TELECOM Digest     Mon, 5 Feb 2007 19:00:00 EST    Volume 26 : Issue 37

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Criminals Are Overwhelming the Web (Tim Weber, BBC)
    Cyber Criminals Focusing More on Web Now (BBC News Wire)
    Cybercrooks Gaining Rapidly on Us (Brian Krebs, Washington Post)
    Orientals Buying Up All Old WE Test Gear For Transformers (Bret Ludwig)
    TiVo Sees if You Skip Those Ads (Monty Solomon)
    CommunicationsDirect News Daily Update (communicationsdirect_daily)
    Verizon Adds Flexibility to Firewall (USTelecom dailyLead)
    Re: Western Union Desk-Fax -- Discontinued? (Carl Zwanzig)
    Re: Western Union Desk-Fax -- Discontinued? (Bret Ludwig)
    Re: Western Union Desk-Fax -- Discontinued? (Scott Dorsey)
    Re: Historical Rules About Private Line Services? (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com)
    Re: Beware of the Dot (Scott Dorsey)

====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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-
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herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the
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               ===========================

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, and why not
support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 16:46:02 -0600
From: Tim Weber, BBC News <bbc@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Criminals Are Overwhelming the Web


By Tim Weber

Criminals controlling millions of personal computers are threatening
the internet's future, experts have warned.  Up to a quarter of
computers on the net may be used by cyber criminals in so-called
botnets, said Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet.

Technology writer John Markoff said: "It's as bad as you can imagine,
it puts the whole internet at risk."

The panel of leading experts was discussing the future of the internet
at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Internet pandemic

Mr. Cerf, who is one of the co-developers of the TCP/IP standard that
underlies all internet traffic and now works for Google, likened the
spread of botnets to a "pandemic".

Of the 600 million computers currently on the internet, between 100 and 
150 million were already part of these botnets, Mr. Cerf said.

Despite all that, the net is still working, which is pretty amazing.
"It's pretty resilient," noted Vint Cerf

Botnets are made up of large numbers of computers that malicious
hackers have brought under their control after infecting them with
so-called Trojan virus programs.

While most owners are oblivious to the infection, the networks of tens 
of thousands of computers are used to launch spam e-mail campaigns, 
denial-of-service attacks or online fraud schemes.

Net resilience.

Mr. Markoff, who writes for the New York Times, said that a single
botnet at one point used up about 15% of Yahoo's search capacity.

It used retrieved random text snippets to camouflage messages so that
its spam e-mail could get past spam filters.

"Despite all that, the net is still working, which is amazing. It's 
pretty resilient," said Mr. Cerf.

The expert panel, among them Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers,
and Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International
Telecommunication Union, agreed that a solution urgently had to be
found to ensure the survival of the web.

But its members were unsure about feasible solutions, even though they
identified operating systems and authentication as key issues.

It was still too easy for net criminals to hide their tracks, several
panel members said, although they acknowledged that it was probably
not desirable that every individual was definitively identifiable.

"Anonymity has its value, and it has its risk," said Jonathan
Zittrain, professor for internet governance at the University of
Oxford.

Closing doors.

Operating systems like Microsoft Windows, meanwhile, still made it too
easy for criminals to infiltrate them, the experts said.

Microsoft had done a good job improving security for its latest
operating system, Windows Vista, said Mr. Markoff.

"It's a known threat, but the numbers I heard today are staggering," he
noted.

But already pirated copies of Vista were circulating in China, even 
though the consumer launch of Vista has only been a few days ago.
Experience showed that about 50% of all pirated Windows programs came 
with Trojans pre-installed on them, Mr Markoff said.

Mr. Dell said the future might bring "disposable virtual PCs",
accessed through the internet, that would minimise the threat of a
persistent virus infection.

Mr. Toure said that whatever the solution, the fight against botnets was 
a "war" that could only be won if all parties -- regulators, governments, 
telecoms firms, computer users and hardware and software makers -- worked 
together.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/6298641.stm

Copyright BBC MMVII

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 16:48:42 -0600
From: BBC News <bbc@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Cyber Criminals Focusing More on Web Now


Cyber criminals will increasingly turn their attention to the web and 
away from e-mail security in 2007, according to a new report.
Security firm Sophos found that the US hosts more than a third of 
websites hosting malicious code, as well as sending more spam than other 
nations.

Lax security on US-hosted websites is one of the key reasons the US
remains a hotspot for cyber crime, said Sophos.

The UK hosts 0.5% of so-called malware and sends out 1.9% of spam.

The number of websites being infected with malware -- malicious software 
-- is on the rise with Sophos uncovering an average of 5,000 new URLs 
hosting malicious code each day.

TOP TEN MALWARE HOSTS
United States - 34.2%
China - 31%
Russian Federation - 9.5%
Netherlands - 4.7%
Ukraine - 3.2%
France - 1.8%
Taiwan - 1.7%
Germany - 1.5%
Hong Kong - 1%
Korea - 0.9%
 
"The internet now represents the easiest way for cyber criminals to
gain entry to corporate networks, as more users are accessing
unregulated sites, downloading applications and streaming
audio/video," said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant for
Sophos.

"A great many businesses aren't geared up to gain insight into users' 
online behaviour, let alone control it," she added.

Hackers have turned to other routes for infecting computers as
companies realise the need to secure e-mail gateways.

They are also subtly changing tactics -- instead of sending so-called 
spyware-infected e-mails, they are sending e-mails linking to websites 
which contain a malicious downloader.

TOP TEN SPAM SENDERS
United States - 22%
China - 15.9%
South Korea - 7.4%
France - 5.4%
Spain - 5.1%
Poland - 4.5%
Brazil - 3.5%
Italy - 3.2%
Germany - 3.0%
United Kingdom - 1.9%  

The file will attempt to download multiple Trojans -- a type of program 
or message that looks benign but conceals a malicious payload -- before 
it downloads a spyware component to offer more chances of success.

Links to websites containing Trojan downloaders account for 51% of
infected mail while spyware-infected mail accounts for 42%, according
to Sophos.

According to the report, 30% of all malware is now written in China. 17% 
is designed for the specific purpose of stealing passwords from online 
gamers, an indication that malware writing exploits country-specific 
online trends.

Sophos detected 41,536 new pieces of malware in 2006. Of these threats, 
Trojans now outnumber Windows viruses and worms by four to one.

Infected emails have fallen significantly from one in 44 during 2005 to 
just one in 337 during 2006.

Ninety per cent of all spam is sent from so-called zombie computers, 
machines that are hijacked by Trojan horses, worms and viruses.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6290413.stm

Copyright BBC MMVII

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 news and headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 16:52:48 -0600
From: Brian Krebs <washpost@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Cybercrooks Gaining Rapidly on Us


Cybercrooks Deliver Trouble
With Spam Filters Working Overtime, Security Experts See No Letup in '07

By Brian Krebs washingtonpost.com staff writer

It was the year of computing dangerously, and next year could be worse.

That is the assessment of computer security experts, who said 2006 was 
marked by an unprecedented spike in junk e-mail and more sophisticated 
Internet attacks by cybercrooks.

Few believe 2007 will be any brighter for consumers, who already are 
struggling to avoid the clever scams they encounter while banking, 
shopping or just surfing online. Experts say online criminals are 
growing smarter about hiding personal data they have stolen on the 
Internet and are using new methods for attacking computers that are 
harder to detect.

"Criminals have gone from trying to hit as many machines as possible
to focusing on techniques that allow them to remain undetected on
infected machines longer," said Vincent Weafer, director of security
response at Symantec, an Internet security firm in Cuptertino, Calif.

One of the best measures of the rise in cybercrime is junk e-mail, or
spam, because much of it is relayed by computers controlled by
Internet criminals, experts said. More than 90 percent of all e-mail
sent online in October was unsolicited junk mail, according to
Postini, an e-mail security firm in San Carlos, Calif. Spam volumes
monitored by Postini rose 73 percent in the past two months as
spammers began embedding their messages in images to evade junk e-mail
filters that search for particular words and phrases. In November,
Postini's spam filters, used by many large companies, blocked 22
billion junk-mail messages, up from about 12 billion in September.

The result is putting pressure on network administrators and corporate
technology departments, because junk mail laden with images typically
requires three times as much storage space and Internet bandwidth as a
text message, said Daniel Druker, Postini's vice president for
marketing.

"We're getting an unprecedented amount of calls from people whose e-mail 
systems are melting down under this onslaught," Druker said.

Spam volumes are often viewed as a barometer for the relative security
of the Internet community, in part because most spam is relayed via
"bots," a term used to describe personal computers that online
criminals have taken control of surreptitiously with computer viruses
or worms.  The more computers the bad guys control and link together
in networks, or botnets, the greater volume of spam they can blast
onto the Internet.

At any given time, between 3 million and 4 million compromised
computers are active on the Internet, according to Gadi Evron, who
managed Internet security for the Israeli government before joining
Beyond Security, an Israeli security firm. And that estimate only
counts spam bots. Evron said millions of other hijacked computers are
used to launch "distributed denial-of-service" attacks -- online
shakedowns in which attackers overwhelm Web sites with useless data
and demand payment to stop.

"Botnets have become the moving force behind organized crime online,
with a low-risk, high-profit calculation," Evron said.

He estimated that organized criminals would earn about $2 billion this
year through "phishing" scams, which involve the use of spam and fake
Web sites to trick computer users into disclosing their financial and
other personal data.

Another trend experts cite is the steady shift of Internet criminal
activity from nights and weekends to weekdays, suggesting that online
crime is evolving into a full-time profession for many.

Symantec found that the incidence of phishing scams has dropped
significantly on Sundays and Mondays in the United States. The firm
found a similar trend when it examined the pattern of new virus
variants compiled and released by attackers.

"The bulk of the fraud attacks we're seeing now are coming in Monday
through Friday, in the 9-to-5 U.S.-workday timeframe," Symantec's
Weafer said. "We now have groups of attackers who are motivated by
profit and willing to spend the time and effort to learn how to
conduct these attacks on a regular basis. For a great many online
criminals these days, this is their day job: They're working full time
now."

Criminals are also becoming more sophisticated in evading anti-fraud
efforts. This year saw the advent and wide deployment of Web-browser
based "toolbars" with embedded technology designed to detect when
users have visited a known or suspected phishing Web site. But many
scam artists responded by developing new methods of hosting their
fraudulent Web sites and routing traffic to them that made them harder
for law enforcement and security experts to thwart.

"We've seen a pretty big evolutionary jump in tactics used by phishers
over the past year, and I believe it's because some of the toolbar
makers and the good guys who work to get these scam sites shut down
have really done a good job at preventing them from being successful,"
said Dan Hubbard, vice president of research for Websense, an online
security firm in San Diego.

The past 12 months also brought a steep increase in the number of
software vulnerabilities discovered by researchers and actively
exploited by criminals. The world's largest software maker, Microsoft,
this year issued software fixes to 97 security holes that it
classified as "critical," meaning hackers could use them to break into
vulnerable machines without any action on the part of the user.

In contrast, Microsoft shipped just 37 critical updates in 2005.
Fourteen of this year's critical flaws were known as "zero day"
threats, meaning Microsoft first learned about the security holes only
after criminals had already begun using them.

The year began with a zero-day hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer,
the Web browser of choice for about 80 percent of the world's online
users. Criminals were able to exploit the flaw to install
keystroke-recording and password-stealing software on millions of
computers running Windows software.

At least 11 of those zero-day vulnerabilities were in the Microsoft
Office productivity software suites, flaws that bad guys mainly used
in targeted attacks against corporations, according to the SANS
Internet Storm Center, a security research and training group in
Bethesda.  Microsoft issued patches to correct a total of 37 critical
Office security flaws this year.

The year also was notable for a wave of attacks exploiting flaws in
software applications that run on top of operating systems, such as
media players and Web browsers. In February, attackers used a security
hole in AOL's popular Winamp media player to install a hidden program
when users downloaded a seemingly harmless playlist file. This month,
a computer worm took advantage of a design flaw in Apple Computer's
QuickTime media player to steal passwords from about 100,000
MySpace.com bloggers, accounts that were then hijacked and used for
sending spam.  Also this month, security experts spotted a computer
worm spreading online that was powered by a six-month old hole in a
corporate anti-virus product from Symantec.

Many security professionals speak highly of Microsoft's Vista, the
newest version of Windows scheduled for release next month. The
program includes improvements that should help users stay more secure
online, such as a Web browser with new anti-fraud tools, as well as
operating system changes that should make it more difficult for rogue
software or viruses to make unwanted changes to key system settings
and files.

But some security vulnerabilities have been identified in Vista
already, including at least one in its new browser, Internet Explorer
7.  Moreover, experts worry that businesses will be slow to switch to
the new operating system and note that even if consumers adopt it more
quickly, Microsoft will continue to battle security holes in legacy
versions of its Office product.

Some software security vendors suspect that a new Trojan horse program
that surfaced last month, called "Rustock.B," may serve as the
template for future malicious software. The program morphs itself
slightly each time it installs itself on a new machine in an effort to
evade anti-virus software. In addition, it hides in the deepest
recesses of the Windows operating system, creates invisible copies of
itself, and refuses to work under common security analysis tools in an
attempt to defy identification and analysis.

"This is about the nastiest piece of malware we've ever seen, and
we're going to be seeing more of it," said Alex Eckelberry, president
of the security vendor Sunbelt Software in Clearwater, Fla. "The new
threats that we saw in 2006 have shown us that the malware authors are
ingenious and creative in their methods."

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 news and headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html  (and also)
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html 

------------------------------

From: Bret Ludwig <bretldwig@yahoo.com>
Subject: Chinese and Koreans Buying Up All Old WE Test Gear For Transformers
Date: 4 Feb 2007 20:50:25 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


I'm not saying don't sell it to them, but, make them pay a good
price. They are buying up any old WE or NE box with audio
transformers. Don't sell it cheap.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 21:45:05 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: TiVo Sees if You Skip Those Ads


by David Lazarus

TiVo revealed the other day that it's offering TV networks and ad
agencies a chance to receive second-by-second data about which
programs the company's 4.5 million subscribers are watching and, more
importantly, which commercials people are skipping.

This raises a pair of troubling questions: Is TiVo, which
revolutionized TV viewing with its digital video recording technology,
now watching what people watch? And is it selling that sensitive info
to advertisers and others?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/04/BUGJ8NTRT91.DTL

------------------------------

Subject: CommunicationsDirect News Daily Update 
From: communicationsdirect <communicationsdirect_daily@communicationsdirect>
Reply-To: communicationsdirect_daily-owner@communicationsdirectnews.com
Date: Mon,  5 Feb 2007 11:44:25 EST


********************************
PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents
The CommunicationsDirect Daily Update
For February 05, 2007
********************************

Cellcom Ready for IPO
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/120/22509?11228

     The mobile operator, Cellcom, is ready to float on the New York
     Stock Exchange next week; 19 million shares will be on offer at
     an expected price of between US$16 to US$18. The underwriters for
     the offering are Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Merrill
     Lynch, Jefferies & Co. and William Blair & Co. Significance: The
     ...

Recharging Phones Via Wireless
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/150/22505?11228

     Sure, your mobile phone can receive data. But how about
     electrical energy? MIT researcher Marin Soljacic foresees a day
     when phone users will be able to recharge their devices via a
     wireless connection.  It's already well known that transferring
     electric power doesn't require wires to be placed in physical
     contact.  Electric ...

Sweden's Ericsson and Turner Broadcasting Collaborate on Mobile Services
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/22503?11228

     STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Swedish telecommunications equipment maker
     Ericsson AB said Monday it will collaborate with U.S. news and
     entertainment producer Turner Broadcasting System Inc. to develop
     international mobile services. Under the deal, Turner's Internet,
     broadcast news and entertainment content will be developed for
     ...

Vonage Adding Enhanced Voice Tricks
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/150/22500?11228

     Vonage Holdings Corp. will soon augment its VOIP service with
     tools to set contact-specific call management rules, Light Reading
     has learned. That means the Vonage sales pitch -- which has been
     all about saving money against traditional phone service -- is
     expanding to include user productivity, Vonage spokeswoman Brooke
     Schulz ...

Europeans Band Together to Speed NFC
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/22498?11228

     A new pan-European consortium wants to define next-generation
     mobile services with Near Field Communications (NFC) and
     accelerate development of NFC applications.  Made up of
     companies, universities and user groups and funded by the
     European Commission, the consortium came together to develop an
     open architecture for the development, ...

Verizon Sells Off SkyTel
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/120/22495?11228

     Nationwide messaging pioneer SkyTel Corp., an indirect subsidiary
     of Verizon Communications Inc. that came with the purchase of MCI
     last year, has been sold to Bell Industries Inc. for a total
     purchase price of $23 million.  With this purchase, Bell
     Industries now is comprised of three diversified operating units:
     Bell' ...

Friday Funding Roundup
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/120/22493?11228

     While no discernible thread connects the wireless startups that
     announced funding rounds last week, the established players are
     definitely hot to invest in strategic wireless technology right
     now.  A few cases in point: DARTDevices Corp: Motorola Inc. has
     pumped an undisclosed amount of strategic series A funding ...

Force10 Round Hits $113M
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/22491?11228

     Force10 Networks, just two weeks after bringing in over $50
     million in Series F funding, has racked up an additional $60
     million as part of the same round, according to documents filed
     with the SEC. The 10-Gbit/s Ethernet switch specialist
     quietly clinched the first slice of funding a couple of weeks
     ago, raising over $50 ...

Copyright (C) 2007 PricewaterhouseCoopers.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 12:24:58 CST
From: USTelecom dailyLead <ustelecom@dailylead.com>
Subject: Verizon Adds Flexibility to Firewall


USTelecom dailyLead
February 5, 2007
http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/gehEfDtusXlEdiCibuddNPWa

TODAY'S HEADLINES

NEWS OF THE DAY
* Verizon adds flexibility to firewall
BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH
* Telecoms, cable operators eye quadruple play
* More TV available on PCs
* Ericsson, Turner team for wireless services
* Broadcom combines Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM
* Viacom demands YouTube remove clips
* Amp'd Mobile lands original-content deals
* Sprint narrows pool of ad agencies to three contenders
HOT TOPICS
* Verizon bundles cell use with TV, landline and Internet
* Alcatel-Lucent to still develop IPTV platform
* China skips ahead to 4G
* ADC finds BigBand Networks buyer
* Daylight-saving time could hit snags this year
TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
* Sling Media chief calls on broadcasters
* Mobile operators consider taking on Google, Yahoo!
* China posts mobile-phone sales growth
* Jupiter research delves into m-commerce
REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE
* Pretexting rules foster privacy debate

Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others.
http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/gehEfDtusXlEdiCibuddNPWa

------------------------------

From: zbang@radix.net (Carl Zwanzig)
Subject: Re: Western Union Desk-Fax -- Discontinued?
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:32:11 -0000
Organization: RadixNet Internet Services


In article <telecom26.35.7@telecom-digest.org>, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> Wasn't "earthlink" originally a pioneer e-mail service offered by
> Western Union?

I think You're thinking of (sl)Easy-link (tm). It was around in the
early 1980's.  I was a subscriber for a while after they gave me a
free account, but dropped it when they wanted me to start paying.

FWIW, in the little use I gave it, I formed an opinion of "suck". Case
in point- the "vt100" mode wouldn't work nicely with a real
vt-100. Trying to describe this to a support person was fruitless, as
they were fixated that I must be using emulation software on a PC or
something.

Ob FAX: A high school teacher of mine had a Stenofax machine in their
office.  I spent a week tracking down an 811a tube for the output amp
so we could try with it (it had a mode to copy/cut mimeo stencels).

z!

------------------------------

From: Bret Ludwig <bretldwig@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Western Union Desk-Fax -- Discontinued?
Date: 4 Feb 2007 20:53:21 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


On Feb 4, 3:08 pm, hay...@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) wrote:

> In article <telecom26.3...@telecom-digest.org>,

> <hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com>  wrote:

>> Jim Haynes wrote:
>>> I don't know the termination date, but I know that in 1959 there was
>>> some central office desk fax equipment for sale in Chicago surplus
>>> stores.  Perhaps it had been replaced by equipment of more modern
>>> design, or perhaps Desk Fax was being phased out in that area at that
>>> time.

>> 1959?  Could you mean 1969?

Hams were converting all tube WU fax gear for ham use (usually crudely
as they always do) as late as the early computer era, maybe '77 or
so. See the ARRL Manuals.

------------------------------

From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Subject: Re: Western Union Desk-Fax -- Discontinued?
Date: 5 Feb 2007 11:11:05 -0500
Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000)


In article <telecom26.35.7@telecom-digest.org>, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> Wasn't "earthlink" originally a pioneer e-mail service offered by
> Western Union?

No, that was "Easylink."  Earthlink was a pioneer ISP run by Scientologists.

MCI Mail was another popular closed e-mail service, and for a while the
US Postal Service ran a system which I believe was simply called "E-Mail."

--scott

"C'est un Nagra.  C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

------------------------------

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Historical Rules About Private Line Services?
Date: 5 Feb 2007 07:34:17 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although what you say is correct, telco
> had very strict rules on things. For example, a pair of wires from
> point A to point B which did not go near an 'actual phone line' but
> was still used for communication purposes was regulated according to
> Bell rules and defined as a 'private line' according to their
> rules.

Many large organizations, such as a transit system, city government,
or large manufacturing plant, had their own private telephone
networks.  As I understand it, these networks were not interconnected
with Bell and operated and maintained by the owner.  In the 1960s and
even 1970s you would see two phones on a desk, a typical Bell 500 set,
and then an obviously old AE (Automatic Electric) phone, with a fabric
cord, the metalic stripe accents on the handset, etc.  I doubt that
the owners of such systems paid Bell anything for them, otherwise,
they would've interconnected and been more up to date.

I recall an old Bell Telephone employee magazine showing a picture of
such a desk with the caption: "This is lost revenue!  We [Bell
employees] need to encourage businesses to switch from their private
networks to our service."

I think in the old days the cost of a large private system, especially
when the organization was big enough to have maintainers already on
staff, was cheaper than Bell.  Bell Telephone service was relatively
expensive before WW II.

The Phila public schools had a modest PAX (private automatic exchange)
in most schools for internal use within the school.  Each classroom
had a non-dial phone. When the handset lifted it rang in the school
office.  The school office phone had a dial.  No interconnection to
Bell.  I suspect such a system required only one SxS switch and a few
relays.  I understand that system is now gone and now classroom phones
have dials, and parents can call a teacher directly, instead of making
the teacher come to the school office where the outside line was.
(I'd love to know what happened to that gear when replaced.)

If anyone can offer more about such large private networks used in
industry, I would appreciate if you'd post it.

In the 1980s the age of the wire plant and switchgear caught up and
doomed such old systems.  Also, Bell had more attractive rates for
distributed Centrex.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know that through the 1950-1970 era,
Chicago Police had a PAX network (with old, AE type dial phones)
everywhere, but a limited number of Bell phones and extensions wired
through the old WABash-2-4700 switchboard in their headquarters. Then
around 1965 or so, Chicago police were cut into the 312-PIG centrex
system out of City Hall. Around 1970, all the old Automatic Electric
phones and the PAX thing were totally gone. Then about 1995 the old
312-PIG network was replaced with most city offices staying on 312-744
but police going onto 312-745 I think, and a few other departments 
going onto 312-746. The system now for City of Chicago internally is
dial last five digits (4,5,6) plus the final four digits.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Subject: Re: Beware of the Dot
Date: 5 Feb 2007 11:12:05 -0500
Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000)


In article <telecom26.35.9@telecom-digest.org>,  <ellis@no.spam> wrote:

> In article <telecom26.29.5@telecom-digest.org>, Monty Solomon
> <monty@roscom.com> wrote:

>> Wireless companies and phone makers say water damage is a common
>> problem with cellphones 

> So why haven't the cellphone makers done something to fix the problem?
> It's not that hard to make a phone that'd take some water without
> breaking.

Cellphone companies wouldn't like that.  When phones break, it not
only allows you to sell the customer a new phone, but it gives you an
opportunity to upsell new services.

--scott

-- "C'est un Nagra.  C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

------------------------------


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