From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jan 16 01:29:56 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0G6TuO12236; Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:29:56 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:29:56 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401160629.i0G6TuO12236@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #24 TELECOM Digest Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:30:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 24 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: My Email With Norvergence (Alex Wulf) Re: My Email With Norvergence (Stanley Cline) Re: Norvergence Bait and Switch (Alex Wulf) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Nick Landsberg) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Jay Hennigan) Re: Curious About Call Routing Through Vonage (John A. Covert) Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question (Clarence Dold) Re: Caller ID and Spying??? (desiv) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk is definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: norvscam@hotmail.com (Alex Wulf) Subject: Re: My Email With Norvergence Date: 15 Jan 2004 14:48:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Robert, It's actually not a VoIp offering. It's Voice-over-ATM. The box that they use on the customer prem is a standard Adtran box that converts standard TDM voice and Data traffic to ATM. The voice is then compressed using the ADPCM standard to 32k per voice channel, thereby compressing up to 24 voice channels to 768k or half a T-1. The rest of the T-1 is then available for internet. There is no magic here. But besides the technical issue. Why would you want to deal with a company that is less than honest with you before you're even a customer? Just wait till you sign up with a 5 year commitment and see what kind of customer service you get for a $89 T-1. There are plenty of other companies out there offering discount services without having to deal with the likes of Norvergence. Alex Robert Johnson wrote in message news:: > (pat can you remove my email address) > I emailed Norvergence to see exactly what their product offering was > about, they denied it was a VoIP offering, yes say it uses > compression ... hmm, how about that, two mutually incompatable > statements, then again, I think TELECOM Digest Readers ought to see > for themselves. > From: Timothy Mack > Subject: RE: Questions about your Service > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:09:00 -0500 > Mr. Johnson, > The Norvergence cost savings solution is not a VoIP > solution. As our website states, it is a patented hardware solution > that uses compression and encryption to get a voice transmission of > far greater quality and the most secure data transmission utilizing > the full bandwidth available on a T-1 circuit. > The most obvious benefit is the savings in cost over a > standard trunk line/PBX or fractional/integrated T-1 solution, as well > as savings on cellular service. > > If you would like to set up a meeting with one of our > representatives to further discuss how this solution can benefit your > business, please follow the link below. Complete and submit the brief > form, and you will be contacted by someone in our scheduling > department for an appointment. > Thank you for your interest in Norvergence. > http://www.norvergence.com/CS_Form/form.cfm > -----Original Message----- > From: Roe Ventola > Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:33 AM > To: Timothy Mack > Subject: FW: Questions about your Service > > Rob Ventola > Vice-President of Sales Support > Ext 4535 > 866-217-6678 voice > 866-742-6678 Fax > Norvergence.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Rashan Thompson > Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:30 AM > To: Roe Ventola; Scott Bufton; Beverly Thomas > Subject: FW: Questions about your Service > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Johnson > Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 12:52 AM > To: customerservice > Subject: Questions about your Service > After reading your site, I am having trouble figuring out exactly what > your product is, if it is simply a VoIP solution why isn't it marketed > as such?, and what is the advantage for purchasing your > product/service over ordering either a Fractional T-1 that carries > both data and voice, or ordering two seperate T-1's for whatever > purpose? > Robert Johnson > > Robert K. Johnson Jr. ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: My Email With Norvergence Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 23:44:07 UTC Organization: Roamer1 Communications - Dunwoody, GA, USA Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org In article , Robert Johnson wrote: > I emailed Norvergence to see exactly what their product offering was > about, they denied it was a VoIP offering, yes say it uses > compression ... hmm, how about that, two mutually incompatable When I looked at the specs for the MATRIX box from the brochure on their web site, it just screamed "voice over ATM". What exactly is so revolutionary about VoATM? (To their credit, it does appear they've implemented some proprietary compression, but the core of the voice offering definitely appears to be VoATM.) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ From: norvscam@hotmail.com (Alex Wulf) Subject: Re: Norvergence Bait and Switch Date: 15 Jan 2004 14:58:12 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Kim, Well its clearly a case of bait and switch. You should contact the Connecticut's Dept of Public Utilities as well as the Attorney General's Office to report this fraud. By the way what kind of box did they send you anyway? MFG, Model etc? Its more than likely some retail box that's available for under $100. What's clear is that they haven't developed some special product. They've just switched your lines over to Norvergence for toll calling and are probably paying your DSL/Cable/Cell bill. In exchange for that they give you a 5 year lease (they like to call it a rental). You obviously don't need the box to make it work. That was just part of the sales scam to make you think they actually developed some custom hardware or whatever lies they like to post on their website. It also is the box they're lieing to the finance company about -that is worth thousands of dollars and that's why they loan the money for it. They're just a communications reseller. Good Luck. Alex Kim Barker Craven wrote in message news:: > Hi Patrick, > I found your name when doing a search for Norvergence. I wanted to > find out what you can tell me about them. > I signed on with them in August, 2003 for telecom services for my > home-based business for a what turns out to be too-good-to-be-true > rate. Included was T1 connection, unlimited long distance on land > lines and cell phones. > Unfortunately, it turned out to be a case of bait and switch, when at > the minute of installation, with the installer out at the street they > called and said T1 was not available in my residential area, but they > would provide cable (we had dsl) which is, and I quote, "almost as > good" as T1. > They said my contract would reflect a discount and they would fax > revised contract right over. The revived contract never came but the > bills persist. > What really galls me is they delivered a Matrix Soho box which I am > supposed to pay $200/mo for 5 years to rent. We have not used this box > since day one. It appears to be nothing more than a router/firewall. > Am I correct? > I am trying to cancel service but they are unresponsive. Further their > financing company, Dolphin capital, is threatening to ruin my credit > rating because I refuse to pay for the box. > What can you tell me about these characters? > Thanks you for your interest. > Kim Barker Craven > President > CREATIVE SERVICES > Strategic Marketing & Graphic Design > 64 Bower Road, Madison, CT 06443 > 203.318.9000 / fax 203.318.9001 > kim@creativeservices.info > www.creativeservices.info > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not mean to sound hateful to the > folks at Norvergence; I really don't. But I am not a human Google > search program. I have spent **all day today** -- since 10 AM Tuesday > morning, seeking out and pulling all the Norvergence references -- bad > or good, but mostly bad -- out of our archives to give to Mike Sullivan > who has agreed to represent me pro-bono as needed in a pending lawsuit > by the Norvergence people against myself. You see, they called again > yesterday with demands, etc. First their lawyer, and I did not return > his call. Then Ms. Susan Carol, who described her job as attempting > to get accurate PR about the firm out on the net. I returned her call, > and found myself 'getting volunteered' into a conference phone call > on January 19 with some executives at Norvergence. I asked John Levine > what I should do; also Mike Sullivan. > John Levine suggested using 47 USC 230 to stop them dead in their > tracks (pertinent section says no electronic publisher can be held > liable for messages written by others; in other words absolute > immunity) but my first thought was to try and be a little kind and > more pleasant. After all, I personally have no knowlege of Norvergence > and no reason to just give them bad coverage. Mike Sullivan suggested > gathering up everything in the archives about the company and > forwarding them to him for review, which I did earlier today, starting > about eight hours ago. :( The more I did that, struggling with emacs > and archives files of humongous size, the more irritated I got, to the > point that now I don't really care if I ever talk to those folks at > Norvergence again or not. John may have been correct: refer them to > 47-USC-230 and let it go at that; even though that's *not* the way I > believe the Digest should be handled. > I have Ms. Carol's biography of Alex Wolf, an executive at Norvergence > and I may publish that here soon to see if that will smooth things > over a little. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 00:16:05 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Phil Earnhardt: [Snip to Pat's Note:] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some time ago, that Topica outfit made > an offer to me to purchase the telecom mailing list; they offered me > a dollar for each name on the list; they said they would take it over > but keep me as the moderator/editor. I did not know as much about them > as I do now, but I am surely glad I did not accept their offer. They > said they could help with distribution problems. Its sort of scary to > think about now. At the time, when I investigated the list of > discussion groups Topica was sponsoring, it seemed like a good oppor- > tunity for the Digest. Pardon me for thinking. And that was even > back before the onset of my brain desease. PAT] Ah, so now we have one data point about how much spammers are willing to pay for a mailing list. Let's see, if 1% of the people on a list of 1,000 are gullible then they are spending $1,000 to attract to attract 10 people to their scams. Thus, the average person who "bites" must net them at least $100. Probablty more. The "hit rate" is probably way lower tha 1% tho, thus, the "phish who bites" is probably gonna get soaked for something like a thousand bucks or more. Then again, there may be more money in re-selling that list to 10 or 100 other spammers then in spamming itself. "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well they told me at that time that what they paid was (a) proportionate to the size of the list, and (b) what they thought the list was worth in their sole opinion. Smaller lists got more money per name; larger lists got less per name. (Larger lists likely to have more no-good names, etc.) And of course in the case of exploder addresses on the list, they only would pay one dollar, regardless of only one 'real' name on the list or a thousand names. In other words if I mail to 'telecom-exploder@your-site' and you in turn automatically distribute the Digest to a few hundred people (as IBM used to do years ago before the then sysadmin got in a snit and started pitching the Digest in the waste basket without handing it out at all) then I would still get only one dollar for that entry. And Topica had a few spies on our list here at one time and I guess what they did was wise up and discover they didn't have to pay me anything, they could just manually make up their own mailing list from names they found in messages, etc. Of course, if I had 'signed on the dotted line' in those days, then they would have been the official possessor of whatever this thing is worth, they could have changed my passwords and I would have been out in the cold anytime they so chose. Part of the deal, you see, where the dollar per name as concerned was I was to deliver the names to them *on their server* then begin administering the Digest *on their server* at their leisure, etc. I am quite certain some day I would have awakened, gone to my computer and found out that my password did not work any longer, and telecom was their 'property'. That's how they wanted to do it, I am sure, which puts a different light on the 'dollar per name' angle. Topica approached lots and lots of moderated Usenet newsgroups in 1995-97 and made offers like that to the group moderators/list custodians. That was no big secret, you could look on the Topica home page in those days and click on a link where they told you how to do it: 'Moderators and list managers, click here to be in partnership with Topica and make money from your list'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 20:55:25 -0800 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some time ago, that Topica outfit made > an offer to me to purchase the telecom mailing list; they offered me > a dollar for each name on the list; they said they would take it over > but keep me as the moderator/editor. I did not know as much about them > as I do now, but I am surely glad I did not accept their offer. They > said they could help with distribution problems. Its sort of scary to > think about now. At the time, when I investigated the list of > discussion groups Topica was sponsoring, it seemed like a good oppor- > tunity for the Digest. Pardon me for thinking. At one time, Topica operated bonafide discussion mailing lists, with membership by request/subscription. They were ethical and honest, and made their money with a small advertising .sig line appended to the messages. They have morphed into a full blownspam-for-hire outfit and are now widely blacklisted. TTBOMK any legitimate mailing lists they once hosted have moved on. Those that haven't moved don't have very good propagation as Topica's netblocks are filter fodder worldwide. They made an attempt to hide their spamming under different domains than topica.com, one of the first and most notorious being email-publisher.com. Now they've stooped to spamming their spamming services, bragging that they comply with the new you-CAN-SPAM law. Opinion is that their spammed advertisement itself isn't compliant. Rule Number One. Go figure. You made a wise choice. Most of the 'net didn't see it coming and defended them for some time. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, and look how many of the old moderated newsgroups are not even around any longer that we had back in the 1980-90's on account of Topica's dirty trick buying out so many moderators, who sold out their discussion groups for the fifty or hundred dollars it made them. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 00:42:28 EST From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Curious About Call Routing Through Vonage Patrick wrote: > why waste the 'minutes' you bought with your Vonage account when you > could call the toll-free number from your direct landline phone at > no charge Calls to 800-service numbers are free from Vonage phones on all rate plans. > from your direct landline Maybe your landline is being used by someone else, or maybe you only have Vonage service at your current location. > you get the little Cisco ATA box from them. I thought new customers get the new Motorola box. /john [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well John, there will *always* be some reason that no other phone is available momentarily for one reason or another. I guess this theoretical person didn't have a cell phone to use either, and there was no payphone close, or there was but the weather in Boston was sub-zero at the time so he was disinclined to go outside. I myself would have been inclined in those circumstances to either walk to a pay station or told the other person to please let *me* use the landline phone, etc. Regards the 'new Motorola box', in the nearly one year that I have been with Vonage, I got the Cisco ATA-186 box. Maybe the new 'new customers' are getting Motorolas, I do not know. Are you still getting those horrible bitter cold conditions there you had most of last week? PAT] ------------------------------ From: dold@800-555-11.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:29:27 UTC Organization: a2i network Justin Time wrote: > joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote in message > news:: >>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That toll free number, 800-555-1140 >>> also works fine here in my town. I bet it will for everyone. PAT] >> Hmm. Just tried it from a cell phone, and the ANI was *not* my cell >> number. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried *my* cellular phone also from >> here, and it did not return correct results either. However my >> Vonage phone did have the correct results, and my wireline phone as >> well. > Uhmm, could it be the ANI being reported was for the trunk from the > wireless carrier that carried the call? > That's the problem with ANI and cell phones that 9-1-1 centers have > been having for years. I once chased that down as some kind of a hack of my company voicemail. We had an 800 number for voice mail access, and a _lot_ of the ANIs were the same. I checked against all of the employee ANIs. Not there. Called it, reorder tone. Sent it to PacBell fraud, Cellular One trunk. At that time, anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area that used a Cellular One cell phone showed an ANI of 510-893-0781, even if they weren't in the 510 area. It also caused grief for my daughter, stuck on a lonely road in the middle of the night, when she called AAA for road service. The ANI caused her to get routed to a center in Oakland, and they were not at all helpful, not being able to figure out where she was, and claiming... anyway, that wound up with her recording being played for all of the AAA reps in three offices, and a change in procedures. I just tried the 800-555-1140 from my AT&T cell phone and it reports my ANI as 62+ my cell phone number. From my office phone, it returns the main ANI, not my DID office number, just like CID does. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: desiv Subject: Re: Caller ID and Spying??? Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 03:28:38 GMT True ... I'd asked that before and she said no. (Well, my mom said that her friend said NO). He's never called. But I work Network support, so I take that with a grain of salt. (Of course I didn't load any non-standard software on my computer ... :-) And since I've never used CallWave, I'm not sure how accurate it is ... Let's say he did call her once, if only to see who answered the phone and then hung up. (Giving her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he called and she never talked to him.) Then it's just the number of people in her database, and she might not have noticed other glitches. She possibly only noticed the one with his name, since she didn't see it very often, if ever, on the CallWave app. OK, so we go from 1 in 60,000 to 1 in a personal phonebook database ... :-) You're right, much easier to handle. desiv > One question: Is there any chance that your mother's friend has > received a phone call from that "other person" at some point? (I > noticed that the friend seemed to recognize the name, anyway.) >> I guess that's why they call it a coincidence. At least a 1 in 60,000 >> chance (Approx. number of people in the calling area), but a chance >> nontheless. People win the lottery with worse odds.. :-) > If the database corruption happened at Callwave and the other person > had called the friend, the "60,000" can be replaced by the number of > people who have called the friend. ------------------------------ 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, Yahoo Groups, 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-copyrighted. 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