote access servers such as the Ascend MAX series. Also the article didn't talk about it, one reason that T1 is so expensive is that it *is* used extensively to carry voice traffic, so the uptime requirement for T1 trunks is very strict indeed -- you wouldn't want a 911 call to be blocked because a T1 trunk dies, now would you? _____ __/satch\____________________________________________________________ Satchell Evaluations, testing modems since 1984, 'Netting since 1971 "The only good mouse-trap is a hungry cat" ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.comstuffit (Steven Lichter) Date: 03 Oct 1999 14:37:52 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Penna PUC Examiner Rejects Bell-GTE Merger In article , lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > The Phila Inquirer reported on 10/1 that an examiner for the Penna PUC > rejected the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE because it would neither > boost competition nor reduce phone rates. I thought that the rejection was made by an Administrative Law Judge, and that the PUC does not have to go by his ruling, but they do most of the time, but not all the time. Just look at the overlay A/C rulings in California. I for one as a retired GTE employee don't like the merger. It is not really a merger if you look at it, just a buyout. GTE as a whole is worth a lot more then Bell Atlantic and is a better run company. I for one hope that the FCC kicks it back and other states look at the merger again. I believe that BA will just sell off a majority of GTE operating areas and keep stuff that is near their areas or large areas. I think all they want it the wireless and the in place long distance and internet backbone. If you look in the future the GTE chairman in a few years gets a golden hand shake and BA takes over. It should not effect me other than my stock and it sure is no good for the customer base. BA sucks BIG TIME!!! 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? (c) ------------------------------ From: Javier Henderson Subject: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: 02 Oct 1999 23:44:37 -0700 Organization: Completely disorganized Greetings, Given our ever-increasing reliance on DTMF-controlled telephone "things" (banking, voice mail, airline departure/arrival information, movie tickets, you name it), at least in the US, and also given that most (all?) telcos don't charge extra for DTMF anymore, I'm sure most telephones in use are touch-tone. The question is, for how much longer will CO's in the US support pulse dialing? I'm guessing "for a long time", but I'm still curious ... Thanks. -jav ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 14:24:00 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Bill Pfeiffer Memorial Site In case you missed the earlier announcement I sent out, the memorial site for Bill Pfeiffer is now online and accepting visitors at http://bill-pfeiffer.n3.net (or) http://www.airwaves.com ... if you knew Bill personally, or only knew him because of his several efforts to contribute to the net community, you may wish to visit the memorial and share with those who were actually able to attend in person on September 16 in Stanton, MN. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #451 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Oct 3 20:10:42 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id UAA28028; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 20:10:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 20:10:42 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910040010.UAA28028@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #452 TELECOM Digest Sun, 3 Oct 99 20:10:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 452 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Distinctive vs. Selective Ringing (was Phone/Water Meter) (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: Where is the True Power? (Steven) Re: Where is the True Power? (Greg Skinner) Re: The Bad Witch, ICANN (Steve Winter) Changing Domain Registrars (Terry Knab) Re: 4th Year Project Help (Kenneth A. Becker) Re: It Makes You Think (A Tale of WW2) (Andrew Emmerson) Differences Between Voice, Data, Video, Text and Graphics (marley8384) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Steve Uhrig) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (John R. Levine) Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? (Steve Winter) Keystone Telephone (Julian Thomas) Re: Freelancers and Copyrights (Bill Levant) A Page Devoted to Thwarting Third-Voice (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: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 15:12:07 CDT From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Distinctive vs. Selective Ringing (was Phone/Water Meter) The subject of 'distinctinve' ringing came up with the 'telemetering' of the water meter via a phone line, and the old 'party lines' was mentioned. Today, telco can have two types of 'distinctive' ringing. One is where you can have two or three unique telephone numbers assigned to the same line. All phones on the line are supposed to ring when any of the phone numbers are called to, and the line is "on-hook". Call Waiting (if also subscribed to on the line) would also work. Each telephone number will have a unique ring-cadence or call-waiting beep sequence, such as a single (long) ring/beep, two (short) rings/beeps per ring-cycle, short-long-short ring/beep per cycle, etc. The other is where you subscribe to a particular service that you control by a *XX code (usually *63 to turn-on the feature or add/modify your list; and *83 to turn-off the feature; the *63 could be rotary/pulse dialed or even touchtoned as 11-63 as well, similarly the *83 could be entered as 11-83). You can set up a list of six/ten/twelve telephone numbers (depending on the capabilities of your central office switch) of particular incoming callers. Whenever a call comes to you from one of these numbers (as long as complete end-to-end SS7 signaling capability is available), your phone will ring in a specific cadence (or call-waiting beep a specific cadence), usually short-long-short. Again all of the phones on the line are supposed to ring. As for _SELECTIVE_ ringing (and the old party-line days), in a two-party system, one customer was wired "tip-to-ground" and the other customer was wired "ring-to-ground" on the loop. When the number of the 'tip-side' customer was dialed, ONLY THEIR phone(s) would ring, while the 'ring-side' customer's phone(s) would remain silent. Another method of providing 'selective' ringing (common in many non-Bell telcos) was to have 'tuned' ringers for party-line combinations of more than two customers. Half of the customers were wired 'tip-to-ground' while the other half of the customers were wired 'ring-to-ground'. Each of the customers on the same half of the party line had 'tuned' ringers, wired only to respond to a particular AC frequency. Most 'default' ringer tunings (as used in Bell territory) was 20-cps, but other ringing AC frequencies could range from 16-Hz to 66-Hz. In most Bell territory, 'multiparty' (4-party, 8-party, 10-or-more party) was provided with a combination of distinctive ringing and selective ringing. Half of the parties were 'ring-to-ground' and the other half of the parties were 'tip-to-ground'. All parties had 20-Hz ringers. Only one-half of the customers' phones would ring on an incoming call to any number on 'their' side of the party-line, while all of the phones on the other side of the party-line remained silent (although you might hear a 'ting' of bell-tap if the electrical balance was 'just right' -- I remember reading one of PAT's replies about the snoopy neighborhood gossips who put their party-line telephone on a metal washtub to amplify any ring-tap of a call to another party on their line!). The way to identify _WHICH_ party was being called on 'that' side of the party line was by a 'distinctive' ringing cadence. There was another way that Bell could provide fully _selective_ ringing on a four-party line, and a more selective way of ringing on eight-party lines, and this further subdivided the party line by two, by using a 'positive' bias vs. a 'negative' bias on the bells in the phones. A four-party line would have: customer-A: 'tip-side' and 'positive ringer bias' cusotmer-B: 'tip-side' and 'negative ringer bias' customer-C: 'ring-side' and 'positive ringer bias' customer-D" 'ring-side' and 'negative ringer bias' An eight party line would add four more parties on to the above set-up, pairing one customer to each of the above. The new 'paired' customers would both have their phones ring if either party was dialed, while all of the other phones would remain silent. The two phones that rang would know which of the two customer was called by a distinctive ringing cadence (one long or two short rings, etc). As for 'telemetering' by phone (water, gas, power, alarm, etc) ... the dial-in in the overnight hours _could_ be done by a 'selective' tip/ring set-up similar to the old party-lines, but most likely is done by a seizing of the line at the central office serving the customer to be 'metered', but with a 'flagging' as to _NOT_ ring the line. The loop would be set to 'answer off-hook' and then make a data connection with a modem in the meter being read. Anyone on the line going off-hook to make an outgoing call would interrupt the data transmission and the data connection would be dropped along with the telephone line connection. That customer can then disconnect and then go back off hook for a real dialtone to make an outgoing call. If the customer is already on a call when the telemetering is to be done, then the line would appear to the central office switch as with a call in progress. Call-waiting on the line has nothing to do with this, since the central office doesn't actually "ring" to the line being 'telemetered', so the line appears 'busy' to the telemetering equipment at the central office. With newer forms of technology out there such as ADSL and ISDN, I personally do _NOT_ like the idea of 'telemetering' via the phone line voice/data channel that _I_ use for my _own_ telephone/fax/data calling. If the utility company wants to 'telemeter' my gas/water/power/etc. usage by 'wire', then let _THEM_ use their own infrastructure they may have in place, or else let _THEM_ pay telco for copper/etc., or else let _THEM_ pay for some more advanced 'add-on' technology (i.e., ADSL) if they want to 'telemeter'. I don't like the idea of some _OTHER_ company making use of the line(s) that _I_ pay telco for _MY_ use. I thought that the days of party-lines were over! And alarm companies and medical-alerting services ("I'm falling and I can't get up") should likewise use separate loops or more advanced (ADSL/ISDN-like) 'add-on' technology to a phone line! 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- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I was about 12 years old I had a friend the same age and we would talk on the phone, in the same kind of language and the same kinds of comments as most kids that age. My family had a single line but his family was on a party-line. We were talking one day when there as a 'click' on the line, and I warned him he had better shut up because 'someone is listening'. His response was, "oh, that's just Mrs. (name). That old witch has been our party- line neighbor for many years. If she does not know everything there is to know about our family by now, I don't see what difference it would make if she listens or not." We waited silently for a couple seconds and then another 'click' and Mrs. Old Witch replaced her receiver. An oddity about party-lines in the days of manual service was that if you lifted the receiver and asked for a number on your party-line, the operator would just say 'the line is busy' without checking further than the usual tip-to-sleeve busy test. The operators did not know who was a party to whom. So you had to say to the operator, 'this is a call on my party line, to (number)' and the operator would have you hang up the receiver then start ringing the number back per the cadence, etc of the other party. After a couple such rings, *then* you went back off hook and waited. Likewise, sometimes kids trying to be funny would ask the operator for their own number, but the operator's response would always be, 'the line is busy'. The payphone in the cafeteria at the school he and I attended had the number 9216, but very few students knew the number. 'Someone' wrote a lewd message on the wall of the phone booth saying 'for a good time, call Mary, phone 9216' with a description of what this fictional Mary-person would do to any guys who came to her home. One of our not-so-bright classmates read the message and decided to call 'Mary'. After a couple seconds he hung up the phone. He waited a couple minutes and tried again. This went on the rest of the lunch hour and then again the next day. Finally he complained to the rest of us that he 'had been trying to call this person named Mary for two days, but the operator kept telling him the line was busy'. I told him Mary must be very popular if she was on the phone all that time talking to losers like himself. PAT] ------------------------------ From: steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) Subject: Re: Where is the True Power? Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:02:12 +0800 Organization: Prima Computer OK, so that's three of us who would like to see a new free TLD. So what does it take to make one? What is the organization that issues/governs the .us, .uk, .de, etc names. US states have them, so you don't have to be a country. The European Union had one when they were little more then a pipe dream. Who do we have to contact and what qualifications do we have to fill to get one of these names into the global system? The technical and logistical details should be trivial. A few name servers and financing/service/equipment donated by people/companies because they believe in the project or just plain want the PR. If the organization was allowed to provide web hosting, dynamic DNS, etc at market rates it could be profitable in its right. What do we do with all the extra money, give it away? And then of course the problem. How do you keep it from becoming commercialized. No corporations? DBAs? One name per person? One name per household? Extended family? First come first serve? Even if John Smith registers TomJones.FREE to run a smear campaign? What are the rules, who makes them, how are they changed? Seems to me this is the problem. Every time you make something idiot proof those damn idiots go and get smarter. I'm quite serious. We need a decent charter and a way to get the TLD accepted into whatever global database is used. There are enough knowledgeable and gifted people out there to do the rest. Steven gds@best.com says: > In article , Steven > wrote: >> People have already built new root servers and they have not been very >> successful. Perhaps Bill Gates could make one and pre configure >> windows/mac to use it, but others would have a bit harder time getting >> people to switch. To be perfectly honest I don't understand why everyone >> hasn't started their own TLDs. I like the idea of a root server revolt, >> but it doesn't seem it would work? > I have never really understood the ORSC approach to new TLDs. They > have the technical knowledge and historical understanding of the > Internet to do this. I believe they could pull this off if they made > a concerted effort to document and promote their service to the > Internet community. > The previous efforts (AlterNIC, eDNS) failed in part because of the > actions of people like Eugene Kashpureff. However, lack of money was > also a factor, as was opposition from other Internet professionals to > a split root. >> One would be much more productive lobbying for a new, free, >> government subsisted TLD for non-commercial use, or at least the >> blessing to organize a non-profit one. > I think this is an excellent idea. .org was originally set aside for > that purpose, but NSI controls it now. They're not going to give it > up; the USG is not going to pry it away from them. It's time to start > from scratch. > gregbo > gds at best.com ------------------------------ From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Subject: Re: Where is the True Power? Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 30 Sep 1999 20:32:01 GMT In article , Pat Townson wrote, in response to Cortland Richmond: : > And anyway, the net is an international, world-wide thing. Why should > people in other countries get stuck with what our politicians here > decide to do? Jon Postel and the IAHC, through the gTLD-MoU, tried to have the IANA functions administered through an intergovernmental body. The USG intervened, at the behest of NSI, ORSC, and other groups that opposed what Postel and company were doing, claiming that they were selling the Internet out to the Europeans, and depriving netizens of their right to choose what type of root service they wanted. Thus, the Green Paper, White Paper, ICANN, etc. The feuding between the warring factions has brought us to the point where politicians and lawyers will now make the decisions. In article , Ted Byfield wrote: > To fight ICANN at the level of official acceptance and integration > of reform is important -- I'd never suggest that people give up that > fight. But I will say that trying to force them to acknowledge and > accept any fundamental innovation (e.g., to accept new gTLDs) is a > waste of time: the only solution could be a sustained grass-roots > effort to acknowledge alternative authorities -- which amounts to no- > thing more than configuring systems to refer to one or two more name- > servers. Someone -- Karl Auerbach from Cisco, I think -- said he'd been > doing so for quite some time, with no problems and much satisfaction. In my opinion, there's nothing at all wrong with this; indeed, the more people point at the alternative roots, the more the new TLDs will "exist", thus presenting attractive alternatives to NSI, its registrars, and any other registry which has some kind of agreement with ICANN. Keep in mind however that not all sysadmins will have the authority to make additions to their root.cache files. People who control their own resources -- independent ISPs, personal sites, and so forth, have this option. Admins at large companies do not. It would require corporate authorization to do this. This is particularly true in the case of ISPs and IAPs that offer service to large numbers of users (e.g. AOL, Mindspring, etc). So the corporations would have to be convinced that these modifications would not upset stability. So the burden is on the advocates of alternate roots to prove to the rest of the Internet community that they can guarantee at least the level of stability we currently have. gds at best.com ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: The Bad Witch ICANN Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 19:39:45 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Judith Oppenheimer spake thusly and wrote: > Revocation. The registrant agrees that Network Solutions shall have the > right in its sole discretion to revoke, suspend, transfer or otherwise > modify a domain name registration upon thirty (30) calendar days prior > written notice ... That is astounding. How do you spell m o n o p l y? It is actually quite scary, unless of course NS is perpetually run by honest and benevolent souls with impeccable judgment and integrity ... but then, they would be as upset with such a policy ... scary stuff, very scary stuff. Steve (who at least has some of his domains service marked and trade marked.) 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: tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) Subject: Changing Domain Registrars Organization: The Home Office Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 18:52:52 GMT I haven't seen this addressed yet, but is there a process that will allow a person to change their domain registrar away from NSI? (I, for one am *very* disgusted with the way they do business and want to get rid of them.) I haven't seen anything that says such a thing is doable ... thoughts? Terry E. Knab News Administrator Nyx Public Access Unix ------------------------------ From: Kenneth A. Becker Subject: Re: 4th Year Project Help Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 17:58:33 -0400 Organization: Wavestar mmakrzem@my-deja.com wrote: > I'm an Electrical Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. > As a fourth year project I would like to design a tracking system to > find objects. I envision a system with a transmitter and receiver, > where the receiver can gather the distance and direction of the > transmitter from the receiver. > Can anyone here help me get started. I haven't had any Radio theory > courses in school yet so I'm pretty blind in the RF phenomenon. > I will have about eight months to design and build the project with > the help of three other students. I think I'm rather in shock. Here you are: an electrical engineering student at a relatively prestigious school. Presumably in a department of electrical engineering at the same mentioned school. Finally, this department would also presumably be staffed by professors, graduate students, and others who are >>also<< electrical engineers. And you're going to the >>internet<< for a blind question about radio tracking methods? Geez, if said university also has a biology department, there are even people over there who >>use<< such things on random animals they want to track! There are several possibilities here. 1) You're working 'way off campus, and can't get to the campus to bang on some people's doors. 2) The EE Department has been completely taken over by computer engineers who don't know an E-field from an H-field. 3) You've been studying all night and don't have the strength (for the next week) to drag yourself down the road from the dorm to the professors' offices. 4) The professors (or just the professors who know) hate undergraduates. This might actually be possible: I've met a few. But, still .... We'll leave any further reasons to the imagination. However, if you're stuck on the basics, look up the ARRL (American Radio Relay League) website. They sponsor radio tracking events (wild weasels?) where various hams run around trying to DF another ham who has placed him- or herself in a particularly hard to DF location. I suspect that they sell more than one book (probably in the campus library) that describes the basics and how to actually build a DF set or two. Come to think of it, walking into the university library and doing a search on radio tracking might be a useful course of action. I imagine there are journal articles and books that cover the subject in ridiculous detail. Really, I'm sorry if I come off sounding a little acerbic here. But, come on, there's probably more information >>at<< the university on the subject than there is in the entire internet! I mean, people of various stripes have been doing radio location since World War 1! Ken Becker Lucent Technologies ------------------------------ From: midshires@cix.co.uk (Andrew Emmerson) Subject: Re: It Makes You Think (A Tale of WW2) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 21:33 +0100 (BST) Organization: CIX - Compulink Information eXchange Reply-To: midshires@cix.co.uk In article , shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) wrote: > One interesting detail was that the the people working with the system > "learned" to understand the inverted speech! Yes, I've heard this too. I've also heard a guy who swore that he could read RTTY transmissions over the air. Andrew Emmerson ------------------------------ From: MARLEY8384@aol.com Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:43:38 EDT Subject: Differences Between Voice, Data, Video, Text and Graphics I was given an assignment yesterday to answer the question, "In a digital world, what are the differences between voice, data, video, text, and graphics?" This paper is to be turned in next Saturday. I have been searching the web for information, but am getting very broad responses. I am very new at these studies and wondered if you could point a new 44 year-old student in the right direction. Thank you for your help. ------------------------------ From: Steve Uhrig Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 17:58:43 -0400 Organization: bright.net Ohio The support doesn't require any additional equipment like DTMF does. Around here lines are programmed as combined dial type. This means that the switch will take either pulse or DTMF on all lines. Javier Henderson wrote: > Given our ever-increasing reliance on DTMF-controlled > telephone "things" (banking, voice mail, airline departure/arrival > information, movie tickets, you name it), at least in the US, and also > given that most (all?) telcos don't charge extra for DTMF anymore, I'm > sure most telephones in use are touch-tone. > The question is, for how much longer will CO's in the US > support pulse dialing? > > I'm guessing "for a long time", but I'm still curious ... ------------------------------ Date: 3 Oct 1999 19:48:30 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > The question is, for how much longer will CO's in the US > support pulse dialing? For what it's worth, Vista-United Telephone, the Florida LEC that serves Lake Buena Vista (a/k/a Disney World and adjecent area) and Celebration (Disney's Potempkin village) says in their tarriffs that they support only tone dialing, not pulse. As far as I can tell, they've never supported pulse dialing. The company was set up when Disney World was built about 25 years ago. Before that it was an empty swamp with no telephones, or anything else, at all. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 14:23:18 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) spake thusly and wrote: > Maybe not, but I *distinctly* recall a federal law passed about ten > years back making it illegal to obtain access to or use of a computer > by using a bogus id. It is a beautiful thought, but someone sending an email has hardly gained access. 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: jata@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) Subject: Keystone Telephone Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 20:29:58 GMT Anyone have any information on this company? It was one of the last Bell competitors -- operated in Philadelphia, and was absorbed into the Bell System in the late 1940's. I'm curious as to the circum- stances of its demise and assimilation. I can remember seeing in the 1950's a sign outside a building noting the availability of *Bell* Telephone booths inside. Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt remove letter a for email (or switch . and @) Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! An aquarium is just interactive television for cats. ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 19:39:23 EDT Subject: Re: Freelancers and Copyrights > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So what happens to those of us who > rely entirely on freelance contributors? Must I know go and seek > permission from each writer before storing back issues of the Digest > in the archives? What nonsense! PAT] 1) Probably not, at least for myself; I hereby declare the text of all of my postings here (unless otherwise specifically noted) to be in the public domain. Besides, unless I'm missing something, you ALREADY pay your contributors the same amount [nothing] for current publishing rights as you pay for the right to archive [also nothing]. Since you don't pay for contributions in the first place, how can you be "ripping off' your contributors? 2) I think the appeals court decision is nuts ... but take note: it was only a three-judge panel. Only the most significant/important/ interesting cases are heard by the full Court of Appeals. Watch for this one to be reargued before the full circuit court. 3) There's always the US Supreme Court, where (I bet) this one will end up. Bill ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 02:47:16 -0400 From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: A Page Devoted to Thwarting Third-Voice I don't know if you know about this site, but I suspect many of you will like it: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~bowersj2/ "This is a site quickly put together to act as a clearinghouse for Third Voice combat techniques." Apparently you CAN pretty much keep people from using Third Voice on your site if you are willing to follow the instructions given at this site in case anyone wishes to experiment with it. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #452 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Oct 3 22:28:44 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id WAA03509; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 22:28:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 22:28:44 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910040228.WAA03509@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #453 TELECOM Digest Sun, 3 Oct 99 22:28:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 453 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Jack Decker) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (L. Winson) Re: Changing Domain Registrars (Coredump) Re: Changing Domain Registrars (John R. Levine) Open-Access Forum This Week (Adam M. Gaffin) Re: Help Needed With Old Phone (Keelan Lightfoot) Re: No Address on TELECOM Digest Posts? (Garrett Wollman) Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy (Darryl Smith) Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy (Mark Crispin) Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy (Steve Winter) Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy (Rob Levandowski) 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. 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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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 21:04:46 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? On 02 Oct 1999 23:44:37 -0700, Javier Henderson wrote: > Given our ever-increasing reliance on DTMF-controlled > telephone "things" (banking, voice mail, airline departure/arrival > information, movie tickets, you name it), at least in the US, and also > given that most (all?) telcos don't charge extra for DTMF anymore, I'm > sure most telephones in use are touch-tone. Flawed assumption. In Michigan, for example, virtually all of the phone companies (large and small) charge extra for Touch Tone. This charge is something I'd love to see eliminated, especially since Ameritech (the largest phone company in the state) no longer gives new customers (or customers that move, etc.) the right to order service without Touch Tone. Therefore, in Ameritech territory at least, you have some people using rotary dial phones or dial-pulsing phones, but paying the Touch-Tone rate, and then in other cases there are folks who are only paying the rotary dial rate but who have the ability to use Touch Tone because they have "grandfathered" rotary service and either Ameritech is incapable of turning off Touch Tone at the switch (I believe this is true on some percentage of switches), or they simply neglected to. And we are not talking a small chunk of change here, Ameritech charges right around $2.50 per month extra for Touch Tone (I think if Ameritech were a group of doctors, they'd still be using leeches). Speaking of Michigan, I know that the Michigan Telecommunications Act is supposed to come up for a rewrite soon. I had thought it was this year, but then someone said it wouldn't happen until the year 2000 (anyone know for sure)? This (the elimination of a separate charge for Touch Tone) would be one of several consumer-oriented things that they COULD put into the next revision of the act, but probably won't. The thing I would MOST like to see here is an expansion of local calling areas. There has been no new Extended Area Service in Michigan since the 1960's, and I could take you to several places where it is a toll call from one side of the street to another. In one GTE area here, you can drive from one village (Holton) into the next village (Twin Lake) along M-120 (the most direct route), and if you suddenly decide you need to stop and call back to your home in Holton it will be a toll call. But if you keep going for a few more miles down the road (still heading away from Holton), you will be in the Muskegon exchange, and can make local calls to both Holton and Twin Lake from there. The local calling areas in Michigan have NO rhyme or reason to them and in many cases are ridiculously small. It is no wonder that we've had so many area code splits here. But I have just about given up on expecting either the Michigan Public Service Commission or our esteemed lawmakers to actually do anything that will substantially benefit the telephone consumer in this state, such as dropping Touch Tone charges or expanding local calling areas. [Note that if anyone wants to have a discussion about Michigan-specific telephone issues, there is a mailing list available for the purpose at http://www.maillist.net/mi-telecom.html - it's an extremely low traffic list at the moment, but it is available.] > The question is, for how much longer will CO's in the US > support pulse dialing? At least as long as they need to in order to enable them to charge extra for Touch Tone (note I did not use the word "justify", there is no justification for it!). Jack (make the obvious modification to my e-mail address to send a private reply) ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L.Winson) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: 4 Oct 1999 01:09:02 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS > Given our ever-increasing reliance on DTMF-controlled > telephone "things" (banking, voice mail, airline departure/arrival > information, movie tickets, you name it), at least in the US, and also > given that most (all?) telcos don't charge extra for DTMF anymore, I'm > sure most telephones in use are touch-tone. I'm not sure how the tarrifs are nowadays. The touch tone charge is being dropped, but not quite yet. The {Wall Street Journal} reported a while back that a substantial number of people still have traditional rotary phones and service. However, the point of phone mail is well taken. I've converted a number of older people who would otherwise stick with rotary because they got tired of being unable to get through to businesses. (And it seems to me almost every business today is answered by a computer and without touch-tone you're outta luck.) In my area we have compulsory ten digit dialing on all calls, which gets tiring on a regular phone. Adding 1010272 for certain toll calls is even more so. Of course you can get a new phone that switches between pulse and rotary, but that's essentially a pain. The switches are tiny and hard to get to. If you go to the trouble of getting a new phone, you might as well upgrade. ------------------------------ From: coredump@NOxSPAM.enteract.com (Coredump) Subject: Re: Changing Domain Registrars Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 00:32:10 GMT Organization: Cores' Internet and Storm Door Company On Sun, 03 Oct 1999 18:52:52 GMT, tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) wrote: > I haven't seen this addressed yet, but is there a process that will > allow a person to change their domain registrar away from NSI? (I, > for one am *very* disgusted with the way they do business and want to > get rid of them.) > I haven't seen anything that says such a thing is doable ... thoughts? I suggest you contact one of the alternate registars, explain to them that you want to change your registration to them and ask them how you would go about doing it. If it's doable, they should be happy to help. Core coredump@NOSPAM.enteract.com http://www.enteract.com/~coredump Dodging pot-holes on the Information Superhighway ------------------------------ Date: 3 Oct 1999 21:57:48 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Changing Domain Registrars Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I haven't seen this addressed yet, but is there a process that will > allow a person to change their domain registrar away from NSI? Sure. There are several competitive registrars active right now, including register.com and the CORE registrars you can find out about at www.corenic.org. There are a few more including AOL who are authorized to be registrars but haven't actually started. When I registered telecom-digest.com, telecom-digest.net, and telecomdigest.org to forestall a rerun of the telecomdigest.net fiasco, I did it through CORE registrar joker.com in Germany. Their service is good, and they're a lot cheaper than NSI, too. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: world!adamg@uunet.uu.net (Adam M Gaffin) Subject: Open-Access Forum This Week Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 01:54:29 GMT Organization: The World Public Access Internet, Brookline, MA Top telecom news and features this week from Network World. Note: You no longer have to register to use Network World Fusion. Open-access Face-off: AT&T and GTE Read what James Cicconi, AT&T's executive vice president and general counsel and John Raposa, associate general counsel for GTE, have to say, then jump into our forum with your comments and questions. Cicconi and Raposa will answer you -- and each other -- this week in this threaded discussion. http://www.nwfusion.com/cgi-bin/WebX.cgi?forum-230@@.ee6d7b5 SBC merger support: Grass-roots with a twist Senior Editor David Rohde looks at the Campaign for Telecommunications Access, a group that supports SBC's proposed buyout of Ameritech in filings with the FCC that turns out to be funded largely by, of course, SBC. http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999/76998_10-04-1999.html Mariposa scales up voice/data box Users who have considered ATM-based access devices to squeeze voice and data onto a single dedicated access line -- but rejected them because they usually only scale to smaller branch offices -- are getting a new option. http://www.nwfusion.com/news/1999/1004carrier.html Cable & Wireless readies managed VPN service http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999/76828_10-04-1999.html HDSL2 could mean cheaper T-1s for you http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999/76961_10-04-1999.html MCI/Sprint merger? Wall St. smiles, users frown http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999/77027_10-04-1999.html Bell Atlantic expected to win long-distance approval in N.Y. http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999/77040_10-04-1999.html Minnesota DSL ruling may be key Upstart DSL service providers are applauding a recent Minnesota decision that could lead to faster provisioning of DSL services. http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999/77224_10-04-1999.html Adam Gaffin Online Editor, Network World agaffin@nww.com / (508) 820-7433 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 18:40:52 -0700 Subject: Re: Help Needed With Old Phone From: Keelan Lightfoot Peggy Cannon wrote: > Unfortunately, I'm not even sure where to look for answers. My > questions are, how old is the phone and can I get it to work with my > current phone configuration. I know nothing about phones. On the > bottom of this phone it says Monophone and Automatic<>Electric. It's > an old rotary black phone that has a lock for the handle. I suppose > my description shows you how much I really don't know. It also has > the original cable, with yellow, green and red wires. Can you help > me? What do you mean by 'it has a lock for the handle'? Does this telephone have an octagonal base with a rubber trim around the perimeter of the bottom of the telephone? If it has this, then is probably a model 40. Some model 40's had a chrome handle under the handset, rather than a black handle, and chrome rings around the microphone and earphone caps. I just found a site full of pictures of Monophones ... do any of the telephones on this page: http://home.ici.net/~andhow/ae_desk.html look like the one you have? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I will trust that some of our readers > who are familiar with Automatic Electric from the long-ago days will > write you to get more specifics and offer advice. -snip- > If I am correct, > older Automatic Electric phones differed from Bell (Western Electric) > phones in at least one obvious way: with Bell/WECO the finger stop > was mounted firmly at about the four o'clock position and the dial > was thin, black metal. With AECO, the finger stop was closer to the > five o'clock position and itself would slide down a bit to nearly > the six o'clock position when your finger pressed against it. I > believe also the dial was a silver color and it was made of thicker > (in depth) metal. Not completely correct -- In my Monophones (Model 40 & 80), the finger-stop is at the five o'clock position, but it is stationary. The only phones with the moving finger-stop that I know of were those with the dial in the handset (Northern Electric/WE Contrempra, Trimline). The dial mechanism in the model 40 is quite similar to the 80, except that the model 40 uses an interesting mechanism to hold the number card in, and the dial is made out of a punched and pressed sheet of brass. The lower half of the dialing mechanism on the model 40 is a pressed piece of steel, whereas the model 80 uses a die-cast lower half. The regulator mechanism, springs & gears all appear to be interchangable between all AE dials. The dial on my Model 40 is black. The difference between WE and AE dials is quite noticeable -- WE dials make 'gear-sounds' during the wind-up and wind-down, but AE dials only make 'gear-sounds' on the wind down. Also, AE dials whine more during the wind-down. > If you get dial tone after wiring it in the line, > it is possible the modern phone system may understand the pulsing > it gets when you dial a number. No guarentees as to how it will > sound to people when you talk on it or how well you will hear them. > First let's find out if it works at al by attaching it to the phone > wires as described at the junction box in your home. PAT] My Model 40 behaves quite well on my line, but if you open the case up, (at least with my monophone), you have to be careful where you route wires, as they will mess with operation of the bell and dial if the position of the wires are not perfect. It sounds fine on a phone line, and plays well with all the phones it shares it's line with. The earphone and microphone elements are compatible between the 40 and much newer 80, so if you need to replace one, just find a cheap model 80 and use the element from it. - Keelan Lightfoot - http://www.bzzzzzz.com/beehive/keelanl/pbx/ ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: No Address on TELECOM Digest Posts? Date: 4 Oct 1999 01:12:26 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , PAT said: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Poorly-secured mailing-lists? Well I > hope you were not looking at me when you said that. No, I'm specifically referring to unmoderated mailing-lists which do not take sufficient precautions to ensure that they will not form a conduit for spam. For example: all of the spam which has made it past *my* anti-spam measures over this past weekend got here because I subscribe to which doesn't appear to have any. Most of the spam I get *other than* from a mailing-list comes from address-harvesting Web crawlers. (Aside: Remember when Lycos was run by people who knew Greek? None of this *dog* nonsense ...) 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 ------------------------------ From: Darryl Smith Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 09:23:47 +1000 Subject: Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy G'Day, Here in NSW, Australia one of the local FM stations advertises where speed traps are on the radio every morning. The Police did not like it, but there was nothing they could do about it, which they found when then went to court. In New Zealand there is a case where some people put up a sign in front of a speed trap, saying 'Speed Trap Ahead'. The case was lost by the police when they tried to charge the people who put up the sign. The reasoning was that preventing someone from commiting a crime is not in itself a crime!!! In addition in Australia, one of the radars is in the 10 GHz band. This is actually a secondary allocation. Hams also have this allocation. However all the anti-posession of radar detector laws are state, whereas ham laws are federal, and our constitution says that state laws cannot overule federal laws -- which means I can have in my posession a radar detector, for propergation experiments :-) As for the road toll, in the last 20 years in NSW the road toll has been going down. Something like 10,000 people are now alive because of this. That is 0.2% of the population. The reasons? Random Breath Testing, with penalties to suit. Police targeting speeding. And police targeting people driving more than two hours without a break [ This long weekend they have 'Stop, Revive' survive' stations open with toilets, free coffee and Kit Kats.] We also cannot use cell phones whilst driving over here, without hands free. I have one comment to make here. I have a ham radio in the car, with a foot shitch for the PTT, and a hands free mike. There are times when I have been talking and then realised that I have not been taking much attention to the road ... Darryl Smith, VK2TDS POBox 169 Ingleburn NSW 2565 Australia Mobile Number 0412 929 634 [+61 4 12 929 634 International] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 10:44:46 -0700 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On 30 Sep 1999, Adam H. Kerman wrote: > Steven wrote: >> So long as they don't work this deal with other countries then anyone >> can continue to get a foreign license/international license, valid in >> the states, for a very modest fee. > Don't try this at home. Rather, don't try this in the place in which > you live. Generally, if you are a permanent resident (regardless of > whether or not you are a citizen), you must obtain driving privileges > through the local jurisdiction. By the treaty that created the > international license, it isn't valid at home. More importantly, there is no such thing as an "International License". The only thing that exists is an international driving permit, which is a translation of your locally-issued driver's license and which is not valid without your locally-issued driver's license. Basically, it simply tells the police that this foreign-language document you're carrying is a driver's license, and indicates the country that issued it and the details. A US-issued international driving permit is absolutely useless and invalid in the USA. There's two forms of the "international license" scam. In one, they just sell you a international permit and let you find out on your own that it's worthless. In the other, they sell you a foreign license and foreign permit, usually from some banana republic, so it looks legal. However, as you'll discover in prison, the banana republic will tell the US government that they did not issue the license, and that the number comes from stolen blank license stock (more likely, provided by a bribed clerk). By the way, the Drivers License Compact has been around for many years, and is generally A Good Thing. Previously, if you were pulled over for speeding in another state, you were tossed into the slammer until you were brought up to a magistrate and paid the fine. Under the Drivers License Compact, they just give you a ticket and send you on your way. -- Mark -- * RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State. * * Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message. * Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 21:12:26 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Dana Paxson spake thusly and wrote: > I checked the data on Rochester, New York, (my home area) and > found the same set of traps I've known about for years ... and a few > I didn't. I remember reading somewhere that the police like that web site because drivers slow down in their area. (Thus making the area safer which is their goal.) 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: robl@macwhiz.com (Rob Levandowski) Subject: Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy Organization: MacWhiz Technologies Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 08:33:04 -0400 In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to dwpaxson@acm.org: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for pointing out that very good > site. Since I do not drive a car -- I don't know how to drive -- that > site was interesting to me but not something I personally would study > in detail as a motorist might do. I think it is too bad that police > have nothing better to do than hide in bushes and give out tickets to > guys for some minor infraction that is legal in the other 49 states, > but illegal in that little town .. it almost reminds me of the way > they handle arrests for having illegal drugs: police get to keep all > the money, the drugs, the automobile and everything else. If illegal > drugs are that bad for the community (I agree they are) then shouldn't > the money and other things of value seized be given to drug rehab > programs and drug education services? Ditto the money the police > get in those speed trap things; the money should go to driver's edu- > cation programs for teenagers instead of into their own coffers. > Otherwise people get the impression there is just a lot of politics > and greed involved. PAT] Pat, You (and interested Digest readers) should check out the book "A Speeder's Guide to Avoiding Tickets," written by retired New York State Trooper James M. Eagan. (ISBN 0380807580) Mr. Eagan's rationale for writing a book that essentially gives people help in exceeding the speed limit without getting a ticket, is that he feels the nature of speed enforcement is hypocritical. If it were about enforcing the law, you'd get pulled over for doing 56 in a 55. Instead, there's a variable "leeway" that is not well defined. It's about the revenue. He has some very good ideas, and most especially, he details what you should do if you see an officer trying to pull you over: turn on your interior lights if it's dark out; wave your right arm to let him know you see him, put on your turn signal indicator; merge right leaving room for his car and understanding that he may be moving much faster than you -- you should speed up if you need to in order to avoid causing the officer to slam on his brakes; slow down gradually, the officer had to move pretty fast to catch up to you, and his brakes are probably already heated up from slowing down for people that didn't get out of the way; make sure you pull off somewhere safe, where the cars can be seen (i.e., not just after the brow of a hill or a corner, not on a bridge, etc.); pull as far off the road as you can; roll down the window well before he gets there; don't root around inside the car before the officer steps up to your window -- wait calmly with your hands on the wheel or in plain sight; don't call the officer "sir" -- it sounds insincere, call them "officer" or better yet, "deputy," "trooper," etc. as appropriate, or best of all, by their rank if you can identify it; if your ID is in the glovebox, leave it open, but if it's in the center console, close it after retrieving your information -- this way the officer can see there's no gun in the glovebox, and not have to worry you're going to grab a gun out of an open center console ... these are the big tips that I remember. The idea is, if you do all the right things, not only will you put the cop at ease, but you may also cause him to come to the conclusion that you are an off-duty cop, and therefore have him let you off easy. Since you never *said* anything about being a cop, it's not imperson- ation. It's just that the average citizen doesn't know how to act during a traffic stop ... Rob Levandowski robl@macwhiz.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #453 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 4 17:08:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA11413; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 17:08:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 17:08:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910042108.RAA11413@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #454 TELECOM Digest Mon, 4 Oct 99 17:08:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 454 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #202, October 4, 1999 (Angus TeleManagement) Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? (Leonard Erickson) Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? (Joseph T. Adams) Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? (Richard D.G. Cox) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Jeremy Greene) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (The Old Bear) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Dave Garland) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Leonard Erickson) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Bruce Wilson) Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter (David Charles) Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter (Alan Fowler) 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, 4 Oct 1999 11:08:20 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #202, October 4, 1999 TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement's Weekly Telecom Newsbulletin http://www.angustel.ca Number 202: October 4, 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/ Sprint Canada .................. http://www.sprintcanada.ca/ Teleglobe Business Services........ http://www.teleglobe.ca/ Telus Communications.................. http://www.telus.com/ TigerTel Services ................. http://www.tigertel.com/ ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Call-Net Chair Slams Crescendo ** Bell Canada to Buy Majority of Aliant Shares ** Payphone Firm Ordered to Stop Misleading Ads ** Bell and Union Settle Pay Equity Fight ** Oil Companies Ban Cellphones at Pumps ** Optel in DSL Joint Venture ** CRTC Reduces Local Loop Service Charges ** Rate Set for Access to Municipal Hydro Poles ** Bell Canada Tests DSL TV Distribution ** Bell Negotiating to Buy Telus Stake in Sympatico ** Three Ontario Exchanges to Get Number Portability ** Teleglobe IDD Rates Deregulated ** Cantel Plans Network Upgrade ** Clearnet Adds 100 Minutes for $5 ** Microcell Adds Time to Prepaid Service ** Further Private-Line Routes Deregulated ** Terms for LD Competition in the North ** Teleglobe Cuts Earnings Forecast ** BCE Emergis Units Sold ** Executive Appointments ** Canquest, Bruce Offer Prepaid Wireless ** Carleton U Opens DSP Lab ** Chandran Heads New Nortel Unit ** Why the Turmoil at Call-Net, Telus? ============================================================ CALL-NET CHAIR SLAMS CRESCENDO: In a letter to shareholders, Lawrence Tapp, Chairman of Call-Net Enterprises, says that the current takeover bid by Crescendo Investments will "promote fire-sale prices" for the company. Crescendo, he says, wants to make a "quick trading profit at the expense of Call-Net long-term shareholders, employees, and customers." (See Telecom Update #201) ** Microcell says that two of its shareholders, Telesystem and Groupe Videotron, are in talks to buy all or part of Call-Net's 11% share in the PCS company. ** Call-Net has named former MCI executive Kevin J. Bennis as Executive VP and Chief Operating Officer, and as President and CEO of Call-Net's U.S. operations. BELL CANADA TO BUY MAJORITY OF ALIANT SHARES: Bell Canada Says it will offer $27 a share to buy up to 15.8 million of The outstanding common shares of Aliant (the company formed by the merger of Bruncor, Island Tel, MTT, and NewTel: see Telecom Update #186), to increase its ownership from 41% to over 51%. Bell will finance the deal, to close by December 31, through a combination of debt and equity to be issued to Bell's shareholders, BCE and Ameritech. PAYPHONE FIRM ORDERED TO STOP MISLEADING ADS: The federal Competition Tribunal has issued an interim order requiring Mississauga-based Universal Payphone Systems to stop using "misleading representations" when promoting its payphone business opportunity. BELL AND UNION SETTLE PAY EQUITY FIGHT: Bell Canada and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union have reached a $59-Million settlement in their five-year-old pay equity dispute, which was due to be heard by the Human Rights Tribunal this fall. In July, the Supreme Court refused to hear Bell's challenge against the Tribunal's authority to hear the case. OIL COMPANIES BAN CELLPHONES AT PUMPS: Despite the absence of any documented problems, Canada's oil companies are urging customers to turn off their mobile telephones while using gas pumps. Imperial Oil (Esso) will post signs at pumps; Petro- Canada, Shell, and Sunoco are advising retailers to tell customers not to use the phones. OPTEL IN DSL JOINT VENTURE: OCI Communications, parent of CLEC Optel Communications, has formed a joint venture with U.S.-based Rhythms NetConnections to offer high-speed DSL Internet access to businesses and service providers across Canada. CRTC REDUCES LOCAL LOOP SERVICE CHARGES: Decision 99-15 reduces telco service charges for each CLEC local loop order in Bell Canada territory from $112.50 to $100 (business) and $50 (residence). In other telco territories the charge drops from $84.50 to $80 (business) and $40 (residence). The business rate applies to apartment buildings. http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/02/d99-15.htm RATE SET FOR ACCESS TO MUNICIPAL HYDRO POLES: The CRTC says it has jurisdiction under the Telecom Act to set the rates which municipal power utilities charge cablecos for renting space on hydro poles, and sets the annual rate at $15.89 per pole. (Decision 99-13) http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/02/d99-13en.htm BELL CANADA TESTS DSL TV DISTRIBUTION: Bell Canada is using Digital Subscriber Line technology from Waterloo, Ontario- based PixStream in trials which deliver ExpressVu's TV and music channels over standard phone wires in two Toronto apartment buildings. BELL NEGOTIATING TO BUY TELUS STAKE IN SYMPATICO: According to published reports, BCT.Telus is discussing with Bell Canada the possible sale to Bell of its 16.2% stake in MediaLinx Interactive, which owns the Sympatico Web site and brand name. THREE ONTARIO EXCHANGES TO GET NUMBER PORTABILITY: Three additional Ontario exchanges will be equipped for number portability this fall: Stoney Creek (October 28), Aurora (November 10), and Markham (November 10). (See Telecom Update #201) TELEGLOBE IDD RATES DEREGULATED: The CRTC has deregulated Teleglobe's wholesale GlobeaccessTel service and any retail Canada-overseas international direct dial services it may choose to offer. (Decision 99-14) http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/02/d99-14.htm CANTEL PLANS NETWORK UPGRADE: Rogers Cantel has signed a $500 Million equipment contract with Ericsson Canada. The equipment will be used to upgrade Cantel's network in preparation for next generation wireless data services. CLEARNET ADDS 100 MINUTES FOR $5: Clearnet's PCS service now offers a minimum of 200 minutes (up from 100) of local calling a month on its Talk and Talk-a-Lot plans; the monthly charge is now $5 more. MICROCELL ADDS TIME TO PREPAID SERVICE: Microcell has increased the number of minutes included in its prepaid "Fidomatic" PCS offerings. The company now offers 225 minutes (up from 142) for $50, and 100 minutes (up from 71) for $25. FURTHER PRIVATE LINE ROUTES DEREGULATED: In Order 99-913, the CRTC deregulates additional High Capacity and Digital Data Service interexchange private line services offered by the ex-Stentor telcos. (See Telecom Update #183) http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/04/o99-0913.htm TERMS FOR LD COMPETITION IN THE NORTH: In Public Notice 99- 21, the CRTC opens a proceeding to set the terms and conditions for toll competition in Northwestel territory. The process will include regional consultations and a public hearing, with a decision by the end of 2000. To participate, notify the CRTC by December 15. http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/03/pn99-21.htm TELEGLOBE CUTS EARNINGS FORECAST: Teleglobe Inc says its 1999 profit will be US 48 to 50 cents per share, about half of its original estimate. The company cites higher expenses at Excel, reduced revenues from Excel's former business service unit, and reduced margins on international voice traffic. BCE EMERGIS UNITS SOLD: BCE Emergis has sold its TotalNet Internet subsidiary to PSINet, and its sports and leisure division to MicroTempus. Emergis says the divestitures will allow it to focus on e-commerce. BELL SELLS ALARM BUSINESS TO AMERITECH: Bell Canada has sold its Bell Gardium security subsidiary to SecurityLink, a unit of Ameritech. Bell will continue to market security services through its Bell World and Espace Bell stores. CANQUEST, BRUCE OFFER PREPAID WIRELESS: Independent telco Bruce Municipal Telephone Services has contracted with Chatham-based Canquest Communications to offer prepaid cellular in Bruce's operating territory on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. CARLETON U OPENS DSP LAB: Carleton University in Ottawa, in partnership with Nortel Networks and Texas Instruments, has opened a $500,000 Digital Signal Processing laboratory. CHANDRAN HEADS NEW NORTEL UNIT: Nortel Networks has combined wireless, wireline, optical, circuit, and packet capabilities in a new Service Provider and Carrier Group, headed by Nortel Executive VP Clarence Chandran. WHY THE TURMOIL AT CALL-NET, TELUS? Takeover fight at Call-Net; top executives quit at BCT.Telus -- Ian Angus discusses the reasons for the upheaval at two of Canada's major phone companies in the October issue of Telemanagement, available this week. Also in Telemanagement #169: ** Managing Customer E-Mail: Success Secrets of Effective Call Centers ** 17 Contenders to Bid in Canada's First Wireless Auction ** Cisco Unveils IP-Based PBX and ACD Systems To subscribe to Telemanagement call 1-800-263-4415, ext 225, or visit the Telemanagement page at http://www.angustel.ca. ============================================================ 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 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. ============================================================ ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 23:30:24 PST Organization: Shadownet steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) writes: > shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) spake thusly and wrote: >> Maybe not, but I *distinctly* recall a federal law passed about ten >> years back making it illegal to obtain access to or use of a computer >> by using a bogus id. > It is a beautiful thought, but someone sending an email has hardly > gained access. As I recall the wording, the use of a forged ID to get your system to do *anything* (including forward mail you wouldn't otherwise) would fall under the law. But even if I'm right, it's not "showy" enough to interest a federal prosecutor. :-( Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: Joseph T. Adams Subject: Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? Date: 4 Oct 1999 12:01:05 GMT Organization: Quality Data Division of JTAE Steve Winter wrote: > shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) spake thusly and wrote: >> Maybe not, but I *distinctly* recall a federal law passed about ten >> years back making it illegal to obtain access to or use of a computer >> by using a bogus id. > It is a beautiful thought, but someone sending an email has hardly > gained access. They have, albeit indirectly. Only a small bit of access, granted, but stealing just a little bit of money (or time) is still illegal. Joe ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:48 BST From: Richard@office.mandarin.com (Richard D G Cox) Subject: Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? Reply-To: Richard@office.mandarin.com Organization: Mandarin Technology When shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) originally said: >> I *distinctly* recall a federal law passed about ten years back making >> it illegal to obtain access to or use of a computer by using a bogus id steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) replied as follows: > It is a beautiful thought, but someone sending an email has hardly > gained access. The UK Computer Misuse Act quite specifically refers to "modifying the information stored in a computer" rather than just to "access"; clearly sending email does just that, and if the actual SMTP access would have been blocked if the sender had used their real From: ID, then arguably that access might indeed be an offence under UK law. Of course, until such a case is brought and if necessary appealed, nobody will be sure! I should add that the CMA applies regardless of the location from where the access to the computer is obtained. Richard Cox (remove the "office" part of my e-mail address for genuine e-mail only!) ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Greene Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 23:48:46 -0400 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Javier Henderson wrote in message news:telecom19. 451.10@telecom-digest.org: > Given our ever-increasing reliance on DTMF-controlled > telephone "things" (banking, voice mail, airline departure/arrival > information, movie tickets, you name it), at least in the US, and also > given that most (all?) telcos don't charge extra for DTMF anymore, I'm > sure most telephones in use are touch-tone. > The question is, for how much longer will CO's in the US > support pulse dialing? > I'm guessing "for a long time", but I'm still curious ... Ha! Tell that to Bell Atlantic. They will still soak you for $4 to have touch tone on a trunk line in Massachusetts. Funny thing is, even if you ask them to remove it, you can still make Touch tone calls. (At least on a DMS switch.) Basically it is a total rip-off. I wonder if BA would qualify for one of those "RICO" prosecutions ... Residential touch-tone was $.98 until the DTE ruled that Bell did not have to pay reciprocal compensation on calls to an ISP served by a CLEC. In a sudden moment of generosity, BA "passed the savings on" and cut the charge in half to $.49. Why does anyone tolerate this? Is this charge supposedly to pay for digital switch upgrades? There haven't been any analog switches in Mass. for a year or two. Haven't the LEC's paid off the costs of installing digital switches by selling Centrex and CLASS services? And doesn't Touch tone use less resources on the switch? On the subject of voicemail systems requiring touch tone: I worked for a company that had a dinky little voice processing system, and it could deceipher pulse signalling just fine. You just couldn't press the * or # keys. -Jeremy ------------------------------ From: oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 00:57:17 -0400 Organization: The Arctos Group - http://www.arctos.com/arctos Jack Decker writes: > In Michigan, for example, virtually all of the phone > companies (large and small) charge extra for Touch Tone. This charge is > something I'd love to see eliminated, especially since Ameritech (the > largest phone company in the state) no longer gives new customers (or > customers that move, etc.) the right to order service without Touch > Tone. . . . I had the pleasure of working with a regional Internet Service Provider which maintained several thousand POTS lines used for dial-in only to its modems located in dozens of locations. A review of the billing for these lines showed that Bell Atlantic routinely provisioned them to support tone dialing at an additional cost of about one dollar per line per month -- or many, many thousands of dollars per year. Needless to say, Bell Atlantic was reluctant to remove the unordered "feature" and even more reluctant to rebate the sums paid in the past. Of course, if you want a telephone line that just lets you talk digitally to the central office switch with no need for things like AC ring signal voltages, pulse- or tone- conversions, dial-tone generation, analog audio signals to report call progress ("ringing"/ "busy"), etc., you can order an ISDN BRI. But that will cost you a lot more. This seem to follow the same logic as charging higher prices for un-leaded gasoline, non-caloric sweeteners, non-fat foods, etc. I guess the magic of the new economic millenium is that business can charge the customer more for things it doesn't provide. ;) ------------------------------ From: dave.garland@wizinfo.com (Dave Garland) Date: 04 Oct 99 01:22:19 -0600 Subject: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Organization: Wizard Information Jack Decker wrote: > Flawed assumption. In Michigan, for example, virtually all of the > phone companies (large and small) charge extra for Touch Tone. This > charge is something I'd love to see eliminated, Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. Until a couple of years ago, USWest in Minnesota charged extra for Touchtone. Then they eliminated the charge, while simultaneously raising the base rate, heralding the change as "a reduction in cost for the majority of subscribers", i.e. people who had been paying $2.50/mo extra for Touchtone. Of course, it was a rate increase for people who hadn't been buying that option. -Dave ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 23:22:44 PST Organization: Shadownet Javier Henderson writes: > Given our ever-increasing reliance on DTMF-controlled > telephone "things" (banking, voice mail, airline departure/arrival > information, movie tickets, you name it), at least in the US, and also > given that most (all?) telcos don't charge extra for DTMF anymore, I'm > sure most telephones in use are touch-tone. > The question is, for how much longer will CO's in the US > support pulse dialing? > I'm guessing "for a long time", but I'm still curious ... On older exchanges, for some years yet. They (probably) aren't yet at the point where they can afford to upset all the "old folks" who still have wired in dial phones. But since pulse dialing definitely uses more resources (in the sense that the dial decoder gear is tied up longer) there *is* some small pressure to get rid of it. I expect that in many places, it'll be done by raising the charge for having pulse dialing supported on your line. And eventually they'll offer some sort of swap deal to get the old phones replaced. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 04 Oct 1999 12:39:55 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? > I'm not sure how the tarrifs are nowadays. The touch tone charge > is being dropped, but not quite yet. The Iowa Utilities Board ordered it dropped in Iowa in about 1987. Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ From: d_c_h@my-deja.com (David Charles) Subject: Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 16:33:32 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I have come across at least two different systems for alarm monitoring or meter reading over a telephone line which should no affect normal operation. I understand that these are both used in some countries in Europe, but I am not sure how widely. The first of these uses an extension of the protocols used to carry caller ID. These extensions allow data to be sent in both directions and to allow operation without a ringing signal. If the user attempts to make a call, the operation of this system is interrupted; I presume that this would also occur for an incoming call. The second sytem uses signals at lower frequencies than the voiceband (below 200 Hz). This system is intended to operate even during during a call without interference in either direction (although I presume it would not function during ringing). David Charles ------------------------------ From: amfowler@melbpc.org.au (Alan Fowler) Subject: Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 05:45:25 GMT Organization: Melbourne PC User Group Inc, Australia blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) wrote: > My only direct experience with one of these setups was when it was > installed at my dad's house; and it may be he had to sign something in > conjunction with that. I know we were told the water company > initiated the call to the box and that we wouldn't be aware of it > happening when it did. The only way I could see that working would be > if some form of distinctive ring, to which the phones or other > connected devices wouldn't respond, were used. Bruce, I'd be more inclined to use an audio frequency tone burst to wake up the water meter and get it to send its data. Regards, ,-._|\ Alan Fowler. (Alan M. Fowler FIEAust CPEng) / Oz \ Mail Address: PO Box 1008G, North Balwyn 3104 Vic, AUSTRALIA. \_,--.x/ Phone: +613-9857-7128 Member, Melbourne PC User Group. v Home page: http://www.emucities.com.au/member/whitethorn ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #454 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 4 18:58:23 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id SAA16176; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 18:58:23 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 18:58:23 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910042258.SAA16176@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #455 TELECOM Digest Mon, 4 Oct 99 18:58:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 455 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple (The Old Bear) Enonymous Offers Free Online Privacy Protection (Monty Solomon) QWEST Circuit Delivery Failures (Robert Harrold) Re: A Way to Harvest Numbers (Richard D.G. Cox) Re: Multiplexing Internal Wiring (ellis@ftel.net) Re: May Your Net Connection Be as Fast as Mine (Kevin DeMartino) Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? (Barry Margolin) Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Changing Domain Registrars (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: oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear) Subject: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 00:35:53 -0400 Organization: The Arctos Group - http://www.arctos.com/arctos A high-minded protest: School, others in Lexington protest plan for Microwave Tower in Steeple By Caroline Louise Cole LEXINGTON - On its white and wood shake steeple, there is no visible sign that construction on a controversial microwave antenna project has begun at the Follen Community Church. But on the side of a construction dumpster sitting by the church's driveway someone scrawled an angry message: "Blood money." The message exemplifies the intense animosity the project has engendered, causing some members to leave the church and souring relations between Follen and its neighbors. "The level of anger this has stirred up has just stunned us," said the Reverend Lucinda Duncan, pastor of Follen, a Unitarian Universalist church whose founder was among the first to speak against slavery in the early 19th century. "We can't say enough how sad it is that we have alienated good people who are our friends, neighbors, and church members." Duncan said at least five people have left the church over the antenna issue. And officials of the neighboring Waldorf School reported last week that students from as many as two dozen families would leave the school due to health concerns if the antennas are installed. Using church steeples to hide microwave antennas has become, in recent years, a popular way for church congregations to make easy money and communications companies to site equipment without blemishing the New England landscape. But what started out 21 months ago as a seemingly innocuous revenue- raising endeavor for the 160-year-old congregation has turned into a nightmare for the church and its leaders. It has led to picketing by parents of students from the Waldorf School and people living in the East Lexington community who fear the antennas will create a serious health hazard. It has brought officials of the school to the point of suing the church and the town of Lexington. It has left church leaders powerless to renege on their antenna agreement with Nextel Communications, which refuses to stop the project despite the animosity it has engendered. It has pitted two of the town's most liberal institutions against each other, rattling the peace of what has been a quiet, close-knit section of this historic town. When Nextel approached the church's parish council with an offer to pay $27,600 a year to lease the spire for 20 years, Duncan said the discussion centered on "whether our little church should get involved with big business." The church approved the lease overwhelmingly in April 1998 and then the town followed, granting Nextel a special permit that June. The public hearings the town held prior to issuing its permit were the first time the church learned it had done something its neighbors didn't like, Duncan said. That's when residents and parents aired their concerns that their children's health would suffer from microwaves coming from the antennas. "I think these antennas are extremely dangerous to health," George Eastman, a spokesman for the Waldorf School board of directors, said this week, expressing fears that have been part of the debate since it inception. Eastman, who has two children at the school, said the antennas "emit a low-frequency radio wave which penetrates the fluid organs ... the brain, kidney and spleen," and can cause cancer. After these fears were presented to the church leadership, the parish council asked Nextel twice to release it from its 20-year contract. "They told us politely, 'No,'" Duncan said, noting that even in the face of the controversy, a majority of the church's 320 members "are comfortable with the safety of this technology." "But it is important to us to be good neighbors, so on that basis, we asked to be released from the contract," Duncan said, adding that the church "has a high number of physicists, scientists, and engineers who are comfortable with the technology." Patricia McSweeney, a spokeswoman for Nextel, which has a regional office in Lexington, said this week that the company cannot find another suitable location. McSweeney said the vast amount of studies on the emissions that would come from the antennas show there are no hazards. "Nextel would not do anything to endanger the children at Waldorf School," McSweeney said, noting the antennas are focused away from the school. Still the issue has been so divisive, Duncan said, the church's lawyer pored over the contract to see if he could find a loophole that would let the church out of its agreement with Nextel. "He concluded there was no possible way for us to break it and that if we did not honor it, each elected lay officer could be sued individually along with the church," Duncan said. "The idea that the church and our other assets could be lost is too high a price to pay, given the church's heritage." Waldorf School officials say they have not exhausted their legal options and plan to ask a judge to block the project, arguing the building permit was issued illegally. But in the end, they are hoping the church stops the project on its own. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 03:55:18 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Enonymous Offers Free Online Privacy Protection By Eric Auchard MENLO PARK, Calif. (Reuters) - Online window shopping often comes at a steep price in terms of consumer privacy. Many computer users ignore just how much personal data they give away to marketers when they surf the Web. Setting to build a business out of solving such threats to privacy, Enonymous.com, a closely-held San Diego start-up, Monday plans to unveil a free online privacy utility that protects the identities of shoppers on the Web from marketers. http://news.lycos.com/stories/Technology/Internet/19991003RTNET-INTERNET-PRIVACY.asp [TELECOM Digest Editor's note: Why is this new service any different than what I offer via http://telecom-digest.org/secret-surfer.html ? My service offers the same thing, at no charge. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Robert Harrold Subject: QWEST Circuit Delivery Failures Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 16:02:15 -0400 Organization: Epoch Internet Has anyone else had problems with QWest being Extremely late delivering T-1 connections? We have had a circuit on order for over four months now and were wondering if anyone else was encountering the same 'It should be in Next week' stall ... Robert Harrold Mr. Micro Computer Systems root@mrmicro.net ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:48 BST From: Richard@office.mandarin.com (Richard D.G. Cox) Subject: Re: A Way to Harvest Numbers Reply-To: Richard@office.mandarin.com Organization: Mandarin Technology d_c_h@my-deja.com (David Charles) wrote: > I was in the UK recently and saw an advert for a service of the type > that would usually be on a premium rate number, but was on an 0870 > number. Calls to such numbers are charged as national calls within > the UK and at the normal rate to the UK from elsewhere). This seemed > unusual, however I assumed that the service provider received a cut > of the termination charges for the calls (as the "free" ISPs in the > UK do), and that is how they make their profit. There is normally a termination payment to customers receiving calls on UK 087(0) numbers; however in some cases the "payment" is dressed up as a rebate on charges for other telecomms services so that the called party can almost-truthfully claim they are not receiving income from the calls. > I tried ringing the number, from Ireland, using a pre-paid calling card > and received a recorded announcement. This said that the service could > not be used on the 0870 number if caller ID was withheld and suggested > ringing again without withholding caller ID or ringing a premium rate > number to access the service anonymously. There is at least one provider that offers services "of the type that would usually be on a premium rate number" by charging for them on a bill sent directly to the renter of the telephone line. Some of those bills are reported to have a remarkably similar appearance to those sent out by one of the real Telcos - but that's not illegal over here. To do this, such businesses would need to be able to obtain the calling number(s). > I had not withheld caller ID, but it would be unlikely that it would > have been delivered on an international call on a pre-paid calling card. Some calling card routing platforms do send the "number withheld" signal when according to the code of practice, they shouldn't. But as they are no more than re-originators, the number that would otherwise be sent will be that of the platform, not of the caller (the technology they use is similar to that sometimes used in the US for cellular call origination.) > I would therefore guess that the real source of income for the service > provider may be selling lists of numbers that have called the service > for targeted telemarketing. I dread to think what "targeted telemarketing" might take place if linked to *some* of the premium-rate types of calls! But in fact any use of the calling numbers in this way would almost certainly be an offence against the UK's Data Protection Act, and I don't think that is likely to happen. If David Charles would like to mail me directly in total confidence with the numbers concerned (removing the "office" part of my email address) I can then see if any of them match any cases we have on file. Richard Cox ------------------------------ From: ellis@ftel.net Subject: Re: Multiplexing Internal Wiring Date: 4 Oct 1999 17:31:53 GMT Organization: Franklin interNet http://www.franklin.net In article , Linc Madison wrote: > Not in California, it wouldn't. The service is not tariffed or > offered, probably because of concerns over exacerbating the already > horrific numbering crunch. > Maybe after we get settled into thousands-block pooling and other > conservation measures, we might be able to get distinctive ringing. Until I moved last year I certainly had distinctive ringing in California (GTE). Has it been withdrawn? http://www.fnet.net/~ellis/photo/ ------------------------------ From: Kevin DeMartino Subject: Re: May Your Net Connection Be as Fast as Mine Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 15:29:54 -0400 In V19 #448, Jack Decker said: > Well here is a thought for you. Suppose that the government were to > pass a law saying that as of a certain date, no more copper or > aluminum wire could be buried or strung overhead in public > rights-of-way by any utility company EXCEPT for three purposes > (which he lists). Specifically EXCLUDED would be any communications- > related use (except for emergency repair). While I sympathize with Jack's desire to replace copper with fiber, I don't think it's a good idea to engineer telecommunications systems by government mandate. My objections are mainly ideological, but forget about ideology. Mandating fiber as a replacement for copper is unnecessary. Broadband networks are in the process of being developed without any government mandate. In V19 #448, David Devereaux-Weber points out a special report in the October issue of Scientific American on broadband Internet access: > http://www.sciam.com/featarch.html There are basically five ways for implementing broadband Internet access, which I am defining as the ability to handle video streams at a data rate of 1.5 Mb/s or greater. (See my posting in V19 #449.) These five approaches are summarized below. (Note that much of the information listed below came from other sources besides Scientific American, and the conclusions are mine). Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL): -- With ADSL technology, broadband signals are transmitted over existing phone lines. Data rates of 1.5 Mb/s or greater can be achieved over about 80% of the existing twisted pair lines in the U.S. using ADSL techniques. Hybrid fiber-coax (HFC): -- With HFC, feeder cables between the headend and the distribution nodes are fiber, while the distribution cables from these nodes to the subscribers are coax. In a particular neighborhood, HFC can simultan- eously support broadband Internet access for a limited number of subscribers. Close to 90% of the household in the U.S. are passed by coax cable, although the percentage of households actually subscribing to cable is considerably less. Thus, HFC can potentially provide broadband Internet access for up to 90% of U.S. households. Fixed wireless: -- Systems such as the local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) provide radio links between a node and subscribers within a radius of a few miles. The capacity of the system must be shared among the subscribers within the line of sight of the node, which probably makes this type of system unsuitable for providing broadband access in areas densely populated by subscribers. However, an LMDS type of system can be very useful for extending broadband access into sparsely populated areas, particularly areas where ADSL and HFC are not available. This could be particularly important if the government mandates (God forbid) universal Internet access. Satellite: -- Satellite systems have much bigger footprints than terrestrial radio systems. In a geosynchronous system, where the satellite maintains a fixed position relative to a point on the earth, the footprint can cover most of the continent. This is great for video broadcasting, but not so good for providing broadband Internet access, where the system capacity must be divided up among all the subscribers within the footprint. However, for sparsely populated remote areas with an underdeveloped telecom infrastructure (Siberia, for example), a satellite system may be this best way to provide Internet access. Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH): -- If cost were no object, FTTH would clearly be the way to go. As the article in Scientific American by Paul Shumate points out, fiber costs are coming down. A key factor in reducing fiber costs is the capability of a single fiber to carry many signals. Unlike the case of ADSL where each subscriber has his/her own twisted pair, a fiber can be shared by many subscribers (except for the last 100 feet or so from the curb to the house), similar to the situation with coax cable. ADSL, HFC, and fixed wireless can be viewed as interim solutions on the way to FTTH. I would guess that in the next several years ADSL and HFC will provide 80-90% of the broadband Internet access for fixed (non-mobile) sub- scribers in the U.S., mostly in urban/suburban areas. (I don't want to sound like a chauvinist by focussing on the U.S., but I don't know much about telecom in other countries.) I'm guessing that fixed wireless will pick up the remaining 10-20%, mostly in rural areas. I don't see much of a role for satellite in providing broadband Internet access in the U.S. However, satellite systems can be expected to continue to broadcast video. Kevin DeMartino Dynamics Research Corporation ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? Organization: GTE Internetworking, Cambridge, MA Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 21:06:47 GMT In article , Richard D.G. Cox wrote: > The UK Computer Misuse Act quite specifically refers to "modifying the > information stored in a computer" rather than just to "access"; clearly > sending email does just that, and if the actual SMTP access would have > been blocked if the sender had used their real From: ID, then arguably > that access might indeed be an offence under UK law. Of course, until > such a case is brought and if necessary appealed, nobody will be sure! Generally, fake From addresses have little to do with getting around filters and gaining access (the spammer could easily obtain a new, valid address that's unlikely to be in anyone's filters yet). They're usually used to prevent the spammer from being mail-bombed, both by irate recipients and from the ordinary bounces that will result from all the obsolete addresses in their lists. I think it would be very difficult to get most spamming prosecuted under any of the existing computer misuse or computer trespass laws. 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. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 12:01:24 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) wrote: >> Revocation. The registrant agrees that Network Solutions shall have the >> right in its sole discretion to revoke, suspend, transfer or otherwise >> modify a domain name registration upon thirty (30) calendar days prior >> written notice ... > That is astounding. How do you spell m o n o p l y? > It is actually quite scary, unless of course NSI is perpetually run by > honest and benevolent souls with impeccable judgment and integrity ... > but then, they would be as upset with such a policy ... scary stuff, > very scary stuff. > Steve (who at least has some of his domains service marked and trade > marked.) NSI's policy monopoly has simply been transferred to ICANN; its anti-user contract, cloned via the ICANN Registrar Accreditation Policy and Agreement ... New registrars are only sales reps for NSI, and PR fodder for ICANN ... Your service and trademarks are useless in this arena, since no challenge from another party is needed for your domain names to be "canceled, deleted or transferred" at any registrar's discretion. tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) wrote: > I haven't seen this addressed yet, but is there a process that will > allow a person to change their domain registrar away from NSI? (I, > for one am *very* disgusted with the way they do business and want to > get rid of them.) What's the point? All the new registrars, including Core's, have the same anti-user policies as NSI ... plus you've always been able to transfer your domain name from sales rep to sales rep among the thousands of service companies (ISP's etc.) that sell domain names ... there's no difference now except that registrars -- new sales reps -- have been added ... But you're not moving away from NSI -- it remains the .com registry ... Rather than quibble over details, why don't those of you who DON'T agree that "your domain name can be canceled, deleted or transferred at any time" contact your congressional representatives and complain long and loud till they do something about it ... The coma-like complacency among web site owners, is what's astounding. Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 mailto:joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Publisher of ICB Toll Free News: http://icbtollfree.com Publisher of WhoSells800.com: http://whosells800.com Moderator TOLLFREE-L: http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html President of ICB Consultancy: http://JudithOppenheimer.com: 800 # Acquisition Management, Lost 800 # Retrieval, Litigation Support, Regulatory Navigation, Correlating Trademark and Domain Name Issues. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Judith, as you know I have banged on some of these same people for a long time now with little or no success in getting them to realize what is happening. All I suspect I have accomplished in many cases is to further jeopardize my own well-being in the process. I do not think appealing to the govern- ment is going to solve things. Remember please that the whole Internet thing has been a thorn in their side for many years now. Many is the congress-critter who has responded in an ignorant way to anything involving the net. All they know, and all they care is that the net -- like everything else -- must be kept under control one way or another lest their own empire come toppling down. And as more and more of the traditional ways in which the masses are controlled, via radio, the print media, etc are losing control, the demands made on the congress-critters from those who count, ie the ones with lots of money, are getting louder and louder. I see the solution -- at least a short term solution, for I do not think the pressure to conform is ever going to lessen on us -- is through the use of so-called 'rogue registrars'; registrars who do not act as sales reps for ICANN/NSI and instead attempt to serve the people of the net. I think we have to encourage and assist them in serving as a 'root'. John Levine mentioned registering a couple of the names used by this site with a registrar in Germany who apparently doesn't follow the 'rules' as closely as others. And being in Germany, I assume they are safely outside the reach of ICANN and the United States government. Ditto with registrars in Canada. I guess what I am saying is we may have to rebuild 'root' from scratch as webmasters begin transitioning from one to the other. I would encourage people to hold registrations with a couple places until it has reached the point that the 'rogue' registrars have pretty much built their databases to the point it does not matter what ICANN and its friends at the Internet ('is for everyone') Society have to say about it any longer. Then dump ICANN/NSI/affiliated registrars and let them just fight and bluster and make threats to each other. If they want to insist they are the 'one, true root' let them go ahead and make that claim. PAT] ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Changing Domain Registrars Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 15:08:12 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) spake thusly and wrote: > When I registered telecom-digest.com, telecom-digest.net, and > telecomdigest.org to forestall a rerun of the telecomdigest.net > fiasco, I did it through CORE registrar joker.com in Germany. Their > service is good, and they're a lot cheaper than NSI, too. Are they as reliable and "accepted" as Network Solutions? Would Network Solutions then have to recognize those domains as "taken"? An enquiring mind is a terrible thing ... 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 Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know, that is a good point. I wonder what John Levine might have to say about the idea of netizens attempting to transition 'root' away from its present holders and to (what are now thought of as) 'rogue registrars' and what kind of recognition they would receive from the 'establishment'. Maybe John and/or others will comment on the resulting confusion, if any, as the result of 'non-accredited' (by NSI/ICANN standards) doing their thing. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #455 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 5 17:17:11 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA00467; Tue, 5 Oct 1999 17:17:11 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 17:17:11 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910052117.RAA00467@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #456 TELECOM Digest Tue, 5 Oct 99 16:54:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 456 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Keelan Lightfoot) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Steve Uhrig) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Ed Ellers) Re: Changing Domain Registrars (John R. Levine) Re: QWEST Circuit Delivery Failures (Brian Iler) Re: UK Free ISP and CLID (John R. Levine) Tech Wanted (billx@bigfoot.com) Long Live the Goal of Access for All of Cleveland Freenet (Ronda Hauben) Re: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple (Ed Ellers) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? (G. Randers-Pehrson) Re: The Bad Witch ICANN (Bill Levant) 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, 04 Oct 1999 20:34:21 -0700 Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? From: Keelan Lightfoot Javier Henderson wrote: -chop- > The question is, for how much longer will CO's in the US > support pulse dialing? > I'm guessing "for a long time", but I'm still curious ... I would think that they would support pulse dialing as long as they support POTS service, seeing as pulse dialing requires no additional hardware -- if the exchange can detect an off-hook condition, it should have no problem detecting a pulse. The only overhead required for pulse dialing (I would think) would be in software. (I can't be sure -- I don't know how low-level the software is in a PSTN exchange) In my crusty old PBX (SG-1A), all pulse dialing and off-hook detection is detected by one board -- 'Impulse Analyzer', which Northern Telecom describes as: 'Times on-hook, off-hook, dialing, and flash signals and generates appropriate control signals suitable for use in the system.' Just noticed something -- 'Times on-hook, off-hook, dialing, and **flash** signals' -- a flash is basically a Pulse '1' being dialed. The way I see it, as long as manufacturers of PSTN exchange equipment support 3 way calling, call waiting, etc., they will probably support pulse dialing, and I don't think that they will drop those services any time soon. On another note, I had heard from someone that lives in Edmonton, AB, that after Telus acquired Ed-Tel (I think that was it's name), all their pulse dial phones stopped working. They had to go out and buy 3 *brand new touch tone telephones*. They probably went to a Telus phone-mart too :> I don't want to bash Telus -- they were really nice to me, and a really friendly guy in their repair department was very helpful in unlocking my old rotary payphone, removing the lock, and offering information on the payphone, at no charge :) I guess looking into the obsolete innards of my payphone was a break from staring at the surface-mount/LSI innards of Millenum payphones all the time. I'm not even a Telus customer! :) - Keelan Lightfoot ------------------------------ From: Steve Uhrig Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 18:02:34 -0400 Organization: bright.net Ohio Jeremy Greene wrote: SNIP > Why does anyone tolerate this? Is this charge supposedly to pay for > digital switch upgrades? There haven't been any analog switches in > Mass. for a year or two. Haven't the LEC's paid off the costs of > installing digital switches by selling Centrex and CLASS services? And > doesn't Touch tone use less resources on the switch? No, it takes more. With pulse dialing no additional equipment is needed. With DTMF you need a DTMF receiver. In fact the lack of available DTMF receivers during periods of very heavy usage is often the cause of slow or no dial tone problems. Those with pulse service receive much faster dial tone in this instance because they don't have to wait for a receiver to become available for their call. Leonard Erickson wrote: > But since pulse dialing definitely uses more resources (in the sense > that the dial decoder gear is tied up longer) there *is* some small > pressure to get rid of it. I expect that in many places, it'll be done > by raising the charge for having pulse dialing supported on your line. > And eventually they'll offer some sort of swap deal to get the old > phones replaced. Pulse dialing does not require more switch resources than DTMF. The switch monitors the on hook off hook status of all lines in the switch every few milliseconds regardless of whether the line is in use or idle. Dial pulses are just a series of on hook off hook events which the switch is monitoring for in the first place. DTMF on the other hand requires a DTMF receiver to receive the DTMF tones. Dial pulse does not require any special receiver. In fact in Ohio DTMF lines are programmed as combined dial type instead of tone dialing only. I guess this is just in case you flip the pulse tone switch to pulse by accident, you can still call out. If the line is programmed as DTMF only the switch will ignore dial pulses. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 21:03:36 -0400 Javier Henderson wrote: > Given our ever-increasing reliance on DTMF-controlled telephone > "things" (banking, voice mail, airline departure/arrival information, > movie tickets, you name it), at least in the US, and also given that > most (all?) telcos don't charge extra for DTMF anymore, I'm sure most > telephones in use are touch-tone. BellSouth, at least in Kentucky, still charges *existing* residential customers $1 less per month if they didn't order Touch-Tone dialing, though it's standard on newly ordered lines. > The question is, for how much longer will CO's in the US support pulse > dialing? > I'm guessing "for a long time", but I'm still curious ... "For a long time" is as good a guess as any. All the analog switches still in use have both pulse and tone support; I suspect it's simply a matter of software ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 1999 19:01:35 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Changing Domain Registrars Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> When I registered telecom-digest.com, telecom-digest.net, and >> telecomdigest.org to forestall a rerun of the telecomdigest.net >> fiasco, I did it through CORE registrar joker.com in Germany. Their >> service is good, and they're a lot cheaper than NSI, too. > Are they as reliable and "accepted" as Network Solutions? Would > Network Solutions then have to recognize those domains as "taken"? Well, sure, of course they do. There's a shared registry at whois.crsnic.net and http://www.crsnic.net which lists all domains registered by all registrars. It's run by NSI but it's officially separate from their registrar business. Try these two to see the different registrars I've used: http://www.crsnic.net/cgi-bin/whois?whois_nic=telecom-digest.net http://www.crsnic.net/cgi-bin/whois?whois_nic=telecom-digest.org All domains registered by all registrars go into the same zone files for com/org/net accessible from the standard root servers. They wouldn't be very useful otherwise. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 16:49:15 -0700 From: Brian Iler Subject: Re: QWEST Circuit Delivery Failures Organization: Western NRG, Inc (805) 658-0800 2 questions come to mind: (1) Where are you located (2) Where is the remote end located (if any) The only time I've ever had problems dropping a T-1 with ANY carrier has been with international circuits. If this was happening to me, I'd find out who the sales rep's boss, and his bosses boss were and start raising hell. Good Luck to ya. Brian A. Iler, CCDA Western NRG, Inc Robert Harrold wrote in message news:telecom19.455.3@telecom-digest.org... > Has anyone else had problems with QWest being Extremely late delivering > T-1 connections? We have had a circuit on order for over four months > now and were wondering if anyone else was encountering the same 'It > should be in Next week' stall ... ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 1999 20:05:56 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: UK free ISP and CLID Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> ... the service could not be used on the 0870 number if caller ID was >> withheld and suggested ringing again without withholding caller ID or >> ringing a premium rate number to access the service anonymously. >> I would therefore guess that the real source of income for the service >> provider may be selling lists of numbers that have called the service >> for targeted telemarketing. I doubt it's anything that nefarious, particularly since as noted harvesting CLID for telemarketing isn't legal in the UK. Free ISPs either require no registration, or only the skimpiest Hotmail-style registration. They use CLID so they have some idea of who their users are, and particularly so they can ban the numbers of people who've been spamming or otherwise misbehaving. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: billx@bigfoot.com Subject: Tech Wanted Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 00:40:09 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Cutting edge tech wanted for So. Florida position. Must be experienced on Key, PBX and Voice Mail. Leadership skills required. Call 561 683-0440 and or fax resume 561 683-7985. Ask for Marian. ------------------------------ From: rh120@columbia.edu (Ronda Hauben) Subject: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet Date: 5 Oct 1999 01:05:27 GMT Organization: Columbia University Reply-To: rh120@columbia.edu Cleveland Freenet closed on October 1, 1999 The Cleveland Freenet was something very special in the history of the development of the Internet as it made access to the Internet avaialable to all in the community. It made access available to school children in Cleveland as I learned when I gave a talk at a conference in Cleveland in 1988. The teacher introducing me told me how her students loved being online and communicating with other students. It made access available in special new forms. Unsung pioneers like Dr. Bohl of the St. Silicon Sports Medicine Clinic on the Cleveland Freenet would respond to questions from users with sports medicine problems from the earliest days of St. Silicon Hospital till the closing of the Freenet on October 1, 1999. Dr. Bohl would post the questions sent to him as anonymous posts and would provide a helpful response that was available for all who looked in on the clinic newsgroup. One user had an experience where an injury that more than 20 doctors in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas of Michigan were not able to diagnose and treat was identified by Dr. Bohl. From the email the user wrote to him, he provided information about what the problem was likely to be, along with the proviso that this was general information not a particular diagnosis. Because of his online clinic it was possible to get the needed treatment to cure the injury, and then to even correspond with the doctor via email in an early use of email between patient and doctor. Also all who looked in on the online clinic newsgroup would be able to learn about the nature of sports medicine injuries and the varieties of their treatment from the helpful responses to individual questions posted on the newsgroup. The Freenet made an email mailbox available to each user so they could use and participate in email. Shortly after I signed onto the Cleveland Freenet I had the thrill of receiving a New Year's greeting from a friend in Australia. One of the most important aspects of Cleveland Freenet was when it provided a free and helpful means for its users to explore and to post to Usenet newsgroups. After a post on Freenet I was soon receiving email from numbers of people and also the posts generated interesting and sometimes prolonged discussion. It was only the fact that Cleveland Freenet provided totally free access that made it possible for me to participate in Usenet. And for years afterwards, Cleveland Freenet made it possible to have a connection to Usenet newsgroups. When the green card lawyers wrote their infamous book advising on how to spam the Net, they advised spammers to stay away from the Freenets, warning them of the acceptible use policy of the Freenets which required responsible use from its users. Sometime after I first got onto Cleveland Freenet, a U.S. government official from the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) posted requesting input on what users felt should be the role of the U.S. government in providing access to the Internet to citizens. Many people posted their responses. Several people responded that it was important that all have access, as citizens would be empowered by an ability to be online. Again in 1994 the U.S. government, this time via the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA), sponsored an online conference requesting input from users about their ideas on providing universal access to the Internet. On Cleveland Freenet this conference was carried as a local newsgroup making it easier to participate than in the mailing list form, as the volume of comments was very great. Learning from the experience of the Cleveland Freenet, Canadian Freenets were started. The Freenet movement in Canada soon became a grassroots movement to make access available to all Canadians. Also Freenets were set up in some in European countries, including Finland and Germany. The development of the Cleveland Freenet provided a model for how the U.S. government could encourage and support a low cost means of access to the Internet for all. The U.S. government has missed this opportunity and both the U.S. government and the people of the U.S. have lost something very important. The notion of a system of computer communications networks making email and Usenet access available to all has provided an inspiring and important goal. The global communications that the Internet makes possible and affordable is a very precious treasure and a signficant new development for our times. The Cleveland Freenet has provided a body of experience showing that such a goal is far from impossible. Those who recognize the importance of this goal need to redouble their efforts to make the vision of all having access to e-mail, Usenet newsgroups and a browser, a reality. A special thank you to all who contributed to make the experience of the Cleveland Freenet such an important one in the development of the Internet. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A few days ago I spent some time on the mailing list here, swapping out email addresses for readers who had been at that site to wherever they told me to move them. At one time, I suppose eight or ten years ago, there were quite a few Freenet-type sites around. Are any of them operating any longer? I suppose there is not a lot of room or tolerance for anything like that on the net today, and it is very unfortunate. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI Date: 5 Oct 1999 01:20:13 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On Mon, 04 Oct 1999 12:01:24 -0400, joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com allegedly said: > The coma-like complacency among web site owners, is what's astounding. Many (like me) probably don't think complaining will do any good at all. > is ever going to lessen on us -- is through the use of so-called > 'rogue registrars'; registrars who do not act as sales reps for > ICANN/NSI and instead attempt to serve the people of the net. I > think we have to encourage and assist them in serving as a 'root'. I like that idea, but we need to get the domains into the root nameservers for them to be useful. That'll be tough. North Shore Technologies JustTheNet Dialup Internet Access Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Geauga Co., Lake Co., Portage Co., Lorain Co., OH Nationwide Access coming soon! Watch this space for details or dial 1.888.480.4NET for more info! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There may have to be new root name- servers established, or at least alternate root nameservers. Then it will be a thing where first one nameserver is queried, and if needed, the other nameserver is queried as part of the process of getting from one site to another. Do you remember in the early days of Usenet how things worked? If you wanted to start a newsgroup and went through all the procedures which were involved, including a netwide discussion and voting process, and provided you 'won' the vote, then the newsgroup was installed and automatically carried by every sysadmin at their sites. Regardless of any one admin's personal opinion about the group, the 'gentlemans agreement' was I accept all of your news and you accept all of mine. Your users get the benefit of all my news and my users get the benefit of all your news. And what happened if you lost the vote to establish your newsgroup? Well, you could still start your group if you wished, in the 'alt' hierarchy. But unlike the 'established' and 'respectable' groups in the Usenet hierarchy which were assured installation everywhere once the months of tedious discussion and vote-taking were over with, those people who chose to start a newsgroup as an ALTernate to the estab- lished forums of Usenet could do so anytime. It was as simple as typing a few keystrokes to 'newgroup' yourself on your own news spool at least, but the real job was in convincing other admins to put it on their spools as well. Or if a Usenet group 'xxxx' was already established but you had disagreements with the people there and did not want to stay part of it, then you created 'alt.xxxx' as a place where things would be different. Again, you had to find sympathetic admins to install it as well, otherwise you sat there and talked to yourself. One of the earliest ALTernate (or was it Alter Net?) groups dealt with the topic of sex, and this was because everyone wanted to talk about it, but it was considered unseemly for inclusion on the spools at places where academia was in charge. It just wouldn't do -- never, never do -- to have it on Usenet, you see. So as a result the alt.sex newsgroup was started. Remember how some places would carry all the Usenet groups but refuse to carry any alt. group, because the alt. things did not have the same degree of 'respecta- bility' (to say the least!) as was found in Usenet? Maybe it is time to go that direction again. Read the above and you will see it certainly is not a historical precedent for one group of netizens to go one way, while others go another direction. It took a few years before many/most of the alt groups which were established sort of on-the-fly in the middle or late 1980's got any decent degree of propogation. I think it is time to begin an 'alternative internet' for lack of a better name. Maybe call it 'Peoples Internet' or something, with domain names of the form xxxxxx.ind for 'independent'. Encourage qualified and competent persons to begin registries and to between them maintain a root nameserver, or maybe two nameservers. Encourage admins to edit their configs to query *our* nameservers as well as *ICANN* nameservers. Would all admins do it? Of course not, but I think quite a few would, and more would begin doing it over a period of a few years, particularly when it was not presented to them as an 'either/or' situation, ie. take ours or take theirs but not both. Regards the complaint, 'this would split the net', the same objection was raised with alt years ago, that it would 'split Usenet' and take away participants, etc. What they meant of course was that it would take power away from some of those who controlled Usenet, and anyway, it did no such thing. Most newer netizens have no idea that group names beginning with 'alt' are not part of Usenet. All they know is they are just one more bunch of newsgroups to look at. To them, it is all under the generic name 'news'. I think the same thing would happen now with an alternative root. Those in power would hate it, and insist that it was 'splitting the net'. They would apply heavy pressure whenever possible on admins to not resolve based on the alternate but only upon themselves, just as admins were pressured in some cases years ago to not carry any of the alt groups but only 'pure Usenet'. If they had given in to those demands, they would have not carried comp.dcom.telecom either since this group comes from the INET side of things going back to the early 1980's, but the INETs which were merged in as part of the newsgroup renaming in 1985 were always the favorite children while the ALTs were the black sheep in the family. I would expect propogation to go to hell where any new alternative nameservers was concerned at least for a short time, but somehow the net will survive and by the year 2010 or so, most people will not know the difference once again, and .ind or whatever we chose to call it would be just one more place to go for a good time. But we would have our guidelines and agreements and the other non-aligned sites would have theirs. We'd always have their root as part of the name resolving process and invite them to use ours if they were not too stubborn to do so. Eventually, just as the print media -- our enemies largely by their own choice as they see the handwriting on the wall -- still none the less open their own web sites out of necessity that they stay in the loop, so would the non-aligned registrars and roots start looking to see what we were up to. They'd have to; their users would demand it. Consider how long places like MCI Mail, Compuserve and AOL had their own non-interconnected email. Then they finally got the message in their thick skulls: you *will* interconnect on email and you *will* interconnect on news or you will die ... ditto today my friends; start doing your thing, the others will come around eventually, and the ones who won't -- well, that will be a tragic loss, won't it. Believe me, they'll come around eventually. To close this, how about a couple of trite expressions. 'They' say the hardest step one takes is the first one. 'They' also say that as great as it feels when a cancerous growth has been removed from your body, agreeing to go under the knife to start with is a very scary proposition. And I will say that the day Martin Luther tacked his notice up on the church door was probably not the happiest day in his life either. But sometimes you just have to say 'we are out of here' and go your own direction. Maybe 2000 is the year the net should begin its own reformation. Thanks for reading today! PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 21:50:08 -0400 The Old Bear quoted: > The public hearings the town held prior to issuing its permit were > the first time the church learned it had done something its neighbors > didn't like, Duncan said. That's when residents and parents aired > their concerns that their children's health would suffer from > microwaves coming from the antennas. > 'I think these antennas are extremely dangerous to health,' George > Eastman, a spokesman for the Waldorf School board of directors, said > this week, expressing fears that have been part of the debate since it > inception. > Eastman, who has two children at the school, said the antennas 'emit a > low-frequency radio wave which penetrates the fluid organs ... the brain, > kidney and spleen,' and can cause cancer." Low frequencies? That would be between 30 and 300 kilohertz. I have an awfully hard time believing that a wireless telephone site would be radiating both LF and microwave energy at the same time. These guys need to get their story straight. ------------------------------ From: Glenn Randers-Pehrson Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 02:00:28 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , steve@sellcom.com wrote: > Glenn Randers-Pehrson spake thusly and wrote: >> All they need to do is to look for a GIF comment that says GifBuilder >> (that's free software, whose author was apparently forced by U-NO-who >> to stop distributing it) or "built with DEMO copy of ..." or "built >> with UNREGISTERED copy of ...". > What about the US flag at www.whitehouse.gov that was created with > unregistered shareware? ;O) The file has no comments, and it has an application extension block that reads "AdobeIR 1.0" which I would presume means that it was built with Adobe Image Ready 1.0, which I believe is LZW-licensed. Whether their copy of ImageReady was actually paid for, there's no way to tell by examining the image file. Obviously it wasn't built with "unregistered shareware" but I suppose it might have been built with pirated software, in which case Unisys wouldn't have gotten its cut. By the way, I have been using that particular image for months as a test case for auto-converting animated GIFs into MNGs with ImageMagick. Glenn Randers-Pehrson PNG/MNG Development Group ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 19:44:01 EDT Subject: Re : The Bad Witch ICANN > How do you spell m o n o p l y? With another "o" after the "p", among other things. Bill P.S. Now you have to stay after the next Digest comes out to bang the erasers. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #456 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 5 19:58:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id TAA06796; Tue, 5 Oct 1999 19:58:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 19:58:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910052358.TAA06796@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #457 TELECOM Digest Tue, 5 Oct 99 19:58:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 457 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cell-Phone Use Aloft May Not Be Danger That Airlines Claim (Mike Pollock) US West Prepaid Cards, and Other Stuff (Babu Mengelepouti) MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal (Monty Solomon) MCI/Sprint Merger (David Esan) Re: Special Security Report: The Phonemasters (Bruce Wilson) Re: Special Security Report: The Phonemasters (J. Baptista) Chicago Telephone Co. (Andrew Emmerson) Hard Times For Jeff Slaton and Other Spammers (Babu Mengelepouti) 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. 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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: Mike Pollock Subject: Cell-Phone Use Aloft May Not Be The Danger That Airlines Claim Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 17:09:43 -0400 Organization: It's A Mike! By JON G. AUERBACH Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL As anyone who has flown has heard, using a cellular telephone aboard an airplane is dangerous. American Airlines warns passengers that cell phones "may interfere with the aircraft's communication and navigation systems." Similar warnings come from Delta, United and Continental. British Airways links cellular interference to potential problems with compasses and even cabin pressure. What the airlines don't tell passengers is that there is no scientific evidence to support these claims. What concerns there are about cellular phones in airplanes dwell in the realm of anecdote and theory -- and to some extent in that of plain finance. There is money to be earned or lost by cell-phone companies and airlines if cell phones are used in-flight. Battery of Tests A 1996 study commissioned by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration looked at thousands of flight records and failed to find a single instance in which equipment was affected by a wireless phone. The study was conducted by RTCA Inc., a nonprofit organization that sets industry standards for airplane electronics. Plane makers Boeing Co. and Airbus Industrie have bombarded their aircraft with cell-phone frequencies and discovered no interference with communication, navigation or other systems. One likely reason that no problems were found: cellular phones don't operate on any of the frequencies used by airplane systems. "The airlines are misleading the traveling public," says John Sheehan, who headed the RTCA study and says he has often used his own cell phone in the sky. "There is no real connection between cell-phone frequencies and the frequencies of the navigation" or communications systems. Using cell phones aloft on commercial and private aircraft is banned not by the FAA but by the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates telephone use. In prohibiting airborne use in 1991, the FCC was mainly concerned about cell phones' potential to interfere with ground-to-ground cellular transmission. The FAA has never outlawed cell-phone use in airplanes. But the agency supports the FCC ban "for reasons of potential interference," according to an FAA advisory. Despite the findings of the 1996 RTCA study, the FAA remains concerned about anecdotal evidence of cell-phone interference in flight records, says an FAA spokeswoman. The FAA isn't the only party still concerned. Boeing continues to advise airlines against cell-phone use in the sky. That's because the electrical charge from the batteries in most handsets exceeds the plane maker's standards. Although Boeing's tests have never shown this to be a problem, in theory the electricity emanating from the device could create interference with airplane systems. Economic Incentive The airlines and telecommunications companies also have an economic incentive to keep cell phones turned off in the air. The carriers receive a cut of the revenues from the telephones installed onboard. The two main providers of this air-phone service, GTE Corp. and AT&T Corp., charge about $6 for a one-minute call, more than 20 times typical cell-phone rates. These in-flight telephones also operate on cellular technology -- using a single airplane antenna to which the onboard phones are typically wired. AT&T and GTE, which recently agreed to sell its Airfone service, decline to discuss air-phone financial arrangements, as do several airlines. But Mr. Sheehan says airlines pocket about 15% of all air-phone revenue generated on their planes. GTE declines to discuss Airfone revenues, but analysts estimate the unit's annual revenues at $150 million. Some airlines also restrict cell-phone use on the ground, which isn't covered by the FCC ban, and which the FAA leaves to the airlines' discretion. Mr. Sheehan says he believes air carriers have resisted allowing cell-phone use on the ground because it "detracts from the revenue they get from the air phone." Airlines deny this, and say the bans are for the benefit of the passengers. "We don't believe it's a good safety issue" to allow normal cell phones, says Andy Plews, spokesman for UAL Corp.'s United Airlines. "We'd like people to use the air phones." A Sponge in the Sky The FCC's concern about air-to-ground cellular interference is real enough. From high in the sky, a cell phone acts like a sponge, sucking capacity out of the cellular sites that carry calls. For ground users, cell phones communicate by connecting to one cell site at a time; from the air, because of the height and speed of an aircraft, the phones often make contact with several sites at once. If allowed, this would limit call capacity, which would mean less revenue, says Howard Sherry, chief wireless scientist at Telcordia Technologies Inc., formerly the research arm of the Baby Bell telephone companies, in Morristown, N.J. The cellular signal from the air is also especially strong, since it is unimpeded by buildings or other ground clutter. That often means it can jump on a frequency already in use on the ground, causing interruptions or hang-ups. And airborne cellular calls are sometimes free because the signal is moving so fast between cells that the software on the ground has difficulty recording the call, says Bentley Alexander, a senior engineer at AT&T's wireless unit. Jailed in England The FCC says no passengers in the U.S. have been prosecuted for violating its regulation because airlines have diligently enforced the ban. But Neil Whitehouse, a British oil worker, is serving a one-year jail sentence in England for refusing to switch off his cell phone on a 1998 British Airways flight from Spain. Sue Redmond, a British Airways PLC spokeswoman, says Mr. Whitehouse put the plane at risk because cellular phones can disrupt the plane's automatic pilot, cabin-pressure controls -- and "every system that is needed to keep that airplane safe for flying." One expert witness at Mr. Whitehouse's trial was Daniel Hawkes, the head of avionics systems for the Civil Aviation Authority, the British counterpart to the FAA. In a telephone interview, Mr. Hawkes says phones have a "potential for a problem," but he concedes that there is no "hard evidence" of any problems. Still, he says it wouldn't be wise to allow cell phones on airplanes because the constant chatter might annoy other passengers. "You'd probably have more instances of air rage," he says. Indeed, the recent trend by some U.S. airlines to allow cell-phone use in planes parked at the gate coincides with growing passenger frustration with flight delays and poor service. These carriers include Northwest Airlines Corp., United, AMR Corp.'s American and Delta Air Lines Inc. Letting passengers chat on the ground is "good passenger service," says Delta spokesman John Kennedy. The Early Days Cell phones on airplanes first became an issue in the late 1980s. At the time, many wireless devices, including laptop computers and audio-cassette players, were proliferating. The responsibility for setting guidelines fell to the FCC, which has joint jurisdiction with the FAA for regulating wireless use on aircraft. Cellular companies were overwhelmingly opposed to allowing cell phones in the air, but broadly supported their use in aircraft on the ground. At first, the FAA favored banning cell phones at all times. In a 1989 letter to the FCC, the FAA warned that cell-phone use could "significantly increase the risk to aviation safety," whether "operated on the ground or in the air." This position was supported by most of the major airlines. Trans World Airlines Inc. told the FCC that allowing cell-phone use, even on the ground, "could be a detriment to public safety." The cell-phone companies were already on the record as being opposed to in-flight use -- but for different reasons. In a 1988 letter to the FCC, McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. wrote that air use could cause "highly disruptive interference to cellular systems" because of the "greatly increased transmitting range" that cell phones have aloft. Nynex Mobile Communications Co. warned that air use would "likely result in significant interference to other cellular transmission." Debating on the Ground As the FCC continued to mull regulations, cellular companies sought to debunk the FAA's claims of potential cellular interference with critical aircraft systems while the plane is on the ground. McCaw, Motorola Inc. and Alltel Mobile Communications Inc. -- now a unit of Alltel Corp. -- noted the absence of scientific studies to support these claims. If cell phones do truly interfere, Alltel wrote in a 1990 letter to the FCC, "one wonders why problems have not resulted from the widespread use of cellular telephones in airport lobbies, parking lots and other facilities in close proximity to aircraft." McCaw cited the wide use of walkie-talkies by airport employees and ground crews. In 1991, the FAA backed off on ground use, saying airlines and pilots could use their own discretion. Later that year, the FCC passed its regulation banning airborne cellular use. The ban didn't apply to preinstalled air phones. As an integral part of the airplanes, those devices had to undergo strict FAA tests before they were allowed on planes. Those tests showed no problems. As passenger carry-ons, cell phones have never been run through the FAA equipment-testing process. The installed air phones also posed no problems for cell systems on the ground. The outside aircraft antenna that carries the air-phone calls also connects to a ground-based cellular network -- but with cells that are spaced much farther apart to avoid multiple phone-to- ground links. The issue began heating up again in 1992, when Rep. Bob Carr, then a Michigan Congressman, and vice chairman of the Transportation Appropriations subcommittee, asked the FAA for a detailed look at alleged cellular interference. Rep. Carr had been reprimanded by a United flight attendant for using his cell phone while a flight to Chicago was delayed on the ground in Detroit. Mr. Carr, a pilot, says he regularly used his cell phone while flying on commercial planes in the late 1980s. He says he is convinced the airline ban was, and is, "bogus" and not founded in science. The FAA asked RTCA to look into the issue. 'Incident Reports' When anything goes wrong on a flight, pilots or operators are required to file "incident reports," which are collected in a database kept by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. RTCA, which began its study in 1992, sifted through a decade's worth of such incident reports, about 70,000 in all, covering both commercial and private flights. RTCA, formerly called the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics, also was given access to confidential reports kept by some airlines in later years. Of 384 incidents that pilots suspected involved electronic interference, RTCA found most were baseless or didn't appear to be related to any electronics. Only ten "had the potential for being interference from electronic devices carried onboard," says Mr. Sheehan. Of those ten, none involved a cell phone. In theory, any device that emits electronic waves -- including laptops, electronic games, pacemakers and hearing aids -- has the potential to cause interference to an airplane. Part of the problem is that airplanes are packed with a huge amount of electronic equipment, from radios and navigational equipment to smoke detectors and in-flight video. These systems can interfere with one another. Moreover, planes in the air are constantly flying through what engineers call a thick electronic soup of emissions from television and radio towers, satellite transmissions and other emitters. This makes pinpointing a single interference event in many cases nearly impossible. Six years ago, Boeing received word that a laptop computer was suspected of shutting off the autopilot system on one of its jets during a commercial flight from London to Paris. The pilot conducted tests by turning the computer on and off, which the airline said again triggered the autopilot error. The airline "felt 100% confident that it was a particular laptop" causing the problem, says Bruce Donham, a senior electromagnetics engineer at Boeing. Boeing sent engineers to Europe, purchased the laptop from the passenger, and tried unsuccessfully to re-create the problem from the same seat and during the exact time of the flight. Later, Boeing arranged to fly the empty plane on the London to Paris route, moving the laptop throughout the aircraft. No interference was discovered. The aircraft maker then brought the laptop back to Seattle and tested it in a Boeing lab. Mr. Donham says the tests showed no correspondence between electronic emissions from the laptop and the autopilot computer. 'No Empirical Data' After its study, RTCA decided to recommend allowing laptops, electronic games and CD players in the air because it couldn't duplicate interference. To be safe, RTCA recommended banning all electronics during critical phases of a flight, which are generally considered to be during takeoff and landing, when a plane is below 10,000 feet. As for cell phones, RTCA's study found "no empirical data" linking their use to safety issues on the ground or in the air. But the RTCA ran out of money and time before it could conduct tests using actual cell phones in various aircraft. So the organization, acting conserva- tively, recommended that cell phones and other so-called intentional transmitters -- such as radio-controlled toys -- be banned in the air. Aircraft makers conducted their own tests for interference as the use of wireless devices grew. Airbus, the No. 2 plane maker, was close to releasing its first fully computerized jet in the mid-1980s. It brought that jet, the A320, to a French Air Force base in Toulon, and parked it within 10 feet of a series of radar beams and electronic transmitters, including ones that simulated cell phones and other wireless devices, says spokesman David Venz. "There was no impact" on aircraft systems, says Mr. Venz. Boeing put its jets through a similar test in 1991, and no interference was found, Boeing says. But when the airlines, concerned about growing cellular use on the ground, came to the company seeking guidance in 1993, Boeing advised them not to allow intentional transmitters, including cell phones, on the ground or during flight. Mr. Donham, the Boeing engineer, says the company adopted a "conservative position" because it didn't know enough to clear them. Boeing kept testing. In 1995, engineers at the aircraft maker conducted a four-hour test on a 737, setting up about 20 cell phones throughout the jet and monitoring the plane's radios, navigational equipment and other controls. A variety of flight conditions were simulated. The results: "Absolutely nothing," says Mr. Donham. Airbus has told airlines it sees no problem with onboard cell-phone use anywhere. "We haven't come up with any indication" that cell phones have "any negative impact," says Mr. Venz, the spokesman. Mr. Donham says Boeing is revising its cell-phone guidelines to suggest use on the ground is now acceptable. But Boeing still advises the airlines against cell-phone use in the air because the devices exceed the company's guidelines for electrical emissions. Mr. Sheehan, who is also a certified pilot, notes that cell phones are regularly used on private and corporate planes "thousands of times every day" without incident. He says he has dialed from the air on many occasions. When asked whether cell phones should be included among the list of devices such as laptop computers that are now permitted above 10,000 feet, he says "that would be OK. It's not a problem." Copyright 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 12:56:47 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: US West prepaid cards, and other stuff... Joseph Singer wrote: > I was told however, that USWest is *not* issuing any more of these > pre-paid debit cards as it was found that their popularity was not > strong enough for them to continue to issue the cards! This seems > like a colossal waste of money to me! I'm sure that the Millenium > instruments are not cheap and for USWest to replace all of their stock > with these phones only to negate one of the benefits of the phones > seems stupid to me. I'd say that part of the problem is that they > didn't promote these new phones' capabilities to people so they never > would buy phone cards. In most of the European cities it's rare to > find a coin operated phone any more because people have gotten used to > using the smart card phones. I really wonder what this is going to mean for laptop users in airports. US Worst has installed many Nortel Millenium phones with data jacks in airports throughout their territory. It's not uncommon in Sea-Tac International Airport and the Portland International Airport to see several people using these jacks simultaneously. The reason that this is important is that the the *only* way to use the data jacks on the "laptop-ready" phones is to pay with a calling card--including one of USWest's prepaid calling cards. Since the cost for 0+-handled local calls is substantially more than the 35 cents for a coin-sent-paid or prepaid-card-sent-paid (?) call, it looks like the refusal by US West to continue issuing their prepaid product does not bode well for laptop users. One thing that I have noticed which is very interesting is that it appears *any* Nortel Millenium phone will accept a prepaid card from *any other* LEC that issues the cards. I have used my US West prepaid cards in BCTel, Bell Canada, and GTE Nortel Millenium phones as well as US West ones. I meant to buy a Bell Canada card when I was in Toronto and test it here, but judging by the behavior of the US West card in other phones, it is likely that it would have worked as well. That could have resulted in a substantial discount for me if I'd bought a card in Canada, based on the currency difference. It does not bode well for US West customers if the prepaid calling cards are discontinued. I just received a billing insert stating that surcharges per call on the US West card were rising to 80 cents to $6.05 (!) per call. When I called US West to clarify what the charge would be for local calls using the calling card, I reached a representative who obviously had little to no knowledge of the calling card product, and when I insisted on speaking to someone who clearly understood how the calling card rates were structured, she simply transferred me back to 1-800-244-1111 (the main customer service number!). It was somewhat fitting that the Muzak-on-hold was a song whose lyrics go "...I'm only human, I'm born to make mistakes." I then called back, and after waiting on hold a long time, was connected to someone who knew to transfer me to the "calling card department." However, the calling card department could not answer my questions about how local calls placed through the 1-800-4USWEST access number were billed. So when I insisted on correct information, they transferred me back to 1-800-244-1111 *sigh*. I think that it will take a complaint with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission to get correct information out of them, as usual. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 01:08:47 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal NEW YORK (CNN) -- In a deal that would break all corporate buyout records, MCI WorldCom Inc. agreed to buy rival telecommunications company Sprint Corp. for $115 billion, sources close to the deal reported Monday. MCI WorldCom made the offer as BellSouth Corp. made its own eleventh-hour bid for Sprint, the country's third-largest long-distance carrier. The boards of both companies voted to approve the plan Monday, but neither offered any comment on the deal. http://CNN.com/US/9910/05/sprint.mci.01/ ------------------------------ From: davidesan@my-deja.com Subject: MCI/Sprint Merger Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:52:03 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I was amazed at the size of the merger. 119 billion dollars is one report I read. To put this in perspective I found the following: The Gross Domestic Product (the total market value of all the goods and services produced in a given country in a year) of the US is 8,163 billion dollars. For some other countries we can find: Ukraine - $115 billion Norway - 112 Peru - 110 Romania - 103 Israel - 100 Singapore - 93 Hungary - 75 Kazakstan - 57 It seems to me that MCI could have purchased everything that was built or done in any of these countries for the price of Sprint. It is hard to imagine how much money we are talking about. I had some trouble actually find these statistics. The CIA site had only selected countries. If someone can find (and post) a complete list of GDP's I think it would be informative. David Esan Veramark Technologies desan@veramark.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something else about the deal that interested me was MCI's statement that as the two companies begin to be merged as one over the next year or two, it will allow for a large savings in efforts that are otherwise being duplicated. As I read that, I thought of Sprint's remarkable new corporate head- quarters in the Kansas City area and how because of the huge size of their employee base, they are moving a couple hundred employees at a time into the new center on a weekly basis over the next two years. And I thought there was a lot of money invested in that project. My goodness; so, will MCI locate itself now in the new (not even yet finished!) Sprint world headquarters or will Sprint abandon/cut back on that and gradually get installed in existing MCI facilities? Which name will they keep, or will they continue to use both names or will they come up with a new name entirely? One hundred nineteen billion dollars ! As for me, I'll be quite contented if a couple readers here renew their subscriptions for another year or two and fifty dollars arrives in my post office box this week. That whole thing really does numb the brain, doesn't it ... so where do things go from here? PAT] ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 04 Oct 1999 14:24:28 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Special Security Report: The Phonemasters A second report from earlier this year on the 'Phonemasters': Star-Telegram.Com | News Online Service Provider of Dallas and Fort Worth and the Homepage of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Found at: http://netarrant.net/news/doc/1047/1:ARL52/1:ARL52032599.html Updated: Thursday, Mar. 25, 1999 at 22:25 CST Five hackers, including one from Grand Prairie plead guilty to $1 million phone scam. By Tawnell D. Hobbs Star-Telegram Dallas Bureau DALLAS -- In what FBI officials are calling a historic case, five men, including one from Grand Prairie, have pleaded guilty to an international computer hacking scheme that cost telecommunication companies and their customers more than $1 million. U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins said yesterday that the case is significant because it's the first time FBI agents were able to capture and decipher keystrokes on high-speed analog telephone lines often used by hackers. "The FBI was actually able to see what they typed as they typed it," Coggins said. The retrieved information let the FBI know the hackers' meeting places and places they planned to hack, he said. Calvin "Zibby" Cantrell, 29, of Grand Prairie pleaded guilty to one count of theft and possession of unauthorized calling-card numbers and one count of unauthorized access to telecommunication computer systems. From October 1994 through February 1995, according to court documents, Cantrell used his personal computer to illegally access Sprint computer systems in Dallas and Sacramento, Calif., by using an illegally obtained log-in name and password of a Sprint employee. Hackers usually use "sniffer programs" to get employee log-in and password information, FBI special agent Mike Morris said. The programs copy the first 100 to 300 bytes of computer information, which is usually log-in information, he said. Cantrell then downloaded, transferred and stole thousands of Sprint calling-card numbers, which the hackers commonly referred to as "tobes." In 20 minutes, 82 "tobes" could be downloaded with a computer program one of the hackers created. Cantrell then sold and transferred the calling-card numbers for $2 each. Cantrell's hacking didn't stop with selling stolen calling-card numbers. Court documents show that in 1994 he also hacked into GTE's computer telephone system and created and activated a telephone number for his own use. The number was then forwarded to an AT&T conference center to generate calls to various "900 phone sex" numbers overseas. Documents show that Cantrell was paid $2,200 from a German named "Ike" for generating a volume of calls to his "900 phone sex" numbers. Companies and individuals lost between $1.1 million and $1.5 million, Coggins said. Cantrell faces a possible maximum punishment of 15 years' imprisonment and a fine of up to $500,000. Coggins would not disclose how the FBI found out about the scheme, although he did say that every investigation launched started with a tip. The other men charged were between the ages of 22 and 28 at the time of the crimes. They are Jonathan M. Bosanac of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.; Corey Lindsley of Portland, Ore.; Thomas Gurtler of Ohio; and Golan Benoni, formerly of San Francisco. The men, including Cantrell, were released on their own recognizance and will face sentencing in Dallas, where the case originated, Coggins said. Tawnell D. Hobbs, (972) 263-4448 (submitted to the Digest by) Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 07:46:01 EDT From: J. Baptista Subject: Re: Special Security Report: The Phonemasters There's one thing I've noticed about hacking that concerns me. Some countries like the U.S. arrest them. Other countries and commercial interests hire them. The question I have is who's going to end up on top? Countries that arrest, or those that hire? Cheers, Joe Baptista Planet Communication & Computing Facility baptista@pccf.net Public Access Internet Research Publisher 1 (212) 894-3704 ext. 1033 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Oct 1999 00:47 BST From: midshires@cix.co.uk (Andrew Emmerson) Subject: Chicago Telephone Co. Reply-To: midshires@cix.co.uk Hallo there, I thought you might be able to throw some light on this. The disk shown in the attached picture file (not included in the Digest) looks very old to me. The object -- a celluloid covered disc of aluminium -- appeared recently on eBay and was described as a private telephone permit. I suspect it's what we call a dial dummy -- a circular plate that covers the aperture in a telephone case where a dial would normally go. In case you can't read the writing, it says: PRIVATE TELEPHONE Only for the use of lessee, who has agreed by contract to forbid others using it. SEE DIRECTORY FOR PUBLIC TELEPHONE. Always call by number and repeat when requested. Always ring for disconnection. THE NUMBER OF THIS TELEPHONE IS: ----. Report trouble to Chicago Telephone Company, 207 Washington Street, Chicago. CHICAGO TELEPHONE COMPANY From all this, I deduce it was a magneto telephone connected to a non-public exchange that was not a PBX but was happy to connect third parties with one another. It has me beat but perhaps there's a simple explanation. If there is, I'd be delighted to know! Cheers, Andrew Emmerson tel: 01604-844130, international +44 1604-844130 fax: 01604-821647, international +44 1604-821647 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Chicago Telephone Company was the predecessor of Illinois Bell. In the early 1920's when AT&T was purchasing every independent phone company it could get its hands on, Chicago Tel was one that it obtained. Like all the acquisitions AT&T made at that time, its name was changed to whatever Bell. The address given of 207 Washington Street then was for many years after that an Illinois Bell central office called 'Franklin' so named because of its location at the intersection of a street by that name. It is directly across the street from 212 (now West) Washington Street which was the Illinois Bell headquarters building for a half-century or so, which had also been the headquarters of Chicago Telephone Company. In the 1920's acquisition by AT&T, nothing changed but the ownership and the name. In the case of the object you mention, which I think dates from maybe 1900-1910, I think all they were trying to say in the writing was that the subscriber probably was paying a flat rate for his service and had to agree not to resell the phone service to anyone else, or give it away. If someone not part of the subscriber's family or company, etc needed to use a phone, they were to look in the phone book for the location of the nearest public phone they could use instead. I am surprised it did not include an admonition against the use of profane language. The Chicago Telephone Company phone directories in the earliest years of this century had an 'Admonition to Subscribers' printed on the cover or the front inside page which asked customers that, "When speaking with our operators, kindly use the same language and courtesy with which you would wish to be addressed. Would you want our operators to respond to you with a curse or profane language when explaining they were unable to connect your call? Please speak to them in the courteous way we instruct them to speak with you." ... it was quite common that if someone had been trying to get through to a number that was constantly busy (train station schedule information, etc) that on hearing the operator's response that 'the line is busy' the customer would cuss at the operator because of it; something like, "g-- da---it, cut in on the line and tell them to can the sh-- and hang up so someone else can get through to them!" The operators had to listen to that all day long from people. How much is the price on e-bay for the item. I'd pay a hundred dollars maybe; those things are all over the place. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 13:44:30 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: Hard Times For Jeff Slaton and Other Spammers > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Remember, a few phone calls each day > help keep the spammers away. Dump all over their toll-free numbers > and remind them what happened to Jeff Slaton ... poor Jeff! Is he > around on the net any more at all? I think the day his phone bill > from Southwestern Bell was delivered by Federal Express in a large > cardboard box he just about died and went to spammer's heaven. And > you can make it possible for others to meet the same fate. Please > make your pledges today to eliminate spam on the net. Use our > business directory to get started now. > Background music: "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow" with a picture of > a delivery truck pulling up in front of a spam-hive; delivery person > smiling as he carries a box marked 'AT&T Billing Department' to the > hive and hands it over to the pathetic creature who answers the door. > Caption on screen says, 'netizens made this gift possible'. PAT] Actually, as I recall, Jeff was in Albuquerque, and the local exchange carrier in almost all of New Mexico is US Worst... uh... *cough* ... West. Southwestern Bell territory is not encountered until the next state east, which is Texas. Also, Jeff's toll free service was provided by Allnet, if I recall properly. Allnet is now Frontier (carrier access code 1010444), a particularly litigious carrier who thinks nothing of suing its (former) customers who don't pay up... :) A little bird told me that Jeff's bill was over $100,000 for that month, back when spam was still relatively uncommon, and the wrath of Netizens extended to his toll-free number. His product, if I remember correctly, was a series of perl scripts that would strip email addresses out of newsgroup postings, and dump them into a ready-made format for another of his scripts that he used for spamming. I don't remember what he called it, but it was a name befitting his email address: spamking@marketing.com. Nowadays, of course, long distance is substantially cheaper -- provided that the caller isn't originating from a pay telephone. The 30 cent mandatory compensation paid to payphone owners, however, can actually make such calls much more expensive to the recipient. So I encourage everyone to take the TELECOM Digest Business Directory on the road with them, or on their lunch break. What better thing to do while waiting for an airplane than shop by phone? There are many fine products in the Business Directory, such as web hosting available from 1-800-730-6761. Be sure to keep them on the line until they answer ALL of your questions ("What's a domain name? I have AOL, is FTP part of the AOL program? I want to put my junkyard on the Internet, can you do that?"). And you certainly might want to inquire about a few products like Chinese Aphrodisiacs (1-888-248-1529) on your lunch hour, to spice up your time at home with your partner. Pick a favorite COCOT to make the calls, one owned by a business you like, perhaps. The possibilities are endless. Yes, the volume of toll-free numbers in spam has gone up ... but that just means many more opportunities to spend your free time shopping by phone. And if a few more spammers get their phone bills delivered by UPS in large cardboard boxes, perhaps there will be fewer of them ... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Slaton's phone bill was about $100,000 *the first month* ... but because of calls which were billed after the cycle cutoff and people who saw the appeal on the net over the next couple weeks, his two subsequent billings combined totalled about the same amount. By the time it was over with, the total billings were closer to about a quarter-million dollars. Do the math and see how easy it is to cause a phone bill for anyone of that amount ... if one percent of the netizens (how many is that, a hundred thousand?) make two or three calls each which run at minimum 35-40 cents each when payphone surcharge is included, how much are we talking about? What if only two or three percent of the netizens responded? And some netizens, in their zeal and enthusiasm to play the game make dozens of phone calls! Despite the fact that there are more spammers with 800 numbers than ever before and that phone rates are cheaper than ever before, there are also more netizens than ever before ... there is absolutely no reason that any spammer who dares to list an 800 number on the net should not receive at least a $20-30 thousand dollar phone bill within a month. And don't you worry about who actually winds up getting the bill and having to pay it. If some Spamsering Service handles the lines, let *them* sharpen up the axe and go after their users. Your job is to make those monthly billings happen and I am sure Frontier, Sprint and MCI would agree with me -- for once! -- entirely. Although the need is greater than ever before as we begin to discover how many of those pathetic creatures there are, I feel certain netizens will meet the challenge and help science find a cure for spamming. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #457 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 5 20:59:06 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id UAA09406; Tue, 5 Oct 1999 20:59:06 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 20:59:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910060059.UAA09406@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #458 TELECOM Digest Tue, 5 Oct 99 20:59:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 458 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (L. Winson) What is the Best NMS for Telecom? (Mike Snyder) First USA On-Line Debiting (Matt Bartlett) Prepaid LD Calling Cards w/Cell Phone? (Frank Prindle) Red Caps on Ends of Wires (Rory Matthews) Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet (T Pelliccio) Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet (S. Lichter) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Brad Houser) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Tony Pelliccio) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (J.F. Mezei) Re: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI (Steve Winter) Domain Name Seizure Policies (Judith Oppenheimer) Employment Opportunity: Telecom Technician - PBX Programming (D. Shreve) Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter (Herb Stein) Re: Enonymous Offers Free Online Privacy Protection (Paul Rubin) Problem With a Merlin Legend (Dr. Dialtone) Re: Multiplexing Internal Wiring (Rupa Schomaker) Re: Chicago Telephone Company (wiring65@aol.com) Scanner Segment on NPR (Mike Pollock) 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: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? Date: 5 Oct 1999 22:48:47 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS MCI and Sprint are merging which will create a huge telecommunications carrier. The spokesman for Sprint said "this is what consumers want -- one stop shopping for all services". Ummm ... wasn't the whole point of the old Bell System divesture -- of which MCI played a big role to make happen -- to eliminate one stop shopping? ABC News quoted Consumers Reports has saying telephone rates have INCREASED by $2 billion for small users, $2-$5 a month, in recent years. Government opposition to this is not expected. We had a working Bell System. The powers that be decided having a single source was not in the public interest and forced it to break up. Now MCI, a direct beneficiary of that breakup, wants to return to the old ways of doing business. Of course, MCI is very much against allowing local Bell companies to offer long distance even though it wants the right to force the local companies to sell it circuits wholesale for it to resell at a profit. IMHO, this is clearly wrong. But can anything be done about it? ------------------------------ From: mike_snyder@hotmail.com (Mike Snyder) Subject: What is the Best NMS for Telecom? Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 17:33:02 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Hello. I work for a CLEC which has the folowing types of Network Elements: SONET ADMs (Fujitsu, Positron & Lucent) SONET DACs (Alcatel & Lucent) Lucent Class 5 switches Newbridge ATM switches Cisco Routers We offer voice, data (Frame rely, raw ATM) Various voice services Access to other LD carries My question is what is the best Network Management System (Manager of MAnagers) out there? I know HP OV OEMF, OSI NEtExpert, Lucent's array of Mgmt products, but what would be the best to manage all these equipment types? Presently, we are upgrading to Lucent's connectvu for the switch config. We use Newbridge's 46020 for the ATM, Ciscsworks for the cisco's and OSI NexExpert for all teh transport gear. I am trying to do a comprehensive analysis to determine the following: 1.) What is considered the best in the telecom industry 2.) What all is available 3.) What functionality does each platform offer. Where can I go to get additional inofrmation. I tried all the big vendor's web pages, but most stuff is marketing hype. I am looking for a NMS which will offer Fault, Configuration and Performance Management in one pacakge ... that is, if one exists. Please help! Any advice/comments will be appreciated. Mike ------------------------------ From: Matt Bartlett Subject: First USA On-Line Debiting Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 17:23:35 -0400 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Last month I made an online payment with FirstUSA credit card. It was in the amount of $157.40. They deducted it automatically from my checking account. I specified it was an one-time only payment. Today, I call up my bank to reconcile my check book, and it is telling me that I had two $25 widthdrawals today. A CSR told me that FirstUSA tried to withdraw the $157.40 twice today. It was already paid last month. When I called FirstUSA today, all the woman would tell me, reading from a script, is "First USA is aware of the problem and is making corrections". She refused to answer if FirstUSA would handle the $50 bounced check fee from my bank. And conviently her supervisor is out at lunch. Anyone else have any problems with online payments with First USA? Matt Bartlett mbartlett@cyberdude.com ------------------------------ From: Frank Prindle Subject: Prepaid LD Calling Cards w/Cell Phone? Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 07:58:54 -0400 I noticed something curious yesterday. If I place an LD call using one of those prepaid calling cards (where you call an 800 number) from a cell-phone, I had always assumed the cell-phone would rack up its usual airtime minutes, and the LD card would deduct the LD minutes. But quite amazingly, the cell-phone minutes don't deduct at all, it's like an airtime-free call. Why would they do this? I only noticed it because the cell-phone is using Mobile Minutes, reading the remaining minutes at the beginning of each call, and I placed two calls in a row. Then I went back and tried it again, and sure enough, no minutes charged! (Note: on regular 800 numbers, the phone definitely deducts minutes.) (Why use an LD calling card with a cell-phone? ... well Mobile Minutes charges $.25/min LD surcharge, while a card (on sale) comes in at about $.11/min.) Frank Prindle prindle@nospamvoicenet.com (sans the nospam) ------------------------------ From: Rory Matthews Subject: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:14:34 PDT Hello, I've got a question you guys might be able to help me with. Lately while in telco boxes I've been noticing those little red caps on a few cable pairs, and I'm just curious what exactly they are for. Could they possibly be some kind of test lines, or just important lines you wouldn't want toyed with? I had occasion to plug my handset onto some of these and usually couldn't get a dial tone, though I once got modem noise. Any comments would be appreciated. (By the way I'm down here in Bellsouth territory if that helps any.) Rory C. Matthews ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 21:56:50 GMT In article , rh120@columbia.edu says: > Cleveland Freenet closed on October 1, 1999 > The Cleveland Freenet was something very special in the history > of the development of the Internet as it made access to the Internet > avaialable to all in the community. > It made access available to school children in Cleveland as I > learned when I gave a talk at a conference in Cleveland in 1988. The > teacher introducing me told me how her students loved being online and > communicating with other students. Go and visit http://www.osfn.org then telnet to osfn.org and setup an account. We're RI's free-net. Word was that Cleveland shut down because of Y2K issues -- we're running identical hardware/software and have taken steps to mitigate any Y2K issues, why they didn't is beyond me. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.comstuffit (Steven Lichter) Date: 05 Oct 1999 22:20:41 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to rh120@columbia.edu: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A few days ago I spent some time on the > mailing list here, swapping out email addresses for readers who had > been at that site to wherever they told me to move them. At one time, > I suppose eight or ten years ago, there were quite a few Freenet-type > sites around. Are any of them operating any longer? I suppose there > is not a lot of room or tolerance for anything like that on the net > today, and it is very unfortunate. PAT] There are still lots of Freenets around; many have moved away from the format that started on the Cleveland Freenet which is where I first started via a telnet to get and post to newsgroups. I too was sad to see the net go away, though I did not use it much for reading groups because it was hard to use the interface they were using after I got used to others and was able to better configure to keep out unwanted E-mail. It did teach me alot. I only use AOL though since I'm able to filter out much better here. 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? (c) ------------------------------ From: Brad Houser Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 12:27:05 -0700 Organization: Intel Corporation The Old Bear wrote in message news:telecom19. 454.6@telecom-digest.org: > This seem to follow the same logic as charging higher prices for > un-leaded gasoline, non-caloric sweeteners, non-fat foods, etc. You are assuming that the stuff was never there to begin with. Your logic makes sense if in the example of "batteries not included", but clearly it costs more to take the fat out. > I guess the magic of the new economic millenium is that business can > charge the customer more for things it doesn't provide. ;) As long as someone is willing to pay for it. This is not new, it is classic supply and demand. ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 22:00:32 GMT In article , ed_ellers@email.msn.com says: > "For a long time" is as good a guess as any. All the analog switches > still in use have both pulse and tone support; I suspect it's simply a > matter of software Even the digital switches will accept pulse well into the future. I know that our DMS-100 accepts pulse and tone on my line and at work the 5ESS- 2000 accepts pulse/tone too. Pulse dialing is inherent to any local loop. Digital loops are another story. As a curious side note I've got a Samsung DCS PBX in my office that translates pulsed digits to DTMF. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 00:22:29 -0400 In Bell-Canada (Quebec) territory, DTMF has been mandatory for a number of years, but they still charge for it. Only existing rotary customers are allowed to continue. For three lines, I get charged (CAD) $7.65 which translates to $2.55 per line per month. This is on top of the $17.43 per line I pay for basic phone service. I end up paying 81.21 for three lines (two basic lines and one with all features). OK, lets be the devil's advocate: It is exactly because a touch tone line allows you to access plenty of new services that the telcos think that they should charge you more for it :-) :-) :-) In the past, I understand that telcos had to spend more for provision of DTMF and hence charge extra. But now that this is reversed with DTMF standard and rotary requiring more logic/hardware, I wonder if a legal/regulatory action might now force the telcos to change their policies that charge for for DTMF. How much revenue do they stand to lose? ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 00:58:24 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Judith Oppenheimer spake thusly and wrote: > Rather than quibble over details, why don't those of you who DON'T > agree that "your domain name can be canceled, deleted or transferred > at any time" contact your congressional representatives and complain > long and loud till they do something about it ... You raise chilling and unrefutable points. But do you really trust the gummit more than NSI. Man, this just gets scarier and scarier ... Has the phrase, "between a rock and a hard place" already entered your mind? You sure know how to bring out the pessimist in this guy ... Steve (wishing he had something positive to suggest) 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 Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 12:07:24 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: Domain Name Seizure Policies Pat, you noted in a recent posting that a registrar in Germany you'd used didn't have the seizure policy in its contracts, and that perhaps registrars outside of the U.S. would be a good alternative to the problematic U.S.-based registrars ... I don't know about the particular German registrar you used, but below is a list of ICANN accredited registrars (some not yet operational), all of whom are required by the ICANN Accreditation Policy to have the seizure language in their contracts: France Telecom/Oleane (France) interQ Incorporated (Japan) Melbourne IT (Australia) Active ISP (Norway) Domain Direct (Canada) EPAG Enter-Price Multimedia AG (Germany) GANDI (France) InterNeXt, Inc. (France) NetBenefit (United Kingdom) NetNation Communications, Inc. (Canada) Nominalia (Spain) Port Information System AB (Sweden) PSI-Japan (Japan) TotalWeb Solutions (United Kingdom) Virtual Internet (United Kingdom) World-Net (France) Of the operational outside-U.S. registrars, Melbourne IT's site is in English. Its policies on com.au names http://www.ina.com.au/policy/policyfr.html) is even more restrictive than its policies on .com, although bottom line, they reserve the right to revoke your domain name at their discretion. Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 mailto:joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Publisher of ICB Toll Free News: http://icbtollfree.com Publisher of WhoSells800.com: http://whosells800.com Moderator TOLLFREE-L: http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html President of ICB Consultancy: http://JudithOppenheimer.com: 800 # Acquisition Management, Lost 800 # Retrieval, Litigation Support, Regulatory Navigation, Correlating Trademark and Domain Name Issues. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:56:14 -0700 From: d_shreve@DELETEnvbell.net (Dennis L. Shreve) Subject: Employment Opportunity: Telecom Technician - PBX Programming Organization: CustomTelecom & Computing Telecommunications Technician - PBX Programming Part time dial in remote programming of Siemens/Rolm Saturn 2E and D9200 Telecom switches. 3-5 years MAC and NOM experience. Certifications and voice mail a plus. No travel. Immediate 20-30 hrs. + sporadic yet ongoing tasks. Dennis L. Shreve Custom Telecom & Computing 775.677.0887 ------------------------------ From: herb@herbstein.com (Herb Stein) Subject: Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 04:23:57 GMT In article , blw1540@aol. comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) wrote: >> Can anyone explain how this might work? > Are you familiar with "distinctive" or "custom" ring service? It's > like a throwback to party line days, when the individual subscribers > on the line each had different ring patterns, but phones these days > won't recognize and accept anything but a standard ring pattern, so > only a device connected to the line that does will respond when a > nonstandard ring's sent over the line. That's why the water company's > device will respond when called by the water company but your phones > don't ring. Someone better explain that to my phones then. All of them cheerfully ring at the different ringing cadences when the appropriate number is called SBC here is Missouri calls it Distinctive Ringing I believe. The FAX modem, of course, has no trouble with it either. I suspect that there is a slightly different technology at work here but have no idea what it is. Herb Stein The Herb Stein Group www.herbstein.com herb@herbstein.com 314 215-3584 ------------------------------ From: phr@netcom.com (Paul Rubin) Subject: Re: Enonymous Offers Free Online Privacy Protection Date: 5 Oct 1999 06:49:49 GMT Organization: NETCOM / MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Monty Solomon : > [TELECOM Digest Editor's note: Why is this new service any different > than what I offer via http://telecom-digest.org/secret-surfer.html ? > My service offers the same thing, at no charge. PAT] The new service (according to the news article) stores your personal info in client side files, and fills in shopping forms automatically. I haven't tried it out yet but will do so soon. ------------------------------ From: Dr. Dialtone Subject: Problem With a Merlin Legend Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 06:34:36 -0400 I have an unusual problem with a Merlin Legend 2.1 v4. When attempting to dial out on an outside trunk by dialing 9. 3 BIS 10's out of 49 sets respond with a reorder tone. I do hear the second dialtone but any digits dialed after that is followed by a reorder tone. I have checked the station translations and compared it with the functioning sets and can't find anything different. I have checked ARC, Restrictions and disallow list and can't find anything that would cause this problem. Has anyone on the list encountered this type of problem? I contacted Lucent and they were stumped. Thanks for your response! ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Multiplexing Internal Wiring From: Rupa Schomaker Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:06:09 GMT Organization: @Home Network ellis@ftel.net writes: > In article , Linc Madison > wrote: >> Not in California, it wouldn't. The service is not tariffed or >> offered, probably because of concerns over exacerbating the already >> horrific numbering crunch. >> Maybe after we get settled into thousands-block pooling and other >> conservation measures, we might be able to get distinctive ringing. > Until I moved last year I certainly had distinctive ringing in > California (GTE). Has it been withdrawn? I just received a flyer in my GTE phone bill that offered distinctive ringing as a service. I don't think that PacBell offers it though. -rupa ------------------------------ From: wiring65@aol.com (Wiring65) Date: 06 Oct 1999 00:15:02 GMT Subject: Re: Chicago Telephone Co. I believe that the current address to which you have referred is Ameritech's downtown Chicago office. > Report trouble to Chicago Telephone Company, 207 Washington Street, > Chicago. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is an Ameritech (nee Illinois Bell) office, but not the headquarters or 'downtown Chicago' office. That is across the street. '207' is an odd number; it is on the south side of the street; it is (or was, whatever) the 'Chicago-Franklin' central office, also in past lives the 'Franklin Coin Office' (for payphones in the downtown area). What you term the 'downtown Chicago office' which used to also be the headquarters for Ameritech/Illinois Bell was at '212' on the *north* side of the street and occupying almost the entire city block. Since it occupies nearly the entire block and part of the lobby now used for the main entrance is on the other end of the building, they refer to it as 225 West Randolph Street, in other words the south side of the next street north. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: Scanner Segment on NPR Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 20:26:04 -0400 Organization: It's A Mike! On 3 October the "This American Life" program on National Public Radio featured a segment on scanning and scannists, including cordless and cell phone monitoring. Click here for the description: http://www.thislife.org/pages/archive99.html#141 and here for the audio: http://www.thislife.org/ra/141.ram Mike ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #458 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 6 03:10:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id DAA23751; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 03:10:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 03:10:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910060710.DAA23751@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #459 TELECOM Digest Wed, 6 Oct 99 03:10:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 459 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires (satch@concentric.net) Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires (Terry Kennedy) Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires (Truman Boyes) Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires (Herb Stein) Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires (Heywood Jaiblomi) Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires (Jeremy Greene) Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple (Herb Stein) Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple (Tad Cook) Re: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI (Greg Skinner) Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet (Brian Roy) Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet (J. Singer) Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter (Gary Novosielski) Question on GR303 via ATM (Paul Eskola) Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal (Bruce Wilson) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Charlie Cremer) Last Laff: End of the Century (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. 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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, 06 Oct 1999 05:46:47 GMT From: satch@concentric.nospam.net (Satch) Subject: Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Organization: SBC Internet Services Allegedly rorymath@hotmail.com (Rory Matthews) said on 05 Oct 1999 in the following: > I've got a question you guys might be able to help me with. > Lately while in telco boxes I've been noticing those little red caps > on a few cable pairs, and I'm just curious what exactly they are for. > Could they possibly be some kind of test lines, or just important > lines you wouldn't want toyed with? I had occasion to plug my handset > onto some of these and usually couldn't get a dial tone, though I once > got modem noise. Any comments would be appreciated. (By the way I'm > down here in Bellsouth territory if that helps any.) Interesting. Back in my days as a broadcast engineer, we radio guys were told that red caps were used to mark priority circuits. In our case, we had four circuits that were marked priority from our Stereo FM studios to our transmitter site: * Our three STL circuits (two live, one standby) * Our transmitter remote control circuit That didn't stop a phone installer from pulling the STL one day. In the studio, we heard through the right channel "Bob? Hey, Bob? Can you hear me over this f**king pair, Bob?" We had to patch the standby STL circuit in to get our right channel feed back. We also had to send a report to the Common Carrier Bureau about the language that made it through our transmitter, and the "steps we took to prevent it from happening again." Fortunately the field engineer who took our report was amused, and we dodged the $5K pink slip for profanity. How about the day the PBX installer shorted our remote control line? Twenty seconds after he did that, the transmitter dumped off the air. The equalizer coupler on the stand-by STL line didn't like the DC pulsing our remote control did, so we had to station someone at the transmitter until Illinois Bell could find and fix the short. Those red caps worked ... most of the time. _____ __/satch\____________________________________________________________ Satchell Evaluations, testing modems since 1984, 'Netting since 1971 "The only good mouse-trap is a hungry cat" ------------------------------ From: Terry Kennedy Subject: Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Organization: St. Peter's College, US Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:32:20 GMT Rory Matthews writes: > I've got a question you guys might be able to help me with. > Lately while in telco boxes I've been noticing those little red caps > on a few cable pairs, and I'm just curious what exactly they are for. > Could they possibly be some kind of test lines, or just important > lines you wouldn't want toyed with? I had occasion to plug my handset > onto some of these and usually couldn't get a dial tone, though I once > got modem noise. Any comments would be appreciated. (By the way I'm > down here in Bellsouth territory if that helps any.) Do they still do that? Red caps/strips indicated Special Safeguarding Measures (SSM) circuits. I have a Bell poster titled "Who turned out the lights?" which depicts a craftsperson shorting a pair of protector terminals, and the path that that pair took all the way back to the generating station. Black caps indicated SSP circuits. I suppose these days the telco uses red caps for all specials. Be careful clipping on those - some of them have really nasty voltages on them. A real copper T1 can have simplex power of +/- 130V or so, and I once experienced a 10 POTS line on 2 pair box that used +/- 300V simplex power. Not to mention you can seriously annoy the people who are using those circuits (a non "data safe" butt set will cause hits on the line even in monitor mode, and going to talk mode will definitely clobber the circuit). Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing terry@spcvxa.spc.edu St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA +1 201 915 9381 (voice) +1 201 435-3662 (FAX) ------------------------------ From: Truman Boyes Subject: Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 23:06:58 EDT Organization: SuperLink Internet Services (732) 432-5454 We usually get these put on our copper T1's, when pulled from the 21x. This can be helpful is keeping people from pulling those pairs when looking for available POTS lines. .truman.boyes. ------------------------------ From: herb@herbstein.com (Herb Stein) Subject: Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 03:27:03 GMT They're marking pairs that we don't want to mess with. Could be ISDN, T1 etc. Any kind of, what the phone company refers to as, special circuits. You likely annoyed someone with your handset. Herb Stein The Herb Stein Group www.herbstein.com herb@herbstein.com 314 215-3584 ------------------------------ From: heywood@gloucester.com (Heywood Jaiblomi) Subject: Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 03:45:01 GMT Organization: Uncle Heywood's Trousers of Fun In Bell Canada territory, the red caps indicate "special services" lines which range from broadcast to OPX and data lines. You can't be first... But you could be next! Ask for details ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Greene Subject: Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 00:48:34 -0400 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. "...while in telco boxes..." - you mean the green cabinets along the side of the road, with the Bell logo on them? I don't think those were intended for public access... ;-) Red caps are used on terminal blocks to cover digital pairs, such as a T1 circuit. There are various other ways of flagging the pairs, but I assume the red caps are there to keep you from frying your brains out on the 100V+ that a T1 span carries. I once discovered this as I tried to push the red caps back onto a live circuit. (Actually it was an HDSL circuit ... I don't know if that runs at a different voltage than T1.) It was not pleasant. Plugging your handset into these is probably a bad idea, unless the handset was designed to do so. -Jeremy ------------------------------ From: herb@herbstein.com (Herb Stein) Subject: Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 03:08:09 GMT What we have here is a failure to communicate. There is no, as in NONE, evidence that RF is an issue. We have a witch hunt going on. Eastman is an idiot.^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HHwrong. In article , Ed Ellers wrote: > The Old Bear quoted: >> The public hearings the town held prior to issuing its permit were >> the first time the church learned it had done something its neighbors >> didn't like, Duncan said. That's when residents and parents aired >> their concerns that their children's health would suffer from >> microwaves coming from the antennas. >> 'I think these antennas are extremely dangerous to health,' George >> Eastman, a spokesman for the Waldorf School board of directors, said >> this week, expressing fears that have been part of the debate since it >> inception. >> Eastman, who has two children at the school, said the antennas 'emit a >> low-frequency radio wave which penetrates the fluid organs ... the brain, >> kidney and spleen,' and can cause cancer." > Low frequencies? That would be between 30 and 300 kilohertz. I have > an awfully hard time believing that a wireless telephone site would be > radiating both LF and microwave energy at the same time. > These guys need to get their story straight. Herb Stein The Herb Stein Group www.herbstein.com herb@herbstein.com 314 215-3584 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 21:53:03 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Ed Ellers wrote: > The Old Bear quoted: >> The public hearings the town held prior to issuing its permit were >> the first time the church learned it had done something its neighbors >> didn't like, Duncan said. That's when residents and parents aired >> their concerns that their children's health would suffer from >> microwaves coming from the antennas. >> 'I think these antennas are extremely dangerous to health,' George >> Eastman, a spokesman for the Waldorf School board of directors, said >> this week, expressing fears that have been part of the debate since it >> inception. >> Eastman, who has two children at the school, said the antennas 'emit a >> low-frequency radio wave which penetrates the fluid organs ... the brain, >> kidney and spleen,' and can cause cancer." > Low frequencies? That would be between 30 and 300 kilohertz. I have > an awfully hard time believing that a wireless telephone site would be > radiating both LF and microwave energy at the same time. > These guys need to get their story straight. Not surprising. Remember that the Unitarian congregation that owns the church is made up of a lot of "physicists, scientists, and engineers who are comfortable with the technology." The Waldorf School was founded by Rudolph Steiner, who taught that all matter is made up of four elements: Earth, Water, Fire and Air. No wonder the Waldorf folks reaction to the cell site is so superstitious. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com ------------------------------ From: Greg Skinner Subject: Re: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 06 Oct 1999 01:07:44 GMT I am not so sure more TLDs (alternative or not) will really solve the problem. For TLDs to be effective businesses, they will have to compete in price with the established registries. So domain registration will be cheap. For large businesses, and many small ones, registering in lots of TLDs will be a drop in the bucket. A worthwhile investment in protecting their intellectual property. Also, there will be little disincentive for cybersquatters to register in multiple TLDs, hoping that someone will come along and want to spend big bucks for them. You could make the argument that if you create enough TLDs, you create a disincentive for multiple registrations. However, there have been studies done by the IAB that suggest that DNS will not scale on a system-wide basis on the order of thousands of TLDs. (Granted, there is some difference of opinion on the limit.) gds at best.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why do you persist in talking in terms of 'effective business'? You have said similar things in other messages here in the past. I will repeat again, I am *not* interested in just one more registrar with a TLD making millions of dollars at the expense of the net, and its primary, principal users, individual, private citizens. I want a TLD and a registrar (or two or three) who maintain it in a responsible way according to community wishes. I expect them to be not-for-profit 'utility' functions or services. I expect them to maintain a root name server for it. If you already have a domain name elsewhere, then you do not need one in the new TLD I propose, and registrars would attempt to discourage multiple placements like that. Don't worry, if we want to visit your site we will query the name server which covers you, presuming we do not already have it in the name server for the new TLD I propose. If you want to come and visit a site on this TLD, all you have to do is query your name server, and if the people who operate your name server refuse to query us then that is between you and them to argue over. If on the other hand you wish to completely drop your .com .org or .net name and take a new name in the new TLD I propose -- even your existing name if it is available -- *and follow our rules, which I assure you will be considerably less oppressive than what you are dealing with now* -- then you are welcome to do that. In other words, Greg, I am proposing that beginning as soon as possi- ble, and continuing over the next two or three years that we build an alternate root from scratch, maintain it with ethical and honest registrars and technical people, send all queries first *to our own root to be resolved* and then to the other root if necessary for resolution. The managers of other top level domains -- and you know who I mean! -- would be perfectly free to query our root name server also if they were not too pig-headed and stubborn to do so, or thought they could lock us out with some sort of power play. I am not trying to run a business here; I am talking about a service for the net where small, individual web site owners -- people like myself for example -- don't have to worry about having their domain name ripped off and being silenced because ICANN happens to take a dislike to them or some mega-giant corporation decides they need the name instead, which is the way it is set up now. *Must I* ask Judith to post those oppressive rules here all over again? I hope not! PAT] ------------------------------ From: briroy@gcfn.org (Brian C Roy) Subject: Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet Date: 5 Oct 1999 23:59:54 -0400 Organization: The Greater Columbus FreeNet >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A few days ago I spent some time on the >> mailing list here, swapping out email addresses for readers who had >> been at that site to wherever they told me to move them. At one time, >> I suppose eight or ten years ago, there were quite a few Freenet-type >> sites around. Are any of them operating any longer? I suppose there >> is not a lot of room or tolerance for anything like that on the net >> today, and it is very unfortunate. PAT] I'm happy to report that the Greater Columbus Freenet is still alive and well, and still using pretty much the same(gopher) format they started with. They've just recently started offering PPP connections ( for a fee) to help support the free part of the system. I read news on this system, and use it for my primary email, because I actually LIKE using pine for mail and tin for news. Brian Roy KB8TEY briroy@freenet.columbus.oh.us OR briroy@gcfn.org ------------------------------ Reply-To: dov@oz.net Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 21:25:36 -0700 From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A few days ago I spent some time on the > mailing list here, swapping out email addresses for readers who had > been at that site to wherever they told me to move them. At one time, > I suppose eight or ten years ago, there were quite a few Freenet-type > sites around. Are any of them operating any longer? I suppose there > is not a lot of room or tolerance for anything like that on the net > today, and it is very unfortunate. PAT] I got my internet feet wet with a "freenet" here in Seattle through the Seattle Community Network. There are still a number of freenets available including the Seattle Community Network, Tri-cities (Washington) freenet, Eugene Free Net, Vancouver (BC) Community Net, Victoria Free-Net, TINCAN in Spokane, Washington, Aztec Arizona Telecommunications Community, Chebucto Community Net (Halifax), DANEnet (Dane County, Wisconsin), Greater Detroit freenet, Edmonton Freenet, Genessee Freenet, Los Angeles Freenet, National Capital Freenet (Ottawa), Nyx (Denver), Prairie Net (Champagne-Urbana), Toronto Freenet and Twin Cities Freenet (Minneapolis/St. Paul) and probably others that I don't know. AOL may have the greater exposure, but there are still lots of people who use the freenets for one reason or another. Also, these freenets are a real community and people really care about their community. Joseph (formerly and still jsinger@scn.org) Joseph Singer Seattle, Washington USA [ICQ pgr] +1 206 405 2052 [voice mail] +1 206 493 0706 [FAX] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 21:24:35 -0400 From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter I just had one of these gadgets installed today. My water company calls the system "HOMER" for Hands-Off MEter Reading. (But wasn't the old way "hands-off" too?). It's connected at one end to the water meter with a three-wire cable, and at the other end to a normal RJ-11 phone jack. Actually, this is the second attempt at installing it. They tried once a few years ago, but were unable to get the thing to function. Watching their debugging attempts, I learned a little about the device. PAT's description of the protocol is exactly right, it uses the telco's "line test" functions. No ringing voltage of any kind is used, distinctive, selective, or otherwise. The phone never rings or tries to. What happens is that the line appears to go "off hook" but it is done from the telco side. Inbound callers would surely get a busy signal. The reason it wouldn't function at my house is that I had a gadget on the line that interfered with it. "It was a Radio Shack Hold Module", a device that would attach to the phone line at any jack, and let you put any extension on hold by flashing the hookswitch twice, so that you could then pick up the call at another extension. The water company installer(s) couldn't figure out the problem at first, so they threw a butt set and voltmeter on the line and listened in as someone at the telco (or maybe "watco") test desk initiated a polling cycle to my meter. When the "HOMER" system dropped the line voltage, my Radio Shack gizmo would respond by going off-hook itself for a second. The HOMER system thought this was someone lifting a phone in the house, and it aborted the test. When I disconnected the hold module, the trouble cleared up. When it was working right, line voltage dropped, and then there were bursts of modem tone back and forth, lasting a total of a second or so, and then the line was released. I'd guess it was 1200 baud or less from the sound of it and the fact that none of the now-common modem mating songs were required. Just click, bleep-bloop, hang-up. Since I still wanted to keep my hold module, the water company folks just packed up their things and departed, defeated, but they left in place the phone jacks and new water meter with the three-wire cable. That made the installer's job today very easy. Oh, the hold module finally quit working reliably and I heaved it out a few months ago. Since Radio Shack doesn't make them any more, I thought I might as well let the water folks hook up their HOMER box that they were so all-fired hot to get installed. What the system is between the phone and water companies, I couldn't tell you, but today's installer said that they were having a lot of trouble with it in some areas, due to Bell Atlantic's ongoing upgrades from copper to fiber. He said there was a workaround available, and that's how he was spending a lot of his hours lately. He said it was slow going because telco was more interested in getting the phone system up and running before worrying about the meter reading functions. Hey, I should hope so! I agree with Mark that the water company really ought to pay for their own pair of wires, but when I compare "leasing" them mine at no charge for two seconds a month, against the inconvenience of paying estimated readings, or waiting for the human meter reader to not show up, I just caved in and let them do it their way. ------------------------------ From: Paul Eskola Subject: Question on GR303 via ATM Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 22:45:19 -0400 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Does anyone have experience with using ATM as a transport for voice calls to a GR303 LDS? Do you really get any benefit from this? Wouldn't the ATM link have to be a Circuit Emulated set of T1's into the switch, thereby cutting any bandwidth savings? Could AAL2 be used on individual DS0's between the RDT and the switch? Any discussion would be appreciated. ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 06 Oct 1999 03:28:07 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal What effect's this likely to have on the new Sprint campus construction in which Pat was so interested? Bruce Wilson [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In any merger of two companies, usually 25-30 percent of the total combined work force is laid off. MCI-Worldcom -- who I suspect is going to be calling the shots here -- has stated that 'a lot of duplicate functions can be eliminated or combined in the new operation' ... a lot of people on Sprint payroll will not be needed any longer. The new campus being built was designed to bring *all* Sprint employees around the USA into one central location in so far as possible. Are they now looking at 25-30-40 percent more space at the 'campus' than they need? Its not like they rented some space in an old office building in downtown Kansas City and brought in some rental furniture ... that campus cost some BIG $$ on its own. Is MCI going to move a lot of its operations into the new campus since it is practically built and cost a bundle to put there, or are going to say to the Sprint employees they decide to keep that they'll all move to Mississippi and set up shop there instead? I can guarentee you Sprint wil have at least 25 percent fewer employees by this time next year ... maybe 40 percent fewer. Companies do not merge and then keep two duplicate IP departments, two duplicate customer service departments, etc. So what happens now to the fancy new campus? PAT] ------------------------------ From: ccremer@netscape.net (Charlie Cremer) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 03:48:07 GMT Organization: Noddy Blighters On Mon, 04 Oct 1999 18:02:34 -0400, Steve Uhrig wrote: > Jeremy Greene wrote: >> Why does anyone tolerate this? Is this charge supposedly to pay for >> digital switch upgrades? There haven't been any analog switches in >> Mass. for a year or two. Haven't the LEC's paid off the costs of >> installing digital switches by selling Centrex and CLASS services? And >> doesn't Touch tone use less resources on the switch? > No, it takes more. With pulse dialing no additional equipment is > needed. With DTMF you need a DTMF receiver. In fact the lack of > available DTMF receivers during periods of very heavy usage is often > the cause of slow or no dial tone problems. Those with pulse service > receive much faster dial tone in this instance because they don't have > to wait for a receiver to become available for their call. > Leonard Erickson wrote: >> But since pulse dialing definitely uses more resources (in the sense >> that the dial decoder gear is tied up longer) there *is* some small >> pressure to get rid of it. I expect that in many places, it'll be done >> by raising the charge for having pulse dialing supported on your line. >> And eventually they'll offer some sort of swap deal to get the old >> phones replaced. > Pulse dialing does not require more switch resources than DTMF. The > switch monitors the on hook off hook status of all lines in the switch > every few milliseconds regardless of whether the line is in use or > idle. Dial pulses are just a series of on hook off hook events which > the switch is monitoring for in the first place. DTMF on the other > hand requires a DTMF receiver to receive the DTMF tones. Dial pulse > does not require any special receiver. > In fact in Ohio DTMF lines are programmed as combined dial type > instead of tone dialing only. I guess this is just in case you flip > the pulse tone switch to pulse by accident, you can still call out. If > the line is programmed as DTMF only the switch will ignore dial > pulses. Excuse me? When a phone comes off-hook, how does the CO equipment know if it is pulse or DTMF? That can't be resolved until the dialing begins. I dispute the suggestion that pulse phones may get a dial tone sooner than DTMF, especially with modern ESS equipment. Here in Southwestern Bell territory, every line is equipped for pulse and DTMF; but if you don't pay extra for DTMF, they have to disable it in the CO. So far as I am aware, there is no provision for disabling pulse and having DTMF alone. The extra charge for DTMF makes no sense at all. Charles Cremer The email reply address of this message is valid, but never read. ------------------------------ Subject: Last Laff: End of the Century Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 20:51:13 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) "The big corporations are suddenly taking notice of the web, and their reactions have been slow. Even the computer industry failed to see the importance of the Internet, but that's not saying much. Let's face it, the computer industry failed to see that the century would end." - Douglas Adams [quotation is from about 00:14:58 into the program: http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events99/battleground/battleground1. ram] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #459 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 6 14:23:08 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA14650; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 14:23:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 14:23:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910061823.OAA14650@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #460 TELECOM Digest Wed, 6 Oct 99 14:23:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 460 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple (Brian Vita) Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple (Bob Goudreau) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Ed Ellers) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Michael Spencer) Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... (Arthur Ross) Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... (Peter Simpson) Re: Special Security Report: The Phonemasters (Satch) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? (Steve Winter) SS7(C7) Message? (Hyunsu Jung) Is This Sharing of my Non-Published Number? (Matthew Black) Who Owns This Prefix? (Jim Hornbeck) Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (Ed Ellers) Re: Telephone Dry Cell Battery (Stewart Fist) 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, 06 Oct 1999 07:32:30 -0400 From: Brian Vita Subject: Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple At 03:10 AM 10/6/99 -0400, was written: > The public hearings the town held prior to issuing its permit were > the first time the church learned it had done something its neighbors > didn't like, Duncan said. That's when residents and parents aired > their concerns that their children's health would suffer from > microwaves coming from the antennas. > 'I think these antennas are extremely dangerous to health,' George > Eastman, a spokesman for the Waldorf School board of directors, said > this week, expressing fears that have been part of the debate since it > inception. > Eastman, who has two children at the school, said the antennas 'emit a > low-frequency radio wave which penetrates the fluid organs ... the brain, > kidney and spleen,' and can cause cancer." I find this whole argument by the folks in Lexington to be ridiculous. We are talking about a cell phone tower that puts out a relatively low power signal. If we travel a mile or two to the Southwest, we end up at Bear Hill in Waltham. Bear Hill is one of the hills that circle Boston and is used extensively as an antenna farm for all sorts of signals, a majority of which are heading over Lexington for Boston. A mile or so to the West we have Bedford with Hanscom AFB with its share of antennas, radar and other goodies. If we jump to the Northwest, we have WRKO with 50,000 watts of AM radio. If memory serves me correctly, there's at least one commercial AM/FM site in Lexington proper. Do they really think that the additional 1Kw or so of combined output of the cell site is going to do them in? Brian T. Vita, President Cinema Service & Supply, Inc., 75 Walnut St., Peabody, MA 01960-5626 (978)538-7575/Fax (978)538-7550/Sales (800)231-8849/Sales Fax (800)329-2775 ***Visit Our Online Store at www.cssinc.com*** ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 11:05:18 EDT From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) wrote: >> These guys need to get their story straight. > Not surprising. Remember that the Unitarian congregation that owns > the church is made up of a lot of "physicists, scientists, and > engineers who are comfortable with the technology." The Waldorf > School was founded by Rudolph Steiner, who taught that all matter is > made up of four elements: Earth, Water, Fire and Air. No wonder the > Waldorf folks reaction to the cell site is so superstitious. Being someone who grew up half a mile away from this site (and attended the Catholic church across Mass. Ave. from what is now the Waldorf School, with my family sometimes parking in its driveway), I'm familiar with all the institutions in the story. The Waldorf school is housed in an old building that was formerly a public school (named Monroe Elementary IIRC -- no, I didn't attend there; I went to Bowman Elementary instead). After the Baby Boom peaked, the number of students in the Lexington public school system started dropping in the late 1970s, and the town began closing some of the older schools, including Monroe. Waldorf started operating in the building a few years after it closed, but I'm not sure if the Waldorf chain actually bought the facility, or just leases it from the Town of Lexington. Given that the Town is one of the parties being sued by Waldorf, I wonder if they could make the whole problem go away by just declining to renew the school's lease the next time it comes up for renewal (again, assuming the town still owns the building) ... As a native Lexingtonian, I am ashamed to see the town that houses the headquarters of Raytheon and a portion of the campus of MIT's famed Lincoln Laboratories is also afflicted by a group of loopy Luddite ignoramuses. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only that Bob, but the people at the school were doing something I consider highly unprofessional by getting the students involved in protest demonstrations at the church. The *students* should never be involved in any of it. They are there, ostensibly for their classroom educations, not for being used as pawns in a dispute the adults are having. Far too often we see this however, that when one side in a dispute has little or nothing else to use in their favor, ie. facts, they drag out a bunch of little folks, make them all as pathetic looking as possible and give them signs to carry around thinking, hoping, if nothing else a guilt trip dumped on the other side will accomplish what their lack of facts could not. Those children should have been in their classrooms during school hours, and any protest marches/demonstrations should have been after school hours. It happens all the time though, to the detriment of children. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:48:21 -0400 L.Winson wrote: > Of course you can get a new phone that switches between pulse and > rotary, but that's essentially a pain. The switches are tiny and hard > to get to. Depends on the phone. A lot of newer AT&T/Lucent phones, when used in pulse mode, will *temporarily* switch to tone mode by pressing the * key; when you hang up the phone goes back to pulse mode for your next call. My mother's cordless phone is like this, and saves her a lot of trouble. (Come to think of it, her old Sony cordless phone used the same technique -- no need to find the little switch there either.) ------------------------------ From: Michael Spencer Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: 06 Oct 1999 03:35:35 -0400 Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology I still have dial. I'm in Canada, not the US. The local telco flatly refused to replace my two-party line with private until the mid-80s, when they did it without asking. I could have touchtone if (1) I paid more and (2) I was willing to buy or rent one of numerous cruddy, anti-ergonomic and easily damaged little pieces of ... um ... little phone sets to which the rest of the world seems to have become accustomed without complaint. I *like* the big, clunky dial phone with a real bell. I just hate the ones that sound like the french fry cooker at McDonalds having a panic attack, fall apart without provocation and are so light that a gentle twich on the handset cord yanks them off the table. I've dropped the old dialphone down the stairs without harming them. I whacked the wrong thing during a renovation and dropped a heavy timber plus half the contents of the attic on one, knocked a chunk out of the case but it works fine. If I'm determined to interact with voicemail or whatever, I use a simpleminded program I cobbled up that tells my modem to tonedial the keystroke. But one of these days MT&T is going to unilaterally upgrade me. In anticipation, I've been trying to find one of those phones that looks and feels approximately like a desktop dial phone, has a bell ringer but has a keypad and generates dialtones. Can someone tell me the trade nomenclature or number for such a phone? Better, where can I get a couple? And if it were to come from the US, do you know of any problem using it on a Canadian phone system? Piecing together bits of info, I gather that the Canadian K-Mart stores bought a carload of them, remaindered (by Nortel?). When they didn't move as novelties, they withdrew them. The trail is cold and I don't know where they all went. Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada mspencer@mit.edu URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 07:21:31 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... > As anyone who has flown has heard, using a cellular telephone aboard > an airplane is dangerous. > American Airlines warns passengers that cell phones "may interfere > with the aircraft's communication and navigation systems." Similar > warnings come from Delta, United and Continental. British Airways > links cellular interference to potential problems with compasses and > even cabin pressure. > What the airlines don't tell passengers is that there is no scientific > evidence to support these claims. What concerns there are about > cellular phones in airplanes dwell in the realm of anecdote and theory > -- and to some extent in that of plain finance. There is money to be > earned or lost by cell-phone companies and airlines if cell phones are > used in-flight. This article made me cringe. While it's not totally wrong, it's far from right. I can only speculate about possible motives for the ground prohibitions, e.g. to generate Airphone business. As to the claims of possible hazards to safety-of-life systems on the ground, indeed that is, IMHO, zero. In-flight, however, I side with the airlines. It is not the normal, intended radiation from the various devices that is the hazard; it is the *un*intended radition and accidental nonlinear intermod products that may affect unintended receivers, e.g. the ILS glideslope, other aids to navigation. There have been anecdotal reports from airline crews of "events" that were thought to be due to some passenger- carried gizmo, although these are impossible to prove one way or the other. The probability of harm is admittedly low, but the consequences could be terribly serious. But the article is most misleading in that it suggests that the cellular and PCS systems would actually work in flight. While the occasional isolated analog call might sometimes succeed, there are serious problems. Cellular systems are not designed for subscribers at 30,000 feet moving at 500 knots. Their RF characteristics depend critically on the fact that the customers are in what the radar folks would call "ground clutter." The difference between 800 MHz propagation near the ground and free space is enormous, e.g. a few tens of km range on the ground vs. thousands of km in free space, for typical cellular transmitter powers and receiver sensitivities. The large losses found near the ground are critical to the isolation of the users in one cell from those in other cells. From a commercial A/C in flight to cells on the ground, the effective propagation is near that of free space. Large numbers of cells would be visible. There would be intolerable interference and confusion about handoff. And, most likely, the digital systems are not designed for Doppler of this magnitude. One of my engineering acquaintances from Bell Atlantic Mobile tells me that they have been getting inquiries about airborne use since time immemorial. The answer has always been something like "Don't even think about it." I expect the Journal has already heard from them, or from the CTIA. ... and all this is aside from the annoyance factor. Airplane seats make lousy phone booths, as anyone who has sat near an Airphone user can attest. Some restaurants now try to capitalize on their wireless phone prohibitions in their advertising. -- Best regards, -- Arthur Dr. Arthur H. M. Ross 2325 East Orangewood Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85020-4730 ------------------------------ From: Peter_Simpson@ne.3com.com (Peter Simpson) Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 06:53:29 -0400 Subject: Cell-Phone Use Aloft May Not Be The Danger That Airlines Claim Interesting and well written article. I wonder if they considered TDMA phones like GSM. My understanding is that the low-frequency "TDMA" part of GSM is what disrupts fire alarms and the like, not the 800/900/1.2G carrier itself. That is, the effect seems to be caused by the low frequency amplitude modulation, the detected RF and lack of it, rather than interference with reception of a radio signal on a particular frequency. This would show up as low frequency pulses on poorly shielded control wires. I live near a cellular tower, which supports several TDMA systems, and, though I cannot hear the conversations, I can clearly hear the "stuttering" TDMA pulsing on my shortwave receiver. The input stages are apparently being overloaded by the pulses of RF and I'm hearing the result. It seems to be a 10's of hertz rate (I have Nextel and 800 MHz TDMA cellular, as well as their data channels, on the tower). [If the above is all Greek to you, TDMA stands for Time Domain Multiple Access, a method of sharing a radio frequency among several users. It uses a scheme which enables each transmitter in turn, for a brief "time slot". Every one gets a turn, usually on the order of a fraction of a second, then everyone gets another turn...etc. So YOUR cell phone transmits, then waits, then transmits again, with the length of the wait being proportional to the number of other users on the channel. The result is that you transmit a sequence of RF "pulses"] Peter Simpson, KA1AXY ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 05:37:59 GMT From: satch@concentric.nospam.net (Satch) Subject: Re: Special Security Report: The Phonemasters Organization: SBC Internet Services Allegedly baptista@pccf.net (J. Baptista) said on 04 Oct 1999 in the following: > There's one thing I've noticed about hacking that concerns me. Some > countries like the U.S. arrest them. Other countries and commercial > interests hire them. > The question I have is who's going to end up on top? Countries that > arrest, or those that hire? First, that's not hacking, by any group that had invented the term to describe themselves or peers. You are talking about cybercrime, or cracking, or electronic vandalism. Just because some hack of a headline writer back in the late 70s got lazy and used the term "hacker" doesn't make it correct usage. I believe that the countries who bear down on cybercriminals are going to come out on top. We have a cadre of security experts who, while engaging in cracking activities in their youth, didn't relish the act in and of itself and ceased doing it when better alternatives became available. These people have matured into sober capable -- and still creative -- adults who do very well in detecting and blocking cracking activity. Some of the cybercriminals will be brought "into the bright side" as their attitudes change and their brillence becomes obvious, just as some criminals become consultants to law enforcement in the process of rehabilitation. Where I have the most fear is with countries (governments) who hire the crackers and cybercriminals to perform espionage on their behalf. This is why I look at the curbing of general crypotgraphy world-wide as a bad thing -- it makes it easier for governments to spy on intellectual property industries all over the world. _____ __/satch\____________________________________________________________ Satchell Evaluations, testing modems since 1984, 'Netting since 1971 "The only good mouse-trap is a hungry cat" ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 02:18:33 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Glenn Randers-Pehrson spake thusly and wrote: > In article , steve@sellcom.com > wrote: >> Glenn Randers-Pehrson spake thusly and wrote: >>> All they need to do is to look for a GIF comment that says GifBuilder >>> (that's free software, whose author was apparently forced by U-NO-who >>> to stop distributing it) or "built with DEMO copy of ..." or "built >>> with UNREGISTERED copy of ...". >> What about the US flag at www.whitehouse.gov that was created with >> unregistered shareware? ;O) > The file has no comments, and it has an application extension block > that reads "AdobeIR 1.0" which I would presume means that it was built > with Adobe Image Ready 1.0, which I believe is LZW-licensed. They changed it. It used to have a comment in the root of the animation. Maybe they read one of my posts about it? ;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 Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: hsjung@nuri.net (Hyunsu Jung) Subject: SS7(C7) Message? Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 21:41:57 +0900 Organization: Inet Internet Services Thanks in advance. I've been making a call test using SS7(C7) signalling between my site(Cisco's VCO) and other site(NT DMS 300). We're using the SS7 protocol of ITU-T "Blue Book" and T1 line When I get a call from other site, that call failed. so I monitor the signalling link through the analyzer. I found that the "extra octets " was in the IAM message as follows. |0000---- |National use |0 | |00001010 |Calling Party's Category |Ordinary calling subscriber | |00000011 |Transmission Medium Reqt |3.1 kHz audio | |00000110 |Pointer to parameter |6 | |00000000 |Pointer to parameter |0 | |Extra octets | |***B4*** |Extra Octets |03 80 90 a2 | |Called party number | |00000111 |Parameter Length |7 | |-0000100 |Nature of Address |International number | |0------- |Odd/Even Indicator |Even number of address signals | I found the extra octets in ITU-T recommendations, but I didn't find. If anyone know that meaning of "extra octets",could oyu explain to me in detail? I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me that meaning! Best Regards, hyunsu jung email:hsjung@nuri.net ------------------------------ From: black@csulb.edu (Matthew Black) Subject: Is This Sharing of my Non-Published Number? Date: 6 Oct 1999 15:28:16 GMT Over the past year I must have received 50 letters to change my CLEC from GTE California to GTE Communications. The promotion includes at least 100 prepaid long distance service at about 10 cents per minute, plus two call handling features such as caller ID or three-way calling. Unused minutes are nonefundable. GTE Communications also offers a no frills plan without the prepaid long distance for $25.00 per month. That's $7.75 more than my current basic service. Anyhow, the reason they spun off this separate company is because GTE California is not permitted to offer long distance service. My question is whether a decision by GTE California to share their customer information with GTE Communications constitutes a breach of nonpublished rules? Some of you may remember when earlier this year GTE California "accidentally" distributed street address and reverse directories containing 50,000 nonpub numbers. It seems they haven't learned. +------------------------------(c) 1999 Matthew Black, all rights reserved-- matthew black | Opinions expressed herein belong to me and network & systems specialist | may not reflect those of my employer california state university | network services BH-180E | e-mail: black at csulb dot edu 1250 bellflower boulevard | PGP fingerprint: 6D 14 36 ED 5F 34 C4 B3 long beach, ca 90840 | E9 1E F3 CB E7 65 EE BC [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The rules are that telcos may -- in fact are required -- to share non-pub numbers with long-distance carriers, or other premium charge service providers *for billing purposes only*. They are not allowed to give out non-pub information for marketing purposes. You as a non-pub subscriber are not permitted to 'hide' from the long distance carrier for the purpose of being billed for your calls but all other rules pertaining to privacy are supposed to be maintained. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jim Hornbeck Subject: Who Owns This Prefix? Date: 6 Oct 1999 15:47:19 GMT Organization: Netcom Let's see if I can phrase this question in a coherent manner. I have a cell phone with Airtouch. I want a particular phone number if it's available. The local Airtouch area doesn't have that prefix in any of its area codes. The local Airtouch folks say they don't have access to the other market areas. How can I search for that prefix (546-xxxx) in all of the Airtouch areas? I think there are 15 or 25 Airtouch marketing areas. Once again, TIA jim hornbeck horn@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:42:28 -0400 L. Winson wrote: "Ummm ... wasn't the whole point of the old Bell System divesture -- of which MCI played a big role to make happen -- to eliminate one stop shopping?" As best I can tell, the reason for the divestiture was that local exchange competition was *not* expected for a long time, if ever, meaning that the only way to open up the developing competition in long distance and customer premises equipment was to take both out of the hands of the local Bell companies. (Personally, if the deal is allowed to go through I hope the FCC forces Sprint PCS to allow equal access to long distance carriers.) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 16:42:25 +1000 From: Stewart Fist Reply-To: fist@ozemail.com.au Organization: Independent writer and columnist Subject: Re: Telephone Dry Cell Battery Does anyone know what type/voltage of dry cells were used by Morse in the first (the two wire) Baltimore-to-Washington telegraphy line, and how far they could drive the circuit between repeater/relays? Stewart Fist - writer and columnist See http://technology.news.com.au/opinion/ http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/ (some archives) http://www.electric-words.com (main archives) 70 Middle Harbour Road, Lindfield, 2070, N.S.W, Australia Phone +61 2 9416 7458 Fax +61 2 9416 4582 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #460 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 6 16:36:14 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id QAA20319; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 16:36:14 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 16:36:14 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910062036.QAA20319@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #461 TELECOM Digest Wed, 6 Oct 99 16:36:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 461 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia (Uwe Brockmann) Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal (Bud Couch) Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (Jeremy Greene) Re: Chicago Telephone Co. (Eric Bohlman) Re: MCI/Sprint Merger (Dennis Metcalfe) Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future (Michael Spencer) Revocation of Domain Names (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI (Greg Skinner) Re: The Bad Witch ICANN (Steve Winter) Re: Y2K Activities (Steven) 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: uwe@netcom.com (Uwe Brockmann) Subject: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia Date: 6 Oct 1999 19:19:09 GMT Organization: Mindspring/Netcom Online Services, Inc. Reply-To: uwe@netcom.com Erbia is my primary residential long-distance carrier. They offer the lowest rates that I have been able to find. However, the service has had a lot of problems that I had not expected. Here is my experience so far: The Low Rates monthly fees - $1.04 FCC PIC-C Surcharge - approx. 4% Universal Access Fee - no other monthly fees interstate - $0.069/minute - rate applies 24/7 - billed in 1 s increments - 1 s per call minimum - no monthly minimum usage requirement intrastate - rate varies from state to state - example: $0.0759/minute within Georgia international - rate varies from country to country - example: $0.1493/minute to Germany - billed in 6 s increments - 18 s per call minimum Erbia also guarantees that they will never raise their rates. The Problems 1. Erbia resells long-distance capacity provided by TeleHub. TeleHub recently cut off all of Erbia's customers leaving them with no primary long-distance carrier! 2. When I first signed up for the service last year, it was provided by a different company. I believe it was called "Advanced Communication Techniques" which may be the same company as "PK Communications" or "PK Consulting". They were way behind in billing. It took several months before I got my first bill which only covered calls that I had made months earlier. 3. After the company somehow morphed into Erbia earlier this year the billing became more regular. However, even though I usually paid my monthly bill shortly after receiving it, it took Erbia an extra month to credit my account. As a result every monthly bill erroneously claimed that I had not paid last month's charges. 4. On my last bill they even charged me a small $0.26 finance charge even though I had paid my previous bills in full and on time. 5. Erbia's customer service phone number cannot handle the current call volume. 6. Last year, a few weeks after signing up with this carrier and long before receiving my first bill, my long-distance service was suddenly disconnected. I called TeleHub and my LBOC, BellSouth. Both blamed each other. They continued to blame each other even after I got them on the phone together. However, they then managed to reconnect me within an hour. Neither side ever told me what the problem had been or whose fault it had been. Most of the BellSouth people I talked to had never heard of TeleHub before. Other Information TeleHub operates their own nationwide ATM network which supposedly runs on top of OC-12 or DS-3 trunks provided by MCI/WorldCom. TeleHub claims that they can reach about 85% of the U.S. population with their network. Calls to or from the rest of the country are routed over regular lines provided by MCI/WorldCom. Before the MCI/WorldCom merger TeleHub was working with WorldCom. Supposedly TeleHub can offer lower long-distance rates by using packet-switched ATM technology rather than traditional circuit-switched technology employed by other long-distance carriers without loss of transmission quality. TeleHub has a web site at http://www.telehub.com. However, this web site was down when I tried to reach it yesterday and today. TeleHub does not list a toll-free number. Today I was unable to reach a human at the only phone number, +1 847 263 4200, that directory assistance lists for TeleHub's Gurnee, IL, headquarters. Instead I got instructions to call the long-distance provider listed in my phone bill, i.e. Erbia. A call to +1 700 555 1212 still indicates that my long-distance provider is TeleHub. However, +1 long-distance dialing does not currently work for me. Neither does the 00 number for the long-distance operator. A few months ago, when the 00 number was still working, the phone was answered with "Century" which was, apparently, the name of a company hired by TeleHub to provide long-distance operator services. Erbia mails monthly bills directly to me instead of billing through the LBOC. Erbia sent me an e-mail which I enclose below. They blame TeleHub for the problem and indicate that they are taking legal action against TeleHub. They are looking for a new long-distance carrier for their service. In the meantime they recommend that their customers use one of several dial-around services. They promise to credit customers' accounts with the difference between the dial-around charges and the lower Erbia rates at a later time. Does anybody know more about what is going on at TeleHub? Can anybody relate their experience (good or bad) with other low-cost long-distance carriers? Here is the e-mail I received from Erbia: > From: "Patrick Oborn" > To: > Subject: erbia Network Outage > Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 17:07:18 -0700 > Organization: PK Communications > Dear valued customer, > Greetings. This email is being sent to you because you are an erbia > communications long distance customer. At this time, we would like to thank > you for your business - and also to make you aware of a very serious problem > we are having. > Our network provider (TeleHub) has recently shut off all of our customers > illegally. We are in the process of finding a new network provider, and > also pursuing legal action against TeleHub. This outage has negatively > affected all involved, and we want you to know that we are working around > the clock to bring full resolution. > In the meantime, please use a casual access code (we suggest 10-10-636, > 10-10-297, or 10-10-321). erbia will credit your account with the > difference of your bill and erbia's 6.9 cent/min rate. Please keep your > receipts, as we will need to provide our accountants with written proof to > authorize your refunds. > Also, if you have a PIC Freeze in place, please remove it. Our new network > provider identification code (PIC) will go out to your Local Telephone > Company within the next 2-4 days - enabling you to continue enjoying the > quality and savings that erbia provides. > Don't forget to check out our new online billing system at > http://erbia-customer.com/support if you haven't had a chance already. > If you have any questions or concerns, please EMAIL us at > mandy.boggs@erbia.com - our toll free support hotline (877-777-3515) is, and > will continue to be, flooded with calls for the next several weeks. > However, we usually respond to email within 10 hours or less. > Thank you very much for your patience and understanding. Your satisfaction > is our business. > Best Regards, > erbia communications, Inc. > http://erbia-customer.com Uwe Brockmann, uwe@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: Bud Couch Subject: Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 11:38:24 -0700 Organization: ADC Kentrox Monty Solomon wrote: > NEW YORK (CNN) -- In a deal that would break all corporate buyout > records, MCI WorldCom Inc. agreed to buy rival telecommunications > company Sprint Corp. for $115 billion, sources close to the deal > reported Monday. > MCI WorldCom made the offer as BellSouth Corp. made its own > eleventh-hour bid for Sprint, the country's third-largest > long-distance carrier. The boards of both companies voted to approve > the plan Monday, but neither offered any comment on the deal. > http://CNN.com/US/9910/05/sprint.mci.01/ Let's see ... AT&T has 42% and everybody is always threatening anti- trust action. MCI is around 30 and Sprint is close to 20%. With this deal, the combined company would have a better than 50% market share, and the two largest then would control about 92%, which is just where Bell was when they were forced into divestiture. If this goes through, we'll all know that the right palms were greased. Unless Janet sits on them, the lawyers in the anti-trust division have got to be seeing a slam dunk. Bud Couch |When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.| bud@kentrox.com | -Tom Lehrer | Insert disclaimer here | "Therefore you're guilty!" -EEOC | ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Greene Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 12:14:24 -0400 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Matt Bartlett wrote in message news:telecom19. 458.3@telecom-digest.org: > Last month I made an online payment with FirstUSA credit card. It was > in the amount of $157.40. They deducted it automatically from my > checking account. I specified it was an one-time only payment. > Today, I call up my bank to reconcile my check book, and it is telling > me that I had two $25 widthdrawals today. A CSR told me that FirstUSA > tried to withdraw the $157.40 twice today. It was already paid last > month. > When I called FirstUSA today, all the woman would tell me, reading > from a script, is "First USA is aware of the problem and is making > corrections". She refused to answer if FirstUSA would handle the $50 > bounced check fee from my bank. And conviently her supervisor is out > at lunch. > Anyone else have any problems with online payments with First USA? I have had problems with online payments taking three or four days to post to my account, when their web page indicates that they will be posted in two days. I think they switched to a new online payment system a few months ago, because I had to re-enter my checking account info. The old online payment system was _really_ slow, sometimes taking four or five days. Can anyone who is familiar with the industry explain why what seems like a simple overnight wire transfer would take so long? Are there genuine reasons, or are they just stalling in order to collect more interest? Their customer service is pretty awful. They gouge you with fees and deceptive terms and conditions. In order to actually accomplish anything, you may have to write to them, by certified mail. Personally, I would not open a new account with them again. They are on my list of companies such as Bell Atlantic that ought to qualify for a RICO prosecution. :-) -Jeremy (Return address doctored to thwart canned meat) ------------------------------ From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman) Subject: Re: Chicago Telephone Co. Date: 6 Oct 1999 08:55:19 GMT Organization: Netcom Wiring65 (wiring65@aol.com) wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is an Ameritech (nee Illinois Bell) > office, but not the headquarters or 'downtown Chicago' office. That > is across the street. '207' is an odd number; it is on the south side > of the street; it is (or was, whatever) the 'Chicago-Franklin' central > office, also in past lives the 'Franklin Coin Office' (for payphones > in the downtown area). What you term the 'downtown Chicago office' Franklin's been at 311 W. Washington for quite some time now; I first saw the building 24 years ago, it looked like it had definitely been built as a CO rather than something else, and it looked like it was quite old at the time. > which used to also be the headquarters for Ameritech/Illinois Bell was > at '212' on the *north* side of the street and occupying almost the > entire city block. Since it occupies nearly the entire block and part > of the lobby now used for the main entrance is on the other end of > the building, they refer to it as 225 West Randolph Street, in > other words the south side of the next street north. PAT] 212 W. Washington has been vacated by Ameritech and has been, or is in the process of being, converted to condos. The newer building at 225 W. Randolph is still occupied by Ameritech. BTW, Ameritech is now leasing space in suburban COs to walk-in retail businesses; the Winnetka CO has a bank branch on the first floor, and the Evanston CO has had signs up indicating retail space for lease. I guess the conversion to digital switching has not only freed up space but lowered noise levels to the point where other businesses can occupy the same buildings. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are right about the Franklin CO address, and I stand corrected. I even sat here and said it was named because of the intersecting street, yet any Chicagoan should know that the intersection at 200 West is Wells Street and that Franklin Street intersects at 300 West, therefore the Franklin CO at 311 West Washington is across the street *southwest* of what used to be the main headquarters building rather than across the street *southeast*. The building on the *southwest* corner of Wells/Washington which would logically have a street number of 201 or 203 West Washington and be *southeast* of the former HQ across the street is or used to be a combination restaurant, bar and grill place where large numbers of telco employees would hang out after work, during lunch or whenever they slipped away for a few minutes. Now this forces me to rethink the location of '207 Washington' as given in the original message. Given the other clues in the original message about Chicago Telephone Company and the style of telephone piece in question, I would say it probably dates to about 1900 or 1905. My reasoning is, the renumbering of Chicago street addresses to the presently used system occurred in, I think, 1912 designating the current State/Madison Streets 'zero starting point in all dir- ections'. Prior to that renumbering, there were no directional designations on streets that I am aware of. Instead of two city blocks per hundred numbers as now, it was stretched out a little differently. Also, they did not use the 'south/east sides of streets get odd numbers; north/west sides of streets get even numbers' as now. It was a hodge-podge of numbering as you walked along. Another clue is that Illinois Bell simply took over all CTC facilities in place; nothing was physically changed to any other location. I suggest therefore that '207 Washington' under the old numbers most likely became '212 West Washington' or '311 West Washington' under the new (as of circa 1912) street numbering system. The definitive answer, should anyone in Chicago wish to pursue it, would be found at the Municipal Reference Library on the 7th floor of City Hall. There, you may consult microfilm of the 'Chicago City Directory' for the years 1873 through 1921 (the last year the city directory was published). I believe the versions in later years included address translations between old and new addresses. There is also a map of the city as it existed in 1900 and other texts you may review. *None* of the material can be removed from the library for any reason. The Chicago Historical Society also has duplicates of much of the above, and microfilm of telephone directories from 1878 to the present time, as does the Chicago Public Library. PAT] ------------------------------ From: dmet@flatoday.infi.net (Dennis Metcalfe) Subject: Re: MCI/Sprint Merger Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 12:38:52 GMT Organization: InfiNet Reply-To: dmet@flatoday.infi.net On Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:52:03 GMT, davidesan@my-deja.com wrote: > I was amazed at the size of the merger. 119 billion dollars is one > report I read. To put this in perspective I found the following: Although I have not followed this all that closely, I do recall the original MCI offer was 65 billion, topped by Bell South at 72 billion ... how did something worth 65 billion just a couple of weeks ago suddenly get to be worth 119 billion? Did they discover a whole 'nother company down in the basement that everyone forgot about or is the stock market so buoyant that any absurd set of numbers can be made to work ... until the balloon pops? Dennis Metcalfe ------------------------------ From: Michael Spencer Subject: Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future Date: 06 Oct 1999 04:06:57 -0400 Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology > We move to US, or to a friendly country domain with well-connected > second-level servers, or we carve out a chunk of ORG. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think we should begin that evacuation > rather soon, personally. Thinking about "Walled City" as in Gibson's _Idoru_? "They turned the killfile inside out ..." A shared, distributed place on the net that isn't in any fixed place and isn't, somehow, on the net? Is anyone thinking about how this might translate from Gibson's fantasy into workable IP technology? Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada mspencer@mit.edu URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 05:39:57 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Revocation of Domain Names I'm just catching up on a great big pile of Digests -- haven't read in about a week, been too busy moving into a new house (to inaccurately quote someone else here recently, "the house is 45 years old, but it's new to me!"). In regards to the discussion about what Netsol and other registrars are doing re: the language in their contracts that states they can take away your domain name at any time for any reason, I agree that this is completely unreasonable. For the time being, I'll take them at their word that this language is there just to cover their own asses. I really believe that if they started yanking domain names just because they didn't like the colour of certain netizens' hair, it wouldn't stand up in court, no matter what the "contract" says. Restraint of trade could be cited quite easily, along with a host of other legal arguments. I think domain names should be handled like phone numbers. I dunno what US tariffs look like, but I was browsin' through my white pages the other day and read part of the Telus tariff here in Alberta, which states essentially that you, the customer, do *NOT* own the telephone number and that the telco can change it - but they MUST have a valid reason for doing so - you do have protection against an unreasonable and arbitrary change. IE: if a company called "FLOWERS" decided they wanted a telephone number that spelled out this word, and I happened to be using it, I could *NOT* be forced into relinquishing it. An obvious "valid reason" that comes quickly to mind would be an area code split, something we recently went through in Alberta - a dimbulb up in Edmonton tried to sue Telus because he had to outlay money for new stationary, etc., but the judge tossed it out based on this tariff. As for domain names, it would take some work to hammer out just what exactly constitutes a "valid reason", but it could be done. And it should be done. What pisses me off here is that when Netsol was a monopoly, it was much easier to make a case against them if they arbitrarily yanked your domain name: they're a monopoly, and you signed that contract only because they were the only game in town. Now, with the ICANN-pushed contract language appearing in the contracts of all the new "competing" registrars, we are being led to believe that there is competition (and thus if you don't like one company's terms you can go find another), yet in fact IT IS STILL A MONOPOLY, run by ICANN. Worse, it's very likely a judge will fall for this nonsense also. If you're looking to set up a domain name, and you're feeling a little paranoid about it, I suggest you check out the .NU domain. As you can see from my return email address, I'm using them - though originally I chose them only because that particular combination of letters had a specific appeal to me. I've just had a good look at their policies and they're quite favourable, IMHO. You can find them at: http://nic.nu (then click on "Policies-Pricing") This is the TLD for the island nation of Niue, but in actuality is run out of (I think) Boston, Mass. In a nutshell, here's how things differ a bit from the standard Netsol contract: 1) There's no provision for ARBITRARY revocation of domain names. You have to violate a specific section of the contract (more on this in point #3), *OR* they have to be ordered by a court to revoke your name. 2) There's no provision that allows them to arbitrarily change the terms of this contract and that your continuing to use the domain name constitutes your acceptance of those changes (I found that part of Netsol's contract particularly galling... I agree to their contract, send them my money, they change the contract two weeks later and my choice is either accept it or WALK AWAY FROM THE MONEY I PAID!!!) 3) They're aggressively anti-spam. They maintain a domain-wide abuse address (abuse@mail.nic.nu) to be used for reporting spammers using the .nu TLD. Anyone caught using the .nu TLD for spamming purposes will find themselves losing *ALL* of the domains they've registered. THIS I LIKE!!! :-) 4) Fees are $45 for the first two years. After that, renewals are priced at (your choice) $25/1 year, $45/2 years, or $65/3 years. So, 'tis cheaper than .COM, .ORG, or .NET. On the down side, it costs you $10 to make technical changes to your domain (ie: moving to new DNS servers, etc. Updates to personal information, ie: your phone number, address, etc., are free). Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the .nu TLD or with its operators other than as a satisfied customer. I never really paid much attention to this contract agreement until this discussion came up here -- and was MIGHTILY pleased that the terms are far, far more favourable than I was expecting - thus, my hearty recommendation. / From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom / Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU / Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU / / I took lessons in bicycle riding. But I could only afford half of them. / Now I can ride a unicycle. / --Steven Wright ------------------------------ From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Subject: Re: Bad Witch ICANN Simply Clones NSI Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 06 Oct 1999 16:45:33 GMT In article , Pat Townson wrote in response to me: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why do you persist in talking in terms > of 'effective business'? Whether or not a business is for-profit or non-profit (or even NO profit -- just a hobby) it must be able to support its operation. There is a significant investment required in software, hardware, network connectivity, personnel, etc. in running a registry. They must be able to finance their operation such that they are able to deliver the service they promise. gds at best.com ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Re : The Bad Witch ICANN Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 13:45:16 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) spake thusly and wrote: >> How do you spell m o n o p l y? > With another "o" after the "p", among other things. > Bill > P.S. Now you have to stay after the next Digest comes out to bang the > erasers. Ahem ... would you believe that was just a spelling test? (but for who, eh?) 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 Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) Subject: Re: Y2K Activities Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 14:22:26 +0800 Organization: Prima Computer If all our computers blow up at midnight then how can we send you e-mail? I personally expect to experience difficulty operating my computer shortly after midnight due to the Y2Keg problem. I should also be able to help test various other devices. I will probably be using the telephone (being nagged by the wife for being out so late), and making heavy withdrawals from the ATM to pay for all the boosing. I don't see how there could be a problem with the condom vending machines in the toilet, as they are completely mechanical, but I imagine they will be getting a thorough workout as well. I'm at least half a day ahead of you so when I sober up for lunch Ill drop you a line and let you know how the computers are running. That should still give you a few hours to prepare for the end of the world. I don't anticipate any problems with riots, shortages, etc here. Most of Asia grinds to a halt for a week every lunar new year. The worst that could happen is we get it a few weeks early this year. Steven AKnight@exchange.hsc.mb.ca says: > Patrick, > As an avid reader of the Telecom Digest, I admire the work you put > into it, and the world wide interest it generates. And, on that vein, > I would ask if you or your regular contributors have considered > putting up a notice site for New Years Eve. It could be beneficial to > us Norte Americanos if some of the gentlemen in the southern > hemisphere would consider e-mailing the results of the clock roll over > at midnight on New Years Eve. ( eg: were any problems encountered, and > what were they?) > 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 [TELECOM Digest Editors's Note: As the 1940's hit, 'September Song' phrased it, " ... for the days whittle down, to a precious few ... September, October ... " we are getting there, aren't we ... I got a curious joke in personal email the other day, and since I do not remember it all, it won't be much of a joke when told here, but it had to do with the McDonald hamburger signs in front of each of their restaurants. It seems those signs all now say 99 billion have been eaten to-date, and it is about time to change the sign to say 100 billion have been eaten. The trouble is, the signs were all construc- ted so many years ago when no one considered there would ever be a time so that many of those things would be consumed. As a result, the sign only has room for two digits, and the result will be the signs all claim that '00 billion' of their things have been eaten in the past 45 years since the first McDonald's opened in Des Plaines, IL in 1955 and the second one in Skokie, IL in 1956. Now when the public sees that 'zero zero billion' McDonald's ham- burgers and or assorted value meals have been consumed in the past nearly half-century, they'll lose confidence in the system and begin rioting. In their riots, all the McDonald/Burger King type places will get destroyed and with all of them gone and the vast wasteland left where they used to be, and no where else to eat, everyone will be reduced to living in wide open spaces and eating beetles, cockroaches or other insects still left crawling around. McDonald's advertising and public relations people are said to have formed a top-level, blue-ribbon committee to insure that all of their signs will be 'hundred billion compliant' sometime in the next couple months before the rollover occurs, but they may miss the deadline because of internal squabbles over the best way to re-align the digits and the rest of the words on the sign to make it all fit together nicely. Top executives of McDonald's are in daily meetings with President Clinton to keep him advised of their progress in the event he needs to bring out the big, tough Marines who are in training at Quantico, VA, declare martial law and a national emergency, and open emergency shelters for McDonald's employees. I don't know about you, but this has me quite concerned. I am packing up my survivalist gear and heading for the hills today. I'll try to capture the largest and fattest cockroaches and beetles and keep them with me in my underground bunker. Write your congress-critter today and ask him why didn't McDonald's start making these preparations years ago. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #461 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 7 20:27:02 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id UAA13654; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 20:27:02 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 20:27:02 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910080027.UAA13654@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #462 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Oct 99 20:27:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 462 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Worldcom and Mergers (Babu Mengelepouti) Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (Richard Shockey) Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (Michi Kaifu) Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (Lou Coles) Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal (Bob Goudreau) Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal (Bruce Larrabee) Re: MCI/Sprint Merger (Chris Kaschig) Re: Red Caps on End of Wires (Coredump) Re: Red Caps on End of Wires (Rory Matthews) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Walter Dnes) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (David Clayton) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Louis Raphael) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Mark Brader) 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, 06 Oct 1999 15:31:34 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: Worldcom and Mergers > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In any merger of two companies, > usually 25-30 percent of the total combined work force is laid > off. MCI-Worldcom -- who I suspect is going to be calling the shots > here -- has stated that 'a lot of duplicate functions can be > eliminated or combined in the new operation' ... a lot of people on > Sprint payroll will not be needed any longer. The new campus being > built was designed to bring *all* Sprint employees around the USA into > one central location in so far as possible. Are they now looking at > 25-30-40 percent more space at the 'campus' than they need? Its not > like they rented some space in an old office building in downtown > Kansas City and brought in some rental furniture ... that campus cost > some BIG $$ on its own. Is MCI going to move a lot of its operations > into the new campus since it is practically built and cost a bundle to > put there, or are going to say to the Sprint employees they decide to > keep that they'll all move to Mississippi and set up shop there > instead? I can guarentee you Sprint wil have at least 25 percent fewer > employees by this time next year ... maybe 40 percent fewer. Companies > do not merge and then keep two duplicate IP departments, two duplicate > customer service departments, etc. So what happens now to the fancy > new campus? PAT] MCI Worldcom has a fairly illustrious history of actually keeping many duplicate operations. In fact, they still maintain about four duplicate telecommunications networks. I have an account with MCI Worldcom that I have had since the time that they were Metromedia Communications, based in, I think, East Rutherford, New Jersey. Metromedia was, you might remember, the first company to offer a flat-rate calling card with no surcharge of any sort. I obtain- ed one of these cards in order to make long distance calls on my own bill, so I didn't have to endure the endless questioning of my mother what those "strange charges on the bill were" (I was a teen at the time). Metromedia Communications had the 10488 (10-ITT) carrier access code, and I think that they came about by buying some or all of ITT's telecommunications assets when ITT decided to get out of the communications business altogether and start running hotels (ITT is now ITT Sheraton). Well, Metromedia later merged with LDDS, to form the company LDDS Metromedia. LDDS was, if I remember correctly, run by a cigar-chomping, whiskey-drinking Mississippian by the name of Bernie Ebbers. The company was later renamed LDDS Worldcom, then finally just "Worldcom." Meanwhile Worldcom bought WilTel, the telecommuni- cations arm of Williams Pipeline Company (carrier access code 10-555). I think that the "LDDS side" was still buying wholesale fiber capacity from Williams even though the combined company OWNED the legacy ITT system outright. Close to four years passed between the time that LDDS and Metromedia merged (during which time the combined company aquired a few other carriers and had become the fourth largest telecommunications company in the US) until the billing systems were combined. And when it was finally done, it was done messily -- one month, I just got a bill with no call detail saying "Please pay this amount." I called and protested, since I had paid my bill in full the month before, and was informed that the only thing that had "imported to the new billing system" was the "total amount due." Obviously, I wasn't going to pay some random amount with no substantiation of why I owed it, so in a VERY RARE concession, I was credited the amount due (LDDS Metromedia Worldcom almost NEVER gave credits for ANYTHING). Today, it is, I think, ten years past the merger of LDDS and Worldcom, and more than five years since WilTel was aquired by Worldcom. And, of course, MCI and Worldcom are one company. The combined company STILL operates multiple telecommunications networks. The 1010555 carrier access code still routes calls over the old WilTel network, the 1010488 carrier access code still routes calls over the legacy analog (!) ITT network, and MCI had a couple of networks of its own -- both the MCI network and the Telecom*USA network. Additionally, there are still multiple billing systems in place, and the divisions of the company operate as separate entities and even COMPETE with each other. I don't think that WorldCom has done a good job AT ALL of integrating operations; their track record is evident of this. It would not surprise me if ten years from now, WorldCom was still operating over FIVE separate telecommunications networks and two or three separate billing systems. Some things I expect will be combined -- employee benefit packages and the like. And suppliers can be consolidated also. But there are likely to be substantial operations in Kansas City for a long time. In fact, I think that the East Rutherford office that was headquarters of Metromedia so long ago is still in operation. ------------------------------ From: Richard Shockey Subject: Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 17:41:35 -0500 Organization: Shockey Consulting LLC lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) wrote: > Ummm ... wasn't the whole point of the old Bell System divesture -- of > which MCI played a big role to make happen -- to eliminate one stop > shopping? No it was to create competitive markets in telecom services. IMHO the government did not go far enough ... the ILEC's should have been forced to divest themselves of the Local Loop itself. There should have been a pure separation from the true monopoly physical plant and the provisioning of service i.e. dial tone. What you are going to see now is one stop shopping from five or six companies instead of one. > ABC News quoted Consumers Reports has saying telephone rates have > INCREASED by $2 billion for small users, $2-$5 a month, in recent > years. I really do not understand why people find the fees suprising. Essentially what is happening is that the carriers are exposing the true cost of service and the government mandated fees (taxes) for things like Universal Service and Local Number Portability, 911 enhancements etc. Local Rates were bound to go up once the Bell System cross subsidies were eliminated. > We had a working Bell System. The powers that be decided having a > single source was not in the public interest and forced it to break > up. We had a system that gouged long distance callers in order to support dirt cheap local service. It was socialism pure and simple. Monopolies, like the old Bell System were no longer in the public interest ... that's why we have the Sherman and Clayton Anti-Trust acts. Divestiture worked. > Now MCI, a direct beneficiary of that breakup, wants to return to > the old ways of doing business. No it just wants to be big enough to compete effectively with ATT, SBC, Bell Atlantic, Qwest, Level3 etc. My judgment is that despite Kinnard the FCC Commissioner the merger will go through since WorldCom will effectively argue that once BellAtlantic and SBC are allowed into the LD market the competitive balance will be essentially restored. I've seen private surveys that indicate that ATT and WorldCom will surely lose between 20-30% market share in LD services within 18 months of the approvals. ATT and WorldCom are very aware of this. Much of this is based on the experience of SNET in CT which was the only ILEC the FCC allowed to sell LD. They grabbed 30% LD market share in 18 months, or so I'm told. There will still be five or six major Long Distance players so there will still be a very competitive market. > Of course, MCI is very much against allowing local Bell companies to > offer long distance even though it wants the right to force the local > companies to sell it circuits wholesale for it to resell at a profit. The ILEC's should be forced to sell the circuits ... (see above) why can't I choose my local carrier the same way I choose my LD carrier? Are you really suggesting that SBC and Bell Atlantic are paragons of "public service" ... there is only thing they understand and are desperate to avoid ... real competition for local phone service. > IMHO, this is clearly wrong. But can anything be done about it? Nope ... sorry.. you have the telecom system the FCC and Congress and the Telecom Lobbyists wants you to have ... and IMHO is a better one than the old Bell System. We have more services at lower prices than ever in the history of the Telecom industry ... and a great deal of new jobs and national wealth has been created in the process. Its not perfect ... but a heck of a lot better that the old days. ------------------------------ From: Michi Kaifu Subject: Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 23:36:35 -0700 Ed Ellers wrote: > (Personally, if the deal is allowed to go through I hope the FCC > forces Sprint PCS to allow equal access to long distance carriers.) That was the case when AT&T bought MaCaw, at least at the beginning, but if I remember correctly, the equal access requirement drifted away later. I remember back then some smaller long distance carriers hated to handle all the trouble of paperwork/provisioning/CS related to equal access, while LD traffic that would be newly generated for them is miniscule. It is mentioned in some news reports that LD traffic from wireless is increasing, but my guts tells me it still is very small, in a scale of LD world. So, in terms of spirit, it makes a lot of sense, but in a real world economy, I don't think equal access scheme works for wireless. Provisioning and customer service are way too much complicated and costly compared to landline for such a small LD traffic. Sometimes, Wall Street people and telecom industry people misjudge the extent people use the cell phones especially for LD and for roaming, because their usage pattern is the "exceptions" among all the users. Michi Kaifu ENOTECH Consulting michi@pop.net ------------------------------ From: Lou Coles Subject: Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 22:56:33 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Ed Ellers wrote in message news:telecom19.460.12@telecom-digest.org: > L. Winson wrote: > "Ummm ... wasn't the whole point of the old Bell System divesture -- of > which MCI played a big role to make happen -- to eliminate one stop > shopping?" > As best I can tell, the reason for the divestiture was that local > exchange competition was *not* expected for a long time, if ever, > meaning that the only way to open up the developing competition in > long distance and customer premises equipment was to take both out of > the hands of the local Bell companies. I think we have to look at market and market share. AT&T [today] has 48% of the LD market which is not considered too dominant. If allowed WorldCom/MCI/Sprint will have 34% combined. RBOC's today do not compete, not with each other and in most areas, not with anyone else. WorldCom after gulping down MCI was expected to "rest", now we have the Sprint "dinner", myself I think WorldCom will order up Earthlink/Mindspring for desert. > (Personally, if the deal is allowed to go through I hope the FCC > forces Sprint PCS to allow equal access to long distance carriers.) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 10:19:01 EDT From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal Bud Couch wrote: > Let's see ... AT&T has 42% and everybody is always threatening anti- > trust action. Could you please be more specific? I'm not aware of any particular antitrust actions pending or threatened against AT&T based on its share of the long distance market, which continues to decline steadily. > MCI is around 30 and Sprint is close to 20%. Extremely incorrect. Not even the Communications Workers of America union quotes numbers that high in its press release opposing the merger (http://www.cwa-union.org/pressreleases/pressRelease.asp?id=129), which notes that MCI's market share is only 26 percent and Sprint's is only 11 percent. > With this deal, the combined company would have a better than 50% > market share, No, they will have a 37 percent share, still behind AT&T's 43 percent. > and the two largest then would control about 92%, No, 80 percent. > which is just where Bell was when they were forced into divestiture. A complete non-sequitur, since AT&T was one company not two roughly-equal competitors (as MCI+Sprint would be vs. AT&T), and its divestiture was of *local* telcos, not long distance services. AT&T came *out* of the divestiture with over 90 percent LD market share, but even such a dominant piece of the pie hasn't been able to prevent it from steadily eroding ever since then. BTW, I hereby nominate "Southern Pacific Microwave" as the new name of the combined Sprint/MCI entity :-). Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: larb0@aol.com (Bruce Larrabee) Date: 07 Oct 1999 02:23:22 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal The "official" line given to employees is that "construction will continue as planned ..." ------------------------------ Date: 06 Oct 1999 19:35:00 +0200 From: ckaschig@gmx.de (Chris Kaschig) Subject: Re: MCI/Sprint Merger Organization: Bonzo's home > Which name will they keep, or will they continue > to use both names or will they come up with a new name entirely? According to dpa ('Deutsche Presseagentur') the new name will be just "WorldCom" - (no "MCI" any longer); no idea by whom this info is authorized. Chris ------------------------------ From: coredump@NOxSPAM.enteract.com (Coredump) Subject: Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 22:15:41 GMT Organization: Cores' Internet and Storm Door Company Rory Matthews writes: > I've got a question you guys might be able to help me with. > Lately while in telco boxes I've been noticing those little red caps > on a few cable pairs, and I'm just curious what exactly they are for. > Could they possibly be some kind of test lines, or just important > lines you wouldn't want toyed with? I had occasion to plug my handset > onto some of these and usually couldn't get a dial tone, though I once > got modem noise. Any comments would be appreciated. (By the way I'm > down here in Bellsouth territory if that helps any.) If you don't know what they are, what are you doing in the box screwing with them? People with protected data circuits get real unhappy when they get knocked down, and have been known to go to extreme lengths to find out why. I've heard of more than one tech that lost a job over it. Core coredump@NOSPAM.enteract.com http://www.enteract.com/~coredump Whooping it up on the Information Superhighway ------------------------------ From: Rory Matthews Subject: Re: Red Caps on End of Wires Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 19:18:34 PDT Boy curiousity killed the cat. Heh, I suppose had I really gotten a shock though I wouldn't mess with one of those ever again. > "...while in telco boxes..." - you mean the green cabinets along the > side of the road, with the Bell logo on them? I don't think those were > intended for public access... ;-) Well as you may or may not have guessed, I'm not actually an employee myself, but rather a teen with an interest in telecommunications. I'm sure you're saying "then don't go messin' around in the box!" or something along those lines. Thing is I don't go plugging into peoples lines to make free calls, and I am truly sorry if I annoyed anyone by plugging into that pair with my homemade set (made from parts bought at Ace Hardware no less). I've always tried to learn using more legal methods but that has usually proved impossible. The times I have asked employees questions that whole 'veil of secrecy' you tend to encounter when asking certain question has gotten in the way. I guess I'll have to be content with what you guys throw in the bin ;-). Rory Matthews [TELECOM Digest Moderator's Note: Well Rory, you can ask us whatever you would like and I am sure the guys here will try to answer you as best they can. I know I will do that. Thanks for visiting us. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Walter Dnes Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 02:35:23 -0400 On 4 Oct 1999 01:09:02 GMT, in comp.dcom.telecom lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L.Winson)wrote: > However, the point of phone mail is well taken. I've converted > a number of older people who would otherwise stick with rotary > because they got tired of being unable to get through to businesses. > (And it seems to me almost every business today is answered by a > computer and without touch-tone you're outta luck.) I have a pulse-dialing phone/fax/answering-machine combo. One feature is that one button can temporarily flip it to tone mode when online. I save the tone surcharge, but still can navigate voice mail menus. Walter Dnes procmail spamfilter http://www.interlog.com/~waltdnes/spamdunk/spamdunk.htm ------------------------------ From: David Clayton Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 18:45:59 +1000 Organization: Customer of Connect.com.au Pty. Ltd. Reply-To: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au ccremer@netscape.net (Charlie Cremer) contributed the following: > Excuse me? When a phone comes off-hook, how does the CO equipment know > if it is pulse or DTMF? That can't be resolved until the dialing > begins. I dispute the suggestion that pulse phones may get a dial tone > sooner than DTMF, especially with modern ESS equipment. If a line is programmed as pulse only, the switch doesn't have to allocate a DTMF Tone Receiver when it goes off hook, so dial tone can be presented quicker. Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Dilbert's words of wisdom #18: Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience. ------------------------------ From: Louis Raphael Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Organization: Societe pour la promotion du petoncle vert Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 05:07:08 GMT Michael Spencer wrote: > But one of these days MT&T is going to unilaterally upgrade me. In > anticipation, I've been trying to find one of those phones that looks > and feels approximately like a desktop dial phone, has a bell ringer > but has a keypad and generates dialtones. Can someone tell me the > trade nomenclature or number for such a phone? Better, where can I > get a couple? And if it were to come from the US, do you know of any > problem using it on a Canadian phone system? It'll work fine, except that the American models have a jack on the ear/mouthpiece to which the twirly cord connects. This jack seems to be a potential breaking point, which didn't exist on the Canadian models. Which is why I'd slightly prefer a Northern Telecom. > Piecing together bits of info, I gather that the Canadian K-Mart > stores bought a carload of them, remaindered (by Nortel?). When they > didn't move as novelties, they withdrew them. The trail is cold and > I don't know where they all went. I got mine in a fax/telecom junk shop in St-Laurent (a suburb of Montreal). They're not that hard to find in such places. Cost me $10, but well worth it. Also, try garage sales. Louis "Improve your computer - type "DELTREE C:\WINDOZE" at the DOS prompt." ------------------------------ From: msbrader@interlog.com (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: 7 Oct 1999 01:48:30 -0400 Organization: - Michael Spencer writes: > I *like* the big, clunky dial phone with a real bell. I just hate the > ones that sound like the french fry cooker at McDonalds having a panic > attack, fall apart without provocation and are so light that a gentle > twich on the handset cord yanks them off the table. > But one of these days MT&T is going to unilaterally upgrade me. In > anticipation, I've been trying to find one of those phones that looks > and feels approximately like a desktop dial phone, has a bell ringer > but has a keypad and generates dialtones. Sometimes known as a 2500 set. > Can someone tell me the trade nomenclature or number for such a phone? I have a rented one from Bell Canada. A few months ago the retainer clip broke off the jack, so I took it to the Phonecentre to get it fixed. After they got over the shock of dealing with someone who was still renting an ordinary phone, they decided that they had to replace the whole phone -- and in order to do that they had to order one in, because they didn't keep it in stock at the Phonecentre. Some uncertainty was expressed over whether one would be available, but it was. And it was defective(!!) -- one key needed to be pressed harder. They ordered another one in, and this is the one I have now. In doing this, the only term they used when talking to me about it was "basic touch-tone phone". > Better, where can I get a couple? Dunno. I could have bought instead of renting it from Bell Canada; maybe the same applies in Nova Scotia. For what it's worth, mine was manufactured by Northern Telecom. Mark Brader | "Fighting off all of the species which you Toronto | have insulted would be a full-time mission." msbrader@interlog.com | "Deja Q", ST:TNG, Richard Danus My text in this article is in the public domain. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #462 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 7 21:07:20 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id VAA15045; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 21:07:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 21:07:20 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910080107.VAA15045@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #463 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Oct 99 21:07:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 463 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future (Mark W. Schumann) Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future (Gail M. Hall) Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia (ralphies@my-deja.com) Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia (Jason Fetterolf) Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Where is the True Power? (Linc Madison) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? ( Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Mark W. Schumann) Re: Old Phones, was Pulse Dialing ... For How Long? (Bruce M. Binder) Re: Who Owns This Prefix? (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Freelancers Win Online Copyright Database Ruling (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Is This Sharing of my Non-Published Number? (Barry Margolin) Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (Curt Squires) 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: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future Date: 7 Oct 1999 16:55:09 -0400 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , Michael Spencer wrote: > [Schumann talking here:] >> We move to US, or to a friendly country domain with well-connected >> second-level servers, or we carve out a chunk of ORG. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think we should begin that evacuation >> rather soon, personally. > Thinking about "Walled City" as in Gibson's _Idoru_? "They turned the > killfile inside out ..." A shared, distributed place on the net that > isn't in any fixed place and isn't, somehow, on the net? > Is anyone thinking about how this might translate from Gibson's > fantasy into workable IP technology? I'm still not seeing the cause for concern. DNS _does_ this already. DNS is not in any fixed place. You can choose a root server, or make your own. "They" can do whatever they want with the top-level domains. "We" can always sublet the second-level domains or run "our" own root servers. ------------------------------ From: gmhall@apk.net (Gail M. Hall) Subject: Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 22:46:49 GMT Organization: APK Net On 06 Oct 1999 04:06:57 -0400, Michael Spencer posted to comp.dcom.telecom: >> We move to US, or to a friendly country domain with well-connected >> second-level servers, or we carve out a chunk of ORG. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think we should begin that evacuation >> rather soon, personally. > Thinking about "Walled City" as in Gibson's _Idoru_? "They turned the > killfile inside out ..." A shared, distributed place on the net that > isn't in any fixed place and isn't, somehow, on the net? > Is anyone thinking about how this might translate from Gibson's > fantasy into workable IP technology? I haven't read the Gibson, but I remember the old BBSs where you called in to a certain phone number, gave your id and password and got in. If you didn't have those, you didn't get in. No biggie, I would think. But with everyone running to the Internet these, I don't know if companies that wrote BBS software such as Wildcat! PCBoard, et al are even still in business. Gail M. Hall gmhall@apk.net ------------------------------ From: ralphies@my-deja.com Subject: Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 21:56:38 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. The following was posted at www.erbia com erbia Announcement Network Update October 5, 1999; 12:00 PM EST erbia has made its final decision on the two new underlying carriers. We believe that these two carriers will provide strong service that is in your best interest. All our customer account records, including toll- free services, have been transferred to our new primary carrier and they have already begun processing them. It will take 24-48 hours to go through the complete processing. After the processing is complete, all services will be restored. In order to assist us in the conversion please remove all PIC freezes. Also, please do not create any new PIC freezes at this time. You will NOT be charged a PIC charge for service restoration. We would like to apologize to you again for the inconvenience and sincerely thank you for your patience and understanding. When this is all over we will provide new and exciting service plans to benefit you, our customers. Richard J. Gibbs, President & COO erbia, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 22:39:12 -0400 From: Jason Fetterolf Reply-To: jason@itw.com Subject: Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia Organization: Apollo Concepts Consulting Reply-To: jason@itw.com In response to Uwe Brockmann, uwe@netcom.com: > The Problems > 1. Erbia resells long-distance capacity provided by TeleHub. TeleHub > recently cut off all of Erbia's customers leaving them with no > primary long-distance carrier! Telehub did not just cut off Erbia's customers, but also ALL other users of their network, ie PromiseNet, and OPEX aka Premiercom, and likely others ... > 2. They were way behind in billing. It took several months before I > got my first bill which only covered calls that I had made months > earlier. Many companies which use Telehub's network have been behind in billing ... beware -- if a telephone company can't bill, they cant stay around long! > 5. Erbia's customer service phone number cannot handle the current > call volume. Everybody's calling to complain that they have no LD carrier, that's why! As a matter of comparison, ATT had the same problem (long delays) when they just offered their 7 cent one rate plan about a month ago. > 6. Last year, a few weeks after signing up with this carrier and long > before receiving my first bill, my long-distance service was suddenly > disconnected. I called TeleHub and my LBOC, BellSouth. Both blamed > each other. They continued to blame each other even after I got them > on the phone together. However, they then managed to reconnect me > within an hour. Neither side ever told me what the problem had been > or whose fault it had been. Most of the BellSouth people I talked to > had never heard of TeleHub before. Most BellSouth people dont *want* to hear of anything that means they will have to learn a new PIC code to enter in to their system! > Other Information > TeleHub operates their own nationwide ATM network which supposedly runs > on top of OC-12 or DS-3 trunks provided by MCI/WorldCom. > Supposedly TeleHub can offer lower long-distance > rates by using packet-switched ATM technology rather than traditional > circuit-switched technology employed by other long-distance carriers > without loss of transmission quality. OPEX aka Premiercom has been in the process of migrating its traffic off of Telehub to Frontier over the past few months due to fast busys and calls not going through, etc. The ATM technology is cheaper, but it can NOT currently handle the traffic being sent over it. Forget about the MCI/Worldcom name associated -- to have a good quality voice call sent and received reliably takes more than just "use" of a big name carrier's network for back up. Bottom line -- Telehub's network is new technology, and it has limited capacity. Until they get the capacity up and work out some bugs, you would be better off using a good old reliable switched fiber optic network from somebody like Frontier. No, you dont get the rates quite as cheap as Erbia -- BUT it will work, day in day out, just like ATT's but for a lot less! > TeleHub does not list a toll-free number. Telehub is more like a wholesaler -- they dont want to talk to end users -- that's Erbia's job. > Does anybody know more about what is going on at TeleHub? Can anybody > relate their experience (good or bad) with other low-cost long-distance > carriers? If you want consistent good experiences from a low cost carrier, then see the link below -- UNitel is just 5.9 cpm (one minute billing), with not as attractibe INstate rates, but no monthly fees besides the PICC. Unitel is a reseller for Frontier, and I have used it and know of many other people and Businesses that spend $1000's /mo on the Frontier network that are very happy with it. See: http://unitelagent.com/index.cgi?apollo for details. If you desire six second billing from the same company, then email me directly for details. Regards, Jason Fetterolf ------------------------------ From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics, Inc. Subject: Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 22:03:44 -0500 Arthur Ross wrote: > In-flight, however, I side with the airlines. It is not the normal, > intended radiation from the various devices that is the hazard; it is > the *un*intended radition and accidental nonlinear intermod products > that may affect unintended receivers, e.g. the ILS glideslope, other > aids to navigation. Right. You cannot predict or characterize what kind of intermod might be produced by the nearly-infinite number of possible combinations of passenger-carried electronics. An electronic system _designed_ for aircraft use is shielded for certain frequencies, and well-characterized in general. Plus, the pilots have control over it. I used to work in engineering for Airfone (as Airfone and later as GTE Airfone) and also In-Flight Phone (now defunct). I spent a LOT of time in screen rooms, using copper-foil tape and blank PCB stock to shield and isolate problem circuits in our equipment. When a pilot suspected the in-flight telco gear was causing a problem he would simply pull the breaker for that equipment. If the problem went away he'd leave it turned off and we'd catch major hell when the airplane landed. There's no cockpit breaker for little Timmy's Gameboy or Dr. Executive's GSM laptop. > Cellular systems are not designed for subscribers at > 30,000 feet moving at 500 knots... > From a commercial A/C in > flight to cells on the ground, the effective propagation is near that > of free space. Large numbers of cells would be visible. There would be > intolerable interference and confusion about handoff. And, most > likely, the digital systems are not designed for Doppler of this > magnitude. > One of my engineering acquaintances from Bell Atlantic Mobile tells me > that they have been getting inquiries about airborne use since time > immemorial. The answer has always been something like "Don't even > think about it." I've been out of the industry for about five years, but I recall conversations with cellular tech people about airborne cellphone use. At that time most (all?) cellphones were analog. The main problem with airborne use was that the phone would lock up one uplink frequency across the entire ground network. This doesn't happen much with commercial passengers, but General Aviation (private planes) are responsible for most of the offenders. There's not actually a problem with handoffs, since the call pretty much stays in the originating cell until the whole system drops under the horizon. Two things work against airborne cellphones, though: First, the cell site antennas are specifically designed to have practically no gain in the "up" direction -- in fact they have a downward "tilt." I couldn't get my analog cellphone to work at all in my 23rd-floor office less than two miles from the nearest cell site. The second mitigating factor is that when the cellular provider's computers spot a particular ESN turning up on many ground sites simultaneously they simply lock that phone out of their system. Perhaps permanently. Gordon S. Hlavenka www.crashelex.com nospam@crashelex.com Grammar and spelling flames welcome. Yes, that's really my email address. Don't change it. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 17:52:27 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: Where is the True Power? In article , Steven wrote: > OK, so that's three of us who would like to see a new free TLD. So > what does it take to make one? What is the organization that > issues/governs the .us, .uk, .de, etc names. US states have them, so > you don't have to be a country. No, there is no U.S. state that has a top-level domain. Each state has a second-level domain under .US, and there are some TLD's that coincidentally match the two-letter abbreviations for some U.S. states (for example, .CA is Canada, not California; .IL is Israel, not Illinois). There are also some states that have second-level domains under .GOV (.ca.gov, .ohio.gov, .hawaii.gov, etc.). You don't have to be a country, but you have to be pretty close in order to get a geographic TLD assigned. ------------------------------ From: colonel@monmouth.com (World's Largest Leprechaun) Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? Date: 7 Oct 1999 19:50:12 GMT Organization: Save the Dodoes Foundation In , juhave@iobox.fi wrote: > Of course commercial sites are probably targeted, but I just may have to > either remove all buttons or change them to jpegs ... I'd suggest PNG instead. PNG is designed for the web. It's more efficient than GIF, and far more efficient than JPEG for buttons and similar graphics. It's also technically better in other ways, and is totally free and open. "The identical is equal to itself, since it is different." --Franco Spisani G. L. Sicherman work: sicherman@lucent.com home: colonel@mail.monmouth.com ------------------------------ From: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: 7 Oct 1999 16:58:14 -0400 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , The Old Bear wrote: > Of course, if you want a telephone line that just lets you talk > digitally to the central office switch with no need for things like AC > ring signal voltages, pulse- or tone- conversions, dial-tone > generation, analog audio signals to report call progress ("ringing"/ > "busy"), etc., you can order an ISDN BRI. But that will cost you a > lot more. Bizarrely, my BRI line (Ohio, Ameritech) supports analog pulse dialing. ------------------------------ From: Bruce M. Binder Subject: Re: Old Phones, was Pulse Dialing ... For How Long? Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 13:48:54 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Michael, et al.: > I could have touchtone if (1) I paid more and (2) I was > willing to buy or rent one of numerous cruddy, anti-ergonomic > and easily damaged little pieces of ... um ... little phone > sets to which the rest of the world seems to have become > accustomed without complaint. > I *like* the big, clunky dial phone with a real bell. > I've been trying to find one of those phones that looks and > feels approximately like a desktop dial phone, has a bell > ringer but has a keypad and generates dialtones. Can someone > tell me the trade nomenclature or number for such a phone? > Better, where can I get a couple? And if it were to come > from the US, do you know of any problem using it on a > Canadian phone system? Not all of the rest of the world has become accustomed without complaint. Some of us still think the standard desk phone of the 1960s and 70s, called the Model 500, is one of the most ergonomic pieces of equipment ever designed. It was designed by the famous industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. See http://www.si.edu/organiza/museums/design/exhib/hd/start.htm for an online exhibition of his work, including the telephone, at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Smithsonian Institution. The updated touch-tone version of this telephone is called the Model 2500. You can usually find Model 2500s for sale on eBay. I don't know if they will work on the Canadian phone system. Both the 500 and the 2500 have the G-1 handset that, in my opinion, is the most comfortable telephone handset ever made. I don't know why no manufacturer makes a phone with a handset anything like it. Why don't cordless phone makers sell cordless hadsets that people can cradle on their shoulders instead of flat rectangular ear-smashers? Here's my idea, free to any manufacturer that wants to use it: make a cordless phone in the shape of the Model 500. Use the G-1 handset, put the battery charge terminals where the switch hook is, put the push buttons in the handle, put a built-in answering machine in the base, if you want. Retro is in, right? VW Beetles, swing dancing, etc. I'd buy one. [Change green to blue in my address to send me e-mail.] Bruce ___ __ __ ___ ( ,)( \/ )( ,) ) ,\ ) ( ) ,\ (___/(_/\/\_)(___/ Bruce M. Binder ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: Who Owns This Prefix? Date: 7 Oct 1999 00:10:56 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On 6 Oct 1999 15:47:19 GMT, horn@netcom.com allegedly said > Let's see if I can phrase this question in a coherent manner. > I have a cell phone with Airtouch. > I want a particular phone number if it's available. > The local Airtouch area doesn't have that prefix in any of its area codes. > The local Airtouch folks say they don't have access to the other market > areas. > How can I search for that prefix (546-xxxx) in all of the Airtouch areas? > I think there are 15 or 25 Airtouch marketing areas. You're not even guaranteed that 546-xxxx is a cellular prefix. You couldn't get 440-546-1234 for example, because while Airtouch operates in area code 440, 546 is a landline prefix serviced out of an Ameritech CO. And why would you want to look in other marketing areas? What's the attraction of having a cell phone whose AC is halfway across the country from your home or office?! North Shore Technologies JustTheNet Dialup Internet Access Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Geauga Co., Lake Co., Portage Co., Lorain Co., OH Nationwide Access coming soon! Watch this space for details or dial 1.888.480.4NET for more info! ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 13:21:21 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Re: Freelancers Win Online Copyright Database Ruling On Thu, 30 Sep 1999 00:00:05 -0400 (EDT), David B. Horvath, CCP wrote: > The problem is that authors wrote articles for magazines/newspapers > that included "one-time print media" (i.e., *this* issue of Harpers'). > The publishers then went out and put the articles on databases or > CD-ROM without paying royalties to the authors. One-time is different > from multi-use (otherwise the publisher could pay the writer for it > once and use the same article in many different magazines -- or > publish a book of them). Mad Magazine has operated this way for 47 years. Of course, in their case, the contract signed with the freelancers specifically state multi-use. :-) I just bought a 7-CD set of the entire run of Mad Magazine, from 1952 to 1998, and there's not a page missing, nor did they have to pay anyone any royalties. It's a position (insisting on multi-use with no royalties) that has cost them some contributors, notably Don "One Fine Day" Martin, but it's a business model that works and allows them to remain advertising-free. / From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom / Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU / Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU / I hooked up my accelerator pedal in my car to my brake lights. I hit the / gas, people behind me stop, and I'm gone. / --Steven Wright ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Is This Sharing of my Non-Published Number? Organization: GTE Internetworking, Cambridge, MA Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 19:51:20 GMT In article , Matthew Black wrote: > Over the past year I must have received 50 letters to change my CLEC > from GTE California to GTE Communications. The promotion includes at > least 100 prepaid long distance service at about 10 cents per minute, > plus two call handling features such as caller ID or three-way calling. > Unused minutes are nonefundable. GTE Communications also offers a > no frills plan without the prepaid long distance for $25.00 per month. > That's $7.75 more than my current basic service. > Anyhow, the reason they spun off this separate company is because GTE > California is not permitted to offer long distance service. > My question is whether a decision by GTE California to share their > customer information with GTE Communications constitutes a breach > of nonpublished rules? [Note: I work for another business unit of GTE, but I have no connection to any of their telco businesses -- I'm not even a GTE customer -- and I do not speak for the company in any way.] It's not clear that they actually shared their customer information. Often, to avoid privacy violations, a company will send out mailings to their own customer list on behalf of third parties, rather than sharing their mailing list itself. They sell this as a service, and GTE Communications would have to pay for it. GTE California would presumably have to offer this to all comers, not just GTE Communications. The third parties would not become aware of your identity unless you actually replied to the ads. 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. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 19:10:04 -0500 From: Curt Squires Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting FirstUSA was the focus of an ABC News Nightline program about a month ago, regarding erroneous late fees and other practices. See http://abcnews.go.com/onair/Nightline/nl990831.html C ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #463 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 7 21:13:45 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id VAA15565; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 21:13:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 21:13:45 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910080113.VAA15565@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #463 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Oct 99 21:07:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 463 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future (Mark W. Schumann) Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future (Gail M. Hall) Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia (ralphies@my-deja.com) Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia (Jason Fetterolf) Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Where is the True Power? (Linc Madison) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? ( Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Mark W. Schumann) Re: Old Phones, was Pulse Dialing ... For How Long? (Bruce M. Binder) Re: Who Owns This Prefix? (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Freelancers Win Online Copyright Database Ruling (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Is This Sharing of my Non-Published Number? (Barry Margolin) Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (Curt Squires) 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: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future Date: 7 Oct 1999 16:55:09 -0400 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , Michael Spencer wrote: > [Schumann talking here:] >> We move to US, or to a friendly country domain with well-connected >> second-level servers, or we carve out a chunk of ORG. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think we should begin that evacuation >> rather soon, personally. > Thinking about "Walled City" as in Gibson's _Idoru_? "They turned the > killfile inside out ..." A shared, distributed place on the net that > isn't in any fixed place and isn't, somehow, on the net? > Is anyone thinking about how this might translate from Gibson's > fantasy into workable IP technology? I'm still not seeing the cause for concern. DNS _does_ this already. DNS is not in any fixed place. You can choose a root server, or make your own. "They" can do whatever they want with the top-level domains. "We" can always sublet the second-level domains or run "our" own root servers. ------------------------------ From: gmhall@apk.net (Gail M. Hall) Subject: Re: Its All About Greed and the Net of the Future Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 22:46:49 GMT Organization: APK Net On 06 Oct 1999 04:06:57 -0400, Michael Spencer posted to comp.dcom.telecom: >> We move to US, or to a friendly country domain with well-connected >> second-level servers, or we carve out a chunk of ORG. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think we should begin that evacuation >> rather soon, personally. > Thinking about "Walled City" as in Gibson's _Idoru_? "They turned the > killfile inside out ..." A shared, distributed place on the net that > isn't in any fixed place and isn't, somehow, on the net? > Is anyone thinking about how this might translate from Gibson's > fantasy into workable IP technology? I haven't read the Gibson, but I remember the old BBSs where you called in to a certain phone number, gave your id and password and got in. If you didn't have those, you didn't get in. No biggie, I would think. But with everyone running to the Internet these, I don't know if companies that wrote BBS software such as Wildcat! PCBoard, et al are even still in business. Gail M. Hall gmhall@apk.net ------------------------------ From: ralphies@my-deja.com Subject: Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 21:56:38 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. The following was posted at www.erbia com erbia Announcement Network Update October 5, 1999; 12:00 PM EST erbia has made its final decision on the two new underlying carriers. We believe that these two carriers will provide strong service that is in your best interest. All our customer account records, including toll- free services, have been transferred to our new primary carrier and they have already begun processing them. It will take 24-48 hours to go through the complete processing. After the processing is complete, all services will be restored. In order to assist us in the conversion please remove all PIC freezes. Also, please do not create any new PIC freezes at this time. You will NOT be charged a PIC charge for service restoration. We would like to apologize to you again for the inconvenience and sincerely thank you for your patience and understanding. When this is all over we will provide new and exciting service plans to benefit you, our customers. Richard J. Gibbs, President & COO erbia, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 22:39:12 -0400 From: Jason Fetterolf Reply-To: jason@itw.com Subject: Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia Organization: Apollo Concepts Consulting Reply-To: jason@itw.com In response to Uwe Brockmann, uwe@netcom.com: > The Problems > 1. Erbia resells long-distance capacity provided by TeleHub. TeleHub > recently cut off all of Erbia's customers leaving them with no > primary long-distance carrier! Telehub did not just cut off Erbia's customers, but also ALL other users of their network, ie PromiseNet, and OPEX aka Premiercom, and likely others ... > 2. They were way behind in billing. It took several months before I > got my first bill which only covered calls that I had made months > earlier. Many companies which use Telehub's network have been behind in billing ... beware -- if a telephone company can't bill, they cant stay around long! > 5. Erbia's customer service phone number cannot handle the current > call volume. Everybody's calling to complain that they have no LD carrier, that's why! As a matter of comparison, ATT had the same problem (long delays) when they just offered their 7 cent one rate plan about a month ago. > 6. Last year, a few weeks after signing up with this carrier and long > before receiving my first bill, my long-distance service was suddenly > disconnected. I called TeleHub and my LBOC, BellSouth. Both blamed > each other. They continued to blame each other even after I got them > on the phone together. However, they then managed to reconnect me > within an hour. Neither side ever told me what the problem had been > or whose fault it had been. Most of the BellSouth people I talked to > had never heard of TeleHub before. Most BellSouth people dont *want* to hear of anything that means they will have to learn a new PIC code to enter in to their system! > Other Information > TeleHub operates their own nationwide ATM network which supposedly runs > on top of OC-12 or DS-3 trunks provided by MCI/WorldCom. > Supposedly TeleHub can offer lower long-distance > rates by using packet-switched ATM technology rather than traditional > circuit-switched technology employed by other long-distance carriers > without loss of transmission quality. OPEX aka Premiercom has been in the process of migrating its traffic off of Telehub to Frontier over the past few months due to fast busys and calls not going through, etc. The ATM technology is cheaper, but it can NOT currently handle the traffic being sent over it. Forget about the MCI/Worldcom name associated -- to have a good quality voice call sent and received reliably takes more than just "use" of a big name carrier's network for back up. Bottom line -- Telehub's network is new technology, and it has limited capacity. Until they get the capacity up and work out some bugs, you would be better off using a good old reliable switched fiber optic network from somebody like Frontier. No, you dont get the rates quite as cheap as Erbia -- BUT it will work, day in day out, just like ATT's but for a lot less! > TeleHub does not list a toll-free number. Telehub is more like a wholesaler -- they dont want to talk to end users -- that's Erbia's job. > Does anybody know more about what is going on at TeleHub? Can anybody > relate their experience (good or bad) with other low-cost long-distance > carriers? If you want consistent good experiences from a low cost carrier, then see the link below -- UNitel is just 5.9 cpm (one minute billing), with not as attractibe INstate rates, but no monthly fees besides the PICC. Unitel is a reseller for Frontier, and I have used it and know of many other people and Businesses that spend $1000's /mo on the Frontier network that are very happy with it. See: http://unitelagent.com/index.cgi?apollo for details. If you desire six second billing from the same company, then email me directly for details. Regards, Jason Fetterolf ------------------------------ From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics, Inc. Subject: Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 22:03:44 -0500 Arthur Ross wrote: > In-flight, however, I side with the airlines. It is not the normal, > intended radiation from the various devices that is the hazard; it is > the *un*intended radition and accidental nonlinear intermod products > that may affect unintended receivers, e.g. the ILS glideslope, other > aids to navigation. Right. You cannot predict or characterize what kind of intermod might be produced by the nearly-infinite number of possible combinations of passenger-carried electronics. An electronic system _designed_ for aircraft use is shielded for certain frequencies, and well-characterized in general. Plus, the pilots have control over it. I used to work in engineering for Airfone (as Airfone and later as GTE Airfone) and also In-Flight Phone (now defunct). I spent a LOT of time in screen rooms, using copper-foil tape and blank PCB stock to shield and isolate problem circuits in our equipment. When a pilot suspected the in-flight telco gear was causing a problem he would simply pull the breaker for that equipment. If the problem went away he'd leave it turned off and we'd catch major hell when the airplane landed. There's no cockpit breaker for little Timmy's Gameboy or Dr. Executive's GSM laptop. > Cellular systems are not designed for subscribers at > 30,000 feet moving at 500 knots... > From a commercial A/C in > flight to cells on the ground, the effective propagation is near that > of free space. Large numbers of cells would be visible. There would be > intolerable interference and confusion about handoff. And, most > likely, the digital systems are not designed for Doppler of this > magnitude. > One of my engineering acquaintances from Bell Atlantic Mobile tells me > that they have been getting inquiries about airborne use since time > immemorial. The answer has always been something like "Don't even > think about it." I've been out of the industry for about five years, but I recall conversations with cellular tech people about airborne cellphone use. At that time most (all?) cellphones were analog. The main problem with airborne use was that the phone would lock up one uplink frequency across the entire ground network. This doesn't happen much with commercial passengers, but General Aviation (private planes) are responsible for most of the offenders. There's not actually a problem with handoffs, since the call pretty much stays in the originating cell until the whole system drops under the horizon. Two things work against airborne cellphones, though: First, the cell site antennas are specifically designed to have practically no gain in the "up" direction -- in fact they have a downward "tilt." I couldn't get my analog cellphone to work at all in my 23rd-floor office less than two miles from the nearest cell site. The second mitigating factor is that when the cellular provider's computers spot a particular ESN turning up on many ground sites simultaneously they simply lock that phone out of their system. Perhaps permanently. Gordon S. Hlavenka www.crashelex.com nospam@crashelex.com Grammar and spelling flames welcome. Yes, that's really my email address. Don't change it. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 17:52:27 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: Where is the True Power? In article , Steven wrote: > OK, so that's three of us who would like to see a new free TLD. So > what does it take to make one? What is the organization that > issues/governs the .us, .uk, .de, etc names. US states have them, so > you don't have to be a country. No, there is no U.S. state that has a top-level domain. Each state has a second-level domain under .US, and there are some TLD's that coincidentally match the two-letter abbreviations for some U.S. states (for example, .CA is Canada, not California; .IL is Israel, not Illinois). There are also some states that have second-level domains under .GOV (.ca.gov, .ohio.gov, .hawaii.gov, etc.). You don't have to be a country, but you have to be pretty close in order to get a geographic TLD assigned. ------------------------------ From: colonel@monmouth.com (World's Largest Leprechaun) Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? Date: 7 Oct 1999 19:50:12 GMT Organization: Save the Dodoes Foundation In , juhave@iobox.fi wrote: > Of course commercial sites are probably targeted, but I just may have to > either remove all buttons or change them to jpegs ... I'd suggest PNG instead. PNG is designed for the web. It's more efficient than GIF, and far more efficient than JPEG for buttons and similar graphics. It's also technically better in other ways, and is totally free and open. "The identical is equal to itself, since it is different." --Franco Spisani G. L. Sicherman work: sicherman@lucent.com home: colonel@mail.monmouth.com ------------------------------ From: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: 7 Oct 1999 16:58:14 -0400 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , The Old Bear wrote: > Of course, if you want a telephone line that just lets you talk > digitally to the central office switch with no need for things like AC > ring signal voltages, pulse- or tone- conversions, dial-tone > generation, analog audio signals to report call progress ("ringing"/ > "busy"), etc., you can order an ISDN BRI. But that will cost you a > lot more. Bizarrely, my BRI line (Ohio, Ameritech) supports analog pulse dialing. ------------------------------ From: Bruce M. Binder Subject: Re: Old Phones, was Pulse Dialing ... For How Long? Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 13:48:54 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Michael, et al.: > I could have touchtone if (1) I paid more and (2) I was > willing to buy or rent one of numerous cruddy, anti-ergonomic > and easily damaged little pieces of ... um ... little phone > sets to which the rest of the world seems to have become > accustomed without complaint. > I *like* the big, clunky dial phone with a real bell. > I've been trying to find one of those phones that looks and > feels approximately like a desktop dial phone, has a bell > ringer but has a keypad and generates dialtones. Can someone > tell me the trade nomenclature or number for such a phone? > Better, where can I get a couple? And if it were to come > from the US, do you know of any problem using it on a > Canadian phone system? Not all of the rest of the world has become accustomed without complaint. Some of us still think the standard desk phone of the 1960s and 70s, called the Model 500, is one of the most ergonomic pieces of equipment ever designed. It was designed by the famous industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. See http://www.si.edu/organiza/museums/design/exhib/hd/start.htm for an online exhibition of his work, including the telephone, at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Smithsonian Institution. The updated touch-tone version of this telephone is called the Model 2500. You can usually find Model 2500s for sale on eBay. I don't know if they will work on the Canadian phone system. Both the 500 and the 2500 have the G-1 handset that, in my opinion, is the most comfortable telephone handset ever made. I don't know why no manufacturer makes a phone with a handset anything like it. Why don't cordless phone makers sell cordless hadsets that people can cradle on their shoulders instead of flat rectangular ear-smashers? Here's my idea, free to any manufacturer that wants to use it: make a cordless phone in the shape of the Model 500. Use the G-1 handset, put the battery charge terminals where the switch hook is, put the push buttons in the handle, put a built-in answering machine in the base, if you want. Retro is in, right? VW Beetles, swing dancing, etc. I'd buy one. [Change green to blue in my address to send me e-mail.] Bruce ___ __ __ ___ ( ,)( \/ )( ,) ) ,\ ) ( ) ,\ (___/(_/\/\_)(___/ Bruce M. Binder ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: Who Owns This Prefix? Date: 7 Oct 1999 00:10:56 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On 6 Oct 1999 15:47:19 GMT, horn@netcom.com allegedly said > Let's see if I can phrase this question in a coherent manner. > I have a cell phone with Airtouch. > I want a particular phone number if it's available. > The local Airtouch area doesn't have that prefix in any of its area codes. > The local Airtouch folks say they don't have access to the other market > areas. > How can I search for that prefix (546-xxxx) in all of the Airtouch areas? > I think there are 15 or 25 Airtouch marketing areas. You're not even guaranteed that 546-xxxx is a cellular prefix. You couldn't get 440-546-1234 for example, because while Airtouch operates in area code 440, 546 is a landline prefix serviced out of an Ameritech CO. And why would you want to look in other marketing areas? What's the attraction of having a cell phone whose AC is halfway across the country from your home or office?! North Shore Technologies JustTheNet Dialup Internet Access Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Geauga Co., Lake Co., Portage Co., Lorain Co., OH Nationwide Access coming soon! Watch this space for details or dial 1.888.480.4NET for more info! ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 13:21:21 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Re: Freelancers Win Online Copyright Database Ruling On Thu, 30 Sep 1999 00:00:05 -0400 (EDT), David B. Horvath, CCP wrote: > The problem is that authors wrote articles for magazines/newspapers > that included "one-time print media" (i.e., *this* issue of Harpers'). > The publishers then went out and put the articles on databases or > CD-ROM without paying royalties to the authors. One-time is different > from multi-use (otherwise the publisher could pay the writer for it > once and use the same article in many different magazines -- or > publish a book of them). Mad Magazine has operated this way for 47 years. Of course, in their case, the contract signed with the freelancers specifically state multi-use. :-) I just bought a 7-CD set of the entire run of Mad Magazine, from 1952 to 1998, and there's not a page missing, nor did they have to pay anyone any royalties. It's a position (insisting on multi-use with no royalties) that has cost them some contributors, notably Don "One Fine Day" Martin, but it's a business model that works and allows them to remain advertising-free. / From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom / Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU / Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU / I hooked up my accelerator pedal in my car to my brake lights. I hit the / gas, people behind me stop, and I'm gone. / --Steven Wright ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Is This Sharing of my Non-Published Number? Organization: GTE Internetworking, Cambridge, MA Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 19:51:20 GMT In article , Matthew Black wrote: > Over the past year I must have received 50 letters to change my CLEC > from GTE California to GTE Communications. The promotion includes at > least 100 prepaid long distance service at about 10 cents per minute, > plus two call handling features such as caller ID or three-way calling. > Unused minutes are nonefundable. GTE Communications also offers a > no frills plan without the prepaid long distance for $25.00 per month. > That's $7.75 more than my current basic service. > Anyhow, the reason they spun off this separate company is because GTE > California is not permitted to offer long distance service. > My question is whether a decision by GTE California to share their > customer information with GTE Communications constitutes a breach > of nonpublished rules? [Note: I work for another business unit of GTE, but I have no connection to any of their telco businesses -- I'm not even a GTE customer -- and I do not speak for the company in any way.] It's not clear that they actually shared their customer information. Often, to avoid privacy violations, a company will send out mailings to their own customer list on behalf of third parties, rather than sharing their mailing list itself. They sell this as a service, and GTE Communications would have to pay for it. GTE California would presumably have to offer this to all comers, not just GTE Communications. The third parties would not become aware of your identity unless you actually replied to the ads. 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. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 19:10:04 -0500 From: Curt Squires Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting FirstUSA was the focus of an ABC News Nightline program about a month ago, regarding erroneous late fees and other practices. See http://abcnews.go.com/onair/Nightline/nl990831.html C ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #463 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 7 23:11:08 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id XAA20604; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 23:11:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 23:11:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910080311.XAA20604@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #464 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Oct 99 23:11:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 464 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FAX Teergrube Anyone??? (Walter Dnes) Problem With a Merlin Legend (Joseph Wineburgh) GETS Now Has a Web page (Garrett Wollman) Book Review: Net Wars - Online Book For You (TELECOM Digest Editor) Norway's Royal Palace Deluged With Phone-ins After Prank (Arthur Ross) Demand for Bonded T1 CSU/DSU (Mark Doyle) Is There a Standard "Do Not Use Cell Phone" Sign? (Gail M. Hall) Looking For Information on a WE Conferencing Mike (Steve Gaarder) Siemens Listened to the Whining About the 2420 Gigaset (Steve Winter) Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? (Adam Sampson) Consumer Reports Has Become A Bully (Monty Solomon) Japanese Land-Line Phone Work in US/UK? (YL/KL Woo) Re: British Doctor's Death Linked to PCS Coverage Gaps (Dale Neiburg) Re: Special Security Report: The Phonemasters (John David Galt) Information Wanted About PCD3311C Circuits (Janne Kankkunen) Tutorial Wanted About SS7 (Bryan Joseph) Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy (Steven) Re: Revocation of Domain Names (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Revocation of Domain Names (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Revocation of Domain Names (Steve Winter) Digest Quality and Quantity (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: Walter Dnes Subject: FAX Teergrube Anyone??? Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 02:35:22 -0400 I don't have the knowledge to design the circuitry or software, but I'm running this idea up the flagpole to see if anybody salutes. Here in Canada we don't have an equivalent to USA's TCPA against junk faxes. I use a passcode-protected fax machine at home. After making the initial connection, you have to enter the correct passcode to successfully send a fax to me. The machine also accepts faxes from whitelisted phone numbers. This allows me to fax stuff home from work or receive faxes from the people I know. Junk fax attemps get rejected. Every couple of months, the fax prints out a journal listing of the last 35 fax "transactions", including unsuccessful attempts. The rejects take approximatly 13 or 14 seconds usage time. Certain anti-spam internet sites use a "teergrube" (German for tarpit) hack on sendmail to tie up for as long as possible any machine that attempts to relay via them. I'm wondering if it's possible to apply this algorithm to incoming faxes. I.e., if an incoming FAX isn't from a whitelisted number, and it doesn't have the correct passcode dialed, rather than merely dump the connection after 13 or 14 seconds, I want the sender to spend as much time as possible "retransmitting bad blocks" and "retraining", etc. Does anybody on this list know the guts of fax protocols well enough to say if this is or isn't possible? I don't expect big business to manufacture such faxes. They would hurt big business. But quite a few people use computers to receive incoming faxes. How difficult would it be to write fax-receiver software with such features? As many junk faxes are long distance, pushing a connection beyond one minute would probably hit the junkers in their pocketbooks. Comments??? Walter Dnes procmail spamfilter http://www.interlog.com/~waltdnes/spamdunk/spamdunk.htm ------------------------------ From: Joseph Wineburgh Reply-To: Subject: Problem With a Merlin Legend Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 15:50:09 -0400 I am unclear as to whether you have tried swapping a different (working) set into the same port or putting the (suspected bad) set in another port to verify whether it was the set or the port. We have had ports as well as sets go bad! Only other thing is some kind of restriction, although from what you describe with the secondary (public network) dialtone then reorder when pressing keys, I'd suspect hardware problems. Call Lucent again and have it escalated to tier 3 if they are still stumped. Sometimes it takes more than one call to get to someone that really knows the system well. Please let us know what you find out! #JOE Dr. Dialtone wrote: > I have an unusual problem with a Merlin Legend 2.1 v4. When > attempting to dial out on an outside trunk by dialing 9. 3 BIS 10's > out of 49 sets respond with a reorder tone. I do hear the second > dialtone but any digits dialed after that is followed by a reorder > tone. I have checked the station translations and compared it with the > functioning sets and can't find anything different. I have checked > ARC, Restrictions and disallow list and can't find anything that would > cause this problem. Has anyone on the list encountered this type of > problem? I contacted Lucent and they were stumped. ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: GETS Now Has a Web Page Date: 6 Oct 1999 20:57:26 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science A few years back there was some interesting information in this forum on the Government Emergency Communications System, which is the only (so far as this reader knows) user of Special Area Code 710. A random walk through Federal emergency-management Web pages led me to the actual National Communications System Web site, on which can be found the GETS home page. This confirms the usage of the 710-NCS-GETS phone number to access the service, and also discusses some of the other services facilitated by the OMNCS (Office of the Manager of NCS) as a part of this program. See . 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 ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Date: 6 Oct 1999 16:42:43 -0500 Subject: Book Review: Net Wars - Online Book For You I want to take a minute to mention to all of you about an on-line book being offered free of charge to the net for your reading pleasure. Entitled 'Net Wars' it was written by Wendy Grossman and published by New York University Press. The full text is online and available *free of charge* to the net community. Ms. Grossman is a relative newcomer to the net, having first gotten online in 1993 in the months just before the 'killer-app' known as the World Wide Web became generally available. Ms. Grossman does an excellent -- I rate it four stars! -- presentation of the modern, present day (post-1993) internet, and while she does not cover earlier history in any great detail, her overview of where things have gone in the past five years is remarkably accurate and detailed. I recommend the book highly to all of you. http://www.nyupress.nyu.edu/netwars.html Its the complete text, and totally free to the net. If you wish to purchase a printed copy you may do that also, and instructions are given at the site. After you read it, your reviews will be welcome and encouraged here. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 08:07:35 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: Norway's Royal Palace Deluged With Phone-ins After Prank Dow Jones Newswires -- October 7, 1999 Norway's Royal Palace Deluged With Phone-ins After Prank OSLO (AP)--Norway's Royal Palace has been deluged with telephone calls as the result of a practical joke that could only be pulled off in the age of hi-tech communications. The prankster has been sending a text message to thousands of Norwegians' cellular phones that gives a number and then states: "Urgent, call...and ask for Harald," or Sonja, or Haakon. "He's expecting your call and knows what it's about," the news media reported Thursday. Harald is the king of Norway. Sonja is the queen and Haakon, the crown prince. In the past two weeks, the palaces has received about 2,000 such calls, and some days as many as 200, hopelessly overloading the small switchboard staff, the Oslo newspaper Verdens Gang reported. "This is unbelievably tiresome," palace secretary Magne Hagen was quoted as telling the newspaper. "It is not a good joke." Text messages can be sent from one cellular phone to another, or from a computer via the Internet. The prankster could have programmed a computer to keep sending the message to random mobile phone numbers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 09:57:41 -0700 From: Mark Doyle Subject: Demand for Bonded T1 CSU/DSU Organization: SBC Internet Services I am doing research to determine if there is a decent market for a Dual T1 DSU/CSU that bonds the 2 T1s together over dedicated or Frame Relay links. It would have the extra benefit of redundancy. Is anyone looking for this solution and at what price? Mark Doyle Engage Communication www.engagecom.com ------------------------------ From: gmhall@apk.net (Gail M. Hall) Subject: Is There a Standard "Do Not Use Cell Phone" sign? Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 22:46:51 GMT Organization: APK Net I just read another story about restricting cell phone usage in today's _Plain Dealer_. BP Amoco is making a rule now forbidding use of cell phones in their gas stations. They plan to put up signs to that effect. (I don't know how they plan to enforce this, though, because the money-collecting persons are usually behind glass trying to stay alive while still doing the job of collecting the customers' money.) But anyhow, I wonder what a standard internationally understood "DO NOT USE CELL PHONE" sign would look like. It seems to me they would have to make the phone symbol an obvious cell phone rather than a "regular" telephone and then use the red circle with the line across it. Is there such an international standard symbol already? Or will people have to just figure that out for themselves. Cell phones are also prohibited in some places like near operating rooms or other areas of hospitals where the signals could interfere with equipment. I can imagine that other places might want to put up such signs, such as in church sanctuaries or school classrooms. BTW, a story on the other side of our newspaper's front page says the Ameritech SBC deal has been approved in Washington. Gail M. Hall gmhall@apk.net ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 17:21:48 EDT From: Steve Gaarder Subject: Looking For Information on a WE Conferencing Microphone A friend of mine dug up a rather odd specimen: a Bell System "1A Microphone". It looks like something designed for teleconferencing. It has a base about six inches square and a couple high. From this there protrudes a rectangular stalk about three feet high, with small holes at intervals on one side. The base has an LED on each side, and two of the sides have "MIKE OFF" buttons. It connects via a DB9 connector in the base. Does anyone know anything about it? Thanks, Steve Gaarder Network and Systems Administrator gaarder@cmold.com C-MOLD, Ithaca, N.Y., USA ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Siemens Listened to the Whining About the 2420 Gigaset Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 17:35:35 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com It looks like Siemens listened to all of the whining about the Gigaset 2420 problems and fixed just about all of them in the new 2420+. (I will "*" the things I whined about) In a nutshell here are the "enhancements" in the 2420+ Simplified Menu Improved Call Handling Improved Call Transfer * Time and Date sets from Caller ID Answering Machine Configured per Line Cordless handset pick-up after answering machine starts * Barge in from any handset to existing call (configurable on or off) Message waiting indicator on cordless handsets (VMWI) (for both telco voice mail or Gigaset answering machine messages) Quick Access to Desk Station Directory (jump to entry using first letter of entry) Intercom Directory (pick list by Phone Name) Line Access Control by Line for each phone Directory Transfer between Desk Station and handsets Two line Caller ID Display 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 Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 00:18:38 +0100 From: Adam Sampson Subject: Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? Reply-To: azz@gnu.org steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) wrote: > shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) spake thusly and wrote: >> Maybe not, but I *distinctly* recall a federal law passed about ten >> years back making it illegal to obtain access to or use of a computer >> by using a bogus id. > It is a beautiful thought, but someone sending an email has hardly > gained access. Ahem, but yes, they have, when they sent their mail. At the time the mail went from their system to their upstream SMTP host, they would have authenticated with a "HELO " at the start of their SMTP session. SMTP servers like sendmail can and do drop connections through failed authentication (HELO from the wrong hostname, MAIL TO: a blocked address etc.). I see no moral or procedural difference (obINAL here) between this exchange and logging on to a shell account with an illicitly-obtained password; it makes no more difference that their mail client may have performed the above exchange than it does if J. Random Cracker uses nessus or another piece of security-scanning software to automatically communicate with another host. Adam Sampson azz@gnu.org ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 02:45:54 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Consumer Reports Has Become A Bully http://home.swbell.net/evansjim/CRthreats/extortion.htm ------------------------------ From: YL/KL Woo Subject: Japanese Land-Line Phone Work in US/UK? Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 20:18:17 +0800 Hi, I would like to buy a cordless phone in Japan. Does anyone here know or have experience if those local models work out of Japan ... say in the US, UK or Singapore? I mean, I don't care about the 100V, and the Alpha-3 features. I just want one because their desgins are so cool. Since I can read some Japanese, I don't mind the Japanese interface. I know that my 3Com modem works in Japan. Does that mean Japanese fixed line phone works out of Japan? I mean is there any difference in the dial tones of Japan and those in USA, UK, Singapore? Would appreciate if you could reply to wooly@earthling.net. Domo Arigato! Yew-Liang ------------------------------ From: Dale Neiburg Subject: Re: British Doctor's Death Linked to PCS Coverage Gaps Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:03:44 -0400 In TELECOM Digest, issue 449, Ed Ellers quoted BBC News Online: > [snip!] > Alison Bell, a 36-year-old surgeon from west London, cut her leg badly > after falling from a step ladder while working on renovations at her > family's cottage near Fishguard. > The hearing in Milford Haven was told that Dr. Alison Jane Graham Bell, > who was based in London, would have survived the freak accident if > help had arrived quickly. >http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/wales/newsid%5F461000/461724.stm Astonishing! Was the doctor any relation to that "other" A. Graham Bell, or is this just another remarkable synchronicity? Dale Neiburg ** NPR Satellite Operations ** 202-414-2640 "...And I have heard many impudently say, that they have chosen their Wives, and Wives their Husbands, by dancing. Which plainly proveth the Wickedness of it." --Philip Stubbes: The Anatomy of Abuses, 1573 ------------------------------ From: John_David_Galt@acm.org (John David Galt) Subject: Re: Special Security Report: The Phonemasters Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 00:07:13 GMT Organization: Tomatoweb.com NewsReader Service J. Baptista wrote: > There's one thing I've noticed about hacking that concerns me. Some > countries like the U.S. arrest them. Other countries and commercial > interests hire them. > The question I have is who's going to end up on top? Countries that > arrest, or those that hire? I see this as depending more on the attitude of the cracker than that of the government involved. "Captain Crunch" went straight, and got hired. Kevin Mitnick, at least so far, appears determined to keep attacking, so he may never see the light of day. (Which may be excessive, but how can we ever protect ourselves if he does?) John David Galt ------------------------------ From: Janne Kankkunen Subject: Information Wanted About PCD3311C Circuits Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 04:38:32 PDT Hello! Do you happen to know where can I find some information about PCD3311C/PCD3312C- circuits? Janne Kankkunen ------------------------------ From: Bryan Joseph Subject: Tutorial Wanted About SS7 Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 10:34:46 -0400 Organization: Picus Can anyone direct me to a good tutorial or FAQ on SS7? Also an overview of international point codes would be helpful ... please reply to bryan@picus.com . ------------------------------ From: steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) Subject: Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 19:34:41 +0800 Organization: Prima Computer You are supposed to apply for a license within 30 days or something after moving to wherever, permanent resident, resident, whatever. If they can't issue you one then what? Do you lose your driving privileges because the rest of the world doesn't issue S/S numbers? The international license is not valid in the country where the license it was issued against was issued. You can probably drive on your foreign license in the US without the international license anyway, so its not a big problem. Ill try this anywhere I please, thank you very much, and I will run into no problems because it is perfectly legitimate. Steven ahk@chinet.com says... > Steven wrote: >> So long as they don't work this deal with other countries then anyone >> can continue to get a foreign license/international license, valid in >> the states, for a very modest fee. > Don't try this at home. Rather, don't try this in the place in which > you live. Generally, if you are a permanent resident (regardless of > whether or not you are a citizen), you must obtain driving privileges > through the local jurisdiction. By the treaty that created the > international license, it isn't valid at home. ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: Revocation of Domain Names Date: 7 Oct 1999 00:08:26 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On Wed, 06 Oct 1999 05:39:57 -0600, Joey@GaryNumanFan.NU allegedly said: > the ICANN-pushed contract language appearing in the contracts of all > the new "competing" registrars, we are being led to believe that there > is competition (and thus if you don't like one company's terms you can > go find another), yet in fact IT IS STILL A MONOPOLY, run by ICANN. > Worse, it's very likely a judge will fall for this nonsense also. Nah. All of those new registrars MUST play by the same rules. At least as far as I can tell. Point that out to the judge. North Shore Technologies JustTheNet Dialup Internet Access Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Geauga Co., Lake Co., Portage Co., Lorain Co., OH Nationwide Access coming soon! Watch this space for details or dial 1.888.480.4NET for more info! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 23:11:09 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: Re: Revocation of Domain Names Joey Lindstrom wrote: > In regards to the discussion about what Netsol and other registrars are > doing re: the language in their contracts that states they can take > away your domain name at any time for any reason, I agree that this is > completely unreasonable. For the time being, I'll take them at their > word that this language is there just to cover their own asses. I'll remember that logic the next time I sit down to a contract negotiation. > I think domain names should be handled like phone numbers. I dunno > what US tariffs look like, but I was browsin' through my white pages > the other day and read part of the Telus tariff here in Alberta, which > states essentially that you, the customer, do *NOT* own the telephone > number and that the telco can change it - but they MUST have a valid > reason for doing so - you do have protection against an unreasonable > and arbitrary change. IE: if a company called "FLOWERS" decided they > wanted a telephone number that spelled out this word, and I happened to > be using it, I could *NOT* be forced into relinquishing it. BUT (and I cannot believe at this point that toll free numbers compare favorably to domain names in user-friendliness), [portability-based] guidelines and rules for toll free numbers (a) not only do not contain any "we can revoke your number at any time" language -- which incidentally, is why no one can be forced to relinquish a number -- but (b) the guidelines also contain language that says, in essence, "The subscriber has the ultimate right to control his toll free service and number." And that ain't in domain name contracts. > What annoys me off here is that when Netsol was a > monopoly, it was much easier to make a case against them if they > arbitrarily yanked your domain name: they're a monopoly, and you signed > that contract only because they were the only game in town. Now, with > the ICANN-pushed contract language appearing in the contracts of all > the new "competing" registrars, we are being led to believe that there > is competition (and thus if you don't like one company's terms you can > go find another), yet in fact IT IS STILL A MONOPOLY, run by ICANN. > Worse, it's very likely a judge will fall for this nonsense also. Bingo. > If you're looking to set up a domain name, and you're feeling a little > paranoid about it, I suggest you check out the .NU domain. All well and good, but for the foreseeable future, if you are a business entity, .com rules. Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 mailto:joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Publisher of ICB Toll Free News: http://icbtollfree.com Publisher of WhoSells800.com: http://whosells800.com Moderator TOLLFREE-L: http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html President of ICB Consultancy: http://JudithOppenheimer.com: 800 # Acquisition Management, Lost 800 # Retrieval, Litigation Support, Regulatory Navigation, Correlating Trademark and Domain Name Issues. ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Revocation of Domain Names Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 17:41:25 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Joey Lindstrom spake thusly and wrote: > I really believe that if they started yanking domain names just because > they didn't like the colour of certain netizens' hair, it wouldn't > stand up in court, no matter what the "contract" says. Restraint of > trade could be cited quite easily, along with a host of other legal > arguments. They would open a big door for someone else to step in and take over if they got trigger happy or greedy about it, and if the big ISPs elected to honor the new registrar ... but ewe ... I don't want to think of the mess that sort of war would make. I want to think that trade mark and service mark owners (like SELLCOM) have a secure spot by having that domain registered. I really want to think that so much, I really really do. I really feel so much better when I think that ... I really want to think that ... I sure hope I am right. 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 Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420+ Gigaset ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Digest Quantity and Quality Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 22:55:00 EDT As many of you have probably noticed, in recent days the output of this Digest has been sort of skimpy. There has not been as much output as I would like, nor has the editing quality been as good as I prefer. The problem has been that I am continuing to fill in as a substitute moderator for rec.radio.broadcasting, and that task is taking some time that would otherwise be spent here on telecom. So I apologize that the output the past week or two has been sort of skimpy. Things will hopefully get back to normal and up to speed again soon. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #464 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 7 23:45:24 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id XAA22267; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 23:45:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 23:45:24 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910080345.XAA22267@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #465 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Oct 99 23:45:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 465 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson "ICANN Has Neither the Authority Nor the Resources" (Judith Oppenheimer) DNRC Files Complaint With ICANN (Jay Fenello) Report: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations (Tad Cook) Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (L. Winson) Re: FAX Teergrube Anyone??? (Louis Raphael) Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia (Robert Eden) Re: Y2K Activities (Brian Elfert) Last Laugh! All Digest Readers Have Won Fifty Dollars! (Michael Maxfield) 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, 07 Oct 1999 00:03:47 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: "ICANN Has Neither the Authority Nor the Resources" - Mike Roberts "... the marketplace is allowed to determine the terms under which registrars and domain-name holders will deal. This approach allows the parties to choose provisions that reflect local business conditions, legal jurisdictions, and other considerations. "ICANN has neither the authority nor the resources to be a consumer protection agency, and in any event there are existing protections for abuses ... such as better business bureaus, trade commissions, etc in most of the countries in which domain name activity is present." Mike Roberts, Interim President/CEO, ICANN, Tue, 5 Oct 1999 09:24:35 PDT Guess that puts the trademark question to bed ... Judith Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com"> Publisher of ICB Toll Free News Publisher of WhoSells800.com Moderator TOLLFREE-L: http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html President of ICB Consultancy: http://JudithOppenheimer.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 10:44:11 -0400 From: Jay Fenello Subject: DNRC Files Complaint with ICANN Over Uniform Dispute Policy HERNDON, October 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The Domain Name Rights Coalition (DNRC), an organization dedicated to protecting the interests of entrepreneurs, small business owners and individuals in domain name issues, today filed a formal complaint with ICANN on their proposed Uniform Dispute Policy (UDP). "We object to any uniform dispute policy, especially one that skews the playing field towards large trademark holders" said Mikki Barry, president of the DNRC. "Under this proposal, only the domain name holders are contractually obligated to follow the rules, while trademark holders continue to have their traditional options available. This not only inhibits competition, but it gives special rights to trademark holders that do not exist in any other medium." The DNRC also protested the use of a small drafting committee, and the way that suggestions were filtered through an ICANN attorney. It was yet another example of ICANN circumventing the White Paper's call for bottom-up, consensus processes. In addition, the DNRC noted how the UDP goes well beyond the mandate of curtailing cybersquatting and reverse domain name hijacking. Reverse domain name hijacking is hardly mentioned in either the rules or the UDP, and most of the other provisions go well beyond the stated purpose of the UDP. These objections join a long list of other complaints against ICANN, including the expansion of their mandate from "technical management" to policy issues that will likely impact civil liberties world-wide, ICANN ignoring its own rules and by-laws, and ICANN's refusal to give individuals any say at the ICANN table. The Domain Name Rights Coalition was formed in 1996, and has worked for national and international policies which are fair and equitable to all users of the Internet ever since. It has also worked to protect the Internet as a global medium of communication and free speech, and it is well known for its vigilant fight against the Domain Name Dispute Policy of Network Solutions, Inc. and similar policies recommended by the World Intellectual Property Organization. CONTACT: Mikki Barry www.domain-name.org 703-925-0282 SOURCE: Fenello.com, Inc. www.fenello.com 770-392-9480 ------------------------------ Subject: Report: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 19:08:41 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) (This is crazy. The alleged incidents turned out to be rumors, nobody can find a case of this ever happening, and cellphones emit a tiny signal compared to two-way radios in police cars and taxicabs. Pagers are banned? They don't emit radio waves. tad@ssc.com) CLEVELAND (AP) -- BP Amoco plans to ban the use of cellular telephones at its U.S. gasoline pumps by the end of the year, a newspaper reported today. The precautionary measure is prompted by concerns that electronic impulses from a cellular phone could help ignite fires if gasoline or gas fumes are present. The risk is slight, but London-based BP Amoco doesn't want to take any chances, Linda McCray, a BP spokeswoman in Cleveland, told {The Plain Dealer}. The company will begin posting warning signs at all Amoco and BP stations by the end of the year, McCray said. "We are unaware of any incidents here in the U.S. in which a cellular has been linked to a fire or an explosion," she said. "This is strictly a precautionary measure we are taking." The BP Amoco ban, which was implemented earlier this year at BP stations in the United Kingdom and Australia, will prohibit the use of personal electronic devices such as cellular telephones, compact disc players and pagers near gas pumps. The San Francisco-based Chevron Corp. also plans to ban cell phones. The company will place warning decals on gas pumps later this year, said Nancy Malinowski, a Chevron spokeswoman. The city of Cicero, Ill., a Chicago suburb, recently passed the first law in the nation banning the use of cellular phones at gas stations. Cell phone manufacturers have included warnings against such use in owner's manuals for years because they say that under certain conditions, cell phones could help generate sparks. The American Petroleum Institute, which is looking into the reports, has so far found no substantiated reports of such incidents. ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? Date: 8 Oct 1999 02:23:28 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS > What you are going to see now is one stop shopping from five or six > companies instead of one. Five or six companies? For the average small-potatoes user? Certainly not now. > We had a system that gouged long distance callers in order to support > dirt cheap local service. It was socialism pure and simple. Long distance rates are not comparable between now and them because the rate structures are completely different. Many rate plans require a monthly service charge which is usually NOT added to rate comparisons. High volume far distance users are probably paying less. Low volume short distance users are definitely paying more. (Short haul inter- state calls had far lower rates before than now when all rates are uniform regardless of distance.) Further, long distance calls from pay phones or via calling card or operator assistance cost substanti- ally more. An additional problem today is fingerpointing between LD and local companies over access charges. The end consumers end up paying for charges to BOTH, (And of course there's the added bureaucracy of splitting charges between different companies.) And another un-counted cost is the telecom staff employed by large users to manage their systems. Previously this work was done by the phone company itself. Regardless of the merit of requiring a company to have its own staff (or hire a telecom consultant), those costs need to be added to long distance rate costs. > Monopolies, like the old Bell System were no longer in the public > interest ... that's why we have the Sherman and Clayton Anti-Trust acts. It is not merely "monopolies" but also excessive concentrations of market power. A merger of this magnitude at the present time repre- sents a significant increase in concentration and is not in the public interest. > My judgment is that despite Kinnard the FCC Commissioner the merger > will go through since WorldCom will effectively argue that once > BellAtlantic and SBC are allowed into the LD market the competitive > balance will be essentially restored. Without question, no mergers should be allowed until the local companies are allowed to offer full services. > The ILEC's should be forced to sell the circuits ... (see above) why > can't I choose my local carrier the same way I choose my LD carrier? Unlike years ago when each customer required a dedicated copper pair and carrier systems were expensive and limited, it is easy today to lay high capacity fiber. Cable companies rapidly wired much of the country with coax, then came back and wired them with fiber. There is no reason a competing company couldn't build its own independent local loop. Indeed, such a company would have an advantage over the Bells since its plant would be more modern. > Are you really suggesting that SBC and Bell Atlantic are paragons of > "public service" ... there is only thing they understand and are > desperate to avoid ... real competition for local phone service. I have been a Bell Atlantic customer for a great many years and have been very satisified with their service. I have tried to use MCI and have been quite unhappy. (I also wish MCI didn't keep phoning me for seven straight days even though each time I told them I wasn't interested. I also wonder why they quote me rates that are more expensive than what I'm paying now.) > We have more services at lower prices than ever in the history of the > Telecom industry ... and a great deal of new jobs and national wealth > has been created in the process. > Its not perfect ... but a heck of a lot better that the old days. A great deal of jobs have been created in the competing companies. MCI hires lots of sales people. I know for myself, my costs have gone up and my service quality has gone down. Bottom line: MCI and Sprint merger is not in the public interest. The original goal was competition. Let's keep it that way. ------------------------------ From: Louis Raphael Subject: Re: FAX Teergrube Anyone??? Organization: Societe pour la promotion du petoncle vert Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 03:13:33 GMT Junk faxes are indeed quite tiresome. I vaguely remember recently sending one back, followed by a number of sheets of paper with just a line across them :-). How about using fax receiving software, and setting it to (fax) 2400 bps if you don't like the caller ... crude, but it would lengthen the call. Also, you could easily have your computer swallow it all up in the general direction of /dev/null, unlike a paper-based fax machine, so you can happily listen to the whole thing. Louis Walter Dnes wrote: > Certain anti-spam internet sites use a "teergrube" (German for > tarpit) hack on sendmail to tie up for as long as possible any > machine that attempts to relay via them. I'm wondering if it's > possible to apply this algorithm to incoming faxes. I.e., if > an incoming FAX isn't from a whitelisted number, and it doesn't > have the correct passcode dialed, rather than merely dump the > connection after 13 or 14 seconds, I want the sender to spend > as much time as possible "retransmitting bad blocks" and > "retraining", etc. Does anybody on this list know the guts of > fax protocols well enough to say if this is or isn't possible? "Colleges don't make fools, they only develop them" - George Horace Lorimer ------------------------------ From: Robert Eden Subject: Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia Organization: Giganews.Com - Premium News Outsourcing Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 20:43:30 -0500 Jason Fetterolf wrote in message: > Telehub did not just cut off Erbia's customers, but also ALL other > users of their network, ie PromiseNet, and OPEX aka Premiercom, and > likely others ... When it worked, 700-555-4141 reported my line as being with MCI/WorldComm and I got dumped too. I wonder if Telehub was really the problem. "We're sorry, the number you are calling *FROM* has been disconnected." ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Y2K Activities From: belfert@foshay.citilink.com (Brian Elfert) Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 14:42:30 GMT TELECOM Digest Editor made a poor attempt at humor: > I got a curious joke in personal email the other day, and since I do > not remember it all, it won't be much of a joke when told here, but it > had to do with the McDonald hamburger signs in front of each of their > restaurants. It seems those signs all now say 99 billion have been > eaten to-date, and it is about time to change the sign to say 100 > billion have been eaten. The trouble is, the signs were all construc- > ted so many years ago when no one considered there would ever be a On a serious note, most new McDonald's locations have signs that say 'billions and billions served'. They probably got sick of changing the numbers every few months. Brian ------------------------------ Subject: Last Laugh! All Digest Readers Have Won Fifty Dollars! Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 19:01:42 PDT From: tweek@netcom.com (Michael Maxfield) Here's one for your 800 number book. Haven't been near a payphone yet to try and claim my $50. Mike. Forwarded message: From wwwpublications@hotmail.com Thu Oct 7 17:25:54 1999 From: wwwpublications@hotmail.com Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 22:26:34 -0300 Message-Id: <199910080126.WAA22523@brasilvision.com.br> Reply-To: wwwpublications@hotmail.com To: tweek@netcom.com Subject: Your $50 This advertisement is never sent unsolicited. Your email address has been submitted to us indicating your interest in our publications. If you are not interested in our publications and wish to be removed from our lists, simply do NOT respond and ignore this email. Your email address will be removed from all future mailings. Thank You. Your Personal Pass Code Number is: 0575085308 To redeem, please call toll free 1-800-377-8977 Congratulations! You have won $50. To redeem your $50, please dial the following toll free number and have your pass code ready. Toll-Free Number: 1-800-377-8977 And your Personal Pass Code Number is: 0575085308 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #465 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 11 14:47:18 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA11939; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:47:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:47:18 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910111847.OAA11939@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #466 TELECOM Digest Mon, 11 Oct 99 14:47:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 466 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson DoJ Children's Home Page Hacker Story Exposes Double Standard (B Mengele) Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (Bruce Wilson) Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal (Bruce Wilson) Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (Lou Coles) Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires (Lou Coles) Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia (ralphies@my-deja.com) Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter (James A. Young) Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter (Syd Barrett) First Merger Cutbacks ... Not Exactly (Clifton T. Sharp Jr.) 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: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 23:47:28 PDT From: Babu Mengelepouti Subject: DoJ Children's Home Page Hacker Story Exposes Double Standards CyberWire Dispatch // copyright October 8, 1999 // All rights reserved Jacking in from the "Mr. Rogers" port: By Lewis Z. Koch CWD Special Correspondent The Department of Justice has either lost its collective mind, lost all sense of its own history or is just too damned busy trying to figure out who really gave the order to waste a couple dozen kids in the Waco debacle. The DOJ has produced a "Hacking Story" kids web page (www.usdoj.gov/kidspage/) and on it they have cartoon woman holding "the scales of justice" -- only she's not blindfolded. The page also has a bewigged judge, peering over his glasses, looking stern, squinting down approvingly as perhaps the thumb screws are tightened on another hapless hacker who has fallen into the clutches of a Justice Department searching for another "teachable moment." Now -- and I am not making this up -- there is an "Internet Do's and Don'ts" on this kids page subtitled "Think about it." This about this: your tax dollars paid for this. The "Think About It" section starts off, "People who break into computers ('hackers') destroy property and records and invade privacy. What's privacy worth to you?" That's a very good question boys and girls. To understand it, how about a bit of a history lesson first. Perhaps we should we ask what privacy is worth of the family of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose privacy the FBI invaded for years, bugging his bedrooms and his phone conversations. What was Dr. King's privacy worth? Or the other people whose privacy was invaded as they interacted with Dr. King? Or are there two standards of privacy, boys and girls -- one for the government rule-breakers and one for hacker rule-breakers? This is called a "double standard" boys and girls. Can we spell "hypocritical?" Perhaps we should do an Internet search with the key words "black bag jobs" and "FBI." (And for extra credit, try "Iran-Contra.") The page goes on to ask, "What information about you (or your parents) do you think is private: medical information? ..." Good question. But perhaps an even better one to ask, boys and girls, is why is all that medical data available in the first place? Why isn't it encrypted? You know, in code, so no one can read it? We'll come back to that, later. It might be that the insurance companies want the data to be open, so they can easily read it as it goes from Internet site to Internet site, medical data traveling across the Internet, just as carefree as can be. The insurance companies want to make it easy for themselves, so they can keep track of all the medical records. Precautions to keep it out of the hands of, say, the FBI or private detectives, or people who can monitor all those records speeding about the Net would cost money, and insurance companies need lots of money, so they can give part of it to politicians. The insurance companies like to share and we all know sharing is a good thing, isn't it, boys and girls? Yes, Jenny, you have a question? What, Aetna doesn't share with you? Shame on them. Maybe you should run for Congress. Yes, you'll get extra credit. Maybe the DOJ should put up a web page for insurance companies, asking them all kinds of fun questions. Inquiring little minds want to know. The DOJ kids page would have children worry about hackers knowing what grade you got in English or Math or how much money you have and how much money you owe and your letters to a friend and a boyfriend or girlfriend. Are those good questions boys and girls? Well, on the one hand, most fifth graders, frankly, don't give a shit (oops, sorry about that boys and girls) -- aren't all that concerned about grades or how much freaking money an eleven year old is making. And as to the money they owe ... please, let's not get carried away boys and girls. The DOJ kids page goes on like some blithering 3rd grade teacher in Kansas set to make a fulsome argument for creationism, "When you write something, how important is it to be able to find it again ... How important is it that data in computers not be altered ... [like] grades? ..." Maybe next week, boys and girls, we can all sit down and write a Freedom of Information request and find out how many people worked the wonderful prose on the kids page. And then we can total up how much they make a year in our special math class! I'll bet it goes way, way, way over $100,000. You think that is a lot of money, don't you? Do you know the expression "chump change" boys and girls? Time to write another letter, boys and girls. This one goes to the Secretary of Commerce William M. Daley. You know him from your fun history books, the son of Richard J. Daley, who had his Red Squad break into peoples' homes, bug their bedrooms and offices phones looking for information for decades until a Federal Judge had to tell them to stop. Mayor Daley wanted to know all about people who disagreed with him. And that's the same Richard J. Daley whose handpicked State's Attorney's police murdered two Black Panther members while they slept in their beds. Well, Richard J's son, William M., is the man who, along with lots and lots of FBI agents and CIA agents and NSA agents, has been fighting for weak encryption rather than strong encryption. Strong encryption, boys and girls, prevents people from reading your personal correspondence or records. Now the Department of Justice wants to bug your computers to prevent you from utilizing strong encryption the way it is supposed to work. Weak encryption makes it so much easier to read your grades. Let's have a show of hands. Who wants the government to know everything about us and for us to not know anything about the government? Anyone? Anyone? Later, let's all look up "data mining" on the Internet. We can probably find out lots of cool things about your parents that they don't want you to know. Now let's talk about the best part of the "Think About it" page: "Some hackers think that if they 'don't alter anything' or 'don't mean to alter anything' they haven't done any harm. But they are stealing telephone and computer time. They also crash systems so they won't work. How do we use information systems today? What would happen if systems like the air traffic control system or the 911 system suddenly stopped working?" Now, let's be real good students, boys and girls. What's real strange about those ideas? Remember when we learned that word "stereotype?" It's bad to stereotype, isn't it boys and girls? Rachel or Brian, can you tell me what the stereotype is here? Riiiiighht. Good. Both of you! You want to know who, exactly, are those "some hackers" the page refers to. Do they have names? The kids page seems to be telling us that all hackers are bad. Well, one group of hackers calls themselves L0pht. And they have cool names like Silicosis, Brian Oblivion, John Tan, Dr. Mudge, Kingpin, Space Rogue, Weld Pond and Dildog. Some of them also belong to a hacker group called "Cult of the Dead Cow." Isn't that a great name to scare a U.S. Attorney! Almost makes you want to be a hacker, doesn't it? You get to testify before the United States Senate and describe how thoughtless the United States government is when it tries to hide software vulnerabilities. You know what? United States Senators were so impressed they even autographed their own pictures for them! Isn't that cool? Tomorrow we'll look up the words "duplicity" and "stupidity." So I guess the lesson is "some hackers" can be good hackers, unless the DOJ kids page authors or the DOJ itself wants to challenge the United States Senate. What do you think? Maybe MTV would even do a celebrity death match segment DOJ v. the Senate. How about those last ideas boys and girls, about systems crashing? Why is it some people have become centa-billionaires or just plain billionaires by making computer software full of flaws and mistakes and bugs, causing the programs to crash all by themselves or to be crashed by some silly 16-year-old script kiddie? Are these very rich men ever asked why a multitude of software users is made to endure their bug-ridden products? No, Rebecca, no need to answer, that was what we call a "rhetorical" question. What do you think your parents would do to General Motors or Ford if their car or truck totally self destructed by itself or fell apart at the slightest fender bump? Yes, Brian? Oh, I see, well I am sorry about your father's Yugo ... You know the concept of "bankruptcy?" Don't you think it's only fair, boys and girls, that the software billionaires should shoulder some of the responsibility for the flaws in their product rather than putting the blame on the heads of "some hackers?" Maybe the Justice lady should put her blind folds back on and administer justice without fear or favor. What do you think, children? Tomorrow's assignment, boys and girls, is to read the latest issue of Phrack, write a synflood script and wear your "Free Kevin Mitnick T shirts" at assembly. Yes, Brian? Of course you get extra credit for your creative use of "Back Orifice," but tomorrow, please restore the school's network to its rightful owner. Thank you. Class dismissed. ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 10 Oct 1999 02:42:34 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? > We had a system that gouged long distance callers in order to support > dirt cheap local service. It was socialism pure and simple. No, the separations process recognized the reality that all of the local service plant, from the connection to a long-distance trunk at the CO to the subscriber's phone, was part of the long-distance network when used to make long-distance calls and the LEC should be compensated for its use. The expensive alternative would've been to have had two complete sets of local plant and the subscribers two phones, one for local cals and one for long-distance. To the extent there's been "socialism" in utility rate-setting, it's been the practice of setting residential rates at artificially low "affordable" levels and using business rates to make up the resulting shortfall in the total revenue requirement. > Monopolies, like the old Bell System were no longer in the public > interest ... that's why we have the Sherman and Clayton Anti-Trust acts. Rate regulation was intended to serve as a substitute for competition; and telcos were regulated monopolies because of the economic ineffeciency of duplicate plants. >Divestiture worked. The problem with introducing competion was "cream-skimming" -- lower rates for high-volume (usually big business) customers, with low-volume customers left holding the bag. Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 10 Oct 1999 02:27:43 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: MCI Buys Sprint in Record $115 Billion Deal > The "official" line given to employees is that "construction will > continue as planned ..." This refers to ...? Bruce Wilson [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It refers to the Sprint World Head- quarters campus in the Kansas City area on which there still remains about one year of work and a few more buildings before it is complete. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Lou Coles Subject: Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 00:00:53 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises L. Winson wrote in message news:telecom19.465.4@ telecom-digest.org: >> What you are going to see now is one stop shopping from five or six >> companies instead of one. > Five or six companies? For the average small-potatoes user? Certainly > not now. Yes now even including the 10-10 #'s. > A great deal of jobs have been created in the competing companies. > MCI hires lots of sales people. I know for myself, my costs have gone > up and my service quality has gone down. But according to your posts you're not an MICWorldcom customer. Why don't you blame BellAtlantic ? > Bottom line: MCI and Sprint merger is not in the public interest. > The original goal was competition. Let's keep it that way. It's not MCI ... it's MCIWorldCom, a totally different company than was MCI. ------------------------------ From: Lou Coles Subject: Re: Red Caps on Ends of Wires Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 00:03:02 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Coredump wrote ... Coredump? What a horrid nick, do you delight in giving old BAL programmers nightmares? ------------------------------ From: ralphies@my-deja.com Subject: Re: Trouble at TeleHub and Erbia Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 00:52:08 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. The following was posted at www.erbia com erbia Announcement Network Update October 8, 1999 erbia would like to apologize to you again for the inconvenience and sincerely thank you for your patience and understanding. For those loyal customers who have suffered through this network conversion with us, we would like to thank you by extending to you 200 free minutes of interstate calling time in the month of December 1999. In addition we will extend to our current customers reduced cost Internet service at $9.95 per month, a savings of $4.00 per month off of our regular price of $13.95 per month. Some of you have experienced difficulties using the 10-10-297 dial- around number, to assist you during this short period of difficulty, we have two additional dial-around numbers for you to use, 10-10-811 or 10- 10-636. Please retain your invoices for these services so that we may credit your erbia account with the difference. In order to assist us in the conversion please remove all PIC freezes. Also, please do not create any new PIC freezes at this time. You will NOT be charged a PIC charge for service restoration. Richard J. Gibbs, President & COO erbia, Inc. ------------------------------ From: James A. Young Subject: Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 00:37:24 -0700 Organization: U S WEST Interprise The Minneapolis water department installed a system that sounds very similar to what you described in my house several years ago. I had no problem with it until last summer when I ordered a DSL connection from US West. I tried to "do it yourself" install and couldn't get it to work at all. US West sent out a tech to trouble shoot the problem and it turned out to be the water meter line. The installers had spliced into a line rather than run their wire 5 feet farther to the main wiring block. The ragged splice was enough to keep the DSL connection from working. Once we isolated the problem, resplicing the connection seemed to fix everything. It kind of annoyed me that a) they were using my phone line in the first place, b) they had sliced into one of my phone wires and done such a crummy job that it caused the DSL service not to work (heck, even my amateur wiring that I'd installed myself worked better than what they had done.) and finally c) I had to pay for and put a line filter on their box to keep it and the DSL connection from interfering with each other. grumble, grumble, grumble ... Gary Novosielski wrote: > I just had one of these gadgets installed today. My water company > calls the system "HOMER" for Hands-Off MEter Reading. (But wasn't the > old way "hands-off" too?). It's connected at one end to the water > meter with a three-wire cable, and at the other end to a normal RJ-11 > phone jack. Actually, this is the second attempt at installing it. > They tried once a few years ago, but were unable to get the thing to > function. Watching their debugging attempts, I learned a little about > the device. > PAT's description of the protocol is exactly right, it uses the > telco's "line test" functions. No ringing voltage of any kind is > used, distinctive, selective, or otherwise. The phone never rings or > tries to. What happens is that the line appears to go "off hook" but > it is done from the telco side. Inbound callers would surely get a > busy signal. > The reason it wouldn't function at my house is that I had a gadget on > the line that interfered with it. "It was a Radio Shack Hold Module", > a device that would attach to the phone line at any jack, and let you > put any extension on hold by flashing the hookswitch twice, so that > you could then pick up the call at another extension. ------------------------------ Reply-To: Syd Barrett From: Syd Barrett Subject: Re: Phone Line Attached to Water Meter Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 21:48:02 GMT Organization: @Home Network Gary Novosielski wrote in message news:telecom19. 459.12@telecom-digest.org: > I just had one of these gadgets installed today. My water company > calls the system "HOMER" for Hands-Off MEter Reading. (But wasn't the > old way "hands-off" too?). It's connected at one end to the water > meter with a three-wire cable, and at the other end to a normal RJ-11 > phone jack. Actually, this is the second attempt at installing it. What about all the supposed fibre many utilities have in the ground? How far does it extend? Is it only between substations and distribution points and such? Here in Virginia Power land, the meters are still read the old-fashioned way -- by a guy in a grubby uniform clutching a clipboard. Anybody in VA know any poop about when Virginia Power will make any switches to automated meter-reading? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 01:59:56 -0500 From: Clifton T. Sharp Jr. Subject: First Merger Cutbacks ... Not Exactly Organization: as little as possible Followup to my earlier note. The next day I went back to Ameritech's web site and tried once again to get information for Illinois. This time, when asked my zip code, instead of a little clickable map I was given a message to check for information at ; couldn't go there, as it prompted me for a password. Checked 'whois' on the domain, and that was quite informative: GTE CORPORATION (WIRELESSYOURWAY-DOM) 600 Hidden Ridge IRVING, TX 75015-2092 US Domain Name: WIRELESSYOURWAY.COM Administrative Contact: TAYLOR, DON-WN-BAHE (DT10554) don.taylor@GTE.NET 972 718 8027 Technical Contact, Zone Contact, Billing Contact: GTE CORPORATION (GC1260-ORG) no.valid.email@WORLDNIC.NET 972 718 3798 Record last updated on 29-Sep-99. Record created on 07-Jun-99. Database last updated on 9-Oct-99 05:21:36 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: DNSAUTH1.SYS.GTEI.NET 4.2.49.2 DNSAUTH2.SYS.GTEI.NET 4.2.49.3 No news that the web address, 128.11.41.236, identifies reverse-DNS style as gtecom7.cam-colo.bbnplanet.com. Called the new customer service number before closing time. Waited about five minutes on hold until a guy with a strong accent spoke loudly into his headset to me, to inform me that Ameritech would continue to provide my cellular service, and that I'd be notified if any changes were afoot. "We wouldn't surprise you with that." Today, tried the web site again. Everything says "Ameritech Cellular". But I have a good guess as to who has recently licensed that name. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Cliff Sharp | "Speech isn't free when it comes postage-due." | | WA9PDM | -- Jim Nitchals, founder, FREE | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- http://www.spamfree.org/ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #466 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 11 17:18:07 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA17830; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:18:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:18:07 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910112118.RAA17830@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #467 TELECOM Digest Mon, 11 Oct 99 17:18:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 467 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Telephone Dry Cell Battery (Andrew Emmerson) Are US PCS Cellphones "Locked" (Dave Harvey) Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet (Terry Knab) Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy (Linc Madison) Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy (Adam H. Kerman) Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... (Jeremy S. Nichols) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Michael Sullivan) Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? (Ed Ellers) First Merger Cutbacks? (Clifton T. Sharp Jr.) Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple (Alan Boritz) Re: MCI/Sprint Merger (Michi Kaifu) Re: DNRC Files Complaint With ICANN Over Uniform Dispute Policy (D Clayton) Re: Webcam Experiences Wanted (Paul Robinson) Re: Report: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations (Satch) Re: Report: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations (M Pollock) Long Distance Then and Now (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. 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: midshires@cix.co.uk (Andrew Emmerson) Subject: Re: Telephone Dry Cell Battery Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 09:16 +0100 (BST) Organization: CIX - Compulink Information eXchange Reply-To: midshires@cix.co.uk In article , fist@ozemail.com.au (Stewart Fist) wrote: > Does anyone know what type/voltage of dry cells were used by Morse > in the first (the two wire) Baltimore-to-Washington telegraphy line, I think the answer is none -- they had not been invented! The voltaic pile itself was not invented until the year 1800 and this was of course wet, with a stack of discs in the recurring sequence of copper, zinc and felt soaked in sulphuric acid. Volta then produced his more practical 'voltaic cell', which consisted of a vessel containing diluted sulphuric acid in which a zinc and a copper plate (the electrodes) were immersed. This generated a voltage of around 0.78V and could be linked in a series or 'battery'. A great many scientists carried out further research, continuously producing improved versions. They included the Briton John Daniell (1836), the Frenchmen Leclanch and Grenet (1856), and the German Bunsen (1843). The dry battery came later, when domestic applications needed it (telephones, buzzers, annunciators). Andrew Emmerson ------------------------------ From: Dave Harvey at Medical Connections Subject: Are US PCS Cellphones "Locked" Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 08:27:17 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I am an occasional traveller to the US, and have a UK based GSM/PCS account. I could hire a PCS phone when travelling to the US, but as the prices are very high, I am looking at buying one second-hand instead. However, in the UK (and most of Europe) handsets are "locked" by the phone companies, so that they may only be used with their own SIMs, unless you pay to have them "unlocked" once your mimimum contract has expired. Having looked through various eBay ads etc., no-one bothers to mentions whether US PCS phones are locked are not, so I wonder whether this system exists in the US. Do I need to watch out for "locked" phones, or is this practice not used in the US (banned by FCC etc.?) All thoughts much appreciated. Dave ------------------------------ From: tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) Subject: Re: Long Live the Goal of Access For All of Cleveland Freenet Organization: The Home Office Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 05:31:03 GMT Brian C Roy wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A few days ago I spent some time on the >> mailing list here, swapping out email addresses for readers who had >> been at that site to wherever they told me to move them. At one time, >> I suppose eight or ten years ago, there were quite a few Freenet-type >> sites around. Are any of them operating any longer? I suppose there >> is not a lot of room or tolerance for anything like that on the net >> today, and it is very unfortunate. PAT] > I'm happy to report that the Greater Columbus Freenet is still alive > and well, and still using pretty much the same(gopher) format they > started with. They've just recently started offering PPP connections > (for a fee) to help support the free part of the system. > I read news on this system, and use it for my primary email, because I > actually LIKE using pine for mail and tin for news. And then there is Nyx.net, which has been in existance since '92. I must say proudly, we have NO, repeat NO network abuse problems. In the last two years, for example, we have terminated only 12 accounts for abuse. As it stands, we do just offer terminal/shell access for now, (I can't say if that will change anytime in the future) but our secret? We require anyone who wants an account to send us proof of who they are (notarized statment, copy of driver's license, etc..). You'd be surprised at how few problems we do have. I'd like to think Nyx is one of the few services of its type that is still true to the spirit of the Internet. And we're a community, which many free sites (sadly including freenets) aren't. Terry E. Knab News Administrator Nyx Public Access Unix ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:29:49 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy In article , Steven wrote: > You are supposed to apply for a license within 30 days or something > after moving to wherever, permanent resident, resident, whatever. If > they can't issue you one then what? That's a meaningless hypothetical question. There is no circumstance in which the state of your residence CAN'T issue you a drivers license. They may refuse to, if you don't meet the legal requirements, but there is never any inability. > Do you lose your driving privileges because the rest of the world > doesn't issue S/S numbers? No. You don't have to be a US citizen, nor even a US resident, to get a Social Security number. If the state in which you are assuming residence requires a SSN to issue a drivers license, then you get an SSN or you don't get a drivers license. > The international license is not valid in the country where the > license it was issued against was issued. You can probably drive on > your foreign license in the US without the international license > anyway, so its not a big problem. > I'll try this anywhere I please, thank you very much, and I will run > into no problems because it is perfectly legitimate. It is not legitimate to drive in the U.S. on a foreign-issued drivers license if you are a full-time permanent resident of the U.S. ------------------------------ From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Re: Drivers License Compact / Extortion Conspiracy Date: 10 Oct 1999 20:48:23 -0500 Organization: Chinet - Public Access since 82 Steven wrote: > ahk@chinet.com says ... >> Steven wrote: >>> So long as they don't work this deal with other countries then anyone >>> can continue to get a foreign license/international license, valid in >>> the states, for a very modest fee. >> Don't try this at home. Rather, don't try this in the place in which >> you live. Generally, if you are a permanent resident (regardless of >> whether or not you are a citizen), you must obtain driving privileges >> through the local jurisdiction. By the treaty that created the >> international license, it isn't valid at home. > You are supposed to apply for a license within 30 days or something > after moving to wherever, permanent resident, resident, whatever. If you have moved somewhere (legally), you are a permanent resident. The time you have to obtain a local license will vary by jurisdiction. In my state, Illinois, a new resident validly licensed elsewhere may drive without an Illinois license for the first 90 days. > If they can't issue you one then what? Do you lose your driving > privileges because the rest of the world doesn't issue S/S numbers? Where in the world are there no national identity numbers? In the United States, there are some permanent residents who are foreign nationals who don't qualify for Social Security Numbers because they don't or can't have jobs. If there is some reason to report their unearned income, then they must get Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers from the IRS which are in Social Security Number format. In Illinois, drivers don't need a Social Security Number if they are exempt from having one (or are in a recognized religious order that prohibits its members from having one) and may substitute the ITIN or some other number at his discretion. > The international license is not valid in the country where the > license it was issued against was issued. You can probably drive on > your foreign license in the US without the international license > anyway, so its not a big problem. In your earlier message, you seemed to imply that you could drive with your international license at home or obtain a license from a foreign country without actually residing there. I can't find a provision in Illinois law prohibiting the state from issuing a license to a nonresident. Maybe that's implied under state's rights. Under federal law, a CDL cannot be issued to a nonresident. > I'll try this anywhere I please, thank you very much, and I will run > into no problems because it is perfectly legitimate. You'll try what, driving with a license issued by a jurisdiction that you weren't residing in or driving on an international license in the country in which you reside? You may do what you like. May I advise you to carry sufficient bail money with. ------------------------------ From: Jeremy S. Nichols Subject: Re: Cell-Phone Use Aloft ... Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:06:48 -0500 Organization: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus The use of cell phones in airplanes is illegal ... http://frwebgate2.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=6775331292+1 7+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve Subpart H--Cellular Radiotelephone Service Sec. 22.925 Prohibition on airborne operation of cellular telephones. Cellular telephones installed in or carried aboard airplanes, balloons or any other type of aircraft must not be operated while such aircraft are airborne (not touching the ground). When any aircraft leaves the ground, all cellular telephones on board that aircraft must be turned off. The following notice must be posted on or near each cellular telephone installed in any aircraft: "The use of cellular telephones while this aircraft is airborne is prohibited by FCC rules, and the violation of this rule could result in suspension of service and/or a fine. The use of cellular telephones while this aircraft is on the ground is subject to FAA regulations." Jeremy S. Nichols, P.E. jsn@tc.umn.edu Minneapolis, MN j.nichols@ieee.org ------------------------------ From: Michael Sullivan Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 07:15:28 GMT Jeremy Greene wrote: > Why does anyone tolerate this? Is this charge supposedly to pay for > digital switch upgrades? No. It's to keep the base rate down. PUCs and Telcos like to avoid rate increases. Under traditional regulation, the PUC decides how much total revenue a regulated telco is entitled to project over the next year, and after doing that, the rates get set to recover the permitted amount. If they eliminate a revenue source, they have to make it up. Thus in a hypothetical scenario, if Telco is entitled to budget for $100M of revenue, and currently $95M comes from base rate and $5M comes from the touch tone fee, elimination of the touch tone fee would require an upward adjustment of the base rate of $5M, or about 5%. In fact, the vast majority of subscribers would enjoy a small rate decrease (since they wouldn't have to pay the touch tone add-on), but the few people who don't currently pay for touch tone would have to pay more. These people tend to be older subscribers, many on fixed incomes. The politial ramifications are obvious. That's why it doesn't happen as often as it might. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Md., USA avogadro@bellatlantic.net (also avogadro@well.com) ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Pulse Dialing in the US: For How Long? Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 01:15:42 -0400 Charlie Cremer wrote: > Excuse me? When a phone comes off-hook, how does the CO equipment > know if it is pulse or DTMF? That can't be resolved until the dialing > begins. I dispute the suggestion that pulse phones may get a dial tone > sooner than DTMF, especially with modern ESS equipment." The CO *does* know, from its class-of-service database, which lines *may* use DTMF and which are not allowed to. Pulse *phones* as such won't get a dial tone faster, but pulse-only *lines* could. (FWIW, even when all phones had to be leased from the telco, there were still situations where a Touch-Tone customer may have had one or more rotary phones as well as Touch-Tone sets -- for one thing the Trimline set was only available in rotary for the first two years or so, and in the 1970s there was a program in which the Bell companies would install Western Electric parts, leased at the same rate as a 500 set, in a housing built to WECo specs and supplied by the customer. A lot of so-called "French phones" were made this way, and often they would not accomodate a DTMF dial.) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 01:21:21 -0500 From: Clifton T. Sharp Jr. Subject: First Merger Cutbacks? Organization: as little as possible On September 17 the wife and I bought cell service from Ameritech. Today I was talking to a friend who has a basic pay-as-you-go plan with them. He expressed an interest in going digital and I mentioned Ameritech's basic plan for that. Tonight he got on the site, called me and complained that he couldn't get any information for Illinois; all the links were for Milwaukee, Indiana, Michigan, etc. Having just been to that site a few days ago I told him he was crazy... and found the same thing at the site. I went to the page where, days ago, they were willing to sell me pagers and cell phones; instead of the dozens of items offered then, I got about five answering machines and cordless phone items. So I went to call the 24-hours-7-days support number at 1-800-221-0994, my brand-new "answer book" in front of me to help navigate the voice-mail jail. The number has been changed. At the new number, no help was available because "Our offices are now closed. Our hours are 7 AM to 8 PM Monday through Friday, and 8 AM to 7 PM Saturday." First service cutback from the SBC/Ameritech merger? Funny thing, I can't find anything in the FCC's 30 conditions about them having to divest one cell company or the other (the "A" carrier here is SW Bell d/b/a CellularOne). But they seem to be in the process of divesting anyway. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Cliff Sharp | "Speech isn't free when it comes postage-due." | | WA9PDM | -- Jim Nitchals, founder, FREE | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- http://www.spamfree.org/ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 23:24:03 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , Brian Vita wrote: > At 03:10 AM 10/6/99 -0400, was written: >> The public hearings the town held prior to issuing its permit were >> the first time the church learned it had done something its neighbors >> didn't like, Duncan said. That's when residents and parents aired >> their concerns that their children's health would suffer from >> microwaves coming from the antennas. >> 'I think these antennas are extremely dangerous to health,' George >> Eastman, a spokesman for the Waldorf School board of directors, said >> this week, expressing fears that have been part of the debate since it >> inception. >> Eastman, who has two children at the school, said the antennas 'emit a >> low-frequency radio wave which penetrates the fluid organs ... the brain, >> kidney and spleen,' and can cause cancer." > I find this whole argument by the folks in Lexington to be ridiculous. > We are talking about a cell phone tower that puts out a relatively low > power signal. > If we travel a mile or two to the Southwest, we end up at Bear Hill in > Waltham. Bear Hill is one of the hills that circle Boston and is used > extensively as an antenna farm for all sorts of signals, a majority of > which are heading over Lexington for Boston. A mile or so to the West > we have Bedford with Hanscom AFB with its share of antennas, radar and > other goodies. If we jump to the Northwest, we have WRKO with 50,000 > watts of AM radio. If memory serves me correctly, there's at least > one commercial AM/FM site in Lexington proper. Do they really think > that the additional 1Kw or so of combined output of the cell site is > going to do them in? There's at least one site in Lexington, proper, with at least three cellular and/or PCS systems. By now there may be more. It's on the southern edge of Lexington on the east side of 128. A well manicured and maintained disguise cellular tower would be a pale comparison to what's coming off the roof of the Stride Rite building. ------------------------------ From: Michi Kaifu Subject: Re: MCI/Sprint Merger Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 23:44:55 -0700 dmet@flatoday.infi.net (Dennis Metcalfe) wrote: > Although I have not followed this all that closely, I do recall the > original MCI offer was 65 billion, topped by Bell South at 72 billion > ... how did something worth 65 billion just a couple of weeks ago > suddenly get to be worth 119 billion? Did they discover a whole > 'nother company down in the basement that everyone forgot about or is > the stock market so buoyant that any absurd set of numbers can be made > to work ... until the balloon pops? The "whole 'nother company down in the basement" is Sprint PCS. Both $65bil. and $72bil. does not include the value of the "tracking stock" of PCS, which is not really a separate entity from Sprint but the stocks are separately valued and traded. PCS tracking stock's market cap is approx. $33bil., so the whole deal, if PCS is included, was in north of $100bil. from the beginning. Wireless business is a strange child full of contradictions. It is supposed to be an engine of growth, but most often is a money-losing operation. It is very difficult to turn out "profit" because you have to continue investing for so many years, but people believe that the payback period is shorter than the landline. Wall Street pushed Bernie so hard to buy wireless business, while forced Mr. Esrey to separate tracking stocks because it is losing money. Well, don't get me wrong ... I love wireless, just as you love your strange child. And there goes another one ... ckaschig@gmx.de (Chris Kaschig) wrote: > According to dpa ('Deutsche Presseagentur') the new name will be just > "WorldCom" - (no "MCI" any longer); no idea by whom this info is > authorized Someone was saying on TV discussion that it's because Sprint people just can't stand to have any "MCI" name on their head. My husband is saying that both MCI and Sprint have pretty negative image, and that it would be a disaster to combine the two, while Worldcom is relatively unknown among "regular consumers" (not TELECOM Digest readers). I think both insights are really true (especially after spending four days to reach the right customer service person, simply to ask for a return kit for an accessory I bought from Sprint PCS -- of couse, it was they who shipped a wrong stuff). Michi Kaifu ENOTECH Consulting michi@pop.net ------------------------------ From: David Clayton Subject: Re: DNRC Files Complaint With ICANN Over Uniform Dispute Policy Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1999 18:09:57 +1000 Organization: Customer of Connect.com.au Pty. Ltd. Reply-To: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Jay Fenello contributed the following: > HERNDON, October 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The Domain Name Rights Coalition > (DNRC), an organization dedicated to protecting the interests of > entrepreneurs, small business owners and individuals in domain name > issues, today filed a formal complaint with ICANN on their proposed > Uniform Dispute Policy (UDP). ...... Exsqueeze me?, I thought that DNRC stood for: "Dogbert's New Ruling Class" (see www.dilbert.com) ... :-) Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Dilbert's words of wisdom #18: Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience. ------------------------------ Date: 09 Oct 1999 21:12:37 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Webcam Experiences Wanted From: Paul Robinson In article , Fred Atkinson writes: > Is there anyone out there that has some experience running Webcams > on your home PC? I have a small video camera I purchased for $59. It's supposed to have a $30 rebate, so if it does come through my net cost will be $29 (not counting tax and the 33c in postage). I am not really surprised at the low quality of the picture (what do you expect from a device that costs less than a good quality still 35mm camera) but that you can do this at all for this price. For taking simple pictures such as snapshot equivalents, such as for use on a web page -- which is what I use it for -- it is more than adequate. I've used it on both my home computer and my office computer since both have USB ports. > I recently purchased one, but the video quality is so poor that I > am returning it to the seller for refund. The problem I have noticed more than anything else is light. Offices use florescents and sometimes have outside windows, and as a result the light level in an office (that a camera notices) can sometimes be considerably higher than that in a home. Unless I adjust light sources in my room the area on camera is usually very dark, whereas in my office it is often fine. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 08:43:47 GMT From: satch@concentric.hormel42.net (Satch) Subject: Re: Report: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations Organization: SBC Internet Services Allegedly tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) said on 07 Oct 1999 in the following: > Cell phone manufacturers have included warnings against such use in > owner's manuals for years because they say that under certain > conditions, cell phones could help generate sparks. > The American Petroleum Institute, which is looking into the reports, > has so far found no substantiated reports of such incidents. I very much enjoyed your essay on BP Amoco. Perhaps they feel that gasoline as dispenses by their pumps is as dangerous as dynamite with electrical blasting caps. That's the only explanation I can think of for this ban. For years, it's been a known thing that emitters of RF can generate enough power in a blasting cap to trigger ignition. This is caused by RF energy building up in the wiring for the blasting cap, causing a standing wave to generate enough heat to trigger the cap. If you have noticed, all electrically triggered explosive devices are shipped with the wires shorted together, and sometimes shipped in all-metal containers, to avoid the problem with the explosives in storage. As for gas explosions caused by sparks igniting vapor: The only case I know of involving gas and radios was an older tube-type CB radio with an open relay that was installed in a car. (I don't think this was in a filling station; instead, I think it was kids working on a car in a driveway.) When the transmitter was keyed, the relay pulled in. When the transmit key was released, the relay dropped out and apparently the arcing across the opening contacts ignited the vapor. No one was injured, and it didn't start a sustained fire. Modern CB radios, business-band radios, and cellular phones all use solid state switching -- there isn't a open relay anywhere to be seen. Is this another case of the lawyers getting a burr up where the sun don't shine? _____ __/satch\____________________________________________________________ Satchell Evaluations, testing modems since 1984, 'Netting since 1971 "The only good mouse-trap is a hungry cat" ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: Re: Report: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:05:33 -0400 Organization: It's A Mike! The Reuters report at http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/991007/3t.html quotes Howard Miller, a spokesman for London-based BP Amoco, as saying, "What we're saying is turn off everything -- phones, pagers, laptops, diskettes -- that uses a battery." This goes right along with the current posted warnings to turn off engines while refueling. After all, cars have batteries, don't they? Mike ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 04:22:30 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Long Distance Then and Now On Thu, 7 Oct 1999 23:45:24 -0400 (EDT), L. Winson wrote: > Long distance rates are not comparable between now and them because > the rate structures are completely different. Many rate plans require > a monthly service charge which is usually NOT added to rate comparisons. > High volume far distance users are probably paying less. Low volume > short distance users are definitely paying more. (Short haul inter- > state calls had far lower rates before than now when all rates are > uniform regardless of distance.) Further, long distance calls from > pay phones or via calling card or operator assistance cost substanti- > ally more. I know that this statement is completely false in the Canadian marketplace, and I can't see how it could possibly be true in the USA. Are you saying that, prior to 1984, you could get 7 cents/minute long distance 24/7 nationwide in the USA? Certainly, many of these plans do require a monthly service charge but many DO NOT -- and even when you factor that charge in, and compare how people prior to 1984 would be doing if they were making the same calls today as they were then, I'm sure it would be lower. As I've said here before, I once -- many moons ago -- made a lengthy overseas phone call to my uncle in the UK. Telus, the ILEC here in Alberta, charged me $1.75 per minute for that call. I swore then and there that I'd switch to anybody -- and I mean *ANYBODY* -- the day I was allowed to switch away from Telus. As soon as Unitel (now AT&T Canada) began offering long distance, I switched. I later moved to Sprint Canada and also signed up with them for local dial tone on the very day it became available. Today, I make that same call to the UK via Sprint Canada for 22 cents/minute. Or, I use Wintel and get it for only 14/cents per minute. Neither company charges me any monthly minimum. Plus, Sprint Canada knocks a couple of bucks off my local phone service each month if I also have their long distance service on my line. Competition has been good for *ME*, and I don't make a lot of long distance calls. My local service costs about 60% higher than it did 15 years ago, but when you factor in both inflation and the long distance savings -- even with my relatively low usage pattern -- I come out ahead. Plus, if I don't like what my phone company's doing, I can tell 'em to go to hell and switch to a new one. This I like. I do, however, doubt that Arthur C. Clarke's prediction (in "2001: A Space Odyssey") of the removal of all long distance rates on December 31st, 2000 -- thus making every call a local call -- will come true. Sure is a nice thought though ... From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU (After we die,) do we go on a journey into something more magnificent, or do we merely get buried and remade into bridge-mix for worms? Well, you know, we just don't know. And that question often tugs on us like harder than Newt Gingrich trying to water ski. Death haunts us because the only guarantee that comes with the gift of life is that sooner or later you're gonna have to return that gift to whatever cosmic Nordstrom's we inhabit. -- Dennis Miller ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #467 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 11 17:56:15 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA19709; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:56:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:56:15 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910112156.RAA19709@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #468 TELECOM Digest Mon, 11 Oct 99 17:56:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 468 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telco Mergers and Name Changes (Mark J Cuccia) Re: MCI+Sprint - How Come This is OK? (Fred Goldstein) Re: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations (Joseph Wineburgh) Re: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations (Eric Friedebach) Re: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations (Johnnie Leung) Re: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations (Steve Winter) Re: BP Amoco to Prohibit Cell Phones at Gas Stations (Tony Pelliccio) Re: Chicago Telephone Co. (Al Varney) 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. 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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: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 21:26:37 CDT From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Telco Mergers and Name Changes The proposed merger of Sprint and MCI may have made some big news for everyone, and the "re-alignment" of telcos in Canada over the past few years has been watched by Canadians and telecom-minded people as well. But there has been one particular merger that took place this past summer that seems to have been overlooked. Earlier this year, the four provincial telcos (and their holding companies) in the Maritime Provinces announced a merger. All four companies have been partially owned by Bell Canada Enterprises Inc, which is the holding company of Bell Canada telco in (most of) Quebec and Ontario. BCE also holds in part or full, Northern Telephone in parts of rural eastern/northern Ontario and Telebec in parts of western/central Quebec (as well as some exchange territory scattered all over Quebec, some of these were once operated by Contel), and also BCE holds NorthwesTel in northern British Columbia and the three northern territories of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut). Bell Canada (or BCE) has also announced plans to 'align' itself with SaskTel and MTS (Manitoba), since (GTE) BCTel in British Columbia and Telus are merging, and also the Stentor (once known as Telecom Canada, and TCTS -- the Trans-Canada Telephone System) Alliance is supposed to be completely 'dissolved' by the end of this year. Also, Bell Canada and Ameritech are supposed to have some form of 'affiliation'. Anyhow, when the four partially BCE-held Martitime Province telcos agreed to merge earlier this year, I was hoping that maybe they would choose the name "Maritime Bell". But no, the name chosen was "Aliant". All of the above has been reported in Canadian business circles, as well as in telecom circles throughout North America and the Internet, particularly in TELECOM Digest and Angus Telemanagement. However, the name 'Aliant' struck me as a bit odd, since a few years back, the (independent) telco in Lincoln NE, once known as Lincoln Telephone and Telegraph, changed its name to 'Aliant'. I recently tried to go to the URL for the Canadian 'Aliant', at http://www.aliant.ca and it went to the new company name for the Maritime Province telcos. But I was still curious about how 'Aliant', formerly Lincoln (NE) Tel & Tel, so I went to http://www.aliant.com from my Bookmarks file. The page came up that the URL had changed to http://www.alltel.com (?!) Yes, by going through the "newsroom" section of Alltel, I found out that late last year (in December), the independent 'group' telco Alltel (which took over some GTE and Contel territory a few years back when GTE and Contel decided to merge), and 'Aliant' formerly LT&T (Lincoln NE) decided to merge. The merger was approved by the FCC and thus became 'official' in July of this year. The 'Aliant' name was removed from the Lincoln NE telco and replaced by Alltel in September. The other large-size city with an independent telco that was still "home grown" was Rochester NY. Rochester Telephone became known as Frontier a few years ago. Frontier is a group-owner of (incumbent) independent LECs in several markets, and also has a long-distance subsidiary, which had been known as Allnet (101-0444+). But even before Allnet and Rochester Tel became Frontier, Rochester Tel had a long-distance subsidiary, mainly available from New York state, called RCI - Rochester Communications Intl. The history of telephony in both Rochester NY and Lincoln NE is very similar. Both towns had competing non-connected Bell and independent, until the "late-teens" or early 1920's, sometime after "Kingsbury". In Nebraska, both Omaha and Lincoln had both a Bell exchange and a non-connected competing independent. Sometime after "Kingsbury", it was agreed to have a 'swap-off'. Bell acquired the indepdent in Omaha, and the independent acquired the Bell in Lincoln. Incidently, Omaha was the VERY FIRST place to have "Panel" switching in the early 1920's. In New York state, both Rochester and Buffalo had both a Bell exchange and a non-connected competing independent. After "Kingsbury", the 'swap-off' occurred where Bell acquired the independent in Buffalo, and the independent acquired the Bell in Rochester. Also, both the Nebraska (Omaha and Lincoln) and New York state (Buffalo and Rochester) independents, before the 'swap-off', had DIAL (Step-by-step) while the Bell exchanges were 'strictly manual'. Many independents throughout the US (and Canada) back then had MANY innovations that Bell refused to implement! As for the MCI-Worldcom / Sprint merger, I wonder how this could affect the Sprint incumbent independent LEC operations of United Telephone (which really is the 'parent' company of Sprint Long Distance) and the acquired exchanges of Centel incumbent independent. United (Sprint) acquired Centel in the early 1990's, similar to the GTE acquisition of Contel. At that time, GTE sold off several GTE and Contel exchanges, some to Alltel (as mentioned above), and some to Citizens' Telecom/Utilities. Also, "Call-Net" in Canada is partially owned by (US) Sprint. They operate as Sprint-Canada, and provide competitive Long Distance (interconnecting mostly with US-Sprint in the US) as well as emerging CLEC services. I wonder if this may become known as "Worldcom-Canada". Ironically, Stentor and more