Telecom/1996-04-telecom-walnutcreek.iso/back.issues/recent.single.issues/V16_#19

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From [e-mail]  Tue Jan 16 02:01:03 1996
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Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #19

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 16 Jan 96 02:00:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 19

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    888 for Toll-Free v. 88X Ring-Down Points (Mark J Cuccia)
    Alphanumeric Paging Software Shipping (David R. Coelho)
    Area Code Splits With Test Numbers From USWest (John R. Grout)
    Foreign Exchange Lines in Northern VA (GTE <-> Bell Atl) (Lee Sweet)
    TENTATIVE Labor Agreement Reached at Bell Atlantic (John Dearing)
    900MHz Spread-Spectrum Devices Interfere (John Nagle)
    Re: Cellular Phone Called Simon (Al Testani)
    Flat-Rate Residential Telephone Service - Is End in Sight? (Lars Poulsen)
    NT SL-1 vs Meridian SL-1? ([e-mail])
    Want to Interview AT&T'ers Who Took Buyout (Rob Gebeloff)
    Motorola 550 Cell Phone Problem (Mark Allen)
    Texas PUC Delays Implementation of 972/281 Areas (Charles Cremer)
    Call Screening Rejection Recorded Announcement? (Eric Tholome)

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

Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 16:20:15 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia <[e-mail]>
Subject: 888 for Toll-Free v. 88X Ring-Down Points


For some 20+ years, the 88X codes have been used as `pseudo' area
codes for identifying remote Manual ring-down points for billing
purposes within the Bell System and other telcos within the North
American network.

The billing equipment used a six-digit code of the form 88X-XXX to
identify specific V&H's associated with these remote rural locations.
Customers could *not* dial these locations nor could the originating
operator dial them. The originating `0' Operator (or post-divestiture
AT&T operator from the US) would reach an inward or toll-station
ring-down operator in a location closer to the desired party, by
entering the NPA of that state/province (+0XX in some situations) +121
or 181. (121 for Inward or 181 for a toll-station operator). The
inward (or toll terminal) operator would actually connect to that
particular location. From what I've been told, *some* of these
settlements *might* have actually had internal local dialing among
some 20 to 50 telephones using an *ancient* step-by-step switch, but
calls to and from that `exchange' were not dialable by customers. Some
of these settlements might have been some form of common party line,
where 20 people shared a common wire, and there was a Bell or AT&T (or
Canadian telco) operator to connect these people with the outside
world. They could call each other by cranking a coded ringing pattern
on a magneto or something.

For billing purposes, *manual* toll-tickets would be *written* up and
later entered into billing equipment using these 88X-XXX mark-sense
codes, plus (usually) a default last four digits (XXXX) of `0000' (or
maybe 0001, 0002 or the like).

These remote points were usually oil drilling rigs, hunting lodges,
fishing camps, mining centers, riverboat pilot centers, etc. There may
have been one or two `telephones' at the remote point, but all calls
to and from these points had to be *operator handled*. Many still
exist in Nevada. They might have a directory entry of something like
`Call Operator and ask for Mountain Lodge No.3' or the like. Calling
these points from the US *might* be able to be handled by the Local
Telco operator if the desired rural point is in the same LATA, but
usually they were routed by AT&T operators `only'. (I don't think that
Sprint or MCI operators even know that these locations exist).

A numerical listing of these 88X-XXX points is included in some of
Bellcore TRA's *rating* documents and products. I have a December 1994
Bellcore TRA `Industry Numbering Plan Guide' (fiche only) which lists
them. There is not any special rhyme or reason to many of the XXX
assignments, but the 88X portion `seems' to have `some' pattern.

881, 882, 883, and 885 (884 was not used) were for remote settlements
all over Mexico. 886 thru 889 were for the US (including Alaska),
Canada, and some Caribbean locations. (Hawaii `seems' to have used 0XX
and 1XX codes within their own 808 NPA for identifying these types of
locations in that state. i.e. 808-0XX and 808-1XX). (880 was also not
used in these 88X-XXX codes).

When I first heard about the use of 888 as an additional special area
code for toll-free service, I wondered as to *how* the ring-down
points using 88X-XXX would be managed (since 888-XXX was used). And
then later I read about the plan for 880 and 881 to be used for
`caller agrees to pay' when calling US 800 (and 888) numbers from
overseas, I again was curious as to the 88X-XXX ring-down points. (880
isn't a problem since there was no use of 880-XXX from what I've been
able to see).

The monthly `INC' (Industry Numbering Committee) mailings I get from
Bellcore had some mention that the industry billing forums should work
at coming up with a *different* scheme as to identify non-dial rural
points.  It seem that there is not the best of communication of data
between these industry forums or individuals who participate in these
industry forums.

The latest INC mailing (received Thursday) had more mention of these
Non-Dial Toll-Points. A submission by an INC participant from Stentor
(Canada) mentions that there could be conflicts if additional 88X
codes were to be used for new uses. (877 is the next toll-free code to
be used if 888 fills-up, and then 866 would be next if 877 fills up,
etc. 882 would be used for caller-pays international to US 877
numbers, 883 would be used for US 866 numbers, etc). The submission to
the INC mentions that there could be conflicts if 883, 885, 886, 887
or 889 were to be assigned at this time for other dialable uses. It
suggests that these codes be `put-on-hold' until a solution could be
worked out with the OBF (Ordering and Billing Forum) and the NOF
(Network Operations Forum).

It is also mentioned that there are about 1400+ such non-dial points,
*half of which are in Canada*. And that these non-dial points are
located in about five different states in the US, in addition to many
such non-dial points in Mexico.

I spoke on the phone this morning with the person from Stentor who
raised this issue at the last INC meeting. He told me that there is
*some* shuffling around of 88X-XXX billing identification codes for
these non-dial points, particularly moving those within 888-XXX into
other 88X codes, due to the impending use of 888 as the second special
area code for toll-free service.

BTW, it is also mentioned in this INC mailing that the Commonwealth of
the Northern Mariana Islands has requested to be a part of the North
American Numbering Plan, similar to Guam's request earlier. There will
be discussions between the US and Canadian governments (and telco
industry people) and representative from Guam and the CNMI. It was
noted that the Northern Mariana's present country code (+670) might
become its North American Numbering Plan area code. It would become
+1-670 and the ITU assigned country code of 670 would become
available, similar to Guam possibly moving from +671 to +1-671.


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: [e-mail] |4710 Wright Road| ([phone])
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954([phone])|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917([phone])|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

From: [e-mail] (david r coelho)
Subject: Alphanumeric Paging Software Shipping
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Personal Productivity Tools, Inc
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 22:07:07 GMT


Los Altos Hills, Calif., January 12, 1995 -- PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY
TOOLS today announced the availability of version 2.4 of the
ETHERPAGE(TM) alphanumeric paging solution for Unix workstations. With
this release, ETHERPAGE is now available on workstations running the
AIX operating system.  ETHERPAGE is the first commercial product to
provide an enterprise-wide alphanumeric paging capability for unix
workstation networks. EtherPage provides exceptional robustness to
insure that messages are delivered efficiently and without fail.
Priced from $595 to $2195, the product is shipping now for SunOS
4.1.X, Solaris 2.x, HP-UX and AIX. EtherPage will work with most Hayes
compatable modems, and utilizes industry standard protocols used by
virtually all paging services.

Features:

    Automatic generation of pages from email
    Easy integration with user written scripts/programs
    Easy integration with network monitoring such as SunNet Manager,
        HP Openview, Tivoli, Boole&Babbage, others
    Command line interface, and GUI interface, available for Openlook/Motif
    Pager aliases which allow messages to be sent to multiple pagers
    Extremely powerful filtering capabilities which allow messages to
      be sent to different pagers based on time of day, day of week, etc
    Automatic insertion of sender identification into messages
    Automatic suppression of duplicate messages
    Automatic splitting of long messages into multiple pages
    Automatic forwarding of messages between multiple servers
    Support for multiple concurrent modems
    User definable per paging service message size limits
    Automatic email confirmation
    Automatic truncation of messages
    Job logging and accounting
    User definable shell scripts with macro expansion for success/failed
      delivery
    User definable retry limits
    Robust handling of modem errors, phone line problems including busy,
      no answer
    Robust handling of paging service errors such as invalid pager id
    Error recovery including automatic email of problem report
    Job batching for rapid delivery of jobs in a single phone call
    Client-server architecture for centralized management
    UUCP style tty locking for shared tty/modem usage
    Symbolic configuration files for easy maintenance
    Support for IXO, TAP, PET protocols; Support for SNPP (RFC 1645)
    Support for touch-tone message delivery
    C application programming interface

If you would like to evaluate EtherPage for 30 days, send email
to [e-mail] or call [phone].


david r. coelho                        email: [e-mail]
personal productivity tools, inc
14141 miranda rd                       voice: [phone]
los altos hills, ca 94022-2045 usa     fax:   [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (John R. Grout)
Subject: Area Code Splits With Test Numbers from USWest
Date: 15 Jan 1996 22:35:17 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Reply-To: [e-mail]


In Thursday, January 11th's {Wall Street Journal}, USWest published
the following pending area code splits and associated toll-free
numbers for PBX testing:

Area Code    Where Affected             Permissive    Toll-Free
                        Date        Test Number
520        Rural Areas of Arizona        10/21/95    [phone]
        Flagstaff, Prescott, Yuma    6/30/96        ""
        Tuscon                12/31/96    ""
541        All but Portland Oregon        6/30/96        [phone]
970        Northern and Western Colorado    1/14/96        [phone]

For more information, call USWest at [phone].


John R. Grout    Center for Supercomputing R & D        [e-mail]
Coordinated Science Laboratory     University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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

From: Lee Sweet <[e-mail]>
Subject: Foreign Exchange Lines in Northern VA (GTE <-> Bell Atl)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 20:14:55 -0500
Organization: Datatel, Inc.


I am in the process of moving to Eastern Loudoun county (VA), which is
(sigh!) GTE country.  I work in Western Fairfax county (the nextmost
easterly county, for those who aren't familiar with the Capital Area
(USA) geography :-).  It's a toll call from my new place to Fairfax.
I was quoted $100 (or so)/month for a Bell Atlantic OR a GTE foreign
exchange line that would put me into Fairfax (in essence, giving me a
Washington Metro calling area line).  (I need an unmetered location
local to work for extensive dialup modem use.)

Now, $100/month is certainly cheaper than several hours/night at
$0.08/minute, but does this seem reasonable?  I now live on the
Chesapeake Bay, and pay $35/month for a Washington metro line, and am
50 miles further away.  Go figure. Any comments? Is it mostly because
of the GTE/BA boundary?

And, BTW, so far, the GTE phone-people have been most helpful. I was
pleasantly surprised; of course, after install things may change!


[e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (John Dearing)
Subject: TENTATIVE Labor Agreement Reached at Bell Atlantic
Date: 16 Jan 1996 00:06:59 GMT
Organization: Philadelphia's Complete Internet Provider


Early Friday, 1/12/96, Bell Atlantic announced that a tentative
agreement had been reached with The Communications Workers of America
(CWA) on "Common Issues" such as wages, benefits and employment
security.

Bargaining was continuing on Local Issues.

The CWA represents some 34,000+ employees at Bell Atlantic and has
been working without a contract for the past five months. The previous
contract expired August 5th, 1995.

No further details were announced at that time.

I hope that our "long journey into night" is nearly over and we can get
back to doing what we do best, "phone work".

Speaking only as a member *of*, but not *for* CWA local 13,000. They
speak for themselves. 8-)


John Dearing : Philadelphia Area Computer Society IBM SIG President
       Email : [e-mail]
   U.S.Snail : 725 Ripley Place, Phila PA 19111-2524 (USA)
 Voice Phone : [phone] (after 5pm Eastern)


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When you have all the details of the
new contract available and are free to discuss it, please write us
again with a summary.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (John Nagle)
Subject: 900MHz Spread-Spectrum Devices Interfere
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 18:49:36 GMT


     I have both a Ricochet radio modem (see "http://www.metricom.com"
for details) and a Southwestern Bell "Freedom Phone" model SST900.
These are both 900MHz spread-spectrum devices, and, much to my
disappointment, they do interfere with each other.  The cordless phone
gets random clicks, and the bandwidth on the radio modem drops as the
cordless handset gets close to the radio modem.  At 10', modem
bandwidth drops by about half, and at 3', the link drops.

    I was expecting better performance from this technology.  I wonder
if it's because the Ricochet unit is a frequency-hopper and the
cordless phone is (I think) a direct-sequence spread spectrum system.

    Other than that, the Ricochet unit works well.  Bandwidth to the
Internet runs about 10Kb/sec, although round-trip times are around
500ms.  I'm in a suburban area, and my net traffic is making several
radio hops via Ricochet's street-light mounted packet radios before it
reaches a wired access point.  Most of Silicon Valley now has little
Ricochet boxes on street lights, offering a realistic alternative to
PacBell and the cellular guys.


John Nagle

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

From: [e-mail] (Al Testani)
Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Called Simon
Organization: EmiNet Domain Internet Services [phone]
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 03:18:47 GMT


[e-mail] (S A Holstein Friesland Society) wrote:

> Can anybody please help me in locating the manufacturer of a product
> named Simon. It is a cellular phone that can handle electronic mail as
> well as being a personal organizer.

> Any information about this product will greatly be appreciated since
> the name and features of the product is all I have.

The product was designed by IBM, manufactured by Mitsubushi for IBM
and distributed by BellSouth.  I not sure it is on the market now.

The unit was a cellular phone with a PC built into it.  It did all of
the PIM functions like address book, calendar, notepad, etc.  and all
of these fuctions were integrated with the cellular phone.  It had
phone paging and a pager card could be purchased to plug into it for
complete paging functions.  It did email and send and receive fax
where you could either type in your fax or draw on the screen with
images or markup a fax you had received.  It had a touch sensitive
screen with a computer generated qwerty keyboard as well as a unique
predictive keyboard.  Nice device ... I have one.

If you need additional informaton, email me.


Al Testani ============= Boca Raton, FL ==============  [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Flat-Rate Residential Telephone Service - Is End in Sight?
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 16:38:45
Organization: Silicon Beach - Business Internet Services


While working on an article about various regulatory issues, I have
come to the conclusion that the days of flat-rate residential
telephone service are numbered. The best that we can hope for is an
extra-deep discount rate for after-hours message units to residential
subscribers.

What has caused this, is the "Internet Phone" mania. Apparently the
excitement over "free long-distance calls" has caused the FCC to
wonder (again) if "value-added networks" aren't really similar to
long-distance carriers. If the answer is yes, then Internet Service
Providers may be mandated to pay the same access fees to the LECs as
the IXCs have been paying all along. This would not only cost more
than local message units, but it would also force the ISPs to measure
and charge for connect time in order to recover these new costs.

This development (which I learned about from an article by Brock
Meeks) comes on the heels of Pacific Bell's proposal to eliminate free
after-hours connect time from their Home ISDN tariff.

How do other TELECOM readers feel about these developments?


Lars Poulsen     http://www.silcom.com/~lars/


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have thought for a long time that it
was just a matter of time until local unmeasured service would be gone
everywhere. We lost it as such several years ago here. We still get
a very small (by comparison to the old days) 'local calling area' where
we pay a few cents per call regardless of how long the call lasts, but
years ago we could have unlimited calling all over northern Illinois
if we wanted it for a set fee per month. Illinois Bell dumped it about
the time the early modem users (middle 1980's) started using what
Bell called 'unlimited call pack' to make calls to the outer suburbs
which lasted for hours to BBS lines. I think there will be various
reasons given for its demise on a location by location basis, but I
can't imagine there being any of it left by the year 2000.  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Uswat)
Subject: NT SL-1 vs Meridian SL-1?
Date: 15 Jan 1996 19:52:15 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Uswat)


I have been trying to find out this for a while, but to no avail.  I
was wondering if anyone could tell me the differences between Northern
Telecom's SL-1 and their Meridian SL-1.  If I had some parts, how
could I tell which belonged to which?  How compatible are they?

It appears that US West nor NT could not answer this.  I thought at
least NT could, but after several inquiries to several people there, I
still have not received a response.  Thanks ahead of time.

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

From: [e-mail] (Rob Gebeloff)
Subject: Want to Interview AT&T'ers Who Took Buyout
Date: 16 Jan 1996 04:52:31 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, USA


This is Rob Gebeloff at {The Bergen Record}.

We're looking to interview some AT&T employees who took the buyout,
especially those who live in our readership area.  If you can help
out, drop me a note or call me at [phone].


Thanks,

Rob

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

From: [e-mail] (Mark Allen)
Subject: Motorola 550 Cell Phone Problem
Date: 15 Jan 1996 16:04:58 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology


I have a Motorola 550 flip cell phone which has the nasty habit of
shutting itself off inappropriately (e.g., I will turn it on for
standby calls, put it in my pocket, and later take it out of my pocket
to find that it has shut itself off.)  This problem seems to be
independent of the battery condition (fully charged, partially
charged) and even the battery itself (brand new battery has the same
problem).  It appears to be more related to mechanical stress on the
phone itself.

1. Has anyone else had this problem?

2. I checked into getting the phone serviced, but the cost was
prohibitive (e.g., 75% of the cost of a new phone without even knowing
what the problem was or whether it could be fixed).  If it's something
as simple as a loose connection or cracked PC trace, I might be able
to fix it myself if I can open up the phone.  How is this done?


Thanks,

Mark Allen    [e-mail]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This may sound silly, but you also
might want to check and see if the phone has a 'time to sleep'
register in it that is set for some very low period of time. For
example, a Radio Shack (really Nokia of course) cell phone I had
a few years ago had a 'feature' built into it where if the phone
was not activated in some period of time (you set the number of
hours in this register) then it shut itself off on the assumption
you may have forgotten to do so. If you set it for zero, then
the feature was de-activated. Any time you used the phone, even
just to press keys on the keypad then the register was reset to
the starting point again. Does your phone have this?   PAT]

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

Date: 15 Jan 96 23:02:01 EST
From: Charles Cremer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Texas PUC delays implementation of 972/281 areas


Texas PUC delays implementation of Dallas and Houston area overlays
(Condensed and paraphrased from an Associated Press article published
in the {Houston Chronicle}.)

On Wednesday, January 10, the Texas Public Utility Commission deferred
a final decision on how to implement the 972 and 281 area plans until
February 7th.

The Commission cited the public's lack of information and lack of
understanding as reason for the delay and scheduled three additional
public hearings in each region for late January.

The attorney representing SBC (Southwestern Bell Communications)
expressed disappointment, saying that in a short time there may be
no more numbers available for new service. There are fewer than 15
available NPA's remaining in Houston's 713 area code and in Dallas'
214 area code.

MCI and other companies hoping to become competitors in the local
service market favor geographic splits, while SBC and businesses favor
overlays. Overlays would allow customers to retain existing numbers,
but would require users to dial 10 digits on most local calls.

An administrative law judge has recommended a split in Dallas and an
overlay in Houston.


Charles Cremer <[e-mail]>

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

From: [e-mail] (Eric Tholome)
Subject: Call Screening Rejection Recorded Announcement?
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 21:40:52 +0200


I was wondering ...

For those of you who can subscribe to some form of call screening,
with which you can blacklist certain numbers, so that people calling
from these numbers cannot get through to you anymore, what kind of
recorded announcement does your telco send to the caller in that case?

I guess it must be PC, but nevertheless clear enough so that the
caller doesn't bother calling again. Something like "we're sorry but
your call cannot be completed because the party you are calling does
not wish to receive calls from your line anymore" I guess.

I would like to see the exact words that the telcos use.

Do they quote a phone number that can be dialed for assistance?

What if the number was blacklisted by mistake?

Thanks for any information,


Eric Tholome                  | displayed with |               private account
23, avenue du Centre          | 100% recycled  |          [e-mail]
78180 Montigny le Bretonneux  |___  pixels! ___|      phone: [phone]
                    France        \________/     fax: same number, call first!


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the case of a specific number being
blocked or blacklisted as you phrased it, the messages I have heard
say, "The party you are calling has indicated they do not wish to
receive calls at this time. Please try your call again later. This is
a recording, <switch number>". Note they do *not* say 'the party does
not wish to speak with *you* at this time' ... merely that the party
does not wish to receive calls at this time.  In the case of a block
against all calls from persons who block their Caller-ID from your
display the message, the message goes something like this: "The party
you are calling does not wish to accept calls from persons who have
blocked delivery of, or hidden their telephone number from display.
Please hang up and call back with your caller-id unblocked."   PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #19
*****************************