Telecom/1996-04-telecom-walnutcreek.iso/back.issues/1993.volume.13/vol13.iss051-100

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Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 12:30:59 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #51

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 29 Jan 93 12:31:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 51

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Phones in the People's Republic of China (Garnet Harris)
    Steve Jackson Games - Day 2 (Houston Chronicle via Paco Xander Nathan)
    MIB for Northern Telecom PBX (Wayne Veilleux)
    Telemarketing Revenge!! (Larry Rachman)
    Source for Bellcore TA's (Milo S. Medin)
    Multiport X.25 Boards For RS/6000 (Roy H. Gordon)
    Mac PowerBook as TDD? (Brad S. Hicks)
    California Cellular vs. Florida Cellular (Marshal Perlman)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 12:50 EST
From: The Tibetian Traveller <[e-mail]>
Subject: Phones in the People's Republic of China


Having just returned from a trip to the People's Republic of China, I
thought that the readers of this Digest might be interested in some of
the telephone equipment that I saw there.  The purpose of the trip was
to install some Telephony Earth Station (TES) equipment.  The purpose
of this equipment is to allow distant switches to talk to each other
over a satellite instead of through landlines.  The voice connections
are set up on an "per-call" basis with full mesh connectivity between
all sites.  This means that any switch in the network can talk to any
other switch in the network with a single hop over the satellite.
While the actual number of allowed calls depends on several factors,
the final configuration would allow 600 phone connections in a single
transponder.  This particular network will use 32 Kbps ADPCM for all
calls with the capacity to handle 10,000 call connections per hour.
This particular trip was to install and test the satellite equipment.
I will go back next week to finish the installation and interface to
the local switches.

Beijing:

A DD line costs $1,000 and takes up to 6 months to get it installed.
(And Hidgon thought he had troubles with his local phone company!)
The two hotels that I stayed at in this city had IDD capability.  The
Holiday Inn also allowed you to charge the call to your AT&T credit
card.  (Since I do not have one, I do not know how difficult or easy
the procedure was.)  The cost of a call to the US ran about $4.50 per
minute and the quality of the calls was fairly good.

All pay phones in this city (and all of China) do not have coin slots.
All have some type of readers that read the magnetic strip on cards.
(Again, I have never had the occasion to use one so I could not
describe the exact procedure.)  None of the hotels I was in had any
and the only ones that I saw on the street were outside the main phone
office.  These were two on a pole and they faced each other with a
little yellow "dome" over the phone to reduce the street noise.  (I
only saw them as I drove by in a cab and never got a close look at
them.)  The only other public phones that I saw were located in the
airport.  There was one of these located between each gate for a total
of ten with one out of order.  All were in use and most had a second
person waiting to use it next.

Earth Station #6 (this is where our equipment was located was
extremely interesting.  This station currently carries several VSAT
lines back to Beijing.  However, they do not have a single line into
the building.  All the incoming and outgoing calls are placed on a
single cellular phone that calls Earth Station #5 which is about 300
yards away.  From there it is patched into a switch.  When we finally
got them to pull in a line for our modem, they initially hooked it to
a local switch that was so bad that we could not even get 300 baud
through it.  They finally patched the output of our computer into a
VSAT trunk, routed it to the Chinasat Beijing office, into our modem
which dialed out from there.

Chengdu:

Again, the two hotels that I stayed at had IDD capability although
neither offered the ability to charge the call to AT&T.  I did not
make any calls from there so I do not know the cost of long distance
calls.

There were no pay phones in any of the hotels.  I did see three public
phones on the street corner all side by side on poles.  They all had a
little box configuration extending from the sides to reduce noise
similar to many public phones in the states.  Again, no coin slots.
They also had four black buttons besides the normal keypad.  One was
labeled "redial" and another was to make a second call on the card.  I
forgot what the other two were for.  (I promise that I will take
better notes when I go back.)

I did not see any pay phones located in the airport terminal.  But I
did see a "telephone room" outside the terminals.  This consisted of a
counter with about ten phones on it.  The phones looked like a
standard desk phone.  I have know idea how they handled the charges
for the calls but again it appeared that all phones were in use.

I also saw a couple people with hand held cellular phones in this
city.  (Also a couple in Beijing).  With the cost of a hard-wire line,
it did not surprise me.

Lhasa, Tibet:

Surprise, the Holiday Inn here actually had two pay phones in the
lobby.  But I understand that they did not have IDD capability.  As a
matter of fact, the hotel only had one IDD line which they had hooked
up to a fax machine.  All calls had to go through the switchboard
operator who called your room back when she finally got a connection.
(One took 20 minutes to get a connection while most only took three to
five minutes.)  Cost: $6 per minute.  Quality of the call was terrible
(but some of the people I called said they had good quality on their
end.)  As a matter of fact, room to room connections had a lot of
noise on them!  Most of the calls to the States were intelligible if
the person talked loud enough to overcome the noise.  Calls to Beijing
were slightly better while calls to Chengdu were abysmal.  After four
attempts, I gave up.

At least the earth station here had a "real" phone line.  But most
attempts to call the Beijing earth station met with busy signals.  And
most of the calls returned a busy before the entire number was dialed,
meaning that the local switch had no spare capacity.  Sometimes, it
took over a half hour to complete the call.  The local switch that
interfaced to the earth station was a Belgium made ST2140. (See, I did
take some notes!)

Nimo, Tibet:

Power in this town was so unreliable that we took our own generator to
run our test equipment.  The power was 110 VAC when we arrived at 2
PM.  Sometime between then and 7 PM, power went out and did not come
back on till 10 PM.  When it did come back on, it was at 220 VAC.
Normally, they run convert this into -48 Volts and have battery
backup.  However, I can not call this an UPS since the power was off
so long the second day that we drained the batteries.

As far as existing phones go, forget it!  (Why do you think they
bought our equipment?)  Their current means of communications is
telegraph twice a day.  Once in the morning and once in the evening.

Nierong, Tibet:

Again, no existing phones in the town.  And again, the local power is
unreliable.  Power was turned off at midnight and did not get turned
back on again till sometime after the sun came up.  (I was not around
an light bulb so I do not know exactly when they turned it back on.)

Fortunately, power for our equipment was a little more reliable.  They
also had a battery back up for the -48 V power supply.  The power
supply is normally powered by an array of solar cells outside the
earth station.  And they have a back up generator for cloudy days.

I will be glad to hear any comments or questions about China's
telecommunications; but you will have to email them to me.  As I have
stated previously, I am going back this Tuesday and will not have
internet access while I am there.  However, I will occasionally have
email access.  You can email me at "[e-mail]".  I will
try to answer any questions; unfortunately, I can not promise to
answer them in a timely fashion.  Be patient and I will eventually
answer them.


Garnet Harris    Hughes Network Systems     [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: Please provide us with another more detailed report
when you return from your next visit. Better still, see if you can
transmit a message to us from there; find a dialup -- if there is such
a thing -- and send email to [e-mail].   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Paco Xander Nathan)
Subject: Steve Jackson Games - Day 2
Organization: Houston Chronicle
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 06:59:06 GMT


[Moderator's Note: This is the second part in a group of messages
received here discussing the trial. A third part will be published
later today, and followups will appear as they are recieved.  PAT]


Steve Jackson Games/Secret Service Trial -- Day Two

By JOE ABERNATHY
Copyright 1993, Houston Chronicle

    AUSTIN -- A young woman read aloud a deeply personal
friendship letter Wednesday in a federal civil lawsuit intended to
establish the human dimension and constitutional guarantees of
electronic assembly and communication.

    Testimony indicated that the letter read by Elizabeth
Cayce-McCoy previously had been seized, printed and reviewed by the
Secret Service.

    Her correspondence was among 162 undelivered personal letters
testimony indicated were taken by the government in March 1990 during
a raid on Steve JaCkson Games, which ran an electronic bulletin board
system as a service to its customers.

    Attorneys for the Austin game publisher contend that the
seizure of the bulletin board represents a violation of the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act, which is based on Fourth Amendment
protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

    "Because you bring such joy to my friend Walter's life, and
also because I liked you when I met you, though I wish I could have
seen your lovely face a little more, I'll send you an autographed copy
of Bestiary," said McCoy, reading in part from a letter penned by
Steffan O'Sullivan, the author of the GURPS Bestiary, a fantasy
treatise on mythical creatures large and small.

    Although the correspondence entered the public record upon
McCoy's reading, the Chronicle obtained explicit permission from the
principles before excerpting from it.

    The electronic mail was contained on the game publisher's
public bulletin board system, Illuminati, which allowed game-players,
authors and others to exchange public and personal documents. After
agents seized the BBS during a raid staged as part of a nationwide
crackdown on computer crime, Secret Service analysts reviewed, printed
and deleted the 162 pieces of undelivered mail, testimony indicated.

    When the BBS computer was returned to its owner several months
later, a computer expert was able to resurrect many of the deleted
communications, including McCoy's friendship letter.

    "I never thought anyone would read my mail," she testified. "I
was very shocked and embarrassed.

    "When I told my father that the Secret Service had taken the
Steve Jackson bulletin board for some reason, he became very upset. He
thought that I had been linked to some computer crime investigation,
and that now our computers would be taken."

    O'Sullivan, who is a free-lance game writer employed by Steve
Jackson, followed McCoy to the stand, where he testified that agents
intercepted -- via the Illuminati seizure -- a critical piece of
electronic mail seeking to establish when a quarterly royalty check
would arrive.

    "That letter never arrived, and I had to borrow money to pay
the rent," he said.

    No charges were ever filed in connection with the raid on
Steve Jackson Games or the simultaneous raid of the Austin home of
Jackson employee Loyd Blankenship, whose reputed membership in the
Legion of Doom hackers' group triggered the raids.

    Plaintiffs contend that the government's search-and-seizure
policies have cast a chill over a constitutionally protected form of
public assembly carried out on bulletin boards, which serve as
community centers often used by hundreds of people. More than 300
people were denied use of Jackson's bulletin board, called Illuminati,
for several months after the raid, and documents filed with the court
claim that a broader, continuing chill has been cast over the online
community at large.

    The lawsuit against the Secret Service seeks to establish that
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act guarantees the privacy of
electronic mail. If U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks accepts this
contention, it would become necessary for the government to obtain
warrants for each caller to a bulletin board before seizing it.

    The Justice Department contends that users of electronic mail
do not have a reasonable expectation to privacy, because they are
voluntarily "disclosing" their mail to a third party -- the owner of
the bulletin board system.

    "We weren't going to intercept electronic mail. We were going
to access stored information," said William J. Cook, a former
assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago who wrote the affidavit for the
search warrant used in the Steve Jackson raid.

    The Justice Department attorneys did not substantially
challenge testimony by any of the several witnesses who were denied
use of Illuminati. They did, however, seek to prevent those witnesses
from testifying -- by conceding their interests -- after Cayce's
compelling appearance led off the series of witnesses.

    Most of the Justice Department's energies were directed toward
countering damage claims made by Steve Jackson, whose testimony opened
the second day of the trial. Most of the day's testimony was devoted
to a complex give-and-take on accounting issues. Some $2 million is
being sought in damages.

    Justice sought to counter the widely repeated assertion that
Steve Jackson Games was nearly put out of business by the raid by
showing that the company was already struggling financially when the
raid was conducted. An accountant called by the plaintiffs countered
that all of Jackson's financial problems had been corrected by a
reorganization in late 1989.


[Moderator's Note: Another installment in this series of reports will
appear in the next issue of the Digest later today.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Wayne Veilleux)
Subject: MIB for Northern Telecom PBX
Organization: Institut de recherche d'Hydro-Quebec, Varennes, Canada
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 16:36:47 GMT


Does anyone knows if it is possible to get the entreprise MIB
(Management Information Base) for the Northern Telecom PBX ?

Thank you for your help.


Wayne Veilleux   Hydro-Quebec   Telecom engr   Montreal, Canada
[phone]   [e-mail]

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

Date: 29 Jan 93 21:19:42 EST
From: Larry Rachman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Telemarketing Revenge!!


Not too long ago, I answered my phone around dinner time and was
treated to an overmodulated voice telling me I'd just won a contest,
and inviting me to call a 900 number to claim my prize. Thank you just
the same, I thought, as I hung up.

Several hours later, I wandered into my office and glanced at my
Caller-ID box. A number was posted as having arrived at about the
right time so, phone phreak that I am, I gave it a call. I received,
as expected, a busy signal, but after a few tries I receiced the tail
end of the recording I'd heard before. This time I waited for it to
end. When it did, I received several seconds of silence, followed by a
burst of seven touchtone digits.  Obligingly, I said 'Hello', and the
recording started up again, played through, and the pattern repeated
itself.

I played around with the thing for about ten minutes before I got
bored, but the experience got me thinking. With a Dialogic board and a
few hours worth of software, it should be easy to set up a system that
would just sit there, and every time it heard seven touchtone digits,
it would speak 'Hello' a few times. Surely there is someone out there
who would be willing to donate a PC and (hopefully flat-rate) phone
line as a community service. Maybe we can get some public-service
organization to fund it.

Any volunteers??


Larry Rachman, WA2BUX    [e-mail]    516-427-0656 (fax)


[Moderator's Note: Are you willing to have your phone line tied up on
a continual, never-ending call to the number the machine is dialing
out on?  Are there message units or other charges for making the call
to the machine?   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Milo S. Medin)
Subject: Source for Bellcore TA's
Organization: NASA Science Internet Project Office
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 00:08:19 GMT


Folks, does anyone know where I can get a catalog of TA's available
from Bellcore and directions for ordering them?


Thanks,

Milo


[Moderator's Note: We print this question all the time, it seems (only
the name of the submitter changes). Perhaps someone will write Milo
direct with the information.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Roy H. Gordon)
Subject: Multiport X.25 Boards for RS/6000
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 00:59:28 GMT


We're looking for multiport X.25 boards for the RS/6000.

Does anyone know of or have experience with any?

We used the HBX pad.

Thanks.


Roy

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

From: mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=[e-mail]
Date: 29 Jan 93 13:10:50 GMT
Subject: Mac PowerBook as TDD?


We've got a Macintosh PowerBook user in our Latin America regional
office who would like to know if there is any combination of hardware
and/or software that would let him use a Macintosh PowerBook as a
Telephone Device for the Deaf (TDD).  Internal hardware would be
preferred; I gather the idea is so that he'll be able to send and
receive TDD calls forwarded to him no matter where he goes.  (What he
actually asked was if his standard built-in Apple fax/data modem could
be used as a TDD, so a device that could also handle regular modem
duties up to at least 2400 bps would probably also be desirable.)

As usual when somebody asks for specific hardware recommendations, you
should reply via e-mail to the address below and I'll summarize the
replies for the Digest.  Many thanks!


J. Brad Hicks     Internet: mc![e-mail]
X.400: c=US admd=ATTMail prmd=MasterCard sn=Hicks gn=Brad

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

From: [e-mail] (Marshal "Airborne" Perlman)
Subject: California Cellular vs. Florida Cellular
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 15:52:49 GMT


Hmmmm, back at home, cell phones go for about $200+ ... and when you
buy it, the dealer gets about $200 or so from Pac-Tel or LA Cellular,
but the user only has to pay his $200 for the phone, and the end user
pays $50 for the first month fee, and then on top of that, $45 a month
for basic service plus calls.

Where I live now, in Florida, I see at Circuit City that they sell
phones for $29, $79, and on and on ... which require activation from
the store. How much more does this work out to and how much does the
store get?  How do the charges work? etc etc etc...

I asked the guy at the store (I was there to get a microwave last
night), and he really didn't have any idea what I was talking about.

If you have any answers for me, please get back to me via **EMAIL**.


Thanks,

Marshal

P.S. Which model causes the least cancer (heh, just a cell joke).

Marshal Perlman                  Internet: [e-mail]
Florida Institute of Technology                   IRC: Squawk
Melbourne, Florida                        Private Pilot, ASEL
407/768-8000 x8435                 Goodyear Blimp Club Member

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #51
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #52

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 29 Jan 93 13:46:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 52

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Steve Jackson Games - Day 3 (Houston Chronicle via Paco Xander Nathan)
    Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (Joel M. Hoffman)
    Telephone Company Rates (Frank Merrow)
    Where is a Source For CFRs? (Mike Gordon)
    Can Phones be Restricted to 911 Only? (Dave Leibold)
    Utility Reputations (Randy Gellens)
    Source For Telephone Headsets? (Daniel M. Rosenberg)
    AppleTalk Docs Wanted (Rob Bailey)
    Information Request: DECT (Euee S. Jang)
    Charge Those 900 Calls (John R. Levine)
    Multiplexing Voice Over Fibre Cheaply (Michael Hrybyk)
    Telecom Books (Capacity Planning)? (Jeff Wasilko)
    Voice Paging Services (Paul Migliorelli)
    Novatel Help Needed (Joe Smooth)
    Last Laugh! A Look at ATM History (Ed Greenberg)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Paco Xander Nathan)
Subject: Steve Jackson Games - Day 3
Organization: Houston Chronicle
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 07:07:50 GMT


[Moderator's Note: This is the third part of three items received here
today. As more news comes in regarding the trial, the articles will
be published in the next available Digest following their arrival.  PAT]


Steve Jackson Games/Secret Service Wrapup

By JOE ABERNATHY
Copyright 1993, Houston Chronicle

    AUSTIN -- An electronic civil rights case against the Secret
Service closed Thursday with a clear statement by federal District
Judge Sam Sparks that the Service failed to conduct a proper
investigation in a notorious computer crime crackdown, and went too
far in retaining custody of seized equipment.

    The judge's formal findings in the complex case, which will
likely set new legal precedents, won't be returned until later.

    A packed courtroom sat on the edge of the seat Thursday
morning as Sparks subjected the Secret Service agent in charge of the
investigation to a grueling dressing-down.

    The judge's rebuke apparently convinced the Department of
Justice to close its defense after calling only that one of the
several government witnesses on hand. Attorney Mark Battan entered
subdued testimony seeking to limit the award of monetary damages.

    Secret Service Special Agent Timothy Foley of Chicago, who was
in charge of three Austin computer search-and-seizures on March 1,
1990, that led to the lawsuit, stoically endured Spark's rebuke over
the Service's poor investigation and abusive computer seizure
policies. While the Service has seized dozens of computers since the
crackdown began in 1990, this is the first case to challenge the
practice.

    "The Secret Service didn't do a good job in this case. We know
no investigation took place. Nobody ever gave any concern as to whether
(legal) statutes were involved. We know there was damage," Sparks said
in weighing damages.

    The lawsuit, brought by Steve Jackson Games of Austin, said
that the seizure of three computers violated the Privacy Protection
Act, which provides First Amendment protections against seizing a
publisher's works in progress. The lawsuit further said that since one
of the computers was being used to run a bulletin board system
containing private electronic mail, the seizure violated the
Electronic Communications Privacy Act in regards to the 388 callers of
the Illuminati BBS.

    Sparks grew visibly angry when it was established that the
Austin science fiction magazine and game book publisher was never
suspected of a crime, and that agents did not do even marginal
research to establish a criminal connection between the firm and the
suspected illegal activities of an employee, or to determine that the
company was a publisher. Indeed, agents testified that they were not
even trained in the Privacy Protection Act at the special Secret
Service school on computer crime.

    "How long would it have taken you, Mr. Foley, to find out what
Steve Jackson Games did, what it was?" asked Sparks. "An hour?

    "Was there any reason why, on March 2, you could not return to
Steve Jackson Games a copy, in floppy disk form, of everything taken?

    "Did you read the article in {Business Week} magazine where it
had a picture of Steve Jackson -- a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen --
saying he was a computer crime suspect?

    "Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Foley, that seizing this
material could harm Steve Jackson economically?"

    Foley replied, "No, sir," but the judge offered his own
answer.

    "You actually did, you just had no idea anybody would actually
go out and hire a lawyer and sue you."

    More than $200,000 has been spent by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation in bringing the case to trial. The EFF was founded by
Mitchell Kapor amid a civil liberties movement sparked in large part
by the Secret Service computer crime crackdown.

    "The dressing-down of the Secret Service for their behavior is
a major vindication of what we've been saying all along, which is that
there were outrageous actions taken against Steve Jackson that hurt
his business and sent a chilling effect to everyone using bulletin
boards, and that there were larger principles at stake," said Kapor,
contacted at his Cambridge, Mass., office.

        "We're very happy with the way the case came out,"
said Shari Steele, who attended the case as counsel for the EFF. "That
session with the judge and Tim Foley is what a lawyer dreams about."

    That session seemed triggered by a riveting cross-examination
of Foley by Pete Kennedy, Jackson's attorney.

    Kennedy forced Foley to admit that the search warrant did not
meet even the Service's own standards for a search-and-seizure, and
did not establish that Jackson Games was suspected of being involved
in any illegal activity.

    "Agent Foley, it's been almost three years. Has Chris Goggans
been indicted? Has Loyd Blankenship been indicted? Has Loyd
Blankenship's computer been returned to him?"

    The purported membership of Jackson Games employee Blankenship
in the Legion of Doom hacker's group triggered the raids that day on
Jackson Games, Blankenship's home, and that of Goggans, a Houstonian
who at the time was a University of Texas student. No charges have
been filed, although the computer seized from Blankenship's home --
containing his wife's dissertation -- never has been returned.

    After the cross-examination, Sparks questioned Foley on a
number of key details before and after the raid, focusing on the holes
in the search warrant, why Jackson was not allowed to copy his work in
progress after it was seized, and why his computers were not returned
after the Secret Service analyzed them, a process completed before the
end of March.

    "The examination took seven days, but you didn't give Steve
Jackson's computers back for three months. Why?" asked an incredulous
Sparks. "So here you are, with three computers, 300 floppy disks, an
owner who was asking for it back, his attorney calling you, and what I
want to know is why copies of everything couldn't be given back in
days. Not months. Days.

    "That's what makes you mad about this case."

    The Justice Department contended that Jackson Games is a
manufacturer, and that only journalistic organizations can call upon
the Privacy Protection Act. It contended that the ECPA was not
violated because electronic mail is not "intercepted" when a BBS is
seized. This argument rests on a narrow definition of interception.

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

From: [e-mail] (Joel M. Hoffman)
Subject: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 15:02:35 GMT


A friend of mine recently called to tell me about a news report that
cellular phones are carcinogens, and to ask what I knew about that.

I've never heard anything of the sort.  Can anyone explain where the
report might have come from, and what it meant?

Many thanks.


Joel    ([e-mail])


[Moderator's Note: It is believed by some people that the amount of
radiation emitted from a cellular phone antenna can cause cancer. This
has made the rounds since about a month after cell phones started back
in the early 1980's.  This is one reason frequently given as to why
handheld phones are limited to 600 milliwatts while the phones which
are installed in cars can have three watts power. It is believed that
with handhelds, the antenna is too close to the brain of the user, and
thus, may fry the user's brain, if not at 600 milliwatts of radiation,
then certainly at three watts' worth.  True or false?  Fact or fiction?
It depends on who you ask, and there seem to be knowledgeable people
on both sides of the issue.  PAT]

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

From: odetics![e-mail] (Frank Merrow)
Subject: Telephone Company Rates
Organization: Odetics, Inc., Anaheim, CA
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 01:56:07 GMT


Hi,

I am interested in information on how utilities set their customer
rates AND what their current rates are.  A friend on the net is
starting a business associated with auditing utility bills or some
such.

Is such information available on the net?  Either as a mailing list,
newsgroup for even FTP site?


Frank Merrow                     (Home) [phone]
Odetics Inc, Broadcast Division  (Work) [phone] Ext 3860
1515 S. Manchester Avenue        (Fax)  [phone]
Anaheim, CA 92802                (Net)  [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Mike Gordon)
Subject: Where is a Source For CFRs?
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 02:50:44 GMT


Since these are federal documents, I'd think they're somewhere.  I'm
particularly interested in certain FCC and OSHA regs. Where are they?


Mike Gordon   N9LOI  [e-mail]

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

Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 04:16:20 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Dave Leibold)
Subject: Can Phones be Restricted to 911 Only?


{The Toronto Sun} on 22nd January 1993 had a letter from Linton Graham
of Weston, Ontario regarding Bell Canada phone disconnection policies.
The writer wondered if phone service had to be shut off, then why not
continue to at least allow access to 911 for emergencies.  The writer
didn't mention specific types of situations, though phone shut-offs
due to failure to pay the bill come to mind.

This letter may be inspired by a near-tragedy in the Toronto area.  A
family's electricity was totally shut off due to unpaid bills; the
indoor household heat was then provided by a barbeque. The dangers of
carbon monoxide and fire from such a practice are evident.

The {Sun} always tacks on a terse response after each letter, and the
one-liner response to the suggestion of 911-only phone service was "(A
practical impossibility)". Yet, with the sort of technology
responsible for Caller ID, call waiting, payphone service class,
distinctive ringing, etc., 911-only service can be set up through
switch software.

Are there jurisdictions where 911-only phone service can be set up
rather than an outright shut-off of phone service?


Dave Leibold - via FidoNet node 1:250/98
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

From: MPA15AB![e-mail]
Date: 29 JAN 93 20:48
Subject: Utility Reputations


{Fortune} magazine had a recent cover story on "Corporate Reputations"
and I thought readers might be interested in their list of the top ten
utilities:

Rank Company                Score     Rank Company               Score

 1   BellSouth               7.44      6   Pacific Telesis Group   6.94
 2   Southwestern Bell       7.15      7   GTE                     6.76
 3   Bell Atlantic           7.09      8   US West                 6.64
 4   Pacific Gas & Electric  7.00      9   Southern                6.44
 5   Ameritech               6.95     10   Nynex                   6.12


Randy Gellens                [e-mail]
A Series System Software                 if mail bounces,  forward to
Unisys Mission Viejo, CA                         [e-mail]
Opinions are personal;   facts are suspect;   I speak only for myself

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

From: [e-mail] (Daniel M. Rosenberg)
Subject: Source For Telephone Headsets Wanted
Organization: The Very Large Software Company of America
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 02:13:50 GMT


Hello folks --

    Does anyone know where I could procure a reasonably priced
(< $100) telephone headset? It'd be for a plain old telephone, not a key
system. Places like Hello Direct sell these things for way too much --
like $200.

    I know AT&T and Panasonic make these things in my price range,
but the local Nerd Mart (Fry's, Northern CA) can't seem to lay their
hands on any.

    I'm sure Plantronics makes these too, but I don't know where
to find them!

Any hints appreciated,


Daniel M. Rosenberg         Stanford Univ CSLI      Opinions here are my own
[e-mail]  {apple,ucbvax}!labrea!csli!dmr  BIT:dmr%csli@stanford

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

Date: 29 Jan 93 23:23:16 EST
From: Rob Bailey <[e-mail]>
Subject: AppleTalk Docs Wanted


Can anyone point me to a good source (preferably on-line!)  describing
Appletalk (and Localtalk?) in detail? The Apple doc's aren't going to
be available for a while, and I'd like to know as much about it as
possible. I'm looking for a pretty complete description, including as
many of the OSI-like layers as possible (i.e., I want to know both
about the voltages and such as well as the bit, byte, and packetizing
protocols).


Thanks...

 ...Rob Bailey    [e-mail]   [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Euee S. Jang)
Subject: Information Request: DECT
Organization: UB
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 12:32:14 GMT


DECT (Digital European Cordless Telecommunications) information
needed:

I am considering the DECT for the environment for my experiment.
Right now, I am having difficulties in finding out the details in
DECT. I got some articles but it is just an introduction.  Does
someone have any kind of detail in DECT?


Erik

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

Subject: Charge Those 900 Calls
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 07:09:04 EST
From: John R. Levine <[e-mail]>


In the January edition of the Pocket OAG, there is a large ad
encouraging you to dial 0 900 339 3000 and charge the call to your
AT&T calling card.  This particular number is "OAG Flight Call", a
service which gives frequently updated airline flight status for 17
major airports.  It costs 95 cents per minute.  I dialed 0 900 339
3000, and got the AT&T tinkle even though my dial-1 carrier is Sprint,
because 900 numbers aren't routed by dial-1 carrier.  I dialed 0 to
ask the operator how much the call would cost -- she couldn't tell.
She bounced me to a supervisor, he couldn't tell, either, so he passed
me to business customer service.  The person there said that it is
indeed 95 cents/minute and he thought that the usual calling card
surcharge would apply, but wasn't sure.

Small print in the ad said "Trial offer where billing is available
12/1/92 - 1/31/93."  When I tried calling with my AT&T card, the call
went through.  I hung up when the greeting said if I hung up now
there'd be no charge.  We'll see.  Attempts to use my local telco
calling card got a recording saying that this card is not valid for
this service.

For variety, I tried 0 900 555 5555, the USA Today info line which
gained considerably notoriety as 800 555 5555, again found the local
telco card didn't work.  My AT&T card got a "thank you", it rang for a
while, and I ended up talking to an AT&T operator who had no idea how
I'd arrived there.


Regards,

John Levine, [e-mail], {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl

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

From: [e-mail] (Michael Hrybyk)
Subject: Multiplexing Voice Over Fibre Cheaply
Date: 28 Jan 1993 00:54:50 GMT
Organization: Univ. of British Columbia - Central Networking
Reply-To: [e-mail]


We have SL-1 switches here on campus, and have increasing amounts of
fibre connecting the buildings. Our telco staff keeps arguing for
running more copper pairs between buildings to the switch, noting that
the cost is prohibitive to put in fibre gear.

Does anyone know of cheap fibre muxes for voice? Gandalf sells one,
but it is reputed to be $1k per port.

Thanks in advance.


Mike

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

From: [e-mail] (Jeff Wasilko)
Subject: Telecom Books (Capacity Planning)?
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 10:42:53 EST
Organization: Univ of Fnord; Roslyn's Cafe Div.
Reply-To: [e-mail]


Following John Higdon's comments on intra-state calls (bypass), I'd
like to get a feel for how many decicated Long-distance circuits we'd
need to cover our needs.

Where can I find books on capacity planning (Erlangs and all that)?

SNET wants to raise intrastate LD rates to a flat 25 cents per minute!
My AT&T rep also tells me that the LD companies are trying (without
much success) to get the state split into multiple LATAs so that there
can be competition for inter-LATA calls ...


Jeff

Jeff's Oasis at Home.   Jeff can also be reached at work at:
                                         [e-mail]

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

Date: 29 Jan 93 13:15:45 EST
From: PAUL MIGLIORELLI <[e-mail]>
Subject: Voice Paging Services


Does anyone know if there are any firms in New York City that offer
any type of voice paging services to the general public?  Or is this
type of service only available on an in-house basis within companies?


Thanks.

Paul Migliorelli  718-353-2865

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

From: Joe Smooth <[e-mail]>
Subject: Novatel Help Needed
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 13:19:43 GMT


Does anybody out there have a service manual for the Novatel 8320 or
8305 transportable cellular phone? If so, please e-mail me! Thanks a
lot!

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

From: [e-mail] (Ed Greenberg)
Subject: Last Laugh! ATM History
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 11:27:32 GMT


In the dark ages of ATM History, Chemical Bank had Chemical Cash
Machines in various locations around New York City.

Do you remember a spoof ad in, I believe, {Screw} Magazine?  The
picture showed a "lady of the evening" standing at a Chemical Cash
Machine.  The copy went something like:

   When your needs are Chemical, Her reaction is financial.
   She may not offer much interest in your deposit, but her vault
   will open when you flash your long green.  Bank on it!


Edward W. Greenberg  | Home: [phone] | [e-mail]
1600 Stokes St. #24  | Work: [phone] | DoD#: 0357
San Jose, CA  95126  | Fax:  [phone] | KM6CG (ex WB2GOH)


[Moderator's Note: Times change with the technology, don't they ...
while "ladies of the evening' (or people of the evening, if we wish
tobe non-sexist about it) are in abundance in most places, more and
more purveyors in the oldest profession are working in the phone rooms
instead; the income is probably as good and certainly the risks which
accompany direct meetings of this sort are eliminated.  An old, old
line of work uses all the new technology!   PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #52
*****************************











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Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 11:03:03 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #53

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 31 Jan 93 11:03:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 53

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Clinton Speaks; White House Phones Go Haywire (TELECOM Moderator)
    New Country Codes Assigned to Some CIS Nations (David Leibold)
    New  "Electronic Highway" for Canada (Tyson MacAulay)
    Need Information on EM Radiation For Mobile Phones (Steven P. Mazurek)
    I Want to Pay For a Local Call (Paulo Santos)
    Modems For LEGAL Use in Germany (James R. Perry III)
    Australian Phone Test Numbers ([e-mail])
    NET "Infopath" (Dale R. Worley)
    Norway D.A. (was Overseas Directory Assistance) (Carl Moore)
    Novatel PTR825 Wiring and Programming (Jack Lowry)
    Why Did ATT Do This? (Paul M. Wexelblat)
    Distinctive Ringing - How Widespread? (James H. Thompson)
    More Questions About Distinctive Ringing (Paul M. Wexelblat)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1993 16:36:11 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Subject: Clinton Speaks; White House Phones Go Haywire


On Friday, January 29 at about 12:40 PM Central Standard Time,
President Clinton made his expected announcement regarding gay people
and the United States Armed Forces.

Phone traffic to 202-456-1414 (White House main switchboard number)
and 202-456-1111 (President Clinton's telephone representatives --
people employed to respond in the name of the president to the thous-
ands of daily callers who wish to speak with him from around the
United States and the world) had been at record levels for several
days.

One problem was that the several hundred new employees starting with
Clinton (as opposed to the several hundred others there all the time
regardless of who is president) had not been given their direct-dial
extension numbers, and they were forced to call through the 456-1414
number until they could learn their own extension number. Many of the
extension numbers were in flux; phones were being moved around and
re-assigned, etc ...

Add to that the fact that our new president is, depending on who you
ask, either very popular or very disliked -- but all agree he has said
and done some things certain to generate much controversy, the most
recent example of which was the 'gays and the military' announcement
on Friday afternoon which followed several weeks of wondering if he
would actually keep that promise.  Numerous magazines and newspapers
for the gay community in recent issues have run blurbs in prominent
places similar to this:

        "Gays and the Military? What do you think?
        Tell President Clinton your opinion: 1-202-456-1111"

So ... the normal increase in phone traffic due to a government in
transition accompanied by an aroused citizenry more willing than ever
to use the telephone to give our president a piece of their mind pro
and con -- mostly con, I might add :( based on reports from telecom
management at the White House -- finally brought the system to a
screaming halt on Thursday and again on Friday for awhile. The switch
serving the White House simply crashed from the volume of traffic.

They'd reboot it, it would run awhile and crash again. Finally it
looked like everything was restored, then came the Friday afternoon
announcement making it official .... boom!  All afternoon and evening
Friday, getting calls into or out of the White House was difficult at
best, with several hundred thousand calls in a four hour period on
Friday afternoon getting deliberatly blocked ('all circuits are busy,
try your call again later please') by C&P Telephone and bounced back
to wherever they came from.

As of Saturday afternoon as I write this, calls to 202-456-1111 are
sometimes getting through (I dialed eight times; got ringing signal
twice; busy three times and re-order signal three times, but no
deliberate turn-aways by C&P).

As a closing note, employees in the 'White House Comments Office' (the
official name for the people who take telephone calls for the
president) are greatly dismayed by the nature of the calls they have
recieved. The job requires thick skin to begin with, but the 'gays and
the military' thing has apparently produced some of the most hateful
and obscene calls those poor folks have ever had to endure, and some
of them have been there for years, responding to telephone calls on
behalf of the resident president then in office. Intelligent, and very
well-reasoned comments on both sides of the issue are a rarity, it
seems, with hatred and bigotry spilling out of the telephone receiver
the norm. How many times per hour would *you* be willing to answer a
phone call which featured such comments as "Those fu----- fags! They're
going to try to ##$$$ all our #$$## soldiers!" ... "Those queers can
(fill in the phrase)" ... etc ad nauseum. A couple staffers left in
tears Friday afternoon -- some of the calls were so vicious. Quite a
few callers even complained that 'All My Children' had been pre-empted.

Emergency White House communications were not affected by the fiasco
on the public network Thursday and Friday; President Clinton's ability
to communicate with world leaders and the military was unimpeded since
that is a different system entirely.


Patrick Townson

(My .signature for this article comes courtesy of a C&P employee who
reads the Digest and was in on the action Friday afternoon. He noted
sadly, "those traditional family values: hatred, viciousness and
bigotry ... alive and well despite the transition."  Yeah ... :(  PAT

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

Date: Sat, 30 Jan 93 23:15:22 EST
From: David Leibold <[e-mail]>
Subject: New Country Codes Assigned to Some CIS Nations


The {Bell News} (Bell Canada, Bell Ontario division) of 25 January '93
has the following report on some new country code assignments:

     ----

Four more countries shed USSR country dialing codes:

Four of the countries once included in the USSR, now have their own
country dialing codes for long distance calls.

The codes, recently assigned by the International Telecommunications
Union (ITU), are:

* Lithuania   370
* Latvia      371
* Estonia     372
* Moldova     373

Anyone calling these countries should use these country codes.
Telephone bills will show that calls were made to those specific
countries rather than to the USSR or to the interim name, CIS (the
Commonwealth of Independent States).

Before the ITU could assign country dialing codes, a number of issues,
including boundaries and country names, had to be resolved through the
United Nations.

The four countries have negotiated and signed agreements with
Teleglobe for billing of international calls and the Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has given its
approval.

(end of article)

      -----

(Notes: 37 was the country code used for East Germany before German
reunification; 37 is now out of service and country code 49 now covers
all of Germany. Thus, new three-digit country codes of the form 37x
are available for assignment).


[e-mail]  [e-mail]  ... or 1:250/730 Fidonet

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

From: [e-mail] (Tyson MacAulay)
Subject: New  "Electronic Highway" For Canada
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 07:59:39 EST


          From {The Financial Post}, Jan 21, 1993

          Canada will have a super-speed "electronic highway" in five
years if a $585 million plan unveiled yesterday by a consortium of
Canadian technology and research leaders goes ahead.

          The Canadian Netwrok for the Advancement of Research,
Industry and Education - known as CANARIE - said the first phase of
the network will cost $115 million by 1994, with the second phase
costing a further $470 million in total direct and indirect
investment.

          A third phase would involve a further $600 million in direct
and indirect investment between 1997 and 1999.

          The so-called highway will electronically link the myriad
individual research groups across Canada, to permit a rapid exchange of
information and technology.

         Proponents of the new high-speed network said it is necessary
to keep Canada competitive.  The US network, called NSFnet, can
transmit 1.5 million bits per second.  In cotrast, CA*net only sends
56,000 bits per second.

          CANARIE will also set up an experiemental test network by
the end of 1994. The lines for this network will be jointly provided
by Stentor, a group of Canada's major telephone companies, and
competitor Unitel Communications.

    ---------

Now ... I have a question for the telecom-gods in the States:

          Could someone tell me how old NSFnet is?  And who might be
the owners/operators of NSFnet?  Any other details about NSFnet would
be greatly appreciated.  Please excuse my ignorance.


Tyson Macaulay   Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario  Canada (where else?)

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

From: [e-mail] (Steven P. Mazurek)
Subject: Need Information on EM Radiation For Mobile Phones
Organization: Ameritech, Hoffman Estates, IL
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 15:32:07 GMT


The following post is for another group. I will take direct emails on
their behalf; unfortunately, I won't be able to monitor for follow up
posts.

Please respond directly to the author, if possible.

                    Thanks...

   ---------------------- 8< snip! ------------------------

I am seeking individuals performing research on the effects of
electro-magnetic radiation on the human physiology.  Given recent
press about the health hazards of portable mobile phones, my company,
is seeking information that supports or counters the view that EM
radiation in the 800-900 MHz portion of the radio spectrum is harmful.

Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.


Mark Beckner   Ameritech Mobile Communications
708 765 5880   708 765 3709 fax   [e-mail]

 ----------------------- 8< snip! ------------------------


Steven P. Mazurek             | Email : {...,uunet,bcr,ohumc}!ameris!smazu
Ameritech Services            |         [e-mail]
Hoffman Estates, IL USA 60196 | Phone : [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Paulo Santos)
Subject: I Want to Pay For a Local Call
Organization: College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1993 22:12:30 GMT


In general, I like the idea of a flat rate for local telephone
service, with no per call charges.

I also like itemized billing to have a record of some calls.  I don't
send certified letters any more.  If I want a receipt of delivery of a
written message to an addressee, I just fax the message.  The long
distance charge on my bill will be evidence that I sent something to
the other party's fax.  Much cheaper, much faster.

But I can't do this for local calls.  Local calls are not itemized.  I
have resorted to dialing local calls with my calling card just to get
an itemized entry, but I don't like it.  It is an expensive solution
and I can't autodial from the fax machine.

So here is an idea for the local companies.  How about a *nn service
to provide call detail on certain calls, at a reasonable cost (say,
10c to 25c per call).  I would dial *nn nnn-nnnn, and the call would
go through as ususal as an untimed local call.  The call would appear
itemized and charged accordingly on my local phone bill.

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 04:15 PST
From: [e-mail] (James R. Perry III)
Subject: Modems For LEGAL Use in Germany


I'm looking for a AT-bus compatible 1/2 card modem that can be legally
used in Germany (modems that do NOT pass German telecomm regulations
result in VERY high fines)... as in manufactured in the US, Taiwan,
South Korea, etc. ... CCITT, not Bell standard, anything from 2400
baud upwards. It is my understanding that CHEAP modems available in
Germany start at $300 and upwards. This is for a friend of mine who
lives there and has to live with German regulatory standards.

Please E-mail replies to me, as I usually don't follow this newsgroup.

Replies from vendors especially welcome.


Thanks,

A.Lizard   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Australian Phone Test Numbers
Date: 30 Jan 1993 21:11:39 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway


  Here are some Australian test numbers.

These numbers will read the telephone number back to you using a
computer generated voice, the numbers are:

   19123 (Most widely used, most states)
   1231  (Works in Adelaide)
   1111
   11544
   [phone] (Toll free number, has very poor comp generated voice!)

In my experience none of these numbers will work from a public
telephone.  Instead you will hear "no information to identify
telephone number".

   In most Australian states the ringback number is 199.  In some
areas though the ringback number is 199XX (Where XX is the last two
digits of your town/suburb code transposed).  For example if your
number is 417 2960 the ringback number will be 19971.

    Another interesting "code" is *0000 which when entered on a
CREDITPHONE (the public telephones that take credit cards) will
display statistics on the number of calls made from the phone and the
number of metering pulses.

   If you have any other test numbers etc please send them to me at:

    [e-mail]


Best Wishes,

Henry

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

From: [e-mail] (Dale R. Worley)
Subject: NET "Infopath"
Date: 30 Jan 93 16:55:27
Organization: MIT Dept. of Tetrapilotomy, Cambridge, MA, USA


New England Telephone has some sort of data communications service
called "Infopath".  Does anybody know what it is and how it is
organized?


Thanks,

Dale Worley        Dept. of Math., MIT        [e-mail]

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

Date: Sat, 30 Jan 93 19:00:01 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Norway D.A. (was Overseas Directory Assistance)


It was written that 011-47-0180 "worked just fine" to get Norway
directory assistance from the U.S.  Are you saying 0180 is the number
you dial within Norway to get directory assistance?  I am reading from
a British Telecom guide to foreign city codes and it says that when
calling from outside Norway, omit leading zero from the area (i.e.,
city) code.  I don't know how directory assistance fits in or does not
fit in with this rule about the leading zero.

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

From: [e-mail] (jack lowry)
Subject: Novatel PTR825 Wiring and Programming
Organization: Prism Medical Systems
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1993 21:51:33 GMT


I have a NOVATEL PTR825 handheld cellular phone, one of it's features
is the ability to be connected up to do hand free operation.  I note
that there are two small earphone type jacks on the bottom of the
phone, in addition to the external antenna connetion. Can anyone give
me the specifics on what connects to each jack, ie speaker 8 ohm etc.

Also, I'd like to know how to change the security codes on the phone.


Thanks,

Jack   wb3ffv!pribal!jackl

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

From: [e-mail] (Paul M. Wexelblat)
Subject: Why Did ATT Do This?
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Univ. of Lowell CS Dept.
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1993 20:36:17 GMT


After reading here a couple of tales about the superiority of an ATT
calling card over a local phone co card (NYNEX for me), I called ATT
today to ask for one, they told me that there was no reason to have
both, and talked me out of it.

Of course I can no longer remember any of the arguements for the ATT
card, can you?


Thanks,

Wex


[Moderator's Note: AT&T cards now use numbers which are unbillable by
other long distance companies and AOS outfits. This means you can't be
accidentally tricked into making a call from a COCOT and later getting
billed your life savings when you thought you were calling via AT&T.
The local telco cards are still using numbers the 'others' can bill
to. That would be the primary difference.   PAT]

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

From: James H. Thompson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Distinctive Ringing - How Widespread?
Organization: VeriFone
Date: 31 Jan 93 00:11:19 -1000


I'm looking for information how widespread the availability of
distinctive ringing services are.  Would appreciate any suggestions on
where to find this data.


Thanks,

James H. Thompson      [e-mail]    (Internet)
VeriFone Inc.          uunet!verifone!jimmy_t  (UUCP)
100 Kahelu Avenue      808-623-2911            (Phone)
Mililani, HI 96789     808-625-3201            (FAX)


[Moderator's Note: I think almost all the Bell companies have this
feature available on their newer switches.  Anyone have precise data
on this and the other recent additions like screening, etc?  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Paul M. Wexelblat)
Subject: More Questions on Distinctive Ringing
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Univ. of Lowell CS Dept.
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1993 20:05:34 GMT


I noted (in another posting here?) that some telcos offer a selective
ring service (two numbers that ring differently on the same line.

Q1: Is this basically a two part line with both parties on the same drop?
Q2: Does anyone make an answering machine that detecte selective rings?
    This would be a great hack for folks cheaply to have "two lines"
    one of which had an answering machine on it.  Your friends could
    choose which line to call on depending...
Q3: What is the incremental cost for this service?

Another question: Does anyone have a feeling for the number of phone
numbers per person in the US these days of running out of numbers

And an observation ...

While looking for info on the selective ring option, I picked up my
local (at the University in Lowell MA) NYNEX directory.  I was
surprised to see that it covered some areas in NH (The front info
pages 58 of them cover info for both MA and NH -- mostly integrated as
opposed to two separate sections.)  Is this unique (multiple states in
one directory)? (N.B. listings for NH include area code, local MA
listings do not; 95% of the listings are MA.)



Wex


[Moderator's Note: It works much like a party line, with a different
ringing cadence for each number. Most such arrangements will handle up
to three numbers on one line (regular ring, short double ring) (long
double ring). There are devices available which will route calls to
answering machine, fax, modem or voice depending on the way the
ringing is done. IBT charges $4.50 for the first additional number
attached to the main line and I think $3.50 for additional numbers. PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #53
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #54

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 31 Jan 93 18:05:40 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 54

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: AppleTalk Docs Wanted (Andrew Klossner)
    Re: AppleTalk Docs Wanted (Brad S. Hicks)
    Re: "Advanced Switching" at SWBT (Andy Sherman)
    Re: "Advanced Switching" at SWBT (John Higdon)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (sic) Harminc
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (sic) (Mike Gambill)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (sic) (Spyros Bartsocas)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Ron Dippold)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Joe Bergstein)
    Re: DMS-100 Bug? (Hans Lachman)
    Re: DMS-100 Bug? (Brent Capps)
    Re: 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized (David Lesher)
    Re: 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized (John Higdon)
    Re: 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized (Lorne Schachter)
    Re: 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized (Carl Moore)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Andrew Klossner)
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 13:00:41 PST
Subject: Re: AppleTalk Docs Wanted
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Tektronix Color Printers, Wilsonville, Oregon


> "Can anyone point me to a good source (preferably on-line!)
> describing Appletalk (and Localtalk?) in detail? The Apple
> doc's aren't going to be available for a while ..."

The definitive reference is the book "Inside AppleTalk, Second
Edition" by Sidhu et al, published by Addison Wesley.  It's been in
stock at technical bookstores for years.  Everything you asked for is
in this book.  Be sure not to get the "first edition" which is
obsolete.

I don't know of any on-line documents.  I don't know of any "Apple
docs which aren't going to be available for a while."


Andrew Klossner  ([e-mail])

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

From: mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=[e-mail]
Date: 31 Jan 93 20:33:13 GMT
Subject: Re: AppleTalk Docs Wanted


> Can anyone point me to a good source (preferably on-line!)  describing
> Appletalk (and Localtalk?) in detail? ...

I know of no on-line source.  But for the level of detail you asked
for, there IS only one source: Gursharan Sidhu et al, {Inside
AppleTalk, Second Edition} (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1990).
Hardcover, $34.95.  "We loved it.  It was much better than Cats.  We
will see it again and again."  ANYBODY is responsible for Macintosh
networks should have (and if possible, read) a copy of this book, and
yes, it does answer all of the specific questions you asked.

There is an OK chapter on AppleTalk networking in Mark Miller,
{Troubleshooting Internetworks} (San Mateo, Calif: M&T Books, 1991).
Trade paperback, $34.95.  Its strength is that it gives practical
examples of using a NGC Sniffer and its packet traces to isolate
particular problems on AppleTalk networks, both on LocalTalk and on
ethernet.

These are the two books that I depend on, day-to-day.


J. Brad Hicks     Internet: mc![e-mail]
X.400: c=US admd=ATTMail prmd=MasterCard sn=Hicks gn=Brad

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 16:35:14 EST
Subject: Re: "Advanced Switching" at SWBT
From: [e-mail] (Andy Sherman)


On 26 Jan 93 19:37:21 GMT, [e-mail] (Chris
Petrilli) said:

> I was also SHOCKED at the cost of running a T1 line from the 83X
> exchange (North Austin) to the AT&T POP (downtown) which is roughly
> 15 miles.  The cost was MORE than the cost from AT&T for a T1 line
> from their Austin POP to Dallas.  Somehow I don't think this is
> reasonable.

Disgusting though it may be, shocking it is not.  Back in my days with
AT&T Medical Diagnostic Systems, I worked on a proposal for a
nationwide network which started out as T1's going from 93 sites into
five regional hubs.  Over 40% of the estimated monthly charge was
local loops from the customer to the AT&T POP (which is money being
billed by AT&T on behalf of the LEC), although loops where nowhere
near 40% of the line mileage.

The next iteration was a SKYNET(R) proposal, with a Ku-band dish at
each site.  *MUCH* cheaper.

(Unfortunately, the customer never got the money for the project...)


Andy Sherman   Salomon Inc  -  Unix Systems Support  -  Rutherford, NJ
[phone]  -  [e-mail] or [e-mail]
"These opinions are mine, all *MINE*.  My employer can't have them."

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 09:41 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: "Advanced Switching" at SWBT


[e-mail] (Chris Petrilli) writes:

>     1) She had no clue what T3/DS3 service was, and said that SWBT
> didn't provide it and she had no way of pricing it.

>     2) Told me that I was "very lucky" that I was in the 83X
> using a ESS1A".

> I don't know about everyone else, but while the 1A is a nice switch
> and all, it doesn't quite qualified for "most advanced switch" even
> with 100 adjuct boxes on it.

> I was also SHOCKED at the cost of running a T1 line from the 83X

At the risk of sounding like a Pac*Bell shill, a few comments are in
order. Over the years I have accused Pac*Bell (and its pre-divestiture
incarnation, Pacific Telephone) of being the most backward LEC in the
country. It seemed as though about five to seven years after something
was commonplace in other parts of the country, Pac*Bell finally got
around to offering it.

No more is this the case. In fact, in yesterday's {Chronicle}, there
was an article wherein Pac*Bell acknowledged the past and spoke of its
goal to become the nation's most advanced LEC in short order. This
will be accomplished by the rapid upgrading of every single switch to
digital, replacing the 1/1AESS equipment still in service on an
accelerated basis.

As to digital circuits, Pac*Bell now almost begs customers to take
POTS on T1. There is no extra charge. Already reasonably priced, point
to point hi-cap will have the bottom dropped out of the pricing
structure in August.

And at no time do you ever get a rep (at least I don't) that says
something stupid such as "We don't offer that service ...", unless, of
course, the company really does not (such as Caller-ID). Add to that
the lack of silly restrictions such as limiting the number of
residence lines that can be installed and the lack of screwy
definitions as to what constitutes residence service, and you have
(already) a progressive LEC.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 00:46:41 EST
From: Tony Harminc <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (sic)


[e-mail] (Alan Munn) wrote:

> Is it possible to connect directly to directory assistance in other
> countries?

[Calling Brazil DA via MCI]

> When I asked to speak directly to the Brazilian operator she
> refused.  I then talked to an MCI supervisor who said we couldn't
> speak directly to the operator,

> Why wouldn't MCI (although I assume this is common practice) let us
> talk directly to the operator?

The usual reason given is that in some countries DA operators are not
distinguished from inward operators, and therefore if the local telco
let you speak directly, particularly in a language the local operator
did not understand, you might ask the distant operator to connect you
to your party rather than just for the number.

Of course the local operator would get suspicious after a while, but
with the amount of time it takes overseas DA to get the number in many
cases, a five or ten minute call might take place before anyone
noticed.


Tony Harminc


[Moderator's Note: It is interesting you mention this. Quite some time
ago when the USA was only about 80 percent direct-dialable with the
other twenty percent either on manual exchanges (or possibly on a dial
exchange but not yet in the overall network) there were instances when
in calling Directory Assistance somewhere the answering operator would
have to connect the call to the local telco in the town where directory
was desired. Now if it was a manual exchange, the answering operator
was supposed to inform the caller that to get information for that
place they should call their long distance operator and ask *her* to
get it for them. But sometimes instead they would ring the manual
exchange, and when the operator there answered, the operator who
picked up the directory call in the first place would hasten to tell
the other end 'operator, this call is for directory only, do not ring
or connect the party ...' but still, in some of those little backward
places, the local operator would look up the number (if she did not
know it by heart) and invariably ask the caller, 'should I ring it for
you?' ... and of course the caller would say okay, and his call would
be for free over 555-1212.  There are still instances where the answer-
operator at 555-1212 has to connect the inquiry to some local telco
which does not share its listings with the (typically a Bell) company
which maintains the 555-1212 listings for the area (generally because
they do not want to pay Bell to do it and feel they can do it cheaper)
but the manuals are all gone. I notice in the case of directory calls
to 809 the operators in South Carolina (where 809-555-1212 is first
picked up) still advise the operator on some of the little islands
that 'this is a directory call only ... do not connect the party.'  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Mike Gambill)
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (sic)
Date: 31 Jan 93 02:53:46 GMT
Organization: U S WEST NewVector Group, Inc.


In response to the post I would like to clarify the use of the IOC ...
as a recent escapee of AT&T I feel obligated to clear up the belief
that the IOC is an inefficient office.  First, Pittsburgh is hardly
the place to be productive.  Second, the IOC is *EXTREMELY*
understaffed for the inbound call volume.  Third, the IOC still must
use cord boards to reach some third world countries ... not all cord
board facilities allow the operator to camp the caller on the line
with the distant party, thus the "dead air" while the operator checks
with the distant telco for the requested number.  I admit that sitting
on a dead line is somewhat unnerving, but is sometimes a necessity.
Please be patient with the operators ... they may seem messed up, but
are really a GREAT group of dedicated people who put up with a lot of
crap!

Sidenote: AT&T also operates the most comprehensive overseas DA
service in existence today ... there have been times the "other" long
distance companies have referred customers to IOC DA for their
international calling needs!  :)


[Moderator's Note: Oh indeed, the IOC is a busy place and needs more
help at times, I am sure. Late Sunday nights trying to call places in
the mideast (where Monday morning and a new work week has begun) come
to mind -- the delays out of Pittsburgh IOC can be horrendous, and it
is not their fault New Delhi won't respond in a timely way. Regards
cord boards and the splitting of connections however, I also know
quite well how cord boards work, and the key can be left open; she
does not have to close the key and use another pair. Some split the
connection, I suspect, just to show who is boss.  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 09:22:07 +0200
From: [e-mail] (Spyros Bartsocas)
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (sic)


> [Moderator's Note: Yes and no. No, you are not supposed to dial
> international DA direct (no, people in other countries cannot dial
> 555-1212 in this country -- I don't think), and yes, it can be done in

Until two or three years ago, it was possible to call US directory
assistnce by calling +1-xxx-555-1212.  What I have done since it
stopped working is call the AT&T direct line, and ask the operator to
connect me with DA for a particular area.  They always do.


Spyros Bartsocas

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

From: [e-mail] (Ron Dippold)
Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 18:20:01 GMT


[e-mail] (Paul Robinson) writes:

> Sears Roebuck & Company's Mail Order Catalog Division is closing after
> more than 95 years.  It was the use of telecommunications that built
> the business and it was the failure to use telecommunications that
> killed it.

I wonder if AT&T is going to yank that commercial - the one about how
they managed to reroute Sears's calls when one of their phone centers
was unable to function during the Christmas season ... I'm pretty sure
that was Sears.  They probably figured they'd get a bit more mileage
out of that one.

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

From: [e-mail] (Joe Bergstein)
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 09:28:38 -0500
Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years


> Sears Roebuck & Company's Mail Order Catalog Division is closing
> after more than 95 years.

> Until last year, incredibly enough, SEARS CATALOG DID NOT HAVE
> AN 800 NUMBER.

Aside from the Donnelly company which printed the Sears catalogs,
another big telecommunications loser will be SPRINT, which has had the
privilege of handling the hundreds of thousands of calls to
1-800-366-3000 for SEARS catalog sales.  Sears' Sprint account rep
better get hustling on new business!

BTW, you can still order from Sears catalog until all their merchan-
dise is exhausted.

I guess that Sears will sell its mailing list to raise cash, and those
of us who've ever ordered from the Sears catalog will now be bombarded
with calls, letters, and catalogs from other mail order houses!

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

From: [e-mail] (Hans Lachman)
Subject: Re: DMS-100 Bug?
Organization: Netcom
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 10:03:29 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Hans
Lachman) writes:

> My home phone line is acting funny, and I was wondering if any of you
> CO experts might know what the problem is.  It acts exactly as if I
> had three-way calling (which I don't), but no matter what number I
> dial (on the secondary dial tone), I always get a fast-busy tone
> instead of having my call put through.

Thanks to all who responded.  Several respondents explained that the
above scenario might occur for someone who has Call Waiting and not
Three Way Calling.  In that case, the secondary dial tone will accept
the Cancel Call Waiting feature code, but not other numbers.  Thus,
the most likely explanation is that my line was accidentally assigned
the Cancel Call Waiting feature.

Pacific Bell has already fixed my line -- so I can't test whether I
actually had Call Waiting for free for two weeks.  I don't know why
the behavior changed two weeks ago since there were no legitimate
changes in my service at that time.  Perhaps the janitor in the
switchroom bumped something. :-) At any rate, I'm glad it now works as
before, because I prefer the notion that hanging up, even if for one
second, really means hanging up (I am not a fan of the "flash"
interpretation).


Hans Lachman    [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Brent Capps)
Subject: Re: DMS-100 Bug?
Organization: Atlas Telecom Inc.
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 19:43:42 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Hans
Lachman) writes:

> In other words, if I am on one call, and I hang up for one or two
> seconds, I get a dial tone as three short bursts initially, then
> continuous.  Then I dial any number, and always get fast-busy.  Then,
> I hang up for another one or two seconds and find that the first call
> is still there (i.e., as if it were on hold).  This is odd since I do
> not have a second line, three-way calling, or any kind of "hold"
> service.  It only started doing this two weeks ago.

For some reason you're getting special dial tone for some reason.
There are literally hundreds of features that use SDT, not just 3WC.
I'd have your BOC check to see if you're line's been accidentally
programmed with the wrong feature -- say you've been hotlined to a
particular feature access code, or an extra feature assigned to your
line like cut-through dialing.

Back when I worked on DMS-100 Centrex, we discovered a wierd feature
interaction bug between 3WC and call waiting such that an incoming call
would take down any existing conversation and immediately connect the
new caller to the originator of the previously existing call without any
notification of any kind.  You'd be talking to one person then suddenly
you'd be talking to someone entirely different.  It was like something
out of the Twilight Zone.

We called it "Call Snatch".


Brent Capps   [e-mail] (gay stuff)
[e-mail] (telecom stuff)

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

From: David Lesher <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 19:10:47 EST
Reply-To: [e-mail]  (David Lesher)
Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex


JH said:

> But here is the best part. It was possible to omit the area code if
> you happened to be calling within the metro Bay Area, even if your
> call crossed area code boundaries until 1982.

Well DC/MD/VA local calls were "area code free" for decades, too, but
I'm not sure if that's comparing apples and oranges ;-}

MD split Blatimore off of 301 last year. Of course, there's been a big
PR campaign, with ads, notices in the phone book, etc, etc. Permissive
dialing ended in November.

As part of my current dispute with See and Pee, I just got a letter
from a Very Senior Person in their Baltimore office.  Any CDT'ers care
to guess the area code listed on the letterhead ;-?  Oh well, that's
better then the letter from the President's droid -- it does not HAVE a
number on it.


wb8foz

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 07:58 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized


On Jan 27 at 19:10, David Lesher writes:

> Well DC/MD/VA local calls were "area code free" for decades, too, but
> I'm not sure if that's comparing apples & oranges ;-}

That is true. And I remember when I was there about eleven years ago,
you could reach most areas in the "metro" using 202, whether that was
the "official" area code or not. A friend in Vienna, VA could be
reached with 202, but the actual area code was 703.

But in the case of 415/408, these were two separate areas (no central
core involved) whose codes could not be interchanged when called from
the outside world.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Lorne Schachter)
Subject: Re: 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 12:59:58 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (John
Higdon) writes:

> But here is the best part. It was possible to omit the area code if
> you happened to be calling within the metro Bay Area, even if your
> call crossed area code boundaries until 1982. In other words, up until
> eleven years ago, San Francisco was a seven digit call from San
> Jose -- even though the NPA had been split more than TWENTY YEARS
> previously!

I remember doing that while I was a student at Berkeley in the mid
70's.  The real problem came in when you had to use the correct area
code in the 80's and I would always forget which one I had to use
depending on where I called.


Lorne Schachter

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 13:16:55 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized


410 in Maryland is now fully cut over after being split from 301.  The
permissive dialing lasted ONE YEAR, from Nov. 1991 to Nov. 1992.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #54
*****************************










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Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 19:19:02 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #55

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 31 Jan 93 19:19:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 55

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: How To Fix Genuine 900 Errors? (Matt Healy)
    Re: How To Fix Genuine 900 Errors? (Larry Cipriani)
    Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ... (Gary L. Russell)
    Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ... (Martin McCormick)
    Re: Telecom Management Degrees (David Kilcy)
    Re: Telecom Management Degrees (Timothy C. Wilson)
    AT&T Public Phone 2000 Bills, Five Months Later (John Nagle)
    Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Credit Card Bug (Jordan Hayes)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Jeff Groves)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Mark Bergman)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Mark Bacchus)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Will Middelaer)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Carl Moore)
    Re: Call Forwarding From One Line (Dave Levenson)
    Re: Call Forwarding From One Line (Steve Forrette)
    Re: Holiday Overseas Callbacks From Bell Canada Operators (Ken Weaverling)
    Re: Holiday Overseas Callbacks From Bell Canada Operators (Carl Moore)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Matt Healy)
Subject: Re: How To Fix Genuine 900 Errors?
Organization: Yale U. - Genetics
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 00:27:01 GMT


Under the Fair Credit Act, if your friend is ever denied credit based
on this case then she can insist on seeing a copy of the credit report
that caused the denial of credit and place a statement in her file
which they *must* report.

She should also complain to state and local officials, such as the
Public Utilities Commission.  Perhaps she should also notify Florida
officials.

If she can find a listing for this outfit in Miami, perhaps she can
attempt a collect call to *them* although I imagine they will refuse
it.  Maybe she can manage a way of calling them from a coin-operated
phone and work it so they get billed back?


Matt Healy    [e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 09:14:09 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: How To Fix Genuine 900 Errors?
Organization: Ideology Busters, Inc.


In article <[e-mail]> is written:

> She only moved to St. Louis last July and has only had this phone
> number since then.  Unfortunately, she did not keep her phone bills,
> but she is 100% certain that she has seen them all, none of them had a
> bill for this number on them, and she has never called SWBT to demand
> the removal of a charge.

She should ask copies of her past phone bills; telcos keep these
records for a while.  If SWBT won't do it voluntarily they will cough
them up if presented a subpoena, maybe she can get an inexpensive
legal service to work the releavant paperwork.


Larry Cipriani, att!cbvox1!lvc or [e-mail]

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

Date: 30 Jan 1993 23:39:00 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ...


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Chuck
Munro) writes:

> Well, as a matter of fact .....

> When I was a customer of H-P (*many* years ago) I had a program on my
> HP1000 that would rapidly move the brake solenoid up and down on the
> paper tape reader.  This would result in music (quite loud if you
> placed an IBM punch card in the reader) which you could play from the
> console keyboard.  This was my first experience with a pre-MIDI
> computer music system.

The first computer I worked on in about 1964-1965 was a UNIVAC II and
it had a speaker wired directly to the bus with a volume control on
the console.

When the engineer turned the system on in the mornings and ran the
diagnostic routines he would turn the speaker up full and leave the
machine running.  No matter where he was in the computer room he could
tell if there was a problem by the sound.  Each diagnostic routine had
a distinctive sound or rhythm.

There was also a Music Maker program that we sometimes ran on the
holidays and played Christmas carols.

Another early system I worked on, an IBM 1401, would play music on a
small transistor radio that was tuned between stations.  The radio was
placed on top of the CPU.  The one song I remember was "Coming 'Round
the Mountain" which also used the 1403 printer as a rhythm section.


Gary L. Russell     Internet: [e-mail]
              or  [e-mail]

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

Subject: Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ...
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 15:27:38 -0600
From: [e-mail]


TELECOM Moderator noted:

> The Apple had a cassette jack on the back to load programs from
> tape. By making use of the little two (or maybe four) byte A/D
> converter inside, I found I could digitize my voice using a microphone
> plugged into the cassette jack then save the resulting binary on a
> floppy disk and play it back through the speaker on the Apple.

    It's even more remarkable than that.  There is no A/D or D/A
converter, at all, in the Apple II's audio input or output.  The tape
input jack feeds a common 741-style operational amplifier wired with
positive feedback to act as a Schmidt trigger. The output of the
op-amp is either at one extreme or the other.  Sine waves fed to the
input emerge as very clean square waves.  Voices and music are
converted into machine-gun bursts of variable-width pulses, a crude
version of the kind of signal found at the output of the one-bit D/A
converters in modern compact disk players.

    While the CD players and other devices designed to emit good
sound have low-pass filtering on the pulse-width output circuit, it
isn't totally necessary to work.  The Apple II speaker and our ears
provide some mechanical low-pass filtering and our brains are good
enough at recognizing speech that we can usually understand what is
said even if it isn't exactly highfi.

    Back when my primary computer was an Apple II, I played with
that feature quite a lot.  The speaker and tape out connections were
both fed with D-type flipflops and it was possible to produce the same
effect on the tape output jack as was heard on the speaker just by
changing an address.

    Each sample of digital sound required just one bit.  The
playback routine just stepped through memory, looking at each bit and
determining whether it represented a change or was just more of the
same.  When change was in order, the program would access the address
of either the speaker or the tape output to toggle the flipflop.

    IBM PC's and their cloanly cousins can produce exactly the
same type of sounds, but the strategy is a little different.  Look at
a hardware manual for details.


Martin McCormick WB5AGZ   Stillwater, OK
O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group

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

From: [e-mail] (David Kilcy)
Subject: Re: Telecom Management Degrees
Organization: State University of New York -- Institute of Technology
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 19:50:40 GMT


This is in reply to someones message who was looking for a college that
has a telecommunications management program ...

The State University of New York Institute of Technology at Utica, NY
has an excellent telecommunications program, in both management and
technical although I tend to feel its balanced more towards
management.  Its a upper-division transfer school that accepts people
with I think at least 60 credit hours.

The admissions office is:
SUNY Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome
PO Box 3050   Utica, NY 13504-3050
or phone [phone]

We have extensive equipment for our program including a full-blown
Northern Telecom DMS-10 central office, a Redcom CO, a NT Meridian 1
and tons of other equipment.


David Kilcy    Internet:  [e-mail]   SUNY Institute of Technology

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

Date: 31 Jan 1993 10:16:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: TIMOTHY C. WILSON <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Telecom Management Degrees


In reference to the inquiry of Micheal Hauben, a student at Columbia
University, in the January 12 issue of TELECOM Digest, I am currently
a third year student in a new program at Rochester Institute of
Technology (Rochester, NY).

The program title is Telecommunications Technology, and I am in the
Management option.  There is also a technical option.  The program is
offered through the College ofof Applied Science and Technolo
Currently the degree encompasses about half off of the courses in
Electronics Technology, one quarter in Computer Technology, and one
quarter in business courses (in the management option).

My background is in broadcasting (specifically television), with prior
courses in computers, electronics and business, so this fit perfectly
with my coursework up to this point.  The person to contactat RIT is
Carolarol Richardson at [e-mail] , she can give you a
more detailed look at the program.  As far as I know RIT is the only
university that offers such a program, plus there is one of the
largest cooperative education programs in the world here.  The telecom
program is small but growing.  If you have any other questions from a
student standpoint contact me at [e-mail]


Good luck,

Tim Wilson

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

From: [e-mail] (John Nagle)
Subject: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Bills, Five Months Later
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 06:58:48 GMT


I used an AT&T 2000 Public Phone at the LA Airport back in August of
1992, and today, the bill came.

      This is the phone with a keyboard and screen, and I'd used it to
call a dial-in port in LA, paying for the call with a PacTel calling
card.  I assumed that the call would be charged to the PacTel card,
and would appear on my PacTel phone bill.  But that's not what
happens.

      AT&T Services sent me a separate bill for $3.55.  $0.71 is for
the call, and $2.50 is for "keyboard usage" (one minute at $2.50, zero
additional 10 minutes at $1.00).  $.09 federal tax and $0.25 state and
local tax.

      Interestingly, the "keyboard usage" is listed as being at Los
Angeles CA, while the call is listed as being from Inglewood to Culver
City.  Is this phone, perhaps, tied directly to AT&T's network,
bypassing PacTel?  Certainly there's enough long distance traffic out
of LAX to justify bypass.  Since I was making a LOCAL call, the call
may have been routed through AT&T to the nearest gateway to PacTel,
then via PacTel to the destination.  Is this the explaination for the
strange billing?


John Nagle

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 15:20:49 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jordan Hayes)
Subject: Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Credit Card Bug
Organization: Investment Management Services Inc., NYC


Jim Knight <[e-mail]> writes:

> The terminals seem to work fine at 2400 bps with a decent but
> not great vt100 emulation.

I've found that using the termcap entry:

    d1|vt100-nam|vt100nam

helps quite a bit.


jordan

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

Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes
From: gatech!groves![e-mail]
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 20:49:30 EST
Organization: Groves BBS


[e-mail] (Monte Freeman) writes:

> [e-mail] (Tompkins) writes:

>> In one of those discussions, about a year ago, a number was posted
>> that purported to work nationally: 10732-1-404-988-9664.

>  Well, it doesn't work from 404. Here's the results of my poking around:

 From my house here in Marietta, GA (in the Atlanta Georgia LATA and
in the 404 area code) I dialed 10732-988-9664, and it read out my ANI
correctly plus and additional "8" appended to the number.  In
addition, after a few seconds the automated voice read off a long
string of "0"s and one "2".

It would appear that the 404 in number above designates the 404 area
code (the area code for Atlanta).  As a result, all that is necessary
is to dial the access code 10732 and the telephone number 988-9664.
It does not seem to matter which long distance company the phone is
picked for either.  I'm picked for MCI.


Jeff Groves

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

From: [e-mail] (Mark Bergman)
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes
Organization: Panix Public Access Internet & Unix, NYC
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 08:02:58 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Timothy
Hu) writes:

> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tompkins)
> writes:

>> that purported to work nationally: 10732-1-404-988-9664.  10732 is a
>> private ATT network.  I know that this number does return your area
>> code and number verbally from 213, 310 and 818 area codes, and I have
>> read reports from others that it works elsewhere.  It does add an
>> "eight" to the end of any number I've ever called it from.

> I tried it here in Boulder. It works!

This code works in NYC from my home phone (ATT service), but
not from the phone/PBX at work, with unknown LD service.


Mark Bergman    (Biker, Stagehand, (former) Unix user support grunt)
718-855-xxxx
[e-mail]    {cmcl2,uunet}!panix!bergman

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 09:02:00 +0000
From: Mark Bacchus <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes


> In one of those discussions, about a year ago, a number was posted
> that purported to work nationally: 10732-1-404-988-9664.  10732 is a
> private ATT network.  I know that this number does return your area
> code and number verbally from 213, 310 and 818 area codes, and I have
> read reports from others that it works elsewhere.  It does add an
> "eight" to the end of any number I've ever called it from.

This number immediately caught my eye, because my home phone number is
404-988-xxxx.  Dialing 10732-1-404-988-9664 from my house results in
the message "It is not necessary to dial a 1 or an area code for this
number".  So I tried 10732-988-9664.  This time it returned my area
code and phone number (with the "8" tacked on to the end).

I've never heard of a case where you could dial a LD carrier access
code followed by a seven digit number.  I guess you learn something
new every day.

Still waiting to see how this call will be billed!


Mark Bacchus    [e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 16:59:16 EST
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
From: [e-mail] ()


Well, it works from 315 also, and it has the 8 at the end.

Will Middelaer    N2KNU    1L at SU Law

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 17:39:06 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes


I finally tried 10732-1-404-988-9664 out exactly like that, and:

1. it worked from area 302 in Delaware;
2. it gave me an 8 at the end of the phone number I was calling from;
3. it then went on to recite a ten-digit string: all zeros except for
   a 2 at the end.

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: Call Forwarding From One Line
Organization: Westmark, Inc.
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 14:44:22 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:

> After talking on my home phone I would like to transfer that call to
> another phone number. Is there any way I can do this, other then
> buying a PBX and getting a second line.

I routinely use my key telephone system to accomplish what you want.
I answer an inbound call, decide to `transfer' it to another
off-premises party, flash the switchhook to invoke three-way calling,
add the outside party to the conversation, and then press the HOLD
button.  My holding circuit remains a party to the conversation, but
it is a very silent party, and it knows when to disconnect.

Note that you don't need a key system to do this, only three-way
calling and a HOLD button.


Dave Levenson        Internet: [e-mail]
Westmark, Inc.        UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave
Warren, NJ, USA        Voice: 908 647 0900  Fax: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: Call Forwarding From One Line
Date: 31 Jan 1993 00:24:54 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

> After talking on my home phone I would like to transfer that call to
> another phone number. Is there any way I can do this, other then
> buying a PBX and getting a second line.

> [Moderator's Note: If you intend to stay on the line with the third
> party, just use three-way callling. If not, you might try using a
> service like 'Starline' (IBT's name for it), a sort of 'home centrex'
> type service which allows calls to be transferred to another phone
> outside your premises and you to disconnect.   PAT]

This may not work in all areas.  I know that at the time I had Pacific
Bell's 'home centrex' offering, it would NOT allow you to transfer a
call outside of your centrex group, leave the line, and still have the
other two parties connected.  The low-end business version of Centrex
that was for groups of only a handful of lines didn't support this,
either.  It may have changed since then, but you would be wise to not
assume that all telcos have enabled this option for all flavors of
Centrex.


Steve Forrette,  [e-mail]

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

From: Ken Weaverling <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Holiday Overseas Callbacks From Bell Canada Operators
Date: 31 Jan 1993 07:32:22 -0500
Organization: Delaware Technical & Community College


In article <[e-mail]> The Moderator writes:

> *That* was an international call years ago.  PAT]

I've heard many stories about how long distance worked years ago with
great fascination (I grew up with direct dial).  But my question is,
"What did this all cost?"  Must have been a small fortune!


Ken Weaverling,  Sys Admin/Faith Healer,  Delaware Tech College  [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: International calls 35 years ago tended to run
about $12-15 for three minutes; that was 1950-60's money, of course.
Person to person calls were the norm; no one wanted to make a station
call overseas and waste the money if they did not reach their party.
Station calls were a little less, about $10-12 for three minutes.
There were no one minute rates and no day/night rates on international
calls. On domestic calls there were day/night rates in increments of
three minutes. Domestic long distance calls fifty years ago cost about
two dollars a minute on person to person calls; a half century ago
those were the norm rather than station calls.  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 18:21:05 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Holiday Overseas Callbacks From Bell Canada Operators


Moderator's note mentioned Miquelon.  That is a French possession next
to Newfoundland, Canada.  There was a little blurb in the digest
earlier about how is it reached from, say, Newfoundland.


[Moderator's Note: Ah, but you are referring to the islands known as
St. Pierre and Miquelon -- French possessions -- located near the
coast of Newfoundland. I was referring to a tiny little town named
Miquelon in far northern Quebec. If you find Val-D'or, then look a few
hundred miles almost straight north.  PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #55
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #56

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 31 Jan 93 20:11:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 56

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Telephone Line Bridge Info Needed (Jack Decker)
    Re: Cellular One/NY Re-bills Roaming Charges (Steve Forrette)
    Re: Freeway Call Boxes and CA Rain (Todd Inch)
    Re: Do Telcos Record the Numbers of Local Calls? (Carl Moore)
    Re: Wiring For Multi-Lines on One Jack (Pat Turner)
    Re: Differences Between ANI and Caller-ID (Brent Capps)
    Re: Alteration of Ring Cadence (Dave Levenson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 12:59:42 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: Telephone Line Bridge Info Needed


In message <[e-mail]>, rossix!amber.dnet!dan@
fernwood.mpk.ca.us (Dan Cook, Ross Escondido) writes:

> I recently created a small electronic circuit which allows me to use a
> pair of telephone lines to 'forward calls.'  What I do is call the
> first line, get bridged to the second, then dialout from there.
> (Dialtone on the second line is not accessable until the correct four
> digit DTMF password has been entered.  I also put a toll restrictor on
> the line -- just in case.)

[stuff deleted]

If you manage to do this at a reasonable cost, it would probably help
a *lot* of TELECOM Digest readers if you would publish the schematics
for your device.

In any case, here some things to consider.  If the line you are
calling is equipped with either call forwarding or three-way dialing
(or could be), you could probably get a clearer connection, and at far
less than the cost of two lines.  The best way would depend on the CO
equipment, and how calls (and custom calling features) are billed in
your area.

Let's discuss each in turn:

1) Call forwarding: Harder to implement, more costly if local calls
are metered, but generally a far superior connection (less loss) and
security is greater, and it does not prevent the phone from being used
for outgoing calls when a forwarded call is in progress.  The way it
would work is, you'd dial the line and a computer-controlled device (a
PC and perhaps a super-modem ... I think a better-grade Zyxel could
handle this) would answer and collect digits that you have
tone-dialed.  Then it would go on hook, wait a few seconds, and then
pick up the line and dial the appropriate codes to forward the call to
the desired number.  Of course, the software could verify numbers to
any degree you desire, and simply refuse to forward calls to numbers
that don't meet the proper criteria (e.g.  toll calls).  After a
couple of minutes, or after receiving a single ring on exchanges where
the phone rings once when a call has been forwarded, it would again
pick up the line and dial the code to cancel the call forwarding (of
course, this would not affect any forwarded call alraed in progress).
So, for each call you made, you'd really have to make TWO calls...
one to the call forwarding device and then a second call, to the same
number but a few seconds later, to actually complete the call.

One final problem with this scheme is that in many areas call
forwarding is not actually set up unless the called party answers, or
you dial the call forwarding code and number twice.  Either way, your
called party is going to be disturbed (either by a call with "no one
on the line", or by a single ring) prior to you placing the actual
call to them.  It can be done, but it's real tricky to get it right.
Note, however, that if you have "selective ringing" on the line, and
have your device answer only on a particular ring code, you can
essentially make a phone line do double duty ... you won't be able to
initiate a new call when the phone is in use (you'd get a busy signal),
but once you have placed a call and your connection has been establi-
shed, and your device has cancelled the call forwarding, someone else
could use that phone for either incoming or outgoing calls.  In some
areas you can specify that calls to only ONE of the distinctive
ringing numbers are to be affected by call forwarding, so you could
hang your device on that number and let someone else use the other
number for their personal calls.  There are a lot pof possibilities
under this scheme, that will vary somewhat depending on the equipment
used in the serving telephone central office.

2) Three-way calling: Easier to set up, less costly, connection not as
good in some switches, and you tie up the phone line for the duration
of the call (except in some areas; see below).  Also, the security
risk might be a bit greater.  Again, in this scheme you hang a
computerized device off the phone line, and dial into it and let it
collect your touch-toned digits.  Once it has analyzed them, it
flashes the line to get a three-way dial tone, dials the number you
wish to call, then flashes the line again to connect you and the
called party together.  Disconnect may be a bit of a problem; you'll
have to determine how best to determine when the call is actually over
and drop the connection (suggestions: listen for dial tone; monitor
line voltage for CPC disconnect [momentary period of zero voltage on
line], listen for "phone off hook" signal [is there any standard for
that raucous thing?!?], listen for extended period of dead silence
[risky, but may be the only thing that will work on some systems], use
a call timeout [perhaps with an override, e.g. by pusing the "*" key
you reset the timer]).  To some extent how you do this might depend on
the intended application; it might be quite appropriate to disconnect
after a few seconds of silence if you only intend to send data or FAX
calls over the device.

Note that in this scheme, call setup is much faster and easier, and
you still have a fair amount of security (no caller can get dialtone
direct from your "other line"; they'd have to fool your device into
outdailing the call for them).  You get an almost immediate response
for busy and no-answer conditions.

In a few areas, you can get a variation of three-way calling,
sometimes called "call transfer".  This is like a cross between
three-way calling and call forwarding, and IMHO is the best of all
possible worlds.  What it allows you to do is to set up a three-way
call, but then the person in the middle of the converstaion can
actually hang up while the parties on either leg of the three-way call
continue to converse ... from that point on it's as if the call has
been forwarded.  Some telcos don't advertise this as a separate
service; it's just how their version of three-way calling works.

In a way I'm surprised more telcos don't offer call transfer, since it
would probably enhance their revenues.  Consider the following
scenario: A person calls the home of a business associate.  The spouse
answers but since s/he knows where the other spouse is (perhaps in a
city 20 or 30 miles away), s/he places a three-way TOLL call to the
spouse, then drops off the line once the connection is established.
The caller isn't paying the toll, so he feels free to talk, and the
recipient knows his spouse isn't listening in (in order to know when
to hang up the phone), so s/he feels freer to converse.  It just
occurs to me that a lot more short-distance toll calls might get
placed if this service were more widely available ... of course, it
could also be used for toll avoidance in some cases, but as I've noted
you can already use call forwarding, or regular three-way calling for
that purpose.

If call transfer is NOT offered, then the three-way calling scheme may
suffer from noise introduced at the center point of the connection,
and in some exchanges there is still a serious degradation of volume
between the two "legs" of the call (that is, on a voice call both end
points can hear the person in the center of the connection quite well,
but neither endpoint can hear the other well).

3) Bridging two separate lines together: Allows you to connect to
lines with a dissimilar class of service (e.g.  company WATS lines, FX
lines, etc.) or to forward calls in areas where custom calling
features aren't available.  Other valid reasons for using this might
be if two separate lines are already available at your desired
location, or if you need to introduce amplification into the loop (but
that can get REAL tricky).  The biggest problem, as you have
discovered, is signal loss.  You can add bidirectional amplification
(indeed, commercial units are available to do just that) but whether
your modem will be happy about it is another matter.  Remember that an
amplifier might do a fine job on voice (to the untrained ear, anyway)
but really grunge up a data line. If you do get an amp, try to get one
that has adjustable signal gain ... you may need to tweak it a few
times before you modem is happy.  If you are ONLY using this scheme to
move data, I'd suggest first trying better modems that are more
comfortable with low signal conditions (unless you have no control
over the modem(s) you are trying to reach).

The two other biggest disadvantages of bridging are the increased cost
of having to have a second phone line, and the potential for abuse.
Remember, any time you bridge two separate lines together, you run the
risk of someone else hacking your system, getting dialtone from the
other end, and placing calls that you'll be billed for.  If you do use
this scheme, see if you can get toll call blocking and/or
billed-number screening (preferably both) from your telco.  In this
day and age, I simply would not trust a toll restrictor to keep bogus
charges off my bill, especially when anyone could dial in and grab
your second line.  There are too many ways to have bogus toll charges
show up on your bill these days.

In any case, I'd certainly be interested in knowing what your final
solution is.  I see this problem all the time (especially in Michigan,
where the telcos were pretty stingy about implementing Extended Area
Service) and I'm sure a lot of folks could learn something from your
experience.


Jack Decker | Internet: [e-mail] | Fidonet: 1:154/8

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

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: Cellular One/NY Re-bills Roaming Charges
Date: 31 Jan 1993 16:35:02 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Mike Bray) writes:

> But when we got our phone bills from Cellular One/NY, we find that the
> roaming charges are NOT what the carriers themselves say they are!  It
> seems that for certain NACN systems, but not all of them, Cellular
> One/NY re-bills the other systems' $2.00/day + .50/minute as
> nothing/day + .99/minute!

> When I called Cellular One/NY to complain about this, they just say
> "this is the way we do it" and that's all I can get them to say.  I
> can't find anything about this practice in any of Cellular One/NY's
> paperwork and they can't seem to explain it either.

This is a new program that some of the carriers are trying to
implement.  Customers have long been confused about roaming rates,
especially when they get something in writing and use it as a
reference, and the rates change after the date of publication.  Also,
the "daily fees" get people angry.  So, some carriers are implementing
a plan where they offer a fixed charge for roaming, that applies to
roaming on ANY system.  It's usually $.99/min, with no daily fee.
They implement this rate themselves, and behind the scenes they pay
the other carriers the actual charge.  It's supposed to be a "revenue
neutral" change, so the carrier is not supposed to make more money off
of the deal.  So, the "average" customer will not pay more overall for
roaming, so the theory goes, and will always know exactly what they
will be charged for roaming.


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Todd Inch)
Subject: Re: Freeway Call Boxes and CA Rain
Organization: Maverick International Inc.
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 21:36:32 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> MPA15AB!RANDY@TRENGA.
tredydev.unisys.com writes:

> I've heard (but don't know if it is true) that the prolonged rain
> we've experienced here in Southern California has caused some of the
> freeway call boxes to run low on power (they are solar powered).

I hope not since we're supposed to get solar cellphones mounted on our
I-90 bridge across Lake Washington (a major commuter nightmare) here
in Seattle soon.  The newspeople keep joking about our weather,
doubting it will ever work.

Seriously, indirect sunlight during overcastiness and rain should
still be good enough if they're designed properly, I would think.  Now
it might be a problem near the North/South Poles where there are
loooong nights.

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 17:48:08 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Do Telcos Record the Numbers of Local Calls?


A few years ago, there was a case of a couple being murdered and their
baby kidnapped, in Kent County, Delaware. (I am working only from what
was available in a newspaper at the time.)  Police work on this case
included looking through long distance phone logs, and when they
widened the case to include calls to/from other relatives of the
couple, they discovered a call from 302-398 (Harrington prefix, from a
location in Houston, Delaware) to 302-492 (Hartly prefix).  Although
398 and 492 are in Kent County, a call from one to the other was toll
at the time (I believe it became local as a result of the countywide
calling plan imposed later).  The newspaper ({News-Journal} in
Wilmington) reported that if that had been a local call, it probably
could not have been traced.  As it happened, it was traced, and one
detective said to another "Hey, it looks like we're going to Houston",
and it turns out they found the baby and made arrests there.

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 17:47 EST
From: rsiatl![e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Wiring For Multi-Lines on One Jack


John R. Levine writes a good summary of how multiple pairs are placed
on a single six position "RJ-11" type jack.  I believe the original
question referred to an eight position jack.  Pairs on an eight
position jack can be assigned four ways that I know of:

1) USOC: Pairs One to three are assigned as John said; the forth pair
is the outermost pins.  This insures full compatibility with USOC
specs for one to three pairs on a six position connector.  Be warned
that some combinations of eight position jacks and six position plugs
will damage the outermost pins of the jack.

2) EIA/TIA 568A Pairs 1&2 are in center as for USOC, Pins 1 & 2* are
pair three, pins 7 & 8 are pair four.  This gives greater noise
immunity than with the conductors for some pairs far apart as in the
USOC spec.

3) AT&T 258A (aka EIA/TIA 568B) AT&T had to be different.  Pair one is
in the center.  Pins on left and right of center pair (where pair two
would be) are pair three.  Pins 1 & 2 are pair two, pins 7 & 8 pair
four.

4) Any damn way the installer wants it. :-) Listed above are two ways
of pairing pins.  With four pins there are 4! or 24 different ways to
number the pairs, resulting in 48 different combinations.

I have only seen four voice lines on one jack once: When I was in
college AU got a new phone switch (a DMS-100) to replace lots of key
systems behind Centrex.  The whole campus had new wiring added for the
system, conforming to AT&T's PDS standard.  Generally it was well
done, an exception was a mechanical room in Haley Center.  This room
housed three repeaters and a 3KW FM transmitter.  One voice jack had
been installed.  The eventual outcome was three repeater remotes and a
POTS line on one jack and a piece of quad wire carrying two other
remotes and a four pair cable with three dry pairs (two TX audio and a
Marti receive line for the Xmitter).  The two cables disappeared in
some HVAC equipment only to reemerge at an IDF on the floor below.  A
series of splitters and splices sent the lines to their desitination.
In doing all of this the modular jack was left hanging by it's four
pair cable.  Since the room was a favorite for naps for the physical
plant employees, an accident was bound to happen.

Sometime between quarters, that jack got yanked from the wall, wiping
out all four circuits, two of which were never missed.  Anyway it took
the campus telco tech a while to get it all sorted out.  It was a lot
better when he left: the Xmitter and POTS lines were punched down on a
66 block and the repeater remotes were routed over a single cable per
repeater.  Luckily this was caught when the radio station tried to go
on the air, as the POTS line controlled the Xmitter.  Had this
happened while they were on the air, they would have been in violation
of FCC regs.


 Summary:
Scheme      Pair 1   Pair 2   Pair 3   Pair 4
USOC          4&5      3&6      2&7     1&8
AT&T          4&5      1&2      3&6     7&8
T568A         4&5      3&6      1&2     7&8

* Looking at the JACK, with the "spring" tab recess facing down, pins
are numbered 1-8 from left to right.  A six position plug would
contact pins 2-7.


Pat Turner   KB4GRZ   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Brent Capps)
Subject: Re: Differences Between ANI and Caller-ID
Organization: Atlas Telecom Inc.
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 00:28:55 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> Marcus D Leech
<[e-mail]> writes:

> Just to add to the confusion, there's also an emerging ANSI standard
> called SCAI, or Switch-Computer Applications Interface.  SCAI gives
> you what Caller-ID gives you plus A WHOLE LOT MORE.  The only
> implementation that I'm aware of is on NTs large switches, and
> marketted as "CompuCall".

> The delivery vehicle for this service is typically X.25.

> Anybody know of any other implementations of SCAI?

CompuCall has a long and checkered history within BNR.  It's actually
a throwback to the mid '80s when BNR was developing a CO/PBX LAN
server whatchamacallit called the PTE; this box communicated with an
SL1 over a proprietary out-of-band signaling protocol that shared some
similarities with the not-yet-standardized CCS7.  Well, after wasting
millions of dollars on this turkey, NT finally pulled the plug; but in
the quest to salvage something from the wreckage a certain manager
(now a senior exec at NT) hit upon the idea of taking this old
proprietary protocol, dusting it off, and changing its name to the
ISDN/AP.  This is a typical evil marketeers trick, the names have been
changed to fool the innocent.  This protocol had almost nothing in
common with ISDN other than the fact that both of them are
out-of-band.

ISDN/AP was eventually marketed as "CompuCall" at a licensing fee of
$50G.  And that, dear friends, is how to make a silk purse out of a
sow's ear.


Brent Capps   [e-mail] (gay stuff)
[e-mail] (telecom stuff)

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: Alteration of Ring Cadence
Organization: Westmark, Inc.
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 02:23:40 GMT


Pat writes (regarding creating different ringer sounds):

> [Moderator's Note: A hacksaw is a bit of an overkill. All you need to
> do is adjust the clapper inside by bending it just a tiny bit, or
> turning the bell parts slightly to create a sort of dull ring on the
> one phone, and a more shrill ring on the other.  PAT]

A 2500 telephone set has two gongs that produce slightly different
notes.  The ring is the harmony that results from the two notes
sounded together.  If you swap the left gong in one set with the right
gong in another, you'll get two sets that produce single-note rings,
and they'll be different.  Can you hear the difference?  That may take
some practice!


Dave Levenson        Internet: [e-mail]
Westmark, Inc.        UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave
Warren, NJ, USA        Voice: 908 647 0900  Fax: [phone]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #56
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #57

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 31 Jan 93 21:39:40 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 57

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: N.E. Telephone Admits Ripoff - Refuses Restitution (Mitch Wagner)
    Re: N.E. Telephone Admits Ripoff - Refuses Restitution (Maxime Taksar)
    Re: You Didn't Accept a Collect Call, You'll be Billed Anyway? (G. Burditt)
    Re: Utility Reputations (Dave Niebuhr)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (Andrew Klossner)
    Re: Cellular Roaming Handbook ([e-mail])
    Re: Charge Those 900 Calls (Steve Forrette)
    Re: AT&T Reaches Out to the Arts (Dave Levenson)
    Re: Phone Translation Experiment (Georg Schwarz)
    Re: 1-800-CALL-ATT vs. LEC Intra-LATA LD (John Adams)
    Re: Telecom Books (Capacity Planning)? (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Re: Can Phones be Restricted to 911 Only? ([e-mail])
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mitch Wagner)
Subject: Re: N.E. Telephone Admits Ripoff - Refuses Restitution
Organization: Open Systems Today
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 19:00:46 GMT


Yeah, New England Telephone is pretty awful, all right -- it's in the
same league as some third-world countries you hear about. In May, I
moved up here to take a job telecommuting out of my home, and tried to
get them to install four phone lines for a business in my apartment,
in addition to one personal line. Whooee, this taxed their tiny little
brains beyond the limit. First I couldn't get a straight answer out of
them whether this was possible given existing wiring in the building.

When it proved impossible, I couldn't get a straight answer out of
them about whether I could hire an outside contractor to rewire or
whether their own technicians had to do it.

After the outsiden contractor did the job, I couldn't get them to
switch on the lines correctly. They had the wrong lines installed, the
right numbers coming out of the wrong wall jacks. Took three tries
over the course of two weeks on that one.

By the end of June all this was straightened out -- except twice,
since then, I've had some wires crossed somewhere and gotten my phone
lines connected with someone else. I'm not talking "voices on the line
here," an faint buzzing or whispering. I'm talking the equivalent of a
party line -- once I heard the phone ring and picked up in time to
hear a sweet old lady say, "No, I'm sorry there's no Mitch Wagner here
 .. sorry, we don't know ANYTHING about computers," and another guy
who had dialed my number correctly and who wanted to speak with me,
responding, "Okay, sorry to bother you then, ma'am, I must have dialed
a wrong number" ...

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 13:19:27 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Maxime Taksar KC6ZPS)
Subject: Re: N.E. Telephone Admits Ripoff - Refuses Restitution


In article <[e-mail]>, PAT writes:

> [Moderator's Note: I had a phone turned on about twenty years ago at a
> place where I stayed occassionally and although the service got turned
> on, the paperwork never made it to accounting for the purpose of
> setting up a billing account. Since the line had unmeasured metro
> service (a type of service we had back then) there were never any
> extra units generated and no reason to ever issue a bill. It went on
> like that for a year. I was careful to never make any long distance
> calls from that line or do anything which would start paperwork going.
> Then one day, some $$#%&# phreak billed a third number phraud call to
> that line.

[How PAT finally gets billed for the line deleted]

I'm sorry, Pat, but this was a little too much, even for you.

Have you lost your devotion to the concept of "paying for what you
use"?  Perhaps this devotion is only recent?  In any case, you seem to
have changed your tone from a few volumes ago when you re-started the
debate on wether measured service is a Good Thing or not.

I don't mind your sharing your opinions with us, but it would be nice
if you didn't expose us to this sort of hypocrisy.


Maxime Taksar              KC6ZPS           [e-mail]


[Moderatpr's Note: Hey, twenty plus years ago I had different ideas
than I do now. Have you held the same attitudes and opinions all your
life without ever changing or modifying them?  Have you never read my
articles here about things I did 30-35 years ago with the phone?  My
very first employer -- a part time job when I was in high school in
the late 1950's -- was the University of Chicago in the phone room
where I diligently worked myself into a position of trust as the sole
person in the phone room overnight after I graduated from high school
only to get fired for phreaking on international calls with
make-believe calling card numbers.  Does that make me a hypocrite now,
32 years later?

In junior-high, I taught the other kids how to supply ground to
ground-start payphones and how to use a bent coat hanger up the coin
return slot to get their nickle back before the operator could tip the
collection table in her favor. (Yes, payphone calls cost five cents
and there was no trap door on the coin return slot.)  We used to think
it great sport to listen on the VHF radio to the Illinois Bell Marine
Operator servicing boats in Lake Michigan and beat her to the punch at
dialing whatever number was passed to her by the boater so she would
always get a busy signal, and later (when we finally let the call go
through) the boater would have an argument with his wife about 'who
was she talking to for an hour?'

Our other favorite joke involved a man listed in the phone directory
by the name of Robert Fuchew. We'd call '2080' (the forerunner to the
present day 312-796-9600 name and address service) and pass his number
to the operator who would look it up and say 'Robert ...' then she
would pause to think about it, and say, " ... I will spell the last
name, it is F-U-C-H-E-W."  "But operator," we would say, "how do you
pronounce it? ... " and our laughs would give us away as 12 year old
brat-children.  (To the curious: *he* pronounced it 'foo-chew'.)  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Gordon Burditt)
Subject: Re: You Didn't Accept a Collect Call, But You'll be Billed Anyway?
Organization: Gordon Burditt
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 09:24:47 GMT


> The moral to this story is, if you ever contact a long distance
> carrier on behalf of a friend or client, use their name, not yours, or
> at least let it be known that you're just making contact on behalf of
> the other person and are not assuming any responsibility for their
> bills!

I think there are a number of situations where you can save yourself a
lot of trouble by not giving your own name, or giving a blatant false
name.  Disclaimers of relationship just don't cut it.  One of these is
posing hypothetical tax questions to the IRS (remember *67!)  Another
is taking a patient to a hospital.

I once drove a very pregnant woman to the hospital as a favor to a
friend.  He was "backup driver", but his car was in the shop.  Because
I brought her in, I got asked lots of questions.  I only knew her as
"Ms. Ashford" (*) and that she worked where I did, and I probably
wouldn't recognize her more than one out of three times.  First name?
Address?  My name?  My SSN?  Most of my answers were something like "I
dunno, I'm just the chauffer".  She worked where I did, so I could
answer vague questions about insurance.  I suspected she was using her
maiden name for work, and suspected she was married, but I wouldn't
give guesses as answers.  I never did find out.  When they absolutely
insisted on my SSN, I pulled out one of my photo-ID SSN cards titled
"Federal Reserve Note" and let them copy down my SSN, just above the
signature of the Treasurer of the United States.  The letters in the
SSN and the wrong number of digits didn't bother them at all.

She later told me that the paperwork had gotten all screwed up.  She
was listed as "I. Donna Ashford", and the father was "Chou Fur" on the
birth certificate.  Both wrong.  "I dunno, I'm just the chauffer"
seems to have gotten into the records.  My "SSN" had become a phone
number.  I'm glad I didn't give my real name, or I might have been
listed as the father, and/or gotten the bill!  It's probably a good
idea not to identify yourself if you bring someone unrelated to the
hospital, and if you must, use a name like "T. Axi Driver" or, as I
did once "Zulu Able Victor Seven Four Eight" (my license plate number
at the time, but I told them it was a federal crime to spell it).

(*) Name changed to protect the innocent, besides, I can't remember
the real one.

When I was in college in the early 70's, I called the phone company
(no campus PBX here -- you want a phone, talk to New York Telephone
yourself) to have the phone owned by the "phone consortium" (a bunch
of guys who chipped in to get one phone) put in my name, because the
guy whose name it was in had graduated.  I accepted responsibility for
calls previously made on the line.  I was taking a risk on the other
guys running up a large bill and refusing to pay, but I trusted them,
and I wasn't disappointed.  BUT, the phone company noticed my name,
"Burditt", and suddenly started trying to stick me with all the back
bills for people in "Burdette Avenue Residence Hall".  Or maybe anyone
on Burdette Avenue.  I did not live there, and I don't think I have
ever set foot in the place.  I asked for, and got, copies of the bills
in question, complete with names, addresses, and itemized calls.  A
collection agency kept calling, but made the mistake of letting me get
THEIR number.

I had a fairly strong defense:

- One of the bills extended to before I was born.

- All of the bills extended to before I had been accepted at college.

- I knew from a previous nuisance-call incident that phone company
  records indicated that there was an enormous pile of phones at
  "110 Eighth Street", including all university phones, dorm pay
  phones, and probably all phones in dorms.  "Same address" arguments
  didn't work here.  The entire campus had one address, by phone records.

- The bills indicated I had 27 lines at one point, with a strange variety
  of billing names and addresses. I could prove at least four lines were
  in use simultaneously.

- None of the names or addresses were even close to mine.

- Some of the bills extended to before "Burdette Avenue Residence Hall"
  had been constructed.

- The one line I admitted responsibility for was paid on time and not
  in dispute.

A friend with the campus newspaper said a lawsuit for this would make
a great story.  He even offered to finance some of it.  So I called up
the collection agency and DARED them to sue.  I called them several
times a week and ORDERED them to sue.  I even offered to walk down to
their office and pick up a subpoena.  They quit calling.  Meanwhile, I
had told the phone company that the lines weren't mine, but as far as
I was concerned, they could be disconnected.  They had all been
disconnected a year ago or more, anyway.  But some of the numbers had
been reassigned, and I heard rumors from one telephone company
representative, who was apologetic but couldn't do anything about the
problem, that someone disconnected those lines, and that someone had
gotten fired for it, because they disconnected someone very VIP.  (The
mayor?  City hall?  The manager of the central office's home? The
chief of police?  The police emergency line?)


Gordon L. Burditt    sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 16:05:45 EST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Niebuhr)
Subject: Re: Utility Reputations


In TELECOM Digest V13 #52 MPA15AB![e-mail]
Randy Gellens write:

> {Fortune} magazine had a recent cover story on "Corporate Reputations"
> and I thought readers might be interested in their list of the top ten
> utilities:

> Rank Company                Score     Rank Company               Score

> 5   Ameritech               6.95     10   Nynex                   6.12
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That's a joke.  NYNEX is the parent of NYTel and it is one useless
telphone company.  Granted, NYTel makes up its own rules and regs and
gets the NY PSC to rubberstamp them, but NYNEX never seems to put the
brakes on it's errant child, one that can't even keep it's rate tables
correct (or install them correctly in the first place).

Believe me, I'd rather be in the Rochester Tel area anytime.


Dave Niebuhr      Internet: [e-mail] / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973  (516)-282-3093

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

From: [e-mail] (Andrew Klossner)
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 12:49:23 PST
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Tektronix Color Printers, Wilsonville, Oregon


> It is believed by some people that the amount of radiation emitted
> from a cellular phone antenna can cause cancer.

To clarify: there are credible scientific reports that a three watt
transceiver, operated near the head for many years, can cause
*glaucoma*.  This is one reason why police radios are now worn at the
waist and wired to a lapel-mounted microphone.  I know of no credible
evidence linking transceivers to brain cancer.


Andrew Klossner  ([e-mail])

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 14:22:17 PST
From: [e-mail] (Phydeaux)
Subject: Re: Cellular Roaming Handbook


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Mike Bray) writes:

>                      Cellular Directions, Inc.
>                      PO Box 66843
>                      St. Petersburg Beach FL  33736

> Their phone number is [phone] and their FAX is [phone]
> and they take VISA, MC, etc, etc.

I just called to order one of these books and they are starting to
ship the 11th edition. Same price as quoted above. I have no idea what
makes them 'official.'


reb

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

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: Charge Those 900 Calls
Date: 31 Jan 1993 12:55:18 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA


In article <[e-mail]> John R. Levine <johnl@
iecc.cambridge.ma.us> writes:

> In the January edition of the Pocket OAG, there is a large ad
> encouraging you to dial 0 900 339 3000 and charge the call to your
> AT&T calling card.

I just tried this, and it worked for me as well.  When I tried to do 0
900 555 1212, I got that AT&T bong, then entered my card.  Curiously,
there was no "Thank you for using AT&T" message, just about five
seconds of silence after I entered the last digit.  Then, an operator
came on and said "AT&T -- You can't bill a call to a 900 number to a
calling card."  I tried it again, this time using a bad calling card
number.  It told me to try again, as the card number was not valid.
So, when billing 0 + 900 calls with AT&T, it first checks to see if
the card number is valid, then checks to see if the called 900 number
is valid for calling card billing.  Quite interesting!


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: AT&T Reaches Out to the Arts
Organization: Westmark, Inc.
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 17:18:35 GMT


> [Moderator's Note: AT&T has always been generous to service organizations
> and charities as well.

Almost always, Pat.

Let's remember that the AT&T Foundation, approximately two years ago,
discontinued its support for Planned Parenthood, apparently due to
pressure from anti-choice political forces.


Dave Levenson        Internet: [e-mail]
Westmark, Inc.        UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave
Warren, NJ, USA        Voice: 908 647 0900  Fax: [phone]


[Moderator's Note: The Planned Parenthood people have always claimed
that AT&T stopped their support 'due to pressure from anti-choice
forces', but AT&T denies that is the case. They say their support in
the past few years has to be more limited than in the past, so they
have begun spreading the largesse around to other groups to insure
that all worthwhile groups get a piece of the pie.  An AT&T executive
noted that the company gave a great deal of money to Planned Parent-
hood for many years and said, "You'd think that when we started giving
money elsewhere instead, Planned Parenthood would have said 'thank you
for your many years of support' rather than cursing us because we did
not give them still more ..."  ... that makes sense to me.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Georg Schwarz)
Subject: Re: Phone Translation Experiment
Date: 31 Jan 1993 15:12:33 GMT
Organization: ZRZ/TU-Berlin


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Dave Leibold) writes:

> be placed into public service. ATR, Carnegie Mellon University
> (Pittsburgh) and University of Karlsruhe (Munich) are the partners in
> this experiment.               ^^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^^

For all of those who obviously don't have a clue about European
geography: Karlsruhe and Munich are two completly different cities,
both located in southern Germany, but several hundred km apart from
each another!  Both of them do have a university (Munich has even
two).  And, as the name already suggests, the University of Karlsruhe
is located in Karlsruhe and not in Munich.

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

From: [e-mail] (adams,john)
Subject: Re: 1-800-CALL-ATT vs. LEC intra-LATA LD
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 15:34:25 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mike
McNally) writes:

> I just c alled my voice mailbox to check voice mail (it's in 415, I'm
> in 408) and as I listened to the "Thank you for using Pacific Bell"
> recording I though of the recent thread concerning intra-LATA long
> distance.  On a whim, I decided to try 1-800-CALL-ATT to see if I
> could force ATT to carry the call instead.  (PacBell won't let 10288
> work for such calls; you get a recording.)  It worked.

I suspect that your results will vary based on where and how you call.
Perhaps a compilation is in order? ;-)!  I had a similar experience at
JFK International Airport (Queens, NY) where I was able to complete a
call to Manhatten *AFTER* getting to AT&Ts network (For a true
interlata call) and hitting the "#" after completion.  Just out of
curiosity, I attempted the same call from the same AT&T Card Caller
(after hanging up of course) and with that instance handled by New
Yawk Tel.  Oh well, at least I found it amusing!


Jack (John) Adams        Bellcore NVC 2Z-220
[phone] {Voice}        [phone] {Facsimile}
[e-mail]    [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: Telecom Books (Capacity Planning)?
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 02:38:50 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Jeff Wasilko) writes:

> SNET wants to raise intrastate LD rates to a flat 25 cents per minute!
> My AT&T rep also tells me that the LD companies are trying (without
> much success) to get the state split into multiple LATAs so that there
> can be competition for inter-LATA calls ...

AT&T is, of course, pulling your leg.

LATA boundaries don't allow anything, they merely _prohibit_ certain
activities by "Bell" companies.  SNET is NOT a Bell, so there's no
reason to split CT into LATAs (disregarding Greenwich, NYTel
territory).  LATAs only exist in Federal law.

Whether there is competition for LD within a state is a state
decision, and LATA boundaries don't count: Most states allow
intra-LATA competition, and a few have, at least for a while,
prohibited inter-LATA competition.  (AT&T had that franchies, the Bell
got intra-LATA.)

Your problem is that the Connecticut Public Utility Control Authority
(They're still the PUCA, right?  Sort of a six-foot invisible rabbit?)
is in bed too closely with SNET.  Here in Mass., intra-LATA toll for
business users is down to 10.5c/min maximum, while residential rates
are a bit more variable and subject to various discount plans.  Of
course, NET here is subject to intra-LATA competition.  No
coincidence.


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

From: [e-mail] (Toxic Avenger)
Subject: Re: Can Phones be Restricted to 911 Only?
Date: 31 Jan 1993 01:07:48 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Dave Leibold) writes:

> Are there jurisdictions where 911-only phone service can be set up
> rather than an outright shut-off of phone service?

I got a phone bill for my dorm room (served by PAC*BELL, 408 NPA) the
day after I left for the winder break.  It was due while I was gone,
and when I returned, I found it, as well as the official notice that
my phone would be interrupted if I did not pay within seven days.
Well, I wandered to my room and picked up the phone ... dial tone;
good they hadn't canned me yet. So I made out the check and dropped it
in the mail.

Later that day, I called a friend and got this recording ...

{three tones} "I'm sorry, your service has been interupted, you may
use this phone to dial 911 for emergencies, 611 for repairs or 811 to
discuss your account with a representitive."

So yes, it is an option. It is what gets done here in Santa Cruz.


Tox

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #57
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #58

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 31 Jan 93 23:08:20 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 58

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Switchboard Equipment Inquiry (Jeannette Lanier)
    Public Phone 2000 Illegal (Jim Gottlieb)
    2 T-1 to 1/2 Rate T-1 Transcoders (John Phipps)
    Human Factors for Speech Recognition Systems (Al Dykes)
    GTE Strikes Again (Richard M. Greenberg)
    Dial-Up IP Router (Jose Luis Jimenez Fernandez)
    Bless Me Father, For I Have Faxed ... (Dave Leibold)
    A Blast From the Past (Steve Brack)
    Tropez 900DX Cordless Telephone Questiona (W. Gregg Stefancik)
    Phone Sex Is No Longer Safe Sex (was ATM History) (Zealand R. Hatch)
    Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call (John Higdon)
    Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call (Steve Forrette)
    Re: 301-303, Not in 410 (Jacob DeGlopper)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: wu/O=NUCLEAR_REGULATORY_COMMISSION/DD.ELN=[e-mail]
Date: 31 Jan 93 22:38:27 GMT
Subject: Switchboard Equipment Inquiry


This is in the nature of a preliminary inquiry by me personally for
information relating to telephone systems.  This is not -- at this
time -- an official inquiry by this agency and I am not acting as their
spokesperson.

The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission operates a main
switchboard that never closes.  This switchboard is operated using a
Conveyant Teledesk model 1600 console.  We purchased this system less
than three years ago.

Since many of you may not be familiar with this system, I will briefly
explain what it is, how it works and what it does.

The Teledesk Console is a modified PC keyboard consisting of the
standard QWERTY keyboard with CTRL and ALT keys as well as the ten
IBM-PC function keys.  At the top of the unit are 16 line keys which
allow the console to handle transfers for 16 lines.  The calculator
keyboard which is normally on the right side is replaced by a
Touch-Tone pad, plus hold, flash, camp, release, transfer and next.
Release is used to either hang up a call or complete a transfer; next
is used to pick up the oldest ringing line (if more than one is
ringing) or the line that is ringing.  If one has two lines ringing,
you can press next, answer the call and ask to wait, then press next
which automatically puts the prior call on hold and answers the next
line.

We have a combination of direct incoming public, inward WATS and
internal operator lines all operated on a centrex system from the
local telephone company.

It is connected to a specialized frame with one set of wires, and each
console is plugged into a 1 Meg 80286 PC (IBM PS/2 Model 30) with a
color VGA monitor and 20 Meg hard drive.  We have our own software
using DBASE which we use to update our office and home listings, and
we wrote software to convert the DBASE files into input for the
Teledesk system which has its own proprietary database format.  When a
number is selected, the operator can view the name and number to be
dialed, and either press a button to automatically dial the number, or
can move up or down the list of names to select a different name.  The
operator can also read the name and number to be called.

The frame supports up to four consoles this way.  We have four
consoles because of the number of calls that come in at certain times.

It has a special software package that provides for looking up people
by name, by department, by telephone number, as well as supplying a
"personal directory" for the operators to look up special, important
or critical information such as our Emergency Operations Center or the
number for Pizza Hut.  :)

This software package also supports some report capabilities including
number of calls handled and what times are busiest.  The system allows
any console to be "out" which means it does not ring, or the system
can be placed in "night" status.  When in night status, the system
will automatically dial out to a selected number, so if there is a
need to evacuate the building the lines can be diverted elsewhere.  It
can route different lines to different places, so that, for example,
if while in night mode, a call on the Operator line could be
transferred to the security guard, and the main incoming number could
transfer to another location.  Also, the operator can press the
transfer key and dial a number, and the system will dial the digits
when dial tone comes out even if the operator dialed faster than the
switch is ready to take the call.

These consoles can also be used as standalone PCs when not running
the software package.

We used to use standard AT&T Switchboard console telephones, and the
call processing times dropped from aproximately one minute per call to
as fast as ten seconds per call.  Also, since the computer dials the
number, the operators can handle calls with less stress since they
can't misdial the numbers.  However, it does cause a problem: when we
did a "hot test" where we plug in an emergency manual dial console for
testing our disaster recovery capability, the operators had to dial
slower as they punched in the numbers faster than the equipment could
handle it!

In approximately two years the U.S. NRC will be consolidating its
remaining national capital area offices into the Two White Flint
Building, which will include the Telephone Operator service.

We believe this system we are currently using is still state of the
art as we've seen nothing else that compares to it.  However, as we
will be moving into a new building my superiors have expressed
interest in discovering if there is any form of "upgrade" or anything
better than what we are using that can be used for a high-volume
switchboard (more than 300 calls a day) which makes fast transfers of
telephone calls by name lookup or extension number, or might provide
other features.

I would like to hear of other computer-based switchboards for use in
the type of application we are using here.

I would like anyone who has information about this may respond in the
Digest, or by an E-Mail reply to this message.  If you do respond
directly to this message, please place:

   TO:  Jeannette Lanier

In the text of the reply, or change the
"O=nuclear_regulatory_commission" field at the top to read
"G=jeannette_lanier".  If that fails, try: [e-mail] If
*that* fails, try: [e-mail] (You should see what it
takes to *send* a message to Internet from a telex number!)

You may also respond to this message by facsimile to +1 (301)
492-7371.  If you have color brochures or items which don't facsimile
well, you may mail them instead to:

     U S Nuclear Regulatory Commission
     Jeannette Lanier, P-612
     Washington, DC 20555

This is not a contract proposal or official request but is a
preliminary inquiry to determine exactly what, if anything, is out
there which may enable us to process telephone communications better.


Thank you for your cooperation,
Jeannette Lanier


[Moderator's Note: I am not sure if Ms. Lanier entered a typo when she
wrote of 'high volume ... more than 300 calls per day' or if the NRC
regards that as high volume. Based on a 24 hour period (she said an
operator is always on duty), that would only be 12-13 calls per hour,
and assuming people do not call as often at night, there might be
30-35 calls per hour during the day. That amounts to a call on average
every five minutes around the clock or every two minutes during the
day. I guess this is very subjective, but I don't regard that as a
very large volume at all, particularly since as Ms. Lanier points out,
there are four operator positions working at various times of the day.
On the old cord boards, operators were expected to handle 50-60 calls
per hour, and handwrite all the charge tickets, etc.  Perhaps her call
count was incorrect.   PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 20:41 JST
From: [e-mail] (Jim Gottlieb)
Reply-To: Jim Gottlieb <[e-mail]>
Organization: Info Connections, Tokyo, Japan
Subject: Public Phone 2000 Illegal


I planned to get some work done at the airport yesterday while waiting
for my flight.  I had hoped to log in to my computer using a Public
Phone 2000.  Now that they are in most major airports and hotels, I
don't even bother carrying a laptop any more.

But it was not to be.  When I selected "Place Terminal Call", it said
"This service is not currently available."  I called the repair number
listed on the phone to ask about this.  The nice lady at AT&T said
that a recent FCC ruling forced them to turn off the terminal option
in all of their Public Phone 2000s.

Anyone have the details?  This is mighty inconvenient.  What is the
FCC trying to protect us from now?


[Moderator's Note: They are trying to protect us from ourselves,
silly!  Isn't that what Big Government is for?  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 09:47 EST
From: [e-mail] (John Phipps)
Subject: 2 T-1 to 1/2 Rate T-1 Transcoders


I am looking for equipment suppliers who manufacture the above
equipment. Ideally, using the G.728 16 kbit/s ld-celp algorithm to
provide the coding. Nice but not required. Please post any info to:

[e-mail]

Thanks for the help.

By the way I noticed a definition of a dBm0 referenced to a "test
level". I have always used the term Transmission Level Point (TLP)
when describing dBm0. In PCM systems 0 dBm0 is defined as being about
3 dB below the maximum PCM code. This max code is the highest signal
level which can be transmitted without signal compression. This
defines the ceiling. In order to be transmitted without overload,
voice, data, and fax signals must be sent at a level below this
ceiling. In international operations, end-to-end circuit line ups are
simplified since a tech in country a can transmit a -10 dBm0 signal to
a tech in country b who only has to know that its level is 10 dB below
his own reference TLP.

Just a comment, please no replies.

In order to test MF signaling try the Northern Telecom 5900
Programable Generator and the 2760 Universal Signaling Analyzer. I
don't know if they are still manufactured. The 2760 uses plug-in
modules for the desired signaling type, CCITT #5, MF, DTMF etc.

For those testing modem, Teltone makes a little black box wich
provides battery and ringing to two station interfaces. For those with
a lot of money to spend contact Telecom Analysis Systems in New Jersey
at 908 544-8347.


[e-mail]              Sean-an-Chogaidh

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

From: [e-mail] (Al Dykes)
Subject: Human Factors for Speech Recognition Systems
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 16:09:45 GMT
Organization: Unix in NYC


Does anyone know of any studies relating to use of limited vocabulary
voice recognition (digits, letters, YES/NO and a few other words) over
the national phone network, by the general public?

A standard example is the capability to let a bank customer call up
and speak his account number and PIN number and then do simple query
transactions.  For the simplest case this could of course be done via
Touch-tone codes.  Speech recognition may allow a slightly more
complex dialog without the long menu prompts that some applications
currently use.

I am interested in information pertaining to:

1) human-factors studies related to acceptance of voice recognition by
the general public, and comparisions between voice input and
Touch-tone input.

2) the technical viability of the North American phone network for
limited vocabulary voice recognition applications. The vendors of
large-vocabulary word recognition systems have all said that they did
not support use over the phone network.  Limited vocabulary systems
might work.  Digit recognition systems clearly work over the phone
system.

Any information, references, anecdotes, sucess and/or failure stories will be
greatly appreciated.


Al Dykes   [e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 21:00 PST
From: [e-mail] (Richard M Greenberg)
Subject: GTE Strikes Again



The public access system that I normally use for Usenet news (the
"play" system from my .sig) is in a GTE area (happily, my home isn't).
The sysop had four lines coming in, and recently decided to add a fifth.
It was put into service today, and GTE figured that as long as the new
line was in, the old ones were no longer needed.  When I tried to log
in this evening, all of the numbers I was aware of got an intercept
saying that they were no longer in service.

I got the sysop on the phone, and he was not overjoyed at the news.
He got to GTE repair, and to their credit, I just dialed two of the
numbers and got modem tones again (about four hours later). The others are
still on the intercept. Oh well ...


Rich Greenberg
Work:  [e-mail] 310-417-8999 N6LRT
Play:  [e-mail] 310-649-0238
What?  Me speak for Amdahl?  Surely you jest ...

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

From: [e-mail] (Jose Luis Jimenez Fernandez)
Subject: Dial-Up IP Router
Organization: UUES, Asociacion de Usuarios de UNIX, Spain
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 15:21:34 GMT


I need a cheap dial-up ip router like this.

             InterNet
               |
               |
             +---+
             |\  |
             | \ | V32bis Modem
             |  \|
             +---+
               |
      +-----------------+
      |  Dial-up Ip     |
      |  Router         |
      |                 |
      |                 |
      +-----------------+
               |
               |
               |                  MyNet
 ---------------------------------------------


I am testing with ka9q but the throutput it's very bad.  Have some
body experience about it ?.


Jose Luis

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 02:07:28 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Dave Leibold)
Subject: Bless Me Father, For I Have Faxed ...


A recent Reuter report spoke of the Roman Catholic Church's plans to
install fax machine units for confessions. These are deluxe hi-tech
models that resemble space-age telephone booths. Some officials with
the RC Church are reportedly less than pleased with the prospect of
such space-age atonements.


Dave Leibold - via FidoNet node 1:250/98
INTERNET: [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: When the {Chicago Sun Times} mentioned this a
couple days ago, they wondered editorially how a person could possibly
use the system: would you sneak over to the fax machine at your office
when no one was around and fax your confession on the sly, hoping no
one came along and read it before you could scoop up the papers and
hurry away?  :) When the priest responded back by fax, what if the
secretary in the office picked your confession up with the stuff she
sent by accident ... it happens. Does anyone here recall the time
about three years ago when the fellow in New York started the 900
service called 'Confessions' using as an advertisement a picture of a
man kneeling in prayer in a NY Tel payphone booth, and how angry NY
Tel got as a result?  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 11:07:08 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Steve Brack)
Subject: Blast From the Past
Reply-To: [e-mail]


I was visiting a friend's apartment the other day when I spied the
most interesting thing: a pay phone whose enclosure did *not* have the
logo of any of the LECs around here, but still had the old "Bell
System" logo.  I hadn't seen one of those in quite a while.

Of course, the phone inside it was defaulted to "Charter Network," not
AT&T.  8)


Steven S. Brack          [e-mail]
Toledo, OH  43613-1605   [e-mail]
MY OWN OPINIONS          [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (W. Gregg Stefancik)
Subject: Tropez 900DX Cordless Telephone Questions
Organization: Clemson University
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 00:40:54 GMT


I have one and am curious how it works.  What type of modulation
method does it use and how secure is it?


W. Gregg Stefancik   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Zealand R. Hatch)
Subject: Phone Sex is No Longer Safe Sex (was ATM History)
Date: 31 Jan 93 00:10:30 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA


> [Moderator's Note: Times change with the technology, don't they ...
> while "ladies of the evening' (or people of the evening, if we wish
> tobe non-sexist about it) are in abundance in most places, more and
> more purveyors in the oldest profession are working in the phone rooms
> instead; the income is probably as good and certainly the risks which
> accompany direct meetings of this sort are eliminated.  An old, old
> line of work uses all the new technology!   PAT]

Safe as long as you're not making those calls on your cell phone. :->


Zealand Hatch            - 408 746-8720 -      {where_ever}!amdahl!zrh
Amdahl Corporation                         -or-  [e-mail]
         (MY BOSS): "He said what! And you believed him?"


[Moderator's Note: I suppose you could always wear a balloon over
your head while you were talking on the cell phone.  :)   PAT

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 11:50 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call


[e-mail] (Paulo Santos) writes:

> If I want a receipt of delivery of a written message to an
> addressee, I just fax the message.  The long distance charge on my
> bill will be evidence that I sent something to the other party's fax.
> Much cheaper, much faster.

A MUCH better idea:

My fax server sends a confirmation of a successful transmission (or
even a failed one, so noted) via e-mail. This message includes the
telephone number of the destination as well as the remote machine's
ID, the number of pages, and the transmission time.

This is much better information (and proof of delivery) than a simple
telephone charge which could be generated by picking up a telephone
without benefit of fax machine and just letting the remote device
answer.

Yes, it would cost you something to implement this. But it is much
more fair for you to pay for your special requirements than to expect
a revamp of the public network. I, for one, need a detailed record of
my calls. So I keep one. I do not expect the telephone company to do
it for me.

> But I can't do this for local calls.  Local calls are not itemized.

Even if you decline to install the fax system described above, you can
always install SMDR. Again, it is not up to the telephone company to
keep track of your business.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]


[Moderator's Note: A successful fax transmission report can be dummied
up quite easily just as easily as one could pick up a phone and dial a
number without actually sending a fax. But put the two togther, giving
two independent verifications that a phone connection was made and a
message sent and you have more convincing evidence if it is needed.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call
Date: 1 Feb 1993 02:25:33 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paulo
Santos) writes:

> I have resorted to dialing local calls with my calling card just to get
> an itemized entry, but I don't like it.  It is an expensive solution
> and I can't autodial from the fax machine.

Even the calling card trick won't work in US West territory (at least
in Washington state).  Here, if you have an unmeasured line, the local
switch won't let you 0+ any "local" call.  You can 0+ local calls from
measured lines or from payphones.  This has been an annoyance to me
when trying to test the restriction on "call me" calling cards, as I
have to go to a payphone in order to test them.  (I guess they didn't
take this into consideration when designing this restriction :-)) In
the big scheme of things, I wonder why they restrict this.  After all,
if I *want* to pay calling card rates for a local call, why not let
me?


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Jacob DeGlopper)
Subject: Re: 301-303, Not in 410
Date: 31 Jan 1993 01:38:08 GMT
Organization: EEAP, CWRU, Cleveland


In article <[e-mail]> Carl Moore (VLD/VMB)
<[e-mail]> writes:

> archives, since they list 303 as a Columbia prefix in 410.  Phone
> books I checked in Maryland last night list 303 as Berwyn (i.e., a
> Washington-metro-area prefix), which could be pseudo-foreign exchange

There's something else strange afoot in Berwyn -- it seems many DC
area paging companies have their 301 number sets on Berwyn exchanges.
I can't see any particular reason to use that part of the world
instead of any other; maybe the rent is cheap, but why always Berwyn?


         Jacob DeGlopper, EMT-A, Wheaton (MD) Volunteer Rescue Squad
            -- CWRU Biomedical Engineering - [e-mail] --

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #58
*****************************










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Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 00:13:01 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #59

TELECOM Digest     Mon,  1 Feb 93 00:13:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 59

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: New "Electronic Highway" For Canada (H.Shrikumar)
    Re: New "Electronic Highway" For Canada (John K. Scoggin, Jr)
    Re: Apartment Security Stupidity (Ed Greenberg)
    Re: Apartment Security Stupidity (Marty Brenneis)
    Re: Where is a Source For CFRs? (Bryan J. Abshier)
    Re: Distinctive Ringing - How Widespread? (Steve Forrette)
    Re: Bitfax - How to Turn Off "Wait For Dial Tone" ([e-mail])
    Re: Baby Bell Breakup (Randy Gellens)
    Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer (Alan M. Gallatin)
    Telecom FAQ Update/Info/Whatever (Paul Renault)
    Telecom Software Quality (Evangelos Kontogiannis)
    LAN/WAN Issues (Javier Henderson)
    Vendors of PBX Circuit Boards Wanted ([e-mail])
    AT&T G2 Information Wanted (Ted Reston)
    MCI Personal 800 Numbers and Rerouting (Bill Huttig)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 19:59:15 -0500
From: [e-mail] (H.Shrikumar)
Subject: Re: New "Electronic Highway" For Canada
Organization: UMass, Amherst MA + Temporal Sys & Computer Networks Bombay India


In article <[e-mail]> it was reported:

>  Proponents of the new high-speed network said it is necessary
> to keep Canada competitive.  The US network, called NSFnet, can
> transmit 1.5 million bits per second.  In cotrast, CA*net only sends
> 56,000 bits per second.

Hmmmm ... did I not read somewhere that the last T1 link was
disconnected from NSFNET? So the NSFNET now performs over a T3
(45Mbps) backbone. Of course many T1 lines are in service over the
regional networks and elsewhere.

  Right here on C.D.T ...

> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> Wednesday, December 2, 1992
> National Science Foundation Network achieves major milestone
> T-1 NSFNET now part of Internet history

> (Wednesday, Dec. 2) Like it's predecessors, the ARPANET and the 56
> Kbps National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET), the T-1 NSFNET
> passed into history today when the last router was moved to connect to
> the T-3 backbone service. As of 12:01 a.m. EST on Wednesday, December
> 2, the T-1 NSFNET backbone is no more -- its circuits are turned off
>  -- marking the beginning of a new networking

   And with the Tech-VP Al Gore still talking of Super-Data-Highways,
the game of catch-up is sure to go on !


shrikumar ( [e-mail] )

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

From: John K Scoggin Jr <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: New "Electronic Highway" For Canada
Date: 31 Jan 1993 19:27:39 GMT
Organization: Delmarva Power & Light Company
Reply-To: [e-mail]


Anyone care to break the news that the NSFnet is NOT running at 1.544
MBPS -- the T-1 net has been turned down and replaced with a DS-3
network (44.736 MBPS)!


John K. Scoggin, Jr.        Email: [e-mail]
Supervisor, Network Operations  Phone: [phone]
Delmarva Power & Light Company  Fax:   [phone]
500 N. Wakefield Drive          NOC:   [phone]
Newark, DE 19714-6066
The opinions expressed are not those of Delmarva Power, simply the
product of an over-active imagination...

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

From: [e-mail] (Ed Greenberg)
Subject: Re: Apartment Security Stupidity
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 21:01:57 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dave
Levenson) writes:

> If I lived there, I'd much rather have that risk than have some
> strange CPE that is not under my own direct control sit between my
> telephone set and my CO loop.  Wouldn't you?

What if, with the door system that Pat likes, you choose not to have
phone service at all?  I imagine you could have an instrument that
does nothing but answer the door, right?

So, how about, for those purists who don't want some "strange CPE,"
you bring the doorphone up on one pair, and bring the phone line(s) on
other pairs?


Edward W. Greenberg  | Home: [phone] | [e-mail]
1600 Stokes St. #24  | Work: [phone] | DoD#: 0357
San Jose, CA  95126  | Fax:  [phone] | KM6CG (ex WB2GOH)


[Moderator's Note: What you are saying is exactly the approach IBT
used to use when they were installing these systems (they have been
prohibited from doing new installations since divestiture, but they
service grandfathered accounts). Usually the manager of the building
had two or three plain old black rotary dial phones (yes, the Bell
version would work with rotary) left in his care by telco. When new
tenants moved in, the manager would give them one of these phones to
use for front door purposes only until the tenant's own phone service
got turned on at a later time. When they got their service and phone,
the old black one was given back to the manager.   PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 15:16:43 PST
From: [e-mail] (Marty the Droid)
Subject: Re: Apartment Security Stupidity


I've been reading this thread for a while and have to toos in my $.02
worth ...

There is a system I have seen at many apartments here in San Francisco
that seem to have thought of most of the points raised in this
thread ...

They are a speakerphone in a metal panel with a metal dial pad. There
is a red LED display to guide dialling. There is also a directory of
the residents in the building with their codes listed, some places use
the apt number for the code. To go off hook you press the octothorpe
(#) key and then enter the code. The unit then dial pulses the number
for the resident. When the resident answers you can speak with them,
when they want to let you enter they press 9 to buzz the door or 3 to
disconnect.  If the line is busy or unanswered you press 3. The unit
will also drop the connection after 45 seconds or so.

I played with the one at my brother's place and learned this: Anytime
the unit hears a touch tone on the line it disconnects the transmitter
in the door phone. If the tone continues it releases the door.  This
means you can't make outgoing calls from the dialtone when it pops up,
nor can you release the door with a TT dialer.

Of course you could hack it if you had access to the dmarc, but then
if you have access to the dmarc you probably don't need to bugger the
door.  I suppose you could also do it from the B box, but if you are
in that class there are few security measures that will bother you.
(Just like Barney and Willie down in the basement of the Gaz company.) :-)


Marty 'The Droid' Brenneis                      ...!uupsi!kerner!droid
Industrial Magician                                   [e-mail]
[phone]     ~~~   KAE7616 - 462.700 - 162.2      ~~~      KC6YYP

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

From: [e-mail] (Bryan J Abshier)
Subject: Re: Where is a Source For CFRs?
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 20:21:29 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mike
Gordon) writes:

> Since these are federal documents, I'd think they're somewhere.  I'm
> particularly interested in certain FCC and OSHA regs. Where are they?

     You can find these at your local law library.  If you don't live
near a big university or law school, try the county seat.  Most county
courthouses have some kind of law library which will have CFRs.


Bryan J. Abshier  --  [e-mail]  --  [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: Distinctive Ringing - How Widespread?
Date: 1 Feb 1993 02:28:33 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA


In article <[e-mail]> James H. Thompson
<[e-mail]> writes:

> I'm looking for information how widespread the availability of
> distinctive ringing services are.  Would appreciate any suggestions on
> where to find this data.

> [Moderator's Note: I think almost all the Bell companies have this
> feature available on their newer switches.  Anyone have precise data
> on this and the other recent additions like screening, etc?  PAT]

'Almost' does not include Pacific Bell in this case.  Out-of-the-way
places such as California don't have new-fangled features like
distinctive ringing or Caller ID yet.


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Bitfax - How to Turn of "Wait For Dial Tone" Flag
Date: 31 Jan 1993 22:40:23 GMT
Organization: Marquette University - Computer Services
Reply-To: [e-mail]


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:

> I have bitfax software on a send/rec modem.  How do I switch off
> wait for dial tone flag?

> The problem I have is the phone line this PC is connected to cannot
> dial out.  I want the recieving end PC to make the call and my end PC
> to blindly send the fax. When I try to do this my PC gives "NO DIAL
> TONE" error.
> >How do I force it to "blind dial" without caring for a dial tone ?

On most modems the "Xn" parameters sets how 'smart' the modem acts in
regard to call progress tones (dialtone, busy, ring).  Usually ATX0
will cause a blind dial, where the modem will wait a specific amount
of time after taking the line off-hook, and then dial.  Other values
will cause varying amounts of 'smarts' to appear, I would try X0
first, and then try higher numbers and use the highest one that still
works.

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

From: MPA15AB![e-mail]
Date: 31 JAN 93 02:42
Subject: Re: Baby Bell Breakup


[e-mail] (John Higdon) writes:

> The split accomplishes two things (three if you include the stated,
> public reason). First, it looks good. Pacific Telesis can now say
> without lying that there is no connection between the two companies.
> Second, it prevents any dreaded backflow of funds. ...
> The stated reason for the split is that it frees the unregulated side
> of stifling rules imposed by PUCs. Given the fecklessness of the CPUC,
> I find this laughable at best. ...

Another reason (as reported in the {L.A. Times}) is that as long as
PacBell owned PacTell, it could not get a franchise for the next
generation of wireless.


Randy Gellens                [e-mail]
A Series System Software                 if mail bounces,  forward to
Unisys Mission Viejo, CA                         [e-mail]
Opinions are personal;   facts are suspect;   I speak only for myself

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

From: [e-mail] (Alan M. Gallatin)
Subject: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer
Date: 1 Feb 93 04:12:50 GMT
Organization: Duke University; Durham, N.C.


I'm trying to get some information on the cost of calling someone who
is roaming on a cellular phone.  Yes, I know that there is no cost
beyond normal long distance charges (to the person making the call)
but, assuming that the roamer access is long distance, my question is
really WHEN do charges start?

Hypothetical questions -- In all cases, assume long distance charges
would apply.  In each case, I call 123-456-ROAM, hear a second "dial
tone" and proceed to dial my friend's ten digit cellular number.

1) From the time I hear the second dial tone, there are ten seconds of
ringing.  My friend answers and we talk for 55 seconds.  Is the call
considered to be :55 or 1:05 in length?

2) Same call setup, but after 15 seconds I get a recording: "The
cellular customer you have dialed is not answering or not in the <X>
Cellular calling area."  15+ second call or zero length?

3) Same call setup, but my friend's line is busy.  Any charge for the
call?

I understand that my friend pays roaming charges if he answers the
call, but that's an entirely different issue.

Why do I ask all this?  If someone is travelling and gives me ten
different roamer access numbers that he could potentially be reached
through (he'll be on the road and passing through different areas)
will it cost me an arm and a leg to call each one everytime I need to
track him down or will I only pay when I actually reach him?

Neither AT&T nor MCI could give definite answers on this one.
Further, neither of the local cellular companies (GTE Cellular
One/Centel) could answer with certainty, either.


* Please e-mail response to [e-mail] since an answer will be *
* received much quicker than the processing time for a digest article.  *
* (You should still post a copy as well for the benefit of others) -    *

Thanks!

Alan M. Gallatin <[e-mail]>

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

From: Paul Renault <[e-mail]>
Subject: Telecom FAQ Update/Information/Whatever
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 10:06:29 EST


Thanks for the FAQ:

    I've just spent three many days on the phone to Bell Canada,
Bell Northern Research, and Northern Telecom trying to find out some
solid info on Caller ID (Caller Display) so I could tie to a client
database via my modem ...

    Besides having to explain over and over and over WHY I wanted
the info, and what I needed, I had to put up with the unbelievable
"Gee, I don't know who could help you, you want some really technical
information ..."

    (Like -- these people sell, what, three or four products - god
forbid that they should know anything about what they sell ...)  I
only managed to find one person who could see the point of making DID
information free and public: namely, that if the info was available
the phone company will sell the service to more users.  Gah!  Double
Gah!

    Anyway, I found your telcom FAQ, found the telephone number
for Stentor, and called them.  Thanks.

    However, the telephone number has changed to [phone],
and for callers from Canada the toll-free number is [phone] -
leave a message.


[Moderator's Note: I am glad te FAQ was useful you. A copy of the
latest edition (version 4) was posted to comp.dcom.telecom Sunday for
anyone who still does not have a copy.   PAT]

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

Date: Sun 31 Jan 93 14:13:11 +0200
From: [e-mail] (Evangelos Kontogiannis)
Subject: Telecom Software Quality


Hello,

I am looking for info on discussion groups/listl/archive files dealing
with Telecom Software Quality issues (ISO Recommendations, etc).  My
company develops software for digital switches for PSTN.  I read
TELECOM digest, but do not recall any item dealing with this issue
speciffically.  Thank you in advance.

Please reply by e-mail to: [e-mail]
                           INTRACOM S.A.

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: LAN/WAN Issues
Organization: CTS Network Services (crash, ctsnet), El Cajon, CA
Date: 31 Jan 93 12:06:10 PST


[ Article crossposted from vmsnet.networks.misc ]
[ Author was Javier Henderson ]
[ Posted on 27 Jan 93 12:04:12 PST ]


Hello, everyone,

I have the following scenario, which I'd like to present to the net
and see what other people may suggest.

The company I work for has a central site in Ventura, CA, and remote
sites around the state, between 80 and 300 miles away.

The central site has two VAX cpu's, and I need about 16-20 terminals
or printers at each remote site. There's no need to have 'stuff' at
the remote sites networked with the central site at this point (such
as PC's running Pathworks for example), but it may be needed in the
future.

DEC's suggestion was to go with DECMuxes. Terry Poot suggested to use
a product called ILAN, to extend the LAN from the central site to the
remote sites. The VAXes have DECnet, but no TCP/IP. If we are to set
up DEC (or third party) terminal servers at the remote sites, they
communicate with the cpu's via LAT, a non-routable protocol.

What would you suggest?


Thanks,

[e-mail]     Javier Henderson

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Vendors of PBX Circuit Boards Wanted
Date: 31 Jan 93 20:07:25 GMT


Hi,

A friend of mine is looking forward to the possibility of purchasing
printed boards for PABX systems (Digital switching) from manufacturers
or vendors in the United States, Taiwan or other countries. He would
need boards for processor unit, terminal units (user units/trunk
units) and some other accessory units for switching systems with 200+
lines.  Potentially, large amount of boards would be needed.  If
somebody knows where he can find the manufactures/vendors, please give
me a mail to:

        [e-mail]

Any other suggestion will also be highly appreciated.


THanks,


Steve

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: 31 Jan 93 18:30:01 GMT
Subject: AT&T G2 Information Needed


I am looking for technical documentation on AT&T G2.  Does anyone out
there know where I might get some?

Please respond via e-mail.  Thank You.


Ted Reston     Reston Consulting Services
batfish![e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 17:34:41 -0500
From: [e-mail] ( Bill Huttig)
Subject: MCI Personal 800 Numbers and Rerouting


I have two Personal 800 numbers from MCI ... I reroute one of the
numbers last night to a party line ... and didn't change it back..
anyway today I find both 800 numbers disconnected and a note on my
account stating that they were terminated because of fraud ... I am
the one that rerouted the numbers; I am going to pay the bill ... I
called the number ... How is this considered fraud?

I am unaware of anything from MCI (oral or in writing) that said that
I could not reroute to certain types of lines.  Fraud Department is
not in so I will have to call tommorow morning.

I have more trouble with MCI disconnecting the number's and miss
billing ... if they thought there was fraud they should have called me
and not just disconnect the numbers.  I spend over $100/momth with
them and I have more trouble with them then I did with ATC ... (only
thing is I save $1.20/hr.


Bill

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #59
*****************************










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Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 09:09:33 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Federal Crackdown on Computer Abuse and Misuse


I received this file over the weekend and am passing it along FYI to
TELECOM Digest readers. It appears the government wants to see time in
prison for anyone/everyone found guilty of numerous crimes involving
the use of computers, based on the sentencing guidelines proposed.

Comments should be directed to the CPSR, the Sentencing Commission, or
one of the newsgroups/mailing lists where the discussion will no doubt
be continuing, such as Computer Underground Digest.


PAT

   Organization: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
   From: Dave Banisar <[e-mail]>
   Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1993 15:12:11 EST
   Subject: Revised Computer Crime Sentencing Guidelines

   From Jack King ([e-mail])

The U.S. Dept. of Justice has asked the U.S. Sentencing Commission to
promulgate a new federal sentencing guideline, Sec. 2F2.1,
specifically addressing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1988 (18
USC 1030), with a base offense level of 6 and enhancements of 4 to 6
levels for violations of specific provisions of the statute.  The new
guideline practically guarantees some period of confinement, even for
first offenders who plead guilty.

For example, the guideline would provide that if the defendant
obtained ``protected'' information (defined as ``private information,
non-public government information, or proprietary commercial
information), the offense level would be increased by two; if the
defendant disclosed protected information to any person, the offense
level would be increased by four levels, and if the defendant
distributed the information by means of "a general distribution
system," the offense level would go up six levels.

The proposed commentary explains that a "general distribution system"
includes "electronic bulletin board and voice mail systems,
newsletters and other publications, and any other form of group
dissemination, by any means."

So, in effect, a person who obtains information from the computer of
another, and gives that information to another gets a base offense
level of 10; if he used a 'zine or BBS to disseminate it, he would get
a base offense level of 12. The federal guidelines prescribe 6-12
months in jail for a first offender with an offense level of 10, and
10-16 months for same with an offense level of 12.  Pleading guilty
can get the base offense level down by two levels; probation would
then be an option for the first offender with an offense level of 10
(reduced to 8).  But remember: there is no more federal parole.  The
time a defendant gets is the time s/he serves (minus a couple days a
month "good time").

If, however, the offense caused an economic loss, the offense level
would be increased according to the general fraud table (Sec. 2F1.1).
The proposed commentary explains that computer offenses often cause
intangible harms, such as individual privacy rights or by impairing
computer operations, property values not readily translatable to the
general fraud table. The proposed commentary also suggests that if the
defendant has a prior conviction for "similar misconduct that is not
adequately reflected in the criminal history score, an upward
departure may be warranted." An upward departure may also be
warranted, DOJ suggests, if "the defendant's conduct has affected or
was likely to affect public service or confidence" in "public
interests" such as common carriers, utilities, and institutions.

Based on the way U.S. Attorneys and their computer experts have
guesstimated economic "losses" in a few prior cases, a convicted
tamperer can get whacked with a couple of years in the slammer, a
whopping fine, full "restitution" and one to two years of supervised
release (which is like going to a parole officer). (Actually, it *is*
going to a parole officer, because although there is no more federal
parole, they didn't get rid of all those parole officers. They have
them supervise convicts' return to society.)

This, and other proposed sentencing guidelines, can be found at 57 Fed
Reg 62832-62857 (Dec. 31, 1992).

The U.S. Sentencing Commission wants to hear from YOU.  Write: U.S.
Sentencing Commission, One Columbus Circle, N.E., Suite 2-500,
Washington DC 20002-8002, Attention: Public Information.  Comments
must be received by March 15, 1993.


                                  * * *

Actual text of relevant ammendments:

                UNITED STATES SENTENCING COMMISSION
            AGENCY: United States Sentencing Commission.
                          57  FR  62832

                        December 31, 1992

   Sentencing Guidelines for United States Courts

ACTION: Notice of proposed amendments to sentencing guidelines, policy
statements, and commentary. Request for public comment.  Notice of
hearing.

SUMMARY: The Commission is considering promulgating certain amendments
to the sentencing guidelines, policy statements, and commentary. The
proposed amendments and a synopsis of issues to be addressed are set
forth below. The Commission may report amendments to the Congress on
or before May 1, 1993. Comment is sought on all proposals, alternative
proposals, and any other aspect of the sentencing guidelines, policy
statements, and commentary.

DATES: The Commission has scheduled a public hearing on these proposed
amendments for March 22, 1993, at 9:30 a.m. at the Ceremonial
Courtroom, United States Courthouse, 3d and Constitution Avenue, NW.,
Washington, DC 20001.

   Anyone wishing to testify at this public hearing should notify
Michael Courlander, Public Information Specialist, at [phone]
by March 1, 1993.

   Public comment, as well as written testimony for the hearing,
should be received by the Commission no later than March 15, 1993, in
order to be considered by the Commission in the promulgation of
amendments due to the Congress by May 1, 1993.

ADDRESSES: Public comment should be sent to: United States Sentencing
Commission, One Columbus Circle, NE., suite 2-500, South Lobby,
Washington, DC 20002-8002, Attention: Public Information.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Michael Courlander, Public
Information Specialist, Telephone: [phone].

* * *

   59. Synopsis of Amendment: This amendment creates a new guideline
applicable to violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1988
(18 U.S.C. 1030). Violations of this statute are currently subject to
the fraud guidelines at S. 2F1.1, which rely heavily on the dollar
amount of loss caused to the victim. Computer offenses, however,
commonly protect against harms that cannot be adequately quantified by
examining dollar losses. Illegal access to consumer credit reports,
for example, which may have little monetary value, nevertheless can
represent a serious intrusion into privacy interests. Illegal
intrusions in the computers which control telephone systems may
disrupt normal telephone service and present hazards to emergency
systems, neither of which are readily quantifiable. This amendment
proposes a new Section 2F2.1, which provides sentencing guidelines
particularly designed for this unique and rapidly developing area of
the law.

   Proposed Amendment: Part F is amended by inserting the following
section, numbered S.  2F2.1, and captioned "Computer Fraud and Abuse,"
immediately following Section 2F1.2:

"S.  2F2.1. Computer Fraud and Abuse

   (a) Base Offense Level: 6

   (b) Specific Offense Characteristics

   (1) Reliability of data. If the defendant altered information,
increase by 2 levels; if the defendant altered protected information,
or public records filed or maintained under law or regulation,
increase by 6 levels.

   (2) Confidentiality of data. If the defendant obtained protected
information, increase by 2 levels; if the defendant disclosed
protected information to any person, increase by 4 levels; if the
defendant disclosed protected information to the public by means of a
general distribution system, increase by 6 levels.

   Provided that the cumulative adjustments from (1) and (2), shall
not exceed 8.

   (3) If the offense caused or was likely to cause

   (A) interference with the administration of justice (civil or
criminal) or harm to any person's health or safety, or

   (B) interference with any facility (public or private) or
communications network that serves the public health or safety,
increase by 6 levels.

   (4) If the offense caused economic loss, increase the offense
level according to the tables in S.  2F1.1 (Fraud and Deceit). In
using those tables, include the following:

   (A) Costs of system recovery, and

   (B) Consequential losses from trafficking in passwords.

   (5) If an offense was committed for the purpose of malicious
destruction or damage, increase by 4 levels.

   (c) Cross References

   (1) If the offense is also covered by another offense guideline
section, apply that offense guideline section if the resulting level
is greater. Other guidelines that may cover the same conduct include,
for example: for 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(1), S.  2M3.2 (Gathering National
Defense Information); for 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(3), S.  2B1.1 (Larceny,
Embezzlement, and Other Forms of Theft), S.  2B1.2 (Receiving,
Transporting, Transferring, Transmitting, or Possessing Stolen

Property), and S.  2H3.1 (Interception of Communications or
Eavesdropping); for 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(4), S.  2F1.1 (Fraud and
Deceit), and S.  2B1.1 (Larceny, Embezzlement, and Other Forms of
Theft); for 18 U.S.C. S.  1030(a)(5), S.  2H2.1 (Obstructing an
Election or Registration), S.  2J1.2 (Obstruction of Justice), and S.
2B3.2 (Extortion); and for 18 U.S.C. S.  1030(a)(6), S.  2F1.1 (Fraud
and Deceit) and S.  2B1.1 (Larceny, Embezzlement, and Other Forms of
Theft).

Commentary

   Statutory Provisions: 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(1)-(a)(6)

   Application Notes:

   1. This guideline is necessary because computer offenses often harm
intangible values, such as privacy rights or the unimpaired operation
of networks, more than the kinds of property values which the general
fraud table measures. See S.  2F1.1, Note 10. If the defendant was
previously convicted of similar misconduct that is not adequately
reflected in the criminal history score, an upward departure may be
warranted.

   2. The harms expressed in paragraph (b)(1) pertain to the
reliability and integrity of data; those in (b)(2) concern the
confidentiality and privacy of data. Although some crimes will cause
both harms, it is possible to cause either one alone. Clearly a
defendant can obtain or distribute protected information without
altering it. And by launching a virus, a defendant may alter or
destroy data without ever obtaining it. For this reason, the harms are
listed separately and are meant to be cumulative.

   3. The terms "information," "records," and "data" are
interchangeable.

   4. The term "protected information" means private information,
non-public government information, or proprietary commercial
information.

   5. The term "private information" means confidential information
(including medical, financial, educational, employment, legal, and tax
information) maintained under law, regulation, or other duty (whether
held by public agencies or privately) regarding the history or status
of any person, business, corporation, or other organization.

   6. The term "non-public government information" means unclassified
information which was maintained by any government agency, contractor
or agent; which had not been released to the public; and which was
related to military operations or readiness, foreign relations or
intelligence, or law enforcement investigations or operations.

   7. The term "proprietary commercial information" means non-public
business information, including information which is sensitive,
confidential, restricted, trade secret, or otherwise not meant for
public distribution. If the proprietary information has an
ascertainable value, apply paragraph (b) (4) to the economic loss
rather than (b) (1) and (2), if the resulting offense level is
greater.

   8. Public records protected under paragraph (b) (1) must be filed
or maintained under a law or regulation of the federal government, a
state or territory, or any of their political subdivisions.

   9. The term "altered" covers all changes to data, whether the
defendant added, deleted, amended, or destroyed any or all of it.

   10. A "general distribution system" includes electronic bulletin
board and voice mail systems, newsletters and other publications, and
any other form of group dissemination, by any means.

   11. The term "malicious destruction or damage" includes injury to
business and personal reputations.

   12. Costs of system recovery: Include the costs accrued by the
victim in identifying and tracking the defendant, ascertaining the
damage, and restoring the system or data to its original condition.
In computing these costs, include material and personnel costs, as
well as losses incurred from interruptions of service. If several
people obtained unauthorized access to any system during the same
period, each defendant is responsible for the full amount of recovery
or repair loss, minus any costs which are clearly attributable only to
acts of other individuals.

   13. Consequential losses from trafficking in passwords: A defendant
who trafficked in passwords by using or maintaining a general
distribution system is responsible for all economic losses that
resulted from the use of the password after the date of his or her
first general distribution, minus any specific amounts which are
clearly attributable only to acts of other individuals. The term
"passwords" includes any form of personalized access identification,
such as user codes or names.

   14. If the defendant's acts harmed public interests not adequately
reflected in these guidelines, an upward departure may be warranted.
Examples include interference with common carriers, utilities, and
institutions (such as educational, governmental, or financial
institutions), whenever the defendant's conduct has affected or was
likely to affect public service or confidence".


* * *

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

This file has been provided FYI to TELECOM Digest readers. Comments
should be directed to either the CPSR or the Sentencing Commission or
other newsgroups or mailing lists (such as Computer Underground
Digest) where the discussion will no doubt be continuing.


PAT











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Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 22:23:11 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #60

TELECOM Digest     Mon,  1 Feb 93 22:23:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 60

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Clinton Speaks; White House Phones Go Haywire (Mark Vanroojen)
    Re: Clinton Speaks; White House Phones Go Haywire (H. Shrikumar)
    Re: Clinton Speaks; White House Phones Go Haywire ([e-mail])
    Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer (John Higdon)
    Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer (Alan M. Gallatin)
    Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer (John Higdon)
    Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer (John R. Covert)
    Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer (Steve Forrette)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Todd Inch)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Tom Avery)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Carl Moore)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Christopher J. Ambler)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Ron Dippold)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Mark Steiger)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 15:24:51 CST
From: [e-mail] (mark vanroojen)
Subject: Re: Clinton Speaks; White House Phones Go Haywire


Thanks for the posting on the White House phones.  I too am dismayed
at the amount of hate a simple decision not to discriminate can
generate.  I appreciate the editorial comments letting the readers
know where you stand.


Mark van Roojen    [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: I also received correspondence from Jack Decker
(too lengthy to include here) taking me to task for 'making it seem
like only the people opposed to gays in the military were making
vicious attacks ...' What I said was that intelligent remarks on
*BOTH* sides of the issue were a rarity. Jack pointed out -- using the
alleged 'art' of Robert Mapplethorpe as an example -- that gay people
can also be crude, lewd and quite obscene when expressing themselves.
I don't disagree with that. Civility or the lack of it transcends
sexual orientation; but the point of my message was not to detirmine
who could be the nastiest and most hateful, but rather, that phone
traffic was extremely heavy all last week; it caused malfunctioning in
the White House telecom equipment; and that the overwhelming majority
of callers were not merely content to express their displeasure with
President Clinton's posture on this issue but had to embelish their
own comments with liberal doses of obscenities and vicious remarks as
well, perchance someone missed the reason for their phone call. Jack
noted that with this action as one of Clinton's first official acts,
the next four years should be interesting, as in the old Chinese
saying 'may you live in interesting times'. Yes Jack, I quite agree,
the next four years should see some incredible changes in the USA.  PAT]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 19:49:14 -0500
From: [e-mail] (H.Shrikumar)
Subject: Re: Clinton Speaks; White House Phones Go Haywire
Organization: UMass, Amherst MA + Temporal Sys & Computer Networks Bombay India


In article <[e-mail]> TELECOM Moderator wrote:

> So ... the normal increase in phone traffic due to a government in
> transition accompanied by an aroused citizenry more willing than ever
> to use the telephone to give our president a piece of their mind pro
> and con -- mostly con, I might add :( based on reports from telecom
> management at the White House -- finally brought the system to a
> screaming halt on Thursday and again on Friday for awhile. The switch
> serving the White House simply crashed from the volume of traffic.

> They'd reboot it, it would run awhile and crash again. Finally it
> looked like everything was restored, then came the Friday afternoon

   Interesting!!

   But hold it ! Surely I'd imagine switches *would* *be* designed to
survive gracefully any severe overload far above BCHA!!

   Or is it perhaps that the switches are indeed designed to handle
several times BCHA gracefully, but only this time the number of call
attempts was far in excess of that n * BCHA rating.

  Enquring minds ...

  BTW ... what switch was it that needed the rebooting? Are we talking
about the LO serving the White House area ie. the (202)-456 Office?
Or is it an RLU (if they are use out there) or a PBX or a Centrex that
(sometimes) could get confused with the switch when stories go
mouth-to-mouth. What make was the "switch" ?


shrikumar ( [e-mail] )


[Moderator's Note: It was only their internal telecom stuff, not a C&P
switch. There is a centrex serving the White House which is not on the
456 exchange. It serves the Executive Office Building and has
extensions from it in the White House as well. '456' is the
switchboard and some other departments in the executive domain. Calls
received at the 456-1414 switchboard can be transferred to the centrex
serving the EOB. What they said happened Thursday and Friday was that
calls could not be properly transferred from the switchboard to other
places. In the process of transferring them, the calls would just
vanish. People calling in got endless ringing with no signal showing
up at the switchboard or in the Comments Office sub-system. After
awhile, the ringing would stop and the caller would be left in limbo,
unretrievable by anyone. Calls being transferred would sometimes jump
right into the middle of a call already in progress between two other
people, dumping the existing caller off. The staffer is talking to one
person and suddenly she had a totally different person on line in
mid-sentence.  People dialing for an outside line would get incoming calls
dumped on their line instead of the expected dialtone.  Apparently the
White House *public* phone system has/had a flaw somewhere. Maybe it
was something in the hardware which pooped out from the intensity of
the calls, or perhaps a bug in the software only became known when the
call volume reached such a high level. They aren't saying.  Of course
callers who were connected each time the disturbances started would
lose their connection and assume the staff had hung up on them; they'd
call back angry and more hostile than the first time demanding to be
connected with 'whoever that was who hung up on me ...' etc.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Clinton Speaks; White House Phones Go Haywire
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 12:07:12 PST


Gee, the White House needs a voice mail system with an automated
attendant! =)


[Moderator's Note: You mean like, press 1 if you agree with Clinton,
press 2 if you disagree, dial extension 3825 or 7448 if you need to
cuss at someone right away who is taking calls for the President; or
at the tone, leave your obscenity.   :)  PAT]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 01:31 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer


[e-mail] (Alan M. Gallatin) writes:

> 1) From the time I hear the second dial tone, there are ten seconds of
> ringing.  My friend answers and we talk for 55 seconds.  Is the call
> considered to be :55 or 1:05 in length?

> 2) Same call setup, but after 15 seconds I get a recording: "The
> cellular customer you have dialed is not answering or not in the <X>
> Cellular calling area."  15+ second call or zero length?

> 3) Same call setup, but my friend's line is busy.  Any charge for the
> call?

You are charged from the moment you hear dial tone from the MTSO. It
could be programmed to supervise upon answer by the mobile, but the
cellular companies discovered that AT&T blocks forward audio
transmission until the call supervises. This means that you cannot
send any DTMF to the MTSO until the call supervises (and charging
begins).

But why on earth are you using this archaic method of roaming? Most
carriers have agreements with other carriers to allow automatic
incoming roaming of one sort or another. If you use that, no one gets
charged anything until the mobile answers. And you do not have to
"track down" anyone. You simply dial the home system mobile number and
the call goes right to the mobile phone, regardless of where it is.

And even if you pay toll to the base mobile number AND the mobile
customer pays the backhaul, it is cheaper than making a dozen
unsuccessful calls to MTSO roaming ports.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Alan M. Gallatin)
Subject: Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 5:10:10 EST


Referring to my method of tracking down a cellular roamer by calling a
list of roamer access numbers, John Higdon replies:

> But why on earth are you using this archaic method of roaming?

[Describes national-call-delivery type roaming services]

> And even if you pay toll to the base mobile number AND the mobile
> customer pays the backhaul, it is cheaper than making a dozen
> unsuccessful calls to MTSO roaming ports.

The potential double toll charges are precisely why a national-call-
delivery type service is not always desirable (assuming, of course,
that I equate my friends toll costs to his cellular account equal in
importance to my own). For every unsuccesful call to a roamer port, I
waste a minute (shouldn't be any more than that) of long distance; if
I have five unsuccesful attempts and then get through, I will have
wasted five minutes of toll.  Although an NCD type service would have
saved me this money, we're paying double toll -- so once the call goes
over five minutes, REAL waste kicks in.

(Of course, I suppose that once the cell customer is tracked down via
NCD, he can then hang up and call back from the cell phone; toll
charges to the cellular customer might not be any different but the
landline customer saves all $.)

Another idea: Assume NCD is activated.  I dial the person's cellular
number and they are properly located.  Can they then simply tell me
where they are and have me call back through a roamer port or does
having NCD active make other forms of roamer access inoperable?


Alan Gallatin  <[e-mail]>

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 02:34 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer


On Feb 1 at  5:10, Alan M. Gallatin writes:

> Can they then simply tell me where they are and have me call back
> through a roamer port or does having NCD active make other forms of
> roamer access inoperable?

In my experience, no type of roaming precludes any other.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 05:12:27 PST
From: John R. Covert  01-Feb-1993 0809 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer


Charging begins as soon as the roaming port you are calling answers.

Since AT&T will not transmit sound from the caller to the called party
until charging begins, cellular roaming ports must be arranged to
answer immediately; otherwise they would not be able to hear you enter
the cellular number with touch-tone.

Thus you are charged for each attempt, whether you reach your party or
not.

There are a _few_ ports which (through error) do not answer until the
cellular subscriber answers.  These ports cannot be used at all via
AT&T, but can be used on other carriers.  The person you're calling
probably isn't in one of these areas anyway, since these areas clearly
don't have many roamers, or the problem would have been fixed due to
complaints that the ports don't work when calling long distance.


john

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

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer
Date: 1 Feb 1993 16:01:50 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Alan M.
Gallatin) writes:

> I'm trying to get some information on the cost of calling someone who
> is roaming on a cellular phone.  Yes, I know that there is no cost
> beyond normal long distance charges (to the person making the call)
> but, assuming that the roamer access is long distance, my question is
> really WHEN do charges start?

> 1) From the time I hear the second dial tone, there are ten seconds of
> ringing.  My friend answers and we talk for 55 seconds.  Is the call
> considered to be :55 or 1:05 in length?

1:05

> 2) Same call setup, but after 15 seconds I get a recording: "The
> cellular customer you have dialed is not answering or not in the <X>
> Cellular calling area."  15+ second call or zero length?

15+ seconds

> 3) Same call setup, but my friend's line is busy.  Any charge for the
> call?

Yes.

> Why do I ask all this?  If someone is travelling and gives me ten
> different roamer access numbers that he could potentially be reached
> through (he'll be on the road and passing through different areas)
> will it cost me an arm and a leg to call each one everytime I need to
> track him down or will I only pay when I actually reach him?

It is unfortunate that this is the case, and it was not always this
way.  We can all thank AT&T for this new 'feature' that had to be
implemented on the cellular roaming ports a few years ago.  Once upon
a time, the roam ports worked in a 'friendly' way, only returning
answer supervision when (and if) the cellular customer actually
answered. (Answer supervision is the signal that the terminating
central office returns to the originating CO to tell it when to start
billing).  This was really nice to the long distance (or cellular)
caller to the roam port.

Then, AT&T implemented a new 'feature' in their long distance network,
whereby the forward talk path is not enabled until AT&T receives the
answer supervision signal from the called end.  If the roam ports were
left the way they had been, it would be impossible for anyone calling
on the AT&T network to use them.  The caller would hear the secondary
dialtone, but the roam port would never hear their touchtones.  So,
all the roam ports are now configured to return answer supervision as
soon as they start their own dialtone.

On a related note, I would encourage anyone that places calling card
calls from a cellular phone to use US Sprint's FON card, as that
system does not return answer supervision until and unless the final
called party answers.  This way, you don't have to pay airtime for
uncompleted calls.  At least it works this way through the 1-800
access method.  The AT&T calling card system returns answer
supervision as soon as the 'bong' tone sounds, so you have to pay
airtime for uncompleted calls as well.  Since most of the time you
need to bill cellular calls to a calling card is when you are roaming,
this can quickly add up.


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Todd Inch)
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes
Organization: Maverick International Inc.
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 21:06:57 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> jyacc![e-mail]
(Charles McGuinness) writes:

>> At the end of the month I'm moving to a house that already has one
>> phone line installed, and having a second line turned on.
>> I have heard that there is a code I can dial into a phone that will
>> tell me what phone number that phone is connected to.

> There is such a secret code that works everywhere in your situation
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> You dial the phone number of your second phone line.  The telephone
> company will give you a ringing tone if you are on your first line or
> a busy signal if you are on your second line. This is a little known
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Actually, in some places you'll get a recording saying you're trying
to call a party-line-number on your own party line, so please hang up
and give them time to answer.  This is true even if it is not a party
line.  That feature does let you test your bells and serve as a cheap
intercom, however.

> feature, so don't spread the word or the phone company might
> discontinue it! ;-)

This "feature" is not always useful.  I usually only get the
opportunity to remodel my key system at home after the wife and kids
are asleep (which, some days, is the only time both lines are unused),
and they don't appreciate my testing which line is which by ringing
it.

In GTE land north of Seattle, WA, the "secret code" is 411.  We use
1-555-1212 for local directory information.  The number varies widely
depending on your local telco and probably isn't as simple as a three
digit number in most areas (hint: it's definitely NOT 911!).  In some
places, these test numbers are frequently changed to prevent customers
from using it, but not around here.  Some telcos, especially very
small ones, may not even have such a number.

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

From: [e-mail] (Tom Avery)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 15:00:41 -0600
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes


I just tried the number here in St.Louis, MO.  It worked for me.  Nice
slow computer generated voice.  Gave me my phone number + 8.


Tom Avery     VM x8939   MDC Account Manager
Silicon Graphics, Inc.   12400 Olive Boulevard, Suite 450
St. Louis, MO  63141     314-542-0876   314-542-0751 (fax)

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 13:54:03 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes


Mark Bacchus <[e-mail]> writes:

> I've never heard of a case where you could dial a LD carrier access
> code followed by a seven digit number.

I assume this is possible in area 609 in New Jersey.  Long distance
within a New Jersey area code is only seven digits, and 609 is split
between two LATAs.

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

From: [e-mail] (Christopher J. Ambler, Phish)
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes
Organization: When Fashion Dictates, you're living in a Fashion State!
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1993 11:02:14 GMT


Interesting. I tried the number from my ISDN set, and after a tone, it
read me back my number with the obligatory 8 appended. After another
tone, I got the string of numbers, but not the 0s and 2s that everyone
else is getting, I got 8880006. I wonder what they are. Any ideas?


[e-mail] | Author, FSUUCP 1.32
[e-mail]  | Secretary, BBSC

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

From: [e-mail] (Ron Dippold)
Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 20:15:06 GMT


[e-mail] (Ron Dippold) writes:

> I wonder if AT&T is going to yank that commercial - the one about how
> they managed to reroute Sears's calls when one of their phone centers

Okay, it's been extensively pointed out that this was actually JC
Penny.  I plead guilty to not paying enough attention to commercials! :)

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

From: [e-mail] (Mark Steiger)
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1993 11:44:03 -0600
Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years
Organization: The Dark Knight's Table BBS:  Minnetonka, MN (Free!)


>> Sears Roebuck & Company's Mail Order Catalog Division is closing
>> after more than 95 years.

>> Until last year, incredibly enough, SEARS CATALOG DID NOT HAVE
>> AN 800 NUMBER.

> Aside from the Donnelly company which printed the Sears catalogs,
> another big telecommunications loser will be SPRINT, which has had th
> privilege of handling the hundreds of thousands of calls to
> 1-800-366-3000 for SEARS catalog sales.  Sears' Sprint account rep
> better get hustling on new business!

> BTW, you can still order from Sears catalog until all their merchan-
> dise is exhausted.

> I guess that Sears will sell its mailing list to raise cash, and thos
> of us who've ever ordered from the Sears catalog will now be bombarde
> with calls, letters, and catalogs from other mail order houses!

I work for a major mail order firm and I know our company is fighting
about ten other companies for the Sears mailing list.  I've heard
around the phone floor that our bid is at about $1 per name.  Whoever
owns that list will practically own the world of catalog sales.


Mark Steiger, Sysop, The Igloo BBS [phone]
Internet: [e-mail]
Fido: 1:282/4018  Simnet: 16:612/24


[Moderator's Note: The Sears' list will indeed be a plum for some
company, and a smart player might buy it then resell it piecemeal to
several other companies and clean up financially that way also.  PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #60
*****************************











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Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 01:24:00 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #61

TELECOM Digest     Tue,  2 Feb 93 01:24:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 61

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call (Paulo Santos)
    Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call (John Higdon)
    Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call (Jack Decker)
    Norwegian Number Change, a First Hand Report (Morten Reistad)
    Re: "Advanced Switching" at SWBT (Don Hackler)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (John Higdon)
    Re: New "Electronic Highway" For Canada (Robert L. McMillin)
    Re: Can Phones be Restricted to 911 Only? (Darren Alex Griffiths)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Paulo Santos)
Subject: Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call
Reply-To: Paulo Santos <[e-mail]>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 22:59:24 GMT


I wrote an article here expressing my desired to receive and pay for
an itemization of some local calls for fax logging purposes.  John
Higdon followed up suggesting that I should setup such a system
myself, and not expect "the telephone company to keep track of my
business."  His thesis is that I should not "expect a revamp of the
public network" to suit my special requirements.

I could not believe it.  Here was John Higdon, the same John Higdon
who complains regularly in this Digest about the backwardness of
Pacific Bell in introducing new features in CA, saying that I should
not ask for of expect a new feature.

The feature I asked for seems reasonable and a useful one; a feature
that some people (at least one) are willing to pay for.  Is it
unreasonable to bring it up in this Digest for discussion?  I don't
think so.

The telephone network is not just a POTS network anymore.  If the
telephone companies were in the market just to provide POTS service, I
would buy Mr. Higdon's argument.  Following his argument, we would
still not have three-way calling or call waiting.  After all, if you
really wanted three-way calling, you could always get two lines and a
conference bridge; if you really wanted to receive a call while you
were engaged in an other conversation, you could get two lines.  The
problem is that people put some value in those added services, but are
not willing to pay the cost of another line for it.  So the phone
companies provides an alternative at a lower cost taht people find
acceptable and buy.  Joe Doe wins, the phone company wins, everyone is
happy.

Same thing happens with the "per call itemization" that I suggest.  I
can't justify investing in an ellaborate system, but I would be
willing to pay the phone company to do it for me cheaper.  It seems
that they have the resources (CO + billing) to do it.  So I suggested
that they offer this service.

I have received several pieces of email about this topic.  I will
summarize to the Digest soon.


Paulo Santos    [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 19:08 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call


On Feb 1 at 18:01, Paulo Santos writes:

> I could not believe it.  Here was John Higdon, the same John Higdon
> who complains regularly in this Digest about the backwardness of
> Pacific Bell in introducing new features in CA, saying that I should
> not ask for of expect a new feature.

You miss a key point. The features that I demand from my local telco
are those that I cannot provide for myself AT ANY COST. Shall we
examine them? The simple feature, hunting, can only be provided in the
central office. "No-loss" three-way calling can only be provided in
the CO (using line amps introduces other serious degradations). CLASS
features can certainly only be done in the central office.

Other features such as call forwarding and call waiting can be
accomplished with multiple lines, but can be done much more simply in
the CO as a software function.

> The feature I asked for seems reasonable and a useful one; a feature
> that some people (at least one) are willing to pay for.  Is it
> unreasonable to bring it up in this Digest for discussion?  I don't
> think so.

Can you not tolerate disagreement? Is it unreasonable to suggest that
your "feature" could be better handled at the customer location? You
brought it up for discussion. Last time I looked, that is what we were
doing, no? For a feature to be viable, it has to have a demand that
somewhat exceeds one request. And what you want would be a
considerable bother to the telco -- not so much in the recording, but
in the processing and delivery of the data to the customer.

> Same thing happens with the "per call itemization" that I suggest.
> I can't justify investing in an ellaborate system, but I would
> be willing to pay the phone company to do it for me cheaper.
> It seems that they have the resources (CO + billing) to do it.
> So I suggested that they offer this service.

If it was set up for you, it would of necessity have to be set up for
everyone. To justify the cost, the telco would probably start pushing
for mandatory measured service. Itemization of local calls is hardly
something that would be in any great demand, particularly if the local
calls were not charged for. As far as an "elaborate" set up is
concerned, my system consists of a simple Panasonic KX-T1232 and a
home computer. Big deal.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]


[Moderator's Note: A point worth mentioning though is in the event of
a dispute regards the delivery of some printed document (for example,
a contract due by a certain date), a telephone company record (as
opposed to a record generated by customer premises equipment) might be
more acceptable in a court, since telco would in effect be a third
party witness to the whole thing and presumably impartial about the
outcome. If my CPE generated a record to accompany the record which my
fax machine generated, while your record says something different,
wouldn't this come down to a case of 'my word against your word'?  If
my fax machine says successful delivery was made, and telco's record
shows a connection at the time in question then it is unlikely you
will try to argue that both telco and myself conspired against you.  PAT]

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

Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 12:05:26 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call


In message <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Paulo
Santos) writes:

> In general, I like the idea of a flat rate for local telephone
> service, with no per call charges.

Me, too!

> I also like itemized billing to have a record of some calls.  I don't
> send certified letters any more.  If I want a receipt of delivery of a
> written message to an addressee, I just fax the message.  The long
> distance charge on my bill will be evidence that I sent something to
> the other party's fax.  Much cheaper, much faster.

> But I can't do this for local calls.  Local calls are not itemized.  I
> have resorted to dialing local calls with my calling card just to get
> an itemized entry, but I don't like it.  It is an expensive solution
> and I can't autodial from the fax machine.

Okay.  Let's get one thing straight.  Traditional local measured
service as is commonly offered by, and sometimes forced upon customers
by local telcos would NOT help you, since local calls are not itemized
(which, by the way, is one of the primary objections to local measured
service ... there HAVE been cases where each call was counted twice, or
some other abnomoly in the system has increased the call count beyond
what it really should have been).

> So here is an idea for the local companies.  How about a *nn service
> to provide call detail on certain calls, at a reasonable cost (say,
> 10c to 25c per call).  I would dial *nn nnn-nnnn, and the call would
> go through as ususal as an untimed local call.  The call would appear
> itemized and charged accordingly on my local phone bill.

That would be a great idea for an OPTIONAL service, although it should
only be enabled on the lines of customers that request it.  However,
in the interim, you might see what happens if you dial just a carrier
access code (10XXX) plus a local number.  I inadvertently did that
once when I lived in Michigan Bell territory (started to dial an LD
call and changed my mind, but forgot to hang up the phone and get new
dial tone before dialing the local number, so what I wound up dialing
was 10222 plus a seven digit local number.  The call, which
fortunately lasted only a minute, showed up on my next MCI bill,
billed at the standard rate for a toll call of under ten miles, or
whatever the lowest geographic rate band is).  If your state allows
intraLATA competition, this might work, depending on how your local
central office switch is configured.

I'm not sure your carrier would like this much, though ... I think
that after the originating and terminating line charges (which are
distance-insensitive) are figured in, they actually lose money on
those short-distance toll calls, especially those placed during the
night/weekend rate period.  They probably would come out ahead on such
calls placed during the day rate period, but not by much.


Jack

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

Date: 1 Feb 93 00:20 +0100
Organization: Oslo Stock Exchange
From: Morten Reistad <[e-mail]>
Subject: Norwegian Number Change, a First Hand Report


As announced, the (02) area code in Norway changed to eight-digit dialing
15:50 last Thursday (jan 28th).

A massive publicity campaign has warned us about this for more than a
year.  Still many people did not get the message according to
"Aftenposten" Thursday 28th.

Media told us the cut would take place 15:50 till 16:00.  At 15:50 I
placed a call from a direct line on (02) 335 XXX to our switchboard at
[phone], an attempt at the same gave fast-busy 15:52, and a call
to 22 341 700 was successful.

Calls to 950 XXX and 640 XXX dumped to fast-busy at 15:56, and 22 640
XXX and 22 950 XXX worked from then on. The much acclaimed "speaking
translator" (speaking the new number) did not come on-line until 16:45
or thereabout. And even now, three days later, calls to [phone]
and (02) 22X XXX STILL dump to fast-busy. Incoming calls from Sweden
appeared to be changed at 15:58.

"Aftenposten" Friday the 29th could report that the cut worked as
announced except for three switches. Two of these were out of order
until 16:15, and one until 16:45. Of course one "vital" service; the
Taxi ordering lines. These were out of order until 16:45.

Emergency calls to Ambulance, Police of Fire Dept were unaffected by
the cut. (Due to legal issues these are separate in the Kingdom of
Norway).

The PTT has met critisism for doing this at a prime business hour. The
reply has been that "they would rather see that it all worked at once
under heavy business loads, than find out in the morning after a night
cut." (Aftenposten 29th, my translation of the journalist's words)

Or, have half a million people help in the debugging of the system.

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

Subject: Re: "Advanced Switching" at SWBT
From: [e-mail] (Don Hackler)
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 01:39:18 PST
Organization: Shakala BBS (ClanZen Radio Network) Sunnyvale, CA 408-734-2289


[e-mail] (John Higdon) writes:

> As to digital circuits, Pac*Bell now almost begs customers to take
> POTS on T1. There is no extra charge. Already reasonably priced, point
  ^^^^^^^^^^^
How does somebody in Pac Bell land do this?  What equipment do I need
to buy?  How can these be broken up as voice/data?  I run a
Usenet/Internet BBS and would love to arrange a high-speed digital
link to my feed site ala SW56, etc ... the outside plant in my area
(northern Sunnyvale) is old and leaky, with lots of line noise after
rain. How good does the copper need to be? I know I'm on a DMS100 or
5ESS switch here in this area.


Don Hackler  - [e-mail]
Shakala BBS (ClanZen Radio Network) Sunnyvale, CA 408-734-2289

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

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 23:34 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?


[e-mail] (Andrew Klossner) writes:

> To clarify: there are credible scientific reports that a three watt
> transceiver, operated near the head for many years, can cause
> *glaucoma*.  This is one reason why police radios are now worn at the
> waist and wired to a lapel-mounted microphone.  I know of no credible
> evidence linking transceivers to brain cancer.

A very good reason is that it is a helluva lot easier to use a radio
in this manner.

I have a new policy concerning this sort of thing. The phrase
"credible scientific reports" does not cut it anymore. Please site the
source (with author, title, and any other identifying data) so that I
can look it up and decide FOR MYSELF if it is a "credible" piece of
work.

The net is awash in unattributed "authority". Many of us have access
to vast university libraries and other depositories of scientific
literature. It is time some of this was made real. If after reading
these reports I am convinced that the material is significant, then
and only then will I give the slightest credence to ANY RF scares.

Also, remember that one study means little. The results must be
repeatable by independent researchers. And the study must be
meaningful in terms of its statistical associations. It can be easily
demonstrated that virtually all people who have developed cancer have
swallowed their own saliva. Does this tell us much?

So I am waiting for your references. Let me read this shocking
material.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 07:41:23 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Robert L. McMillin)
Subject: Re: New "Electronic Highway" For Canada


> Could someone tell me how old NSFnet is?  And who might be the
> owners/operators of NSFnet?  Any other details about NSFnet would be
> greatly appreciated.  Please excuse my ignorance.

No worry -- I had to look it up myself.  Here's the lowdown from the
excellent O'Reilly and Associates book, {!%@:: A Directory of
Electronic Mail Addressing and Networks}:

  NSFNET is the [United States'] National Science Foundation's network.
  It is currently made up of the NSFNET backbone and 23 mid-level wide
  area networks which interconnect over 1,000 research institutions,
  corporations, and government agencies.  The NSFNET allows researchers
  access to supercomputers at the United States supercomputing centers as
  well as providing other network services.  The NSFNET backbone is
  managed by Merit, Inc., a consortium of eight Michigan universities in
  partnership with the State of Michigan, IBM, and MCI.  As November,
  1989, the NSFNET has connections to 837 networks.

  All computers on NSFNET use Internet-style domain addresses.

  The NSFNET runs on a T-1 backbone system.  The mid-level networks use
  both T-1 and 56 Kbps lines.

  NSFNET is planning to increase the speed of its backbone to T-3 (45
  Mbps).  A T-1 linke to EASInet in Geneva, Switzerland, is planned for
  1990.  Other mid-level networks will be added to NSFNET in the future.

                            ---------

Unfortunately, the book gives no history of NSFNET, so I can't help
you there.  Maybe someone else in net.land knows.


Robert L. McMillin                     | Voice:    [phone]
Hughes Aircraft/Hughes Training, Inc.  | Fax:      [phone]
Los Angeles, CA                        | Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 19:25:14 PST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Can Phones be Restricted to 911 Only?


[e-mail] (Dave Leibold) writes:

> {The Toronto Sun} on 22nd January 1993 had a letter from Linton Graham
> of Weston, Ontario regarding Bell Canada phone disconnection policies.
> The writer wondered if phone service had to be shut off, then why not
> continue to at least allow access to 911 for emergencies.  The writer
> didn't mention specific types of situations, though phone shut-offs
> due to failure to pay the bill come to mind.

When an old girlfriend's phone was disconneted in San Francisco a few
years ago, Pac Bell did just what you described.  Any call made on the
phone resulted in a recording saying that phone service had been
disconnected and the only valid calls were to the billing office and
911.  She didn't pay the bill and after about two weeks the phone went
completely dead.  Of-course, incoming calls were also disabled.


  Cheers,

Darren Alex Griffiths        [e-mail]
Open Systems Solutions Inc.  [phone] x139
Fujitsu Ltd.                 Fax: [phone]
Operating Systems Division   Coins: 7924-139
6121 Hollis Street           Emeryville, CA 94608-2092

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #61
*****************************










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Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 09:30:33 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #62

TELECOM Digest     Tue,  2 Feb 93 09:30:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 62

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Two Line Bridge Schematics (Toxic Avenger)
    Security Topics in Telecom Archives (TELECOM Moderator)
    HP-48S as a Phone Dialer? (Bob Izenberg)
    ISDN Basic Rate Access (Govindan Raghavan)
    Waste Disposal Problems? (Jane Fraser)
    Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex (Tad Cook)
    Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Robert E. Laughlin)
    Alternate Reason For White House Busy (Rob Knauerhase)
    For Sale: Cellular Starter/Hands-Free Kits (Michael Blackstock)
    Old 202 Area (was 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized) (Carl Moore)
    Using Fax Machine + Fax Modem as a Scanner (Robert J. Barth)
    Sorry, Wrong Number (Paul Robinson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 17:53:49 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Toxic Avenger)
Subject: Two Line Bridge Schematics


With all this talk of a call fowarding device, and the different
methods of implementing the idea, I decided to search my archives, and
found this textfile.

It is plans for a simple diverter (call fowarder), It was also first
published as a phreaking tool, so there are no security measures
integrated in the design.  A DTMF decoder could be added to keep the
right people using the line, and the wrong people sighing.

Anyway, what follows is the full text of the plans, including all the
standard Phreak/Hack BS.  Use it as you will.

NOTE\WARNING: The device described by these plans is a wire-fraud
access device.  This makes it illegal to possess one in many states.
Using it on one's own phone line without any intention to defraud
should be totally legal, but It would probably be best not to carry
one around in your pocket, as freedoms and the bill of rights are
headed towards the window as it is, and we don't need another example.


Tox
        ------File Begins------

Cheshire Catalyst Research Productions present ...

Diverter 1992.  An alternative to the DARK BOX.

Design: Mavicon M.D., The Ear, Cheshire Catalyst and two that
shall remain nameless.

Plans: Mavicon M.D.

Diverter Plans

Parts List:

Everything can be obtained at your local Radio-Shack.  As much as I
hate that store, they are convenient ...

RLY1   DPDT relay
T1  1:1 audio transformer
D1  1N914 or similar diode
D2  large LED
LMP1 neon lamp
R1  10 k
R2  photocell
R3  22 k
R4  47 k
Q1  2N2222, 2N3904, 2N4401, most any other NPN switching
transistor
1 nine volt battery. The negative terminal goes to ground on the
schematic.  Positive terminal to +9 volts.

Assembly:

The best way to assemble the design is to grab one of those small
copper lined perfboards from Radio-Shack.  They are nice to work
on, and can easily be trimmed down to a minimum size once
everything is soldered in.  The process is the same as any other.
Solder all the parts in per the schematic.  The photocell must be
in a position so that the light from the neon lamp (LMP1) and the
LED (D2) both shine on it.  All the polarity must be observed.
Whichever direction you put the led in, you must remember (color
code your wires, green is positive, red is negative, yellow is
positive, black is negative) the negative side of the line must
go to its negative side.  The same goes for the transformer. The
positive side of each line has to be connected to the correct
pair on the transformer.  On the Radio-Shack transformers, put
positive of both lines on the Red and Black pairs,  The negative
on Yellow and White.  Our prototypes have reached less that 1" x
1" in size.

NOTE: The entire thing MUST be wrapped in black tape.  IT must be
light tight or you will have a relay that turns on with the sunrise.

Theory of Operation:

The diverter works on some basic electronic principals.  Step by
step.  The phone rings.  The neon lamp is activated by the high
voltage(88 p-p) ac and flashes.  This light shines on the
photocell, decreasing its resistance.  When this happens, the
positive voltage flowing through the photocell and the 10k
resistor exceed the breakdown voltage of the base of the
transistor and switches that transistor on.  Once the transistor
is on, current flows freely from emitter to collector, energizing
the relay.  The relay's two sets of switches connect both lines
to the 1:1 audio transformer, effectively taking both lines off
the hook and coupling any audio signals from either line to the
other one.  Once this happens, current is now flowing through the
transformer,relay,led loop.  This current lights the led and that
light shines on the photocell.  This is what keeps the device
latched.  The light from the led keeps the photocell resistance
low enough to keep the transistor on.  Now, you make you call and
get on with your business.  You hang up.  Now, the local CO keeps
current flowing through the indial line for about 5 seconds, at
which point it drops down for a second or so and then goes back
up.  This is the signal the device uses to determine when you've
hung up.  When the current drops down, there is no light, and the
photocell resistance raises enough to turn the transistor off and
delatch the entire system.

B


 |-------------------------------------
 |                                    |         o +9V
 |  L1+      T1                       |         |
 |  o-------wwwww----------|          |         |
 |                         |          |         |
 |  L1-                    |          |         |
 |  o-------------|        |          |         o--------|
 |                |        |          |         |        |
 |                |        |          |         |        |
 |                |        |          |         |        |
 | L2-            |    |---l----------l---------l--|   _____
 o-------\ LMP1   |    | |  \|    |   |         w  |    /^\   D1
R4  47k   *       |    | |   |    |\  |         w  |   /---\
 --\/\/--/        |    | |   |    | | |         w  |     |
 |                |    |-l----------l-----------l--|     |
 |                |      |      RY1 |           |        |
 o L2+            |------|          |           |        |
 |                                  |           o---------
 |                                  |           |
 |                                  |            ----|
 |            D2                    |               /
 |          |\ |       T1           |              /
 |----------| >|-----wwwwww----------             /
            |/ |                                000
                                     |--------- 000  Q1
                                     |          000
           oooo                      |             \
          o    o               10k   |              \
 o-------o-/\/\/o------------/\/\/---|                \
+9V       o    o R2   \         R1                      |
           oooo       / 22k                           -----
                      \ R3                             ---
                      |                                 -
                      |
                    -----
                     ---
                      -

  -------END of File------

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 09:34:15 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Subject: Security Topics in Telecom Archives


After mailing out the file to you Monday detailing new federal govern-
ment sentencing guidelines for persons convicted of crimes which
involve computers, it occurred to me some of you might not be familiar
with a section of the archives where numerous articles of this sort
have been collected over the years, so I made an image of the
directory and attach it below.

This is just one small section of the Telecom Archives -- a very tiny
part, actually -- and you are invited to explore the entire thing
using anonymous ftp via lcs.mit.edu.  For readers without ftp ability,
various ftp > email services are available.  Enjoy your visit to the
Telecom Archives!


total 1047
drwxr-xr-x  2 ptownson telecom      1024 Feb  1 10:17 ./
drwxrwxr-x 15 telecom  telecom      6144 Feb  1 10:23 ../
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     24515 Sep  3  1991 atm-bank.fraud
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom      6144 Mar 14  1991 cellular.fraud.abernathy
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom      2755 Mar 14  1991 cellular.fraud.prevention
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     13343 Feb 25  1990 computer.fraud.abuse.act
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     27395 Jun 23  1990 craig.neidorf.indictment
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom      9354 Jul 30  1990 craig.not.guilty
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     67190 Jun 23  1990 crime.and.puzzlement
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     62602 Aug 12  1990 ecpa.1986
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     97987 Aug 12  1990 ecpa.1986.federal.laws
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     21918 Dec  2  1990 illinois.computer.laws
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     28935 May 19  1990 jolnet-2600.magazine.art
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     30751 Mar  7  1990 jolnet-attctc.crackers
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     43365 Jan 28  1990 kevin.polsen
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     35612 Apr  1  1990 legion.of.doom
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     20703 Aug 12  1990 len.rose-legion.of.doom
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom      2516 Jun 14  1991 len.rose.in.prison
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom    184494 Jun 22  1991 len.rose.indictment-1
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom    192078 Jun 22  1991 len.rose.indictment-2
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     15355 Feb  1 10:16 sentencing.guidelines
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     67099 Nov  4  1990 telecom.usa.call.block-1
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     31995 Nov 20  1990 telecom.usa.call.block-2
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     10833 Nov 20  1990 telecom.usa.call.block-3
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom      6344 May 24  1992 virgin.islands.phreak
-r--r--r--  1 ptownson telecom     14821 Sep 12  1990 war.on.computer.crime

Using ftp:

     ftp lcs.mit.edu
     login:  anonymous   use name@site as password
     cd telecom-archives
     cd telecom.security.issues
     get <filename of choice>


PAT

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

From: [e-mail] (Bob Izenberg)
Subject: HP-48S as a Phone Dialer?
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 12:01:21 [phone] (CST)


    A guy that I know wants to use his HP48S as a telephone
auto-dialer.  He wanted to know if anyone's tried anything like this.
I don't know beans about the HP48S sound capabilities, so I'll ask the
Digest readership: Is what he wants to do possible?  Where should I
tell him to start looking for info on how to do this?  (Other than
calling HP, which has been suggested.)  Thanks!


Bob Izenberg               voice phone: [phone]
Motorola RISC Software         [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Govindan Raghavan, XT-DL)
Subject: ISDN Basic Rate Access
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 20:48:24 GMT


When we lay copper access cables from end offices to the customer
premises, we use repeaters if the distance to the CPE exceeds a
certain value.  Is there such a "range" for basic rate access lines?
Are there repeaters available in the market for basic rate access to
cover customers at large distances from end offices?

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

Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1993 13:16:12 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Waste Disposal Problems?


Someone told me recently that the modernization of phone networks is
causing a large problem of waste disposal because lines being replaced
contain lead and copper.  Also, old switches have materials with low
levels of radioactivity. Are there such problems? Can anyone provide
more details?


Jane Fraser, Center for Advanced Study in Telecommunications, The Ohio
State University, 210 Baker Ssytems, 1971 Neil Avenue, Columbus,
43210, 614-292-4129

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

Subject: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in CENTREX
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 11:59:55 PST
From: [e-mail] (Tad Cook)


At home I have two-line residential CENTREX service from US West,
which they market under the name Centraflex.  I am served by a 5ESS
switch.  I am confused about application of telco voice messaging and
Caller-ID on this type of service.

Currently my service is set up so that calls to the main number (we
don't give out the number on the second line in the hunt group, and it
is unlisted) rotate to the second line when the main line is busy.  If
the second line is busy, that line gets a Call-Waiting tone.  I am
also able to transfer calls between the two lines, or to anywhere
else, without staying on the line and making it a conference call.  I
can also turn off Call-Waiting for the duration of the call on the
second line.

I thought it might be neat to get voice messaging from the telco, so
that if the call is not answered after six rings or so on either line,
or if both lines were busy and the person on the second line ignored
the Call-Waiting signal, voice messaging would answer and take the
message.  Unfortunately, the telco tells me that telco provided voice
mail is incompatible with Centrex!  Does anyone know why?  Didn't
Bellcore design telco provided voice mail to work with Centrex?  It
seems to me that I have been answered by CO provided voice mail when
calling numbers in a Centrex group in the past, but maybe this was
really provided by external hardware at the called location.

The other questions involve Caller-ID, which US West tells me should
be available in May.

They have informed me that on outbound calls, the number for the
second line will show up in the ID if a call is placed from that line.
We have been trying to keep people calling our main number instead of
dialing direct into our second line, so that calls will be answered by
our answering machine (which is only on the first line), but if people
we call from the second line see that number, they may try to return
calls to the wrong line.  Does anyone know if it is possible to get
the same number listed as the ID on both lines?

The other Caller-ID problem involves reading the ID on incoming calls.
Apparently this will work fine if I read it off of the first line, but
if the first line is busy and the call rotates to the second line, US
West informs me that I will only see the ID of the first line as the
incoming caller, because the call was actually forwarded from the
first line upon busy!

Does anyone know of any way around these problems?  Surely Bellcore or
the designers of the 5ESS would have thought these through!


Tad Cook     |  Phone:  [phone]  (home)     |   MCI Mail: 3288544
Seattle, WA  |  Packet: KT7H @ N7DUO.WA.USA.NA   |   [e-mail]
             |  Internet: [e-mail]           or...sumax!ole!ssc!tad

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Hotel Telephone Surcharge
Organization: NRaD
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 21:43:34 GMT


Hello,

    Some time ago there was a thread about hotels charging to make
a call.  This is just to pass on to the world that at least one hotel
is still doing it.  Hilton Resort on Hilto Head Island, SC, charges
$0.75 for every call outside of the hotel, even 800 numbers.  I was
there and did not find the notice in one of the hotel brochures that
is in the room (second drawer down of a dresser).

    This is intended just as a heads up to the world of telecom.


Robert E. Laughlin     NCCOSC RDT&E Div (NRaD)
These opinions are mine.  I do not speak for NRaD.
email    [e-mail]    From Compuserve my email address
is ">INTERNET:[e-mail]".

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

From: Rob Knauerhase <[e-mail]>
Subject: Alternate Reason For White House Busy
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 22:52:15 CST
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Univ. of Illinois @ Urbana


PAT's recent discussion about busy signals at the White House was all
fine and good, but Jay Leno (on _The Tonight Show_, 2/1/93) had an
alternate explanation (the first part is not an exact quote):

"... People have been complaining about getting busy signals when
they call the White House."

"Well, if I just told America they weren't getting a tax cut OR their
Social Security, I'd take the phone off the hook too!"

[I assume TELECOM Digest is not the place for a continuing political
commentary, but this bit of humor was related enough to the topic at
hand that I thought I'd pass it along.]


Rob Knauerhase, University of Illinois @ Urbana, Dept. of Computer Science


[Moderator's Note: Thanks for passing along that clever response from
Jay Leno. The Chicago papers discussed the White House phone congestion
in recent days by noting that the combination of a popular president
combined with the several controversial issues he raised and people's
willingness to use long distance without flinching at the rates as
they might have done a few years ago led to the problem.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Michael Blackstock)
Subject: For Sale: Cellular Starter/Hands-Free Kits
Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc.
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 16:15:51 GMT


I have the following extra items:

New Hands Free kit for Motorola 8000/9000 "brick" hand-held cellular
phone comes with glass mount antenna, speaker, mike, and power cradle.
By Alliance Research Corp.  $70

New Hands-Free kit for Motorola 8000/9000. The same kit as above but with
a passive repeater "cordless", glass mount antenna.  $60

New Starter Kit for the Audiovox/Prestige "mini" portable cellular
phones, such as the Audiovox MVX-500.  Comes with rechargeable
battery, Battery Saver (allows you to plug the phone into the
cigarette lighter plug), and a leather case.  $40

New Quick Charger/Conditioner for the Motorola micro T.A.C. "Flip
Phone" This charger can be used both in the car or home use.  $35

New Hands Free Kit for the Mitsubishi 3000 or DiamondTel 99x portable
cellular phone.  Comes with glass mount antenna, speaker, mike, and
power cradle By Alliance Research Corp.  $70

Prices include COD and shipping.


Michael     [phone]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 13:14:37 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Old 202 Area (was 313 Split Not Being Well Publicized)


All but the outermost MD and VA suburbs were reachable long distance
in area code 202 until October, 1990 (at which time local calls in the
DC area were fully cut over to NPA + 7D if they were to a different
area code from the calling location.  202 under this local scheme,
even before MD and VA were deleted from 202, could be used for DC
only).  This change in 202 was like an area code split (I refer to it
as such, because 202 shrank even though there was no new area code).
(You are saying that no point was ever reachable in 408 and at the
same time reachable in 415?)

The "202 for MD/VA suburbs" had remained in effect when the DC area
had to go from NNX to NXX prefixes in late 1987.

To avoid confusion for local callers, the Pentagon, physically in
Virginia but then using area code 202 and NOT 703, was switched in
1990 to area 703.  This did not change the seven-digit numbers in the
Pentagon EXCEPT that 202-694 gave way to 703-614 (703-694 being in use
at Stuart, Va., way down near the NC border).

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

From: [e-mail] (Robert J Barth)
Subject: Using Fax Machine + Fax Modem as a Scanner
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Sound & Vision BBS [phone]
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 01:20:52 +0000


How can I use a standalone fax machine as a scanner?

I would like to be able to plug my fax machine into my pc fax/modem,
and press a few buttons, and end up with a fax format file of whatever
was on the sheet of paper ...

Has anyone managed this?  I've tried with not much success so far ...

Any ideas appreciated.


Nominal  : Rob Barth             | RJB Communications (+44) (0)932 253131
InterNet : [e-mail] | Sound & Vision BBS (+44) (0)932 252323
FidoNet  : sysop, 2:254/14       |  The best UK BBS with a full UseNet &
Nyx      : [e-mail]  | Internet Email feed. All hours/speeds.

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

Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1993  22:27:44 EST
Subject: Sorry, Wrong Number


An article in the February 1 {Washington Post} Business Monday
section, tells how AT&T, the creator of 1-800 numbers back in 1967,
and today claiming the fastest connection times, set up a number for
people to call to get a rebate of $500.00 when they purchased an AT&T
videophone, had to change the number because of a mixup.

The subcontrator of the rebate program didn't know that it was being
hired by AT&T, so it got the 1-800 number for AT&T's rebate plan
issued by: MCI.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #62
*****************************










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Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 10:11:01 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #63

TELECOM Digest     Tue,  2 Feb 93 10:11:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 63

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Symposium on Broadband (Steve Agard)
    Telecom's Competition in South Africa (Cliff Featherstone)
    Suche Unterlagen fuer Lightspeed 2400C! (Dieter Vuellers)
    Frame Relay Congestion Question (Shu Zhang)
    Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished (Bob Hofkin)
    Re: Introduction to comp.dcom.telecom / TELECOM Digest (Jack Decker)
    Re: MIB for Northern Telecom PBX (Christian Doucet)
    Re: Mitel Value Ripoff Policy (Dale R. Worley)
    Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Credit Card Bug (Javier Henderson)
    Re: AT&T G2 Information Needed (Jim Allen)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Steve Agard)
Subject: Symposium on Broadband
Organization: DSC Communications, Plano Tx.
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 00:23:23 GMT


                    IEEE Symposium Announcement:

                    ----------------------------
                   |                            |
                   |   SYMPOSIUM ON BROADBAND   |
                   |                            |
                    --------------------------

                            Presented By
        IEEE Communications and Vehicular Technology Society
                          Dallas Chapter

Broadband - Network services of the future, or just another technology
for backbone Public, Private, and Local/Wide Area networks?  Broadband
networks are expected to provide the foundation of emerging services,
synergistic with the Advanced intelligent Network and the Personal
Communications Services network.  Aspects of broadband are enjoying
the broadest international spectrum of interest and activity yet seen
by the Telecommunications and Computer industries.

This one-day multi-track symposium with panel discussion will present
the latest developments in broadband and wideband markets and
technologies. The symposium will address such questions as: How do
ATM, SMDS and Frame Relay services inter-relate? What are the most
recent technical issues and developments? How do we get to Broadband
from here?  What are the benefits of Bandwidth-on- Demand services? Is
there synergy between telephone and cable TV companies?


                            April 27, 1993
                      The Richardson Civic Center
            411 West Arapaho Rd (@ I 75), Richardson, Texas
                    Registration: 7:45 AM - 8:15 AM


                  Keynote Speaker:   Dr. Dave McDysan
         Boardmember, The ATM Forum;  Executive Staff Member,
   Virtual Data Services Strategic Planning, MCI Telecommunications


                   Tentative Agenda Topics/Speakers

Three sessions are presented: Overview and Applications; Technology;
Services. The Services and Technologies sessions run in parallel.


                       OVERVIEW and APPLICATIONS
                       -------------------------

                         The Evolving Network
                         Richard W. Stephenson
                Director, Customer Applications Analysis
                 Southwestern Bell, Technology Resources

                   CCITT & Trends in ATM Deployment
                            Michael R. Zeug
                          Vice-Chair, T1S1.5;
                       Member of Technical Staff
                          Ameritech Services

                ATM Technology As it Applies to Services
                           Dr. Krish Prabhu
                    V.P., Research And Development
                       Alcatel Network Systems

          Information Service Network Architectures (INA / TINA)
                              Dave Brown
                  Principle Member of Technical Staff
                              NEC America

                    Broadband Network Infrastructure
                              Al Pereira
          Manager, Applications Marketing & Advanced Technology
                        GTE Telephone Operations

                   PANEL DISCUSSION, FOLLOWED BY LUNCH

                              TECHNOLOGY
                              ----------

                    ATM LANs & Application Requirements
                               Chase Bailey
                         Chief Technical Officer
                       Efficient Network Technology

         An Introduction to Multimedia, and Its Impact On The Network
                               Jim Pollock
                                President
                              BusinessWorks

                Issues Between Private & Public ATM Networks
                                Sam Shuler
                     Senior Member of Technical Staff
                            Texas Instruments

                    Multipoint Signaling:  A Case Study
                              Michael Gaddis
                        Senior Research Associate;
            Associate Director of the Applied Research Laboratory
                          Washington University

             Introduction to Network Management for ATM Networks
                             Gunnar Nilsson
                       Systems Architecture Manager
                                ELLEMTEL

                  Scalable Coherent Interface for ATM
                            Peter R. Fenner
                               President
                          Lightbus Technology


                               SERVICES
                               ---------

                               Irfan Ali
                           V.P., The ATM Forum;
               Manager, Competitive Analysis & Technology
                           Northern Telecom

             Benefits of a Common Broadband Services Platform
                              Athar S. Mian
                         Member of Technical Staff
                        NYNEX Science and Technology

             Internetworking Frame Realy, ATM, SMDS and ISDN
                               Larry Lang
                             Product Manager
                              Cisco Systems

             Applications of Frame Relay and Wideband Services
                             Mike McLoughlin
                        Systems Product Manager
                            General DataComm

                 Switched DS1 and Fractional DS1 Services
                            Richard Barale
                   Director, Video Systems Marketing
                    DSC Communications Corporation

              Meeting End-User Demand For Flexible Bandwidth
                             Gary Sanders
              Product Manager, Transport Network Applications
                        Ericsson Network Systems


              PANEL DISCUSSIONS,  FOLLOWED BY RECEPTION


                           SESSION CHAIRS:

                       Overview and Applications
                       -------------------------
                             Steven Agard
                      Vice-Chair, The ATM Forum;
                  Chairman, T1S1.5 ATM Subworking Group;
                            Senior Manager
                     DSC Communications Corporation

                              Technology
                              ----------
                             Demos Kostas
                Manager, Complex Technologies Standards
                   GTE Telephone Operations Services

                               Services
                               --------
                             Ron Maginley
             Senior Manager, Carrier Service Development
                           Northern Telecom



Although I am willing to answer Symposium questions e-mailed to me,
registration must be provided in writing, with the following form:

                          REGISTRATION FORM:

                        Symposium On Broadband

Send your tax-deductible funds, payable to "IEEE" to: IEEE, 2116 E.
Arapaho, Suite 474, Richardson, TX 75081.  Registrations postmarked
before April 7, 1993 are eligible for the Pre- registered rates below.
Seating is limited.

Check all that apply:
Attendee:
                                 Pre-registered:
                           (Before April 7, 1993)     At the Door:
                           ----------------------    -------------
Student/ Lifetime/ Retired Members     [  ] $20          [  ] $30
   IEEE Student ID#____________
Group (of 2 or more, price each)       [  ] $50          [  ] N/A
IEEE Member                            [  ] $60          [  ] $75
Non-Member                             [  ] $70          [  ] $95

[  ] Master Card/Visa         [  ] PO#____________ Amount $____________
     (Sorry, no Amex)         [  ] Check#_________ Amount $____________
     #_________________________
     Exp. date:________________


Planning to Attend:
          [  ] Overview and Applications  +  Technology sessions
   or:    [  ] Overview and Applications  +  Services sessions

Name________________________________________________
Company_____________________________________________
Address_____________________________________________
       _____________________________________________
       _____________________________________________

   _________________________________________________________________

Chapter Chairperson:     Dhawal Moghe,  BNR Inc.,  [phone]
Symposium Chairperson:   Steve Bootman, DSC Communications Corp.,
                                        [phone]
Program Chairperson:     Steven Agard,  DSC Communications Corp.,
                                        [phone]
Symposium Treasurer:     Stanton Zeff,  Alcatel Network Systems
                                        [phone]

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

Date: 02 Feb 93 03:47:33 EST
From: Cliff Featherstone <[e-mail]>
Subject: Telecom's Competition in South Africa


South Africa has been "traditionally" served by a government owned PTT
(Post and Telecommunications -- or P&T), providing both postal and
tele- communications services. In true bureaucratic tradition, the
general attitude was in the order of "you're lucky we see fit to GIVE
you a telephone line, let alone one that actually works".

In recent years, the level of service has been improved.  About a year
ago, the PTT was broken up into two independent business units -- "The
Post Office" and "Telkom".  The powers that be are trying very hard to
instill a business ethic and mentality in what were previously
"government departments".

Similarly, our rail system was run by the state-owned South African
Railways which was renamed South African Transport Services (SATS) a
few years back.  Like the P&T, SATS was broken up into multiple
business units not too long ago.

At the time, nothing was said (at least not publicly) about SATS'
telephone and data systems.  (The only other phone network in South
Africa belongs to the military).

There has been much talk and speculation (and the inevitable official
enquiry) regarding opening the market to competition.  Big names
(including AT&T have been mentioned).  But, to date, nothing has
happened.

This morning on breakfast television ("Good Morning South Africa") an
ad was flighted for "Transtel, South Africa's alternative telecomm-
unications carrier".

South African telecommunications is, it seems, poised to be dragged
(kicking and screaming) into the twentieth century.


Cliff Featherstone        SERCH
Specialised Electronic Research
South Africa    [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Dieter Vuellers)
Subject: Suche Unterlagen fuer Lightspeed 2400C!
Date: 2 Feb 1993 09:04:36 GMT
Organization: Uni-GH Paderborn, Germany


Hallo!

Ich suche dringend Unterlagen zum Modem Lightspeed 2400C.  Besonders
benoetige ich die Belegung der Netzteilbuchse und der DIP-Schalter.

Vielen Dank fuer eure Muehe.


Dieter Vuellers    [e-mail]
University of Paderborn (Germany)

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

From: [e-mail] (Shu Zhang)
Subject: Frame Relay Congestion Question
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 02:26:27 GMT


Is anyone familiar with congestion notification in the frame relay
networks, especially with the consolidate link layer management(CLLM)
message? Would you please explain to me why all CLLM messages have the
same same two address octets of 111110R0 and 1111XXX1, instead of
different address octets, like ordinary data frame in the frame relay
network?

Thanks in advance.

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

From: Bob Hofkin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Software Productivity Consortium
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 16:58:20 GMT


> I just got a note from Prodigy that advised me to look for Internet
> mail access in January,

BIX has finally put their Internet link into production.

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

Date: Tue, 02 Feb 93 10:06:34 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: Introduction to comp.dcom.telecom / TELECOM Digest


In message <[e-mail]>, TELECOM Moderator <telecom@
eecs.nwu.edu> wrote:

> The TELECOM ARCHIVES provides a wealth of information including a full
> set of the back issues of TELECOM Digest (twelve year's worth) and
> dozens of other files, including a "Frequently Asked Questions" file.
> Please review the archives if possible for answers to questions you
> may have, but do not hesitate to write to the Digest if necessary.
> The archives are available using anonymous ftp:  lcs.mit.edu. Users at
> non-Internet sites (ie UUCP, Bitnet, MCI Mail, etc) will need to use
> an email/ftp server.

I've had FTP access for close to a month now and have yet to be able
to connect with lcs.mit.edu.  It almost seems as though the connection
gets misrouted along the way (apparently I get to a *different*
machine that hangs off of lcs.mit.edu).  I sent a message to the
postmaster at lcs.mit.edu describing the problem, but so far no
response.

In any event, I wonder if anyone else has had this problem, and if you
were able to work around it.  I'd especially appreciate either:

A working IP address OTHER THAN 18.26.0.36, if there is such a thing,
or

The address of a "mirror site" for the telecom archives, if such a
site exists.

Any help along these lines would be appreciated.


Jack


[Moderator's Note: I've thought about Jack's question for awhile and
really have no answer as to why he reaches something else.  There are
other sites which have some of the archives material, but I am not
sure if anyone has the entire thing other than lcs.mit.edu. Perhaps
people with dial up access to some of the stuff will write Jack with
details and anyone who can answer his first question is welcome to do
so also.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Christian Doucet)
Subject: Re: MIB for Northern Telecom PBX
Organization: Hydro-Quebec (DSB)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 19:20:02 GMT


[e-mail] (Wayne Veilleux) writes:

> Does anyone knows if it is possible to get the entreprise MIB
> (Management Information Base) for the Northern Telecom PBX ?

Try to dial 1-800-NORTHERN, they should have all the info you need.


Christian Doucet ----- [e-mail] | Hydro-Quebec
System Administrator - [e-mail]        | voice: + 1 514 858 7704
I speak for myself! -- #include <disclaimer.h>   | fax  : + 1 514 858 7799

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

From: [e-mail] (Dale R. Worley)
Subject: Re: Mitel Value Ripoff Policy
Date: 1 Feb 93 17:09:53
Organization: MIT Dept. of Tetrapilotomy, Cambridge, MA, USA


In article <[e-mail]> Barton F. Bruce <Barton.Bruce@
camb.com> writes:

> I want to know if Mitel's license is transferable to a new customer or
> not. DEC lets you transfer your operating system license for a $300
> processing fee. If the Mitel license is not transferable, are not many
> folks carrying it on their books as an asset and should not be?

My impression is that most license agreements automatically terminate
upon bankruptcy of the licensor.  I think this is because the
bankruptcy court has wide latitude in disposing of the assets of the
bankrupt, and in modifying contracts that it has (like the license
agreement).  Thus, in order to make sure that the licensed property
can't be sold to, say, a competitor, and to make sure that the license
agreement can't be retroactively modified by the court, license
agreements are written to automatically terminate in the event of
bankruptcy.


Dale Worley    Dept. of Math., MIT    [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Credit Card Bug
Organization: CTS Network Services (crash, ctsnet), El Cajon, CA
Date: 02 Feb 93 01:18:46 PST


In reference to the AT&T 2000 pay phones ... I tried to use one of
them at DFW the other day, and couldn't ... a message kept appearing
on the screen about my calling card being invalid ... the one I had
just used, on the same phone, to make voice calls.

I called the 800 number for customer service, posted right by the
keyboard, and they told me that the keyboards were disabled 'not too
long ago', for reasons that 'I can't explain'.

Does anyone have any insights?


Javier Henderson    [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: You are the second person to write about this in
recent days. A few issues ago, the writer said he called AT&T to ask
and was told there was a problem with the FCC. No answers have yet
come forth.  Does anyone know what is going on?    PAT]

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

Date: Tue,  2 Feb 93 01:06:12 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: AT&T G2 Information Needed
Organization: AT&T


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
writes:

> I am looking for technical documentation on AT&T G2.  Does anyone out
> there know where I might get some?

Unfortunately the email to batfish bounced so here's two of the most
generic documents in the AT&T CIC.  Call 1 800 432 6600.


Jim Allen     [e-mail]

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

DEFINITY Communications System Generic 2 System Description Issue 1
Select Code: 555-105-201.  Pages: 474 Issue: 01 Issue date: 920601

A technical description of the system intended for service personnel,
sales personnel, and customers who need a comprehensive overview.
Included are descriptions of features, hardware, software, system
administration, a maintenance plan, upgrade plans, technical
specifications, environmental requirements, illustrations of
components, and a list of related publications for System 85 R2V1 to
R2V4 and DEFINITY Communications System Generic 2.

DEFINITY Communications System Generic 2 and System 85 Feature
Descriptions Issue 1
Select Code: 555-105-301.    Pages: 2120   Issue: 01   Issue date: 920601

A two-volume set containing an in-depth description of the DEFINITY
Generic 2 and System 85 system, data, network, and voice features.
Intended for customers, AT&T sales personnel, and system
administrators. Included are user operations, interactions between
features, restrictions, administration, and hardware requirements.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #63
*****************************










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Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 01:10:59 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #64

TELECOM Digest     Wed,  3 Feb 93 01:10:50 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 64

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Human Factors for Speech Recognition Systems (Norm Tiedemann)
    Re: Differences Between ANI and Caller-ID (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Re: Two Line Bridge Schematics (Barry Bouwsma)
    Re: Wiring For Multi-Lines on One Jack (Tony Harminc)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Clive Feather)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Joe Harrison)
    Re: Holiday Overseas Callbacks From Bell Canada Operators (Tony Harminc)
    Re: Alternate Reason For White House Busy (Roger Theriault)
    Re: Alternate Reason For White House Busy (J. Philip Miller)
    AT&T's Ad on Sears - NOT! (Paul Robinson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue,  2 Feb 93 14:12:28 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Human Factors for Speech Recognition Systems
Organization: AT&T


> Does anyone know of any studies relating to use of limited vocabulary
> voice recognition (digits, letters, YES/NO and a few other words) over
> the national phone network, by the general public?

Quite a few, the only problem is finding non-propriatary ones.  See
the list at the end.

> 1) human-factors studies related to acceptance of voice recognition by
> the general public, and comparisions between voice input and DTMF input.

Studies have shown that most people would like the option of using
DTMF or voice. Most conclude it is easier to use voice if you are
calling on a speaker phone, since you don't need to be looking at or
have your hands near the phone, or cordless phone or cellular phone,
since you don't need to remove your mouth from the headset to hit the
buttons. However, no matter how good the speech recognition is, DTMF
will be more accurate.

> 2) the technical viability of the North American phone network for
> limited vocabulary voice recognition applications. The vendors of
> large-vocabulary word recognition systems have all said that they did
> not support use over the phone network.  Limited vocabulary systems
> might work.  Digit recognition systems clearly work over the phone system.

That's mainly due to the fact that "vendors of large-vocabulary word
recognition systems" have not trained their recognizer over the phone
network. There are some significant limiting factors in speech
recognition over the phone network. (4KHz frequency range, very
characteristic background noise, then add speaker phones and cellular
for more trouble.)

My experience is in limited vocabulary systems, and these system when
they are designed to work over the network work very well if fact. The
secret is to do all the training and preliminary data collection over
the network.  For limited vocabulary of 6-10 words 95-98% recognition
is not out of the ordinary. This depends greatly on the words selected
to recognize, and the harder problem in this type of recognition is
the human factors aspect (getting the caller to say the right thing,
and only the right thing.)  American like to say "one please" or "I
would like sales" even when they know they are talking with a machine,
so garbage rejection is almost more important the correct recognition.
It will never be technically feasible to recognize the alphabet with
out some human factor aid (D as in dog, T as in Tom). The 4KHz
sampling rate cuts off the hard phoneme at the beginning of these
letter and that's why a human can not tell the difference. (I always
need to spell my last name T, as in Tom, I E D, as in David, E M A N N.)

A few papers and proceedings you may want to get are:

Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech,
   and Signal Processing, New York, April 1988. A particular article is
   pp. 55-57 J.G. Wilpon "Isolated Word Recognition over the DDD Telephone
   Network - Results of Two Extensive Field Studies"

Proceedings of the Fifth World Telecom Forum, Vol. 1, Part 2 1986. pp 235-238,
   R. Thanawala, et al, "Automatic Speech Recognition in the Public Switch
   Network.

Proceedings of the Voice I/O System Applications Conference, September 1989.
   R. Mikkilineni, R.Perdue, "Experiences with Implementing Automatic Speech
   Recognition in the Public Telephone Network"

Also an AT&T Technical Journal on "Speech Technologies" Sept/Oct 1990 Vol 69,
   Number 5. This contains 5 or 6 articles that address speech recognition
   in the network. (AT&T Technical Journals can be obtained by calling the
   AT&T Customer Information Center at [phone].)

There have also been two recent conferences at which I know specific
papers were presented dealing with this topic. But I can't put my
hands on them right now. If this is not enough, or you would like
something specific I may be able to help you. Feel free to get in
touch with me directly.


Norm Tiedemann        AT&T Bell Labs IH 5C-416
att!ihlpm!normt        2000 Naperville Rd.
[e-mail]    Naperville, IL    60566

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: Differences Between ANI and Caller-ID
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 22:47:32 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Brent
Capps) writes:

>> Anybody know of any other implementations of SCAI?

The name "SCAI" is confusing: Northern uses it for their own link, but
it's also the name of the ANSI standard link.  NT sort of pretends to
be a predecessor of ANSI, but I'll leave that for others to argue.
Suffice to say that NT SCAI .NE. ANSI SCAI.

> CompuCall has a long and checkered history within BNR.  It's actually
> a throwback to the mid '80s when BNR was developing a CO/PBX LAN
> server whatchamacallit called the PTE; this box communicated with an
> SL1 over a proprietary out-of-band signaling protocol that shared some
> similarities with the not-yet-standardized CCS7.  Well, after wasting
> millions of dollars on this turkey, NT finally pulled the plug; but in
> the quest to salvage something from the wreckage a certain manager
> (now a senior exec at NT) hit upon the idea of taking this old
> proprietary protocol, dusting it off, and changing its name to the
> ISDN/AP.  This is a typical evil marketeers trick, the names have been
> changed to fool the innocent.  This protocol had almost nothing in
> common with ISDN other than the fact that both of them are
> out-of-band.

It's a bit longer than that.  Way back in 1982, we at Digital did an
advanced development with Northern on a "Command and Status Link" to
the SL-1.  CSL used a protocol that vaguely sort of resembled early
snapshots of ISDN (this was before Q.931 was finished).  In 1986, we
actively began to build products to this and similar links, under the
generic term Computer Integrated Telephony.  NT renamed CSL to
"ISDN/AP" when it was actually released as a product (around 1987).
Later, they decided to introduce a gratuitous processor in between the
SL-1 and the user's CIT server, which converts the protocol to a
different one, which might be (I'm confused myself) called Meridian
Link.

SCAI is on the DMS-100 and SL-100 product lines, while Meridian Link
is on the SL-1 product line.  Both lines, of course, are now called
Meridian 1.  They do love to keep the terminology from being clear ...


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 23:05:29 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Govindan Raghavan, XT-DL) writes:

> When we lay copper access cables from end offices to the customer
> premises, we use repeaters if the distance to the CPE exceeds a
> certain value.  Is there such a "range" for basic rate access lines?
> Are there repeaters available in the market for basic rate access to
> cover customers at large distances from end offices?

The ANSI Standard BRI (2B1Q code) goes 18,000 feet.

Repeaters do exist.  However, they cost something over a thousand
dollars apiece right now, so the telephone comapnies aren't exactly
beating down a path to the vendors' doors.  Thus if you don't live
within 18 kf of an ISDN line termination (CO or neighborhood mux, like
a SLC-96, which handles ISDN), you're probably "SOL".

PRI (T1) only goes 6000 feet, so they're used to repeaters.  Besides,
it's factored into the price.


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

From: [e-mail] (Barry Bouwsma)
Subject: Re: Two Line Bridge Schematics
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Barry Bouwsma)
Organization: St. Elizabeth Hospital, Youngstown, OH
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 21:00:53 GMT


In a previous article, [e-mail] (Toxic Avenger)
describes and diagrams a device one can use as a call forwarder, which
works by detecting the ringing of one phone line and connecting that
line to another through an isolation transformer.

I would like to point out a few difficulties which may occur in the
operation of such a device.  These will be phone system dependent.

> Theory of Operation:

> The diverter works on some basic electronic principals.  Step by
> step.  The phone rings.  The neon lamp is activated by the high
> voltage(88 p-p) ac and flashes.  This light shines on the
> photocell, decreasing its resistance.  When this happens, the
> positive voltage flowing through the photocell and the 10k
> resistor exceed the breakdown voltage of the base of the
> transistor and switches that transistor on.  Once the transistor
> is on, current flows freely from emitter to collector, energizing
> the relay.  The relay's two sets of switches connect both lines
> to the 1:1 audio transformer, effectively taking both lines off
> the hook and coupling any audio signals from either line to the
> other one.

    A problem I had with my phone system when I was making devices
which operated similarly was that the phone would be answered too soon
and the call would not be connected through.  The caller would hear
the phone ringing normally for part of the ring which would then jump
to a busy signal (whether fast or not I do not recall.)  I had to
design a circuit to be triggered by the ring and delay the answer
connection by a bit.  The phone system has since been switched to a
digital system and I don't know whether a similar problem would occur
with it now.  If not, the simpler circuit would be adequate.

> You hang up.  Now, the local CO keeps current flowing through the
> indial line for about five seconds, at which point it drops down for a
> second or so and then goes back up.  This is the signal the device
> uses to determine when you've hung up.

    Not all phone systems do this.  The circuit I mentioned above was
designed for a U-Mich radio station with this in mind, with an older
relay-operated switching phone system in use.  The University
installed its own digital phone system shortly afterwards, one which
did not drop the DC when a call was terminated; in fact the DC would
*never* be dropped.  I had installed a key phone system for the same
station and now a line put on hold stays on hold forever even after
the caller hangs up.

    A second problem was that the older phone switch would drop the DC
momentarily when the call was completed.  I had to add a second
circuit triggered by the first circuit to apply a short continuous
pulse to keep the relay energized during the time the connection was
being made.  Perhaps that was the entire problem with the simpler
circuit, that the connection would be made briefly and then lost,
causing the switch from ringing to busy.

    The regular telephone company, which had provided the university's
phone service before it put in its own, has since upgraded most of its
exchanges to digital, but I have not performed further experiments to
determine its behavior when phones are answered.  The DC does get
dropped, not shortly after the connection is closed, but maybe a
minute later, just before that off-hook racket graces your ears.


Barry Bouwsma,  Internet: [e-mail]   [e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 02 Feb 93 01:11:16 EST
From: Tony Harminc <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Wiring For Multi-Lines on One Jack


Pat Turner wrote on the assignment of pairs to modular jacks:

> Summary:
> Scheme      Pair 1   Pair 2   Pair 3   Pair 4
> USOC          4&5      3&6      2&7     1&8
> AT&T          4&5      1&2      3&6     7&8
> T568A         4&5      3&6      1&2     7&8

> * Looking at the JACK, with the "spring" tab recess facing down, pins
> are numbered 1-8 from left to right.  A six position plug would
> contact pins 2-7.

I have a Northern Telecom QNE1FN6(101) eight pin jack (actually only
six terminals and wires are installed), and it comes with a wiring
diagram:

    Front  View                  BIX Terminal #
                                1 2   3 4   5 6    7 8

T4 T3 T2 R1 T1 R2 R3 R4  USOC  WB/BW WO/OW WG/GW WBr/BrW

T3 R3 T2 R1 T1 R2 T4 R4  IDSN  WB/BW WO/OW GW/WBr WG/BrW

So this is another way of looking at it -- what NT calls ISDN seems to
match T568A (and this diagram indicates Tip and Ring too).  The BIX
terminals are laid out so that wiring the colours in the normal order
gets the USOC arrangement, but for ISDN you need the strange order.


Tony Harminc

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

From: [e-mail] (Clive Feather)
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 6:47:19 GMT


In Telecom 13.47.2 TELECOM Moderator notes:

> [Moderator's Note: Yes and no. No, you are not supposed to dial
> international DA direct (no, people in other countries cannot dial
> 555-1212 in this country -- I don't think)

Strangely enough, I was trying this from the UK the other day. The
results were odd. When I dial 010-1-NPA-555-1212 (010 is the
international access code), what happens depends on the area code:

  Canadian codes
    414, 416, 519, 604
      all work every time;
    418, 514, 613, 705, 807, 819, 204, 306, 403, 506, 709, 902
      always give me number unobtainable after dialing the whole number
    905 [not yet in use];
      gives number unobtainable immediately after the area code.

  U.S.codes
    212, 408, 415, 510
      work about one time in three, and give number unobtainable the
      rest of the time.

  Carribean codes
    809
      works every time.


Clive D.W. Feather     | IXI Limited
[e-mail]          | Vision Park
Phone: [phone] | Cambridge   CB4 4RZ
Fax:   [phone] | United Kingdom

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

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 18:43:27 +0000
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance


It's been discussed recently whether or not people in countries
outside the the USA can or cannot call into US 555-1212 directory
assistance.

Well the answer is "yes" to that one, at least from here. I just
wanted a number in Boston so I called 010-1-617-555-1212 (I'm calling
from England). Right away I got a reply from a female voice,
definitely with an American accent, so I don't think I got intercepted
by any kind of British assistance service.

She answered the phone by saying "What city please?" - I don't know if
that is the regular greeting from directory assistance when calling it
from within the US. I thought she would already know I was calling
Boston (617?), so maybe I was in fact connected to some separate
assistance centre that only handles incoming international calls. I
guess I should have asked her.

The call ended with a computerized voice (also with an American
accent) telling me the number I wanted.


Joe Harrison


[Moderator's Note: The reason she asked what city you wanted is
because 617, like most area codes, has numerous towns and cities
within it. Indeed, Boston is the main place in 617, but there are lots
of suburban towns in the vicinity in their own directories. I've
noticed when calling directory assistance in the UK the response is
the same; a live person answers and takes the request, then the robot
speaks up with the answer, and invites me to stay on the line if I
have further inquiries.   PAT]

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

Date: Wed, 03 Feb 93 01:44:05 EST
From: Tony Harminc <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Holiday Overseas Callbacks From Bell Canada Operators


Carl Moore comments on the Moderator's reference to Miquelon:

> Moderator's note mentioned Miquelon.  That is a French possession next
> to Newfoundland, Canada.  There was a little blurb in the digest
> earlier about how is it reached from, say, Newfoundland.

And the Moderator delivers a little geography lesson:

> [Moderator's Note: Ah, but you are referring to the islands known as
> St. Pierre and Miquelon -- French possessions -- located near the
> coast of Newfoundland. I was referring to a tiny little town named
> Miquelon in far northern Quebec. If you find Val-D'or, then look a few
> hundred miles almost straight north.  PAT]

Perhaps it is our Moderator who needs the geography lesson.  Miquelon
is at about latitude N 49.5, or about 30 miles north of the US border.
(Obviously the US border is much further south that far east, but this
still puts Miquelon south of Winipeg and less than 100 miles north of
Seattle.)

'Far northern Quebec' would be over 900 miles further north, at about
N 62.5 for the top of the province.


Tony Harminc


[Moderator's Note: Our disagreement seems to be over the term 'far
northern' and I agree your explanation makes sense. Miquelon is about
100 miles north of Val-D'or and a few hundred miles north of the USA
border *at that point*. Relative to where most Canadians live --
within a hundred miles or so of the USA border -- it is a bit to the
north, but not 'far north' in the sense that the little villages
around the Hudson Bay area are in far northern Canada.  Thanks for the
geography lesson. When I drew a straight line across my map from
Seattle eastward, I found you are quite correct in your measurements,
although I did not believe you were correct until I measured it for
myself.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Roger Theriault)
Subject: Re: Alternate Reason For White House Busy
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 10:12:50 -0800 (PST)
Organization: Motorola, Mobile Data Division, Vancouver, CANADA


Perhaps they just haven't learned how to use their phones?

A Doonesbury cartoon a few weeks back depicted the Clinton White
House, with someone asking "Anyone figured out the phones yet?"


Roger Theriault    Internet: [e-mail]
                   UUCP: {uw-beaver,uunet}!van-bc!mdivax1!theriaul
                   CompuServe: 71332,730 (not too often)
I am not a spokesman for Motorola or anyone else besides myself.

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

From: [e-mail] (J. Philip Miller)
Subject: Alternate Reason For White House Busy
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 16:57:09 -0600 (CST)


> [Moderator's Note: Thanks for passing along that clever response from
> Jay Leno. The Chicago papers discussed the White House phone congestion
> in recent days by noting that the combination of a popular president
> combined with the several controversial issues he raised and people's
> willingness to use long distance without flinching at the rates as
> they might have done a few years ago led to the problem.   PAT]

Today the President pointed out that the switchboard in the White
House was installed in 1964.  He used it to illustrate the type of
infrastructure that needs replacing in the US.


     J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067
     Washington University Medical School, St. Louis MO 63110
      [e-mail] - [phone] [362-2694(FAX)]


[Moderator's Note: My contact said he 'thought the switchboard itself
dated back about thirty years' which would seem to agree with what
Clinton said. He pointed out there were numerous 'improvements' made
over the years, software patches, and changes to increase the capacity
of the system and apparently some of this finally has caught up with
them.  PAT]

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

Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1993  20:33:29 EST
Subject: AT&T's Ad on Sears - NOT!


In Telecom Digest #13-54, Brad Hicks <mc/g=brad/s=hicks/ou=0205925@
mhs.attmail.com> wrote:

> (Paul Robinson) writes:

>> Sears Roebuck & Company's Mail Order Catalog Division
>> is closing ...

> I wonder if AT&T is going to yank that commercial -- the
> one about how they manage to reroute Sear's cals when
> one of their phone centers was unable to function during
> the Christmas season ...

I don't wish to contradict such an Eminent Spokesperson for Visa
International as Mr. Hicks, but that advertisement was for the company
operated by Mr. James Cash Penney, which is known by his initials.

Oh wait, Mr. Hicks works for Master Card.  Never mind ...  :)


Paul Robinson -- [e-mail]
These (uninformed and inaccurate) opinions are mine alone,
no one else is (stupid enough to be) responsible for them.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #64
*****************************










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Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 02:29:35 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #65

TELECOM Digest     Wed,  3 Feb 93 02:29:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 65

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Introduction to comp.dcom.telecom / TELECOM Digest (Glenn R. Stone)
    Re: Introduction to comp.dcom.telecom / TELECOM Digest (Mark Earle)
    Re: Norwegian Number Plan Change -- More Information (Erik Naggum)
    Re: Frame Relay Congestion Question (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access (Bob Larribeau)
    Re: Telephone Line Bridge Info Needed (William Stuart)
    Re: Australia Phone Test Numbers (John J. Butz)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Dan Lawrence)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? ... (H. Shrikumar)
    Re: AppleTalk Docs Wanted (Maxime Taksar)
    Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished (Benjamin Chernoff)
    Correction to Inquiry on Phone Systems (Jeannette Lanier)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 14:23:20 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Glenn R. Stone)
Subject: Re: Introduction to comp.dcom.telecom / TELECOM Digest
Reply-To: [e-mail]


In Telecom 13.63.6 [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
writes:

> I've had FTP access for close to a month now and have yet to be able
> to connect with lcs.mit.edu.  It almost seems as though the connection
> gets misrouted along the way (apparently I get to a *different*
> machine that hangs off of lcs.mit.edu).  I sent a message to the
> postmaster at lcs.mit.edu describing the problem, but so far no
> response.

The address "lcs.mit.edu" is actually a domain, or whole group of
machines.  The one you get when you say "ftp lcs.mit.edu" is a machine
called "mintaka", which is the main ftp and mail server for that
domain.  The IP address 18.26.0.36 is the correct one, and I had no
trouble doing FTP, logging in as "anonymous", cd'ing to
telecom-archives, and browsing for a minute or two at the titles ...
The fact that the FTP welcome banner says "mintaka" is probably
confusing to about half of the few who bother to notice, including, I
assume, Mr. Decker ... rest assured that the banner is a red herring,
and that the archives really are hiding in there in the right place.


Glenn R. Stone  ([e-mail])     small medium at large


[Moderator's Note: I've never noticed this for the simple reason I do
not ever use FTP to the archives. Instead, I rlogin/telnet/dial-up
to one of two work stations given to me for my use by MIT, then I
get my Kerbos ticket punched for a trip over to mintaka via
/nfs/common/telecom-archives. With a valid K. ticket, I get read/write
privileges in the common directory at mintaka, but I never see the
mintaka banner or greeting message since I enter from a different
direction and never actually log in to mintaka, anonymous or other-
wise.  I wonder if what you say is what causes Jack's problem.    PAT]

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

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 93 20:36:26 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Mark Earle)
Subject: Re: Introduction to comp.dcom.telecom / TELECOM Digest


Jack Decker writes about being unable to connect with the site where
the Telecom Archives are kept. Here is my experience:

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

Kill is Ctrl-U
cgull:/users/staff/mearle $ ftp lcs.mit.edu
Connected to lcs.mit.edu.
220 mintaka FTP server (Version 5.57 Thu Dec 6 10:57:23 EST 1990) ready.
Name (lcs.mit.edu:mearle): anonymous

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

Jack -- dunno what to say. I tried FTP to both the numeric address and
the more usual lcs.mit.edu and get there everytime. Must be something
funky in the system you're trying from, or perhaps "upstream" from
your site?


[e-mail]  [e-mail]  Mark Earle 1:160/50
wa2mct@ka5lzg ax.25 packet

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

From: Erik Naggum <[e-mail]>
Date: 03 Feb 1993 02:57:46 +0100
Subject: Re: Norwegian Number Plan Change -- More Information


After having asked people all over the Telco about this, I _finally_
got through to the head architect behind the new numbering plan.  It's
such a relief to find people who know things so well.  Here's what he
told me.

Last summer, all areas of the country except 02 (which comprises Oslo
and Akershus) switched to full eight-digit dialing, i.e. they had to
dial the area code in front of all numbers dialed, complete with the
leading zero.  Oslo and Akershus were exempt from this change because
they would be the first to cut over to the new numbering plan, and the
Telco figured that two changes so close in time in this very populated
area would be too much.

The cut-over to the new eight-digit numbering plan occurs in five
stages, with 02 being switched over first.  Oslo becomes 22 and
Akershus gets 67 and 66.  The reason for these counter-intuitive
numbers is that between phase one and phase two, the new numbers would
have to work simultaneously with the old numbers, and the only place
in the old numbering plan where there is enough space to accomodate
Akershus is in 066 and 067.  Several exchanges changed number to fit
into the vacant slots in these areas.  The problem that I discussed in
my previous article was thus solved on the basis of the first digit
following 66 and 67 in international calls.

The entire country could not switch over at the same time because of
lack of both telco and central office vendor personnel to monitor the
cut-over.  As Morten has reported, several central offices experienced
problems and there also was a period of 18 hours after the official
cut-over that some remote COs refused to acknowledge their own new
prefix, so people connected to them could only dial other parts of the
country.  Although it was evident that much money would be saved by a
single cut-over, more money would be spent accomplishing it and
getting enough personell available.

Morten reported previously that there would be no grace period and no
permissive dialing.  That's true for Oslo, since we've had six-digit
numbers all the way up until the cut-over 28 January.  However, the
rest of the country will find that the new numbering plan is available
for those COs that can handle the larger routing tables.  The Telco
does not _guarantee_ that the new numbering plan will work until the
date and time they have scheduled because only then will the last COs
be cut over on the new numbering plan.

In the old numbering plan, there are four-digit special service
numbers starting with "01", such as DA (0180, as someone mentioned
here), Telco access lines (0140 for Telco headquarters, 0145 for fault
reporting, 019x for Telco branch offices, etc), and other local
oddities (such as 0177 for the public transportation information
center in Oslo, only).  1 Jan 1994, these will drop the leading zero,
and become three-digit numbers, instead.  No other change is expected.

As Morten mentioned, we have special Fire Department, Police and
Ambulance emergency numbers: 001, 002 and 003, respectively, (although
I have to look them up to remember which is which).  These will change
from 00x to 11x on 1 Jan 1994, too.  Thus, all special service numbers
will have three digits and start with 1, and will generally not be
accessible to international callers.

Starting 1 Jan 1995, the international access code will become "00"
(it's the somewhat strange "095" today).  The one year grace time for
the "00x" numbers may be used to provide permissive dialing and voice
warnings.  Today, they report a number of problems with American
tourists travelling all over Europe and calling home "00-1" to reach
the U.S., and there is a great desire to have a common numbering plan
scheme for all of the European Community (EC) and the European Free
Trade Association (EFTA) countries.

Other interesting tid-bits include our "green numbers" (the name is
taken from the French "ligne vert" (sp?)), which are now "050" and
will become "800" in the new numbering plan.  The mobile services
number ranges have been cleaned up and given much more growth space
("lebensraum").  This is the number ranges that have been the hardest
pressed, only second to 02 numbers.  Norway boasts the highest number
of mobile units per population, and also sports one of the highest
number of telefaxes per population.  With a population of 4.1 million,
the number space for the dumb and numeric pager service (110,000) is
full, and the text pager has been given 200,000 numbers, 70,000 of
which are already used, which means that one in a little over twenty
Norwegians carry a pager of some sort.

My experience during the past week is that the switch has been
relatively painless.  However, it's interesting to notice ads in the
newspapers and on billboards showing the old number, or only six
digits.

There are some really clever ways to group the eight digits in new
numbers.  The "official" notation is four groups of two digits, also
known as the "bingo card notation" when you list several numbers:

    Phone:    [phone]
    Pager:  [phone]
    Fax:    [phone]

I have a personal preference for two groups of four, though, and it
seems to be spreading.

I've asked for statistics on how often the old numbers are dialed and
intercepted, and will report as soon as I get the first set of
numbers.


Best regards,

Erik Naggum    [phone]
<[e-mail]>  <[e-mail]>

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: Frame Relay Congestion Question
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 02:02:09 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Shu
Zhang) writes ...

> Is anyone familiar with congestion notification in the frame relay
> networks, especially with the consolidate link layer management(CLLM)
> message? Would you please explain to me why all CLLM messages have the
> same same two address octets of 111110R0 and 1111XXX1, instead of
> different address octets, like ordinary data frame in the frame relay
> network?

Good question.  It is because BY DEFINITION, ordinary data frames in
FR have a (network-owned) header that ends with the last "address"
octet, and a (user-owned) payload that includes the nominal HDLC
"control" octet.

In order to have explicit congestion notification, we (ANSI T1S1.2,
the standards committee that slugged this out in the late '80s) stole
one bit from the header for Forward Explicit Congestion Notification
(FECN), one bit for Backwards ECN, and one for Discard Eligible (DE).
FECN is set on frames that see congestion.  BECN is set on frames sent
on a Virtual Circuit that is congested in the OTHER direction, so that
the SENDER sees that its frames are hitting congestion.

BECN depends upon two-way traffic.  That's fine for HDLC and similar
acknowledged data (even TCP), but what if there's no backwards
traffic?  That's what CLLM is for.  Now the bulk of the group did not
think this was a crucial problem -- AT&T wanted it, and their main use
was, we think, voice, and we designed FR for data, period -- so we
were not about to steal a FOURTH bit from the "address" field (really,
the FR header).  But the "control" field isn't control, it's payload,
so we couldn't just put "XID" in a user's payload.

The solution was to use a reserved (management) address for all of
these messages.  That's why it's the _consolidated_ link layer
management message -- all "source quench" (that's basically what it
is) messages are consolidated into one, and shuffled around the
network with much effort.

I personally don't know of any data networks that actually use it.


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

From: Bob Larribeau <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access
Organization: Consultant
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 01:36:10 GMT


> When we lay copper access cables from end offices to the customer
> premises, we use repeaters if the distance to the CPE exceeds a
> certain value.  Is there such a "range" for basic rate access lines?
> Are there repeaters available in the market for basic rate access to
> cover customers at large distances from end offices?

It depends on the transmission techniques used on the loop.  In the
U.S.  the ANSI standard U interface has a limit of 18,000 feet.
Extenders exist.  AT&T has one they call the BRITE Card.  Adtran also
has an extender.

I have heard that Pacific Bell's new single line tariff includes an
extender if it is required at no additional charge.


Bob Larribeau   San Francisco

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

From: [e-mail] (William Stuart)
Subject: Re: Telephone Line Bridge Info Needed
Date: 3 Feb 93 01:07:06 GMT
Organization: Florida Tech, CP/EE Dept.


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Jack Decker) writes:

> In message <[e-mail]>, rossix!amber.dnet!dan@
> fernwood.mpk.ca.us (Dan Cook, Ross Escondido) writes:

>> I recently created a small electronic circuit which allows me to use a
>> pair of telephone lines to 'forward calls.'  What I do is call the
>> first line, get bridged to the second, then dialout from there.
>> (Dialtone on the second line is not accessable until the correct four
>> digit DTMF password has been entered.  I also put a toll restrictor on
>> the line -- just in case.)

> If you manage to do this at a reasonable cost, it would probably help
> a *lot* of TELECOM Digest readers if you would publish the schematics
> for your device.

While the solutions recommended were good, I know of an even simpler
method.

A friend of mine has an uncle in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Illinois.  All
of his family and businesses are in a small town that is about 30
minutes away and in a different calling zone.  Needless to say, this
could run up some big phone bills.

His solution?: He pays for two phone lines that are connected at a
point midway between his home and the nearby town.  The location of
the connection is just inside the calling zone of the town, so the
line that provides dialtone is a local line.  The second line is just
a leased line, like radio stations use to send audio to their
transmitters.  This line qualifies as a 'local' line in his calling
area.  Somewhere in a cow pasture there is a junction box that
connects the two.  Needless to say, the whole thing is transparent and
audio quality does not suffer.  While a leased line costs more than a
standard line, he says its not much more and the whole deal is FAR
less than ldx charges.  To top it off he says Ma Bell did the whole
thing for him once he explained what he wanted to do!


Bill   [e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 93 15:52:25 EST
From: [e-mail] (John J Butz [phone])
Subject: Re: Australia Phone Test Numbers


[e-mail] writes:

> Here are some Australian test numbers.  These numbers will read the
> telephone number back to you using a computer generated voice, the numbers
> are:
>   19123 (Most widely used, most states)
>   1231  (Works in Adelaide)
>   1111
>   11544
>   [phone] (Toll free number, has very poor comp generated voice!)
> In my experience none of these numbers will work from a public telephone.
> Instead you will hear "no information to identify telephone number".

G'day Mates,

I tried the toll free number from here in the States just for the hell
of it ...

The first try resulted in an announcement telling me to not dial the 0
when trying to reach Tazmania.

My second try without the "0" gave a computer voice "number" playback
that sounded something like this ...

        "mnualahh mhyaq thyr errr oi"  =8-)


Put that one on your barbie ...


J "INTL_BILL_OPTS" Butz      AT&T - BL
[e-mail]   ER700 Sys Eng

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

From: [e-mail] (Dan Lawrence)
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 20:42:25 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Todd Inch)
writes:

> In GTE land north of Seattle, WA, the "secret code" is 411.  We use
> 1-555-1212 for local directory information.  The number varies widely
> depending on your local telco and probably isn't as simple as a three
> digit number in most areas (hint: it's definitely NOT 911!).  In some
> places, these test numbers are frequently changed to prevent customers
> from using it, but not around here.  Some telcos, especially very
> small ones, may not even have such a number.

I used to live in the GTE land north of Seattle (Halls Lake was my
exchange) and I found that 411 only worked on phone book published
numbers.  It would not return an unlisted unmber.  To do that you had
to dial 611!


Dan Lawrence

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

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 93 16:32:33 -0500
From: [e-mail] (H.Shrikumar)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?


Hi,

> This is one reason why police radios are now worn at the waist and
> wired to a lapel-mounted microphone.  I know of no credible ...

  A thought ... why cannot the cellular rubber-duckie stick out of the
*bottom* of the handheld unit, so that its sticks out the front and
below from of your body, and closer to the waist than the head.

  Customer acceptance would be a problem ... would people get too
confused ? :-)  I agree ... it would look a bit wierd.


shrikumar ( [e-mail] )

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

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 93 16:03:22 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Maxime Taksar KC6ZPS)
Subject: Re: AppleTalk Docs Wanted


In article <[e-mail]> is written:


> Can anyone point me to a good source (preferably on-line!)  describing
> Appletalk (and Localtalk?) in detail? The Apple doc's aren't going to
> be available for a while,

AppleTalk documentation has been available from Apple for quite a
while now.  The most recent, most complete document about it is
{Inside AppleTalk}, which I've seen at many bookstores here in the Bay
Area.

If there is sufficient interest, I can find out author, cover price,
ISBN, and possibly how to order it from Apple.


Maxime Taksar              KC6ZPS           [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed,  3 Feb 1993 01:26:44 -0500 (EST)
From: Michael Benjamin Chernoff <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished


Bob [e-mail] wrote:

> BIX has finally put their Internet link into production.

Now that Prodigy has internet mail, is there anyway to look up a
Prodigy user's address?


Michael

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

From: wu/O=NUCLEAR_REGULATORY_COMMISSION/DD.ELN=[e-mail]
Date: 2 Feb 93 21:51:51 GMT
Subject: Correction to Inquiry on Phone Systems


In a previous message, I asked for information about advanced
switchboard systems for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's
pending move to the Two White Flint Building.

The operator who typed in the message made a mistake and mistyped the
sentence "This is a high volume office handling more than 300 calls a
day."

While the sentence is technically correct, what I had originally wrote
was "This is a high volume office handling more than * 800 * calls a
day." (Operators routinely handle more than 250 calls on weekdays,
each; we have three people, not four; the fourth console is available
for updating the databases and as a spare in case one of the other
machines fails.)

Please excuse any misunderstanding on this.  I have already received
some helpful information and I appreciate any information anyone can
offer.

Thank you for your attention,


Jeannette Lanier

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #65
*****************************










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Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 10:49:41 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #66

TELECOM Digest     Wed,  3 Feb 93 10:49:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 66

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access (David G. Lewis)
    Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access (Bob Blackshaw)
    Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access (Gary W. Sanders)
    Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Credit Card Bug (Edwin G. Green)
    Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Credit Card Bug (Doug Krause)
    Kudos to AT&T (Public Phone 2000) (Ken Jongsma)
    Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex (Terry Kennedy)
    Re: Where is a Source For CFRs? (Eric P. Scott)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Howard Wilson)
    Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call (Carl Moore)
    Roaming Ports Blocked For Some Users (Kevin Henson)
    AT&T Changes Reach Out America (Ken Jongsma)
    International "900" Numbers (Ken Jongsma)
    Need Information on Bridges and Dialogic's Phone Number (John V. Jaskolski)
    Iridium: How Will It Find You? (Ross Stapleton)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (david.g.lewis)
Subject: Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 14:15:29 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Fred R. Goldstein) writes:

> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
> (Govindan Raghavan, XT-DL) writes:

> PRI (T1) only goes 6000 feet, so they're used to repeaters.  Besides,
> it's factored into the price.

Just to clarify: this is a layer 1 limitation of the T1, so use of
HDSL would push it out to 18kft; repeaters would push it out to the
physical limit of the repeaters, and fiber-optic transport for the DS1
would push it out indefinitely.  So in other words, with, say, a
DDM-1000 carrying the DS1, I could drop a PRI off a switch in Boston
to a customer in San Diego ...

It would be silly, but it's possible :-)


David G Lewis                              AT&T Bell Laboratories
[e-mail] or !att!goofy!deej     Switching & ISDN Implementation

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

From: [e-mail] (Bob Blackshaw)
Subject: Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access
Organization: Corporation for Open Systems
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 14:31:35 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Govindan
Raghavan, XT-DL) writes:

> When we lay copper access cables from end offices to the customer
> premises, we use repeaters if the distance to the CPE exceeds a
> certain value.  Is there such a "range" for basic rate access lines?
> Are there repeaters available in the market for basic rate access to
> cover customers at large distances from end offices?

Here in the U.S. using 2B1Q line encoding and echo cancelling, the
basic rate access is limited to 18,000 feet. However, the standards
documents show various means of extending this distance. Use of remote
concentrators or repeaters are among the possibilities.

The U reference point line code superframe also includes a means of
addressing these units.


Bob

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Wed,  3 Feb 93 13:45:56 GMT
Subject: Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access
Organization: AT&T


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Fred R. Goldstein) writes:

> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
> (Govindan Raghavan, XT-DL) writes:

> The ANSI Standard BRI (2B1Q code) goes 18,000 feet.

> Repeaters do exist.  However, they cost something over a thousand
> dollars apiece right now, so the telephone comapnies aren't exactly
> beating down a path to the vendors' doors.  Thus if you don't live
> within 18 kf of an ISDN line termination (CO or neighborhood mux, like
> a SLC-96, which handles ISDN), you're probably "SOL".

> PRI (T1) only goes 6000 feet, so they're used to repeaters.  Besides,
> it's factored into the price.

    Ohio Bell's ISDN request was approved on Jan 20 by the PUCO
(Ohio).  In it they have a two tier pricing schedule, under 18kft and
over 18kft.  If you're over 18Kft they bring in a T1 to your location
and split out to the ISDN interface onsite.

    I am still waiting to find out what the pricing is really
going to be. Will Ohio Bell offer reasonable priced ISDN service and
sell a lot of price it out of site and sell a few? March 9 is the
offical roll out date.


Gary W. Sanders (N8EMR)    [e-mail]
AT&T Bell Labs   614-860-5965

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

Date: Wed,  3 Feb 93 07:29:25 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Credit Card Bug
Organization: AT&T


In article <[e-mail]> is written:

> In reference to the AT&T 2000 pay phones ... I tried to use one of
> them at DFW the other day, and couldn't ... a message kept appearing
> on the screen about my calling card being invalid ... the one I had
> just used, on the same phone, to make voice calls.

> I called the 800 number for customer service, posted right by the
> keyboard, and they told me that the keyboards were disabled 'not too
> long ago', for reasons that 'I can't explain'.

> Does anyone have any insights?

> [Moderator's Note: You are the second person to write about this in
> recent days. A few issues ago, the writer said he called AT&T to ask
> and was told there was a problem with the FCC. No answers have yet
> come forth.  Does anyone know what is going on?    PAT]

These and other similar services have been turned off pending FCC
approval.  They will be resumed when AT&T receives authority from the
FCC.

I am sorry for any inconvenience that this is causing and will post to
this group as soon as the service is turned on again.


Edwin G. Green    AT&T Bell Laboratories      Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
INH 1E-506        317-845-3659   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Doug Krause)
Subject: Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Credit Card Bug
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 3 Feb 93 10:16:40 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

> I called the 800 number for customer service, posted right by the
> keyboard, and they told me that the keyboards were disabled 'not too
> long ago', for reasons that 'I can't explain'.

Can you still plug a laptop modem in or is that dead as well?


Douglas Krause  University of California, Irvine
Internet: [e-mail]   Bitnet: [e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1993 13:56:56 EST
From: Ken Jongsma <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Kudos to AT&T (Public Phone 2000)


Well, as much as AT&T gets bashed around here, I've got to say they're
doing something right. I was at O'Hare the other day and wanted to use
one of those Public Phone 2000 terminals to call in and get my mail.
There were none to be seen in the United terminal, so I thought I'd
call AT&T and see if I could find someone that knew if there were any
at O'Hare.

I called the 1-800-CALL-ATT number and asked the operator. She didn't
know what a Public Phone 2000 was, but put me through to the home
videophone marketing department. They knew exactly what I was talking
about and connected me with someone in the Public Phone 2000 office.
He actually had a directory of the locations and was able to look it
up in under two minutes. (There are 20 of them just outside of
Terminal E).

I then asked about the keyboards being disabled, and he confirmed that
according to a recent FCC ruling, they weren't able to allow people to
use them for the time being. The dataports would still be useable, but
since didn't have a machine with me, that was of little use.

Does anyone know what the deal is on this ruling? I suppose that
someone thinks tying an unregulated rental offering of a terminal to a
regulated long distance offering is a "bad thing."

Anyway, I was impressed that a company as large as AT&T has managed to
train their people that deal with the public to handle some pretty
esoteric requests. I was impressed. Probably the reason they had those
record profits last year ...


Kenneth R Jongsma            [e-mail]
Smiths Industries        [e-mail]
Grand Rapids, Michigan             [phone]

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

From: Terry Kennedy <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in CENTREX
Organization: St. Peter's College, US
Date: 3 Feb 93 09:52:53 EST


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Tad Cook)
writes:

> They have informed me that on outbound calls, the number for the
> second line will show up in the ID if a call is placed from that line.

  This is correct.

> [...] but if people we call from the second line see that number,
> they may try to return calls to the wrong line.

  Normally two lines in a hunt group are considered to be equivalent
in function.  I'm not sure why you feel that having the second number
displayed is such a problem -- after all, if it was intended to be a
special line (for example, one that you would answer after hours,
etc.) you wouldn't want hunting from the first one, right?

> Does anyone know if it is possible to get the same number listed as
> the ID on both lines?

  It's not possible. Caller ID delivers the actual telephone number.
ANI would deliver the billing number.

> The other Caller-ID problem involves reading the ID on incoming calls.
> Apparently this will work fine if I read it off of the first line, but
> if the first line is busy and the call rotates to the second line, US
> West informs me that I will only see the ID of the first line as the
> incoming caller, because the call was actually forwarded from the
> first line upon busy!

  This is not true -- with CO-based call forwarding / hunt / etc. you
will see the caller's number (provided that it's not blocked and in
your LATA, etc.).


Terry Kennedy        Operations Manager, Academic Computing
[e-mail]    St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
[e-mail]    [phone]

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 01:48:58 PST
From: [e-mail] (Eric P. Scott)
Subject: Re: Where is a Source For CFRs?
Organization: San Francisco State University
Reply-To: [e-mail]


Executive agencies of the United States Government issue regulations
all year long, which are then printed in the Federal Register.  Once a
year (generally) a cumulative "snapshot" of current regulations
appears as the Code of Federal Regulations.

Federal Regulations are grouped by topic into Titles, each title
consisting of multiple Parts.  Frequently you'll see references to
"Part 15" or "Part 68" -- the implicit whole is Title 47,
Telecommunications.

Since the sheer volume of federal regulations precludes their being
published all at once, 47 CFR bears an effective date of October, with
copies actually appearing in print sometime around January.  As of
this writing, only the 1991 edition is available:

    47 CFR, Parts 0-19    $19
    47 CFR, Parts 20-39   $19
    47 CFR, Parts 40-69   $10
    47 CFR, Parts 70-79   $18
    47 CFR, Parts 80-END  $20

Prices reflect the number of pages in each book.  The 1992 edition
should be available in about three weeks, with a probable $5 - $15
price increase.  Each paperbound book can be purchased separately.

+ Note that if you are interested in more than a few Titles, it's
probably cheaper to get an annual subscription to the entire CFR.  The
most recent catalog prices that at $620 (or $188 on microfiche).
Prices include shipping within the U.S., and there is no sales tax.
For shipment to foreign addresses, add 25% to all prices.

+ Note also that public libraries designated as Government Depository
libraries, university libraries, etc. should have the complete CFR
available in their reference or government publications sections.
Yes, law libraries too.

"How to order":

In person: visit your nearest U.S. Government Bookstore
    --> beware of limited hours
        e.g. San Francisco's closes at 3:30 p.m.

By phone (Visa/MasterCard):
    call your nearest U.S. Government Bookstore
    -or-
    [phone], 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. Eastern time


-=EPS=-

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

From: [e-mail] (Howard Wilson)
Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years
Organization: Okcforum Unix Users Group
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 09:59:56 GMT


Joe Bergstein ([e-mail]) wrote:

> BTW, you can still order from Sears catalog until all their merchan-
> dise is exhausted.

Sorry folks, but I feel this error *MUST* be corrected.  Sears is NOT
going out of business.  The probability "all merchandise is exhausted"
is so slim as to be impossible.  This is Sears folks, they have more
crap than you can buy in a year.  To correct the error, this is NOT a
closeout sale.  You can order from the Sears catalog until the end of
this year.  That means get those orders in by 12/31/93, or they won't
honor it.  At least for now.  I don't see them popping up in December
saying "we'll let you order for another month", but it IS possible.

Again, you can NOT order from the catalog until all merchandise is
gone (the catalog won't be around long enough).  You can only order
until the end of this year.


Howard Wilson II
Stile, Howard Wilson II, and any other names I might use
can be reached at:  [e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 93 16:13:53 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: I Want to Pay For a Local Call


I think I was able to do 0+ on a local call from my residence phone
and indeed put it onto my phone bill.  (Delaware.)

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

Subject: Roaming Ports Blocked For Some Users
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 93 11:39:47 PST
From: [e-mail]


John Higdon writes:

> In my experience, no type of roaming precludes any other.

LA Cellular (the A carrier for Los Angeles and surrounding areas) does
not allow calls via roamer access ports for customers in the
California SuperSystem. For example, a Bay Area Cellular customer
roaming in LA can only be reached by calling their mobile number
directly. If you call a roaming port in LA and enter the ten-digit
mobile number, you will receive a recording about this being an
invalid mobile number.

I checked with customer service when I was down there, and this is
intended behavior, not a bug.


Kevin

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

Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1993 13:55:28 EST
From: Ken Jongsma <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: AT&T Changes Reach Out America


According to an ad in the {Wall Street Journal} and other national
newspapers, there's been a significant change in AT&T's Reach Out
America plan.

The price has increased from $7.15 for the first hour to $7.50, but
the beginning time has been moved to 7PM from 10PM. Additional time
remains at .10 per minute.


Kenneth R Jongsma           [e-mail]
Smiths Industries       [e-mail]
Grand Rapids, Michigan            [phone]

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

Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1993 15:21:27 EST
From: Ken Jongsma <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: International "900" Numbers


For those of you that collect those 900-like international numbers, I
came across a couple more:

011 592 1010   (Guyana)
011 351 99 35110 (Portugal)

These numbers were supposed to be accessable from the US. I don't know
about other countries. No other charge than the tariffed international
rate was suppose to apply.

The AT&T operator said direct dial to the Guyana number was $2.99 for
the first minute and $1.28 each additional. I didn't ask about the
second. Nor did I actually call either of them. You're on your own!


Kenneth R Jongsma          [e-mail]
Smiths Industries      [e-mail]
Grand Rapids, Michigan           [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (John V. Jaskolski)
Subject: Need Information on Bridges and Dialogic's Phone Number
Date: 2 Feb 93 21:20:25 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Boston University Dept. of Cognitive and Neural Systems


Can anyone out there tell me Dialogic's phone number?

Also, I am interested in buying (or building) telephone bridge.

This device would allow multiple callers to teleconference.  In other
words, five or six people can all call into the same number and talk
to each other simultaneously.  Bridges can be purchased but they are
very expensive.  A bridge that has the capability of having 15 people
talk at the same time can cost $15,000 to $30,000 dollars.  Any
information regarding chips, books, hardware, manufacturers, etc.
will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.


John V. Jaskolski

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

Subject: Iridium: How Will It Find You?
From: [e-mail] (Dr. Ross Alan Stapleton)
Date: 2 Feb 1993 14:51 MST
Organization: University of Arizona MIS Department


When/if the Motorola Iridium (Dysprosium? ;-) system is built, how
exactly will it work, as far as finding its users?  If I'm a
subscriber, and someone tries to reach me, just how will the system
determine where I am to call me (does it ping every satellite
footprint, looking for my receiver, or am I required to send "I am
here" information every so often?)  and just how does it happily pass
users off to less expensive services where these are available?


Ross   [e-mail]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #66
*****************************










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Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 11:53:00 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #67

TELECOM Digest     Wed,  3 Feb 93 11:53:43 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 67

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Low Cost Access to a Network? (Chuck Petch)
    Mitel SX-200 Message Indicator Lights (Darren Alex Griffiths)
    Calling Telco With Questions is a Waste of Time (John Andrusiak)
    Telephone Costs Go Up in Russia (H. Shrikumar)
    Personal 800 Number Question (Howard Wilson)
    What Phone Do I Put On a Boat? (Steve Grabhorn)
    What the Heck is 4,941,976.667 Hz Good For? (Bob Clements)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (Jack Decker)
    Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished (Paul Robinson)
    Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished ([e-mail])
    Correction: AT&T's Ad on Sears - NO (Brad S. Hicks)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Chuck Petch)
Subject: Low Cost Access to a Network?
Date: 2 Feb 1993 23:19:48 GMT
Organization: Grass Valley Group, Grass Valley, CA


Does anyone know of a free or low cost network connection for the home
computer user? I have access to Internet at work and would like to
enjoy a similar type of network connection at home, but of course, I
can't afford Internet prices. I'm not real computer savvy, so please
forgive me if I'm asking what seems obvious. Incidentally, I've run
across mentions of FidoNet that indicate it may be what I'm looking
for. Can anyone supply a few details?

I would appreciate a reply by e-mail as I don't normally check this
SIG.


Thanks,

Chuck Petch

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

Subject: Mitel SX-200 Message Indicator Lights
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 93 17:13:01 PST
From: [e-mail]


We have a new voice mail system called Repartee, and an old Mitel
SX-200 switch.  The voice mail system claims to be able to turn on
lights on the phone when we have a new message, and the Mitel claims
to know how to do this as well.  The voice mail system requires a
string of to send to the switch, something like *22 + ext I suppose,
but we don't know what this string is supposed to consist of.  We have
long since lost the Mitel manual and the voice mail vendor and Mitel
support are not much help.  Does anyone know how to switch on the
message indicator lights using the Mitel switch?


Thanks,

Darren Alex Griffiths         [e-mail]
Open Systems Solutions Inc.   [phone] x139
Operating Systems Division    Fax: [phone]
6121 Hollis Street            Coins: 7924-139
Emeryville, CA 94608-2092

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

From: John Andrusiak <[e-mail]>
Subject: Calling Telco With Questions is a Waste of Time
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 02:14:58 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> Paul Renault, renaul2@CAM.
ORG writes:

> I've just spent three many days on the phone to Bell Canada, Bell
> Northern Research, and Northern Telecom trying to find out some solid
> info on Caller ID (Caller Display) so I could tie to a client database
> via my modem ...

> Besides having to explain over and over and over WHY I wanted
> the info, and what I needed, I had to put up with the unbelievable
> "Gee, I don't know who could help you, you want some really technical
> information ..."

Don't bother calling up the phone company for information that's
technical. It's a waste of time. (NT is the phone company in a way, so
it applies to them too.)

Take NT/BNR mentioned above. I used to work for them. One day when I
was working for them I needed a component that they make. I wasn't
connected into the informal distribution channels for this stuff. So I
tried phoning the NT sales department. Once I found who to call, they
couldn't do anything for me that was useful. The only thing these
people seem to respond to is "I want a phone system and I have $X
bucks to spend." (where X is a big as possible.)

Still, things are getting better. A few years ago when I attempted to
get some technical information from the phone company they got their
lawyers to phone my parents and threatened them with lawsuits, etc.
This because I wanted to know which wire was TIP and which was RING!

Try Motorola instead. They probably have a technical report to go with
the chips for Caller ID that they produce.


John Andrusiak - [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 00:17:34 -0500
From: [e-mail] (H. Shrikumar)
Subject: Telephone Costs Go Up in Russia


  I just read in {NYTimes} (2 Feb 1993) that (along with several other
costs) in Russia, the telephone costs are being driven up by the
inflationary pressures.

  Off my memory, the monthly rental for a phone line is now to be some
106 Roubles.  And local calls are to cost three Roubles a minute (up
from few kopecks ... so that makes it a several hundred percent jump
straight).

  Businesses are to pay double the domestic [I think this means
residential -- shri] phone rates. International calls are also to cost
more. Calls to Europe would attract 110 Roubles a minute, and those to
Africa/America 220 Roubles a minute (for residential subscribers).

  [ Some Rouble-$ rates I had seen a month ago converts these to
$0.194 per min to Europe, and $0.388 per min to Africa/America.  These
are not bad at all, so till now I'd guess calling from Russia should
have been dirt cheap! Unless the Rouble has changed from 568 Roubles
to one USD - could've ... I just dont know.  :-) ]

  BTW ... are there any readers from Russia, the Ukraine and other CIS
states on this list? It would be interesting to hear your comments and
more!


shrikumar  ( [e-mail] )


[Moderator's Note: We used to get messages from fellow in the Soviet
Union now and then a couple years ago here. I don't know whatever
happened to him.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Howard Wilson)
Subject: Personal 800 Number Question
Organization: Okcforum Unix Users Group
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 10:14:02 GMT


Ok, I guess I pretty much need personal 800 numbers explained to me
all over.  It was my understanding (and still is, considering my
source of the "new info) that personal 800 numbers were assigned to
ONE number, and that changing that assigned number was pretty darned
difficult.  Example: My phone number at home is 444-4444.  I get an
800 number assigned there, and from anywhere in the US, I can call my
800 number and ring 444-4444.

Ok?  Sounds fine to me.  Now I get this person (ahem ... it's a
separate story, but trust me, I have GOOD reason to believe he's
lying, as this would be the first true thing I've heard from him)
telling me he has a personal 800 number (and no job, yeah ... sure).
He says the way HIS works is he can dial any number he wants, such as
555-5555, from his number, 444-4444, and have it billed there.  I
replied "You don't need an 800 number to do this, just pick up
444-4444 and dial".  He then changed his tune and said he MEANT he
could dial 555-5555 from any OTHER phone, and have it CHARGED to his
800 number (at 444-4444).  Again, I replied he didn't need an 800
number for that, and in fact didn't even need to bother an operator to
do it.

Now, what I need to know is, exactly how full of it IS he?  I thought
the whole POINT of a personal 800 number was to call one number from
anywhere else, not call ANY number from anywhere else.  Has this
service changed, or have I misunderstood it?  If it is the latter, why
use an 800 number?  If you can bill a call to your own 800 number, why
do that rather than your own HOME number?

I hope this is clear, because I'm quite confused about it all.


Stile, Howard Wilson II, and any other names I might use can be reached
at:  [e-mail]    I speak for no one but myself!


[Moderator's Note: What an 800 number, 'personal' or otherwise does is
allow the caller to automatically reverse the charges to the called
party. Period.  Some 800 numbers terminate on their own wire pairs and
instruments at some place while others are arranged to terminate on an
actual POTS line instead. Some 800 numbers (like those from Cable and
Wireless) can have the place where they terminate changed by the user
remotely. Others require the carrier to make the changes. 800 numbers
have nothing to do with billing calls dialed between two numbers to be
billed to a third number. *Where* an 800 number is usable is decided
by the customer and the carrier. Some are purely local in range while
others are statewide or interstate. A few are international.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: What Phone Do I Put on a Boat?
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 09:55:26 GMT


    I need to replace an installed sound-powered phone (I think)
system on a fairly small ocean-going vessel (90' long by 50' beam)
with something a little more modern.

    The old system consisted of stations with a rotary switch (to
select the station you wanted to talk to), a handset with a
push-to-talk button, and a hand crank (a "growler") to "ring" the
station you wanted to communicate with. A friend suggested that we
might be able to replace the whole system on the vessel with a small,
self-contained phone system.  We are also going to install a seperate,
sound-powered phone network.

    I've pulled out my North Supply 'Business Telephone Systems'
catalog, but I don't have any experience selecting any of the small
systems. I installed a Mitel SX-200 system ten years ago, after
spending two weeks at their school in Colorado, so I'm not _too_
ignorant about telephony.

    I'd appreciate any advice in two areas:

    One, what would be a good, small phone system to buy? We'd
need two outside lines when the boat docks, and no more than ten or
twelve extensions internally. An intercom ability between extension
units is needed, as well as external paging capability from any
extension. 120VAC is available, any system without backup batteries is
unacceptable. Of course, the longer the system can run on batteries,
the better.

    Two, I'd appreciate any advice from people familiar with
marine work.I don't plan on installing the extension stations with
RJ-11 jacks, I think hardwiring them is the way to go. I plan on
stocking the boat with spares.

    Well, I didn't say 'three', but there's something else that's
bothering me. The older systems, that have already been ripped out,
were designed with special things in mind, mainly by people that have
used them for years and know what to look out for. I don't know how
many of you have heard a 'growler', but you can't mistake it for
anything else, and you can hear it over quite a bit of background
noise. We'll probably have to add ringers if the extension phones have
pizo-electric crystal ringers.

    One last thing, I don't even want to think about putting a
phone in the engine room. But whatever we buy will probably have to
support external ring circuits so we can flash strobe lights, or
something like that, to get people's attention. but that shouldn't be
a problem.


Steve Grabhorn, Code 984, Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center
San Diego, CA, 92152-5000; Phone:[phone]; Internet:[e-mail]

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

Subject: What The Heck is 4,941,976.667 Hz Good For?
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 93 09:05:56 -0500
From: [e-mail]


The question:

    What the heck is 4,941,976.667 Hz good for?

The background:

    In the early 1980s, AT&T bought a bunch of Rubidium atomic
frequency standards.  They were specially modified for AT&T from a
standard model.  The main modification was the addition of an extra
standard frequency output at the above frequency, in addition to the
normal standards of 1.0 MHz and 5.0 MHz.

    I can't figure out what that frequency is good for.  It isn't
related to T1, T2 or T3 bit rates.  Nor the European equivalents. Nor
SONET rates.  It isn't related to NTSC or PAL video subcarriers.  And
in the red herring department, it is not related to the natural
frequency of the Rubidium oscillator itself, which is up in the 6.84
GHz area.

    I've asked a number of other Telecom-knowledgable people, who will
remain nameless here, and they can't identify it either.

    So:  Anyone know what AT&T wanted that frequency for?


Thanks,

Bob Clements, K1BC, [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 03 Feb 93 11:16:03 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?


In message <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (John
Higdon) wrote:

> I have a new policy concerning this sort of thing. The phrase
> "credible scientific reports" does not cut it anymore. Please site the
> source (with author, title, and any other identifying data) so that I
> can look it up and decide FOR MYSELF if it is a "credible" piece of
> work.

> Also, remember that one study means little. The results must be
> repeatable by independent researchers. And the study must be
> meaningful in terms of its statistical associations. It can be easily
> demonstrated that virtually all people who have developed cancer have
> swallowed their own saliva. Does this tell us much?

> So I am waiting for your references. Let me read this shocking
> material.

I have to agree with John on this.  Let us keep in mind that the
recent wave of hysteria about RF and EMI radiation is being fueled by
the press, which is hardly noted for checking their fact (the most
notable example of this was when "60 Minutes" started the story about
the use of Alar on Apples and nearly put the Apple industry out of
business ... this was totally irresponsible journalism, if you can
even call it journalism, since there wasn't any hard evidence at all
to back up the allegations).

At the same time, I tend to use a bit of common sense, and common
sense tells me that the shorter the wavelength, the more potential it
has for harm on the body.  Everyone agrees that overexposure to
microwaves is harmful (you wouldn't want your hand inside an operating
microwave oven!) and when you are up in the 900 MHz range it's not ALL
that far, relatively speaking, from the frequencies that could be
considered as microwave.  So for that reason alone, it's prudent to
limit your exposure a bit.  I would not spend hours a day on a
handheld cellular phone, but I would not have done it before the
current media reports surfaced, either.

In a similar manner, I've never thought it was a good idea to spend
long periods of time underneath high-tension electrical lines.  But
now the media has "discovered" that these cause cancer, and the
reports exaggerate the matter to the point that the kids are afraid to
play underneath the (relatively low voltage) electric feeder lines
that run down the side of the road.

What ALL these reports overlook is the inverse square law.  Put
simply, when you are twice as far away from a source of radiation, you
get only one fourth the radiation.  On one news report, a guy was
going around measuring the radiation from various household
appliances, and in each case he held a probe right up close to the
appliance, within an inch or so at most.  What they didn't point out
was that at only a foot away from that appliance, the radiation would
be only 1/144th of the radiation at one inch.  If handheld cellular
phones DO pose any danger, it's only because the antenna is SO close
to the head (which leads one to wonder, could they design such a phone
so that the antenna sticks out of the BOTTOM of the handset rather
than the top?  It might look funny, but would probably cut the
radiation received at the closest point of the brain to about 1/50th
of the current level).

What would be poetic justice is if the network technicians (the guys
who operate their transmitters, and mircowave and satellite equipment)
started bringing lawsuits against the networks for overexposure to RF
fields ... after all, the networks could hardly claim they didn't know
about the danger, now could they?  :-) And if they manage to scare
everyone to the point that no new electrical feeder lines can be run,
and the power companies have to start shedding load, let's keep in
mind that TV transmitters rely on electric power to operate!  Wouldn't
it be interesting to see the networks put out of business by a crisis
of their own making?  :-)


Jack Decker | Internet: [e-mail] | Fidonet: 1:154/8

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 11:30:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished


Today someone mentioned that someone at Prodigy had information about
ISDN.  So I decided to try sending some mail to them:

 Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 03:34:04 -0500
 From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON@access>
 To: tdarcos@access
 Cc: mbounces@access
 Subject: Returned mail: User unknown
   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
 While talking to inetgate.prodigy.com:
 >>> RCPT To:<[e-mail]>
 <<< 550 <[e-mail]>... User unknown
 550 "Sandra G. Weiss" <[e-mail]>... User unknown

There's something there, all right.  I tried calling up their system
to see if its mailer is working:

 % telnet
 telnet> open inetgate.prodigy.com 25
 Trying 192.207.105.34 ...
 Connected to inetgate.prodigy.com.
 Escape character is '^]'.
 220 inetgate.prodigy.com 5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 Sendmail is ready
    at Wed, 3 Feb 1993 11:24:02 -0500
 helo access.digex.com
 250 Hello access.digex.com, pleased to meet you
 rcpt to:<[e-mail]>
 550 <[e-mail]>... User unknown
 rcpt to:<[e-mail]>
 550 <[e-mail]>... User unknown
 rcpt to:<[e-mail]>
 250 <[e-mail]>... Recipient ok

 telnet> close

So now I tried calling back to my own system:

 telnet> open access.digex.com 25
 Trying 192.55.213.2 ...
 Connected to access.
 Escape character is '^]'.
 220 access.digex.com 5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 Sendmail is ready
    at Wed, 3 Feb 1993 11:28:42 -0500

This indicates that they are apparently running the same mail program
as we are, and I send and receive mail just fine. You might ask why I
did an SMTP connection when I could have just done a 'ping'.  That's
because I already know they are connected; I wanted to know if their
*mailer* worked.

Now if they can figure a way to deliver mail to the users, then there
should be no problem.


[Moderator's Note: On the other hand, maybe they do know how to
deliver mail to users, but you got the address wrong. It happens.  PAT]

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

Organization: The American University - University Computing Center
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 11:40:07 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished


Michael and others,

I am a Prodigy subscriber and have access to name lookups.  I am
willing, time constraints and all, to lookup anyone's name.

Form I would prefer for requests:

Email to me at [e-mail]

Name, City, State

List several varations if you aren't sure of anything.


Guy


[Moderator's Note: Why don't you see what you can find out about
Sandra G. Weiss, a/k/a 'hfdg66r' and get back to Paul Robinson.
However Guy, you may be sorry you made this offer -- you may find
yourself turned into a full time directory assistance operator rather
quickly once this message makes the rounds and a few thousand people
read it.  PAT]

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

From: mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=[e-mail]
Date: 3 Feb 93 15:59:04 GMT
Subject: Correction: AT&T's Ad on Sears - NOT


Paul Robinson's message in TCD 13.64 misattributes somebody else's
remark to me.  I never commented on any AT&T ad, with respect to
Sears, Penneys, or anybody else.


J. Brad Hicks     Internet: mc![e-mail]
X.400: c=US admd=ATTMail prmd=MasterCard sn=Hicks gn=Brad


[Moderator's Note: It appears Mr. Robinson was referring to a message
sent by Ron Dippold <[e-mail]> but he got it confused with
something involving your name. Then when I published it, I did not
catch it either.   PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #67
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #68

TELECOM Digest     Thu,  4 Feb 93 09:28:40 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 68

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex (John Higdon)
    Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex (Terry Kennedy)
    Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex (John Higdon)
    Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex (David G. Lewis)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Rick Duggan)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Timothy Hu)
    Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished (A. Alan Toscano)
    Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished (Peter M. Weiss)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Jan Richert)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Carl Moore)
    Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access (Roy Smith)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Lars Poulsen)
    Re: Personal 800 Number Question (Steven H. Lichter)
    Re: Alternate Reason For White House Busy (Robert L. McMillin)
    Re: What The Heck is 4,941,976.667 Hz Good For? (John R. Ackermann, Jr.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 13:41 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex


Terry Kennedy <[e-mail]> writes:

> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Tad Cook)
> writes:

>> Does anyone know if it is possible to get the same number listed as
>> the ID on both lines?

> It's not possible. Caller ID delivers the actual telephone number.
> ANI would deliver the billing number.

Bzzzt. But thanks for playing anyway. It is perfectly possible to get
the same directory number assigned to an unlimited number of lines in
a hunt group. In fact, telco PREFERS this, since it does not use up
the available number supply. I have no less than two hunt groups, one
with ten lines, the other with four lines, wherein all of the lines
have the same number. Number readback identifies them all alike; and
it matters not which one is used concerning interaction with CLASS
features at the other end (they are all treated the same). This is
true because each line does in fact have the same telephone number.

To report a specific line to telco (for repair or other purposes), one
uses a "terminal number". For instance, "I would like to report
trouble on 408 264-4115, terminal #4." This uniquely identifies the
line for repair service.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1993 17:09:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Terry Kennedy <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex
Organization: St. Peter's College, US


> Bzzzt. But thanks for playing anyway. It is perfectly possible to get
> the same directory number assigned to an unlimited number of lines in a
> hunt group. In fact, telco PREFERS this, since it does not use up the
> available number supply. I have no less than two hunt groups, one with
> ten lines, the other with four lines, wherein all of the lines have the
> same number. Number readback identifies them all alike; and it matters
> not which one is used concerning interaction with CLASS features at the
> other end (they are all treated the same). This is true because each
> line does in fact have the same telephone number.

  Given the constraints the original poster gave, I stand by my
answer. He wanted two lines with different numbers (so they could be
called individually) and wanted to know if in that case they could
report the same number for Caller ID purposes only. With those
constraints, they will each report a different number. He could do as
you suggest if he considers the single number more important than the
ability to reach the numbers individually, provided that his local
telco offers the configuration you describe.


Terry Kennedy        Operations Manager, Academic Computing
[e-mail]    St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
[e-mail]    [phone]

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 14:22 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex


On Feb 3 at 17:09, Terry Kennedy writes:

>   Given the constraints the original poster gave, I stand by my answer. He
> wanted two lines with different numbers (so they could be called individ-
> ually) and wanted to know if in that case they could report the same number
> for Caller ID purposes only.

I guess I glossed over that part of it. My automatic assumption is
that if someone wants hunting, the lines are treated equally and it
matters not which lines are reached by a caller. For instance, here at
home, I have actually three hunt groups. One is for PEP modems, one
for V.32 modems, and the other for my toy voice conference. Obviously,
on each line of a particular group there is a similar device as on
every other line.

Amusingly enough, an associate had a modem hunt group with a different
kind of modem on each line. I used to call it "modem roulette", since
you never really knew what was going to answer. He has since come
around.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (david.g.lewis)
Subject: Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 18:03:16 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> Terry Kennedy <TERRY@
spcvxa.spc.edu> writes:

> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Tad Cook)
> writes:

>> They have informed me that on outbound calls, the number for the
>> second line will show up in the ID if a call is placed from that line.

> This is correct.

>> Does anyone know if it is possible to get the same number listed as
>> the ID on both lines?

> It's not possible. Caller ID delivers the actual telephone number.
> ANI would deliver the billing number.

The only ways I could see to have the Calling Party Number of the
first line used for calls originated from the second line are (a) if
both lines are behind a key system, but then I don't know if the hunt
group will work; (b) if they're ISDN lines with a "shared DN"
capability, where each ISDN set has call appearance buttons for both
lines and the person calling out from the "second" line can actually
grab a call appearance of the "first" line to place the call.


David G Lewis                              AT&T Bell Laboratories
[e-mail] or !att!goofy!deej     Switching & ISDN Implementation

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

From: [e-mail] (Rick Duggan)
Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Rick Duggan)
Organization: College of Computing
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 18:17:59 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail].
uoknor.edu (Howard Wilson) writes:

> Sorry folks, but I feel this error *MUST* be corrected.  Sears is NOT
> going out of business.  The probability "all merchandise is exhausted"
> is so slim as to be impossible.

No one said they were.  As we all know by now, they are phasing out
catalog operations.  However, the catalog has many, many more items
than the retail stores (and more than the stores could ever stock).
So, it's not unreasonable to believe they've probably purchased all
they will of some of the items they know *won't* be carried in the
stores.  Since they have a finite supply of such items, they might run
out of them.  Now, Sears isn't the biggest proponent of just-in-time
delivery, but they don't have the next 20 years worth of catalog-only
bicycles sitting in some warehouse.  And why would they bother to get
a new small shipment of something they're about to stop selling?


Rick Duggan - [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Timothy Hu)
Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Boulder CO
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 18:46:23 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail].
uoknor.edu (Howard Wilson) writes:

> Again, you can NOT order from the catalog until all merchandise is
> gone (the catalog won't be around long enough).  You can only order
> until the end of this year.

Then I suppose DAK will buy up what's left and sell it.


Timothy Hu [e-mail]     | The intelligence (or lack of) expressed
Interactive Systems Corporation  | above does not necessarily reflect
Resource Solutions International | that of anyone else.

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

Subject: Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 13:29:30 CST
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail] (A Alan Toscano)


Several readers have posted examples of mail to prodigy.com which were
returned 'User Unknown'.

Recently, I enquired of Prodigy Membership Services about when
Internet email might become available. Here's the reply I received:

> From: SERVICE USAGE HELP
> Subject: Internet mail access
> Sent on: 01/28 at 08:19 PM

> Dear Mr Toscano:
> With "MAX E-MAIL" you will be able to compose, edit and spellcheck all
> private messages "offline".  There is a one time introductory charge
> for downloading the required software.  For a nominal additional cost,
> members can exchange private messages with those on INTERNET, send
> faxes, or U.S. mail letters from their computers.  look for details on
> this new product early in 1993.

> Thanks for writing.

> Kathleen T,. Membership Services

As of this writing, availability of these new services hasn't been
announced yet, so I wouldn't think that any ordinary Prodigy members
have Internet email access at this time. (I've previously been told
that it was being beta tested by Prodigy employees.)

I wonder if sending email to a Prodigy member who isn't subscribed to
the "MAX E-MAIL" (additional cost) features, would result in mail
returned 'User Unknown'? Perhaps this is the cause of what's been
occurring recently.


A Alan Toscano -- Houston, TX -- <[e-mail]> -- <attmail!atoscano>

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

Organization: Penn State University
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 15:59:56 EST
From: Peter M. Weiss <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] says:

(He offered to do lookups of names/addresses for the rest of the net.)

> [Moderator's Note: Why don't you see what you can find out about
> Sandra G. Weiss, a/k/a 'hfdg66r' and get back to Paul Robinson.
> However Guy, you may be sorry you made this offer -- you may find
> yourself turned into a full time directory assistance operator rather
> quickly once this message makes the rounds and a few thousand people
> read it.  PAT]

Not really, he then reverse bills you -- it's a 900-type IP service ;-)


Pete

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

From: [e-mail] (Jan Richert)
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance
Date: 3 Feb 93 16:13:18 GMT
Organization: Krefcom UUCP Server, Krefeld, FRG


[e-mail] (Alan Munn) writes:

> Is it possible to connect directly to directory assistance in other
> countries?

Sometimes you can reach the US directory assistance from Germany by
dialing +1 XXX 555 1212 ... but sometimes you get a message "Your call
cannot completed as dialed" ... from time to time this message is
interrupted and the directory assistance answers ... strange thing.

The German directory assistance can be reached by dialing [phone]
from anywhere.


Greets,

Jan Richert (NIC-ID: JR482)   | Internet:   [e-mail]
Krefeld, FRG                  | Datex-J:    02151399843-0001
Voice & FAX: [phone]  | IRC-Nick:   jrichert

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 17:43:08 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance


[e-mail] (Clive Feather) writes:

> Canadian codes
>    414, 416, 519, 604
>      all work every time;
>    418, 514, 613, 705, 807, 819, 204, 306, 403, 506, 709, 902
>     always give me number unobtainable after dialing the whole number
>    905 [not yet in use];
>     gives number unobtainable immediately after the area code.

Off the top of my head, I think all the Canadian area codes are
accounted for above.  But why is 414 included?  414 is Wisconsin
(U.S.), not in Canada.  I thought you might be thinking of 514, but
that's included elsewhere.

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 13:31:46 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Roy Smith)
Subject: Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access
Organization: New York University, School of Medicine


> Repeaters do exist.  However, they cost something over a thousand
> dollars apiece right now, so the telephone comapnies aren't exactly
> beating down a path to the vendors' doors.  Thus if you don't live
> within 18 kf of an ISDN line termination (CO or neighborhood mux, like
> a SLC-96, which handles ISDN), you're probably "SOL".

    I live on City Island, which is a bit of land about 1/2 mile
wide by two miles long, isolated from the rest of the Bronx by several
miles.  When I enquired of NYTel about ISDN in my area, I was told
that we don't even have a CO on the island, but are served by a
substation (I think that was the word he used) from some CO in the
Bronx, and that we're either 1) not even on the list or 2) scheduled
for sometime in 1994 (depending on who you talk to).  City Island has
the entire 718-885 exchange.  Would a SLC-96 be serving an entire
exchange, or several of them?  Would that be what the telco guy meant
by a "substation?".


Roy Smith <[e-mail]>
Hippocrates Project, Department of Microbiology, Coles 202
NYU School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

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

From: [e-mail] (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes
Organization: CMC Network Systems (Rockwell DCD), Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 19:26:58 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Todd Inch)
writes:

> In GTE land north of Seattle, WA, the "secret code" is 411.  We use
> 1-555-1212 for local directory information.  The number varies widely
> depending on your local telco and probably isn't as simple as a three

Here in GTE Santa Barbara land, it's 114 ("reverse 411") and
1-555-1212 says "it is not necessary to dial a 1"; 555-1212 yields
reorder as does 1-805-555-1212. This latter is one of my pet peeves
with GTE. I have tried to suggest to various information operators,
repair dispatchers and customer service representatives that
1-805-555-1212 should be routed somewhere useful, but they claim that
"everybody knows to use 411 for information within your own area code"
and they refuse to even write down the suggestion. (After all, it
can't be much harder to route it to a service point than to route it
to reorder.)

This is what I hate about GTE. "We don't care, we don't have to.
We're the phone company." At this time, GTE is laying off plant
maintenance people left and right, and soon all customer service and
information operators will move from Thousand Oaks, California to
Plano, Texas. I think this is the effect of rate cap regulation, which
gives the LEC a strong reason to cut costs. (On the other hand, the
rate cap regulation has not prevented GTE from filing for rate
increases, nor CPUC from granting them.)

Technically, they are pretty good by now, but their attitude stinks.
 ... Oops. Got carried away again. "GTE - a phone company that inspires
passion in our customers!!"


Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer    Internet E-mail: [e-mail]
CMC Network Products / Rockwell Int'l    Telephone: [phone]
Santa Barbara, CA 93117-3083        TeleFAX:   [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Steven H. Lichter)
Subject: Re: Personal 800 Number Question
Date: 3 Feb 1993 21:02:42 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)


I have an 800 number for my BBS line for my use when I get into areas
that don't have PC Pursuit (there are more then you think). It has
saved me large amounts of money over the couple of years I have had
it.  The rate is the same anytime of the day (AT&T). I have never
looked at any other service carriers. It works like a remote call
forwarding number and AT&T can chnage it for me within a few minutes
if needed. I have found that unless I block some area codes it can be
used anywhere in the US including local. My big complaint is there are
people trying to hack it thinking it is a DID line, so each month I
get a bunch of calls listed that are 15 to 30 seconds and they do add
up. Also I have been told that slimmy phone marketers look for 800 fax
machines and numbers to sell their junk.

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 13:43:35 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Robert L. McMillin)
Subject: Re: Alternate Reason For White House Busy


TELECOM Moderator writes:

> [Moderator's Note: Thanks for passing along that clever response from
> Jay Leno. The Chicago papers discussed the White House phone congestion
> in recent days by noting that the combination of a popular president
>  ...

Oh please -- Clinton lost the popular vote.  The only groups the man
is popular with are the ever politically correct media and the usual
Democratic rabble.


Robert L. McMillin                     | Voice:    [phone]
Hughes Aircraft/Hughes Training, Inc.  | Fax:      [phone]
Los Angeles, CA                        | Internet: [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: Well then, one could say he is controversial and
Has generated a lot of discussion. That, combined with a willingness
by citizens to use the phone more than ever gets us to the same point.
I think the lesson here is we are going to see the telephone and
electronic mail used a lot more with this administration. In the next
issue of the Digest, I will pass along Clinton's new email address.  PAT]

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

From: John Ackermann <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: What The Heck is 4,941,976.667 Hz Good For?
Organization: NCR Corporation -- Law Department
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 21:49:48 GMT


[e-mail] writes:

> The question:

>    What the heck is 4,941,976.667 Hz good for?

>    I can't figure out what that frequency is good for.  It isn't
> related to T1, T2 or T3 bit rates.  Nor the European equivalents. Nor
> SONET rates.  It isn't related to NTSC or PAL video subcarriers.  And
> in the red herring department, it is not related to the natural
> frequency of the Rubidium oscillator itself, which is up in the 6.84
> GHz area.

It's a subharmonic of the natural rubidium oscillation frequency.  The
standard uses a PLL to lock a crystal oscillator at the 4.96xxxx MHz
frequency to the natural rubidium resonant frequency (it's something
like a divide by 1,842 loop).  The 1 and 5 MHz outputs are synthesized
from that locked oscillator.

I don't know what you would use the direct output for, although it
would be the most stable and jitter-free output available.  Perhaps
they fed that signal from several standards to a phase comparator to
track the difference between a suite of such standards.

By the way, I'd love to get hold of one of those things at "hobbyist"
pricing some day ...


John R. Ackermann, Jr.         Law Department, NCR Corporation, Dayton, Ohio
[phone]               [e-mail]
Packet Radio: [e-mail]    tcp/ip: [e-mail] [44.70.12.232]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #68
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #69


TELECOM Digest     Thu,  4 Feb 93 12:06:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 69

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Rochester Tel Plans to Split (Democrat & Chronicle via Curtis E. Reid)
    Proposed Restructuring of Rochester Tel (Curtis E. Reid)
    German PCN License (E1) Given to VEBA and Thyssen (Thomas Diessel)
    Computer-Telephone Integration (Rick Zwiep)
    Teledoc (Geneva) Document Server (Joe Harrison)
    Question About a Telephone "Relay" When Phone's in Use (John Jackson)
    Salesmen That Won't Quit (Ed Sims)
    Telecommunications Magazine Asks: Another Divestiture Needed? (J Sicherman)
    Wanted: Info on Interalia Digital Voice Announcer (William Petrisko)
    X.32 Protocol: Software Emulation Possible? (Nadim Massoud)
    Fujitsu F9600 Inquiry (Todd Lesser)
    Clinton's E-Mail Address (From the White House via Bonnie J. Johnson)
    Who is Telebec? (John R. Levine)
    Where Did Genesis Electronics Go? (Are They Now Microlog?) (Robert MacKin)
    Cellular (XXX0)/XXX- Listings Wanted (J.R. Bob Dobbs)
    Cellular Phone Frequency Allocations (Hugh Eaves)
    Frame Relay Advice Sought (Paul Fisher)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 04 Feb 1993 10:07:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Curtis E. Reid <[e-mail]>
Subject: Rochester Tel Plans to Split


There was a Page 1 news report in Rochester, NY's {Democrat &
Chronicle} today February 4, 1993.  This is a excerpt.


                     ROCHESTER TEL PLANS SPLIT
               It would invite other firms to compete

    Praise and surpise greeted yesterday's announcement by Rochester
Telephone Corp. that it wants to be the first in the industry to break
up its monopoly on local telephone service.

    Rochester Tel filed a petition yesterday with the New York State
Public Service Commission proposing to invite other companies to
compete for residential and commerical phone service in exchange for
freedom from many state regulations.  'Groundbreaking' is how
telecommunications experts described the plan.

    Rochester Tel has bolstered its reputation for being an industry
innovator.

'They're ahead of everybody else,' said Ellie Noam, director of the
Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia University.  'This
is the future, the way telecommunications is going.'

    Rochester Tel is the first regulated telephone company in the
country to propose spiltting its local telephone operation into two
parts: A regulated network of phone lines and call-switching equipment
that any company can use, and a competitive marketing company that
will sell telephone service to commerical and residential customers.

    The company wants to run its business like a railroad, said Noam,
who cautions that he hasn't seen the petition.  The network will be
the railroad track -- Rochester Tel owns it, but other companies can
pay to use it.  The marketing company will be one of several 'trains'
that send information over the network.

    This is the approach the PSC has encouraged for several years.
And as its rulings steadily open doors for potential competitors,
regulated monopolies like Rochester Tel lose more customers to nimble,
non-regulated "alternate providers."

    ... end of excerpt ...


Curtis E. Reid                [e-mail]
Rochester Institute of Technology/NTID    [e-mail] (DECUS)
P.O. Box 9887                716.475.6089 TDD/TT 475.6895 Voice
Rochester, NY 14623-0887  U.S.A.    716.475.6500 Fax (Business Use Only)

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

Date: 04 Feb 1993 10:18:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: Curtis E. Reid <[e-mail]>
Subject: Proposed Restructuring of Rochester Tel


{This is an extract from Rochester, NY's {Democrat & Chronicle"},
February 4, 1993, page 9A.  It is a diagram that I will attempt to
duplicate here:

              PROPOSED RESTRUCTURING OF ROCHESTER TEL

Rochester Telephone Corp. has proposed an 'Open Market' structure in
which a holding company would compete in the unregulated marketplace.
A separate, regulated, network company would maintain control over
infrastructure, the 911 emergency system and some operator services.
Here is an outline of the proposed restructuring:

                          Rochester Telephone Corp.
                     Local telephone service (regulated)
                                   /\
                          ---------  -------
                        //                  \\
                      //                      \\
                   ///                          \\\
                  vv                               vv
                     Under proposed Open Market structure

    Rochester's            Rochester's
    network company            competitive company
    ('R-Net,' regulated)        ('R-Com,' unregulated)
    -------------------------    -----------------------------
    * Pole and main phone        * Line from pole into house
      lines                * Phone bills
    * Central offices        * Equipment sales, leases
    * Switching networks        * Inside wire maintenance
    * Buildings            * Yellow Pages
    * Land and right-of-ways    * Customer service
    * 911 emergency service        * Some operator services
    * Some operator services    * Voice Mail and other special
                      calling features such as call
                      forwarding, call waiting and
                      caller identification


Curtis E. Reid                [e-mail]
Rochester Institute of Technology/NTID    [e-mail] (DECUS)
P.O. Box 9887                716.475.6089 TDD/TT 475.6895 Voice
Rochester, NY 14623-0887  U.S.A.    716.475.6500 Fax (Business Use Only)

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

From: [e-mail] (Thomas Diessel)
Subject: German PCN License (E1) Given to VEBA and Thyssen
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 16:20:16 +0100 (MET)


Today the German Secretary of Mail and Telecommunications gave the
license for a PCN network in Germany (called E1) to the E-plus group
led by VEBA und Thyssen, both based in Duesseldorf. The other
candidate was the E-Star group led by Munich based BWM and MAN. (The
secretary comes from Munich, too.)  E-plus plans to start the E1
service in Berlin and Leipzig (both cities located in the eastern part
of Germany) by the end of this year. There are already two GSM
networks in Germany, D1 by Telekom and D2 by Mannesmann Mobilfunk
(based in Duesseldorf, too).


Thomas Diessel
Federal Armed Forces University, Munich  -  Computer Science Department
Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39  -  W-8014 Neubiberg, Germany

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

From: [e-mail]
Organization: Macintosh Awareness Group In Canada
Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1993 07:28:22 EST
Subject: Computer-Telephone Integration


In article <telecom13.64.2>, Fred Goldstein provides further
background on SCAI, CompuCall and the Meridian Link.

In the latest Northern doc I have, they state:

"Meridian Link is Northern Telecom's strategic offering to provide
Host to Switch functional integration ... and evolution towards Switch
to Computer Application Interface ... CSAI"

>> Anybody know of any other implementations of SCAI?

I am very curious to know of *any* organizations using Computer-Telephony
Integration (particularly Centrex-based).  According to some implementors,
there are less than 300 CTI installations in North America.  If you
know of any, please post here.

> snapshots of ISDN (this was before Q.931 was finished).

As far as I understand, Q.931 was not envisioned to include the
concept of a monitor function and a proxy function.  The monitor
function allows the call status to be seen outside of the switch, and
the proxy function allows the computer to dial and receive calls on
behalf of the telephone set.


Rick Zwiep             [e-mail]
The Transition Group             voice:[phone] x234
Standard Disclaimer:   I have no opinions, but I'll listen to yours.

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 17:59:51 +0000
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Teledoc (Geneva) Document Server


Do TD readers know this exists? (I didn't). A selection of useful
telecommunications documents such as ITU, CCITT, CCIR, IFRB, BDT stuff
is available from this server.

Internet mail address: [e-mail]
X.400 mail address:    S=teledoc/P=itu/A=arcom/C=ch

To use, send mail with TEST or HELP in the body to either of the
above addresses (Subject: is ignored).

Joe Harrison

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

From: [e-mail] (John Jackson)
Subject: Question About a Telephone "Relay" When Phone's in Use
Organization: Alternative Collegiate Computing Association
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 23:30:29 GMT


Greets.  I got my caller ID interface for my computer Tuesday.  Got my
caller ID on Wednesday.  Everything seems to work great.  Thing is,
I've bought a "dumb" deocder.  Some of the smart ones will only decode
after the first ring.  Mine has no special care.  This puppy tries to
decode voice conversations.

Solution: slap something on the line that will disconnect the decoder
when the line is in use (or impedance goes low).  I see now on a piece
of paper I received with the box that:

    'noisy telephone lines may produce "garbage" characters between
     ASCII call data.'

So, in other words, aren't these guys TELLING me this thing is going
to decode during calls??  :) I don't care, really.  I think it's neat.
Hell, I've already called myself on my other line and recorded the
signal, then played it through the decoder :)

But for now, I want to build something to "un-plug" it.  I'm in the
mood to build something else (this is fun).  I just don't know what
the hell to use.  Idea is:

       .--------------.      .-----------.     .-----------------.
 CO====| Line Monitor |======|  Decoder  |/////| C O M P U T E R |
       `--------------'      `-----------'     `-----------------'

Could someone supply some schematics or refer me to IC's/existing
circuits that will allow me to drop a relay in and disconnect the
decoder when the line is in use?


Thanks,

John

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

Reply-To: [e-mail] (Ed Sims)
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 21:17.58.78
Subject: Salesmen That Won't Quit
From: [e-mail] (Ed Sims)


About a year ago, we signed up at a home show for some literature on
replacement windows.  One company, Omni Windows, has called five times
trying to sell their wares.  Each time we have told them that we have
already bought windows from another company and to take us off their
list.

Late one Sunday evening about a month ago they called and the salesman
got really crappy after I got crappy with him about not being off
their list yet.

They called again tonight and I again requested they take us off their
list (Actually I didn't -- my wife did. She won't let me talk to them
now.)

My wife, the list-lurking telecom manager, says there are laws but
can't seem to come up specifics.

How do we break Omni Windows?

BTW we live in Indianapolis, IN.


Ed Sims     [e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 00:29:30 -0800
From: Jeff Sicherman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Telecommunications Magazine Asks: Another Divestiture Needed?
Organization: Cal State Long Beach


  The January 1993 issue of {Telecommunications} has an article called
"The State of the Public Network: Why We Need Another Divestiture".
it pretty much covers much of the discussion here about how RBOC's use
local monopolies to subsidize supposedly separate and competitive
businesses, mostly ineffectively and almost always to the detriment of
the ratepayer with generally ineffectual oversite by (C)PUC's. In
fact, I would have thought it was ghost written by Higdon but there
wasn't the tele-tale, requistite diatribe against GTE.

  However there was one unfamiliar item in it. It, in one brief
sentence, referred to 'proposed 511 services'. Did I miss a discussion
of this topic in the Digest ?


Jeff Sicherman

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

From: [e-mail] (William Petrisko)
Subject: Wanted: Info on Interalia Digital Voice Announcer
Date: 4 Feb 1993 10:01:44 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona, College of Engineering and Mines, Tucson
Reply-To: [e-mail]


I recently came across a nifty device that will record a short voice
message (digitally) and will serve as a outgoing-only voice announcer
for two telephone lines.  I would like to know, however, what the bank
of DIP switches on the back panel are for.

It is made by Interalia (in Canada), model# DMU-2CAB, and is labelled
"Digital Voice Announcer."

If anyone has a similar unit, or can tell me the phone number/address
of the manufacturer, please let me know.


Thanks,

bill petrisko     SHORT and SOON to EXPIRE: [e-mail]
aka n7lwo  LONG and INVALID: !uunet!4gen!warlok!gargle!omnisec!thumper!bill

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

Organization: The American University - University Computing Center
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 08:23:55 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: X.32 Protocol: Software Emulation Possible?


I need to connect to a network using the X.32 protocol (X.25 Dial-in
PAD).  The only modems I' ve heard can do this are the Hayes Ultra
9600 or 14400.  I own a Zoom v32bis modem, and can connect to the X.32
number in V.32 synchronous mode, but I cannot do anything more than
connecting.  Since I can connect, isn't it possible to emulate X.32 by
software?

If such a software exists, where can I find it (for PC under DOS or
Windows)?  If not, are there any modems that offer the capability
while being cheaper than the Hayes?

Thanks for your help.


Nadim Massoud   [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 16:56 PST
From: [e-mail] (Todd Lesser)
Reply-To: Todd Lesser <[e-mail]>
Subject: Fujitsu F9600 Inquiry


A non profit corporation my father is on the board of is looking into
purchasing a Fujitsu F9600 PBX.  They were given a quote for 78K.  It
is going to have 48 trunks (1 T1 and 24 analog) and 32 extentions.  It
sounds a bit spendy to me.  Does anyone know of anything good or bad
about the Fujitsu?  Please send e-mail to [e-mail].


Todd Lesser    Info Connections
[phone] Voice    [phone] Fax
<[e-mail]> or <attmail!denwa!todd>

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

Date: Thu, 04 Feb 93 12:59:46 EST
From: Bonnie J Johnson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Clinton's E-Mail Address


While reading another list I came across this information:

"The first time in history that the White House has been connected to
the public through e-mail. We welocome your comments and suggestions."

Jock Gill   Electronic Publishing
Public Access E-mail   The White House
Washington, DC   [e-mail]
CLINTON PZ on America On-line


Just an FYI.

bj

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

Subject: Who is Telebec?
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 15:32:27 EST
From: John R. Levine <[e-mail]>


In a booklet about the Magdalen Islands, windswept sand bars in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence noted for baby harp seals in the winter and
windsurfing in the summer, there is an ad from Telebec (accents over
the first two e's) which says it's the phone company for the Magdalen
Islands.

The islands are part of Quebec and are direct dialable in area code
418.  I thought that Bell Canada was the telco for all of Quebec.


Regards,

John Levine, [e-mail] or {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl

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

From: [e-mail] (Robert Patrick MacKin)
Subject: Where Did Genesis Electronics Go? (Are They Now Microlog?)
Organization: University of Western Ontario
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 23:42:34 GMT


I am looking for info on the Genesis Genie 220B voicemail unit.  I
think Microlog bought them out but I have no number for them.  Can
anyone help?  Thanks!


[e-mail] (Robert Patrick MacKin)
Western Business School  --  London, Ontario

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

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 19:59:31 -0500
From: [e-mail] (J.R. Bob Dobbs)
Subject: Cellular (XXX0)/XXX- Listings Wanted


I am looking for a list of the cellular exchanges by area code (with
SID if possible).  I have attempted to find a listing and have failed
to do so as of yet. If anyone has a listing, could they please forward
it to me (or the newsgroup). If such a list doesn't exist, could
someone who has partial listings (even if it is only for your area
code), please mail those to me. With them I will attempt to compile my
own listing by SID or area.


Thanks,

Dynastar


[Moderator's Note: One of my favorite radio programs is the 'Hour of
Slack Radio Ministry' sponsored by the Church of the Sub-Genius, the
Reverend J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs, Pastor. Here in Chicago, his show is on
every Saturday afternoon on WZRD, 88.3 FM. In response to Maxime
Taskar and a few others who have complained about what they perceive
as my 'hypocrisy' from time to time in these daily bouts of insanity
we call comp.dcom.telecom I can only offer in my own defense these
comforting words from the immortal Pastor Bob --

"I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that
 I'm preaching to"  -- J. R. "Bob" Dobbs

Praise Bob!   PAT]

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

Date: 04 Feb 1993 10:42:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Hugh Eaves <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cellular Phone Frequency Allocations


These are probably FAQ's, but I've got a few questions about the
frequency allocations for cellular phones:

Are all the allocated frequencies usually in use in a particular area?

Do different carriers in the same area use different channels?

What frequencies are used (specifically), and what is the channel
spacing?

Are there plans to expand the currently allocated frequency set?


Thanks,

Hugh L. Eaves                  Internet: [e-mail]
Medical College of Virginia    Bitnet: hleaves@vcuruby
Department of Human Genetics   Voice: [phone]

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

From: pfisher.HIS.LOCAL![e-mail] (Paul Fisher)
Subject: Frame Relay Inquiry
Organization: UVic
Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1993 00:00:00 GMT


Could anyone direct me to some basic reference works on the subject of
fram relay. I have a fourth year student preparing a term paper on the
subject and would like to assist him in sourceing this information.

Thanks.


[e-mail]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #69
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #70

TELECOM Digest     Fri,  5 Feb 93 09:59:15 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 70

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Large BBS Raided by FBI (Richard B. Dervan)
    US Air Force Officer Sentenced in Computer/Sex Charge (Nigel Allen)
    Federal Criteria for Information Technology Security Review (Willis Ware)
    New Twist to Caller ID (Star-Tribune via Kevin Bluml)
    Consumers Could Choose Local Phone Service (Dem & Chronicle via P Dampier)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Richard B Dervan)
Subject: Large BBS Raided by FBI
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 13:18:52 GMT


   WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Federal Bureau of Investigation on
Saturday, Jan. 30, 1993, raided "Rusty & Edie's," a computer bulletin
board located in Boardman, Ohio, which has allegedly been illegally
distributing copyrighted software programs.

   Seized in the raid on the Rusty & Edie's bulletin board were
computers, hard disk drives and telecommunications equipment, as well
as financial and subscriber records.

   For the past several months, the Software Publishers Association
("SPA") has been working with the FBI in investigating the Rusty &
Edie's bulletin board, and as part of that investigation has
downloaded numerous copyrighted business and entertainment programs
from the board.

   The SPA investigation was initiated following the receipt of
complaints from a number of SPA members that their software was being
illegally distributed on the Rusty & Edie's BBS.

    The Rusty & Edie's bulletin board was one of the largest private
bulletin boards in the country.  It had 124 nodes available to callers
and over 14,000 subscribers throughout the United States and several
foreign countries.  To date, the board has logged in excess of 3.4
million phone calls, with new calls coming in at the rate of over
4,000 per day.  It was established in 1987 and had expanded to include
over 19 gigabytes of storage housing over 100,000 files available to
subscribers for downloading.  It had paid subscribers throughout the
United States and several foreign countries, including Canada,
Luxembourg, France, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden
and the United Kingdom.

   A computer bulletin board allows personal computer users to access
a host computer by a modem-equipped telephone to exchange information,
including messages, files, and computer programs.  The systems
operator (Sysop) is generally responsible for the operation of the
bulletin board and determines who is allowed to access the bulletin
board and under what conditions.

   For a fee of $89.00 per year, subscribers to the Rusty & Edie's
bulletin board were given access to the board's contents including
many popular copyrighted business and entertainment packages.
Subscribers could "download" or receive these files for use on their
own computers without having to pay the copyrighted owner anything for
them.

   "The SPA applauds the FBI's action today," said Ilene Rosenthal,
general counsel for the SPA.  "This shows that the FBI recognizes the
harm that theft of intellectual property causes to one of the U.S.'s
most vibrant industries.  It clearly demonstrates a trend that the
government understands the seriousness of software piracy."  The SPA
is actively working with the FBI in the investigation of computer
bulletin boards, and similar raids on other boards are expected
shortly.

   Whether it's copied from a program purchased at a neighborhood
computer store or downloaded from a bulletin board thousands of miles
away, pirated software adds to the cost of computing.  According to
the SPA, in 1991, the software industry lost $1.2 billion in the U.S.
alone.  Losses internationally are several billion dollars more.

"Many people may not realize that software pirates cause prices to be
higher, in part, to make up for publisher losses from piracy," says
Ken Wasch, executive director of the SPA.  In addition, they ruin the
reputation of the hundreds of legitimate bulletin boards that serve an
important function for computer users."

   The Software Publishers Association is the principal trade
association of the personal computer software industry.  It's over
1,000 members represent the leading publishers in the business,
consumer and education software markets.  The SPA has offices in
Washington DC, and Paris, France.


   CONTACT: Software Publishers Association, Washington
             Ilene Rosenthal, 202/452-1600 Ext. 318
             Terri Childs, 202/452-1600 Ext. 320

                     =======================

Richard B Dervan                       [e-mail]
System Support Programmer/Analyst      [e-mail]
Information America, Inc



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

From: Nigel Allen <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 09:00:00 -0500
Subject: U.S. Air Force Officer Sentenced in Computer/Sex Charge
Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto


I saw the following item in the U.S. Air Force News Service, which is
regularly posted to soc.veterans, and thought that it might be of some
interest.  I have also posted it to misc.legal.

 (from AF News Svc 01/28/93, posted by [e-mail])

     GOODFELLOW AFB, Texas (AFNS) -- The former commander of
Goodfellow Technical Training Center was sentenced to dismissal from
the Air Force after being found guilty of pornography charges Jan 25.

     A jury deliberated about an hour before sentencing Col. James A.
Maxwell Jr., said Capt. Christopher Mathews, circuit trial counsel.

     Dismissal for an officer is equivalent to a dishonorable
discharge for an enlisted member and includes loss of all pay,
allowances and military retirement benefits.

     Maxwell, a 26-year Air Force veteran, was charged July 2 with
conduct unbecoming an officer for using his personal computer to
solicit, collect and distribute child pornography and pornographic
information.

     He was also charged with interstate transmission of indecent
language and pornography via the computer, and using indecent language
with a junior officer.

     The maximum jail sentence Maxwell could have received was ten
years and six months.

     He was center commander for two years and will stay at Goodfellow
as special assistant to the commander while his appeal is pending.


Nigel Allen     [e-mail]
Canada Remote Systems  - Toronto, Ontario
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044

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

Subject: The Federal Criteria for Information Technology Security Review
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 93 02:41:52 PST
From: Willis H. Ware <[e-mail]>


[Moderator's Note: Mr. Ware passed along this item from RISKS which he
thought would be of interest to many telecom readers.  PAT]

  Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 16:08:16 EST
  From: [e-mail] (nicki lynch)
  Subject: The Federal Criteria for Information Technology Security review

The **PRELIMINARY DRAFT** of the U.S.  Federal Criteria for
Information Technology Security (FC) (which will eventually replace
the "Orange Book") is available on-line.  The files are located on
both the NIST Computer Security Bulletin Board and on the NCSC's
DOCKMASTER computer system.  DOCKMASTER has the FC available in UNIX
compressed postscript format, while the NIST BBS has the FC available
in PKZIP postscript format.  When printed out, both volumes of the
document total approximately 280 pages double-sided.  By the first
week of February, the FC (without the figures) should be available in
ASCII format at both sites.  The figures will also be available
individually in postscript form.

What follows are instructions on how to download the files from both
sites, how to register your name for announcements, and how to send in
comments.

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

TO DOWNLOAD THE FILES FROM DOCKMASTER:

The files can be found on DOCKMASTER in the directory:

          >site>pubs>criteria>FC

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

TO DOWNLOAD THE FILES FROM NIST'S BBS:

Volumes 1 and 2 of the FC can be accessed through the Internet via
anonymous ftp. To download, ftp to csrc.nist.gov or to 129.6.54.11.

Log in as "anonymous" and use your Internet address as the password.
The FC postscript files are in directory /bbs/nistpubs.  The files are
fcvol1.ps.Z and fcvol2.ps.Z, for volumes one and two respectively.
Both of these volumes have been ZIPped using PKZIP.  The PKZIP program
is available in /bbs/software should you need to download it.


REGISTERING YOUR NAME:

When you receive an electronic copy of the draft FC, please send us
you name, mailing address, telephone, and e-mail address to the e-
mail address listed below and state that you have an electronic
copy of the FC. If you distribute the document to additional people
in your organization, please send us the same information on those
people as well.  We will put the names into our database for any
further announcements, meeting notices, draft announcements, etc.,
related to the effort.  NIST will be sending out a LIMITED NUMBER
of hard copies, but due to the substantial expense of sending out
such a large document - even at book rate, we would prefer people
to receive the document via electronic means.  Therefore, by
sending us your name and the names of those in your organization
who have the downloaded copies of the document, it saves us from
having to send additional hard copies.

COMMENTS:

We are soliciting TECHNICAL, SUBSTANTIVE comments on the document.
The deadline for comments is March 31, 1993.  All those who contribute
substantive comments will be invited to a two-day workshop at the end
of April 1993 to resolve the comments.  The workshop will be held in
the Washington-Baltimore area in a to-be- announced location.

Please send your comments to:

                    [e-mail]

or, if you prefer, you can send us a 3.5" or 5.25" diskette in MSDOS
or UNIX format (please indicate which) to:

                     Federal Criteria Comments
                     ATTN: Nickilyn Lynch
                     NIST/CSL, Bldg 224/RM A241
                     Gaithersburg, MD  20899

We would prefer to receive electronic copies of comments and/or name
registrations, but we will also receive hardcopy comments/name
registrations at this same address.  You can also contact us via the
following fax:

                      FAX: [phone]

Thank you in advance for your interest in this effort.

Federal Criteria Group, National Institute of Standards and Technology

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

Date: Thu, 4 Feb 93 14:08:51 CST
From: [e-mail] (Kevin Bluml)
Subject: New Twist to Caller ID


 From the {Minneapolis Star-Tribune}   Wed. Feb. 3, 1993

Headline - Bill would permit bus, cab companies to use caller-
identification technology.

Taxi drivers may soon have a weapon against crime.

A bill introduced by Rep. Walter Perlt, DFL-Woodbury, would allow
telephone companies to offer caller identification services to
commercial passenger carriers, including buses, taxicabs, and
limousines. The device displays the phone number or the name of the
subscriber of the telephone being used by the caller.

"If something goes wrong, like a robbery, they can trace back the
number," he said. "It's not foolproof, but it can help."

Fred Blankenburg, general manager of Blue and White Taxi in
Minneapolis, said he's eager to see the bill become law.

"When we ask for a phone number of somebody requesting a cab and they
give us a different number than what appears on the caller ID device,
or nobody is there when we call to verify, who knows? You could be
preventing a crime or just saving time from picking up somebody who is
playing games," he said.

Perlt acknowledged that he's heard talk that dispatchers might ignore
calls with prefixes from high-crime neighborhoods.

"I discount that because you can't pinpoint an address from a phone
number," he said. "It's just a no-cost way to the taxpayers to give
drivers some protection and provide better customer service."

David Chanen (Star-Trib byline)

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

This is the first thing I've heard about CID in Minnesota, I wish
they'd just offer it to everyone with the various hearings and
blocking options that other states have discussed. This seems like a
really backwards way of starting it up in the state. The above is the
whole article, no talk of blocking options, etc, or when or if it will
be offered to the general public.


Kevin V. Bluml  - Cray Research Inc. 612-683-3036
USmail -   655 - Lone Oak Drive, Eagan, MN 55121
Internet - [e-mail]  UUCP - uunet!cray!kevin

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

From: [e-mail] (Phillip Dampier)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1993 10:18:24 -0500
Subject: Consumers Could Choose Local Phone Service


[Moderator's Note: A further update on the announcement made by
Rochester Telephone this week from the {Democrat & Chronicle}.  PAT]

CONSUMERS COULD CHOOSE THEIR LOCAL TELEPHONE SERVICE
by Janet Lively

Remember when you had to "vote" for the long-distance company you
wanted to use?

If Rochester Telephone Corp. gets its proposal through state
regulators, you could choose local telephone service the same way.

But don't start mulling over the decision: Under the best
circumstances, choice would not come to local telephone service until
the middle of next year, according to the company.

Rochester Tel started the process yesterday when it filed a petition
with the New York State Public Service Commission asking to reorganize
its company.  It also must file requests with the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC).  Neither commission is likely to
approve Rochester Tel's request verbatim.

The company wants consumers to be able to buy local telephone service
from any number of qualifying companies, including a subsidiary of
Rochester Tel.  In exchange, Rochester Tel will be freed from some
regulations it says restricts its growth in several businesses.

Consumers would choose companies using a ballot system similar to the
one used eight years ago for long-distance carriers.  Competitors
would be given six months' notice to gear up marketing campaigns.

Phone numbers would stay the same, no matter which company you choose.
But if you picked a company other than Rochester Tel, that company
would bill you and handle complaints about service.  It also would
hookup new customer's phones.

Under the Rochester Tel proposal, basic residential line rates would
be capped through 1998 for all local telephone service providers.
After that, the PSC would continue to regulate basic rates.

Prices for other services, such as toll calls and call forwarding,
would be set by the marketplace.  But competition will only bring
prices down, as it has for long-distance prices since the AT&T
monopoly broke up in 1994, said company spokeswoman Diana Melville.

The company plans to split its Rochester Telephone business into two
parts -- a regulated, wholesale basic service operation and a
non-regulated business that would deal directly with commercial and
residential customers.  Rochester Tel employees would be divided
between the two new companies and a new holding company, but there
would be no layoffs.

The regulated operation would include:

 - Telephone poles, call switching equipment, the directory assistance
   system and phone lines (excluding the line between the pole and the
   customer's property).

 - Some special services, such as call identification, that work with
   the computerized central switches.

Non-regulated phone companies, including the Rochester Tel retail
service operation, would buy these network services at prices
regulated by the PSC.  The new companies could resell these telephone
services in any combination and at any price they like, except for
caps on basic service.

One more exception: Rochester Tel's proposal would require competitors
to provide at least basic service to all customers within the six
county area served by Rochester Tel.

Crucial to Rochester Tel's strategy is its proposal to reorganize its
corporate structure.  It wants to create a holding company, which
would probably be renamed, to handle general corporate functions, such
as finance, corporation information and acquisitions.  All other parts
of the business, including the two new operations in Rochester, would
be separate subsidiaries.

In addition to the local service business in the Rochester area,
Rochester Tel owns 44 operating companies in 15 states.  Most of the
companies are regulated regional telephone companies.  But the company
is also in the long-distance, commercial phone systems and wireless
businesses.

The PSC has denied previous Rochester Tel petitions to reorganize into
a holding company, a structure used by most large telephone companies.
Holding companies are harder to monitor, because the PSC would have
access to only the books of the regulated operations.  It also would
be more difficult to make sure that profits and costs weren't being
shifted between regulated and non-regulated operations.

That argument doesn't hold, said Ronald L. Bittner, company president
and chief executive officer.  Rochester Tel has no desire to subsidize
its subsidiaries to be profitable; they should be profitable on their
own, he said.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #70
*****************************










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Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 22:57:16 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #71

TELECOM Digest     Sun,  7 Feb 93 22:57:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 71

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Customer Surveys For Voice/Data Installation Services (Aaron Leonard)
    Alphanumeric Pagers Question (Bradley G. Wherry)
    Meridian 1 Information Request (Stephen Caron)
    Watch Your ANI Translation! (John Boteler)
    Ontario Communications Ministry Merged (Nigel Allen)
    Satellite Explosion: Chinese Rocket Was Not to Blame (CND via Nigel Allen)
    How to Get 800 Enhanced Call Routing on a Non 800 Number? (P. Mohta)
    Area Code Trivia From Ontario (Carl Moore)
    Are Supra v.32bis FAX Modems Any Good? (Michael L. Barrow)
    Intelligent Networks (IN Concept) (Lars Kalsen)
    PacBell SDS/IS (Matt Holdrege)
    Proposed 511 Service (Paul Robinson)
    800 Portability Booklet (David Lesher)
    Telex to Internet Gateway Questions (John Schmidt)
    Extended Services Sufficient to Work With X25 Card? (A. W. Morsink)
    Calling Outside the US (Binoy P. James)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 07 Feb 1993 10:37:15 -0700 (MST)
From: Aaron Leonard <[e-mail]>
Subject: Customer Surveys For Voice/Data Installation Services


My university is embarking on a project to improve the quality of its
provision of voice and data services to customers on campus (a "Total
Quality Management" - TQM - project.)

Right now, we're focusing on our work order process, which involves
the installation of voice and data services, from consultation with
customer to verification of satisfaction.

We would be very much interested in finding out from other service
providers (commercial providers, in-house corporate operations, etc.)
what tools or metrics they may have for ascertaining customer
expectations and/or satisfaction.

These might include such things as:

  Customer survey questions and procedures;
  Survey results;
  Installation followup interviews or response forms.

If anyone has any such information in an easily accessible form, I
would very much appreciate it if he/she could email it to me.  (If
you'd be willing to sit still for some brief questions, please send me
your phone number and I'll call you at your conveniene.)


Thanks in advance,

Aaron Leonard   University of Arizona CCIT Telecommunications
Internet: [e-mail]    BITNET: AARON@ARIZONA

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

From: [e-mail] (Colorado Cyberpunk)
Subject: Alphanumeric Pagers Question
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 17:45:23 GMT


Do alphanumeric pagers all use the same protocol between the terminal
and whatever system to which you are connected?  Are the protocol(s)
published/documented anywhere?  If so how do I go about getting them?
Obviously this is leading to writing some software to do automated
monitoring of some systems.  Since it isn't for resale if someone has
already written something and it is available (source code) on the
internet then a pointer to it would be appreciated.


Thanks,

bradley g wherry    [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Meridian 1 Information Request
Date: 7 Feb 93 15:31:54 PST
Organization: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona


    I am a student attending California Polytechnic University at
Pomona majoring in Computer Information Systems with an emphasis in
telecommunications Analysis. Currently, I am taking a course in
Network Management. One of the projects in this class involves groups
of five students conducting a feasibility analysis, writing a RFP,
responding to the RFP, then evaluating the response to the RFP. We are
using two PBX products for comparison in this project: The AT&T
Definity G3 and the Northern Telecom Meridian 1.

     Here is our problem. While we have received some cooperation from
AT&T, we have not been able to get any pricing information from
Northern Telecom.  The couple of students that have had contact with
N.T. have run into dead ends. They have been given the impression that
N.T. feels that they are conducting some form of corporate espionage
and are unwilling to reveal much about their product price or
technical wise. We have been able to find some pricing information in
the Faulkner Technical Reports, but this is mainly prices on the
station equipment.

     So, what my fellow group members and I are looking for, is any
pricing information on a Meridian 1 series system (as prescribed in
the case given to the groups) that will is to be used in a nationwide
manufacturing firm and support the following:

     ---1,000 lines with 10% line growth over the next seven years;
     ---ACD capability for at least 40 stations;
     ---Digital telephone support;
     ---CCS connectivity to the local IXC;
     ---Support for both BRI and PRI ISDN;
     ---Integration with a DEC VAX host;
     ---Support for desktop video conferencing at 64Kpbs.

    I hope this is enough information to give you an idea of what size
system we are looking for. Any pricing information on any of the
Meridian 1 components would be appreciated. We would also be
interested in any comments you have on the Meridian 1.


Stephen Caron    Cal. Poly. Pomona    [e-mail]

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

From: John Boteler <[e-mail]>
Subject: Watch Your ANI Translation!
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 10:56:47 -0500 (EST)


To echo and expand on Bill Cerny's comments, it's also a good idea to
check closely your ANI translation from time to time.

We just had a situation where customers were being mis-identified
because of a "typo" when the MCI switch serving our T1 got loaded. The
asterisk ("*") was appearing in the phone number sent to us in-band!

Just something else to keep you 800 users on your toes. :)


[e-mail] (John Boteler)

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

From: Nigel Allen <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 19:00:00 -0500
Subject: Ontario Communications Ministry Merged
Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto


Ontario's premier Bob Rae has amalgamated the Ministry of Culture and
Communications with the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation to form a
new Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation.  (The word
"communications" does not appear in the new ministry's name.) Anne
Swarbrick has been appointed minister of the amalgamated ministry. The
changes are part of a government reorganization and cabinet shuffle
announced Wednesday, February 3. Former Culture and Communications
minister Karen Haslam becomes a minister without portfolio assigned to
the Ministry of Health.

The Communications Division of the new ministry will probably not be
affected much by the merger. It publishes a newsletter, _Communica-
tions Ontario_, which you can receive free of charge by writing to:

 Communications Division
 Ministry of Culture and Communications
 77 Bloor Street West, 20th Floor
 Toronto, Ontario M7A 2R9   Canada
 telephone [phone]   fax [phone]

According to an Ontario government publication, the Communications
Division "is responsible for providing policy, operational and
technical advice on issues affecting Ontario consumers, suppliers and
manufacturers of telecommunications and broadcasting and cable systems
and services. Activities include policy development, representations
and interventions before the federal government and Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, research,
technology assessments, and industry and federal- provincial liaison
on communications matters.


Canada Remote Systems - Toronto, Ontario
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044

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

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 19:43:00 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Nigel Allen)
Subject: Satellite Explosion: Chinese Rocket Was Not to Blame
Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto


 Forwarded from soc.culture.china
 From: [e-mail] (xiao-lin li)
 Organization: Indiana University
 Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 16:08:50 GMT

 From CND News:

Forwarded by: Chongyu Hua <[e-mail]> and Wenfeng
Source: UPI, 2/2/1993

BEIJING -- An investigation into the launch failure of a U.S.-built
Australian satellite in December has found the Chinese carrier rocket
operated normally and was not to blame, a state-run newspaper said
Tuesday.

The Guangming Daily quoted Chinese space specialists as saying the
clearing of the rocket came after an investigation and a visit to
China by a dozen American technicians last month.

The satellite, manufactured by Hughes Aircraft Co. of the United
States and owned by the Sydney, Australia-based firm Optus
Communications, was launched Dec. 21 aboard a Long March 2-E rocket
from China's Xichang Space Center in southwest Sichuan Province.

The rocket appeared to place the Optus B-2 satellite in orbit but
officials later disclosed a small explosion had occurred and the
satellite had broken up.

The Guangming Daily said the American space experts examined launch
telemetry, analyzed the data and checked wreckage found of the
satellite and that "the result of the investigation indicates the
flight of the rocket was completely normal."

The newspaper said the explosion occurred in the satellite vehicle
itself about 45 seconds into the launch. It did not speculate on a
cause, but said the outcome indicated "the performance of the Chinese
rocket is very reliable."

                          --------

Nigel Allen, Toronto, Ontario    [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Pushpendra Mohta)
Subject: How to Get 800 Enhanced Call Routing on a Non-800 Number?
Date: 7 Feb 1993 16:53:39 GMT
Organization: CERFnet Dial n' CERF Customer Group


I am looking for a cost effective way to get features seemingly
available only using 800 Enhanced Call Routing (ECR).

I want the caller to pay for the call and/or minimize my per minute
costs.

The application calls for a single number, which when called presents
a menu. The options in the menu then transfer the caller to one of
three sites, California, New Jersey or default. The default attendant
may then manually route this call to California or New Jersey.

Now I suppose it is easy to do this with a PBX or some such but I end
up paying the cost of the transfered call and it ties my ports.

(In the enhanced 800 service a menu transfer is treated as one call
and the attendant handled call can be treated as one call using "Take
Back and Transfer" or Caller TakeBack).

Short of a 900 number, where I could recover the costs from the
caller?  Are there other ways to accomplish this?


I only want the caller to pay for the call, initial and transferred.


Thank you,

Pushpendra Mohta          [e-mail]     [phone]
Director of Engineering   [e-mail]  [phone]
CERFNet                                      [phone] (FAX)

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

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 12:03:57 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Area Code Trivia From Ontario


 From material which I received regarding 416/905 split in Ontario:

LET'S PLAY AREA CODE TRIVIA!

Here are a few interesting facts on telephone area code evolution.
Just for fun why not test your knowledge with the following questions:

1. Q. In 1947, Ontario had only two area codes.  What were they?

2. Q. By 1962, Ontario had five area codes.  What years were the three
additional codes introduced and what were they?

3. Q. In 1993, Ontario will have a total of six area codes.  Which
province has more?

4. Q. Three U.S. regions have recently introduced new area codes.  Can
you name the cities around which these changes occurred?

5. Q. What numbers never appear as the first number of an area code?


[Moderator's Note: Answers will appear in an issue of the Digest on
Monday.    PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Michael L Barrow)
Subject: Are Supra v.32bis FAX Modems Any Good?
Date: 7 Feb 1993 18:30:20 GMT
Organization: MIT Information Systems/CSSC


I recently purchased a pair of these modems and I have had several
problems with them. In addition, I know of five friends that own them
and have similar problems.

I have two main problems:

- When I call our campus modem pool, I experience pausing problems.
This is hard to explain, but basically, the modem will receive a chunk
of text (less than a full screen) and then pause. After about a
half-second or so, it will continue painting the screen. This didn't
happen with the Motorola/UDS modem I had and I can't figure out what
the problem is here.

- Any noise or anything on the line causes the modem to immediately
drop the line. Noise includes, a roomate picking up another phone,
someone powering up or down another modem connected to the same phone
line, or a phone technician clipping his butt-set onto the line to
check for conversation. Once again, this never happened with my
Motorola modem and I don't know why it's happening with this one.
After all, what are MNP5 and v.42bis for anyway?

If you've had any unpleasant experiences with this modem, please let
me know by emailing [e-mail].


Thanks!

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

From: [e-mail] (Lars Kalsen)
Subject: Intelligent Networks (IN Concept)
Organization: DKnet
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 19:01:19 GMT


Hi,

I am looking for a good book on Intelligent Networks (IN). I am also
interested in references to overview arcticles about the subject.

If you have some information please E-mail me - I will make a list
with all the answers and send it to this list.

Greetings from Denmark!


Lars Kalsen

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

Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1993 11:11:27 EST
From: Urban Surfer <[e-mail]>
Subject: PacBell SDS/IS


PacBell will be filing thier residential ISDN BRI tariff next month.
The marketing name is SDS/IS which is something like Switched Digital
Service/Integrated Service. The line charges should be the same as a
1mb line.  I hope this means that local BRI calls will be about one
cent per minute.

Hopefully the PUC won't screw this up and we can get ISDN at home
cheaply by April.


Matt Holdrege    [e-mail]   Pacificare Health Systems

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

Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1993 00:21:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Proposed 511 Service


In Telecom Digest 13-69, Jeff Sicherman <[e-mail]> asked
about 'Proposed 511':

I was the one that posted the article about it several weeks ago.  A
Cox newspaper got permission to operate an information service in a
city in which it operates a paper; the telephone number for the
service is 511.  (I think the city was in Florida but don't hold me to
that.)  Dialing the three digits from that town connects you to their
service.  This was the first time a non-telephone company was given
permission to have a three digit telephone number.

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

From: David Lesher <[e-mail]>
Subject: 800 Portability Booklet
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 0:51:44 EST
Reply-To: [e-mail]  (David Lesher)
Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex


I picked up a rather interesting Sprint giveaway at ComNet this week.
It gives a good overview of what is going on with the hows & whats of
800 portability. It's technical enough for us hardcore CDT'ers to
enjoy it.

It's one of their "TeleNotes" series, and seems to come from their 800
Marketing Group in Atlanta.

Joe Bob Briggs says "Check it out ..."


wb8foz

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

Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1993 23:22:54 EST
From: JOHN SCHMIDT <[e-mail]>
Subject: Telex to Internet Gateway Question


Some time ago I read something posted here which seemed to imply that
there was a gateway between the telex "system" and Internet.  Is this
true?  Can I receive telexes here sent by someone with telex service?
What about sending them? (I assume this can't be done, because they
would have no way to bill for them.)

If receiving is possible, how would the sender address the telex?

Does this work for international telexes, and if so, over which
carrier, (former RCA), or (former WUI)?  or both?

I have friends in Africa who have access to inexpensive (relatively)
telex service, I can fax them (at least to a friend of theirs who gets
them at his business), but it is very expensive or impossible for them
to reply by fax.  They have attempted to Telex me at work, but the
telexes seem to often get lost between the machine and my office!  My
friend has the hard copy of at least one he sent with the answerback
from our machine on it, proving it got through.  The only explanation
I got fron the mail room was that they don't get many these days and
"the guy who takes care of the machine was on vacation when it came
in"!?! Anyway, having it appear as E mail here would probably work
much better.

I have tried to find Internet connectivity there (in Central African
Republic), with no luck.  Someone said there is a Fidonet node there,
but I've never found an address.


John H. Schmidt, P.E.         Internet: [e-mail]
Technical Director, WBAU      Phone--Days     [phone]
Adelphi University                   Evenings [phone]
Garden City, New York 11530   Fax-------------[phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (A. W. Morsink)
Subject: Extended Services Sufficient to Work With X25 Card?
Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, VU, Amsterdam
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 14:21:36 GMT


Hi. Our faculty will soon be getting a datafeed over a telephone line.
The sender supposedly uses the X25 protocol. If they get an X25 card
for their PS/2 486 OS/2 system and install the extended services
(which seem to support X25 up to a certain degree), do they need any
additional software? The data should consist of pure ASCII only and if
they can get that in a flat file, they can take it from there.

If you can help us with this, please mail me.


Arnoud W. Morsink              Internet: [e-mail]
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam             [e-mail]
The Netherlands                BITNET  : v67cam01@hasara11

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

From: [e-mail] (BINOY P JAMES)
Subject: Calling Outside the US
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 20:46:51 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University


Hi,

I am attempting to decipher the best possible calling plan to call
outside the United States, specifically to Qatar in the Middle East.

Which long distance company? AT&T, MCI, SPRINT etc ...

Which plan? REACH OUT WORLD, Special Country plan, etc ...

Please reply by e-mail if possible.

Calls would usually go out after 11:00 pm, eastern time, lasting
between 1/2 hour to one hour.


Thanks in advance,

[e-mail]   Binoy P. James

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #71
*****************************










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Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 00:32:22 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #72

TELECOM Digest     Mon,  8 Feb 93 00:32:15 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 72

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Bell Canada Applies to Hike Local Rates (Nigel Allen)
    Exchange Scanning - Enough Already! (Bill Garfield)
    An Interesting Hotel Blockage (Ed Greenberg)
    FAX Problems Between Mac Quadra and Amiga 3000 (Adele Ponty)
    Interesting Tricks You Can Do With Your Phone (Matthew Harttree)
    "phONEday" Area Code Changes in UK (Linc Madison)
    T1, MUXs, D/A, etc. (Roy H. Gordon)
    MFJ and Non-OCC's (David Lesher)
    No 976 Lines Here, Folks (American Heritage via Charles A. Hoequist)
    Standard Dialing Plan (John Higdon)
    Motorola 8000-D Docs Needed (William Petrisko)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Nigel Allen <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 19:00:00 -0500
Subject: Bell Canada Applies to Hike Local Rates
Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto


Bell Canada applied yesterday (February 5) for a substantial and
complicated increase in local telephone rates -- up to 60% in some
cases -- in response to competition in the long distance market.

In Phase I, local rates would increase on April 1 by $1.40 per month
for all residence customers with individual-line service and $3.25 per
month for individual-line business customers. Residential installation
charges would increase by $3 (no installer visit required) or $6 (if
an installer has to do work on the premises).

In Phase II, effective September 1, a Community Calling Plan (CCP)
would eliminate toll charges between many suburban exchanges that are
local to the same major city (such as Toronto, Ottawa-Hull or Montreal
[except that the Montreal CCP would not be implemented until November
1) but long distance from each other.  But local phone rates would
rise sharply: a Toronto residence customer, who now pays $12.60 plus
tax monthly for an individual phone line without added features, would
see an increase to $14.00 with the Phase I increase and to $19.45 with
the Community Calling Plan increase. Without the Community Calling
Plan, Toronto's residential rate would increase to $15.80 on September
1. Oakville, a suburb of Toronto, would see rates rise from $14.75
(today) to $16.15 (April 1) and to $21.95 (Sept. 1, with CCP) or to
$16.80 (Sept. 1, without CCP).  Customers in Bell's smallest exchanges
would see their rates rise from $5.60 to $7.00 (April 1) and to $10.30
(September 1).

The CCP would be a replacement for Extended Area Service (EAS) in the
greater Toronto, Ottawa-Hull and Montreal areas. Customers would not
be able to opt out of it; the "without CCP" figures above are provided
in the event that the CRTC does not approve the introduction of CCP.

The application would not affect long distance rates, given the
competition Bell is now facing (and the competition will get fiercer
once telephone subscribers can pre-subscribe to a competitive long
distance service, as opposed to having to dial extra digits or use an
autodialler to reach a competitive long distance company's dial port
and enter an authorization code). Bell recently received approval to
increase the surcharge for collect, third-number and pay phone coin
calls from $1.50 to $1.75.

Some observations: The CRTC does not like to grant interim rate
increases, which the proposed April 1 increases would be, unless the
company is in serious difficulty.

A lot of suburban Toronto businesses (in Mississauga, say) have
Toronto foreign exchange service so that customers in other suburbs
can reach them without having to make a long distance call. (Of
course, their Toronto customers can call them at their regular
(suburban) telephone number.)

The Toronto telephone exchange includes all of the Municipality of
Metropolitan Toronto (the city of Toronto, the borough of East York,
and the suburban cities of Etobicoke, Scarborough, North York and
York).

The complete application weighs over 20 pounds, including Bell's
voluminous responses to the CRTC's written questions. It can be
examined at certain Bell public offices.

For more information on Bell's application, call 1-800-668-2355
(voice), or contact:

 Mr. Bernard A. Courtois
 Vice-President (Law & Regulatory Affairs)
 105 rue Hotel de Ville, 5th Floor
 Hull, Quebec  J8X 4H7
 telephone [phone]  fax [phone]

If you wish to comment on the application, send a letter so that it
will be received by March 22 to:

 Mr. Allan J. Darling, Secretary General
 Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
 Ottawa, Ontario   K1A 0N2
and send a copy to Mr. Courtois as well.

If you wish to appear at the hearing (tentatively scheduled to begin
in Hull on May 17), notify the CRTC and Bell by March 22.


Nigel Allen         [e-mail]
Canada Remote Systems  - Toronto, Ontario
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044

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

Subject: Exchange Scanning - Enough Already!
From: [e-mail] (Bill Garfield)
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 14:45:00 -0600
Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Bill Garfield)


My employer, at our Houston corporate office, has _all_ of one
exchange plus 3,000 numbers in another exchange.  Approximately 4500
of the total numbers are currently unassigned, reserved for expansion.
Recently, I did a traffic study on calls going to intercept due to
number not in service. I was shocked to discover that we're taking
over 5,000 intercept pegs per day, every day.  Peg counts overnight,
between 10 PM and 6 AM average 165 per hour.

SWBT tells me that most of this is due to "scanning" and that there
are legitimate companies that actually perform this "service".  They
say most of the scanning is done searching for fax machines.  Some of
it is would-be hackers, looking for anything of value they can find.
But it doesn't end with a single scan.  Exchanges are routinely
scanned over and over and over, constantly looking for new equipment
installations.

Why is this legal?  This to me, constitutes nuisance calling and
harrassment.  What can be done to stop it?


Ye Olde Bailey BBS   713-520-1569 (V.32bis) 713-520-9566 (V.32bis)
  Houston,Texas          yob.sccsi.com       Home of alt.cosuard


[Moderator's Note: It is a little hard to yell at hackers for doing this
when 'legitimate companies' do it and get away with it. Are any of your
(in service) lines equipped with Caller-ID?  Operating on the assumption
the 'legitimate companies' and/or hackers don't know which lines in
the exchange are operative and which are not -- why else would they be
scanning if they knew the answer? -- it is likely they hit one or more
of your connected lines during the night as well. Of course it rings
once or twice and they move along; no one in your company is going to
be there at midnight to answer them, and even if they did, the other
end is equipped to just disconnect immediatly when it hears a voice.
So, put Caller-ID on a few of the lines in sequence; let's say put it
on extensions 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. Observe the Caller-ID unit
for a few days and see if the same number shows up on all of them a
few seconds or a minute apart. Be sure and flush the box before you
leave for the night and check it first thing in the morning. If over a
period of several days you see the same numbers showing up on those
lines then find out who they belong to and call them back.

If it turns out to be a hackerphreak, then tell 'em if it becomes
necessary for you to make a home visit, you'll bring a sledgehammer
and smash their toy computer into a thousand pieces. If it turns out
to be a 'legitimate company' then you call, get the president of the
firm on the line and your first question to him should be to ask for
the name of his attorney. When he wants to know why, as I am sure he
will, you tell him it is due to the continuing harassment he is
causing your company.  Don't worry about talking first to one of his
underlings, let him straighten it out. It is harassment and nuisance
calling to dial a number, let it ring once and disconnect when done
deliberatly as part of a scan.    PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ed Greenberg)
Subject: An Interesting Hotel Blockage
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 15:29:10 PST


This weekend, I booked a room at the Best Western Garden Inn, in Santa
Rosa, CA.  The Garden Inn is part of a chain of "Pacific Plaza Hotel"
properties.

The hotel states that "To Serve You Better" calls are handled by
Sprint and can be charged on all major credit cards, a sprint card,
and MCI card or an AT&T card.  They also say that you may use your own
carrier and may contact your carrier for dialing instructions.  All
very standard.

Very nicely, there is no charge for local, 1-800 or calling card calls
added to the hotel bill.  Kudos for that.

A few minutes investigation reveals that 0+ calls are handled by the
"Best Western Hotel Network" and that 10xxx dialing (at least 10288+)
works fine.  So far, Pacific Plaza Hotels have made me feel very good
about their phone service.

One problem exists ... when you dial an 0+ call that is within the
LATA, the Best Western network intercepts it.  Dialing 10288+0+ yields
a Pacific Bell recording that a long distance code is not required.

Since there is no way to prefix an intra-lata call, there is no way to
keep Best Western Network from grabbing the call from Pacific Bell,
and thus no way to be sure that the charge won't be through the roof.

I am writing to the hotel and copying them on this message, although
the real question is whether there will be anybody at the hotel that
is telecom literate enough to understand the problem.  I may try a PUC
or Pacific Bell complaint.  PB will likely be interested in the
skimming of THEIR revenue.

One other comment about this motel: It was spotlessly clean, I was
treated with great courtesy and respect, and would definitely stay at
this or another Pacific Plaza property again, but would watch my back
on telecom routings and charges.


Edward W. Greenberg  | Home: [phone] | [e-mail]
1600 Stokes St. #24  | Work: [phone] | DoD#: 0357
San Jose, CA  95126  | Fax:  [phone] | KM6CG (ex WB2GOH)

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

From: [e-mail] (Adele Ponty)
Subject: FAX Problems Between Mac Quadra and Amiga 3000
Organization: UTCC Public Access
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 23:27:34 -0500


My friend and I have an ongoing problem sending FAXes between our
machines and I would like some feedback from anyone with some insight
into this problem.  The two machines in question are a MAC Quadra and
an Amiga 3000.  The Quadra has a JVC external fax/modem and the FAX
software used is called STF.  My machine is the Amiga 3000.  Connected
to it is a Supra V.32bis fax/modem and my software is called GPFax.

My friend claims that my Amiga is at fault yet we both claim to be
able to send and receive FAXes flawlessly to any other destination
other than between our equipment.  I asked my friend to send back to
me the contents of the file that I originally FAXed him.  When I view
the returned file, it contains nothing but a series of tightly drawn
horizontal lines, displaced at random intervals by white space.  I
think my friend has screwed something up here.  Or maybe the Quadra
displays things at resolutions to high for my Amiga's display. Anyone
have any ideas??  Please e-mail.


INTERNET:  [e-mail]
    UUCP:  [e-mail] (bbs)
    [e-mail]  (alternate)

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

From: [e-mail] (Matthew Harttree)
Subject: Interesting Tricks You Can Do With Your Phone
Date: 7 Feb 1993 12:44:48 GMT
Organization: Elon College


I have always wondered about the strange messages/events that I get
when I mis-dial a number.

The lighter side of telephony, I guess. Stupid things you do by
accident or find out somehow.

For example my Dad lives in Northern New Jersey in the 201 area code.
I muffed the digits on his phone number once and got a recording
telling me to "Please deposit twenty cents" ????

(I was calling from my dorm room!)

I was really intrigued by the story of the 10-732 Caller-ID.

If this type of thing amuses you too, I would love to hear about it.
If there is enough interest I could get a list going.

No phreakers, please ... AT&T has enough trouble with out me adding to
it.  (no offense).


Thanks in advance,

Matt

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

Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 23:21:20 GMT
From: Linc Madison <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: "phONEday" Area Code Changes in UK


   ----- BT advert in 7th February Sunday Times -----

AREA CODES CHANGE ON PH[ONE]DAY

ON 16 APRIL 1995, your area code will change.  Oftel, the Office of
Telecommunications, has announced that the availability of new
telephone numbers in the UK is to be increased.

Recent years have seen considerable growth in the range of telecoms
services on offer, and in the number of companies operating such
services.

These have been matched by increases in customer demand.

To ensure that these trends can continue, and to allow customers to
benefit in full from the continuing growth in the networks, one digit
is to be added to all UK area codes.

The change will come into effect on Phoneday, 16 April 1995.

* All UK geographic area codes will have a 1 inserted after the
initial 0.  For example, the Dundee code changes from 0382 to 01382;
the London codes from 071 to 0171 and 081 to 0181; and so on.

* Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield will each
receive entirely new codes to help meet the rapid growth in demand for
telecoms services in these cities.

Their local numbers will also be extended by the addition of an extra
digit at the start of the existing number.

* At the same time, all international dialling codes will change from
the 010 prefix to 00.  This will bring the UK into line with the rest
of Europe, as required by the EC.

If you'd like to know more about Phoneday, call for your free
information pack on 0800 01 01 01.

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

Most of the above has been covered here in the Digest, but I didn't
know about the changes in Bristol, Leeds, etc.

For the benefit of non-UK readers, I'll send along a summary when the
info pack arrives.

Also, one personal note: if there's anyone out there who knows
anything about configuring MacTCP for SLIP, please e-mail me!  I've
got access to a full NNTP feed, but can't use it because I can't get
my Macintosh software to do SLIP.


Linc Madison  ==  [e-mail]
              ==  [e-mail]
59 Stourcliffe Close, London W1H 5AR  Tel. [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Roy H. Gordon)
Subject: T1, MUXs, D/A, etc.
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 00:43:55 GMT


We have the following application and are attempting to find a more
cost effective solution.  The proposed alternative architecture is
obvious, but nobody knows if it can be done, or, except for vague
suggestions, whom to contact.  So, here it is.

At the user end is a dumb terminal (e.g., a PC running ProComm with
vt100 terminal emulation).  The remote host (an RS/6000) is called
where this interactive application actually runs.

The requirements of the application are such that many sessions need
to be supported concurrently.  (This isn't a problem.)  So, we are
going to get several T1 lines from the telco, reachable on an 800
number by the users.

At the host end, the T1s will go through a PBX and be broken out into
24 analogue lines which will be routed through modems into terminal
servers.  The terminal servers are connected to the RS/6000 via
ethernet, and the terminal servers do the IP conversion and routing.

So, here's what it looks like (from the point of view of the user):

                      in / output
    client comm program         - digital
    modem                - digital <--> analogue
    telco (e.g. AT&T)        - analogue <--> digital
    T1 line                - digital
    PBX (at host site)        - digital <--> analogue
    modems at terminal servers    - analogue <--> digital
    RS/6000                - digital

So, since we want digital into the RS/6000 and we get digital out of
the T1, why can't we take it directly as digital, instead of having it
converted at the PBX into analogue only to be reconverted back to
digital by the host modem in the very next link in the chain.
Clearly, we would need a MUX at the end of each T1 to break out the 24
logical channels on each T1.  But if we had such a MUX why couldn't we
then take the individual lines directly into the terminal server or
into the RS/6000, and at the very least bypass the need for the
modems?

It would seem that one issue would be if there would be a MUX that
would convert each channel out in some standard protocol, e.g., RS232
(asynch) protocol, in which case we could then connect via a standard
serial cable into the terminal server (or RS/6000) serial ports.

Obviously, assuming we could find a MUX that will take a T1 on one
end, a crucial question is what protocols it converts to on the other
end.

Is this scenario possible?  Are MUXs like this available?  Are there
holes in this scenario I haven't considered?  I'm also assuming we can
bypass the PBX if needed, but we would then have to arrange for some
type of call forward busy and call forward no answer.


Thanks in advance.

Roy

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

From: David Lesher <[e-mail]>
Subject: MFJ and Non-OCC's
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 1:03:16 EST
Reply-To: [e-mail]  (David Lesher)
Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex


I got a call tonight from the salessleeze from the local cable
company.  I was immediately tipped off by the fact he asked for the
billing name the C&P account is in, not the listing name.

I got rid of him with my usual tactic [I demanded his name, credit
card number and expiration date and explained that I charge to talk to
telesleeze ...]  but then started wondering.

I know the MFJ requires See & Pee release data on subs to OCC's, but
under whose standard does Slimeball Cable qualify as such?


wb8foz

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

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 10:54:00 +0000
From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist <[e-mail]>
Subject: No 976 Lines Here, Folks


 From _American Heritage_ magazine, December 1982:

"Cincinnati, December 26 [1882]: A Mr. A.H. Pugh, dissatisfied with
the service of the telephone company, was moved to strong lanugage:
'If you can't get the party I want you to, you may shut up your damn
telephone!'  Aghast, the phone company removed its instrument from
Pugh's home. He sued to get it restored, but the courts decided in
favor of the company. _Damn_ was not to be said over the wire."


Charles Hoequist   |Internet: [e-mail]
BNR Inc.           | 919-991-8642
PO Box 13478, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3478

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

Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 00:35 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Standard Dialing Plan


Pacific Bell has just announced that by October 11, 1993, the company
will institute its "Standard Dialing Plan" throughout the serving
areas. It is as follows:

ALL ten-digit calls (area code + seven digit number) will be prefixed
by the access code '1'. This means that the last stronghold of "one
not required", Greater San Jose, will fall to the "dial 1" monster.

ALL seven-digit calls (within the area code) will NEVER be preceded by
the access code '1', even if it is toll or long distance.

ALL 0+ calls will require ten digits. Even a call within the area code
will require the area code to be dialed as part of the number.

This plan is anticipation for the new "phoney" area code numbering
system currently being advanced by Bellcore. Since the switches will
not be able to spot area codes by the presence of a '1' or '0' as
middle digit, the dialing sequence has to be standardized.

So it looks like after nearly forty years of DDD, a '1' will soon be
required from telephones in San Jose. I wonder when the "educational"
process will begin.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (William Petrisko)
Subject: Motorola 8000-D Docs Needed
Date: 7 Feb 1993 09:51:35 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona, College of Engineering and Mines, Tucson
Reply-To: [e-mail]


I recently purchased a Motorola 8000 cellphone (used) without
instructions.  Noone seems to have a manual for this phone (it is the
"D" series.)

Anyone want to mail me a quick synopsis for user commands?  (Volume,
storing/recalling #'s, RING VOLUME, etc ...)


bill petrisko        SHORT and SOON to EXPIRE: [e-mail]
aka n7lwo     LONG and INVALID: !uunet!4gen!warlok!gargle!omnisec!thumper!bill

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #72
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #73

TELECOM Digest     Mon,  8 Feb 93 01:25:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 73

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    The White House Phone Situation (Reuters/Vielmetti via J. Philip Miller)
    Definity Phone Sets (Dale Chayes)
    Finding a Vendor For Hardware Units in Switching Systems (Youhua Tsai)
    Telex <=> RS-232 (Robert Horvitz)
    When Does 800 = 900? (Ken Jongsma)
    Chicago Uses E911 as Revenue Source (Ken Jongsma)
    New French E-Journal on Computer Security (Jim Warren)
    ANI on 800 Line w/o T1? (Tas Dienes)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (Joel Upchurch)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (RISKS/Weinstein via Jack Decker)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (Gregory Youngblood)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (John R. Ruckstuhl Jr.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (J. Philip Miller)
Subject: The White House Phone Situation
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 08:22:27 -0600 (CST)


[Moderator's Note: Mr. Miller passed along this report from Ed
Vielmetti which originally came from Reuters.  PAT]

 Organization: Msen, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, Michigan
 Date: Fri, 05 Feb 93 01:27:38 EST
 From: Edward Vielmetti <[e-mail]>


REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO EMPLOYEES OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND
BUDGET  3 Feb

             When I took office, the White House had a telephone
system that had been there since President Carter -- (laughter) -- and
a switchboard that has been there since the 1960s.  They talk about
jamming the White House switchboards -- you can do it tomorrow if you
want to; it's not hard.  (Laughter.)

             I could not have a conference call in my office on my
telephone, except an unwanted one -- anybody in the central office
could punch a lighted button and listen to what I had to say.
(Laughter and applause.)

             The American people, I think, would be pretty surprised
and disappointed that after a dozen years of people who promised to
run the government like a business -- they meant a business in the
1950s, not for the 21st century.  (Laughter.)

   ......

  From: [e-mail] (Msen Reuters Automated News)
  Date: 3 Feb 1993 13:0:39 -0500

CLINTON MAKING WHITE HOUSE COMPUTER FRIENDLY

    By Steve Holland

    WASHINGTON, Reuter - Bill Clinton's aides knew the White House
phone system left something to be desired when they discovered the
operators transferring calls by plugging cords into holes.

    Then the president himself tried to arrange his own conference
call and found he could not do it without getting an operator or a
secretary involved.

    "I was amazed,"  Clinton said later, showing frustration probably
similar to that of President Rutherford B. Hayes, who installed the
first phone at the White House in 1877 but had nobody to call because
few people had phones then.

    For Clinton, it was not long before a deluge of calls from
Americans interested in expressing their opinions on topics ranging
from Zoe Baird to gays in the military overwhelmed the White House,
which could handle only 5,000 calls a day.

    Phones either went unanswered or people found a constant busy
signal. It was a terrible embarrassment for Clinton, whose 1992
campaign prided itself for its communications and whose headquarters
could accept 60,000 calls a day.

    His immediate reaction was to blame the Republicans.

    "The other crowd had the White House for 12 years, and they have
presented themselves as businesslike and modern, you know, and tried
to make the Democrats look like yesterday's crowd.  Well, when I got
to the White House, guess what I found? Same phone system Jimmy Carter
had," he said recently referring to the last Democrat to win the White
House.

    For 200 years the White House has been subjected to the whims of
the presidents and every occupant has left a mark on the place,
whether it be Harry Truman's complete rebuilding job or Jackie
Kennedy's redecorating.

    Now, Clinton and his team are trying to bring White House phones
and the executive mansion's computer system up to date and ready for
the 21st century.

    "It's a yesterday place, and we need to make it a tomorrow
place,"  Clinton said.

    Some of this work is falling to Jeff Eller, Clinton's director of
media affairs, a moustachioed fellow who lives and breathes computer
software, electronic mail, satellite uplinks and the like.

    "Tyson's Chicken had a better phone system than we had in the
White House before we got here," says Eller, referring to a large
Arkansas business that Clinton's Little Rock headquarters surpassed as
the state's largest in phone capacity when his campaign picked up
steam last year.

    Eller says there is a generational, philosophical and emotional
gap between the new White House team and that of George Bush, who only
learned how to use a computer in the last couple of years and often
complained he could not program his television video cassette
recorder.

    "What I'm talking about is that we are for the most part younger,
computer literate, comfortable with computers and understand their
value in moving information," Eller said.

    The Clinton team has already installed a comments line for
everyday Americans to phone in their concerns. It's 202-456-1111.

    And the team is working to allow the system to accept more calls,
helping out the half-dozen or so weary operators who still plug patch
cords into holes to transfer calls -- a system that apparently dates
back at least to the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s.

    Clinton's assistants are also seeing how they can expand the
capacity of an obsolete mainframe computer and adapt it for easier
access to "E-mail," an electronic mail system in which people can
quickly send messages to each other via computer terminals.

    Troubled by the sight of an old wire service teletype printer when
he got to the White House, Eller is improving the ability to call up
news on more computer terminals rather than printing out stories and
copying them for distribution.

    "Emotionally, our heads are always in touch with the news cycle.
That's how we think," Eller said. "We believe that the more
information you share, the better you're going to be."

 REUTER

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

  J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067
      Washington University Medical School, St. Louis MO 63110
       [e-mail] - [phone] [362-2694(FAX)]

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

From: [e-mail] (dale)
Subject: Definity Phone Sets
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 16:53:13 GMT


Our institution has recently installed an AT&T Definity phone system
(with Audix voice mail) but in the process of upgrading, only the high
level administrative folks got new phones on their desks. Its clear
that these digital phones make a much more sensible user interface to
the features of this system than a standard touch-tone phone.

The first problem with our existing arrangment is that there is no way
to tell that you have voice mail without dialing into AUDIX to find
out. In larger AUDIX systems, there is apparently a warble tone when
you take the handset off hook, but this feature is not available on
our system. We have heard that it will be available as an upgrade
perhaps this summer. The AT&T digital phones have a "message" LED
among many other useful features.

My question is: what (perhaps non-AT&T) desk sets are known tol work
well with a Definity/Audix system?  We already know about the $550
AT&T digital phones, and the $60 or so AT&T phones with a message LED.
Surely there must be third party equipment for this market.


Dale Chayes   Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Internet: [e-mail]
Voice:    [phone]     Fax:  [phone]

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

From: Youhua Tsai <[e-mail]>
Subject: Finding a Vendor For Hardware Units in Switching Systems
Date: 7 Feb 93 19:46:07 GMT


A friend of mine is looking for the opportunity of purchasing hardware
units for PABXs.  Initially, he would need to purchase the Digital
Switching Network, Central Processor Unit.  If you have any
information as where he can find the vendor, please contact me to the
following email address:

            [e-mail]


Thanks in advance.

Steve

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

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 13:53:56 -0800
From: Robert Horvitz <[e-mail]>
Subject: Telex <=> RS-232


We have this big old and very loud telex machine in our office.  We'd
like to get rid of it and integrate telex with our LAN.  Surely we're
not the first to have this idea.  Assuming the wheel has already been
invented, can someone explain how to do this?  Is there a particular
kind of modem designed for interfacing DOS machines with telex
circuits?

Thanks in advance for your help.  Send answers via email and I'll post
a summary ... unless there's already a file that answers this question.

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

Subject: When Does 800 = 900?
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 19:35:23 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Ken Jongsma)


OK boys and girls! Here's another opportunity to have phun at your
local COCOT or other suitable phone.

An IXC company called ATN is promoting the use of 800 numbers assigned
to it as a means of getting around 900 call restrictions. For example:
You might dial 1-800-697-1110 thinking that it is a free call. Stay on
the line long enough and the real time ANI number for the phone you
are on will be charged for a collect call at 900 rates!

ATN is apparently smart enough to check some line records. Calls from
the LEC payphones I tried get a recording stating that the 800 number
is not valid from the area I was calling from. Calls from a hotel in
the same area went through just fine.

Can you imagine what this is going to do for colleges, businesses and
others that don't have ATN assigned 800 exchanges blocked? Yuck.


Ken    [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: At least they call back collect, rather than just
converting it to 900, so a certain number will be caught and stopped
that way by telephone operators at universities and business places.
But for those folks reading this who control their phone system: I
tried it and stayed on long enough to hear the opening message. It is
a sex line. Be forewarned and get it blocked out if possible!   PAT]

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

Subject: Chicago Uses E911 as Revenue Source
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 19:36:26 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Ken Jongsma)


According to an article in _GPS_World_, the City of Chicago has
amassed over 30 million dollars in a fund built from the $1 per month
surcharge on every phone bill for Enhanced 911 services.

Since this is well in excess of what it actually costs to provide
E911, the city is looking for ways to spend the money on other
projects.  Apparently, the thought of reducing the surcharge has not
occurred to them ...


Ken Jongsma                   [e-mail]
Smiths Industries                  [e-mail]
Grand Rapids, Michigan    [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: Not true. The city is building a new emergency
communications center on the west side of Chicago with that money. It
is being used both to fund the E-911 system itself and construct the
building.   PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 19:19:29 PST
From: [e-mail] (Jim Warren)
Subject: New French E-Journal on Computer Security


[Moderator's Note: Jim passed along this correspondence he received.  PAT]

 From: [e-mail]
 To: [e-mail]
 Subject: New French computer security e-journal


Bonjour!

A new computer security e-journal is already published in France. It's
the first in my country:

     * weekly;
     * name: _Chaos Digest_;
     * last issue available: #1.07 (8 Fev 1993);
     * for a subscription send an e-message to: [e-mail]

If you can diffuse this e-journal throughout your site, don't hesitate
to contact me, ok?

Thanks, and hope to hear from you soon!


Jean-Bernard Condat
Chaos Computer Club France [CCCF]    B.P. 8005
E-Mail: [e-mail]         69351 Lyon Cedex 08, France
Phone:  [phone]               Fax:  [phone]

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

From: Tas Dienes <[e-mail]>
Subject: ANI on 800 Line w/o T1?
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 06:37:22 GMT


Does anybody know if it is possible to get ANI on an 800 line without
having to get T1 service?  I just have a couple of regular (actually,
Centranet) lines - local service is GTE, 800 is Sprint.  Sprint says
no, but I was wondering if anybody else can?


Thanks,

Tas

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

Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?
From: upchrch![e-mail] (Joel Upchurch)
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 17:52:28 EST
Organization: Upchurch Computer Consulting, Orlando FL


[e-mail] (Andrew Klossner) writes:

>> It is believed by some people that the amount of radiation emitted
>> from a cellular phone antenna can cause cancer.

> To clarify: there are credible scientific reports that a three watt
> transceiver, operated near the head for many years, can cause
> *glaucoma*.  This is one reason why police radios are now worn at the
> waist and wired to a lapel-mounted microphone.  I know of no credible
> evidence linking transceivers to brain cancer.

I've heard the same thing. I also recall some rumors concerning health
hazards in operating hand-held radar guns. While I have some strong
doubts about portable cellular phones causing tumors, I wonder if you
could reduce the risk considerably by having the antenna come out of
the bottom of the phone instead of the top? Would it have that much
effect on reception?


(If your mail bounces use the address below.)
Joel Upchurch/Upchurch Computer Consulting/718 Galsworthy/Orlando, FL 32809
[e-mail] {uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd,ucf-cs}!peora!joel [phone]

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

Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 14:36:47 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?


Just in case you missed it, I saw the following in the RISKS-FORUM
Digest, Tuesday 2 February 1993, Volume 14, Issue 30:

 Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 16:55 PST
 From: [e-mail] (Lauren Weinstein)
 Subject: Re: EM Radiation (and cell phones) (Menon, RISKS-14.29)

The issues surrounding the topic of possible negative health effects
from cellular phone use are going to be among the hottest (no pun
intended) in coming years.

There are no definitive studies that fully address the complexities of
the situation, especially in view of increasing circumstantial
evidence that non-ionizing radiation may have more biological effects
than previously thought.

It's true that walkie-talkies, ham radios, etc. have been around for
many years--but there are some potentially significant differences
with cellular phones:

1) Most walkie-talkie, police radios, ham radios, etc. are operated
   in a push-to-talk mode.  You're only transmitting when you're
   actually talking.  Cell phones transmit continuously, so exposure
   is continuous during calls.

2) Cell phones operate at higher frequencies than most common
   service or ham radios (common hand-held ham radios, for
   example, usually go no higher than the 440 Mhz band.  Cell
   phones operate in the 800-900 Mhz region, which puts them
   just about in the microwave range.

Recently there have been a number of concerns raised about microwave
exposure to the operators of police radar units.  We're talking longer
exposure and higher frequencies in the radar case -- but nobody knows
where the "thresholds" might be for exposure to possibly show effects
in some persons.  The bottom line is that the higher the frequency,
the more "energetic" the effects.

In at least a couple of the cases of persons accusing cell phones of
causing tumors, part of their evidence is the shape and direction of
tumor growth -- they apparently are aligned with the antenna and growing
inward from the outside.  Of course, this says nothing about cause and
effect -- but it has to at least be considered.

It's true that cell phones use quite low power.  But a little power
packs a bigger "punch" at these frequencies, and with the antenna
right next to the head the *field strength* (which matters more than
the absolute power) can be quite high (inverse square law applies).

Concerns about health effects from hand-held radios have been around
for a long time.  But with the millions of people using continuously
transmitting, ultra high frequency units who never did before, some
new dimensions are added to the picture -- and they are definitely
worthy of serious consideration.

By the way, not all cellular systems are created equal when it comes
to radiation exposure.  The new CDMA digital system, for example,
throttles back the power from the portable unit depending on how close
you are to the cell site -- the site transmitter sends a signal back
to the handheld controlling the power level.  The main reason for
doing this is to drastically increase battery life, but it has the
additional benefit of reducing overall exposure as well.


              --Lauren--

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

  Date: 27 Jan 93 17:03:44 PST
  From: [e-mail] (Andrew Klossner)
  To: [e-mail]
  Subject: Re: EM Radiation - is smoking safer?  (Menon, RISKS-14.29)

    "We've had walkie talkies (ok - two way radios) for years with
    no perceivable or admitted risk to the health of users."

Not so.  Long term (over 20 years) use of two-way radios by police
officers has been linked to higher incidences of glaucoma.  This is
one reason why the transmitter unit is now worn on the belt, with the
microphone pinned to the lapel.

(This means that the transmitter irradiates the gonads instead of the
eyeballs ... a possible new risk?)


  -=- Andrew Klossner  ([e-mail])
                       (uunet!tektronix!frip.WV.TEK!andrew)

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

[end of excerpt from the RISKS-FORUM Digest]


Jack Decker | Internet: [e-mail] | Fidonet: 1:154/8

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

Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?
From: tcscs![e-mail] (Gregory Youngblood)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 11:00:02 CST
Organization: TCS Consulting Services


I'm a cellular network technicians, and I have been for roughly four
years now.  I'm also a heavy user of cellular, averaging 1800 to 2000
minutes a month, with a little over half using handhelds.  The rest of
the time the handheld is in a car kit.  I agree with the person who
mentioned before about limiting the amound of time transmitting close
to your body when possible.  Unfortunately a lot of times I had no
choice in the matter as there was no POTS service where I was, and my
celllular system was the only phone system around.

What I'd like to see is a study that looks at the cellular network
people, and cellular employees from all over the country, using all
sorts of phones and cellular systems.  These are the ones that use
cellulars the heaviest at times, and also the technicians are in the
cell sites and exposed to more than just the usage of the phone.
Personally I'd like to see several studies done like the one I'm
talking about.

BTW, have others noticed the change in names from cellular phones to
cellphones.  Is that another media driven word created by them to make
it easier and faster to say?  Or is that a trend that appears to be
going on around the country?  I'm asking as I saw this in the national
'news' shows and the local tv news.


Greg
TCS Consulting Services   P.O. Box 600008   St. Paul, MN  55106-0008
      Mail-server requests to:  [e-mail]
[e-mail]        or       [e-mail]
..!srcsip!tcscs!zeta                or           ..!guppy!tcscs!zeta

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

From: [e-mail] (John R. Ruckstuhl Jr.)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?
Organization: EE Dept at UF
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 21:54:38 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> jack_decker@f8.n154.z1.
fidonet.org (Jack Decker) writes:

> I have to agree with John on this.  Let us keep in mind that the
> recent wave of hysteria about RF and EMI radiation is being fueled by
> the press, which is hardly noted for checking their fact (the most

> What ALL these reports overlook is the inverse square law.  Put
> simply, when you are twice as far away from a source of radiation, you
> get only one fourth the radiation.  On one news report, a guy was
> going around measuring the radiation from various household
> appliances, and in each case he held a probe right up close to the
> appliance, within an inch or so at most.  What they didn't point out
> was that at only a foot away from that appliance, the radiation would
> be only 1/144th of the radiation at one inch.  If handheld cellular

Just a point of information -- I think that "inverse square law" is
only applicable to point-source radiation.  For line-source radiation
(e.g.  from transmission lines) intensity diminishes linearly with
distance for plane-source radiation, intensity doesn't diminish at all
with distance.  Of course, this assumes a perfectly transmitting
medium (vacuum).

FWIW.


Best regards,

John R. Ruckstuhl, Jr.             [e-mail]
Dept. of Electrical Engineering    [e-mail], uflorida!ruck
University of Florida              [e-mail], sphere!ruck

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #73
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #74

TELECOM Digest     Mon,  8 Feb 93 01:59:20 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 74

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Frederick Roeber)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Lutz Albers)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Harold Hallikainen)
    Re: Cellular Phone Frequency Allocations (Ron Dippold)
    Re: Cellular Phone Frequency Allocations (Paul Robinson)
    Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex (Dave Ptasnik)
    Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex (Terence Cross)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Paul S. Sawyer)
    Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years (Steven H. Lichter)
    Re: Introduction to comp.dcom.telecom / TELECOM Digest (Jack Decker)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: CERN -- European Organization for Nuclear Research
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 17:52:25 GMT


> Sometimes you can reach the US directory assistance from Germany by
> dialing +1 XXX 555 1212 ... but sometimes you get a message "Your call
> cannot completed as dialed" ... from time to time this message is
> interrupted and the directory assistance answers ... strange thing.

Do +1 xxx 555 1212 numbers supervise?  If not (since they are supposed
to be free calls, at least in some telcos), this may well explain why
the PTTs get upset -- they don't like the idea of not getting money.


Frederick G. M. Roeber | CERN -- European Center for Nuclear Research
e-mail: [e-mail] or [e-mail] | work: [phone]
r-mail: CERN/PPE, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland | home: [phone]

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

Date: 07 Feb 93 17:38:41 EST
From: Lutz Albers <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance


In TELECOM Digest 68/V6 <[e-mail] (Jan Richert)>
writes:

> The German directory assistance can be reached by dialing [phone]
> from anywhere.

This is the directory assistance of the city of Duesseldorf. Not that
this will cause a problem for an international dialer (except for the
language, the operators usually speaks German), because DA requests
are often routed all over the country to find a free operator. I've
tried this three times from munich and got an operator in Traunstein,
Kempten and Augsburg.


Lutz Albers           InterNet:   [e-mail]
Reginfriedstr. 10     CompuServe: 100022.1102
8000 - Muenchen 90    Phone:      [phone]
Germany               Fax:        [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Harold Hallikainen)
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance
Organization: California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1993 07:56:16 GMT


> [Moderator's Note: ... noticed when calling directory assistance in
> the UK the response is the same; a live person answers and takes the
> request, then the robot speaks up with the answer, and invites me to
> stay on the line if I have further inquiries.  PAT]

    I recently found the "invite to stay on the line" to cause a
problem.  Since the "called party" had not disconnected, I could not
use the # to place another call without rekeying my credit card
number.  Slowed me down a bit ...


Harold

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

From: [e-mail] (Ron Dippold)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Frequency Allocations
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 20:54:13 GMT


[e-mail] (Hugh Eaves) writes:

> These are probably FAQ's, but I've got a few questions about the
> frequency allocations for cellular phones:
> Are all the allocated frequencies usually in use in a particular area?

Can't tell you for certain on this one, but I would suspect that this
is the case in a heavy use urban area.  The frequency use cuts the
available channels down by a factor of seven (from 833 channels to 119
per cell) -- and of course, you can't always place the cells ideally.
Then consider that you've got carriers A and B in an area and that's
60 channels per cell, which isn't that much for the LA freeway.  In
many areas, however, I can't see all the channels being used -- a
single carrier using just a few cells has way too many channels
available.  I know from experience that Juneau, Alaska, actually has a
cellular system.

> Do different carriers in the same area use different channels?

Yup, otherwise it would be awfully hard to aquire both A and B in a
single location depending on your preference.  Now, their coverage
areas may not completely overlap, but you can bet that for, say,
downtown LA they'll both be there.

> What frequencies are used (specifically), and what is the channel
> spacing?

30 khz channels.  A separate frequency is used for transmission and
recieve.

System A center transmit frequencies are 825.03 to 834.99 MHz (A) and
845.01 to 846.48 MHz (A') and 824.04 to 825.00 MHz (A'') for the
mobile, and 870.03 to 879.99 (A) and 890.01 to 891.48 MHz (A') and
869.04 to 870.00 MHz (A'') for the base.

System B center transmit frequencies are 835.02 to 844.98 MHz (B) and
846.51 to 848.97 MHz (B') for the mobile, and 880.02 to 889.98 MHz (B)
and 891.51 to 893.97 MHz (B') for the base.

> Are there plans to expand the currently allocated frequency set?

Well, you can see that there are A, A', and A'' frequencies, and the
channel numbering is a bit strange - channels 990-1023 are actually
lower frequencies than channels 1-799, which would seem to indicate at
least one extension.  I've seen references to A''' and B''
possibilities, which would suggest another extension -- say picking up
some of that banwidth from 849 to 869 MHz, although I have absolutely
no idea what's in there right now.

However, the current allocation system is massively inefficient
because the current technology, while incredibly better than what was
there before, is obsolete.  For example, each voice channel is using
30 KHz -- yet the phone company can do with 3 KHz for the same
conversation if you use your regular phone.  The AMPS system needs to
leave plenty for error and separation from adjacent channels.

The methods being looked at right now are mostly geared at making
better use of the current bandwidth.  There's NAMPS from Motorola - I
have absolutely no idea what this is about, although it's supposed to
get a small capacity increase -- sort of an interim thing.  There's
TDMA, which basically time multiplexes each of those 30 KHz channels
three ways to get a theoretical maximum triple capacity (but keep away
from multipath and cell reuse).  Finally, there's CDMA which offers
10-30 times capacity depending on circumstances.  Mostly about 20, but
if you think 10 then you can be pleasantly surprised later.  All of
these technologies coexist with current AMPS technology, because all
those cell phones that are currently out there won't just dry up and
go away, however much it might be wished!

I think a capacity increase through better efficiency looks better
than one from allocating new frequencies -- in both cases you need new
mobiles and have to upgrade your base stations.  Plus, technologies
such as CDMA offer additional features such as soft handoff, better
data services, etc.

(I might as well disclaim here that I'm working on CDMA.)


else

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

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 00:42:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Frequency Allocations


In TELECOM Digest 13-69, Hugh Eaves <[e-mail]> asked:

> Are all the allocated frequencies usually in use in a particular area?

According to what I know, the cellular system has 666 channels (this
number is probably higher; I have heard '872' used) available for
phones, based on a cell system in which a particular group of channels
is assigned to a particular cell area, of which there are six types of
cell areas.  No cell area will touch another using the same
frequencies.  That means that aproximately 111 frequencies (666/6, or
872/6 if that's right) are therefore available in any one of the six
cell area.  The 112th simultaneous cellular phone in that area won't
be able to use the system.  In heavy usage areas, this could be as
small as a three block area or smaller if need be, so crowding
shouldn't be a problem.

> Do different carriers in the same area use different channels?

I'm not sure.  I know that in the US, the telephone company carrier
and the non-telephone carrier are treated differently as "A" and "B".
In some casea a cellular phone must explicitly indicate which system
it is attached to or it could be charged for use of two different
systems simultaneously.  Europe is totally different.

You might want to send your questions to the following lists, and
subscribe to them.  (Change 'Cellular' to 'Cellular-Request' to
request a subscription.)  I'll pass the question on to them for
response:


[e-mail]     [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Ptasnik)
Subject: Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex
Date: 7 Feb 1993 17:59:32 GMT
Organization: University of Washington


[e-mail] (Tad Cook) writes:

> At home I have two-line residential CENTREX service from US West,
> which they market under the name Centraflex.  I am served by a 5ESS
> switch.  I am confused about application of telco voice messaging and
> Caller-ID on this type of service.

> >I thought it might be neat to get voice messaging from the telco, so
> that if the call is not answered after six rings or so on either line,
> or if both lines were busy and the person on the second line ignored
> the Call-Waiting signal, voice messaging would answer and take the
> message.  Unfortunately, the telco tells me that telco provided voice
> mail is incompatible with Centrex!  Does anyone know why?  Didn't
> Bellcore design telco provided voice mail to work with Centrex?  It
> seems to me that I have been answered by CO provided voice mail when
> calling numbers in a Centrex group in the past, but maybe this was
> really provided by external hardware at the called location.

At the University of Washington we are served by Centrex provided by a
US West 5ESS.  We have a central voice mail system manufactured by the
same company that manufactures the US West system (Octel).  You want
your calls to be forwarded on a don't answer basis to voice mail, from
a line that has call waiting.  We have been told (having users who
want the same service) that the 5ESS is not configured to provide this
service.  It is assumed that if you have call waiting, you want that
second call.  As a result the waiting call does not forward anywhere
else on a don't answer basis.  If you really want to get that extra
call, put in another line, or just drop the call waiting, and your
callers will be able to leave messages.

At least it seems that US West is being consistent.


The above is nothing more than the personal opinion of:

Dave Ptasnik    [e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 17:02:25 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Terence Cross)
Subject: Re: Caller ID and Voice Messaging in Centrex


Terry Kennedy <[e-mail]> writes:

> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Tad Cook)
> writes:

>> Does anyone know if it is possible to get the same number listed as
>> the ID on both lines?

>> It's not possible. Caller ID delivers the actual telephone number.
>> ANI would deliver the billing number.

This is in fact possible in ISDN, without sharing the DN (DN:
directory number, similar to POTS line with more than one line).
There can be a number of DNs for each access and the Telco can be
requested by the subscriber to set a special Access Default Number
(ADN), this number instead of the DN will then be sent forward for
CLID.

The ADN must be the same as one of the DNs though.


rgs,

Terence Cross                             [phone]
Software Engineer (B.A., B.A.I.)          ECN  +830 1498
AXE Operations & Maintenance Committee
Ericsson Systems Expertise Irl. Ltd.      [e-mail]
Athlone,  Ireland                         [e-mail]

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

Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years
Date: 7 Feb 93 07:40:45 EST (Sun)
From: [e-mail] (Paul S. Sawyer)


Sears dropping their Catalog Service?

That's unthinkable!  That would be like AT&T dropping UNIX!

Huh?  Really ...?    Nevermind.


Paul S. Sawyer    - University of New Hampshire CIS - [e-mail]
Telecommunications and Network Services             - VOX: [phone]
Durham, New Hampshire  03824-3523                   - FAX: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Steven H. Lichter)
Subject: Re: Sears Kills Catalog After 95 Years
Date: 7 Feb 1993 19:29:24 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)


 From an article [e-mail] (Timothy Hu):

> Then I suppose DAK will buy up what's left and sell it.

No but C.O.M.B or DAMARK might buy what is left.

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

Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 11:39:05 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: Introduction to comp.dcom.telecom / TELECOM Digest


In message <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Glenn
R. Stone) wrote:

> In Telecom 13.63.6 [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
> writes:

>> I've had FTP access for close to a month now and have yet to be able
>> to connect with lcs.mit.edu.  It almost seems as though the connection
>> gets misrouted along the way (apparently I get to a *different*
>> machine that hangs off of lcs.mit.edu).  I sent a message to the
>> postmaster at lcs.mit.edu describing the problem, but so far no
>> response.

> The address "lcs.mit.edu" is actually a domain, or whole group of
> machines.  The one you get when you say "ftp lcs.mit.edu" is a machine
> called "mintaka", which is the main ftp and mail server for that
> domain.  The IP address 18.26.0.36 is the correct one, and I had no
> trouble doing FTP, logging in as "anonymous", cd'ing to
> telecom-archives, and browsing for a minute or two at the titles ...
> The fact that the FTP welcome banner says "mintaka" is probably
> confusing to about half of the few who bother to notice, including, I
> assume, Mr. Decker ... rest assured that the banner is a red herring,
> and that the archives really are hiding in there in the right place.

Glenn, I appreciate the help (from you and others who replied) but I'm
not quite THAT dumb, although I can see where my original message
might lead you to think that I had actually connected to something.
The fact is that when I try to FTP to lcs.mit.edu (or 18.26.0.36), it
tries to connect but never quite gets there ... I never get ANY sort
of welcome banner.  It also makes no difference if I explicitly
specify mintaka.lcs.mit.edu.  If I try to do a traceroute to either, I
get essentially the same results, e.g:

Resolving lcs.mit.edu... traceroute to 18.26.0.36:33434
1: 35.214.1.0    via.musk.merit.edu. (110 ms) (110 ms) (110 ms)
2: 35.214.0.1    musk.merit.edu. (660 ms) (715 ms) (660 ms)
3: 35.1.208.2    gr.merit.edu. (825 ms) (825 ms) (770 ms)
4: 35.1.208.1    eth0.grand.mich.net. (825 ms) (825 ms) (770 ms)
5: 35.124.80.1   (825 ms) (880 ms) (825 ms)
6: 35.124.144.1  (880 ms) (880 ms) (825 ms)
7: 35.127.48.1   ser3.michnet1.mich.net. (825 ms) (880 ms) (825 ms)
8: 35.1.1.1      en-2.enss131.t3.ans.net. (880 ms) (880 ms) (880 ms)
9: 140.222.41.3  t3-2.Cleveland-cnss41.t3.ans.net. (880 ms) (990 ms) (825 ms)
0: 140.222.40.4  t3-3.Cleveland-cnss40.t3.ans.net. (880 ms) (880 ms) (880 ms)
11: *** 140.222.32.2    t3-1.New-York-cnss32.t3.ans.net. (825 ms) (880 ms)
12: 140.222.48.1  t3-0.Hartford-cnss48.t3.ans.net. (880 ms) (935 ms) (880 ms)
13: 140.222.49.1  t3-0.Hartford-cnss49.t3.ans.net. (990 ms) (880 ms) (880 ms)
14: 140.222.134.1 t3-0.enss134.t3.ans.net. (880 ms) (935 ms) (880 ms)
15: 192.54.222.1  w91-cisco-external-ether.mit.edu. (880 ms) (880 ms) (880 ms)
16: 18.168.0.6    B24-CISCO-FDDI.MIT.EDU. (880 ms) (935 ms) (825 ms)
17: *** *** ***
18: *** *** ***
[... more of the same through line 29 ...]
29: *** *** ***
traceroute done: !! maximum TTL exceeded

When I said I got to a "different machine", in this case it's
B24-CISCO-FDDI.MIT.EDU that I'm referring to.  A few days ago, I had
different results... it was essentially the same as above except that
lines 15 through 18 read:


15: *** 192.54.222.1    w91-cisco-external-ether.mit.edu. (825 ms) (990 ms)
16: 18.168.0.6      B24-CISCO-FDDI.MIT.EDU. (935 ms) (990 ms) (880 ms)
17: 18.52.0.1       RADOLE.LCS.MIT.EDU. (880 ms) (935 ms) (935 ms)
18: *** *** ***

As you can see, I was at least getting as far as RADOLE.LCS.MIT.EDU;
now I'm not even getting THAT far.  For whatever reason, lcs.mit.edu
is one of only a handful of systems I have been unable to FTP to, and
as you can see I'm actually getting as far as MIT, just not to the
correct machine.

I don't know if it makes any difference, but I'm coming in over a
dial-up line using the net.exe program from the KA9Q package.  I don't
know if there's anything that could be done here (by way of changes in
the configuration) that would help (I suspect not), but then I'm not
quite that familiar with how this software actually works so if anyone
knows of any settings that could be tweaked here, please let me know.
Failing that, I suspect a network problem of some sort ... after all,
as I say there are VERY few other sites that I have been unable to ftp
or telnet to, and in most cases those were just temporary outages (or
I wasn't interested enough to try again).



Jack Decker | Internet: [e-mail] | Fidonet: 1:154/8

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #74
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #75

TELECOM Digest     Mon,  8 Feb 93 09:28:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 75

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: AT&T PP2000 Bills, 5 Months Later (Mark Rudholm)
    Re: X.32 Protocol: Software Emulation Possible? (H. Shrikumar)
    Re: X.32 Protocol: Software Emulation Possible? (Morten Reistad)
    Re: Frame Relay Congestion Question (Shu Zhang)
    Re: Cellular (XXX0)/XXX- Listings Wanted (Brent Whitlock)
    Re: HP-48S as a Phone Dialer? (Martin McCormick)
    National Data Superhighways - Access? (Will Martin)
    Re: Who is Telebec? (Nigel Allen)
    Re: Low Cost Access to Network (Lars Poulsen)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 15:13:18 PST
From: [e-mail] (Mark Rudholm)
Subject: Re: AT&T PP2000 Bills, 5 Months Later


In Volume 13, Issue 55, Message 7 of 17, [e-mail] (John Nagle)
writes:

> Interestingly, the "keyboard usage" is listed as being at Los
> Angeles CA, while the call is listed as being from Inglewood to Culver
> City.  Is this phone, perhaps, tied directly to AT&T's network,
> bypassing PacTel?  Certainly there's enough long distance traffic out
> of LAX to justify bypass.  Since I was making a LOCAL call, the call
> may have been routed through AT&T to the nearest gateway to PacTel,
> then via PacTel to the destination.  Is this the explanation for the
> strange billing?

Probably not.  LAX happens to be in one of the many parts of the City
of Los Angeles (mind you, that is, WITHIN the corporate limits of the
city) that is served by central offices identifying themselves as
something other than "Los Angeles."  In the case of LAX, the central
office is Inglewood, which is an adjacent city.  I suspect that the
bill from AT&T uses the postal address for the "Keyboard Usage" and
the CO names for the actual telephone call.  By the way, a voice call
made from any public phone in LAX will be billed as from INGLEWOOD for
the same reason.

Another example of political and telco geographical inconsistencies
would be the Venice and Pacific Palisades areas, which are served by
Santa Monica.  Also, the Beverly Hills CO serves some of the areas
surrounding Beverly Hills (mostly L.A.)  Then there is the entire San
Fernando Valley, which, other than Burbank, Glendale, and the city of
San Fernando, is all part of the city of L.A.  yet I don't know of a
single CO up there that is listed as "Los Angeles."  Instead, they're
named after districts like "Sherman Oaks," "Van Nuys," and "Canoga
Park" (the residents of which, are often unaware themselves that they
live in L.A!)


Mark D. Rudholm     Philips Interactive Media
[e-mail]   11050 Santa Monica Blvd.
[phone]     Los Angeles, CA  90020

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 02:25:28 -0500
From: [e-mail] (H.Shrikumar)
Subject: Re: X.32 Protocol: Software Emulation Possible?
Organization: UMass, Amherst MA + Temporal Sys & Computer Networks Bombay India


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

> I need to connect to a network using the X.32 protocol (X.25 Dial-in
> PAD).  The only modems I' ve heard can do this are the Hayes Ultra
> 9600 or 14400.  I own a Zoom v32bis modem, and can connect to the X.32
> number in V.32 synchronous mode, but I cannot do anything more than
> connecting.  Since I can connect, isn't it possible to emulate X.32 by
> software?

Well ... possible but ... but to get the HDLC (or rather LAPB) framing
right, you'd need to send synchronous bytes. This cannot be done by
the PC com ports so you'd need a sync card. You'd also need the X.25
software for layers two and three.

Precisely such a thing is an X.25 card and software. Ones from Eicon
can support X.32 very well. There should be other makes too but I don't
know.

X.32 does not seem to be very widespread in installation around the
world. I believe (hearsay from an Eicon Dealer) that Canada provides
X.32 access ports. Is this correct?

   +------------------

Informal X.32 availabilty Poll:

I'd like to know which countries X.32 is offered in. This is not so
much in demand, so most reviews of PSDN offerings dont seem to cover
this topic. If you could mail me a brief note if X.32 is available in
your country and the service provider (if not the PTT) and the
tarriffs (and if different from X.25 leased access), I'll summarize
back to the list.

  +------------------

Considering the interest that the Async access mechainsms for X.400
are generating around the world, the place that X.32 could have taken
could possible go to Async OSI protocols! Way to go!!

> Nadim Massoud   [e-mail]

Is this in the US? Where are you located ... and who is the
X.32 provider?


shrikumar ([e-mail])


[Moderator's Note: American University is in Washington, DC.   PAT]

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

Date: 5 Feb 93 22:36 +0100
From: Morten Reistad <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: X.32 Protocol: Software Emulation Possible?


In Telecom DIGEST Vol 13.69 Nadim Massoud <[e-mail]> says:

> I need to connect to a network using the X.32 protocol (X.25 Dial-in
> PAD).  The only modems I' ve heard can do this are the Hayes Ultra
> 9600 or 14400.

First, X.32 is only a method to bring the protocol X.25 to the
customer over ordinary phone lines. Just like SLIP or PPP for the IP
networks. You then need something in your end of the connection that
provides layer 2 and 3 of the X.25 protocol. You may also want some
higher protocol that acually does something useful, like providing an
X.29 terminal interface. (Calling X.32 'dial-in pad' is just like
calling SLIP/PPP 'dial-in telnet'. )

> I own a Zoom v32bis modem, and can connect to the X.32 number in
> V.32 synchronous mode, but I cannot do anything more than connecting.

You then need a computer (or switch, pad, bridge or router) that can
communicate with this synchronous interface. The normal serial
interface on a PC is not useful for this.

> Since I can connect, isn't it possible to emulate X.32 by software?

You do not have to EMULATE X.32. X.32 is a standard, and you can
comply with standards just as well as anyone else. X.25 is mainly
software, but for a PC you will need some extra hardware for the
actual interface.

> If such a software exists, where can I find it (for PC under DOS or
> Windows)?  If not, are there any modems that offer the capability
> while being cheaper than the Hayes?

There are two alternatives here. You could buy a full X.25 card with
X.25 software for your PC.  Eicon Technology sells a good card with
software, and have excellent technical documentation. Be prepared to
fork over $800+ and some work for this. OS/2 also has an X.25
solution, but I do not know the details.

Or, you could buy a 'pad-in-a-box' cards or modems that run X.25 and
protocols above it on the board/modem itself, and provides an
asynchronous interface to the PC, looking exactly like a normal PAD.
These will probably cost $500 ++. The Hayes one is probably one of the
cheapest of these.

I have no affiliation with Eicon, except that a sales rep of theirs
bought me a beer once.


Best regards,

Morten Reistad

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

From: [e-mail] (Shu Zhang)
Subject: Re: Frame Relay Congestion Question
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 06:56:13 GMT


[e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein) writes:

> The solution was to use a reserved (management) address for all of
> these messages.  That's why it's the _consolidated_ link layer
> management message -- all "source quench" (that's basically what it
> is) messages are consolidated into one, and shuffled around the
> network with much effort.

Thank you for your explanation.

Is it possible to make some modifications on the address field of the
CLLM messages? for example, use the same address value as that of the
ordinary data frames in the backward direction. I think this will
allow the intermediate nodes to relay CLLM messages in the same way
they relay the data frames, without adding any specific processing to
CLLM messages.  Am I right?


Thanks.

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

From: [e-mail] (Brent Whitlock)
Subject: Re: Cellular (XXX0)/XXX- Listings Wanted
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 16:18:55 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana



[e-mail] (J.R. Bob Dobbs) writes:

> I am looking for a list of the cellular exchanges by area code (with
> SID if possible).  I have attempted to find a listing and have failed
> to do so as of yet. If anyone has a listing, could they please forward
> it to me (or the newsgroup). If such a list doesn't exist, could
> someone who has partial listings (even if it is only for your area
> code), please mail those to me. With them I will attempt to compile my
> own listing by SID or area.

Ameritech Mobile has a brochure which contains the roaming access
numbers for virtually all of North America.  This brochure would
probably give you most of the cellular exchange numbers.  Your local
cellular carriers may have equivalent brochures.

By the way, what does SID stand for? I didn't find it in the FAQ. Did
you mean STD?


    * * * * * * --> DISCLAIMER:  I speak only for myself. <-- * * * * * *
Brent Whitlock        Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology
[e-mail]    Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
            University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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

Subject: Re: HP-48S as a Phone Dialer?
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 16:32:24 -0600
From: [e-mail]


> A guy that I know wants to use his HP48S as a telephone auto-dialer.
> He wanted to know if anyone's tried anything like this.

    I would be the last person to say that something can't be
done, but here is why it might be a pretty good project.  My
experience is with the HP28 series so the HP48 might be different, but
first of all, the sounder in the HP28's is a little piezoelectric
speaker that produces a click each time the CPU accesses it.  This is
similar to the noise makers on the IBM PC's and Apple II.'s which were
previously discussed in this group.

    The sounder makes single-frequency tones pretty easily.  In
order to make duel-tone signals, it would be necessary to produce a
complex pattern of pulses at the speaker.  You would need to have
assembly-level access to the processor and hope that the system clock
is fast enough to produce several thousand samples per second.
Patterns stored in memory would eat memory like crazy.  Writing timing
loops to produce similar signals would also be really fun.  I have
also noticed that the system clock seems to have some short-term
instability which shows up as slight audible changes in the pitch of
notes sounded from the calculator and slight variations in timing of
the printer output signal which appears on the infrared port.

    Finally, it might be hard to get enough audio out of that
little sounder to produce a valid signal on the telephone, not to
mention the lack of equalization.  In short, your work is cut out for
you.


Martin McCormick WB5AGZ   Stillwater, OK
O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 9:46:25 CST
From: Will Martin <[e-mail]>
Subject: National Data Superhighways - Access?


I believe this topic has been touched on in Telecom in the past, and
I'd like to see more discussion about it:

There's been recent news coverage of the new administration's plan to
set up a data network for general public access that has been referred
to as "National Data Superhighways". Publicized examples of the way
such a network would be used include such things as letting school
students run programs on NASA supercomputers that model weather and
other such computing-intensive tasks. What nobody ever mentions in
these news items is just what sort of access control and/or security
is planned for this environment.

After all, for years now, these type of systems have been the target
of crackers and thus have had to beef up their system security. Now
the government is proposing letting massive numbers of anonymous
individuals get access to the very machines they have been trying to
protect and close off from such access. Is this a case of the right
hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, or is there really some
sort of plan for setting up specific public-access systems that would
be dedicated to this educational use, separate and distinct and in
addition to the computers government agencies need to use to do their
own work?  (If so, who will be paying fior these extra machines --
NASA, for example, can't even afford to store its existing magtape
inventory in controlled conditions, much less copy the data to
newer-format storage media. Now they're expected to have extra Crays
for kids to play on?)

Can anyone point me to published references that go into some level of
detail as to the practical aspects of implementing this proposal?


Regards,

Will

If header address doesn't work, try: [e-mail] OR
[e-mail]

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

From: Nigel Allen <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 19:00:00 -0500
Subject: Re: Who is Telebec?
Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto


John R. Levine <[e-mail]> asks:

> Who is Telebec? I thought that Bell Canada was the telco for
> all of Quebec.

Telebec is a subsidiary of BCE Inc., which also owns Bell Canada.
While Bell Canada (which now calls its Quebec division Bell Quebec) is
regulated federally by the Canadian Radio- telkevision and
Telecommunications Commission, Telebec is regulated provincially by
the Quebec Telecommunications Board (Regie des telecommunications du
Quebec). I understand that Telebec was created from various
independent telephone companies that Bell acquired over the years.
Since the Quebec government wanted to retain jurisdiction over the
telephone operations that Bell had bought, they were operated as a
separate subsidiary.

Long distance rates from Telebec points appear to be significantly
higher than from Bell Canada points, suggesting that keeping Telebec
territory under provincial jurisdiction kepy Quebec nationalists
happy, but at the expense of telephone subscribers served by the
exchanges in question.

There are several other independent telephone companies in Quebec. The
largest of them is Quebec-Telephone (based in Rimouski), which is
half-owned by GTE Corporation.  GTE also owns half of the British
Columbia Telephone Company.

There are also about 20 independent telephone companies in Ontario.
One of them, Northern Telephone Ltd., is owned by BCE Inc. The largest
Ontario independent telephone company is the telephone department of
the city of Thunder Bay.


Nigel Allen     [e-mail]

Canada Remote Systems  - Toronto, Ontario
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044

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

Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 10:57:17 PST
From: [e-mail] (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: Re: Low Cost Access to Network


In article <[e-mail]> Chuck Petch writes:

> Does anyone know of a free or low cost network connection for the home
> computer user? I have access to Internet at work and would like to
> enjoy a similar type of network connection at home, but of course, I
> can't afford Internet prices.

The times are changing. The days when an Internet connection meant
$500K/year for a 56Kbps ARPAnet pipe are long gone. The new low end in
turnkey packages is the Rockwell NetHopper. You attach one to your
ethernet at home** and the other to the ethernet at work; plug each of
them in to a dedicated phone line; spend five minutes configuring each
and presto: When packets want to move, the box dials a connection on
the built-in modem. When the line is idle, it hangs up. The price is
less than $2000 per box, which makes it quite affordable for
professional telecommuting.

[** Ethernet at home: There are more of those than PBXs at home, I
    bet!]

Too expensive for you ? Don't mind a little tinkering ? Several
"freeware" packages are available to use similar technology on PCs and
workstations at home, and when configured right, it is all
interoperable.

And next year, as we all know, those links will not be 14400 bps
modems, but 64000 bps ISDN connections. :-) :-) :-)

With Vice-President Gore leading the charge, there is a real chance
that we will soon have the local county administration on the
Internet, title database, zoning maps etc. as well as the local
library.

Since my workplace first got an Internet connection, I have been
excited about bringing this technology "to the people". Now, ten years
later, I'm building the products to make that happen. I love it!!


Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer    Internet E-mail: [e-mail]
CMC Network Products / Rockwell Int'l    Telephone: [phone]
Santa Barbara, CA 93117-3083        TeleFAX:   [phone]


[Moderator's Note: I love it also!  And the really wild part of the
whole thing Lars is that even less than a decade ago none of us would
have imagined the tremendous growth of the net.   PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #75
*****************************










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Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 01:31:31 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #76

TELECOM Digest     Tue,  9 Feb 93 01:31:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 76

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Where is a Source For CFRs? (Mike Gordon)
    Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs (John David Galt)
    Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature (Matt Healy)
    Re: Telephone Costs Go Up in Russia (Timothy E. Buchanan)
    Re: Wanted: Small (4-12 Line) PBX/Phone System (Wayne Vogel)
    Re: Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Tony Waddell)
    Unhappy GTE Representatives (was "Secret" Phone Codes) (Jeff Wasilko)
    Re: German PCN License (E1) Given to VEBA and Thyssen (H. Shrikumar)
    Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished (Kauto Huopio)
    California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State (Ken Dykes)
    Re: SS7 / CID Question (Douglas Scott Reuben)
    Meet Me at the Power Line (Col. G. L. Sicherman)
    Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit (Mitch Wagner)
    Re: Wiring For Multi-Lines on One Jack (Conrad Kimball)
    Ontario Trivia Answers (Carl Moore)
    Re: Ontario Trivia Answers (Tony Pelliccio)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mike Gordon)
Subject: Re: Where is a Source For CFRs?
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 01:22:27 GMT


Thanks to everyone who replied to my request for a source for the Code
of Federal Regulations.  Unfortunately, I was looking for an FTP site
for them.  It seems that the first paragraph of my message got
rerouted to the bit bucket.

     So, my original question stands.  Does anyone know of an FTP site
for the Code of Federal Regulations?


Mike Gordon   N9LOI  [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 22:04:01 -0800
From: [e-mail] (John David Galt)
Subject: Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs


I have MCI, and have no problem using it in the Bay Area.  Dial
950-1022, wait for tone, dial 0 + ten digit number, wait for tone,
dial calling card number.  (MCI card, not Pac Bell card.)

As Pat says, this is probably illegal, but it's not as if you're
ripping anybody off, you're just evading a monopoly that morally
shouldn't exist.  More power to you.


John David Galt          Freedom of Lifestyle is an inalienable human right.

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

From: [e-mail] (matt healy)
Subject: Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ...
Organization: Public Macs, Yale University
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 16:23:31 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] wrote:

> Another early system I worked on, an IBM 1401, would play music on a
> small transistor radio that was tuned between stations.  The radio was
> placed on top of the CPU.  The one song I remember was "Coming 'Round
> the Mountain" which also used the 1403 printer as a rhythm section.

Early programmable pocket calculators could make neat noises when
placed atop radios; I once played around with them.

Also, years ago I ran programs from a DECWRITER terminal.  I soon
learned to tell the difference between program output and error
messages (it had a *noisy* dot-matrix printhead; at 30 characters/sec
it sounded like a machine gun).


I'm away from the lab just now...
This message was posted from a public Macintosh at Yale University.  The
identity of the poster is not necessarily their true one.

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

From: [e-mail] (BUCHANAN TIMOTHY E)
Subject: Re: Telephone Costs Go Up in Russia
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 17:22:25 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (H.
Shrikumar) writes:

> I just read in {NYTimes} (2 Feb 1993) that (along with several other
> costs) in Russia, the telephone costs are being driven up by the
> inflationary pressures.

> BTW ... are there any readers from Russia, the Ukraine and other CIS
> states on this list? It would be interesting to hear your comments and
> more!

My wife is Russian, and we just got back from a visit there. 106
rubles a month, plus local tolls, will be a burden for most people,
since monthly wages are typically 2000-5000 rubles now. Of course,
it's still less than a kilo of good sausage from a kiosk, 1000 rubles.
A snickers candy bar on the street costs 140 rubles.

A telecom story from Russia: public payphones still take either the
tiny two or a fifteen kopeck coin, both of which have disappeared from
circulation due to the inflation. A man at the Komsomolskaya train
station was selling the 15 kopeck coins for 10 rubles each! I bought a
dozen for 100 rubles, which meant my calls cost < two cents each.


Timothy

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

From: [e-mail] (keeper of the tone)
Subject: Re: Wanted: Small (4-12 Line) PBX/Phone System
Date: 8 Feb 1993 13:25:57 -0500
Organization: Mount Holyoke College


You might also want to check out VODAVI, ISOTEC and MITEL.  The first
two are hybred key systems and will support all the requirements you
stated.  The second is a PBX-style switch which will also support your
needs. I recommend the sx-20 or sx-50 if you look at the Mitel.


wayne    telcom dept mount holyoke college

[e-mail]      telcom/alarm service
v413-538-2239  f413-538-2050   insert standard disclaimer here

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

From: [e-mail] (Tony Waddell)
Subject: Re: Hotel Telephone Surcharge
Organization: Pacific * Bell
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 19:27:21 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:


> Some time ago there was a thread about hotels charging to make
> a call.  This is just to pass on to the world that at least one hotel
> is still doing it.  Hilton Resort on Hilto Head Island, SC, charges
> $0.75 for every call outside of the hotel, even 800 numbers.  I was
> there and did not find the notice in one of the hotel brochures that
> is in the room (second drawer down of a dresser).

> This is intended just as a heads up to the world of telecom.

I think this is fairly common.  I recently stayed at the Horizon Hotel
and Casino in Lake Tahoe Nevada.  Not only did they charge for ALL
calls local, toll free, or otherwise, but if you didn't provide them
with a credit card (Mastercard, Visa, etc) at check-in, they disable
the phone entirely except for calls withing the hotel.  The surcharge
was 75 cents and was applied to all outside calls.


Tony Waddell

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

From: [e-mail] (Jeff Wasilko)
Subject: Unhappy GTE Representatives (was "Secret" Phone Codes)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 21:18:52 EST
Organization: Univ of Fnord; Roslyn's Cafe Div.
Reply-To: [e-mail]


In regards to article <[e-mail]>:

> This is what I hate about GTE. "We don't care, we don't have to.
> We're the phone company." At this time, GTE is laying off plant
> maintenance people left and right, and soon all customer service and
> information operators will move from Thousand Oaks, California to
> Plano, Texas. I think this is the effect of rate cap regulation, which

I've been talking to GTE in Northeastern Virginia (outside of DC).
Somehow someone at GTE screwed up our service order to disconnect six
lines from an office we closed down. Six months later, we're still
getting bills for normal service (despite the fact that the lines were
all disconnected and going to referral).

In speaking to the various reps, I heard that GTE had just moved them
from an office in Southern VA to the Northern VA office six months
ago. They just found out that GTE was now planning to close the VA
office altogether and move the Customer dis-service operation to
Florida.

The reps I spoke to on my last call were very helpful in straightening
out the billing problem (they offered to re-do the service order and
back-date it to get us credit), but they were both very bitter about
the way GTE was treating them. They were also worried about the level
of service GTE Virgina customers would get when customer service was
in Florida.

Too bad, GTE. You could learn a few things from Rochester Tel.


Jeff
Jeff's Oasis at Home.       Jeff can also be reached at work at:
                                            [e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 02:13:04 -0500
From: [e-mail] (H. Shrikumar)
Subject: Re: German PCN License (E1) Given to VEBA and Thyssen
Organization: UMass, Amherst MA + Temporal Sys & Computer Networks Bombay India


In article <[e-mail]> diessel@informatik.
unibw-muenchen.de wrote:

> a PCN network in Germany (called E1) by E-plus ... other was
> the E-Star

> There are already two GSM networks in Germany, D1 by Telekom
> and D2 by Mannesmann Mobilfunk

   I wonder what the competitive environment is?

   Would E-plus and E-star compete? What about D1 and D2? If not
today, are there plans? Or is there a zonal split?

   I'd welcome diessel@informatik, or anyone else who knows about
these trends there to tell us about the division of the market among
these service providers.

   PS: Wow! The services and companies providing them are also named
so methodically!! An admittedly irrational conclusion re. the
possible "non"-competitiveness springs in my mind ! :-) Or is it just
the fabled German perfection at work ??


shrikumar ( [e-mail] )

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

From: [e-mail] (Kauto Huopio)
Subject: Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 16:02:26 GMT
Organization: Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland


In article <[e-mail]> Bob Hofkin <hofkin@software.
org> writes:

>> I just got a note from Prodigy that advised me to look for Internet
>> mail access in January,

> BIX has finally put their Internet link into production.

Hmm, let me see:

bix.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = bix.com
bix.com preference = 20, mail exchanger = genvid.com

bix.com internet address = 192.80.63.253
genvid.com      internet address = 192.80.63.1
genvid.com      internet address = 192.80.63.2
genvid.com      internet address = 192.80.63.3
genvid.com      internet address = 192.80.63.4
genvid.com      internet address = 192.80.63.6

So, it might be even possible to get a telnet connection to BIX?


Kauto Huopio ([e-mail])
Mail: Kauto Huopio, Punkkerikatu 1 A 10, SF-53850 Lappeenranta,Finland

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 05:15:31 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Ken Dykes)
Subject: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State


Recently I received a call from the Glendale area of Los Angeles.  I
live in southern Ontario CANADA.  My Caller-ID box instead of showing
out-of-area showed PRIVACY.  The call to me was made (and answered)
twice in the same night; both times PRIVACY ... some sort of
call-blocking was enabled by PacBell.

PacBell is being far too kind to the zealots :-)

And ... I'm impressed that SS7 is so well connected throughout North
America. (And just a month ago I was impressed with getting Ottawa
numbers in my area, about 300 miles away :-).)


Ken Dykes, Thinkage Ltd., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada    [43.47N 80.52W]
    [e-mail]   [e-mail]   thinkage!kgdykes


[Moderator's Note: Are you certain this was PacBell's doing, or was it
your caller who entered the privacy mode?  PAT]

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

Date: 8-FEB-1993 05:34:04.17
From: Douglas Scott Reuben <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: SS7 / CID Question


Hi,

A number of question have come up regarding SS7 and CID:

1. Can a 1ESS switch display CID? Are there any software upgrades/hardware
upgrades which allow it to do so?

2. Assuming a 1ESS can't offer CID to its local subscribers, if it is
connected with SS7 to a 5ESS or a DMS or in general some CID-capable
switch, can the 1ESS send out the CID information? That is, what does
it take for a switch to send out CID over SS7? Do you just have to
"connect" SS7 to that given switch, or is another software package
needed to SEND OUT (not display) the originating number via the SS7
protocol? Can a 1ESS support this "send out" package, if such a thing
exists? (Or is the "send out" and "local CID" package one and the
same?)

3. Can a 1ESS support SS7? I THINK they can, so the reason that you
can't get CID from a 1ESS isn't because it can't handle SS7, right?

Basically, I am wondering if it is technically possible for a 1ESS
(which from what I gather can not support CID) to send out the numbers
of people who call FROM the 1ESS to newer, CID-capable machines. Or,
is there some technical limitation which prevents the 1ESS from
sending out the numbers as well?

Every 1ESS that I've tried to get CID info from fails (ie, you call
from the 1ESS to a 5ESS that has CID).  Is the Telco doing this
intentionally, ie, so that customers on the 1ESS who can't hit *67 to
make their calls private will not have to show their number to
EVERYONE they call, or is it more of a technical reason why one can't
get CID from a 1ESS?

Thanks for any info ...


Doug    [e-mail]  //  [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon,  8 Feb 93 13:39:06 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Meet Me at the Power Line
Organization: Save the Daleks Foundation


In <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
writes:

> ... and the reports exaggerate the matter to the point that the kids
> are afraid to play underneath the (relatively low voltage) electric
> feeder lines that run down the side of the road.

> What ALL these reports overlook is the inverse square law.  Put
> simply, when you are twice as far away from a source of radiation, you
> get only one fourth the radiation.  On one news report, a guy was
> going around measuring the radiation from various household
> appliances ...

The inverse-square law holds only for point sources.  For a line, the
corresponding law is straight reciprocal: inversely proportional to
the distance from the line.

Even with a household appliance, the inverse-square law may not apply.
If you're six feet tall and broad in proportion, and are bending over
a toaster, you may get more radiation than you would expect from the
inverse-square law.

I play it safe -- my C.R.T. runs on liquid propane.


Col. G. L. Sicherman    [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Mitch Wagner)
Subject: Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit
Organization: Open Systems Today
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 93 18:00:56 GMT


I've always thought that if I ever had a salesman that just wouldn't
stop phoning, even when I asked them to stop, I would inform them that
if they didn't stop calling I would file harassment charges against
them with the police.

And then if they called back, I would do so.

Would this work?


mitch w.


[Moderator's Note: Depending on where you live, perhaps the police
would come out and -- with a very straight look on their faces -- take
your complaint, then later on file it away.  In places like Chicago,
the police probably would not even bother to take the complaint and
would refer you instead to a courtroom where you could speak with a
judge and ask for an order restraining the caller from contacting you
again. Then it would be up to you to serve notice of this order on the
offender or pay a sheriff in that jurisdiction to serve the notice.
(Mitch to his secretary: "I am driving over to Kalamazoo and Timbuck,
too. I am going to look for that guy who called me twice last week
after I told him to stop and serve this court order on him. I hope he
gave me the right name when he called. I hope he decides to obey the
order so I don't have to go back to court again, wait in line for an
hour with the court clerk and file another complaint saying he did not
obey the first order ...").  Generally I would say the police are
ineffectual when it comes to matters like this unless it gets very
prolonged, very harassing and (as often as not on the caller's part)
very sick. Then they'll trap him and prosecute in a half-hearted way.
You are better off calling the company, raising cain and filing a
civil suit if your bottom line can justify it.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Conrad Kimball)
Subject: Re: Wiring For Multi-Lines on One Jack
Date: 8 Feb 93 19:22:35 GMT
Organization: Boeing Computer Services, Seattle, WA


In article <[e-mail]>, rsiatl![e-mail]
writes:

> 4) Any damn way the installer wants it. :-) Listed above are two ways
> of pairing pins.  With four pins there are 4! or 24 different ways to
> number the pairs, resulting in 48 different combinations.

Not quite right.  If all four pins are considered to be distinct then
there are 4! or 24 permutations of four pins.  There is no need for
your final multiplication by two, If that was intended to account for
swapping polarity in each pair then you've already accounted for that
situation by assuming that each pin is distinct.  (To help see why,
consider a single pair of pins.  Your algorithm would predict 2! ways
to number the pair, times another two, for four combinations, when we
can intuitively see that the answer must be just two.)

If you want to keep polarity out of the analysis until the end, you
should proceed by considering how many combinations of pairs of pins
(where pins are indistinct within a pair) can be drawn from a set of four
pins -- the answer is 4!/(2!*2!) or six combinations (look in a
statistics book under "combinatorics").  Then, each pair can be
permuted 2! ways (the polarity issue), and since there are two pairs in
the set of four pins, we get six combinations of pairs * 2!  permutations
of pair #1 * 2!  permutations of pair #2, or 6*2*2 = 24, which agrees
with the original 4!  answer.


Conrad Kimball       | Client Server Tech Services, Boeing Computer Services
[e-mail]   | P.O. Box 24346, MS 7A-35
[phone]       | Seattle, WA  98124-0346

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 12:12:54 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Ontario Trivia Answers


This is to be the followup to the message sent regarding Ontario area
code trivia.

Area Code Trivia Answers!

1. A. 416 and 613.

2. A. 1953--(519), 1957--(705), 1962--(807).

3. A. None.

4. A. New York, Los Angeles and Baltimore.

5. A. 0 and 1, as they are reserved for the operator and long distance.

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

Date: Mon, 08 Feb 93 20:19:12 EST
From: Tony Pelliccio <[e-mail]>
Subject: Ontario Trivia Answer


The only two digits that can't be used as the first digit of an area
code are 0 and 1.

Tony

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #76
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #77

TELECOM Digest     Tue,  9 Feb 93 02:24:40 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 77

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (Mark Walsh)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (Scott D. Fybush)
    Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens? (Gregory Youngblood)
    Re: When Does 800 = 900? (John R. Levine)
    Re: When Does 800 = 900? (Daniel Burstein)
    Re: New Twist to Caller ID (John Higdon)
    Re: New Twist to Caller ID (Carl Moore)
    Re: Standard Dialing Plan (Calif.) (Carl Moore)
    Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 (Michael H. Brand)
    Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Dave Levenson)
    Re: "Secret" Phone Codes (Shawn Nunley)
    Jack Decker's FTP Problem (Aninda Dasgupta)
    Re: Using Fax Machine + Fax Modem as a Scanner (Ronald Elliott)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mark Walsh)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?
Date: 8 Feb 93 23:17:46 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA


 From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail]
(John R. Ruckstuhl Jr.):

> In article <[e-mail]> jack_decker@f8.n154.z1.
> fidonet.org (Jack Decker) writes:

>> What they didn't point out was that at only a foot away from that
>> appliance, the radiation would be only 1/144th of the radiation
>> at one inch.

> Just a point of information -- I think that "inverse square law" is
> only applicable to point-source radiation.  For line-source radiation
> (e.g.  from transmission lines) intensity diminishes linearly with
> distance for plane-source radiation, intensity doesn't diminish at all
> with distance.

Now *that* would be a gain antenna!  :-) But seriously folks, the
handheld phone antennas are at least as omnidirectional as your
theoretical 1/4 wave antenna because people never seem to orient these
things vertically.

Just makes me wonder; what is car phone performance like for those
folks who like to lay down their antenna so it is almost horizontal as
if they've just done mach 0.25 or something ...


Mark Walsh (walsh@optilink) -- UUCP: uunet!optilink!walsh
AOL: BigCookie -- Amateur Radio: KM6XU@WX3K -- USCF: L10861

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

From: [e-mail] (Scott D Fybush)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 02:48:39 GMT


The {Boston Sunday Herald} of February 7, 1993 includes an article
rehashing the cellphone/cancer "controversy", including a mention that
the only phones causing concern are handheld cellulars, not
car-mounted cellulars or cordless phones.  So what photo do they have
illustrating the article?

You guessed it, a guy on a Brookline streetcorner yakking away on a
*BAG PHONE*!

I work in the media, and even I think the press that's been given to
the whole issue is way out of line ... and wildly inaccurate much of
the time.  One TV reporter in Boston (who I'm embarrassed to admit
works for the same company I do :-( ) did a whole report on the
potential dangers of high-voltage power transmission lines, then ended
the report by interviewing a family that lives under the big
*broadcast TV and FM* towers in Needham/Newton, Mass.  If reporters
can't even distinguish their own transmitting tower from a
high-voltage power line, we're all in worse trouble than we thought.


Scott Fybush -- [e-mail]

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

Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Are Carcinogens?
From: tcscs![e-mail] (Gregory Youngblood)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 93 11:59:36 CST
Organization: TCS Consulting Services


[e-mail] (Jack Decker) writes:

> The issues surrounding the topic of possible negative health effects
> from cellular phone use are going to be among the hottest (no pun
> intended) in coming years.

> Concerns about health effects from hand-held radios have been around
> for a long time.  But with the millions of people using continuously
> transmitting, ultra high frequency units who never did before, some
> new dimensions are added to the picture -- and they are definitely
> worthy of serious consideration.

It is interesting to note that a local TV station in Minneapolis/St.
Paul MN took some measuring equipment (didn't catch what it was
exactly) and took several measurements.  The hand-held two way radios
the station used put out more of whatever they were measuring.
Cellular phones came in the same category as TV screens and computer
monitors, far lower than the two way radios.

I sould point out though I didn't catch the entire excerpt, so it may
be they were measuring residual radiation or something like that.


Greg

TCS Consulting Services   P.O. Box 600008   St. Paul, MN  55106-0008
      Mail-server requests to:  [e-mail]
[e-mail]        or       [e-mail]
 ..!srcsip!tcscs!zeta               or           ..!guppy!tcscs!zeta

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

Subject: Re: When Does 800 = 900?
Organization: I.E.C.C.
Date: 8 Feb 93 15:09:49 EST (Mon)
From: [e-mail] (John R. Levine)


> An IXC company called ATN is promoting the use of 800 numbers assigned
> to it as a means of getting around 900 call restrictions. For example:
> You might dial 1-800-697-1110 thinking that it is a free call. Stay on
> the line long enough and the real time ANI number for the phone you
> are on will be charged for a collect call at 900 rates!

> [Moderator's Note: At least they call back collect, rather than just
> converting it to 900, ...

No they don't -- like he said, stay on the line and ATN will fabricate
a collect call that never happened.  This strikes me as an inherently
fraudulent procedure since in many cases if they in fact hung up and
called back, the collect call it would reach an attendant who would
reject it or the line might not even be able to receive incoming
calls.

If they really did hang up and call back collect, I'd think that'd be
a legitimate business technique, certainly if they warned the
callee-to-be what the collect charge would be.


Regards,

John Levine, [e-mail], {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl


[Moderator's Note: I called it again to be certain. The message says,
"in just a minute you will receive a collect call back from ATN ...
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
when we call you, if you accept the call the charges will be $2 per
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
minute. That seems pretty clear.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Daniel Burstein)
Subject: Re: When Does 800 = 900?
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 10:41:37 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ken Jongsma) writes:

> ATN is apparently smart enough to check some line records. Calls from
> the LEC payphones I tried get a recording stating that the 800 number
> is not valid from the area I was calling from. Calls from a hotel in
                                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ note #1
> the same area went through just fine.

> Can you imagine what this is going to do for colleges, businesses and
> others that don't have ATN assigned 800 exchanges blocked? Yuck.
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ note #1, #2

Response notes from [e-mail]:

1: Since many hotels and other groups may be routing their calls through
distant locations, the restriction-by-area deal may not work.

2: While at this point "800" number prefixes (the "abc" in
1-800-abc-defg) define the company, this is being phased out.  pretty
soon, each company will be able to grab each and every prefix.  i.e.
tele-sleaze might have 1-800-abc-1232, while tele-rip might have
1-800-abc-1212.


[e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 11:52 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: New Twist to Caller ID


[e-mail] (Kevin Bluml) writes:

> This is the first thing I've heard about CID in Minnesota, I wish
> they'd just offer it to everyone with the various hearings and
> blocking options that other states have discussed. This seems like a
> really backwards way of starting it up in the state.

You talk about backwards. Count your blessings; you might be stuck
with Caller ID, California Style (none).

Since Caller ID is now becoming commonplace throughout the country, a
number of businesses have developed new services that take advantage
of the technology. One of them involves the ordering of Pay-Per-View
cable features. My local cable company has the customer call the PPV
order number while the cable box is set to the desired channel, at
which time the PPV program is enabled automatically.

How does it do this without CNID? With a MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE 800
number is how. Of course, this expense is reflected in our
stratospheric cable rates. California -- the land of innovative
technology -- NOT!


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

Date:  Fri, 5 Feb 93 17:27:46 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject:  Re: New Twist to Caller ID


I take it there is some sort of regulatory commission which could take
up possible "redlining" of some phone prefixes?

A phone prefix is an even less precise means of pinpointing a location
than a five-digit U.S. zipcode.  In Wilmington, Delaware, the downtown
prefixes are also found in the expensive Greenville-Centerville area
(going northwest on state route 52).

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 15:20:11 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Standard Dialing Plan (Calif.)


What about those parts of California served by, say, GTE?

I understand the southern part of 408 has continued to publish 1+
(area code if different from yours) +7D for long distance.  Is that
what is published in 209, 916, 707 and 619? (For example, what do the
Sacramento and Fresno phone books have to say?)  Obviosly, 1 + 7D
would reduce to just 7D.

213, 310, 818, 714, 909, 415, 510 already have the new scheme because
they had to accommodate N0X/N1X prefixes.  I recall some blurb about
805 also dropping the leading 1 for long distance within it.

In area 215 in Pennsylvania, Bell of Pa. published the change to "no
1"; i.e., 1+7D became 7D within 215.  Some remote parts of 215 are not
under Bell of Pa., but as far as I know they made that change (such as
at Birdsboro) except for what I noted (in the archives) for Denver and
Adamstown (which will eventually make that change also).

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

From: [e-mail] (Michael H. Brand)
Subject: Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1993 05:42:07 GMT


I used an AT&T Public Phone 2000 last Friday (2/4/93) at the Omaha, Ne
Airport just outside Gate 11. The keyboard was NOT disabled; things
were working great. Perhaps this phone was forgotten, or they are ALL
enabled now?


Mike

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge
Organization: Westmark, Inc.
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 04:15:12 GMT


I regularly stay at the Hilton in Pikesville, MD.  I routinely call my
own 800 number to `phone home' the inexpensive way.  The hotel imposes
what they call a `nominal' charge of 75 cents to handle this call.
The inbound 800 call is usually to the modem, and usually takes less
than a minute, resulting in a charge from the 800 service provider of
eleven cents.  A 75 cent surcharge on call that costs 11 cents is
hardly nominal!

The Hilton in San Jose does not impose a surcharge on 800 calls.


Dave Levenson        Internet: [e-mail]
Westmark, Inc.        UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave
Warren, NJ, USA        Voice: 908 647 0900  Fax: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Shawn Nunley)
Subject: Re: "Secret" Phone Codes
Organization: Novell Inc., San Jose, Califonia
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 00:21:31 GMT


[e-mail] (Tompkins) writes:

> In one of those discussions, about a year ago, a number was posted
> that purported to work nationally: 10732-1-404-988-9664.

Here's an interesting note.  Our company is already on SDN, so when I
try to dial 10732 ... I get a fast busy right away (from our Definity
Generic III switch). So, I tried just dialing 404-988-9664 and it
worked.  Since our switch is already on the network, and therefore
already programmed to append the 10732, it was snap.  Also, the
numbers recited after the actual phone number + 8 were 8880000465.  Is
this some routing information maybe?


Internet: [e-mail]
UUCP: {ames,sun,apple,mtxinu,cae780,sco}
         !novell!shawn
Shawn Nunley    Tel: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Aninda Dasgupta)
Subject: Jack Decker's FTP Problem
Organization: Philips Laboratories, Briarcliff, New York
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 14:41:35 GMT


By looking at Jack Decker's traceroute output, it seems that his TCP
packets are going through too many gateways.  Though these gateways
(the ones run by ANS and MERIT) are fast boxes (often RS/6000 boxes),
and though they are for the most part connected by T3 links, his TCP
packets are just not getting to mintaka in time.  You see, every TCP
packet has a "Time-to-live" field.  As the packet goes through each
gateway, or "hop," as they are called in TCP parlance, the
Time-to-live (TTL) field is decremented.  As is shown by traceroute,
when the packet reaches a node that sees a value of 0 in the TTL
field, it simply discards the packet and echoes back to the original
sender that the packet's TTL has expired. [For further reading on this
topic, see Douglas Comer's excellent book "Internetworking with
TCP/IP"] It is interesting to note that often, Jack's packets seems to
reach very close to mintaka.

What can be done to rectify this problem? The most obvious, though
often impossible, thing to do is to change the default of 60 seconds
for the TCP TTL that is compiled into the UNIX (or other OS) TCP
software.  I have done this in UNIX so I will describe that.  Editing
the file in_proto.c and changing the default of 60 assigned to the
variable named tcp_ttl, to something like 120, should work.  After the
editing, the kernel will have to be rebuilt (using make).
Alternatively, experienced UNIX admins. can use the adb debugger to
patch the changes into the kernel that is already running. Both these
solutions require root access to the host that Jack is dialing into.

In case root access to the dialup host is not available, Jack might
try connecting to a different host, preferably in a different part of
the country than from where he is trying.  As I said, it is simply a
matter of getting to mintaka with a few less hops on the Internet.
Often, trying ftp from a "larger" host helps.  By larger, I mean a
host that is directly on the 35.1 domain.  That way, he will save the
two hops that he has on the 35.214 domain.  I suspect, a saving of
just two hops is all he needs, since he has been able to get to
radole.lcs.mit.edu.  Moreover, he should try to ftp late at night,
when the other usual TCP traffic will be less and therefore, his TCP
packets will get to mintaka faster, hopefully before the 60 sec. TTL.

Hope this verbose description helps.  I tried to email to Jack
directly, but somehow, with our new Internet gateway configuration,
the mail bounced.


Aninda DasGupta ([e-mail]) Ph:[phone] Fax:[phone]
Philips Labs\n 345 Scarborough Rd\n  Briarcliff Manor\n NY 10510


[Moderator's Note: In a way, I am glad your mail did bounce, as you
have provided an excellent reply to Jack's question, and mentioned
something many of us would not have considered.  Thanks!    PAT]

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 11:51:56 PST (GMT-7)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Science and Technology Center, Apple Valley Ca.
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Using Fax Machine + Fax Modem as a Scanner


In comp.dcom.telecom, article <[e-mail]>, is
written:

> How can I use a standalone fax machine as a scanner?

> I would like to be able to plug my fax machine into my pc fax/modem,
> and press a few buttons, and end up with a fax format file of whatever
> was on the sheet of paper ...

> Has anyone managed this?  I've tried with not much success so far ...

> Any ideas appreciated.

What I have done is plugged my fax machine into my first line and
dialed my fax/modem on the second line with no problem. What you are
trying to do would require a knowledge of the codes your fax modem
uses to cause it to go offhook then online in fax mode, or to
determine if a call is fax or data.  For example, the Hayes "standard"
says *ATH1* should cause a *modem* to go offhook, then *ATO* takes it
online. If you then give the other *modem* an ATC1 it should detect
the handshake and the two should talk.

If you can accomplish that with your fax/modem in *fax* mode, you're
good to go.


Ronald Elliott             Science and Technology Center
[e-mail]              P.O. Box 818
[phone]                 Apple Valley, Ca 92307
                                 [phone]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #77
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #78

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 10 Feb 93 02:20:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 78

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    A Whole New Ball Game - Sport Broadcasts via Phone (FIDO via Don Kimberlin)
    AT&T Are You Listening? (Laurence Chiu)
    PhoneStation -- A New Mailing List (Jody Kravitz)
    Pacific Bell Caller ID (Todd Lesser)
    SecureClear Model 100 Demo Let Down (Rob Bailey)
    Live From AT&T Bell Labs Teleconference (Tom Flavell)
    Text of MFJ Wanted ([e-mail])
    Seeking Older Telrad Telephone Instruments (Tom Betz)
    Steve Jackson Games Articles Wanted (Gregory Youngblood)
    Smart Talk Network Restricts Some Calls (FIDO/Chris Farrar via D. Leibold)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 02:14:27 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Don Kimberlin)
Subject: A Whole New Ball Game - Sport Broadcasts via Phone


[Originally posted in Fidonet's BROADCAST conference]

   TELECOMMUNICATIONS MAKES IT A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME

One of the more common limitations suffered by smaller radio
broadcasters is maintaining carriage of local sports teams when their
town's team is on the road.  When economically possible, the small
station has classically ordered a "Schedule D program transmission
channel" from the phoneco, and aired a remote broadcast from as far
away as the broadcaster could afford.  (The "Schedule D channel" is
one common name for an ordinary telephone message channel of 3 kHz
bandwidth supplied for program use.)

But, dramatic increases in charges for such channels coupled with more
and more curtailed offering of them by the phonecos has made it ever
more difficult for the local broadcaster to provide live sports
coverage of "the hometown club" when it's out on the road.  Now, it
looks as though a new twist in telephone communications could make
obtaining out-of-town coverage as easy as a dial-up phone call.

An Akron, Ohio company called TRZ Communications has started a dial-in
800 offering called "Teamline" that offers callers telephonic
connection to listen to any of about 3,500 live radio broadcasts of
high school, college and NFL football games, major league baseball,
hockey, basketball and auto racing.

The founder of TRZ Communications, Tom R. Zawistowski, is a former
college athletic director who perceived a merket exists for people who
wanted to be able to hear their favorite team from anywhere a
telephone could reach.  He said the idea first came to his mind in
1982 when many alumni of William & Mary College of Williamsburg,
Virginia, where he was then athletic director, complained of not being
able to keep up with their alma mater's team play-by-play.

Using a large PBX, TRZ offers dial-in customers to its 800 numbers
their choice of a wide range of sporting events, and more recently has
expanded offerings to special programs in fields like business,
education and medicine.  The entire operation at TRZ is automated to
the extent that a caller dials in on an 800 number, selects the
broadcast they want with a four-digit number, and then is prompted to
enter a credit card number, which is automatically verified, after
which the connection to the selected program is made.

Local flagship radio stations are the source of the programs, for
which they recieve a portion of the proceeds of each call.  Rates are
much like an ordinary phone call, starting at 50 cents a minute,
decreasing to 20 cents per minute for long calls.  The current price
schedule makes a three-hour game cost about $36.00, but TRZ expects
that with increased usage, the cost can be reduced to about $6.00 for
a three-hour game within five years.

So, it looks as though a means to provide occasional program service
for local radio stations has been developed and is available through
TRZ Communications of Akron, Ohio.  With some 3,500 events already
available, it is obvious a large number of local stations already know
of TRZ, since they are sources for its programs, while many others may
now be ready to take advantage of TRZ's output.

Dialing up an occasional program line to get an out-of-town live
sports event...what a far cry from the struggle of setting up a
one-time program channel of just a few years ago ... and with 800
numbers to dial, to boot!


Don Kimberlin - via FidoNet node
1:250/98 INTERNET: [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: It was quite common for many years to relay sports
events back to the local radio station via telegraph. I remember very
well listening to the Chicago Cubs when they were broadcast by radio
station WIND (560 AM) back in the 1950's. Games at home were carried
live, and games away from home were read by the announcer direct from
the ticker machine. When the ticker machine would slow down or stop
for awhile, the announcer would play music; then after the record
finished he would resume reading the stuff which came over the wire
from the baseball stadium until he got to the end of it; then if more
had come out of the machine he would read it also, otherwise he would
play another record.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: AT&T Are You Listening?
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 04:05:25 GMT


Some comments on AT&T and MCI international calling plans --

My current LD carrier is AT&T. I call NZ and Australia a bit and my
wife calls China. I am currently subscribed to ATT's Reach Out World
Plan which gives me 20% discounts on all calls made in off-peak hours.
The trouble is China is not included in ROW.  But for some
inconsistent reason China is included in their Special Country plan
which offers discounts for calling one specified country at any time.
The trouble you cannot have both plans and if I sign up for SC then I
lose all discounts to Aust/NZ.  Calling China is especially costly
since my wife has to make a quick one minute call to alert the parties
that she will be calling later (her parents do not have a phone in the
home). The first minute charge for calls to China are outrageous (up
to $5 in peak times and no less than $3.)

I am thinking about MCI instead. They have a similar plan to ROW
(don't remember the name) with similar rates but also they have
Friends and Family. I can denote two international numbers F&F (China
is allowed) and thus get savings to all the international destinations
I call.

I don't want to switch carriers. I like AT&T. Their lines are good
(I've made consistent 14.4 connects all over the country using my
cheap Supra modem), their customer service very friendly etc. But they
just don't offer the calling plans I want. Anyway MCI advertise all
the time on our local channel which carries Chinese broadcasting, in
both Cantonese and Mandarin with toll-free numbers you can call which
are answered by Chinese speaking operators so my wife is always asking
me why I don't use MCI! I cannot explain modems to her that easily!

So if there are any AT&T people out there who can pass on these
comments to the powers that be, please do so. You may be losing
another customer to the opposition.


Laurence Chiu     [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: Are you sure this is AT&T's fault or that of the
local telco which does AT&T's billing?  For some six or eight months
after AT&T started Reach Out World with the additional ten percent
discount on domestic calls granted in that program, IBT customers
could not have it since IBT was unable to get the billing correct.
What had to happen was each month I was told by AT&T that they would
get a copy of my bill, examine it and manually correct it, issuing
credits as required. You might want to specifically inquire if AT&T is
saying they do not offer the arrangement you are seeking *or* if they
do but your local telco (if that is who bills your AT&T calls) is not
up to speed on it, and if so, can you have it with AT&T issuing the
required credits manually.  They might say yes!   PAT]

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

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 18:57:23 PST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: PhoneStation  -- A New Mailing List


During the Winter USENIX Technical Conference in San Diego, Stephen
Uhler of Bellcore presented the paper:

PhoneStation, Moving the Telephone onto the Virtual Desktop

Uhler described a research project involving an pots-line interface he
built for a Sun SparcStation and a programming language based on an
extension of John Osterhout's TCL (U.C.Berkeley).  The TCL extensions
provide for call progress monitoring, text-to-speech conversion, phone
line control, exception handling, etc.  Demonstration programs were
presented showing how easy it is to build an answering machine or
voice-mail system.  Uhler believes that one of the reasons that many
menu-based voice-mail systems are so clumsy is that the languages used
to code them are themselves clumsy.  Those who have programmed
existing commercial voice-mail systems would appreciate the example
programs from the paper.

During the question-answer session which followed the presentation of
the paper, a number of issues were brought up:

Will (or can) Bellcore license the language and/or the interface
design?

Will this work be put in the public domain?

Could the programming language be adapted to support existing hardware
platforms such as Watson boards?

What additional extensions to the language would be appropriate?

How should ISDN be supported?

I suggested that a mailing list be set up.  The response appeared
favorable and it appears that Uhler will participate.

With thanks to Brent Chapman, the mailing list has now been set up as:

    [e-mail]

A "digestified" version, which transmits all of the day's traffic in a
single message is also available as:

    [e-mail]

These lists are currently accepting "subscribe" requests as described
below.  After the initial flurry (we hope) of subscription requests
have died down, I'll enable the list for traffic and send a welcome
message to everyone on the list.

How to subscribe:

GreatCircle.Com uses a new list management system called "majordomo".

(majordomo: a person who speaks, makes arrangements, or takes charge
for another.)

To subscribe, send mail to "[e-mail]" containing the
following in the body (the subject line is ignored) of the message:

    help
    subscribe PhoneStation

or

    help
    subscribe PhoneStation-Digest

You may optionally specify an e-mail address at the end of the subscribe
line if you want to.

I'm looking forward to some lively discussion.


Jody Kravitz

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

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 20:59 PST
From: [e-mail] (Todd Lesser)
Reply-To: Todd Lesser <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pacific Bell Caller ID


In the February 1993 issue of {Phone + Magazine}:

"Pacific Bell Drops Caller ID Plans"

"Pacific Bell announced it will not offer Caller ID service in
California at this time because California Public Utilities Commission
requirements prevent it from offering customers a viable service at a
reasonable price.  However, the company plans to offer three other
services - Call Trace, Call Screen and Call Return - beginning next
month.

    Caller ID was approved in California with a free line blocking
requirement, in addition to the free per-call blocking option proposed
by Pacific Bell.  Additionally, California requires that unlisted
customers receive locking authomatically. This automatic line
blocking, say Pacific Bell officials, makes it economically impossible
for the company to offer Caller ID service at this time.

    The new services to be introduced will help people avoid unwanted
calls and return missed calls.  Call Trace permits subscribers to
automatically trace a disturbing or threatening call - the number is
captured by Pacific Bell and released to law enforcement authorities
when a police report is filed. Call Screen rejects calls from as many
as 10 specified phone numbers. Call Return lets subscribers
automatically return the last call received, whether the call actually
was answered."


Todd Lesser   Info Connections
[phone] Voice    [phone] Fax
<[e-mail]> or <attmail!denwa!todd>

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

Date: 09 Feb 93 22:03:57 EST
From: Rob Bailey <[e-mail]>
Subject: SecureClear Model 100 Demo Let Down


I couldn't resist ...

I was attracted to the cheazy display by the (otherwise
without-function) blinking red LED. It said "For a demonstration of
the Motorola Secure-Clear technology, press the button" (or at least
something like that). I held my breath, and pressed ... and ...

As reported previously here, it was just voice inversion. So ... I
whipped out the handy-dandy pocket tape recorder and recorded the demo
 - about 20 seconds of clear text wrapped around about five seconds of
scrambled speech. I might point out I specifically remember the demo
saying that the scrambling "prevented" eavsdropping. I take issue with
that; "thwart" or "slows down", but not "prevented".

Out to the car. I played the demo over my handheld (two-way radio) w/o
turning on the scrambler, and I listened over the car-radio with the
descrambler turned on. I expected to hear something really juicy like
"We're the Motorola design team" or "Hi, Mom". But what I actually got
was the last couple of seconds of the following sentence (the part in
[]'s has been extrapolated by me, since for whatever reason it was
apparently clipped from the demo):

[This is the Motorola] model 100 operating in half-scrambled mode."

What a let down. Anyway, now you all know what it says. By the way,
for those of you that think I'm not listening, my VHF-Loband mobile
radio has a scrambler/descrambler on it and I do have the cordless
phone frequencies programmed into channels I1 through J9, so be
careful what you say. Of course, I'd never violate the ECPA, though.


Rob Bailey, WM8S or [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Live From AT&T Bell Labs Teleconference
Date: 9 Feb 93 10:47:56 EST


Please contact the Education Services Director at your local PBS
station if you are interested in seeing this program broadcast
locally. To register as a downlink site, simply E-mail
[e-mail].

LIVE FROM AT&T BELL LABS, the third annual NSTW Teleconference of AT&T
Bell Labs, will be fed to stations live on Wednesday, April 28, 10-11
am, ET /D.  The teleconference will feature hosts David Heil, of PBS's
NEWTONS APPLE, Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate and Bell Labs' vice
president of research, introducing celebrities like Penn & Teller and
the Flying Karamazov Brothers to students across America.

Penn & Teller, magicians and pranksters, will explore what scientists
"really" do in their laboratories when nobody is looking.  The Flying
Karamazov Brothers, world renown jugglers, will demonstrate the
relationship between juggling, mathematics and physics.

Between segments on communications in the year 2003, the on- going
revolutions in microelectronics and software, and features on
minorities and women in science, students will have the opportunity to
ask questions of researchers and developers.

In addition to transmission on PBS's Spacenet IV, LIVE FROM BELL LABS
will be available to schools on AT&T Telstar 302's C and KU- band
transponders.  On April 28, the program will be broadcast live from
10-11am ET and rebroadcast on Telstar 302's C and KU- band
transponders at 11am, 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 pm ET.  For more
information on these feeds or program content, call Brian Monahan,
AT&T Bell Labs, [phone]. To register as a downlink site, simply
call Tom Flavell at [phone] or E-mail him at [e-mail]

Free posters and curriculum guides are available from: LIVE FROM AT&T
BELL LABS, 600 Mountain Avenue, Room 3A-309, Murray Hill, NJ
07974-0636.

Off-air taping rights: Unlimited.  Duplication rights granted.

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

Organization: The American University - University Computing Center
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 15:49:31 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Text of MFJ Wanted


Doesn anyone have a full text copy of the Modified Final Judgement
(MFJ) from divestiture?

If so, please email to me at:

[e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Tom Betz)
Subject: Seeking Older Telrad Telephone Instruments
Organization: Betz & Associates
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 19:19:10 GMT


While we're saving our nickels and dimes to replace our aging Telrad
key/BX, I need to add a couple of extensions to it.  Unfortunately, as
this model system was discontinued about a year after it was installed
in 1984, I can't get them from the company who sold them to us
originally; they no longer support this system.

Also unfortunately, it is an oddball binary system, so just any
telephone won't work with it.

I would appreciate any help in finding vendors for used/reconditioned/
new telephone instruments with the Telrad catalog numbers 83-050-0100
or 83-050-0000.  These numbers have a /0 or /1 following them on the
units we have.

Please respond to this account, or to [e-mail].


Thanks.

Tom Betz -- 512 Warburton Avenue - Yonkers, NY 10701-1832 -- [phone]
[e-mail] | "It's a sick world...          | [e-mail]

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

Subject: Steve Jackson Games Articles Wanted
From: tcscs![e-mail] (Gregory Youngblood)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 00:10:39 CST
Organization: TCS Consulting Services


Could the person who sent the reports of the Steve Jackson trials
please contact me?  I was only able to find days one, two and possibly
three of the trials, but then it ended leaving me in suspense about
what happened next.

Please contact me at any of the addresses below.


Thanks,

Greg
TCS Consulting Services   P.O. Box 600008   St. Paul, MN  55106-0008
      Mail-server requests to:  [e-mail]
[e-mail]        or       [e-mail]
 ..!srcsip!tcscs!zeta               or           ..!guppy!tcscs!zeta


[Moderator's Note: So far as I know, only three articles were issued
in the most recent batch, covering the three days of the trial. I do
not think any further reports have come out, because the judge has not
yet ruled. I believe following the three days of testimony, the judge
took the matter under advisement and stated he would rule at a later
time, which is where we are at now, waiting for the court's findings
and decision.   PAT]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 02:11:32 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Dave Leibold)
Subject: Smart Talk Network Restricts Some Calls


[Author is Chris Farrar, as originally posted on Fidonet PHONES
conference ... STN is a long distance resale company.]

Smart Talk Network included a notice with this month's phone bill
regarding changes dialing outgoing calls, and restrictions on where
calls may be placed to:

Calls to area code 809 will not be permitted from STN's North
American access number 1-800-STN-2-STN

Calls originating from the following area codes will not be permitted
over the STN network: Area code 212 - New York (Manhattan); area code
718 - Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Statan Island.

The notice also goes on to tell how to dial a call from a pay phone,
and the common sense information about not giving out your card number
or pin to anyone, and make sure no-one is watching over your shoulder
when you dial calls.


Chris

              ----------

Dave Leibold - via FidoNet node 1:250/98
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #78
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #79

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 10 Feb 93 10:38:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 79

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    What It Could Come To ... (FIDO via Don Kimberlin)
    Bell Canada/BC Tel Telecom Public Notice CRTC #9314 (Adele Ponty)
    Current Switched56 (tm) DSU/CSU Vendors Needed (Ronal Thompson)
    ADSI Standard Information Wanted (Barry Kominik)
    Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Dan Lanciani)
    SMDS Question (Sean Malloy)
    TCP Time-to-Live (TTL) Field (Mark Boolootian)
    Client Server Computing? (Matthew Lucas)
    CoinSoft Software Wanted (Kurtis MacFerrin)
    GTE Does It Again (David Gast)
    Overseas Chat Lines (Jason Garner)
    Yellow Pages Data on Disk Wanted (Lynne Gregg)
    Oldtown, MD Revisited (Carl Moore)
    Telephone Malaprops (FIDO via Don Kimberlin)
    BIX Gateway (John R. Levine)
    Re: Number Identifier Attempts From Canada (Dave Leibold)
    Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer (Bob Frankston)
    Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access (Fred R. Goldstein)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 02:10:49 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Don Kimberlin)
Subject: What It Could Come To ...


[crossposted from Fidonet's FCC conference]

Here's a news kicker originally posted by Bill Oxner in Fido's
Asian_Link.  It tells what the public reaction could get to if the
phonecos in the U.S. don't shape up:

     Tongue-tied Thais blast phone company

BANGKOK, Reuter - A powerful bomb that damaged a telecommunications
office in eastern Thailand on Monday may have been planted by
customers angered by the shortage of working phone booths, residents
said.

Local residents said they believed the bomb might have been planted by
customers angered because many public telephones in Chantaburi
province had been out of order for months. They said people had
recently taken to laying black funeral wreaths next to broken public
phones.

Police said the bomb shattered windows at the provincial telephone
centre and destroyed five booths.


Don Kimberlin - via FidoNet node 1:250/98
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Adele Ponty)
Subject: Bell Canada/BC Tel Telecom Public Notice CRTC #9314
Organization: UTCC Public Access
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 14:26:18 -0500


Many people may still be unaware of the application Bell Canada made
last fall with the CRTC, to eliminate the free directory assistance
service currently available.  If approved, Bell will no longer offer
free 411 calls made publically, free long distance directory enquiries
and directory assistance requested by the blind and visually impaired.

Apparently, Bell Canada's argument for the elimination of this service
is based on their view that revenue from calls made on competing phone
networks are in part, generated by callers making these 411 enquiries
at Bell's expense.  If you disagree with Bell's application or have an
opinion I strongly urge you to send it in writing to the CRTC.  The
application in question is called CRTC Telecom Public Notice #9314 and
the deadline for submission is March 1st.  The address is Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Ottawa Ontario K1A
0N2.  You can send it to the attention of Mr. A. J. Darling, Secretary
General.


INTERNET:  [e-mail]
UUCP:  [e-mail]  (bbs)   [e-mail]  (alternate)
BELL:  [phone]   FAX:[phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ronal Thompson)
Subject: Current Switched56 (tm) DSU/CSU Vendors Needed
Organization: Telebit Corporation; Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 22:15:12 GMT


I am currently in search of vendors that carry Switched56 DSU/CSU
products. We are expanding our evaluation and compatibility process
and require information of current vendors. Our list now includes:

AstroCom        St. Paul MN    1-612-227-8651
AT&T            San Mateo, CA    1-415-513-6300
Dowty            Cherry Hill, NJ    1-301-317-7710
General Datacomm    Middlebury, CN    1-800-243-1030
NEC            San Jose, CA
Motorola        Mannfield, MA

Contact information for these vendors came from the 1991 Network World
and I _hope_ that more exist now. Many thanks in advance for your
help.


Ron   [e-mail]      These ain't no opinions but my own!
R.THOMPSON65  GEnie    MJWG99A  Prodigy

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

From: [e-mail] (Barry Kominik)
Subject: ADSI Standard Information Wanted
Organization: [Phantom Access] / the MindVox system
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 20:29:22 GMT


Does anyone know where I can get a description of the Bellcore
Technical Release for the Analog Display Services Interface (ADSI)?
This is the new proposed standard for screen based telephone
equipment.


Thanks in advance,

Barr Kominik     [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 03:08:59 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Dan Lanciani)
Subject: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?


    I recently ordered a second line in my name and at the same
address as my existing line.  For some reason I thought one could get
non-published or unlisted (I forget) status at no extra charge for
each line beyond the first.  Did I imagine this?  The business office
was quite certain that I would have to pay extra.  I suppose the
answer is specific to NET land ...


Dan Lanciani    ddl@harvard.*

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

From: [e-mail] (Sean Malloy)
Subject: SMDS Question
Date: 9 Feb 1993 23:59:39 -0600
Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station, TX


I was at the symposium for Broadband Networks last week, and watched
with some interest a presentation by a gentleman from GTE on SMDS.

He was talking about applications, and mentioned that one would be the
interconnection of LANs within a metropolitan area.  I thought about
it for a while, and alarm bells started to go off in my head.  Putting
LANs on a public-switched network?  Doesn't that open up all sorts of
security issues?

I asked the speaker about this, and he danced around the issue.  I got
frustrated, and decided that security wasn't his bag.  But the
question remains.  What sort of precautions are taken to prevent
unauthorized users from getting into the LAN?  Passwords?  That's
proven to be incredibly effective on the net (heh).  Besides, it'd add
overhead.  Some sort of callback?  That reduces the advantages of
being switched ...

The speaker mentioned that Rockwell and NASA had used SMDS in a trial
in Southern CA, and -they- had no outstanding security questions.  Of
course, they were the only ones on the network ...

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something fundamental about the service, or
there -is- security that might work effectively (right now, it seems
to be security through obscurity).  Can anyone out there straighten me
out, or at least point me in the right direction?


Thanks,

Sean C. Malloy  -  Texas A&M University  -  [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Mark Boolootian)
Subject: TCP Time-to-Live (TTL) Field
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 08:06:24 -0800 (PST)


[e-mail] (Aninda Dasgupta) writes:

> What can be done to rectify this problem? The most obvious, though
> often impossible, thing to do is to change the default of 60 seconds
> for the TCP TTL that is compiled into the UNIX (or other OS) TCP
> software.

Thought I'd mention the following because it wasn't entirely clear in
the post:

While the TTL is supposed to be the amount of time a packet is allowed
to live in the network, in general, it is used as a hop count.  Each
router the packet passes through typically will decrement the TTL
field by one.  If a router has excessively long queues and the packet
has to hang around for some time, the router may elect to decrement
the TTL field by some larger amount.

Although I didn't see the original post, I find it very hard to
believe the user has a path with so many hops that the TTL is
expiring.  The Internet is broad, but not that broad.  By the way,
most implemenations of traceroute use a TTL of 30.


Mark Boolootian        [e-mail]        [phone]
Disclaimer:  booloo speaks for booloo and no other.

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

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 11:57:09 -0500 (EST)
From: Matthew Lucas <[e-mail]>
Subject: Client Server Computing?


I would appreciate any help or pointers to a good book with respect to
client server computing. In particuliar:

Client Server Computing:

- Why is it replacing mainframes?
- Why is it so hot?
- What is it replacing?
- What does it have to do with telecom?
- What does it have to do with network computing?
- What does it have to do with high performance workstations?
- What does it have to do with big high capacity LANs?


Thanks,

Matt.

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

Date: 09 Feb 1993 17:24:58 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail]
Subject: CoinSoft Software Wanted
From: [e-mail]
Subject: CoinSoft?
Date: 9 Feb 93 17:24:44 EST
Organization: Harvard University Science Center


Hi,

A friend of mine has a payphone that can supposedly be programmed
using some software from ATT called "CoinSoft". Does anyone know
where, besides ATT, I might be able to get a copy?


Thanks!


Kurtis MacFerrin    [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 00:06:06 -0800
From: [e-mail] (David Gast)
Subject: GTE Does It Again


Since about last Friday, all datacom (modem and fax) going from
Gte-land to UCLA has had lots and lots of errors.  According to UCLA
telecommunications, the problem is due to the installation of a new
trunk by GTE.  I don't know that UCLA telecom is not blameless; in
fact, I know of previous problems with them, particularly their VM
system.

I have been logged out, suspended from jobs, exited from vi, foiled in
attempting to "less" a file (it kept going back in the file), etc.
Just in typing this letter, I have had to delete about 25 characters
and retype 10 others that were changed.

The light may be on, but the phone service??


David

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 01:45:50 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Jason Garner)
Subject: Overseas Chat Lines


I recently saw an ad on late night television for a chat line.  It
looked like the typical 900 chat services where you get to talk to
very beautiful women for a very low fee.  This one was not a 900
service though.  It began with 011 followed by a country code for
Equador or Chile and then a number.  I don't recall the rate for
calling but I did call an operator at the time and determined that the
amount stated in the commercial was about the same as the price AT&T
charged for the call.  So how do they make any money? The commercial
did not suggest using any particular long distance carrier as some
commercials that I've seen in the past have.  Anyone notice this on TV
lately?  I asked my girlfriend to jot down the number if she saw the
commercial again (she watches more TV than I do) and she just sort of
laughed at me so I seriously doubt she will.


[Moderator's Note: We've discussed this here in recent weeks. The
profit to the information provider comes from payments made to him by
the telco where he is located which shares revenues from the increase
in traffic they have as a result of calls to the IP. Various telecom
administrations are willing to do this. In the USA, AT&T will do it
provided incoming calls are forced to go over AT&T, as in the example
of 702-333-8444.  PAT]

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

Date: 10 Feb 93 10:42:11 EST
From: Lynne Gregg <[e-mail]>
Subject: Yellow Pages Data on Disk Wanted


Anyone have ideas for sources for Yellow Page data on disk?  I'm
looking for YP's for most major cities.

Please reply email:  [e-mail]


Thanks!

Lynne

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

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 17:49:06 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Oldtown, MD Revisited


I wrote earlier about 301-395 (Oldtown) apparently being discontinued,
with people on it being switched to 301-478 (Flintstone).  Oldtown is
about 14 miles southeast of Cumberland, Md.  Because of an indirect
link to one of my ancestors, I have traveled again to western MD (and
nearby WV).  In Oldtown proper (squeeze thru a one-lane railroad
underpass off Md. route 51 and then turn right) I saw an advertising
sign where parts of the old "395" were still visible but "4","7","8"
(smaller size) had been put up in its place.  Enough of "395" is
covered to cause a problem in identifying it if I didn't have the
other sources available.  Out on route 51, however, I saw at least 3
business places still showing 395 on their signs.

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 02:11:13 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Don Kimberlin)
Subject: Telephone Malaprops


[crossposted from Fidonet FCC conference]

Here's a republication of some fun malapropisms of common telephone
jargon, for those who missed it earlier:

 From the June, 1992 newsletter of Allied Supply, Council Bluffs,
Iowa:

        "I had a nice letter from Carey Maurer at UTC, He had some
`out of context' telecom terminologies of his own.  Here are a few of
his ideas:

"KEY SERVICE UNIT - The last gas station with a rest room that's open
along the interstate;

"FIBER MUX - The condition of a two year old's outfit after eating an
ice cream cone;

"ONE WAY OUTGOING TRUNK - What became of your baggage after it was
loaded on the airplane;

"RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY - The function of most teenagers' memory,
especially after being told to do the chores;

"RINGING GENERATOR - The clapper of a bell;

"T-CARRIER - An airline flight attendant;

"Thanks, Carey!  Anyone Else?"
<end of quote>


Don Kimberlin - via FidoNet node 1:250/98
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

Subject: BIX Gateway
Organization: I.E.C.C.
Date: 10 Feb 93 06:17:07 EST (Wed)
From: [e-mail] (John R. Levine)


>> BIX has finally put their Internet link into production.

> Hmm, let me see:

> bix.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = bix.com
> bix.com preference = 20, mail exchanger = genvid.com

> bix.com internet address = 192.80.63.253
> genvid.com      internet address = 192.80.63.1
> ...
> So, it might be even possible to get a telnet connection to BIX?

Probably, sooner or later.  The address genvid.com is actually the
same as delphi.com, the Delphi online service which is also owned by
General Videotex, the same outfit that now owns BIX.

Delphi has a very functional Internet connecting allowing inbound and
outbound telnet, outbound FTP, and e-mail both ways.  (My Delphi
mailbox is [e-mail].)  Currently they tell Delphi users to
telnet to a public access system to read usenet news, but that will
certainly change.

Since they have Internet connectivity in place, I expect that they'll
eventually extend it to BIX.  At the moment, though, the address
192.80.63.253 doesn't respond to pings yet.


Regards,

John Levine, [e-mail], {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 02:20:45 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Dave Leibold)
Subject: Re: Number Identifier Attempts From Canada


There were recent posts about calls to +1 404 988.9664 which would
read back the caller's number when dialed with 10732 within the U.S.
(via AT&T on a special connection).

Equal access and 10XXX+ are about 18 months away; Bell Canada is
making preparations for this to accomodate Unitel and eventually other
carriers. My attempts to dial the number as straight long distance
calls on Bell and Unitel networks result in a ringing which is not
answered, thus it seems numbers from Toronto are not passed along.

In the case of Unitel, it should be noted that the calls are done by
account number and thus the caller's number is not known to Unitel in
any event.


Dave Leibold - via FidoNet node 1:250/98
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer
Date: Wed 10 Feb 1993 23:15 -0400


When I call from a coin phone to a local roaming port, I notice that I
get my money back if the called party doesn't answer but don't if
either they answer or I get the recorded message telling me that the
other party is out of range.

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: ISDN Basic Rate Access
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 05:37:01 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Roy Smith) writes:

> I live on City Island, which is a bit of land about 1/2 mile
> wide by two miles long, isolated from the rest of the Bronx by several
> miles.  When I enquired of NYTel about ISDN in my area, I was told
> that we don't even have a CO on the island, but are served by a
> substation (I think that was the word he used) from some CO in the
> Bronx, and that we're either 1) not even on the list or 2) scheduled
> for sometime in 1994 (depending on who you talk to).  City Island has
> the entire 718-885 exchange.  Would a SLC-96 be serving an entire
> exchange, or several of them?  Would that be what the telco guy meant
> by a "substation?".

A SLC-96 is a 96-line mux, hence the name.  In its most common analog
application, five 24-channel T1 lines are used to support the 96
lines, with one of the T1s in "hot standby".  There are other products
like it, basically larger and smaller packages.  But offhand I'd guess
that yes, a mux like that is what the telco guy meant by "substation".

The prefix code doesn't prove anything.  It's common practice for one
central office to have different codes in it, assigned geographically.
In MA the phone company does this a lot for billing reasons: If you're
in Woburn, you used to be 3MU from Boston, while Winchester was 2MU.
Woburn numbers were served off the Winchester switch.  I suspect City
Island's the same way (though I thought it was billed as a city zone,
not a billing zone of its own, so it's sort of pointless).


Fred R. Goldstein  [e-mail] k1io
or [e-mail]   voice: [phone]
Standard Disclaimer: Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #79
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #81

TELECOM Digest     Thu, 11 Feb 93 01:41:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 81

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Telex Interfaces (Tony Harminc)
    Re: Telex Interfaces (Doran Howitt)
    Low Cost Telex Reception (Was Telex to Internet) (Paul Robinson)
    Telex to Connectivity (Bob Frankston)
    Re: Interesting Tricks You Can Do With Your Phone (Gregory Youngblood)
    Re: Interesting Tricks You Can Do With Your Phone (Mark Terribile)
    Stupid Phone Tricks (Jim Rees)
    Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit (Ben Cox)
    Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit (Peter M. Weiss)
    Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit (Mitch Wagner)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Arthur Rubin)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Dave Bonney)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Paul Barnett)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (John R. Levine)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 00:47:27 EST
From: Tony Harminc <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Telex Interfaces


Two recent posts can share an answer:

JOHN SCHMIDT <[e-mail]> wrote:

> I have friends in Africa who have access to inexpensive (relatively)
> telex service, I can fax them (at least to a friend of theirs who gets
> them at his business), but it is very expensive or impossible for them
> to reply by fax.  They have attempted to Telex me at work, but the
> telexes seem to often get lost between the machine and my office!  My
> friend has the hard copy of at least one he sent with the answerback
> from our machine on it, proving it got through.  The only explanation
> I got fron the mail room was that they don't get many these days and
> "the guy who takes care of the machine was on vacation when it came
> in"!?! Anyway, having it appear as E mail here would probably work
> much better.

and Robert Horvitz <[e-mail]> wrote:

> We have this big old and very loud telex machine in our office.  We'd
> like to get rid of it and integrate telex with our LAN.  Surely we're
> not the first to have this idea.  Assuming the wheel has already been
> invented, can someone explain how to do this?  Is there a particular
> kind of modem designed for interfacing DOS machines with telex
> circuits?

The answer to both problems would seem to be a Telex interface box.
There used to be lots of these on the market, but with the near demise
of telex except in the third world, I imagine many makers are now out
of business.

The box I used several years ago converted async RS232 ASCII to/from
the telex 5 level code (and also handled the *bizarre* 130V current
loop interface (260V in some areas!)).  This box came with PC software
to process inbound and outbound telexes, queue them, etc. much like a
FAX board does.  In my application I had the box plugged directly into
an IBM mainframe (VM) system, so it isn't restricted to PCs, though of
course the supplied software won't run on anything else.

I just called DA and the maker of the box I used is still listed, so
presumably they have other lines of business too :-) They are Nomis
Systems [phone].  And to the best of my knowledge the box is
still sitting in my former employer's basement storage room -- probably
they'd be glad to sell it for a few bucks.


Tony Harminc

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 21:58:20 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Doran Howitt)
Subject: Re: Telex Interfaces


There were a couple of messages recently asking about how to connect
to the telex network.

A good way to access telex is to get an account with AT&T EasyLink
Services.  This is the former Western Union Telegraph Company
telex/TWX business, which AT&T bought in 1990 and then folded in with
AT&T Mail.  Western Union had pretty nicely integrated the telex and
e-mail technologies, and the result is now marketed by AT&T.

EasyLink will give you a electronic mailbox and assign it a regular
telex number so that all your telexes come into the box.  You can
either dial up to get your messages of have them forwarded
automatically to another address such as a fax machine.

EasyLink is available in a many countries.  In the USA, last I looked,
there was a $25 a month minimum to have an account.  There's no charge
to receive a telex into your mailbox, because sender pays all -- just
like a telephone call, though you do pay extra for forwarding.
EasyLink has X.400 connections with CompuServe and the like but I
don't know if it has an internet connection.  I believe MCI Mail has a
competitive offering.

Anyone who still has a real telex machine is throwing away money on a
dedicated circuit that's idle probably 99.9 percent of the time.

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

Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993  23:06:51 EST
Subject: Low Cost Telex Reception (Was Telex to Internet)


[e-mail] wrote about getting someone with "cheap
telex service" in Africa to be able to communicate with him via some
method over the Internet.

Here's how you can do it and you can test it for free:

You can subscribe to MCI Mail.  MCI Mail accounts not only offer
internet access for incoming and outgoing messages, at no extra charge
they provide an incoming telex address.

For example, my account on MCI mail uses the name of TDARCOS.  It has
the account number of 506-6432.  It is identified on internet as
"[e-mail]" and it is also a telex number in which the
three zeroes are changed to the number 650.  The answerback is the
telex number plus "MCI UW" so, for example, my telex number on MCI is:

       6505066432
and the answerback is:

       6505066432MCI UW

Advise your correspondent to dial the telex number for the United
States first.  It's usually 21 or 021 but be sure they find this out
first.

So here's what you can do: ask your African correspondent to send *ME*
a test telex to my number.  I will forward the message to you.  If
this works, you could get an MCI mail number yourself and then let
them send you messages to your telex number, then send faxes from your
machine back to them.  This will probably be the least costly way
because faxes FROM the US to other countries are very expensive, on a
character-for-character basis, about ten or twenty times as expensive
as a typed letter faxed to someone.

Oh yes, MCI Mail's rates are much cheaper than other companies.  An
MCI Mail box with incoming telex is $35 a year; AT&T Easylink charges
$25 a *month*.

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Telex to Connectivity
Date: Wed 10 Feb 1993 09:25 -0400


For those who want to replace their Telex systems, remember that both
Att/Easylink and MCI have telex numbers corresponding to mailboxes.
You can autoforward the messages to another mailbox, including the
Internet, if you wish.

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

Subject: Re: Interesting Tricks You Can Do With Your Phone
From: tcscs![e-mail] (Gregory Youngblood)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 12:06:50 CST
Organization: TCS Consulting Services


[e-mail] (Matthew Harttree) writes:

> I have always wondered about the strange messages/events that I get
> when I mis-dial a number.

> The lighter side of telephony, I guess. Stupid things you do by
> accident or find out somehow.

> For example my Dad lives in Northern New Jersey in the 201 area code.
> I muffed the digits on his phone number once and got a recording
> telling me to "Please deposit twenty cents" ????

Going on with this type of thing, in Houston (SWB territory) I had a
list of numbers which when called returned any one of a number of
error messages.  My favorite was to put the recording "The call you
have made requires an initial deposit of 25 cents.  Please hang up,
deposit 25 cents, and try your call again." on my voice mail recording
so when people called and got my voice mail they heard this message.
Of course, at the end of the message, I added "or leave your message
after the beep."


Greg

TCS Consulting Services   P.O. Box 600008   St. Paul, MN  55106-0008
      Mail-server requests to:  [e-mail]
[e-mail]        or       [e-mail]
  ..!srcsip!tcscs!zeta              or           ..!guppy!tcscs!zeta

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Interesting Tricks You Can Do With Your Phone
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 17:48:12 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Matthew Harttree) writes:

> I have always wondered about the strange messages/events that I get
> when I mis-dial a number.

> For example my Dad lives in Northern New Jersey in the 201 area code.
> I muffed the digits on his phone number once and got a recording
> telling me to "Please deposit twenty cents" ????

Well, I once called the _correct_ number from a NY Tel pay phone in
Westchester County.  (I don't recall the community, now; it was near
the Saw Mill River Parkway and US Hwy 9).  During the call, voice was
interrupted by a voice mail prompt for CitiBank (apparently an
internal prompt from a Centrex).  The call was cut off a minute or so
later, so I guess it was supposed to be the `additional cents for the
next N minutes' message.

I tried to report it, and I think I actually left a problem
description with someone, but I never heard about action on it.


(This man's opinions are his own.)
 From mole-end        Mark Terribile
[e-mail], Somewhere in Matawan, NJ

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

From: [e-mail] (Jim Rees)
Subject: Stupid Phone Tricks
Date: 10 Feb 1993 15:14:04 GMT
Organization: University of Michigan CITI
Reply-To: [e-mail]


Our University has a DMS of some kind.  Dialing 91072 gets you an
intercept recording that states, "The number you have reached,
107-0000, has been changed.  The new number is 000-0000."

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

From: [e-mail] (Ben Cox)
Subject: Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 20:31:56 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Ben Cox)
Organization: Ancient Illuminated Sears of Bavaria


[e-mail] (Mitch Wagner) writes:

> I've always thought that if I ever had a salesman that just wouldn't
> stop phoning, even when I asked them to stop, I would inform them that
> if they didn't stop calling I would file harassment charges against
> them with the police.

> And then if they called back, I would do so.

> Would this work?

Yes, it did.  He didn't call back.  :)


Ben Cox    [e-mail]

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

Organization: Penn State University
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 16:17:38 EST
From: Peter M. Weiss <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit


I wonder what happens when two telemarketers call one-another? Do
they end up buying each others products?  Do the COs freeze?

This is intriguing.


Pete


[Moderator's Note: When two bill collectors call one-another they
cancel each other out. Ancient wisdom teaches "never try to collect
from another bill collector ... it won't work ... he knows all the
ways to stall, all the delaying tactics, etc."    PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Mitch Wagner)
Subject: Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit
Organization: Open Systems Today
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 11:55:39 GMT


[e-mail] (Mitch Wagner) writes:

> ... if I ever had a salesman that just wouldn't stop phoning, even
> when I asked them to stop, I would inform them that if they didn't
> stop calling I would file harassment charges against them with the
> police.

> [Moderator's Note: Depending on where you live, perhaps the police
> would come out and -- with a very straight look on their faces -- take
> your complaint, then later on file it away....
> ... (Mitch to his secretary: "I am driving over to Kalamazoo and Timbuck,
> too. I am going to look for that guy who called me twice last week
> after I told him to stop and serve this court order on him. I hope he
> gave me the right name when he called. I hope he decides to obey the
> order so I don't have to go back to court again, wait in line for an
> hour with the court clerk and file another complaint saying he did not
> obey the first order ...")....

Oh, well. Another good idea bites the dust.

Although this notion of my having a secretary intrigues me ...


   -- mitch w.


[Moderator's Note: Don't misunderstand: in instances of genuine harass-
ment over the telephone -- serious threats, continued calls of a very
obscene nature, ringing-silence-hangup calls, or as one reader said to
me, "I would answer, there would be insane laughter followed by whispers
I could not understand ... later she was judged to be mentally ill," --
in cases like that, telco and the police will trap the caller and assist
in prosecution. But telemarketers or bill collectors who get obnoxious
at least have one thing going for them: in theory at least, a legitimate
business reason for having placed the call(s). It is not a criminal act
to make a telephone call when there is some basis for doing so; and
criminal activity is all the police are allowed to deal with. Police
may not involve themselves or invoke their authority in *civil* disputes.
That, plus their heavy case load causes their reluctance to bother
with an obnoxious, but marginally legal telemarketer who called you.  PAT]

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

Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
From: a_rubin%dsg4.dse.beckman.com (Arthur Rubin)
Date: 10 Feb 93 20:15:35 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Arthur Rubin)


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dan
Lanciani) writes:


> I recently ordered a second line in my name and at the same
> address as my existing line.  For some reason I thought one could get
> non-published or unlisted (I forget) status at no extra charge for
> each line beyond the first.  Did I imagine this?  The business office
> was quite certain that I would have to pay extra.  I suppose the
> answer is specific to NET land ...

Here in PacTel land, they claim that additional lines can be unlisted
at no charge, but all I _know_ is that there is only one (monthly)
unlisting charge for having two unlisted lines at the same location.


Arthur L. Rubin: [e-mail] (work) Beckman Instruments/Brea
[e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail] (personal)
My opinions are my own, and do not represent those of my employer.

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Bonney)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
Organization: None At Present
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 19:44:31 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dan
Lanciani) writes:

>    I recently ordered a second line in my name and at the same
> address as my existing line.  For some reason I thought one could get
> non-published or unlisted (I forget) status at no extra charge for
> each line beyond the first.  Did I imagine this?  The business office
> was quite certain that I would have to pay extra.  I suppose the
> answer is specific to NET land ...

 ... and in NET land you need to ask for 'SPECIAL NON-LISTED'.  It's
coded as 'SPNL' in their records.  No Charge! :-)

 You >do not< want to ask for plain vanilla UNLISTED or NONPUBLISHED!
These they charge for!

 Provided that your other line is listed in the same name and at the
same address.  If you get difficulties from the business office, give
me a call.  I'd be glad to straighten them out.


dab
A Telecommunications Professional Now Unemployed In Westford MA
No Employer, No Disclaimer.    Just My Own Thoughts.
Inquiries To MCIMail 422-4552    Internet <[e-mail]>
   or a guest account at <[e-mail]>
        Telephone [phone]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 14:45:05 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Paul Barnett)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?


This is indeed specific to the local telephone company.  In Mpls-St.
Paul, which is served by US West, you HAVE to publish the number, or
pay an extra charge.  However, you could specify a different name for
the listing, and some people invent strange names.  Others simply list
it as "computer line", and they get plenty of unsolicited calls from
people trying to sell them "computer stuff".

On the other hand, here in Dallas, either in GTE-land or SWBT-land,
there is no extra charge for a non-published secondary number, if
there is already a primary LISTED number at that address.

I would guess that this is somehow spelled out in the tariff.  Press
for a specific interpretation, and complain to your PUC, if you think
it will do any good.


Paul Barnett   MPP OS Development     (214)-497-4846
Convex Computer Corp.  Richardson, TX

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

Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
Organization: I.E.C.C.
Date: 10 Feb 93 22:47:45 EST (Wed)
From: [e-mail] (John R. Levine)


Here in Massachusetts it is indeed the case that second and subsequent
lines at a single location can be unlisted at no charge.  For some
reason New England Tel sometimes insists otherwise.  When I added
RingMate (distinctive ringing) to my second line, NET wanted to charge
to unlist each of the numbers on the second line, and I had to go to
the state DPU to get NET to behave.

If as seems to be the case there's a pattern here, I should get the
state to tell NET to audit the records to see how many subscribers are
paying an unwarranted charge to unlist their second lines.


Regards,

John Levine, [e-mail], {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #81
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #80

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 10 Feb 93 23:56:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 80

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Running Out of Area Codes (Los Angeles Times via Robert L. McMillin)
    Toll-Denial Also Blocks 911 Access; Why? (Marcus Leech)
    The Transatlantic Telecable (Karsten Lang Pedersen)
    Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State (David G. Lewis)
    Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State (Robert L. McMillin)
    Re: SS7 / CID Question (Al Varney)
    Re: SS7 / CID Question (John Higdon)
    Re: Alphanumeric Pagers Question (Brad S. Hicks)
    Re: Alphanumeric Pagers Question (Danny Turner)
    Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Dave Niebuhr)
    Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Javier Henderson)
    Re: Unhappy GTE Representatives (Javier Henderson)
    Re: Unhappy GTE Representatives (Brian D. McMahon)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 05:11:31 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Robert L. McMillin)
Subject: Running Out of Area Codes


Here is an article from the February 8, 1993 edition of the {Los
Angeles Times}.  Sorry about the {Times'} tendency for verbal
diarrhea, but it's something we live with.

PHONE NUMBERS GROW SCARCE IN INFORMATION AGE

By Jube Shiver, Jr.

WASHINGTON -- As the information age fuels an explosion of fax
machines, cellular phones, and other high-tech communications devices,
government regulators and industry officials are scrambling to
preserve an increasingly precious resource: the phone number.

A looming problem of telephone-number-gridlock threatens to retard
business growth and the development of new technologies.  And it will
also introduce new wrinkles in the dialing habits of millions of phone
users now served by the North American dialing system, experts say.

The day of reckoning is fast approaching.  The supply of three-digit
North American telephone area codes -- all of which have "0" or "1" as
the middle number -- will be exhausted within two years unless
augmented by new kinds of three-digit area codes, phone company
officials and telecommunications experts say.

While the public generally takes the telephone system for granted,
there are fierce battles going on behind the scenes over who will
control one of the communication industry's most important functions
 -- the allocation of telephone numbers.  The winner will play a
central role in determining how fast rapidly emerging new technologies
can be accomodated.

Some cellular phone subscribers in the United States are already
reporting delays in getting phone service as the rapidly expanding
industry gobbles up an estimated 7,500 new telephone numbers a day.

Likewise, an explosion of home offices -- with their attendant fax
machines and computer modems -- is fueling demand for extra phone
lines.  Some 14% of Pacific Bell's residential customers now have two
phone lines -- a number that has risen sharply in the past five years.

With so much at stake, upstart communication service companies are
already facing off against Bellcore, an arm of the seven regional
phone companies that currently administers long distance area codes.

A growing number of firms want the Federal Communications Commission to
mediate the dispute -- a request that could delay Bellcore's planned
expansion of area codes as regulators weigh the issue.

The FCC so far has stayed largely aloof, though it has sought advice
from the communications industry on how best to administer telephone
numbers.

Many industry experts say that hundreds of millions of dollars in new
equipment will be needed to make the transition from the current
numbering system, first established in 1947, to a new one.

While the obstacles are technical in nature, the fundamentals are not
hard to grasp:

The current system relies on a limited pool of three-digit area codes
that need the "0" or "1" as the middle digit to help telephone
switching equipment to distinguish between area codes and the first
three digits of a local exchange.

That limitation restricts the number of available area codes to about
150, each of which can support about 7.8 million seven-digit phone
numbers.  With the proliferation of multiple lines, cellular phones
and new communications services, the available universe of numbers is
being rapidly depleted.

By 1995, Bellcore plans to introduce about 640 new area codes using
middle digits other than 0 and 1 that will roughly quadruple the
current telephone number capacity and hopefully meet rising demand for
another three decades.

But doing so will require a massive overhaul of the North American
telephone infrastructure, including the reprogramming of telephone-
company switching software and hardware.

Businesses -- many of which have old telephone switchboards that only
recognize current long distance codes -- may be especially hard hit,
while consumers will likely have a much harder time finding phone
numbers through long-distance directory assistance because of the
proliferation of area codes.

Callers will have to closely pinpoint neighborhoods in making
directory assistance requests because of the area-code proliferation.
That's already a problem in Southern California, which now has seven
area codes and is likely to get many more.

Critics want to wrest control of area codes from Bellcore.  Providers
of new communications services -- such as cellular phones -- are
especially angry, claiming Bellcore is trying to protect the lucrative
cellular business of the regional Bells by making it tough for other
competitors to get phone numbers.

But Ron Conners, who heads the numbering system for Bellcore in its
Livingston, N.J., office, defends the company's performance.

"We've done a good job of administering a phone numbering plan that
has been the envy of the world ... the [phone number] assignments we
make are public and subject ot the oversight of the FCC.  If anyone
doesn't like what we do, they can complain," Conners said.

Still, Conners conceded, the telephone system will be in "real
difficulty" if industry disputes over Bellcore's administration of
area codes delays the introduction of the 640 additional new numbers
beyond 1995.

Even if a timely transition is made, it will not come cheap.  Few, if
any, suppliers currently make equipment capable of recognizing area
codes with middle digits other than 0 or 1.

Frustrated by its inability to find phone equipment able to handle the
new codes, Wall Street Merrill Lynch recently issued an ultimatum to one
manufacturer: Either make a switchboard that recognizes the new number
combinations, or the brokerage would take its business elsewhere.

"We've got to kick companies in the butt" to get them to deal with the
problem, said Raymond Liuzzo, an assistant vice president at the New
York investment house.

Equipment makers have told Merrill Lynch that it will have to wait
months -- and spend thousands of additional dollars -- to acquire a new
private branch exchange (PBX) system that will recognize the new area
codes, Liuzzo said.  (PBX equipment allows communications both within a
company and with the outside world.)

Even the regional phone companies are scrambling.  As Pacific Telesis
recently told the FCC, it is spending about $84 million to upgrade its
switching and billing support systems in order to avoid exhausting the
internal numerical codes needed to determine how to route calls to the
proper long-distance carrier.

Yet, with communications technology evolving so fast, some experts say
even 640 more area codes would be little more than a temporary solution.
They are urging the industry to develop more expansive efforts -- to
avoid a recurrance of telephone number gridlock a few years down the
road.

The expansion also won't ease the squeeze on many telecommunication
services now served by a single, "non-geographic" area code -- such as
toll-free 800-exchanges or 900-prefix information lines.

These numbers have grown in popularity in recent years and become an
important business marketing tool, said Mike Hirsch, a vice president at
the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn., a Washington trade
group.

But as demand for such numbers grows in popularity, toll-free 800
exchanges or 900-prefix exchanges could quickly fill to capacity and
Bellcore would have to find equally unusual code combinations to
maintain the marketing value of these special telephone services,
experts say.

Other new technologies are also certain to tax the available pool of
phone numbers.

The FCC recently approved the development of a global satellite paging
system that would let people send brief messages nearly anywhere around
the world.  Down the road, even more numbers will be needed for
futuristic services such as wireless personal communications
technologies.

One such system, called PCS, will permit users to communicate or
perform computer functions with a device as portable and unobtrusive
as a wristwatch.

Pressure is also building on local phone companies to designate three-
digut local numbers -- similar to the 911 emergency or 411 telephone
directory service numbers -- for new information service providers.

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 05:52:19 +0000
From: Marcus (M.D.) Leech <[e-mail]>
Subject: Toll-Denial Also Blocks 911 Access; Why?


My sister volunteers for a women's shelter in Squamish, B.C.  They've
been having problems with unauthorized long-distance calling, so they
had B.C. Tel put toll-denial on the line.  The problem is that B.C.
Tel says this also blocks 911 access.  I can't think of any technical
reason for this, and it seems unreasonable.

Is anyone familiar with the CO equipment they use in B.C., and why
there would be this restriction?


Marcus Leech, 4Y11    Bell-Northern Research  |opinions expressed
[e-mail]         P.O. Box 3511, Stn. C   |are my own, and not
[e-mail]    Ottawa, ON, CAN K1Y 4H7 |necessarily BNRs

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

From: [e-mail] (Karsten Lang Pedersen)
Subject: The Transatlantic Telecable
Organization: DAIMI: Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, Denmark
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 07:34:46 GMT


Does anyone have info about the transatlantic telecable?  It was used
before the satelites where put into the game!

Please E-mail me on : [e-mail]


Greetings from,

Karsten Lang

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

From: [e-mail] (david.g.lewis)
Subject: Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 13:51:55 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ken
Dykes) writes:

> Recently I received a call from the Glendale area of Los Angeles.  I
> live in southern Ontario CANADA.  My Caller-ID box instead of showing
> out-of-area showed PRIVACY.  The call to me was made (and answered)
> twice in the same night; both times PRIVACY ... some sort of
> call-blocking was enabled by PacBell.

> PacBell is being far too kind to the zealots :-)

It might be the PSC's doing.  The NY PSC, for example, has mandated
that New York Tel must not permit delivery of CPN for customers in
Manhattan until they have completed an education campaign (which I
expect means bill inserts) on how to restrict delivery on a per-call
basis.  (I don't know the exact wording of the ruling, but this is the
sense I get from my friends in regulatory affairs.)  As a result, all
calls outbound from Manhattan using SS7 have the CPN marked as
"presentation restricted", resulting in the PRIVACY indication on the
display.  The Cal PSC may have made a similar ruling.

> And ... I'm impressed that SS7 is so well connected throughout North
> America. (And just a month ago I was impressed with getting Ottawa
> numbers in my area, about 300 miles away :-).)

Thank 800 Number Portability and the FCC's call setup time
requirements connected therewith, which require a fairly widespread
deployment of SS7, at least at 800 SSPs (Signaling Service Point -
where the 800 number query is launched from in the LEC network).  I
know our folks have been working like crazy turning up
SS7/ISUP-signaled trunks, like thousands per day.


David G Lewis                              AT&T Bell Laboratories
[e-mail] or !att!goofy!deej     Switching & ISDN Implementation

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 06:45:20 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Robert L. McMillin)
Subject: Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State


[e-mail] (Ken Dykes) writes:

> Recently I received a call from the Glendale area of Los Angeles.  I
> live in southern Ontario CANADA.  My Caller-ID box instead of showing
> out-of-area showed PRIVACY.  The call to me was made (and answered)
> twice in the same night; both times PRIVACY ... some sort of
> call-blocking was enabled by PacBell.

Which probably means that the switch was SS7-connected, but thanks to
the California Public fUtilities Commission, EVERYBODY's phone number
will show up as PRIVACY-enabled.  After all, privacy is the same thing
as anonymity ... NOT!

> PacBell is being far too kind to the zealots :-)

It's not Pac*Hell's fault, really.


Robert L. McMillin                     | Voice:    [phone]
Hughes Aircraft/Hughes Training, Inc.  | Fax:      [phone]
Los Angeles, CA                        | Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 12:12:44 CST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: SS7 / CID Question
Organization: AT&T Network Systems, Lisle, IL


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Douglas Scott Reuben) writes:

> 1. Can a 1ESS switch display CID? Are there any software upgrades/hardware
> upgrades which allow it to do so?

   No CID on 1 ESS(tm) switches -- sorry.  The only upgrade that would
permit CID is called "1A ESS Processor Conversion" {a "brain
transplant"} But then it would be called a 1A ESS switch! :-)

> 2. ...  can the 1ESS send out the CID information?

   No.

> That is, what does it take for a switch to send out CID over SS7?

   Can't speak for other vendors, but Bellcore suggests (in
TR-NWT-000317) Calling Party Number be included in all applicable
intra-LATA SS7 calls.  On AT&T SS7-capable switches, "sending" CID
depends on:

   SS7 signaling (Q.71x/T1.111 standards) and
   SS7 trunking  (Q.76x/T1.113 standards)

>3. Can a 1ESS support SS7? I THINK they can, so ...

   Incorrect assumption -- 1 ESS switches DO NOT support SS7 OR CID.

> ... or is it more of a technical reason why one can't get CID from a
> 1ESS?

   The support of SS7 and CID (CLASS features) would take more
resources than are available in a 1 ESS switch.  Same for 2B ESS
switches, 3 ESS switches, cross-bar, SXS, panel, ...  AT&T's
SS7-capable switches are the 1A ESS, 4ESS(tm) and 5ESS(rg.tm)
switching systems.


Al Varney - just my opinion, of course.

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 09:28 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: SS7 / CID Question


Douglas Scott Reuben <[e-mail]> writes:

> 1. Can a 1ESS switch display CID? Are there any software upgrades/hardware
> upgrades which allow it to do so?

No. There are no upgrades that can make this possible. The switch
cannot support SS7 or CLASS from either end of the call. There is no
upgrade possible, since the program-store capacity of the switch is
too limited. With the usual custom calling package loaded, it does not
even have room for "cancel call-waiting".

> Can a 1ESS support this "send out" package, if such a thing
> exists?

There is no such thing as a "send out" package. SS7 requires a
constant two-way data stream between participating switches.

> 3. Can a 1ESS support SS7? I THINK they can, so the reason that you
> can't get CID from a 1ESS isn't because it can't handle SS7, right?

Huh? A 1ESS CANNOT support SS7, period.

> Every 1ESS that I've tried to get CID info from fails (ie, you call
> from the 1ESS to a 5ESS that has CID).

Now you know why.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=[e-mail]
Date: 10 Feb 93 12:28:23 GMT
Subject: Re: Alphanumeric Pagers Question


[e-mail] (Colorado Cyberpunk) asked:

> Do alphanumeric pagers all use the same protocol between the terminal
> and whatever system to which you are connected?

Generally, yes.  It's called (depending on who you ask) either the IXO
or the TAP protocol.

> Are the protocol(s) published/documented anywhere?  If so how do I
> go about getting them?

I only know of one place ... as appendices to the manuals for the
computers that run major paging services.  If you run into another
source for that spec, let me know; people ask so often that if there
were a good answer, it'd be in the FAQ.

> if someone has already written something and it is available (source
> code) on the internet then a pointer to it would be appreciated.

I put the source code for a very, very crude implementation into the
public domain.  There's a copy of it in the Telecom Digest archive
site, but I'm at a total loss to remember what it's called or what
directory it's in, and I don't have ftp access to look it up.  Pat?


J. Brad Hicks     Internet: mc![e-mail]
X.400: c=US admd=ATTMail prmd=MasterCard sn=Hicks gn=Brad


[Moderator's Note: The Telecom Archives is available using anonymous
ftp lcs.mit.edu.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Danny Turner)
Subject: Re: Alphanumeric Pagers Question
Date: 10 Feb 1993 09:24:52 GMT
Organization: Computer Newspaper Services, Howden, UK.


[e-mail] (Colorado Cyberpunk) writes:

> Do alphanumeric pagers all use the same protocol between the terminal
> and whatever system to which you are connected?  Are the protocol(s)
> published/documented anywhere?  If so how do I go about getting them?
> Obviously this is leading to writing some software to do automated
> monitoring of some systems.  Since it isn't for resale if someone has
> already written something and it is available (source code) on the
> internet then a pointer to it would be appreciated.

Most pagers use the TAP (Telocator Alphanumeric Input) protocol this
is freely available, unfortunately I only have a hard copy, but I am
quite willing to fax it to you if you want. We are currently
developing code to run on Sparc's but I have now idea when it will be
in place :-)


Danny Turner    Computer Newspaper Services  The Bishop's Manor
Howden   North Humberside, DN14 7BL  e-mail: [e-mail]
Voice: [phone]    Fax: [phone]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 07:13:45 EST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Niebuhr)
Subject: Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge


In a recent issue of the TELECOM Digest [e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
writes:

> I regularly stay at the Hilton in Pikesville, MD.  I routinely call my
> own 800 number to `phone home' the inexpensive way.  The hotel imposes
> what they call a `nominal' charge of 75 cents to handle this call.

The Best Western Maryland Inn in Laurel, Md. also tacks on surcharges
but I can't remember off-hand what they are ($0.25US for one type of
call (800, calling card, etc. and $0.50 for another (local, I think))

I posted the correct info back in late Sept. 92 or early Oct. 92.


Dave Niebuhr      Internet: [e-mail] / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973  (516)-282-3093

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge
Organization: CTS Network Services (crash, ctsnet), El Cajon, CA
Date: 09 Feb 93 17:41:41 PST


Dave Levenson ([e-mail]) wrote:

> I regularly stay at the Hilton in Pikesville, MD.  I routinely call my
> own 800 number to `phone home' the inexpensive way.  The hotel imposes
> what they call a `nominal' charge of 75 cents to handle this call.

(rest of the message deleted)

The few times that I encountered these 'nominal' charges, I disputed
them upon checkout, and every time they removed them from the bill.
Only once they had to call the manager. His argument: "well it's only
50 cents per call, and I'm sure you're on an expense account". My
response: I will call Amex to refuse the entire hotel bill. He
proceeded to drop the four or five bucks worth of 800 calls.


Javier Henderson   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Unhappy GTE Representatives (was "Secret" Phone Codes)
Organization: CTS Network Services (crash, ctsnet), El Cajon, CA
Date: 10 Feb 93 07:44:54 PST


In regards to the original poster's message about GTE customer service
moving from Virginia to Florida ... I heard that most customer service
reps in southern California are moving to Texas. Apparently GTE is
consolidating the customer service offices into one big one. Has
anyone else heard this rumors?


Javier Henderson   [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 11:04:29 cdt
From: McMahon, Brian D <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Unhappy GTE Representatives


Jeff Wasilko <[e-mail]> writes:

> In speaking to the various reps, I heard that GTE had just moved them
> from an office in Southern VA to the Northern VA office six months
> ago. They just found out that GTE was now planning to close the VA
> office altogether and move the Customer dis-service operation to
> Florida.

This does seem to be a corporate habit.  GTE re-"organizes" so often,
I seriously doubt anyone is completely sure of where the corporation
is at any given time.  Some of the reorgs not only shaft the
employees, they shaft communities, too.  They used to have a fairly
sizable presence in Grinnell.  During one round of cutbacks, I asked a
friend of mine who worked for GTE if those letters stood for "General
Turmoil and Excitement."  He laughed, sort of.  A few months later, he
was looking for work.

Let's see now, where do I send my bill THIS month ...?


Brian McMahon (BDM13)    <[e-mail]>    <[e-mail]>
Postmaster / Acad. Software Support   Grinnell College Computer Services
Grinnell, Iowa 50112 USA   Voice: [phone]   Fax: [phone]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #80
*****************************










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Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 03:03:45 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphone Transmissions


The file attached here was received today and is too long for
inclusion in a regular issue of the Digest. It is submitted for your
comments and consideration. You might want to send your comments to
the FCC as well.


PAT

  From: [e-mail] (Rob Raisch)
  Subject: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphone Transmissions
  Organization: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
  Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 05:10:24 GMT

        --------------NOTICE--------------

This information is provided as a public service by the:

Internet Federal Register Project of Counterpoint Publishing
and The Internet Company (internet.com).

For more information on the availability of this data, please send
mail to:

    [e-mail]

Redistribution of this information is unlimited as long as this notice is
included and not modified in any fashion.

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


47 CFR Parts 2 and 15

[ET Docket No. 93-1; FCC 93-1]

Radio Scanners That Receive Cellular Telephone Transmissions

AGENCY: Federal Communications Commission.

ACTION: Proposed rule.

SUMMARY: This Notice of Proposed Rule Making proposes to deny
equipment authorization to radio scanners capable of receiving
transmissions in the Domestic Public Cellular Radio Telecommunications
Service. This action is taken in response to the Telephone Disclosure
and Dispute Resolution Act (Pub. L. 102-556). The intended effect of
this action is to help ensure the privacy of cellular telephone
conversations.

DATES: Comments must be submitted on or before February 22, 1993, and
reply comments on or before March 8, 1993.

ADDRESSES: Federal Communications Commission, 1919 M Street, NW.,
Washington, DC 20554.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

David Wilson, Office of Engineering and Technology, [phone].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This is a summary of the Commission's
Notice of Proposed Rule Making in ET Docket No. 93-1, FCC 93- 1,
adopted January 4, 1993, and released January 13, 1993. The full text
of this decision is available for inspection and copying during normal
business hours in the FCC Dockets Branch (room 230), 1919 M Street,
NW., Washington, DC. The complete text of this decision also may be
purchased from the Commission's duplicating contractor, Downtown Copy
Center, at [phone] or 1990 M Street, NW., suite 640,
Washington, DC 20036.

Paperwork Reduction

   The following collection of information contained in this proposed
rule has been submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for
review under section 3504(h) of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C.
3504(h)). Copies of this submission may be purchased from the
Commission's duplicating contractor, Downtown Copy Center, at (202)
659-8657 or 1990 M Street, NW., suite 640, Washington, DC 20036.
Persons wishing to comment on this collection of information should
direct their comments to Mr. Jonas Neihardt, Office of Management and
Budget, room 3235 NEOB, Washington, DC 20554, [phone]. A copy
of any comments filed with the Office of Management and Budget should
also be sent to the following address at the Federal Communications
Commission: Federal Communications Commission, Office of the Managing
Director, Paperwork Reduction Project, Washington, DC 20554. For
further information contact Ms. Judy Boley, [phone].

   OMB Number: None.
   Title: Scanning Receiver Compliance Exhibit.
   Respondents: Businesses or other for profit, small businesses/organizations
   Action: New collection.
   Frequency of Response: On occasion reporting.
   Estimated Annual Burden:
   Number of respondents: 40.
   Annual hours per respondent: 0.25.
   Total annual burden: 10.

Needs and Uses: An exhibit accompanying a Form 731 Application for
Equipment Authorization will determine compliance of applicants
requesting authorization to market scanning receivers and frequency
converters with Congressionally mandated regulations. The regulations
prohibit the marketing of radio scanners capable of intercepting, or
being modified to intercept, cellular telephone conversations.

Summary of the Notice of Proposed Rule Making:

   1. By this action, the Commission proposes to amend 47 CFR parts 2
and 15 to prohibit the manufacture or importation of radio scanners
capable of receiving frequencies allocated to the Domestic Public
Cellular Radio Telecommunications Service.  This action is in response
to the Telephone Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act (Act), Pub. L.
102-556.

   2. The Domestic Public Cellular Radio Telecommunications Service
("Cellular Radio Service") provides telephone service to mobile
customers. Cellular telephones use frequencies in the bands 824-849
MHz and 869-894 MHz to connect their users to other cellular system
users and to the Public Switched Telephone Network.

   3. As defined in 47 CFR part 15 scanning receivers, or "scanners,"
are radio receivers that automatically switch between four or more
frequencies anywhere within the 30-960 MHz band. In order to control
their potential to cause harmful interference to authorized radio
communications, the rules require that scanners receive an equipment
authorization (certification) from the Commission prior to marketing.

   4. In the past five years, 22 different models of scanning
receivers capable of receiving cellular telephone transmissions have
been issued grants of equipment authorization. During this same
period, ten other models capable of tuning frequencies between 806 and
900 MHz except for the cellular bands have also been authorized.
Several publications currently on the market describe relatively
simple modifications that users can make to many of the latter
scanning receivers to enable that equipment to receive cellular
telephone transmissions.

   5. The Telephone Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act requires
that the Commission, by April 26, 1993, prescribe and make effective
regulations denying equipment authorization for any scanning receiver
capable of:

    Receiving transmissions in the frequencies allocated to
the domestic cellular radio service,
    Readily being altered by the user to receive transmissions
in such frequencies, or
    Being equipped with decoders that convert digital cellular
transmissions to analog voice audio.

The Act also stipulates that, beginning one year after the effective
date of the regulations adopted to satisfy the above requirements, no
receiver having the above capabilities shall be manufactured in the
United States or imported for use in the United States.

   6. In accordance with the Act, we are proposing to deny equipment
authorization to scanning receivers that tune frequencies used by
cellular telephones. We are also proposing to require applicants for
the authorization of scanning receivers to include in their
applications a statement declaring that their receivers cannot be
tuned to receive cellular telephone transmissions.

   7. Also in accordance with the Act, we are proposing to require
that scanning receivers be incapable of being readily altered by the
user to operate within the cellular bands. To assist us in determining
whether a scanner complies with this requirement, we propose to
require applicants for scanning receiver equipment authorization to
include in their applications a statement pledging that their
receivers cannot be readily altered to receive cellular telephone
transmissions. We also propose to prohibit the authorization of any
scanning receiver for which cellular coverage can be readily restored
by the user. We solicit comment on this proposed reporting requirement
and on the definition of "readily altered."  We also seek comment on
whether additional information, such as why the receiver cannot be
readily altered, should be required.

   8. In further compliance with the Act, we propose to deny equipment
authorization to any scanning receiver that can be equipped with
decoders that convert digital cellular transmissions to analog voice
audio. We invite comment on the potential impact of this requirement
on existing models of scanning receivers.

   9. There currently are a number of frequency converters on the
market that can be used in conjunction with scanners that receive
frequencies below 800 MHz to enable the reception of cellular
telephone transmissions. We are proposing to deny equipment
authorization to converters that tune, or can be readily altered by
the user to tune, cellular telephone frequencies. We will require that
applicants for FCC equipment authorization of frequency converters
used with scanners include in their applications a statement pledging
that the converters cannot be easily altered to enable a scanner to
receive cellular transmissions. We seek comment on whether this
statement should also include evidence indicating why the converter
cannot be easily modified.

   10. The Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis is contained in the
text of the Notice.

11. Comment Dates

   Pursuant to applicable procedures set forth in 47 CFR 1.415 and
1.419, interested parties may file comments on or before February 22,
1993, and reply comments on or before March 8, 1993. In order to
comply with the requirement of the Telephone Disclosure and Dispute
Resolution Act that FCC rules be promulgated within 180 days of
enactment, we will proceed with this Notice without furnishing a prior
text as provided by Article 607 of the United States-Canada Free-Trade
Implementation Act of 1988 (Pub. L. 100-499, 102 Stat. 1851). To do so
would frustrate achievement of a legitimate domestic objective. In
addition, the Commission is not likely to be able to accommodate
requests for extension of the comment periods. To file formally in
this proceeding, you must file an original and five copies of all
comments, reply comments, and supporting comments. If you want each
Commissioner to receive a copy of your comments, you must file an
original plus nine copies. You should send comments and reply comments
to Office of the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission,
Washington, DC 20554. Comments and reply comments will be available
for public inspection during normal business hours in the Dockets
Reference Room of the Federal Communications Commission, 1919 M
Street, NW., Washington, DC 20554.

12. Ex-Parte Rules-Non-Restricted Proceeding

   This is a non-restricted notice and comment rule making proceeding.
Ex parte presentations are permitted, except during the Sunshine
Agenda period, provided they are disclosed as provided in Commission
rules. See generally 47 CFR 1.1202, 1.1203 and 1.1206(a).

   13. For further information on this proceeding contact David
Wilson, Technical Standards Branch, Office of Engineering and
Technology, 202-653-8138.

List of Subjects in 47 CFR Parts 2 and 15:

   Communications equipment, Wiretapping and electronic surveillance.

Federal Communications Commission.

Donna R. Searcy,
Secretary.

   Parts 2 and 15 of title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations are
proposed to be amended as follows:

PART 2-FREQUENCY ALLOCATIONS AND RADIO TREATY MATTERS; GENERAL RULES
AND REGULATIONS

   1. The authority citation for part 2 continues to read as follows:

   Authority: Secs. 4, 302, 303 and 307 of the Communications Act of
1934, as amended, 47 U.S.C. 154, 154(i), 302, 303, 303(r) and 307.

   2. Section 2.975 is amended by adding a new paragraph (a)(8)
to read as follows:

2.975   Application for notification.

   (a) * * *
   (8) Applications for the notification of receivers contained
in frequency converters used with scanning receivers shall be
accompanied by an exhibit indicating compliance with the provisions
of 15.121 of this chapter.
*     *     *     *     *
   3. Section 2.1033 is amended by adding a new paragraph (b)(12)
to read as follows:

2.1033   Application for certification.
*     *     *     *     *
   (b) * * *
   (12) Applications for the certification of scanning receivers under
part 15 shall be accompanied by an exhibit indicating compliance with
the provisions of 15.122 of this chapter.
* * * * *

PART 15-RADIO FREQUENCY DEVICES

   1. The authority citation for part 15 continues to read as follows:

   Authority: Secs. 4, 302, 303 and 307 of the Communications Act of
1934, as amended, 47 U.S.C. 154, 302, 303 and 307.

   2. Section 15.37 is amended by adding a last sentence to paragraph
(b), and adding a new paragraph (f), to read as follows:

15.37   Transition provisions for compliance with the rules.
*     *     *     *     *
   (b) * * * In addition, receivers are subject to the provisions in
paragraph (f) of this section.

 * * * * *

   (f) The manufacture or importation of scanning receivers, and
frequency converters used with scanning receivers, that do not comply
with the provisions of 15.121 shall cease on or before April 26, 1994.
Effective April 26, 1993, the Commission will not accept applications
for equipment authorization for receivers that do not comply with the
provisions of 15.121.  This paragraph does not prohibit the sale or
use of authorized receivers manufactured in the United States, or
imported into the United States, prior to April 26, 1994.

   3. Section 15.121 is added to read as follows:

15.121 Scanning receivers and frequency converters used with scanning
receivers.

   Scanning receivers, and frequency converters used with scanning
receivers, must be incapable of operating (tuning), or readily being
altered by the user to operate, within the frequency bands allocated
to the Domestic Public Cellular Radio Telecommunications Service.
Receivers capable of "readily being altered by the user" include, but
are not limited to, those for which the ability to receive
transmissions in the restricted bands can be added by clipping the
leads of, or installing, a diode, resistor and/or jumper wire; or
replacing a plug-in semiconductor chip. Scanning receivers, and
frequency converters used with scanning receivers, must also be
incapable of converting digital cellular transmissions to analog voice
audio.












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Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 02:31:02 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #82

TELECOM Digest     Thu, 11 Feb 93 02:30:45 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 82

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Exchange Scanning - Enough Already! (Russell Kroll)
    Re: Exchange Scanning - Enough Already! (Nigel Allen)
    Re: Inside AppleTalk/LocalTalk (Rob Bailey)
    Re: AppleTalk Docs Wanted (Matt Healy)
    Re: National Data Superhighways - Access? (Robert L. McMillin)
    Re: National Data Superhighways - Access? (Jon Krueger)
    Re: Modems For LEGAL Use in Germany (Steve Pershing)
    Re: N.E. Telephone Admits Ripoff - Refuses Restitution (Bruce Albrecht)
    Re: Bell Canada Applies to Hike Local Rates (Mark Brader)
    Re: Proposed 511 Service (Carl Moore)
    Cellular Phones Power Control (Lauren Weinstein)
    Clinton and the New Telephone System (Richard Thomsen)
    Re: Differences Between ANI and Caller-ID (Brent Capps)
    Re: ANI on 800 Line w/o T1? (John Higdon)
    Re: "phONEday" Area Code Changes in UK (Tony Harminc)
    Re: Low Cost Access to Network (Brad S. Hicks)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Exchange Scanning - Enough Already!
From: [e-mail] (Russell Kroll)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 22:42:55 GMT
Organization: Unka Phaed's UUCP Thingy, Houston, TX


> [Moderator's Note: It is a little hard to yell at hackers for doing this
> when 'legitimate companies' do it and get away with it. Are any of your
> (in service) lines equipped with Caller-ID?  Operating on the assumption

> So, put Caller-ID on a few of the lines in sequence; let's say put it
> on extensions 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. Observe the Caller-ID unit
> for a few days and see if the same number shows up on all of them.

Unfortunately, we have not been granted the privelege of being able to
have Caller-ID down here.  It went before the PUC some time back, and
failed.  If and when it does arrive, things like this will (hopefully)
become uncommon.


[e-mail] (Russell Kroll)
Unka Phaed's UUCP Thingy, Houston, TX, [phone]
1200/2400/9600/14400 v.32bis/v.42bis

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

From: Nigel Allen <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 19:00:00 -0500
Subject: Re: Exchange Scanning - Enough Already!
Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto


[e-mail] complains that someone appears to be
calling all the phone numbers assigned to his employer in sequence.

Maybe it's not a hacker. Maybe it's a company using an automatic
dialing-announcing machine to sell carpet cleaning or health club
memberships. There is a particularly obnoxious company in Toronto that
uses dialing-announcing machines to get people to call its 976
numbers.

But doesn't the U.S. have federal legislation dealing with automatic
dialing-announcing machines, in addition to any legislation that Bill
Garfield's state may have passed?


Nigel Allen            [e-mail]
Canada Remote Systems - Toronto, Ontario   416-629-7000/629-7044


[Moderator's Note: What is wrong with your theory, Nigel, is that a
carpet cleaning company or health club -- or even a persistent bill
collector -- would not call (was it?) 165 times each night. You don't
sell memberships or cleaning services at midnight. In any event, I
don't think there is legislation at the federal level.   PAT]

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

Date: 10 Feb 93 21:54:52 EST
From: Rob Bailey <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Inside AppleTalk/LocalTalk


Thanks to the coupla dozen folks who responded to my question about
AppleTalk and LocalTalk docs. Unfortunately, I am not one of these
guys that asks questions w/o doing at least a LITTLE research. I
already knew of the popular _Inside xxx_ series and have it; the
documentation I said I was waiting on is the (rumored? I know nothing
about Macs) consolidated documentation that addresses all networking
rather than spread it out over several versions of the OS and
hardware.

Anyway ... what I really wanted anyway was documentation on the
hardware protocols (the low-level OSI stuff) -- right down to level 1
(volts, et al). I'm still looking ...

If this stuff is in the _Inside xxx_ series, don't bother responding,
since I'm acting as a go-between the Net and my Mac programmer, who
actually has those doc's on order already.


Rob Bailey, WM8S, or [e-mail]
I just own Bailey-Hudson - I don't speak for it.

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

From: [e-mail] (Matt Healy)
Subject: Re: AppleTalk Docs Wanted
Organization: Yale University--Genetics
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 02:21:10 GMT


Be sure to get the _SECOND_ edition; 1st is obsolete!

Following is from my copy:

{Inside AppleTalk (r), Second Edition}
by Gursaran S. Sidhu, {et al}
ISBN 0-201-55021-0 $34.95 FPT USA

(c) 1990

Addison-Wesley or

APDA
Apple Computer, Inc.
20525 Mariani Avenue, Mailstop 33-G
Cupertino, CA 95014, USA

If you are responsible for administering an AppleTalk network, or
write software for it, you should have a copy of this book.  It gives
complete, detailed info on all the AppleTalk and related protocols.


Matt Healy   [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 10:35:11 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Robert L. McMillin)
Subject: Re: National Data Superhighways - Access?


Will Martin <[e-mail]> writes:

> There's been recent news coverage of the new administration's plan to
> set up a data network for general public access that has been referred
> to as "National Data Superhighways". Publicized examples of the way
> such a network would be used include such things as letting school
> students run programs on NASA supercomputers that model weather and
> other such computing-intensive tasks. What nobody ever mentions in
> these news items is just what sort of access control and/or security
> is planned for this environment.

What I want to know is, why aren't the telcos pushing for this?  I
think I know the answer: they're too focused on providing POTS (only
when they have to) and CENTREX and high-speed data services (which
they would rather do) to worry about providing universal digital
services which gain them no new, interesting businesses (like
providing "video dial tone").

But what bothers me even more than the telcos lack of initiative in
this matter are the implications of the Feds running such a network.
Based on the way the FCC has behaved itself in matters of free speech
on the broadcast airwaves, it seems an easy step for the datacops to
come along and shut you off the net if you don't profess politically
correct ideology under the "limited resource" doctrine.  In speech-
restricted California, we now have a law that will enable the
PC-minded to arrest fourth graders for calling other kids ugly names.
What's to prevent a similar law against puerile morons doing so on the
digital highway?

A state-controlled "data superhighway" smells like an ingenious way
for the U.S. government to do to two-way digital communications what
the U.K. did to one-way radio broadcasting with the BBC: maintain
control over access, and thus, content.  It would be an excellent tool
for snooping on individuals.  As with driving privileges, no one is
guaranteed access to the net, but if you sign this form handing over
certain rights to the state, we'll let you on. Networking has so far
been a tool for decentralization and democratization, but it could
just as easily become a device allowing the state even further
encroachments into our lives.

GTE may offer terrible service, but at least they don't come into the
houses of teenage hacking suspects, guns cocked.


Robert L. McMillin                     | Voice:    [phone]
Hughes Aircraft/Hughes Training, Inc.  | Fax:      [phone]
Los Angeles, CA                        | Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 03:51:05 -0800
Subject: Re: National Data Superhighways - Access?
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Ingres Corporation, a subsidiary of The ASK Group, Inc.
From: [e-mail] (Jon Krueger)


Will Martin writes:

> administration's plan to set up..."National Data Superhighways"
> ...network for general public access

The idea is hardly new with Clinton or his administration.  Proponents
hope he'll come up with the cash.

> Publicized examples of the way such a network would be used include
> such things as letting school students run programs on NASA
> supercomputers that model weather...[but] NASA can't even afford
> to store its existing magtape inventory in controlled conditions,
> much less copy the data to newer-format storage media. Now they're
> expected to have extra Crays for kids to play on?)

A reasonable point.  In fact any hard look at the proposed uses
reveals the usual quota of silly ideas.  NASA giving away its cycles
to a world filled with cheap commodity cycles closer to the kids is
laughable enough.  To hear it offered as a justification for building
an expensive high performance data network takes the cake.  It would
in fact make more sense to use the net to link the kids' forty million
PCs together to provide "community supercomputing" for NASA.

However, technology history is filled with lots of equally amusing
examples of cost justification that missed the mark.  The interstate
highway system was justified by military uses.  Really.  Two
generations later, we know that ordinary citizens have used it a hell
of a lot more than the military, not to mention trucking, tourism, and
migration.  But at the time, the bean counters were impressed by
"military mobilization".

> What nobody ever mentions in these news items is just what sort of
> access control and/or security is planned for this environment.

What sort of access control and/or security do we have for highways?
After all, someone could drive fifty miles, break into your house, and
be fifty miles away in an hour.  In other words, these are not new
problems, either to systems or highways.  It is true that high speed
generally accessible nets will reveal weaknesses of current systems in
a glaring light.

However, I tend to think the more interesting issues are how a
national net could enable us to work and play together better.
Certainly access and demonstrably secure interoperation will be
required before it's anything but a toy.  But once that's
accomplished, and indeed becomes part of the cost, what would an
affordable megabit per second connecting you to the world, and the
world to you, enable?  If universality of access to this were as
widespread as access to POTS, what would that make possible?  What's
the potential if anyone could open a digital channel to any other
consenting party?  What would you do with it?  What would you like to
connect to?


Jon Krueger  [e-mail]

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

Subject: Re: Modems For LEGAL Use in Germany
From: [e-mail] (Steve Pershing)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 10:42:27 PST
Organization: Questor|Free Usenet News|Vancouver, BC: [phone]


[e-mail] (James R. Perry III) writes:

> I'm looking for a AT-bus compatible 1/2 card modem that can be legally
> used in Germany (modems that do NOT pass German telecomm regulations
> result in VERY high fines)... as in manufactured in the US, Taiwan,
> South Korea, etc. ... CCITT, not Bell standard, anything from 2400
> baud upwards. It is my understanding that CHEAP modems available in
> Germany start at $300 and upwards. This is for a friend of mine who
> lives there and has to live with German regulatory standards.

ZyXEL modems are approved for use in Germany, and are sold there.  We
will also sell them to almost anyone anywhere in the world, at about a
10% profit. (The profit goes to support the free aspects of the
Questor site.)

Their internal card is, unfortunately, full-length but it does
16.8kbps as a proprietary speed (soon 19.2kbps), 14.4kbps class 2 FAX,
and 9600bps voice.  (It sells for around USD345.)

NEW SPEC SHEETS are now available from our mail-server, including
specs on ZyXEL's "Cellular" option.  The spec-sheets have been scanned
in at 300x300dpi as TIFF images, then ZOO-compressed.  The mail-server
will automatically uuencode them (or optionally xxencode).

For information on how to use the mail-server (and for a directory of
available files), send e-mail to:

     [e-mail]

and enter the following at the left margin of an otherwise blank
message body:

help
dir
end

Good luck in your search for a 1/2-length card!


    Steve Pershing, SysAdmin  <[e-mail]>    The QUESTOR Project
  FREE access to Environ, Sci, Med, & AIDS news, and more.  [also UUCP]
    on a ZyXEL-U1496S+  =>  v.42bis, v.32bis, v.33, up to 16,800bps.
                 -=-         -=-         -=-         -=-
   Fones: (+1 604)  Data: 681-0670  Telefax: 682-6160  Voice: 682-6659

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 19:23:57 CST
From: [e-mail] (Bruce Albrecht)
Subject: Re: N.E. Telephone Admits Ripoff - Refuses Restitution


> Yeah, New England Telephone is pretty awful, all right -- it's in the
> same league as some third-world countries you hear about. In May, I
> moved up here to take a job telecommuting out of my home, and tried to
> get them to install four phone lines for a business in my apartment,
> in addition to one personal line. Whooee, this taxed their tiny little
> brains beyond the limit. First I couldn't get a straight answer out of
> them whether this was possible given existing wiring in the building.

A classmate of mine once attempted to get a phone line into his dorm
room at Harvard, and was told by NET that they were out of connections
for the dorm, but if he was willing to get a business line, and pay
for connection to the Telco office (at some outrageous amount), they
could install a line within a few days.  Being a good Harvard law
student, he contacted the Massachusetts PUC to complain, and shortly
thereafter, NET contacted him to about setting up his personal line.


[e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Mark Brader)
Subject: Re: Bell Canada Applies to Hike Local Rates
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 13:20:17 GMT


> In Phase II, effective September 1, a Community Calling Plan (CCP)
> would eliminate toll charges between many suburban exchanges that are
> local to the same major city (such as Toronto, Ottawa-Hull or Montreal
> [except that the Montreal CCP would not be implemented until November
> 1) but long distance from each other.  But local phone rates would
> rise sharply: [in addition to the other increase also requested] ...

Why is that?  The policy here has been that local phone rates are
based on how many telephones *you* can call locally [note to those in
less civilized :-) areas: this means free].  I think that a large
local calling area makes sense in the neighborhood of a big city, so
it's probably a good idea for different Toronto suburbs to become
local to each other.  But why should my rates in Toronto go up because
people in nearby cities are getting this service?


Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto,   utzoo!sq!msb, [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 13:51:18 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Proposed 511 Service


It was West Palm Beach, Fla., and the newspaper was the {Palm Beach
Post} (parent company is Cox Enterprises).

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 12:03 PST
From: [e-mail] (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Cellular Phones Power Control


Greetings.  I see that a message of mine from RISKS migrated over
here, so I wanted to very briefly mention two issues I've been
discussing with various folks since my original posting.

1) The primary reason CDMA does tight power control is not to conserve
   battery power, but rather so that the spread spectrum system
   being used will work at all.  Battery conservation and radiation
   reductions are nice side-effects.

2) A couple of people wrote me saying that ordinary analog (AMPS) cellular
   service also has power control.  While it is true that a power control
   system is defined in the spec, it appears that in actual use most cells
   keep their mobile units set to full power (for whatever class of mobile
   it is, either 3W or 600mw) virtually all of the time.  In fact, I've
   gotten notes from a couple of cell experts who say they know of no AMPS
   systems that actively run power control (I cannot verify this, however).
   The AMPS power control spec utilizes a small number of steps and was
   designed to control inter-cell interference.  In practice, however, I'm
   told that fading is usually so significant that just running at full
   power is the norm.

Further questions on the operational aspects of these systems, as
opposed to the specifications, would probably best be directed to the
manufacturers and operators of the systems.


 --Lauren--

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 13:23:20 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Richard Thomsen)
Subject: Clinton and the New Telephone System


I thought Clinton's team was against discrimination, including age
discrimination.  Yet I saw this on the Digest:

> Some of this work is falling to Jeff Eller, Clinton's director of
> media affairs, a moustachioed fellow who lives and breathes computer
> software, electronic mail, satellite uplinks and the like.

> "What I'm talking about is that we are for the most part younger,
                                                       -------
> computer literate, comfortable with computers and understand their
> value in moving information," Eller said.

Just because someone is older does *not* mean computer illiterate!

I understand that someone in Delco once got fired for making similar
remarks about needing "young blood" in the organization.


Richard Thomsen    [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: I did not get the impression he was saying that
younger people are more computer-literate. I got the impression he was
merely describing the staff he works with. ('we are younger'). If I
were to describe myself, I might say 'I know about computers, I work
for some lawyers, and I am 50 years old.' That would not be saying
that younger/older people do not work for lawyers or that younger/
older people do/do not 'know about computers'.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Brent Capps)
Subject: Re: Differences Between ANI and Caller-ID
Organization: Atlas Telecom Inc.
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 18:13:14 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Fred R. Goldstein) writes:

> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Brent
> Capps) writes:

>> CompuCall has a long and checkered history within BNR.

> It's a bit longer than that.  Way back in 1982, we at Digital did an
> advanced development with Northern on a "Command and Status Link" to
> the SL-1.  CSL used a protocol that vaguely sort of resembled early
> snapshots of ISDN (this was before Q.931 was finished).  In 1986, we
> actively began to build products to this and similar links, under the
> generic term Computer Integrated Telephony.  NT renamed CSL to
> "ISDN/AP" when it was actually released as a product (around 1987).
> Later, they decided to introduce a gratuitous processor in between the
> SL-1 and the user's CIT server, which converts the protocol to a
> different one, which might be (I'm confused myself) called Meridian
> Link.

Yeah, I left out a lot of the details like the CSL name.  The CSL was
designed to be very tightly coupled around the SL-1 architecture, in
part because it was designed by the SL-1 engineers at BNR/Mountain
View, a very separate group from the DMS family designers in Ottawa
Richardson TX and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.  There were
two attempts to adapt the CSL to the DMS architecture, both were
failures because of the way its designers had built the CSL around the
SL-1's terminal node numbering mechanism, which can't be easily
converted to the DMS's frame/bay/shelf/slot heirarchy.  To my
knowledge it STILL won't work with DMS and, having been a member of
the second porting team on the SL-100, I'd say it never will.  CSL
became ISDN/AP became Meridian Link.

However, you're getting CIT mixed up with the CSL.  CIT was a
cooperative thing between DEC and NT designed from the get-go to work
with DMS switches.  It's an entirely separate and fairly primitive
protocol.  I believe CIT is now called SCAI.

> SCAI is on the DMS-100 and SL-100 product lines, while Meridian Link
> is on the SL-1 product line.  Both lines, of course, are now called
> Meridian 1.  They do love to keep the terminology from being clear ...

Well now you know why.  From a technological and historical standpoint
SCAI and Meridian Link have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
Yet they're sold as an integrated product line -- just like Meridian.


Brent Capps
[e-mail] (gay stuff)
[e-mail] (telecom stuff)

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 15:59 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: ANI on 800 Line w/o T1?


Tas Dienes <[e-mail]> writes:

> Does anybody know if it is possible to get ANI on an 800 line without
> having to get T1 service?  I just have a couple of regular (actually,
> Centranet) lines - local service is GTE, 800 is Sprint.  Sprint says
> no, but I was wondering if anybody else can?

In order to receive realtime ANI from a long distance carrier, you
must have a "trunk-side connection". All connections from your telco's
switch are "line-side connections". So the answer is no, you cannot
get realtime ANI without having a direct trunk connection to a
carrier's switch.

There is a way around this however. Stay tuned.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 23:19:32 EST
From: Tony Harminc <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: "phONEday" Area Code Changes in UK


Linc Madison <[e-mail]> wrote:

> * All UK geographic area codes will have a 1 inserted after the
> initial 0.  For example, the Dundee code changes from 0382 to 01382;
> the London codes from 071 to 0171 and 081 to 0181; and so on.

I have cousins in Bedford, where the current area code is 0234.  So
presumably it will become 01234.  Bedford has six digit numbers, but
unfortunately the 567 range is not allocated, so no one will have
01234 567890 unless that range is opened up.

Still, people living in Bedford are going to get some suspicious looks
when they first start giving out their new phone numbers.


Tony Harminc

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

From: mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=[e-mail]
Date: 10 Feb 93 22:57:33 GMT
Subject: Re: Low Cost Access to Network


[e-mail] (Lars Poulsen) said:

> The new low end in turnkey packages is the Rockwell NetHopper. You
> attach one to your ethernet at home** and the other to the ethernet at
> work; ...

Doesn't that assume that the ethernet at work is gatewayed into the
ethernet?  We no got that.  I doubt that most people have that.


J. Brad Hicks     Internet: mc![e-mail]
X.400: c=US admd=ATTMail prmd=MasterCard sn=Hicks gn=Brad

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #82
*****************************










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Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 10:47:48 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #83

TELECOM Digest     Thu, 11 Feb 93 10:47:45 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 83

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Southwestern Bell to Buy Cable Systems (Washington Post via Karl Johnson)
    ANI on 800 Line w/o T1? (Tim Gorman)
    Re: TCP Time-to-Live (TTL) Field (Matt Healy)
    Meaning of TTL in TCP/IP (was Jack Decker's FTP Problem) (Matti Aarnio)
    Re: Jack Decker's FTP Problem (Ehud Gavron)
    Motorola Date Codes (Leroy Donnelly)
    Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Illegal (Mike Riddle)
    Re: Frame Relay Congestion Question (Fred R. Goldstein)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 93 18:39:08 EST
From: [e-mail]  (Karl Johnson)
Subject: Southwestern Bell to Buy Cable Systems


According to {The Washingotn Post} on Wednesday, February 10
Southwestern Bell will buy the cable TV franchises for Montgomery
County, MD and Arlington County, VA for $650 Million from Hauser
Communications.  This would be the first Baby Bell to own a Cable
Company, and could according to The Post "alter the debate surrounding
federal telecommunications policy."

This would be another area where SWB does business in the Washington
area.  SWB owns the local Cellular One franchise and the "One Book"
Yellow Pages for Washington.

The sale should be compleated by mid summer according to SWB.  The
combined systems would amount to the 12th largest cable system in the
nation, and would allow SWB use the existing wires to luanch the next
generation of cellular telephone service, according to observers.
Several (unmentioned) cable companies are attempting to adapt their
cable system to form the backbone for Personal Comminications Service.
PCS on the cable systems here would put SWB into competion with C&P
(Bell Atlantic), which is testing an experimental TV system in
Arlington that uses phone wires which would conpete with SWB.

The article also mentions that SWB would need a waiver to make this
purchase the cable companies, as this technically is a violation of
the restrictions on long-distance service.  SWB said it thought the
waiver would be granted.  The article mentions that Pacific Telesis
has been attempting to get one since 1989 so it may buy the cable
system in Chicago.

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

Date: 11 Feb 93 10:30:44 EST
From: tim gorman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: ANI on 800 Line w/o T1?


In TELECOM Digest V13 #82 [e-mail] writes the following:

> Tas Dienes <[e-mail]> writes:

>> Does anybody know if it is possible to get ANI on an 800 line without
>> having to get T1 service?  I just have a couple of regular (actually,
>> Centranet) lines - local service is GTE, 800 is Sprint.  Sprint says
>> no, but I was wondering if anybody else can?

> In order to receive realtime ANI from a long distance carrier, you
> must have a "trunk-side connection". All connections from your telco's
> switch are "line-side connections". So the answer is no, you cannot
> get realtime ANI without having a direct trunk connection to a
> carrier's switch.

> There is a way around this however. Stay tuned.

First, there are ways to get ANI over 800 lines without T1 service. It
depends entirely on what your long distance provider offers. If the
only method for providing the ANI is over a Primary Rate or Basic Rate
ISDN line, the T1 route *may* be the only way to go (I say may
because, dependent upon your geographical relationship with the
carriers switch, it may be possible to provide Basic Rate ISDN over
copper pairs). If the carrier can offer standard trunking with the ANI
sent as an MF (or possible DTMF) digit stream and your PBX can handle
the specific format, then a T1 is not a requirement.  If your 800
number is in the Sprint assigned 800-NNX ranges then you may have to
wait until May 1 to move your service to another carrier that can
provide you ANI over something other than a T1.

Second, all connections from your telco's switch are not "line-side
connections", at least in SWBT in Kansas. Maybe we are somehow more
progressive than other areas but I doubt it. The connection you get to
the telco switch should be dependent upon your requirements for
operation. These may not always meet tariffed offerings, but a
"special arrangement request" type offering should be available from
all LEC's.

Third, having said trunk side connections are available from the
telco's switch, it is also necessary to point out that this probably
won't help you in getting your ANI in any way. No switch I am aware of
that is in use in the LEC networks will accept ANI from a carrier so
the telco switches couldn't tandem ANI to you anyway. The telco
switches aren't setup to pass ANI on the trunk side unless you are the
billing office for a toll call, are a 911 PSAP, or are a Feature Group
D interLATA carrier. If your PBX can handle Feature Group D signaling
formats, you want to go through the process of being designated as an
interLATA carrier, want to get an 800 NXX assigned (or wait until May
1 when 800 portability comes into play), and provide trunks into every
sector where you may receive calls from then this may be a viable
solution.

Although not even close to being all inclusive, perhaps the following
picture may give a better understanding than the prose above.


       LINE SIDE                              TRUNK SIDE
                       ____________/               \
                      |           |----------------- Feature Grp B
                      |           |\               / FG D (ani sent)
                      |           |
   O--O               |           |/     (TL)      \
    /\ ---------------|           |----------------- Centrex Tie lines
   /--\               |           |\               /
                      |           |
   ATION SET          |           |/     (DO)
                      |           |----------------- PBX (see line side)
          (SVC CODE)  |           |\
   ______             |           |
        |/  (TK)     \|           |      (DI)      \
        |-------------|           |----------------- PBX (DID trks)
   PBX  |\           /|           |                /
        |             |           |
        |     (DO)   \|           |                \
        |-------------|           |----------------- CAMA (ani sent)
   -----|            /|           |                / (carries intraLATA
                      |           |                   toll)
                      |           |
           /         \|           |                \
   RI ISDN -----------|           |----------------- E911 (ani sent)
           \         /|           |                /
                      |           |
                      |           |/               \
                      |           |----------------- PRI ISDN
                      |-----------|\               /


Tim Gorman - SWBT
*Opnions are mine, any resemblance to official policy is coincidence*

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

From: [e-mail] (Matt Healy)
Subject: Re: TCP Time-to-Live (TTL) Field
Organization: Yale U. - Genetics
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 00:38:19 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail].
gov (Mark Boolootian) wrote:

> [e-mail] (Aninda Dasgupta) writes:

>> What can be done to rectify this problem? The most obvious, though
>> often impossible, thing to do is to change the default of 60 seconds
>> for the TCP TTL that is compiled into the UNIX (or other OS) TCP
>> software.

> Thought I'd mention the following because it wasn't entirely clear in
> the post:

> While the TTL is supposed to be the amount of time a packet is
> allowed to live in the network, in general, it is used as a hop count.
> Each router the packet passes through typically will decrement the TTL
> field by one.  If a router has excessively long queues and the packet
> has to hang around for some time, the router may elect to decrement
> the TTL field by some larger amount.

> Although I didn't see the original post, I find it very hard to
> believe the user has a path with so many hops that the TTL is
> expiring.  The Internet is broad, but not that broad.  By the way,
> most implemenations of traceroute use a TTL of 30.

Use of the TTL field is far from consistent.  The following is from my
SGI's on-line documentation for the ping command (man ping):

TTL DETAILS

     The TTL value of an IP packet represents the maximum number of IP
routers that the packet can go through before being thrown away.  In
current practice you can expect each router in the Internet to
decrement the TTL field by exactly one.

     The TCP/IP specification says that the TTL field for TCP packets
should be set to 60, but many systems use smaller values (IRIX and
4.3BSD use 30, 4.2BSD used 15).

     The maximum possible value of this field is 255, and most Unix
systems set the TTL field of ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to 255.  This
is why you will find you can "ping" some hosts, but not reach them
with telnet or ftp.

     In normal operation ping prints the ttl value from the packet it
receives.  When a remote system receives a ping packet, it can do one
of three things with the TTL field in its response:

   + Not change it; this is what Berkeley Unix systems did before the
     4.3BSD-tahoe release.  In this case the TTL value in the received
     packet will be 255 minus the number of routers in the round-trip
     path.

     + Set it to 255; this is what IRIX and current Berkeley Unix systems
     do. In this case the TTL value in the received packet will be 255
     minus the number of routers in the path from the remote system to
     the pinging host.

     + Set it to some other value.  Some machines use the same value
     for the ICMP packets that they use for TCP packets, for example
     either 30 or 60. Others may use completely wild values.


Matt Healy   [e-mail]

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

From: Matti Aarnio <[e-mail]>
Subject: Meaning of TTL in TCP/IP (was Jack Decker's FTP Problem)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 12:29:27 +0200


Lately I have seen this "TTL is time in seconds" dream on many places.
Who originated that idea?  Current IP version 4 does not contain an
absolute time stamp in each datagram, rather it has a hop-count.

In comp.dcom.telecom Aninda Dasgupta <[e-mail]> wrote:

> By looking at Jack Decker's traceroute output, it seems that his TCP
> packets are going through too many gateways.

Nope, 30 is quite normal amount of router hops from one edge to
another of the present Internet network. Even 50 is not that unusual.

> Though these gateways (the ones run by ANS and MERIT) are fast boxes
> (often RS/6000 boxes), and though they are for the most part connected
> by T3 links, his TCP packets are just not getting to mintaka in time.

Now Dasgupta sounds like talking about time as wall-clock time!
However that route report showed max times to be under five seconds.

> You see, every TCP packet has a "Time-to-live" field.  As the packet
> goes through each gateway, or "hop," as they are called in TCP
> parlance, the Time-to-live (TTL) field is decremented.  As is shown by
> traceroute,

Yep, decremented by one per each router HOP on one way.  When router
detects a TTL value 0, it sends back an ICMP-TTL-exceeded notification
which has TTL set to max value (at least if router software is not
faulty at that ... most SunOSes prior to 4.1.2 were using unfixed BSD
4.2 TCP/IP, which had a fault there.)

> when the packet reaches a node that sees a value of 0 in the TTL
> field, it simply discards the packet and echoes back to the original
> sender that the packet's TTL has expired. [For further reading on this
> topic, see Douglas Comer's excellent book "Internetworking with
> TCP/IP"] It is interesting to note that often, Jack's packets seems to
> reach very close to mintaka.

> What can be done to rectify this problem? The most obvious, though
> often impossible, thing to do is to change the default of 60 seconds
> for the TCP TTL that is compiled into the UNIX (or other OS) TCP
> software.

Nope, it is not SECONDS, it is HOPS.  (Gomer does explain it well)
(And it is explained well in the original RFCs too, see RFC 791).

Most commonly this problem is with network routers goofing their
routes to given target (sub)network. Usually this is a configuration
problem, which has created a black-hole on the routing.

> In case root access to the dialup host is not available, Jack might
> try connecting to a different host, preferably in a different part of
> the country than from where he is trying.  As I said, it is simply a
> matter of getting to mintaka with a few less hops on the Internet.

This may or may not solve the problem in case it is a routing
black-hole in the network.  Finding out whose routers are last ones
that are reachable, and then reaching for their management with
questions about unrechable networks further out will be a more efficient
way.

> Often, trying ftp from a "larger" host helps.  By larger, I mean a
> host that is directly on the 35.1 domain.  That way, he will save the
> two hops that he has on the 35.214 domain.

These are not "domains", you are referring to a subnetted class A IP
network, which has a 8 bit network number (1..63) and a 24 bit
host-number within that network with first 8 bits of host-number being
used as subnet identity at the level where encountered routers reside
(and what is presented above.)

> I suspect, a saving of just two hops is all he needs, since he has
> been able to get to radole.lcs.mit.edu.  Moreover, he should try to
> ftp late at night, when the other usual TCP traffic will be less and
> therefore, his TCP packets will get to mintaka faster, hopefully
> before the 60 sec. TTL.

Two hops out of 15 used ones would help?  No, I don't think so.


Matti Aarnio <[e-mail]>  OH1MQK
    IP-(Inter-)networker since 1989

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

From: [e-mail] (Ehud Gavron 602-570-2000 x. 2546)
Subject: Re: Jack Decker's FTP Problem
Date: 10 Feb 93 17:41:00 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: ACES Consulting Inc.


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Aninda Dasgupta) writes:

> By looking at Jack Decker's traceroute output, it seems that his TCP
> packets are going through too many gateways.

Those gateways are on the route between him and his destination.

> and though they are for the most part connected by T3 links, his TCP
> packets are just not getting to mintaka in time.

Not true.  Time is NOT a factor.

> You see, every TCP packet has a "Time-to-live" field.

And when they first created gateways they realized it would be too
much hassle to decrement TTL by one every second, so instead they
decrement it by one EVERY GATEWAY.

> What can be done to rectify this problem? The most obvious, though
> often impossible, thing to do is to change the default of 60 seconds
> for the TCP TTL that is compiled into the UNIX (or other OS) TCP

60 hops (for now TTL means hop-count-maximum) is enough to reach any
destination in the universe connected to our Internet.  It is not 60
seconds.

Most likely it's 15 (AT&T 3B2s have this as default) and should be
modified up to 40 or so.

> software.  I have done this in UNIX so I will describe that.  Editing
> the file in_proto.c and changing the default of 60 assigned to the
> variable named tcp_ttl, to something like 120, should work.  After the
> editing, the kernel will have to be rebuilt (using make).

This is probably true although I suspect the number he Jack had was
not 60.

> two hops that he has on the 35.214 domain.  I suspect, a saving of
> just two hops is all he needs, since he has been able to get to
> radole.lcs.mit.edu.

This part is EXCELLENT ADVICE for a quick workaround with little effort.

> Moreover, he should try to ftp late at night, when the other usual
> TCP traffic will be less and therefore, his TCP packets will get to
> mintaka faster, hopefully before the 60 sec. TTL.

This is totally bogus.


Ehud Gavron        (EG76)     [e-mail]
The research thinktank of the southwest.

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 19:26:42 CST
From: [e-mail] (Leroy Donnelly)
Subject: Motorola Date Codes
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: DRBBS Technical BBS, Omaha


For those who own Motorola phones the following will tell you when it
was made.


YEAR    CODE      MONTH       CODE

1984     J        January    A or B
1985     K        February   C or D     EXAMPLE:
1986     L        March      E or F         SERIAL NUMBER: 289CLW4321
1987     M        April      G or H                            ^^
1988     N        May        J or K                            ||
1989     P        June       L or M                   YEAR ----+|
1990     Q        July       N or P                             |
1991     R        August     Q or R                  MONTH -----+
1992     S        September  S or T
1993     T        October    U or V                  November 1986
1994     U        November   W or X
1995     V        December   Y or Z

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

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 16:11:28 CST
From: [e-mail] (Mike Riddle)
Subject: Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Illegal
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Inns of Court, Papillion, NE


Ken Jongsma <[e-mail]>) writes:

> Does anyone know what the deal is on this ruling? I suppose that
> someone thinks tying an unregulated rental offering of a terminal to a
> regulated long distance offering is a "bad thing."

A correspondent on the Compuserve Telecommunications forum confirms
that the problem seems to be bundling an untariffed service (the
keyboard,etc.)  with tariffed services.  He also noted that virtually
only AT&T can get "dinged" by the FCC over this kind of "violation."

 From another post from an individual who works for Mother, I'm
presuming that AT&T is pursuing a regulatory solution.  I, for one, am
going to keep my eye out for the right reference number so I can
meaningfully add my "two cents" worth.


          <<<< insert standard disclaimer here >>>>
[e-mail]        |  Riddle Law Office
[e-mail]        |  [phone] (Data/Fax)
Sysop of 1:285/28@Fidonet          |  V.32bis/V.42bis/Gp III V.17

Maximus 2.01wb
Riddle Law Office (1:285/28)

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: Frame Relay Congestion Question
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 05:32:59 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Shu
Zhang) writes:

> Is it possible to make some modifications on the address field of the
> CLLM messages? for example, use the same address value as that of the
> ordinary data frames in the backward direction. I think this will
> allow the intermediate nodes to relay CLLM messages in the same way
> they relay the data frames, without adding any specific processing to
> CLLM messages.  Am I right?

No.  The CLLM has a single, defined address.  All other possible Q.922
address values are somebody else's, either user virtual circuits or
network-reserved virtual circuits.  It's consolidated!  And they have
to be processed.  Remember, user DLCIs are bidirectional, so the user
owns the DLCI value in both directions, whether the user traffic is
really bidirectional or not.


Fred R. Goldstein
[e-mail] k1io or [e-mail]
voice:[phone] Standard Disclaimer: Opinions are mine alone;
sharing requires permission.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #83
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #84

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 12 Feb 93 01:02:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 84

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: German PCN License (E1) Given to VEBA and Thyssen (Lutz Albers)
    Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished (Kauto Huopio)
    Re: 1ESS and CNID (Arnette Schultz)
    Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs (Glenn McComb)
    Re: Meet Me at the Power Line (John Nagle)
    Re: Using Fax Machine + Fax Modem as a Scanner (Jarom Hagen)
    Re: SS7 / CID Question (Mark Baker)
    Re: AT&T Are You Listening? (John Higdon)
    Re: Human Factors For Speech Recognition Systems (Charles Hoequist)
    Re: What The Heck is 4,941,976.667 Hz Good For? (Bob Clements)
    Followup: Rochester Tel Wants to Split (Phillip Dampier)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 Feb 93 15:44:58 EST
From: Lutz Albers <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: German PCN License (E1) Given to VEBA and Thyssen


In <TELECOM Digest V13/076>  [e-mail] (H. Shrikumar) wrote:

> I wonder what the competitive environment is?

> Would E-plus and E-star compete? What about D1 and D2? If not
> today, are there plans? Or is there a zonal split?

  [stuff deleted]

> PS: Wow! The services and companies providing them are also named
> so methodically!! An admittedly irrational conclusion re. the
> possible "non"-competitiveness springs in my mind ! :-) Or is it just
> the fabled German perfection at work ??

Well, I think an explanation of the German celluar networks is in
place here.

The oldest working celluar network is the B/B2 network, which is
operated by the DBP Telekom (DBPT) (our dear beloved telecom service
provider ;-). This is an analogue network with no roaming (you need to
know the zone where the called party is located). This network is to
be dismantled around the end of 1994.

The successor of the B network is the C network, which is also
operated by the DBPT. Again this is an analogue network. For this
network you don't need to know the exact location of the called party,
just calling 0161 + number will get you through. According to
information of the DBPT this network uses cells with a radius of
approximatly 20 km and can serve up to 800.000 customers.

A few years ago the German Ministry for Telecommunications decided to
give licenses for a new digital celluar network (based on the new
European GSM standard) to the DBPT (D1) as well as to the private
consostium Mannesmann Mobilfunk (D2). Both networks went into service
last year (at least in the metropolitan areas and along the freeways).
To understand the additional introduction of the E network one needs
to know that both provide plans to cover nearly all areas of Germany.
BTW, this network will provide international roaming in countries with
GSM networks.

Last year the German Ministry decided to give an additional license for
an additional digital network which will base also on the GSM
standard, but will use smaller units with less power. The DBPT was
barred from building such a network so two consortiums names E-plus
(Veba, Thyssen et al) and E-star (BMW et al) were bidding for the
license which was given finally to E-plus. This network will not cover
all of Germany.

So there will be now four celluar networks competing (two of them run
by the DBPT).


Lutz Albers          InterNet:   [e-mail]
Reginfriedstr. 10    CompuServe: 100022.1102
8000 - Muenchen 90   Phone:      [phone]
Germany              Fax:        [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Kauto Huopio)
Subject: Re: Prodigy <> Internet Gateway Almost Finished
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 05:31:32 GMT
Organization: Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland


In article <[e-mail]> I wrote:

> So, it might be even possible to get a telnet connection to BIX?

I got an answer from Sarat Vemuri ([e-mail]) that
x25.bix.com is the way to telnet to BIX. The DNS (Domain Name Service)
gives these addresses to x25.bix.com:

x25.bix.com     internet address = 192.80.63.1
x25.bix.com     internet address = 192.80.63.2
x25.bix.com     internet address = 192.80.63.3
x25.bix.com     internet address = 192.80.63.4
x25.bix.com     internet address = 192.80.63.6

So, there seems to be plenty of capacity. Someone with a BIX account,
give x25.bix.com a try and report to comp.dcom.telecom the results!!

Sarat notes the charge: "Charges are $1/hr billed to your BIX
account."


Kauto Huopio ([e-mail])
Mail: Kauto Huopio, Laserkatu 3 CD 363,  SF-53850 Lappeenranta,Finland

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 18:01 CST
Subject: Re: 1ESS and CNID


In Telecom-Digest: Volume 13, Issue 76, Message 11 of 16 DREUBEN@
EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU (Douglas Scott Reuben) writes:

> A number of question have come up regarding SS7 and CID:
> 1. Can a 1ESS switch display CID? Are there any software upgrades/hardware
> upgrades which allow it to do so?

Nope.  1ESS does not support SS7 or LASS features in any form.  This
includes Caller Identification features such as Calling Number
Delivery or Calling Name Delivery.  The poor old 1ESS just doesn't
have the memory space to support the extensive software for these
advanced features.

The 1ESS does not support SS7.  Never has, never will.  The 1A ESS is
a different story.  It does fully support LASS and SS7.

Since a 1ESS can not support SS7, Calling Party Number (a.k.a. caller
identification) is never sent from a 1ESS.  A 1ESS will of course
signal ANI (billing number) information using the (older) Equal Access
Multi-frequency signaling protocol. (See FAQ to understand the
differences between CPN and ANI.)

> Every 1ESS that I've tried to get CID info from fails (ie, you call
> from the 1ESS to a 5ESS that has CID).  Is the Telco doing this
> intentionally, ie, so that customers on the 1ESS who can't hit *67 to
> make their calls private will not have to show their number to
> EVERYONE they call, or is it more of a technical reason why one can't
> get CID from a 1ESS?

I assume you receive an "Out of Area" or "Number unavailable"
indication.  Technical reason.  1ESS does not support SS7 or LASS
(including the "privacy" features).  It doesn't need the privacy
features, because an originating party's number (CPN) is never
transmitted from a 1ESS.

Another reader from Canada remarked on what they assumed was Pacific
Bell blocking Caller Identification because their display for calls
originating from California was "Private" not "Out of Area" (or number
unavailable, etc).  It is possible. Several switches support an "all
numbers private" indication.  I'm not sure if this is a Bellcore
requirement, or simply a fact of Calling Number Delivery evolution.
(Some states that don't permit calling number/name delivery wanting to
insure that numbers are "never" delivered, even out of state.)


Arnette Schultz [e-mail]
(Opinions and inaccuracies are all mine!)

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

From: [e-mail] (Glenn McComb)
Subject: Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 06:38:58 GMT


Oops. Sorry to hear that your credit card call got hit for an
additional 0.75

When I originally posted this a while back, I wanted to be able to
access MCI from my primary number, not just credit card access.  I
mean: 10222+ dialling.

BTW, Execuline, which I now use for 415/510 calls from 408 charges
0.12/min no matter what time of day.  Thank you speed dial!


Glenn A. McComb        [phone] ofc * 725-0222 fax
McComb Research        PO Box 220 * Cupertino, CA 95015
gmccomb @ netcom.com                MHS: glenn @ mccomb

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

From: [e-mail] (John Nagle)
Subject: Re: Meet Me at the Power Line
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 02:02:42 GMT


[e-mail] writes:

In <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
writes:

> The inverse-square law holds only for point sources.  For a line, the
> corresponding law is straight reciprocal: inversely proportional to
> the distance from the line.

       However, for a multiconductor power line, there is a
cancellation effect from the return current, so the geometry is more
complicated.  The ratio of the distance between the conductors and the
distance to the conductors is key.  When you are far away from a pair
of wires near each other (like an ordinary power cord) the effects of
the two conductors cancel out.  Twisted pairs cancel even better.  So
an analysis based on a single-line model isn't valid.

       Three-phase lines require more analysis, but I think that the
effects of all three lines cancel similarly, since there's no net
electron flow (the current in all three lines instantaneously sums to 0).


John Nagle

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

From: [e-mail] (Jarom Hagen)
Subject: Re: Using Fax Machine + Fax Modem as a Scanner
Date: 11 Feb 93 18:37:14 GMT
Organization: NPRI, Alexandria VA


[e-mail] (Robert J Barth) writes:

> nHow can I use a standalone fax machine as a scanner?

> I would like to be able to plug my fax machine into my pc fax/modem,
> and press a few buttons, and end up with a fax format file of whatever
> was on the sheet of paper ...

All you need to do is to connect the fax and the modem with phone line
cable, have the fax dial a number to make it look for a fax and then
put your fax modem on manual receive (from the software).

It works for me.


Jarom
*Not paid for and/or endorsed by NPRI.  602 Cameron St, Alexandria VA 22314
(UUCP: ...uunet!uupsi!npri6!jhagen)       (Internet: [e-mail])

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 07:59 CST
Subject: Re: SS7 / CID Question


> A number of question have come up regarding SS7 and CID:

> 1. Can a 1ESS switch display CID? Are there any software upgrades/hardware
> upgrades which allow it to do so?

The 1 ESS(tm) Switch simply exhausted its available address spectrum
several years ago to allow new capabilities such as SS7 and CLASS to
be implemented on it.  The 1 ESS processor was designed in the early
60's and has a maximum on 768K words of magnetic card storage for
generic program and office data (both equipment configuration and
line/trunks/routing type translation information.)

The 1A ESS switch does support SS7 and CLASS services.  The 1A ESS is
a 1 ESS with a 1A processor which was designed in the mid 70's and has
a 12Mbyte memory spectrum.

> 2. Assuming a 1ESS can't offer CID to its local subscribers, if it is
> connected with SS7 to a 5ESS or a DMS or in general some CID-capable
> switch, can the 1ESS send out the CID information?

1 ESS can't do SS7 therefore it can not send out CID.

> Every 1ESS that I've tried to get CID info from fails (ie, you call
> from the 1ESS to a 5ESS that has CID).  Is the Telco doing this
> intentionally, ie, so that customers on the 1ESS who can't hit *67 to
> make their calls private will not have to show their number to
> EVERYONE they call, or is it more of a technical reason why one can't
> get CID from a 1ESS?

Since 1 ESS does not support SS7 or CLASS it does not even support the
ability for customers to dial *67.  Almost all calls are carried via
MF signaling in and out of 1 ESS switches.


Mark Baker      AT&T Network Systems

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

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 10:41 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: AT&T Are You Listening?


[e-mail] writes:

> I am thinking about MCI instead.

> I don't want to switch carriers.

Then don't. Use AT&T for whatever AT&T does well, and use MCI for
whatever you perceive to be the better deal from that company. The
concept of "switching" is a matter of brainwashing from the long
distance carriers. Yes, you can only have one PIC or "dial 1"
provider, but you can have as many accounts with as many companies as
you like.

For instance, keep AT&T as your PIC and then sign up with MCI for the
international plan, keeping your MCI account secondary. Then when you
call China (or whereever), prepend '10222' to the call. Frontline
salesslime will tell you that you have to "switch" to take advantage
of a particular plan, but that is 99.9% hogwash.

> So if there are any AT&T people out there who can pass on these
> comments to the powers that be, please do so. You may be losing
> another customer to the opposition.

I have used various plans offered by Sprint and MCI, but I have never
"left" AT&T. There is no need.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1993 15:08:00 +0000
From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Human Factors For Speech Recognition Systems


This is just to add a few bits and pieces to Norm Tiedemann's
response on this topic.

While it is true, as he wrote, that large-vocabulary systems (say, >
1000 words) by and large haven't been trained for telephony speech,
this isn't because vendors are perverse.  The data gathering necessary
to do the training even for small-vocabulary systems requires
considerable time and money, and it's not clear what the return would
be. Dragon Systems, for example, focuses on applications like spoken
input to a word processor. That's not something people want to do over
the telephone very often. I suspect these hurdles are even more
daunting for vendors than the problems of telephony speech, nasty as
that is.

Some additional sources of information:

_IEEE Computing_ Magazine for August, 1990 was devoted to "Voice in
Computers", or something similar, and I seem to remember some articles
there on speech recognition in the public network.

Norm Tiedemann mentioned one set of ICASSP proceedings. I would expand
that and say pretty much all of them in the last five or six years
have something on telephony ASR.

More human-factors oriented work is in the ACM CHI (Computer-Human
Interaction) Journal. They also have a yearly convention which
publishes proceedings. In fact, there's a good article in the 1991
proceedings of CHI. That's the name of it, incidentally: 'Proceedings
of CHI'. Sounds like a conference on Eastern philosophy.  The article
is "Should we or shouldn't we use spoken commands in voice interfaces?"

Good luck. Since this is a topic I'm following, I'm interested in
whatever gets turned up.


Charles Hoequist   |Internet: [e-mail]
BNR Inc.           | 919-991-8642
PO Box 13478, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3478

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

Subject: Re: What The Heck is 4,941,976.667 Hz Good For?
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 15:20:51 -0500
From: [e-mail]


In TELECOM Digest, "John R. Ackermann" <[e-mail]>
wrote:

[An explanation of what he thought that frequency, 4,941,976.667 Hz,
was all about.]

In private email, we have determined that he was wrong, basing his
response on a mis-remembered but similar number used in some frequency
standards.

So my question still stands:

What would AT&T have wanted that rather oddball frequency for, so
precisely that they bought special customized atomic standards to
generate it?  Repeating: It really is a special for AT&T, not a
consequence of the rubidium standard's internal workings.


Thanks for any wisdom.

Bob Clements, K1BC, [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Phillip Dampier)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 13:03:46 -0500
Subject: Followup: Rochester Tel Wants to Split


Here are further details on Rochester Tel's proposal, courtesy of a
trade publication for the cable television industry ...


ROCHESTER TEL WANTS TO SPLIT
By Rachel W. Thompson  Multichannel News
February 8, 1993

Anticipating competition, Rochester Tel last week proposed breaking
its New York operations into two pieces.

Under a plan filed with the New York State Public Service Commission
last Wednesday, rate-regulated R-Net would take over the assets and
personnel that support basic switching and transmission functions in
the six-county Rochester area and deregulated R-Com would market both
wholesale and retail services using R-Net's network, which would also
be available to competitors.

Time Warner, Inc. is part owner of FiberNet, Inc., an alternate-access
telephone company that operates in Rochester alongside Time Warner's
Greater Rochester Cablevision.

FiberNet vice president Jim Geiger called Rochester Telephone's
proposal "a structure that the pro-competitive regulators have hinted
at," and "commendable."  But if the company believes it can prevent a
physical overbuild of its facilities through the restructuring, that's
"faulty logic, considering that [the cable company is] about 1,400
miles into [a] fiber overbuild."

GRC, some of whose fiber belongs to FiberNet under a condominium
arrangement, passes 300,000 of the 360,000 homes in Rochester
Telephone's local-access telephone area (LATA) "with a broadband
plant, and 200,000 of them are customers," Geiger said.

"By the time that [Rochester Telephone's plan] could conceivably
become effective," FiberNet will be ready to offer a full range of
telecommunications services, he said.  Asked whether FiberNet would be
ready to start offering basic residential services, he answered, "I
would say that as the rest of the local exchange becomes deregulated,
we're certainly interested in exploring those niches."

FiberNet is a joint venture of Time Warner, Petrocelli Industries and
three individuals, including Geiger, and was founded in April 1990.

Petrocelli Industries is a privately held electric and communications
contracting firm based in New York City that does construction for
cable and telephone companies, including Teleport Communications
Group.  Time Warner is a minority partner in FiberNet, Geiger said.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #84
*****************************










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Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 02:08:01 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #85

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 12 Feb 93 02:08:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 85

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State (Ken Dykes)
    Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State (Dave Niebuhr)
    Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones (Robert Loeber)
    Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones (G. Waigh)
    Re: Running Out of Area Codes (Tony Harminc)
    Re: Running Out of Area Codes (Carl Moore)
    Re: Running Out of Area Codes (John Adams)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Dave Niebuhr)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Henry Mensch)
    Re: AT&T Are You Listening? (Laurence Chiu)
    AT&T vs. MCI, China, etc. (was AT&T Are You Listening?) (C Pedregal-Martin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1993 19:49:13 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Ken Dykes)
Subject: Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State


In Telecom-Digest: Volume 13, Issue 76, Message 10 of 16:

> live in southern Ontario CANADA.  My Caller-ID box instead of showing
> out-of-area showed PRIVACY.  The call to me was made (and answered)
> twice in the same night; both times PRIVACY ... some sort of
> call-blocking was enabled by PacBell.

> [Moderator's Note: Are you certain this was PacBell's doing, or was it
> your caller who entered the privacy mode?  PAT]

I asked him during the phone conversation. he did not do it himself.
and he seemed to be perplexed by my amusement :-)

Also, *can* California residents enter the blocking code even though
Caller-ID as a service doesnt exist? Seems unlikely.

The more I think about this, the more sneaky PacBell is being. Instead
of being a "kind service" to the privacy zealots, they are really
trying to build up demand for the service to be allowed under
favourable terms.

ie: If enough out-of-state relatives and friends refuse to pick up the
phone because of *PRIVACY* (I answer out-of-area, or -not available-
in this case I answered because of screening via answering machine)
eventually people will start COMPLAINING they cannot successfully call
anyone anymore. Things that make you go Hummmmmmmmmmm.


Ken Dykes, Thinkage Ltd., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada    [43.47N 80.52W]
    [e-mail]   [e-mail]   thinkage!kgdykes
    [e-mail]             [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: Yes, people in California -- at least in the Bay
Area and San Jose -- *can* enter the privacy *67 code. Tests have been
done to demonstrate this. JH has done it, and gets the three spurts of
tone in response, for whatever good it does. And get this: I've gotten
calls from the Bay Area which show up on my display as 'outside' one
time, and 'private' the next ... from the same caller! PacBell is
doing something with the ID, that's for sure.  *What* they are doing
is not clear yet.  The deployment of SS-7 seems to be moving rapidly
now. I am seeing the number from more and more interstate places than
ever before. I estimate within three or four months it will be very
commonplace on an interstate/interlata basis, at least in major cities
around the USA.

What I think is fascinating is how I can use Call Screening across
LATA boundaries now. When I try to screen someone who is not in this
LATA, there will be a delay while the CO actually makes contact with
the distant office to ask 'are you capable of doing this, and if so,
is there such a number as xxx-yyyy?' Instead of the immediate response
I get to a screening request locally, it may take fifteen seconds or
so for the Rogers Park CO to get back to me. Sometimes the answer will
be the number has been added to my directory of screened calls; other
times the answer will be 'sorry, cannot add this number' and still
other times the reply will be 'sorry, cannot add this number *right
now* -- try again in a few minutes' !! I assume this last reply means
the attempt to contact the distant CO timed out with no response to
the query from my CO.  PAT]

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

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 09:18:36 EST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Niebuhr)
Subject: Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State


In TELECOM Digest V13 #80 [e-mail] (david.g.lewis)
said:

> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ken
> Dykes) writes:

>> Recently I received a call from the Glendale area of Los Angeles.  I
>> live in southern Ontario CANADA.  My Caller-ID box instead of showing
>> out-of-area showed PRIVACY.  The call to me was made (and answered)
>> twice in the same night; both times PRIVACY ... some sort of
>> call-blocking was enabled by PacBell.

>> PacBell is being far too kind to the zealots :-)

> It might be the PSC's doing.  The NY PSC, for example, has mandated
> that New York Tel must not permit delivery of CPN for customers in
> Manhattan until they have completed an education campaign (which I
> expect means bill inserts) on how to restrict delivery on a per-call
> basis.

I don't understand why Manhattan would be singled out for non-Caller
ID when the rest of NYC (area code 718 has it; 917 doesn't count since
it's for pagers/cell phones/special services, etc.)

In fact, the rest of the NY LATA (area codes 516, 718, 914) already
have full CLASS service (I don't know about the tiny bit of area code
203 that is in the NY LATA.

Public education started about three months before the introduction of
each part of CLASS and is continuing today.

There has to be another reason for Manhattan not having CLASS service.


Dave Niebuhr      Internet: [e-mail] / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973  (516)-282-3093

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

From: [e-mail] (Robert Paul Loeber)
Subject: Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones
Date: 11 Feb 1993 19:59:21 GMT
Organization: California State University, Chico


> 3. As defined in 47 CFR part 15 scanning receivers, or "scanners,"
> are radio receivers that automatically switch between four or more
> frequencies anywhere within the 30-960 Mhz band....

I know this may sound like a dumb question ... but what is the FCCs
definition of a "radio receiver"?  If it is "something which is
intented to receive radio frequencies"... then transceivers would fall
into that definition.  If that's the case ... this legistation would
be forced to deny authorization to the manufacturers of cellular
phones.  If this isn't the case, people (in the future) who would want
to take part in monitoring cellular conversations would be best off to
get a cellular phone (instead of a scanner) [assuming they could get
the phone to act as a receiver -- but of course, no one would do that
since monitoring cell-fone conversations is against the law].

               "Enquiring minds want to know...."


Bob Loeber    [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Geoffrey P Waigh)
Subject: Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones
Organization: University of Toronto Computing Disciplines Facility
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 17:48:12 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> TELECOM Moderator <telecom@
eecs.nwu.edu> writes:

[Text of proposed amendments]

Whenever I have heard of this plan, I have wondered how Americans will
continue to design radio equipment.  Is there some clause that I
missed that will allow RF engineers to continue purchasing spectrum
analyzers, mixers and other simple to connect gadgets for the purpose
of testing their equipment?  If so, what is going to stop these
devices from being used to scan cellular communications?  It would be
amusing if spectrum analyzers had to be kept under lock-and-key to
prevent use by anyone other than a "certified, responsible entity."


Geoffrey Waigh    [e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 21:03:27 EST
From: Tony Harminc <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Running Out of Area Codes


Robert L. McMillin posts from the {Los Angeles Times}:

> The day of reckoning is fast approaching.  The supply of three-digit
> North American telephone area codes -- all of which have "0" or "1" as
> the middle number -- will be exhausted within two years unless
> augmented by new kinds of three-digit area codes, phone company
> officials and telecommunications experts say.

> A growing number of firms want the Federal Communications Commission to
> mediate the dispute -- a request that could delay Bellcore's planned
> expansion of area codes as regulators weigh the issue.

It's not at all clear how the FCC, a US government agency, could have
any jurisdiction over the NANP, which is an international arrangement.
Telcos in Canada, Bermuda, and the Caribbean do not answer to the FCC.

> Many industry experts say that hundreds of millions of dollars in new
> equipment will be needed to make the transition from the current
> numbering system, first established in 1947, to a new one.

> Businesses -- many of which have old telephone switchboards that only
> recognize current long distance codes -- may be especially hard hit,
> while consumers will likely have a much harder time finding phone
> numbers through long-distance directory assistance because of the
> proliferation of area codes.

> Callers will have to closely pinpoint neighborhoods in making
> directory assistance requests because of the area-code proliferation.
> That's already a problem in Southern California, which now has seven
> area codes and is likely to get many more.

This sounds like nonsense.  Telcos do not divide DA bureaus up
strictly by area code in most cases.  If a city has several area
codes, a call to any one should be enough to find out a number in that
city.  And locally, 411 should do.

> Equipment makers have told Merrill Lynch that it will have to wait
> months -- and spend thousands of additional dollars -- to acquire a new
> private branch exchange (PBX) system that will recognize the new area
> codes, Liuzzo said.  (PBX equipment allows communications both within a
> company and with the outside world.)

I have absolutely no sympathy!  The transition to interchangeable
codes has been known and planned for since the early 1970s.  Where
have these vendors been for the last twenty years ?


Tony Harminc

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

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 12:50:58 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Running Out of Area Codes


The article, if anything, tends to sensationalize.  After what
happened with divestiture (COCOTs etc.), is there some
make-a-fast-buck scenario in going up against what we heard from
Bellcore?  It has been apparent here for a long time that the easiest
way to relieve the area code shortage is to generalize area codes from
N0X/N1X to NXX, and even that method will require reprogramming a lot
of equipment (including overseas).  The archive file "history.of.area.
splits" discusses the dialing changes that were made for N0X/N1X
prefixes and which would also accommodate the NXX area codes.

Of course, when a code generalizes, be mindful of the poor souls who
get the first of the previously-forbidden forms.  This happened with
the N0X/N1X prefixes in area 213 (for example, explaining your phone
number to an operator on the U.S. East Coast), and the lengthy
discussions here in telecom will help to mitigate such problem for the
people who get the first NNX area code.

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

From: [e-mail] (adams,john)
Subject: Re: Running Out of Area Codes
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 13:28:21 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert
L. McMillin) quotes the {Los Angeles Times}:

> With so much at stake, upstart communication service companies are
> already facing off against Bellcore, an arm of the seven regional
> phone companies that currently administers long distance area codes.

SURPRISE!  (At least I was!)  In yesterday's "New Yawk Times" appeared
an article stating that SPRINT is now an *owner* (along with the seven
RECs) of BELLCORE.  I'm personally convinced that this will have
little to do with me, although I can see a couple of legions of
attorneys lining up on either side of this issue.

God, I love this industry!


Jack (John) Adams        Bellcore NVC 2Z-220
[phone] {Voice}        [phone] {Facsimile}
[e-mail]    [e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 09:12:27 EST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Niebuhr)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?


In TELECOM Digest V13 #81 [e-mail] (John R. Levine)
writes:

> Here in Massachusetts it is indeed the case that second and subsequent
> lines at a single location can be unlisted at no charge.  For some
> reason New England Tel sometimes insists otherwise.  When I added
> RingMate (distinctive ringing) to my second line, NET wanted to charge
> to unlist each of the numbers on the second line, and I had to go to
> the state DPU to get NET to behave.

> If as seems to be the case there's a pattern here, I should get the
> state to tell NET to audit the records to see how many subscribers are
> paying an unwarranted charge to unlist their second lines.

In NYTel land, a second line is provided with no listing whatsoever.
I could have either a *true* listed name/number, *fake* name/true
number, or be totally unlisted.  It wouldn't make one difference.  And
in addition to that there is no unlisted charge for the second line
regardless of the listing/non-listing of the first number.


Dave Niebuhr      Internet: [e-mail] / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973  (516)-282-3093


[Moderator's Note: This is ditto for Illinois Bell. As long as you
have *something* -- at least one line -- listed, there is no non-pub
charge regardless of how other lines are handled. Likewise, as long as
you pay for *one* non-pub arrangement, you can have all your lines
non-pub for all they care at no extra charge.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Henry Mensch)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 16:35:14 -0800
Subject: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
Reply-To: [e-mail]


On Wed, 10 Feb 93 03:08:59 -0500 [e-mail] (Dan
Lanciani) wrote:

> I recently ordered a second line in my name and at the same
> address as my existing line.  For some reason I thought one could get
> non-published or unlisted (I forget) status at no extra charge for
> each line beyond the first.  Did I imagine this?

I don't think so; when I lived in NET-land (I left two years ago), I
had a second line which was unlisted this way at no extra charge.


# henry mensch / booz, allen & hamilton, inc.  / <[e-mail]>

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: AT&T Are You Listening?
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 05:41:54 GMT


[Some comments on AT&T and MCI international calling plans deleted here
for brevity's sake.]

> [Moderator's Note: Are you sure this is AT&T's fault or that of the
> local telco which does AT&T's billing?  For some six or eight months
> after AT&T started Reach Out World with the additional ten percent
> discount on domestic calls granted in that program, IBT customers
> could not have it since IBT was unable to get the billing correct.
> What had to happen was each month I was told by AT&T that they would
> get a copy of my bill, examine it and manually correct it, issuing
> credits as required. You might want to specifically inquire if AT&T is
> saying they do not offer the arrangement you are seeking *or* if they
> do but your local telco (if that is who bills your AT&T calls) is not
> up to speed on it, and if so, can you have it with AT&T issuing the
> required credits manually.  They might say yes!   PAT]

Actually I had problems setting up ROW. When I called AT&T they
contacted PacBell who is my local telco. They advised AT&T that my
number was invalid! Granted it was a new prefix 510-988-xxxx but it
was working and therefore perfectly valid. Anyway I had to stay on the
line with a three-way between AT&T, PacBell and me for over 20 minutes
before the whole mess was straightened out.

Then I got my first bill and sure enough I was not getting my ROW
discounts. I called AT&T who promised to give me a credit on my next
bill.  They did and all my ROW discounts showed up as well as the 5%
discount for calls within CA since I also joined up with their Anytime
Saver plan (is that what it's called?).  I have been impressed with
AT&T customer service and the quality of their lines seem to be good.
So I am loathe to switch.

BTW I called MCI based on a message from someone else who suggested I
use AT&T as my 1+ carrier but setup an account with MCI and use their
International Plans. After some prodding I was told I could enroll
with MCI's plans via 10xxx but I guess I would have to be billed
separately for that. The respondent suggested that this kind of
billing was iffy at best.  I still don't know what to do!


Laurence Chiu

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

From: [e-mail] (Cris Pedregal-Martin)
Subject: AT&T vs. MCI, China, etc (was AT&T Are You Listening?)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 16:18:27 EST
Reply-To: [e-mail]


Greetings. Some remarks on AT&T and MCI's calling plans ...

Background:

Laurence Chiu can't get discounts from AT&T to both China and other
foreign countries: China is not in "Reach Out World", and "Special
Country" is incompatible with ROW.  He is thinking about switching
carriers (to MCI). Our esteemed Moderator suggests this may be a
problem with the billing at the local telco.

My current housemates have gone through this (with China).  They
switched to MCI to be able to use "Friends & Family" and get 20% off.
They are back with AT&T: too many lost connections, and too much time
waiting for customer service to answer the phone. (Just a data point,
no flames please).

I had a similar situation too (calling Europe and Canada with ROW, but
wanting to call Argentina and Paraguay, which are not in ROW).  You
may want to try what I did.  I opened an account with MCI, while
keeping AT&T as my default IXC (i.e., my "dial-1" company).  I put the
Paraguay number and the Argentina number as my two foreign F&Fs. And I
kept ROW with AT&T.  When calling Paraguay and Argentina I had to
prefix the call with 10-222, of course.

Front line "reps" at MCI will try to get you to switch; they may even
tell you you can't use F&F if you are not a dial-1 customer (as
discussed in c.d.t. in the past, this is *not* true); you may need to
go up one level or two of supervisors.  The other thing is that their
billing software (at least in the Northeast they bill directly unless
you don't have an account with them) is obviously not prepared for
this, so it took me four months to get this working. They would close
my account "automatically" and I'd get billed by my Baby-Bell (with no
discounts); I would call them and they would refund the money and
start billing me themselves again. After the second month, a very nice
supervisor gave me her 800 number and I'd call her and get it all
straightened out (the bills did say I was dial-1 so it was a kludge).

Of course, it all depends on the amounts involved. And, given the
experience of my friends, you may want to do things the other way
around: drop ROW, put China as SC with AT&T, and buy MCI's world-plan
to call NZ and AU; you may even save more (by putting two numbers on
F&F) as I am fairly sure that MCI's world plan doesn't include China.
As I said before, this is independent of who you want to keep as your
dial-1 company (and whose customer service you expect to have to deal
with).

Usual disclaimer: no relation with the companies involved except as a
customer.


Regards,

Cristobal Pedregal Martin      [e-mail]
Computer Science Department    UMass / Amherst, MA 01003

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #85
*****************************










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Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 11:34:03 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #86

TELECOM Digest     Sat, 13 Feb 93 11:34:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 86

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    N.E.T. and the Phantom Phone Exchange (Tom Arnold)
    150th Anniversary of FAX (Bill St.Arnaud/com-priv via J. Philip Miller)
    Book Review "America Calling" (Jim Haynes)
    ADSL Asymetrical Digital Subscriber Line/Request For Info (Ed Pimentel)
    Canadian Telecom Conference in April (Nigel Allen)
    AT&T Conversant System (Justin Leavens)
    New Zealand Telephone Public System (Pete Lancashire)
    Completion Rates For Calling Centers (Steve Brack)
    AT&T Automated Access To Operator Services (Alan Toscano)
    ZyXEL Modem Voice/Fax Software Wanted (Russell Nelson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Tom Arnold)
Subject: N.E.T. and the Phantom Phone Exchange
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Tom Arnold)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 23:04:15 GMT


Perhaps one of the TELECOM readers can shed light on the recent weird
behavior up here in New England Telephone land on the part of exchange
264 in the 508 area code (Eastern to Mid-Massachusetts.)

This exchange serves two Digital Equipment Corporation engineering
facilities in Boxborough.  It no doubt serves other things as well.
All told, there are on the order of 800 lines in both buildings.
Yesterday (Wed., Feb 10,) around noon I was trying to dial into my
building's modem lines from my home in Brighton (Boston,) in the 617
area code, and I was getting a relentless busy indication from my
modem (Scholar.)  I put a phone on the line and tried several numbers
that way.  Each one returned fast busy, both modem lines, the main
desk, voicemail, etc.  All this was from my business line, so I also
tried it from my home line (served by a different exchange,) with the
same results.

So I called the N.E.T. operator and described the problem.  She tried
it, and also couldn't get through.  At first she just said that the
'circuits were busy' -- and I told her that the problem was persistent
and unusual. Then she asked me if I was sure about the number, because
her console indicated that the exchange (264) was not a valid
exchange(!) She also asked me if I had ever called the number before.
We have used these numbers since 1986, and I told her that. I provided
her with the town, street address, and name of the facility, but she
still said that the numbers were invalid. So I asked to log a problem
report, whereon she switched me to the repair service, where I more or
less repeated the previous conversation.

I then asked, if I dialed an invalid exchange, shouldn't I get a SIT
message of some sort?  She said no, not always; sometimes an invalid
number returns fast busy.  This suprised me, but phones are more of a
hobby for me than a profession.  Does anyone know if this is true, and
if so, under what circumstances?

She didn't seem convinced when I rang off, but I assume that the
problem log really happened.  I then phoned DEC's main number in
Maynard, Mass, and talked with the operator there.  She agreed that
the numbers I tried were the correct ones.  She then switched me to
DEC's internal telecom help desk. I described the problem to the
fellow there, and told him that I thought that telecom into those two
buildings was completely down.  Mercifully, he took my problem report
seriously, and assigned it a problem incident number right away.

As it turned out, at 5 PM, the foreign exchange line in Watertown
opens for inward access, and I was able to get to the numbers in
question using DEC's internal telephone network.  Thus, the problem
was not in DEC's phone switch for that area, nor in DEC-leased trunk
lines feeding it.  At 10:30 this morning (nearly 24 hours later,) I
again tried dialing voicemail at my building, but still got that old
fast busy.  We also got a flurry of Email from the telecom people
telling us that N.E.T. had been notified. This, naturally, inspired
great confidence in me ... the problem was finally cleared sometime
this afternoon.

The fellow from DEC telecom called me back to let me know that the
problem was fixed.  It appears DEC telecom has more weight with N.E.T.
than simple customers. And the DEC telecom folk certainly deserve
kudos for a quick and professional response. The problem turned out to
be in the routing tables in the switch at the central office,
presumably the one serving the buildings in question.

But, how could such an error occur?  Can a technician really delete a
whole exchange from a telephone switch by accident without realizing
it?  Could the routing algorithm in use (I have no idea what kind of
switch N.E.T. is using for the 264 exchange,) somehow drop 800 lines
by mistake?  If so, wouldn't this be a serious and scary software
problem?  If it was a hardware problem, wouldn't something wrong
enough to bring down an exchange (or a reasonable hunk of it) cause
lots of alarms which would be noticed by alert telco employees?

And, since I gave the original operator the name, street address,
etc., of my building, is there any reason why they couldn't look up
the main number for the building on their console, and at least see
that the number wasn't mistaken?

Or is all this yet another ominous sign of the rotting of our once
glorious phone system??

Inquiring minds want to know!


Peace,

tom arnold    (no, *another* tom arnold)
Digital Equipment Corporation   |   [e-mail]  -or-
Boxborough Technology Center    |   [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: There are lots of kinks a regular customer cannot
get cleared short of lodging several reports and working their way up
to an assistant to the Chairman ... sad but true. *No one* taking the
complaints will listen. I am sorry to say the people you spoke with at
telco probably put you down as some sort of crank caller and let it go
at that. That's the way they operate. Consider the latest screwup here
in Chicago to catch my eye: Remote Activation/Deactivation of the Call
Forwarding feature is accomplished by dialing 312-274-9923 for lines
in the Rogers Park CO. (Caution, kiddies, this number is *closely*
watched; calling number captured, the whole bit.) It answers, you
punch in the number to be forwarded (or upon which to cancel
forwarding), your personal PIN, *72 and the number to which calls are
to be forwarded, or *73 to cancel forwarding. If forwarding, the
number you forward to is read back to you for confirmation and you
confirm it or enter the correct number.  A great way to get around the
old, old problem of having to return to the phone in question in order
to turn off the call forwarding or turn it on, right?  It would be,
*if it worked*.

For some time now, the number has been busied out from coin phones in
the Rogers Park CO. Coin phones elsewhere can reach it, as can regular
lines. From a Rogers Park coin phone you can zero plus it to your
calling card (with the usual surcharge, of course) or the operator can
connect you; neither of which function (operator services or calling
card) is out of Rogers (the operators are out of the Irving CO I
think). Telling Repair Service about this is like talking to a parrot.
This has been this way for at least a month, but it has not interested
me that much. Maybe next week I will call the office of the Chairman
and raise a stink. Repair even had the audacity one day to ask if I
was talking about Bell payphones or private ones.  Do they think I
would be that stupid?  To answer your question, sure they can lose
whole offices at one time. You've seen it happen!  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (J. Philip Miller)
Subject: 150th Anniversary of FAX
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 18:59:56 -0600 (CST)


Although there is a semi-ad at the end of this posting, it presents
some interesting information for readers of the Digest.  I suspect few
others are also subscribed to com-priv.

 -phil

 Forwarded message:
 From: [e-mail] (Bill St. Arnaud)
 Subject: 150th Anniversary of FAX
 Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 14:31:05 EST



150th Anniversary of FAX
========================

Yes, believe it or not, 1993 is the 150th anniversary of FAX!  FAX is
even older than the telephone and is probably the oldest telecomm-
unications technology after the telegraph.

The original FAX machine was invented by a Scottish physicist
Alexander Bain in 1843. Incredibly, Bain had to use jaw bones and
heather in his experiments to build the first FAX machine!

Although Bain's machine was sound in principle, we don't know if it
actually worked in practice.  It wasn't until 1861, when a Frenchman
named Caselli, built the first FAX network from Paris to Lyons, that
FAX became a working communications tool.

Caselli's FAX machines were seven feet tall and used gigantic pendulums
to synchronize the horizontal scan line transmission, a far cry from
today's all digital FAX machines.

However, Caselli's FAX machines so alarmed the US Postmaster General,
that in his report to Congress in 1872, he made this prescient
statement:

" ...the probable amplification of the facsimile system of Caselli, by
which an exact copy of anything that can be drawn or written my be
instantaneously made to appear at a distance of hundreds of miles from
the original; and the countless other applications of electricity to
the *transmission of intelligence* yet to be made, --- must sooner or
later most seriously interfere with the transportation of letters by
the slower means of the post."

For more information on the past, present and future of FAX there is
an excellent article in this month's issue of {New Scientist} by Tim
Hunkin.  Mr. Hunkin has built a replica of Bain's first FAX machine
which is now on display at the British Science Museum.  Mr. Hunkin
will also be talking about the past and future of FAX on the
television show "The Secret Life of Machines" on the Discovery
Channel, Tuesday night, February 23 at 9:30 PM EST.

VISION 2000, is a Communications Canada and industry initiative to
accelerate and foster the development of personal communications in
Canada.  VISION 2000, in association with its consortium members, is
developing "Future FAX" as a key personal communications technology.
Video FAX, multimedia FAX, voice FAX, e-mail FAX, wireless FAX, and
personal communicators are key FAX technologies that will
revolutionize the way we will communicate with each other in the next
decade.

For a copy of our free report on FUTURE FAX, please call or FAX, Bill
St. Arnaud, VISION 2000, Voice: +1 613.567.2000 or +1 613.238.8912,
Fax: [phone]

Special thanks to George Pajari of FAXIMUM Software for researching
the quotation from the US PostMaster General.


Bill St. Arnaud       Internet: [e-mail]
VISION 2000 INC.      X.400: C=CA; A=TELECOM.CANADA;
203-294 Albert St.    O=VISION2000; DDA:ID=V2K.EMS
Ottawa CANADA         Voice: [phone]
K1P 6E6               Fax:   [phone]

VISION 2000 INC:  A Department of Communications and industry initiative to
foster and accelerate the development of personal communications in Canada.

                             ---------

     J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067
     Washington University Medical School, St. Louis MO 63110
      [e-mail] - [phone] [362-2694(FAX)]

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

From: [e-mail] (Jim Haynes)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 16:38:38 -0800
Subject: Book Review "America Calling"


"America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940" is the
complete title of the book.

In {Science} magazine Vol 259, 29 Jan 1993, page 699 is a review of
the above book.  The author of the book is Claude S. Fischer of U. C.
Berkeley.  (University of California Press, 1992, xvi, 424 pp. illus.
$25).  The author of the review is Glenn Porter, Hagley Museum and
Library, Wilmington, DE.  It's quite a long review, and has some nice
old pictures.

"Fischer is interested in what uses ordinary people made of the new
technology of telephony.  Who called whom, for what purposes, and
what difference did it make in their lives?" says the reviewer.
"The book explicitly omits the business use of the telephone.

  ...

The author freely mixes bits of data, theory, and speculations from
many places and time periods.  This is not a book notable for its
analytical or methodological rigor.  Here social science meets
journalism, and the dress is casual.  The results are often
fascinating and sometimes surprising, if not altogether satisfying."

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

Subject: ADSL Asymetrical Digital Subscriber Line/Request For Info
From: [e-mail] (Ed pimentel)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 17:47:20 EST
Organization: Willard's House BBS, Atlanta, GA -- [phone]


I would like to know more about ASDL, its format, its capabilities,
and how it may be incorporated in other ONLINE SERVICES such video on
demand. Can it be interface to EIA/TIA562?  BTW, please also supply
more info on the EIA/TIA 562 interface that use 64k baud over regular
tel lines.

Are there any APIs, SDKs, Toolkits that allow one to develop apps such
as distant learning use all of the above?


[e-mail] (Ed pimentel)
gatech!kd4nc!vdbsan!willard!edimg   emory!uumind!willard!edimg
Willard's House BBS, Atlanta, GA -- [phone]

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

From: Nigel Allen <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 19:00:00 -0500
Subject: Canadian Telecom Conference in April
Organization: Echo Beach


National Conference on the Future of Telecom in Canada,
Toronto, April 1 and 2, 1993

The University of Toronto's Institute for Policy Analysis is
sponsoring the National Conference on the Future of Telecommunications
in Canada, in Toronto at the Four Seasons Hotel on April 1 and 2,
1993.  Registration is $749.00 (Canadian funds, including GST) before
March 15 and $802.50 (Canadian funds, including GST) after that date
or at the door.

For more information, contact:

 Ms. Erin Parfitt,
 Institute for Policy Analysis,
 University of Toronto,
 140 St. George Street, Suite 325,
 Toronto, Ontario, Canada  M5S 1A1
 telephone [phone],
 fax [phone].

No e-mail address is given. (Say that you heard about the conference
through the TELECOM Digest.)

The speakers and organizers are among the most influential
telecommunications policy in Canada, including Hudson Janisch, a law
professor at the University of Toronto and W.T. Stansbury, a professor
at the University of British Columbia. Session titles include:
Efficient Pricing of Telecommunications Services and the Ways to Get
There; Necessary Changes in the Regulatory Structure and Processes to
Promote Network Efficiency and Universal Service at Affordable Rates
(with the top regulatory lawyers at Bell Canada and Unitel
Communications Inc.); New Federal Telecommunications Legislation and
Federal-Provincial Arrangements; Entry and Foreign Ownership in Canada
and Opportunities in Foreign Markets; Changing Public Policy and
Telecommunications in Canada (a dinner speech by Bud Sherman,
vice-chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission, Can Large Contribution Payments Be Maintained in Light of
the CRTC's Competition Decision?, Emerging Competition in Local
Networks and the Implications for Interconnection Rules; and Managing
the Transition to Competitive Telecommunications Markets: The U.S.
Experience (a luncheon speech by Richard Wiley, a U.S. lawyer who I
think was once chair of the Federal Communications Commission).


Nigel Allen                [e-mail]
Canada Remote Systems - Toronto, Ontario
416-629-7000/629-7044

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

From: [e-mail] (Justin Leavens)
Subject: AT&T Conversant System
Date: 12 Feb 1993 12:09:05 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA


I've got a couple of AT&T reps trying to sell me on an AT&T Conversant
system, and I was curious to know if there's anyone out there who is
familiar with this kind of system or can offer any feedback on what
might be competing with it. Thanks in advance.


Justin Leavens   Microcomputer Specialist   University of Southern California

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

From: [e-mail] (Pete Lancashire)
Subject: New Zealand Telephone Public System
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 17:48:06 GMT


I'm considering moving to New Zealand and would like to 'talk' with
anyone who familiar with the current state of and future plan for the
public telephone system.

Or would the group like to 'hear' my questions and join in?


Pete Lancashire    [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: Yes please, pass your questions along. We have
readers of the Digest in New Zealand.  PAT]

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

Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 13:32:38 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Steve Brack)
Subject: Completion Rates For Calling Centers


I am currently working for a nonprofit organization that handles
fundraising for the University of Toledo.  One of our operations is an
annual "Phone-a-thon" campaign where we contact alumni to ask for
donations.  I have been trying to find some figures on what we should
be seeing in terms of:

    1) calls/person/hour
    2) Call completion rates
    3) Required trunk capacity

Some of the problems we've been having include a percieved lack of LD
trunkage ("Try your call again later" on LD calls), what my boss has
termed low throughput (20 calls/person/hour), and a low contact rate
(not home, busy, no answer, etc.)  If someone could e-mail me with
some idea of what numbers are considered average, and some suggestions
to alleviate the problems my supervisoor has brought to my attention,
I would be much obliged.

Note, however, that I have not been authorized to represent the
University in these matters, but that I am attempting to get some
information so that my supervisor can make a more informed decision.


Thank you.

Steve Brack    University of Toledo Foundation
Steven S. Brack    [e-mail]
Toledo, OH  43613-1605   [e-mail]
MY OWN OPINIONS   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: 12 Feb 93 20:41:05 GMT
Subject: AT&T Automated Access To Operator Services


AT&T has implemented a new 800 number for reaching its Automated
Access To Operator Services (AATOS) interface -- which is used to place
Calling Card calls and Operated Assisted calls from "blocked"
telephones. The new number is:

        1 800 321-0288, or, if you wish: 1 800 3210-ATT.

Previously, AATOS was accessable via prompts on 1 800 CALL-ATT, as
well as on 1 800 882-CARD. These prompts will no longer be available
as of April 1.

(For various reasons, including cost and trunking/traffic considera-
tions, AT&T would still prefer calls to be dialed 0+ or 10ATT-0+ when
possible.)

Disclaimer: I do not work for AT&T. I'm just a customer.


A Alan Toscano -- Houston, TX -- <[e-mail]>

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

Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 16:03:56 EST
From: Russell Nelson <[e-mail]>
Organization: Crynwr Software
Subject: ZyXEL Modem Voice/Fax Software Wanted


I'm willing to pay a bounty for a ZyXEL voice/fax program.  The bounty
is a ZyXEL 1496E+ (or cash equivalent).  The program must:

  o Be freely copyable with source and use the GNU General Public License.
  o Be written in C.
  o Run on Linux, MS-Windows, and/or DOS (in that order).
  o Support distinctive ringing.  Should answer voice on "RING", and
    FAX on "RING 1".
  o Preview FAXes on the screen.
  o Under MS-Windows, print FAXes to the current printer.
  o Under Linux or DOS, decode FAX format files into a NxM bitmap (I
    can add my own printer support).
  o Send FAXes (optimally from the output of Ghostscript, but text-only
    input is fine).
  o Play back a message when answering as voice.
  o Have an option on every playback message to chain to a selected message,
    or record a message.
  o Allow playback message or recording to be interruptible by a DTMF digit.
  o Chain to a selected playback message when a DTMF digit is received.
  o Be interruptible at the keyboard.
  o Play back recorded messages, either by DTMF commands or by
    keyboard commands.  Because the volume of the speaker playback is
    so low this should be done over the phone, not the internal speaker.

Perhaps this program would be useful to you also, and you'd like to
increase the bounty by some amount?  Please contact me if so.


russ <[e-mail]>
Crynwr Software     Crynwr Software sells packet driver support.
11 Grant St.        315-268-1925 Voice  |  LPF member - ask me about
Potsdam, NY 13676   315-268-9201 FAX    |  the harm software patents do.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #86
*****************************










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Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 14:15:16 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #87

TELECOM Digest     Sat, 13 Feb 93 14:15:15 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 87

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    AT&T Sues MCI, Sprint, Wiltel (Paul Robinson)
    Cheap Way to Get Incoming SDMR From DID? (James Deibele)
    Phone Extension Problem (Ossian Smyth)
    RFI: Device to Restrict LD Access on Phone (Gerry George)
    What Could Cause Jitter in a Voice Channel Over Fiber? (Tracy Ching)
    Looking For One-Way A/B Switch For Two-Line Phone System (Joseph Chan)
    Local Cellular Channel Distribution (Eric E. Snyder)
    That's Easy For YOU to Say ... (William Degnan)
    Sharing One FAX Card Among Several Voice Lines (Elizabeth Fong Wah Chan)
    General Magic's Telescript?? (Keith Bechard)
    Ma Bell Calling (Robert L. Stinnett)
    Questions Ahout Uniden CP-1200 Cellular Phone (Joe Smooth)
    1-800-CALL-ATT 'ext. 21' to be Discontinued (Paul Robinson)
    Listing of Telecom Magazines Wanted (Eric Pearce)
    What is 'Los Angeles'? (Paul Robinson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993  19:55:46 EST
Subject: AT&T Sues MCI, Sprint, Wiltel Over Tariff Schedules


In a report on page B11 in the 2/11 {Washington Post}, AT&T wants a
District Court to award it damages for $1 billion in lost business
since 1991 due to MCI, Sprint, and Wiltel Commnications (Tulsa OK) not
filing tariff schedules of their rates.

AT&T says its competitors have negotiated "secret contracts" with
business customers over the last three years.  Its competitors claim
that because they are not dominant carriers, they do not have to file
tariff schedules.  Wiltel said "This frivolous lawsuit is the latest
example of AT&T's unfortunate practice of using its huge size and
market dominance" to punish competitors.

AT&T had asked the FCC to require all of its competitors to file
tariff schedules of rates, but the FCC said this was not required
because they aren't dominant.  AT&T said the FCC was wrong and filed a
challenge.  On Nov. 13, 1992, a three-judge Federal Appeals court said
AT&T was right and 5,000 telephone companies are supposed to file
tariff schedules.

AT&T also doesn't like the current tariff that MCI has filed, saying
"The writing down of pen on paper does not constitute a tariff."  MCI
says the tariffs are allowed to be in plain language.  The FCC says
only 40 companies have filed tariff schedules since the ruling.  MCI
has gotten very recent large contracts from Citibank and the FAA for
voice and data transmission services and said the legal action was
"camoflage for AT&T's marketplace shortcomings" and its "difficult
time rationalizing why it is losing customers."

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

From: [e-mail] (James Deibele)
Subject: Cheap Way to Get Incoming SDMR From DID?
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- [phone]
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 09:09:52 GMT


We need to have direct inward dialing (DID) for phone lines that will
be plugged into modems.  We don't care what number the sender is
calling from (we're not interested in caller ID, which looks like it
will be available in Oregon soon), but we must know what number is
called, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and either the
DID trunk line (first trunk is #1, etc.) or preferably the analog line
selected by the PBX or key switch unit or whatever.  We need this via
a standard RS-232 serial port.

Or we can handle PC cards under several different operating systems
and handle SBUS on SUNs.  We've been told by US West that we need a
"box" (KSU or PBX or something) to convert DID trunk to analog - DID
doesn't do rings in the traditional sense, so there's no way for a
modem to know it's supposed to answer.  We have no need for phones on
this at all.  We haven't actually purchased the modems yet, so we're
willing to consider a combined DID/modem unit -- if there is such a
thing.  We will not be making outgoing calls through this unit, it
just needs to handle inward traffic.  We estimate that we'll need
eight simultaneous lines at most, though it would be nice to be able
to expand beyond that by adding more cards.  For a PC based solution,
we'd want it to be networked via ethernet without causing the modems
any problems.

We've been quoted $7000 for a PBX from local companies, with capacity
for four or eight lines.  That's installed, programmed, and tested,
but we think we should be able to do better than that.  We've been
told that most KSUs are cheaper, but not as expandable.  We don't
think that matters a lot at this stage.  We've heard lots of rumors of
future products, but we'd prefer something available now and would
really like something that's been tested extensively in the field.

I've talked to a dozen local telephone equipment companies, including
the local Graybar office.  I've also talked to AT&T, NCR, GTE, "Hello
Direct", and extensively with US West.  I plan to talk to most of the
rest of the local equipment companies and as many PBX and KSU
manufacturers as I can reach next week.

If anybody has any information on a product like this, I'd like to
hear about it.  I've got a list of people who are interested in
something similar, and I'll mail them the info I receive.


Thanks!

[e-mail]
PDaXs gives free access to news & mail. [phone] - 1200/2400, N81
Full internet (ftp, telnet, irc) access available. Voice: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ossian Smyth)
Subject: Phone Extension Problem
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 12:54:20 GMT


Every time my one of my parents picks up the main phone in our house,
the extension line to my room cuts off.  Does anyone know what this
could be?


Ossian Smyth


[Moderator's Note: It could be one of the contacts in the main phone
is being used like an exclusion key to provide privacy to that phone
when it is in use. Are your parents aware of this and know it is
happening? There is a certain contact (at least in Bell phones in the
USA) which functions the opposite of the other contacts. Most are
open when the phone is on hook and closed when the phone is off hook.
The one in there which is the other way around (closed on hook, open
when off hook) can be used for various special purposes. Using a two
pair modular cord, bring the phone line from outside into your premises
up to that phone *first, before it goes to any other extension* on one
pair. Connect the two pairs together in the phone with one side of
pair two going through the 'open when phone is off hook' contact. Then
use the second pair from that phone to take the phone line back to the
main demarc from whence it is distributed normally to all other phones
on the premises. This phone now serves as a master, or front-end to
all the phones on your premises. When that phone is on hook, the
circuit to all the other phones is completed and they operate. When
the master phone on the front end goes off hook, all other phones go
dead since the circuit to them is now broken.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Gerry George)
Subject: RFI: Device to Restrict LD Access on Phone
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 11:02:59 EST
Reply-To: [e-mail]


I am interested in obtaining one of those devices which restrict or
prevent someone from dialing a 1 + areacode on a phone line without a
proper access code.  Alternatively, are there any options with the
long-distance carriers where this same thing (access code required)
can be achieved?

If such info already exists in the archives, I will be happy to search
for it. Otherwise, feel free to mail replies.


Thanks,

Gerry George    School of Management, Boston Univ.
Internet: [e-mail]   Compu$erve: [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Tracy Ching <[e-mail]>)
Subject: What Could Cause Jitter in a Voice Channel Over Fiber?
Organization: California State University, Sacramento
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 16:45:47 GMT


While sending a 1KHz tone over that voice channel, the other end is
jittering (changing phase constantly) and also slightly changing
amplitude.  The "gurus" who administer the thing say there is nothing
that can be done to fix it.  I just want my clear channel.

    What could cause such a problem?  Be as technical as you want.
Thanks for any info.

I'm quite sure my 1KHz tone is pure, i.e. no jitter from the source.


[e-mail]  OR   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Joseph Chan 3-5418)
Subject: Looking For One-Way A/B Switch For Two-Line Phone System
Date: 13 Feb 1993 06:08:10 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Bioengineering


If I have two phone lines come to my house (our house was wired with
two-pair wire) the simplest way is to use two regular telephones (I
already have) to connect to the two lines. (First phone connect to
green and red pair, and second connnect to black and yellow pair).

Is there a one-way A-B switch so that incoming phone calls, either
line one or line two, would ring can ring both phones, and outgoing
phone calls can switch to either line one or line two?

Since I already have single phone line phone sets, we do not wish to
buy special two-line telephone sets.  I am thinking to buy a simple
and cheap one-way A-B switch instead of two-line telephone sets.

Thank you for any information.


Joseph Chan    INTERNET: [e-mail]
UUCP: uunet!uw-beaver!uw-nsr!joseph


[Moderator's Note: Radio Shack has a device like this. You plug both
incoming lines into it and it feeds out to a single line phone. You
press a key for the desired outgoing line and it automatically will
switch either incoming line into the phone when it senses ringing.
You'd need one of these for each phone. An incoming call would cause
both phones to ring (unless one phone was in use on one of the lines
already) and you could answer from either phone. This device does not
allow calls to be held while you switch lines.

Another solution is to modify the existing phones yourself. Mount a
double-pole toggle switch on the phone (if you take the shell off, you
will see in the plastic mold on the underside a place to punch out for
this purpose). Bring both phone pairs (r/g and y/b) up to the phone
connected through the toggle switch (r/g one side; y/b to the other
side and center out to the phone network). Then, whichever way you
have the switch thrown is the pair which will connect to the phone.
You will only get the bell on that line however. To avoid the
possibility that all phones will have their switch set the same way
thus entirely killing the bell on the other line, what you do is get a
little buzzer of the right voltage (there are lots of them which will
work) and you install it in the phone.  *Important* -- disconnect the
bell from the network in the phone. Send the r/g to it separately as
well as to the switch you mounted. Unscrew one of the bell clappers
and take it off, mounting your buzzer where the clapper had been. Run
the y/b wires to the buzzer as well as to the toggle switch. Now a
call on line one will ring the bell regardless of switch setting, and
a call on line two will make the buzzer sound, regardless of switch
setting.  The difference in sounds identifies the line to be (switched
to) and answered. Even if you are off hook on line two, the bell will
ring if a call comes in on line one. Variations on a Theme: Adding a
mechanical (as opposed to electronic) hold circuit ... just as you ran
parallel to the switch and the bell/buzzer run parallel to another
toggle switch with a center-off position where you cause a dead-short
of red to green or yellow to black (or neither, in the center position).
That's all the old Bell System two-line turn button phones did; when
you pulled up the left plunger, the line not being used was shorted
out to keep it from disconnecting the other party. Of course, it was
idiot-proof; you could not hang up and forget to release the hold. If
you add a hold circuit via a toggle switch, figure out some way to
remind yourself to release it when finished ... maybe a little light
bulb which illuminates as a reminder or something?   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Eric E. Snyder)
Subject: Local Cellular Channel Distribution
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: 13 Feb 93 16:57:52 GMT


Someone mentioned the other day that of the 800 odd cellular channels
available, only one sixth of these would be in use in a given area (at
least, per cell carrier).  Is it then possible to deduce from the
frequency of a single channel verified to be in use exactly which 100
or so channels would be active?  This would be useful since one could
key in these frequencies and 'scan' them instead of frequency
searching.

Ideas?


Eric E. Snyder            Department of MCD Biology
University of Colorado, Boulder   Boulder, Colorado 80309-0347

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

From: [e-mail] (William Degnan)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 10:41:42 -0500
Subject: That's Easy For YOU to Say ...


According to a story which appeared in {USA Today Decisionline}, NYNEX
Corp has introduced a network-based voice-dialing service that permits
callers to dial by speaking the name of the party they wish to reach.

The story quotes NYNEX Science & Technology president Casimir
Skrzypczak, who I don't expect will get too many calls via this
method.

NYNEX, said they plan to file tariffs for VoiceDialing with the New
York PSC on Feb. 26 and expect a decision by May. They expect to
charge $4 - 6 per month for the feature.

                          -----------

"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over
wires.  Even if it were, it would be of no practical value."
                                    -- Boston Post 1865
                           ----------

William Degnan,  Communications Network Solutions
-Independent Consultants in Telecommunications and Technology-
P.O. Drawer 9530       | [e-mail] | [e-mail]
Austin, TX 78766-9530                |        Voice [phone]


[Moderator's Note: Gee, we had 'voice dialing' for the first half
century of the telephone ... they want to go back to that system?  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Elizabeth Fong Wah Chan)
Subject: Sharing One FAX Card Among Several Voice Lines
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 22:18:51 GMT


I am absolutely new to the field of telecom. Presently, my company
plans to install a voice processing system to do voice mail, audiotex,
and faxing.

We have purchased a four-line voice processing board and a software
development package.

Since we want to allow callers to be able to send and receive faxes in
addition to voice processing. One known solution is that we can
purchase four Intel SatisFAXtion model, each one connected to one of
the four phone lines to the voice processing board.

However, this solution is too expensive, and besides we don't need
that many fax boards. I wonder if there is some kind of simple
switching equipment that allows sharing of one fax board among all
four phone lines.

What I am thinking of is that when a caller dial up to a particular
line and is greeted by voice prompts and menus, he may choose to do
faxing and our software will send a special DTMF command that is
recognised by the switching equipment. The switching equipment will
then switch the fax board over to that particular line. Then the
caller can start faxing.

Certainly, only one caller can do faxing at a time. Access control can
be done by programming. What we need is the piece of switching
equipment that can accept DTMF as commands and do the switching
automatically.

Could anyone please advise what kinds of equipment we need, preferably
specific product information?


Thanks in advance.

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

From: [e-mail] (Keith Bechard)
Subject: General Magic's Telescript??
Organization: U S WEST/Advanced Technologies
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 20:08:58 GMT


Does anyone know where information can be obtained on General Magic's
Telescript language?


Thanks,

Keith Bechard    U S WEST/Advanced Technologies
[e-mail]    [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Robert L. Stinnett)
Subject: Ma Bell Calling
Organization: University of Missouri
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 19:02:55 CST


GTE is raising rates in this area again as well.  As I think back over
the years, it seems that phone-use and phone charges were more simpler
and less costly in the AT&T (Ma Bell) days.  Everything was right
there, no worrying about all these different companies, one
straight-forward bill.

What has happened to our communication society?  I think the line is
down and the repairman is on vacation.


[Moderator's Note: Don't get me started  :).   PAT]

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

From: Joe Smooth <[e-mail]>
Subject: Questions Ahout Uniden CP-1200 Cellular Phone
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 23:02:36 GMT


I have a Uniden CP-1200 mobile phone, and have a few questions about
it.

I noticed that in order to reprogram the NAM, etc., you need a
"diagnostics" handset or a "NAM programming" handset. Does anybody
know if there is a way to convert a normal, standard handset into one
of the above?  The tech I talked to at Uniden said that he couldn't
sell me one, because I am not an authorized service center.

Also, does anybody know where I can pick up an Oki-900 portable phone
CHEAP, or a battery for a Novatel 8320 transportable phone? Please let
me know.


Thanks a lot!

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

Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993  17:56:29 EST
Subject: 1-800-CALL-ATT 'ext.  21' to be Discontinued


Effective April 1, dialing 1-800-CALL-ATT, then dialing extension 21
will no longer be available for getting direct access to AT&T's
switch.

Oh horrors!  What will we do, what will we do?

Fortunately, AT&T has an answer.  They have a new number which is
*exclusively* for connecting to their switch.  The new number is:

     1-800-321-0-ATT


Paul Robinson -- [e-mail]    This is my opinion only.

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

Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 23:24:28 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Eric Pearce)
Subject: List of Telecom Magazines Wanted


I poked around on lcs.mit.edu and didn't see any listing of telecom
magazines ... is there a list somewhere?  I'm interested in
subscription info, content and quality.


Thanks,

 -e

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

Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993  23:14:41 EST
Subject: What is 'Los Angeles'?


[e-mail] spoke about the fact that the San Fernando Valley,
except for three towns, is all in the "City of Los Angeles" even
though they are identified as other places.

This is because some places get known by alternate names, and these
names become so common that they get used differently even though the
"official" name is something else.

A lot of people who got arrested in Los Angeles used to tell people
that they were staying at the "Graybar Hotel" instead of admitting
they were in the County Jail.  Until it was torn down a few years ago,
the post office would forward mail addressed to the "Graybar Hotel" to
the Los Angeles County Jail.  (This is where life imitates art.)

In case you are unaware, there is no such "city" as Hollywood; it is
also part of the "City of Los Angeles."  (There is, however, an
incorporated city called "West Hollywood.")

Right next to where I used to live in the incorporated city of Long
Beach, is "San Pedro".  The Police Department building says it is in
"San Pedro, CA."  What does it say on the police cars?  "Los Angeles
Police Department."  Not county; City of Los Angeles.

I heard they wanted to put a "Los Angeles City Limits" sign in the
Ukraine but that country is too small ...


[Moderator's Note: Did they tear down the post office, or the County
Jail?   PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #87
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #88

TELECOM Digest     Sat, 13 Feb 93 22:29:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 88

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Running Out of Area Codes (Ken Stox)
    Re: Running Out of Area Codes (Robert L. McMillin)
    Re: Running Out of Area Codes (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Number Shortage ... What About "#" Sign? (Elana Beach)
    Re: SMDS Question (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Re: SMDS Question (Lars Poulsen)
    Re: SMDS Question (Pushpendra Mohta)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (John Higdon)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (David Lesher)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Richard Lucas)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Joel Upchurch)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Jim Gottlieb)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Sven Echternach)
    Re: Exchange Scanning - Enough Already! (Ed Greenberg)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Ken Stox)
Subject: Re: Running Out of Area Codes
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Ken Stox)
Organization: AC Nielsen Co.
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 18:14:16 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, Tony Harminc <TONY@VM1.
MCGILL.CA> writes:

> This sounds like nonsense.  Telcos do not divide DA bureaus up
> strictly by area code in most cases.  If a city has several area
> codes, a call to any one should be enough to find out a number in that
> city.  And locally, 411 should do.

I can vouch for that, here in Chicago, the DA bureaus serve the 312
and 708 area codes. I lived in the city for many years and moved to
the burb's some two years ago. An old friend called 312 DA, and was
rather insistent that they must have my listing ( My name is, as far
as I know, unique in North America). DA replied that, in fact, they
did have a listing , but in 708. Needless, thanks to DA, I heard from
an old friend.


#include <std_disclaimer.h>
Ken Stox     Consultant to A.C. Nielsen    [e-mail]

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 12:00:18 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Robert L. McMillin)
Subject: Re: Running Out of Area Codes


Tony Harminc <[e-mail]> writes:

>> Callers will have to closely pinpoint neighborhoods in making
>> directory assistance requests because of the area-code proliferation.
>> That's already a problem in Southern California, which now has seven
>> area codes and is likely to get many more.

> This sounds like nonsense.  Telcos do not divide DA bureaus up
> strictly by area code in most cases.

They do in LA.  The 213/310 split has been a mess in terms of figuring
out which area code serves which city.  Luckily for most people, 310
covers the coastal areas, so if the city you want to call is near the
beach, it's probably 310.  Inglewood?  Beverly Hills?  Those cities
are roughly halved by the 213/310 area code split.  True, the DA
bureaus aren't split up physically, but a 310 operator will tell you
"that city is in 310, sir" if you ask for a Long Beach number from a
213 operator.  So it is a bit worse, particularly if you're calling
long distance and have to pay for both calls.

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: Running Out of Area Codes
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 23:44:25 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(adams,john) writes:

> SURPRISE!  (At least I was!)  In yesterday's "New Yawk Times" appeared
> an article stating that SPRINT is now an *owner* (along with the seven
> RECs) of BELLCORE.  I'm personally convinced that this will have
> little to do with me, although I can see a couple of legions of
> attorneys lining up on either side of this issue.

Recall, however, that Sprint Corp. does business as "United Telephone
System", and is the phone company in many parts of the country.  I
think they're trying to by Centel, another big local telco.  (United
Telephone changed its name to that of the long distance company they
bought from GTE.)


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

From: [e-mail] (Elana Beach)
Subject: Number Shortage ... What About "#" Sign?
Organization: Open Communications Forum
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 14:06:04 GMT


Extreme newbie talking here ... I hope this is an interesting thought
for discussion, because it isn't easy being green!  :-)

ANYWAY ... in the various discussions of the number shortage, I never
have seen this possibility I am about to discuss, and I wonder if it's
because it's not workable, or just because no one thought of it yet.

Could the # sign be used in any permutation to help alleviate the
number shortage ... i.e. have it replace the leading "1" for
long-distance phone calls or whatever?

The * is already used as a leading character for things like *67, etc,
so that is out.  However it seems to me that the #, being so utterly
unused, could be used in SOME interesting fashion to rethink our way
through the number shortage problem.  To my non-tech mind, it seems
for example that to replace the leading 1 with the # will at LEAST
free up the leading one for something else.

Then there's combinations of #* (#N*, #*N, etc.) that could mean
different things when used with the regular numbers.

With any luck, this attempt at an idea just might be a creative spark
to get your minds going on a new line of thought.  Maybe it will help
someone out there to come up with a creative solution they would not
have thought of otherwise.


E.


Moderator's Note: The problem lies in your statement about '# is so
utterly unused ...'; this is not true. It is frequently used. There
are many switches which handle 'custom calling features' the opposite
of the way you describe, for example using 72#, 73# and so forth,
rather than with an asterisk on the front. The # -- sometimes known as
an octothorpe -- is also used to indicate the end of a dialing string,
or carriage return when the number entered is shorter or longer than
the expected seven or eleven digits. The use of # at the end of such
non-standard dialing strings avoids the need for the caller to wait
while the equipment times out. For example, 0# gets the operator much
faster than just 0, since before fetching the operator, the equipment
is going to wait several seconds to see if you intend to go further
with your dialing, such as 0 + area code + number. Your use of # tells
it not to wait any longer. When calling the number to which a calling
card is assigned, one need only enter the four digit PIN rather than
the entire calling card number. The equipment knows how to interpret
what you have entered (first four digits of fourteen, wait for ten
more, or four of four proceed with processing now) because you insert
the # at the end. This is ditto on international calling, since the
number of digits we dial varies from one country to the next, depending
on the length of the country code (one, two, or three digits usually),
city code (one, two or three digits) and the local number (four to
seven digits usually). Typically you can cut 20-30 seconds off the
dialing time on an international call by hitting # at the end of your
dialing. So the 'mostly unused' # really has a big job.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: SMDS Question
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 23:11:12 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Sean Malloy) writes ...

> He was talking about applications, and mentioned that one would be the
> interconnection of LANs within a metropolitan area.  I thought about
> it for a while, and alarm bells started to go off in my head.  Putting
> LANs on a public-switched network?  Doesn't that open up all sorts of
> security issues?

No.

> I asked the speaker about this, and he danced around the issue.  I got
> frustrated, and decided that security wasn't his bag.  But the
> question remains.  What sort of precautions are taken to prevent
> unauthorized users from getting into the LAN?  Passwords?  That's
> proven to be incredibly effective on the net (heh).  Besides, it'd add
> overhead.  Some sort of callback?  That reduces the advantages of
> being switched ...

SMDS is a packet-switched service.  No more, no less.  Unlike X.25,
it's connectionless, so it actually melds more easily with LAN traffic
(LANs are connectionless) than X.25 or Frame Relay, both of which of
course involve connections.

But the SMDS network only delivers packets to the destination address
(E.164 format) in each packet.  So if anybody on the same SMDS sends
you a packet, you might receive it, but you don't have to return the
favor.  You will not receive anybody else's traffic, and they won't
get yours.  If you're really paranoid about somebody else maliciously
addressing packets to you, then I suppose you could set up a Closed
User Group too.

Think of it as being like a shared LAN in which the phone company
provides bridges that block all traffic UNLESS it's addressed to the
destination.  (That's the opposite of 802.1 bridges which assume it's
all private and thus pass everything unless they know not to.)


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

From: [e-mail] (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: Re: SMDS Question
Organization: CMC Network Systems (Rockwell DCD), Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 07:35:20 GMT

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Sean
Malloy) writes:

> I was at the symposium for Broadband Networks last week, and watched
> with some interest a presentation by a gentleman from GTE on SMDS.

This is turning out to be the surprise of the decade. GTE actually is
going seriously after SMDS, and they have even installed a
GTE-to-PacBell SMDS gateway. I hear that they are way ahead of the
Baby Bells in this effort.

> He was talking about applications, and mentioned that one would be the
> interconnection of LANs within a metropolitan area.  I thought about
> it for a while, and alarm bells started to go off in my head.  Putting
> LANs on a public-switched network?  Doesn't that open up all sorts of
> security issues?

Attaching to a public network, inherently is a security issue.
Fortunately, we have tools to address this issue and set a security
policy adequate to our needs for each site. Lots of people attach over
phone wires, and many routers let you install packet filters to
implement your policy.


Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer    Internet E-mail: [e-mail]
CMC Network Products / Rockwell Int'l    Telephone: [phone]
Santa Barbara, CA 93117-3083        TeleFAX:   [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Pushpendra Mohta)
Subject: Re: SMDS Question
Date: 13 Feb 1993 18:12:12 GMT
Organization: CERFnet Dial n' CERF Customer Group


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Sean
Malloy) writes:

> I was at the symposium for Broadband Networks last week, and watched
> with some interest a presentation by a gentleman from GTE on SMDS.

> He was talking about applications, and mentioned that one would be the
> interconnection of LANs within a metropolitan area.  I thought about
> it for a while, and alarm bells started to go off in my head.  Putting
> LANs on a public-switched network?  Doesn't that open up all sorts of
> security issues?

You take standard precautions: You secure your gateways and you secure
your hosts. You may get firewall machines or encryption devices. There
is a plethora of literature on this.

SMDS solves some of this problem by creating "closed groups" At your
request, the access points to the SMDS network can have filters
designed to exchange traffic with selected SMDS hosts only. (PacBell
does this, I am sure GTE does the same.)

The access points also check to see the source SMDS address coming in
to the network is the same as one preassigned to that port, so it is
difficult for people to fake their SMDS addresses.

However, your data is with the phone company .... :-)  So, if you are
forced to be paranoid: Encrypt.

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 10:19 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?


[e-mail] (Paul Barnett) writes:

> This is indeed specific to the local telephone company.  In Mpls-St.
> Paul, which is served by US West, you HAVE to publish the number, or
> pay an extra charge.

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. So, if I wanted to
avoid paying unlisting charges on my residence lines, the phone book
would look something like this (?):

Higdon John ------------- 264-4115 (the number I normally list)
Higdon John ------------- 266-4400
Higdon John ------------- 266-4401
Higdon John ------------- 266-4402
Higdon John ------------- 266-4403
Higdon John ------------- 266-4404

[etc., etc., and on and on for sixteen lines]

Some of the businesses in town might take up an entire page! Just how
thick is the phone book for Mpls-St. Paul?

> However, you could specify a different name for the listing, and
> some people invent strange names.

So is there an entire page of 'Rover'?


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: David Lesher <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 19:09:05 EST
Reply-To: [e-mail]  (David Lesher)
Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex


I've always found it interesting that second through n-th lines can be
non-pub for free. After all, it exposes one of the BOC's "BIG LIES".

Years ago, The Seven Dwarfs claimed that non-pub cost extra because
they suffered under the weight of those 411 calls; all caused by your
n.p. number.

Then they succeeded in getting DA charges tariffed -- Bingo -- another
profit center! So the tripe they now peddle is that n.p. numbers cause
them oh_so_much trouble. The classic explanation was the comedian who
said it's "because they have to push the rest of the numbers in the
book up one place ..."

Of course the REAL reason that additional unlistings are free is
simple.  To do otherwise would REALLY cost Ma's kids.

Consider:

  EVERY number in every Centrex would have to be listed. Think about
  your local megacorporation or worse, state university.

  The #1 largest user of n.p. numbers is, of course, not NSA or even
  teleslime. Rather, it's the BOC's! Think how zealously She guards
  those "secret" numbers to reach someone who understands something and
  might help you out! [re: PAT's recent story about CNID and calling the
  switch back ...] Now just suppose your local directory listed them
  all.

Hmmm, maybe I should petition the PSC.......


[e-mail]        (301) 56-LINUX

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

From: [e-mail] (Richard Lucas)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
Organization: Boulder Valley School District
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 01:08:08 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dan
Lanciani) writes:

> I recently ordered a second line in my name and at the same
> address as my existing line.  For some reason I thought one could get
> non-published or unlisted (I forget) status at no extra charge for
> each line beyond the first.  Did I imagine this?  The business office
> was quite certain that I would have to pay extra.  I suppose the
> answer is specific to NET land ...

     There are two possible ways of requesting the second line. If you
requested that it be billed with the main number, the service order
would need to contain a line specifying the AML (Additional Main
Listing) details. Omit that and the second line won't be listed. There
should be no charge to omit the AML. The second option is to bill the
line by itself.  In that case the USOC would be NP3 rather than NPU,
and would generate no charge. At least in Colorado we had the rule you
remember. The basic procedures date back to pre-Divestiture days and
as such may not be NET-specific.


Rick Lucas ([e-mail], and former USW service rep)
Debate Coach, Fairview HS, Boulder, CO

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

Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
From: upchrch![e-mail] (Joel Upchurch  )
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 18:06:53 EST
Organization: Upchurch Computer Consulting, Orlando FL


[e-mail] (Dan Lanciani) writes:

> I recently ordered a second line in my name and at the same
> address as my existing line.  For some reason I thought one could get
> non-published or unlisted (I forget) status at no extra charge for
> each line beyond the first.  Did I imagine this?  The business office
> was quite certain that I would have to pay extra.  I suppose the
> answer is specific to NET land ...

My first line is published. When I got my second line it wasn't
required to be listed. For all I know I might have to pay extra to
have it listed. I notice there are a lot less sales calls coming in on
the second line. I've entertained the notion of using the second
number as my primary contact with people I know and putting my modem
and fax on the first line and have a answering machine take calls on
that line.

The nice part was that since both numbers are billed together AT&T
didn't charge any extra to have Any Hour Saver on both lines.


(If your mail bounces use the address below.)
Joel Upchurch/Upchurch Computer Consulting/718 Galsworthy/Orlando, FL 32809
[e-mail] {uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd,ucf-cs}!peora!joel [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Jim Gottlieb)
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Jim Gottlieb)
Organization: Info Connections, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 13:55:14 GMT


[e-mail] (Jan Richert) writes:

> Sometimes you can reach the US directory assistance from Germany by
> dialing +1 XXX 555 1212 ... but sometimes you get a message "Your call
> cannot completed as dialed"

I believe this is because your call may be carried on any of a number
of carriers to the U.S.

For example, I sometimes try to call California 976 numbers from here
in Japan.  Regardless of what carrier I pick to handle the call on
this side, I enter the U.S. via AT&T, MCI, or Sprint on a seemingly
random basis.  If I land on AT&T, my calls to 976 go through.
Otherwise I might hear "MCI does not complete calls to 976 ..." or a
similar one from Sprint.

This could be rather confusing to a casual caller.

I suspect that certain carrier(s) pass overseas calls to DA while
others don't.


Jim Gottlieb               Info Connections, Tokyo, Japan
<[e-mail]>       In Japan: <[e-mail]>
Fax: [phone]              Voice Mail: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Sven Echternach)
Subject: Worldwide Directory Assistance
Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 14:24:34 +0100


> [Moderator's Note: Yes and no. No, you are not supposed to dial
> international DA direct (no, people in other countries cannot dial
> 555-1212 in this country -- I don't think), and yes, it can be done in
> ...]

Yes, you can reach 555-1212 from most countries in the world!  It is
just one of these undocumented features AT&T doesn't tell us.

Just call up the AT&T USA Direct Access Number from most countries.
AT&T publishes them daily in {USA Today} and other newspapers.

If you get an operator, like from Germany, tell her you want (npa)
555-1212, where npa is the NPA of the number you want to have.

They won't ask you for your calling card because it is a toll free
call.

Unfortunately, some AT&T Operators don't know about this, but keep on
asking for your Calling Card (in 20% of the cases), so hang up and try
again then.


Regards,

Sven


[Moderator's Note: First of all, 'USA Direct' is a different matter
than simply calling from some other country to the USA. With USA
Direct you actually get an AT&T operator in the USA. In the latter
case, the local telecom operator handles the call according to the
rules in that country. And in any event, if they (AT&T operators or
the operators in your country) are giving it to you for free, that is
a much better deal than we who are stateside get: we have to pay about
60-65 cents for each call to npa-555-1212.    PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ed Greenberg)
Subject: Re: Exchange Scanning - Enough Already!
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 13:06:02 GMT


> [Moderator's Note: What is wrong with your theory, Nigel, is that a
> carpet cleaning company or health club -- or even a persistent bill
> collector -- would not call (was it?) 165 times each night. You don't
> sell memberships or cleaning services at midnight. In any event, I
> don't think there is legislation at the federal level.   PAT]

Actually, the way I read the scenario, they might.  Consider that if
the business has the entire prefix assigned to it, but is using only,
let's say, 5,000 out of the 10,000 numbers assigned, and somebody
scanned the whole exchange, then they would get 5,000 calls on their
DID trunks that would result in intercept from their switch.

Now, typically, the company holding onto so many empty DIDs doesn't
get them all turned on, but enables them by the 1000s group.  As long
as the telco has numbers to spare, this works, but eventually growth
in the area puts pressure on this and you need to either pay for your
numbers to reserve them, or give 'em up.


Edward W. Greenberg  | Home: [phone] | [e-mail]
1600 Stokes St. #24  | Work: [phone] | DoD#: 0357
San Jose, CA  95126  | Fax:  [phone] | KM6CG (ex WB2GOH)

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #88
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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #89

TELECOM Digest     Sat, 13 Feb 93 23:48:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 89

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    The Definitive Word on TTL Fields (Mark Boolootian)
    Re: Meaning of TTL in TCP/IP (Eric M. Carroll)
    Re: AT&T Are You Listening? (Jack Decker)
    Re: AT&T Are You Listening? (Ed Greenberg)
    Re: ANI on 800 Line w/o T1? (John Llorens)
    Re: ANI on 800 Line w/o T1? (John Higdon)
    Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones (Ken Stox)
    Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones (John Higdon)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mark Boolootian)
Subject: The Definitive Word on TTL Fields
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 13:01:45 -0800 (PST)


I don't want to drag this on ad infinitum, but it is important to get
the correct information out and that doesn't seem to be happening
here.

Matti Aarnio <[e-mail]> writes:

> Lately I have seen this "TTL is time in seconds" dream on many places.
> Who originated that idea?  Current IP version 4 does not contain an
> absolute time stamp in each datagram, rather it has a hop-count.

and, referring to TTL, again writes:

> Nope, it is not SECONDS, it is HOPS.  (Gomer does explain it well)
> (And it is explained well in the original RFCs too, see RFC 791).

While it is a minor point, the TTL field is in fact specified as being
in seconds in RFC 791 (and also in RFC 1122 - Host Requirements).
Here is the salient passage from 791:

    Time to Live:

    The time to live is set by the sender to the maximum time the
    datagram is allowed to be in the internet system.  If the datagram
    is in the internet system longer than the time to live, then the
    datagram must be destroyed.

    This field must be decreased at each point that the internet header
    is processed to reflect the time spent processing the datagram.
    Even if no local information is available on the time actually
    spent, the field must be decremented by 1.  The time is measured in
    units of seconds (i.e. the value 1 means one second).  Thus, the
    maximum time to live is 255 seconds or 4.25 minutes.  Since every
    module that processes a datagram must decrease the TTL by at least
    one even if it process the datagram in less than a second, the TTL
    must be thought of only as an upper bound on the time a datagram may
    exist.  The intention is to cause undeliverable datagrams to be
    discarded, and to bound the maximum datagram lifetime.


Since routers typically decrement the TTL by one, the TTL is typically
referred to as a hop count.  But according to the spec, it is
acceptable for a router to decrement the TTL by some larger value.  I
am unaware of any cases where this occurs, but it is within the realm
of possibilty.

>> By looking at Jack Decker's traceroute output, it seems that his TCP
>> packets are going through too many gateways.

> Nope, 30 is quite normal amount of router hops from one edge to
> another of the present Internet network. Even 50 is not that unusual.

I would like to challenge you to produce a traceroute for me with 30
hops in it (and no routing loops!).  My understanding of why a TTL of
60 is commonly used in TCP is that it virtually guarantees a packet
can move from one edge of the Internet to the other and back again
without being discarded (i.e. the maximum width of the Internet is <
30 hops).  50 hops is unbelievable.

I want to correct something *I* wrote in my last post.  I said:

> By the way, most implemenations of traceroute use a TTL of 30.

I should have said, most implementations of traceroute use a maximum
default TTL of 30 (the reason being is that is usually sufficient to
get where you need to go).


Mark Boolootian        [e-mail]        [phone]
Disclaimer:  booloo speaks for booloo and no other.

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

From: [e-mail] (Eric M. Carroll)
Subject: Re: Meaning of TTL in TCP/IP
Organization: UTCS Campus Access
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 16:21:14 -0500


> Nope, it is not SECONDS, it is HOPS.   ...
> (And it is explained well in the original RFCs too, see RFC 791).

The TTL is in seconds. But a router is required to decrement it by at
least one. Thus it has hop-count properties. RFC791 defines it, and
RFC1122 clarifies it.

 From RFC791:

Time to Live:  8 bits

[Moderator's Note: This message quoted the very same text and has been
omitted here, since he repeats what the first message in this issue
said quoted from the same source by Mark B.  PAT]

 From Host Requirements RFC1122:

3.2.1.7  Time-to-Live: RFC-791 Section 3.2

DISCUSSION:
                 The TTL field has two functions: limit the lifetime of
                 TCP segments (see RFC-793 [TCP:1], p. 28), and
                 terminate Internet routing loops.  Although TTL is a
                 time in seconds, it also has some attributes of a hop-
                 count, since each gateway is required to reduce the TTL
                 field by at least one.


Eric Carroll     University of Toronto Computing & Communications
                 Network & Operations Services, Network Development

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 15:02:50 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: AT&T Are You Listening?


In message <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Laurence
Chiu) wrote:

> I am thinking about MCI instead. They have a similar plan to ROW
> (don't remember the name) with similar rates but also they have
> Friends and Family. I can denote two international numbers F&F (China
> is allowed) and thus get savings to all the international destinations
> I call.

> I don't want to switch carriers. I like AT&T. Their lines are good
> (I've made consistent 14.4 connects all over the country using my
> cheap Supra modem), their customer service very friendly etc. But they
> just don't offer the calling plans I want. Anyway MCI advertise all
> the time on our local channel which carries Chinese broadcasting, in
> both Cantonese and Mandarin with toll-free numbers you can call which
> are answered by Chinese speaking operators so my wife is always asking
> me why I don't use MCI! I cannot explain modems to her that easily!

Why not use both carriers?

I would suggest you do this: Switch your line to MCI and use them for
all your voice calls.  You might want to try your modem calls at least
once; you may well be surprised to find that the line quality to the
places you call is perfectly acceptable.

However, should you find a place that you cannot call via MCI, simply
force the call to go via AT&T, by dialing 10288, then 1, the area code
and number.

If there is a location that you have consistent problems calling via
MCI, by all means call up MCI's customer service and complain!  But
honestly, you should not have that many problems.  All three of the
major carriers use digital fiber optic circuits now so you really
should not notice a difference in the quality of your modem connects,
unless you are calling some place out in the hinterlands.

But remember, as long as your phone line has been converted for "equal
access" (MOST lines in the U.S. have by now), you can ALWAYS force a
call to go by the carrier of your choice, simply by prefixing whatever
you'd normally dial with the carrier's "10xxx" code.  Thus, if you'd
normally dial 1-(xxx) xxx-xxxx, you'd instead dial 10xxx-1 (xxx)
xxx-xxxx.  The "10xxx" codes for the "big three" carriers are:

10222 - MCI
10288 - AT&T
10333 - Sprint

(I know this is all "common knowledge" for regular readers of the
TELECOM Digest, but I have to imagine that new folks stumble through
here at least once in a while!)  :-)

AT&T spends a LOT of money on advertising to convince you that their
quality is better.  In my mind, this is just about as valid as the
advertising that oil companies used to run to convince you that one
brand of gasoline was better than another.  In many cases, all the gas
stations in a town got their gas from the same source!  It was the
same gas, yet they all tried to convince the public that theirs was
better!

And we see a similar situation here, in that in many cases if you are
going to have trouble on a call, the trouble is most likely to be in
the local telco's lines from their point-of-presence (of which there
is often only one per LATA) to their local exchange, and ALL the
carriers use those same lines to complete calls.  If you try a call
over MCI and it doesn't work, and you then try to complete it over
AT&T and it does, that doesn't necessarily mean that AT&T is better,
it just means you got a different circuit from the local telco.  Had
you tried your second attempt on MCI again, you would probably have
been just as satisfied with the result.

Mind you, I can find things to complain about regarding all the
carriers, but with AT&T my biggest complaint is that AT&T tries to
make it sound as though their lines are so vastly superior to that of
their competitors when the truth is that there really isn't any
perceptible difference in most cases (certainly nothing you could hear
on a voice call ... and in the past I have seen a few cases where you
couldn't make a modem connect over AT&T, while using MCI produced a
near-perfect connection.  Still, that could also have been a local
telco problem).

AT&T's new fax commercials really get me ... they talk about their fax
guarantee but insofar as I can determine from the short amount of time
that the fine print remains on the screen, they only guarantee to
credit your bill for the cost of any failed fax call.  Have the other
carriers refused to do that?  I rather doubt it, since essentially we
are talking a "poor connection" and the major carriers have all issued
credits for those for quite some time!


Jack Decker | Internet: [e-mail] | Fidonet: 1:154/8

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

From: [e-mail] (Ed Greenberg)
Subject: Re: AT&T Are You Listening?
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 13:22:39 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> John Higdon <[e-mail].
com> writes:

> For instance, keep AT&T as your PIC and then sign up with MCI for the
> international plan, keeping your MCI account secondary. Then when you
> call China (or whereever), prepend '10222' to the call. Frontline
> salesslime will tell you that you have to "switch" to take advantage
> of a particular plan, but that is 99.9% hogwash.

> I have used various plans offered by Sprint and MCI, but I have never
> "left" AT&T. There is no need.

I can second this.  I have an MCI personal 800 number. Even though my
PIC is AT&T, I have a "Friends and Family" account with one number on
it -- mine.  I discount the cost of my 800 calls home by 20% this way.
The whole thing was set up for me by a courteous, respectful, _telecom_
literate_ MCI rep who understood me perfectly when I said that I had
no intention of switching PICs but wanted an MCI 800 number.  She
explained that I could add F&F to a secondary account and set it up.
I checked and checked, waiting to be slammed, and imagine my surprise
when I wasn't!


Edward W. Greenberg  | Home: [phone] | [e-mail]
1600 Stokes St. #24  | Work: [phone] | DoD#: 0357
San Jose, CA  95126  | Fax:  [phone] | KM6CG (ex WB2GOH)

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

From: [e-mail] (John Llorens)
Subject: Re: ANI on 800 Line w/o T1?
Organization: Compaq Computer Corp.
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 17:34:17 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> John Higdon <john@zygot.
ati.com> writes:

> Tas Dienes <[e-mail]> writes:

>> Does anybody know if it is possible to get ANI on an 800 line without
>> having to get T1 service?  I just have a couple of regular (actually,
>> Centranet) lines - local service is GTE, 800 is Sprint.  Sprint says
>> no, but I was wondering if anybody else can?

> In order to receive realtime ANI from a long distance carrier, you
> must have a "trunk-side connection". All connections from your telco's
> switch are "line-side connections". So the answer is no, you cannot
> get realtime ANI without having a direct trunk connection to a
> carrier's switch.

> There is a way around this however. Stay tuned.

You can recieve realtime ANI and DNIS on reqular voice lines via a
DTMF header that begins the call.  While this information is being
transfered to the called, the caller is receiving a ring back tone.

When you (called) have processed the ANI/DNIS (database lookup,
operator available, etc ...) you send a special DTMF to the switch to
connect the voice path.  This method requires a Dialogic or equivalent
tone detection/generation equipment at the receiver's end.

Who offers this service?

   Arch Telecom
   Houston TX
   [phone] or 1-800-882-2947

How much does it cost?

   ATT Readyline rates!

Who is the carrier?

   ATT (ISDN inbound and outbound for extremely fast call setup times)

Features in addition to ANI/DNIS delivery?

   ANI Blocking/Passing can be programmed via touchtone.
   Takes effect immediately.

Destination number redirect to any domestic number.

   Can be programmed via touchtone.
   Takes effect immediately.

Can be used as a calling card.

   Speed dial codes

I think they also offer this service in combination with ATT's new
Vari-a-bill 900 service.

etc ... I don't remember all the services/features...

I don't know of anyone else using this method for switched long
distance service. I hope the info is useful to those in need of this
service.


John Llorens    Compaq Computer Corporation   [e-mail]

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 13:32 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: ANI on 800 Line w/o T1?


tim gorman <[e-mail]> writes:

> First, there are ways to get ANI over 800 lines without T1 service.
> It depends entirely on what your long distance provider offers.

> If the carrier can offer standard trunking with the ANI sent as an MF
> (or possible DTMF) digit stream and your PBX can handle the specific
> format, then a T1 is not a requirement.

> If your PBX can handle Feature Group D signaling formats,

Were you responding to the same post I was? The original poster said
that he had ordinary POTS (well Centrex anyway) from GTE and no
special equipment. I assumed he was asking if he could casually get
ANI from a carrier without T1.

All POTS circuits are "line side". I never claimed that you could not
get trunk connections from telco (I have them in certain
applications), but the question was not about PBXes, complex
alternatives to IXC direct trunking or anything else. It was about ANI
on POTS. Of course, it is certainly possible for a carrier to provide
ANI using DTMF after a call has been answered, but to my knowledge
there is no such offering at this time.

There is even a rumored service from AT&T that provides ANI via the
CNID mechanism to customers. Only problem with that (and why I did not
mention it) is that the poster is from California, the land of
politically correct, anonymous thinking. (An aside: the pest who
called me fifteen times this morning, hanging up each time I answered
will have no worry about HIS identity being discovered. Only in
California!)


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ken Stox)
Subject: Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Ken Stox)
Organization: Ministry of Extremely Silly Walks
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 17:55:41 GMT


> 3. As defined in 47 CFR part 15 scanning receivers, or "scanners,"
> are radio receivers that automatically switch between four or more
> frequencies anywhere within the 30-960 Mhz band....

I guess my TV set will become illegal too!! It has a mode which
"scans" all channels to see if they are transmitting, and then when
you hit the channel up or down buttons only "active" stations will be
shown.

You know, that may not be such a bad idea... :->


#include <std_disclaimer.h>
Ken Stox     Consultant to A.C. Nielsen    [e-mail]

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 12:57 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones


[e-mail] (Robert Paul Loeber) writes:

> I know this may sound like a dumb question ... but what is the FCCs
> definition of a "radio receiver"?

> get a cellular phone (instead of a scanner) ...

Also, what is the FCC's definition of "easily modified"? I happen to
know someone who has rewritten the firmware for a very popular
handheld phone to allow it to act as a powerful monitor of cellular
communications. Unlike an ordinary scanner, this modified product has
the ability to follow a conversation after a handoff.

Believe me, if I wanted to listen in on cellular traffic I would not
waste any time or effort with my venerable Yaesu. The [name withheld]
"Special Edition" cellular phone would be my weapon of choice!

Scanner laws will be just about as effective as gun laws -- only much
sillier. The FCC is seriously deluded if it thinks it can win a
technological war with anyone. The below-average moron outguns the FCC
in the brain cell department.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #89
*****************************










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Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 12:25:47 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #90

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 14 Feb 93 12:25:45 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 90

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: N.E.T. and the Phantom Phone Exchange (John K. Scoggin Jr)
    Re: N.E.T. and the Phantom Phone Exchange (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE (Steve Forrette)
    Re: Cellular Phones Power Control (Samir Soliman)
    Re: Cellular Phones Power Control (Wilson Mohr)
    Re: Cellular Phones Power Control (John Gilbert)
    Re: What Could Cause Jitter in a Voice Channel Over Fiber (John Scoggin Jr)
    Re: What Could Cause Jitter in a Voice Channel Over Fiber (D. Greenwood)
    Re: Text of MFJ Wanted (Jeff Sicherman)
    Re: Number Identifier Attempts From Canada (Graham Toal)
    Re: Source For Telephone Headsets Wanted (A.J. Harvey-Perry)
    Re: BIX Gateway (Seng-Poh Lee)
    Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer (John Higdon)
    Re: A Whole New Ball Game - Sport Broadcasts via Phone (Stewart Clamen)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: John K Scoggin Jr <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: N.E.T. and the Phantom Phone Exchange
Date: 13 Feb 1993 18:19:40 GMT
Organization: Delmarva Power & Light Company
Reply-To: [e-mail]


YES!  This is the not the first time that a telco has hosed their
routing tables.

One Saturday morning I got a call from our Southern Division Energy
Control Center in Salisbury MD that they could not get any calls from
Southern Delaware.  I tried it myself -- Delmarva has an extensive
private fiber net and I have a bunch of OPX lines in various counties
terminating on the sets in the Network Operations Center here.

Sure enough, Kent and Sussex Counties had NO long-distance access
through MCI -- AT&T worked fine.  Talked to the folks at MCI -- they
had several open problem reports on the same thing.  They were getting
nowhere with Bell of Pennsylvania (MCI has two big DMS250's in
Philadelphia that apparently handle Delaware, as well as eastern PA).

Anyhow, I raised enough hell that I finally spoke to a switchman in
Bell's Market St CO.  Finally found that they had installed a new
generic the night before and had forgotten to load some of the
translation tables!


John K. Scoggin, Jr.        Email: [e-mail]
Supervisor, Network Operations  Phone: [phone]
Delmarva Power & Light Company  Fax:   [phone]
500 N. Wakefield Drive          NOC:   [phone]
Newark, DE 19714-6066
The opinions expressed are not those of Delmarva Power, simply the
product of an over-active imagination...

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: N.E.T. and the Phantom Phone Exchange
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 23:49:16 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Tom Arnold) writes:

> Perhaps one of the TELECOM readers can shed light on the recent weird
> behavior up here in New England Telephone land on the part of exchange
> 264 in the 508 area code (Eastern to Mid-Massachusetts.)

> This exchange serves two Digital Equipment Corporation engineering
> facilities in Boxborough.  It no doubt serves other things as well.

The answer is obvious: You should always report these things to
internal telecom people FIRST!  We know how to diagnose them.

The DEC Boxborough sites are served via a PBX with some Direct Inward
Dialing trunks.  The Acton sites are served via the same CO, with
other numbers.  If the DID trunks are down, callers will get fast
busy.  DID trunks can fail inside the central office, or inside the
PBX, or the wire in between them can fail.  Any of these will cause
fast busy.

The phone company doesn't have lines with these numbers; rather, there
are large blocks of numbers pointed at a few lines whose numbers may
not even be dialable (sometimes they're alphanumeric).  Of course,
enough of the telecomm support people understand this.

> But, how could such an error occur?  Can a technician really delete a
> whole exchange from a telephone switch by accident without realizing
> it?  Could the routing algorithm in use (I have no idea what kind of
> switch N.E.T. is using for the 264 exchange,) somehow drop 800 lines
> by mistake?

It's not an "exchange", and it's not even a prefix code.  It's a trunk
group.  And yes, they drop pretty easily.  DID trunks use an analog
protocol that is terribly difficult to maintain. (The 264 prefix is an
analog switch, a 2BESS.)  The lines are probably multiplexed at the CO
onto one or two T1 carriers, so if the T1 drops, the group is down,
and all calls to those numbers get fast busy!


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
(Digital equipment Corp, Corporate Telecom Engineering)
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 02:54:59 -0800
From: Steve Forrette <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE


It seems that telcos (such as Pacific Bell) which do not yet offer
Caller ID in their regions, and are marking all calls that leave the
LATA as PRIVATE so that they don't show up in other areas, are
creating a major impediment for the usefulness of Caller ID.  What if
a users in another area subscribes to "block blocking," whereby their
telco will reject any call that's market PRIVATE.  This will prevent
any incoming calls from anyone in California!  Similarly, I would
imagine that a great deal more people who have Caller ID boxes choose
to ignore calls that come in as PRIVATE.  How are you supposed to
differentiate between people who have specifically requested that
their numbers be blocked (who I most certainly DON'T want to talk to)
from those who just happen to live in a state who's PUC knows what's
best for its citizens (many of whom I do want to talk to)?

And just having Pacific Bell not include the calling number at all
would prevent the proper functioning of Call Return, Call Block, and
other CLASS services which rely on knowing the calling number but
don't reveal it to the customer.  Is this going to be a growing
problem?


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 09:01:37 -0800
From: Samir Soliman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Power Control


> 1) The primary reason CDMA does tight power control is not to conserve
> battery power, but rather so that the spread spectrum system
> being used will work at all.  Battery conservation and radiation
> reductions are nice side-effects.

CDMA is an interference limited system while other systems (FM and
TDMA) are thermal noise limited (receiver sensitivity determines the
coverage).  Tight power control is used to control intrinsic
interference (interference due to other users in the same cell as well
as users in the adjacent cells). Keep in mind that in CDMA there is no
frequency reuse (no need for frequency planning). All users on one
CDMA radio channel use the same 1.25 MHz band. A by product of tight
power control is battery conversation and radiation reductions (hence
the term portable friendly).

> 2) A couple of people wrote me saying that ordinary analog (AMPS) cellular
> service also has power control.  While it is true that a power control
> system is defined in the spec, it appears that in actual use most cells
> keep their mobile units set to full power (for whatever class of mobile
> it is, either 3W or 600mw) virtually all of the time.  In fact, I've
> gotten notes from a couple of cell experts who say they know of no AMPS
> systems that actively run power control (I cannot verify this, however).
> The AMPS power control spec utilizes a small number of steps and was
> designed to control inter-cell interference.  In practice, however, I'm
> told that fading is usually so significant that just running at full
> power is the norm.

On the CDMA reverse (up) link there are 3 power control loops. An open
loop (mobile responsibility) which has 80 dB dynamic range and is used
to mitigate near-end far-end problems. The closed loop which has a
resoulation of 1 dB and is used to compensate for fast fading problems
(mobile-base station). The outer loop (Selector-Base station-mobile)
is used to achieve a target voice quality.

On the forward (down) link, the power control is used to reduce
interference and mitigate the corner problem.


Samir S. Soliman        QUALCOMM  Incorporated
10555 Sorrento Valley Rd.  San Diego, CA 92121

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 02:01:25 CST
From: [e-mail] (Wilson Mohr)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Power Control


This is true in most "small" systems. "small" meaning they have not
got a large enough subscriber penetration to necessitate a system that
utilizes frequency reuse. However, if you take a city like Chicago or
LA you will find power control not only on the uplink (mobile to
cell), but also on the downlink ( cell to mobile ). This
implementation allows greater reuse density within the given spectrum.
As a mtter of record, most large systems do not even let the mobile
get much beyond half-power when operating in the densest portions of
the system. But remember, mobiles are capable of 3W and portables are
only .6W. The power stepping capability allows mobiles and portables
to peacefully co-existent in dense regions.  Portables by definition
always run at (full) .6W. There is a parameter within your phone that
is passed to the system telling the system that it is a portable and
should always run at full power. Combining this with other system
admin features allows very complex traffic patterns without
compromising call quality (hopefully).

If anyone wants the nitty-gritty, I can elobaorate, but I will save
bandwidth for now.

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

From: [e-mail] (John Gilbert)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Power Control
Organization: Motorola,  Land Mobile Products Sector
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 19:49:48 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lauren
Weinstein) writes:

> ... While it is true that a power control system is defined in the
> spec, it appears that in actual use most cells keep their mobile units
> set to full power (for whatever class of mobile it is, either 3W or
> 600mw) virtually all of the time.  In fact, I've gotten notes from a
> couple of cell experts who say they know of no AMPS systems that
> actively run power control (I cannot verify this, however).

Here in Chicago on the Ameritech system I very seldom see my mobile go
above level 3 or 4 while I am making a call.  Adaptive power is very
much in use here.


Level          Power
00    3.0   W    34.8 dBm (+2/-4 dB)
01    1.2   W    30.8 dBm (+2/-4 dB)
02    0.478 W    26.8 dBm (+2/-4 dB)
03    0.190 W    22.8 dBm (+2/-4 dB)
04    0.076 W    18.8 dBm (+2/-4 dB)
05    0.030 W    14.8 dBm (+2/-4 dB)
06    0.012 W    10.8 dBm (+2/-4 dB)
07    0.005 W     6.8 dBm (+2/-4 dB)


John Gilbert   [e-mail]

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

From: John K Scoggin Jr <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: What Could Cause Jitter in a Voice Channel
Date: 13 Feb 1993 21:18:21 GMT
Organization: Delmarva Power & Light Company
Reply-To: [e-mail]


In article [e-mail], [e-mail] (Tracy Ching
<[e-mail]>) writes:

> While sending a 1KHz tone over that voice channel, the other end is
> jittering (changing phase constantly) and also slightly changing
> amplitude.  The "gurus" who administer the thing say there is nothing
> that can be done to fix it.  I just want my clear channel.

>     What could cause such a problem?  Be as technical as you want.
> Thanks for any info.

> I'm quite sure my 1KHz tone is pure, i.e. no jitter from the source.

Digital systems experience an impairment known as timing jitter.  This
is caused by the accumulation of variations in timing of a digital
signal.  A string of repeaters adds small timing errors due to the
clocks in each repeater and the addition/removal of 'stuffing bits' in
async muxes (like most M13's).  It is possible to add buffers to
retime the signal at each end, de-jitterizing the signal, but they are
pretty expensive.


John K. Scoggin, Jr.        Email: [e-mail]
Supervisor, Network Operations  Phone: [phone]
Delmarva Power & Light Company  Fax:   [phone]
500 N. Wakefield Drive          NOC:   [phone]
Newark, DE 19714-6066
The opinions expressed are not those of Delmarva Power, simply the
product of an over-active imagination...

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

From: [e-mail]
Organization: EdgeWays! InfoLink - A FirstClass GUI BBS  N. Vancouver, BC
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 13:32:11 PST
Subject: Re: What Could Cause Jitter in a Voice Channel Over Fiber


In my experience in the operation and maintenance of a 960 channel
communications system, mainly microwave radio, but also including some
fibre optic and digital communications, the main contributor to phase
jitter is the voice channel multiplexing equipment.

The medium, (fibre optic, microwave radio or wire line), relatively
speaking, is a negligible contributor to phase or amplitude
transmission impairments.

Have a look at the specifications of the voice channel multiplexing
equipment your 1 kHz tone is going through and I think you may find
your culprit.


[e-mail]
EdgeWays! InfoLink  [e-mail]
GUI BBS: [phone] * Voice: [phone]
The views expressed here are of the individual author only.

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 00:39:18 -0800
From: Jeff Sicherman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Text of MFJ Wanted
Organization: Cal State Long Beach


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

> Doesn't anyone have a full text copy of the Modified Final Judgement
> (MFJ) from divestiture?

Sorry, it's still being modified ...


Jeff Sicherman

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 22:02:59 GMT
From: Graham Toal <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Number Identifier Attempts From Canada


Just out of interest, is there *any* way to dial this from Britain?
(Still trying to find out for sure if CLID is passed out of our
exchanges - the best answer we have so far is 'probably, on some
transatlantic routes', but no-one on uk.telecom has *ever* reported
anyone in the US identifying their line ...)


Graham

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

From: [e-mail] (A.J.Harvey-Perry)
Subject: Re: Source For Telephone Headsets Wanted
Organization: AT&T
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 11:01:45 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Daniel
M. Rosenberg) writes:

> Does anyone know where I could procure a reasonably priced (< $100)
> telephone headset? It'd be for a plain old telephone, not a key
> system. Places like Hello Direct sell these things for way too much --
> like $200.

All I can add to this is that I have tried one or two headsets,
including Panasonics. Currently I have a Plantronics headset which I
have been told is very cheap, but good. I would recommend that you try
and get one of these.


Regards,

Adrian Harvey-Perry    AT&T Network Systems UK Ltd.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of my own and not of
my company.

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 19:09:40 EST
From: [e-mail] (Seng-Poh Lee, Speedy)
Subject: Re: BIX Gateway
Organization: Public Domain Inc.


In article <[e-mail]> is written:

>> So, it might be even possible to get a telnet connection to BIX?

> Probably, sooner or later.  The address genvid.com is actually the

It already exists. Telnet to x25.bix.com and login as BIX. It appears
to cost $1/hour anytime of the day.


Seng-Poh Lee    <[e-mail]>

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 17:34 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Calling a Roaming Cellular Customer


[e-mail] writes:

> When I call from a coin phone to a local roaming port, I notice that I
> get my money back if the called party doesn't answer but don't if
> either they answer or I get the recorded message telling me that the
> other party is out of range.

You neglected to mention if it was a COCOT. If it was, then it
"guessed" if the call was answered by listening for voice from the
other end. No voice = no answer, as far as the phone is concerned (the
recorded message counts as "voice").

Now if cellular providers would put the SIT in front of that
announcement, then you would get your money back from COCOTs. I will
bet that if you had been using a utility pay phone, it would keep your
money when calling the roamer port no matter what.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Stewart Clamen)
Subject: Re: A Whole New Ball Game - Sport Broadcasts via Phone
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 04:03:50 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> Don.Kimberlin@f730.n250.
z1.FIDONET.ORG (Don Kimberlin) writes:

> One of the more common limitations suffered by smaller radio
> broadcasters is maintaining carriage of local sports teams when their
> town's team is on the road.  When economically possible, the small
> station has classically ordered a "Schedule D program transmission
> channel" from the phoneco, and aired a remote broadcast from as far
> away as the broadcaster could afford.  (The "Schedule D channel" is
> one common name for an ordinary telephone message channel of 3 kHz
> bandwidth supplied for program use.)

Donald Sutherland, the movie actor, is a great Expos fan, and has
season tickets right behind first base.  However, his job makes it
hard be in Montreal the entire baseball season.  I don't know if it is
still true, but in the early 1980s, it was reported that the baseball
team had a special phone number set up for him so he could call from
anywhere and listen to play-by-play radio coverage.


Stewart M. Clamen        Internet:    [e-mail]
School of Computer Science    UUCP:          uunet!"[e-mail]"
Carnegie Mellon University    Phone:          [phone]
5000 Forbes Avenue        Fax:         [phone]
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891, USA

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #90
*****************************










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Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 13:39:03 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #91

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 14 Feb 93 13:39:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 91

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Jerry Leichter)
    Re: Wiring For Multi-Lines on One Jack (Pat Turner)
    Re: Differences Between ANI and Caller-ID (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit (Henry E. Schaffer)
    Re: Ma Bell Calling (John Higdon)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Dave Levenson)
    Re: Cheap Way to Get Incoming SDMR From DID? (Ed Greenberg)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Paul Barnett)
    Re: Telex to Internet Gateway Question (Donald R. Newcomb)
    Telex to USA (was Telex to Internet Gateway Question) (Richard Cox)
    Re: Standard Dialing Plan (Bob Goudreau)
    Re: Alphanumeric Pagers Question (Shawn Nunley)
    Re: GTE Does It Again (Rusty Hodge)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 10:06:51 EDT
From: Jerry Leichter <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge


I recently ran across a personal record for additional hotel charges,
at a location our Moderator may appreciate: The O'Hare Hilton.
According to the rate card in the room - at least they provide that
now! - the charges are as follows:

Local call        $1.00
In-state toll call    $1.00 + Illinois Bell charges
Direct dial LD and    $1.00 + AT&T operator-assisted full rate.
 International        That is, pay $1.00 to direct-dial your late-
            night call, and STILL pay for an operator-
            assisted day call.
Operator-assisted LD    $1.00 surcharge
Operator-assisted International
            $1.50 surcharge
1-800            FREE
  but
Other carriers        $1.00 surcharge.  The card specifically
            listed 1-800 access to other carriers as
            subject to the surcharge.  It's of course no
            problem for a modern system to have a list
            of carrier-access 800 numbers and treat them
            differently.  (Those carriers with a 7-digit
            access number are subject to the same charge
            since these are treated as local calls.)
Credit card calls    $1.00
Directory assistance    $1.00

I made my calls from the lobby, which actually had a couple of the new
AT&T model 2000 phones.  (The ones in the lobby don't have keyboards,
but the ones on the second floor, where the conference rooms are, do.)

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 13:50 EST
From: rsiatl![e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Wiring For Multi-Lines on One Jack


Conrad Kimball writes:

>> 4) Any damn way the installer wants it. :-) Listed above are two ways
>> of pairing pins.  With four pins there are 4! or 24 different ways to
                          ^^^^
>> number the pairs, resulting in 48 different combinations.

> Not quite right.  If all four pins are considered to be distinct then
> there are 4! or 24 permutations of four pins.  There is no need for
> your final multiplication by two, If that was intended to account for
> swapping polarity in each pair then you've already accounted for that

I meant to say *with four PAIRS* there are 4! ways of numbering four
distinct pairs.  I presented two ways of pairing pins in an eight pin
jack.  There are others of course.  Three other configurations I can
think of include the high speed over TP plan using the outside four
conductors, the eight pin version of a RJ1DC (T&R, T1&R1, E&M, SB,
SG), and 10BASET ethernet.  I mentioned those two because of their
intended use in a building wiring scheme.

Sorry for the confusion.


Pat Turner KB4GRZ   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: Differences Between ANI and Caller-ID
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 23:28:05 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Brent
Capps) writes:

> However, you're getting CIT mixed up with the CSL.  CIT was a
> cooperative thing between DEC and NT designed from the get-go to work
> with DMS switches.  It's an entirely separate and fairly primitive
> protocol.  I believe CIT is now called SCAI.

Just for you history buffs out there ... that's not quite it.  The
term "Computer Integrated Telephony" was coined by yours truly, in
1986, for the express purpose of being a "generic" term; the canonical
definition (if anybody asks me, as the coiner) is:

    "The functional integration of telephone switching with
     end-user computer applications."

Digital makes a number of "CIT" products, and has product names that
include "CIT" within it.  I had to coin a generic term because our
group was expanding beyond NT/CSL into a multi-vendor project.  The
first DEC CIT link to actually ship as a product was to the Mitel (UK
version) SX-200A; the second was the SL-1.  Now, of course, there are
numerous PBXs that cooperate, some via the "CSTA standard" that the
European Computer Manufacturers' Association has released.

CSTA is the ECMA standard, while SCAI is the ANSI standard.  A
different SCAI is the DMS-100 link; it still doesn't talk to DEC CIT
products (if it's even shipping; I don't think it's beyond SOAK (beta)
yet).


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

From: [e-mail] (Henry E. Schaffer)
Subject: Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit
Organization: North Carolina State University
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 03:19:07 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> TELECOM Moderator notes:

> [Moderator's Note: Don't misunderstand: in instances of genuine
> harassment over the telephone -- serious threats, continued calls of
> a very obscene nature, ringing-silence-hangup calls -- in cases
> like that, telco and the police will trap the caller and assist in
> prosecution.

  In the one case when it happened to me the police (Raleigh PD) said
that the telco (Southern Bell) would handle it and the telco said that
the PD would handle it.  It took me several dozen calls before I found
out about the division of the telco which handled harassment, and was
able to get them to start trapping (sort of "oh, we hoped it had
stopped so we didn't start") and then several weeks of keeping a phone
log (when the only wee hours calls we were getting were this
harassment -- mostly incoherent mumbling, with a few obscenities and
death threats mixed in) and reporting all this to the telco.  After
these weeks of reporting, the harassment division told me that they
would confront the caller and threaten cutting off his phone service
and that they wouldn't get involved in prosecution.  It must have
worked -- the calls stopped right after that.


henry schaffer

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 19:23 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Ma Bell Calling


[e-mail] (Robert L. Stinnett) writes:

> GTE is raising rates in this area again as well.  As I think back over
> the years, it seems that phone-use and phone charges were more simpler
> and less costly in the AT&T (Ma Bell) days.  Everything was right
> there, no worrying about all these different companies, one
> straight-forward bill.

At least with GTE nothing has changed (service gets worse, rates go
up). But ah, yes, the "good old days". I remember playing with the
family phone circa 1957. I used to love dialing various numbers and
listening to the sounds of the connections being completed. One time I
dialed "212 990 1111" and was greeted with a Manhattan traffic report.
As soon as I realized what it was, I hung up. The charge? $2.00! And
those were 1957 dollars. (Today it would be what? $.20? Terrible!)

Yes, one-stop shopping was great. No nasty choices to make. No
worrying about what features might be useful. No worry about calling
plans. It really was easier. All you needed was considerably more
money. Choices?  What was there to choose between? Features? There
were none. Calling plans? Simple: make the call and pay whatever Ma
Bell wanted to charge.  Much better system.

Want to connect special equipment to your lines? Not allowed. Want to
find out what type of equipment served your telephone? Just utter such
words as "central office" or "crossbar" or "tandem office" or "ANI" or
even "battery", "reversal", or "supervision", and you might expect a
visit from the FBI. After all, telecommunications was something only
the telephone company was supposed to know about. Need a phone? Call
the phone company. Do what it says; pay what it demands. Simplicity
itself.

Divestiture happened a scant nine years ago. In that time, costs have
plummeted, available services have increased exponentially, and the
overall service level and telco responsiveness have increased to a
level never before dreamed of in history. The last nine years make the
previous 100 years look like a bunch of losers standing around the
water cooler.

> What has happened to our communication society?  I think the line is
> down and the repairman is on vacation.

You are joking, right?

> [Moderator's Note: Don't get me started  :).   PAT]

If the choice is between then and now, give me now--in spades. Spare
me the nostalgia for telecom's wretched past.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
Organization: Westmark, Inc.
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 22:28:33 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Paul Barnett) writes:

> On the other hand, here in Dallas, either in GTE-land or SWBT-land,
> there is no extra charge for a non-published secondary number, if
> there is already a primary LISTED number at that address.

And now for something completely different:

In New Jersey, a second line billed to the same name and address
carries a lower monthly charge than the first, and is not listed.  A
second listing costs _extra_, but still less than the cost of two
lines billed separately.


Dave Levenson        Internet: [e-mail]
Westmark, Inc.        UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave
Stirling, NJ, USA    Voice: 908 647 0900  Fax: [phone]

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 00:23:25 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Ed Greenberg)
Subject: Re: Cheap Way to Get Incoming SDMR From DID?
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)


Just a thought in defense of the $7,000 quote:

You're asking for a combination of product selection, engineering,
programming, maintenance, troubleshooting, etc.  The engineered
solution that will do the job, pass the traffic, make the records,
etc., carries both costs and risks, which justify a modicum of profit.

Certainly you could order the lines, buy the PBX, send somebody to PBX
school, install it, program it, debug it, maintain it, and have no
recourse to anybody when it doesn't do what you need.  In the long
run, my own humble opinion is that you'd spend more than the $7,000
quoted, plus ongoing maintenance.

Looking back on your message, I see that you run a public access Unix.
This may explain your interest in doing this on the cheap.  If you're
a profit-making organization with a high commitment to customer
service (and uptime) the cost of bringing in professionals should not
be dismissed out of hand.  If you're non-profit, low-budget and
casually operated, you'll probably have lots of fun doing it yourself.

One last thought: You sound like you want to use DID for
accountability, and SMDR for either accountability or backup usage
records.  I question whether you'll get much accountability out of the
system you desire, since the number group you will be assigned will be
a consecutive block, and nothing stops a user, legit or unauthorized,
from just selecting a line.

On the other hand, I seem to have assumed that you're associated with
the public access system, but you may just be using it, representing
another organization entirely.  If so, please disregard the last two
paragraphs above.


Best,

Edward W. Greenberg  | Home: [phone] | [e-mail]
1600 Stokes St. #24  | Work: [phone] | DoD#: 0357
San Jose, CA  95126  | Fax:  [phone] | KM6CG (ex WB2GOH)

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 11:13:31 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Paul Barnett)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?


> That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. So, if I wanted to
> avoid paying unlisting charges on my residence lines, the phone book
> would look something like this (?):

I agree.  I tried to reason with them, but got nowhere.  I finally
gave up and abandoned the whole thing.  However, I will clarify that
this was a number of years ago, when US West was still Northwestern
Bell (at least in MN).

> Some of the businesses in town might take up an entire page! Just how
> thick is the phone book for Mpls-St. Paul?

Apparently, this policy didn't apply to businesses.  Go figure.

> So is there an entire page of 'Rover'?

No, but I know one person that listed his as "Professor Plato", after
a fictitious character in Control Data's ill-fated CAI system.  I
always wondered how many of those listings on the last page of the
phone book (starting with "Zzzyxxx"... you get the idea) were second
lines that people didn't want to list.

A current resident of Mpls-St. Paul has informed me that US West is
not currently charging him for a non-published second line.  I wonder
if this was always the case, and it was a matter of convincing whoever
answered your call to customer service that day.

I will also note that they did not charge extra for a non-published
number that utilized the distinctive-ringing feature, but that is a
fairly recent offering.


Paul Barnett    MPP OS Development     (214)-497-4846
Convex Computer Corp.  Richardson, TX


[Moderator's Note: Here in Chicago, a lady is in the business of
supplying short-term furnished rental apartments to business exec-
utives, including telephone service. Since each apartment has a phone
and each is billed separately, and they are all in separate premises,
she would have to pay a non-pub fee for each phone unless she chose to
have them listed, which is what she did. The Chicago phone directory
has about a half-column of listings of her name over and over again,
each with a different number and address.  She apparently finds that
preferable to paying over a hundred dollars in fees for non-pub service
at her various locations.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Donald R. Newcomb)
Subject: Re: Telex to Internet Gateway Question
Organization: University of Southern Mississippi
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 14:25:39 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(JOHN SCHMIDT) writes:

> Some time ago I read something posted here which seemed to imply that
> there was a gateway between the telex "system" and Internet.  Is this
> true?  Can I receive telexes here sent by someone with telex service?
> What about sending them? (I assume this can't be done, because they
> would have no way to bill for them.)

> If receiving is possible, how would the sender address the telex?

I recently had a discussion with the "Help Desk" at ATT-EasyLink
Services about a number of X.400 internetworking topics. One point
that I'm still not clear on is that it seems that "Western Union"
"real time" (hard wired) Telex machines all have a shadow EasyLink
number. It is possible, given a WU Telex number, to obtain this
EasyLink number and use the Internet <-> EasyLink to send to this
account. I have not had an opportunity to test this theory.

At one time, I had an account on the Omnet Service, which is a branch
of SprintMail (Telemail). Omnet is mostly used by Oceanographers,
Geologists and Meteorologists. These people have some strange com-
munications needs and Omnet trys to accomodate them. They published a
method for using any switched-circuit Telex to access an Omnet
mailbox. It involved calling a Telex number in the US which was linked
via computer to a packet-switch PAD. From this PAD you could request
the PSN address of the Omnet machine and log onto their service. To do
this your password could not contain lower case or other characters
not found in 5 level Baudot code. I'm sure the international Telex
call could be quite expensive.


Donald R. Newcomb           University of Southern Mississippi
[e-mail]   "Hattiesburg, Mississippi:
[e-mail]       Where tomorrow is yesterday." Jimmy Buffett

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 15:55 GMT
From: Richard Cox <[e-mail]>
Subject: Telex to USA (was Telex to Internet Gateway Question)
Reply-To: [e-mail]


[e-mail] (Paul Robinson) said:

> Advise your correspondent to dial the telex number for the United
> States first.  It's usually 21 or 021 but be sure they find this out
> first.

The different US Telex networks have *different* access codes from
outside the US.  It's quite a while since I had to telex the USA but I
do remember using 023 or 0230 most of the time.  The code for MCImail
telex was quite different to most of the others.


Richard D G Cox

Mandarin Technology, Cardiff Business Park, Llanishen, CARDIFF, Wales CF4 5WF
Voice: [phone]      Fax: [phone]      VoiceMail: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]     Not diallable on 511 in mainland USA

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 06:23:54 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Bob Goudreau)
Subject: Re: Standard Dialing Plan


John Higdon reports about PacBell's new "Standard Dialing Plan":

> ALL ten-digit calls (area code + seven digit number) will be prefixed
> by the access code '1'.

> ALL 0+ calls will require ten digits. Even a call within the area code
> will require the area code to be dialed as part of the number.

Does the plan say anything about always *allowing* 1 + 10D dialing,
even for local numbers (which could also be dialed as 7D)?  There's
nothing more annoying than a telco switch that says "It is not
necessary to dial 1 and the area code for this number".  If telco
knows what number is intended, why doesn't it just go ahead and
complete the call?!  Being able to always rely on the same
nationally-dialable number would be an awfully useful feature for many
business travelers who use laptop computers, etc. that have
preprogrammed numbers.

> This means that the last stronghold of "one not required", Greater >
> San Jose, will fall to the "dial 1" monster.  This plan is in antici-
> pation for the new "phoney" area code numbering system currently
> being advanced by Bellcore.

John, do I detect a little antipathy :-) toward interchangeable area
codes?  Seriously, what other dialing plan would you propose instead?


Bob Goudreau        Data General Corporation
[e-mail]    62 Alexander Drive
[phone]        Research Triangle Park, NC  27709, USA

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

From: [e-mail] (Shawn Nunley)
Subject: Re: Alphanumeric Pagers Question
Organization: Novell Inc., San Jose, Califonia
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 00:40:10 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Danny
Turner) writes:

> Most pagers use the TAP (Telocator Alphanumeric Input) protocol this
> is freely available, unfortunately I only have a hard copy, but I am
> quite willing to fax it to you if you want. We are currently
> developing code to run on Sparc's but I have now idea when it will be
> in place :-)

If someone is wlling to email me the spec for IXO pagers, I would be
willing to create some Procomm scripts for sending pages to alpha
pagers.  All I really need is the process for calculating the
checksum, because I have already figured out the rest.

Using Procomm and some creative use of the directory, it would be easy
to create a simple message sending utility.


Internet: [e-mail]
UUCP: {ames,sun,apple,mtxinu,cae780,sco}
   !novell!shawn
Shawn Nunley    Tel: [phone]

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

From: Rusty Hodge <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: GTE Does It Again
Organization: Amgen
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 02:47:06 GMT

Sounds like a problem I had about five years ago when PacTel switched
to a DMS in my local CO.  Basically, there was a timing error between
the switch internally and the trunks feedig it.  Voice sounded fine,
but fax and modem transmission was terribly disrupted.

(I think they called it "Slip Rate Error"?)

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #91
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #92

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 14 Feb 93 14:23:20 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 92

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Meaning of TTL in TCP/IP (was Jack Decker's FTP Problem) (A. Dasgupta)
    Re: Meaning of TTL in TCP/IP (was Jack Decker's FTP Problem) (Rick Duggan)
    Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones (Willaim Sohl)
    Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones (Marc Kaufman)
    Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit (Bill Campbell)
    Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs (Glenn McComb)
    Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State (Justin Leavens)
    Re: SS7 / CID Question (Tony Harminc)
    Re: CLID Long Distance (John McHarry)
    Re: 1ESS and CNID (John Higdon)
    Re: Current Switched 56 (tm) DSU/CSU Vendors Needed (Curtis Sanford)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Aninda Dasgupta)
Subject: Re: Meaning of TTL in TCP/IP (was Jack Decker's FTP Problem)
Organization: Philips Laboratories, Briarcliff, New York
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 13:25:14 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> Matti Aarnio <[e-mail]>
writes:

> Lately I have seen this "TTL is time in seconds" dream on many places.
> Who originated that idea?  Current IP version 4 does not contain an
> absolute time stamp in each datagram, rather it has a hop-count.

Ok, ok, I guess I shouldn't be so presumptuous and be more explicit in
my messages. Some people took me to task about the TCP TTL field.  In
my original message, I didn't want to be more detailed and verbose
than I already was, and therefore didn't go into too many details. My
original post that has caused a deluge of (sometimes angry) mail into
my mailbox (lighten up folks :-)

To clarify: The TTL field in TCP packets is decremented by (usually) 1
on every hop (and to my angry critics, I was and am aware of that :-)).
The original designers of TCP and IP realized that it would be too
painful to accurately measure the amount the time that a packet spends
in transit from one gateway to another, so they simply decremented the
TTL by one instead of by the clocked time. In my message, I didn't
want to go into all that detail and thought that interested people
would read about it in Comer's book.

> Now Dasgupta sounds like talking about time as wall-clock time!
> However that route report showed max times to be under five seconds.

My suggestions to Jack Decker indicated a time factor in his TCP
packets reaching the destination host.  I still contend there is a
time factor, and here's why.  The TCP code is known to use the TTL
field and decrement it by one on each gateway.  However, I suspected
(and still do) that the client programs like telnet and ftp also
maintain their own timers.  Thus, if the application to app. timers
expire, the programs croak. I haven`t played with the client source
code as much as I have messed around with UNIX kernels and TCP code,
so I can't vouch for such an application layer timer.

I have found some evidence of it in telnet'ing to an obscure host deep
inside the unomaha.edu domain (Univ. of Nebraska, Omaha) from a host
deep inside rpi.edu (Rensselaer Poly. Inst.) In daytime, my telnets
would often fail and show similar symptoms as Jack Decker's ftp
problems.  I, most often, had no problem logging in at night. This
lead me to believe that the telnet client program was timing out.
Traceroute clearly comes out and says that the TTL has expired, but
the telnet client simply says "connection timed out."  Also, when I
changed my TTL field to 120 in the telnet source code, things
improved.

>> What can be done to rectify this problem? The most obvious, though
>> often impossible, thing to do is to change the default of 60 seconds
>> for the TCP TTL that is compiled into the UNIX (or other OS) TCP
>> software.

> Nope, it is not SECONDS, it is HOPS.  (Gomer does explain it well)
> (And it is explained well in the original RFCs too, see RFC 791).

Well, I know it is not seconds, but that is what it is "called" in the
source code and documentation.  I (perhaps wrongly?) assumed that I
was leading someone to a point in the source code and in order for
that someone to be able to correctly locate the place and not get
confused about the issue of seconds and hop-counts, I simply chose to
call it seconds, as does the comment next to the line in the source
code.

>> In case root access to the dialup host is not available, Jack might
>> try connecting to a different host, preferably in a different part of
>> the country than from where he is trying.  As I said, it is simply a
>> matter of getting to mintaka with a few less hops on the Internet.

> This may or may not solve the problem in case it is a routing
> black-hole in the network.  Finding out whose routers are last ones
> that are reachable, and then reaching for their management with
> questions about unrechable networks further out will be a more efficient
> way.

In my aforementioned problem in reaching a host at Omaha, I got my
girlfriend to give me an account on a host that was closer to unomah's
internet gateway. That made it easier to telnet during daytime.

>> I suspect, a saving of just two hops is all he needs, since he has
>> been able to get to radole.lcs.mit.edu.  Moreover, he should try to
>> ftp late at night, when the other usual TCP traffic will be less and
>> therefore, his TCP packets will get to mintaka faster, hopefully
>> before the 60 sec. TTL.

> Two hops out of 15 used ones would help?  No, I don't think so.

Well, if my memory serves me right, Jack had deleted part of his
traceroute dump from his message to the Digest. I don't see how you
could count 15.  Perhaps I didn't read his post very carefully ...

> IP-(Inter-)networker since 1989

Good for you, Matti.

Perhaps Jack Decker will let us know whether he finally succeeded in
his attempts to ftp to mintaka.


Aninda DasGupta ([e-mail]) Ph:[phone] Fax:[phone]
Philips Labs\n 345 Scarborough Rd\n  Briarcliff Manor\n NY 10510

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

From: [e-mail] (Rick Duggan)
Subject: Re: Meaning of TTL in TCP/IP (was Jack Decker's FTP Problem)
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Rick Duggan)
Organization: College of Computing
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 03:10:38 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> Matti Aarnio <[e-mail]>
writes:

> Lately I have seen this "TTL is time in seconds" dream on many places.
> Who originated that idea?  Current IP version 4 does not contain an
> absolute time stamp in each datagram, rather it has a hop-count.
> However that route report showed max times to be under five seconds.

Quoting from {Computer Networks}, Second Edition, by Andrew Tanenbaum,
"The [DoD IP] {Time to live} field is a counter used to limit packet
lifetimes.  When it becomes zero, the packet is destroyed.  The unit
of time is the second, allowing a maximum lifetime of 255 sec."

Perhaps that's not the way it's implemented, but it is conceptually
the correct way to think about it (so long as you realize it
is *implemented* as hops).

Quoting now from {Telecommunications: Protocols and Design} by John D.
Spragins, et. al., "[DoD IP] {Time to Live} (8 bits): Measured in
gateway hops and decremented at each gateway.  Ensures that datagrams
or fragments do not loop indefinitely." This makes no mention of real
clock time and seems to be implementation driven.

However, the ISO IP has a similar field, called the PDU Lifetime.
It's described as "{PDU Lifetime} (8 bits): Specifies lifetime of Data
Unit as a multiple of 500 msec.  It is determined and set by the
source station, then decremented by each gateway the data units visits
by each 500 msec of estimated delay for that hop (transmission time to
gateway plus processing time)."

So no one is crazy for conceptualizing the TTL or PDU Lifetime in real
clock time.


Rick Duggan - [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (sohl,william h)
Subject: Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 18:56:43 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> John Higdon <[e-mail].
com> writes:

> Scanner laws will be just about as effective as gun laws -- only much
> sillier. The FCC is seriously deluded if it thinks it can win a
> technological war with anyone. The below-average moron outguns the FCC
> in the brain cell department.

As I pointed out in another reply, don't blame the FCC.  I seriously
doubt any competent FCC person belives for a second that this scanner
ban will be effective.  It is the congresscritters that have been
"conned" into passing the law so cellular manufacturers can now say
that the equipment that can listen to cellular is now illegal to
produce.  I also doubt that any of them will point out that all
existing cellular capable scanners are not illegal to own.


Standard Disclaimer- Any opinions, etc. are mine and NOT my employer's.

Bill Sohl (K2UNK) BELLCORE (Bell Communications Research, Inc.)
Morristown, NJ             email via UUCP      bcr!cc!whs70
201-829-2879 Weekdays      email via Internet  [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Marc T. Kaufman)
Subject: Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: CS Department, Stanford University, California, USA
Date: 14 Feb 93 19:08:33 GMT


[e-mail] (John Higdon) writes:

> Scanner laws will be just about as effective as gun laws -- only much
> sillier. The FCC is seriously deluded if it thinks it can win a
> technological war with anyone. The below-average moron outguns the FCC
> in the brain cell department.

Actually, it's not the FCC by itself in this.  In fact, they have
declined to attempt to regulate scanners in the past.  If you read the
NPRM, you will see that the FCC is only attempting to set a rule in
accordance with legislation passed by Congress.  It's the dummies in
Congress who are short in the brain cell department.


Marc Kaufman ([e-mail])

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

From: [e-mail] (Bill Campbell)
Subject: Re: Salesmen That Won't Quit
Organization: Celestial Software, Mercer Island, WA
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 18:39:19 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mitch Wagner)
writes:

> [e-mail] (Mitch Wagner) writes:

>> ... if I ever had a salesman that just wouldn't stop phoning, even
>> when I asked them to stop, I would inform them that if they didn't
>> stop calling I would file harassment charges against them with the
>> police.

I had one satisfying experience recently.  I received a telemarketing
call on a Saturday morning from Aurora Nissan and I told the salesman
that I didn't appreciate being called at home and hung up.  He then
called me back and started giving me a bunch of crap " ... why do you
have a telephone if you don't want to take calls".  I hung up again.

The satisfaction came a couple of months later when I got a mailing
from the same dealer with the president's signature on it.  I wrote a
letter to him directly describing the incredibly rude behaviour of his
sales staff, and that I would never consider buying anything from
Aurora Nissan.  He responded with a personal letter saying that they
had identified the caller and "taken appropriate action".  I can only
hope that this action involved great discomfort :-).


Bill

INTERNET:  [e-mail]   Bill Campbell; Celestial Software
UUCP:   ...!thebes!camco!bill   6641 East Mercer Way
             uunet!camco!bill   Mercer Island, WA 98040; [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Glenn McComb)
Subject: Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 03:30:13 GMT


I've been getting a lot of mail regarding my post about Execuline and
their Intra-Lata rate of a flat 0.12/min, 6-sec billing within 450
mile radius in California. Also, 0.15/min for anywhere else in US.

Their phone number is [phone], or [phone], ask for Floyd
McKeighen ... and it wouldn't hurt to give me a plug for referring
you.

They CAN change your phone to their system as primary carrier (1 +
dial), but I opted to stay with MCI until I got some experience with
them.


Glenn A. McComb       [phone] ofc * 725-0222 fax
McComb Research        PO Box 220 * Cupertino, CA 95015
gmccomb @ netcom.com                MHS: glenn @ mccomb

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

From: [e-mail] (Justin Leavens)
Subject: Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State
Date: 14 Feb 1993 12:28:13 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert
L. McMillin) writes:

> Which probably means that the switch was SS7-connected, but thanks to
> the California Public fUtilities Commission, EVERYBODY's phone number
> will show up as PRIVACY-enabled.  After all, privacy is the same thing
> as anonymity ... NOT!

But the CPUC *approved* CNID with its guidelines. So shouldn't PacBell
(and GTE for that matter) be delivering CNID information where
appropriate (on any line that is not unlisted)? Or are they not
required to do anything that doesn't result in a profit?


Justin Leavens   Microcomputer Specialist   University of Southern California

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 00:45:37 EST
From: Tony Harminc <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: SS7 / CID Question


Douglas Scott Reuben asked:

>> 2. ...  can the 1ESS send out the CID information?

Al Varney replied:

>   No.

>> That is, what does it take for a switch to send out CID over SS7?

>> Can a 1ESS support this "send out" package, if such a thing
>> exists?

John Higdon replied:

> There is no such thing as a "send out" package. SS7 requires a
> constant two-way data stream between participating switches.

Well ... yes and no.  My house is served by a 1ESS and it is quite
happy to send my number out via SS7 so that it appears on people's
displays.  Bell Canada added a box that they call an 'analogue
adjunct' to all of its 1ESSs in Toronto and Montreal, and most of the
SP1s in those and several other cities as well.

I have no idea how the box is implemented, but it is in a sense a
"send out" only box -- it does not equip the 1ESS to receive inbound
CNID.  (Obviously at the lower SS7 levels it must be bidirectional,
but it implements only outgoing CNID.)  Perhaps one of our Northern
Telecom readers would care to comment on this box.  (I assume NT
designed and built it for Bell.)

My switch is scheduled to be replaced by a DMS100 this weekend (13
Feb) so perhaps Bell would be happy to sell the box to a US telco that
has a slower upgrade program. :-)


Tony Harminc

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

From: [e-mail] (McHarry)
Subject: Re: CLID Long Distance
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 10:07:39 EST


SS7 by itself won't necessarily deliver it, CPUC or no.  The local
exchange carriers are selling the information and they have to make
some sort of arrangements with the interexchange carriers to deliver
it.  Last I knew, they were unwilling to share any of the revenue from
the service.  Why should an interexchange carrier that sells ANI to
directly connected customers give approximately the same information
to the LEC gratis to sell in competition with it?

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 10:40 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: 1ESS and CNID


[e-mail] writes:

> (Some states that don't permit calling number/name delivery wanting to
> insure that numbers are "never" delivered, even out of state.)

Remember, California does NOT prohibit CNID. It has merely placed
conditions on its offering TO CALIFORNIANS that Pacific Bell feels
makes the service undesireable (hence unprofitable). What Pac*Bell
does with regard to interstate commerce is beyond the control of the
CPUC (and the activists). Therefore, it is under absolutely no
obligation to block any information going out of state. As long as
Pac*Bell is not delivering any CNID data to persons WITHIN CALIFORNIA,
it is not offering the service and is therefore under no restrictions.

I encourage Pac*Bell to not send blocked status on interstate calls.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Curtis Sanford)
Subject: Re: Current Switched56 (tm) DSU/CSU Vendors Needed
Date: 14 Feb 93 19:55:26 GMT
Organization: Ascend Communications, Alameda CA


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ronal
Thompson) writes:

> I am currently in search of vendors that carry Switched56 DSU/CSU
> products. We are expanding our evaluation and compatibility process
> and require information of current vendors. Our list now includes:

We also produce Switched-56 CSU/DSU products.  Our products feature
multiple network interfaces (up to 7) and provide inverse multiplexing
to the BONDING specification, as well as various proprietary features.
For information, we may be contacted at:

             [phone],  or  [e-mail]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #92
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #93

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 14 Feb 93 15:09:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 93

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: AT&T Are You Listening? (John Higdon)
    Re: Rochester Tel Wants to Split (Eli Mantel)
    Re: Using Fax Machine + Fax Modem as a Scanner (Gordon Grant)
    Re: Southwestern Bell to Buy Cable Systems (J. Philip Miller)
    Re: Running Out of Area Codes (Steven H. Lichter)
    Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE (Steven H. Lichter)
    Re: What Could Happen! (Tony Pelliccio)
    Re: Telex <=> RS-232 (Nino Margetic)
    Some Discounts REQUIRE You to Change Your Dial-1 Carrier (Marc Kozam)
    Re: Stupid Phone Tricks (Bruce Sullivan)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 02:17 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: AT&T Are You Listening?


[e-mail] (Jack Decker) writes:

> Why not use both carriers?  I would suggest you do this: Switch your
> line to MCI and use them for all your voice calls.

As previously stated, I would suggest the opposite. Keep AT&T as your
PIC. That way you have much easier access to AT&T's vastly superior
operator services. I really hate it when I pick up a phone, dial an
operator assisted call and have one of the "brand X" operators answer.
MY guests never have to deal with that.

> If there is a location that you have consistent problems calling via
> MCI, by all means call up MCI's customer service and complain!

Good luck. MCI droids are worthless. You will never reach a resolution
on the first try. You will be lucky to even ever speak to anyone who
even knows what you are talking about. You should see the hell we go
through ANYtime we have to deal with even the slightest technical
matter with MCI.

> AT&T spends a LOT of money on advertising to convince you that their
> quality is better.

If your definition of quality is "does the call (eventually) go
through and can I hear the person at the other end?", then I would
agree that such an advertising statement is probably meaningless.  But
AT&T is still the only company where you can actually speak to a
knowledgeable technician on the first call and speak to a rep who
actually knows about the service in question and can give you real
answers.

> If you try a call over MCI and it doesn't work, and you then try to
> complete it over AT&T and it does, that doesn't necessarily mean that
> AT&T is better, it just means you got a different circuit from the
> local telco.  Had you tried your second attempt on MCI again, you
> would probably have been just as satisfied with the result.

Not necessarily true. MCI and Sprint outages are legion and legendary.
Sprint is constantly suffering from local outages here in the Bay Area
and MCI's answer to a complaint about calls not going through is for
the caller to dial '10288' before the number. Sure is a good thing
AT&T is there when you REALLY need to call.

> AT&T's new fax commercials really get me ...

Yes, they annoy me as well. But since I do not use media advertising
as a basis upon which to select a carrier (pro or con), AT&T's
commercials do not send me into a tailspin, ignoring reality and the
facts. And the fact is that AT&T remains the most responsive,
comprehensive, and consistently the highest quality IEC in the world.
Its operator services are not even in the same universe as the
pretenders. Yes, MCI, Sprint and a host of other carriers have some
specific services and plans that MAY (but not necessarily) be
incrementally cheaper than AT&T, but for most purposes involving FGD
long distance, the company's services are hard to beat.

MCI and Sprint are slowly (very slowly) getting better and better. But
the truth is that AT&T is also beginning to smell the coffee. Right
now Sprint is hawking its "digital network with the most modern
signaling", etc., etc. The thrust is that it was the leader in digital
telephony.  What a laugh. Who do you supposed invented it? AT&T did
misread the importance of "digital quality", and lagged in giving
digital connections to customers. But when Sprint started making hay
with it, AT&T became fully digital in very short order (the network
WAS already in place, long before Sprint even thought about it).

And advanced signaling? Calls on AT&T complete in a split second; in
about eight seconds with Sprint. Yes, it is because AT&T is connected
via SS7 to my telco and Sprint (for whatever reason) is not. But it
goes to illustrate the stupidity of the advertising and how
intelligence is not to be gained by listening to it.

Both MCI and Sprint have experienced major billing problems and then
demonstrated a serious lack of ability to handle them. Yes, I had a
billing problem with AT&T that turned out to be Pac*Bell's problem.
But AT&T did not attempt to ruin my credit and turn me over to a
collection agency as Sprint did. (Sprint ended up giving me a $50
credit over and above all of the disputed amounts as a "good will"
gesture, but I really prefer having it done right to begin with.)

I have no stock or interest in AT&T. But every time I have used MCI or
Sprint for whatever reason, some monster rears its head and a major
inadequacy is revealed.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Eli Mantel)
Subject: Re: Rochester Tel Wants to Split
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 19:49:59 GMT


Rochester Telephone is being lauded for its plan to provide competition
for local telephone services, but I wonder whether what's best for
Rochester Telephone is also best for its customers.

As I understand the proposal, the bulk of the capital investment that
Rochester Telephone owns will remain in the regulated portion of the
company.  Telephone customers will purchase telephone service through
companies that are essentially aggregators.  These aggregators will be
free to design different packages of telephone services to offer
potential customers.

 From the viewpoint of public policy, it is almost always best that
services be priced as closely as possible to their true (incremental)
cost.  Achieving this goal is rather problematic when the bulk of the
costs are in fixed plant and equipment, whether pricing is done
through competition or regulation.

Whereas regulation provides at least some tie-in between the cost of
providing service and the pricing of that service, the proposed
solution will most likely result in offerings that tie prices to a
perception of value.  Simply put, for the residential user, flat-rate
telephone service is likely to be priced substantially higher than it
is now, because there will be some significant portion of customers
for whom flat-rate service will still be a better *value*, even at a
much higher price.

Bear in mind that these aggregators will not be adding any significant
value to the telephone services.  All they will offer will be what's
available thorugh the existing telephone switches.  They will pay one
(regulated) price for these features, and resell them for a higher
price.  This is pretty much what cable companies do with premium
services.  They buy HBO for, say, $3.00 per month for each subscriber
signed up, and then resell it to us at $10.00 per month.  While they
have "added value" by virtue of providing a physical cable connection
(which is already covered by the costs of basic cable service), their
main contribution is "marketing".

Why is Rochester Telephone supporting this plan?  Well, the regulated
portion will retain the bulk of the assets.  That ensures that they
continue to receive the same level of profitability on those assets.
They certainly hope that the unregulated portion will get a good
portion of the market share.  Short of an outright gouging of their
customer base, they can expect to succeed at retaining the bulk of
their customers.

I'm no expert on this topic.  Some of my facts may be wrong, and the
resulting conclusions may therefore be unwarranted.  I would love to
hear convincing evidence that Rochester Telephone's proposal is really
going to be in the public interest.


Eli Mantel ([e-mail])

The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
  North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
     Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
        internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80

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

From: [e-mail] (Gordon Grant)
Subject: Re: Using Fax Machine + Fax Modem as a Scanner
Organization: Joint European Torus
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 13:20:17 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert J
Barth) writes:

> How can I use a standalone fax machine as a scanner?

> I would like to be able to plug my fax machine into my pc fax/modem,
> and press a few buttons, and end up with a fax format file of whatever
> was on the sheet of paper ...

> Has anyone managed this?  I've tried with not much success so far ...

I have succeeded with this using my Samsung sf1000 Fax machine and my
ZyXEL 1496e modem. The modem was driven with ZyXEL's Zfax software.

The technique is to plug both units into the same phone line, using a
plug-in adaptor. The Zfax software is run up and the cursor set on the
Manual receive fax option. On the fax machine lift the hand set and
dial a single digit to fool the machine that a number has been dialed,
then press send.  Remove the adaptor from the wall socket and start
the Zfax software to receive the fax.

I needed to remove the adaptor from the wall socket to stop Miss "
bossy boots" BT from injecting " you have dialed incorrectly -- please
replace the handset and try again" I needed it there initially to give
a dial tone to the Fax M/C.

I suspect that this may be more difficult with a cleverer Fax machine.
Sometimes that well known brand "THE CHEAPEST" does have some
advantages.

I must credit this method to my son James who wanted to include some
maps into his GCSE Geography Project. It works very well and Zfax can
convert the results to several bitmapped file formats.

Now who knows how to convert a Word-for-Windows document into a format
that Zfax can send as a fax?


[e-mail]              Gordon Grant           Jet Abingdon OX14 3EA UK
Fidonet: (2:253/170)   Voice [phone]   Fax [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (J. Philip Miller)
Subject: Re: Southwestern Bell to Buy Cable Systems
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 12:56:30 -0600 (CST)


[e-mail]  (Karl Johnson) writes:

> This would be the first Baby Bell to own a Cable
> Company, and could according to The Post "alter the debate surrounding
> federal telecommunications policy."

Actually the {St. Louis Post Dispatch} points out that SWBT already
owns cable companies in the UK and has interests in ones in Israel.
This would just be the first by any of the Baby Bells in the US.

Bell Atlantic is challenging restrictions on providing video services
within its telephone service.  Art Bushkin, president of Bell Atlantic
Information Services is quoted as saying "It is time for the obsolete
restrictions of the AT&T Consent Decree and the Cable Act of 1984 to
fall."

Jim Krekeler, a securities analyst with Edward D. Jones & Co is quoted
as saying "It's no accident that [buying a cable system in] Washington
DC happens to be a tremendous way to lobby the House and the Senate.
If you put all the bells and whistles on the system, you could impress
Congress on the [telephone industry's] ability to run the system and
have it benefit the consumer."


  J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067
      Washington University Medical School, St. Louis MO 63110
       [e-mail] - [phone] [362-2694(FAX)]

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

From: [e-mail] (Steven H. Lichter)
Subject: Re: Running Out of Area Codes
Date: 14 Feb 1993 20:08:43 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)


It is my understanding that only the areas that are in the City of Los
Angeles; downtown only remained 213 and the others went to 310. Those
areas are West LA and such. At least that is the way it was meant to
be and explained to us.

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

From: [e-mail] (Steven H. Lichter)
Subject: Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE
Date: 14 Feb 1993 20:12:35 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)


We just were notified that PacBell will be offering Call Trace, last
number call back. You will not know the number in either case, but
that would mean to me that they are not blocking the calls ID. It
maybe a SS7 problem or lack of.


Steven H. Lichter    GTECalif COEI



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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 15:16:32 EST
From: Tony Pelliccio <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: What Could Happen! (Bangkok, Thailand Telecom Uprising)


Similar things happen here in the US. A few years ago New England
Telephone went on strike and lo and behold, a few of the key fiber
trunks got cut.

Additionally, telecom facilities are pretty well marked here in the
US, and if you wanted, you could knock out communications to a small
residential area, or halt ALL long distance traffic from a city.

Besides, I really don't think something like that would happen here
since the service isn't all that bad. Granted, we do pay a fairly good
chunk but in comparison to other countries, we're not doing too badly
here in the U.S.


Tony Pelliccio    n1mpq @ garlic.sbs.com    pjj125 @ uriacc.uri.edu

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

From: [e-mail] (Nino Margetic)
Subject: Re: Telex <=> RS-232
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 19:38:56 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Nino Margetic)
Organization: University College London


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert
Horvitz) writes:

> We have this big old and very loud telex machine in our office.  We'd
> like to get rid of it and integrate telex with our LAN.  Surely we're
> not the first to have this idea.  Assuming the wheel has already been
> invented, can someone explain how to do this?  Is there a particular
> kind of modem designed for interfacing DOS machines with telex
> circuits?

I opted for a follow-up rather than reply for two reasons. Firstly,
someone will probably know more than I do, and secondly, I have also a
question regarding telex usage on PCs.  Here goes: ad 1) there are a
number of telex cards for PCs, which you simply plug into an expansion
port of your PC, and off you go. The price range (here in the UK) is
from, say, 700GBP to 3000-4000GBP. It works quite well, in general. In
particular, you get what you pay for.  Namely, a friend of mine bought
a 700GBP card from an UK company, and now he is stuck with good card,
and *absolutely* abysmal software which runs it.

And, now we come to the second thing, i.i. the question. Does anyone
know, if there is a "standard" (say, like class 2 in fax/modems, or
CAS -- *please* let us *not* engage now in the war about whether two
mentioned really *are* standards), for talking to telex boards, or,
are we at the mercy of the manufacturer of each board (i.e. everything
is propriatory)?? I have now spent three days trying to fix/improve
the original software for the telex board (if it matters to anyone,
it's called PROCOM 20), but without much luck. I would very much like
to sit down and write my own software for sneding and receiving
telexes.  It shouldn't be to hard, since there is a TSR (called
PROBACK), which does all the dirty work, but I do not know how to talk
to it ...

Any suggestions/info are *very* welcome.

BTW, we *did* talk to the company about improvements, but they are not
interested in fixing it, or making a new version ...


Nino

Janet: [e-mail]
Earn/Bitnet/Internet: [e-mail]  University College London, UK
Bang: ...!mcvax!uknet!ucl!n.margetic        [phone] x 53 13

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 10:26:43 EST
From: mlksoft![e-mail]
Subject: Some Discounts REQUIRE You to Change Your Dial-1 Carrier


[e-mail] (John Higdon) writes:

> Frontline salesslime will tell you that you have to "switch" to take
> advantage of a particular plan, but that is 99.9% hogwash.

    This is true.  I used to have Sprint as my dial-1 carrier, but
almost exclusively used AT&T's ROA program to make calls (prepending
10288 before each call).  Setting it up caused the usual confusion.

    I suspect the other 0.1% refers to the many offers I receive
in the mail, e.g. "Make AT&T your long distance company and get $ 50."
In the fine print, it REQUIRES that they be your dial-1 carrier.


Marc Kozam    UUCP: {media,mimsy}!mlksoft!kozam
        Internet: mlksoft![e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 19:46 GMT
From: Bruce Sullivan <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Stupid Phone Tricks


Here in our data center, we have several dozen flat business lines
which are used solely for dial backup purposes (outbound only). They
are unlisted. The bottom line is, any calls that would come in on them
would be wrong numbers.

Typically, a phone ends up being left plugged into one of the lines
and, of course, the phone occasionally rings. The normal approach
would be to pick it up and answer in a business-like fashion ("XYZ
Data Processing, may I help you?"), whereupon you would typically be
hung up upon.

One day, in a fit of whimsy, I instead picked it up and said, in my
best telco monotone,

"I'm sorry, the number you have reached has been disconnected or is no
longer in service. If you feel ..."

They hung up.  Less than five seconds later, it rang AGAIN. This time,
I picked it up and said,

"I SAID, the number you have reached has been disconnected or is no
longer in service ..."

They still hung up, but didn't call back.


[Moderator's Note: Clever response. Since you only make outgoing calls
on those lines occassionally, and never have incoming calls, you
should ask telco to set the lines up as one-way outgoing service only.
Then you'd never see any wrong numbers at all.   PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #93
*****************************










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Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 17:03:58 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #94

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 14 Feb 93 17:04:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 94

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Press Release - Ontario Telecommunications Strategy (Nigel Allen)
    Strange Long Distance Problem (Ken Jongsma)
    White House Phone Factoids (Rob Knauerhase)
    976 Parking Ticket Scam (Dave Leibold)
    BBS Tax Passes Florida Senate (Joel Upchurch)
    Dialup Access to TELECOM Digest and Files (Mark Earle)
    Subscriber Equipment to Turn a T1 Into Analog Lines (Marc Unangst)
    CTI: Electronic Telephone Line Switch Wanted (Elizabeth Fong Wah Chan)
    Wanted: 'NPA' Shareware Program (Sven Echternach)
    An Explanation of NAMPS (Russell E. Sorberv)
    'Secure' Motorola CT2 Silverlink (Juha Veijalainen)
    Sprint and Bellcore Sign Pact (Washington Post via Paul Robinson)
    800 Numbers That Charge (Greg Volk)
    Telephone Surcharges in Hotels (Dennis G. Rears)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 10:31:00 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Nigel Allen)
Subject: Press Release - Ontario Telecommunications Strategy
Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto


Here is a press release from the Ontario government.  It was
originally posted by [e-mail] (Mary Nakoneczny).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 12, 1993

TELECOMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY WILL HELP SHAPE ONTARIO'S ECONOMIC FUTURE

    TORONTO - Premier Bob Rae and Economic Development and Trade
Minister Francis Lankin today outlined a comprehensive, multi-year
strategy for telecommunications that will invest $100 million
jobsOntario funding in this key sector, provide access for telecom
projects to the governments $150 million Sector Partnership Fund and
shape the government's telecom policy.

    "Telecommunications is a key sector and a critical
infrastructure that will be a driving force in securing Ontario"s
economic future and our competitiveness in the global marketplace,"
said Minister Lankin.  "Based on a compelling vision statement --
Through telecommunications, Ontario and Canada, the best place in the
world to live, work, learn and do business -- Ontario's
telecommunications strategy points to our future.".

    The Premier announced $100 million in jobsOntario funding for
the delivery of the Ontario Network Infrastructure Program (ONIP) -- a
program designed to accelerate the development of telecommunications-
based information networks in partnership with the private sector.

    "This is a strategic investment in Ontario's future," said the
Premier.  "The information networks supported under this program will
foster business competitiveness, strengthen Ontario's research
capability, provide opportunities for life-long education and
training, support community development -- and create jobs now and in
the future."

    The government is now open for business for telecommunications
projects through the government's $150 million Sector Partnership Fund
(SPF).  A Telecommunications Sector Framework has been approved under
the SPF to focus on four priority areas: developing new telecomm
applications; forming innovative business enterprises; establishing
specialized sectoral infrastructure; and enhancing market development
and promotion.

    The multi-year strategy is based on the strategic priorities
and vision statement recommended in Telecommunications - Enabling
Ontario's Future, a report prepared for the province by a 22-member
advisory committee with representatives from the telecom sector,
business, government, labour and community-based interests.

    The strategy is a government-wide commitment, she said.
Management Board will lead the way for the Ontario government to
become a model user of telecommunications and other information
technologies.  The Ministry of Education and Training will lead the
development of an education and training strategy for
telecommunications.

    Minister Lankin also announced that the province will take a
strong advocacy role before the industry, the federal government and
the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommuncations Commission)
in Ontario's interests.

    A new telecommunications council will work with Lankin to
recommend priorities, initiatives and timetables for the future growth
of telecommunications in the province.  Partnership will be crucial in
building an information infrastructure for Ontario, Lankin said.

    Jim Coombs, a former President and CEO of SaskTel, will serve
as council Chair.  Serving as Vice-Chairs are Sheelagh Whittaker,
President and CEO of Canadian Satellite Communications Inc., (Cancon)
and Don Tapscott, Vice-President, Technology, DMR Group Inc., and
Chair of the former advisory committee.

    "The strategy is a plan of action that will require all of us
in government, business, labour and the community to work together.
The council will be a champion for the ongoing strategy and will work
with government as we move forward," said Minister Lankin.


Media Contact:        Russell Drago
            Marketing and Information Services
            [phone]

            Anna Larson
            Ministry of Economic Development and Trade
            [phone]

Ce texte est disponible en francais.

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

Nigel Allen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada    [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: Thanks also go to David Leibold who submitted the
identical text in a message to the Digest over the weekend. In his
message, Dave also made these additional comments:

"Today (12th February), the Ontario provincial government announced
details of its telecommunications strategy. I had the privilege of
attending the briefing session in Toronto and thus picked up an
information kit with the relevant documents. The kit even had a
diskette containing word-processor documents such as the press release
and details of the strategy initiatives. Many thanks to Allan Kennedy
of the Ontario government who let me know about the briefing session.
He is Internet-reachable via [e-mail] and can provide more
details regarding Ontario's telecom strategy."    PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ken Jongsma)
Subject: Strange Long Distance Problem
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 15:28:12 -0500 (EST)


I've been having an interesting problem over the past two days. The
symptoms are as follows:

   - All calls made from my home phone, PIC'd to Sprint for the last
     seven years.

   - Calls to 1 805 395 xxxx get an immediate fast (trunk) busy, with
     no recording.

   - Calls to 1 319 277 xxxx go through just fine.

   - Calls to 1 800 877 8000 get two rings, a single tone, followed
     by the message "All Circuits Busy... 49-530" (This is the
     Sprint credit card access number. It should not ring, but
     give an immediate computer tone. The recording is a Sprint
     recording, according to the Sprint repair tech.)

   - Prefacing the call to 1 805 395 xxxx with 10288, 10333, 10222
     makes no difference, I still get a fast (trunk) busy.

   - Attempting to 0+ 805 395 XXXX gets a fast busy immediately. No
     card tone or operator intercept. Likewise, 10288 0+, etc.

   - Calls placed through a Sprint operator to 1 805 395 xxxx go
     through with no problem.

   - Just to confuse things further, Mi Bell told the Sprint tech
     that my PIC was AT&T. This even though 1 700 555 4141 gets a
     nice Sprint recording.

A call to Michigan Bell repair yesterday generated the suggestion that
I call Sprint repair. Sprint repair has been working on it for 24
hours, but has been unable to discover the problem. Sprint did say
there was a cable cut in California yesterday, but that it was
unlikely that that was related to my problem. Sprint is presently
waiting for Michigan Bell to investigate and call back.

I suspect a problem with Michigan Bell and my local switch, but
getting through to them is a lost cause. Sprint will have better luck
getting them to do something, I think. Maybe by the time I get back
from a business trip in three weeks, they'll work it all out.


Ken Jongsma
Smiths Industries            [e-mail]
Grand Rapids, Michigan   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Rob Knauerhase)
Subject: White House Phone Factoids
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 18:29:06 CST
Reply-To: [e-mail]


This is excerpted without permission from Helen Thomas' "Backstairs at
the White House" column of 2/13/93.

" The president has complained about the telephone system in the White
House and was concerned that he could not put in a call without
someone tuning in. But he sold the operators and the operations short
since all he needed was a few tips on how the system works.

"He could have pressed a ``private'' line and no one could listen in
unless he allowed it. He could also arrange to have his calls
scrambled.

"Contrary to widespread belief the old "hotline" between Washington
and Moscow was not a telephone to warn against an impending doomsday
attack, but rather a teletype manned at the Pentagon."

                             ----------

Interesting questions:

1. How is a "private" line enforced w.r.t. extensions and/or taps?  By
what mechanism does one allow "tuning in"?

2. Does all the FBI's no-scrambling-in-telecommuniations noise apply
to the President (probably not)?  Who can receive his scrambled
calls?

3. What's the speed of the "hotline teletype"?  At 300 baud, it could
take hours (well, almost :) to determine that the missiles are en
route ...


Rob Knauerhase, University of Illinois @ Urbana, Dept. of Computer Science
  [Note: 'columbus.slip.uiuc.edu' is not a 24-hour connection.  Send
   correspondence to [e-mail] for guaranteed delivery.]


[Moderator's Note: An issue of the Digest on Saturday discussed the
use of 'exclusion keys' to prevent other extensions on the same line
from overhearing what was being said. Bear in mind also the president
is NOT confined to 'an extension on the White House switchboard' with
its cordboard and plug characteristics when making calls. The centrex
system in the Executive Office Building has numerous extensions which
terminate in the White House, including a couple for the president
which can be answered by his secretary and one which comes direct to
the multi-line phone on his desk without a secretarial pickup on it. I
am advised there are also direct ring-downs to certain individuals, a
direct 'outside line' enabling calls to be made anywhere without going
through a centrex or PBX (and likewise, enabling calls to be received
if someone knows what number to dial). The president's personal
quarters include much of the above plus personal phone lines for the
family's use. It is not true that to cut back on expenses Billary is
going to yank out the switchboard and install COCOTS for all the
Clintonistas to use when making personal calls on company time. :)

Does anyone remember several years ago during Nixon's tenure when a
counter-culture magazine printed a few pages from the EOB internal
phone directory listing the direct-dial centrex numbers on Nixon's
desk and a few other top White House staffers of that era?  :) Cute.
Wish I had thought of it first. Now, the White House and EOB phone
directories are as scarce as hen's teeth where the general public is
concerned.  PAT]

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 21:46:02 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Dave Leibold)
Subject: 976 Parking Ticket Scam


{The Toronto Star} reports that there is a 976 number which claims to
give information on how to fight parking ticket charges ... for $24
(CAD$) a call.

The 976 number is publicised via flyers which include such phrases as
"Important Notice" and "Available seven days a week 24.00-call" (no
dollar sign!). The dubious recorded message was set up by a private
company seeking to cash in on a current traffic fines crackdown.

Meanwhile, free calls (800 or Toronto local) may be placed to official
provincial offices which deal with traffic ticket matters. The company
with the 976 number has no connection with the municipal or provincial
agencies which deal with traffic infractions.

This incident prompted the federal Communications Minister, Perrin
Beatty, to advise consumers to claim a refund from Bell Canada for any
unauthorised 976 charges.

Of the 170 Bell Canada 976 service numbers, half of these are phone
sex lines while the rest are for features such as horoscopes, sport
scores, and of course the aforementioned cash grab.


Dave Leibold - via FidoNet node 1:250/98
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

Subject: BBS Tax Passes Florida Senate
From: upchrch![e-mail] (Joel Upchurch  )
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 13:48:38 EST
Organization: Upchurch Computer Consulting, Orlando FL


I just noticed in the paper today that a six percent tax on
information services passed the Florida Senate Thursday. The newspaper
article ({Orlando Sentinel}, Feb. 12, pg B-5) says that the sales tax
would effect those stocks, news and other data, electronic shopping,
electronic bulletin boards, systems analysis, bank funs transfers such
as automatic teller cards and even 900-number telephone calls and many
more.


(If your mail bounces use the address below.)
Joel Upchurch/Upchurch Computer Consulting/718 Galsworthy/Orlando, FL 32809
[e-mail] {uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd,ucf-cs}!peora!joel [phone]

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

Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 21:16:02 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Mark Earle)
Subject: Dialup Access to Digest and Files


This is just a reminder that for folks with modems, issues of the
digest are available at my FidoNet bbs 1:160/50 [phone]
FidoNet system operators may file - request files for the most recent
list and then get specific files as desired. Modem is a US Robotics
HST, which will give 9600 to similar modems, and 2400 w/mnp5 to most
error correcting modems of other brands.

"Regular" callers may download on the first call, no hassle.

Here's the list of the telecom files area:

     ----- Files Listing -----

ADAACT.ZIP    American Disability Act, telecom related
BANNED.ZIP    List of banned text, newsgroups, etc.
BOOKREV1.ZIP  Book Review of Early Telegraphers
CALLERID.ZIP  Caller ID review - by area, hardware, etc.
CONSTI.ZIP    Constitutional notes
CRACKDWN.ZIP  Review of crackdown - new book
CUD451.ZIP    Computer Underground Digest 4 51
CUD451.ZIP    through cud462 online  Use r cud45*.*
CUD501.ZIP    through cud510.ZIP
D12IG767.ZIP  Telecom Digest 12 767
D12IG767.ZIP  Use r d12ig*.* to see exact file names.
D12IG767.ZIP  Vol 12 767-917 online.
D13IG01.ZIP   Vol 13 01  through Vol 13 80 online
DFP1V5.ZIP    Digital Freedom Press 1 5
EFF289.ZIP    Electronic Freedom Foundation news day 289
EFF314.ZIP    Clinton's Plan for infrastructure
EFF314.ZIP    Electronic Freedom Foundatoin news day 314
EFF315A.ZIP   EFF news day 315
EFFC405.ZIP   Effector 4 05 major changes at EFF announced
EFFOP.ZIP     EFF Open Platform proposal
GOPHER.ZIP    Cable backhoe fades? How about gophers?
GOPHER.ZIP    Informative article on cable protection
IRIDIUM.ZIP   As of Jan 29, new $$ for this project
NEIDORF.ZIP   Craig's side of story, as Steve Jackson
NEIDORF.ZIP    games goes to trial in Austin this week
NEWAC210.ZIP  Info on ac 210 split from 512 (TX)
NYSNOW.ZIP    Snow storm effects on telecom
RFLINK.ZIP    Reference rf lan solutions
SPRNTOUT.ZIP  Sprint outage day 289 (October 14/15 1992)
TELLLOSE.ZIP  Telecom losers and winners
USLSUIT.ZIP   Unix System Labs suit re: BSD/AT&T


[e-mail]        Mark Earle    Fidonet 1:160/50
[e-mail]      HST 24 hrs <-- [phone]
[e-mail]      [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: My thanks to Mark Earle for making this valuable
resource available. I strongly encourage our many readers without FTP
access at their site to pick up a big variety (see above list!) of
telecom-related files as well as back issues of TELECOM Digest by
calling Mark's BBS at 512-855-7248.  If you *do* have anonymous ftp at
your site, then of course you can ftp lcs.mit.edu, and 'cd telecom-
archives' once connected.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Marc Unangst)
Subject: Subscriber Equipment to Turn a T1 Into Analog Lines
Date: 14 Feb 1993 12:25:22 -0500
Organization: The Programmers' Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI


I'm one of the members of the hardware staff of Cyberspace
Communications, a non-profit group that operates a public-access Unix
conferencing system here in Ann Arbor, MI.  Currently, our system is a
Sun-2/170 (don't laugh, it was free) with a Systech 16-port serial
board and six dialin lines.  Five of the lines are connected to
2400bps modems which go to ports on the Systech board; the sixth goes
into a V.32bis modem and is attached to a PC running PCRoute, which in
turn is on an Ethernet with the Sun.

While talking (informally) to a Michigan Bell rep earlier this week,
he suggested that we look into getting a T1 line if we plan to expand
the number of phone lines any further.  He said that he was unsure
what the break-even point would be between a T1 and multiple POTS
lines, but that he was fairly sure it was a dozen or less POTS lines.
This sounded like a great idea to me, since it not only means we may
save money on our phone bills, but it also means that line noise will
be much less common, since the path will be digital between our
building and the CO.  (Right?)

However, no one on the technical staff has any experience with T1
lines, so the question came up: How would we take the T1, as delivered
by Michigan Bell to our premises, and split it up into 24 analog
POTS-style lines that we could connect modems to?  I presume that some
sort of multiplexor/demultiplexor would be involved, but as I said, no
one involved has any experience with this sort of thing.  What are the
names of some of the vendors that sell this sort of equipment?  What
would a low-end mux/demux unit cost?  In addition, is there a better
way to accomplish what we want to do?  It seems somewhat pointless to
take the digital path provided by the phone company, split it up into
24 analog paths, only to digitize those analog paths 20 feet down the
line with modems.  Keep in mind that our user base is mostly home
users with PCs and modems; not many of the people using the system
have access to the Internet, so leasing a T1 to our local IP service
provider and just getting on the Internet isn't really an option,
since the home users would have no way of accessing us.


Marc Unangst, N8VRH     [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Elizabeth Fong Wah Chan)
Subject: CTI: Electronic Telephone Line Switch Wanted
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 09:20:03 GMT


I am a novice in the field of telecom. Presently, my company plans to
automate the call answering and faxing systems.

We have purchased a four-line voice processing board, a one-line fax
modem, and a software development package.

We want to allow callers to do faxing (send and receive) on demand by
pressing certain touch-tone keys, yet we want to install only one fax
modem that is to be shared among the four phone lines. I wonder if
anyone could advise some specific telephone line switches that can
accept and recognise special DTMF sequences as commands and do the
switching to connect the requesting caller's line and the fax modem.

Note that concurrent access to the fax modem can be prevented by
software. All we need is a very simple switch as described. A PBX will
be too sophisticated for our applications.

Thanks in advance for any helpful information.


Louie

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

From: [e-mail] (Sven Echternach)
Subject: Wanted: 'NPA' Shareware Program
Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 15:04:41 +0100


There used to be a quite useful shareware program out there for MS DOS
Computers, named NPA.

It knows all valid Exchanges for all US NPA's, and can tell you all
Exchanges for a City, the Cityname for a certain NPA and Exchanges,
etc.

I just have an old version, dated September, 14, 1991, and wonder if
there are any newer releases out there, preferably available via FTP
or on a BBS.


Thanks in advance!

Sven

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 18:48:09 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Russell E. Sorberv)
Subject: An Explanation of NAMPS


[e-mail] (Ron Dippold) writes:

> The methods being looked at right now are mostly geared at making
> better use of the current bandwidth.  There's NAMPS from Motorola - I
> have absolutely no idea what this is about, although it's supposed to
> get a small capacity increase -- sort of an interim thing.

Narrowband AMPS (NAMPS) has a 10KHz bandwidth, not 30KHz as in AMPS.
This is a 300% capacity increase within the same allocated frequencies.
While not as good as a 20 times increase as promised by CDMA, 300% is
more than "small"!

NAMPS was recently named a EIA/TIA standard.  While it was pioneered
by Motorola, other companies besides Motorola make NAMPS equipment
(e.g. Panasonic).


Russ

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

From: FNAHA![e-mail]
Date: 14 FEB 93 10:32
Subject: 'Secure' Motorola CT2 Silverlink


Motorola CT2 Silverlink cordless / TelePoint phones are supposedly
digital and transmit data over a 38400 bit/s link to your base station
or Telepoint cell.

Salespersons also tell that 'conversations cannot be eavesdropped'.
What they could not tell me is whether digital transmission itself is
considered 'secure' or is the actual data crypted or scrambled.

Does anyone out there know?


Juha Veijalainen    4ge system analyst, tel. [phone]
  Unisys Finland    Internet: [e-mail]
>> Mielipiteet omiani ** Opinions are PERSONAL, facts are suspect <<

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

Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993  23:19:43 EST
Subject: Sprint and Bellcore Sign Pact


 From page C2 of the Feb 10 {Washington Post}:

Bellcore and Sprint signed a two-year agreement that lets Sprint's
local telecommunications companies gain access to projects at the
research company.  Terms were not disclosed.

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

From: [e-mail] (Greg Volk)
Subject: 800 Numbers That Charge
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 05:16:51 GMT


A few days back, some messages came over that dealt with 800 numbers
that charge a fee. Well, call 1800-555-4578 from a payphone and it'll
ask you for 75 cents. I've never put in the 75, so I don't know what
it does after that. Probably not much.


[Moderator's Note: I get <tones> "You call cannot be completed as
dialed, please check the number, etc ..."  Some COCOTS charge for
calls to 800 numbers, so you might want to find out if it was the
COCOT talking to you or a switch somewhere. I do not think the
subscriber at 800-555-4578 (if there is one) is asking for the money.
There would be no way for him to collect it in any event.  I suggest
either a switch programming error somewhere or a greedy COCOT is
giving you the back-talk.  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 12:36:21 EST
From: Dennis G. Rears <[e-mail]>
Subject: Telephone Surcharges in Hotels

   The topic "Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge" reminds of something I
been meaning to suggest for years.  The subject of hotels charging
extra for use of 800 numbers or calling cards has graced the TELECOM
Digest several times.  The discussions generally leads to the
following points:

    1) There is no real (variable) cost to the Hotel for providing
    the service.  The hotel must have their system anyway;

    2) Generally only the high price hotels charge (Hilton vs
    LaQuinta);

    3) Telephone service should be part of the room. They don't
    charge extra for towels or TV;

    4) Most users are business travelers who put everything on
    expense account anyway;

  My suggestion is this: Boycott all facilities (bar, restaurant, etc)
and encourage other members of your group to boycott them too.  When
leaving (or arriving) at the hotel present the manager a form letter
of what you are doing and why you are doing it.  Comments?


dennis

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #94
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #95

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 14 Feb 93 19:31:15 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 95

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    900 Numbers Tarnished Beyond Repair? (James Deibele)
    We Have it Good in California ... NOT (Rich Greenberg)
    GTE Payphone With Sprint LD: Who Makes Refunds? (Gerrold T. Sithe)
    RJ-11 Jack on French Modem (Lars Poulsen)
    How Does Video Phone Work? What Software is Used On-line? (Danial Ho)
    Handheld AMPS Cellular - Never Below Full Power (600mw)? (Lauren Weinstein)
    Looking For Cheap Used Dialogic Boards (John V. Jaskolski)
    Great Magazine Article About FAX (Jim Haynes)
    IXO.TAP.protocol in Archive (Brad S. Hicks)
    What Number do I Dial From My Phone to Get My Phone to Ring? (J. Jaskolski)
    DS0 Portion of a T1 (Fred R. Stearns)
    V & H to Latitude/Longitude? (Tom Libert)
    Does Anyone Know Tellab's Phone Number? (John V. Jaskolski)
    Bell Canada Charging for 411 (Tony Pelliccio)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (James Deibele)
Subject: 900 Numbers Tarnished Beyond Repair?
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- [phone]
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 22:43:51 GMT


I suppose that legally there may have been reasons for accepting
anything and everything to put on a 900 number -- the big long-distance
carriers had to do it to keep their "common carrier" status.  But it
seems to have been really short-sighted.

I was talking to a developer friend, and he was interested in 900
numbers as a way of selling his shareware: I'd set up a normal
DOS-based BBS for him, and people could call up and download the
program.  He'd only make a few dollars per download, but he'd have the
money without having to take phone orders or mail out floppies.  Say
he got a steady number of calls, five or ten a day at a profit of
$5-10 each call. He'd be making a little over $1000 month after
deducting the price of 900 setup charges and usage charges.

He'd be happy with that, his customers would be looking at $15-$20 for
his program, and the phone company would make its chunk, too.  We
figured that uncollectibles would be small -- it'd be hard to argue
with a straight face that "I called that 900 number by mistake and
stayed on for an hour.  And then I called back the next day for
another hour (to get some of his add-ons) by mistake too".

So I've poked around a little bit, and it's been interesting: 900
number service providers are not listed in the local directory, nor do
any of the long distance carriers advertise that they do 900 service.
They're not listed in the telecom archives, at least not under any
obvious file name.  Calling Sprint, I got a package of information
showing page after page of restrictions on what could and could not be
done.

One of the restrictions was a maximum of $15 a call, which figures out
to $.25/minute.  Problem is, they charge .19, .24, or .22 cents a
minute depending on how much you use -- starts low, jumps at 50,000
minutes, drops a bit at 250,000 minutes.  He'd almost certainly always
be in the low end, so if someone could download all of his program in
a few minutes (say they were using V.32bis), he'd be able to make more
money than if somebody were to download at 2400.  1200 would be close
to break-even, and 300 simply couldn't be supported.

I'm glad to see that Sprint does some kinds of restrictions on 900
numbers.  I know that when I hear "900" I immediately start thinking
"sleaze, sleaze".  It's just too bad that with Sprint he can't charge
$25 for a call, get the customer's name and address, and mail out a
disk and printed manual.  Or do whatever it is he'd like to in terms
of charging X price for Y benefits.

Locally, the State of Oregon uses a 976 number to give road
conditions.  But mostly I see this type of stuff subsidizing the local
newspapers, which use 976 numbers for "personals", or on the cable
channels in "psychic" ads.  ("It's like a vacation for your mind."
goes one ad.)  This is really too bad -- there've been times that I've
wanted a transcript of a show, but it's a pain to get out the
checkbook and mail off a check and letter.

Will 900/976 numbers ever be "cleaned up?" is my general,
philosophical question?  And more specifically, is there a 900 service
provider aimed at people like my friend, who's selling a tangible
product?  One where he won't have to subsidize all the chargebacks
from people pissed at being charged $4/minute for IQ tests (another ad
that runs frequently)?


[e-mail]                   "2091 newsgroups & nothing on ..."
PDaXs gives free access to news & mail. [phone] - 1200/2400, N81
Full internet (ftp, telnet, irc) access available. Voice: [phone]


[Moderator's Note: Even 900 sex lines are not necessarily bad. The
good or bad comes from the way the operator of the service wishes to
handle it. It is true there are far more ripoffs than there are good
900 services (sex or otherwise), but there are information providers
giving value for the money via 900. There are premium lines charging
as little as a dollar for a minute or two, and many people doing what
your friend is doing; selling books, software, technical support and
more over a 900 line. Done properly, it can be profitable without
being a ripoff in the process.   PAT]

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

Date: Sun 14 Feb 93 12:19:16 PST
From: [e-mail] (Rich Greenberg)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: We Have it Good in California ... NOT


 From today's (2/12) {L A Times}, an item in the "Only In LA" column
by Steve Harvey:

Another Cellular Phone Scare Story:

You've heard the reports that those trendy high-tech gadgets could be
dangerous to your health.  But what about to your pocketbook?

During a federal drug trial in L.A., a rep for a cellular company
produced the suspects' phone records -- including calls that didn't go
through.  She pointed out that the lucky prosecutors had unusually
extensive records because users of such phones in the L.A. area are
billed even for calls that aren't answered.

Out of curiousity, Judge Dickran M. Tevrizian Jr. asked wether there
were any areas where users are not charged for uncompleted calls.

"Just about anywhere else," the rep answered.


Rich Greenberg      Work: [e-mail]   310-417-8999
N6LRT               Play: [e-mail]       310-649-0238
What?   Me speak for Amdahl?  Surely you jest....

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

From: [e-mail] (Gerrold T. Sithe)
Subject: GTE Payphone With Sprint LD: Who Makes Refunds?
Date: 14 Feb 1993 12:55:16 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)


        I once called long distance on a GTE payphone with Sprint for
its default carrier.  The call was abnormally cut off as was a second
attempt.  I called the GTE operator about a refund.

        She said since Sprint was the long distance carrier, I had to
call them for a refund.  So I called the Sprint operator.  She said it
was a GTE payphone that took my coins, so only GTE could make the
refund.  I again called a GTE operator who again insisted Sprint was
responsible.  So I again called a Sprint operator who again insisted
GTE was responsible.

        At this point I stomped away from the payphone, unable to make
my call, unable to get a refund, and pretty damn mad.  Anyone know
which company was responsible for the refund in this case?


[Moderator's Note: All telephone companies act as collection agents
for all other telephone companies. That is, you deposit coins in the
phone of one company and internally they pay the other companies
involved. You use your calling card from one telco to originate a call
via another telco and the second telco bills the first one who in turn
bills your account. Whoever collected your money should refund your
money and reverse any transactions generated as a result back to
wherever they came from; then that telco accepts the chargeback and
reverses it back to whoever originally got the credit from them, etc.

Since you put coins in the coin box, the only mechanism for refunding
coins collected in error is by either returning the coins in the mail
to the customer or issuing credit to a telephone bill (with some telco
somewhere). GTE would then bill the offsetting charge to the inter-
telco account for Sprint -- to the same place they had previously
billed the credit for the coins they had colleted from you.  I doubt
anyone would investigate to see *whose* facilities caused the abnormal
termination of your call. I suppose Sprint could refuse to accept the
chargeback saying it was GTE facilities at fault and reverse the
chargeback to GTE, but even the $5 per hour clerk at either end
handling the paperwork (no actual *money* ever changes hands between
telcos -- just an unending series of IOUs passed back and forth every
day) would soon realize there was a limited return for the time
involved in handing IOUs back and forth and would find it within his
authorization to write it off to customer goodwill. Prior to divesti-
ture, AT&T had a department called "Separations and Settlements" which
employed a few hundred people who handed IOU's back and forth between
the various Bell companies, AT&T, GTE and all the independent telcos.
Actual money would change hands between the bunch of them maybe once a
year or so as needed to zero things out. The rest of the time all that
they passed among themselves were slips of paper.  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 17:38:21 PST
From: [e-mail] (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: RJ-11 Jack on French Modem


A French built modem showed up on my desk today for evaluation of
software compatibility. I need to see if I can get it to speak to the
PBX in my lab (a KXT-30810).

The modem came with an RJ-11 like jack on the back, and an interesting
adapter cable with an RJ-11-like plug on one end, and a six-pin
art-deco 25 mm wide by 50 mm high plug with a spade with six contact
ribbons sticking out the back.

My first hope was that I could just attach to the RJ-11, but no such
luck. Visual inspection of the PCB reveals that if we number the pins
1 2 3 4 from left to right, pins 1 and 3 are connected together, and 4
is connected separately, while 2 seems not to be connected.

I connected tip and ring to 1 and 4, and managed to receive RING RING
RING, but I do not get a "voice" path established. I also have failed
to make outgoing calls.

The PBX provides 26V of battery and 90V of ringing voltage.  This has
been enough for everything else that has been through here.

Does anybody have specific information on French wiring habits?


Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer    Internet E-mail: [e-mail]
CMC Network Products / Rockwell Int'l    Telephone: [phone]
Santa Barbara, CA 93117-3083        TeleFAX:   [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Danial Ho)
Subject: How Does Video Phone Work? What Software is Used On-line?
Organization: Fujitsu NTS
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 22:45:43 GMT


I have basically two questions.

1) How does AT&T's video phone work?

AT&T phone can transmit video signal and voice signal at the same
time.  Does the phone transmit two signal frequencies over the same
phone line, or does it merge the two types of data into one byte
stream down the phone line?  Also, if I want to build a video phone
that can talk to AT&T's phone, what standard or protocol should I
follow?

2) If I want to provide on-line services, are there any software
libraries that I can purchase to help me write the program?  The
libraries should provide high level functions so I can call them
instead of setting bits and bytes directly in the program.

If you know of the answers or can tell me where I can find the
appropriate reference material, I would really appreciate it.


Thank you,

Daniel Ho

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 11:50 PST
From: [e-mail] (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Handheld AMPS Cellular -- Never Below Full Power (600mw)?


Greetings.  We've now seen a variety of conflicting reports regarding
AMPS power control.  I have messages from three different people
working in the industry each describing contrary situations, and all
of them claiming to base their information on power control message
statistics.  It's starting to look like geographic and administrative
decisions may result in different use or non-use of AMPS power control
in different areas.

But ... we've now strayed from the original reason for this
discussion.  We were talking about radiation from handheld cellular
phones.  We've recently seen messages (including in this Digest) from
cell folk saying that even in areas where AMPS car phones are power
controlled, handheld phones are still being held at their full power
of 600mw at all times.  It would be interesting if somebody could
address this issue directly.  Are there systems where handheld AMPS
phones are routinely being ordered down below their max of 600mw?
Obviously, if power control isn't being *used* for handheld AMPS
phones, it effectively doesn't exist for those users.


 --Lauren--

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

From: [e-mail] (John V. Jaskolski)
Subject: Looking For Cheap Used Dialogic Boards
Date: 14 Feb 93 19:20:43 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Boston University Dept. of Cognitive and Neural Systems


I am looking for CHEAP USED (old) Dialogic boards.  Specifically, I am
interested in Dialogic's D121 Voice Boards (12-line voice processing
board) older versions are fine; Dialogic's LSI120 Loop Start Interface
(used to interface D121's with analog installations). I want at least
two of each.  Also of interest is the MSI baseboard and any other used
boards.  Anyone who has any of these USED and wants to get rid of them
(or if you know of anyone who might have them) please let me know.


Thank you very much,

John V. Jaskolski

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

From: [e-mail] (Jim Haynes)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 17:52:30 -0800
Subject: Great Magazine Article About FAX


The February, 1993 issue of {IEEE Spectrum}, page 46, has an article
about Fax by Jonathan Coopersmith of Texas A&M.  It's a summary of 150
years of history.  The author is writing a book on the history of the
facsimile machine.


[Moderator's Note: Readers should see an issue of the Digest issued
earlier this weekend for a more detailed review of this article.  PAT]

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

From: mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=[e-mail]
Date: 14 Feb 93 16:20:12 GMT
Subject: IXO.TAP.protocol in Archives


Apparently, the only way to get a copy of the IXO/TAP protocol
specification is to own a paging company and read it out of your
paging system's central computer's manual.  Some companies' technical
support staff will provide you with a copy, but most won't.

This finally offended me enough to do something about it.  Someone
from Telebit faxed me a copy; I'm paying that debt forward by rekeying
it into a plain ASCII document, which I've sent to Pat to include in
the Telecom Archives as file IXO.TAP.protocol.  Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: Rekeying this document may be bending the Fair Use
doctrine; I'm not enough of a lawyer to know.  The IXO.TAP.protocol
document is closely adapted from chapter 7 of Glenayre Electronics'
publication GLP-3000-180 issue 5, and is Copyright Jan 30, 1991 by
them; I won't bother asserting copyright on my annotations at the end
of it.  Since it's a small portion of the overall work and I'm making
zero dollars and zero cents off of it, and since I consider this
distribution to be both educational and informal, I think my rekeying
of it is legal.  If you (or Glenayre) think otherwise, take it up with
me, not with my employer.


J. Brad Hicks     Internet: mc![e-mail]
X.400: c=US admd=ATTMail prmd=MasterCard sn=Hicks gn=Brad


[Moderator's Note: Brad's file will be available in the Archives as of
Monday morning, to be grabbed using anonymous ftp cs.mit.edu.    PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (John V. Jaskolski)
Subject: What Number do I Dial From My Phone to Get My Phone to Ring?
Date: 14 Feb 93 19:27:18 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Boston University Dept. of Cognitive and Neural Systems


I presently live in Boston.  When I used to live in Milwaukee, WI, I
could dial "97" and the last five digits of my telephone number, push
down and release the hook, hear a tone come over the line, hang up,
and my phone would ring.  Does anyone know what I can dial from Boston
to do the same thing?  In other words What number do I dial from my
phone to get my phone to ring? (From Boston)


Thank You,

John V. Jaskolski


[Moderator's Note: Please reply direct to Mr. Jaskolski.  PAT]

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

From: ddssuprs![e-mail] (Fred R Stearns)
Organization: Dickens Data Systems, Inc.
Subject: DS0 Portion of a T1
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 19:40:15 GMT
Organization: Dickens Data Systems, Inc.


How is the A/D and D/A conversion performed to create the digital data
from and analog voice circuit to the 1/24 digital circuits of a T1
service?  Is it CVSD, or seven-bit samples at 8KHz, or something else?


Fred R. Stearns -- [e-mail]

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

From: Tom Libert <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 14:13:05 EST
Subject: V & H to Latitude/Longitude?


FCC Tariff 4 (available from Bellcore and NECA) provides "vertical and
horizontal" (V & H) coordinates for all wire centers in the US.  There
is a simple way to determine the distance between wire centers using
the V & H coordinates.  Some sort of map projection must have been
used to convert latitude and longitude to V & H; I'd like to invert
that mapping (i.e. convert V & H to lat/long).  Does anyone have
details?  As an incentive, I'll provide a free copy of the latest isue
of NECA Tariff 4 to anyone who provides the anwer.

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

From: [e-mail] (John V. Jaskolski)
Subject: Does Anyone Know Tellab's Phone Number?
Date: 14 Feb 93 19:29:42 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Boston University Dept. of Cognitive and Neural Systems


Does anyone know Tellab's phone number?


Thank you,

John V. Jaskolski

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 15:21:46 EST
From: Tony Pelliccio <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bell Canada Charging For 411


In most parts of the US it's a fact of life. You're allowed roughly
five free calls, and then after that it's around 25 cents a pop.

Besides, that's why you get a directory every year ... so YOU can look
it up. Now they've given you an incentive. :)


Tony

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #95
*****************************










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Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 20:34:00 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Cable's Future Role in Telephony


This article was too long for a regular issue of the Digest and is
being submitted FYI. It will also be filed in the Telecom Archives.

PAT

  Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 14:22:40 -0500
  From: matt lucas <[e-mail]>
  Subject: Feb. TS Insight: CABLE'S FUTURE ROLE IN TELEPHONY

This is the lead article in the February 1993 issue of TeleStrategies
Insight. Information about TeleStrategies, Inc., and TeleStrategies
Insight appears at the end of the article.

Matt.

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

CABLE'S FUTURE ROLE IN TELEPHONY or how cable MSOs can eat the RBOCs' lunch!

           By Dr. Jerry Lucas, President, TeleStrategies, Inc.
                  and Publisher, TeleStrategies Insight

This year the biggest question in the cable TV industry isn't whether
cable should get into the telco world -- they're already in it. It's
what future role they should play in next-generation telephony. This
analysis covers (1) where cable is today regarding the telephony
world, (2) why they must partner and who they must partner with to
succeed and (3) how the cable industry should define their business to
establish a winning vision for the 21st century.

THE FIBER WAVE

Prior to 1989 there was virtually no fiber in a cable TV system. This
situation was much like the telephony world in 1979 -- no fiber in the
network. And just as the '80s saw a technology revolution with the
advent of almost total fiber connectivity between central office
switches, within the next several years you'll see a similar
revolution in cable TV.

Companies like TCI, the largest multiple system operator (MSO), state
that within two years 80 percent of their subscribers will be served
via a fiber backbone system. The industry as a whole will average 70
percent. All of this plunge into fiber is totally cost justifiable in
serving the entertainment marketplace alone. To the cable industry,
fiber to the neighborhood means better quality, higher reliability and
more capacity (500 channels or more).  These are exactly the kind of
things that will help keep a franchise at renewal time or beat the
direct broadcast satellite people, both of which will become important
in the post-1994 time frame.

During the initial front (1989-91) of the fiber wave, cable companies
weren't sure they should take the plunge (using this fiber backbone
architecture) to compete with the LECs in the telco world. But
TeleStrategies, industry consultants, cable equipment vendors and
others kept delivering one message: there are big dollars to be made
if you do. But along with the good news there is bad news.

First the good news: cable is a $20 billion per year business with
over 90 percent of households passed by and an overall subscriber rate
of 60 percent nationally. Future growth from video services is likely
to be only in pay per view and interactive TV. My view is that, when
you factor in competition and price regulation, these new services
will not be enough to sustain the growth rates cable had in the '80s.
The only alternative yielding strong growth will be in the telco area.
And here local exchange carriers' (including cellular) revenues are
more than $90 billion, with over 50 percent open to competition with
the right regulatory changes. (See TeleStrategies Insight, September
1991) That's nearly a $50 billion market and it's two and a half times
bigger than cables' market! That's the "lunch" the cable companies can
go after.

Then there's the bad news: telcos want to get into your business, and
given the right set of circumstances, they, too, could have a
subsidized backbone network and favorable regulatory rulings allowing
them to eat cable's lunch (as discussed later).

CABLE'S PLUNGE INTO TELCO

1992 saw the cable industry and RBOCs enter into a battle that shows
every sign of becoming a full-scale war. Four of the six largest MSOs
(TCI, Cox, Continental and Comcast) own one of the two largest CAPs
(Competitive Access Providers), Teleport. If you take out the other
large CAP, Metropolitan Fiber Systems, cable controls over 80 percent
of the CAP market. Almost every MSO today has CAP activity underway.

Again, this is good news and bad news for the cable industry. The good
news is that they have a business vehicle (the CAPs) that is a start
in their quest to capture the $50 billion telco prize. The bad news is
that the cable-dominated CAP business as it is now cannot maintain its
competitive edge over present and future competitors without a change
in strategy. Why?

First, the CAPs' business represents an investment of a little over
$500 million and had service revenues via its fiber optic plant of
roughly $200 million in 1992. A number of players could easily
duplicate what the CAPs have in place today. An RBOC, for example, has
the resources, with no regulatory barriers, to establish a CAP-only
business outside its serving area.

Second, the CAPs' major customer set is the IXCs. Note that AT&T
spends 50 percent of its revenue for access ($18 billion per year) and
the other LECs pay roughly the same percentage for access, a big part
of the $50 billion telco lunch. Today CAPs' revenues are IXC expenses
that are targets for cost reduction.

Third, the CAPs' principal resource after its fiber is their
contracts: contracts for rights-of-way for their fiber, carrier
interconnection agreements and, more importantly, future collocation
agreements with the LECs. Within a year's time, these agreements could
be obtained by anyone with resources and patience including IXCs and
large end users.

Does this mean the CAP business is a loser and that cable shouldn't go
surging into that market? No. Does this mean cable has to do more to
succeed as a CAP? Yes. They need to have a clear vision of where
they're going as CAPs, they need a partner and they have to redefine
their overall business.

CABLE'S PROBLEM

The cable industry has a major problem or challenge when it comes to
taking charge of an infant industry like the CAPs'. There are three
reasons for this. First, the cable industry has a lot of diversity; it
is not a unified industry. Take the two largest MSOs; TCI, the
largest, has strong, centralized management with a fairly uniform
approach to the CAP business.  The second largest, Time Warner, is
highly decentralized with regional managers having a lot of autonomy.
The sixth largest MSO, Comcast, is heavily involved in cellular. All
three are in the CAP business but with different resources and
strategies. The net result of this diversity is that no one company
can serve as a model for the rest of the cable industry and lead by
example.

Second, the cable industry is small potatoes compared to the telephony
industry in which it wishes to establish itself. Cable's annual
revenues, $20 billion, are less than 13 percent of the telephony
market's $160 billion. As Lee Iacocca says, in this business you
either lead, follow or get out of the way. Cable is going to have to
follow in the telco world and structure its CAP business strategy
accordingly.

Third, cable has entered the telco business largely by acquiring CAPs
already in the business. Almost to an operation the following
statement holds true.  The CAP people know a lot about the telco world
and little about the cable business, and vice versa. CAPs and cable
are two different businesses with the only thing in common being
ownership and some fiber plant carrying hub-to- hub traffic. Because
of a yet to be established synergy between CAP and cable businesses
there is a lack of vision in the cable industry as to what cable's
role will be as telco and entertainment merge.

Without a clear vision of cable's role in telco and a clear business
definition of what a cable company is to be in the 21st century as it
enters the telco world, today's entree via the CAP business, I
believe, will fail.  Without a clear vision of the business, it will
be impossible for vendors to identify a broad, lucrative market for
which to build equipment, business users to understand the role cable
will play in the future, investors to understand business plans, etc.

PARTNERING

For these reasons and others, the cable industry must select partners
to move into the telco world. While there are several leading
candidates, one industry stand out: the interexchange carriers. First,
lets look at why the others don't have as much to offer.

1. RBOCs as partners -- At first glance the RBOCs should be natural
partners of the cable industry. At one time, as early as six months
ago, this was the case and together venturing had been mutually
beneficial. The telcos (See TeleStrategies Insight, March, 1992) could
have made peace with cable by agreeing to stay out of entertainment in
return for infrastructure services rendered (billing, service
provisioning, switching, IXC interconnection, etc.).

Today, however, in many regions cable and RBOCs have declared war.
Bell Atlantic, in particular, has made it clear they plan to be a
major player in the video business. Over the last two months they have
inked a $1.5 billion deal with the state of New Jersey to bring fiber
to the curb along with cable TV service in the 1996-99 time frame;
they initiated a video dial tone field trial in the Washington, DC
area with Blockbuster Video as a potential partner; and, they
petitioned the courts to strike down the prohibition that keeps telcos
from being full-fledged cable operators in their regions. Again, if
you're going to be in this business you lead, follow or get out of the
way. For the RBOCs, leading is certainly the fun way to go even if the
approach fails.

But there's another option in partnering with RBOCs -- forming
ventures that are geographically located outside their serving areas
(the extra-territorial strategy). Last summer, the U. S. Court of
Appeals overturned Judge Greene's prohibition on RBOCs entering the
information service business. Now, if Bell Atlantic wants to be a
cable operator, they can do so as long as they don't operate within
their six-state/Washington, DC serving area.

The cable industry should forget this partnering option unless you're
a cable operator with franchise "dogs" looking for a sucker willing to
bail you out.  Why? The RBOCs cannot hold themselves out to the public
as long distance carriers. That mean no interLATA facility ownership,
interLATA resale, joint venturing with long distance companies to
provide service, etc. Take note of Pac Tel's recent announcement that
they're splitting off their cellular and international divisions away
from their regulated business. Why? The leading reason for doing this
is their desire to expand their cellular venture into Personal
Communications Services (PCS) and this means an interLATA operation.
Besides, if US WEST and TCI, partners in European cable TV and telco
activities, haven't ventured here at home it probably means their
lawyers haven't figured out how to do it without violating the
interLATA restriction.

2. Other partners -- What about cellular companies, computer and/or
central office switch vendors as partners? No, they're not strong
partnering candidates. First, cellular: unless you own the local
franchise, like Comcast, it's better to go after the new PCS licenses
rather than act in a supporting role to cellular. A cable company
would probably have to choose between being a wholesaler to a cellular
company or a PCS license holder and PCS appears to be more lucrative
(more on this later). Regarding the computer industry, the only
players with technology and clout are IBM and DEC. I don't think IBM
has the bucks today to make two-way cable a profitable venture anytime
soon. (They lost $5 billion in 1992.) DEC is also hurting.

Finally, the two big switch vendors, AT&T and NTI, are not the door to
knock on. AT&T will very likely venture with cable but it will do so
through its Communications Services Division rather than through
Network Systems (its manufacturing arm), taking the lead much as in
the McCaw deal. As for NTI, I don't think they could afford to
alienate their largest customer set, the RBOCs, by promoting a
technology strategy to eat the telcos' lunch.

3. IXCs as partners -- I saved the best for last. There are three
reasons why cable should partner with the IXCs. First, as mentioned
above, they are the CAPs' best customer today. Second, they provide a
means to get into PCS with relatively low risk (to be discussed).
Third, they can provide the technology expertise and the
infrastructure (SS7, ATM, SONET, etc.) required to capture all
emerging opportunities in the telco world.  You might be asking why an
IXC would want to partner with cable. First, a cable company does not
have the restrictions of the RBOCs. It can enter into joint service
arrangements that are exclusive. Regulated LECs can't do this in their
serving areas. It's a mechanism to gain a competitive advantage in
this marketplace. Second, the IXCs will be entering the PCS arena and
challenging the RBOCs and cellular companies. PCS traffic carried over
the fiber/coax backbone of a cable company makes the economies right
(See TeleStrategies Insight, July 1992).  Finally, from a strategic
perspective, it's not in the IXCs' interest to see the RBOCs get
stronger. Sometime down the road, the RBOCs will enter the long
distance market. It's not likely anytime soon, if ever, that a cable
company will move into the IXC business. In the era of the pending LEC
level playing field, who would you trust with the last-mile connection
to your customer?  My assessment: cable will be a better bet than an
RBOC for IXC partnering.

A CABLE STRATEGY IN TELEPHONY

With the IXC industry at its side, here's how cable should enter the
telco world and here's its role.

Step One: Be a CAP -- With friendly IXCs, the CAP business is a
winner. If a cable company isn't a CAP in their serving area, they
should go ahead ASAP under the following two conditions. First, If
there isn't a CAP in town, be the first one. Note that the first CAP
in a market generally gets the majority of business from corporations
that want either access redundancy or a second (non-LEC) competitor in
the local loop. Just as the early bird gets the worm, it's hard for
later entrants to challenge the first CAP. The second condition is to
buy into or invest in an existing CAP.

The reason it's important to enter the CAP business, in addition to
longer- term benefits, is that it prepares cable for the real action,
PCS. The resources you put in place as a CAP can be used in PCS. The
interconnection and collocation agreements with the LECs, SS7 and soon
to be added digital switching, and the fiber backbone in the business
area will be required for PCS. If you have those resources, you will
be a stronger partner for an IXC when the PCS opportunity opens up.

Step Two: PCS Entree -- The FCC has yet to establish the rules on who
gets what in the pending reallocation of spectrum for PCS. The rules
are expected sometime this year after the new FCC chairman is in
place, probably in May or June. The plan most talked about is MCI's
proposal, which calls for PCS licenses to be awarded to three national
consortia. These consortia would not be controlled by any one company;
a consortium would be owned by an IXC and regional license holders
(probably serving areas much like those that were defined for cellular
 -- 305 metro and 425 rural areas). In addition, present cellular
license holders and LECs could not get licenses in their serving areas
but could get regional licenses outside those areas, heavy LEC
participation in a consortium would count against applicants, and all
license applicants would go through the comparative hearing process.

This approach has merit. The FCC would be in hot water with Congress
if it gave large spectrum awards to a few companies. Three national
licenses would likely involve individually the top three IXCs (AT&T,
MCI and Sprint). An idea all three can agree with! A consortium headed
by an IXC other than those three would not be in a good position to
win in a comparative hearing because of the lack of resources needed
to win. Finally, the FCC staff likes the idea of national licenses. It
eliminates the massive effort and resources that individual cellular
franchises needed to create the big systems. Note that McCaw, the
largest cellular carrier with over 100 licenses, never won a lottery.

The big three IXCs will head up the structuring of PCS consortia if
the MCI plan is adopted as expected here. The strongest player to
partner with in a market will be a cable company with a CAP business
up and running. This is the trump card the cable companies have to
play when dealing with the IXCs.

Step Three: Fiber to the Home -- The next development will be the
cable industry knock-out punch to the telcos. Although the technology
isn't quite right for 45 Mbps, two-way multimedia communication to the
home via cable TV, the environment for hype is. Step three calls for
hyping what cable can do to solve the nation's ills. Hype much like
this was used in the franchise war days during the late '70s and early
'80s when the institutional cable networks promised the local
governments that they would improve communications for public safety,
education, health, etc. Why? Because starting on January 20, 1993 the
Clinton-Gore team had to begin working on keeping their campaign
promises. Except for the pledge to reduce the deficit, no promise
sticks out more than the one to bring down the high cost of health
care (nearly $90 billion last year). Then there's the pledge to
improve education and the one to create jobs. You can make the case,
as the consulting firm Arthur D. Little did in a recent study, that
with improved telecommunications and information processing you can
improve access to health care, improve quality of care and save $40
billion a year right off the top. Big bucks are going to be spent on a
fiber optic infrastructure to solve the health, education and
employment problems. The bad news for the cable industry is that the
RBOCs are going to make the case they're in the best position to do
this with fiber optics to the home, and, by the way, if the government
lets them into cable TV, it will require less government resources to
achieve this goal. The good news for the cable industry, on the other
hand, is that the bulk of newly available funds for an improved
infrastructure will be administered at the community level by the same
government jurisdictions (city, county, etc.) that issue cable
franchises.

The cable industry is going to have to get on the "save the nation
with a new fiber optic/telecommunications infrastructure" band wagon
and stake out its piece of the action. Why? Because government actions
can totally change a market. For example, after World War II, Vice
President Gore's father, former Senator Albert Gore, Sr., sponsored
the National Highway Act. When enacted, the bill did more than
anything else to destroy the railroad monopoly in movement of goods
and passengers. It literally crippled the railroad industry. Trucks,
buses and cars could move as swiftly as trains at a lower cost and it
was good for the country. Vice President Gore is the champion of the
National Research and Education Network (NREN). This network will have
a dramatic effect on the Information Age and our nation's
telecommunications network as we know them today. (See TeleStrategies
Insight, June 1992). Note that almost every RBOC is involved in an
NREN gigabit networking project, and to my knowledge, not one cable
MSO is.

Step three in summary: the cable industry should call its favorite IXC
and its local government and start working on an approach to solve
problems in health care, distance learning, education and
work-at-home. Field trials and demonstrations of cable technologies to
provide telemedicine to the home would be a good start. In short,
cable people, put on a helmet and get into the game. If not, the cable
industry under Vice President Gore could witness the creation of an
infrastructure plan that takes the wind out of their sails -- just
like Senator Gore, Sr. did to the railroads 45 years ago.
Additionally, step four would be to follow up the hype with two-way
multimedia service to the home when the technology is ready.

THE CABLE VISION

The cable industry has to broaden its definition of its business. The
old definition was "we are an information service company providing
entertainment video. Our customers are residential users and the
community governments who gave us the franchise." The new definition
proposed here is that cable should be full service providers (voice,
data and video) with its customers consisting of residential users,
local governments and interexchange carriers.

Copyright CC 1993 TeleStrategies Inc.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or re-transmitted in any form
without written permission of the publisher.
TeleStrategies Inc.
1355 Beverly Road, Ste. 110
McLean, VA 22101

                  ____________________________


If you have comments about this article, please contact Lynn Stern,
editor of TeleStrategies Insight, by email ([e-mail]) or by
telephone at 703- 734-7050.

About TeleStrategies

Founded in 1980 by Dr. Jerry Lucas, TeleStrategies Inc. is the leading
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TeleStrategies Insight is the company's monthly newsletter on
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          14 Feb 93 23:28 EST
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  (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 14 Feb 1993 21:13:01 -0600
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  (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 14 Feb 1993 21:12:31 -0600
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 21:12:31 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #96

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 14 Feb 93 21:12:30 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 96

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE (Graham Toal)
    Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE (Henry Mensch)
    Re: Overseas Directory Assistance (Steve Brack)
    Re: Yellow Pages Data on Disk Wanted (James Deibele)
    Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Carl Oppedahl)
    GTE On the "Move" (Paul Barnett)
    Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs (John Higdon)
    Re: White House Phone Factoids (Kenneth Herron)
    Re: Ma Bell Calling (Donald E. Kimberlin)
    Local Calling Area Re-Organization in SE-WI ([e-mail])
    Alphanumeric Pagers Question (Samuelson S. Rehman)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 21:43:50 GMT
From: Graham Toal <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE


Definitely sounds like guerrilla tactics from the California telco.
Couldn't they have supplied partial information like the area code for
California but with the exchange/telephone no blanked in some way? eg
415 xxx xxxx or whatever it is?  Perhaps if here *is* a technical
alternative, you should all call your PUCs to get it implemented?


G

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

From: [e-mail] (Henry Mensch)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 15:11:44 -0800
Subject: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE
Reply-To: [e-mail]


[e-mail] (Steven H. Lichter) wrote:

> We just were notified that PacBell will be offering Call Trace, last
> number call back. You will not know the number in either case ...

Does this mean the number won't appear on my bill, either (and that,
potentially, I won't know in advance that I'm making a toll call)?  I
got the enclosure in this month's bill, also, and haven't called them
on it yet.


# henry mensch / booz, allen & hamilton, inc.  / <[e-mail]>

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 14:07:25 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Steve Brack)
Subject: Re: Overseas Directory Assistance


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
writes:

> I recently found the "invite to stay on the line" to cause a
> problem.  Since the "called party" had not disconnected, I could not
> use the # to place another call without rekeying my credit card
> number.  Slowed me down a bit ...

One of the telecom jobs I've held involved working with headset phones
where dropping a call was inconvenient, invloving physically
disconnecting the phone.  When calling DA, all I would do is ask the
DA operator to drop the call when (s)he finished.  If I forgot to ask,
I'd have to wait to get reanswered, then ask to be dropped.

Usually, the operator would manually recite the number instead of
passing me off to the recording, as would normally be done.


Steven S. Brack           [e-mail]
Toledo, OH  43613-1605    [e-mail]
MY OWN OPINIONS           [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (James Deibele)
Subject: Re: Yellow Pages Data on Disk Wanted
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- [phone]
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 22:13:00 GMT


[e-mail] (Lynne Gregg) writes:

> Anyone have ideas for sources for Yellow Page data on disk?  I'm
> looking for YP's for most major cities.

DAK regularly lists one of the Yellow Pages on CD-ROM in their
catalog, which I just received a few days ago.  Unfortunately, they
restrict it to people who are buying one of their CD-ROM drives, but
at $69 for the disc and around $200 for the drive, it's not such a bad
deal.  I think the name is "PhoneDisc USA" or something like that.  I
don't have DAK's phone number in front of me, but you should be able
to get it from 800-555-1212.  Or you might be on Drew's mailing list,
too.

There's supposed to be at least one competitor in that price range,
but I don't have any more information on them.

Note that it will only let you print out 25 names at a time, so it's
not very good for slurping up whole cities at a time.


[e-mail]                   "2091 newsgroups & nothing on ..."
PDaXs gives free access to news & mail. [phone] - 1200/2400, N81
Full internet (ftp, telnet, irc) access available. Voice: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Carl Oppedahl)
Subject: Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 23:01:39 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jerry Leichter)
writes:

> I recently ran across a personal record for additional hotel charges,
> at a location our Moderator may appreciate: The O'Hare Hilton.
> According to the rate card in the room - at least they provide that
> now! - the charges are as follows:

(Charges deleted here for brevity; see original posting.)

> I made my calls from the lobby, which actually had a couple of the new
> AT&T model 2000 phones.  (The ones in the lobby don't have keyboards,
> but the ones on the second floor, where the conference rooms are, do.)

The hotel's policy is, of course, an outrage.  When I encounter this I
always write a letter to complain.  The idea that they would charge $1
for me to call an 800 number (who cares whether it is to a long-distance
carrier or not) galls me.

I, too, take my business to the lobby.

But think -- wouldn't we all be smart, when we are making our hotel
reservations in the first place, to ask what the policy is for local
calls and 800 number calls?  And take that into account when choosing
where to stay?

I like the way it is when I stay in a ski condo in Vail ...

There is a card on the phone, that says something like this:

       Please use your calling card for all calls.
       Local calls are free.
       Please do not direct-dial any toll calls.
       If you do, we will charge $20 extra for the
       hassle of going back and posting it to your
       charge card later.

I have set up 800 numbers to ring to each of the four or so phone
numbers I call most often (home, office, etc.) and when I dial those,
I get several benefits:

No first-minute surcharge as there would be for a calling card call;
the hotels, some of them at least, do not charge for it as they do not
recognize the number as a calling-card access number; I can call from
pay phones etc. and dial fewer digits, and do not have to worry about
someone looking over my shoulder and seeing my calling-card number.


Carl Oppedahl AA2KW  (intellectual property lawyer)
30 Rockefeller Plaza   New York, NY  10112-0228
voice 212-408-2578     fax [phone]



[Moderator's Note: Have you ever considered having a call-extender
type of device put on a line -- with a complex security code -- and an
800 number in to it to be used for ALL outgoing long distance calls?
That way you would get the direct dial rate on all your long distance
calls no matter where you are when you need to make a call. The
'surcharge' would be whatever you pay per minute on the 800 line, but
the combination of charges would often times still be less than making
a call via the hotel switchboard with its surcharge, or the surcharge
your calling card requires.  Your biggest savings would come on very
short calls where there is no oppotunity to spread the surcharge over
several minutes.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Paul Barnett)
Subject: GTE On the "Move"
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 17:24:15 CST


 From the {Dallas Morning News}, Sunday, 2/14/93.
Front page, upper left hand corner

"Moving fast on all fronts"
Key GTE unit gears up for mass re-engineering
First in an occasional series
By Diana Kunde, Staff Writer of the Dallas Morning News


The executive on the videotape strides to some empty office cubicles
and delivers a stark message to GTE employees: "To be honest, this
isn't the last empty cubicle you're going to see."

But with the threat comes a challenge: "In a sense, these careers
weren't ended by GTE," he continues.  "They were ended by other
companies, by competition."

This is the new reality at GTE Telephone Operations, based in Irving,
where management wants nothing short of a complete culture change --
from bureaucratic to lean and creative, from a regulated utility to a
telecommunications services company.

In a considerably more competive world, GTE believes that its
Telephone Operations unit must adapt to a fast-moving environment, and
it must do so quickly.  Conscious of troubles at industry giants such
as General Motors Corp. and IBM, the relatively prosperous company
wants to move before crisis hits.

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

That's just the front page.  The rest of the article fills up an
entire page in the interior of the first section.

There's an sidebar with a sampling of the goals of GTE Telephone
Operations, extracted from an employee handbook.  I'll follow up with
it later if there is any interest.

I'm not an apologist for GTE: I'm simply a residential customer that
has experienced many of the frustrations detailed by other readers of
this newsgroup.  The whole article reads more like marketing
propaganda than anything else, but I thought it was interesting to see
"The Phone Company" admit that they might be doing something wrong.


Paul Barnett
MPP OS Development     (214)-497-4846
Convex Computer Corp.  Richardson, TX

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 15:22 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs


[e-mail] (Glenn McComb) writes:

> I've been getting a lot of mail regarding my post about Execuline

> They CAN change your phone to their system as primary carrier (1 +
> dial), but I opted to stay with MCI until I got some experience with
> them.

But what is the mechanism for offering intraLATA bypass? This CANNOT,
repeat CANNOT be done via FGD ("1+" or "10XXX" dialing). Pac*Bell will
not complete the call in this manner.

Does Execuline offer 950 service?


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Kenneth Herron)
Subject: Re: White House Phone Factoids
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 23:44:30 GMT


[e-mail] (Rob Knauerhase) writes:

> "Contrary to widespread belief the old "hotline" between Washington
> and Moscow was not a telephone to warn against an impending doomsday
> attack, but rather a teletype manned at the Pentagon."

Tom Clancy's latest book, _The Sum of All Fears_, makes several
references to this hotline.  It's a work of fiction, but knowing Mr.
Clancy it's probably pretty accurate.  A very good book overall.


Kenneth Herron     [e-mail]    University of Kentucky
[phone]    Dept. of Mathematics

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 23:54 GMT
From: Donald E. Kimberlin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Ma Bell Calling


In one of his typically insightful commentaries, John Higdon replied
to <[e-mail] (Robert L. Stinnett) about telephone
dial services and rates over a lifetime of experience.

However, John seems to, perhaps in the crunch of netmail haste, gotten
a point of reference reversed.

Concerning the relative cost of a DDD adventure as a youth in 1957,
John wrote:

> But ah, yes, the "good old days". I remember playing with the
> family phone circa 1957. I used to love dialing various numbers and
> listening to the sounds of the connections being completed. One time I
> dialed "212 990 1111" and was greeted with a Manhattan traffic report.

> As soon as I realized what it was, I hung up. The charge? $2.00! And
> those were 1957 dollars. (Today it would be what? $.20? Terrible!)

That prompted me to get out a shareware program that's stowed around
here, and see what the current dollar cost of $2.00 expended in 1957
was.  Well, my shareware program is only updated to 1990, but it said
that what John ran up on his parent's phone bill in 1957 would have
amounted to $9.29 in 1990.  Conversely, if John was thinking about a
20 cent first minute in 1990, its equivalent on Mom and Pop's 1957
bill would have been four cents!

I think Mom and Pop would get rather more concerned today about Little
Johnny blowing nine bucks as they would have about him doing it with
four cents back in 1957 ...

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

From: Ron <[e-mail]>
Subject: Local Calling Area Re-Organization in SE-WI
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 10:56:44 CST


Many months ago, early last year, it was announced to the public that
the Local Calling Area in Southeastern Wisconsin was going to be
changed to be equal for all parties.

The proposal was for the local calling area to be a 25 mile radius
from your CO.  So everyone's calling area would be different depending
on where they are calling from.

A decision on this proposal was due late last year if I recall
correctly, but nothing has been announced.

Does anyone know anything more on this?


Thanks,

Ron     Lightning Systems, INC.   [e-mail]  [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Samuelson S. Rehman)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 17:39:46 -0800
Subject: Alphanumeric Pagers Question


Shawn Nunley wrote...

> If someone is willing to email me the spec for IXO pagers, I would be
> willing to create some Procomm scripts for sending pages to alpha
> pagers.  All I really need is the process for calculating the
> checksum, because I have already figured out the rest.

I've extracted this small portion of code from my IXO/TAP com. stack.
Hope this helps:

 ---------------------------------------------  s.snd.c:ixo:ixo_CalcCheckSum

int    i,
            sum,        /* Local cardinal for dec checksum    */
            buflen;        /* Length of packet buffer        */
char    cs_str[20];        /* Local string fro hex checksum    */

    /* ... parts of code truncated ...*/

    /* Start calc checksum */
    if (!ixo_sil) printf( "page:    Calculate CS...\n" );
        sum = 0;
    for( i=0; i<buflen; i++)
        sum += (buf[i] & 0x7F);

    /* Convert checksum to hex */
    cs_len = sprintf( cs_str, "%X", sum );

    /* Convert the checksum from hex to BBL format */
    for(i=cs_len-3; i<cs_len; i++)
    {
        if ( cs_str[i] >= 'A' )
        cs_str[i] -= 7;
    }

    /* Append checksum string at the end of packet buffer */
    buflen += sprintf( &buf[buflen], "%.3s\r", &cs_str[cs_len-3] );

   ---------------------------------- end of extract

If you want the lastest specification of the IXO/TAP protocol, you
might wanna write to British Telecom.

One thing you might want to know, most paging terminals claims they
support IXO but I have not seen two that works the same. I had write
different modules to support five different modules. I think
supporting Glenyare and Motorola terminals are quite enough.

Also, different paging terminals support different transmission length
and displayable charsets.

P.S. A quick question: Is anyone here using EMBARC ?

Good Luck!


Best Regards...

Samuelson S. Rehman
{Systems Programmer - RnD.NCA, Director of NIS Systems}
Newspager Corp. of America

voice:[phone] | fax:[phone] | email:[e-mail],[e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: I want to remind all readers of the new file in the
Telecom Archives covering this very topic in detail. You should pull a
copy if the topic is one of regular concern to you.   PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #96
*****************************











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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #97

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 15 Feb 93 01:16:45 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 97

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Touch Tone is no Extra Charge ... Maybe (Paul Robinson)
    Phoenix, AZ Has Caller ID (Kevin W. Reed)
    What Would Be Required to Compile "Secret #" FAQ? (Chris Taylor)
    Re: 1-800-CALL-ATT 'ext. 21' to be Discontinued (Paul Robinson)
    Re: 900 Numbers Tarnished Beyond Repair? (Richard B. Dervan)
    Re: Local Cellular Channel Distribution (Paul Robinson)
    Re: The Definitive Word on TTL Fields (Christopher Davis)
    Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs (Glenn McComb)
    Re: Standard Dialing Plan (Mark Brader)
    Re: Running Out of Area Codes (Bob Denny)
    Graybar Hotel, Sorry (Paul Robinson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 23:16:19 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Touch Tone is no Extra Charge ... Maybe


I have two phone lines in my house.  Because someone in the house
wants one of them for their answering machine, I decided to have two
more phone lines installed.  Here's the details from C&P Telephone of
Maryland:

I live in a Maryland suburb of Washington, DC.  The installation is
$65 for the first line and $48 for each additional line, when these
are added to an existing bill.  The rates are slightly higher if the
new lines were being separately added, and if someone wants to split
off some of the phone numbers and take them to another area, then
putting them on the same bill will end up costing both parties all of
the savings by putting them on the original bill.  Also, since the
first line is listed, the other lines are issued unlisted (my computer
line has never been listed even though the main number is).  The clerk
didn't ask me, and since I don't really care, I didn't ask for listing.

When I moved in I saved the $65 because two lines were already installed.
(I wouldn't even *think* of sharing the line my computer uses).

Unlimited residential service is quoted as $20 a month.  I note that
because I already have unlimited local service, the new lines must
also be installed that way; the sales clerk told me that this was the
case.  Her exact words were that it was "a violation of tariff
schedules to install measured and unmeasured service at the same
house."  Also this clerk was honest: the base rate for unlimited
service is $16.50 plus a $3.50 'subscriber line charge' She plainly
stated the rate for phone service was 'twenty dollars per line'.

She also stated that of the measured plans, she herself thought the
stupidest one was the one that sets local calls instead of 10c each
untimed, to be 3.3c each plus 1 1/2c per minute.  They do give one
advantage: if I was taking the 65 calls per month plan ($8.50 plus the
usual $3.50 subscriber charge and taxes) if the lines are billed on
one bill the metering is combined, which meant with four measured
lines the subscriber can use a total of 260 calls in total over all
the lines, meaning if you used 100 calls one one line and 100 on
another, you would not go over the limit.  Note this 'spreading' of
call counts does not apply to directory assistance calls.  Residential
lines get six free calls per month (down from 12) and the calls are
assigned to each line; use eight on one line and none on another and
you owe them for two DA calls at 25c each.

Of the *145* 'long distance carriers' who provide service in this
area, you can sign up for any one of *53* of them that want
subscruibers, and you can select #54, 'none' as the default carrier.
They allow you one month from start of service to choose a carrier
without charge.  If you don't choose, you get left 'undecided' which
means 'AT&T'.  What she means by 'carriers' may mean companies taking
Feature Group B or F.G. D (10XXX access or 950 codes.)  In that case,
one of the 'telephone companies' in the area is the Maryland
Department of Motor Vehicles at 950-1MVA (this gets them the
equivalent of a local toll-free number), and 'Fairfax Cable' (Fairfax
VA) which operates a code at 10-xxx-00 for people to call in to order
pay per view movies.

The installation charge noted above is to put a DEMARC box on the
ground or some easily accessible place as close to the telco 'point of
presence' (or 'POP' -- usually a waist-high post but in our
neighborhood is the telephone pole across the street).  In my house
the lines run from that POP to the second floor, to a tension
adjustment clip, then run down the side of the house around to a
drilled hole in the basement cinder block.  There is an old-fashioned
weather resistant covered outdoor telephone jack using a four-plug
socket on the back of the house.  By my express action with a
screwdriver on the network block, the wire to that jack sits
unconnected.  Thus my lines are protected against any local fraud
short of someone with wire cutters.

If I want the demarc box anyplace else, or if I want additional jacks
installed, I have to pay Time and Materials at $16/15 minutes, unless
the place where the demarc is moved to is shorter than where they
would put it and is accessible. They will bill the installation charge
in one, two, three or four month installments.  I asked for three
months.  If I can, I will probably have the demarc box installed
inside in my upstairs bedroom along with the jacks.  While the demarc
box has a 'dual access' slot, one side with a lock secured by the
telephone company, and the other side which can be locked by the
customer, I've seen demarc boxes and they are usually cheap plastic
and probably easily broken.  It might be cheaper my way; he has to run
the line past my room to get down to ground level.

While I can do the jack wiring, I don't really have the patience nor
the 'touch' to do nice, neat wiring like the stuff that's already
here.  Since this is a rented house, I'll let the phone company guy do
the stapling.  (Oh gee, what's a non-sexist term for the phone
installer?  And what does that do to Jimmy Webb's 'Wichita Lineman'
song made famous by Glen Campbell)?

I suspect phone service is heavily used here: my first two lines had a
number in which the third digit of the exchange was a 5.  The two new
lines which they gave me the numbers (they won't be installed until
2/16) start with the same two digits (indicating the area I'm in) but
the third digit for them is a 7.  I could have, for an additional
charge, been allowed to ask for a specific four digit number if it was
available in one of the prefixes serving this area.

I am fortunate that we still have telephone poles.  If they were using
buried cable (as most of Montgomery County, MD has) the rate to
install more buried wire is 65c PER FOOT after the first 175 feet from
the POP.

Oh yes, about the 'no surcharge for touch tone'.  When I originally
moved in here two years ago, you had to ask to not have touch tone or
it cost $30 to order it removed (sneaky, considering touchtone was
$1.25 a month).  Even sneakier: C&P Telephone has tariffed to
eliminate the $1.25 a month surcharge for touch tone, by adding the
surcharge to the base rate, then reduced the new 'base' charge by 33c.
Nice way to 'decrease' the charge for the service.  So it means that
Touch-Tone is now standard with all lines and is not 'surcharged'.  Or
so they claim, when a $1.25 optional charge is 'removed' by raising
the rates to that less 33c.


Paul Robinson - [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Kevin W. Reed)
Subject: Phoenix, AZ Has Caller ID
Organization: Posted via TeleSys Development Systems (Mesa, AZ U.S.A.)
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 02:08:35 GMT


Caller ID just got turned on in Phoenix, AZ after a brief delay from
the Corporations Commission.

The delay was due to US West not properly notifying all its customers
of the free ability to signup for line blocking.  Also, apparently,
many of the police departments in the area had not received adequate
notice that the lines they use in undercover work had not been blocked
properly.

On the radio the other day, US West was reported to have signed up
close to 5,000 subsribers to the Caller ID feature.  It then went on
to say that US West had also accepted more than 30,000 requests for
full line blocking.


TELESYS DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS
Kevin W. Reed        Public *NIX Site and Newsfeed Source
[e-mail]     UUCP: ...!ncar!noao!enuucp!telesys!kreed
SCO Xenix/Unix Support    Data/UUCP/BBS [phone]

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 01:51:55 -0500 (EST)
From: Chris Taylor <[e-mail]>
Subject: What Would Be Required to Compile 'Secret #' FAQ?


To the group:

Let's say one of us were to volunteer his/her time to compile
something with the commonly asked-about numbers to get a ringback,
etc.

If we did it for all the exchanges in all the major North American
population centers, do you think it could be something a couple of
people could manage?

What would be an efficient way of soliciting tidbits of knowledge from
the far-flung corners of the Net? Maybe just a questionaire to fill
out:

EXCHANGE:    556
CITY:        Tin City, NJ
RINGBACK:    445<your number>
HEAR YOUR NUMBER:
        958
CANCEL CALL WAITING:
        *67
ETC,ETC

I don't know. I'm curious to hear opinions on how hard it would be to
initiate a project like this.


Chris Taylor    [e-mail]   [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: One of the things you'd have to contend with is the
frequency with with which 'ringback' and in particular 'hear your
number' code numbers are changed. 'They' do not like people outside
the telco to know these or use them, thus the routine varies from
community to community, and sometimes from month to month. You would
have a lot of changes in your list on a regular basis.   PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 22:50:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: 1-800-CALL-ATT 'ext. 21' to be Discontinued


In TELECOM Digest 13-87, I wrote that the 1-800-CALL-ATT x 21 number
was being discontinued.  Enough people wrote to ask me what this
number was for that I figured I should explain.

In the United States a telephone customer has the right to use a
competitive long distance company for telephone calls which are
outside the same state or certain intra-state calls.

The usual practice is for the customer to select the carrier they
want.  Or they can often dial 1-0 and the three digit code (usually
called the '10XXX code') belonging to that carrier.  Some telephones,
especially private pay stations and hotels, have their lines connected
to a specific carrier (because of commissions paid by the carrier) and
even go so far as to block the '1-0-xxx' code (which is illegal, like
'red lining' some areas so that people can't use credit cards to some
countries, but it's done anyway).  Also, if you are calling from an
office that cannot give you a dial tone to dial a long distance call,
you may have to use an operator and pay more for the call.

So AT&T, like its competitors, implemented a code off of one of its
800 numbers you could dial into, then when you got to AT&T's "welcome"
message, you could punch in '21' on a touch-tone pad and be given to
AT&T's switch and be able to dial a call directly over AT&T's
facilities.

So AT&T is getting so many calls on that 800 number that they've moved
calls for their switch to that number.

"And now you know, the rest of the story."  - Paul Harvey


Paul Robinson -- [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Richard B Dervan)
Subject: Re: 900 Numbers Tarnished Beyond Repair?
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 04:03:01 GMT


[e-mail] (James Deibele) writes:

> I was talking to a developer friend, and he was interested in 900
> numbers as a way of selling his shareware: I'd set up a normal
> DOS-based BBS for him, and people could call up and download the
> program.  He'd only make a few dollars per download, but he'd have the
> money without having to take phone orders or mail out floppies.  Say
> he got a steady number of calls, five or ten a day at a profit of
> $5-10 each call. He'd be making a little over $1000 month after
> deducting the price of 900 setup charges and usage charges.

Well, why doesn't he just set up a 900 service so they can get a
registration number?  A local chat-line system here works like this ...

1) Call 900 number with modem and enter the 'system id';
2) 900 number gives you a code;
3) You enter that code on the BBS;
4) Presto!  Instant time!

That might be easier.  Just charge $15/call or something like that.
The service is provided by another company so you only have to give
that company it's cut.  The person could call the 900 number, get the
code, and then call your friend's BBS with the code and either get a
registration key or access to a registered version of the program.
That way people could still call and get the evaluation copies.


Richard B Dervan                       [e-mail]
System Support Programmer/Analyst      [e-mail]
Information America, Inc

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 23:01:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Local Cellular Channel Distribution


ES> Someone mentioned the other day that of the 800 odd cellular channels
ES> available, only one sixth of these would be in use in a given area (at
ES> least, per cell carrier).

If I remember, it's done in groups called "A" through "G" and set up
similar to a honeycomb.  There are some documents in the Telecom
Digest archives that explain it, I think, and if not, there are some
books you can look for in a good technical bookstore or library.  This
stuff isn't secret, and that's what's so stupid about ...

ES> Is it then possible to deduce from the frequency of a single
ES> channel verified to be in use exactly which 100 or so channels
ES> would be active?

I am not sure.  I think so, but the objective is to prevent the same
channel being used in adjacent cells, so it may be possible.  The
documents I've glanced tell all this.  I wasn't very interested at the
time to bother with it.

But how would you know that a particular channel is 'verified to be in
use'?  You wouldn't be doing anything such as (gasp) *scanning* any of
the cellular frequencies would you?  That's illegal.  And we all know
that none of the readers of this TELECOM Digest would ever do anything
illegal like that, wouldn't we?

ES> This would be useful since one could key in these frequencies
ES> and 'scan' them instead of frequency searching.

Err, next time you want to ask a question like this, I suggest you use
the 'double blind anonymous posting service' from Finland as it might
be inconvenient if some men in dark suits were watching for you.  Oh,
I'm sorry; you're concerned about someone *else* scanning those
frequencies: you don't have to worry about eavesdropping; it's illegal
and that will stop people, right?  :)


Paul Robinson -- [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: The Definitive Word on TTL Fields
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 04:14:55 GMT


Mark Boolootian <[e-mail]> wrote:

> I would like to challenge you to produce a traceroute for me with 30
> hops in it (and no routing loops!).

I could have done it back when NEARNET was off of JvNC; JvNC added
about 5-10 hops to *any* outgoing connection.  Add the T3 backbone, a
few internal hops at each end-site, and, say, a few bounces through
BARRnet, and you've got 30.

Now, of course, I'm on Alternet, so I get really low hopcounts to
everywhere, or so it seems ... your machine is 17 hops away, and
that's actually a bit high (Alter -> T3 -> ESnet).  Bet it would have
approached 30 from a "backwater NEARNET" site back in the JvNC days.


Christopher Davis * <[e-mail]> * <[e-mail]>

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

From: [e-mail] (Glenn McComb)
Subject: Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 04:20:58 GMT


Sorry, I forgot to mention that the access is via 950+.  If I use them
for my 1+ carrier, I believe PacHell will still trap the intra-lata
calls unless I use my 950+ access number.  The bypass also has 800+
access.  I've been using the 950+ access on my speed dial, and it
doesn't seem to mind that I pass them 1 + xxx + xxx + xxxx, so I can
use the "950" button + regular button to dial via Execuline, or I can
use my regular speed dial button alone to dial via my 1+ carrier
(MCI).

Rigth now, I'm only setup with a "credit card" access; they aren't my
primary carrier.  So far, I've been happy with the quality, so I might
change in the future.  They also offer accounting codes, so MCI
doesn't sound like such a good deal anymore (to me).


Glenn A. McComb            [phone] ofc * 725-0222 fax |
McComb Research             PO Box 220 * Cupertino, CA 95015 |
gmccomb @ netcom.com                     MHS: glenn @ mccomb |

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

From: [e-mail] (Mark Brader)
Subject: Re: Standard Dialing Plan
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 04:55:50 GMT


> There's nothing more annoying than a telco switch that says "It is
> not necessary to dial 1 and the area code for this number".  If telco
> knows what number is intended, why doesn't it just go ahead and
> complete the call?!

It doesn't know what number is intended.  It knows what number you
dialed.

The message is a polite way of saying "You were about to reach a wrong
number!  But luckily we noticed that the number you dialed would be a
local (or in-area) call, while you dialed in a manner requesting a
long-distance (or out-of-area) call.  Since everyone knows the extent
of their local calling area (or area code), you must have been calling
the wrong number.  Please try again and dial the right number now."

Obviously there are people for whom this trap is a disservice, but
there are others for whom it's a service.

Maybe it would be a good compromise if this trap was retained, but
011-1-npa-xxx-xxxx was allowed for all calls within the NANP, even
local ones, with the charging as if you'd dialed them the usual way.
Nobody's likely to dial 011-1 by accident, are they?


Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Bob Denny)
Subject: Re: Running Out of Area Codes
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 05:39:18 GMT
Organization: Alisa Systems, Inc.


My kid tells me that it is "in" to have a pager, whether you're a drug
dealer or not. Each of those pagers have their own seven-digit phone
number, and you can buy 'em at the local stationery store. The service
is something like $15/mo.

No wonder phone numbers are disappearing so fast!!!


Robert B. Denny                    voice: [phone]
Alisa Systems, Inc.                  fax: [phone]
Pasadena, CA   ([e-mail], ..uunet!alisa.com!denny)


[Moderator's Note: In the Chicago Public Schools, pagers are
considered verbotin and are confiscated from students.  This is part
of the War on Drugs.   PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 23:13:07 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Graybar Hotel, Sorry.


I wrote:

> Until it was torn down a few years ago, the post office would forward
> mail addressed to the "Graybar Hotel" to the Los Angeles County Jail.

TELECOM Moderator queried:

> [Moderator's Note: Did they tear down the post office, or the County
> Jail?   PAT]

Sorry, the info was from an article about the end of the Graybar Hotel
as the new County Jail was finished and the old 'Graybar Hotel' was
torn down.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #97
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #98

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 15 Feb 93 11:32:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 98

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Programs to Send Messages to Pagers Using IXO Protocol (TELECOM Moderator)
    Curious Local Exchange Problem (Daniel Burstein)
    Internet Access from Qatar? Anyone? (Bindy P. James)
    Searching For PPP Pointer RFC (Sam Houston)
    Procedure to Use 800-321-0ATT? (Curtis E. Reid)
    Re: Modems For LEGAL Use in Germany (Christian Weisgerber)
    Re: Modems For LEGAL Use in Germany (Wolfgang Zenker)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Daniel Burstein)
    Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE (Steven H. Lichter)
    Re: GTE On the "Move" (Steven H. Lichter)
    Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State (Jack Decker)
    Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones (Ken Thompson)
    Re: Standard Dialing Plan (Al Varney)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 10:41:16 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <telecom>
Subject: Programs to Send Messages to Pagers Using IXO Protocol


Monty Solomon has kindly provided the archives with a large file of
programs which can be executed on your computer if you send a lot of
alphanumeric messages to pagers. This file should complement the
discussion going on here over the weekend regarding IXO protocol.

Look for it in the Telecom Archives, using anonymous ftp lcs.mit.edu
under the title 'ixo.program.scripts'


Patrick Townson

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

From: [e-mail] (Daniel Burstein)
Subject: Curious Local Exchange Problem
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 11:13:30 GMT


All these postings about impossible phone problems reminded me of an
episode I sufferred through about three years ago.

At the time, I had a single phone in the 212-663 exchange.  One day,
when I started to dial a phone number, I got an IMMEDiATE busy after
the first digit.

On further experimentation, I discoverd that I only the numbers "6"
and "8" would get through the first digit - all others, INCLUDING "0"
and "9" (as in "911") immediately busied out.

After a bit of thought and experimentation, I realized that I could
only dial out to phone numbers in my physical central office (which
was composed of three different numerical exchanges).

Since these exchanges were 663, 666, and 865, any first digit other
than 6 or 8, and then any second other than 6, etc., etc. got me a
busy.

Oh, yes, I couldn't call repair service either (611). As soon as I
hit the secoond digit ("1") whoops, there went the busy.

I -could-, however, make calls to any number in the three exchanges.

So what I did: I called one of the telco test numbers in my exchange
(xxx-99xx). I got a semi-literate person, and explaiend to them that I
needed a call back from repair service.  So far so good.

BUT, for the next four or five days guess what happened. The techies
would get a very abridged trouble report (i.e. unable to dial out),
would grab my line in the CO, get a dial tone, call out to one of
their test numbers (which, of course, was in the same exchange), and
clear out the trouble report.

FINALLY, after a LOT of screaming, ranting and raving (and being told,
of course, that this whole problem was IMPOSSIBLE), I got a real
techie to call back.  He actually listened, and (after a bit of
prodding) got someone to look up the routing and authorization tables
assigned to my account.

Yep, someone, somehow, had put that most curious restriction on my
service.

It was fixed shortly afterwards, but NY Tel still claims that this
sort of thing just can't be done.

Hmm, sounds like it would be an EXCELLENT service offering: A
restriction on your line to ONLY let the person make calls to the CO
itself (let's add in a "911" option for safety.


[e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: The phones for inmate use at the Cook County Jail
have many restrictions on them. The curious part of it to me is that
they are all on the 312-890 centrex serving the entire circuit court
and correctional center complex at 28th and California Avenues here.
But the inmate phones can receive incoming calls only from another
extension on the centrex (no incoming calls from outside the premises);
they cannot call other extensions on the centrex; they can only make
zero-plus calls on a collect basis anywhere. No third number billing,
no credit card billing, no 700/800/900 numbers, etc. They cannot dial
411, 611 or 911. They cannot dial the operator inside or outside. All
calls from those phones must be of the form 0 + AC + 7D, even for the
local calling area. The IBT operator knows the calls are from the jail
and announces them in this way, "I have a collect call from <name>, an
inmate at the Cook County Jail, will you accept charges?" None of the
automated operator service on these lines.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (BINOY P JAMES)
Subject: Internet Access from Qatar? Anyone?
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 15:34:50 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University


Anybody know if I could access Internet from Qatar, in the Middle
East?  How about Bitnet at least?

I'm heading back in a few months and I really want to stay on Internet
and send e-mail to folks back in the States.


Thanks in advance.

Binoy P. James    [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Sam)
Subject: Searching For PPP Pointer RFC
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Xerox Corporation, Webster NY
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 16:39:49 GMT


Does anyone know if an RFC has been published for Point to Point
Protocol, the updated synchronous/asynchronous SLIP?

Thanks in advance.


"sam" houston       Xerox, Rochester, N.Y.

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

Date: 15 Feb 1993 09:32:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Curtis E. Reid <[e-mail]>
Subject: Procedure to use 800-321-0ATT


Can someone give us the procedure for using the AT&T's Switch at
800/321-0288?

I'd like to know what steps is required to make the call go through?
Thanks!


Curtis E. Reid                [e-mail]
Rochester Institute of Technology/NTID    [e-mail] (DECUS)
P.O. Box 9887                716.475.6089 TDD/TT 475.6895 Voice
Rochester, NY 14623-0887  U.S.A.    716.475.6500 Fax (Business Use Only)


[Moderator's Note: After dialing 800-321-0288, you hear the AT&T
tones, and the robot operator announces, "AT&T ... please enter the
number you are calling, or zero for an operator."  After entering the
number you are asked to enter your card number. It is basically the
same as any other credit card call.  Persons who have experiences with
this are requested to write.   PAT]

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

Organization: My Individual Private Site
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 01:58:06 +0100
From: [e-mail] (Christian Weisgerber)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Modems For LEGAL Use in Germany


Steve Pershing writes:

> ZyXEL modems are approved for use in Germany, and are sold there.  We

Indeed, ZyXEL modems are sold over here and actually they've become
rather popular. However, they are NOT APPROVED by any means.

I'm very concerned about the fact that a commercial vendor of these
modems provides such blatant disinformation.


Christian "naddy" Weisgerber, Germany       [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Wolfgang Zenker)
Subject: Re: Modems For LEGAL Use in Germany
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 12:54:54 +0100


[e-mail] (Steve Pershing) writes:

> ZyXEL modems are approved for use in Germany, and are sold there.  We
> will also sell them to almost anyone anywhere in the world, at about a
> 10% profit. (The profit goes to support the free aspects of the
> Questor site.)

Sorry, but ZyXEL modems are NOT approved by the German BZT. But they
work very reliable on the German phone system and almost nobody cares
about an approval anymore.


Wolfgang

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

From: [e-mail] (Daniel Burstein)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 10:44:47 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dan
Lanciani) writes:

> I recently ordered a second line in my name and at the same
> address as my existing line.  For some reason I thought one could get
> non-published or unlisted (I forget) status at no extra charge for
> each line beyond the first.  Did I imagine this?  The business office
> was quite certain that I would have to pay extra.  I suppose the
> answer is specific to NET land ...

In New York, if you order it as a SECOND (i.e., if busy then transfer)
line on the MAIN account, then it is not listed.  For example, think
of your local dry cleaner - hoe many of phone numbers do they have
listed?

And ... for good measure, you DON't have to put in the "switch when busy";
(technically this is called a "hunt group").


[e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Steven H. Lichter)
Subject: Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE
Date: 15 Feb 1993 14:36:56 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)


I would guess that if the return call is Toll or L/D it would appear
as would any other one of that type. I had thought that PacBell was
not even going offer those two services as they felt they could not
make any money on it. Sure hope the Assembly and State Senate get
going on those bills that over rule the PUC and I think the PUC should
have the people vote on there appointments as we do for the State
Surpreme Court, makes them more to what we want.


Steven H. Lichter    GTE Calif COEI

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

From: [e-mail] (Steven H. Lichter)
Subject: Re: GTE On the "Move"
Date: 15 Feb 1993 14:40:31 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)


There is a big shakeup in Telops. Some of it is good, but some will
cause problems later on. But that is just my view as a 25+ year GTE
employee who will have to try and do my job after the dust settles.


Steven H. Lichter    GTE Calif COEI

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 10:12:34 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State


In message <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Robert
L. McMillin) wrote:

> [e-mail] (Ken Dykes) writes:

>> Recently I received a call from the Glendale area of Los Angeles.  I
>> live in southern Ontario CANADA.  My Caller-ID box instead of showing
>> out-of-area showed PRIVACY.  The call to me was made (and answered)
>> twice in the same night; both times PRIVACY ... some sort of
>> call-blocking was enabled by PacBell.

> Which probably means that the switch was SS7-connected, but thanks to
> the California Public fUtilities Commission, EVERYBODY's phone number
> will show up as PRIVACY-enabled.  After all, privacy is the same thing
> as anonymity ... NOT!

>> PacBell is being far too kind to the zealots :-)

> It's not Pac*Hell's fault, really.

I think I would take issue with both of these statements.  First of
all, it would seem that Pac*Bell would have the choice of not sending
the number at all, rather than sending the number with a "privacy"
flag attached.  If Caller ID is not being offered in California, then
there is no reason they should be sending the number out of state,
particularly when they're sending it with the "private" flag, which
means that Caller ID subscribers can't read it anyway.

And in the second place, as I recall the discussion here, the
California PUC did NOT say that Pac*Bell could not offer Caller ID.
Rather, they imposed what I feel were quite reasonable restrictions to
help protect the privacy of those who might not realize that their
number was being made available to all and sundry.  In particular,
they said that per-line blocking was to be the default for anyone who
is paying for an unlisted number.  Is that so unreasonable?  I think
not ... after all, if a person is paying an extra monthly charge to
keep their number from appearing in the directory, or being given out
by directory asistance, then it's not unreasonable to assume that they
are concerned enough about protecting the privacy of their phone
number that they don't want it automatically going out to anyone who
calls.

Yet to hear Pac*Bell tell it, this was sufficient justification for
NOT offering Caller ID.  I'll tell you what, if I were on the
California PUC and I were getting complaints about the lack of
availability of Caller ID, I wouldn't cave in quite yet ... instead,
I'd tell Pac*Bell "Don't even THINK about coming to us for another
rate increase until you have at least test-marketed Caller ID under
the terms we set forth!"  I'd be real surprised if Pac*Bell could
PROVE that there is strong customer resistance to Caller ID simply
because potential users can't get unlisted numbers automatically.

The fact remains that the California PUC set forth terms under which
Caller ID could be offered, and Pac*Bell said, in effect, "I don't
like your rules so I'm going to take my ball and go home!"  Apparently
the Caller ID software is already installed, so all they have to do is
turn it on, yet apparently they'd rather do without the extra income
from Caller ID than to even try it the way the PUC allowed it.  That,
to me, seems like a case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's
face.

So if there is fault to be found, I think it rests SQUARELY on the
shoulders of Pac*Bell.  And yes, I realize that a few readers of this
conference don't like the idea of Caller ID blocking at all, but some
of us do see incoming telephone calls as (generally speaking) more of
an intrusion than a benefit, particularly on our home phone lines, and
would like to retain some control over who gets our phone number.
And, as has been pointed out numerous times here, there are ways other
than Caller ID to catch harassment callers (e.g. "Call Trace").

(Which brings up one other thought ... why don't states pass laws
requiring harassment callers to compensate their victims and/or the
telco for the actual costs involved in trapping and tracing them?  It
doesn't really seem fair that the VICTIM should have to pay for the
trace feature, which seems to be the primary objection to the use of
Call Trace ... maybe this one needs some more thought at the
legislative level, so that the perpetrator pays, not the victim!).


Jack Decker | Internet: [e-mail] | Fidonet: 1:154/8

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

From: Ken Thompson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones
Date: 15 Feb 93 15:22:02 GMT
Organization: NCR Corporation Wichita, KS


This ruling appears to make even cell phones illegal.  They scan the
phone frequencies.  It also will effect many amateur UHF receivers and
transcievers.  Our ability to experiment with transverters will be
hindered too.


Ken Thompson    N0ITL
NCR Corp.  Peripheral Products Division   Disk Array Development
3718 N. Rock Road  Wichita KS 67226   [phone]
[e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 11:18:32 CST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Standard Dialing Plan
Organization: AT&T


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mark Brader)
writes:

>> There's nothing more annoying than a telco switch that says "It is
>> not necessary to dial 1 and the area code for this number".  If telco
>> knows what number is intended, why doesn't it just go ahead and
>> complete the call?!

> It doesn't know what number is intended.  It knows what number you
> dialed.

   Sorry, I disagree.  How can you dial 1 + ten-digits and not have
intended to dial a ten-digit number.  How often do people really dial
all ten digits and intend to only dial seven digits?  And if they do
dial ten digits by mistake, how often was the incorrect NPA dialed?

> The message is a polite way of saying "You were about to reach a wrong
> number!  But luckily we noticed that the number you dialed would be a
> local (or in-area) call, while you dialed in a manner requesting a
> long-distance (or out-of-area) call.  Since everyone knows the extent
> of their local calling area (or area code), you must have been calling
> the wrong number.  Please try again and dial the right number now."

   Everyone doesn't know this info -- that's why UNIVERSAL ten-digit
dialing is a favor for them, and almost no inconvenience to others.

> Obviously there are people for whom this trap is a disservice, but
> there are others for whom it's a service.

   Please name an instance of someone grateful to receive that
intercept ...

> Maybe it would be a good compromise if this trap was retained, but
> 011-1-npa-xxx-xxxx was allowed for all calls within the NANP, even
> local ones, with the charging as if you'd dialed them the usual way.
> Nobody's likely to dial 011-1 by accident, are they?

   Some switches would have problems not routing such calls to an IXC,
and they (and you) might not prefer the costs if the destination is
fairly local to the caller.  Other switches would have problems
routing such a call to a local line without routing via a tandem,
which adds expense to the TELCO.  Why not just allow 1 + ten-digit
regardless of NPA??

   That's my humble opinion.  Here's Bellcore's:

(From "North American Numbering Plan Administrator's Proposal On The
Future of Numbering In World Zone 1", Jan. 6, 1992 (draft for comment))

 "... Failure to place a call in the appropriate format is now
 seen as a cause for call rejection in areas using toll alerting
 [that's "1+ means toll" areas -- ALV].  It follows that 7-digit
 dialing will be encountered both with and without toll alerting.
 Numbering planners have long considered it good practice for
 switches to accept and attempt to complete any call originated
 with a valid 10-digit address, INCLUDING HOME NPA CALLS FOR WHICH
 7-DIGIT DIALING COULD SUFFICE. [Caps mine -- ALV]"

   Again, who is hurt by removal of this announcement?  Note that the
announcement is still appropriate for other circumstances, such as 1 +
seven-digit where inappropriate.


Al Varney - just my opinion, of course

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #98
*****************************










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Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 01:32:01 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #99

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 16 Feb 93 01:32:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 99

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Cellular Phones Power Control (Gregory Youngblood)
    Re: Cellular Phones Power Control (Wilson Mohr)
    Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs (Steve Forrette)
    Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE (John Higdon)
    California Caller ID Blocking (Steve Forrette)
    Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State (David G. Lewis)
    Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Steve Forrette)
    Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge (Darren Ingram)
    Re: DS0 Portion of a T1 (Al Varney)
    Re: DS0 Portion of a T1 (Fred Goldstein)
    Re: Rochester Tel Wants to Split ([e-mail])
    Re: Bell Canada Charging For 411 (Charles Stephens)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Russ Kepler)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Power Control
From: tcscs![e-mail] (Gregory Youngblood)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 11:11:34 CST
Organization: TCS Consulting Services


[e-mail] (Wilson Mohr) writes:

> This is true in most "small" systems. "small" meaning they have not
> got a large enough subscriber penetration to necessitate a system that
> utilizes frequency reuse.

This is only one reason.  I worked in several systems and frequently
had to disable cell sites power control features. Why?  Because of
terrain and foilage conditions which changed during the year resulting
in a large number of dropped calls.  By disabling this we were able to
get rid of that problem.  We had to disable the power stepping in both
directions.

While this wasn't the solution of choice, it worked, and we were
fortunate in that we didn't have to worry about reuse.


TCS Consulting Services   P.O. Box 600008   St. Paul, MN  55106-0008
      Mail-server requests to:  [e-mail]
[e-mail]        or       [e-mail]
 ...!srcsip!tcscs!zeta              or           ..!guppy!tcscs!zeta

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

From: [e-mail] (Wilson Mohr)
Date: 15 Feb 93 18:59:25 GMT
Subject: Re: Cellular Phones Power Control


[e-mail] (Wilson Mohr) irresponsibly writes:

> Portables by definition always run at (full) .6W...

Ooops. I have been corrected by my colleagues. That was the particular
implementation at a place I used to work. For correct information
please consult other postings in this group. Thanks!

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

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: PacBell IntraLATA Rate Ripoffs
Date: 15 Feb 1993 18:53:54 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA


In article <[e-mail]> John Higdon <john@zygot.
ati.com> writes:

> But what is the mechanism for offering intraLATA bypass? This CANNOT,
> repeat CANNOT be done via FGD ("1+" or "10XXX" dialing). Pac*Bell will
> not complete the call in this manner.

This IS possible for an enterprising long distance carrier to
implement.  They can take their version of the 700 number space and
use it for this purpose.  I believe there were stories of a company in
Illinois that offered this service.  Whenever you want to dial a long
distance intra-LATA call that your LEC won't give to a long distance
carrier, you dial it as 1 + 700 + number.  The carrier knows that when
it receives a call to the 700 NPA, the caller really means an
intra-LATA call within their own area code.  I guess this would only
work well in places where the local LATA is in a single area code
(which is the case for area code 916 where Execuline is located).  You
could even have a 'real' carrier as your PIC, then access the other
carrier via 10XXX for just intra-LATA toll calls.  I wonder why this
not more widespread.  Isn't AT&T the only carrier that is using 700
for another useful purpose?


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 14:56 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Pacific Bell, Caller ID, and PRIVATE


[e-mail] (Steven H. Lichter) writes:

> I would guess that if the return call is Toll or L/D it would appear
> as would any other one of that type.

Pacific Bell has stated that a return call that is toll will appear on
the bill with the last four digits converted to 'X's. Interestingly
enough, that is very useful information. If I suspect that some known
jerk in Hayward is calling me and I use "call return" on him and then
the bill shows up with the Hayward prefix of this person, it would be
strong circumstantial evidence of evil-doing.

Imagine if I actually found out who was annoying me on the telephone.
It drives the activists crazy to think that might be possible!


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]


[Moderator's Note: If they blocked out the number with XXXX on my
bill, I would persist that since I was paying for the call, I was
entitled to know the number; then not pay for it until they revealed
it. I wonder how many write-offs they will tolerate from people who
take this stance regularly?   PAT]

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 22:07:41 -0800
From: Steve Forrette <[e-mail]>
Subject: California Caller ID Blocking


Regarding the Caller ID situation in California, I wanted to summarize
what I've seen in the past few Digest issues and offer some
observations.  Apparently Pacific Bell is now tagging all calls that
leave CA via an SS7- connected IXC as "private" so that call
recipients in other states see "private" on their Caller ID screens.
Although the CPUC has no jurisdiction to enforce this, Pacific Bell
has apparently done this in order to avoid a big stink that our
Socially Responsible friends would surely raise.

In any event, this creates a problem for those who do not receive
PRIVATE calls, either by subscribing to block blocking, or by not
answering calls that show up as PRIVATE on the Caller ID display.
This means that nobody from California can call them (at least using
an IXC that uses SS7 interfaces to the LEC on each end of the call).
Furthermore, it is not a good solution for Pacific Bell to just not
include the information, as this would prevent the other CLASS
features (such as Call Trace, Call Return, Call Screening, Selective
Call Forwarding, etc) from functioning.  And there currently is no
provision in the SS7 protocol to deliver the number with a 'partial
blocking' option to allow the NPA and possibly the prefix to be
displayed, but not the whole number.

Here are some technological solutions to the problem that I've thought
of (these are of course secondary to the ideal solution of Caller ID
being offered in California and/or Pacific Bell allowing out-of-state
delivery):

- Recipients could tell California callers in advance to call them on
a non-SS7 long distance carrier so that the call always shows as OUT
OF AREA.  Then the recipient can still protect their privacy by not
answering PRIVATE calls from the people who really want to call
anonymously.  A calling card call or operator assisted call is another
option ("Gee, I just can't get through when I dial myself, can you
try?")

- Recipients could subscribe to Priority Ringing and add their
frequent callers to the priority list.  Then, if a call comes in as
PRIVATE, but using the priority cadence, they recipient knows that it
is someone they really want to talk to.

- Callers from California could possibly use the unblocking code and
prepend calls with *67 to turn ON number delivery, when they call an
out-of-state person who refuses anonymous calls.  Is this allowed?  I
know that for over a year Pacific Bell has accepted the *67 dialing
code, even though it really didn't do anything.  Have all California
lines now been defaulted to "per-line blocking with per-call
unblocking?"  If so, this would be a much better interim solution that
the above two choices.  Can someone in California team up with a
Caller ID subsciber to test this?

These are just some thoughts from someone who thinks everyone should
be able to decide privacy issues for themselves, either by using
Caller ID for incoming calls, or blocking for outgoing calls, without
having an outside force or special interest group make the decisions
for them.


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (david.g.lewis)
Subject: Re: California Versus CLID Versus Out-of-State
Organization: AT&T
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 21:39:57 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ken
Dykes) writes:

> In Telecom-Digest: Volume 13, Issue 76, Message 10 of 16:

>> live in southern Ontario CANADA.  My Caller-ID box instead of showing
>> out-of-area showed PRIVACY.  The call to me was made (and answered)
>> twice in the same night; both times PRIVACY ... some sort of
>> call-blocking was enabled by PacBell.

> Also, *can* California residents enter the blocking code even though
> Caller-ID as a service doesnt exist? Seems unlikely.

> [Moderator's Note: Yes, people in California -- at least in the Bay
> Area and San Jose -- *can* enter the privacy *67 code. Tests have been
> done to demonstrate this. JH has done it, and gets the three spurts of
> tone in response, for whatever good it does.

"For whatever good it does" indeed; the confirmation tone doesn't
*necessarily* mean that the request has been acted upon, although it
may.

> And get this: I've gotten calls from the Bay Area which show up on
> my display as 'outside' one time, and 'private' the next ... from the
> same caller! PacBell is doing something with the ID, that's for sure.
> *What* they are doing is not clear yet.

The behavior above is consistent with the hypothesis that PacBell is
indicating "presentation restricted" on all calls going to an IXC via
SS7.  It is possible for two consecutive calls from the same calling
station to the same called station to take different routes through
the network.  For one thing, the caller may have indicated a different
IXC, and the IXCs may be at different stages in SS7 Network
Interconnect deployment.

If the same IXC is used, different paths may have been used from the
EO to an Access Tandem due to overflow off a "High Use" group to an
alternate trunk group, where the signaling may be different on the two
TGs (SS7 in one case, MF in the other).  Or, one call may direct route
to the IXC from the End Office via MF trunks, and the other may route
from the EO to an AT via SS7 trunks and from the AT to the IXC via SS7
NI trunks, again because of overflow.  Or the SS7 NI trunks may be at
the EO, and the MF signaling may be on the EO/AT trunks.

Even if all calls from a given EO to a given IXC are directly routed,
not all trunk groups will be cut over to SS7 at the same time, so one
call may be routed over an SS7 signaled trunk and another call routed
over an MF signaled trunk.  In any of these cases, the call with
end-to-end SS7 will result in "Private" being displayed, and the call
with an MF signaled trunk somewhere in the path will result in "Out of
area" being displayed.

Disclaimer: I don't work on NI deployment.


David G Lewis                              AT&T Bell Laboratories
[e-mail] or !att!goofy!deej     Switching & ISDN Implementation

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

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge
Date: 15 Feb 1993 18:32:38 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA


I've found an effective way to get around the policy at hotels which
charge a surcharge for 800 'calling card' access numbers, but not for
'regular' 800 numbers: get a calling card from one of the 'third
banana' carriers.  I have one from ITT/Metromedia which I use in
various special circumstances, and I have yet to find a hotel which
recognized its 800 number as a 'calling card' 800 number.  The card
also has no per-call surcharge of its own, so I can place a short long
distance call from a hotel without paying a king's ransom.


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 07:48:12 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Darren Ingram)
Subject: Re: Hilton Hotel Telephone Surcharge


At the Hilton National hotel in Wembley, North London, the in-room
phones charged 30 pence (100p=$1.43) per charging unit, which is the
same as a standard 5 pence (well 4.9x pence) BT charge unit.


Darren
DIMS (newsdesk mailbox)([e-mail])   - Views expressed do  -
184 Brookside Avenue, Whoberley, Coventry CV5 8AD UK - not automatically   -
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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 23:46:20 CST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: DS0 Portion of a T1
Organization: AT&T Network Systems, Lisle, IL


In article <[e-mail]> ddssuprs![e-mail]
(Fred R Stearns) writes:

> How is the A/D and D/A conversion performed to create the digital data
> from and analog voice circuit to the 1/24 digital circuits of a T1
> service?  Is it CVSD, or seven-bit samples at 8KHz, or something else?

   You need a reference on mu-law or A-law PCM encoding, or something
that explains analog-digital CODECs (coder/decoders).  Try almost any
good book on digital transmission systems.  CCITT recommendation G.711
covers A-law and mu-law encoding (aka "the Blue Books").

   {Proceedings of IEEE}, Vol. 62, May 1974 contains an article called
"Digital coding of speech waveforms: PCM, DPCM and DM quantizers".  Or
try the horses mouth: "The T1 Carrier System", {Bell System Technical
Journal}, Vol. 44, No. 7, Sept. 1965.

   Very briefly, a CODEC works through the following steps:

a) a low-pass FILTER limits the signal to about 3.3kHz and virtually
   no signal > 4kHz (per Nyquist).

b) a SAMPLER takes a "snapshot" of the instantaneous voltage 8000
   times per second.

c) while the SAMPLER holds a particular "snapshot", a QUANTIZER converts
   the analog voltage to a digital representation of the measured voltage,
   a value between 0 and N ( >256 values).

d) The digital representation is mapped by an ENCODER into one of 256
   values (some values may not be used).


   This 8-bit value is one channel of a DS1/T1 signal.  Since the
samples are at 8000/second and are 8-bit units, you get 64000
bits/second for each voice channel.  Various transmission systems can
alter the low bit in each 6th sample for their own use (bit robbing),
thus giving "almost 8-bit voice".  When these signals run through
various switches, more samples can be "robbed" as they are switched
onto other transmission facilities.  If you are VERY un-lucky, you can
get an effective rate of 7 bits/sample.

   The A-law and mu-law encodings are just different forms of
converting various points of input voltage into a non-linear digital
representation.  Both use a multi-segment approximation to a
logarithmic curve, so that small variations of small voltage levels
receive different representations, and larger variations of larger
voltage levels are needed before the sample is assigned a new value.
This is called "companding", and attempts to offer a constant
signal/distortion ratio for normal speech signals.

   The receiving end, a DECODER converts the 8-bit values back to
their original "snapshot" values and then uses a low-pass
"reconstruction" filter to convert (almost) back to the analog signal.

   Real implementations can interchange steps c) and d), using a
non-linear analog COMPRESSOR to modify the "snapshots" into the
non-linear "companding" curve and then a linear QUANTIZER.


Al Varney

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

From: [e-mail] (Fred Goldstein [k1io; FN42jk])
Subject: Re: DS0 Portion of a T1
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Fred Goldstein [k1io; FN42jk])
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 21:22:53 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, ddssuprs![e-mail]
(Fred R Stearns) writes:

> How is the A/D and D/A conversion performed to create the digital data
> from and analog voice circuit to the 1/24 digital circuits of a T1
> service?  Is it CVSD, or seven-bit samples at 8KHz, or something else?

The standard method is Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), with 8000 samples
per second and 8 bits transmitted per sample.

In North America, the low order bit is sometimes "robbed" for
signaling, (1/6 of the time) which limits data to 56 kbps.  In North
America, a 12-bit linear sample is compressed to 8 bits via a formula
called mu-255 (note News won't pass Greek letters), while Europe
compresses it using a formula called "A law".  Europe also inverts
alternate bits.  So the two flavors of PCM are incompatible.

Of course, some long-haul transmission systems use lower bit rate
audio, like ADPCM.


Fred R. Goldstein   [e-mail]
k1io             or [e-mail]   voice:[phone]
Standard Disclaimer:  Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission.

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 13:13:04 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Rochester Tel Wants to Split


[e-mail] writes:

> Whereas regulation provides at least some tie-in between the cost of
> providing service and the pricing of that service, the proposed
> solution will most likely result in offerings that tie prices to a
> perception of value.

But regulation is always imperfect, and will allow value-based pricing
to some extent.  A monopoly will always push for higher (value-based)
prices, and regulators will invariably allow some such pricing.

If the regulators are one step removed from setting the actual retail
phone rates, they may be in a better (political) position to set
cost-based rates for the 'wholesale' services the regulated network
vendor will provide.

If there is indeed cost-based pricing for the regulated network
services, and if there is substantial competition among retail
telephone service providers, then value-based pricing cannot prevail.
As much as a provider would like to impose value-based pricing, it
would be quickly undercut by its competitors if it attempted such a
scheme.

> Simply put, for the residential user, flat-rate telephone service is
> likely to be priced substantially higher than it is now, because
> there will be some significant portion of customers for whom
> flat-rate service will still be a better *value*, even at a much
> higher price.

Only if the current flat-rate service is now priced below cost.  A
provider could get away with pricing substantially above cost only if:

 - there isn't any viable competition, or
 - it provides added value that its competitors do not.

Hopefully, the restructuring can be done so that a healthy competition
among telephone service providers ensues.  If a provider can give such
valuable service that customers are willing to pay extra, I say:
Hurrah!

Also, a hotly competitive environment will be more likely to produce
rational pricing schemes, such as the (peak-hour measured)/(off-hour
flat-rate) scheme which has been mentioned here before.  I venture to
guess that such a scheme might be cheaper than the current residential
flat-rate plans.

If properly structured, the Rochester Tel transformation could be a
model for the rest of the country, and could usher in an era of
plummeting local phone rates, similar to the precipitous fall in
long-distance rates we have seen in the past decade.  (Indeed, it
might produce still lower long-distance rates: a competitive local
telephone service provider might rebate some of its share of the
long-distance access charge, to attract more subscribers.)

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

From: [e-mail] (Charles Stephens)
Subject: Re: Bell Canada Charging For 411
Organization: COW Pastures
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 17:22:00 GMT


Tony Pelliccio ([e-mail]) wrote:

> In most parts of the US it's a fact of life. You're allowed roughly
> five free calls, and then after that it's around 25 cents a pop.

> Besides, that's why you get a directory every year ... so YOU can look
> it up. Now they've given you an incentive. :)

Well Southern Bell only gives you three freebies before they charge
you US$.30!!!

But, with more phone lines you get more free DA calls.  With my three
phone lines, I get a total of nine free DA calls (of course I usually
make about 15-20 calls a billing cycle).

I would use the phone book, but not only are they inaccurate, they get
destroyed pretty quick.


Charles Stephens     [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Russ Kepler)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?
Date: 15 Feb 93 18:28:09 GMT
Organization: BASIS International, Ltd., Albuquerque NM USA


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Paul Barnett) writes:

> A current resident of Mpls-St. Paul has informed me that US West is
> not currently charging him for a non-published second line.  I wonder
> if this was always the case, and it was a matter of convincing whoever
> answered your call to customer service that day.

When I was told that I'd have to pay for not listing the modem line to
my house I simply started musing about possible names: "Freddy
Phudpucker", "Telco Ripoff", "Ma Bellsux" etc.  The service folks got
the idea, and simply gave me the line unpublished.  It could be that
they were tired of me already -- it had been a tiresome series of
their diconnecting one of two lines, one with a forward to the new,
etc.  I got on a first name basis with some of the service reps ...

The modem line still has some trouble in the billing system -- I pay
for the second line on my regular bill but still get occasional calls
from the telco -- one asked where the LD was to be billed, and another
asked where the line itself was billed.  They were lucky that I even
answered the line -- the modem doesn't and U usually don't, but after
40-50 rings I'll answer and that about how long it took.

I have a suspicion that they have some sort of rule that allows them
to reject an obscene name, but they'd have some real trouble rejecting
a line that simply insulted their "service".


Russ Kepler, Basis International Ltd. [e-mail]  phone: [phone]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #99
*****************************










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From: TELECOM Moderator <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TELECOM Digest V13 #100

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 16 Feb 93 02:39:20 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 100

Index To This Issue:                      Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Searching For PPP Pointer RFC (Paul Robinson)
    Re: AT&T Are You Listening? (David G. Lewis)
    Re: Strange Long Distance Problem (Carl Oppedahl)
    Re: Standard Dialing Plan (Garrett Wollman)
    Re: What Would Be Required to Compile 'Secret #' FAQ? ([e-mail])
    Re: Procedure to use 800-321-0ATT (Ben Cox)
    Re: What Could Cause Jitter in a Voice Channel (Al Varney)
    Re: What Number do I Dial From My Phone to Get My Phone to Ring? (Oppedahl)
    Re: Sharing One FAX Card Among Several Voice Lines (Mark James)
    Re: Internet Access From Qatar? Anyone? (Carl Oppedahl)
    Internet Access Wanted in Cedar Rapids, IA (Dave Fox)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 23:16:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Searching For PPP Pointer RFC


In Telecom Digest 13-98  [e-mail] (Sam) wrote:

> Does anyone know if an RFC has been published for Point to Point
> Protocol, the updated synchronous/asynchronous SLIP?

I got these from the copy of the RFC index I downloaded from
NIC.DDN.MIL two days ago.  Using a text editor, I looked up 'PPP' and
'point-to-point':

1378  The PPP AppleTalk Control Protocol (ATCP).  1992 November
1377  The PPP OSI Network Layer Control Protocol (OSINLCP).  1992 November
1376  The PPP DECnet Phase IV Control Protocol (DNCP).  1992 November
1333  PPP link quality monitoring.  1992 May
1332  PPP Internet Protocol Control Protocol (IPCP).  1992 May
1331  Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) for the transmission of multi-protocol
      datagrams over point-to-point links.  1992 May
1220  Point-to-Point Protocol extensions for bridging.  1991 April

The following are all obsoleted by the above, but you may want
to look at them:

1172  Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) initial configuration options.
1171  Point-to-Point Protocol for the transmission of multi-protocol
      datagrams over Point-to-Point links.
1134  Point-to-Point Protocol: A proposal for multi-protocol
      transmission of datagrams over Point-to-Point links.

Anyone who will ever use the Internet RFCs should have a copy of the
index.  It is revised as new RFCs are issued. There is also a mailing
list to receive notification when new RFCs are issued.  The index
(rfc-index.txt) and the RFCs (rfcxxxx.txt) can be obtained by
anonymous ftp from NIC.DDN.MIL in subdirectory 'rfc'.

To get it, or any of the RFCs, you send a message to:

[e-mail]  with the following text:

send rfc-index.txt
send rfc1378.txt
send rfc1377.txt

etc.

For those without Internet mail access, many of the Internet RFCs have
been stored by me and others on a BBS called 'Brodmann's Place' at +1
301-843-5732 All of the above RFCs were either there before or have
been uploaded before this message was posted.


Paul Robinson -- [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: My thanks also to Steven L. Johnson <johnson@tigger.
jvnc.net> for supplying identical information from the index.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (david.g.lewis)
Subject: Re: AT&T Are You Listening?
Organization: AT&T
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 22:20:48 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> jack.decker@f8.n154.z1.
fidonet.org (Jack Decker) writes:

> ... in many cases if you are going to have trouble on a call, the
> trouble is most likely to be in the local telco's lines from their
> point-of-presence (of which there is often only one per LATA) to their
> local exchange, and ALL the carriers use those same lines to complete
> calls.

Not necessarily.  Assume, for the moment, that all three major IXCs
(heck, let's add WilTel, too -- the four largest IXCs) have 100% fiber
optic transmission facilities.  (Not true, but let's assume.)
Therefore, differences in transmission quality can only come from
three places:

1. The local loop from the premises to the End Office;

2. The LEC interoffice plant from the End Office to the Access
   Tandem, if any;

3. The (LEC-owned, IXC-purchased) access plant from the EO/AT to the
   IXC switch.

The first, the loop plant, is going to be the same regardless of the
IXC.  However, other LEC facilities may differ depending on the IXC
selected, *not* solely on the random chance of which trunk group is
selected for routing on a given call.

First, exchange access arrangements differ among IXCs.  AT&T has a
deep deployment of direct connection to the Equal Access End Office.
MCI, Sprint, WilTel, and other IXCs have comparatively little
connection to EAEOs, and concentrate most of their traffic through an
IXC.  (I use the word "comparitively" because I don't know the
absolute magnitude; I know that several years ago it was little to
none, but I don't know if that's current.  Compared to AT&T, though,
it is relatively low.)

Therefore, a call using AT&T will often route directly from the EAEO
to the AT&T network.  A call using another IXC will usually route from
the EO over LEC interoffice facilities to an AT, and then to the IXC
switch.  Adding the LEC interoffice facilities which are not present
on the call being routed to AT&T will add some (perhaps small, perhaps
large, depending on the type of facilities) degradation.

Second, the facilities from the LEC switch (EO or AT) to the IXC
switch are, obviously, different for different IXCs.  They are
provided by the LEC, and likely meet the same criteria for sound
quality, but they are different because the selected IXC is different.

Third, a not-insignificant number (I don't know the exact number; I'd
guess it's more than one, less than one hundred ...) of AT&T's
switches are located in buildings shared by AT&T and the local BOC, as
a holdover from pre-divestiture days.  The exchange access facilities
from the BOC switch to the IXC switch, in this case, are intraoffice
facilities which are inherently less subject to degradation than are
interoffice facilities.  That's probably not really fair to other
IXCs, but if the FCC's NPR on colocation goes through, I suppose
everyone could get into that biz.

> If you try a call over MCI and it doesn't work, and you then try to
> complete it over AT&T and it does, that doesn't necessarily mean that
> AT&T is better, it just means you got a different circuit from the
> local telco.

My point is that you may have gotten a different circuit from the
local telco *because* you used AT&T.

Disclaimer: ("claimer"?)  I work for AT&T and take a certain amount of
pride in my employer; however, I have tried to limit my comments to
factual descriptions of network access arrangements.


David G Lewis                              AT&T Bell Laboratories
[e-mail] or !att!goofy!deej     Switching & ISDN Implementation

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

From: [e-mail] (Carl Oppedahl)
Subject: Re: Strange Long Distance Problem
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 21:44:04 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ken Jongsma)
writes:

> I've been having an interesting problem over the past two days. The
> symptoms are as follows:

[stuff omitted]

> - Prefacing the call to 1 805 395 xxxx with 10288, 10333, 10222
>   makes no difference, I still get a fast (trunk) busy.

Suggests it is the fault of your local telco, not the long-distance
carrier.

> A call to Michigan Bell repair yesterday generated the suggestion that
> I call Sprint repair.

Typical of the local telco to pass the buck.

> I suspect a problem with Michigan Bell and my local switch, but
> getting through to them is a lost cause.

Maybe you could embarrass MI Bell into action by filing a complaint
with the FCC, saying that MI Bell is being discriminatory in its
provision of access to the long-distance network.


Carl Oppedahl AA2KW  (intellectual property lawyer)
30 Rockefeller Plaza   New York, NY  10112-0228
voice 212-408-2578     fax [phone]


[Moderator's Note: The other thing he might try is to simply not pay
the portion of the bill added on for 'connection to the network' --
you know, that $3-something charge they tack on every month to make up
for what they no longer collect on long distance. When asked why, say
"because Michigan Bell is not providing total access to the network,"
and that when they begin doing so, you will begin paying. Don't worry,
they won't cut you off for non-payment; you'll cause a few snickers in
the business office, and it will get fixed.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Garrett Wollman)
Subject: Re: Standard Dialing Plan
Organization: University of Vermont, EMBA Computer Facility
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 21:57:10 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

> Sorry, I disagree.  How can you dial 1 + ten-digits and not have
> intended to dial a ten-digit number.  How often do people really dial
> all ten digits and intend to only dial seven digits?  And if they do
> dial ten digits by mistake, how often was the incorrect NPA dialed?

While I agree with Al's position in general, consider the following:

I meant to dial:  1 803 793 xxxx
I actually dial:  1 802 793 xxxx

If 10D dialing within my NPA is not trapped, I end up making an
expensive New England Tel. toll call, rather than a cheap AT&T call to
South Carolina.

(Now does anybody want to share stories of wrong area codes when
calling into the NANP from outside?  I can remember calling home (at
the time, 802 434 xxxx) from Finland, and getting someone at 902 434
xxxx, which is in Nova Scotia, instead.  "Hi!" "Who's this?".  Note
that this was a credit-card call, and the procedure was to call the
international operator (92022 when I was there), and read out the
destination number and calling card number to her.  I soon learned of
AT&T's USA Direct(tm) service, and decided to use that instead ...)


Garrett A. Wollman   [e-mail]
uvm-gen!wollman      UVM disagrees.

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 12:48:33 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: What Would Be Required to Compile 'Secret #' FAQ?
Organization: Ideology Busters, Inc.


In article <[e-mail]> Chris Taylor <[e-mail]>
writes:

> RINGBACK:    445<your number>
> HEAR YOUR NUMBER:
>        958

Maybe I was asleep or something ... could someone tell me why these
services would be useful?

Is there really sufficient demand for these to justify someone, other
than the phone company, doing this?  By demand, I mean consumers who
are willing to pay for "hear your number", "ring back", and maybe
others.  How much would be a "reasonable" amount; $0.25 per call?
More, or less?

And how could this be billed to the "correct consumer" anyway?  If
this were done via a toll-free 800 number, how would the provider
collect payment?  If it was done via a 900 number, does the provider
always get the correct phone number to play/call back?  Is this
easier than I imagine or will it be pretty difficult?

> [Moderator's Note: One of the things you'd have to contend with is the
> frequency with with which 'ringback' and in particular 'hear your
> number' code numbers are changed. 'They' do not like people outside
> the telco to know these or use them.

True, but if it was an outside business doing this could the telcos
force it to stop?

Are there any reasons why this would be a dangerous service to sell?


[Moderator's Number: *If* telco wanted to sell it (and really, telco
would be the only organization able to do it with close to 100 percent
accuracy; others would have to read the ANI or the Caller-ID and get
the detail from those sources which is not always correct), they'd
find a way to charge a premium for it much like IBT does with the Name
and Address Reverse Listing Service here for 312/708 (312-796-9600).
Calls to 312-796 (so far as I know, '9600' is the only resident on
that exchange) are 35 cents per call, with two inquiries allowed and
no guarentees you will get any information if the number you pass is
non-pub, etc. (You still get charged.) Telco does sell ringback in
some places through variations on an 'intercom feature' offered as
part of 'Intellidial' and similar packages.

Regards 'hear your number', telco does not like having that available
to the general public. It has to be available since linemen and
technicians need to sort out wire pairs they are working on, but given
the general public's bent for fraud and assorted mischeviousness,
letting them match up the wires (of others) with a specific number in
an authoritative way would lead to problems. There are security
problems inherent with telling anyone who happens to be on the wire
what the 'number' to the wire is.  It is not like your wire pair runs
straight to the CO without being multipled in every basement and
janitor's closet over a two block area surrounding where you live.
Anyone -- literally -- could clip on those wires and dial 'hear your
number'; and it would be 'your' number they were hearing, and most
likely you against whom fraud was perpetrated.  If others did it via
900 or whatever, there is no law against it, but they would be
charging, and most people who ask this ageless question here in the
Digest are looking for *free* ways to get the info.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ben Cox)
Subject: Re: Procedure to use 800-321-0ATT
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 20:12:08 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Ben Cox)
Organization: Ancient Illuminated Sears of Bavaria


Pat writes:

> [Moderator's Note: After dialing 800-321-0288, you hear the AT&T
> tones, and the robot operator announces, "AT&T ... please enter the
> number you are calling, or zero for an operator."  After entering the
> number you are asked to enter your card number. It is basically the
> same as any other credit card call.  Persons who have experiences with
> this are requested to write.   PAT]

Yes, that's exactly how it works.  Of course, once you hear the tones
you don't have to wait for the robot to finish its spiel.  :)


Ben Cox         [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 93 21:56:04 CST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: What Could Cause Jitter in a Voice Channel
Organization: AT&T Network Systems, Lisle, IL


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

> In article [e-mail], [e-mail] (Tracy Ching
> <[e-mail]>) writes:

>> While sending a 1KHz tone over that voice channel, the other end is
>> jittering (changing phase constantly) and also slightly changing
>> amplitude.  The "gurus" who administer the thing say there is nothing
>> that can be done to fix it.  I just want my clear channel.

>> I'm quite sure my 1KHz tone is pure, i.e. no jitter from the source.

> Digital systems experience an impairment known as timing jitter.  This
> is caused by the accumulation of variations in timing of a digital
> signal.  A string of repeaters adds small timing errors due to the
> clocks in each repeater and the addition/removal of 'stuffing bits' in
> async muxes (like most M13's).  It is possible to add buffers to
> retime the signal at each end, de-jitterizing the signal, but they are
> pretty expensive.

   Note also that the mu-law PCM sampling algorithm can itself lead to
some distortion when near-zero samples are encoded.  Particularly with
1 and 2 kHz tones, where you can be very slightly out of synch with
the 8kHz sampling rate, and see the results as quantization noise
coupled with jitter.

   This is why the Digital Reference Signal for digital facilities is
1004 Hz (and I have heard that some standards folks want 1008 Hz??).
This offset from 1000 Hz means only an infrequent sample hits that
zero-crossing area with a sample of +0 or -0.

   Also, are you sure there isn't any T1 bit-robbing of A/B bits
occuring?

   The ultimate test would be for you to send only binary samples of
known value and see if they arrive without change.  If so, then it's a
problem with the encoder and/or decoder (and the jitter).


Al Varney - just my opinion, of course.

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

From: [e-mail] (Carl Oppedahl)
Subject: Re: What Number do I Dial From My Phone to Get My Phone to Ring?
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 21:40:07 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John V.
Jaskolski) writes:

> I presently live in Boston.  When I used to live in Milwaukee, WI, I
> could dial "97" and the last five digits of my telephone number, push
> down and release the hook, hear a tone come over the line, hang up,
> and my phone would ring.  Does anyone know what I can dial from Boston
> to do the same thing?  In other words What number do I dial from my
> phone to get my phone to ring? (From Boston)

According to Part 68 of the FCC regulations, the local telco is
supposed to tell you how to make your line ring back ... so that if
you have installed your own phone jacks you can test them out.

The idea is to put do-it-yourselfers on a level playing field with the
telco inside-wiring installers.  Otherwise, if they keep the number
secret, their installers would have an unfair advantage.

So the way to get the answer to that question is ... ask your local
telco.

Now, I can tell you that I have never, never, never, in three cities
found a local telco that will spill the beans on this number just for
the asking.  I have always had to ask to talk with a supervisor, then
the office, manager, etc. etc.  And in many cases I have had to
photocopy the section of Part 68 that says this, and fax it to them.
But I have always eventually gotten it.

Here in Manhattan the numerical sequence to dial differs from one
central office to the next.  Seemingly no two are the same.

Good luck.


Carl Oppedahl AA2KW  (intellectual property lawyer)
30 Rockefeller Plaza    New York, NY  10112-0228
voice 212-408-2578     fax [phone]


[Moderator's Note: Telco need not provide an automated service for
this purpose or tell you how to access the automated service. They
need only to make your bell ring on request. In other words, the
business office could have told you to ask the operator to ring you
back. That would have met the requirements.  PAT]

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

Date: Tue, 16 Feb 93 12:46:09 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Mark James)
Subject: Re: Sharing One FAX Card Among Several Voice Lines
Organization: Dialogic (N.Z.) Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Elizabeth
Fong Wah Chan) writes:

> Presently, my company plans to install a voice processing system to
> do voice mail, audiotex, and faxing.

> We have purchased a four-line voice processing board and a software
> development package.

> Since we want to allow callers to be able to send and receive faxes in
> addition to voice processing [...]
> I wonder if there is some kind of simple switching equipment that
> allows sharing of one fax board among all four phone lines.

You don't mention the brand name of your four-line board.  If it's a
Dialogic D/41, you can add a single AMX/81 board that will connect any
of the four lines to any other, or to any of eight local telephones,
fax machines, modems or what have you.  You should find out whether
your software development package will support such a configuration.

Disclaimer: I work for Dialogic.  I presume (but don't know) that
competitors offer similar solutions to Elizabeth's problem.


Mark James  <[e-mail]>  **[ Opinions are mine ]**
Dialogic (N.Z.) Ltd.                Voice:  [phone] ext 27
Auckland, New Zealand               Fax:    [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Carl Oppedahl)
Subject: Re: Internet Access From Qatar? Anyone?
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 01:11:09 GMT


In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (BINOY P
JAMES) writes:

> Anybody know if I could access Internet from Qatar, in the Middle
> East?  How about Bitnet at least?

There is a newsgroup which you might not know about, called
alt.internet.access.wanted.  It is perfect for your query.  (I realize
you may not have access to that group, in which case that would be why
you did not post to it.)  Anyway, if you can I suggest you post to
that group.

If you are not able to post to that group directly, you may wish to
consider using one of the services that lets you post via email.  For
example, you could post to:

[e-mail]

and state in your posting that you would like to get responses via
email.

Best of luck.


Carl Oppedahl AA2KW  (intellectual property lawyer)
30 Rockefeller Plaza   New York, NY  10112-0228
voice 212-408-2578     fax [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Fox)
Subject: Internet Access Wanted in Cedar Rapids, IA
Organization: Division of Biostatistics, WUMS, St. Louis, MO
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 20:13:27 GMT


I am looking for an INTERNET newsfeed for a friend in the Cedar
Rapids, IA area.  Please e-mail me any info.

Thanks in advance.


[e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: You too might try Carl Oppedahl's advice in the
message just before this one.   PAT]

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End of TELECOM Digest V13 #100
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