From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 7 00:47:35 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E110A14F32; Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:47:34 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #551 Message-Id: <20051207054734.E110A14F32@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:47:34 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:47:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 551 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Red Cross Worker Steals Client Debit Cards (Kathy Colbert) Europe's Own Internet Space Now Open for Business (Reuters News Wire) In Face of False Article, Wikipedia Tightens Rules (BBC News Wire) Communications History (Dave Marthouse) Sony BMG Urges Security Fix for CDs (Monty Solomon) Sources For Print Telephone Directories? (Larry G) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Randal Hayes) Re: The Lasting Impact of Sony's Rootkit (alonzo_heem@yahoo.com) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (William Warren) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Kathy Colvin Subject: Red Cross Worker Steals Client Debit Cards Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 22:33:42 -0600 Red Cross Volunteer and His Sister Charged With Stealing More Than 100 Red Cross Debit Cards Intended For Hurricane Evacuees Contact: Kathy Colvin of the U.S. Department of Justice, 214-659-8707, Web: http://www.USDOJ.gov/USAO/TXN DALLAS, Dec. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- United States Attorney Richard B. Roper announced that Brian Oneal Hines and his sister, Charmaine Denise Hines, surrendered to a federal marshall Tuesday and appeared before United States Magistrate Judge Wm. F. Sanderson, Jr., on charges outlined in a federal criminal complaints filed yesterday in the Northern District of Texas. Each complaint charges each with using stolen Red Cross debit cards to fraudulently obtain goods and services, in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1029(a)(2). Judge Sanderson detained each of the defendants. The affidavit filed with the federal criminal complaint states that on Nov. 2, federal law enforcement agents received information from the Red Cross office located at 4800 Harry Hines Boulevard in Dallas that a Red Cross volunteer/temporary worker, Brian Hines, was committing fraud with stolen Red Cross debit cards intended for hurricane evacuees. A Red Cross employee stated while he was researching missing Red Cross debit cards on Sept. 27, Hines came into the office offering to volunteer. While the employee was working, he noticed that Hines had a small piece of paper in his hand and that every time he came around, Hines would crumple up the piece of paper in a suspicious manner. The employee was able to read numbers on Hines' paper and identified the numbers on this list as being consistent with a series of missing debit cards. The employee was able to determine that one of the missing debit account numbers had been activated with $4,695 loaded as the value of the card. The employee found that there were at least 100 debit cards missing. The national office of the Red Cross notified the employee that half of the missing one hundred cards had been activated, most of which with a value of $4,695 each, an unusual amount according to the Red Cross employee. Prior to Nov. 2, the Red Cross employee had discussed his suspicions about Hines with another Red Cross employee, who thought it was probable that Hines might leave the Red Cross office and conduct a fraudulent ATM transaction using one or more stolen Red Cross debit cards. On the afternoon of Nov. 2, the employee observed Hines exit the Red Cross parking lot and drive to a Frost Bank branch located on Harwood in Dallas, where Hines pulled into the ATM lane of the bank. A few days later, a U.S. Postal Inspector and a U.S. Secret Service agent interviewed Hines who eventually admitted repeatedly using stolen Red Cross debit cards to fraudulently obtain large amounts of cash from Dallas area ATMs. Hines stated he gave 20 - 25 cards to his sister, Charmaine Denise Hines and her boyfriend. When asked what he bought with the proceeds from the debit cards, Hines stated that he bought jewelry for himself and his girlfriend and vehicles for both family members and friends. Hines also gave gifts of cash, clothing, shoes and jewelry to his family and friends Hines also admitted that in October of 2005, he stole at least 100 Red Cross debit cards or "client assistance cards" from various locations. Hines stated that he was able to steal Red Cross debit cards from the Reunion Arena location with the help of _security guard personnel_. Hines confessed to activating and loading (values) on approximately 100 stolen debit cards. When law enforcement interviewed Charmaine Denise Hines, she admitted that her brother had given her several stolen Red Cross debit cards and that she had fraudulently used the cards to obtain large amounts of cash. While the investigation is ongoing to determine the scope of the fraudulent activity and the total dollar loss, Red Cross records reflect a loss of more than $230,000 at this time. U.S. Attorney Roper praised the investigative efforts of the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney David Jarvis. http://www.usnewswire.com/ Copyright 2005 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770 NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Europe's Own Internet Space Now Open For Business Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 22:37:10 -0600 Trademark holders and government bodies can start claiming their European identities on the Internet from 1000 GMT on Wednesday, when the registers open for the new ".eu" domain name aimed at boosting European e-commerce. The first steps toward a European Internet domain were taken in 1999 and later supported by the European Commission to encourage cross-border electronic commerce within the Union. "This is the first time we see a geographic top level domain shared by multiple countries. It creates an e-commerce trading block the EU hopes to benefit by," said David Saias, vice president of sales for Register.com, one of the big registrar companies with which requests for domain names can be filed. New EU member states such as Poland, which want a bigger presence on the Web, can use the ".eu" domain to be more visible and easier to find, he said. But even in the traditional EU nations such as Germany, many companies currently register their Internet name under the national ".de" name instead of the ".com" space which is associated with American or global organizations. If successful, the ".eu" domain could become the de facto domain for all European organizations, which would make it easier for companies and consumers to find and approach companies outside their home countries, Saias said. "This '.eu' domain is a geographic marketing tool," he said. For the first two months, close to 500 registrar companies will take down claims only for registered trademarks, public bodies and geographical locations in the European Union. Companies, trade names, business identifiers and literary works can be registered for two months after that. Starting April 7, all individuals within the 25 European Union member states can start filing their requests, said the not-for-profit EURid organization which keeps the database for the .eu domain names. The European Union had demanded a "sunrise period" before open registration to avoid "cybersquatting," which could result in trademarks being registered by parties other than their owners or companies having to pay massive amounts to buy their Internet domain names from speculators. During the sunrise period, evidence of prior rights such as trademarks will be checked by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: BBC News Wire Subject: After False Article, Wikipedia Tightens New Rules Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 22:41:19 -0600 Wikipedia tightens online rules -- Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has tightened its submission rules followinga complaint. Prominent journalist John Seigenthaler described as "false and malicious" an entry on Wikipedia implicating him in the Kennedy assassinations. When he phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, he was told there was no way of finding out who wrote the entry. Wikipedia has since removed the entry and now requires users to register before they can create articles. But visitors to the site will still be able to edit content already posted without having to register. The case has highlighted once again the problem of publishing information online. 'Impulse vandalism' Unlike content published in magazines, books or newspapers, online information can be posted anonymously by anyone. ************************ The marketplace of ideas ultimately will take care of the problem but in the meantime, what happens to people like me? -John Seigenthaler ************************ Wikipedia has thrived on offering people the chance to contribute to a collective knowledge bank. Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has gathered together some 850,000 articles in English as well as entries in at least eight other languages on a wide range of topics. Based on wikis, open-source software which lets anyone fiddle with a webpage, anyone reading a subject entry can disagree, edit, add, delete, or replace the entry. It relies on volunteers, many of whom are experts in a particular field, to edit previously submitted articles. Mr. Wales acknowledged that the new procedures would not prevent people from posting false information but said he hoped it would limit the number of new articles being created. This, in turn, should make it easier for the 600 volunteers to edit content, he said. "In many cases the types of things we see going on are impulse vandalism," he said. In an opinion piece for the USA Today, where Mr Seigenthaler was the founding editorial director, the 78-year-old journalist claimed that only one sentence in his Wikipedia biography was correct -- the fact that he was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. He went on to describe Wikipedia as a "flawed and irresponsible research tool". "The marketplace of ideas ultimately will take care of the problem but in the meantime, what happens to people like me?" he asked. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4502846.stm Copyright 2005 BBC MMV NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. For more news headlines from the BBC each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html ------------------------------ From: Dave Marthouse Subject: Communications History Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 23:33:02 -0500 I am a bit of a communications history buff. I've been doing a little research about telecom in the days before transoceanic phone service before cables and satellites. The only way to bridge the oceans was hf radio. It's interesting to note that anyone with a shortwave radio could listen to all the international point-to-point phone traffic. I am going to assume that a form of independent sideband was used with a maximum of two or four circuits going to a specific country. Ssb is very easy to receive even with a standard shortwave radio of the day as long as it had a bfo to demodulate and recover the signals. I would like to know if any form of primitive encryption was used to make the circuits a bit more secure. It must have been very easy to literally monitor all the international traffic to and from a given nation. Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be appreciated to help scratch my historical itch. Dave Marthouse dmart@pure.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:24:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sony BMG Urges Security Fix for CDs By ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Sony BMG Music Entertainment said Tuesday some 5.7 million of its CDs were shipped with anti-piracy technology that requires a new software patch to plug a potential security breach in computers used to play the CDs. The security vulnerability was discovered by online civil liberty group Electronic Frontier Foundation and brought to the attention of Sony BMG, which has been under fire in recent weeks over security issues with an unrelated CD copy-protection plan. The company said Tuesday it brought the issue up with the MediaMax software maker, SunnComm Technologies Inc., which has developed a software patch to fix the problem. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=53741647 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 16:13:04 PST From: Larry G Subject: Sources For Print Telephone Directories? Hi everyone, I tried sending this post via usenet, but for some reason it either wasn't approved or never reached the servers. I managed to find my own answer to the question, but more sources can't hurt. Years ago, I ordered some out-of-state phone directories (I live in California) and received a catalog of where to get more. I remember having a catalog from AT&T and one from GTE (which is now Verizon). Recently, I was curious to know if you could still order out-of-state/area telephone directores. While sources for online listings were plentiful, print sources were not. Through some obscure search, I managed to find Verizon's website for this "DirectoryStore.com", but was wondering if that was the only source. I assume that you can also order from your local phone company directly. This question in this timeframe is like asking for a listing of someone's 8-track tape collection, I realize, but not all cities and places have listings online. Thanks for any information, and if the original post was rejected for some reason, can you please tell me why. AFAIK, it is telecom related. Thanks in advance, Larry [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So far as I know, your original post did not get to me. It is telecom-related and would have been used, as it was this time. But, you know how it goes with spam on the net. While legitimate mail can often times get lost in the rush of junk coming through, the only email guarenteed prominent placement is spam. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 14:48:27 -0600 From: Randal Hayes Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List > I called 1-888-382-1222. After I entered my phone number, the voice said > the calls would stop in 3 weeks, My understanding is that it is 3 months. Although the "refresh" and "scrubbing" frequency from the FTC/FCC DNC Registry was originally set at 3 months, it was changed such that those telemarketers who must comply with the DNC Registry must "scrub" their lists every 30 days with the latest DNC database information. Randy Hayes ------------------------------ From: alonzo_heem@yahoo.com Subject: Re: The Lasting Impact of Sony's Rootkit Date: 6 Dec 2005 15:00:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Maybe Sony should have read this piece first: " The effort required to enforce copyright is approaching infinity. " Encryption, the Industry counters: we will be so clever that we'll only distribute a product that can be unlocked and used by the customer, by the miracle of the cipher, a secret code. "The Internet was built for maximum survivability in a nuclear war. It's everywhere, and growing exponentially. How's the hell is Entertainment business going to keep up with that? And copyright all you want. The Internet doesn't care; if it can be digitized and loaded onto a networked computer, it will be everywhere, soon. The cyborg guarantees it. Go ahead - sick your lawyers on a few dozen downloaders. It's just a finger in the dyke; a thousand new holes will appear every day. Squared. "Comparisons of the Internet to a military cyborg really aren't hyperbole. The grim history is that Internet was originally built as a cybernetic military command-and-control infrastructure for coordinating, among other things, the launch of nuclear missiles. Researchers at the Department of Defense figured out that virtual communication circuits on a network beat the heck out of literal, point-to-point circuits of dedicated wiring. This scheme of virtual circuits brought with it the prospect the military could build a control system that could fix itself instantaneously if it sustained damage. "Damage, as in, nuclear damage. When a segment of the network was compromised -- as in, "Oh, heck -- they just nuked Denver" -- the system could re-configure these virtual circuits on-the-fly -- with computers and routers instead of work crews with pliers, wire and soldering guns -- and the messages would still get through, right now. Simply, the Net interpreted sudden silences in any of its network nodes as damage, and routed around it. "That is the Prime Directive, core message, and DNA of the Internet, all in one: If you can't get a message through one channel, route around it -- invisibly, silently, relentlessly -- until you make the connection. "And here's the commercially grizzly implication of that Prime Directive no entertainment executive has, as of yet, been able to understand: The Internet interprets commercial interest, censorship or virtual toll-booths of any kind as damage. And routes around them. Invisibly, automatically, instantaneously." Quoted from http://www.thomasscoville.com/Tinseltown_Burning.pdf "Why downloading isn't wrong, copyright is dead and Hollywood is in decline." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 20:42:22 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: > Here is the problem, > I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL > connections to the internet and use these connections to provide > internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of > about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would > like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I > don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to > balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). > Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? > -Jonathan Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. Best of luck. William ------------------------------ NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml End of TELECOM Digest V24 #551 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 7 15:41:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 7F9FA14F88; Wed, 7 Dec 2005 15:41:04 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #552 Message-Id: <20051207204104.7F9FA14F88@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 15:41:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BEEN_TURNED_DOWN,DRUGS_ERECTILE autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Dec 2005 15:42:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 552 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Phony Email Tricks Ebay Investigators (Robert McMillan) FTC Study on Masking and Filtering to Stop Spammers (Thomas Claburn) Interview With a Spammer (Tom Spring) Amp'd Dials Down Music Prices (Eric Friedebach) For RIM: Careful What You Ask For (Eric Friedebach) Hypothetical SxS Question (Lisa Hancock) Cellular-News for Wednesday 7th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Cisco Chief: Video Will Boost Internet Traffic (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (GlowingBlueMist) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (jonfklein@gmail) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Gordon Burditt) Re: Don't Call It Spyware (John Levine) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lisa Hancock) Re: Default COCOT Behavior (Ed Greenberg) Re: Communications History (Rik) Re: Communications History (Lisa Hancock) Re: Communications History (Scott Dorsey) Re: Communications History (Jim Stewart) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Robert McMillan Subject: Phony Email Tricks Ebay Investigators Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:44:29 -0600 Robert McMillan, IDG News Service A sophisticated phishing attack has proven so successful, it has tricked eBay's own fraud investigations team into endorsing it as legitimate, according to an independent security consultant who reported the attack to eBay. In late November, Richi Jennings received a fraudulent e-mail message containing the subject line "Christmas is Coming on ebay.co.uk." Offering him "great tips for successful Christmas selling," the message directed him to the Web site ebaychristmas.net, which then asked Jennings to enter his eBay user name and password, as well as the name and password for his e-mail account. Jennings reported the site to eBay on November 25, and four days later he got a note back from the company's investigations team claiming that the e-mail message was, in fact, "an official e-mail message sent to you on behalf of e-Bay." Jennings was dumfounded. He immediately wrote back to eBay pointing out that the Web site being used was clearly fraudulent, but his e-mail went unanswered. eBay Changes Tune On Monday, an eBay spokesperson confirmed that the e-mail message was indeed part of a fraud, but she could not explain why it had initially been identified as legitimate. "I don't know the answer to that," said spokesperson Amanda Pires. "I'm assuming right now it was just an error." From their initial response, it appeared that eBay's investigators did not take his concerns seriously, Jennings said. "They never actually used the word idiot, but I felt like they were calling me an idiot," he said. He believes that the e-mail message in question bore such a close resemblance to a legitimate eBay message that the company's investigators were simply tricked by the scam. Pires said that eBay had, in fact, been working to take down the phishing site since November 8, weeks before Jennings even contacted the company. Both Jennings and eBay agreed that the phony Web site has been set up in such a way that it is extremely difficult to shut it down. The Web site's server software is being hosted on a variety of different PCs that appear to have been taken over by malicious "bot" software. Whenever eBay succeeds in getting one of these servers shut down, a new one pops up to take its place, Pires said. "This is one of the cleverest [phishing attacks] I've seen in a while," Jennings said. Antifraud Efforts EBay has also been trying to shut down the Web site by working with the Internet registrar that was used to acquire the ebaychristmas.net domain, Pires said. Despite these efforts, however, the site has remained operational. That registrar, which does business under the name Joker.com, has the power to shut down the scam Web site, Jennings said. "If they were taking their responsibilities seriously, the site would have been shut down weeks ago," he said. Joker.com did not respond to e-mail requests to comment for this report. EBay's gaffe shows how hard it has become to keep track of fraudsters, said Rich Miller, an analyst with Internet services vendor Netcraft. Netcraft, which offers a free antiphishing toolbar of its own, classified more than 8,000 phishing sites in the month of November, Miller said. "It's very had to keep straight what is legitimate and what's not," he said. As for Richi Jennings, though he doesn't have high regard for eBay's investigators, he's willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's possible, he said, that the company was simply overwhelmed with questions about a legitimate e-mail message that closely resembled the scam, and then made the mistake of assuming he was writing about the same thing. "Hopefully this was a false negative in a sea of correct answers," Jennings said. Copyright 2005 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, PC World Communications, Inc. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Thomas Claburn Subject: FTC Study on Masking and Filtering to Stop Spammers Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:54:09 -0600 By Thomas Claburn Security Pipeline Tue Nov 29, 9:00 AM ET Trickery and technology both play key roles in managing spam, according to a study released yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission. The agency looked at three aspects of spamming and efforts to control it: the automated harvesting of E-mail addresses on public areas of the Internet; using E-mail address masking to reduce address harvesting; and the effectiveness of spam filtering by Internet Service Providers. To conduct its five-week study, the FTC established 50 test E-mail accounts at each of three separate ISPs; two used spam filters and one didn't. It also posted 50 E-mail addresses on various Web sites, chat rooms, message boards, USENET groups, and blogs. Sure enough, spammers harvested many of those addresses and spammed them. However, addresses posted in chat rooms, message boards, USENET groups, and blogs proved less likely to be harvested than those on general Web sites. The FTC noted that some chat room operators took active steps to prevent E-mail address harvesting from online areas under their supervision. E-mail address harvesting qualifies as an aggravated violation of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM). The study concluded that E-mail address masking is an effective way to reduce spam. During the course of the study, unmasked E-mail addresses received over 6,400 spam messages, while only one spam message reached masked E-mail addresses. Also known as "munging," masking is the long-standing practice of altering an E-mail address so that it's readable by people but improperly formatted for machines, such as "tclaburn at cmp dot com." However, the effectiveness of address masking is not foolproof, particularly if a simple masking method (such as the one above) is used. The FTC observed that at least one harvesting program appeared to be able to capture masked addresses and translate them into a useable form by converting the words "at" and "dot" into their respective symbols. While the FTC concludes address masking is an effective tactic to prevent spam, some Internet users argue the practice diminishes the Internet's functionality for the sake of personal gain. The study also underscores the utility of ISP-based filtering. After five weeks, E-mail accounts at the ISP with no filter received 8,885 spam messages. The accounts at the ISPs that filtered received 1,208 spam messages (over 86% blocked) and 422 spam messages (over 95% blocked) respectively. The FTC did not disclose the makers of the two spam filters used in the study. But it did note that the difference between the two ISPs' block rates is not necessarily a reflection of superior technology because the study does not address whether the filtering resulted in any false positives (legitimate messages mistaken for spam). An FTC spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. Copyright 2005 CMP Media LLC. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, CMP Media, LLC. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Tom Spring Subject: Interview With a Spammer Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:50:15 -0600 Meet Average-Joe Spammer Tom Spring, PC World Tip of the MonthWatch Out for Holiday-Related Scams. Phishers love the holiday season because they view the boost in online shopping as an opportunity: The security firm AppRiver reports that spam volumes nearly double over the holidays. Be particularly on guard for e-mail messages that purport to come from your credit card company or your favorite online merchant. It's tough being an average-Joe spammer these days. Divorced and in his 40s, Mike has two kids to help support, a skyrocketing home heating bill, and a mortgage. And spamming just isn't paying the bills like it used to. In the heyday of his spamming career, from 1997 to 2000, profiting from sending out unsolicited bulk e-mail was easy, Mike says. On an average month he made $40,000 pelting millions of inboxes with spam. Now, he complains, spam filters have become too effective and block most of his e-mail. Also, he adds, spamming for a living has become increasingly risky, as evidenced by recent arrests of--and fines imposed on-spammers. He himself is currently being sued by a large ISP for using illegal methods for sending spam, he says. "Spamming becomes a little more unprofitable and a little more high-risk every day," says Mike, who agreed to be interviewed on condition that his real name be withheld. "I don't know why I still do it." In fact, spam is no longer Mike's sole, or even principal, source of income. He now works in construction by day and devotes only 20 hours a week at night to spam. And because of the lawsuit, Mike has changed the nature of his activities. He makes $500 a week by selling lists of IP addresses for compromised computers, sometimes called zombie PCs -- systems that have been hijacked by a hacker so that they can be used to send spam. The people who own these computers (which can be in homes or businesses) have no idea their PCs are being used for such purposes. By routing junk e-mail through these PCs, spammers can hide their identity and can also save money on the bandwidth required to send large volumes of e-mail. Mike either buys the lists of compromised PCs from hackers and fellow spammers, or he gets them free from sites run by spammers, such as the Russian-based FreeProxy.RU. Once he gets a list, he checks the validity and quality of the addresses, weeding out those that don't respond or that have been put on spam blacklists. He then sells the "cleaned" lists of zombie PCs to other spammers. Mike is one of the thousands of spammers in the world who make up the majority of junk e-mail purveyors. "There are only a few dozen spammers worldwide that are making 90 percent of the spam profits," he says. "The rest of the bulk e-mailers are people like me." After I found Mike through a Web site where spammers meet and share tips, he agreed to a phone interview. Here is an edited transcript of that conversation. Interview With a Spammer Q: Don't you think what you do is wrong? A: I don't care what people think. If nobody was really interested in spam and never bought anything that was advertised to them, spam would go away. But people are interested in spam. As long as people buy things advertised in spam then people like me will send bulk e-mail. Are we really that different from so-called legitimate bulk e-mailers? I don't think there is a whole lot of difference. Q: Why don't you send bulk e-mail legally? The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act [the federal law regulating unsolicited bulk e-mail] allows you to. A: You are correct. CAN-SPAM created a lot of opportunity for spammers. However, playing by the rules is too risky, and it's bad for business. Here is what I mean. The only way spammers can sneak by an ISP's anti-spam filter these days is by tricking spam filters. The techniques to trick anti-spam filters are illegal, according to CAN-SPAM -- not to mention a growing number of state anti-spam laws. To get past spam filters you can't play by the rules. Those illegal spammers who try to go legit are finding themselves in court for violating different anti-spam laws. CAN-SPAM was great because there was one law to abide by for sending bulk e-mail. Now ISPs and states are coming after us. If you want to be sure you don't end up in a court, don't let them find you. Q: Are anti-spam laws and better filters working to stop spammers? A: Yes. Today big ISPs block e-mail from suspicious sources. They filter out spam based on e-mail addresses, words, links in the e-mail, pictures, or anything. For people like me it's just not worth it anymore. However, this forces a lot of spammers to send more spam. In the old days you could earn, say, $1000 by sending out 20,000 spam messages. Today, to earn $1000, you have to send out 2 million spam messages or more. The better filters get, the more determined we will get. It's not as if spammers really want to break the law. It's just that we are looking for any edge possible to get past the filter. Right now we are targeting smaller ISPs that don't have a lot to spend on good spam filters. Q: So why spam, if it's getting riskier and less profitable? A: Good question. For me, it's what I know how to do. And I just would hate to give up. It's like admitting defeat. But I am planning on quitting this spring. Q: How did you make money when you were actually sending out spam? A: For me it was mortgage and debt consolidation leads. For every person that called a mortgage broker based on my e-mail I would earn between $22 and $26. Dating sites would pay me $2 for every trial membership I brought them, and $15 for anyone who joined. Q: What does the future of spam look like for average-Joe spammers? A: Not good. The capital investment in computers and software required to make it worth the risk is enormous. A lot of people younger than me are spamming. But for a lot of people like myself, it's no longer easy money. We are throwing in the towel. Q: So you are seeing a changing of the spam guard, so to speak? A: Here is the deal. Spammers make money through advertising. And spammers today are diverse. They work with adware; they control botnets of computers; they are virus writers. Today's spammers don't just want to sell you Viagra; they want to trick you to into handing over your credit card number, or infect your system and turn it into a zombie. Q: Will spam ever go away? A: Spam will never go away. Filters may get better and more spammers may get arrested, but there will always be spammers. We adapt. I don't know what the next great spamming technique will be. But I can promise you spammers are working on it right now. As I said before, so long as people click on spam and buy things advertised in their inboxes, spam will exist. Copyright 2005 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, PC World Communications, Inc. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Eric Friedebach Subject: Amp'd Dials Down Music Prices Date: 7 Dec 2005 09:10:32 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com by Peter Kafka, 12.06.05, Forbes.com NEW YORK - How much does a digital song cost? At Apple Computer's store, a single goes for 99 cents. But buy the same tunes via Sprint Nextel's over-the-air download service through your mobile phone, and it will cost $2.50. Both the wireless carrier and the music companies with which it works say that customers will pay a $1.50 premium for the opportunity to buy a song any time they want it, without being tethered to a computer. But executives at new wireless phone service Amp'd Mobile, aimed at young customers with insatiable appetites for digital content, argue that logic is flawed. When Amp'd launches on Dec. 15, the carrier will sell over-the-air downloads for 99 cents. http://www.forbes.com/technology/wireless/2005/12/07/music-downloads-ampd-cx_pk_1206musicampd.html Eric Friedebach /Jaywalking in Dallas/ ------------------------------ From: Eric Friedebach Subject: For RIM: Careful What You Ask For Date: 7 Dec 2005 09:17:23 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Tomas Kellner, 12.06.05, Forbes.com NEW YORK - Last November, the federal government injected itself in the protracted BlackBerry court fight, where NTP is suing BlackBerry's maker, Research In Motion, over patent infringement. The feds filed a "statement of interest" with the court, saying the U.S. government is a major BlackBerry user, and the court should refrain from issuing any injunction that would shut government BlackBerries down. The government went on to say that it was "assessing" the extent to which "the public interest would be impaired by the award of any injunctive relief" to NTP. "This is nearly unprecedented," says professor Mark A. Lemley, director of Stanford's Program in Law Science and Technology. "I can't think of another case in which they have weighed in unsolicited on whether a court should grant a particular injunction," which is a great weapon for plaintiffs in patent litigation, shutting down defendants' product or even the entire business, and forcing them into settlement talks. http://www.forbes.com/2005/12/05/rimm-federal-lawsuit-cz_tk_1206rimm.html Eric Friedebach /Jaywalking in Dallas/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: 7 Dec 2005 10:40:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com This question is purely speculative only, not for real use. Suppose we wanted to install a PABX using step-by-step gear in a condo complex. We need 250 stations. My question regards the most efficient station number assignments. One person says the stations ought to have a four digit number that corresponds to the apartment number. There are 19 buildings with 10-15 units per building. So unit #103 would get phone number 0103 and unit #1513 would be phone 1513. While the above is easier to remember, wouldn't that be a waste of SxS terminals and require more switch units without any gain in efficiency? Isn't a four digit code inherently more complex than a three digit in an SxS environment? I think the phone ought to be numbered strictly sequentially, starting from 111 and going upward. The Bell System history talks about "graded multiples" to more efficiently use trunks and switchgear in central offices, but I don't think that would apply in this application. Now if we wanted to implement the above using modern technology, would only a PC be required with appropriate software and cards? I guess we'd need capacity for about five conversations at once. P.S. (For real). We had in-house maintenance staff which had three Nextel "push to talk" walkie talkie cell phones -- two guys and the manager. The maintainence staff was let go and replaced by outside contractor. The phones were surplus. They had to pay $600 to get out of the contract (stll cheaper than the 18 months left ). The homeowners were annoyed at that. Some were annoyed at the termination of the inhouse staff, but not very much. Thanks. Public replies please. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem as I see it with matching apartment number to intercom number is a security issue. Do you really want to let strangers know that the tenant in apartment 103 (0103) or the tenant in apartment 1513 (1513) is or is not at home? With the Bell System 'Interphone' (or the competitor's 'Enterphone') arrangement, the intercom numbers were used randomly for more security. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 7th December 2005 Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 07:46:15 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Cingular 3G Launch Presents Data Revenue Opportunity http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15126.php Cingular Wireless launched its third-generation wireless network in select markets Tuesday, bringing with it the opportunity to derive additional revenue from data services. ... [[ Financial ]] Russia's largest mobile operator MTS bids for Turkey's Telsim http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15124.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has filed a bid for Turkey's second-largest mobile operator Telsim, a spokesperson for MTS told Prime-Tass late Monday. ... Orascom CEO Interested In TIM Hellas Via Weather Fund http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15125.php Orascom Telecom Holding Chief Executive Naguib Sawiris is exploring the possibility of bidding for Greek wireless operator TIM Hellas, a spokesman for Sawiris' telecommuncations unit said Tuesday. ... Minister says Russia's MTS may get control over MTS Belarus http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15127.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) may get a controlling stake in its Belarus affiliate, MTS Belarus, in 2007, Belarus' Communications Minister Vladimir Goncharenko told a news conference Tuesday. ... More Cash for MVNO Vendor http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15139.php Visage Mobile, which provides MVNO platforms, says that it has closed US$30 million in series D funding led by Nomura International, bringing its total capital raised to more than US$80 million. All of its previous investors participated in the D rou... [[ Messaging ]] Celcom Boosts its Messaging and Prepaid Capacity http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15136.php LogicaCMG says that it has deployed a major mobile messaging and mobile payments upgrade with Malaysia's Celcom, serving over 5 million prepaid subscribers. The contract valued at approximately over US$16 million includes the deployment of LogicaCMG'... [[ Network Contracts ]] UPDATE: Ericsson Wins 'largest Ever' Network Deal From U.K.'s 3 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15123.php Ericsson AB said Tuesday it has won an exclusive contract to run the network and IT infrastructure of Hutchison Whampoa's third-generation U.K. operator, 3. ... T-Mobile Signs Single Clearing House Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15132.php BSG Clearing Solutions, a provider of clearing and settlement solutions, has announced the signing of a framing agreement with T-Mobile International for international roaming clearing services. The agreement allows all European affiliates of T-Mobil... [[ Network Operators ]] Russia's VimpelCom to launch Beeline brand in Ukraine next year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15128.php Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom plans to offer mobile services under the Beeline brand in Ukraine hrough its local subsidiary in five to six months, VimpelCom's CEO Alexander Izosimov told Prime-Tass Tuesday. ... CDMA Coverage in the Arctic Wilderness http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15131.php Alaska Communications Systems has extended its CDMA network to an area of the North Slope oil fields in Alaska. Two new CDMA cell sites were turned up late last month in Deadhorse and Kuparuk, on the North Slope. The footprint covers Deadhorse, Prudh... [[ Personnel ]] Australia's Telstra Says Doug Campbell To Retire http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15122.php Telstra Corp. said Tuesday that Doug Campbell will retire as head of its CountryWide rural services division later this month. ... New Boss for Hutch 3G Ireland http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15134.php Hutchison 3G Ireland 3 has announced the appointment of Robert Finnegan as managing director for 3 Ireland. Finnegan will report directly to 3 UK and Ireland CEO, Bob Fuller. Most recently, Finnegan was CEO of Sentrio Technologies, a hosted mobile re... [[ Regulatory ]] Russia's Reiman says VimpelCom "has best chance" for Far East license http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15130.php Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom "has the best chance" to get GSM licenses for regions in Russia's Far East Federal District, as it filed its application earlier than other companies, Russian IT and Telecommunications Minister Leon... [[ Reports ]] O2 Tops Mobile Phone Retailer Survey http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15137.php O2 and Phones 4u rank highest in satisfying customers with their mobile phone retail experience, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2005 UK Mobile Phone Retailer Study. The study measures customer satisfaction with the seven leading mobile ph... Young Consumers Are The First 'Technology Everywhere' Generation http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15140.php Young consumers are using more technology at a younger age to connect with more people than ever before, according to a survey of more than 5,000 US and Canadian online youth between the ages of 12 and 21 by Forrester Research. For example, 87% of 15... [[ Statistics ]] Russia's Sibirtelecom mobile user base up to 1.8 mln Dec 1 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15129.php The mobile subscriber base of Russian telecommunications company Sibirtelecom and its subsidiaries rose 86% since the beginning of the year to 1.834 million people as of December 1, the company said Tuesday. ... Two Million Customers for Jordanian Operator http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15135.php Jordan's Fastlink has announced that the number of its customers has risen to 2 million with the advent of the year end, reaching the targeted number for 2005, a year that has witnessed fierce competition in the telecommunications market in Jordan. T... [[ Technology ]] Vodafone Group Launches Global Mobile TV From Dec http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15121.php Vodafone Group Plc Tuesday announced the launch of its global Mobile TV channels featuring a mix of world TV brands, pan-European sports coverage and entertainment and documentary programmes. ... France Telecom Signs Chinese R&D Agreement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15133.php China's ZTE and France Telecom has signed an agreement for joint research and development, initially focusing on applying the Linux operating system for 3G smartphone handsets, with the development of a particularly innovative client interface. The a... Vodafone Selects Integrated Location Solution http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15138.php Openwave Systems says that NEC is integrating the company's Location Manager into NEC's Network Assisted Location Information Solutions. Vodafone K.K. in Japan is the first customer to select the combined solution. Openwave and NEC's location solutio... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 12:03:18 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Cisco Chief: Video Will Boost Internet Traffic USTelecom dailyLead December 7, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zDcsatagCzsTnRJVQV TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Cisco chief: Video will boost Internet traffic BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * BellSouth announces IPTV trial * RCN buys Con Ed Communications * SunRocket offers new VoIP plan * Comcast, TWC mull family-friendly tiers * Gartner advises companies to halt "mission-critical BlackBerry deployments" USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Telecom Crash Course -- The must-have book for telecom professionals TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Cingular launches 3G network * Nortel to help build WiMAX network in Canadian province * Mobile Web quality improves * Yahoo! is on the line with new phone service REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Dutch government halves KPN stake Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zDcsatagCzsTnRJVQV ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 01:15:17 -0600 Organization: Octanews wrote in message news:telecom24.550.3@telecom-digest.org: > Here is the problem, > I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL > connections to the internet and use these connections to provide > internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of > about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would > like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I > don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to > balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). > Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? > -Jonathan There are many routers on the market that do exactly what you are describing. Try a quick Google search using "load balancing router" and check out what turns up. Caution -- Many routers allow two WAN ports be connected like you want but in actuality they are only configured to use one or the other for traffic and switch to the other one when the link in use fails. Read the reviews and check online user manuals to verify the router you pick does load balancing as well as failure mode switching. You might check out the D-Link DI-604 router for example. I have seen it go for around for $35 bucks on www.streetprices.com. Here is the link to D-link model DI-604 http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=62&sec=0 From there you can read the manual or other information about the product. ------------------------------ From: jonfklein@gmail.com Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: 7 Dec 2005 09:44:50 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I know nothing about setting up a server, so please pardon my ignorance. Is there any reason why it needs to be a linux server? Could it be Windows? Where can I get further information about setting up a server and modifying the route tables? William Warren wrote: > jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: >> Here is the problem, >> I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL >> connections to the internet and use these connections to provide >> internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of >> about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would >> like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I >> don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to >> balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). >> Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? >> -Jonathan > Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet > card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. > You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. > Best of luck. > William ------------------------------ From: gordonb.sn0lt@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:56:47 -0000 > I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL > connections to the internet and use these connections to provide > internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of > about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would > like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I > don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to > balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). Are the lines connected to the same provider? Are they willing to bond the lines together on their end? (This may cost extra, or you may get the voice equivalent of a blank stare from the customer service representative in India.) You may be able to distribute outgoing traffic evenly between the two lines, but you have no control over how the incoming traffic is distributed unless you make arrangements with your ISP. There are drivers in FreeBSD (and probably Linux as well) which permit distributing traffic over several lines which presumably have the same destination. In FreeBSD, this is the netgraph driver with the one2many module. The rest of the system pretends the two lines are one interface. This works best if the other end is also doing the same thing (and I suspect Cisco routers at the ISP can do it). You would use a FreeBSD or Linux machine as your router with multiple network cards (two for the two lines, one for internal net, perhaps one for wireless). It is possible (especially if the lines are from different providers) that each DSL line will not accept outgoing packets except for those with "from" IP addresses assigned to the DSL lines. In other words, packets going out DSL line A have to be from netblock A, and the replies will probably be routed down DSL line A. Similarly for DSL line B. (ISPs do this to prevent untraceable spoofed flooding. If you flood, it's at least traceable to a specific box at the ISP. You might still be able to spoof your neighbor if he's on the same box.) Once you start a TCP connection, the IP address must be from either netblock A or B and traffic must go out the corresponding line for the duration of the connection. Do you intend to accept incoming connections from the outside? (Mostly, this means servers, but some peer-to-peer and FTP issues are involved also). Then you need an arrangement with your ISP to fail over (and you want load balancing also) from line A to B and vice versa routing for the public IPs of your servers. > Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? To do a good job, you need help from your ISP. To do a really good job, especially if the lines are from different ISPs, you need to talk BGP on both of them. For what you are doing, this is a bit like using nuclear weapons to solve a mosquito problem. Gordon L. Burditt ------------------------------ Date: 7 Dec 2005 17:47:53 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Don't Call It Spyware Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA In article you write: > Three years ago the company was considered a parasite and a scourge. > Today it's a rising star -- selling virtually the same product. How a > pop-up pariah won the adware wars. There's some statements in this article which I know are wrong, like the claim that they finance the Anti-Spyware Coalition. I'm an ASC member and I can assure you that Gator/Claria has never tried to show their face, and would have been turned down if they asked, like many other adware companies already have. This makes me somewhat sceptical of the whole article. Also, I've met Annalee and she is a good writer but she is not the most skeptical person I've ever met. Claria has been pretty good at dealing with their legal challenges, and their PR is great (it even fooled Esther Dyson), but people in the industry are under no illusions about what they do. Regards, John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 7 Dec 2005 10:47:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com There are three huge loopholes in this program and they're taking full advantage. Telemarketers are scum. They can't bear not to use their high speed auto dialers and cheap phone lines. Answering machine picks up and they leave a message. Human picks up and they switch a human on. One is non-profits. They are aggressively calling for donations for ambulances to zoos. Two is political. They very aggressive call around election times. Third is "prior relationship". Because of the loose definition, practically any business can claim a "prior business relationship" through some sort of loose affiliation with another business. If you have a bank account, your bank can sell your name to "affiliates". Supermarket discount cards, pharmacy registration, etc. Other businesses simply lie. I've gotten several calls starting off "we think we've done work for you a few years ago". In my case I know they're lying since I live in an apartment and could never have used their services. They bank on the fact that most of us have lives and won't bother to file a formal complaint with the authorities and even if we do the authorities won't do much about it. Anyone care to defend telemarketers or the people who make the equipment they use? [public replies please ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:35:53 -0800 From: Ed Greenberg Subject: Re: Default COCOT Behavior > I have an interest in telephony, and to further it, I recently bought > a COCOT for personal use to play around with. > Another interesting behavior I've noticed is that while you're dialing > a number, but before you deposit any money, it beeps out the DTMF for > the number to be dialed extremely slowly over the line. If you don't > deposit any money by the time the number is about to be completely > dialed, it will hang up. After you deposit the money, it will pick up > again and dial the number quickly. Does anyone have any explanations > for why it would do this? The circuit board inside is described as an > "Elcotel Series 5," if anyone is curious. This is called trickle dialing. The phone relies on the line for power, so it's gone off hook to get voltage while it's interacting with you. The digits are being dialed in order to keep the dialtone from timing out. This also keeps the phone from ringing in while you are off hook. > Despite all the oddities, having your own pay phone sure is fun. Did you get software, so you can reprogram it to do what you want it to do? ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Communications History Date: 7 Dec 2005 03:48:59 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Similarly, in the 1970's long distance phone calls were being sent via satellites using sub-carriers on frequencies in the "shortwave" range. These subcarriers were modulated with ssb. I connected an output of my satellite receiver to my shortwave receiver and tuned in many telephone circuits. The audio was very clear and there was no fading as was common on over the air shortwave. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Communications History Date: 7 Dec 2005 06:27:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dave Marthouse wrote: > The only way to bridge the oceans was hf radio. It's interesting to > note that anyone with a shortwave radio could listen to all the > international point-to-point phone traffic. One of the Bell Labs history "A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System" series covered overseas radio transmission in detail. Most larger libraries have these and it's worth checking out. I'm not sure which volume of the series covers overseas calls. They used a combination of long wave and short wave transmissions, using whichever happened to afford the best signal when the call was made. I sensed that engineers had to babysit every call adjusting the signals as necessary. They had to manually consider a variety of electronic and atmospheric conditions. The ability of equipment to "lock on" was limited in the early days. I believe later on they did use an elementary form of encryption to protect privacy. Not enough to guard against a determined listener but enough so that a casual listener couldn't understand. While radio transmission technology grew sharply during WW II I don't think much was applied to overseas radio calls. Instead the emphasis was on designing, building, and laying the overseas Atlantic cable. Made a world of difference when that went into service. I don't know much about overseas Pacific telephone lines, where the distances are so much greater. There was a British company, "Cable & Wireless" that had telegraph service. The company maintained relay stations on little islands with some people and equipment. Very expensive. I'm curious as to when Hawaii got radio-telephone service to the mainland US and then cable service. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Communications History Date: 7 Dec 2005 10:18:29 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Dave Marthouse wrote: > I am a bit of a communications history buff. I've been doing a little > research about telecom in the days before transoceanic phone service > before cables and satellites. The only way to bridge the oceans was > hf radio. It's interesting to note that anyone with a shortwave radio > could listen to all the international point-to-point phone traffic. I > am going to assume that a form of independent sideband was used with a > maximum of two or four circuits going to a specific country. Ssb is > very easy to receive even with a standard shortwave radio of the day > as long as it had a bfo to demodulate and recover the signals. I > would like to know if any form of primitive encryption was used to > make the circuits a bit more secure. It must have been very easy to > literally monitor all the international traffic to and from a given > nation. Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be > appreciated to help scratch my historical itch. For the most part, radiotelephone links didn't go SSB until the early 1960s, and there were still AM links hanging on well into the eighties here and there in the South Pacific. No encryption. No more than current ship-to-shore HF radiotelephone traffic uses today. That's why the Communications Act of 1934 made divulging communications to a third party illegal. scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 10:19:55 -0800 From: Jim Stewart Reply-To: jstewart@jkmicro.com Organization: http://www.jkmicro.com Subject: Re: Communications History Dave Marthouse wrote: > I am a bit of a communications history buff. I've been doing a little > research about telecom in the days before transoceanic phone service > before cables and satellites. The only way to bridge the oceans was > hf radio. It's interesting to note that anyone with a shortwave radio > could listen to all the international point-to-point phone traffic. I > am going to assume that a form of independent sideband was used with a > maximum of two or four circuits going to a specific country. Ssb is > very easy to receive even with a standard shortwave radio of the day > as long as it had a bfo to demodulate and recover the signals. I > would like to know if any form of primitive encryption was used to > make the circuits a bit more secure. It must have been very easy to > literally monitor all the international traffic to and from a given > nation. Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be > appreciated to help scratch my historical itch. My copy of "Principles of Electricity applied to Telephone and Telegraph Work" published by AT&T in 1953 shows block diagrams of the LD-T2 and LD-R1 HF transmitter and receiver pair. There is no encryption of any kind. Furthermore, the block diagram of the TD-2 microwave system is devoid of any encryption. Granted, picking off a single voice channel would not be trivial, but it wouldn't be impossible either. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #552 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 7 18:56:25 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id BF3CD14F06; Wed, 7 Dec 2005 18:56:24 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #553 Message-Id: <20051207235624.BF3CD14F06@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 18:56:24 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:00:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 553 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson SBC Long Distance and Lack of Customer Service (tvirl438@hotmail.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: tvirl438@hotmail.com Subject: SBC Long Distance and Lack of Customer Service Date: 7 Dec 2005 07:27:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This very lengthy article demonstrates quite well why so many of us who _can_ do better than have SBC as our telephone company _choose_ to use some other carrier. I quite well understand that not everyone can be so fortunate as to have a choice in local telephone service as we do here in Kansas, and if you are not able, for whatever reason to choose any other carrier then I have to sympathize with you unless you happen to like SBC (in its new manifes- tation as AT&T), but many of us do not like it, and refuse to deal with it. This reader, tvirl438@hotmail.com , I am sure thought he would save time and effort by dealing with SBC via email. Such was not the case, as you will find out by reading through his various email correspondence with the company, and their non-committal replies. I can tell you, from my own experience with SBC, that they tend to say one thing, and do another. It happened to me a few times also; a rep makes one claim, then later a totally different result. I will not trouble you with all my experiences with SBC, but this reader will describe his experience with SBC's long distance service. PAT] =============================== (now our reader begins) The fact that I can hold 2 e-mail conversations with the same company and get different results should show how incompetent they are. They increased my monthly amount without telling me. I switched calling plans in August, because the plan that I was on had an increase in its rate. When I switched, they notified people who were customers 2 days before I was. Is this legal? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The correspondence begins with an explanation by SBC for some action taken. PAT] Greetings, Thank you for your recent email. We would like to extend our sincere apologies for the problems you encountered. That information in the previous email was taken directly from your July 28, 2005 statement. It is our goal to provide excellent customer service. We are sorry if we did not meet that objective. If you would like it removed please let us know by emailing or calling the customer care center. The plan in question was another plan that also changed, no notice was sent of this change because you had changed plans after the notice of your original plan was changed. Please let us know if you are still having issue with your long distance plan. Customer Care Center: 1-800-924-1000 Hours of operation: West - Monday - Friday 7:00 am - 9:00 pm Saturday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Pacific Southwest - Monday - Friday 7:00 am - 9:00 pm Saturday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Central Midwest - Monday - Friday 7:00 am - 9:00 pm Saturday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Central Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. Regards, Your SBC Customer Service Representative NOTICE Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. SAFETY TIP The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. =========================== [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now he responds to SBC, quoting parts of his original letter. PAT] On Mon Dec 05 11:57:29 PST 2005,wrote: > This never printed just like someone else said in a different e-mail. > I have 2 threads going with you on this topic. The text below never > printed on any of my bills. > RESRD2MW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: Greetings, > Thank you for your recent email. We are pleased we are able to assist you with your inquiry. We apologize for the inconvenience of not giving you the answer you were looking for. > Effective October 12, 2005, the name of the JustCall (sm) 60 long distance price plan was changed to "JustCall (sm) 100", and the number of nationwide direct-dialed minutes will increase from 60 to 100 per month. The monthly recurring charge will increase from $3.00 to $6.00 and the per minute rate will increase from $0.07 to $0.09 for calls beyond the 100 minute block. This plan will also no longer be offered, however, until the plan is discontinued entirely, you may keep it unless you move or change service. Doing so will result in your being asked to select another long distance price plan. For more information or to discuss other long distance plans, please refer to the phone number on the front of your bill. > Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > Regards, > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > NOTICE > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > SAFETY TIP > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: He writes to SBC again and complains that they _still_ are not adressing his original questions. PAT] > On Fri Dec 02 17:25:07 PST 2005: >> If you look at the text below, that doesn't talk about the plan in question. That is the plan I left because of the $2 fee. Where does it state an increase in my plan that I cancelled yesterday from $3 to $6? This month's statement had a $6 plan. Where does your text mention $6? > > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > Greetings, > > Thank you for your recent email. > > I understand your concerns regarding the increase to your SBC Long Distance calling plan. Your 7/28/05 SBC billing statement included the following message under the SBC Long Distance portion of your bill regarding the recent long distance increase: > > "Your Rates, Terms or Services Have Changed: > > Effective September 12, 2005 the > > Long Distance III -- JustCall Standard > > calling plan will have a recurring monthly charge > > of $2.00. The domestic direct-dialed per minute > > rate for this plan will remain $0.10 per minute. > > This plan is no longer available for sale, > > however until this plan is discontinued entirely, > > you may keep this plan until you move or change > > your service, at which time you will be asked to > > select another long distance price plan. SBC has > > a variety of plans available. If you would like > > to discuss other long distance calling plans, > > please call 1-888-617-2253. Thank you for > > choosing SBC Long Distance." > > Our records indicate that this billing statement is still available online for your viewing. To view the details of your 7/28/05 bill: > > 1. Log in to your MySBC eBill(SM) account at http://www.sbc.com/mysbc with your User ID and Password. > > 2. Click on View My Bill under Current Bill Summary. > > 3. Select the month you wish to view from the pull down menu at > > the top of the page. > > Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. > > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > > Regards, > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > NOTICE > > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > SAFETY TIP > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Let's try it again, shall we? PAT] > > On Fri Dec 02 11:52:08 PST 2005,wrote: > > > When was I informed about the rate increase? Please show me which statement this was on. Can a live person give me an honest answer? 3 phone calls and 2 e-mails later, still no one competent has responded to my question. > > > You can adjust your rates, but you also need to inform your customers about the increase. I joined the plan after you sent out the information. > > > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > > Greetings, > > > > > > Thank you for your recent email. > > > We would like to extend our sincere apologies for the problems you encountered. It is our goal to provide excellent customer service. We are sorry if we did not meet that objective. > > > We appreciate your inquiry about our rates. SBC companies have been proudly serving its customers for more than 125 years. Like any business in a highly competitive industry, we occasionally adjust our rates to ensure that we are aligned with current market conditions. Factors in our pricing decisions include our costs of doing business, the value our services provide, and our need to invest in the future. > > > Please don't hesitate to email us again if there is anything else we can do for you. Thank you for taking out the time to email SBC. We definitely value your business. > > > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > > > http://sbc.com/repair - A self-help resource for your residential or small business repair questions. > > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > > > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > > > Regards, > > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > > NOTICE > > > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > > SAFETY TIP > > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. > > > On Fri Dec 02 06:48:00 PST 2005, wrote: > > > > I make less than 60 minutes of long distance calls per month. > > > > When I first received telephone service, I chose AT&T. They > > > > offered me a plan that had no monthly charge. I would buy calling > > > > cards at Sam's for less than 4 cents per minute. I had AT&T for 2 years, was never charged a dime. AT&T then instituted a $5 monthly minimum. I have SBC local service. At the time, SBC was entering the long distance market. They offered me a plan that also had no monthly charge. This worked for about a year. The promotional period, which I was not warned about, ran out. I called them and they had another plan to switch me to that also had no monthly fee. I asked them how much it would be to remove long distance from my line. They told me $17. Free sounded better than $17 so I switched to the new plan. Nine months passed and I was then warned that my plan would not be sold to any new customers, details to follow. The next month the details were that I would be charged $2 per month, plus 10 cents per minute for all calls. I called SBC and asked if they had any free plans. None. They did however have a plan that would be $3 per month for the first 60 minutes. I asked if there were any promotional periods. She said none. I made the switch in August. This worked for 3 months, the first month was even free. I would use about 50 minutes per month, was only paying $3. Then my bill came yesterday. My $3 plan for 60 minutes became a $6 plan for 100 minutes. Do the math, I am getting doubly screwed. I called them and asked for an explanation. My plan had terminated again. I was told they mentioned it on the July statement. They did not. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She didn't understand the request. I asked to "speak to someone who had more brains". I got put into a queue for the supervisor. Same woman came back 2 minutes later and said that her supervisor would tell me the same thing. I asked how much to remove long distance, I was told $10.51. I agreed. I will use the calling cards and my cell phone for long distance. I only have SBC local service so I can get DSL cheaper through another provider. Why are you doing this to your customers? > > > > > > > > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > > > Greetings, > > > > > > > > Thank you for your email and for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. Our goal is to provide you with the personal attention you deserve. We make every effort to respond to each email individually and address each customer's specific needs. We will make every attempt to respond to your inquiry within 1-2 business days, Monday through Friday. Your patience is appreciated. > > > > While you are waiting for our email response, you may want to visit our online self-help tool, where many customers have found fast answers to their questions. Cut and paste ask.sbc.com into your browser (see safety tip below). > > > > RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS > > > > If you are a residential customer and would like to establish service with your SBC local service provider or add features to your existing account, please visit the address listed below and click on your state to use our Shopping Cart: sbc.com/products > > > > BUSINESS CUSTOMERS > > > > If you are a business customer and you would like to establish service with your SBC local service provider or add features to your existing account, please visit sbc.com/business_customers, select "View Products and Services" and your state. > > > > If you need more information, please visit the appropriate addresses below: > > > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless and satellite products and services. > > > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers and handy online tips. > > > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > > > Thank you again for your patience. > > > > Regards, > > > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > > > NOTICE > > > > Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > > > SAFETY TIP > > > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should guard against clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, always copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at sbc.com/safety. > > > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now, our fearless reader tries yet one more time to get a specific answer from a real person, he supposes, by writing to the 'name' which has been replying to him all along. PAT] > > > > >To: RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com > > > > >Message: > > > > >Your customer service does not service the customer. My SBC Long > > > > >Distance plan has been changed 3 times in the 24 months that > > > > >I have > > > > >had you as a carrrier. It has changed because I keep getting bumped > > > > >out of plans you discontinue. That is why I no longer have any long > > > > >distance. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We told you early on that there were _two_ threads in progress. Above this point was one thread, and now here is the other thread, again, starting with a reply from SBC to his earlier correspondence. PAT] Greetings, Thank you for your recent email. Based on the information provided in your request, we are unable to process the adjustment of $3. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Even though in thread #1 above they said they 'would remove it' from his account. PAT] If you have any additional questions regarding this issue, please visit our Web Site at http://sbc.com/contactus or call the SBC Billing Department at 1-800-924-1000. Hours of operations are: Monday-Friday 7:30 AM-9PM, Saturday 8AM-5PM (LOCAL), Closed Sunday & SBC Holidays. Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We appreciate your business and continued loyalty. If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. Regards, Your SBC Customer Service Representative NOTICE Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. SAFETY TIP The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What brought this latest thread on was reader's simple request to receive a small credit, as follows: PAT] On Mon Dec 05 11:59:47 PST 2005, wrote: > I will ask you this question again: If it never printed on my statement, due to your system and no fault of mine, should I be held responsible for this? > How many other customers have you pulled this one on? Can you credit me the $3 difference? > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > Greetings , > Thank you for your recent email. > On behalf of SBC Wisconsin, I would like to extend my sincere apology for the problems you encountered regarding the confusion and our delay in answering your original inquiry. It is our goal to provide excellent customer service, and I am sorry that we did not meet that objective. > The change in your SBC Long Distance plan from the Just Call 60 Standard II to the Just Call 100 Standard II became effective 10/12/05. After reviewing our records, we show that you ordered the Just Call 60 Standard II on 8/12/05. Since you ordered the plan after your SBC Long Distance bill date, which is the 10th of each month, the August bill message that informed customers of the change did not print on your 8/28/05 statement. > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > Regards, > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > NOTICE > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > SAFETY TIP > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Still not willing to give up, our reader writes his 'service representative' once more. Remember, this is the second concurrent thread we are on now. PAT] > On Fri Dec 02 17:33:40 PST 2005, wrote: >> Read what I wrote you and then read what you wrote me. We are comparing apples and oranges. I will be informing all of my friends and co-workers of the problems that I have been having. Enjoy losing their business too. This is why I chose to drop long distance completely yesterday. I have tried to be nice about this, but this is the third time in 24 months that you have allowed me to go into a plan that has terminated within 12 months, the most recent only being 3 months. That is why the plan you are talking about and the plan I am talking about do not match. >> I did a Google search on problems with your company and I was not surprised to see that you have been giving other customers customer no service. >> This is a lot of work to try to get $6 out of your company, but I enjoy the fact that it is taking your company more than $6 in time to fix this. Your e-mail below does not explain any $6 charge. >> RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > Greetings , >> Thank you for your recent email. >> I understand your concerns regarding the increase to your SBC Long Distance calling plan. Your 7/28/05 SBC billing statement included the following message under the SBC Long Distance portion of your bill regarding the recent long distance increase: > > "Your Rates, Terms or Services Have Changed: > > Effective September 12, 2005 the > > Long Distance III -- JustCall Standard > > calling plan will have a recurring monthly charge > > of $2.00. The domestic direct-dialed per minute > > rate for this plan will remain $0.10 per minute. > > This plan is no longer available for sale, > > however until this plan is discontinued entirely, > > you may keep this plan until you move or change > > your service, at which time you will be asked to > > select another long distance price plan. SBC has > > a variety of plans available. If you would like > > to discuss other long distance calling plans, > > please call 1-888-617-2253. Thank you for > > choosing SBC Long Distance." > > Our records indicate that this billing statement is still available online for your viewing. To view the details of your 7/28/05 bill: > > 1. Log in to your MySBC eBill(SM) account at http://www.sbc.com/mysbc with your User ID and Password. > > 2. Click on View My Bill under Current Bill Summary. > > 3. Select the month you wish to view from the pull down menu at the top of the page. > > Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. > > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > > Regards, > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > NOTICE > > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > SAFETY TIP > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our reader asks them still another time. PAT] > > On Fri Dec 02 11:52:08 PST 2005, wrote: > > > When was I informed about the rate increase? Please show me which statement this was on. Can a live person give me an honest answer? 3 phone calls and 2 e-mails later, still no one competent has responded to my question. > > > You can adjust your rates, but you also need to inform your customers about the increase. I joined the plan after you sent out the information. > > > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > > Greetings , > > > Thank you for your recent email. > > > We would like to extend our sincere apologies for the problems you encountered. It is our goal to provide excellent customer service. We are sorry if we did not meet that objective. > > > We appreciate your inquiry about our rates. SBC companies have been proudly serving its customers for more than 125 years. Like any business in a highly competitive industry, we occasionally adjust our rates to ensure that we are aligned with current market conditions. Factors in our pricing decisions include our costs of doing business, the value our services provide, and our need to invest in the future. > > > Please don't hesitate to email us again if there is anything else we can do for you. Thank you for taking out the time to email SBC. We definitely value your business. > > > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > > > http://sbc.com/repair - A self-help resource for your residential or small business repair questions. > > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > > > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > > > Regards, > > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > > NOTICE > > > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > > SAFETY TIP > > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Reader explains further: > > > On Fri Dec 02 06:48:00 PST 2005, wrote: > > > > I make less than 60 minutes of long distance calls per month. > > > > When I first received telephone service, I chose AT&T. They offered me a plan that had no monthly charge. I would buy calling cards at Sam's for less than 4 cents per minute. I had AT&T for 2 years, was never charged a dime. AT&T then instituted a $5 monthly minimum. I have SBC local service. At the time, SBC was entering the long distance market. They offered me a plan that also had no monthly charge. This worked for about a year. The promotional period, which I was not warned about, ran out. I called them and they had another plan to switch me to that also had no monthly fee. I asked them how much it would be to remove long distance from my line. They told me $17. Free sounded better than $17 so I switched to the new plan. Nine months passed and I was then warned that my plan would not be sold to any new customers, details to follow. The next month the details were that I would be charged $2 per month, plus 10 cents per minute for all calls. I called SBC and asked if they had any free plans. None. They did however have a plan that would be $3 per month for the first 60 minutes. I asked if there were any promotional periods. She said none. I made the switch in August. This worked for 3 months, the first month was even free. I would use about 50 minutes per month, was only paying $3. Then my bill came yesterday. My $3 plan for 60 minutes became a $6 plan for 100 minutes. Do the math, I am getting doubly screwed. I called them and asked for an explanation. My plan had terminated again. I was told they mentioned it on the July statement. They did not. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She didn't understand the request. I asked to "speak to someone who had more brains". I got put into a queue for the supervisor. Same woman came back 2 minutes later and said that her supervisor would tell me the same thing. I asked how much to remove long distance, I was told $10.51. I agreed. I will use the calling cards and my cell phone for long distance. I only have SBC local service so I can get DSL cheaper through another provider. Why are you doing this to your customers? RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > > > Greetings, Thank you for your email and for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. Our goal is to provide you with the personal attention you deserve. We make every effort to respond to each email individually and address each customer's specific needs. We will make every attempt to respond to your inquiry within 1-2 business days, Monday through Friday. Your patience is appreciated. > > > > While you are waiting for our email response, you may want to visit our online self-help tool, where many customers have found fast answers to their questions. Cut and paste ask.sbc.com into your browser (see safety tip below). > > > > RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS > > > > If you are a residential customer and would like to establish service with your SBC local service provider or add features to your existing account, please visit the address listed below and click on your state to use our Shopping Cart: sbc.com/products > > > > BUSINESS CUSTOMERS > > > > If you are a business customer and you would like to establish service with your SBC local service provider or add features to your existing account, please visit sbc.com/business_customers, select "View Products and Services" and your state. > > > > If you need more information, please visit the appropriate addresses below: > > > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless and satellite products and services. > > > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers and handy online tips. > > > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > > > Thank you again for your patience. > > > > Regards, > > > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > > > NOTICE > > > > Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > > > SAFETY TIP > > > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should guard against clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, always copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at sbc.com/safety. > > > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for me, I would have long since given up, but not our sturdy reader. He makes one final attempt to get his message across. PAT] > > > > >To: RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com > > > > >Message: > > > > >Your customer service does not service the customer. My SBC Long > > > > >Distance plan has been changed 3 times in the 24 months that > > > > >I have > > > > >had you as a carrrier. It has changed because I keep getting bumped > > > > >out of plans you discontinue. That is why I no longer have > > > > >any long > > > > >distance. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And thus ends (as of this time) the second thread in this concurrent set of two email exchanges. Is it all just as clear as mud? SBC obviously does not intend to give him the money (three dollars? six dollars?) they screwed him out of. I do not know, but they have by now probably sent him another set of 'safety hints' and 'warnings' about how to click on their links. I sure am glad I do not have to deal with them any longer, except for the once per week promotional mailings telling me how much they miss me as a customer and how if I agree to come back and get screwed again they will (they claim) offer me two or three months of take it all service for $19.95 plus DSL for another $19.95 or so. I told you when this customer correspondence started with his 'service representative' that it was a long message, and indeed it was. If there is _anyway -- anyway at all_ that you can dump SBC/AT&T and go with someone else, I strongly urge you to do it. Is there any UNE operation in your community? (Such as Prairie Stream or Gage). Get over to them. Dump your DSL and go with cable or satellite for your internet if possible. Even SBC is now trying to undercut operations like Prairie Stream ($24.95 for take it all, plus one hundred minutes of long distance) by quoting 'only' $19.95 for their package that is the same thing. But you know, SBC tends to lie (see the above message) and stall and apologize repeatedly for same but never really give any customer service. If you had the patience to read all the above email send to our reader/user, and _still_ want to stay with SBC, then be my guest. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #553 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Dec 8 16:04:43 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 64FDD14E14; Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:04:42 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #554 Message-Id: <20051208210442.64FDD14E14@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:04:42 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, LONGWORDS autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:06:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 554 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Paul R. LaMonica) Yahoo to Offer Cheap PC to Phone Calls (Eric Auchard) Yahoo Updates Messenger's Phone Features (Juan Carlos) Public Interest Registry Announces Milestone: 4 Million Domains (P Godwin) Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? (donotemailme@ekkinc.com) Busing Amazon Workers From Tulsa to Coffeyville (Wesrock@aol.com) Cellular-News for Thursday 8th December 2005 (Cellular-News) BT Enlists Content Partners For TV Service (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Neal McLain) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Carl Navarro) Re: Communications History (Paul Coxwell) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Paul R. LaMonica (cnnmoney@telecom-digest.org) Subject: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:46:22 -0600 SBC has joined forces with AT&T and taken its name...but the growth still isn't there. By Paul R. La Monica, CNNMoney.com senior writer NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Ma Bell is back. But it almost seems like she never left. SBC, the Baby Bell that was spun off during the AT&T breakup in 1984, agreed to buy AT&T earlier this year. But SBC decided to hold onto the old AT&T name for the combined company. The deal was completed in November and shortly after closing, SBC got rid of its "SBC" ticker symbol. Effective Dec. 1, the new AT&T (Research) even adopted Ma Bell's old "T" ticker symbol. So SBC no longer exists. It's now AT&T. Get it? Lots of static But can the new AT&T do any better in the cutthroat world of telecom than the old one, or for that matter, the standalone SBC, did? Analysts are skeptical. Investors looking for the merger to quickly boost profits through cost cutting may be in for a surprise. "We think full realization [of cost-saving efforts] may not come until 2009 or beyond, which is a long time in this industry," wrote Dave Novosel, an analyst with fixed-income research firm Gimme Credit in a recent report. The other rationale behind SBC buying AT&T was that SBC would be able to bolster its presence with so-called enterprise accounts, large national corporations buying long-distance and data services. SBC, like fellow Baby Bells Verizon (Research), BellSouth (Research) and Qwest (Research), had struggled to extend its corporate business beyond local regions. AT&T and its rival MCI (the former WorldCom) remained tops in the enterprise game. But holding on to AT&T's enviable list of Fortune 500 clients won't be easy. With MCI (Research) being bought by Verizon, one analyst said he thinks that the competition between the new AT&T and Verizon could be brutal. After all, the old AT&T and MCI often had to resort to price wars in order to hold onto enterprise business and that's a big reason why revenues at the old Ma Bell had started to decline. "It's possible that Verizon and AT&T will come to unwritten terms on having their own fiefdoms and not killing each other," said Patrick Comack, an analyst with Zachary Investment Research. "But these guys are going to be shooting for national accounts and I don't see how they avoid bumping heads in a serious way." Wireless weakling Another analyst points out that as a result of the merger, AT&T will not have as big a presence in the more lucrative wireless market. SBC co-owns Cingular Wireless with BellSouth but the old AT&T unloaded its wireless unit a few years ago and was left with mainly consumer long distance and corporate divisions. "We remain concerned with AT&T's higher exposure to the declining enterprise long distance market as well as its moderately aggressive broadband strategy which dilute the benefit of Cingular," wrote Kevin Moore, an analyst with Wachovia Capital Markets, in a recent report. Moore estimates that the new AT&T will generate less than a quarter of its sales and about 21.5 percent of its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) from the Cingular wireless business. By way of comparison, BellSouth generates about 41 percent of its total revenue and 31 percent of EBITDA from wireless, Moore estimated. Comack added that investors considering bets in telecom should focus on companies that have stronger wireless businesses. He said that in addition to competition from Verizon's wireless unit, the new AT&T will face increased pressure from Sprint Nextel (Research) and the group of top cable companies that are partnering with Sprint to offer their own wireless service. "If you are going to be in telecom at all, you want to be in wireless stocks. There is no reason to be an investor in SBC/AT&T," he said. And if competition from other big phone and cable companies wasn't bad enough, AT&T also has to contend with a host of new challengers such as Internet phone companies Vonage and Skype, which is now owned by eBay (Research). Search giants Google (Research) and Yahoo! (Research) could become a force in the so-called voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) market as well. To be sure, the new AT&T has a VoIP offering of its own. But Victor Schnee, president of Probe Financial Associates, an independent telecom research firm, said that the toughest task for the new AT&T will be trying to expand in emerging telecom businesses like VoIP and digital television services while also dealing with the integration of the more mature assets from the old AT&T. "This is a work in progress," said Schnee. "They are struggling with how do they modernize and take advantage of new growth markets. It's hard to get excited about closing the AT&T deal." Other telcos are much better bargains Of course, some might argue that all these risks are already priced into the stock. AT&T, after all, trades at just 14 times 2006 earnings estimates. But that's not exactly a bargain considering that analysts expect earnings to increase by just 6.7 percent next year. BellSouth also trades at 14 times next year's profit projections but analysts expect earnings to increase by 11 percent. And even though Sprint Nextel trades at a premium of 16 times 2006 estimates, it also looks like a better bet than AT&T since its profits are expected to increase by nearly 14 percent next year. Given its prospects, the new Ma Bell looks an awful lot like the old Ma Bell. And that's not a good thing. Analysts quoted in this story do not own shares of the companies mentioned. Wachovia has done banking for AT&T, BellSouth and Qwest The other firms do not have investment banking ties to the companies. http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/01/technology/techinvestor/lamonica/index.htm Copyright 2005 CNN Money. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, CNN Money. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml To discuss this with other readers, go to our forum area: http://telecom-digest.org/chat ------------------------------ From: Eric Auchard Subject: Yahoo to Offer Cheap PC-to-Phone Calls Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:41:41 -0600 By Eric Auchard Yahoo Inc. said the company plans to allow computer users to make and receive calls from phones at rates that undercut eBay-owned rival Skype and are significantly below traditional phone companies. Yahoo said on Wednesday a new version of its Yahoo Messenger text, voice and video communications software to be introduced in the next few days will include "Phone Out," with low per-minute charges for calls from computers to phones, and "Phone In," a low-cost subscription service for phone callers to call computer users. The world's largest Internet media company said it plans to charge one cent per minute to Yahoo Messenger users calling the United States from, say, Russia, or anywhere else in the world and 2 cents a minute to call 30 other countries including Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea. In all the Yahoo Messenger phone-calling service will be available in 180 countries, according to Terrell Karlsten, a spokeswoman for the Sunnyvale, California-based company. Details were due to be available shortly at http://voice.yahoo.com/. Blair Levin, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus and a former staff member of the Federal Communications Commission, said in a report to investors that Yahoo's move is part of a broad and growing challenge to traditional telecommunications carriers. While unlikely to lead consumers to replace traditional phone services on a broad scale, he said, computer-based phone services will put further pressure on phone company revenues, even as they raise regulatory issues about whether to begin requiring Internet services to meet costly phone regulations. "We believe pricing is dropping to a level where price itself is likely to be less of a factor driving a consumer's choice," Levin wrote. Instead convenience, ease-of-use, and how well voice-calling can be integrated with other computer services will be what differentiates Time Warner-owned America Online's AIM, Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and Skype. YAHOO TRADES BLOWS WITH SKYPE Yahoo, which has offered some voice calling features via instant messaging software for five years is seeking to recapture momentum from Skype, which has in two years built up a base of 68 million users worldwide, including several million of Skype Out computer-to-phone, low-cost calling services. Yahoo Messenger calls to the United States are half the price of Skype's 2.1 cents per minute. But the Skype rate applies to nearly 30 countries, making it comparable with Yahoo rates. (see http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/ ) "In a basic sense, Skype is functionally identical to AIM, MSN or Yahoo," said Nick Shelness, an instant messaging analyst with Ferris Research based Perthshire, Scotland who was formerly a chief technology officer at IBM's Lotus division. "All three -- AIM, MSN and Yahoo -- have had audio capabilities for quite some time. They just didn't stress those features," he noted. Yahoo Messenger also offers e-mail links, text messaging to mobile phones, photo sharing and video calling services. The new low-cost calling services rely on deals struck with a variety of traditional long-distance carriers which Yahoo inherited through its acquisition of Dialpad in June 2005. "Historically communications have been stuck in a bunch of different silos," said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo vice president of communications products, and a former executive at Dialpad. "The home phone is one silo, the work phone is a silo, the mobile phone is a silo, instant messaging is another silo and mobile phone text-messaging is another silo," he said of how Yahoo plans eventually to tie together communication services. Phone In, the phone-to-PC service, costs $2.99 a month or $29.90 a year, allowing people to select a personal phone number, and receive incoming calls at no additional charge. As an example, San Francisco residents using the service who have friends or family in London will be able to choose a local London-based phone number. UK callers to the number would be charged for making a local call. Travelers can have multiple numbers that allow them to have local numbers in each country they visit, starting first in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States with other countries to follow, Yahoo said. The new version of Yahoo Messenger allows users to search for contacts they have entered the system by name, by Yahoo nickname, by phone number or other contact details. Users can then choose to communicate via text, voice or e-mail. To encourage use of its phone calling services, Yahoo said that, for a limited time, it would offer a free headset to users who sign up for its Phone Out service. Localized versions in various national markets will be available, Yahoo said. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. To discuss this with other readers, go to our forum area: http://telecom-digest.org/chat.html ------------------------------ From: Juan Carlos Subject: Yahoo Updates Messenger's Phone Features Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:43:04 -0600 Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service Yahoo plans to upgrade Yahoo Messenger with a capability that lets users dial out from the instant messaging service interface to traditional or mobile phones, a Yahoo executive says. Cheap Calls Yahoo Messenger users will also be able to rent one or more phone numbers from Yahoo to receive phone calls through the instant message (IM) interface, said Jeff Bonforte, the company's senior director of voice product management. Calls made from within Yahoo Messenger to U.S.-based phone numbers will be priced at 1 cent per minute, while calls to 30 other countries with heavy telecommunications traffic in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia will cost under 2 cents per minute, he said. Calls can also be made to over 150 other countries, and rates vary, he said. The rates are based on where the call terminates, not where it originates, Bonforte said, so it would cost someone in, for example, Singapore or Brazil one cent per minute to call someone in the U.S. To use this feature, which Yahoo calls "phone out," Yahoo Messenger users need to prepay for the calls in chunks of either $10 or $25, but the unused credit never expires, so a user could theoretically buy $10 worth of calls and take years to spend the amount, he said. Yahoo Messenger has had PC-to-PC voice communications for years, and it has offered users a fee-based option to dial out to a phone number using the third-party Net2Phone service. However, this voice capability is now being tightly integrated with Yahoo Messenger and will be threaded into various other Yahoo online services in the future, he said. Yahoo views voice communications not as an IM-specific feature but rather as an application that is becoming key to interacting online in general. "This is just the beginning for Yahoo" in the voice space, Bonforte said. Sounds Good, Says Analyst Users will be able to obtain one or more phone numbers for $2.99 monthly or $29.90 per year to receive calls from regular or mobile phones via their Yahoo Messenger interface. To start, only U.S., U.K. and French numbers will be available. However, Yahoo Messenger users worldwide can get U.S. or U.K. numbers, Bonforte said. So, for example, someone living in Germany who speaks often with people in San Francisco and New York, can get local numbers for those U.S. cities. French numbers are restricted to residents of that country, he said. Yahoo hasn't yet announced when the new Yahoo Messenger version with these phone-out/phone-in capabilities will become available. While eBay's Skype is the undisputed leader in PC-to-PC voice communications, Yahoo does well to integrate this functionality into Yahoo Messenger and into its other online services, an analyst said. That way, Yahoo will make it convenient for its users to engage in PC-to-PC phone calling, both for those who also use Skype and for those who don't, said Yankee Group analyst Kate Griffin. "It definitely extends the value and functionality for users," she said. Note: PC World has a partnership agreement to provide content to Yahoo News. Copyright 2005 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. To discuss this with other readers, please go to our forum area: http://telecom-digest.org/chat ------------------------------ From: Peter Godwin Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 17:43:20 +0100 Subject: Public Interest Registry Announces Milestone of 4,000,000 .ORG Domains Worldwide .ORG usage contributes to continued growth in the .ORG Community RESTON, VA - November 30, 2005 - Public Interest Registry (PIR), the .ORG registry, announced today that over 4,000,000 .ORG domains are registered worldwide. The successful growth of the .ORG domain is a direct result of the increase in global internet use, the credibility associated with the .ORG brand, as well as the success of over 180 .ORG resellers worldwide. "We have reached a significant milestone within the .ORG community," said Edward G. Viltz, President and CEO of PIR. ".ORG is no longer considered to be the 'other' domain. It has become the established Internet home of the worldwide noncommercial community. The attainment of four million registered .ORG domains is a direct reflection of the increased awareness and demand for the .ORG domain. We reaffirm our commitment to the continued management of the .ORG Registry in the public interest and thank our Registrars, their Resellers, Afilias Global Registry Services and the .ORG Community for their support." .ORG, originally created in 1984, has grown to be the third largest generic top level domain and the fifth largest when including country code top level domains. PIR is promoting the use of .ORG within the global nonprofit community through outreach programs targeting developing regions of the world. Additionally, PIR has offered to .ORG registrars discounts targeting Latin America, Africa, India, China and Southeast Asia in an effort to expand the Internet and promote the .ORG domain in these regions. About PIR Public Interest Registry ( http://www.pir.org ) is a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit corporation created by the Internet Society (ISOC) to manage the .ORG domain. PIR's mission is to manage the .ORG domain in an exemplary manner, while educating and empowering the global non-commercial community to use the Internet more effectively and, concurrently, to take a leadership position among Internet stakeholders on policy and related issues on behalf of the .ORG community. PIR is based in Reston, VA, USA. ABOUT .ORG The .ORG domain, which has come to be associated with noncommercial activities, is the Internet's third largest "generic" or non-country specific top-level domain with more than 4 million domain names registered worldwide. In 2002, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board of Directors selected ISOC's proposal from among 11 organizations bidding to operate the .ORG top-level domain. PIR assumed control of the registry on 1 January 2003. ABOUT PIR Public Interest Registry (www.pir.org) is a not-for-profit corporation created by the Internet Society (ISOC) to manage the .ORG top-level domain. PIR's mission is to manage the .ORG domain in a manner that supports the continuing evolution of the Internet as a research, education and communications infrastructure, while educating and empowering the non-commercial community to most effectively utilize the Internet. PIR is based in Reston, Virginia. For more information: Michael Ward Public Interest Registry (703) 464-7005 x113 E-mail: mward@pir.org ------------------------------ From: donotemailme@ekkinc.com Subject: Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? Date: 8 Dec 2005 10:07:35 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com A little advice needed: For a new office I am helping to setup, we are installing a 384k T1 line, and are planning on using vonage over that T1 line for our phone service. We plan to have at least 2 and maybe 3 phone lines through vonage. We are looking into cordless multi-line phones. We figure we'll need 1 base station and 4-8 handsets. Vonage offers a call-hunt feature that will ring the second or third line if the first line is busy. Will this multi-line service from vonage work with 1 mutli-line base station? Thanks, Ken ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 20:28:11 EST Subject: Busing Amazon Workers From Tulsa to Coffeyville Amazon taps state for temp workers By Jim Stafford The Oklahoman TULSA - Amazon.com has reached into Oklahoma for some of the 1,000 seasonal workers it needs to staff its Coffeyville, Kan., shipping center during the holiday season, luring them across the border with daily chartered bus commutes that feature televised entertainment. Every afternoon at 3 p.m., a chartered bus pulls out of the Albertsons parking lot near E 51st Street and Memorial here and begins the 90-minute, 75-mile trek north to Coffeyville. "It's a nice chartered bus with a television and VCR so they can watch movies, things like that," said Lisa Brown, director of operations for Chicago-based Staff Management. Amazon.com contracted with Staff Management to hire the temporary workers it needs to ship the vast quantities of books, electronics, toys and other merchandise bought by online shoppers during the Christmas retailing season. The 45 long-distance commuters from Tulsa arrive at the 1-million-square-foot "fulfillment center" well before their 5 p.m. shift begins, Brown said. Staff Management also buses almost three times as many temporary workers to Coffeyville from Joplin, Mo., each day. Joplin is 67 miles to the east. "We are busing about 140 people from Joplin," Brown said. "And I believe we do have some who are driving on their own." Amazon.com opened the Coffeyville fulfillment center in a former Golden Books distribution center in 1999, said Doris Scism with the Coffeyville Chamber of Commerce. The center was expanded from an original 450,000 square feet to the current 1 million, she said. The Coffeyville center employs about 500 full-time workers, in addition to the temporary employees. Coffeyville's population of about 12,000 requires Amazon.com to look beyond the immediate area for seasonal workers to meet the holiday demand. Oklahoma's work force development agency, Workforce Oklahoma, worked with Staff Management in recruiting the Tulsa workers, Brown said. A Staff Management news release said starting pay for employees at the Amazon.com center is $9.50 per hour for day-shift workers and $10 per hour for nights and part-time positions on weekends. Staff Management offered the incentive of a "performance-based" raffle of a new 2005 Chevrolet Aveo to workers who signed on for the seasonal jobs. Those who complete their temporary assignments, which generally end at Christmas, will be eligible for the drawing, Brown said. This is the second year that bus transportation has been provided for the temporary workers, Brown said. The Tulsa bus begins its return trip into Oklahoma after the night shift ends at 1:30 a.m., and arrives back in town about 3 a.m. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A large number of Amazon.com workers also come from Independence, which is about twelve miles north of the Coffeyville Industrial Park on Sunflower Avenue where Amazon is located. Amazon is considered one of the major employers both for Independence and Coffeyville. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 8th December 2005 Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 09:25:26 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] Dutch Government Trims Stake In KPN http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15143.php The Dutch government on Wednesday said it trimmed its stake in the country's leading telecommunications services provider, KPN, to around 8% and said it would get rid of its "golden share" in the company. ... http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15144.php British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC isn't immediately planning to offer mobile phones as part of its product range, a senior executive said Tuesday. ... Alfa Group Expects Telsim Sale Price To Be Too High-Executive http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15145.php The head of Alfa Group's telecommunications branch, Altimo, said Wednesday he expects the sale price of Turkey's Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon to be too high. ... Virgin Mobile Rejects NTL Takeover Bid http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15148.php Virgin Mobile Holdings (U.K.) PLC said Wednesday that its board had unanimously rejected the proposed takeover offer by NTL Inc. ... Belarus' BeST to take $184 mln loan from China Eximbank http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15149.php Belarus state-controlled GSM mobile operator Belarus Telecommunications Network, or BeST, has signed an agreement to take out a U.S. $184.2 million loan from Export-Import Bank of China (China Eximbank). The agreement was signed during Belarusian ... [[ Handsets ]] PRESS: Russia's Euroset postpones Eurobond offering indefinitely http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15150.php Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset has indefinitely postponed the offering of its debut, U.S. $150 million 30-month Eurobond issue, the company's President Eldar Razroyev said, Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday. ... Bulgarian Operator Extends Retail Presence http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15153.php Bulgaria's M-Tel has expanded its retail outlets to include selling its products through the independent retailers, Technopolis and Handy shops. The two dealers will exclusively offer the services of the biggest mobile operator in Bulgaria, including... Nearly 1 in 5 of Recent Handset Purchases Have No Landline http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15155.php New research released today by the USA's Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) shows a shift away from landlines to wireless phones for many American consumers, particularly younger age groups, those who rent their homes and singles. A full 17% of c... Wal-Mart and RadioShack Top US Handset Sales http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15156.php Telephia has reported that Wal-Mart and RadioShack have posted strong market share for retailing wireless handsets. Among recent wireless purchasers who bought their phone within the last 6 months at a major U.S. retailer, such as big box and consume... UTStarcom Wins Vietnamese CDMA Handset Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15159.php UTStarcom has won a contract to supply its C1161 CDMA 1x handsets to S-Fone, a nationwide CDMA service provider based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. S-Fone is the sixth operator in 2005 to offer UTStarcom-designed and -manufactured handsets, joining S... [[ Legal ]] Lawmakers Ask Swiss Government To Explain Swisscom Disclosure http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15146.php Two parliamentary commissions Wednesday asked the Swiss government for a response to criticisms of its handling of Swisscom AG's privatization plan and terms attached to it. ... [[ Messaging ]] Visto Powering Turkish Push Email Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15160.php Visto Corp. has announced that Turkey's Turkcell has deployed Visto Mobile with ConstantSync technology to deliver mass-market push mobile email services to a customer's wireless device of choice. Called TurkcellE-Postaci, the new service is a perso... [[ Network Contracts ]] Contract to Improve Phone Coverage Inside Trains http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15152.php Avitec has won the contract to provide and install OnBoard Repeaters for mobile coverage in all of Sweden's high speed train wagons (X2000). The order was signed by the Swedish Railway Authorities in collaboration with SJ, TeliaSonera, 3, Tele 2 and ... Ericsson Involved in Slovak Military Mobile Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15158.php The UK defense contractor, BAE Systems, along with Ericsson has been selected by the Slovak Ministry of Defence to deliver a fully US, EU and NATO interoperable mobile military communications system (MOKYS) to the Slovak armed forces. The contract wi... [[ Offbeat ]] Nokia Face Of Africa returns in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15157.php The continent's most established model talent search, the Nokia Face Of Africa begins its sixth season this month as the African TV channel M-Net and leading mobile company Nokia have renewed their commitment to popular initiative. This time round 12... [[ Regulatory ]] Mexican Antitrust Regulator Expects Tougher Law In 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15141.php The head of Mexico's antitrust commission said Tuesday that he is optimistic a new law giving regulators more power will be passed in the spring congressional session. ... [[ Statistics ]] Ukraine's URS chief says subscriber base up to 219,000 Dec 1 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15147.php The subscriber base of Ukraine's mobile operator Ukrainian Radiosystems (URS) rose to 219,000 people as of December 1 from 160,204 people as of October 1, Sergei Mironov, chairman of URS' executive board, told Prime-Tass Wednesday. ... [[ Technology ]] Ericsson Adds New Features To Mini-Link Product http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15142.php Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson (ERICY) Wednesday said it has added new capabilities to its Mini-Link TN microwave transmission family so that it now offers a complete, end-to-end transmission solution, opti... Samsung Licenses Smart Antenna Technology http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15151.php ArrayComm says that it has granted Samsung Electronics the right to use ArrayComm's smart antenna solutions for Samsung wireless communications base station products. The agreement gives Samsung full rights to use ArrayComm solutions for base station... Chip Standardization Good News for Handset Manufacturers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15154.php Intel and STMicroelectronics have announced they will collaborate on the development of NOR-type flash memory products, a move that will bring much-needed standardization to the market, iSuppli Corp. believes. The two semiconductor suppliers on Monda... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:17:05 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: BT Enlists Content Partners for TV Service USTelecom dailyLead December 8, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zJBoatagCAbMBJtTDI TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * BT enlists content partners for TV service BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Virgin Mobile balks at NTL bid * RIM, NTP communicate via mediator * Analysis: What does the future hold for print directories? USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * In the Telecom Bookstore: Wireless Crash Course TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Inmarsat announces satellite broadband service * Mobile WiMAX standards approved * Verizon Wireless to offer CBS shows REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC seeks extensive data in Adelphia review * Will Google's reach incite regulation push? Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zJBoatagCAbMBJtTDI ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:12:00 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Suppose we wanted to install a PABX using step-by-step gear in a condo > complex. We need 250 stations. My question regards the most > efficient station number assignments. > One person says the stations ought to have a four digit number that > corresponds to the apartment number. There are 19 buildings with > 10-15 units per building. So unit #103 would get phone number 0103 > and unit #1513 would be phone 1513. > While the above is easier to remember, wouldn't that be a waste of SxS > terminals and require more switch units without any gain in > efficiency? Isn't a four digit code inherently more complex than a > three digit in an SxS environment? I think the phone ought to be > numbered strictly sequentially, starting from 111 and going upward. The most "efficient" numbering plan (least amount of equipment) would be to assign extension numbers in three 3-digit ranges: 211-200 311-300 411-400 This arrangement provides a total of 300 lines, enough to accommodate 250 apartments with spares for other uses (office, maintenance room, loading dock, etc.). Advantage: This plan requires only three sets of switches: linefinders, first selectors, and connectors. By contrast, the hypothetical 4-digit plan that "one person" suggests would require four sets: linefinders, first selectors, second selectors, and connectors. As you note, a four digit code [is] inherently more complex than a three digit in an SxS environment." Advantage: This plan avoids two SxS taboos: subscriber numbers beginning with 0 or 1: - Initial 0 is taboo because "experience has shown that in a single- office system it is not advisable to use subscribers' numbers commencing with the numeral zero (0) unless absolutely necessary to secure the desired capacity" [1]. And, of course, zero is traditionally used to reach the local operator, if any. - Initial 1 is taboo because an SxS (or any other rotary-dial) switch can't distinguish between an intentionally-dialed 1 and a false switchhook depression. Disadvantage: It's not possible to match subscriber numbers to apartment numbers (although, as PAT notes, this might not be a good idea anyway). [1] Kempster B. Miller. "Telephone Theory and Practice" vol. 3 "Automatic Switching and Auxiliary Equipment." New York: McGraw Hill, 1933, p. 129. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 17:46:43 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 7 Dec 2005 10:40:16 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > This question is purely speculative only, not for real use. > Suppose we wanted to install a PABX using step-by-step gear in a condo > complex. We need 250 stations. My question regards the most > efficient station number assignments. > One person says the stations ought to have a four digit number that > corresponds to the apartment number. There are 19 buildings with > 10-15 units per building. So unit #103 would get phone number 0103 > and unit #1513 would be phone 1513. > While the above is easier to remember, wouldn't that be a waste of SxS > terminals and require more switch units without any gain in > efficiency? Isn't a four digit code inherently more complex than a > three digit in an SxS environment? I think the phone ought to be > numbered strictly sequentially, starting from 111 and going upward. Of course it would waste resources, but on the bright side you'd only have to clean the first two levels of the connector banks :-) Later implementations would have used a tranlator and register senders. You dial 1513 and the translator converted it into 813. The wiring and troubleshooting of translators and register senders, even in a common control crosspoint office, would have been a nightmare. > The Bell System history talks about "graded multiples" to more > efficiently use trunks and switchgear in central offices, but I don't > think that would apply in this application. > Now if we wanted to implement the above using modern technology, would > only a PC be required with appropriate software and cards? I guess > we'd need capacity for about five conversations at once. Or a PBX carded 4x250. The high station count precludes an old analog Mitel SX-200, but it would have served about 188 stations with 31 calling paths. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem as I see it with matching > apartment number to intercom number is a security issue. Do you really > want to let strangers know that the tenant in apartment 103 (0103) or > the tenant in apartment 1513 (1513) is or is not at home? With the > Bell System 'Interphone' (or the competitor's 'Enterphone') > arrangement, the intercom numbers were used randomly for more security. In a Viking entry sysem, you assign 2 or 3-digit numbers to a directory, but those numbers don't relate to anything but storage bins. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Communications History Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:51:33 +0000 > I am a bit of a communications history buff. I've been doing a little > research about telecom in the days before transoceanic phone service > before cables and satellites. The only way to bridge the oceans was > hf radio. It's interesting to note that anyone with a shortwave radio > could listen to all the international point-to-point phone traffic. I > am going to assume that a form of independent sideband was used with a > maximum of two or four circuits going to a specific country. Ssb is > very easy to receive even with a standard shortwave radio of the day > as long as it had a bfo to demodulate and recover the signals. I > would like to know if any form of primitive encryption was used to > make the circuits a bit more secure. It must have been very easy to > literally monitor all the international traffic to and from a given > nation. Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be > appreciated to help scratch my historical itch. In the earlier days, quite a number of the HF links were just regular double-sideband AM with carrier, not even SSB. Even today we still have ship-to-shore telephone links operated over simple, unencrypted SSB links in the marine band (2 to 3MHz-ish). I'm on the east coast of England, and there are still quite a number of calls placed this way from the off-shore oil rigs in the North Sea. When satellites started taking over international circuits, there was no encryption either. They used the same sort of basic carrier arrangements as were already in use for coax systems, with each circuit in an SSB channel of 4kHz overall bandwidth (wider than the telephone speech bandwidth to allow for guard bands, pilot tones, etc.). 12 channels made up a group, then 5 groups were multiplexed together to form a supergroup, and so on. The arrangement allowed for easy routing of circuits at intermediate points without splitting everything down to individual channels and then recombining. If, say, one group (12 channels) out of a supergroup was destined for a particular place,you could just extract that group complete and then multiplex it on to a different supergroup to send it on its way -- No need to worry about the individual channel content of the group. Anyone with a suitable satellite receiver/downconverter could connect it to a receiver and then just tune across the band, finding an SSB telephone channel every 4kHz or so. In fact when I worked for BT in the 1980s that's almost EXACTLY the way we would check a specific channel off the satellite (or other carrier systems). We had monitor sets that we could connect to the downconverted satellite baseband. They had precisely calibrated level meters so we could measure pilot-tone levels to make adjustments, but they were still, in effect, just fancy SSB SW receivers. Of course, in this case you'd be picking up just one direction of the conversation, as hybrids were used back at the origin to split the circuit. Finding the "mate" of a channel was easy enough with all the records in front of you, although even that could take a while to set up. For someone tuning around without that information, it would be much, much harder. Paul ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 7 Dec 2005 13:50:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Telemarketers are scum ... non-profits ... aggressively calling for > donations It's not so much the non-profits, but the telemarketing companies they hire to make the calls. They are using the same obnoxious techniques that were used before the Do Not Call went into effect. As you described, they hang up when an answering maching picks up. The call shows up as "toll free" or "out of area" on the Caller ID. Sometimes I'll see the number, so I know it's the same telemarketer calling over and over again. I had one, calling on behalf of a legitimate charity, ring my phone three and four times a day, every day over a period of two weeks, anytime between 9 a.m. and 8:56 pm. I knew who it was, because the first time they called, I answered and said I was too ill to discuss the charity. After two weeks of this harassment, I answered and blew off steam at the unfortunate young lady who made that call. But they got the hint, finally, and stopped calling me. My next move was to find the name and email address of the director of the charity that hired the telemarketer and give him a piece of my mind about telemarketers, how rude and inconsiderate they are, and how, by choosing that form of soliciting for my contribution, I'll never give them another dime. Lena ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #554 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 9 15:19:04 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id EACEB14D26; Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:19:01 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #555 Message-Id: <20051209201901.EACEB14D26@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:19:01 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, RISK_FREE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:20:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 555 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers (David Caruso) Fear of ID Theft Greatly Overblown, per Government Study (Reuters NewsWire) Google Ad Fraud Plaintiff Seeks to Cut Role in Case (Eric Auchard) Many Domains Registered With False Registration Data (zonk) Cellular-News for Friday 9th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Ron Kritzman) Telecom Update #509 - Canada - (Angus Telemanagement) Alltel to Spin Off Landline Business (USTA Daily Lead) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Robert Bonomi) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Robert Bonomi) Re: Communications History (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Last Laugh! RSStroom Reader (CmdrTaco) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: David Caruso Subject: MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:28:18 -0600 By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer Every evening rush hour, hustlers lugging bags full of bootlegged movies walk the subway train aisles, calling "two for five dollars!" as brazenly as if they were selling hot dogs at Yankee Stadium. At those prices, the DVDs, often of current Hollywood blockbusters, sell well, despite laughable sound and picture quality. Few customers seem to care the copies were made illegally. Bootleggers apparently have little to fear. Under state law, people caught videotaping inside a movie theater face a maximum fine of $250. As part of its worldwide campaign against piracy, the film industry is pushing for tougher penalties for smuggling a camcorder into a cinema in New York, which has the country's worst bootlegging problem and some of the weakest penalties. A bill pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America would make operating recording equipment inside a theater a criminal misdemeanor, raising the maximum punishment to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. Making the crime a misdemeanor also would empower police to arrest violators on the spot, rather than simply issuing a summons. People caught a second time would be charged with a felony. "We have to do something, because right now there's no risk," said William J. Shannon, a Yonkers-based deputy director of the association's U.S. anti-piracy operation. "Right now, you're looking at something about the same as a parking ticket." Legislators, film industry representatives and lawyers met Wednesday in Manhattan to discuss the new proposal, which would make New York one of several states to adopt tougher rules on movie piracy in recent years. But Pace Law School professor David N. Cassuto likened the use of tough criminal penalties to attack the lowest-level offenders in pirating operations to "using a howitzer to solve a roach problem." The proposed penalties would also apply to an obnoxious 16-year-old who holds up a camera phone during the coming attractions to snap a photograph of the screen, warned defense attorney Marvin Schecter. Through intricate watermarking technology, investigators can now determine in which theater a film was playing when it was recorded by someone with a handheld camera. About half the bootleg films that are recorded live in a theater, duplicated thousands of times, then sent around the globe originated in New York City, the trade group said. ___ On the Net: Motion Picture Association of America: http://www.mpaa.org/ Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. For more Associated Press News, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html To chat with other readers about this event, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/forum.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Fear of ID Theft Greatly Overblown, According to US Study Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:23:28 -0600 A new study suggests consumers whose credit cards are lost or stolen or whose personal information is accidentally compromised face little risk of becoming victims of identity theft. The analysis, released late on Wednesday, in a report commissioned by the United States government, also found that even in the most dangerous data breaches -- where thieves access social security numbers and other sensitive information on consumers they have deliberately targeted -- only about 1 in 1,000 victims had their identities stolen. ID Analytics, the San Diego, California-based fraud detection company that performed the analysis, said it looked at four recent data breaches involving a total of 500,000 consumers. It declined to provide the names of the companies involved in the breaches, but Mike Cook, ID Analytics co-founder, said one of them was a top five U.S. bank. After six months of study, comparing compromised information against credit applications, ID Analytics said it discovered something counterintuitive: The smaller the breach, the greater the likelihood the information was subsequently used by fraudsters to hijack the identity of victims. "If you're in a breach of 100, 200 or 250 names, there's a pretty high probability that you're identity is going to be used," said Mike Cook, ID Analytics' co-founder. "The reason for that is if you look at how long it takes a fraudster to use an identity, they can roughly use 100 to 250 in a year. But as the size of the breach grows, it drops off pretty drastically." A study conducted earlier this year by Javelin Strategy and Research, which mirrored the methodology of an earlier Federal Trade Commission study, found that 9.3 million Americans said they had been victimized by identity thieves during the preceding 12 months. ID Analytics said it discovered that identity thieves have a hard time using a stolen credit cards to hijack the identity of cardholders because the cards are usually quickly canceled -- and because piecing together an identity based on the information on the card is hard work. Not one of the card breaches it studied resulted in a subsequent identity takeover. While the findings will provide some comfort to consumers whose credit cards are lost or lifted or whose sensitive information is compromised when, for instance, a laptop is stolen, as recently happened at Chicago-based Boeing Co., some of ID Analytics' suggestions could be controversial. The company suggests, for instance, that companies shouldn't always notify consumers of data breaches because they may be unnecessarily alarming people who stand little chance of being victimized. That's likely to rankle consumer watchdogs, who are pushing Congress to enact a law, sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), Republican of Pennsylvania, and Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), Democrat of Vermont, that requires companies to implement tough data security standards and to notify consumers, law enforcement and credit-reporting agencies whenever there's a breach. "As far as notifications, we think there are certain instances where businesses might want to notify consumers and certain instances where they might not to inform them," said Cook. "For instance, if they lose data, and they don't know where it is, we think too many notices may not be a good thing. They should probably monitor that and spend dollars on consumers who are actually harmed, rather than spending dollars on 10 million consumers" most of whom won't be affected. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. For more news stories, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html To discuss this report, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/forum.html ------------------------------ From: Eric Auchard Subject: Google Ad Fraud Plaintiff Seeks to Cut Role in Case Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:26:03 -0600 By Eric Auchard Click Defense Inc., which had filed a lawsuit against Google Inc. claiming the Web search leader's advertising sales practices were fraudulent, said on Thursday it was seeking to withdraw as lead plaintiff in the suit in order to focus on its own business. The company said in a statement it wanted to withdraw as the lead plaintiff named in a lawsuit seeking class-action status it had filed against Google in June in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Still, Click Defense said it planned to press its claims against Google. "We are only withdrawing as a representative plaintiff," Click Defense Chief Executive Scott Boyenger said in a statement, adding that the company was doing so in order to focus on its business as a provider of technology used to detect "click fraud" in online advertising campaigns. Virtually all of Google's revenues derive from so-called pay-per-click advertising in which advertisers pay only for ads on which Web users have clicked to view more information. Click fraud is not "fraud" as defined under the law. Rather, it is an industry term used to describe the deliberate clicking on Web search ads by users with no plans to do business with the advertiser. Rival companies might employ people or machines to do this because the advertiser has to pay the Web search provider for each click. Click fraud can run up thousands of dollars in advertiser costs or benefit a Web site operator that gets a cut of advertising revenue from Internet search providers. Google declined to comment on the pending case. At the time the lawsuit was originally filed it stated: "We believe the suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously." In general, Google says its credits advertisers who can show they have fallen pray to "invalid click" schemes. The complaint filed by Click Defense of Fort Collins, Colorado, alleged that Google has refused to take steps to thwart fraudulent advertising billing practices "even though the company was well aware of the practice." "We remain a member of the class and our click fraud claims against Google will still be litigated when and if the class is certified," Boyenger said. Click Defense said it was withdrawing after another potential plaintiff had stepped forward to act as representative plaintiff. On Wednesday, Advanced Internet Technology (AIT), a $34 million-a-year Internet service provider serving customers in the Middle Atlantic states and the Carolinas, said it planned to take over as lead plaintiff in the suit against Google. "(Click Defense) started down the road and got cold feet and we are jumping in their stead," Jay O'Dell, a sales executive with AIT, told Reuters by phone. Darren Kaplan, an attorney with the law firm Chitwood Harley Harnes LLP, remains plaintiff's counsel. A hearing on the motion for class certification in the Google click fraud case has been scheduled for May of 2006, Click Defense said. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. For more news headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html To discuss this item with other readers, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Zonk Subject: Many Domains Registered With False Data Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:05:15 -0600 Posted by Zonk on Thursday December 08, @01:01PM from the seekrit-webmaster-conspiracy dept. bakotaco writes "According to research carried out by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) many domain owners are hiding their true identity. The findings could mean that many websites are fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals. The report also found that measures to improve information about domain owners were not proving effective." From the article: "The GAO took 300 random domain names from each of the .com, .org and .net registries and looked up the centrally held information about their owners. Any user can look up this data via one of the many whois sites on the net. The report found that owner data for 5.14% of the domains it looked at was clearly fake as it used phone numbers such as (999) 999-9999; listed nonsense addresses such as 'asdasdasd' or used invalid zip codes such as 'XXXXX'. In a further 3.65% of domain owner records data was missing or incomplete in one or more fields." To discuss this matter further, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As the official Keeper of the Records, ICANN was asked for a comment on this report, but they refused any discussion of it. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 9th December 2005 Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 07:50:18 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] Virgin's Branson Confident NTL's Mobile Bid Will Go Ahead http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15161.php Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson said Thursday he is confident that NTL Inc.'s bid for Virgin Mobile Holdings U.K. PLC will go ahead. ... Qualcomm Raises 1Q View On Chip Shipments http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15163.php Qualcomm Inc. raised its outlook for first-quarter earnings based on growth in mobile station modem chip shipments. ... Ukraine's Kyivstar plans to invest over $600 mln in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15164.php Ukraine's leading mobile operator Kyivstar plans to invest over U.S. $600 million in the development of its network in 2006, compared with about $594 million allocated for this year, Telenor's CFO and Kyivstar's board of directors' member Torstein Mo... [[ Handsets ]] Nokia To Open Flagship Stores In "Shopping Capitals" http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15162.php Finland's Nokia Oyj Thursday said it would start a new multimedia retailing activity by opening several Flagship Stores in "shopping capitals of the world." ... [[ Network Contracts ]] Sprint Shakes Up, Expands Business Consulting Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15165.php Sprint Nextel Corp. is looking to expand its presence in the consulting business beyond advice and into implementation. ... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:23:48 -0600 From: Ron Kritzman Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell cnnmoney@telecom-digest.org wrote: SBC has joined forces with AT&T and taken its name ... Okay. Illinois Bell, Ameritech, SBC, and now AT&T, in area codes 312, 708 and 847. So I've had 4 phone companies 3 areacode swapped out from under me while living in the same house with the same phone number. What do I win? - Ron Emoveray ethay Igpay Atinlay otay eplyray [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You must apparently live in the north shore area of Chicago. (I assume they are still '847' or has that been changed as well?) PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 10:50:40 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update #509 From: Angus TeleManagement Group Reply-To: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 509: December 9, 2005 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Former Bell Exec to Head MTS-Allstream ** Alberta Plans Canada's First Wi-Max Net ** Yukon, NWT Get Wireless Competitor ** Shaw Quits Cable Association ** Cellphones Up 481,000 in Three Months ** Bell, March Ally for Surveillance ** Amtelecom Buys Rural Telco ** Competitors, Cablecos Battle over Voice QoS ** Rogers Wants Ban on Wireless Junk Voicemail ** Ontera Waives Charges for Kashechewan Customers ** Dog Days for Cellphones ** Wi-LAN, Cisco Settle Suit ** Globalstar Readies Satellite Launch ** Nortel Buys into Vodavi ** Court Approves TIW Payout ** Branson Says Virgin Deal "Close" ** Cogeco Sales, Profits Rise ** IIC Conference in Ottawa Next Week ============================================================ FORMER BELL EXEC TO HEAD MTS-ALLSTREAM: Pierre Blouin, former head of Bell Canada's consumer and wireless organizations, has been named CEO of MTS Allstream, Canada's third-largest telecom carrier. He replaces Bill Fraser, who previously announced his plan to retire. ** Blouin left Bell in September after a reorganization removed Bell Mobility from his portfolio. He had been with the telco for 20 years. (See Telecom Update #495) ALBERTA PLANS CANADA'S FIRST WI-MAX NET: The Alberta Special Areas Board has contracted with Nortel Networks and Netago Wireless to deploy what is believed to be the first commercial network in Canada based on the new Wi-Max standard. The network will bring high-speed Internet access (1 Mpbs to 3 Mbps) to about 80% of businesses and residences in rural parts of southeastern Alberta by the third quarter of 2006. YUKON, NWT GET WIRELESS COMPETITOR: Cellular competition began in Yukon this week when Ice Wireless Inc. launched service in Whitehorse. The Ice consortium plans to extend coverage soon to Yellowknife; one of its partners, New North Networks, has served Inuvik since 1999. Until now Bell Mobility has been the sole provider in most of the North. SHAW QUITS CABLE ASSOCIATION: Shaw Communications has resigned from the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, citing "divergent interests and different strategic objectives." The CCTA expressed regret and promised to continue "business as usual." CELLPHONES UP 481,000 IN THREE MONTHS: There are now more than 16 million cellphones in use in Canada. Figures compiled by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association show a net increase of 481,000 phones in the third quarter of 2005, and over a million in the first three quarters. ** Rogers added 402,000 subscribers in the first nine months of the year. Telus Mobility grew by 349,000; Bell/Aliant added 306,000. BELL, MARCH ALLY FOR SURVEILLANCE: Bell Canada and March Networks have formed a partnership to develop and market video surveillance applications in Canada. Development will take place at the Bell Advanced Solutions Innovations Centre in Ottawa, a joint venture of March's holding company and Bell. (See Telecom Update #500) AMTELECOM BUYS RURAL TELCO: Amtelecom, Ontario's third-largest independent telco, has bought the tenth-largest, People's Communications of Forest, for $21 million. Amtelecom gains about 5,000 phone subscribers, bringing its total to approximately 27,000. COMPETITORS, CABLECOS BATTLE OVER VOICE QoS: Cybersurf, supported by Vonage, Primus, and a coalition of Quebec ISPs (see Telecom Update #507), wants the CRTC to order Shaw, Rogers, and Videotron to make PacketCable functionality available to ISPs, and to require Shaw to allow competitors to resell a Quality of Service enhancement it currently markets to its own Internet customers. ** Videotron, the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, and Telus say such an order is unwarranted and would amount to a revision of the VoIP decision. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2005/8622/C122_200512716.htm ROGERS WANTS BAN ON WIRELESS JUNK VOICEMAIL: Rogers has asked the CRTC to prohibit "voicecasting" -- automatic delivery of unsolicited solicitations to voice mailboxes--to wireless customers. Rogers says its customers are irate about the cost and annoyance of receiving such messages. (See Telecom Update #452) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2005/8622/r11_200514936.htm ONTERA WAIVES CHARGES FOR KASHECHEWAN CUSTOMERS: Ontera, the provincially owned telco in northern Ontario, is waiving more than $12,000 in long distance and Internet charges for relocated residents of Kashechewan. DOG DAYS FOR CELLPHONES: Vancouver-based On4 Communications says it will introduce a $350 cellphone for dogs early in 2006. The bone-shaped PetCell, a GPS-equipped handsfree (pawsfree?) device, will enable owners to track runaway dogs, and allow them to talk to lonely home-alone pets. Calls to the dog-phone will require a passcode, to ensure the pet isn't bothered by wrong numbers and telemarketers. WI-LAN, CISCO SETTLE SUIT: Cisco Systems has purchased patents from Wi-LAN Inc, settling a suit for patent infringement filed by the Calgary wireless broadband developer in 2004. (See Telecom Update #439) GLOBALSTAR READIES SATELLITE LAUNCH: Globalstar has signed contracts with two European companies and obtained U.S. government approval to launch up to eight spare satellites in Kazakhstan, beginning in 2007. The satellite phone provider is also building a new satellite gateway in Wasilla, Alaska. NORTEL BUYS INTO VODAVI: In an SEC filing dated December 2, Nortel Networks says its Korean subsidiary has acquired 23.3% of the outstanding shares of Vodavi Technologies, an Arizona company that manufactures IP-based business telephone systems. COURT APPROVES TIW PAYOUT: Telesystem International Wireless, which is going out of business, has obtained court approval to distribute $259 million to shareholders. A further $27 million payout may follow. (See Telecom Update #502) BRANSON SAYS VIRGIN DEAL "CLOSE": Virgin Mobile Holdings has rejected NTL's offer to buy the cellco for US$1.4 billion, but Virgin's owner Richard Branson says the two sides are "quite close." In Canada, Virgin Mobile is a partnership between Branson's company and Bell. (See Telecom Update #427) COGECO SALES, PROFITS RISE: Cogeco Cable says that its digital and Internet customer base grew by 22.5% and 15.9%, respectively, in its 2005 fiscal year. Revenue increased 5.3%, to $554 million; net income was $28.7 million. IIC CONFERENCE IN OTTAWA NEXT WEEK: The Canadian Chapter of the International Institute of Communications is holding its fifth annual conference at the Ottawa Congress Centre on December 12-13. The theme of this year's meeting is "Broadband: Are We Ready?" See the IIC'S website for the conference agenda and registration information. http://www.iic-canada.ca ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca =========================================================== 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 late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. 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. ============================================================ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 13:34:27 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Alltel to Spin Off Landline Business USTelecom dailyLead December 9, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zNnwatagCAhfldDseX TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Alltel to spin off landline business BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * EA snaps up JAMDAT * Report: Cable penetration sagging * Cable's wireless dilemma * Free Wi-Fi becomes the norm * Alcatel projects big growth from mobile operations USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Voice Over IP Crash Course by Steven Shepard TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Yahoo! strikes cross-platform deal with Aussie broadcaster VOIP DOWNLOAD * BellSouth enhances enterprise VoIP offering * BT takes another step toward 21CN reality Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zNnwatagCAhfldDseX ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: 9 Dec 2005 10:04:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > "the new Ma Bell" Too many journalists writing about AT&T these days still use the term "Ma Bell". That's inaccurate. Ma Bell isn't going away, it's been long gone. "Ma Bell" referred to the old AT&T Bell System pre-divesture. It referred to the old system, somewhat negatively, of when Bell owned all equipment and long distance, and supplied 100% of customers needs. Once AT&T divested the local companies, it ceased being the old Ma Bell. It quickly evolved into other types of business. It even lost the "Bell" name. The old AT&T died at divesture. If anything, the term "Ma Bell" is more accurately applied to the divested companies since they still have monopoly control in some areas and operate more of the traditional services. They use the Bell name and logo. (Verizon still prints the "Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania" on its literature and puts the Bell logo on its payphones.) People, knowing my interest in telephones, ask me how I feel about "AT&T going away". I answer it went away long ago at divesture. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:58:04 EST Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question In a message dated Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:12:00 -0600, Neal McLain writes: > Advantage: This plan avoids two SxS taboos: subscriber numbers beginning > with 0 or 1: > - Initial 0 is taboo because "experience has shown that in a single- > office system it is not advisable to use subscribers' numbers > commencing with the numeral zero (0) unless absolutely necessary > to secure the desired capacity" [1]. And, of course, zero is > traditionally used to reach the local operator, if any. > - Initial 1 is taboo because an SxS (or any other rotary-dial) switch > can't distinguish between an intentionally-dialed 1 and a false > switchhook depression. > Disadvantage: It's not possible to match subscriber numbers to apartment > numbers (although, as PAT notes, this might not be a good idea anyway). > [1] Kempster B. Miller. "Telephone Theory and Practice" vol. 3 > "Automatic Switching and Auxiliary Equipment." New York: McGraw Hill, > 1933, p. 129. > Neal McLain The 1933 citation you mention, which I read in the 1940s, was really my introduction to how the telephone and telephone systems works, and definitely piqued my interest in the field. However, the 1 as initial digit taboo was reserched thoroughly when DDD was extended to customers through CAMAs in largely step-by-step exchanges, particularly in large cities that were primarily step-by-step. I forget how many million actually live calls were studied to determine how many of them had a false switchhook depression. There were none. Zero. Conventional wisdom was wrong. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I used to know someone who worked his away around the 'incoming calls only' rule on a telephone at the place where he lived. Although the phone did have dial tone, it also had a blank face plate, to avoid being able to dial outgoing calls, supposedly. His respose was to learn how to tap on the hook in the proper sequence and timing. Inconvenient to be sure, but it worked. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 15:50:42 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > This question is purely speculative only, not for real use. > Suppose we wanted to install a PABX using step-by-step gear in a condo > complex. We need 250 stations. My question regards the most > efficient station number assignments. > One person says the stations ought to have a four digit number that > corresponds to the apartment number. There are 19 buildings with > 10-15 units per building. So unit #103 would get phone number 0103 > and unit #1513 would be phone 1513. > While the above is easier to remember, wouldn't that be a waste of SxS > terminals and require more switch units without any gain in > efficiency? Isn't a four digit code inherently more complex than a > three digit in an SxS environment? I think the phone ought to be > numbered strictly sequentially, starting from 111 and going upward. A 'subset' 4-digit system (where all digits are in the range 1-4) would likely be the 'most efficient' hardware construct. this gives you 256 'numbers', which is a close match to your 250 station requirement. > The Bell System history talks about "graded multiples" to more > efficiently use trunks and switchgear in central offices, but I don't > think that would apply in this application. > Now if we wanted to implement the above using modern technology, would > only a PC be required with appropriate software and cards? I guess > we'd need capacity for about five conversations at once. Correct, one approach would be a _little_ PC (e.g. a 386 box), Asterisk software, and an appropriate number of line cards. And, of course, with computer-based system, you can assign 'dialable' numbers any way you want. You don't have any additional 'mechanical complexity' based on the length of the numbering plan. The problem is going to be in those 'line cards'. 250 'stations' requires 250 POTS ports on the 'switch'. Now, you _can_ get that many ports on the PC, no problem. A mere 3 quad-port T-1 cards does it. But then you need 11 "D-4" channel banks, or equivalent, to break those T-1s out to the individual POTS circuits. Then, if this is going to be more than an 'intercom' system, you need a bunch of 'trunk' lines to the C.O. '5 conversations' may be a reasonable 'average' usage (although it strikes me as _low_), but you'll need *several* times more than that to handle reasonable variability in call volumes. probably more like 50 (at least!) to handle 'reasonable' peak calling without having to give fast-busy, due to lack of 'trunk' circuits. ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:50:45 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing There's a very nice way to shut out all telemarketers. See if your LOC offers Do Not Disturb service. Do Not Disturb service, which is often *cheaper* than No Solicitation, can be set with a 24 hour/day "no-disturb" period. To ring your phone, the caller has to know a 4-digit password set by you. You can optionally allow "emergency calling" with "*", which requires the caller to state their name (and you get to hear that before deciding whether or not to allow the call to connect). You have to make sure that you do not have voice mail or other forwarding, since it will send your call to your voice mail if you do. An answering machine is OK. I've done this for over a year now, and the blessed silence from my landline phone has been delightful. The handful people who are authorized to call me all know the password; and it's easy enough to program it into the speed dial on most modern phones. You can also change the password at any time. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 14:53:33 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , William Warren wrote: > jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: >> Here is the problem, >> I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL >> connections to the internet and use these connections to provide >> internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of >> about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would >> like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I >> don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to >> balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). >> Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? >> -Jonathan > Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet > card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. > You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. This approach only solves "part" of the problem, namely 'outgoing' traffic. "Incoming" traffic is an entirely different problem. And load-balancing _that_ traffic cannot be done in anything approaching a satisfactory manner without 'help' from the 'upstream' end. And it requires that both DSL circuits terminate at the same 'upstream' provider. In article , jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: > I know nothing about setting up a server, so please pardon my > ignorance. Is there any reason why it needs to be a linux server? No, it *doesn't*have*to*be* "Linux". > Could it be Windows? It _could_. *BUT* the 'standard' routing code _in_the_kernel_ of most operating systems does =not= support multiple equal-priority routes to the same destination, *with* rotating use of those routes on a per-packet basis. Thus, you are _very_probably_ going to have to modify the relevant pieces of the O/S kernel to accomplish this 'ping-pong' load-balancing. Doing those modification is _much_ easier if you have the source-code for the O/S available. If you can get access from Microsoft, go for it. > Where can I get further information about setting up a server and > modifying the route tables? "If you have to ask ..." about basics like that, you should _not_ be attempting this on your own. This kind of exotic tweaking _does_ call for a "guru". Hire a professional to explain to you what this approach _will_ accomplish, and what it will *not* accomplish. There are a _lot_ of things to take into consideration that have not even been _touched_ on in this discussion, before concluding that this approach is viable for what you "really" want to accomplish. e.g. do you want to load-balance 'incoming' or 'outgoing' traffic, or "both"? Also, what proportion of the total traffic will be 'incoming', and how much will be 'outgoing'? Also _where_ will the 'far end' of the traffic be going -- is it "anywhere on the Internet" (as in a 'Internet cafe' environment), or is it all to a _single_ place (as in a 'remote' office, just needing connectivity back to the big computers at 'headquarters')? Will this be TCP traffic, or UDP traffic? will TCP 'connections' be long-lived, or very transient? *ALL* of those things affect the nature of the 'solution' to load-balancing traffic loads that is 'right' for _your_ situation. > William Warren wrote: >> jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: >>> Here is the problem, >>> I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL >>> connections to the internet and use these connections to provide >>> internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of >>> about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would >>> like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I >>> don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to >>> balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). >>> Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? >>> -Jonathan >> Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet >> card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. >> You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. >> Best of luck. >> William ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Communications History Date: 9 Dec 2005 07:34:06 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dave Marthouse wrote: > Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be appreciated to > help scratch my historical itch. I pulled up the Bell System Eng & Science history and there is an extensive chapter on radiotelephony and overseas calls. They go into good detail on the technical challenges of high powered transmitters, greatly varying originating voice signal strength, amplification, echo control, 2-wire to 4-wire conversion, antenna design and construction, signal propagation, etc. It is in the first volume of the series, 1875-1925. I strongly recommend it*. A large muncipal or college library likely would have it. As mentioned, they used both high and low frequency depending on conditions. Channel capacity was very limited. It appears that functions of radio transmission we take for granted today all had to be worked out by them. It amazes me that a tiny little cell phone can do everything (although at much lower power) they needed to do to send and receive a telephone radio signal. They DID use a basic encryption to provide some privacy by inverting some frequency bands and "wobbling". As mentioned, a determined listener could bypass that but a cascual listener would not hear intelligable conversation. The book goes into detail on this process. *I also recommend Vol 2 which covers 1925-1975. Lots of interesting stuff on switching development. Vol 3 covers military applications which I didn't find so interesting but there are chapters on military radio development. At the beginning of WW II they experimented with both AM and FM vehicle radios to see what was best. They also talk about the challenges of dealing with sub-contractors meeting demanding military specs. Equipment for the domestic market simply would quickly break in the rough military environment. ------------------------------ From: CmdrTaco Subject: Last Laugh! RSStroom Reader Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:11:06 -0600 Get RSS Feeds on Your Toilet Paper Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 08, @02:29PM from the raising-the-bullshit-detector dept. 0110011001110101 writes "A crazy new product out of Taiwan seems to be aimed at the feed dependent of us out there. The 'rsstroom reader' is a bathroom gadget that prints news feeds onto your T-P -- that's right, your TOILET PAPER! The best part is the "biometrics" toilet seat that'll figure out who you are based on your weight and prints the news you want -- not your roommates tabloid garbage. Going to the rsstroom will never be boring again! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you know how to program this RSS reader, fine, but if you do not, the vendor will ship it to you pre-programmed with certain 'factory default' settings regards the RSS feeds, based on 'average' weight and posture on the toilet seat, and including such gems of RSS feeds as Slate, PC World Communications and Telecom Digest. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #555 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 9 21:37:42 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E90B01504D; Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:37:41 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #556 Message-Id: <20051210023741.E90B01504D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:37:41 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.2 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, INFO_TLD,MAILTO_TO_REMOVE autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:40:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 556 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Two NYC Workers Accused of Stealing 9-11 Funds (Associate Press NewsWire) One in Four Netters Recieve Phony E-Mail (Jennifer C. Kerr) Verizon Wireless to Deliver CBS Clips to Phones (Reuters News Wire) US Air Force to Guard Cyberspace (Grant Gross, IDG News) Businesses Rush for '.eu' Domains (Associated Press News Wire) 'Always On' Internet (AFP News Wire) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Joe Morris) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Arthur Kamlet) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (James Carlson) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Two NYC Workers Accused of Stealing 9-11 Funds Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:31:21 -0600 Two former employees in the city medical examiner's office were charged with embezzling millions of dollars intended to help identify victims of the World Trade Center attack. Natarajan R. Venkataram, 41, and Rosa Abreu, 38, were arrested Wednesday. "These defendants breached their positions of trust and responsibility and took advantage of a national tragedy," said Rose Gill Hearn, city commissioner of investigation. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency forwarded millions of dollars to help the medical examiner buy computer hardware, software and support services to identify the dead. Prosecutors said Friday that the defendants, both administrators in the medical examiner's office, steered an $11.4 million contract to a company controlled by an associate of Venkataram's. The company did some work, but most of the money went to companies that did little or nothing and were sometimes controlled by the defendants, prosecutors said. About $5.5 million was allegedly transferred at Venkataram's direction to bank accounts in India. A lawyer for Venkataram declined to comment. Abreu's attorney did not immediately return a call. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. For more Associated Press headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html Discuss this event in our forum: http://telecom-digest.org/forum.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not know if this is a new record for thievery where municipal employees are concerned or not. I do know that in 1996-97 several employees of the Chicago Transit Authority absconded with several million dollars -- a couple hundred dollars at a time -- from CTA on an almost daily basis. Although you might think the biggest heists each day would be at the money counting room, 77th and Vincennes bus barn where several routes terminated each day -- and workers there were commonly walking away with a fist full of dollar bills routinely -- and not to take them to the bank! -- the subway fare collecting agents had a good racket going also: Sitting in their cage, they'd collect fares from passers by but then fail to register the fare. They were supposed to (older style) pull an overhead strap which caused a bell to ring, flashed a light and unlocked the turnstile. The newer sytem had them punch a button on a keyboard which in turn rang the bell, turned a red light (stop!) to green to allow passengers to walk through the temporarily opened gate, etc. Then each day at the end of their shift they would 'read the meter' in the presence of the employee who was relieving them, take all the money away to be audited elsewhere (probably 77th and Vincennes). That was supposed to be the CTA audit trail on fares collected. Trouble is, the employees learned they could (instead of ringing the 'fare paid' button they could instead ring the 'monthly pass presented' key, or the 'employee pass' key or a couple others which would unlock the turnstile and flash a light but _not_ show up on the fare collected register. That money was of course, their take. The night shift agents at State Street and Jackson/Van Buren downtown between them pulled about a million dollars over two years before they got caught. For about a year in the time period 1988-90 I was employed as a 'rider' -- in CTA parlance, a 'rider' is an 'ignorant' old man or an old 'shopping bag' woman, also allegedly too old and mentally feeble to know what was happening. Objective: _always_ pay with cash, _always_ rush through the gates, _never_ pay attention to anything, (or so the collection agents were to think) but really, out of the corner of your beady eyes notice if the _right_ lights flashed on the gates, the register incremented your trip, etc. Other 'riders' were to deliberatly find a reason to pick a fight with the collection agent or bus driver, or train conductor, etc and see how they responded. It helped a lot if the 'rider' was unshaven, had body odor, and, just in general, acted ignorant. The CTA employees were not to think that a 'rider' was anyone of any consequence, obviously. Jackson/Van Buren subway _did_ have a lot of strange people boarding the train there anyway, so I did not look out of place, and I did work downtown on the late shift for that department store (where I took care of their PBX/centrex) so several nights per week I was an ideal person (in CTA's view) to 'ride' through that station. You were _never_ to reveal anything about yourself to the fare collector, etc, just toss your money in at her and shove your way along. If you had anything to talk or snitch about, you were to do that by calling a certain private, non-published direct phone line in someone's office at CTA, the same as Walmart does it now with their 'mystery shoppers'. But I had this one situation; the fare collector acted _so ignorant_; was _so brazen_ in her thievery (she hit me three times in one week for my fare during the late night hours); I just could not resist telling her off good. A middle-age black lady; she impresed me that she was into drugs as a spare time thing. Monday and Tuesday she grabbed at my money as I stuck it in the cage at her and did 'monthly pass' to open the gate. I said nothing, just catalogued it away, and continued on my trip home. I did not go to work Wednesday, but went in Thursday night, and I do not remember why, exactly, but she did or said something to another passenger which really annoyed me, so when she hit me on my fare again (used the employee free ride) to open the gates that night, I decided to call her on it. I had seen her do the same thing for two riders ahead of me in line that night, so I decided to have fun with her. She rang 'employee free' on my fare, the light turned green, instead of walking through I just stood there and said to her 'why did you ring me like that? do it correctly'. All real nasty and authoritarian she ordered me 'keep moving, do not hold up the line'. I told her when you _ring my fare correctly_ I will move along, not before. She came up with a lame excuse about how she had 'earlier double rang a fare and wanted to make up for the resulting shortage.' I told her 'you have a pad of Form (whatever) in there to be used in that case. On the Form, you write down the money amount (usually 90 cents for one fare), you initial it and ask the passenger to also scribble his initials there, _then_ you open the gate with the mis-ring key and you turn in that scrap of paper with your work for the night, that is how you do it.' Now she was furious! "You hurry up and get through the gate or I will call the police and have you arrested!" I told her "you just do that ... go ahead and call police, do you want to use the phone there in the cage or would you prefer I call them from the payphone over there on the wall? But if _I_ call, then I will also call the fare collector supervisor over at State/Lake Street and tell her about it also." Now she knew I had to know _something_ about the 'system' and she thought about that for a minute and decided it would probably be best to not get police or her supervisors involved. She ripped off one of the 'fare adjustment' forms from the pad of same, filled in the amount of the fare shoved it out the window at me and said 'put your name on here', with a very angry look on her face (at being caught). I just was _not_ going to let that one go through, so the next morning I called the private, unlisted phone number at the Merchandise Mart (CTA headquarters) and told the man all about it. I told the gentleman about it, he said that he had heard 'other hearsay reports about that same lady' so he figured it was about time to hit her with a bunch of 'riders'; several 'riders' each night for a week or two, so I can 'catch her in the act and she won't be able to deny it.' I guess the collection fare person had never had so many old bag-ladies and smelly, unshaven old men come past her booth in one night before. About a month later, I got a call from someone at CTA who identified himself as 'the agent supervisor'. It was a very short phone call and got right to the point: "you remember about a month ago when you called here and made a complaint about Agent (number)?" I said I did, and his reply was "you were right. I fired her yesterday, she went to the Union to file grievance. The Union told her, 'we would help you, but CTA has been on our case lately for defending so many people who have been alleged to steal from them.' So, I think the Bitch is out of here, and chances are the Authority will have an indictment for her sometime real soon." NOTE: The CTA is itself a quasi government in the Chicago area. Not a government _agency_ but a _government_, with the power to fine, indict, prosecute, etc. Her, and 'her kind' took CTA for several million dollars as best as anyone was ever able to figure out. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jennifer C. Kerr Subject: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:40:29 -0600 About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting consumers, a study says. Of those receiving the phony e-mails, most thought they might be from legitimate companies -- seven in 10, or 70 percent, were fooled by the e-mails, said the report. The study released Wednesday by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance looked at Internet security and "phishing scams." Phishing refers to e-mails that appear to come from banks or other trusted businesses and are used to induce recipients to verify their accounts by typing personal details, such as credit card information, into a Web site disguised to appear legitimate. "What's happening is that more and more people are actually engaging in transactions online that would generate e-mail traffic that the scammers are copycatting," said Tatiana Platt, senior vice president at AOL. The study found nearly three-quarters of those surveyed, 74 percent, use their computers for sensitive transactions such as banking, stock trading or reviewing medical information. That leaves phishers with a good chunk of Internet users to target, Platt said. Platt said too many people still don't have adequate computer security to guard against viruses, hackers and other threats. The study found 81 percent of home PCs lacked at least one of three critical protections -- updated antivirus software, spyware protection and a secure firewall. The researchers conducted in-home interviews with more than 350 Internet users nationwide. The researchers also reviewed the e-mails received by those households. The Federal Trade Commission has several tips to keep from getting hooked by phishers: _If you get an e-mail asking for personal information, call the company directly or type in the company's correct Web address. Do not click on the link provided in the e-mail. _Use antivirus software and a firewall. This can protect a user from accepting unwanted files that could harm a computer or track a consumer's Internet activities. _Don't e-mail personal or financial information. ___ On the Net: National Cyber Security Alliance: http://www.staysafeonline.info Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html To discuss phishing on the net, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Verizon Wireless to Deliver CBS Clips to Phones Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:47:28 -0600 Verizon Wireless plans to start sending clips of popular CBS shows "CSI," "Survivor" and "Late Show with David Letterman" to mobile phones, marking CBS's first foray into wireless video, the companies said on Wednesday. The clips will be available to customers of Verizon Wireless's V Cast video service and are aimed at luring more consumers to use a high-speed wireless network it is building. Mobile providers are moving beyond traditional phone calls in the hope of boosting revenue with features like video. TV networks like CBS see this trend as a way to win new viewers and give new options to existing ones. Some, like NBC, are also making agreements with Apple Computer Inc. to have whole shows or clips run on its video iPod device. While the iPod needs to be connected to a computer for video downloads, clips are delivered to cellphones wirelessly. Rather than airing full shows, V Cast will carry shorter clips, including part of Letterman's monologue from "Late Show" and highlights from other shows. It will run preview clips of CBS series "CSI" and "Survivor." Customers will also start receiving video news segments from CBS News and Paramount TV's "Entertainment Tonight," the companies said. The news clips will include breaking news as well as features from "CBS Evening News" and "The Early Show." CBS, now a unit of Viacom Inc., will become a publicly traded company next year; Paramount TV is also a Viacom unit. Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc. Reuters/VNU Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. ------------------------------ From: Grant Gross Subject: US Air Force to Guard Cyberspace Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:49:17 -0600 by Grant Gross, IDG News Service WASHINGTON-- The U.S. Air Force's goals now include "fighting" in cyberspace, according to a new mission statement released this week. A cyberspace security responsibility was newly included in the mission statement, released Wednesday. The new mission statement, intended to set the current and future direction of the Air Force, reads: "The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace." A story on the Air Force Web site quotes a letter to airmen from Michael Wynne, secretary of the Air Force, and Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, saying U.S. enemies will use any means to strike at the country and it is the Air Force's calling to "dominate" air, space and cyberspace. Details Promised The Air Force is the first of the five branches of the U.S. military to include fighting in cyberspace as part of its core mission. However, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has advocated training the military to also defend cyberspace. The government has also warned of potential virtual attacks in response to conventional military action. "We have quite a few of our Airmen dedicated to cyberspace ... from security awareness, making sure the networks can't be penetrated, as well as figuring out countermeasures," the Air Force-written story quotes Wynne as saying. "The Air Force is a natural leader in the cyber world and we thought it would be best to recognize that talent." An Air Force spokesperson declined to further elaborate, saying Wynne was tentatively scheduled to talk about the new mission statement in a press conference next week. The term, "sovereign options," was also new to the mission statement, according to the Air Force Web site. Copyright 2005 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. To read stories in USA Today, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder if this means that someday, Air Force guys will investigate hackers, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Associated Press NewsWire Subject: Businesses Rush For '.eu' Domain Names Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:51:07 -0600 European businesses rushed to sign up for the new ".eu" Internet domain name, putting in 100,000 Web site applications by the end of its first day available, the group in charge of registering the requests said Thursday. Businesses and public bodies were able to sign up for the new European Union Internet address starting Wednesday morning, and they did so with haste. They filed 40,503 applications within the first 15 minutes of availability -- hitting a top speed of 60 requests per second -- according to the European Registry of Internet Domain Names, or EURid, the nonprofit organization in charge of handling requests. That number had nearly doubled by the end of the first hour, when 80,000 applications had been received. By the end of the day, "sex.eu" was the most requested name, with 213 applicants bidding for it, followed by "hotel.eu" and "travel.eu." Other popular site names included jobs, casino, poker, golf, music and porn, followed by the new ".eu" domain. The Web site names were handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, with German enterprises filing the most requests, EURid said. France and the Netherlands rounded off the top three countries most eager to sign up for the new domain. Until now, Europeans had to choose between a national domain such as ".fr" for France or a global one like ".com," often seen as American. Richard More O'Ferrall, spokesman for the EU small business lobby UEAPME, said the ".eu" name could be useful for European companies. "It broadens your appeal and the appeal of your product across Europe," he said. "You have something that identifies you with the EU." Though many are not yet up and running, new domain names can be used immediately but not everyone is allowed to register names during this sunrise period. Only registered trademark owners, government agencies and companies may sign up during the registration round that began Wednesday. On Feb. 2, ".eu" opens up to family names. General registration begins April 7, but only to people who live in the European Union and to companies with headquarters or branches inside the 25-nation bloc. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. For more headlines from Associated Press, listen to Telecom Digest News Radio: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/TDNewsradio.html (and also) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/Fednews.html ------------------------------ From: AFP News Wire Subject: 'Always on' Internet Changing American Life Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:52:42 -0600 "Always on" broadband Internet hook-ups are transforming American life, empowering grass roots politics, moulding new work and shopping habits and bringing far flung families closer. A major new survey published Wednesday also found that the most explosive growth in online time was among low income web surfers, who had previously been excluded from the Internet revolution. "The Internet has clearly matured across all segments of American society," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the University of South California Annenberg School Center for the Digital future, which conducted the survey. The project, the fifth annual release of the study, yielded "extraordinary findings about how the Internet continues to change America," Cole said. In 2005, more Americans than ever before were on the Internet -- 78 percent of the population -- and their use of the medium rose to an average of 13.3 hours a week. For the first time, a broadband connection is the most popular way for US users to access the web -- 48 percent compared to the 45 percent of users still drumming their fingers as their computer labors through a dial up process. "It is really the always on (factor) which changes our relationship with the Internet long term," Cole said, at an advance briefing on the report for congressional staffers last week. Whereas dial-up consumers typically get online two to three times per day for around 30 minutes, those with broadband links frequently log on to check news, shop or to chase down information, Cole said. E-mail remains the most popular online activity, followed by general web surfing, reading news, shopping and entertainment -- and only 27 percent of users said they would give up the Internet over their cell phone or television. Internet use is also becoming more available across the economic digital divide. In 2005, Internet use among those with incomes of less than 30,000 dollars rose to 61 percent, after hovering around 50 percent for four years. "The fastest growing use of the Internet is among those with the lowest income," said Cole. The survey also found online campaigning is transforming US politics and empowering individual voters dwarfed by the might of the print and broadcast media. The online revolution could even allow a third-party candidate to break the two-party Republican/Democrat monopoly of US politics, said Cole. "The Internet will forever change the course and nature of American politics. "The Internet is no longer a marginal force in American politics -- it is quickly becoming the central force in empowering voters," Cole said. Cole said at the congressional briefing that 40 percent of Internet users now believe going online can give people more political power. A majority of Internet users told the survey that the Internet was having no influence on the time they were spending with family and friends. But 40 percent said it had increased contact with close relatives and friends. The web is also playing an important role in keeping members of the US military, many fighting far flung conflicts, in touch with their families back home, the survey said. Copyright 2005 Agence France Presse. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Agence Presse France. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: 9 Dec 2005 13:11:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks to all who responded. Interesting observations. Neal McLain wrote: > The most "efficient" numbering plan (least amount of equipment) would be > to assign extension numbers in three 3-digit ranges: That's what I thought. > This arrangement provides a total of 300 lines, enough to accommodate > 250 apartments with spares for other uses (office, maintenance room, > loading dock, etc.). In my hypothetical example, I envision a copious amount of "house phones" throughout the community, such as in front of each building, at the pool, etc. > Disadvantage: It's not possible to match subscriber numbers to apartment > numbers (although, as PAT notes, this might not be a good idea anyway). I agree for security and privacy reasons it is better NOT to have matching intercom and apt numbers. If you want to call a specific person, you should know their number. > [1] Kempster B. Miller. "Telephone Theory and Practice" vol. 3 > "Automatic Switching and Auxiliary Equipment." New York: McGraw Hill, > 1933, p. 129. Thanks for the above book reference. Is it hard to find? Seems worthwhile to check it out. Regarding other comments, I envisioned this to be a private system only without any outside connection. This would keep it simple and for internal use only. One friend suggested having a manual switchboard instead. I realized there are two neighbors who would love to do that. They'd be good at it because, how can I say this, they know everyone's whereabouts and business at all times. So if you want to call Mr. Smith but he's away, these neighbors will already know where Mr. Smith is, what he is doing, whether or not Mrs. Smith is aware of it, etc., as well as the status of each and every other neighbor in the complex. Not that they would gossip or listen in on calls, they would NEVER EVER do that. I happened to meet a retired Bell Telephone craftsmen and mentioned my idea. He thought I was crazy. He pointed out the immense wiring and maintenance needs of an SxS plant. That made me realize and appreciate how far we've come with electronics, and how complex the old Bell System was to build and run. It's relatively easy for us today to pop in an electronic box and have fancy phone service. It's totally another to bring together expensive and complex SxS gear to provide service reliably. My application is pretty basic as phone applications go, but we can see it would still take some serious engineering and planning. Switches, wiring, and footprint are all expensive and we don't want a 2,000 sqft room when a 500 sq ft one will do. Modern technology has made the need for such a system obsolete. Years ago fine apartment buildings had separate house phone systems -- more than a plain intercom -- so the office or doormen could check in with an apt or vice versa. Many people had message rate service* and a PBX was a free call to call neighbors. Some buildings had answering service switchboards which I believe Pat worked with. Anyway, today call waiting or multiple individual phone lines eliminated the need for a separate system. Cell phones and portable cordless phones eliminate the need for outside and house phones -- people have their cordless or cell phones with them and won't miss an incoming call. Ironically the switching cost of such a system would be cheap today but we don't even need it. Years ago I stayed in a Miami hotel. A big function of the PBX operators was paging guests who weren't in their room. The hotel PA system covered all public areas. House phones were liberally placed all over the hotel; I remember the pool area having numerous outdoor telephone boxes (and thinking that kind of coverage was pretty neat). The hotel PBX was a high 3 position manual board with two multiples of the extension bank. Very small motels would have a small cord switchboard handled by the desk clerk, but anything larger had at least one full time operator, maybe several. Actually in hindsight the constant paging on the PA system was a bit tiring to other guests. I wonder if resort hotels still bother to do that, or simply route to the room's voice mail. Today hotels have a tiny little console the desk clerk handles in his spare time. Some are centrex with the room numbers matching the telephone extension. However, I was surprised recently when visiting a friend in the hospital how often the PA system was used to page doctors. Way back when I worked in a hospital they were converting to pagers; I presume all doctors and key staff would carry them now. Bell had a "meet me page" in the 1970s where the paged person would dial a special extension and be automatically connected with the incoming call instead of the operator manipulating cords. *Message rate service is still offered today. But the price of a message unit has remained stable -- 7c in my area -- for years, 7c in 1965 was more like 70c. Further today they give off peak discounts so a weekend call might only be 3c. ------------------------------ From: Joe Morris Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 22:29:52 UTC Organization: The MITRE Organization TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Wesrock@aol.com: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I used to know someone who worked his > away around the 'incoming calls only' rule on a telephone at the place > where he lived. Although the phone did have dial tone, it also had a > blank face plate, to avoid being able to dial outgoing calls, > supposedly. His response was to learn how to tap on the hook in the > proper sequence and timing. Inconvenient to be sure, but it worked. PAT] And I'm sure you remember the little "dial lock" gizmos that were clamped into the "1" fingerhole and were supposed to keep people from making outbound calls on an unattended office telephone? It seems that nobody ever thought about dialing with the switchhook -- or just banging away with ten or more pulses and asking the operator for assistance. Joe Morris ------------------------------ From: kamlet@panix.com (Arthur Kamlet) Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:25:17 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: ArtKamlet@aol.REMOVE.com In article , wrote: > "Ma Bell" referred to the old AT&T Bell System pre-divesture. It > referred to the old system, somewhat negatively, of when Bell owned > all equipment and long distance, and supplied 100% of customers needs. > Once AT&T divested the local companies, it ceased being the old Ma > Bell. It quickly evolved into other types of business. It even lost > the "Bell" name. Except that AT&T fought for and succeeded in keeping the name: Bell Laboratories. Not until AT&T spun off Western Electric and Bell Labs, soon renamed Lucent Technologies, did Lucent's managers manage to screw up Bell Labs. Art Kamlet ArtKamlet @ AOL.com Columbus OH K2PZH ------------------------------ From: James Carlson Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: 09 Dec 2005 17:35:20 -0500 Organization: Sun Microsystems bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: > "Incoming" traffic is an entirely different problem. And > load-balancing _that_ traffic cannot be done in anything approaching a > satisfactory manner without 'help' from the 'upstream' end. Indeed. > And it requires that both DSL circuits terminate at the same > 'upstream' provider. Not necessarily. There are at least two other possibilities here, both of which allow for connections to multiple providers: - NAT in use, and load balancing on a per-connection basis. This automatically balances the return traffic as well, as everyone on the net thinks you're actually two separate independent IP nodes. - You're a big company and you can afford to arrange BGP peering with the ISPs and inject routes into the backbone. There are others as well that involve just living with the fact that you'll appear to be separate nodes on the net, and remaining multihomed -- this is what you'd probably do if you were doing this for (say) a web server with multiple A records. > *BUT* the 'standard' routing code _in_the_kernel_ of most operating > systems does =not= support multiple equal-priority routes to the same > destination, *with* rotating use of those routes on a per-packet > basis. Doing it on a per-packet basis ("round robin") is a mistake. It causes poor performance by reordering packets and often causes trouble with various middleboxes. Instead, you want to hash based on flow identification, which some systems can do. James Carlson, KISS Network Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 9 Dec 2005 14:53:06 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mark Crispin wrote: > There's a very nice way to shut out all telemarketers. > See if your LOC offers Do Not Disturb service. > Do Not Disturb service, which is often *cheaper* than No Solicitation, > can be set with a 24 hour/day "no-disturb" period. To ring your > phone, the caller has to know a 4-digit password set by you. It's a great idea, but wouldn't work for us who have so many lame- brained friends who would never remember any code. We can't even get our friends to remember to change their email addressbook when we change our email provider. There is also an item called "Caller ID Manager" from Privacy Corps. It looks like a separate Caller ID box, but can be set to block whatever numbers you program into it, including all 800 numbers, all 888 numbers, unidentified numbers, etc. Costs about $100. From the description, it looks like it works on one phone and one would have to add "remotes" for other phones. (Google it). I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. Lena ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #556 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Dec 10 22:56:24 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 383ED14EA1; Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:56:23 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #557 Message-Id: <20051211035623.383ED14EA1@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:56:23 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, RISK_FREE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:00:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 557 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Economist.com How the Internet Killed the Phone (Marcus Didius Falco) The Meaning of Free Speech Economist.com (Marcus Didius Falco) Foreign Residential Listing (Verizon Again) (Fred Atkinson) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Fred Atkinson) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (harold@hallikainen) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Robert Bonomi) Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (Barry Margolin) Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (Scott Dorsey) Re: Many Domains Registered With False Data (Robert Bonomi) Re: Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? (Robert Bonomi) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Steve Sobol) Re: MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers (Robert Bonomi) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:58:02 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Economist.com How the Internet Killed the Phone http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3DE1_QQDTVJQ http://economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=3D4401594 Economist.com Telecoms and the internet From The Economist print edition Almost-free internet phone calls herald the slow death of traditional telephony THE term 'disruptive technology' is popular, but is widely misused. It refers not simply to a clever new technology, but to one that undermines an existing technology and which therefore makes life very difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of doing things. Twenty years ago, the personal computer was a classic example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing, and eventually brought IBM, one of the world's mightiest firms at the time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for another disruptive technology, voice over internet protocol (VOIP), which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit to consumers, than personal computers (see article). VOIP's leading proponent is Skype, a small firm whose software allows people to make free calls to other Skype users over the internet, and very cheap calls to traditional telephones -- all of which spells trouble for incumbent telecoms operators. On September 12th, eBay, the leading online auction-house, announced that it was buying Skype for $2.6 billion, plus an additional $1.5 billion if Skype hits certain performance targets in coming years. This seems a vast sum to pay for a company that has only $60m in revenues and has yet to turn a profit. Yet eBay was not the only company interested in buying Skype. Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Google were all said to have also considered the idea. Perhaps eBay, rather like some over-excited bidder in one of its own auctions, has paid too much. The company says it plans to use Skype's technology to make it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate, and to offer new =93click to call advertisements, but many analysts are sceptical that eBay is the best owner of Skype. Whatever the merits of the deal, however, the fuss over Skype in recent weeks has highlighted the significance of VOIP, and the enormous threat it poses to incumbent telecoms operators. For the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than the death of the traditional telephone business, established over a century ago. Skype is merely the most visible manifestation of a dramatic shift in the telecoms industry, as voice calling becomes just another data service delivered via high-speed internet connections. Skype, which has over 54m users, has received the most attention, but other firms routing calls partially or entirely over the internet have also signed up millions of customers. A price of zero. The ability to make free or almost-free calls over a fast internet connection fatally undermines the existing pricing model for telephony. If you believe that you should not have to pay for making phone calls in future, just as you don't pay to send e-mail, says Skype's co-founder, Niklas Zennstrom. That means not just the end of distance and time-based pricing it also means the slow death of the trillion-dollar voice-telephony market, as the marginal price of making phone calls heads inexorably downwards. VOIP makes possible more than just lower prices, however. It also means that, provided you have a broadband connection, you can choose from a number of providers of VOIP telephony and related add-on services, such as voicemail, conference calling or video. Many providers allow a VOIP account to be associated with a traditional telephone number or with multiple numbers. So you can associate a San Francisco number, a New York number and a London number with your computer or VOIP phone and then be reached via a local call by anyone in any of those cities. Furthermore, your phone (or computer) will ring wherever you are in the world, as soon as it is plugged into the internet. So you can take your Madrid number with you to Mumbai, or your San Francisco number to Shanghai. Skype and other VOIP services, in other words, are leading to lower prices, more choice and greater flexibility. It is great news for consumers but terrible for telecoms operators. What can they do? Watching the elephants dance As is always the case with a disruptive technology, the incumbents it threatens are dividing into those who are trying to block the new technology in the hope that it will simply go away, and those who are moving to embrace it even though it undermines their existing businesses. Since VOIP will cause revenue from voice calls to wither away, the most vulnerable operators are those that are most dependent on such revenue. In particular, that means mobile operators, which have been struggling for years to get their subscribers to spend more on data services, but are still hugely dependent on voice. Worse, the very third generation (3G) networks that are supposed to provide future growth for these firms could now undermine them, because such networks make mobile VOIP possible too. Least vulnerable, by contrast, are those fixed-line operators that are now building new networks based on internet technology, which will enable such firms to benefit from the greater efficiency and lower cost of VOIP compared with traditional telephony. These operators are taking an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach and getting into the VOIP business. While their voice revenues will slowly evaporate, they will then be well placed to offer fee-based add-on services over their new networks. Again, this is a common pattern with disruptive technologies: forward-looking incumbents can end up giving upstart innovators a run for their money. It is now no longer a question of whether VOIP will wipe out traditional telephony, but a question of how quickly it will do so. People in the industry are already talking about the day, perhaps only five years away, when telephony will be a free service offered as part of a bundle of services as an incentive to buy other things such as broadband access or pay-TV services. VOIP, in short, is completely reshaping the telecoms landscape. And that is why so many people have been making such a fuss over Skype, a small company, yes, but one that symbolises a massive shift for a trillion-dollar industry. Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Economist.com For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:58:46 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: The Meaning of Free Speech Economist.com http://economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3DE1_QQDDSDQ http://economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=3D4400704 Sep 15th 2005 | LONDON AND SAN FRANCISCO From The Economist print edition The acquisition by eBay of Skype is a helpful reminder to the world's trillion-dollar telecoms industry that all phone calls will eventually be free NIKLAS Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, which distributes software that lets people make free calls from their computers to other Skype users anywhere in the world, don't usually travel to America. Legally, they probably could. But they prefer to avoid that jurisdiction, since they also founded (and subsequently sold) KaZaA, a peer-to-peer software company whose product many people use to share copyrighted songs. So setting foot in America could invite some legal trouble. This does not mean, however, that they cannot appear at conferences in Silicon Valley, where Skype which uses the same basic idea of KaZaA, but applies it mainly to voice communication=97is considered the next big thing. Thus, in July, Mr Zennstrom appeared, via a Skype video call, on the screen of a packed auditorium at Stanford University, while sitting in Estonia next to Tim Draper, a venture capitalist who invested $10m in Skype. Mr Draper is the ultimate loud American, whereas Mr Zennstrom is a sombre Swede. He's already taken down one industry and he's on to the next one, hollered Mr Draper referring to recording studios and telecoms companies. Mr Zennstrom started shifting uncomfortably. I never wanna sell my stock until it's a hundred billion, Mr Draper yelled, then started singing and dancing. The blushing Mr Zennstrom was speechless. Of course, Mr Draper was posturing. That became clear on September 12th, when Skype announced that it had agreed to be taken over by eBay, based in Silicon Valley and the world's largest online marketplace. Mr Draper and Skype's other investors will get nothing like $100 billion, but eBay is paying a hefty sum $2.6 billion in cash and shares and perhaps more if certain criteria are met nonetheless. This pairing took many people by surprise. There have been rumours that Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies were also interested in buying Skype. Any of these might have made a more obvious fit, since each also has instant-messaging software that can be used for free phone calls (or 'voice chats', as opposed to text chats) between computers. Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, launched its own voice-chat software in August. A week later, Microsoft bought Teleo, a San Francisco company that lets people call conventional telephones from their computers (as Skype also does, for $0.02 a minute). Yahoo! had already bought Dialpad, another Skype-like firm, in June. AOL, Apple and others have similar products. As Meg Whitman, eBay's boss, and Mr Zennstrom explain it, a combination of eBay and Skype is not all that far-fetched. From eBay's point of view, placing cute Skype buttons on the web pages where people trade used cars, houses and other items that usually require voice bargaining =93reduces friction=94, says Ms Whitman. Buyers can simply click on the button and talk to sellers. Another idea is to make money from 'pay-per-call' advertising, where advertisers would place voice links (ie, Skype buttons) on certain pages just as they now place text links on, say, the search-results pages of Google. Whenever a web surfer clicks on one of these links and talks to a salesperson, the advertiser would pay eBay and Skype a fee. Google got rich by doing this in the text world; there is no reason why eBay might not be able to do it in the voice world. From Skype's point of view, the deal strengthens its existing link with PayPal, eBay's online bank, which it uses to charge for services such as calls from computers to conventional telephones (called SkypeOut) or from conventional phones into Skype (called SkypeIn). This involves prepaid accounts, which Skype users can top up via PayPal with their credit cards. For Skype, however, the main attraction may be that eBay, unlike the other potential suitors, plans to leave it largely alone, both as a brand and as a business. When Yahoo! and Microsoft buy companies, they typically disintegrate them, says Mr Zennstrom. His vision for Skype, by contrast, is to become the world's biggest and best platform for all communications 'text, voice or video' from any internet-connected device, whether a computer or a mobile phone. This is every bit as audacious as it sounds. Mr Zennstrom, in general, is a modest man. But his company is only three years old, will probably make only $60m in revenues this year, and will certainly not turn a profit. So it is the fact that his ambition is not nearly as ridiculous as it sounds that should make incumbent telecoms firms everywhere break out in a cold sweat. That is because Skype can add 150,000 users a day (its current rate) without spending anything on new equipment (users 'bring' their own computers and internet connections) or marketing (users invite each other). With no marginal cost, Skype can thus afford to maximise the number of its users, knowing that if only some of them start buying its fee-based services such as SkypeOut, SkypeIn and voicemail, Skype will make money. This adds up to a very unusual business plan. "We want to make as little money as possible per user," says Mr Zennstrom, because we don't have any cost per user, but we want a lot of them. This is the exact opposite of the traditional business model in the telecoms industry, which is based on maximising the average revenue per user, or ARPU. And that has only one logical consequence. According to Rich Tehrani, the founder of Internet Telephony, a magazine devoted to the subject, Skype and services like it are leading inexorably to a future in which all voice communication, near or far, will be free. End of the line The technical term that encompasses all forms of voice communication using the internet is voice-over-internet-protocol, or VOIP. This includes pure computer-to-computer calling as well as the various hybrid states, such as a Skype user connecting to the traditional telephone network, or even two people talking on seemingly conventional phones that are linked, behind the scenes, via the internet. It also includes residential VOIP providers such as Vonage, based in New Jersey and the market leader in America with over 1m subscribers, that supply their customers with adapters so they can plug ordinary telephones into their broadband connections without using a= computer. Sandvine, a telecoms-equipment firm, estimates that there are 1,100 VOIP providers in America alone. But the trend is worldwide. IDC, a market-research firm, predicts that the number of residential VOIP subscribers in America will grow from 3m at the end of 2005 to 27m by the end of 2009; Japan already has over 8m subscribers today. Worldwide, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm, the number of residential VOIP subscribers will reach 197m by 2010. Even these numbers, however, do not include people using VOIP without subscribing to a service (ie, by downloading free software from Google, Skype or others). Skype alone has 54m users. Even before VOIP makes 100% of telephone calls in the world completely free (which may take many years), it utterly ruins the pricing models of the telecoms industry. Factors such as the distance between the callers or the duration of a call, the key determinants of cost today, are simply irrelevant with VOIP. Vonage already lets its customers choose telephone numbers in San Francisco, New York or London, no matter where they live. A Londoner calling the London number is making a 'local' call, even if the Vonage subscriber is picking up the phone in Shanghai. As when checking e-mail on, say, Hotmail, the only thing needed is a broadband-internet connection, but it can be anywhere in the world. Sooner or later, people will discard their unwieldy phone numbers altogether and use names, just as they do with their e-mail addresses, predicts Mr Zennstrom. Call duration is also becoming irrelevant. A lot of people open a Skype audio channel and keep it open, says Mr Zennstrom. After all, it costs nothing. Many people with Apple computers are already accustomed to this. They open an application called iChat, which is a video and voice link, and stay connected to their loved ones far away. Increasingly, members of a family or a business team can stay online throughout the day, escalating from unobtrusive instant- messaging (Can you talk?) to a conference call, a video call and back to a little icon on their screen. It is thus altogether wrong to call this phenomenon the end, or death, of telephony. "Calling it the death of telephony suggests people aren't going to make calls, but they are," says Sam Paltridge, a telecoms guru at the OECD. "It's just the death of the traditional pricing models. In short, all this is great news for consumers and awful news for telecoms operators. "VOIP will destroy voice revenues faster than most analysts' models predict," says Cyrus Mewawalla, an analyst at Westhall Capital. Voice will very rapidly cease to become a major revenue generator for all telecoms operators, fixed and mobile. That said, some telecoms carriers are much more vulnerable to VOIP than others, says Mr Mewawalla. Telecoms operators offer and charge for a number of services besides pure voice calls. Because VOIP will cause only the revenues from voice calls to shrink, it will hit those operators hardest that are most dependent on their revenues from voice (see chart 2). For pure mobile operators, such as Vodafone or Taiwan Mobile as it happens, Taiwan is the country with the highest ratio of Skype users 'VOIP could be an enormous problem', says Mr Mewawalla, because voice accounts for over 80% of their revenues. By contrast, VOIP is less threatening to integrated operators (ie, those offering both fixed and mobile services) such as Deutsche Telekom or Japan's NTT. And those carriers such as BT, France Telecom or KPN that are currently building next-generation networks based on internet technologies will be able to offer VOIP services themselves, bundled with other offerings, and might emerge relatively unscathed. Some operators are taking an unenlightened view by trying to delay the advance of VOIP. China Telecom has been blocking access to Skype from Shenzen, according to local newspaper reports. Vodafone has introduced wording into new contracts for some German subscribers reserving the right to block VOIP in future, though a spokesman for the company says it is not doing so at the moment. Clearwire, an American wireless-broadband provider, also reserves the right to block VOIP traffic. In February, Madison River Communications, a rural phone company in North Carolina, was fined $15,000 by regulators for blocking access to Vonage's VOIP service. Occasionally, operators have even blocked access to Skype's website, thus preventing people from downloading the software or topping up their calling credit. The more enlightened approach which most operators in rich countries, to varying degrees, accept is to compete with VOIP openly or even to embrace it. Already, says Mr Paltridge, pricing of traditional phone services is changing quite radically as operators try to adjust and to compete with the Skypes of this world. Operators are moving towards flat-rate pricing plans for traditional telephone service, so that the marginal price of making calls falls to zero. Many American regional operators offer unlimited local and national calling for a fixed monthly fee, and such schemes are also becoming popular in other countries. Several incumbent operators have also launched their own VOIP services, such as Verizon's VoiceWing and BT's Broadband Voice. These offer lower prices than traditional telephone service but are generally not as cheap as a call between Skype and a regular phone. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," says John Delaney of Ovum, a consultancy. Such services are an admission that a less lucrative VOIP customer is better than no customer at all. Switching to VOIP also helps operators by lowering their own costs dramatically. BT and others are building new, internet-based networks behind the scenes, which will carry all voice traffic as VOIP even if the calls start or end in the traditional way. The other argument for embracing VOIP is that the incumbents can then start offering the fun new services that VOIP makes possible and charging for them. This goes far beyond traditional voicemail. Video-conferencing and unified messaging whereby all forms of communication, from voicemail and video messages to e-mails or entire electronic documents go into one virtual inbox will become common, says Wendy McMillan-Turner, head of voice services at BT. Since all of these features are essentially software programmes, they can all be integrated with applications that people today use on their computers, such as Outlook calendars and contacts files. The service that many telecoms operators are most excited about, however, is IPTV, which refers to television (and entertainment in general) being delivered over new and super-fast broadband-internet connections into homes. This would allow them to charge for a bundle of services, including broadband access, entertainment and voice. The voice component could then atrophy gracefully and eventually be thrown in for nothing. Ultimately -- perhaps by 2010 -- voice may become a free internet application, with operators making money from related internet applications like IPTV, says Mr Mewawalla. Cable operators are coming at VOIP from exactly the opposite direction. They already offer television and entertainment, as well as broadband access, so they might as well offer cheap telephony as well. This puts the cable companies in a good position. Unlike the telecoms operators, they do not depend on voice for their revenues today, so they can use cheap VOIP service as a competitive weapon to make life difficult for the telecoms operators, who are increasingly their only competition. In California, for example, most people have a choice between one cable company, Comcast, and one traditional telecoms carrier, SBC. Since voice uses very little bandwidth compared with television, the cable companies need not even add a lot in the way of bandwidth. The result, says Mr Mewawalla, is that voice service is fast becoming a marketing freebie to make customers 'sticky' to keep them loyal. "I would expect people to advertise free calls with VOIP, subsidised by other elements of the package,' says Ms McMillan-Turner. Thus, BT will consider value-added services sold around VOIP as voice revenues in future, she says. BT hopes that selling such services will offset the inevitable decline in traditional voice revenue. Evalueserve, a consultancy, predicts that American and European fixed operators' long-distance voice revenue will decline by around 40% by 2008, and that in Europe 50% of broadband users will give up their voice lines by 2008. Mobile operators face a far greater challenge than fixed-line carriers. Voice accounts for the bulk of their business and they cannot (at least today) offer broadband access as easily as the cable and fixed-line companies. New =93third-generation=94 (3G) networks were supposed to make possible whizzy new data services to compensate for flat and even declining revenues from voice calls, but consumer adoption has been slow. Worse, those very 3G networks that are supposed to provide future growth for the industry could now undermine it, since they make possible VOIP calling over mobile networks. Already, one mobile operator, E-Plus in Germany, has announced a deal that will allow subscribers to use Skype on its 3G network. Users would thus pay only for the internet connection, while making free calls to other Skype users and to other telephones for very little. E-Plus hopes to win valuable business customers and to put pressure on much bigger but less agile rivals such as Vodafone. Today, VOIP calling over 3G networks is still very much a minority sport, but as 3G coverage and transmission speeds improve something the industry is racing to achieve, it will become common. This represents a mortal danger for mobile operators. VOIP on mobile is the first real threat they are going to face, and they are in a state of shock, says Mr Mewawalla. Mobile operators generally charge three to five times as much as fixed operators for each minute on the phone, so they have far more to lose from falling voice prices. International travellers will use VOIP over hotel-room broadband links or Wi-Fi hotspots in airports to save on the roaming charges by their mobile-phone company. Vodafone counters that, like BT, it is moving towards internet-based networks that will reduce its own cost of carrying calls and make possible new value-added services. But this sounds unconvincing. Much more so than fixed-line operators, mobile operators would have to cannibalise their current business in order to generate new revenues from VOIP. Ironically, this means that BT, once regarded as a dinosaur-like incumbent, is now being held up as a shining example of an operator that is embracing the future, while Vodafone, whose pure-mobile strategy once seemed visionary, now stands accused of being on the wrong side of history. At the end of the day, there is no getting around the reality, as Skype's Mr Zennstrom says, that "something that is a great business model for us is probably a terrible business model for them." Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, economist.com For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Direct replies are unlikely to be read. To reply use the address below: falco(underscore)md(atsign)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Foreign Residential Listing (Verizon Again) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 19:44:14 -0500 Well, as a result of not getting my billing for my foreign residential listing straightened out, I escalated to the NC PSC to get help. I have been on the phone monthly with Verizon trying to get it resolved. My listing is with directory assistance, but I haven't been paying for it. I'm fairly certain that sooner or later someone doing an audit will discover that they are not getting any money for it and delete it. Each month, they tell me they've now fixed it and I'll get a correct bill the next month, but I don't. Well, I got a call from a very well mannered young lady from Verizon. She investigated and is now telling me that I will be billed for a year forward when the directory is published in March. So, I'm getting free listing with directory assistance until then. Somehow, I don't think that's right. As even in spite of the enormous number of people I have talked with, I still can't get them to straighten it out. I can't be without a directory assistance listing. Someone from my past may need to track me down for any one of a number of positive reasons. I'm going to have to call that young lady back and push this further. This is ridiculous. Fred Atkinson ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 08:28:36 PST From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Reply-To: fatkinson@mishmash.com Lena wrote: > It's a great idea, but wouldn't work for us who have so many lame- > brained friends who would never remember any code. We can't even get > our friends to remember to change their email addressbook when we > change our email provider. Not just those who can't remember a four digit code, but how about those who never got your code? I tried to call an old friend the other night whom I hadn't spoken to in years. He's got that feature installed and I have no idea what his code is. So, I didn't get to talk to an old buddy I hadn't been in contact with in a very long time. And there's no way to leave him a message letting him know I called. > There is also an item called "Caller ID Manager" from Privacy Corps. > It looks like a separate Caller ID box, but can be set to block > whatever numbers you program into it, including all 800 numbers, all > 888 numbers, unidentified numbers, etc. Costs about $100. From the > description, it looks like it works on one phone and one would have to > add "remotes" for other phones. (Google it). There are always technological solutions out there. Sad we have to pay to keep telemarketers from calling us. > I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to > prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or > political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. They've done one better than that. They've passed a law allowing you to have your number listed as a number that telemarketers are not allowed to call. And when they do call, you can report it to the FTC. When they get enough complaints, they can take action against them. I've got all of my home numbers (and I have a few) listed on it. I can't even remember when was the last time I received a telemarketing call. > Lena Fred Atkinson ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 08:28:57 -0800 Organization: University of Washington On Fri, 9 Dec 2005, Lena wrote: > It's a great idea, but wouldn't work for us who have so many lame- > brained friends who would never remember any code. We can't even get > our friends to remember to change their email addressbook when we > change our email provider. Leaving aside whether you'd want to have friends like that, there is still the out of having the "*" for emergency break-through. In my experience, the least techo-savvy of my contacts are the ones who had the least problem in coping with my line's password. Their questions are never about how to get through to call me, but rather about how to set it up on their own phone line! -- Mark -- http://panda.com/mrc Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote. ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: 9 Dec 2005 19:59:14 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I seem to recall a router that had two WAN connections and a dial-up connection. I think it did some sort of load balancing between the two WAN lines and switched to dial-up if both WAN lines failed. I don't remember who made it, but I THOUGHT they were sold to Symantec, but I can't find it on their website. I'm not sure how it worked, but I have the impression that it routed web page requests out the two WAN lines and then put them back together on the LAN side. Since most web pages contain (too many) lots of images, the image loading was split between the two WAN lines, so the user saw faster loading. It did not, as far as I know, try to spread out packets from the same transaction, but, instead, spread out the transactions (file requests, etc.). I was considering buying one a few years ago, but never got around to it. Harold FCC Rules updated daily at http://www.hallikainen.com ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:30:14 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , James Carlson wrote: > bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: >> "Incoming" traffic is an entirely different problem. And >> load-balancing _that_ traffic cannot be done in anything approaching a >> satisfactory manner without 'help' from the 'upstream' end. > Indeed. >> And it requires that both DSL circuits terminate at the same >> 'upstream' provider. > Not necessarily. There are at least two other possibilities here, > both of which allow for connections to multiple providers: > - NAT in use, and load balancing on a per-connection basis. This > automatically balances the return traffic as well, as everyone on > the net thinks you're actually two separate independent IP nodes. NO, it does _Not_. You cannot change the NAT translation _during_ a 'session' (a single TCP connection). And if the 'incoming' data characteristics change radically _during_ that session, the 'balance' goes out the window. Consider a scenario where there is -one- durable connection presently in progress, which is, say, 'streaming audio' to laptop #1, and coming in over circuit #1. Now, the over the space of a minute, other 19 laptops each initiate a web request to a trivial text-only web-page with the Windows XP SP2 update _information_ on it, including a link to a copy of the actual service pack which resides on that same server. Oh, yeah, those requests have the HTTP 'keepalive' protocol flag set. Circuit #2 is 'unused' at the moment, so -- based on traffic levels -- _all_ these HTTP sessions are going to go on circuit #2, using 'source' addresses that will cause return data to come in over that selfsame circuit #2. Which _is_ reasonable at this point, the overall traffic from retrieving the 19 copies of that text web-page is likely less than the the one-minute block of streaming-audio. *BUT*, now each laptop decides to download the actual service pack. BAM! usage on circuit #2 goes through the roof. And circuit #1 is still loafing along at a small fraction of capacity. Yes, this is an extreme case, but it illustrates the point that there is _no_PRACTICAL_way_ to balance the incoming load without active co-operation from the 'upstream' end(s) of the circuits. You (on the receiving end) *cannot* unilaterally (meaning "without active cooperation from the remote end[s]) change which circuit those packets are coming in over. You cannot suddenly switch the IP address the laptops are using; "keepalive" is in effect, the request goes as part of the _same_ connection, and of course, once the download request was sent, the laptop is only doing 'listen and ack'. > - You're a big company and you can afford to arrange BGP peering > with the ISPs and inject routes into the backbone. THAT doesn't solve the "problem", either. Not even 'mostly'. Again, the original scenario was a 'site' with a maximum of 20 machines (all laptops) at the location. In _that_ situation, "good luck" in getting a BGP announcement for a /27 (or smaller) propagated past an immediate upstream. IF _they_ will agree to accept it. To get a moderately-reliably 'forwardable' announcement, you're going to have to use "gross overkill" sized blocks. you'll have a _terrible_ time providing adequate 'justification' to get PA space for that application from an upstream. And you're way too small to qualify for your own PI space, for _this_ application alone. Now, if you're big enough that you've got a PI /16, say. *and* can afford to dedicate a couple of /24s to this inefficient (at best, approximately a _four_percent_ utilization of the address-space), you _can_ 'play games' to influence the inbound traffic. *BUT*, to re-route individual hosts, *without* changing their IP address, you are likely to have to BGP 'announce' routes for a /32. Over time, this _will_ lead to fracturing of the space, and you _will_ be announcing separate routes for most of those hosts, *individually*. *OR* you get _really_ wasteful of address-space, and _use_ only one address in each /24 -- thus needing about a /19 to support 20 laptops. With an address-space utilization of approximately 0.25%. Yeah, this would work, but I can't imagine that anyone would classify it as a "practical" solution. We won't even go into 'what happens' to a pre-existing connection with an _active_ stream of traffic when a route 'withdrawal' (for an address presently routed via circuit #1) arrives at an intermediate router before the 'announcement' for routing via circuit @2 arrives. Note: if you already announce an 'inferior' grade of route through circuit #2 for that address, you cannot ensure that inbound traffic will come through circuit #1 -- it _is_ "guaranteed" that "somebody" will be using a 'policy' bias in their routing that causes them to select the carrier supplying circuit #2 over that or circuit #1. *sigh* > There are others as well that involve just living with the fact that > you'll appear to be separate nodes on the net, and remaining > multihomed -- this is what you'd probably do if you were doing this > for (say) a web server with multiple A records. Review the original context -- site supporting "a maximum of 20 _laptops_", wanting to load-balance the two circuits. How many folks run servers (web, or otherwise) _with_multiple_A_records_ on laptops? <*grin*> Absent any specifications of the data flow, a reasonable "first guess" is that the traffic will be mostly: web-page retrieval, e-mail reading/sending, possibly some RSS feeds, along with some other 'streaming' incoming data. Not guaranteed, of course, but absent better data for that scenario, it is 'betting odds' that at least 95% of the total traffic is 'incoming'. Which means that the 'easy' approaches -- which are for balancing _outgoing_ traffic -- aren't of much use. Especially since -- for the aforementioned kinds of traffic -- there is _very_little_ correlation between incoming and outgoing traffic on a machine-by-machine, or even connection-by- connection basis. Obviously, the "more you know" about the actual traffic generated, the better your chances of designing a policy that works effectively for _that_ traffic mix. Caveat: even a minor change in traffic characteristics can utterly invalidate a 'carefully tuned/optimized for one particular scenario' balancing policy. As soon as you have any form of 'durable' connection involved, any attempt to balance things based solely on conditions at the time of connection _initiation_ is doomed to to lead to 'far less than optimal' balancing at a point later in time. 'Things change', and the circuit assignment for that already established connection cannot be modified to adapt to the fact that "the world has changed out from under it". >> *BUT* the 'standard' routing code _in_the_kernel_ of most operating >> systems does =not= support multiple equal-priority routes to the same >> destination, *with* rotating use of those routes on a per-packet >> basis. > Doing it on a per-packet basis ("round robin") is a mistake. It > causes poor performance by reordering packets and often causes trouble > with various middleboxes. Instead, you want to hash based on flow > identification, which some systems can do. THIS depends on what your objectives are. :) If you're interested in maximizing your link utilization, _without_ regard to impact on QOS (as it were) to the users, the performance hits due to out-of-order packet reception are "not my problem". Packet re-ordering _may_ occur in some instances, *BUT* it is not a guaranteed problem. Furthermore, if the pair of lines are 'bonded' into a single logical circuit -- which requires cooperation from the remote end -- then this "possible" issue effectively disappears. If the circuits go to different end-points, you do get a whole raft of other possible issues -- including, but not limited to, remote servers that are multi-homed _on_ both of the networks you are connected to. They see packets that are part of the same 'connection' arriving on different interfaces. This _can_ confuse some kinds of systems, notably 'load balancers' that exist in front of a 'farm' of "identical" servers. Also, if the circuits go to different end-points, then you _are_ likely to have issues with 'larger than single packet' communications to "anycast" servers. They may well be routed to _different_ servers. Available evidence suggests that this would be a 'vanishingly small' issue for 'typical' _laptop_-origin traffic. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Organization: Symantec Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:29:03 -0500 In article , Jennifer C. Kerr wrote: > About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month > that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting > consumers, a study says. Only one in four? I figure almost all netters get spam, and at least 75% would get phishing spam. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Date: 10 Dec 2005 15:31:54 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Jennifer C. Kerr wrote: > About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month > that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting > consumers, a study says. Who did this study? Pretty much all of my users get at least a couple dozen a day. Some of them get a couple dozen an hour. Where can I go where only a quarter of the users get them a month? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Many Domains Registered With False Data Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:29:15 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Zonk wrote: > Posted by Zonk on Thursday December 08, @01:01PM > from the seekrit-webmaster-conspiracy dept. > bakotaco writes "According to research carried out by the US > Government Accountability Office (GAO) many domain owners are hiding > their true identity. The findings could mean that many websites are > fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals. The > report also found that measures to improve information about domain > owners were not proving effective." From the article: "The GAO took > 300 random domain names from each of the .com, .org and .net > registries and looked up the centrally held information about their > owners. Any user can look up this data via one of the many whois sites > on the net. The report found that owner data for 5.14% of the domains > it looked at was clearly fake as it used phone numbers such as (999) > 999-9999; listed nonsense addresses such as 'asdasdasd' or used > invalid zip codes such as 'XXXXX'. In a further 3.65% of domain owner > records data was missing or incomplete in one or more fields." > To discuss this matter further, please go to: > http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As the official Keeper of the Records, > ICANN was asked for a comment on this report, but they refused any > discussion of it. PAT] "Figures don't lie, but liars can figure." The last line of the cited report is a particularly egregious example of this. One of the domain owner fields is a for a 'fax' number for contact. If you don't have a fax then, *of*course*, that field is going to be 'incomplete' -- or filled with some registrar 'default', recognizably *invalid*, data -- e.g. (000) 000-000, or (999) 999-999. The '5.14%' number is similarly suspect, _if_ the 'phone numbers' examined include the 'fax phone number' field. And, unless the GAO restricted the check to domains registered to addresses in the USA, 'defective' and/or 'missing' *ZIPCODE* data is to be expected. Even Canada doesn't have _ZIP_ codes. that said, I figure that this one is a gratuitous error on the part of the person writing the review of the GAO report, rather than a procedural flaw in the GAO analysis. That said, I expect the GAO report did find evidence of real problems in the registration process. Too much 'trust', and not enough '*trust*but* *verify*'. For U.S.A. based addresses, there is simply no excuse for accepting a registration where the street address and "postal code" do not match. The USPS has an on-line look-up tool where the full ZIP+4 can looked up for any particular address. Now, admittedly, some addresses may have multiple ZIP+4 codes -- e.g. my building has distinct zip+4 for each of several groups of residents, _and_ a 'catch all' ZIP+4 that is valid for any address in the building. I think there may be yet another '+4' that identifies 'some/any building on this block'. A number of other countries have similar publicly accessible tools for validating addresses, postal codes, and/or the combination thereof. The fact that registration services do -not- make use of things like that to make even a 'minimal' attempt to keep the database 'clean' *is* an outrage, and an abomination, no doubt about it. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:36:40 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > A little advice needed: > For a new office I am helping to setup, we are installing a 384k T1 > line, and are planning on using vonage over that T1 line for our phone > service. We plan to have at least 2 and maybe 3 phone lines through > vonage. We are looking into cordless multi-line phones. We figure > we'll need 1 base station and 4-8 handsets. Vonage offers a call-hunt > feature that will ring the second or third line if the first line is > busy. Will this multi-line service from vonage work with 1 mutli-line > base station? "Probably". Most residential-grade type equipment is designed to work with multiple (single-line) POTS lines from the telephone service provider. Vonage provides a single-line POTS line, on the 'telephone' side of the 'adapter'. Note, be sure to co-ordinate wih whomever is installing the Internet 'fractional' T-1, to arrange for an enhanced QOS, or at least priority, for the VOIP traffic on your T-1. Three simultaneous voice conversations can tie up 50% or more of that pipe. That's a big enough share that you don't want the risk of 'non-real-time' traffic pigging the bandwidth. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 17:10:18 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Ron Kritzman wrote: > cnnmoney@telecom-digest.org wrote: > SBC has joined forces with AT&T and taken its name ... > Okay. Illinois Bell, Ameritech, SBC, and now AT&T, in area codes 312, > 708 and 847. So I've had 4 phone companies 3 areacode swapped out from > under me while living in the same house with the same phone number. All of my friends living back home, too (old Ohio Bell territory). Not my parents now, they live out in the sticks in Alltel land ... but most of THEIR friends are still in AT&T land :) Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:47:05 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , David Caruso wrote: > By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer > Every evening rush hour, hustlers lugging bags full of bootlegged > movies walk the subway train aisles, calling "two for five dollars!" > as brazenly as if they were selling hot dogs at Yankee Stadium. At > those prices, the DVDs, often of current Hollywood blockbusters, sell > well, despite laughable sound and picture quality. Few customers seem > to care the copies were made illegally. > Bootleggers apparently have little to fear. Under state law, people > caught videotaping inside a movie theater face a maximum fine of $250. Of course, under Federal copyright infringement statutes, which such taping _does_ also violate, the penalties are *much* higher. All the copyright owners have to do is file the _appropriate_ lawsuits. But that's a civil tort. and _they_ have to do the investigation and suit prosecution themselves. A criminal violation, -that- is the responsibility of 'somebody else' to investigate/prosecute. and they get the benefits _without_ having to 'do anything' themselves. > As part of its worldwide campaign against piracy, the film industry is > pushing for tougher penalties for smuggling a camcorder into a cinema > in New York, which has the country's worst bootlegging problem and > some of the weakest penalties. > A bill pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America would make > operating recording equipment inside a theater a criminal misdemeanor, > raising the maximum punishment to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. > Making the crime a misdemeanor also would empower police to arrest > violators on the spot, rather than simply issuing a summons. > People caught a second time would be charged with a felony. > "We have to do something, because right now there's no risk," said > William J. Shannon, a Yonkers-based deputy director of the > association's U.S. anti-piracy operation. "Right now, you're looking > at something about the same as a parking ticket." *IF* they filed a civil lawsuit against every person to whom a 'summons' was issued, I bet the problem would go away _really_ quickly. Amazing, isn't it, how they want 'somebody else' to solve their problem for them, but aren't willing to use the _existing_ remedies available to them, whereby they could clean up the problem themselves? ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #557 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Dec 11 16:04:08 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8C7F814DC2; Sun, 11 Dec 2005 16:04:07 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #558 Message-Id: <20051211210407.8C7F814DC2@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 16:04:07 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 11 Dec 2005 15:05:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 558 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Court Rules Against Mother in Downloading Suit (Ted Bridis) CNN Pours Into Broadband Pipeline (Paul Grough) Sprint Showing Full Length Movies (Robert McMillan) Privacy implications of Microsoft's Windows Live Local (Monty Solomon) Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft? (Monty Solomon) Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (DevilsPGD) Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (Steven Lichter) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Ted Bridis Subject: Court Rules Against Mother in Downloading Suit Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:18:48 -0600 By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer A federal appeals court late Friday upheld the music industry's $22,500 judgment against a Chicago mother caught illegally distributing songs over the Internet. The court rejected her defense that she was innocently sampling music to find songs she might buy later and compared her downloading and distributing the songs to shoplifting. The decision against Cecilia Gonzalez, 29, represents one of the earliest appeals court victories by the music industry in copyright lawsuits it has filed against thousands of computer users. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago threw out Gonzalez's arguments that her Internet activities were permitted under U.S. copyright laws. Gonzalez had rejected a proposed settlement from music companies of about $3,500. A federal judge later filed a summary judgment against her and ordered her to pay $750 for each of 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing over the Internet. Gonzalez, a mother of five, contended she had downloaded songs to determine what she liked enough to buy at retail. She said she and her husband regularly buy music CDs and own more than 250. However, the appeals panel said Gonzalez never deleted songs off her computer she decided not to buy, and judges said she could have been liable for more than 1,000 songs found on her computer. "A copy downloaded, played, and retained on one's hard drive for future use is a direct substitute for a purchased copy," the judges wrote. They said her defense that she downloaded fewer songs than many other computer users "is no more relevant than a thief's contention that he shoplifted only 30 compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later." Gonzalez could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Geoff Baker, said comparing Gonzalez to a shoplifter was "inflammatory" but declined to comment further until he had more time to review the decision, which was released late in the day. Gonzalez was named in the first wave of civil lawsuits filed by record companies and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America, in September 2003. "The law here is quite clear," said Jonathan Lamy, a senior vice president for the Washington-based RIAA. "Our goal with all these anti-piracy efforts is to protect the ability of the music industry to invest in the bands of tomorrow and give legal online services a chance to flourish." Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Paul J. Gough Subject: CNN Pours Into Broadband Pipeline Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:21:22 -0600 By Paul J. Gough CNN has finally joined the broadband big leagues, lifting the veil on an extreme makeover of its Web site that has been in the works for more than a year. The long-awaited premium broadband service, dubbed Pipeline, went live December 5 and already has signed up a number of subscribers in its initial week, though CNN executives decline to cite specifics. The killer app for Pipeline is four live video streams, which offer mostly unedited looks at news events throughout the world. These streams -- or "pipes" -- can be played in a special video player and chosen by Pipeline's editors in Atlanta. On Thursday night, Pipeline offered video streams from CNN International, a memorial service for slain Beatle John Lennon in Central Park, the House of Representatives and a traffic cam on a snowy Chicago night. That last pipe turned out to be prescient an hour later when news broke out from Chicago's Midway Airport when a Southwest Airlines jet slid off a runway. The third stream became video live from the scene at WFLD-TV. A day earlier, when a passenger was shot and killed by federal agents at the Miami airport, Pipeline offered several live camera angles of the scene. "When the plane shooting happened, we had three different affiliates' coverage. We had multiple angles on the story; you could select the one you wanted," said David Payne, senior vp CNN News Services and general manager of CNN.com. "I think even more intriguing, as that was happening, there was a bank robbery in Oregon and a rescue in Georgia." All were represented on the streams. NEWSROOM'S-EYE-VIEW Payne thinks this is the promise of Pipeline. He said the mostly anchorless live streams show what the news is. The live coverage of the plane shooting allowed viewers to see the same feeds that the network control rooms were viewing at the same time. "As the story was unfolding for the plane shooting, and it became clear that that was under control, all these other events were happening," Payne said. "That really shows the power. On linear television, you're so limited in what you can do and what you can show. We have four times the capability." Live coverage isn't the only hallmark of CNN Pipeline. The video player offers users the ability to see the top stories in video, get other news on demand and even browse CNN's vast archives. But the one thing you won't see: whole programs. Payne doesn't think that's a good thing, despite what others in the news industry are doing on their Web sites. "We think that showing shows, creating specific programing, is not the right approach. Consumers are pretty loud and clear about that to us," Payne said. "Our goal is to let the news take you to wherever it goes and we're going to go along with it. I don't anticipate creating shows or linear programing." Payne doesn't think the $2.95 a month -- or $24.95 a year -- price tag is a deal-killer, despite the evidence that consumers are generally still resistant to paying for premium content on the Web. "There's no question in my mind that there's a $2.95 value that can be created of an entire month that would enable somebody or cause somebody to this," Payne said. "I can't even find an analogy to spending 9 cents a day." More innovations are coming, predicts Payne, that will go far beyond the mostly TV-centric news Web sites. "We can do so much more than a set-top box or rabbit ears on a TV," Payne said. "Once you think about your computer as a set-top box, with all the capability it has and all the advancements it has, I think in the future what we see on our converging scenes is something that we can't even dream of." Reuters/Hollywood Reporter Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Robert McMillan Subject: Sprint Offering Full-Length Movie Downloads Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:16:53 -0600 By Robert MacMillan Using a mobile phone to buy movie tickets and check showtimes is one thing, but Sprint offers the whole movie. Sprint Nextel Corp. is expected to announce on Monday that it has begun selling a service which allows users of its mobile video phones to watch full-length movies, television shows, concerts and comedy specials. Provided by vendor MSpot, the service offers unlimited shows and movies for a monthly flat fee of $6.95, on top of regular service charges. The announcement comes as Sprint and other wireless phone services are looking to video content like TV programs, music and sports to boost revenue. They also are spending billions of dollars building up their networks for mobile video and speedy Internet service so they can grow revenue despite cheaper calling plans and a shrinking pool of first-time wireless phone subscribers. The initial lineup includes films that are far from anyone's first-run list. Among them are "One-Eyed Jacks," the Marlon Brando-Karl Malden Western, as well as "Angel and the Badman" with John Wayne. Other titles include "Night of the Living Dead" and the most recent -- "Short Circuit" from 1986. "This is what we could get rights to quickly," said Dale Knoop, Sprint's general manager for multimedia services. He said the company and MSpot are in negotiations for more current content, but declined to say which studios are involved. Sprint plans to debut seven new films a week. Knoop also declined to say how many people have watched the films. One question facing Sprint and the wireless industry is whether handheld-device users want to watch a feature-length film on a 2-inch or 3-inch screen. Sprint found that many people have a shorter attention span when it comes to mobile phone video, a Sprint spokeswoman said. Allowing for that, the service lets viewers watch movies in segments, similar to a DVD. Apple Computer Inc. also is exploring longer video content. The company earlier this week said it would offer iPod downloads of full-length NBC-owned television shows, including recent ones such as "The Office" and "Law & Order," as well as older shows like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Knight Rider." It also offers replays of ABC programs "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost." The NBC and ABC shows cost $1.99 each. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:29:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Privacy Implications of Microsoft's Windows Live Local by David Pescovitz Mike Liebhold, my colleague at the Institute for the Future, is deep into the geohacking scene. He just took a look at Microsoft's new Virtual Earth incarnation, Windows Live Local and found some big privacy concerns. Below is the entirety of Mike's post to the Geowanking listserv: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/12/09/privacy_implications.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:33:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft? By STEVE LOHR Redmond, Wash. THINK back to Round 1 of the Internet, when things really got rolling in 1995. The computing landscape was shifting, and a cool, fast-growing young company symbolized the new order: Netscape. At the time, Microsoft looked to be a lumbering old war horse, trapped in the yesteryear of desktop personal computer software, word processors, spreadsheets and operating systems. It seemed, in other words, so 1980's. But, of course, Microsoft emerged a winner. It embraced the Internet and vanquished the Netscape threat with hard work, ingenuity and strong-arm tactics that a federal court ruled violated the nation's antitrust laws. Microsoft's shares soared to a record high at the end of 1999. The Internet, Round 2, is now under way. Again, the computing terrain is changing remarkably, helped along by free software like Linux and the spread of high-speed Internet access. Today, all kinds of computing experiences can be delivered as services over the Internet, often free and supported by advertising. Clever Internet software can now turn flat, view-and-read Web pages into snappy services that look and respond to a user's keystrokes much like the big software applications that reside on a PC hard drive. New companies are even sprouting up to offer Web-based word processors and spreadsheets, products long regarded as mature - and long dominated by Microsoft's desktop programs. Champions of the Internet services model range from I.B.M. to start-ups. But the totemic company in this next big evolutionary step in computing is Google, the Internet search power whose ambitions appear to be growing as fast as its profits. And Microsoft? It once more finds itself surrounded by doubt and dismissed as a laggard. Some of its own senior engineers have defected to Google and elsewhere, and its stock price has barely budged in three years, despite solid earnings growth, because others appear to be winning the race for the future. The familiar pattern of a decade ago begs the question that Bill Gates was asked when he met last month with a group of executives and journalists from The New York Times: Will you do to Google what you did to Netscape? Mr. Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and chairman, paused, looked down at his folded hands and smiled broadly, as if enjoying a private joke. "Nah," he replied, "we'll do something different." The man whom Mr. Gates is counting on to make a difference is Ray Ozzie, a soft-spoken 50-year-old who joined the company just eight months ago. He has the daunting task of galvanizing the troops to address the Internet services challenge, shaking things up and quickening the corporate pulse. The forces arrayed against Microsoft, analysts say, may well prove more formidable than ever. "The problem Microsoft faces today is that there is a totally different model emerging for how software is created, distributed, used and paid for," said George F. Colony, the chairman of Forrester Research, a technology consultant. "That's why it's going to be so difficult for Microsoft this time." Yet there are optimists. Big industry shifts, they say, create opportunity. Inevitably, they note, Internet computing erodes Microsoft's power to set technology standards, but the company can still benefit as the overall market expands. That's what happened in the 1990's. They say that if Microsoft shrewdly devises, for example, online versions of its Office products, supported by advertising or subscription fees, it may be a big winner in Internet Round 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/yourmoney/11micro.html?ex=1291957200&en=d6cd667b8d963552&ei=5090 ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 21:16:13 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > Jennifer C. Kerr wrote: >> About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month >> that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting >> consumers, a study says. > Who did this study? > Pretty much all of my users get at least a couple dozen a day. Some > of them get a couple dozen an hour. > Where can I go where only a quarter of the users get them a month? Unplug your server from the internet and the phishes dry up :) ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 04:26:33 GMT Barry Margolin wrote: > In article , Jennifer C. Kerr > wrote: >> About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month >> that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting >> consumers, a study says. > Only one in four? I figure almost all netters get spam, and at least > 75% would get phishing spam. > Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu > Arlington, MA > *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** Shoot, every day I get at least 6 telling me they want to buy stuff freom my store, I won a lottery; they I did not remember entering or that my Ebay, PayPal, or other account is being violated. Funny I don't use the e-mail account for any of them. It all started with just one post here before I got my e-mail client to crunch my address, before that never got one. The Nigerians are going to have to do a better job of killing off the scammers, now they are moving to Romania and Russia. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All you get each day is only six? I get six each day from people doing bogus PayPal entries, and a couple dozen more from people impersonating various other banks. Over all, I get 30-40 phish attempts daily, an additional 20-30 viruses, and at least 150-200 'regular' spams (many of which fall directly into my spam file, but not all of them.) All the above is just my account here at massis.lcs.mit.edu on behalf of telecom. A good thing about a text- based account (like here at massis) is that those html-based items (spam, scam and phish) stand out like a sore thumb; their size is so large (even a very short spam can easily take 50-75 K) as opposed to a legitimate text-based email (usually 3-5 K) that you can spot them almost immediatly without reading anything other than maybe one line or so. Now, with my personal Cableone.net account although the ratio of virus/spam/scam is about the same as Telecom mail (85-90 percent junk), at least cableone.net screens it out before showing it all to me. What they percieve to be unwanted junk, they put in various folders for me so that one click gets rid of it all even though it is all html-based. What is amazing about some phishers and other con-artists there are the ones who go to so much trouble to actually 'invent' an entire bank (not just divert the front page in order to capture your data before then turning you over to the real bank). These guys make up an entire bogus bank to convince victims that the (bogus) bank is holding some sum of money for them as 'next of kin' or associate of the 'bank officer' who wants to transfer a huge amount of money to you, etc, as long as you first part with your life savings to them. But Steve, I guess we should not complain, since after all, we live in the United States under the governorship of ICANN and Vint Cerf, and as one of the readers here would say (a real First Amendment nut if ever one existed) we dasn't dictate how others 'run their sites' or the contents therein. And as another old fool reading this message would proclaim, it is wrong to return such mail to the _LEGITIMATE_ and _BONAFIDE_ senders of same, since doing so might be construed as a Denial of Service for them and cause us to get sued or imprisoned for causing _them_ grief for doing that. I don't know about you, Steve, but I am about ready to pack a lunch and a clean pair of underwear and report to the nearest prison. That probably is where I belong, as an enemy of ICANN, and all the 'good and decent' things the net has become under their governorship, taking all my complaints with me. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:00:56 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Sat, 10 Dec 2005, Fred Atkinson wrote: > Not just those who can't remember a four digit code, but how about > those who never got your code? I tried to call an old friend the > other night whom I hadn't spoken to in years. He's got that feature > installed and I have no idea what his code is. So, I didn't get to > talk to an old buddy I hadn't been in contact with in a very long > time. And there's no way to leave him a message letting him know I > called. I sympathize. But does he have the "*" emergency break-through enabled? If so, then you can break through the lock; you just have to state your name and see if he takes the call. If not, then he's chosen to lock out people who don't have the code; and you'll have to use email or buy a postage stamp. Not long ago, I heard from two old friends from 30 years ago. One wrote a letter, the other sent email. After that long a period of time, it's probably better to use written contact rather than suddenly barging in with a phone call. You don't know how someone's life has changed in the past several decades, much less whether a phone call would be a burden or even unwelcome. Note that in a true emergency, you can ask the phone company to make an emergency contact with someone and pass along a message. They pass along "so-and-so is dying, call such-and-such number immediately" type messages to estranged family members all the time. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 11 Dec 2005 06:25:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Fred Atkinson wrote: > Lena wrote: >> I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to >> prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or >> political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. > They've done one better than that. They've passed a law allowing you > to have your number listed as a number that telemarketers are not > allowed to call. And when they do call, you can report it to the FTC. Fred, I've done that; added my name to the "Do Not Call" register. The telemarketers that call are part of the exemptions in the law that allows political and charitable organizations to call, even those on the "Do Not Call" list (as well as those businsses who have done business with the person being called). These are the ones I would like to see limited to one call per year. Lena [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lena, when you limit those people to 'one call per year', wouldn't that be like saying spammers and scammers and phishermen should be limited to one spam, scam or phish per year? Are you trying to dictate what people can talk about on their phone? PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #558 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 12 03:48:10 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 450191506C; Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:48:01 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #559 Message-Id: <20051212084801.450191506C@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:48:01 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:50:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 559 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wikipedia Prankster Confesses (Katarine Q. Seelye) Wikpedia Becomes Force (Agence France Press News Wire) Arizona Town Goes Wireless (Michelle Roberts) Analysis Tool for Wholesale Telecom Market (poderico@gmail.com) Re: Showdown with USA Over Internet Control (Seth Breidbart) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Ron Kritzman) Re: Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) (Seth Breidbart) Re: Who Owns the Music? (Seth Breidbart) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Katharine Q. Seelye Subject: Wikipedia Prankster Confesses Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 22:51:23 -0600 By Katharine Q. Seelye The New York Times It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker quitting his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility. A man in Nashville, Tenn., has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville. Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Seigenthaler he had written the material suggesting Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Seigenthaler discovered the false entry only recently and wrote about it in an op-ed article in USA Today, saying he was especially annoyed that he could not track down the perpetrator because of Internet privacy laws. His plight touched off a debate about the reliability of information on Wikipedia -- and by extension the Internet -- and the difficulty in holding Web sites and their users accountable, even when someone is defamed. In a letter to Seigenthaler, Chase said he thought that Wikipedia was a "gag" Web site and that he had written the assassination tale to shock a co-worker, who knew of the Seigenthaler family and its illustrious history in Nashville. "It had the intended effect," Chase said of his prank in an interview. But Chase said that once he became aware through news accounts of the damage he had done to Seigenthaler, he was remorseful and scared of what might happen to him. Chase also found that he was slowly being cornered in cyberspace, thanks to the sleuthing efforts of Daniel Brandt, 57, of San Antonio, Texas, who makes his living as a book indexer. Brandt has been a frequent critic of Wikipedia and started an anti-Wikipedia Web site in September after reading what he said was a false entry about himself. Using information in Seigenthaler's article and some online tools, Brandt traced the computer used to make the Wikipedia entry to the delivery company in Nashville. Brandt called the company and told employees about the Wikipedia problem but was not able to learn anything. Brandt then sent an e-mail message to the company, asking for information about its courier services. A response bore the same Internet Protocol address that was left by the creator of the Wikipedia entry, offering further evidence of a connection. A call by a reporter to the delivery company Thursday made employees nervous, they later told Seigenthaler. On Friday, Chase hand-delivered a letter to Seigenthaler's office, confessing what he had done, and they talked at length. Wikipedia, a nonprofit venture that is the world's biggest encyclopedia, is written and edited by thousands of volunteers, and mistakes are expected to be caught by users. Chase wrote: "I am truly sorry to have offended you, sir. Whatever fame comes to me from this will be ill-gotten indeed." Seigenthaler said he "was not after a pound of flesh" and would not take Chase to court. Chase resigned because, he said, he did not want to cause problems for his company. Seigenthaler urged Chase's boss to rehire him, but Chase said this had not happened. Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center, said that as a longtime advocate of free speech, he found it awkward to be tracking down someone who had exercised that right. "I still believe in free expression," he said. "What I want is accountability." Copyright 2005 The Seattle Times Company Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Seattle Times and New York Times. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Agence France Press Subject: Wikpedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:15:44 -0600 Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is the product of collaboration of its users, has become a major force on the Internet, but faces a crisis after a false biography raised questions about its credibility. The website, created as a free, "open source" multilingual encyclopedia for the world, has reached a crossroads after phenomenal growth along with a scandal that has forced the site to tighten up monitoring of its content. Wikipedia was started in 2001 as an experiment in "wiki" software. Wiki means quick in Hawaiian, but the software enables multiple users in different locations to edit a document. Wikipedia has more than two million articles, including over 850,000 in English. It has sites in 200 languages, with 10 of them having over 50,000 articles -- English, German, French, Japanese, Polish, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish. Nielsen/Netratings found that Wikipedia had over 12.7 million US users in September, up nearly 300 percent from a year ago. It was ranked as the 35th most popular global website by Alexa.com. As an open-source encyclopedia, Wikipedia can be revised and edited in real time by any of its users. Although that might be seen by some as a recipe for disaster, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the give-and-take helps create a better product. Wales told AFP that users often find a common ground that helps the site maintain its stated policy of "neutral point of view," or NPOV. "That process of debate and dialogue is what generates some of the best work on Wikipedia," said Wales, a former options trader whose past projects have included a pornographic website. "Some of the best articles come out of a dialogue of people who don't agree -- you end up with a really solid representation." Wales said Wikipedia has only three employees, but "several hundred" volunteers who monitor the site to help maintain accuracy and neutrality. He put up 500,000 dollars to start the site, but it now operates with donations and grants through a non-profit entity he formed called the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia strives for "Britannica or better quality," Wales said, but admits it has not yet achieved that. Wales acknowledged a breakdown in the process in a biography posted earlier this year of John Siegenthaler, a retired journalist who was an aide in the 1960s to attorney general Robert Kennedy. A Wikipedia article that went largely unnoticed for several weeks said, "For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." "I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious 'biography' that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia," Siegenthaler wrote in a column in USA Today. Wales said Wikipedia tightened up its monitoring after the incident and will require users to register before making any changes or new postings. But he said the site will remain anonymous and that the overall policy will remain unchanged. Wikipedia has spawned critics, including a website called Wikipedia Watch. "The basic problem is that no one, neither the trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, nor the volunteers who are connected with Wikipedia, consider themselves responsible for the content," says Wikipedia Watch's Daniel Brandt. Additionally, he said "anyone can edit an article, and there is no guarantee that any article you read has not been edited maliciously." In an unusual bit of self-criticism, Wikipedia notes on its site that some complain about "a perceived lack of reliability, comprehensiveness, and authority" in the encyclopedia. But as part of its open-source credo, it states that "Wikipedia's editing process assumes that exposing an article to many users will result in accuracy." Despite the recent controversy, Wikipedia has been "a great success story," says Michael Cornfield, research consultant at the Pew Internet and American Life Project in Washington. "It's become synonymous with (online encyclopedia) the way Google has become with search engines and Xerox with copiers," said Cornfield. Cornfield said a key milestone for Wikipedia was the 2005 tsunami, after which numerous scientists contributed to the site. He said many experts contribute to Wikipedia because "if you have knowledge and the teaching instinct, here is a classroom of the world." But Cornfield said Wikipedia must find a way to ensure its credibility, even if it means a more heavily monitored or edited product. "This is the first crisis, but having a crisis is a marker of growth," Cornfield said. "Enough people use it now and contribute to it, so we may have a public solution to the crisis." Copyright 2005 Agence France Presse. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Agence France Presse. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Michelle Roberts Subject: Arizona Town Will Go Wall-to-Wall Wireless Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 22:56:04 -0600 By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer Call it a municipal status symbol in the digital age: a city blanketed by a wireless Internet network, accessible at competitive prices throughout the town's homes, cafes, offices and parks. Tempe, the Phoenix suburb that is home to Arizona State University, is due to have wireless Internet available for all of its 160,000 residents in February, becoming the first city of its size in the United States to have Wi-Fi throughout. Tempe officials hope that by making high-speed Internet as accessible as water or electricity across its 40 square miles, it will attract more technology and biotech companies -- and the young, upwardly mobile employees they bring. An increasing number of the nation's cities are looking at using Internet access as an economic development tool. Few cities have gotten as far as installing systems, "but most cities are realizing that it may be something that they want to do," said Cheryl Leanza, legislative counsel for the National League of Cities. Philadelphia is developing a citywide high-speed system with EarthLink Inc. Unlike Philly or Tempe, New Orleans is building a free system, though the network speed will be limited. The Tempe network is being installed by NeoReach Wireless, a subsidiary of Bethesda, Md.-based MobilePro Corp. Roughly 400 antenna boxes mounted on light poles throughout the city will be used to stitch together the network, to which NeoReach will sell access, primarily through other providers. The network uses a so-called "mesh" setup, meaning it passes wireless signals from pole to pole and automatically reroutes transmissions if one of the transmitters breaks down. Speeds will vary depending on the number of users logged into the same access point. The network is strong enough only to be picked up outdoors or through one wall, meaning those who want service in their businesses or homes will need a box that serves as a signal booster and router. The city of Tempe gave the company access to its light poles in exchange for use of the network in transmitting data to and from city offices and vehicles, said Karrie Rockwell, a spokeswoman for NeoReach. Two hours of free access each day also will be available for Internet users on the Arizona State campus or the nearby Mill Avenue retail district, where the network began a year ago as a pilot project and has proven popular. Robert Jenkins, 50, sits at a coffee house on Mill Avenue a couple of times a week with his laptop, downloading larger files that take too long at home when he uses his mobile phone to access the Internet. NeoReach will directly sell service to outdoor users for $3.95 per hour or $29.95 per month. The resellers of NeoReach access have not yet announced pricing, but Rockwell said it will be cheaper than DSL or cable Internet access. Cable operator Cox Communications Inc. charges $49.95 per month for customers who don't get Cox phone or TV service. Qwest Communications International Inc. charges $44.99 and $54.99 per month, depending on the speed. Tempe signed a contract with NeoReach after asking for bids -- which prevented it from having to start its own utility and probably quelled potential objections to the city's involvement in a Wi-Fi network. Elsewhere in the nation, cities have run into heavy resistance from telecom companies, which argue that the free market should dictate the cost and availability of service. At least 14 states have passed laws limiting municipal Internet service, and other states are expected to consider similar limits, Leanza said. Arizona does not have such a law. ___ On the Net: City of Tempe: http://www.tempe.gov NeoReach Wireless: http://www.neoreach.com Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: poderico@gmail.com Subject: Analysis Tool For Wholesale Telecom Market Date: 11 Dec 2005 13:38:21 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com The telephone providers supports national as well as international calls. While in the national case a proprietary network can be used to satisfy the entire demand, the international calls must be, whole or partially, satisfied with other carriers. Each carrier provides a complete price list for every destination reached, completed with the declared Quality of Service (QoS). For some estinations, the carrier can details these information for some locale area. The cost is represented as a cost per minute plus a cost per call; while the QoS is represented with a real number ranging from 0 and 1: 0 is the lowest quality and 1 is the highest quality. The destinations are identified with the international code eventually completed with the area code when needed. The above information can be used to estimate cost and quality of offered service, but these are not sufficient for a complete calculus. An estimation or historical data on distribution calls must be used to have a well done service cost and quality calculation, being for each destination the number of calls and the total minutes of traffic given. A generic telephone provider has the problem to schedule the best way to route the outgoing calls, selecting for each destination a preferred carrier. More details on http://www.poderico.it/bestprice/index.html Luigi Poderico www.poderico.it ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Showdown with USA Over Internet Control Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:37:47 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Seth Breidbart wrote: > In article , Patrick Townson > noted in response to an article by > Andy Sullivan wrote: [ICANN] >> And they do not want to make things _too easy_ to filter >> out; that might make the internet useful for average, everyday >> citizens once again. > Is that why ICANN kicked AOL off the Internet? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two comments, Seth ... _when_ did ICANN > 'kick AOL off the internet'? Once, again, we see that sarcasm doesn't play on the net. > And, if as you claim, 'ICANN has no control over the wires' then how > come if I do not sign their contract when requested, granting them > ownership and sole arbitrator privleges over the name > 'telecom-digest.org' they can refuse to allow me to be on the net? Really? Who do you get your connectivity from? I get my home connectivity from RoadRunner, and they don't require me to sign any contract with ICANN; my colo server gets connectivity from another provider, and they don't require any contract with ICANN either. I have registered several domains, and _that_ requires a contract with ICANN. But if I preferred to just give out the IP address, I wouldn't need those either. > I would say that if I am required to sign a contract > which 'allows me' to use my name and make speeches on the net, then > the person or entity who makes that requirement has a lot of control > over the net, wouldn't you? But I've been using my name and making speeches on the net for a long time, since well before I had a domain. (Depending on how you define "the net", I could argue I was doing so before ICANN existed.) > And what real problem would there be, > in the process of handing out those contracts to sign in which I must > agree to certain things to _amend_ those contracts to include things > dealing with spam/scam, etc? Everyone has to sign one of those > contracts every so often, don't they? No, they don't. When does schlund.de sign a contract with ICANN? Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I seriously doubt that schlund.de has any contact with ICANN. I get my connectivity through cableone.net both for personal matters _and_ for the Digest. In the case of the Digest, I use puTTY (a secure form of telnet) to connect with massis. lcs.mit.edu in Boston. I do _not_ do telnet to telecom-digest.org. 'telecom-digest.org' only exists as a figment of my imagination. It is an _alias domain name_, ditto telecom-digest.com and telecom-digest.net. The only one I use is telecom-digest.org (as you may know), and all three of those aliases (.org/.com/.net) terminate on the computer system of the mayor of Trumansburg, NY known as iecc.com. When calls to those three alias names (let's call it http://telecom-digest.org ) hit the mayor's computing system, they are forwarded to MIT to the massis.lcs.mit.edu computer where they then land, or go into the telecom-archives directory. Calls for http first land on a web page on the mayor's computer where they are instantly redirected over to MIT. If I did (some form of) _telnet://telecom-digest.org_ I would wind up on Mayor Levine's computer, rather than massis/MIT. So when I start work here each day, I must telnet (or puTTY, actually) to massis.lcs.mit.edu and login here _on MIT_ where I pretend I am dealing with a fictious entity known as telecom-digest.org and do all my editing work on massis before I send it out as telecom-digest.org using sendmail with the flag -f ('trusted user' manipulates the 'From:' portion of the email address, so that 'ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu' becomes 'ptownson@telecom-digest.org' or 'editor' or whomever.) Now, is all that clear? So whatever I do here all day, either telnetting to MIT for this Digest, or telnetting to one of my accounts at Berkeley, CA where I have a couple .edu accounts or a couple other .edu accounts 'back east' I begin by hooking my computer to the cable line of cableone.net in Independence, KS and I have a 'backup' arrangement to do dialup via TerraWorld.net here in Independence also. I do not know what arrangements Cable One has with ICANN, nor do I know what arrangements the various .edu sites I use have with ICANN. All I know is that my _domain name_ telecom-digest (multipled three times, .org/.net/.com) is registered with ICANN and they reserve the right to take it away from me if they wish to do so. Either I (or someone) has to pay an extortion fee to ICANN and _sign a contract with them_ waiving most of my rights. If that is not having control over the net, I do not know what is. I keep hearing people saying "ICANN has no rights over your domain name," and I do not know where they come from or what happens with _their_ domain names. Surely they have to sign the same contract signing away their rights to ICANN also. Am I some sort of exception to the rules? I must obey ICANN's rules but no one else has to? That must be the case. I must be some sort of exceptional case; no one else has to sign away their domain name or pay some extortion payment? Is that why I have to keep explaining this over and over? Why should I have to pay ICANN exortion money to be able to use my name? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:54:39 -0600 From: Ron Kritzman Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You must apparently live in the north > shore area of Chicago. (I assume they are still '847' or has that been > changed as well?) PAT] Still 847, but they've overlaid 224. To date the only 224 numbers I've seen are cellphones. I've never seen any statistics, but I'm guessing that there are a lot of numbers being returned to the pool as residential users get rid of 2nd lines in favor of broadband internet. Emoveray ethay Igpay Atinlay otay eplyray ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:43:29 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Anthony Bellanga wrote: >> Lisa Hancock wrote: >>> Nowadays employers seem a lot tighter and grant only the major day >>> off. Many retailers are open on holidays, even Thanksgiving, >>> Christmas, and New Years, and expect people to work. > I guess it depends on who you work for or what type of business or > work you do. And aren't there certain labor laws requiring time and a > half or similar for (non-union) employees who have to work on certain > declared *National* (not "just" Federal) Holidays such as > Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Independence Day, and maybe Labor > Day? (the original "big five", which does not include Memorial Day, > Columbus Day, Veterans' Day, Presidents' Day (which was originally > known as George Washington's Birthday), and in more recent years mlk > day). According to the "Your Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act" poster (as posted in every workplace), you get time and a half after 40 hours worked in a week. It doesn't say anything about holidays. Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only for more than 40 hours in one week, but also more than 8 hours in one day. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Who Owns the Music? Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 06:18:44 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Steven Lichter wrote: > DevilsPGD wrote: >> Before posting legal advice please take the time to investigate where >> the person asking the question is located since their jurisdiction may >> have vastly different rules then yours. > I was not posting legal advice and besides this has to to with Federal > Law!! For which (local) federation? Seth ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #559 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 12 14:57:30 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 76A3B14F98; Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:57:30 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #560 Message-Id: <20051212195730.76A3B14F98@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:57:30 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:59:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 560 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Yahoo Offers Moveable Type For Bloggers (Eric Auchard) Court Refuses to Hear National Geographic CD-ROM Case (Reuters News Wire) MCI Tests Ultra Long-Haul Technology (USTelecom dailyLead ) Cellular-News for Monday 12th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Wage Laws, was Holiday Observances (was Re: Kennedy) (Danny Burstein) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Lisa Hancock) Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Lisa Hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Eric Auchard Subject: Yahoo Offers Moveable Type For Bloggers Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:26:10 -0600 By Eric Auchard Yahoo Inc. and Six Apart Ltd., creator of Movable Type -- the most popular software used to create professional blogs -- said on Sunday Yahoo will be the preferred supplier of Movable Type for small businesses. The partnership is the latest in a string of deals by the world's largest Internet media company as it seeks to embrace so-called "social media," the new generation of Web sites that encourage Internet users to share written text, photos and videos. On Friday, Yahoo acquired Del.icio.us, a site for users to share their favorite Web links. Earlier this year, it acquired Flickr, which offers a way to annotate and share photos. Yahoo will effectively act as the preferred provider of Movable Type for small business users, taking advantage of its scale and efficiency, Anil Dash, vice president of professional products for San Francisco-based Six Apart, said in a phone interview. "This is going to be our recommended (sales) channel for small business," he said. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said it will offer commercial blogs based on Movable Type as part of its existing small business Web-site management service. Yahoo provides customers with a unique Web address, blogging tools and business-class e-mail services with spam and virus protections for less than $12 a month. Movable Type is commonly used by businesses, Web designers and professional bloggers to create easily updated Web sites. Other blog software such as Google Inc.'s Blogger, WordPress, Xanga and Six Apart's own Live Journal, are more often used to create blogs for individuals. Yahoo hosts roughly 30 million individual Web sites, including hundreds of thousands of small business sites, said Rich Riley, general manager of Yahoo's small business unit. One in eight U.S. online stores are hosted by Yahoo, he said. Yahoo is one of the world's largest suppliers of hosted Web sites, which refers to Web sites set and maintained for customers by Yahoo for a monthly subscription fee. Six Apart said it had optimized the underlying software in Movable Type so that it responds twice as fast as the same software offered by Six Apart's own Web site. Six Apart continues to develop versions of Movable Type designed to run inside big businesses, along with its consumer-oriented Live Journal software and a quick set-up version of Movable Type known as TypePad. Separately, Dash said Six Apart's Japanese unit is developing a version of Movable Type to run on Oracle database software, in a bid to encourage wider use of blogs among big businesses. Six Apart was developed to run on open source database software originally. Privately-held Six Apart, founded four years ago by husband-and-wife team Ben and Mena Trott, counts 100 employees worldwide. It has received nearly $12 million in funding from backers Neoteny Co. Ltd. and August Capital, Dash said. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Court Won't Hear National Geographic CD-ROM Case Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:28:17 -0600 The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a ruling that copyright law authorized a publisher to reproduce a collective work in CD-ROM format, even if some new materials have been added. The justices declined to review a dispute involving National Geographic magazine and whether it had to pay freelance writers and photographers additional compensation for using their work in the electronic compilation. In 1997, the National Geographic Society began selling a CD-ROM set containing digitally scanned copies of all past issues dating back 108 years. The 30-disc set depicted an exact electronic image of the original bound magazines, with pages presented two at a time in the very same sequence as in the original paper format. The user would see the articles, photographs and advertisements exactly as they had appeared in the original paper copies. Numerous freelance writers and photographers sued for copyright infringement and said they were entitled to additional compensation. But a federal judge and U.S. appeals court in New York ruled against the freelance contributors. The appeals court ruled that the CDs represented an "electronic replica" of the magazine and were a permissible "revision" under copyright law, even if some new copyrightable materials, such as an introductory sequence and a computer software program, had been added. The freelance contributors appealed to the Supreme Court to hear the case. But the justices rejected the appeal without any comment or recorded dissent. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:41:28 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: MCI Tests Ultra Long-Haul Technology USTelecom dailyLead December 12, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zSvMatagCAnewhoZKp TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * MCI tests ultra long-haul technology BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Juniper targets service assurance * BellSouth offers residential VoIP via deal with 8x8 * Columnist: Don't sweat a BlackBerry shutdown * AT&T reaches tentative contract deal with unions * Cable operators open to family tier, but programmers resist * Internet video is red hot USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * You're getting USTelecom dailyLead, but are you missing part of the story? HOT TOPICS * Alltel to spin off landline business * Verizon to unload directory unit * Telecoms turn focus to converged services * Free Wi-Fi becomes the norm * Mobile WiMAX standards approved TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Philips brings TV-on-mobile chipset to U.S. * Sprint Nextel to offer full-length movie, TV downloads Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zSvMatagCAnewhoZKp ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 12th December 2005 Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 07:38:56 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[Financial News]] Australia's Telstra: Hong Kong CSL, New World To Merge http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15177.php Australia's Telstra Corp. said Friday that it has agreed to merge its Hong Kong mobile business CSL with New World Mobile Holdings Ltd., creating Hong Kong's largest mobile operator. ... Singapore MobileOne Confirms Tie-Up With PLDT, SMART http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15179.php MobileOne Ltd. confirmed Friday it will be entering into an agreement with Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., or PLDT, and its unit. ... Alltel To Spin Off Wireline Operations In $9.1 Billion Deal http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15180.php LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)--Alltel Corp., one of the nation's largest telecom service providers to rural areas, on Friday said it plans to become a pure wireless company by spinning off its wireline business and merging those operations with Valor Commun... NTL: Virgin Mobile Offer Better Value For Shareholders http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15184.php NTL Inc. said Friday that it continues to believe that its potential offer at 323 pence per Virgin Mobile share represents better value, for all Virgin Mobile shareholders, than Virgin Mobile's stand-alone alternatives. ... Potential Buyers Seen Unlikely To Step Up For Alltel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15185.php While Alltel Corp. may appear to be an attractive acquisition target, few buyers are likely to step up in the near term. ... Analyst says Russian mobile operators’ Jan-Sep revenue up 38% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15187.php The total revenue of Russia’s mobile operators rose 38% on the year to U.S. $7.57 billion in January-September, iKS-Consulting analytical agency said in a report Friday. ... EA Games buys Jamdat Mobile http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15199.php The console games firm, Electronic Arts and the mobile phone games developer, JAMDAT have entered into a merger agreement under which EA will acquire JAMDAT for a total of approximately US$680 million. EA and JAMDAT together plan to publish over 50 g... [[Handsets News]] Samsung To Start Making Handsets In India By March http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15182.php PREMIUM - South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Friday said it will start producing cellular handsets in India by March. ... Panasonic Withdraws from GSM Handset Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15197.php Panasonic Mobile says that it will phase out development of GSM mobile phones due to severe global competition. By concentrating resources into next-generation mobile terminal technologies, as well as unifying platforms and core technologies for the ... [[Legal News]] Russian antitrust still undecided on Alfa, Telenor stakes in VimpelCom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15183.php Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) is yet to decide on applications from both Russia's Alfa Group and Norway's Telenor to increase their respective stakes in Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom, FAS Director Igor Artye... Brazil's Wireless Co Claro Resumes Operations In Minas http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15186.php Brazilian wireless operator Claro, the local unit of Mexico's America Movil SA, will resume operations in the southeast state of Minas Gerais on Saturday, after a local court overturned an injunction that forced the firm to halt operations a week ago... Verizon Wireless Wins Lawsuit Against Telemarketers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15188.php TRENTON, N.J. (AP)--Verizon Wireless has won two legal skirmishes against telemarketers who made unwanted sales calls to its customers, and said it has launched a new offensive against unsolicited text messages. ... [[Messaging News]] MMS Interconnection for Pakistan http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15196.php Pakistan's three GSM network operators, Telenor, Ufone and Warid Telecom have launched a MMS interconnection service. This would enable the subscribers of all three operators to exchange MMS or multimedia messages with zero interconnect charges. This... [[Mobile Content News]] Students Ready to Accept Cell Phone Ads - For a Price http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15190.php Advertisers are increasingly using cell phones to reach college students, and they are finding a receptive audience, says a new study by Ball State University. A survey of 669 students at Ball State in November found a third of students are receiving... [[Network Contracts News]] Ericsson Gets 3 Contracts In West Africa From Investcom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15181.php Telefon AB LM Ericsson said Friday it has received three contracts in West Africa from the international operator Investcom LLc. ... Israeli Operator Orders Fixed/Mobile Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15193.php Israel's iDEN operator, MiRS has ordered a core convergence switching solution from Tekelec. The solution enables MiRS' transition to the Internet protocol multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture and enables next-generation capabilities, including fi... [[Network Operators News]] GSM Expansion for Kosovo http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15195.php Kosovo's GSM network operator, Vala 900 says that it has engaged in its 4th expansion phase and is planning to expand coverage to 99% of the population by adding 284 new base stations. The company will also increase network capacity to 700,000 custom... [[Offbeat News]] Vodacom Sponsors Mobile Health Initiative http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15200.php Vodacom Tanzania has launched a mobile health clinic in partnership with Marie Stopes, an international NGO, and medical service provider Managed Mobile Health Clinic (MMHC). Vodacom has supplied the bus for the Mobile Health Clinic with all the nece... [[Regulatory News]] China Could Loose 60 Million Phone Users in 6 Months http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15192.php China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has announced plans to require all PrePay phone users to register their handsets, or face having them disconnected. China currently has approximately 200 million PrePay users out of a total of some 380 m... [[Statistics News]] AC&M says Ukraine's total mobile subscriber base up 5.8% in Nov http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15189.php The total subscriber base of Ukraine's mobile operators rose 5.8% in November to 26.36 million people as of November 30, Advanced Communications & Media (AC&M) said in a statement Friday. ... Australian PrePay Usage Jumps This Year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15191.php Australia's Communications and Media Authority has issued a report that gives an overview of the Australian telecoms market. The report notes that during 2004-05 mobile services increased by 12% to 18.42 million, with the penetration rate of mobile p... [[Technology News]] S Korea KT Corp, Alcatel Enter Mobile Broadband Devt Pact http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15178.php South Korea's KT Corp. said Friday it has entered into an alliance with France's Alcatel to cooperate in developing mobile broadband applications. ... SIM Cards That Talk to Each Other http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15194.php Italy's TIM has announced the Italian launch of the first SIM Card that allows mobile phones to "communicate" with TV set-top boxes, computers, household appliances and a host of home electronics devices. The new Z-SIM" SIM Card is a Telecom Italia G... CDMA/EV-DO 450 Scanner Solution http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15198.php PCTEL has announced the commercial availability of a new SeeGull DMA/EV-DO scanner solution for the 450MHz frequency band. PCTEL's CDMA/EV-DO 450 scanner solution addresses the drive testing and RF measurement needs of wireless carriers who are dep... ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Wage Laws, was Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 08:32:47 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) writes: [ snip ] > According to the "Your Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act" > poster (as posted in every workplace), you get time and a half after > 40 hours worked in a week. It doesn't say anything about holidays. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only for more than 40 hours in > one week, but also more than 8 hours in one day. PAT] While many people believe that, I'm not aware of any such daily requirement. And that 40 hr/week overtime line is fuzzy, with _plenty_ of exceptions. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 12 Dec 2005 04:12:19 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lena wrote: >>> I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to >>> prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or >>> political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lena, when you limit those people > to 'one call per year', wouldn't that be like saying spammers and > scammers and phishermen should be limited to one spam, scam or phish > per year? Are you trying to dictate what people can talk about on > their phone? PAT] I'm trying to dictate what people can call me on MY phone. I don't want telemarketers calling me at all, but the ones who have exceptions to the rule, those calling on behalf of charities and political organizations are rude. They won't leave a message on the answeing machine, but will hang up, and then call over and over again. That is why I suggest limiting them to one call per year; perhaps they will leave their message and go away. As far as spammers and scammers and phishermen go, they should all be taken out and drawn and quartered. Lena [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I quite agree with your assessment, but my point was what makes _your_ telephone any more sancrosanct than _my_ computer. If _you_ have the right to dictate who can call you on _your_ phone, then _I_ should have the right to dictate what kind of messages come through on _my_ computer. And let's face it, spam-scam and phishing is far worse than telemarketers ever have been. Imagine, if you will, several hundred telemarketers ringing your phone without ceasing all day and all night, and your only recourse, according to the so-called 'experts' was to rely on screening attempts, and many of the spammer-scammers managed to trick their way around that. Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: 12 Dec 2005 09:57:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Arthur Kamlet wrote: > Except that AT&T fought for and succeeded in keeping the name: > Bell Laboratories. At the time of divesture everyone thought the "Bell" name had major value, thus the fight to keep it. A lot of things turned out differently that what was expected in 1984 thanks to technology and regulatory changes. Former strengths evaporated, former weaknesses grew strong. However, as it turned out, the Bell name became of little value, indeed, almost a negative. I thought Bell Atlantic was foolish when it changed its name to Verizon, but it turned out to be a smart decision. The future -- high profits -- were in new technologies not associated with the stodgy old Bell System basic black 500 set. Even though Bell developed a great many technical things, using the trade name Verizon on new and modern ads just seems to fit better. I just can't see an ad by the Bell System featuring Gwen Stefani rockin' along as Verizon uses for its cell phones, or Motorola's ad showing a woman squeezing into skintight slacks that still has room for her slimphone*. Indeed, I'm not even sure they're using James Earl Jones as their spokesman anymore. The big profit money (unregulated new services) is with the young people who get cell phones galore, use them a lot (note T-Mobile's ads with the talking cheerleader), text message, download everything, heavy duty Internet service, etc. These people never heard of and could care less of the old Bell System, the guys struggling in snow shoes up the mountain in the blizzard to maintain the microwave tower, operators on duty as flood waters creep up to their floor, etc. In the unregulated world, I think Verizon is doing quite well with that stuff, especially without the regulatory burdens of serving the poor, rate filings, etc. I suspect the kids (and adults) lose their phones regularly and spend big bucks to get out of the contracts, which is pure profit for them. They would never let a regulated company do that. Verizon sticks the old Bell logo on the _side_ of payphone mounts, probably just to reassure old geezers like myself. Admittedly I still prefer to use a "real" payphone rather than an "imitation", although any call beyond the local area will be terribly costly, and some imitation phones are actually cheaper for such calls. (Many traditional real payphones still have the "Bell System Property Not For Sale" on the cover of the coin return slot.) *In the old days, a slimphone was the Trimline set, offered at a premium price. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: 12 Dec 2005 10:12:58 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com There are more and more devices coming onto the affordable marketplace that allow parents to monitor their teenagers' whereabout and activities. Is this a good or bad thing? One is a video camera in the car which monitors their driving. It can see whether they use their seatbelts (kids often forget) and whether they drive carefully or not (samples show kids, even knowing of the device, get distracted easily). Another is a GPS device for car or cell phone so they know where the kid is at all times. I have very mixed feelings about these devices and this kind of supervision. Sometimes I think the stricter the parents with this stuff and various house rules, the more wild the kid will end up as they figure out ways to circumvent them or just lie to cover up. In other words, sometimes I think a more flexible structure and some trust works out better. If I were a kid I'd be furious if my parents used such devices on me, and I wouldn't be keen if a friend's parents did so. Admittedly, myself and my friends were a pretty tame (lame?) crowd. But on the flip side, some kids out there are pretty wild and do need more structure. I knew a girl whose parents were terribly strict with her, but this girl was in the fast lane and I could see the parents not wanting to be grandparents too early. Some kids hit puberty and become totally different people, with tons of energy and restlessness, and a desire to be as adventerous as possible. Plenty of 14 y/o girls lie to their parents and seek out college boys to date (and lie to them as well). Plenty of new drivers (either gender) make the Indianapolis 500 look tame and get killed in the process. So I don't know what the ethical answer is. I am very grateful they didn't have this kind of monitoring when I was kid, as well as no metal detectors to go into high school. Indeed, in my high school they abolished the hall pass system and the halls became _quieter_ than before. I will note one big change from my teen days is that (1) parents today seem to be more involved in their own lives than in my day, that is, they don't have the time to really know their kids' day-to-day activities and friends since both parents work long hours or aren't even there. (2) more kids have their very own cars at age 16 and the freedom that goes with them. I didn't get my own car until I was 21, in my younger years a parent would drive kids out on their dates (not a lot of fun, but it did act as a damper). Borrowing the parents' car first means the car must be available and it not always is in a one-car household, and secondly requires a explanation of need, destination, etc. When a kid has their very own car it's a lot easier to just take off. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I was in high school (1956-60) there were no metal detectors to walk through either, nor any of the other 'security' devices so prevalent these days. Somehow, we managed to survive. My friends, and the people who administer my household (Margaret [the meals on wheels lady]; the nurse and the SRS housekeeper who come around now and then, etc) always seem so amazed to hear me humming [or listening to a recording of] my favorite musical composition, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach 'Come Sweet Death, Come Blest Repose'. Don't you want to live forever, they ask. Hell no, is my reply. When my time comes for a _natural_ death, I will be so happy to be gone. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #560 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 13 04:39:17 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id CD9A715101; Tue, 13 Dec 2005 04:39:16 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #561 Message-Id: <20051213093916.CD9A715101@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 04:39:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, US_DOLLARS_3 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Dec 2005 04:38:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 561 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Front Lines - December 12, 2005 (Jonathan Marashlian) A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank (Monty Solomon) Cable Industry Gets Family Friendly (Monty Solomon) Cellular-News for Tuesday 13th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Communications History (Charles G Gray) Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Carl Navarro) Re: Court Won't Hear National Geographic CD-ROM Case (Lisa Hancock) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lisa Hancock) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Carl Zwanzig) Re: Wage Laws, was Holiday Observances Phone Rates (Robert Bonomi) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Jonathan Marashlian Subject: The Front Lines - December 12, 2005 Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 16:22:53 -0500 Organization: The Helein Law Group http://www.thefrontlines-hlg.com/ The FRONT LINES Sponsored by The Helein Law Group, P.C. http://www.thlglaw.com/ Advancing The Cause of Competition in the Telecommunications Industry 2nd CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS ALLOWS ANTITRUST CLAIMS AGAINST RBOCs TO PROCEED On October 3rd, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a lower court ruling that had dismissed a lawsuit against all four RBOCs -- BellSouth, Qwest, SBC, and Verizon -- alleging violations of the Sherman Act, Section 1 (antitrust). Twombly, et al v. Bell Atlantic, ___ F.3d ___, 2005 WL 2420523 (2d Cir, NY). Here's the pertinent background. The plaintiffs were not CLECs or other competitors. Instead, the plaintiffs were CONSUMERS. The action is styled as a class action. The allegations are that following the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the RBOCs conspired to exclude competitors from their respective geographic markets for local telephone and high-speed Internet services and also tacitly agreed not to compete against one another in said markets. The District Court dismissed the suit for failure to state a cause of action upon which relief could be granted. The Second Circuit, however, reversed and remanded on a narrow procedural ground, finding instead that the plaintiffs had sufficiently pled enough facts to meet the notice pleading requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Having met the notice pleading requirements, the Second Circuit held that the lower court erred when it dismissed the suit. The reversal means that the plaintiffs will be able to use discovery to build their case against the RBOCs. The suit remains subject to possible motions for summary judgment against the plaintiffs, but these filings cannot be made until after the plaintiffs have had a chance to use discovery to build their case. The specific factual allegations used by the plaintiffs are most interesting. It was alleged that - The RBOCs control 90% of the local telephone market in the U.S. The RBOCs have agreed (conspired) not to compete with one another in their respective territories. The result of this conspiracy has been to drive CLECs out of the market for local phone and high-speed Internet services. Plaintiffs (as consumers) were injured by forcing them as consumers of these services to pay at rates higher than they would otherwise pay in a competitive environment. The factual predicates stated in support allegations of antitrust violations were - The RBOCs engaged in "parallel conduct" by not competing with each other, conduct that cannot be explained but for the existence of a tacit agreement not to compete. This allegation was supported by alleging that - * The RBOCs' operating territories include pockets of territories surrounding other RBOC operating territories which provide the RBOCs competitive advantages to invade other RBOC territories, but such invasions have not occurred; * The RBOCs have frequently complained that FCC regulations implementing the 1996 Telecommunications Act hurt their businesses by forcing them to provide CLECs with access to their networks at rates that are below the cost of maintaining those networks. Such RBOC complaints should have served as a spur for the RBOCs to invade other RBOC territories to reap the benefits of being able to compete based on obtaining below cost network operations; but the RBOCs nevertheless ignored this "incentive"; * Richard Notebaert, Qwest's CEO, stated publicly that competing in neighboring SBC territories "might be a good way to turn a quick dollar but that doesn't make it right"; * The RBOCs communicate frequently with each other through a myriad of organizations that provide the opportunity for a conspiracy to form and be conducted without the likelihood of detection; and * From the day the 1996 Act became law, the RBOCs have used every means available to destroy the ability of CLECs to compete. The Second Circuit cited these and other facts to find that the antitrust lawsuit could not be dismissed for failing to state a cause of action. Thus, the plaintiffs may now proceed to the discovery stage. At stake is some form of injunctive relief, treble damages and exposure to maximum fines of $100,000,000 per corporation, $1,000,000 per person or imprisonment of up to ten years or both. CLECs and others - stay tuned. FCC CONSOLIDATES FRONTIER DECLARATORY PETITION REGARDING ACCESS CHARGES WITH PETITIONS PREVIOUSLY FILED BY SBC AND VARTEC; ACCESS CHARGES ON VERGE OF COLLIDING WITH INTERNET PROTOCOL On November 23, 2005, Frontier Telephone of Rochester, Inc. (Frontier) filed with the FCC a Petition for Declaratory Ruling that USA Datanet (Datanet) and any similarly situated carriers must pay tariffed originating interstate access charges for Feature Group A calls from Frontier's end users. Feature Group A calls require calling parties to input a seven-digit number, obtain dial tone from another carrier's switch, input a personal identification number, and then the telephone number of the called party. In its petition, Frontier seeks a declaratory ruling that it is owed originating access charges for IP-transported Feature Group A calls for the following interstate access rate elements: 1) end office common trunk port; 2) end office local switching; 3) local transport tandem transmission - fixed; and 4) local transport tandem transmission facility. Frontier filed its petition after the United States District Court for the Western District of New York stayed Frontier's case seeking payment of access charges from Datanet for originating Feature Group A access services. Frontier Telephone of Rochester, Inc. v. USA Datanet Corp., No. 05-CV-6056 CJS, Decision and Order, 13-14 (W.D.N.Y. Aug. 2, 2005). The court found it appropriate to stay the case pending the FCC's resolution of the issues raised by Frontier. Frontier asked the FCC to consolidate its petition with existing WC Docket No. 05-276, which is examining petitions for declaratory rulings filed by SBC and VarTec on similar IP access charge issues. The FCC agreed to Frontier's request. As a quick re-cap, on September 26, 2005, the FCC released a Public Notice requesting comments on Petitions filed by SBC and VarTec. Both Petitions request clarification regarding the application of access charges to certain providers of wholesale transmission using Internet Protocol (IP). As described below, SBC and VarTec take contrary positions on the issue. On September 21, 2005, SBC filed a petition for declaratory ruling that wholesale transmission providers using Internet protocol (IP) technology to transport long distance calls are liable for access charges. SBC filed its petition after the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri dismissed without prejudice SBC's claims seeking payment of access charges for long distance calls that were transported using IP technology. The court found it appropriate to defer the issues raised by SBC to the primary jurisdiction of the FCC. In its Petition, SBC seeks a declaratory ruling that wholesale transmission providers using IP technology to carry long distance calls that originate and terminate on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) are liable for access charges under section 69.5 of the Commission's rules and applicable tariffs. SBC seeks a ruling that providers meeting these criteria are interexchange carriers. VarTec filed a petition for declaratory ruling on related issues. Specifically, VarTec seeks a declaratory ruling that it is not required to pay access charges to terminating local exchange carriers (LECs) when enhanced service providers or other carriers deliver calls directly to the terminating LECs for termination. VarTec also seeks a declaratory ruling that such calls are exempt from access charges when they are originated by a commercial mobile radio service (CMRS) provider and do not cross major trading area (MTA) boundaries. VarTec also seeks a declaratory ruling that terminating LECs are required to pay VarTec for the transiting service VarTec provides when terminating LECs terminate intraMTA calls originated by a CMRS provider. As the industry rapidly migrates to IP-based calling, the issue of access charges and access charge reform is gaining traction in the courts and at the FCC. Access charges continue to be a tremendous source of revenue for ILECs and independent LECs and, as such, will continue to be tremendous motivation for lawsuits and other "self help" efforts to collect access charges from a variety of entities, some of which may or may not be applicable. If you have concerns, please contact your regulatory attorney and if you do not have one, contact us at: 703-714-1313 or via e-mail: mailto:jsm@thlglaw.com jsm@thlglaw.com. COMMUNICATIONS TAXES: News & Notes At The Helein Law Group we are frequently asked to provide advice regarding state and federal taxation of telecommunications and enhanced communications services. The firm's Telecommunications & Technology Regulatory Practice includes a separate focus that offers expert advice on federal and state excise taxes on communications products and services, as well as on state sales, use and gross receipt (excise taxes), and other "tax-like" regulatory fees that are or can be applied to a variety of communications and information technology services and products. As a new service to its clients and readers of The Front Lines, we will begin publishing summaries of tax decisions relevant to the communications industry on a more frequent basis. We are taking these steps to highlight the dizzying array of taxes, changes in tax laws & regulations, and the importance of these changes have in the context of the telecommunications & enhanced services industries. If you seek legal advice on issues pertaining to taxes or "tax-like" fees, please contact our firm at 703-714-1300 or via e-mail: mailto:mail@thlglaw.com mail@thlglaw.com. New York In New York, a recent decision held that sales tax applies to purchases of electricity used to provide power to telecommunications equipment. XO Communications, Inc. (XO), purchased electricity from Con Edison that was used to power its telecommunications equipment and filed a refund claim on the sales tax paid on its purchases of electricity. XO relied on Section 1115(a)(12-a) of the N.Y. Tax Code that its purchases of electricity were used in the production, delivery, or rendering of telecommunications services. But it was held that the exemption in Section 1115(a)(12-a) does not apply to purchases of electricity. XO then relied on Section 1115 (a)(12) claiming exemption for machinery and equipment used in manufacturing tangible personal property for sale. This argument was rejected because the term "machinery and equipment" does not include electricity and the electricity purchased did not produce tangible personal property for sale; but was used to produce a service. XO's reliance on Section 1115(c)(1) was also rejected because telecommunications services are not corporeal property because they cannot be seen or handled and telecommunications are not taxed as tangible personal property under the Tax Law but as a service. XO's final argument that under Section 1115(c)(1) its purchase of alternating current was a purchase of a raw material that was converted to direct current was rejected because the conversion was considered to be only an intermediate step in the process to sell it telecommunications services. XO New York, Inc., New York Division of Tax Appeals, DTA N 820005, 9/29/05. Pennsylvania Graham Packaging Company, L.P., recently lost its appeal to overturn the taxability of canned software based on the differences in the delivery method used, i.e., the difference between being received via computer disks as opposed to receiving via an electronic download. The question presented was whether the renewal of a license to use canned computer software that was originally delivered by computer disk was subject to sales tax when updates are delivered via electronic download? The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue held that the initial acquisition of canned software by disk, makes it tangible personal property and taxable. It issued Sales Tax Bulletin 2005-04 follows an earlier ruling against Graham, and effective 11/1/05, sales tax must be charged on all sales of canned software regardless of the delivery method. Graham Packaging Company, LP, v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, No. 652 F.R. 2002, 9/1 and Sales Tax Bulletin, 2005-04, PA Department of Revenue, 11/1/05. The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue also announced that it will soon update its Statement of Policy, 61 Pa. Code 60.20, to reflect the Federal Internet Tax nondiscrimination Act and the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act, as well as Pennsylvania Act 23 of 2000 and Act 89 of 2002. In the meantime the Department provided a list of examples and definitions of both enhanced and non-enhanced telecommunication services. Services that the Department has determined are enhanced telecommunications services include: * Data Processing * Information Retrieval Services * Video Programming * Video on Demand * Voice Service Services that the Department has determined are not enhanced telecommunications services include: * Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) * Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) * Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) * Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) * Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) * Primary-rate Integrated Services Digital Network (PRI_ISDN) * T-1 and T-3 lines * Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) * Vertical Services * Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) Sales tax Bulletin 2005-03, Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, Issued 9/30/05. Tennessee The Tennessee Court of Appeals has held that telephone central office machinery and equipment does not qualify for the industrial machinery equipment exemption under the Tennessee sales and use tax. AT&T Corporation, Network Systems Division v. Loren Chumley, Commissioner of Revenue, S Tennessee, Tennessee Court of Appeals, Appeal from the Chancery Court for Davidson County, M2004-01514-COA-R3-CV, 10/21/05. ________ The Front Lines is a free publication of The Helein Law Group, P.C., providing clients and interested parties with valuable information, news, and updates regarding regulatory and legal developments primarily impacting companies engaged in the competitive telecommunications industry. The Front Lines does not purport to offer legal advice nor does it establish a lawyer-client relationship with the reader. If you have questions about a particular article, general concerns, or wish to seek legal counsel regarding a specific regulatory or legal matter affecting your company, please contact our firm at 703-714-1313 or visit our website: http://www.thlglaw.com/ www.THLGlaw.com The Helein Law Group, P.C. 8180 Greensboro Drive, Suite 700 McLean, Virginia 22102 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:09:24 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility. A man in Nashville has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Mr. Seigenthaler on Friday that he had written the material suggesting that Mr. Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Wikipedia, a nonprofit venture that is the world's biggest encyclopedia, is written and edited by thousands of volunteers. Mr. Seigenthaler discovered the false entry only recently and wrote about it in an op-ed article in USA Today, saying he was especially annoyed that he could not track down the perpetrator because of Internet privacy laws. His plight touched off a debate about the reliability of information on Wikipedia - and by extension the entire Internet - and the difficulty in holding Web sites and their users accountable, even when someone is defamed. In a confessional letter to Mr. Seigenthaler, Mr. Chase said he thought Wikipedia was a "gag" Web site and that he had written the assassination tale to shock a co-worker, who knew of the Seigenthaler family and its illustrious history in Nashville. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/media/11web.html?ex=1291957200&en=250503cbb293b485&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:37:51 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cable Industry Gets Family Friendly By JENNIFER C. KERR Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under pressure from the government, the nation's two largest cable companies plan to offer packages of family friendly channels to give parents a new way to shield children from sex, rough language and violence. Industry leader Comcast Corp., No. 2 Time Warner Cable and several other companies will start offering "family choice" tiers, most likely by spring, said Kyle McSlarrow, head of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the main cable trade group. Details will vary by company, McSlarrow told the Senate Commerce Committee on Monday. He did not have an estimate on the cost, but said the tiers would be tied to digital cable packages, which cost more than a standard non-digital package. The industry has come under increased scrutiny for raunchy programming, most recently from the head of the Federal Communications Commission. Chairman Kevin Martin urged cable executives at an indecency forum last month to give parents more tools to help navigate the hundreds of channels available to consumers. Without endorsing a specific solution, Martin offered several suggestions, including family friendly tiers and so-called "a la carte" pricing, which would let customers pick and pay for only those channels they want. Most cable executives have dismissed the idea of a la carte pricing, saying it would drive up costs and lead to the demise of channels that can't attract enough advertising dollars. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=53885309 ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Tuesday 13th December 2005 Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 07:42:05 -0600 From: Cellular-Nnews Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] NTT DoCoMo To Invest $6 Million In Chinese Mobile Payment Co http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15202.php NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Monday it will invest $6 million in January in the holding company of Chinese mobile payment service provider Just In Mobile Information Technology Shanghai. ... Russia's MTS purchases 51% of Kyrgyzstan's Bitel for $150 mln http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15204.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has purchased a 51% stake in Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel for U.S. $150 million, MTS President Vasily Sidorov told reporters Monday. ... Orascom Sells Congo GSM Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15209.php Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH) has signed an agreement to sell its controlling 65% equity stake in its GSM operation in Congo Brazzaville, Libertis Telecom. Total consideration to OTH is US$66.6 million in cash. As of September 30th 2005, Libe... [[ Legal ]] EU Ends Antitrust Probe After ETSI Changes Patent Rules http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15203.php The European Commission Monday closed an antirust investigation into the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, a group that sets the industry's technology standards. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Mobile Content A Key Factor When Buying a Handset http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15206.php According to research on digital services for mobile phones commissioned by Buongiorno Vitaminic, downloading ringtones, wallpapers and multimedia games comes third place among the favourite activities of mobile holders, preceded only by calls and te... Mobile TV Launched in South Africa http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15210.php South Africa's Vodacom has launched the first mobile television entertainment service on cellphones, to customers in South Africa using 3G handsets. New forms of content are increasingly making their way onto cellphones -- music, in particular, is alr... [[ Network Contracts ]] Ericsson In Deal With BITE For Mobile Infrastructure http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15201.php Swedish telecommunications equipment company Telefon AB LM Ericsson Monday said it has signed a contract with Baltic mobile operator BITE Group to supply second-generation and third-generation mobile systems infrastructure in Lithuania and Latvia unt... Improved Billing Platform in Qatar http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15208.php Comptel says that it has delivered a data charging solution to Qtel in Qatar, which includes online mediation, rating product components. This will enable Qtel to offer unified and wider service offerings for both postpaid and prepaid mobile users. Q... [[ Statistics ]] 3G Spending is Higher for Operator Portals Compared to Off-Portal http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15205.php 3G raises adoption of applications and increases overall data services spending, according to a new report from Telephia, which showed that 3G users were much more active than non-3G users, especially for new and advanced mobile activities developed ... Chinese ICT Exports Overtake USA http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15207.php China overtook the United States in 2004 to become the world's leading exporter of information and communications technology (ICT) goods such as mobile phones, laptop computers and digital cameras, according to OECD data.... ------------------------------ Subject: Communications History From: Charles G Gray Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:48:28 -0600 In 1959 I was assigned to the US Army Signal Depot in Okinawa. I got my uniform all spruced up and answered all of the questions from the examining board correctly and won "soldier of the month". There were three awards. One was a new Army Green uniform, which would have cost me about half a month's pay out of my pocket. When I joined the Army in 1957 they issued us one OD uniform and one green one. We were supposed to buy the second green one ourselves. We got black shoes, but we had to dye the brown boots black ourselves. Another piece of the award was a three-minute phone call to the United States -- which at the time would cost about US$36.00 (over a third of a month's pay). As I recall it was handled by RCA Globecom from a phone booth in Sukiran to Tulsa, OK. It was full duplex, so we didn't have to do the "over" thing. I called my wife, who had just borne our first son. I learned that he had been born via a Red Cross "health and welfare" telegram, since my wife couldn't afford to call me. I'm glad that the troops today have multiple methods of communicating, but in 1958-59 I was severely restricted. My wife wrote every day, but we only had that one single phone conversation in my 15 months overseas. At $12 a minute, we could buy a lot of stamps. The final part of the award was a trip to the northern part of Okinawa (on the general's helicopter) to have a look at the tropospheric scatter radio site that was being installed. My memory is clouded by the fog of time, but I think it was Philco doing the installation. Since I was a radio repairman I got the "grand tour" of the whole site. The helicopter ride was something special as well, since they were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are today. Moving along, when I went to school with AT&T in New Jersey in 1970 we visited their HF radio site near Princeton, NJ. There were huge AM transmitters, and equally huge multi-panel rhombic antennas. At that time they were used only for contingency call routing to countries like Switzerland, who being landlocked, always had a fear of one or more of their neighbors interfering with their cable connections. Each transmitter had the name of the country it was prepared to serve. Of course, the advent of satellites put an end to the overseas HF services. Regards, Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications Oklahoma State University - Tulsa (918)594-8433 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: 12 Dec 2005 12:38:14 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I was in high school (1956-60) > there were no metal detectors to walk through either, nor any of the > other 'security' devices so prevalent these days. Somehow, we managed > to survive. In fairness to today's administrators, there were some differences between now and then: 1) Drop outs: A lot of kids, particularly boys, simply dropped out of school when it got too boring or onerous. While there was encouragement to stay in school in those days, there wasn't the pressure like today and there were plenty of good jobs available if the kid had half a brain or a strong back. In those years American industry was humming along very nicely and a big demand for labor. If you had some smarts and could learn skills and worked hard on the job you would get promoted even wtihout a HS diploma and make a nice living. The point is a lot of the trouble makers in school today would simply have been out of school in those days. 2) Guns: Our country has gone nuts with guns. People had guns in the old days. But they had only one or two and they weren't as powerful as today. A kid recently murdered his girlfriend's parents and he was loaded for WW III; likewise with the kids who shot up their schools. 3) There were bad kids and bad schools: School administrators were always fanactical about keeping bad news out of the paper, but inner cities and tough rural neighborhoods had their share of violence. There was a film on that, The Blackboard Jungle. During the "good years" of WW II, schools set up in temporary construction camps for war industries were pretty rough, the boys caring little and the girls running off to "take care" of soldiers. At the end of the war there were many very bewildered 16 and 17 year old girls sitting in front of a squalid room waiting for their partying husband. Some had a baby with them. Today we'd put a man who did that in jail but back then as long as they were married it was fine. Back in the war and postwar years authors who wrote about this stuff were criticized as unpatriotic or were banished to heavy-duty college textbook status that few people would read. When Hollywood attempted (very rarely) to cover this social problems the films didn't sell and Hollywood was criticized as being commie for putting them out. Fortunately many books on this subject have survived in large libraries. The Natl Bldg Museum in Washington did an exhibit on wartime construction, incl wartime housing, and included the family and social issues therein. [public replies please] ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 05:15:42 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 12 Dec 2005 10:12:58 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > There are more and more devices coming onto the affordable marketplace > that allow parents to monitor their teenagers' whereabout and > activities. Is this a good or bad thing? > One is a video camera in the car which monitors their driving. It can > see whether they use their seatbelts (kids often forget) and whether > they drive carefully or not (samples show kids, even knowing of the > device, get distracted easily). > Another is a GPS device for car or cell phone so they know where the > kid is at all times. > I have very mixed feelings about these devices and this kind of > supervision. I'm very close to getting a GPS for the vehicle. It has two good things in that it can monitor speed, and location. In today's society, I think it is fast becoming a must to know where your own or your child's vehicle is at all times. You can also get it to disable the vehicle, and entry level systems are in the $500 price range plus a few bucks a month for monitoring. If you have a 1970 Pinto you're probably safe from carjacking, but an SUV or any Honda or sports car and you could be a victim. To be able to go on the internet or call the law enforcement people and track your stolen ride is a pretty reasonabe investment. Some of the systems let you establish zones. ie you live in NJ and you tell your child to stay out of NYC. You set a zone around NYC and if the vehicle crosses into that zone it can page you. We could have used that to keep someone out of crack town. Ya gotta do whatever you can sometimes. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Court Won't Hear National Geographic CD-ROM Case Date: 12 Dec 2005 12:22:49 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Reuters News Wire wrote: > The 30-disc set depicted an exact electronic image of the original > bound magazines, with pages presented two at a time in the very same > sequence as in the original paper format. The user would see the > articles, photographs and advertisements exactly as they had appeared > in the original paper copies. > Numerous freelance writers and photographers sued for copyright > infringement and said they were entitled to additional compensation. The article did not describe the terms in which the contributors sold their work. Presumably in this case it was for a use in a particular magazine issue. It would appear in this case in essence NatlG merely reprinted an old issue for which they already compensated the contributor. I don't think contributors are entitled to any extra compensation if the publisher simply issues a reprint of the original work, and that happens often. In other words, if I sell a photo to NatlG and they run it in an issue, and that issue is so popular that they reprint it many times over, I am not entitled to any more compensation than if it was a normal press run. FWIW, I also want to note that the second hand price of old Natg Geo is very low. My local library has a bookcase full of them for sale at 20c each and won't take any more donations to sell. They're not moving very quickly. I like the issues from the 1950s and earliers since the Bell System always had a nice full page ad on the last page (there was a connection between the Bell System and Natlg Geo boards). I got one ad showing "the voice with a smile" which I'm giving to our Centrex operators. FWIW, a lot of ads from the 1950s are from corporations touting their defense work for the convert, such as missles and atomic energy. Lots of ads had the symbol of an atom in them. In the 1950s companies were proud of that, in the 1960s it became rather controversial. Actually, some people on e-bay make a business of buying this off stuff, clipping out the ads, and selling the ads. NatlG isn't so good for this since the pages are small, but Fortune and Life magazines have big ads (nice colorful Bell System ads, BTW). I also picked up a bound volume from the early 1950s with an interesting article on Long Island, but the bound volumes are stripped of all ads, which can be more interesting than the articles themselves. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the past, I wrote a few articles which I sold, mostly to the Christian Science Monitor for their Home Forum page; also an occasional crossword puzzle. These were in the 1960's, and the Monitor always paid _very well_ for articles and essays and such they purchased, but the conditions were you gave them an _exclusive_ use to the content. No one else could use the articles (including yourself) and _they could use the articles when they pleased and as often as they pleased. I think they paid me fifty dollars for each my Home Forum articles and puzzles. I know it was always sufficient to keep me in beer and cigarettes. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 12 Dec 2005 12:44:38 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lena wrote: > I'm trying to dictate what people can call me on MY phone... > telemarketers ... are rude. They won't leave a message on the answeing > machine, but will hang up, and then call over and over again. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I quite agree with your assessment, but > my point was what makes _your_ telephone any more sancrosanct than _my_ > computer. ...And let's face it, spam-scam > and phishing is far worse than telemarketers ever have been. The difference between telemarketing and spam, IMHO, is that telemarketers make my phone ring, and that is something that demands immediate attention. That bothers me a lot. Much more than spam that might happen to be in the inbox when I check for it at my leisure. (I don't have automated email retrieval). I guess I have been fortunate that I am not innundated with spam. As some of my ISP provided email accounts that I guarded meticulously, and only sent to friends, leaked to (or were guessed by) spammers, I switched to gmail, which seems to have wonderful spam protection and spam reporting ease. Click a button and it's gone. Telemarketers, OTOH, are difficult to get rid of. Lena ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 12 Dec 2005 13:37:22 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lena wrote: ... I agree with Lena. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I quite agree with your assessment, but > my point was what makes _your_ telephone any more sancrosanct than _my_ > computer. If _you_ have the right to dictate who can call you on > _your_ phone, then _I_ should have the right to dictate what kind of > messages come through on _my_ computer. ... I think all of us consumers agree that we don't want any spam emails at all and no soliciting telephone calls at all. Congress, in its infiite wisdom and infinite lobbying, finally put some limits on telemarketing. They do not go as far as we consumers want, and more restrictions need to be applied. The telemarketers have a powerful lobby and fight against this stuff. I think what Lena is suggesting a compromise that could get through Congress. In response to other posts, telemarketers representing charities, past business relationships, and political issues ARE permitted to call just as before and you can't stop them; they're exempt from regulation. Even if you told candidate Smith not to call you, in the next election candidate Jones will call you. I don't understand at all why there's no "no-spam" law passed. I don't know who represents the spamming interests and would think those supporting no-spam would be quite vocal and organized. I think one problem is the openness of the Internet where it is very hard to trace where spam truly comes from, it apparently is very easy for spammers to forge their origin points or actually hijack someone else's computer to do their duty work. To me, that kind of thing should be a serious felony offense. I understand another problem is that much spam originates overseas (along with a lot of illegal porn). I don't understand Internet message addressing, but it seems to me any initiated message should have a secured sender's address address. There should be some technical way that something like that is reasonably tamper proof so it works reliably. Such an address would cut down "phising" and other fraudulent and abusive activity now going on. Some people get very upset with that idea because they want "anonimity". Fine. Let's set up a completely separate Internet that is anonymous, without verifiable addresses (like now). People who want to interchange on that are free to do so, with all that entails. For those of us who take our Internet use a little more seriously, we should have a separate secured system where only messages and screens from properly authenticated sites are permitted. You would have to use (intentionally) two different browsers, one for the garbage, one for serious stuff. I don't understand why some people just love "mob rule". Civilization grew out of the development of rules for us to live by--basic manners and organization. It's how we get anything done in society. Random folk talk is fine for a bar. ------------------------------ From: zbang@radix.net (Carl Zwanzig) Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 01:31:57 -0000 Organization: RadixNet Internet Services Joe Morris wrote: > And I'm sure you remember the little "dial lock" gizmos that were > clamped into the "1" fingerhole and were supposed to keep people from > making outbound calls on an unattended office telephone? It seems > that nobody ever thought about dialing with the switchhook -- or just > banging away with ten or more pulses and asking the operator for > assistance. In my high school's computer lab (two ASR33's and an HP 9100), they resorted to locking the dial in the off-normal position -because- we were dialing with the switchhook (for some reason, we called it Dutch Dialing). Ten quick snaps of the hook and "Assistance in dialing, please". A small mod to the set fixed that... (as did the portable tone pad). Speaking of which, is there an online copy of the famous phrase book for operators? z! ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Wage Laws, was Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 02:27:48 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Danny Burstein wrote: > In sethb@panix.com (Seth > Breidbart) writes: [ snip ] >> According to the "Your Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act" >> poster (as posted in every workplace), you get time and a half after >> 40 hours worked in a week. It doesn't say anything about holidays. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only for more than 40 hours in >> one week, but also more than 8 hours in one day. PAT] > While many people believe that, I'm not aware of any such daily > requirement. _FEDERAL_ law does not require 'time and a half' for more than 8 hours worked. A number of STATE laws -do- so require. Federal law expressly provides that if there are both state and federal requirements that apply, the method that gives the employee the higher pay will be used. Federal law specifically does _not_ mandate extra pay for evening, night, weekend or holiday work. According to the U.S. dept of labor, "these are matters for negotiation between the employer and employee (or his representative)". ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #561 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 13 23:34:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id BC9071506B; Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:34:04 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #562 Message-Id: <20051214043404.BC9071506B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:34:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, DRUGS_ERECTILE,MORTGAGE_PITCH,MORTGAGE_RATES autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:35:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 562 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Spamming the Wrong Message (Adam L. Penenerg) New Place For Spam's Same Old Pitches (Nuki Yoguchi) Spam Scam Invokes Princess Diana (Jeremy Kirk) Spam's Latest Spoilage (hampton roads.com) MASD Warns of Fake Stocktips Using Cellphones (Reuters News Wire) AT&T Rolls Out Speedier Broadband Service (USTelecom dailyLead) HSI and Diverted 1-800-CALL-ATT? (Carl Moore) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Steven Lichter) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Lisa Hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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: Adam L. Penenberg Subject: Spamming the Wrong Message Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:46:08 -0600 By Adam L. Penenberg Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67213,00.html Last week, many netizens cheered when Jeremy Jaynes, the eighth-ranked spammer in the world, was sentenced to nine years in prison. Jaynes, who also went by the name Gaven Stubberfield, was famous for pushing "zoo" porn and operating various spam scams. He fired off millions of e-mail messages, clogging ISP servers and inboxes with various come-ons while amassing a fortune estimated at about $24 million. But that's not why he's going to jail. A Loudoun County, Virginia, jury found him guilty of three counts of forging e-mail headers. Media Hack Like Martha Stewart, he wasn't convicted of a crime as much as he was nailed for trying to cover his tracks. Unlike Martha and other white-collar criminals, he may serve as much time in prison as a bank robber, rapist or someone who committed manslaughter. What this tells us is that in the spam game, e-mail isn't the only way to send a message. Graham Cluley of Sophos, an antispam and antivirus peddler, said, "This sentence sends out a strong message to other spammers that their activities are not going to be tolerated by the U.S. authorities ... It's likely that Jeremy Jaynes' nine-year sentence will keep a few spammers awake at night wondering if the rewards are really worth it." Steve Linford of The Spamhaus Project crowed, "We are very pleased the Virginia jury recommended nine years. It sends the right message to the rest of the U.S.-based spammers that jail time is waiting for them." And not to be outdone, an Associated Press headline read: "Judge sends a message: nine years for spammer." Imagine my surprise when I awoke the next morning and checked one of my many throwaway webmail accounts, which I keep under various noms de plume (my favorite is "media_wh0re"). I found the same pile of spam I always get -- for penile enhancements, Viagra, hot girl-on-girl porn and lower mortgage rates. I guess not everyone got the message. And why should they? Jaynes was prosecuted under a Virginia statute, while many spammers detonate their spam bombs from other countries. I applaud prosecutors for going after spammers, but I don't expect that it will have much impact. "The problem is, we're getting into a war-on-drugs type of situation," said Brian McWilliams, author of Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills and %*@)# Enlargements. "Knocking a guy like Jeremy Jaynes out of business doesn't solve the demand side of the spam problem. There's still a significant number of people who respond favorably to spam, and as long as that's true, spammers will keep trying to reach them." Indeed. Recently, DoubleClick reported that clickthrough rates on e-mail were still at about 8 percent. With hundreds of millions of spam messages shooting through cyberspace every year, you do the math. Unless we can convince people not to click through on these (often) bawdy ads, perhaps we need to look at things differently. After all, "people go to jail for mail fraud all the time, but it doesn't make me less likely to send a letter," pointed out Jeff Rohrs, president of Optiem, an interactive-marketing agency specializing in permission-based e-mail marketing. "E-mail is just a bit ahead of the curve when compared to other digital media because its cost of entry is so low. What other medium lets you send to millions of people for pennies? That's why it remains so attractive to spammers." Citing a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project study, Rohrs believes that consumers are getting used to the nuisance of spam. Witness the drop in people who say that they are spending less time with e-mail, from 29 percent last year to 22 percent this year; and the drop in people who trust e-mail less because of spam, from 62 percent to 53 percent. He would like to see these numbers compared to traditional media like TV, radio and direct mail. He asks: "Do people trust TV less because of infomercials? Or mail less because of annoying mortgage offers that disguise themselves as bills? My guess is that these things annoy people, but they have learned to compartmentalize their impact -- the mediums still deliver value, so consumers are willing to put up with some annoyances for the real benefits." Think about that the next time you return from vacation and have to spend an hour deleting spam. Adam L. Penenberg is an assistant professor at New York University and the assistant director of the business and economic reporting program in the department of journalism. Copyright 2005 Wired News. Copyright 2005, Lycos, Inc. Lycos is a registered trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,67213,00.html NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Yuki Noguchi Subject: A New Place For Spam's Same Old Pitches Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:38:28 -0600 By Yuki Noguchi, Washington Post Staff Writer Now that Web logs -- blogs, for short -- are a popular online pastime for millions of people, scammers are finding new ways to exploit them as vehicles for junk advertisements. The Internet has even coined a term -- splog, a combination of spam and blog -- for a phenomenon that follows in the footsteps of rogue advertising such as spam e-mail, junk mail, junk faxes and adware. The new forms of spam can show up on blogs as fake comments posted by readers that actually have nothing to do with the subject at hand. Instead they are advertising pitches or attempts to get you to click on an unrelated Web site. They also can be set up as bogus blogs; go looking for a blogger talking about, say, bathroom renovations, and you could wind up on a Web site that has a few random renovation-related words but that mainly tries to get you to click on links to advertisements. For the most part, the ads are new pitches for old schemes -- gambling, porn -- and are posing enough of a customer nuisance that Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo are developing tools to clamp down on them. Blogs are free and easy to set up, and until now, they have mostly been earnest forums for political and personal discourse. But their blogs, the greater the potential audience for spammers. Some bloggers and search-engine users are calling on companies that help set up blogs to better police their systems. "Yahoo and Google are the common carriers of the information age, and they have a reasonable responsibility ... to prevent the illegal and inappropriate use of their services," said Scott Allen, an Austin-based online editor for About.com who also maintains a blog. Last month, Blogger, a free blog service, identified a "spamalanche" that hit its system, and the company had to dismantle 13,000 spam-filled blogs created in the course of a single weekend. "The readership of blogs has exploded in the last 18 months," and with it the popularity of splogs, said Jason Goldman, product manager for Blogger, which is owned by Google Inc. "The challenge is one of balance: to make it difficult for people to post bad script but not make it hard for our users." Unauthorized advertisers are blighting the blogosphere by hijacking legitimate discussions of topics with a flurry of phony comments. "We would get surges of it -- as many as 200 to 300 within two hours; we couldn't blacklist the [spammers' online] addresses fast enough," Allen said. "It hampers the open conversation that is the very nature of blogs." Advertisers are also setting up bogus blogs -- what Goldman and others refer to as splogs -- and linking them to numerous other sites to inflate their popularity on search engines. When searchers click on what they think is a relevant site, they end up on imitation blogs full of gibberish and links to ads. Advertisers will pay the spammers every time someone clicks on one of those links. Ben Popken, keeper of a blog called TheSpunker, recently searched the Internet for Swiss army knives and found himself stymied by splogs. Every time he typed in the topic on a blog search engine, he kept pulling up a site that appeared to be a legitimate blog but was filled with links to other Web sites. "In one way, it's a tribute to the openness of the blog system. It's kind of ingenious in this diabolical way," Popken said in an interview. "But something like this happening undermines the trust that blogs are based on." Spammers often use automated software to set up splogs, so since February Google has stepped up its efforts to stop the trashing before it begins, Blogger's Goldman said. Blogger requires a user to enter a code word before setting up a blog and has developed a way of flagging suspected spammers and requiring a similar verification process before they can post comments, he said. Google is further trying to improve its mechanism for identifying junk blogs from legit ones, he said, and only a few bloggers have complained of problems maintaining their blogs. Yahoo has instituted controls on its free Yahoo 360 blogging software that allow users to limit viewership and comments on their blogs, said company spokeswoman Meagan Busath. "Obviously, Yahoo has had a lot of experience combating spam," because it had to combat a similar problem with exploitation of its free e-mail accounts, Busath said. Still, some bloggers say the efforts are not keeping up with incoming spam. John R. Levine, co-author of "The Internet for Dummies," said spam attacks have gotten steadily worse on his blog in the past six months. "I get more fake comments from gambling sites than all other comments put together," he said. He has had to start requiring e-mail address verification before letting people post comments on his site, http://weblog.taugh.com/ . "It makes you look like a doofus. I have this nice blog about e-mail policy, and comments about poker and naked ladies [do] not improve that conversation." Identifying responsible parties can be difficult, because free blog software programs -- like free e-mail accounts -- do not require identity verification. The culprits tend to be fast-moving, and their handiwork so far is not as debilitating as other forms of online fraud. "It's rarely worth the resources and time it takes to find them," said Anne P. Mitchell, president and chief executive of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy and a law professor at the Lincoln Law School of San Jose. But Internet companies that helped create the blog phenomenon can also help keep it clean, she said. "From an ethical, moral, good Internet neighbor perspective ... if they have the ability to do so, they should do so." Copyright 2005 The Washington Post Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: On my Blogger account http://ptownson.blogspot.com I have it set to require moderation on all comments added by anyone. Doing it that way allows me to erase it before the offensive stuff sees the light of day. Lisa Minter does the very same thing on her (reprint of this) Digest each day; when I first got her set up with Yahoo Groups she tried to run it openly, but it is virtually impossible to run an open-ended discussion group either here on Usenet or somewhere like Yahoo. Sad, but true. Start any sort of open-ended virtual discussion group, and it will soon be ruined by the spammers. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Kirk Subject: Spam Scam Invokes Princess Diana Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:40:57 -0600 Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service LONDON- Antivirus experts have warned users to beware of a spam e-mail campaign that promises a sizable grant from The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. The fraudulent e-mail messages say the recipient has been selected to receive a grant of 2.6 million British pounds (about $4.5 million in U.S. funds) grant and should contact the organization. However, the e-mail messages do not come from the memorial fund, which was founded in September 1997 soon after Diana's death. The spam is unusual in the sense that it uses the name of a real charitable fund, plus the name of an actual employee there, according to a warning from security vendor Sophos. "This is not one that will look phishy," said Carole Theriault, a security consultant with Sophos. "They've obviously done their research before they put it out." The memorial fund has also issued a warning on its Web site. Limited Success Some of the messages contain links to Web sites asking for bank account details, and in some messages recipients are directed to wire funds by Western Union to certain people, the warning said. The fund has received almost daily calls asking about the legitimacy of the e-mail, and some people are known to have gone through the first few stages of trying to collect a claim before stopping, said Therese Lyras, press and communications coordinator for the fund. "No one has contacted us to say they have actually sent money," she said. Copyright 2005 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Hamton Roads.com Subject: Spam's Latest Spoilage Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:42:56 -0600 The Virginian-Pilot Score another one for the spammers. Their floods of e-mail pitches for Viagra, luscious lips and lottery schemes have blocked genuine electronic messages warning of real storms. In an effort to reach large numbers of people quickly, emergency managers in Florida's hurricane-hit Indian River County began to send electronic alerts to their citizens. Some 4,200 folks signed up to be pinged by authorities when hurricanes, twisters and other severe incidents threaten. But thanks to non-stop solicitations, Internet service providers everywhere have had to throw up spam-blocking walls to keep their systems from being overloaded and their customers from becoming irate. So Indian River County's emergency-alert e-mails, while legitimate, looked suspicious. And to Internet providers, like AOL, mass mailings equal spam. That means messages warning citizens of impending doom never made it to the inboxes of folks who needed the information. This particular problem appears to be solved, thanks to a reconfiguration of the agency's e-mail server. For those who rely on such information, that's about as comforting as knowing that while our dependence on e-mail grows, more important stuff will get lost in the electronic shuffle. Copyright 2005 HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, HamptonRoads.com For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Independence, KS tried the same thing without success, for the same reason. For a long time now, the franchise agreement with CableOne (and prior, with Time Warner) requires the cable provider to not only allow a couple of channels on television to the community (cable channel 10 for general community purposes; channel 14 for Independence High School and the college; Channel 22 for City Hall and county government) but they also had an arrangement where, if the police department or sheriff had some emergency announcement, they could 'flip a switch' and make their announcment over _all channels_ (for example, weather emergency; other police announcements for the entire community; i.e. two years ago when the little eight year old girl was kidnapped outside Lincoln Elementary School). So watch whatever you wanted on television, when police or city authorities had an emergency announcement, they could cut in and make the announcement. They rarely have to use it, but they still test it once a week or so, with a thirty-second announcement. (Steady tone for a few seconds, then a voice states, "This is Independence, Kansas Emergency Responders with a test message. This is just a test, had there been an actual emergency, Independence or Mont- gomery County emergency responders would have instructed you, etc." Then a tone again and back to whatever program in progress you were watching. Just as sure as they test the emergency sirens on Saturday at 12 noon. _Never_ routine stuff; that is for channel 14 or channel 10 (which few people watch anyway). Someone said "what about people with their faces buried in their computer screens?" So the response was "since _most_ people use Windows and Windows has that 'messenger' function where a screen can be flashed at you (it was not intended exactly that way, but most Windows users know how it can be done, and keep it turned off) Independence authorities arranged with Cable One and TerraWorld (our two primary internet suppliers to do something like that; but only for emergencies. If there was a weather emergency, a tornado for example, authorities would notify cableone.net and terraworld.net and gain control of many -- but not all -- computers in the community. The kids who manage the two ISPs here in town could easily make it happen, but what they did not count on was that there are more AOL ISP users here in town than cableone and terraworld combined. So the big spam-enablers MCI and AOL kept blocking police announcements, _thinking_ they were doing us a favor; some users got the warnings but most computer users did not. The result was much confusion; police eventually quit trying to notify people in that way, although they still continue to use cable television to do so. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: NASD Warns of Fake Stock Tips in CellPhone Scam Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:32:23 -0600 Brokerage regulator NASD on Tuesday warned investors against reacting to stock tips sent in unsolicited mobile phone text messages, as spam schemes aimed at hyping share prices move beyond e-mail and onto cellphones. The so-called "pump and dump" schemes involve spam messages with false recommendations of a company's stock that lead the share price to rise. Fraudsters can then sell their shares, leaving investors with worthless stock, the regulator said. There have been relatively few cases of illegal spamming to U.S. cellphones and investor-focused spam schemes have been more common in e-mail to date. But the number of texts urging recipients to invest immediately in a particular stock has recently increased to the point that there were enough for NASD to take notice, said John Gannon, its vice president of investor education. "We determined there were sufficient messages coming in that it needed to be brought to investors' attention," said Gannon, who did not reveal the quantity of spam messages or say which stocks had been involved. Gannon said these schemes do not generally involve brokers, but NASD would refer any fraudulent text messaging cases it identified to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:22:50 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T Rolls Out Speedier Broadband Service USTelecom dailyLead December 13, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zWyAatagCAsKttiLtw TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T rolls out speedier broadband service BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Microsoft, MCI join forces on Internet phone service * EarthLink snaps up New Edge * Nortel wins big deal with Comcast * Motorola flying high on RAZR sales * Thomson makes offer for Thales Broadcast & Multimedia * Reliance Infocomm, China Telecom to provide telecommunications link * Vodafone wins Turkey's Telsim with $4.55B offer USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Stifel Nicolaus to Host Financial Conference at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Alltel launches wireless broadband in N.C. city * Vonage debuts Wi-Fi phone REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * European lawmakers expected to pass controversial telecom legislation * Verizon expands FiOS TV in Texas * Possibility of NYC Wi-Fi network raises questions Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zWyAatagCAsKttiLtw ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:16:57 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: HSI and Diverted 1-800-CALL-ATT? From memory, I saw "HSI" on a pay phone outside a convenience store last Sunday (it was at a Turkey Hill store on Lampter Road north of -- NOT LOCATED RIGHT AT -- Pennsylvania route 741). I apparently punched in 1-800-2255-288 (1-800-CALL-ATT) okay, but got sent to a collect-call menu of some sort. This is conjuring up some memory of "I HATE COCOTS" in this digest many years ago. Has this ever happened before where a telephone number was "intercepted" in this manner? Fortunately, there was nothing urgent about my attempted call; more of an effort to get that telephone's number onto my bill (failed!). ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 14:19:28 GMT Lena wrote: > Lena wrote: >> I'm trying to dictate what people can call me on MY phone... >> telemarketers ... are rude. They won't leave a message on the answeing >> machine, but will hang up, and then call over and over again. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I quite agree with your assessment, but >> my point was what makes _your_ telephone any more sancrosanct than _my_ >> computer. ...And let's face it, spam-scam >> and phishing is far worse than telemarketers ever have been. > The difference between telemarketing and spam, IMHO, is that > telemarketers make my phone ring, and that is something that demands > immediate attention. That bothers me a lot. Much more than spam that > might happen to be in the inbox when I check for it at my leisure. (I > don't have automated email retrieval). I guess I have been fortunate > that I am not innundated with spam. As some of my ISP provided email > accounts that I guarded meticulously, and only sent to friends, leaked > to (or were guessed by) spammers, I switched to gmail, which seems to > have wonderful spam protection and spam reporting ease. Click a > button and it's gone. Telemarketers, OTOH, are difficult to get rid > of. > Lena I'm on the FTC's Do Not Call List and it works pretty good. I get a few 800 handups, but once in a while I will answer the phone on one of these when I'm home, when it is a telemarketer, I let them have a blast of miliwatt tone, that gets their attention and no more calls, I'm sure they have hearing problems for a while also. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 13 Dec 2005 17:38:52 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Lena wrote: > Fred Atkinson wrote: >> Lena wrote: >>> I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to >>> prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or >>> political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lena, when you limit those people > to 'one call per year', wouldn't that be like saying spammers and > scammers and phishermen should be limited to one spam, scam or phish > per year? No one here has ever said spammers, scammers and phishers should be free to do what they do. All we've done is point out the futility in the approaches suggested here. > Are you trying to dictate what people can talk about on their phone? > PAT] No, she and we are trying to dictate what people can talk about on OUR phones. Big difference. My paying for a phone does not give someone else license to unlimited use of it for THEIR purposes. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That would also be true regarding _your_ computer accounts would it not? But finding the _legitimate, bonadide_ guilty party and chopping off his fingers would not be so futile, would it? But I have many readers here who consider me to be an imbicile and unable to correctly idenfity spammers; apparently they do not know how to geographically locate and match up IP numbers, and no, you do _NOT_ rely upon what the "From:" has to say; you begin much further up in the envelope. Start with the "from " at the very top and carefully examine the first two or three lines as well as paying close attention to the path lines showing how the message got to you. Some of that stuff up there is much harder (but not impossible!) to forge. Now, 'tis true that dial-up IPs tend to be quite dynamic and almost useless, but really serious spammers have a solid line all the time don't they? Please go look at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html to see an example of something I am working on in cooperation with the geobytes.com database. Testing the accuracy of my 'welcome to visitors' line has thus far shown a high degree of positive results. Just go look at those lines on that page. I don't care if you bother to listen to the audio or read the AP newswire. Some of you are probably too smart to bother with that anyway. If the 'welcome to visitors from' line produces really gross inaccuracies in your instance, I would like to know about it. In a day or three, I am going to present here an HTML 'form' in which you can cut and paste the top half dozen or so lines from your favorite spam. I hope you will give it an honest review, and report your results to the Tin Hat imbicile. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:03:49 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Mon, 12 Dec 2005, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > I don't understand at all why there's no "no-spam" law passed. There are "no-spam" laws. They are, at best, modest successes. For those of us who receive hundreds of spams daily, and/or have manage mailers which receive many more, the laws are miserable failures. The general problem is the considerable cost in going after spammers. It is almost impossible to recover more than a fraction of these costs, even when there is complete success in prosecution and seizure of the spammer's ill-gotten gains. Don't forget that when spammers get money, it goes straight through their nose (or in other non-recoverable means). For every big time spammer with a million dollar house there are lots of small fry living in his mother's basement. > I don't understand Internet message addressing, but it seems to me any > initiated message should have a secured sender's address address. > There should be some technical way that something like that is > reasonably tamper proof so it works reliably. Such an address would > cut down "phising" and other fraudulent and abusive activity now going > on. Technically, this is impossible with the current mechanisms used by Internet mail. Nothing short of a complete redesign from the ground up will accomplish it. Anything less is just a band-aid. We have had such mechanisms as PGP and S/MIME for years. An effort to create a new Internet email infrastructure would be extraordinarily expensive and complex. It would make the conversion to TCP and SMTP in 1983 look trivial by comparison. It would put legions of programmers and protocol engineers on the gravy train for many years. The people who you hear groaning about the possibility are the vendors who *sell* the products. The programmers who *write* the products (and thus are *paid* by the vendors) are salivating at the prospect of a multi-year pork-feed that would make a lamphrey look like a piker. The new email infrastructure will also give the world email postage stamps. And this time, it won't be just governments who get a cut of the profits. The biggest objection to SMTP in the SMTP vs. X.400 wars two decades ago was that SMTP's fundamental design made it impossible to impose email postage stamps. You can bet that the new redesigned Internet email won't have that problem. Guess who pays for all of this. Be careful for what you wish. You may get it. And there are plenty of people who are quite happy to provide it to you (*ka-ching*!). -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:51:48 EST Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List In a message dated 12 Dec 2005 13:37:22 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > I think all of us consumers agree that we don't want any spam emails at > all and no soliciting telephone calls at all. This must not be a true statement, since otherwise there would be no telemarketing calls, expecially. It is a labor intensive business and must provide a sufficient return to the operators of such services to make a profit. Otherwise they would go bankrupt. Everyone is a consumer in one way or another, so it must not be correct that 100% of consumers don't want any soliciting telephone calls at all. Spam is not nearly so expensive to originate, but it, too, has costs and must provide a sufficient return that it is not true that ALL consumers do not want it. Actually, I have occasionally gotten e-mails, mostly spam, form organizations or businesses with which I do have a legitimate business relationship, which make offers that I have responded to favorably and which, in at least one case, have saved me money. Then there are some e-mails that some members of a group will consider all spam, and which others in the group think are relevant to their interests and appreciate the information or offers. Defining spam in some cases becomes very controversial. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: 13 Dec 2005 06:50:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Carl Navarro wrote: > In today's society, I think it is fast becoming a must to know where > your own or your child's vehicle is at all times. You mention one reason is auto theft and hijacking which are I think are valid concerns. I would be curious to how well GPS (and predecessor systems) lead to stolen car recovery. Hijacking is pretty gruesome but fortunately rare. But I'm curious as to what about "today's society" you mean? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: 13 Dec 2005 06:55:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Joe Morris wrote: > And I'm sure you remember the little "dial lock" gizmos that were > clamped into the "1" fingerhole and were supposed to keep people from > making outbound calls on an unattended office telephone? It seems > that nobody ever thought about dialing with the switchhook -- or just > banging away with ten or more pulses and asking the operator for > assistance. I think it was pretty difficult for most people to tap in accurately a seven digit number. If you're timing was the least bit off any part of the way you had to start over. You also risked discovery while doing it. It wasn't that hard to tap in zero and get the operator to do it, though, but I think a lot of people didn't think of that option. All in all I'd say the dial locks, which were inexpensive, were reasonably effective to protect against telephone abuse. I've only rarely seen plate locks to cover up a Touch Tone dial. Years ago our Centrex required a PIN to make long distance calls after hours. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@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 oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have 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 fifty 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. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #562 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 14 19:17:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5C12514F47; Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:17:05 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #563 Message-Id: <20051215001705.5C12514F47@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:17:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:16:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 563 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Many Amazon.com Workers Sick From Food Poisoning (TELECOM Digest Editor) China on Track to Add 100M New Phone Users (USTelecom dailyLead) DirecTV to Pay $5.35 Million For Do-Not-Call Violations (Monty Solomon) Cellular-News For Wednesday 14th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Microsoft Warns of Critical Errors (Reuters News Wire) Attack Targets Mozilla Firefox (Robert McMillan) Bell System Service Standard 'Green Books'- What is Used Now? (L Hancock) IEC's Broadband World Forum Asia Presents IPTV Developments (Lisa Reyes) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (DevilsPGD) Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Scott Dorsey) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Charles Cryderman) Spam (was Re: FTC Do Not Call List) (Jim Haynes) Re: Spamming the Wrong Message (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Communications History (Charles Cryderman) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 are 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Scores of Amazon.com Workers Sickened From Apparent Food Poisoning Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:41:58 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Several dozen amazon.com employes in the Coffeyville/Independence facility were stricken with apparent food poisoning early Tuesday morning after eating food provided to them by an Oklahoma catering company. The company normally provides food to employees working at night. Local and area hospitals were inudated with Amazon employees after the outbreak began about 1:30 AM Tuesday. The distribution center is located between Coffeyville and Independence in the Coffeyville Industrial Park. Emergency Medical Service paramedics and technicians from Independence, Coffeyville, Parsons, and Caney were alerted to the outbreak and began transporting victims to the Coffeyville Regional Medical Center, Mercy Hospital in Independence, and Labette County Medical Center in Parsons. Joanne Cox, director of Public Relations for Mercy Hospital said one woman was admitted, five others were treated and released. At CRMC, Susan Correll said 20 people were transported to that facility, and eight were admitted. At LCMC there were eight employees treated, then released, according to William Mahoney, CEO of the hospital. Amazon announced the closing of the facility during the early morning hours on Tuesday, but by the time for the day shift, the facility had re-opened. Word of the outbreak began shortly after midnight according to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department. Deputy Todd Clark was making his routine rounds and noted a car on the side of the road at Paul Street and Walnut Street in Coffeyville. As is customary, the deputy stopped to inquire about the well-being of the passenger and notice a female occupant who was leaning out of the car window vomiting. He offered to help the woman or escort her to her destination. She told him she worked at amazon.com and had eaten some barbeque pork catered to the employees between the late evening and early morning shifts by Poritunes Food and Ale, an Oklahoma company which feeds employees at the facility. Cook advised his dispatcher about the situation and then about an hour later, at 1:16 AM the dispatcher advised him that Coffeyville EMS personnel were responding to Amazon where a woman with diabetes had become ill and was believed to be striken with food poisoning. Cook responded to the facility to assist the EMS workers and was told upon arrival that between 60 and 80 employees had become ill. At that point, Tony Lamb, an employee of Coffeyville EMS requested other emergency agencies in the area to assist in the evacuation and transport of the facility's employees, and that a public announcement be made asking everyone who had eaten the barbeque offered by the catering service (from the earlier shift, now mostly scattered and on their way home) to be alert to the problem and see their physician as needed. A general announcement was made over cable television in Independence and Coffeyville seeking amazon.com employees for this. Sharon Watson, director of public affairs for Kansas Department of Health and Evironment said three investigators had been assigned to work with Montgomery County health officials to detirmine the exact cause of the outbreak; They were joined by Oklahoma health officials (the catering firm is located in Oklahoma) in saying it was apparently 'tainted pork sausage' which was responsible. Samples of the pork sausage and samples from the patients were sent to the state laboratory in Topeka for futher examination. By Wednesday things were back to normal at the Amazon facility. Copyright 2005 Independence Reporter Publishing. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 12:46:45 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: China on track to add 100M new phone users in USTelecom dailyLead December 14, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zZBoatagCAASfBXSzN TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * China on track to add 100M new phone users in '05 BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * SureWest hits sweet spot with IPTV * AT&T debuts online security news channel * SES Global to buy rival New Skies * KT to raise investment 20% in 2006 * Verizon tests IMS solution from Nortel USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Learn how to implement IP video TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Avaya unveils VPN remote software for IP phones * Intel eyes home-entertainment market with new chip * Companies test wireless payments via NFC network REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * TWC seeks statewide franchise in Texas * DirecTV fined $5.3M for telemarketing Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zZBoatagCAASfBXSzN ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 01:15:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DirecTV to Pay $5.35 Million For Do-Not-Call Violations By Andrew Bridges, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- DirecTV Inc. will pay $5.35 million to settle charges that its telemarketers called households listed on the national do-not-call registry to pitch satellite TV programming, Federal Trade Commission officials said Tuesday. The proposed settlement, if approved by a federal judge in Los Angeles, would be the FTC's largest civil penalty in a consumer protection case. The DirecTV complaint, filed by the Department of Justice at the FTC's request, named the company and five telemarketing firms it hired, as well as six principals of those firms. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/12/13/directv_to_pay_535_million_for_do_not_call_violations/ ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 14th December 2005 Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 07:48:11 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Malaysian 3G Coverage Expanded http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15225.php Malaysia's Maxis Communications has expanded its 3G service coverage to Penang. Since the launch of its 3G services on 1 July, Maxis has significantly increased its 3G coverage in the Klang Valley and will soon offer 3G services in Johor Bahru. To da... Temporary 3G Expansion in New Zealand http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15228.php Telecom New Zealand says that it is investing about $1.7 million in additional temporary mobile coverage to meet the demand at New Zealand's favourite holiday spots during the local summer. The extra mobile sites and increased capacity will cover the... CDMA Upgrade for Venezuela http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15231.php Venezuela's Movistar has announced the commercial launch of it's 3G CDMA2000 1xEV-DO network to serve the country's 26 main cities. Lucent upgraded Movistar's existing Lucent-supplied base stations and mobile switching center (MSC) to support CDMA200... [[ Financial ]] Vodafone Buys Telsim In Turkey For $4.55 Billion http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15215.php Vodafone Group said Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire Telsim, the number two mobile operator in Turkey, from the Turkish Savings Deposit and Investment Fund ("SDIF") for a consideration of US$4.55bn. ... Telefonica Moviles' Brazilian JV To Lower Capex In 06-07 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15216.php Telesp Celular Participacoes, the largest company within the Brazilian joint venture of Telefonica Moviles and Portugal Telecom SA, plans to cut sharply capital expenditure in 2006 and 2007, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange... PRESS: VimpelCom's directors may block 2006 capex in Ukraine http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15218.php Three members of Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom's board of directors may vote against the company's investment program in Ukraine for 2006, Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday, citing a letter sent to VimpelCom's Chairman D... Russia's MegaFon to bid for Uzbekistan's Buztel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15220.php Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon plans to participate in the tender for Uzbekistan's mobile operator Buztel-GSM, MegaFon's Press Secretary Marina Belasheva told Prime-Tass Tuesday. She did not elaborate. ... SonyEricsson Increases Chinese Investment http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15227.php Sony Ericsson has received Chinese Ministry of Commerce approval to take control of Beijing Suohong Electronics (BSE), a Sony China controlled manufacturing facility, by raising its share holding to 74.5%. The BSE site, which is 60% dedicated to the ... Celtel Buys Madagascan Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15230.php The Pan-African GSM operator, Celtel International has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Madagascar's mobile telecom operator, Madacom for an undisclosed amount. The agreement was reached with the current shareholders led by the Dis... [[ Handsets ]] Japan October Mobile Phone Shipments Up 32% On Year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15211.php Japan's shipments of mobile phones, including personal handy-phone system devices, soared 32.0% in October from a year earlier to 3.17 million units, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association said Tuesday. ... Emblaze Mobile Buys Handset Distributor http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15224.php Israel's Emblaze Mobile says that it has acquired a strategic interest in the European handset distributor, Global Telecoms Distribution. GTD is one of Europe's leading distributors of multimedia handsets with a 3 year trading history and 100 staff... [[ Legal ]] EU Delays Review Of Telefonica Takeover Of UK's O2 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15212.php The European Commission Tuesday delayed by two weeks its antitrust review of Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica's planned takeover of U.K. mobile communications company O2 PLC. ... Ericsson Employees Charged On Tax Crimes In Sweden http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15214.php The Swedish National Economic Crimes Bureau Tuesday charged four current and former employees at telecommunications equipment vendor L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. with severe evasion of tax controls. ... Russia's Rezervspetsmet says MTS' buy of Bitel illegal http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15219.php The purchase of Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel by Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) was illegal, little known Russian company Rezervspetsmet said in a statement Tuesday. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Gambling Via Vodafone Live http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15221.php Austria's GSM network operator, A1 has launched a gambling service through the Vodafone live! portal. Mobile phone bets can even be placed while games are in progress. Every newly registered customer will also receive a gaming credit of EUR5.... Mobile Gamers Likely To Replace Handsets Twice a Year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15223.php IGN Entertainment has released a new report which finds mobile gamers are key growth drivers for the mobile industry. The survey documents spending habits of mobile gamers, which shows more hardware buys per year, higher minute usage and bigger wirel... [[ Network Contracts ]] Vodafone To Invest $600 Million To Upgrade Telsim Radio Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15217.php Vodafone Group PLC said Tuesday that it will invest $600 million over three years in upgrading the radio network of Turkish mobile phone operator Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon. ... [[ Network Operators ]] Vodafone in a Strop, a FlexiStrop http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15229.php The Czech Republic GSM operator, Oskar Vodafone has launched a service that enables customers to impose limits on the cost of their monthly phone bill. Following the Smart Overview service, the operator is introducing FlexiStrop. With this free servi... [[ Personnel ]] Eva Lindqvist Appointed Senior Vice President of Mobile Business http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15222.php Eva Lindqvist has been appointed new Senior Vice President of Mobile Business at Marketing, Products & Services at TeliaSonera's Head Office as of January 1, 20