From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Oct 24 19:49:41 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id TAA18526; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:49:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:49:41 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910242349.TAA18526@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #501 TELECOM Digest Sun, 24 Oct 99 19:49:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 501 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Travel Report: Saint Martin/Sint Maarten and Hurricane Jose (Linc Madison) Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (Dennis Metcalfe Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (Dr. Doright) Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (laura@redconnect.net) Re: Any Five Digit Dialing Left in US? (Linc Madison) Re: Congressional Spam Bill Due Today (Orin Eman) Re: Congressional Spam Bill Due Today (Danny Burstein) Request Help Establishing Local Cellular Service (Mickey & Renee Ferguson) Re: St. Louis City Central Offices (Ray Hearn) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:53:56 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Travel Report: Saint Martin/Sint Maarten and Hurricane Jose I just returned from a week's trip to the Caribbean island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten. First of all, no, I will NEVER AGAIN go to the Caribbean during hurricane season. The first half of the week was beautiful, with sun and beach and just the occasional cloudburst in the afternoon. Then Hurricane Jose came along and just sort of sat there, raining on us. Saint Martin wasn't as hard hit as Saint Barthelemy (or St. Bart's for short), and our hotel suffered very little damage (one small roof section of one building and two plate-glass patio doors, but a grand total of only about three rooms affected, plus some flooding, as much as knee deep in a few rooms), so it was mostly just a nuisance as it turned out, but it was a BIG nuisance. We lost electricity for about 16 hours, but the water and telephone continued working. I was quite surprised that the telephones worked in the rooms, since they're on a PBX, but I guess it was a high enough priority to have some sort of backup power of its own. The island of St. Martin is a bit of an oddity politically. It's only about 47 square miles -- slightly smaller than the city of San Francisco -- but it has been divided for centuries between the French and the Dutch; hence the two spellings. The French side is a part of the Departement d'Outre Mer (DOM) of Guadeloupe, meaning that it is every bit as much a part of France as Paris or Bordeaux. It isn't a territory with some lesser status. The Dutch side is part of the Netherlands Antilles, which are semi-autonomous in a compact with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The French side uses the French Franc, and soon the Euro, but the Dutch side uses the Netherlands Antilles Florin, which is tied at an exact NAF 1.78 : US $1.00 exchange, making it approximately the same as a Dutch Guilder. Both sides accept the US dollar for almost all transactions (and indeed most often quote prices in dollars), which is a good thing, since neither side accepts the other side's money. Go figure. The only international airport is on the Dutch side, although more than half of the island (by land area) is French. The hotel where I stayed is on the French side, so that's the only place I really got to see how the phones work. Payphones are identical to the ones used elsewhere in France, using the same "smart chip" phone cards. (Indeed, the card I bought in Paris worked in St. Martin.) The tariffs are a bit strange, though. Calling from French St. Martin or St. Barthelemy, calls within those 1-1/2 islands cost 23 centimes/minute at normal rate, 11 centimes at reduced rate. Calls to the rest of Guadeloupe are 0.91 (0.47), calls to the Dutch side of Sint Maarten are 1.44 (1.23), calls to the mainland of France are 2.39 (1.63), the US (lower 48 only) and Canada are 3.11 (2.47). Rate periods (for all calls) are peak rate 0800 to 1900 Monday through Friday and 0800 to 1200 on Saturdays; reduced rate all other times. Calls to other Caribbean islands fall into two charge groups: Saba (Neth. Antilles), Sint Eustatius (N.A.), Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and the British Virgin Islands, are charged at FF3.48 (FF2.76 reduced rate). Aruba (N.A.), Bonaire (N.A.), Curacao (N.A.), Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos, and U.S. Virgin Islands, are charged at 6.35 (5.02). It costs more to call the local airport than to call Guadeloupe, several islands away. It also costs far more to call Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands than to call Nunavut. Calls to Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the Marianas Islands, are a whopping 10.25 francs peak, 8.10 francs off-peak, the same charge band as Angola, Saudi Arabia, Armenia, Bhutan, Cambodia, North Korea, Eritrea, Iraq, Mongolia, Nauru, Niue, Uzbekistan, Tuvalu, or Vietnam, among others. Among countries that are CHEAPER to call than those parts of the U.S.: Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia, Chile, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Libya, and the Ukraine. The only countries listed that are more expensive to call are Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, Micronesia, Western Sahara, and Tokelau, with rates of 22.13 FF/minute (except Western Sahara at 17.71) with no reduction for off-peak. Rates for services like INMARSAT aren't listed. (Current exchange rate is about 6 FF to US $1.) There used to be local dialing rules for calls between Saint Martin and Sint Maarten, but they have been abolished, at least from the French side. You now must dial 00 + 599 + 5 + NXXXX to call Sint Maarten. I still saw instructions to dial 06 + NXX.XXX for calls from the Dutch side to the French side, but then again, I still saw instructions to dial 3 + NXXXX or 19 + (tone) + 599 + 5 + NXXXX for the reverse call, and both of those methods are no longer allowed. The information regarding dialing codes in the directory is woefully outdated, or just plain inaccurate. Most of the new area codes for the NANP Caribbean are not reflected; only St. Lucia and Trinidad & Tobago show their new codes. In the U.S., AL AZ AR CT MD MS NV SC and UT are all shown as single codes. Further, we have things like Oakland CA 213 (Los Angeles not listed!), Miami FL 407, Orlando FL 305, Evanston IL 312, Elizabeth NJ 201, Flint MI 313, Columbus GA 404, Allentown PA 215 (along with Bethlehem, Chester, Easton, Haverford, and Reading), and San Antonio TX 512. In Canada, NWT and Yukon are still shown as 403, and the 250, 780, and 450 area codes are not mentioned. Best of all, the entire state of Mississippi is in area code 406. MS, MT, what's the difference?? Anyway, that's your telecom report from the heart of Hurricane Jose. Linc Madison * * San Francisco, California [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for checking in with us, and we are glad *you* got back in one piece at least. PAT] ------------------------------ From: dmet@flatoday.infi.net (Dennis Metcalfe) Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 21:26:18 GMT Organization: InfiNet Reply-To: dmet@flatoday.infi.net On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 00:07:07 GMT, tinikins@my-deja.com wrote: > First USA is in SERIOUS financial trouble they cannot even afford the > payroll at the site in Maryland. You are not the only cardholder who > has had their account double-debited. Call back and DEMAND that you are > able to take a cash advance on your credit card for the money, it is > possible and they WILL waive all the fees. Also try and do a balance > transfer to another company because FUSA is going under. There is an > article in the Kiplinger Financial Magazine this month. > The FUSA company is going under so PLEASE take my advice and get out > before it is too late. To date there are five class action lawsuits > against FUSA. The president of the company Dick Vague has disappeared > from site, and retired ... > Good luck, I hope it all works out for you. You can also file a > complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, they have a site on the > net and a complaint form on line. Aha! More than a week ago I got a notice from First USA that one of my user names had been denied a credit card because of an insufficient credit file. Since I had NEVER applied for credit from these guys and since that user name happens to belong to my deceased dog, I sent an e-mail demanding to know who had attempted to secure a credit card in that name (had to have come off some web site) ... they have not responded to my inquiry. I was going to press this but having read the comments above, I can see I would be wasting my time. I am still annoyed that some d*mned web site attempted something like this ... if I knew which one pulled that stunt, I would file a complaint with the appropriate regulatory body or enforcement agency. Gee, and people wonder why I am a bit cagey about filling out on-line forms ... heh Dennis Metcalfe [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Hopefully in the next day or so I will be able to announce some MAJOR enhancements to the anonymous postoffice feature here, including anonymous Usenet postings and anonymous remail as well as the existing secret-surfer function. Hopefully when I have it all finished, the web sites and spammers who like to collect names, fill in credit applications and whatever will have even less to go with than they do now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dr. Doright Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:05:06 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , tinikins@my-deja. com wrote: > First USA is in SERIOUS financial trouble they cannot even afford the > payroll at the site in Maryland. You are not the only cardholder who > has had their account double-debited. Call back and DEMAND that you are > able to take a cash advance on your credit card for the money, it is > possible and they WILL waive all the fees. Also try and do a balance > transfer to another company because FUSA is going under. There is an > article in the Kiplinger Financial Magazine this month. > The FUSA company is going under so PLEASE take my advice and get out > before it is too late. To date there are five class action lawsuits > against FUSA. The president of the company Dick Vague has disappeared > from site, and retired ... > Good luck, I hope it all works out for you. You can also file a > complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, they have a site on the > net and a complaint form on line. That's certainly an alarming statement. First USA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank One (NYSE symbol ONE). There have been problems and a management restructuring. You can go to Yahoo - Financial and enter the symbol, ONE, to read the news. Bank One is profitable and I have serious doubt that they would let First USA "go under". I have a First USA card and pay online and have had no difficulty. However I do pay the full balance. It might be extra hard for them to explain a charge to my account when I owe nothing. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Bank One is not very stable either. And if you saw the dreadful condition of their web site and the total lack of security where their 'online banking' is concerned, you would be alarmed at that also. You knew I assume that to get into any of their deep pages with customer account records or to do transactions, you merely have to cut-and-paste on the URL line of your browser. The 'security' on their front page where one might usually enter the site consists of some real cheezy script that any experienced hacker could get through. I think in their merger with First Chicago several months ago, some things got badly messed up. The customers of First Chicago got locked out entirely for a couple weeks in the beginning, then when that was supposedly cleared up people began noticing all these flaky little things in the web site. We've known First Chicago was in bad shape for a few years now, sadd- led with a lot of bad debt, etc. The hint came when First Chicago started adding an extra day's clearing time (meaning an extra day of float in their favor) on wire transfers and their own cashier's checks. The merger with Bank One was supposed to prop them up a little, but I think it only made matters worse at Bank One, which has not been extremely heathly for a few years now itself. I would be very reluctant to get involved with either of them or their subsidiaries right now. You might take a bad hit yourself if they decide to start service-charging every dollar that they can get. It sounds like FUSA is already fighting to stay alive. You don't really know, but its possible Bank One got hit severely with fraud via their online banking, which is also where credit card applications are filled out and submitted. PAT] ------------------------------ From: laura@redconnect.net Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 22:47:17 GMT Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com NEVER let a company take payment automatically from your checking account, especially for a one time payment. Your consent will make it an ongoing thing. It's very hard to get them to stop and the bank is almost no help. I had to close my checking account (at Fleet) to stop it. First USA sucks, I had a card with them for 9.9% and they raised it to 21% because they claim I was late with one payment. The check was cashed two days before due date and it was posted to my account two days afterward. I called them and even faxed them a copy of the check to no avail. I spoke to a supervisor and told them I'm not paying 21% for anything and if they don't lower my APR back to 9.9% I will transfer it to another card (I get low APR transfer offers at least once a week) and close the account. He said "Well, we reveiw accounts every six months and ..." I told them to close the account. That was two months ago and I still get mail from them for 2.9% balance transfers. >> When I called FirstUSA today, all the woman would tell me, reading >> from a script, is "First USA is aware of the problem and is making >> corrections". She refused to answer if FirstUSA would handle the $50 >> bounced check fee from my bank. And conveniently her supervisor is >> out at lunch. >> Anyone else have any problems with online payments with First USA? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So it sounds like Bank One and FUSA have already started stalling for time on daily transactions while they try to build up some reserves. Push through charges to customer accounts as quickly as possible, including service charges, but take as long as possible to apply credits or payments to the same accounts. Deny the customer as much of the float as you can while increasing your own float by a day or two day's worth. It is an old gimmick banks have used for years when they started to get in a little trouble. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:14:49 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: Any Five Digit Dialing Left in US? In article , L. Winson wrote: > Not that long ago, a small town in the U.S. might only require sub- > scribers to dial only five digits on local calls instead of the normal > seven. (People did have a seven digit number for outsiders to reach > them.) > I wonder how many places, if any, still have this? The town of Goliad, Texas, (361) 645-nxxx where n=2/3/8, had 5D local dialing for many, many years, but they had to give it up just a few years ago when the local calling area was dramatically expanded to include not only the whole of Goliad County, but also the nearby city of Victoria and other nearby towns. > Another short cut feature was that people in live near an area > code border (even a state border) needed to dial only seven digits > to call the adjacent exchange in a different area code. That feature still exists in many places, but fewer and fewer with each passing year. The last major city with such an arrangement was Kansas City, which is currently phasing out 7D FNPA local calling due to the shortage of prefixes. ------------------------------ From: orin@wolfenet.COM (Orin Eman) Subject: Re: Congressional Spam Bill Due Today Date: 24 Oct 1999 21:27:16 GMT Organization: Wolfe Internet Access, L.L.C > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting point. I wonder what *they* > intend to do with all the email addresses they collect as a result? > One thing of course, to make their plan work, is they will have to > supply the database to spammers in order that spammers can comply > with the law about not sending email where it is not wanted. Do you The could do it the way the WA state database works. You ask the database whether an address is present in it. That's all you can do. There is no way of getting the entire database. Of course, it's a bit of a pain to do a rather slow web page based lookup for each email address they have, so the spammers don't usually bother. There is more information at http://www.wa.gov/ago/junkemail/ Orin. Yes, my address is registered. ------------------------------ From: dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) Subject: Re: Congressional Spam Bill Due Today Date: 23 Oct 1999 22:03:25 -0400 >> The Unsolicited Electronic Mail Act of 1999, written and cosponsored >> by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico), would have the Federal >> Communications Commission create and maintain the list and would [snip] > So why is it that when Congress finally gets around to doing something, > they main thing it seems to do is collect even more information about > law-abiding citizens? [snip] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting point. I wonder what *they* > intend to do with all the email addresses they collect as a result? > One thing of course, to make their plan work, is they will have to > supply the database to spammers in order that spammers can comply > with the law about not sending email where it is not wanted. Actually, there's a very simple and elegant answer to this which will satisfy all the privacy concerns. All an ISP needs to do is market itself as a, for want of a better term, spam-free service. Then, if the FCC agrees, it simply tells the Federales that the _entire_ domain is on the spam-free list. Of course, if the FCC doesn't agree to this, the alternative is for the ISP to write a very short program which sends a list to the FCC of _all_ its current _AND POTENTIAL_ customers, i.e. one starting with "aaaaaaaa", "aaaaaaab" .... and ending with "zzzzzzz". Hmm, that would be 26*26*26... a pretty large number. But wait, there's MORE! Some systems allow longer names, some differentiate between upper and lower case, and most let you use numbers and other characters. So ... let's say a 15 character field, with 26 Upper and 26 lower case letters, ten numbers, and ten misc characters. So ... that would be 72 to the 15th power, or, hmm ... a number even bigger than Donald Trump's ego. Which would certainly be a bit annoying to anyone needing to check against it. Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 19:00:14 -0700 From: Mickey & Renee Ferguson Subject: Request Help Establishing Local Cellular Service I am in the market to buy a cellular phone, and I hope I can tap into the wisdom of the good netizens at comp.dcom.telecom. I purchased a phone to be hooked up to Pacific Bell's PCS service, since they had the best coverage and plans for my needs. (Background: I live in Temecula, CA, about an hour north of San Diego and an hour east and south of Los Angeles. Our local phone service is provided by GTE.) When I tried to activate the phone, they (Pac Bell) told me that they could provide a phone number that was listed as "Anaheim/Temecula" at (909) 265-xxxx. Well, Anaheim is about 50 miles from Temecula, and certainly not a local phone call. I find out that GTE apparently has not given Pac Bell any phone numbers that provide local phone call access (meaning a local call from home, for example, to the cell phone's number). I find it very hard to believe that the FCC (or whoever allocates blocks of numbers) would allow GTE to prevent Pac Bell from having any numbers that have local dialing access. Pac Bell is supposed to be able to provide service to all of Southern California. But the Temecula-Murrieta area has a population of nearly 100,000. Not exactly a small area. Is GTE playing fair with Pac Bell? Or am I getting wrong information? Any help anyone can provide me would be greatly appreciated. Mickey & Renee Ferguson Renee.Ferguson@iname.com and MickeyF@iname.com ------------------------------ Reply-To: Ray Hearn From: Ray Hearn Subject: Re: St. Louis City Central Offices Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 05:36:44 -0500 I live in the Flanders CO area of South St Louis City.( 832, Vernon, 481, Hudson, 351,352,353 Flanders) The CO is located at Eichelberger and January. I have been requesting the timeframe that DSL will be available in my area from every company who puts up a DSL billboard and the answer is always the same, second quarter of 2000. I'm sure that all of the City areas will be served long behind the County locations that are considered more affluent. Ray Michael A. Chance wrote in message news:telecom19.499.20@telecom-digest.org: > SBC has been rolling out DSL service in the St. Louis metro area, but > currently the only central office in the City of St. Louis proper to > get the upgrades is the Chestnut office, located in the old Southwest- > ern Bell headquarter building at 1010 Pine St., and serving the > downtown area. No time frame has been given for when the rest of the > city might get DSL capability. (A good portion of the suburban area > already has DSL access.) > There's a lot of folks that would be interested in DSL if it were > available, but they're mostly located in a few areas of the City. So, > knowing which central offices area serving those areas would help in > focusing the lobbying efforts to get DSL access. > I know that the Prospect office is on S. Grand near Tower Grove Park, > and serves the near southside area (I live about five blocks from it). > There's the Flanders central office somewhere in in the South City > area, but I don't know the location of that one. I'm guessing that > there's two to four more central offices located in the City proper, > but I have no idea which ones or where they're located. > Any Southwestern Bell central office or outside plant folks out there > that could fill in the missing locations? ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #501 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Oct 24 21:19:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id VAA21928; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 21:19:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 21:19:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910250119.VAA21928@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #502 TELECOM Digest Sun, 24 Oct 99 21:19:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 502 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Toronto's New Area Code (Linc Madison) Re: NPA-NXX Listings (Linc Madison) Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad (Ed Ellers) Re: Watergate and Telecom (Ed Ellers) Qualcomm Q-Phone (T.R. Cox) TTI City Tax Outside of City Limits (Jay Hennigan) Brasilian Caller ID Delivery (Luiz de Barros) Definition For Telecom? (Mika Kristian Muller) Re: Local Cable Competition (Coredump) Re: Local Cable Competition (John Shaver) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Ryan Tucker) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Health and Machines) (Jonathan Seder) Re: Cellphones & Gas Stations (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? (L. Winson) Visual Voice 5.0 Questions (Bender of Minds) Schematics Need For Old French Phone (Paul Marchese) Public Service Announcement: Awareness is Important (Cindy Freeman) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:29:38 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: Toronto's New Area Code In article , wrote: > As you maybe aware Toronto's new area code will be 647. Bell Canada > has said that this area code will be an overlay however many people > here do not like this plan and want an area code split. Several > proposals have been made to split the city of Toronto's area code they > include: > 1. The districts of East York, York, and Toronto retaining the 416 > area code, and the districts of Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough > moving to the new area code. Bad plan. Divides the city very unevenly. The EY/Y/T side has far more numbers than the E/NY/S side. Also, where do you put the wireless numbers? > 2. A split straight down Yonge Street. The West end of the city > getting one code, and the east end another. Messy plan. Yonge Street cuts right through the heart of the city. Also, again, where do you put the wireless numbers? > 3. A wireless overlay, that is cells, pcs, pagers moving to the new > area code. This will free up many numbers for land phone usage. And golly gosh, you don't have to ask the FCC for permission! However, be careful you don't overestimate the number of wireless numbers. You could annoy a lot of people if you tout this as a cure-all and then wind up having to introduce another landline area code a year and a half later. > Bell has said that the new area code will be in effect in 2001. I have > noticed that I can dial numbers within 416 as 10-digit numbers, as I do > to reach 905 numbers. Yup. They introduced permissive 10D at the time of the 416/905 split, but didn't tout it much. > Another thing I have noticed is that as soon as I enter 647 (three > digits only!!!) I get a fast busy signal. Is this usual?? (b.t.w. > I use Sprint for local, not Bell.) Pretty common. The switch knows that there are no possible valid numbers that begin with 647, so you must be misdialing. It's the same principle as my local phone switch stopping me as soon as I dial, for instance, 011-699 (a nonexistent country code) or 994 (a prefix that doesn't exist in my area code). ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:36:25 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: NPA-NXX Listings In article , Jeremy Greene wrote: > Bill Adams wrote in message news:telecom19.490.7@ > telecom-digest.org: >> Anyone know where I can get a list of NPA-NNX which list the city? >> Any help would be greatly appreciated. > Telcordia (formerly Bellcore) offers a free product on their website > that is quite detailed. It is a summary, month-by-month, of all NXX > changes. It appears that you need a PC to unzip the files. The file is "zipped," but can be read by products, including freeware, on non-Microsoft platforms. The unix "unzip" utility works just fine, as does StuffIt Expander on the Macintosh. However, the NNAG (NPA-NXX Activity Guide) only lists added, deleted, and modified prefixes. In order to get the entire listing, you have to buy the NNACL (NPA-NXX Active Code List), for a one-time cost of $150. The NNAG can be used to keep the NNACL updated, but you have to write your own script(s) to do so. > http://www.trainfo.com/tra/nnagonly.htm A better option is to get "NPA for Windows" (if you have MS-Windows or a Windows emulator on your machine). It's $35 shareware. Linc Madison * * San Francisco, California ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:42:03 -0400 L. Winson wrote: > One thing I noticed is that AT&T's later basic Touch Tone (the one > with an electronic ringer) had keys with just a tiny amount of travel > as compared to the older sets. That disastrously bad keypad was also used on the last few years' worth of 2500 sets with conventional bell ringers. Paul Wills wrote: > In the days before All Number Calling there was still an interest in > maintaining the letters on a telephone dial. A calculator layout > would have messed up the order they were presented in." I've seen a Bell Labs photo of a prototype pushbutton set that actually had the buttons, *with letters,* in the calculator layout resulting in the mixed-up letter sequence you describe. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Watergate and Telecom Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:48:22 -0400 L. Winson wrote: > I thought about going back another 25 years and what we'd find in > telecom: > 1) TV: Very rare, and no remote capability like today without > considerable pre-arrangement. No video tape capability. Extremely > bright lights required. Fine, but scratch the "extremely bright lights" -- by 1949 the industry had gone to image orthicon cameras that had very good sensitivity. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 14:45:38 PDT From: T.R. Cox Subject: Qualcomm Q-Phone Information Needed Hi Pat, I'm searching for some information on my new cellphone and I'd appreciate it if you could put this on the list. Thanks. I recently purchased a Qualcomm Q-Phone and related line of service from Airtouch here in Portland. I'm curious to know about any programming or test mode procedures I can use to configure the phone and/or manipulate options that Airtouch thinks I'm too stupid to fool around with. I have searched the net but I haven't found anything, does anyone out there have any information about this phone? Thanks in advance. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////\ |Thaddeus Cox = tadc@europa.com <==- Finger for standard legal disclaimer| \//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ------------------------------ From: jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) Subject: TTI City Tax Outside of City Limits Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 22:08:22 GMT I recently moved and in the process PICed TTI National as my LD carrier. Good rates, apparently a subsidiary of MCI. Although my mailing address is "Santa Barbara", my service address is outside of the city limits. Santa Barbara imposes a 6% utility tax on its residents, and TTI insists on charging me this tax unless I go through several hoops to prove to them that my service address is outside of the city limits. All of my other utilities got it right and are not charging me the tax. I suspect that I'm not alone in this, and they are similarly bilking many others nationwide who are near but not in taxable areas. I've argued repeatedly with their customer service people who have told me that I need to get a letter from the Chamber of Commerce(!) to prove that I don't live in the city. A map won't do it for them. To whom do I complain? FCC? California PUC? Jay Hennigan - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. NASDAQ: NETX - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For starters, begin by withholding the amount charged as municipal tax when you make your payment each month. Telcos are *not* permitted to disconnect your service or take into account any part of your bill which is tax that you refuse to'pay for whatever reason. All they are allowed to do report to the taxing authority that 'customer X refused to pay this tax'. The taxing auth- ority can then do as it pleases about it; in your case, probably nothing since you are not within their jurisdiction. But take care to read the pertinent law and make sure it refers to 'customers who are within the city limits of Santa Barbara' and *NOT* 'all customers of telcos which do business in the city of Santa Barbara', or perhaps 'tax on telcos in Santa Barbara which they are allowed to recover from all their customers', etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Luiz de Barros Subject: Brasilian Caller ID Delivery Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:33:07 +0000 Organization: Nlink Internet Provider - BRAZIL Dear All, Does anyone know where I can found information about caller ID delivery in Brasil, from Siemens Central Switches to POTS lines? The carrier told me the protocols available are MF, DTMF and MFC. Luiz ------------------------------ From: Mika Kristian Muller Subject: Definition For Telecom? Date: 24 Oct 1999 21:29:04 GMT Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, CS lab I'd need to know a definition for 'telecom', that should describe it briefly overall and state the key points how it'd different from datacom (some background for doing security analysis for datacom vs. telecom). Couldn't find one easily on web, so any link would be appreciated. Mika ------------------------------ From: coredump@NOxSPAM.enteract.com (Coredump) Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 21:41:47 GMT Organization: Cores' Internet and Storm Door Company On 23 Oct 1999 22:31:35 GMT, larb0@aol.com (Bruce Larrabee) wrote: >> Can anyone tell me which cities currently >> have multiple cable TV franchises (meaning that most households have >> more than one cable TV company to choose from) and what the experience >> with that type of competition has been? > There are many such towns/suburbs in the Chicago area like that. I > live in Elgin and have Americast. Jones Cable is also in the area. I > had Jones before and switched to Americast. Jones is now ATT. (TCI bought them out in this area just before ATT bought TCI). Core coredump@NOSPAM.enteract.com http://www.enteract.com/~coredump Footloose and Fancy Free on the Information Superhighway ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 09:24:25 -0600 From: John Shaver Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Maybe with the purchase of the cable companies by AT&T they will not be sold as often and the rates increased each time to pay for the new company's cost in buying the cable company. ------------------------------ From: rtucker+from+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Reply-To: rtucker+replyto+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 02:37:40 GMT Organization: Time Warner Road Runner - Rochester NY In , David Esan spewed: > There is an article in Thursday's Rochester, NY newspaper about the split > of NPA 716. You can find it at: > www.rochesternews.com/1021areacode.html Argh. If it comes down to a split, Rochester is *not* going to get to keep 716. Buffalo is simply bigger. What is it with people being so resistant to overlays? -rt Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ President, TTGCITN Communications Box 92425, Rochester NY 14692-0425 Please keep public threads public -- e-mail responses will be ignored. ------------------------------ From: Jonathan Seder Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Health and Machines) Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 13:06:52 -0700 Organization: SyntelSoft Inc > I think the one think I get out of this whole fiasco is that more > testing needs to be done ... More than 12,000 studies have been done (from a recent Wall St Journal article), and no significant link has been found. This is simply junk science. There are problems with handheld wireless phones -- distracted motor vehicle operators and pedestrians, rude restaurant patrons -- but radiation is not a problem. ------------------------------ From: Scot E. Wilcoxon Subject: Re: Cellphones & Gas Stations Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 20:35:31 -0500 David Esan wrote: > NPR had a delightful bit on trying to track down the reason for the > cell phone ban at gas stations. The reporter tracked and tracked and > eventually found that (as reported in this newsgroup) the ban is based > on a story, later found to be untrue, about a car bursting into flame > in Indonesia. There was no scientific data, no tests to back up the > claim that this could happen. You can download the piece at > http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=10/20/1999&PrgID=2 Sounds like an entry for the TELECOM Digest Myths list. ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? Date: 24 Oct 1999 02:14:31 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS One thing I hate in modern telephone sets is the electronic ringers. I find their tone very irritating. They only have two volume settings (low or high), while the older sets have much more control. (Ironically a major feature of the 500 set introduced in 1950 was variable ringer volume.) I find the ringers on the older Trimline and Princess phones particu- larly pleasant. But it seems to me most phones sold today have electronic ringers. Does the general public have no preference? Do traditional ringers cost more to make than electronic ones? ------------------------------ From: mindbender6@yahoo.com (Bender of Minds) Subject: Visual Voice 5.0 Questions Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 17:49:15 GMT Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Reply-To: mindbender6@yahoo.com Is anyone using visual voice 5.0. I have questions regarding it's use. Please contact me. Thanks, Chris ------------------------------ From: Paul Marchese Subject: Schematics Needed For Old French Phone Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 16:50:02 -0400 Sir, I purchased an old French rotary phone at a flea market, and I am looking for schematics for it. I was wondering if you could tell me where I may find some. Thank you for your time. Paul ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 23:40:43 GMT From: Cindy Freeman Reply-To: cmf@broadcast.airwaves.com Subject: Awareness is Important [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do we have time to squeeze in a public service announcement to close this issue? I think we might. PAT] --------------- Please read this. It is not a joke, but rather about a serious subject that affects men and women. Cindy A handsome, middle aged man walked quietly into the cafe and sat down. Before he ordered, he couldn't help but notice a group of younger men at the table next to him. It was obvious they were making fun of something about him, and it wasn't until he remembered he was wearing a small pink ribbon on the lapel of his suit that he became aware of what the joke was all about. The man brushed off the reaction as ignorance, but the smirks began to get to him. He looked one of the rude men square in the eye, placed his hand beneath the ribbon and asked, quizzically, "This?". With that the men all began to laugh out loud. The man he addressed said, as he fought back laughter, "Hey, sorry man, but we were just commenting on how pretty your little ribbon looks against your blue jacket!" The middle aged man calmly motioned for the joker to come over to his table, and invited him to sit down. As uncomfortable as he was, the guy obliged, not really sure why. In a soft voice, the middle aged man said, "I wear this ribbon to bring awareness about breast cancer. I wear it in my mother's honor." "Oh, sorry dude. She died of breast cancer?" "No, she didn't. She's alive and well. But her breasts nourished me as an infant, and were a soft resting place for my head when I was scared or lonely as a little boy. I'm very grateful for my mother's breasts, and her health." "Umm", the stranger replied, "yeah". "And I wear this ribbon to honor my wife", the middle aged man went on. "And she's okay, too?", the other guy asked. "Oh, yes. She's fine. Her breasts have been a great source of loving pleasure for both of us, and with them she nurtured and nourished our beautiful daughter 23 years ago. I am grateful for my wife's breasts, and for her health." "Uh huh. And I guess you wear it to honor your daughter, also?" "No. It's too late to honor my daughter by wearing it now. My daughter died of breast cancer one month ago. She thought she was too young to have breast cancer, so when she accidentally noticed a small lump, she ignored it. She thought that since it wasn't painful, it must not be anything to worry about." Shaken and ashamed, the now sober stranger said, "Oh, man, I'm so sorry mister". "So, in my daughter's memory, too, I proudly wear this little ribbon, which allows me the opportunity to enlighten others. Now, go home and talk to your wife and your daughters, your mother and your friends. And here ..." The middle aged man reached in his pocket and handed the other man a little pink ribbon. The guy looked at it, slowly raised his head and asked, "Can ya help me put it on?" -------------------------- This is breast cancer awareness month. Do regular breast self-exams and have annual mammograms if you are a woman over the age of 45. And encourage those women you love to do the same. Please send this on to anyone you would like to remind of the importance of breast cancer awareness. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ms. Freeman is responsible for http://www.airwaves.com and the rec.radio.broadcasting newsgroup on Usenet. You are invited and encouraged to pass along this item to other places where it will be seen. And thank you very much, Cindy, for sending it here. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #502 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 25 02:13:08 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id CAA01832; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:13:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:13:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910250613.CAA01832@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #503 TELECOM Digest Mon, 25 Oct 99 02:13:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 503 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New Rule Will Protect Privacy of Children Online (Monty Solomon) Too Many Passwords (nospam) Use or Spy Any Internet/LAN PC! (Crowsort) New York Times Web Policy (Ed Ellers) Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing (Mark J Cuccia) Re: Local Cable Competition (Garrett Wollman) U.S. Encryption Export Rules May be Revised (Monty Solomon) Cookies Are a Real Hassle (Gene Barnes) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 15:34:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New Rule Will Protect Privacy of Children Online http://www.ftc.gov/opa/1999/9910/childfinal.htm Effective April 2000 Certain Web Sites Must Obtain Parental Consent before Collecting Personal Information from Children The Federal Trade Commission today issued the final rule to implement the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). The main goal of the COPPA and the rule is to protect the privacy of children using the Internet. Publication of the rule means that, as of April 21, 2000, certain commercial Web sites must obtain parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under 13. "This final step achieves one of the Commission's top goals - protecting children's privacy online," said FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky. "The rule meets the mandates of the statute. It puts parents in control over the information collected from their children online, and is flexible enough to accommodate the many business practices and technological changes occurring on the Internet." The COPPA was enacted following a three-year effort by the Commission to identify and educate industry and the public about the issues raised by the online collection of personal information from children and adult consumers. The Commission recommended that Congress enact legislation concerning children following a March 1998 survey of 212 commercial children's Web sites. The survey found that while 89 percent of the sites collected personal information from children, only 24 percent posted privacy policies and only one percent required parental consent to the collection or disclosure of children's information. The COPPA received widespread support from industry and consumer groups. On October 21, 1998, the COPPA was signed into law. The statute gave the Commission one year to issue rules to implement its privacy protections. On April 27, 1999, the Commission published a proposed rule in the Federal Register and requested public comment on a number of its key provisions. The Commission received 145 comments from a variety of sources including Internet businesses, privacy and children's advocacy groups, technology companies, and individuals. The statute and rule apply to commercial Web sites and online services directed to, or that knowingly collect information from, children under 13. To inform parents of their information practices, these sites will be required to provide notice on the site and to parents about their policies with respect to the collection, use and disclosure of children's personal information. With certain statutory exceptions, sites will also have to obtain "verifiable parental consent" before collecting, using or disclosing personal information from children. The rule will become effective on April 21, 2000, giving Web sites six months to come into compliance with the rule's requirements. The issue of how Web sites can obtain "verifiable parental consent" generated the most interest among the commenters and prompted the Commission to hold a workshop devoted to the issue. The statute defines "verifiable parental consent" as "any reasonable effort (taking into consideration available technology) ... to ensure that a parent of a child ... authorizes the collection, use, and disclosure" of a child's personal information. The comments and the workshop testimony (available on the Commission's Web site) showed that certain methods of consent provide greater assurances that the person providing consent is the child's parent, but that some of these methods need additional time to develop and become available for widespread use. As noted below, the final rule temporarily adopts a "sliding scale" approach that will allow Web sites to vary their consent methods based on the intended use of the child's information. Key Provisions of the Final Rule * Privacy Notice on the Web Site A Web site operator must post a clear and prominent link to a notice of its information practices on its home page and at each area where personal information is collected from children. The notice must state the name and contact information of all operators, the types of personal information collected from children, how such personal information is used, and whether personal information is disclosed to third parties. The notice also must state that the operator is prohibited from conditioning a child's participation in an activity on the child's disclosing more personal information than is reasonably necessary. In addition, the notice must state that the parent can review and have deleted the child's personal information, and refuse to permit further collection or use of the child's information. * Verifiable Parental Consent The final rule temporarily adopts a "sliding scale" approach that allows Web sites to vary their consent methods based on the intended uses of the child's information. For a two-year period, use of the more reliable methods of consent (print-and-send via postal mail or facsimile, use of a credit card or toll-free telephone number, digital signature, or e-mail accompanied by a PIN or password) will be required only for those activities that pose the greatest risks to the safety and privacy of children -- i.e., disclosing personal information to third parties or making it publicly available through chatrooms or other interactive activities. For internal uses of information, such as an operator's marketing back to a child based on the child's personal information, operators will be permitted to use e-mail, as long as additional steps are taken to ensure that the parent is providing consent. Such steps could include sending a confirmatory e-mail to the parent following receipt of consent, or obtaining a postal address or telephone number from the parent and confirming the parent's consent by letter or telephone call. The "sliding scale" will sunset two years after the effective date of the rule, at which time the more reliable methods would be required for all uses of information, unless the Commission determines more secure electronic methods of consent are not widely available. * Choice Regarding Disclosures to Third Parties The rule requires operators to "give the parent the option to consent to the collection and use of the child's personal information without consenting to disclosure of his or her personal information to third parties." * Online Activities for which Parental Consent is Not Required The rule sets forth several exceptions to the requirement of prior parental consent that permit operators to collect a child's e-mail address for certain purposes. For example, no consent is required to respond to a one-time request by a child for "homework help" or other information. In addition, an operator can enter a child into a contest or send a child an online newsletter as long as the parent is given notice of these practices and an opportunity to prevent further use of the child's information. * Coverage of Information Submitted Online The Federal Register notice accompanying the rule makes clear that the rule covers only information submitted online, and not information requested online but submitted offline. * Role of Schools in Obtaining Consent for Students The Federal Register notice accompanying the rule makes clear that schools can act as parents' agents or as intermediaries between Web sites and parents in the notice and consent process. * Safe Harbor Program The statute includes a "safe harbor" program for industry groups or others who wish to create self-regulatory programs to govern participants' compliance. Commission-approved safe harbors will provide Web site operators with the opportunity to tailor compliance obligations to their business models with the assurance that if they follow the safe harbor they will be in compliance with the rule. Sites participating in such Commission-approved programs will be subject to the review and disciplinary procedures provided in those guidelines in lieu of formal Commission action. * Enforcement The statute authorizes the Commission to bring enforcement actions and impose civil penalties for violations of the rule in the same manner as for other rules under the Federal Trade Commission Act. The Commission vote to publish the final rule in the Federal Register was 4-0. It will be published in the Federal Register shortly. Copies of the full text of the rule as well as information about the FTC's privacy initiative are available from the FTC's web site at http://www.ftc.gov and also from the FTC's Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (877-382-4357); TDD for the hearing impaired 202-326-2502. To find out the latest news as it is announced, call the FTC NewsPhone recording at 202-326-2710. MEDIA CONTACT: Victoria Streitfeld Office of Public Affairs 202-326-2718 STAFF CONTACT: Jessica L. Rich Bureau of Consumer Protection 202-326-2148 Toby Milgrom Levin Bureau of Consumer Protection 202-326-3156 (FTC File No. 994504) (childfinal) ------------------------------ From: nospam@elmhurst.msg.net (nospam) Subject: Too Many Passwords Date: 24 Oct 1999 22:28:38 -0500 Organization: MSG.Net, Inc. In article , Derek Balling wrote: > Did you enter your password online so that you could login to your mail? > They saw that. Is that password the same as the password to your account > at work, as it is for 90% of all computer users? Yeah? > You just compromised your work account. As a side note, if you have too many passwords for too many distinct systems to keep track of, you might want to try Bruce Schneier's "Password Safe", it's free software that stores any number of passwords with strong encryption, protected by a single passphrase. It will also generate a new random password using a reliable random-string generation to avoid guessable passwords. http://www.counterpane.com/passsafe.html I'm just a satisfied user, I trust it because I know firsthand that some of the most paranoid network security staff in Fortune 500 companies use Password Safe to store their root passwords ... > An objective question to anyone who would use any anonymiser: Do you > know personally the person who runs it? Not only that, do you know the hosting provider, their upstream ISP, and everybody who has root or equivalent access on every system and router that is in a position to sniff traffic to and from that 'anonymizing proxy' ? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The very same argument could be and > has been made regarding anonymous remailers. 'Do you want them to > know everything you write about, who you write to, etc' and the > same thing could be said about any ISP could it not. If you knew what I know about ISPs (especially several Chicago-based ISPs) then you would not trust them. I do not trust any ISP. > They are after all, your starting point; they see your password, they see > the places you surf to, etc. Do you personally know the person(s) > who operates the ISP you use? If the answer to that is 'no', then > maybe the internet is not for you either; after all, the ISPs could > misuse the information they obtain, if they in fact bother to > correlate it and put it together in usable form. At some point or > another, each user has to decide for him/herself that 'I choose to > trust this arrangement' or 'I do not trust this arrangement'. There is one arrangment where Nobody has the ability to correlate knowledge of your online behavior -- not the ISP, not the proxy server operator, not the destination host. That is the 'Zero Knowledge' true anonymous system. It isn't free, but it is truly anonymous. > IMO, persons who operate any form of anonymous pass-thru service on > the net, either email, or web-surfing or whatever should be consid- > ered in the best possible light, that they are trying to help preserve > or restore the standards of privacy on which the net was operated for > the first ten or fifteen years. There are similar arrangments to 'Zero Knowledge' already in place for anonymous email services. > 'you cannot trust the anonymizers with your secrets' are the people who > usually have the most to gain by accurate demographics from the net, > or the most to lose with totally fictional demographics created by users > trying to hide from them. That is not entirely true. I say "You may not be able to trust anybody with your secrets", but I also say "You should not have to trust anybody with your secrets". This includes not trusting any ISP, any one proxy server, etc. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'd like to hear about some of your ISP stories, especially if you have clearcut evidence that the ISP has abused the net or some of his customers. Send it in confidence for review and publication here. Also, in the next day or so I plan to introduce two major privacy enhancements here at telecom-digest.org for users of the site. In addition to http://telecom-digest.org/secret-surfer.html I will be introducing two additional functions to the postoffice: Anonymous one-time email. You'll be able to send email wherever you please (one piece at a time) and it will be sent from user 'nobody'. Anonymous Usenet postings. You'll be able to send messages to any newsgroup you please, from user 'nobody' When my work is complete, hopefully a day or two from now, you'll go to http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice not only for your own anonymous email box, but also to compose your anonymous outgoing email and newsgroup messages. Then you will hand them over to Postmaster Pat for prompt delivery. I hope you will all find this new feature to be useful. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Crowsort Subject: Use or Spy any Internet/LAN PC! Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 09:50:54 +0200 How YOU can Hack Windows 95-98-NT... in seconds! And use or spy any PC via a LAN or the Internet... as if you were there! Platforms concerned: => Windows 95/98 => Windows NT Workstation/Server 3.5, 3.51 and 4.0 => Windows 2000 Whether you are a rookie or a seasoned hacker, there are times where you want to do something RAPIDLY. Some of us worked a lot to enhance password cracking but we have to recognize that if passwords have been carefully chosen, it still takes a lot of TIME. Others are using well-known security holes in NT but we also have to recognize that the ways to use those security breaches are not easy and it also takes TIME to understand and to implement them. There is a way to get all the passwords of *any* version of Windows INSTANTLY. There is a way to control a distant machine 'as if you were there'. Netbus and BO2K were good attempts, I used them for months, but despite of what their authors said, using it every day is difficult and frustrating enough to disgust lazy guys like me ... the fact that I cannot see the distant screen in real-time is really frustrating! A friend demonstrated me RA. RA (Remote-Anything) is THE solution you were looking for: it shows in real-time the distant desktop (like PC-Anywhere and other MB-based commercial products) BUT the server (the program you install on the PC you want to control) is **80 KB** long ... You can install it remotely by using the buffer overflows of Outlook Express or IE4 or simply by sending it as an Email attachment! Better than that: once installed, it does not show in the Task-List, can't be discovered or killed with CTRL-ALT-DEL! Once you poisoned PCs on a LAN, no need to remember which ones: RA is able to find automatically available PCs and displays IP addresses and DNS Names! Just click on one of them to be connected! And it is so fast that you can see any animation playing on the distant PC in real-time! All this from one unique tool! ____________________________________________________ Here are some of the functions I picked-up from RA's Doc: o Connect to a new desktop: opens the Connection Dialog Box which allows you to open a new window on a new Desktop (you can watch multiple Desktops at a time). o Monitor only: will toggle the passive-monitoring and active-control modes (active monitoring allows you to type keys and move the mouse on the distant PC while passive monitoring will only allow you to watch only). o Full screen: will enter the full-screen mode. You can exit it by typing CTRL+ESC and then right-clicking the Master's task bar icon to come back to the windowed mode. o Remove wallpaper on distant desktop: is useful to minimize the amount of data sent over the network. It always speeds up a connection. o Start Screen Saver: is useful when you want to leave the desktop with a screensaver running: when Remote-Anything moves the mouse cursor on a Slave desktop, it stops the screensaver if it was running. With this option, you can immediately run the screensaver (use this option with the keyboard shortcut to avoid moving the mouse in active mode or switch to passive monitoring to activate this menu option with the mouse). If the screensaver is password protected, this is a way to lock the distant PC. o Play a Sound: will make a sound being played on the distant PC. Usually it is 'ding.wav' but it can be any sound the distant PC registered as the default sound. o Send commands: will display a Dialog Box equivalent to the Start/Run command of Windows 95. o Get Passwords of distant PC: get all the network passwords, the screensaver password, and the Applications passwords Windows has been asked to remember. o Lockup distant PC: Hangs the distant PC which will need to be restarted manually. o Reboot distant PC: will immediately send the order to reboot to the distant PC, this will disconnect you from this Desktop but you can reconnect once the distant Windows session is active again. o Shut Down distant PC: will shut down the distant PC if it supports shut down. You will be disconnected. _____________________________________________________ o How does it work? It is as simple as using Windows 98 itself: move the mouse, type keys, the distant PC will do everything you want! It works over LANs and the Internet! o Where can I get it? At the moment, you can get it from: http://www.twd-industries.com You'll have to pay a small fee to the authors to get RA. I can tell you that it's worth the price: I simply did things I would never have been able to do without it. If you have access to a local network, RA will allow you to do whatever you want! This tool is so easy to use that every hacker will want it. The more you wait, the less what you can do with it will remain a secret! But as time goes, I guess it will be available from a lot of other places. Have fun! The Crowsort is back. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All very interesting, isn't it. After testing it out, please send reviews for publication here. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: New York Times Web policy Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:53:19 -0400 PAT, the TELECOM Digest Editor, noted in reply: > Generally, references to NYT items are discouraged here, because of > their policy of collecting privacy-invading data from users of their > site, and their unwillingness to share freely with the net. I would argue that what the New York Times is doing is a net *benefit* to Web users, compared to not having the material up at all. Incidentally, part of their reason for requiring registration is to limit free-of-charge access to U.S. residents. My suspicion is that they're doing this to avoid "unfairly" competing with the International Herald-Tribune, the almost legendary newspaper for Americans abroad that is now a joint venture between the Times and the Washington Post. The Post, for its part, doesn't see such a problem as their site is wide open. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Then what they should do is refuse connections to sites they do not want to service, using document- referrer, or similar techniques. Not only does the Post not see any problem, but neither do most other papers. This leads one to think NYT is more interested in collecting demographics and other- wise snooping on netizens than anything else. As to whether or not there is some benefit by having it there following registration versus not having it at all, that is a matter of opinion. There are only several hundred newspapers, a couple of wire services and a few dozen sites on the net which provide all the news you could ever want to know and more. We would not suffer a sudden dearth of news if NYT closed down their web site tomorrow, which I keep hoping they will but they probably won't. I've had some users of http://telecom-digest.org/news tell me they routinely spend at least an hour at this site each day just reading the several hundred items I have available; and guess what, not a single one of them came from NYT. If you are not getting a complete, comprehensive news report each day, with lots of stories and several audio streams to pick from, then please try the one here. Don't forget that if you go to the bottom of the front page where the several different magazines and the audio streams are listed and click on the big 'Telecom Digest' logo, you will go to a whole new page with dozens more indepth stories, photos, etc. I sort of like it, if I do say so having created it all myself. http://telecom-digest.org/news PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:48:36 CDT From: Mark J Cuccia Reply-To: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-digit Dialing Lee Winson wrote in "Any Five Digit Dialing Left in US?": > Another short cut feature was that people in live near an area code > border (even a state border) needed to dial only seven digits to call > the adjacent exchange in a different area code. Linc Madison replied: > That feature still exists in many places, but fewer and fewer with each > passing year. The last major city with such an arrangement was Kansas > City, which is currently phasing out 7D FNPA local calling due to the > shortage of prefixes. Yes, Kansas City metro begins mandatory ten-digit for any inter-state/ NPA local calling between the Missouri side (NPA 816) and the Kansas side (NPA 913) in December this year (1999). It has been "permissive" since June (I think), but I wonder if ten-digit inter-state/NPA local dialing has been "permissive" for some time even prior to June 1999, but wasn't yet announced to the public that it could be done. I think that WITHIN the same state/NPA (i.e., local within the Kansas/913 side; local within the Missouri/816 side), it will continue to be "permissive" to dial ten-digits local in December -- and that it has already been "permissive" since June (if not earlier). Of course, if either/both the Kansas/913 side or/and the Missouri/816 side ever decide to go "overlay", then you will have MANDATORY ten-digit local dialing within the same state/NPA for any local calls within that NPA. As for other metro areas straddling a state/NPA line which still maintains seven-digit permissive dialing, I think there are several situations between Missouri and Illinois, and Iowa and Illinois - crossing the Mississippi River. But any existing local seven-digit inter-NPA/state dialing between these adjacent-state situations is to be phased out in favor of ten-digit local dialing - particularly in eastern IA / northwestern IL. The eastern Iowa 319 NPA as well as the central Iowa 515 NPA are PROBABLY going to be overlaid (along with the mandatory ten-digit local dialing) within the next few years. At this time, I _THINK_ that local calls between Cincinnati OH and Covington KY metro area are still dialable as just seven-digits. (That's all in Cincinnati Bell's territory - Cincinnati Bell for the Metro area in sw OH / northern KY / se IN, as well as Southern New England Telephone in most all of CT, are the two BOCs that AT&T never owned a majority of by 1984, the time of divestiture; these two "semi-BOCs" were treated 'specially' at the time of divestiture, and are now frequently classified as 'independent' LECs; Cincinnati Bell was _NOT_ made part of Ameritech; S.N.E.T. was _NOT_ made part of NYNEX.) The KY side (Covington KY and suburbs) will change from NPA 606 to the new NPA 859, permissive 1-Apr-2000, mandatory 1-Oct-2000. NPA 513 in (now) extreme southwestern OH (including the OH side of Cincinnati metro) split off new NPA 937 (which includes Dayton OH) back in 1996/97. But knowing how NPAs are splitting and overlaying almost every month (several per month for some months), 513 will need further relief soon. If Cincinnati Bell, BellSouth, Ameritech, and NANPA, as well as KY regulatory and OH regulatory haven't done so yet, they soon WILL have to be looking into making the local dialing between the OH and KY sides of Cincinnati Metro become 10-digits, first on a permissive basis (if it isn't already permissive - publically announced or not), and then making it mandatory, a-la- Kansas City KS/MO Metro. (Is California EVER going to get serious and logical regarding their telephone code/numbering/dialing procedures?) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__HOME:__(USA)__Tel:_CHestnut-1-2497 WORK:__mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu|4710-Wright-Road|__(+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity-5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New-Orleans-28__|fwds-on-no-answr-to Fax:UNiversity-5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail- ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: 25 Oct 1999 00:56:28 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Michael A. Chance wrote: > Can anyone tell me which cities currently have multiple cable TV > franchises (meaning that most households have more than one cable TV > company to choose from) and what the experience with that type of > competition has been? Boston and Somerville both have competition. In Boston, the competitors are Cablevision (incumbent) and RCN; in Somerville, it's MediaOne (incumbent; ex-Time Warner) and RCN. In both communities, RCN also offers facilities-based telephone service. (However, the part of Boston I live in is part of the Brookline rate center, so RCN is reselling Hell Titanic dial tone instead.) RCN's business plan involves wiring only communities where multiple dwelling units make up a majority of the housing stock. Hence, Somerville was their first system in the area -- Somerville is about 85% multi-family homes (``triple-deckers'' in local parlance). They also (according to their Web page) have systems in Arlington, Newton, and Waltham. (The ringer in that list is Newton, which is mostly detached single-family homes; I'm not sure why they would have built there. I would have expected Medford and Malden to get built first.) As for how well-received it's been, I'm not sure. I don't know what RCN's take-up rate is, but here in Boston and in Somerville they're competing against incumbent carriers who have yet to offer cable modem service in those communities. On the other hand, Cablevision of Boston is a two-cable system with about twenty more channels than RCN-Boston offers -- including Durham, New Hampshire-based PBS outlet WENH-TV and several Spanish-language services. Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same wollman@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 09:29:54 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. Encryption Export Rules May be Revised By Reuters Special to CNET News.com October 19, 1999, 4:25 p.m. PT WASHINGTON--The Clinton administration is considering relaxing export limits on computer source code for data scrambling programs, in a possible move acknowledging the growing importance of Linux, a top export official said today. http://news.cnet.com/category/0-1003-200-919920.html ------------------------------ From: Gene Barnes Subject: Cookies Are a Big Hassle Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 11:50:23 -0700 Pat, I was interested in anonymizer. I had been getting some PGP info from Fred and asked him about it. He said that you might be able enlighten me. I went to your web site to get informed. Is there any cost and if so, how much. Also do you know of any program that will take care of Cookies. Thanks, Gene Barnes [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have a small program I wrote to take care of the cookies that collect on my Windows 95 machine. You are welcome to adapt this for your own use. It is a batch file that runs in DOS that you call from time to time as needed. ---------cut here----------- CLS echo off echo *** IE3 *** rem ** Delete Internet Explorer 3 cookies cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y C:\windows\cookies\*.txt deltree /y C:\windows\cookies\index.dat rem ** Delete Internet Explorer 3 Cache cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y c:\windows\Tempor~1\*.* rem ** Delete Internet Explorer 3 History cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y c:\windows\history\*.* echo *** IE4 *** rem ** Delete Internet Explorer 4 cookies and cache cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y C:\windows\profiles\ptownson\cookies\*.* deltree /y C:\windows\profiles\ptownson\Tempor~1\*.* deltree /y C:\windows\profiles\ptownson\history\mshist*.* echo *** Netscape 3 *** rem ** Delete Netscape 3 Cookies cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y C:\progra~1\netscape\naviga~1\cookies.txt rem ** Delete Netscape 3 Cache cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y C:\progra~1\netscape\naviga~1\cache\*.* rem ** Delete Netscape 3 History cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y C:\progra~1\netscape\naviga~1\netscape.hst echo *** Netscape Communicator *** rem ** Delete Netscape 4 Cookies cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y C:\progra~1\netscape\users\patrick_townson\cookies.txt rem ** Delete Netscape 4 Cache cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y C:\progra~1\netscape\users\patrick_townson\Cache\*.* rem ** Delete Netscape 4 History cd\ PROMPT $p$g PATH C:\windows\command;C:\windows;C:\windows\co deltree /y C:\progra~1\netscape\users\patrick_townson\netscape.hst ------------------------------ Put your name where you see mine, of course, and use whichever of the routines above apply in your case, or just run them all, they go quickly. Don't forget to degfrag your disk drive now and then also. I try to do it at least once weekly. And watch for some privacy enhancements you can use on the net when I get them added to the telecom-digest.org website in the next day or so. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #503 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 25 13:00:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id NAA21499; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 13:00:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 13:00:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910251700.NAA21499@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #504 TELECOM Digest Mon, 25 Oct 99 13:00:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 504 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Health and Machines) (Kenneth A. Becker) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Health and Machines) (Tony Pelliccio) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Ed Ellers) Re: Local Cable Competition (Fred Goodwin) Re: Local Cable Competition (JonesMB) Re: Local Cable Competition (Robert Wiegand) Re: Local Cable Competition (Barry Margolin) Re: Local Cable Competition (Paul R. Joslin) Re: A New World Order (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Schematics Needed For Old French Phone (Jay Hennigan) Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? (Satch) Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? (Jay Hennigan) Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? (Ray Normandeau) Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? (Tony Pelliccio) Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing (Ed Ellers) Re: New Rule Will Protect Privacy of Children Online (Bruce Wilson) Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (Tony Pelliccio) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kenneth A. Becker Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Health and Machines) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 11:11:06 -0400 Organization: Wavestar Joseph Wineburgh wrote: > Snipped for brevity, please excuse me. > One further point - People have been using walike-talkies and ham > radios for years with much much higher power levels, so this is not a > new discussion... > I think the one think I get out of this whole fiasco is that more > testing needs to be done ... Joe had a very good post, but I think I do have a problem with one point (out of the many he made, with which I mostly agree): This business of walkie talkies by hams and others. The Ham Radio bands where walkie-talkes are used are mainly in the 144 MHz to 440 MHz range. The trick here has to do with wavelength. Suppose that one is running a 10 W transmitter at 144 MHz, which has a 2 meter wavelength. The distance between max E field to min E field is 1/2 wavelength, or 1 meter. The currents that flow in the human body are therefore described (roughly) by the equation I(body) = K*(Emax - Emin)/(Resistance of 1 meter of human) where K is some constant, durned if I know what it is. Now, suppose you're doing this at 900 MHz. The wavelength here is 1/3 of a meter; E min to Emax is 1/6 of a meter, and I(body) should be roughly 6 times worse for the same power level. Another way to look at this is to say that the Efield/(delta X) is six times greater for the same power level at 900 MHz vs. 144 MHz. This, by the way, is a major reason why it's reasonably safe to wander around under an 80 Meter (3.5 MHz) dipole antenna with 1000 W on it. It is also the reason why one does not approach 100 W RADARs running in the microwave region. It's not just that the microwave frequencies on that RADAR might be running at the same frequency at the H2O absorbtion frequency (a la microwave cooking): it's that enormous E field that starts enough current flowing in YOU that's the danger. Now, 900 MHz is not quite into the microwave region: However, the history of radiation limits around microwave equipment is not especially reassuring. The original limits were set based on guestimmates of the "K" value given above. By the time the "final" values were set in the middle 60's, the power levels that were "legitimate" dropped by several orders of magnitude, based upon >>injuries suffered by the microwave workers<<. Blindness, sterilization, etc.. Point: K is not a true constant, it's a strong function of frequency and other parameters. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly willing to believe that what we have here is sensationalism at work. The people over at the FCC/FDC have to be completely aware of those sterilized microwave workers, and I find it hard to believe that they'd let something this obvious slip past them. However, please don't go around bringing up handhelds and such that run at other frequencies - the >>rules change<< as the frequency changes. Ken Becker ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Health and Machines) Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:12:56 GMT In article , JSeder- nospam@syntel.com says: >> I think the one think I get out of this whole fiasco is that more >> testing needs to be done ... > More than 12,000 studies have been done (from a recent Wall St Journal > article), and no significant link has been found. > This is simply junk science. There are problems with handheld wireless > phones -- distracted motor vehicle operators and pedestrians, rude > restaurant patrons -- but radiation is not a problem. With they way the courts work it's only covering one's ass. Right now I'm taking a course called "The Legal Environment of Business". Here's what I get out of the course: a) If you really don't know - call someone who does. b) All the lawyers, judges and other legal scholars should be lined up and shot. The advent of remedies in equity has put us into a hell of a jam. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:38:13 -0400 Eric Florack wrote: > I particularly find the comment about it being the first time powerful > radio waves are emitted from a source so close to the body ... being a > veteran radio person, I have perhaps been exposed to more RF energy than > most, but I would hardly consider my experiences /rare/. (I've worked at > stations of 1,000 5,000 10,000 and 50,000 watts, over the years.) > Now, if there's such a thing as a 50,000 watt cell phone, I might be > interested. Different wavelengths have different effects. Getting close to a 600-watt source at 650 kHz may not be noticeable. Getting equally close to a 600-watt source at 2450 MHz will *cook* you. But the real question is whether a 600-*milliwatt* source at 800 or 1900 MHz is a problem. A good analogy might be to minor increases in the background gamma radiation count, caused by above-ground nuclear detonations decades ago, versus exposure to X-rays from a mammogram or a CT scan. Some people say that any unnecessary exposure to ionizing radiation is to be avoided at all costs, while others believe that a very little bit won't hurt; the same argument is now taking place over the *non-* ionizing radiation involved here. > It's called lawsuit time. Just like the little slip of paper in your > toaster oven warning you not to use your shiney new toaster oven as > headgear was driven by lawsuit time. Yep, or regulation time. Ever notice that those 49 MHz "walkie-talkie" headsets have the headset wired directly to the main unit? The FCC won't allow them to use a plug and jack for the microphone, because some kid might hook up his CD player (or PC sound card) instead and play DJ. And did you know that, if anyone still made B&W TVs larger than 12 inches diagonal, they'd have to have a disclaimer that they can't display closed captions in color? ------------------------------ From: Fred Goodwin Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:48:33 -0500 Michael A. Chance wrote: > Personally, I'm a little tired of TCI/AT&T being the only game in town > for cable TV, and would love to see a little free-market competition > for my business. I know that nearly all of the current cable TV > franchises are exclusive to one provider ... Actually, Federal law prohibits exclusive cable franchises. Fred Goodwin, CMA Associate Director -- Technology Program Management SBC Technology Resources, Inc. 9505 Arboretum, 9th Floor, Austin, TX 78759 fgoodwin@tri.sbc.com (512) 372-5921 (512) 372-5991 fax ------------------------------ From: JonesMB Reply-To: JonesMB Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 04:45:05 -0500 >> Can anyone tell me which cities currently have multiple >> cable TV franchises (meaning that most households have >> more than one cable TV company to choose from) and what the >> experience with that type of competition has been? > There are many such towns/suburbs in the Chicago area like that. I > live in Elgin and have Americast. Jones Cable is also in the area. I > had Jones before & switched to Americast. > Competition benefitted a little bit. Not so much in rates, but with > channel selection. Just before Americast came in, Jones added some > additional channels -- obviously only because of competition. I said > sorry, too little too late, and switched. I live in Streamwood (NW suburb of Chicago). After I moved here, I was bombarded with mailings from Americast/Ameritech and TCI/AT&T cable. Both had comparable rates but TCI had a much wider channel selection. TCI offered SpeedVision and DMX and Americast didn't so I picked TCI. Those in the area who had TCI before Americast moved in say that their rates didn't go down but the number of available channels increased. Channels that you could only get with a dish are now available via cable. Seeing as I watch less than 10% of the available channels it would be nice if we could pick only what we watch and pay less. jmb ------------------------------ From: Robert Wiegand Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:12:19 -0500 Organization: Motorola CIG Michael A. Chance wrote: > Can anyone tell me which cities currently have multiple cable TV > franchises (meaning that most households have more than one cable TV > company to choose from) and what the experience with that type of > competition has been? We have two providers here in Arlington Heights, IL (suburb of Chicago). The original provider was TCI. Later Americast was added. Shortly before Americast went active TCI added a number of channels. Guess what -- most of these new channels just happened to be in the Americast lineup. The prices didn't go down, but you get more for the money. Regards, Bob Wiegand bwiegand@sesd.cig.mot.com ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Organization: GTE Internetworking, Cambridge, MA Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 05:33:10 GMT In article , Michael A. Chance wrote: > multiple franchise holders. Can anyone tell me which cities currently > have multiple cable TV franchises (meaning that most households have > more than one cable TV company to choose from) and what the experience > with that type of competition has been? RCN has been available as an alternative to MediaOne in Arlington, MA, and a few other towns in the area, for about a year. Barry Margolin, barmar@bbnplanet.com GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA *** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups. Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group. ------------------------------ From: paul.joslin@weirdness.com (Paul R. Joslin) Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: 25 Oct 1999 11:47:21 -0400 Organization: Structural Dynamics Research Corp. Michael A. Chance writes: > multiple franchise holders. Can anyone tell me which cities currently > have multiple cable TV franchises (meaning that most households have > more than one cable TV company to choose from) and what the experience > with that type of competition has been? The city of Lebanon, OH, went one step beyond. They built a competing fiber optic cable system - and saw rates fall 30%. Other municipalities in the area are considering joining in. There is also interest in developing advanced services such as telecom and datacom for local government use. A similar result occured in Wadsworth, OH. http://enquirer.com/editions/1999/10/17/loc_warren_co_cable_net.html Paul R. Joslin The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns paul.joslin@sdrc.com something that will always be useful and which never +1 513 576 2012 will grow dim or doubtful. -- Mark Twain. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:01:22 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: Re: A New World Order J.A. McLennan wrote: (problems reaching the links quoted in original article). Judith Oppenheimer wrote: ... deleted.... It's not unusual for ICANN, charged with keeping the internet up, to have problems keeping its own server up. It seems to be working this morning. Judith > The Full Story: http://icbtollfree.com/headsup.html > This site contains a number of links to > http://www.icann.org/comments-mail/..something or other... > I tried several of these links and they were all dead. Does somebody > not want us to read those comments? Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 mailto:joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Publisher of ICB Toll Free News: http://icbtollfree.com Publisher of WhoSells800.com: http://whosells800.com Moderator TOLLFREE-L: http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html President of ICB Consultancy: http://JudithOppenheimer.com: 800 # Acquisition Management, Lost 800 # Retrieval, Litigation Support, Regulatory Navigation, Correlating Trademark and Domain Name Issues. ------------------------------ From: jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) Subject: Re: Schematics Needed For Old French Phone Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:03:28 GMT On Sun, 24 Oct 1999 16:50:02 -0400, Paul Marchese wrote: > I purchased an old French rotary phone at a flea market, and I am > looking for schematics for it. I was wondering if you could tell me > where I may find some. Can you be more specific? French as in made in France, or "French phone" as in an ornate handset with a curved mouthpiece horn? Any markings or model numbers on it? There were a number of novelty phone housings made in the 1970s along this line, the innards were typically standard telco issue. Rat Shack sold some imports, but IIRC theirs are a fake rotary dial which is actually DTMF buttons in a circle. If all you're trying to do is get it hooked up, you can probably just try various combinations of the line cord wires until you get dial tone. If it has one red and one green wire, that's a pretty good indication that it's standard telco guts in a fancy housing. Jay Hennigan - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. NASDAQ: NETX - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:18:32 GMT From: satch@concentric.hormel42.net (Satch) Subject: Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? Organization: SBC Internet Services Allegedly lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) said on 23 Oct 1999 in the following: > But it seems to me most phones sold today have electronic ringers. > Does the general public have no preference? > Do traditional ringers cost more to make than electronic ones? The public has a preference: they would rather spend a few dollars less than to have a ringer of the same quality as the ones used on airplane PA systems. The old mechanical ringers, expensive? You ever LOOK at one? Compare that to the cheap pieces of plastic they put in phones, silicon and all. Just the coils cost more than the build cost of "modern" telephones ... _____ __/satch\____________________________________________________________ Satchell Evaluations, testing modems since 1984, 'Netting since 1971 "The only good mouse-trap is a hungry cat" www.fluent-access.com ------------------------------ From: jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) Subject: Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 04:06:56 GMT On 24 Oct 1999 02:14:31 GMT, L. Winson wrote: > One thing I hate in modern telephone sets is the electronic ringers. > I find their tone very irritating. They only have two volume settings > (low or high), while the older sets have much more control. (Ironically > a major feature of the 500 set introduced in 1950 was variable ringer > volume.) Actually, I find the sound of the 500 set ringer rather annoying, and I think it's deliberate. On the called party's end, the ringer is intended to be noisy and annoying. An unanswered call generates no toll revenue. But the ringback tone that the caller hears (440 + 480 Hertz) is mellow and pleasant. Don't annoy the callers, make sure they hang on until the callee picks up the phone to silence the awful clatter. > I find the ringers on the older Trimline and Princess phones particu- > larly pleasant. Agreed. Remove or stuff with paper one of the gongs on your 500 set, you'll like it. > But it seems to me most phones sold today have electronic ringers. > Does the general public have no preference? Some electronic ringers have variable pitch and volume. On my system, I use clean 440 + 480 sinewaves, same as you hear in your ear when making a call. An old wein-bridge oscillator hack complete with light bulbs from many years ago. > Do traditional ringers cost more to make than electronic ones? They probably do now. Jay Hennigan - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. NASDAQ: NETX - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 ------------------------------ From: Ray Normandeau Subject: Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 12:56:37 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) wrote: > One thing I hate in modern telephone sets is the electronic ringers. > I find their tone very irritating. They only have two volume settings > (low or high), while the older sets have much more control. (Ironically > a major feature of the 500 set introduced in 1950 was variable ringer > volume.) > I find the ringers on the older Trimline and Princess phones particu- > larly pleasant. On my SPCS phone I usually only use VIBRATE mode as I am sometimes on camera as an actor. http://www.buzznyc.com/actors/res.normandeau.raymond.html http://www.buzznyc.com/actors/res.frazier.rita.html ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:22:29 GMT In article , lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com says: > One thing I hate in modern telephone sets is the electronic ringers. > I find their tone very irritating. They only have two volume settings > (low or high), while the older sets have much more control. (Ironically > a major feature of the 500 set introduced in 1950 was variable ringer > volume.) During Bell's trial of electronic switching they had to convert all the phones to electronic ringers because they couldn't push the 90VAC through the switching matrix. Of course they realized the cost of modifying every instrument and decided to find a way for the matrix to handle the voltage necessary. > I find the ringers on the older Trimline and Princess phones particu- > larly pleasant. Yes, that was one of their better designs. > But it seems to me most phones sold today have electronic ringers. > Does the general public have no preference? > Do traditional ringers cost more to make than electronic ones? Undoubtedly the mechanical variants would cost more than the singe chip electronic phones. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:19:03 -0400 Linc Madison wrote: > That feature still exists in many places, but fewer and fewer with > each passing year. The last major city with such an arrangement was > Kansas City, which is currently phasing out 7D FNPA local calling due > to the shortage of prefixes." Louisville, Kentucky still has seven-digit dialing into Indiana COs in the local calling area; after the massive fiasco we had over the attempt to ram mandatory 10D down our throats with the proposed 270 overlay, there has been no talk of mandating 10D, much less 1+10D, for calls across the river. ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 25 Oct 1999 13:30:13 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: New Rule Will Protect Privacy of Children Online I found this in comp.sys.att. It appears someone's trying to use the act to run a scam and collect credit card numbers. ------------ Termination of Access. In the beginning of the year 2000, your access to the Internet will be terminated. In order to prevent this, you must certify your age in accordance with the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The final ruling on COPPA was issued on October 20, 1999 Certification of age may be done through www.gifr.net where you will obtain an Internet license with proper age verification. You may review this bill by going to www.ftc.gov to search the online compendium of rulings. The Global Internet Federal Registry (GIFR) is a worldwide service to prevent undesirable behavior through "Secure Ramping", the upcoming technology of the new millenium. The GIFR website is now available in 47 languages in countries throughout the world. The application for your license has been provided free of charge. Although, you may choose to use a credit card number as age verification. Global Internet Federal Registry www.gifr.net ------- Appropriate Headers From This Message ------- Subject: Newsgroup Access Termination 4992 Path: lobby!newstf02.news.aol.com!portc04.blue.aol.com!newsfeed.mathworks.com!ne ws.idt.net!nntp. farm.idt.net!news From: admin@gifr.net Newsgroups: comp.sys.att Date: 24 Oct 1999 22:46:14 GMT Organization: IDT (Best News In The World) Lines: 15 Message-ID: <7v027m$k1u@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-10.ts-1-bay.mvl.idt.net -------- End of Headers For the Message ---------- Bruce Wilson [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for passing this along, and yes, it is a total scam. Adults do not need to prove anything, nor is some sort of 'license' required on the net. This is just another version of the old scam continually practiced over and over on AOL about 'we need to get your password and user name in order to update our billing records'. Yet many news guys will probably fall for it unless you help spread the word. Now as the new law noted, children will be required to obtain parental permission before giving out any information about themselves or their families at sites for example which require registration or otherwise collect demographics or personal information. But don't be tricked into going off to some site to give out your name, address and credit card numbers in order to obtain some bogus license you do not need in order to use the internet. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:16:58 GMT In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to laura@redconnect.net: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So it sounds like Bank One and FUSA > have already started stalling for time on daily transactions while > they try to build up some reserves. Push through charges to customer > accounts as quickly as possible, including service charges, but take > as long as possible to apply credits or payments to the same > accounts. Deny the customer as much of the float as you can while > increasing your own float by a day or two day's worth. It is an old > gimmick banks have used for years when they started to get in a > little trouble. PAT] No bank will tell you this, but credits are always applied AFTER any debits from your account. There could be a payroll transfer of several thousand dollars sitting in your account but they'll process a debit that exceeds your balance, pay it and then charge you the difference plus a service fee in the range of $15 to $25 dollars. The cute part about it is that they don't publish this information. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #504 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 25 14:04:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA24305; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:04:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:04:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910251804.OAA24305@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #505 TELECOM Digest Mon, 25 Oct 99 14:04:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 505 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #205, October 25, 1999 (Angus TeleManagement) Sprint PCS and Phone Reception (Michael David Jones) Ameritech ISDN Service (treb@netnet.net) First USA and Wingspan (Paul Hrisko) Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad (Isaac Wingfield) Re: 'No PIC Fee' Doubled Last Month? (Dave Alden) Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing (M. Koerner) Re: TTI City Tax Outside of City Limits (Alan Boritz) Re: Toronto's New Area Code (Jim Jordan) Re: Handset Prices (was Re: Are US PCS Cellphones "Locked") (Ed Ellers) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 11:00:23 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #205, October 25, 1999 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement's Weekly Telecom Newsbulletin http://www.angustel.ca Number 205: October 25, 1999 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: AT&T Canada ...................... http://www.attcanada.com/ Bell Canada ............................ http://www.bell.ca/ Lucent Technologies .................. http://www.lucent.ca/ Sprint Canada .................. http://www.sprintcanada.ca/ Teleglobe Business Services........ http://www.teleglobe.ca/ Telus Communications.................. http://www.telus.com/ TigerTel Services ................. http://www.tigertel.com/ ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** CRTC Sets New Universal Service Targets ** Wireless Auction, Week Two ** Nortel Buys E-Commerce Firm ** Telus Reapplies for Expanded Vancouver Calling ** Call-Net Postpones Meeting, Results ** Ericsson Expands Montreal 3G Wireless Lab ** New Rules for Telco Reseller Affiliates ** Telefficiency to Offer Local Service ** High-Speed Data Planned for Rural Ontario ** Minacs Expands Halifax Call Center ** Gigabit Internet Planned for Alberta ** Bell Single-Line Inside Wire Services Deregulated ** Bell to Charge IXCs for Toll-Free Payphone Calls ** Fido Caps Free Call Forward ** MTS Opens Winnipeg Portal ** Mixed Results at BCI, Emergis ** Cantel Edges Into the Black ** Serendipity Buys Videoconferencers ** AirTouch Tests Primal's Calling Party Pays ** Latham Takes Helm at Optel ** New VP at Cable Association ** How to Manage Customer E-Mail ============================================================ CRTC SETS NEW UNIVERSAL SERVICE TARGETS: The CRTC's long-awaited High Cost Serving Area Decision (99-16) says that all Canadians should have access to single-line touchtone phone service with the ability to connect toll-free to the Internet, but that no new subsidies need be created to accomplish this. All incumbent telcos are to submit plans to meet the full objective. http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/02/d99-16en.htm ** The possibility that Northwestel needs supplementary funding to achieve this standard in its territory will be addressed separately in Public Notice 99-21 (see Telecom Update #202). ** Commissioner Andrew Cardozo dissented, saying supplementary funding for service upgrades in high-cost areas should also be available to other telcos. QuebecTel and two Manitoba cabinet ministers have since objected to the decision on similar grounds. WIRELESS AUCTION, WEEK TWO: At the end of the first week of Canada's broadband wireless auction, bids totaled $18.5 Million. The most contested licenses cover Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver, with interest also in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and several smaller cities. This week, the bidding pace picks up, with four auction rounds scheduled each day. http://spectrum.ic.gc.ca/2438/navpage_1.html NORTEL BUYS E-COMMERCE FIRM: Nortel Networks is paying US$2.1 Billion to acquire San Jose-based Clarify Inc, "the world's second-largest provider of front-office solutions for e-business." TELUS REAPPLIES FOR EXPANDED VANCOUVER CALLING: Telus Communications has applied again for an expanded Greater Vancouver free calling area, proposing monthly rate increases of 25 cents-70 cents (residence) and 50 cents-$1.50 (business lines, including Megalink, Microlink, and Centrex) to take effect May 1. The CRTC turned down a similar proposal in September but invited a reapplication with lower rates (see Telecom Update #201). CALL-NET POSTPONES MEETING, RESULTS: On October 19, Call-Net Enterprises postponed its shareholders meeting until October 26 and delayed publication of its quarterly results to November 2. Unless former CEO Juri Koor resigns from the board before then, the October 26 meeting will vote on replacing him with Eric Rosenfeld of Crescendo Partners. ** Telesystem and Videotron have both stated their intention to purchase part of Call-Net's shares in Microcell. ERICSSON EXPANDS MONTREAL 3G WIRELESS LAB: Ericsson will invest $196 Million in the expansion of its Montreal research center for the development of Third Generation wireless products. NEW RULES FOR TELCO RESELLER AFFILIATES: CRTC Order 99-972 prohibits the incumbent telcos from providing local loops or local services to affiliated resellers for resale within the incumbent's serving territory. The order ends the previous prohibition on telco affiliates reselling their long distance services, and places no limits on Teleglobe affiliates. http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/04/o99-0972.htm TELEFFICIENCY TO OFFER LOCAL SERVICE: Business telephone system vendor Telefficiency says it will offer local telephone service to its 10,000 southern Ontario customers, beginning in January. The company has hired Jean-Marie Baudot, formerly with Optel, to head its Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) business. HIGH-SPEED DATA PLANNED FOR RURAL ONTARIO: Under the new Data Services Improvement Program (DSIP) the Ontario government and Bell Canada will spend up to $11.5 Million to bring high- speed Internet access to 270 communities in Area Codes 519, 905, 613 and part of 705, by March 31, 2000. MINACS EXPANDS HALIFAX CALL CENTER: Minacs Worldwide, a call center service bureau, will add 250 representatives to its Halifax facility by year-end. GIGABIT INTERNET PLANNED FOR ALBERTA: Alberta's university and research network, Wnet 2, is being upgraded to gigabit speeds, using wide-area Ethernet networking. Netera Alliance (formerly WurcNet) aims to complete Wnet 3 and connect it to CA*net3 early in 2000, with help from Shaw and Telus. BELL SINGLE-LINE INSIDE WIRE SERVICES DEREGULATED: CRTC Order 99-1016 says that enough competitors are providing installation and maintenance of inside wire in Bell Canada territory that Bell's inside wire service to single-line customers can be deregulated. The CRTC retains the right to assure competitors access to inside wire and to protect customer confidentiality. http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/04/o99-1016.htm BELL TO CHARGE IXCs FOR TOLL-FREE PAYPHONE CALLS: CRTC Order 99-1017 allows Bell Canada to charge alternative long distance providers a 25 cent access charge for each toll-free call to competitors' networks made from a Bell payphone. http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/04/o99-1017.htm FIDO CAPS FREE CALL FORWARD: Microcell's Fido now limits free call forward to 1,000 minutes/month; beyond that, Fido charges ten cents/minute. MTS OPENS WINNIPEG PORTAL: MTS Advanced has opened an Internet portal, www.mywinnipeg.com, which provides cultural and recreational information on Manitoba. MIXED RESULTS AT BCI, EMERGIS: During the third quarter: ** BCI International revenue edged up 2% to $209 Million; losses doubled to $140 Million. BCI's overseas wireless companies now have five million subscribers. ** BCE Emergis lost $5.5 Million in the third quarter, compared to a $17.9 Million loss the previous quarter. Sales rose 21%. CANTEL EDGES INTO THE BLACK: Rogers Cantel reported net income (excluding one-time items) of $4.7 Million in the third quarter, a break from many years of operating losses. Revenue rose 10.7% to $349 Million. Early debt repayment led to a one-time charge of $69.3 Million. ** Rogers Communications scored a $1.04-Billion gain on sale of shares to AT&T and BT, resulting in a third-quarter profit of $782 Million. Excluding one-time factors, Rogers lost about $30 Million. SERENDIPITY BUYS VIDEOCONFERENCERS: Serendipity Telepresence (Mississauga) has acquired two other videoconferencing organizations, Corel Video and International Video Conferencing Inc. AIRTOUCH TESTS PRIMAL'S CALLING PARTY PAYS: Calling-party-pays software from Mississauga-based Primal Technologies is being tested by 2,000 U.S. wireless customers of AirTouch. LATHAM TAKES HELM AT OPTEL: OCI Communications, parent of Optel, has named Robert Latham, a long-time Bell Canada executive and recently President of Orbcomm, as President and CEO. He replaces Bill Young, who continues as OCI's Chairman. NEW VP AT CABLE ASSOCIATION: The Canadian Cable Television Association has appointed Elizabeth Roscoe as Senior Vice- President, External Affairs. HOW TO MANAGE CUSTOMER E-MAIL: The October issue of Telemanagement reveals the secrets of successful call centers in taming the avalanche of customer e-mail. ** Until November 30, new subscribers to Telemanagement will receive a bonus: Tips, Tricks & Traps, a collection of a collection of 22 practical reports and resources by Ian Angus, Lis Angus, and Henry Dortmans. ** To subscribe to Telemanagement (and receive Tips, Tricks and Traps) call 1-800-263-4415, ext 225 or visit the Telemanagement Home Page at http://www.angustel.ca. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to majordomo@angustel.ca. The text of the message should contain only the two words: subscribe update To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to majordomo@angustel.ca. The text of the message should say only: unsubscribe update [Your e-mail address] =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER: All contents copyright 1999 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 225. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ============================================================ ------------------------------ From: jonesm2@rpi.edu (Michael David Jones) Subject: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception Date: 25 Oct 1999 10:32:53 -0400 Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, USA I've been a happy Sprint customer for quite a while now. I have one of the original Sony "pop-up earpiece" phones, and I've been thinking of upgrading. The biggest thing I'd like in a new phone is better reception, as I'm right on the edge of a cell at my house. I've talked to several people (both local and corporate) at Sprint and gotten all sorts of answers about which phone they support has the best reception. One guy told me that my Sony has better reception than any of the new phones because it was the first one developed and was over-engineered. Another guy told me yesterday that the brand new Qualcomm ultra-thin phone is the first phone to have better reception than the Sony because it has a "second-generation chipset". He also told me that the Nokias were the worst phones they sell in terms of reception. Anybody have some real information? I'm mostly interested in digital-only, not dual band. Mike Jones | jonesm2@rpi.edu Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward. ------------------------------ From: Subject: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:18:33 -0500 Organization: DCT Technologies I was wondering if anyone has Ameritech ISDN service in Wisconsin, perhaps even NE area, how they feel they were treated, and does it live up to all the hype. I currently use a 33.6 analog connection, but I have ISDN availible. DSL and cable are not going to happen any time soon because I live out in the country, and cable isn't even avaible, and the CO is too far for DSL. Thanks for any comments. Todd ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 11:16:39 -0400 From: Paul Hrisko Subject: First USA and Wingspan On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 00:07:07 GMT, tinikins@my-deja.com wrote: > First USA is in SERIOUS financial trouble they cannot even afford the > payroll at the site in Maryland. You are not the only cardholder who > has had their account double-debited. Call back and DEMAND that you are > able to take a cash advance on your credit card for the money, it is > possible and they WILL waive all the fees. Also try and do a balance > transfer to another company because FUSA is going under. There is an > article in the Kiplinger Financial Magazine this month. > The FUSA company is going under so PLEASE take my advice and get out > before it is too late. To date there are five class action lawsuits > against FUSA. The president of the company Dick Vague has disappeared > from site, and retired ... Hopefully everyone here knows that Wingspan.com is part of the FirstUSA company. I was planning on moving some assets to one of the online banks after getting fed up with surcharges on an account I had with a local bank (and I wanted to see what the experience was like). After going through the site information I bailed out quickly. I have a FUSA CC and have had payments applied late -- some almost two weeks after I sent the check. Once I can blame on the USPS, three times -- no. I'm wondering if they're just doing it to collect the late payment charge since they usually credit it quickly enough when I call (though it does take a couple of calls). I just wonder about on-line banking's future if less web-centric customers experience the same lack of service with Wingspan. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:41:18 -0700 From: Isaac Wingfield Subject: Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad In TELECOM Digest Issue 498 julian@tele.com wrote: >> Back in the early days when Bell Labs was working on Touch >> Tone, this would have been the late fifties, there were no calculators >> as they are now known. And a.ross@ieee.org replied: > Gee ... I think you're maybe a decade or two off here ... or maybe it > depends on what part of the country you were in. I was a summer > student at Bell Labs about the time that the DTMF keypad was being > selected (early 60's) and I recall some banter with one of my > office-mates about it. The early '60s sounds about right. I was in college at the time, and working for a strange little company that built oddball gear for Ma Bell under contract. Somewhere around that time, we got a more-or-less 10-inch cube or relays and stuff from Bell, which I stuck in a box along with a power supply and other items. I was told the box was a piece of test gear for the touch-tone trials then going on at Illinois Bell (?), and it was to be used to verify that consumers' telephones (or the consumers themselves) were working properly. Among other things we added was a single "Nixie" tube (remember those?) on the front, and a couple of test leads with clips, which came out from somewhere. If you clipped the leads across a telco pair and then pressed a button on a t-t keypad, the Nixie would light up with the proper number. There was no provision to decode or display other than digits 0-9. We didn't have a t-t pad, so to test it I used a pair of HP 200 audio oscillators and a frequency counter to get the frequencies right. I remember that the unit we got from Bell was mostly passive, including the resonant circuits to discriminate between the various tone pairs (may have been tuned relays). It was much slower to respond to tones than contemporary designs, but *very* picky about the accuracy of the frequencies. I believe that the output of the Bell unit was in their "1-2-2'-5" code, via those lovely wire-spring relays they used at the time. We had to decode the 1-2-2'-5 to 1-of-10 to drive the Nixie. I suspect that the unit we got from Bell was the standard t-t detector they had designed for use in the CO; we just adapted it for "portable" use and gave it a readout. Isaac Wingfield Project Director isw@ictv.com ICTV Vox: 408-364-9201 14600 Winchester Blvd. Fax: 408-364-9300 Los Gatos, CA 95030 ------------------------------ From: alden@math.ohio-state.edu (Dave Alden) Subject: Re: 'No PIC Fee' Doubled Last Month? Date: 25 Oct 1999 16:00:45 GMT Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University Hi, After writing article : > Nine months ago I got tired of all the fees my LD company was > charging, so I had my local phone company (Ameritech) switch my line > to no LD company. I've been paying my $0.54/month for the privilege > of being able to send and receive LD calls through other means. Last > month this fee was increased to $1.04/month without any warning. I > was wondering if this was across the board to everyone, and if so, > why? I went the the fcc homepage and found: http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Factsheets/picc.html Which states as of July 1, 1999 the MAXIMUM allowable PIC charge went up to $1.04 for the first line and $2.53 per additional (for residential lines and single-line business lines). I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Ameritech was one of the first to charge the maximum allowed. :-( ... dave alden ------------------------------ From: Michael G. Koerner Subject: Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-digit Dialing Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 11:09:56 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Mark J Cuccia wrote: > As for other metro areas straddling a state/NPA line which still > maintains seven-digit permissive dialing, I think there are several > situations between Missouri and Illinois, and Iowa and Illinois - > crossing the Mississippi River. But any existing local seven-digit > inter-NPA/state dialing between these adjacent-state situations is to > be phased out in favor of ten-digit local dialing - particularly in > eastern IA / northwestern IL. The eastern Iowa 319 NPA as well as the > central Iowa 515 NPA are PROBABLY going to be overlaid (along with the > mandatory ten-digit local dialing) within the next few years. I'll have to check and see if '7D' is still possible between such places as Superior, WI and Duluth, MN and between Marinette, WI and Menominee, MI (also between Hurley, WI and Ironwood, MI and between Beloit, WI and South Beloit, IL). '7D' might also still be possible between LaCrosse, WI and La Crescent, MN. However, ALL 'FNPA local' calling INSIDE of Wisconsin (ie. Weywauwega, WI (920-867) to/from Waupaca, WI (715-256/258)) is now mandatory '1+10D'. Regards, Michael G. Koerner Appleton, WI ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: TTI City Tax Outside of City Limits Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 11:58:41 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) wrote: > I recently moved and in the process PICed TTI National as my LD carrier. > Good rates, apparently a subsidiary of MCI. Although my mailing address > is "Santa Barbara", my service address is outside of the city limits. > Santa Barbara imposes a 6% utility tax on its residents, and TTI > insists on charging me this tax unless I go through several hoops to > prove to them that my service address is outside of the city limits. > All of my other utilities got it right and are not charging me the > tax. > I suspect that I'm not alone in this, and they are similarly bilking > many others nationwide who are near but not in taxable areas. I've > argued repeatedly with their customer service people who have told me > that I need to get a letter from the Chamber of Commerce(!) to prove > that I don't live in the city. A map won't do it for them. > To whom do I complain? FCC? California PUC? None. Just choose another carrier and fire them. You're spending way too much time and effort on something that should be straightforward. BTW, phantom "taxes" were a common source of billing fraud with Sprint about 15 years ago. In Sprint's case, not only wouldn't they know for which jurisdiction they were "collecting," but also the percentage and on what part of the service bill it was based. Challenging the amounts did no good, since Sprint would suspend service if it wasn't paid. ------------------------------ From: Jim Jordan Subject: Re: Toronto's New Area Code Date: 25 Oct 1999 16:26:03 GMT Organization: Nortel Networks, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Reply-To: Jim Jordan In article , wrote: > As you maybe aware Toronto's new area code will be 647. Does that mean that every new Toronto number will be MIS-dialed? (Sorry ...) W. Jim Jordan, Nortel Networks, Stop 29CA3A08 | +1 613 763 1568 PO Box 3511 Stn C, Ottawa, ON K1Y 4H7 Canada | wjjordan@nortelnetworks.com Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Nortel Networks. Inbound spam filtering is in place. Don't send what I won't see. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Handset Prices (was Re: Are US PCS Cellphones "Locked") Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:42:09 -0400 Tony Pelliccio wrote: > They seem to be brand new. If they're refurb'd I'd expect they'd > take the damned SIMLOCK off since they've already recovered their > subsidization. With Omnipoint you pay $49 whether you are on a prepay > or normal account. Powertel also charges $49 for a new phone (the Mitsubishi G75 in my case), though that may be a temporary sale price. Sprint PCS' cheapie phones are refurbished, however. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #505 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 25 17:31:44 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA02565; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:31:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:31:44 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910252131.RAA02565@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #506 TELECOM Digest Mon, 25 Oct 99 17:31:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 506 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers (Mark J. Cuccia) Any 416/905 Free Extenders Out There? (gt_snoracer@my-deja.com) Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? (Joe) Re: Area Code 716 Split (David Esan) Re: St. Louis City Central Offices (Herb Stein) Re: St. Louis City Central Offices (Lost in Cyberspace) Re: First USA Debiting (Andrew Finkenstadt) Re: New York Times Web Policy (Ed Ellers) Re: New York Times Web Policy (John De Hoog) Recording Device Found on Line (Thomas W. McDonald) Another Chat Room Incident Frightens Students (TELECOM Digest Editor) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 13:56:24 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers Replying to TWO threads here - the telephone vs. calculator keypad arrangement, and the electronic ringer vs. real bell gongs ... Regarding the 'standard' DTMF keypad arrangement: -1-2-3-(A) -4-5-6-(B) -7-8-9-(C) (*)0(#)(D) as opposed to the adding machine / calculator / comptometer keypad: -7-8-9- -4-5-6- -1-2-3- ---0--- It was mentioned by others in earlier posts that Bell Labs did several user-trial experiments of numerous keypad arrangments. It was also mentioned by someone that there were some experimental "calculator" keypad arrangments of DTMF phones in the late 1950's or early 1960's. Bell System Tech Journal (or maybe Bell Labs Record magazine- or BOTH) had an article in the late 1950's showing an experimental DTMF phone, a Black (well at least it appeared to be black - the photo was B&W) 500 WECO desk set telephone, which had the calculator-keypad style, with the '0' where it is right now - by itself on the bottom row in the middle. The ten-touchtone buttons arranged in the rectangle were placed in a CIRCULAR background that would fit into a standard 500 deskset BUT SO THAT A ROTARY DIAL 500's HOUSING would fit over to cover the internals of the phone, UNLIKE the "2500" DTMF keypad which needed its OWN "squared" housing. And since Bell Labs had invented the transistor only ten years prior, I don't think that vacuum tubes produced the tones, but rather tones were generated by transistors. However, in the pictures, you see TWO cords protruding from the back of the phone - one obviously is the telephone line-cord, but the other cord might have been an external electric-power cord! It would seem that telephone-line-power wasn't enough to power the DTMF generator in this phone. A reprint of the picture used in the BSTJ or BLR article is reproduced in "History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System : Switching Technology (volume) 1925-75" authored by Amos E. Joel (with Bell Labs from 1941 to 1984 when he retired). In the very early 1960's, the "standard" telephone DTMF keypad arrangement was adopted, but the ten buttons are still placed in this CIRCULAR 'backboard' (yet the buttons are arranged in the rectangle), where a ROTARY 500's housing could be used. Bell Labs Record and/or Bell System Tech Journal has aritcles/pictures of this from that time. A picture of an early 1960's touchtone phone can be seen on the web, at Lucent/Bell-Labs' website: http://www.lucent.com/hall/1964.html It mentions 1964, but I think that "public" touchtone was trialed in 1963 or even 1962. Note in the Lucent picture that the number-card states: MAin 0-2368 The MAin-0 "exchange" was frequently used as a 'generic' exchange in the 1950's, since there were VERY few places that had c.o.codes of the 'NN0' format; in the early 1960's, KL5 (KLondike-5) was a frequent "generic" exchange, since it translated to '555'. Even though Bell was trying to eliminate the public use of EXchange names beginning in the late 1950's, it took quite some time for ANC (All Number Calling) to completely take effect, at least as far as telco was concerned. Many TV programs and movies from the mid-1960s still quoted EXchange names, so it isn't all that surprising that even a Bell Labs publicity photo from circa 1964 would have a phone with "MAin-0-2368" in it! Anyhow, some of the articles from BSTJ/BLR issues in the early 1960s regarding "pushbutton" (DTMF) dialing have technical charts that _DO_ indicate the TWO sets of FOUR frequencies EACH. The 'place' for the '*' and the '#' are shown with the 'cross' of each buttons' low+high frequency pair, but with a note of "reserved for future use", but not showing the symbols '*' and '#'. Likewise, the 'fourth' column of 1633 Hz to make a set of 16 pairs of frequencies for the (Autovon) A/B/C/D column (although Autovon labelled these buttons as FO for Flash Over-ride, O for Over-ride, I for Immediete, P for Priority - but I don't remember if this is the right order from top-down) is shown in the tech charts of the frequencies, but also as "reserved for future use". In the late 1940's (1948?) there was an experimental pushbutton-dial tone-generating phone, probably used in Media PA (the first public #5XB office). Again, there are photos of this in BSTJ/BLR from that time, and the "Switching Technolgy" Bell Labs book authored by Amos Joel has a photo of the phone. It was a modified WECO 302 desk telephone with ten pushbuttons, arranged in two horizontal rows, the buttons numbered from left to right in increasing order: 1-2-3-4-5 6-7-8-9-0 The tones were not produced by transistors, not even by vacuum-tubes, but rather by mechanicals inside of the phone that actually plucked metal reeds. The tones were NOT the (customer loop) DTMF touchtones of today, but rather the ( blue :) MF _TOLL_ tones. Imagine that... telco actually made some _CPE_ (CUSTOMER premesis equipment) that could have been used to phr..k the network! Well, I'll stop there! :-})>>> On another related topic/thread... some pictures of the experimental electronic-tone-generated 'ringer' telephone used in the Morris ECO trials (Electronic Central Office) in the early 1960's - those pictures can be seen in BSTJ/BLR articles from that time as well as in Amos Joel's book. The phones used for that trial were _NOT_ any of the experimental pushbutton (touchtone) dialing phones, but rather rotary 500 sets that had faster 20pps spinning dials rather than the 'standard' 10pps. More photos can be found from the resoures I've already mentioned. And I prefer the real sound of a real bell/gong for ringing although I will admit that SOME electronic ringers can be tuned for a more pleasant sound. With today's electronics, why doesn't someone make an electronic ringer that can be set to actually sound like the bells of a 1920's era steel ringer box' gongs, or a 1930's era bakelite ringer box gongs, or a 302's bells, or a 500's bells, a Princess phone's gong (yes, WECO/Labs developed a built-in ringer for a Princess in 1962 - the original 1959 Princess had NO built-in ringer, and was OH-SOoooo lightweight that it would tip-over or slide-all-over while trying to dial a call), or a Trimline's ringer, or the 1960's-era BellChime ringer/chimer. My computer can either store .ra, .wav, etc. files or else RE-produce sounds/tones/etc., such as various telephone GONG ringers, the NBC Chimes, the CBS 'bong-at-the-top-of-the-hour', etc. So why doesn't someone come up with an electronic tone ringer that can reproduce the sounds of the earlier electromechanical gong ringers?! MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__HOME:__(USA)__Tel:_CHestnut-1-2497 WORK:__mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu|4710-Wright-Road|__(+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity-5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New-Orleans-28__|fwds-on-no-answr-to Fax:UNiversity-5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail- ------------------------------ From: gt_snoracer@my-deja.com Subject: Any 416/905 Free Extenders Out There? Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 04:24:59 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Does anyone know if there are any 416 or 905 free LATA extenders still in operation? I recall a useful service from a real estate agent in York Region whereby callers from Newmarket could connect at an Aurora number (which is local to Toronto), listen to a short ad, and have their (normally) toll calls to 416 connected toll free. This turned into a pay service approximately four years ago ... I am unsure of the current status. I would think that cut-rate long distance and regulation had forced these services out of existence. However, a few months back I heard an ad on a radio station promoting a similar service between Burlington and Toronto, using an Oakville number. This turned into a pay service after a month, though. Any free ones out there? ------------------------------ From: haggerty@coralberry.net (Joe) Subject: Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:35:59 GMT Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Reply-To: haggerty@pobox.com According to my information, from the security department of my local telco in NC, there is no such law in North Carolina. I have never heard of a federal statute, so I presume it varies from state-to- state. I previously lived in Virginia, where there apparently WAS such a statute. They were defined as "Annoying, Threatening, Harassing, or Obscene Phone Calls". Calling with no intent to communicate (e.g., letting it ring once, or just hanging up when answered) was a violation. So was I call you and say "Is your refrigerator running?". Not obscene or threatening, but certainly harassing and annoying. Since in NC I have been bothered by a "disgruntled" telemarketer that I requested never again call my number, only to have them call every few minutes for hours and just hang up. It was at a time I was expecting an important call and just had to answer. The phone company security department MANAGER said that if they were not obscene and made no threat, it violated no NC law, and they would do nothing. They actually offered to write a letter to the customer saying only that a complaint had been filed about it (as it was a telemarketer, we assumed that the owner would be interested in their employee's behavior, if nothing else, it wasted paid time), but in the end, they refused to do even that. Consumers still lose out in other situations. Here is a common one for us: A telemarketer with defective equipment calls. The out-of-area number blocked is a fairly good chance it's a telemarketer. I answer. Nothing but clicks and eventually re-order. The process repeats at regular intervals - I assume the equipment just re-queues my phone number. Eventually, their system works and I get a person. I tell them three things: (1) their equipment is broken and is harassing "potential" customers, (2) put me on the do-not-call list, and (3) because they insist on harassment phone calls, I will never under any circumstances purchase their product/service. I consider their actions as harassing phone calls, UNFORTUNATLY, this is probably a case where they ARE attempting to communicate. The second isn't as common, but when it did happen it was a pain. My spouse got a business line with answering machine in our house for her business. Shortly thereafter we started getting calls at 2-3 am from a FAX. It would repeat every five minutes for about 1/2 hour, then stop. Until the next night. The phone was in a remote part of the house, but it still successfully woke us. This was a FAX, and was an attempt to communicate, so it wasn't considered harassment. I recommended her next office purchase be a FAX, just to find out who was calling. We did, and it was coming from England. The INTENDED destination was a lawyer's office in my town. A very large law firm. We contacted the law firm and they weren't very friendly (surprise!). They talked about how we were intercepting their communications, and the cover letter said we had to destroy it, we were breaking the law by reading it, etc, etc, etc. Also, they had removed that FAX number two years ago. I think that they were using old stationary with the number, and also, other very large law firms just had it in their speed-dial. To make a long story longer ... we spoke with the office manager (not a lawyer) and made a deal. We would mail them the hard copy (in those days it was a hardcopy fax) of faxes, and charge them a "service fee" for the use of our phone and fax equipment. I tried $50/page, but I think we ended up at about $25/fax. We just sent the fax and enclosed a bill. We made several hundred dollars from them. Then the number of faxes slacked off, and they stopped paying the bills. I offered to send them instead to the "rumors and scandals editor" of a local newspaper and they started talking lawyer stuff again. I couldn't/can't afford a lawsuit from a law firm, so I dropped it. BUT, I've always wondered the legal standing of misdirected FAXes vs. misdirected U.S. Mail items. I mean, you can't NOT read a fax, like you can NOT open a sealed piece of mail addressed to my neighbor but placed in my mailbox. Joe ------------------------------ From: davidesan@my-deja.com Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:34:13 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , rtucker+replyto+ 199910@katan.ttgcitn.com wrote: > In , David Esan my-deja.com> spewed: >> There is an article in Thursday's Rochester, NY newspaper about the >> split of NPA 716. You can find it at: >> www.rochesternews.com/1021areacode.html > Argh. If it comes down to a split, Rochester is *not* going to get to > keep 716. Buffalo is simply bigger. > What is it with people being so resistant to overlays? -rt I'm resistant in this case, because 99% of all my calls require only seven digits. I can't see why I have to dial ten digits, just so Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch&Lomb don't have to change their paperwork. We are already suffering from the stupidity of the telephone companies who assign full exchanges to any company wasting thousands of available telephone numbers, who create strange rate centers so that more exchanges have to be assigned, who resist any change at all in any of these policies because it would cost them money even though they are making money hand over fist. I can understand overlays in large cities where ten digit dialing is part of a normal way of life. But in Rochester or Buffalo? C'mon, lets get Global Communications and Bell Titanic to fix the problem. If they can't, lets split the area code, and leave the average consumer alone. Although I am amused at the three-way split that would put the southern tier of 716 in its own area code. When will that run out of exchanges? 2100? David Esan Veramark Technologies desan@veramark.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's basically what happened in Chicago with the 312/773 split a few years ago. Ameritech was going to do it essentially in reverse: A much smaller geographical part of the downtown area was going to be moved off of 312 and into 773 which would have allowed the downtown area an almost infinite amount of expansion room while permitting everyone else in Chicago to keep 312 and the status-quo for several years. The Jackson/Adams/Clark/ LaSalle area downtown just literally eats up tens of thousands of phone lines in that little area alone between the banks, the stock exchanges, and the several very large companies. It was going to go west pulling in the medical center and the University of Illinois. They were all going to get 773 as their domain, and everyone else could keep 312 with enough spare room to last for a few years. But no, no! Better that two million Chicagoans should all have to change their area code than that a firm of five hundred lawyers downtown or a couple of banks and the federal center at Jackson and Dearborn Street should have to change their letterheads and hire someone competent to reprogram their phone systems, etc. So they kept 312 which will soon need to be split again while all the people around town had to learn to live with 773. PAT] ------------------------------ From: herb@herbstein.com (Herb Stein) Subject: Re: St. Louis City Central Offices Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:59:38 GMT I live in the area served by the Manchester central office and have ISDN. It is served out of Ladue. A friend has a business in Manchester and just got ADSL. I'll have to ask him where it's served from. To my knowledge, only Chestnut and Ladue serve ISDN. Hauling ADSL back to an office equipped to provide ADSL service is no problem for them. I've had a chance to play with his ADSL service and I'm underwhelmed. Telneting into his server to help with DNS, Apache etc. is barely better than V.90. He's told that there is a service guarantee of 1.5mb down and 128kb up from his machine but I haven't see it. He says that large downloads are FAST once they get rolling. I suspect that SWBT's implementation is not ready for prime time but they are trying to run with or ahead of the Charter Pipline cable services so as not to lose market share. We'll see. In article , Michael A. Chance wrote: > SBC has been rolling out DSL service in the St. Louis metro area, but > currently the only central office in the City of St. Louis proper to > get the upgrades is the Chestnut office, located in the old Southwest- > ern Bell headquarter building at 1010 Pine St., and serving the > downtown area. No time frame has been given for when the rest of the > city might get DSL capability. (A good portion of the suburban area > already has DSL access.) Herb Stein The Herb Stein Group www.herbstein.com herb@herbstein.com 314 215-3584 ------------------------------ From: LostInCyberspace79@at&t.com Subject: Re: St. Louis City Central Offices Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:27:51 -0600 On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 07:34:40 -0500, Michael A. Chance wrote: > I know that the Prospect office is on S. Grand near Tower Grove Park, > and serves the near southside area (I live about five blocks from it). > There's the Flanders central office somewhere in in the South City > area, but I don't know the location of that one. I'm guessing that > there's two to four more central offices located in the City proper, > but I have no idea which ones or where they're located. > Any Southwestern Bell central office or outside plant folks out there > that could fill in the missing locations? There are at least six central offices within the city of St Louis: Chestnut - (10th and Pine) Prospect - (Grand and Shenandoah) Flanders - (January and Eichelberger) Jefferson - (Washington, west of Spring) Forest - (Delmar, east of Lake) Evergreen - (Natural Bridge, east of Goodfellow) These three COs are located outside of the city, but serve the city: Melrose - (Bayless Avenue, west of Morganford) Parkside - (Delmar, east of Skinker) Mission - (near Bellevue and Southwest) The Riverview CO (near Chambers and Duke Drive) may serve a small portion of the city. Lost In Cyberspace address munged use LostInCyberspace (at) att.net ------------------------------ From: kahuna@panix.com (Andy Finkenstadt) Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting Date: 25 Oct 1999 16:54:04 -0400 Organization: Me Myself and I Reply-To: kahuna@panix.com In tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) writes: > No bank will tell you this, but credits are always applied AFTER any > debits from your account ... > The cute part about it is that they don't publish this information. I have three banks. Each of them has a published statement of the order in which credits and payments are applied to my accounts. The orders are: * Local regional bank: Deposits first, followed by debits. If funds are uncollected, then they are unavailable for debitting. * Remote credit union: In chronological order, as they were submitted and applied. * Remote local bank: Deposits first, followed by debits. The funds are immediately made available upon deposit - but it helps that I have a very large Certificate of Deposit with them as well. Their "right of set-off" is their insurance about the collectibility of any overdraft from me. Maybe I am just lucky to have, out of the several thousand in the United States, three banks that each disclose, in writing, their account reconciliation policy. Andy Finkenstadt Andrew Finkenstadt (http://www.finkenstadt.com/andy/) "I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone." - Bjarne Stroustrup ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: New York Times Web Policy Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:24:37 -0400 PAT, the TELECOM Digest Editor, noted: > As to whether or not there is some benefit by having it there > following registration versus not having it at all, that is a matter > of opinion. There are only several hundred newspapers, a couple of > wire services and a few dozen sites on the net which provide all the > news you could ever want to know and more. We would not suffer a > sudden dearth of news if NYT closed down their web site tomorrow, > which I keep hoping they will but they probably won't. What we *would* lose is access to the Times' columns and other material written exclusively for that paper, which are the only things I read on the Times' site. (Actually, I get most of my general news from Fox News and BBC News.) But why do you think that it's worse to have a site like this on the Web, which provides information to the people it chooses to deal with, than to not have it at all? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I do not know if it is 'worse' or not, let's call it an even trade maybe. Purely opinion of course, but I see nothing terribly beneficial about the site; their columnists have been carefully trained to write what the owners of the paper want to see. Most people are not going to bother registering and giving up personal data about themselves just to read what some parrot's owners have trained it to say. Someone told me they have a cgi-bin script to deal with NYT, on the few occassions the paper has something different to say than what it usually talks about. I am looking into that cgi-bin script now, to see if it might be a useful thing to have available at http://telecom-digest.org/news for users who want to now and then see something the paper has. Its a lot like my feelings about advertising on the net. I do not personally like it, and won't have it on the telecom web site with the exception that some of the syndicated features I use do have ads and I let them stay here because the material they present is otherwise quite worthwhile. I have that same sort of ambivilent love/hate feeling about web sites that snoop on users. If the material is otherwise exceptionally good, I'll try to work around the problems I see. But NYT does not fit in that category. For them, it usually isn't worth the bother. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John De Hoog Subject: Re: New York Times Web policy Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:37:21 +0900 Organization: Wonmug's World Ed Ellers wrote: > Incidentally, part of their reason for requiring registration is to > limit free-of-charge access to U.S. residents. This is no longer true; the Times is now accessible for free from anywhere in the world, although registration is still required. John De Hoog, free registered NY Times user in Tokyo [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Demographics and statistics gathered in Europe or Asia are just as useful to some companies as the same thing when gathered from USA users. Overall, I do not like seeing that kind of imposition made on netizens, especially newer ones who have not yet seen how fast they can wind up on a spam mailing list after turning over their name and email address at a web site they visit. I am sure NYT sells all that data to commercial interests on the web for spam purposes. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Thomas W. McDonald Subject: Recording Device Found on Line Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:16:38 -0400 An installation technician goes on a service call. Caretaker let's them in the house. The line is reported as having no dialtone with a s/c on line. Technician finds a recording device in the crawl space causing the s/c; he disconnects it and leaves it at it's location. The subscriber comes home while the line is being repaired. Technician tells them the line is fixed (not mentioning the device). Now my questions. Does the tech have the obligation to mention the device to the police, or to the subscriber? The device was past the demarc and on the subscriber premises. Tom McDonald Splicing Supr. SNET ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:15:46 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Another Chat Room Incident Frightens Students According to law enforcement officials in Townsend, Massachusetts, a teen-age computer user in Missouri used an America Online chat room to make 'Columbine-like' threats to hurt students and teachers at one of their schools. Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly announced over the weekend that the teen-ager, whose name and hometown in Missouri were not released made the threats using a chat room on AOL which had been established for use by the eighth-grade class at Hawthorne Brook Middle School in Townsend, a community of about two thousand residents in northern Massachusetts. He said the Missouri youth had been chatting online with the students in Townsend since September, but this past week the cyber-relationship turned (in his words) terrifying. Reilly said the guy in Missouri told several students he was actually in their community and he threatened to hurt them, their teachers, and destroy their school. The threats -- which included a list giving the specific names of teachers and students who were targeted in the attack -- was, in Reilly's words, an act of 'cyberterrorism' that left the school body shaken and frightened. It may have been just a hoax, a joke as was claimed by the Missouri user, but "the fear that was expressed by students, parents, teachers and others in this community was very real," Reilly said. The students originally thought that the user from Missouri was a peer, about their own age, and included him in their conversations, revealing information about their town, their school and themselves. When the user allegedly directed some of the students to a site on the net which allegedly contains child pornography on Wednesday of last week, some of the children told their parents or teachers, who then called police. The Missouri user made his explicit threats about the students, their teachers and their school at this same time. Townsend Superintendent of Schools James McCormick said that on the same day, the school received a suspicious and anonymous phone call which made reference to the April 20 incident at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. While all this was going on Wednesday, police requested assistance from America Online, and an AOL emergency response team immediatly located the chat room and the offending user. (I guess you would call it a violation of their Terms of Service, eh?) ... They logged it all from that point onward, and pulled the records giving the user's true name and address. AOL rightfully said they would make their own response to the offending user, but they would not reveal any identification about the user without an order to do so. On Thursday, the school was closed as bomb-sniffing dogs were led through the building and student lockers, bags and backpacks were checked. Nothing suspicious was found and the school was declared safe for re-entry and resumption of classes. At the same time, at the request of Townsend police, a federal search warrant was served upon AOL, and the results of the emergency response team's work from the day before was released. On Friday, authorities converged on the the suspect's home, not knowing for sure what they would find, or the extent of any difficulty they would encounter taking him into custody. What they found was, a nineteen year man who lived with his parents. Totally paralyzed from the neck down as the result of a car crash, unable to care for himself in any way, he was able to communicate via his computer using a speech-to-text program while he was confined in his wheel chair or bed. Police claim that the man made a full confession to them; that he admitted communicating with the students on various occassions, and that he was in possession of, and had displayed child pornography. Because of the unusual circumstances, police asked for guidance in handling the matter and were instructed by a judge to place the man under arrest, serve a search warrant on the parents (who actually owned the computer), confiscate the computer, and release the man to his parents pending trial. The police stated that parents had no involvement in, nor knowledge of what had been going on. No date for trial has been set. The residents of Townsend received news over the weekend that the 'cyberterrorist' who had frightened their little community had been 'captured, and placed under arrest'. Indeed, truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #506 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 26 01:41:48 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id BAA22704; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 01:41:48 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 01:41:48 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910260541.BAA22704@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #507 TELECOM Digest Tue, 26 Oct 99 01:41:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 507 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Recording Device Found on Line (wdg) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (Jim Youll) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (Monte Chartier) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (Justa Lurker) Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad (Matt Ackeret) Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad (Paul Wills) Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad (Robert Casey) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (charles@gte.net) Re: Cell Phone Health Hazards? (Stanley Cline) Re: Cell Phone Health Hazards? (Richard D.G. Cox) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Jim Youll) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Bruce Larrabee) Re: Request Help Establishing Local Cellular Service (Fred Goldstein) Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing (Stan Cline) Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing (Blake Droke) Microtronix Test Set Available to Rent or Borrow? (Alan Clark) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: wdg@[204.52.135.1] Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 21:09:22 -0500 Organization: Houston Area League of PC Users, Inc. In article Thomas W. McDonald writes: > An installation technician goes on a service call. Caretaker lets > them in the house. The line is reported as having no dialtone with a > s/c on line. Technician finds a recording device in the crawl space > causing the s/c; he disconnects it and leaves it at it's location. The > subscriber comes home while the line is being repaired. Technician > tells them the line is fixed (not mentioning the device). Technician did good. > Now my questions. Does the tech have the obligation to mention the > device to the police, or to the subscriber? The device was past the > demarc and on the subscriber premises. Tech is a phone tech, not a cop. Tech's only obligation was to fix the line. Anything beyond that is outside the scope of his job description. Tech does not work for the sub, tech works for the telco and should only report his findings back to his supervisor and let the supervisor make the decision where to take it from there. Upon making the report to his supervisor, the tech then forgets about it and goes on with his work. That the "device" was so improperly attached as to cause a line problem suggests to me that it was very likely amateur equipment straight from the local Rat Shack and placed by an amateur snoop. Pro quality 'bugs' are virtually undetectable and are never placed on the CPE side of the demarc, except in the movies. ------------------------------ From: Jim Youll Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 22:36:07 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Thomas W. McDonald wrote: > An installation technician goes on a service call. Caretaker let's > them in the house. The line is reported as having no dialtone with a > s/c on line. Technician finds a recording device in the crawl space > causing the s/c; he disconnects it and leaves it at it's location. The > subscriber comes home while the line is being repaired. Technician > tells them the line is fixed (not mentioning the device). > Now my questions. Does the tech have the obligation to mention the > device to the police, or to the subscriber? The device was past the > demarc and on the subscriber premises. In the ordinary course of my work, when I fix a problem, I tell the owner what was wrong and how I fixed it, making no presumptions about what I've discovered, no matter what it is. What they do with the information is up to them. ------------------------------ From: Monte Chartier Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:23:41 -0500 Organization: Front Range Internet, Inc. (800.935.6527) Wire tapping is against the law requardless of which side of the demarc. The information should be given to the subscriber and the local police. Monte Chartier Special Investigator Omega Investigations montec@frii.com ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Replies to email will be POSTED) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 22:21:55 GMT It was Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:16:38 -0400, and Thomas W. McDonald wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > An installation technician goes on a service call. Caretaker let's > them in the house. The line is reported as having no dialtone with a > s/c on line. Technician finds a recording device in the crawl space > causing the s/c; he disconnects it and leaves it at it's location. The > subscriber comes home while the line is being repaired. Technician > tells them the line is fixed (not mentioning the device). > Now my questions. Does the tech have the obligation to mention the > device to the police, or to the subscriber? The device was past the > demarc and on the subscriber premises. The tech must have been working on the inside wires to find the device. As the subscriber is paying for the service call (via an inside wire maintainance plan or a per call charge) I would say that it is the subscriber's right to know about the device. The tech is the subscriber's agent in repairing the line. I see no reason not to tell the customer what the problem was. I assume that the caretaker and subscriber could not be separated after the device was found, so that the subscriber would know what was wrong with the line without the caretaker's knowledge. That would be the only scenario where I could see delaying the notification. But the subscriber should know. And should have been told at the earliest convienient time. JL ------------------------------ From: mattack@area.com (Matt Ackeret) Subject: Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad Date: 25 Oct 1999 16:58:57 -0700 Organization: Area Systems in Mountain View, CA - http://www.area.com In article , Louis Raphael wrote: > Bonzjivar@aol.com wrote: >> The DTMF key pad configuration is upside down when compared to a >> calculator key pad. I was wondering if you might know the reason for >> this? > Originally, I think that it had something to do with slowing people > down. It's much slower to punch numbers on a phone than on a > calculator, in case you've ever noticed. What I heard is that at the > beginning, people were punching them too fast, hence the unusual > configuration. Like QWERTY, I guess. The QWERTY story is a myth. http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/myths.html (I believe there is also more data on http://www.urbanlegends.com and/or http://www.snopes.com but couldn't find it in a quick search.) mattack@area.com ------------------------------ From: Paul Wills Subject: Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 21:37:22 -0400 Pat, With the Key Pad discussion going on, I finally got around to scanning in a relevant article from the June, 1966 issue of Long Lines, magazine. This is the "official" AT&T version of the story: [The original article included two photographs of a ten button Touch Tone dial, one in Calculator order and one in "normal" order.] Why aren't Touch-Tone telephone buttons arranged the same way as those on most adding machines? "It's a natural question, and one that customers are asking. They feel that office workers would be able to dial faster and make fewer errors with the Touch-Tone phone if its pushbutton layout were identical with that of an adding machine. "But it doesn't add up. "For one thing, the adding machine only has numbers, while the telephone has numbers and letters. If we followed the adding machine pattern (photo above), the telephone alphabet would begin with "PRS" and end with "DEF"-not a popular arrangement. "Telephone users' preference for the now standardized Touch-Tone pushbutton design was borne out in tests conducted by "human factors" specialists at Bell Telephone Laboratories, who considered 16 different button arrangements before putting the set to a field trial in 1959. "Psychological tests demonstrated that people expect to see numbers arranged in a left to right order, and to read letters in alphabetical sequence from left to right, starting from the top down. The Touch-Tone telephone scores on both counts. "And the great reception of Touch-Tone by customers -- most of whom do not work with adding machines -- is a significant endorsement of the ease and speed of Touch-Tone calling." ------------------------------ From: wa2ise@netcom.com (Robert Casey) Subject: Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad Date: 26 Oct 1999 03:08:49 GMT Organization: NETCOM / MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. As a joke, I took a Ma Bell 2500(?) touch tone phone and disassembled the keypad to rearrange the keys in calculator pattern. Also rewired some of the contacts to match. Planted modified phone in the office. Friend comes in to work, uses phone, gets a little confused. "Am I losing my mind?". I would recommend against such pranks; it could cost time dialing 911 if an emergency happens. ------------------------------ From: charles Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 23:34:10 GMT That's a good question, If the recorder would have been on the network side, he should tell his telco security dept, it might have been the DEA, FBI, etc wire tap. I would not have told the customer or the police. Being on the customer side, well, who knows? Maybe the recorder put beeps on the line every 15 sec. and was a legal recorder? It was broken. Probably should at least inform his supervisor of the situation. You see alot of crazy stuff installing/repairing phones. charles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:18:43 -0400 From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Joseph Wineburgh wrote: > One thing I'd like some clarification on is the following, posted by > Stanley Cline in alt.cellular: >> [Analog handhelds: 0.6 watts, xmitting continuously >> IS-136: 0.6 watts, transmitting 1/3 of the time, so effectively 0.2 >> watts >> CDMA: 0.2 watts, xmitting more or less continuously >> GSM: 1.0 watts, transmitting 1/5 of the time, so effectively 0.2 >> watts > Only "bag" and "car" analog phones xmit 3 watts, and those use > external antennas that are nowhere the user's head. > And remember: These are MAXIMUM xmit limits. In most situations the > phones actually xmit even less than these values.] > Even though ABC did not measure digital phones (Nok 6190, Mot 6670 & > 6690), according to Stanley's figures, your exposure is much lower > power wise. A couple of corrections (thanks to Steve Punter and Steven C. den Beste in alt.cellular for the corrections): 1) GSM is actually 1.0W xmitting 1/8 of the time = effectively .125W 2) For CDMA, the above figure assumes that only full-rate packets are transmitted; CDMA phones use smaller packets much of the time so that the effective xmit power is actually less. Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 00:34 BST From: Richard@office.mandarin.com (Richard D G Cox) Organization: Mandarin Technology Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Scot E. Wilcoxon wrote: > ignore the people running the ABC television transmitters, sitting > in a concrete building under a 50,000 watt transmitter for four decades. At well below microwave frequencies! Before I came into telecomms, I used to work in the (UK) broadcast television industry and for some of the time my job included operating a microwave link to connect outside broadcasts. Before we started to work on "links" we were very clearly instructed about the hazards of /microwave/ radiation, and so we treated it with respect. In general the hazard is due to the combination of frequency and proximity. In the particular case of GSM transmissions, the LF interruptions of the carrier create a "dirty" signal that seems to be able to interfere with just about any electronic equipment nearby - presumably as a result of the harmonics caused by the TDM modulation. I dread to think what microwave frequencies those harmonics might include, particularly since they are transmitted from an antenna less than one inch from my skin. So I avoid using my (1800MHz) mobile when a wireline phone is available. Somewhere in between hysteria and indifference, there is the common sense approach which says that, even if someone doesn't understand how something might be happening, it may be prudent for them to at least allow for the possibility of it happening, and to organise their life to minimise risks. How long did it take scientists to decide whether AIDS could even exist? Richard D G Cox PO Box 111, PENARTH, UK; Telephone +44 29 2031 1131; Fax +44 29 2031 1131 To reply by private email, simply take "office" out of the e-mail address ------------------------------ From: Jim Youll Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 22:45:35 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com treb@netnet.net wrote: > I was wondering if anyone has Ameritech ISDN service in Wisconsin, > perhaps even NE area, how they feel they were treated, and does it > live up to all the hype. I currently use a 33.6 analog connection, > but I have ISDN availible. DSL and cable are not going to happen any > time soon because I live out in the country, and cable isn't even > avaible, and the CO is too far for DSL. I had it in Ohio, and my comment is that it works a bit too well ... which betrays a lack of competence on the part of Ameritech and the people "in charge", so to speak, of that company's ISDN offering. I have been trying to get my ISDN line disconnected (due to a move) for six weeks now. They have placed four orders, I have spent an aggregate total of over three hours in phone calls discussing the problem, and as of tonight the line is still active. Even a call to the state's public utilities commission has failed to solve the problem. "Why is he concerned," you say? Because the line is supposed to have an intercept on it that says "the new number is ..." so that people can find me, which they presently cannot, because it's still "active" even though I am not there to take the calls. So, Ameritech ISDN, once they get it working, seems to be okay. But that's really more of a tribute to the people who designed the protocols and built the switches. Ameritech people haven't the least idea how to provision, maintain or debug ISDN circuits. they can't even find the off switch. No, I'm not going to pay them for any of this! ------------------------------ From: larb0@aol.com (Bruce Larrabee) Date: 26 Oct 1999 02:45:14 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service > but I have ISDN availible. DSL and cable are not going to happen any > time soon because I live out in the country, and cable isn't even > available, and the CO is too far for DSL. Maybe an expert can correct me, but aren't loop limits for ISDN about the same as for DSL?? 18 kilofeet? I know that the flavor of DSL affects the loop length and that you can use ISDN loop extenders - but, in general, if you can have ISDN the loop also fits for DSL? BIL ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 20:54:13 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Request Help Establishing Local Cellular Service At 07:49 PM 10/24/1999 -0400, Mickey & Renee Ferguson ask, > I find out that GTE apparently has not given Pac Bell any phone > numbers that provide local phone call access (meaning a local call > from home, for example, to the cell phone's number). I find it very > hard to believe that the FCC (or whoever allocates blocks of numbers) > would allow GTE to prevent Pac Bell from having any numbers that have > local dialing access. Pac Bell is supposed to be able to provide > service to all of Southern California. But the Temecula-Murrieta area > has a population of nearly 100,000. Not exactly a small area. > Is GTE playing fair with Pac Bell? Or am I getting wrong information? > Any help anyone can provide me would be greatly appreciated. Somebody's snowing you, and I don't think it rhymes with "Oh, Gee!" PacBell's PCS service is "Commercial Mobile Radio Service" in the FCC's terms. So's cellular; they're subject to the same landline- interconnection rules. In general, calls to/from CMRS are local to the entire metropolitan region. (I'm not sure offhand if it's BTA or MTA or what, but it's much bigger than a typical landline local calling area.) So a PacBell PCS phone can call Temecula, regardless of its local number. I'm led to believe that the California Public Utilities Commission doesn't like that rule. They adore intra-LATA tolls, a non-cost-based extortion rate that they use to subsidize PacBell's predatorily-priced local wireline service. So as an exception to the norm, they have ordered state telcos to charge tolls to CMRS numbers that are not "local". Contrast that to here in Massachusetts, where I can make a local call to *or from* my cell phone from Cape Cod, Boston, or anyplace else in the area including Rhode Island and most of the Mass. In fact, my cell number is *not* in a rate center local to my home, under most rate plans, but I didn't even know that until I had it for a long time, since rate centers *do not count* for cellular. They're sometimes called "oddball" numbers, local to a large area. So PacBell Cellular needs a Temecula-local number to be local to you. GTE doesn't control those numbers. All phone numbers are assigned by Lockheed-Martin (the NANPA administrator), subject to state rules. Since most S-CA area codes are always "in jeopardy" of running out of prefix codes, they're rationed. PacBell PCS might want a Temecula prefix, and could have one, but they probably have a limited ration of 909 prefix codes. Or maybe they just don't want to bother, because they don't have enough business out there. The fact that GTE is the ILEC means nothing, except that they'd need to interconnect to GTE's switches (not a big deal). Note that CMRS in this case is like a CLEC, who has the right to declare a prefix to be in any rate center it has tandem-office connections to. Mainly it's the CPUC's fault for insisting on tolls to PCS. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:14:09 -0400 From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing Ed Ellers wrote: > Louisville, Kentucky still has seven-digit dialing into Indiana COs in > the local calling area; after the massive fiasco we had over the Chattanooga, TN still has 7d local dialing into northwestern Georgia, and Memphis has 7d local dialing to West Memphis, AR and the Southaven, MS area. (I know that 10d dialing works but isn't required to call Memphis from West Memphis; I don't know about the other way around, or about Mississippi.) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ ------------------------------ From: Blake Droke Subject: Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 20:27:36 -0500 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Reply-To: bdroke@sprintmail.com Ed Ellers wrote: > Louisville, Kentucky still has seven-digit dialing into Indiana COs in > the local calling area; after the massive fiasco we had over the > attempt to ram mandatory 10D down our throats with the proposed 270 > overlay, there has been no talk of mandating 10D, much less 1+10D, for > calls across the river. Memphis, Tennessee has local seven digit dialling to parts of three area codes, 901 in Tennessee, 870 in Arkansas, and 662 in Mississippi. But, the number of prefixes outside 901 are few. Just five in 870, and six or seven in 662. There are another six prefixes in 662 that can be dialled with seven digits if you have EAS service from Bellsouth, which adds Olive Branch, MS and Hernando, MS. The Mississippi suburbs (662) are currently having a population boom, so this may end pretty soon. All of this from landline phones. Wireless phones get a little weird. Some carriers allow seven digits to 870 & 662 numbers that are allowed on landline service. Some carriers require ten digits to call these numbers (but without a long distance charge). And of course, Powertel requires ten digits for ALL calls, including those within 901. Another odd thing about wireless in the Memphis area, there few if any wireless numbers in the Memphis Metro area which are assigned a 662 number. Even if the customer lives, works or both in Mississippi, he or she is routinely assigned a 901 number. There are a handful of wireless numbers assigned in the 870 (Arkansas) code. But there are no wireless only NXXs assigned to the Arkansas section of the Metro area. Most Arkansans get 901 numbers for wireless. ------------------------------ From: Alan Clark Subject: Microtronix Test Set Available to Rent or Borrow? Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:27:54 -0400 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services I need access to a Microtronix test set to rent or borrow for a very short period of time -- does anyone in the Atlanta area have one available? Thanks, Alan ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #507 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 26 02:49:13 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id CAA24594; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 02:49:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 02:49:13 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910260649.CAA24594@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #508 TELECOM Digest Tue, 26 Oct 99 02:49:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 508 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Clearnet, Fido, Telus Mobility in Calgary (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? (Alan Boritz) Re: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception (Matt Bartlett) Re: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception (Rob McMillin) Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? (Louis Raphael) Re: Are US PCS Cellphones "Locked" (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Re: First USA and Wingspan (Barry Lustig) Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Local Cable Competition (Stanley Cline) Re: Local Cable Competition (William Wheeler) Re: Local Cross-NPA-Boundary Seven-Digit Dialing (Neal McLain) Mexico Telecom Termination Agreements (Leo McCulloch) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Ryan Tucker) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Eric Florack) Re: Pay Phone Paying (Stanley Cline) A New 'Follow Me' 800 Service is Available (TELECOM Digest Editor) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 23:56:46 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Clearnet, Fido, Telus Mobility in Calgary I'm looking for anyone in the Calgary area who has any experience with these three carriers to give me their impressions of the service received. My contract with Cantel/AT&T has expired and I wanna jettison this crappy service as soon as possible, but I don't wanna invest in a new phone or a new long-term contract until I've got a better idea of what I'm getting into. :-) Right now, after researching the rate plans and the technology, I'm leaning towards Clearnet's CDMA service, but I'd also like to hear from users of Fido and/or Telus Mobility's digital CDMA service. Since any information you have to offer would be of very limited interest to others, please reply directly to my mailbox at joey@garynumanfan.nu - thanks! (If anyone else is interested in this, lemme know and once I've gathered up the information, I'll write a summary and email you a copy, or post it here if there's sufficient interest). From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU OS/2: Windows done RIGHT! ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: Is it Legal When They Say This? Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:23:35 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , haggerty@coralberry. net (Joe) wrote: > According to my information, from the security department of my local > telco in NC, there is no such law in North Carolina. I have never > heard of a federal statute, so I presume it varies from state-to- > state. > I previously lived in Virginia, where there apparently WAS such a > statute. They were defined as "Annoying, Threatening, Harassing, or > Obscene Phone Calls". Calling with no intent to communicate (e.g., > letting it ring once, or just hanging up when answered) was a > violation. So was I call you and say "Is your refrigerator running?". > Not obscene or threatening, but certainly harassing and annoying. > Since in NC I have been bothered by a "disgruntled" telemarketer that > I requested never again call my number, only to have them call every > few minutes for hours and just hang up. It was at a time I was > expecting an important call and just had to answer. The phone company > security department MANAGER said that if they were not obscene and > made no threat, it violated no NC law, and they would do nothing. You asked the wrong person. Bell Atlantic does exactly the same thing in New York and New Jersey. You need to call them at least once, so get a "name" and keep notes on what gems of stupidity the csrep has to say. Then immediately file a complaint with your state's telecommuni- cations utility regulatory agency (not a "presidential" complaint with the phone company), and request that the phone company be ordered to immediately investigate the source of the harassing phone calls and have them stopped. Don't worry about whether or not the calls are outside your LATA, that's for the phone company to figure out. Once you get a response from your state telecommunications regulatory agency, be prepared to file followup complaints if your phone company doesn't respond within 24 hours, and any time they refuse to do ANYTHING. Unlike direct phone calls to the phone company that are generally ignored, those kind of complaints are tracked by the state agency and can never be ignored. > Here is a common one for us: A telemarketer with defective equipment > calls. The out-of-area number blocked is a fairly good chance it's a > telemarketer. I answer. Nothing but clicks and eventually re-order. > The process repeats at regular intervals - I assume the equipment just > re-queues my phone number. Eventually, their system works and I get a > person. I tell them three things: (1) their equipment is broken and is > harassing "potential" customers, (2) put me on the do-not-call list, > and (3) because they insist on harassment phone calls, I will never > under any circumstances purchase their product/service. I consider > their actions as harassing phone calls, UNFORTUNATLY, this is probably > a case where they ARE attempting to communicate. Nonsense. If there's no fax on your phone lines, there's no attempt to communicate. Once the sender knows that fact, and continues to call looking for a fax, it's an act meant solely to harass. The same technique works for this form of harassment. > The second isn't as common, but when it did happen it was a pain. My > spouse got a business line with answering machine in our house for her > business. Shortly thereafter we started getting calls at 2-3 am from a > FAX. It would repeat every five minutes for about 1/2 hour, then stop. > Until the next night. The phone was in a remote part of the house, but > it still successfully woke us. This was a FAX, and was an attempt to > communicate, so it wasn't considered harassment. I recommended her > next office purchase be a FAX, just to find out who was calling. We > did, and it was coming from England. > The INTENDED destination was a lawyer's office in my town. A very > large law firm. We contacted the law firm and they weren't very > friendly (surprise!). They talked about how we were intercepting their > communications, and the cover letter said we had to destroy it, we > were breaking the law by reading it, etc, etc, etc. Unfortunately, they were correct, to a point. The Communications Act of 1934 is very specific on how record communications are to be handled when you are NOT the intended recipient. However, it doesn't apply in the way they told you. > To make a long story longer ... we spoke with the office manager (not > a lawyer) and made a deal. We would mail them the hard copy (in those > days it was a hardcopy fax) of faxes, and charge them a "service fee" > for the use of our phone and fax equipment. I tried $50/page, but I > think we ended up at about $25/fax. You're a sucker, Joe. It would probably make you sick if you knew what the lawyer was charging his client for the time billed to handle that fax. You probably should have started out with $1,200 per fax, PLUS copy charges (per page), PLUS postage. Alternately, you could have offered $1,250 or $1,300/hour in 1/4 hour increments, plus copy and postage (always keep a copy to prove re-transmission and to use for collection). By settling for a such a token amount, you probably saved two incompetents from being fired (one each at the client and lawyer's office). > We just sent the fax and enclosed > a bill. We made several hundred dollars from them. Then the number of > faxes slacked off, and they stopped paying the bills. I offered to > send them instead to the "rumors and scandals editor" of a local > newspaper and they started talking lawyer stuff again. As you can see, they see you as a sucker and an irritant. And you can't just forward a third-party fax where you want. Send a followup letter (certified) to the lawyer's office, with a copy to the client, and list the faxes for which they've paid and the ones they still owe (the client in the UK probably had no idea they were sending confiden- tial documents to your house unless if you cc'd them previously). Threaten to put their "account" with a collection agency if they don't pay up, along with your assumption that they will agree to allow you to publish the contents of all unpaid transactions. Don't expect them to pay up, but it should end the problem, along with maybe costing the lawyer a client (or someone their job at either place). > I couldn't/can't afford a lawsuit from a law firm, so I dropped it. One alternative is to file a small claims court suit. It should be a slam-dunk, since their initial agreement to pay could be used to prove a unilateral contract (First year business law). More likely than not, the office manager used petty cash to keep you off her back, then the payments stopped when she was fired or moved on (to unemployment, hopefully). The hardest part of that scenario is ignoring the empty threats the lawyer's office might heap on you. > BUT, I've always wondered the legal standing of misdirected FAXes > vs. misdirected U.S. Mail items. I mean, you can't NOT read a fax, > like you can NOT open a sealed piece of mail addressed to my neighbor > but placed in my mailbox. Paper mail is covered by an entirely different body of law than electronic mail; unfortunately I don't have a reference handy on where to look for it. The secrecy of electronic communications is covered by the Communications Act of 1934 (now codified into 47USC), and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (codified under 18USC and adminstered by the USDOJ). Note that service providers (like yourself in the role as "fax forwarder") are specifically exempted, and permitted to record message transmission statistics and other event-related information, provided that you do not disclose the *contents* of the third-party communications to someone else. Note that all of the law regarding secrecy of electronic communi- cations deals explicitly with disclosure in the course of interception, not the mere receipt of an electronic communication. If you are the intended recipient, none of these laws apply and you can disclose or publish to your heart's content with no fear of federal prosecution. State law, however, is a different matter, and some states have more restrictive laws on some forms of electronic communication that originate and terminate within their jurisdictions (which would not apply to international faxes). ------------------------------ From: Matt Bartlett Subject: Re: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 23:40:11 -0400 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Mike, In most peoples opinions the Sony "pop-up" phone (CMD-600) is probably the best phone that Sprint ever had. The newer Sony phones, CMS-1101 Singleband/CMS-1201 dualband are pretty good, having been made by Qualcomm. The Z-Phone (CMZ-100) is a piece of garbage. The worst signal around. You won't be finding any new Sony cellular/PCS phones as they are out of that business. If you are looking for a good phone, go with the TouchPoint or Dual Band Touchpoint, made by Denso Wireless. I've used them both (and every other Sprint PCS phone) and have had the best reception with them than I had with every other phone. And as far as the Nokia's for Sprint (2170 singleband/6185 TriBand/ 5170 Singleband), Yes, they are horrible. Out of all of them, the 5170 is the best and thats not saying much. The 2170 is just plain door-stop material. As a matter of fact, the 2180 they produce for CDMA-800 networks is pretty well trash material as well. Hope this gives you some insight ... Go with the TouchPoint or dbTP. Matt Bartlett ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 21:38:54 -0700 From: Rob McMillin Subject: Re: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception Organization: SBC Internet Services Michael David Jones wrote: > I've been a happy Sprint customer for quite a while now. I have one of > the original Sony "pop-up earpiece" phones, and I've been thinking of > upgrading. The biggest thing I'd like in a new phone is better > reception, as I'm right on the edge of a cell at my house. I've talked > to several people (both local and corporate) at Sprint and gotten all > sorts of answers about which phone they support has the best > reception. One guy told me that my Sony has better reception than any > of the new phones because it was the first one developed and was > over-engineered. Another guy told me yesterday that the brand new > Qualcomm ultra-thin phone is the first phone to have better reception > than the Sony because it has a "second-generation chipset". He also > told me that the Nokias were the worst phones they sell in terms of > reception. Anybody have some real information? I'm mostly interested > in digital-only, not dual band. I have the Qualcomm QCP-1960, which I believe is the "ultra-thin" phone you're referring to. I've used it for about a month now. It's good, though the sound quality isn't as good as the Nokia 2160 TDMA/AMPS phone I've got, or my wife's 5160. However, I understand that's a common problem with CDMA. It works pretty well wherever there's coverage (which is about 90% of AT&T Wireless's coverage in Southern California). Inside buildings, in the car driving, I seem to lose calls at about the same rate as with AT&T (AT&T dies on the 405 in Long Beach near the city gasworks, while Sprint goes away at the 405/110 junction). One other thing about the QCP-1960: I strongly recommend getting the external battery, as I've had problems with the internal battery discharging faster than you might expect. http://www.pricegrabber.com | The best deals, all the time. ------------------------------ From: Louis Raphael Subject: Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? Organization: Societe pour la promotion du petoncle vert Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 05:02:33 GMT L. Winson wrote: > But it seems to me most phones sold today have electronic ringers. > Does the general public have no preference? I hate electronic ringers. Indeed, I've gone as far as to rip out the buzzer on electronic phones that don't have a fully quiet setting, letting the old mechanical phones do the ringing (they can be heard all over the house anyways). I'm sure we're not alone. I remember people complaining about them quite a lot when they first came out - I think that most people just got used to them, the same way that we get used to everything else. > Do traditional ringers cost more to make than electronic ones? Surely, judging by how they're made. Louis ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Are US PCS Cellphones "Locked" Organization: Excelsior Computer Services From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 02:21:19 GMT > Actually, the 'Digital Cell phone $99 no contract' offers from > PrimeCo, Sprint, etc are for locked phones- the price of the phone is > subsidized by the carrier, and they charge a hefty fee to 'unlock' the > phone if you wish to switch the phone to another carrier. Is the unlocking something that can only be done by the carrier? Why can't the user unlock the phone? How exactly is the phone locked? -Joel ------------------------------ From: Barry Lustig Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 22:38:48 -0400 Subject: Re: First USA and Wingspan Reply-To: barry@lustig.com I had one once as well and has the same problems as you. I decided to do some testing. Whenever I would send a payment to them with a return-receipt, the check would be credited against my account in two to three days. If I didn't use a return-receipt, the check could languish as much as ten or twelve days before being credited. When I called them to complain I got a customer service rep who told me that they "didn't have supervisors, so no I couldn't talk with one." I spend 45 minutes arguing with him about the problems with their payment handling systems. He refused to budge. After this, I closed my account with them and vowed never to have anything to do with them or any company associated with them. barry > I have a FUSA CC and have had payments applied late -- some almost two > weeks after I sent the check. Once I can blame on the USPS, three > times -- no. I'm wondering if they're just doing it to collect the > late payment charge since they usually credit it quickly enough when I > call (though it does take a couple of calls). I just wonder about > on-line banking's future if less web-centric customers experience the > same lack of service with Wingspan. ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting Date: 26 Oct 1999 02:44:41 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On 25 Oct 1999 16:54:04 -0400, kahuna@panix.com allegedly said: > Maybe I am just lucky to have, out of the several thousand in the > United States, three banks that each disclose, in writing, their > account reconciliation policy. My medium-sized full-service bank applies credits first. North Shore Technologies Corporation Steven J. Sobol, President & Head Geek 815 Superior Avenue #610 sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Cleveland, Ohio 44114 http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net I'm collecting donations for the Cleveland Indians so they can buy some pitching. If you want to contribute, please contact me. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:18:12 -0400 From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Michael A. Chance wrote: > multiple franchise holders. Can anyone tell me which cities currently > have multiple cable TV franchises (meaning that most households have > more than one cable TV company to choose from) and what the experience > with that type of competition has been? * Many cities in the Northeast (RCN vs. various companies); * Many cities in Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio (Ameritech vs. various companies); * Newnan, GA (city government vs. Charter Communications); * Montgomery, AL and Columbus, GA (Knology vs. TCI/AT&T); * Chamblee, GA (BellSouth vs. Comcast). In virtually all of these cases, channel capacity has increased, new services such as cable modems are made available, customer service has improved, and rates have gone down. There's also the so-called "competition" that goes on at apartment buildings (where apartment owners contract with companies to build "in-house" "cable" systems); in that case, *for the most part* (there are companies such as Optel, Lyncstar, and of course RCN that are nowadays more like regular cable companies) prices go down a bit, but service and channel selection suffer as well. Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ ------------------------------ From: William Wheeler Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 20:09:05 -0700 Organization: Acta Sanctorum Corpus Ordo Vox Hermeius et Templum Reply-To: wuffa@novaroma.org Here in Portland, Oregon it is ATT all the way they got both companies here. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 23:38:19 -0400 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Local Cross-NPA-Boundary Seven-Digit Dialing In TD 19:503, Mark J Cuccia wrote: > As for other metro areas straddling a state/NPA line which > still maintains seven-digit permissive dialing, I think > there are several situations between Missouri and > Illinois, and Iowa and Illinois - crossing the Mississippi > River. But any existing local seven-digit inter-NPA/state > dialing between these adjacent-state situations is to > be phased out in favor of ten-digit local dialing - > particularly in eastern IA / northwestern IL. According to the 1999-2000 U S West directory for Council Bluffs, Iowa, it's still possible to call between Omaha and Council Bluffs by dialing seven digits. What's really strange about the Omaha/Council Bluffs area is City of Carter Lake, IA. It's located on the *west* side of the Mississippi River. Historically, it was located on the east side of the river, in a "meander" -- a big loop where the river meandered north, west, and south. Eventually, the river cut a more direct route, leaving Carter Lake (the city) stranded on the west side. The old river bed is now a lake, also called Carter Lake (see map at http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Pyt=Tmap&addr=&csz=carter+lake+ia&Get%A0Ma p=Get+Map). Legally, the City of Carter Lake is still in Iowa. It has an Iowa zip code (51510) and an Iowa NPA-NXX (712-347). But there's no way you can drive to it without driving through Nebraska. Neal McLain nmclain@compuserve.com ------------------------------ From: Leo McCulloch Subject: Mexico Telecom Termination Agreements Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 23:16:54 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Telemex now has technology enabling it to intercept all illegal (grey) traffic to Mexico. Our client can provide approved contracts for Mexico City (including Puebla) as well as all bands in Mexico at competitive rates, which eliminates threat of interruption of services. Termination to Mexico City (including Puebla) is about $.05 per minute, FOB Mexico City. There is transport available from Houston, at $.015 per minute. The balance of the country is available from USA points in the neighborhood of $.10 - $.12 on-net, $.18 or higher off-net. Better rates may be negotiated for high volume. Some minimums apply but all programs are suitable for voice/data networks and telcom debt card programs. Lic. Leo Arthur McCulloch Jr., McCulloch & Associates, Attorneys at Law, Dallas, Texas, is an international law firm specializing in the creation of strategic joint ventures, investments, financing and commercial transactions, and legislative and regulatory representation in Mexico, exclusively. We have offices in Mexico, D.F.; Acapulco; Reynosa; and Morelia. We may be reached at e-mail: lamcculloch@worldnet.att.net, tel 817-329- 7445, fax 817-421-5439. ------------------------------ From: rtucker+from+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Reply-To: rtucker+replyto+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 04:38:05 GMT Organization: Time Warner Road Runner - Rochester NY In , davidesan@my-deja.com spewed: > I'm resistant in this case, because 99% of all my calls require only > seven digits. I can't see why I have to dial ten digits, just so > Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch&Lomb don't have to change their > paperwork. We are already suffering from the stupidity of the > telephone companies who assign full exchanges to any company wasting > thousands of available telephone numbers, who create strange rate > centers so that more exchanges have to be assigned, who resist any > change at all in any of these policies because it would cost them > money even though they are making money hand over fist. I don't want to have to change my paperwork either ;-) I already list my area code on everything, and would rather not have to deal with the trouble of changing that. Leave existing exchanges alone; just give new lines the new area code. Then again, dialing ten digits isn't a problem for me -- my only telephone is a cellphone, and all of the speed dials are programmed with area code. So perhaps I'm not average ;-) Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ President, TTGCITN Communications Box 92425, Rochester NY 14692-0425 Please keep public threads public -- e-mail responses will be ignored. ------------------------------ From: Eric Florack Reply-To: Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:41:41 -0400 Organization: Free File Farm BBS rtucker+from+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker), a fellow 716'er, intoned, regarding the area code 716 split: > What is it with people being so resistant to overlays? -rt Likely, Ryan, it has to do with stationary, business cards, automated dialers, the need to re-program any on-site phone systems, lost business for mis-routed calls etc, etc etc, all of which have been well-documented here in this group. I note you live in Hilton, (a burb about 25 miles NW out of Midtown).O ut your way, your split will likely cause some problems with dial-up to the eastern burbs, such as Webster, and Perinton, and even to the western burbs such as Scottsville. I agree, that for many, such as yourself, who apparently are not bound to dialup lines, (being tied to Cable TV instead) it's a small matter. To others who make their living on the phone, it tends to be a much larger matter. With my regards. /E Eric Florack eflorack@servtech.com bignasty@billsfan.com http://www.servtech.com/~eflorack/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:19:09 -0400 From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Pay Phone Paying John R. Levine wrote: > How many other places still have postpay? It's nice. I know of two off the top of my head: a) Waverly Hall, GA (Waverly Hall Telephone Co.) b) Radcliff, KY (including Fort Knox) (Brandenburg Telephone Co.) Both areas have modern digital switches, SS7, equal access, etc. I know of some other independents, including Ringgold [GA] Telephone Co. near Chattanooga, that were postpay until a year or two ago. Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: A New 'Follow Me' 800 Service is Available Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 02:18:00 EDT For a number of years, I've talked off and on about MyLine and how useful it has been for me. I still continue to use the service even though it recently experienced a change in management. It still is as reliable as it always was. But I want to mention today a similar service offered by MCI-Worldcom which some of you may find more attractive. http://www.findmefollowme.com This is intended as a direct replacement for AT&T's old 'Follow Me' which was discontinued, but with a few more bells and whistles than AT&T was offering. If any of you are seeking to replace your AT&T service, you may want to vist this site. One user reports having used it now for several months, and finds that having voice mail and fax mail follow him to his e-mail has been an invaluable aid in making his life easier. One issue for many of you, as I recall, was that AT&T did not let people keep their toll free numbers when the service was killed. The MCI Worldcom product manager for Contact says that Contact customers *can* keep their toll free 800/888/877 number if they leave the service. For any larger corporate customers who are interested in trialing the service, demo accounts are available. After you have examined http://www.findmefollowme.com, perhaps you would share your thoughts here on the strengths and limitations of the AT&T service vrs. this offering from MCI-Worldcom. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #508 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 26 14:06:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA14557; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:06:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:06:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910261806.OAA14557@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #509 TELECOM Digest Tue, 26 Oct 99 14:06:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 509 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New DNS Entry (Alan Pugh) Book Review: "Dictionary of Networking", Peter Dyson (Rob Slade) Yet *MORE* Shenanigans From "PNG Telecommunications" (Linc Madison) A New World Order - 9th Circuit Rulings (Brian Webb) Latency Standards? (Alex Vrenios) Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan (Mike Fox) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Mark Brukhartz) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (PhoneDude) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 11:58:05 -0500 From: Alan Pugh Subject: New DNS Entry A press release concerning a new entry into the DNS field. TUCOWS Launches Open Shared Registry System for Domain Name Registration TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 26, 1999-- Move Offers ISP's Wholesale Registrations For $13 Per Year TUCOWS (www.tucows.com) has revolutionized the wholesale domain name registration market with today's launch of OpenSRS (Open Shared Registration System at www.opensrs.com). Internet Service Providers, web hosting firms and value added resellers can use OpenSRS to register domain names for their customers for just $13 per registration a year with a further discount for TUCOWS affiliates. OpenSRS is a combined software and service offering that enables .com, .net and .org domain name registrations at a fraction of the cost currently charged by the incumbent, Network Solutions Inc. and all new competitors. TUCOWS is once again pleased to play a significant part in the evolving world of Internet Commerce and software services development," said Ross W. Rader, Director of eCommerce for TUCOWS.com. "Offering ISPs a means to provide an inexpensive domain name registration service to their end users is something that no other registrar has been willing to do. Not only have we addressed this need, but we have given OpenSRS participants the opportunity to leverage standards-based, open source tools to gain access to pricing previously reserved for a select few, high-volume registration firms." The OpenSRS client software has been released under the GNU Public License which is the most popular open source license in use today. This liberal licensing arrangement allows companies to customize and modify the client software to ensure that it works within their environment, an opportunity not available with typical "closed-source" software. "OpenSRS.com allows us to offer a quality service at a much more competitive price," said Paul Engels, Vice President of Marketing, I.D. Internet Direct Ltd. "As Canada's largest independent ISP, we register thousands of domain names. Being able to save our customers more than 50 percent on their annual registration costs is a win-win solution for everyone." "Onvia is excited to be working with TUCOWS. Based upon our initial meetings, we are looking forward to building a great partnership. Domain registration is a very important service offering to our small biz members," says Jeff Chemeres, Director of Business Development, Services at Onvia.com. OpenSRS is broken down into two major components operated by TUCOWS: an open-source client front end and a server back-end. The net result of the process of transactions between OpenSRS and NSI is that a customer can now register a domain name with their local Internet Service Provider or web-hosting company in real-time, with prices that are finally competitive. In order to provide quality customer support service, TUCOWS has established a 24 hour customer service center for OpenSRS.com, enhanced with email, pager and a emergency toll-free number. About TUCOWS.com Inc. With offices in New York City; Flint, Michigan; and Toronto, Canada, TUCOWS.com (The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software) is one of the largest Internet distribution sites featuring Windows(R), Macintosh(R), Linux(R) and PDA software. TUCOWS.com was founded in 1994 as a public service to new Internet users. Today the privately owned and operated company offers an array of electronic downloaded software programs that can be accessed at over 600 affiliates in over 75 countries world-wide. The site serves more than 80 million pages per month making TUCOWS.com one of the busiest sites on the Internet. CONTACT: TUCOWS.com Charmaine D'Silva, cell: 416/824-8374 charm@tucows.com Alan Pugh Vnet 772-3077 Haiku error message: Login incorrect. Only perfect spellers may enter this system. ------------------------------ From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 08:06:02 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "Dictionary of Networking", Peter Dyson Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKNPDCNT.RVW 990911 "Dictionary of Networking", Peter Dyson, 1999, 0-7821-2461-5, U$29.99/C$45.00/UK#19.99 %A Peter Dyson %C 1151 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda, CA 94501 %D 1999 %G 0-7821-2461-5 %I Sybex Computer Books %O U$29.99/C$45.00/UK#19.99 800-227-2346 Fax: 510-523-2373 %P 448 p. + CD-ROM %T "Dictionary of Networking, Third Edition" The title of the first edition was "Novell's Dictionary of Networking," and it still shows in the significant number of entries that are specific commands for Novell Netware. A large number of entries still relate to personal computers, as opposed to networking or communications. The Internet now gets a few more terms included, but those are not always reliable. The dropping of any modifiers and the claim to the complete field of networking is not supported by the material included in this book. While the entries are generally more extensive, the number of listings is not much greater than for the old glossaries that got used as promotional giveaways by various networking companies. In most cases, the explanations and definitions are quite sound, although the professional will note many omissions or not-quite-right errors. ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) has been corrected since the second edition, but a number of errors still remain. It is true that, if you are using four bit packets, Hamming code must attach three redundant bits to each. However, it is much more effective in a larger scale, requiring, for example, only eight redundant bits for a 56 bit data packet. Cable testers use the nominal velocity of propagation to test the length of an intact cable segment, but, more importantly, a reading less than the cable length indicates an internal break in the cable being tested. Most people will only have seen a bang path in an older email address, but it is a machine, rather than email, address and also carries routing information. In terms of organization, symbols are spelled out. Numbers are written in digits, but listed in order as if they were spelled out. Yes, it has an entry for virus. No, it's not any good. Microsoft terminology joins Novell jargon in this latest edition. In fact, a very significant proportion of the material in the glossary relates to companies, organizations, or proprietary programs. While this might seem, at first thought, reasonably useful, it turns out to be rather annoying in practice. The number of proprietary terms possible are enormous, and, unless you are actually using that technology, irrelevant to anything else. The end result tends to feel like a bunch of unboxed ads slipped in between the material you are looking for. Unfortunately, this work simply does not have any distinctive that would recommend it above what is already available. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999 BKNPDCNT.RVW 990911 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century. - Dan Quayle, 9/15/88 http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 07:59:02 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Yet *MORE* Shenanigans From "PNG Telecommunications" Those of you who have been here a while may remember the **NIGHTMARES** I had dealing with my 800 service through a company called PNG Telecommunications (now doing business as Power Net Global, but I prefer the expansion of PNG = Persona Non Grata). I signed up for an 800 number through them. They assigned it to me, but even after I started getting billed for it, they never told me what my 800 number was, which made it a little difficult for me to use it or give it out. Several calls to their voicemail-deathtrap system (when it would even accept a message) were completely ignored. I finally managed to get through to a live being (although I'm not sure whether "human" applies), and found out my number. Everything was fine for a while until one day I called my own 800 number and spoke to a housewife in North Dakota. I called customer service, and they fixed it, but then a couple of weeks later I called my own 800 number and spoke to a housewife somewhere in Pennsylvania. I gave them my daytime number to contact me, only to find that they re-routed my 800 number to ring on my office phone. I wasn't pleased about giving my employer (a very large company) a free line to my desk. They also repeatedly screwed up the billing. When I complained in this newsgroup about the pathetic excuse for a business I was dealing with, someone purporting to be the president of the company replied by e-mail. Rather than offering help in getting the matter straightened out, he offered the opinion that I was lying about all of this for some nefarious purpose. Shortly after that, I RespOrg'ed the number to a new carrier, which has had very few problems, other than a delay in activating service from Canada. I've been happy with the new carrier for about 2.5 years now. Lo and behold, what do I find in Monday's mail, but a bill from PNG for the $3.00 monthly minimum on my account! Yes, an account I closed in the spring of 1997. I was actually able to ring through to a customer service clerk, who said I should disregard the bill and that it would not come back to bite my 800 number, but I'll be watching over the next couple of months. I could switch to a completely new number that has never been polluted by PNG (I rather like 1-877-546-2623, but please don't call it, since it may or may not already be assigned), but I like having an 800 number that can actually be dialed from payphones and motels, even if the rest of the number has no mnemonic value. Whatever you do, if you see a company called PNG (or PowerNet Global) of West Chester, Ohio, RUN THE OTHER WAY!! Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom(at)LincMad(dot)com * North American Telephone Area Codes & Splits >> NOTE: e-mail replies to the address in this sig will be read first! << ------------------------------ From: webbb@excite.com (Brian Webb) Subject: A New World Order - 9th Circuit Rulings Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 02:10:06 PDT The Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just handed down a ruling in the case *LOCKHEED v. NETWORK*, or more completely *Lockheed Martin Corp. v. Network Solutions, Inc.". The 9th Circuit upheld the District Court's judgment. For those insufficiently acquainted with our federal republic, the 9th Circuit covers California, Oregon, Washington, and several other western states. The background of the case goes like this ... Lockheed owns and has operated "The Skunk Works," an aircraft design and construction laboratory. "Skunk Works" is a registered and incontestable service mark. Third parties, not involved in this litigation, had registered domain-name combinations with NSI which are variations on the phrase "skunk works." Lockheed sent two letters bringing the and registrations to NSI's attention. Lockheed's letters informed NSI of its belief that the third-party registrants were infringing or diluting Lockheed's service mark. Lockheed requested that NSI cancel the allegedly offending registrations. Lockheed also requested that NSI cease registering domain-name combinations that included "Skunk Works" or variations on the phrase and report to Lockheed all such domain-name combinations contained in its registry. NSI took no action on Lockheed's requests, informing Lockheed by letter that Lockheed had failed to comply with the terms of NSI's dispute resolution policy. Due to Lockheed's dealings with the third-party registrants, and ceased being used, but NSI did not immediately cancel the registrations and later permitted a new registrant to register . After procedural motions were made, the court issued its summary judgment. The court said that contributory infringement occurs when the defendant either intentionally induces a third party to infringe the plaintiff's mark or supplies a product to a third party with actual or constructive knowledge that the product is being used to infringe the service mark. The court analogized that NSI's role differs little from that of the United States Postal Service: when an Internet user enters a domain name combination, NSI translates the domain-name combination to the registrant's IP Address and routes the information or command to the corresponding computer. Although NSI's routing service is only available to a registrant who has paid NSI's fee, NSI does not supply the domain-name combination any more than the Postal Service supplies a street address by performing the routine service of routing mail. Where domain names are used to infringe, the infringement does not result from NSI's publication of the domain name list, but from the registrant's use of the name on a web site or other Internet form of communication in connection with goods or services ... NSI's involvement with the use of domain names does not extend beyond registration. http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/web/newopinions.nsf/f606ac175e010d64882566eb0065 8118/4635319b8bdf28ae882568150068b21d?OpenDocument Related cases are *AVERY DENISON v. SUMPTON*, 08/23/1999, 98-55810: http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/web/newopinions.nsf/f606ac175e010d64882566eb0065 8118/04a35134bff267ca882567d60065ee63?OpenDocument and *BROOKFIELD v. WEST COAST*, 04/22/1999, 98-56918: http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/web/newopinions.nsf/f606ac175e010d64882566eb0065 8118/93e74a376e0018c38825675c00110e49?OpenDocument and *PANAVISION INTL v. TOEPPEN*, 04/17/98, 97-55467: http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/web/newopinions.nsf/f606ac175e010d64882566eb0065 8118/6a05133ffcbb2761882566fc00818b3c?OpenDocument and *CYBERSELL INC v. CYBERSELL INC", 12/02/1997, 96-17087: http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/web/newopinions.nsf/f606ac175e010d64882566eb0065 8118/885aaf26807dc4e4882566fb000215a1?OpenDocument Bryan "I don't even pretend to be a paralegal" Webb ------------------------------ From: vrenios@enuxsa.eas.asu.edu (Alex Vrenios) Subject: Latency Standards? Date: 26 Oct 1999 15:38:12 GMT Organization: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ I am looking for a document that describes latency standards. How much delay in audio is acceptable? At what point do users complain that they cannot communicate with another party? Etc. I am interested in both the cellular and landline cases and I am most interested in a standard that was found through some kind of experimentation. Also, did the cellular industry ever claim that they would "only approach" the latency standards of the landline counterparts? Did they say why and quote reasons? I am designing a multihop wireless ad hoc network scheme and would like to base my latency standards on some solid foundation from earlier works. References appreciated -- thanks. Alex Vrenios Ph.D. Student Computer Science Dept. Vrenios@enuxsa.eas.asu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 10:36:48 -0400 From: Mike Fox Subject: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan AT&T's One-Rate Online plan promises ten cents a minute with no monthly fee (except for the Gore taxes of course), and it specifically includes in-state North Carolina Long Distance at 10 cents a minute. At least on the day of this writing, you can see that at http://www.catalog.att.com/cmd/prodfaqs/index.html#eoffer4: > AT&T One Rate Online offers AT&T Long Distance Service for ten cents a > minute on direct-dialed state-to-state long distance calls made from > home. This rate applies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with no > monthly fee. > AT&T One Rate Online offers competitive in-state rates ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > for long distance calls from home within state at just 10¢ in all states ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > except: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, North ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > Wyoming (pending tariff effectiveness). AT&T One Rate Online also ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > offers rates for local toll calls from home. For all other types of calls, > standard rates and charges apply. These rates vary by type of call > and by state. However, I just got my first bill and guess what, I was charged 12 cents a minute for in-state NC long distance. When I called to complain, I was politely told that the rate for NC had gone up to 12 cents in mid-September. But the web-page excerpt I have included above is from October 26! And yes, I did sign up for the plan in late September, which means that at the time I signed up, AT&T's own web page was promising a rate they don't deliver! I would never have bothered to sign up for AT&T if their rates had been honestly posted, after all I can get 10 cents a minute in-state with 10-10-432 and no monthly fees. I only signed up with them for the convenience of getting the same rate and not dialing extra numbers. They did credit me the difference for calls already made, but informed me that henceforth, I would be paying 12 cents a minute for in-state long distance, and they would "try" to get the web page updated soon. So, if you're in NC (or any other state where AT&T may be pulling this stunt) and on the one-rate online plan, check your bill carefully and demand your credit for any mis-billed in-state calls. They will continue to give this credit (but only to those who ask for it) up until the web page is updated. Then you're stuck with a plan worse than the one you signed up for. Also, I am now looking for a new LD carrier. I require: 1. No minimum usage requirement; 2. No monthly fees, except for Gore taxes which must be reasonable (i.e., in-line with the industry standard charges); 3. ten cents a minute or less in-state NC long distance. Since over 90% of my LD calling is in-state NC, state-to-state rates are a secondary consideration. Later, Mike "We're not against ideas. We're against people spreading them." (General Augusto Pinochet of Chile) ------------------------------ From: Mark.Brukhartz@wdr.com Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 04:41:54 -0500 Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service I've used Ameritech ISDN in suburban Chicago for four or five years. It is reliable and works well. I first had business service, billed directly to my company, then converted to residential service. The residential service provides untimed calls within the 8 mile Band A local area. The recent installation of a residential ISDN line was trouble-free. The provisioning was almost perfect from day one. An adjustment was needed to permit call forwarding via 72# dialing. By default, their NI-1 configuration forwards calls only through a D channel command which is not generated by my 3Com ImpactIQ terminal adaptor. The original business ISDN installation, years ago, was a nightmare. It took two months to install, then failed six months later when an installer gave my switch port to another customer. My installer had failed to close the installation ticket! The Ameritech Chicago area installers have since learned to handle ISDN well. Mark ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: 26 Oct 1999 15:16:06 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On 26 Oct 1999 02:45:14 GMT, larb0@aol.com allegedly said: >> but I have ISDN availible. DSL and cable are not going to happen any >> time soon because I live out in the country, and cable isn't even >> available, and the CO is too far for DSL. > Maybe an expert can correct me, but aren't loop limits for ISDN about > the same as for DSL?? 18 kilofeet? I know that the flavor of DSL > affects the loop length and that you can use ISDN loop extenders - > but, in general, if you can have ISDN the loop also fits for DSL? From what I understand, DSL is less, and it can't use repeaters. (DSL is about two miles, ISDN is 18000 feet, and ISDN can use repeaters.) North Shore Technologies Corporation Steven J. Sobol, President & Head Geek 815 Superior Avenue #610 sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Cleveland, Ohio 44114 http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net I'm collecting donations for the Cleveland Indians so they can buy some pitching. If you want to contribute, please contact me. ------------------------------ From: PhoneDude Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:13:23 -0400 Organization: GTE Laboratories Incorporated Bruce Larrabee wrote in message news:telecom19.507. 12@telecom-digest.org: >> but I have ISDN availible. DSL and cable are not going to happen any >> time soon because I live out in the country, and cable isn't even >> available, and the CO is too far for DSL. > Maybe an expert can correct me, but aren't loop limits for ISDN about > the same as for DSL?? 18 kilofeet? I know that the flavor of DSL > affects the loop length and that you can use ISDN loop extenders - > but, in general, if you can have ISDN the loop also fits for DSL? Well, yes and no. Loop limitations in distance are about the same from 14 to 18 kfeet, but ISDN can be repeatered and DSL cannot. In addition, DSL has other limiting factors that do not affect ISDN such as having T1s in the same cable binder or other high frequency services in the same cable. Add to this the fact that many ISDN capable central offices have not yet been equipped with DSL and the difference becomes quite large. PD ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #509 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 26 16:36:06 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id QAA23362; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 16:36:06 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 16:36:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910262036.QAA23362@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #510 TELECOM Digest Tue, 26 Oct 99 16:36:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 510 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Local Cable Competition (Syd Barrett) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (Adam Frix) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (Alan Boritz) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Bob Goudreau) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Dana Paxson) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Ryan Tucker) Re: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception (Ed Ellers) Re: First USA On-Line Debiting (Bruce Wilson) Re: First USA and Wingspan (Curious Angel) Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad (David Charles) Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers (Ed Ellers) Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers (Bill Ranck) Multi-Location Networked Voice Mail? (Mike Schumann) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply-To: Syd Barrett From: Syd Barrett Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 08:31:40 GMT Organization: @Home Network Adam Frix wrote in message news: telecom19.500.10@telecom-digest.org: > In article , Michael A. Chance > wrote: > Don't listen to AT&T/TCI. They're bluffing. They won't forgo their > $100 million upgrade; if anything, they'll accelerate the program in > the interests of remaining competitive should there be a competing > provider behind every house. Exactly: rather than having them forego their upgrade, competition would prod them to accelerate their schedule, if only to retain customers thinking of switching. By remaining the sole franchisee, they can take their sweet time performing infrastructure upgrades, as MediaOne has done in Henrico/Richmond, VA. M.O. promised broadband Internet and digital cable four years ago (back in '95) and are still saying, 'Sign up on our waiting-list and we'll let you know when it comes to your neighbourhood! It's coming soon!' Same party-line they've been spouting the entire four years. Luckily, I'm somewhat pleased with Comcast in Chesterfield (a suburb of Richmond), but I wonder how things will be when AT&T takes over the local Comcast franchise as part of their MediaOne buyout (they already have signed a memorandum of understanding with Comcast). I just hope they don't mess up a good thing. JonesMB wrote in message news:telecom19.504.5@ telecom-digest.org: > now available via cable. Seeing as I watch less than 10% of the > available channels it would be nice if we could pick only what we > watch and pay less. Maybe once VOD (video-on-demand) becomes widespread this statement will switch from being subjunctive to indicative. Out of the 181 digital cable channels I receive, I watch/listen to ('listen to' since 20 or so are audio-only music channels) maybe 5-6 of them with any regularity. That comes out to ~3%. There should be two types of fee: 1) a flat 'package' rate for those channels I view regularly, and 2) a pay-per-view rate for the ones I watch occasionally. Obviously, the channels I never watch such as Great Outdoors and Home Shopping Club shouldn't be included in my package. But once digital cable becomes more prevalent, such tailored packages will make a nice competitive strategy. All it takes is one innovative cable provider. Another gripe I have with cable currently is the lack of first-run movies. Movies tend to make it to video first (within three months of theatre showing), and *then* onto the various movie channels (HBO, Showtime, Skinemax) three months beyond *that*. Therefore, it's up to six months before I can view a movie on TV. I'm lazy. I'd rather have a recent movie available as pay-per-view rather than having to drive to Blockbuster. And since electrons and photons are cheaper to transport than atoms and molecules, these PPV movies should be *less* expensive than the equivalent check-out at a video-store. There's less overhead: no inventory, no FedEx fees, handling by a breathing minimum-wage employee, et cetera. So the media conglomerates should pass on the savings to the consumer. Right now, most PPV stuff consists of Bobbi Does Billy-type fare, at least in my market. I currently don't have any access to recent-release non-porn films. ------------------------------ From: adamf.nospam@columbus.rr.com (Adam Frix) Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:04:25 -0400 Organization: Road Runner Columbus In article , Monte Chartier wrote: > Wire tapping is against the law requardless of which side of the demarc. Not here it's not. As long as one person in the conversation is aware of the recording, everything's OK. ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 07:50:28 -0400 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , Thomas W. McDonald wrote: > An installation technician goes on a service call. Caretaker let's > them in the house. The line is reported as having no dialtone with a > s/c on line. Technician finds a recording device in the crawl space > causing the s/c; he disconnects it and leaves it at it's location. The > subscriber comes home while the line is being repaired. Technician > tells them the line is fixed (not mentioning the device). > Now my questions. Does the tech have the obligation to mention the > device to the police, or to the subscriber? The device was past the > demarc and on the subscriber premises. The tech should have told the subscriber exactly where the problem was, and told him that he unplugged the recording device. Strictly speaking, the technician shouldn't have touched ANYTHING on the subscriber side of the demarc. Proper protocol should have been to verify it good at the demarc and tell the subscriber that his CPE recording device should be unplugged or fixed, leaving the equipment as he found it. Beyond that, it's none of anyone else's business what is plugged into the phone line unless if it's causing harm to technicians or the network. How the subscriber uses the recording device is also none of the technician's business. The technician should concentrate on doing his job (which he apparently didn't do very well in this case) and leave police work to cops. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 11:47:09 EDT From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Eric Florack wrote: >> What is it with people being so resistant to overlays? -rt > Likely, Ryan, it has to do with stationary [sic], business cards, > automated dialers, the need to re-program any on-site phone systems, > lost business for mis-routed calls etc, etc etc, all of which have > been well-documented here in this group. If you are arguing *against* an overlay, the items you have enumerated above don't seem to add overwhelming support to your argument. Let's consider them one at a time: 1) Stationery: no change required for an overlay; new stationery must be ordered if your area code changes due to a split. Advantage: Overlay. 2) Business cards: same as above. Advantage: Overlay. 3) Automated dialers: depends on how many of the speed-dial settings are currently for 7D numbers, but let's be generous and assume that most are (though in my actual case, only three of the combined 15 speed-dial buttons on my home and office phones are for 7D numbers). Advantage: Split. 4) PBX reprogramming: similar to the automated dialer issue. Advantage: Split. 5) Lost business due to misrouted calls: under an overlay, your business retains its current number. Local callers who mistakenly try dialing it with only 7 digits get the standard error message telling them to try again with the area code, and 99.99% of them successfully do so. (The remaining 0.01% are thus too obtuse to dial *any* local number under the new 10D regime, and will probably be dead of starvation within a few weeks.) Long distance callers are completely unaffected by the overlay. Under a split, however, your old number will become unassigned (and perhaps eventually reassigned to someone else), and some non-local callers who have your old brochures or stationery and who haven't heard about your new area code will not be able to reach you. Advantage: Overlay. So, on balance, it appears that you have provided more arguments *in favor* of an overlay than against one. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:38:37 -0400 From: Dana Paxson Reply-To: dwpaxson@acm.org Organization: Dana Paxson Studio Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split I'd like to weigh in on this one. I worked at Nortel here in Rochester for twenty years as a systems engineer, planning and supporting the Directory Assistance systems Nortel builds and installs. Area code splits are a headache no matter which way one goes. Somebody always gets stuck with the ten-digit curse. Ryan Tucker is lucky to have all the right things in place: ten-digit numbers already programmed. That makes things easy, but few others are in this position. Eric Florack's point about all the reprinting and redirecting necessary when numbers change is valid beyond question. So what to do? Geographic splits guarantee that one area of turf gets all the work in the split. Overlays manage to spread the pain equally, but probably cause more than the total pain caused by the geographic split, mostly due to the fixed labor overhead associated with reprinting and reprogramming subsets of numbers everywhere. But there may be a better way. Much of the pressure on the number space comes from identifiable sources: modem lines, fax lines, wireless, and second or third lines. There are also groups of numbers reserved but not fully used. Why not think of phone numbers in terms of their sources, especially in growing areas of expansion? I would prefer to see the new area code(s) go to those sources of new numbers that are rapidly growing, and leave the stable number base alone. Wireless is the first candidate. Second would be all those new numbers not to be published. Third would be all new corporate number exchanges, where the company is already undergoing a complete overhaul of all its numbers anyway. The point is that the new area codes should follow the 'churn' in the number base, not interfere with the stable numbers. Hell, new numbers haven't been printed or programmed on anything yet. Why shouldn't they make the best candidates for new area codes? Or is this too simple? I'm sure that some readers can find fault with this proposal. I haven't checked the statistics on it all, but years of work on DA databases have told me that the cost of leaving well enough alone (or bad enough alone, as the case may be) is a lot less than making it worse. Please, let's not overlay these area codes. Before anybody leaps ahead, applying some more brains would help minimize the impacts. Of course, when Internet telephony really hits, and cable telephony wakes up, the game will change completely, so most of this will be moot. Can you say 'dial by URL'? Thought so. Dana W. Paxson dwpaxson@acm.org 716 224-9356 Reality boggles everything. That's why we've got denial. ------------------------------ From: rtucker+from+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Reply-To: rtucker+replyto+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:44:09 GMT Organization: Time Warner Road Runner - Rochester NY In , Eric Florack spewed: >> What is it with people being so resistant to overlays? -rt > Likely, Ryan, it has to do with stationary, business cards, automated > dialers, the need to re-program any on-site phone systems, lost > business for mis-routed calls etc, etc etc, all of which have been > well-documented here in this group. I note you live in Hilton, (a > burb about 25 miles NW out of Midtown).O ut your way, your split will > likely cause some problems with dial-up to the eastern burbs, such as > Webster, and Perinton, and even to the western burbs such as Scottsville. I'd think people would be more resistant to a split than an overlay if it was about stationary, busienss cards, etc. And actually, I live in the city ... my mailing address is a PO Box at the main post office and my main phone line is a cellphone, so you'd never know it *grin* > I agree, that for many, such as yourself, who apparently are not bound > to dialup lines, (being tied to Cable TV instead) it's a small > matter. To others who make their living on the phone, it tends to be a > much larger matter. My employer is one of the local ISP's, so yes, I really don't want anything to happen because the tech support people will get cranky *grin* ... however, if a split happens, face it: Rochester is getting a new area code. And that'll cause just as much trouble. -rt Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ President, TTGCITN Communications Box 92425, Rochester NY 14692-0425 Please keep public threads public -- e-mail responses will be ignored. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 03:45:05 -0400 Matt Bartlett wrote: > In most peoples opinions the Sony "pop-up" phone (CMD-600) is > probably the best phone that Sprint ever had. The newer Sony phones, > CMS-1101 Singleband/CMS-1201 dualband are pretty good, having been > made by Qualcomm." Sprint PCS' Web site (http://www.sprintpcs.com/store/equipment.asp) shows both the CMD-600 and CMS-1101SPR as available (refurbished units only) for $39.99, as are the Nokia 2170, Samsung SCH-1000 and Samsung SCH-1900. (The CMD-600 had a Qualcomm logo under the pop-up earphone, and I've seen it sold under the Qualcomm name rather than Sony for other CDMA carriers, so it's possible that Qualcomm made that one too.) ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 26 Oct 1999 11:47:01 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: First USA On-Line Debiting > No bank will tell you this, but credits are always applied AFTER any > debits from your account. There could be a payroll transfer of several > thousand dollars sitting in your account but they'll process a debit that > exceeds your balance, pay it and then charge you the difference plus a > service fee in the range of $15 to $25 dollars. > The cute part about it is that they don't publish this information. All one has to do is look at a statement to see what got applied in what order on a day on which there were both credits and debits; and I've yet to encounter a bank that applies debits before credits. They've all applied credits first; and my bank will post a credit immediately, rather than wait until the end of the day's closing, on request. Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ From: byte.this@usa.net (Curious Angel) Subject: Re: First USA and Wingspan Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:43:16 GMT Organization: Heaven Reply-To: Curious Angel On Mon, 25 Oct 1999 11:16:39 -0400, Paul Hrisko wrote: > On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 00:07:07 GMT, tinikins@my-deja.com wrote: >> First USA is in SERIOUS financial trouble they cannot even afford the >> payroll at the site in Maryland. Also read http://cnnfn.com/1999/10/19/news/wires/bankone_wg/index.htm This is perhaps the most predatory, evil bank on the Planet Earth. But don't worry. Thanks to the Internet, they are destined to be eaten alive by thousands of small lawsuits and within five years SUED INTO OBLIVION. If you're in, GET OUT. Don't do it by phone, write it: Ship it CERTIFIED and copy the OCC on your notice of termination with them. That paper trail is the only thing between your assets and a pack of THIEVING, MALEVOLENT men who are about to become desperate. angel ------------------------------ From: d_c_h@my-deja.com (David Charles) Subject: Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:09:09 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , dov@oz.net wrote: > Actually, the DTMF keypads in Denmark originally had the setup: > 789 > 456 > 123 > 0*# > Many of the Danish public telephones that use coins have the keypads > set up this way. The newer card phones have the usual pattern of I have not seen any unusual keypad arangements in Denmark, but have in Norway. It is possible that the explanation is similar. In Scandanavia the mapping between the number of pulses and the digit in loop disconnect dialling varied from place to place. In Sweden 0 is one pulse, 1 is two pulses, 9 is ten pulses etc. In Norway there were at least two different systems used. I do not know what was used in Denmark. The telephones with unusual keypads I saw in Norway were using loop disconnect dialling. The mapping between the position of they key and the number of pulses produced was normal (i.e top left key gave one pulse) but the keys were labelled so that they operated according to the local convention. (Similarly the numbering on the dial on rotary phones differed from normal). Presumably it is cheaper to produce a phone with different labels on the keypad than with a special board layout to accomodate the local system. I think the layout was as below, but cannot be sure: 987 654 321 .0. I cannot think of any plausible loop disconnect dialling system that would fit the layout mentioned by Joseph Singer. It is however possible that this layout can be used with some switchable DTMF/LD chip to provide one or more local LD arrangement and (standard) DTMF more easily than the standard keypad arrangement. All new equipment in Denmark is required to be DTMF only, therefore these reasons for not using the standard arrangement would no longer apply. David Charles ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 03:32:48 -0400 Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > A picture of an early 1960's touchtone phone can be seen on the web, at > Lucent/Bell-Labs' website: http://www.lucent.com/hall/1964.html I think that was the 1959 prototype (which would explain the MAin 0-2368 reference), after the final key layout was determined but before the decision was made to use gray keys with white type. ------------------------------ From: Bill Ranck Subject: Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers Date: 26 Oct 1999 14:01:46 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > A picture of an early 1960's touchtone phone can be seen on the web, > at Lucent/Bell-Labs' website: http://www.lucent.com/hall/1964.html > It mentions 1964, but I think that "public" touchtone was trialed > in 1963 or even 1962. Note in the Lucent picture that the number-card > states: > MAin 0-2368 > The MAin-0 "exchange" was frequently used as a 'generic' exchange in > the 1950's, since there were VERY few places that had c.o.codes of the > 'NN0' format; in the early 1960's, KL5 (KLondike-5) was a frequent > "generic" exchange, since it translated to '555'. Bell had a big exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. I was ten years old. My mother took me to the Fair. I remember the TouchTone telephone hands-on demonstration. I think they "officially" introduced TouchTone at the World's Fair and that is why the literature says 1964. They had a regular dial phone and a TouchTone set up next to each other with some sort of timing arrangement so you could try dialing by pushbutton and by dial to compare. They suggested dialing 555-5555 on both, but I used my home phone number because I could dial that pretty fast. Even with having to find the numbers on the new phone the TouchTone was faster by a lot. Of course, Bell also introduced video phones at the '64 World's Fair. I think they predicted it to be widespread by the 1970's. Another historically interesting introduction at the 1964 Fair was the Ford Mustang. For some reason, I don't remember that at all even though I learned to drive a few years later in a '67 mustang. I don't remember the Ford exhibit, but I remember the Bell Telephone one. Oh yeah, Disney's "It's a Small World" was introduced there too. I remember that one ... sheesh. ***************************************************************************** * Bill Ranck +1-540-231-3951 ranck@vt.edu * * Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Computing Center * ***************************************************************************** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago had a large Bell System exhibit during the 1960-70's including such 'modern' innovations at the time as picture phones and speaker phones. One interesting thing was a speaker phone built as a pay phone. You sat down in a little booth, deposited your coins as requested and called wherever you wished. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike Schumann Subject: Multi-Location Networked Voice Mail? Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:48:02 -0500 We have two specialty retail stores currently using Lucent Partner phone systems. We would like to upgrade (or replace) these phone systems to support networked multi-location voice mail capabilities. Specifically, we want to be able to forward messages from one mailbox to another mailbox at the other location, or broadcast a single message to all of our employees. Also, we have a number of employees who move between stores. We want our customers to be able to leave messages for an employee at either location, but only have a single mailbox for the employee to check. While we are willing to spend $ on equipment to solve this problem, I am very reluctant to invest significant resources in additional tie lines, etc. that would incure a monthly recurring cost. We currently have a lightly used TCP/IP data network (using ISDN routers) connecting our locations that could be used by the voice mail systems to exchange messages without requiring any additional telecommunications infrastructure. We have a total of about twenty employees. Our main location has three voice CO lines and about twelve phones. Our satelite location has two voice CO lines and about six phones. Any suggestions on what voice mail and/or phone systems we should look at would be appreciated. Thanks, Mike Schumann schumann-nospam@bitstream-nospam.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Make sure you get features the employees *will actually use* and don't waste a lot of money on things they will ignore. I've seen cases of such overkill due to a salesman's zealous selling approach that really amazed me. One large department store in Chicago has a Rolm PBX that sits behind some centrex and DID lines for example. The Rolm duplicates a lot of what the centrex has to offer, plus literally a dozen more features regarding handling/transferring/manipulating of calls that no one there knows how to utilize. The instruction manual for users -- typically buried deep in the bottom drawer of a clerk's desk and never referred to -- is about a hundred pages long. Now you will not be having an installation nearly that size of course, but watch and see if the salespeople you talk to don't have you looking at some features, services, and phone instruments with so many buttons and gimmicks that the *average employee* never begins to figure out, let alone routinely use. Good or bad, if your employees won't use them, don't buy them. If you wish, after you have gotten a few proposals from various vendors, if you want to outline the offers here, I am sure the readers will be glad to critique them, pointing out the flaws, failures and good points of each. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #510 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 27 00:08:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id AAA12177; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 00:08:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 00:08:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910270408.AAA12177@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #511 TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Oct 99 00:08:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 511 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Stewart Fist) MMDS Wireless Internet Consortium Formed (The Old Bear) BT-AT&T Deal Riles Privacy Advocates (Monty Solomon) Re: A New 'Follow Me' 800 Service is Available (Ryan Tucker) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? (Dave Navarro) Re: Definition For Telecom? (Jan Ceuleers) Seeking Ranking of Top Ten Carriers by Traffic (Jorge de Vicente Benito) Need Voice Mail Software (Larry Rachman) Excite@Home Statement in Response to GTE (Monty Solomon) Request For ADSL Information (Jeff Manera) Fone Finder Link (Walt Brubaker) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 07:34:38 +1000 From: Stewart Fist Reply-To: fist@ozemail.com.au Organization: Independent writer and columnist Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? It's interesting that correspondence on Cellphone Hazards from engineers are all calculating what _should_ happen according to their 50-year-old radio theory. They completely ignoring the biomedical evidence as to what _does_ happen. This is evidence of the old furphy that non-ionising radiation hasn't got the energy to break co-valent chemical bonds, and therefore can't effect human tissue. That was discredited about a half-century ago. People discovered that they could actually see (a profound chemical and electrical change) using a form of non-ionisiting radiation called light. There also seems to be a failure to comprehend the Inverse Square Law. A battery-powered antenna one inch from the side of your head can easily impact on the DNA in a single brain cell with much more power than a 50,000 Watt transmitter a hundred yards away, or a soldier's backpack. And brain tumours all start with the DNA of only one cell going into an uncontrolled reproduction phase. All other suspected causes of brain tumour are also random in effect, and minute in incidence. These may only occur in a small number of highly susceptible individuals -- so do we just abandon them to their fate? This is the first time in history that 100 million people have begun to use transmitters against the side of the head for long periods every day, for a life-time. Some people (telecom tradesmen) use them for five hours a day from the age of about 18 to 80. And when a 1-watt GSM (TDMA) transmits, its power is concentrated into one-eight of the time-frame. So the effect is like a stobe light -- very short in duration but intense power. The suggestion that you can just average the output, in the expectation that the only effect is tissue heating, is ridiculous. The question is; What effect does the pulsed power have when impacting on DNA during critical phases of cell division? (which is a highly electrical process). These averaging claims are like averaging the local pressure of a bullet over the ten minutes of confontation with a gun-man, and saying its only a few pounds per second -- and therefore not dangerous. Another correspondent quoted the Wall Street Journal saying: More than > 12,000 studies have been done (from a recent Wall Street Journal > article), and no significant link has been found. On this basis he claimed that the research of hundreds of top cellular and molecular biologists around the world were engaged in 'junk-science'. I've challenged the industry repeatedly to back up these claims, and provide me with a list of even 60 of the most important of these 12,000 studies. I've never managed to get any. However they did publish a list, in Australia, of half-a-dozen animal studies which they said proved cellphones were safe. At the top of the list they had a Brain Tumour study by Professor Ross Adey, which found a slight reduction in tumour incidence in exposed rats. I wrote to Adey asking why the industry was able to use just this one of his numerous (about 300) research reports to make claims of safety, and this is his reply, worded for publication: > It has come to my notice that the Australian cellphone industry has > singled out one of our studies to support their claim that cellphones > are safe. > Nothing could be farther from the truth. My research team has > published hundreds of papers on this subject over the past 35 years, > many with disturbing findings. From this pioneering research, it is > my considered view that there is unequivocal laboratory and > epidemiological evidence pointing to potentially adverse health > effects of radiofrequency and microwave radiation. Nothing in our > research findings can be construed as supporting the view that use > of a cellphone is free from health risks. > To the contrary, our research in animal models exposed to digital > cellphone fields has revealed the occurrence of effects on > regulation of cell growth related to tumour formation. > Extreme caution is necessary before directly extrapolating these > findings to human health risks. Reduced tumour numbers in > exposed animals seen in one of our experiments, as opposed to an > increase, is of vastly less significance in a medical context than the > finding that there was a field effect on cell growth regulation. It > will be some months before these findings finally appear in an > international peer-reviewed journal. > But with a feckless irresponsibility so characteristic of their venal > vested interests, industry organizations have hastily concluded that > our findings support their endless chant, indeed their mantra, that > use of these phones carries no risk. And from the biomedical > research of which they have been virtually the sole sponsors > worldwide, they openly state that the only answer that they wish to > hear is one unequivocally supporting corporate positions and > policies, totally unfettered by health concerns. > W. Ross Adey, M.D. Professor of Biochemistry > University of California at Riverside . If this is the best report that the cellphone industry find out of the 12,000 claimed research finding that supposedly prove cellphones to be safe, I think even the village idiot could see that there is a major problem and that the 12,000 report claim is an outright lie. It is impossible to prove such things are safe; the best you can say is that you found no evidence. And the vast majority of the published papers in this area do find positive connections between exposure and tissue or functional changes (in animals and humans). What's more, most of TELECOM Digest readers don't appear to know that Dr. George Carlo, the CTIA's hired-gun trouble-shooter for the last six years -- the man who ran the Wireless Technology Research $27 million research-funding program -- has sent a letter to the 30 top cellphone carriers and manufacturers, putting them on notice that serious evidence did emerge during this period about cellphone links to brain tumours, and that they ignore this research at their peril. Carlo says that when these results first emerged, CTIA members verbally agreed to publicise the work, but then never took action. He also accused carriers of trying to mislead the FDA and he says that the industry risks a backlash of lawsuits similar to the tobacco industry if it continued to ignore the issues. Carlo admitted to a reporter at my newspaper (The Australian) that he: > already faced a suit for conspiring with the CTIA to conceal > information. ``As a public health person, I'm trying to follow > through my obligation to let the public know what we've found,'' he > said. "We've done some ground-breaking work. I want to make sure > the legacy of the WTR is not one of being a PR agent for the > industry." I'm certainly not a fan of Carlo, and I think he is just trying to cover his back, but that doesn't mean that his assessment is wrong. WTR scientists (including Carlo) went on strike for six months in 1997 until their research was covered by CTIA-funded indemnity insurance after Carlo and the WTR were charged with conspiracy to conceal evi- dence in a Chicago brain-cancer case. Even the scientists who wrote FCC safety standards 15 years ago also insisted on indemnification. No other research scientists has ever needed such cover, to my know- ledge. Then the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (an independent off-shoot of the Harvard School of Public Health) which had been paid to audit WTR activities and findings, turned against the CTIA's cover-up. They had received substantial back-door funding from the CTIA, laundered through Carlo's Health and Environmental Sciences Group, and were then paid openly to provide "arms-length auditing". The counter-claim that Carlo is trying to blackmail the CTIA into giving him more research funds doesn't stand up. He broke irrepair- ably with them over the indemnity insurance issue, and later over their refusal to support him in another court case. He may, however, be trying to rehabilitate his reputation, which is pretty much in tatters after acting as fireman for the CTIA over six years. The full document of his remarkable letter can be found at: http://www.electric-words.com/radiation/carlosletter.html In it he points to specific findings of studies linking cell phones to brain tumours. He conveyed these findings to the US cellular industry earlier this year at the annual convention of the CTIA. He says that WTR research has shown: * The rate of brain cancer deaths was higher among hand-held mobile users than those using non-handhelds. * The risk of rare tumours on the outside of the brain was more than doubled among cell phone users than non-users. * There was a correlation between the occurrence of brain tumours on the right side of the head and use of phones on the right side of the head. * The risk of acoustic neuroma, a tumour of the auditory nerve, was 50 per cent higher in people who reported using cell phones for six years or more. * The ability of phone antenna radiation to cause genetic damage was definitely positive and followed a dose-responsive relationship. In his letter, Dr. Carlo accused the wireless industry of ignoring its responsibility to follow up the findings and to protect consumers. He said some segments of the industry had "repeatedly and falsely claimed that wireless phones are safe for all consumers, including children, and have created an illusion of responsible follow-up by calling for and supporting more research", and consequently that the industry was risking a consumer backlash similar to that faced by the tobacco industry. I don't accept all of Carlo's claims above, but you'd have to be an ostrich with your head deep in the sand to ignore these warnings given the raft of supporting evidence from independent scientists. This doesn't mean that cellphones are potentially highly dangerous -- but it does mean that we don't know how potentially dangerous they are. DNA usually repairs itself -- but not always. Over a life-time the accumulation of DNA impacts could be epidemic, or it could be incidental. We don't know. Nor does it mean we should abandon cellphones. Few people are going to do that. But it does mean that we should look at re-engineering handsets to get the emissions away from the head, and observe the precautionary principle of reducing the exposures of the public, until we have better evidence. Stewart Fist - writer and columnist See http://technology.news.com.au/opinion/ http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/ (some archives) http://www.electric-words.com (main archives) 70 Middle Harbour Road, Lindfield, 2070, N.S.W, Australia Phone +61 2 9416 7458 Fax +61 2 9416 4582 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:22:32 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: MMDS Wireless Internet Consortium Formed The following is a clipping from today's NY Times: Technology New Alliance Will Promote Wireless Access to Internet by David Barboza A group of leading technology companies said Monday that they would form an alliance to create products that would allow consumers to get high-speed Internet access through a wireless system within the next year. The consortium -- which is led by Cisco Systems Inc., the giant Internet networking company, and Motorola Inc., the maker of wireless telephone products -- is essentially backing an alternative to delivering broadband Internet access through underground cables and wires. The race to bring broadband Internet access to consumers has led to several alliances that promise to deliver that kind of service through satellites, cellular telephone networks and standard cable and telephone lines. Now, the group headed by Cisco and Motorola is trying to provide a cheaper and more effective solution to digging up the ground and laying cables: They want to deliver data, voice and video services over the airwaves and directly into buildings and homes that are affixed with antennas or the equivalent of a satellite dish. "This is the technology that is going to take the fixed broadband wireless market into the next millennium," said Steve Smith, director of marketing in the broadband wireless business unit at Cisco Systems, which is based in San Jose, Calif. "This gets consumers Internet access without tearing up the ground." Officials at Cisco Systems said Monday that a group of ten companies -- Motorola, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Bechtel Telecommunications, Samsung, Toshiba, LCC International, EDS, KPMG Consulting and Pace Microtechnology -- had agreed to create and develop products that use a Cisco technology, one that is equipped to deliver Internet service over a radio frequency called MMDS. Aware that the AT&T Corp. was moving into cable television and developing a system capable of delivering high-speed Internet access through its cable services, MCI Worldcom and Sprint have spent about $1 billion in the last few years to buy many of the companies that owned the licenses to the MMDS radio spectrum. Three weeks ago, MCI Worldcom agreed to acquire Sprint in a $115 billion merger. If the technology is successful, it appears that Internet service providers will be able to choose among cable operators, wireless service providers and perhaps even satellite operators like Teledesic LLC, which is developing a kind of "Internet in the Sky" technology, a multibillion-dollar plan backed by the cellular telephone pioneer Craig McCaw and William H. Gates of Microsoft. Cisco Systems and Motorola are also backing something called LMDS, which is another radio frequency that offers broadband access, mostly to businesses. According to Cisco officials, however, the MMDS system is more effective in crowded urban areas and is more easily available to everyday consumers and the mass market. Robert Edwards, a spokesman at Motorola, which is based in Schaumburg, Ill., said Monday that the company was backing both the LMDS and MMDS technologies and working to develop a large portfolio of offerings so that big technology companies and consumers could have a wide range of alternatives to getting broadband access. The companies involved in the agreement Monday said that the ability to deliver high-speed broadband access through a wireless system would also rapidly accelerate the introduction of broadband services to rural areas and urban centers, and do so more easily and inexpensively. ------------------------------ Reply-To: Monty Solomon From: Monty Solomon Subject: BT-AT&T Deal Riles Privacy Advocates Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:57:57 -0400 BT-AT&T Deal Riles Privacy Advocates By Polly Sprenger LONDON British Telecom and AT&T won approval of their $10 billion joint venture from the Federal Communications Commission last week, clearing the way for launch of the communications network, called Concert, by the end of the year. But European privacy advocates are raising eyebrows over the approval agreement's terms, which allow U.S. law enforcement agencies to monitor data exchanged on the new network. Critics say such monitoring will violate privacy laws in Europe. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/display/0,1449,7215,00.html ------------------------------ From: rtucker+from+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: A New 'Follow Me' 800 Service is Available Reply-To: rtucker+replyto+199910@katan.ttgcitn.com Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:39:02 GMT Organization: Time Warner Road Runner - Rochester NY In , TELECOM Digest Editor spewed: > But I want to mention today a similar service offered by MCI-Worldcom > which some of you may find more attractive. [...] After the post in the Digest a couple days ago, I decided to check out http://www.ureach.com/. I've had pretty good luck with these folks so far... everything pretty much works as advertised. Customer service has been good so far (their paging gateway has some ... issues ... with Cellular One's Rochester system. Which isn't surprising ;-). And, best yet, it's free, and when you run out of free time, it's cheap. This is not a paid advertisement; this is merely me finding something cool. :-) -rt Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ President, TTGCITN Communications Box 92425, Rochester NY 14692-0425 Please keep public threads public -- e-mail responses will be ignored. ------------------------------ From: dave@ppowerbbasic.com (Dave Navarro) Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:14:40 -0400 Organization: PowerBASIC, Inc. (www.powerbasic.com) For anyone who hasn't taken the time to read the Unisys License very carefully ... If you use software, such as PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro, that has obtained a legal license to produce LZW compressed GIFs then you have nothing to worry about. This issue is for companies using software that is not licensed to produce LZW compressed data (typically those sites that generate images "on the fly"). --Dave ------------------------------ From: Jan Ceuleers Subject: Re: Definition For Telecom? Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 20:02:45 +0200 Organization: the Experimenter Board Reply-To: jan.ceuleers@computer.org Telecommunications, to me, means communications over long distances. Data communications, on the other hand, refers to the communication of 'data' (whatever those may be), over any distance. Notice that the two overlap in the WAN: the communication of data across long distances is a form of telecommunications. I know that there are other connotations associated with these terms, particularly with regard to one being TDM-oriented and the other packet-oriented. This is however not based in fact, as a simple examination of these assertions against the definition will demonstrate. Mika Kristian Muller wrote: > I'd need to know a definition for 'telecom', that should describe it > briefly overall and state the key points how it'd different from > datacom (some background for doing security analysis for datacom > vs. telecom). > Couldn't find one easily on web, so any link would be appreciated. Jan Ceuleers, Antwerp, Belgium ------------------------------ From: Jorge de Vicente Benito Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 10:56:00 +0200 Subject: Seeking Ranking of Top Ten Carriers by Traffic, etc. To Whom It May Concern: I'm contacting you after doing a laborious but fruitless search through various reports from the Industry Analysis Division in the FCC website. I've also visited the websites of ITU and Telegeography but haven't found what I am looking for. I'm interested in getting: - a ranking of the top 10 U.S carriers by total volume of traffic measured in hours or minutes. (I already have the ITU listing of the Top 10 International Telecommunications Operators.) - a break-down of each carrier traffic (both 10 Top Lists mentioned above) by international and domestic traffic. - as regards each carrier int=B4l traffic, a break-down in percentages or whole numbers by country or continent of destination. Do you know or have any suggestions where I can get this info, whether in your website or in somebody else's? Thank you in advance for your cooperation. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 06:53:08 PDT From: Larry Rachman <_lr_@yahoo.com> Subject: Need Voice Mail Software Can anyone recommend a piece of PC software that will perform the usual voicemail and autoattendant functions on a PC equipped with a Dialogic D/41 card? I'm looking for something inexpensive for SOHO use (shareware or freeware preferred), not one of the multi-thousand-dollar big-time commercial offerings. I know that the D/41 comes with an out-of-the box answering machine demo, but I'm looking for more capabilities. This thing will need to work with a Panasonic PABX. Thanks in advance, Larry Rachman ------------------------------ Reply-To: Monty Solomon From: Monty Solomon Subject: Excite@Home Statement in Response to GTE Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:28:29 -0400 REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct., 25 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is being released today by Excite@Home: (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990528/SFF034 ) Since the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act, GTE has spent millions on lawyers in an effort to prevent consumers from reaping the benefits of competition, as the law intended. They have lost every significant case. It would be absurd for the court to find that the antitrust laws should be used to protect an entrenched monopolist, such as GTE, with a greater than 95% market share from a new competitor, like Excite@Home, who has less than 2% market share. SOURCE Excite@Home Copyright PR Newswire. All rights reserved ------------------------------ From: Jeff Manera Subject: Request For ADSL Information Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:44:30 -0400 Hello, I am a financial analyst interested in the broadband industry and particularly in ADSL. I would greatly appreciate your input. Which companies are providing the core products or technologies, that will profit from the growth of ADSL as a broadband technology? I believe Pairgain Technologies is a leader in DSL technologies, but don't how who are the players in ADSL. Thanks very much. Jeff Manera Weiss Research ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:20:12 -0700 From: Walt Brubaker Subject: Fone Finder Link Hello Mr. Townson, I'm writing today to suggest a new link for your wonderful telecom website. By the way, I like all your Javascripting, so you have no need to be so modest about it. Anyway, Fone Finder has provided a unique, free service to Netizens since 1994. It's an NPA/NXX lookup (the only one I know of), which uses a database to show matching NPA/NXX's to a template. For example, a person can type in a city, and get all the NXX's, or type in a NPA, and get all the NXX's and their cities. Over 100K entries are in the database, which is updated monthly. In addition, Fone Finder has an international search, with 220 countries, and 30,000 city codes. The address is: http://primeris.com/fonefind/ By the way, we link to you from our homepage. Many thanks for your time. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for your kind words about the telecom-digest.org site. I will add a link for you today. But I did want to share your message with readers, since your NPA/NXX database is just exactly what I get ask about many, many times. I hope readers will find your service useful. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #511 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 27 14:12:08 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA11409; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:12:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:12:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910271812.OAA11409@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #512 TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Oct 99 14:12:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 512 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Area Code 716 Split (Jack Decker) Forged LOA Results in $80K Fine per Customer (Eli Mantel) Information Wanted on an Old Kellogg Telephone (Keith Van Wyhe) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? (Bruce Wilson) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? (Darren K.) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Steve Uhrig) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan (Bill Ranck) Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers (Danny Burstein) Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers (L. Winson) Re: Key Pad Arrangements (Bill Levant) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 01:19:04 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split On Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:38:37 -0400, Dana Paxson wrote: > Geographic splits guarantee that one area of turf gets all the work in > the split. Overlays manage to spread the pain equally, but probably > cause more than the total pain caused by the geographic split, mostly > due to the fixed labor overhead associated with reprinting and > reprogramming subsets of numbers everywhere. But there may be a > better way. > Much of the pressure on the number space comes from identifiable > sources: modem lines, fax lines, wireless, and second or third lines. > There are also groups of numbers reserved but not fully used. Why not > think of phone numbers in terms of their sources, especially in > growing areas of expansion? I would prefer to see the new area > code(s) go to those sources of new numbers that are rapidly growing, > and leave the stable number base alone. I have a preference too, but it's not exactly the same. My understanding is that much of the reason we are running out of area codes is because so many CLEC's have to get numbers in ever rate center due to small local calling areas. In this day and age, I cannot see ANY good reason why anything further than 10 or 12 miles away should be a toll call. What I would like to see is forced exchange consolidation. If we consider a typical city in certain parts of the country, the central city is considered to have one exchange (although Ameritech has been known to divide larger cities into separate zones within the city!). Then the surrounding suburbs are in several smaller exchanges that ring the city. My idea would be this: Pass a federal law (or state laws if for some reason the feds can't use the "commerce clause" to get around states' rights, as they usually do) that says that for any city of over 50,000 lines, the exchange for that city must be merged with any other exchanges within 25 miles of that city. The 25 miles would be calculated using the nearest exchange boundaries, not the rate centers -- if any point in exchange "A" is within any point in exchange "B", the two would be merged together. If two (or more) adjacent cities both have over 50,000 lines, they'd be combined into one exchange first, and then the 25 miles out would be calculated using that combined exchange as the basis for the calculation (that is, any community that is within 25 miles of the boundary for any of the former adjacent exchanges would be folded into the new exchange). So, whereas before you would have had a central city, or perhaps a metropolitan area ringed by a bunch of smaller exchanges, you'd now have one larger one. The new mega exchange would still have local calling to any exchange that was formerly local to _any_ of the merged exchanges, so no one would lose local calling to anywhere, but most everyone would have local calling to many more places than was formerly possible. Yes, this might even give some people a really huge local calling area (100 miles or more from one end to the other in some cases) but you know what? I really doubt that the phone companies would go broke, given the capacity of fiber-optic trunking these days. In more sparsely populated areas, where no city in a county currently has over 50,000 lines, all the exchanges currently in a county would be combined, and everyone in the county would be given local calling to the adjacent counties. If a particular exchange was just outside the 25 mile radius to be included in a metro calling area, but the majority of exchanges in the county were going into that area, you'd fold the smaller exchange in anyway, just to keep it from being isolated from the rest of the county. In the case where a smaller exchange might be within the 25 mile radius for two (or more) larger exchanges, it would be folded in with the nearest of the two IF both are in the same county. In the case where the nearest larger exchange is not in the same county but another is, it would work this way: If the smaller exchange now has local calling to only one of the larger exchanges, it would be folded in with that exchange. If it has local calling to two or more of the exchanges, or none of them, the customers in that exchange would be polled by postcard ballot for their preference. The big advantage is that CLEC's, ISP's etc, would only need to have one access point (and initially, only one exchange) for an entire "metro" area. In many cases you'd have as many as a dozen or more small exchanges folded into the new one, so the savings in exchange prefixes needed for CLEC's could be substantial. The one objection that I can hear to this (besides the screaming about loss of toll revenue, since the phone companies would no longer be able to gouge people for calls to points a few miles away), is "What if there is currently more than one phone company operating in what would be a combined exchange? How do you merge exchanges that are served by different ILEC's?" Well, I really don't see problem in that. In effect, those companies now become competitors. By default, they keep their existing customers, and they still own any outside plant that they owned before. But now, all those companies have the right to in effect expand their boundaries. If someone located on what was formerly an across exchange boundary wants to request service from "the company across the street", they can do so, and the company is perfectly free to run a line. If someone five miles down the road makes the same request, and the company wants to run a cable, they are free to do so (of course, they may have to pay pole rental if they use another utility's poles). In my opinion, this would be a great way to jump-start competition in many areas -- make several ILEC's co-equals with each other in larger exchanges. I will bet that if, for example, BA/GTE and SBC/Ameritech were suddenly sharing an exchange, they would not try the same tricks to inhibit competition that they do with wet-behind-the-ears CLEC's, because the other company would know all the tricks and would have them in court so fast that their lawyers couldn't keep up. And of course, in whatever way they chose to accommodate each other, they'd also have to accommodate the CLEC's, so as not to appear to be discriminatory. Maybe someone thinks that 50,000 lines is too small a number, make it 100,000 then. Or make it a sliding scale based on population. My point is that all exchanges should be combined in some way, no existing exchange should be allowed to stay its present size unless it is already really huge (for example, a case of an entire rural county being served by only one exchange). I do believe that given the advance of technology, no one should be stuck with a calling area only a few miles across. In fact, I'd like to see some progressive state declare the entire state one exchange, so that everyone in the state could call anyone else in the state without paying a toll charge. I'll bet that state would reap tremendous rewards, businesses and people would move there specifically because of the potential savings in phone charges. (If you think that is far-fetched, I recall talking to a real estate agent in the northern part of the Twin Cities metro area in Minnesota, just a couple miles or so before you hit the boundary of the metro calling area. For those who are not aware, the Twin Cities have a huge local calling area that encompasses most of seven counties, and it is a local call from ANY part of that area to ANY other part. Anyway, this real estate agent said that land and homes were considerably less expensive once you got out of the metro calling area -- apparently people knew where the Metro area ended, and were willing to pay a considerable premium for a home that was "out in the country" but still within the Twin Cities calling area. I had this conversation at least ten years ago, so I don't know if things have changed since then, but I would bet they have not). What about LATA boundaries? They can be considered irrelevant for local calls (there are already many places where local calling areas overlap LATA boundaries), and if they get in the way, just abolish the LATA concept. The phone companies will have to become competitive under this plan, but if the thinking is that they may not be competitive enough, then just use state boundaries as the dividing lines, and tell the telcos they cannot complete out-of-state calls until they meet the competition guidelines. In many cases, under this plan there wouldn't be much intra-LATA toll left anyway (since many formerly-toll calls would become local) so you could justify abandoning LATAs and using state boundaries instead -- that would give the local phone companies a way to recover some of the toll revenue they would lose under this plan. I guess the above is just one of those little fantasies I have when I dream at night. I am always hopeful that someday the phone companies will stop trying to "nickel and dime" people to death. It always saddens me when I see some poor person struggling to pay a huge phone bill because I know that the cost to the phone company to complete those calls wasn't anything near what they charged the customer (mind you, I don't doubt they can prove some of those costs on paper using "creative accounting", but frankly I think that much of what the phone company tries to snow the various utility commissions and the public with is lies, lies, and more contemptible lies, and also a lot of it is just plain waste because as a "regulated utility" there is not as much incentive to cut costs). It amazes me that some long distance companies in Canada -- Canada, mind you, where there is a huge area to cover that is mostly sparsely populated, especially once you get more than a hundred miles or so away from the southern border -- that in this place where you would expect costs to be much higher, some long distance companies are able to offer unlimited long distance calling within Canada for a flat monthly charge, a charge that is even fairly affordable for the average family. Why can't we have that here in the United States? Because our phone companies are gouging their customers and our government is getting part of the take, that is why. I wish someone who has good communication skills AND a knowledge of the telephone industry would write up a reasonably short document, something that could be read in five minutes or less (ten at the most) by the average person, explaining how telephone customers are being exploited. How, for example, it is silly to forward chain messages around the 'net warning of an impending "modem tax", because that tax is already here, in the form of an extra charge on additional lines beyond the first one in a residence (since most "additional lines" are in fact used by modems, either in computers or FAX machines). Something that would really explain all those extra charges on the typical phone bill, and how the government slid all these extra taxes in, in such a way that they *technically* can't be called a tax, but in reality there's not a lot of difference between whatever they are and a tax. Something that you could send to your friends in the upcoming election year, and especially to the people who insist on forwarding the latest "modem tax" scare or virus hoax to you every time one comes around. Give 'em the real skinny on this stuff, and maybe they'll stop voting for the people who are doing this to us (maybe another of my fantasies, but I'd like to think it could happen, if enough people were informed). Sorry for running on for so long, but it really does bother me the way we are all getting ripped off on phone charges, and now that the government's getting part of the take (I'm speaking of the schools and libraries here, but they ARE part of the government, and any money they get from phone customers is money that does not have to be taken out of other tax revenues) they are going to be less inclined to change things, unless people get really upset about it real soon now. Somehow our lawmakers have gotten the idea that if something isn't called a tax, people will be too stupid to realize when the government is picking their pockets -- and I'm afraid that is true for a certain percentage of the people. Jack (Make the obvious modification to my e-mail address to reply privately) ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Forged LOA Resuls in $80K Fine per Customer Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 06:10:22 PDT The October 1999 issue of Discount Long Distance Digest (http://www.thedigest.com/) has a report that the FCC imposed a fine against Qwest Communications in the amount of approximately two million dollars for slamming. The fine is based on $80,000 per customer for each of 22 instances involving forged letters of agency (LOA's) and $40,000 each for another eight instances. Qwest will have an opportunity to ask for the penalty to be reduced. It appears that the forged LOA's came from various independent agents such as American Communications Network. There's nothing that suggests that Qwest acted in any intentional way nor is there anything to indicate Qwest did anything unusual to encourage its independent agents to submit false LOA's. Without diminishing the seriousness of slamming, there certainly seem to be many worse frauds for which the penalties are far less. It seems like the amount of these fines is way out of proportion to the harm done to the customer or the unfair gain to Qwest. Also, I don't understand why it's more egregious to submit a forged LOA, for instance, rather than an LOA that was included as part of a contest entry form, as has happened with some unscruplous carriers in the past. To the contrary, Qwest was at worse negligent in failing to verify the authenticity of the LOA's it received, while those companies that used contest entry forms as LOA's had a clear intent to deceive customers. I'm about the last person in the world to suggest that businesses should be allowed to get away with fraudulent or deceptive practices, but it sure seems like the agents (or their sub-agents) are the real perpetrators of the crime, and I doubt that Qwest will be able to pass these costs onto them. Perhaps somebody else can explain what I'm missing. Eli Mantel ------------------------------ From: Keith Van Wyhe Subject: Information Wanted on an Old Kellogg Telephone Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 08:41:53 -0700 If you could help me find out any information on this old phone I have I would appreciate it. I owned an old Hotel, Saloon, and Grill which I recently sold. In the very the large vast basement I found many old items buried in a dirt corner. We found several of these phones in very good condition yet. They are made by Kellogg, candlestick phones, no dial, they were patented Nov. 26, 1901-March 19, 1907-April 14, 1908. (All three of those dates were on the phone.) I am just trying to place the time period when they were used and where they were made. ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 27 Oct 1999 12:26:26 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? > If you use software, such as PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro, that has > obtained a legal license to produce LZW compressed GIFs then you have > nothing to worry about. The problem, as I see it, is inability to prove you did so if challenged. AFAIK, none of these programs "brands" the binary file. You can't examine it with a sector editor and find the name of the program used to create it as you may, for example, a word processing document. Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ From: darrenk@network.rahul.net Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? Date: 27 Oct 1999 13:34:45 GMT Organization: a2i network In article , Dave Navarro wrote: > This issue is for companies using software that is not licensed to > produce LZW compressed data (typically those sites that generate images > "on the fly"). This includes any freeware programs out on the net to generate .gifs graphics on the fly. check out http://www.slashdot.org/articles/99/08/29/0722236.shtml for a blurb about it and links, and also http://burnallgifs.org for what one group is doing about it. Darren "The truth is out there, but so are lies" - X-Files "The truth sets you free" - Conspiracy Theory ------------------------------ From: Steve Uhrig Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:20:00 -0400 Organization: bright.net Ohio The big difference is that ISDN can be provided over almost any DLC. DSL on the other hand can not. You could be 40 miles from the nearest CO and get ISDN as long as there is a DLC within range of your location. Bruce Larrabee wrote: >> but I have ISDN availible. DSL and cable are not going to happen any >> time soon because I live out in the country, and cable isn't even >> available, and the CO is too far for DSL. > Maybe an expert can correct me, but aren't loop limits for ISDN about > the same as for DSL?? 18 kilofeet? I know that the flavor of DSL > affects the loop length and that you can use ISDN loop extenders - > but, in general, if you can have ISDN the loop also fits for DSL? ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J. Sobol) Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: 26 Oct 1999 22:33:24 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On 26 Oct 1999 15:16:06 GMT, sjsobol@JustThe.Net allegedly said: > On 26 Oct 1999 02:45:14 GMT, larb0@aol.com allegedly said: >>> but I have ISDN availible. DSL and cable are not going to happen any >>> time soon because I live out in the country, and cable isn't even >>> available, and the CO is too far for DSL. >> Maybe an expert can correct me, but aren't loop limits for ISDN about >> the same as for DSL?? 18 kilofeet? I know that the flavor of DSL >> affects the loop length and that you can use ISDN loop extenders - >> but, in general, if you can have ISDN the loop also fits for DSL? > From what I understand, DSL is less, and it can't use repeaters. (DSL > is about two miles, ISDN is 18000 feet, and ISDN can use repeaters.) Wrong ... DSL is up to 22K feet -- sorry about that, guys. North Shore Technologies Corporation Steven J. Sobol, President & Head Geek 815 Superior Avenue #610 sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Cleveland, Ohio 44114 http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net I'm collecting donations for the Cleveland Indians so they can buy some pitching. If you want to contribute, please contact me. ------------------------------ From: Bill Ranck Subject: Re: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan Date: 26 Oct 1999 20:35:21 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA Mike Fox wrote: > AT&T's One-Rate Online plan promises ... > So, if you're in NC (or any other state where AT&T may be pulling this > stunt) and on the one-rate online plan, check your bill carefully and > demand your credit for any mis-billed in-state calls. They will AT&T has annoyed me lately with their new policy of not billing unless it's for more than $30. I just got billed for some July and Augest calls a few days ago. > Also, I am now looking for a new LD carrier. I require: > 1. No minimum usage requirement; > 2. No monthly fees, except for Gore taxes which must be reasonable > (i.e., in-line with the industry standard charges); > 3. ten cents a minute or less in-state NC long distance. > Since over 90% of my LD calling is in-state NC, state-to-state rates > are a secondary consideration. Well, I have just today signed up with a new company I found on the Internet. http://newetex.electrotex.com/telecom/longdistance.html Their automated web page sign-up did not work right when I tried it a couple weeks ago, but I called and talked to someone named Charley today and he assures me I am now signed up. Service is provided through Eclipse. I do not know anything about these folks other than what's on their web page above, and they say NC in-state rates are 8.9 cents/minute. I will report back in a month or so once I have my calling cards and 8xx number from these folks. If it is all as advertised it seems like a pretty good deal. I would suggest that you print out the web sign-up form and fax it to them if you decide to try them. I don't know what's wrong with their web submit, but Charley promised he would look into that. ***************************************************************************** * Bill Ranck +1-540-231-3951 ranck@vt.edu * * Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Computing Center * ***************************************************************************** ------------------------------ From: dannyb@panix.com (Danny Burstein) Subject: Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers Date: 26 Oct 1999 17:16:56 -0400 In Bill Ranck writes: > Bell had a big exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. I was > ten years old. My mother took me to the Fair. I remember the > TouchTone telephone hands-on demonstration. I think they "officially" > introduced TouchTone at the World's Fair and that is why the > literature says 1964. Indeed. They also had TouchTone pay telephones, which, in addition to using the new push buttons, were in flush mounted cabinets rather than sticking out from the walls. All very high tech, you know. Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers Date: 26 Oct 1999 22:50:59 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Museum of Science and Industry in > Chicago had a large Bell System exhibit during the 1960-70's including Does this museum still have a telephone exhibit? The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, a similar type of museum, also had a Bell System exhibit, but I understand it had been removed during a remodeling. Displays included (among others): 1) Switching timing differences: There was a row of jacks and lamps with a single cord underneath. The visitor plugged the cord into the right jack. Timers indicated how many electro-mechanical calls and ESS calls would be completed during the time the visitor took to show the speed improvements. 2) handicapped switchboard. It was for the blind to use, and had audible assists to indicate usage. (It was a modified 555.) 3) Overseas compression line clock: To get more conversations on overseas lines, the technology was to fill in dead spots on other conversations. The display had a clock which counted the actual time a visitor was talking relative to total wall clock time to show that there are actually many dead spots in a conversation that other conversations can be put in. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is a place I have not visited for about twenty years. From 1967 to 1974 I lived literally right across the street from the museum in the nice (at the time, not any more) apartment building I have mentioned before on 56th Street. There was an extensive redesign of the museum a number of years ago and I think large segments of the Bell System exhibit were removed. For those persons interested in a bit of Chicago history, the MSI building was originally constructed as part of the Columbian Exposi- tion in 1892-93 (The Hall of Science) in Chicago, and is the one remaining building from that Exposition of more than a century ago which delighted the world and brought hundreds of thousands of visitors to Chicago over the two year period in which the Exposition operated, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America. After the Exposition closed in the fall of 1893, most of the buildings were torn down, but the Hall of Science remained, as an empty shell for a number of years. About 1920, a major gift from Sears, Roebuck Company provided the basis for the building to be completely refurbished, and (by 1920's standards) remodeled. Sears, along with John Rockefeller and other socially responsible business leaders in Chicago provided funds for the first exhibits, and for the perpetual care of the new museum. One of those early donors was AT&T, whose Bell System exhibit occupied the west wing of the first floor for about the next sixty years, until sometime around 1980-85. MSI is still an extremely popular place to visit, especially among tourists. A telephone exchange in the immed- iate neighborhood (773-684) was formerly called 'MUseum', and MSI's own telephone switchboard has had the number (773-684) MUseum-4-1414 for probably seventy years. Long-time Chicago residents will also recall that when Channel 11 television station WTTW first went on the air in 1954, the station itself was an exhibit at the museum for several years. Its programs were broadcast from the auditorium at MSI; anyone could walk in, sit down and watch the station's programs. If I ever go back to Chicago for any reason, perhaps I will go visit there again. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:40:57 EDT Subject: Re: Key Pad Arrangements > I took a Ma Bell 2500(?) touch tone phone and disassembled > the keypad to rearrange the keys in calculator pattern. Also rewired > some of the contacts to match. You, sir, have FAR too much time on your hands. And an evil mind. Hee, hee. Bill ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #512 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 27 23:25:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id XAA04768; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:25:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:25:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910280325.XAA04768@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #513 TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Oct 99 23:25:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 513 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Arthur Ross) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Juha Veijalainen) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (George Yanos) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Stewart Fist) Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? (Tony Harminc) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Robert Yoder) Re: Local Cable Competition (Gail M. Hall) Re: Multi-Location Networked Voice Mail? (David Clayton) Need Info: T3 Multiplexer Which Support Two 56kbps With v.35 (Hyunsu Jung) NSI Does Not Supply the Domain-Name Combination (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Congressional Spam Bill Due Today (Leonard Erickson) Synplicity FPGA (Child K.L. Sun) A Stink Over "Skunk Works" (Monty Solomon) Tone Frequencies (Srinivas Prasad) Japanese Telephony Questions (Mark Fine) Desperately Seeking Japanese Area Codes (David Henry) Re: First USA *** CORRECTED POST *** (Bill Levant) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 03:04:36 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Stanley Cline wrote in TELECOM Digest #507 > 2) For CDMA, the above figure assumes that only full-rate packets are > transmitted; CDMA phones use smaller packets much of the time so that > the effective xmit power is actually less. It's almost always *far* better than that. CDMA uses closed loop reverse link power control. It transmits full power only if a) it's doing full rate, as you say, but also b) it is at the very fringe of coverage. Power control has two aspects: Open loop and closed loop. The open loop part is based on the level of the received power, and it is further corrected by adjustment bits transmitted on the forward link and an 800 Hz rate. The open loop recipe says that the sum of the transmitted power and the received power, in dBm units, should be -73. The units of that -73 are a little unusual: square mW. And "received" power means the entire power coming in the receiver front end within the 1.23 MHz signal bandwidth: the entire forward link manifold of channels (yours plus everyone else's plus the pilot and paging channels) plus the thermal noise. The latter is about -112 dBm plus the noise figure in dB, This means, somewhat remarkably at first sight, that the transmitted power can actually be less than the received power. Suppose, for example, that the handset is receiving something like -30 dBm (quite possible if the handset is near a cell -- it's only a microwatt). That would make the Tx power -43 dBm, ... or about 20 times smaller. Viewed another way, in dBm units, TxPower+RxPower = -73, so TxPower-RxPower = (-73 - 2*RxPower). This number is negative, i.e. Tx is thus less than Rx if RxPower > - 73/2 = -36.5 dBm. This is the crossover point. Tx is less than Rx if Rx is above this level. This power control turnaround constant of -73 dB(mW^2) changes for the PCS service, as its rationale derives from basic antenna properties that scale with the wavelength. -- Best -- Arthur (from Bucharest, Romania) ------------------------------ From: Juha Veijalainen Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:42:19 GMT On Wed, 27 Oct 1999 07:34:38 +1000, Stewart Fist wrote: > It's interesting that correspondence on Cellphone Hazards from > engineers are all calculating what _should_ happen according to their > 50-year-old radio theory. They completely ignoring the biomedical > evidence as to what _does_ happen. Some sites that might suggest what _does_ happen -- according to current studies: Page of Radiation laboratory at University of Kuopio, Department of environmental sciences. This page has several links to publications and research programmes. http://www.uku.fi/laitokset/sate/eindex.htm Current research related to mobile phones and electromagnetic radiation. http://www.uku.fi/laitokset/sate/shortplan.htm Information on European COST 244 research project on electromagnetic radiation. http://www.radio.fer.hr/cost244/ So far no positive results, but as they say "The public concern alone is sufficient to warrant research in the issue" Juha Veijalainen, Helsinki, Finland http://www.iki.fi/juhave/ ((Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect)) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:43:33 CST From: George Yanos Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? > The suggestion that you can just average the output, in the > expectation that the only effect is tissue heating, is ridiculous. > The question is; What effect does the pulsed power have when impacting > on DNA during critical phases of cell division? (which is a highly > electrical process). Just a couple of observations. First, headlines that say "CELLPHONES KILL" sell more papers than "CELLPHONES DON'T KILL". Second, people old enough to use cell phones don't have much cell division going on in the area near the antenna. It seems to me that the phone might be much more dangerous on your lap than next to your head. ***************************************************************** George Yanos 708-205-6788 GYanos@uic.edu ***************************************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 07:39:39 +1000 From: Stewart Fist Reply-To: fist@ozemail.com.au Organization: Independent writer and columnist Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? That reference to the letter in my long post, should have been , an additional s got caught up somehow. It is at Stewart Fist - writer and columnist See http://technology.news.com.au/opinion/ http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/ (some archives) http://www.electric-words.com (main archives) 70 Middle Harbour Road, Lindfield, 2070, N.S.W, Australia Phone +61 2 9416 7458 Fax +61 2 9416 4582 ------------------------------ From: tzha0@ibm.net (Tony Harminc) Subject: Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:26:49 GMT On 24 Oct 1999 02:14:31 GMT lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) wrote: > One thing I hate in modern telephone sets is the electronic ringers. > I find their tone very irritating. They only have two volume settings > (low or high), while the older sets have much more control. (Ironically > a major feature of the 500 set introduced in 1950 was variable ringer > volume.) The 300 set had variable volume, but you had to open the set and use a screwdriver to adjust one gong. The trick (I wonder if someone patented it) is that the hole in the gong is slightly off centre. > I find the ringers on the older Trimline and Princess phones particu- > larly pleasant. Interesting -- I find the Princess ringer unpleasant because it has only a single gong. It doesn't sound like a telephone at all to me. The gongs in 500 sets are quite variable in tone. If you have a bunch to choose from you can usually set up a much more pleasant and non clashing ring than what you get off the shelf. Tony H. ------------------------------ From: Robert Yoder Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:37:24 -0600 Organization: Dimensional Communications treb@netnet.net wrote: > I was wondering if anyone has Ameritech ISDN service in Wisconsin, > perhaps even NE area, how they feel they were treated, and does it > live up to all the hype. I currently use a 33.6 analog connection, > but I have ISDN availible. DSL and cable are not going to happen any > time soon because I live out in the country, and cable isn't even > avaible, and the CO is too far for DSL. I had ISDN when I lived in Schaumburg, IL a few years ago. Ameritch never showed up on the first scheduled installation day, to my extreme displeasure. They did show up the second time they scheduled. The installer couldn't finish the job that day because he found problems with the line between the CO and my home, for which he needed to call another group to fix. The problems were rectified the next day, and I had no problems with the line after that. I was VERY impressed the the intelligence and technical expertise of the installer. So my only complaint was the original no-show. ry ryoder@dimensional.com "Unix: The Solution to the W2K Problem." ------------------------------ From: gmhall@apk.net (Gail M. Hall) Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 01:07:20 GMT Organization: APK Net On Mon, 25 Oct 1999 20:09:05 -0700, William Wheeler posted to comp.dcom.telecom: > Here in Portland, Oregon it is ATT all the way they got both companies > here. In our area of Northeast, Ohio, Cablevision is just about the biggest, but we read that it is up for sale. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Ameritech buys it and eliminates the competition. But that's just *my* paranoia coming out. I had wondered why Cablevision didn't get on the bandwagon and offer more services, but when I read that the company wants to get rid of its "outlying" services and concentrate on its main markets, I figured, maybe now that they are getting some competition they are less interested in competing here. Just speculation, though. I don't really know what's in their minds. It's also hard to say what will happen with any of Ameritech's projects now that they have been swallowed up by SBC. Gail M. Hall gmhall@apk.net ------------------------------ From: David Clayton Subject: Re: Multi-Location Networked Voice Mail? Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 20:20:13 +1000 Organization: Customer of Connect.com.au Pty. Ltd. Reply-To: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Mike Schumann contributed the following: > We have two specialty retail stores currently using Lucent Partner > phone systems. We would like to upgrade (or replace) these phone > systems to support networked multi-location voice mail capabilities. > Specifically, we want to be able to forward messages from one mailbox > to another mailbox at the other location, or broadcast a single > message to all of our employees. ..... I know Vodavi's "Pathfinder" Voice Mail product will forward messages from one node to another (using IP) by a product feature called "Point to Point". I think you can get more info at www.vodavict.com (not 100% sure about the URL though). Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Dilbert's words of wisdom #18: Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience. ------------------------------ From: Hyunsu Jung Subject: Need Info: T3 Multiplexer Which Support Two 56kbps With v.35 Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:05:40 +0900 Organization: Inet Internet Services Hi, I need your recommendation on the T3 Multiplexer from which I can extract two 56kbps using V.35 port and I can use the remaining of the T3 except two 56kbps through HSSI interface. I found T3 product from digital link,but that product supported only 300kbps increments irrespective of interface types. Any infomation would be appreciated. Best Regards, Hyunsu Jung hsjung@nuri.net ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 20:06:18 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: NSI Does Not Supply the Domain-Name Combination > "NSI does not supply the domain-name combination..." > The registrant agrees that NSI shall have the right in its sole > discretion to revoke, suspend, transfer or otherwise > modify a domain name registration ... NSI does not giveth -- on what legal grounds does it taketh away? Judith webbb@excite.com (Brian Webb) wrote: > Although NSI's routing service is only available to a registrant who > has paid NSI's fee, NSI does not supply the domain-name combination > any more than the Postal Service supplies a street address by > performing the routine service of routing mail. Where domain names > are used to infringe, the infringement does not result from NSI's > publication of the domain name list, but from the registrant's use of > the name on a web site or other Internet form of communication in > connection with goods or services ... NSI's involvement with the > use of domain names does not extend beyond registration. Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 mailto:joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Publisher of ICB Toll Free News: http://icbtollfree.com Publisher of WhoSells800.com: http://whosells800.com Moderator TOLLFREE-L: http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html President of ICB Consultancy: http://JudithOppenheimer.com: 800 # Acquisition Management, Lost 800 # Retrieval, Litigation Support, Regulatory Navigation, Correlating Trademark and Domain Name Issues. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think they need to have legal grounds. You signed a contract with them agreeing that *YOU* would think of an appropriate domain name. Then if YOU agree to give them ownership of it, THEY agree to allow you to use it for yourself until whatever time they need it more than you do, in which case they take it back. Isn't that fair? After all, they do allow you to use the domain name you thought of unless some large company needs it. I am reminded of the 'Cash Recycling Company'. They have a wonderful program to help guys on the net Make Money Fast. It goes like this: To enroll in their program, you send them one hundred dollars to become an agent. Once you are an agent for the Cash Recycling Company you can spend as much as or little time each day as desired, walking around with your head down, looking at the sidewalk around you. Any cash you find laying on the sidewalk, you are entitled to keep forty percent of it as your agent's commission and remit the other sixty percent to the Cash Recycling Company. PAT] ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Congressional Spam Bill Due Today Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:29:45 PST Organization: Shadownet dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) writes: > Actually, there's a very simple and elegant answer to this which will > satisfy all the privacy concerns. > All an ISP needs to do is market itself as a, for want of a better term, > spam-free service. Then, if the FCC agrees, it simply tells the Federales > that the _entire_ domain is on the spam-free list. There are domains on the Internet that are actually merely *gateways* to other networks. And some of those networks have a "no commercial traffic" rule. So if the FCC *doesn't* allow opting out on a "per domain" basis, things will get really interesting. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: u8713501@cc.nctu.edu.tw (Child K.L. Sun) Subject: Synplicity FPGA Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 02:46:33 GMT Organization: NCTU Hi Guys, I read news about a synthesis tool -- Synplicity. Did anyone use this tool? How it performs compared with Xilinx synthesis tool? Child ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:08:47 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Stink Over "Skunk Works" Am I my cybersquatter's keeper? Not according to a U.S. appeals court. The decision is one more battle in a long war as trademark rights clash in the global space of Net domain names. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/mediagrok_display/0,1185,7218,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:03:25 IST From: Srinivas Prasad Subject: Tone Frequencies Dear Sir, I have a small query with respect to tone frequencies in the US. I would appreciate if you could help me out. I would like to know the tone frequencies in US for the following. (a) dial tone; (b) busy tone; (c) ring and ring back tone. Thanks in advance for your help. With regards, Srinivas ------------------------------ From: Mark Fine Subject: Japanese Telephony Questions Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 20:17:48 +0200 Organization: Internet Gold, ISRAEL Hello! My name is Mark Fine. I am Software Development Team Leader at NetGong Ltd. a software company from Israel that specialized in CTI (Computer-Telephony Integration) applications. We have created a number of CTI applications that successfully work in USA and Israel. Currently we are going to update our programs for Japanese telephony. We would like to ask you the following question about Caller ID and phone number format in Japan. Every answer, WWW address, etc. will be very appreciated. Our question: 1. What is the phone number length in Japan? Is it equal for all Japan regions and all telecommunications companies? 2. What is the phone number length in Japan for mobile phones? Is it equal for all Japan regions and all telecommunications companies? 3. Consider Per-Line blocking, is 186 code for unblocking equal in all Japan regions and all telecommunications companies? 4. What is the contents of CID string passed to the user in a case of local call (were called and caller person are within the same area code) and in a case of long distance call (called and caller person are in different areas)? 5. Let us assume that caller and called person are located within the same area code zone. Does CID string contain 0 and area code? PS: We have a lot of experience working with Caller ID in Israel and USA. If you are interested please don't hesitate to ask us about this. Thank you! Regards, Mark Fine Software Team Leader NetGong LTD Tel: 972-4-9894888 Fax: 972-4-9891717 E-Mail: m-fine@shf.co.il Kohav Yokneam Building P.O.B 67, Yokneam 20692, Israel Web: http://www.i-n-s-i.com (http://www.net-gong.com) ------------------------------ From: David Henry Subject: Desperately Seeking Japanese Area Codes Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 09:13:16 +0200 Organization: Internet Gold, ISRAEL Hi, I've surfed the Web in vain. I have a list of prefectures, I have a list of some area codes. What I need is the complete list of codes collated by prefecture. Can anyone please point me to the correct URL? Thanks, David [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why don't you see if the files in our archives here would be of any help? Please refer to: http://telecom-digest.org/archives/country.codes PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:42:31 EDT Subject: Re : First USA *** CORRECTED POST *** >> First USA is in SERIOUS financial trouble they cannot even afford the >> payroll at the site in Maryland. Uh, can we stay a little reality-based here, gang? According to CNN/fn, Bank One's third quarter **PROFIT** declined to $925__million__dollars. Not __revenue__, PROFIT. In other words, they earned ONLY $925,000,000 in the last three months. Hardly "SERIOUS financial trouble." Hardly "can't make payroll". Granted, maybe they suck, but sheesh. Bill ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #513 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 28 00:44:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id AAA07954; Thu, 28 Oct 1999 00:44:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 00:44:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910280444.AAA07954@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #514 TELECOM Digest Thu, 28 Oct 99 00:44:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 514 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Domain Names: Divine Right, or First Come First Serve (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers (L. Winson) Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers (Art Kamlet) Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers (Justin) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Nathan) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Fred Goldstein) Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-Digit Dialing (M Sullivan) Re: Local Cable Competition (Jeffrey J. Carpenter) Re: Forged LOA Resuls in $80K Fine per Customer (wdg@[204.52.135.1]) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? (Barry Margolin) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Ed Ellers) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (Cortland Richmond) Sprint PCS/Wireless Web (Jon Solomon) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:19:42 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB Toll Free News / WhoSells800.com Subject: Domain Names: Divine Right, or First Come First Serve? In savvy political fashion, the strategy here is one of semantics: trademark interests claim dire need for 'trademark protection,' when what they really want is 'trademark supremacy,' the divine right to any domain name, trademark-related or not. ------------------------------- New York, NY October 27, 1999 (ICB TOLL FREE NEWS) In March, 1998, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that trademarks do not have supremacy in toll free vanity numbers, but rather are the jurisdiction of trademark protection and unfair competition laws. This was after five years of lobbying by trademark interests which included aggressive scapegoating of "brokers and hoarders" parallel to their scapegoating today of "cybersquatters." In September, 1999, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled that domain names are not trademarks, angering trademark interests who all along have been considering domain names AS trademarks. And just a few days ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said, "NSI does not supply the domain-name combination." Potentially strengthening the legal basis for challenging domain name registrars' trademark-prompted demand that "The registrant agrees that [registrar] shall have the right in its sole discretion to revoke a domain name ..." Yet on October 26 the House of Representatives passed HR 3028, the so-called 'Cybersquatting Bill', by a voice vote. Civil liberties groups opposed the measure, saying the legislation would infringe on free speech rights and let large corporate trademark holders take away domain names from small businesses and individuals who have legitimate claims to those names. But the backers of the bill proved too powerful a lobby. The bill came to a vote with no discussion Tuesday, after being introduced only a few weeks ago. In savvy political fashion, the strategy here is one of semantics. Trademark interests claim dire need for 'trademark protection,' something readily available under the trademark protection and unfair competition laws. But it's not 'trademark protection' they really want. Trademark supremacy is the agenda, a divine right to any domain name, trademark-related or not. ICB is a toll free consultancy as well as news service. We have many trademark owners as clients, and are vested in protecting and promoting their interests, along with those of our other clients. But experience shows, reverse hijackers far outnumber squatters. Our clients include global corporations that buy 800 numbers when they can't obtain them by other means. But lost and stolen 800 number retrieval is a far more significant part of our business. We know from many years' experience that big companies have a 'divine right' mentality, and a modus operandi to match, to all 800 numbers and to all domain names. 'Trademark protection' simply offers the appearance of a legitimate platform. The overt hostility of trademark interests, their pejorative 'cybersquatter' rhetoric, and the dynamics of HR 3028, should raise a huge red flag: The bill came to a vote with no discussion Tuesday, after being introduced only a few weeks ago. We hear it is being rushed through without a joint Senate/House conference and will probably be law on Friday. The clause making the provision of false information a basis for prosecution is loose enough to cover people who forget to update information after they change a phone number, etc. (My area code was changed by my phone company last year -- did I notify every place where I used the phone number to register information?) Yet an individual could pay up to $100,000.00 under this bill. Another clause allows the court to remove a domain name from someone who could not be contacted and is not under the court's jurisdic- tion. This is so broad that it may be declared unconstitutional. We expect commercial interests to use whatever tools necessary to achieve their goals, and in this bill they've been handed a slam dunk, home run, hole-in-one, on a silver platter: a general instrument to fight any domain name registration they don't like. But we expect our statutory bodies to be more than the enforcement arm of Corporate America's commercial agendas. The U.S. Congress should not be endorsing the trademark lobby's 'divine right" to domain names. copyright 1999 ICB Inc. Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210 mailto:joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Publisher of ICB Toll Free News: http://icbtollfree.com Publisher of WhoSells800.com: http://whosells800.com Moderator TOLLFREE-L: http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html President of ICB Consultancy: http://JudithOppenheimer.com: 800 # Acquisition Management, Lost 800 # Retrieval, Litigation Support, Regulatory Navigation, Correlating Trademark and Domain Name Issues. ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers Date: 28 Oct 1999 03:32:16 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS > Indeed. They also had TouchTone pay telephones, which, in addition to > using the new push buttons, were in flush mounted cabinets rather than > sticking out from the walls. All very high tech, you know. IIRC, there were actually two types of flush mounted three-slot pay phones. One was actually in essence a regular three-slot pay phone, only with chutes connected to the slots of the front of the panel to get the coins. Other models were developed specifically to be flush. I remember when a new shopping center was built in 1964 it had flush mounted pay phones that looked very modern. Later on, it also had a rare Touch-Tone three-slot coin phone. The strange thing was that this phone was sort of located in an out-of-the way place in the middle of one of the stores by itself. (Store pay phones are normally located in the entrance lobbies, near the restrooms, or near the offices.) I don't know why that one was Touch Tone (this was about 1970 when it was still relatively rare, especially for pay phones.) The Bell System also made a panel phone for home use. IIRC, the cord was in a retractor. Regarding Pat's comments about the MSI's phone number, the Phila Franklin Institute went to Centrex about 1970, getting 448-1000. They had a Call Director switchboard. They shared the 448 exchange with the Phila School District Adm Bldg which got 448-3000. To my surprise, the school district's switchboard was a two position CORD board -- (older style, no less) -- I had thought all Centrex switchboards would have a modern console, or at least a modern 608 beige cord board.* I wonder if the School Adm Bldg's centrex exchange was actually step-by-step since the ringing signals were the old style ones, they didn't have ANI (if you made a local distance call you were asked for your number). What was interesting was that the first digit was absorbed. That is: all extensions began with 3. If you wanted to call ext 3753 you could merely dial 753. (If you wanted to dial ext 3352 you did have to dial a leading three.) (I discovered this and my co-workers thought it was neat, except my boss who thought I had too much time on my hands.) AFAIK that system was replaced some years ago; they no longer even that have number. I remember visiting organizations that had a more modern Centrex. I noticed several differences: 1) in the older systems, ringing started instantly after the last dial pull, the newer ones had a pause. 2) in the older systems, you had special dial tone that I think was unique to dial PBX systems. When you dialed 9 for an outside line, you had a pause, then the modern dial tone. In newer systems, the dial tone and ringing signals were the same as regular phones, and there was NO pause after dialing 9 getting the outside dial tone. 3) to transfer a call in both systems, you flashed the hookswitch once. In the older systems, you would get the operator who would make the transfer for you. In newer systems, you'd get a stutter dial tone and would dial the transfer yourself. [In the School District Adm Bldg system, a transfer request on a direct-dialed call would come up on the switchboard on the attendant light jack, on an operator connected call the cord supv lamps would automatically flash.] The Phila City Hall centrex (MUnicpal 6-1776), years ago, did also use cord switchboards, a *24* position (two rows of 12) 608 cord board. All the operators did was plug you into a line and dial (TT pad) the desired extension for you. Transfering calls worked the same as the older systems described above. I don't think they use that any more, while City Hall is still MUnicipal 6 (now called 686), they've added 685 as well; and a I know a lot of city agencies have new phone numbers. The City also had a "private automatic exchange" which I think is long gone -- places had these old style AE 40 phones which had nickel accents. While we're on the subject of touch tone pads on switchboards, I might mention a former US army arsenal in Phila. They weren't Centrex but had a lot of extensions. The operators had a cord switchboard. Upon receipt of a request, say ext 7182, they would plug into the "7" jack strip, then dial (touch tone pad) 182. Some jack strips covered two numbers, for example there could be a strip "56", and to get ext 5692, they'd merely dial 92. I don't know why it was like that. This same switchboard had terminating trunks for the army's AUTOVON network, and they were handled exactly the same as calls from city Bell lines. (I thought Autovon lines had fancy special TT phones, but users at this facility used their plain old 500 sets -- I think they dialed 8 for autovon; and it was used as a long distance service mostly.) ------------------------------ From: kamlet@infinet.com Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 18:11:01 EDT Subject: Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers Reply-To: kamlet@infinet.com Organization: Voyager.Net In article , L. Winson wrote: > 3) Overseas compression line clock: To get more conversations on > overseas lines, the technology was to fill in dead spots on other > conversations. The display had a clock which counted the actual time > a visitor was talking relative to total wall clock time to show that > there are actually many dead spots in a conversation that other > conversations can be put in. This was the first use of TASI, but it sure sounds like TCP, doesn't it? :^) Art Kamlet Columbus, Ohio kamlet@infinet.com ------------------------------ From: raptor@wwa.com (Justin) Subject: Re: Touchtone Keypads and Electronic Ringers Reply-To: raptor@wwa.com Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:44:47 GMT Organization: Verio Mark J. Cuccia went on and on about: > as opposed to the adding machine / calculator / comptometer keypad: > -7-8-9- > -4-5-6- > -1-2-3- > ---0--- Picking nits: As a lover of all things mechanical and electronic, I can't help myself. The Comptometer was a full-keyboard device, having multiple columns with keys 1-9. Interestingly, an experienced operator didn't go above 5; to enter, say, an 8, they'd press 5, then 3 in the same column. Try one at http://www.syssrc.com/museum/mechcalc/comptometer/java/index.html In replies delete X from address Justin === raptorX@wwa.com Chicago http://www.wwa.com/~laser26/ ------------------------------ From: Nathan Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Organization: bCandid - Powering the world's discussions - http://bCandid.com Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 19:07:25 -0500 Steven J. Sobol wrote: >> From what I understand, DSL is less, and it can't use repeaters. (DSL >> is about two miles, ISDN is 18000 feet, and ISDN can use repeaters.) > Wrong ... DSL is up to 22K feet -- sorry about that, guys. It depends on the telco. Southwestern Bell says 17,500ft is the limit. On a side note about DSL, Southwestern Bell is about to roll it out in my area. Somehow, though, they plan to get it to everyone around here, despite only having one CO for the city. I'd have to assume they're going to put DSLAMs in their SLCs or DLCs or something. They have been pulling *LOTS* of fiber over the last few years. Most of the lines outside of the immediate area around the CO have large chunks of fiber in the loop, from what I understand. The only thing I find perplexing about that, though, is that everywhere I've seen, 56k modem speeds are quite good, usually around 46k if not a little higher. I had always had the impression that fiber was *BAD* for 56k connect speeds. Ah well, come January or February, I'll know for sure. That's when they're going to start deployment outside of lines served directly from the CO. -Nathan ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:57:56 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Steven J. Sobol wrote >> From what I understand, DSL is less, and it can't use repeaters. (DSL >> is about two miles, ISDN is 18000 feet, and ISDN can use repeaters.) > Wrong ... DSL is up to 22K feet -- sorry about that, guys. Uh, "DSL" is half a word. ADSL, the consumer thang that ILECs mostly sell and which runs atop analog voice, works on most lines to 12 kf easily, and on *good* lines to 18kf, sometimes. No repeaters. SDSL, the business thang that CLECs mosty se ll and which needs a dedicated loop, works on good lines to 22 kf, albeit at speeds that decline with distance. Non-standard DSL from Paradyne, Lucent/AGCS and Elastic can go 22kf atop voice. GTE's trying the AGCS flavor (Superline) which is derived from Paradyne (MVL) technology. ------------------------------ From: Michael Sullivan Subject: Re: Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) Seven-digit Dialing Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:16:54 GMT Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > Cincinnati Bell for the > Metro area in sw OH / northern KY / se IN, as well as Southern New > England Telephone in most all of CT, are the two BOCs that AT&T never > owned a majority of by 1984, the time of divestiture; these two > "semi-BOCs" were treated 'specially' at the time of divestiture, and > are now frequently classified as 'independent' LECs; Cincinnati Bell > was _NOT_ made part of Ameritech; S.N.E.T. was _NOT_ made part of > NYNEX.) SNET was recently acquired by SBC, so Connecticut is now in RBOC country, not independent, for the first time. Although SNET is owned by an RBOC, it is not a BOC, however. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Md., USA avogadro@bellatlantic.net (also avogadro@well.com) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 21:43:39 -0400 From: Jeffrey J. Carpenter Subject: Re: Local Cable Competition Michael A. Chance wrote: > Personally, I'm a little tired of TCI/AT&T being the only game in town > for cable TV, and would love to see a little free-market competition > for my business. I know that nearly all of the current cable TV > franchises are exclusive to one provider, but I thought that there > were a few markets that have broken from that model and permitted > multiple franchise holders. Just to clarify, the current AT&T debate is not whether other companies can come in and build their own infrastructure to compete against AT&T, it is whether AT&T should be required to allow other companies to use AT&T's own infrastructure. Jeffrey J. Carpenter P.O. Box 471 Glenshaw, PA 15116-0471 Phone: +1 218 837-6000 Fax: +1 310 914-1716 Email: jjc@pobox.com Web: http://pobox.com/~jjc/ ------------------------------ From: wdg@[204.52.135.1] Subject: Re: Forged LOA Resuls in $80K Fine per Customer Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 20:59:56 -0500 Organization: Houston Area League of PC Users, Inc. In article Eli Mantel writes: > The October 1999 issue of Discount Long Distance Digest > (http://www.thedigest.com/) has a report that the FCC imposed a fine > against Qwest Communications in the amount of approximately two > million dollars for slamming. > The fine is based on $80,000 per customer for each of 22 instances > involving forged letters of agency (LOA's) and $40,000 each for > another eight instances. Qwest will have an opportunity to ask for > the penalty to be reduced. > It appears that the forged LOA's came from various independent agents > such as American Communications Network. There's nothing that > suggests that Qwest acted in any intentional way nor is there anything > to indicate Qwest did anything unusual to encourage its independent > agents to submit false LOA's. Qwest, by entering into contracts with its independent agents, is ultimately liable for the actions of its agents. Perhaps by imposing stiff fines the FCC hopes to send a wakeup call to Qwest and others that both they and endusers are damned sick and tired of slamming. Make the fines big enough to make the practice unprofitable and maybe the practice will cease. IMO the long distance industry as a whole needs to clean up its act. I find it difficult to believe that hizhonor would be very pleased by the current state of affairs. Yet one could argue that slamming, craming and telesleaze are all the hellspawn of Judge Green. LOA forgery or LOAs as part of a contest entry form or for that matter, as part of an endorsement of a check, IMO all fall into one general category called deceptive practices. A number of the AOS companies are also skating on this same pond. 80 grand a pop? Yeah, that should be enough to get their attention! ------------------------------ From: Scot E. Wilcoxon Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 20:47:09 -0500 > The problem, as I see it, is inability to prove you did so if > challenged. AFAIK, none of these programs "brands" the binary > file. You can't examine it with a sector editor and find the name of > the program used to create it as you may, for example, a word > processing document. GIF allows comments. Get some GIF tools to display such info. Or in Netscape: View, Page Info, find Gif in upper pane, left-click. See if there is a "Comment" field. For example, on http://www.1clipart.com/ go look at Animals:Ducks and you'll find several with comments. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Is the '.gif tax' Thing Starting All Over Again? Organization: GTE Internetworking, Cambridge, MA Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 20:41:12 GMT In article , Bruce Wilson wrote: >> If you use software, such as PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro, that has >> obtained a legal license to produce LZW compressed GIFs then you have >> nothing to worry about. > The problem, as I see it, is inability to prove you did so if > challenged. AFAIK, none of these programs "brands" the binary > file. You can't examine it with a sector editor and find the name of > the program used to create it as you may, for example, a word > processing document. IANAL, but I think the burden of proof should be on the plaintiff to show that you used unlicensed software. Also, I thought there were some posts in this thread that pointed out that many GIF files *do* have comments or other embedded data that indicates the software that created them. Of course, there's nothing preventing other software from embedding the same data in their files. But again, I think the presumption is that this data is correct, unless the plaintiff can show that it's been forged. Barry Margolin, barmar@bbnplanet.com GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA *** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups. Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:45:15 -0400 Bob Goudreau wrote: > 1) Stationery: no change required for an overlay; new stationery > must be ordered if your area code changes due to a split. Advantage: > Overlay. > 2) Business cards: same as above. Advantage: Overlay." You forgot advertising -- in most areas that still have 7D dialing businesses often use only the 7D number in local ads, on signs, etc. With an overlay everybody in the NPA has to change their ads to show 10D numbers; with a split the only businesses that have to switch are those that expect to get business from both sides of the split, which in many cases are few and far between. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 13:10:54 -0700 From: Cortland Richmond Organization: Alcatel Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line On Mon, 25 Oct 1999 Justa Lurker (/dev/null@.com) wrote: >> The tech must have been working on the inside >> wires to find the device. As the subscriber is paying >> for the service call (via an inside wire maintainance >> plan or a per call charge) I would say that it is the >> subscriber's right to know about the device. >> The tech is the subscriber's agent in repairing the >> line. I see no reason not to tell the customer what the >> problem was. >> I assume that the caretaker and subscriber could not >> be separated after the device was found, so that the >> subscriber would know what was wrong with the line >> without the caretaker's knowledge. That would be the only >> scenario where I could see delaying the notification. >> But the subscriber should know. And should have been >> told at the earliest convienient time. I understand it is unlawful for anyone to inform the target of a legally placed wiretap of its existence. However, perusal of Title 18, chapter 119, (see http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/) fails to show a specific provision in THAT section of the Federal law making it so. Perhaps this falls under interfering with law enforcement. Cortland [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interfering with law enforcement I would say. I am reminded of quite a few years ago when the Lawson YMCA in Chicago had a three or four position cord board serving its residence area (about 800 rooms). The phone room was up on the fifth floor. One day a couple of police officers walk in the room with a technician from Illinois Bell. They serve the Chief Operator with a search warrant and ask to see the toll tickets for the past couple of days. She finds the ticket they are looking for and the cops consult with the Illinois Bell guy for a couple minutes. Now those old switchboards were quite tall and wide; you could take the back off of them and almost walk inside one. The tech goes around to the back of the board, takes off the wooden cover, practically crawls inside and attaches some wires differently than what they had been, attached a small tape recorder, climbs out and puts the wooden cover back in place. A couple of the operators had been watching this in between taking calls and they were obviously curious. The cop sees their curiosity and he says, 'you two keep your mouths shut; you did not see anyone here doing anything; if I find out you even told the other operators who come in on the afternoon shift what you saw, then you two are going to go to jail also!' The next day they apparently had a tape of what they wanted, because the man came back, got back inside the innards of the switchboard, removed his tape recorder and wired it all back like it had been. About the most outrageous case of interference with law enforcement I have ever heard of was a case reported once by the {Chicago Tribune}. It seems a man had a police scanner, and nothing better to do all day but sit and listen to it. He also had a 'criss-cross' (reverse telephone listing) directory. When he heard the police on the scanner discussing a raid they were going to do on some address, this guy consulted his criss-cross, phoned the number and told the people, 'the police are on the way now, you better get the hell out of there'. The people would take their dope or whatever and split, leaving the police to come up empty-handed. He did this at least a few times. I do not remember how he finally got caught. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jstcc@netcom.com (JSol Technologies LLC) Subject: Sprint PCS/Wireless Web Date: 27 Oct 1999 20:12:05 GMT Organization: NETCOM / MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. I just purchased my Sprint PCS phone with Wireless Web. It took about a week or so to activate the service, but all and all it is quite impressive. You can go to a particular web site, or yahoo, or read the news including the stock market.... You can also receive e-mail using the address:xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com. It displays the name of the user who sent you e-mail (but not the e-mail address ...). I have an entry in my sendmail host here at MIT (jsol@trillian.mit.edu) which has a .forward file which looks like this : |/usr/local/bin/procmail. .procmailrc tests for a mailer- daemon message (which is only sent to trillian) and all other mail sent to both trillian and to the PCS phone. I had to do this because one of their gateways (I can't remember whose) was rejecting mail, sending back to the trillian mail file. I had "\jsol,xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com", which created several thousand returned mail messages, which I couldn't read because EMACS ran out of address space. Anyway, it is a far more functional and more fun PCS phone and service. Enjoy, --jsol ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #514 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 28 04:06:39 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id EAA14589; Thu, 28 Oct 1999 04:06:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 04:06:39 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910280806.EAA14589@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #515 TELECOM Digest Thu, 28 Oct 99 04:06:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 515 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Request Help Establishing Local Cellular Service (Michael Sullivan) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (John Ledahl) US West DSL Woes (Craig Macbride) Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? (Michael Sullivan) Re: A Stink Over "Skunk Works" (Bruce Wilson) Re: Japanese Telephony Questions (John De Hoog) Re: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan (Bruce Wilson) Re: New York Times Web Policy (Michael Sullivan) Re: Caller ID Boxes w/Rejection (rustyx@redconnect.net) Telephones Needed (Samantha Krysztal) Re: Seeking Ranking (Bram Dov Abramson) Re: Another Chat Room Incident Frightens Students (Terry Knab) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Arthur Ross) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (Michael Sullivan) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael Sullivan Subject: Re: Request Help Establishing Local Cellular Service Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 04:51:48 GMT Fred Goldstein made some good points in responding to the Fergusons' questions regarding PacBell's lack of local number inventory for PCS phones in Temecula, Southern CA. A few of those points need to be clarified, though. As Fred pointed out, virtually all of SoCal is in number jeopardy. As a result, NXX codes are being rationed. The California PUC has taken a curious approach to dealing with area code relief. In one of the LA area codes (I forget which), it originally approved use of an overlay area code, which would have given effective relief throughout the area code for at least a few years, but caved in to a state legislator's objection to ten-digit dialing and suspended the overlay. Over 100 NXX codes from the overlay had already been assigned to carriers, and there were only 51 left in the existing area code. Some companies were relying entirely on the overlay and only had codes from the new area code, so they were unable to serve customers. Under code rationing, if I recall correctly, only eight codes per month were being given out. These were assigned by a lottery; lose the draw and you get no code. Recently, the PUC confirmed that it was unalterably opposed to the overlay, but has no current area code relief plan. Comments on a proposed split will be filed in a few months. Meanwhile, to make the existing area code last longer, it has removed sixteen of the remaining available codes for a number-pooling trial that won't start for months and decided to release only two of the 35 remaining new codes a month. As a result, carriers whose customer bases are rapidly expanding, such as wireless carriers, cannot get numbers when and where their customers need them. It's likely PacBell can only get a fraction of the codes it requests. This means that if they have numbers available, they probably aren't located where you want. You either take what's available or wait and hope. The next point needing clarification is that California has lots of very small rate centers -- the CO-based areas on which toll rates are calculated. The CPUC has actually increased the number of rate centers instead of consolidating them. The CPUC also requires CLECs to use numbers in the rate center of its customers; they can't get numbers in one rate center and use them to serve customers in other rate centers. Accordingly, CLECs have to get numbers from lots and lots of rate centers, and have lots of empty numbers. Wireless carriers are not subject to this requirement, and typically take numbers from a very small number of rate centers, so they have high fill rates. This leads to the next point, which is wide-area toll-free calling to/from wireless numbers. This differs widely from area to area. Typically, calls from wireless phones are routed via an interconnection point that will miminize or eliminate any toll (i.e., the wireless carrier eats the toll, if any). Calls to wireless phones are not as simple as Fred suggests. These calls are indeed to a specific rate center, and there may well be a toll associated with the call, even if both the caller and the wireless number are in the wireless calling area. The reason why the caller does not have to pay a toll is that the wireless carriers have traditionally paid the telcos for a service known by a name such as "reverse billing" or "expanded local calling area." What this means is that all calls to the wireless numbers in a given NXX code will be treated similarly to "800" numbers, with the wireless carrier paying a negotiated toll charge, whether the call is local or toll, so that the wireless carrier can advertise a toll-free inbound calling area -- such as Fred's calls from the Cape to Boston wireless numbers, which would otherwise be toll calls. In recent years, telcos have become increasingly reluctant to offer this service, or have increase the rates for it. As a result, many cellular and PCS carriers no longer are willing or able to pay for it. Thus, calls to your cellular number may very well be rated as toll calls to the rate center where the numbers are drawn from. I hope this helps you understand this very complicated issue. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Md., USA avogadro@bellatlantic.net (also avogadro@well.com) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:13:35 -0700 From: John Ledahl Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? To Mr. Fist and others, I find your analysis of the cell phone hazards issue right on the mark. A few years ago when I was forecasting the cellular industry as a Director of Wireless for a global market research firm I asked the industry the following questions at a trade conference: 1) Why risk the huge future of wireless connectivity, one that will eventually reach into the homes and work lives of people around the world, by not securing solid information on the effects of cellular radiation on people? For example, the market sizes for cellular markets are hit hard every time there is a new complaint. 2) Why not begin today a longitudinal study (at least five years long and used as a benchmark study for future research) - co-chaired by a biomedical scientist and a radio scientist - that will meet the scrutiny of the most severe critics? Of course one answer was the ill-fated CTIA study, commissioned because the FCC did not want to intrude on market conditions. [Actually, I believe the FCC did not want to pay for the study.] I believe that there may be problems with cellular phones radiating through human cells. I don't know for sure any better than anyone else. However, I also believe that creative scientists can reduce or resolve these problems to acceptable risk levels once they know clearly what they are (e.g., CRT exposure a few years back). The analogy used of the tobacco industry's response to probable cancer risks has come to mind many times recently. I ask again: Why are we risking the great future of what radio can bring to the world by refusing to study the effects of its deployment around the world? Another way of asking industry leaders this question is: How would you feel if after a protracted amount of time it is irrefutably proven that certain amounts of cellphone exposure causes specific kinds of damage to the body (lets not leave out the possibility of radiowaves impacting normal brain functions like memory, etc.) and millions of people around the world are directly suffering from these effects -- INCLUDING TWO PEOPLE IN YOUR IMMEDIATE FAMILY? And it was avoidable? How would you feel? And, of course, as a result of this lack of foresight all wireless services became either extinct or suspect ... John Ledahl ------------------------------ Subject: US West DSL Woes From: craig@glasswings.com.au (Craig Macbride) Organization: Nyx Net, the spirit of the Night (www.nyx.net) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:31:31 GMT A friend of mine got DSL from USWest in July. She has two phone lines to her home, let's call them line A, (425.603.XXXX) her main line and line B, (425.603.YYYY) her business line. She ordered DSL on line B, and received an email message confirming her order for it to be on line B. USWest set it up on line A, without even informing her of this, let alone asking whether it was agreeable with her to do so! This, of course, made setup very much more confusing, since nothing worked initially and it was then necessary to swap all manner of things over after finding out it was on the other line. (This was never intended as a permanent solution, just to see that DSL worked and to be able to use it.) After setting it up and confirming that DSL did in fact work, she asked them to swap it over to the line it was actually ordered on. They said they would do so in early September and would call to let her know so she could switch everything back. Instead, they attempted it without warning at 6:30 pm on a day in mid-September. Not only did DSL not work when switched to the other line, but, in doing the switch over, they totally cut line A off (not just the DSL!) for about 15 hours. After quite some days passed, USWest finally told her that DSL won't work on line B, despite having accepted her order (and payment, of course) to do exactly that. They originally said they might be able to swap the phone numbers over, or to put in a DSL-capable line and move the intended phone number to it, but have done neither. At this stage, three months after originally ordering DSL, she now has no DSL service at all and USWest are still dithering around saying things like "There may not be a definitive answer." Two questions come immediately to mind: 1) Are USWest usually this incompetent? 2) How can the US ever have any level of phone number portability if USWest can't even swap two numbers in the _same house_ in three months??! Craig Macbride ----------------------http://amarok.glasswings.com.au/~craig--------------- "It's a sense of humour like mine, Carla, that makes me proud to be ashamed of myself." - Captain Kremmen ------------------------------ From: Michael Sullivan Subject: Re: Public Acceptance of Electronic Ringers? Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:45:54 GMT One significant difference between mechanical and electronic ringers is their current draw. The FCC established a standard "Ringer Equivalence Number" ("REN") that represents the current draw of a standard mechanical ringer as REN=1. Electronic ringers are typically a fraction of that. This is important because there is only enough ring current on a loop to power a limited number of ringers, typically 3-5 REN, depending on loop length, which adds resistance and thereby limits the available current. In the bad old days, telcos used to bar use of more than three to five extensions for this reason. Now you can have more that that number of devices attached to your line, and in many cases people do, because of the increased electrical efficiency (reduced current draw) of electronic ringers. Even though they sound awful. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Md., USA avogadro@bellatlantic.net (also avogadro@well.com) ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 28 Oct 1999 04:17:00 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: A Stink Over "Skunk Works" > Am I my cybersquatter's keeper? Not according to a U.S. appeals court. > The decision is one more battle in a long war as trademark rights > clash in the global space of Net domain names. Does anyone know how far back the phrase "inside man at the skunk works" goes? If "skunk works" is a mark, it is, IMHO, a weak one, but the real point is the processor of registrations isn't held to be the enforcement agent of every holder of every alleged mark or name in the world and the holder's only cause of action's against the registrant. Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ From: John De Hoog Subject: Re: Japanese Telephony Questions Date: Thu, 28 Oct 99 04:21:14 GMT Organization: Wonmug's World http://wonmug.com On 28-Oct-1999, Mark Fine wrote: > We would like to ask you the following question about Caller ID and > phone number format in Japan. Every answer, WWW address, etc. will be > very appreciated. Most of the Japanese telecom standards are available here: http://www.ttc.or.jp/j/summary/index.html John De Hoog, Tokyo http://wonmug.com ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 28 Oct 1999 04:43:07 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan > Well, I have just today signed up with a new company I found on > the Internet. http://newetex.electrotex.com/telecom/longdistance.html It seems you're about to have signed up with Cincinnati Bell. Your site's an agent for a company that's part of IXC which is merging with Cincinnati Bell. Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ From: Michael Sullivan Subject: Re: New York Times Web Policy Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:27:07 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Demographics and statistics gathered > in Europe or Asia are just as useful to some companies as the same > thing when gathered from USA users. Overall, I do not like seeing > that kind of imposition made on netizens, especially newer ones who > have not yet seen how fast they can wind up on a spam mailing list > after turning over their name and email address at a web site they > visit. I am sure NYT sells all that data to commercial interests on > the web for spam purposes. PAT] Pat, the NYT privacy statement says you are wrong: ---------------------- What does The New York Times on the Web do with the information it gathers/tracks? Statistical Analysis and Banner Advertising: The New York Times on the Web may perform statistical analyses of user behavior in order to measure interest in the various areas of our site (for product development purposes) and to inform advertisers as to how many consumers have seen or "clicked" their advertising banners. The Times also uses demographic information to allow advertising banners on our Web site to be targeted, in aggregate, to the readers for whom they are most pertinent. This means that readers see advertising that is most likely to interest them, and advertisers send their messages to people who are most likely to be receptive, improving both the viewer's experience and the effectiveness of the ads. In this statistical analyses and banner advertisement targeting, we will disclose information to third parties only in aggregate form. Personal information about you as an individual subscriber will not be provided to any third party without your consent. E-Mail: Using the e-mail addresses provided at registration, The New York Times on the Web periodically sends promotional e-mail to its subscribers about services offered by The New York Times on the Web and its advertisers. You can indicate on the subscriber registration form that you do not wish to receive e-mail information from The New York Times on the Web or its advertisers. The New York Times on the Web may contact you regarding account status, changes to the subscriber agreement, and to confirm registration. The above is from . Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Md., USA avogadro@bellatlantic.net (also avogadro@well.com) [TELECOM Digest Editors's Note: The last paragraph dealing with email says the same thing I said, only in different words. I said 'the email addresses they collect are used for spamming'. They said, the email addresses they collect are used to periodically send promotional email about services and advertisers. Another name for 'promotional mail about services and advertisers' is 'spam', is it not? They offer to remove your name from their spam list (or not add it to start with), but so does every spammer. Are we in agreement then that NYT uses its registration requirement as a way to collect email address to be used for unsolicited commercial emails? They call it promotional advertis- ing material, I call it spam. Consider the little web site I here: Actually sort of skimpy compared to many/most web sites, I only get on average 5000-7000 hits per day from actual users (excluding bots, excluding hits on GIF images, etc,) but this week a couple times it has exceeded 9000, which is unusual. Now how many of those readers each day who visit the telephone online museum, read this Digest you are reading now, visit the telecom archives or use the other features here would come back to visit here a second time if the first time I 'caught' them looking at my various deep-links, etc I hustled them right up to the front door and told them they had to provide me their name and email address before I would let them look at anything? I can see asking politely if someone wants to be on your mailing list or not, and in fact you can make that decision when you are at telecom-digest.org but I do think it is out of line to *require* a person to give up that personal info about themselves merely to be able to view a web site. It goes completely against the spirit of what the web and the net are about. I would never want a policy like that at this little site of mine, no matter what I had to offer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rustyx@redconnect.net Subject: Re: Caller ID Boxes w/Rejection Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:10:34 GMT Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Most calls I receive either show the name or number of the caller or both and in the case of telemarketers, it shows up on my caller id as either "Unavailable" or "Out of the Area". I've heard that they use pbx's and that's why no caller id info comes through. Anyway, once the info is shown on the boxes display, I press the reject button to put it on my reject list. This works for actual numbers or "Unavailable" and "Out of Area" calls too. I've yet to get a call from "Unavailable" and "Out of Area" numbers from someone I actually wanted to talk to, so I don't worry about missing wanted calls. On 27 Oct 1999 20:08:10 GMT, caltax@aol.comp.mil (CalTax) wrote: >> The Radio Shack Caller ID System 400 does indeed reject calls that >> show up as "Unavailable" or "Out of Area". One called early this >> morning, I put their "Unavailable" number in my reject calls list. >> They called again a couple of hours later and were rejected after the >> second ring. Too bad the way caller id is transmitted that it takes >> between the 1st and 2nd rings to capture the callers info. But at >> least now the telemarketers get hung up on without completing the > What do you mean by "put their "Unavailable" number in my reject > calls list." I don't receive numbers with Unavailable or Out of > Area. Do you just program the machine to reject anything that comes > through as Unavailable or Out of Area? Or do you program in actual > numbers to reject? ------------------------------ From: samantha_krysztal@my-deja.com Subject: Telephones Needed Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:23:23 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. We need info about distributors of the following cellular telephones: We need a Nokia 3210, 5110, 6150. Motorola Startac, and Siemens C25 and more. Thanks for info or a contact. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:22:02 -0400 From: Bram Dov Abramson Subject: Re: Seeking Ranking Jorge de Vicente Benito , 10/27/99: >I've also visited the websites of ITU and Telegeography but haven't >found what I am looking for. > - a ranking of the top 10 U.S carriers by total volume of traffic > measured in hours or minutes. (I already have the ITU listing of the > Top 10 International Telecommunications Operators.) Hi. Good timing: we're just finalizing some of the data for the next yearbook, _TeleGeography 2000_. Once ready, I'll post the list of the top ten international carriers in the world as well as the top ten international carriers in the U.S. (both ranked by volume of minutes) to telecom-digest. > - a break-down of each carrier traffic (both 10 Top Lists mentioned > above) by international and domestic traffic. We cannot publish carrier breakdowns by country-to-country route, however. Sorry. Cheers, Bram Dov Abramson Telecommunication Research Analyst TeleGeography, Inc. babramson@telegeography.com tel +1 202 467 4043 http://www.telegeography.com fax +1 202 467 0851 ------------------------------ From: tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) Subject: Re: Another Chat Room Incident Frightens Students Organization: The Home Office Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 05:05:05 GMT TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > According to law enforcement officials in Townsend, Massachusetts, a > teen-age computer user in Missouri used an America Online chat room > to make 'Columbine-like' threats to hurt students and teachers at > one of their schools. > Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly announced over the weekend > that the teen-ager, whose name and hometown in Missouri were not > released made the threats using a chat room on AOL which had been > established for use by the eighth-grade class at Hawthorne Brook > Middle School in Townsend, a community of about two thousand residents > in northern Massachusetts. The gentleman in question is a quadripligic from Smithville, MO (a suburb of KC) and his name was released (although I do not recall it). He is currently under mental observation in a facility in the KC area. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The poor guy was obviously acting-out as he did in a desparate call for help. I hope some good will eventually come from this very sad story. I know his parents must be quite dis- tressed by it, also. Let's hope he can return to his community and his family in a positive and healthy way at some time in the future. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:06:24 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? At 12:02 AM -0400 10/28/1999, Ryan Shook wrote: > RE dBm > Your units don't add up. the m indicates mili. Mili what? I'm used to > seeing decibel MicroVolts or dB MiliVolts. Is this what you meant? dBm = dB relative to a milliwatt - standard, well-known terminology in radio-related stuff! To get that all to work, you have to be careful with the units. That was the point of my comment about the "unusual units". When you add two numbers that represent dBm, what you get is something that is dB relative to a square milliwatt. That's kindof odd. Remember that adding dB's corresponds to multiplying the linear units, so the sum of two "dBm" things gives the 10* the log of the product of the two linear things. Ergo, dB relative to a square milliwatt. That help? It is indeed a little confusing if you/ve never seen it before! -- Best -- Arthur (from Romania) Dr. Arthur H. M. Ross 2325 East Orangewood Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85020-4730 Tel: 602-371-9708 Fax: 602-336-7074 Portable (CDMA, of course!): 602-677-1021 ------------------------------ From: Michael Sullivan Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 05:29:32 GMT Cortland Richmond wrote: > I understand it is unlawful for anyone to inform the target of a > legally placed wiretap of its existence. However, perusal of Title 18, > chapter 119, (see http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/) fails to > show a specific provision in THAT section of the Federal law making it > so. Perhaps this falls under interfering with law enforcement. Believe me, a recording device on a subscriber's private property, after the demarc, is certainly not a "legally placed wiretap." If a law enforcement agency has a wiretap authorization, it goes to the telco, which provides access to the lines for a wiretap. If it does not have a lawful wiretap authorization, it cannot lawfully intecept a subscriber's communications. Period. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interfering with law enforcement I > would say. There is nothing illegal about "interfering with law enforcement" if the law enforcement agency's actions are grossly in violation of federal law, Pat. In fact, the law enforcement agency's illegal wiretap gives the subject grounds for a civil suit and could subject the agency's hot-rodders to a federal felony prosecution. I'd encourage the installer in this case to report a possible crime to multiple authorities, as well as disclose it to the customer. If there was a legal wiretap on the line, the telco's procedures would have ensured that the installer sent out knew about it in the very unlikely event it was on the customer's side of the demarc. > I am reminded of quite a few years ago when the Lawson > YMCA in Chicago had a three or four position cord board serving its > residence area (about 800 rooms). The phone room was up on the > fifth floor. One day a couple of police officers walk in the room > with a technician from Illinois Bell. They serve the Chief Operator > with a search warrant and ask to see the toll tickets for the past > couple of days. She finds the ticket they are looking for and the > cops consult with the Illinois Bell guy for a couple minutes. Now > those old switchboards were quite tall and wide; you could take the > back off of them and almost walk inside one. The tech goes around > to the back of the board, takes off the wooden cover, practically > crawls inside and attaches some wires differently than what they had > been, attached a small tape recorder, climbs out and puts the wooden > cover back in place. > A couple of the operators had been watching this in between taking > calls and they were obviously curious. The cop sees their curiosity > and he says, 'you two keep your mouths shut; you did not see anyone > here doing anything; if I find out you even told the other operators > who come in on the afternoon shift what you saw, then you two are > going to go to jail also!' The next day they apparently had a tape > of what they wanted, because the man came back, got back inside the > innards of the switchboard, removed his tape recorder and wired it > all back like it had been. I guess this is an example of traditional Chicago justice. That wiretap was grossly illegal, if it was as you described it, and the cop was violating the 1968 Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets Act, intimidating witnesses to a crime and obstructing justice -- all of which are criminal offenses and grounds for suspension from the force, as well as giving rise to civil suits. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Md., USA avogadro@bellatlantic.net (also avogadro@well.com) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: While I agree with your thoughts about traditional Chicago justice -- and before I got to the point that my stomach would churn each time I read the daily newspapers there or went out into inner city neighborhoods on business, etc, and finally left the town purely for my own peace of mind, I saw a lot of 'Chicago style justice'. But for all I know, they may well have had a legal wiretap order for John Doe, execute the order when you find out who it is, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #515 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 28 15:33:28 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id PAA08883; Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:33:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:33:28 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910281933.PAA08883@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #516 TELECOM Digest Thu, 28 Oct 99 15:33:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 516 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map (Danny Burstein) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Brian Elfert) Re: Area Code 716 Split (John R. Levine) Re: Tone Frequencies (Dennis K. Wong) Re: Latency Standards? (James Carlson) Re: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan (Bill Ranck) Re: Recording Device Found on Line (Justa Lurker) Re: New York Times Web Policy (Kenneth A. Becker) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Fred Baube) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (L. Winson) Re: A New World Order - 9th Circuit Rulings (Adam H. Kerman) Last Laugh! Trials and Tribulations of a Telemarketer (Clive Dawson) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 11:42:19 EDT From: Danny Burstein Subject: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map From New Scientist magazine 30/10/99 (October 30, 1999 for USA types) Spam hits the fan A NATION OF PORNOGRAPHERS and spammers. That was the view of Britain apparently adopted by one of the biggest Internet service providers in the US last week, as it decided to block all incoming e-mail from British companies. The action was taken by IDT, a New Jersey-based provider, in response to a wave of unsolicited and offensive e-mails received by some of its customers. "It was for massive spamming -- pornographic material," [snip, snip] But the scope of IDT's block is unusual. "To block all commercial traffic from a major industrialised nation sounds clueless to me," [snip, end] The rest of the story is available (no registration or fees needed) at http://www.newscientist.com BTW, since IDT is a major reseller and also a backbone contributer, it's quite possible this 'kill' affected a lot more than just folk with idt.com addresses. ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: 28 Oct 1999 12:54:20 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On Wed, 27 Oct 1999 19:07:25 -0500, wierdo@mtlaw.nwark.com allegedly said: > The only thing I find perplexing about that, though, is that > everywhere I've seen, 56k modem speeds are quite good, usually around > 46k if not a little higher. I had always had the impression that > fiber was *BAD* for 56k connect speeds. Depends on the brand and model of modem and remote-access server used, I think. At the ISP where I used to work, most of the dialup lines are provided by ICG Communications. They're ISDN PRI circuits. The POP in Cleveland sits on a phone number served off the ICG Cleveland CO which is copper. Some other numbers are served out of Garfield Heights. Garfield Heights is sitting on a SONET ring and is 100% fiber. I've seen mixed results. Most of the customers saw improved speeds. Some did not. North Shore Technologies Corporation Steven J. Sobol, President & Head Geek 815 Superior Avenue #610 sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Cleveland, Ohio 44114 http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net I'm collecting donations for the Cleveland Indians so they can buy some pitching. If you want to contribute, please contact me. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service From: belfert@foshay.citilink.com (Brian Elfert) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:42:49 GMT Fred Goldstein writes: > ADSL, the consumer thang that ILECs mostly sell and which runs atop > analog voice, works on most lines to 12 kf easily, and on *good* lines > to 18kf, sometimes. No repeaters. US West got a RADSL line working for me on a 19,000 foot loop. Of course, the only reason it worked was the 22 gauge cable US West had used in the area. Brian ------------------------------ Date: 28 Oct 1999 02:43:14 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > The one objection that I can hear to this (besides the screaming about > loss of toll revenue, since the phone companies would no longer be > able to gouge people for calls to points a few miles away), is "What > if there is currently more than one phone company operating in what > would be a combined exchange? How do you merge exchanges that are > served by different ILEC's?" Well, I really don't see problem in > that. In effect, those companies now become competitors. Don't even have to do that, they can keep their exclusive ILEC territories, but their exchanges are now all part of the same rate center. Remember, the billing topology of the network now bears very little relationship to the physical topology. My cell phone has an Ithaca prefix and calls to it are billed like calls to an Ithaca landline number, even though the switch is actually 75 miles away in Syracuse. As I've noted before, the CO in my town has three prefies in three separate rate centers, one of which is a toll call to the other two. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Dennis K Wong Subject: Re: Tone Frequencies Date: 28 Oct 1999 07:49:02 GMT Organization: Simon Fraser University Srinivas Prasad wrote: > I have a small query with respect to tone frequencies in the US. I > would appreciate if you could help me out. > I would like to know the tone frequencies in US for the following. > (a) dial tone; 350+440Hz Continuous > (b) busy tone; i. Busy tone: 480+620Hz 0.5s ON 0.5s OFF ii.Reorder: 480+620Hz 0.25s ON 0.25s OFF > (c) ring and ring back tone. i. Most common: 440+480Hz 2.0s ON 4.0s OFF (the initial ring on some telephone exchanges may range from 0.5s ON to2.0s ON) i. Some PBXs: same frequency, but cadence varies from (1.0s to 1.5s ON and 2.0s OFF to 3.5s OFF) ii. Mitel PBXs (When calling from outside) same frequency, but 0.5 ON 0.5 OFF 0.5 ON 1.5s off (burr burr burr burr....) (Internal calls) 1.0s ON 3.0s OFF ------------------------------ From: James Carlson Subject: Re: Latency Standards? Date: 28 Oct 1999 08:16:24 -0400 vrenios@enuxsa.eas.asu.edu (Alex Vrenios) writes: > I am looking for a document that describes latency standards. > How much delay in audio is acceptable? At what point do users > complain that they cannot communicate with another party? Etc. Have you ITU-T G.114, "One-Way Transmission Time," yet? James Carlson, System Architect IronBridge Networks / 55 Hayden Avenue 71.246W Vox: +1 781 372 8132 Lexington MA 02421-7996 / USA 42.423N Fax: +1 781 372 8090 "PPP Design and Debugging" --- http://people.ne.mediaone.net/carlson/ppp ------------------------------ From: Bill Ranck Subject: Re: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan Date: 28 Oct 1999 12:25:21 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA Bruce Wilson wrote: >> Well, I have just today signed up with a new company I found on >> the Internet. http://newetex.electrotex.com/telecom/longdistance.html > It seems you're about to have signed up with Cincinnati Bell. Your > site's an agent for a company that's part of IXC which is merging with > Cincinnati Bell. A call to 700-555-4141 revealed IXC as my LD carrier. I called Eclipse Communications and asked about that, and they verified that they are part of IXC. Hard to keep all these phone companies and psuedo-phone companies straight. Electrotex is apparently an agent selling LD service for Eclipse, who in turn are part of IXC, who are about to be absorbed by Cincinnati Bell. I'm fairly certain Electrotex is just an electronics company in Texas who are branching out into the telephone LD business. Never heard of Eclipse before, but IXC I recognized. Not sure if that's good or bad. Time will tell I guess. I am supposed to get my toll-free number from them in the next couple of days. I will be following up on that closely since I have two kids in college that I want to use this. Also I want it for myself when on trips, so I can avoid the outrageous hotel phone charges. ***************************************************************************** * Bill Ranck +1-540-231-3951 ranck@vt.edu * * Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Computing Center * ***************************************************************************** ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Re: Recording Device Found on Line Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Replies to email will be POSTED) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 12:47:54 GMT It was Wed, 27 Oct 1999 13:10:54 -0700, and Cortland Richmond wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > On Mon, 25 Oct 1999 Justa Lurker (/dev/null@.com) wrote: >> The tech is the subscriber's agent in repairing the >> line. I see no reason not to tell the customer what the >> problem was. > I understand it is unlawful for anyone to inform the target of a > legally placed wiretap of its existence. However, perusal of Title 18, > chapter 119, (see http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/) fails to > show a specific provision in THAT section of the Federal law making it > so. Perhaps this falls under interfering with law enforcement. As others have mentioned, legal wiretaps are generally better installed and placed than the device in this thread. The installer had no clue to the legality or not of this tap. Pat's story was clearer -- the police did the tap and the operators were aware that the tap was done by police. If this installer would be charged with interfering it would be an interesting trial, as he would have no clue that he had interfered with a legal tap. (Unless the police had been kind enough to leave a note by the tap.) Even without telling the customer he has interfered by removing the tap from the line. He might as well tell. I hope that the tap was a prank, or that this question is from an ethics lesson. Should that customer fall prey to a crime that could have been prevented by knowing about the tap *I* wouldn't want to be the installer reading about it in the paper. JL ------------------------------ From: Kenneth A. Becker Subject: Re: New York Times Web Policy Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:12:47 -0400 Organization: Wavestar Michael Sullivan wrote: Snipped for brevity ... > E-Mail: Using the e-mail addresses provided at registration, The New > York Times on the Web periodically sends promotional e-mail to its > subscribers about services offered by The New York Times on the Web > and its advertisers. You can indicate on the subscriber registration > form that you do not wish to receive e-mail information from The New > York Times on the Web or its advertisers. The New York Times on the > Web may contact you regarding account status, changes to the > subscriber agreement, and to confirm registration. > The above is from . > [TELECOM Digest Editors's Note: The last paragraph dealing with email > says the same thing I said, only in different words. I said 'the email > addresses they collect are used for spamming'. They said, the email > addresses they collect are used to periodically send promotional email > about services and advertisers. Another name for 'promotional mail > about services and advertisers' is 'spam', is it not? They offer to > remove your name from their spam list (or not add it to start with), > but so does every spammer. Are we in agreement then that NYT uses its > registration requirement as a way to collect email address to be used > for unsolicited commercial emails? They call it promotional advertis- > ing material, I call it spam. Pat, There's spam and there's SPAM. It's one thing to check (or uncheck) a box in a sign-up web form saying that one doesn't want spam; it's another thing to find stuff in your inbox promoting the worst possible scams, porn, and so on, which one gets willy-nilly. For the record, I made sure that box was unchecked when I signed up with the NYT; and, no, I haven't received any spam from those guys, period. I do get spam that apparently comes from harvesters on the web, as do we all, I guess. The way I figure the NYT has a right to make some money.. If their registration means that they can keep track of the number of readers so they can get advertisting money >>so they can keep the web site up!<<, then so be it. In fact, as things go, I like the idea of "aggregate statistics" -- they don't, apparently, report who the individual users are to the marketeers, but they do give the advertisers a pretty good idea of how many eyeballs run past the ads. Much better than the doubleclick.net folks who seem to want to keep track of one's every move. Ken Becker [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Where the doubleclick people are concerned, I personally regard them as one of the worst scourges of all. I am surprised in a way that some hackers have not seen fit to sacrifice them permanently for the overall good of the net. They spy, and even very experienced netizens can get caught up with cookies sent by those people if not careful; they are in and out so fast when a call is made to a web site which is affiliated with them, you don't even see what they did. Thus the need to carefully and regularly flush out your cache, defrag your hard drive, etc. Anyone can be polluted by those people, and probably has been at one time or another. In your mention of lowercase 'spam' and uppercase 'SPAM', I think the only difference is in the eye of the beholder, or recipient. Emails I enjoy receiving are spam in your sight, and vice-versa. If I sent this Digest out to someone without an explicit 'opt-in' request on file, it would be spam. That's why I have a file of all the requests received for changes to the mailing list, and I keep it for a month or so after making the change. That's my proof that someone 'opted-in' to receive the Digest. On the rare occassion when I get a complaint 'how did you get my name?' I send them back a copy of the letter I received, presumably from them, asking to be added. I do not think it is right to require someone to provide personal information and then further require them to opt-out of mailings. I see no problem with making your web presentation and including a conspicuous note saying, "if you would like to receive mail from us from time to time, please put your name and email address here". In other words, an opt-in approach on web sites. There are people who like getting the latest pyramid chain-letter, just as there are people who do not mind getting the latest 'promotional message from our advertiser', just as there are people who like getting this, and hundreds of other newsletters/digests on the net. But the only acceptable way to do it is by opt-in, and not the kind of 'double-opt' where you *must* opt-in to see the web site and you *must* subsequently opt-out to not receive unwanted email. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 18:44:59 +0300 From: Fred Baube Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Reply-To: fred@moremagic.com John Ledahl wrote: > How would you feel if after a protracted amount of time it is > irrefutably proven that certain amounts of cellphone exposure causes > specific kinds of damage to the body (lets not leave out the > possibility of radiowaves impacting normal brain functions like > memory, etc.) and millions of people around the world are directly > suffering from these effects -- INCLUDING TWO PEOPLE IN YOUR IMMEDIATE > FAMILY? And it was avoidable? How would you feel? Call me loony, but here's a solution I came up with a year ago. An irritating thing about the latest generation of phones is that they are so compact that when you speak into them, with the speaker next to your ear, the microphone is as close to your ear as it is to your mouth. Clearly something is amiss designwise, when you speak and your voice misses the mike by a mile; could this explain the awful sound quality the listener receives? After all, the mike has to make do with only a small portion of your voice energy, and probably only the lowest tones at that. So I suggest, kill two birds with one stone. Make a phone shell where there is a thumb slide that pops out a mike from the bottom of the phone, on a stalk. When it snaps into the dropped-down position, it's right next to the mouth of the average user. And next to this mike is the antenna; it's not one centimeter from your brain (as is the case for current phones), it's at least six centimeters from your brain. It only look odd because you're used to the current design, which is potentially dangerous. The user gets used to it. Can I patent this ? Fred Baube F.Baube(tm) * "Geese, I'm led to understand, make G'town U. MSFS '88 * excellent watchdogs. Which is good fred@moremagic.com * because Rottweillers make lousy poultry." +358 (40) 737 6934 * http://www.brunching.com/ratings/ #include * rate-farmanimals.html ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Date: 28 Oct 1999 18:04:51 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS Here's a question: Has there been any long term study done of telecom and electrical workers to see if they have a greater risk of illness than the general population of industrial workers? Many utility workers (Bell System and power companies) tended to work there their entire career, making it easy to trace health exposures. Power company workers were exposed to very (albeit low frequency) electro-magnetic fields from generators and power lines. Telephone company workers, esp in Long Lines, were exposed to high frequency carrier line exposures. Some worked near microwave towers. Of course, other adverse factors have to be taken into account (eg environmental hazards where the person lived, smoking, etc.). ------------------------------ From: ahk@chinet.com (Adam H. Kerman) Subject: Re: A New World Order - 9th Circuit Rulings Date: 28 Oct 1999 11:19:29 -0500 Organization: Chinet - Public Access since 82 Brian Webb wrote: > The Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just handed down a ruling in > the case *LOCKHEED v. NETWORK*, or more completely *Lockheed Martin > Corp. v. Network Solutions, Inc.". The 9th Circuit upheld the > District Court's judgment ... > After procedural motions were made, the court issued its summary > judgment. The court said that contributory infringement occurs when > the defendant either intentionally induces a third party to infringe > the plaintiff's mark or supplies a product to a third party with > actual or constructive knowledge that the product is being used to > infringe the service mark. The court analogized that NSI's role > differs little from that of the United States Postal Service: when an > Internet user enters a domain name combination, NSI translates the > domain-name combination to the registrant's IP Address and routes the > information or command to the corresponding computer. > Although NSI's routing service is only available to a registrant who > has paid NSI's fee, NSI does not supply the domain-name combination > any more than the Postal Service supplies a street address by > performing the routine service of routing mail. Where domain names > are used to infringe, the infringement does not result from NSI's > publication of the domain name list, but from the registrant's use of > the name on a web site or other Internet form of communication in > connection with goods or services ... NSI's involvement with the > use of domain names does not extend beyond registration. I don't understand the Subject you chose: A New World Order. In the case you have described, the court did not order registrars to determine whether or not a domain name could be a trademark infringement. The court did nothing to expand the traditional duties and obligations of a registrar. This would seem to maintain the status quo. I am curious what the registrants of skunkworks.com and skunkworks.net had intended to do with their sites and what Lockheed threatened them with. Was either site set up by folks interested in the history of the facility? If so, God help freedom to publish. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 11:19:07 CDT From: Clive Dawson Subject: Last Laugh! The Trials and Tribulations of a Telemarketer Hi Pat, I don't know the source of this; maybe it's been going around for years, with the rate changing to keep up with the times ...! Cheers, Clive Dawson Austin, TX ------- Start of forwarded message ------- One thing that has always bugged me, and I'm sure it does most of you, is to sit down at the dinner table only to be interrupted by a phone call from a telemarketer. I decided, on one such occasion, to try to be as irritating as they were to me. The call was from AT&T and it went something like this: Me: Hello AT&T: Hello, this is AT&T... Me: Is this AT&T? AT&T: Yes, this is AT&T... Me: This is AT&T? AT&T: Yes This is AT&T... Me: Is this AT&T? AT&T: YES! This is AT&T, may I speak to Mr. Byron please? Me: May I ask who is calling? AT&T: This is AT&T. Me: OK, hold on. At this point I put the phone down for a solid five minutes thinking that, surely, this person would have hung up the phone. Much to my surprise, when I picked up the receiver, they were still waiting. Me: Hello? AT&T: Is this Mr. Byron? Me: May I ask who is calling please? AT&T: Yes this is AT&T... Me: Is this AT&T? AT&T: Yes this is AT&T... Me: This is AT&T? AT&T: Yes, is this Mr. Byron? Me: Yes, is this AT&T? AT&T: Yes sir. Me: The phone company? AT&T: Yes sir. Me: I thought you said this was AT&T. AT&T: Yes sir, we are a phone company. Me: I already have a phone. AT&T: We aren't selling phones today Mr. Byron. Me: Well whatever it is, I'm really not interested but thanks for calling. When you are not interested in something, I don't think you can express yourself any plainer than by saying "I'm really not interested", but this lady was persistent. AT&T: Mr. Byron, we would like to offer you 10 cents a minute, 24 hours aday, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Now, I am sure she meant she was offering a "rate" of 10 cents a minute but she at no time used the word rate. I could clearly see that it was time to whip out the trusty old calculator and do a little ciphering. Me: Now, that's 10 cents a minute 24 hours a day? AT&T: (getting a little excited at this point by my interest) Yes sir that's right! 24 hours a day! Me: 7 days a week? AT&T: That's right. Me: 365 days a year? AT&T: Yes sir. Me: I am definitely interested in that! Wow!!! That's amazing! AT&T: We think so! Me: That's quite a sum of money! AT&T: Yes sir, it's amazing how it ads up. Me: OK, so will you send me checks weekly, monthly or just one big oneat the end of the year for the full $52,560, and if you send an annual check, can I get a cash advance? AT&T: Excuse me? Me: You know, the 10 cents a minute. AT&T: What are you talking about? Me: You said you'd give me 10 cents a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days aweek, 365 days a year. That comes to $144 per day, $1008 per week and $52,560 per year. I'm just interested in knowing how you will be making payment. AT&T: Oh no sir I didn't mean we'd be paying you. You pay us 10 cents a minute. Me: Wait a minute here!!! Didn't you say you'd give me 10 centsa minute? Are you sure this is AT&T? AT&T: Well, yes this is AT&T sir but...... Me: But nothing, how do you figure that by saying that you'll give me 10 cents a minute that I'll give you 10 cents a minute? Is this some kindof subliminal telemarketing scheme? I've read about things like this inthe Enquirer you know. Don't use your alien brainwashing techniques on me! AT&T: No sir we are offering 10 cents a minute for..... Me: THERE YOU GO AGAIN! Can I speak to a supervisor please! AT&T: Sir I don't think that is necessary. Me: Sure! You say that now! What happens later? AT&T: What? Me: I insist on speaking to a supervisor! AT&T: Yes Mr. Byron. Please hold on. So now AT&T has me on hold and my supper is getting cold. I begin to eat while I'm waiting for a supervisor. After a wait of a few minutes and while I have a mouth full of food: Sup.: Mr. Byron? Me: Yeth? Sup.: I understand you are not quite understanding our 10 cents a minute program. Me: Id thish Ath Teeth & Teeth? Sup.: Yes sir, it sure is. I had to swallow before I choked on my food. It was all I could do to suppress my laughter and I had to be careful not to produce a snort. Me: No, actually I was just waiting for someone to get back to me so that I could sign up for the plan. Sup.: OK, no problem, I'll transfer you back to the person who was helping you. Me: Thank you. I was on hold once again and was getting really hungry. I needed to end this conversation. Suddenly, there was an aggravated but polite voice at the other end of the phone. AT&T: Hello Mr. Byron, I understand that you are interested in signing up for our plan? Me: Do you have that friends and family thing because you can never have enough friends and I'm an only child and I'd really like to have a little brother... AT&T: (click) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #516 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 28 23:00:12 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id XAA25428; Thu, 28 Oct 1999 23:00:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 23:00:12 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910290300.XAA25428@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #517 TELECOM Digest Thu, 28 Oct 99 23:00:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 517 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here (TELECOM Digest Editor) To 'Bell' or NOT to 'Bell' - Names/Logos/Holdings/etc. (Mark J. Cuccia) The Internet is Dangerous - Two Users Found Dead (Jonathan Loo) MSN Is First National ISP to Offer Nortel's Internet Call Waiting (Solomon) FCC Gets Larger - Includes More Watchdog Activities (John Stahl) Re: The City of Philadelphia's Centrex (Bill Levant) Re: Japanese Telephony Questions (Fritz Whittington) Attempt to Reach Payne Stewart's Cell Phone (Carl Moore) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 22:20:57 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here I wanted to let everyone know of two new anonymizing features added at this website for use by anyone who needs them. Anonymous outgoing email: You may now send single (one piece at a time) email letters from this site which indicate to the recipient that they were sent by 'anonymous'. No response back to you is possible. Anonymous postings to Usenet newsgroups: You may now send single (one newsgroup at a time) postings from this site to any newsgroup which will indicate to the readers that they were sent by 'anonymous'. Again, no response back to you is possible, and moderators of moderated newsgroups may choose to decline your anonymous posting in their sole judgment. Like secret-surfer, these two new anonymizing features are **not to be abused or used for the transfer of text and/or images which are illegal to possess in the country from which you are calling.** Any abuse or harassment will not be tolerated. Like secret-surfer, they are intended exclusively as privacy-enhancing tools for honest, law- abiding netizens who wish to add a layer of privacy to their surfing of the net or newsgroup/email correspondence. These two new tools cannot be used when a response is expected via email. For that, you need one of the anonymous mailboxes also offered. Both tools, like secret-surfer, are provided by cotse.com (The Church of the Swimming Elephant) and are cross-linked and reachable from: http://telecom-digest.org/secret-surfer.html (or) http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice I hope that you find them both useful, and will treat them with the same respect as I have come to expect of postal patrons and secre- surfers to date. Enjoy surfing/reading/posting! Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:40:42 CDT From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: To 'Bell' or NOT to 'Bell' - Names/Logos/Holdings/etc. Orginally in "Local Inter-NPA (Cross-NPA-Boundary) 7D-Dialing", Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > Cincinnati Bell for the Metro area in sw OH / northern KY / se IN, > as well as Southern New England Telephone in most all of CT, are > the two BOCs that AT&T never owned a majority of by 1984, the time > of divestiture; these two "semi-BOCs" were treated 'specially' at > the time of divestiture, and are now frequently classified as > 'independent' LECs; Cincinnati Bell was _NOT_ made part of > Ameritech; S.N.E.T. was _NOT_ made part of NYNEX.) and Michael D. Sullivan (avogadro@bellatlantic.net) replied: > SNET was recently acquired by SBC, so Connecticut is now in RBOC > country, not independent, for the first time. Although SNET is > owned by an RBOC, it is not a BOC, however. At divestiture, Cincinnati Bell kept the "Bell" name and logo. AFAIK, they are still not part of any "RBOC" holding company. SNET never seemed to have the "Bell" name - pre-divestiture, the Connecticut company had always seemed to be known as "Southern New England Telephone". They _DID_ use the "Bell System" logo (whichever one was the style of the 'Bell' for that decade), but at divestiture, they dropped that logo in favor of a five-pointed star or geometric design. (They've had at least two different logos since divestiture). Now they are part of 'SBC' (which wants to merge with Ameritech). At divestiture SBC (Southwestern Bell Corporation) was the only one of the seven "RBOC" holding companies which was one-in-the-same identical original pre-divestiture Bell Operating Companies. I don't think that SNET has (re)adopted the "Bell" logo yet or not. SBC also took over Pacific*Telesis, one of the original seven post-divestiture RBOC holding companies. At divestiture, California's BOC - Pacific Telephone (and Telegraph) and Nevada Bell (which was always partially owned by Pac Tel), became part of the new spun-off RBOC holding company Pacific Telesis. Prior to divestiture, Nevada had the "Bell" name _AND_ logo; California's Pacific had the "Bell" logo, but not the "name" - it was still Pacific Telephone (and Telegraph). With divestiture the "Bell" name was taken by the Pacific company, replacing "Telephone (and Telegraph)", yet everything under Pacific Telesis, including the Pacific and Nevada operating companies, as well as Pac Telesis itself adoped the "touchtone star" logo rather than the "Bell" logo! I think that is still the case, even though SBC has taken them over. Prior to the early 1960's, Oregon, Washington (state) and central Idaho were handled by Pacific (Bell) Telephone (and Telegraph). But around that time, those states (or portions) were split-off to form a new BOC, Pacific Northwest Bell. With divestiture, PNB became part of US West (along with Northwestern Bell and Mountain Bell)). Except for SBC and Bell Atlantic, the "corporation" holding companies logos of NYNEX, BellSouth, Ameritech, US West -- did _NOT use the "Bell" logo for a number of years at divestiture, although their "Cellular" (Mobility) subdidiaries frequently did use the "Bell" logo along with the "Corporation" name. The individual "pre-divestiture" operating company names STILL DID use the "Bell" logo (except, of course for Pacific and Nevada as mentioned earlier). As the "corporation" entities began to consolidate their individual operating companies (i.e, New York Tel and New England Tel both changing to NYNEX; the five Midwest state telco names all changing to Ameritech; Southern Bell and South Central Bell changing to BellSouth; and Pac NW Bell, Mountain (States) Bell and Northwestern Bell all changing to US West) into the "corporate" name, most all of them adopted the "Bell" logo as part of the corporate logo,, at least for the logo for traditional regulated local telephone services. Back to the two companies that AT&T held less than a majority of (SNET, Cincinnati Bell) -- there was yet ANTOHER operating telco that AT&T held part of, albeit an ever shrinking tiny ownership of, until about 1975 -- that being The Bell Telephone Company of Canada. AT&T held only single-digit percentages of Bell Canada (Quebec and Ontario) until 1975. Bell Canada used the OLDER (pre-1970s) Bell System logo until 1975 (even when the US Bell telcos went to the current modern-looking logo), but the words printed inside of the 'Bell' were "Bell Canada" rather than "Bell System". They abolished the use of that logo altogather. Only recently has Bell Canada re-established some form of logo - but it is so "ultramodern", I can't really figure out what it is supposed to represent! Incidently, Bell Canada (or now its holding company BCE - Bell Canada Enterprises Inc.) has owned a sizeable portion of the telcos in the Maritime Provinces. (Recently, those four holding corporations have merged into 'Aliant', not to be confused with independent Lincoln (NEBRASKA) Tel & Tel's use of 'Aliant' in the mid-to-late-1990s -- LT&T (Neb) Aliant and independent group-owner "Alltel" recently merged -- and "Alltel" is now the name used for Lincoln Neb's Tel). But back to the Canadian Maritime Provinces -- NBTel, Maritime Tel and Tel (NS) which owns part of (Prince Edward) Island Tel, and Newfoundland Tel -- at one time many decades ago, these telcos TOO used the OLD Bell System logo. This was circa 1930's. The words inside of the "Bell" were the name of the province and 'telephone company'. I don't think that any of them use the word 'Bell' in their actual 'name'. Later acquisitions of BCE Inc, such as NorthwesTel (YT/NWT/Nunavut), Telebec (PQ) and Northern Telephone (ON) never seemed to have used neither the "Bell" name nor logo. Finally, in the early 1970's, Bell Canada and Northern Electric (partially held by Bell Canada, (US) Western Electric, and AT&T itself) formed a new R/D entity called "Bell Northern Research". It has the 'Bell' name, but not logo. It was formed to take over Canadian R/D needs in preparation for the dissolution of the corporate arrangement between Bell Canada/NECO and AT&T/WECO/Bell Labs, as well as to start some "Canada specific" R/D in the meantime. Bell Labs in the US went with AT&T at divestiture. It dropped the "Bell" logo, but not the name. It was frequently called AT&T-Bell Laboratories. Of course, with the spin-off of Lucent (WECO) a few years ago, Bell Labs went with them. However, neither Lucent nor Bell Labs uses the "Bell" logo. And except for the 1984-85/86 use of the "Bell" name by AT&T for Bell Labs, Judge Greene told AT&T that they couldn't use the "Bell" name with divestiture, as the name/logo was reserved to the operating companies. That's why AT&T changed to the so-called 'death-star' logo. However, beginning in Jan.1983 (one year before divestiture officially took effect), there was an equipment/computer branch of AT&T using the current 'death-star' AT&T logo, but was called "American Bell Inc" (not to be confused with the 19th Century "Bell" entity known as American Bell - I don't remember offhand what their functions or ultimate consolidation was). That use of the "Bell" name by AT&T probably preceded Judge Greene's order against AT&T using the "Bell" name (or logo) except for Bell Labs, the order (IIRC) from Greene was issued in Summer 1983, just half-a-year before the official start of divestiture ... And then there's Bellcore ... With divestiture looming in 1982/83, AT&T (Bell System) created a "Central Services Organization" (CSO) to handle nationwide/NANP-wide common efforts and co-ordinations. It was to be owned by the seven regional Bell Corporations spun-off by AT&T, and was initially organized and staffed by people from AT&T-HQ, AT&T Long Lines, WECO, Labs, the various BOCs, and other miscellaneous parts of the Bell System. With divestiture in 1984, the CSO became known as Bell Communications Research, Inc. (Bellcore, for short). It had rotating staff from the various BOCs or their holding companies, as well as a permanent staff. More recently, the NANP administrative functions of Bellcore were spun-off to Lockheed-Martin (although that too may change yet again). Also, the SAIC entity purchased the ownership of Bellcore from the seven (or six or five) Bell corporations. The use of the "Bell" name and logo in Bellcore had to be eliminated with the purchase by SAIC. The new name has become Telcordia, with its own 'T/T' logo (Telcordia Technologies). But even the (post-1969) "Bell" logo used in Bellcore was reduced DRASTICALLY in size in the late 1980's, and on some letterheads was non-existant in most recent years, even before the name-change to Telcordia due to the purchase by SAIC. Incidently, SAIC-Canada recently became the "Canada-specific" numbering administrator, known as the CNAC (Canadian Numbering Administration Consortium). Those duties had previously been under the CRTC, prior to that by the Canadian Government's "Industry Canada", and prior to that by Stentor. And Stentor, which is basically dissolved now (Canada-wide co-ordination of the traditional network is to be managed jointly by Bell Canada and Telus - which through recent mergers and associations have become the two only 'major' telcos or groups of telcos in Canada) - used to be called "Telecom Canada" (1982-92), and prior to that was called TCTS (the Trans-Canada Telephone System, founded circa 1930; which was a re-naming or re-formation of the 1920's TAC - Telephone Association of Canada), a group-association of the basic dominant provincial local/toll LECs in Canada. But Bell Canada (PQ/ON, pts of the NWT) has always been the more "dominant" member of Stentor or whatever it had previously been known as. ONE BELL SYSTEM -- It _USED_ to work! MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__HOME:__(USA)__Tel:_CHestnut-1-2497 WORK:__mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu|4710-Wright-Road|__(+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity-5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New-Orleans-28__|fwds-on-no-answr-to Fax:UNiversity-5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:45:58 EDT From: Jonathan Loo Subject: The Internet is Dangerous - Two Users Found Dead Organization: University of Maryland University College Two people who ran an investment marketing web site have been found dead. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/slaying991028.html ------------------------------ Reply-To: Monty Solomon From: Monty Solomon Subject: MSN Is First National ISP to Offer Nortel's Internet Call Waiting Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:22:21 -0400 High-Quality Service Helps MSN Internet Access Subscribers Manage Incoming Calls REDMOND, Wash., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Nortel Networks(TM) Corp. (NYSE: NT; Toronto) today announced an agreement to provide MSN(TM) Internet Access subscribers across the country with Nortel Networks' Internet call waiting (ICW) service. ICW alleviates the need for a second telephone line and enables consumers to quickly and easily receive and manage incoming telephone calls while remaining connected to the Internet. With MSN ICW, consumers can take advantage of traditional call waiting and caller ID services via the Internet, meaning while online they can identify who is calling and manage the call without losing their Internet connection. "Microsoft is committed to delivering best-of-breed services like Internet call waiting to MSN Internet Access subscribers," said Yusuf Mehdi, director of marketing for Microsoft's Consumer and Commerce Group. "Teaming with an industry leader like Nortel Networks provides our customers with a reliable, easy and affordable Internet call waiting solution and advances our Everyday Web vision by helping customers to leverage the full power of the Internet." MSN ICW rollout began today in Atlanta, Seattle and San Diego, and there are plans to offer the service to MSN Internet Access subscribers in 50 major U.S. metro areas over the next several months. The service is aimed at delivering key ICW benefits, including incoming-call notification, call-management capabilities and cost savings as a result of the fact that MSN Internet Access subscribers at home or in small businesses don't need a second telephone line. When online, Internet users will be notified immediately of incoming calls through a pop-up message on their computer screen with the name and number of the caller. They can then choose to either answer the call through their telephone or computer, without losing their Internet connection, or click on an icon to forward the call to another phone number or deliver a personalized or automated call-back message to the caller. "As telecommunications and the Internet converge, Nortel Networks is combining its unique skills to deliver value-added services that enhance the Web experience for consumers," said Irving Ebert, vice president of Strategic Alliances, Nortel Networks. "We are thrilled to work with Microsoft to deliver this exciting service to MSN Internet Access subscribers." International Data Corp. forecasts that 21.6 million households will subscribe to Internet call waiting services by 2003. "Internet call waiting is an innovative service that will save customers from missing calls while on the Internet," said Dana Thorat, senior research analyst at IDC. "It offers consumers a compelling alternative to purchasing a second telephone line." Availability and Pricing for MSN Internet Call Waiting MSN ICW is available immediately to new and existing MSN Internet Access subscribers in Atlanta, Seattle and San Diego. There is no activation fee, and customers can sign up for the service at http://www.extremevoice.com/msn/. The current monthly fee ranges from $4.95 to $5.95, depending on location. To use MSN ICW, users need the call forward busy service, which can be activated by local telephone companies for a small extra monthly charge; consumers also have the option to sign up for the call forward busy service as part of the online registration for MSN ICW. About MSN Internet Access MSN Internet Access (MSNIA) works with Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 95- or 98-based PCs to provide a fast, reliable Internet connection so users can make the most of their time online. At the heart of MSNIA is Internet Explorer 5 browser software. This powerful software delivers a cleaner, more intuitive interface that allows users to spend less time figuring out how to use the Internet -- and more time getting things done online. MSNIA offers award-winning e-mail functionality with Microsoft Outlook(R) Express, local phone numbers across the United States, 24x7 toll-free technical support and a customizable home page. Customers can order a free* one-month trial of MSN Internet Access by visiting http://free.msn.com/ or by calling 800-FREE-MSN (373-3676). About Nortel Networks Nortel Networks is a global leader in telephony, data, wireless and wireline solutions for the Internet. The company had 1998 revenues of $17.6 billion (U.S.) and serves carrier, service provider and enterprise customers globally. Today, Nortel Networks is creating a high-performance Internet that is more reliable and faster than ever before. It is redefining the economics and quality of networking and the Internet through Unified Networks(TM) that promise a new era of collaboration, communications and commerce. Nortel Networks can be visited online at http://www.nortelnetworks.com/ . About Microsoft Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software -- any time, any place and on any device. NOTE: Microsoft, MSN, Windows and Outlook are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. Nortel Networks and Unified Networks are trademarks of Nortel Networks. Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. *Connect-time charges may apply. SOURCE Microsoft Corp. Copyright PR Newswire. All rights reserved ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:57:52 From: John Stahl Subject: FCC Gets Larger - Includes More Watchdog Activities Here is an article from Inter@ctive Week magazine relating that the FCC has "grown" two new branches to it's organization 'tree'; one, with the onerous name of the "Enforcement Bureau", to 'police' the Telecommunications Act of 1996; and the other, with a 'nice-sounding' name called the "Consumer Information Bureau", to presumably to shell out info to consumers. Respectively submitted, John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecom/Data Consultant email: aljon@worldnet.att.net ------------------------ This story was printed from Inter@ctive Week, located at http://www.zdnet.com/intweek. The FCC Expands By Randy Barrett, Inter@ctive Week October 27, 1999 1:25 PM PT URL: http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2382969,00.html The Federal Communications Commission announced the creation of two new divisions: the Enforcement Bureau and the Consumer Information Bureau. The changes are part of an agency overhaul announced this summer by FCC Chairman William Kennard. The new bureaus will be operational by Nov. 8. "Our decision to establish bureaus devoted exclusively to enforcement and consumer information signals the enormous importance of these functions in our transition from an industry regulator to market facilitator," said Kennard, who added more reorganizations will be announced soon. The Enforcement Bureau will be led by David Solomon and will consolidate the enforcement functions of the existing Common Carrier, Mass Media, Wireless Telecommunications and Information divisions. The bureau will have primary responsibility for enforcing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as well as FCC rules and orders. Lorraine Miller will lead the Consumer Information Bureau, which consolidates the Gettysburg Call Center, the Office of Public Affairs, Public Service and Reference Operations Divisions. ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 20:52:59 EDT Subject: Re: The City of Philadelphia's Centrex > The Phila City Hall centrex (MUnicpal 6-1776), years ago, did also use > cord switchboards, a *24* position (two rows of 12) 608 cord board. > All the operators did was plug you into a line and dial (TT pad) the > desired extension for you. Transfering calls worked the same as the > older systems described above. I don't think they use that any more, > while City Hall is still MUnicipal 6 (now called 686), they've added > 685 as well; and a I know a lot of city agencies have new phone > numbers. There are probably only three people in the world who care about any of this (me, the guy who originally posted, and the guy at City Hall who's responsible for it all), but: -- In the old days, the City Hall switchboard was 215/MU6-9700. They changed it to -1776 for the bicentennial (at allegedly "great cost", if I recall ...) -- They used to have *four-digit* extensions, which could be dialed from outside as 686-xxxx, and *five-digit* extensions in the form xx-yyyy (mostly in outlying City buildings) that had weird dialing rules, and which couldn't be called directly from outside without going through the operator (though they could dial out locally). To call between five-digit extensions in the same "xx" group, one dialed the last three; to call between five-digit extensions in different "xx" groups, one dialed "8" plus 5 digits; from five digits to four digits, 8-51-xxxx; from four to five, 1-xx-yyyy, and from four to four, just xxxx. By fooling around one day, I discovered that you could call from four digits to four digits with 1-51-xxxx (though why anyone would want to is beyond me). The five-digit groups had "weird" ringing tones, mostly unique to a particular 5-digit group. All this went away in the early '80's, in stages, though in some of the less-traveled corners of City government, you can still find phones with the old MU6-9700 dial cards and five-digit extensions. Nowadays, the City has 215 686-, 683- and 685- all to itself; all calls are dialed as 5-digits (e.g. 3-xxxx, 5-xxxx) even within a single prefix, the old five-digit extensions have been folded into 685- (and to a lesser extent, 683-); and they have some tie trunks to City-related agencies not on the main Centrex (e.g. dial 1-5x-yyyy for the airport [parts of 215-492 and 215-937], the pension board [part of 215-496], and so on, depending on what "x" is). Used to be, NOBODY could dial outside the City Limits without the operator. In the bad old days, it would ring 150 times before you'd get the toll operator. An incredible nuisance. You had to have an authorization number for the operator, but as long as it fit the format (2D-1L-3D), no one validated it. Interestingly, though, the fax machine was on an UNRESTRICTED Centrex line, so a simple solution presented itself: Dial out from there, and then transfer the call back to your desk. Worked every time. They also used to block calls to MCI's and Sprint's 950 and 800 access numbers, and forced you to use AT&T through the operator. At least, they did until someone gave the City Hall operator their calling card number, which promptly ended up in heavy use at the prison (where the operator's boyfriend, uh, lived). Now, everyone has 7-digit PIN numbers for toll calls. They even have voice mail. Geez. There's something weird about the 685- numbers; when dialed, the system "hesitates" a moment before cutting through to ringing tone ... since the 685- numbers are all over the City (the 686- and 683- numbers are almost all downtown), I wonder if 685- is actually a pseudo-code, with a database lookup for routing, or something like that. It may also be a DID setup; I think 686- is still "real" Bell Centrex. Bill ------------------------------ From: Fritz Whittington Subject: Re: Japanese Telephony Questions Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:09:01 -0500 Organization: James P. Lazar, P. C. Mark Fine wrote: > My name is Mark Fine. I am Software Development Team Leader at NetGong > Ltd. a software company from Israel that specialized in CTI > (Computer-Telephony Integration) applications. . . . > PS: We have a lot of experience working with Caller ID in Israel and > USA. If you are interested please don't hesitate to ask us about > this. OK! I'll take your offer! We recently switched from SW Bell analog lines to T1 PRI DID lines from InterMedia. As part of the changeover, we installed a new Norstar MICS KSU. Everything works very nicely except for one thing: when we make outgoing calls, the called party with a CallerID box will see our number, but *Unknown Name* instead of our business name. The InterMedia trouble-shooters say it isn't broken, their system just doesn't pass the name info, just the number. Only the ILECs can do that, not the CLECs. Do you know if this is common or uncommon? Are there other CLECs that DO pass the name? Are there any FCC regs (pending, but not yet in full effect) that will require the name to be passed? Best Regards, Fritz Whittington The Law Offices of James P. Lazar, P. C. +1 214 273 2576 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:07:19 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Attempt to Reach Payne Stewart's Cell Phone As you know, golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed in a plane crash (if they weren't already dead due to depressurization). You heard the plane was going from Orlando (Fla.) to Dallas (Texas) and strayed, pilotless, up to South Dakota before it ran out of fuel. I heard a radio report which said there was some live coverage of this story as it broke. That report says Stewart's wife was following it and tried to call him on his(?) cell phone. So there can be a cell phone on a Learjet? I take it the attempt(s) by Stewart's wife failed because Stewart was unconscious or dead. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #517 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 29 03:54:26 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id DAA05166; Fri, 29 Oct 1999 03:54:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 03:54:26 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910290754.DAA05166@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #518 TELECOM Digest Fri, 29 Oct 99 03:54:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 518 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Kim Brennan) Re: New DNS Entry (Sonya Woods) Re: Local Cross-NPA-Boundary Seven-Digit Dialing (George Rapp) Re: A Stink Over "Skunk Works" (John Nagle) Re: US West DSL Woes (Hudson Leighton) Re: US West DSL Woes (Ed Ellers) Re: To 'Bell' or NOT to 'Bell' - Names/Logos/Holdings/etc. (Linc Madison) Older Business Systems? (L. Winson) Re: Attempt to Reach Payne Stewart's Cell Phone (John R. Levine) Re: Attempt to Reach Payne Stewart's Cell Phone (Jeremy M. Posner) Re: Two New Anonymizing Tools (Al Iverson) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scot E. Wilcoxon Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:22:29 -0500 > people old enough to use cell phones don't have much cell > division going on in the area near the antenna. It seems to me that > the phone might be much more dangerous on your lap than next to your > head. OK, that subject has recent research. New neurons are continually being made. http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500045561-500074264-500183493-0,00.html Not long ago an impossible experiment was done on humans. There's a chemical which in animal studies stains only new neurons, and has shown cell growth in animal brains. But for several reasons, mainly because it is toxic, it could not be given to humans, and the human brains couldn't be cut up for study anyway. A researcher accidentally discovered that the chemical was being given to a few cancer patients due to its specific toxicity; he got permission from some patients to study their brains and over the next several years some of them died. New neurons were found in the human brains. > Here's a question: Has there been any long term study done of telecom > and electrical workers to see if they have a greater risk of illness > than the general population of industrial workers? Did you try asking a library or the Web before asking us? There are people whose business is to do such studies and they've been at work for some time. Of course, a lot of the research is presently in medical journals and non-Web repositories. More library info is coming on line, but a lot of the Web-related info is being sponsored by someone with a certain interest in the material. > Many utility workers (Bell System and power companies) tended to work > there their entire career, making it easy to trace health exposures. A quick look at the Web find a pile of references to a few telephone worker studies with EMF and asbestos focus. Mention was also made in one page to telephone workers having lower illness rates than workers in general, but the same rate as electrical workers could suggest either fewer environmental factors than other workers or an occupational reduction of risk (such as better health due to more physical labor than other workers). One small sample of female telephone workers in the 1980s (how many years of work might the average female telephone worker have done then?) found some differences from average, but also wondered if people with certain other risk factors may have chosen that work. > Of course, other adverse factors have to be taken into account (eg > environmental hazards where the person lived, smoking, etc.). Well, if it were easy it would be obvious already to everyone rather than so much research being done. ------------------------------ From: kim@aol.com (Kim Brennan) Date: 28 Oct 1999 19:59:45 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? > An irritating thing about the latest generation of phones is that they > are so compact that when you speak into them, with the speaker next to > your ear, Not all cell phones are constructed in this way. Several of the flip open phones (of which the StarTac is probably the most famous) are small compact phones that enlarge to near normal phone proportions ... and the microphone is down near the mouth when the speaker is up near the ear. Actually, the StarTac was one of the phones mentioned in at least one of the reports has having a better than normal design, because in normal operation the antennae is pointing away from the head (being as the antennae is at the hinge of the StarTac design.) Kim Brennan Duo 2300c, PB 2400, VW Fox Wagon GL, Corrado SLC, Vanagon GL Syncro http://members.aol.com/kim Duo Info Page: http://members.aol.com/kim/computer/duo/duoindex.html ?'s should include "Duo" in subject, else they'll be deleted unread. ------------------------------ From: sonya_woods@my-deja.com (Sonya Woods) Subject: Re: New DNS Entry Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:21:24 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Dear Alan, Do you use the New Tucows Domain Service with OpenSRS? What do you think about it? I visited OpenSRS yesterday, and was searching for the domain name registry process, but didn't find it. I found a primary technical instructions, but I don't know if these instructions are for common users or resellers. Finally, I couldn't register. I forgot this option and came back to my current domain names registrar, Nominalia.net. The Nominalia site guarantee the registry in less than 24 hours (if I pay ...), and offered me easy customer services for managing my domain name request service. I always had been working with NSI, but Tucows prices and services are expensive and prehistoric. I only found a problem with this registrar it's working with owns Nic's instead of Core Nic's. Regards, Sonya In article , Alan Pugh wrote: > A press release concerning a new entry into the DNS field. > TUCOWS Launches Open Shared Registry System for Domain Name > Registration > Move Offers ISP's Wholesale Registrations For $13 Per Year > TUCOWS (www.tucows.com) has revolutionized the wholesale domain name > registration market with today's launch of OpenSRS (Open Shared > Registration System at www.opensrs.com). > > CONTACT: TUCOWS.com > Charmaine D'Silva, cell: 416/824-8374 > charm@tucows.com ------------------------------ From: George Rapp Subject: Re: Local Cross-NPA-Boundary Seven-Digit Dialing Date: 28 Oct 1999 16:05:55 -0500 Organization: Newscene Public Access Usenet News (http://www.newscene.com/) Neal McLain wrote: > According to the 1999-2000 U S West directory for Council Bluffs, > Iowa, it's still possible to call between Omaha and Council Bluffs by > dialing seven digits. > What's really strange about the Omaha/Council Bluffs area is City of > Carter Lake, IA. It's located on the *west* side of the Mississippi > River. Historically, it was located on the east side of the river, in > a "meander" -- a big loop where the river meandered north, west, and > south. Eventually, the river cut a more direct route, leaving Carter > Lake (the city) stranded on the west side. The old river bed is now a > lake, also called Carter Lake. While it's true that Carter Lake is located on the west side of the Mississippi River, that's equally true for the rest of Iowa! I think it's more interesting to note that Carter Lake is on the west side of the *Missouri* River, which oxbowed years ago and left Carter Lake physically adjacent to Nebraska but legally part of Iowa. You would drive through Carter Lake on the way from downtown Omaha to the airport. Incidentally, the action of the Missouri River is also responsible for the fact that there are Native American casinos in Iowa, even though there was never any reservation land created there (it was all in NE). The river stranded a couple of chunks of Winnebago and Omaha reservation land on the Iowa side, and nobody thought too much about it, until Iowa approved casino gambling. Then the tribes went to the Supreme Court to make sure that land *stayed* in Iowa (opposite of the Carter Lake situation), and thus were able to operate casinos on "their" land. I believe the casinos have telephones. 8^) George Rapp (Bellevue, NE) Go 'Huskers!!! Home: gwr@novia.net ICQ: 14583674 AIM: gwrboing Work: grapp01@mail.dfas.msd.eds.com (or) george.rapp@dfas.mil Would a fly without wings be called a walk? ------------------------------ From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: A Stink Over "Skunk Works" Date: 28 Oct 1999 18:14:14 GMT Organization: MindSpring Enterprises blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) writes: >> Am I my cybersquatter's keeper? Not according to a U.S. appeals court. >> The decision is one more battle in a long war as trademark rights >> clash in the global space of Net domain names. > Does anyone know how far back the phrase "inside man at the skunk > works" goes? If "skunk works" is a mark, it is, IMHO, a weak one, but > the real point is the processor of registrations isn't held to be the > enforcement agent of every holder of every alleged mark or name in the > world and the holder's only cause of action's against the registrant. The original phrase was "skonk works", from Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" comic. Lockheed originally used "skonk works", got complaints from Capp's syndicator, and switched to "skunk works". John Nagle Animats ------------------------------ From: hudsonl@skypoint.com (Hudson Leighton) Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:31:47 -0500 Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc. In article , craig@glasswings.com.au (Craig Macbride) wrote: > A friend of mine got DSL from USWest in July. She has two phone lines > to her home, let's call them line A, (425.603.XXXX) her main line and > line B, (425.603.YYYY) her business line. She ordered DSL on line B, > and received an email message confirming her order for it to be on > line B. USWest set it up on line A, without even informing her of > this, let alone asking whether it was agreeable with her to do so! snip > Two questions come immediately to mind: > 1) Are USWest usually this incompetent? > 2) How can the US ever have any level of phone number portability if USWest > can't even swap two numbers in the _same house_ in three months??! Sounds familar, in my case: Installed it on the wrong exchange! ie: 122-1234 instead of 123-1234 Have managed to disconnect me once. Part of the problem is staffing, I have had fairly good luck with the USWest DSL Customer service, BUT (big but) I have literally spent a day on hold waiting from them to answer. Slow day, dug out a old speaker phone and camped on the line for about six hours before they answered. Also had one DSL modem die, but since then it has been great. They advertise 256K, I usually get 60K, 100K on big files most of the time, but it does beat 5.6K or 2.8K. Hudson http://www.skypoint.com/~hudsonl ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 23:39:18 -0400 Craig Macbride wrote: > After setting it up and confirming that DSL did in fact work, she > asked them to swap it over to the line it was actually ordered > on. They said they would do so in early September and would call to > let her know so she could switch everything back. Instead, they > attempted it without warning at 6:30 pm on a day in mid-September. Not > only did DSL not work when switched to the other line, but, in doing > the switch over, they totally cut line A off (not just the DSL!) for > about 15 hours. > After quite some days passed, USWest finally told her that DSL won't > work on line B, despite having accepted her order (and payment, of > course) to do exactly that. They originally said they might be able to > swap the phone numbers over, or to put in a DSL-capable line and move > the intended phone number to it, but have done neither. Pathetic indeed, but here's a "stupid" question -- since she has two voice lines coming into her house, why does it matter which one is being used for DSL? Is it that only one of those two lines is wired into the room where the computer, and therefore the DSL modem, is located? Or is it a billing issue of some sort? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My first thought was the line they put it on in error was her listed number (in the directory) for incoming calls and she had a lot of voice traffic on that line which would have to be dealt with. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 20:50:46 -0700 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: To 'Bell' or NOT to 'Bell' - Names/Logos/Holdings/etc. In article , Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > Now they are part of 'SBC' (which wants to merge with Ameritech). > At divestiture SBC (Southwestern Bell Corporation) was the only one > of the seven "RBOC" holding companies which was one-in-the-same > identical original pre-divestiture Bell Operating Companies. This is a somewhat nitpicky point, but post-divestiture Southwestern Bell is not quite *IDENTICAL* to pre-divestiture Southwestern Bell. Specifically, the area around El Paso, Texas -- roughly the area of Texas that is in the Mountain Time Zone -- was served by Mountain Bell, but became part of Southwestern Bell at divestiture. It's a fairly small chunk of land, relative to the whole of Texas anyway, but it has well over half a million people. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom(at)LincMad(dot)com * North American Telephone Area Codes & Splits >> NOTE: e-mail replies to the address in this sig will be read first! << ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Older Business Systems? Date: 28 Oct 1999 18:13:52 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS In our discussion of touchtone keypads, I thought about the phone systems of large organizations and how they've evolved. Time point: 1970 vs. today. IIRC, business users tended to share phone LINES (either centrex or PBX extension) within an office, via the use of six button keysets, rather than giving each person their own direct number, as is done now. For example, with Centrex or PBX, an office of ten people might have three lines. Each person might have a phone on their desk, but a keyset and they'd have to share the three lines. That's the way I remember it back then. It seems like today every worker has their own phone line, and they merely transfer a call to someone else rather than merely yelling over "pick up line 1". I also remember many key systems with bare bone functionality. I know a lot did not have lamps -- they had the hold key and line keys, but no blinking for ringing or steady for in use. ("Wink hold" was also an additional option above having lamps.) And it seemed to take years for Touch Tone to be universal in business offices -- the plain black phone with metal dial (not even plastic) was the standard. I wonder if the pricing of providing individual lines to someone, centrex or PBX was higher in years past, and higher enough to offset the cost of providing key systems. (I see many offices today with simple phones, but more of them.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I used to see a lot of interesting combinations on six-button, five-line phones. Do you remember the older phone sets where the line buttons on the bottom were slender and round instead of square as in later years? Or when the 'hold' button (the first one on the left) was clear instead of red? I saw one arrangement where there were three *extensions* (from a PBX elsewhere in the company (three-digit extensions); the fifth button was a dial intercom within that working area of twelve or thirteen people, and the sixth button was non-locking and served as a link to an overhead public announcement system (one pair on it for the talk, and another pair to key the microphone I guess). Why the company did not have an extension phone for each person rather than having three extensions to serve the entire department with an intercom for them to talk among themselves I do not know. In the days before computers when customer service representatives used to have to walk into rows and rows of file cabinets to pull a customer's file to discuss the account there were interesting uses for multi-line phones also. In very large companies, the 'file room' would often be the length of a football field several rows deep and several rows wide of file cabinets. Each aisle would be marked with the equivilent of a 'street sign'. Thousands of file cabinets, each with hundreds of files. The 'street signs' would say something like 'accounts 1234567 through 2345678' with an arrow pointing one way, and some different numbers with an arrow pointing the other way. Every ten or fifteen feet mounted on the wall would be a box with the buttons on it, and a place on the side to jack-in a headset. A common audible and common visual would indicate when any line had a new, unanswered call. Reps would answer a call, take the customer's account number, put the call on 'hold' unplug their headset, walk through the room until they came to the proper aisle, go down the aisle to the proper cabinet, pull the file, plug their headset into the nearest jack on the wall, (hopefully) remember which line *they* had left on hold -- for there were always several lines blinking in the cadence that meant 'on hold' -- and discuss it with the customer. Finish talking with the customer, disconnect, write up the notes for what was desired which went in one of various wire baskets sitting around as mailboxes sit on street corners, then plug in your headset to answer another call, and repeat the above actions. Perhaps as you were at one of the little 'lectern-like' stands everywhere writing your notes and talking to your customer, one of the dozens of file clerks or ledger-posting clerks would come walking along pushing her grocery-like cart in front of her which was loaded with file jackets, scraps of paper and whatever. She'd pull some papers out of her cart, open a file cabinet (the really good, fast ones could do it with their eyes closed), riffle the files looking for the one she wanted and drop her handful of papers in it, close the cabinet and walk on to to another one. If the file was not in the cabinet, she'd look at *you* rather suspiciously, come over to the lectern where you were working with your customer on the phone, pick the file jacket up and see if it was the one she wanted. If it was, she simply took it out of your hands, dropped her paperwork in it, then handed it back to you, and walked away. I think maybe those wall-mounted things for headsets to be plugged into were twelve button sets; eleven lines plus a hold-button. They were all blinking and flashing constantly with calls waiting to be answered and calls answered but on hold while the service reps were around the room looking for the desired files, etc. At a place where I lived that had a manual, cord switchboard, the tenant phones were non-dial, manual sets; but in the manager's office she had a six-button phone with a dial. Two of the line appearances were extensions from the cord switchboard, a third was a direct (with dial tone) 'private outside line', the fourth was a non-locking key which sounded a buzzer on the same style phone in the owner's office in the room next to hers when he was expected to pick up one of the lines, and the fifth line appearance was a 'service monitor' ... she could press that and 'tap' the switchboard to observe the operators. (All it connected across was the operator's talking path, she could not monitor any of the extension users unless they were talking with the operator.) That last line appearance also went to a little speaker on her desk; she could depress that button, leave the phone on hook and listen to the speakerphone-like thing service-observing the operator on duty. But the strangest configuration I ever saw for a six-button phone was in the Chicago Temple Building auditorium. In addition to the hold button, the first line button was an extension from the switchboard which served the building. The second button was an open talking path to four similarly wired instruments. The third, fourth and fifth buttons were non-locking signal buzzers to signal any one of the three other stations on this open-loop party-line talking path. All of these had a headset jack in the back of the phone, and the user would generally just wear the headset all the time, always with that second button depressed, meaning he always heard the background noises etc at the other three locations. To talk with one of them you just spoke into the mouthpiece of your headset. I presume if you could not get their attention then you pressed the associated non-locking button to give them an audible buzz to get their attention. One termination on this loop was stage-right, another was in the sound and lighting booth, a third was in the radio station booth (where a few radio stations had permanently wired connections back to themselves) and the fourth one was stage-left at the organist. There was a fifth termination on the loop as well, rarely used, which was located in the organ pipe-chambers on the second and third floor of the building behind the stage area. This was arranged so that in the event the organ tuner was working upstairs on the pipes he could communicate with his assistant who was at the console on the first floor. Both would wear their headsets and chat back and forth as the tuning or other repairs were being done. They got that peculiar circuit from Illinois Bell of course, just as anything telephone-related came from the phone company. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 28 Oct 1999 23:04:25 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Attempt to Reach Payne Stewart's Cell Phone Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I heard a radio report which said there was some live coverage of this > story as it broke. That report says Stewart's wife was following it > and tried to call him on his(?) cell phone. So there can be a cell > phone on a Learjet? Well, sure. It was probably in his pocket. As we've hashed out before, cell phones don't work so well at high altitude. It's also possible that there were aircell phones on the plane, cell phones modified to work with an overlay cellular network that points up and is certified to be OK in planes. > I take it the attempt(s) by Stewart's wife failed because Stewart > was unconscious or dead. That's the working assumption, although if she was calling the phone in his pocket, it could also be because he turned it off at the crew's request when they took off. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: jposner@panix.com (Jeremy M. Posner) Subject: Re: Attempt to Reach Payne Stewart's Cell Phone Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 23:46:08 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In article , Carl Moore wrote: > As you know, golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed in a > plane crash (if they weren't already dead due to depressurization). > You heard the plane was going from Orlando (Fla.) to Dallas (Texas) > and strayed, pilotless, up to South Dakota before it ran out of fuel. > I heard a radio report which said there was some live coverage of this > story as it broke. That report says Stewart's wife was following it > and tried to call him on his(?) cell phone. So there can be a cell > phone on a Learjet? I take it the attempt(s) by Stewart's wife failed > because Stewart was unconscious or dead. Assuming the report was correct, it merely proves that she could dial the number for his phone, not that his phone could have received the signal even if he was capable of answering. Not to mention that the phone could have been off. | Jeremy M. Posner | "The internet? Is that thing still around?" | | jposner@panix.com | -Homer Simpson | | (212) 426-7967 | http://www.panix.com/~jposner/ | ------------------------------ From: radparker@radparker.com (Al Iverson) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Organization: See sig before replying! In article , TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > I wanted to let everyone know of two new anonymizing features added > at this website for use by anyone who needs them. > Anonymous outgoing email: > You may now send single (one piece at a time) email letters from this > site which indicate to the recipient that they were sent by 'anonymous'. > No response back to you is possible. Please let us know what domain name this outgoing mail is going to use, so we can choose to refuse mail from that domain. I already get enough slimy sleaze and spam from anonymous folks who don't have the guts to sign their name or legitimate contact information; please don't create an attractive nuisance that facilitates this. Al Iverson -- Web: http://al.radparker.com/ -- Home: Minneapolis, USA MAPS LLC RSS Project Coordinator -- at http://www.mail-abuse.org/rss/ STOP! Include SWANKY99 in email replies or they may be tagged as spam. Send me no unsolicited advertising, as I will always return it to you. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Surely ... I would look for mail from anonymous@cotse.com if you wish to refuse it. Ditto on Usenet posts. I am sure most moderated newsgroups would not accept anything from it either; heck, I would never publish anything sent here from anonymous@ cotse.com ... but it is available -- I will repeat -- only for netizens with good and honorable intentions by going to one of two locations here: http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice or http://telecom-digest.org/secret-surfer.html then clicking on the appropriate links therein. Thus far neither post- office nor secret-surfer has had any problems I am aware of. But they can be closed down promptly if netizens, instead of using these tools, decide to misuse or abuse them instead. Each piece of mail going out by the way is plainly marked at the bottom, 'this came from an anonymous user; address shown is not the correct address'. Before you use any of these privacy tools of course, always begin by sending mail to yourself, in a controlled environment so *you* can see the results. Ditto with secret-surfer. Make sure they will be satisfactory for your requirements, and NEVER use them in an illegal way. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #518 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Oct 30 15:30:31 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id PAA03786; Sat, 30 Oct 1999 15:30:31 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 15:30:31 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910301930.PAA03786@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #519 TELECOM Digest Sat, 30 Oct 99 15:30:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 519 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson ISDN Viruses (John S. Maddaus) DSL-Specific Search Engine (Adam Gaffin) Telephone Privacy (Monty Solomon) Re: 'No PIC Fee' Doubled Last Month? (Douglas Kaspar) Re: US West DSL Woes (someone@teleport.com) Re: US West DSL Woes (Dave Garland) To 'Bell' or NOT to 'Bell' - Names/Logos/Holdings/etc. (Bob Goudreau) Re: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map (Rob Levandowski) Re: New DNS Entry (Brian Elfert) Re: New DNS Entry (John R. Levine) Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here (Patrick Klos) Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here (Al Iverson) Re: US West DSL Woes (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Re: US West DSL Woes (Gideon Stocek) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net (John S. Maddaus) Subject: ISDN Viruses Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 22:01:28 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net Thought you and your readers might be interested in this. "ISDN Viruses are quite possibly the worst thing to happen to computing since the creation of the Cellular Trojan Horse. Basically, these viruses travel over the wires using the X.224 transport protocol, and seize the D channel using Q.931. All SS7 data sent over the D channel is quickly compromized and re-routed to different signal transfer points, causing massive ANI Failure over the entire routing mesh. Rumor has it that the Internet Liberation Front was behind these viruses with heavy investement coming from the German Bundesnachrichtendienst's Project Rahab. These hackers were paid with AT&T calling cards encoded with a polymorphic encryption scheme, and cocaine." Communication protocols and standards by definition are open to misuse by a potential adversary because: a) they make communications protocol details publicly available; b) they assume benign users are connected to the network; c) they define how network nodes must interface, thereby providing information on vendor equipment attached to the network; d) they were developed to allow for expansion (hence Q.931 for example contains information elements containing fields which can be unlimited in length and passed through by the network). A great weakness in the OSI model (from a security perspective) is that different levels of the model do not concern themselves with the content of information contained within other levels. It is merely passed on without verification, validation, or authentication. Though AT&T may choose to authenticate signaling between its network nodes I sincerely doubt they do so with a LEC or another IXC. The ability to send (and deposit on a remote telecommunication network node, aka a PBX through normal call setup) destructive code has been confirmed in briefings which I attended several years back. Combined with the fact that no person or entity knows exactly what is connected to the PSTN (and the advent of open market competition is increasing the number of unknowns daily), such "hacks" raise the bar considerably and are therefore potentially devastating. At this point I maintain that phreaking and hacking become one in the same. This information is beginning to make its way through the hacker archives as evidenced by the above excerpt taken from a recent Phrack Magazine article. Though the technical detail of this article may be suspect due to the nature of the magazine, the concept that is being aired is real and such press within the hacker community is likely to spread intense interest in bringing down a telecom network. John S. Maddaus jmaddaus@usa.net ------------------------------ From: Adam Gaffin Subject: DSL-Specific Search Engine Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:09:29 +0000 Organization: Network World Fusion Reply-To: agaffin@nww.com This week, we launched DSL Search, a search engine dedicated entirely to (ta da) DSL. We've indexed more than 4,000 documents from scores of DSL-related sites and resources, including DSL equipment makers (from modems to DSLAMs) and service providers. DSL-related articles from Network World and Network World Fusion are in the database as well. Use it for background research on specific DSL technologies or companies or to see who's providing DSL in your area or state (caveat: we've focused initially on U.S. and Canadian providers). http://www.nwfusion.com/dsl/ Note: No more pesky registration forms to use NW Fusion! Adam Gaffin Online Editor, Network World agaffin@nww.com / (508) 820-7433 "I programmed my robotic dog to bite the guy who delivers the electronic mail." -- Kibo ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 03:30:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Telephone Privacy Excerpt from ACLU News 10-28-99 Consumer and Privacy Organizations, Legal Scholars Urge Appeals Court to Protect Consumers' Telephone Privacy WASHINGTON -- In a friend-of-the-court brief filed October 25, 15 consumer and privacy organizations and 22 legal scholars urged a federal appeals court to reconsider a decision that would allow telephone companies to use private telephone records for marketing purposes. The groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the case is of great importance to consumers across the United States. The brief, filed in support of a petition from the Federal Communications Commission, asks the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a privacy provision that was enacted by Congress in 1996 and implemented by the FCC. In US West v. FCC, the federal appeals court said that the "opt-in" privacy safeguard recommended by the FCC violated the First Amendment rights of the telephone company to market products and services. The information that would be disclosed "consists of customer calling records that would not exist but for the private activities of telephone customers," the groups said in legal papers. "These records, which are not publicly available, include such sensitive and personal information as who an individual calls, when, for how long, and how often." An alternative "opt-out" approach, they argued, is burdensome and "would have required telephone customers to contact their carrier to prevent the disclosure of their personal calling records." The groups concluded that an "opt-in approach is consistent with the First Amendment and is the most reasonable fit with Congress's intent to protect the privacy of telephone subscribers' personal information." "This is not a question of whether there is a First Amendment right to commercial speech, but instead of whether corporations have a right to disclose the sensitive personal information of their customers without consent," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the ACLU. "If the courts allow companies to claim a right to disclose personal information, then every law that gives us control over our own data is called into question," he added. The brief was supported by a wide range of privacy and consumer organizations, including the ACLU, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Consumer Federation of America, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. The brief was also endorsed by many leading legal scholars. The Washington law firm of Covington & Burling filed the brief on behalf of the coalition. The friend-of-the-court brief filed by the coalition is available on the ACLU's website: http://www.aclu.org/court/uswest_brief.html Additional information about US West v. FCC: http://www.epic.org/privacy/litigation/uswest/ ------------------------------ From: Douglas Kaspar Subject: Re: 'No PIC Fee' Doubled Last Month? Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 23:08:40 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services My guess is that the price increase has to do with your phone provider being assessed a fee for the Universal Service Fund. Doug Kaspar Dave Alden wrote in message news:telecom19. 498.9@telecom-digest.org: > Nine months ago I got tired of all the fees my LD company was > charging, so I had my local phone company (Ameritech) switch my line > to no LD company. I've been paying my $0.54/month for the privilege > of being able to send and receive LD calls through other means. Last > month this fee was increased to $1.04/month without any warning. I > was wondering if this was across the board to everyone, and if so, > why? ------------------------------ From: someone@teleport.com Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes Reply-To: usbcpdx@my-deja.com Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:35:50 GMT On Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:31:31 GMT, craig@glasswings.com.au (Craig Macbride) wrote: > A friend of mine got DSL from USWest in July. > 1) Are USWest usually this incompetent? Oh, yesssssss. Couldn't pour water out of boot even if instructions were on heel because most of the techs who could read were laid off when they centralised in Denver (not to mention what the unionized craft employees did to the plant records, hehehe. Management found _all_ kinda stuff when they opened records boxes in Denver, hehehehe.) > 2) How can the US ever have any level of phone number portability if USWest > can't even swap two numbers in the _same house_ in three months??! Don't expect them to. Number Portability, like Military Intelligence, was a wonderful idea which, as implemented, tastes like year-old Vegemite. ------------------------------ From: dave.garland@wizinfo.com (Dave Garland) Date: 29 Oct 99 11:31:11 -0600 Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes Organization: Wizard Information Craig Macbride wrote in a message: > 1) Are USWest usually this incompetent? I've had three DSL lines put in by USWest. The first went in smoothly. We had some tech problems, my ISP wasn't prepared for subscribers with Cisco 605s (USW swapped it for a 675 without charge), my computer didn't like USWest's NIC (USW swapped it for an ISA card without charge). The tech support people were superb, knowledgable, and willing to take as long as necessary to solve the problems. But to get through to them required spending over an hour on hold each time. The second required that USWest first install a POTS line, as the client's phones were all with a CLEC. The installer did put a line in, but failed to connect it to the appropriate extension on the punchdown block. USWest wouldn't initiate the DSL service order until the line was actually in place, but was to do so the day after the install was scheduled. Never happened, a month later they couldn't find any record of a service order and had to start the process again (a three-week delay that according to service reps can't be shortened.) And they sent a PCMCIA NIC instead of the PCI NIC that was requested. They did second-day a PCI card to me, but failed to send the return labels for the PCMCIA card, so it's still sitting on my desk. Hold times were reasonable (five to ten minutes). The third DSL also needed a POTS line first. USWest wouldn't promise that it would qualify for DSL until it was installed, and since we didn't want it unless it did qualify, installing was an act of blind faith. The installer was supposed to phone in the DSL request. Never happened. When we followed up (three weeks later), they took the (new) order, shipped us a Cisco 675 (but failed to send a NIC), and hooked the DSL service up to the wrong exchange (823-xxxx instead of 821-xxxx, some poor sod in the neighborhood got DSL and didn't even know it). When we got that figured out they said they'd second-day ship a NIC, but three weeks later it still hasn't arrived. Last time I checked (five days ago) the DSL still wasn't active. -Dave, in Minneapolis ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 15:41:38 EDT From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: To 'Bell' or NOT to 'Bell' - Names/Logos/Holdings/etc. Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > Finally, in the early 1970's, Bell Canada and Northern Electric > partially held by Bell Canada, (US) Western Electric, and AT&T itself) > formed a new R/D entity called "Bell Northern Research". It has the > 'Bell' name, but not logo. It was formed to take over Canadian R/D > needs in preparation for the dissolution of the corporate arrangement > between Bell Canada/NECO and AT&T/WECO/Bell Labs, as well as to start > some "Canada specific" R/D in the meantime. However, a few years ago, BNR was folded back into Northern Telecom (nee Northern Electric) proper. Since then, NT itself changed its name to Nortel Networks in the wake of its acquisition of Bay Networks. Nortel has substantial operations (~10,000 employees) here in the Research Triangle Area, including what was once a BNR site along my daily commute route. That facility has consistently sponsored trash pickup along a section of that road via North Carolina's "Adopt a Highway" program, and the sponsorship sign along that road has consequently evolved over the course of 1990s from "BNR" to "Northern Telecom" to "Nortel Networks". Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: robl@macwhiz.com (Rob Levandowski) Subject: Re: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map Organization: MacWhiz Technologies Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 06:35:32 -0400 In article , Danny Burstein wrote: > A NATION OF PORNOGRAPHERS and spammers. That was the view of Britain > apparently adopted by one of the biggest Internet service providers in > the US last week, as it decided to block all incoming e-mail from > British companies. I'd be willing to bet that this decision was made by some middle management type who doesn't understand international naming conventions. The decision-maker probably thought that ".co.uk" was the domain name of some entity, not the United Kingdom equivalent of the .com TLD. The problem here is that the standard isn't standard. There's the .com TLD, which at one time used to be primarily for U.S. businesses, and now is global. There are countries that use .co.*, and others that use .com.*, which can be even more confusing. If the Internet were to be designed all over again ;) there probably should be a standard set of second-level domains for country-specific TLDs. Rob Levandowski robl@macwhiz.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: New DNS Entry From: belfert@foshay.citilink.com (Brian Elfert) Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 13:11:53 GMT sonya_woods@my-deja.com (Sonya Woods) writes: > Do you use the New Tucows Domain Service with OpenSRS? > What do you think about it? > I visited OpenSRS yesterday, and was searching for the domain name > registry process, but didn't find it. I found a primary technical > instructions, but I don't know if these instructions are for common > users or resellers. Finally, I couldn't register. You must have not read the site at all. The very top of the web page says it will not open until Nov 15, 1999. Also, I'm not sure OpenSRS will handle registrations by individuals. It looks like it will only handle registrations for ISPs. > been working with NSI, but Tucows prices and services are expensive > and prehistoric. I only found a problem with this registrar it's > working with owns Nic's instead of Core Nic's. Nominalia charges $20 per year, and OpenSRS/TUCOWS charges $13 per year. How exactly is OpenSRS more expensive? Brian ------------------------------ Date: 29 Oct 1999 09:30:55 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: New DNS Entry Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I visited OpenSRS yesterday, and was searching for the domain name > registry process, but didn't find it. I found a primary technical > instructions, but I don't know if these instructions are for common > users or resellers. Finally, I couldn't register. Well, of course you couldn't register, as it says on the home page it won't be up and running until November 15th. OpenSRS is intended for people who want to build their own front end, either for their own use or for resale, not for end users. > I forgot this option and came back to my current domain names > registrar, Nominalia.net. The Nominalia site guarantee the registry in > less than 24 hours (if I pay ...), and offered me easy customer > services for managing my domain name request service. I always had > been working with NSI, but Tucows prices and services are expensive > and prehistoric. Expensive? They'll be charging $26 for two years. The least expensive active registrars now are joker.com who charge DM80, about $45, and Nominalia who charge about $40. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: patrick@klos.com (Patrick Klos) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Date: 29 Oct 1999 14:57:05 GMT Organization: Klos Technologies, Inc. In article , Al Iverson wrote: > In article , TELECOM Digest Editor > wrote: >> Anonymous outgoing email: >> You may now send single (one piece at a time) email letters from this >> site which indicate to the recipient that they were sent by 'anonymous'. >> No response back to you is possible. > Please let us know what domain name this outgoing mail is going to > use, so we can choose to refuse mail from that domain. > Al Iverson -- Web: http://al.radparker.com/ -- Home: Minneapolis, USA > MAPS LLC RSS Project Coordinator -- at http://www.mail-abuse.org/rss/ > STOP! Include SWANKY99 in email replies or they may be tagged as spam. > Send me no unsolicited advertising, as I will always return it to you. Your signature implies you're heavily involved in anti-SPAM practices. With that in mind, you must realize that this anonymous service would be the LAST service any SPAMMER would use! It would be totally impractical for a SPAMMER to use such a site that allows only one recipient at a time (that's the impression I get from reading the posting). So why are you making a big deal out of it?!? No one hates SPAM more then me, but this posting serves no logical purpose except maybe to add to your anti-SPAM hype? Patrick Klos Email: patrick@klos.com Klos Technologies, Inc. Web: http://www.klos.com/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Everything I offer in the way of anony- mous services at http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice is designed in such a way as to encourage privacy while discouraging spam. If you look at the templates used for outgoing/incoming web-based email and the template used for outgoing anonymous email, you will see they are not very convenient interfaces at all for spammers, yet they serve their purpose quite well for users who wish to send occassional mail either for which they require a return address, or do not require a return address. Ditto the anonynmous Usenet postings. I had *thought* that feature might be useful for people who want to post responses or inquiries regarding sensitive situations in newsgroups where for what- ever reason, they dare not have their own name as part of it; at least not their own name from their employer's work station, etc. If a spammer wants to sit there and type in hundreds of newsgroup names in the little tiny box provided for same, or sit there and type in thousands of names in the little tiny box provided for same with the anonymous email, then god bless him. If he is not willing to sit there and type it all in by hand -- which is the only option he gets with mine -- then what business has he got trying to be a spammer in the first place? PAT] ------------------------------ From: radparker@radparker.com (Al Iverson) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Organization: See sig before replying! Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 15:26:25 -0500 TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Al Iverson: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Surely ... I would look for mail from > anonymous@cotse.com if you wish to refuse it. Ditto on Usenet posts. > I am sure most moderated newsgroups would not accept anything from it > either; heck, I would never publish anything sent here from anonymous@ > cotse.com ... but it is available -- I will repeat -- only for netizens > with good and honorable intentions by going to one of two locations > here: http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice or > http://telecom-digest.org/secret-surfer.html Pat, how are you enforcing this "only for netizens with honorable intentions" policy? Honor system isn't going to cut it. After the first harassing email one of my friends receives from that setup, I'm going to work long and hard to get it listed on the MAPS Realtime Blackhole List and any other blacklists found appropriate. Please don't create an attractive nuisance. Al Iverson -- Web: http://al.radparker.com/ -- Home: Minneapolis, USA MAPS LLC RSS Project Coordinator -- at http://www.mail-abuse.org/rss/ STOP! Include SWANKY99 in email replies or they may be tagged as spam. Send me no unsolicited advertising, as I will always return it to you. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am not enforcing any policies. I only fixed it, or tried to fix it so that people who have other than honorable intentions find it all quite difficult to use. A netizen who has honorable intentions does not need a 'To:' line capable of holding more than one or two email addresses which they have to type in by hand. They do not need a cc: or a bcc: line. They do not need a box in which to type their text which can conveniently go on for thousands of lines. A netizen with honorable intentions does not need a way to manipulate all the headers, and has no objection that the message comes plainly from 'anonymous@cotse.com' and that at the bottom of the message it says plainly 'this is an anonymous message and does not relate to the address shown above'. What kind of spammer could live with those terms? What kind of person engaged in deceptive practices would be happy with an address of anonymous and a disclaimer at the bottom of his message? I have yet to see spammers use anonymous mail systems; have you ever seen any? Forging headers is more their thing, and you cannot forge the ones I provide. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Scot E. Wilcoxon Organization: self Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 18:40:06 -0500 >> After quite some days passed, USWest finally told her that DSL won't >> work on line B, despite having accepted her order (and payment, of >> course) to do exactly that. > Pathetic indeed, but here's a "stupid" question -- since she has two > voice lines coming into her house, why does it matter which one is > being used for DSL? Both wires may end up in the house side by side but one might have had repairs which interfere with DSL, or one may have drops elsewhere in the neighborhood, or one might be getting fed from the industrial zone to one side which added 1000 feet too long for DSL ... not enough facts. ------------------------------ From: Gideon Stocek Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:08:56 -0700 Organization: Aracnet Internet > They advertise 256K, I usually get 60K, 100K on big files most > of the time, but it does beat 5.6K or 2.8K. You're misunderstanding the situation. They advertise 256 kilobits per second, you're mixing up kilobits and kilobytes per second in your example above. 256 kilobits per second is ~25.6 kilobytes per second (which corresponds to the ~5.6 kilobytes of a 56 kilobit modem). So by getting 60K (I assume you mean kilobytes or rather kibibytes now because you're mixing and matching bytes and bits) you're actually getting better speed than US West is selling. This reflects my own experience. I tend to get somewhere in the order of 40-50 Kilobytes per second. gideon ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #519 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Oct 30 17:09:44 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA07653; Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:09:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:09:44 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910302109.RAA07653@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #520 TELECOM Digest Sat, 30 Oct 99 17:09:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 520 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Danny Burstein) Re: US West DSL Woes (Craig Macbride) Re: FCC Gets Larger - Includes More Watchdog Activities (Bennett Z. Kobb) Overlay Question (kevina_toronto1@my-deja.com) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Adam H. Kerman) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Tony Toews) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Terry Knab) Re: Older Business Systems? (L. Winson) Re: Older Business Systems? (Bruce Wilson) Mass. LECs (Monty Solomon) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Leonard Erickson) Re: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception (Ray Hearn) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 16:05:16 EDT From: Danny Burstein Subject: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them In the continuing saga of the FCC trying to hide that USF tax which, let me remind people, sent $130 million of the last $207 million to the telephone company serving the 3.5 million residents of Puerto Rico ... AT&T Wants Fee Added to Phone Bills By JEANNINE AVERSA Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators opened an investigation Friday into a request by AT&T Corp. to sharply increase fees that residential customers pay to subsidize phone service for the poor, people in expensive-to-serve areas and school Internet hookups. [snip] The FCC said late Friday that it would not let the proposed fees go into effect for now and opened an investigation to determine whether they are justified. [snip] AT&T justified the proposed fee increase as fair and necessary to cover its increased costs in providing the subsidized services. [snip] Consumer groups assailed AT&T's request. "This is an outrageous proposal," said Gene Kimmelman of the Consumers Union. "It amounts to nothing more than price gouging to consumers, especially people who make few long-distance calls." [snip, end] Commentary: So ... the FCC is saying that they can raise taxes on a business, but the business can't report these to the customer, and can't pass them along either. Something about that sounds wrong to me. And Consumer Reports, which generally (although certainly not always) is against secrecy in government, seems to have missed the point here. And ... getting back to the dollar figures I quoted above. I can't help but wonder what was done with that $130 million that went to Puerto Rico. Seems to me that it might be worth following up on that. That amount of money could do a lot of mischief, or pay off a lot of favors. Or even pay for a small army. (Side note: can anyone point me to the legislation that Congress passed to give the FCC this taxing authority? I'm honestly looking for it, since I'd like to read the exact wording, and haven't been able to find it. Presumably there's something there that I just haven't located. Of course, if there's nothing, then that opens up a very big can of worms.) ------------------------------ Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes From: craig@glasswings.com.au (Craig Macbride) Organization: Nyx Net, the spirit of the Night (www.nyx.net) Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 14:02:48 GMT Ed Ellers writes: > Pathetic indeed, but here's a "stupid" question -- since she has two > voice lines coming into her house, why does it matter which one is > being used for DSL? Is it that only one of those two lines is wired > into the room where the computer, and therefore the DSL modem, is > located? Or is it a billing issue of some sort? Mostly that the business line is paid for by the business and used for business calls. Somewhat hard put DSL on the private line and then have the company pay the DSL proportion of the phone bill on that line. Of course, she could swap which one she uses for which, but that then comes to your first point, concerning which line has extensions in which rooms. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My first thought was the line they > put it on in error was her listed number (in the directory) for > incoming calls and she had a lot of voice traffic on that line which > would have to be dealt with. PAT] Interesting comment. Which line would be best in that regard depends on the time of day, business phone calls being vastly more likely during usual business hours. Business calls are also likely to be of shorter duration and therefore not impact the DSL performance for very long. Craig Macbride --------------------http://amarok.glasswings.com.au/~craig--------------- "It's a sense of humour like mine, Carla, that makes me proud to be ashamed of myself." - Captain Kremmen ------------------------------ From: Bennett Z. Kobb Subject: Re: FCC Gets Larger - Includes More Watchdog Activities Date: 30 Oct 1999 07:02:55 PDT Organization: Concentric Internet Services John Stahl wrote: > the FCC has "grown" two new branches to it's organization 'tree'; one, > with the onerous name of the "Enforcement Bureau", to 'police' the > Telecommunications Act of 1996; and the other, with a 'nice-sounding' > name called the "Consumer Information Bureau", to presumably to shell > out info to consumers. The new bureaus replace the Compliance and Information Bureau, (CIB) which had both enforcement and consumer info functions. So the two smaller tentacles replace one bigger tentacle. CIB was formerly the Field Operations Bureau, the dreaded/respected "Uncle Charlie" of wireless yore. Many of the bureau's field offices have been closed or replaced with automated monitoring stations. The Commission retains agents in major cities, but they aren't supposed to directly accept calls or visits from the public. Will the reorganization include more policy authority for the Enforcement Bureau? I doubt it will. The other bureaus can create rules without much attention to their enforceability. Bennett Kobb www.newsignals.com ------------------------------ From: kevina_toronto1@my-deja.com Subject: Overlay Question Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 16:33:20 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. My question is this if we go to a general overlay ie forced 10-digit dialing for all "416","467","905", numbers and 11-digit dialing for long-distance Canada/US calls can we not free up another 200 exchanges? ie. 416-000-xxxx to 416-199-xxxx (excluding 416-N11-xxxx numbers where N is 0 to 9).???? Does this also mean that we can now dial toll-free numbers as 10-digit numbers instead of 11-digit numbers??? Once ten digit dialing comes why not?? (before we could not use exchanges like 416-209-xxxx but now they are valid! As well as I notice that 00 now gets my long distance carrier. Why don't we change 011 to 00 to conform to international standards 01 could still stand for international collect. By moving to 00 for international calls we can make calling less of a pain for all. National calls could be dialed as 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx or as 00-(+1)-xxx-xxx-xxxx. I have noticed that carrier access codes are in the area code (101), I believe that * codes should be moved from 11 to (111) in order to keep standardizaion in the numbering plan! ie *67/1167 would become *67/11167. Doing this would allow us to phase in international standards ie. 112 for emergency calls since the "star-band has been moved from "11" to "111". These changes would allow us to slowly move towards moving towards standardization. Other changes would be phased in over the years/ or ITU would modifiy other codes etc. (We can move towards a world standard why not!!!). ------------------------------ From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Date: 30 Oct 1999 12:15:12 -0500 Organization: Chinet - Public Access since 82 Ed Ellers wrote: >Bob Goudreau wrote: >> 1) Stationery: no change required for an overlay; new stationery must be >> ordered if your area code changes due to a split. Advantage: Overlay. >> 2) Business cards: same as above. Advantage: Overlay." > You forgot advertising -- in most areas that still have 7D dialing > businesses often use only the 7D number in local ads, on signs, etc. > With an overlay everybody in the NPA has to change their ads to show > 10D numbers; with a split the only businesses that have to switch are > those that expect to get business from both sides of the split, which > in many cases are few and far between. I disagree. Most splits we have seen are within a single metropolitan area. Marketing is aimed at anyone in the area, not just people a few blocks away. Even restaurants that deliver to a limited area are going to paint the area code on their trucks. You just never know where the truck will be. Or you might wish to remind customers to call ahead from the office, which could be in another area code. Numerous businesses are going to end up fairly close to the NPA boundary. We've only seen a few splits in which the old area code was shared by two central cities with separate metropolitan areas and separate television and radio markets in which maybe there'd be little incentive to change billboards to list the area code. In these cases, they may have always listed the area code as metropolitan areas cross state lines but area codes don't. ------------------------------ From: ttoews@telusplanet.net (Tony Toews) Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Organization: Me, organized? Not a chance. Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:50:31 GMT Jack Decker wrote: > It amazes me that some long distance companies in Canada -- Canada, > mind you, where there is a huge area to cover that is mostly sparsely > populated, especially once you get more than a hundred miles or so > away from the southern border -- that in this place where you would > expect costs to be much higher, some long distance companies are able > to offer unlimited long distance calling within Canada for a flat > monthly charge, a charge that is even fairly affordable for the > average family. Clarification here. This is only for after hours and weekend calling. Here in Alberta the "Yak Plan", yes complete with pictures of Yaks, is $20 per month and good for anywhere in Canada except Yukon, NWT, Nunavut and some remote areas served by radio telephone or other such wierdness. Tony Toews, Independent Computer Consultant Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm VolStar http://www.volstar.com Manage hundreds or thousands of volunteers for special events. ------------------------------ From: tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Organization: The Home Office Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 05:38:56 GMT Ed Ellers wrote: > Bob Goudreau wrote: >> 1) Stationery: no change required for an overlay; new stationery >> must be ordered if your area code changes due to a split. Advantage: >> Overlay. >> 2) Business cards: same as above. Advantage: Overlay." > You forgot advertising -- in most areas that still have 7D dialing > businesses often use only the 7D number in local ads, on signs, etc. > With an overlay everybody in the NPA has to change their ads to show > 10D numbers; with a split the only businesses that have to switch are > those that expect to get business from both sides of the split, which > in many cases are few and far between. Empire Carpet in Chicago is one that has this nightmare. In Chicago, ten or so years ago, all their ads said call 588.2300 (If you've seen the ads, you know what I mean) Well, when 708 came around, both them *AND* the Chicago Tribune bought their numbers in 708 just to have 7D calling. Now, for the interesting part ... Empire has *now* gone to a toll-free number 800.588.2300 (and advertises this number in LA too) with the famous jingle recut with 800 tacked onto it. Now there's one way to avoid an area code split. Terry E. Knab News/Interm System Administrator Nyx Public Access Unix [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The famous (at least to Chicagoans) little jingle 'five eight eight, two three hundred ... Empire!' which they sang on television and radio a dozen times per day for years one day started sounding different: it now began with about two seconds of four-part harmony on the very front with a short pause ... 'eight-hundred ........ five-eight-eight, two-three- hundred'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Re: Older Business Systems? Date: 30 Oct 1999 00:39:50 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > one arrangement where there were three *extensions* (from a PBX > elsewhere in the company (three-digit extensions); the fifth button > was a dial intercom within that working area of twelve or thirteen This was a very common arrangement, even in PBX systems. Some local intercoms were dial, others used little push buttons attached to the side of the phone. > Why the company > did not have an extension phone for each person rather than having > three extensions to serve the entire department with an intercom for > them to talk among themselves I do not know. I wonder if perhaps years ago the cost of a key intercom system, plus the convenience of the common extensions and intercom somehow outweighed giving people individual lines. Perhaps running copper wire to accomodate individual extensions for everyone, plus space on the switchboard and switching system, was expensive back then. Maybe there was a hefty price difference between a 1,000 extension system and a 1,300 extension system. > In the days before computers when customer service representatives > used to have to walk into rows and rows of file cabinets to pull a > customer's file to discuss the account there were interesting uses > for multi-line phones also. ... > Every ten or fifteen feet mounted on the wall would be a box with the > buttons on it, and a place on the side to jack-in a headset. A > common audible and common visual would indicate when any line had a > new, unanswered call. The Free Library of Philadelphia had a such an arragement in its master card catalog room for librarians to answer telephone inquiries. But I don't think this key system had lamps on it, the librarian had to remember which line the call came in on. The keys were on the standard wall-type keyset box. (Wall phones in key systems used a regular phone and an adjacent mounted box for the six keys. I've also seen such boxes mounted flat on desks when Trimline phones were used in key systems, and used a control panel for PA systems. > mgr had a six-button phone with a dial. Two of the line appearances > were extensions from the cord switchboard, a third was a direct (with > dial tone) 'private outside line', My high school had this arrangement in the counselor's office. The school had a 555 PBX connecting Bell phones in the offices (classrooms had a separate private phone system). Counselors had extensions of the PBX, but also their own direct dial lines as well, plus a dial intercom within their office. The six keys' of a counselor's phone were: HOLD, outside line 1, outside line 2, PBX ext, PBX ext of adjacent office, Intercom. Several offices in the school also had direct lines as well as a PBX extension. All the others used a simple separate 500 set. (The PBX was used only for outside calls, inside calls used the other private system.) The other post on Phila's City Hall brought up the issue of toll calls on business systems. I'm glad he mentioned that, because times of changed dramatically there as well. In the old days (1970), making a long distance call was serious business. Most extensions in a business did NOT have this authority, indeed, they were local if they even had city dialing authorization. Any toll calls (including message unit suburban calls), had to go through the company operator, who wrote up a internal chargeback ticket and requested the Bell operator for time and charges to put on the ticket. I presume when the cost of direct distance fell enough, along with the cost of operator handled calls going up so steeply, that it became simpler for companies to cease bothering with such controls. Further, large companies can afford common outward WATS lines. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When Illinois Bell used to have a public office on the north side of Chicago at Broadway and Bryn Mawr Avenue, the service reps all had six-button, five line sets on their desks. Then one day, I guess AT&T decided, let's begin pushing Prin- cess phones. Everyone in the business office got a Princess phone as a way of making sure customers saw them all over the place when they came in to discuss their account, etc. So here is this single line Princess phone (although they were also manufactured on request for two lines, with a single 'turn-button' which selected the line to use) on each rep's desk, with the multi-line part of it in a little black box also on each desk which had the winking-blinking lights, hold-button, etc. Some of those six button sets had very strange configurations. Do you remember how you could get a single line phone where the right plunger of the switchhook could be lifted up a quarter inch or so until it latched and that served as an 'exclusion key' cutting off any other extension that were on the same line? And if you had a 'two-line, turn-button' phone the little plastic knob in the left corner of the face plate directed with line (of two) the phone was on, and in those cases, the same right plunger of the switchhook served as 'mechanical hold' (that is, by merely shorting the wires of the line you were NOT talking on). The little two position turn button which selected the line you were on also had a *third* position; you could momentarily press it and if equipped, other phones on the line had a supplementary buzzer which would sound, to tell the user to pick up one of the lines. Well, if you had a six- button/five line phone, if equipped the right plunger on the switchhook served as an exclusion key for any one of the lines, and the little two position turn knob, if equipped, served as the handset/headset bypass and users were cautioned that 'merely replacing the receiver does not hang up the phone if the button is turned to headset mode'; the line keys also had to all be disengaged as well, or the button turned back to handset mode. Although normally depressing one of the line keys caused any other line key which was depressed to pop back up, it was only a matter of adjusting the ball-bearings in the bottom to fix it so that two or more keys could be depressed at one time, which was a very common configuration in places where user configured conference capability was required. And did you ever see the inside of a six- or twelve-button key set from Western Electric? Those things were absolute works of art. As Mark Cuccia likes to say, there was one Bell System, and it used to work quite well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) Date: 29 Oct 1999 11:38:22 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Older Business Systems? > IIRC, business users tended to share phone LINES (either centrex or > PBX extension) within an office, via the use of six button keysets, > rather than giving each person their own direct number, as is done > now. > For example, with Centrex or PBX, an office of ten people might have > three lines. Each person might have a phone on their desk, but a > keyset and they'd have to share the three lines. That's the way I > remember it back then. It seems like today every worker has their own > phone line, and they merely transfer a call to someone else rather > than merely yelling over "pick up line 1". I think the arrangement you describe is still in common use in small businesses. Our current key system can handle up to 8 CO lines and 16 extensions; and we use the internal paging to announce calls at least as much as we call the stations directly. In looking for a larger system, we're not considering DID because we don't have a 1:1 ratio between people and extensions. Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 01:18:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Mass. LECs This partial listing of telecommunications companies providing local exchange services in Massachusetts is alphabetical under the company name that was used to become certificated/registered in Massachusetts. Companies may do business under more than one name, i.e. d/b/a. This list is updated periodically. http://www.magnet.state.ma.us/dpu/telecom/lexchpro.htm ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 22:51:27 PST Organization: Shadownet Scot E. Wilcoxon writes: >> people old enough to use cell phones don't have much cell >> division going on in the area near the antenna. It seems to me that >> the phone might be much more dangerous on your lap than next to your >> head. > OK, that subject has recent research. New neurons are continually > being made. > http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500045561-500074264-500183493 > -0,00.html > Not long ago an impossible experiment was done on humans. There's a > chemical which in animal studies stains only new neurons, and has > shown cell growth in animal brains. But for several reasons, mainly > because it is toxic, it could not be given to humans, and the human > brains couldn't be cut up for study anyway. A researcher accidentally > discovered that the chemical was being given to a few cancer patients > due to its specific toxicity; he got permission from some patients to > study their brains and over the next several years some of them died. > New neurons were found in the human brains. That's *not* the same as what you claimed. Yes, there is evidence that new neurons may be being formed. But they are not formed at anything near the rate that new cells are elsewhere in the body. If normal cell growth is a fire, cell division in the brain is barely glowing coals. fist@ozemail.com.au (Stewart Fist) writes: > It's interesting that correspondence on Cellphone Hazards from > engineers are all calculating what _should_ happen according to their > 50-year-old radio theory. They completely ignoring the biomedical > evidence as to what _does_ happen. > This is evidence of the old furphy that non-ionising radiation hasn't > got the energy to break co-valent chemical bonds, and therefore can't > effect human tissue. That was discredited about a half-century ago. > People discovered that they could actually see (a profound chemical > and electrical change) using a form of non-ionisiting radiation called > light. Apples and oranges. The cells in the eye are specialized *to* detect light. > There also seems to be a failure to comprehend the Inverse Square Law. > A battery-powered antenna one inch from the side of your head can > easily impact on the DNA in a single brain cell with much more power > than a 50,000 Watt transmitter a hundred yards away, or a soldier's > backpack. And brain tumours all start with the DNA of only one cell > going into an uncontrolled reproduction phase. Have you actually *calculated* (or better yet *measured*) the field strengths involved? For example, the backpack radios involved had the antenna from 6 inches to a foot away from the head. And radiated signals in the tens of watts range. Compare this with a cellphone an inch away and at maybe 100 *milliwatts*. S = p/d^2 cellphone backpack S = .100/1^2 S = 50/6^2 S = .1 S = 50/36 S = 1.39 So the backpack is putting almost *14 times* the power. And then there's my 5 watt CB walkie talkie, with the built in mike. My head is all of 4 inches (at best) from the antenna. S = 5/4^2 S = 5/16 S = .3125 So that's 3 times as strong as the cell phone. > And when a 1-watt GSM (TDMA) transmits, its power is concentrated into > one-eight of the time-frame. So the effect is like a stobe light -- > very short in duration but intense power. Wrong. It's *still* limited to one watt. That means one joule of energy in one second. Or 1/10th joule in 1/10th second. Or 1/100th joule in 1/100th second. This isn't *average* power, it's *peak* power. > The suggestion that you can just average the output, in the > expectation that the only effect is tissue heating, is ridiculous. And you are doing exactly that (averaging the power) by claiming that the power is *more* intense *because* of the short duration) > The question is; What effect does the pulsed power have when impacting > on DNA during critical phases of cell division? (which is a highly > electrical process). Why should short bursts at a power level of X have any more effect than longer bursts at the *same* power level? Remember, since it's the same power level a burst twice as long will have twice the energy. > These averaging claims are like averaging the local pressure of a > bullet over the ten minutes of confontation with a gun-man, and saying > its only a few pounds per second -- and therefore not dangerous. Again, you've got it exactly backwards. It's *not* a very high power for a very short period (which would indeed average out to a small average power). Instead, it's a low power for a very short period. What you seem to be missing is that the power limits on the phone are "instantaneous" power *not* average power. The short of "spikes" you are thinking of cause huge amounts of interference. If you graph the power output, it won't be a spike that goes way above the 1 watt line, but averages out to 1. It'll go quickly *to* the one watt line and fluctuate around it a bit for the duration of the pulse, then drop quickly. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ Reply-To: Ray Hearn From: Ray Hearn Subject: Re: Sprint PCS and Phone Reception Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 03:42:02 -0500 I have three of the CMD-600 phones in use and the greatest preformance gains I have seen are from a software upgrade. Just drop into your Sprint store and ask for the technician. Tell him you were sugguested that you needed a saftware upgrade. In 10 minutes he will return your phone with all of your present programing (features and dialing directory) intact but with a slightly smoother operating phone. Unfortunatly in my living room I have one of those notorious black holes in the coverage and I can lose a call on occasion by turning my head. Each upgrade makes this a little better. Outside of the coverage issue this is a tough phone. Regards, Ray Ed Ellers wrote in message news:telecom19. 510.7@telecom-digest.org: > Matt Bartlett wrote: >> In most peoples opinions the Sony "pop-up" phone (CMD-600) is >> probably the best phone that Sprint ever had. The newer Sony phones, >> CMS-1101 Singleband/CMS-1201 dualband are pretty good, having been >> made by Qualcomm." > Sprint PCS' Web site (http://www.sprintpcs.com/store/equipment.asp) > shows both the CMD-600 and CMS-1101SPR as available (refurbished units > only) for $39.99, as are the Nokia 2170, Samsung SCH-1000 and Samsung > SCH-1900. (The CMD-600 had a Qualcomm logo under the pop-up earphone, > and I've seen it sold under the Qualcomm name rather than Sony for > other CDMA carriers, so it's possible that Qualcomm made that one > too.) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #520 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Oct 31 00:34:19 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id AAA22767; Sun, 31 Oct 1999 00:34:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 00:34:19 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199910310434.AAA22767@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #521 TELECOM Digest Sun, 31 Oct 99 00:34:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 521 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Spring Ahead and Fall Behind (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map (Greg Skinner) Re: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map (Walter Dnes) The Calling Party Has Disconnected (Roy Smith) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Ed Ellers) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (John R. Levine) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Walter Dnes) dialpad.com Free Long Distance (charlie) Cellular Phones (Samantha Krysztal) More Cell Phone Questions (David Esan) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Steve Winter) Re: Pay Phone Paying (Jeff Foote) Re: Congressional Spam Bill Due Today (Shalom Septimus) Re: West Coast DSL Woes (David N Hunt) Traffic Termination (Alexander Kandelaki) Question About Traffic and Measurement Parameters (Molinari Alessio) Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service (Walter Dnes) Re: MSN Is First National ISP to Offer Nortel Internet Call Waiting (mous) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 00:21:56 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Spring Ahead and Fall Behind Today, Sunday, marks the day each year in which we 'fall behind' as part of the 'spring ahead, fall behind' observance we have in the United States each year. In many areas we must set our clocks BACK ONE HOUR officially at 2:00 AM local time Sunday morning, or at some point before going to bed or after arising that is convenient. But don't forget to set your clock at some point overnight or you will get wherever you are going on Sunday an hour earlier than anyone else. And for a good time, tune your web browser to the collection of links on this site at http://telecom-digest.org/linkspage.html and choose the item, 'At the Tone, The Time Will Be' to hear what NAVOBS has to say about it all. Of particular interest, try clicking on the link during the 'one hour, fifty-nine minute' phase; after one hour, fifty-nine minutes and fifty seconds, the man will tell you the time is one o'clock exactly, without missing a beat. PAT ------------------------------ From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Subject: Re: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 30 Oct 1999 22:14:11 GMT In article , Rob Levandowski wrote: > The problem here is that the standard isn't standard. There's the > .com TLD, which at one time used to be primarily for U.S. businesses, > and now is global. There are countries that use .co.*, and others > that use .com.*, which can be even more confusing. If the Internet > were to be designed all over again ;) there probably should be a > standard set of second-level domains for country-specific TLDs. Actually, the original intent of the .com TLD was for businesses that did not want to identify with a particular country. It was never a rule or recommendation that US businesses register there. --gregbo gds at best.com ------------------------------ From: Walter Dnes Subject: Re: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 20:00:45 -0400 On Fri, 29 Oct 1999 06:35:32 -0400, in comp.dcom.telecom robl@macwhiz.com (Rob Levandowski)wrote: > I'd be willing to bet that this decision was made by some > middle management type who doesn't understand international > naming conventions. The decision-maker probably thought > that ".co.uk" was the domain name of some entity, not the > United Kingdom equivalent of the .com TLD. I don't believe in dumbing down the internet. Besides, there will always be PHB's straight out of Dilbert who will mis-understand "See Spot Run". And I also see problems with trying to get countries all over the planet to agree with your definition of "intuitive". Walter Dnes procmail spamfilter http://www.interlog.com/~waltdnes/spamdunk/spamdunk.htm ------------------------------ From: roy@endeavor.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) Subject: The Calling Party Has Disconnected Organization: New York University School of Medicine Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 20:46:04 -0400 I just got a very strange call. Phone rang, I picked it up and said hello, heard what might have been a fraction of a second of somebody speaking, then a click, then a voice recording [the same woman's voice that says "please deposit 25 cents" in payphones] saying, "The calling party has disconnected. You will not be billed for this call. Please hang up now." Anybody have any clue what that was all about? ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 21:23:26 -0400 Danny Burstein wrote: > Commentary: So ... the FCC is saying that they can raise taxes on a > business, but the business can't report these to the customer, and > can't pass them along either. Something about that sounds wrong to > me. It's not much different from what Democrats in Congress did with the "retransmission consent" clause in the Cable Act of 1992; this allows popular local TV stations to demand payment from cable companies, but prevents the cable companies from raising basic cable rates to recover the payments. President Bush vetoed the act because of this odious provision; the Democratic majority in Congress passed it over his veto. ------------------------------ Date: 30 Oct 1999 22:39:34 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > In the continuing saga of the FCC trying to hide that USF tax which, let > me remind people, sent $130 million of the last $207 million to the > telephone company serving the 3.5 million residents of Puerto Rico ... Those numbers are quite misleading. There are two kinds of USF money. The bulk of it, several billion dollars, goes to small rural telcos like mine to provide affordable service. The other kind, the $207M goes to larger telcos that serve some rural and some urban areas when their own rate balancing isn't adequate to pay for rural service. The Puerto Rico telco falls into that latter category. It's not surprising, since rural P.R. is pretty rural and it's much poorer than elswhere. > Commentary: So ... the FCC is saying that they can raise taxes on a > business, but the business can't report these to the customer, and > can't pass them along either. Something about that sounds wrong to > me. I think that the theory was that the USF charge should be calculated as part of the per-minute rates, not a per-line charge. I agree that the whole system of inter-telco transfers is a mess, and I have grave doubts about the wisdom of using USF money to pay for computers in schools. > (Side note: can anyone point me to the legislation that Congress > passed to give the FCC this taxing authority? 47 USC 214(e) John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Walter Dnes Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 19:07:44 -0400 On Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:45:15 -0400, in comp.dcom.telecom Ed Ellers wrote: > You forgot advertising -- in most areas that still have 7D > dialing businesses often use only the 7D number in local ads, > on signs, etc. With an overlay everybody in the NPA has to > change their ads to show 10D numbers; with a split the only > businesses that have to switch are those that expect to get > business from both sides of the split, which in many cases > are few and far between. That may have been the case years ago. It just doesn't fly in populous cities. Toronto is getting a new area code soon ... > http://www.bell.ca/en/tools/frameset.asp?Location=/en/corp/aboutbell/overlay/content.asp The 416 area code already coincides with the entire City of Toronto (expanded to the old "Metro" boundaries a couple of years ago). There are going to be two area codes in one city, no ifs, ands, ors, buts. Splitting East-West along Yonge Street or shrinking 416 to the downtown core won't simplify things. Besides, there's a lot of development north of Steeles Avenue (905 area code, but still local call). Many businesses already include 416 or 905 in their advertised (media/paper/business-cards) phone numbers. A chunk of 905 is a local call to 416, so businesses already experience calls via 10 digits. An overlay is the least ugly solution here. Walter Dnes procmail spamfilter http://www.interlog.com/~waltdnes/spamdunk/spamdunk.htm ------------------------------ From: charlie Subject: dialpad.com Free Long Distance Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 04:23:23 GMT Organization: @Home Network http://www.dialpad.com We are having a lot of fun with this. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, we certainly are! Just so everyone knows what it is about, it is the first (and I think only) totally free of charge long distance phone service on the net which does *not* require downloading any software or place restrictions on the calls you make. It is done entirely with a java applet, so you will need to have java enabled on your browser. Since the Double Click people are involved, you'll want to make sure all the registration details you provide in the beginning are truthful and honest. When you have completed the one-time registration, you receive on your screen a little java applet thing that looks like a telephone, with a keypad, etc. Henceforth when you go to the URL http://www.dialpad.com you will login and get the little applet automatically. Assuming you have a speaker, mic and sound card in your computer, you can then make calls to any USA number desired and talk as long as desired. Exceptions are that 411, 555, 900 and 911 are blocked. No charge, period. I thought it was nice that it was done entirely in java, meaning that to make a phone call you do not have to leave the net; you just open the window with that applet to make your call. They even give you a speed dial function and a 'personal phone book' function if you want to use it, as well as a log of the calls you made previously. All calls must be dialed as ten digits. And it is all totally free. They pay for the phone call via banner ads that appear on the screen. You get a new ad every fifteen seconds or so, and it is hoped you will click on the ads from time to time. Since the banner ads are graciously provided to you by the Double Click people and are based on the answers you gave in the rather nosy and intrusive registration form (how much is your income, where do you live, how old are you, lots more) you'll want to make sure they have correct answers to each question. As your phone call(s) are in progress, if you watch closely, you'll see the Double Click people busily doing their thing also; so men, its important that you guard your private areas closely; they'll get into anything they can find if you don't watch out, as you sit there absent-mindedly chatting on the 'phone'. I think they read any other cookies you have on your hard drive as well as look at 'temporary internet pages', etc you have in storage. How long this free phone call site will be available I do not know; maybe just until the first time they get a good hefty phone bill and the advertising click-through revenue does not cover it all. Already some phreaks are trying to learn what can and cannot be called, while Double Click is no doubt trying to learn what the phreaks are about, the same as they will want to know all about you when you go to that site. So have fun with all the free phone calls you can make with this java applet thing at http://www.dialpad.com but remember the importance of keeping your computer clean and your own thoughts pure when you are accurately answering the questions they ask before they let you play with this new toy. I spent some time yesterday trying to figure out how to link directly to the applet and the cgi-bin without success. Had I been able to do it, I would have offered you '/public-phone' at this site minus all the banner ads and the privacy invasions. Alas, they have it sewn up pretty tight. If anyone figures out how to bypass all the nonsense and get right into the phone call part, let me know please. Anyway have fun with free phone calls at http://www.dialpad.com and watch your answers to their questions from the very start. PAT ------------------------------ From: samantha_krysztal@my-deja.com Subject: Large Quantities of Cellular Phones Wanted Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 04:52:43 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I need the distributor who can supply large amounts of cellular telephone models: Nokia 3110, 3210, 5110, 5210, 6110, 6150, 8810, 9110 Erickson A1018S, GF768, GF788, GH688, SH888 Motorola 920, Startac(any model), D520, CD930, V3688 Sony CMDC1 Siemens C25, S10, SL10 I need the bandwidths 900 and 1800 MHz. ------------------------------ From: davidesan@my-deja.com (David Esan) Subject: More Cellphone Questions Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 20:19:46 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. If I were to use a headset to get the antenna away from my head but kept the phone clipped to my belt, wouldn't that potentially harm the cells in my midsection? 4. How about cordless phones? Or is the power output too low to worry? TIA David Esan Veramark Technologies desan@veramark.com ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 18:37:21 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Scot E. Wilcoxon spake thusly and wrote: > OK, that subject has recent research. New neurons are continually > being made. Would wearing a little tinfoil hat while talking on the cellular phone help? Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: Jeff Foote Subject: Re: Pay Phone Paying Date: 29 Oct 1999 05:41:56 GMT Organization: Washington State University Stanley Cline wrote: > John R. Levine wrote: >> How many other places still have postpay? It's nice. I know of about three companies in my area which have postpay phones. 1. Pioneer Telephone Company (LaCrosse, WA), the price is only $0.10. 2. Sprint/United Telephone has a few postpay phones remaining in south-central Washington, but they have mostly prepay cocot-like phones now. 3. CenturyTel (formerly PTI) has them in many small eastern Washington towns, except for places where the exchanges were sold to them by US West in 1994, those places have prepay. > Both areas have modern digital switches, SS7, equal access, etc. Same for all the places I mentioned. Have you called a pay phone today? Visit the Pay Phone Directory website! http://www.payphone-directory.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How do postpay phones collect their money in the case of one-way calls to recorded announcement lines, where no talking by the caller is done anyway? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Shalom Septimus Subject: Re: Congressional Spam Bill Due Today Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 02:44:49 -0400 On 23 Oct 1999 22:03:25 -0400, dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) wrote: > Of course, if the FCC doesn't agree to this, the alternative is for the > ISP to write a very short program which sends a list to the FCC of _all_ > its current _AND POTENTIAL_ customers, i.e. one starting with "aaaaaaaa", > "aaaaaaab" .... and ending with "zzzzzzz". Hmm, that would be 26*26*26... > a pretty large number. And then, one by one, without any fuss, the stars would start going out ... :-) Shalom Septimus druggist@pobox.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:32:43 -0400 From: David N Hunt Subject: Re: West Coast DSL Woes Organization: Mid-South Consulting Engineers, Inc. > We recently switched from SW Bell analog lines to T1 PRI DID lines from > InterMedia. As part of the changeover, we installed a new Norstar > MICS KSU. Everything works very nicely except for one thing: when > we make outgoing calls, the called party with a CallerID box will see > our number, but *Unknown Name* instead of our business name. > The InterMedia trouble-shooters say it isn't broken, their system just > doesn't pass the name info, just the number. Only the ILECs can do that, > not the CLECs. > Do you know if this is common or uncommon? Are there other CLECs that > DO pass the name? Are there any FCC regs (pending, but not yet in full > effect) that will require the name to be passed? Fritz, Caller name is obtained by the telco serving the "called number" doing a database lookup based on the "calling number" from the caller ID. If the terminating telco doesn't offer calling name delivery or the subscriber doesn't pay for it, the name will not be looked up and not delivered. Also, if the originating telco does not load the data on their subscribers in a database, and tell the industry which database to look in, the name will not be available for delivery. David N. Hunt, Executive Vice President - Business Development Mid-South Consulting Engineers, Inc. 3901 Rose Lake Drive, Charlotte, NC 28217 dnhunt@msceng.com, tel: 704/357-0004, fax: 704/357-0025 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:18:31 -0400 From: Alexander Kandelaki Subject: Traffic Termination Partners Wanted Dear All, Our company is looking for partners whom will be interested in our proposal. We are going to establish traffic termination exchange point for Central and Eastern Europe and ASIA to former Soviet Union Republics. Also we can terminate traffic from USA and Canada to Europe. We are offering price for incoming minutes more cheaper then existing providers in this regions. The first step is completed , we create already two Point of Presence : One in USA and second in Tbilisi (Georgia) and ready to terminate traffic to Tbilisi. Now we are looking for partners who will be interested in the traffic termination to Tbilisi, Georgia (International phone code +995 32). We have our own Earth Station, satellite channel to IntelSat 707 ( 359 degree) telephony switch, fiber-optic connection to local PSTN From our site we have all necessary equipment and staff , and we will guarantee you with Quality of Service connection to Tbilisi. From your site is necessary to have satellite channel to IntelSat 707 (359 degree) or IntelSat 604 and traffic to Tbilisi. For full information, please contact me. Sincerely Yours, Alexander Voice/Fax : (+1 530) 660-9975 ------------------------------ From: Molinari Alessio Subject: Questions About Traffic and Measurement Parameters Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:32:10 +0200 Where can I find information about telephone traffic and measurements parameters? Best Regards Alessio Molinari Network Management Misure qualita' - traffico *+39 02 41331.6204 *alessio.molinari@infostrada.it Via Lorenteggio n°257 20152 Milano ITALY ------------------------------ From: Walter Dnes Subject: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:33:41 -0400 Interlog was voted Toronto's best ISP three years in a row. Then it was bought by PSInet, and things have gone to hell in a handbasket ever since. The new unified news server (that serves all the Toronto area ISP's that PSI has bought) has been an absolute fiasco. After three months I'm still emailing to the address in the "X-Submissions- To:" header, because the moderated-newsgroup features aren't working. So I'm looking for recommendations re a personal newsfeed service. I assume any rates quoted are US$. (I'll probably be staying with Interlog for connectivity, especially if ADSL does get going soon). BTW, please don't make your replies too long, because then I won't see them. According to a tech's post on the internal support group ... > Posts over 10K not being posted: > This has been classified as a "technical limitation" of the > server, and therefore nothing can be done to resolve this issue. > The only groups that are not affected by this limitation are > groups that accept binaries, such as those in the alt.binaries.* > group listing. So I can download alt.binaries.sex.this.that.and.the.other, but CERT advisories and RISKS (and other digestified groups >10K) get dropped. Sheesh. As PSI integrates Interlog, I'll probably be looking at a changed email address one of these days. Doing it once will be enough. I'm thinking of getting a ".org" domain and controlling my own email address. Can anybody recommend a (hopefully non-spamming) registrar that will accept clients from the Toronto area? They don't have to be local. Again, I'll assume all rates are US$ unless otherwise stated. I don't need "value-added" business-oriented bells+whistles. I'd be getting a ".com" domain if I intended to set up a business site. Walter Dnes procmail spamfilter http://www.interlog.com/~waltdnes/spamdunk/spamdunk.htm ------------------------------ From: mouscatch@aol.com Subject: Re: MSN Is First National ISP to Offer Nortel's Internet Call Waiting Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 22:53:45 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > High-Quality Service Helps MSN Internet Access Subscribers Manage > Incoming Calls > Availability and Pricing for MSN Internet Call Waiting > MSN ICW is available immediately to new and existing MSN Internet > Access subscribers in Atlanta, Seattle and San Diego. There is no > activation fee, and customers can sign up for the service at > http://www.extremevoice.com/msn/. The current monthly fee ranges from > $4.95 to $5.95, depending on location. To use MSN ICW, users need the > call forward busy service, which can be activated by local telephone > companies for a small extra monthly charge; consumers also have the > option to sign up for the call forward busy service as part of the > online registration for MSN ICW. > Customers can order a free* one-month trial of MSN Internet Access by > visiting http://free.msn.com/ or by calling 800-FREE-MSN (373-3676). Why should I buy another service that just works on the Internet, $5.95/month plus call forwarding another $5.00/month? I already use a CPS call waiting box, http://www.cpscom.com/cwp.htm, when I am on the Internet. It works with the same call waiting service that I use for my voice calls, so I get double duty for my $5.00/month call waiting service. And yes, I have to dial back after I take a call, but who cares, its just another click and I'm right back where I left off. The screen pops may be nice, but for the extra $60.00/year difference, I can live with the 'beep beep' that my call waiting switch gives me. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #521 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 1 17:27:53 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA07495; Mon, 1 Nov 1999 17:27:53 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 17:27:53 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911012227.RAA07495@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #522 TELECOM Digest Mon, 1 Nov 99 17:27:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 522 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #206, November 1, 1999 (Angus TeleManagement) Nortel Might Be Spun-Off Says Parent - BCE (John Stahl) Motorola Announces Universal Cell Phone Chip (The Old Bear) Have You Visited Tribute Recently? (TELECOM Digest Editor) FCC Blocks AT&T Monthly Fee Increase (Monty Solomon) Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected (Diamond Dave) Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected (Steve Riner) Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected (Daniel W. Johnson) Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected (Anthony Argyriou) Excite@Home Keeps a 'Video Collar' (Monty Solomon) Real Networks is Watching You (Monty Solomon) Re: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map (Justa Lurker) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 11:20:44 -0500 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #206, November 1, 1999 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement's Weekly Telecom Newsbulletin http://www.angustel.ca Number 206: November 1, 1999 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: AT&T Canada ...................... http://www.attcanada.com/ Bell Canada ............................ http://www.bell.ca/ Lucent Technologies .................. http://www.lucent.ca/ Sprint Canada .................. http://www.sprintcanada.ca/ Teleglobe Business Services........ http://www.teleglobe.ca/ Telus Communications.................. http://www.telus.com/ TigerTel Services ................. http://www.tigertel.com/ ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** New Area Codes in 905, 604 by 2003 ** Call-Net Announces New Board ** Nortel Seeks to Halt Rival's Hiring ** QuebecTel Seeks to Shed Foreign Ownership Curb ** Bell Operators Reject Pay Equity Offer ** Bell Mobility to Offer Wireless Conference Calls ** Wireless Auction, Week Three ** Vancouver Wins Interim Right-of-Way Order ** Nortel to Equip Intrigna IP Network ** Videotron Writes Off U.S. Investment ** NBTel to Manage Networks of Cisco Customers ** Securities Board Proposes Electronic Delivery ** Copyright Board Protects Internet Music ** Bell Mobility Equips Wireless Campuses ** Consortium Formed for Broadband Wireless ** Telus Purchases Directory Publisher ** Cannect Offers Instant Teleconferencing ** TigerTel Buys Kitchener Reseller ** Cescom Starts Up IP Telephony Network ** Financial Reports AT&T Canada BCE Lucent MTS Nortel Telus ** Telemanagement Bonus: "Tips, Tricks & Traps" ============================================================ NEW AREA CODES IN 905, 604 BY 2003: It's official: Area Codes 905 and 604 are expected to run out of prefixes in 2004, which means that additional Area Codes will be needed by mid- 2003. Industry planning committees are now exploring relief options, including splits and overlays. CALL-NET ANNOUNCES NEW BOARD: On October 26, shareholders of Call-Net Enterprises removed Juri Koor from the company's Board of Directors and replaced him with Crescendo's Eric Rosenfeld. ** Other members of Call-Net's new Board: Robert Gillespie (GE Canada), Jan Peeters (Olameter), Robert Poile (Trident), Peter Tanaka (Strathshore Financial), Lawrence Tapp (Richard Ivey School of Business), Colin Watson (Spar Aerospace), and John Berndt, Art Krause, and Patrick Smith (Sprint Corp). ** Call-Net has sold its 11% stake in Microcell for $90 Million. NORTEL SEEKS TO HALT RIVAL'S HIRING: Last week, Nortel Networks asked Quebec Superior Court to stop San Jose-based Optical Networks (partially owned by Cisco) from hiring its employees. Nortel says Optical has tried to "get hold of our trade secrets" by hiring 19 of Nortel's Montreal engineers in the last year. ** The judge granted a partial injunction, barring 10 ex- Nortel employees at Optical from calling people they worked with at Nortel to entice them to leave. QUEBECTEL SEEKS TO SHED FOREIGN OWNERSHIP CURB: QuebecTel, 51% owned by GTE, says that foreign ownership restrictions prevent it from responding effectively to competitive pressures. It says wants to qualify as a Canadian company by reducing GTE's stake, but GTE has not agreed. BELL OPERATORS REJECT PAY EQUITY OFFER: Bell Canada operators have voted 54% to reject Bell's offer of $59 Million to settle their pay equity complaint. Their case now goes to the Human Rights Tribunal. BELL MOBILITY TO OFFER WIRELESS CONFERENCE CALLS: Bell Mobility says it will be the first wireless carrier in North America to offer wireless conference calls. WIRELESS AUCTION, WEEK THREE: At the end of the second week of Canada's broadband wireless auction, bids totaled $139.5 Million, up from $18.5 Million the previous Friday. On Wednesday this week, the bidding schedule intensifies, moving to six auction rounds per day. VANCOUVER WINS INTERIM RIGHT-OF-WAY ORDER: The CRTC has ordered Bell Canada, BCT.Telus, and Call-Net to each pay an interim fee of $1 to the City of Vancouver for access to City rights-of-way (see Telecom Update #184). The Commission says it will shortly issue a Public Notice on the matter, and has not predetermined the outcome. NORTEL TO EQUIP INTRIGNA IP NETWORK: Intrigna, owned by Bell and MTS, has agreed to pay Nortel Networks about $50 Million to equip Intrigna's IP-based business network in Alberta and BC. VIDEOTRON WRITES OFF U.S. INVESTMENT: Videotron has written off its 70% investment in OpTel Inc, which provides telephone, television, and Internet access services in several U.S. cities. OpTel sought bankruptcy protection last week. ** Contrary to a published report, OpTel is not related to Toronto-based CLEC Optel Communications. NBTEL TO MANAGE NETWORKS OF CISCO CUSTOMERS: NBTel Networks is partnering with Cisco Canada to provide network management services to Cisco customers. SECURITIES BOARD PROPOSES ELECTRONIC DELIVERY: The Canadian Securities Administrators have proposed permitting the delivery of prospectuses, account statements, and trade confirmations to investors by e-mail. The decision will be finalized in December. COPYRIGHT BOARD PROTECTS INTERNET MUSIC: The Copyright Board of Canada has ruled that music transmitted over the Internet is subject to copyright law. The ruling applies only to the person posting the music; Internet Service Providers are not liable for royalty payments. BELL MOBILITY EQUIPS WIRELESS CAMPUSES: Nortel offices with 1,000 employees in Ottawa and Montreal have been equipped with Bell Mobility's Wireless Office, which provides a single wireless handset that can be used on premises or on the road. CONSORTIUM FORMED FOR BROADBAND WIRELESS: Cisco Systems, Motorola, Broadcom, and eight other companies have formed a consortium to develop standards for a new two-way broadband wireless technology. TELUS PURCHASES DIRECTORY PUBLISHER: Telus has acquired White Directory of Canada, which publishes phone books for Niagara Falls and St. Catharines, Ontario. CANNECT OFFERS INSTANT TELECONFERENCING: Vancouver-based Cannect Communications now offers teleconferencing with no reservation requirement and no time limit. TIGERTEL BUYS KITCHENER RESELLER: TigerTel Services has bought Kitchener-based Telnet Communications, a regional reseller of long distance and local phone services. CESCOM STARTS UP IP TELEPHONY NETWORK: Montreal-based Cescom has launched an international IP telephony network, which it says will reach 20 countries by year-end. FINANCIAL REPORTS: The following results are for the third quarter: ** AT&T Canada: Sales for the first full quarter following the MetroNet merger were $331 Million, with a $63.8 Million loss from operations. EBITDA was $14.1 Million; most of the overall loss of $202 Million was attributed to merger costs. ** BCE: Profits rose 23% to $474 Million, or $123 Million after a one-time charge. Improved results at Nortel accounted for 90% of the gain. Bell Canada data services revenue rose 21% over the previous year, and now accounts for 19% of overall sales, which increased 3%. ** Lucent Technologies: Revenue was US$10.6 Billion, up 23% over last year; net income rose 50.2% to US$948 Billion. Lucent has reorganized itself into four core businesses focused on service provider networks, enterprise networks, network professional services, and semiconductors. ** Manitoba Telecom Services: Total revenue rose 4.6% to $183 Million. Wireless sales rose 15%; long distance sales declined 3%. Net income was $23.2 Million, down from $23.4 Million last year. ** Nortel Networks: Sales were US$5.39 Billion, a 30% increase over last year. Net income from operations rose 61% to US$380 Million, which was offset by a charge related to purchase of Bay Networks. ** Telus: Sales increased 1% to $1.45 Billion; long distance revenue fell 5%. Net income rose 3% to $144 Million. TELEMANAGEMENT BONUS: "TIPS, TRICKS & TRAPS": Until November 30, new subscribers to Telemanagement receive "Tips, Tricks and Traps," a collection of 22 Telemanagement articles by Ian Angus, Lis Angus, and Henry Dortmans. Included in the collection: ** "Eight Ways to Stretch Your Phone Budget" and other techniques to cut costs without reducing quality; ** "Those '50% of Savings' Deals" -- a self-defense guide against ill-advised contingency proposals; ** "Angus's Laws for Understanding and Surviving (and Possibly Profiting From) the New Telecom." To subscribe to Telemanagement (and receive Tips, Tricks and Traps) call 1-800-263-4415, ext 225 or visit http://www.angustel.ca/teleman/tm.html. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to majordomo@angustel.ca. The text of the message should contain only the two words: subscribe update To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to majordomo@angustel.ca. The text of the message should say only: unsubscribe update [Your e-mail address] =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER: All contents copyright 1999 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 225. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ============================================================ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 10:32:45 From: John Stahl Subject: Nortel Might Be Spun-Off Says Parent - BCE Here is some hot news about the potential future of Nortel, one of the world's largest suppliers of telecommunications equipment. Wonder if it can survive, much less compete with it's largest competitor, Lucent, if it is spun-off? Can it make it on it's own? Article submitted by: John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecom/Data Consultant email: aljon@worldnet.att.net Nortel Could Be Spun Off Says Parent Company By Reuters Oct 28, 1999 (3:48 AM) BCE Inc., Canada's biggest telecommunications conglomerate, posted strong results in its third quarter but said it might consider spinning off a strong contributor to its bottom line -- affiliate Nortel Networks Corp. . In a telephone conference call, BCE President and Chief Executive Jean Monty said the 'high' discount on the conglomerate's share price has been a hot topic with investors who have been wondering whether it would help to spin off 41-percent-owned Nortel, one of the world's biggest telecom equipment makers. "If the discount is not reduced over time by the operational initiatives that I have just referred to, we might consider structural changes to the group, including the possible spin out of Nortel," Monty told analysts in a conference call. "However, I am not going to speculate with you on the likelihood of this scenario, and that is all I will have to say about Nortel today," he added. Under questioning from analysts, Monty would not say exactly how BCE might accomplish such a spin-off. Nortel's results are no longer consolidated into BCE's results, but accounted for on an equity basis. Analysts have said the rationale to a spin-off of Nortel centers on the stock market's view of BCE as a holding group rather than as an operating company. That depresses the value of BCE's share price, which might be better valued if the company sold off Nortel to focus on its remaining operating concerns. As in previous quarters, Nortel helped boost the parent company's third-quarter baseline profit -- before any special items -- to C$474 million or 74 Canadian cents a share from C$380 million or 60 Canadian cents a share a year earlier. Late Tuesday, Nortel reported that its third-quarter operating profit hit 28 U.S. cents a share, beating a consensus forecast of 26 U.S. cents from analysts. The telecom gear company's results rose on booming sales of fiber-optic products, which are widely used in the surging market for Internet connections. BCE said its net earnings for the quarter totaled 19 Canadian cents a share, or C$123 million, including net special charges of C$351 million that came largely from acquisition-related charges at Nortel. In the year earlier period, BCE reported net profit of C$5.83 a share, or C$3.7 billion, inflated by gains of C$3.3 billion mainly related to a dilution gain on BCE's reduced ownership in Nortel. BCE unit Bell Canada, the nation's biggest phone company, also added to BCE's earnings. Bell, currently 80 percent owned by BCE, posted a baseline contribution of C$278 million versus a year-ago C$340 million. In March, U.S. Baby Bell Ameritech Corp., now a unit of SBC Communications Inc., bought a 20-percent stake in Bell Canada for C$5.1 billion. Monty told the analysts that BCE has been focusing on growth by integrating the group's companies so that it is more of an operating company. BCE shares lost C$1.65 to C$82.75 on the Toronto Stock Exchange Wednesday, while Nortel rose C$1.70 to C$85.50. Fred Ketchen, director of equity trading at ScotiaMcLeod Inc. pointed out that the investors seemed unimpressed with BCE's results. "The market is telling us it did poorly." However, the numbers were confusing, Ketchen added. "I wish that when companies reported earnings, they would report them in a manner which we could understand." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 13:26:49 -0500 From: The Old Bear Subject: Motorola Announces Universal Cell Phone Chip A CHIP FOR ALL STANDARDS Motorola is the first semiconductor manufacturer to announce a single chip conforming to all of the world's cellular phone standards and capable of allowing wireless phone users to send e-mail and browse the Web. Called DSP56690, the chip meets the CDMA, GSM, and iDEN, and TDMA standards and also supports satellite-based products. summarized by NewScan from: Reuters/San Jose Mercury News (1 Nov 99) http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/014129.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 01:27:16 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Have You Visited Tribute Recently? One of the more popular parts of this site is 'Tribute to the Telephone' which I sometimes call our online telephone museum. The pages in that section of this site receive several hundred hits daily from visitors seeking to learn more telephone history, view antique telephone sets and see other fascinating exhibits about telecommunications. David Massey hosts that part, which is accessed as: http://telecom-digest.org/tribute Recent additions to Tribute to the Telephone during October and some additions officially scheduled to 'go live' as of November 6 include a CD ROM of 'Tribute' in its entireity. This CD-ROM does *not* include the entire Telecom Archives -- only the 'online museum' part known as Tribute to the Telephone. To obtain your copy of the CD-ROM please see ordering details at http://telecom-digest.org/tribute/offline.htm where you will order direct from David Massey. But by all means, look over that entire section of this site if you haven't done so recently. Be prepared though, to spend several hours at it, as you would in most any large museum. Thank you, David, for a superb contribution to Telecom Digest and Archives. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 00:36:35 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Blocks AT&T Monthly Fee Increase WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission Friday blocked AT&T Corp. from increasing a monthly fee that the No. 1 long-distance carrier charges its residential customers to cover the cost of federal universal service subsidies. http://news.lycos.com/stories/Business/19991030RTBUSINESS-ATT-INCREASE.asp ------------------------------ From: bbscornerSPAMBLOCK@juno.com (Diamond Dave) Subject: Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected Organization: The BBS Corner / Diamond Mine On-Line Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 12:00:41 GMT This happens when someone was making an automated collect call via AT&T's OSPS system. If the calling party hangs up while the called party answers, you will get that message. The calling party more than likely found out they reached the wrong person and hung up! Dave Perrussel Webmaster - Telephone World http://phworld.tal-on.com On Sat, 30 Oct 1999 20:46:04 -0400, roy@endeavor.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) wrote: > I just got a very strange call. Phone rang, I picked it up and said > hello, heard what might have been a fraction of a second of somebody > speaking, then a click, then a voice recording [the same woman's voice > that says "please deposit 25 cents" in payphones] saying, "The calling > party has disconnected. You will not be billed for this call. Please > hang up now." > Anybody have any clue what that was all about? ------------------------------ From: Steve Riner Subject: Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 11:49:52 -0600 Organization: Frontier GlobalCenter Inc. Roy Smith wrote in message: > I just got a very strange call. Phone rang, I picked it up and said > hello, heard what might have been a fraction of a second of somebody > speaking, then a click, then a voice recording [the same woman's voice > that says "please deposit 25 cents" in payphones] saying, "The calling > party has disconnected. You will not be billed for this call. Please > hang up now." You possibly received a collect call (via, for instance, 1-800-COLLECT). Normally you will get a recorded message with the caller's recorded name interspersed indicating the nature of the call and giving the opportunity to hang up. It's possible that, if the caller disconnects before you accept charges (by staying on the line), the service will give you the message you received. Steve Riner Columbia Heights MN Explore Minnesota Highways of the past and present at: http://www.frontiernet.net/~riner/main_hwy.htm Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected From: panoptes@iquest.net (Daniel W. Johnson) Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 16:05:17 -0500 Roy Smith wrote: > I just got a very strange call. Phone rang, I picked it up and said > hello, heard what might have been a fraction of a second of somebody > speaking, then a click, then a voice recording [the same woman's voice > that says "please deposit 25 cents" in payphones] saying, "The calling > party has disconnected. You will not be billed for this call. Please > hang up now." > > Anybody have any clue what that was all about? My guess: Someone intended to make a automated collect call and changed their mind. (Perhaps they decided they had misdialed.) Daniel W. Johnson panoptes@iquest.net http://members.iquest.net/~panoptes/ 039 53 36 N / 086 11 55 W ------------------------------ From: Anthony Argyriou Subject: Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 10:49:34 -0800 Organization: Alpha Geotechnical Reply-To: anthony@alphageo.com > Anybody have any clue what that was all about? Someone attempted to make a collect call, then gave up. It sounds like the caller got to the part where the automated collect call system asked for a name, started to say something, then realized they had the wrong number and hung up. Anthony Argyriou ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 10:19:38 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Excite@Home Keeps a 'Video Collar' By Brock N. Meeks, MSNBC November 1, 1999 6:03 AM PT WASHINGTON -- When new subscribers to the Excite@Home cable modem service sign their contract, no one tells them where the land mines are buried. Those land mines come in the form of a mandated ban on providing access to any streaming video longer than ten minutes in length and the right of any cable operator to independently ban any kind of content from being accessed by their particular cable modem subscribers. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2385059,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 10:11:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: RealNetworks is watching you Reuters NEW YORK -- RealNetworks Inc.'s RealJukebox software monitors the user listening habits and some other activities and reports the information and the user's identity to the company, the *New York Times* said. A security expert intercepted and examined information generated from the program, and company officials acknowledged that RealJukebox gathers information on what users are playing and recording, the Times said. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2385034,00.html ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Re: Britain Knocked Off the Internet Map Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Reply to TD Please) Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 08:31:36 GMT It was Fri, 29 Oct 1999 06:35:32 -0400, and robl@macwhiz.com (Rob Levandowski) wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > In article , Danny Burstein > wrote: >> A NATION OF PORNOGRAPHERS and spammers. That was the view of Britain >> apparently adopted by one of the biggest Internet service providers in >> the US last week, as it decided to block all incoming e-mail from >> British companies. > I'd be willing to bet that this decision was made by some middle > management type who doesn't understand international naming conventions. > The decision-maker probably thought that ".co.uk" was the domain name of > some entity, not the United Kingdom equivalent of the .com TLD. I attended an internet class (as an assistant, not a student) in college where one of the system admins insisted that *.com was US based, was really *.com.us , and we didn't need to use the .us on those addresses because we were within the US. After a few vigorous head shakes from me the instructor allowed me to correct him. This was months after I set up my own .com - and back in the days when it was still free to register. I can see where someone who doesn't deal with TLD issues would be confused, especially with an Ameri-centric viewpoint. As far as standardizing .co. or .com. under the country code, it is more than a few years too late to change or really to wish history was different. JL ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #522 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 1 19:18:18 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id TAA12806; Mon, 1 Nov 1999 19:18:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 19:18:18 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911020018.TAA12806@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #523 TELECOM Digest Mon, 1 Nov 99 19:18:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 523 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: dialpad.com Free Long Distance (Fred Atkinson) Re: dialpad.com Free Long Distance (Diamond Dave) Re: ISDN Viruses (Fred Goldstein) Where is the FAQ For This Newsgroup (Tom B.) CD Software Is Said to Monitor Users' Listening Habits (Monty Solomon) Introduction to Unimobile Service (Udhay Sankar N) Re: Pay Phone Paying (John R. Levine) Re: MSN Is First National ISP to Offer Nortel's Internet Call (Ed Ellers) Re: MSN Is First National ISP to Offer Nortel's Internet Call (Turqey) Re: Sprint PCS/Wireless Web (Ed Ellers) Re: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan (David Lind) Re: Older Business Systems? (Dave Perrussel) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (David Jensen) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Fred Goodwin) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 06:54 EST From: Fred Atkinson Organization: Personal Copy Subject: Re: dialpad.com Free Long Distance > http://www.dialpad.com > We are having a lot of fun with this. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, we certainly are! Just so everyone > knows what it is about, it is the first (and I think only) totally > free of charge long distance phone service on the net which does *not* > require downloading any software or place restrictions on the calls > you make. Actually, not the first. I've been using a free one called 'broadpoint.com' for a while. They do not require downloading of software. You get a PIN number and dial a toll-free access number to get service. They limit you to two hours per month. The down side is that you have to listen to a thirty second commercial for every two minutes that you want to be able to talk. And if you don't use all of the time that you listened for, you lose the extra time at the end of the call. They do kick you off if you try to talk longer than you have allocated time for. Fred [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, that one involves using a telephone, and being delayed while the advertising is playing out. The one at http://www.dialpad.com lets you make calls while you are actually connected to the internet. It does not set a time limit that I know of, and the theory is that you will pay attention to the little banner ads presented on your screen as you talk, and maybe click on one of them once in a while. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bbscornerSPAMBLOCK@juno.com (Diamond Dave) Subject: Re: dialpad.com Free Long Distance Organization: The BBS Corner / Diamond Mine On-Line Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 12:14:45 GMT On Fri, 29 Oct 1999 04:23:23 GMT, charlie wrote: > http://www.dialpad.com > We are having a lot of fun with this. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, we certainly are! Just so everyone > knows what it is about, it is the first (and I think only) totally > free of charge long distance phone service on the net which does *not* > require downloading any software or place restrictions on the calls > you make. Though I like this new Dialpad service, there are problems with this service that you do not get with regular telephone or with another similar IP telephone service called Net2Phone. When making a call, you hear a fake ring signal while dialpad makes the call. If the call goes to an intercept recording (i.e. The Number You Have Reached Is Not In Service, etc) will not be heard. Same goes for other important recordings such as area code changes, phone number changes, etc. The reason is that you will hear the fake ringing (generated by dialpad's Java applet) until the call has "suped" (as Mark Cuccia likes to say) which means the telco at the far end has returned answer supervision for billing purposes (of course you're not billed since the call is free). You also get a fake busy signal if the called party is busy. However this only works if the telco on the far end returns a busy signal condition if they implement full SS7 technology. There are still some places in this country that are using MF singalling (though these numbers are few) and you'll just get ringing and ringing because the system does not get a SS7 signal!) And of course like other IP services, you cannot call Canada, the Carraibean, Guam or the Northern Marianas Islands (which is billed as domestic rates on most IXCs) and you also cannot call Alaska (and I think also Hawaii). With any IP system there is always a delay and echo. Though I talked with a few people with this service and they said though the voice was intelligable, it was muffled and low in volume (though that could have been my cheap microphone!) But -- I'm sure everyone can agree on the price -- FREE!! Its definately something to experiment with. Dave Perrussel Webmaster - Telephone World http://phworld.tal-on.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Just be aware that as part of the 'free service' they are doing a lot of snooping. You are getting specially transmitted banner ads based on your perceived interests, which are culled from the intensive registration form you fill in when you sign up. Beware the Double Click people who are hovering around all the time you are on line there. Give special consideration to the regis- tration form you fill in as part of the process. Yes, there have been a lot of experiments going on; quite a bit of testing was done over the weekend by users who want to be better aquainted with it all, while Double Click was getting better aquainted with them. I would be quite interested in learning how to link to that cgi-bin *and* provide it with the necessary data so that the opening formalities could be dispensed with. Linking to the cgi-bin is not a problem by itself, but it expects certain values to be passed to it at the time of the call, i.e. your cookie information; otherwise all it has to say in return is 'invalid information received'. Does anyone have any ideas on this? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 08:11:57 -0500 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses At 03:30 PM 10/30/1999 -0400, John Maddaus wrote: > "ISDN Viruses are quite possibly the worst thing to happen to computing > since the creation of the Cellular Trojan Horse. Basically, these viruses > travel over the wires using the X.224 transport protocol, and seize the > D channel using Q.931. All SS7 data sent over the D channel is quickly > compromized and re-routed to different signal transfer points, causing > massive ANI Failure over the entire routing mesh. > Rumor has it that the Internet Liberation Front was behind these viruses > with heavy investement coming from the German Bundesnachrichtendienst's > Project Rahab. These hackers were paid with AT&T calling cards encoded > with a polymorphic encryption scheme, and cocaine." I hope Digest readers recognize this for the put-on it is. Roughly translated into English, "The hoofaloofahingamajinga will prognosticaglify the frammistat". Believe me, there's no SS7 on the D channel, no X.224 anything (that is actually the now-obscure OSI Transport Layer Protocol, a failed competitor to TCP) in ISDN, and the whole rest of Maddaus' screed about security is just blather and falsehoods, written to sound scary. Usually this stuff comes on April Fools', but I guess Halloween gets a scare too. This one's just as real as the Darth Mauls in the first grade. ------------------------------ From: tlanford@earthlink.net (Tom B.) Subject: Where is the FAQ For This Newsgroup? Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 19:34:01 GMT Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Does anyone know where the FAQ for this newsgroup is? Thanks, Tom B. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are two ways to obtain a copy. You can look at http://telecom-digest.org and click on the link shown on that index page for 'Frequently Asked Questions' -- or -- since it is quite a large file (130,000 + bytes) if you prefer to receive a copy sent automatically by email do this: Write tel-archives@telecom-digest.org The subject line does not matter. As the text in the message, do as follows, flush to the left margin: REPLY yourname@site INFO faq END No more, no less. You'll get a copy by return mail a few seconds later in most cases. If you add some additional commands, you can get other helpful files from the archives automatically, such as: INFO with no description following, gets a list of all info files. HELP gets a file that describes how to use the information service. INDEX gets an index of all files in the archives (hundreds listed). GET latest-issue returns whatever the latest issue of this Digest is. SEARCH string where string is a subject line or author name for back issues of the Digest over several years. That's just a few of the things you can get sent automatically in email from the Telecom Archives. You can get definitions from our several GLOSSARY files, and a lot more. Remember, 'INFO faq' (without the quotes) will get you the Telecom Frequently Asked Questions File. Or, use the web site, but I cannot imagine you would want to sit there and try to read it all via the web. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 10:26:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CD Software Is Said to Monitor Users' Listening Habits By SARA ROBINSON RealNetworks' popular RealJukebox software for playing CD's on computers surreptitiously monitors the listening habits and certain other activities of people who use it and continually reports this information, along with the user's identity, to RealNetworks, said a security expert who intercepted and examined data generated by the program. In interviews last week, company officials acknowledged that RealJukebox, which can copy music to a user's hard drive and download it from the Internet as well as play it, gathers information on what music users are playing and recording. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/11/biztech/articles/01real.html ------------------------------ From: Udhay Shankar N Subject: Introduction to Unimobile Service Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 16:12:12 -0700 Organization: Unimobile - enabling the World Wide Wireless Web Hi: I work with a startup called Gray Cell, Inc., and the product we're working on is a desktop app called Unimobile. It's available for free download from http://www.unimobile.com/. So what does it do ? Two main things. It allows you to message others who use Unimobile, and also gives you the option of receiving messages on your desktop or mobile phone. You can also send messages to most any mobile phone in the world from your desktop. The other thing it does is allow you to manage all your email and get personalised internet content delivered to your dektop or mobile device - with one click! Unimobile's network has the world's largest footprint. It operates on more than 300 mobile telecom networks globally, including all major mobile networks in the United States such as AT&T, Sprint PCS, Nextel, GTE and OmniPoint. With Unimobile one is not required to change existing email clients, Internet service providers, mobile service provider or mobile device. So, as you can see, we're creating an entirely new category of application here, with a potential to change the way the net is used. Gray Cell is the first Indian company with a global consumer internet product. We're also the first such company to receive Venture Capital funding from Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists, having gone through our first round of funding from Draper International and Walden International, along with angel funding from Exodus Communications, Inc. founders K B Chandrasekhar and B V Jagadeesh. We have our head office in Campbell in the Silicon Valley and research & development centers in Bangalore, India. The official press release is at: http://www.unimobile.com/aboutus/pressreleases.shtml. I can be reached at this email ID, or by phone at 408-364-1400 to answer any questions you might have. More info is available at http://www.unimobile.com/. I think you will agree that this is of interest and that you will see fit to give us a close look. Best Regards, Udhay Unimobile --- The World's First Internet Mobile! Get one NOW! --- ------------------------------ Date: 01 Nov 1999 00:38:20 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Pay Phone Paying Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >>> How many other places still have postpay? It's nice. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How do postpay phones collect their > money in the case of one-way calls to recorded announcement lines, > where no talking by the caller is done anyway? PAT] They don't unless you're feeling honest. But for a dime, why not be honest? John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: MSN Is First National ISP to Offer Nortel's Internet Call Waiting Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 01:30:40 -0400 wrote: > Why should I buy another service that just works on the Internet, > $5.95/month plus call forwarding another $5.00/month? Call forwarding on busy -- which is *not* controlled from your phone, but instead stays on all the time to a fixed number you specify -- is often a lot less expensive than that. BellSouth in Kentucky charges $1/month. Since I don't have call waiting, my solution was to set call forwarding on busy to my PCS phone, which has voice mail and caller ID at no extra charge as well as no charge for the first minute on incoming calls. I turn the phone on while browsing, and any calls get passed to it so I can see the caller ID and either answer it or let the call go to voice mail. (The one side effect is that I get calls while I'm out of the house when my mother's on the phone, but that's no biggie at least in our household where voice calling patterns are not unlike those of a bygone era. :-) ------------------------------ From: turqey@aol.com (Turqey) Date: 31 Oct 1999 20:28:23 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: MSN Is First National ISP to Offer Nortel's Internet Call Waiting I am currently with AOL and it would take more than that to get me to switch to the Microsoft Network. It would seem that the other ISPs should make their customers aware of some of the other independant hardware and service type alternatives. http://www.56kb.com/reports/callwait.shtml ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Sprint PCS/Wireless Web Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 01:43:41 -0400 JSol Technologies LLC wrote: > You can also receive e-mail using the > address:xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com. It displays the name of the > user who sent you e-mail (but not the e-mail address ...). Sprint PCS has had this for quite some time before the Wireless Web offering came out. FWIW, a number of cities have a really good application for text messaging -- a service called WeatherWarn, being offered mostly by TV stations (and a few newspapers), sends regional weather bulletins either to normal e-mail accounts or to text pagers and digital phones (if the latter are enabled for text messaging). weatherwarn.net doesn't seem to have a Web site, but you can go to your favorite search engine and search for WeatherWarn *and* the nearest major city to see if you're covered. ------------------------------ From: David Lind Subject: Re: Warning: AT&T Bait and Switch With One-Rate Online Plan Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 06:47:48 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , Bill Ranck wrote: > Bruce Wilson wrote: >> Well, I have just today signed up with a new company I found on the >> Internet. http://newetex.electrotex.com/telecom/longdistance.html > A call to 700-555-4141 revealed IXC as my LD carrier. I called > Eclipse Communications and asked about that, and they verified that > they are part of IXC. Hard to keep all these phone companies and > psuedo-phone companies straight. Electrotex is apparently an agent > selling LD service for Eclipse, who in turn are part of IXC, who are > about to be absorbed by Cincinnati Bell. > I'm fairly certain Electrotex is just an electronics company in > Texas who are branching out into the telephone LD business. Never > heard of Eclipse before, but IXC I recognized. Not sure if that's > good or bad. Time will tell I guess. I am supposed to get my > toll-free number from them in the next couple of days. I will be > following up on that closely since I have two kids in college that I > want to use this. Also I want it for myself when on trips, so I can > avoid the outrageous hotel phone charges. Will keep my eyes open > for any service changes do to the merger. Have used IXC from another reseller (TMC) for about a year now. All fees the same only I signed up at 8.9 cents a minute, and they won't change. VERY clear billing statement, no strange fees, no obvious errors. No fee 800 number is great; calling home from a payphone without a dime in my pocket; no ld charges on the cell phone to call home; loved ones can call on my dime. All this at a good, rate! Guess it's obvious this is my first 800 number? Six second billing is a real $ saver. The worst thing that's happened, is once a lightning strike hit a switch in CA, and service was down for a day. Think that is the only time I ever talked to c.s. A 1010 number might come in handy if lightning strikes twice. Besides good rates, it's a pleasure to find ANY telecom company, that I don't have to wade through gobs of B.S. and convoluted billing to figure out what I'm really being charged. Wish Pac Bell made it this easy. [Note] I'm not a heavy LD user, and services are from a different reseller, so your results may vary. David ------------------------------ From: bbscornerSPAMBLOCK@juno.com (Dave Perrussel) Subject: Re: Older Business Systems? Organization: The BBS Corner / Diamond Mine On-Line Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 12:26:00 GMT On 28 Oct 1999 18:13:52 GMT, lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) wrote: > In our discussion of touchtone keypads, I thought about the phone > systems of large organizations and how they've evolved. > Time point: 1970 vs. today. What you discussed started long before 1970. > IIRC, business users tended to share phone LINES (either centrex or > PBX extension) within an office, via the use of six button keysets, > rather than giving each person their own direct number, as is done > now. You're talking about the infamous 1A2 key system, which we used to use in our office until November 1997. At that time they gave us our own phone numbers with voicemail. Some people where I work STILL use the 1A2 key system phones. > For example, with Centrex or PBX, an office of ten people might have > three lines. Each person might have a phone on their desk, but a > keyset and they'd have to share the three lines. That's the way I > remember it back then. It seems like today every worker has their own > phone line, and they merely transfer a call to someone else rather > than merely yelling over "pick up line 1". The advantage of that is that it was easy to have a conference call, just tell the other person to pick up "Line 1" or which ever one the call was on. With individual lines we now have three way calling, though its not as easy to do. > I also remember many key systems with bare bone functionality. I know > a lot did not have lamps -- they had the hold key and line keys, but > no blinking for ringing or steady for in use. ("Wink hold" was also > an additional option above having lamps.) And it seemed to take years > for Touch Tone to be universal in business offices -- the plain black > phone with metal dial (not even plastic) was the standard. Before we had the key system, we had old black rotary phones, then we had a key system with rotary dials, and eventually they were touch tone. Some of the phones of all three generations are still around, though some are in boxes now. > I wonder if the pricing of providing individual lines to someone, > centrex or PBX was higher in years past, and higher enough to offset > the cost of providing key systems. (I see many offices today with > simple phones, but more of them.) Sure it costs more to have more phone lines. Though I don't know how much savings they would get. Granted I think in our office alone, we had four lines serving ten people (though we usually used the fourth as a dedicated modem line) and now we have ten individual phone lines plus an eleventh for the modem line plus voice mail on most of our lines. So do the math and see that is more expensive. But how much more expensive with today's pricing vs. that of over twenty years ago and I couldn't tell you. Dave Perrussel Webmaster - Telephone World http://phworld.tal-on.com ------------------------------ From: David Jensen Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Organization: Jensen Family Reply-To: djensen@madison.tds.net Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 18:36:04 GMT What more does AT&T want. This month they sent me the following charges for "National Access Contribution": "Universal Connectivity Charge $0.99" "In-state carrier line charge .26" "Carrier Line Charge 1.51" Along with $0.26 in various taxes. I'm not a fan of these stealth taxes, but the way they collect the taxes appears to differ from the way they have to pay them to the FCC. I'm not a customer of AT&T and I did not use AT&T last month. I'm not paying the bill, but I am curious how many other people they send this fraudulent bill to. On Sat, 30 Oct 1999 16:05:16 EDT, in comp.dcom.telecom Danny Burstein wrote in : > In the continuing saga of the FCC trying to hide that USF tax which, let > me remind people, sent $130 million of the last $207 million to the > telephone company serving the 3.5 million residents of Puerto Rico ... ------------------------------ From: Fred Goodwin Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 08:22:58 -0600 johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) wrote: >> (Side note: can anyone point me to the legislation that Congress >> passed to give the FCC this taxing authority? > 47 USC 214(e) That should be 47 USC 254(b)(4) and (d). 214 discusses universal service, but does not mention carrier "contributions". 254(d) spells out the *requirement* that carriers "contribute". Fred Goodwin, CMA Associate Director -- Technology Program Management SBC Technology Resources, Inc. 9505 Arboretum, 9th Floor, Austin, TX 78759 fgoodwin@tri.sbc.com (512) 372-5921 (512) 372-5991 fax ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #523 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 1 22:52:06 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id WAA22627; Mon, 1 Nov 1999 22:52:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 22:52:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911020352.WAA22627@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #524 TELECOM Digest Mon, 1 Nov 99 22:52:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 524 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson African Stratospheric Airships? (Michael J. Kuras) Planet Communications & Computing Facility (Robert S. Hall) Re: New York Times Web Policy (Adam Sampson) Re: Motorola Announces Universal Cell Phone Chip (L. Winson) Re: Pay Phone Paying (Joseph Singer) Re: US West DSL Woes (Cortland Richmond) Re: US West DSL Woes (Tad Cook) Re: More Cellphone Questions (Steve Winter) Other Gigaset Models? (was: New Version of the Siemens 2420) (Doug Kiner) Re: Area Code 716 Split (Linc Madison) Re: Spring Ahead and Fall Behind (Anthony Argyriou) Seeking GSM StarTac Headset (Arun Baheti) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 16:02:52 -0500 From: Michael J. Kuras Subject: African Stratospheric Airships? (Came across this today. As with any PR realease, I take it with a grain of salt, but this one seems WAY out there. Is this even technically feasible? And if so, is it economically feasible for Africa?) U. S. / Africa Ventures Pre-Trading Opportunities http://worksessions.com/6783/ The Industry Is Wireless Telecommunications. The Focus Is The Delivery Of Telecommunications Services Throughout The Entire African Continent. US/Africa currently holds all operating rights to a new telecommun- ications technology for deployment of "stratospheric airships" throughout the entire continent of Africa. Additionally, US/Africa is a strategic partner with the developer and owner of this new technology, Sky Station International, Inc. for deployment of services throughout all of Africa. The technology will accomplish delivery of telecommunications from the stratosphere at an altitude of approximately 70,000 feet. Specific services can be tailored to meet the needs and desires of the country of deployment. Services will include Internet access, basic telephone services, mobile communications, broadcast communications, distance learning and telemedicine. Frequency allocation for stratospheric services has been approved by The International Telecommunications Union in, Geneva Switzerland. Strategy And Logistics Of Wall Street Tracy Manangent Inc's mission is to target emerging growth companies that project a solid future. Our objective is to educate the public by identifying strong new companies prior to them trading publicly. We call it "PRE-TRADING OPPORTUNITIES". The reason is no secret. On Wall Street the strongest returns are realized with transactions prior to a company trading its shares publicly. This provides an advantage to the investor in his efforts to maximize investment return. Michael J. Kuras finger for pgp key ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 18:04:53 +0800 (HKT) From: Robert S. Hall Subject: Planet Communications & Computing Facility Pat: I would be interested in knowing whether you or any of your readers have seen the message I received below today. Something is fishy about this, including: 1. PCCF.NET domain name only registered in June 1999. Reading below, you'd guess these guys had been around forever. 2. A Canadian firm claiming "Over the years we have used the BIND surveys to assist the United States Government and the Department of Defense in closing security holes in the domain name system infrastructure." Nothing against the folks up north, but I would have expected Uncle Sam to farm that kind of work out domestically. 3. I'm the domain administrator for a web hosting service in Hong Kong, now a part of the PRC. It's nice to know the US Government is so interested in closing its security holes in DNS that it invites Mainland China's domain admins to join in the fight, especially seeing how we (the PRC) were accused of stealing military secrets just a few months ago. 4. I would have expected the people running such an important program to use some of the "financial assistance" referred to in the messages to buy e-mail software with spell check capabilities. 5. Wouldn't the "Director of Public Research" for such an important program be a bit too busy to act as a domain administrator, as he calls himself below? I have also included the text of a second message received from Mr. Baptista at the bottom. Anyone know if these people are for real? Maybe I've read too many stories here about the length spammers will go to get addresses now days. It just don't seem right. Rob Hall -----Original Message----- From: hostmaster@pccf.net [mailto:hostmaster@pccf.net] Sent: Sunday, October 31, 1999 08:49 To: [snip] Subject: hello hostmaster for SOA [snip] Hello: I am a domain administrator with Planet Communications & Computing Facility. We are a private network research facility. I am contacting you with respect to the BIND 1999 Survey of Internet hosts and ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. We conduct and maintain the BIND (Berkley Internet Name Daemon) survey databases. Over the years we have used the BIND surveys to assist the United States Government and the Department of Defense in closing security holes in the domain name system infrastructure. This year we have received financial assistance which has allowed us to conduct an extensive enumeration of internet domain name servers. You are receiving this message because servers where you are listed as the SOA (source of authority) have been included in the most recent BIND data. We would like to invite you to pickup a report from us which details all information available on your servers as reported in the public dns system. The report includes a number of tests results from queries made on your name servers and provides details on the status of any failed or passed tests. If you are running BIND versions which can be hacked, or are insecure, those detail are reported and supporting information provided to assist you in closing potential security holes. A separate message has been emailed to you with instructions on how to extract information on your servers from our databases. It's fairly simple, all you have to do is reply to the message and keep the subject line intact. We have emailed it with a subject header labeled CONFIDENTIAL. In the event you may want to forward this message to others, you can do so without inadvertently allowing access to your database records. We hope that you find this information of assistance. Our intention is to fix the numerous problems encountered in the public domain name system. This year we enumerated in excess of 200,000 name servers. Of those 25,000 have misconfigured SOA records, 12,000 do not resolve, 62,000 are no longer operational and 22,000 can be easily hacked. - ICANN - In conclusion I would like to ask that you take an active role in Internet Governance. The United States Government has assigned control of the Internet Domain System and Infrastructure to ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) which represents big business interests, trademark lawyers and public telephone companys. ICANN intends to tax domain names and the ip infrastructure. To date a number of regulation have been imposed on internet registrars which take away existing rights and claims to second level domain names. As a result of these efforts, a number of organizations have started alternate root infrastructures and intend in competing with ICANN. This November 1-4 ICANN will be holding public meetings in Los Angeles. If you live in or near LA, please try to attend. If you don't, you can participate via remote. Please help us get the word out. Information on the meeting is available at: http://bind1999.pccf.net/resources/meetings/ Information on the people involved in what has been termed the domain name system wars is available at: http://bind1999.pccf.net/resources/ It is critcal to the internets future that it remain an open system. As a domain administrator you have control over the root cache file which now points to the United States Government (USG) root servers. If you don't like what ICANN and the USG is doing - you have the power to switch. A number of alternative root servers now exists to assist you in making that choice. Thank you for your time. Regards Joe Baptista, Director Public Research Second message text follows: Hello: This message is automatically generated by the BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Daemon) Survey maintained by Planet Communications & Computing Facility, Ottawa, Ontario. A message with a detailed explaination of the survey has been emailed to you under seprate cover. ATTENTION - WARNING - ATTENTION This message contains details and access instructions on recovering survey data collected by us from the public domain name system. A report of all name servers under your SOA RR (source of authority resource record) in which you have been listed as hostmaster. To recover the information - you can reply to this message making sure you keep the subject header intact, or you can email bind1999@pccf.net with a subject line of: @TICKET:[snip]@[snip]@[snip] Please make sure you delete the body of the message, so you don't confuse our mailers. Please note, it may take a few hours for the system to compile your report. If you mailer sends autoreplies, you may already have your report. Regards Joe Baptista, Director Public Research --------------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: While I do not know for sure what to think about the above messages, I can tell you that Mr. Baptista wrote to this Digest on a couple of occassions back when the ICANN pro/con thread was going on heavily here. On one occassion he by- passed moderation to write directly to a long list of names he had harvested from previous issues of the Digest to complain that he had been slandered by the publication here of something critical about his Planet Communications organization and a stance it had taken regards ICANN. On one or two other occassions, he wrote to the Digest via moderation to further discuss ICANN. Since I feel rather certain he will see your inquiry printed here, perhaps he will respond again to answer your concerns. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 17:23:37 +0100 From: Adam Sampson Subject: Re: New York Times Web Policy Reply-To: azz@gnu.org On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 03:33:28PM -0400, editor@telecom-digest.org wrote: > Where the doubleclick people are concerned, I personally regard them as > one of the worst scourges of all. I am surprised in a way that some > hackers have not seen fit to "Crackers" or "publically-minded netizens", please; "hacker" is starting to get back its positive meaning. > sacrifice them permanently for the overall good of the net. They spy, > and even very experienced netizens can get caught up with cookies > sent by those people if not careful; they are in and out so fast when > a call is made to a web site which is affiliated with them, you don't > even see what they did. Thus the need to carefully and regularly > flush out your cache, defrag your hard drive, etc. I agree entirely with the sentiment here. However, a much easier way to deal with this is simply to turn off cookies. The only site I've found in two years of browsing with all cookies rejected that breaks is a local Netscape-branded webmail server. Use of cookies for authentication is simply bad practice; it assumes "one user = one browser", which is why few sites use it. If you don't want to do this, simply block doubleclick.com (or linkexchange.com or whatever). You can do this by using a proxy server -- most will block a site from being proxied -- or by just dropping the route from your machine to linkexchange.com's block of IP addresses (read up on your OS's routing facilities; Unix and Windows use the "route" command). Incidentally, public health warning: while under Windows it's tempting to automate defragging your hard disk, don't; if there's a power cut while it's in progress, you're likely to suffer serious data loss. > If I sent this Digest out to someone without an explicit 'opt-in' request > on file, it would be spam. I'd just call it a mistake; my definition of spam is that which is sent *knowing* that I don't want it. I wouldn't hold you even remotely responsible in this case. Adam Sampson azz@gnu.org ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L. Winson) Subject: Re: Motorola Announces Universal Cell Phone Chip Date: 1 Nov 1999 23:08:48 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS > CDMA, GSM, and iDEN, and TDMA standards Could someone summarize in layman's terms what those various standards represent and how they are used in service today? Thanks. ------------------------------ Reply-To: dov@oz.net Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 15:59:44 -0800 From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Pay Phone Paying Jeff Foote wrote: > I know of about three companies in my area which have postpay phones. > 1. Pioneer Telephone Company (LaCrosse, WA), the price is only $0.10. > 2. Sprint/United Telephone has a few postpay phones remaining in > south-central Washington, but they have mostly prepay cocot-like > phones now. > 3. CenturyTel (formerly PTI) has them in many small eastern > Washington towns, except for places where the exchanges were sold to > them by US West in 1994, those places have prepay. >> Both areas have modern digital switches, SS7, equal access, etc. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How do postpay phones collect their > money in the case of one-way calls to recorded announcement lines, > where no talking by the caller is done anyway? PAT] Well, in the Bell System on post pay telephones you would get dial tone and dial the number. When the number supervised you'd get bursts of dial tone. I think the called party could hear you, but you could not hear the called party because of the "dial tone" like sound which prevented conversation. Also, to alert the operator that you were calling from a pay phone there would be a burst of dialtone-like sound for about five seconds when the operator answered. I would guess that probably means that in areas where they had CDO's they didn't bother to have separate trunks for coin phones and coin phones were differentiated to the operator by the dial tone buzz that she got when she answered a call. Joseph Singer "thefoneguy" PO Box 23135, Seattle WA 98102 USA +1 206 405 2052 [voice mail] +1 206 493 0706 [FAX] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought that post-pay phones cut off the mouthpiece pending payment rather than jamming the audio. When John Levine also responded to this earlier today, I got the same impression from his response. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 00:05:13 -0800 From: Cortland Richmond Organization: Alcatel USA Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Ed Ellers (ed_ellers@email.msn.com) replied to Craig Macbride who wrote: > After setting it up and confirming that DSL did in fact work, she > asked them to swap it over to the line it was actually ordered > on. They said they would do so in early September and would call to > let her know so she could switch everything back. Instead, they > attempted it without warning at 6:30 pm on a day in mid-September. Not > only did DSL not work when switched to the other line, but, in doing > the switch over, they totally cut line A off (not just the DSL!) for > about 15 hours. > After quite some days passed, USWest finally told her that DSL won't > work on line B, despite having accepted her order (and payment, of > course) to do exactly that. They originally said they might be able to > swap the phone numbers over, or to put in a DSL-capable line and move > the intended phone number to it, but have done neither. Ed said: > Pathetic indeed, but here's a "stupid" question -- since she has two > voice lines coming into her house, why does it matter which one is > being used for DSL? Is it that only one of those two lines is wired > into the room where the computer, and therefore the DSL modem, is > located? Or is it a billing issue of some sort? And Pat said: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My first thought was the line they > put it on in error was her listed number (in the directory) for > incoming calls and she had a lot of voice traffic on that line which > would have to be dealt with. PAT] And _I_ say ... what's the flap? ADSL does not preempt a telephone. Gideon Stocek (gid-foo@telecom-digest.zzn.com) said: >> You're misunderstanding the situation. They advertise 256 kilobits >> per second, you're mixing up kilobits and kilobytes per second in your >> example above. Kilobytes? Sheesh. THAT'S the trouble. Here I thought they said TRILOBYTES. Dinosaur telphones, and cambrian cheese. Cortland ------------------------------ Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 15:08:40 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) craig@glasswings.com.au (Craig Macbride) wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My first thought was the line they >> put it on in error was her listed number (in the directory) for >> incoming calls and she had a lot of voice traffic on that line which >> would have to be dealt with. PAT] > Interesting comment. Which line would be best in that regard depends > on the time of day, business phone calls being vastly more likely > during usual business hours. Business calls are also likely to be of > shorter duration and therefore not impact the DSL performance for very > long. How could voice traffic on the line affect DSL performance? I thought that DSL speed was independent of any voice traffic on the line. There is probably something I don't know about DSL. I've had DSL from US West in Seattle for about six months, and I love it. One disadvantage though was when we had hum on the line, we had to go through US West Megabit Services to get it repaired, and the hold times were very long. The problem turned out to be an intermittent short from tip to ground about a block away, but it never seemed to affect the DSL speed. We are close enough to the LAkeview CO that even with the short, the longitudinal imbalance was such that we could still talk over the hum. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: More Cellphone Questions Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 16:13:13 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com davidesan@my-deja.com (David Esan) spake thusly and wrote: > If I were to use a headset to get the antenna away from my head but > kept the phone clipped to my belt, wouldn't that potentially harm the > cells in my midsection? > 4. How about cordless phones? Or is the power output too low to worry? At SELLCOM we are so confident in their safety that we even use them ourselves (without even wearing little tinfoil hats). Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: dkiner@my-deja.com (Doug Kiner) Subject: Re: Other Gigaset Models? (was: New Version of the Siemens) Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 02:32:00 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I have been considering the Gigaset 2415 for home use, but I have read quite a few negative comments about the 2420. Many of the problems appear to have been addressed, based on what you have posted. I am wondering, however if the "single line" models (2410, 2415) suffer from the same problems, or have they "inherited" the improvements as well? TIA, Doug In article , steve@sellcom.com wrote: > It looks like Siemens listened to all of the whining about the > Gigaset 2420 problems and fixed just about all of them in the > new revision of the 2420. (I will "*" the things I personally > whined about.) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 19:24:52 -0800 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: Area Code 716 Split In article , Adam H. Kerman wrote: > Ed Ellers wrote: >> Bob Goudreau wrote: >>> 1) Stationery: no change required for an overlay; new stationery must be >>> ordered if your area code changes due to a split. Advantage: Overlay. >>> 2) Business cards: same as above. Advantage: Overlay." >> You forgot advertising -- in most areas that still have 7D dialing >> businesses often use only the 7D number in local ads, on signs, etc. >> With an overlay everybody in the NPA has to change their ads to show >> 10D numbers; with a split the only businesses that have to switch are >> those that expect to get business from both sides of the split, which >> in many cases are few and far between. > I disagree. Most splits we have seen are within a single metropolitan > area. Interesting point. Too bad it's not true. I did a little tally of splits in the U.S. and Canada for 1/1/95 to 11/1/99, and found that, by my reckoning, 27 were within a single metropolitan area, while 61 were of area codes with multiple metropolitan areas. "Less than a third" is not "most." I excluded the split of 809 and the addition of 670 and 671. Yet another example of Adam Kerman refusing to be confused by facts. (For reference, as "single metro" I included splits like 810/248, 313/734, 612/651, 415/650, 714/949, 818/626, 813/727, and even 216/440. As "multiple metro" I included splits like 817/940/254, 210/830/956, 216/330, 619/760, and 408/831.) Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom(at)LincMad(dot)com * North American Telephone Area Codes & Splits >> NOTE: e-mail replies to the address in this sig will be read first! << ------------------------------ From: Anthony Argyriou Subject: Re: Spring Ahead and Fall Behind Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 09:10:45 -0800 Organization: Alpha Geotechnical Reply-To: anthony@alphageo.com TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > And for a good time, tune your web browser to the collection of > links on this site at http://telecom-digest.org/linkspage.html and > choose the item, 'At the Tone, The Time Will Be' to hear what > NAVOBS has to say about it all. Of particular interest, try clicking > on the link during the 'one hour, fifty-nine minute' phase; after > one hour, fifty-nine minutes and fifty seconds, the man will tell > you the time is one o'clock exactly, without missing a beat. Windows 95 and 98 automatically do this for your computer. I got up this morning to see the clock showing the adjusted time, and a dialog box announcing that windows had changed my clock settings, make sure they're ok. Clicking ok opens the clock control panel applet. Interestingly, there's a bug in this, that most people won't see. If you're at your computer at 0159, and accept the change at 0100 (which would have been 0200), the computer will repeat the change one hour later! Anthony Argyriou ------------------------------ From: Arun Baheti Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 11:18:03 -0800 Subject: Seeking GSM StarTac Headset With all the talk of tin-foil hats, perhaps someone can recommend a vendor or product. I've been trying to find something for months. After searching for a suitable product and finding nothing, I tried Motorola's website and even called them directly. They claim to make no handfree headset (microphone that clips to your collar and earpiece, or any variation on the theme) for the GSM StarTac. I've been sent several that don't work with the GSM phones and have tried three aftermarket vendors. I've tried PacBell Wireless. I find it hard to believe that this doesn't exist. I find it harder to believe that Motorola doesn't make the accessory itself -- anyone have the story behind that? Any help is appreciated. Replies may be sent directly to me and I will summarize for the digest or anyone who is interested on request. Thanks. --arun ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #524 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Nov 2 00:02:07 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id AAA26437; Tue, 2 Nov 1999 00:02:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 00:02:07 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911020502.AAA26437@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #525 TELECOM Digest Tue, 2 Nov 99 00:02:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 525 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service (Jack Hamilton) Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service (Ed Kern) Re: Excite@Home Keeps a 'Video Collar' (Max Buten) Re: Nortel Might Be Spun-Off Says Parent - BCE (John McHarry) Sprint Jerking Friend Around - Anything He Can Do? (Tim Smith) On Walls and Mouse Holes: Security and Privacy (Monty Solomon) Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here (Steve Winter) Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here (Justa Lurker) Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here (Al Iverson) Attractive Nuisance (Derek Balling) An Anonymous Example (anonymous@cotse.com) Re: Cell Phone Hazards (Fred Baube) Re: dialpad.com Free Long Distance(Jim Weiss) Re: US West DSL Woes (Ben Wattum) British Telecom CEO: BT, AT&T Won't Merge (Monty Solomon) 588-2300 and NAtional 2-9000 (Ed Ellers) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 22:04:48 -0800 Organization: Copyright (c) 1999 by Jack Hamilton Reply-To: jfh@acm.org Walter Dnes wrote: > Interlog was voted Toronto's best ISP three years in a row. Then it > was bought by PSInet, and things have gone to hell in a handbasket > ever since. The new unified news server (that serves all the Toronto > area ISP's that PSI has bought) has been an absolute fiasco. I've heard that about PSI. > So I'm looking for recommendations re a personal newsfeed service. I > assume any rates quoted are US$. I use Newsguy (www.newsguy.com). It's about $70/year, which includes a 10MB mailbox. It seems to be a pretty good service. There are occasional hangups (slow response times), and don't count on getting an answer from their tech support people, but they're good enough that I've renewed my annual subscription several times. > As PSI integrates Interlog, I'll probably be looking at a changed > email address one of these days. Doing it once will be enough. There's a lot to be said for getting a forwarding address from some stable source (I have two, one from my college alumni association and one from the Association for Computing Machinery). You can change ISP's all you want, and no one needs to know. There are various companies which claim to provide free forwarding addresses to all comers, but they have not been, in my experience, reliable. It's best to stick with an organization which is in some way accountable for its actions. > I'm thinking of getting a ".org" domain and controlling my own email > address. Can anybody recommend a (hopefully non-spamming) registrar > that will accept clients from the Toronto area? They don't have to be > local. Again, I'll assume all rates are US$ unless otherwise stated. > I don't need "value-added" business-oriented bells+whistles. > I'd be getting a ".com" domain if I intended to set up a business site. I don't know why a registrar would care where you're from, if you're registering a .com or .org domain. I recently registered a domain name with 4domains.com, which charges $59 instead of $70. You could also get a domain name in the .CA top-level domain. It would probably be less expensive than a .COM domain, if you can locate the organization which issues them for your area (the registrar for Sacramento, California is Brooks Fiber Properties, which doesn't answer email). You seem to be asking about a web hosting site rather than a domain name registrar, but I don't know why a hosting site would care where you are either. You'd probably be putting this on a credit card, so there's no currency exchange problem. I also looked for a web hosting site, and I think that for now I will just use my new ISP, Mindspring, assuming that we can figure out why I hardly ever connect faster than 28.8. Their low-end service provides very little in the way of bells and whistles. I wanted to buy from a local ISP, but it appears that they're all being gobbled up (Mindspring recently bought my very first ISP, Netcom; the ISP I'm about to switch away from, Calweb, seems to have been bought by a company named SkyLynx; and another local ISP was bought by Verio). For a slightly higher level of service at a relatively low cost, you might look at bhcom.com. I don't know anything about the quality of their service, but their service plans sound reasonable, and they answer email. Speaking of spamming, I received a call from Verio last week. They had noticed that I had recently registered a domain name that hadn't yet been associated with an IP address, and wanted to know whether I would consider them as a web site host. I suppose they call everyone who registers a new domain name -- sounds like a big task. Jack Hamilton Broderick, CA jfh@acm.org ------------------------------ From: Ed Kern Subject: Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service Date: 31 Oct 1999 14:36:04 GMT Walter Dnes wrote: > So I'm looking for recommendations re a personal newsfeed service. I > assume any rates quoted are US$. (I'll probably be staying with > Interlog for connectivity, especially if ADSL does get going soon). I'm using Altopia , and I love it. Great retention, great peering, great connectivity. I've also heard good things about Giganews , but I haven't used them myself. Cheers, Ed ------------------------------ From: maxbuten@home.com (Max Buten) Subject: Re: Excite@Home Keeps a 'Video Collar' Organization: Ampers and Sons Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 22:49:43 GMT Makes sense to me! Excite@home download speeds are sometimes very very slow (and sometimes wondrously fast). When they're slow I don't want anybody on my twig of the tree using all the bandwidth for streaming video. And I'd rather have them figuring out how to speed up the service instead of getting bogged down with theoretical, practical limits. In article , monty@roscom.com says: > By Brock N. Meeks, MSNBC November 1, 1999 6:03 AM PT > WASHINGTON -- When new subscribers to the Excite@Home cable modem > service sign their contract, no one tells them where the land mines > are buried. > Those land mines come in the form of a mandated ban on providing > access to any streaming video longer than ten minutes in length and the > right of any cable operator to independently ban any kind of content > from being accessed by their particular cable modem subscribers. > http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2385059,00.html Max Buten Contract Programer in Powerhouse maxbuten@home.com 610 664 2301 fax 603 388 4591 http://members.home.net/maxbuten/ ------------------------------ From: mcharry@erols.com (John McHarry) Subject: Re: Nortel Might Be Spun-Off Says Parent - BCE Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 01:05:53 GMT On Mon, 01 Nov 1999 10:32:45, John Stahl wrote: > Here is some hot news about the potential future of Nortel, one of the > world's largest suppliers of telecommunications equipment. While this is certainly not impossible, it has come up before and aroused a certain amount of Canadian nationalism. Without the BCE stake in Nortel, it would cease to be a Canadian company, since the majority of the non-BCE shares are foreign owned. ------------------------------ From: tzs@halcyon.com (Tim Smith) Subject: Sprint Jerking Friend Around - Anything He Can Do? Date: 1 Nov 1999 17:17:42 -0800 Organization: Archimedes Plutonium Grepping Society A friend of mine has the misfortune of having Sprint as his local phone company (and his long distance company, but at least his cell phone is safe, as Sprint PCS isn't avaialable where he lives). He ordered ISDN, and they told him the install would be before a certain date, and that they would call the day before. Well, they never called -- they just showed up in the afternoon on the last day of time frame they gave, waited a while, and then left a message on his answering machine saying he had missed his appointment. When he called the next day, they told him they had cancelled his order, and he had to start over! The second order's time frame has just passed, and they did not call, and did not come out. My friend is getting rather ticked off at Sprint. Is there anything he can do to get them to actually come out, in a reasonable time frame, and with warning so he can be there, and install ISDN? --Tim Smith ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 21:24:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: On Walls and Mouse Holes: Security and privacy Interesting reading ... Ask Tog, November, 1999 On Walls and Mouse Holes: Security and privacy In the next decade, we could complete the transition from one person-one computer to the concept of a personal network, enabling people to tap into their personal cyberspace from any point on the globe. The most fundamental requirement of such a personal network is that an individual be able to maintain the most private of information without worry. Before that can occur, we will have to build a multiplicity of new walls, as well as stuff closed the mouse hole permeating those few walls we have now. When this process is complete, we shall have achieved security. Privacy is another matter ... http://www.asktog.com/columns/031WallsAndMouseholes.html ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 18:55:15 -0400 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com TELECOM Digest Editor spake thusly and wrote: > I wanted to let everyone know of two new anonymizing features added > at this website for use by anyone who needs them. I would encourage you to keep good logs just in case someone did use your service for something illegal. That way you could simply require a subpoena for the logs and protect yourself from legal liability. I believe that for all practical legal purposes, you are simply allowing random individuals to post USENET articles and email as YOU. With good logs you could let that liability land where it should rather than on you. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think I agree with you at all. I am in no way responsible for what others post on the net. PAT] ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Replies to email will be POSTED) Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 08:36:55 GMT It was 29 Oct 1999 14:57:05 GMT, and Pat wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > If a spammer wants to sit there and type in hundreds of newsgroup names > in the little tiny box provided for same, or sit there and type in > thousands of names in the little tiny box provided for same with the > anonymous email, then god bless him. Put a little Javascript "onLoad" to clear the form. Then when he goes [BACK] after submitting he has to type or paste it *all* again. JL ------------------------------ From: radparker@radparker.com (Al Iverson) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Organization: See sig before replying Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 13:33:56 -0600 In article , patrick@klos.com (Patrick Klos) wrote: > In article , Al Iverson > wrote: >> In article , TELECOM Digest Editor >> wrote: >>> Anonymous outgoing email: >>> You may now send single (one piece at a time) email letters from this >>> site which indicate to the recipient that they were sent by 'anonymous'. >>> No response back to you is possible. >> Please let us know what domain name this outgoing mail is going to >> use, so we can choose to refuse mail from that domain. > Your signature implies you're heavily involved in anti-SPAM practices. > With that in mind, you must realize that this anonymous service would be > the LAST service any SPAMMER would use! It would be totally impractical > for a SPAMMER to use such a site that allows only one recipient at a > time (that's the impression I get from reading the posting). > So why are you making a big deal out of it?!? Do some research. You'll probably find, like I already know, that spammers regularly utilize semi-anonymous "throw-away" email accounts. You may notice that the return address is a lot of spam is forged. Why? Because they don't want you to reply to them via email. Because they'll receive the bounces from addresses that don't exist, and flames from people like me who make a hobby out of spammer hunting. The return contact channel in most spam is a link to a web site, a link to an email address (on some other network), or sometimes just a phone number. A "send-only" email address is already what the spammers are trying to accomplish. It fits their goals very well. They want to be able to spew garbage into your mailboxes without any sort of accountability. That, to me, is a very big deal. Pat has, to a degree, addressed some of my concerns. For example, limiting the recipients to one or two is a great idea. I think that, in and of itself, is the best way you could limit people from using it to send unwanted email advertising. Al Iverson MAPS LLC RSS Team radparker.com Al Iverson -- Web: http://al.radparker.com/ -- Home: Minneapolis, USA STOP! Include SWANKY99 in email replies or they may be tagged as spam. Send me no unsolicited advertising, as I will always return it to you. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 18:33:08 -0700 From: Derek Balling Subject: Attractive Nuisance > I only fixed it, or tried to fix it so that people who have other than > honorable intentions find it all quite difficult to use. Bull. Admittedly, the code below will not work. I have no desire to test it and make it work, but it is certainly an example which could be used and constructed quite quickly by someone who is really inclined to look at the web site and abuse it. I'm sure I'm missing some fields here that will "make it go"... consider this like those MacGyver episodes where they'd intentionally leave out filming the neat bits that made the stuff REALLY blow up, so that it couldn't get repeated at home. ------ #!/usr/local/bin/perl use LWP; use LWP::UserAgent; use HTTP::Request::Common; @spam_addrs = ('user@domain1.com', 'user@domain2.com'); foreach $address_to_spam (@spam_addrs) { print "Spamming.... $address_to_spam"; $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new; $ua->request (POST 'http://telecom-digest.zzn.com/email/noframes/mailer/t_baseform.asp?whattodo =compose&fromattach=', ['send' => 1, 'fldTo' => $address_to_spam, 'text' => $spammessage]); print "Done.\n"; sleep 1; } -------------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 19:49:54 EDT From: anonymous@cotse.com Subject: An Anonymous Example This is what it will look like. It will always be from the above address, with a subject line, and then the disclaimer message which is shown below. -- www.cotse.com/anonmail.htm Message sent via the COTSE Anonymous E-mail. This message did not originate from the address in the from line. It originated from an anonymous source. COTSE is not responsible for the contents of this message. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 12:07:27 +0200 From: Fred Baube Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards Reply-To: fred@moremagic.com steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) > Scot E. Wilcoxon spake thusly and wrote: >> OK, that subject has recent research. New neurons are continually >> being made. > Would wearing a little tinfoil hat while talking on the cellular > phone help? I would recommend a cap made of Brillo pads. Tell people it's a fashion initiative. Fred Baube F.Baube(tm) * "Geese, I'm led to understand, make G'town U. MSFS '88 * excellent watchdogs. Which is good fred@moremagic.com * because Rottweillers make lousy poultry." +358 (40) 737 6934 * http://www.brunching.com/ratings/ #include * rate-farmanimals.html ------------------------------ From: NBJimWeiss@aol.com (Jim Weiss) Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 10:54:23 EST Subject: Re: dialpad.com Free Long Distance > http://www.dialpad.com > We are having a lot of fun with this. Here's more on this subject: http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/indepth/docs/phone102999.htm Long-distance calls can be made for free with PC, new service (10/28/1999) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jim Weiss Network Brokers, Inc. "Providing Long Distance Services for Less" nbjimweiss@aol.com 305-252-1822; fax: 603-250-0817 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ------------------------------ From: Ben Wattum Subject: Re: US West DSL Woes Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 06:56:05 -0900 In regards to caller name delivery, Mr. D. Hunt needs to read the TR-1188 written by the old Bell Core. The 1188 states that "if the name is not delivered in the IAM (initial address message), then the switch should be capable of doing a data base dip, based upon the OPC" In the LNP world, you would first go to the LNP data base to find the point code of the CNAMD data base and then make the dip. Many on the newer switches will do this. With the Nortel product it is a SOC option called RES000080. I have no idea what Lucifer (Lucent) does, as they are always about two or three years behind the industry. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 21:34:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: British Telecom CEO: BT, AT&T Won't Merge By Jana Sanchez CANNES, FRANCE - British Telecommunications has no plans to merge with or be acquired by its partner AT&T within the next 12 to 18 months, said BT's president and CEO in a keynote interview here today at Gartner Group (IT) 's European Symposium-ITxpo '99. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/display/0,1449,7339,00.html ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: 588-2300 and NAtional 2-9000 Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 22:57:55 -0500 PAT, the TELECOM Digest Editor, noted: > The famous (at least to Chicagoans) little jingle 'five eight eight, two > three hundred ... Empire!' which they sang on television and radio a dozen > times per day for years one day started sounding different: it now began > with about two seconds of four-part harmony on the very front with a short > pause ... 'eight-hundred ........ five-eight-eight, two-three-hundred'. I haven't heard that version, because WGN now shows different commercials and often different programming for cable viewers outside Chicago (and satellite viewers, even *in* Chicago!) and has done so for several years. But I used to hear the old jingle all the time on WGN, as well as the one (I've forgotten for who) with the phone number NAtional 2-9000. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had forgotten all about NAtional Two - Nine Thousand until you brought it up. I think that was a furniture store. David Tamkin probably knows for sure. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #525 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 3 05:03:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id FAA25095; Wed, 3 Nov 1999 05:03:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 05:03:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911031003.FAA25095@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #526 TELECOM Digest Wed, 3 Nov 99 05:03:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 526 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Call for Papers: MobiCom 2000 (Samir R. Das) 3-2-1-Rrring! (Mike Pollock) Bell Atlantic Mobile Share-A-Minute Plan (Monty Solomon) Re: ISDN Viruses (Mel Beckman) Re: An Anonymous Example (Al Iverson) Re: An Anonymous Example (Steve Winter) A Whole Day Wasted (TELECOM Digest Editor) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: samir@jazz.cs.utsa.edu (Samir R. Das) Subject: Call for Papers: MobiCom 2000 Date: 2 Nov 1999 12:12:37 -0600 Organization: University of Texas at San Antonio Announcement and Call for Papers MobiCom 2000 The Sixth Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking August, 2000 Boston, Massachusetts, USA Sponsored by ACM SIGMOBILE * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Visit http://www.research.telcordia.com/mobicom2000/ for the most up-to-date information * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * MobiCom 2000 is the sixth of an annual series of international conferences dedicated to addressing the challenges in wireless and mobile computing, communications and networking. By bringing together researchers, practitioners, and visionaries from all over the world, MobiCom provides an environment where ideas flow freely between individuals instrumental in shaping the world of tomorrow. MobiCom is a highly selective conference where the quality of its technical program is ensured by an outstanding technical program committee. A number of social and technical events, such as speeches by leaders in the field, panels on timely and controversial issues, tutorials on basic and advanced topics, and workshops focused on pressing issues of the day, provide ample opportunities for learning and exchanging information between users, providers, and researchers. TECHNICAL PAPERS: Technical papers describing original, previously unpublished, and completed research, not currently under review by another conference or journal, are solicited on the following topics: o Applications and computing services supporting mobile users o Architectures, protocols, and algorithms to cope with mobility, limited bandwidth, or intermittent connectivity o Database and data management issues in mobile computing o Performance of mobile/wireless networks and systems o Security and privacy of mobile/wireless networks and systems o Interaction between different layers of mobile/wireless systems o Integration and interworking of wired and wireless networks o Adaptive applications and systems for mobile environments o Distributed-system aspects of mobile systems o Operating system support for mobility o Location-dependent applications o Wireless multimedia systems o Power management o Mobile agents All papers will be refereed by the program committee. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Papers of particular merit will be proposed for publication in the ACM/Baltzer Wireless Networks (WINET) and Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) journals. *** NOTE *** SPECIAL PAPERS FOR CHALLENGES SESSION: MobiCom solicits short papers (8 pages max.) that challenge the mobile computing community with new technologies or visionary applications. Such papers should provide stimulating ideas or visions that may open up exciting avenues of mobile computing research. Papers will be reviewed and should be submitted using the normal procedure. However, the papers should be clearly identified as intended for the Challenges session. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: All paper submissions will be handled electronically. Authors should prepare a PostScript or Portable Document Format (PDF) version of their full paper. Papers must meet the following restrictions: o No longer than 15 pages (except for Challenges papers). o Fit properly on US Letter-sized paper (8.5x11 inches). o PostScript version 2 or later, or Portable Document Format (PDF). o Use only Computer Modern or standard Adobe printer fonts (i.e., Courier, Times, Roman, or Helvetica). Other fonts may be used but must be included in the PostScript/PDF file. All submitted papers will be judged based on their quality through double-blind reviewing, where the identities of the authors are withheld from the reviewers. Authors' names must not appear in the paper or in the PostScript/PDF file. Exact submission procedures will be available from http://www.research.telcordia.com/mobicom2000/ by December 17, 1999. Please direct any questions about the submission process to the Program Co-Chairs, Ramon Caceres (ramon@research.att.com) and J.J. Garcia-Luna (jj@cse.ucsc.edu). Paper submission deadline is February 18, 2000. TUTORIALS: Proposals for tutorials are solicited. Evaluation of proposals will be based on the expertise and experience of the instructors, and on the relevance of the subject matter. Tutorial topics that encompass the systems aspects of mobile computing and/or practical experiences in building/deploying such systems are of particular interest. Potential instructors are requested to submit a tutorial proposal of at most 5 pages, including a biographical sketch, to the Tutorial Co-Chairs, Venkat Padmanabhan (padmanab@microsoft.com) and Nigel Davies (nigel@comp.lancs.ac.uk), by February 18, 2000. PANELS: Panels are solicited that examine innovative, controversial, or otherwise provocative issues of interest. Panel proposals should not exceed 3 pages, including biographical sketches of the panelists. Potential panel organizers should send the proposal to the Panels Co-Chairs, Pravin Bhagwat (pravinb@us.ibm.com) and Andrew Campbell (campbell@comet.columbia.edu), by Februray 21, 2000. RESEARCH DEMOS: Informal proposals for research demos are solicited. Proposals will be reviewed and selection made based on value to the community and interest level for the conference. Proposals should not exceed 3 pages and should include: the focus area in mobility, such as mobile networks, applications, interfaces etc., the technologies involved in the research, specific equipments to be used for the demo, demo layout, space required to set up the demo and possible interactions (interoperability) with other proposed demonstrations (e.g., Mobile IP implementations). Send proposals to the Demo Chair: Ronald Hutchins (ron.hutchins@oit.gatech.edu). BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD: Papers with a student as a primary author will be considered for a cash award of $500 US Dollars for the best student paper competition. Student authors must clearly indicate with their submission that they would like to be considered for this award. IMPORTANT DATES: Paper submissions due: February 18, 2000 Notification of acceptance: April 28, 2000 Camera-ready version due: May 26, 2000 FOR MORE INFORMATION: Send email to mobicom2000@research.telcordia.com with any questions or comments about the conference or for more information. This Call For Papers and other MobiCom 2000 information are available from http://www.research.telcordia.com/mobicom2000/. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chair: Raymond Pickholtz, George Washington University General Vice Chair: Sajal K. Das, University of Texas at Arlington Program Co-Chairs: Ramon Caceres, AT&T Labs J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, University of California at Santa Cruz Steering Committee Chair: Imrich Chlamtac, University of Texas at Dallas Tutorials Co-Chairs: Nigel Davies, Lancaster University, UK (currently at Sony US Research Labs) Venkat Padmanabhan, Microsoft Research Panels Co-Chairs: Pravin Bhagwat, IBM Watson Research Andrew Campbell, Columbia University Research Demos Chair: Ronald Hutchins, Georgia Institute of Technology Workshops Chair: Jason Redi, BBN Technologies Local Arrangements Co-Chairs: Rajesh Krishnan, BBN Technologies John Zavgren, BBN Technologies Publicity Co-Chairs: Kwang-Cheng Chen, National Taiwan University Samir R. Das, University of Texas at San Antonio Ashutosh Dutta, Telcordia Technologies Registration Chair: Irene Katzela, University of Toronto Finance Chair: David B. Johnson, Carnegie Mellon University Industry Exhibits/Sponsorships Chair: Andrew Campbell, Columbia University European Liaison: Adam Wolisz, Technical University, Berlin Asia/Pacific Liaisons: K.-C. Chua, National University of Singapore Hiroyuki Morikawa, University of Tokyo, Japan TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Arup Acharya NEC Ian Akyildiz Georgia Tech B. Badrinath Rutgers University Victor Bahl Microsoft Research Mary Baker Stanford University Hari Balakrishnan MIT Stefano Basagni University of Texas at Dallas Pravin Bhagwat IBM Research Vaduvur Bharghavan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Andrew Campbell Columbia University Scott Corson University of Maryland Sajal Das University of Texas at Arlington Nigel Davies Lancaster University (currently at Sony US) Dan Duchamp AT&T Labs Metin Feridun IBM Research Armando Fox Stanford University Mario Gerla University of California, Los Angeles Zygmunt Haas Cornell University Tomasz Imielinski Rutgers University Ravi Jain Telcordia David Johnson Carnegie Mellon University Anthony Joseph University of California, Berkeley Tom LaPorta Lucent Venkat Padmanabhan Microsoft Research Charles Perkins Nokia Research Center Chiara Petrioli Politecnico di Milano George Polyzos University of California, San Diego Ramesh Rao University of California, San Diego Ram Ramanathan BBN Technologies Jason Redi BBN Technologies Christopher Rose Rutgers University M. Satyanarayanan Carnegie Mellon University Srini Seshan IBM Research Adarshpal Sethi University of Delaware Martha Steenstrup BBN Technologies Roy Want Xerox PARC ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: 3-2-1-Rrring! Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:41:40 -0500 Organization: It's A Mike! CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- 3-2-1-Rrring! With the push of 10 telephone buttons, Gov. Jeb Bush launched a new area code Monday for the Cape Canaveral area: 321. That's 3-2-1 as in Liftoff! Bush used the new area code to call a video conferencing room at the Kennedy Space Center, where 25 NASA officials and local dignitaries were gathered. The new area code was the "one of those light-bulb ideas," Bush said, that should draw even more attention to Brevard County and the space industry. Three-two-one replaces the 407 area code, which will remain in effect locally for another year as a transition period. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 'Replaces' as in all 407's will be numbered 321, or does the author mean it is part of a split or an overlay of 407? Don't you wish newspaper writers would get things right once in a while where things involving telephones and the internet are concerned? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 00:31:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bell Atlantic Mobile Share-A-Minute Plan http://www.ba.com/nr/1999/Oct/19991102003.html Bell Atlantic Mobile Inspires Whole Families, Small Businesses To Go Wireless With New Share-A-Minutesm Plan Offers Ideal Combination of Shared Minutes, Monthly Access, Group Calling October 29, 1999 Media contact: Howard Waterman, (908) 306-7832 Andrea Linskey, (908) 306-7845 BEDMINSTER, NJ -- Bell Atlantic Mobile will introduce wireless pricing on November 3, giving families and small businesses a new way to use wireless by sharing monthly access and home airtime minutes among multiple phones -- all on one bill. The Share-A-Minute plan will provide an alternative to landline phone service as entire families begin to rely on their wireless phones to talk with the people they communicate with most. In addition, Share-A-Minute's unique group calling feature provides 200 home airtime minutes a month for each member to use when calling or receiving calls from other group members, in addition to the home airtime minutes the group shares. Starting at $49.99 monthly access, Share-A-Minute will be available in all of the company's East Coast markets by November 9. Unlike other plans with large minute allowances, Share-A-Minute empowers families to manage the cost of wireless calling between light, moderate and heavy users in one family. Since they are shared, minutes that would otherwise go unused by a light user, can now be used by a heavy user in the same family instead of that user paying extra. "These plans will be the catalyst of the next surge of wireless growth, as the number of households and small businesses with multiple wireless phones grows exponentially," said Denny Strigl, president and CEO of Bell Atlantic Mobile. "Share-A-Minute is the best group calling plan available today, and is a good example of how Bell Atlantic Mobile will continue to take an aggressive approach to pricing and providing innovative options for customers." Share-A-Minute customers benefit from a host of features: * The customer pays one flat-rate monthly access fee and shares a pool of home airtime minutes between two digital phones for calls made within the user's extensive calling area. * Additional users can join the Share-A-Minute plan for an additional $15 each. * Customers sharing their pool of home airtime minutes can place free local calls when dialing one another, a significant cost-savings for those who use their wireless phones primarily for family calling. * Any digital wireless phone Bell Atlantic Mobile sells is available for use with this plan. * Customers can also send e-mail text messages to each other's phones from the Internet or their computers for an additional monthly fee. * Caller ID, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, No Answer/Busy Transfer & Call Waiting are included. "Entire families will use wireless phones to communicate with each other because parents won't think twice about getting phones for their teenage kids, grandparents or even the babysitter," said Debra Carroll, vice president of marketing for Bell Atlantic Mobile. "Customers can choose any digital handset we offer, inexpensively add family members to the plan and make over three hours of local calls to each other per month while enjoying a predictable cost for the whole family's wireless service." HOW IT WORKS A mother in Washington, DC, for example, can sign up for the $49.99 plan and share her pool of 200 home airtime minutes per month with her husband. If they wanted to add their teenaged daughter to the plan, the cost would be an additional $15 per month, for a total of $64.99 monthly access. By giving up to four family members the option to share minutes and the monthly access fee, the Share-A-Minute plan provides customers with superior value. With joint access to hundreds of minutes of monthly talk time included, the family could receive a lower per-customer cost than separate phone accounts. For families or business customers needing additional minutes, for $79.99 per month customers get 500 home airtime minutes, and for $99.99 monthly access, 800 home airtime minutes are included. "This plan simplifies the ability of families to communicate with one another using wireless technology," said Mark Lowenstein, Senior Vice President at the Yankee Group. "It's the next phase of group communications." According to the Yankee Group's 1999 Mobile User Survey, 21 percent of wireless users believe wireless will ultimately be the second line in their home. Small businesses and start-ups looking to equip up to four employees with wireless service will also find Share-A-Minute a cost-effective option, as access fees are consolidated and controlled through shared use of minutes. The local group calling feature is also very attractive to business customers who frequently speak to co-workers. For more information on Share-A-Minute, customers can visit Bell Atlantic Mobile's Online Store at www.bam.com, or call 800-255-BELL. -------------------------- Bell Atlantic Mobile owns and operates the largest wireless network in the East and systems in the Southwest, covering 180,000 square miles, and the largest chain of retail outlets devoted exclusively to wireless voice, data, and paging. Based in Bedminster, NJ, Bell Atlantic Mobile has 6.9 million customers and 8,000 employees from Maine to Georgia and in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and west Texas. Through its "Wireless at Work..." community service program, the company uses its technology to help individuals and communities improve security and emergency communications. Bell Atlantic Mobile's parent, Bell Atlantic Corporation (NYSE:BEL) is one of the world's largest wireless communications companies, with domestic operations in 25 states and international investments in Mexico, Europe and the Pacific Rim. For more information on Bell Atlantic Mobile visit: www.bam.com; on global operations visit: www.bellatlantic.com/worl dwide. Copyright 1999 Bell Atlantic Corporation ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 20:56:20 -0800 From: Mel Beckman Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses I won't even comment on Maddaus silly excerpt from Phrack about ISDN viruses. I have to wonder why he thinks this drivel "may be suspect". It's completely bogus from stem to stern, as anyone with passing familiarity with ISDN internals can see in a blink. > Communication protocols and standards by definition are open to misuse > by a potential adversary because: > a) they make communications protocol details publicly > available; As they must be if people are actually to build devices that talk to each other. > b) they assume benign users are connected to the network; Um, you're saying that SSL, which is a communications protocol, assumes that users are benign? The prosecution rests. > c) they define how network nodes must interface, > thereby providing > information on vendor equipment attached to the network; And this is bad ... how? > d) they were developed to allow for expansion (hence > Q.931 for example > contains information elements containing fields which can be > unlimited in length and passed through by the network). Called self-defining fields, this is more properly an artifact of data structures, not protocols. It has nothing to do with his argument, as a self-defining field can have arbitrary limitations placed on it. There is nothing onerous about "dead" data being propagated in a Q.931 frame. > A great weakness in the OSI model (from a security perspective) is > that different levels of the model do not concern themselves with the > content of information contained within other levels. It is merely > passed on without verification, validation, or authentication. Though > AT&T may choose to authenticate signaling between its network nodes I > sincerely doubt they do so with a LEC or another IXC. The ability to > send (and deposit on a remote telecommunication network node, aka a > PBX through normal call setup) destructive code has been confirmed in > briefings which I attended several years back. I assume Maddaus is referring to SS7 caller identification data, which Bellcore documented as unverfiable by nature briefings I attended. The upshot is that SS7 assumes that only authenticated users get connectivity to the SS7 network. Since SS7 connections are physically insulated from the Internet and other networks, this is not a hard restriction to obey. SS7 ANI information is assumed to originate from authenticated entities, as there is no mechanism to verify an originating switches copper cross connects to local loops. > Combined with the fact that no person or entity knows exactly what is > connected to the PSTN (and the advent of open market competition is > increasing the number of unknowns daily), such "hacks" raise the bar > considerably and are therefore potentially devastating. At this point > I maintain that phreaking and hacking become one in the same. This > information is beginning to make its way through the hacker archives > as evidenced by the above excerpt taken from a recent Phrack Magazine > article. Though the technical detail of this article may be suspect > due to the nature of the magazine, the concept that is being aired is > real and such press within the hacker community is likely to spread > intense interest in bringing down a telecom network. While we would all be silly to minimize the risk of hackers to telecomm networks, Maddaus is completely wrong about protocols being the problem, just as the NSA was wrong about the strength of encryption protocols being greater for those whose internals are kept secret (remember SkipJack?) In reality, complete and utter public disclosure of protocols is a much better way to detect and correct security weaknesses than what I am hearing Maddaus espouse: proprietary, secret protocols. The more eyes on the problem, the better. There are no guarantees, no matter what you do, other than the guarantee that secret, proprietary protocols have always been the easiest to crack, and subvert. Mel Beckman ------------------------------ From: radparker@radparker.com (Al Iverson) Subject: Re: An Anonymous Example Organization: See sig before replying Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 02:59:35 -0600 In article , anonymous@cotse.com wrote: > This is what it will look like. It will always be from the above > address, with a subject line, and then the disclaimer message > which is shown below. > > -- > www.cotse.com/anonmail.htm > Message sent via the COTSE Anonymous E-mail. > This message did not originate from the address > in the from line. It originated from an anonymous > source. COTSE is not responsible for the contents > of this message. You'll find that this is a pretty weak disclaimer in the eyes of the feds, the first time somebody uses your tool to post a kiddy porn ad. Al Iverson -- Web: http://al.radparker.com/ -- Home: Minneapolis, USA STOP! Include SWANKY99 in email replies or they may be tagged as spam. Send me no unsolicited advertising, as I will always return it to you. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why is it I am not very impressed with your message? PAT] ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 14:46:59 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Pat spake thusly and wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think I agree with you at all. > I am in no way responsible for what others post on the net. PAT] I just filed a criminal complaint regarding an obscene email bombing from "anonymizer" (Durham, NC Police IR 99-76738) I listed infonex.com and verio.net as responsible parties since they have for quite some time now knowingly allowed a system under their control to be used for harassment by wire. I also mentioned their fomenting, and aiding and abetting felonies by deliberately running their anon servers. I have very high hopes of sueing them in civil court as well. Regarding running anon email servers, I am reminded of an old quote: "stupid is as stupid does". Federal telecom law makes it a federal felony to knowingly allow a system under one's control to be used for harassment by wire. anonymous@cotse.com spake thusly and wrote: > This is what it will look like. It will always be from the above > address, with a subject line, and then the disclaimer message > which is shown below. > > -- > www.cotse.com/anonmail.htm > Message sent via the COTSE Anonymous E-mail. > This message did not originate from the address > in the from line. It originated from an anonymous > source. COTSE is not responsible for the contents > of this message. But COTSE most certainly will be legally responsible for the contents. Probably both criminally and civilly. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why is it I am not very impressed with your *idle* threats either? Since public pay telephones are 'under the control of the phone company', and since they do not collect valid and recourseable identification from users of same, therefore they can be sued when a harassing phone call is made to someone from a payphone, can't they? WELL, CAN'T THEY ??????? Or as Al Iverson would say, the first time someone uses a public payphone to send a message promoting child pornography and the phone company has no idea who used the phone to transmit the message, the phone company is going to be in BIG TROUBLE! No sir, no weak excuses about not being responsible for it ... telco should have made the user sign up first and present valid identification, etc. No, of course not ... because telco has lots of money, and lots of powerful lawyers who would slap you silly the first time you opened your mouth to them, wouldn't they ... Or as Al Iverson would say, and you would probably agree given your disposition, the first time someone puts a letter with no valid return address in a post office box with a kiddie porn ad and the person who receives it cannot figure out where it came from, the Postal Service is going to be in BIG TROUBLE since they did not have someone there to check the identification of the person mailing the letter and insure that a return address appeared on the envelope and the mailing piece. No sir, no weak excuses about not being responsible for it ... Postal Service should check the identification of everyone mailing a letter. ISN'T THAT RIGHT STEVE? ISN'T THAT RIGHT, AL IVERSON? Well no, because the Postal Service is run by the government -- a bunch of cronies for the most part who have never been very good about or interested in following the laws they love to oppress others with. I'd love to see you tell *their* lawyers what they are going to get sued for. And as Al Iverson would probably say, when you show people how to commit crimes; ie present detailed instructions on how to forge their own mail headers so they don't have to bother *me* with giving them a template to do it all the time, that's 'aiding and abetting them in the crime' -- a very serious offense! -- by teaching them how to do it. RIGHT STEVE? RIGHT, AL IVERSON? Tell ya what: the next time someone commits a crime in your community, go file suit against CBS/NBC/TNT/CNN/Ted Turner and tell them you are holding them responsible for 'aiding and abetting' since that television show they had about some violent criminal activity taught an impressionable young person how to commit the very same crime in your community. When their lawyers get finished laughing themselves spastic, see what else they have to say. Ah, but you know the scoop don't you? Here you are not dealing with a telco lawyer, a public serpent in charge of the postal service, or someone from a major television network. Here, you are just dealing with a webmaster of some two-bit web site who has no money, no lawyer, no means to defend himself -- like the majority of the guys who run small personal web sites on the net such as myself. So you'll have your way, won't you? Not with me you won't. I intend to work with Steve G., the webmaster at cotse.com in seeing that his anonymizer and his mail service are widely publicized on the net. It is not my problem how you or anyone else chooses to process the information. For now, I would appreciate it if you and Al Iverson would quit trying to hold netizens to a completely different standard than everyone else. If you want to tell me that it is okay for telephone companies to allow anonymous use of payphones and it is okay for the post office to allow letters without a verified sender address and it is okay for newpapers and television to 'aid and abet' the commission of crimes by showing details but for some reason it is not okay for a person with a web site to go with the same standards, then my answer to you both is you are hypocrites. So after you and Al have made your demands on telco and the post office, then come back and see me, okay? But until then, gentlemen, I am not impressed with your threats and comments. The net is going to hell fast enough on its own without having the two of you ready to stab someone in the back who is trying to preserve the old traditions. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 02:53:59 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: A Whole Day Wasted Thanks to some stupid problem with the modem card in my laptop- on-its-last-gasping-breath I was unable to get on line at all on Tuesday to do any work. I wound up after a couple hours of trying to rebuild the TCP/IP drivers, the modem drivers and everything else having to go to someone's house and use their computer to get on line to the driver website where I could download the proper drivers, bring them back here on a diskette and install them. Then, it still did not work right. The problem was, the modem would dial, it would negotiate, then after a few seconds respond that 'the computer you are calling did not answer the phone'. After rebuilding everything still another time, about 10 pm Tuesday night I had things working and was back on line with my ISP. So there is a day's worth of work on Airwaves Radio Journal and TELECOM Digest shot. :( And the backlog of mail both places was horrendous once I finally did get connected. But I seem to be stuck at about 33, speed-wise. It is very unfortunate in an operation like mine that the slightest little incident can have all sorts of repercussions. If anyone has an older, pentium-based machine they no longer use that they wish to donate to the Digest, please let me know. With a little bit of nudging, my two year old laptop still functions, but I fully expect it to just quit one of these days soon also. Thanks. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #526 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 3 16:21:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id QAA17900; Wed, 3 Nov 1999 16:21:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 16:21:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911032121.QAA17900@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #527 TELECOM Digest Wed, 3 Nov 99 16:21:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 527 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Florida's New 321 NPA (was Re: 3-2-1-Rrring!) (Mark J Cuccia) Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! (John R. Levine) Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! (Michael G. Koerner) Re: African Stratospheric Airships? (Leonard Erickson) Re: 588-2300 and NAtional 2-9000 (Terry Knab) Re: 588-2300 and NAtional 2-9000 (Jason A. Lindquist) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Jonathan Seder) Re: Pay Phone Paying (Bug Couch) Re: Post-Pay Phones (Bill Levant) Re: Seeking GSM StarTac Headset (Darryl Smith) Re: ISDN Viruses (Steve Winter) Re: Evolution of Nortel's PBXen? (Al Varney) Need Product Info!! (Hyunsu Jung) Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here (John R. Levine) Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here (Al Iverson) Hawaii One Day, Seattle the Next (TELECOM Digest Editor) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 11:18:32 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Florida's New 321 NPA (was Re: 3-2-1-Rrring!) > Mike Pollock quoted the news article: > CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- 3-2-1-Rrring! > With the push of 10 telephone buttons, Gov. Jeb Bush launched a > new area code Monday for the Cape Canaveral area: 321. That's > 3-2-1 as in Liftoff! Yet another "vanity" area code! :( > The new area code was the "one of those light-bulb ideas," > Bush said, that should draw even more attention to Brevard > County and the space industry. More POLITICS and "vanity" - they seem to "go together"! :( > Three-two-one replaces the 407 area code, which will remain in > effect locally for another year as a transition period. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 'Replaces' as in all 407's will be > numbered 321, or does the author mean it is part of a split or > an overlay of 407? Don't you wish newspaper writers would get > things right once in a while where things involving telephones and > the internet are concerned? PAT] THANK YOU, Pat, for AGAIN pointing out the ERRORS and MISCONCEPTIONS by the "so called mainstream" press/media. I lump them in with the politicos and the "Hollywood" so-called 'entertainment' industry of today. The facts about 321 are as follows, but due to the politics/vanity involved with 321, it is QUITE convoluted as an NPA relief plan: The NANPA Planning Letter for this NPA relief is: PL-NANP-168, "NANP Split Boundary Extension Concentrated Overlay of 407 NPA with 321 NPA", dated April 22, 1999 and can be downloaded for free from NANPAs website, in Adobe-Acrobat .pdf format: http://www.nanpa.com/pdf/pl-nanp-168.pdf The Atlantic Coastal county, Brevard County, is splitting from NPA 407, to new NPA 321, permissive dialing effective 1-Nov-1999. Mandatory dialing is effective on 1-Oct-2000. From the Planning Letter: "During the permissive dialing period, either 407 or 321 NPA code will be accepted in a dialed number terminating in the Brevard County area of the new 321 NPA. After the permissive period, all calls dialed with the incorrect NPA code will be routed to intercept." Also: "... area includes the Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Eau Gallie, Melbourne, and Titusville rate areas." This is the Cape Kennedy/Canaveral Space complex/area. The "central/Orlando/Disney" part of 407 (central Florida) is going to be OVERLAID with 321, effective 1-Dec-1999. Since 1-April-1999, there has been permissive 10-digit as well as (existing) 7-digit dialing of local calls. Mandatory 10-digit local dialing takes place in this "bulk" part of NPA 407 (central FL), effective 1-Dec-1999. The town/ratecenter of Debarry in the extreme north of "central, 407" Florida will _NOT_ (at the time) be overlaid with new 321, nor will it SPLIT to NPA 321. It will retain 7-digit local dialing for calls _WITHIN_ its ratecenter, but for local calls to the adjacent ratecenter/town of Sanford (which itself will be "overlaid" or at least convert to 10-digit local dialing for ITS originating local calls), Debarry WILL have to dial 10-digits for such local calls to Sanford. Incidently, one of Sanford's own (several) 407-NXX c.o.codes happens to be 407-321, which could ultimately be overlaid with 321-NXX c.o.codes! BUT, since 10-digit local dialing is to be MANDATORY from/within Sanford, there is no code conflict. But that could be confusing to people calling Sanford from Debarry if it still has 7-digit local dialing within Debarry, yet 10-digit local dialing to Sanford. Debarry town/ratecenter has several 407-NXX prefixes, by the way, most BellSouth, some appear to be CLECs, and some apprear to be wireless. The incumbant landline LECs in this area include BellSouth, Sprint-United (local) Tel of Florida, and Disney's own Buena Vista Telephone for "Mickey Mouse land" (Disney World). A bit of trivia here ... Disney Studios in Burbank CA are on Buena Vista Blvd, and Disney uses the Vista or Buena Vista name as a trademark for their record label and other media under Disney (I don't know if they are using (Buena) Vista at ABC, the American Broadcasting Company's radio and television networks and owned/operated stations - Disney did merge with/acquire/purchase the ABC Radio and Television Networks a few years ago). MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__HOME:__(USA)__Tel:_CHestnut-1-2497 WORK:__mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu|4710-Wright-Road|__(+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity-5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New-Orleans-28__|fwds-on-no-answr-to Fax:UNiversity-5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail- ------------------------------ Date: 3 Nov 1999 11:23:31 -0500 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Three-two-one replaces the 407 area code, which will remain in > effect locally for another year as a transition period. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 'Replaces' as in all 407's will be > numbered 321, or does the author mean it is part of a split or > an overlay of 407? The latter, in a rather odd way. Starting this month, most of Brevard County, which includes the Space Coast, is moved from 407 to 321. Starting next month they'll start issuing 321 numbers in the rest of 407, the Orlando area. The rules about the transition to 10D dialing are too wierd to explain, see Linc Madison's discussion at http://www.lincmad.com/commentary.html#fl321 John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Michael G. Koerner Subject: Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 10:35:22 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: mgk920@dataex.com Mike Pollock wrote: > CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- 3-2-1-Rrring! > With the push of 10 telephone buttons, Gov. Jeb Bush launched a new > area code Monday for the Cape Canaveral area: 321. That's 3-2-1 as in > Liftoff! > Three-two-one replaces the 407 area code, which will remain in > effect locally for another year as a transition period. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 'Replaces' as in all 407's will be > numbered 321, or does the author mean it is part of a split or > an overlay of 407? Don't you wish newspaper writers would get > things right once in a while where things involving telephones and > the internet are concerned? PAT] The 'Space Coast' part of 407 is splitting away from 407 **AND** '321' will also overlay '407' in the Orlando metro area. A very confusing plan, IMHO. Regards, Michael G. Koerner Appleton, WI ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: African Stratospheric Airships? Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 19:35:58 PST Organization: Shadownet Michael J. Kuras writes: > (Came across this today. As with any PR realease, I take it with a > grain of salt, but this one seems WAY out there. Is this even > technically feasible? And if so, is it economically feasible for > Africa?) > U. S. / Africa Ventures Pre-Trading Opportunities > http://worksessions.com/6783/ > The Industry Is Wireless Telecommunications. The Focus Is The Delivery > Of Telecommunications Services Throughout The Entire African > Continent. > US/Africa currently holds all operating rights to a new telecommun- > ications technology for deployment of "stratospheric airships" > throughout the entire continent of Africa. Additionally, US/Africa is > a strategic partner with the developer and owner of this new > technology, Sky Station International, Inc. for deployment of services > throughout all of Africa. > The technology will accomplish delivery of telecommunications from the > stratosphere at an altitude of approximately 70,000 feet. Specific > services can be tailored to meet the needs and desires of the country > of deployment. I suspect this is planning to use production versions of the high- altitude solar-powered "sailplanes" that have been tested in the US. Basicly about a half-sized, unmanned, sailplane with the upper surface covered with solar cells. During the day they climb to very high altitudes, and at night they slowly descend (at dawn they might be as low as 30-40 thousand feet). They were developed with the intent of using them for sensor platform for both surveilance and weather, and for use as communications relays. They should be able to stay up for months at a time. So you just keep a few spares on hand and when one signals that it needs to descend for servicing, you start another one up. By the next day it's nearing operational altitude and you can let the other one descend. And since the planes are constantly moving, though in more or less fixed areas, if one *does* drop out, it doesn't leave a hole, since you need substantial overlap of coverage to make this work anyway. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) Subject: Re: 588-2300 and NAtional 2-9000 Organization: The Home Office Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 04:46:39 GMT Ed Ellers wrote: > PAT, the TELECOM Digest Editor, noted: >> The famous (at least to Chicagoans) little jingle 'five eight eight, two >> three hundred ... Empire!' which they sang on television and radio a dozen >> times per day for years one day started sounding different: it now began >> with about two seconds of four-part harmony on the very front with a short >> pause ... 'eight-hundred ........ five-eight-eight, two-three-hundred'. > I haven't heard that version, because WGN now shows different > commercials and often different programming for cable viewers outside > Chicago (and satellite viewers, even *in* Chicago!) and has done so > for several years. But I used to hear the old jingle all the time on > WGN, as well as the one (I've forgotten for who) with the phone number > NAtional 2-9000. I saw the new version of Empire on KCBS a couple weeks ago, so the ad *is* airing outside of Chicago now. Terry E. Knab News/Interm System Administrator Nyx Public Access Unix ------------------------------ From: jlindqui@enterprise.uiuc.edu (Jason A. Lindquist) Subject: Re: 588-2300 and NAtional 2-9000 Date: 2 Nov 1999 19:26:52 GMT Organization: SETEC Astronomy Reply-To: linky@see.figure1.net Ed Ellers writes: > But I used to hear the old jingle all the time on > WGN, as well as the one (I've forgotten for who) with the phone number > NAtional 2-9000. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had forgotten all about NAtional Two - > Nine Thousand until you brought it up. I think that was a furniture > store. David Tamkin probably knows for sure. PAT] That's Lincoln Carpets, of course! I seem to remember First Metropolitan Builders having a distinctive number as well, but it escapes me ... Jason Lindquist <*> "Mostly though, I think it gave us hope, linky@see.figure1.net That there can always be a new beginning. KB9LCL Even for people like us." -- Gen. Susan Ivanova, B5, "Sleeping In Light" ------------------------------ From: Jonathan Seder Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 21:06:27 -0800 Organization: SyntelSoft Inc One of Stewart Fist's observations deserves a response. He mentions several studies that correlate increased risk of rare diseases with cellphone use. However, observations like these typically arise from small sample sizes. That is, if a disease has an incidence of 10/million in a large population, and you find a single case among your study group of a thousand cellphone users, that does not mean that the incidence of this disease is a hundred times greater among cellphone users. Here's an actual example from Mr Fist's note: "The risk of acoustic neuroma, a tumour of the auditory nerve, was 50 per cent higher in people who reported using cell phones for six years or more." According to itsa.ucsf.edu/~rkj/Chapter/Epidem.html, the incidence of acoustic neuroma in the US is indeed about ten per million per year. We don't know when this study was done, but even in 1999 the number of people who have used handheld cellular phones for six years or more is very small -- certainly too small to arrive at the conclusion that Fist quotes. You can't do this by studying long-term cellphone users -- the sample selection problems will make the results useless. The same UCSF paper suggests that only one in several hundred acoustic neuromas is detected. Because of scare stories about cellphone use or affluence or other factors that might correlate to cellphone use but not susceptibility to acoustic neuromas, cellphone users may be more likely to seek medical attention for hearing problems or headaches -- so a poorly designed study would probably count acoustic neuromas that otherwise would have gone undetected. ------------------------------ From: Bud Couch Subject: Re: Pay Phone Paying Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 18:01:23 -0800 Organization: ADC Kentrox Joseph Singer wrote: > Well, in the Bell System on post pay telephones you would get dial > tone and dial the number. When the number supervised you'd get bursts > of dial tone. I think the called party could hear you, but you could > not hear the called party because of the "dial tone" like sound which > prevented conversation. Also, to alert the operator that you were > calling from a pay phone there would be a burst of dialtone-like sound > for about five seconds when the operator answered. I would guess that > probably means that in areas where they had CDO's they didn't bother > to have separate trunks for coin phones and coin phones were > differentiated to the operator by the dial tone buzz that she got when > she answered a call. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought that post-pay phones cut off > the mouthpiece pending payment rather than jamming the audio. When > John Levine also responded to this earlier today, I got the same > impression from his response. PAT] I never knew that Ma Bell even *had* post-pay phones; even in the days of "number, please" the phones of Bell of PA that I used were pre-pay. One of the first jobs I had in the telecom business was at North Electric (no, not Northern, North) where I was assigned to evaluate a pay phone design that they were looking to buy from Zero (the suitcase people) who had acquired it as a bankruptcy settlement because they were making the aluminum case for it. Zero had no one who understood *anything* about the insides. North did buy it, and I understand got a good deal on it, and sold it for years. It was the first non-Bell single slot pay phone. At any rate, the post-pay mechanism in it was extremely simple: a diode across the transmitter. Under normal battery (tip= ground, ring= -48V) the diode was back-biased, current flowed through the carbon mike and could be modulated by the voice. When you connected to the operator you could still talk, and the reverse battery from the far end on long distance calls was intercepted by the LD operator station. On local calls, the reverse batttery created as supervision would do two things: It would pull the coin platform horizontal (instead of tilted into the coin recepticle), and it would allow the current to flow through the diode, instead of through the carbon mike. Now the called party couldn't hear you, until you put in your nickle (this was a *long* time ago) where it would land on the coin platform, depressing a microswitch which was in series with the diode. Voila! Current through the carbon mike and communication. When the call ended, either the open circuit of the hang up or the normal battery when the called party released would release the coin platform and dump the money into the coin recepticle. Note that when an operator was involved the coins went directly to the recepticle; the operator could never give your money back. Bud Couch |When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.| bud@kentrox.com | -Tom Lehrer | Insert disclaimer here | "Therefore you're guilty!" -EEOC | [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the manual exchanges I was familiar with, the operator could most definitly return the coins. Two buttons on the switchboard -- the same ones which were used for party line ringing by making changes in the polarity -- were used to 'collect' or 'return' coins, by tipping the platform one direction or the other. Occassionally the operator would make a mistake and have to ask you (a) to please make the deposit again, or (b) if it was collec- ted in error offer to have the money returned by mail, or if you planned on trying again in just a few minutes you could, 'just tell the next operator you have (amount of coins) credit from operator (number).' And because things were different in those days, you could indeed at a later time place your call and simply explain that operator (number) collected in error and you would like to use the credit on the call you were making now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 21:21:36 EST Subject: Re: Post-Pay Phones > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought that post-pay phones cut off > the mouthpiece pending payment rather than jamming the audio. When > John Levine also responded to this earlier today, I got the same > impression from his response. PAT] I think you're right, PAT. If one was willing (or cheap enough) to put up with essentially half-duplex operation to do it, one could carry on a conversation without paying by alternately shouting into and listening to the earpiece. Bill ------------------------------ From: Darryl Smith Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 20:50:46 +1100 Subject: Re: Seeking GSM StarTac Headset G'Day, I just asked my brother about the Motorola StarTac. Aparently there is a hands free for the V and X models, but not for the 70, 80 or 100 models. These models may not be available in the USA as they are on the [almost world wide] 900 MHz GSM band (915-928 MHz). Car kits are aparently available, but not hands free. I just checked one of the catalogs I have here and they have almost nothing for the StarTac apart from the batteries and cases. Hands Free kits have become quite popular down here in the last 12 months. You now see them being used everywhere. People are now putting phones in pockets. I wonder how the heart is affected by RF radiation. Darryl Smith, VK2TDS POBox 169 Ingleburn NSW 2565 Australia Mobile Number 0412 929 634 [+61 4 12 929 634 International] ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 12:10:10 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Fred Goldstein spake thusly and wrote: > At 03:30 PM 10/30/1999 -0400, John Maddaus wrote: >> "ISDN Viruses are quite possibly the worst thing to happen to computing >> since the creation of the Cellular Trojan Horse. Basically, these viruses >> travel over the wires using the X.224 transport protocol, and seize the >> D channel using Q.931. All SS7 data sent over the D channel is quickly >> compromized and re-routed to different signal transfer points, causing >> massive ANI Failure over the entire routing mesh. >> Rumor has it that the Internet Liberation Front was behind these viruses >> with heavy investement coming from the German Bundesnachrichtendienst's >> Project Rahab. These hackers were paid with AT&T calling cards encoded >> with a polymorphic encryption scheme, and cocaine." > I hope Digest readers recognize this for the put-on it is. Roughly > translated into English, "The hoofaloofahingamajinga will prognosticaglify > the frammistat". > Believe me, there's no SS7 on the D channel, no X.224 anything (that is > actually the now-obscure OSI Transport Layer Protocol, a failed competitor > to TCP) in ISDN, and the whole rest of Maddaus' screed about security is > just blather and falsehoods, written to sound scary. > Usually this stuff comes on April Fools', but I guess Halloween gets a > scare too. This one's just as real as the Darth Mauls in the first grade. A previous horror, very real, and much more insidious knocked out our ISDN use many months ago. ------------------------------ From: varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney) Subject: Re: Evolution of Nortel's PBXen? Date: 2 Nov 1999 07:34:53 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL Reply-To: varney@lucent.com In article , John McHarry wrote: > On 19 Oct 1999 20:39:14 GMT, varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney) > wrote: >> The SP-1 was Northern's first software-controlled CO switch, which >> saw CO service in 1971 and a 4-wire tandem version in 1975 > And it lead to the DMS-100, which initially used the same processor > and replaced the mini crossbar matrix with a digital matrix. The SP-1 > was kind of analogous to the 1ESS, which was also a computer > controlled analog switch. It should have been analogous -- Northern built a few No. 1 ESS switches before the SP1 was designed, and they knew enough about the No. 2 ESS to decide they didn't want to use it. >> In 1977, Northern introduced the DMS-10, a PCM-based CO switch. >> This was built from the SL-1 by adding dual processors and analog line >> circuits based on the DMS-1 line multiplexer. > I wasn't aware the initial DMS-10 line cards were DMS-1 based. By the > time I got involved, they were much different. I would have thought > their pedigree would have been more SL-1 line cards, My notes are in Illinois, and I'm stuck in San Diego. I don't think that the CARDS were the same, just that the circuits of the DMS-10 and the DMS-1 had to be "outside plant ready" and the SL-1 circuits were designed for "indoor service" only. The DMS-10 would certainly have had the line-card FORMAT of the SL-1. Al Varney ------------------------------ From: Hyunsu Jung Subject: Need Product Info Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:04:14 +0900 Organization: Inet Internet Services Hi, I'm looking for a product which meets the following requirements: - Objective: extracted at least 2 56/64Kbps from T3 ,which will be used for the SS7 signalling Link. - Network Interface: T3(45Mbls) - Data/Voice Interfaces(support at least 1 HSSI and 1 DXI-1,V.35/RS-449 optionally): HSSI,DXI-1(T1/FT1),V.35/RS-449 - Protocol: Transparent, ATM or Frame Relay - Cost: reasonable price Any help or advice would be appreciated. Best Regards, Hyunsu Jung hsjung@nuri.net ------------------------------ Date: 3 Nov 1999 11:34:27 -0500 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Federal telecom law makes it a federal felony to knowingly allow > a system under one's control to be used for harassment by wire. Section 230 of PL 104-104, the 1996 Telecom Act that included the CDA says: (1) TREATMENT OF PUBLISHER OR SPEAKER- No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Although I agree that systems that provide completely anonymous mail (as opposed to anonymized mail where the person forwarding the message knows who the author is but deletes the identifying info) is the electronic equivalent of scribbles on bathroom walls, the law pretty clearly absolves the operators of anon relays of legal liability for libel of slander. One could still go after them for copyright violation, though, if that were an issue. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: radparker@radparker.com (Al Iverson) Subject: Re: Two New Anonymizing Features Added Here Organization: See sig before replying Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 13:24:29 -0600 In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to steve@sellcom.com: > Since public pay telephones are 'under the control of the phone > company', and since they do not collect valid and recourseable > identification from users of same, therefore they can be sued when a > harassing phone call is made to someone from a payphone, can't they? > WELL, CAN'T THEY ??????? > Or as Al Iverson would say, the first time someone uses a public > payphone to send a message promoting child pornography and the phone > company has no idea who used the phone to transmit the message, > the phone company is going to be in BIG TROUBLE! No sir, no weak > excuses about not being responsible for it ... telco should have > made the user sign up first and present valid identification, etc. The flaw in your theory is that you assume that everything is tariffed and governed by law in the same way that telephones are. Al Iverson Al Iverson -- Web: http://al.radparker.com/ -- Home: Minneapolis, USA STOP! Include SWANKY99 in email replies or they may be tagged as spam. Send me no unsolicited advertising, as I will always return it to you. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No Al, I did not forget about tariffs and being governed by law. If netizen-webmasters had lots of money and plenty of powerful attornies working for them, they could be tariffed and governed by law also, couldn't they? If I could write tariffs here, I think one of the first I would write would be to charge each and every person on the net $1.04 cents per month as a 'telecom-digest.org website access fee'. The idea would be that it costs me a lot of money to maintain this website, and even if you are not a regular user there is always the possibility you might want to use it, and I must keep it up and running and ready for such an instance. Therefore you must pay that $1.04 each month which your ISP will pass along to me for my expense in keeping the website available. That's how telcos operate isn't it? We cannot just let the long distance network stand on its own, paid for by its users; after all we each want to be the first on our block to reduce our rates to 4.5 cents per minute and to do that the rest of the money has to come from somewhere. Oh Al, what about paper snailmail which gets deposited in postal coll- ection boxes with invalid or non-existent return addresses? I bet the post office gets in BIG TROUBLE for providing those 'attractive nuisances' known as maiboxes on every street corner, don't they? Oh! Silly me -- how could I forget? -- they're all cronies and highly- placed flunkies in the government, while I am just a webmaster on that nuisance known as the internet. And a nuisance it is, too; just ask telco/post office/print or broadcast media/take your choice how this thing has screwed up all the carefully-crafted controls they used to have over the rest of us. Well here is the new deal, Al; you can take it or leave it: anonymous services -- in the several variations in which they exist -- on the net would not be necessary in the first place if it were not for the massive commercialization of the net in recent years and the inherent invasions of privacy which have accompanied the process happening first. We call what they are doing 'Cerfing the net' ... transitioning as quickly as possible the internet from a thing controlled by the citizens into a thing controlled by the same old crowd that has tried to govern everything in the past. Netizens would not need to use anonymous services from time to time if it were not for operations like the Federal Bureau of Inquisition -- who you say will not be accepting any 'weak excuses from webmasters' -- smooching, getting cozy with their friends at telco and in the traditional media at the same time that they treat netizens as dirt under their feet and a nuisance that has to be brought under control. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 14:27:18 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Hawaii One Day, Seattle the Next So, a mass killing in Hawaii yesterday (seven people) and now the news on Wednesday says someone did the same thing (five people) earlier today in Seattle ... so are these things getting to the point we can expect one every day or two now, or at least once a week as I predicted awhile back? PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #527 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Nov 4 13:10:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id NAA25558; Thu, 4 Nov 1999 13:10:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 13:10:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911041810.NAA25558@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #528 TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 Nov 99 13:10:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 528 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson VoIP Drives Communications Prices to Zero (John Stahl) Another Online Privacy Issue (Steve Polatas) Real Privacy (Monty Solomon) Lift-up Switchhooks (Dan Lanciani) Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service (Tony Toews) Re: Other Gigaset Models? (was: New Version of the Siemens) (Steve Winter) Home Wireless Networks (mckibbon@my-deja.com) Re: Telecom Update (Canada) #206, November 1, 1999 (JF Mezei) Q: 3COM NBX100 - Experience? (Wolfgang Schuler) Different AT&T International Calling Rates - Why? (Anthony E. Siegman) Quantumlink Communications (Marc Schneider) Re: Seeking GSM StarTac Headset (Steve Winter) Re: Cell Phone Hazards (Steve Winter) Re: Sprint PCS/Wireless Web (Ray Normandeau/Frazier) Media Spoils for a Fight in Portland (Monty Solomon) Data Sharing Worries Privacy Advocates (Monty Solomon) Listings of Telecom Providers and ISP's - Please (John Stahl) Telephony Problems (Mark Fine) ALLTEL: Local Phone Problems (Surlefleuve@aol.com) Old April Fool's Column in a Telecom Magazine (Jamie R. Goldstein) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 14:34:50 From: John Stahl Subject: VoIP Drives Communications Prices to Zero Here is a short report from PC World magazine on the cost of a LD phone call based on VoIP technology. No wonder that the big guys like Sprint, MCI, etc. and the small independent telcos and CLEC's are involved with VoIP. This confirms the info which TELECOM Digest Editor-in-Chief has recently related to the readers regarding dialpad.com. This article also lists three additional web based telephony services at the end of the article. Guess making telephone calls via computer on IP technology gets the 'ad' advantage to recover system costs when the prices approach $0.0. Respectively submitted, John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecom/Data Consultant email: aljon@worldnet.att.net --------------------- Price of a Phone Call Drops to Nil Watch your back Candice Bergen, the price of a long-distance phone call drops to nothing on the 'Net. By Tom Spring PC World, 11/03/99 Woe is Sprint's once-ubiquitous "dime-a-minute" pitch that today just seems exorbitant. But don't write Sprint off yet. Despite a bevy of start-ups challenging traditional telcos with free PC-to-phone services for long-distance phone calls, quality remains second-rate. Dialpad.com, which began offering its services in October, is the latest voice-over-Internet firm du jour, allowing any PC owner with a Net connection, speakers, and a microphone to call any regular telephone in the US for free. In two weeks, with no marketing budget whatsoever, the start-up has signed on 120,000 registered users. The concept is not new. But dialpad.com is winning the praise of analysts who say the company's banner-add-sponsored service is near "cellular quality" and extremely easy to use. Talk is Cheap on the Net Getting started is simple. Answer two pages of demographic information and grant permission for diailpad.com to download a small Java applet onto your computer. Next, a window pops up. Just punch in the telephone number you want to call, press "dial", and start talking. "We have exceeded even our most ambitious expectations," says Hyunduk Ahn, dialpad.com's chief executive officer of his company's early success. Banner Ad a Minute Rate Voice-over-the-Internet traffic-or IP telephony-allows phone conversations over the Internet and intranets that use the TCP/IP protocol. Analysts have long predicted that IP telephony will make its way into the mainstream as it offers cheaper phone rates, and will likely lead to the convergence of voice, data, and video. The greatest barrier to using voice-over data network services is voice quality, says Mark Winther, an analyst with International Data Corp. However, as Internet bandwidth increases, quality improves, and more people use services. The popularity of IP telephony will quadruple this year alone to about 9.6 billion paid minutes by 2000. That number is expected to jump to 135 billion minutes by 2004, according to IDC. Those numbers don't factor in free services like dialpad.com, Innofone's Hot Caller service, Callrewards.com, and CallMeFree.com. Each of these players offers lookalike services that route calls to traditional phones. They are banking on making money through advertising instead of charging you 3 cents a minute as do fee-based voice-over Net services like Net2Phone, WebPhone.com, and deltathree.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 14:35:18 -0500 From: Steve Polatas Subject: Another Online Privacy Issue Pat, The following article came through in Keith Dawson's most recent "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front" mailing. I thought it fit in with some of the online privacy threads seen here recently. Steve Polatas SNEAKY CUSTOMER TRACKING BY EMAIL Scot E. Wilcoxon notes that he got an email from TurboTax -- so far so innocent, he uses their software. It was titled "Priority Announcement for TurboTax Customers." At the bottom of the email was a link to an image: src="http://info.turbotax.com/images/blankpixel.gif/Key=8910.Uhy.C87jIw" If your email client is set to display HTML, then TurboTax knows that you've read their email -- your browser displays a one-pixel invisible graphic and the "Key=" records your identity in their Web log. No cookies involved. Moral: if you care who knows what you read, then stop your email client from interpreting HTML. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 22:08:51 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Real Privacy Real Privacy Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems uttered the signature soundbyte on privacy in the information age: "You already have zero privacy. Get over it." The media are waking up to this reality, big time. When a computer security researcher revealed that RealNetworks' popular media player, RealJukebox, was sending your personal data to the company every time you popped in a CD, it made front-page news. RealJukebox has 13.5 million registered users. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/mediagrok_display/0,1185,7365,00.html ------------------------------ From: Dan Lanciani Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 05:19:15 EST Subject: Lift-up Switchhooks I recently acquired some two-line Princess phones. (Pretty neat; I never realized they existed.) Anyway, these phones include an additional switch activated by pulling up one of the switchhooks. I remember seeing this feature on 5-line 2500 sets and I seem to think it was called an exclusion switch, but I never knew what it was for. On the princess phones this switch appears to short whichever line is not currently selected. Is this intended as a simple hold function? And what is it used for on 5-line phones? Also, these princess phones use a six position modular jack with line 1 on the first pair, lamp power on the second pair, and line 2 on the third pair. Was there a power kit that turned this into something more standard or did they use custom-wired jacks? On the general subject of 2-line phones with modular jacks, does anyone make a modular line cord with twisted pair construction? I find that the standard flat cables (especially longer ones) introduce a lot of crosstalk. I've fabricated my own from cat3 and modular plugs, but they aren't as flexible or attractive as I'd like. Dan Lanciani ddl@harvard.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The switchhook that you pull up was intended to place the line you were *not* using on hold. Unlike a five line phone, this was simply a short across the line, and sometimes referred to as a 'mechanical hold'. Alternatively, the plunger of the switchhook that you pull up could be used as an 'exclusion key', meaning that any other extension with that line on it was dead, or excluded from the connection for the purpose of privacy. When handled in that way, the phone pair coming in had to be brought first to that instrument, *then* sent back out to the main junction box and routed around the premises to wherever. When used as a mechanical hold, the plunger would cause a short on which ever line was not in use; when used as an exclusion key, it did the opposite, by breaking the circuit of the line which was in use. You had to make a small wiring change inside the phone to use the plunger in the way desired. You could either use the plunger as a mechanical hold on a two line phone or as an exclusion key for one line of a five line phone, but not both obviously. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ttoews@telusplanet.net (Tony Toews) Subject: Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service Organization: Me, organized? Not a chance. Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 18:06:02 GMT Jack Hamilton wrote: > You could also get a domain name in the .CA top-level domain. It would > probably be less expensive than a .COM domain, if you can locate the > organization which issues them for your area (the registrar for > Sacramento, California is Brooks Fiber Properties, which doesn't answer > email). Umm, .CA is Canada. .CA.US would be California. Tony Toews, Independent Computer Consultant Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm VolStar http://www.volstar.com Manage hundreds or thousands of volunteers for special events. ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Other Gigaset Models? (was: New Version of the Siemens) Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 14:54:21 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com dkiner@my-deja.com (Doug Kiner) spake thusly and wrote: > I have been considering the Gigaset 2415 for home use, but I have read > quite a few negative comments about the 2420. Many of the problems > appear to have been addressed, based on what you have posted. > I am wondering, however if the "single line" models (2410, 2415) suffer > from the same problems, or have they "inherited" the improvements as > well? I am not sure, but I believe they would have the new software (we don't have them quite yet). I really recommend going with the new 2420 because I was surprised at how many places to use cordless handsets. I can't imagine going back to only 4. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: mckibbon@my-deja.com Subject: Home Wireless Networks Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 21:08:56 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Is anyone familiar with the products of Home Wireless Networks? (www.homewireless.com) They appear to have a small business telephone system that allows a wireless voice and data communications system. Please respond to mckibbon@sol.racsa.co.cr. Thanks, Steve ------------------------------ From: J.F. Mezei Subject: Re: Telecom Update (Canada) #206, November 1, 1999 Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 22:42:33 -0500 Angus TeleManagement wrote: > BELL MOBILITY TO OFFER WIRELESS CONFERENCE CALLS: Bell Mobility says > it will be the first wireless carrier in North America to offer > wireless conference calls. Bell Mobility should check its facts because Fido (using Microcell Connexion's GSM network) has been providing conference call capabilities on its network since at least June 1997, although not all phones support it. ------------------------------ From: Wolfgang Schuler Subject: Q: 3COM NBX100 - Experience? Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 10:07:35 +0100 Organization: T-Online Any experience with the new LAN-Phone-System NBX 100 from 3COM? Or any hints to compare different systems ? Thank you, Wolfgang Schuler , ALSTOM AT , Germany ------------------------------ From: siegman@stanford.edu (Anthony E. Siegman) Subject: Different AT&T International Calling Rates - Why? Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 10:36:30 -0800 Organization: Stanford University Big ads for AT&T "One Rate International Value Plan" this morning. Rates for calling from US vary from from 10 cents/minute for UK, 16 cents/minute for Japan, 17 cents/minute for many other places (Europe, Australia, Israel, Korea) -- and then 30 cents for Philippines, 35 cents for Mexico, 40 and 45 cents for Colombia and El Salvador, and 55 cents/minute (highest shown) for India. Just out of curiousity, what determines the differences in these rates? Genuine technical costs? What the traffic will bear? Excessive rates by phone companies at the called end? Email cc to siegman@stanford.edu appreciated. ------------------------------ From: Marc Schneider Subject: Quantumlink Communications Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:58:52 -0500 I am a sales rep for Qwest and I am competing against a reseller called Quantumlink Communications out of California. They are offering a rate of .099/min to Germany with no contract. I have been trying to dig up any dirt possible on them. Their website does not mention anything about long distance service. Do you know anything about these guys? Thanks, Marc Schneider Major Account Executive Qwest Communications ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Seeking GSM StarTac Headset Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 14:51:57 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Arun Baheti spake thusly and wrote: > With all the talk of tin-foil hats, perhaps someone can recommend a > vendor or product. I've been trying to find something for months. > After searching for a suitable product and finding nothing, I tried > Motorola's website and even called them directly. They claim to make > no handfree headset (microphone that clips to your collar and > earpiece, or any variation on the theme) for the GSM StarTac. > I've been sent several that don't work with the GSM phones and have > tried three aftermarket vendors. I've tried PacBell Wireless. > I find it hard to believe that this doesn't exist. I find it harder > to believe that Motorola doesn't make the accessory itself -- anyone > have the story behind that? > Any help is appreciated. Replies may be sent directly to me and I > will summarize for the digest or anyone who is interested on request. I use a Motorola StarTAC cellular phone. When I want to use it hands free, I just grab up any of the pile of 2.5mm cordless phone headsets that we use around here and just start talking. One thing, when doing that, closing the front does NOT terminate the call. (I guess so that one can walk around with the phone in its holster.). The phone I have is the dual mode (digital with analog fallback). I believe (with my phone) the challange would be to find a 2.5mm jack handsfree phone headset that would not work with it. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 15:47:52 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Fred Baube spake thusly and wrote: > steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) >> Scot E. Wilcoxon spake thusly and wrote: >>> OK, that subject has recent research. New neurons are continually >>> being made. >> Would wearing a little tinfoil hat while talking on the cellular >> phone help? > I would recommend a cap made of Brillo pads. Tell people it's a > fashion initiative. Tinfoil packed with steel wool would work and not have the pink soap. Could those guys in the history books who wore those metal helmets have possibly known something that we don't? What kind of phones were they using back then? Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: Ray Normandeau/Frazier Subject: Re: Sprint PCS/Wireless Web Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 21:35:38 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. The SEPT99 LIT 1729A S075 bill insert from Sprint PCS for SPCS Wireless WWW on page/panel 6 says: "Your number is transmitted to any site you visit on the Internet". Whose gonna call? Well first your number has to be added to the lists that are now in compilation. Then the lists have to sold and traded with other marketers. Then you can get calls from telemarketers on your SPCS phone. But it get's better. If you get text messages via your SPCS phone, well, now you will get WIRELESS SPAM too!! Ray Normandeau -French chef in "Light Sleeper" with Susan Sarandon and Willem Dafoe. The residuals have fallen down and can't get up. Rent the video today :-). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 21:36:02 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Media Spoils for a Fight in Portland The story of AT&T's pinstriped suits and high-priced lawyers taking on woodsy, homey Portland, Ore., in the battle for open access is a made-for-the-media tale. That was obvious most of all to the business press, which used a slow news time to fan the flames of the Net's latest David-and-Goliath fight. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/mediagrok_display/0,1185,7341,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 21:33:42 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Data Sharing Worries Privacy Advocates By Robert O'Harrow Jr. Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 31, 1999 Imagine e-mail from a stockbroker recommending a portfolio based on an internal review of your checking-account activity. Or a call from a bank clerk to a favored customer offering discounts on insurance coverage. Or a personalized letter proposing ways your newly widowed mother can invest her insurance money. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/daily/oct99/privacy31.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 07:14:48 From: John Stahl Subject: Listings of Telecom Providers and ISP's - Please Monty Solomon recently gave TELECOM Digest (V19 #520) an internet address for a listing of Massachusetts (MA) telecom providers from the MA Department of Public Utilities. I was wondering if any subscriber might have similar links to other of the 49 states listings of their "approved" telecom providers (CLEC's, IOC's, ILEC's, etc.) and, if the particular state requires registration, lists of ISP's doing business within the state, too. Thanks for your help. John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecom/Data Consultant email: aljon@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ From: Mark Fine Subject: Telephony Problems Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 15:34:17 +0200 Organization: Internet Gold, ISRAEL Hello! I am writing TAPI compliant application that does the following: 1. Receives inbound calls. 2. Retrieves caller ID and converts it to canonical format. 3. Compares the retrieved caller ID to phone numbers from database. 4. Store user's phone number in canonical format in database. 5. Places outgoing calls using stored phone numbers. The program had to work with Japan telephony. I have a problem: The caller ID format is 0XXXXXXXXX for regular or 0YYYYYYYYYY for mobile phones. I want to convert it to canonical format in order to compare it to phone from database. The problem is that I don't know where is the end of the area code within caller ID string. TAPI does not give me any indication about the length of the area code within caller ID string. So, how can I divide the caller ID string for are code and subscriber number? Can you help me please?! Thank you! Regards, Mark Fine, NetGong LTD, P.O.Box 67, Yokneam 20692, Israel Tel: +972-4-9894888 Fax: +972-4-9891717 e-mail: m-fine@shf.co.il Web: http://www.Net-Gong.com ------------------------------ From: Surlefleuve@aol.com Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 18:48:58 EST Subject: ALLTEL: Local Phone Problems I live in the small town of Commerce, Georgia, and have no option but to have ALLTEL as my local phone provider. I have been experiencing one particular problem that no one at ALLTEL seems to be able to fix. Whenever I dial any local (7-digit) number in the next town over (Athens, Georgia) I get a fast busy, or an "all circuits busy" recording. However when I place a call into any of those exchanges using a dial around (10-10-XXX) number, I can get through without any problem, however at a per minute charge. I am only experiencing fast busy signals when calling into Athens, and no other local (non-Commerce) exchanges. One additional piece of information, Athens exchanges are serviced by BellSouth. Would the problem be between the two seperate telcos even in a local calling area? And, since ALLTEL cannot fix this problem, who should I talk to about resolving the issue? ------------------------------ From: jrgoldstein@my-deja.com Subject: Old April Fool's column in a telecom magazine Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 00:28:38 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Several years back I recall reading an "editorial" in a telecom magazine (perhaps Teleconnect) that was an obvious April Fool's article -- a homeowner was trying to get his telephone line repaired from one of the three remaining telephone/cable tv/internet companies. Of the three companies, one had merged with Pizza Hut, and the last was AT&T -- short for Allen and Two Temps. Does anyone recall which magazine this was, or possibly even have the text? I doubt that the authors of this prank article would have bet on the consolidation we see today. Regards, Jamie Goldstein ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #528 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Nov 4 13:54:04 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id NAA27472; Thu, 4 Nov 1999 13:54:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 13:54:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911041854.NAA27472@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #529 TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 Nov 99 13:54:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 529 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: ISDN Viruses (John S. Maddaus) Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (Lucille Causey) Re: Pay Phone Paying (David Charles) Re: Unlocking GSM Phones (Steven) Rats Dive Into Cell Phone Debate (Mike Pollock) Disney/Sprint-Local Vista-United Tel; Tone vs. Pulse (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: African Stratospheric Airships?/HAPS (Arthur Ross) Re: Florida's New 321 NPA (was Re: 3-2-1-Rrring!) (Steven J. Sobol) Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected (Tim Meehan) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net (John S. Maddaus) Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 02:45:08 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net Mel Beckman wrote: > I won't even comment on Maddaus silly excerpt from Phrack about ISDN Thanks for the kudos, but I didn't write it, just passed it on. > viruses. I have to wonder why he thinks this drivel "may be suspect". Actually, I've found some articles to be quite useful, perhaps less than 90% factual, but useful just the same. In this case, the words ISDN viruses were sufficient. Just requires an open mind and the ability to pick the correct pieces out, something the rest of your post clearly proves escapes you. > It's completely bogus from stem to stern, as anyone with passing > familiarity with ISDN internals can see in a blink. >> Communication protocols and standards by definition are open to misuse >> by a potential adversary because: >> a) they make communications protocol details publicly >> available; > As they must be if people are actually to build devices that talk to > each other. Granted, but how do you insure that your device is talking to the device you think it is talking to? Take someone's word? Your local telco says it's so? >> b) they assume benign users are connected to the network; > Um, you're saying that SSL, which is a communications protocol, > assumes that users are benign? The prosecution rests. Glad you're not my lawyer. The Q.931 signaling between our PBXs and local COs does not use SSL, the IS-41 signaling between our MTSOs and STPs does not use SSL, SS-7 between our COs and STPs does not use SSL. Ahh, perhaps you are suggesting we can replace all with a feature rich version of SSL. >> c) they define how network nodes must interface, >> thereby providing >> information on vendor equipment attached to the network; > And this is bad ... how? >> d) they were developed to allow for expansion (hence >> Q.931 for example >> contains information elements containing fields which can be >> unlimited in length and passed through by the network). > Called self-defining fields, this is more properly an artifact of > data structures, not protocols. It has nothing to do with his > argument, as a self-defining field can have arbitrary limitations More bull. Try reading the Q.931 spec and key in on User-User sub-element. Remember cryptographic authentication's use of "spare" IS-41A fields? The limitations varied significantly according to Motorola, Ericsson, Nortel, Lucent, Hughes, etc. from ignore and drop on floor to Kernel Panic shut down switch. Guess you had to be there. > placed on it. There is nothing onerous about "dead" data being > propagated in a Q.931 frame. Yup and there is nothing onerous about propagating "dead" data over a LAN or WAN, unless of course the data isn't dead. Gee, how do all the virus protection, firewall, and intrusion detection companies manage to stay in business and grow even? Wonder how your sysadm would feel about that statement? And you don't see a parallel in the telecom environment? TCP/IP is secure after all! Forget IPV6! Buy Microsoft! >> A great weakness in the OSI model (from a security perspective) is >> that different levels of the model do not concern themselves with the >> content of information contained within other levels. It is merely >> passed on without verification, validation, or authentication. Though >> AT&T may choose to authenticate signaling between its network nodes I >> sincerely doubt they do so with a LEC or another IXC. The ability to >> send (and deposit on a remote telecommunication network node, aka a >> PBX through normal call setup) destructive code has been confirmed in >> briefings which I attended several years back. > I assume Maddaus is referring to SS7 caller identification data, > which Bellcore documented as unverfiable by nature briefings I > attended. The upshot is that SS7 assumes that only authenticated > users get connectivity to the SS7 network. Since SS7 connections are > physically insulated from the Internet and other networks, this is > not a hard restriction to obey. SS7 ANI information is assumed to > originate from authenticated entities, as there is no mechanism to > verify an originating switches copper cross connects to local loops. Sorry, wrong number. You weren't at the briefing I mentioned. It was given by an unverifiable by nature organization to the corporate security folks of the LEC for which I worked. Specific cases were documented as were the types of attacks which took significant advantage of the underlying protocols of ISDN and those that comprise what is known as SS-7. Had absolutely nothing whatever to do with CallerID. Had a lot to do with total denial of service and 100% re-route of PSTN traffic, ISDN Viruses and even ethnic cleansing. Amazing the amount of personal data you can retrieve and destructive data you can hide within overhead white space and then send over SS-7 when you buy a small LEC. And yet another false assumption by you. Our COs and MTSOs all received and sent signaling via SS-7 and they were all connected to our NOCs via internal LAN/WAN, some nodes of which also had outside connectivity much to the security departments chagrin (needs of the business you know). Oh, and our STP sites sold extra SS-7 bandwidth to whomever wanted to pay for it and they were connnected to the LAN for remote maintenance purposed by the vendor. AND, can you really believe that all foreign telcos (which share a common signaling system #7 with US) abide by your fictional rule? >> Combined with the fact that no person or entity knows exactly what is >> connected to the PSTN (and the advent of open market competition is >> increasing the number of unknowns daily), such "hacks" raise the bar >> considerably and are therefore potentially devastating. At this point >> I maintain that phreaking and hacking become one in the same. This >> information is beginning to make its way through the hacker archives >> as evidenced by the above excerpt taken from a recent Phrack Magazine >> article. Though the technical detail of this article may be suspect >> due to the nature of the magazine, the concept that is being aired is >> real and such press within the hacker community is likely to spread >> intense interest in bringing down a telecom network. > While we would all be silly to minimize the risk of hackers to > telecomm networks, Maddaus is completely wrong about protocols being > the problem, just as the NSA was wrong about the strength of > encryption protocols being greater for those whose internals are kept > secret (remember SkipJack?) In reality, complete and utter public > disclosure of protocols is a much better way to detect and correct > security weaknesses than what I am hearing Maddaus espouse: > proprietary, secret protocols. The more eyes on the problem, the > better. There are no guarantees, no matter what you do, other than the > guarantee that secret, proprietary protocols have always been the > easiest to crack, and subvert. Oh do get off of your Clipper bandwagon. I had to sell encryption gear with the damn things in it (that decision was politically forced). We all knew what the outcome would be. At least Whit Diffie was courteous in saying no thanks when I asked him to return the DES gear we loaned SUN. Better treatment then the Secret Service or the DEA. NOWHERE in my post did I advocate proprietary protocols. YOU chose to infer that. I stated that open protocols are not robust from a security perspective which does not equal "substitute with proprietary". Rather I choose to continue to develop Q.931 and SS-7 intrusion detection systems and espouse authenticated signaling over the network (oh yes there are companies doing such work precisely for the reasons you would deny exist and the names of which might surprise even you). Personally, I prefer to learn about new vulnerabilities rather then pretend they don't exist. jmaddaus@usa.net ------------------------------ From: Lucille Causey Subject: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 11:05:39 -0600 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises A friend suggested we post here, that someone can help us. Our family owned jewelry store has a credit card terminal that stopped working Monday. The credit card processing company says that the machine dials a local number here in Fort Worth Texas 817 area code. It dials 950-5305 or 950-1754. It gives an error, and when I try to dial either number on the same phone line, I get a recording "It is not necessary to dial a long distance access code when calling this number." The credit card company National Processing Center says that the phone numbers are valid for this area, and that my machine is properly programmed. They said that it will automatically be updated to dial the area code when 10 digit dialing becomes mandatory in a year or so. Southwestern Bell says that THERE IS NO 950 exchange in the 817 area code, and these numbers are incorrect and could not possibly work. Yet for several years I remember seeing the display on the machine "Dialing 950-5305" How could Southwestern Bell claim that this prefix does not even exist? The credit card company is blaming the local phone company, and the local phone company is claiming that my machine is programmed for a non existant number! Meanwhile we are losing several hundred dollars a day because we can't take credit cards. Lucille Causey [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can always as a last resort call the credit card manual approval line. I am sure you have a number for that somewhere there. You call the number, then enter the credit card number, merchant number and sales amount on a touch tone phone. But if you will call and insist on it, the credit card people will either send send someone to reprogram your machine or they will tell you how to do it over the phone (most likely way of handling it. I had this same situation a couple years ago, where 950 one day stopped working and a credit card machine quit functioning. Their technical service people walked me through reporgramming the terminal to dial their 800 number instead. PAT] ------------------------------ From: d_c_h@my-deja.com (David Charles) Subject: Re: Pay Phone Paying Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 14:08:51 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , dov@oz.net wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How do postpay phones collect their >> money in the case of one-way calls to recorded announcement lines, >> where no talking by the caller is done anyway? PAT] > Well, in the Bell System on post pay telephones you would get dial > tone and dial the number. When the number supervised you'd get bursts > of dial tone. I think the called party could hear you, but you could > not hear the called party because of the "dial tone" like sound which > prevented conversation. Also, to alert the operator that you were > calling from a pay phone there would be a burst of dialtone-like sound > for about five seconds when the operator answered. I would guess that > probably means that in areas where they had CDO's they didn't bother > to have separate trunks for coin phones and coin phones were > differentiated to the operator by the dial tone buzz that she got when > she answered a call. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought that post-pay phones cut off > the mouthpiece pending payment rather than jamming the audio. When > John Levine also responded to this earlier today, I got the same > impression from his response. PAT] The standard type of payphone in the UK in the 70's and early 80's was post pay. The way it operated was different from the American ones that have been described. Until the call was answered the coin slots were closed. When the call was answered you could hear the caller for about one second and then pay tone started (usually called 'the pips'). This had a rapidly pulsed cadance (e.g. 100ms on 100ms off) and could be heard by both parties. I am not sure if the speech path was cut off during this time, but the tone would have prevented conversation. There was then a few seconds allowed for a coin to be inserted, the speech path was then muted briefly and then connected so conversation was possible. More coins could be inserted at any time (again the speech path was briefly muted after each coin was inserted). When the time paid for has expired the pay tone was applied again and there were a few seconds allowed to insert another coin before you were cut off. There was no facility for coins to be returned (there was a return chute, but it was only used for coins that were not accepted by the phone). The mechanical design of the slots required pressure to insert coins, therefore you could rest a coin in the slot and insert it immediately on hearing the pay tone. I think the last time I saw one of these phones was around 1988. There are a number of types of private payphones in use which are post-pay. These have a number of disadvantages over the old type. These include "guessing" when the call is answered, not closing the slots before payment is expected and not having the facility to have a coin at the slot but not inserted. With some of these it probably would be possible to listen to a recorded message without inserting payment. I would guess that the owners probably would make more from coins inserted too early (because the user is expecting a pre-pay or old style post-pay phone) than they lose this way. David Charles ------------------------------ From: steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) Subject: Re: Unlocking GSM Phones Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 15:21:11 +0800 Organization: Prima Computer Some codes are based on the IMEI and can be calculated, but not necessarily all of them. You can lock/unlock a phone from the handset, or with a data cable depending on the model. Theres nothing magical about it. GSM operators lock/unlock phones all the time. The lack of answers to prepubescent Italian geeks on alt.cellular.gsm can hardly be taken as proof that it can't be done. However, as it is a service the telephone companies charge for you can hardly blame people for not offering the service for free. Steven mikefox@ibm.net says: > Kim Brennan wrote: >> Hmm, all this talk of SIM locked GSM phones, makes me wonder, how is >> it done. And how are they unlocked? Surely this information is >> available (even if users don't necessarily have the resources to do it >> themselves.) > Generally the way to do this is to obtain the unlock code from the > service provider who holds the lock. > But of course many service providers won't give you this code, which > usually results in one to five posts a day to alt.cellular.gsm that ask > plainatively "Can anyone tell me how to unlock my Alcatel One Touch > Easy" and no one ever responds because, well, no one can do it. There is > no universal code for any carrier or model of phone, it's a unique code > for every individual phone and cannot be computed from the IMEI (GSM > version of the ESN). ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: Rats Dive Into Cell Phone Debate Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 21:26:45 -0500 Organization: It's A Mike! An experiment with rats swimming in milk indicates cell phones may damage long-term memory and the ability to navigate. What does this strange study mean for humans? By Kristen Philipkoski. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,32280,00.html Mike ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 17:15:28 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Reply-To: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Disney/Sprint-Local Vista-United Tel; Tone vs. Pulse John R. Levine wrote: > Mark J. Cuccia wrote: >> The incumbant landline LECs in this area include BellSouth, >> Sprint-United (local) Tel of Florida, and Disney's own Buena Vista >> Telephone for "Mickey Mouse land" (Disney World). > FYI, that last company is Vista-United, jointly owned by Disney and > Sprint, and I presume operated by Sprint. They have two rate centers, > Lake Buena Vista a/k/a Disney World and Celebration. > They're the only LEC I've ever seen whose tariffs say they only > support tone dialing, no pulse allowed. Is there any "residential" (single home owner private property, particularly) service in either of Disney's/Sprint's Vista-United? Being the LEC for the Disney (and Universal, etc.?) complex in Florida, wouldn't their "only customer" really be themselves and other contracted businesses which operate in the Disney/etc. complex? In some ways, Vista-United seems like a grand-scale PBX or Centrex which really is providing service to BUSINESS customer(s) ONLY. If there aren't any residential customers, then there would be no "private" citizens who could potentially complain that the telephone company is discriminating against them by not allowing them to use rotary/pulse dialing telephones. Incidently, regarding pulse/rotary being accepted, more and more LECs in the US (and Canada?) are converting all customers on a switch to ALLOW tone-dialing, usually by some form of rate-averaging between the old pulse-line monthly fee and the old "pay-more-for-touchtone" monthly fee. So, while the line is a tone-dial line, it still accepts pulse/dial. Incidently, I've been told by a friend in Yukon/NWT/Nunavut's NorthwesTel land that the smaller "Redcom" manufactured switches don't accept dialpulse signaling, UNLESS the line-card or line-profile is "set" for pulse -- i.e., it is tone-dial ONLY unless pulse is "added". NorthwesTel has told customers served by such "Redcom" switches that they need to NOTIFY NorthwesTel if the customer intends on using any dialpulse/rotary phone on their line. That might sound like something "archaic" these days -- i.e., people with rotary phones, but there _ARE_ collectors of old WECO/NECO/etc. rotary dial, electromechanical GONG ringers, who intend to breathe OUR LAST TELEPHONIC BREATH using a _REAL_ 1920's-60's era WECO/etc. phone! MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__HOME:__(USA)__Tel:_CHestnut-1-2497 WORK:__mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu|4710-Wright-Road|__(+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity-5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New-Orleans-28__|fwds-on-no-answr-to Fax:UNiversity-5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 14:11:38 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: Re: African Stratospheric Airships?/HAPS Michael J. Kuras wrote in TELECOM Digest Issue 524: > US/Africa currently holds all operating rights to a new telecommun- > ications technology for deployment of "stratospheric airships" > throughout the entire continent of Africa. Additionally, US/Africa is > a strategic partner with the developer and owner of this new > technology, Sky Station International, Inc. for deployment of services > throughout all of Africa. > The technology will accomplish delivery of telecommunications from the > stratosphere at an altitude of approximately 70,000 feet. Specific > services can be tailored to meet the needs and desires of the country > of deployment. These guys (Skystation) are for real, or think they are. And there appears to be serious money behind it. They have been to the ITU & other bodies promoting this scheme, and have been making progress in getting official imprimateur for it. They sell it as an attractive way of providing instant wireless coverage to developing economies that have little telecom infrastructure and less money. I understand that they have signed up some down-on-their-luck defense contractors (e.g. Lockheed, IIRC) to build the things. The idea is a sort of blimp-like airship, hovering in the stratosphere, that will support a very large electronic beamforming antenna array. It will synthesize cell-like coverage areas on the ground. By putting them at 22 km altitude they get a lot of coverage from one craft. It does stationkeeping by some sort of proprietary active engine(s). One of the disquieting aspects of it is that these HAPS things (HAPS = High Altitude Platform Station, or something like that), being a kind of airship rather than satellite, have to be periodically rotated back to the ground for refueling/provisioning, meaning that they will be occasionally transiting navigable airspaces. And they will be *very* large things due to the radio physics/engineering requirements of the antennas. My personal opinion is that the whole scheme is really loopy. And I'd like to see the first liability policy against one of those football field-sized antennas falling out of the sky and hitting somebody on the head ... or for a collision with a commercial aircraft. Technically yes, it is physically possible. Whether it will work as a business, I think the marketplace and national regulatory authorities will have to decide. I personally am *very* skeptical. IIRC, they (Skystation) have a website that TD readers might want to look up. Standard disclaimer: This is my *personal* opinion only. It does not necessarily represent the viewpoint of any client or employer, past or present. -- Best -- Arthur (typed 10 km over the North Atlantic) ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@JustThe.Net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: Florida's New 321 NPA (was Re: 3-2-1-Rrring!) Date: 4 Nov 1999 00:08:51 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.4NET On Wed, 3 Nov 1999 11:18:32 CST, mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu allegedly said: > THANK YOU, Pat, for AGAIN pointing out the ERRORS and MISCONCEPTIONS > by the "so called mainstream" press/media. I lump them in with the > politicos and the "Hollywood" so-called 'entertainment' industry of > today. > The facts about 321 are as follows, but due to the politics/vanity > involved with 321, it is QUITE convoluted as an NPA relief plan: Where does the word "relief" actually apply to this situation? I think it's going to cause much more discomfort than relief. Just remember that the typical politician/bureaucrat's stupidity does not have any limits. > A bit of trivia here ... Disney Studios in Burbank CA are on Buena > Vista Blvd, and Disney uses the Vista or Buena Vista name as a > trademark for their record label and other media under Disney (I don't > know if they are using (Buena) Vista at ABC, the American Broadcasting > Company's radio and television networks and owned/operated stations - > Disney did merge with/acquire/purchase the ABC Radio and Television > Networks a few years ago). They also syndicate shows under the name "Buena Vista Television Distributions". And the Florida post office that serves Disney is Lake Buena Vista, FL. (Don't know whether it's actually a municipality or just a P.O.) North Shore Technologies Corporation Steven J. Sobol, President & Head Geek 815 Superior Avenue #610 sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Cleveland, Ohio 44114 http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net ------------------------------ From: Tim Meehan Subject: Re: The Calling Party Has Disconnected Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 19:14:52 -0500 Organization: Sprint Canada Inc. roy@endeavor.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) banged away at the keys in comp.dcom.telecom on Sat, 30 Oct 1999 20:46:04 -0400 and came up with: > "The calling party has disconnected. You will not be billed for this > call. Please hang up now." > Anybody have any clue what that was all about? I know I get this on occasion on my answering machine when someone tries calling me collect through the Bell Canada automated attendant. Probably someone calling from a similar setup. Tim Meehan * tim.meehan@utoronto.ca * crisp, clean and no caffiene "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of sXXXch, or the right of the people peaceably to XXXemble, and to peXXXion the government for a redress of grievances." -- Marc Rotenberg ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #529 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Nov 4 16:32:25 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id QAA05909; Thu, 4 Nov 1999 16:32:25 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 16:32:25 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911042132.QAA05909@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #530 TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 Nov 99 16:32:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 530 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Multiwavelength Optical Networks" (Rob Slade) DSL Quality in NYC (Chris Huston) Employment Opportunity: Telecommunications Specialist (Kathlene Badeski) Yet Another Interesting Spam (Joey Lindstrom) Analogue Telephone With German Support For Number Display (Sander Eek) CLEC Help Needed (Michael E. Winsett) Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! (Michael J. Kuras) Global Currencies in E-Commerce (J.F. Mezei) Bad Cellphone Service (Bill Schafer) Re: Other Gigaset Models? (was: New Version of the Siemens) (N. Shirkey) Re: And We Thought This Was no Longer Possible! (Steven) Central Office Locations (Jason Rendel) University Involved in Research in Communication Tech (NCR) Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (John R. Levine) Re: Lift-up Switchhooks (Barry Margolin) Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (Frank Prindle) Re: All About George Gilder (Andrew Green) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 12:31:51 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "Multiwavelength Optical Networks", Stern/Bala Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKMWOPNT.RVW 990919 "Multiwavelength Optical Networks", Thomas E. Stern/Krishna Bala, 1999, 0-201-30967-X, U$69.95/C$104.95 %A Thomas E. Stern %A Krishna Bala %C P.O. Box 520, 26 Prince Andrew Place, Don Mills, Ontario M3C 2T8 %D 1999 %G 0-201-30967-X %I Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. %O U$69.95/C$104.95 416-447-5101 fax: 416-443-0948 bkexpress@aw.com %P 766 p. %T "Multiwavelength Optical Networks: A Layered Approach" The book is intended both as a course text, and professional (engineering) reference, for wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) optical networks: those networks that use different "colours" of light in a single physical path, either to create separate communications channels or increase bandwidth. Chapter one introduces the general situation for optical networks: the need for higher bandwidth and the limitations that leave existing optical paths mostly unused. Some attempt is made to explain basic technologies. This material is accessible to the intelligent non- specialist, but it lacks depth for those not fully familiar with photonic technologies. For example, the point is made that optical systems are fast but dumb, and electronic systems are intelligent but slow, but there is no specific comparison of the current and theoretical switching speeds for equivalent optical and electronic discrete components. Designs for switches and other node elements are presented in chapter two, although the material could be improved with the addition of some discussion of the physical components themselves. Study problems are included, and, although not simple, they may be simplistic in terms of testing for full comprehension. The topological, connection, and physical layer protocol discussions in chapter three make it a bit of a mixed bag. It is in chapter four that we get some of the background needed to understand the content in the previous section, with explanations of optical fibre, lasers, detectors, switches, and so forth. Functions and characteristics of static multipoint networks are outlined in chapter five, with wavelength routed networks in chapter six, and logically routed networks in chapter seven. Chapter eight looks at survivability and restoration topologies. Current trends in multiwavelength technologies are reviewed in chapter nine. The appendices discuss theory, algorithms, and the SONET standard. While the organization of the material is not always straightforward, the content is useful to the student or worker in the multiwavelength field. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999 BKMWOPNT.RVW 990919 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com Inside some of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but he can usually be sedated with a few pieces of chocolate cake. http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ From: Chris Huston Subject: DSL Quality in NYC Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 11:46:55 -0700 Hi, I'm looking for an internet access provider in midtown Manhattan. DSL seems to run ~$300/month for 512-768kbps. Burstable or fractional T1 run ~$1000-1500/month. Some of the providers said that DSL is unreliable and trouble-prone, others said it worked great. It also appears that COVAD (www.covad.com) and Bell Atlantic have a lock on the market - AT&T, UUNET and Verio all resale COVAD DSL. One of the vendors said that with DSL you can be down for "days at a time." Apparently, if there is a problem with DSL you have to call your ISP, who calls COVAD who may call Bell Atlantic and at each step there may be a 6-24hr delay. Is this really how it works? My thinking is the T1 prices don't make sense - even in the context of unreliable DSL. For the price of the burstable T1, I could have 4 DSL connections from 4 different ISPs, pay less (monthly) and have greater bandwidth* and lot's of redundancy. I only need ~256k but I need it to be reliable. (* any one connection would be limited to the speed of one DSL, but 10 people with 30 connections would see the combined through-put of 4x512kbps = 2Mbps) Are you using DSL at your business in Manhattan? Are you happy with it? Do you use T1? Have you had any problems? Your advice is greatly appreciated, Thanks, Chris Huston ------------------------------ From: Kathlene Badeski Subject: Employment Opportunity: Telecommunications Specialist Position Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 10:08:05 -0500 Organization: Pathway Communications Our Toronto based client is seeking a highly qualified Telecommuni- cations Specialist for all tier 1 support for the corporate office and branch locations across Canada and the U.S. The position is located in Toronto and will require some travel. Responsibilities include: * Implement all changes to telephone administration and re-configuration * Voicemail administration * Troubleshoot and repair PBX software, hardware and Voicemail * Support management on telephony decisions * Budgetary planning and short & long term telecom plan * Development and implementation of the disaster recovery plan * Analyze daily network traffic volumes * Develop cost reduction strategies Qualifications: * Minimum of 8 years experience in voice telecommunications * Degree in telecommunications and knowledge of telephony concepts, industry standards and services * Solid knowledge of Frame Relay, Voice over IP, Switchview, Voicemail * Call Express AVT product knowledge * Certified in Nortel Meridian 1 software features and admin. Release 18 &up * ISDN configuration and design To apply, email your resume in Word format with salary expectations. I will contact those who meet the qualifications. Kathlene Badeski Recruiting Consultant ICS Ltd. T: (416) 492-3333 Ext. 246 F: (416) 492-3339 kbadeski@icsjobs.org ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 23:03:54 -0700 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Yet Another Interesting Spam I'm something of a redneck, but even *I* cringe at the language in this interesting little bit of spam. Again, the spammers are trying hard to disguise their spam as "personal" mail. Only problem is, I haven't been "in class" for 15 years. :-) Did anyone else get this one? (Note: the "lindstrom.com" bit refers to my alternate email address, joey@lindstrom.com - the spam is written under the assumption that the domain name refers to my ISP, whereas in this case it's just a mail forwarding system.) ==================BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE================== From: hrlewinski@aol.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Message omitted here. Not only no reason to print spam, but it was too crude to try and repair to useable standards. Suffice to say it was a reference to a pay-sex site. The author used personal things in the text such as your name, and 'see you in school tomorrow', and 'what is this new site you are located on' as part of the message. PAT] ===================END FORWARDED MESSAGE=================== From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU Maybe someday they'll get everything nice and tidy and we'll have that thing we sing about, when "we ain't a-gonna study war no more." Maybe. Maybe the same day the leopard will take off his spots and get a job as a Jersey cow, too. But again, I wouldn't know; I am not a professor of cosmopolitics; I'm an M.I. When the government sends me, I go. In between, I catch a lot of sack time. -- Juan Rico, "Starship Troopers" (Robert Heinlein) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes Joey, it has been all over. I got the exact same message three times already in telecom and four times in the Airwaves Radio Journal mail. I think a copy also came to me at my personal compuserve.com mail account. They are getting smarter and smarter. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Sander Eek Subject: Analogue telephone with German support for number display Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 15:42:07 +0100 Organization: XS4ALL Internet BV Hallo, I am looking for a place where I can buy "normal" telephones wich support the German way of number recognition / number display. (FSK) These telephones are going to be connected to an Elmeg C48m wich supports the German way of numberrecognition / numberdisplay therefore telephones bought in The Netherlands do not support numberrecognition behind this PABX. Please cc your reply to: sander@eek.nl Thanks in advance, Sander Eek ------------------------------ From: Michael E. Winsett Subject: CLEC Help Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 07:46:11 -0800 Well this is all new for me and I have very little time to learn a lot. I am applying for CLEC license. 1. For 911 service who would I contract that out to or what's all involved with that? Does that mean I am fiscally taking 911 calls or does that mean I am installing the police office with that? I have no clue about what I am suppose to do with the 911 service and what's involved. 2. Bell, US West, and GTE in this area all have no shared bandwidth. When I have shared, why can I not have a certain amount allocated for me, and how would I go about getting non shared bandwidth. 3. I will need a little over twenty thousand numbers for my needs and I will also need to run OC9 from Eugene Oregon to Seattle Washington using a mux that will be transporting an ATM signal on it. How would I do this cost effectively. 4. That also brings up another problem crossing state lines. I know nothing about this and I know there are many rules I need to follow but I do not know what. Before I start this whole process I will need to know how to provide a total solution that I would not be breaking any rules. Any ideas? 5. If there is some one out there that has the qualifications willing to work for us starting up are public solutions please e-mail a resume. I will need a few people starting this department up for me coming up in Jan. My e-mail address is winsett@gorge.net If anyone can help out please do? Thanks for all the help people have all ready given me. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No offense intended, but I suggest you need a lot of help at this point before you consider starting up a telephone company, if your correspondence above is any indication. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 12:47:28 EST From: Michael J Kuras Subject: Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! Although perhaps under slightly different circumstances, I wouldn't imagine that Nevada was very happy to hear about this, since they lost out on '777' a few years ago. Imagine the turf battles we'd see, domain-name style, if we ever go to 11+ digit dialing. michael j kuras finger for pgp key mkuras@ccs.neu.edu ------------------------------ From: J.F. Mezei Subject: Global Currencies in E-Commerce Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 03:31:23 -0500 I am starting to hear a lot of hype about some software that can do multi-currency e-commerce on a world-wide basis. Is there some totally new development in the handling of credit cards, or is this truly just hype? My understanding is that when a merchant submits credit card transactions, they are always in the local currency ( the customer will get the final amount in whatever his home currency is). Since there was discussions on e-commerce transaction security here a while ago, I though I would ask here. One of the issues: When I buy a whose price is listed in USA dollars (USD) , the credit card company will convert this to Canadian dollars (CAD) at a rate that is next to impossible to obtain until you get your bill. If the merchant were to be able to provide me with a price in CAD, either the merchant may lose when the amount I agreed to pay gets converted to the merchant's local currency, or the merchant would covernt the CAD to USD, submit it to the VISA, and then it woudl get converted back to CAD when I get the bill, and of course, due to conversions done at different moments by different banks, the amount would never be the same. Any idea what these guys are talking about when they talk about multi-currency e-commerce? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If it is going to resemble present- day credit card processing in any way, then the merchant always gets what he asked for, in the currency of his country. How much you actually pay is detirmined by the conversion rate in effect on the day the sale was made. When international charge tickets come into the credit card office for processing, clerks first pay the merchant the amount requested in his currency and then charge your account for the identical amount in American currency. They then re-write the charge ticket for the purpose of getting it through the billing system with the 'correct' (i.e. US Dollars) amount handwritten on the ticket somewhere. This is so everyone up and down the line 'takes a charge' or 'takes a credit' for the same, arbitrarily agreed upon amount; an amount that was in effect on the business day the sale was orginally consumated. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 18:01:24 -0500 From: Bill Schafer Subject: Bad Cellphone Service I am having a problem with Shared Technologies Cellular. Do I have any recourse? Please point me in the right direction. Thanks, Bill Schafer schaferbs@mail.riverview.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Personally, I never heard of the company. Maybe some reader here knows about them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: n_shirkey@my-deja.com Subject: Re: Other Gigaset Models? (was: New Version of the Siemens) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 03:25:20 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Go to: http://www.gigasettelephones.com. They seem to be the only on-line Siemens reseller that has even heard of the new Siemens 2410 1-line phone ($169). In article , dkiner@my-deja.com (Doug Kiner) wrote: > I have been considering the Gigaset 2415 for home use, but I have read > quite a few negative comments about the 2420. Many of the problems > appear to have been addressed, based on what you have posted. > I am wondering, however if the "single line" models (2410, 2415) suffer > from the same problems, or have they "inherited" the improvements as > well? > In article , steve@sellcom.com wrote: >> It looks like Siemens listened to all of the whining about the >> Gigaset 2420 problems and fixed just about all of them in the >> new revision of the 2420. (I will "*" the things I personally >> whined about.) ------------------------------ From: steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) Subject: Re: And We Thought This Was no Longer Possible! Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 15:22:14 +0800 Organization: Prima Computer midshires@cix.co.uk says: > Yes, and since when did they limit the bandwidth of calls to 2599hz? And to address the subject, certainly within the States nearly all signaling is out of band, but not in other places. Much of the telecommunications infrastructure in the 3rd world is 3rd hand equipment from the US. When making a call from Shenzhen to Beijing (courtesy of a switch in Guangzhou) its exciting to imagine that its the same switch I used to 20 years ago from LA to NY. Steven ------------------------------ From: Jason Rendel Subject: Central Office Locations Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 12:59:32 -0500 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. I am looking for a site that shows where all the telephone central office switchs are located throughout the US. I was just curious and wanted to see what the network backbone looked like. Thanks for all your help. Jason Rendel ------------------------------ From: NCR Subject: University Involved in Research in Communication Tech Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 11:22:11 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Hi, Does anyone have a list of US universities involved in research in communication technologies, with emphasis on VLSI implementation? Regards, Nav ------------------------------ Date: 4 Nov 1999 14:37:33 -0500 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > It dials 950-5305 or 950-1754. It gives an error, and when I try to > dial either number on the same phone line, I get a recording "It is > not necessary to dial a long distance access code when calling this > number." > Southwestern Bell says that THERE IS NO 950 exchange in the 817 area > code, That's true, actually. There's no 950 exchange anywhere in the U.S. > and these numbers are incorrect and could not possibly work. That's 100% completely wrong, and SWB knows it. 950 is a special prefix reserved for "Feature Group B" access to long distance carriers. The four digits after 950 identify the particular carrier. Lots of credit card companies use 950 numbers because the way that they're connected to the phone network makes them connect extremely quickly, minimizing the length of the call. Here's the two relevant entries for the two numbers you mentioned from the Lockheed-Martin master database of 950 numbers: 1754 ALC IBM Merrill Blau 847-240-3067 5305 MSY Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, Discover & Co. Steven C. Van Wyk 847-405-2632 In any event, it appears to me that SWB is most likely at fault here, and that they screwed up the programming in your local phone switch so that it doesn't handle 950 numbers correctly. You might try calling the two contact numbers. They won't be able to fix your problem, but they can probably find the appropiate heads to roll at SWB to fix stuff. What's particularly odd is that if you can't make these calls, most likely no other merchant served by the same phone switch who uses the same card service companies can, either. Indeed, they may have screwed up all 950 service in your entire area. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Lift-up Switchhooks Organization: GTE Internetworking, Cambridge, MA Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 19:51:15 GMT In article , Dan Lanciani wrote: > I recently acquired some two-line Princess phones. (Pretty neat; I > never realized they existed.) Anyway, these phones include an > additional switch activated by pulling up one of the switchhooks. I > remember seeing this feature on 5-line 2500 sets and I seem to think > it was called an exclusion switch, but I never knew what it was for. > On the Princess phones this switch appears to short whichever line is > not currently selected. Is this intended as a simple hold function? > And what is it used for on 5-line phones? I recall switchooks like this on phones that we used with modems in the early 80's. This was before the days when inexpensive modems could do their own dialing, so you would dial manually using the phone dial/keypad (there were still plenty of rotary phones in those days as well). When you heard the modem tone, you would pull up the switchhook and the audio would be switched from the handset to the modem's connection. Barry Margolin, barmar@bbnplanet.com GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA *** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups. Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group. ------------------------------ From: Frank Prindle Subject: Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 15:05:16 -0500 Lucille Causey wrote: > Our family owned jewelry store has a credit card terminal that stopped > working Monday. The credit card processing company says that the > machine dials a local number here in Fort Worth Texas 817 area > code. It dials 950-5305 or 950-1754. It gives an error, and when I > try to dial either number on the same phone line, I get a recording > "It is not necessary to dial a long distance access code when calling > this number." Well, 950-5305 works fine here in the Philadelphia area. Sounds like your terminal may have been updated to dial 817-950-5305, which of course, would be invalid whether or not you have mandatory 10-digit dialing, since 950 numbers have no area code. Just try dialing 950-5305 manually from any phone, and see if you get the modem tone. If so, try dialing 817-950-5305 or 1-817-950-5305 -- if you get the recording, then your terminal is dialing 10 or 11 digits and needs to be reprogrammed back to 7 digits. By the way, SWB is correct, there is no 950 in AC 817, nor in any other area code. That prefix has no area code, it's just magic. Sincerely, Frank Prindle prindle@nospamvoicenet.com (sans the nospam) ------------------------------ From: Andrew Green Subject: Re: All About George Gilder Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 14:31:14 -0600 PAT notes: > So, it came as a bit of a surprise to see this 'alternative > point of view' about Gilder when it arrived in my mail today. > Read it and see what you think. Replies will be quite welcome. After I submitted my reply here, I decided to send a similar letter to the Seattle Weekly, the original publishers of the Emily White article on George Gilder. That was ages ago, but I heard from them today that they have published my reply in their November 4 issue. Sure enough, at http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9944/letters-readers.shtml you can find a number of replies in addition to mine, including some interesting points raised about the quality of Ms. White's fact-checking. Andrew C. Green Datalogics, Inc. 101 N. Wacker, Ste. 1800 http://www.datalogics.com Chicago, IL 60606-7301 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #530 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 5 12:51:03 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id MAA14357; Fri, 5 Nov 1999 12:51:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 12:51:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911051751.MAA14357@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #531 TELECOM Digest Fri, 5 Nov 99 12:51:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 531 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bell Atlantic Lies - So What Else is New? (Julian Thomas) Re: Another Online Privacy Issue (Julian Thomas) Re: ISDN Viruses (Steve Winter) Re: ISDN Viruses (Fred Goldstein) Re: Disney/Sprint-Local Vista-United Tel; Tone vs. Pulse (Stanley Cline) Disney/Sprint-Local Vista-United Tel; Tone vs. Pulse (Michael J. Graven) Re: Disney/Sprint-Local Vista-United Tel; Tone vs. Pulse (Ed Ellers) AT&T Telemarketing Hits New Low! (John Meissen) Re: Different AT&T International Calling Rates - Why? (John McHarry) Re: African Stratospheric Airships?/HAPS (John McHarry) Re: Quantumlink Communications (Jason Fetterolf) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jata@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) Subject: Bell Atlantic Lies - So What Else is New? Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 15:29:37 GMT We live in Trumansburg Home Tel territory (John L has spoken highly of this small but forward looking independent) -- needless to say we are surrounded by Bell Atl, and they are the default intra-LATA carrier. My wife was setting up a phone for her mother (age 92, blind, in a nursing home, but that's not really relevant except that it's in BA territory) and found this in the front section of the BA book for the "Residence Service Reps" *toll-free* (used to be business office) 890-7100. (my * for emphasis). Several calls later, everything was set up. Then the AT&T bill section for that period shows up with a number of calls to 607 890 7100 -Binghamton - outside the LATA, so handled by AT&T. Called AT&T and complained about being billed for a tollfree call. They agreed that it should not have happened. ALso called BA who said likewise. AT&T said that T'burg Tel was the culprit -- they print the AT&T bill section as part of their total bill. Spoke to T'burg Tel, who took a few days to investigate, but came back with a story to the effect that the number is toll-free ONLY FROM A BA LINE. There is nothing in the BA book to this effect. Now, I can't complain very hard, since T'burg Tel is giving us a credit for these calls even though they don't seem to think they need to, but somehow BA is cutting it close to giving false information if this is the case. Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt remove letter a for email (or switch . and @) Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! Switching is a science, radio is an art. Grounding is Black Magic. ------------------------------ From: jata@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) Subject: Re: Another Online Privacy Issue Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 15:32:40 GMT In , on 11/03/99 at 02:35 PM, Steve Polatas said: > If your email client is set to display HTML, then TurboTax knows that > you've read their email -- your browser displays a one-pixel invisible > graphic and the "Key=" records your identity in their Web log. No cookies > involved. > Moral: if you care who knows what you read, then stop your email client > from interpreting HTML. Or read the email when you are not connected.... Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt remove letter a for email (or switch . and @) Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! -- -- Windows: 50 million flies can't be wrong! ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 20:08:04 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com This was truncated when it appeared in the newsgroup. Fred Goldstein spake thusly and wrote: > At 03:30 PM 10/30/1999 -0400, John Maddaus wrote: >> "ISDN Viruses are quite possibly the worst thing to happen to computing >> since the creation of the Cellular Trojan Horse. Basically, these viruses >> travel over the wires using the X.224 transport protocol, and seize the >> D channel using Q.931. All SS7 data sent over the D channel is quickly >> compromized and re-routed to different signal transfer points, causing >> massive ANI Failure over the entire routing mesh. >> Rumor has it that the Internet Liberation Front was behind these viruses >> with heavy investement coming from the German Bundesnachrichtendienst's >> Project Rahab. These hackers were paid with AT&T calling cards encoded >> with a polymorphic encryption scheme, and cocaine." > I hope Digest readers recognize this for the put-on it is. Roughly > translated into English, "The hoofaloofahingamajinga will prognosticaglify > the frammistat". > Believe me, there's no SS7 on the D channel, no X.224 anything (that is > actually the now-obscure OSI Transport Layer Protocol, a failed competitor > to TCP) in ISDN, and the whole rest of Maddaus' screed about security is > just blather and falsehoods, written to sound scary. > Usually this stuff comes on April Fools', but I guess Halloween gets a > scare too. This one's just as real as the Darth Mauls in the first grade. A previous horror, very real, and much more insidious knocked out our ISDN use many months ago. Weak of heart stop reading here A horrible thing called "metering". It make your $40 monthy bill that you had been paying for over a year read $699. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 21:35:27 -0500 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses In V19#529, John Maddaus wrote: > Glad you're not my lawyer. The Q.931 signaling between our PBXs and > local COs does not use SSL, the IS-41 signaling between our MTSOs and > STPs does not use SSL, SS-7 between our COs and STPs does not use SSL. > Ahh, perhaps you are suggesting we can replace all with a feature rich > version of SSL ... The Q.931 signaling is a purely-local protocol, run between the "TE" (PBX or phone) and the "ET" (switch), and not propagated. It is not SS7, it is not IS_41, it is not IP. It has no network (routing)layer; it's essentially a two-party application run directly atop a data link (Q.921 LAPD). For the record, I *am* an expert on ISDN signaling. I was for many years a member of the relevant ANSI-accredited technical subcommittee (T1D1, T1S1) and I wrote a textbook "ISDN In Perspective" which suffers, perhaps, from mixing in some details of the protocol design along with user-oriented stuff. I doubt Maddaus has read it. (Also note I'm replying over an ISDN line.) The point is that the Phrack (or whatever) article he quoted was *pure* BS, a put-on of the worst degree, a technical "in-joke". It was, of course, also a classic "ISDN bash", noting that ISDN bashing has been popular sport in the USA for the past fifteen years or so. (Bellcore *really* screwed up the early marketing here. Europeans and Asians understand it *much* better and use it widely.) > More bull. Try reading the Q.931 spec and key in on User-User > sub-element. I not only read it, but I was involved in the debates over it. The UUI information element is passed along between consenting end users such that the switching system never ever touches or interprets it. User to User, period. Rarely even implemented in the USA, btw. > Remember cryptographic authentication's use of "spare" > IS-41A fields? The limitations varied significantly according to > Motorola, Ericsson, Nortel, Lucent, Hughes, etc. from ignore and drop > on floor to Kernel Panic shut down switch. Guess you had to be there. IS-41 (cellular) is very, very different. A mistake in one thing has no bearing on a completely unrelated thing. The original article simply bandied around unfamiliar but familiar-sounding phrases like "X.224" in a means calculated to scare the *casual* reader, while (as Mel Beckman noted) almost every sentence was as far from true as one could make it. Really carefully crafted, as gibberish goes. I fear that this discussion has led casual readers to become more wary of ISDN. That is highly counterproductive. ISDN is a proven technology. The Primary Rate Interface is the ideal PBX trunk facility, far more reliable than the analog or Channelized T1 alternatives. Basic rate works fine too, though the US Bells are generally loath to install it, and there have been many compatibility issues between the different American implementations. Not security issues, though. Certainly not viruses. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 15:53:07 -0500 From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Disney/Sprint-Local Vista-United Tel; Tone vs. Pulse Mark J Cuccia wrote: > Is there any "residential" (single home owner private property, > particularly) service in either of Disney's/Sprint's Vista-United? Vista-United has residential tariffs filed with the Florida PSC, and yes, they have some residential customers (in Celebration, and Disney employees who live elsewhere on the property.) The tariffs are available for download from the Florida PSC's web site. > ALLOW tone-dialing, usually by some form of rate-averaging between the > old pulse-line monthly fee and the old "pay-more-for-touchtone" > monthly fee. Here in GA, rates for local service now include tone dialing; however, I think one can still get a rotary-only line for $1.30 less per month. -SC ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 17:54:27 PST Subject: Disney/Sprint-Local Vista-United Tel; Tone vs. Pulse From: mjg@netscape.net (Michael J Graven) Mark Cuccia writes: > Is there any "residential" (single home owner private property, > particularly) service in either of Disney's/Sprint's Vista-United? Yes. Vista-United Telecommunications serves both the parks and offices in the theme park area, and also the community of Celebration, Florida, just to the south of U.S. 192 and east of Interstate 4. Real people live in Celebration. > LAST TELEPHONIC BREATH using a _REAL_ 1920's-60's era WECO/etc. phone! That might be sooner than you think, bucko. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Disney/Sprint-Local Vista-United Tel; Tone vs. Pulse Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 23:03:02 -0500 Mark J Cuccia wrote: > Being the LEC for the Disney (and Universal, etc.?) complex in Florida, > wouldn't their "only customer" really be themselves and other contracted > businesses which operate in the Disney/etc. complex?" Not really, since -- aside from Celebration -- there are some residential customers, namely employees who live on the property. (Incidentally, Universal Studios Florida is well away from the Disney property. In fact Universal's decision to build their new attraction in the same region where Disney was planning to add a studio tour-type attraction caused a major rift between the two companies.) FWIW, the first time I saw AT&T coin phones installed in a non-Bell area was at EPCOT Center, in 1984; AT&T was a major founding sponsor. The Magic Kingdom still had Stromberg-Carlson coin phones (IIRC). ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 13:34:24 -0800 Subject: AT&T Telemarketing Hits New Low! AT&T isn't satisfied with just interrupting your dinner and sending junk postal and email (I have a friend who gets spam as often as twice a day and has been trying to get off their list for weeks); they've discovered the ultimate captive audience for their marketing spiel -- people actually on the phone trying to place a call! Their telemarketing group just started a program which places an intercept on the lines of their customers so that ANY time you try to place a long distance call through them you have to first sit through a marketing spiel (20 seconds, in my case). No indication of what's going on, why it's happening, how to stop it, or even if your call will eventually go through. So far it's only happening on my primary line. I called, and the best they could tell me was that it would be "removed within 24 hours". You can't talk to a supervisor anymore, either ("We can have a supervisor call you within 24 hours." Right). What if one of my kids were trying to place an important call? They wouldn't have a clue what was going on, and would try over and over until concluding that they couldn't place the call. I can't believe they would be that stupid. Well, maybe I can. Time to go looking for appropriate regulatory agencies. If anyone can pass along an appropriate name/number, either governmental or phone company, I would appreciate. Right now I'm livid that they would even consider this. I'm paying them to put through a call, not deliver marketing crap. Oh, I did get them to tell me that pressing the '#' key aborts the message. john meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ From: mcharry@erols.com (John McHarry) Subject: Re: Different AT&T International Calling Rates - Why? Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 00:33:13 GMT On Tue, 02 Nov 1999 10:36:30 -0800, siegman@stanford.edu (Anthony E. Siegman) wrote: > Big ads for AT&T "One Rate International Value Plan" this morning. > Rates for calling from US vary from from 10 cents/minute for UK, 16 > cents/minute for Japan, 17 cents/minute for many other places (Europe, > Australia, Israel, Korea) -- and then 30 cents for Philippines, 35 > cents for Mexico, 40 and 45 cents for Colombia and El Salvador, and 55 > cents/minute (highest shown) for India. > Just out of curiousity, what determines the differences in these > rates? Genuine technical costs? What the traffic will bear? > Excessive rates by phone companies at the called end? Historically international wholesale rates were determined by settlement rate agreements between PTTs. These were monopolies, and in most cases governmental entities. Settlement rates were set more for policy reasons than any cost basis. In many cases they were set high and used to subsidize other services. In some parts of some countries the income from international settlements is all that makes providing service viable. Various countries are in the process of transitioning to an open market in various aspects of telephony. Where this has progressed to the point where there are multiple international carriers with unregulated rates, it has tended to drive the price down. By how much depends on the degree of market openness and of competition. For instance, in the US long distance and international is pretty cutthroat, while most of the local transport is still under administered pricing. I think the most open country is New Zealand, but competition is still somewhat limited. In unregulated markets the retail price is closer to what the traffic will bear. There are still pretty high barriers to entry, so the competitors jockey for position while trying not to drop prices in general too much. Hence all the weird "calling plans". If you don't make a lot of international calls you are likely to get gouged for those you do because it is not worthwhile for you to join a "plan". The idea is to offer something over the competition without leaving any money on the table. Some place down in the noise is technical cost. I would guess this is a fairly large factor in Inmarsat calls, but even their rates plummetted when they smelled competition from LEOS systems. ------------------------------ From: mcharry@erols.com (John McHarry) Subject: Re: African Stratospheric Airships?/HAPS Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 00:45:56 GMT On Wed, 3 Nov 1999 14:11:38 -0700, Arthur Ross wrote: > My personal opinion is that the whole scheme is really loopy. And I'd > like to see the first liability policy against one of those football > field-sized antennas falling out of the sky and hitting somebody on > the head ... or for a collision with a commercial aircraft. The latter shouldn't be a problem. If I remember the aeronautical rules of the "road", an airship has the right of way over an airplane. Now if it collided with a free balloon, that would be another matter. ------------------------------ Reply-To: jason@itw.com From: Jason Fetterolf Subject: Re: Quantumlink Communications Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 10:00:00 EST Organization: Apollo Concepts Telecom and Data Consulting Marc Schneider asks: > I am a sales rep for Qwest and I am competing against a reseller > called Quantumlink Communications out of California. They are > offering a rate of .099/min to Germany with no contract. I have been > trying to dig up any dirt possible on them. Their website does not > mention anything about long distance service. Do you know anything > about these guys? Quantum Link is another alias for NOS Communications aka ANI, of "judgment proof" Las Vegas, Nevada (no offense to NV citizens). If this is the Quantumlink I am aware of, then the reason they can offer 9.9 cpm (cents per minute) is because its not rated in *cents per minute*, but in *cents per minute of USAGE*. Call up Quantum Link and ask them flat out, "what is their rate to Germany" (or anywhere for that matter). Listen carefully to how the response is worded. If they say that the rate is " x" cents per minute of *usage*, then what they are not telling you is that the NOS/ANI/ Quatumlink tariff specifies that "Non-transport / non-usage charges apply per carrier's tariff" ... meaning that every call that is quoted at 9.9 cents per minute of usage is billed in an obscure billing unit called a TCU (total call unit) which does not equal to a minute. The TCU billing scheme normally kicks in during the third month of customer billing and continues until the customer catches it ... if they ever do ... then its time to switch. The first two months the customer is billed in actual minutes, so yes they could get 9.9 cpm the first two months, but then look out! The TCU is computed by summing usage (your actual call time elapsed) *and* NON-usage/non-transport charges(derived from an obscure table that is in their tariff that comes on the backside of page 52, for instance, of the first month's bill. Bottom line -- the TCU effectively DOUBLES any rate quoted by Quantum link/NOS/ANI ... so 9.9 cents per minute of usage is really about 19.8 cents per minute when compared to billing in minutes ... they are a bunch of agressive sleaze-balls at the the NOS HQ in Vegas; everyday they dupe innocent business customers into actually paying much more than they were previously paying. For more info see: http://www.telecombuyer.com/telecombuyernos.pdf (in pdf format) Let me know if you need any more help! ------------------------------ Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Organization: Excelsior Computer Services From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 02:53:08 GMT >> me remind people, sent $130 million of the last $207 million to the >> telephone company serving the 3.5 million residents of Puerto Rico ... > Those numbers are quite misleading. There are two kinds of USF money. > The bulk of it, several billion dollars, goes to small rural telcos > like mine to provide affordable service. The other kind, the $207M I don't understand why people in rural areas should get subsidized phone (and mail) service, when people in large cities pay more for almost every thing else. You don't see people in the small cities subsidizing parking in New York (easily $20.00 for a couple of hours), so why should people in NY subsidize phone service elsewhere? (For that matter, folks in NYC don't even get unmetered local service....) It seems to me that most things cost more in cities, but that those things that cost less should remain that way. (On the other hand, I also believe that phone service, like postal service, is part of the intrastructure that a government should provide its people, and should not be a realm for making money anyway.) -Joel ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #531 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 5 14:45:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA19251; Fri, 5 Nov 1999 14:45:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 14:45:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911051945.OAA19251@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #532 TELECOM Digest Fri, 5 Nov 99 14:45:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 532 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad (S. Falke) Re: Global Currencies in E-Commerce (John R. Levine) Re: Global Currencies in E-Commerce (David Charles) Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service (Jack Hamilton) Re: Another Online Privacy Issue (Steve Winter) Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! (Bob Goudreau) Re: 588-2300 and NAtional 2-9000 (David W. Tamkin) Re: ALLTEL: Local Phone Problems (Stanley Cline) Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (Randall Johns) Sky Communications (John Shaver) The DVD Hack: What Next? (Monty Solomon) Re: Old April Fool's Column in a Telecom Magazine (Ed Kern) Re: Switching Computer Security (steven@primacomputer.com) Help Me Make it to 2000; Get Free CD-ROM (TELECOM Digest Editor) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 12:54:09 -0800 From: S. Falke Subject: Re: Dial Key Pad vrs. Calculator Key Pad Organization: SBC Internet Services Paul Wills wrote in message ... > ... "official" AT&T version of the story: > Why aren't Touch-Tone telephone buttons arranged the same way as those > on most adding machines? cc: bgates@microsoft.com So, then someone could make their next billion by offering a pc keyboard with the "high efficiency" touchtone-key layout? Might be the end of carpal tunnel syndrome as we know it. ------------------------------ Date: 4 Nov 1999 23:20:56 -0500 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Global Currencies in E-Commerce Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I am starting to hear a lot of hype about some software that can do > multi-currency e-commerce on a world-wide basis. > Is there some totally new development in the handling of credit cards, > or is this truly just hype? Smells like hype to me. > When I buy a whose price is listed in USA dollars (USD) , the > credit card company will convert this to Canadian dollars (CAD) at a > rate that is next to impossible to obtain until you get your bill. It's the interbank rate on the day the transaction clears minus 1%. Most transactions are cleared a day or two after they're made. > When international charge tickets come into the credit card office > for processing, clerks first pay the merchant the amount requested > in his currency and then charge your account for the identical > amount in American currency. They then re-write the charge ticket > for the purpose of getting it through the billing system with the > 'correct' (i.e. US Dollars) amount handwritten on the ticket > somewhere. I doubt it's exactly that, for the most part there's no such thing as a charge ticket any more, it's just computer book entries. My understanding is that each credit card group (Visa and Mastercard, mainly) has one clearing point. In Visa's case it's in California, probably Bank of America, and every Visa member bank presents its net credits and debits every day in US dollars. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: d_c_h@my-deja.com Subject: Re: Global Currencies in E-Commerce Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 17:07:39 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , J.F. Mezei wrote: > I am starting to hear a lot of hype about some software that can do > multi-currency e-commerce on a world-wide basis. > Is there some totally new development in the handling of credit cards, > or is this truly just hype? There is a press release concerning multi-currency credit point-of-sale services for credit card processing at: http://www.forbairt.ie/news/pressreleases/monex.html. David ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 21:00:24 -0800 Organization: Copyright (c) 1999 by Jack Hamilton Reply-To: jfh@acm.org ttoews@telusplanet.net (Tony Toews) wrote: > Jack Hamilton wrote: >> You could also get a domain name in the .CA top-level domain. It would >> probably be less expensive than a .COM domain, if you can locate the >> organization which issues them for your area (the registrar for >> Sacramento, California is Brooks Fiber Properties, which doesn't answer >> email). > Umm, .CA is Canada. .CA.US would be California. The original poster mentioned that he was in Toronto, and when I was last there, that was in Canada. A .CA domain, no? My point was that it might be difficult to get a geography-based domain name, because registration is not centralized, and the registrar for Toronto might do a good job. The registrar for my area doesn't do a good job, for example. Canada might be much better organized than the United States. For an example of what appears to be a thoroughly (perhaps excessively) planned country domain, see , administered by the Association Francaise pour le Nommage Internet en Cooperation (AFNIC). The page lists the rules for second-level domain names. For example, if you are a veterinarian, you could have a name like xxx.veterinaire.fr, or if you are a private individual you could have xxx.nom.fr (with proof of french residency or citizenship, naturally). Jack Hamilton Broderick, CA jfh@acm.org ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: Another Online Privacy Issue Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 01:10:02 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com Steve Polatas spake thusly and wrote: > Scot E. Wilcoxon notes that he got an email from TurboTax -- so far so > innocent, he uses their software. It was titled "Priority Announcement > for TurboTax Customers." At the bottom of the email was a link to an > image: > src="http://info.turbotax.com/images/blankpixel.gif/Key=8910.Uhy.C87jIw" The ultimate in "return receipt", eh? Steve (who hates html in email, it just seems somehow immoral or something ...) http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 09:49:09 -0500 (EST) From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! Michael J Kuras wrote: > Although perhaps under slightly different circumstances, I wouldn't > imagine that Nevada was very happy to hear about this, since they > lost out on '777' a few years ago. I have no sympathy for the unhappiness of Nevadans who wanted NPA 777, because the "slightly different circumstances" involved an attempt on their part to subvert NANPA's rules about reserving "Easily Recognized Codes" (including triple-digit patterns such as 777) for purposes other than general relief of plain old geographic codes. In contrast, all of the other "vanity" area codes, such as the Space Coast's 321, or Tennessee's VOLunteer, or the numerous mnemonic Caribbean codes, came out of the normal pool of codes available for general relief. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: dattier@yahoo.com (David W. Tamkin) Subject: Re: 588-2300 and NAtional 2-9000 Date: 5 Nov 1999 09:52:26 -0600 Organization: Customer of MCSNet, a division of Winstar, Lafayette IN 47903 Reply-To: dattier@yahoo.com Ed Ellers wrote in : E> But I used to hear the old jingle all the time on WGN, as well as the E> one (I've forgotten for who) with the phone number NAtional 2-9000. The editor noted: T> I had forgotten all about NAtional Two - Nine Thousand until you brought T> it up. I think that was a furniture store. David Tamkin probably knows for T> sure. Lincoln Carpet still is reachable at 773-622-9000, but they have no listed address. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 15:45:02 -0500 From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: ALLTEL: Local Phone Problems Surlefleuve@aol.com wrote: > Whenever I dial any local (7-digit) number in the next town over > (Athens, Georgia) I get a fast busy, or an "all circuits busy" > recording. However when I place a call into any of those exchanges > using a dial around (10-10-XXX) number, I can get through without any > problem, however at a per minute charge. I am only experiencing fast Sounds like a lack of interoffice trunks -- this is very, very common nowadays, especially when one end is Bell and the other end is an independent of any sort (GTE, ALLTEL, Sprint, etc.) > busy signals when calling into Athens, and no other local > (non-Commerce) exchanges. One additional piece of information, Athens > exchanges are serviced by BellSouth. Would the problem be between the > two seperate telcos even in a local calling area? And, since ALLTEL Yes. > cannot fix this problem, who should I talk to about resolving the > issue? Since you are an ALLTEL customer, you'll need to deal with ALLTEL; if the problem persists, a complaint to the Georgia PSC may be in order. More than likely people in Athens are having trouble calling Commerce as well; those callers can complain to BellSouth. -SC in Atlanta, who deals with this sort of thing every day ------------------------------ From: Randall Johns Subject: Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 18:01:16 -0600 Lucille Causey wrote: > Our family owned jewelry store has a credit card terminal that stopped > working Monday. The credit card processing company says that the > machine dials a local number here in Fort Worth Texas 817 area > code. It dials 950-5305 or 950-1754. It gives an error, and when I > try to dial either number on the same phone line, I get a recording > "It is not necessary to dial a long distance access code when calling > this number." I just tried these numbers from Dallas, and even though we have mandatory 10D dialing, the calls went through by dialing only the seven digit number. If I dial 972-950-5305 or 972-950-1754, the calls also go through, but if I use area codes 214 or 469, I get a recording from GTE on my home phone line in area code 972. If I try dialing the 7D number from my SWBell wireless phone (a 214 area code number), I get a message that I have to dial all 10 digits, and if I dial 214-950-5305 from the cell phone, the call goes through. Fort Worth has permissive local 10D dialing already, so it seems that a call dialed as 817-950-5305 should go through. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 20:44:51 -0700 From: John Shaver Subject: Sky Communications Here on the Southwest Border we have a number of aerostats. They use helium. They look a bit like blimps, but they are tied down to the ground. In fact their cable provides power to the platform aloft. These seem to act as weathervanes, but I understand that the platform inside is stabilized in about 3 axes. The cable also provides a hazard to local aircraft and the system comes down every so often to allow battery powered flashing lights to be placed along the cable every 1000 feet or so. They have lost an aerostat or two because of bad weather and they are hauled down during thunderstorms and turbulent weather. John ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 23:35:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The DVD Hack: What Next? by Andy Patrizio 3:00 a.m. 4.Nov.1999 PST DVD's security system was supposed to be hacker-proof. Turns out it wasn't idiot-proof. Thanks to a gaffe by one of the decryption software's licensees, a band of Norwegian programmers made it possible to make a perfect copy of a DVD film with none of that pesky encryption. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,32265,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 22:11:14 EST From: Ed Kern Subject: Re: Old April Fool's column in a telecom magazine Jamie Goldstein wrote: > Several years back I recall reading an "editorial" in a telecom > magazine (perhaps Teleconnect) that was an obvious April Fool's > article -- a homeowner was trying to get his telephone line repaired > from one of the three remaining telephone/cable tv/internet companies. > Of the three companies, one had merged with Pizza Hut, and the last > was AT&T -- short for Allen and Two Temps. Here's that joke. I had this sitting in a text file on my disk. I have no idea who wrote it. Cheers, Ed --------------------------- The Future of Communications Sometime in 1999: "Hello. This is Bell Atlantic-Nynex-MCI-TCI-America Online customer service. May I help you?" "Yes, I'd like to report a problem with my telephone." "Our records show you don't have local phone service through us." "How'd you know who I am? I didn't give you my name" "We have ways." "Well, I'm pretty sure you have my phone service." "Our records show you have long-distance, cellular, satellite TV, Internet access and your MasterCard through us. Your phone service must be through one of the other three big communications companies. Have you looked at your bill?" "My bill is 134 pages long." "Oh, you're one of our light users. But we'd be happy to become your local phone provider. If you sign up, you get one-third off long-distance calls made on your cellular phone to friends and family members who have an Internet home page." "It's tempting, but I just want my phone fixed." "Fine, sir. Just a reminder: Next time you need to contact us, try our Internet site. And when you get there, you can sign up for a free showing, through your satellite TV system, of Hamlet starring Bell Atlantic-Nynex-MCI-TCI-America Online CEO Ray Smith." "Thanks. Goodbye." Click. Dial. Ring. "Good morning! This is SBC-Pacific Telesis-Sprint-GTE-Little Caesars." "Little Caesars? You do pizza?" "You buy it over phone lines. It's content. Would you like one? You get a medium with two toppings when you order HBO on cable." "Uh, no. I called because my phone line isn't working right." "I see. Do you have your phone over your cable line or do you have your phone over a phone line." "A phone line, I think." "OK, then that's not SBC-Pacific Telesis-Sprint-GTE-Little Caesars. My file shows that you get cable TV and video games on demand from us, but in your area, we only offer phone service over cable lines. If you use a phone line, it must be one of the other companies." "Thanks. I'll call them." "And sir? We're testing some new products in your area. We're offering electric service and natural gas service for 10% less than the public utilities. One-stop shopping. We want to provide you with everything that comes into your house and connects to a device or appliance." "No, thanks. Bye." Click. Dial. Ring. "Hello. Endorphin Enterprises." "I'm sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number." "You're probably in the right place. We just changed our name. We used to be US West-UUNet-Universal Pictures-Ameritech, but that got pretty cumbersome. I guess they wanted to call it UUUUSA, but then decided to start fresh. So we're Endorphin Enterprises." "Clever." "Personally, I thought we should call ourselves Youse Guys. Get it?" "Yeah, that's good. Um, I was calling because my phone line doesn't seem to work right." "Ohhhhh. What services do you have with us?" "I'm not sure." "We offer everything: local, long-distance, cellular, cable TV, satellite TV, Internet access, music on demand and so on. But so does everybody else these days." "Yes, well, it's gotten a little confusing. I've already called those two other companies with long names." "Oh, right. OK, see, it looks like you don't have anything at all with us. Now, we could make your life easier by giving you all the services so you'd know who to call. Except in your area, we only offer movies on demand over the Internet, so that could be a problem." "No, really, I just want to get my phone fixed." "My guess is you must have your local phone service through AT&T. That's the only other company left in the business." "OK, I'll try AT&T." Click. Dial. Ring. "Hello. AT&T. Bob Allen speaking." "Bob Allen? The chairman? I'm sorry. I wanted customer service." "No problem. Hold on a moment." Pause. Rustling sounds. "Hello. Customer service. Bob Allen speaking." "Mr. Allen, I really just wanted customer service." "This is it. We spun off everything but my office. It goes totally against the megamerger trend. Our shareholders love it. I'm getting paid $55 billion this year." "Well, sir, my phone line doesn't work right, and I think I need someone to come fix it." "Be right there, as soon as I can find my tool belt." ------------------------------ From: steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) Subject: Re: Switching Computer Security Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 02:24:07 +0800 Organization: Prima Computer I've seen all kinds of security devices on switches; it varies from place to place. 5ESS does keep a log, as do all the others I have used. Most run a unix-like OS, although some of the new pseudo switches are just NT boxes with a stack of dialogic cards. Nothing stops people from dialing into the switch from home, in fact they are encouraged to do it. I charge $200 and hour for work on switches, $300 for off hours. You want to have me hanging around the site all night waiting for something to go wrong? The 'phone masters' or whoever in the news this week got in the same way they have been for the last 20 years. If you want to learn more do a search in Yahoo for HaCkEr + WhArEz. Steven rorymath@hotmail.com says... > I was wondering, does anyone have any papers on how switching > computers (5 ESS preferably) are secured? Do they keep any kind of > logs? I was told they usually have a kind of schedule of who should > be logged on and when. Is that true? If so what happens if someone > who shouldn't be logged on does? I mean, whats to stop people like > the 'phone masters' from firing up minicom and connecting to some > switch on their home PC? I think a guy also told me that they have a > special 'key modem' of sorts, but then how did the phone masters get > around this? > > -Rory Matthews ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Help Me Make it to 2000; Get a Free CD-ROM Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 12:00:00 EST If you have not yet made a voluntary donation to assist with TELECOM Digest/c.d.t. production expenses for the current year, would you *please* consider doing so at this time. The newsgroup and website are totally free resources on the net, and without any banner advertising, profiling of users or other privacy-invading features. To keep the web site and Digest free of advertising, I rely heavily on support by readers. Maybe too heavily :( ... but that's where things are at. If you have already made a contribution in the past but can afford to make another one at this time, that will be appreciated also. A suggested amount of donation is twenty or thirty dollars per reader per year. If your donation is thirty dollars or more, I'll be happy to send you a copy of David Massey's *Tribute to the Telephone* CD-ROM, which is being officially released on November 6, if you ask for it at the time you send your donation. http://telecom-digest.org/tribute is our online telephone museum, and an extremely popular part of this site. Now that entire section of this site has been placed on CD-ROM for ease in using it. Please do what you can to help push me through the millenium gateway somewhat solvent and keep the Digest flowing regularly. Write to: Patrick Townson Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Thank you very much! ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #532 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Nov 6 02:58:11 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id CAA16976; Sat, 6 Nov 1999 02:58:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 02:58:11 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911060758.CAA16976@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #533 TELECOM Digest Sat, 6 Nov 99 02:58:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 533 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Lawsuit Against Qwest, LCI, USLD Says Subscribers Slammed (N. Thibodeaux) Re: AT&T Telemarketing Hits New Low! (Larry Finch) Re: The DVD Hack: What Next? (Larry Finch) Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (Terry Knab) Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (Brian Elfert) Re: Sky Communications (Charles Freund) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Mickey Ferguson) Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP (Marcy Dixon) Re: Other Gigaset Models? (was New Version of Siemens) (telpro@crc.net) Jobs in Telecommunication (joe b) Re: Another Online Privacy Issue (Linc Madison) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nelson Thibodeaux Subject: Lawsuit Against Qwest, LCI, USLD Says Subscribers Slammed Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 15:37:52 -0600 (RANDY-JOHNSTON-ATTY-LAW) Randy Johnston, Attorney at Law, Files Lawsuit Against Qwest Affiliate USLD HURST, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 5, 1999--A lawsuit was filed yesterday against USLD and its affiliates Qwest and LCI in the 67th District Court of Texas over the slamming and cramming of numerous consumers. The action was filed by the majority shareholders of All American Telephone, Inc. (AAT), previously located in North Richland Hills, Texas. The lawsuit details the actions of former employees of AAT that conspired with the named carriers to bill and collect monies from consumers in the name of AAT. In addition, consumers were billed for Monthly Recurring Charges by and in the name of Qwest and LCI. The consumers in question were formerly in the AAT customer database, although some had cancelled service as long as a year prior to receiving bills from these carriers. Further, Qwest, LCI nor USLD have produced any documentation providing authority to bill the consumers in question. In July 1998, AAT received an NAL (Notice of Apparent Liability) from the FCC of $1,080,000 for alleged slamming of consumers. The majority shareholders of AAT had dismissed AAT President, Clay Garey, on the 25th of June 1998. The dismissal occurred at an emergency shareholder meeting held as of result of Garey's refusal to provide access to corporate records concerning financial, marketing practices or prior notification the company had serious regulatory problems with the FCC. It was also discovered that MultiMedia, a company apparently solely owned by Garey, was indebted to USLD for over $2,000,000. No contract existed between AAT and USLD for long distance services. However, Garey claimed the debt was as a result of MultiMedia providing wholesale services that allegedly were to the benefit of AAT. A management team was hired to review financial records and marketing activities after the dismissal of Garey. A subpoena of MultiMedia bank records revealed large sums of monies, had been transferred by Garey from AAT into MultiMedia bank accounts. The management team of AAT ceased all marketing to new customers upon the securing of AAT facilities in June 1998. In July 1998, USLD informed AAT that all its customers would be immediately disconnected because of the failure of AAT to accept the total financial liability of its contracted customer, MultiMedia, Inc. In August 1998, federal authorities served AAT offices with a search and seizure warrant. The warrant indicated the FCC suspected fraudulent slamming activity during the tenure Garey was President of AAT. In the same month, a third party rebiller, HOLD of San Antonio, Texas, contacted AAT indicating USLD desired to obtain an agreement to bill previously unbilled long distance charges to consumers, in the name of AAT. AAT did not agree to any billing arrangement, and, in turn, HOLD provided AAT a written statement that no AAT customers would receive bills from their efforts. In September 1998, AAT obtained evidence that HOLD initiated billing to the consumers in question without authority or agreement of AAT. Consumers were billed for long distance, on their local telephone bill in the name of AAT, as a result of actions by HOLD and USLD. AAT did not agree, approve, initiate or receive any funds from the billings. Billings to consumers not only included the initial dates of unbilled call records, but continued and may still be continuing. The billing by HOLD, with agreement by USLD, clearly violates FCC and state statues. Further, there is evidence that both companies continued to rely on rating and customer records obtained from Garey and/or MultiMedia, although all parties were well aware that Garey had been terminated and had no authority or right to records of AAT. In addition, AAT obtained consumer copies of their local telephone bill, reflecting monthly recurring charges from Qwest and LCI. The telephone numbers of these consumers appear to have been obtained solely from the database of AAT. The billing and collecting of monies from consumers, previously in the AAT database, was without authority of AAT or presumably the consumers. The actions of these carriers resulted in an unmanageable pollution of customer information rendering any potential of a reasonable continuance of business by AAT impossible. The actions by Qwest, LCI and USLD were apparently an attempt to collect monies, out of the pocket of individual consumers, for a debt owed to USLD. Initial estimates are the unauthorized billings of these carriers will exceed a minimum of $3.5 million. In November 1998 and again in 1999, Attorneys for AAT filed two separate informal complaints, listing specific consumer examples, with the Federal Communications Commission. The complaints suggested the actions were particularly egregious considering USLD was fully aware that federal authorities were actively conducting a criminal investigation of previous marketing activities of AAT. USLD blatantly billed customers in the name of AAT without regard to the rights of AAT or consumers. Of particular concern, customers in question were initially acquired by AAT during the period being investigated by the federal government. To date no response has been received from the FCC regarding the complaints filed by AAT. In September 1999, Patrick Thompson**, who apparently represented he was formerly the CFO of AAT from August 1996 through June 1998, plead guilty to one count of federal mail fraud. The lawsuit also disputes Thompson's claim as CFO of AAT, however provides evidence of the involvement of Garey and Thompson as officers of several other corporations. In addition, unknown to the majority of AAT shareholders, these corporations illegally utilized AAT long distance certifications to bill customers in the name of AAT. Further, these corporations established multiple separate accounts with USLD. The lawsuit documents the genesis of the NAL against AAT was initially a result of complaints by 13 consumers, 11 being from the State of New York. The change in the consumer's long distance was initiated and placed on USLD by the sole request of MultiMedia. The State of New York requires wholesale carriers to be certified. Since USLD was contracted only with and through MultiMedia, USLD knew or should have known MultiMedia held no such wholesale certification. The violation of state regulatory statues are blatant by MultiMedia and USLD. As a result of the actions of these carriers, AAT certifications was put in jeopardy, resulting in the initial NAL by the FCC, a government investigation and the eventual total financial collapse of AAT. Randy Johnston, Attorney at Law 710 Founders Square, 900 Jackson St. Dallas, Texas 75202 214/741-6260 CONTACT: Randy Johnston, Attorney at Law 214/741-6260 KEYWORD: TEXAS INDUSTRY KEYWORD: CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: **Patrick Thompson is not related to nor the same person as myself, Patrick Townson. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Larry Finch Subject: Re: AT&T Telemarketing Hits New Low! Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 21:35:52 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: LarryFinch@worldnet.att.net Enforcement Division, Common Carrier Bureau Federal Communications Commission 2025 M Street NW Washington, DC 20554 jmeissen@aracnet.com wrote: > AT&T isn't satisfied with just interrupting your dinner and sending > junk postal and email (I have a friend who gets spam as often as twice > a day and has been trying to get off their list for weeks); they've > discovered the ultimate captive audience for their marketing spiel -- > people actually on the phone trying to place a call! > Their telemarketing group just started a program which places an > intercept on the lines of their customers so that ANY time you try to > place a long distance call through them you have to first sit through > a marketing spiel (20 seconds, in my case). No indication of what's > going on, why it's happening, how to stop it, or even if your call > will eventually go through. > I can't believe they would be that stupid. Well, maybe I can. Time to > go looking for appropriate regulatory agencies. If anyone can pass > along an appropriate name/number, either governmental or phone > company, I would appreciate. > Oh, I did get them to tell me that pressing the '#' key aborts the > message. Larry Finch ::LarryFinch@worldnet.att.net larry@prolifics.com ::LarryFinch@aol.com PDCLarry@aol.com ::(whew!) N 40 53' 47" W 74 03' 56" ------------------------------ From: Larry Finch Subject: Re: The DVD Hack: What Next? Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 21:38:16 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: LarryFinch@worldnet.att.net I've been waiting for this to happen since I first read about DVD encryption; it was doomed from the start. Any encryption algorithm that depends on keeping the algorithm secret MUST fail. If the mistake wasn't made here, some irate former employee would eventually have sold it or given it away. Larry Monty Solomon wrote: > DVD's security system was supposed to be hacker-proof. Turns out it > wasn't idiot-proof. > Thanks to a gaffe by one of the decryption software's licensees, a band > of Norwegian programmers made it possible to make a perfect copy of a > DVD film with none of that pesky encryption. Larry Finch ::LarryFinch@worldnet.att.net larry@prolifics.com ::LarryFinch@aol.com PDCLarry@aol.com ::(whew!) N 40 53' 47" W 74 03' 56" ------------------------------ From: tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) Subject: Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! Organization: The Home Office Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 04:23:40 GMT Randall Johns wrote: > Fort Worth has permissive local 10D dialing already, so it seems that > a call dialed as 817-950-5305 should go through. In 816-Missouri, this doesn't work. After reading this post, I called 816.950.5305 -- does not complete. 950.5305 *DOES* complete. Odd isn't it? And we do have permissive 10D local here too. Terry E. Knab News/Interm System Administrator Nyx Public Access Unix ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! From: belfert@foshay.citilink.com (Brian Elfert) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 21:56:48 GMT Lucille Causey writes: > A friend suggested we post here, that someone can help us. > Our family owned jewelry store has a credit card terminal that stopped > working Monday. The credit card processing company says that the > machine dials a local number here in Fort Worth Texas 817 area > code. It dials 950-5305 or 950-1754. It gives an error, and when I > try to dial either number on the same phone line, I get a recording > "It is not necessary to dial a long distance access code when calling > this number." 950 seems to be some sort of exchange the credit card processors use that is supposed to work in every LATA. My processor told me to use an 800 number with the 950 numbers as backup. I was really suprised that they would have the same phone number starting with 950 in every LATA. Brian ------------------------------ From: Charles Freund Subject: Re: Sky Communications Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 16:10:23 -0600 Organization: Nortel Networks Reply-To: freund+usenet@nortelnetworks.com I believe you will find that they are used by US Customs; if they are the aerostats that I read about a while back, they are actually airborne radar sets. They are used to monitor cross-border aircraft traffic, looking for the drug runners flying on the deck. Charles John Shaver wrote: > Here on the Southwest Border we have a number of aerostats. They use > helium. They look a bit like blimps, but they are tied down to the > ground. In fact their cable provides power to the platform aloft. > These seem to act as weathervanes, but I understand that the platform > inside is stabilized in about 3 axes. The cable also provides a hazard > to local aircraft and the system comes down every so often to allow > battery powered flashing lights to be placed along the cable every > 1000 feet or so. They have lost an aerostat or two because of bad > weather and they are hauled down during thunderstorms and turbulent > weather. ------------------------------ From: Mickey Ferguson Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 12:40:39 -0800 Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote in message : > I don't understand why people in rural areas should get subsidized > phone (and mail) service, when people in large cities pay more for > almost every thing else. You don't see people in the small cities > subsidizing parking in New York (easily $20.00 for a couple of hours), > so why should people in NY subsidize phone service elsewhere? (For > that matter, folks in NYC don't even get unmetered local service....) > It seems to me that most things cost more in cities, but that those > things that cost less should remain that way. Dr. Hoffman, I respectfully disagree with your statement that most things cost more in cities. There are lots of things that cost *less* in large cities than in rural areas. Ever notice the price of gasoline? This is another item that is necessary to our typical way of life, yet it's frequently anywhere from 10 to 50 cents or more per gallon in some of the rural areas. In Temecula, CA, we pay on the average about 15 cents more per gallon than in Los Angeles, about an hour and a half away. And we can hardly be considered rural, with well over 100,000 people (I heard it might be as many as 240,000!) living within the Temecula Valley area. Of course gasoline is just one item. Many of the everyday purchases such as food and clothing are more expensive in rural areas, where there is much less competition and few "bulk quantity" types of stores. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 17:20:02 -0600 From: Marcy Dixon Subject: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP Organization: SBC Internet Services I'm in the middle of nowhere in rural Texas. My local ISP went belly up and I need a new one. ALL of the ISPs around here are far enough away that I'd need to make a long-distance call to get to them. Some ISPs have 800 numbers but they still charge me a per minute charge. Is there an ISP or Compuserve-type service that'll get me on the internet without paying a per minute rate? I'd almost be happy with one that limits me to 20 hours or so per month. Help me - I'm poor! ------------------------------ From: anyone Subject: Re: Other Gigaset Models? (was: New Version of the Siemens) Date: 05 Nov 1999 13:42:30 PST Organization: Concentric Internet Services Does anyone know if Siemens will update the old phones with the problems, either free of charge or for a price? If so, how would someone go about upgrading the phone? jmg On Tue, 02 Nov 1999 14:54:21 -0500, steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) wrote: > dkiner@my-deja.com (Doug Kiner) spake thusly and wrote: >> I have been considering the Gigaset 2415 for home use, but I have read >> quite a few negative comments about the 2420. Many of the problems >> appear to have been addressed, based on what you have posted. >> I am wondering, however if the "single line" models (2410, 2415) suffer >> from the same problems, or have they "inherited" the improvements as >> well? > I am not sure, but I believe they would have the new software (we > don't have them quite yet). > I really recommend going with the new 2420 because I was surprised > at how many places to use cordless handsets. I can't imagine going > back to only 4. ------------------------------ From: JOE B Subject: Jobs in Telecommunication Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 03:01:12 +0000 A Brand new dedicated site for the Telecoms Market. If interested, please visit http://www.commstaff.com Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 22:14:49 -0800 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: Another Online Privacy Issue In article , Steve Winter wrote: > Steve Polatas spake thusly and wrote: >> Scot E. Wilcoxon notes that he got an email from TurboTax -- so far so >> innocent, he uses their software. It was titled "Priority Announcement >> for TurboTax Customers." At the bottom of the email was a link to an >> image: >> src"http://info.turbotax.com/images/blankpixel.gif/Key=8910.Uhy.C87jIw" > The ultimate in "return receipt", eh? > Steve (who hates html in email, it just seems somehow immoral or > something ...) I believe you meant to say: "Steve (who hates html in email...)" ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #533 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Nov 6 17:46:07 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA11045; Sat, 6 Nov 1999 17:46:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 17:46:07 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911062246.RAA11045@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #534 TELECOM Digest Sat, 6 Nov 99 17:46:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 534 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP (Anthony Argyriou) Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP (Nathan) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Nathan) Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (Tony Pelliccio) Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (Stanley Cline) Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service (Louis Raphael) Re: African Stratospheric Airships?/HAPS (Kyler Laird) ICANN Committee Proposes Nationalizing Country Codes (Anthony Argyriou) Bell Atlantic Flexpath T-1 Install Problems (Bob Baxter) Re: Help Me Make it to 2000; Get a Free CD-ROM (Mark Atwood) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Anthony Argyriou Subject: Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 09:03:17 -0800 Organization: Alpha Geotechnical Reply-To: anthony@alphageo.com Marcy Dixon wrote: > I'm in the middle of nowhere in rural Texas. My local ISP went belly > up and I need a new one. ALL of the ISPs around here are far enough > away that I'd need to make a long-distance call to get to them. Some > ISPs have 800 numbers but they still charge me a per minute charge. Is > there an ISP or Compuserve-type service that'll get me on the internet > without paying a per minute rate? I'd almost be happy with one that > limits me to 20 hours or so per month. > Help me - I'm poor! AOL has 800 numbers, but your time is pretty limited and expensive. The problem is that the ISP pays for your 800-number call, and the only reasonable way to pay for it is to recover the cost from you by charging hourly for your time. Meanwhile, what's happened to your ISP? Did they get padlocked and the equipment sold, or is there something left which could be sold to a regional or large ISP to give them a local POP? Anthony Argyriou ------------------------------ From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics, Inc. Subject: Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 12:16:08 -0600 Marcy Dixon wrote: > I'm in the middle of nowhere in rural Texas. Is > there an ISP or Compuserve-type service that'll get me on the internet > without paying a per minute rate? My father lives in the middle of nowhere in rural Arkansas. He solved the problem by ordering a special line (foreign exchange, I think?) which is "local" to somewhere else. Then he got a call-pack on that line, and happily surfs away, without any per-minute charges. Seems to me he pays around $30 for the special line. Not cheap, but at least the costs are predictable. If his neighbors call him on the second line, they pay LD rates :-) Gordon S. Hlavenka www.crashelex.com nospam@crashelex.com Grammar and spelling flames welcome. Yes, that's really my email address. Don't change it. ------------------------------ From: Nathan Subject: Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP Organization: bCandid - Powering the world's discussions - http://bCandid.com Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 15:26:18 -0600 Try asking your local phone company (Southwestern Bell?) if they have some sort of a "circle saver" calling plan. In my area, they have a plan whereby you can call any points within a 40 mile radius of your location for free, after paying the $20/mo that this plan costs. Alltel over in the forests of Madison County has the same sort of plan, but it is limited to some number of hours per month. Either way, you'd probably have better luck going that route than trying to find an ISP with a no-charge 800 or similar service. Another thing you might try is calling all the ISPs and making sure none of them have a foreign exchange number in or within the local calling area of your community. Several local ISPs here have that sort of arrangement with the phone company. -Nathan ------------------------------ From: Nathan Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Organization: bCandid - Powering the world's discussions - http://bCandid.com Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 15:19:34 -0600 Mickey Ferguson wrote: > Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote in message 12@telecom-digest.org>: >> I don't understand why people in rural areas should get subsidized >> phone (and mail) service, when people in large cities pay more for >> almost every thing else. You don't see people in the small cities >> subsidizing parking in New York (easily $20.00 for a couple of hours), >> so why should people in NY subsidize phone service elsewhere? (For >> that matter, folks in NYC don't even get unmetered local service....) >> It seems to me that most things cost more in cities, but that those >> things that cost less should remain that way. > Dr. Hoffman, I respectfully disagree with your statement that most > things cost more in cities. There are lots of things that cost *less* > in large cities than in rural areas. Ever notice the price of > gasoline? This is another item that is necessary to our typical way > of life, yet it's frequently anywhere from 10 to 50 cents or more per > gallon in some of the rural areas. In Temecula, CA, we pay on the > average about 15 cents more per gallon than in Los Angeles, about an > hour and a half away. And we can hardly be considered rural, with > well over 100,000 people (I heard it might be as many as 240,000!) > living within the Temecula Valley area. Maybe you do, but those of us who live in *REAL* rural areas have cheaper gas than anyone in any city over 100,000 people. Right now it's $1.19/gal for 87 octane. Lots of other things are cheaper, too. In most cases computer and network things are cheaper here, at least for the labor. And go figure, the ISPs charge the same thing for unlimited dial-up that they do everywhere else: $19.95. And gee, ISDN is cheaper here than in most other places. And of course, the cheapest in the nation (last I checked) is from the North Arkansas Telephone Company, whose headquarters is in the bustling city of Flippin, AR. Note that Flippin is < 10,000 people. > Of course gasoline is just one item. Many of the everyday purchases > such as food and clothing are more expensive in rural areas, where > there is much less competition and few "bulk quantity" types of > stores. I don't know what planet you're living on, but food is most DEFINITELY cheaper in most rural areas. The city I live in is about 50,000 people now, yet the place where my grandparents live has about 1,500 people, and food is only 75% of the price. Gas is a bit more expensive, but that's a general trend in that part of the state, including the areas that are more developed. Almost anywhere you go these days, there's a town/city with a Wal-Mart, or a Sam's Club or some other sort of discount chain within an hour or so. The people who I know that live out in the boonies have no problem driving to the Sam's Club, loading up the truck with a month's worth of food, and going home. Even without the "bulk quantity" type of stores, things are still fairly cheap, at least in my experience. Also, land is *MUCH* cheaper, and the banks are usually much nicer about giving you the $30,000 for your nice house that would have cost $250,000 in any of the major population centers of the nation. Note that this is all based on my experiences, and really say nothing apart from the way things are in Western Arkansas, Eastern Oklahoma, Southwest Missouri, and eastern Colorado in comparison to the way they are in the large cities I've visited, such as Orlando, the south Florida area, Dallas, St. Louis, and various places in Ohio. Any other places that may or may not exist in the world, I haven't been to, or didn't look at prices while I was there, and therefore have no comparison to make between those places and more rural areas. -Nathan ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 19:44:20 GMT In article , causeys@ix.netcom.com says: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can always as a last resort call > the credit card manual approval line. I am sure you have a number > for that somewhere there. You call the number, then enter the credit > card number, merchant number and sales amount on a touch tone phone. > But if you will call and insist on it, the credit card people will > either send send someone to reprogram your machine or they will tell > you how to do it over the phone (most likely way of handling it. I > had this same situation a couple years ago, where 950 one day stopped > working and a credit card machine quit functioning. Their technical > service people walked me through reporgramming the terminal to dial > their 800 number instead. PAT] 950 still works in the New England area. We sell a POS package that has credit card processing built into it. Most of the time we deal with First Data Merchant Services under it's various guises. It's gotten to the point that we tell them to not only give us the 950 number but also the 800 number as 950 may/may not work. They've been pretty accomodating. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 12:57:25 -0500 From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! Terry Knab wrote: > In 816-Missouri, this doesn't work. After reading this post, I called > 816.950.5305 -- does not complete. 950.5305 *DOES* complete. Odd > isn't it? Here in Atlanta, where ten digits is mandatory for local calls, 950 numbers can only be dialed as seven digits. -SC ------------------------------ From: Louis Raphael Subject: Re: Looking For Domain Registrar and Newsfeed Service Organization: Societe pour la promotion du petoncle vert Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 18:59:31 GMT Jack Hamilton wrote: > My point was that it might be difficult to get a geography-based domain > name, because registration is not centralized, and the registrar for > Toronto might do a good job. The registrar for my area doesn't do a > good job, for example. I think that the confusion arose from your assumption that the .CA domain is handled similarly to the .US one. Registrations are handled by the CA-domain-registrar, which is (the last time I checked) a volunteer-run free service. Visit http://www.cdnnet.ca for more information. > Canada might be much better organized than the United States. For an > example of what appears to be a thoroughly (perhaps excessively) planned > country domain, see , administered by the Association > Francaise pour le Nommage Internet en Cooperation (AFNIC). The page > lists the rules > for second-level domain names. For example, if you are a veterinarian, > you could have a name like xxx.veterinaire.fr, or if you are a private > individual you could have xxx.nom.fr (with proof of french residency or > citizenship, naturally). CA is not *that* organized. Essentially, federally-registered organizations (or organizations registered in more than one province) can get .CA, others get .XX.CA where .XX is a two-letter province/territory code. There are also city.XX.ca domains available. There are a few other restrictions against having multiple domains, two-letter or fewer names and obscenities, I think. Louis ------------------------------ From: laird@freedom.ecn.purdue.edu (Kyler Laird) Subject: Re: African Stratospheric Airships?/HAPS Date: 6 Nov 1999 13:55:54 GMT Organization: Purdue University mcharry@erols.com (John McHarry) writes: > On Wed, 3 Nov 1999 14:11:38 -0700, Arthur Ross > wrote: >> My personal opinion is that the whole scheme is really loopy. And I'd >> like to see the first liability policy against one of those football >> field-sized antennas falling out of the sky and hitting somebody on >> the head ... or for a collision with a commercial aircraft. > The latter shouldn't be a problem. If I remember the aeronautical > rules of the "road", an airship has the right of way over an airplane. FAR 91.113 (3) An airship has the right-of-way over an airplane or rotorcraft. Also ... c) In distress. An aircraft in distress has the right-of-way over all other air traffic. (Who would be in distress at FL700? Well *I* would be if I got that high!) > Now if it collided with a free balloon, that would be another matter. (1) A balloon has the right-of-way over any other category of aircraft; I'll be interested in seeing how they get up and down. Just working it out with the FAA (in the US) should be a coup. Even more interesting, there's been all of this discussion about using radio telephone devices (even while on the ground) in airliners. The debate has been over the danger that the EMF pose. What's going to happen when a plane flies under one of these radio stations?! Since they'll be "above every major city in the world" this is going to be a common occurrence. That's right where they'll be landing -- a crucial time of dependence on radio nav aids. I see that they use the 47 GHz band (47.2-47.5 GHz stratosphere-to- earth and 47.9-48.2 GHz earth-to- stratosphere). How likely is it that such transmissions will affect GPS/ILS usage? 'course everyone should also look into the spying capabilities of these things. I love this technology but the privacy threats make it incredibly scary. --kyler ------------------------------ From: Anthony Argyriou Subject: ICANN Committee Proposes Nationalizing Country Codes Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 08:48:11 -0800 Organization: Alpha Geotechnical Reply-To: anthony@alphageo.com Reported in "Tasty Bits From the Technology Front": http://tbtf.com/blog/1999-10-31.html THE ICANN's Government Advisory Committee recommended this, but such an idea would require approval by the ICANN board, which meets in public (unlike the GAC). Both the ICANN president, Mike Roberts, and the US Commerce Department's Becky Burr spoke out against the idea. Anthony Argyriou ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 11:58:55 -0500 From: Bob Baxter Subject: Bell Atlantic Flexpath T-1 Install Problems I work as the IT director for a small publishing company in New York City. We have 100 DID lines, and wish to purchase another group of one hundred DIDs. In reviewing the various services offered by Bell Atlantic, their Flexpath T-1 service looks like the best choice for our business. Over the last two weeks, numerous phone calls to BA for a target date for installation have been met with, "we will let you know." Yesterday, the Bell representative calls, requesting that in order to install the new Flexpath T-1, they want to remove twenty numbers from our existing DID and place on the new T-1. The reason offered is these numbers will be used for testing. If we choose not to go this route and have the Flex installed independently with the new range of numbers, then we risk possible disruption of our telephone service for several days. In short, I've never heard of this before, and am seeking the advice of other Digest readers. I cannot see how the install of the new Flexpath could cause problems with our existing lines. If there are other providers of voice T-1 service in New York that are looking for new clients, I'm open to your pitches. Regards, Bob Baxter bobbles@panix.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Help Me Make it to 2000; Get a Free CD-ROM From: Mark Atwood Date: 05 Nov 1999 12:00:09 -0800 TELECOM Digest Editor writes: (entirly reasonable request for donations snipped) Have you considered opening up an e-gold account to take donations with? e-Gold accounts are free, there are no "merchant fees", the inexchange/outexchange spread is less than a credit card transation fee, and it's inherantly international. http://www.e-gold.com/ The internet currency with a fan club. Mark Atwood | mra@pobox.com | http://www.pobox.com/~mra | [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes as a matter of fact I did do that after getting your email, and I am now the owner of account 109142 which has nothing in it. For anyone who wishes to make a donation via http://www.e-gold.com to account 109142 which is registered to TELECOM Digest and my name, I will be most appreciative. You have to be a member of E-Gold to use the service, however membership is easy and free; it took me a couple minutes to sign up. The more traditional method is snailmail to PO Box 765, Junction City, KS 66441-0765. Thanks for the suggestion about E-Gold; it seems like a good program to use. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #534 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Nov 7 23:42:11 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id XAA01218; Sun, 7 Nov 1999 23:42:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1999 23:42:11 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911080442.XAA01218@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #535 TELECOM Digest Sun, 7 Nov 99 23:42:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 535 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Bell Atlantic Flexpath T-1 Install Problems (Danny Burstein) Re: African Stratospheric Airships?/HAPS (Hudson Leighton) Clinton Goes After Phone Fraud (Monty Solomon) New Privacy Glitch Snares Real (Monty Solomon) It's Not Chic, Not 212 and Sometimes Not Working (Mike Pollock) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (William Van Hefner) Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! (Leonard Erickson) Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP (Dr. Doright) Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP (Linc Madison) Re: NPA-NXX Listings (Peter) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Marvin A. Sirbu) Microsoft Ruling (Monty Solomon) Judge: 'Gates Was Main Culprit' (Monty Solomon) We BUY Used DSS/DTV Components!! (cardz@home.com) Re: An Anonymous Example (Spam Trap) Re: ICANN Committee Proposes Nationalizing Country Codes (Justa Lurker) Re: Central Office Locations (Greg Monti) Re: AT&T Telemarketing Hits New Low (Eli Mantel) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dannyb@panix.com (Danny Burstein) Subject: Re: Bell Atlantic Flexpath T-1 Install Problems Date: 6 Nov 1999 20:49:38 -0500 In Bob Baxter writes: > I work as the IT director for a small publishing company in New York > City. We have 100 DID lines, and wish to purchase another group of one > hundred DIDs. In reviewing the various services offered by Bell > Atlantic, their Flexpath T-1 service looks like the best choice for our > business. Note that "local number portability" is now an (almost) reality in NYC. Chances are that with your volume, you can, indeed, get the attention, and some much better quotes and technical support, from one of the competing telcos. As an aside, since you're a publishing house, you should take a close look at how you're moving data back and forth to your customers, other locations, and the printers. There have been _LOTS_ of changes, mostly to your benefit, in the past six months. Yes, it's been that recent. If you'd like some direct pointers, feel free to send me (an) e-mail. Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: hudsonl@skypoint.com (Hudson Leighton) Subject: Re: African Stratospheric Airships?/HAPS Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 19:50:28 -0600 Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc. In article , laird@freedom.ecn.purdue.edu (Kyler Laird) wrote: > Even more interesting, there's been all of this discussion about using > radio telephone devices (even while on the ground) in airliners. The > debate has been over the danger that the EMF pose. What's going to > happen when a plane flies under one of these radio stations?! Since > they'll be "above every major city in the world" this is going to be a > common occurrence. That's right where they'll be landing -- a crucial > time of dependence on radio nav aids. > I see that they use the 47 GHz band (47.2-47.5 GHz stratosphere-to- > earth and 47.9-48.2 GHz earth-to- stratosphere). How likely is it > that such transmissions will affect GPS/ILS usage? > 'course everyone should also look into the spying capabilities of > these things. I love this technology but the privacy threats make it > incredibly scary. The problem with electronic signals and airliners is about signals orginating INSIDE the aircraft, you are inside a round alumimum tube, the signals can do some funny things bouncing around inside the airplane. Signals outside of the airplane are not that big of a problem. Look at using your cellphone/computer/gameboy on a airplane as walking around your house with your laptop, shuffing your feet. Every so often you builf up enough charge to zap the laptop, nothing happens most of the time, but every once in awhile every this is in the correct state and you crash the laptop. http://www.skypoint.com/~hudsonl ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 21:24:50 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Clinton goes after phone fraud By Reuters November 6, 1999 3:00 PM PT WASHINGTON -- President Bill Clinton on Saturday launched a national campaign to fight telephone fraud that includes a Web site that lets victims file complaints online. Clinton said in his regular weekly radio address that consumers will be able to get information about how to prevent telemarketing scams on the Internet at http://www.consumer.gov/, and also file complaints on the site. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2389680,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 21:32:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New Privacy Glitch Snares Real by Chris Oakes and Jennifer Sullivan 3:00 a.m. 6.Nov.1999 PST RealNetworks plugged a major privacy glitch in its music software last Monday, but a newly discovered problem in the company's far more popular streaming software remains wide open. The company last week issued a patch to remove from its RealJukebox software a unique identification number, which tracks users' listening habits. Software analysis shows that the same identifier is also transmitted by RealNetworks' RealPlayer. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,32350,00.html ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: It's Not Chic, Not 212 and Sometimes Not Working Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 23:43:18 -0500 Organization: It's A Mike! In the following article: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/regional/ny-phone-212.html George Stephanopoulos, the former aide to President Clinton who became a 646'er when he moved from the Columbia neighborhood to lower on the Upper West Side, says "I call Saigon Grill for takeout, and dial 1 like it's long-distance." My ISDN line within the boundaries of 212 has a 917 area code thanks to the overlay of 917 before 646 became effective. It took me about a week to remember that I'm not in 212 and have to dial the 1 and the area code to reach anyone else in Manhattan. Big deal. I'll live. Elsewhere in the article, John Bonomo, a spokesman for Bell Atlantic, said everyone who uses a phone should know by now to dial a 1 before another area code. Uh, no. Due to a catastrophic programming glitch, my ISDN line was unable to call all the exchanges in the New Rochelle CO in Westchester County in area code 914. I got an intercept saying "We're sorry, it is not necessary to dial 1 when calling this number," which is a lie. There was a block on the line. When the Bell Atlantic ISDN tech was trying to fix the problem, he told me "I tried dialing 914 366-XXXX without a 1 and it rang and someone answered." Duh! By omitting the 1 he had in fact dialed a local number in the 914 exchange of the 917 area code. If he had just dialed 914-366X and stopped dialing after the seventh digit, he might have realized that he reached someone's pager or cell phone whose number was 917 914-366X. So, no, not even Bell Atlantic techs know that 1 plus is mandatory. Being in 917, I must dial 1 to reach 914. Idiots! Mike ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 22:52:41 -0800 From: William Van Hefner Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them >> Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote in message > 12@telecom-digest.org>: >>> I don't understand why people in rural areas should get subsidized >>> phone (and mail) service, when people in large cities pay more for >>> almost every thing else. You don't see people in the small cities >>> subsidizing parking in New York (easily $20.00 for a couple of hours), >>> so why should people in NY subsidize phone service elsewhere? (For >>> that matter, folks in NYC don't even get unmetered local service....) >>> It seems to me that most things cost more in cities, but that those >>> things that cost less should remain that way. Keep in mind that without subsidies people in the "big cities" wouldn't be able to make calls to those "rural areas", since service would be priced beyond the range most consumers there could afford. Would you rather be charged more to make a long distance call to Podunk, NY, than to Manhattan? Would you rather pay a higher rate for incoming calls to your 800 number from those areas? For that matter, it is much more expensive to offer phone service (and long distance) to urban neighborhoods, due to high fraud in those locations. Should we similarly charge people who live in "ethnic" communities more to have dialtone than in upscale white neighborhoods? Perhaps price it beyond their ability to use the service? People who live "out in the boonies", and beyond the reach of a nearby telephone pole, are already asked to pay additional fees to their local telco for installation. These charges can run into the thousands of dollars. If someone is willing to pay that kind of money for phone service, I think that the least we can do is meet them half-way. Subsidies do not simply benefit people in rural areas. They benefit everyone who makes calls to those areas, who travels to those areas, or who makes calls that pass through those areas. Similarly, it prevents service providers from "redlining" certain communities based on potential profitability. William Van Hefner Editor - Discount Long Distance Digest http://www.thedigest.com ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Desperate 950 Prefix Problem! Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 23:17:33 PST Organization: Shadownet Lucille Causey writes: > A friend suggested we post here, that someone can help us. > Our family owned jewelry store has a credit card terminal that stopped > working Monday. The credit card processing company says that the > machine dials a local number here in Fort Worth Texas 817 area > code. It dials 950-5305 or 950-1754. It gives an error, and when I > try to dial either number on the same phone line, I get a recording > "It is not necessary to dial a long distance access code when calling > this number." > The credit card company National Processing Center says that the phone > numbers are valid for this area, and that my machine is properly > programmed. They said that it will automatically be updated to dial > the area code when 10 digit dialing becomes mandatory in a year or so. > Southwestern Bell says that THERE IS NO 950 exchange in the 817 area > code, and these numbers are incorrect and could not possibly work. Yet > for several years I remember seeing the display on the machine > "Dialing 950-5305" 950 is a "special" exchange reserved for Feature Group B access. It's not a "real" exchange in *any* area code! > How could Southwestern Bell claim that this prefix does not even > exist? Because it *isn't* an "exchange". 950 is an *access code*. The four digits following the 950 specify a specific Feature Group B company or service. It's rather like the "10-10" codes (Which are Feature Group D access codes). If you have the terminal dialing the 817 areacode before the 950-xxxx *that* is incorrect. What may be happening is that Feature Group B access is no longer supported in your area. In which case the credit card company will have to supply you with a different *type* of number. > The credit card company is blaming the local phone company, > and the local phone company is claiming that my machine is programmed > for a non existant number! Meanwhile we are losing several hundred > dollars a day because we can't take credit cards. Here are the entries for the two FGB codes you say your terminal dials from the latest copy of the Feature Group B database. 1754 ALC IBM Merrill Blau 847-240-3067 5305 MSY "Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, Discover & Co." Steven C. Van Wyk 847-405-2632 Obviously, the 950-5305 number is for Discovery cards. :-) I'd suggest telling the phone company that you are attempting to access a "Feature Group B" line, and that you are getting the "It is not necessary to dial a long distance access code when calling this number." message when you do so. I suspect that using the "magic phrase" will get things straightened out. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: drdoright@my-Deja.com (Dr. Doright) Subject: Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP Date: 7 Nov 1999 13:29:36 GMT Organization: Do The Right Thing Reply-To: drdoright@my-Deja.com On Fri, 05 Nov 1999 17:20:02 -0600, Marcy Dixon wrote: > I'm in the middle of nowhere in rural Texas. My local ISP went belly > up and I need a new one. ALL of the ISPs around here are far enough > away that I'd need to make a long-distance call to get to them. Some > ISPs have 800 numbers but they still charge me a per minute charge. Is > there an ISP or Compuserve-type service that'll get me on the internet > without paying a per minute rate? I'd almost be happy with one that > limits me to 20 hours or so per month. The only Marcy Dixon listed is in Taylor. It that's you, your definition of rural is radically different from mine. If you were in the Big Thicket in SE Texas, or in the Trans-Pecos Big Bend region, you might be rural. Total Access (http://www.totalaccess.net) has POP's in Taylor and Dime Box and Hutto. Dr. Doright ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 10:13:04 -0800 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: Is There ANY ISP That Has a Real Toll-Free POP In article , Marcy Dixon wrote: > I'm in the middle of nowhere in rural Texas. My local ISP went belly > up and I need a new one. ALL of the ISPs around here are far enough > away that I'd need to make a long-distance call to get to them. Some > ISPs have 800 numbers but they still charge me a per minute charge. Is > there an ISP or Compuserve-type service that'll get me on the internet > without paying a per minute rate? I'd almost be happy with one that > limits me to 20 hours or so per month. No. Someone has to pay the costs of an 800 number, and that's going to be you, the customer, one way or another. However, since Texas still has OUTRAGEOUS in-state long-distance rates, you might consider, as bizarre as it sounds, getting an ISP with a dialup number in a neighboring state. Some years back, a friend of mine who was at Texas A&M was advised to use a dialup number in Lafayette, Louisiana, instead of the much closer number in Houston, because the per-minute rate was about 1/3. Of course, the other advice about checking with the various calling plans that your local telco offers and checking with the ISPs in your area to see if one might have a number that is somehow local to you, still applies. ------------------------------ From: Peter Subject: Re: NPA-NXX Listings Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 15:39:33 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:36:25 -0700, Linc Madison wrote: > A better option is to get "NPA for Windows" (if you have MS-Windows or > a Windows emulator on your machine). It's $35 shareware. NPA for Windows is a nice program however its database has numerous errors ... many of which have been in there for years ... and the program's publisher seems to have little interest in correcting those errors. Peter ------------------------------ From: Marvin A Sirbu Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1999 16:05:53 -0500 Organization: Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA > (Side note: can anyone point me to the legislation that Congress > passed to give the FCC this taxing authority? I'm honestly looking for > it, since I'd like to read the exact wording, and haven't been able to > find it. Presumably there's something there that I just haven't > located. Of course, if there's nothing, then that opens up a very big > can of worms.) Section 254 of the Telecom Act of 1996 deals with Universal Service. Among other things it says the following: > (d) Telecommunications Carrier Contribution: Every telecommunications > carrier that provides interstate telecommunications services shall > contribute, on an equitable and nondiscriminatory basis, to the > specific, predictable, and sufficient mechanisms established by the > Commission to > preserve and advance universal service.... The FCC suspended AT&T's proposal to raise prices by $1.50 and label it an FCC-imposed universal service fee, because this amount appeared to the FCC to be in excess of the actual amount that AT&T was obligated to pay into the universal service fund. Subsequently AT&T reduced the amount it proposed to charge to $1.38 and this new rate was not suspended by the Commission.but allowed to take effect. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 21:52:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Ruling Judge Jackson's Findings http://usvms.gpo.gov/ Judge Lowers Boom on MS http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32131,00.html Judge Jackson: 'Most harmful of all ...' http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2389567,00.html Monopoly! Judge Rules Against Microsoft http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_4031.html Judge rules Microsoft a monopoly http://cbs.marketwatch.com/archive/19991105/news/current/msft_trial.htx ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 22:01:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Judge: 'Gates Was Main Culprit' by Declan McCullagh 3:00 a.m. 6.Nov.1999 PST Bill Gates was directly involved in strong-arming companies into kowtowing to Microsoft's demands, according to US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. Jackson's 207-page condemnation of Microsoft released late Friday reads like a litany of precisely the same offenses the company's enemies have spent years complaining about -- and spent much of the trial accusing the world's richest antitrust defendant of masterminding. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32377,00.html ------------------------------ From: cardz@home.com Subject: We BUY Used DSS/DTV Components!! Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 09:41:07 GMT Organization: @Home Network Canada We will BUY your used DSS access cards for CASH! We are currently in need of two types of access cards. We pay $50 for the older cards, and $25 for the newer ones! We will buy in quantity if you can supply. Have any sitting around? Email us at: cardz@home.com (we do not monitor this newsgroup regularily). **Please view our website to determine which types of cards you have, and let us know in your email correspondence. http://www.angelfire.com/mb/cardz/ giojvk ------------------------------ From: Spam Trap Subject: Re: An Anonymous Example Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 17:22:58 -0700 Organization: Mindspring Reply-To: Joseph S. Sperrazza On Tue, 02 Nov 1999 02:59:35 -0600, radparker@radparker.com (Al Iverson) wrote: > In article , anonymous@cotse.com > wrote: >> This is what it will look like. It will always be from the above >> address, with a subject line, and then the disclaimer message >> which is shown below. [snip] > You'll find that this is a pretty weak disclaimer in the eyes of the > feds, the first time somebody uses your tool to post a kiddy porn ad. [snip] From http://www.cotse.com/privacy.htm We will only provide logs to Law Enforcement Agencies if forced to with a subpoena. No information will be given unless we are served with a valid subpoena*. We only recognize the authority of the Court in The United States of America. *Disclaimer to above: Although we strive hard to protect an individual's privacy, we do not tolerate abuse. Using our services to stalk, harass, or threaten other individuals constitutes abuse. We will cooperate with the authorities in the cases of abuse. Please note that authorities means US Law enforcement only and cooperation means aid in tracking the abuser, not turning over all our logs. A valid subpoena is still required for our logs. NOTES: If you wish to have your domain blocked from receiving e-mail from the COTSE anonymous e-mail please contact webmaster@cotse.com and we will block the anonymous mail from being able to send to your domain. Reply by posting preferred Spammers tracked down and LARTed ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Re: ICANN Committee Proposes Nationalizing Country Codes Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Reply to Telecom Digest please) Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 11:58:56 GMT It was Sat, 06 Nov 1999 08:48:11 -0800, and Anthony Argyriou wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > THE ICANN's Government Advisory Committee recommended this, but such > an idea would require approval by the ICANN board, which meets in > public (unlike the GAC). Both the ICANN president, Mike Roberts, and > the US Commerce Department's Becky Burr spoke out against the idea. Sounds like a thought got leaked before it could be molded into what was really intended. For those that haven't followed the link, the report is about giving governments control over their own ccTLDs. Not really a totally bad idea, and very similar to the way the trademark dispute is going. Could you imagine a country having the TLD assigned to represent it being controlled by outsiders? Some ISP in some other country that wants the initals so they can use the domain personally? Possibly with some agreement to 'put the country on the Internet map' at first, but then "ownership" stays with the ISP and not the country? GAC seems to want to make sure that governments can have their domains back, treating the ccTLDs as trademarks of the countries involved. This is similar to the new Domain Name Dispute Policy, which attempts to prevent speculators and troublemakers from registering other people's trademarks for nepharious purposes. Not necessarily good (as it makes all domains BUSINESS related and could theoretically be used to steal a personal domain and give it to a company) but not altogether bad. As it applies to ccTLDs I can see it as a good thing, once it is polished into an acceptable form. Of course here in TELECOM Digest the bad witch ICANN cannot do right. I'll have to don my fireproof suit. JL ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 22:02:11 -0600 From: Greg Monti Subject: Re: Central Office Locations On 4 Nov 1999, Jason Rendel wrote: > I am looking for a site that shows where all the telephone central > office switchs are located throughout the US. I was just curious and > wanted to see what the network backbone looked like. I'm sure there are complete (and expensive) databases available that will show you everything you want. Look at http://www.telcordia.com However, if you just want to look up the location of the CO for a specific area code-prefix combination, go to http://www.mapquest.com Mapquest now has a telephone exchange search feature in the "Online Maps" area. I entered 214-363 to look for a CO in North Central Dallas. Mapquest plotted it as a star on Hillcrest Road near Del Norte Lane. I drove by. Sure enough, that's where the CO is for that prefix (and many others). Caution: There are many, MANY omissions and mistakes in whatever database Mapquest is using. For example, entering 214-362, which is in the same CO as 214-363, gives an error message. My home prefix, 972-661, does not show in the Mapquest database either. It's listed as 214-661, which was changed to 972 three years ago. Greg Monti Dallas, Texas, USA gmonti@mindspring.com http://www.mindspring.com/~gmonti ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 20:22:07 PST Subject: Re: AT&T Telemarketing Hits New Low jmeissen@aracnet.com wrote: > Time to go looking for appropriate regulatory agencies. If > anyone can pass along an appropriate name/number, either governmental > or phone company, I would appreciate. Why bother? People aren't forced to use AT&T. Sure, there are lots of people who continue to use AT&T, paying monthly fees and minimums that they don't have to as well as excessively high calling card rates. Of course, if AT&T represents that some of the charges are government-mandated when they aren't, that's fraud. But I'm happy listening to telemarketing messages to get free calls when I use my Freeway calling card, although Freeway cannot be PIC'd as a carrier. Perhaps AT&T is now offering the same option to their existing customers. That would be one way for them to remain competitive. Or perhaps they've decided they need to enhance their revenue stream. If this is the case, then such an onerous practice should result in lost customers who decide they need to look around for a better deal. If people can't find any of the many better deals aside from the plans offered by AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, something's wrong with our marketplace. But at least this should give people a reason to look. Eli Mantel ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #535 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 8 13:31:03 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id NAA24941; Mon, 8 Nov 1999 13:31:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 13:31:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911081831.NAA24941@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #536 TELECOM Digest Mon, 8 Nov 99 13:31:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 536 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #207, November 8, 1999 (Angus TeleManagement) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Alan Boritz) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Stanley Cline) Re: Bell Atlantic Lies - So What Else is New? (John R. Levine) Re: Bell Atlantic Lies - So What Else is New? (Doug Reuben) Re: Central Office Locations (Terry Kennedy) Re: Cell Phone Hazards? (Robert Berntsen) Re: ISDN Viruses (Robert Berntsen) Touchtone Phone Input, Voice Output? (Babylon5Fan) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 11:11:11 -0500 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #207, November 8, 1999 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement's Weekly Telecom Newsbulletin http://www.angustel.ca Number 207: November 8, 1999 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: AT&T Canada ...................... http://www.attcanada.com/ Bell Canada ............................ http://www.bell.ca/ Lucent Technologies .................. http://www.lucent.ca/ Sprint Canada .................. http://www.sprintcanada.ca/ Teleglobe Business Services........ http://www.teleglobe.ca/ Telus Communications.................. http://www.telus.com/ TigerTel Services ................. http://www.tigertel.com/ ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Newbridge Issues Profit Warning, Replaces President ** Losses Mount at Call-Net ** Ottawa Raises PCS Cap, Plans Spectrum Auction ** Bell Buys Into Excel Canada ** Sympatico Users Protest Software Change ** Nortel to Expand Fiber-Optics Manufacturing ** Optel IPO Raises $100 Million ** JDS Pays US$2.8 Billion for Optics Supplier ** Wireless Auction Winding Down ** CRTC Publishes Activity Calendar ** Clearnet's Mike Launches in Alberta ** CPC to Sell Video Ads on Payphones ** Court Declines to Halt Nortel Rival's Recruitment ** Bankrupt Satellite Company Gets Cash ** Shaw Completes Fundy Purchase, Cuts Staff ** John MacDonald Joins Leitch Technology ** Telus to Offer GTE Internet Portfolio ** Cogeco Wants Internet Resale Decision Reversed ** More Private Line Routes Deregulated ** Aliant Buys New England ISP ** Centigram Doubles Stake in InfoInterActive ** V-Span Buys Toronto Videoconferencing Provider ** Look Applies for BC MDS License ** PIAC Offers Long Distance Price Comparison ** Financial Reports Mitel Shaw Teleglobe ** What Caused the Call-Net Coup? ============================================================ NEWBRIDGE ISSUES PROFIT WARNING, REPLACES PRESIDENT: Newbridge Networks says its quarter ended October 31 was a "disappointment," with North American sales flat and net income half the forecast level. Alan Lutz, President and COO since May 1998, has resigned; his replacement is Pearse Flynn. LOSSES MOUNT AT CALL-NET: Third-quarter revenues of Call-Net Enterprises fell 5% from the previous quarter and 14% from last year. Residential long-distance revenue is down 32% from last year. Call-Net lost $120 Million, compared to $125 Million the previous quarter. ** Call-Net's new CFO is Michael Conway. The company has retained Nesbitt Burns to help in "examining strategic options." OTTAWA RAISES PCS CAP, PLANS SPECTRUM AUCTION: Industry Canada has raised the cap on the amount of PCS and cellular spectrum any one carrier can own from 40 MHz to 55 MHz. The department will auction 40 MHz of PCS spectrum (Blocks C and E) in the Fall of 2000, and will license more "in 2001 or when appropriate." http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/sf01936e.html BELL BUYS INTO EXCEL CANADA: Teleglobe has sold a minority interest in multi-level long distance marketer Excel Canada to Bell Canada. Bell paid US$6 Million for an undisclosed number of shares, and will receive two of the five seats on Excel Canada's Board. SYMPATICO USERS PROTEST SOFTWARE CHANGE: Over 700 customers have protested Bell Canada's decision to require them to use Redback Networks' "Access Manager" software with the Sympatico High Speed Edition Internet access service. SympaticoUsers.org (http://www.sympaticousers.org) says that Bell has moved from a proven protocol to "a non-standard, proprietary method that simply does not work with many common operating systems and applications." NORTEL TO EXPAND FIBER-OPTICS MANUFACTURING: Nortel Networks plans to spend $400 Million in 2000 to triple its optical networking manufacturing capacity. Nortel will add 5,000 employees, 2,300 of them in new Ottawa and Montreal facilities. OPTEL IPO RAISES $100 MILLION: OCI Communications, the parent of Optel, has raised $100 Million through an Initial Public Offering. OCI's share price jumped 24% in the first day of trading. JDS PAYS US$2.8 BILLION FOR OPTICS SUPPLIER: JDS Uniphase is buying California-based Optical Coating Laboratory, which makes films and filters used in multiple-wavelength fiber optic transmission, for US$2.8 Billion. Optical Coating has annual revenues of about US$350 Million. WIRELESS AUCTION WINDING DOWN: Canada's broadband wireless auction is in the final stage, and may conclude this week. Last week ended with bids totaling $169.6 Million. Teligent has dropped out, leaving twelve active bidders. CRTC PUBLISHES ACTIVITY CALENDAR: The Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission has released its schedule of activities for October 1999 through June 2000. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/backgrnd/calendar/cal9910e.htm CLEARNET'S MIKE LAUNCHES IN ALBERTA: Clearnet is today launching its Mike business wireless service in Alberta. CPC TO SELL VIDEO ADS ON PAYPHONES: Canada Payphone says it will begin deploying Elcotel "Grapevine" payphones in Canada early in 2000. The phones include a video screen which will bring "the Internet and paid advertisers" to payphone users. COURT DECLINES TO HALT NORTEL RIVAL'S RECRUITMENT: The Quebec Superior Court has rejected Nortel Networks' bid for an injunction to halt recruitment of its Montreal employees by Optical Networks Inc. However, 10 staffers who moved to Optical have been ordered not to assist Optical's recruitment efforts or to reveal Nortel trade secrets. (See Telecom Update #206) BANKRUPT SATELLITE COMPANY GETS CASH: ICO Global Communications, the Low Earth Orbit satellite company which sought bankruptcy protection recently, says it will receive up to US$1.2 Billion from a group of investors headed by Craig McCaw, Chairman of another LEO company, Teledesic. SHAW COMPLETES FUNDY PURCHASE, CUTS STAFF: Shaw Communications has completed its acquisition of Maritimes cableco Fundy Communications and has laid off 60 employees -- a quarter of Fundy's staff. (See Telecom Update #181) JOHN MACDONALD JOINS LEITCH TECHNOLOGY: John MacDonald, who resigned in May as President of Bell Canada, has been named CEO and President of Toronto-based Leitch Technology, which makes equipment for multimedia transmission. TELUS TO OFFER GTE INTERNET PORTFOLIO: Telus says it will begin offering GTE's Net.Alliance Internet services, including VPN, Managed Connectivity, and Voice over IP, in the first quarter of 2000. ** Telus's Ontario operation will be officially launched on Tuesday, November 9, in Toronto. COGECO WANTS INTERNET RESALE DECISION REVERSED: Cogeco Cable has asked the CRTC to rescind the portion of Decision 99-11 which mandates resale of cablecos' high-speed Internet service (see Telecom Update #200, 204). Alternatively, Cogeco requests that the order be stayed until various questions are clarified. http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/eng/proc_rep/telecom/1999/8662/c6-01.htm MORE PRIVATE LINE ROUTES DEREGULATED: In Order 99-1041, the CRTC deregulates additional High Capacity and Digital Data Service interexchange private line services offered by the ex-Stentor telcos. (See Telecom Update #183, 202) http://www.crtc.gc.ca:80/internet/1999/8045/04/o99-1041.htm ALIANT BUYS NEW ENGLAND ISP: Aliant has expanded its Internet business into New England by buying AcadiaNet, a Maine-based Internet provider with 6,000 customers. CENTIGRAM DOUBLES STAKE IN INFOINTERACTIVE: San Jose-based Centigram Communications has increased its stake in InfoInterActive, which makes Internet call management products, from 6% to 12%. V-SPAN BUYS TORONTO VIDEOCONFERENCING PROVIDER: V-Span (Anaheim, California) has bought Vector Videoconferencing, a Toronto-based provider of multimedia services, and changed its name to V-Span Canada Ltd. LOOK APPLIES FOR BC MDS LICENSE: Look Communications, which operates wireless cable (MDS) systems in Ontario and Quebec, has applied for an MDS license in British Columbia. (CRTC Broadcasting Public Notice 99-142) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/bcasting/notice/1999/p99142_0.txt PIAC OFFERS LONG DISTANCE PRICE COMPARISON: The Public Interest Advocacy Centre has posted a Utility Shopping Page which contains a price comparison of major long distance providers. http://www.piac.ca/utilitys.htm FINANCIAL REPORTS: ** Mitel Corp. reports revenue of $349 Million for the quarter ended September 24, up $1 Million from last year. Adjusted net income rose 7.8% to $27.7 Million. ** Shaw Communications revenue in the quarter ended August 31 reached $190 Million, up 14% from last year. Net income of $18.0 Million compared with a $752,000 loss last year. On September 30 Shaw had 147,000 high-speed Internet customers. ** Teleglobe's third-quarter revenue was $710 Million, down 15% from last year. Profits fell to $3.4 Million from $66 Million. (All amounts in U.S. dollars.) WHAT CAUSED THE CALL-NET COUP? In Telemanagement #170, available this week, Ian Angus analyzes Crescendo's coup at Call-Net and examines the market conditions and missteps by management that led to this overturn. Also in the November- December issue of Telemanagement: ** Understanding and controlling latency in IP telephony; ** Statscan develops a new snapshot of Canadian telecom; ** Globalstar's launch: a second chance for Low Earth Orbit satellite phones. Until November 30, new subscribers to Telemanagement receive "Tips, Tricks and Traps," a collection of 22 reports from Telemanagement. To subscribe to Telemanagement (and receive Tips, Tricks and Traps) call 1-800-263-4415, ext 225 or visit http://www.angustel.ca/teleman/tm.html. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to majordomo@angustel.ca. The text of the message should contain only the two words: subscribe update To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to majordomo@angustel.ca. The text of the message should say only: unsubscribe update [Your e-mail address] =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER: All contents copyright 1999 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 225. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ============================================================ ------------------------------ From: aboritz@cybernex.net (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 23:25:40 -0500 Organization: Dyslexics UNTIE In article , Mickey Ferguson wrote: > Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote in message 12@telecom-digest.org>: >> I don't understand why people in rural areas should get subsidized >> phone (and mail) service, when people in large cities pay more for >> almost every thing else. You don't see people in the small cities >> subsidizing parking in New York (easily $20.00 for a couple of hours), >> so why should people in NY subsidize phone service elsewhere? (For >> that matter, folks in NYC don't even get unmetered local service....) >> It seems to me that most things cost more in cities, but that those >> things that cost less should remain that way. > Dr. Hoffman, I respectfully disagree with your statement that most > things cost more in cities. There are lots of things that cost *less* > in large cities than in rural areas. Ever notice the price of > gasoline? This is another item that is necessary to our typical way > of life, yet it's frequently anywhere from 10 to 50 cents or more per > gallon in some of the rural areas. In Temecula, CA, we pay on the > average about 15 cents more per gallon than in Los Angeles, about an > hour and a half away. And we can hardly be considered rural, with > well over 100,000 people (I heard it might be as many as 240,000!) > living within the Temecula Valley area. I've been to Temecula, and it very definitely is rural in the literal sense. But it's not typical of rural areas in California, since you're right next to several urban population centers. On the other hand, I'm about 20 miles from the largest city in the US, with gasoline prices among the cheapest in this part of the state (New Jersey). I'm about as close to New York as you are to San Diego, yet your prices are higher while mine are lower. Travel only 10 miles north into Orange County in New York (the border is less than a mile away), and the gasoline prices jump no less than 50 cents a gallon. Travel northwest along famous Route 17 and the prices will not go down until you reach Buffalo. > Of course gasoline is just one item. Many of the everyday purchases > such as food and clothing are more expensive in rural areas, where > there is much less competition and few "bulk quantity" types of > stores. Upstate New York is an untypical example, however it's also puzzling. Orange County and the rest of New York north of here are not high income areas, yet there aren't a lot of unsatisfied residents traveling south for better prices. ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 00:15:40 -0500 Organization: by area code and prefix (NPA-NXX) Reply-To: sc1@roamer1.org On Sat, 06 Nov 1999 22:52:41 -0800, William Van Hefner wrote: > afford. Would you rather be charged more to make a long distance call > to Podunk, NY, than to Manhattan? Would you rather pay a higher rate > for incoming calls to your 800 number from those areas? Guess what -- there is a carrier doing [more or less] exactly this now! It's one of the plans offered by the Cognigen MLM/agent outfit: http://www.cognigen.net/iphone/?rcomm (I have no connection with Cognigen or any of its agents) This plan's rates are based on the access charges charged by LECs at each end of a call. Therefore, with this plan, calls to areas served by independent LECs, who generally demand more in access charges than RBOCs, GTE, and Sprint/United/Centel, cost more. For instance, the rate lookup page for this plan gave me all sorts of different rates for calls placed to/from my BellSouth line in metro Atlanta: * 3.9c/min to call most wireless phones anywhere in the US (why???) * 4.9c/min to call an urban customer of most RBOCs and some Sprint and GTE areas (e.g., Montgomery, AL) * 5.9c/min to call a rural customer of most RBOCs and some Sprint and GTE areas (e.g., Fort Payne, AL) * 6.9c/min to call a customer of CenturyTel in Ooltewah, TN (just outside Chattanooga) * 8.9c/min to call a customer of GT Com in Mexico Beach, FL (east of Panama City) * 11.9c/min to call a customer of Brindlee Mountain Telephone Co. in Arab, AL (south of Huntsville) * 14.9c/min to call a customer of Art Brothers' Beehive Telephone in Utah and Nevada * 16.9c/min to call a customer of ALLTEL (formerly Standard Telephone) just up the road from here in Dawsonville, GA (remember, intrastate access charges tend to be higher than interstate access charges) I also priced some calls from equal-access independent LEC areas to customers of other independents; I saw rates as high as ~30c/min! I'll stay on my WorldCom, AT&T, Sprint, etc. plans, thank you very much :) > locations. Should we similarly charge people who live in "ethnic" > communities more to have dialtone than in upscale white neighborhoods? > Perhaps price it beyond their ability to use the service? The "prepaid local service" outfits are already doing this, IMO. Seeing the writing on the wall, some states are requiring ILECs to offer toll-restricted regular service at regular rates and installment payment plans (for past-due balances) to credit-challenged customers. > People who live "out in the boonies", and beyond the reach of a nearby > telephone pole, are already asked to pay additional fees to their > local telco for installation. These charges can run into the thousands Some rural customers actually maintain their own lines part of the way! (for instance, Nevada Bell's "farmer lines") > Subsidies do not simply benefit people in rural areas. They benefit > everyone who makes calls to those areas, who travels to those areas, > or who makes calls that pass through those areas. Similarly, it > prevents service providers from "redlining" certain communities based > on potential profitability. I agree completely. Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ ------------------------------ Date: 8 Nov 1999 03:26:54 -0500 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Bell Atlantic Lies - So What Else is New? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > My wife was setting up a phone for her mother (age 92, blind, in a > nursing home, but that's not really relevant except that it's in BA > territory) and found this in the front section of the BA book for the > "Residence Service Reps" *toll-free* (used to be business office) > 890-7100. (my * for emphasis). ... > Spoke to T'burg Tel, who took a few days to investigate, but came back > with a story to the effect that the number is toll-free ONLY FROM A BA > LINE. There is nothing in the BA book to this effect. > Now, I can't complain very hard, since T'burg Tel is giving us a > credit for these calls even though they don't seem to think they need > to, but somehow BA is cutting it close to giving false information if > this is the case. Well, gee, BA publishes the phone book with the yellow cover for its customers, T'burg publishes the one with the blue cover for its customers. I don't think that either promises dialing instructions for the other's customers. That said, 890 numbers are a fairly broken hack. The problem is that the LATA lines around here don't match area codes at all. The 607-890 prefix is assigned to Binghamton, and from T'burg or Ovid to Binghamton is an inter-LATA call, even though it's the same area code, so when you call it from a T'burg Tel number, it's routed to your long distance carrier who will charge you for it. BA has special programming in their switches to treat it as a special case. but T'burg doesn't since it's not their number. But I believe that BA's 890 numbers in each area code in upstate NY are equivalent. Next time try 315 890 7100. That's the same LATA as T'burg, so it'll get sent to BA (assuming they're your intra-LATA carrier) who should flag it as free. Moral: special numbers should look special. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Doug Reuben Subject: Re: Bell Atlantic Lies - So What Else is New? Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 06:16:41 -0800 Organization: Interpage Network Svcs / +1 617 696 8000 Reply-To: Recently, Julian Thomas wrote in message ... > We live in Trumansburg Home Tel territory of [a] > small but forward looking independent) -- needless to say we are > surrounded by Bell Atl, and they are the default intra-LATA carrier. [Call made to a 890-xxxx number which the Bell Atlantic book claims is free] > Several calls later, everything was set up. Then the AT&T bill > section for that period shows up with a number of calls to 607 890 > 7100 -Binghamton - outside the LATA, so handled by AT&T. Called AT&T > and complained about being billed for a tollfree call. They agreed > that it should not have happened. ALso called BA who said likewise. > AT&T said that T'burg Tel was the culprit -- they print the AT&T bill > section as part of their total bill. > Spoke to T'burg Tel, who took a few days to investigate, but came back > with a story to the effect that the number is toll-free ONLY FROM A BA > LINE. There is nothing in the BA book to this effect. Bell Atlantic assumes that if you have their book you are their customer, ie, your line is serviced by them! :) I've had this problem in NY State as well, and previously in the NY Tel (Bell Atlantic) section of Connecticut (Greenwich/Byram) not served by SNET. There are a number of local telcos in central/upstate NY not served by NY Tel, one of the larger ones in Taconic Telephone (now part of Rochester Tel I believe). They offer service in many of the NY Tel strongholds, such as outside Poughkeepsie (if you stop at the I-84 rest stop heading east just up the hill from the Taconic State Parkway -- the only rest stop in NY on I-84 east of the Hudson, you will see that all the payphones are serviced by them.) If you try to dial repair, ie, 890-1611/6611 or any of the other 890 numbers which NY Tel uses to route calls to the appropriate business office or service center, an invalid number recording comes on. Note that these are NOT COCOTs or private pay telephones; these are real, Northern Telecom thick, heavy, plastic payphones which a lot of the independents use (ie, they'd rather not buy from GTE :) ) and are the same as Bell Canada's older payphones. The Taconic/Roch. Tel. payphones DO indicate customer service numbers, mainly toll-free ones, for Taconic customers to call with service problems, but if you are served by NY Tel and the Taconic payphone is the closest one to you, you may be out of luck if you try to dial the 890-1611 or -6611 or any other 890 number. (Note: Some Taconic/Roch Tel payphones have been adopting COCOT-ish payphones lately, I saw one on NY-55 recently east of Lagrangeville. However, the ones described above where straightforward Northern Telecom brown/black payphones with no "intelligence" -- they just tone out whatever you type in directly to the line so it was Taconic/Roch Tel's switching which blocks the 890 numbers.) NYTel's payphones in CT have similar problems -- before NY Tel started using 890-1611/6611 in downstate NY for repair you would just dial 611 and that got to repair. (In CT it *used* to be 1-611 from SNET territory but that's no longer true; if you dialed 1-611 from a NY Tel payphone in CT it just got a recording saying "Please do not dial 1".) When NY Tel changed to the 890 system downstate, CT customers in Greenwich/Byram (at least where I tried it from) were NOT able to get repair from NY Tel, and had to call directory assistance to get the *direct* number on Long Island (a long distance or toll call depending on your carrier and when you made the call) to get repair service. The problem was eventually fixed (as well as other CT routing issues like NY Tel handling calling card calls from Greenwich/Byram to anywhere in CT AND NY Metro, probably one of the only cases where NY Tel handled traditionally IXC calls via it's own calling card system), but it was just another contentious issue with people in the area, many of whom would prefer to get rid of NYTel and have SNET come in and service the entire state (except for CT's only private telco, Woodbury Telephone a bit east of Danbury along US-6. Now THEY are a routing problem from payphones, but that's another story :) ). The alleged benefit of all this is that when you are traveling or away from your home market you do not need to call the local operator and have her get you repair in your home area (assuming they will even do this anymore), and can instead just dial (A/C) 890-6611 and get through that way. Of course they can do what SNET does and offer a repair (611) or general (811) number in CT (except for the NY Tel and Woodbury Telco areas), and an (800) 453-SNET number for out-of-state calls, but that's a bit too forward thinking for NY Tel! :) Regards, Doug Reuben Dsr1@interpage.net Interpage Network Services Inc. www.interpage.net +1 (617) 696-8000 ------------------------------ From: Terry Kennedy Subject: Re: Central Office Locations Organization: St. Peter's College, US Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 09:33:03 GMT Greg Monti writes: > Caution: There are many, MANY omissions and mistakes in whatever > database Mapquest is using. For example, entering 214-362, which is > in the same CO as 214-363, gives an error message. My home prefix, > 972-661, does not show in the Mapquest database either. It's listed > as 214-661, which was changed to 972 three years ago. It looks like they're using an old copy of the LERG (or at least data derived from an old LERG). Note that the LERG itself is inaccurate - for cellular and CLEC prefixes, it shows the ILEC tandem that they home to and not the actual switch site. A particularly spectacular Mapquest error is 212-376, an MFS switch which interconnects with Bell Atlantic/NY at W. 57th Street. But Map- quest puts it in Bryant Park, while the actual switch is at 101 Hudson Street in Jersey City, NJ. Terry Kennedy http://www.tmk.com terry@tmk.com Jersey City, NJ USA ------------------------------ From: Robert Berntsen Subject: Re: Cell Phone Hazards? Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 13:28:58 +0100 Fred Baube wrote in message ... > Call me loony, but here's a solution I came up with a year ago. > An irritating thing about the latest generation of phones is that they > are so compact that when you speak into them, with the speaker next to > your ear, the microphone is as close to your ear as it is to your mouth. > Clearly something is amiss designwise, when you speak and your voice > misses the mike by a mile; could this explain the awful sound quality > the listener receives? > So I suggest, kill two birds with one stone. Make a phone shell where > there is a thumb slide that pops out a mike from the bottom of the > phone, on a stalk. When it snaps into the dropped-down position, it's > right next to the mouth of the average user. And next to this mike is > the antenna; it's not one centimeter from your brain (as is the case > for current phones), it's at least six centimeters from your brain. > Can I patent this ? Philips has already made a cellphone with the "thumb". It is mechanically weak. And your theory that the mic has to be in front of the mouth is not true. Regards, R. ------------------------------ From: Robert Berntsen Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 13:47:35 +0100 John S. Maddaus wrote in message: > Thought you and your readers might be interested in this. > "ISDN Viruses are quite possibly the worst thing to happen to computing > since the creation of the Cellular Trojan Horse. Basically, these > viruses travel over the wires using the X.224 transport protocol, Just one question: Is this nonsense produced by someone competing with ISDN (Cable modem producer or DSL equipment producer)? Regards, R. ------------------------------ From: Babylon5Fan Subject: Touchtone Phone Input, Voice Output? Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 14:06:00 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I'm trying to track down a system that accomplishes the following: 1) A user calls a special phone number; 2) The computer answers the phone and presents a voice menu; 3) The user keys the phone's touchtone to respond to the menu; (the results of which are a request for specific database info.) 4) The system queries a database (preferably Oracle) and 5) The results of the query are available to the user immediately by voice (or possibly by fax?) I know systems like this are out there. Anybody know of any? ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #536 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 8 14:00:22 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA26321; Mon, 8 Nov 1999 14:00:22 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 14:00:22 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911081900.OAA26321@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #537 TELECOM Digest Mon, 8 Nov 99 14:00:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 537 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Radio Address Paper by President on Telemarketing Fraud (Monty Solomon) Radio Address by the President on Telemarketing Fraud (Monty Solomon) Memorandum for the Attorney General on Telemarketing Fraud (Monty Solomon) Data & Computer Communications, Sixth Edition (William Stallings) Re: Bell Atlantic Flexpath T-1 Install Problems (Tom Haley) Nokia: First 3G Phones May Not Be Global (Monty Solomon) New Improved Siemens Gigaset 2420 (Gary Boudreaux) Re: Touchtone Phone Input, Voice Output? (James Gifford) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 12:04:57 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Radio Address Paper by President on Telemarketing Fraud http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1999/11/8/2.text.1 THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release November 5, 1999 PRESIDENT CLINTON ANNOUNCES NATIONWIDE INITIATIVE TO PREVENT TELEMARKETING FRAUD Today the President will announce a new public-private partnership, called the "kNOw Fraud" initiative, to arm consumers with information so they can protect themselves from telemarketing fraud. It is estimated that illegal telemarketing operations bilk the American people of $40 billion every year. This initiative has three main parts. First, the President will announce that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will mail to every home in America -- approximately 120 million addresses -- an easy-to-read information card that lists key fraud prevention tips for consumers. The President also will launch a new toll-free number that consumers can call for assistance when they believe they have been the victims of telemarketing or mail fraud. The toll-free number will be staffed by representatives of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Approximately 1.5 million calls are expected. The President will unveil a series of public service television ads that tell consumers about the upcoming mailing. Along with USPS, the other participants in the public-private initiative are the AARP, the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FTC, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Finally, the President will direct Justice to send him a plan to crack down on consumer fraud by strengthening enforcement, prevention, and coordination. "kNOw Fraud" The President will announce an unprecedented nationwide multi-media initiative to combat telemarketing and mail fraud which includes a mailing to every home in America, a new tollfree number, 16,000 fraud prevention videos, and website: - Checklist of Key Fraud Prevention Tips. The President will announce that an oversized postcard will be mailed to every home in America during the week of November 15 listing key fraud prevention tips. The information will help consumers differentiate between legitimate telemarketers and scam artists. - Toll-free Number to Assist Victims of Fraud. A recent Postal Inspection Service survey shows that 25 percent of respondents would not know where to go if they had been the victim of fraud. In order to address this problem, the President will announce that a new toll-free number, provided with the assistance of AT&T, will be available beginning the week of November 15 to assist people who believe that they have been the victims of fraud. Callers will reach either the FTC's Consumer Response Center or a Postal Inspection Service Operations Support Office. All callers will hear a greeting from actor Andy Griffith and an automated fraud prevention message. Approximately 1.5 million callers are expected to call this new number. - Public Service Announcements (PSAs). The President will announce PSAs that will begin airing to alert consumers about the upcoming "kNOw Fraud" mailing. - Fraud Prevention Website. The President also will announce that a new "kNOw fraud" webpage is available to consumers at www.consumer.gov. This webpage provides fraud prevention tips such as warning consumers if an unknown caller says there is a prize but money must be sent in order to receive it; requests the wiring of money; or identifies himself as a law enforcement official who will help for a fee. This website also will allow consumers to file a complaint online with the FTC. - Fraud Prevention Video. A new fraud prevention video, narrated by actor Louis Gossett Jr., which is part of the BBB's Consumer Education Video Series, will be distributed to 16,000 libraries during the week of November 15, to educate consumers about ways to prevent being victimized by illegal telemarketing and mail fraud. Directive to the DOJ to Prevent Fraud The President also will announce a new directive to the DOJ to report back within six months with a plan (1) to prevent and enforce consumer fraud activities and (2) improve coordination among the federal government's consumer protection activities. In creating this plan, the President directed DOJ to cooperate and consult with all interested parties, including other federal agencies and offices -- including the FTC and SEC -- state and local law enforcement and consumer agencies, and consumers. This plan also should make efforts to build on efforts of the private sector, including non-profits, to protect consumers. Consumer Protection in the Administration's Proposed Crime Bill The President also highlighted new consumer safety measures which are included in his proposed crime legislation. Falling violent and property crime rates mean our nation's seniors are safer, but senior citizens remain threatened by telemarketing scams, retirement rip-offs, and abuse and neglect by caretakers. To help protect seniors from these crimes and punish the criminals who prey on elderly Americans, the President's bill would: - Shut down fraudulent telemarketers by granting the Attorney General new authority to block and terminate telephone service to illegal telemarketers; - Protect nursing home residents from abuse and neglect by giving federal prosecutors new tools to halt and punish nursing home operators who repeatedly abuse and neglect the residents in their care; - Fight health care fraud and abuse by making it easier for the Justice Department to prosecute and punish illegal kickback schemes -- and harder for criminals to stick Medicare with the bills by declaring bankruptcy; and - Safeguard retirement and pension plans by making it a federal crime to defraud employee pension benefit or retirement funds and increasing penalties for retirement plan managers who take bribes. ### ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 12:04:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Radio Address by the President on Telemarketing Fraud http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1999/11/8/1.text.1 THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release November 6, 1999 RADIO ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT TO THE NATION THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Today I want to talk to you about new steps we're taking to make America safer for consumers, particularly for older Americans. For seven years now we've worked hard to build safer streets and stronger communities, and our strategy is working. We have the lowest crime rate in 30 years. Our nation is safer. But no one really believes America is as safe as it can be. We have to fight all kinds of crime at every level. To many of our most vulnerable citizens, especially our seniors, the greatest threat may not come from a criminal on the street, but from a scam artist on the phone. Every year, illegal telemarketers bilk the American people of an estimated $40 billion; and more than half the victims are over 50 years of age. Telemarketing thieves are stealing more than money -- they're stealing people's hopes and dreams and their security. In far too many cases, victims have been robbed of savings they've spent a whole lifetime building up. Some have even lost their homes as a result. Over the years, I've taken a number of steps to crack down on telemarketing fraud. I signed into law the toughest criminal penalties for telemarketing crimes in history. Our enforcement efforts have resulted in more than 300 convictions nationwide. But we have to do more. Today, I am announcing important new tools to help government organizations and consumers take action. And I'm directing the Attorney General to send me a plan to crack down on consumer fraud. Specifically, I'm calling on the Justice Department to strengthen prevention and enforcement and improve coordination among the federal government, state and local law enforcement officials and our consumer groups. Citizens also need new tools to take on telemarketing fraud and to find out where to go for help. According to a recent study, one out of four Americans said they wouldn't know where to turn if they were victimized by a telemarketing scam. This is an even greater concern as we enter the holiday season and the chance of becoming a victim of fraud rises. That's why today we're launching a new nationwide campaign to help consumers fight telemarketing rip-offs. It's called Project No Fraud, and it's led by the U.S. Postal Service, the American Association of Retired Persons, the Council of Better Business Bureaus, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Association of Attorneys General and the Securities and Exchange Commission. This campaign will give consumers new resources to slam the phone on telemarketing scams. Beginning November 15th, every household in America will receive an easy to read postcard with common sense tips and practical guidelines to prevent telemarketing fraud. This is the largest consumer protection mailing in our history. It will provide information you can keep by the phone to help you distinguish between fraudulent and legitimate telemarketers. The bottom line is this: you must familiarize yourself with the telltale signs of fraud, and don't give out important personal financial information to an unknown caller. We're also establishing a new toll free number that will soon be up and running to help people who believe they've been the victims of telemarketing fraud. It will provide links to law enforcement officials who will be able to share information and track down patterns of fraud. As many as 1.5 million callers are expected to utilize this new service every year. We've also created a new website for consumers to receive fraud prevention information, and even file a complaint on line. It can be found at www.consumer.gov. With our actions today we're sending a clear message to fraudulent telemarketers: we've got your number and we won't let you off the hook. As we close out the budget season in Washington, I urge Congress to send the same message, to reject arbitrary, across-the-board cuts that will undermine our law enforcement efforts and instead send me a budget that will protect our families and our communities and advance our values. Let's all answer the call of the American people, put partisanship aside and finish the work we've been sent here to do. Thanks for listening. # # # ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 12:05:25 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Memorandum for the Attorney General on Telemarketing Fraud http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1999/11/8/3.text.1 THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary (Chicago, Illinois) ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release November 6, 1999 November 6, 1999 MEMORANDUM FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL SUBJECT: Protecting Consumers from Fraud My Administration has taken unprecedented steps to safeguard consumers through vigorous law enforcement and prevention, but we must continue to do more. For example, we have announced new initiatives on Internet fraud and identity theft that call on law enforcement to step up their efforts on behalf of consumers. In addition, as part of my 21st Century Crime bill, I announced several new measures that will help protect elderly Americans from fraudulent activities. My crime bill will give the Department of Justice new authority to block and terminate telephone service to illegal telemarketers. In addition, it will give Federal prosecutors new tools to protect nursing home residents from abuse and neglect; to fight health care fraud; and to safeguard retirement and pension plans. Consumers are often unaware of where to receive assistance. A recent Postal Inspection Service survey found that 12 percent of respondents admitted to being a victim of fraud, but that 25 percent of all respondents did not know where to go for help if they were the victim of telemarketing or mail fraud. Today I announced the "kNOw Fraud" project, which is a public-private partnership of the United States Postal Service, the American Association of Retired Persons, the Council of Better Business Bureaus, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the National Association of Attorneys General, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Even though violent crime rates are at record lows, illegal telemarketing fraud costs Americans an estimated $40 billion every year. Project "kNOw Fraud" will help arm consumers with needed information so that they can protect themselves from telemarketing fraud. This initiative shows how Government can serve the public when working in close coordination to vigorously enforce consumer protection laws and keep the public informed about new scams and how to avoid them. Federal agencies such as the FTC and the SEC also have initiated important consumer protection initiatives in order to thwart fraudulent activities. The FTC's Consumer Response Center takes consumer complaints and inputs them into a centralized database, the Consumer Sentinel, which is available for use by Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies across the country and in Canada. Since its launch, Consumer Sentinel counts some 214 partner organizations that have contributed an estimated 200,000 complaints to the database, allowing law enforcement officials to ascertain whether a complaint is an isolated incident or part of a wider pattern of activity. Last year, the SEC's Office of Investor Education and Assistance handled more than 60,000 consumer complaints and inquiries, many of which dealt with telemarketing or online fraud. In addition, the SEC's website warns the public about fast-breaking scams and tells consumers how to investigate investment opportunities. Recognizing the need for closer coordination, earlier this year you directed the Council on White Collar Crime to coordinate and bolster the consumer protection activities of the Department of Justice, the FTC, the SEC, the Postal Inspection Service, and others. To further these efforts, I direct you to report back to me within 6 months with a plan (1) to better prevent consumer fraud activities and (2) improve coordination among the Federal Government's consumer protection activities to ensure that each agency's expertise is considered. In creating this plan, you should consult with all interested parties, including other Federal agencies and offices, including the FTC and SEC; State and local law enforce-ment; and consumer agencies and consumers. This plan also should build on efforts of the private sector, including nonprofits, to protect consumers. These steps, taken together, will help to protect consumers from fraud and also help to save consumers millions of dollars in the next millennium. WILLIAM J. CLINTON # # # ------------------------------ From: ws@shore.net (William Stallings) Subject: Data & Computer Communications, Sixth Edition Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 12:12:37 -0500 Organization: Shore.Net/Eco Software, Inc; (info@shore.net) This is to announce the publication of Data and Computer Communications, Sixth Edition. The book is intended to be both a professional reference and a textbook. A brief table of contents is attached. A more detailed table of contents and discount ordering information is available at the web site listed below. Data and Computer Communications, Sixth Edition (Prentice-Hall, 2000, ISBN 0-13-084370-9) TABLE OF CONTENTS Data and Computer Communications, Sixth Edition TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE WEB SITE FOR DATA AND COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS PART ONE OVERVIEW Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Protocols and Architecture PART TWO DATA COMMUNICATIONS Chapter 3 Data Transmission Chapter 4 Transmission Media Chapter 5 Data Encoding Chapter 6 The Data Communication Interface Chapter 7 Data Link Control Chapter 8 Multiplexing PART THREE WIDE AREA NETWORKS Chapter 9 Circuit Switching Chapter 10 Packet Switching Chapter 11 ATM and Frame Relay Chapter 12 Congestion Control in Data Networks PART FOUR LOCAL AREA NETWORKS Chapter 13 LAN Technology Chapter 14 LAN Systems PART FIVE COMMUNICATIONS ARCHITECTURE AND PROTOCOLS Chapter 15 Internetwork Protocols Chapter 16 Internetwork Operation Chapter 17 Transport Protocols Chapter 18 Network Security Chapter 19 Distributed Applications Appendix A ISDN and Broadband ISDN Appendix B RFCs Cited in This Book Appendix C Projects for Teaching Data and Computer Communications Glossary References | | Descriptions, errata sheets and discount order info | | Bill Stallings | for my current books and info on forthcoming books | | ws@shore.net | at www.shore.net/~ws. Visit CS Student | | | Support site: www.shore.net/~ws/StudentSupport.html | ------------------------------ From: Tom Haley Subject: Re: Bell Atlantic Flexpath T-1 Install Problems Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 12:53:22 -0500 Organization: Channel 1 Communications Try AT&T (formerly TCG-Teleport) or Frontier Communications. Bob Baxter wrote in message ... > If there are other > providers of voice T-1 service in New York that are looking for new > clients, I'm open to your pitches. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 12:10:38 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Nokia: First 3G Phones May Not Be Global HELSINKI (Reuters) - The first wireless terminals using third generation mobile phone technology may not be global although the standard is being developed for use worldwide, the world's biggest mobile phone maker Nokia said Monday. http://news.lycos.com/stories/Technology/19991108RTTECH-MOBILES-NOKIA.asp ------------------------------ From: boudreaux@hathawayprocess.com (Gary Boudreaux) Subject: New Improved Siemens Gigaset 2420 Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 14:29:51 GMT Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America Is the new version of the 2420 (with ability to "barge in" on an existing call from a remote handset) available yet? If so, is there a way to distinguish this new version by looking at the box? ------------------------------ From: James Gifford Reply-To: gifford@nitrosyncretic.com Organization: Nitrosyncretic Press Subject: Re: Touchtone Phone Input, Voice Output? Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 10:38:20 -0800 Babylon5Fan wrote: > I'm trying to track down a system that accomplishes the following: > 1) A user calls a special phone number; > 2) The computer answers the phone and presents a voice menu; > 3) The user keys the phone's touchtone to respond to the menu; > (the results of which are a request for specific database info.) > 4) The system queries a database (preferably Oracle) and > 5) The results of the query are available to the user immediately by > voice (or possibly by fax?) > I know systems like this are out there. Anybody know of any? What you're describing is a straight-up IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system with database lookup. You're not likely to find an off-the-shelf system that will do this, but there are lots of development tools and "building block" environments that can be used to put one together. Typically, you need a Dialogic or other speech/line interface card in a PC, running this software. I'd suggest you start with Artisoft's Visual Voice. There are others -- a net search should turn them up for you. | James Gifford - Nitrosyncretic Press - gifford@nitrosyncretic.com | | See http://www.nitrosyncretic.com for the Robert Heinlein FAQ | | and information on "Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader's Companion" | ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #537 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Nov 9 20:27:06 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id UAA28345; Tue, 9 Nov 1999 20:27:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 20:27:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911100127.UAA28345@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #538 TELECOM Digest Tue, 9 Nov 99 20:27:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 538 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Switching Computer Security (John S. Maddaus) AT&T Local Service Can't Call AT&T Wireless (Dave Miller) Re: New Improved Siemens Gigaset 2420 (Steve Winter) Re: Memorandum for the Attorney General on Telemarketing Fraud (A. Green) Re: ICANN Committee Proposes Nationalizing Country Codes (Richard Cox) Need Local Calling Areas (NPA-NXX's) For Specific NPA-NXX's (access@) Tie Trunks - Signals and Circuit Conditions (Keelan Lightfoot) Customer Service (David Esan) Relief Options For Area Code 817 (Ft. Worth, Texas) (Linc Madison) Taconic Tel in Dutchess County (Julian Thomas) C.O. Finder Software For Telco Locater (DSSTVFAN) Newspaper Reporter Needs Cellular Information (Lisa Stiffler) Re: We BUY Used DSS/DTV Components!! (John Waters) NPA-NXX Listings (Steve Riley) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net (John S. Maddaus) Subject: Re: Switching Computer Security Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 01:23:39 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net steven@primacomputer.com (Steven) wrote: > I've seen all kinds of security devices on switches; it varies from > place to place. 5ESS does keep a log, as do all the others I have > used. Most run a unix-like OS, although some of the new pseudo > switches are just NT boxes with a stack of dialogic cards. Nothing > stops people from dialing into the switch from home, in fact they are > encouraged to do it. I charge $200 and hour for work on switches, > $300 for off hours. You want to have me hanging around the site all > night waiting for something to go wrong? The 'phone masters' or > whoever in the news this week got in the same way they have been for > the last 20 years. If you want to learn more do a search in Yahoo for > HaCkEr + WhArEz. In fact remote dial-in is encouraged. I have watched as Bell Atlantic employees have remotely dialed in to a 5ESS ORM to troubleshoot and maintain. Regarding logs, there are two absolutes that a switch must perform - route/place/receive calls and generate billing records. To that extent (particularly in the mobile world) switches would cease creating audit logs under load. Also, I know of at least one major manufacturer of central office switches that for many years has had an open X.25 connection, i.e. you hit the connection you are in as root, no login, no password. On at least one occasion, I was given un-supervised access to a major LEC Central Office master console (no I'm not a hacker, it was part of my job). Though all mods affected at the master console are monitored by the NOC, the damage could have been done. And yes, secureIDs offer some protection, but a good social engineer can get around them as we have proven internally. rorymath@hotmail.com says: > I was wondering, does anyone have any papers on how switching > computers (5 ESS preferably) are secured? Do they keep any kind of > logs? I was told they usually have a kind of schedule of who should > be logged on and when. Is that true? If so what happens if someone > who shouldn't be logged on does? I mean, whats to stop people like > the 'phone masters' from firing up minicom and connecting to some > switch on their home PC? I think a guy also told me that they have a > special 'key modem' of sorts, but then how did the phone masters get > around this? jmaddaus@usa.net John S. Maddaus ------------------------------ From: Dave Miller Subject: AT&T Local Service Can't Call AT&T Wireless Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 17:19:30 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com We have two local dialtone lines provided by AT&T Local Services in Burlington, Washington State. AT&T Wireless markets cellular phones in the area with 360-961-xxxx numbers which are dialable via GTE landlines from anywhere in a two county area. Until the middle of last week, we could call the cellphones on our AT&T lines as a seven digit local call. Now we can't, in fact it requires eleven digits and long distance fees. After going several rounds today with AT&T, I'm convinced that we'll never be able to call the cell phones as local calls again. The LERG states that the 961 prefix is in Bellingham and therefore is long distance. Can someone explain the apparent "special arrangement" which AT&T Wireless has with GTE, and why AT&T Local Services would be ignorant of such arrangement? I'm afraid this is going to be a long battle. Perhaps competitive local dialtone providers don't have to match the calling area/rules the incumbent provider does? Thanks, Dave ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: New Improved Siemens Gigaset 2420 Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 23:20:56 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com boudreaux@hathawayprocess.com (Gary Boudreaux) spake thusly and wrote: > Is the new version of the 2420 (with ability to "barge in" on an > existing call from a remote handset) available yet? If so, is there a > way to distinguish this new version by looking at the box? We have the newest phones available at http://www.sellcom.com/siemens.html I would go by the features rather than the box. Does Caller ID set the clock? Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: Andrew Green Subject: Re: Memorandum for the Attorney General on Telemarketing Fraud Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 16:14:20 -0600 The President in his MEMORANDUM FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL is quoted as saying: > ...as part of my 21st Century Crime bill, I announced several > new measures... Gee, I would have called it the "21st Century _Anti_Crime Bill," but that's just me... :-) > Since its launch, Consumer Sentinel counts some 214 partner > organizations that have contributed an estimated 200,000 > complaints to the database, allowing law enforcement officials > to ascertain whether a complaint is an isolated incident or > part of a wider pattern of activity. *snort* I'm not arguing _against_ this initiative, you understand, but until I see a positive, public action taken against actually-visible Internet con artists and thieves like Sam Khuri of Benchmark Print Supply, the "J.Groves" spammer from out west, or any of a number of other repetitive, active con artists, I will find it hard to believe that this new program will have any effect on the lesser-known lowlifes who are staying much more under cover. Andrew C. Green Datalogics, Inc. 101 N. Wacker, Ste. 1800 http://www.datalogics.com Chicago, IL 60606-7301 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: ICANN Committee Proposes Nationalizing Country Codes From: richard@interNIK.net (Richard Cox) Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 05:38:33 GMT Organization: PenTeleData http://www.ptd.net > GAC seems to want to make sure that governments can have their domains > back, Hold on, slow WAY down. There is nothing "official" about internet namespace, if you want "official" try the late unlamented OSI. Countries own that namespace. BUT, the Internet is an interconnection of *private* networks; there's nothing "public" about it. Things that are public are most often controlled by governments. So, we have a bunch of computers, all privately owned and we've developed a naming system for them. It's a private system. Keep saying that to yourselves. It's a private system. It's a private system for naming interconnected private networks. The authors of RFC1519 very very carefully danced around this point and to prevent the idea that any government of the world could dicate to IANA directly, phrased things such that the manager for as cctld must be a citizen of that country. In that manner if said country wants things changed, they can exert pressure on that individual instead of telling IANA what to do (there are some really bad scenarios possible here that could break the net). The government of say, Canada doesn't own rec.travel.canada and it desn't own the tld .canada. I think .canada should be managed by a Canadian, but do not think Canada should directly in control of it. (modulo any a priori native claims :-) ------------------------------ From: access@microworld.com Subject: Need Local Calling Areas (NPA-NXX's) For Specific NPA-NXX's Organization: bCandid - Powering the world's discussions - http://bCandid.com Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 01:08:45 -0700 Hello, I need to find local calling areas for about 2000 NPA-NXX's. Would also like local city listings for each NPA-NXX that we serve. Basically want to search on all NPA-NXX's that we have Points of Presence in and get the results so that we can put the information into a searchable database. We would probably want to update this database on a Monthly basis. We are a small National ISP and we are looking to combine multiple Larger Providers to get the best coverage area. Our costs vary based on the access number and provider used (Ranging from $.50-2.50/Month/ user). We would like to prioritize our lowest cost POP's and not display POP's for the other networks that we may have coverage in. Example: Customer calling from 801-295 and wants to know which access numbers they can call. We may have ten access numbers on five different networks that are local to the 801-295 area. We would like to list only the access numbers for POP that cost us the least (Since Network 1 doesn't have coverage in 801, we fallback to Network two which doesn't have coverage in the 295 NXX, Network three does have POP's in the area, but Network four also has POP's which are less expensive by $2.00/user/month, so we would list the access number on Network 4). We plan to allow business clients and people who travel to roam through all networks and access numbers, but always using the least expensive one. This may not always be the least expensive option (If one customer used four networks, our cost could be four times the level). We believe that 10% of our customer base won't login during any month and thus our costs would be reduced by that much and so long as only 2-5% of our customer base roams, we shouldn't have any major cost problems (If we do, its time to restructure pricing). We have found a company (CCMI) that can provide this information, but we don't have the $20K Budget to purchase it. Our dial-up customer base is less than 300 so our funds are limited for this. We believe that with the right information, we should be able to find customers who aren't aware that we cover their area (ie, they fill in a form with their NPA/NXX via our web site and we tell them, rather than them looking through a list of 2000 access numbers (200+ in California) to find an access number that may be local to them). We know that local calling areas change all the time, but having a good idea based on the POP's we serve would be excellent. Basically it would: Help us target our customers better (Yes we have service in your area or no we don't). Help us reduce costs by moving customers from one network to other (ie, change thier access number). Improve service for customers who roam to different areas. (People who travel or who are new to an area may not know which POP they can dial if any from their hotel or new apartment in another state). Provide alternate access numbers to customers who may be having a POP problem. We could flag the POP's which have high busy ratios and provide new customers with a GOOD access number that may cost $2/user more but will keep a customer who would probably cancel if they get constant busy signals at thier normal local POP). We could also use this to help troubleshoot issues related to specific modem types, etc. Last year this time, we were growing at 200 accounts/month (until a recent unaticipated disaster caused by an upstream ISP). We hope to build our customer base again, so that some day we can afford to purchase this information. Its very difficult for the little guy to compete on a national level, but we are going to try :) Please respond to the group AND to my personal email as I don't frequent news groups. Thank You, Judd Dare Microworld Dotcom ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 03:33:31 -0700 Subject: Tie Trunks - Signals and Circuit Conditions From: Keelan Lightfoot I will soon be getting tie trunk cards for my SG-1As -- E&M/DX trunks and Loop signaling trunks. Where could I get a detailed description of the signals and connections used in an E&M trunk, and the difference between E&M and DX trunks? I would search the telecom-digest.org archives, but when I search for e&m, the '&' messes things up. Also, where could I get a detailed description of the signals and connections used in an loop signaling tie trunk? Is it basically an 'always off-hook' loop signaled pair (Like a normal POTS line), with two way dial pulse repeating? What addition hardware is required for each trunk type? My exchanges are about two feet apart, and I am willing to build my own hardware to replicate what would be in a central office. - Keelan Lightfoot - http://www.bzzzzzz.com/beehive/keelanl/pbx/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sometimes at http://telecom-digest.org/search it helps to single or double quote the search string. PAT] ------------------------------ From: davidesan@my-deja.com Subject: Customer Service Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 14:35:24 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I found this over in rec.humor.funny. I work in Boston, Massachusetts. A co-worker just told me this true story that happened to him this morning. He had a dispute about a phone-card bill for long distance service from his long-distance carrier, which we shall refer to by the three-letter acronym TLA to protect the guilty. Towards the end of his very long and unproductive call he was starting to get exasperated, and the following (paraphrased) exchange ensued. ("CW" = my co-worker; "TLA" = TLA's front-line customer support; "SUP" = TLA support supervisor.) CW: Look, it's 9:20, I'm late for work, and I need to get this resolved. TLA: It's not 9:20; it's only 7:30. CW: Where are you located? TLA: I'm in Colorado. CW: Well, I'm in New England, and here it's 9:20. TLA: Oh, *that's* your problem! Your phone card doesn't work overseas. CW: I'm in *New* England, I'm not overseas! TLA: Yes you are; your phone card doesn't work in England. CW: Listen, can I talk to your supervisor? [Pause, pause. The supervisor comes on the line.] SUP: Hey, are you calling from Great Britain? *Sigh*. And not only did he not get his billing problem straightened out, but they charged him for what was supposed to be a toll-free call to their support line. David Esan Veramark Technologies desan@veramark.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This reminds me of the idiots working at inbound call centers who take orders for products advertised on television who, when they receive an order from someone in New Mexico, insist that they cannot ship outside the USA. And no amount of talking will convince them that New Mexico is in the USA and not part of Mexico. People in the town of Mexico, Missouri have the same problem I am told. As soon as the word 'Mexico' is spoken, the telemarketer/ order taker starts running their mouth. I attempted to call a number in New Mexico once via an inward operator (trouble in dialing it direct) only to have the operator switch me to the international center in Pittsburgh, PA. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 08:18:10 -0800 From: Linc Madison Subject: Relief Options For Area Code 817 (Ft. Worth, Texas) The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) has issued a press release regarding options for area code 817: There are five options presented: (1) general-services overlay (2) split the "mid-cities" (Arlington, Grapevine, Euless, etc. -- eastern Tarrant County) into a new code (3) split Parker, Hood, and western Tarrant Jasper Counties into a new code, overlay the remainder (FtW and mid-cities) with another new code (4) Concentrated overlay on FtW/mid-cities; remainder keeps 817 only (5) Overlay on FtW/mid-cities; realign remainder into 940 I have proposed a modification on Option #5 to the PUCT: instead of realigning the entire remainder into 940, extend the 940/254 boundary. My proposal would realign as follows, by rate center: 940: Azle, Reno, Springtown, Weatherford 254: Granbury, Cresson, Acton, Godley, Cleburne, Rio Vista, Grandview, Alvarado The PUCT's proposed realignment would create a thin sliver of 940 on the south side of Fort Worth; my proposal creates much more sensible and publicly acceptable boundaries. Cleburne and Rio Vista have a much stronger community of interest with Hillsboro (in 254) than with Denton or Wichita Falls (in 940). I haven't actually checked the prefix lists yet, but I am confident that the affected prefixes are unassigned in both 940 and 254, since both codes are pretty sparsely utilized. It would certainly make sense for 254 and 940 to have reassigned prefixes from each other before reassigning prefixes in the border areas of the rump 817. If you support this proposal, and especially if you live in the Fort Worth area, please contact the PUCT: Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom(at)LincMad(dot)com * North American Telephone Area Codes & Splits >> NOTE: e-mail replies to the address in this sig will be read first! << ------------------------------ From: jata@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) Subject: Taconic Tel in Dutchess County Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 21:42:44 GMT In , on 11/08/99 at 06:16 AM, Doug Reuben said: > There are a number of local telcos in central/upstate NY not served by NY > Tel, one of the larger ones in Taconic Telephone (now part of Rochester > Tel I believe). They offer service in many of the NY Tel strongholds, > such as outside Poughkeepsie (if you stop at the I-84 rest stop heading > east just up the hill from the Taconic State Parkway > -- the only rest stop in NY on I-84 east of the Hudson, you will see > that all the payphones are serviced by them.) Actually, I think that's the former Sylvan Lake Tel Co and yes it was absorbed by Roch Tel -- now Frontier. Lagrangeville and Hopeless Jungle. I think Taconic is further north; probably Columbia Cty? Don't have a Dutchess book around (we moved out of the area 4.5 yrs ago) to check it out. Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt remove letter a for email (or switch . and @) Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! ------------------------------ From: DSSTVFAN Organization: Angelfire Subject: C.O. Finder Software For Telco Locater Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 15:56:08 -0600 Where can I download the software called CO Finder or any similar software that provides inputs of area code or partial exchange number that tells you the LATA served by the telco in the area (for US). This is especially helpful when try to provision thru the appropriate carrier. ------------------------------ From: Lisa Stiffler Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 11:19:34 -0800 Subject: Newspaper Reporter Needs Cellular Information Hello. I'm a reporter at the {Seattle Post-Intelligencer}, an a.m. metro newspaper, and I'm trying to get some information on technology being developed to block cell phone communication. I've heard rumor of a something that would block incoming and outgoing calls in a limited area near the device. Do you know anything about this/have recommendations as to who I might contact to find out about this? Thanks for your time and any help. Yours, Lisa [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Will readers with information please respond direct to Ms. Stiffler. You will recall we had a discussion on this very topic about a month ago here. Thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Waters Subject: re: We BUY Used DSS/DTV Components!! Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 15:16:25 -0500 > Organization: @Home Network Canada > We will BUY your used DSS access cards for CASH! We are currently in > need of two types of access cards. We pay $50 for the older cards, > and $25 for the newer ones! We will buy in quantity if you can > supply. > Have any sitting around? Email us at: cardz@home.com > (we do not > monitor this newsgroup regularily). > **Please view our website to determine which types of cards you have, > and let us know in your email correspondence. > http://www.angelfire.com/mb/cardz/ > giojvk Pat: This is going down a slippery slope. DirecTV and other US-Based Direct-To-Home services are technically illegal here in Canada. We cannot legally pay for the services (thanks to the Civil Serpents at the CRTC), so the only way to get service is to use a hacked access card. The RCMP keep making noises about going after the owners of the US dishes, and are DEFINITELY going after any dealers that they find. About the only use for a used DSS card without a system is to program a hack onto it. US Customs seizes any cards coming into the US that it finds. AFIK it's a $10k fine for having a hacked card in the US. John W. Waters Telecommunications Specialist x 8080 ATI Technologies E: jwaters@ati.com V: (905) 882-2600 F: (905) 882-1585 S: 33 Commerce Valley Drive E Thornhill, ON L3T 7N6 ------------------------------ From: Steve Riley (MCS) Subject: NPA-NXX Listings Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 14:25:20 -0800 Speaking of NPA-NXX listings, does anyone know where I can get one in Excel or text format that I can keep stored in my PDA? Such a list would be very handy sometimes. Steve > On Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:36:25 -0700, Linc Madison telecom-digest.zzn.com> wrote: >> A better option is to get "NPA for Windows" (if you have MS-Windows or >> a Windows emulator on your machine). It's $35 shareware. > NPA for Windows is a nice program however its database has numerous > errors ... many of which have been in there for years ... and the > program's publisher seems to have little interest in correcting those > errors. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #538 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Nov 9 23:01:30 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id XAA04643; Tue, 9 Nov 1999 23:01:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 23:01:30 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911100401.XAA04643@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #539 TELECOM Digest Tue, 9 Nov 99 23:01:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 539 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: ISDN Viruses (John S. Maddaus) Re: Ameritech ISDN Service (Al Varney) Need Suggestions For Internet Access (Thomas Hinders) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (ken) Prepaid Phone Card For Short Calls? (Howard Gayle) Re: NPA-NXX Listings (Robin Roberts) Looking for Pulse to DTMF Converter (glmodi@my-deja.com) For Sale: Nortel Meridian PABX System (Jason E. Chlebowski) Signalling System Seven and Traffic Analysis (Fred Atkinson) For Sale: Toshiba DK Cards RCTUB(AB) & PDKU (salesmgr@airshow-online.com) Re: An Anonymous Example (Steve Winter) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net (John S. Maddaus) Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 02:40:06 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net Fred Goldstein wrote: > In V19#529, John Maddaus wrote: >> Glad you're not my lawyer. The Q.931 signaling between our PBXs and >> local COs does not use SSL, the IS-41 signaling between our MTSOs and >> STPs does not use SSL, SS-7 between our COs and STPs does not use SSL. >> Ahh, perhaps you are suggesting we can replace all with a feature rich >> version of SSL ... Gosh, and I wasn't even responding to you, but I shall now. > The Q.931 signaling is a purely-local protocol, run between the "TE" > (PBX or phone) and the "ET" (switch), and not propagated. The protocol is not but information elements contained within certainly are. > SS7, it is not IS_41, it is not IP. It has no network (routing)layer; > it's essentially a two-party application run directly atop a data link > (Q.921 LAPD). Thank you for validating my point above that Q.931 is not SSL which the poster I responded to seemed to think had some relevancy to Q.931. > For the record, I *am* an expert on ISDN signaling. I was for many Did anyone infer you were not? I certainly did not. > years a member of the relevant ANSI-accredited technical subcommittee And standards meetings make beltway politics look tame. Every potential vendor is there for a very specific reason, get the subcommittee to agree to add a capability which the vendor can use to their advantage in the face of competition. Been there done that. Oh and the fact that a standard is generated does NOT mean that an individual vendor in constrained in interpretation of the meaning of the standard. For instance, every PBX in our inventory is a custom install usually performed by employees of the servicing LEC because the PBX install config REQUIRES the knowledge of the CO make, model, and sometimes even the software generic to which its PRI lines will be receiving/sending signaling data. This should suggest to you that there are different flavors of ISDN, which there are. > (T1D1, T1S1) and I wrote a textbook "ISDN In Perspective" which > suffers, perhaps, from mixing in some details of the protocol design > along with user-oriented stuff. I doubt Maddaus has read it. (Also > note I'm replying over an ISDN line.) And reading your book and replying over an ISDN line no doubt makes you the ultimate expert, I see. I didn't realize that my sending email over our PRI lines meant so much. Guess I'll have to ditch Stallings and the spec itself -- too bad I rather liked them. > The point is that the Phrack (or whatever) article he quoted was > *pure* BS, a put-on of the worst degree, a technical "in-joke". It > was, of course, also a classic "ISDN bash", noting that ISDN bashing > has been popular sport in the USA for the past fifteen years or so. > (Bellcore *really* screwed up the early marketing here. Europeans and > Asians understand it *much* better and use it widely.) >> More bull. Try reading the Q.931 spec and key in on User-User >> sub-element. > I not only read it, but I was involved in the debates over it. The > UUI information element is passed along between consenting end users How do you define consenting end users, telephone, PBX? Better yet, how do you insure that the consenting end user you are passing information to is the consenting end user you think it is? Do you authenticate it? If so how? If not why not? > such that the switching system never ever touches or interprets it. > User to User, period. Rarely even implemented in the USA, btw. We have 120 plus sites world wide, most equipped with DMS-100 super nodes servicing 10,000+ users. We consider our sites consenting users. Please cite the specific safeguards within the spec that you helped write that prevents an unauthorized user from spoofing one of our authorized sites! Where we can get ISDN, we use it, though we are looking at a more cost effective strategy of bringing ATM to the doorstep. There are many locations where the local carrier has not provided ISDN capability for us to take advantage of. We have a number of locations that can not cost justify movement to ISDN from Centrex or POTS. >> Remember cryptographic authentication's use of "spare" >> IS-41A fields? The limitations varied significantly according to >> Motorola, Ericsson, Nortel, Lucent, Hughes, etc. from ignore and drop >> on floor to Kernel Panic shut down switch. Guess you had to be there. > IS-41 (cellular) is very, very different. A mistake in one thing has no > bearing on a completely unrelated thing. Except that this modification was necessitated because the original standard shared the same common lack of foresight in addressing ANY security improvements that could have been made with nearly every wireline telecom standard on the books. Tell me, were the subjects of signaling security, information assurance, information warfare, authentication, cryptography, fraud EVER discussed in the standards process? Why not? > The original article simply bandied around unfamiliar but familiar-sounding > phrases like "X.224" in a means calculated to scare the *casual* reader, > while (as Mel Beckman noted) almost every sentence was as far from true as > one could make it. Really carefully crafted, as gibberish goes. > I fear that this discussion has led casual readers to become more wary of > ISDN. That is highly counterproductive. ISDN is a proven technology. The > Primary Rate Interface is the ideal PBX trunk facility, far more reliable > than the analog or Channelized T1 alternatives. Basic rate works fine too, > though the US Bells are generally loath to install it, and there have been > many compatibility issues between the different American implementations. > Not security issues, though. Certainly not viruses. Yes the world is lovely, there are no trouble spots and certainly no threats to our fine unprotected and vulnerable telecommunications infrastructure. It is never counter-productive to increase casual or experienced users awareness of security issues they face in the networks that they depend upon every day. Had the data side followed that argument, it is unlikely that PAT would have received any of these posts. jmaddaus@usa.net John S. Maddaus ------------------------------ From: varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney) Subject: Re: Ameritech ISDN Service Date: 9 Nov 1999 21:55:19 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL Reply-To: varney@lucent.com In article , wrote: > I've used Ameritech ISDN in suburban Chicago for four or five years. > It is reliable and works well. I've written on the topic before, but here's a summary. Next month (Dec. 1999) will mark the 10th anniversary of continuous ISDN service at the Bell Labs Indian Hill R&D campus. Service is from a 5ESS-2000 switch owned and operated by Ameritech. There are about 10,000 ISDN lines on the campus. The switch itself is just another Ameritech CO, located about a mile from the campus, and also serves about 40,000 (old statistics) other residential and business customers. I'm no longer involved in switch support, so I don't have up-to-date statistics. As far as I can recall, the only ISDN outage (very brief) was related to a switch software upgrade problem. The switch usually is the first in the country to receive a new upgrade -- knowing your phone service, your boss's phone service and your neighbor's phone service can be affected helps assure the upgrades go smoothly. Al Varney - just my opinion ------------------------------ From: Thomas_Hinders@lotus.com (Thomas Hinders) Subject: Need Suggestions For Internet Access Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 17:33:38 -0500 I live west of Philadelphia, in AC 610 Exchg 970, zip 19464. I currently have ISDN (supplied by my Co.), which is being pulled. My needs are for a service/connection which offers 100Kbps+ in both directions (I upload and download large files). I've called BellAtl. for DSL but I'm told by them (and other DSL providers) that I am "too far from the CO" at 24,001 feet. Aside, from sticking with my ISDN, which is too costly and requires a toll call to reach my ISP, are there any other suggestions? Also, I used to have a link to a Web site, which asked for address/phone number, and it listed the services available in your area. I lost the link. Please email me directly and I will summarize and post. Tom Hinders thomas_hinders@lotus.com ------------------------------ From: not@home.mil (ken) Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 22:55:45 GMT Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Also rural areas seldom if ever get "new" equipment. My local CO is a Stromberg-Carlson circa 1968. Even a small rural area can generate millions of dollors of revenue. Most companies use rural areas as a backwater to extend the useful lives of their ageing equipment. I pay the same price as an urban customer, yet I don't have access to caller ID, or ISDN. I know of areas here in West Virginia that don't have tone dialing. For the idea of subsidized phone service for rural areas to ring true we would have to pay the same price for the same quality of service. That isn't the case. On Sat, 06 Nov 1999 22:52:41 -0800, William Van Hefner wrote: >> Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote in message > 12@telecom-digest.org>: >>> I don't understand why people in rural areas should get subsidized >>> phone (and mail) service, when people in large cities pay more for >>> almost every thing else. You don't see people in the small cities >>> subsidizing parking in New York (easily $20.00 for a couple of hours), >>> so why should people in NY subsidize phone service elsewhere? (For >>> that matter, folks in NYC don't even get unmetered local service....) >>> It seems to me that most things cost more in cities, but that those >>> things that cost less should remain that way. > Keep in mind that without subsidies people in the "big cities" > wouldn't be able to make calls to those "rural areas", since service > would be priced beyond the range most consumers there could > afford. Would you rather be charged more to make a long distance call > to Podunk, NY, than to Manhattan? Would you rather pay a higher rate > for incoming calls to your 800 number from those areas? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 14:35:41 PST From: Howard Gayle Subject: Prepaid Phone Card For Short Calls? Can anyone recommend a prepaid phone card with these features? * no call setup charge * no minimum charge per call * no or low pay phone surcharge * no monthly charge * no expiration * US domestic use * short billing time unit (for example, 6 seconds) * disposable or refillable I expect most calls to be short, so the price per minute is secondary. ------------------------------ From: robin.roberts@brite.com Subject: Re: NPA-NXX Listings Date: 9 Nov 1999 10:13:14 -0600 Try the North American Numbering Plan Administration: http://www.nanpa.com/ and specifically: http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/co_code_assignments.html Jeremy Greene wrote: > Bill Adams wrote in message news:telecom19.490.7@ > telecom-digest.org: >> Anyone know where I can get a list of NPA-NNX which list the city? >> Any help would be greatly appreciated. > Telcordia (formerly Bellcore) offers a free product on their website > that is quite detailed. It is a summary, month-by-month, of all NXX > changes. It appears that you need a PC to unzip the files. > http://www.trainfo.com/tra/nnagonly.htm > I'm not sure where to go for comprehensive info on existing NXX's. You > may have to pay Telcordia to get that. ------------------------------ From: glmodi@my-deja.com Subject: Looking For Pulse to DTMF Converter Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 16:29:27 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. I am looking for a Pulse to DTMF (Tone) converter for a two port system. Any suggestions. Thanks, G L Modi glmodi@hotmail.com ------------------------------ From: Jason E. Chlebowski Subject: For Sale: Nortel Meridian PABX System Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 13:26:12 -0600 Organization: Primary Network http://www.primary.net Hello All: I've got a client who is upgrading their entire phone system and has asked us to find a a buyer for the current large Nortel Meridian PABX system. I've got some details here as to all of the components involved. If you or someone you know would be interested in purchasing a large system of this type, email me and I'll forward the details of the system. Thanks and Best Regards, Jason E. Chlebowski Vice President CAPITAL, TECHNOLOGY & LEASING, LLC. Post Office Box 143 Beaufort, Missouri 63013-0143 573-484-3018 phone 573-484-3030 fax mailto: jchlebowski@captechleasing.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 23:23 EST From: Fred Atkinson Organization: Personal Copy Subject: Signalling System Seven and Traffic Analysis Hello, It appears that I may be accepting a position that would require me to oversee a major toll-free network for the customer that company is contracted to. I need to read up on Signalling System Seven and brush up on traffic analysis (Poisson tables, centi-call seconds, etc.). Can someone recommend some that aren't written for a PH.D? Fred ------------------------------ From: salesmgr@airshow-online.com Subject: For Sale: Toshiba DK Cards RCTUB(AB) & PDKU Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 22:42:58 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Toshiba DK Cards RCTUB(AB) & PDKU (1) Used RCTUBA 3A Processor $825 (1) Used RCTUBB 3A Processor $825 (1) New Boxed Toshiba DK PDKU $290 Station interface ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: An Anonymous Example Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 18:02:47 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com anonymous@cotse.com spake thusly and wrote: > This is what it will look like. It will always be from the above > address, with a subject line, and then the disclaimer message > which is shown below. > -- > www.cotse.com/anonmail.htm > Message sent via the COTSE Anonymous E-mail. > This message did not originate from the address > in the from line. It originated from an anonymous > source. COTSE is not responsible for the contents > of this message. Wow, I actually saw someone using it already on one of the religious newsgroups. They were accusing someone of having sex with animals. Great public service, Pat! Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite welcome, I'm sure; and thanks for the compliment. I've even received a message via the service for use here in comp.dcom.telecom but since neither I, nor most newsgroup moderators post anonymous messages received like that, its a moot point. Did anyone point out that the message was posted in the wrong newsgroup and should have been in one devoted to beastiality? :) PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #539 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 10 13:33:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id NAA00453; Wed, 10 Nov 1999 13:33:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 13:33:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911101833.NAA00453@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #540 TELECOM Digest Wed, 10 Nov 99 13:33:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 540 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Central Office Locations (Stanley Cline) Re: Central Office Locations (Tony Pelliccio) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Ed Ellers) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Bob Goudreau) Re: Customer Service (Dave Goodman) Re: Customer Service (Steve Sobol) Re: Looking For Pulse to DTMF Converter (David Clayton) Re: Looking For Pulse to DTMF Converter (C4M30) Re: Need Local Calling Areas (NPA-NXX's) For Specific NPA-NXX's (J Harder) Re: Need Local Calling Areas (NPA-NXX's) For Specific NPA-NXX's (J Lurker) Re: ISDN Viruses (Fred R. Goldstein) Telebridge vendors (Tom Beckman) PSTN Textbooks? (Stuart Summerville) Re: Rural Phone Service (John R. Levine) Re. Taconic Tel in Dutchess County (John Stahl) Re: ICANN Committee Proposes Nationalizing Country Codes (Justa Lurker) Accurate List of Wireless NPA-NXX Assignments (John S. Maddaus) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 21:13:54 -0500 From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Central Office Locations Greg Monti wrote: > I'm sure there are complete (and expensive) databases available that > will show you everything you want. Look at http://www.telcordia.com Actually, that's http://www.trainfo.com/ for Telcordia TRA. Some LECs (e.g., BellSouth) and DSL web sites have limited lookup data, based off old LERGs, telco network disclosures, and so forth. > However, if you just want to look up the location of the CO for a > specific area code-prefix combination, go to http://www.mapquest.com DeLorme's Street Atlas USA (from v4 for Windoze onward at least) will provide a map of the area a CO is in by entering a NPA-NXX; if you zoom in enough you will *usually* find yourself "sitting atop the CO". :) > Caution: There are many, MANY omissions and mistakes in whatever > database Mapquest is using. For example, entering 214-362, which is I agree. -SC ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Central Office Locations Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 03:38:12 GMT In article , gmonti@mindspring.com says: > Mapquest now has a telephone exchange search feature in the "Online > Maps" area. I entered 214-363 to look for a CO in North Central > Dallas. Mapquest plotted it as a star on Hillcrest Road near Del > Norte Lane. I drove by. Sure enough, that's where the CO is for that > prefix (and many others). > Caution: There are many, MANY omissions and mistakes in whatever > database Mapquest is using. For example, entering 214-362, which is > in the same CO as 214-363, gives an error message. My home prefix, > 972-661, does not show in the Mapquest database either. It's listed > as 214-661, which was changed to 972 three years ago. It's pretty close but you're right. I tried 401-621 and got the error, while 401-272 shows a location on the corner of Snow St. and Chapel St. In reality the CO is on the corner of Washington St. and Greene St. Trying 401-854 got an error too. That's Brooks/Worlcom's switch in Providence that's located on Parsonage St. Getting even weirder I put in 401-241 which belongs to Omnipoint. It can't find that either. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 00:22:30 -0500 Stanley Cline wrote: > This plan's rates are based on the access charges charged by LECs at each > end of a call. Therefore, with this plan, calls to areas served by > independent LECs, who generally demand more in access charges than RBOCs, > GTE, and Sprint/United/Centel, cost more. > For instance, the rate lookup page for this plan gave me all sorts > of different rates for calls placed to/from my BellSouth line in > metro Atlanta: > * 3.9c/min to call most wireless phones anywhere in the US (why???) Wireless providers get paid *by their own customers* for incoming calls, with the exception of the first minute in the case of some digital providers. They don't need to get paid by the IXCs. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 10:21:49 EST From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them "ken", allegedly at the dubious-looking email address "not@home.mil", wrote: > Also rural areas seldom if ever get "new" equipment. My local CO is a > Stromberg-Carlson circa 1968. Even a small rural area can generate > millions of dollors of revenue. Most companies use rural areas as a > backwater to extend the useful lives of their ageing equipment. I pay > the same price as an urban customer, yet I don't have access to caller > ID, or ISDN. I know of areas here in West Virginia that don't have > tone dialing. For the idea of subsidized phone service for rural areas > to ring true we would have to pay the same price for the same quality > of service. That isn't the case. Your notion of what "subsidy" means would seem to be at sharp variance with the definition used by the rest of us. Just because the subsidy isn't as high as you like doesn't mean that it's noexistent! Without the federal rural electification and telephone subsidies, physically expensive-to-serve "backwater" areas would be paying even *higher* subscriber rates than they do now. Geez, if you're willing to be the beneficiary of monetary transfers from most of the rest of the country, please at least be willing to recognize that fact, and don't carp that the gift horse isn't good enough. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: Dave Goodman Subject: Re: Customer Service Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 21:20:22 -0500 Organization: The Center for Creative Confusion, Sarasota, FL > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This reminds me of the idiots working > at inbound call centers who take orders for products advertised on > television who, when they receive an order from someone in New Mexico, > insist that they cannot ship outside the USA. And no amount of talking > will convince them that New Mexico is in the USA and not part of > Mexico. ... Ah, yes. I lived in New Mexico for years, but traveled extensively. The usual conversation on the east coast cocktail circuit was: "Where are you from?" "New Mexico" "Oh. How long have you been in this country?" Dave Goodman . . . . . __|__ . . . M/V Dragonfly davegdmn@earthlink.net . . --o--o--(_)--o--o-- . . Sarasota, FL [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Don't you get a strong urge at times to ask them whatever happened to classes in elementary geography such as used to be taught in school? About the time you thought that you heard the dumbest thing anyone could say, then someone even dumber comes along. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.Net (Steve Sobol) Subject: Re: Customer Service Date: 10 Nov 1999 02:50:30 GMT Organization: New Age Consulting Service Inc., Cleveland, OH, USA On Tue, 09 Nov 1999 14:35:24 GMT, davidesan@my-deja.com allegedly said: > ("CW" = my co-worker; "TLA" = TLA's front-line customer support; "SUP" > = TLA support supervisor.) > CW: Look, it's 9:20, I'm late for work, and I need to get this > resolved. > TLA: It's not 9:20; it's only 7:30. > CW: Where are you located? > TLA: I'm in Colorado. > CW: Well, I'm in New England, and here it's 9:20. > TLA: Oh, *that's* your problem! Your phone card doesn't work overseas. Would the Telco in question have a stock ticker symbol like, say, W C O M ?? :> Just curious. North Shore Technologies Corporation Steven J. Sobol, President & Head Geek 815 Superior Avenue #610 sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Cleveland, Ohio 44114 http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net ------------------------------ From: David Clayton Subject: Re: Looking For Pulse to DTMF Converter Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 19:33:46 +1100 Organization: Customer of Connect.com.au Pty. Ltd. Reply-To: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au glmodi@my-deja.com contributed the following: > I am looking for a Pulse to DTMF (Tone) converter for a two port > system. Any suggestions. Dialogic used to make ISA cards that do that, (I have seen them taken out of old Voice Mail systems), I don't know if they are still available. Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Dilbert's words of wisdom #18: Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience. ------------------------------ From: c4m30@aol.com (C4M30) Date: 10 Nov 1999 12:44:50 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Looking For Pulse to DTMF Converter Try Immix -- they're in Boca Raton, Florida. They carry two-line and eight-line high-end programmable dialers (I think around $200-300 for two-line) that worked pretty well for us in overseas conditions. Here's the site: http://www.broadband-guide.com/company/immix.html ------------------------------ From: Jerry Harder Subject: Re: Need Local Calling Areas (NPA-NXX's) For Specific NPA-NXX's Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 02:40:43 GMT Organization: @Home Network wrote in message news:telecom19.538.6@ telecom-digest.org: > I need to find local calling areas for about 2000 NPA-NXX's. Would > also like local city listings for each NPA-NXX that we serve. > Basically want to search on all NPA-NXX's that we have Points of > Presence in and get the results so that we can put the information > into a searchable database. We would probably want to update this > database on a Monthly basis. > We are a small National ISP and we are looking to combine multiple > Larger Providers to get the best coverage area. Our costs vary based > on the access number and provider used (Ranging from $.50-2.50/Month/ > user). We would like to prioritize our lowest cost POP's and not > display POP's for the other networks that we may have coverage in. Try www.tariffs.com. They may have a lower quote. There is no percentage in doing this yourself since you will need to track countless telco tariffs and make associations between rate center names and NPANXXs. Good luck, Jerry Harder remove spamnein from address to reply ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Re: Need Local Calling Areas (NPA-NXX's) For Specific NPA-NXX's Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Reply to the digest) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 13:12:55 GMT It was Tue, 09 Nov 1999 01:08:45 -0700, and access@microworld.com wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > I need to find local calling areas for about 2000 NPA-NXX's. Would > also like local city listings for each NPA-NXX that we serve. > Basically want to search on all NPA-NXX's that we have Points of > Presence in and get the results so that we can put the information > into a searchable database. We would probably want to update this > database on a Monthly basis. ... > We have found a company (CCMI) that can provide this information, but > we don't have the $20K Budget to purchase it. Our dial-up customer > base is less than 300 so our funds are limited for this. You are going to have to invest the money. Sorry, there are no free rides -- the information you seek is not easily obtained. Other than that, can't you ask the ISPs that you contract with to provide the info? Keep it based on rate centers not on NXXs. > Please respond to the group AND to my personal email as I don't > frequent news groups. Ask here, answer here. JL ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 11:44 EST From: FGOLDSTEIN@wn1.wn.net (Fred R. Goldstein) Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses Without carrying on this thread any further, I will simply conclude this thread by saying that Maddaus is simply fogging the issue. I point out something that Phrack wrote that is utterly irrelevant to ISDN, and Maddaus harps on it as if it were vital. "Please cite the specific safeguards within the spec that you helped write that prevents an unauthorized user from spoofing one of our authorized sites!" What does that mean? The ISDN protocol is point to point. There is no way to spoof anything. The user-to-user information element is a short optional field that is used in some countries (rarely the USA) for special functions between consenting switches. Since it's carried over a point-to-point link (a signaling message between two PBXs, usually, with NO packet network between them, just a raw E1 link), it can't be spoofed; the sender's identity is that of the wire over which the message arrives! This isn't IP, and it isn't the Internet. It's like spoofing rotary dial pulses -- they come over the same wire as the phone is plugged in to. But it's harder to spoof a digital pipe than tap an analog line ... I repeat: The Phrack story that Maddaus is trying to defend was a hoax, no more real than Bill 602P, Blue Star LSD, or the alligators in the sewers. ISDN has no virus risk. ------------------------------ From: tom@heartmath.com (Tom Beckman) Subject: Telebridge Vendors Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 20:05:57 -0800 Organization: HeartMath LLC I'm looking for vendors that provide telebridge lines for "meet me" teleconferencing. I've read about telebridges with capacity for 30, 150 and 500 callers. Any help would be appreciated. Tom ------------------------------ From: stuarts@icpdd.neca.nec.com.au (Stuart Summerville) Subject: PSTN Textbooks? Organization: NEC Australia Reply-To: stuarts@icpdd.neca.nec.com.au Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 05:53:17 GMT Hi all, I'm after a textbook that (atleast in part) details the operation (from a standards point of view) of PSTN networks. I'm told some exist, mostly from the '70s. Regards, Stuart Summerville NEC Australia Pty. Ltd. ph: (+61 3) 9264-3090 Integrated Comm Products (R&D) fax:(+61 3) 9264-3841 649-655 Springvale Road Mulgrave stuarts@icpdd.neca.nec.com.au VIC 3170, AUSTRALIA ------------------------------ Date: 10 Nov 1999 01:24:02 -0500 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Rural Phone Service Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Also rural areas seldom if ever get "new" equipment. >> Would you rather be charged more to make a long distance call >> to Podunk, NY, than to Manhattan? The equipment depends at least as much on the telco as on how urban or rural a place is. Believe it or not, Podunk NY is a real place. It's a tiny hamlet just southwest of Trumansburg, with a few houses and a small cross-country ski area. The residents, of whom there are perhaps a dozen, are served from a GTD-5 that offers all of the usual custom calling services as well as voice mail. ISDN will be available, as far as I can tell, as soon as the telco is done wiring up the new jail being built north of here, next year some time. (There's currently one (1) ISDN customer, but he tells me it does work.) It also varies a lot from state to state. Maine, for example, had antique phone systems for many years because the state regulators didn't permit a rate of return as high as in other states, so New England Tel (or whatever they're called now) installed new equipment everywhere else first. This wasn't just a rural issue, LL Bean couldn't get an 800 number for years because there wasn't enough trunkage in the entire state to handle the anticipated call volume. I don't know if rate of return is an issue in West Virginia. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 03:56:10 From: John Stahl Subject: Re. Taconic Tel in Dutchess County In TELECOM Digest (Volume 19 : Issue 538) Julian Thomas responded about Taconic Telephone. I have business contacts at this mid-sized ILEC. Here is the true story: Actually Taconic Telephone has been purchased but not by Rochester (now called Frontier Corp.) It was purchased last year by MJD Enterprises, a up-and-coming holding company who went on a buying during the last two years binge purchasing Taconic Tel., Chautauqua and Erie Tel. headquartered in Westfield, NY and Utilities Inc., headquartered in Standish, ME, to name a few. Believe MJD now owns over 100,000 subscriber lines in the US. If you check the latest info at the USTA internet site you can find about MJD. However, though these companies are owned by MJD, they still maintain their local control and have kept their own company names. Taconic Tel., an ILEC, is headquartered in Chatham, NY (about 25 miles southeast of Albany, NY) and serves over 20,000 subscribers. They used to own a (parallel) CATV system which may now be separated from the telecom operation. They also own their own LD telephone service. MJD has initiated a CLEC operation out of the Taconic system using the Taconic CO switch going into the Albany area to the north and into territory to their south to compete with Bell Atlantic and other CLEC's established in that area . Taconic is located north of Sylvan Lake tel. (now part of Frontier system.) Respectively submitted, John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecom/Data Consultant email: aljon@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Re: ICANN Committee Proposes Nationalizing Country Codes Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Reply to the digest) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 13:03:57 GMT It was Tue, 09 Nov 1999 05:38:33 GMT, and richard@interNIK.net (Richard Cox) wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: >> GAC seems to want to make sure that governments can have their domains >> back, > Hold on, slow WAY down. > There is nothing "official" about internet namespace, if you want > "official" try the late unlamented OSI. Countries own that namespace. > BUT, the Internet is an interconnection of *private* networks; there's > nothing "public" about it. Things that are public are most often > controlled by governments. Think TRADEMARK. Who owns the trademark on Canada? Wouldn't it be nice if some Canadian living in Zaire owned it and controlled it? How about an American national living in Toronto? Sure Canada could deport him, but without better rules he could still own the domain. Allowing countries to reclaim their domains is the only clear way that their TRADEMARK ccTLDs can be retained. Right in line with the DNDP. Look at the TO and CC domains. Their main service to the countries assigned is to send money for permission to use vanity names. Not as a domain for persons actually in or citizens of those countries. They have sold their TRADEMARK for a price. JL ------------------------------ From: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net (John S. Maddaus) Subject: Accurate List of Wireless NPA-NXX Assignments Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 06:15:13 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net Does anyone have a source for an up-to-date listing of all wireless (traditional cellular and PCS) NPA-NXX listings for North America, especially the U.S. In the past, our cellular SBU kept an unofficial company listing which of course mirrored roaming agreements. Unfort- unately, it was not at all universal amongst our diverse cellular territories. I have contacted NANPA and Lockheed Martin to no avail. Any help would be appreciated. jmaddaus@usa.net John S. Maddaus ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #540 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Nov 11 00:49:21 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id AAA24799; Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:49:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:49:21 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911110549.AAA24799@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #541 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Nov 99 00:49:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 541 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Clever Spammer: To $pam or Not, That is the Question (Mike Pollock) Re: Telebridge Vendors (Reedh@rmi.net) Re: Telebridge Vendors (Tom Beckman) Long Phone Call Linked To Stroke-Like Attack (Jim Weiss) Looking for Pulse to Tone (DTMF) Converter (G.L. Modi) E-Commerce Panel Head: No Internet Tax, Yes MORE Phone Tax (Tom Byfield) Kellogg Wiring Harness (Mike Davis) Patents Throw Away That Cell Phone (Mike Pollock) Bay Area Start up. Director of Sys Eng. (Todd Caplan) ISPs to BT: Thanks, But No Thanks (Monty Solomon) Toll Free Trouble (Alan Bunch) Re: Central Office Locations (Clarence Dold) Re: C.O. Finder Software For Telco Locator (Steve Riley) Re: ISDN Viruses (Mel Beckman) Campus Cops Crack Down on Free Music (Monty Solomon) www.e-gold.com For Funds Transfer (TELECOM Digest Editor) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Pollock Subject: Clever Spammer: To $pam or Not That is the QUESTION Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 15:40:40 -0500 Organization: It's A Mike! ----- Original Message ----- From: texffvizvr@webtv.net To: lqjydzmpyq@aol.com ; netcom.com@mindspring.com Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 1999 2:40 PM Subject: To $pam or not that is the QUESTION Hello, To $pam, or not to $pam: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the Accounts Receivable to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous Net Tyrants of "sanctified commerce", Or to take up Bulk Advertising against a sea of anonymity, And by opposing Net Tyranny , to end obscurity? To go Chapter 13: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end our business growth, The heart-ache and the thousand financial shocks That a thriving business is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To be bankrupt or wish you were, to sleep. To sleep: perchance to dream of profit: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of mere employment, what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal business coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect of a thriving business. By thc with deference to Shakespere IS IT MADNESS TO SPAM? Hamlet feigned madness to fight against his powerful, incestuous, murderous, uncle and usurper King. The big players on the internet are powerful, and collusively smug. Do you think that they would mourn the death of your free speech on the Net? They would be happy to see free speech killed, outside their own realm of course. The small businesses, including your own would have no way to advertise effectively! Of course you're welcome to wade in up to your eyeballs in the advertising that BIG UNCLE puts out. So why don't you people just GET WITH THE PROGRAM, and pay them for their commercials; and STOP ALL THIS BULK MAILING CRAP? BIG UNCLE knows that anyone can have the power to reach MILLIONS of people with a message, YOUR message. Professional bulk advertisers have long since learned to harness the power of mass mailing on the Net. Why bother? It is very profitable, often amazingly profitable. Whatever your past attempts may have been at bulk advertising, don't be discouraged. The careful, sucessful bulk mailer knows how to bulk mail without offending ISPs or clients. You need to use the right tools and techniques. We are offering the premier mail program in use today. A program that can make Email advertising a key player for your profits, MASSIVE MAIL. MASSIVE MAIL has been honed every day for months! Why? To make MASSIVE MAIL the most effective and reliable mailer in the world! Our sales have been to professionals ONLY for the last year. Now at last you can have access to MASSIVE MAIL. Not only the program, but the programmers themselves and technical support you want and need to do bulk mailing effectively. Entry level for MASSIVE MAIL has been sold at $4,995.00 but is now available for $2,495.00 (additional units are only $495.00). We want your small business to have this power! We have techs on staff that not only know his program, but use it for their own mass mailings, and are here virtually 24 hours daily and able to help you get out hundreds of thousands of pieces of E-mail in a shift. Think about having those MILLIONS OF EYEBALLS on your message. Call or Fax for details and see how MASSIVE MAIL can be a key player in your success! Leave NAME: PHONE #: FAX #: & E-MAIL ADDRESS please slowly spell E-MAIL ADDRESS Thank you 1-435-508-2764 Ask about our bulk website hosting system. "Massive Mail is more than a program. Its a Solution! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I must say that is a rather clever sales pitch, but his price is really ridiculous. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Reed Organization: None whatsoever Subject: Re: Telebridge Vendors Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 14:27:08 -0700 One such is ConferTech at http://www.confertech.com/home.html --reed Tom Beckman wrote: > I'm looking for vendors that provide telebridge lines for "meet me" > teleconferencing. I've read about telebridges with capacity for 30, > 150 and 500 callers. Any help would be appreciated. ------------------------------ From: tom@heartmath.com (Tom Beckman) Subject: Re: Telebridge Vendors Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 16:17:15 -0800 Organization: HeartMath LLC I should have said that I'm looking for carriers that offer these lines, as opposed to service bureaus. I want to have the telebridge lines on a full-time basis. I've heard that Sprint offers them. Tom ------------------------------ From: NBJimWeiss@aol.com (Jim Weiss) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:20:30 EST Subject: Long Phone Call Linked To Stroke-Like Attack NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Stay on the phone long enough and you may encounter problems worse than your phone bill: One French psychiatrist experienced temporary, stroke-like symptoms after completing an hour-long phone call, where he cradled the phone between his head and shoulder. http://www.intelihealth.com/enews?251980">http://www.intelihealth.com /enews?251980 Jim Weiss Network Brokers, Inc. "Providing Long Distance Services for Less" nbjimweiss@aol.com 305-252-1822; fax: 603-250-0817 ------------------------------ From: glmodi@hotmail.com (G.L. Modi) Subject: Looking For Pulse to Tone (DTMF) Converter Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 23:52:40 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy I am looking for Pulse to Tone converters. Any suggestion would be highly appreciated. Thanks, G L Modi ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 20:52:18 -0500 From: Tom Byfield Subject: E-Commerce Panel Head: No Internet Tax, Yes MORE Phone Tax ----- Forwarded [from NewsScan Daily, 10 November 1999 ("Above The Fold")] E-COMMERCE PANEL URGES BAN ON INTERNET SALES TAXES Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, head of the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce, is proposing that Congress adopt a ban on taxes on all Internet sales and services, and use a proposed 1% tax on local and long-distance telephone service to compensate states and cities for any lost revenues. In addition, the panel recommends: phasing out the $3.3-billion excise tax on local and long-distance telephone service (which was enacted to finance the Spanish-American War); allowing states to use welfare funds to purchase computers and Internet access for poor families; encouraging states to simplify their tax codes; and opposing all international sales taxes and tariffs on U.S. Internet commerce. The plan is expected to spark heated debate among the commission's 19 members at their meeting next month. (Wall Street Journal 10 Nov 99) http://wsj.com ----- Backwarded ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 19:12:54 PST From: Mike Davis Subject: Kellogg Wiring Harness Hi Tom, I saw your letter looking for Kellogg wiring. I have a complete wiring harness that was recently taken out of a Kellogg oak wall phone. All connections are tagged with the their locations. I think the only ones that would have to be soldered are the ones to the hook switch. I took it from a phone that was modernized to save for a project like yours. The cost would be $25 + postage. Mike Mike Davis antique telephone collector member of Telephone Collectors Intl. and #2022 Antique Telephone Collectors Assn. specialty, old pay phones. ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: Patents Throw Away That Cell Phone Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 22:38:03 -0500 Organization: It's A Mike! The New York Times (Registration Required) http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/11/biztech/articles/08pate.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 13:44:23 -0800 From: Todd Caplan Subject: Bay Area Start up. Director of Sys Eng. Organization: HiTech Communications Inc. Preferably looking for someone who was a Senior Manager from a larger company. Responsibilities: This person will Manage the Systems Engineering team in the delivery of advanced system solutions to major telecom customers; from initial market requirements to tested product. Uses experience and initiative to: * Organize a team of 20 Engineers, 1 Manager, and 2 Team Leaders which is divided up between 3 small Teams. * This person will be very effective in integrating silicon, algorithms and application software into successful products. * Obtain or develop applications technology for fastest time to market. * Establish predictable and repeatable development processes. * Develop and set up product verification environment. Be a core member of the management team, including a key contributor in deciding the scope of Silicon Spice products and services. 1.) The Features of their products. 2.) Direct product responsibility and the Applications to the chips. 3.) Edge of internet applications software. Establish a support group for pre- and post-sale customer assistance. Experience: Datacom system development experience, preferably both hardware and software But the emphasis is really going to be on the Software side. The reason I say this is that the Sr. VP of Systems Eng. came from Premisys and he has a very strong Hardware Background. So this person that is going to fit into this position will need to complement the VP's Hardware background with the Candidates Software background. This person is going to need a strong understanding of whole system requirements, including operational, management and diagnostic aspects of systems. Experience with IP routing, switching, VOIP, VPN and QOS implementation. Excellent project managerial skills including planning and tracking of projects based on best practices. Good at interacting with customers, understanding their needs and managing co-development and custom projects. Team player, whom fits in with their culture and is an excellent leader and motivator of engineers and support staff Additional experience with ATM and frame relay is an asset. However the VP has the ATM experience so it's only a Plus if he/she were to have the ATM experience it's not required. We Are Looking For Someone Who Is Very Detailed Oriented as well as somebody who is executing oriented. Somebody who can go step by step day to day. Todd M. Caplan HiTech Communications Inc. Post Office Box 4952 El Dorado Hills, CA 95762 Wk (Dir): 916-939-7317 Fax: 916-933-1995 E-mail: todd_c@pacbell.net ------------------------------ Reply-To: Monty Solomon From: Monty Solomon Subject: ISPs to BT: Thanks, But No Thanks Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 16:51:16 -0500 By Polly Sprenger LONDON British Telecom says it will make good on its promise to slash Internet access rates for U.K. consumers. Critics say the monopoly telco hasn't gone far enough. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/display/0,1449,7570,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 12:40:02 -0600 From: Alan Bunch Subject: Toll Free Trouble Hi All, I have a colo-ed PRI through a CLEC here in Dallas. It is conencted to a modem bank for dialin internet access. I called ATT, my LD carrier for all of the other business lines here at the house, and tried to order an 800/888/877 number for the modem PRI at the CLEC. ATT tells me that they can not do that I need to call the other carrier. Well I did and got my number. The problem is that the CLEC is 15 cents/min. My question is why does this happen. Could this be technical, political, ecomonic, likely all of the above. I have some ideas but would like to hear from the assembled TELECOM Digest masses. alabun Alan Bunch Spyder Enterprises Inc. alabun@spyderinc.com 817-329-3692 http://www.spyderinc.com Personal service at it's best ! ------------------------------ From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: Central Office Locations Date: 10 Nov 1999 18:51:58 GMT Organization: a2i network Reply-To: dold@network.rahul.net Tony Pelliccio wrote: > It's pretty close but you're right. I tried 401-621 and got the error, > while 401-272 shows a location on the corner of Snow St. and Chapel St. > In reality the CO is on the corner of Washington St. and Greene St. The V&H tables work in units of roughly .3 miles, so that's as close as it can get. My C.O. is off by about a block. If, by some separate method, they can get the street address for a CO., they could get closer, but I suspect they are using V&H tables, which are readily available. Clarence A Dold - dold@network.rahul.net - Pope Valley & Napa CA. ------------------------------ From: Steve Riley Subject: Re: C.O. Finder Software For Telco Locator Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 11:28:08 -0800 DSSTVFAN wrote: > Where can I download the software called CO Finder or any similar > software that provides inputs of area code or partial exchange number > that tells you the LATA served by the telco in the area (for US). This > is especially helpful when try to provision thru the appropriate > carrier. Check out http://www.nacmind.com/tools. Lots of useful lookup-type tools. It's sometimes kind of slow, however. Steve ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 10:26:52 -0800 From: Mel Beckman Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses jmaddaus wrote: >>> b) they assume benign users are connected to the network; >> Um, you're saying that SSL, which is a communications protocol, >> assumes that users are benign? The prosecution rests. > Glad you're not my lawyer. The Q.931 signaling between our PBXs and > local COs does not use SSL, the IS-41 signaling between our MTSOs and > STPs does not use SSL, SS-7 between our COs and STPs does not use SSL. > Ahh, perhaps you are suggesting we can replace all with a feature rich > version of SSL. I'm addressing your general comment that protocols are by definition open to misuse because they assume benign users are connected to the network. SSL is a protocol. It doesn't assume benign users -- its only reason for existence is because users are not benign. I didn't say anything about SSL being used for Q.931, if you re-read my post. > CallerID. Had a lot to do with total denial of service and 100% > re-route of PSTN traffic, ISDN Viruses and even ethnic cleansing. > Amazing the amount of personal data you can retrieve and destructive > data you can hide within overhead white space and then send over SS-7 > when you buy a small LEC. All security involves trust at some level. In the PSTN, SS7 designers decided that they would place trust in LECs. If you postulate hostile LECs, then yes, there obviously such a LEC could abuse its trust and cause problems. If I postulate hostile banks, your bank account isn't safe either. There is no such thing as perfect protection in any communications environment; all security policies are a tradeoff between convenience and safety, and all involve trust at some level. Violoate the trust, and security is compromised. The only question is knowing the trust relationships you depend upon, and having a way to detect violations. > Oh do get off of your Clipper bandwagon. I had to sell encryption > gear with the damn things in it (that decision was politically > forced). We all knew what the outcome would be. At least Whit Diffie > was courteous in saying no thanks when I asked him to return the DES > gear we loaned SUN. Better treatment then the Secret Service or the Mick Jagger always told me "Mel, avoid name dropping. It looks pretentious and silly." Just like proprietary protocols. The best test of security in any protocol is open, public, review. This has been demonstrated over and over. - Mel Beckman ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:23:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Campus Cops Crack Down on Free Music If, at the behest of record companies, university officials conducted surprise searches of dorm rooms and punished the students found to possess dubbed tapes and duplicated CDs, it's likely that the press and the pundits would be outraged. But when the equivalent happened online, reporters found hardly anyone to stick up for the kids. On Oct. 18, according to Wired News, administrators at Carnegie Mellon University performed an "unannounced, random search of 250 student files ... including some that were password-protected." Seventy-one students who were hosting MP3 files, movies and copyrighted games had their dorm room Internet access revoked following the search. In order to get their access back, reported the New York Times, students will have to attend a 90-minute seminar on copyright issues and write an essay about "what they learned." Presumably, a treatise on the absurdities of trying to regulate music on the Web won't cut it. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/mediagrok_display/0,1185,7572,00.html ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: www.e-gold.com For Funds Transfer Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:00:00 GMT Just a reminder that persons wishing to make donations to the Digest may now do so via www.e-gold.com to account # 109142 which should be much more convenient for readers outside the USA among others. Thanks. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #541 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Nov 11 14:14:16 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA19994; Thu, 11 Nov 1999 14:14:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 14:14:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911111914.OAA19994@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #542 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Nov 99 14:14:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 542 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 991 Calls a Problem for 911 (Mike Riddle) Caller ID Proliferation? (Danny Shurett) Re: ISDN Viruses (John S. Maddaus) Re: Prepaid Phone Card For Short Calls? (Jason Fetterolf) EPIC Blasts Yahoo for Identifying Posters (Monty Solomon) Re: Question About C.O. Finder NPA/NXX Software (Mike Pettis) Western Electric Stuff (Mike Hinman) Re: Bell Atlantic Lies - So What Else is New? (Jeffrey C. Honig) Traditional Touch-Tone Automated Attendants Not Making Connection (Pollock) Re: The $pam Message (clive1@dvorak.amd.com) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Riddle Subject: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 Date: 11 Nov 1999 07:35:08 -0600 Organization: Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short Reply-To: mriddle@oasis.novia.net http://www.omaha.com/Omaha/OWH/StoryViewer/1,,244916,00.html BY TANYA EISERER WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER Omaha police officers are investiating a growing number of 911 calls per month that county officials say are not emergencies -- they are a problem with a new telephone prefix. The toll on police resources has come since March, when Cox Communica- tions began distributing a new 991 telephone prefix to about 5,000 digital telephone service customers. People trying to reach those customers are inadvertently dialing 911 and then hanging up the phone -- thus requiring a police officer to be sent to a residence. The prefix is being blamed in part for a significant increase in the number of wrong number and hang-up calls being handled by Douglas County 911 dispatchers. Since March, patrol officers are being sent to investigate about 500 more hang-up calls per month, which takes time away from other emergency calls. Mark Conrey, the county's 911 chief, said the problem is not going away. "It started out as a nuisance," he said. "Now it's growing into a problem that's going to impact us." Cox Communications officials became aware of the problem several months ago and have since stopped assigning phone numbers with the prefix 991 followed by a '1' such as 991-1. The company is trying to educate customers about being more careful when they dial, said Mike Kohler, director of public affairs. About 700 people in the Omaha-area have phone numbers that include 991-1 in the number. Cox also has requested and received a new prefix, 614, which the company soon might start assigning in place of 991, Kohler said. "If it means doing further awareness in the form of public service or some kind of outreach, we will do that," he said. Emergency dispatchers answer, on average, about 60,000 emergency and nonemergency calls a month, Conrey said. In the past six months, nearly 10 percent of the calls answered have been wrong number or hang-up calls. The sheer volume of wrong calls and hang ups per month -- about 6,739 -- is nearly double the monthly average in 1998. Sue Lewis, a 911 operator with 3 1/2 years' experience, said it has gotten unbearable. Lewis estimates that she is receiving between 40 and 50 hang-ups or wrong numbers related to the 991 prefix per shift. "If there's ten lines ringing, I bet nine of them are for the 991 number," Lewis said. "That's how bad it is." More troubling is the number of hang-up calls -- about 1,489 a month -- that police officers must investigate. Officers are required to go to a residence any time a 911 hang-up call is received. Conrey recommends that people stay on the line when they mistakenly dial 911 so that an officer doesn't have to be sent out. Although the county has no way of knowing whether the hang-up or wrong number calls are a direct result of the 991 prefix, the increase is alarming. "It does concern us that it takes some patrol officer's time away from someone who may be calling 911 at the same time who needs help," said Sgt. Dan Cisar, a police spokesman. "At the very least, people know we're going to come regardless when they call 911, just to make sure they're OK." Cox Communications received the 991 prefix in February from the North American Numbering Plan, which is a division of Lockheed Martin Corp. Previously, the prefix had been assigned to U S West, but later was added back to a pool of available numbers in 1998. To date, about 5,000 Cox customers in the Omaha area have phone numbers with the 991 prefix. Of those, about 700 include the numbers 991-1, Kohler said. Cox must use a majority of the numbers in order to receive a new block of numbers with a different prefix, Kohler said. Nationally, about 103 cities have been assigned the 991 prefix, Kohler said. Cox officials did talk to people in Washington, D.C., Seattle and Minneapolis about the concern. None of the cities contacted had chosen to discontinue the 991 prefix, Kohler said. "We're just going to do our best to manage the problem," he said. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It seems to me the police are inflating their numbers here a little to make the problem look worse than it is. Note the dispatcher saying she receives 40-50 wrong numbers per shift and that 'nine out of ten ringing calls are wrong numbers' ... if there are only seven hundred customers in the affected block of numbers beginning 991-1xxx, how could police statistics be correct? Those 991-1xxx subscribers must themselves be getting a huge volume of calls in order to accomplish that much of a wrong number ratio where calls to police are concerned. Please go back and read the article carefully, actually doing the math where the police statistics are concerned. If they answer 60,000 calls per month, or about 2000 calls per day or around 83 calls per hour -- which seems to me rather high for a city like Omaha at more than one call per minute; is it that crime-ridden of a place in which to live? -- and 6700, or 11 percent of those are wrong numbers, directly attributable to the 700 or so hapless folks who have 991-1xxx as their phone number, are they saying those 700 people are getting at least nine or ten calls per day each where the person calling them first got a wrong number (i.e. the police) and had to dial over again? And one dispatcher alone handles forty or more such calls in each shift with nine out of ten ringing lines being intended for 991-1xxx? So each of those 991-1xxx subscribers receives more calls in a day's time which were misdialed first than most residential subscribers receive in total? I think the {Omaha World-Herald} needs to get a reporter who knows how to challenge the 'facts' she is given and write an accurate report. I think someone got a bee in thier bonnet regarding the very occassional wrong number directly attributable to 991-1xxx and is trying now to wage a crusade on the topic. A certain police dispatcher maybe. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Danny Shurett Subject: Caller ID Proliferation? Organization: bCandid - Powering the world's discussions - http://bCandid.com Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 09:52:18 -0500 How much longer will it take so that all incoming calls will have Caller-ID information? It seems like all the calls I wish I hadn't answered are always unknown name, unknown number. This question is prompted by an attempt to send a fax to my home phone line at 1:30am. ------------------------------ From: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net (John S. Maddaus) Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 06:31:18 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net Mel Beckman wrote: SNIP > I'm addressing your general comment that protocols are by definition > open to misuse because they assume benign users are connected to the > network. SSL is a protocol. It doesn't assume benign users -- its > only reason for existence is because users are not benign. I didn't > say anything about SSL being used for Q.931, if you re-read my post. My point was very simple, there is no SSL equivalent used ubiquitously in the routing of voice/data calls over the PSTN. >> CallerID. Had a lot to do with total denial of service and 100% >> re-route of PSTN traffic, ISDN Viruses and even ethnic cleansing. >> Amazing the amount of personal data you can retrieve and destructive >> data you can hide within overhead white space and then send over SS-7 >> when you buy a small LEC. > All security involves trust at some level. In the PSTN, SS7 designers > decided that they would place trust in LECs. If you postulate hostile > LECs, then yes, there obviously such a LEC could abuse its trust and > cause problems. If I postulate hostile banks, your bank account isn't > safe either. Unfortunately, a LEC purchase by a host nation state of an unfriendly nature to the U.S. has occurred at least once. The result was a gathering of detailed information on certain individuals of a particular ethnic persuasion. The intended use of that information was not pleasant. > There is no such thing as perfect protection in any communications > environment; all security policies are a tradeoff between convenience > and safety, and all involve trust at some level. Violoate the trust, > and security is compromised. The only question is knowing the trust > relationships you depend upon, and having a way to detect violations. Which is precisely why the need for awareness and defensive measures are required, none of which are funded in any substantial way by telco's in this country. The issue isn't "perfect protection" but rather NO protection. That I maintain is unacceptable and capable of being corrected. >> Oh do get off of your Clipper bandwagon. I had to sell encryption >> gear with the damn things in it (that decision was politically >> forced). We all knew what the outcome would be. At least Whit Diffie >> was courteous in saying no thanks when I asked him to return the DES >> gear we loaned SUN. Better treatment then the Secret Service or the > Mick Jagger always told me "Mel, avoid name dropping. It looks > pretentious and silly." Just like proprietary protocols. Believe what you will, I care not. > The best test of security in any protocol is open, public, review. > This has been demonstrated over and over. I say again that this is not part of the debate, I never advocated proprietary protocols. HOWEVER, knowing what traverses via protocols is a practical necessity and I'll give you a specific example of what I mean. Using two pieces of equipment, I have confirmed that some setup messages coming in over our PRI lines have both Calling and Called number blank. I can monitor all "D" channel traffic and have been doing so for months. The monitoring point is at the demarc (DSX panel monitoring jacks) between the CO and a DMS-100. The calls are all inbound from the CO and all connecting and establishing modem sessions, some as long as 2 days 4 hours per shot. We do not see such extended activity ever. Does that not sound a bit odd? 2I have seen this at two locations, one served by U.S. West and the other BellSouth. How do those calls get routed? Is it possible that non-traditional IA5 characters and an "unknown" numbering plan can allow anonymous access to my facilities? I'm open to suggestions on this, but I'll guarantee that somewhere there is a vulnerability in a standard or implementation of the standard. The very fact that multiple COs from multiple LECs are connecting calls and passing a blank Q.931 called-number information element into multiple PBXs (which in turn is ringing dial-up modems) is not according to spec. But it is happening. jmaddaus@usa.net John S. Maddaus ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 03:22:41 -0500 Reply-To: jason@itw.com From: Jason Fetterolf Subject: Re: Prepaid Phone Card For Short Calls? Organization: Apollo Concepts Telecom and Data Consulting In response to Howard Gayle's query: > Can anyone recommend a prepaid phone card with these features? > * no call setup charge > * no minimum charge per call > * no or low pay phone surcharge > * no monthly charge > * no expiration > * US domestic use > * short billing time unit (for example, 6 seconds) > * disposable or refillable > I expect most calls to be short, so the price per minute is secondary. Howard, I have the following recommendations: 1. Destia has a great card that bills domestic calls at 9.9 cpm (toll-free access), 6 sec billing, 30 sec min, no mo. fees, no expiration, 30 cent payphone fee/call. If you dial a local # in NYC or LA area, then the rate is only 5 cpm! It must be PRE-paid for online via CC, billing records are available online at a password protected site. Please contact me directly via e-mail for sign-up info. 2. Acculinq also has a great card that bills domestic calls at 9.9 cpm (toll-free access), 6 sec billing, 30 sec min, a $ 1 mo. fee, no expiration, 30 cent payphone fee/call. If you dial a local # in Houston, Dallas or Denver, CO area, then the rate is only 6.9 cpm! It must be secured online via CC, billing records are available online at a password protected site. Your credit card is automatically debited the month AFTER you make the call. See Acculinq info and sign-up at: http://ld.net/linq/?apollo 3. USATEL - 14.9 cpm, BUT a rare find in that there is NO payphone surcharge. SOME more FEATURES: Low flat rates anytime to call anywhere in the world 14.9 cents per minute within the Continental USA (Full min billing I believe) No Fees, minimum usage requirements or surcharges PIN and dialing instructions sent via email within 1 business day. Card sent in mail within three business days. Fraud Protection rechargeable prepaid card limits risk. Same day service - order by 4:00PM Monday-Saturday! See http://ld.net/usatel/?apollo for details or sign-up! In summary, all of these cards are great options, and very reliable. If you need an actual "cash and carry" prepaid card that requires no CC (credit card) for purchase, i have one that is just 5 cpm, but then it will either have a minimum 29 cent surcharge/call, a mo. fee of 29 cents, and have a 49 cent payphone surcharge, and be billed in full min increments, ... if you want something like that, let me know, but it will not be the cheapest for short calls! Regards, Jason ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 03:11:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Blasts Yahoo for Identifying Posters If you post a remark about a company on a Yahoo message board, watch out: The company might force Yahoo to identify you. Then it might sue you. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/display/0,1449,7564,00.html ------------------------------ From: Mike Pettis Subject: Re: Question About C.O. Finder NPA/NXX Software Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 06:52:04 -0500 You can get information about this software at: http://www.stuffsoftware.com Mike Pettis stuff@mpinet.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes indeed, you can find it there and this is a great opportunity for me to remind everyone that Stuff Software has been a sponsor of this Digest for several years. Paula Pettis has had a listing on http://telecom-digest.org/sponsorlinks.html for many years. Whenever you need the sort of software or services described, I wish you would at least check with them. They also list new prefix changes each month at their site. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike Hinman Subject: Western Electric Stuff Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 06:48:41 -0500 I have a very old Western Electric Dynamotor that I think was made in the 40s or early 50s. I am told it was used for telephone circuit power? Anyway, if anyone knows of a site or newsgroup interested in old WE stuff please let me know. Thanks, Mike Hinman http://www.hometechs.com bfttfan@bellsouth.net Hinman and Associates of Florida, Inc. Jacksonville, FL [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You may also want to contact David Massey who maintains our online telephone museum here at http://telecom-digest.org/tribute since he has considerable experience with evaluating that older equipment. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Bell Atlantic Lies - So What Else is New? From: Jeffrey C Honig Date: 11 Nov 1999 10:11:08 -0500 Organization: Berkeley Software Design, Inc.; Trumansburg, NY USA Doug Reuben writes: > Bell Atlantic assumes that if you have their book you are their customer, > ie, your line is serviced by them! :) Maybe the group that produces the book does, but BA also makes sure that everyone served by Trumansburg Home Telephone gets one. Probably because they are the default intra-LATA carrier around here. They even called to make sure that I received it in good condition! Thanks, Jeff [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We have that same situation here in Junction City. United is the phone company (well, now they have regretably chosen to call themselves Sprint), but the phone book seen everywhere is published by Southwestern Bell. There are so many SWB phone books laying around in fact that when I first had service turned on here, I 'just assumed' SWB was the company and called them, only to be told I would have to call Sprint instead :( to get local service. Talk about a shock when I heard that. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: Traditional Touch-Tone Automated Attendants Not Making Connection Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 11:09:50 -0500 Organization: It's A Mike! Thursday November 11, 10:45 am Eastern Time Company Press Release SOURCE: Philips Voice Request Traditional Touch-Tone Automated Attendants Not Making The Connection for Today's Business Callers Solutions to Ineffective Call Routing Lie In Speech Recognition Automated Attendants http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/991111/ga_philips_1.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 11:19:58 CST From: clive1@dvorak.amd.com Subject: Re: The $pam Message Pat, I have annoyed by many copies of the $pam message from "Massive Mail" in the last couple of weeks. This spammer is better than most at hiding the e-mail trail, using 3rd-party foreign email relay sites. It's a pity that you published the copy you did, rather than the one which came with a toll-free number: 800-804-4352 so that everybody who wants to inquire about ALL the details of this service can do so without having to pay for a long distance call. This line will answer and let you record a very long message with all your questions, and then it will even play your message back to you if you want to check it carefully. Then you can record it all over again to correct your mistakes, etc. Very helpful, I must say. Clive Dawson [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for submitting this correc- tion, and I am pleased to pass along the correct number for anyone who wants to discuss business with this (admittedly above average) intelligent spammer. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #542 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 12 04:31:05 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id EAA20099; Fri, 12 Nov 1999 04:31:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 04:31:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911120931.EAA20099@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #543 TELECOM Digest Fri, 12 Nov 99 04:31:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 543 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 (Mike Riddle) Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 (Steve Sobol) Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 (Derek J. Balling) BellSouth Privacy Director Launched in Atlanta (Andrew Kaplan) Re: New Improved Siemens Gigaset 2420 (Jamie Hanrahan) Re: Caller ID Proliferation? (bubba@worldnet.att.net) When Will the NANPA Run of of Codes (kevina_toronto1@my-deja.com) Re: Campus Cops Crack Down on Free Music (Justa Lurker) DSL (David Hughes) Re: NPA-NXX Listings (Leonard Erickson) That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Arthur Ross) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Riddle Subject: Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 Date: 11 Nov 1999 20:17:02 -0600 Organization: Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short Reply-To: mriddle@oasis.novia.net > I think the {Omaha World-Herald} needs to get a reporter who knows > how to challenge the 'facts' she is given and write an accurate > report. I think someone got a bee in thier bonnet regarding the very > occassional wrong number directly attributable to 991-1xxx and is > trying now to wage a crusade on the topic. A certain police dispatcher > maybe. PAT] Follow-up story today: Published Thursday November 11, 1999 911 Errors Not a Problem Everywhere BY JOHN W. ALLMAN WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER Some things are universal -- one of them is knowing that by dialing 911, help will arrive. But, across the United States, emergency dispatchers in many cities are finding that every person who calls 911 doesn't need help. Some are trying to dial a friend or loved one. Others might be trying to fax a document or to make an international call. The problem stems from telephone prefixes and area codes that are similar to 911. In Omaha, since March, new customers receiving Cox Communications' digital telephone service have been assigned phone numbers with the prefix 991. And since then, the number of erroneous 911 calls has doubled. That same prefix is also available in 94 other U.S. cities from Maine to Oregon, California to Florida. The problem isn't limited to the 991 prefix. In Garland County, Ark., dispatchers have answered calls from people who are assigned both 991 and 922 prefixes. The problem became almost comical at times, with callers, who refused to believe they had dialed the wrong number, arguing with 911 operators. "Short of sending them a (patrol) car, it's hard to get them to believe, 'Hey, ya'll screwed up,' " said Carlee Boatman, a county 911 dispatcher. That's happening in Omaha, too. Sue Lewis, a Douglas County 911 dispatcher, said she had one man dial her several times when trying to reach a 991 number. Even though she told him he was dialing the wrong number, the man insisted that the number he was trying to call started with 911. After the third or fourth time, a frustrated Lewis connected him to his phone number. "I got tired of answering it," she said. "I kind of felt sorry for him." While emergency dispatch officials in some cities say they have not had reports of trouble, others have found that having similar numbers can prove bothersome. "They're more of an inconvenience," said Anita Velasco, communications administrator for the City of Tucson, Ariz. In Tucson, the 991 prefix is new to the area. It is being assigned to customers of a cellular-phone provider. "Our center already receives about 1,500 calls a day," Velasco said. "They (991 calls) are in that mix, but they're not causing us a problem at this point." FCC officials say they have not received complaints. A spokesman for the federal agency said Friday that the FCC has no plans to ban number combinations that are similar to 911. "I can see where it would be a simple mistake, but it's a matter of getting used to dialing that different pattern," said Rebecca Barnhart, a spokeswoman for the North American Numbering Plan Administration, a division of Lockheed Martin Corp., which assigns phone numbers across the United States. Barnhart said the agency has not, to her knowledge, received complaints about prefixes such as 991. Mark Conrey, emergency 911 director for Douglas County, is filing a complaint with the National Emergency Number Association about the increase in calls since the prefix 991 was introduced. The agency, which had not to this point received complaints about 991, has asked to see Omaha's data, Conrey said. "It's not anything that we can sit back with," he said. "We do believe the problem is associated with 991." In Omaha, the brouhaha began when Cox Communications received 10,000 phone numbers with the 991 prefix from the North American Numbering Plan Administration. Cox started assigning the numbers in March. About the same time, a dramatic increase took place in the number of wrong calls and hang-ups received by Douglas County 911 emergency dispatchers. The increase did not go unnoticed. Dispatchers are handling an average of 6,739 wrong number and hang-up calls a month, which is more than double the average of similar calls received per month in 1998. Of those calls, an average of 1,489 calls a month are hang-ups, each of which requires a patrol officer to go to the caller's house and check on the person's well being if the caller cannot be reached by phone. That's about 500 more trips per month to investigate hang-ups than reported in 1998. Cox Communications has since stopped assigning phone numbers that include 991-1 in the number. About 700 numbers with that combination were assigned before it was discontinued. To date, the company has assigned about half its phone numbers with the 991 prefix. Cox also is instructing its employees to educate customers about asking their friends and acquaintances to be careful when they dial, said Mike Kohler, director of public affairs. Another solution is for the telecommunications company to seek a different prefix, which it has done, Kohler said. Cox will soon begin assigning the prefix 614. That solution, however, only highlights a larger issue: Growing demand coupled with an antiquated way of allocating phone numbers means that prefixes are rapidly becoming an endangered species. Because prefixes are attached to 10,000-number blocks, many of the numbers go unused, especially in smaller cities and towns. In Nebraska alone, the North American Numbering Council estimates that 50 percent to 70 percent of the phone numbers assigned are not being used, said Nebraska Public Service Commissioner Anne Boyle of Omaha. As more and more requests are made for phone numbers to accommo-date home telephones, computer modems, cellular phones and digital pagers, the allotment of available numbers will continue to dwindle. "The country is running out of prefixes," said Karla Ewert, media relations manager for U S West in Nebraska. "When you start dealing with this whole issue of running out of numbers, every time you set numbers aside for any reason, it just speeds up the process." The Nebraska Public Service Commission is discussing several options that might bring sweeping change to the way numbers are assigned, Boyle said. The commission is conducting an audit of Nebraska phone service providers to determine how many numbers are being used. One idea is for some of the state's unused phone numbers to be reassigned to areas needing additional service, Boyle said. The commission also is asking the Federal Communications Commission to reduce the blocks in which numbers are assigned. Boyle said the state commission would like to see prefixes assigned in 1,000-number blocks as opposed to 10,000-number blocks. The FCC appears receptive to this request. In September, the commission granted four states interim authority to utilize various telephone number conservation procedures. One of the procedures is to allow phone numbers to be received in smaller blocks, such as 1,000. Those four states - California, Florida, Massachusetts and New York - have since been joined by a fifth, Maine. The FCC, in its order, also allowed the states the authority to reclaim unused and reserved numbers. There appear to be no official plans to head off problems with prefixes and area codes similar to 911 - either by banning them or using them as a last resort. Barnhart, spokeswoman for the North American Numbering Plan Administration, said the administration has not considered reserving those prefixes similar to 911 as a last resort. "The industry guidelines don't state that those numbers similar to 911 would be assigned last," she said. "It would actually be something we would have to take back to the industry." ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.Net (Steve Sobol) Subject: Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 Date: 11 Nov 1999 21:04:31 GMT Organization: New Age Consulting Service Inc., Cleveland, OH, USA > I think the {Omaha World-Herald} needs to get a reporter who knows > how to challenge the 'facts' she is given and write an accurate > report. I think someone got a bee in their bonnet regarding the very > occassional wrong number directly attributable to 991-1xxx and is > trying now to wage a crusade on the topic. A certain police dispatcher > maybe. PAT] Cleveland has had 216 991-xxxx forever, and has had 911 service since the late 1980's, and I've never heard of the problem happening here. It was worse when my parents' home number was 216 381-1231, before Cleveland got 911 service. The South Euclid, Ohio police department is 216 381-1234. North Shore Technologies Corporation Steven J. Sobol, President & Head Geek 815 Superior Avenue #610 sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Cleveland, Ohio 44114 http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No one else seems to have heard of this problem either except Omaha, where Ms. Lewis personally receives forty or more such calls on each of her shifts, and where one man reached her nine times in a row before she got disgusted and finally connected him herself. I am curious: how could one person dialing nine times in a row (and reaching the police each time) always come up on the same dispatcher position each time? If she got him nine times, how many times did he dial in total, assuming his call each time went to the first available position in some sort of system of rotation? On the other hand, if there were only one or two dispat- chers taking calls -- thus increasing the likelyhood she would have pulled this particular caller that many times 'in a row' then how could the center handle anywhere near the total call volume which was indicated in the earlier article? The math just does not add up and even allowing for some extravagance in telling the story, why is Omaha getting bombed in this way and nowhere else? Why is it necess- ary in the story to tell in detail how the problem only started once a competitive local telco started assigning numbers, and giving the competitor's name? I doubt the competitive telco's customers are the ones misdialing. I certainly do not doubt that some wrong number calls reach police dispatchers, but in the original story and the followup story the math just does not add up. Ms. Lewis alone receives 'nine wrong number calls in a row' and 'forty on every shift' and 'if ten lines are ringing, nine of them will be wrong numbers for the 991 exchange' ?? Assuming Ms. Lewis' experience is typical, then other dispatchers on the same shift and the other shifts are getting about the same volume of wrong numbers. There were 6700+ wrong numbers last month, or in excess of 200 wrong numbers per day all or mostly attributable to the approximatly 700 customers who occupy 991-1xxx? And none of this would have happened if the competitive telco had not gone into business competing with Bell and started assigning 991 numbers would it? They did say it started happening at the same time as the new exchange opened didn't they ... must be the fault of the competitive telco who, in its greed, insisted on a block of ten thousand numbers and there was nowhere else available for them. Why, after all these years have we not heard stories about directory assistance (411 in many places) getting bombed with wrong numbers intended for 441-1xxx or 611 repair service getting bombed with calls for 661-1xxx or telco business offices on 811 getting hit with lots of wrong numbers for 881-1xxx? Why Omaha PD where the rate of wrong number calls seems disproportionatly high? What I would like to see is an audit of WHO was calling WHERE when these incidents occur. Have the dispatchers keep of list of the phone numbers on calls received which appear to be wrong numbers to 911 intended for 991. When possible, find out what number the person was trying to call. Then, let's organize these results. All of the callers are on exchanges in the same central office? I'll bet you anything there is a translation error in that CO with 991 going to 911, or there is some piece of common equipment in that CO which is in trouble. Is the problem worst at times when traffic inbound to police is usually lowest, such as early morning hours? What time of day or night does Ms. Lewis work, when she gets banged that hard with call after call? During early morning hours when traffic is low, a person trying to call some number (whatever number) who encounters an interoffice trunk in trouble or some central office equipment in trouble is more likely on redialing time and again (to get his call through) to repeatedly encounter the troubled equipment than a person with a similar situation in the daytime. The daytimer will release the troubled equipment to dial again, but another seizure will follow instantly by a subscriber going in some other direction and it becomes impossible to pin anything down since no one subscriber gets the same common equipment twice in a row, as would be more likely to happen at, let's say, 3:00 AM. So what exchanges do these calls come FROM? What time of day seems to be worst? Who are the calls going TO? Are they mostly going to a large subscriber on 991-1xxx who because of his inbound call volume could expect a larger number of his calls to go astray before reaching him than say, a residence which only gets three or four calls per day? Do quite a few of the wrong number calls to PD appear to originate on one prefix? Might all those numbers be a PBX or Centrex subscriber who attempted to program his PBX to 'absorb' 9 in such a way that calls to 9-911 or merely 911 would process promptly to the police? PBX admins do attempt to deal with 911 on their own sometimes and maybe when his users (on the PBX) dial 9-991-1xxx something is happening to those 9's on the front ... or it sees the '911' combination in the middle and decides to go with it, thinking that a frightened or incapacitated user 'meant to dial' 911. Any *large* PBX's among the calls FROM? I'd venture to say that if the dispatchers kept a log of FROM and TIME (and as often as possible, TO) for a period of three or four days some definite conclusions could be drawn. If we see results FROM clustered in a given prefix or in the prefixes of a given central office and we see TIME as early morning slow-traffic (from telco's perspective) periods then I would be inclined, as 'they' used to say, to send a man back in the frames and have have him look around a little; and yes, I know 'they' do not have frames any longer; at least I assume Omaha is as up to date telephonically as the rest of the USA. Now if the resultant FROM and TIME factors are evenly distributed throughout the metropolitan area and at various times of day and night, then I would see if TO could reveal anything; i.e. a large subscriber on 991-1xxx getting the sort of incoming volume that the percentage of his calls going to the police was somewhat 'normal'. I know of what I speak. I had a case of my own where I went to my office one day and the phone was ringing off the hook. It turns out the Chicago-Beverly central office had been cut to ESS the night before. Someone decided, by accident I am sure, to translate 922 as 939. Therefore, Sears Roebuck's Credit Card office with its five-position manual cordboard which rocked around the clock on the number WABash 2-4600 is not going to miss one or two calls per minute coming from a central office which decides to place the call on my two-line instrument at WEbster-9-4600, but the person on that end is going to go crazy with calls one behind another never ceasing. When *I* was able to get a line out (not easy when you hang up the phone and it instantly rings again with another caller) I was able to talk to one of the guys at the Wabash central office (which I was also in, 922 and 939 are both wired out of Wabash) and he said he would 'call over there and tell them to change it and reload the tables'. Maybe 20 minutes later, my problem stopped. But I was able to assist by telling the man calls are coming FROM and going TO. It would be nice if the Omaha Poh-leece could make the same assessment of their problem before saying something stupid and getting a newspaper reporter to repeat the stupidity. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 16:25:21 -0800 From: "Derek J. Balling" Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V19 #542 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It seems to me the police are inflating > their numbers here a little to make the problem look worse than it is. > Note the dispatcher saying she receives 40-50 wrong numbers per shift > and that 'nine out of ten ringing calls are wrong numbers' ... if > there are only seven hundred customers in the affected block of > numbers beginning 991-1xxx, how could police statistics be correct? If there are a couple businesses in that block who get decent amounts of phone calls from largely ignorant customers. That combination happens all the time, near as I can tell from looking at AOL subscription rates. :) > Those 991-1xxx subscribers must themselves be getting a huge volume of > calls in order to accomplish that much of a wrong number ratio where > calls to police are concerned. Please go back and read the article > carefully, actually doing the math where the police statistics are > concerned. If they answer 60,000 calls per month, or about 2000 calls > per day or around 83 calls per hour -- which seems to me rather high > for a city like Omaha at more than one call per minute; is it that > crime-ridden of a place in which to live? Keep in mind that in many many areas of the country, you cannot get a police presence without dialing 911, even if it is for something like "loud neighbors" or "cat in a tree". The only place that can physically dispatch a "man in blue" is often the 911 center. Thus, a lot of the calls aren't for crimes, but just for annoyances, nuisances, etc. that require a police presence but aren't "emergency" or "crime-related" in nature. > -- and 6700, or 11 percent > of those are wrong numbers, directly attributable to the 700 or so > hapless folks who have 991-1xxx as their phone number, are they saying > those 700 people are getting at least nine or ten calls per day each > where the person calling them first got a wrong number (i.e. the > police) and had to dial over again? This isn't inconceivable if there are a couple businesses in that block. You're thinking in terms of averages when it only takes one or two big receivers of calls to make a difference. > I think the {Omaha World-Herald} needs to get a reporter who knows > how to challenge the 'facts' she is given and write an accurate > report. I think someone got a bee in thier bonnet regarding the very > occassional wrong number directly attributable to 991-1xxx and is > trying now to wage a crusade on the topic. A certain police dispatcher > maybe. Heck, even if the numbers ARE inflated, I'd have to side with the dispatcher. Assigning numbers which are easily misdialed into emergency-services numbers has got to be one of the most clinically stupid things I've heard of in a long time. D [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, now let's evaluate what you just said. Many 911 systems amount to individual seven digit numbers easily dialed into at a dispatcher's position. For example, in Chicago, SUPerior-7-0000 gets you 911 the same as dialing 911 gets you 911. Trouble is, doing it as 787-0000 bypasses the 911 software and just rings in. *67 even works when you do it that way. That is the number the operator dials when you dial zero and ask the operator to fetch the police. Chicago PD treats it as 'a call from the operator' with no callback number available (assuming *67 was done). I think many/most 911's just eventually wind up on a seven digit number at a dispatcher position. I've returned calls to seven digit numbers and received an answer of 'Chicago Emergency' ... I suspect, but am not positive, that the primary purpose of 911 is to 'treat' the new call; do a database dip, route it to an appropriate position, etc. I do not think they sit there with telephones on their desk with a number plate ID card saying 'phone number 911'. Once the database dip is done and other procedures handled in the half-second or so required, the incoming call is then placed on a circuit with a seven digit number assigned to it. *If you dial the seven digit number directly, i.e. in Chicago the number 312-787-0000, you'll still hit those dispatchers*, who will think the telephone company operator put you through. Oh, hush my mouth! I wasn't supposed to say all that was I? So you consider it clinically stupid to assign numbers which might be confused with 911 (or its output to the work floor) by persons of less than average intelligence. 991 is to close to 911. Would 811 also be to close to 911? What about 011 for international calls? What if I meant to call SPRing-7-0000 and dialed SUPerior-7-0000 by accident? Better get rid of that 777 exchange. And some places use 112 for directory assistance and a company in that town has a PBX which uses ninth level for outgoing calls. So I dial 9-11 and the PBX decides I want the police. Better make all PBX manufacturers use something other than 9 to get outside. Where do you stop in an effort to make dialing a phone idiot-proof? And I am not at all convinced from the story as reported in the newspaper that the idiots are all subscribers in this case. I smell a strong hint of central office problems here with translations, and that some newspapers will accept anything the police and/or the telephone company tell them as is without question. "It's those stupid civilians we have to deal with all the time. What a pain! Can't they ever learn to dial correctly?" and telco replies, "Well if we did not have to tolerate all those competitors, we would not be in such a bind with our numbering scheme; we could just not use any number combinations the public was too stupid to dial correctly." Go back and read the article again please: it starts with a police dispatcher moaning and groaning about how difficult her job is having to deal with stupid civilians who cannot dial correctly, then continues telling us how a competing telco caused all the problems by opening 991, and how none of this would be a problem if genuine telco had been allowed to give out numbers the way it wanted. And you concur that it is stupid to give out look-alike numbers. I mean, aren't we going to stop this areacode/prefix madness now, before the police become overwhelmed with the stupid civilians they are forced to deal with all day? Can we stop the world long enough for police dispatcher Lewis to get off? Now if the poh-leece really want to reduce their call volume to a more manageable level they could stop trying to be an answering service for the whole world, or at least the whole city government. 911 service was developed and defined back in the 1960's as a way to summon the police **when a dire emergency existed which required immediate intervention by an emergency response agency**. A fire is such an emergency. A person stricken with a heart attack is such an emergency. A woman screaming for help on a street corner is such an emergency. Your car having been stolen yesterday and you would like to file a police report is NOT such an emergency. If you do not need IMMEDIATE police intervention then you have no business calling 911!! But 911 services, like so many other parts of municipal government is fraught with politics and power plays. 911 administrators would like everyone to think that they are the only people who could even possibly take any call for the police at all or a variety of other city agencies. And unfortunatly, they have managed to convince many city governments of just that. As a result, they handle calls for everything imaginable; the more calls they get, the more help they need to hire, the bigger the budget their 'department' needs, etc. It has gotten so bad in some places; the phone traffic is so heavy in some places that now we have to consider '311' to handle the overflow, in the hopes the stupid, ignorant citizens they are forced to serve 'can be educated' to dial correctly! With 311 coming, does this mean we will need to eliminate 331? Why not just take 911 back down to its orginal purpose: call to get immediate intervention in dire emergencies? That alone would probably cut their call volume by 75 percent, which is what makes it such heresy to speak about with a bureaucrat or a 911 administrator (one and the same in most cases). And whatever you do, never blame genuine telco or the police for something as long as there remains a citizen who needs to be educated, or do you say as I often do, 're-educated'? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Andrew Kaplan Subject: BellSouth Privacy Director Launched in Atlanta Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 18:31:07 -0500 Call Screening Software Designed by BellSouth Engineers Protects Residential Phone Customers From Unwanted Calls October 28, 1999 ATLANTA - BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) announced today the launch in Atlanta of the new BellSouth Privacy Director service that enables customers to have complete control of their telephone calls and screen out unwanted calls, especially those from unknown and private numbers that don't show up on Caller ID. "No one likes to be interrupted by annoying calls from telemarketers or other unknown persons," said Terry Yarbrough, assistant vice president for product management for BellSouth Consumer Services. "We are extremely excited to be able to offer customers this hallmark service that helps them screen out unwanted calls while being able to accept calls from friends and family members who have their names blocked from Caller ID." Privacy Director service works in conjunction with Caller ID Deluxe. When a person calls with a blocked or unknown number that won't show up on Caller ID, Privacy Director service answers the call and gives the callers the option of identifying themselves. If they refuse to identify who they are, the phone doesn't ring at the BellSouth customer's home and they are not interrupted. If the callers identify themselves, the phone rings and Privacy Director tells the customer who is calling. The customer then has the option of answering the call, ignoring the call, or sending phone solicitors a sales reject message. "Customers love Caller ID and Call Waiting, making those two services our most popular features," Yarbrough said. "Now Privacy Director service provides the trifecta of privacy, making it easy and convenient for customers to manage their time and meet their communications needs." Because Privacy Director service gives customers a great value and provides a solution to telemarketing calls and other interruptions from unknown callers, BellSouth expects the new call-screening service to be one of the most popular ever offered. A unique aspect of the design of Privacy Director service is that BellSouth designed and wrote the product software itself, a national first in the industry. The Privacy Director software was created in collaboration with Lucent Technologies Communications Software Unit, who also created the intelligent network hardware. BellSouth chose to write its own software because lab tests reveal additional opportunities for advancements not available under the product's original design. "BellSouth wanted customize the call-screening software to address the specific needs of our customers and make it as convenient and easy to use as possible," Yarbrough said. Enhancements created by BellSouth's software design included giving a "private number" caller the ability to block or unblock their number. The BellSouth software enables a private caller to press "1" to unblock number and complete the call or to record their name and keep their number private. "By designing our own unique call-screening software, we will be able to make changes as the need arises to incorporate future enhancements and integrate our services on the same calling platforms," Yarbrough said. Privacy Director service was successfully tested in Stuart and Port St. Lucie, Fla., beginning July 15, and resulted in more than 600 customer subscriptions, on target with pre-trial estimates. Privacy Director service became available in South Florida on September 23 and received overwhelming success with an average of more than 1,100 new subscriptions per day. Privacy Director will roll-out throughout the BellSouth nine-state region next year. Privacy Director service is available for $5.95 per month plus a one-time programming fee of $19.95. Customers with the BellSouth Complete Choice plan can have Privacy Director service for just one penny a month after a $19.95 programming fee. To order the service, Atlanta area customers should call toll-free 877-487-8525. BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) is a $25 billion communications service company. It provides telecommunications, wireless communications, cable and digital TV, directory advertising and publishing, and Internet and data services to nearly 36 million customers in 19 countries worldwide. Debbie Locker (404) 927-7445 dlocker@bellsouth.net Rich Jeffers (404) 927-7430 jeffersr@bellsouth.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I hate to rain on their party, but their service is neither unique nor is it the first. We subscribers to MyLine have had that feature available for several years where the caller can be required to speak before the connection is made if desired. The user hears what the caller says, and then directs MyLine to put the call through or send it to voicemail. And instead of it costing $5.95 per month plus a programming fee of $19.95, with MyLine you program it yourself, on or off, forward to where, etc at no charge. It is automatically a part of MyLine. But if BellSouth is happy claiming they are first with this 'unique' service then let them claim it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jeh@cmkrnl.com (Jamie Hanrahan) Subject: Re: New Improved Siemens Gigaset 2420 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 04:26:10 GMT Organization: Kernel Mode Systems On Mon, 08 Nov 1999 23:20:56 -0500, steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) wrote: > boudreaux@hathawayprocess.com (Gary Boudreaux) spake thusly and wrote: >> Is the new version of the 2420 (with ability to "barge in" on an >> existing call from a remote handset) available yet? If so, is there a >> way to distinguish this new version by looking at the box? > We have the newest phones available at http://www.sellcom.com/siemens.html > I would go by the features rather than the box. > Does Caller ID set the clock? It says it does on your web site. Does the new version allow you to delete messages during remote playback? During playback, does it let you skip ahead or back by anything but entire messages? (It pains me no end to have to re-listen to an entire long message just to re-hear the phone number at the end ...) Did they improve the rubbery, wobbly, convex-so-your-finger-slips-off- of-them "chiclet" buttons on the base? --- Jamie Hanrahan, Kernel Mode Systems, San Diego CA Windows NT/2000 driver consulting and training http://www.kernel-mode.com/ Please post replies, followups, questions, etc., in news, not via e-mail. ------------------------------ From: bubba Subject: Re: Caller ID Proliferation? Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 21:41:46 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services 99% of the time unknown name and number, out of area or unavailable calls are from telemarketers or pollsters and it's never been anyone I actually want to talk to. Get a caller ID box that rejects calls and set it to reject unknown name/number. Your phone will still ring since the caller ID info is transmitted between the first and second rings before being rejected, but after a week or two the calls will almost stop. This aproach worked well for me. On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 09:52:18 -0500, Danny Shurett wrote: > How much longer will it take so that all incoming calls will have > Caller-ID information? It seems like all the calls I wish I hadn't > answered are always unknown name, unknown number. > This question is prompted by an attempt to send a fax to my home phone > line at 1:30am. ------------------------------ From: kevina_toronto1@my-deja.com Subject: When Will the NANPA Run Out of Codes Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 22:31:57 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. At the current rate the NANPA is using up area codes when will we run out of area codes? Do you think that we will move all codes to new scheme ie (xxx)-xxxx-xxxx as I have seen at lincmad.com ? Has anyone done any research into the cost of changing all the systems in North America (local, long distance, etc.) for this change? I was also wondering has any phone companies started upgrading their system to accomodate the change that might be nessary? With the change to the NANPA will the plan be forced to go to three digit country codes ie. one for each country? As well the * codes ie *69 is 1169 why not change 1169 to 11169 etc. this would allow us to adapt some IUT recommendations ie 112 for police, fire, ambulance. As well why allow the use of 00 as well as 011? Yes 00 by itself does give you your long distance operator, but doesn't 0 by itself give you the local operator? ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Re: Campus Cops Crack Down on Free Music Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Reply to Telecom Digest) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 22:44:08 GMT It was Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:23:54 -0500, and Monty Solomon wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > If, at the behest of record companies, university officials conducted > surprise searches of dorm rooms and punished the students found to > possess dubbed tapes and duplicated CDs, it's likely that the press > and the pundits would be outraged. But when the equivalent happened > online, reporters found hardly anyone to stick up for the kids. Not exactly, but good hype. > On Oct. 18, according to Wired News, administrators at Carnegie Mellon > University performed an "unannounced, random search of 250 student > files ... including some that were password-protected." Seventy-one > students who were hosting MP3 files, movies and copyrighted games had > their dorm room Internet access revoked following the search. Ah, so they were using university provided service to transfer the music files from their computers to the world. The students were had computers that were accessable to the general public via the internet. Not exactly the same as an illegal cassette dub being loaned around campus. The students had posted the files in a very public place. > In order > to get their access back, reported the New York Times, students will > have to attend a 90-minute seminar on copyright issues and write an > essay about "what they learned." Presumably, a treatise on the > absurdities of trying to regulate music on the Web won't cut it. Probably not -- but a 90 minute lecture and an essay is minimal punishment. They aren't being turned over for prosecution, just a repremand. Hopefully ethics will also be covered in their seminar. JL ------------------------------ From: David Hughes Subject: DSL Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 16:52:17 -0600 I am interested in learning about the pros and cons of DSL service. Do you have an opinion or can you point me toward sites that can assist me? Thank you. ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: NPA-NXX Listings Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 14:59:42 PST Organization: Shadownet robin.roberts@brite.com writes: > Try the North American Numbering Plan Administration: > http://www.nanpa.com/ > and specifically: > http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/co_code_assignments.html They won't help him. He needs lists that give the city (actually rate center in most lists). And so far that NANPA site *doesn't* have such. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 17:32:37 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas editor@telecom-digest.org wrote in Volume 19, Issue 538: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This reminds me of the idiots working > at inbound call centers who take orders for products advertised on > television who, when they receive an order from someone in New Mexico, > insist that they cannot ship outside the USA. And no amount of talking > will convince them that New Mexico is in the USA and not part of > Mexico. People in the town of Mexico, Missouri have the same problem > I am told. As soon as the word 'Mexico' is spoken, the telemarketer/ > order taker starts running their mouth. I attempted to call a number > in New Mexico once via an inward operator (trouble in dialing it > direct) only to have the operator switch me to the international > center in Pittsburgh, PA. PAT] Guess this must be a remarkably persistent phenomenon, not restricted to telemarketing and CSRs either. Many years ago I travelled to New Mexico from New England for a job interview. I was astounded at the number of people back in the Boston 'burbs who wanted to know what kind of passport you needed. These were mostly college-educated folks who, one would think, would know that it has been part of the US of A since 1912. Go figure. -- Best -- Arthur [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is how I figure it ... very sadly, many components of American education have been dumbed down to the point that a *good* high school education in the 1950-60's is about the equivilent of two years of college today, perhaps three years of college, in areas like the social sciences and the fine arts. It is true there are many subjects taught in universities today which would have been incomprehensible in the 1950-60's, but in so many 'core' areas the high schools are doing a very poor job of preparing guys to go on to higher education. Sadly also, a lot of folks don't have any idea how badly they were cheated educationally when it comes to certain 'core' topics. I guess they do not miss what they never knew about to start with. I'm hardly perfect in spelling and grammar, yet I get messages for this Digest which make me absolutely cringe at times. I simply repair them as best I can, or sometimes re-write the message totally, attach the person's name to it and print it here rather than flame them for their spelling, or toss the message out unused, etc. In some unmoderated Usenet groups between the spam and the virtually illegible postings from some people the group is almost useless. No one should be flamed for their spelling and grammar, but there are times on the net it gets ridiculous. And as you have exper- ienced, many US citizens do not even know all the various parts of the country they live in. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #543 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 12 19:48:08 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id TAA19888; Fri, 12 Nov 1999 19:48:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 19:48:08 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911130048.TAA19888@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #544 TELECOM Digest Fri, 12 Nov 99 19:48:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 544 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Ronald B. Oakes) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (The bald one) Re: That Foreign Country Between AZ and TX (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Charles Johnson) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Dana Paxson) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (J.F. Mezei) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Thomas A. Horsley) Editor's Perogative (was Re: That Foreign Country) (nospam) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: oakes@crecendo.cig.mot.com (Ronald B. Oakes) Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Date: 12 Nov 1999 15:35:07 GMT Organization: Motorola CIG On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 17:32:37 -0700, Arthur Ross wrote: > editor@telecom-digest.org wrote in Volume 19, Issue 538: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This reminds me of the idiots working >> at inbound call centers who take orders for products advertised on >> television who, when they receive an order from someone in New Mexico, >> insist that they cannot ship outside the USA. And no amount of talking >> will convince them that New Mexico is in the USA and not part of >> Mexico. People in the town of Mexico, Missouri have the same problem >> I am told. As soon as the word 'Mexico' is spoken, the telemarketer/ >> order taker starts running their mouth. I attempted to call a number >> in New Mexico once via an inward operator (trouble in dialing it >> direct) only to have the operator switch me to the international >> center in Pittsburgh, PA. PAT] > Guess this must be a remarkably persistent phenomenon, not restricted > to telemarketing and CSRs either. Many years ago I traveled to New > Mexico from New England for a job interview. I was astounded at the > number of people back in the Boston 'burbs who wanted to know what > kind of passport you needed. These were mostly college-educated folks > who, one would think, would know that it has been part of the US of A > since 1912. Go figure. The problem with New Mexico being confused with a foreign country is common enough that the New Mexico Magazine has run a monthly column for many years entitled "One of our Fifty is Missing." Personally, I never encountered a business that thought that New Mexico was a foreign country, but once, when visiting my aunt in Kentucky when I was about 13, I had a kid very surprised that I spoke English as well as I did. Although I grew up in Albuquerque, I don't speak more than a dozen words of Spanish, half of those picked up from Sesame Street. My father reports that once when flying from Michigan in the days before computer reservation systems, being informed that the airline didn't fly to Albuquerque. The person taking the reservation was looking in the foreign fare book. Perhaps the most recently publicized case of this was when a resident of New Mexico tried to get tickets for the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta and they were told to go to the agency that handled foreign sales. Because of this, a friend of the New Mexico resident established an Embassy for New Mexico in Atlanta. Fortunately, I have never encountered a phone system that did not know where to route calls with a 505 area code. I guess that is one advantage of having a state that hasn't had to split area codes yet. Ron Oakes ------------------------------ From: stanri@yahooREMOVETHISPART.com (The bald one) Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 15:41:44 GMT Organization: @Home Network On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 17:32:37 -0700, Arthur Ross wrote: > Guess this must be a remarkably persistent phenomenon, not restricted > to telemarketing and CSRs either. Many years ago I travelled to New > Mexico from New England for a job interview. I was astounded at the > number of people back in the Boston 'burbs who wanted to know what > kind of passport you needed. These were mostly college-educated folks > who, one would think, would know that it has been part of the US of A > since 1912. Go figure. I live in Rhode Island, and have run into the same thing ... "Rhode Island, where's that?? A small island somewhere??" or as one person asked once, and they were serious ... "Your from the island of Rhodes, how close to the Greek mainland are you." Gee, maybe I do need a passport, or at the very least, a green card. Like everyone else, I hate spam. To reply, remove the "REMOVETHISPART" from the email address. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 10:36:37 -0600 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Arthur Ross (a.ross@ieee.org) wrote: > These were mostly college-educated folks who, one would think, > would know that it [state of New Mexico, NM] has been part of > the US of A since 1912. Go figure. Not to mention some who think that Canada is the 51st state, or that Canada (even Windsor, Niagra, Toronto, etc. in ON -- or Vancouver, Victoria, etc. in BC -- etc.) are some COLD COLD cities near Santa's workshop at the North Pole! Everyone _KNOWS_ that Canada is the "catch-all" name for the additional ten (or thirteen if you include YT/NWT/VU) US states! But SERIOUSLY, regarding the US _STATE_ of New Mexico ... That region has actually been a part of the U.S. of A., since right after the Mexican-American War circa 1848. What are now the "states" of Arizona and New Mexico were a _TERRITORY_ of the US until AZ gained "statehood" (1910?), and then the US "TERRITORY of NM" gained "statehood" in 1912. Now, telephonically, regarding the US State of New Mexico, and the independent COUNTRY of Mexico, during the 1970's, when the 903 NPA code of the NANP/DDD Network (World Zone / Country Code +1) was used for about twelve-to-fifteen locations/ratecenters along the northwestern border of the Republic of Mexico, in the Mexican states of Baja California Norte, Sonora, and even Chihuahua ... (Prior to circa 1980, telephonically, much of the northwest Mexican border region was owned in part by Pacific (Bell) Tel & Tel and AT&T executives) The town of Las Palomas CHIH actually got its _DIALTONE_ from the Contel central office switch in Columbus, NM (USA). +1-903-549- indicated Las Palomas CHIH (MEXICO) - not anymore, though. +1-505-531- indicates Columbus NM (USA) - still does. At the time, the switch was a SxS (Step) switch, and you could LOCALLY dial just the last four digits for calls within _AND_BETWEEN_ Columbus NM (USA) and Las Palomas CHIH (MEXICO). The "thousands" and -xxxx line-numbers were _NOT_ duplicated between the 903-549- and 505-531- NPA-NNX central office codes! I assume that it could have been possible for a US/Canadian caller (or an overseas caller calling to the NANP) to dial a line-number (-xxxx) actually in Las Palomas CHIH (MEXICO) using +1-505-531-xxxx, "as if" the call were to Columbus NM (USA), and thus be billed "domestic" US or Canada-to-US rates (or if calling from overseas, the rate to the US from that country), as opposed to the OVERLY INFLATED EXHORBITANT rate to call Mexico if dialing +1-903-549-xxxx! :-})>>> Of course, AT&T/Bell System rates to Mexican border towns, while somewhat higher than domestic (or even US-to-Canada) rates of similar distance, have usually been comparably less expensive than the rates to points "deep" within Mexico via Telmex. In October 1980, the 903 NPA was elimated, and all dialing to the northwestern border towns was re-numbered to conform with that part of Mexico's own Country Code +52, which within Mexico is in the '6x(x)' range of city codes. Thus for those who didn't have IDDD (011+/01+) access from the US or Canada, calling to _ALL_ of +52-6 ... was possible using a pseudo NANP area code, 70-6, the third-digit '6' doing a 'double-duty' as both the third-digit of the NANP area code _AND_ as the first-digit of the +52 Mexican city-code! However, all of the Telefonica Fronteriza (by then re-named Telefonos de Noroeste) towns and directly served Mountain Bell and Contel locations along the northwest Mexican border still "homed" on US Bell System toll switches or even got their _DIALTONE_ from the United States. Las Palomas CHIH (MEXICO) was changed as such: +1-903-549-xxxx (OLD) +52-654-9-xxxx (NEW) +1-70-654-9-xxxx (alternate new) There really was _NO_ internal change to their own routing digits at that time. (However, OTHER Mexican border towns did have one or two digits changed from their old NNX code under NPA 903, when changing to pseudo NPA 70-6...) Sometime during the 1980's, all of the Mexican border towns that "homed" on US toll switches still had connections with those US toll switches, but their "primary homings" were changed to home on Telmex (or Telnor) toll switches. And those towns that actually got _DIALTONE_ from the US -- during the 1980's, Telmex re-associated those customers to thus get dialtone from Telmex' own central offices located within Mexico. Las Palomas CHIH (Mexico) was no longer receiving dialtone from the Contel c.o. switch in Columbus NM (USA), but instead now got its dialtone from a (new digital remote?) switch, and was also re-numbered to be part of another city-code range within +52 Mexico -- I think it was/is +52-166-6-xxxx. And since the city-code didn't start with a '6', they couldn't be dialed as a "pseudo-NANP" call anymore with 70-6. Incidently, the pseudo-NANP uses of 70-6 and 90-5 were elimated by Bellcore-NANPA circa Feb.1992. At that time, ALL calling to Mexico, ANYWHERE within Mexico, HAD to be dialed as an IDDD 011+/01+ 52 + eight-national-digits call. If one didn't have customer IDDD origination in their SxS or #5XB type office, they lost out on dialing as 70-6 (most of northwest Mexico) or 90-5 (Mexico City and vicinity), and HAD to (temporarily, until IDDD origination for customers came to their area) place the call via an AT&T (or Stentor Canada) Operator. As for Columbus NM (USA), for most of the 1990's, the local telco has been "Valley Telephone Co-Op". I don't know if Contel got out of Columbus NM prior to their purchase by GTE, or if Columbus NM was one of the ratecenters that was sold as part of the GTE-Contel merger in the early 1990's. Finally: The former 903 NPA for Northwest Mexico was re-assigned to northeastern Texas in the 1990/91 split of 214 (Dallas Metro); The former 70-6 pseudo-NPA was re-assigned to northern Georgia in the 1992 split of 404 (Atlanta Metro); And the former 90-5 pseudo-NPA was re-assigned to southeastern Ontario in the 1993 split of 416 (Toronto). MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__HOME:__(USA)__Tel:_CHestnut-1-2497 WORK:__mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu|4710-Wright-Road|__(+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity-5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New-Orleans-28__|fwds-on-no-answr-to Fax:UNiversity-5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail- ------------------------------ From: Charles Johnson Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Date: 12 Nov 1999 16:20:32 EST Organization: Concentric Internet Services Reply-To: Charles Johnson You think New Mexico has problems. I still find literature, even this week, that lists Mexico as being part of Central America and not part of North America. Brazil also has a problem, it is a country from Portugese colonial history, not Spanish (I know the native Americans were there first), and yet even the last U.S. Census form I read last time got this wrong -- the U.S. Government cannot even get this right ... how pathetic. Someone should ask Al Gore and the other candidates what language is spoken in Brazil, and whether or not Brazil is hispanic. That should provide some real education on how America thinks. Brazil is not hispanic. Hispanic from most of the definitions I've read on government forms is "of Spanish sub-culture." Which means that if you are directly from Spain you are not hispanic, and if your country is not from Spanish colonial history, it is not hispanic. Lastly, why the hell is anywhere the Spanish been suddenly considered inferior to Americans? America may be great in most ways, but we still have some major things as a country we need to work on. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 16:49:16 -0500 From: Dana Paxson Reply-To: dwpaxson@acm.org Organization: Dana Paxson Studio Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Pat, You wrote: > Here is how I figure it ... very sadly, > many components of American education have been dumbed down to the > point that a *good* high school education in the 1950-60's is about > the equivilent of two years of college today, perhaps three years of > college, in areas like the social sciences and the fine arts. It is > true there are many subjects taught in universities today which would > have been incomprehensible in the 1950-60's, but in so many 'core' > areas the high schools are doing a very poor job of preparing guys > to go on to higher education ... > In some unmoderated Usenet groups between the spam and > the virtually illegible postings from some people the group is almost > useless. No one should be flamed for their spelling and grammar, but > there are times on the net it gets ridiculous." You really got me started. I'm back in college at age 57, taking calculus refreshers, and sitting in class with kids one-third my age. The community college I go to is great, but they have to offer tons of remediation courses to make up for what the public education system didn't get done. It isn't just the system, though; the kids themselves spend way too much time whining and too little just getting the basics in place. Hell, they practice for piano and guitar and football -- why not for English and math? Hold it, Dana. It might just be because they have to hold long hours part-time jobs just to pay tuition and get by. I overheard one young lady at school talking about her *three* jobs. These young folks can't live with Mom and Dad any more, so they've got to hustle to live. It's brutal. That's why fixing the schools is so important. I shudder to think of what kind of systems engineers we'll have working on the telephony and computer networks of tomorrow ... unless we get back to educating again. Hello? Hello? Regarding the spelling and grammar you see: I teach creative writing occasionally, and get published occasionally myself, and what I see *getting published* by others is terrible. I can't begin to imagine the horrors of a full-time magazine editor who is screening manuscripts. But I've seen things that would turn any real writer green ... regardless of initial skin tone. Dana W. Paxson dwpaxson@acm.org 716 224-9356 Reality boggles everything. That's why we've got denial. ------------------------------ From: J.F. Mezei Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 17:39:58 -0500 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is how I figure it ... very sadly, > many components of American education have been dumbed down to the > point that a *good* high school education in the 1950-60's is about > the equivilent of two years of college today I disagree. I am in Canada. I was never taught US history or geography at school. Yet, I am probably able to list most if not all US states. Why ? Because I have seen maps, and have heard names of states on TV often enough. Perhaps maps of the USA are not common enough in certain social circles in the USA ? In recent years, I have found that when purchasing stuff from a USA outfit, they are more knowledgeable about that fact that Canada does not have a numeric zip-code system (ANA NAN instead of NNNNN) So it seems that geographical knowledge is improving in the USA. ------------------------------ From: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Date: 12 Nov 1999 18:10:06 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is how I figure it ... very sadly, > many components of American education have been dumbed down to the > point that a *good* high school education in the 1950-60's is about > the equivilent of two years of college today... Oh, I don't know about that. I had a teacher in the 60's who insisted a geography book we had that said the Florida keys were the southernmost point in the US was wrong because you could look at the map and see that Baja California obviously extended further south ... So as you see, the confusion with Mexico extends in the other direction with California (just to even things up, I guess :-). >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And regretably, a lot of high school teachers in the USA are *dumb* also. That is very, very sad. And when an exceptionally good, smart teacher comes along such as Marva Collins in Chicago, they are quickly ridiculed and driven out of the system so that students and other teachers do not get any ideas on how to do better. Chicago remember, is the town where the school board said they would be quite content if at least fifteen percent of the students in a given school were able to read at some sort of nationally stand- ardized grade level. And it was quite an accomplishment for them to reach that plateau. They were going to set the minimum level of accomplishment for each school at thirty percent of its students being up to standard or beyond with the threat that those schools which did not meet that minimum standard would be 'reconstituted', i.e. closed entirely and re-opened 'in place' with entirely new staff and very close probationary supervision. Then they found that by keeping the minimum at thirty percent of the students reading at an appropriate level, more than half the schools in the system would have to undergo reconstitution, so they backed it down to the fifteen percent require- ment, and only had to reconstitute about a dozen of the worst schools. This, from a school system that in the 1940-50's was voted tops in the entire USA on several occassions. Very very sad. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nospam@elmhurst.msg.net (nospam) Subject: Editor's Perogative (was Re: That Foreign Country) Date: 12 Nov 1999 11:27:35 -0600 Organization: MSG.Net, Inc. In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Arthur Ross : > I'm hardly perfect in spelling and grammar, yet > I get messages for this Digest which make me absolutely cringe at > times. I simply repair them as best I can, or sometimes re-write the > message totally, attach the person's name to it and print it here > rather than flame them for their spelling, or toss the message out > unused, etc. Is this really the best way to handle messages with minor errors in grammar? I notice that every time I send a message to the Digest, you will correct all my minor errors in punctuation -- it bothered me the first few times I noticed that what appeared was not what I had written. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, it is the best way. Some people send me stuff where they cannot even edit out unrelated material. I get messages each day from people who *quote the entire issue of the Digest* in which something appeared and then add a two line reply of their own. I get messages from people which are several lines long as one continuous sentence, or who do not realize that sentences have to have subjects and verbs. I do not require that writers here use {Chicago Manual of Style} guidelines even though I have considered a couple times using that reference as my own guideline in preparation of the Digest. Now what happens when you mass-produce digests and newsgroups as I do, between Telecom/c.d.t. and Airwaves/r.r.b. you handle such a volume of mail that of necessity at times you have to whiz through it barely reading it, or looking for only the 'worst offenses' in spelling, grammar, etc. In that sense, my digest production is a lot like producing a large daily newspaper. Do you ever read the {New York Times}, the {Chicago Tribune} or any of a dozen other papers and see an absolutely glaring typographical error? I am the same way. I don't shed any tears about it, although when I first catch it -- typically about ten seconds after the mailing has started and it is too late to go back and correct it -- I have been known to scream, cuss and kick the cat. I can tell you that mail received here which is well prepared and which requires only a minimum of editing or no editing at all will always go out first. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #544 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 12 23:48:11 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id XAA27194; Fri, 12 Nov 1999 23:48:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 23:48:11 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911130448.XAA27194@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #545 TELECOM Digest Fri, 12 Nov 99 23:48:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 545 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: BellSouth Privacy Director Launched in Atlanta (Bruce Larrabee) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (John McHarry) Re: DSL (Grover C. McCoury III) Re: DSL (Sean McGrath) Re: When Will the NANPA Run Out of Codes (Linc Madison) Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? (Andrew Tannenbaum) Siemens GigaSet 2420 (John M. Grosvenor) Re: New Improved Siemens Gigaset 2420 (Steve Winter) Western Electric/Janette Dynamotor (Michael Hinman) Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 (John David Galt) Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 (Ron Walter) Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 (Ryan Tucker) Omaha and 911 (Robert S. Hall) USWest Residential ADSL vs. Qwest LD (Guy Helmer) Re: Caller ID Proliferation? (Ron Walter) Re: Caller ID Proliferation? (Julian Thomas) Re: Caller ID Proliferation? (Brian Elfert) Line Identification Phone Number? (Dave Carpenter) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: larb0@aol.com (Bruce Larrabee) Date: 12 Nov 1999 23:42:59 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: BellSouth Privacy Director Launched in Atlanta > But if BellSouth is happy claiming they are first with this 'unique' > service then let them claim it. PAT] It's also very similar to Ameritech's "Privacy Manager" rolled out several months ago ... maybe even a year? BIL ------------------------------ From: mcharry@erols.com (John McHarry) Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 00:29:48 GMT On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 17:32:37 -0700, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Arthur Ross : >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This reminds me of the idiots working >> at inbound call centers who take orders for products advertised on >> television who, when they receive an order from someone in New Mexico, >> insist that they cannot ship outside the USA ... > Guess this must be a remarkably persistent phenomenon, not restricted > to telemarketing and CSRs either. Many years ago I travelled to New > Mexico from New England for a job interview. I was astounded at the > number of people back in the Boston 'burbs who wanted to know what > kind of passport you needed. I guess people from the "real" Boston area would need one. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 14:08:49 -0800 From: Grover C. McCoury III Organization: Corvia Networks, Inc. Subject: Re: DSL ADSL Forum is at http://www.adsl.com/ David Hughes wrote: > I am interested in learning about the pros and cons of DSL service. Do > you have an opinion or can you point me toward sites that can assist > me? ********************************** Grover C. McCoury III @ Corvia Networks, Inc. physical: 212 Gibraltar Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94089 audio: (408)752-0550 x128 electronic: grover@corvia.com WWW: http://www.corvia.com **********************************/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 08:14:37 -0800 From: Sean McGrath Subject: Re: DSL Organization: SBC Internet Services Also visit http://www.dsl-reports.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 09:12:58 -0800 From: Linc Madison Subject: Re: When Will the NANPA Run Out of Codes In article , wrote: > At the current rate the NANPA is using up area codes when will we run > out of area codes? Do you think that we will move all codes to new > scheme ie (xxx)-xxxx-xxxx as I have seen at lincmad.com ? Has anyone > done any research into the cost of changing all the systems in North > America (local, long distance, etc.) for this change? I was also > wondering has any phone companies started upgrading their system to > accomodate the change that might be nessary? First of all, the scheme you have seen on my web site is 4-4-4, not 3-4-4. The majority of schemes for dealing with the exhaust of the NANP require 4-digit area codes. Officially, all that has been decided is that no N9X area codes (290, 291, 292, ... 997, 998, 999) will be assigned so that those number ranges can be used for expansion. As to the cost, it's a bit of a moot point, since the alternative will be to run out of telephone numbers. However, since the cost will be substantial, I strongly favor adding two digits at once (one on the area code, one on the prefix), to maximize the benefits gained for that cost. Even the fastest-growing areas will take several years to absorb a full tenfold increase in local numbers, so there will be a protracted period without area code splits, with several more years of a slow trickle. > With the change to the NANPA will the plan be forced to go to three > digit country codes ie. one for each country? Very, very unlikely. The two issues are completely separate. > As well the * codes ie *69 is 1169 why not change 1169 to 11169 etc. > this would allow us to adapt some IUT recommendations ie 112 for police, > fire, ambulance. First, it's ITU, and second, 112 is not an ITU recommendation. It is exclusively a European Union recommendation. > As well why allow the use of 00 as well as 011? Yes 00 by itself does > give you your long distance operator, but doesn't 0 by itself give you > the local operator? Why should we change to match the rest of the world? They deliberately designed their numbering system to not conform to ours. ------------------------------ From: Andrew Tannenbaum Subject: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 17:36:01 GMT Organization: Brookline, MA, USA I'm looking for references to laws regulating automatic redialing of telephone numbers. If I have a fax server that fails to connect to my intended recipient, if I'm dialing the wrong number by accident, my retry scheme might be quite irritating to the accidental victim. I have heard that such a system should be limited to four retries. I have also heard that there are laws regulating this. I've taken some time to look through the US Federal Code re Telecom at: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/ but haven't found anything there. Did I miss it? I've also searched the Telecom Digest archives and the usual web search engines, to no avail. Are there state laws? Are there laws in countries outside the USA? I've heard rumors about such laws in the UK and Japan. Andy Tannebaum (If you send me email, please remove the anti-spam noise.) ------------------------------ From: John M. Grosvenor Subject: Siemens GigaSet 2420 Date: 12 Nov 1999 10:36:33 PST Organization: Concentric Internet Services OK, I have stayed off this subject for a while, but now, I am going to put in my 2 cents worth. I have owned my 2420 since last December, and have found the same problems as everyone else. So now that Siemens is shipping a unit that solves most (not all) of my concerns, I called Siemens (877-267-3373) to see what relief they would give to the people who helped find all the problems. Well, according to Siemens, they have no option to upgrade my unit, if I want the fixes, I need to buy a complete new unit! Like it isn't just a software upgrade! I could understand needing to send the unit back in, even paying to get the new software, but they say that they don't do this! So, I asked to talk to a supervisor, and got put into a voice mail, and after two days, haven't heard back. So now, not only am I disappointed in the 2420, I am also disappointed in the company. If anyone knows of a way to upgrade the old units, I would appreciate it. Thanks, John M. Grosvenor ------------------------------ From: steve@sellcom.com (Steve Winter) Subject: Re: New Improved Siemens Gigaset 2420 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 14:53:58 -0500 Organization: WWW.SELLCOM.COM Reply-To: steve@sellcom.com jeh@cmkrnl.com (Jamie Hanrahan) spake thusly and wrote: > Does the new version allow you to delete messages during remote playback? I believe that both versions allow that if you know what button to push. I know it will from the handset. > During playback, does it let you skip ahead or back by anything but > entire messages? (It pains me no end to have to re-listen to an > entire long message just to re-hear the phone number at the end ...) There is one key that will have it read aloud the caller id info for that call. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Cyclades Siemens EnGenius Zoom at discount prices. SSL Secure VISA/MC/AMEX Online ordering New Brick Wall "non-MOV" surge protection Now shipping the new enhanced Siemens 2420 Gigaset ------------------------------ From: Michael Hinman Subject: Western Electric/Janette Dynamotor Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 15:14:57 -0500 I have an old Dynamotor and I am wondering if they have value or collectibility. Mike Hinman http://www.hometechs.com bfttfan@bellsouth.net Hinman and Associates of Florida, Inc. Jacksonville, FL ------------------------------ From: John_David_Galt@acm.org (John David Galt) Organization: Association for Computing Machinery Subject: Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 20:46:21 GMT Why not just avoid issuing 991-1xxx numbers? That's not very many. John David Galt ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 09:46:02 -0600 From: Ron Walter Organization: Capitol City Telephone Subject: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 I must have read a different article because it did not seem to me that the article in the Omaha World Herald was an attack on the provider (Cox Cable) in any way. To me it did not seem to imply that their customers were the ones making the calls either, nor any problem directly related to the provider itself. The problem appears to be related directly to the prefix. No, I don't suppose you hear much about the 911 problems in other areas that use the 991 prefix. Maybe that's because those prefixes have been around for awhile. But when a new prefix is introduced and there is a noticable jump in wrong number calls, something is up. As a phone system vendor, I can give you an example that shows why there's a problem. One of our systems allows you to turn on message lights on another extension by dialing that extension and then the number 2. We are in the 402 area code. On those systems, if there is an extension 14 or extension 140, it frequently finds its message light on because people are picking up the phone, forgetting to select a line or dial 9, then dialing 1-402-xxxxxxx. The system sees it as dialing extension 140 (or 14 and ignores the 0), then 2 turns on the message light. On just about any PBX or Key System with a dial 9 feature, that becomes a real possibility because people sometimes forget they aren't on their home phone so they forget to select a line or dial 9 and start dialing away. So then, they dial 991-1xxx, the first 9 selects a line, the next 3 digits out are 911. So many small key systems today have the dial 9 feature on them as well that it could happen from any size of a system. Another area where that becomes a problem is Centrex users who have to dial 9 before the number they are dialing -- if they forget the 9, the Centrex system sees the first 9 as access, then the next digits are 911. Finally, the numbers don't seem so out of place to me. There is a feature available in a lot of call centers that will route calls, based on caller ID, to the agent who last talked to that number before if that agent is available. In a 911 system that would make sense because in a multiple call situation the caller gets to someone already familiar with the situation. So it may not be a coincidence at all that even if several people are staffing the center the same person got the same agent every time. From my perspective living in Nebraska, the concern here that led to this being a story in the paper doesn't come from another phone company operating, but the concern is over a lack of phone numbers in the 402 area code. Part of the problem is that several small towns like Greenwood have a population of well under 1000 people but have 10,000 numbers reserved for that exchange. Therefore there is some angst in this area about how to get more numbers, which is pretty apparent in the time spent in the latest article dealing with the shortage of numbers. ------------------------------ From: rtucker+from+199911@katan.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 Reply-To: rtucker+replyto+199911@katan.ttgcitn.com Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 12:49:57 GMT Organization: Time Warner Road Runner - Rochester NY TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > Your car having been stolen yesterday and you would like > to file a police report is NOT such an emergency. If you do not need > IMMEDIATE police intervention then you have no business calling 911!! Unfortunately, there is no real, published number for the police here. Many months ago, I was mugged in the city of Rochester (about four houses down from one of their neighbourhood enforcement stations, oddly enough). My wallet was taken, my glasses were broken, and I got some nasty bruises and scrapes. Nothing too major. The friend I was visiting escorted me to his apartment and I called 911. Unfortunately, no description, less than $3 was stolen, and I was OK. I'm happy with that. They say they'll send someone over ASAP to file a police report. Great. I set about cancelling my cards, etc, etc. A few hours later, noone has shown up. I dig out the phone book and try to find a non-emergency number to check on this. There is none. So I call 911 again, hear the ASAP response again, and wait another few hours, and then go home (which is outside of the city). So the next day, I need to find out where I can go to file one. Lo and behold, calling 911 from home gets me the county sheriff. Nuts. So, to call the Rochester police, I have to drive *into* the city, call 911 from a payphone, and wait a few hours (or more) for them to show up. I eventually just stopped by the place four houses down to see what could be done there ... filed a report, got my wallet back (with everything intact except the $2), and it's all good. Now ... the trouble is that I'm living within the city now, but calling 911 from my phone (which is a cellphone) gets me another jurisdiction. No problem during emergencies (sometime, I'll have to relate my last 911-from-a-cellphone emergency, when I had to give directions to my house [which IS on the map] while trying to keep a knife out of me), but it'll make routine stuff difficult. This sounds a lot like what companies who have a toll-free number and nothing else do to folks outside the country ;-) -rt Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ President, TTGCITN Communications Box 92425, Rochester NY 14692-0425 Please keep public threads public -- e-mail responses will be ignored. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The important thing, and the good news, is that you got out of it okay. I'm glad you are safe and sound. In Illinois at least, and perhaps in other states, the law which established 911 service mandated not only that it had to be implemented by a certain date in the 1980's -- a part of the law which was ignored as bureaucrats from different police jurisdictions whose communities shared telco central offices squabbled over who would handle the police calls for the other villages in the same central office -- but also that police were required to maintain an administrative seven digit phone number as well. The legislators who set it up did not want 911 to be used for every call to the police; only emergency calls. Meanwhile the politicians were concerned that by cooperating with other authorities in operating 911 that if anything went wrong, they would be the ones to catch hell, and if anything went right, the other guy would be the one to get the praise and credit. So we went several years past the state-mandated deadline in northern Illinois without 911 in many of the various suburbs until they could get their act together and place public service ahead of petty personal interests. Cellular users still did without 911 for a number of years after that even though simple technical solutions existed which while not absolutely perfect would have worked quite well had not the various bureaucrats in charge of all the different 911 things been so frightened that someone else might get one of their calls, since they regard themselves as the only people who could possibly know anything at all about handling emergencies or responding to the dumb civilians they are required to speak with all day long. It is really too bad that in some places as you point out, the only way to reach police at all is through 911. This is totally in opposi- tion to what 911 was intended for. As 911 was implemented during the 1970-80's, the old fashioned police/fire call-boxes began to vanish. Had you in the old days pulled one of those boxes and when the police arrived in a big hurry told them what you wanted to do was file a report on something, they'd have probably arrested you for causing a false alarm. 911 supposedly was to replace the call-boxes and provide a way to gain immediate police intervention. It is too bad that the administrators of 911 systems started playing politics and turned 911 into an answering service for municipal government instead, with the concept of immediate emergency intervention as one of their 'sidelines' assuming you can get through the congestion. In the middle 1960's I did some volunteer work for the Chicago Public Library in a 'summer school' program they had for little kids in kindergarten and first grade. One thing we taught them was how to use the emergency call boxes located in the hallways of their schools and in the parks, etc. We would show a picture of a house on fire, or two cars which had collided in an intersection, and a 'scary' picture of a man with a gun who was trying to grab a woman's purse. And the lesson was, if they saw something like this, they were to go to the nearest box, pull the lever, then if it was safe for them to do so, to wait there at the box until a policeman arrived, and tell him what they had seen, or take him to where they had seen it, etc. We also taught them about using the phone to call the old POLice-5-1313 number as well or more appropriate for their age, to dial 'zero' and tell the operator about what had happened or was going on. In the middle 1970's we had adapted this to show the kids how to dial 911 on the phone. They were to only do it if some 'bad thing' like the pictures we had shown happened, or if their parents somehow got hurt and asked them to, etc. They were never to call 911 just to 'tease or play tricks on the policemen or their friends', and they were to speak clearly, state their name and say what had happened, then wait there by the phone if it was safe to do so until the policemen or firemen arrived to help them. So it was with just a little pride I read an item in the {Chicago Tribune} one day about 1975 or so. A small blurb on the front page was entitled, 'Today, we have some good news for a change', with a picture of a five year old child who had been in our 'safety class' at the library a week or two before. And the caption read, "This young man is a hero. He saved his mother's life when she was hit by a car. After attending the safety for children class at the library, when his mother was hit as she crossed the street from a park near their home, he went immediatly to the red call box on the wall of the gymnasium in the park and pulled the lever, then ran to meet the firemen when he heard them coming and took them to his mother. He is five years old. We think he is pretty smart." I do not know if the library even offers that program any longer or if it is now considered passe ... or if similar classes are given, what they say to do. Maybe, 'call 911 if you want to find out what day is garbage pickup in your neighborhood.' It is a shame how the politicians had to let 911 get so totally abused. PAT] ------------------------------ Reply-To: From: Robert S. Hall Subject: Omaha and 911 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 23:21:05 +0800 Pat: Something sticks in my mind as not having been mentioned so far with regards to Omaha and its 911 problems. Isn't/wasn't Omaha the "Number 1 Toll-Free destination of the USA" ?? Wouldn't you expect the incumbent telco to have their act together, based on their support of all of those call centers, and the local telecom employee-pool to have enough experienced techs to avoid the problem (if it exists) in setting up a new telco? Translation errors in a switch in Podunk are one thing, but this city has been around for a while as far as telephones are concerned. I installed a computer system for a hotel chain central reservations office there many years ago. My impression, based on my (all too many) visits to Omaha is that a good majority of the residents in that city earned a living at the end of a telephone set. Maybe Ms. Lewis is experiencing post-tele-scum withdraw and is trying to gain some lime-light ... Your points in V19 #543 are all valid, but wouldn't you expect more from a city that has made a large part of its GDP from telephones to be capable of getting it right?! There's no excuse for poor reporting of technology that is unusual for a city, but we're talking about Omaha here. 1-800-MARRIOTT, 1-800-RODEWAY, 1-800-COME-TO-OMAHA-WE WANT-YOUR-CALL-CENTER-BUSINESS ... Rob Hall Hong Kong [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Years ago, when business long distance phone service often consisted of 'banded WATS', Omaha did have a nice advantage: long distance rates there were cheapest of anywhere in the country. The most distance you could go in any direction was a couple thousand miles or less. I think WATS had eight 'bands': The first was for the states which surrounded you and touched your state. Then increasingly larger 'rings' surrounded that until you reached Band six which took in the entire USA except Alaska and Hawaii. Band seven was I believe, part of your state, and Band eight was your entire state. On the east coast or west coast, Band six calls were quite expensive since you had a potential distance of 3000-4000 miles in the call. Large call centers found they could save huge amounts of money in their telecom costs each month by locating in Nebraska -- essentially the geographic center of the continental USA -- since it was 'impossible' to place a call to a distance more than a couple thousand miles away or recieve an incoming 800 toll-free call from any greater distance. But there were other considerations as well, with the cost of long distance phone service not part of the problem: If you are selling something on the phone, you want people to be friendly to your telemarketers; not hostile to them. Speech accents make a big, big difference in that. The company does not want a telemarketer with a 'southern accent' (people in north may be hostile or prejudiced); no 'eastern or New England accents' allowed (people in west may find it hard to understand them). No West Virginians need apply; the company does not want any 'hillbilly sounding' telemarketers trying to sell things to educated people in big cities. And in the big cities, take care not to have any more black telemarketers than you absolutely have to to keep Janet Reno from getting too suspicious; bigoted, racist people everywhere are going to hang up the phone and refuse to buy our long distance service, our vacation packages, or give to our charities if they hear a 'black-sounding voice' giving the pitch. And while you are at it, better make sure the telemarketer you hire does not sound too nasal in her speech; if we are trying to sell something to people over the phone in a small town, it will never, never do to give them the perception that they are talking to a Jewish person in a large city like New York or Chicago. We want them to think we are honest and trustworthy and full of Mom and Apple Pie and Americana ... we want the called-party to *trust us*, not be suspicious of us. We have enough problems trying to sell our crappy products and services over the phone without the people we call thinking some big-city slicker is trying to trick them or that an 'ignorant hillbilly' is on the phone or that black people are lazy and on welfare or that southern people are right wing rednecks or whatever it is that people think about folks who live in California (laid back, sinful lifestyles), etc. The telemarketer pleads in his defense that he is not in the business of ending bigotry, ignorance, religous intolerance and social differ- ences of opinion, etc. He is in the business of selling life insurance, magazine subscriptions, long distance service, collecting money for the benefit of police associations, veterans, crippled children or whatever. Since everyone professes a love for Apple Pie, Mom, and Americana then let's start with those premises and work from there. Where do I find these things? Well, your mother lives in a small town or rural area of Nebraska, Iowa or Kansas. Her speech is bland, and easily understood by all; offensive to no one. She can be trusted when she speaks to you. Now we still have to overcome your resistance to what we are selling; we have to deal with your hostility at being called during dinner or after you have gone to sleep; we still have to get you interested in our product, but at least we don't have to overcome your bigotry about black people, Jewish people, red- neck people, gay people, lazy people, smart people, ignorant people or whatever other bugs you have up your Back Orifice these days. No one can please everyone of course, so the telemarketer just tries to stay as mainstream as he can, which is why he hired your mainstream mother to work for him in his mainstream Omaha office. Hers is one of the anonymous voices on the phone you can trust. And as noted earlier, quite by coincidence, long distance rates were very good there for many, many years, back when it mattered. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ghelmer@cs.iastate.edu (Guy Helmer) Subject: USWest residential ADSL vs. Qwest LD Date: 12 Nov 1999 15:45:21 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA I ordered USWest's Megabit 256 service for my existing primary residential line in early August. After the ADSL service was installed and working (which is another story entirely!), I dropped my residential additional line. USWest's most recent billing showed that they changed the designation for the primary line from "primary residential" to "Megabit DSL" and the additional line from "additional" to "primary residential". I haven't yet received the bill that shows the disconnection of the additional line. Qwest was my LD carrier for the primary residential line, but after I disconnected the additional line, Qwest claimed they received a disconnection notice for the *primary* line. I have called Qwest four times to re-establish my account, and each time the account is disconnected within a day. LD calls are still routed through Qwest by USWest, and I'm still billed at the correct rates, but the disconnect notice kills the calling cards I have for the account. A USWest customer rep said Qwest must be misunderstanding the "Megabit DSL" designation as not being a residential line. USWest says they are not sending Qwest disconnection notices. Qwest says there isn't anything wrong, but obviously something is broken in a system somewhere. Advice on how to get this insidious problem escalated and solved would be appreciated. Guy Helmer, Ph.D. Candidate, Iowa State University Dept. of Computer Science Research Assistant, Ames Laboratory --- ghelmer@scl.ameslab.gov Research Assistant, Dept. of Computer Science --- ghelmer@cs.iastate.edu Teaching Assistant, ComS 652 Distributed Operating Systems ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 10:14:27 -0600 From: Ron Walter Organization: Capitol City Telephone Subject: Re: Caller ID Proliferation? In Volume 19, Issue 542, Danny Shurett wrote: > How much longer will it take so that all incoming calls will have > Caller-ID information? It seems like all the calls I wish I hadn't > answered are always unknown name, unknown number. > This question is prompted by an attempt to send a fax to my home phone > line at 1:30am. Unfortunately there will never be such a time. Though interstate caller ID is getting much more reliable there are a number of issues that will always be there. Caller ID being blocked, calls made from telemarketing centers over T1 lines that don't really have a number to identify them, etc. The other problem is that I doubt Caller ID would have helped you with that fax coming in at such an early hour. Chances are that the call is from a fax line itself which is going to be answered by a fax machine, or it's to a place using an automated fax system so there's no one there to answer anyway. Your best bet would have been, if you've got a modem with fax capability, would be to answer the call with the fax modem. Any of the information you would have needed would be right there. Of course, you won't need to bother since the fax was received and the dumb machine on the other end won't continue its annoying littly auto-redial routine. Yes, it's a pain to set the computer up to answer a call at 1:30 but better than waiting through several calls and always getting that beep beep that tells you it's a fax. ------------------------------ From: jata@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) Subject: Re: Caller ID Proliferation? Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 20:36:01 GMT In , on 11/11/99 at 09:41 PM, bubba said: > 99% of the time unknown name and number, out of area or unavailable calls > are from telemarketers or pollsters and it's never been anyone I actually > want to talk to. Get a caller ID box that rejects calls and set it to > reject unknown name/number. I suspect 99% is high ... but in any case, consider the following scenario: Family member is travelling away from home, has emergency, calls home from some phone or other that is either blocked for caller ID or on a CO that does not transmit the information. Do you really want to lose that call? Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt remove letter a for email (or switch . and @) Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Caller ID Proliferation? From: belfert@foshay.citilink.com (Brian Elfert) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 18:53:13 GMT Danny Shurett writes: > How much longer will it take so that all incoming calls will have > Caller-ID information? It seems like all the calls I wish I hadn't > answered are always unknown name, unknown number. US West does not supply outgoing caller-ID info on Channelized T1 service. Lots of medium to large businesses buy this service. US West does provide outgoing caller ID on PRI service. My father's place of employment has been pestering US West to change this, as many people won't pick up calls that don't have caller ID, as many are telemarketers. Brian ------------------------------ From: Dave Carpenter Subject: Line Identification Phone Number? Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 11:44:46 -0800 I do some in-house, volunteer telecom wiring (new extensions, etc.) for a non-profit volunteer center. I'd like to know the number that I call in order to get back a voice identifier of the line I'm on. I'm in Pac Bell territory (N. California, SF bay area). Sorry about my modified return address, but I hate getting spammed. My correct address is provided below, if you choose to e-mail me. Thanks, Dave Carpenter Sound Logic Note: "From" address is invalid. To reply, delete duplicate portion from the address: < voicebox@dnai_dnai.com > ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #545 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Nov 13 01:20:31 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id BAA00485; Sat, 13 Nov 1999 01:20:31 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 01:20:31 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911130620.BAA00485@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #546 TELECOM Digest Sat, 13 Nov 99 01:20:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 546 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: ISDN Viruses (Fred Goldstein) Re: ISDN Viruses (Mel Beckman) Re: Long Phone Call Linked To Stroke-Like Attack (The Old Bear) Mexico "Off-Net" Telecom Network Project (Leo McCulloch) FCC Expected to Order Line Sharing For DSL Carriers (Monty Solomon) Spy Satellites For Everyone (Monty Solomon) Re: Q: 3COM NBX100 - Experience? (Paul D. Wallend) Re: An Anonymous Example (Tony Pelliccio) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Tony Pelliccio) BellSouth Privacy Director Concern (Ed Ellers) Regulators Unlikely to Back MCI/Sprint Deal (Monty Solomon) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 22:36:11 -0500 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses This time, John Maddaus moves from hoax-spreader to either damn fool or outright liar, and I didn't want to continue the thread, but he concludes, > I say again that this is not part of the debate, I never advocated > proprietary protocols. HOWEVER, knowing what traverses via protocols > is a practical necessity and I'll give you a specific example of what > I mean. Using two pieces of equipment, I have confirmed that some > setup messages coming in over our PRI lines have both Calling and > Called number blank. I can monitor all "D" channel traffic and have > been doing so for months. The monitoring point is at the demarc (DSX > panel monitoring jacks) between the CO and a DMS-100. Maddaus words that to make it sound as if he's exploiting a vulnerability; in fact, he's using an ordinary protocol analyzer. I've used them myself. Given the way ISDN D channel protocols are implemented in the USA, you pretty much need one in order to do all but the easiest ISDN installations. Many fine ISDN devices, even $300 routers, have D-channel analyzers built in, but you can get a really nice one that'll monitor passing traffic. The PRI can be passively monitored, while the BRI "U" point uses a "man in the middle" analyzer. > The calls are all inbound from the CO and all connecting and > establishing modem sessions, some as long as 2 days 4 hours per shot. I've known Internet callers who do that routinely. > We do not see such extended activity ever. Does that not sound a > bit odd? Not in the least. > I have seen this at two locations, one served by U.S. West and the > other BellSouth. How do those calls get routed? "Routed" is not meaningful. It's a phone call, dammit. Some device "dials" via D-channel messages, point to point. > Is it possible that non-traditional IA5 characters and an "unknown" > numbering plan can allow anonymous access to my facilities? NO. The IA5 characters in ISDN are used for calling and called party number. The recipient only uses called party number for identifying what to do with the call. It's usually tariffed as "direct inward dialing" or "multiple subscriber number". Nontraditional characters should lead to calls being dropped. Calling number is optionally set by the sender to allow a PBX to do caller ID down to the originating extension. (E.g., I call from the office and the home phone caller ID shows my PBX extension, not a trunk number.) Nonetheless a PBX is free to set the "calling" number to anything it wants. The network may screen it and validate it; if the number is not one assigned to the PBX, the network should say so, but then the recipient may receive it as an "unknown" number. This could be used, for instance, to provide a few bytes of "free" information to the recipient without actually completing a call. Nothing viral about it. No security risk at all, unless you consider it a major breach of telco security that somebody just might have snuck a four-byte or so "code call" in without paying for the call. Telcos always worry about such things; that's one reason user-to-user signaling is so rare. Since these bits are not processed by the network at all (except perhaps to be screened), there is no security risk. IF the recipient uses calling party number to validate who can call in (not a good idea!), then somebody spoofing the calling number field may get through. But it should show as unscreened, and this is a lousy security device. > I'm open to suggestions on this, but I'll guarantee that somewhere > there is a vulnerability in a standard or implementation of the > standard. Vulnerability to what? Cellular trojan horses? Alligators? Maddaus said VIRUSES, which are programs that self-propagate by hiding inside others. He has produced ZERO evidence of an ISDN virus. > The very fact that > multiple COs from multiple LECs are connecting calls and passing a > blank Q.931 called-number information element into multiple PBXs > (which in turn is ringing dial-up modems) is not according to spec. > But it is happening. Called number is an optional field. If you don't subscribe to it, you don't get it. And even if the CO were passing something that doesn't correspond to one or another version of the spec, that is no evidence of a virus. American ISDN protocol implementations are UNDOCUMENTED. The NI-1 and vendor specs are a starting point, but the behavior is only defined by the switch itself, and an implementor must learn this "folklore". This isn't a security issue, just a pain in the arse for implementors who have to cope with the numerous inconsitencies in the protocols. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 23:14:33 -0800 From: Mel Beckman Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses John S. Maddaus said: > I say again that this is not part of the debate, I never advocated > proprietary protocols. HOWEVER, knowing what traverses via protocols > is a practical necessity and I'll give you a specific example of what > I mean. Using two pieces of equipment, I have confirmed that some > setup messages coming in over our PRI lines have both Calling and > Called number blank. I can monitor all "D" channel traffic and have > been doing so for months. The monitoring point is at the demarc (DSX > panel monitoring jacks) between the CO and a DMS-100. The calls are > all inbound from the CO and all connecting and establishing modem > sessions, some as long as 2 days 4 hours per shot. We do not see such > extended activity ever. Does that not sound a bit odd? > I have seen this at two locations, one served by U.S. West and the > other BellSouth. How do those calls get routed? Is it possible that > non-traditional IA5 characters and an "unknown" numbering plan can > allow anonymous access to my facilities? I'm open to suggestions on > this, but I'll guarantee that somewhere there is a vulnerability in a > standard or implementation of the standard. The very fact that > multiple COs from multiple LECs are connecting calls and passing a > blank Q.931 called-number information element into multiple PBXs > (which in turn is ringing dial-up modems) is not according to spec. > But it is happening. While the spec calls for filling in those fields on PRI, I frequently see them missing on setup messages when debugging calls in PacBell land. The called number field presence depends on switch translations, and sometimes PacBell just gets it wrong. But when calls are coming into a modem pool on a PRI line, nobody cares -- all incoming calls go to an available DSP. Only applications doing DID discrimination would have problems with this, and then presumably the installer debugs the problem and gets translations changed. Multi-day modem calls aren't at all unusual for Internet users. Many ISPs still sell dedicated 56K modem dial-up because there are often no message charges for analog calls, particularly from telecommuters (message unit charges are rare on home phones). The ISP I own has a number of such customers, who prefer ganged modems to ISDN on the cost basis alone. Your question about how the calls get routed is easy: they are routed by called number information injected by the calling party (probably an analog call), and the routing information transits the SS7 network until arriving at the DMS100. The DMS100 is simply failing to populate the D-channel messages properly, and as I said, this is a common problem. It sounds like you may be assuming that the originating LEC is sending a faulty message, but I think that's ruled out by the fact that the call gets routed to the destination. - Mel Beckman ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 09:46:35 -0500 From: The Old Bear Subject: Re: Long Phone Call Linked To Stroke-Like Attack NBJimWeiss@aol.com (Jim Weiss) reported: > NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Stay on the phone long enough and you may > encounter problems worse than your phone bill: One French psychiatrist > experienced temporary, stroke-like symptoms after completing an > hour-long phone call, where he cradled the phone between his head and > shoulder. > http://www.intelihealth.com/enews?251980">http://www.intelihealth.com > /enews?251980 Oddly enough, a few days prior reading the above posting in TELECOM Digest, I attended an excellent production of "The Last Hurrah", a stage adaptation of Edwin O'Connor's 1956 book based upon the life and times of Boston's fabled mayor James Michael Curley [1874-1958]. The Huntington Theatre, a professional stage under the auspices of Boston University, has the practice of providing extensive background notes on the context of its productions. In "The Last Hurrah" program notes, there is the following: "Mayor Curley's oldest daughter Mary served as ceremonial First Lady after her mother's death [in 1930]. In 1950, Mary died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage while talking on the telephone at her apartment. (By dreadful coincidence, her younger brother Leo, later that same day talking on the same telephone, also suffered a hemorrhage and died.)" Although this event is not referenced in the play itself, theatre- going readers of TELECOM Digest may enjoy the play which continues at Boston's Huntington Theatre through November 21 (see http://www.bu.edu/huntington ) Regards, The Old Bear ------------------------------ From: Leo McCulloch Subject: Mexico "Off-Net" Telecom Network Project Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 23:32:53 -0600 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Investment Capital: US$ 3,000, 000 - $US 5,000,000, investment, debt, or equipment lease, or any combination thereof. Investor/Lender Participation: Negotiable Timing: Immediately: General Description: "On-Net" in Mexico consists of one hundred-sixty (160) cities, which is scheduled to be extended to over 300 cities over the next three years. "On-Net" consumes about 66% of all long distance traffic coming into Mexico from the United States. "Off-Net" consists of about 2,000 incorporated villages and towns, and consumes about 33% of US traffic coming into Mexico; 100 million to 150 million minutes per month. TelMex, the only carrier serving "Off-Net" cities, charges other carriers a minimum of $.14 USD per minute to terminate their traffic "Off-Net". Our client proposes to build a voice-over-Internet (VoIP) network to service the "Off-Net" communities of Mexico. This approach to building and operating a long distance network is dramatically less expensive by conventional telephone standards, and works more efficiently employing recently available technologies. This proposed service is not prohibited by Mexico telecom regulations. Our client has a customer which will send to them a minimum of approximately 50 million minutes per month of "Off-Net" traffic once the network is operational. This customer is the single largest generator of traffic from the United States to Mexico, and it sends a mix of about a 50/50 "Off- Net" to "On-Net" traffic each month; that distribution ratio occurs because most Mexican workers who migrate to the U.S., do so from the rural areas of Mexico. Hence a significant amount of traffic is generated from high concentrations of Mexican in the U.S. (Southern California, Texas, Illinois, South Florida, New York-New Jersey metro, etc.) to these rural points. Sophisticated demographic studies have been completed and are available to interested investors. Initial network configuration plans, pricing, early estimates, indicate a capital requirement of US$ 3,000, 000 - $US 5,000,000, with the largest percentage of that required for equipment. We believe our client's customer will generate about $4,500,000 USD a month of sales, with a gross profit margin, after network expense, of about $2,500,000 USD per month. Other potential customers are available. Our client is a sophisticated provider of telecom services in Mexico and internationally active since 1996, profitable since 1998. Rapid recovery of investment. Development of relationship with sophisticated active telecom investors is desired. Detailed information is available to qualified investors upon the execution and delivery of mutual agreements of non-disclosure. Telemex now has technology enabling it to intercept all illegal (grey) traffic to Mexico. Our client can provide approved contracts for Mexico City (including Puebla) as well as all bands in Mexico at competitive rates, which eliminates threat of interruption of services. Termination to Mexico City (including Puebla) is about $.05 per minute, FOB Mexico City. There is transport available from Houston, at $.015 per minute. The balance of the country is available from USA points in the neighborhood of $.10 - $.12 on-net, $.18 or higher off-net. Top technology. Better rates may be negotiated for high volume. Some minimums apply but all programs are suitable for voice/data networks and telecom debit card programs. Lic. Leo Arthur McCulloch Jr., McCulloch & Associates, Attorneys at Law, Dallas, Texas, is an international law firm specializing in the creation of strategic joint ventures, investments, financing and commercial transactions, and legislative and regulatory representation in Mexico, exclusively. We have offices in Mexico, D.F.; Acapulco; Reynosa; and Morelia. We may be reached at e-mail: lamcculloch@worldnet.att.net, tel 817-329- 7445, fax 817-421-5439. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 00:11:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Expected to Order Line Sharing For DSL Carriers WASHINGTON (Reuters) - High-speed Internet service over telephone lines should get a boost next week from the Federal Communications Commission, industry officials said Thursday. The agency is expected to order major local carriers, such as Bell Atlantic Corp. and SBC Communications Inc., to share their lines and allow competitors to offer high-speed data service while the established carrier continues to offer basic voice service to the same customer. http://www.mercurynews.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/085906.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 00:25:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Spy Satellites For Everyone By Kevin Poulsen, ZDTV November 10, 1999 9:59 AM PT On September 30th, less than a week after it left Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Lockheed Martin Athena II rocket, Iconos opened its electronic eye to peer down through 400 miles of space and sky and capture the first high-resolution image produced by a commercial spy satellite. The result is a starkly beautifully black and white photo of Washington, D.C. on which you can count the number of cars leaving National Airport and see clearly the scaffolding around the Washington Monument. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2391297,00.html ------------------------------ From: wallend@my-deja.com (Paul D. Wallend) Subject: Re: Q: 3COM NBX100 - Experience? Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 04:32:26 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Wolfgang, Thanks for opening this thread ... it couldn't be more timely. My associates and I are just finishing a search for PBX solutions and have included several traditional vendors (Siemens, Lucent, InterTel), one communication server vendor (com2001.com) and the NBX solution. We have found that although the unified messaging functionality is a bit incomplete (no faxes, no text-to-voice for reading e-mail and fax headers, etc.) the technology is very attractive and incredibly cost effective. The other more traditional solutions cost USD $30-$50,000 to get unified messaging functionality and the NBX delivers similar, if somewhat less robust features for under $20,000! All that AND you can run it over your existing Ethernet LAN. I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts, those of others and especially from anyone actually using the product. Best regards, Paul D. Wallend VP Operations Avid Sportswear Gardena, CA In article , Wolfgang Schuler wrote: > Any experience with the new LAN-Phone-System NBX 100 from 3COM? > Or any hints to compare different systems ? ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: An Anonymous Example Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 01:40:03 GMT In article , steve@sellcom.com says: > anonymous@cotse.com spake thusly and wrote: >> This is what it will look like. It will always be from the above >> address, with a subject line, and then the disclaimer message >> which is shown below. >> -- >> www.cotse.com/anonmail.htm >> Message sent via the COTSE Anonymous E-mail. >> This message did not originate from the address >> in the from line. It originated from an anonymous >> source. COTSE is not responsible for the contents >> of this message. > Wow, I actually saw someone using it already on one of the religious > newsgroups. They were accusing someone of having sex with animals. > Great public service, Pat! In alt.rhode_island there was a post from "Benjamin Phelps" touting the WBC's Nov. 22nd visit to Providence, RI. I can't wait, I've always wanted a chance to speak to the 'reverend' face to face, shotgun in tow. Guess who it said the poster was - yup - COTSE. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ From: nospam.tonypo1@nospam.home.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Organization: Providence Network Partners Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 02:51:09 GMT In article , stanri@yahoo.com says: > On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 17:32:37 -0700, Arthur Ross > I live in Rhode Island, and have run into the same thing ... "Rhode > Island, where's that?? A small island somewhere??" or as one person > asked once, and they were serious ... "Your from the island of Rhodes, > how close to the Greek mainland are you." > Gee, maybe I do need a passport, or at the very least, a green card. I never say I'm from Rhode Island anymore. Simply saying "Providence" brings instant recognition. I just wish the TV show with the same name were a little more true to Providence. Granted, the shots of downtown and the east side are nice but why not show some of the other parts. == Tony Pelliccio, KD1S formerly KD1NR == Trustee WE1RD ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: BellSouth Privacy Director Concern Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 04:54:11 -0500 A BellSouth press release stated: > Privacy Director service works in conjunction with Caller ID > Deluxe. When a person calls with a blocked or unknown number that > won't show up on Caller ID, Privacy Director service answers the call > and gives the callers the option of identifying themselves. If they > refuse to identify who they are, the phone doesn't ring at the > BellSouth customer's home and they are not interrupted. If the callers > identify themselves, the phone rings and Privacy Director tells the > customer who is calling. The customer then has the option of answering > the call, ignoring the call, or sending phone solicitors a sales > reject message. I have a problem with this. A very big problem. Since this service will work regardless of whether the called party reads the number off a Caller ID display, what justification is there for requiring Caller ID (Deluxe or otherwise) in order to obtain this service? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 01:08:42 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Regulators Unlikely to Back MCI/Sprint Deal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal regulators are unlikely to approve MCI WorldCom Inc.'s proposed $115 billion purchase of Sprint Corp., the Washington Post said in its Saturday edition. Quoting knowledgeable sources, the newspaper said a merger between the second- and third-largest long-distance telephone carriers in the United States would be viewed as a severe blow to competition. http://news.lycos.com/headlines/TopNews/article.asp?docid=RTNEWS-TELECOMS-MCI&date=19991113 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #546 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Nov 13 21:10:57 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id VAA04615; Sat, 13 Nov 1999 21:10:57 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 21:10:57 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911140210.VAA04615@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #547 TELECOM Digest Sat, 13 Nov 99 21:10:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 547 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Court Imposes Gag-Order in a Skiing Newsgroup (J.F. Mezei) NJ Government Agency Wins Court Orders to Seize Domain Name (D. Burstein) TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? (Monty Solomon) Re: Different AT&T International Calling Rates - Why? (Gintas) AT&T Puts 800-555-1212 Up for Sale! (Eli Mantel) AT&T Discontinues 800 Directory Assistance (Stan Schwartz) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Arthur Ross) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Bob Goudreau) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Juha Veijalainen) Re: Caller ID Proliferation? (8192439@my-deja.com) Re: Caller ID Proliferation? (Graham Murray) Wiretap Story Comes Out Scrambled (Monty Solomon) Virgin Goes on Wireless Streak (Monty Solomon) Re: Line Identification Phone Number? (Herb Stein) Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 (Terry Knab) Re: Editor's P[r]erogative (was Re: That Foreign Country) (Ted Byfield) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: J.F. Mezei Subject: Court Imposes Gag-Order in a Skiing Newsgroup Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 15:54:26 -0500 I wonder if this is going to set a precendent? I find it interesting that that court seemed unaware of the global nature of usenet. ------------------------- When is it a Felony to Talk about Zoom Skis? King County District Court Issues First-Ever Usenet Gag Order copyright 1999 by Bert H. Hoff Seattle, WA. 11/12/99 A King County District Judge today issued a far-reaching order that may be a first-ever precedent in cyber-space, banning a man from talking about Zoom skis, or any other skiing-related topic, in the Usenet newsgroup Rec. Skiing.Alpine. A motion to limit the order to ban off-topic posts was denied. The man known as 'Two Buddha' in this Usenet group and on ski hills throughout the Western U.S. will be charged with a felony if he talks about skiing in a skiing newsgroup. The judge is undertaking to moderate the Usenet group, by saying who can or cannot post there, to bring to an end a six-month 'flame war.' She admonished all parties involved to stay off the newsgroup, or at least to post only on-topic posts. She has also specifically banned a man from any posts to the Usenet Rec.Skiing.Alpine newsgroup for a period of one year (King County Dist. Ct. case 99-7536).In this, she has undertaken what no Internet Service Provider has been able to do. Internet service providers have feared to undertake the bold step taken by this King County District Court judge, for fear of lawsuits about censorship under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In this first-ever step, the District Court judge has issued a court order with far-reaching Constitutional dimensions. The Seattle Police Department is also breaking new ground in constitutional law. Seattle Police Department Detective Luanne Shirey persuaded petitioner Edward C. 'Ted' Waldron to post to Rec.Skiing.Alpine on her behalf, requesting all the participants of Rec.Skiing.Alpine to limit their posting to on-topic posts and not to engage in flame wars. As is usual in Usenet newsgroups, this post was met with a flurry of responses, 'Nobody in the police department or anywhere else will tell me when and where I post or what to say' ... 'Detective Shirey can take her post and ...' Ah, the freedom of expression in Usenet, even when the language turns coarse! David Hobbs and Edward C. 'Ted' Waldron, actively assisted at the hearing by Eric Leonard, sought anti-harassment orders under RCW 10.14.040, recently amended to add e-mail and newsgroup posts to the forms of harassment prohibited. When the law was amended in early 1999, concern was raised that it could lead to judicial restriction of freedom of speech in newsgroups. There is no doubt that an ugly flame war was involved. All sides alleged that the other parties had made death threats and threats of physical violence. The judge pointed out that all parties had used uncivilized, disgusting language that should not appear in a newsgroup. Detective Shirey testified that the Seattle Police Department was concerned that the flame wars would escalate into real-world physical violence if the police department and the court did not intervene. The evidence in the case consisted mainly of Usenet posts. Det. Shirey testified that the Police Department had been monitoring the newsgroup for some time and had a couple of 'three-ring binders of posts'. She stated that she and her superiors had made a judgment as to which side to take in the flame war, which threats to take seriously, and which to ignore. Petitioner Ted Waldron stated he had filed at the suggestion of Det. Shirey and others in the Seattle Police Department. The judge dismissed his complaint, stating that he had done a lot to stir things up rather than to defuse them. His posting private and personal information about the respondent and nominating him for an award in the Usenet group Alt. Usenet.Kooks, the judge pointed out, just goes to show that he created things that came back at him. In short, the bench came down on a different side in the flame war than did Det. Luanne Shirey and the Seattle Police Department. But, even where the court disagrees with the police department, do we want the courts and the police department monitoring our participation in Usenet? Government is already involved in monitoring Usenet participation for reasons of 'national security'. If you post something in Usenet that could be considered a physical threat to the President of the United States, you may expect a call from the Secret Service. Recently there has been concern about the National Security Administration's involvement in Project Echelon. According to information on ForumsAmerica.com, Project Echelon began in the 1980s, and is controlled largely by the U. S. National Security Agency (NSA) in coordination with at least four other countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. In a statement by Congressman R. Barr (GA), who has called for Congressional hearings about the project, he asserts that the system allows the government to intercept virtually any internationally transmitted phone conversation, fax, e-mail, or data transfer; the system reportedly monitors two million transmissions per hour, without any court order, oversight, or probable cause to believe the transmission is connected to any criminal activity. According to the discussion on the ForumsAmerica News and Politics discussion newsgroup, the project has come to light because of information leaked from the Government of Australia. There is an irony here. An Australian government employee by the name of Anthea Kerrison forwarded posts from the Rec.Skiing.Alpine newsgroup to the Seattle Police Department's Det. Shirey, which Det. Shirey introduced into evidence in the Seattle hearing in a private dispute to ban a Seattle man from talking about skiing in a skiing Usenet newsgroup. In a phone conversation with the respondent prior to the hearing, Det. Shirey told the respondent that she was concerned about security at the World Trade Congress summit to be held in Seattle. Who wins and who loses when police monitor Usenet posts and courts issue orders banning a citizen from participating in an open Usenet newsgroup? One of the petitioners won. He won a court order barring the defendant from contacting him or being within 1,000 feet of him. He also won an unprecedented order under Washington State's new electronic anti-harassment law, banning a man from talking about skiing in a skiing-oriented Usenet newsgroup. Who loses? The respondent lost. He lost a community of friends he has been part of for several years, friends whom he has met on-line and with whom he has enjoyed ski trips. He lost financially as well. As an iconoclastic, flippant, intentionally obnoxious on-line persona 'Two Buddha' he gave the 'inside scoop' on Northwest-made ski products and on ski resorts throughout the Western U.S. He put U.S.-made skis under the boots of expert skiers, who then talked about them in the newsgroups and moderated discussions on manufacturers' Web sites. Through these connections he received 'professional courtesy' equipment and ski lift tickets from time to time in return for users' reviews of the products involved. Because of a court order now making it a felony for him to talk about skiing in a skiing Usenet group, he can no longer commiserate with his on-line friends about skiing. It is a felony for him to talk about Zoom skis in a Usenet skiing newsgroup. Who ultimately loses? Us. All of us who would like to talk in Usenet newsgroups without the Detective Shireys of the world looking over our shoulders. All of us who would like to say what we think without the Seattle Police Department of the National Security Agency compiling 'three-ring binders' of our Usenet posts in the name of 'national security' or community security. All of us who do not want the Seattle Police Department or the King County District Court, or any police department or any court, to monitor Usenet newsgroups to protect us from ourselves. All of us who do not want a Politburo or a security agency or a police agency or a court to issue a gag order saying that a citizen cannot participate in an open Usenet newsgroup to find his voice and speak his Truth, even to say that his Revealed Truth is that Zoom Cascade skis kick ass anywhere on the mountain. ### Further information: http://www.vix.com/menmag/gagorder.htm [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've sat here for about ten minutes trying to think of what to say. I am dumbfounded and almost speech- less. I find it incredible that a police officer would attempt, apparently successfully, to silence the free speech rights of some person on the net. I wonder why the police officer did not go pick on someone her own size, like the {Seattle Post-Intelligencer} for example, and try to get an order telling them what they could say or publish ... but I think you know the answer: their lawyers would have slapped her silly, and had more First Amendment litigation started in a minute than you could imagine. I wonder why the police officer had to get some stooge to go on and post her message for her instead of just posting it herself? I find it to be pretty scary when a police officer somewhere decides they do not like something published on the net and all they have to do is go get an ignorant judge (and the judge must have been pretty stupid to think that some silly 'gag-order' was going to be obeyed by anyone more than an inch outside the court's jurisdiction) to silence the writer. I mean, can you really imagine them trying to pull that crap on a columnist or writer for the newspaper? It works on the net though, or at least they try to make it work here. If this newsgroup/web site or some other newsgroup you read happens to vanish overnight, well ... its just Police Officer Shirey doing her thing. In the next message in this issue, Danny Burstein reports how a state government agency in New Jersey decided they would take over a privately maintained, not-for-profit web site when they took a dislike to the proprietors of same. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 14:18:11 EST From: Danny Burstein Subject: NJ Government Agency Wins Court Orders For Domain Names oh ... AND they also got the 1-800 number ... NJ Transit receives rights to three Internet domains, 800 number The Associated Press 11/13/99 12:26 PM Eastern (NEWARK) The right name means everything. Especially if you're NJ Transit. The state commuter agency won a court settlement Friday forcing a Nutley-based company to give up ownership of three Internet domains and an 800 number that refers to NJ Transit. " They'll transfer the ownership of NJTransit.com, NJTransit.org, NJTransit.net and 1-800-NJTransit to us immediately," said Jeffrey Warsh, the commuter agency's executive director. "We own the name and they were using it illegally." [rest snipped for the usual reasons. It's available for the moment at: http://wire.nj.com but they tend to cycle stories out after a day or so] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Danny asked for the full story to not printed and I'm honoring his request. Read it at the above link. What happens it seems is this: An organization which discusses transportation issues in New Jersey among other things relevant to the state holds a large number of *active* domain names all beginning 'NJ' as in NJTransit.com among others. The state agency New Jersey Transit (often referred to as NJ Transit) took a dislike to this. The web site was used to discuss transportation issues in general in the state; it was not used in an effort to be an imposter of the state agency. They attempted to compromise with the state agency by offering to print all of their timetables, fare information and other public notices at no charge to the state. That, it seems, was not good enough. Naturally, the state agency pulls this routine about 'cybersquatting' and gets a court to issue an order pulling the domain names away from their rightful owner. So, the Cerfing of the net continues ... apparently unabated ... and if the thought of Police Officer Shirey foaming at the mouth and getting your newsgroup/website shut down is not scary enough, then how about if you work on it night and day for a few years, shed a few tears over it and wind up in the poor house because of it only to have a judge somewhere declare you are nothing more than a cyber-squatter, and order you to be evicted? One regular reader here asked me in private correspondence once why so many netizens were in a 'coma-like' trance as these changes go on about us. I dunno ... but now, as the beautiful melody of J.S. Bach plays in the background -- a MIDI of 'Sleepers, Awake' -- yes, I know it is still Saturday night and not Sunday morning in church -- let's read Monty Solomon's latest report on the continued assaults on our privacy when using the net. Those of you who were slumbering may go back to doing so. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 18:03:49 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? by Declan McCullagh 3:00 a.m. 26.Oct.1999 PDT WASHINGTON -- Plenty of people worry about their privacy online, but few consider that someone may be eavesdropping on what they're typing -- through a wall or even across the street. It's something government snoops have been able to do for at least the last decade, according to newly released documents from the US National Security Agency. Spy agencies have dubbed the concept TEMPEST, a code name for technologies used to intercept and decipher the electromagnetic signals that all computers emit. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32097,00.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Is that enough for one day? PAT] ------------------------------ From: gs@callbackservice.com Subject: Re: Different AT&T International Calling Rates - Why? Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 23:07:16 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , siegman@stanford. edu (Anthony E. Siegman) wrote: > Big ads for AT&T "One Rate International Value Plan" this morning. > Rates for calling from US vary from from 10 cents/minute for UK, 16 > cents/minute for Japan, 17 cents/minute for many other places (Europe, > Australia, Israel, Korea) -- and then 30 cents for Philippines, 35 > cents for Mexico, 40 and 45 cents for Colombia and El Salvador, and 55 > cents/minute (highest shown) for India. > Just out of curiousity, what determines the differences in these > rates? Genuine technical costs? What the traffic will bear? > Excessive rates by phone companies at the called end? One of the main factors is the volume of calls to a particular country. If you need to buy one minute of international calls, none of carriers will sell it for 10 cents/min. But when you buy each month bilions of minutes, you can get low rate and as a result set low retail rate. As soon as the volume to a particular country increases, providers get get lower rate to this country. Sincerely yours, Gintas http://www.CallbackService.com/GlobalTel ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: AT&T Puts 800-555-1212 Up for Sale! Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 00:35:33 PST The title of AT&T's recent press release, "AT&T Migrates Toll Free Listings to the Web" http://www.att.com/press/item/0,1354,2250,00.html hides the more significant news, which is that AT&T is asking the FCC to let it drop its toll-free directory assistance service effective March 31, 2000. AT&T's rationale for dropping this service is the economic impracticality of offering the service due to the fact that there are about 17 million unlisted toll-free numbers as compared to 2 million toll-free numbers listed with toll-free directory assistance. Nothing in the press release indicates just what AT&T proposes to do with the number if their request is granted, but I've got to imagine that there are a variety of ways to make money with this service. An obvious way would be to contract with major toll-free customers to allow calls to be connected through directly, thereby capturing some long distance revenue. Another way would be to allow people to use it as a yellow pages service, then directing people to those businesses that you had referral agreements with ... you want a travel agent, a florist, a dentist, call toll-free directory assisance, and you pick up a referral fee on every one of those calls plus the phone charges. I guess it will be up to the FCC to decide how the new owner is selected, assuming there are multiple contenders. If they auction it off, I hope the money goes to defray some of the various fees on our phone bill, and not into AT&T's treasury. Eli Mantel ------------------------------ From: Stan Schwartz Subject: AT&T Discontinues 800 Directory Assistance Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 15:36:46 -0500 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991112/wr/att_tollfree_1.html AT&T to Switch Toll-Free Service to Web Site NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Corp (NYSE:T - news)., the No. 1 U.S. long-distance company, said it plans to discontinue its operator-assisted toll-free directory service and move the listings onto its Web site. The company said in a statement it had filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to close down its toll-free assistance phone line, which keeps track of 750,000 phone numbers, effective March 31. The Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents most of the operators working the toll-free assistance line, said the move hurts people who do not have access to the Internet. "This move will cost jobs, deny millions of Americans access to a vital service and hurt businesses that depend on their connection to customers," CWA President Morton Bahr said in a statement. AT&T spokesman Burke Stinson said the company had not yet decided what to do about the 900 operators, located in four states, who service the toll-free assistance line. He said the company still had to receive permission from the FCC to shut down the service before it could make a decision about their jobs. In past cases of job cuts, Stinson said AT&T has either helped employees find new jobs or provided them with severance packages. AT&T said it lists less than 10 percent of the more than 19 million total toll-free numbers, making it 'economically impractical' to continue providing its current service. The company said it also will make its listings available to other directory service providers. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 08:31:50 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Charles Johnson wrote in TELECOM Digest Volume 19, Issue 544: > Brazil is not hispanic. Hispanic from most of the definitions I've > read on government forms is "of Spanish sub-culture." Which means > that if you are directly from Spain you are not hispanic, and if your > country is not from Spanish colonial history, it is not hispanic. > Lastly, why the hell is anywhere the Spanish been suddenly considered > inferior to Americans? America may be great in most ways, but we > still have some major things as a country we need to work on. Please feel free to accuse me of linguistic/geographic nit-picking, but this is something that has annoyed me for years. "America" has come, in common global usage, to mean "United States." Seems to me that it should take in everything from the Queen Elizabeth Islands of arctic Canada to the island of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of Argentina/Chile. But, alas, that universal usage prevails. -- Best -- Arthur (from Arizona, itself a state since 1912) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 01:34:31 EST From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > But SERIOUSLY, regarding the US _STATE_ of New Mexico... > That region has actually been a part of the U.S. of A., since right > after the Mexican-American War circa 1848. Historical nitpick: Don't forget the Gadsden Purchase! In 1853, the US bought an additional chunk of the Southwest from Mexico, primarily to provide a more suitable railroad route across the US's southern perimeter. (The eponymous Gadsden was a South Carolinian railroad company president. He got his friend Jefferson Davis, who then headed the US War Department, to facilitate the purchase because both men dreamed of commercially tying the West to the South instead of to the North.) While most of the purchased land is now in Arizona, the eastern portion of it became the southwestern slice of New Mexico. The obligatory telecom tie-in: the railroad that was ultimately built across the Gadsden Purchase corridor was none other than the Southern Pacific Railroad, the direct ancestor of Sprint! Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: Juha Veijalainen Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 20:26:11 GMT On Fri, 12 Nov 1999 15:41:44 GMT, stanri@yahooREMOVETHISPART.com (The bald one) wrote: > I live in Rhode Island, and have run into the same thing ... "Rhode > Island, where's that?? A small island somewhere??" or as one person > asked once, and they were serious ... "You're from the island of > Rhodes, how close to the Greek mainland are you." > Gee, maybe I do need a passport, or at the very least, a green card. My experience is quite the opposite - maybe I should throw away my passport next time I visit USA :-) Few people know where Finland is -- those who know, place it correctly on the world map, well, at least they usually place it in Europe. The others seem to be very sure about the location of Finland, USA. Though some companies seem to have some trouble when I finally give up explaining and tell them my postal/zip code -- their computers do not seem to be able to accept 00300 as a zip code. Juha Veijalainen, Helsinki, Finland, http://www.iki.fi/juhave/ Some random words: cryptography, nuclear, steganography, reindeer ((Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect)) ------------------------------ From: 8192439@my-deja.com Subject: Re: Caller ID Proliferation? Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 16:40:59 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , jata@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) wrote: > In , on 11/11/99 at 09:41 PM, > bubba said: >> 99% of the time unknown name and number, out of area or unavailable >> calls are from telemarketers or pollsters and it's never been anyone I >> actually want to talk to. Get a caller ID box that rejects calls >> and set it to reject unknown name/number. > I suspect 99% is high ... but in any case, consider the following > scenario: > Family member is travelling away from home, has emergency, calls home > from some phone or other that is either blocked for caller ID or on a > CO that does not transmit the information. > Do you really want to lose that call? For those of us who are plagued by telemarkers calls 99% seems about right. Every call I get that shows up as "Unavailable" just hangs up, NEVER leaves a message and when I have picked it up was always a telemarketer. Family members have my cell phone number for emergencies or they can have the operator call collect. Unfortunatly Bell Atlantic doesn't yet offer a Privacy Manager like other Telcos do, so the ability to block those types of calls would be a godsend. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ------------------------------ From: Graham Murray Subject: Re: Caller ID Proliferation? Date: 13 Nov 1999 17:44:59 +0000 Organization: Private Internet Host jata@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) writes: > I suspect 99% is high ... but in any case, consider the following > scenario: > Family member is travelling away from home, has emergency, calls home > from some phone or other that is either blocked for caller ID or on a > CO that does not transmit the information. > Do you really want to lose that call? One solution to this is to have the call diverted to an answering machine or voicemail system. I have caller display and also subscribe to BT's Callminder service (a voicemail system which picks up the call, and allows the caller to leave a message, if your line is busy or on no answer.) I will frequently not answer calls which show as "number withheld" and allow CallMinder to pick them up. My experience is that people you want to talk to will leave a message, but telemaketers do not. So it can be a reasonable screening mechanism. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 01:50:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Wiretap Story Comes out Scrambled The IETF, an international group that sets standards for the Internet, wants the Feds to do their own dirty work. The group voted yesterday not to help governments with wiretapping efforts. Had it wanted to, the group would have found it easy to help Big Brother. It could just tweak the standard Internet protocols to facilitate wiretaps, as telecommunications companies already must do with their networks. Easier to do that, in fact, than it was for the media to get through the story without crossing a few wires. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/mediagrok_display/0,1185,7646,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 01:54:21 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Virgin Goes on Wireless Streak By Polly Sprenger LONDON - Seven stark-naked people in Leicester Square Thursday afternoon helped Richard Branson, the billionaire head of Virgin, launch his latest world-domination scheme: using e-commerce to grab a piece of the booming European mobile-phone market. http://www.thestandard.com/articles/display/0,1449,7612,00.html ------------------------------ From: herb@herbstein.com (Herb Stein) Subject: Re: Line Identification Phone Number? Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 16:18:54 GMT Dave, Unfortunately, there is no single, standard number, at least not in the US. There have been a few long distance or 800 numbers that offered this service, but I don't know if any of them still exist. If you indicate what area code and exchanges you are concerned with, someone in this group and probably help. In article , DaveC wrote: > I do some in-house, volunteer telecom wiring (new extensions, etc.) > for a non-profit volunteer center. > I'd like to know the number that I call in order to get back a voice > identifier of the line I'm on. > I'm in Pac Bell territory (N. California, SF bay area). Herb Stein The Herb Stein Group www.herbstein.com herb@herbstein.com 314 215-3584 ------------------------------ From: tknab@nyx.net (Terry Knab) Subject: Re: 991 Calls a Problem for 911 Organization: The Home Office Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 07:44:45 GMT Ron Walter wrote: > From my perspective living in Nebraska, the concern here that led to > this being a story in the paper doesn't come from another phone > company operating, but the concern is over a lack of phone numbers in > the 402 area code. Part of the problem is that several small towns > like Greenwood have a population of well under 1000 people but have > 10,000 numbers reserved for that exchange. Therefore there is some > angst in this area about how to get more numbers, which is pretty > apparent in the time spent in the latest article dealing with the > shortage of numbers. And a lot of the problem is getting the PUC to allow the LECs to merge their small towns to one master prefix. (If they did that, there would be an unbelievable number of prefixes opened up in places like Iowa and Nebraska.) The issue goes back to COs and out of date practices. Used to, you *had* to have a seperate CO for every small town. But with Remote Switching being a reality, the use of 10,000 numbers for a town of less than 1,000 people is *VERY* outdated. Some of it comes back as well to Rate Centers and the like. But really, consolidation is the big issue in terms of COs and prefixes. And the Nebraska PUC could set a precident if they wanted to, but most likely won't look at this as an easy way to reduce number consumption. Terry E. Knab News/Interm System Administrator Nyx Public Access Unix ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 01:33:29 -0500 From: Ted Byfield Subject: Re: Editor's P[r]erogative (was Re: That Foreign Country) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, it is the best way. Some people Correcting, abstracting, and otherwise tweaking is a hallowed tradition, and should definitely be expected when a moderator describes himself as an 'editor.' All in all, PAT runs a very tight ship, and I can't see how anyone could begrudge him the pride he rightly takes in maintaining a service whose records provide an invaluable public resource. If indeed the net will 'replace' print, then there's room for fixing stupid mistakes. Though I will point out that the 'T' is for 'Ted' and not for 'Tom' (and *definitely* not for 'tomb,' which appeared on the list once). (I'll survive somehow, I promise ;) Cheers, t[ed, an editor] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, it all leaves here in letter- perfect condition, without error. The misteaks :) occur as a result of network transmission. So that Mary Ann Ladd and Garrett Wollman (my two LCS/MIT contacts), John Levine (host for telecom-digest.org) and others don't become depressed or saddened by the extra work I am caused when one of their computers makes an error, I usually just accept the blame and pretend that it was my fault all along. All this said with a straight face as I remind myself this is not Sunday morning in church; it is still Saturday night and I can go out to the bars and find something better to do than worry about the Cerfing of the Net. See you all tomorrow, maybe, else Monday for sure. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #547 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Nov 14 18:56:12 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id SAA09965; Sun, 14 Nov 1999 18:56:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 18:56:12 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911142356.SAA09965@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #548 TELECOM Digest Sun, 14 Nov 99 18:56:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 548 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bell Labs Predictions For 2025 (The Old Bear) Unexpected Usage - Y2K (Justa Lurker) Re: Wiretap Story Comes Out Scrambled (Richard Shockey) Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? (Bob Vaughan) Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? (Michael J Kuras) Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? (Dr. Doright) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Louis Raphael) Re: That Foreign Vountry Between Arizona and Texas (Bill Levant) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Mark W. Schumann) Re: AT&T Puts 800-555-1212 Up for Sale! (Steve Sobol) Re: Spy Satellites For Everyone (Walter Dnes) Re: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? (Jerry Harder) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 00:51:52 -0500 From: The Old Bear Subject: Bell Labs Predictions For 2025 Bell Labs predicts a "Global Communications Skin" by 2025 MURRAY HILL, NEW JERSEY, U.S.A., 1999 NOV 12 (NB) -- By Steven Bonisteel, Newsbytes. If you think you are plugged in now - with your Internet connection, your wireless phone and your Palm Pilot - just wait until 2025. By then, say experts at Bell Labs, the research arm of Lucent Technologies Inc. [NYSE:LU], you'll be wired into a global communications network through devices as small as a lapel pin. What's more, they say, that global network will be more like a "communications skin" capable of sensing everything from weather patterns to how much milk is in your refrigerator. "We are already building the first layer of a mega-network that will cover the entire planet like a skin," Bell Labs President Arun Netravali said today in a document loaded with prognostications from lab staff. "As communication continues to become faster, smaller, cheaper and smarter in the next millennium, this skin, fed by a constant stream of information, will grow larger and more useful." Netravali said that "skin" will include millions of electronic measuring devices - thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones - all monitoring cities, roadways, and the environment. "All of these will transmit data directly into the network, just as our skin transmits a constant stream of sensory data to our brains," he said. "Such systems might be used for anything from constantly monitoring the traffic on a local road, water level in a river to the temperature at the beach or the supply of food in a refrigerator." Bell Labs spokeswoman Wendy Zajack told Newsbytes that the predictions for the future of communications technology were released, in part, to mark the approaching Millennium. In addition, she said, with Bell Labs facing its 75th anniversary, the prognostications underscore the organization's reputation for "brain power." And that's no idle boast. Bell Labs researchers have garnered at least two Nobel Prizes in physics (including one in 1956 for the 1947 discovery of the laser). Zajack notes that Bell Labs, bundled with Lucent when that company was spun off from AT&T Corp. [NYSE:T] in 1996, files applications for more than three patents a day and has more than 30,000 inventions to it credit since it was formed 75 years ago. Netravali said some recent breakthroughs at Bell Labs, particularly in areas that are boosting bandwidth and reducing the size of electronic components, will help bring about their vision of communications in the new Millennium. Noting that Bell Labs researchers recently demonstrated the first long-distance (300 kilometer) transmission of data at a trillion bits per second over a single strand of optical fiber, Netravali said that, in 10 years, a single fiber will carry a quadrillion bits per second. "This will put nearly limitless amounts of bandwidth at users' fingertips," the document stated. "It is this plentiful and inexpensive bandwidth that will enable high-quality videoconferencing and faster, 'always-on' Internet connections in the next century." Netravali said the huge bandwidth will be able to support the massive amount of data required for all the devices wired to the global communication "skin" to communicate as machine-to-machine and object-to-object communication increases. By 2010, he said, the volume of this "infrachatter" will actually surpass communication between humans. "At home, your dishwasher will be able to call its manufacturer when it is malfunctioning and the manufacturer will run diagnostics remotely," Netravali said. "Or your lawn sprinkler could check the Web site of the National Weather Service before turning itself on, to make sure the forecast doesn't call for rain." The Bell Labs researchers said waiting by the phone, surfing the Internet, and face-to-face business meetings will go the way of eight-track tapes. "Software-driven intelligent networks and wireless technology will enable people to be reached wherever they are and will give the consumer the power to choose if a message will be an e-mail, voice mail or video clip," said Rich Howard, wireless research director. Joseph Olive, director of language modeling, said system-on-a-chip technology that will lead to communications devices - "metaphones" - the size of jewelry that will be voice operated. "Dialing a phone will be a concept learned only in history classes," he said. "Placing a call to mom will be as simple as saying 'Mom.' The small metaphones on your lapel will be able to read Web sites and e-mail to you." Raju Rishi, strategy director of product management, said advances in videoconferencing and high-speed networking will lead to a rise in telecommuting to virtual offices and to virtual business travel as well. "Combined with directional microphones, surround-sound audio, and 3-D (three-dimensional) images, the effect is much closer to that of a face-to-face meeting," Rishi said, adding that, as the technology grows more immersive, there will be no need for business colleagues to gather in one place. Kenan Sahin, Bell Labs vice-president of software technology, said the Internet will be transformed from a cache of data to a smarter "HiQNet" in which personal "cyberclones" will anticipate humans' information requirements. "This HiQNet, which will be as immediate as dial tone is today, will be so integral to our lives it will become practically invisible," the document said. "People will use anything from a TV to a wireless lapel phone for access." Said Sahin: "The first communication revolution of the 20th Century gave us telephone-based communications. The second gave us computer-based communications like e-mail and the Internet. The 21st Century will bring us a knowledge-based communications revolution. "We will be able to get expert help for everything from sending baby photos to our family to finding the perfect job. That same network intelligence may also save people money. You'll be able to say to your communications device, 'I want to talk to Bob in Chicago,' and the device will get you the best deal on the connection. "The Internet will evolve from being a complexity in our lives that we have to spend time mastering, to a behind-the-scenes tool that will improve our quality of life," Sahin said. "In the end, (it will) make us more human, not less." Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com ------------------------------ From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker) Subject: Unexpected Usage - Y2K Organization: Anonymous People Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Reply to the digest) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 10:15:52 GMT The following was posted in misc.transport.rail.misc by "Hiroshi Naito" : The JR's ticket reservation and issuing system crashed on the day at around 11:11 because of intensive access caused by ticket collectors who were in favor of a string of 10 "1" letters (11, 11, 11, 11,11) printed on a platform ticket (Nyujo ken in Japanese). The first two digits indicate the year of Heisei 11 in original Japanese era designation still in use as well as the year in the Christian calendar. Regular train tickets have time stamping printed up to date, but a platform ticket is printed up to minutes. At that time, the ticket collectors suddenly started purchasing platform tickets through the MARS system. The rate of platform tickets issued is usually only about three percent of the entire tickets while it reportedly soared up to 75 percent at 11:11 on the day. Besides, the system requires 150% more processing time per transaction for a platform ticket compared to for a regular train ticket. This situation caused a massive load on the central computer beyond its ticket issuing capability and resulted in the computer down. This seems to be a good lesson as to the Y2K issue. The transport- related systems must be well verified and has been fixed for the date processing problem of Y2K, however, this incident suggests implication of system downs all over the world on 2000, 1, 1, caused by unexpected overwhelming transactions. Hiroshi Naito I wonder how the phone system will hold up to the calls wishing a happy new year. Anyone want to see a call at 00:00 01/01/00 on their bill as a collectors item? JL [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It may turn out a little different than that since 00:00 01/01/00 is *relative to where you are at* around the USA and the world, with 1/24th of the world experiencing that at any given time. Even so, the people of the world and the USA are not evenly distributed around the globe, so there will be times in which more of us experience it than others. And, even divided into 24 parts (or maybe 25? aren't some places in the southern hemisphere on daylight savings time at that time of year while other places are not?) that's still a burden on the phone network, should everyone try to use it at once. And there are some people who won't experience the time at all, while others may possibly experience it twice! Consider, if you left San Francisco at 9:00 pm on Friday, 31 Dec on a flight to Hong Kong, your absolute time in the air would certainly be more than three hours, meaning when you landed it would be Sunday, 2 Jan at some point in the afternoon. Or if you left Hong Kong at 4:00 am on Sat, 1 Jan after a night of partying, wouldn't you reach San Francisco sometime Friday evening in order to do it all over again? It might be interesting to watch on that Friday evening in the USA and Saturday morning/afternoon through Europe and the far east to see who is successfully able to post the first Usenet message of the new year, a message time stamped Sat, 1 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT. I think there will be a lot of messages hitting the news stream right about the same time at that minute. I may try to publish an issue of this Digest to go out right at that instant, or as close as I can get it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Richard Shockey Subject: Re: Wiretap Story Comes out Scrambled Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 14:35:05 -0600 Organization: Shockey Consulting LLC Monty Solomon wrote: > The IETF, an international group that sets standards for the Internet, > wants the Feds to do their own dirty work. The group voted yesterday > not to help governments with wiretapping efforts. Had it wanted to, > the group would have found it easy to help Big Brother. It could just > tweak the standard Internet protocols to facilitate wiretaps, as > telecommunications companies already must do with their networks. > Easier to do that, in fact, than it was for the media to get through > the story without crossing a few wires. > http://www.thestandard.com/articles/mediagrok_display/0,1185,7646,00.html I'm not so sure this story is being accurately reported. Though the NO votes in DC were very vocal, the abstentions were in the majority IHMO. This issue is not going to go away in the IETF any time soon. ------------------------------ From: techie@roadwarrior.stanford.edu (Bob Vaughan) Subject: Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? Date: 14 Nov 1999 12:39:01 GMT Organization: Tantivy Associates In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > WASHINGTON -- Plenty of people worry about their privacy online, but > few consider that someone may be eavesdropping on what they're typing > -- through a wall or even across the street. > It's something government snoops have been able to do for at least the > last decade, according to newly released documents from the US > National Security Agency. Spy agencies have dubbed the concept > TEMPEST, a code name for technologies used to intercept and decipher > the electromagnetic signals that all computers emit. Actually, the British have been able to do this since the 1950's. They were able to intercept electrical impulses from cipher machines using various methods, both from direct radiation, and from echoes of unencrypted traffic superimposed on encrypted circuits. More detail can be found in the book "Spy Catcher" by Peter Wright. (former Deputy Director of MI5). -- Welcome My Son, Welcome To The Machine -- Bob Vaughan | techie@{w6yx|tantivy}.stanford.edu | kc6sxc@w6yx.ampr.org | P.O. Box 9792, Stanford, Ca 94309-9792 -- I am Me, I am only Me, And no one else is Me, What could be simpler? -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 11:39:30 EST From: Michael J Kuras Subject: Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? > It's something government snoops have been able to do for at least the > last decade, according to newly released documents from the US > National Security Agency. Spy agencies have dubbed the concept > TEMPEST, a code name for technologies used to intercept and decipher > the electromagnetic signals that all computers emit. I've attended several TEMPEST courses. Though shrouded in secrecy, there's nothing revolutionary about the technology. It's more common sense than anything else -- electronic fields can yield clues about the originating equipment. The touchy part comes from the amassed knowledge and processing techniques, which I hope to avoid here. TEMPEST issues are a very real and important part in the design and maintenance of military electronic systems. Most field-level electronic technicians have at least a cursory knowledge of the subject and know enough to ask about questionable configurations (e.g. mounting a cellphone within a few feet of secure computer terminal). There are also, of course, very highly trained TEMPEST individuals who are almost always involved with inspections, assessments, and prototype configurations. As an aside, though several phrases can be shoehorned into the acronym, TEMPEST officially stands for nothing. TEMPEST detection is a fascinating field. In one demonstration, I was astounded to see some relatively simple gear (consisting of little more than an antenna, receiver, and oscilloscope) show the screen output of a computer in the next room. The system picked up the EMI from the computer's video subsystem and reproduced it locally. Amazing. TEMPEST also extends to telecom and all sorts of electromechanical equipment -- anything that carries informational electrons is a potential target. It's not wiretapping, it's completely non-intrusive and never touches the actual data medium. It's the reading of the natural byproducts of technology, sometimes from quite a distance: the unique current-draw of pressing the 'A' key on an electric typewriter, the EMI of a particular video subsystem, the magnetic field generated by your local loop 30 feet away from the third pole from your house. I can't say how much TEMPEST detection is actually employed. Very few can, as it's inherently very stealthy. But it's a serious enough threat that there are government buildings completely encased in fine-wire mesh, complete with gold-foil windows and grounded to dozens of deep-sunk iron rods. All for the purpose of preventing EMI from leaking out. Although TEMPEST is rather straightforward in theory, it quickly becomes incredibly complex, employing highly sophisticated receiving and processing equipment (in the above computer monitor example, for example, it should be noted that this was a simple monochrome system; today's hi-res color computers are significantly more complex to decipher.) So for now, at least, rest a little easier with the knowledge that They *really* have to be interested in you to employ tempest detection against you. For this month, at least. The legality issues would be interesting to investigate, and I imagine will come to some sort of head in the next five years. Again, this isn't wiretapping -- it doesn't physically touch any equipment. Police can react to what's in plain view in your car during a traffic stop, drug and bomb dogs can react to 'public-domain' smells, so what's different about stray EMI? Can someone simply tune it in and do what they want with it? Sure there are laws against cellphone tapping, but that forbids interception of a specific frequency for a specific purpose. In general, however, I'd imagine that whatever EMF's are floating around in the public domain are simply that: public domain. BTW, I stumbled across an interesting TEMPEST web site as I was writing this. Gives a good overview of the technology and issues. http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html michael j kuras finger for pgp key mkuras@ccs.neu.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, the Federal Communication Commission *does* have a law saying that you may not *deliberatly* intercept transmissions not intended for yourself, and that regards those you do overhear or see, you may not, under the law, acknowledge their existence or the contents therein. So while I can watch my television or listen to the radio and tell you about what I saw or heard -- these are *broadcasts intended for public consumption* -- I cannot legally tell you what I overheard on my police scanner or my amateur radio reciever. Nor am I permitted to use such the contents of such transmissions to my own benefit; for example I overhear two persons discussing some business transaction and then take action to jinx the transaction or do it myself before the others have a chance. There are specific laws of this same nature dealing with cellular phones, cordless phones, etc; but aside from those the Communications Act itself addresses the matter of transmissions not intended for yourself, intentional reception of same and misuse of information obtained as a result. This is why 'radar detectors' in automobiles are illegal. Police would say you are interfering with the administra- tion of justice which is debateable. But the Communications Act would say that you are deliberatly receiving transmissions not intended for yourself (intended for internal use by police) and that you are attempting to benefit by what you 'overheard', i.e. learning the loca- tion of police officers, that you might avoid breaking a law in their presence. Certainly if on my police scanner I overheard some police activity going on and took some action to jinx it I would breaking the law, so why not with radar detectors? Unlike a radio station transmitter, or a CB radio or an amateur 'ham' radio which are considered 'intentional radiators', a computer or a piece of machinery which emits RF is an 'unintentional radiator' and while the FCC rules are somewhat different, they still do not allow for the deliberate reception of a transmission which is not intended for yourself or acknowledging/benefitting from same. Persons would do well to make sure their computer is not making it easy for someone to spy on them at a distance like this, but legally I am not sure at all that any information gleaned in this way would be allowed as evidence in a court, because there is no way the information could have been legally obtained. I'd think the evidence would be squashed or dis- allowed on demand. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dr. Doright Subject: Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 15:06:28 -0600 Organization: Posted via RemarQ, http://www.remarq.com Monty Solomon wrote in message news:telecom19.547. 3@telecom-digest.org: > WASHINGTON -- Plenty of people worry about their privacy online, but > few consider that someone may be eavesdropping on what they're typing > -- through a wall or even across the street. TEMPEST is an acronym for (T)ransient (E)lectro(M)agnetic(P)ulse (E)manation (ST)andard. The standard use to define the effective suppression of EMP to prevent the interception of private communication, not the technology to actually intercept and decipher as stated above. But then what could one expect from a journalist? Dr. Doright ------------------------------ From: Louis Raphael Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Organization: Societe pour la promotion du petoncle vert Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 14:41:58 GMT Here in Canada, the USofA is usually referred to as "the U.S." or "the States" -- when one hears it being referred to as "America," it's usually by a foreigner. The term "American" is the common one for "USians" (occasionally used as a joke by some of my friends), however. Louis Arthur Ross wrote: > Please feel free to accuse me of linguistic/geographic nit-picking, but > this is something that has annoyed me for years. "America" has come, in > common global usage, to mean "United States." Seems to me that it should > take in everything from the Queen Elizabeth Islands of arctic Canada to the > island of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of Argentina/Chile. But, > alas, that universal usage prevails. ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 10:07:10 EST Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas > Arthur (from Arizona, itself a state since 1912) Or was it? I seem to recall a story about how the bill granting statehood didn't get properly passed in 1912, and that no one noticed until they went to admit Alaska (or Hawaii; whichever would have been #49) at which point the bill was quietly passed retroactively. True story or urban legend ? I don't know, and a quick northernlight.com search didn't resolve it one way or the other. Bill ------------------------------ From: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: 14 Nov 1999 01:08:31 -0500 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , William Van Hefner wrote: > For that matter, it is much more expensive to offer phone service (and > long distance) to urban neighborhoods, due to high fraud in those > locations. Got a cite on that? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You will find numerous anecdotal items in the archives of this Digest over the past several years relating stories of phone calling card abuse and misuse from pay phones in inner-city neighborhoods. Both AT&T and Sprint (illegally, in the opinion of many people) 'redline' certain urban areas where the use of their calling card is concerned, particularly on international calls, although in the 1970-80's Sprint disallowed the use of their calling card for any purpose in the midtown Manhattan area of New York City because of their perceptions involving fraud. AT&T has for many years disallowed the use of their calling card from pay- phones in ethnic neighborhoods in Chicago on international calls to, ironically, the very countries where the residents of that area would be most like to want to call due to their perceptions of fraud. The very same disallowed calling card *can* be used on international calls by white people in white neighborhoods to 'white' European countries, if you get my drift. Read all about it in our archives: http://telecom-digest.org/archives/back.issues and check the indices for that directory to get specific issues, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.Net (Steve Sobol) Subject: Re: AT&T Puts 800-555-1212 Up for Sale! Date: 14 Nov 1999 06:40:05 GMT Organization: New Age Consulting Service Inc., Cleveland, OH, USA On Sat, 13 Nov 1999 00:35:33 PST, mantel@hotmail.com allegedly said > Another way would be to allow people to use it as a yellow pages > service, then directing people to those businesses that you had > referral agreements with ... you want a travel agent, a florist, a > dentist, call toll-free directory assisance, and you pick up a > referral fee on every one of those calls plus the phone charges. > I guess it will be up to the FCC to decide how the new owner is > selected, assuming there are multiple contenders. If they auction it > off, I hope the money goes to defray some of the various fees on our > phone bill, and not into AT&T's treasury. I'm an AT&T 800 customer. One of the benefits of being an AT&T 800 customer is being able to list yourself in their tollfree directory and be relatively sure that people will be able to look you up via 800 555-1212. ;) I wonder how this is going to affect a service which so many AT&T business long-distance customers (including me) have taken for granted for many years. North Shore Technologies Corporation Steven J. Sobol, President & Head Geek 815 Superior Avenue #610 sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Cleveland, Ohio 44114 http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net ------------------------------ From: Walter Dnes Subject: Re: Spy Satellites For Everyone Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 00:41:00 -0500 Organization: ICAN.Net Customer On Fri, 12 Nov 1999 00:25:36 -0500, Monty Solomon wrote: > On September 30th, less than a week after it left Vandenberg Air > Force Base on a Lockheed Martin Athena II rocket, Iconos opened > its electronic eye to peer down through 400 miles of space and > sky and capture the first high-resolution image produced by a > commercial spy satellite. The result is a starkly beautifully > black and white photo of Washington, D.C. on which you can count > the number of cars leaving National Airport and see clearly the > scaffolding around the Washington Monument. The cynic in me can't help but wonder just how long it'll be before technology and "entrepreneurship" combine to produce internet sites showing live scans of nude beaches and people sunbathing nude on their rooftop patios. Walter Dnes [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh, its naked pictures you want? That's an easy order to fill on the internet. Do a search on 'naturalist' and a search on 'nudist'. You'll get links to many sites run by naturalist and/or sunbathing organizations. They do not generally refer to themselves as 'nudist camps' any longer. The links will run the gauntlet from organizations using the naturalist philosophy as a way to thinly-veil their 'swinger' parties to the opposite extreme, a group of Christian nudists attending a church service at their campground. You and your family can visit these web sites and learn about the lifestyle through lots of pictures and articles. You will learn about the 'hotlist' each organization is *supposed* to check before admitting to membership with bonafide ID some person who wishes to join the organization; a national database of persons kicked out of other naturalist organizations because of sexual indiscretions or unseemly interest in the little boys and girls who were in such a club with their parents (from which the offending member was quietly and quickly expelled. I guess the 'problem', as they euphemistically describe it, is rife in some of their clubs.) And at the web sites of several of these organizations, a notice on the opening page says plainly that if your intentions in viewing the site are less than honorable, they sincerely wish you would go away, and find some porno web site to visit instead. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jerry Harder Subject: Re: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 08:11:53 GMT Organization: @Home Network Andrew Tannenbaum wrote in message news:telecom19.545.6@telecom-digest.org: Try the Direct marketing Association. Their Web site is http://www.the-dma.org/. Good luck, Jerry Harder remove spamnein from address to reply ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #548 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 15 03:05:12 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id DAA00274; Mon, 15 Nov 1999 03:05:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 03:05:12 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911150805.DAA00274@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #549 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Nov 99 03:05:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 549 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Klutz Strikes Again! (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: ISDN Viruses (John S. Maddaus) Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? (Paul Griffin) Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? (Garrett Wollman) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Mark W. Schumann) Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them (Ted Byfield) Re: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? (Andrew Tannenbaum) Re: Unexpected Usage - Y2K (Mark Brader) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 01:49:09 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Klutz Strikes Again! Sunday evening, an unfortunate incident here ... Between the publishing of issue 548 and the start of preparation on issue 549, my fingers typed something that deleted a bunch of new mail in error. For many years, I've had the unix command 'rm' aliased here to 'rm -i' which means before erasing a file, ask to be certain. It serves me quite well since in tc-shell one can use file name completion and sort of zip right along typing the first couple letters of a file name as part of the rm command; the occassional error gets caught before it is too late. This becomes a nuisance however when every file in a tmp directory is to be erased after it is no longer needed. To get around being asked 27 times in a row if indeed I want to erase the file I said I did, I backslash the rm, add -f which means do it and ask no questions, followed by * as in \rm -f * to clean out everything in a tmp directory while retaining the directory structure itself. Without the backslash, my alias for rm would override the -f so I have to blackslash it since I am too lazy to go file by file in a case like that. Well! Of course you need to be in the directory you think you are in and should be in. If you are in the wrong directory, haha! There goes the rest of your work down the chute to the bit bucket also. Unfortunatly a file with about a dozen messages for this issue of the digest vanished as a result. If you sent me an article for publication on Sunday *AND* it did not appear in either issue 548 or this current issue 549 ... well, you were one of the victims. Please resubmit it if you can, after checking the past two issues and the last 30 or so Usenet c.d.t. messages. I know for a fact there were a couple messages on the judge who has taken over moderating the skiing newsgroup lost, and a message or two on the NJTransit website lost, among others. I do apologize, and have chopped off one of my fingers as a reminder to myself to not let this happen again. I've had worse days. PAT ------------------------------ From: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net (John S. Maddaus) Subject: Re: ISDN Viruses Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 05:51:28 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: jmaddaus@NO_SPAM.usa.net Mel Beckman wrote: > While the spec calls for filling in those fields on PRI, I frequently > see them missing on setup messages when debugging calls in PacBell > land. The called number field presence depends on switch translations, > and sometimes PacBell just gets it wrong. But when calls are coming > into a modem pool on a PRI line, nobody cares -- all incoming calls go > to an available DSP. Only applications doing DID discrimination would > have problems with this, and then presumably the installer debugs the > problem and gets translations changed. This is not a modem pool, and definitely not an ISP. Calls are always inbound to dedicated modems on specific pieces of equipment/info systems. Like I said, we are sitting on the demarc between CO and our facilities. All calls are inbound with no called number passed on our DMS-100, but the modem sessions are there and the setup messages reflect blank called numbers. The DMS is set to route such calls to a live operator who does not have a modem. We can confirm that these sessions are indeed modem sessions, with the exception being one fax. After monitoring all setup messages for months, we have never seen sessions longer than several hours, in part due to the type of facility that we are. Legitimate telecommuters dial in through our RAS. We have run three different pieces of equipment on these PRIs, an HP internet advisor with T1 base, and two "special" pieces of equipment loaned to us. And, we have noticed that the PSTN is not necessarily careful on what it passes on in the calling number field, i.e. sometimes NPA only, other times NPA-NXX, other times last four digits, some with 11 digit dialing, some 10. Not consistent at all. > Multi-day modem calls aren't at all unusual for Internet users. Many > ISPs still sell dedicated 56K modem dial-up because there are often > no message charges for analog calls, particularly from telecommuters > (message unit charges are rare on home phones). The ISP I own has a > number of such customers, who prefer ganged modems to ISDN on the > cost basis alone. > Your question about how the calls get routed is easy: they are routed > by called number information injected by the calling party (probably > an analog call), and the routing information transits the SS7 network > until arriving at the DMS100. The DMS100 is simply failing to > populate the D-channel messages properly, and as I said, this is a > common problem. As I said, we see the setup messages before the DMS100 and the called number fields are blank. The equipment we use is special purpose and is either reporting accurately the setup messages, or translating literally control characters designed to hide the destination and origination. Interestingly, the calling number for all of these calls is "UNUSED". > It sounds like you may be assuming that the originating LEC is sending > a faulty message, but I think that's ruled out by the fact that the > call gets routed to the destination. Not necessarily the originating LEC. It is only a pass through. However, a PBX could. I have already confirmed that with default numbers populated that are not valid (such as 9998887777). jmaddaus@usa.net John S. Maddaus ------------------------------ From: Paul Griffin Subject: Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 12:14:34 +0800 Bob Vaughan wrote: > In article , Monty Solomon > wrote: >> WASHINGTON -- Plenty of people worry about their privacy online, but >> few consider that someone may be eavesdropping on what they're typing >> -- through a wall or even across the street. >> It's something government snoops have been able to do for at least the >> last decade, according to newly released documents from the US >> National Security Agency. Spy agencies have dubbed the concept >> TEMPEST, a code name for technologies used to intercept and decipher >> the electromagnetic signals that all computers emit. > Actually, the British have been able to do this since the 1950's. I was involved in Tempest testing for ICL (previously a UK computer manufacturer) in the early 1970s. It was fascinating, and I learned quite a lot about the attitudes of various UK government departments in the process !! Paul From the Hooker [email: hooker@opera.iinet.net.au ; web: http://hooker.iinet.net.au/paul.html] ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? Date: 15 Nov 1999 04:18:40 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Michael J Kuras wrote: > I can't say how much TEMPEST detection is actually employed. Very few > can, as it's inherently very stealthy. But it's a serious enough > threat that there are government buildings completely encased in > fine-wire mesh, complete with gold-foil windows and grounded to dozens > of deep-sunk iron rods. Two true stories: In the 1970s, half of the third floor of our building (545 Technology Square) was occupied by the CIA. (The other half was full of AI hackers working on Seymour Papert's LOGO project.) Recently, we installed a wireless network in the building. According to our experience elsewhere, we figured that one corner of the third floor did not need a wireless access point. In spite of the theory, people in that corner had no end of problems using the wireless net. Eventually, we poked our heads up into the suspended ceiling and found out, yep, the CIA had installed metal-backed ceiling tiles. No wonder the 2.4-GHz wireless network technology didn't work! This diligence on the CIA's part was apparently a bit spotty. A co-worker who was there tells this story: All of the CIA's phones had red lights on them which were supposed to illuminate on any signs of a wiretap. Some of the hackers would enter the third-floor telephone closet -- not hard to do if you're a locksmith -- and run a set of keys along the 66 blocks where the CIA's phones were terminated. All of the CIA agents would come boiling out of their offices, but since they never caught anyone doing this, it remained an unsolved mystery. (After the CIA moved out, LCS converted their old vault into an extension of the third-floor machine room. More recently, it turned into offices. To this day it's well-nigh impossible to get any sort of wiring into that room.) Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same wollman@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick ------------------------------ From: catfood@apk.net (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them Date: 15 Nov 1999 00:15:50 -0500 Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site In article , Mark W. Schumann wrote: >In article , William Van Hefner > wrote: >> For that matter, it is much more expensive to offer phone service (and >> long distance) to urban neighborhoods, due to high fraud in those >> locations. > Got a cite on that? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You will find numerous anecdotal items > in the archives of this Digest over the past several years relating > stories of phone calling card abuse and misuse from pay phones in > inner-city neighborhoods.] [snip] That's my point. If there's a fraud problem with pay phones, what has that to do with the supposition that private lines in urban areas are subsidized? The cites you provide support something quite different from what William Van Hefner is claiming. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 00:59:12 -0500 From: Ted Byfield Subject: Re: AT&T to Feds: You Raise Taxes, We List Them editor@telecom-digest.org (Sun 11/14/99 at 06:56 PM -0500) wrote: > stories of phone calling card abuse and misuse from pay phones in > inner-city neighborhoods. Both AT&T and Sprint (illegally, in the > opinion of many people) 'redline' certain urban areas where the use > of their calling card is concerned, particularly on international > calls, although in the 1970-80's Sprint disallowed the use of their > calling card for any purpose in the midtown Manhattan area of New > York City because of their perceptions involving fraud. AT&T has > for many years disallowed the use of their calling card from pay- > phones in ethnic neighborhoods in Chicago on international calls This summer I made an AT&T calling card international call to the UK from a Hell Atlantic payphone in Manhattan -- the NE corner of 116th St and Riverside Drive, to be exact. For purposes of redlining, this is a problematic neighborhood: predominantly white and wealthy, but Columbia University -- which is very international -- is just a block away, heavily black areas of Harlem (which include a Eritrean/ Ethiopian population) are just a few blocks to the north and east, and Riverside Drive sees a decent share of Hispanic traffic. I was pretty surprised that the calling card worked; and not at all surprised that, only one week later, when I tried to make the same call, it was rejected. I doubt that phone fraud in the intervening week had convinced BA to stop international calls; but I don't doubt that my long call might have reminded BA about a phone they'd forgotten to shut down. Phone fraud is to telcos what weather is to farmers: like it or not, it's a part of the business. But redlining on thinly disguised racial grounds isn't part of the business, IMO. So if this incident involves legal issues, I'd be very happy indeed to dredge up my records and send a letter to the NYS PSC. Cheers, T ------------------------------ From: Andrew Tannenbaum Subject: Re: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 04:51:37 GMT Organization: Brookline, MA, USA Thanks to wb8foz for the clue that Zoom had to hack their Demon Dialer to comply with these regs. I went to the Zoom site, and their dialer specs mention that they comply with FCC Rules Parts 68 and 15 (of USC Title 47). These subparts were not well covered at the Cornell US Codes web site I'd checked, but they are available at the GPO site: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=47&PART=68&SECTION=318&YEAR=1998&TYPE=TEXT Title 47 Part 68 Section 318 seems like the right one. (It was called "Additional Limitations," which was not a big help.) trb ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 00:46:02 EST From: msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: Unexpected Usage - Y2K Pat writes: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It may turn out a little different > than that since 00:00 01/01/00 is *relative to where you are at* > around the USA and the world, with 1/24th of the world experiencing > that at any given time. ... And, even divided into 24 parts (or maybe > 25? aren't some places in the southern hemisphere on daylight savings > time at that time of year while other places are not?) that's still > a burden on the phone network, should everyone try to use it at once. Yep. But, ignoring daylight saving time, there are currently 37 or<*> 38 time zones in the world, not 24 or 25. That's 26 hourly zones from -11 to +14, 9 or 10 zones on half-hours, and 2 on quarter-hours. Of course there are several time zones with very few people. As an offhand guess, I'd think the time zones with the most telephones are probably +1 (Central European Time) and -5 (Eastern Time in North America). If my information is correct that Lord Howe Island (+10:30) and South Australia (+9:30) observe southern hemisphere daylight saving time, while Norfolk Island (+11:30) and Australia's Northern Territory (also +9:30) do not, then January 1 begins the same number of times, 37 or 38. (All other time zones include either Northern Hemisphere places or equatorial places that do not observe DST.) <*> I have conflicting information as to whether Pitcairn Island shares zone -9 with most of Alaska, or has its own time zone at -8:30. Mark Brader | Peter Neumann on Y2K: Toronto | This problem gives new meaning to "going out on msb@vex.net | a date" (which many systems will do on 1/1/00). My text in this article is in the public domain. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think what I may do that Friday afternoon however is prepare an issue of the Digest with a date of Sat, 1 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT and then have on the one hand everything ready to be pushed into sendmail about one second before the rollover and on the other side have my NNTP connection to Supernews open and ready to go so the Usenet messages can be pushed out at the same time. I might also fix an issue dated Fri, 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT so I can get in the last word as well! :) I'd have the issues ready and waiting so all I had to do was just push them out one right behind the other. This may seem like a dumb thing to say, but being a person who has lived through nearly 2/3rds of the years which begin '19' it just seems absolutely freaky to think of years beginning '20', and to realize that when we wake up that morning, everything will look the same as it did the day before, and hopefully work the same as it did the day before. Younger people who do not have as much 'experience with 19' as us older people who have written it on our checks and letters and other documents for more than a half-century probably do not feel quite the same anticipation. My little nephew who will be ten years old on December 10 sees nothing special about it at all. And then in just 13 months comes 2001 and the 'true' millenium mark; to me it is all terribly exciting and full of challenges. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #549 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 15 15:21:29 1999 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id PAA24912; Mon, 15 Nov 1999 15:21:29 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 15:21:29 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199911152021.PAA24912@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #550 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Nov 99 15:21:00 EST Volume 19 : Issue 550 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! (Joseph Mallett) Re: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? (David Charles) Re: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? (John Nagle) Re: Touchtone Phone Input, Voice Output? (Al Varney) Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? (Anthony Argyriou) Re: AT&T Puts 800-555-1212 Up for Sale! (Jason Fetterolf) Re: Line Identification Phone Number? (Sam Hodgeman) Re: USWest Residential ADSL vs. Qwest LD (Paul J. Lustgraaf) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (Kim Brennan) Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas (G.L. Sicherman) Re: BellSouth Privacy Director Concern (Al Varney) Two Rivers Technologies (Mike Pollock) Seeking Statistics (Nortel1st@aol.com) Re-Routing Page Requests (Michael Hartley) Charged (Criminal) For Use of UK 800 Number (evans_the_swim) Re: NJ Government Agency Wins Court Orders For Domain Name (Bill Levant) Country Code Question (Molinari Alessio) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph Mallett Subject: Re: 3-2-1-Rrring! Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 03:27:59 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises If we ever go into 11+ digits, can I have the 31337 NPA? (Oh c'mon, just a joke against all the phreaker lurkers here.) Joseph Mallett jmallett@newgold.net New Gold Technology http://smegsite.com/ http://newgold.net/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's note: I do not understandthe joke. Would you care to explain? PAT] ------------------------------ From: d_c_h@my-deja.com (David Charles) Subject: Re: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 12:34:18 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. In article , Andrew Tannenbaum wrote: > I'm looking for references to laws regulating automatic redialing > of telephone numbers. If I have a fax server that fails to connect > to my intended recipient, if I'm dialing the wrong number by accident, > my retry scheme might be quite irritating to the accidental victim. ... > Are there laws in countries outside the > USA? I've heard rumors about such laws in the UK and Japan. Some requirements concerning automatic retries are listed below. These all concern type approval (or equivalent) of terminal equipment, it is possible that in some countries there are further regulations concerning the use of such facilities. Europe- PSTN: Maximum 15 attempts with minimum 5s between each attempt [ETSI TBR21 subclause 4.8.3, referenced by EU Common Technical Regulations CTR21 (98/482/EC) and I-CTR37 (1999/303/EC)]. Europe - ISDN: No Requirement Japan - PSTN and ISDN: Either no more than three attempts in three minutes (this may be repeated indefinitely) or no more than 15 attempts in total (terminal must then be reset before further attempts possible). This does not apply when reporting a fire, burglary or other emergency. [Ordinance concerning terminal facilities etc. (MPT ordinance no.31 of 1985) articles 11(3) and 34-3(2), including amendments up to March 1999] Australia - ISDN: Maximum 10 attempts with minimum 2s between each attempt. [Australian Communication Agency TS 031 subclause 5.4.2.5, referenced by Telecommunications Labelling (Customer Equipment and Customer Cabling) Notice No.2 of 1997]. The European requirements mentioned apply in all EU countries and some others. Previously there were a large number of different national requirements, and these could still apply for some types of equipment (e.g. those outside the scope of the pan-European specifications). Also most equipment in use at present would have been approved under old national requirements. The current European and Australian requirements only apply to call attempts automatically initiated by the terminal equipment. The Japanese requirements (and some old European national requirements) also require it to restrict externally generated requests. In general requirements such as these only concern retries when the call is not completed, therefore if the call is answered a new sequence can be started. David Charles ------------------------------ From: John Nagle Organization: Animats Subject: Re: Are There Laws Regulating Auto Redialing? Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 09:43:21 -0800 Andrew Tannenbaum wrote: > I'm looking for references to laws regulating automatic redialing > of telephone numbers. If I have a fax server that fails to connect > to my intended recipient, if I'm dialing the wrong number by accident, > my retry scheme might be quite irritating to the accidental victim. > I have heard that such a system should be limited to four retries. I > have also heard that there are laws regulating this. I've taken some > time to look through the US Federal Code re Telecom at: > http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/ At one time, some of the South American countries with weak phone systems had such restrictions, but I don't know if this is still the case. The big problem used to be underprovisioning of originating registers in central offices, but originating registers are cheap in modern switches, so this is less of an issue. John Nagle ------------------------------ From: varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney) Subject: Re: Touchtone Phone Input, Voice Output? Date: 15 Nov 1999 18:20:41 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL Reply-To: varney@lucent.com In article , James Gifford wrote: > Babylon5Fan wrote: >> I'm trying to track down a system that accomplishes the following: >> 1) A user calls a special phone number; >> 2) The computer answers the phone and presents a voice menu; >> 3) The user keys the phone's touchtone to respond to the menu; >> (the results of which are a request for specific database info.) >> 4) The system queries a database (preferably Oracle) and >> 5) The results of the query are available to the user immediately by >> voice (or possibly by fax?) >> I know systems like this are out there. Anybody know of any? > What you're describing is a straight-up IVR (Interactive Voice Response) > system with database lookup. Most large voice network providers offer this kind of service. Search for "IVR" or "FAX back" on their Web sites. I know AT&T was offering this on their own hardware (the Oracle database is yours, they have the IVR/FAX stuff) or would do a "systems integration" partnership if you wanted your own hardware. A very cheap (or cheesy) solution is an answering machine (for voice menu) in parallel with a FAX machine that accepts DTMF prompts for a FAX-back request. Al Varney ------------------------------ From: Anthony Argyriou Subject: Re: TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 07:00:41 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Sun, 14 Nov 1999 11:39:30 EST, Michael J Kuras wrote: > The legality issues would be interesting to investigate, and I imagine > will come to some sort of head in the next five years. Again, this isn't > wiretapping -- it doesn't physically touch any equipment. Police can > react to what's in plain view in your car during a traffic stop, drug > and bomb dogs can react to 'public-domain' smells, so what's different > about stray EMI? Can someone simply tune it in and do what they want > with it? Sure there are laws against cellphone tapping, but that > forbids interception of a specific frequency for a specific purpose. > In general, however, I'd imagine that whatever EMF's are floating > around in the public domain are simply that: public domain. However, there are some precendents regarding ownership of EM radiation. The power company _owns_ the 60Hz (in the US) radiation produced by its power lines. The case was a farmer who had a barn under some high-tension lines which had begun to sag. He put a BIG coil in the rafters of the barn, and powered his farm from that. The power company sued, successfully. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, the Federal Communication > Commission *does* have a law saying that you may not *deliberatly* > intercept transmissions not intended for yourself, and that regards > those you do overhear or see, you may not, under the law, acknowledge > their existence or the contents therein. ... > ... This is why 'radar detectors' in automobiles > are illegal. Police would say you are interfering with the administra- > tion of justice which is debateable. But the Communications Act would > say that you are deliberatly receiving transmissions not intended > for yourself (intended for internal use by police) and that you are > attempting to benefit by what you 'overheard', i.e. learning the loca- > tion of police officers, that you might avoid breaking a law in their > presence. Certainly if on my police scanner I overheard some police > activity going on and took some action to jinx it I would breaking the > law, so why not with radar detectors? Radar detectors are not illegal everywhere. It is _not_ illegal to own or use one in California. However, it is not illegal for your insurance company to raise your rates or drop you for having one, and it is not illegal for a police officer to be much pickier and stringent on a traffic stop if he sees a radar detector. > but legally I am not sure at all > that any information gleaned in this way would be allowed as evidence > in a court, because there is no way the information could have been > legally obtained. I'd think the evidence would be squashed or dis- > allowed on demand. PAT] Unless, of course, a warrant was obtained, which you'd never know about until you were already in court. Anthony Argyriou ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 10:45:38 -0500 Reply-To: jason@itw.com From: jason@itw.com (Jason Fetterolf) Subject: Re: AT&T Puts 800-555-1212 Up for Sale! Organization: Apollo Concepts Telecom and Data Consulting Steve Sobol's follow up on this issue was: > I'm an AT&T 800 customer. One of the benefits of being an AT&T 800 > customer is being able to list yourself in their tollfree directory > and be relatively sure that people will be able to look you up via 800 > 555-1212. ;) This 800 Directory Assistance listing service is not uniquely offered by AT&T. I am an independent agent for about 15 different 800 Responsible Organizations (including AT&T), and ALL of the these LD/800 service providers, as well as all the others that I have ever dealt with provide the 800 number owner with 800 Directory Assistance upon their request. > I wonder how this is going to affect a service which so > many AT&T business long-distance customers (including me) have taken > for granted for many years. From a service-oriented point of view, I agree that the removal of this service as a "quick dial" to 800-555-1212 will cause businesses to lose some business from people who do not have internet access. It does not surprise me, however, as AT&T continues to automate their customer service functions in order to decrease their costs (at the expense of personalized customer service). Another good example (several years ago) of AT&T's increasing use of automation is demonstrated by the fact that if one had an "unrecog- nized number" on their resi. phone bill, then they could talk to a rep and clarify who that number belonged to ... no longer, though ... resi. customers are now directed to the multi-level voice menu systems and a computerized voice to get that information; no humans needed. One possible benefit to this situation: perhaps some AT&T LD/800 svc. customers will quit looking at AT&T as offering the "best value" (or only option) in these services, and give their business to a smaller, just-as-capable company that can help them to quit over-paying and get better customer service. Best Regards, Jason Fetterolf 610-385-1110 ------------------------------ From: Sam Hodgeman Subject: Re: Line Identification Phone Number? Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 09:15:56 -0800 Organization: Posted via RemarQ, http://www.remarq.com Try this. 1-800-346-0152 Herb Stein wrote in message ... > Dave, > Unfortunately, there is no single, standard number, at least not in > the US. There have been a few long distance or 800 numbers that > offered this service, but I don't know if any of them still exist. If > you indicate what area code and exchanges you are concerned with, > someone in this group and probably help. > In article , DaveC > wrote: >> I do some in-house, volunteer telecom wiring (new extensions, etc.) >> for a non-profit volunteer center. >> I'd like to know the number that I call in order to get back a voice >> identifier of the line I'm on. >> I'm in Pac Bell territory (N. California, SF bay area). ------------------------------ From: grpjl@iastate.edu (Paul J Lustgraaf) Subject: Re: USWest residential ADSL vs. Qwest LD Date: 15 Nov 1999 17:22:30 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA In article , Guy Helmer wrote: > I ordered USWest's Megabit 256 service for my existing primary > residential line in early August. After the ADSL service was > installed and working (which is another story entirely!), I dropped my > residential additional line. USWest's most recent billing showed that > they changed the designation for the primary line from "primary > residential" to "Megabit DSL" and the additional line from > "additional" to "primary residential". I haven't yet received the > bill that shows the disconnection of the additional line. > Qwest was my LD carrier for the primary residential line, but after I > disconnected the additional line, Qwest claimed they received a > disconnection notice for the *primary* line. I have called Qwest four > times to re-establish my account, and each time the account is > disconnected within a day. LD calls are still routed through Qwest by > USWest, and I'm still billed at the correct rates, but the disconnect > notice kills the calling cards I have for the account. > A USWest customer rep said Qwest must be misunderstanding the "Megabit > DSL" designation as not being a residential line. USWest says they > are not sending Qwest disconnection notices. Qwest says there isn't > anything wrong, but obviously something is broken in a system > somewhere. Advice on how to get this insidious problem escalated and > solved would be appreciated. This has to be a US Worst problem, because it is happening to other people in Iowa with other LD carriers, including AT&T. Typical for US Worst ... Paul Lustgraaf "Change is inevitable. Progress is not." Manager of Network Services Iowa State University Computation Center grpjl@iastate.edu Ames, IA 50011 515-294-0324 ------------------------------ From: kim@aol.com (Kim Brennan) Date: 15 Nov 1999 18:57:06 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Our moderator posts: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And regretably, a lot of high school > teachers in the USA are *dumb* also. Yes, the USA has bad teachers (and good ones), and parents that can't help educate thier children (and ones that can.) I remember a French teacher (rather a teacher that taught French. He was actually from Belgium) that gave me the worst grades I ever got. Unfortunately for me, he retired that year. I would have taken French under him again the following year, simply because I knew he was teaching me, despite the grades. Though this was a Junior High School teacher I believe my story still has value. I had five more years of French after that. I got better grades. I didn't LEARN anything however. All the French I learned was from that first teacher. I was always a good math student. I never had problems with any math until I ran into Calculus (in High school). While I got "passing" grades which would have counted for credit in College, I knew that had not learned anything. I took Calculus two more times (at the University of Maryland). I flunked it both times. Then I took it at a Community College (Montgomery College). It was a breeze. The difference was the teacher and the method of teaching. I went back later and looked at the U of Md texts, and still couldn't figure it out. And I realized that it wasn't me. It was the method of teaching (whether in a book or lecture) that made all the difference. I never finished College. I have taught myself more than they (now) teach. And continue to, never knowing when what I learn will be practical, but also knowing that it isn't wasted even if I never use it. I have taken side courses now and again to fill in my percieved lacks of education (only all too frequently to discover that I really did know it anyway). And also to get those one or two pearls of useful information that makes the whole course worthwhile. Kim Brennan Duo 2300c, PB 2400, VW Fox Wagon GL, Corrado SLC, Vanagon GL Syncro http://members.aol.com/kim Duo Info Page: http://members.aol.com/kim/computer/duo/duoindex.html ?'s should include "Duo" in subject, else they'll be deleted unread. ------------------------------ From: colonel@monmouth.com (G.L. Sicherman) Subject: Re: That Foreign Country Between Arizona and Texas Date: 15 Nov 1999 19:20:44 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies In , charles_johnson1@spamhoo.com wrote: > You think New Mexico has problems. I still find literature, even this > week, that lists Mexico as being part of Central America and not part > of North America. Central America is part of North America too. > Brazil is not hispanic. Hispanic from most of the definitions I've > read on government forms is "of Spanish sub-culture." Which means > that if you are directly from Spain you are not hispanic, and if your > country is not from Spanish colonial history, it is not hispanic. Nevertheless, for statistics it may be useful to include Brazilians with Hispanics. They often have similar backgrounds and have similar lives in the U.S. After the Internet takes over we can safely dispense with anachronisms like states and countries. G. L. Sicherman work: sicherman@lucent.com home: colonel@mail.monmouth.com ------------------------------ From: varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney) Subject: Re: BellSouth Privacy Director Concern Date: 15 Nov 1999 19:02:53 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL Reply-To: varney@lucent.com In article , Ed Ellers wrote: > A BellSouth press release stated: >> Privacy Director service works in conjunction with Caller ID >> Deluxe. When a person calls with a blocked or unknown number that >> won't show up on Caller ID, Privacy Director service answers the call >> and gives the callers the option of identifying themselves. If they >> refuse to identify who they are, the phone doesn't ring at the >> BellSouth customer's home and they are not interrupted. If the callers >> identify themselves, the phone rings and Privacy Director tells the >> customer who is calling. The customer then has the option of answering >> the call, ignoring the call, or sending phone solicitors a sales >> reject message. > I have a problem with this. A very big problem. > Since this service will work regardless of whether the called party > reads the number off a Caller ID display, what justification is there > for requiring Caller ID (Deluxe or otherwise) in order to obtain this > service? While I've not explored in detail the exact BellSouth service, the similar ones I've examined use the Caller ID display to inform the called party which calls are from "Privacy Director" (that is, calls that were originally blocked/unknown) vs. those that originally contained Caller ID information. The intercepted callers that identify themselves do so via voice, and the "Privacy Director" can't display much other than the fact that this was a "screened" call requiring further called party interaction. When you answer such a call, you don't really want to be saying "Hello, hello" to the "Director", you want to be listening to the caller's voice. I'm not aware of any requirement for the called party to actually have a Caller ID device. The tariff is $XX per month and INCLUDES the Caller ID service. You don't have to use it. Al Varney - just my opinion ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: Two Rivers Technologies Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 14:00:00 -0500 Organization: It's A Mike! I just got a brochure for this outfit. They conduct seminars on Mastering Telecommunications Fundamentals and Understanding Telecommunications Applications. Mike http://www.tworivers-tech.com/ ------------------------------ From: Nortel1st@aol.com Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 11:17:36 EST Subject: Statistics Wanted Dear Patrick, I've save your link in my favorite places and found your website to be very informative. I was wondering if you may have any information on the Secondary Market for Telecommunications Systems Dollar Figures, Growth, Potential. Nortel1st@aol.com www.1stalliancecom.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Will anyone with a source of inform- ation on this please contact the writer directly. Thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael Hartley Subject: Re-Routing Page Requests Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 12:37:00 -0000 PAT, FYI, I found this on the TBTF list and remembered recent Digest threads on a similar subject. Mike From: dawson@world.std.com (Keith Dawson) Subject: TBTF Log, 1999-10-31 to 1999-11-13 Reply-To: tbtf-approval@tbtf.com To: tbtf@tbtf.com Thursday, 1999-11-04++ Cheek of the week (supermarket division). 7:28:16 am Richard Leahy writes from Ireland: > If you go to www.asda.co.uk [1], click thru to jobs, then graduate > scheme -- there's a little questionnaire. If you don't give wow > answers it sends you to one of their competitor Web sites > (Sainsbury's, Tesco. M&S), implying "Ha ha you're not good > enough for ASDA but try these crappy retailers." > Hardly the sort of behaviour you would expect considering ASDA is > one of the top five retailers in the UK with an annual turnover of > $13.6bn. However given that they have been recently acquired by > Wal-Mart this sort of thing may reflect a newly injected Netsavvy > (or cynicism) from their US parent. [1] http://www.asda.co.uk/ ------------------------------ From: evans_the_swim@dontbothermewithspam.tesco.net Subject: Charged (Criminal) For Use of UK 800 Number Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 14:08:55 GMT Organization: Tesco ISP Reports in uk.legal, and/or alt.internet.providers.uk.free are that an individual known as Chris Buckley has been charged in criminal court for obscene language and for use of an 0800 number to access an ISP. (0800 numbers here are the same as 800 numbers in the US and Canada -- you don't get billed for 'em.) The source of these was CB - viz: In article <80k4m7$oev$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, avengersvomit@my-deja.com (avengersvomit@my-deja.com) said thus: > Net censorship or BT exercising a right? Censorship in the form of a prosecution. BT shouldn't even have the rights they have anyway. The Police were led by BT all the way for months. > It seems that ISP's are using > regulations anything other than freedom of speech as grounds for > preventing freedom of speech. Whether this is the case in respect of > Chris Buckley is difficult to determine but if he is reading this we'd > like to hear his version of events. The thread(s) in this and alt.internet.providers.uk.free tell most, if not all, of the story. There are things I shall not be commenting on though due to legal advice. I am electing to be tried on all three charges (might not be able to get a crown court for charge two though) in a Crown Court. ------------------------------- Allegedly the 0800 number was leaked by a BT employee and sometime after its use by CB he was, um, "direct" in his posting style regarding such use. We will follow the case with _much_ interest ... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you wouldn't mind summarizing the matter to-date, and then providing us with followups now and then for use in the Digest, that would be great. Thanks very much. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 09:51:17 EST From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Subject: Re: NJ Government Agency Wins Court Orders For Domain Names [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is reconstructed from mail which was lost Sunday evening. PAT] > They'll transfer the ownership of NJTransit.com, NJTransit.org, > NJTransit.net and 1-800-NJTransit to us immediately," said Jeffrey > Warsh, the commuter agency's executive director. "We own the name and > they were using it illegally. Uh, excuse me. What's wrong with this? First of all, NJT didn't "win" the case; it was settled immediately before trial. Seems the former owners of NJTransit.com, etc., didn't want to litigate the case. And why not? Simple. NJ Transit is a registered service mark. You couldn't legally open a store called NJ Transit, so why should the web be any different? Some years ago, in Baltimore, a woman named Sony opened an eponymous (look it up) restaurant. A certain electronics company sued (can't let the public confuse televisions with sushi, can we?) and she was forced to change the name of the restaurant to include her last name (which I can't recall at the moment). Funny thing, though; the neon tubes spelling her last name "burned out" shortly thereafter, and were NEVER replaced. Oh, well. Now, I consider myself a liberal (perhaps somewhat less so than I was in earlier years -- and considerably less so than our libertarian-leaning Moderator), especially on freedom-of-speech issues, but I JUST DON'T SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH ENFORCING TRADEMARKS ON THE NET TO THE SAME DEGREE AS WOULD BE APPLICABLE OFF THE NET. The net is not a "special place" where the usual rules shouldn't apply ... it's part of the world. Sorry. Bill ------------------------------ From: Molinari Alessio Subject: Country Code Question Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 18:08:59 +0100 Dear Mr Patrick Townson thanks for to give me a link http://www.erlang.com. I'm dubious for North Marianna Island (00670) , Guam ( 00671) and American Samoa (00684) country code. Are correct? From Italy I try to do some phone test but I received also busy tone. Best regards, Alessio Molinari Network Management Misure qualita' - traffico *+39 02 41331.6204 *alessio.molinari@infostrada.it Via Lorenteggio 257 20152 Milano ITALY [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I believe that while the above three *used to be* country codes, they are now considered USA area codes instead. Am I correct? Instead of this person dialing the above as country codes, should he be dialing the USA country code '1' followed by the above as area codes? Please write him directly, but some clarification here would be good also. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #550 ******************************