Telecom/1996-04-telecom-walnutcreek.iso/back.issues/telecom-recent/[e-mail] _Mon Jan 15 17:10:12 1996.msg

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Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #16

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 15 Jan 96 17:10:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 16

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (David W. Crawford)
    Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (Glen L. Roberts)
    Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint (Tye McQueen)
    Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Jodi Weber)
    Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Shawn Goodin)
    Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Ed Ellers)
    Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (John McGing)
    Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away! (Michael P. Deignan)
    Re: Blizzard of 96 - Phone Service in Northern Virginia (Lee Winson)
    Re: Blizzard of 96 (Dave Levenson)
    Re: Unusual Radio Promotion (Dave Levenson)
    Re: Unusual Radio Promotion (Ed Ellers)
    Re: Unusual Radio Promotion ([e-mail])
    New India Telecom Mailing List: india-gii (Arun Mehta via Monty Solomon)

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

From: David W. Crawford <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint
Date: 15 Jan 1996 12:28:46 -0500
Organization: Woo Studios Ltd.


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They may be telling people it is
> necessary to be a business customer, but I wonder how they would
> be in any position to define what a 'business customer' is?  I would
> say even if it is necessary to default a line over to them that is
> not a bad tradeoff. Give them one of your lines you don't use very
> often -- except on Friday of course! I guess to avoid the aggravation
> of arguing with them over whether or not residence phones can be
> included it is better to just mention that you work from home and
> operate your business there. Les, do you know if there is any
> minimum length of time one has to be on the program? In other words
> do you have to stay on for a full year in order to get all the
> Fridays credited back to you for example?  Can you stay on for a
> month, get four Fridays of free calls and then drop out?    PAT]

So you tell Sprint, the long distance carrier, which will serve your
residence (and under this scheme, Sprint will serve your residence
even if you maintain another carrier as the default for 1+dialed
calls) that you want business long distance service (Sprint Business
Sense) at your residence.

Is there a hazard that your LEC (the LEC is involved in the billing
of the long distance service, right ?) will reclassify your household
phone service from residential line to a more expensive business line ?

EndNote: I have a collection of Sprint calling cards; every time I
applied, I received a T-shirt and 30 free minutes within US evening
calls, plus 'surprise bonuses'.  The last 'surprise bonus' was that I
could call anywhere within the US for one hour -- on Halloween between
8 and 9pm only -- for free.  So I placed a call, but after 20 minutes
of 'all circuits are busy' messages I gave up.


David W. Crawford    <[e-mail]>


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe that is how they handle calls on
Friday; constantly bouncing them back with 'all circuits busy'  <g> ...
If what Les Reeves says is correct, that a business account with the
local telco is not needed, then your question becomes a moot point.
If they do bother to verify that, then you have to decide for yourself
if the change in your status is warranted or not.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Glen L. Roberts)
Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Full Disclosure
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 17:34:20 GMT


[e-mail] (Les Reeves) wrote:

> Leonid A. Broukhis ([e-mail]) wrote:

>>    Go to http://www.sprint.com/ then to the Business Sense
>> International (which will bring you to
>> http://www.sprintbiz.com/cgi-bin/qfridays.cgi ) and tell us _where_
>> does it say anything about residence phones. If it sounds too good
>> to be true, it isn't.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They may be telling people it is
> necessary to be a business customer, but I wonder how they would
> be in any position to define what a 'business customer' is?  I would
> say even if it is necessary to default a line over to them that is
> not a bad tradeoff. Give them one of your lines you don't use very
> often -- except on Friday of course! I guess to avoid the aggravation
> of arguing with them over whether or not residence phones can be
> included it is better to just mention that you work from home and
> operate your business there. Les, do you know if there is any
> minimum length of time one has to be on the program? In other words
> do you have to stay on for a full year in order to get all the
> Fridays credited back to you for example?  Can you stay on for a
> month, get four Fridays of free calls and then drop out?    PAT]

They told me there was a $50/month usage minimum to qualify for Free
Fridays, and that I was limited to $1000/month on Fridays, and that
the free calling lasts for a year. I might think they meant $1000/year
max not $1000/month max. I signed up and sent them a letter to confirm
their statements to me.


Links, Downloadable Programs, Catalog, Real Audio & More on Web
Full Disclosure [Live] -- Privacy, Surveillance, Technology!
(Over 140 weeks on the Air!)
The Net Connection -- Listen in Real Audio on the Web!
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~glr/glr.html


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: $1000 per month does not come close to
$1000 per year does it, either in the math or the syntax. Granted, it
seems like quite a deal; I wonder how they are going to weasel out of
it when the promotion becomes widely known, as has certainly happened
by its discussion in this forum. Poor Sprint; they never seem to learn
do they?  Remember how screwed up their whole operation used to be
back in the days right after their original owner (remember, it was named
for the <S>outhern <P>acific <R>ailroad <I>nternal <N>etwork <T>ele-
communications service at the SPRR) sold it?  You would think that
fiasco with the free fax modem promotion a couple years ago would have
gotten them wised-up.   PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Tye McQueen)
Subject: Re: Fridays are Free With Sprint
Date: 14 Jan 1996 01:01:32 -0600
Organization: Texas Metronet, Inc  (login info (214/705-2901 - 817/571-0400))


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note:
> The bottom line is if you call Sprint at that number and agree to be
> billed a minimum of fifty per month for long distance calls for one
> year, you can have up to a thousand dollars per month in free calls as
> long as you make the calls on Friday. That is 50*12=600 versus 1000*
> 12=12,000, a difference of $11,400.

I believe the free calls on Friday are also limited to being less than
or equal to the value of calls during that week.  This limits your
savings to 50% at most.

I got this impression from subtle wording in the TV commercials.


Tye McQueen                 [e-mail]  ||  [e-mail]
             Nothing is obvious unless you are overlooking something
       http://www.metronet.com/~tye/ (scripts, links, nothing fancy)


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Hmmmm ... anyone else get this impression
or actually get told this by a Sprint rep?  PAT]

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

From: [e-mail]
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 13:37:16 EST
Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away!


Pat -

On the Sunday and Monday (January 7 and 8) of the heavier blizzard
(as compared to what's coming down today), I got the "All circuits
are busy" interrupt throughout a good part of each day trying
to place calls from 908 to 201 (intraLATA stuff in Bell Atlantic
territory).


Jodi Weber
[e-mail]   or   [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 07:46:44 EST
From: [e-mail] (Shawn Goodin)
Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away!
Organization: pro-charlotte gateway, Charlotte, NC


Hello from Charlotte, NC!

We were on the tail end of the storm -- as a transplanted Northerner
(you probably remember me from the Suburban Round Table, and I talked
to you earlier this year about Microsoft's phone system), I expected
the storm to have some effect on the telecommunications system and the
area businesses.  As it turned out, while there were some expected
delays due to busy circuits on long distance trunks and on cellular, I
considered them to be pretty minimal.

Charlotte, however, was hit by a one to four inches or so of snow, and
an inch or two of ice.  In my area, I had maybe an inch of snow and an
inch or so of ice, but that is enough to paralyze this city.

They don't plow streets here unless it's a significant snowfall (more
than six inches).  They instead use a mixture of sand, slag (cinders?)
and salt to melt any snow/ice.  Problem was, it was too cold for salt
to be truly effective, and the schools in the Charlotte area were
closed from Monday through Friday, with various teacher workdays now
rescheduled as make-up days.  One of those make-up days is Memorial
Day (and this was to be the first year in quite a while for kids to
get Memorial Day off.  Not this year (again).

It was infuriating to see the main thoroughfares essentially clear of
most ice/slush/snow, yet still have the schools closed.  The issue
here is the safety of the kids -- with many secondary and
side/neighborhood streets still covered with ice, it was deemed too
dangerous for school buses to safely travel (Charlotte-Mecklenburg
buses approximately 33,000 students every day).

With temperatures this weekend in the 50's, it's expected that everything
else out there will melt, and schools will finally reopen on Monday.

A much smaller storm came through Thursday night/Friday morning.
Lines in the grocery stores were seven or eight carts deep as shoppers
prepared for being snowed out another week (grin) despite the forecast
of much warmer temperatures for Friday and the weekend.  Much of what
fell Friday was gone by Saturday afternoon.  Wonder what they do with
all of that extra bread, milk, and toilet paper.


Shawn Goodin -- KD4QGZ   Charlotte, NC       CompuServe:  76703,1034
[e-mail]     [e-mail]     [e-mail]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Of course I remember the Suburban Round
Table; and there was also the BBS that Herb Zite used to operate as
well on the same software; I think his was called the Chicago Round
Table. Several sysops used Bill Blue's software which was called the
"People's Message System" or PMS for short. That's what we had running
on the BBS I maintained for the Chicago Public Library in the early 1980's.
I bet it is fun watching their reaction in the south to the smallest
little bit of snow, isn't it?  We had about four inches here over the
weekend and no one thought anything of it at all.   PAT]

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

Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away!
From: [e-mail] (Ed Ellers)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 10:33:47


In article <[e-mail]>, TELECOM Digest Editor
said:

> Later that day I had my picture taken by an enterprising fellow who would
> take your picture with a Polaroid Instamatic Camera standing on top of a ten
> foot high pile of snow which had been scooped over to the side of the road
> if you gave him a dollar.

You may be thinking of a Polaroid Automatic camera -- Instamatic was Kodak's
trademark, even though Motorola had used Insta-Matic as a trademark before
them.  The Polaroid cameras in 1966 were called the Automatic 100 through the
Automatic 104 (not counting the Swinger).

These days a dollar wouldn't even pay for the FILM for such a venture!


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are probably right. I don't remember
what it was for sure. I do remember the next day was Sunday; four or five
of my friends and I rode the Illinois Central Suburban Electric Train
(now it is called 'Metra') from Hyde Park to downtown Chicago. We got
off at the Jackson/Adams station downtown. At the intersection of
Michigan Avenue and Adams Street next to the Art Institute and directly
across from Orchestra Hall was another *huge* mound but in this case
some people from the Art Institute had created some marvelous sculptures
out of snow on the top of that mound. They took pictures also for anyone
who wanted it, standing in the 'doorway' of an Igloo they had created
up there.

Television was still relatively unsophisticated and remote broadcasts
always took a bit of effort to handle, so as always in the alley behind
Orchestra Hall was the big semi-trailer truck from Illinois Bell and
their crew, with the guys from WTTW/Channel 11 and they were having a
snowball fight. Funny, isn't it, how some things from long ago stand
out so clearly in your mind. Nothing like that storm since.    PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 23:18:47 -0500
From: John McGing <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away!
Reply-To: [e-mail]


Pat,

Just a note from an ex-Chicagoan who delivered his papers during that
1967 storm.  I was telling my wife about the evening papers being
dropped off at the intersection of Diversy and Austin (I had a four
block walk to that intersection).  I tied a big box to my flexible
flyer sled and pulled the thing to the drop off point and folded my
papers and ended up doing two routes.  I went from Diversy to almost
Belmont, from Austin to Narragansett.  Steinmetz HS is in that square,
and I tried to shortcut to one of my last customers by cutting across
the field there.  Bad move.

Anyway, I probably delivered papers for six hours that day, I know it
was very late and dark when I got back but luckily people did let me
warm up and give me warm drinks.

At the corner of Diversey and Moody a CTA bus was abandoned and was
drifted over; when the city started to come alive the biggest wrecker
I ever saw pulled that bus out but Diversey was one lane for days.

My customers did get their papers.  I delivered all the afternoon
papers, the {Daily News, Chicago American, Chicago Today (successor to
the American}).

Course, you at least did something socially useful but you're also a
bit older than me :)

BTW, no papers delivered here for four days in a row.  ;)


John

[e-mail]   Nobody knows the troubles I've seen
JOHN.PF on GEnie  Team OS/2         .... and nobody cares!
          http://www.access.digex.net/~jmcging


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had two newspaper routes when I
was eleven and twelve years old; I guess 1953 or so. On my morning
route I had the {Chicago Tribune} and the {Chicago Sun Times}. I
guess I had about fifty customers, and I had three or four who got
the {Wall Street Journal}. On my afternoon route I had about a hun-
dred customers (some were also morning customers) who got the {Chicago
Daily News} and the {Chicago Herald-American}. About a dozen of the
afternoon customers got miscellanous stuff; there were three or four
for the {Christian Science Monitor} and a couple who got that Polish
newspaper, the {Daily Zygoda}. I had a wagon I pushed along with
the distributor's name, "Charles Levy Circulating Company" on the
side, and a nice warm jacket they gave me to wear with their logo
on it. I got paid based on collections. I had to turn in a certain
amount to the company, via the driver who brought my stack of papers
twice each day. Everything over that was mine. I went around to each
customer once a week to get the money for the papers from the week
before. I had some who only got the Sunday paper; some who got it
every day, etc. Long after I gave up my routes they changed the pro-
cedure and started billing for the papers from the office, having
the customers remit direct, mainly because so many of the kids were
getting their money stolen by guys on the street who would rob them.
Oh, I almost forgot! We had {TV Guide} magazine every Wednesday,
with television listings starting two or three days later. Those
were fifteen cents each and I got a nickle for each one.

When I was nine years old I had a {Saturday Evening Post} route, if
you remember that weekly magazine founded by Benjamin Franklin. I
had about twenty people on my route, and took them their copy every
Saturday. They sent the magazines to our house by parcel post to
arrive every Thursday or Friday, and I was to deliver them on Saturday
unless it was a holiday in which case I could take them around on
Friday. Each person paid ten cents at the time of delivery and I
sent the company five cents for each copy I sold. "We trust you!"
they said in their recruitment ad for sales people. "As long as
you promise to pay us for the copies we send and do so, we will
send you more copies each week." If you had any left over copies
unsold you tore off a portion of the front cover with the date and
sent it in with your payment for the rest. {TV Guide} also used
kids as independent salesmen for their weekly publication back in
those days. I never had that until they finally started doing it
through Levy Circulating. Then some kids had that only, but I had it
for delivery with the Wednesday newspapers to whoever subscribed.

A friend of mine had a Time/Life route. He delivered {Time Magazine}
door to door to 'his customers' on one day each week and its com-
panion publication {Life Magazine} another day each week. Overall
I earned about five or six dollars per week on my newspaper route.
When I was younger my {Saturday Evening Post} route brought me
about a dollar or two each week. Once a year, Illinois Bell also
hired kids to deliver the new phone books and pick up the old ones.
I don't remember what they paid, but it was something like ten cents
for each new book out/old book returned.      PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Michael P. Deignan)
Subject: Re: Snow, Snow, Go Away!
Date: 12 Jan 1996 17:46:00 -0500
Organization: Ideamation, Inc.


The only problems I had with phone service during the Blizzard was I
couldn't connect to my Internet Service Provider for several hours.
Other than that, if you didn't look outside, you wouldn't have known
anything was going on by picking up the phone.

That said, let me think back ...

I've "lived" through two "great blizzards". The first one occured in
February 1978, when we got something like three feet of snow in a 36 hour
period. I was 14 years old at the time.

I still remember watching John Ghiorse, the Channel 10 weatherman,
(who is still alive and well and on Channel 6 today) telling everyone
it was "just going to be flurries, an inch or two at most."

Well, 7:30am arrived, and I had to leave for school. School was about
a mile away from my house, living in Providence, RI, and none of the
radio stations had any school cancellations. So, I left the house with
my friend Patrick, determined to make it to school.

The snow was really coming down hard, and we had a couple inches on
the ground as we walked to schoo. By the time we made it to school (close
to 8:30), it was pretty clear that this wasn't going to be "flurries".
We went inside, only to find all the students who had shown up (about
100 of us) all clustered in the lunch room. It seemed that most of the
staff had not shown up, so we couldn't go to our home rooms.

After sitting in the cafeteria for what seemed like hours, finally we
were told to "go home" at 10 am. Both Pat and I proceeded to walk back
home, this time with three or four inches of snow on the ground.  It
took us another 45 minutes.

When I got home, naturally all the weathermen were on the channels
talking about the storm. Some of them, being "sensationalist",
starting talking "blizzard". Our old standby, John Ghiorse, wasn't
calling it a blizzard -- yet. He coldly explained that to have a
blizzard you had to have certain conditions met, and while we were on
the way there, we were not there yet -- technically.

The snow continued. Offices let people out early. Traffic jammed on
the highways. People couldn't get off the exit ramps, and others
abandoned their cars in the middle of the highway. Roads clogged.
Everything came to a stand-still. People were stranded, others
braved the walk home. My father, a 14-year veteran of the Providence
Police force, walked home from downtown -- about a three mile walk.

I went to bed. It was still snowing. When I woke up, we had something
like 37 inches of snow. Drifts literally travelled up the sides of
houses. Both of our doors were snowed in ... I had to crawl out of a
side window to get out of the house and start digging out the doors.

After digging for a few hours, I decided to go visit a friend down
the street. No problem, I think -- its only one city block away. Yeah.
Snow was up to my chest. I walked to Jeff's house, it took me almost an
hour to get there. After warming up, I started the trek home.

Sometime that first afternoon, some snowmobiles ran up and down the
streets, making a compressed trail to walk in. It made travelling
easier, but not by much.

None of the main streets were plowed. People couldn't get in to
work to go plow. My father, who had walked home the day before,
couldn't get in to work. The whole state came to a stand-still.
People were stranded at firehouses, hospitals, and stranger's
homes.

Funny, now that I look back, the phones were pretty busy too. You
had to wait for a minute or two to get a dial tone. Not that it made
much sense to me at the time :-)

Eventually things got back to normal. On the third day the major
roads in the area were plowed, and we were able to take a sled and
go shopping. It was a truely eerie feeling walking down the middle
of Smith Street, one of the major arteries running into Providence,
and simply having the street crowded with people -- no cars.

On the way to the store, we came across several people -- neighbors --
helping a man shovel his car out of the middle of the street --
apparently he couldn't get it off the road, and he got stuck facing
towards his house. I remember we had to walk up the snow bank on one
side they were shovelling, and over to the other side -- the banks
had to be seven feet high.

Finally on the fifth day, the catepillars started working their way
through our neighborhood. We had huge four or five foot mounds along
the side of the road. At intersections they would create four huge
mounds on each corner -- these had to be ten feet high. I think we
still have pictures around somewhere. They made great snow forts.

About seven days later, everything was pretty much back to normal.


 ... Fade ahead 17 years ...

On to the great blizzard of '96. I really wouldn't call this a
Blizzard. More like a snow squall. If you want a Blizzard, go to
Alaska where the annual snowfall is over 600 inches! Now *THAT* is
alot of snow!

For this blizzard, things are a bit different. Now I'm thirty, and
talk about irony -- I work for the Providence Police Department (dad
has long since retired on disability due to getting shot on a drug
raid), but not as a cop, instead as Director of MIS.  Most people
don't realize that Providence is the second largest city in New
England, with Boston being the first.

Overall, we received 24 inches of snow over a day and a half (Sunday
and Monday). We got about 16" by 8 AM on Monday, with another 8" by
the time things wrapped up Monday nite.

Monday morning arrived, and unlike everyone else, I had to drive to
work. Unfortunately, working in Public Safety I didn't get the
luxury to stay home. Most people did decide to stay home, though.
Probably just as well that they did. Cars on the roads would have
gotten stuck, and made clean-up alot harder.

Despite the fact that the streets had been plowed sometime during the
night, they still had about 4" of standing snow on them. I live in
Providence, about a city block from Smith Street (the same from '78)
in the same neighborhood I grew up in as a kid. By the time I reached
Smith Street, the roads were in decent shape -- I certainly wouldn't
have wanted to drive without my Ford Explorer though. I made it to
work, with my stop at Dunkin Donuts and all, in less than 20 minutes.

Telecom-wise, things held up pretty good. No outages, although the
part of the DMS-100 switch the city leases from Nynex did get clogged
with calls from people wanting to know when their streets were going
to get plowed.

By Tuesday, things were pretty much back to normal. Alot of the
streets still have standing snow, but are passable. All of the major
roads are down to bare pavement. It is snowing right now, but it is
going to change to rain (supposedly) and make ice-mountains of
everything around here.

Overall, I have to say that Providence and the State of RI faired
pretty well. I see accounts on the National news about neighborhoods
still buried in DC and I think back to the '78 blizzard.

I think we faired pretty well for three reasons:

        1. John Ghiorse didn't predict flurries. He didn't predict 2'
       of snow either, but that's beside the point.

    2. The bulk of the snow occured on a weekend, and we were
       well into the snowstorm by the time people had to commute.

    3. When commute time arrived people were not at work this time,
       they were already at home.

Welp, that's about it from here.


MD

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

From: [e-mail] (Lee Winson)
Subject: Re: Blizzard of 96 - Phone Service in Northern Virginia
Date: 13 Jan 1996 21:07:30 GMT
Organization: PACS IBM SIG BBS


In the Philadelphia area, which got 30 inches of snow, phone service
remained ok.  I had a few situations of busy circuits.  No wait for
dial tone.  On Friday we had a second storm, and my calls from the
suburbs to the city couldn't get through on account of busy circuits.

  The busy circuit recording was irritating since it rang about 6
times before the recording came on.

  IMHO, whenever telephone circuits get close to capacity for whatever
reason, the phone company should announce on radio/TV asking people to
defer using the phone for a while.  This is prevent busy circuits or
no dial tone blocking urgent calls to get through.  If lines get
really crowded, the phone company should announce that only emergency
calls should be made.

  During storms, there is tremendous phone traffic.  Much of it is
important -- cancelling appointments, arrangements for transportation,
baby sitters, etc.  But much of it is social -- people stranded in the
house chatting, or people chatting about the storm.  If there is
enough capacity in the network in a storm to accomodate social
chitchat, fine, but not at the expense of delaying dial tone.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Back in the days of step-by-step and
panel type central phone exchanges, there were a couple here in
Chicago which were notorious for taking a long time to return a
busy signal. With luck, if someone's line was busy you got a busy
signal then and there. But quite often, it would ring anywhere from
one to three or four times and *then* the busy signal would cut in.
I think what you were experiencing was it was taking a long time
merely to get an available intercept recording circuit. Telco usually
does announce on the radio and television about these things.

Once about 1950 when I was little, the operators at Illinois Bell
went on strike. They called it a 'wildcat strike', meaning the union
had not authorized it. The operators were protesting the new
automatic dialing. Most offices in Chicago had been converted but
there were still two or three manual central offices, and those
operators were both hearing (and spreading) unfounded rumors that
the company planned to finish the automation and fire all the oper-
ators. They all walked off the job for two days, and during that time
if you picked up your phone (in a manual central office) or dialed
the code to reach that office (from one which had been automated)
a recording came on the line immediatly saying 'due to a labor dispute
between our employees and the company, we are only able to handle
emergency calls at this time. If your call is not an emergency, please
hang up now. If it is an emergency, please hold and supervisory person-
nell will respond as soon as possible.' Illinois Bell tried to bring
in spare operators from other central offices to fill in for the
strikers but most of the ladies were afraid to cross the line, knowing
they would have to work with the strikers later on.    PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: The Blizzard of 96
Organization: Westmark, Inc.
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 15:02:00 GMT


Here are one man's observations on the `Blizzard of 96':

Here in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City, we got between two
and three feet of snow within about 24 hours.  Governor Whitman
declared a state-wide emergency under which it became illegal to
operate a motor vehicle other than for emergency services.  (I have
not heard of anybody actually being given a summons for driving, but
they were ticketing cars which got stuck in the snow.)  The emergency
in New Jersey was lifted after about 24 hours; in New York, 48 hours.

The snow was of the `light and fluffy' variety -- not too hard to
shovel, and not particularly destructive to overhead utility lines.
There were no widespread power, telephone, or cable TV outages.  It
was transportation, both public and private, that got hit hard.  Rail
and bus service nominally operated on weekend schedules, but it was
hard to tell that it operated at all.  (The New York Subways operated
normally, except for those lines which run above ground.)

One of our customers operates a fleet of several hundred armored
trucks.  They stayed off the streets in NJ on Monday.  It was their
first service outage in decades.  Some ATM machines ran out of cash;
probably some bank branches would have run out, but they were mostly
closed.  At the customer's request, we used remote access to their
computer systems to re-route scheduled coin and currency shipments for
delivery one day late.

Several roofs collapsed, mostly flat roofs on large retail and
industrial buildings.  A fire in an industrial building in Elizabeth,
NJ was probably not caused by the blizzard, but the firefighters were
surely hampered by the conditions.  Injuries occurred in traffic
accidents.  Heart-attacks occurred as people performed physical work
(mostly with shovels) beyond their normal levels.

Our COCOTs saw a significant drop in revenue as the public stayed home
or indoors.  By the third day, revenue was back to normal weekday
levels on all but one of our phones.  That one (on a drive-up pedestal
in Rahway, NJ) came back to life a couple of days later, when the
roadway it serves was cleared of snow.

Friday, a little more snow (we hardly noticed!) followed by some rain.
Today (Saturday), the temperature is supposed to hit 40 in the city,
and upper thirties in the 'burbs.  We expect some local flooding as
the snow begins to melt.


Dave Levenson        Internet: [e-mail]
Westmark, Inc.        UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave
Stirling, NJ, USA    Voice: 908 647 0900  Fax: [phone]
[The Man in the Mooney]

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

From: [e-mail] (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: Unusual Radio Promotion
Organization: Westmark, Inc.
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 14:22:10 GMT


Mike Harpe ([e-mail]) writes:

> WHAS-AM 840 here in Louisville is starting a rather unusual radio
> promotion that I thought the Digest readers would have some thoughts
> on ...

> It's simple ... they are calling pay telephones around town and giving
> money to people who answer them.

> Is this a proper use of payphones?  How would a COCOT operator feel
> about this?  I would like to hear some opinions.

In many jurisdictions, payphones are not permitted to allow incoming
calls at all (war on drugs, or something similar).  Even where the law
permits, many premises-owners ask that their payphones not be arranged
to permit incoming calls.  It would seem that this promotion would be
of limited value in these areas.

As a COCOT operator in NJ, we normally don't permit incoming calls
unless the premises-owner specifically requests it (usually only if
the payphone is indoors, and is the only phone on the premises) and
the local ordinances permit it.  Unless incoming calls are permitted,
we don't advertise the phone number of the instrument, though we don't
take any other action to hide it (e.g. Caller*ID will show the number
of a payphone that called you, even if it won't accept your callback).

Incoming calls occupy our equipment and produce no revenue.  If this
occupancy reduces the availability of the equipment to revenue-producing
outbound callers, then it costs us.  It is for this reason that we reduce
the revenue commission paid to the premises-owner if incoming calls
are permitted.


Dave Levenson        Internet: [e-mail]
Westmark, Inc.        UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave
Stirling, NJ, USA    Voice: 908 647 0900  Fax: [phone]
[The Man in the Mooney]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Dave, I did not know you were a 'bottom-
feeder', as we used to say here in the Digest a few years ago.
Surely you remember all those messages; why did you not comment back
then, or weren't you in the business then?  <grin>     PAT]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ed Ellers)
Subject: Re: Unusual Radio Promotion
Date: 14 Jan 1996 01:31:28 GMT
Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire]


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

> Is this a proper use of payphones?  How would a COCOT operator feel
> about this?  I would like to hear some opinions.

It's hard to say. The COCOT guys wouldn't like it, but I don't know
what they could do aside from disabling ringers.  Now if these phones
are inside places of business this *might* be considered an annoyance
call, but out on the street I don't know of anything forbidding it.

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Unusual Radio Promotion
Date: 15 Jan 1996 17:45:44 GMT
Organization: CTS Network Services


We put a pay phone in our teenager's room (this really keeps the phone
calls down), and I think he would LOVE IT!

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

Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 23:38:20 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[e-mail]>
Subject: New India Telecom Mailing List: india-gii
Reply-To: [e-mail]


FYI
Begin forwarded message:

 Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 08:56:01 +0530 (GMT+05:30)
 From: Arun Mehta <[e-mail]>
 Subject: india-gii

Announcing india-gii, the list that discusses all issues that impact
telecom in India, including policy, practice, problems and issues, as
well as events happening in the world that directly impact telecom and
the growth of the Internet in India.

We are planning a seminar on "Indian Telecom Policy in the context of
the Global Information Highway: Opportunities and Threats" on 2-3
March, 1996, in New Delhi. Along with leading Indian experts, it is
planned to involve international participants through electronic mail.

A. What is the status of telecom in India? How does it compare with
that of other countries?

B. What is the importance of telecom in India's development? What are
we losing on account of the poor state of telecom in the country?

C. From the perspective of the users what are:
  1. Advantages/disadvantages of a long-distance and satellite commun-
     ication monopoly;

  2. Advantages/disadvantages of the concentration of the roles of
     service provision, policy formulation and industry regulation in
     one body.

D. Changes needed in Indian legislation such as the Indian Telegraph
Act of 1885 to cater to today's needs and those of the immediate
future.

E. Indian legislation vis-a-vis rights to privacy, freedom of
expression, etc. in cyberspace.

F. Implications of new technologies for Indian telecom, specifically:

   1. Low-earth orbit communications (Iridium and the like);

   2. Spread-spectrum, packet radio and other broadcast technologies.

G. Implications of DOT policies and guidelines, such as:

   1. Restrictions on interconnection of networks;

   2. License fees.

H. Implications of the coming together of telecom and entertainment
technologies.

To susbcribe, send mail to [e-mail], and in the body of the
message write:   subscribe india-gii Newt Gingrich
if that happens to be your name, else whatever your name is ...


Arun Mehta, B-69 Lajpat Nagar-I, New Delhi-24, India. Phone [phone]
[e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail]
http://mahavir.doe.ernet.in/~pinaward/arun.htm

"I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be
stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house
as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."--Gandhi

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #16
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