Telecom/1996-04-telecom-walnutcreek.iso/back.issues/1987.volumes.6-7/volume.7.all.issues

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From [e-mail]  Thu May 21 17:45:22 1987
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Date: Thu, 21 May 87 17:36:03 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V4 #1
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Thu, 21 May 87 17:36:03 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 1

Today's Topics:

                          missing submissions
                           Re: Regular Phone Chirp
                               1-800-XXX-0000
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: [e-mail]
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To: telecom
Subject: missing submissions
Status: RO

Due to a bug in the software during the setup of TELECOM at BUIT1,
all input to the digest was lost for the past few days. If you don't
see your submission in this digest, please repost/resend it to us.

Sorry for the inconvenience.
--jsol

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

Date: Thu, 21 May 87 06:20:40 EDT
From: [e-mail]
To: telecom
Subject: missing submissions
Date:          Thu, 21 May 87 10:01 EDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject:       Re: Regular Phone Chirp
To: [e-mail]

I have a home-brew piezoelectric ringer signal on my line and the same thing
happens, except it happens at 4:32am.  A long time ago, I had a simple on-hook
monitor which would listen to the phone line and run it through a small amp
to a speaker.  I would leave it running in my room to listen to the idle noise
on the line.  Well, one day I left it on my parents line, and they got a
"chunk-chunk" noise at about 11:00pm.  I put the speaker/amp on my line and
waited for 4:32am, and sure enough, I got the same "chunk-chunk", accompanied
by an obediant chirp from my piezo ringer.  So from this I deduced it must be
some sort of automated test sweep.  I am in a 1aESS if that helps any.
It sounds to me like the line is reversing polarity briefly, although I haven't
checked it with a meter yet.

David Harpe
[e-mail]

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

Date:          Thu, 21 May 87 10:11 EDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject:       1-800-XXX-0000
To: [e-mail]

Completely by accident, I noticed the other day that if you dial 1-800-XXX-0000
where XXX is a valid 800 exchange, you get the following message:

        "You have reached the ATT long distance network.  Thank you for
         choosing ATT.  This message will not be repeated."

And sure enough, it wasn't repeated.  My question is:  Why is this there?
My long distance carrier is ATT, and I know there are numbers you can dial
that allow you to check your LD carrier, but I thought those numbers were in
the 700 range.  Does this happen for those of you who have MCI, Sprint, etc?

David Harpe
[e-mail]

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Fri May 22 19:25:57 1987
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From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V4 #2
To: [e-mail]
Status: RO


TELECOM Digest     Fri, 22 May 87 19:26:02 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 2

Today's Topics:

                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                       Re: TELECOM Digest V6 #51
                 Extended phone services in California
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: utah-cs!stride.stride.com![e-mail] (UNR VAX-11/750)
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Path: stride!utah-gr!uplherc!nrc-ut!nrcvax!ihm
From: [e-mail] (Ian H. Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V6 #51
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 May 87 18:19:48 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Ian Merritt)
Distribution: world
Organization: The Frobboz Magic Telephone Co., Inc.
Lines: 44

>
>   Date:     Wed, 13 May 87 10:40 EDT
>   From:     "Steven H. Gutfreund" <[e-mail]>
>   Subject:  Phone card scam
>
>   Does anyone have some reasonable technical suggetions about what
>   could be done (I realize that a lot of ideas are shot down by the
>   Long Distance Carries because of marketing and simplicity reasons)
>
>                   - Steven Gutfreund
>
>Sure. Hundred digit credit card numbers. Ok, twenty digits ought to be
>enough. Especially with the spiffy AT&T phones that automatically
>punch in your AT&T credit card number for you, there really isn't any
>reason (beyond convience for people at manual phones) not to use big
>numbers.
>
>At each central office, keep a list of every authorized credit card
>number. (How hard would that be? Figure 100,000,000 valid credit card
>numbers, 20 digits (10 bytes) each. With only BCD compression, this is
>only 1GB of storage, which could easily be distributed on a weekly
>basis. (Or looked up directly via some sort of packet switched
>network.) You could veryify a number in less than a second.)

Actually, that's exactly how the verification is done now.  The AT&T
CCIS (Common Channel Interoffice Signalling) network is employed for
the inqueries to regional database sites (I don't recall thje AT&T
term for them), and TSPS that handles the Calling Card service for
them actually does the inquery for each attempt to use the card.  The
only thing you have suggested that would change the system is the
additional digits.  The problems are that it would be a bitch to
memorize all that and difficult at best to type it all in error free.
Remember there are often times you don't have your card with you to
'conveniently' insert into a handy-dandy slot phone, and such phones
are not always available.  I for one never carry my card; I just key
it in from memory.  I think it would be better extend the current
scheme to a 7 digit PIN # (instead of the current 4).  This would
allow several new features I won't attempt to list here, it would
improve security, and as mosty people have developed the ability to
remember telephone numbers, the pin, being just another 7 digit
number, would be easy to remember (without a card).

Cheerz--
                            --i

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

From: utah-cs!stride.stride.com![e-mail] (UNR VAX-11/750)
Date: 22 May 87 05:49:01 GMT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
From: [e-mail] (Ian H. Merritt)
Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V6 #51
Date: 18 May 87 18:19:48 GMT
Date: Fri, 22 May 87 09:24:13 PDT
From: blia.UUCP![e-mail] (Ted Marshall)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Extended phone services in California

Recently, there was a big discussion here of the extended telephone services
being tried by South Central Bell. Today, In the San Jose Mercury News,
there was an article stating that Pacific Bell is planning to offer a
set of such services to its customers starting in Q2, 1988. The list of
services included is as follows:
    * auto callback
    * auto recall (call me back when call goes through)
    * customer-originated trace
    * call identification
    * call-identification blocking
    * distinctive ringing
    * selective call forwarding
    * selective call rejection

The article does not state how long it will take until these are offered in
all Pac Bell exchanges. It also does not give the charges for these services.

Finally it notes that Pac Bell has not yet filed with the PUC and so everything
is subject to change at the regulators' whim.

--
Ted Marshall       ...!ucbvax!mtxinu!blia!ted <or> mtxinu!blia![e-mail]
Britton Lee, Inc., 14600 Winchester Blvd, Los Gatos, Ca 95030     [phone]
The opinions expressed above are those of the poster and not his employer.

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Sun May 24 01:11:08 1987
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Date: Sun, 24 May 87  1:10:53 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #5
To: [e-mail]
Status: O


TELECOM Digest     Sun, 24 May 87  1:10:53 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 5

Today's Topics:

 Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Communication Progress for Criminals)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 May 87 23:19:07 EDT
From: kitty![e-mail]
To: seismo!xx.lcs.mit.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Communication Progress for Criminals)
Cc: kitty![e-mail]


> In a recent article [e-mail] (Dave Turner) writes:
>
> The following is from an editorial by Wayne Green in the June, 1987 issue
> of 73 Amateur Radio magazine:
>
> The recent legislation making cellular phone calls illegal to listen in on
> has provided a bonanza for both organized and disorganized crime. It's
> difficult not to laugh over the situation the cellular industry has gotten
> itself into in its blind pursuit of the fast buck.
>
> What's happened is a mass move into cellular by criminals. They buy a
> cellular system, have an unscrupulous dealer alter the electronic serial
> number (ESN) on the built-in programmable IC, which makes calls both
> untraceable and free--a great combo. They tool around town, making calls
> to Pakistan, Columbia, and their Caribbean drug warehouses at will.

    I have a few comments to make on this and some related topics which
may be of interest to Net readers.  My comments are based upon personal
knowledge and experience as one who has provided some forensic science
consulting services to certain law enforcement agencies for a number of years.

    It's sort of interesting to note that it was even easier to implement
spoofing fraud in dial IMTS mobile telephone installations, but such fraud
has been virtually unheard of.  The reasons for this are: much fewer IMTS
channels and much fewer IMTS customers than cellular make such fraud extremely
conspicuous; most IMTS installations are combined with MTS installations and
have a high probability of telephone company (or RCC) operator monitoring.
    My personal opinion is that cellular fraud has been encouraged due to
"safety in numbers". :-)

> Cellular has turned out to be great for coordinating every kind of criminal
> activity. It's just what criminals have been needing for years-- a
> dependable, free, untraceable, and safe communications system. With a
> combination of pagers and cellular phones, crooks are making a shambles
> of the cellular system--all protected by Congress.
>
> If you wanted to deal in drugs, how better to get orders from your
> customers than by giving them your cellular phone number? There's no way
> to tap a telephone that can be anywhere in a big city, operating through
> different cells as it moves around. And with an altered ESN it's all free!

    Progress in telecommunications has unquestionably been of benefit to
criminal activity.
    Probably the single greatest benefit has been the introduction of call
forwarding.  This service has been of such great benefit to the conduct of
unlawful gambling, narcotics and prostitution operations that for many years
I have jokingly referred to it as: "1A Criminal Facilitation Service"; AT&T
and BOC people may appreciate the satire in this remark.
    As an example, an unlawful gambling operation could change location
every day or so, with the telephone number for bettors being the same.  This
situation also neatly defeats any court-authorized eavesdropping warrant since
there would never be conversations on the telephone pair that was the subject
of such a wiretap; a forwarded call never takes place on the physical line
whose number was dialed.  In earlier No. 1 and No 1A ESS installations there
was no rapid method to determine to what number a given line had its calls
forwarded; such determination could only be made by an experienced switchman
using the ESS maintenance tty.  This rather frustrated law enforcement
agencies in their investigation of unlawful gambling and narcotics activity.
Furthermore, I know of some instances where telephone company personnel flatly
denied to law enforcement investigators that they could determine the
forwarded telephone number; this was, of course, a false statement, but was
made in a  misguided effort to keep the telephone company "uninvolved".
    As an interesting aside, prior to the advent of ESS and call
forwarding, some larger unlawful gambling operations used an electronic device
called a "cheese box" that effected a rudimentary kind of call forwarding in a
manner similar to a loop-around test line.  Two telephone lines would be
ordered for say, an unoccupied office or apartment, and each line would
connect to the "cheese box".  The actual location of the gambling operation
would call the first line, and remain on the line and wait for calls; the
"customers" would call the second line, with the result that it would
auto-answer and be connected to the first line.
    Telephone company loop-around test lines were used for the conduct of
unlawful narcotics dealing during the 1970's, but this practice has generally
disappeared as telephone companies: (1) installed 60A control units or
equivalent devices that dropped loop-around connections upon the detection
of speech energy (legitimate use of loop-around test lines is for single
frequency transmission measurements only); and (2) went ESS and therefore had
"call trace" capability that would automatically determine the origin of
calls to loop-around and other test lines.
    After call forwarding, the next most useful communications adjunct to
criminal activity is the voice radio pager.  It is an unfortunate fact of life
that no self-respecting prostitute or "street dealer" of narcotics would be
caught without their voice pager.  Voice pagers represent an ideal, inexpensive
method of arranging clandestine meetings.  A typical voice pager scenario:
customer calls narcotics dealer's pager from a coin telephone, giving coin
telephone number; narcotics dealer finds coin telephone to call coin telephone
where customer is waiting to arrange for a meeting.  What could be simpler
and more untraceable?
    In my travels, I have known of only two instances where criminals used
any speech privacy devices (speech scramblers) to defeat eavesdropping (lawful
of otherwise); however, I suspect that a new generation of low-cost digital
speech privacy devices will result in more of these devices being used by
criminals.  The units that I have seen used were all based upon analog
"speech inversion" techniques; these devices are easy to defeat, whereas the
digital devices are virtually impossible to compromise by other than NSA.
    One of the most novel (at the time) applications of communications
technology by criminals that I have personally seen was the use of
telecopiers by a large unlawful gambling operation about 11 years ago.
While the law enforcement agencies involved had obtained eavesdropping
warrants to install wiretaps on some of the telephone lines involved, they
were totally baffled by the strange sounds heard during some intercepted
calls.  I was called in to solve the mystery, and some listening told me
that this was an FSK facsimile machine running in 6-minute mode.  So we
borrowed a telecopier to decode the tapes; this was not as easy as first
anticipated.  I finally had to modify the telecopier to start in receive
mode without receiving a ringing signal (which was not possible from an
after-the-fact tape recording).  We got some pretty damning evidence, much
to the consternation of the criminals (who suspected a wiretap, but felt
that the facsimile machine was "secure").  While telecopiers are rather
common today, such was not the case 11 years ago.  I suspect that as
telecopiers decrease in price, they too will be more commonly used by
criminals.  While Group I and Group II facsimile machines are fairly easy
to monitor, the more common Group III (sub-minute) machines are much more
complex since they are digital and require faking a handshake protocol by
any receiving machine used as a monitor.

> If it weren't against the law to listen to cellular channels, I'd suggest we
> hams help the law by listening for suspicious cellular calls and recording
> them. Say, how'd you like to get the goods on some serious crooks and find
> (a) the evidence is inadmissible because it was illegally attained and (b)
> yourself on trial for making the recordings. So join me in a big laugh, okay?

    I know of law enforcement agencies that have in the past used scanners
to listen to paging service channels and IMTS mobile telephone channels, and
have obtained useful intelligence information.  None of the information so
derived was used in court per se, but it may have contributed to the "probable
cause" for looking in a certain _public_ place at a certain time.  When any
investigator was pressed in court for the "basis of probable cause", the
information was attributed to an "anonymous informant" - a VERY common source
of law enforcement information.  Under the circumstances, I see nothing wrong
with this - but I am certain that a number of people will disagree with me.
    For example, an experienced investigator can readily detect a drug
deal going on via certain types of pager messages.  Now, if a police cruiser
just happened to be going by the aforesaid location, and decided it was time
for a routine traffic check... :-)

    [Flames about prosecuting people for alleged "victimless" crimes such
as gambling, narcotics and prostitution should be directed to /dev/null]

<>  Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York
<>  UUCP:  {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry
<>  VOICE: 716/688-1231        {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/
<>  FAX:   [phone] {G1,G2,G3 modes}    "Have you hugged your cat today?"


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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Tue May 26 11:35:05 1987
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From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #3
To: [e-mail]
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Resent-To: [e-mail]
Status: RO


TELECOM Digest     Sun, 24 May 87  1:09:31 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 3

Today's Topics:

                   Re: 3-tone no connection question
                   help on modem + answering machine
                     Re: phone wiring for a modem
                          Re: Ringback codes
                        Re: Regular Phone Chirp
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: "\F
From: umix!itivax!chinet!aicchi![e-mail] (Burch)
Subject: Re: 3-tone no connection question
Date: 22 May 87 14:15:12 GMT

Well, those three tones, (Which used to be real loud, 0dB), are
called SIT or Special Information Tones.  They are used to help
your local phone switch when you are connected to an intercept
recorder.  They tell your switch what to do about billing your
call.  However, once offhook supervision has been returned by the
party you call, they have no effect.  Therefore, you may use them
on your answering machine and they will have no effect. Except
Cuteness...  Seriously, I doubt that a recorder could send those
with enough purity to be heard by the PLL's that listen for them.

--
-David B. (Ben) Burch
 Analysts International Corp.
 Chicago Branch (ihnp4!aicchi!dbb)

"Argue for your limitations, and they are yours." - R. Bach

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

To: moss!cbatt![e-mail]
From: moss!ihnp4!wheaton![e-mail] (Steve Hurlbut)
Subject: help on modem + answering machine
Date: 22 May 87 21:15:30 GMT

Is there a phone answering machine plus modem combination that allows owner to
call in from remote location, have answering machine commect him to modem, then
revert back to answering machine when owner is finished using modem?

UUCP:ihnp4!wheaton!steve

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

To: seismo![e-mail]
From: pur-ee!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Re: phone wiring for a modem
Date: 22 May 87 22:11:00 GMT

> I need to wire a new phone line through a house for use with a modem.
> Is there some kind of sheilded phone cable that I could use to help
> reduce any noise in the connection?  Anything else I should be aware
> of when routing the wire such as not getting too close to electrical
> wires?  Thanks.

    i also expect to be installing a new line soon, so any advice or
horror stories would be appreciated.

    wayne hamilton
    U of Il and US Army Corps of Engineers CERL
UUCP:    {ihnp4,seismo,pur-ee,convex}!uiucuxc!hamilton
ARPA:    [e-mail]    USMail:    Box 476, Urbana, IL 61801
CSNET:    [e-mail]        Phone:    [phone]
CIS:    [73047,544]            PLink:  w hamilton

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

To: seismo![e-mail]
From: pur-ee!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Ringback codes
Date: 22 May 87 22:18:00 GMT

> Every once in a while, someone posts a note asking about ringback codes
> (numbers to dial to make your own telephone ring).  Unfortunately, these
> codes aren't the same everywhere, and are mostly undocumented.
> ...

    i use a technique that has worked flawlessly whenever and wherever
i have tried it:
    dial 0
    ask the operator to ring your number
    hang up
('course, you do need to know your own number...)

    wayne hamilton
    U of Il and US Army Corps of Engineers CERL
UUCP:    {ihnp4,seismo,pur-ee,convex}!uiucuxc!hamilton
ARPA:    [e-mail]    USMail:    Box 476, Urbana, IL 61801
CSNET:    [e-mail]        Phone:    [phone]
CIS:    [73047,544]            PLink:  w hamilton

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

To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Regular Phone Chirp
Date: Thu, 21 May 87 16:07:23 -0700
From: [e-mail]

I'd completely forgotten about this. When we lived in Chicago, our
bedroom phone would chirp at 7am on the dot, every weekday. After we
stopped being annoyed by it, it became a useful alarm clock.

chris

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Tue May 26 13:50:33 1987
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From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #4
To: [e-mail]
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Resent-To: [e-mail]
Status: RO

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 24 May 87  1:10:34 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 4

Today's Topics:

    Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (ALIT and Telephone "Chirps")
 Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Use of shielded cable for telephones)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 May 87 23:18:25 EDT
From: kitty![e-mail]
To: seismo!xx.lcs.mit.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (ALIT and Telephone "Chirps")
Cc: kitty![e-mail]


> In a recent article [e-mail] (Roger Hoover) writes:
> A friend of mine has a cheapo phone that chirps every night at
> 11:55pm.  A call to New York Telephone about this got a response
> claiming that NYT did no regular testing that would cause this.
> A telephone on the same line with a mechanical ringer does not
> make any noise.
>
> 1) What is causing this noise?

    I am willing to bet that the response from New York Telephone is
incorrect.  While the action of New York Telephone test apparatus may be
precipitating the problem, the telephone company has no responsibility
to take any corrective action; such a position may be difficult for the
average customer to accept.  Their "denial" of regular testing is either based
upon specific ignorance of the person to whom you spoke, or is intentionally
based upon paranoia of creating a whole new basis for customer complaints.
The latter situation is probably more likely.
    It sounds to me like the telephone is poorly designed, and causes
the "chirp" whenever telephone line battery voltage is removed and then
reapplied to the telephone when it is on-hook.
    Most telephone company central offices have ALIT (Automatic Line
Insulation Test) apparatus which is used to detect the presence of faulty
outside plant cables.  ALIT apparatus is programmed to test all regular
telephone lines (loop-start only) for low leakage resistance from each
conductor to ground.
    In operation, ALIT apparatus first determines if the line under
test if busy; if it is, the line is not tested.  If the line is idle, the
ALIT apparatus connects to the tip and ring of the line, while DISCONNECTING
the line from the off-hook detection battery source.  The ALIT apparatus
then makes a resistance measurement from tip-to-ground, and ring-to-ground;
such measurements require no central office battery on the line.  The ALIT
apparatus then disconnects from the line and restores it to normal.  The
entire ALIT measurement time is between 1 and 2 seconds per subscriber line.
    Lines which fail the ALIT test (i.e., their leakage resistance to
ground is BELOW a given threshhold), are listed on a printer or transmitted
by other means to a telephone company test center.  Most ALIT apparatus will
also transmit an alarm to an attended test center if a significant number
of lines fail the test.
    So the point is: the most likely explanation for the "chirp" is that
ALIT momentarily disconnects the telephone from the central office battery,
thereby creating a transient voltage which is falsely triggering the "chirp"
circuit in the telephone.  It is also possible that the test voltage from the
ALIT apparatus itself is falsely triggering the "chirp" circuit.
    Since ALIT apparatus can only test lines that are idle, ALIT testing
is always done between 2300 and 0700 hours.  Since ALIT apparatus tests lines
in numerical sequence, the test time of any given line will remain pretty
much the same every night (unless the ALIT apparatus programming is changed).

> 2) Is their an easy way to stop it?

    Buy a better quality telephone. :-)

<>  Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York
<>  UUCP:  {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry
<>  VOICE: 716/688-1231        {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/
<>  FAX:   [phone] {G1,G2,G3 modes}    "Have you hugged your cat today?"

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

Date: Fri, 22 May 87 23:18:45 EDT
From: kitty![e-mail]
To: seismo!xx.lcs.mit.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Use of shielded cable for telephones)
Cc: kitty![e-mail]

In a recent article [e-mail] (Dave Johnson) writes:
> I need to wire a new phone line through a house for use with a modem.
> Is there some kind of sheilded phone cable that I could use to help
> reduce any noise in the connection?  Anything else I should be aware
> of when routing the wire such as not getting too close to electrical
> wires?  Thanks.

    I can think of no valid reason to use shielded telephone cable
for wiring in a house.  Most AC powerline noise is imposed upon telephone
lines through induction rather than conduction or radiation, so any
conventional shielded cable won't help this situation anyhow.
    Furthermore, the relative exposure of inside telephone wiring to
AC powerlines is insignificant when compared to outside cable plant exposure
to the electromagnetic fields of high-voltage AC transmission lines.

    Shielded cable is only useful for high-speed twisted-pair LAN
devices or other high-speed data lines (56 kbits/sec or greater).

    I have only two suggestions for your wiring:

1.    Try to find two-pair "inside station wire" which is _truly_ paired.
    Many two-pair station cables have four wires which are NOT paired,
    and therefore have some susceptibility to noise pickup and crosstalk.
    I wouldn't lose any sleep if you can't find such cable, however.

2.    Try to keep at least a 2 inch separation between telephone cables
    and any powerline wiring.

<>  Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York
<>  UUCP:  {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry
<>  VOICE: 716/688-1231        {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/
<>  FAX:   [phone] {G1,G2,G3 modes}    "Have you hugged your cat today?"

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Tue May 26 23:12:56 1987
Received: from buita.bu.edu by buit1.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA03965; Tue, 26 May 87 23:12:56 EDT
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: by buita.bu.edu (1.1/4.7)
    id AA09893; Tue, 26 May 87 23:12:52 EDT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 87 23:12:39 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #6
To: [e-mail]
Status: RO


TELECOM Digest     Tue, 26 May 87 23:12:39 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 6

Today's Topics:

 Re: Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Use of shielded cable for telepho
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
               Re: Extended phone services in California
                           cellular inquiry
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: [e-mail]
From: hoptoad![e-mail] (Tim Pozar)
Subject: Re: Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Use of shielded cable for telephones)
Date: 26 May 87 04:10:44 GMT



In article <[e-mail]> kitty![e-mail] writes:
>In a recent article [e-mail] (Dave Johnson) writes:
>> I need to wire a new phone line through a house for use with a modem.
>> Is there some kind of sheilded phone cable that I could use to help
>> reduce any noise in the connection?  Anything else I should be aware
>> of when routing the wire such as not getting too close to electrical
>> wires?  Thanks.
>
>    I can think of no valid reason to use shielded telephone cable

   I can give you one reason:
   RFI or Radio Frequency Interference.
   I spec'ed a Northern Telecom SL-1 (s series) for our AM station in San Jose.
I knew at that time there was some pretty nasty RF levels in the building and
cofermed them with a RF field strength meter.  200volts per meter!  The
building contains a 50Kw transmitter and sits in the main lobe of the direc-
tional.  When we spec'ed the SL-1, I told Pac Tel (the folks we were
purchasing the switch from) that they would be encountering some high RF and
shielded, twisted pair would be advisable when installing the sets.  They said,
"No problem", and instaled unshielded, twisted pair.  Boy did they lose money
on our purchase!  They had to not only reinstall shielded, twisted pair, but
drop .01uf caps on all the lines and ferrite beads!
   Now I relize that most houseing will not be right next to a 50,000 watt
AM radio station, but if you are one of the small unfortunate RFI can be
handled with shielded wire and mabey a couple of .01uf caps.


--
        Tim Pozar
UUCP    [e-mail]
Fido    125/406
USNail  KLOK-FM
    77 Maiden Lane
    San Francisco CA 94108

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

To: [e-mail]
From: hoptoad![e-mail] (Tim Pozar)
Subject: Re: Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Use of shielded cable for telephones)
Date: 26 May 87 04:10:44 GMT



In article <[e-mail]> kitty![e-mail] writes:
>In a recent article [e-mail] (Dave Johnson) writes:
>> I need to wire a new phone line through a house for use with a modem.
>> Is there some kind of sheilded phone cable that I could use to help
>> reduce any noise in the connection?  Anything else I should be aware
>> of when routing the wire such as not getting too close to electrical
>> wires?  Thanks.
>
>    I can think of no valid reason to use shielded telephone cable

   I can give you one reason:
   RFI or Radio Frequency Interference.
   I spec'ed a Northern Telecom SL-1 (s series) for our AM station in San Jose.
I knew at that time there was some pretty nasty RF levels in the building and
cofermed them with a RF field strength meter.  200volts per meter!  The
building contains a 50Kw transmitter and sits in the main lobe of the direc-
tional.  When we spec'ed the SL-1, I told Pac Tel (the folks we were
purchasing the switch from) that they would be encountering some high RF and
shielded, twisted pair would be advisable when installing the sets.  They said,
"No problem", and instaled unshielded, twisted pair.  Boy did they lose money
on our purchase!  They had to not only reinstall shielded, twisted pair, but
drop .01uf caps on all the lines and ferrite beads!
   Now I relize that most houseing will not be right next to a 50,000 watt
AM radio station, but if you are one of the small unfortunate RFI can be
handled with shielded wire and mabey a couple of .01uf caps.


--
        Tim Pozar
UUCP    [e-mail]
Fido    125/406
USNail  KLOK-FM
    77 Maiden Lane
    San Francisco CA 94108

From: [e-mail] (Superuser)
Date: 26 May 87 09:02:30 GMT
To: ames!comp-dcom-telecom@ames
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: sgi!wdl1!kck
From: [e-mail] (Karl C. Kelley)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Extended phone services in California
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 May 87 07:43:00 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Lines: 11

 few weeks ago I got a note from my telephone co (pacbell) informing that they
are going to install some kind of new equipment and telling me that if I use
things like a modem (which i'm using now) or an answering machine, (which i
have come to depend on a great deal), that I should contact the place where
I bought the equipment and THEY would be able to tell me if any adjustment is
needed when this new telco equipment comes online.  This irritates me because
I have little hope of going to the electronics dept at Emporium and getting
a rational response to my query.  It strikes me that I might have better
luck asking the question here, since some of you appear to follow these things,
and in particular this entry looks like it could be related.  Anybody out
there know if these two things are related, or what the phone co has in mind?

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

To: [e-mail]
From: hoptoad![e-mail] (Tim Pozar)
Subject: Re: Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Use of shielded cable for telephones)
Date: 26 May 87 04:10:44 GMT



In article <[e-mail]> kitty![e-mail] writes:
>In a recent article [e-mail] (Dave Johnson) writes:
>> I need to wire a new phone line through a house for use with a modem.
>> Is there some kind of sheilded phone cable that I could use to help
>> reduce any noise in the connection?  Anything else I should be aware
>> of when routing the wire such as not getting too close to electrical
>> wires?  Thanks.
>
>    I can think of no valid reason to use shielded telephone cable

   I can give you one reason:
   RFI or Radio Frequency Interference.
   I spec'ed a Northern Telecom SL-1 (s series) for our AM station in San Jose.
I knew at that time there was some pretty nasty RF levels in the building and
cofermed them with a RF field strength meter.  200volts per meter!  The
building contains a 50Kw transmitter and sits in the main lobe of the direc-
tional.  When we spec'ed the SL-1, I told Pac Tel (the folks we were
purchasing the switch from) that they would be encountering some high RF and
shielded, twisted pair would be advisable when installing the sets.  They said,
"No problem", and instaled unshielded, twisted pair.  Boy did they lose money
on our purchase!  They had to not only reinstall shielded, twisted pair, but
drop .01uf caps on all the lines and ferrite beads!
   Now I relize that most houseing will not be right next to a 50,000 watt
AM radio station, but if you are one of the small unfortunate RFI can be
handled with shielded wire and mabey a couple of .01uf caps.


--
        Tim Pozar
UUCP    [e-mail]
Fido    125/406
USNail  KLOK-FM
    77 Maiden Lane
    San Francisco CA 94108

From: [e-mail] (Superuser)
Date: 26 May 87 09:02:30 GMT
To: ames!comp-dcom-telecom@ames
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: sgi!wdl1!kck
From: [e-mail] (Karl C. Kelley)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Extended phone services in California
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 May 87 07:43:00 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Lines: 11

 few weeks ago I got a note from my telephone co (pacbell) informing that they
are going to install some kind of new equipment and telling me that if I use
things like a modem (which i'm using now) or an answering machine, (which i
have come to depend on a great deal), that I should contact the place where
I bought the equipment and THEY would be able to tell me if any adjustment is
needed when this new telco equipment comes online.  This irritates me because
I have little hope of going to the electronics dept at Emporium and getting
a rational response to my query.  It strikes me that I might have better
luck asking the question here, since some of you appear to follow these things,
and in particular this entry looks like it could be related.  Anybody out
there know if these two things are related, or what the phone co has in mind?

Date: Tue, 19 May 87 06:32:11 mdt
From: utah-cs!gr.utah.edu!uplherc!wicat![e-mail] (UUCP)
To: [e-mail]




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

To: [e-mail]
From: hoptoad![e-mail] (Tim Pozar)
Subject: Re: Submission for comp.dcom.telecom (Use of shielded cable for telephones)
Date: 26 May 87 04:10:44 GMT



In article <[e-mail]> kitty![e-mail] writes:
>In a recent article [e-mail] (Dave Johnson) writes:
>> I need to wire a new phone line through a house for use with a modem.
>> Is there some kind of sheilded phone cable that I could use to help
>> reduce any noise in the connection?  Anything else I should be aware
>> of when routing the wire such as not getting too close to electrical
>> wires?  Thanks.
>
>    I can think of no valid reason to use shielded telephone cable

   I can give you one reason:
   RFI or Radio Frequency Interference.
   I spec'ed a Northern Telecom SL-1 (s series) for our AM station in San Jose.
I knew at that time there was some pretty nasty RF levels in the building and
cofermed them with a RF field strength meter.  200volts per meter!  The
building contains a 50Kw transmitter and sits in the main lobe of the direc-
tional.  When we spec'ed the SL-1, I told Pac Tel (the folks we were
purchasing the switch from) that they would be encountering some high RF and
shielded, twisted pair would be advisable when installing the sets.  They said,
"No problem", and instaled unshielded, twisted pair.  Boy did they lose money
on our purchase!  They had to not only reinstall shielded, twisted pair, but
drop .01uf caps on all the lines and ferrite beads!
   Now I relize that most houseing will not be right next to a 50,000 watt
AM radio station, but if you are one of the small unfortunate RFI can be
handled with shielded wire and mabey a couple of .01uf caps.


--
        Tim Pozar
UUCP    [e-mail]
Fido    125/406
USNail  KLOK-FM
    77 Maiden Lane
    San Francisco CA 94108

From: [e-mail] (Superuser)
Date: 26 May 87 09:02:30 GMT
To: ames!comp-dcom-telecom@ames
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: sgi!wdl1!kck
From: [e-mail] (Karl C. Kelley)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Extended phone services in California
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 May 87 07:43:00 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Lines: 11

 few weeks ago I got a note from my telephone co (pacbell) informing that they
are going to install some kind of new equipment and telling me that if I use
things like a modem (which i'm using now) or an answering machine, (which i
have come to depend on a great deal), that I should contact the place where
I bought the equipment and THEY would be able to tell me if any adjustment is
needed when this new telco equipment comes online.  This irritates me because
I have little hope of going to the electronics dept at Emporium and getting
a rational response to my query.  It strikes me that I might have better
luck asking the question here, since some of you appear to follow these things,
and in particular this entry looks like it could be related.  Anybody out
there know if these two things are related, or what the phone co has in mind?

Date: Tue, 19 May 87 06:32:11 mdt
From: utah-cs!gr.utah.edu!uplherc!wicat![e-mail] (UUCP)
To: [e-mail]




From: [e-mail]
Date: Tue, 26 May 87 17:36:45 PDT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: cellular inquiry


 MSG:FROM: SPGDCM  --UCBCMSA  TO: NETWORK --NETWORK           05/26/87 17:36:44
 To: NETWORK --NETWORK  Network Address

 From:    Doug Mosher                 <SPGDCM at UCBCMSA>
 Title:   MVS/Tandem Systems Manager  [phone]
 Office:  Evans 257, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
 Subject: cellular inquiry

 To: [e-mail]

 I do not yet understand enough about the cellular technology, and perhaps the
 answers are relatively simple and of interest to others as well as me.
 (If not, the moderator may wish to divert the discussion).

 Clearly a customer can rent a cellular phone, and register for service in a
 particular area; then they can both send and receive calls.

 The technology somehow recognizes and notes the user's location as they drive
 about, and knows in what cell to ring them if an outsider calls them.

 The questions:

 1. How is the location-recognition accomplished? Does one's currently inactive
 cellular phone burp regularly and its address get re-noted? Does that drain
 your battery? If it's really off are callers told something different from
 "ring...ring...ring...no answer"?

 2. Over how large an area does this typically work?

 3. If an owner drives from SF, normal location, to New York, and tries to call
 out, what happens?

 4. If while they are in New York, someone in SF, their home, calls them, what
 happens?

 5. Can you register as a visitor in a distant area, electronically or by
 calling in or however? Does this enable anyone else to call you from long
 distance? Must they know, essentially, where you went and when you're there?

 Thanks, Doug
   [  cellular inquiry

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Thu May 28 20:32:26 1987
Received: from buita.bu.edu by buit1.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA07208; Thu, 28 May 87 20:32:26 EDT
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: by buita.bu.edu (1.1/4.7)
    id AA14607; Thu, 28 May 87 20:32:28 EDT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 87 20:31:40 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #7
To: [e-mail]
Status: O


TELECOM Digest     Thu, 28 May 87 20:31:40 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 7

Today's Topics:

                   Administrivia - Status of TELECOM
                 bandwidth of LADS (metallic?) circuit
                      Celluar phones at the Indy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 26 May 87 04:35:29 CDT
From: academ![e-mail] (UUCP Adminstration)




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

Date: Wed, 27 May 87 15:57:52 EDT
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Administrivia - Status of TELECOM


As we continue to experience pain and anguish over the conversion
from XX.LCS.MIT.EDU to BUIT1.BU.EDU, I note three problems, one of which
has been solved.

1) The digestifier was generating bad digests. Specifically
message #2 included the text of message #1; #3 contained
both #1 and #2, etc. etc. This made the digest very large
and without much content. This problem has been solved.

2) USENET continues to mail duplicate messages. I am manually
looking at each set of submissions before sending out a digest,
and I generally catch most of the duplicates; but occasionally
a digest goes out with a message from a previous digest. This
can't really be helped without a major programming effort;
something I do not have the time to do. This problem is really
a usenet-wide problem, and I believe the usenet administrators
are working on a fix, so bear with them (and me).

3) BUIT1.BU.EDU is having problems connecting to some of the digest
recipients. BBN.COM and YUMA.ARPA are examples of hosts I cannot send
mail to. This may be an exasperation of #1 above, since very large
digests might time out, I am not sure. This may be fixed when our
ARPANET connection goes in, but in the mean time, I will try
forwarding Telecom digests that I can't mail to directly, through a
forwarding host (probably XX.LCS.MIT.EDU).

Well, now you know what the state of TELECOM is. I pledge that I will
do what I can to insure the best possible digest, both in quality,
and in speed of delivery.


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

To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: bandwidth of LADS (metallic?) circuit
Date: Thu, 28 May 87 01:04:14 -0400
From: Steve Dyer <[e-mail]>


I've been running for several months with a LADS circuit between my
house and the university, running at 9600 baud with a pair of Gandalf
LDS 309A short-haul modems.  I'm quite happy with this setup, but I
am wondering how much of the available bandwidth I am using.  If the
leased line is truly just a length of copper which runs from both endpoints
into the central office, and the total length of the wire is probably no more
than a mile, wouldn't there be a chance that the capacity of the line was
greater than 9600 or 19.2kb?   Actually the distance between my house
and the other end is about 2 blocks, but I assume these lines always
must pass through the central office.  Note that this isn't a "voice
grade" line, but something NETel calls "LADS" which presumably means
"Local Area Data Service" or some such.  I think that this is
the same as a metallic line, although it's hopeless to talk to anyone
at the phone company who knows enough about what they're providing.

Are there are bandwidth restrictions imposed on this type of line by
the telco in addition to those imposed by the length?  How would you
recommend measuring the effective capacity of the line?  Is there any
chance of exploiting the residual bandwidth (if there is any at all)
using something other than the LDS309As (or would the expense of such
equipment argue that a DDS line would be cheaper!)  As you can tell,
I'm dreaming of a poor-man's 56kb+ line and am trying to gauge how
much of a pipe dream it is.
---
Steve Dyer
[e-mail]
[e-mail] aka {ihnp4,harvard,linus,ima,bbn,halleys}!spdcc!dyer

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

From: [e-mail]
To: tektronix![e-mail]
Date: Tue May 26 14:45:36 1987


To:
Path: littlei!adams
From: [e-mail] (Robert Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Celluar phones at the Indy
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 May 87 21:45:32 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Robert Adams)
Distribution: world
Organization: Intel Corp., ISO Systems Development, Hillsboro, OR
Lines: 12


     While watching the Indianapolis 500 on TV this Sunday, I saw
them do a feature on one of the car crews that were using a celluar
phone to talk to the driver on the track.  You see, most crews use
some sort of CB or shortwave set to talk between the pit and the
driver and the TV announcers are always talking about what they overheard
on the radios.  This one car had a celluar phone and the crew would
phone the driver to discuss things.  This seemed really strange to
me until I realized that the use of the phone meant that no one
could legally listen in on their conversations.
      Everyday someone discovers a new way to use that law.

      -- Robert Adams


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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Sat May 30 17:31:26 1987
Received: from buita.bu.edu by buit1.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA16339; Sat, 30 May 87 17:31:26 EDT
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: by buita.bu.edu (1.1/4.7)
    id AA05659; Sat, 30 May 87 17:31:30 EDT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sat, 30 May 87 17:28:08 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #8
To: [e-mail]
Status: O


TELECOM Digest     Sat, 30 May 87 17:28:08 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 8

Today's Topics:

                          New area code 890!
                            Cellular Fraud
                          Cellular phone ids
                          Re: Ringback codes
                         Re: cellular inquiry
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 29 May 87 08:04:49 EDT
From: [e-mail] (F. Prindle)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: New area code 890!


An insert in my latest phone bill says AT&T is going to start using the 890
area code to augment it's current 800 toll free service; I suppose, with the
need to allocate some of the 800 prefixes to the alternates, they have simply
run out of prefixes in 800.  But 890 surely is a strange area code, with that
9 in the middle; my ESS currently doesn't parse 1-890-xxx-xxxx correctly,
thinking that it is a local prefix of 890 and not an area code.  Is this the
first area code that is not N0X or N1X?
Frank Prindle
[e-mail]

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

Date: Sun 24 May 87 03:21:33-EDT
From: Doug Reuben <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cellular Fraud
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]




Well, although Cellular is "untraceable" in the same way that regular phones
are, it still is not the ideal system to commit toll fraud on.

>From what I understand about how the cellular system works, a new
subscriber is assigned a phone number, and then given a 4 digit code
that is unique to his cellular phone. Thus, the chip that is placed
into a cell phone to identify it may have a # like this:
212-909-1234-5555. The 5555 is the 4 digit ID code, very much like the
PIN number on Bell System Calling Cards.

When you request service, you have to have your number "turned on" at the
Cellular Company. And, like a calling card, the Cell Co. checks to see if the
special ID # matches before it puts the call through (It checks a lot of other
things too, like signal strength and stuff, but that's not important now...).

So in order for someone to make free calls, he has to know an active number,
and then go to the dealer who sold the phone with that number and ask the
dealer what the ID number is. If the dealer is unscrupulous, he will give out
the ID number, and THEN you can make free calls.

However, in no more than a month, if the customer finds that there are a lot
of calls which he did not make, he can call the Cell. Co. and demand that they
remove the calls from his bill. The Cell. Co. will also change the ID number,
and if they are smart will check out the Cellular phone dealer to see if he
gave away the ID code to that specific number.

So what free Cellular service will get you is at best a month's worth of calls,
and that's about it. Also, you will have to go to different dealers all the
time, since if it happened with the same dealer a lot the Cell Co. might
investigate the Cellular phone dealer. Also, you would have to change your
number every month if you wanted people to call you.

     Stolen Bell Cards work the same way, although faster. If you steal a Bell
System Calling Card, and you use it a lot, the local Bell Company (or, heaven
forbid, the GTE company if you can
manage to use a calling card there! :-) ) will call the paying customer and
ask "did you make 300 calls today?". Usually, the customer says no, so they
just cancel the card and issue a new PIN number to the customer, usually right
away. (The system to assign PIN numbers is almost instantaneous, it seems. The
minute they assign you a PIN # you can use it!). Assuming the free calls were
made from a payphone, the Bell Co. will still call the destination numbers to
see if anyone knows who called them, in hopes of catching the person. If they
get enough people to say "Sure, I know Mr. so-and-so", then they may go after
the person who stole the card.

    The point is that Bell Calling Cards have a built in safety system to
protect against fraud. (The alternates don't have anything quite as
sophisticated...). It would not be very hard to put a similar "excessive use"
system of cellular phones. Thus, if cell fraud becomes pervasive, it should be
a relatively simple manner to end it, and thus Cell Fraud is really not much
better than the standard stuff people do at payphones.

     Also, Bell System Calling Cards can be used as frequently as you like. The
normal "warning" occurs if you have  more that 30 calls in 3 hours (or is it
36?). However, if you use your Bell Card a lot (like I do), then you can ask
your local Bell Co. to put a little note on your account that you are a heavy
user of the card. That way, if you make more than 30 calls in 3 hours (or
whatever), you don't get the card turned off. This is VERY convenient if you
are away from home and don't want to worry about how many calls you make.

    Basically then, the people who designed the Cellular System were smart,
and they made sure you can't cheat it too easily or too long. Seeing how easy
it is for them to stop Calling Card fraud, I see no reason why with the
Cellular system set up the way it is that they can't prevent Cell fraud as
well...

    (I'm sure I made a few mistakes there, so any corrections are welcome...)

    Well, that's my two cents worth! -

    -Doug

[e-mail]
[e-mail]
...seismo!weslyn.bitnet!reuben (UUCP)

-------

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

Date: Wed, 27 May 87 15:30:43 edt
From: gordon!davido (David Ornstein)
Subject: Cellular phone ids
To: [e-mail]




Somebody broke into my car a while ago and they took my Alpine stereo
system, but left my cellular phone.  This got me thinking about their
reasoning.  The obvious reason for not taking it is that the real guts
of the thing are burried in a box with 3 Z80s in it under the back of the car.
My second thought was that they knew that it would be almost useless to them
unless they could change the number of the phone.

Is this true?  COuld somebody fill me in on the background of the custom
part of the average cellular phone?  Is it just a 10-byte prom with my phone
number in it?

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Ornstein        "Never join a religion that has a water slide."

Internet:    davido@gordon
UUCP:        {mit-eddie|seismo}!mirror!gordon!davido
         or {harvard|ames|decvax|husc6}!necntc!davido
US Snail:    Access Technology, 6 Pleasant St, Natck MA 01760
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


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

To: [e-mail]
From: elroy![e-mail] (John T. Grieggs)
Subject: Re: Ringback codes
Date: 29 May 87 00:03:29 GMT



In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat Barron) writes:
>...
>Your CO is smart enough to know that it makes no sense to allow you to
>call yourself.  Using the credit card (apparently) bypasses your CO.

At least on GTE in Torrance, the CO is not all that smart. I am able to
dial my own number, hang up immediately, and have it ring once...

_john

--
John T. Grieggs (Telos @Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, Ca. 91109 M/S 301-260A    [phone]
Uucp: {cit-vax,elroy,chas2}!jplpro!grieggs
Arpa: ...jplpro![e-mail]

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

To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail] (Keith Holmquist)
Subject: Re: cellular inquiry
Date: 28 May 87 14:20:58 GMT



>  Subject: cellular inquiry
>
>  To: [e-mail]
>
>  I do not yet understand enough about the cellular technology, and perhaps the
>  answers are relatively simple and of interest to others as well as me.
>  (If not, the moderator may wish to divert the discussion).
>
>  Clearly a customer can rent a cellular phone, and register for service in a
>  particular area; then they can both send and receive calls.
>
>  The technology somehow recognizes and notes the user's location as they drive
>  about, and knows in what cell to ring them if an outsider calls them.

First my background in cellular was as a design engineer for both mobile
units and base station, primarily designed the brain sections along with
signal and audio processing. It`s been 2 years since I`ve worked on it
so some of my answers may be out dated but I`ll try not to lead you astray.
>
>  The questions:
>
>  1. How is the location-recognition accomplished? Does one's currently inactive
>  cellular phone burp regularly and its address get re-noted? Does that drain
>  your battery? If it's really off are callers told something different from
>  "ring...ring...ring...no answer"?
The systems do not know where a particular subscriber is at any time. As a mobile
unit cruises the streets It locks on to a dedicated channel called the control
channel. As travel progresses the mobile periodical scans all the avaible
control channels and continually looks for the stronges signal. When a call is
initiated all the control  channels in a given system ( i.e. not all the systems
in the country) transmit the request. The mobil whose being called then responds
on it present control channel a voice channel is then assigned for the remainder
of the call.

I'm not clear on what you mean by "burp".  How a non responding mobile unit
would be delt with is really up to the individual systems. I am unaware of
any regulations in that area, the systems I worked on responded with
a recorded messge similar to "The mobil unit you are requesting is unavailable
at this time" or something equelly as dry and tasteless.

>
>  2. Over how large an area does this typically work?
It works over an entire system in any one geographical area.
>
>  3. If an owner drives from SF, normal location, to New York, and tries to cal
>  out, what happens?
Typically the way this is being handled is the call is intercepted and the caller
is given the option to place the call by credit card. It is entirely possible
for the system to decide if this caller is registered with It in another city
but would reqiure a nation wide network from cellular system to cellular system.
I have not read any articles saying this is reality yet. It was all just a
dream 3 years ago.
>
>  4. If while they are in New York, someone in SF, their home, calls them, what
>  happens?
I believe presently that the caller from SF get the message you are unavailable.
There are provisions in the protocol for a mobil to register whenever it
roams from its preferred system and from that point it is up to the base
systems to determine if the subscriber is valid or not. Again a nation wide
network is needed.
                                                       see above response
>                                                      /------------\
>  5. Can you register as a visitor in a distant area, electronically or by
>  calling in or however? Does this enable anyone else to call you from long
>  distance? Must they know, essentially, where you went and when you're there?

Now an editorial comment:
The cellular concept is a good one but due to pressures to not allow it to
become a monoply it may never reach it's full potential. If one uses the
as an example the Bell system, I think you would agree that the nation
wide/ world wide coverage was made easier by allowing one large operating
system the privealage to design and implement the entire system. Could
you imagine the confusion of having Dick and Jane Telephone on the west
coas and Ted and Alice on the East. Cellular is presently in that state
although a few large operators seem to be positioning themselves for
more complete coverage. Just thought I comment. The end

An opinionated source
Keith
>
>    [  cellular response]

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Mon Jun  1 19:53:18 1987
Received: from buita.bu.edu by buit1.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA22336; Mon, 1 Jun 87 19:53:18 EDT
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Received: by buita.bu.edu (1.1/4.7)
    id AA14430; Mon, 1 Jun 87 19:53:25 EDT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 87 19:51:14 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #9
To: [e-mail]
Status: O


TELECOM Digest     Mon, 1 Jun 87 19:51:14 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 9

Today's Topics:

                              Re: (none)
               Re: bandwidth of LADS (metallic?) circuit
                           9600 bps dialups
                          Cellular phone ID's
                          Re:  Cellular Fraud
                      confusion about 890 service
                    Re:  confusion about 890 service
                        Cellular authentication
                  Interception of cellular ID numbers
                            890 Area Code??
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: cmcl2!uiucdcs!cbatt![e-mail]
From: ames!pyramid!ncc![e-mail] (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Subject: Re: (none)
Date: 29 May 87 17:09:51 GMT



>      While watching the Indianapolis 500 on TV this Sunday, I saw
> them do a feature on one of the car crews that were using a celluar
> phone to talk to the driver on the track.
> [...]  This seemed really strange to
> me until I realized that the use of the phone meant that no one
> could legally listen in on their conversations.
>       Everyday someone discovers a new way to use that law.

It has *always* been illegal to divulge the contents of any non-amateur
or non-broadcast transmission. This has never stopped anyone from
listening in to private communications, and I doubt that the new law
will make have any significant impact on this practice.

I think the primary motivation for using cellular is that it is
*technically* much more difficult (for the average person) to intercept
a transmission.

Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM
pyramid!ncc!lyndon  || pyramid!ncc![e-mail]

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

Date: Saturday, 30 May 1987 17:55:14 EDT
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: bandwidth of LADS (metallic?) circuit


We have several LADS lines in service, all at 56kbs, synchronous. There
should be information available from the vendor of an arbitrary short-haul
modem telling you what speed it can push how far (longer distance-> lower
speed).

We were frustrated and slightly amused when we called the person who was the
official Point-of-Contact for our campus asking what the milage was on one
of our lines and got the reply that they didn't know and had never heard the
question before.

Gene

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

Date: Saturday, 30 May 1987 17:59:58 EDT
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: 9600 bps dialups


I remeber seeing discussion here months ago about 9600 bps dialup
modems that were really half-duplex with fast turnaround. Has the
game changed any since? I've seen an ad from US Robotics offering
one that is full-duplex, but with split speed (9600/300), and turns
around which channel gets to talk fast. I don't remeber if anyone
said so before, but is there any sort of arbitration in these
things to decide which direction gets the high speed?

Thanks,
Gene


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

Date: Sat, 30 May 87 15:58:07 PDT
From: Mark Crispin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cellular phone ID's
To: [e-mail]


The "PIN" on the telephone number is NOT assigned by the Cellular
Phone company, but rather is the serial number of the radio you
are using.  Every radio has a unique serial number, supposedly on
a chip that is epoxied onto the radio's PC board.  The number is
in the format XX-0-XXXX where X represents hex digits.  The first
XX is the manufacturer's code (e.g. for EF Johnson phones it is
83) and the last XXXX is the manufacturer's serial number for your
phone.

The PROM which has your cellular phone number, features, etc., is
removable, of course.  The only "security" thing on this PROM
(sometimes called a NAM) is the lock-code for your phone, which of
course can be easily read (the main purpose of the lock-code is to
keep away randoms who might try to use your phone in your car.

When your phone initiates a call it transmits the phone number and
the radio serial number.  They must match for the call to go through.
That is why if you change the radio on your phone you (or your dealer)
must call your cellular phone company to tell them about the new
radio.

The weakness in this system is that a thief could get ahold of a
phone without a epoxied serial number (either by building one or by
buying one of the cheapos that don't epoxy the serial number chip in
it) and then change it.  I suspect the easiest instance of fraud is
to use an out-of-service-area phone number (e.g. a San Diego phone
number in San Francisco) that has roamer privileges.  Generally, the
companies don't have serial number records for roamers (consider the
problems of keeping records of some other company's customers!) and
rely upon hot-listing known bad guys.  So you pick a fraudulant
phone number and serial number pair, and change it periodically when
the company finds out it ain't real.

This must be what the drug pushers and similar slime are doing.  They
aren't particularly clever, they're relying upon the deregulation
mania of the present US regime to guarantee poor communication between
telephone service providers.
-------

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

Date: Sun, 31 May 87 17:36:41 EDT
From: Michael Grant <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail],
Subject: Re:  Cellular Fraud
Cc: [e-mail],


Excuse me...YOU ARE WRONG!

The Electronic Serial Number is an 8 digit Hexidecimal number.  It is not
easily changed.  Both the MIN, (Mobil Id Number, your phone number) and the
ESN are sent out when you press the send key.  Your MIN is easily changed
by reprogramming your phone, but the ESN is not easily changed.  To change
your phone number, both the phone, and the cell system must be changed.

Depending on the cell system you are trying to commit fraud on, you may
get several months of free calls, or just one.  If you are using one of
the systems that participate in the fraud detection systems in use, (the
name slips my mind at the moment), your service will be cut off after the
first fraudulent call--in all of those systems.

You may have gotten the 5 digit code from the lock feature that comes with
most cell phones these days.  This is just a security feature to keep
your phone from being used while it's unattended.  It has nothing to do
with the cell system itself.  My phone only has a 3 digit security code.
I usually see this security code set to the last n digits of the phone's
phone number.
-Mike


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

Date: Mon, 1 Jun 87 09:25:33 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Frank Prindle)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: confusion about 890 service
Cc: [e-mail]


It seems I've misinterpreted my phone bill insert which talked about 890
service.  My AT&T bill is usually at the tail end of my Bell of PA bill, so
I assumed this insert was from AT&T, but it was really from Bell of PA.  I
called them and, though somewhat confused herself, the service rep explained
that it was "like 800 service in that you dial 1-890 to use it", but then
clarified that the 890 was a prefix, not an area code; i.e. 1-890-1234 would
be a toll free number supplied by Bell of PA.  That explains why it is not
in the format of an area code.  Is this prefix (890) universally unused and
thus available to the LOCs to use for this service, or is this just a Bell of
PA special?
Sincerely,
Frank Prindle
[e-mail]

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

Date:     Mon, 1 Jun 87 9:49:41 EDT
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
To: Frank Prindle <[e-mail]>
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject:  Re:  confusion about 890 service


So you are actually referring to 215-890?  I don't know offhand if that is
being "used".  But 890 is not universally-UNused (I think there is a 617-890
near Boston).

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

Date:     Mon, 1 Jun 87 10:02:37 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Martin Ewing)
Subject:  Cellular authentication
To: [e-mail]


I am interested in the recent discussion of cellular protocols.

Does anyone know/care to comment on how mobile units convince the Cellular
Offices (COs?) they are who they claim to be?  The 4-digit "PIN" is fine,
but what is to keep me from snooping around for a convenient mobile's ID and
using the same numbers for my own call?

This seems like a good application for public-key encryption, but I doubt
that the world has made so much progress yet.

Martin Ewing                 [e-mail]
Caltech Radio Astronomy      [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Jun 87 10:34 CDT
From: Mike Linnig <[e-mail]>
Subject: Interception of cellular ID numbers
To: [e-mail]


If the cellular ID numbers are sent from the car are unencrypted, someone
with the right (underground) connections could make quite a fortune by
building a box that pulls these numbers "out of the air".

Are protocols used by cellular phones published anywhere?

    Mike

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

Date: Mon, 1 Jun 87 16:47 EST
From: "Scott D. Green, Classroom Services" <[e-mail]>
Subject: 890 Area Code??
To: [e-mail]


I understood (from Bell o' PA, I think) that they were setting up 890 as
a toll-free exchange for reaching the Business Office, rather that the
800- numbers they had been using.  It always seemed a little absurd to use
an 800- number to call across town, anyway.  Sounds a little like the 950-
exchange they set up for no-charge calls to the ALDCo's.

-scott

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From jsol  Tue Jun  2 17:54:19 1987
Received: by buit1.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA26397; Tue, 2 Jun 87 17:54:19 EDT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 87 17:52:05 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #10
To: [e-mail]
Status: RO


TELECOM Digest     Tue, 2 Jun 87 17:52:05 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 10

Today's Topics:

               Steve Dyer's msg regarding LADS Circuits
                           9600 bps dialups
                       Cellular Telephone System
                              890 prefix
                          Re:  Cellular Fraud
                   A twist on modems calling people
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Jun 87 10:08:20 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Dixon)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Steve Dyer's msg regarding LADS Circuits



With a line of that length (like less then 4 km or so), it would be quite
possible to run at a much higher speed. For example, the ISDN U-interface
can be run at either 80kb or 160kb (full duplex over 1 pair, even)
over distances like that with little or no problems. Sometime soon, I am
going to be performing some experiments with this type of interface running
at 160kb on a loop that is aprox 1.5 km long. I think that this type of
setup could lend itself to be kind of a happy medium between a dial-up
line (even at 9.6kb) and a VERY MEGA-EXPENSIVE dds line, which I dont
think that any of us could personally afford. If anyone has any interest in
these types of experiments, please contact me.

P.S. My mail link was down today, so I dialed up into BU. I can normally
be reached at [e-mail] or more specifically
[e-mail]

Happy Networking...  Jim Dixon..


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

Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1987  21:32 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: 9600 bps dialups


The US Robotics HST 9600 modem is indeed full duplex.  It uses a
return channel of 300 baud, which is plenty fast enough for hand
typing from a terminal.

The modem runs at a fixed speed on the RS232 line so the switching
between 300 and 9600 is transparent to your terminal.  The end with
the most data to send gets the 9600, the other 300.  The negotiation
between modems is fast and changes dynamicly.

I recently installed an HST modem on my Remote CP/M bulletin board
system.  It is quite impressive in it's performance, handling both
interactive terminal sessions and XMODEM file transfers (using the
YMODEM 1k block size protocol).  Those who predicted that the 300 baud
return channel would be unusable for data, claiming it would be used
only by the modem for MNP ack/nak's, were wrong!

I am very impressed by the USR HST 9600 and would not hesitate to
recommend it to anyone.  I use one here at home to communicate with my
RCP/M which is located in the computer club President's home about 5
miles away.  We have received long distance calls from several other
SysOps around the country who also have the HST.  There have been no
problems with any of the calls.

It wouldn't surprise me if the HST becomes the defacto standard for
9600 bps.  It beats those pseudo full duplex (really half duplex)
modems.

--Keith Petersen
Arpa: [e-mail]
Uucp: {bellcore,decwrl,harvard,lll-crg,ucbvax,uw-beaver}!simtel20.arpa!w8sdz
GEnie: W8SDZ
RCP/M Royal Oak: 313-759-6569 - 300, 1200, 2400 (V.22bis) or 9600 (USR HST)

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

To:
From: allegra![e-mail] (Mikel Manitius)
Subject: Cellular Telephone System
Date: 2 Jun 87 16:59:56 GMT



I have seen a lot of confusion here over cellular telephone technology
latley. I will attempt to explain some of the basic principles of how
cellular telephones work. Please keep in mind that beyond the basic
technology, each Cellular Operatiing Company can change a lot of things.

A cellular system consists of a geographical area, such as a city. I
will use Orlando as an example here. The coverage in Orlando is well
over a hundred miles from edge to edge, however there exist much larger
systems such as the New York/New Jersey area. The size is limited only
by the number of cells, and the system's capacity for number of cells.

A system is divided into "cells". Each cell has it's own transmitter
and receiver, which is connected via leased lines to the cellular
central office (CO).

Each cell has it's own "control" frequency on which it accepts and
issues calls.

Each mobile unit is identifed by two numbers that are encoded in it's
memory. The first is a serrial number, which is guaranteed to be
unique anywhere in the world (kind of like Ethernet), the second is
the ten digit telephone number of the unit that it has been assigned.
(ie: mine is 305-222-xxxx)

Incomming calls:

    When an incomming call arrives at the cellular CO (305-222)
     the system announces the call to ALL CELLS on their control
     channel. A mobile unit is given a time threshold to respond
     on the control channel. If it does not respond, the caller is
     given some message such as "The Bell South Mobility customer
     you have dialed, has travelled beyond the service area, or has
     left the vehicle". If the mobile does respond, it sends it's
     two identification numbers, and is assigned a voice frequency
     by the CO from the nearest cell site (strongest signal). The
     mobile phone then begins ringing. And the call is left to
     complete (ie: either the person answers, or the phone keeps ringing).

Outgoing calls:

    The customer enters the number he wishes to call, and pushes
     a "SEND" button on the phone. The mobile unit transmits it's two
     identification numbers, and the destination number over the control
     channel to the nearest cell, and the call is either validated, and
     a voice channel is assinged for the completion of the call, or the
     call is rejected, and the mobile issues a siren tone.

Traveling within the service area:

    Once the call has been established, the cellular system constantly
      monitors the signal strength of each mobile in each cell that has an
      active call. As the signal drops below an acceptable level, the system
      automatically selectes a another cell and transmits the new frequency
      to the mobile. Then the call is switched in less than a second, and
      the change is usually inaudiable.

Roaming:

    Roaming occurs when a cellular mobile from system A travels into
       the service area of system B (ie: Orlando to Miami). In most cases
       the unit is allowed to place credit card and local calls only. However
       if system B is operated by the same company (ie: Bell South) it's network
       may authorize billing and allow the mobile to place toll calls.

       The mobile may also receive calls. However the person who is calling
       you must know which city you are in, dial the access number for that
       city, wait for a second dial tone, and then key in your full ten
       digit telephone code (on a touch-tone telephone). Then the call proceeds
       as described above.


>From my own personal experience, I have had a cellular phone in my car for
almost a year. I drove from Orlando to Montreal with it over christmas, and
was able to use my phone without any problems in the following cities: (I
took I-95 to NY and then I-87 [thuway]) Jacksonville, Charleston, Norfolk,
Richmond, Washington/Baltimore, Wilmington, New York/New Jersey, Albany,
and Montreal. It most cities I was able to place toll calls directly, which
later appeared on my regular Orlando bill as "Roamer" changes. I was also
able to receive calls while driving from people who knew which city I
was in (I had supplied them with time estimates and access numbers).

What really surpried me was the size of the service area around Montreal.
I was able to use my cellular telephone from within the Adirondak State
Park on the New York Northway, my service was being provided by the "Bell
Canada Northern Corridor Service", at that time I was over 35 miles away
from the Canadian border! 70 miles away from Montreal! I did however later
find out that this service was not part of the Montreal system.

Cellular phone can get costly too. I pay $30/month for leasing the
equipment, which I get to keep after 36 months. $20/month for service,
and $0.35 peak/$0.22 off peak minus 6% AT&T corporate discount (even
for personal use). A usual month's bill is $100. Roaming gets much
more expensive. It's anywhere from $0.40 to $1 per minute while roaming,
and some [but not many] cities also add a $1 to $5 /day charge for
roamers. If I were a roamer in Orlando, I would be paying $0.55 per
minute for airtime. These charges apply for inbound and outbound calls
alike, and area *VERY* service area dependant. In Orlando, 911 and
811 (Customer Assitance) calls are free.

The cellular companies also make out on mobile to mobile calls, since
then they get two people paying for the call.
--
                    Mikel Manitius @ AT&T-IS
                    [e-mail]

          Copyright 1987. Redistribution via Stargate PROHIBITED

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 87 12:43:14 PDT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: 890 prefix


 MSG:FROM: SPGDCM  --UCBCMSA  TO: NETWORK --NETWORK           06/02/87 12:43:13
 To: NETWORK --NETWORK  Network Address

 From:    Doug Mosher                 <SPGDCM at UCBCMSA>
 Title:   MVS/Tandem Systems Manager  [phone]
 Office:  Evans 257, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
 Subject: 890 prefix
 To: [e-mail]

 Pacific Bell in California uses the prefix "811" to enable customers to call
 their business office from anywhere in the lata, toll-free; this sounds like
 the 890 prefix service mentioned here earlier.

 Different final 4 digits are used for different prefixes.

 It seems almost overkill to allow calls from anywhere in the lata, in that my
 most urgent calls when travelling are not usually to telco business offices.
 However, if they have chosen to route all calls to a central location for
 service, it makes more sense. Bank of America here routes all calls about
 statements and what checks have cleared to one central office in Cal. for all
 x hundred branches, and no longer can you go to your branch and review your
 checks.

 Thanks, Doug
   Z  890 prefix

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

To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail] (Ron Natalie)
Subject: Re:  Cellular Fraud
Date: 2 Jun 87 15:29:25 GMT



> The Electronic Serial Number is an 8 digit Hexidecimal number.  It is not
> easily changed.  Both the MIN, (Mobil Id Number, your phone number) and the
> ESN are sent out when you press the send key.  Your MIN is easily changed
> by reprogramming your phone, but the ESN is not easily changed.  To change

Make that, it is not supposed to be easily changed.  While the ESN is not
in that NAM (the EPROM with the phone number) in it's nice ZIF socket, many
manufacturers just put it in another ROM which anybody with a small amount
of electronics background can change.

I would expect the most common sort of Cellular fraud involves using
phones from another system through automatic ROAM agreements.  Presumably
the ESN/Phone number checking isn't as rigourous or as up-to-date in remote
systems as it is in your home system.

-Ron

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

To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 87 13:10:25 EDT
Subject: A twist on modems calling people
From: [e-mail]


The folks at our main facility just installed a new telephone switch, and made
two changes which are not user-transparent.  The two changes involve the method
used to reach our remote switch, and the method used to dial an international
call.  If you haven't guessed yet, the old international prefix corresponds to
the new method of ringing my extension from the main facility.  This would be
amusing if it weren't for all the auto-dial facsimile machines trying to phone
home to Japan with the old dialing codes.  They're not much fun to talk to, and
they don't seem to report the fact that the calls aren't getting through.

The moral of this story: Get your Fax straight, before you make changes.
--
Steve Valentine, NEC Information Systems 289 Great Rd., Acton, MA 01720
[e-mail]
Robots don't use software!  Software uses Robots!

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Mon Jun 15 22:29:32 1987
Received: from MIT-Multics.ARPA by buit1.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA19369; Mon, 15 Jun 87 22:29:32 EDT
Date:  Mon, 15 Jun 87 22:22 EDT
From: "Roger A. Roach" <[e-mail]>
Subject:  TELECOM Digest V7 #11
To: [e-mail]
Message-Id:  <[e-mail]>
Forum-Transaction:  [0380] in the >site>arpa_mail_dir>Telecom meeting
Transaction-Entered-By:  [e-mail]
Transaction-Entered-Date:  4 Jun 87 19:39 EDT
Status: RO

From: [e-mail]@buita


TELECOM Digest     Thu, 4 Jun 87 18:51:19 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 11

Today's Topics:

                   Re:  9600 bps dialups (HST 9600)
                      9600 bps dialups (HST 9600)
                       "890" and warning letter
               Re: bandwidth of LADS (metallic?) circuit
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                          Party line question
                    Re:  Cellular Fraud -- trivial
                            1-800-XXX-0000
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Jun 87 21:12:55 EDT
From: Michael Grant <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: Re:  9600 bps dialups (HST 9600)
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]


>It wouldn't surprise me if the HST becomes the defacto standard for 9600 baud.
>--Keith Petersen

I would be surprised.  Even though I usually don't require more than 300 baud
to type at a terminal, my systems support UUCP which wouldn't work very well
with 300 baud in one direction.  Do these modems do some sort of flow
analys and adjust the speed accordingly?

I feel that the only good 9600 baud modem is one that provides at least a
full 9600 baud in both directions, with NO egregious delays.

-Mike

p.s. the Microcom MNP level 6 comes close.


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

Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1987  21:45 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <[e-mail]>
To: Michael Grant <[e-mail]>
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: 9600 bps dialups (HST 9600)


The USRobotics HST 9600 modem assigns the 9600 baud direction to the
end that is sending the most data.  It should work fine with uucp.
Most file transfer protocols have the receiving end sending only some
kind of acknowledge or negative acknowledge (resent request) which
usually consists of only a few characters.

--Keith Petersen
Arpa: [e-mail]
Uucp: {bellcore,decwrl,harvard,lll-crg,ucbvax,uw-beaver}!simtel20.arpa!w8sdz
GEnie: W8SDZ
RCP/M Royal Oak: 313-759-6569 - 300, 1200, 2400 (V.22bis) or 9600 (USR HST)

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

Date: Wed, 3 Jun 87 00:04:28 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Gottlieb)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: "890" and warning letter


Someone mentioned that AT&T was adding a toll-free area code of 890.

In fact, Bell of PA (and perhaps the other Bell Atlantic companies?) has
created the toll-free *prefix* of 890.  This would be accomplished through
agreements with neighboring independent Telcos and appears to actually be a
way for Bell Atlantic to offer a local toll-free service without involving
AT&T.  Personally, I don't think Telcos should be allowed to do this.  The
area code 800 is well established as a toll free prefix and the introduction
of different toll-free prefixes in each area code will only add to customer
confusion.  Uniformity should not be sacrificed in favor of the Telco saving
a few cents.



A different someone mentioned a letter from Pacific Bell warning that a new
switch was being installed.  P*B has been routinely sending out these letters
to those about to be converted (usually from crossbar) to a Northern Telecom
DMS100 Digital switch.  The switch has many quirks, but especially annoying
is often a lack of CPC (Calling Party Control signal), though P*B has been
adding this to the DMS switches.  The letter is just for P*B to cover
themselves ("We warned you!").



Telephone enthusiasts (and anyone else with an interest in communications)
is invited to call the ESSug (ESS Users Group) on [phone] (300/1200bps)

Jim Gottlieb
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARPA: [e-mail]
UUCP: {ucbvax, sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!ucla-cs} !pic.ucla.edu!jimmy
      (this machine has no UUCP link)
Tel. [phone]

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

Date: Tue, 2 Jun 87 22:28 EDT
From: Jeffrey Del Papa <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: bandwidth of LADS (metallic?) circuit
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]


    Date: Saturday, 30 May 1987 17:55:14 EDT
    From: [e-mail]

    We have several LADS lines in service, all at 56kbs, synchronous. There
    should be information available from the vendor of an arbitrary short-haul
    modem telling you what speed it can push how far (longer distance-> lower
    speed).

    We were frustrated and slightly amused when we called the person who was the
    official Point-of-Contact for our campus asking what the milage was on one
    of our lines and got the reply that they didn't know and had never heard the
    question before.

    Gene



the easiest answer to this question is to simply short out the line and use an
ohmmeter. the number is ~6k ohm/mile but look in the aprop telco documents for the
exact number. (you could also use a TDR if you happen to have on hanging around...
that is also the only easy way to be sure that they didn't leave the loading coils on the
line.)
<dp>


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

From: ssc-vax![e-mail] (Roger Clark Swann)
Date: 3 Jun 87 23:18:40 GMT
To: uw-beaver![e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: ssc-vax!clark
From: [e-mail] (Roger Clark Swann)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Party line question
Keywords: pulse dialing, mechanical, electronic
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 3 Jun 87 23:18:39 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Corp., Seattle WA
Lines: 27

**** jam for line eater ****

I recently had a question for a friend that could not figure out:

problem: electronic phone won't dial when connected to party line.

My friend has a beach house with phone service being a party line.
I don't remember if he said how many connections there are to the
line, but he said that he DOES NOT get any rings other that his own.
He normally has an WECO 500 style insturment on the line with no
problems dialing or receiving calls. However, when he tried to
hookup an 'electronic' (keypad with chip that generates dial pulses)
phone the line, he could only dial about three digits before getting
a re-order recording. He said that he could hear the 'clicks' as the
pulses were being generated and they sounded OK. Someone can call in
and the phone will ring and voice circuits are OK. (This same phone
instrument works fine at his in town residence)

The only thing I could think of was that the 'electronic phone was
not pulsing at the correct speed. But then he told me that he tried
hooking his modem to the line and making it pulse dial. The result
was the same re-order recording. So, this makes me think that there
is some strange configuration on this phone line or something???

Anyone have an idea as to what is going on here?

Roger Swann         uw-beaver!ssc-vax!clark

[Any number of reasons could cause this problem. FCC regulations don't
even *allow* you to plug in a modular instrument to a party line. --JSol]


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

Date: Thu, 4 Jun 87 03:53:18 PDT
From: hoptoad.UUCP![e-mail] (John Gilmore)
Subject: Re:  Cellular Fraud -- trivial
To: [e-mail]


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Michael Grant) writes:
> The Electronic Serial Number is an 8 digit Hexidecimal number.  It is not
> easily changed.  Both the MIN, (Mobil Id Number, your phone number) and the
> ESN are sent out when you press the send key.  Your MIN is easily changed
> by reprogramming your phone, but the ESN is not easily changed.  To change
> your phone number, both the phone, and the cell system must be changed.

The whole thing is pretty silly.  Each unit has a serial number
and the serial number is "supposed to be" impossible to change.
Actually in many systems it is in a PROM in a socket, so no biggy.
Even if it was impossible to change, it's not impossible to change
the ROMs that hold the program that runs the phone, so you could
always reprogram it to ignore the ROM.  You could embed the whole
phone in epoxy, but who would buy a $2000 phone that you have to throw
away if any little thing breaks?

The best deal would be to make a program ROM where if you put it in
this mode, it would listen on the control channel for phones making
calls or answering rings, and save away 10 or 20 of their phone number/
serial number pairs.  Anytime you wanted to make a call, it would pick
one at random and pretend to be that phone.  The load on any
individual's bill would be light enough that you'd be hard to catch.
This would not let you receive calls for free, but I seem to recall
some scheme for that, too.  Geoff Goodfellow, Bob Jesse, and Andrew
Lamothe published a paper on this in the November 1985 issue of
Personal Communications Technology magazine (FutureComm Publications
Inc., 4005 Williamsburg Ct., Fairfax, VA  22032, 703/352-1200).

The cellular phone standard is called "EIA IS-3-B" though I think they
recently upgraded it to "-C".  You can get a copy from Global Engineering
Documents (call 800 information).  It is not lucid but it is readable
if you flip around a lot and think about it.

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

Date: 04-Jun-1987 1311
From: [e-mail]  (Dave C., 226-7726, LKG1-3/A06)
To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: 1-800-XXX-0000


Ref message subj as above dtd Thu, 21 May 87 10:11 EDT from David Harpe,
<[e-mail]>:

>Completely by accident, I noticed the other day that if you dial 1-800-XXX-0000
>where XXX is a valid 800 exchange, you get the following message:

>        "You have reached the ATT long distance network.  Thank you for
>         choosing ATT.  This message will not be repeated."

I checked a few codes and found a similar message.   However, 800-444-0000,
in particular, identified itself as the MCI long distance network.  An article
in Telecom Digest 5:156 mentioned that 800 NXX codes are equal access based
and an article in TD 6:3 gave a list of the 800 NXX codes assigned to MCI.

Also, I dialed 800-NXX-0000, where the particular NXX I used is the same as
the one through which you reach my beeper.  I found that it connects to
a recorder machine, as though it were a regular telephone number.  Using
some other NXX codes for some of my colleagues' beeper numbers, I found
that they seem to be regular beeper numbers.   (No, I didn't actually
send the beep, though.)

It's likely that the beeper exchange numbers I called are not routed
through any long distance carrier, and that New England Telephone allows
NXX-0000 to be used as a regular number.   Perhaps it is just a convention
that both AT&T and MCI follow that 800-NXX-0000 produces the same message
as 700-555-4141.

Oh yes, it apparently doesn't matter what the default long distance carrier
is.  One of my lines is assigned to Sprint and the other to MCI.  I got
the same results using both of these lines.

Dave C.   (David A. Cantor)

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Mon Jun 15 22:32:58 1987
Received: from MIT-Multics.ARPA by buit1.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA19386; Mon, 15 Jun 87 22:32:58 EDT
Date:  Mon, 15 Jun 87 22:22 EDT
From: "Roger A. Roach" <[e-mail]>
Subject:  TELECOM Digest V7 #12
To: [e-mail]
Message-Id:  <[e-mail]>
Forum-Transaction:  [0381] in the >site>arpa_mail_dir>Telecom meeting
Transaction-Entered-By:  [e-mail]
Transaction-Entered-Date:  6 Jun 87 14:10 EDT
Status: RO

From: [e-mail]@buita


TELECOM Digest     Sat, 6 Jun 87 13:23:45 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 12

Today's Topics:

                             Administrivia
                           re:help!!! DMS100
                       Nurse, Get Me A Telephone
                              phonevision
                        Maryland phone prefixes
                         Horror stories wanted
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 4 Jun 87 19:12:00 EDT
From: [e-mail]
To: telecom
Subject: Administrivia


I am using an experimental delivery mechanism for TELECOM now. I have
in place a "second queue", specially for TELECOM. It takes a quick two
line modification to sendmail itself, and some configuration hacking
to do it. I did this because bu-cs (our mail gateway) was overloaded
by TELECOM distributions, so I made a system that I could move around
from site to site as the needs change and as the load changes (if
we really lose I can have my workstation deliver the digest). The
incoming mailboxes, telecom and telecom-request will always be
at BUIT1.BU.EDU (unless we change the host name).

There are some folks who have "copyrighted" their submissions. I am
going to return unsubmitted any message that is copyrighted because
TELECOM is in the public domain and in order for it to remain a
valuable asset to the community, it must remain so. I don't want
to get involved with the legal issues of copyrighted material.
Note that also, any material that comes from the AP or UPI newswire
will not be submitted either.

This policy is consistent with my previous notes about message
content. If you announce the latest batch of "illegal sprint codes"
I will not publish that either, in fact that is the main reason why
TELECOM is a moderated digest.

I think we have pretty much settled down from the move. We still get
duplicates, but I suspect that this is being tracked down and will slowly
become a non-issue. I will continue to the best of my ability weed
out the duplicates.

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

Date: 04-Jun-1987 1823
From: [e-mail]  (Nick Lippis DS Strategic Planning)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: re:help!!! DMS100


From:     DELNI::LIPPIS       "Nick Lippis DS Strategic Planning"  8-MAY-1987 10:37
To:       RHEA::DECWRL::"[e-mail]",LIPPIS
Subj:     re: help!!! DMS100


From:     TELCOM::MCMILLAN      8-MAY-1987 09:53
To:       DELNI::LIPPIS

When we (DEC) had problems in MKO our problems mostly were with intra SL-100
calls and local CO calls. We found that the SL-100 was hitting the data sets
with too high a level and the modems (DF124 & DF112 but not DF03) were
having their receiver circuitry saturated. This is due to a diifference in
design between modems. We also had some local CO problems. But for the
most part our long distance data calls were not any more of a problem than
they were before. Now if these people have put in some new carriers to
service their long distance service (e.g. T-spans) they may have different
problems than they had previously.

It is difficult to answer your question, we don't have much detail
(i.e. what type modems we talking about, how is your paddata table
set-up, what did you have before DMS, what was changed with DMS
install, etc., etc.)

George

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

Date: Fri,  5 Jun 87 13:01:20 EDT
From: "Michael A. Patton" <[e-mail]>
Subject:  Nurse, Get Me A Telephone
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]



The following item appears in the Business Notes section of the Time
magazine dated June 8, 1987.  It appears with a photograph captioned
"In hospitals, these devices make money" and which shows what appears
to be a standard cheap one-piece phone being plugged into a modular
jack by a patient (you can tell by the wrist band ID (which is
readable).

                    New Products:

          Nurse, Get Me A Telephone

Disposable razors have long been a consumer staple, and throwaway
cameras are a new photographic fad.  Now the latest items to use and
lose are telephones.  Several companies, including Mini-Phone,
Diversified Communications and International Connectors, are selling
an estimated 100,000 lightweight, disposable phones a year, and the
market is growing fast.  The best customers are not individuals but
hospitals, which sell the phones to patients as a moneymaking venture.
          Health-care institutions pay a manufacturer about $9 a phone,
then charge patients about $12 to use the instrument during their
stay.  And since many patients formerly walked off with standard-issue
phones (average price: $75), the theft of a disposable phone is less
costly.  Says Kendall Gallagher, a Mini-Phone vice president: ``A
patient confronted with a hospital bill might feel he's entitled to
everything in the room, including the phone.''  Philadelphia's Mercy
Catholic Medical Center estimates that it saves between $50,000 and
$75,000 a year by installing the discardable devices.  Indeed, they
have proved so popular that throw-away phones will soon be sold in the
hospital's gift shop--at 30% over cost.


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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 87 14:12:33 PDT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: phonevision


 MSG:FROM: SPGDCM  --UCBCMSA  TO: NETWORK --NETWORK           06/05/87 14:12:31
 To: NETWORK --NETWORK  Network Address

 From:    Doug Mosher                 <SPGDCM at UCBCMSA>
 Title:   MVS/Tandem Systems Manager  [phone]
 Office:  Evans 257, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
 Subject: phonevision
 to: [e-mail]

 Phonevision (TV pic + audio phones) may hit us from a slightly different
 angle.

 A recent brochure from Datapoint notes their addition of MINX to their
 Starbuilder network architecture.

 MINX adds what they call "voice and full-motion video" to PC communication
 networks. It appears that you add a Datapoint monitor-camera combination to
 some sort of IBM PC; presumably the same monitor is used at other times for
 high quality color graphic monitor use.

 I have no idea what quality; certainly some teleconferencing video is limited
 scan, like 2 per second or whatever; their term "full-motion" is interesting.

 It seems to be a contest as more features are added to one's telephone and
 networked pc workstation, until they meet in the middle. (But then at that
 point you'll have TWO of them on every desk....)

 Remembering also that the Datapoint co. stimulated the whole pc business in
 the first place in about 1975 by their chip activity and the Intel 8004,
 8008...

 Thanks, Doug
      phonevision

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

Date:     Sat, 6 Jun 87 3:50:46 EDT
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject:  Maryland phone prefixes


Area code 301 here (202 also useable near DC).  There are some hints that
prefixes are in short supply in Maryland.

I checked with the operator just now and got 286 Berwyn and 878 Fort Ritchie.
286 had been listed in older directories as Clarksville (since Clarksville
has 531 for Columbia service and 988 for Ellicott City service--531 local to
Balt. city and 988 for Balt. metro area service--you wonder what now appears
on the pay phones in Clarksville).  878 does appear in the Md. suburban direc-
tory as Silver Spring (Fort Ritchie is far outside DC area); some older sour-
ces have 878 as Fort Ritchie (Balt. City service).

369 is listed as Laurel (Berwyn service, which is to DC metro).  703-369
is at Manassas, Va., immediately adjacent to the calling area from DC proper.
(There already is 301-490 at Laurel, Md. and 703-490 at Woodbridge, Va.)

738 is listed at Rockville, in the DC area.  Previously, there was no 301-
738, but there's a 738 at Ridgely, W. Va., across the Potomac from, and
local to, Cumberland, Md., causing me to wonder if it was "protected"; if
that 738 is still there, you can now call 738-xxxx from Cumberland to
Ridgely (W.Va.) and 1-738-xxxx from Cumberland to Rockville.


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

Date: Sat, 6 Jun 87 08:33:28 EDT
From: Simson L. Garfinkel <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Horror stories wanted



I am currently gathering research data (ie: stories) for
horror-experiences with equal access and hotel PBX's. That is, I am
collecting stories of people who have tried to use the carrier of their
choice while staying at hotels and have found out that they have no choice
and must instead use the carrier the hotel has chosen.

Please send your story to

                    [e-mail]

Your story may be used in a class-action law suit against hotel operators.
Please include your full name, address, and phone number.

Thanks..

...simson





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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

From [e-mail]  Mon Jun 15 22:36:06 1987
Received: from MIT-Multics.ARPA by buit1.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA19406; Mon, 15 Jun 87 22:36:06 EDT
Date:  Mon, 15 Jun 87 22:22 EDT
From: "Roger A. Roach" <[e-mail]>
Subject:  TELECOM Digest V7 #13
To: [e-mail]
Message-Id:  <[e-mail]>
Forum-Transaction:  [0382] in the >site>arpa_mail_dir>Telecom meeting
Transaction-Entered-By:  [e-mail]
Transaction-Entered-Date:  9 Jun 87 21:45 EDT
Status: RO

From: [e-mail]@buita


TELECOM Digest     Tue, 9 Jun 87 20:51:41 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 13

Today's Topics:

                       Re: Horror stories wanted
                              890 prefix
                          Confidencer Wanted
                       Re: Horror stories wanted
                            Re: phonevision
                            X.25 PAD Sought
                          Re:  Cellular Fraud
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat,  6 Jun 87 17:33:46 EDT
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Horror stories wanted
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]


What is wrong with a hotel allowing access to only one carrier?
Or with a hotel not even HAVING any phone service?  (The latter
may be a good selling feature!)  If a hotel customer doesn't like
what the hotel provides, he can always find another hotel.
                                                                                ...Keith

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

Date: Sun, 7 Jun 87 12:39:15 PDT
From: csustan![e-mail] (Elric of Imrryr)
To: lll-crg![e-mail]
Subject: 890 prefix
Cc:



Is this prefix (890) universally unused and
thus available to the LOCs to use for this service, or is this just a Bell of
PA special?
Sincerely,
Frank Prindle
[e-mail]

Well here in California (Pacfic Bell), 890 is one of the ringback
prefixes. PacBel has been using '811' as the toll free prefix to call
your service rep.

Brad

--
elric     Lunatic Labs @ Csustan {lll-crg,lll-lcc}!csustan!elric
Reality is what ever you can get away with! | The info on cracking DES will be
                                                      | in my next transmission...

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

Date: Sun, 7 Jun 87 13:11:40 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Scott O'Connell)
To: crash![e-mail]
Subject: Confidencer Wanted
Cc: crash![e-mail]


Does anyone know where I can purchase a Rohn Confidencer?  It's the noise
cancelling microphone used on 500 type WE telephones.  AT&T phone stores say
they haven't carried them in a long time.

Please reply directly, thanks.

Scott O'Connell - Datagram Corp.   UUCP: {akgua hplabs!hp-sdd sdcsvax nosc}...
3297 Sweetwater Springs Blvd #8          ...crash!pnet01!scotto
San Diego, CA 92078-1477           ARPA: crash!pnet01!scotto@nosc
800/235-5030                       INET: [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 8 Jun 87 08:38:51 EDT
From: Simson L. Garfinkel <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Horror stories wanted


   Date: Sat,  6 Jun 87 17:33:46 EDT
   From: "Keith F. Lynch" <[e-mail]>

   What is wrong with a hotel allowing access to only one carrier?

Because only having one carrier may be a violation of federal
regulation. Specifically, anti-trust laws and the like.


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

To: seismo![e-mail]
From: harvard!huma1![e-mail] (Steve Janowsky)
Subject: Re: phonevision
Date: 8 Jun 87 18:24:43 GMT



In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Doug Mosher) writes:
.>
.> MINX adds what they call "voice and full-motion video" to PC communication
.> networks. It appears that you add a Datapoint monitor-camera combination to
.> some sort of IBM PC; presumably the same monitor is used at other times for
.> high quality color graphic monitor use.
.>
.> I have no idea what quality; certainly some teleconferencing video is
.> limited scan, like 2 per second or whatever; their term "full-motion"
.> is interesting.

I believe that data compression techniques allow something like "full-motion"
video.  When you're speaking (for example) your lips move but most of the
tv screen remains constant -- and thus only the lips need to be re-
transmitted.

Of course this is a gross oversimplification, but...

Steve Janowsky      ([e-mail]
                     ...harvard!huma1!janowsky)

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

From: hplabs!well![e-mail] (L. Brett Glass)
Subject: X.25 PAD Sought
Date: 3 Jun 87 23:15:33 GMT




I am setting up a network link for a public-service organization that is
looking for an inexpensive, possibly used, X.25 PAD. It need not have the
ability to originate calls. Please send recommendations, information, etc.
to one of the addresses below:

{lll-crg|ptsfa|hplabs|hoptoad}!well!rogue
well!rogue@!LLL-LCC.ARPA
glass (BIX)

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

From: hplabs!well![e-mail] (Kenton Abbott Hoover)
Subject: Re:  Cellular Fraud
Date: 3 Jun 87 18:46:53 GMT



It would seem that one should build a box which, when one is not sending a call
keeps the original serial number/phone number/etc. number combination, but when
one is to send simply picks a new series of numbers from any scavaged off the
airwaves (that just happen to belong to other senders).  I would think that
the cost of the electronics to do this would be about 2 times one unit plus 10%.

Have I missed something?
-- Kenton


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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************

Date: Mon, 22 Jun 87 13:46:36 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #18
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Mon, 22 Jun 87 13:46:36 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 18

Today's Topics:

                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                          Re: Horror Stories
                             digit graber
                   Addresses of Government Officials
                      Re: Intra-lata credit calls
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                              COMPUDUNIT
                            Further Horrors
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: ihnp4!ll1a!ll1![e-mail]
Date: 16 Jun 87 22:14:01 GMT
To: ll1a!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!comp-dcom-telecom@ames
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: ll1!nesac2!jec
From: [e-mail] (John Carter ATLN SADM)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Horror Stories
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Jun 87 17:03:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: nesac2.1250
Posted: Tue Jun 16 13:03:04 1987
References: <[e-mail]|
Distribution: world
Organization: NESAC Lisle, Illinois
Lines: 33

| |What is wrong with a hotel allowing access to only one carrier?
| |Or with a hotel not even HAVING any phone service?  (The latter
| |may be a good selling feature!)  If a hotel customer doesn't like
| |what the hotel provides, he can always find another hotel.
| |                                ...Keith
|
| ||Because only having one carrier may be a violation of federal
| ||regulation. Specifically, anti-trust laws and the like.
|
| I agree with Keith.  This is the same "the world owes me a living"
| mentality that demands the highest of quality from a faceless "Ma
| Bell" while resisting any increases in cost.  It is best exemplified
| by the socialist fools at Consumer Reports.  If the hotel can choose
| who will provide mattresses, room TVs, etc why not telephone service?
| If they abuse the customers they will lose business.  Makes sense to
| me!
| +HECTOR+
| -------

But it's the only room available within 10 miles of the meeting,
using their carrier means the call is on your hotel bill, your
company provides you with a credit card for a different carrier, and
your company won't pay for calls made on another carrier and charged
to your hotel bill.  And there's no place to put the T1100+ if you
try to use the pay phone for E-mail.
--

John Carter
AT&T Communications - Atlanta RWC
USnail:    3001 Cobb Parkway, Atlanta GA 30339
E-mail:    ...ihnp4!cuea2!ltuxa!ll1!nesac2!jec
Voice:    404+951-4642
(The above views are my very own. How dare you question them? :-)


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

From: dolqci![e-mail]
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 87 14:51:44 edt
To: <[e-mail]>



To: [e-mail]
Subject: digit graber

A while ago someone asked about a device to decode touchtones on the line
and display them on some sort of display.  The "Model TPM-32 DTMF/Dial Pulse
Digit Display Unit" by Motion Technology seems to do the trick for a mear
$249.00.  It can be ordered from:

Specialized Products Company
2117 W. Walnut Hill Lane
Irving, TX  75038

I just noticed the thing in their most recent catalog.  I'm in no way
affiliated with them.

-Mike

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

Date: Wed, 17 Jun 87 18:11 CDT
From: Mike Linnig <[e-mail]>
Subject: Addresses of Government Officials
To: [e-mail]


If you feel the need to write someone about the changes to the FCC's access
charge policy...

The following is a portion of a list of government officials found on the
arpanet a year or so ago.  The names might have changed, but most of the
addresses are probably still good.

    Mike Linnig


     ----------  MAILING ADDRESSES OF GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS  ----------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Telephone #  | Organization                | Notes
---------------|-----------------------------|---------------------------------
  202 456 1414 | White House Office          | President Ronald Reagan
               | 1600 Pennsylvania Ave N.W.  |
               | Washington, DC 20500        |
---------------|-----------------------------|---------------------------------
  202 632 6600 | Federal Communications      | Chairman
               |  Commission                 |  Mark S. Fowler
               | 1919 M St N.W.              | Commissioners
               | Washington, DC 20554        |  James Quello
               |                             |  Henry M. Rivera
               |                             |  Mary Ann W. Dawson
               |                             |  Dennis R. Patrick
---------------|-----------------------------|---------------------------------
  202 523 3598 | Federal Trade Commission    | Chairman
               | Pennsylvania Ave at Sixth   |  James C. Miller III
               |  St N.W.                    |
               | Washington, DC 20580        |
---------------|-----------------------------|---------------------------------
  202 275 2812 | General Accounting Office   | Comptroller General
               | GAO Bldg                    |  Charles A. Bowsher
               | 441 G St N.W.               |
               | Washington, DC 20548        | Fraud Waste and Abuse Hotline
               |                             | 1-800-424-5454 (outside DC)
               |                             |       633-6987 (DC area)
---------------|-----------------------------|---------------------------------
  202 395 3000 | Office of Management and    | Director
               |  Budget                     |  James C. Miller III
               | Old Executive Office Bldg   |
               | 17th and Pennsylvania Ave   |
               |  N.W.                       |
               | Washington, DC 20503        |
---------------|-----------------------------|---------------------------------
  202 224 3121 | Officer of the House        | Speaker of the House
               | U.S. Capitol                |  Thomas P. O'neill (Mass)
               | Washington, DC 20515        |  Room 2331  202-225-5111
               |                             |
               |                             | Majority Leader
               |                             |  James C. Wright, Jr. (Tex)
               |                             |  Room 1236  202-225-5071
               |                             |
               |                             | Minority Leader
               |                             |  Robert H. Michel (Illinois)
               |                             |  Room 2112  202-225-6201
---------------|-----------------------------|---------------------------------
  202 224 3121 | Officers of the Senate      | President of the Senate
               | U.S. Capitol                |  V.P. George Bush
               | Washington, DC 20510        |  Old Executive Office Bldg
               |                             |  202-224-8391
               |                             |
               |                             | Majority Leader
               |                             |  Robert Dole (Kan)
               |                             |  Room SH141 202-224-6521
               |                             |
               |                             | Minority Leader
               |                             |  Alan K. Simpson (Wyoming)
               |                             |  Room SH709 202-224-3424
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

To: [e-mail]
From: apollo![e-mail] (Jim Rees)
Subject: Re: Intra-lata credit calls
Date: 17 Jun 87 14:47 GMT



I've noticed that when I make an intra-lata call in Michigan (formerly
Michigan Bell), and charge it on my calling card, the charge shows up
on the NE Tel portion of my bill (my home service is from NE Tel), but
it not listed as anything special.  I assume that NE Tel is doing the
billing on behalf of Michigan Bell, but it doesn't say that on the bill.

But why should my AT&T card number allow Michigan Bell to bill NE Tel?
AT&T wasn't involved in the call.  Or is the card acting as a NE Tel
card at the time?  If so, why should Michigan Bell honor the card?
I think the technology has outpaced the regulation, as usual, but it's
nice that these calls still work.

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

From: cmcl2!phri!dasys1![e-mail] (Patt Haring)
Date: 17 Jun 87 14:39:03 GMT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: dasys1!patth
From: [e-mail] (Patt Haring)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,cat.mag,comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: COMPUDUNIT
Keywords: mystery story writing project
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 17 Jun 87 14:39:02 GMT
Organization: The Big Electric Cat
Lines: 16

   Re: MYSTERY WRITING ANYONE?
If anyone is interested in participating in a mystery story
writing project via telecommunications, they should contact me
Michael Blyth at 718-816-5742. The project titled COMPUDUNIT
will consist of using an existing writing curriculum to
write your own WHODUNIT MYSTERY! Funding for this program is
provided by Learning Link. Participants will try writing
a collective Whodunit using the same COMPUDUNIT curriculum
guide. Writing starts in Sept. 1987. Don't miss it, call
today.


--
Patt Haring                      {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\
Big Electric Cat Public Unix           {bellcore,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!patth
New York, NY, USA                                {philabs}!tg/

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

Date: Thu 18 Jun 87 11:06:42-PDT
From: HECTOR MYERSTON <[e-mail]>
Subject: Further Horrors
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]


[e-mail] writes>

>>  This is the same "the world owes me a living"
>>  mentality that demands the highest of quality from a faceless "Ma
>>  Bell" while resisting any increases in cost.  It is best exemplified
>>  by the socialist fools at Consumer Reports.

>just to let you know that this "fool" thinks that you are all wet ...
>if society allows monopolies, we have a right to demand that prices go
>down and quality goes up when technology improves ... of course, your
>disregard for the value of the work (and the need for it) of Consumers
>Report make me expect that I am talking to deaf ears ...to bad.
>not that I think that CR is infallible ...far from it!

You missed  both points.   Society did  NOT "allow  monopolies"  society
BROKE UP the  monopoly allowing the  user (in this  case the hotels)  to
choose which  Long Distance  carrier  to use.   The original  poster  was
complaining about the Hotel blocking access to OTHER carriers.  We can't
have our cake (by breaking  up the Bell System)  and eat it too  (demand
that hotels  provide some  sort of  equal  access to  one and  all).

  A discussion of CR probably belongs in Net.fussbudget.  But, since you
ask, here is my rationale.  CR is  OK for testing toasters and the  like
although   they   over-emphasize   the   manufacturer   and   government
responsibilities for user stupidity ("Unsafe  if turned on while in  the
bathtub").  They have recently chosen to expand into social  engineering
and liberal politics.  Their views on such things as  Telecommunications
policy have no more validity than  that of any other left-wing  journal.
Besides, they insist in numbering their pages in mid-19th century style.

I am replying here as ARPANET does not recognize your address.
-------

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 87  0:08:16 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #19
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Wed, 24 Jun 87  0:08:16 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 19

Today's Topics:

                        Query about FAX format
                         Incoming Phone Calls
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                      Re: Intra-lata credit calls
               FCC proposes tax for "Enhanced Services"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 22 Jun 87 13:43:16 EDT
From: Richard Furuta <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Query about FAX format
Cc: [e-mail]


Can someone provide me with information about what kind of interfaces are in
use by FAX machines?  What signalling tones are used?  What encoding of the
page is transmitted?  Is any of this compatible with computer communication
equipment?  What would it take to make your average everyday Unix-style
computer behave as if it were a FAX machine (transmit and/or receive)?

Please send me a copy of your responses directly.  I am on Telecom but boy
am I ever behind in my reading!

Thanks.

                    --Rick
                      [e-mail]
                      seismo!mimsy!furuta

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

Date: 22 Jun 87 22:43 PDT
From: William Daul / McDonnell-Douglas / APD-ASD  <[e-mail]>
Subject: Incoming Phone Calls
To: [e-mail]


This may end up sounding like a really dumb question but...

If all the lines in a neighborhood are being utilized and someone tries to call
into that area to a phone that is NOT being used what (if anything) will
happen?  Will they get a busy signal?

Thanks,  --Bi//


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

From: jack!man!nu3b2![e-mail]
Date: 24 Jun 87 01:00:19 GMT
To: man!comp-dcom-telecom
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: nu3b2!rwhite
From: [e-mail] (Robert C. White Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Intra-lata credit calls
Summary: It's who pays that counts.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 24 Jun 87 01:00:19 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: National University, San Diego
Lines: 21


Its like the roaming agreement on a celular telephone.  when you make a
calling card call, the call is billed through the "normal" route.  Company
"A" bills AT&T for the call and AT&T normally reaches you through your
local operating company [which is why the firs ten numbers on your card
are most probably your phone number.]  The sematnics of a billing
depend on the operating company in question.  I think you will find that
all the call detail listed is AT&T long-lines provided, at least on that
one page, and that the fact that this bill is forwarded through is listed
someware insignificant [like on the back of the summary page or something]

This whole thing is noraml, AT&T always does it that way.


Robert.

Disclaimer:  My mind is so fragmented by random excursions into a
    wilderness of abstractions and incipient ideas that the
    practical purposes of the moment are often submerged in
    my consciousness and I don't know what I'm doing.
        [my employers certainly have no idea]




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

Date: Tue, 23 Jun 87 23:57:47 EDT
From: jsol (Jon Solomon)
To: telecom
Subject: FCC proposes tax for "Enhanced Services"


Thanks to Keith Peterson at SIMTEL for forwarding information
he received on the info-modems list. What he forwarded was a couple
of postings to some USENET newsgroups, describing what the FCC wants
to do, and ways which people can (if they choose to) inform the
FCC of their views on it. The submission is too large to post, so
I have made it available for FTP access from XX.LCS.MIT.EDU in the
file <TELECOM>FCC.THREAT.1

I will post a copy of this to the USENET readers, and BITNET users
should send me mail if they want a copy. (mail to [e-mail])

Enjoy,
--jsol

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 87 23:30:19 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #20
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Thu, 25 Jun 87 23:30:19 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 20

Today's Topics:

                   FCC news release on PDN surcharge
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                       Re: Incoming Phone Calls
                                CSCNET
                       Re: Incoming Phone Calls
                 Re: Addresses of Government Officials
    Re:  FCC Surcharges for Telenet/Tymnet/CompuServe/MCIMAIL/etc.
                            Information tax
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed 24 Jun 87 20:06:16-PDT
From: David Roode <[e-mail]>
Subject: FCC news release on PDN surcharge
To: [e-mail]


Following is the FCC access charges news release of June 10, 1987.  (This is
not
the official text of the Commission's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM).)

FCC PROPOSES ELIMINATION OF INTERSTATE ACCESS CHARGES EXEMPTION FOR ENHANCED
SERVICE PROVIDERS

   The Commission has proposed elimination of the exemption from interstate
access charges currently allowed enhanced service providers, effective
January 1, 1988.  Charges for intrastate service would not be affected.
   Enhanced services add value to, or enhance the use of, basic transmission
service.  Examples of enhanced services, which the Commission defined in its
Computer II and Computer III procedings, include computer-based applications
such as protocol processing, information retrieval systems and voice or
message services.
   In its access charge proceeding, the Commission provided for exemptions
for a number of groups.  These exemptions have gradually been eliminated.
   In the pre-access environment, enhanced service providers and WATS
resellers were paying local business exchange service rates for their
interstate access, rather than the higher charges that other common carriers
(OCCs) were paying and the even higher amounts assessed to MTS and WATS
through the divisions of revenues and settlements processes.  The Commission
decided that the immediate imposition of interstate access charges on enhanced
service providers and resellers could affect their ability to provide service
during the time they were adjusting to the new access charge rules.
Consequently, the Commission granted enhanced service providers, as well as
resellers, a temporary exemption from payment of interstate access charges.
   In proposing to eliminate this exemption, the Commission said it was
concerned that the charges currently paid by enhanced service providers did
not contribute sufficiently to the cost of the exchange access facilities
they use in offering services to the public.  Concerns about rate shock
might justify a temporary, but not a permanent, exemption from access
charges.  Enhanced service providers have had ample notice of the Commission's
ultimate intent to apply interstate access charges and ample opportunity to
adjust their planning accordingly.
   Moreover, it said, the potential financial impact on enhanced service
providers of eliminating their exemption is substantially smaller than it
was at the time the exemption was granted.  In particular, the Commission
noted that the common carrier line charge has decreased dramatically with the
introduction of subscriber line charges.
END
-------

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

From: ucsdhub!jack!man!nu3b2![e-mail]
Date: 25 Jun 87 07:25:29 GMT
To: man!comp-dcom-telecom
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: nu3b2!rwhite
From: [e-mail] (Robert C. White Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Incoming Phone Calls
Summary: busy signal,sort of.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 25 Jun 87 07:25:29 GMT
References: <MDC-WBD-BO4Z2@OFFICE-1>
Organization: National University, San Diego
Lines: 39

In article <MDC-WBD-BO4Z2@OFFICE-1>, [e-mail] (William Daul / McDonnell-Douglas / APD-ASD) writes:
> This may end up sounding like a really dumb question but...
>
> If all the lines in a neighborhood are being utilized and someone tries to call
> into that area to a phone that is NOT being used what (if anything) will
> happen?  Will they get a busy signal?

It is not a dumb question, but there is something I don't think you
understand.  EVERY phone number is on it's own DEDICATED pair running
all the way to the Central Office Switch servicing that area [often
but not always the entire prefix {first 3 of the standard 7 digits}
the only common execption to this is those who have purchased a
"foregn exchange"  <say a Blatimore number in Washington>

If every circut comming into a CO [Central Office] is busy, and
you are calling from another CO, or your CO's swithch is not capable
of compleeting enough connections to support your outgoing call
<weither it's destined for a house down the street or in europe>
you will recieve the "fast" busy signal <or french siren on some
switches>.  This is the "Circut Overload/Insufficient Access Rights"
signal and is heard mostly on mother's day /snicker ;-).

Any other busy signal or condition is either a mundane destination
busy [Or system all f**ked up signal]

All the lines in a CO can be busy, all the connections in a CO
switch can be busy, but the only way all "the lines going into
a neighborhood" can be busy is if every number has at least one
instrument "off-hook"  If it often takes several minutes for the tone
generator to give you dial-tone, call your Opperating Company
and tell them to buy a bigger switch!!!

Robert.

Disclaimer:  My mind is so fragmented by random excursions into a
    wilderness of abstractions and incipient ideas that the
    practical purposes of the moment are often submerged in
    my consciousness and I don't know what I'm doing.
        [my employers certainly have no idea]




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

To: [e-mail]
Subject: CSCNET
From: [e-mail] (A. Ross Johnson)
Date: 24 Jun 87 22:32:35 PDT (Wed)



I have just noticed that CompuServe now offers foreign access via
CSCNET.  The nodes are limited in number, but this does provide
the short-term traveler with access to U.S. networks without
a local foreign data network account.

Have subscribers to this list utilized CSCNet for foreign access
to U.S. networks?  What is the experience.  The surcharge on
CompuServe is evidently $20/hour, which is generally less than
what one would pay to local networks in Germany and Britain (and probably
elsewhere) for the same service.  There will be local ld charges, e.g. so
far the only node in Germany is evidently in Frankfurt, that will
offset the savings.

Ross Johnson

If I receive many replies, I will summarize to this group.

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

From: moss!ihlpf![e-mail] (A Little)
Subject: Re: Incoming Phone Calls
Date: 25 Jun 87 14:52:49 GMT
To: <[e-mail]>



> > If all the lines in a neighborhood are being utilized and someone tries to
> > call into that area to a phone that is NOT being used what (if anything) will
> > happen?  Will they get a busy signal?
>
> I believe that they will get a re-order tone.  This is a "fast-busy",

Most local offices TRY to design their networks so that blocking will
not occur.  A classic example of the above scenario is an area
near a high school and a majority of the students get home at
3:00 and want to call their friends.  A well designed office will
distribute lines from this area throughout the network.

The respondant was correct, though, that if all circuit are used,
reorder tone will result.

Andy
inhp4!ihlpf!ahl





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

Date: 25 Jun 86 08:15 EST
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Addresses of Government Officials



    Outside of the usual public carriers, does anyone have any idea if the
pubic officials mentioned earlier have Internet addresses? Surely, there must
be at least *1* person at the top levels of our government with enough
initiative to venture into our realm.

    Of course, actually reading the mail is a different story. :-)
                                    -Dave

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
   From the North Coast      Dave Chatfield, Dept. of Computer Services
   _____   of America...._-! Cleveland State University
  !     --___       ___--  !
  !          ------(*)     ! BITNET: C0144@CSUOHIO
  !          Cleveland     ! ARPA: [e-mail]
  !                        ! USENET: davec!ncoast.UUCP
  !       O  H  I  O      !  BBS: Assistant Sysop, PC-OHIO 216-381-3320
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

Date: Thu, 25 Jun 87 17:58:38 EDT
From: Michael Grant <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: Re:  FCC Surcharges for Telenet/Tymnet/CompuServe/MCIMAIL/etc.
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail],


If they add these fees, it seems like it's going to be the same price to
dial up directly to the service long-distance.  Am I missing something?
-Mike

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

Date: Thu, 25 Jun 87 20:48:09 EDT
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Information tax
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]


> Is it fair to have voice pay more than data for the identical services?

It is not the identical service.  A T1 line (1.544 million baud) can
support 44 full duplex voice conversations.  It can support over 1200
1200 baud links.  And that is worst case, where both ends of the link
are sending 1200 baud solid without pause.  Actual usage tends to be
about 1/10 of this, and this feature is taken advantage of by packet
nets such as telenet, tymnet, etc.

If this was not the case, how could services such as PC PURSUIT
afford to sell time for less than six cents per hour?  Presumably they
are multiplexing over some existing common carrier and already paying
the access charges and long distance charges, anyway.

Five dollars per hour for a 1200 baud line?  Only if voice lines are
charged $1400 per hour!  Why should they pay less for the same service?

Seriously, if anyone can find any possible justification for this
proposed 8000% tax, I would very much like to hear it.
                                ...Keith

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 87  0:21:34 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #21
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Tue, 30 Jun 87  0:21:34 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 21

Today's Topics:

                       Re: Incoming Phone Calls
                     Area Code split, Chicago area
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                 Re: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                            Clarksville, Md.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To:
From: pttesac![e-mail] (Marnix van Ammers)
Subject: Re: Incoming Phone Calls
Date: 28 Jun 87 18:20:51 GMT



In article <MDC-WBD-BO4Z2@OFFICE-1> [e-mail] (William Daul / McDonnell-Douglas / APD-ASD) writes:
>This may end up sounding like a really dumb question but...
>
>If all the lines in a neighborhood are being utilized and someone tries to call
>into that area to a phone that is NOT being used what (if anything) will
>happen?  Will they get a busy signal?

Me and my friend who both work in the phone company and have
experience with ESS happened to read this and before reading
the followups decided that unless there was a problem with
the office (poor load balancing), nothing would happen.  That
is, the incoming call would complete with no problem.

If there were poor load balancing, some of the people in
the neighborhood would start getting no-dial-tone or slow-
dial-tone at times.

On incoming calls to a very busy office with poor load
balancing, callers could get re-order tone (120 ipm busy
tone).
--
Marnix (ain't unix!) A.  van\ Ammers    Work: [phone]
Home: [phone]            CEO: MAVANAMMERS:UNIX
UUCP: {ihnp4|ptsfa}!pttesac!vanam    CIS: 70027,70
    ** So what *is* a deterministic finite automaton ? **

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

Date: 29-Jun-1987 0028
From: [e-mail]  (John R. Covert)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Area Code split, Chicago area


In 1990, Chicago, currently 312, will split.  The inner area will
remain 312; the outer area will be 708.

This leaves only 903, 908, 909, and 917 available for assignment.

(508 is assigned to Massachusetts, 719 to Colorado, and 407 to Florida.)

/john

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

From: moss!asr2![e-mail]
Date: 29 Jun 87 13:28:40 GMT
To: moss!cbosgd![e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: asr2!skipt
From: [e-mail] (Skip Tourville)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
Summary: it this really true?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 29 Jun 87 13:28:39 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: AT&T Conversant Systems, Columbus, OH
Lines: 15

>From a recent article:

> .......  EVERY phone number is on it's own DEDICATED pair running
> all the way to the Central Office Switch servicing that area [often

Is this really true? (For residential service I mean)

In areas where there is a large concentration of directory numbers
it might be useful to run a digital trunk to a remote switching unit.
If the number of digital channels is less that the number of directory
numbers, some blocking would occur under heavy load.  I think I have
heard of such arrangements.


Skip


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

Date:     Mon, 29 Jun 87 19:31:49 EDT
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject:  Clarksville, Md.


I made it down to Clarksville, Maryland recently.  The setup I knew for there
as of several years ago was (in area code 301):
286--no local service to Balt. or DC
531 (Columbia service)--local to Baltimore city, not beyond it
988 (Ellicott City service)--local to Baltimore metro area
so I assumed that 286, with the smallest calling area, would show up on pay phones.
But recently, I noticed 286 popping up in Washington area directory as Berwyn, part
of Washington metro area; so the question I put forth in a recent Digest was what
was now on the Clarksville pay phones.  Answer: 531.
This suggests that Clarksville area is changing from rural to suburban-bedroom.
(Use 596--Columbia with Laurel service--for local service to DC.)


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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 87 19:05:34 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #22
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Sat, 25 Jul 87 19:05:34 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 22

Today's Topics:

                             PDN surcharge
                    Re: copper pairs back to the CO
                         Dedicated lines to CO
                              novatel 390
                  sales calls and directory listings
                        Bell PA as L.D. Carrier
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  Tue, 30 Jun 87 15:07 MST
From: Paul Dickson <[e-mail]>
Subject:  PDN surcharge
To: [e-mail]


>   Enhanced services add value to, or enhance the use of, basic transmission
>service.  Examples of enhanced services, which the Commission defined in its
>Computer II and Computer III procedings, include computer-based applications
>such as protocol processing, information retrieval systems and voice or
>message services.

How does the FCC define "basic transmission service"? If it's a voice
connection between to two points, then services like PC-pursuit
shouldn't be considered an "enchanced service". The bits per second data
rate of these data serives are far lower than voice communications. I
wouldn't mind paying the surcharge if I got with it a 19.2Kbps data rate
or greater.

          Paul Dickson
          Dickson%pco @ BCO-Multics.ARPA

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

Date: Tue, 30 Jun 87 17:16:19 EDT
From: Michael Grant <[e-mail]>
To: moss!asr2![e-mail],
Subject: Re: copper pairs back to the CO


>> .......  EVERY phone number is on it's own DEDICATED pair running
>> all the way to the Central Office Switch servicing that area [often ...

In some circumstances, especially if you order up many phone lines, the
telco will install a T1 line to a room or closet you provide them.  They
then break that T1 line upto 24 voice channels.  I have heard of this being
done to offices and apartment complexes in areas where the copper wire back
to the CO is at a premium.

-Mike Grant


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

Date: Wed,  1 Jul 87 11:04:32 edt
From: [e-mail] (David R. Fulmer)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Dedicated lines to CO
Cc:



> .......  EVERY phone number is on it's own DEDICATED pair running
> all the way to the Central Office Switch servicing that area [often

Ah, but this is not always true.  In some areas where the local telco
didn't plan ahead for enough expansion they sometimes multiplex several
subscriber's lines onto one wire pair.  This way they don't have to lay
new cable if the area outgrows their original estimates.

A freind has this.  He has both a voice line and a line running his
BBS, but only one wire pair running to the CO.

This doesn't have much to do with the original discussion about all pairs
being busy, but I though it was worth posting anyway. . .


Dave Fulmer
!seismo!andrew.cmu.edu!df1b
[e-mail] (arpa)
r750df1b@cmccvb (bitnet)


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

Date:  Tue, 7 Jul 87 18:24 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Richard Kovalcik, Jr.)
Subject:  novatel 390
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]


I am looking for someone familiar with the "dealer setable" options on
the novatel 390 cellular phone and / or with access to the dealer
instruction manual.  I am especially interested in descriptions of the
"dealer setable" options.  Please contact me if you can help.


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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 87 17:15:57 PDT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: sales calls and directory listings


 MSG:FROM: SPGDCM  --UCBCMSA  TO: NETWORK --NETWORK           07/10/87 17:15:56
 To: NETWORK --NETWORK  Network Address

 From:    Doug Mosher                 <SPGDCM at UCBCMSA>
 Title:   MVS/Tandem Systems Manager  [phone]
 Office:  Evans 257, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
 Subject: sales calls and directory listings

 To: [e-mail]

 I just got some interesting info from the sales rep at Pacific Bell when I
 called asking how I could reduce my receipt of sales calls.

 On the one hand, I could only choose between being "listed" (so my friends and
 apparently businesses can all find me) or "unlisted" (so neither can, and
 paying an extra fee). Also I cannot order a directory line such as "NO SALES
 CALLS".

 HOWEVER, another very nice option exists. There is another directory, the
 "reverse directory", which is ordered by physical address. This is used by
 almost all sales callers, since they choose neighborhoods, based in good part
 on demographics (certain neighborhoods or streets tend to be rich/poor/full of
 homeowners/people living in salt air and needing window repairs/etc/etc).
 Normally if you are "listed" you're listed in both, and "unlisted", unlisted
 in both. BUT: It is FREE to be de-listed in the reverse directory only, and
 still appear in the regular one. Comes out every 6 months so it takes awhile
 for you to see the effect of delisting; I imagine some organizations use old
 ones so it might fade over an even longer period.

 The salesperson believed that 9 out of 10 sales callers use the reverse.

 In published brochures I now remember the telco claiming that the reverse
 directory is used also by police, fire, etc. Hmmmm, betcha I'll still show on
 the 911 screens even though I de-listed.

 Thanks, Doug
      sales calls and directory listings

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

Date: Sat, 11 Jul 87 01:01:45 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Gottlieb)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Bell PA as L.D. Carrier
Cc:



A May 1987 bill insert from Bell of Pennsylvania suggests that customers
use the PIC code of 1-0-B-P-A when calling to South Jersey in order to
"automatically save 10% off AT&T's regular long-distance rates for these
calls..."

I remember hearing that there is some deal that lets Bell of PA (and, I think,
New York Tel.) handle inter-LATA traffic into parts of New Jersey.  That's
OK.  What puzzled me was the following sentence: "If you've already chosen
Bell of Pennsylvania as your long-distance company, there's no need to dial
'1-0-B-P-A.'"

Now, I do sleep eight hours a night so I may have missed something, but
I do know that BOCs can not be long-distance carriers.  How could some-
one have Bell of PA as their primary carrier?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Gottlieb     "It's easier to apologize than to ask permission.  When in
                  doubt, do it."

Internet:   [e-mail]
UUCP:       sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!ucla-cs!pic.ucla.edu!jimmy


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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 87 19:41:15 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #23
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Sat, 25 Jul 87 19:41:15 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 23

Today's Topics:

                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                  distributed key system info wanted
                      Incompatibility with 5ESS?
       NYSE stock quotes, etc, SCA data transmission in FM Bands
                              BOC Support
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Gerry Wheeler <[e-mail]>
Date: 14 Jul 87 18:57:39 GMT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: mks!wheels
From: [e-mail] (Gerry Wheeler)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: distributed key system info wanted
Keywords: distributed key system
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 14 Jul 87 18:57:38 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ont.
Lines: 58


We are going to have our operations distributed between two buildings, a
short distance apart (but not adjacent -- the intervening public roads
prevent running wires between buildings).  We would like to find a
telephone system which will span the two buildings transparently.  For
example, people using the intercom shouldn't have to know whether the
destination is in the same building or not, and people in either
building should be able to answer incoming calls (especially when the
system is set for night service).

We currently have an electronic key system with features such as hands
free intercom, paging, and busy lamps on all stations, and we would like
something similar.  We expect a maximum size of 16 to 20 stations total,
and maybe 5 CO lines.

So far, we have seen three solutions.  One is to run all the CO lines
into building A, which would have a (electronic) key system.  Then,
using several single line interfaces, station outputs would run from
system A to building B, likely via leased lines.  The phones in building
B would be standard desk phones.  They would be able to access the
system's features by dialling special codes, but they wouldn't have
features like hands-free intercom, busy lamps, etc.  The second solution
is to put another (electronic) key system in building B, which would see
the station lines from system A as CO lines.  Unfortunately, this does
not give the desired transparency.  For example, the two intercom
systems remain completely independent.  The third solution we have seen
is to use electronic systems which are designed to be tied together.
The IBM-Rolm Redwood system is one of these.  The two systems operate as
equals, rather than master/slave.  However, even then there are failings
in the transparency of operation.  For example, the intercoms are not
integrated, and calling an extension on the other system still involves
going through local dial tone, getting remote dial tone, and dialling
the remote extension.

It would seem technically feasible to have two electronic systems which
pass data and voice back and forth over leased lines, such that they
share a common view of the world.  By continually updating each other as
to the status of their stations and lines, all stations' indicators
would reflect the status of the whole distributed system.  In addition,
when calling a remote station, the originating system could send data to
the remote system indicating which tie line is being used for voice, and
to which extension it should be routed.  In such a system stations
connected to either system would have equal access to all other
stations, and features like busy lamps would operate correctly for all
stations and lines.  (As a bonus, if this system could also provide a
few 9600 bps serial lines between the buildings, we would really be
set!)

If someone could point us in the direction of a system to integrate the
two buildings, for a reasonable cost, we would be most appreciative.  Of
course, responses on unreasonable systems will be read with interest
too.  We'll summarize whatever information we get.

--
"Network XXIII. Where two's company, and three's an audience." -- Max Headroom

Gerry Wheeler                  {seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!watmath!mks!wheels
Mortice Kern Systems Inc.

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

Date: Tue Jul 14 15:01:27 1987
From: [e-mail] (Michael C. Berch)
Subject: Incompatibility with 5ESS?
To: [e-mail]


The Pacfic Bell CO (Millbrae, California: 415-697) where I live is
finally installing a new switch, replacing the one installed in 1954.
We will finally get stuff like international direct dial, etc., that
normal people have had for a while now. PacBell sent out the following
letter (excerpted):

"Dear Customer:

As part of our plan to expand and improve telephone service, [...] we
will be making some changes in the central office equipment serving
your area. [...]

We are informing you in advance of this change because there is a
possibility that our new equipment may affect some customer telephone
equipment. [...] If you have [equipment other than a standard
Touch-Tone or rotary-dial telephone] please contact your equipment
vendor prior to our change date.

Your vendor will need to know these facts:

    Pacific Bell is installing #5 ESS equipment in the Millbrae
    Central Office. Installation is planned for September 19, 1987.

Your vendor can tell you if any adjustments are necessary to make your
equipment compatible with our installation.  [...]"

-----
Hmmm. I didn't know that a 5ESS was not downwardly compatible with
anything you might plug into the network. What sorts of things might
cause problems or be incompatible? Are they talking about older PBXs,
or what?

Michael C. Berch
ARPA: [e-mail]
UUCP: {ames,ihnp4,lll-crg,lll-lcc,mordor}!lll-tis!mcb

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

Date: Mon, 20 Jul 87 04:53:38 PDT
From: <ptsfa![e-mail]>


To: ames!comp-dcom-telecom
Path: ptsfa!nonvon!root
From: [e-mail] (root)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,misc.invest,misc.wanted,rec.audio,sci.crypt,comp.dcom.telecom,rec.ham-radio,rec.ham-radio.packet
Subject: NYSE stock quotes, etc, SCA data transmission in FM Bands
Keywords: NYSE quotes, SCA, FM, Data
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 19 Jul 87 23:50:06 GMT
Organization: NONVON Systems Computer Research Group
Lines: 21



    Looking for information on recieving or decoding the data transmissions
that occur on many Public Service FM radio stations (KQED, KQEC, KMET, etc).
Any help/information at all would be appreciated.

    Info is modulated on the SCA subcarrier for many background music
applications. Special reciever circuitry is used for reception. Althouh
most stations transmit music, some, like KQED, transmit data, and this is
specifically what I'm looking for... the baud rate, encoding method, etc.

    Please e-mail responses, and *IFF* there is any interest, I will
disburse what I get.

    Thank You,
     Alex P Novickis

UUCP: {ihnp4,ames,qantel,sun,amdahl,lll-crg,pyramid}!ptsfa!nonvon!apn

{* Only those who attempt the absurd   ...   will achieve the impossible   *}
{* I think... I think it's in my basement... Let me go upstairs and check. *}
{*                                                      -escher            *}


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

Date: 21 Jul 87 18:32 PDT
From: William Daul / McDonnell-Douglas / APD-ASD  <[e-mail]>
Subject: BOC Support
To: [e-mail]


Could someone please send me the name of the organization that was created to
support the BOCs.  I think it was mentioned way back when...the company was
suppose to make sure that the BOCs would always be able to talk with one
another...in the national interest...as well as other services.  Thanks for any
pointers,  --Bi//

[I believe you are referring to Bell Communications Research, or
Belcore. --JSol]

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

To: ucbvax!BUIT1.BU.EDU!jsol
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 87 07:43:08 EDT
From: ulysses!heh <ulysses![e-mail]>


Could you please post the following note for me?  Thanks.

I'm looking for *ANY* product in the market with a VME or SCSI
interface that interfaces with telephone lines or that does
digital voice recording and transmission.  This product
(hardware/firmware/software) is expected to do any of the
following: initiate and answer calls, recognize and generate
touch tone, digitize, store, and play back voice files, and
to carry on dialogues with voice input and touch-tone control.

Products I'm looking for are similar to the Natural Microsystems'
Watson board or Dialogic Corp's Dialog board for PCs, and the
Voice Power board for AT&T UNIX PC 7300, but I'd like to use Sun
workstations.

Any information is appreciated.  Thanks in advance.


Harlan Husmann
{ihnp4,ucbvax,vax135,seismo}!ulysses!heh
[phone]


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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 87 20:05:49 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #24
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Sat, 25 Jul 87 20:05:49 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 24

Today's Topics:

                        Long Distance Carriers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 18 Jul 87 18:03:15 cdt
From: John Reece <sun!texsun!pollux![e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]


Path: pollux!john
From: [e-mail] (John Reece)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Long Distance Carriers
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Jul 87 22:42:46 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (John Reece)
Distribution: world
Organization: Department of Electrical Engineering; S.M.U.; Dallas, TX
Lines: 444

The following is a list of long distance carrier access numbers of the
form 10XXX. An asterisk indicates that the number is used but the name
of the company is not available.


001    MidAmerican LD (Republic Telecom)
002    AmeriCall LDC
003    RCI Corporation
004    *
005    *
006    *
007    Tel America
009    *
010    *
011    Metromedia Long Distance
012    Charter Corporation (Tri-J)
013    Access Services
014    *
015    *
018    *
020    *
021    Mercury
022    MCI Telecommunications
023    Texnet
024    Petricca Communications Systems
028    Texnet
030    Valu-Line of Wichita Falls
031    Teltec Saving Communications
033    US Sprint
035    *
036    Long Distance Savers
039    Electronic Office Centers of America (EO/Tech)
040    *
042    First Phone
044    Allnet Communication Services (LDX, Lexitel)
050    *
051    *
053    American Network (Starnet)
054    *
055    *
056    American Satellite
057    Long Distance Satellite
058    *
059    COMNET
060    Valu-Line of West Texas
061    *
062    *
063    COMNET
065    *
066    *
069    V/COM
070    National Telephone Exchange
072    *
077    *
080    AMTEL Systems
081    *
082    *
084    Long Distance Service (LDS)
085    WesTel
086    *
087    *
088    Satellite Business Systems (MCI)
089    Telephone Systems
090    WesTel
092    *
093    Rainbow Communications
095    Southwest Communications
098    *
099    AmeriCall
120    *
121 *
122    RCA Global Communications
123    *
124    *
131    *
133    *
137    All America Cables and Radio (ITT)
142    First Phone
146    ARGO Communications
170    *
177    *
188    Satellite Business Systems
200    *
201    PhoneNet
202    ExecuLines
203    Cypress Telecommunications (Cytel)
204    United Telephone Long Distance
205    *
206    United Telephone Long Distance
210    *
211    RCI
212    Call US
213    Long Distance Telephone Savers
214    Tyler Telecom
215    Star Tel of Abilene
216    *
217    Call US
218    *
219    Call USA
220    Western Union Telegraph
221    *
222    MCI Telecommunications (SBS)
223    Cable & Wireless Communication (TDX)
224    American Communications
225    *
226    *
227    ATH Communications (Call America)
228    *
229    Bay Communications
230    *
231    *
232    Superior Telecom
233    Delta Communications
234    AC Teleconnect (Alternative Communication)
235    *
236    *
237    Inter-Comm Telephone
238    *
239    Woof Communications (ACT)
240    *
241    American Long Lines
242    Choice Information Systems
243    *
244    Automated Communications
245    Taconic Long Distance Service
246    *
247    *
248    *
249    *
250    Dial-Net
251    *
252    Long Distance/USA
253    Litel Telecommunications
255    All-State Communications
256    American Sharecom
258    *
260    Advanced Communications Systems
263    Com Systems (Sun Dial Communications)
264    *
265    *
266    *
267    *
268    Compute-A-Call
269    *
270    *
271    *
272    *
275    *
276    CP National (American Network, Starnet)
277    *
278    *
280    *
282    *
283    *
284    American Telenet
285    *
286    Clark Telecommunications
287    ATS Communications
288    AT&T Communications
295    *
298    Thriftline
299    *
300    *
301    *
302    Austin Bestline
303    MidAmerican LD (Republic Telecom)
304    *
307    *
310    *
311    SaveNet (American Network, Starnet)
312    *
313    *
314    *
318    Long Distance Savers
321    Southland Systems
322    American Sharecom
323    *
324    First Communication
326    *
330    *
331    Texustel
332    *
333    US Sprint
335    *
336    Florida Digital Network
337    *
338    Midco Communications
339    Communication Cable Laying
341    *
342    *
343    Communication Cable Laying
345    AC Teleconnect (Alternative Communication)
348    *
350    Dial-Net
353    *
355    US Link
357    Manitowoc Long Distance Service
358    *
362    Electronic Office Centers of America (EO/Tech)
363    Tel-Toll (Econ-O-Dial of Bishop)
366    *
369    American Satellite
370    *
372    *
373    Econo-Line Waco
375    Wertern Union Telegraph
379    *
382    *
385    The Switchboard
390    *
393    Execulines of Florida
399    *
400    American Sharecom
401    *
404    MidAmerican LD (Republic Telecom)
405    *
411    *
412    Penn Telecom
414    *
415    *
421    *
422    *
424    *
426    *
428    Inter-Comm Telephone
432    Lightcall
435    Call-USA
436    Indiana Switch
440    Tex-Net
441    Escondido Telephone
442    First Phone
443    *
444    Allnet Communication Services (LDX, Lexitel)
445    *
450    *
452    *
455    Telecom Long Distance
456    ARGO Communications
457    *
458    *
462    American Network Services
464    Houston Network
465    Intelco
466    International Office Networks
468    *
469    GMW
470    *
472    Hal-Rad Communications
475    *
480    Chico Telecom (Call America)
482    *
484    *
486    *
488    United States Transmission Systems (ITT)
497    *
500    *
505    San Marcos Long Distance
511    *
512    *
515    Burlington Telephone
523    *
529    Southern Oregon Long Distance
532    Long Distance America
533    Long Distance Discount
535    *
536    Long Distance Management
537    *
538    *
539    *
543    *
547    *
550    Valu-Line of Alexandria
551    Pittsburg Communication Systems
552    First Phone
555    TeleSphere Networks
556    *
565    *
566    Cable & Wireless Communication (TDX)
567    Advanced Marketing Services (Dial Anywhere)
579    Lintel System (Lincoln Telephone LD)
580    *
584    *
585    *
587    *
588    *
590    Wisconsin Telecommunications Tech
599    Texas Long Distance Conroe
600    *
601    Discount Communications Services
602    *
606    Biz Tel Long Distance Telephone
607    *
610    *
616    *
622    Metro America Communications
626    *
627    *
628    *
634    Econo-Line Midland
638    *
646    Contact America
647    *
652    *
654    Cincinnati Bell Long Distance
655    Ken-Tel Service
658    *
660    Tex-Net
661    *
666    Southwest Communications
669    *
675    Network Services
678    *
680    Midwest Telephone Service
682    Ashland Call America
684    Nacogdoches Telecommunications
685    *
687    NTS Communications
688    *
689    *
698    *
700    Tel-America
704    Inter-Exchange Communications
707    Telvue
709    Tel-America
711    *
717    Pass Word
722    *
723    *
724    *
726    Procom
727    Conroe-Comtel
728    *
729    *
733    *
734    *
735    Marinette-Menominee Lds
736    *
737    National Telecommunications
738    *
741    ClayDesta
742    Phone America of Carolina
743    Peninsula Long Distance Service
747    Standard Informations Services
753    *
755    Sears Communication
757    Pace Long Distance Service
759    Telenet Communication (US Sprint)
760    American Satellite
765    *
766    Yavapai Telephone Exchange
767    *
770    *
771    Telesystems
774    *
776    *
777    US Sprint
778    *
782    *
785    Olympia Telecom
786    Shared Use Network Service
787    Star Tel of Abilene
788    ASCI's Telepone Express Network
789    Microtel
792    Southwest Communications
800    Satelco
801    MidAmerican LD (Republic)
805    *
808    *
818    *
821    *
822    *
823    *
824    *
825    *
826    *
827    TCS Network Services
833    Business Telecom
834    *
835    *
836    *
837    *
838    *
839    Cable & Wireless Communication (TDX)
847    VIP Connections
850    TK Communications
852    Telecommunicatons Systems
853    *
855    *
857    *
859    Valu-Line of Longview
862    *
864    *
866    Alascom
868    *
870    *
872    Telecommunications Services
874    Tri-Tel Communications
876    *
878    *
879    Thriftycall (Lintel Systems)
880    *
881    Coastal Telephone
882    Tuck Data Communications
883    TTI Midland-Odessa
884    TTI Midland-Odessa
885    The CommuniGroup
887    *
888    Satellite Business Systems (MCI)
889    *
895    Texas on Line
897    Leslie Hammond (Phone America)
898    Satellite Business Systems (MCI)
899    *
900    *
909    *
910    Montgomery Telamarketing Communication
911    *
915    Tele Tech
919    *
927    *
933    North American Communications
936    Rainbow Commuinications
937    Access Long Distance
938    Access Long Distance
945    *
950    *
951    Transamerica Telecommunications
955    United Communications
957    *
958    *
960    Access Plus
963    Tenex Communications
969    Dial-Net
977    *
983    *
985    America Calling
986    MCI Telecommunications (SBS)
987    ClayDesta Communications
988    Western Union Telegraph
991    Access Long Distance
992    *
995    *
996    *
999    *



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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 87 20:09:52 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #25
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Sat, 25 Jul 87 20:09:52 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 25

Today's Topics:

                      SS# & Utilities -- a story
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Jul 87 16:42:59 GMT
From: hao!gatech![e-mail]  (Gene Spafford)
Subject: SS# & Utilities -- a story
To: [e-mail]


[This is the last message to be published this weekend. A total of 4
digests were sent out with approximately 11 or 12 messages going to
individual recipients. TELECOM was nonfunctional for some time due to
several catastrophe's including my vacation and our network connection
going down several times. Things look more stable now.

NOTE: Telecom is available as comp.dcom.telecom on usenet, it would
lessen the load on the ARPANET/MILNET backbone if readers who receive
TELECOM in their mailbox and who read netnews; switch to reading TELECOM
as a newsgroup. Send your delete requests to [e-mail].
--jsol]


As a matter of principle, I'm one of those people who won't give out
my social security number when applying for utilities or credit cards.
The reasons why have been discussed numerous times in various
security-related groups.  It is my understanding that it is against
the law to force someone to give his/her social security number unless
it is a government agency; although I've often run into occasional
resistance, a few moments of explanation has usually resulted in
things working out okay.

Then there's today.  I'm moving to W. Lafayette Indiana in two weeks
and I called to establish my phone service there.  Indiana is
served by GTE for phone service.  I did not anticipate any problems
since I have an excellent credit history, as could be verified by
a quick check with the local Southern Bell folks.  After the rep
at GTE took all my information down, she asked for my SS#.  I explained
that I don't give that out.  She informed me that I would be required
to pay a $75 deposit if I refused to give my SS#.  So, I asked to
talk to her supervisor.

Her supervisor repeated that I would have to give my SS# to waive the
deposit.  I asked if they could simply call Southern Bell or take a
credit card #, or they could call Purdue and verify my employment.  He
said that wasn't enough -- I had to supply my SS#, no other option.  I
enquired as to why they needed it -- he said it was for a credit check
and to verify future disconnect requests.  I explained that they could
do that self-same credit check without the SS# *and* I don't give out
my SS# precisely because I don't want it used as a verification number
on my account.   He insisted I either supply the number or pay the
deposit.  He also asked why I was being so stubborn -- it was even on
my driver's license, wasn't it?  (It isn't -- and hasn't been.  In
Georgia, you have always had the option of having a different ID, and
now the licenses are being issue with those as default.  The guy at GTE
claims that the Indiana licenses are *required* to have the SS# on them
-- anyone know if this is true?  It shouldn't be...) I explained that
having done some work in computer security, and personal experience, I
know how that number can be abused.  He said I was the only person he'd
ever run into to refuse to give the SS# (!).

I then asked him if the requirement for a SS# was written policy -- I
wanted a copy to examine.  He informed me that such information was
private to the company and I couldn't have a copy -- didn't I trust
him?  I then asked if that policy was on file with the state Public
Service Commission.  At that he (rather loudly) asked if I wanted
service with GTE or not?  I asked him very calmly if he was threatening
to deny me service -- he quieted down.  I next explained that I wanted
to see a copy of the written policy because it would be interesting to
include in an article I might write on improper use of SS#s.  He became
very quiet.  I offered to find the name and number of someone at
Southern Bell who could verify my 9 years of service here.  He said to
call back with that information (thankful to get rid of me, I guess).

The lady I talked to at Southern Bell was very helpful.  She informed
me that all the Southern Bell operators are told not to force a SS#
because it is against both policy and law, but if someone won't provide
it they are to get a bank account # or credit card number (both of
which I am willing to give in circumstances such as this).  She was
more than willing to talk to the supervisor at GTE and give him a
credit reference, if only he'd call.  She said she'd also fill him in
on policy.  *AND*, most interestingly, Southern Bell had somehow
obtained my SS# through other means and it was on file, but she
marked it so that it was not to be given out to anyone, specifically
not anyone with GTE Indiana. :-)

Back to GTE.  I called the supervisor (collect, of course) and gave him
the name and number of the lady at Southern Bell.  He was very curt and
said he'd probably still require a deposit.  He hung up on me.

20 minutes later the original GTE operator called me back and
cheerily informed me that my service would be turned on August 4
with *no* deposit required!


Questions
---------

1) Do many of you (net-readers) withhold your SS# in similar circumstances?
Do you have these kinds of confrontations too?

2) Anyone know if other people at GTE Indiana are such jerks, or is
this an isolated instance?

3) Anyone know if Indiana does, in fact, *require* that the SS# be
on the driver's license?

4) Should I bother to follow-up on this further?  That is, should
I bother contacting the Public Service commission in Indiana
about the treatment I received? (I'm currently not sure it is
worth the effort).

Too bad we don't have a choice of phone companies as well as long
distance carriers -- I'd keep Southern Bell.

--
Gene Spafford
Software Engineering Research Center (SERC), Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
Internet:    [e-mail]
uucp:    ...!{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,rutgers,seismo}!gatech!spaf


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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:26:42 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #26
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:26:42 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 26

Today's Topics:

                      modem/Contel SL1XT problem
                           charging schemes
                                    ISDN
                    What number am I dialing from?
                      Bell of PA as a LD carrier
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                    Re: SS# & Utilities -- a story
                            BBS project !!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: uw-beaver![e-mail]
From: uw-nsr![e-mail] (Stewart Castaldi)
Subject: modem/Contel SL1XT problem
Date: 24 Jul 87 22:59:03 GMT




     We have recently moved our computer which required that our telephone
lines be attached to a different PBX.  This new PBX is a Contel SL1XT.
We have seven modem lines, 1 dial-out and 6 dial-in. The dial-in lines
are on a hunt group so that if the first line is busy when it is dialed
then the call will automatically be transfered to the first non-busy
line.
     It appears that the first line on the hunt group is being taken
off hook or disconnected approximately every half hour.  Users complain
that carrier drops or garbage character strings are encountered about
every 30 minutes.  The accounting files show that the line is going
off hook and then the modem is timing out and hanging up at approximately
10 and 40 minutes past the hour on a very regular basis.
    Has anyone on the net experienced these problems or know of problems
with the Contel SL1XT?

--
Stewart Castaldi                           Dial: [phone]
University of Washington WD-12             Inet: [e-mail]
Seattle, Washington  98195                 UUCP: uw-nsr!stewart

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

To: munnari![e-mail]
From: munnari!trlamct.oz![e-mail] (Andrew Jennings)
Subject: charging schemes
Date: 24 Jul 87 05:43:40 GMT



We're doing some work that involves working out data charging schemes. So
far we've encountered the following schemes :

              data rate (independent of distance)
              rate & distance
              rate & distance with special inter-city rates
              distance to your local "center"

Are there any more elaborate schemes out there ? We figured that if these
cover all the US schemes then this probably covers all possible.


--
UUCP: ...!{seismo, mcvax, ucb-vision, ukc}!munnari!trlamct.trl!andrew
ARPA: [e-mail]
Andrew Jennings                             Telecom Australia Research Labs


(Postmaster:- This mail has been acknowledged.)

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

Date:         Sun, 26 Jul 87 17:28:44 EDT
From: Marc Davidson <[e-mail]>
Subject:      ISDN
To: [e-mail]


Is anybody out there involved in ISDN trials?  like the one being put on
by (I think ) Mountain Bell in Phoenix. Bell Canada is going to
be starting one in Ottawa in September, they will be using Northern Telecom's
DMS-100 switch and will be providing Basic Rate Access lines in the beginning
and later on, probably next year, Primary Rate Access lines. Intercity ISDN
is expected by 1989.
  I was wondering what type of services are being offered by the present ISDN
trials in North America, is there any Broadband ISDN services yet?
In particular, the concept that you can take 'your' terminal from one physical
network outlet and then walk over to another physical outlet and plug 'your'
terminal in and still be recognized by the network, is an interesting one.
In Ottawa, that type of service will be provided behind any NT1 (Network Termin
ating equipment), but not behind another different NT1, it should be offered
globally (within the same switch) in the near future. It would be interesting
if you could do this sort of thing, but at much larger distances...say the othe
r side of the world. I would appreciate it if anybody could send me further
info on ISDN (in general).
                            Thanks,

                                   Marc Davidson
                                   Undergrad CO-OP student Electrical Eng.
                                   University of Ottawa, Ottawa Canada
                                   Bitnet: JMD2F@UOTTAWA, 443185@UOTTAWA
                                   Telex/Dialcom: 20:GOC009, 22:PES001
                                   Telno: [phone]
"Duntish: Mentally incapacitated by a severe hangover"
                                            ...Douglas Adams

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

Date: Sun 26 Jul 87 16:05:05-PDT
From: Vic Christensen <[e-mail]>
Subject: What number am I dialing from?
To: [e-mail]



     At least at MIT (and I assume the surrounding area), the number to get
the mechanical voice to tell you what umber you're dialing from is
[phone], if I recall correctly...

                               Vic Christensen
-------

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

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 87 08:48:20 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Frank Prindle)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Bell of PA as a LD carrier


It is quite simple - if you choose (with Bell of PA) to make Bell of PA your
primary "long distance" carrier, the longest distance you can call with 1+ is
three south Jersey counties!  A lot of people in PA, back when the ballots
were being distributed, didn't understand this (Bell of PA did nothing to make
it clear) and ended up with an apparently useless phone (since Bell of PA also
didn't explain 10xxx-1+ dialing either).  Fortunately, Bell of PA "allowed"
these poor unfortunates to re-select a primary carrier without charge!  I doubt
anyone really uses Bell of PA as a primary now.
Frank Prindle
[e-mail]

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

From: moss!twitch![e-mail]
Date: 27 Jul 87 14:40:33 GMT
To: moss!cbosgd![e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: twitch!homxb!hrs
From: [e-mail] (H.SILBIGER)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: SS# & Utilities -- a story
Summary: State requires SS# on driver licences.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 27 Jul 87 12:02:58 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Distribution: world
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 55

>
>
> As a matter of principle, I'm one of those people who won't give out
> my social security number when applying for utilities or credit cards.
> The reasons why have been discussed numerous times in various
> security-related groups.  It is my understanding that it is against
> the law to force someone to give his/her social security number unless
> it is a government agency; although I've often run into occasional
> resistance, a few moments of explanation has usually resulted in
> things working out okay.
>
> Then there's today.  I'm moving to W. Lafayette Indiana in two weeks
> and I called to establish my phone service there.  Indiana is
> served by GTE for phone service.  I did not anticipate any problems
> since I have an excellent credit history, as could be verified by
> a quick check with the local Southern Bell folks.  After the rep
> at GTE took all my information down, she asked for my SS#.  I explained
> that I don't give that out.  She informed me that I would be required
> to pay a $75 deposit if I refused to give my SS#.  So, I asked to
> talk to her supervisor.
> said he'd probably still require a deposit.  He hung up on me.
>........

.........
>
> Questions
> ---------
>
> 1) Do many of you (net-readers) withhold your SS# in similar circumstances?
> Do you have these kinds of confrontations too?
>
> 2) Anyone know if other people at GTE Indiana are such jerks, or is
> this an isolated instance?
>
> 3) Anyone know if Indiana does, in fact, *require* that the SS# be
> on the driver's license?
>
> 4) Should I bother to follow-up on this further?  That is, should
> I bother contacting the Public Service commission in Indiana
> about the treatment I received? (I'm currently not sure it is
> worth the effort).
>
> Too bad we don't have a choice of phone companies as well as long
> distance carriers -- I'd keep Southern Bell.
>
> --
> Gene Spafford
> Software Engineering Research Center (SERC), Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
> Internet:    [e-mail]
> uucp:    ...!{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,rutgers,seismo}!gatech!spaf

The State of New Jersey requires SS# for all licences, registrations, etc.
It has been challenged, but the practice was upheld.

Herman Silbiger ...!ihnp4!homxb!hrs


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

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 87 14:30 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: BBS project !!
To: [e-mail]


pP--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        PKpPATTENTION BBS USERS, PROGRAMMERS !!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

          BBS USERS:

                I'm now in  the process of  doing research and  starting to
          develop a  ShareWare BBS  program. The  goal of  my project is to
          build the "Ultimate" BBS! Now  is your chance to give  your input
          into this project! I want to hear your ideas! What complaints  to
          you have about the BBSes you  call? What do you like about  them?
          What don't you like about these systems? You have some ideas  for
          features? Great!  Don't limit  yourself. Please  let me  know (no
          matter how exotic or complex the idea!) Please mail me any ideas,
          questions, or comments at  the address below. Thanks  again. Your
          comments and ideas are sought and greatly appreciated!

                        THANKS!!

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

          PROGRAMMERS:

                I need YOUR HELP NOW! I'm writing a ShareWare BBS  program.
          My goal is  to create the  "Ultimate" BBS: A  BBS with many  fea-
          tures, that is easy  to use, easy to  maintain, and that is  very
          flexible. I am requesting opinions of users of BBSes (as you  can
          see above) and will try to  take them into account. I know  some-
          thing about communications and programming but I can use all  the
          help I can get on  this large undertaking. Any information  about
          modems, communication routines,  questions, or comments  would be
          greatly appreciated. (See below for my Address) I know BASIC  and
          Turbo Pascal. Would C be a  better language to use for this?  (It
          would be nice if I could make this BBS run on as many machines as
          possible) Any comments, questions, suggestions (including  source
          code), or requests to  be involved will be  greatly appreciated!!
          (See below for my Address)

                        THANKS!!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USnail: Jeffrey F. Perry               NOTE: Please send responses directly to
        67 Angelica Drive                    me. (I don't read this list)
        Framingham, Ma 10701

ARPANET: [e-mail]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:34:54 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #27
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:34:54 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 27

Today's Topics:

                             911 Surprises
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                   TV satellite transponder cost???
     re: NYSE stock quotes, etc, SCA data transmission in FM Bands
     re: NYSE stock quotes, etc, SCA data transmission in FM Bands
        SS No., private payphones, Sprint, waiting, sales calls
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 87  14:30:54 CDT
From: Paul Fuqua <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: 911 Surprises


     Tarrant County (Fort Worth) is about to start a 911 emergency telephone
service, the second in the state, prompting quite a few newspaper articles
about aspects of their service and that of Harris County (Houston), which
started in January 1986.
     The details I found most interesting were the problems that had to be
overcome in both systems (quoted without permission from the Dallas Morning
News):

    For instance, Harris County found initially that people dialing a
    seven-digit number with 911 in it would sometimes reach the emergency
    operator by mistake.  Telephone company computers were so quick, they
    would pick up the 911 and transfer the call before waiting for a fourth
    digit.  [There are no other magic three-digit calls in this area:  for
    411, one dials 1411, and all other numbers are seven digits.  - pf]

    ...

    In the beginning, 911 operators were deluged by calls from children
    trying out the system and from people who put the 911 number on the
    speed-dialing function on their telephones and hit the number by mistake.

    Misdirected calls also come in from cordless phones whose batteries are
    low -- a situation that seems to mistakenly trigger calls to 911 ...

    ...

    Another problem Tarrant County is working on is establishing street
    addresses for rural homes.  The [911] district is working with the U.S.
    Postal Service and telephone companies to assign street addresses to more
    than 9,000 locations in Tarrant County so that a recognizable address
    will appear on the screen -- not just a rural route and box number.

    [The director] was surprised when the effort met some resistance. ...
    "Some people have said, `I'm not going to use 911 so I don't need my
    address changed.'"

Tarrant County will start up their system on August 2, despite the failure of
equipment to automatically transfer the address information from the
emergency operator to the appropriate agency.  Dallas County (Dallas) expects
to start their own service next April;  the goal is that the whole state will
have 911 by 1995.

                              pf

Paul Fuqua
Texas Instruments Computer Science Center, Dallas, Texas
CSNet:  pf@ti-csl
UUCP:   {smu, texsun, im4u, rice}!ti-csl!pf
Someday (maybe):  [e-mail]


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

From: humu!uhccux.UUCP![e-mail] (The Perplexed Wiz)
Date: 28 Jul 87 02:19:53 GMT
To: humu!comp-dcom-telecom
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: uhccux!todd
From: [e-mail] (The Perplexed Wiz)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: TV satellite transponder cost???
Keywords: TV satellite transponder cost Hawaii
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 28 Jul 87 02:19:52 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: U. of Hawaii, Manoa (Honolulu)
Lines: 18

A friend is trying to get information on the lowest possible cost of
satellite transponder time for television distribution to, from, and
within Hawaii.  This television station is the local PBS station in
Honolulu, Hawaii.

He is interested in specifics of satellite brokers and classification
of channel allocation (e.g., preemptable, unprotected, protected).

Are long term leases or purchases of transponders possible???

Please send any information to me and I will forward it...
thanks...todd

--
Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii Center for Teaching Excellence
UUCP:        {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!todd
ARPA:        uhccux![e-mail]
INTERNET:    [e-mail]

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

Date: 27 Jul 87   13:54 PST
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: re: NYSE stock quotes, etc, SCA data transmission in FM Bands


Date: 27 July 1987, 13:49:41 PST
From: Kevin J. Burnett          x3330                KJBSF    at SLACVM
To:   TELECOM at BUIT1.BU.EDU
Subject: re: NYSE stock quotes, etc, SCA data transmission in FM Bands

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>    Looking for information on recieving or decoding the data transmissions
>that occur on many Public Service FM radio stations (KQED, KQEC, KMET, etc).
>Any help/information at all would be appreciated.
I believe that the current edition of Radio-Electronics magazine has an
article about decoding the SCA signals on FM stations.  I don't recall what
exactly they said about it, but I think they had a decoder that you could
build yourself. (that's the July issue)
---
Kevin J. Burnett
[e-mail]
Santa Clara University '88

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 87 15:02:34 PDT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: SS No., private payphones, Sprint, waiting, sales calls


 MSG:FROM: SPGDCM  --UCBCMSA  TO: NETWORK --NETWORK           07/28/87 15:02:30
 To: NETWORK --NETWORK  Network Address

 From:    Doug Mosher                 <SPGDCM at UCBCMSA>
 Title:   MVS/Tandem Systems Manager  [phone]
 Office:  Evans 257, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
 Subject: SS No., private payphones, Sprint, waiting, sales calls

 To: [e-mail]

 SS# and government and business

 My understanding is that the fed govt and fed agencies, grant recipients, etc.
 are restrained in their use of the SS#, and also have some policies relating
 to what info they can ask you for, and notifications about how that data will
 be used. They must tell you: what data is required from you, what it will be
 used for, and what are the consequences of your refusal to tell them.

 I get lots of little forms from e.g. the IRS going into these matters; for
 example, briefly, "tell us your SS#, we use it to verify your taxes, we are
 authorized by acts xxx and yyy to require this, consequence for refusal is...
 (something bad, can't remember what)."

 Unfortunately these laws all refer to govt agencies. I do not know of laws
 that permit or prevent any private uses of government-supplied numbers.

 I occasionally try to refuse this and that private use. The reactions vary
 from agency doesn't care (like once I refused to provide a thumbprint and
 found to my surprise that it was optional) to agency insists.

 Credit bureaus and credit granters love to require the SS#.

 In many cases I get the feeling I will lose out on a private service (such as
 a credit card or a loan) if I protest/refuse. This becomes most painful with
 monopoly services such as a local telco. I would imagine the best path of
 resistance for such would be the closest thing you can find to a regulatory
 agency such as local PUC. I would expect them to be completely bureaucratic
 about it: if the written tarriffs require an SS# you'd have no complaint, if
 they don't, you would have a complaint.

 Private Pay phones

 In the SF bay area there are now various private pay phones. I am sorry to see
 that there seems to be no requirement for them to identify a responsible
 person or company. If you lose out there is not a clear path to complain to. I
 suppose some companies may discover that the occasional psychopathic user
 physically destroys offensive devices; though admittedly this may happen even
 if they identified a number to call. I think all public vending devices
 including phones should be required to identify either an owner or a servicing
 agency.

 Many of these phones here cost $.25, though Pac Bell's are $.20. I was very
 surprised when I needed to use a non-bell payphone yesterday and had only 3
 dimes. The bad news: rejected my third dime; the good news, allowed the call
 on .20 though posted price was .25.

 This model also allowed free 611 and 911 calls. I am interested in any info
 readers have about how 911 and 611 calls are routed to the proper general
 service and private companies on these devices . ??Or perhaps Pac Bell can
 supply their own private, separately priced pay phones??

 US Sprint

 I just received my new "FON" credit card from them. They say it replaces the
 previous travelcard service. Umph... I used to pay nothing extra to call while
 travelling, and I called various local 950-0777 numbers to place calls. Now I
 call an 800 number (at least this is uniformly available, while the 950
 service was here and there but not everywhere). But now I pay .55 extra per
 tone call (and, as before, there is a 1.55 extra 800 number for rotary calls).

 Do any readers know of alternate carriers, preferably nationwide, which
 provide cheaper travel calling? I may be stuck with the unilateral raise from
 0 to .55 if all other choices are more expensive.

 Sprint has incidentally gotten at least two months behind in their billing as
 a result of merging with US Telecom. In the worst way: they still bill you but
 don't credit your payments till 3 months later, very unfortunate.

 Waiting Demons

 The increasing use of staging equipment for company service lines, such as
 airlines and US Sprint, is a bore. Takes 10-30 minutes to filter through the
 queue; speaker phone becoming a necessity. Anyone know of devices to assist
 the caller (for example a device to wait for some sort of change in the line,
 and emit a loud tone, or even better, speak into the phone a message such as
 "now that you have answered let me summon the caller"?

 Automated sales calling

 I received my second most-pernicious automated sales call yesterday on my ans.
 machine. The caller's tape gives a long pitch, then asks you for your number
 or address. They avoid identifying themselves in any way so you can't complain
 to them or about them.

 My "cause for action" essentially is that they are tying up my answering
 machine for minutes without my permission, and to no value to them, since even
 if I loved their product when listening to the message, there is no way to
 contact them.

 Does anyone know of regulations affecting this, or to whom I could try to
 complain? If action could really be gotten, I could hope to be present some
 day, and give them my number, then report them once they contact me and give
 some sort of identification (though maybe they stay anonymous even then).

 There's an underlying issue of public responsibility here, in both vending
 machines and anonymous telephone business. Where are the regulators when we
 really need them?

 Thanks, Doug
     >SS No., private payphones, Sprint, waiting, sales calls

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:41:09 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #28
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:41:09 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 28

Today's Topics:

                      State Line, Pa. (2 of them)
  Bell of PA as default carrier / Sprint FONcard and Schlage key card
                            Modem problems
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
          Recognizing answering machines (and other messages)
                              Re: (none)
           Has India X.25 network to the rest of the world?
                   Universal Custom Calling proposal
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:     Wed, 29 Jul 87 1:30:14 EDT
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject:  State Line, Pa. (2 of them)


There is a State Line, Pa. (Bedford County) with phone prefix 814-767 (don't
know what mailing address is used), NOT to be confused with State Line, Pa.
17263 (Franklin County) for which I don't know the phone prefix (area 717).

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

Date: 29-Jul-1987 2252
From: [e-mail]  (John R. Covert)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Bell of PA as default carrier / Sprint FONcard and Schlage key card



From:MONTI, National Public Radio        29-JUL-1987 16:46
Subj: Bell of Pa as a default carrier

In case nobody else responds to the guy who wondered how Bell of Pennsylvania
could be anybody's default long distance company, here's the obvious answer:

If a Pennsylvania customer selects BPA to be his default long distance carrier,
he may direct dial using 1 + area code (if necessary) calls only withing his
own home LATA.  If he's in the Philadelphia LATA, he may also call the limited
number of New Jersey counties to which BPA is allowed to carry toll traffic.

If he tries to dial, using 1 + AC, to a phone outside those two limited areas,
he will probably get a recording saying he can't use BPA for this call.  He'll
then have to know somehow about the existence of 10XXX or have a travel card
for a non-AT&T long distance carrier.  He'll have to use one of those two
methods to make that call.  For some weird Philadelphian who rarely or never
makes toll calls outside his LATA and the New Jersey special privilege
corridor, this might actually be a viable level of service to have.  I
wouldn't have it.

The reason an AT&T card wouldn't work here is because if the subsciber dials,
say, 0-312-NXX-XXXX, the call would be routed to the "operator assisted or
credit card" level of the DEFAULT long distance carrier for that phone, which
would be BPA, which would get him an intercept recording just as if he had
dialed 1-312-NXX-XXXX.

Greg Monti, National Public Radio, 2025 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20026
202-822-2459

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

From:MONTI, National Public Radio       29-JUL-1987 16:52
Subj: Sprint FONcard and Schlage key card


Just found a good reason not to carry around the fancy new US Sprint FONCard.
Its metal foil inlay which makes it shiny silver in color messes up the
ability of the Schlage card-entry system to read my security card.  I
remember being told when the Schlage system was first installed that any
substantial metal object in the same pocket or wallet would invalidate the
reading of your card.  To enter the office I either need to remove the
Schlage card and present it to the detector by itself or remove the US
Sprint FONCard and present the whole wallet to the detector.

If Sprint never implements the magnetic stripe feature on the back of the
FONCard, I might as well just write the card number on a piece of paper and
carry that in my wallet.  The new number is 14 digits and bears no relation
to the old Sprint travel service number I have nor to my home phone number.
Oh well, guess this is progress.

Greg Monti, National Public Radio, 2025 M Street NW< Washington, DC 20036
202-822-2459   via VAX1::

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

Date: Thu, 30 Jul 87 06:45:25 edt
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Modem problems
Cc: thinder



              We have recently installed a group of Racal Vadic 4224E
         modems to serve as dial in access to our local area network and to
         selected host machines. Prior to this installation these
         connections were handled by Ven Tel MD212 modems with no problems.
              Soon after cut over we received complaints from a few users
         that they could no connect to the LAN using a variety of PC's/
         terminals and modem combinations. After investigation it "seems"
         that the problem is related to our modem/phone line and "ring".
         If a user dials into the rotary and the modem answers without any
         ring, the users modem may not "see" the connection. It is not
         consistent, sometimes a line will answer with a ring then a tone
         nine times in a row, then on the 10th time fail, the reverse  also
         occurs.
              To further compound the problem, one line that is connected
         to a VAX and Racal Vadic modem ALWAYS provides one ring and then
         the modem tone.
              I have more information about the connection, including the
         cabling and specifications of the network devices. Rather than
         list all this information I will respond to any questions
         concerning the problem directly.
              Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


                        Thomas K. Hinders
                        Naval Surface Weapons Center
                        Silver Spring MD
                        [phone]/1802
                        [e-mail]
                               or
                        [e-mail]


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

From: mnetor!spectrix![e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Date: Thu Jul 30 10:46:21 1987


Date: 30 Jul 87 14:46:18 GMT
To: mnetor!uunet!comp-dcom-telecom
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
Responding-System: spectrix.UUCP

Path: spectrix!rmc
From: [e-mail] (Russell Crook)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Recognizing answering machines (and other messages)
Keywords: answering machines recognition autodialers
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 30 Jul 87 14:46:16 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Spectrix Microsystems Inc., Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 24

Dumb question time:
Given that you have a computer-driven system to do call-ahead (i.e., have
a system that will call ahead to a number with a prerecorded message, and
then listens to the line for some sort of response):
is it (realistically) possible for this system to recognize if it has
encountered:
1) an out of service number (by recognizing certain aspects of the recording?)
2) an answering machine (i.e., is the "beep" standardized)
3) pulse (versus touchtone) signals
4) anything else (busy, blocked call, etc.)

The intent is confirmation of time and place with a customer.

Some of these I know are easily done, and readily available in existing
stuff. However, 1) and 2) are (I believe) much tougher to handle.
Does anyone know of something that handles most of these cases? (If so,
I would like the approximate cost, even if it is only a guess).

Please reply by mail (if there is sufficient response, I will post).

Thanks in advance

Russell Crook (...!seismo!{mnetor,utzoo}!spectrix!rmc)


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

To: sdsu!comp-dcom-telecom
From: pnet01.CTS.COM![e-mail] (Adams Douglas)
Subject: Re: (none)
Date: 31 Jul 87 16:36:22 GMT



Regarding using Sun workstations with voice mail equipment. Try contacting the
following company:
                Linker Systems
                13612 Onkayha Circle
                Irvine, CA (zip?)
                714-552-1904

It was my impression at SigGraph that this company is working on similar
interfacing.

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

To: [e-mail]
From: enea!sal.UUCP![e-mail] (Danny Kohn)
Subject: Has India X.25 network to the rest of the world?
Date: 9 Aug 87 03:59:26 GMT



I am working with a NGO with one of it's offices in Bombay-India.

We have some difficulty finding out if there is some Data Network
available (we need X.28 connection).

Is there someone out there who would know the current status
of X.25/X.28 in India?

Danny Kohn

UUCP: dk![e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 3 Aug 87 00:47:49 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Gottlieb)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Universal Custom Calling proposal
Cc:


It has been reported that Southwestern Bell plans to introduce  a
new calling card that, come Signalling System #7, will allow peo-
ple to program  pay  telephones  with  the  same  custom  calling
features that they use at the home or office.

What I've been wondering for a long time is why telcos don't just
give  many of these features away in order to stimulate more cal-
ling.  Why not give all payphones 3-Way?   This  would  encourage
more  calls  to  be made.  Why not give all cellular phones 3-Way
and Call Waiting.  Since you pay airtime  for  both  calls,  they
would  rake  in  the  bucks.   3-Way (and 4-way and 5-way and...)
calls seem to be the ones that last the longest.   I  think  some
telco  should be brave and try giving 3-way (and maybe Call Wait-
ing and Call Forwarding) to all customers. With the right  publi-
city,  they  would  more  than make in additional calls/length of
calls the money they would lose from not charging for  such  ser-
vices, and make up the costs of installing more 3-port conference
circuits.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Gottlieb     "It's easier to apologize than to ask permission.  When in
                  doubt, do it." -- Grace Hopper, U.S. Navy, Retired

Internet:   [e-mail]
UUCP:       sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!ucla-cs!pic.ucla.edu!jimmy

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:51:18 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #29
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:51:18 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 29

Today's Topics:

                    Re: SS# & Utilities -- a story
                          Int'l Collect Calls
                    Re: SS# & Utilities -- a story
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
             Need recommendation for 3-4 line phone system
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                     X.PC and MNP protocol drivers
                      Telephone Interface Modules
                    In-use indicator for phone line
                 Awful tones when hitting wrong number
                          FCC access charges
                        New articles in archive
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 4 Aug 87 12:48:50 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jeffrey J Wieland)
Subject: Re: SS# & Utilities -- a story


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gene Spafford) writes:
>[This is the last message to be published this weekend. A total of 4
...
>As a matter of principle, I'm one of those people who won't give out
>my social security number when applying for utilities or credit cards.
>The reasons why have been discussed numerous times in various
>security-related groups.  It is my understanding that it is against
...
>Questions
>---------
>
>1) Do many of you (net-readers) withhold your SS# in similar circumstances?
>Do you have these kinds of confrontations too?

My wife, who also has had some minor problems, but nothing like this.

>2) Anyone know if other people at GTE Indiana are such jerks, or is
>this an isolated instance?

When my mother went to have her telephone line and billing changed to her
own name, she was also informed that she would have to pay a "deposit".
She was able to persuade them otherwise (20 years as a high school teacher
pays off sometimes).

GTE in West Lafayette can be pretty nasty (and slow), probably due to
the large number of students here at Purdue.

>3) Anyone know if Indiana does, in fact, *require* that the SS# be
>on the driver's license?

Indiana does NOT require the SS# to be on your driver's license.  You
can be issued a number with a "Z" prefix instead.  My wife has one of
these.

>4) Should I bother to follow-up on this further?  That is, should
>I bother contacting the Public Service commission in Indiana
>about the treatment I received? (I'm currently not sure it is
>worth the effort).

Couldn't hurt.

>Too bad we don't have a choice of phone companies as well as long
>distance carriers -- I'd keep Southern Bell.
>
>--
>Gene Spafford
>Software Engineering Research Center (SERC), Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
>Internet:    [e-mail]
>uucp:    ...!{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,rutgers,seismo}!gatech!spaf

            Jeff Wieland
            [e-mail]

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

Date: Fri, 7 Aug 87 15:55:24 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Ben Broder)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Int'l Collect Calls



I have a friend who has received a phone bill containing
several somewhat confusing items.  They appear to be collect
calls from El Salvador.  However, none of the calls have a time
of day and some do not even have an originating phone number.

Although she does have friends in El Salvador, she insists that
no one accepted collect calls on those days.  Is it possible
that these calls were really calls billed to a third number
(my friend's) that for some technical reason appear as collect
calls?

    Thanks for any help,

    Ben Broder ([e-mail])

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

From: sundc!hemaneh![e-mail] (Central Area MTS)
Subject: Re: SS# & Utilities -- a story
Date: 6 Aug 87 03:01:12 GMT
To: <[e-mail]>



In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Gene Spafford) writes:
> Questions
> 1) Do many of you (net-readers) withhold your SS# in similar circumstances?
> Do you have these kinds of confrontations too?

I too withhold my SS# as a general principle. There are a lot of places
here in Dallas that misuse it from 7/11 to the local cable tv company. For
the most part, I've been able to refuse all of them. I did give in on
the cable tv people once and used my roommate's SS# instead.

> 2) Anyone know if other people at GTE Indiana are such jerks, or is
> this an isolated instance?

It seems that many public utlities have this attitude, though not all.

> 4) Should I bother to follow-up on this further?  That is, should
> I bother contacting the Public Service commission in Indiana
> about the treatment I received? (I'm currently not sure it is
> worth the effort).

I don't see why not. It seems that it has only taken a few of us refusing
to make a general policy change in the phone company. When i first moved to
Dallas 4 years ago, Southwestern Bell was quite insistant about it. When I
recently moved and changed service, they did not even try to press the issue
when I said no. The depressing thing is that people like 7/11 ask for it
on their movie club applications. Perhaps a letter the the Southland Corp?...

As someone who has worked on accounting sw, I can understand the convenience
of using the SS# as an index for customers, However, it makes things much
too easy to get to information about a person. Although, did you know that
it is perfectly legal to posses more than one SS#? So long as you are not
trying to defraud anyone, only confuse, it's ok.

            Cal Thixton    /* these are my opinions */
            Sun Microsystems  Dallas
        {ucbvax,decvax,decwrl,ihnp4}!sun!{,texsun!}tj
        {ut-sally,convex,smu}!texsun!tj [e-mail]
--
            Cal Thixton
            Sun Microsystems  Dallas
        {ucbvax,decvax,decwrl,ihnp4}!sun!{,texsun!}tj
        {ut-sally,convex,smu}!texsun!tj [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (UUCP)
Date: 6 Aug 87 15:54:56 GMT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: cbosgd!osu-eddie!mdf
From: [e-mail] (Mark D. Freeman)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Need recommendation for 3-4 line phone system
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 6 Aug 87 02:28:13 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: StrongPoint Systems, Inc.; Columbus, OH. (guest of Ohio State U.)
Lines: 25

I hope this is the right group for this...

We are moving into new office space next month, and will need a phone
system.  We will have three lines, which should alternate-answer.
Additionally, we will have one data-only line which should not be on
the main system at all.

We need 5 phones, and redial an intercom features.  Speed dialing and
music on hold would be nice.  Of course, cheap is a major requirement.

One minor point: I hate phones on which the * and # keys are used by
the phone for special features.  Makes using voice mail systems a real
pain in the ass.

Any recommendations?


--
< < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < <> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
Mark D. Freeman                            [e-mail]
StrongPoint Systems, Inc.                   [e-mail]
2440 Medary Avenue                      ...!cbosgd!osu-eddie!mdf
Columbus, OH  43202            Guest account at The Ohio State University
[phone]
< < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < <> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

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

From: ndmath![e-mail] (Greg Corson)
Date: 7 Aug 87 20:17:16 GMT
To: comp-dcom-telecom%seismo.css.gov@iuvax
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: ndmath!milo
From: [e-mail] (Greg Corson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.dcom.modems,comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: X.PC and MNP protocol drivers
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 7 Aug 87 20:17:15 GMT
Organization: Math. Dept., Univ. of Notre Dame
Lines: 14

Does anyone know of a place where I can get Apple Macintosh compatable drivers
(or source code) for either the X.PC or MNP communications protocols?

I am looking for the drivers to incorporate in a terminal program I am writing.

I don't mind it if I have to pay some kind of licensing fee to get the drivers
but if somebody is willing to give them away it would be great.

Greg Corson
19141 Summers Drive
South Bend, IN 46637
[phone] (weekdays till 6 central)
...seismo!iuvax!ndmath!milo


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

To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail] (Malcolm Slaney)
Subject: Telephone Interface Modules
Date: 8 Aug 87 00:11:31 GMT



Can anybody recommend a good source of telephone line interface modules?
I have audio output now on my Sun and I would like to hook it to a phone
line so I can really have some fun.

It would be nicest if I could get ringing indications and have some
way to take the phone off hook.

Thanks.

                        Malcolm Slaney
                        Schlumberger Palo Alto Research
                        [e-mail]

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

Date: Sat 8 Aug 87 20:55:57-EDT
From: "Adam Peller" <[e-mail]>
Subject: In-use indicator for phone line
To: [e-mail]


Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Does anyone know how to build a circuit that will light up a LED if
the phone line is being used (checks to see if the voltage is low)?

thanks

Adam Peller -- [e-mail] (Arpa)

-- please send replies directly to me, I'm not on the mailing list
-------

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

To: tektronix![e-mail]
From: James Deibele <[e-mail]>
Subject: Awful tones when hitting wrong number
Date: 10 Aug 87 08:04:03 GMT



Every once in a while, I'll dial a wrong number and get an incredibly horrible
recording in my ear.  The recording always starts off with three LOUD tones,
which has caused me to wonder if the tones weren't to warn off TTY's for the
deaf or something similar.  Every time I hear once, I'm seriously tempted to
throw the phone against the wall (and I would if we lived back in the days of
the one BIG phone company, with leased phones, etc.).  It doesn't seem to
matter whether the local company is a GTE or Baby Bell, they still use the
tones.  Whazz going on?  Thanks.

--
A hunting we will go,                    |  James S. Deibele (jamesd@percival)
A hunting we will go,                    |  TECHBooks (TM)
We'll steal someone else's signature --- |  FidoNet #105/3 or #105/4
And we'll never let it go.               |  [phone]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: FCC access charges
Date: 14 Aug 87 21:33:11 GMT



+++ If you want to respond by mail, do not hit "r";  +++
+++ please note address correction in my .signature. +++

   In the September issue of "Micro Times" (a free magazine circulating
in So. Cal. & maybe elsewhere) there is a rather informative article on
the FCC access surcharges for Enchanced Service Providers ("And Then There
Were None", by Brock N. Meeks.) As expected, the author's conclusion
is roughly that the local Bells are going to make a bundle at our (modem
users') expense, and that "fairness" of the proposal is very questionable.
The article also includes all the info about the preferred format of
letters that you may want to send in response. I know that such package
was posted here a while ago, but some of you may have missed it and the
"Micro Times" version may be more up-to-date. The magazine is available
in electronic form (I just tried it, it's there) on "Tele-Web"
BB at [phone] [300/1200, 7 bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, 24 hrs,
multi-user] where you should type "GO MICRO" at a prompt.
   Also, on Compuserve there appeared a statement of CS's position regar-
ding the matter, along with an example of a letter & addresses of all
FCC Commisioners. I like to think that they responded to my repeated
suggestions sent via "User Feedback" urging them to do just that. I have
the CS package on disk & can post it here or email to those interested
persons (if any) who don't have access to CS.
                          Sincerely - Eric Behr
-----------------------------------------------------------
I'm sick & tired of editing my incorrect address in the header.
The *correct* one is [e-mail]; I have no connection
with the CS Department, except that we breathe the same smog.

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

Date: Tue, 18 Aug 87 18:12:10 EDT
From: jsol (Jon Solomon)
To: telecom
Subject: New articles in archive


Many articles around the FCC's new incentive to charge "enhanced services"
for access to the local network are now available for anonymous FTP
on host XX.LCS.MIT.EDU in directory <TELECOM>. The files were too large
to include in a digest, and are being made available to you in this
method. Note that USENET users will as usual continue to get copies of
these files mailed after this digest.

The files are:

    pc.pursuit -- a look at the impending charges and their impact
        on pc pursuit users.

    docket.87-215 - the docket itself.

    fcc.policy - some more notes on the subject.

There are some conversations in today's digests which may require that
you read these documents. This is unavoiadable.

--jsol

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 87 21:41:12 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #30
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Sat, 22 Aug 87 21:41:12 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 30

Today's Topics:

                          Periodic Line Noise
                    Choice of long distance carrier
               Re: Why can't the world call 800 numbers?
               Re: Why can't the world call 800 numbers?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 7 August 1987, 10:44:11 EDT
From: Nicholas Simicich <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Periodic Line Noise


Someone who lives in or near Endicott, New York, is having the
following trouble with their home dial in terminal.  The terminal is a
PC on a call back system--thus, the terminal is not always the
originator of the noisy call, but may be, instead, in answer mode.  The
noise seems to occur no matter who is the originator.  I believe that
they are using 212A type modems.

I'd appreciate a direct response as well as a copy to the net if your
response is interesting (which it is, of course) as I'm a couple of
months behind in my digest reading :-).

-=-=-=-
I get a consistent, periodic (once every 2.1 seconds, I timed it) one
byte (X'7B' or X'FB'--not sure exactly which) inbound-only noise when
talking to PCTERM (an internal call back system), a local BBS, and a
university using either an internal package, PROCOMM 2.4.2, and
MS-Kermit and anything else I could test on.  Some connections are
clear and remain clear (the one session which started clean and became
dirty was explained by the Deposit Telephone Co. as a NY Telephone
line-configuration exercise one weekend).  The dirty ones stay dirty
and it's impossible to do any work. I tried another modem--no luck. The
Telephone Co. is stymied. Ideas?  I've also been assured that there are
no powerful radars nearby, etc.  I've used a pure vanilla PC DOS system
with the same results.  The Deposit phone company claims that my exchange,
693, is fairly modern, and that the microwave circuit is not the problem.

-=-=-=-
Nick Simicich, [e-mail], or, for bitnet,
NJS at YKTVMX
Collect:(all I know about the problem is above) [phone]
Contents: 100% personal opinion, sugar, salt, High fructose
corn syrup...

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

Date: 19 Aug 87 16:55:00 EDT
From: "KEPLER::HUI" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Choice of long distance carrier
To: "telecom" <[e-mail]>




I would appreciate advice/recommendations on my upcoming choice
of long distance carrier.  I would also appreciate a copy
(or pointer) to the last survey of long distance carrier
rates in telecom-digest.  (I've been offnet for several
months.)  My calling pattern is mostly from home (area code 301)
to California (area codes 805, 707) and to West Germany.
Calling is almost entirely during non-peak rate periods.

Oh yes, home is Baltimore, MD.  With respect to Germany, I
would appreciate information on who supplies service
(anyone other than AT&T yet?) and differencies in hours
for minimum rate.

Also the local phone company (C&P) charges extra (of course)
for tone service.  Does anyone know if they're actually
equipped to NOT provide it if you don't order it?

Many thanks for all responses.  Please reply to me directly
as
    [e-mail]
I'm not on the telecom mailing list yet.

            - A. Minick Rushton
              Space Telescope Science Institute
------
------

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

Subject: Re: Why can't the world call 800 numbers?
Date: 21 Aug 87 19:02:53 EDT (Fri)
From: [e-mail] (Jonathan Clark)
To: [e-mail]


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Gilmore) writes:
>[Since the Arpanet side seems to be losing, let's do it ourselves over
>here on the Usenet.  Be sure to include an Approved: header or your message
>will get emailed to the dead moderator. -- John]
>
>From outside the US/Canada, the number is 201-592-2000.  It drives me up the
>wall that from my phone I can call every telephone in the world directly except
>800 numbers in the U.S.  Since many companies publish only their 800 numbers,
>it means I can't call them at all.  Was it really beyond AT'Ts capability to
>arrange for 800 numbers to be free in the US/Canada, but billed at normal
>rates when called from abroad, but at least make them work?

Well, I'm not in the POTS bit of AT&T, but large pieces of the world can
call 800 numbers. AT&T periodically puts out bulletins about 'International
800 service is now available to...'. The trouble is that having an
internationally-diallable 800 number costs the person paying for the number
more money upfront plus more money per call (I think), and typically they
decide that this isn't worth it. It's the same deal (fundamentally) as
having in-state only 800 numbers.

I believe that it also costs less to have an *out-of-state* only 800 number,
(which is why you see 'call 800-123 4567, in Nebraska call 987 6543')
but don't quote me on that. I have no idea of the exact tariffs involved.
--
Jonathan Clark
[NAC,attmail]!mtune!jhc

An Englishman never enjoys himself except for some noble purpose.

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

To: uunet![e-mail]
From: van-bc![e-mail] (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Why can't the world call 800 numbers?
Date: 21 Aug 87 18:22:37 GMT



In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Gilmore) writes:

>From outside the US/Canada, the number is 201-592-2000.  It drives me up the
>wall that from my phone I can call every telephone in the world directly except
>800 numbers in the U.S.  Since many companies publish only their 800 numbers,
>it means I can't call them at all.  Was it really beyond AT'Ts capability to
>arrange for 800 numbers to be free in the US/Canada, but billed at normal
>rates when called from abroad, but at least make them work?

Actually AT&T at least does have 800 numbers in Canada, that usually connect
to the same place. Unfortunately there are two problems:

    1. They are different
    2. They don't advertise them as effectively as the US ones

For example to order my copies of the SYSVID all I had was the 800 number in
the US. Through a bit of phone tag with various 555-1212 directory services
in that part of the US I came up with a generic number for AT&T. They were
able to give me the phone number to call to order. When I called them they
said "oh, you don't have our 800 number in Canda?". They gave it to me, I
called back on that.

Interesting note, newer versions of the SYSVID now include the Canadian 800
number as well.


--
{ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!Stuart.Lynne Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 87 21:42:22 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #31
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Sat, 22 Aug 87 21:42:22 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 31

Today's Topics:

            GEnie's action alert on FCC modem fees proposal
   GEnie's how to communicate opposition to FCC modem fees proposal
 GEnie's letter format for filing comments on FCC modem fees proposal
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1987  02:31 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: GEnie's action alert on FCC modem fees proposal


ACTION ALERT
============


THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
IS CONSIDERING THE IMPOSITION OF
COSTLY NEW "ACCESS CHARGES"
ON YOUR USE OF GENIE SERVICES
=====================================


    For 2 years, you and other GEnie subscribers have used your telephone to
reach our service.  Until now, your calls to us have been treated just like
any other residential or business calls. Now, however, the Federal
Communications Commission in Washington, D.C. is proposing to change all this.
 The FCC is considering a plan to make extremely expensive new "access
charges" applicable to GEnie services provided to you over local telephone
lines.

    The FCC's "access charge" scheme would drastically increase telephone
company charges which we pay.  In fact, our initial estimates suggest that
GEnie Service costs would jump up by as much as $4.50 per hour of use for
every one of our customers.  Although
                 =====
we have not yet considered the extent to which these cost increases would
necessitate a price increase for GEnie Service, a cost increase of this
enormous magnitude could require up to a doubling of our GEnie Service prices.


THE "ACCESS CHARGE" PROPOSAL
CAN BE PRVENTED IF WE ALL ACT
TOGETHER TO COMMUNICATE OUR
CONCERNS TO FEDERAL AUTHORITIES
===============================

    Right now the FCC plan is simply a proposal.  It is not too late to
prevent this mistake from occurring.  Nonetheless, we all need to work
together to head off this disastrous possibility.  The FCC commissioners and
their staff responsible for making the final decision seem convinced that such
access charges are necessary and proper.  We need your help in explaining why
such increased charges would severely disserve the public interest.

    In evaluating its "access charge" proposal, the FCC will have to listen to
your concerns if they are explained in terms of the proposal's practical
effects on you or your business.  Your views count.  In addition, your elected
congressmen will want to hear your concerns.  Legislative representatives play
a very helpful role in highlighting your interests for the FCC to consider.


YOU NEED TO ACT NOW AND TO STAY
INVOLVED UNTIL THE "ACCESS
CHARGE" PROPOSAL IS REJECTED
BY THE FCC
===============================

    The FCC requires that comments on its proposal be filed by September 24,
1987.  Responses to these comments may be filed through October 26, 1987.  The
FCC may act on the matter as early as sometime in December.

    It is important for you to get busy now preparing your comments for
submission to the FCC not later than September 24, 1987 -- whether in the form
of a letter or a more formalized "pleading." Several significant facts ought
to be included in expressing your views.  Actually, they are pretty basic and
easy to understand and communicate:  (1) who you are;  (2) how you use GEnie
Service; and (3) how you or your business would be hurt if GEnie Service
prices doubled due to access charges.  These comments should be addressed to
the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.    The address of the FCC
is 1919 M Street, N.W.; Washington, D.C.  20554. Similar letters or comments
should be sent to your state's U.S. Senators and the U.S. House of
Representatives' members from your district.

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

Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1987  02:35 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: GEnie's how to communicate opposition to FCC modem fees proposal


HOW TO COMMUNICATE YOUR
OPPOSITION TO ACCESS CHARGES
============================


WHAT THE FCC PROPOSES AND HOW IT WILL AFFECT YOU:
=================================================

    On July 17, 1987, the Federal Communications Commission announced its
intent to apply its carrier access charges to all enhanced service providers
-- the FCC's technical name for services like GEnie.  What this means is that
all providers of such services, including GEnie, which use local telephone
lines to reach services provided by means of interstate telecommunications
facilities will be subject to significantly increased telecommunications
costs. Currently, long-distance common carriers, such as AT&T and MCI, pay
interstate access charges.  No decision has been made yet to raise our prices
if the FCC were to impose access charges on enhanced service providers.
However, if this proposal is adopted, the prices of GEnie Service might have
to be raised as much as 100%.

    GE, other enhanced service providers, their customers, and some of their
respective trade associations will be opposing the FCC's proposal by lobbying
and filing comments with the Commission.  The Commission has asked for
comments from the public on its proposal which are due on or before September
24, 1987.  Responses to these comments are due by October 26, 1987.  If both
users and providers of services make clear to the FCC the adverse consequences
that will follow if its proposal is implemented, there is a good chance that
the proposal will be rejected.


HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN DO:
========================

    The Commission will be interested in knowing how its proposal will affect
you, the user of GEnie services, whether you are a residential user or whether
information services are an essential aid to carrying out your business.
Generally, the Commission's stated policy is to make information, services
like GEnie, available to all users, both large and small.  The Commission
apparently does not appreciate that these enormous cost increases would
seriously hurt you -- the very persons the FCC wants to help.

    The best way to communicate your concerns to the FCC is to explain what
implementation of its proposal would mean to you or your business.  You can do
this by writing a letter to the FCC Commissioners and important staff members.
 The discussion in item #4, "Writing Your Letters and Comments " explains a
very effective technique for writing this  type of letter to the Commission.

    You may also wish to file formal comments with the Commission for
consideration by the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau Staff when considering this
matter.  This may sound like more work, but it is really just a more formal
way to say exactly what you would say in your letter.  The discussion in item
#4 tells you how to do this.

    Additionally, Congress would be anxious to learn that the proposed FCC
action might have such adverse effects on its constituents.  Because the FCC
is attuned to Congress' viewpoints, letters to your Senators and
Representatives would also be effective in preventing the FCC proposal from
taking effect.

    Finally, we ask that you send GE Information Services a copy of any
letters or comments that you write in connection with this matter.

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

Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1987  02:39 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: GEnie's letter format for filing comments on FCC modem fees proposal


WRITING YOUR LETTERS AND COMMENTS:
==================================

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR FILING WITH THE
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
======================================

    The FCC will read and consider your views in reaching a decision whether
and how to impose access charges on enhanced service providers if you follow
the following guidelines:
1.   Letters:  Type your letter on 8 1/2" x 11" paper and use the  following
format:

*    *      *    *    *

(YOUR LETTERHEAD OR NAME AND ADDRESS)


(DATE)



The Honorable Dennis R. Patrick, Chairman
Federal Communications Commission
1919 M Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.  20554

    Re:  CC Docket 87-215
     Amendments of Part 69 of the
     Commission's Rules Relating to
     Enhanced Services Providers
     ==============================


Dear Chairman Patrick:


          [TEXT:

   Begin by describing who you are.  Include any specific titles, duties, or
responsibilities that would qualify you as someone who stands to be affected
by the FCC's proposal.    Of course, if you only use the GEnie service in a
residential setting, explain that. The FCC will be interested.    Explain why
the use of the information services offering is important to you or to your
business and what it allows you to do that you could not otherwise do.

   Secondly, explain that you are aware that the Commission has proposed to
impose access charges on enhanced service providers.  Explain that you fear
that this regulatory action would adversely affect you or your business.
Describe with as much detail as Possible what this would mean for you or your
business.

  Close by urging the FCC not to adopt its proposal to     apply access charges
to enhanced service providers]


         Sincerely,
          [NAME]


cc:  The Honorable James H. Quello
     The Honorable Mimi Weyforth Dawson
     The Honorable Patricia Diaz Dennis
     Gerald Brock, Chief, Common Carrier Bureau
     Thomas Sugrue, Chief, Policy Division,
      Common Carrier Bureau
     William H. Tricarico, Secretary
      Federal Communications Commission

    *    *      *    *    *


2.   If writing formal comments, use the following format and double space the
text of your comments on 8 1/2" x 11" paper:


    *    *      *    *    *

       Before the
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
    Washington, D.C.  20554


In the Matter of          )
                  )
Amendments to Part 69          )
of the Commission's Rules     )      CC Docket No. 87-215
Relating to Enhanced Service  )
Providers              )
                  )
To: The Common Carrier Bureau )


COMMENTS OF [YOUR NAME]
=======================



[TEXT:    Follow the same guidelines for
your text as in the formatted letter in
paragraph 1 above.]


Respectfully submitted,

[If writing for a company, the
name of the company in CAPITAL
letters]




[NAME, TITLE (if applicable),
and address)

[DATE]

*    *      *    *    *


    If your comments are ten or more pages long, there are three additional
things you must do.  (A word of caution: Your comments will be most effective
if they are short and concise).

    First, attach a cover page with the heading used above at the top.    In the
center of your cover page type COMMENTS OF [YOUR NAME]."  In the bottom left
hand corner, put the date.  In the bottom right hand corner type:  (1) your
name or your company's name if you are filing on their behalf; (2) your title,
if applicable; and (3) your or your company's address, whichever is
applicable.

    Second, behind the cover page, include a two- or three-paragraph summary
of your comments, numbering the pages using small roman numerals.

    Three, behind the summary and continuing the small roman numeral page
numbering, place a table of contents which includes the summary, table of
contents, and any headings within the text of your comments.

    3.    Mail your letters and comments as soon as possible but please make
sure they are post marked early enough to arrive at the FCC offices no later
than September 24, 1987.  This is the day that comments are due on the
proposal.

    4.    Send two (2) copies of your letters to Chairman Patrick and to each of
the other Commissioners and Staff members listed at the bottom of the
formatted letter to:

[NAME]
Federal Communications Commission
1919 M Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.  20554

    If you are writing comments, send the original and five (5) copies to:

William H. Tricarico
Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
1919 M Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.  20554

    5.    If you are part of an organization or association that relies on
information services for your activities, encourage other members to write,
but do not use a form letter or comments if a number of you plan to write.
The Commission frowns on these.



LETTERS TO YOUR SENATORS AND HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE
=================================================

1.  Type your letter and use the following format:

  *    *    *     *    *

[YOUR LETTERHEAD OR NAME AND ADDRESS]


[DATE]


[NOTE:    USE THE APPROPRIATE
ADDRESS AS FOLLOWS]

The Honorable
United States Senate
Washington, D.C.  20515

    - OR -

The Honorable
United States House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.  20510

Dear Senator              (or Congressman             )


     [TEXT:

Follow essentially the same format as that for your letter to the Federal
Communications Commission:

o   Explain who you are and how you use information
    services.
o   Note your concern with the FCC's proposal to impose
    access charges on enhanced services providers.
o   Describe what effect this probably will have on your
    use of information services and, in turn, on your
    business or other activities.
o   If you have sent a letter or letters to the FCC,
    explain that you have done so and attach a copy of your
    FCC letter to the letter to the Congressman.
o   Close by urging the member of Congress to express his
    concern to the Federal Communications Commission.]



     Sincerely,


     [NAME]

      *    *    *    *      *

    2.    The sooner you send your letters to Congress, the more effect your
opinions will have because your representatives will be able to exert pressure
on the FCC before the agency begins considering its proposal in earnest.

    3.    Again, do not use form letters.  Let your representatives know that
you put some time and thought into this matter and that it will affect you
personally.

    4.    You may also wish to send letters to the following chairmen of the
subcommittees which will be most interested in the FCC's proposal:
   The Honorable Daniel K. Inouye
   Chairman
   Subcommittee of Communications
   Committee of Commerce, Science and
      Transportation
   United States Senate
   Washington, D.C.  20510

  The Honorable Edward J. Markey
  Chairman
  Subcommittee on Telecommunications &
  Finance
  Committee on Energy & Commerce
  United States House of Representatives
  Washington, D.C.  20515

    5.    For your convenience, we have included a list of United States
Senators

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 87 18:46:05 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #32
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Sun, 13 Sep 87 18:46:05 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 32

Today's Topics:

                           Phone Interfaces
                     Comp.dcom.telecom submission
                  Re: Choice of long distance carrier
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                              DSZ Rip-Off
                     new Md. pay-phone instructions
                        Graphics Package Wanted
                         missing issues 26-29
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: spar![e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Phone Interfaces
Date: 03 Sep 87 17:46:36 PDT (Thu)


Can any body recommend an easy way to get a phone interface.  I have an
A/D and D/A box connected to my Sun and I would like to hook it to the
phones.  This is a company project (for a change) so I can easily justify
up to a hundred dollars or so to guarantee that we don't burn out a phone
line.

At the very least I would like analog input/output, a ringing indication
and maybe touch tone recognition.

Does anybody have any recomendations?

Thanks.

                                Malcolm

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

Date: Tue, 8 Sep 87 16:57:26 PDT
From: sdcsvax!ames!fai![e-mail]
To: amdahl!buit1.bu.EDU!jsol
Subject: Comp.dcom.telecom submission



I tried to send the following to the originator of the request by mail,
but it bounced back to me:

Subject: Re: Choice of long distance carrier

In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>
>I would appreciate advice/recommendations on my upcoming choice
>of long distance carrier.  I would also appreciate a copy
>(or pointer) to the last survey of long distance carrier
>rates in telecom-digest.  (I've been offnet for several
>months.)  My calling pattern is mostly from home (area code 301)
>to California (area codes 805, 707) and to West Germany.
>Calling is almost entirely during non-peak rate periods.
>
>Oh yes, home is Baltimore, MD.  With respect to Germany, I
>would appreciate information on who supplies service
>(anyone other than AT&T yet?) and differencies in hours
>for minimum rate.
>
>Also the local phone company (C&P) charges extra (of course)
>for tone service.  Does anyone know if they're actually
>equipped to NOT provide it if you don't order it?
>

I tried Sprint first (about 4 years ago) at home.  I constantly ran into
recordings asking me to call back later since all circuits were busy (or even
worse just a network busy signal).  After that, I decided to try MCI.  I found
that most of the time my connections were very poor quality (either I couldn't
hear the other party or vice versa).  I then gave up on the CHEAP carriers and
went back to AT&T because I want to be able to place a call and to be able to
hear the other party.

Just recently, I started having problems completing calls at work -- Lo and
behold, I found out that the company had just switched to Sprint for long
distance service.  When I complained to our telecom department, they told me
to dial 10288 and the number I was calling (this places the call over AT&T).

My suggestion would be to go with AT&T -- if the two largest competitors of
AT&T are in this bad of shape, what can you expect from the small ones?

Incidentally, I don't find AT&T's rates that bad.  I also subscribe to their
"Reach Out America" plan which is a real good deal if you make your calls on
the weekend.

---

Steven A. Minneman (Fujitsu America Inc, San Jose, Ca)
!seismo!amdahl!fai!stevem

The best government is no government at all.


---

        Steven A. Minneman (Fujitsu America Inc, San Jose, Ca)
        !seismo!amdahl!fai!stevem

The best government is no government at all.



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

From: [e-mail]
To: tektronix![e-mail]
Date: Wed Sep  9 03:28:10 1987


Date: 9 Sep 87 10:28:09 GMT
To: reed!tektronix!comp-dcom-telecom
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
Responding-System: omen.UUCP

Path: omen!caf
From: [e-mail] (Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.dcom.telecom,comp.protocols.misc,or.general
Subject: DSZ Rip-Off
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 9 Sep 87 10:28:09 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Omen Technology Portland OR
Lines: 30
Keywords: dsz zmodem hack pirate

A set of debug scripts designed to hack DSZ has been making the rounds
of bulletin boards.  The single purpose of these scripts is to disable
the registration request printed by UNREGISTERED copies of DSZ.  In
other words, the only purpose of these debug scripts is to encourage
nusers to avoid registering DSZ.  The final insult is the message:
-
  If you find this usefull, you may if you wish send $1.00 to MOBIUS
  c/o MOBIUS .aka. Servant of TSOTL, Pyroto Mountain P.O.Box 35103
  Phoenix AZ 85069, or just Support your best Shareware. The $1.00
  will also provide you with 60 minutes online time on my BBS as a
  contribution.
-
In other words, this gentleman suggests you Support Shareware by
sending HIM $1.00 to support his piracy instead of registering DSZ
with its author.
-
Since nobody is bothering to rip off FAST, DART, Blast, or Relay
protocol drivers, at least one can say ZMODEM has "arrived".
-
If you see any of these files on a BBS, please inform the sysop of
the pirate nature, and ask that they be removed.  I would also
appreciate any information of exactly who wrote these files, and
who are conspiring to spread them.

Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX Author of Pro-YAM communications Tools for PCDOS and Unix
...!tektronix!reed!omen!caf  Omen Technology Inc "The High Reliability Software"
17505-V Northwest Sauvie Island Road Portland OR 97231  VOICE:503-621-3406:VOICE
    TeleGodzilla BBS: 621-3746 19200/2400/1200  CIS:70007,2304  Genie:CAF
  omen Any ACU 2400 1-503-621-3746 se:--se: link ord: Giznoid in:--in: uucp
  omen!/usr/spool/uucppublic/FILES lists all uucp-able files, updated hourly


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

Date:     Fri, 11 Sep 87 9:31:17 EDT
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject:  new Md. pay-phone instructions


A C&P pay phone in Elkton which is on 301-398 prefix has new calling
instructions.  Maryland is running out of NNX prefixes, and apparently
provision is being made to switch to NXX prefixes.
Station-to-station: local--(7 digit) number
                    toll-- 1 + area code + number
All 0+ calls require area code.
(Yes, "area code" can include 301.)

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

Date:     Sun, 13 Sep 87 18:06:16 EDT
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail],
Subject:  Graphics Package Wanted




I am looking for graphics packages that may be used on a Sun for representing
finite state machines.  If you have, or know of someone who might have,
developed software to graphically display finite state automata,
please send me mail at

              ARPA:    [e-mail]
          BITNET:    [e-mail]
          CSNET:    [e-mail]
          UUCP:    ...!ihnp4!berkeley    -\
              ...!allegra!berkeley    -->![e-mail]
              ...!harvard        -/

If you know of any publications that have information about graphically
displaying finite state machines, please send me mail about them.

Thanks.

                        Srivas

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

Date: Sun, 13 Sep 87 18:44:05 EDT
From: jsol (Jon Solomon)
To: telecom
Subject: missing issues 26-29


If you are missing issues 26-29 then please let me know so I can
mail them to you. I have a correct set of issues within that range,
and can mail you by return mail any of the issues of Volume-7 in that
range.

--jsol

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 87 22:18:20 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-to: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #33
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Fri, 18 Sep 87 22:18:20 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 33

Today's Topics:

                         Re:  Phone Interfaces
                         Re: Phone Interfaces
                  Re: new Md. pay-phone instructions
                          RingMaster service
                                Question
                           Re: TELECOM Digest V7
                             Sprint "Lawsuit"?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 14 Sep 87 16:11:43 EST
From: Michael Grant <[e-mail]>
To: spar![e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: Re:  Phone Interfaces


Well, we just bought this thing that answers the phone and lets you
page people throughout the building.  It basically answers the phone and
connects the line to an amplifier.  Maybe this device is what you
want.  It cost us $247.00.  It's called a Page Adaptor by
Valcom.  Model V-9940.  We got it from "The Telephone Man" in
Springfield Virgina.  They might have other things that solve your
problem as well.  By the way, this thing took almost 3 months to
order from these people, so I hope you don't need it soon!

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

Date: Tue, 15 Sep 87 18:13:32 EDT
From: pyrnj![e-mail] (Romain Kang)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Phone Interfaces
Cc:


This question recently came up on Pyramid's internal network.  The most
attractive box was made by SpeechPlus in Mountain View, CA.

They call it a voice response system.  In brief, it can answer the
phone, transmit DTMF codes to a computer via an RS-232 port as ASCII
digits, receive ASCII text via the same port and send it back down the
phone line as high quality synthesized speech.

It includes such features as:
    XON/XOFF flow control or
    DTR/CTS flow control

    DTR supervision for incoming calls (raise DTR when a call
    comes in)

    Notification of an incoming call by sending digits to the
    RS-232 port (DTR is strapped)

    Flash-hook the phone line to transfer a call to a human
    being

    DTMF generation to make outgoing calls

List price is $3,900.

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

To: [e-mail]
From: westmark![e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: new Md. pay-phone instructions
Date: 16 Sep 87 02:31:37 GMT



In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Carl Moore, VLD/VMB) writes:
> A C&P pay phone in Elkton which is on 301-398 prefix has new calling
> instructions.  Maryland is running out of NNX prefixes, and apparently
> provision is being made to switch to NXX prefixes.
> Station-to-station: local--(7 digit) number
>                     toll-- 1 + area code + number
> All 0+ calls require area code.
> (Yes, "area code" can include 301.)

Maryland must be one of the few places left that hasn't adopted this
dialing plan.  I would expect most of the US to be on 1+ or 0+ ten
digits before long.  Because if the widespread use of this dialing
plan, areas where it is not required generally permit it, for the
benefit of travelers from other parts.
--
Dave Levenson
Westmark, Inc.        A node for news.
Warren, NJ USA
{rutgers | clyde | mtune | ihnp4}!westmark!dave

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

Date: Wed, 16 Sep 87 14:04:30 EDT
From: think![e-mail] (John R. Levine)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: RingMaster service


BellSouth's operating companies South Central Bell and Southern Bell are
introducing a new service called RingMaster. It assigns two or three numbers
to the same phone line, and gives the different numbers different rings. That
way if you run a business in your home you can know whether to answer "Hello"
or "Thank You For Calling Schrod Bait Systems" without having to install and
pay for two lines. You could also use it for a minor variety of toll evasion;
when you leave the office, call the second number, let it ring four times, and
hang up, so your housemate hears the ring and knows you're on the way without
answering the phone and completing the call.

Sounds like a clever way to get some revenue from CO equipment that has to be
present anyway to support the dwindling number of party lines.
--
John R. Levine, Cambridge MA, [phone]
{ ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, [e-mail]
The Iran-Contra affair:  None of this would have happened if Ronald Reagan
were still alive.
---
John R. Levine, Cambridge MA, [phone]
{ ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, [e-mail]
The Iran-Contra affair:  None of this would have happened if Ronald Reagan
were still alive.

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

Date:     Sun, 13 Sep 87 18:55 ADT
From: <[e-mail]> (Zaphod Beeblebrox)
Subject:  Question
To: [e-mail]


One of the previous issues had a list of the 0 access numbers to
use a different long distance carrier for you call....
could you please send me that list again....Thankyou

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

Date:         Mon, 14 Sep 87 08:27 EST
From: Howie Ducat <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Re: TELECOM Digest V7
To: The Moderator JSol <[e-mail]>


Date:         Mon, 14 Sep 87 08:18 EST
From:         Howie Ducat <howie@bklyn>
Subject:      Sprint "Lawsuit"?
To:           <[e-mail]>

Hi..
   I recently received what I thought was my usual monthly SPRINT bill..
In actuality, it was some sort of legal gobbledegook about someone in
Illinois winning a lawsuit against SPRINT.. and I seem to be entitled
to SOMETHING from them, but I can not for the life of me figure out
what it is... anyone have any idea??

Howie Ducat
Brooklyn College Telecommunications

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************
From jsol  Fri Sep 25 22:51:23 1987
Received: by bu-it.bu.edu (3.2/4.7)
    id AA15789; Fri, 25 Sep 87 22:51:23 EDT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 87 22:11:19 EDT
From: The Moderator (JSol) <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V7 #34
To: [e-mail]


TELECOM Digest     Fri, 25 Sep 87 22:11:19 EDT    Volume 7 : Issue 34

Today's Topics:

                            sprint lawsuit
                            Telephone Chip?
                         Re: Sprint "Lawsuit"?
                         phone # on pay phones
                   Submission for comp-dcom-telecom
                        Re: 0+ pay phone calls
                         "Ringmaster service"
              AT&T, Baby Bells getting into data networks

[This is the last digest to be sent from BU-IT.BU.EDU. All further
digests will go through XX.LCS.MIT.EDU. All TELECOM pointers (including
-REQUEST) now point to XX. Also, today is the only day that individual
message readers will see a digest. Starting tomorrow we will resume
sending individual messages. --JSol and Jim]

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 87 20:17:26 PDT
To: [e-mail]
Subject: sprint lawsuit


 MSG:FROM: SPGDCM  --UCBCMSA  TO: NETWORK --NETWORK           09/18/87 20:17:25
 To: NETWORK --NETWORK  Network Address

 From:    Doug Mosher                 <SPGDCM at UCBCMSA>
          MVS/Tandem Systems Manager  [phone]
          Evans 257, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
 Subject: sprint lawsuit

 To: [e-mail]

 Here's what I know plus what I intuited from the sprint notice:

 In the past (and still now? not clear) sprint charged regular rates for little
 short "calls" that did not result in an answer. Like it takes say 30 seconds
 to place a call, hear four rings, no answer, and hang up.

 Not clear if they charged for all or many or some of these. Has to do with
 their not having as good a connection as AT&T technically, so they can't
 detect answers (as well or at all?).

 Somebody did a class action suit and won; now in the settlement they are
 asking each of us to choose either flat or estimated reimbursement IF WE HAD
 SUCH PROBLEMS.

 I can't remember if I had any, can't estimate how many, and find the whole
 thing a bother. I might be a real liar if I certify I had any or so many of
 them. And I figured the whole deal amounts to plus or minus say $3 for me.

 I actually threw it out.

 Now look, I am in favor of class action suits, and this is one more case where
 Sprint blew it (the other case was where they charged the wrong rates during
 holidays a year or so ago, and didn't even fix it in general when they knew
 about it; another class action suit slapped them BIG for that one.)

 But I am beginning to think that the results of such suits should be for the
 company to get punished, and for the money to go to: charity, public interest
 groups, education, or whatever. As this stands, then tiny dribs of money go to
 a mixture of those even more compulsive, or even less honest, than me, and
 those are weird folks I'll tell you.

      sprint lawsuit

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

Date: Sat, 19 Sep 87 20:27:11 edt
From: [e-mail] (Seth Benjamin Rothenberg)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Telephone Chip?




I know that Motorola makes a speakerphone-on-a-chip; does anyone know of a
telephone-on-a-chip?  It need not have a dialing circuit in it, as I won't be
using it.

Thanks
Seth Rothenberg
[e-mail]
rochester!pt!andrew.cmu.edu!sr16
sbrst@cisunx
[e-mail]



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

Date: 21 Sep 87 10:59:23 EDT (Monday)
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Sprint "Lawsuit"?
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]


There are probably more knowledgable people on the net, but here's my 2
cents worth. I interpreted the letter to mean that several class action
suits had been brought against Sprint over their well known practice of
billing customers for any call that lasts over 30 seconds from the time
that the phone starts ringing, whether the recipent answers the phone or
not. I don't have the letter in front of me, but in general the proposed
settlement contains two options:

1) credit for any call meeting the above description for which no credit
has been previously granted, or

2) a small amount of credit (3 minutes, I think) for each year that the
customer has subscribed to Sprint.

Obviously this favors people who have saved all of their old bills and
can therefore account for more than six unanswered calls per year. On
the other hand, if you requested credit for the calls at the time you
were billed (which I usually did) then the settlement doesn't really
affect you.

/Don

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

Date:     Mon, 21 Sep 87 9:18:05 EDT
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject:  phone # on pay phones


On a recent trip, I stopped at a pay phone on a roadside and made a call,
but I also called the operator and asked what the number was (since it
was not displayed; only the area code).  I was told they are not allowed
to give out the number for pay phones.  Can anyone send me any reasons?
(I can consolidate if necessary.)
Does this have anything to do with the appearance of the word "coin" or
similar expression in lieu of place name on a phone bill alongside call
made to or from pay phone?

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

From: ssc-vax![e-mail] (Roger Clark Swann)
Date: 21 Sep 87 14:33:16 GMT
To: uw-beaver![e-mail]
Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom


Path: ssc-vax!clark
From: [e-mail] (Roger Clark Swann)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: 0+ pay phone calls
Keywords: area codes
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Sep 87 14:33:15 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Corp., Seattle WA
Lines: 25

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

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Carl Moore, VLD/VMB) writes:
> A C&P pay phone in Elkton which is on 301-398 prefix has new calling
> instructions.  Maryland is running out of NNX prefixes, and apparently
> provision is being made to switch to NXX prefixes.
> Station-to-station: local--(7 digit) number
>                     toll-- 1 + area code + number
> All 0+ calls require area code.
> (Yes, "area code" can include 301.)

I remembered the above article when I needed to make a local pay phone
call this past weekend. I wanted to bill the local to my calling
card, so I used the 0+ followed by the numbers. On the first try I,
included the area code as part of the local number I wanted to
reach. This did NOT work, (got a re-order recording). On the second
try I left off the area code and the call went right through.
So, I guess that we in the Seattle area are behind the rest of the
world for now. Check back in the year 2000 and maybe we will have
caught up by then...:-)

Roger Swann    uucp: uw-beaver!ssc-vax!clark

I disavow any knowledge of my actions.


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

To: [e-mail]
Subject: "Ringmaster service"
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 87 16:21:49 PDT
From: David G. Cantor <[e-mail]>


In Telecom, Volume 7, Issue 33 John Levine states


    BellSouth's operating companies South Central Bell and Southern
    Bell are introducing a new service called RingMaster. It assigns
    two or three numbers to the same phone line, and gives the
    different numbers different rings.

This was available for years in General Telephone Country (GTE).
GTE supported up to 10 parties with distinctive rings (5 ringing
frequencies and ringing between either line and ground).  You could
request several numbers on the same line and you had to pay the sum
total of the individual line costs (note that party line were
substantailly less expensive than single-party lines).

One common use, in a time when standards were different, was by an
unmarried couple living together.  Each, to the outside world,
appeared to have his (her) own line.  It avoided problems such as having
another telephone ring while talking to one's parents, etc.

dgc

David G. Cantor
[e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 24 Sep 87 02:52:06 PDT
From: hoptoad.UUCP![e-mail] (John Gilmore)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: AT&T, Baby Bells getting into data networks


I picked up these messages from the Telenet PC Pursuit bulletin board
system (type "C PURSUIT" to Telenet) and thought Telecom readers
would be interested.

I found the proposal for a separate data network particularly wierd,
since it looks like you would just attach modems to it anyway.
Presumably they would figure what kind of modem you had, decode the tones,
and ship the data digitally (like Telenet does now).  I don't see why
this can't be done transparently using normal telephone lines and
numbers, e.g. if during the call, they notice that recognizable modem
tones are going down the line, and there is a local modem free on both
ends, they could just stop sending 64KB/sec and start sending 1200B/sec
or 2400B/sec or 9600B/sec.  They might be able to do this right at the
beginning of a call, by looking for echo-suppressor tones.

Also, doesn't ISDN presume anybody, data or voice, can call anybody
else, data or voice?  I sure hope so...

    John

Msg #  2474 Dated 08-29-87 01:16:42
 From: PATRICK TOWNSON
   To: ALL
   Re: BELL TELCOS GOING ONLINE!

Well, we knew it had to happen someday....Ameritech (the parent
company for Illinois Bell, Michigan Bell, Indiana Bell and others)
announced this past week that it will enter the up to now forbidden
area of on-line computer information and network services. This is
the first time a Bell Operating Company has said definitly it will
offer "enhanced information services".

Ameritech has paid five million dollars for a fifteen percent interest
in <Inet of America>, whose majority owners are Bell Canada and
suprise!! ....GTE/Telenet. .......

Permission to aquire an interest in Inet of America was granted by the
Justice Department last month, and Ameritech will begin work on the
new venture as soon as Judge Harold Greene gives his okay. Judge Greene
was the person who presided over the AT&T divestiture case. Approval
is expected, and will take the form of a full lifting of the
restriction against the various Baby Bells from entering this line.

<Inet of America> will offer EMAIL and other network services, including
interconnection arrangements with various information data bases.
Bell Canada has offered a similar service since 1985, and of course
Telenet has offered network services for a few years now. What
interested me the most was seeing that Telenet and Ameritech will
be in this together.

This message was prepared from the various press releases and
newspapers reports on the subject appearing this past week. I
specifically saw a <virtually identical> report in the Chicago Sun-
Times on Thursday 8/27, and the Wall Street Journal the same day.
It then appeared in a couple of telephony industry trade journals
this weekend.

Is Telenet taking the old standard approach, "if you can't beat
them, then join them"..????   I am sure it is far too early to
say where this effects us as Pursuiters, since the newspaper
accounts went on to say that the Ameritech/Bell Canada/Telenet
deal would not be implemented for a couple of years....but seeing
this article after weeks of reading about the dismal future of
enhanced services when the new fees go into effect next year does
give one reason to pause and reflect.

Any Telenet execs out there wish to comment?


Msg #  2698 Dated 09-03-87 21:15:26
 From: PATRICK TOWNSON
   To: ALL
   Re: COMPUTER PHONE NETWORK

I mentioned earlier that Ameritech (Illinois Bell, Michigan Bell,
Indiana Bell, others) planned to join forces soon with Telenet and
Bell Canada in a new national computer public network. While the
details are by no means firm, here is speculation by a couple of Bell
insiders -- people in senior management who tend to go out to lunch
frequently with FCC Commissioners and staff members.

First, a little background: For many years, AT&T operated a service
called TWX, meaning <T>ype<W>riter E<X>change. It was in direct
competion to Western Union Telex. TWX operated just like regular voice
phones as far as dialing and network protocol. TWX had its own "area
codes" of 410-510-610-710-810-910. You could not and still cannot
access these "TWX area codes" from a regular phone. Neither can TWX
machines make calls to the area codes used by voice phones. Other than
the inability to jump between the voice network and the data network,
everything else about TWX functioned as we know it today -- for
example, dialing 610-555-1212 from a TWX machine gets Directory
Assistance -- numbers of other TWX machines -- in that "area code",
which in fact happens to be for Canada. An operator responds  by
typing manually at a TWX machine and looks up the number, etc. Pulling
Zero gets a TWX operator who will assist in completing calls,handling
collect and third number billings, etc.

About twenty years ago, Western Union sued the Bell System and forced
them to give up the TWX business, by selling it (naturally) to Western
Union, which still runs the service today, but under the name "Telex
II". Even though owned by Western Union, the network switching
equipment for TWX/Telex II is still scattered in Bell central offices
and AT&T Long Lines facilities, and Bell maintains the circuits.

Now what does this <possibly> have to do with computer and modem
users? Well, the FCC is currently looking with some interest at an
informal proposal by AT&T to MOVE ALL COMPUTER/DATA TRANSMISSIONS to
their own little "semi-network", with their own area code and
prefixes, etc. So the, uh, speculation goes, folks with modems would
be required to have at least TWO phone lines on their premises --
unless they planned to not have a voice line -- and the second line
would be <dedicated> to the data traffic. The dedicated line for
the computer would have a "funny looking" area code (that is, not
the one used in your area for voice). Otherwise it would be just
a normal ten digit phone number. Every geographic area would have
one or more prefixes assigned to it. (The prefix is the first three
digits of your phone number).

Long distance calls over the system would run about $7-8 per hour,
as they do now, using the Reach Out Plans as the guidelines. Local
calls on the same prefix would be around five cents a minute, again
as they are now in communities with "user sensitive billing". There
might or might not be some "local free calling zone". There would
be a monthly access charge of course, just as you pay now for your
voice line. Calls on this network could not jump over to the voice
network or vice versa. In other words, an attempt to dial an area
code and number from the data line would be intercepted, and the
same would happen in reverse.

The Knowledgeable Sources who talk about these things at lunch
with their friends from the Commission seem to think the so-called
area code will be "300" or "400", or both. Directory Assistance
will be available to folks who choose to have listed numbers for
their computer (300-555-1212). International access will be handled
via "011", just as it is now on voice. Dialing zero, or possibly
some three digit access code will connect with an operator's position,
for handling collect calls, etc. Some people seem to think AT&T will
have it all implemented possibly as early as 1989...about the time
that Ameritech/Bell Canada/Telenet have their system ready to go.

Of course this is all just talk....just a figment of someone's
imagination at AT&T Long Lines, right?  Of course.


Msg #  2882 Dated 09-12-87 01:17:01
 From: PATRICK TOWNSON
   To: ALL
   Re: BELLS NOW IN THE BUSINESS

The Friday papers announced the Thursday ruling by Judge Harold Greene
regarding the proposals by the various regional Bell holding companies
wanting to handle data traffic.

They got the OK to create and maintain a data network; but they may NOT
create the actual data. That is, no BBS's, no data banks or other
information services, etc....just handle the traffic; a lot like PCP
does now, less this bulletin board.

They still cannot go into long distance service, however they will no
longer need a waiver to enter non-telephone related enterprises. The
group which pushed hardest for the okay to handle data traffic was
the consortium formed by GTE/Telenet, Ameritech and Bell Canada. These
three organizations are now free to pursue in ernest their plans for
ITNET, the name of the new data network being formed.

Basically, Bell went away angry at not being allowed into the long
distance market; some observors have noted however they were very
pleased to get the go-ahead for handling data traffic.

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

End of TELECOM Digest
*********************