Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa00831; 21 Jun 92 22:44 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA26450 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 21 Jun 1992 20:57:45 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA24285 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 21 Jun 1992 20:57:37 -0500 Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 20:57:37 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206220157.AA24285@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #501 TELECOM Digest Sun, 21 Jun 92 20:57:12 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 501 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior (Kevin W. Williams) Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior (Leonard Erickson) Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior (Ken Abrams) Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior (Alan Rubinstein) Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 (Paul Houle) Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 (David W. Barts) Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 (Rich Greenberg) Re: Any News of CWA and AT&T? (David G. Lewis) Re: Any News of CWA and AT&T? (AT&T Management Insider) Re: Cycolac (was How Bell Labs Selects Ringers) (Jan De Ryck) Re: Cycolac (was How Bell Labs Selects Ringers) (Mark Terribile Re: Cycolac (was How Bell Labs Selects Ringers) (Barton F. Bruce) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: williamsk@gtephx.UUCP (Kevin W. Williams) Subject: Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior Organization: gte Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 20:53:44 GMT In article , jon_sree@world.std.com (Jon Sreekanth) writes: > While playing around with pulse dialing, I observed some strange > behavior which I'm hoping some readers can shed light on. > I have two lines here. Using one line, I pulse dial the other line's > number, pick up the call, and the two are in communication. Now, if I > dial further pulse digits from the _calling_ phone, the exchange cuts > me off fairly often. I find I can dial one or two or three as many > times as I want, but when I dial a high digit like six or so, the call > is broken, and the calling phone immediately gets a dial tone starting > out with two (three ?) interruptions. > The strangest part is: if I pulse dial digits from the _called_ > phone, no such behavior is noticed. > Is this intended behavior, and if so what purpose does this serve? Or > is it a bug (widespread?). My numbers are 617-876 and 617-547, and I'm > paying for DTMF service on both. You don't say what kind of switch you are on, but I can guess what could be causing it that would be pretty much generic. Most modern switches will scan for hangup by sampling the line state at some infrequent interval (100 milliseconds or so). If your dial pulse rate lines up with the scan rate, it could see the on-hook pulses as a continuous on-hook. Continuous on-hook for a short-period of time would be recognised as a flash. Stuttered dial tone would be the signal for you to call the next party for your three-way. The called/calling number behavior could be a result of whether you are set to called or calling party hangup control, or whether you have three-way calling. Flash recognition would have to be set to a pretty low value to make this occur. Any idea what kind of switch you are on? Kevin Wayne Williams AGCS nee Automatic Electric ------------------------------ From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon. Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 21:11:13 GMT jon_sree@world.std.com (Jon Sreekanth) writes: > While playing around with pulse dialing, I observed some strange > behavior which I'm hoping some readers can shed light on. > I have two lines here. Using one line, I pulse dial the other line's > number, pick up the call, and the two are in communication. Now, if I > dial further pulse digits from the _calling_ phone, the exchange cuts > me off fairly often. I find I can dial one or two or three as many > times as I want, but when I dial a high digit like six or so, the call > is broken, and the calling phone immediately gets a dial tone starting > out with two (three ?) interruptions. > The strangest part is: if I pulse dial digits from the _called_ > phone, no such behavior is noticed. > Is this intended behavior, and if so what purpose does this serve? Or > is it a bug (widespread?). My numbers are 617-876 and 617-547, and I'm > paying for DTMF service on both. It's "intended" behavior. Pulse dialing is accomplished by doing the same thing (electrically) that you'd be doing if you pressed down and released the switch-hook! That what a "pulse" *is*. As the calling party, it's not surprising that you lose the connection. The called party has different behavior because the phone system is *supposed* to let him hang up for as long as 20-30 seconds without losing the connection. This is intended to let you move to another extension. Leonard Erickson leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com CIS: [70465,203] 70465.203@compuserve.com FIDO: 1:105/56 Leonard.Erickson@f56.n105.z1.fidonet.org (The CIS address is checked daily. The others infrequently) ------------------------------ From: kabra437@athenanet.com (Ken Abrams) Subject: Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior Organization: Athenanet, Inc., Springfield, Illinois Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 15:38:59 GMT In article jon_sree@world.std.com (Jon Sreekanth) writes: > times as I want, but when I dial a high digit like six or so, the call > is broken, and the calling phone immediately gets a dial tone starting > out with two (three ?) interruptions. > The strangest part is: if I pulse dial digits from the _called_ > phone, no such behavior is noticed. Some people try the strangest things ... The action of the pulse dial is the same as opening and closing the switch hook (hang-up button) manually but the timing of the dial is (more) closely controlled. I think the interrupted dial tone is the key to this "mystery". It tends to indicate that the originating line in your example is equipped with three-way calling. Eventually, one (or more) of the pulses is interpreted as a switch hook flash and that is the signal to envoke three-way calling (add-on conference). Chances are good that the called line does not have this feature. If you are really that bored that you have to play with your phones, I can recommend some good computer games ;-). Ken Abrams nstar!pallas!kabra437 Springfield, IL kabra437@athenanet.com (voice) 217-753-7965 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 17:46 PDT From: Alan_Rubinstein@3mail.3com.com Subject: Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior > If I dial further pulse digits from the _calling_ phone, the exchange cuts > times as I want, but when I dial a high digit like six or so, the call > is broken, and the calling phone immediately gets a dial tone > If I dial at the called phone, no such behavior is noticed. What is happening is that the exchange is integrating the on hook portion of the series of pulses, when they reach the threashold that signals caller hangup, the called party is dumped. This explains your ability to dial small numbers (less than six) without releasing your call. When the dial reaches the return position you are again continuously drawing loop current so you find yourself staring at dial tone. The results from your trials at the called party is the same as what would happen if the called party disconnected for a short period. This behaviour does not occur in any electrmechanical exchanges that I have tried in the past but does occur on #1ESS and derivatives. I would be interested in learning of the response in other electronic exchanges if know the pedigree of your CO and can dust off your 500 sets or switch your set into pulse mode, let me know what you discover. Alan Rubinstein WB1EST 3COM Corp. Santa Clara, CA. (408) 764-5584 Internet alan_rubinstein@hq.3mail.3com.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 09:40:25 MDT From: houle@jupiter.nmt.edu (Paul Houle) Subject: Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 Organization: New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology I found a few more odd things. For one, our institutional phone system at Tech usually blocks any attempt to dial a long-distance number from most phones unless you dial a "TAC" number for billing authorization. Dialing 1-710-555-1212 caused a phone company intercept recording to come on; I don't remember exactly which one, which was a bit odd. At coin phones, calls to some exchanges in 710, such as 555 and 222 were routed to an operator intercept. Attempting to call 1-710-424- xxxx generated the intercept "We're sorry, but your call did not go through". Generally the phone would not return dial tone for about a minute after this. Twice upon calling 1-710-555-1212, an operator laughed and asked about who I was trying to reach. BTW, the operator claimed to be an AT&T operator. It seems to me that the best way for FEMA or some similiar organization to keep a secret area code is to have one or more special phone switches that recieve ANI -- some numbers might be blocked from it completely and always get an intercept. Others might always go through, or always go through to 710 services that they are authorized to use. The rest of the numbers will go to an "AT&T operator" (even if you place the call through Sprint or MCI). This operator will pretend it's an ordinary intercept unless you know exactly what to say to get through. [Moderator's Note: It seems an awful lot of low-level employees have to be experienced Pretenders then, doesn't it? AT&T has a few thousand operators who might answer such calls. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 09:21:09 -0700 From: David W. Barts Subject: Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 The Moderator notes: > [Moderator's Note: Illinois Bell intercepts after 1-710; no further > digits are accepted. You receieve the tones and "Your call cannot be > completed as dialed, please check the number and dial again, or ask > your operator to help you." So I guess 'any kid at a payphone' can > stand there and dial all he wants. I think a bit has to be set > somewhere which says the phone being used is able to call those > numbers. Otherwise you are 7448 outta luck. ^^^^ Shame on you, PAT! This is a Family Digest! :-) :-) US West (Pacific Northwest Bell) does nothing in particular after 1-710 is dialed. But if you complete the number by dialing seven more digits, you get the familiar " We're sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number, and try again." recording. David Barts N5JRN UW Civil Engineering, FX-10 davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu Seattle, WA 98195 [Moderator's Reply-in-Kind: You may accuse me of distributing a Family Digest using taxpayer supported facilities, but at least no one can claim I am Socially Responsible. :) PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 11:37:37 PDT From: richg@hatch.socal.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 One more datapoint: from the 310 a/c (Tinsletown), PacBell allows the eleven digits of 1-710-555-1212, and then Jane tells me that my call cannot be completed as dialed. Rich Greenberg - N6LRT - 310-649-0238 - richg@hatch.socal.com [Moderator's Note: Speaking of Just Plain Jane, I received a few more replies about her, and I will try to get them out Sunday night. PAT] ------------------------------ From: deej@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (david.g.lewis) Subject: Re: Any News of CWA and AT&T? Organization: AT&T Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 13:40:51 GMT In article bwmohle@pbsdts.sdcrc. PacBell.COM writes: > I've been following the various articles on the negotiations between > the CWA and AT&T... However, the thread has kind of > dried up ... > [Moderator's Note: I haven't heard a thing recently. I guess they are > still negotiating (?). Comments from any insiders? PAT] Not that I'm an insider or anything ... taken from AT&T Today, the AT&T Public Relations newswhatever ... BARGAINING UPDATE *** Informal discussions continue in Washington, D.C. Several outstanding issues remain to be resolved. Newsline and AT&T TODAY will keep you informed when significant developments occur. Wow. David G Lewis AT&T Bell Laboratories david.g.lewis@att.com or !att!houxa!deej Switching & ISDN Implementation [Moderator's Note: Outstanding issues = 'how long do we get for coffee break?'; 'how far is my desk from the drinking fountain and bathroom?'; 'how long do you have to work here (no, I meant 'be here') to get vacation?', etc. :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: An Insider in Management Subject: Re: Any News of CWA and AT&T? Organization: AT&T Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 14:41:31 GMT > [Moderator's Note: I haven't heard a thing recently. I guess they are > still negotiating (?). Comments from any insiders? PAT] Pat, ON CONDITION OF ANONYMITY They are still negotiating a few sticky points, notably job security and a management-proposed pay cut to Phone Center employees (they currently make a flat hourly around $11 - $12 and management wants to go to hourly of $6 - $7 plus commission). If the other employees in the mall knew how much they were making, the whole shopping mall would go on strike! The unions are trying to get their workers to do certain "job actions", etc. They have demonstrated in front of muckity-mucks' homes. One day, they all wore black to one location. Another day, they all wore shorts. On Monday, they are all supposed to wear read and stand up for five minutes at 10:00 am to show support for the NJ Bell negotiations starting that day. I get the impression the union leadership is concerned that these actions are having little affect. That's probably because I don't think it really bothers management. More than that is a "feeling" of defensiveness I get when they tell each other how effective the job actions have been. For a recorded message giving a union perspective, call 201-276-7771. I should say that, though I am considered management, I don't rub shoulders with the managers over these union employees. It may bug *them* more than the people I work with (I guess the union people hope it does). Of course, we have a developer down the hall from me that wears shorts to work every day the outside temperature goes above 50 degrees (that's basically all year except for three or four months). One day, he showed up shoeless. Really! Again, please quote this as much as you want, just keep me anonymous. [Moderator's Note: I do not like anonymous messages. I occassionally make exceptions when *I* know who wrote them as is the case here. PAT] ------------------------------ From: brabo@busadm1.cba.hawaii.edu (Jan De Ryck) Subject: Re: Cycolac (Was How Bell Labs Selects Ringers) Organization: College Business Administration, University of Hawaii Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1992 00:42:40 GMT In article davidb@zeus.ce.washington. edu (David W. Barts) writes: > John Levine writes: >> Trivia question: What else do they use cycolac for? > I always thought the name for the plastic they made 500 sets from was > ABS. On the theory that cycolac and ABS are one and the same, I'll > answer "plastic drain pipes" to your question. I seem to recall that cycolac was used for the body of one of Citroen's cars (The Mehari???). The big advertising gimmick was that it was colored all trough, i.e. you could scratch it and still have it be the same color. Jan DE RYCK, systems engineer College of Business Administration, University of Hawaii at Manoa ------------------------------ From: mat%mole-end@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Re: Cycolac (Was How Bell Labs Selects Ringers) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1992 23:36:13 GMT In article , David W. Barts writes: > John Levine writes: >> Trivia question: What else do they use cycolac for? > I always thought the name for the plastic they made 500 sets from was > ABS. On the theory that cycolac and ABS are one and the same, I'll > answer "plastic drain pipes" to your question. Wasn't Cycolac ABS used in football helmets? I worked on a phone project at a local major vendor and the sets we used were made out of an ABS made by Borg-Warner. They were so proud of it they ran ads featuring the phone sets. One day, after running into some frustrating multi-part bugs, I found out how tough the stuff is. I took one of the dinky little handsets in my hand and swung it hard from over my head to the edge of the table. Had I swung a hammer, I would have left a very deep scar in the table; instead I left a small nick (not 5 mm across) in one edge of the handset. Impressive stuff ... (This man's opinions are his own.) From mole-end Mark Terribile uunet!mole-end!mat, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ ------------------------------ From: bruce@camb.com (Barton F. Bruce) Subject: Re: Cycolac (Was How Bell Labs Selects Ringers) Date: 20 Jun 92 00:05:48 EDT Organization: Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc. In article , David W. Barts writes: > I always thought the name for the plastic they made 500 sets from was > ABS. On the theory that cycolac and ABS are one and the same, I'll > answer "plastic drain pipes" to your question. Cycolac is someone's (Marbon Chemical?) brand name for their ABS resin. If it came from someone else, it is NOT Cycolac, but still is ABS. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #501 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa05283; 22 Jun 92 0:59 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA31306 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 21 Jun 1992 23:11:25 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA30751 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 21 Jun 1992 23:11:17 -0500 Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 23:11:17 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206220411.AA30751@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #502 TELECOM Digest Sun, 21 Jun 92 23:11:22 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 502 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (Erik Rauch) Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (Rich Mintz) Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (Jiro Nakamura) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Ron Natalie) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Bill Mayhew) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Steven S. Brack) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Robert S. Helfman) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Jeffrey Jonas) Re: Longest Phonecall (Brent Whitlock) Re: Longest Phonecall (Ron Natalie) Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 (Ron Natalie) Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 (Kenton Hoover) Re: RFC For Fax Specs (Eric Brunner) Re: FBI Requirement For Wiretaps; Making Someone Else Pay (Paul Robinson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Erik Rauch Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 10:51:56 EDT I've been reading about phone companies that charge for some kind of 'intercom' service. In my area under Bell Atlantic, this service is offered for free -- but Bell, of course, doesn't talk about it. It has been in existence for about eight years; it involves dialling a special 55x prefix and then the last four digits of your phone number (the x in 55x varies as your exchange.) Of course, you have to put up with a tone while you talk. But a useful service nonetheless. ------------------------------ From: rmintz@ecst.csuchico.edu (Rich Mintz) Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Organization: California State University, Chico Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 00:08:14 GMT I've used the method of getting a ringback described by a user in one of the earlier messages also. At least in all the areas I've lived in, there is always a special three-digit prefix which corresponds to the one you're calling from which will perform this function. For example, if your phone number is 345-1234, there is an alternate xyz-1234 number which connects you to this "test" number. I've found this "alternate" prefix many times through sequential dialing with my modem and using the Hayes 'W' command to wait for a dial tone after the number is dialed (that's what you get when the test number answers) and testing whether the result code is "No Dialtone" or "No Carrier" (which means it DID find the dialtone and went on to wait for a carrier). Once the call completes and you get the dial-tone sound, a flash changes it to a higher pitched tone. From there you just hang up, and your phone will ring. Upon answering, you'll hear the same high pitched tone. At this point, you can hang up to stop, or do another flash so that you'll get yet another ringback when you hang up. I realize my description of how this works is a little different from the one described by the user in an earlier message ... perhaps they're due to variations on the equipment used at the CO, etc. Rich -> rmintz@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ------------------------------ From: jiro@shaman.com (Jiro Nakamura) Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Organization: Shaman Consulting Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1992 05:53:34 GMT In article cavallarom@cpva.saic.com writes: > Pacific Telephone no longer charges for DTMF service. It is universal > in this area. They most probably raised the rates across the board as well, to "compensate" for the "lack of revenue." NYNEX does charge for DTMF ... Jiro Nakamura jiro@shaman.com (NeXTmail) NeXTwatch / Technical Editor 76711,542 (CIS) The Shaman Group +1 607 277-1440 (Voice/Fax) ------------------------------ From: ron@pilot.njin.net (Ron Natalie) Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers Date: 21 Jun 92 16:12:10 GMT Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Since you now have to get a social security number before you're weaned, let's just take the next logical step and go down to your local FCC office (maybe they could open an office within Social Security) and get your 'for-life' phone number issued. No more of this silly 700-number stuff from AT&T. Then the government will implant a little cellular phone into your body (shouldn't take to long for things to get to this point, especially with micro-cells) and we will be able to reach everyone, everywhere. Not to mention knowing where you are, BROTHER. You sound like you've sat through The President's Analyst too many times. ------------------------------ From: wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (Bill Mayhew) Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 01:50:04 GMT In article Jeff Sicherman writes: > Then the government will implant a little cellular phone into your > body (shouldn't take to long for things to get to this point, > especially with micro-cells) and we will be able to reach everyone, > everywhere. Not to mention knowing where you are, BROTHER. > Wait a second, didn't I just see this scenario in a Borg episode of > Star Trek ... I KNEW those guys looked familiar. This reminds me of the classic spy spoof movie, The President's Analyst, starring James Coburn, Will Geer, et al. Coburn plays a psychiatrist who is recruited to be the US president's analyst. Every time the president suffers an impending break-down red flashing lights go off in Coburn's office. It turns out that everybody is spying on everybody else as the movie unfolds. Ultimately, the Telephone Company turns out to be the bad guy, taking Coburn hostage to convince him of a master plan as described below. The movie ends with a hillarious rescue sequence and and ending that telecom mavens would love. A must-see picture. Relased in 1967, it is an interesting social commentary. Bill Mayhew NEOUCOM Computer Services Department Rootstown, OH 44272-9995 USA phone: 216-325-2511 wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (140.220.1.1) ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jun 1992 13:27:01 -0400 (EDT) From: sbrack@jupiter.cse.UTOLEDO.edu (Steven S. Brack) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) In article edg@netcom.com (Ed Greenberg) writes: > Jane is a real person who recorded for the Bell System for many years. Here in Ohio Bell territory, it has become rather rare to hear the pleasant woman's voice admonishing you to "first dial a '1'," or saying much of anything else for that matter. Instead we get a recording that sounds like it was made by a tech who didn't like OBT anymore. It's extremely scratchy, and typically goes like this: " call as dialed. Please try your call again." Note, no SIT even. Jane Barbie's gone, at least from OBT, and her replacement doesn't like me. 8) This recording style appears all over the Toledo area, so it doesn't seem accidental. Who knows, maybe they have to pay Jane a royalty or something. 8) ------------------------------ From: helfman@aero.org (Robert S. Helfman) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 21:16:54 GMT In article shaun@octel.com (Shaun Case) writes: > Jane Barbie is the real name of the woman who did the American > English Aspen prompts. There's a signed B&W photo of her up in our > voice lab, which I just viewed scant moments ago. Jane also did voice > work for Pac Bell, specifically directory assistance (411) and > time-of-day (767xxxx). Yah, she's the Time Lady. If we had a scanner > handy, I'd post a GIF, but ... alas. Jane Barbie was also the female voice heard on the voice-overs for WWVH (the Hawaiian version of WWV). [Moderator's Note: Her voice was also used for Time of Day here in Chicago for many years (312-CAThedral-8000). She had recorded the phrase 'at the signal, the time will be' and the digits which were then patched together as appropriate. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 13:00:15 -0400 From: krfiny!jeffj@uunet.uu.net Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Here's an article of tangental TELCOM interest I'm forwarding from sci.electronics: from helfman@aero.org (Robert S. Helfman) Message-ID: <1992Jun16.071044.1540@aero.org> Subject: Re: Accurate Clock thru RS-232?? Visiting WWV was a real kick for me as an adult, because as a kid, I remember hearing that voice booming out of the night "National Bureau of Standards WWV. When the tone returns, Eastern Standard Time is: xx hours xx minutes". Of course the wording changed when Washington discovered someone lived west of the Mississippi and they went first to Greenwich Mean Time, then UCT. The voice announcements were done by Don Elliott of Atlanta; the guy now (the format changed a couple of years ago, I think) seems to have a distinctly Eastern-seaboard sound, to my ears. (Does anyone know any more about who it is?) The "At the tone, xx hours xx minutes Coordinated Universal Time" has a slightly stilted "lilt" to it that conjures up "The East". The announcer for WWVH in Hawaii was Jane Barbe of Atlanta, who was, I believe, the "Time Lady" and several other announcements for the former Bell System and the Baby Bells (y'all devotees of 'comp.dcom. telecom' probably know that already!) ------------- Jeffrey Jonas jeffj@synsys.uucp [Modertator's Note: Did you know that to avoid interference with each other in the western USA (where both are heard with equal clarity) WWVH states the time about fifteen seconds before the minute, then remains silent while WWV repeats the announcement about seven seconds before the minute. Then both resume their tone simultaneously. Likewise, when either station has a longer message to read, the other one discontinues the tone for the minute or two the first one is speaking (but they continue the ticking in the background). The two stations never speak at the same time; announcements are read one minute by WWV and a minute later (or earlier) by WWVH. As soon as one finishes speaking, listen carefully -- you will hear the other one start with the same message, and the silence is reversed. When they are finished, both resume their tone signal simulataneously. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bkwg0457@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Brent Whitlock) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 16:20:15 GMT > Speaking of phone calls, I remember hearing a story once about a girl > who went to Paris for the summer, while her boyfriend went to Hawaii. > They were going to miss each other so much they had to talk often, but > they couldn't afford a hefty phone bill. So what they did was to leave > the phone off the hook at both ends for the entire month of July. They > would talk, make arrangements for what time they'd come back, and talk > some more. When the phone bill eventually arrived, it was for a couple > thousand dollars, and the girl took it to the phone company and complained > that this COULDN'T be right, and they decided it was a computer glitch > and deleted it. > It was told to me as a FOAF, has anybody heard anything similar? It is, at least, plausible. I had an experience in 1986 which supports my statement. One evening I called a friend in Illinois from Virginia. We talked for maybe 20 minutes, said goodbye, and hung up. The next evening, after I had come home from work, I went to pick up the phone and call someone. I noticed that the phone was not properly seated in its holder, and there was no dial tone. I thought that I probably didn't put it back in place properly the night before. I pressed the switch, got a dial tone, and thought nothing more of it. In about a month, our phone bill arrived. There was a nearly 24 hour long distance phone call to Illinois billed on it. When my housemate, who had the phone in his name, told me this, I was astonished. The number called belonged to my friend who I had called that night. I figured that what happened was that the switch didn't disconnect the call after my friend hung up because my phone didn't get hung up properly. My housemate called the long distance company (I don't remember which it was) and told them that there had been a mistake. This phone call only lasted for a few minutes, yet was billed for 24 hours. We could prove that all of us were at work all day, and that the person at the other end was also at work all day. The L.D. rep. agreed that a 24 hour phone call was a little ridiculous, and removed it from the bill. * * * * * * --> DISCLAIMER: I speak only for myself. <-- * * * * * * Brent Whitlock Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology bwhitlock@uiuc.edu Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ------------------------------ From: ron@pilot.njin.net (Ron Natalie) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Date: 21 Jun 92 13:53:46 GMT Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. There's a story about two students, one from MIT and one from Stanford who left a phone off the hook for a semester. They avoid billing by having the phone service terminated before they ever hung up. Ron [Moderator's Note: Cute, but I think everyone is aware that telco sends out post-disconnect billings all the time for any unfinished business at the time service was discontinued. And of course the call would have terminated when the service did. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ron@pilot.njin.net (Ron Natalie) Subject: Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 Date: 21 Jun 92 14:00:02 GMT Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. > I don't know anything about 710, but it probably isn't a good idea to > give it tons of net.coverage if it is used for anything to do with > national security. Oh, come off it. If the information gets anywhere close to here were in deep kimche anyhow. The TELECOM Digest is probably the most benign of the forums for "telecommunications enthusiats." ------------------------------ From: shibumi@turbo.bio.net (Kenton A. Hoover) Subject: Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 Date: 21 Jun 92 21:52:11 GMT Reply-To: shibumi@turbo.bio.net Organization: GenBank Computing Resource for Mol. Biology I just tried 1 710 555 1212 from a trunk in the 415-962 exchange. I got an intercept, which said: "We're sorry, it is not necessary to dial a 1 or 0 before dialing this number. Please hang up and dial again." There are these guys in black hats floating around outside the building now. In a more serious vein, perhaps its all something to do with FTS2000 ... Kenton A. Hoover BIOSCI Network Administrator (bionet newsgroups) shibumi@presto.ig.com GenBank/IntelliGenetics, Inc. 415 962 7300 shibumi@genbank.bio.net ------------------------------ From: adobe!brunner@uunet.UU.NET (Eric Brunner) Subject: Re: RFC For Fax Specs? Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1992 17:41:32 GMT In article , mf15@prism.gatech.edu (Monte Freeman) writes: > I need the RFC (or some other type of "oficial document" ) that > gives the specs for fax transmissions. A description of the protocol, > Anyone have any idea where I can find something like this? > Preferably in on-line Internet accessible format ... See rfc1314, "A File Format for the Exchange of Images in the Internet", but A. Katz and D. Cohen of ISI, April 1992, in any up-to-date rfc repository near you. #include Eric Brunner, consulting at and not speaking for Adobe uucp: uunet!practic!brunner or uunet!adobe!brunner ------------------------------ Reply-To: tdarcos@mcimail.com From: Paul Robinson Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 19:57:16 EDT Subject: Re: FBI Requirement for Wiretaps; Making Someone Else Pay. It's funny, when Pat mentioned Ayn Rand's {Atlas Shrugged}, (my favorite book; I've read it seven times!), a line from the book came to mind. Francisco D'Anconia is talking to Rearden: A worse act than murder is to sell someone suicide as an act of virtue; worse than that is to convince them to jump into a furnace, voluntarily, as an act of charity; worse than that is to get them to build the furnace, besides. To translate that, the FBI wants the ability to make traces and monitorings of communications equiment at any time they want to do so (remember, a court order is done by request of the agency). Further, they want the provider of communications to make it easier for someone to spy on their customers, and further; to make them pay the cost of allowing the government to spy on them in the first place! If I own an apartment building and the government wants to tap into a telephone, they don't turn around and make ME pay the cost of installing the line running to their office, (what they probably do is declare the building confiscated for Civil Forfeiture, then, since they own the building, put the taps in themselves! :( ) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #502 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa21209; 22 Jun 92 9:04 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA13747 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 22 Jun 1992 07:15:44 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA10163 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 22 Jun 1992 07:15:36 -0500 Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 07:15:36 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206221215.AA10163@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #503 TELECOM Digest Mon, 22 Jun 92 07:15:30 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 503 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: UK Directory Enquiries (David Lesher) Re: UK Directory Enquiries (Nigel Allen) Re: UK Directory Enquiries (Alan Barclay) Re: UK Directory Enquiries (Leonard Erickson) Re: Influencing PUCs (Charlie Mingo) Re: Influencing PUCs (Jon Baker) Re: Is This Phone Legal? (R. Kevin Oberman) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Jeff Sicherman) Re: C&P To Revoke Telephone Number (William Degnan) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Lesher Subject: Re: UK Directory Enquiries Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 18:12:15 EDT Reply-To: wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu (David Lesher) Others said: > [story about free directory enquiries from BT when using payphones] > This is the way it is in California as well, both from Bell and > COCOTS. > [Moderator's Note: Ditto here in Chicago, where IBT payphone calls to > Directory Assistance are at no charge. PAT] Here's a repeat unanswered question. Do the FCC rules on COCOTS cover DA? In Miami, all the COCOTS gave free DA. Here in suburban VA, they want $0.50 or more. wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu ------------------------------ From: Nigel Allen Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 20:00:00 -0400 Subject: Re: UK Directory Enquiries Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto In Volume 12, Issue 487, sgraham@autelca.ascom.ch (Stephen Graham), notes that British Telecom charges for Directory Enquiry calls from residential and business lines, but not from pay phones. Most North American telephone companies charge for most calls to Directory Assistance, with exceptions for the elderly and persons with a disability (in some jurisdictions) and for new numbers that are not yet listed in the directory (in Bell Canada territory, at least). Calls for local directory assistance from telephone company-operated pay phones are invariably free in North America, as far as I know. BT does not provide directories in its pay phones, and when you complain about this, says that Directory Enquiry calls are free. I don't think public opinion or the Office of Telecommunications (Oftel) would allow BT to charge for Directory Enquiry calls unless directories were once again installed in pay phones. I can understand removing directories from pay phones along the street or in public parks, but I think it's unfair to remove directories from railway stations, shops and other locations which have reasonably good security. Besides, if you want to look through the yellow pages to locate a restaurant or hotel, being able to call Directory Enquiries free isn't particularly useful. Nigel Allen, Toronto nigel.allen@canrem.com Canada Remote Systems - Toronto, Ontario/Detroit, MI World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044 [Moderator's Note: Doesn't your Directory service include a supervisor to do yellow pages lookups? Many telcos in the USA have that. They are not permitted to recommend or give only one listing unless you tell them the category (restaurant), what you think the name is, and the street address. If they cannot find it exactly, then they tell you places with similar names or addresses on the same street, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Alan Barclay Subject: Re: UK Directory Enquiries Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 13:33:55 BST sgraham@autelca.ascom.ch (Stephen Graham) discussed BT charging for non-payphones and not charging for BT payphones for number advice. > payphones, I get the impression that if you dial 192 on a public > payphone that this is still a free service and no coins are cashed. > Can anyone confirm this as I think it's a bit of an oversight on the > part of BT not to charge payphone users for this service. It would It is true, basically BT was told by OFTEL (Office Of Telecommunications, the UK-wide equivilant of the PUC's) that if they charged for enquiries they would have to have paper telephone directories available in the box. BT decided that it would be more economical to not charge for enquiries from BT payphones. Private payphones are still charged for, and it's up to the owner of the payphone to provide a telephone number service. Alan Barclay, iT, Barker Lane, CHESTERFIELD, S40 1DY, Derbys, England alan@ukpoit.uucp, ..!uknet!ukpoit!alan, FAX:+44 246214353, VOICE:+44 246214261 iT - The Information Technology Business Of The Post Office In Tune With Technology [Moderator's Note: Does anyone remember when the old style pay phone booths in the USA had the little shelf mounted on the side of the booth, a small electric light attachment and a dozen or more phone books there attached with a chain to keep them from walking away? PAT] ------------------------------ From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: UK Directory Enquiries Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon. Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 00:45:57 GMT stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) writes: > In article sgraham@autelca.ascom.ch > (Stephen Graham) writes: > [story about free directory enquiries from BT when using payphones] > This is the way it is in California as well, both from Bell and > COCOTS. The line of reasoning is that many pay stations don't have > directories, so it is in the public interest to allow people to get > the numbers for free. Presumably, when calling from home, you have > your paper directory handy, and get to pay for the convenience if it > is too much trouble for you to use it. Yes, but what gets annoying is when you *have* to call directory assistance because the number is too recent to have been included in the current directory! I tend to resent having to pay for information that I *cannot* get without going through DA. Leonard Erickson leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com CIS: [70465,203] 70465.203@compuserve.com FIDO: 1:105/56 Leonard.Erickson@f56.n105.z1.fidonet.org (The CIS address is checked daily. The others infrequently) ------------------------------ From: Charlie.Mingo@p4218.f70.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Charlie Mingo) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 16:47:50 -0500 Subject: Re: Influencing PUCs polk@girtab.usc.edu (Corinna Polk) writes: > So then, what does the normal $35-$50 line installation fee cover? My > impression was that paying that standard installation fee gave me a > phone line, regardless of the situation. If I had the lines already > running into the house, then it was a simple install that required a > data entry (aka "Customer Service") person to type on a terminal. If > it required a new drop then someone was to do that. But either way, > the price was the same, the former installs covering the cost of the > latters. Isn't this the way PacBell works? When I was getting service from Illinois Bell in Chicago, there was a $35 charge to create a billing record in the telco computer, plus another $23 "line activation" charge (ie, throwing a switch on the computer). This was if you actually had a line in place, waiting to be turned on. If you needed a service visit, there was a flat $90 surcharge. My solution? Since this was in a University of Chicago dorm, I ran phone cables through the wall sockets and split the cost of a phone with my two neighbours. ------------------------------ From: asuvax!gtephx!bakerj@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Jon Baker) Subject: Re: Influencing PUCs Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, Arizona Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 15:01:04 GMT In article , john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: > amdunn@mongrel.UUCP (Andrew M. Dunn) writes: (in response to this from > me:) >> I have been following this out of the corner of my eye. What is this >> "third line cost" business? Why does it cost more to put in line three >> than line one or two? I called a USWorst service rep, about additional lines, and she said that it costs the same to put in line one, line two, line three, and so forth. Basic residential service is $19/month. Installation fee is $46. There is an additional first-time-only 'construction charge' of $75 to cover US Worst's costs of laying all the initial cable in the subdivision. It is NOT a charge to do any ADDITIONAL construction -- it is a charge for construction they have already done. Once I pay that $75 for a line, no one who ever occupies my house ever again will have to pay for it. Any additional construction, ditch-digging, cable-laying, house-wiring, etc, that is required is going to cost more, or you can do it yourself. >> Because the two-pair cable that carries lines one and two is installed >> at the time the house is built. > And in whose infinite wisdom was a TWO line cable deemed adequate for > your residence? Did you make that decision? Did telco? Did the > developer? If it was someone other than yourself, why do YOU have to > pay for someone else's lack of planning? Four-wire telephone cable is standard for new homes, at least out here. Most people don't have 16 residence lines in their house, John! It would be very, very rare to have more than two lines. >> Everybody is entitled to whatever they want. They are NOT entitled to >> expect the other subscribers to pay for it, if their usage exceeds the >> norm. If you PAY for a third line (ie. pay what it costs to get one >> put in you can HAVE one. I don't expect the subscriber base to subsidize my extra lines, but it's bullshit to make me pay for initial cable laying just because I'm the first guy to occupy this house. That should be amortized over the expected life of the line, and built into the standard residential rate. > Side note: Please, PLEASE do not feed me the PC "socially responsible" > bull about how residence is subsidized. First, I do not believe it. It was subsidized pre-divestiture, but I don't think it is any more. I think basic residential service pretty holds it's own these days. Especially at $20/month, $50 start-up, and $75 first-time hookup charge. > providing it). And give me a break: does USWest charge BUSINESSES a > cool grand to install a third line? I will bet that if they did, the > word "bypass" would start to figure heavily in many Southwestern > businesses' vocabulary. If they're going to charge me $1K+ for a third line, I might as well put in a T1 and multiplexer. J.Baker asuvax!gtephx!bakerj DISCLAIMER : I am not an official representative of US Worst, just a dissatisfied customer. ------------------------------ From: oberman@ptavv.llnl.gov Subject: Re: Is This Phone Legal? Date: 21 Jun 92 15:39:24 GMT In article , jerryp@key.amdahl.com (J. R. Pendleton) writes: > This thing was lime green and it looked like a standard desk set with > a thyroid problem. It had a big master padlock and a hand lettered > sign that said "Public Phone - 25 cents for 3 Minutes" In California the phone is NOT legal. The PUC has set a maximum charge for local calls of $.20 and mandates free access to 911 (no coin required). I don't recall the minimum time required, but it's over three minutes. While I'm not about to call the PUC on this, someone should let the owner know that it is in violation of CPUC regulations and that the fine ($1000?) would certainly blow away any profits! R. Kevin Oberman Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Internet: oberman1@llnl.gov (510) 422-6955 Disclaimer: Don't take this too seriously. I just like to improve my typing and probably don't really know anything useful about anything. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 18:15:07 -0700 From: Jeff Sicherman Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers Organization: Cal State Long Beach In article skaggs@nsslsun.nssl.uoknor. edu (Gary Skaggs) writes: > Jeff Sicherman's comment (tongue-in-cheek :-)) regarding SSNs and > implanted cellphones brought to the surface one of my pet peeves: nine > digit zip codes. > Number of nine digit zips : 1,000,000,000 > That's four zip codes for every man, woman, and child in the US. You > could have one for your home, one for your office, one for your > vacation home in the Ozarks, and one for your mistress' house :-). > Why then is my zip code only down to the route carrier level? Even though this is not comp.usps, a few points are in order. Carrier Route is not exactly the same as ZIP code. Without going into boring, excrutiating detail, the current ZIP coding takes delivery down to buildings, parts of buildings, apartments houses or parts thereof (depending upon number of units) or, for residential areas with houses or small business areas, a side of a street. The intent is to reduce the sorting burden on the mail-delivery-person who currently spends, on average, up to half of each work day sorting the mail before going out on the delivery route. The Postal Services goal is to get this down even further by having the current sorting machinery (which reads the postnet bar codes you will find on the bottom of envelopes) to sort down to the delivery point order so that the in-house preparation is reduced to about an hour or so. Anyway, to get to this point, mass mailers and others doing there own postnet coding (for rate incentives) will be expected, within the next few years, to encode an 11-digit POSTNET code. Note that the 11 digits will not be expected to be on the readable address, just the bar coding. In most cases, the last two digits will come from your street address or will default to 99 in cases where there is none. > My 73160-2135 just gets it into the carrier's bag. > I should be able to get mail addressed to 73160-2135 with nothing else > on it ... no name, no address, no city (listed as OKC not Moore for > zip purposes, grumble) but NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. That just goes to the > carrier's bag. What a waste! Let's raise the rates some more! I see, you want BIG UNCLE to know where you are at all times to get your mail to you ?? Actually, the elevn-digit code will pretty much do that but, as you see, it is an automation artifact, not a formal addressing mechanism as you propose. > [Moderator's Note: My unique one mprovement

lan code is > 60690-1570. Put just that on an envelope; it comes to my box. PAT] Carerful, PAT, there might be a few people out there who might like to send you some contraband material ... Jeff Sicherman ------------------------------ From: William.Degnan@mdf.FidoNet.Org (William Degnan) Date: 21 Jun 92 14:42:47 Subject: Re: C&P To Revoke Telephone Number Michael Harpe (meharp01@vlsi.ct.louisville.edu) writes to all: > Every time I have ordered telephone service from South Central Bell, > they have always told me my number when I ordered the service. No > disclaimer about it not being guaranteed at all was given. I would > think that if the telco's databases were worth a darn, they would be > able to guarantee that. After all, you're gonna use SOME number, why > not that one? With all the circuit orders I have issued on behalf of clients, I have only had one TN that wasn't the number that was preassigned. But "not guaranteed until in and working" is still a good admonition. The further ahead you reserve a number, the more time there is for somebody else to get it assigned to them. If you order all your company's printing to be done based on a number reservation, you get what you deserve. I normally suggest that we have the telco turn the number on -- even if it is only as an RCF before the order goes to the printer. When they are actually ready for the number it can be installed at their new premises. Much of the discussion is about a telco changing numbers long after they are installed. The general exchange tariff for your telco likely states that they own the numbers and that they can change them whenever they want. Just the same, I always cringe when I see that a major rehome is being done and that thousands of customers numbers are being changed. I would hope that they had exausted all other options first. It just isn't good customer relations. William Degnan, Communications Network Solutions Independent Consultants in Telecommunications and Technology- P.O. Drawer 9530 | wdegnan@mdf.fidonet.org | mfwic@mdf.fidonet.org Austin, TX 78766-9530 | !wdegnan@attmail.com | Voice +1 512 323 9383 Origin: Private Line - Stealth Opus in Austin (1:382/39.0) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #503 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa23011; 22 Jun 92 9:42 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA29652 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 22 Jun 1992 07:55:51 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA15595 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 22 Jun 1992 07:55:43 -0500 Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 07:55:43 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206221255.AA15595@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #504 TELECOM Digest Mon, 22 Jun 92 07:55:30 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 504 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Government and Corporate Sysops Monitoring Users and Email (Jim Warren) Joan Kennelly (was Jane Barbie) (Tony Harminc) AT&T Uses Manual Billing For Some Calls to San Francisco (John L. Shelton) Bell of PA Overtaxing the 'Burbs (Scott Green) Bell Canada Appeals Competition Ruling (David Leibold) Payphone Pornography Without the Price (David Leibold) Motorola Watch Pagers (Karl Bunch) Ameritech PCS (Monty Solomon) List of no Calling Card Surcharge Carriers Wanted (Paul Robinson) California CLASS Ruling on Call Trace Question (R. Kevin Oberman) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 17:46:26 PDT From: jwarren@autodesk.com (Jim Warren) Subject: Government and Corporate Sysops Monitoring Users and Email Last month, I gave a morning talk to an all-day meeting of an organization of systems administrators of mini-class, mostly-shared systems -- most of them employed by Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. Initially titled, "Dodging Pitfalls in the Electronic Frontier," by mutual agreement with the organizers, we re-titled it, "Government Impacts on Privacy and Security." However, it was the same talk. :-) It was based on information and perspectives aired during recent California Senate Judiciary privacy hearings, and those presented at the 1991 and 1992 conferences on Computers, Freedom & Privacy. (I organized and chaired the first CFP and co-authored its transcripts, available from the IEEE Computer Society Press, 714-821-8380, Order #2565.) The talk was long; the audience attentive; the questions and discussion extensive. The attendees were clearly and actively interested in the issues. At one point, I asked "How many have *NOT* been asked by their management or superiors to monitor their users and/or examine or monitor users' email." Only about 20% held up their hands -- even though I emphasized that I was phrasing the question in a way that those who would be proud to hold up their hands, could to do so. Jim Warren, jwarren@well.sf.ca.us -or- jwarren@autodesk.com [Moderator's Note: I present this as food for thought, and suggest that continued discussion with Mr. Warren continue in the comp. privacy forum or email. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 01:02:51 EDT From: Tony Harminc Subject: Joan Kennelly (was Jane Barbie) On Feb. 4th, 1991, the CBC Radio program "As It Happens" interviewed Joan Kennelly (my guess at spelling) of Oakland, California. Ms. Kennelly is the recorded voice of several services, including Northern Telecom Meridian Mail, Pacific Bell Message Centre, various supermarket checkout counter UPC readers, and "interstate calls in the eastern US". The interview is about ten minutes, and discusses what is special about her voice that makes it suitable for digitizing and editing. She gives a number of examples, including lessons to the interviewer on "smiling while you speak" and so on. She does sound familiar to me from somewhere. The interviewer (Michael Enright -- who is usually one of the best in the world) is a little out of form in this one, but it's still very interesting. The recording quality is excellent. Cassette tapes of the interview can be ordered from the CBC for about $20 (I forget the exact amount I paid, but it was less than $25). PLEASE NOTE: I cannot copy my tape for you. I signed a copyright agreement that prohibits other than personal use of the tape. Tapes can be ordered from: As it Happens Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio Current Affairs Dept. Box 500, Station 'A' Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6 Specify the date (Feb 4/91) and the interview title "Electronic Voice". The CBC will send you a copyright form which you sign and return with payment. I managed to do the first part over the phone, thus avoiding one mailing out of four. The number is +1 416 975-3311. As it Happens is heard across the country on CBC AM stations, overseas on Radio Canada International, and in the US on many NPR stations. I have no connection with the CBC or Ms. Kennelly. Tony H. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 06:09:59 -0700 From: jshelton@ads.com (John L. Shelton) Subject: AT&T Uses Manual Billing For Some Calls to San Francisco Yes, it's true. Last night I needed to page a co-worker, who has a San Francisco beeper rented from Pagenet. I was in NYC, and called using my AT&T calling card. Before AT&T even asked for my card number, I got a message that the number could not be reached as dialed, and the office code was "212T"; the call was being blocked in NYC. I had tried this earlier in the week and gotten the same message, but was in a hurry so didn't track it down. This time I had the time. Calls to his beeper worked just fine from the client's office earlier in the week, but I don't know what LD company they use. At least I knew that the number was valid, and that some LD companies can connect. Thinking that the hotel might have some special arrangement with AT&T, I bypassed their standard routing by using 1-800-CALL-ATT but this didn't work either. The nice voice asked me to dial the number twice, then told me to hang up and dial again. I tried twice. Finally, I called the operator, who informed me that she couldn't place the call on the AT&T network. She said the company owning the exchange was refusing calls from AT&T. To solve the problem, she called a Pac Bell operator, and had that operator complete the call. Both operators stayed on the line during the five second duration of the call (long enough for me to punch in my number). The AT&T operator told me I'd have to go through this ritual next time, and informed me that she would submit a manual (paper?) ticket for billing purposes. How many questions does this episode bring to mind? John ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 11:02:11 -0400 From: green@WILMA.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU Subject: Bell of PA Overtaxing the 'Burbs October 1 last year, the PA state legislature allowed the City of Philadelphia to collect an additional 1% sales tax on top of the state's 6%. In April, I happened to notice that I, a suburbanite just outside the city, was being charged this 1% local tax. My CSR down at Bell looked at my record and noticed immediately (these folks are *amazaing*) that neither my address nor exchange was not in Philadelphia. "No Problem," she said. "We'll change the coding and issue the refund." Case closed. Not. The following month (no credit, no change), a different CSR reached similar conclusions about my account. "Perhaps," he said, "the code change was entered too late to be reflected on the bill." That could be. It *was* only two weeks before my closing date that CSR 1 made the change. The computer can be awfully slow sometimes. As far as the credit for tax paid in error, "perhaps Accounting was backed up. You should definitely see it on the next bill." The next bill arrived with the credit. And the tax continuing to show up. CSR 3 had a couple of real good explanations for this one. "For the purposes of 911 emergency services, I (suburban exchange, zip, and fire and police services) was considered part of Philadelphia County. We are aware of the problem, but it is a very complicated computer system and takes time to reprogram." More than nine months? It was time to play the trump card. "P-U-C," I said. Well, he practically begged me to speak with his Customer Assurance people instead of the PUC. Since Bell was already aware of the problem, it really wouldn't help to bring them in, he explained. Well, after declining his offer to speak with others, he told me that he would vigorously pursue the problem, and has called back once to tell me that he was still working on it. The moral, of course, is Check Your Phone Bill[sm]. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, instead of the PUC, I've contacted the {Philadelphia Inquirer}, because they love utility-bashing, plus they've got the resources to track down other victims. scott ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 19:23:45 EDT From: David Leibold Subject: Bell Canada Appeals Competition Ruling Bell Canada has decided to fight portions of the historic CRTC decision that allows Unitel and BCRL/Call-Net to provide competing long distance networks, despite statements in {The Toronto Star} which suggest that Bell has retracted an earlier intention not to appeal any decision on the competition proposal. Bell maintains that it accepts competition in principle, but at issue are the terms under which the CRTC granted Unitel and BCRL the access. Bell claims it must subsidise local service with long distance revenues to the tune of 17c/minute while the CRTC decision only requires Unitel and BCRL to pay out 11c/min. Bell is also objecting to having to assume the large share of costs to install competitive access as per CRTC order. The appeal will likely delay competition in Canada; however, it appears unlikely that the fact of competition will be altered. More battles to come yet ... watch this Digest. dleibold@vm1.yorku.ca ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 92 19:35:20 EDT From: David Leibold Subject: Payphone Pornography Without the Price A Canadian Press despatch reported on payphones in the Ottawa area which allowed access to 976 numbers toll-free. The Bell Canada tariffs do not allow for 976 access from payphones, thus this situation would be a switch programming error somewhere along the way. The result was a flurry of free fone porn calls which started in late 1990. The situation came to light only when an Ottawa Citizen reporter advised Bell Canada. Of course, one would not expect the callers themselves to be hasty to report this find to the telco. Such cheap thrills were well-known in the high school community; one Grade 10 student remarked "It's perverted". Specifically, payphones in the west end of Ottawa and Nepean had the 976 bug. dleibold@vm1.yorku.ca ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 23:08:09 GMT From: karl@ttank.ttank.com (Karl Bunch) Subject: Motorola Watch Pagers Reply-To: !karl@ttank.ttank.com Organization: Think Tank Software, Norwalk, CA Anybody have experience with the "watch" pagers made by Motorola? I've been carrying a cell phone and pager for quite some time now. It seems the best solution for my needs. But, I am tired of having the pager on my belt. The local "paging" services have told me they've "had a lot of problems" with the watches. They claim they break down a lot and waste batteries like mad. The current pager I have eats batteries, so that's no big supprise. But, if they are prone to failure I certainly don't want to plop $350.00 down just to have it break on me. Are there other alternatives? Email to me and I'll summarize if there is enough interest. Thanks in advance, Karl Bunch UUCP: ..!uunet!cerritos.edu!ttank!karl Think Tank Software INTERNET: karl@ttank.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 06:09:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Ameritech PCS Ameritech Wednesday began an 18-month consumer test of a revolutionary portable phone that will allow users to make and receive phone calls using regular phone lines instead of a cellular phone network. The new system -- called personal communcations services, or PCS -- uses miniaturized cordless telephones that are connected to regular phone lines through a digital radio system. The phones can be used on the street, in shopping areas, business districts or residential areas as long as they are within range of small transmitting antennae. Antennae are being installed at intervals of around 200 yards throughout the downtown Chicago area and in selected suburban locations for the PCS test. The new phones must be used from within the designated areas, though calls can be made to anywhere. Initially, 200 people will take part in the PCS test. The number of participants will be expanded to 1,000 by the end of the year. Ameritech spokesman Steve Ford said in the first phase of the test PCS users will only be able to make outgoing calls. But he said users will be able to both make and receive calls by the end of the year. In an interim phase, PCS users will be able to receive pages on the portable phones and automatically return those calls. The PCS phones, made by suburban Schaumburg-based Motorola, have a feature that allows pages to be returned by simply pressing two buttons. Ameritech and Motorola estimate the phones eventually will be priced at less than $100, though they did not provide any estimate of initial pricing. PCS customers pay only for the calls they make, with the price of a local call approximating that of a public telephone call. Long-distance service will be provided by Sprint, and Bank Illinois will provide billing services. Unlike car phones, PCS units initially cannot be used while traveling because the technology is not yet able to pass calls between transmitters. Users must remain in the coverage area of the transmitter where the call initiated or the connection will be broken. But Ameritech said a feature allowing communcation "on the move" is expected to be available later in the trial. The key advantages of PCS are the high-quality sound, reduced power requirements and longer battery life, The phones are about as big as a deck of cards. Information gathered in the Ameritech test will be shared with the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC has granted Ameritech and more than 70 other firms experimental licenses for PCS systems, but has not yet determined who will be authorized to provide the services on a commercial basis. [Moderator's Note: Ameritech/IBT are certainly very progressive and technologically advanced telcos. I'm glad to be in their region. PAT] ------------------------------ Reply-To: TDarcos@MciMail.Com From: Paul Robinson, Contractor Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 06:34:48 EDT Subject: List of no Calling Card Surcharge Carriers Wanted I'd like to collect a list of telephone carriers that the users on here are currently using which operate using calling cards (their own or telephone company ones) that the carrier does not impose a surcharge for calls placed via a calling card, either credit or prepaid. And except for those that use predeposit calling cards (where you are pre- purchasing the value of calls on the card in advance, and even then the only charge should be for the amount of value purchased), there should be no special charges, i.e. no monthly minimums, and no extra charges imposed (if they require it, I'll accept a fee of 50c in any month that bills are mailed; if the carrier uses credit cards or predeposit, there should be no surcharge). I'll post (and E-Mail those who request) the list of carriers I get, if any. Please respond via E-Mail to TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM. What I am looking for are companies that either use an 1-800 number or (in rare cases) use the 950 exchange in most of the country; I am looking specifically for companies which can be accessed essentially anywhere in the U.S. (They may exclude calls made from Alaska and Hawaii). I know there is at least one company because I used to use one that did exactly this. While the usual rates for a telephone call by most carriers are within 1-2c a minute, the usual 75-85c surcharge for each call can make them unfeasable for short or non-business calls. Also, does anyone know how a carrier gets an 800 number for this purpose? One can't offer long distance calls at 12c a minute for night rates when 800 access lines run 15c a minute, now can they? Paul Robinson Opinion not necessarily anyone else's. ------------------------------ From: oberman@ptavv.llnl.gov Subject: California CLASS ruling on Call Trace question Date: 21 Jun 92 15:54:12 GMT News reports of the ruling have one feature that I'm unclear on, Call-Trace. I have two newspaper articles on the subject and one says that it will be available on all phones on switches supporting the new features at $10 per use. Another said that it would require a $5 activation fee and $5 per use. Anyone know which it is? I think, from a public safety perspective, that everyone should have this available. I want them to catch the caller after the FIRST call, not after the first call, a day to call in the request for service and N days getting it into the switch. R. Kevin Oberman Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Internet: oberman1@llnl.gov (510) 422-6955 Disclaimer: Don't take this too seriously. I just like to improve my typing and probably don't really know anything useful about anything. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #504 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa26766; 23 Jun 92 10:24 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA14294 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Tue, 23 Jun 1992 07:50:01 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA11869 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Tue, 23 Jun 1992 07:49:53 -0500 Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1992 07:49:53 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206231249.AA11869@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #505 TELECOM Digest Tue, 23 Jun 92 07:49:57 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 505 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Call For Help re: Denmark (Carl Wright) NTC Long Distance Telephone (Frank Keeney) Renaming CuD as comp.society.cu-digest (Usenet Group) (CUD Moderators) Phone Keypad Interfaces to Enhanced Telephone Services (Craig Hubley) Telephone Tone Control (Craig Hubley) New List: Cellular and Related Technologies Mailing List (Youngblood With NETel, is it an UPgrade or a DOWNgrade? (Scott Fybush) Strange Message on Answering Machine (Satish Pai) MCI Phone Bill (John Staub) CID/California (Steven H. Lichter) Batman Well Connected? (Dr. Ross Alan Stapleton) Messages Were Overflowing Again (TELECOM Moderator) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: wright@irie.ais.org (Carl Wright) Subject: Call For Help re: Denmark Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 16:15:43 EDT Organization: UMCC - Ann Arbor, MI USA I have an assignment involving phone calling from Denmark. I would like to contact six or more people in Denmark whom I can ask questions about making calls in Denmark. The answers will be obvious to people who use the Danish system. Please contact me via email or phone. Carl Wright Lynn-Arthur Associates, Inc. Internet: wright@ais.org 2350 Green Rd., #160 Voice: 1 313 995 5590 EST Ann Arbor, MI 48105 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 13:02 EDT Reply-To: frank@calcom.shecora.sai.com From: frank@calcom.shecora.sai.com (Frank Keeney) Subject: NTC Long Distance Telephone Announcement of new features with NTC long distance telephone service: * 6 second billing after the first 18 seconds. * No surcharge calling cards. * 800 inbound service as low as $5.00 per month, plus usage. * Daytime rates as low as $.1699 with usage greater than $350/mo. * No advance fee or monthly fees for Dial-1 service. Frank Keeney Internet: frank@calcom.shecora.sai.com Calcom Communications or PO Box 2912 frank.keeney@f745.n102.z1.fidonet.org Culver City, CA 90232 BBS (818) 791-8680 v.32bis ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 12:27 CDT From: Cu Digest (tk0jut2@mvs.cso.niu.edu) Subject: Renaming CuD as comp.society.cu-digest (Usenet Group) Chip Rosenthal has taken the initiative to propose that the Usenet version of Cu Digest (CuD) be changed from ALT.society.cu-digest to COMP.society.cu-digest. There are several reasons why the alt-to-comp shift would be useful. First, the number of Usenet sites carrying ALT groups seems to be decreasing, which reduces the availability of CuD. Changing to a COMP group would allow access for many more sites and readers. Second, expansion of readership would also expand the range of articles by broadening the pool of contributors. This should improve the quality of CuD by stimulating more feature-length articles especially from academic sites. CuD, which began at the suggestion and with the encouragement and help of Pat Townson, focuses on computer issues relevant to scholars, researchers, and the media in much the same way as other comp groups (EFF, Telecom Digest, RISKS) do. The primary difference is that we encourage articles (rather than short posts, although we try to include as many posts as space allows). Our primary interest is on the legal and cultural aspects of cyberspace, and we try to keep readers informed of relevant computer conferences, computer-related news, book reviews, and summaries of research on computer technology and culture. We appreciate the support we have received for re-naming, and we encourage readers to **VOTE IN SUPPORT** of the change in two weeks. Discussions and other relevant information on voting can be found on Usenet's news.groups, Jim Thomas / Gordon Meyer CuD co-editors ------------------------------ From: craig@world.std.com (Craig Hubley) Subject: Phone Keypad Interfaces to Enhanced Telephone Services Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 21:35:06 GMT Many new telephone-based services are being offered by the Baby Bells and their equivalents in other countries. All of these services are more or less the same (call forwarding, multiple numbers/rings on one line, call waiting, caller id, and now on-the-switch answering service) but I am trying to find out how much, if any, their user interfaces differ. That is, *70 seems to pretty universally suppress call waiting, but I don't know if the code to retrive messages from your answering service is the same everywhere, North-America-wide, or just across a single company's jurisdiction. Are there FCC standards for this, or CCITT standards? If there is a standard source for this information/standard I would like to hear about it. Please email me and I will repost results. Craig Hubley Craig Hubley & Associates craig@world.std.com - Boston 617-322-8574 (days only please) craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca - Toronto 416-969-2826 (24 hours) ------------------------------ From: craig@world.std.com (Craig Hubley) Subject: Telephone Tone Control Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 21:45:35 GMT I am trying to find sources of chips/schematics/electronics to translate telephone tones (and possibly also pulses) into specific control signals that can be used to control other electronics. It would be great if the device could be powered by the phone line itself (12 VDC?) and even better if it could step down to provide standard 5V or 3V control signals to other chips. All I want to do is to get the tones (and other activity on the phone line such as ringing or call waiting beeps) into a CPU. Anyone out there built an answering machine on a board? Pretty much any answering machine which responds to touch tones would incorporate a similar device, so I'm sure there are lots of such sources. I am willing to rip up old answering machines to find them if I know what I'm looking for, and also interested in commercial sources of complete programmable phone control systems. Even if you don't know of anything specific, names of periodicals and catalogs that publish/sell electronics useful in telephony would be very welcome. I will post back anything useful that I find but please email me so that I can collect the material in a sane way. Thanks, Craig Hubley Craig Hubley & Associates craig@world.std.com - Boston 617-322-8574 (days only please) craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca - Toronto 416-969-2826 (24 hours) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 21:00:53 CDT Reply-To: zeta@yngbld.gwinnett.com From: Gregory Youngblood Subject: New List: Cellular and Related Technologies Mailing List CELLULAR on Mail-Server@yngbld.gwinnett.com The CELLULAR list is for the discussion of cellular telephoney and technology. This also includes technologies relating to the cellular industry such as microwave, RF, telco and more. Subjects could range from topics dealing with marketing ideas, test equipment, phones preferred for different reasons, system and site engineering and just about anything that was related to cellular. All traffic will be archived and stored using the format CELLmmyy.ZIP. 'mm' will refer to the month, and 'yy' the year. These archives can be retrieved by sending a message to: Mail-Server@yngbld.gwinnett.com For help with the Mail-Server, put HELP in the message body. For an index to the files available, put INDEX in the message body. It is recommended that you send a HELP and INDEX request before attempting to retrieve files from the Mail-Server. To subscribe to the CELLULAR mailing list, send a message to: Mail-Server@yngbld.gwinnett.com In the body of the message put: SUBSCRIBE CELLULAR The default is NOECHOMAIL, which means when you send a message to be distributed, you will not receive an acknowledgement. If you want to get a response letting you know your message was received, put: ECHOMAIL CELLULAR in your subscription message as well. o send a message to the mailing list for distribution, send it to: CELLULAR@yngbld.gwinnett.com Owner: Gregory S. Youngblood zeta@yngbld.gwinnett.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 23:25 EDT From: Scott Fybush Subject: With NETel, is it an UPgrade or a DOWNgrade? You'd think that paying more for a higher grade of local service would mean adding more exchanges to one's flat-rate dialing area without losing any, right? Apparently not so in New England Tel. I moved within Waltham MA last month. At the old location, I had had Local Unmeasured service, about $12/mo plus the gouges for touchtone, "Local Access Fee," and what have you. This service is considered basic -- there is local measured for much less, but it's a lifeline sort of thing and no line in the same house can have a higher grade if one line has local measured -- and is what NETel pushes on undecided customers. With it, you get flat-rate calling to Waltham and about seven adjacent towns, along with Wayland and Natick, in the 508 area code. Waltham is on the outer fringe of what NETel calls "Metropolitan Boston." In "Metro," local unmeasured is just the adjacent towns or exchanges. In areas on the border of Metro, you thus get local service to the towns just outside Metro. So far so good. When I moved, I figured I'd upgrade service as part of the service order (otherwise there's a $15 charge to change service levels.) My bills for measured calls to non-adjacent Metro areas made a switch to the next level, Suburban service, economically wise. So I switched. Suburban service gives flat-rate calling to all of "Metro" except the Boston Central exchange, for about $19 a month plus the gouges. Here's where the problem starts. Remember how I could call Natick for free with the "basic" service? Turns out with the "enhanced" service, Natick becomes a "Zone 1" call, at 1 cent per call plus 1.6 cents per minute. And, wouldn't ya know it, my new net access is in Natick, so the 1.6 cents would have added up but fast. What else could I do? I called up my NETel service rep this morning and had her upgrade me to the NEXT higher service, "Metropolitan." For a whopping $25 a month plus the usual gouges, I'll now be able to call all of 617 except for seven exchanges way to the south, along with huge chunks of 508, including Natick. To her credit, the service rep was willing (in fact said she would have OFFERED) to waive the $15 upgrade fee (I wouldn't have upgraded anyway, since I'll have another service order in two months and could have lumped it in with that). To her discredit, she came back after a minute of really bad MOH to ask "What was your phone number again? I think I wrote it down wrong!" (pity the poor shmoe who jumps from local measured to Metropolitan because of the wrong entry :-) I think I should be annoyed at NETel. I've never heard of a tiered system in which the lowest and highest service tiers both get something that the middle one doesn't. Of course, it's also silly that I should be able to call free to Marshfield, some 40 miles from here, but not to my office in Lowell, less than half the distance. Anyone else have some Metropolitan Boston service oddities to share? Oh yeah, BTW, I'm also annoyed that there's no real way for me to verify that the service order has been carried through on a change like this, until the bill comes, and even then the calls aren't itemized. I'll just have to keep repeating to myself, "You could be served by GTE ... you could be served by GTE ... you could be served by GTE..." until I wake up grateful for even a simple dialtone. :-) Scott Fybush -- please reply to my NEW net access of: fybush@unixland.natick.ma.us which I can now dial up without incurring toll charges :-) ------------------------------ From: A. Satish Pai Subject: Strange Message on Answering Machine Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven CT 06520, USA Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 23:39:41 GMT This is something that's probably not a serious problem, but I'm curious to know the reasons for it. The setup I have at home is two phones and an answering machine on one plain telephone line. (Telco is SNET, 203-776 exchange.) Several times (about once in two weeks) I have had the following message recorded on my answering machine: " Please hang up and try your call again. This is a recording. Two-oh-three-two-one." I presume that this is some sort of automatic message generated by the telco's equipment. There were no calls attempted from the phones at the time the message must have got recorded (in fact, this seems to happen when no one is at home), so the part about hanging up and trying again makes no sense. There is no possibility that the phones were left off the hook, either. In any case, for a message to get recorded, it would seem that there was an incoming call, and not an outgoing one, so is the telco's equipment calling me erroneously, or are incoming calls being hijacked, or what? Other than this the phones and answering machine behave normally. Internet: Pai-Satish@CS.Yale.Edu A. Satish Pai UUCP: ...!{uunet,harvard,decvax,ucbvax}!yale!pai Bitnet: Pai@YaleCS +1 203 432 1217 [Off.] Mail: Box 2158, Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520 +1 203 776 7069 [Res.] [Moderator's Note: Someone calls and the phone rings. Just before your answering machine picks up, they disconnect, but too late to stop your machine from answering. Telco sees you have gone off hook, and sends dial tone, which plays through your outgoing message. After 15-25 seconds or so, you have not dialed a number -- your machine is still talking to no one with an outgoing message. Telco decides you are not going to place a call and must have left your phone off hook, or if you are going to call it is too late this time around, 'so please hang up and try your call again ... ' about the time telco starts urging you to 'hang up and try your call again', your answering machine outgoing message finishes and the machine starts recording what it hears on the line, namely the intercept telco has started playing. Had the hang-up caller stayed on the line even another few seconds to hear some of your outgoing message, your machine probably would have a recording of dial tone on it instead. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Staub Subject: MCI Phone Bill Date: 22 Jun 92 17:44:00 GMT Organization: NCR-FESC BETHLEHEM, PA. I received my phone bill on Saturday. There were $148 worth of phone card charges. I called MCI. They checked and told me that my local company had assigned my phone number to another person. MCI had then gived them a phone card. They were the ones that made the calls. They took the charges off the bill. Fine and dandy. I have had the number for 24 years. I am going to be checking my phone bill very closely from now on. I wonder HOW that could happen or *how many times * it could have happened in the past. JOHN STAUB Phone 215-264-5411 FESC Voice Plus 397-1000 2156 CITY LINE RD. Fax 215-264-9287 BETHLEHEM PA 18017 address john.staub@bethlehemPA ------------------------------ From: GLORIA.C.VALLE@gte.sprint.com Date: 22 Jun 92 13:29:00 UT Subject: CID/California There are a lot more costs than placing the equipment. Cost of taking the order (customer rep.), processing order, inputing the order to the switch, testing customers service. Each of these jobs has to be paid for since the PUC requires that no other service pay for another. This is in part because of the breakup and deregulation. What I state is not official GTCA policy which may differ, but I try to put correct information out. Steven H. Lichter GTCA COEI Mad Dog (Steven) Sysop: Apple Elite II -- an Ogg-Net BBS UUCP: steven@alchemy.UUCP (714) 359-5338 1200-2400 bps 8N1 ------------------------------ Subject: Batman Well Connected? From: stapleton@misvax.mis.arizona.edu (Dr. Ross Alan Stapleton) Date: 22 Jun 1992 06:46 MST Organization: University of Arizona MIS Department I just saw "Batman Returns" over the weekend, and am almost positive I saw the following: there are several scenes in the Batcave, with various high-techy devices arrayed around ... in one, Batman is standing in front of some telecom-looking equipment, and one of the many lighted red buttons on the panel reads "AUTOVON" ... Ross ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 08:04:26 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Subject: Messages Were Overflowing Again I am always gratified by the tremendous amount of traffic in this group and the large number of replies received on the topics presented. But as in the past, sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. 450 messages offering replies to various topics; seminar and convention notices; requests for area code listings; and a raft of other messages were dumped from the queue Monday morning. Yes, I know two weeks ago I put out ten issues of the Digest over the weekend to select 100+ of the articles waiting, but I cannot produce at that rate all the time, nor do I think anyone really wants to read *that much*. So the queue is 'zeroed out' ... what you received Sunday or Monday thus far is what was used. Let's close out all the old topics and start fresh. Thanks. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #505 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa19527; 24 Jun 92 3:36 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA11410 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Wed, 24 Jun 1992 01:27:17 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA00822 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Wed, 24 Jun 1992 01:27:08 -0500 Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 01:27:08 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206240627.AA00822@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #506 TELECOM Digest Wed, 24 Jun 92 01:27:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 506 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Need Used Voice Frequency Repeaters (Toby Nixon) US West Embarrassed in Moscow (Ken Jongsma) Two Year Sentence For 900 Fraud (Jack Winslade) Telephone Connection to Yugoslavia? (Radivoje Zonjic) Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Barry Mishkind) Z-Modem, Y-Modem Under the SunOS (Nayel Shafei) Database For Phone Bills (Carl Moore) FREE Broadband Equipment!! (Todd Tannenbaum) In-State Regulations For COCOTs (Andy Rabagliati) NZ Telecom Security "Lose" Phone Logs in Court Case (Pat Cain) Where to Buy Special Gadgets, One-of? (Dave Mitton) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Toby Nixon Subject: Need Used Voice Frequency Repeaters Date: 23 Jun 92 18:18:22 GMT Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA I am on the board of directors of a non-profit educational foundation (501 (c)(3) -- all contributions tax deductible) which gives seminars and distributes information on free-market principles. This group operates a teleconferencing bridge to make it easy to have meetings between members of the board, presidents of local chapters, etc. The phone lines coming into this bridge are currently amplified by Lear-Siegler VFR-7608 (Issue 2) two-wire to two-wire Electronic Voice Frequency Repeaters. Unfortunately, many of these VFR-7608's have burned out, greatly reducing the number of conferencing circuits available. We've finally diagnosed the problem as not enough capacity in the power supply at startup (these things draw only 60 milliamps normally, but one amp when they start after a power failure). Because the digital components are damaged, we've found that repairing them is not feasible; it would cost more to repair them than to buy new ones. All of the VFR-7608's we now have were donated surplus from various telephone companies, and before we invest in new ones (at something like $200/each), I thought I'd post here and ask if anyone out there might be aware of a source for used voice frequency repeaters like the VFR-7608. Our understanding is that the VFR-7610 (Issue 1) would also work, and that there are other similar boards that we could also use (R-TEC VFR-5050, WESCOM 7306-32, etc.). We'd like something that is adaptive or that can be fairly easily balanced and tuned to the circuit (none of us have a great deal of expertise; the VFR-7608's are fully adaptive digital devices). Like I said, a donation of these boards would be fully tax deductible; we'd also be willing to pay a reasonable amount, and of course we'd pay shipping. If you have some of these laying around as surplus, or know of any potential sources, would you please reply by email? Thanks very much in advance. Toby Nixon, Principal Engineer | Voice +1-404-840-9200 Telex 401243420 Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. | Fax +1-404-447-0178 CIS 70271,404 P.O. Box 105203 | BBS +1-404-446-6336 AT&T !tnixon Atlanta, Georgia 30348 | UUCP uunet!hayes!tnixon Fido 1:114/15 USA | Internet tnixon@hayes.com ------------------------------ From: jongsma@esseye.si.com (Ken Jongsma) Subject: US West Embarrassed in Moscow Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 21:03:12 EDT For the second time in the past few weeks, an RBOC has been hammered by {Forbes} magazine for messing around in business other than local service. Some excerpts from an article in the current issue: [begin] _Pick Russian business partners with care. US West didn't, and is about to have its lunch eaten by tiny Plexsys Corp._ One overriding lesson emerging from the frenzy of American dealmaking in the former Soviet Union: Wisely choosing a Russian partner matters more than anything else. US West, the Denver based Bell telephone holding company, forgot this when it got into the Russian cellular telephone market. And, boy, is it embarrassed now. Back in 1988 former Senator Gary Hart introduced US West to some Soviet telecommunications officials. Since then US West has managed to set up the first two cellular phone systems in Russia. Its Moscow system, which became commercial in April, now has 400 subscribers; there are 300 customers on the eight month old St. Petersburg system. But US West just got a nasty surprise. This month privately held Plexsys Corp., based in Naperville, Ill., will turn on its own cellular system in Moscow. Plexsys' system immediately makes US West's project obsolete. How come? US West's license restricts it to what has become an old fashioned cellular frequency, 450MHz, where interference can be a big problem and the number of calls that can be made at one time is limited. [I wonder if they are describing an IMTS system? - Ken] The Plxsys system uses the 800MHz band, the same as in the US, and there the technology is much more advanced. [...End] Wouldn't it be nice if someone said, "That's enough! Sell off all non- regulated activities and concentrate on being a utility." and all the money that they are wasting on these fiascos could be put towards improving the local telephonic infrastructure? Ken Jongsma ken@wybbs.mi.org Smiths Industries jongsma@benzie.si.com Grand Rapids, Michigan 73115.1041@compuserve.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 20:40:32 CST From: Jack.Winslade@ivgate.omahug.org (Jack Winslade) Subject: Two Year Sentence For 900 Fraud Reply-to: jsw@drbbs.omahug.org Organization: DRBBS Technical BBS, Omaha [JSW note: This is a followup to two items I sent to the Digest.] Excerpted from an article in the {Omaha World-Herald} by David Thompson, WS staff writer. 'Omahan Gets 2 Years in Phone Fraud' Ellis B. Goodman was sentenced Tuesday to two years in prison and was fined the maximum of $50,000 for a conviction arising from the use of a 900-toll telephone number in which callers were defrauded. The business that Goodman headed, Bedford Direct Mail Service, Inc., was fined $750,000 by Chief U.S. District Judge Lyle Strom. Postal inspectors said the case was one of the first nationally in which a conviction was obtained for abuse of a 900-toll number. Bedford sent 'Phone/Mail-a-grams' to thousands of people telling them they were eligible to win two prizes, one cash and another a discount shopping spree. When recipients phoned the 900-number, they heard a recorded message that they had won a prize, the shopping spree from a catalog that Bedford would send. During the sentencing hearing Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellyn Grant told the judge that Goodman, a successful promoter, was walking a fine line between good promotion and fraud. 'Here, your honor, he crossed that line.' ... [Goodman's attorney] Wyrsch said that at the time of the Bedford promotion, there was uncertainty about regulations for 900-number promotions and that it was only after the promotion had started that the FCC issued guidelines. Strom said that the basis for the conviction was a scheme to defraud. ... Strom ordered Goodman to report July 27 to a prison designated by the U.S. Bureau of prisons. The judge said he would recommend the Federal Prison Camp at Yankton SD. Good day. JSW ------------------------------ From: plains!zonjic@uunet.UU.NET (Radivoje Zonjic (CE)) Subject: Telephone Connection to Yugoslavia? Date: 24 Jun 92 04:58:29 GMT Organization: North Dakota State University, Fargo There has been no way to reach Yugoslavia today by phone. In fact, I've tried only Serbia. Given that Mr. James Baker today introduced new sanctions to be imposed on Serbia and Montenegro, I'm just wondering if there's a possibility that this kind of cutoff is in fact, of a political meaning? I've also tried numbers in two former YU republics (Croatia and Slovenia) who have the same country code, and everything was O.K. Rade Zonjic, Grand Forks, ND ------------------------------ From: barry@coyote.datalog.com (Barry Mishkind) Subject: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Organization: Datalog Consulting, Tucson, AZ Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 04:52:51 GMT From the {Tucson Citizen}, 6/23/92: The Tucson area's 911 line was snarled yesterday when callers trying to get tickets to a concert overload the local telephone system, a US West spokeswoman said. Louise Rebholz, community relations manager for the phone company, said jammed lines resulted in some calls not being routed to 911. In some instances, people trying to reach the police and emergency line got a busy signal or a recorded message instead of 911 operators, she said. It was not known whether some callers failed to receive help in emergencies because of the problem. The problems occurredduring a two hour span beginning at 10 AM as fans tried to buy tickets by telephone to a July 26 Tucson concert by Garth Brooks. Between 10 and 11 AM alone, US West handled 192,000 calls in the Tucson area. Normally, it handles 70,000 calls during that hour on Mondays, officials said. ----------------- And not an apology in the house! Of course, _not one_ employee of US Worst saw this coming, nor told a supervisor about it, nor cared: "We don't have to care, we're the phone company." I can verify that for over an hour I couldn't even get a number in my own exchange (on the far east side of the city), much less across town. It shut down my access to the Internet (oh, my!) and was downright annoying for those of us trying to conduct business. Barry Mishkind barry@coyote.datalog.com FidoNet 1:300/11.3 [Moderator's Note: Come now, do you *really* think US West or any telco relishes these situations and ignores them 'because they are the phone company'? And had telco known in advance (did any of the concert promoters advise telco of the times, etc?), what in your estimation might telco have done about it, other than possibly block off access from certain exchanges when traffic was heavy? PAT] ------------------------------ From: shafei@cvbnet.prime.COM (Nayel Shafei x6268) Subject: Z-Modem, Y-Modem Under the SunOS Date: 23 Jun 92 19:18:49 GMT Organization: Computervision, A Prime Computer Company, Bedford, MA, USA Where can I find a version of Z-modem, Y-modem, or similar comm protocols to run on a SPARC2? Nayel Shafei Computervision 14 Crosby Dr., MS. 5-21 Bedford, MA 01730 W. (617)275-1800x6268 Fax (617)275-6157 shafei@cvbnet.prime.com shafei@zurich.ai.mit.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 14:45:48 EDT From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) Subject: Database For Phone Bills I recently had some calls to area 809 on my phone bill. I saw some differences in the display of prefixes for such areas between the MCI and AT&T parts of the bill. Via MCI, I saw only the country name, with the 10-digit number (809+7D) crunched together. Example: "BAHAMAS". But via AT&T, I got the city name, the country abbreviation, and the phone number displayed with the usual embedded blanks (809 xxx xxxx); example for city: NASSAU, BA. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 10:15:01 cdt Subject: FREE Broadband Equipment Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering From: tannenba@engr.wisc.edu (Todd Tannenbaum) We have several pieces of Sytek broadband communication electronics that we would be willing to GIVE AWAY. These are broadband coaxial cable to RS-232 boxes. They come in a two, eight and 32 port versions. The 32 port unit has two port cards that plug in. You may pick them up or pay for shipping. If intrested contact: Kenneth Bartz Computer Aided Engineering Center Network/Hardware Program Manager Internet address: bartz@engr.wisc.edu Phone: (608) 263-7674 Todd Tannenbaum, Network Manager | e-mail: tannenba@engr.wisc.edu Computer Aided Engineering Center | Voice Ph: (608) 262-3118 University of Wisconsin-Madison | Fax Ph: (608) 262-6707 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 00:25:06 -0400 From: wizzy!andyr@uunet.UU.NET (Andy Rabagliati) Subject: In-State Regulations For COCOTs Reply-To: wizzy!andyr@uunet.UU.NET David Lesher asks: > Do the FCC rules on COCOTS cover DA? When I lived in Colorado, I had occasion to question the PUC on COCOTs. I tried to use the COCOT for DA a year ago. Southern Colorado Communications, I remember. I paid, it swallowed my money and gave me dialtone again. The PUC said that operators in Colorado have practically no regulations. They were not even required by state law to provide free 911 -- I didn't try it. They suggested I contact the local police department to see if they had regulations. The FCC have teeth, but they were very clear that they ONLY regulate inter-state traffic. If I remember rightly, DA was not covered. Cheers, Andy Rabagliati | W.Z.I. RR1 Box 33, Wyalusing PA 18853 | (717)746-7780 ------------------------------ Subject: NZ Telecom Security "Lose" Phone lLgs in Court Case From: Pat Cain Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 23:39:31 +1300 Organization: thesidewaysmachine, WCC City Net, Wellington, New Zealand Here's an unusual item from Auckland, New Zealand ... Summary: For the first time in NZ history: a case against a woman charged with *plotting* to murder her former lover. The lawyer representing the woman summoned phone call logs from Telecom NZ (owned by Ameritech and Bell Atlantic). The department which looks after these is run by five ex-cops and instead of producing those logs they went and told the woman's ex-lover about the request and their particular dislike for the lawyer. The records covering the two hour period requested have mysteriously disappeared. The lawyer is calling for a government inquiry into the matter. Paraphrased from {The Dominion} 22 June 1992: A defence lawyer in a murder plot case is seeking a government inquiry into what he claims is deliberately lost or destroyed computer phone call logs relating to a critical two-hour period. The lawyer, Christopher Harder, claims Telecom's Auckland security division, run by five former police officers, was like a "second-class, unofficial police force whose actions were dictated by their attitude to the individual they were dealing with". Harder claims the Telecom security staff interfered with the data because they disliked him. In the case, Harder is representing a North Shore (Auckland) woman, aged 47, charged with counselling to murder her former lover -- the father of her two children -- after a bitter custody battle. It is believed to be the first time such a charge has been brought in New Zealand. Harder summonsed Telecom employee Christopher Martin, an ex-policeman, to produce Telecom records of the calls the complainant made and received. Martin said in court that he had told the complainant, the alleged target of the murder plot, that Harder was inquiring about his telephone records. He said he had contacted the complainant because he felt like it and he had a negative attitude toward Harder as a result of having being a policeman. The complainant claimed to have been visited by a Telecom official and told about Harder requesting the records and also that all of Telecom's security staff had a similar dislike for Harder. In the meantime Harder is refusing to pay a $13,000 Telecom bill for time spent using the company's billing computer, because he says Telecom has not fully compiled with the requirement of the summons. He said he would ask Communications Minister Maurice Williamson to hold a commission of inquiry into the activities of Telecom's Auckland security section. Telecom spokesman Chris Galloway refused comment saying it was not company policy to discuss matters that were sub judice. Pat Cain, PO Box 2060, Wellington, New Zealand. pat@sideways.welly.gen.nz ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 06:40:38 PDT From: NaC Token Ring Program Subject: Where to Buy Special Gadgets, One-of? I'm looking to buy one RJ31-X jack for a home security alarm system. This jack hooks the alarm in series to the circuit, if the connector is engaged. (it even has some spare contacts to sense this, if you care) This information is from the alarm installer's manual. The local AT&T store gave me the national number. The national AT&T 800 number said they don't stock it. Where can I easily get one of these? (Other than paying an installer.) Dave Mitton (In the greater Boston area) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #506 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa20023; 24 Jun 92 3:56 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA00510 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Wed, 24 Jun 1992 02:12:55 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA03499 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Wed, 24 Jun 1992 02:12:47 -0500 Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 02:12:47 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206240712.AA03499@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #507 TELECOM Digest Wed, 24 Jun 92 02:12:50 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 507 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Connect Voice Mail/Centrex to Suns? (Joan Eslinger) AT&T USADirect and Calling Card (Kauto Huopio) Pay Phones in San Francisco (John Higdon) Ameritech/IBT (Bill Nickless) AT&T and Area Codes 706/404 (Monty Solomon) Questions About Boxes (Golando Gathings) Computer Aided Dispatching (Gilbert Amine) Who Makes Inverse Multiplexers? (apollo@buengc.bu.edu) Pennsylvania Local Phone Call Costs (Andy Rabagliati) Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (Paul S. Sawyer) Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (Laurence Chiu) Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (cavallarom@cpva.saic.com) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Robert L. McMillin) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Gregory M. Paris) Re: Bell of PA Overtaxing the 'Burbs (Dave Niebuhr) Re: Antitrust Reform Act of 1992 (HR 5096) (Carl Moore) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: wombat@key.amdahl.com (Joan Eslinger) Subject: Connect Voice Mail/Centrex to Suns? Date: 23 Jun 92 19:26:37 GMT Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Advanced Systems, Fremont CA I'm trying to find out if there's a way to connect our phone system and/or voice mail into one of our servers. I'm not even certain what needs to be connected to what, but here's the scenario. We recently chucked our old phone system and went to a Centrex ISDN system. We also have Octel Aspen voice mail. The new phone system came with a choice of two telephones, one with no ISDN (and apparently for that reason no message light) ability and a more expensive ISDN phone. So a few people got ISDN phones and most people didn't. Now, to find out if you have messages, most people have to pick up the handset to listen for a special dialtone, kind of annoying and inconvenient. What I wonder is if there is some kind of board we could stick into one of our Sun SPARC servers that would interface with the phone system, letting people run some kind of daemon process on their workstations to notify them of voice mail messages (or even play them back through /dev/audio). Does such a thing exist? Joan Eslinger / wombat@key.amdahl.com ------------------------------ From: Kauto.Huopio@lut.fi (Kauto Huopio) Subject: AT&T USADirect and Calling Card Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 19:44:31 GMT Organization: Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland Is there an FTP site containing ALL rates using AT&T USA Direct with AT&T card from around the world? It seems to be ratder difficult to get full and accurate rates for a person like me (living in Finland). Now, does anyone know rates to/from Finland from/to USA using USA Direct and calling card? Kauto Huopio (huopio@kannel.lut.fi) Mail: Kauto Huopio, Punkkerikatu 1 A 10, SF-53850 Lappeenranta,Finland ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 14:38 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Pay Phones in San Francisco Unfortunately, yesterday's {Chronicle} has already hit the bird cage so this is all from memory. It was reported that San Francisco city officials are upset at the proliferation of private pay phones. Welcome news, you think? Not exactly. The concern is not over the tariff non-compliance, rip-off rates, poor quality of service, or any of the other COCOT topics mentioned at length on this forum. What the city fathers are concerned about is making sure that San Francisco gets its cut of the action. They are concerned that these one-armed bandits are actually operating on city property (pole, sides of buildings, etc.) and the owners are not paying for the privlege. "If phones are going to be in the public way, the taxpayer should reap a benefit," (or words to that effect) said some city official. In other words, apparently, public phones are considered a nuisance rather than a convenience. If the public is going to have to endure them, there might as well be money flowing into the leaky public coffers. You have to understand that businesses of every description are lining up to leave San Francisco. The city has a hefty payroll tax, a receipts tax, regulations that you would not believe, no place to park, and virtually every other disincentive to conduct business that you could imagine. I once had an office in Pacific Heights and I swear that I will never again have a San Francisco address for a business. Now the city is greedily looking over the matter of enforcing its "pay phone permits". The city claims that it wants, for aesthetic reason, to control the proliferation of phones. An example is the fact that there are seven phones on Mission Street between 18th and 19th. But of course the real concern is collecting the $50 a month from each phone (or 20% of the gross, whichever is greater). The estimates are that the city would collect more than $25,000 monthly. Maybe we could come up with some more people who could get a cut of the action. Perhaps the cost of a coin-paid local call should be raised to a buck so everyone can reap a reasonable reward. I would be very happy if the city was really interested in quality and wanted to exercise control over what is frequently an inferior product. But just having another hand in the till is something we can all well do without. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ From: nickless@antares.mcs.anl.gov (Bill Nickless) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 01:03:06 -0500 Subject: Ameritech/IBT > [Moderator's Note: Ameritech/IBT are certainly very progressive and > technologically advanced telcos. I'm glad to be in their region. PAT] ... until you want things like ISDN. Ameritech/IBT seems to be among the slowest to offer data services to the home. I am under the impression that they're behind some un-named California telcos. Bill Nickless System Support Group +1 708 252 7390 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 02:02:13 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T and Area Codes 706/404 AT&T ran the following ad in the 7/23/92 {Boston Globe}: Notice to AT&T Customers in Massachusetts: Due to increased usage, Bell Communications Research, Inc., the administrator of the North American Number Plan, implemented the 706 area code on May 3, 1991. At that time, customers were able to place calls using either the new 706 or the existing 404 area code. On August 3, 1992, this period of permissive dialing will end. Therefore, AT&T is making changes in its tariff FCC #2, which may result in a change of service area and charges per area for calls between Massachusetts area code 617 and the 404 area code, for AT&T 800 READYLINE, AT&T 800 MasterLine, AT&T MEGACOM 800 and AT&T Gold Service (Egress Arrangements-Switched, Dedicated and Nodal). For more information, customers may call their AT&T Account Executive or 1 800 222 0400. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 12:45:51 -0400 From: gathings@cs.utk.edu Subject: Questions About Boxes I would like to know that the following boxes are and their functions in the networking world: DSU /CSU units statistical multiplexers routers gateways bridges Please reply via email. golando ------------------------------ From: Gilbert Amine (gamine@mcimail.com) Subject: Computer Aided Dispatching Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 17:52 GMT A friend of mine is putting together a digital radio-based computer-aided dispatching system, and is looking for a source of information or a consulting engineering resource in the area of RF networking/polling/GPS. I would appreciate any information or referrals on this subject. Please address responses to gamine@mcimail. com, and I will summarize and post responses on the telecom user group. Regards, Gilbert Amine Rochelle Communications, Inc. Austin, Texas ------------------------------ From: apollo@buengc.bu.edu Subject: Who Makes Inverse Multiplexers? Date: 23 Jun 92 18:15:51 GMT Organization: College of Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA As the subject line says ... Basically, I need something which will take a fixed speed dedicated line and add on additional switched 56/64 as we need additional thruput. -It must be able to handle up to a full T1. -The addition of switched circuits must be under manual control (some serial port?) -Automatically dial switched circuits if the dedicated line is lost. What is out there and has anyone worked with them? What kind of interfaces can I expect (V.35, ethernet, RS-422)? Doug apollo@buengc.bu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 00:46:15 -0400 From: wizzy!andyr@uunet.UU.NET (Andy Rabagliati) Subject: Pennsylvania Local Phone Call Costs Reply-To: wizzy!andyr@uunet.UU.NET I am priviliged to be served by Commonwealth Telephone, a quaint little operation in Northern PA. When I asked for a rate chart for calling within PA but outside their LATA (i.e. most of the 717 area code) they seem totally unable to provide one. Within their LATA, they can price a call, given the two exchanges, but I wanted a chart. They referred me to my LD carrier (AT&T), for outside the LATA, who after checking, told me they did not provide service between the two points. When I pointed out that calls appeared on my bill billed by them, not Comm. Tel., they explained that they do not have access to Comm. Tel's computers. They apparently mail them a tape, from which Comm. Tel does the billing. They did seem suprised, though, that the calls were appearing on their section of the bill. What really annoys me, though, is that local calls to Williamsport, maybe 40 miles away IN THE SAME LATA, are more expensive than calling California on my Reach Out America plan. And the most expensive place in America to call is Scranton, two hours drive away, billed by AT&T but not subject to any of my plans. So, -- can anyone give me a newsfeed? The AT&T rep (very helpful) blamed the lack of de-regulation of in-state calls (pardon the double negative). Will this ever change ? Cheers, Andy Rabagliati | W.Z.I. RR1 Box 33, Wyalusing PA 18853 | (717)746-7780 ------------------------------ From: paul@unhtel.unh.edu (Paul S. Sawyer) Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Organization: UNH Telecommunications and Network Services, Durham, NH Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 13:50:32 GMT In article jiro@shaman.com (Jiro Nakamura) writes: > In article cavallarom@cpva.saic.com > writes: >> Pacific Telephone no longer charges for DTMF service. It is universal >> in this area. > They most probably raised the rates across the board as well, to > "compensate" for the "lack of revenue." > NYNEX does charge for DTMF ... NYNEX (New England Telephone) recently stopped charging N.H. TouchTone customers more than pulse ... but as you note, we now ALL pay more! Paul S. Sawyer - University of New Hampshire CIS - paul@unhtel.unh.edu Telecommunications and Network Services - VOX: +1 603 862 3262 Durham, New Hampshire 03824-3523 - FAX: +1 603 862 2030 ------------------------------ From: lchiu@animal.gcs.co.nz (Laurence Chiu) Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Organization: GCS Limited, Wellington, New Zealand Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 22:45:18 GMT In article hourglas!erikr@wisdom. bubble.org (Erik Rauch) writes: > I've been reading about phone companies that charge for some kind of > 'intercom' service. In my area under Bell Atlantic, this service is > offered for free -- but Bell, of course, doesn't talk about it. It has > been in existence for about eight years; it involves dialling a > special 55x prefix and then the last four digits of your phone number > (the x in 55x varies as your exchange.) > Of course, you have to put up with a tone while you talk. But a useful > service nonetheless. Well in New Zealand where, although two Bell's now own the Phone Company, the existing policies still prevail, we can have this intercom service for free also. And there is no annoying dial tone. When I want to talk to my wife in the kitchen upstairs when I am sitting on my PC downstairs, rather than shout or hike up the stairs, I just call the number here which causes your phone to ring. But here once you pick up the phone, there is no dial tone, and two parties can talk. So I let it ring, let her pick it up and then flick the hook on switch on my speakerphone. Certainly beats installing an intercom in the house! Laurence Chiu ------------------------------ From: CAVALLAROM@CPVA.SAIC.COM Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Date: 22 Jun 92 13:19:11 PST Organization: Science Applications Int'l Corp./San Diego In article , jiro@shaman.com (Jiro Nakamura) writes: > In article cavallarom@cpva.saic.com > writes: >> Pacific Telephone no longer charges for DTMF service. It is universal >> in this area. > They most probably raised the rates across the board as well, to > "compensate" for the "lack of revenue." > NYNEX does charge for DTMF ... Sorry, but NO they did not raise rates for this. It was just a matter of aggressive placement of new digital COs, and a policy set by CPUC some ten years ago that they provide DTMF service FREE when a certain percentage of COs went digital. I think the threshold was 96%. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 06:50:23 -0700 From: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Responding to a message from Robert S. Helfman , our Moderator writes: > Jane Barbie was also the female voice heard on the voice-overs for > WWVH (the Hawaiian version of WWV). > [Moderator's Note: Her voice was also used for Time of Day here in > Chicago for many years (312-CAThedral-8000). She had recorded the > phrase 'at the signal, the time will be' and the digits which were > then patched together as appropriate. PAT] Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape loops all run by some kind of switch. Robert L. McMillin | Voice: (310) 568-3555 Hughes Aircraft/Hughes Training, Inc. | Fax: (310) 568-3574 Los Angeles, CA | Internet: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com [Moderator's Note: Very good point. Can anyone comment on how the time of day was handled *after* they quit using live people speaking it but *before* it went digital? PAT] ------------------------------ From: paris@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com (Gregory M. Paris) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: Motorola Codex, Canton, Massachusetts Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 17:19:17 GMT I don't know if it was Jane or not, but in Flint, Michigan where I grew up, the time was available at (313) 234-1212 and the message was "at the tone the time will be" (not "signal"). Hey, I just called the number now and it's still working. It said, "Good afternoon" -- something it didn't used to do -- but the voice is still the same one I remember ... Greg Paris Motorola Codex, 20 Cabot Blvd C1-30, Mansfield, MA 02048-1193 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 11:17:05 EDT From: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (Dave Niebuhr) Subject: Re: Bell of PA Overtaxing the 'Burbs In green@WILMA.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU writes: [... text about billing for extra tax in Philadelphia by Bell of PA deleted ...] > The moral, of course, is Check Your Phone Bill[sm]. We'll see what > happens. In the meantime, instead of the PUC, I've contacted the > {Philadelphia Inquirer}, because they love utility-bashing, plus > they've got the resources to track down other victims. This is similar to the same problem I'm having with NYTel except it concerns an overcharge for calls to one exchange from a group of others. The telco's are afraid of the PUCs/PSCs and certainly don't like it when complaints are lodged against them. I know my telco was upset that I went to the NY PSC. I agree, it is one big big run-around that the telcos give and it looks like they have a standard answer: "We're working on it." I guess I'll bring out the next *big gun* in New York, the Consumer Protection Board whose head is not exactly on friendly terms with any utility. Dave Niebuhr Internet: niebuhr@bnl.gov / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973 (516)-282-3093 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 11:29:36 EDT From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) Subject: Re: Antitrust Reform Act of 1992 (HR 5096) It's OK to display 800-54-PRIVACY as opposed to 800-54-PRIVA, because the equipment ignores the extra numbers. But if you don't dial the extra numbers in the first place, you're still OK. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #507 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa22541; 24 Jun 92 5:33 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA26026 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Wed, 24 Jun 1992 02:40:16 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA04733 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Wed, 24 Jun 1992 02:40:07 -0500 Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 02:40:07 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206240740.AA04733@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #508 TELECOM Digest Wed, 24 Jun 92 02:40:10 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 508 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Longest Phonecall (Jack Winslade) Re: Longest Phonecall (Hoyt A. Stearns Jr.) Re: Longest Phonecall (Lawrence V. Cipriani) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Phil Howard ) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Mark W. Schumann) Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection (Justin Leavens) Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection (Scott Colbath) Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior: Summary (Jon Sreekanth) The Quintessence of Quiescence (Jeffrey Jonas) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 11:09:34 CST From: Jack.Winslade@ivgate.omahug.org (Jack Winslade) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Reply-To: jack.winslade%drbbs@ivgate.omahug.org Organization: DRBBS Technical BBS, Omaha In a message dated 21-JUN-92, Brent Whitlock writes: >> Speaking of phone calls, I remember hearing a story once about a girl >> who went to Paris for the summer, while her boyfriend went to Hawaii. >> They were going to miss each other so much they had to talk often, but >> they couldn't afford a hefty phone bill. So what they did was to leave >> the phone off the hook at both ends for the entire month of July. They >> would talk, make arrangements for what time they'd come back, and talk >> some more. When the phone bill eventually arrived, it was for a couple >> thousand dollars, and the girl took it to the phone company and complained >> that this COULDN'T be right, and they decided it was a computer glitch >> and deleted it. >> It was told to me as a FOAF, has anybody heard anything similar? Back in the 1970's, there was some speculation by phone 'enthusiasts' that if a call was established and not terminated for quite some time, the 'system' (this was in the days of THE system) would forget about it and no billing record would be generated. I don't know anyone who tried it. A twist on this was that if the service was disconnected before the call was terminated, no billing record would be generated. I am aware of a number of cases where mailer software on both ends of a connection has failed to disconnect and the connection remained up (with Ma's meter running) for many hours until somebody realized what was going on and killed it. About two years ago this happened to one of our machines which was using a PC Pursuit (Sprintnet) connection between Omaha and Denver. It normally would have been no big deal, but it made the call penetrate the prime-time barrier, thus making the entire call billed as a prime-time call. (Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense. ;-) If I remember, it was something like $12.00 or so. We had a similar case shortly after where a system in Houston called us. Ours shut down after the session, but his end remained up and for some reason he was billed for several hours of LD time. If I remember correctly, he had no hassle getting the charges removed. (Marc, you listening in down there ??) I would hate to see what the bill would be like if these were international calls. ;-) Good day! JSW Ybbat (DRBBS) 8.9 v. 3.14 r.1 (1:285/666.0) ------------------------------ From: isus!hoyt@ennews.eas.asu.edu (Hoyt A. Stearns jr.) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Organization: International Society of Unified Science Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 23:29:25 GMT I once called Phoenix from a hotel phone in France. The duration was about one half hour. The hotel billed by counting pulses on the line, which I could hear, once a second or so. These pulses incremented an electromagnetic mechanical counter. Later, after checking out, I noticed the phone bill was unexpectedly low, it then occurred to me that the three digit counter had overflowed! Attempts at explanation to the hotel failed, as I don't speak French, and they didn't speak English (or wouldn't speak English, and didn't care). Hoyt A. Stearns jr. hoyt@ 4131 E. Cannon Dr. isus.tnet.com Phoenix, AZ. 85028 ncar!enuucp! voice_602_996_1717 telesys!isus!hoyt ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 13:03:40 EDT From: lvc@cbvox1.att.com (Lawrence V Cipriani) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Organization: Ideology Busters, Inc. A coworker told me the story of how in the "good-old-days" they would leave long-distance lines open in lab-to-lab tests for months at a time, and that since the switch word length to record the call time was small enough [e.g., 16 bits maybe] it would overflow to 0 and they wouldn't have much of a call charge! Once the switching people at AT&T figured out what they were doing they increased timer length several bits. Larry Cipriani, att!cbvox1!lvc or lvc@cbvox1.att.com ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 07:21:41 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein) writes: > Greetings. Unfortunately, rearrangement of numbers and areas by > telcos is not particularly rare. The telcos essentially *own* the > numbers. You rent them. > A large number of Pac*Bell subscribers in the Woodland Hills area (an > 818 area code, Valley suburb in the city of L.A.) recently were not > only moved into a different local/toll calling area, but were all > forced to change their seven digit numbers as well. This was not the > result of any errors, "simply" the result of central offices and toll > areas being realigned. As you can imagine, the subscribers affected > were none too pleased. When people go to the effort to get vanity numbers, do they at least get the chance to try for the same vanity number in the new exchange if it is available? I am wondering how this process works. Do they randomly pick new numbers or do they at least try to keep the last four digits if at all possible? Is there a phase in period where both numbers will work as they with area code splits (I'd imagine this would be hard to do for anything short of an exact prefix change)? Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 15:59 EDT From: catfood@wariat.org (Mark W. Schumann) Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access UNI* Site In article skaggs@nsslsun.nssl.uoknor. edu (Gary Skaggs) writes: > My 73160-2135 just gets it into the carrier's bag. > I should be able to get mail addressed to 73160-2135 with nothing else > on it ... no name, no address, no city (listed as OKC not Moore for > zip purposes, grumble) but NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. That just goes to the > carrier's bag. What a waste! Let's raise the rates some more! > [Moderator's Note: My unique one mprovement

lan code is > 60690-1570. Put just that on an envelope; it comes to my box. PAT] I once got a package from my dad addressed to: 12-39 50112-0805 The 12-39 was my in-house box number at the college, and -0805 is designated for Grinnell students. Got there in a couple of days from Connecticut (to Iowa). Mark W. Schumann/3111 Mapledale Avenue/Cleveland, Ohio 44109-2447 USA Preferred: mark@whizbang.wariat.org | Alternative: catfood@wariat.org ------------------------------ From: leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) Subject: Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection Date: 22 Jun 1992 12:54:40 -0700 Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA > [Moderator's Note: The same ad is playing on the radio here in Chicago > a lot these days. Apparently some sort of radio detection to keep > track of where you are going in your car. Sounds like a great deal for > privacy enthusiasts! :) PAT I talked to someone who worked with a similar service here in LA, and was interested to hear that indeed, the service had been used for some uses outside of simply locating stolen cars. Apparently, from what they said, there were two or three instances where police kept track of suspects using the locator system, including a suspected child molestor and a suspected crooked police officer. Apparently, the transmitter unit is activated automatically if the car is started without the unit being deactivated, but it can be activated by the police monitoring station. I wonder what the installation contract says about this "covert" activation. Justin Leavens University of Southern California Microcomputer Specialist ------------------------------ From: scol@scottsdale.az.stratus.com (Scott Colbath) Subject: Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection Date: 23 Jun 92 13:27:55 GMT In article red-eft!abaheti@valley. west.sun.com (Arun Baheti) writes: > I was just in my car and heard an add for Pacific Bell's new auto > theft systems. Apparently, when a car is stolen, they will auto- > matically track its location and notify the police. There was also an > amorphous mention of a guarantee. Does anyone have any details on > this service -- and how (if) it works? > [Moderator's Note: The same ad is playing on the radio here in Chicago > a lot these days. Apparently some sort of radio detection to keep > track of where you are going in your car. Sounds like a great deal for > privacy enthusiasts! :) PAT This sounds like a thing I remember while living in Massachusetts called Lojack. When your car was stolen, you reported it to the police and Lojack. A transmitter hidden in your car would send out a signal which was moitored by the Massachusetts State Police. They had four antennae on the roof of a few selected patrol cars. Using this device, they could chase the signal and find the car within a couple of hours. The advantage over a typical car alarm being that thieves never had a chance to strip the car. If the car was hidden in a garage or something, it was still able to be found. Scott Colbath Stratus Computer Phoenix, Az. (602)852-3106 Internet:scott_colbath@az.stratus.com ------------------------------ From: jon_sree@world.std.com (Jon Sreekanth) Subject: Re: Strange Pulse Dialing Behavior: Summary Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 17:14:46 GMT This is a summary of email and posted responses to my question about pulse dialing. Briefly, I found that if pulse digits are dialed during a stable call, the exchange would mistake it for a hangup or hook flash. This is unexpected and annoying, because even if a voice mail front end was smart enough to decode pulse digits, the exchange would probably not let the caller transmit them. Summary responses follow. ------ Pulse dialing works by alternately opening and shorting the line. Now, an open line is the same as hanging up the phone, so all this has to be distinguished by timing. The nominal values are as follows: Pulse-dialed digit: 100ms repetition rate (60/40 make/break ratio) Hookflash (for Call Waiting and Three-Way, generally): 500ms On-hook (disconnect): 1500ms if hookflash means something, 500ms otherwise. So, if the calling party goes on-hook for more than 500ms, the CO is expected to treat it as a drop request. If the called party goes on-hook, the disconnect timer is much longer, ranging from forever (in an electromechanical office) to about 15 sec (typical setting in most electronic offices). ----- This is intended behavior in the USA, and my best guess is to discourage the use of pulse dial detection on incoming calls. Pulse dial costs the telco alot more than DTMF and I can see the PTT's going to any extent to discourage pulse! ----- > This was a suspicion that occured to me, that the switch thought pulse > dialing was like going back on hook. But surely the switch should be > smarter than that! It's capable of detecting 60ms/40ms edges on the > dc voltage while it's picking up pulse digits, so it has the sensing > capability inherently. Is it throwing away the capability and > averaging the loop with some large time constant ? I doubt that it has it in the first place. Originally it was done with relays. The "A" and "C" relays were slow to release and the "B" relay would follow any change very quickly. The A relay monitored your line current, the C relay (I think it was called a C relay ... I'm sure that it controlled what was called the C lead.) provided a "Control" signal to the next switching unit (selector or connector unit). And the B relay detected dialing. (Some switches had the nerve to all it a P relay!) So an off hook closed the C relay. Dialing would pulse the A and the B relays, but the A would snap closed when the pulsing started, and not release until the end of the digit. The B relay pulsed with each pulse. Pure time constants. It has been many many years since I looked at a step-by-step switch, and I hated them then. So I may be remembering it all wrong. But the point is that the new switch is designed to do as close to what the old one did as could be. No edge triggering at all. Just, is there current for a long enough period of time, or not. ----- Generally not true outside N. America. A caller can pulse dial all he wants here and in every other country in Europe I've been too. I worked on a phone information system in San Francisco, and I found that you could not pulse dial more than a three from any modern exchange in the USA or Canada. Tone dialers are very cheap and its not much to ask one to purchase one. On the other hand, trying to detect the double pops that pulse dialing produces is very unreliable. There have been a few attempts here, but mostly have been abandoned and besides Dutch has a way of really faking it out! ----- In most switches, when you are dialing the number, you are connected to an Originating Register, which counts the pulses or tones. Once the call is connected to a trunk somewhere, the OR goes off-line to serve someone else. It is possible that your switch checks the off-hook status less rigorously when tied to a trunk. ----- You don't say what kind of switch you are on, but I can guess what could be causing it that would be pretty much generic. Most modern switches will scan for hangup by sampling the line state at some infrequent interval (100 milliseconds or so). If your dial pulse rate lines up with the scan rate, it could see the on-hook pulses as a continuous on-hook. Continuous on-hook for a short-period of time would be recognised as a flash. Stuttered dial tone would be the signal for you to call the next party for your three-way. ----- What is happening is that the exchange is integrating the on hook portion of the series of pulses, when they reach the threashold that signals caller hangup, the called party is dumped. This explains your ability to dial small numbers (less than six) without releasing your call. When the dial reaches the return position you are again continuously drawing loop current so you find yourself staring at dial tone. ----- This behaviour does not occur in any electrmechanical exchanges that I have tried in the past but does occur on #1ESS and derivatives. I ----- end of summaries Just to confirm things, it turns out that if an extension phone is picked up, so it holds the line steadily off hook, and pulse dialling is attempted now with the main phone, the exchange dosen't mis-behave. The condition where the exchange, either by sampling the line at regular intervals or by integrating loop current, decides that there is on-hook, does not occur. Same result when I substituted a simple, one-transistor 15mA current sink for the extension phone (current source instead of resistor avoids damping audio level). The whole experience was rather interesting to me, in bringing out an unexpected telco feature (bug ...). Thanks to everyone who replied. Jon Sreekanth Assabet Valley Microsystems, Inc. Fax and PC products 5 Walden St #3, Cambridge, MA 02140 (617) 876-8019 jon_sree@world.std.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 15:00:18 -0400 From: krfiny!jeffj@uunet.uu.net Subject: The Quintessence of Quiescence Responding to Volume 12, Issue 499, Message 2 of 10: >> While quiescent is a perfectly good word, I hardly ever see it used >> outside a data processing context. In Electrical Engineering, the "Q" point of a transistor means quiescence. It's the balance point of the transistor's operation with no signal present. Properly biasing a transistor sets the desired Q point. > I can recall at least one use: on the wrapper of a PopSicle(R), which > reads "a quiescently frozen treat". I hope that was a joke. A quietly frozen dessert? Does everybody in the factory have to whisper? "Be vewwy vewwy qwiet - we're making Popsicles! Heh heh heh". A trip to the dictionary reveals a more appropriate q word: quintessence: 1) the 5th and highest element in ancient and medieval philosophy that permeated all nature and is the substance composing the celestial bodies. 2) the essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form. Being the quintessential poster that I am, I am ending this right here. Jeffrey Jonas jeffj@synsys.uucp PS: no PS this time. This page intentionally left blank. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #508 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa21291; 25 Jun 92 1:53 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA01080 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Wed, 24 Jun 1992 23:40:00 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA03663 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Wed, 24 Jun 1992 23:39:52 -0500 Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 23:39:52 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206250439.AA03663@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #509 TELECOM Digest Wed, 24 Jun 92 23:39:55 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 509 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (John Higdon) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Hans Mulder) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Scott Dorsey) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (James J. Menth) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Bob Clements) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Martin McCormick) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Terry Kennedy) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Robert S. Helfman) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Tony Harminc) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 02:29 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) On Jun 24 at 2:12, TELECOM Moderator writes: > [Moderator's Note: Very good point. Can anyone comment on how the time > of day was handled *after* they quit using live people speaking it but > *before* it went digital? PAT] And what makes you think that it is digital now? In most places, the old mechanical drum announcers are still very much in service. Although I have never seen one, the machines are very simple. There is a magnetic drum upon which all the various digits with up and down inflections are recorded. The drum is scanned by a multiple head assembly and the appropriate head is switched on line in sequence. Pac*Bell originally used a "Jane Barbie" machine when it first went with automatic referral that sounded very clean and had the distinctive voice of Jane Barbie. This was replaced with a wretched piece of excrement that was identical to those in common use on the east coast. It has track-to-track crosstalk and the female announcer sounds as though she is miffed for not actually getting the part as Wicked Witch of the East. I just dialed a recently-changed number. That machine is still in use. And it is very mechanical. Just because technologies exist (such as digital voice) does not mean that telcos use it! John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 12:24:14 +0200 From: hansm@cs.kun.nl (Hans Mulder) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) In article Robert L. McMillin asks: > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. Those two dozen very short tapes were duplicated many times over and spliced manually to form a set of longish tapes, with a total playing time of 24 hours. You can guess the rest ... Have a nice day, Hans Mulder hansm@cs.kun.nl ------------------------------ From: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: NASA Langley Research Center and Reptile Farm Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 13:02:55 GMT In article rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes: > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. The system that I saw at WWV many years ago had a magnetic drum about a foot in diameter, with a number of tracks on it, and one head per track. There was a large relay control unit which selected the tracks to be played back in sequence based upon a BCD input. scott ------------------------------ From: jjm@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (james.j.menth) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: AT&T Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 13:27:28 GMT In article rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes: > Responding to a message from Robert S. Helfman , our > Moderator writes: >> Jane Barbie was also the female voice heard on the voice-overs for >> WWVH (the Hawaiian version of WWV). >> [Moderator's Note: Her voice was also used for Time of Day here in >> Chicago for many years (312-CAThedral-8000). She had recorded the >> phrase 'at the signal, the time will be' and the digits which were >> then patched together as appropriate. PAT] > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. The article mentions putting together the digits for a time signal and, by coincidence, I just finished a section in "A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System-Switching Technology 1925-1975" Around 1930-31 in New York city there was a mix of dial offices (panel and step-by step) and manual offices. When a dial call was placed to a manual office an operator would complete the call using digits displayed on lamps. This was improved using technology developed by Bell Laboratories for the film industry: Sound on film. The book contains a picture of a chest high cabinet called a "call announcer" containing loops of film on a series of readers. A manual call would be presented to a completion operator and the required digits would be repeated in the operator's headset using pasted together speech from the call announcer. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 10:00:08 EDT From: clements@BBN.COM I can't figure out the attributions, but various people wrote: >> Jane Barbie was also the female voice heard on the voice-overs for >> WWVH (the Hawaiian version of WWV). > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. > [Moderator's Note: Very good point. Can anyone comment on how the time > of day was handled *after* they quit using live people speaking it but > *before* it went digital? PAT] Sure. I have, in my vacation scrapbook, a set of photos of the WWVH site from a couple of years ago. I posted a long note about it in comp.protocols.time.ntp at the time. I have peered into the amazing gizmo in which Ms. Barbie's soul was entrapped. It is a leased device, made by the same people who made them for the phone companies. I was told that that company (something like "Audichron", in Atlanta, I think) does not sell their announcement machine, but only leases them. So WWV and WWVH were paying lease charges for decades on the darned things. (As do all the telcos.) To save money, there were just two of them at each site (WWV and WWVH), rather than the three (voting, triply redundant) copies of everything else in the system. Still, that added up to a lot of bucks. These lease charges were one of the reasons for switching to the new digital voice announcements. I'll omit the information about the timecode generators, transmitters, antennas and all that, and just answer the question about the announcement machines. The guts of the machine is a pair of rotating magnetic drums, mounted on a horizontal axis and rotating at 1 RPM. The drums' rotation is synchronized by a pulse from the time code generators, driven by the cesium atomic clocks. There are also magnetic heads on worm gears which slide along parallel to the axis of the drums. The gearing on the heads is such that one head takes sixty different tracks across one drum during any hour, and the other head takes twenty-four different tracks across the other drum during any day. A third head does not move, so it always reads the same track, which contains the station break which is played every half hour. So one head has twenty-four messages of the form "At the tone, twenty three hours" and the second head has sixty messages of the form "fifty nine minutes, Coordinated Universal Time". The gearing, and the whole concept, would make Rube Goldberg proud. I was real glad to see the thing. Sadly (or not), all the above should be in the past tense. It's now all just silicon. Bob Clements, K1BC, clements@bbn.com [who thought the Jane Barbie thread had been closed] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 13:53:56 -0500 From: martin@datacomm.ucc.okstate.edu A common practice before the days of digital hardware was to record a pleasant human voice saying all the words which would be needed to provide the service such as time and temperature or stock quotes and putting each frays on a separate track of a drum which was coated with the same iron oxide material as is found on magnetic tape or computer disks. The drum spun at a carefully controlled speed and a pickup head was guided by the machine's logic to the proper tracks on the drum. If the time was 7:45, the head would first hit the track containing "seven," followed by the one containing "forty," and then the one containing "five." If the voice was to sound really good, there would be multiple versions of some phrases, depending upon whether they were to be spoken at the end of an expression or in the middle. Believe me, it makes a difference. I recall, once, hearing a figure of $100,000 as the price of a drum-based time and temperature system. There were some other interesting things going on in the sixties with electromechanical voice retrieval systems. I remember a news report about a system called Audre which stood for "Automatic Digit Recognition." The report featured a little demonstration of the system. Audre was used to allow bank customers to make transactions via Touchtone phone. The voice was female, maybe Jane's, and was stored as a series of photographic film loops affixed to a clear plastic drum. Words and phrases were selected by enabling photo pickups like the ones found in movie projectors to change the modulated light back into audio. In the report, the frays "My name is Audre." was obviously recorded as one statement. It sounded perfectly normal. Everything else, had a military-style cadence to it as all the speech was timed to the spinning of the drum. I remember hearing a pop each time the pickup was changed to a new track. The voices which were heard on the time signal stations of WWV and WWVH, up until about a year ago, were recorded on magnetic drums. The same was also true for the Canadian time signal station CHU. A report on Radio Netherlands' "Media Network" program said that the drum system at WWV was over 20 years old. The drum systems seemed to be very robust. A year or so before our local time and temp number turned digital, the drum-based system began to show its age. It would, sometimes, have difficulty in placing the pickup head on the right track. The result was a garbled mixture of two tracks' audio. After our local time number went to a digital system, it worked right for a few weeks and then would deliver a stuttering salad of word bits and static for a while. Hopefully, there is somebody on the network who actually used to work on those systems and can tell us what it was like. Maybe there were even systems using phonograph recordings, but I would suspect that they wouldn't have been very trustworthy. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group ------------------------------ From: Terry Kennedy Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: St. Peter's College, US Date: 24 Jun 92 17:53:38 EDT In article , rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes: > [Moderator's Note: Very good point. Can anyone comment on how the time > of day was handled *after* they quit using live people speaking it but > *before* it went digital? PAT] In the units I've seen, there are short loops of 2" wide audio tape in a removable assembly. These loops are only about 6" long. The carrier assembly plugs into a socket which has a drive motor, multi-track read head, and a transducer. The different tracks have various messages recorded on them. Some tracks have the single numbers, while others have pieces of the message (which can be chained together across tracks). Amazing technology for its time. Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA terry@spcvxa.spc.edu +1 201 915 9381 ------------------------------ From: helfman@aero.org (Robert S. Helfman) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 16:32:07 GMT > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. At WWV, the voice 'snatches' were recorded on a rotating magnetic drum. (I visited WWV in the late '70's). The drum was about a foot in diameter. A set of read heads would jump around over the drum to pick off the appropriate numbers. ("At the tone" "four" "hours" "thirteen" "minutes" "Coordinated Universal Time") The drum appeared to rotate at about 1 rpm. (Understand, I'm remembering this from my single breathless visit to WWV. I posted a description of the visit in 'sci.electronics' about a month ago, but I'll briefly reiterate: When I worked for the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Fire Laboratory in Riverside, CA, I used to frequently go to Fort Collins where their Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station is located. During one visit, I was driving to Waverly to have dinner with some Japanese cowboys (!!!) I had met in Fort Collins (these were Japanese from Japan, who were working on cattle ranches near the Wyoming border and attending animal husbandry courses at the University of Nebraska at Scott's Bluff). I passed the WWV 'antenna farm', noticed that the visiting hours were 1-3 pm Wednesdays only, and vowed to make a trip out there. It was at least three years before I managed to have a free afternoon to kill, I was in Fort Collins, and it was a Wednesday! I showed up at WWV, the sole engineer on duty gave me a grand tour of the whole deal, including the 3 Cesium standard atomic clocks, the nixie tube (!) displays of WWV time, the majority-vote circuitry that resolved differences between the clocks, the transmitters, the antennas, the works. It was delightful, since I had been hearing WWV since high school days and had always tried to imagine this mysterious facility whose faithful ticking boomed out of the night on my shortwave receiver. One interesting tidbit: the 100hz power used to operate the motors which drove the voice drum was also derived from the same Cesium standard atomic clocks as the carrier frequencies and the audio modulating tones. EVERYTHING at WWV is derived that way. ------------------------------ From: Tony Harminc Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 06:50:23 -0700 Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Many years ago there was an exhibit in the South Kensington Science Museum in London that showed how the British "Speaking Clock" worked. My recollection is hazy (I was about ten when I saw it), but I remember multiple gramophone disks each with a pickup arm, and a mechanical selection mechanism. I believe the disks were mounted on a common horizontal shaft. It is worth keeping in mind that the timing of the voice segments is not critical -- the tone is what counts, and that was not on the disks, of course. Perhaps someone who was a little older at the time remembers better. Tony H. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #509 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa23041; 25 Jun 92 2:34 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA12622 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Thu, 25 Jun 1992 00:14:59 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA08153 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Thu, 25 Jun 1992 00:14:51 -0500 Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1992 00:14:51 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206250514.AA08153@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #510 TELECOM Digest Thu, 25 Jun 92 00:14:45 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 510 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Peter Clitherow) Re: Concert Goers Blast 911 Service (Lauren Weinstein) Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Jon Baker) Re: Ameritech/IBT (Scott Dorsey) Re: Ameritech/IBT (Matthew Holdrege) Re: Ameritech PCS (Ang Peng Hwa) Re: Pac*Bell Posturing (Andrew Klossner) Re: You Can Ring My Bell (David Cornutt) Re: You Can Ring My Bell (Julian Macassey) Re: Toggles Are Bad Design (Justin Leavens) Re: Toggles Are Bad Design (James Elliott) Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 (Jim Speth) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Reply-To: Organization: Bellcore - IMS, Morristown, NJ Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 11:39:29 GMT In article barry@coyote.datalog.com (Barry Mishkind) writes: > The Tucson area's 911 line was snarled yesterday when callers trying > to get tickets to a concert overload the local telephone system, a US > West spokeswoman said. .... > And not an apology in the house! Of course, _not one_ employee of US > Worst saw this coming, nor told a supervisor about it, nor cared: "We > don't have to care, we're the phone company." There might have been problems on a switch (perhaps a memory upgrade would have helped?) but most likely, U S WEST would have known about this sort of thing before. In particular, the operator services department in most Bell Operating Companies has a staff line or two to monitor local/national events to ensure that enough operators are available to handle needs. It sound like there needs to be better communication between this group and the CO admin people though. peter clitherow (201) 829-5162, DQID: H07692 bellcore, 445 south street, room 2f-085, morristown, nj 07962 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 09:27:43 PDT From: lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Re: Concert Goers Blast 911 Service Greetings. Pat, you asked what the solution is to these recurring "concert fans saturate phone system" events. The solution is simplicity itself. Until such a time as the phone networks are capable of handling such concentrations in a more reasonable manner, you either voluntarily request (or legislate, if that doesn't work) that ticket sales which are likely to cause such saturations will not be conducted by phone. It's not as if these concerts usually pop out of thin air -- they're typically planned far in advance. The rationale for such restrictions would be the denial to customers of necessary phone services, both emergency and normal, that otherwise results. Ticket purchases in such cases could be by mail, with priority by postmark date, perhaps with a number of tickets preallocated for different parts of the city/areas to avoid unfair skewing of orders. Print little forms in the local magazines/newspapers to make it all simple for the buyers. While they're at it, some limits on the number of tickets that can be sent to any one address might be a good idea as well, to help avoid the massive "blocks" of tickets which are later sold or scalped at way above face value, often locking many "average" people out of the shows. There are some applications for which our current phone networks just aren't the best choice. --Lauren-- ------------------------------ From: asuvax!gtephx!bakerj@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Jon Baker) Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, Arizona Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 17:44:24 GMT In article , barry@coyote.datalog.com (Barry Mishkind) writes: > [Moderator's Note: Come now, do you *really* think US West or any > telco relishes these situations and ignores them 'because they are the > phone company'? And had telco known in advance (did any of the > concert promoters advise telco of the times, etc?), what in your It is not the responsibility of the promoters to notify the telco. However, prudent network managers do keep tabs on upcoming events, such as this, by monitoring the radio and newspapers. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. > estimation might telco have done about it, other than possibly block > off access from certain exchanges when traffic was heavy? PAT] They can do quite a bit about it. That's why we have network managers. They can choke, or throttle, calls to the particular phone number for the ticket line during the periods of heaviest traffic. All CO's in the affected area would be notified, via network management control systems, to NOT attempt to complete calls to that directory number, but issue re-order (or some other appropriate treatment) instead. This way, each CO is a bit busy handling all of the attempts, but they don't tie up the trunking network in the region, nor do they overload the target CO. Similar network controls, on a broader scale, can be applied in the event of natural disasters or other events that might cause a large number of people to attempt to place calls to a particular CO. If you figure that only about 10% of calls will get through to 602/889, then we can block 90% of them at the originating CO's, rather than tieing up trunks all the way, only to get blocking or a busy signal near the end of the path. J.Baker asuvax!gtephx!bakerj DISCLAIMER : I am not an official representative of AGCS. ------------------------------ From: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Ameritech/IBT Organization: NASA Langley Research Center and Reptile Farm Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 13:00:08 GMT In article nickless@antares.mcs.anl.gov (Bill Nickless) writes: > ... until you want things like ISDN. Ameritech/IBT seems to be among > the slowest to offer data services to the home. I am under the > impression that they're behind some un-named California telcos. ISDN? In the home? I'm in a C&P area and we just got touch-tone service for the first time last year. I asked the craftsman who came out to install a second line last month about ISDN services, and he said that he had recently been at a seminar on the systems, but said that the chances of it being available in my lifetime were slim. Sigh. scott ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Jun 92 18:02 GMT From: Matthew Holdrege Subject: Re: Ameritech/IBT >> [Moderator's Note: Ameritech/IBT are certainly very progressive and >> technologically advanced telcos. I'm glad to be in their region. PAT] > ... until you want things like ISDN. Ameritech/IBT seems to be among > the slowest to offer data services to the home. I am under the > impression that they're behind some un-named California telcos. I found Ameritech/IBT to be very responsive to business. I received a great deal of support when I had some ISDN circuits installed in Chicago last year. Ameritech is also rapidly installing ISDN gear at a lot of other CO's. Of course the first sites to get ISDN were in business and high-tech areas. I asked about getting ISDN to my home in the Chicago suburbs and they showed me the CO map and a rough implementation schedule. Right now you can get ISDN at home if you live in the right area. In 1993 and 1994 most everyone in IBTland will be able to get ISDN. BTW, the IBT tariffs for ISDN seem to be among the best in the country and decidely better than Pacific Bell. Matt Holdrege Pacificare Health Systems 5156065@mcimail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 22:12:09 SST From: Ang Peng Hwa Subject: Re: Ameritech PCS Monty Solomon's description of Ameritech's new cordless phone sounds a lot like CT2. You can only send, and only when you are within 50 yards of a transmitter point. To my knowledge, it has failed everywhere it has been tried except here in Singapore. Sales were so successful that the PTT here was taken by surprise. There is an element of prestige in having one of those CT2 phones as they are extremely compact -- with less electronics. And apparently people are willing to pay for prestige. It'll be interesting to see the result of the test, first with send only and then with send and receive. ------------------------------ From: andrew@frip.wv.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) Subject: Re: Pac*Bell Posturing Date: 22 Jun 92 21:29:43 GMT Reply-To: andrew@frip.wv.tek.com Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville, Oregon > The expense has already occurred. The system is ready. All that has > to be done is to "turn it on". This isn't true from the telco's perspective. To "turn on" the system, they must: -- Market the service, otherwise they won't get enough demand to justify their costs; -- Train their rep and service people in the features; -- Turn their graphics -- the existing subscriber instructions don't discuss CLASS; ... and so on. There's a lot more to providing telecom service than wiring a switch. Andrew Klossner (andrew@frip.wv.tek.com) (uunet!tektronix!frip.WV.TEK!andrew) ------------------------------ From: cornutt@lambda.msfc.nasa.gov (David Cornutt) Subject: Re: You Can Ring My Bell Organization: NASA/MSFC Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 18:23:25 GMT krfiny!jeffj@uunet.uu.net writes: > (1) This gives me yet another silly project idea: how about a MIDI > interface so upon ring detect, a song of your choice is played, > turning your electronic music equipment into a phone ringer. I have a > Caller-ID converter on my PC. I could use the PC's internal speaker > (or Sound Blaster if I had one) to play when the phone rings. Now here's an idea: a Caller ID-to-MIDI interface. What you do: (1) Get a sampler. (2) Get your friends to come over to your house and say their names into the sampler. (3) Map each sample to a different key number. (4) Build a Caller ID interface that can map the calling number into a database that gives you the key number that contains the voice sample for the person who's calling, and then send a MIDI Note On to the sampler with the appropriate key number. This way, the phone will tell you who's calling -- in *their* voice! Hmmm ... David Cornutt, New Technology Inc., Huntsville, AL (205) 461-6457 (cornutt@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov; some insane route applies) "The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my employer, not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary." ------------------------------ From: julian%bongo.UUCP@nosc.mil (Julian Macassey) Subject: Re: You Can Ring My Bell Date: 19 Jun 92 02:53:57 GMT Reply-To: julian@bongo.info.com (Julian Macassey) Organization: The Hole in the Wall Hollywood California U.S.A. In article krfiny!jeffj@uunet.uu.net writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 491, Message 6 of 10 stuff deleted > TELECOM readers have long known that the original brass two gong ringer > is hard to beat for volume, durability, ability to locate, recognize > and hear above many background sounds. How much time and money must > be spent to verify the obvious? Why has the free market not produced > better phones? First of all, the driving force in any product - especially a consumer product - is cost. So a good gong ringer will cost about $4.00 and a piezo jobbie about $2.00. That is an important factor. It is easy to make a cheaper ringer than a gong ringer. It is almost impossible, given current technology, to make better ringer that is cheaper. And as I have said in an earlier posting, it is hard to beat the 2500 set. You can buy a new 2500 set for $25.00, you can find them at garage sales for $1-3. So what would be a better phone than a 2500 set? You can add gimmicks, but that is fashion. I am talking telephony. The origial Mickey Mouse phone was a blend of fashion and telephony. It looked cute and met the same specs as an AT&T 2500, including the drop test. People were reluctant to pay $125.00 for this phone. They bought $9.95 pieces of crap by the carload. None of those peices of crap are around anymore. > (1) This gives me yet another silly project idea: how about a MIDI > interface so upon ring detect, a song of your choice is played, > turning your electronic music equipment into a phone ringer. I have a > Caller-ID converter on my PC. I could use the PC's internal speaker > (or Sound Blaster if I had one) to play when the phone rings. I could > even key the songs to: > - the Caller-ID > - the phone line used (for multiple lines) > - distinctive ringing (for ident-a-ring, ring master, etc) > - time of day > - day of week > Voice syntheses so the phone talks to me -- naaa, too unnerving. > (well, perhaps for a Star Trek motif "engineering to Captain Kirk!") > This is starting to sound like a David Letterman sketch (the Addams > family phone screams, Agathe Christie's phone sounds like a gunshot >nand body falling, Walter Cronkite's says "and now here's the phone". Ok, you want a phone that always works, just like your phone does now. When the lights go out, the phone still works? Then you have to power the cutsie ringer from the ring current. I looked at this in the past to make R2D2 (Starwars) phones tweet and diddle instead of ring. Alas, there is not much energy left for volume after the cute sound effects chips have done their thing. You want the stereo to play Metallica or Wagner when the phone rings? Easy. You use a ringer chip and use the warble output to drive a gate (switch or relay) to turn on the stereo. Bear in mind though, that it won't work when the power fails and you may not always want that much racket. So, you want silent periods, also no problem, add a timer chip to the chain. Or go the whole hog and have a PC run it. So now you have a $600.00 phone. It's all yours, but they are not going to stand in line at Wallmart to buy it ... Julian Macassey, julian@bongo.info.com N6ARE@K6VE.#SOCAL.CA.USA.NA ------------------------------ From: leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) Subject: Re: Toggles Are Bad Design Date: 24 Jun 1992 11:51:36 -0700 Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA In article gordon@sneaky.lonestar.org (Gordon Burditt) writes: > Is the *XX number space really that full? What are all those codes > used for? Does anyone have a "standard list" of them? I don't think there is a 'standard' list of these codes. After almost a year of thinking that my 'Cancel Call Waiting' "feature" simply didn't work, I found out that GTE uses 73# to cancel call waiting. I suppose that I could have checked an instruction list somewhere, but I had always assumed that *70 was a standard since I'd never seen anything else. But it looks like we won't have to worry about any of those pesky codes for Caller-ID here in GTEland. Thank goodness I'm moving back to PacBell land next week. I never knew how good I had it until I moved to a GTE area ... Justin Leavens University of Southern California Microcomputer Specialist ------------------------------ From: elliott@veronica.cs.wisc.edu (James Elliott) Subject: Re: Toggles Are Bad Design Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1992 21:53:39 GMT I agree. Toggles are almost always bad design. The number of times I have been frustrated in my efforts to set up computer control of devices in my home (such as timed, coordinated unattended operation of my VCRs and receiver to tape simulcast shows) and been frustrated by the fact that the control computer has no way of knowing the initial state of a toggle-controlled option, is large. The same principle applies to control of options on phone lines. This is above and beyond straightforward human-centered design issue. Don't use toggles; use separate controls. Jim Elliott elliott@cs.wisc.edu ------------------------------ From: James G. Speth Subject: Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 Date: 22 Jun 92 17:43:40 GMT Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz In article ron@pilot.njin.net (Ron Natalie) writes: > Oh, come off it. If the information gets anywhere close to here were > in deep kimche anyhow. The TELECOM Digest is probably the most benign > of the forums for "telecommunications enthusiats." Out of curiosity, what are some of the LESS benign forums? Jim Speth speth@cats.ucsc.edu [Moderator's Note: Would anyone like to address Mr. Speth's question? For the sake of neutrality, I will refrain for now. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #510 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa17102; 26 Jun 92 22:37 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA28915 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Fri, 26 Jun 1992 20:42:20 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA03701 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Fri, 26 Jun 1992 20:42:10 -0500 Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 20:42:10 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206270142.AA03701@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #511 TELECOM Digest Fri, 26 Jun 92 20:42:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 511 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Contemporary Remote Controls (Jacob DeGlopper) Re: With NETel, is it an UPgrade or a DOWNgrade? (Fred Goldstein) Re: Phone Keypad Interfaces to Enhanced Telephone Services (Justin Leavens) Re: Telephone Connection to Yugoslavia? (Carl Moore) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Lauren Weinstein) Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection (Arthur L. Rubin) Re: Pay Phones in San Francisco (Darren Alex Griffiths) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (Bill Cattey) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (jbutz@homxa.att.com) Re: AT&T and Area Codes 706/404 (George Mitchell) Re: Influencing PUCs (Andrew M. Dunn) Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 (Greg Price) Re: Computer Aided Dispatching (John Nagle) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jrd5@po.CWRU.Edu (Jacob DeGlopper) Subject: Re: Contemporary Remote Controls Reply-To: jrd5@po.CWRU.Edu (Jacob DeGlopper) Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 13:28:37 GMT In a previous article, lairdb@crash.cts.com (Laird P. Broadfield) says: > Incidental question: Do any of the setups make allowances for more > than one device in range (e.g. a stack of TVs) such that they can be > controlled individually? Technics audio products certainly don't! That's one reason our college radio station hangs on to the remote controls for any new equipment we get. For example, when we installed a pair of new CD players about two months ago, of course the techs got to play with them before anyone else :). Pointing one remote at the two players would make both open at once, or start playing, or (worst for on-air operations) stop. Since we have glass walls between the studios, you could sit in the next studio and make the CD players do strange things ... all the remotes are locked up in the tech shop where only some can get at them. Jacob DeGlopper, EMT-A, Wheaton Volunteer Rescue Squad -- CWRU Biomedical Engineering - jrd5@po.cwru.edu -- +1 703 538 7624 ------------------------------ From: goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com (Fred Goldstein) Subject: Re: With NETel, is it an UPgrade or a DOWNgrade? Reply-To: goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com (Fred Goldstein) Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 17:26:00 GMT > Remember how I could call Natick for free with the "basic" service? > Turns out with the "enhanced" service, Natick becomes a "Zone 1" call, > at 1 cent per call plus 1.6 cents per minute. And, wouldn't ya know > it, my new net access is in Natick, so the 1.6 cents would have added > up but fast. Frankly, I'd call up the DPU and complain. Waltham was NOT a local call to Natick before November 18, 1990, when the DPU ordered that all contiguous exchanges in NET's Mass. territory become local. The bill insert said that Natick was to be added to Waltham's local area. I seriously doubt that the DPU intended that 1SR (suburban) service would not get flat-rate calling for something that's flat-rate with 1FR (contiguous) service. NET may be playing games with semantics, or may have a glitch in their billing. Of course, 1SR _does_ charge for calls to Boston Central from exchanges like Cambridge which are contiguous, while it's free on 1FR or 1ER (metro). But that's the main anomoly of 1SR (an obsolete hack if you ask me). Of course, the DPU can decide that NET was right. 1SR is just one option, after all. And their service tiers are _not_ defined to be inclusive of lower tiers. Fred R. Goldstein goldstein@carafe.tay2.dec.com k1io or goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com voice:+1 508 952 3274 Standard Disclaimer: Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission. ------------------------------ From: leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) Subject: Re: Phone Keypad Interfaces to Enhanced Telephone Services Date: 26 Jun 1992 11:45:13 -0700 Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA In article craig@world.std.com (Craig Hubley) writes: > That is, *70 seems to pretty universally suppress call waiting, but I > don't know if the code to retrive messages from your answering service > is the same everywhere, North-America-wide, or just across a single > company's jurisdiction. Are there FCC standards for this, or CCITT > standards? Here in GTECA land, a 73# is required to suppress call-waiting. I couldn't tell you if that's a GTE standard, but that's what it is here. Justin Leavens University of Southern California Microcomputer Specialist leavens@mizar.usc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 10:28:14 EDT From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) Subject: Re: Telephone Connection to Yugoslavia? Nothing about Bosnia-Herzegovina? What messages do you get in trying to call these various parts of the former Yugoslavia? For example, there was a recording (via AT&T) about emergency conditions in Kuwait after it was invaded in 1990 by Iraq, and AT&T apparently was intercepting calls to Kuwait before the connection proceeded beyond the U.S. borders. It's understood that the various republics splitting off from Yugo- slavia are still under that country code (given the previous dis- cussions about the former East Germany and the former Soviet Union, not to mention what I have seen in newspapers about Czech and Slovak republics proposed for what is now Czechoslovakia). ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 09:35:15 PDT From: lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers Greetings. Someone asked if the subscribers had any choice in the selection of new numbers, in the situation of being forced to change numbers by telco. In the case of the Woodland Hills event I originally mentioned, I believe the subscribers were allowed to pick their new four digit numbers in the new prefix, but could only choose numbers within fairly limited ranges, i.e. they did not have the entire 10,000 possibilities from which to choose. --Lauren-- ------------------------------ From: a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com Subject: Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection Date: 26 Jun 92 17:40:23 GMT Reply-To: a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (Arthur Rubin) In scol@scottsdale.az.stratus.com (Scott Colbath) writes: > This sounds like a thing I remember while living in Massachusetts > called Lojack. When your car was stolen, you reported it to the police > and Lojack. A transmitter hidden in your car would send out a signal > which was moitored by the Massachusetts State Police. They had four > antennae on the roof of a few selected patrol cars. Using this device, > they could chase the signal and find the car within a couple of hours. > The advantage over a typical car alarm being that thieves never had a > chance to strip the car. If the car was hidden in a garage or > something, it was still able to be found. PacTel Teletrak (?) and Lojack are provided by different companies. (There may be a third major system, as well.) My recollection of the systems is the Lojack is automatically activated if the car is started without the key. Teletrak advertised that, if your car is stolen, (and it is not automatically activated, by whatever means), you can activate the system by letting them know. (Of course, this means you can let someone use the car, and then have the police pick him up for stealing the car, but ... you could do that anyway. This just makes it more reliable.) Arthur L. Rubin: a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (work) Beckman Instruments/Brea 216-5888@mcimail.com 70707.453@compuserve.com arthur@pnet01.cts.com (personal) My opinions are my own, and do not represent those of my employer. Our news system is unstable; if you want to be sure I see a post, mail it. ------------------------------ From: dag@ossi.com (Darren Alex Griffiths) Subject: Re: Pay Phones in San Francisco Organization: Open Systems Solutions Inc. Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 18:48:17 GMT john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: > Now the city is greedily looking over the matter of enforcing its "pay > phone permits". The city claims that it wants, for aesthetic reason, > to control the proliferation of phones. An example is the fact that > there are seven phones on Mission Street between 18th and 19th. But of > course the real concern is collecting the $50 a month from each phone > (or 20% of the gross, whichever is greater). The estimates are that > the city would collect more than $25,000 monthly. I used to be involved with a bar about a block from there, 19th and Valencia Street. About six months before we sold out to some friends someone came in the place and offered to put a COCOT on the wall outside. Since we had a lot of people asking to use the bar phone I said sure. In return we'd get $50 a month and the supplier would take care of all the permits. All things went well at first, it took the supplier (I forget the name but I can find out if anyone is really interested) about a month to secure permits with what seemed like every agency from the CIA on down and the phone was installed. The day after it was setup this patrol officer came storming in the bar while I was working there and said, quite loudly, in front of customers "What the hell do you think your doing with the phone out there". It seemed that he was rather upset that he hadn't been consulted about the phone and demanded that it be removed the next day because he was afraid that the phone would attract drug dealers to the area. I guess he didn't think that drug dealers would want to use the dozen or so city phones in the area and it seems he wasn't a very good cop because one with any sense would have known that there are plenty of drug dealers already there. In any case, the next day the phone was moved inside, as a result the COCOT cut our take to $25 because it wasn't in a place where anyone could get at and people still asked to use the bar phone because the office was often far quieter than the bar with loud music playing. Cheers, Darren Alex Griffiths dag@ossi.com Open Systems Solutions, Inc (510) 652-6200 x139 Fujitsu Fax: (510) 652-5532 6121 Hollis Street Emeryville, CA 94608-2092 [Moderator's Note: This is a good example of how rotten to the core municipal government can be. All those permits and foot-dragging by the city to do something of value -- install a telephone -- for the residents. I could tell you dozens of stories about how abusive the City of Chicago is to the few people still around who own real property and pay taxes, etc. The idiots in our city council are now trying to put all sorts of requirements on pay phones here, as if that would solve the myriad of problems we endure. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 11:59:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Bill Cattey Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Thanks for bringing up this question. (I've always wondered about the hangup call message but was unable to ask about it as succinctly as you.) Thanks also Pat, for explaining how it happens. Now I have a question: Where can I get an answering machine that recognizes the hangup call and doesn't record it? If no such machine exists, is there one with a remote command "Skip over this stupid hangup call message"? By far the largest number of messages I get are these annoying hangup calls, and it's driving me nuts! Bill Cattey [Moderator's Note: There are answering machines available with CPC (called party control) which abort on detecting a hangup. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jbutz@homxa.att.com Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 10:26 EDT Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine > Several times (about once in two weeks) I have had the following > message recorded on my answering machine: " > Please hang up and try your call again. This is a recording. > Two-oh-three-two-one." I presume that this is some sort of automatic > message generated by the telco's equipment. There were no calls > attempted from the phones at the time the message must have got > recorded (in fact, this seems to happen when no one is at home), so Or ... There's this fun one. Call your friend's answering machine, while simultaneously three-way-calling a joke line, "heavy breathing" line, intercept, or other answering maching, so that your friends answering machine records the message being played on the second line! Leaves them scratching their head every time. [Moderator's Note: Wow ... what a lot of fun! This is just a variation on the stupid prank immature phreaks (yes, I know that may be considered redundant by some readers) which involves calling two unrelated people via three-way calling then remaining silent as each accuses the other of placing the call. And if you have two physical lines, each with three-way, then you patch the lines together and get four people in on the 'joke' ... all of whom are convinced as a result the telco must be more screwed up than ever. It helps if at least a couple of the victims are older people you wake up at 2 AM. PAT] ------------------------------ From: george@tessi.com (George Mitchell) Subject: Re: AT&T and Area Codes 706/404 Organization: Test Systems Strategies, Inc., Beaverton, Oregon Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 15:25:27 GMT monty@proponent.com (Monty Solomon) writes: > AT&T ran the following ad in the 7/23/92 {Boston Globe}: I'd love to borrow your crystal ball one of these days. george@tessi.com [Moderator's Note: It should have been *6*/23/92. Thanks for catching the typo. Sorry for any confusion caused. PAT] ------------------------------ From: amdunn@mongrel.uucp (Andrew M. Dunn) Organization: A. Dunn Systems Corporation, Kitchener, Canada Subject: Re: Influencing PUCs Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 03:21:25 GMT In article polk@girtab.usc.edu (Corinna Polk) writes: > So then, what does the normal $35-$50 line installation fee cover? My > impression was that paying that standard installation fee gave me a > phone line, regardless of the situation. If I had the lines already > running into the house, then it was a simple install that required a > data entry (aka "Customer Service") person to type on a terminal. If > it required a new drop then someone was to do that. But either way, > the price was the same, the former installs covering the cost of the > latter. It seems to vary by jurisdiction. I've seen both scenarios, where: (a) you pay a flat fee, no matter what, or (b) you pay a flat fee UP TO SOME "REASONABLE" LEVEL OF SERVICE I think the latter is growing more popular. Somebody decides what is a reasonable level of service (ie. two lines) and says "OK, for the flat installation fee you can have whatever is needed to provide you with service up to that limit". Anything beyond the limit, you pay time and materials for (plus a healthy dose of good ol' profit). That's not how it's done here in Bell Canada territory. The flat fee seems to cover ANY type of installation. This included the sixth line here recently, and the 25-pair cable from the street to the house. It varies. Your mileage may vary. Check the tariffs which are required to be available for your perusal everywhere that I've seen. Andy Dunn (amdunn@mongrel.uucp) ({uunet...}!xenitec!mongrel!amdunn) ------------------------------ From: greg@coombs.anu.edu.au (Greg Price) Subject: Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University Date: 26 Jun 92 19:04:39 GMT richg@hatch.socal.com (Rich Greenberg) writes: > One more datapoint: from the 310 a/c (Tinsletown), PacBell allows the > eleven digits of 1-710-555-1212, and then Jane tells me that my call > cannot be completed as dialed. Why not try changing the 555 to a some other randomish type sequences? If you were really going to hide something 555 is a choice I wouldn't use. What is really needed is a telco person to give a few hints on the routing of those area codes, or possibly if anyone calls these area codes. Anyone work in a trunk exchange? Greg ------------------------------ From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: Computer Aided Dispatching Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 07:18:36 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Gilbert Amine (gamine@mcimail.com) writes: > A friend of mine is putting together a digital radio-based > computer-aided dispatching system ... Systems that do this job right now are available from Etak, Inc, of Mountain View, CA. The Etak Vehicle Management System interfaces with existing two-way radios, and reports in the vehicle position with data bursts on the radio link. The vehicle carries the Etak navigation system (which uses CD-ROM based maps, a magnetic compass, a two-axis rate gyro, a two-axis tilt meter, and wheel encoders) and provides the driver with a map display. The dispatching center has map displays showing the location of all vehicles on the system, and can transmit coordinates of destinations to the vehicles, where they show up on the driver's display. Doesn't use GPS; doesn't need it. John Nagle ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #511 ****************************** NOTE: ISSUES 512 THROUGH 519 ARRIVED OUT OF ORDER AND ARE FILED HERE AS FOLLOWS: 515, 514, 512, 516, 517, 513, 518, 519, THEN IN NORMAL ORDER 520 THROUGH 550.   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa04120; 28 Jun 92 12:39 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA00964 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sat, 27 Jun 1992 21:42:54 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA08044 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sat, 27 Jun 1992 21:42:46 -0500 Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1992 21:42:46 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206280242.AA08044@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #515 TELECOM Digest Sat, 27 Jun 92 21:42:45 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 515 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Interesting Phone Circuit (The Famous Harmonica Bug?) (Augustine Cano) Who Makes Inverse Multiplexers? (Doug A. Chan) Need Standards/RFCs/Docs For OSI/Object Modelling/X-Windows (S. Johnson) SDS/ISDN Interoperability (Matthew Holdrege) Looking For Info on Dialog Between PAD and Async Terminal (John Saldanha) Ringer Equivalency Numbers (RENs) (Steven S. Brack) Fiber Channel Standards Info Wanted (Alfredo Cotroneo) Part 15 Compatible Transceivers (Joseph E. Baker) Switch Question (Tom Streeter) Missouri Requires Modernization (J. Philip Miller) Update on CWA-AT&T Battle (Phillip Dampier) AT&T Knows I am Moving. How? (Naddim Massoud) Telecomics (David Leibold) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Interesting Phone Circuit (The Famous Harmonica Bug?) Date: 27 Jun 92 09:54:50 CDT (Sat) From: afc@shibaya.lonestar.ORG (Augustine Cano) I picked up an original Western Electric phone besides a dumpster. The plate around the keypad was gone and a small reddish box with 4 wires attached was bouncing around inside. The phone works just fine although audio volume seems low. The little plastic box (1" X 2" X 3/8") with the numbers 840364202 and 3-80 on the cover contains a PCB. The box looks like this: +---------------+ ^ | 840364202 | | | 3-80 | | 1" \ | | \--------------+ v <---------------> 2" The circuit board inside (component side, same scale): green wire o wire connections to PCB +--------|------+ 0 screws white wire ---0 -R1- | DDDD | -R1- orange white gold gold brown wire ---0 -R2- o T | -R2- orange white gold gold |-\\\\\\\--R3- o-- white wire -R3- brown green gold gold +---------------+ DDDD diode (521) T transistor (WE9 803A) -\\- a spring (inductor?) On the back, beside the traces it says: AM-2 220. Some traces and some holes on the board are not used, the remaining make up the following schematic: spring brown wire --0-\\\\\\\\-+-R3---+-----------+ | | --- | diode \ / gr. wire | v | | --- -|--|- | \++++/ transistor | \||/ | || white wire --0--R1--+---R2-----+---------+| | white wire So, is this the famous harmonica bug? I haven't had a chance to test if this circuit actually does anything. Can somebody shed some light on this without the complete schematic of the rest of the phone? Assuming standard color coding (what is the color coding standard in WE phones?) are the right signals going in/out of this circuit for this to actually do what it's supposed to do? Speculation: the low volume could be due to losses in this non-standard circuit. This was not a standard part of WE phones, was it? If this is really a bug, the transistor is really a switch in parallel with the off-hook switch. Unfortunately, the block with 19 screws where all the wires go is riveted securely to the base and I haven't attacked that part yet, so I don't know what's underneath. Augustine Cano INTERNET: afc@shibaya.lonestar.org UUCP: ...!{ernest,egsner}!shibaya!afc ------------------------------ From: apollo@buengc.bu.edu (Doug A. Chan) Subject: Who Makes Inverse Multiplexers? Date: 27 Jun 92 15:10:16 GMT Organization: College of Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA As the subject line says ... Basically, I need something which will take a fixed speed dedicated line and add on additional switched 56/64 as we need additional thruput. -It must be able to handle up to a full T1. -The addition of switched circuits must be under manual control (some serial port?) -Automatically dial switched circuits if the dedicated line is lost. What is out there and has anyone worked with them? What kind of interfaces can I expect (V.35, ethernet, RS-422)? Doug apollo@buengc.bu.edu ------------------------------ From: S.Johnson@bradford.ac.uk (S JOHNSON) Subject: Need Standards/RFCs/Docs For OSI/Object Modelling/X-Windows Date: 27 Jun 92 14:44:41 GMT Organization: University of Bradford, UK Hi, Basically the subject header says it all. I need all and any text files or spare documents anyone can lay their hands on all about the above subjects, particularly dcom standards for the 7-layer model. Any info about X would be great too - ftp sites gracefully accepted. Thanks in advance, Steve Johnson s.johnson@bradford.ac.uk ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 23:58 GMT From: Matthew Holdrege Subject: SDS/ISDN Interoperability We are planning to implement a number of switched 56k backup circuits for our WAN in California. Pac Bell has given us a list of SDS availability for each site. I was surprised to see that a number of sites were offering ISDN as the _only_ switched option available. I found out that the 5ESS switch does not offer SDS so they had to install ISDN on it to provide switched 56K. The DMS-100's can handle SDS or ISDN but PacBell charges less for SDS. PacBell says that I can call an ISDN number from an SDS number without any problems. Has anyone else tried this? Matt Holdrege Pacificare Health Plans 5156065@mcimail.com ------------------------------ From: john saldanha Subject: Looking For Info on Dialog Between PAD and Async Terminal Organization: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1992 21:16:57 GMT A friend of mine is looking for information on the dialog between a PAD (Packet Assembler Disassembler) and an async terminal. He asked me about this but I didn't have the faintest clue what he was talking about. Some of the jargon he was using was X.25, HDLC, DATEX-P, and Datapak. I am hoping there is someone on the net who knows about such stuff and can help him out. If you think you can help, please send me e-mail letting me know how to get in touch with you (preferably a phone number as my friend is from Germany and is currently travelling in the U.S.) Thanks, John Saldanha jsaldanh@haydn.helios.nd.edu Tel: (219) 239-5273 ------------------------------ Date: 27 Jun 1992 17:34:45 -0400 (EDT) From: sbrack@jupiter.cse.UTOLEDO.edu (Steven S. Brack) Subject: Ringer Equivalency Numbers (RENs) I recently made a tour of my new home, and added up all the RENs of all the phones, just to see what I would get. Total RENs: 7.4 *!* (Must really increase Ma's electric bill 8) Highest rated device: ConAir "prestige" phone, 1.7B Lowest rated device: Genuine Bell answering machine, 0.3B Lowest rated phone: AT&T 100 pushbutton phone, 0.7B Anyway, this brought up some questions. 1) Some phones give their REN as X.XA (X being any number), while others give theirs as X.XB. What do the A & B mean? 2) Why should the least feature-filled phone, a $15 one-piece phone have a higher REN than the AT&T phone, which does quite a bit more, and rings more loudly, as well? 3) Does the length of wire run figure into REN calculations? (I have an extension phone connected to a 250' cord.) So, I thought I'd give it to the manually implemented database (that's you). 8) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 15:03:28 +0200 From: alfredo@quickt2.it12.bull.it (Alfredo Cotroneo) Subject: Fiber Channel Standards Info Wanted I am looking for the ultimate ANSI specs of the Fiber Channel standards, but I could not find either the exact document number, nor where could I obtain a copy from. Can anybody help, please? I suppose that the standard document numbers should be available from ANSI. Does anybody have the address of ANSI (phone/fax/email) handy?. Any help or further pointer to the Fiber Channel standard documents will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Alfredo E. Cotroneo Bull HN Information Systems Italia Pregnana Milanese (Milano) Italy email: a.cotroneo@it12.bull.it ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 09:50:12 PDT From: jeb@jupiter.risc.rockwell.com (Joseph E. Baker) Subject: Part 15 Compatible Transceivers I am interested in purchasing Part 15 compatible spread spectrum transceivers for use in some system prototypes. The various prototypes may cover a fairly wide portion of the range of part 15 allowable bandwidths, so I'm interested in just about anything (at least anything that actually demodulates the spread signal). I would be grateful for any pointers to manufacturers or to sources of information. Please reply by email to me, and I will summarize any responses. Thanks, Joe Baker jeb@risc.rockwell.com (805)373-4648 ------------------------------ From: streeter@cs.unca.edu (Tom Streeter) Subject: Switch Question Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1992 21:11:09 GMT A brief question about something I've been watching all afternoon (instead of getting any real work done) ... Crews from AT&T and Southern Bell have been installing what I assume is a switch outside the building where I work. A large (maybe 25'x10'x8') metal-and-concrete unit has been placed in a hole that was dug to accomodate it. The outer part of the unit is a concrete shell that is split into a lower and upper half. The lower half of the shell consists of a series of equipment racks framed together . The metal frames are blue, and the equipment in them looks -- well-- like the equipment one sees in a phone closet, except more of it. The top half of the concrete shell has what looks like a large air conditioner unit on the top that will be above ground when the hole is filled in. The only person on the site who didn't look too busy when the lower half of the unit was being placed in the hole was the guy who is going to connect the power. He said the unit was a switch, but couldn't find any sort of model number in his documentation (he's one of the few non-SB or AT&T people out there). He said that he'd been told that it was being installed to serve only the campus (which is about to build a couple of new buildings) and is connected to the CO by a fiber line that was installed last week. No one who ever played with Tonka toys when they were a kid (or later, for that matter) could help but to be impressed at the installation procedure. The crew guiding the unit into the hole did it with a nonchalance I'm not sure I could muster standing under anything with "Wt. 42,000" stenciled on it. The supervisor (a woman who's obviously done this more than a couple of times) would give hand signals to the crane operator asking for adjustments of about six inches or so, fully expecting him to make such fine adjustements (which he did). All in all, it was a smooth operation. I have a couple of questions I hope someone might be kind enough to address. The switch was an AT&T product (based on the number of things that came in AT&T boxes and the AT&T techs who were running around). What kind of switch might this be? Is it possible that it's one of those legendary 5ESS's that are discussed here with such vigor, or are those the sort of things that are only found in COs? Any speculation as to what it might be? My other question is even more speculative (and probably not asked as directly as possible considering my general ignorance about such things). "Campus" numbers are considered those that fall in 704-251-6xxx, that is, those are the numbers that one can use all the bells and whistles with (call forwarding, park and pickup, three-way, etc.) Some campus offices are served on 704-255-9xxx and are reached from "campus" phones as if they were off-campus (i.e., having to dial '9' and the whole number to reach them). A request for a new phone line is considered a relatively big deal here, and the reason generally given is that there's a shortage of lines. Is it possible that the campus will be given an exchange of its own? Or is it possible that it will be used to tie the already existing numbers together under a single set of services (e.g, making it possible for two 2-6xxx numbers to conference with a 5-9xxx number). Are the two possibilities mutually exclusive? Have I provided enough information to allow someone to make a decent guess? Am I missing the point? Please respond by e-mail, and I'll summarize all that give me permission to do so. Thanks. Tom Streeter streeter@cs.unca.edu Dept. of Mass Communication 704-251-6227 University of North Carolina at Asheville Opinions expressed here are Asheville, NC 28804 mine alone. ------------------------------ From: phil@wubios.wustl.edu (J. Philip Miller) Subject: Missouri Requires Modernization Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 6:10:32 CDT From the {St. Louis Post Dispatch} 6/25/92 The MO Public Service Commission approved new rules that could prod the state's 41 telephone companies to modernize their networks and improve service. The companies have until next March to submit plans on how they will comply and what it will cost. Included among the particular areas are: upgrading all phones to one-party service; all customers have touch-tone service; provide electronic switch to accomodate enhanced 911; support new services like call blocking and call return; offer custom calling services to all customers; offer equal access for LD between area codes within MO. J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067 Washington University Medical School, St. Louis MO 63110 phil@wubios.WUstl.edu - Internet (314) 362-3617 [362-2694(FAX)] ------------------------------ From: phil@wubios.wustl.edu (J. Philip Miller) Subject: Update on CWA-AT&T Battle Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 6:16:30 CDT SWBT and the CWA which represents 39,000 of its employees have agreed to refrain from sanctioing a strike or lockout during negotiations on a new labor contract. The agreement can be rescinded only after the current contract expires. The company or the union must give 30 days notice before either side can terminate the agreement. Vic Crawley, vp of CWA said both sides accept risks in signing the agreement, "but the upside of the agreement is very positive. It sets a productive tone for negotiations where the two sides will be more like partners than adversaries." The Communications Workers of America is continuing their "electronic picketing" by asking people to give the CWA the authority to switch their long distance carrier. No one seems to know which carrier will be blessed with the business. CWA's latest press releases have been ultra dull stuff about the merger between their union and one representing broadcast engineers. I suspect there will be further updates in the CWA newsletter which should show up any day now. ------------------------------ Organization: The American University - University Computing Center Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1992 19:17:27 EDT From: MASSOUD@AMERICAN.EDU Subject: AT&T Knows I am Moving. How? About a week ago I notified US Sprint (my LD carrier) and C&P telephone (local carrier) to disconnect my service on June 30th, because I am moving. Today I received junk mail from AT&T offering me a "$50 long distance savings bond" if I select them as my LD carrier for my new home. Am I correct in assuming that C&P telephone gave them the information, probably so that my Bell Atlantic phone card stops working after this date? Nadim Massoud Massoud@American.edu [Moderator's Note: AT&T probably buys information like that from the local telco also. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 23:32:35 EDT From: David Leibold Subject: Telecomics The daily comic Shoe on 18th June featured a character who was working a fax machine and wound up attempting to fax his tie ... Any other examples of telecom references in the funnies? dleibold@vm1.yorku.ca ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #515 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa04515; 28 Jun 92 12:51 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA27096 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sat, 27 Jun 1992 20:43:24 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA14609 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sat, 27 Jun 1992 20:43:16 -0500 Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1992 20:43:16 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206280143.AA14609@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #514 TELECOM Digest Sat, 27 Jun 92 20:43:19 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 514 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (Bob Yazz) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (John I. Hritz) Re: Telephone Tone Control (Mike Willey) Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Neil R. Ormos) Re: Pac*Bell Posturing (John Higdon) Re: Ameritech/IBT (Robert L. McMillin) Re: Ameritech/IBT (Charles Mattair) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Joel M. Snyder) Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 (Alan Boritz) Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (Erik Rauch) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bob Yazz Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1992 20:02:11 GMT PAT writes: > Had the hang-up caller stayed on the line even another few > seconds to hear some of your outgoing message, your machine probably > would have a recording of dial tone on it instead. PAT] My local DMS switch did this a few years back but it's fixed now. Commonly, the hang-up caller is the machine's owner checking for messages, and hanging up when a certain number of rings has occurred (the "toll-saver" feature). When dialtone runs out, a CPC disconnect should be sent before the "please hang up" recording. (Both actions are instructions to hang up and start again, with the CPC referring to machines and the recording referring to humans. A CPC disconnect signal is essentially a complete drop of the line voltage for 0.8 (or if you ask them to change it for you) 1.2 seconds.) My DMS switch wasn't doing this but it does now. A CPC should also be sent out when the hang-up caller hangs up, but I went around and around on this issue with Code-A-Phone techies who said that line voltage is not guaranteed to be stable for up to two seconds after a phone is answered, so their machine is programmed to ignore all line voltage fluctuations, including CPC disconnect signals, during the first two seconds after it answers the phone. I eventually got rid of that machine. Extra delay in sending out the hang-up CPC disconnect (about one ring cycle's worth of delay) would also get around the problem. I don't know how DMS's are doing this now, but I never get those messages at all anymore. Of course, maybe the poster's switch is doing everything perfectly, and his answering machine is just ignoring the CPC. Bob Yazz ------------------------------ From: jih@crane.aa.ox.com (John I. Hritz) Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Date: 27 Jun 92 15:39:59 GMT Organization: OTA Limited Partnership, Ann Arbor MI 48104 USA In article A. Satish Pai writes: > Several times (about once in two weeks) I have had the following > message recorded on my answering machine: " > Please hang up and try your call again. This is a recording. > Two-oh-three-two-one." I presume that this is some sort of automatic Kind in the same vane. I periodically get recordings on my machine that consist of a and then a pause of about five seconds. This repeats for a couple of minutes. That's it nothing else. I was at home once when the call came in and picked it up. Just this regular beep. My guess is that it is some marketing department trolling for fax machines or (less likely) a cracker hunting for modems. The regularity of the beeping makes me thing it's a recording device with the prerequisite warning tone. Any similar experiances? Or opinions on origin and purpose. This is one case where CID/ANI would be handy. John Hritz, jih@ox.com O.T.A. Limited Partnership 101 N. Main, Suite 410 Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 930-1888 ------------------------------ From: mike@uunet!ctbilbo (Mike Willey) Subject: Re: Telephone Tone Control Organization: Communications Technology Systems, Inc. Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1992 15:18:56 GMT In article craig@world.std.com (Craig Hubley) writes: > I am trying to find sources of chips/schematics/electronics to > translate telephone tones (and possibly also pulses) into specific > control signals that can be used to control other electronics. > Even if you don't know of anything specific, names of periodicals and > catalogs that publish/sell electronics useful in telephony would be > very welcome. I will post back anything useful that I find but please > email me so that I can collect the material in a sane way. Check the Teltone T-310, it communicates line activity and provides limited line control through an RS-232C async port. This is really good pooky, we use them to help test our equipment from time to time. I don't have an exact address or TN handy, but they are headquartered in Kirkland, Washington. Cheers, Mike Willey Communication Technology Corporation Dallas, Texas ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 15:15:01 -0600 From: Neil R. Ormos Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service In (24 Jun 92 04:52:51 GMT) barry@coyote.datalog.com (Barry Mishkind) quotes the {Tucson Citizen}, 6/23/92 as reporting: > The Tucson area's 911 line was snarled yesterday when callers > trying to get tickets to a concert overload the local telephone > system... and laments: > And not an apology in the house! Of course, _not one_ employee of > US Worst saw this coming, nor told a supervisor about it, nor > cared ... to which our Moderator responds: > And had telco known in advance (did any of the concert > promoters advise telco of the times, etc?), what in your > estimation might telco have done about it, other than possibly > block off access from certain exchanges when traffic was heavy? We've had similar problems in the Chicago area with telephone problems associated with the computer ticket services. The ticket services, the telco, and the utility regulators are responsible to prevent them. These problems are essentially public nuisances, and they ought to be treated as such. In any case, the telcos can help prevent these problems. The telcos are well aware of the potential for unusual load-induced service disruption and have developed tools to avoid or remedy it. It is not unusual for telcos to assign subscribers who are expected to receive high peak call volumes to a selected exchange. (For example, in Chicago, the studio/contest lines of most radio stations are 591-xxxx numbers. This allows other switches to recognize excessive call attempts to the selected exchange and block such calls, when necessary, without blocking normal calls. Thus, the telco should be responsible for knowing the type of business its subscribers conduct and assigning problem subscribers, at the subscriber's expense, to high volume exchanges. It is clearly forseeable that ticket selling services and the like will cause load-induced problems. (There are probably some exceptions to this; e.g. a rush of calls to a drug-company's product information hotline as a result of publicity about product tampering is probably not a forseeable event of sufficiently high probability to justify such assignment). Where it is not possible or feasable to provide a suitable technological solution to the problem, telephone service should be tariffed to prohibit such improper uses of the telephone system and to hold the subscriber responsible (i.e. liable) for intentional abuse. We have land use policy (i.e. zoning), pollution control law, and other regulation to control similar anti-social behavior; the fact that this particular nuisance occurs in the telphone system should not prevent us from protecting the public interest in reliable communications. I might add that there are better (and socially fairer) ways to distribute high-demand tickets, but as long as the concert promoters and ticket sellers are permitted to use a public-resource-intensive mechanism without paying the fully loaded cost, they have no incentive to investigate them. neil ormos thssno@iitmax.iit.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 92 02:37 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Pac*Bell Posturing andrew@frip.wv.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) writes: > This isn't true from the telco's perspective. To "turn on" the > system, they must: Really? Let us look at each of these in relation to the real world and Pac*Bell's stated intentions. > Market the service, otherwise they won't get enough demand to > justify their costs; Pac*Bell intends to market the other CLASS features. How much more does it cost to market CNID in conjuction with the CLASS services in general as opposed to all of those services without CNID? I submit that the cost is negligible. > Train their rep and service people in the features; As well as for the other features--again an negligible, incremental cost. > Turn their graphics -- the existing subscriber instructions don't > discuss CLASS; But the new ones will, with or without Caller-ID. And how much more will it cost for the CNID space? > ... and so on. There's a lot more to providing telecom service than > wiring a switch. This whole argument would hold water a lot better if the company had not intended to go ahead and offer all of the other CLASS features. It costs virtually the same to promote, train, and educate in the matter whether it be for five services or for six services. BTW, I got these points from someone who actually works for Pac*Bell and who agrees that the whole public announcement is indeed posturing. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 03:45:39 -0700 From: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) Subject: Re: Ameritech/IBT Scott Dorsey writes: > In article nickless@antares.mcs.anl.gov > (Bill Nickless) writes: >> ... until you want things like ISDN. Ameritech/IBT seems to be among >> the slowest to offer data services to the home. I am under the >> impression that they're behind some un-named California telcos. > ISDN? In the home? I'm in a C&P area and we just got touch-tone > service for the first time last year. I asked the craftsman who came > out to install a second line last month about ISDN services, and he > said that he had recently been at a seminar on the systems, but said > that the chances of it being available in my lifetime were slim. Yes -- from C&P. Demand dial tone competition now. Residential ISDN will continue to be telephonic vaporware unless we can break out the crowbar of legal competition against the arrogant RBOCs, whose managements are largely interested in using their profit-guaranteed POTS to subsidize other, more potentially lucrative ventures -- which they frequently know nothing about. If they applied the same imagination and capital to upgrading the telephone system, we might be well on our way to an all-digital network by now. Robert L. McMillin | Voice: (310) 568-3555 Hughes Aircraft/Hughes Training, Inc. | Fax: (310) 568-3574 Los Angeles, CA | Internet: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 12:04:11 CDT From: mattair@sun44.synercom.hounix.org (Charles Mattair) Subject: Re: Ameritech/IBT Organization: Synercom Technology, Inc., Houston, TX In article kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Dorsey) writes: > In article nickless@antares.mcs.anl.gov > (Bill Nickless) writes: >> ... until you want things like ISDN. Ameritech/IBT seems to be among >> the slowest to offer data services to the home. I am under the >> impression that they're behind some un-named California telcos. > ISDN? In the home? I'm in a C&P area and we just got touch-tone > service for the first time last year. I asked the craftsman who came > out to install a second line last month about ISDN services, and he > said that he had recently been at a seminar on the systems, but said > that the chances of it being available in my lifetime were slim. > Sigh. Ditto for Houston. I called re ISDN for my home. $200 or so per month. SW Bell has only wired two offices for ISDN: one downtown and the other somewhere out in the hustings. I'm not in one of them. The cost was for the FX number and dedicated cable pairs they would have to allocate. Also, ISDN does not go outside those offices. Trying to find out this much took a week and several many phone calls. The most frustrating thing was finding someone to talk with. Say ISDN and you get a referral to the business side; as soon as those people determine the number is residential, they won't talk with you. Gotta call the residential side. Those poor, helpful souls have never heard of ISDN. Reminds me of a parody of one of SWB's slogans. "We may be the only phone company in town and we damn well act like it." Charles Mattair (preferred) mattair%synercom@hounix.org (or) mattair@synercom.UUCP Any opinions offered are my own and do not reflect those of my employer. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers From: jms@misvax.mis.arizona.edu Date: 27 Jun 1992 17:34 MST Reply-To: jms@arizona.edu Organization: University of Arizona MIS Department In article , catfood@wariat.org (Mark W. Schumann) writes: > I once got a package from my dad addressed to: > 12-39 > 50112-0805 The stories go on: the University of Arizona's ZIP is 85721. Anything sent to that ZIP gets sorted by our mailroom. That means you can address something to Joel Snyder, 85721, and it'll get there just fine -- in fact, no slower than the normal mail. ZIP + 4 normally selects at the block level (there's a ZIP + 4 book in your post office for your town); for some places, obviously, the + 4 gets it a lot closer, such as a PO Box (mentioned previously), a single office building, etc. Joel M Snyder, 1103 E Spring Street, Tucson, AZ, 85719 Phone: 602.882.4094 (voice) .4095 (FAX) .4093 (data) BITNET: jms@Arizona Internet: jms@arizona.edu SPAN: 47541::telcom::jms ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212 From: Alan Boritz Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 12:51:32 EST Organization: Harry's Place BBS - Mahwah NJ - +1 201 934 0861 davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts) writes: > US West (Pacific Northwest Bell) does nothing in particular after > 1-710 is dialed. But if you complete the number by dialing seven more > digits, you get the familiar " We're sorry, your call cannot be > completed as dialed. Please check the number, and try again." > recording. New Jersey Bell gives the same "cannot be completed as dialed" intercept, but the same number (1-710-555-1212) provokes an interesting intercept when dialed with a 10XXX. NJ Bell says that a long distance access code is not required. aboritz@harry.UUCP (Alan Boritz) Harry's Place BBS - Mahwah NJ - +1-201-934-0861 ------------------------------ From: Erik Rauch Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 16:16:25 EDT rmintz@ecst.csuchico.edu (Rich Mintz): > if your phone number is 345-1234, there is an alternate xyz-1234 > number which connects you to this "test" number. > I've found this "alternate" prefix many times through sequential > dialing with my modem and uning the Hayes 'W' command to wait for a > dial tone after the number is dialed (that's what you get when the > test number answers) and testing whether the result code is "No > Dialtone" or "No Carrier" (which means it DID find the dialtone and > went on to wait for a carrier). > Once the call completes and you get the dial-tone sound, a flash > changes it to a higher pitched tone. Yes, this seems to be the most common mode. You don't have to go dialing random "special" exchanges, however; they usually are clustered, most of the time having the same two first digits. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #514 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa06806; 28 Jun 92 13:45 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA03488 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Fri, 26 Jun 1992 22:01:06 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA21739 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Fri, 26 Jun 1992 22:00:57 -0500 Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 22:00:57 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206270300.AA21739@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #512 TELECOM Digest Fri, 26 Jun 92 22:01:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 512 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Mark Cavallaro) Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Adam M. Gaffin) Re: Concert Goers Blast 911 Service (Leonard Erickson) Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (John Rice) Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 (Foster Schucker) Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 (L. Erickson) Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 (Ron Natalie) Re: Longest Phonecall (David B. Whiteman) Re: Longest Phonecall (Richard Nash) Re: Longest Phonecall (Gary Morris) Re: Longest Phonecall (Stephen Davies) Re: Longest Phonecall (David Schachter) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: cavallarom@cpva.saic.com Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Date: 25 Jun 92 09:12:26 PST Organization: Science Applications Int'l Corp./San Diego In article , barry@coyote.datalog.com (Barry Mishkind) wrote: > Louise Rebholz, community relations manager for the phone company, > said jammed lines resulted in some calls not being routed to 911. In > some instances, people trying to reach the police and emergency line > got a busy signal or a recorded message instead of 911 operators, she > said. ----- > And not an apology in the house! Of course, _not one_ employee of US > [Moderator's Note: Come now, do you *really* think US West or any > telco relishes these situations and ignores them 'because they are the > phone company'? And had telco known in advance (did any of the > concert promoters advise telco of the times, etc?), what in your > estimation might telco have done about it, other than possibly block > off access from certain exchanges when traffic was heavy? PAT] Pat, I may be mistaken, but I believe CO switches can be programmed and/or configured to ensure that 911 ALWAYS has reserved trunking/and priority for calls. Mark [Moderator's Note: Yes, true IF your local CO can get around to providing you with a dial tone and IF the CO can then find time to look at and translate what you have dialed. Until that point -- if there are delays in that stage -- HOW is telco supposed to know you want to call 911? Once it is ascertained calling party wants 911, then fine -- give the customer what he wants. But what about the calls lost before that point? People don't have direct lines to 911, you know. PAT] ------------------------------ From: adamg@world.std.com (Adam M Gaffin) Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 17:45:12 GMT In article asuvax!gtephx!bakerj@ ncar.UCAR.EDU (Jon Baker) writes: > It is not the responsibility of the promoters to notify the telco. > However, prudent network managers do keep tabs on upcoming events, > such as this, by monitoring the radio and newspapers. An ounce of When I visited New England Telephone's Network Operations Center a few months back, I was curious why they had CNN showing on the largest of the Dr.-Strangelove-style screens in the middle of the room. Turns out that whenever an ad comes on that network with an 800 number, NET experiences a surge of calls to the 800 provider (ditto with any breaking stories, particularly of the international variety). Adam Gaffin Middlesex News, Framingham, Mass. adamg@world.std.com Voice: (508) 626-3968. Fred the Middlesex News Computer: (508) 872-8461. ------------------------------ From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Concert Goers Blast 911 Service Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon. Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 04:52:06 GMT lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein) writes: > Greetings. Pat, you asked what the solution is to these recurring > "concert fans saturate phone system" events. The solution is > simplicity itself. Until such a time as the phone networks are > capable of handling such concentrations in a more reasonable manner, > you either voluntarily request (or legislate, if that doesn't work) > that ticket sales which are likely to cause such saturations will not > be conducted by phone. It's not as if these concerts usually pop out > of thin air -- they're typically planned far in advance. The > rationale for such restrictions would be the denial to customers of > necessary phone services, both emergency and normal, that otherwise > results. > Ticket purchases in such cases could be by mail, with priority by > postmark date, perhaps with a number of tickets preallocated for > different parts of the city/areas to avoid unfair skewing of orders. > Print little forms in the local magazines/newspapers to make it all > simple for the buyers. While they're at it, some limits on the number > of tickets that can be sent to any one address might be a good idea as > well, to help avoid the massive "blocks" of tickets which are later > sold or scalped at way above face value, often locking many "average" > people out of the shows. > There are some applications for which our current phone networks just > aren't the best choice. Actually, as has been described many times in the past here, the phone system *is* set up to handle this sort of things. That's what "choke" prefixes are for. The tricks is to force these outfits to use them. If *I* were drawing up a law to prevent such outages, I'd merely authorize the phone company to charge the business responsible for the overload for all lost revenues *plus* any extra costs incurred by the overload *plus* some sort of damages. The only allowable defenses would be if the business could not have reasonably foressen the demand, or if the phone company had been asked for a number on the choke exchange, but not responded in a timely manner. Yes, I know there'd need to be a lot more detail. But I also think that businesses should be responsible for this sort of abuse of the network! Leonard Erickson leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com CIS: [70465,203] 70465.203@compuserve.com FIDO: 1:105/56 Leonard.Erickson@f56.n105.z1.fidonet.org (The CIS address is checked daily. The others infrequently) ------------------------------ From: rice@ttd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Organization: Teradyne Inc., Telecommunications Division Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 18:32:43 GMT > [Moderator's Note: Come now, do you *really* think US West or any > telco relishes these situations and ignores them 'because they are the > phone company'? And had telco known in advance (did any of the > concert promoters advise telco of the times, etc?), what in your > estimation might telco have done about it, other than possibly block > off access from certain exchanges when traffic was heavy? PAT] Pat, I'd have to disagree. Proper design of a "Life and Death" emergency system should preclude ANY intruption of that service based on trunk loading. 911 trunks should be Independent of any other traffic. John Rice K9IJ "Did I say that ?" I must have, but It was rice@ttd.teradyne.com MY opinion only, no one else's...Especially (708)-940-9000 - (work) Not my Employer's.... (708)-438-7011 - (home) ------------------------------ Subject: Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 From: tredysvr!nzkites!foster@gvls1.GVL.Unisys.COM (Foster Schucker) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 19:40:36 NZT Organization: Kiteflyers Roost speth@cats.UCSC.EDU (James G. Speth) writes: > Out of curiosity, what are some of the LESS benign forums? > [Moderator's Note: Would anyone like to address Mr. Speth's question? > For the sake of neutrality, I will refrain for now. PAT] Pat, Pat, Pat, how could you miss "alt.sex.phone" for the 900 fans and "alt.sex.bondage.phone" for our GTE readers? ;-) Foster Schucker -- "You are welcome to my opinion, I'm done using it." ------------------------------ From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon. Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 04:37:05 GMT After much hacking, I've solved the secret of the 710 areacode ... First you %I&*))_*_ NO CARRIER Leonard Erickson leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com CIS: [70465,203] 70465.203@compuserve.com FIDO: 1:105/56 Leonard.Erickson@f56.n105.z1.fidonet.org (The CIS address is checked daily. The others infrequently) [Moderator's Note: Now we see what happens to people who try to reveal the secrets of area code 710. :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: ron@pilot.njin.net (Ron Natalie) Subject: Re: For National Security Reasons, Stop Talking About 710 Date: 25 Jun 92 13:50:41 GMT Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. > Out of curiosity, what are some of the LESS benign forums? When I was back doing security work for the Army, the security office used to forward me things like the 2600 newsletter and TAP. Actually 2600 was very much like the TELECOM Digest. A lot of discussions of things like how payphones actually worked and things like that. Every once and a while there would be articles on how to hack into some large companies internal long distance system or computer network. (I seem to recall, hacking Telenet, as easy as 123456. Frankly, having been a legitimate Telenet user, I can't imagine anyone havig the patience to hack it). TAP is less technically oriented, but more a dissemination on how to get into things. These are mass market things, I would suspect that a whole culture of phreak BBS is probably out there for the serious cracker. Ron ------------------------------ From: dbw@crash.cts.com (David B. Whiteman) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 07:51:57 GMT Eight years ago I first tried a new long distance phone company that was setting up in San Diego. My first phone call with them was placed on 3/30/84 to my father. I don't remember how long the call lasted, but it was no longer than a few minutes. About a week later I got my first statement with a closing date of 3/31/84, and a postmark of 4/5/84. This statement listed only my first phone call to my father. According to the statement the call lasted 999 hours, 59 minutes, and 9 tenths of a second, and the call took placed on 5/11/84. It took me three calls until I reached a supervisor that took the charge off my phone bill. I kept asking the billing reps how their computer can predict that I would be making the phonce call a few weeks in the future. One rep said the computer must have made a mistake and was just billing for the phone call a year late, but the company was not in existance the preceding year. I eventually cancelled my account when I discovered that the calling card travel codes were only six digits long, and issued in consecutive numerical order. The phone company had a booth on campus to sign up students as customers and my two friends and myself who signed up after each other had travel codes that were in sequence. David Whiteman dbw@crash.cts.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 21:51:57 +0100 From: rickie@trickie.uucp (Richard Nash) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall In a message dated 21-JUN-92, Brent Whitlock writes: >> Speaking of phone calls, I remember hearing a story once about a girl >> who went to Paris for the summer, while her boyfriend went to Hawaii. >> They were going to miss each other so much they had to talk often, but >> they couldn't afford a hefty phone bill. So what they did was to leave >> the phone off the hook at both ends for the entire month of July. They >> would talk, make arrangements for what time they'd come back, and talk >> some more. When the phone bill eventually arrived, it was for a couple >> thousand dollars, and the girl took it to the phone company and complained >> that this COULDN'T be right, and they decided it was a computer glitch >> and deleted it. >> It was told to me as a FOAF, has anybody heard anything similar? > Back in the 1970's, there was some speculation by phone 'enthusiasts' > that if a call was established and not terminated for quite some time, > the 'system' (this was in the days of THE system) would forget about > it and no billing record would be generated. I don't know anyone who > tried it. A twist on this was that if the service was disconnected > before the call was terminated, no billing record would be generated. This may have been already mentioned by someone, but in the DMS 100/200 switches, an AMA Long Duration log is generated whenever a call exceeds a predefined interval as engineered by the operating telco. Operations surveillance computers can flag these calls for maintenance staff to investigate as to whether the circuit is actually being used. Richard Nash Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6K 0E8 UUCP: trickie!rickie@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca ------------------------------ From: garym@telesoft.com (Gary Morris) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Organization: TeleSoft, San Diego, CA, USA Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 20:37:08 GMT In Jack.Winslade@ivgate.omahug.org (Jack Winslade) writes: > I would hate to see what the bill would be like if these were > international calls. ;-) We had one of those about three years ago. Someone using an outbound modem here in San Diego was logged into a system in Sweden. The port got hung and they thought the connection was dropped and went home, but the modems were still connected. It was a Sunday and the port/modem didn't get reset until Monday morning. The bill for that one call, about 15 hours, was about $700. We now have idle timeouts on the modems. GaryM ------------------------------ From: steve@olsa99.olive.co.za (Stephen Davies) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Date: 25 Jun 92 12:10:32 GMT Organization: Compustat (Pty) Ltd Jack.Winslade@ivgate.omahug.org (Jack Winslade) writes: > We had a similar case shortly after where a system in Houston called > us. Ours shut down after the session, but his end remained up and for > some reason he was billed for several hours of LD time. If I remember > correctly, he had no hassle getting the charges removed. (Marc, you > listening in down there ??) > I would hate to see what the bill would be like if these were > international calls. ;-) This has happened to me. My mailer software crashed whilst connected from South Africa to the UK. The call stayed up about three hours before I noticed it. Here is South Africa we are still in the days of the big monopoly. International rates are over R400 ($160) per hour, and there is no cheaper after-hours rate. There is no itemized billing here, but by my reckoning that crash cost me over R1000 ($400). Telkom were not interested in letting me off the hook (so to speak). Nowadays I watch for that sort of bug quite a bit more carefully! Pat, I must say the the TELECOM Digest is quite mind-boggling reading for us South Africans. Here we have a growing number of digital exchanges but still many-many crossbars. Most South Africans don't even have a telephone at all. We have quite a few manual exchanges around too. A couple of years back there was a program showing on TV called "Nommer, Asseblief" (Number, please). This is the phrase you would usually hear after you cranked your phone (!) and the operator came on the line. So hearing about all your post-divestiture "problems" tends to make my mouth water ... Regards from a rainy Cape Town, Steve Davies ------------------------------ From: david@llustig.palo-alto.ca.us (David Schachter) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Organization: Greenwire Consulting Date: Thu, 25 Jun 92 18:31:26 GMT We had a VAX 730 in Mountain View, CA, with a dial-up X.25 connection to our Israel R&D subsidiary. Due to a bug, allegedly in DEC's X.25 software, the connection was held for a month. The phone bill was in the tens of thousands of dollars. We paid half and the phone company ate the rest. We also turned the machine off. This was in the mid 1980's. David Schachter internet: david@llustig.palo-alto.ca.us uucp: ...!{mips,decwrl,sgi}!llustig!david [Moderator's Note: Amoco Oil here in Chicago once had a connection that stayed up for gawd knows how many months (years?). It was an incoming 800 line into an ACD (automatic call distributor) which never got disconnected. No one wanted to hear about it; all my complaints were in vain. I finally got a repair foreman interested; once he yanked down the connection, the bill turned out to be over a hundred thousand dollars. It took me a month to get anyone to listen to reason and locate the problem; who knows how long it had been bad before that. This was back in 1974. IBT had to eat it, which annoyed them no end, but it was their ACD, their consoles and lines, etc. They actually billed Amoco for the call at first; an Amoco attorney told IBT he'd sue them in a minute if they pulled something like that again. I wrote a little blurb about this in Harry Newton's {Teleconnect Magazine} several years ago. Maybe some of you read the article. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #512 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa02776; 29 Jun 92 0:14 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA10638 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 28 Jun 1992 22:17:54 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA30177 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 28 Jun 1992 22:17:43 -0500 Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 22:17:43 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206290317.AA30177@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #516 TELECOM Digest Sun, 28 Jun 92 22:17:46 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 516 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson We Were Isolated Saturday (TELECOM Moderator) 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 (Bruce Schlobohm) Sorry, But 911 is Not in Service at This Time (Paul Robinson) 911 in Australia (David B. Whiteman) Voiding 911 (Barry Mishkind) Newfoundland Province Code 709 (Carl Moore) Massachusetts Deregulates AT&T (John R. Levine) Massachusetts DPU Relaxes Rules on AT&T (Monty Solomon) Bronx Discrepancies (Carl Moore) Professor Seeks Telecom Sabbatical Position (Bruce Klopfenstein) Two Questions From a Newcomer (Sam Israelit) AT&T Billing (Part 2) (John Higdon) Caller-ID Comes to Toledo -- Maybe (Steven S. Brack) First Pics via Cellular (Martin McCormick) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 12:14:15 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Subject: We Were Isolated Saturday From about 2 AM Saturday morning until about 11 AM Sunday morning, for some reason we were unable to get out to the world. All I was able to get was a message 'host name lookup failure' in response to attempts to mail the Digests (512-513-514-515) and post them to the net using our nntpxmit program. Likewise, no incoming mail during all that time. Then a couple hours ago, whatever was holding things up got fixed, and the mail started rolling in again. Indications are the above issues of the Digest did finally get delivered, and I reposted them to comp.dcom.telecom as well. I got this response from an administrator here: Subject: Re: network links down on Saturday? Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 13:02:33 -0500 From: Bill Westphal Sorry 'bout that. The department router was down. We've rebooted it. Bill --------------- So there you have it. If issues 512-513-514-515 did not reach your site, please let me know, or try to get them from the Telecom Archives if possible. (ftp lcs.mit.edu) PAT ------------------------------ From: bms@penguin.eng.pyramid.com (Bruce Schlobohm) Subject: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 Date: 28 Jun 92 18:05:40 GMT Organization: Pyramid Technology, San Jose, Ca. At work, our PBX requires that we dial 9 + 1 + areacode+ phone-number for calls outside of the 408 areacode. A colleague here has become very adept at starting most phone calls with 9 + 1. A couple of days ago, he was at home, and started dialing 9 + 1, and then remembered he was not at work so he hung up. A few minutes later he received a call from a dispatcher asking if he was in any trouble, and that there was a police car on its way to help him out! After things calmed down, the dispatcher told him that they knew he had only dialed 91, and not 911, and had debated as to whether to consider it to be a distress call or not. I didn't realize that 91 can be detected by the 911 circuitry. I wonder how often this type of thing happens? (For the curious, this person lives in the Los Gatos or Campbell area; I'm sorry I can't be more precise at the moment.) bruce schlobohm bms@pyramid.com ------------------------------ Reply-To: TDarcos@MCIMail.COM From: Paul Robinson Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 11:42:02 EDT Subject: Sorry, But 911 is Not in Service at This Time Reported on DC-Area Based Cable Channel "News Channel 8": A man in Australia had been watching the U.S. program "Rescue 911," one of a series of "reality based" TV shows that depict re-enactments of actual events. This show generally shows the effectiveness of the U.S. 9-1-1 virtually universal emergency telephone number. In this gentleman's case, however, it was not effective. The gentleman kept trying to call 911 in order to get the fire department to put out a fire in his building! By the time he got through to the fire department, an extra nine minutes had elapsed; the fire destroyed the entire second floor of the building. Now, when the show is broadcast in Australia, they post an announcement that the correct number there is 0-0-0. Paul Robinson This opinion is MINE, and nobody else's (who'd want it?) ------------------------------ From: dbw@crash.cts.com (David B. Whiteman) Subject: 911 in Australia Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 07:55:48 GMT The radio had a news story about a fellow in Australia who loved to watch the TV show Rescue 911. When his house was on fire he kept frantically trying to dial 911 without sucess. He forgot that where he lived one dials "0 0 0" (three zeros) for emergency services. David Whiteman dbw@crash.cts.com ------------------------------ From: barry@coyote.datalog.com (Barry Mishkind) Subject: Voiding 911 Organization: Datalog Consulting, Tucson, AZ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 19:50:51 GMT Headline in Wednesday, June 24 {Tucson Citizen}: DISASTER MAY RENDER 911 VOID Fans of Country singer proved the point Monday. Tucson's 911 emergency number might be useless during a disaster such as a large explosion or earthquake, even if 911 equipment survived undamaged, city officials concede. Apparently someone at (are you ready?) the newspaper office had a stroke, and no one could reach 911. After trying several times, a co-worker decided it was faster to drive the person to a clinic than trust to the 911 system. So who's at fault here? The country singer's promo guys for rigging the ticket sales to do this? The city for not having any real alternative (they claim they would use two-way radio in the event of a real emergency)? the US West for not choking the system faster? I wonder if this pattern will continue until someone "important" dies. Nah, after all, the Congress has its own ambulance ready at all times -- remember no civilian can use it. Barry Mishkind barry@coyote.datalog.com FidoNet 1:300/11.3 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 12:09:12 EDT From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) Subject: Newfoundland Province Code 709 It's my understanding that area codes originally came out in late 1940s? Anyway, a Wilmington, Del. radio station had a trivia-contest question about which parts of North American continent (excluding Caribbean Islands) were still British colonies in the 1940s. The answer is British Honduras (now Belize) and Newfoundland, the latter being a surprise to me. I have since read that Newfoundland was not incorporated as a province of Canada until 1949. Newfoundland (which includes mainland Labrador) is area code 709. Notice that the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon are right next to Newfoundland, but have country code 508. [Moderator's Note: Someone said to me that despite the different country code noted above, there is 'local community dialing' between some points in southern Newfoundland and the islands. Either a straight seven-digit connection, or some code followed by the local number on the islands. Can anyone comment on this? PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Massachusetts Deregulates AT&T Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 12:28:52 EDT From: John R. Levine The local papers report that the Massachusetts DPU has deregulated AT&T's intrastate interlata service, since the market is now considered competitive. Other companies' interlata rates have never been regulated. Operator assisted calls are still regulated, and there is some sort of price cap for people whose long distance phone bills are under $5/month. Note that this is only for calls between the 413 area and the 617/508 areas; anything else is either interstate or intralata. I don't know if Mass. allows intra-lata competition, but the New England Tel rates are low enough that it's not a big issue -- a maximum of 31 cents first minute, 13 cents/extra minute day rate anywhere within the LATA. AT&T applied for this a year ago. NET, who appear to believe that the only good regulator is a dead regulator, supported them. MCI, Sprint, and the state Attorney General opposed them. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 20:30:00 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Massachusetts DPU Relaxes Rules on AT&T From the 6/24/92 {Boston Globe}: The Department of Public Utilities yesterday removed some of the regulatory shackles on AT&T in Massachusetts. In its ruling, the DPU essentially agreed with AT&T that intrastate long-distance calling was now a competitive market. In its decision, the DPU declared that AT&T was no longer bound by rate-of-return regulations -- that is, profitability analysis performed by the DPU -- in setting rates for long-distance calls within the state. The DPU also removed many of AT&T's filing requirements, saying it would now review rate changes in 30 days, rather than six months. But the DPU retained regulations in two marketplaces, where it determined that AT&T did not face sufficient competition from rival carriers such as MCI and Sprint. For customers who make no more than $5 worth of calls a month, AT&T was required to freeze prices at the 1990 level. Also, if AT&T wants to change the rate for operator services -- any calls requiring the assistance of an operator -- it must file comprehensive cost data, as in the past. AT&T has been seeking less regulation for several years, but the DPU has traditionally argued that the market had not sufficiently developed to prevent it from engaging in anticompetitive behavior. With yesterday's decision, the DPU follows the trend of most states, which have relaxed regulations on interstate calling. Such regulations date back to before 1982, when the court ordered a breakup of the Bell System. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 9:13:48 EDT From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) Subject: Bronx Discrepancies I have now located some recent New York City phone books in the Newark (Delaware) library. One set of yellow pages has "Effective July 1, 1992 718 is the new area code for the BRONX", but a white-pages call guide says "Starting May 16, 1993, Area Code 718" in a footnote of a listing of Bronx in 212. ------------------------------ From: klopfens@andy.bgsu.edu (Bruce Klopfenstein) Subject: Professor Seeks Telecom Sabbatical Position Date: 28 Jun 92 15:23:03 GMT Organization: Bowling Green State University B.G., Oh. I teach new telecommunications technologies in a social science (not engineering) program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I am interested in identifying potential sabbatical positions for all or part of the 1993-1994 academic year. I must have a proposal written by 15 October 1992. The purpose of this faculty improvement leave is to allow the scholar to pursue new or existing research interests. I am very interested in the future telecommunications infrastructure, the advanced intelligent network, and broadband services to the home. My degrees are in communication (social science) with the graduate degrees coming from Ohio State, site of the current Center for the Advanced Study of Telecommunications (CAST). I want to identify possible positions in the telecommunications industry that would allow me to learn and write about any or all of the topics named above. An example project for me would to be to work on a telecommunications technology text for non-engineering students (broadcast students, for example). As a teacher in this area, I can safely say there are no good texts available right now. Such a project could be underwritten, for example, by a foundation supported by a telecommunications organization (GTE, Northern Telecom, Ameritech, AT&T, etc.). What's in this for me is a chance to write a book that I have not had time to write (again, that's the purpose of a sabbatical). What's in it for a telecommunications sponsor is a work that can be used by non-engineering students around the country (if I do the job right) that will better prepare them for entry into the telecommunications industries. I expect the students who are now preparing themselves for employment in the broad- casting industry will be attractive to the telecommunications industry in the very near future. I also am interested in telecommunications policy as well as forecasting consumer adoption of telecommunications innovations as other possible research topics. All reactions, suggestions, contacts, and other ideas cheerfully accepted. An electronic version of my resume is available upon request. Thanks for your help. Bruce C. Klopfenstein, Ph.D. | klopfens@andy.bgsu.edu Associate Professor and Chair | klopfenstein@bgsuopie.bitnet Department of Telecommunications | klopfens@bgsuvax.UUCP 322 West Hall | Voice: (419) 372-2138 or 2224 Bowling Green State University | Home: (419) 352-4818 Bowling Green, OH 43403-0235 | fax (419) 372-8600 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 11:07:52 -0800 From: sami@scic.intel.com Subject: Two Questions From a Newcomer I have two questions: 1). Is there a forum on the Internet that is dedicated to ISDN? What about ATM? 2). Has anyone heard of an ISDN interface for Macintosh computers? Thanks in advance for any useful info! Sam Israelit Engineer, Businessman, ... Brewer Portland, OR ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 13:49 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: AT&T Billing (Part 2) This month's bill from Pac*Bell contained two more calls to (you guessed it) the UK billed by AT&T. But this time when I called for adjustment, things went a bit differently. As you will recall, last month I was flatly told that if the calls appeared as direct-dialed, there could be no mistake and there could be no credit issued. After creating a fuss, AT&T issued, reluctantly, a "one time" credit. After that, I was told, future calls would have to be paid for (whether I made them or not was the implication). This time when I called AT&T to point out the two new calls, I was immediately put on hold. When the gentleman came back he told me that a credit would be issued for those calls and to deduct them from my bill. Period. Conclusions? Either AT&T has a very inconsistent policy, or some notes have been made on my records. In any event, the number to which those calls were billed has been changed. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ Date: 28 Jun 1992 17:22:26 -0400 (EDT) From: sbrack@jupiter.cse.UTOLEDO.edu (Steven S. Brack) Subject: Caller-ID Comes to Toledo -- Maybe Ohio Bell hasn't announced any plans to offer Caller*ID in my area (Toledo, Ohio) that I know of. But, upon wandering around in the phone section of a local store, what do I find? A Caller*ID box. It's selling for around $100, can recall the last number it received, and has a "Bell Products" label on it. Shades of things to come? ------------------------------ Subject: First Pics via Cellular Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 06:13:07 -0500 From: martin@datacomm.ucc.okstate.edu A fellow member of one of our local amateur radio clubs is doing an intern-ship at KOCO TV Channel 5 in Oklahoma City. He was able to give me some more information on the First Pics system which lets them transmit still pictures via cellular phone. The major components of the system are a Sony Betacam, a celular phone, and, what I'll call the heart of the system, a small Sony digitizer and modem package which connects the video system to the cell phone. My information source believes that the interface box connects to the cell phone through the handset interface. When a reporter wants to send a picture, he or she connects the monitor output from the Betacam to the video input on the digitizer and watches the monitor until just the right shot is observed. At the push of a button, a single frame of color video is digitized and buffered. It is, then, able to be transmitted via the cell phone back to the station. Transmission time for one frame is 45 seconds. The picture is full-color, but slightly grainier than a standard frame of NTSC video which indicates that the buffer doesn't store every pixel of the NTSC frame. The system is bidirectional, allowing the TV station to send weather map video or shots of the radar display back to the field crew. Since the Betacam is used as the video input to the system, lots of flexibility is possible. The crew can take full- motion video, send the best stills back over the cellular phone, and play the full-motion shots when the crew returns to the station. We will most surely see these systems at work in all possible types of situations. They represent the sort of telecommunications technology which is just waiting for people to apply it. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #516 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa05733; 29 Jun 92 1:35 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA04162 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 28 Jun 1992 23:49:50 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA22432 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 28 Jun 1992 23:49:42 -0500 Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 23:49:42 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206290449.AA22432@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #517 TELECOM Digest Sun, 28 Jun 92 23:49:46 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 517 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Combinations of Names From Phone Digits (Kamran Husain) "Legal" Phreaking? (Bryan Lockwood) What Are These Specs? (Ged Weare) Cellular / Video Help! (Todd Langel) Interactive Cable TV (Jeff Sicherman) ISDN Availability to Residence Customers in Chicago Area (Neil R. Ormos) Telescam Again? (Bob Frankston) AGT Cellular Gets First North American Digital Cellular Running (D Leibold) Sprint Bill Case (David Lesher) Telecom Things to See Across the USA (Ed Greenberg) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: khx@se44.wg2.waii.com (K Husain) Subject: Combinations of Names From Phone Digits Date: 28 Jun 92 16:38:52 GMT Reply-To: khx@se44.wg2.waii.com Hi gang! This is a simple program to generate alphanumeric combinations of the digits a telephone number. I did this to figure out if my phone number could make a meaningful word from the letters on the keypad. (Mine does'nt!) I am sure a lot of folks can simply do this in their heads, but this might be of help in case you have not had your coffee in the morning. If sources such as these have to posted elsewhere, I will do so. Kamran --------cut here------- /* ** This program is for fun, not profit. If you can miraculously figure ** out a way to make money off this... let me in on it for a %age ;-)!!! ** Just do please do keep the authorship around should you decide to ** make copies. Feel free to copy. ** I assume NO responsiblities, etc. for use, etc. ** In other words Use At Your Own Risk!!! ** ** Kamran Husain, MPS Inc. Sugarland, Texas ** khx@se44.wg2.waii.com */ #include "stdio.h" #include "stdlib.h" typedef struct Letter { int count; char list[3]; } LTR; LTR map[10] = { { 1, '0', '0', '0'} , { 1, '1', '1', '1'} , { 3, 'a', 'b', 'c'} ,{ 3, 'd', 'e', 'f'} , { 3, 'g', 'h', 'i'} , { 3, 'j', 'k', 'l'} , { 3, 'm', 'n', 'o'} , { 3, 'p', 'r', 's'} , { 3, 't', 'u', 'v'} , { 3, 'w', 'y', 'z'} }; /* ** Global counters */ int lpr; /* words printed so far */ int charspercombo; int numberFlag = 0; int callme(char *str, int i); /* recursive function */ void usage(); /* Main begins here. ** Generates combinations of letters from strings of ** telephone numbers. Useless really except that you ** might want to know some of the words YOUR phone ** number might come up with. ** ** The output can be passed to the uniq filter to parse ** out duplicates. ** Kamran Husain MPS Inc Sugarland Texas ** khx@se44.wg2.waii.com */ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { register int len, i; char *tcp, *cp; if (argc < 2) usage(); cp = argv[1]; if (*cp == '-') { cp++; if (*cp != 'n') usage(); numberFlag++; cp = argv[2]; } tcp = cp; len = strlen(cp); for (i=0; i< len; i++, cp++) { if (*cp == 0) break; if ((*cp < '0') || (*cp > '9')) exit(2); } charspercombo = len+2; callme(tcp, 0); printf("\n"); } void usage() { printf("\n Usage:\n ncomb [-n] #####\n"); exit(1); } /* ** Recursive function to try all combinations of phone number ** given null terminated string and current location within string. */ int callme(char *str, int i) { int j, ndx; char ch; if (str[i] == '\0') { if (lpr > 80) /* print if more than about 80 columns */ { lpr = 0; printf("\n"); } printf("%s ", str); lpr += charspercombo; return; } ch = str[i]; ndx = ch - '0'; /* try numeric combinations as well if flag is set */ if (numberFlag) callme(str,i+1); /* try all combinations for this digit. */ for (j =0; j < map[ndx].count; j++) { str[i] = map[ndx].list[j]; callme(str,i+1); } str[i] = ch; } [Moderator's Note: I tried the above and could not get it to work. Maybe I did something wrong. Readers with questions should address the author direct. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: "Legal" Phreaking? From: system%coldbox@uunet.UU.NET (Bryan Lockwood) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 03:51:20 PDT Organization: The Coldbox- +1 907 633 6828. World's northernmost site? Quoted from the email bin: > (I will call back, since it is after all legal for me to use a > bluebox for personal use, among other things which I understand are > legal there too. The author lives in Holland. This line of the message made me curious, and so I asked for amplification. Here's what I got: > I'm no lawyer, but in a quick nutshell I'll try to explain the > law here with examples. If I were to set up a small bank of phones > and offer calls to anywhere in the world for say a Guilder a minute > (about $.60 and what the max for any call SHOULD be) I would be a > criminal. This would be "false competition". However in Holland, > the rights and freedoms of the individual are held above the rights > of business, and therefore I can legally play with the phone. I > would be in violation of the law if I gave away or sold actual > methods of bypassing the bill however. In comparison to the USA, > Canada, France and England where there are laws against this type of > activity, it is much harder here to use the phone this way here in > Holland. I feel that a legal cure for a technical problem is never > the answer, and will allways embrace a legal attitude of this type > over outright prohibition. The war on drugs is another good example > where the law makes a problem worse. Here it is not viewed as a > social problem and making hash legal has kept the drug problem out of > Holland. BTW ... its legal in Alaska isn't it? (at least for personal > use and growing like here) Keep it that way! You don't want the > problems and embarassment the lower 48 has. Anybody care to comment on this? It's a very *interesting* philosophy of law, one that seems to lead to startling practices if applied to other areas of life! I was a bit startled by such a concept ... I suppose my upbringing is showing. Author: Bryan Lockwood (system@coldbox) Originating system: The Coldbox- +1 907 633 6828. World's northernmost site? WWIVnet: @501 | Usenet: uunet!coldbox!system | Direct: (907)633-6828 [Moderator's Note: Yes I guess your upbringing is showing. The fellow in Holland has written to us here at TELECOM Digest on a few occassions also, expressing much the same philosophy. If what he says is true -- I don't think it is -- then why in the world would *any* telecom organization want to do business in Holland; or for that matter, any business at all if it is, as the fellow suggests, perfectly legal to rip off a company 'for personal use'. I wonder if he subscribes to the same ethics where other businesses are concerned in his country: clothing, food, household supplies, other utility services, places of entertainment, etc? Since anything he needs for his personal consumption would be by definition for 'personal use', maybe he rips them all off, deadbeating his way through life. Actually though, I think telecom is his main target; he probably has a grudge against them going way back, and he has developed this rationale in order to synch his ethics with actual practice. We need to devise these concepts, ie 'what I rip off is okay' in order to avoid the complaint expressed by John Bunyan who noted, "what I think and what I do in real life are often two ..." PAT] ------------------------------ From: weare@bostech.com (Ged Weare) Subject: What Are These Specs? Organization: Boston Technology, Wakefield, MA Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 16:12:28 GMT We are trying to locate some specs that were referenced in a recent article in IEEE Communications Magazine (Feb 92). The article was called "Intelligent Network Concepts in Mobile Communications", and was by Bijan Jabbari. The specs are listed in the article as: [9] IS-41.1, .2, .3 and .4, Rev B December 1991 [10] ETSI TC GSM, Recommendations GSM 3.09 and 3.12, Feb 1990. Both are related in some way to cellular phones or ISDN. [10], we think, is put out by a European body, but we have no clue about [9]. Any help as to what these specs are, and where we can get copies, would be appreciated. Jed Weare weare@bostech.com Boston Technology (617) 246-9000 x3519 100 Quannapowitt Parkway Wakefield, MA 01880. ------------------------------ From: Todd.Langel@f230.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Todd Langel) Subject: Cellular / Video Help! Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 00:00:04 EDT Organization: FidoNet node 1:3603/230 - CSFSO Telecomm, Clearwater FL I am currently working on a cellular project here in Tampa. We are using Hewlett Packard 8590, 8591, and 8592's Spectrum Analysers to monitor linear amplifier controllers in cell sites in the area. We are using three HP's in each of the twelve sites we are monitoring and are trying to use the monitor output on the back to hook up to a Quadraplexer (A device that lets you take four video inputs and put them on one screen with four quadrents. We are using a Burel Quadraplexer.) Then take the single output of the quad to a VCR for recording. The problem I am having is that the output on the back of the HP's are 19.2Khz and that standard TV signals are at 15.7Khz NTSC. From what I have been told by the people at HP,the only monitor that will work is something like a non-interlaced Super VGA monitor, And know of no way to convert the signal down to be acceptable for a VCR recording. I also want to point out that I am not sure of the 15.7Khz NTSC being acceptable either. This is what I have been told is the standard for regular TV's by several manafacturers in California that I have talked to in the past few days. My question is: Does anyone know of a way to convert a 19.2Khz video signal to another signal that could be recorded on a VCR ??? Any Help would be greatly appreciated! (Also - I am Guessing that NTSC stands for National Television Standard C????????) Anyone??? Thanks, Todd ... OFFLINE 1.38 * Internet: Todd.Langel@f230.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG UUCP: ...!uunet!myrddin!tct!psycho!230!Todd.Langel ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 12:35:02 -0700 From: Jeff Sicherman Subject: Interactive Cable TV Organization: Cal State Long Beach I would appreciate references to articles, books, journals on the technology and applications of interactive cable-TV and any case studies of systems that have been tried. Jeff Sicherman ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 15:14:35 -0600 From: Neil R. Ormos Subject: ISDN Availability to Residence Customers in Chicago Area In , nickless@antares.mcs.anl.gov (Bill Nickless) comments: >> [Moderator's Note: Ameritech/IBT are certainly very progressive and >> technologically advanced telcos. I'm glad to be in their region. PAT] > ... until you want things like ISDN. Ameritech/IBT seems to be among > the slowest to offer data services to the home. I am under the > impression that they're behind some un-named California telcos. Coincidentally, I happened to query Illinois Bell regarding the availability of ISDN service to my home (served by the Elk Grove CO (708 228)) earlier this week. I was told that my CO, and many others, are already equipped for ISDN and that availability in such cases depends on the length of the subscriber loop (i.e. the length of the wiring between the the CO and service location), and whether or not you are served by a "remote" CO (some are not equipped for ISDN even though the real CO is). They quoted installation charges of about $95, a monthly charge of $37, and usage-sensitive charge of about $.12 per minute. The monthly charge varies depending on whether you want zero, one, or two of the B channels to be voice-capable; the above-cited price assumes one. As a side note, in contrast to other Chicago-area utilities, Illinois Bell provides excellent customer service. The residential customer service rep I initially spoke to had never heard of ISDN. However, instead of just telling me to call one of the business customer service reps, he courteously elicited information to enable him to contact the right department, and arranged for a rep who was knowlegable about ISDN to call me back. The ISDN rep was also helpful and courteous. neil ormos thssno@iitmax.iit.edu ------------------------------ From: Bob_Frankston@frankston.com Subject: Telescam Again? Date: Sun 28 Jun 1992 19:35 -0400 I've been getting pages from 540-1278 on my pager. I've got a 718 number (in addition to my Boston one) so I presume it is coming from there. The lack of an area code is a further indication since my Boston recording reminds the caller to leave an area code. Anyone know about this one? I tried dialing it from Boston (knowing I won't be charged above the LD rates) but it is blocked. To pursue this, I called the "annoyance call bureau" at 800-522-1122 and was assured that it was callable from Boston. Of course, that isn't dialable from Boston. On my next call they gave me the same number despite my explanations. Once again, 800 Brain Damage strikes. Speaking to information some more, it turns out that there is only the 800 number and the corporate headquarters number. BTW, NET has the same 800 number problem. So I called 212-395-2552 (corporate HQ) who was more helpful and gave me 315-738-8111. I got lost in voice mail hell with no category to report this kind of scam. OK, one is supposed to remember to call to report this the next day at telco's convenience. The idea of a way to report a problem with fax (forget about email) would never occur to a pretechnology company like Nynex. So I'll just pass on it realizing that telco just doesn't care about this kind of scam. If you are in NY and can find out more about this, please tell us (though not at the risk of your job). Of course all of this is out of proportion to the problem, but regular Telecom readers understand that proportionality is not a virtue when dealing with causes. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 22:50:48 EDT From: David Leibold Subject: AGT Cellular Gets First North American Digital Cellular Running AGT Cellular in Alberta, Canada, announced that it has North America's first digital cellular system in operation, beating out other cellular companies including its competitor, Cantel. AGT Cellular placed ads in recent newspapers trumpeting this achievement, stating that the heavy use of digital technology in AGT's network helped establish digital cellular service, and joked about digital not being in "Mister Rogers Neighbourhood" (a reference to Rogers Communications which owns AGT's competitor Cantel, which had announced plans to go digital, but hasn't put them into effect yet). dleibold@vm1.yorku.ca ------------------------------ From: David Lesher Subject: Sprint Bill Case Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 11:02:24 EDT Reply-To: wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu (David Lesher) Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex This is a bit out of date, but some time back there was a thread about a "Fatal Attraction" type case in which a Sprint bill was a vital piece of evidence. The defense introduced one bill, and the prosecutation another. The defense's version came under scrutiny because it lacked the proper advertising blurp line for that month. Well, I read that the defendant was convicted, and addition charges were pending regarding forgery of evidence. Gee, if she'd switched to MCI, she could have used Friends and Family ... wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu ------------------------------ From: edg@netcom.com (Ed Greenberg) Subject: Telecom Things to See Across the USA Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 05:28:38 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) I'll be taking a five week motorcycle trip across the USA and back. I'd be interested in pointers to Telecom related things to see as I travel. Some of the things that might interest me are: * Toll, Radio and other facilities that might give tours. * Places with oddball CO's like manual or other strange service. * Small telco's that might show off their inside plant. * Telephone and commuications museums. * Whatever else is radio, electronics and telco related that is seeable by the public (or a member of the public who calls up and asks nicely.) States I'll visit include: California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, then back to CA by the most northern states (north of I-80, and probably north of I-90.) Blatant Plug: If you're on my route and operate something techie that you think I'd enjoy, and feel like showing it off, please send Email. adTHANKSvance, Ed Greenberg Home: +1 408 283 0511 | edg@netcom.com P. O. Box 28618 Work: +1 408 764 5305 | DoD#: 0357 San Jose, CA 95159 Fax: +1 408 764 5003 | KM6CG (ex WB2GOH) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #517 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa08489; 29 Jun 92 2:51 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA07331 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:08:05 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA16377 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:07:39 -0500 Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:07:39 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206290607.AA16377@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #513 TELECOM Digest Sat, 27 Jun 92 20:02:05 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 513 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Michael G. Katzmann) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Jeff J. Carpenter) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Roy Smith) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Martin McCormick) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (David Schachter) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Clive Feather) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (John Rice) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Alan Gilbertson) Re: You Can Ring My Bell (Bill Mayhew) Re: You Can Ring My Bell (John R. Levine) Re: C&P To Revoke Telephone Number (Seth Breidbart) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: vk2bea!michael@arinc.com (Michael G. Katzmann) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Date: 26 Jun 92 22:26:47 GMT Reply-To: vk2bea!michael@arinc.com (Michael G. Katzmann) Organization: Broadcast Sports Technology, Crofton. Maryland. In article rlm@ms_aspen.AC.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes: > Responding to a message from Robert S. Helfman , our > Moderator writes: >> [Moderator's Note: Her voice was also used for Time of Day here in >> Chicago for many years (312-CAThedral-8000). She had recorded the >> phrase 'at the signal, the time will be' and the digits which were >> then patched together as appropriate. PAT] > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. The talking clock in Sydney (Australia) used to come from the G.P.O. and was (when I saw it in the late 70s), a series of three discs. These were optical devices (presumably working like motion picture soundtracks). The sequence was ... At the third stroke the time will be Ten ... ... forty three ... ... and twenty seconds ... The "strokes" came by landline from the Sydney Observatory. I imagine the Post-Master General's department installed these at each capital city. The machine was under glass, so that the workings were clearly visible, and was about the size of a small billiard table. The voice was that of Graham Conolly, an announcer on ABC radio. The machine was made by the English Muirhead Company, who also made the 'picture-gram' machines that were used by newspapers to send photographs around the world before the digital era. Michael Katzmann Broadcast Sports Technology Inc. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Crofton, Maryland. U.S.A Amateur Radio Stations: NV3Z / VK2BEA / G4NYV opel!vk2bea!michael@uunet.uu.net ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1992 08:16:31 -0400 (EDT) From: Jeffrey J. Carpenter Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Excerpts from netnews.comp.dcom.telecom: 21-Jun-92: > [Modertator's Note: Did you know that to avoid interference with each > other in the western USA (where both are heard with equal clarity) > WWVH states the time about fifteen seconds before the minute, then > remains silent while WWV repeats the announcement about seven seconds > before the minute. If you do not live on the west coast, you can hear what it sound like by calling both at the same time. WWV +1 303 499 7111 and WWVH +1 808 335 4363. jeff ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 11:36:58 EDT From: Roy Smith Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: Public Health Research Institute (New York) John Higdon writes: > Although I have never seen one, the machines are very simple. There is a > magnetic drum upon which all the various digits with up and down > inflections are recorded. The drum is scanned by a multiple head assembly > and the appropriate head is switched on line in sequence. A few years ago, I spent a day in the Science Museum in London. They had on exhibit an early (the first?) talking time machine. Just like John said, each digit and phrase was recorded on a different track and various heads moved about to pick up the different pieces of voice in the proper sequence. The interesting part is that the recordings were made optically on glass disks (like the optical sound track on movie film). The machine, probably 50 years old at the time, was still working fine, chattering away with "The time at the beep will be", "five minutes", "and", "twenty seconds", "past", "3 O'Clock PM", (pause), "Beeeeep!", or some such. Of course, talking time machines only have to access the words in a set sequential order, so it's simplier than a random-access recording like "the number you have dialed xxx-xxxx, is not in service". Still, it was neat to watch. roy@wombat.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 13:28:22 -0500 From: martin@datacomm.ucc.okstate.edu It appears that I have goofed in a major way. In my last posting regarding sound retrieval technology from the electromechanical era, I misspelled phrase. The spell checker caught it, but I was in too big a hurry and selected the first choice which was "frays," a perfectly valid word, but not a substitute. Frays more aptly describes what making such discoveries does to one's nerves. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group ------------------------------ From: david@llustig.palo-alto.ca.us (David Schachter) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: Greenwire Consulting Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 18:27:31 GMT In article rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes: > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. The audio was recorded on a magnetic drum and selector heads picked off the appropriate segments. In 1991, NIST replaced the voice and time code generators with digital technology and added new bits to the time code transmission to improve the ability of radio clocks, such as the Traconex Time Source, to provide accurate, reliable time. Originally, Jim Eason, ex-announcer for KGO AM, was recorded for the male voice (WWV) but I believe someone else ended up "in the bits." To hear for yourself, tune your shortwave receiver to 2.5, 5, 10, 15, or 20 megaHertz. (Lower frequencies are better at night, higher frequencies during the day.) To hear the time code, insert a low-pass filter to pick out the 100 Hz sub-carrier. You will hear one pulse (bit) per second; the width of the pulse identifies it as a zero, a one, or a marker. To hear the voice signal, insert a high-pass filter to strip out the sub-carrier. (The crummy speaker in most shortwave receivers makes an excellent high-pass filter already!) David Schachter internet: david@llustig.palo-alto.ca.us uucp: ...!{mips,decwrl,sgi}!llustig!david ------------------------------ From: clive@x.co.uk (Clive Feather) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 14:22:06 BST > [Moderator's Note: Very good point. Can anyone comment on how the time > of day was handled *after* they quit using live people speaking it but > *before* it went digital? PAT] The British Telecom TIM machine had three sets of recordings. One set was: "one" "two" ... "twelve" The second set was: "o'clock" "one" "two" ... "fifty-nine" The third set was: "precisely" "and ten seconds" ... "and fifty seconds" Two fixed recordings ("At the third stroke, it will be" and " ") were then wrapped around these. The original machine is in the London Science museum. I seem to recall that some parts rotated every hour, minute, and ten seconds, respectively. The word "drum" comes to mind, but I can't say why. Clive D.W. Feather | IXI Limited clive@x.co.uk | 62-74 Burleigh St. Phone: +44 223 462 131 | Cambridge CB1 1OJ Fax: +44 223 462 132 | United Kingdom ------------------------------ From: rice@ttd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: Teradyne Inc., Telecommunications Division Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 19:00:45 GMT The Audichron systems I remember seeing used magnetic cylinders. Same composition, essentially, as magnetic tape. Multiple tracks were recorded, with multiple record/playback heads, on the cylinders. The first track would be the "At the tone, the time will be" message, and following tracks would be the hours, minutes and seconds (in 10 second increments), each recorded on a separate track And offset on the cylinders to put them in the proper position in the voice message. Track selection was by mechanical selection of the proper combination of playback heads, which were switch selected with clock motor driven multi-switches. With five heads selected at a time, changing every 10 seconds. The first head read the "At the tone ..." portion, the second head read the Hour, third, the minute, 4th seconds and 5th "AM" or "PM". The cylinders were in constant rotation with callers connected to the output at the beginning of each ten second cycle. There were some variations, but that's how I remember it. It's been a long time since I saw one of the machines (about 20 years). Temperature machines worked similarly, with a mechanism to select the right combination of playback heads based on a temperature sensor. John Rice K9IJ "Did I say that ?" I must have, but It was rice@ttd.teradyne.com MY opinion only, no one else's...Especially (708)-940-9000 - (work) Not my Employer's.... (708)-438-7011 - (home) ------------------------------ From: Alan.Gilbertson@f230.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Alan Gilbertson) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 01:32:14 EDT Organization: FidoNet node 1:3603/230 - CSFSO Telecomm, Clearwater FL > [Moderator's Note: Very good point. Can anyone comment on how the time > of day was handled *after* they quit using live people speaking it but > *before* it went digital? PAT] I don't have any direct information on how things were handled in the US, but the old UK PTT system used analog optical disks with sound tracks exactly like those used to record analog optical sound on movie film. Moving "read heads" selected the appropriate track from each disk in order to stitch together the following: "At the third stroke, the time will be" "" "o'clock"||"" "and seconds."||"precisely." "{pip} {pip} {pip}" This cycle was timed to repeat every ten seconds. The "stroke" referred to was a beep at about 1200 Hz or so, from memory, and was the last of the three "{pip}"s, which were spaced one second apart. The thing was quite accurate, and mercifully free of advertising or other gimmicks. I think the Post Office claimed they kept it accurate to within a tenth of a second. Alan Internet: Alan.Gilbertson@f230.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG UUCP: ...!uunet!myrddin!tct!psycho!230!Alan.Gilbertson ------------------------------ From: wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (Bill Mayhew) Subject: Re: You Can Ring My Bell Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 15:25:47 GMT It would be pretty hard to surpass the twin gong ringer in a 2500 style instrument. The ringer really is an elegant design. People that stare at computer chips all day long should take time to look at an elegant electromechanical device from time to time for a reality check. Speaking of 2500 instruments, I recently found a clear plastic housing ITT 2500 set at the local discount store. The classic 2500 has a lot more soul than those cheap esatz trimline-like phones with clear plastic. ITT only made one desinger concession; the coiled cord for the hand set has color coded wires instead of all the same color that would be usual. The 2500 has undergone considerable evolution over the years. This is real obvious when comparing a ca 1968 against the newest one I have. The hybrid network used to be a rather large metal box, now it is a little PC board with something that looks like an interstage audio transformer. There is a lot less bulk of wiring inside too; I'm sure that when you make several million phones, saving a few inches of wire each adds up to a lot of savings. The handset cotton is now a piece of styrofoam. Even the MIC and earpiece have undergone sublte changes to reduce bulk of materials. The most radical change for the tone set has been in the keypad, now using bubble contacts and an IC/3.58 MHz crystal for tone generation. The old style pad with germanium transistors and cup core inductors was also an example of quite neat engineering. Despite the many subtle changes, outside appearance of the 2500 is the same, the performance is as good as or better than ever, and the reliability likely much higher -- especially in the keypad. I've been told Raymond Lowe designed the improved Bell System logo introduced in the 1970s. I don't know if Mr. Lowe had anything to do with the 2500 style, but even almost 40 years after its introduction, it still looks stylish; I'm sure he would approve. By the way, the ITT part number for the clear 2500 is "250070-TRA-20M CLEAR PC2500CLR", or at least that is what is on the label on the box. Bill Mayhew NEOUCOM Computer Services Department Rootstown, OH 44272-9995 USA phone: 216-325-2511 wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (140.220.1.1) ------------------------------ Subject: Re: You Can Ring My Bell Organization: I.E.C.C. Date: 25 Jun 92 14:50:16 EDT (Thu) From: johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) > The origial Mickey Mouse phone was a blend of fashion and telephony. > It looked cute and met the same specs as an AT&T 2500, including the > drop test. People were reluctant to pay $125.00 for this phone. Not me, and it was worth every penny of the roughly $80 it cost in about 1978. Since I bought it pre-dereg, they explained that I was only buying the case, and the guts still belonged to SNET (I lived in New Haven at the time.) I asked what would happen when I moved, and got varying answers. One was that they'd do the paperwork to sell the guts to the telco where I moved to, another was that they'd come out and degut the phone when they turned off service. Assuming the first answer was true, I was prepared to tell them that I was moving to Shoreham VT, so they'd sell it to the Shoreham Telephone Co. and its proprietor, who was also my grandfather, would sell it or give it to me. In practice, of course, they immediately lost track of the thing and I just took it with me. Still looks and works great. I also got one of those Noteworthy wall phones with a corkboard and a box to store the phonebook, though since it's rotary dial I use it less than I used to. It uses a regular trimline handset, so I suppose if I could find an old dung-brown TT trimline with the ringer in the base, I could swap handsets. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl ------------------------------ From: sethb@fid.Morgan.COM (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: C&P To Revoke Telephone Number Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co., New York, NY Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1992 22:06:10 -0400 In article William.Degnan@mdf. FidoNet.Org (William Degnan) writes: > I normally suggest that we have the telco turn the number on -- even > if it is only as an RCF before the order goes to the printer. When > they are actually ready for the number it can be installed at their > new premises. I'd be careful about advertising a number even if you're certain it's yours. When I moved about five years ago, I was given my phone number in advance, and told that I would "probably" get it. The service was turned on on Friday, using that number. I moved on on Saturday. On Monday, I called the phone company and told them that the number had to be changed. I don't know what the person who had previously had it was running, but whatever it was generated way too many calls at 3 AM. Seth sethb@fid.morgan.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #513 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa08535; 29 Jun 92 2:53 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA02028 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:04:24 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA02468 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:04:12 -0500 Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:04:12 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206290604.AA02468@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #518 TELECOM Digest Mon, 29 Jun 92 01:04:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 518 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: We Were Isolated Saturday (Monty Solomon and TELECOM Moderator) No Obvious L.A. Telecom Effects From Yucca/Big Bear Quakes (L. Weinstein) A Piece of Long Distance History (Mark Terribile) Information Wanted on PC Pursuit (Daniel L. Schneider) KTLA 45th Anniversary Program (Barry Mishkind) 900Mhz Cordless Phones: Which One? (James J. Dempsey) "Choke" Prefixes (was Concert Goers Blast 911) (Lauren Weinstein) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (Bill Mayhew) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (Art Hunter) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (S. Spencer Sun) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (Nick Sayer) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 00:59:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Re: We Were Isolated Saturday > From about 2 AM Saturday morning until about 11 AM Sunday morning, > for some reason we were unable to get out to the world. All I was able > to get was a message 'host name lookup failure' in response to > attempts to mail the Digests (512-513-514-515) and post them to the > net using our nntpxmit program. We received two copies of #512 here. One of them was actually #511. We didn't receive copies of #513 or #514. At your convenience, would you please send them to monty%roscom.uucp@ think.com Thanks. Monty Solomon / PO Box 2486 / Framingham, MA 01701-0405 monty%roscom@think.com [Moderator's Note: I have several reports of non-reciept of 513 and 514. They will be transmitted early Monday morning, following this issue. Readers should change the header on 511 so it reads that way. In the process of trying to shove that one out Friday overnight or Saturday morning, one of the attempts (the one that succeeded!) got mis-numbered. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 09:35:31 PDT From: lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: No Obvious L.A. Telecom Effects fFom Yucca/Big Bear Quakes Greetings. Just a quick note to mention that an informal survey shows no significant L.A. area telecom-related effects from the pair of quakes this morning (one centered in the Yucca Valley about 100 miles from the L.A. metro area (prelim 7.4), and one near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino area (prelim 6.5, apparently triggered by the first quake). No dial tone sluggishness was noted after either the 5 AM or 8:10 AM quakes. Pacific Bell was issuing routine warnings about not clogging up the phone system. Computers I routinely check after such events stayed up, and interlata calling also seemed normal. Power, cable service, etc. was apparently generally unaffected, with small pockets of trouble. No significant structural damage has been reported in the L.A. area (other than a couple of apparently cosmetic cracks in the Disneyland hotel and similar things), nor any related deaths in the L.A. area. Shaking was fairly prolonged from the first quake, but at least from my location in the Santa Monica Mountains nothing fell, nothing broke, and other than three rather concerned cats everything seems pretty much under control. No doubt with time there will be reports of more minor damage from old concrete building facades, cracks and such. There was more damage in Yucca Valley at the epicenter of the first quake, where a number of buildings had wall or roof collapses and one child was killed when a fireplace/chimney fell on him. It is worth noting that the 1971 6.3 San Fernando quake, being so much closer to the L.A. area, did *far* more damage. Also, it is mainly old, brick and unreinforced concrete buildings that are at most risk during such events. That's why quakes of this magnitude can be devastating in some parts of the world where such construction, or even worse (e.g. mud, etc.), is common, unlike here. All in all, even though more aftershocks are expected as usual, everything seems to be returning rapidly to normal ... even the cats. --Lauren-- [Moderator's Note: John Higdon has also checked in with me and noted that Sunday morning's quakes were a bit too close -- and too strong -- for comfort in his 'desert hideaway'. But he was unharmed and will be writing to us again soon. Just as we have all heard the 'AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuals' routine, one clever writer suggested to me that the earthquake was God's punishment for having the LA Gay Pride Parade yesterday ... but his aim was a little off and he forgot that his watch was set on Vatican Time. :). PAT] ------------------------------ From: mat%mole-end@uunet.UU.NET Subject: A Piece of Long Distance History Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 00:39:34 GMT Here's an isolated bit of telecom history: When the [Signal Corps] started drafting and commissioning Ma Bell's managers and engineers, AT&T convinced Olmstead not to spread the wealth but to concentrate it in a single brainy battalion. These experts proceeded to create a dial telephone system for the battlefield. At the time, there wasn't long-distance dialing anywhere. In 1944, if you made a long-distance phone call in the U.S., you had to go through the operator. If you were an Army officer fighting in a muddy field in the middle of France, you dialed it yourself, whether the person you wanted was in the next field or in England. (From _There's A War To Be Won_, Geoffrey Perret, in a chapter entitled _Logs, Lists, Logic ... Logistics_. My copy cost me $30 a while ago, but I've seen it recently for much less in one of the big discount catalogs, probably B&N. Truly a wonderful book, though telecom crops up only in isolated places. A marvellous story of working with what you have instead of worrying about what you lack.) (This man's opinions are his own.) From mole-end Mark Terribile uunet!mole-end!mat, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ ------------------------------ From: dans@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Daniel L. Schneider) Subject: PC Pursuit? Date: 27 Jun 92 06:21:50 GMT Reply-To: dans@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Daniel L. Schneider) Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX Could anyone here tell me a lot about PC Pursuit? Is there an email address for PC Pursuit where I could get some info? Maybe a FTP site? Information about other similar services would also be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Dan dans@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu [Moderator's Note: You can pull a file from the Telecom Archives which discusses this public data network in detail. PAT] ------------------------------ From: barry@coyote.datalog.com (Barry Mishkind) Subject: KTLA 45th Anniversary Broadcast Organization: Datalog Consulting, Tucson, AZ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 16:36:15 GMT A friend who comes from LA just asked about the 45th anniversary program shown by KTLA ... I'd like to acquire a dub of this tape to give him. He saw the writeup in {Daily Variety} or {Hollywood Reporter}, and is drooling for a chance to see it. If anyone has access ... Thanks. Barry Mishkind barry@coyote.datalog.com FidoNet 1:300/11.3 ------------------------------ From: jjd@BBN.COM (James J Dempsey) Subject: 900Mhz Cordless Phones: Which One? Date: 28 Jun 1992 18:22:36 GMT Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Reply-To: jjd@BBN.COM (James J Dempsey) I've been waiting a year or so to buy a cordless phone until the 900Mhz phones were generally available. So far I have seen two in the stores: A Tropez unit and a Panasonic unit. I have seen reviews in this forum for the Tropez phone. Generally, I recall pepole saying that it worked but that voice quality was low, probably due to an underdesigned digital transmission format. I haven't seen any reviews of the Panasonic phone. For just under $400, I'd prefer to hear what people think before I go out and purchase. Has anyone used the Panasonic 900Mhz cordless? Are there any other models on the market? About to be on the market? Both the Panasonic and Tropez are pretty much basic cordless phones. I'd prefer one with a speaker phone in the base and two batteries similar to some current 49Mhz phones from Sony. Anyone heard of 900Mhz versions like this? Thanks a lot! Jim Dempsey jjd@bbn.com ..!{decvax, harvard}!bbn!jjd ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 12:59:15 PDT From: lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: "Choke" Prefixes (was Concert Goers Blast 911) Greetings. It has been suggested that so-called "choke" prefixes (e.g. 213-520) are the solution to saturation problems from ticket purchasing events and the like. There are some cases, in some areas, where they help. But in many areas they don't solve the problem and can even make matters worse. First off, and the least important point, is that such prefixes are generally chargeable numbers. The people trying to sell tickets don't usually want people to have to pay for those calls, for obvious promotional reasons. In theory you could set up any random prefix as toll-free, but there are logistical reasons why this is not usually done. Outside of using a conventional choke prefix, you could also use 900 numbers, and take advantage of the flow control built into at least *some* 900 services. But it isn't clear how effective this would be depending on the carrier, the type of service, and the like. Even worse, many people would refuse to call a 900 number to order tickets, and many have 900 numbers blocked in any case. Secondly, choke prefixes (and 900 numbers, if flow controlled) can actually generate *more* calls. In an age of automatic redial features and daemon dialers, people will just redial constantly trying to get through the busy signals that result from choke prefix use. The result is even worse saturation of local exchanges, including the denial of dialtone problems that really put people at risk when it comes to reaching emergency services. That's the key point actually. Choke prefixes can prevent overloading of the target office and interoffice trunks. But they do nothing to stop the local dialtone and related local switch problems in individual offices resulting from many people attempting (usually over and over again) to draw dialtone and dial out to that prefix. Given the large areas that are frequently handled by a single switch, a significant ticket event in a metro area can easily result in denial of dialtone to hundreds of thousands of people, even if choke prefixes *are* being used. I stand on my original observation; there are some activities for which the current phone system is just not suitable today. --Lauren-- ------------------------------ From: wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (Bill Mayhew) Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 03:49:36 GMT In article jih@crane.aa.ox.com (John I. Hritz) writes: > Kind in the same vane. I periodically get recordings on my > machine that consist of a and then a pause of about five > seconds. This repeats for a couple of minutes. That's it nothing That is indeed a fax machine. It really makes me mad as h*** when I get one of those calls on my voice line about 3:00 in the morning. I suspect that one or more companies have access to various professional mailing lists and trolling for fax machines on to which to dump junk mail. We get a *lot* of junk fax messages at work. Curiously, only the IEEE has my home phone number. I have all the trade magazine pubs sent to the office. On warranty cards, I write, "please, no fax calls," in the spot where the number would go. I omit my actual number. Makes me *really* whish we had caller ID here so that I could return the favor to those jerks! I have a Cobra answering machine that detects CPC. One nice featuere is that it backspaces over any dialtone at the end of the call. Pretty nifty! The manual doesn't mention that the machine has that nifty feature, but I've watched the machine in action. If the machine detects nothing but dialtone, it even decrements the call counter back to the previous number of calls. The operation seems pretty reliable; I've never had the machine expunge a real call. Occasionally, the machine errs, and there is one or two seconds of dialtone, but I can live with that. Bill Mayhew NEOUCOM Computer Services Department Rootstown, OH 44272-9995 USA phone: 216-325-2511 wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (140.220.1.1) ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine From: art@aficom.ocunix.on.ca (Art Hunter) Reply-To: art@aficom.ocunix.on.ca (Art Hunter) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 07:48:29 -0400 Organization: AFI Communications - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada > Now I have a question: Where can I get an answering machine that > recognizes the hangup call and doesn't record it? If no such machine > exists, is there one with a remote command "Skip over this stupid > hangup call message"? What I do is record every call with my Caller-ID recording system and when callers are directed to my answering machine I look at my log of who called and then return the calls. In fact I often just rewind the tape and never listen to the messages as I have already contacted the callers. It sort of make the answering machine redundant. I have, however, overcome the issue of having people hang up and never say a word. The reverse is now happening in that folks know that I have recorded their phone number and their name and the time of the call and so they don't respond to the answering machine. If they are new callers, then they often leave a hollow message that says "Hi this is John Smith at 123-4567 could you call me back". I get that much of the message from reading my log of calls and don't need the words to tell me the above. ------------------------------ From: Shih-ping Spencer Sun Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 01:04:13 EDT Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Reply-To: spencer@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (S. Spencer Sun) Organization: Live Organ Transplants In article , jbutz@homxa.att.com writes: > [fun with 3-way calling and answering machines] > [Moderator's Note: Wow ... what a lot of fun! This is just a variation > on the stupid prank immature phreaks (yes, I know that may be > considered redundant by some readers) which involves calling two > unrelated people via three-way calling then remaining silent as each > accuses the other of placing the call. And if you have two physical > lines, each with three-way, then you patch the lines together and get > four people in on the 'joke' ... all of whom are convinced as a result > the telco must be more screwed up than ever. It helps if at least a > couple of the victims are older people you wake up at 2 AM. PAT] OBDisagreementWithPAT: Actually more of a request for distinction. As with any sort of prank, I think intent/motive play a big part in determining the reasonableness of an action. If you want to screw with your friend's mind, and get a mutual friend to play one of the parts while you stay silent, I don't think that's bad as, say, someone just randomly and senselessly doing it in the middle of the night. Sure, it may be immature, but we all need to cut loose every now and then :-) Note I don't condone the second category (i.e. the random, senseless type). The first type may or may not be appropriate depending on the mentality of your victim-friend. The opinions expressed in this article are solely mine. sss/PU'94 Dept of CS (spencer@phoenix.princeton.edu)/JvNCnet (spencer@jvnc.net) [Moderator's Note: Actually, the first type may or may not be appropriate depending on *your* mentality. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer) Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'. Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 17:23:32 GMT wdc@athena.mit.edu (Bill Cattey) writes: > Now I have a question: Where can I get an answering machine that > recognizes the hangup call and doesn't record it? I have two such machines (one just replaced the other). One works too well and sometimes disgards messages from my mother, who speaks softly, the other occasionally leaves messages with just a single click as the switch recycles. > If no such machine exists, is there one with a remote command "Skip > over this stupid hangup call message"? There are new answering machines that record messages digitally in battery-backed RAM. The advantage is that you can delete individual messages. So if you have an important one, an empty message, a survey taker, a collection agency, and a message from your rich uncle Snerdley, you can delete the three in the middle and just keep the first and last ones for later perusal. Sony makes one that costs a lot, and AT&T makes a cheap one. No, I don't have any connection with Sony or AT&T, apart from owning the AT&T machine (which apart from being tapeless really isn't so hot, IMHO). I'm thinking of making a little module to hook up to a serial port on my Sun and to the audio I/O port to turn my ELC into an answering machine. Seems the only way I'll be happy with an answering machine is if I get to make it work the way I like it. :-) Nick Sayer N6QQQ @ N0ARY.#NOCAL.CA.USA.NA 37 19 49 N / 121 57 36 W +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest' ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #518 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa10891; 29 Jun 92 3:42 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA30257 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:59:24 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA10658 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:59:13 -0500 Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:59:13 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206290659.AA10658@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #519 TELECOM Digest Mon, 29 Jun 92 01:59:10 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 519 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection (Vince Hartung) Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection (Alan Boritz) Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection (David B. Whiteman) Pac$Bell Tentacle-Stretching (was Pacific Bell Car Theft) (Nick Sayer) LoJack (was Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection) (Leroy Donnelly) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Jack Winslade) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (David Lesher) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (David E. A. Wilson) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Monte Freeman) Jane BARBE (was Jane Barbie) (George S. Thurman) National Security (John Draper) More Strange 710 Stuff (was Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212) (T Lofaro) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: vince@Apocalypse.CAD.UCLA.EDU (Vince Hartung) Subject: Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection Date: 28 Jun 92 22:51:44 GMT Organization: U.C.L.A. Computer Aided Design Laboratory In article a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (Arthur Rubin) writes: > In scol@scottsdale.az.stratus.com > (Scott Colbath) writes: >> This sounds like a thing I remember while living in Massachusetts >> called Lojack. When your car was stolen, you reported it to the police >> and Lojack. A transmitter hidden in your car would send out a signal > PacTel Teletrak (?) and Lojack are provided by different companies. > (There may be a third major system, as well.) My recollection of the > systems is the Lojack is automatically activated if the car is started > without the key. Teletrak advertised that, if your car is stolen, > (and it is not automatically activated, by whatever means), you can > activate the system by letting them know. Actually, the way PacBel's Teletrak works, is that it triangulates the signal sent from the car using *MANY* fixed sites. (VERY ACCURATE) The activation is done by a car alarm. Teletrak then sends the raw received data to a computer where it is the postion of the vehicle is computed. (The more fixed triangulation points the more accurate the bearing.) Then Teletrak H.Q. calls the cops in the stolen car's area and tells the cops the moving location of the car, direction of travel, and the approximate speed (speed not that accurate). The Teletrak H.Q. operator is looking at a Thomas Guide type map. The cops can then set up an intercept to bag the bad guy, and haul him off to jail. Lojack is a *LESS* superior technology when compared to Teletrak. (Speaking radio direction finding wise.) YOU have to call the cops to let them know your car has been stolen. (Not that great at 2 a.m. if you discover it at 8 a.m. before work ... it could be in Mexico by then.) Once Lojack officials are aware, they activated the beacon transmitter and get a rough estimated of where the car is. Then they call the cops in that jurisdiction and the cops have to try to look for it, instead of being told where it is, and which way it's going. The technical problems with Lojack, is that the frequency that the transmitter is on is subject to multipath and flutter like your car radio. When using a doppler direction finder, this can cause incorrect reading of direction. Plus you have cops that AREN'T radio techs working the system. (Push mic button and talk ... that's the extent of their knowledge many times.) They may not be familiar with the causes of refection, or even be aware of it. Well, there you have it. Based on it's technical merit. In *MY* (Radio Technician) opinion, Teletrak is *FAR* superior a method of stolen vehicle recovery. The only reason Lojack is more popular, is because it came out earlier and is cheaper than Teletrak. BUT, it does not come with the same warranty as Teletrak. I could be wrong, but I *THINK* Teletrak will guarantee a 50K refund on a unrecovered car protected using their system. Lojack only offers free replacement of the Lojack unit. That tells me that PacTel is pretty confident in their product. Vince ------------------------------ Subject: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection From: Alan Boritz Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 12:45:14 EST Organization: Harry's Place BBS - Mahwah NJ - +1 201 934 0861 red-eft!abaheti@valley.west.sun.com (Arun Baheti) writes: > I was just in my car and heard an add for Pacific Bell's new auto > theft systems. Apparently, when a car is stolen, they will auto- > matically track its location and notify the police. There was also an > amorphous mention of a guarantee. Does anyone have any details on > this service -- and how (if) it works? > [Moderator's Note: The same ad is playing on the radio here in Chicago > a lot these days. Apparently some sort of radio detection to keep > track of where you are going in your car. Sounds like a great deal for > privacy enthusiasts! :) PAT The system doesn't always track vehicle location (like an AVM system), but the vehicle units are always listening. The service vendor transmits a code that activates a transponder hidden in the vehicle. Then a police agency, or someone, DF's it to find the vehicle. There's no privacy issue there, unless if the transponder transmits any time OTHER than when a theft is reported. aboritz@harry.UUCP (Alan Boritz) Harry's Place BBS - Mahwah NJ - +1-201-934-0861 ------------------------------ From: dbw@crash.cts.com (David B. Whiteman) Subject: Re: Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 07:26:56 GMT There was a news story on TV about a car equipped with one of the car theft protection systems that was stolen. Police tracked the stolen car to a locked garage. The owner of the house that the garage was a part of, and who was in the house at the time the police came by, denied any knowledge of how the stolen car made it into his garage. Criminal charges were not filed against him; however, the owner of the stolen car was sucessful in his civil law suit against the garage owner. David Whiteman dbw@crash.cts.com ------------------------------ From: mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer) Subject: Pac$Bell Tentacle-Stretching (was Pacific Bell Car Theft) Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'. Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 06:30:56 GMT This is disgusting. Pac$Bell seems to want to get its greasy little fingers on every sort of enterprise possible, save that of providing good service to its "tariffed" customers. More grist for the mill: I got a mailer from them with a proposal similar to the "funny muney" catalog schemes run by some comsumer credit cards. Well, now you too can buy overpriced junk if you make enough phone calls. Thank you, no. Meanwhile, _REAL_ residential ISDN is nowhere to be found. What have we got to do to get Pac$Bell involved with the telephone business? Nick Sayer N6QQQ @ N0ARY.#NOCAL.CA.USA.NA 37 19 49 N / 121 57 36 W +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest' ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 19:22:36 CST From: Leroy.Donnelly@ivgate.omahug.org (Leroy Donnelly) Subject: LoJack (was Pacific Bell Car Theft Protection) Reply-To: leroy.donnelly%drbbs@ivgate.omahug.org Organization: DRBBS Technical BBS, Omaha Questions have been asked about LoJack vehicle recovery systems. If you want to listen to the locators on your scanner check out the frequency of 173.730. This is a frequency that has been assigned to the company for use in the U.S. Ybbat (DRBBS) 8.9 v. 3.14 r.1 DRBBS (1:285/666.0) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 11:32:14 CST From: Jack.Winslade@ivgate.omahug.org (Jack Winslade) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Reply-To: jack.winslade%drbbs@ivgate.omahug.org Organization: DRBBS Technical BBS, Omaha In a message dated 22-JUN-92, Robert L. Mcmillin writes: > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. Although I never saw one, I was told that the announcing machines consisted of a wide multi-track magnetic tape with each track having one of the many phrases necessary to make the thing work. For example, the spoken numeral 'nine' might appear on two tracks, once with an upward inflection as in 'the time will be nine thirty-six' and again with a downward inflection as in 'the time will be six thirty-nine'. The loop apparently ran continuously and the audio outputs were switched as needed. Back in NYC in the days of the mechanical announcers, the time number was published as 637-1212 but EVERYONE knew that to get the time, the word N-E-R-V-O-U-S would be dialed. Every phone enthusiast knew that 637-anything would get the time. TelecomUrbanLegend: ;-) Back in those days (and probably in these days) when it was advantageous to give someone a real-sounding phone number but one which was phony (picture the stereotypical singles' scene), the prefix 637 or NE7 was often used. Of course when he dialed ... another famous one (I'll never admit to falling for it ;-) was CIrcle 6-4200 aka 246-4200 which was (and probably still is) a Dial-a-Prayer number. (Hell, she said it was her office number and it sounded right for a midtown business number.) Here's the strange part -- deja vu or whatever -- A few months ago I was watching a late-night rerun of Kojak. The title to the episode was, believe it or not 246 4 200. During the episode it was suspected that it might be a phone number. Kojak (sucking the Tootsie-Roll Pop) dialed the number and reported 'nope, Dial-a-Prayer'. I wonder if the screenwriter had the same stunt pulled on him? BTW, the significance of the numbers in the teleplay were hotel room numbers. Well, I guess that's enough digression for one day. ;-> Good day. JSW Ybbat (DRBBS) 8.9 v. 3.14 r.1 (1:285/666.0) ------------------------------ From: David Lesher Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 13:31:17 EDT Reply-To: wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu (David Lesher) Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex An interesting sidelight on the Autochron {sp?} machines. They were rented, and VERY expensive. (Somehow, I have a warm spot in my heart for anyone that out-screwed "We own it -- you gotta rent it" Ma, but that's beside the point.) Anyhow, at one point, Ma RENTED out time service. You could get a local pair with the time audio on it. The only users I knew of were police and fire departments with logging recoders on their incoming lines. The time was put down on another channel of these machines. This was to solve the usual issue of when the cops got the call, vs when they got to the scene. Of course, modern, mega-track, digitized logging machines don't need such. And besides, with last decade's $5.00/month LMC circuit costing $500.00, I doubt anyone would buy it anyhow ;-} wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu ------------------------------ From: david@cs.uow.edu.au (David E A Wilson) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Wollongong University, Australia Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:17:48 GMT rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes: > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. I seem to recall that in the UK and possibly Australia as well that the various digits were recorded on different tracks of a glass disc and that the appropriate reader was selected to get the correct digit at each point in the phrase. This would be longer lasting than any magnetic media and selecting one of many optical readers would be fairly easy to achieve. David Wilson (042) 21 3802 voice, (042) 21 3262 fax Dept Comp Sci, Uni of Wollongong david@cs.uow.edu.au ------------------------------ From: ccoprfm@prism.gatech.edu (Monte Freeman) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Date: 28 Jun 92 16:33:36 GMT Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology Interesting bit of trivia about Mrs. Barbie: She still lives here in Atlanta (Audichron, the comapny that manufactured the drum machine that so many telcos used for these recordings, is still here and in business). She is the voice that is heard on the 146.760 Alford Memorial Radio Club Stone Mountain repeater saying "From the top of Georgia's beautiful Stone Mountain, this is W4BOC repeater," as well as about five other IDs. Audichron donated one of these recording devices to the club YEARS ago, and Mrs. Barbie did the recordings for us. Several years ago, the machine just stopped working. It was removed from the top of the mountain to be repaired, and just somehow got lost. When we went through and did our repeater upgrade two or three years ago, someone made the comment that it would be nice to have "Ms. Calabash's" voice back. (Ms. Calabash is the name someone gave to this mysterious sexy voice shortly after it went into use on the repeater, and it just sort of stuck ...) Anyway, we started trying to track down what had happened to the Audichron. Eventually, we found it stuck in someone's basement. He had no idea how it got there, what it was, or who it belonged to. He was however glad to see it leave. This thing weighs close to 75 pounds! We took it to Audichron, and they restored it back to it's origianl factory condition. They asked us if they could have it to go in their museum. We said that if we could get the stuff that was recorded on it off and onto a tape so we could put it in out digital voice recorder, that they could have the old machine. They happily agreed of course. Several months after the recording went into service, Mrs. Barbie came to one of our club meetings. It was a real treat to meet the lady behind the voice! :-) Monte Freeman -- Operations Department / Information Technology Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!ccoprfm Internet: ccoprfm@prism.gatech.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 17:44 GMT From: George S. Thurman <0004056081@mcimail.com> Subject: Jane BARBE (was Jane Barbie) With all of the messages recently about "Jane Barbie", I thought that I would let everyone know that the correct spelling of her last name is BARBE. George S. Thurman 4056081@mcimail.com ------------------------------ From: crunch@netcom.com (John Draper) Subject: National Security Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 16:20:53 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) > 710 is indeed assigned for "Government Special" use. It's actual > function is highly classified. Doesn't surprise me that you couldn't > get any information without a need to know. I respectfully suggest > that you not pursue the matter any further, least someone from the > Government might start asking YOU a lot of questions!! Ken, If you are SO concerned about national security, then why are you broadcasting to the world that 710 has anything special in it at all? Now every phone hacker on the net will be encouraged to start "scanning" the 710 area code for their "special classified" numbers. Just by mentioning things like this can cause problems, so you were better off not even mentioning it. WolfGang, There are a number of sites in Russia that have Email gateways, and very soon will have full internet access. Email me: crunch@netcom.com for more details. John D. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 01:14:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Frank T Lofaro Subject: More Strange 710 Stuff (was Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212) My dorm phone (at CMU) uses AT&T ACUS service (a college student phone plan) where all the dorm phones use AT&T long distance and one places a call by dialing 9 for an outside line, then the area code and number. It then asks for your personal access (used for billing) code and connects you. Strange thing is if I dial a bogus area code and number I get the intercept right away after the last digit is dialed (and before I can get to enter my security code), but if I dial the 710 area code and a number, it asks for my code, and only then does it give me the intercept. So maybe 710 isn't only using line-based access control. Why an eight-digit security code related to a college calling plan would be involved in access granting/denying is beyond me, if that is the case (we have ROTC students here, but I'd really doubt they'd have 710 access). Anyway, it seems 710 is not processed by the local CO, but just handed off to the LD carrier. So the fact the intercept only comes after I enter the code could be because some codes might give access, weird routing at AT&T, or because Big Brother wants to get it on record that it was I that tried to access 710 :) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #519 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa09406; 30 Jun 92 0:24 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA25695 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 22:43:21 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA00851 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 22:43:11 -0500 Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 22:43:11 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206300343.AA00851@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #520 TELECOM Digest Mon, 29 Jun 92 22:43:15 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 520 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Administrivia: Something Cross-Connected Somewhere (TELECOM Moderator) Tour of US West Data Center in Omaha (Paul W. Schleck) SWBT Organizational Changes (Tim Gorman) An Oops in ncomb.c (Kamran Husain) Bix Block Punch-Down Tool (Andrew M. Boardman) A Response to "Legal" Phreaking (Bill Squire) The Depths of Sliminess (Paul Fuqua) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 20:11:09 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Subject: Administrivia: Something Cross-Connected Somewhere For the past several days, every single message posted to alt.dcom.telecom has been finding its way here to comp.dcom.telecom as well. Naturally my autoreply then sends a receipt and the person writes back saying 'what did you sent me a reciept for ... I sent nothing to comp.dcom.telecom'. I try to catch all these articles and avoid using them here, but some have gotten missed, leading to needless duplication in the two groups. It looks to me like a site called taurus is doing this ... running some version of news which is taking what comes in to alt and tossing it over to me. But whoever is doing it, please stop. Thanks. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ From: pschleck@odin.unomaha.edu (Paul W. Schleck) Subject: Tour of US West Data Center in Omaha Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 17:06:37 GMT Thanks to some inside connections between US West and an organization I am a member of, /usr/group/nebraska (a Unix user group), I was able to participate in an evening tour of the new US West Data Center at Landmark Plaza between 12th and 13th Streets and Farnham near the Old Market in Omaha, Nebraska. Those who have read the digest for any length of time know that US West is both a very customer-oriented, economical, local service provider and a very shifty RBOC looking to branch out in to areas that regulated monopolies shouldn't, but the PUC doesn't have the "regulatory horsepower" (to quote a John Higdonism) to slap them back. For this reason, I couldn't resist the offer for an "inside look." The new data center replaces the one on Dodge Street, which had become too small and run-down to support the kind of hardware a 14-state RBOC needed. The result was a completely new 5-story building, set on a quite massive concrete foundation. The basic layout is one of perimeter offices with large, traditional, computing rooms in the center of each floor. The tour guide claimed it was one of the largest data centers in the country. When the inevitable "What about the NSA?" question emanated from the back of the crowd, the guide quickly corrected his statement to "one of the largest PRIVATE data centers" :-). One of the floors that we viewed was still unfinished. The floor was covered with a welded metal plate to offer complete grounding. Around the edges were gutters to catch possible leaks from the cold-water air-conditionign system (which makes an awe-inspiring "whoosh" when you walk up to the building). Interesting enough, the computer rooms do NOT use Halon (too much trouble with the EPA, which has labelled it hazardous, and effectively cut off most manufacturing of it), but rather a system of water sprinklers (they know what they are doing, I guess). Most of the finished floors housed a collection of top-of-the-line IBM and Amdahl MVS/XA iron with positively huge tape cartridge silos to feed them. The rest was a mixture of Vaxen running "old" Unix (I guess they mean pre-SVr4), including one to manage tracking of reports to 611. Of course, being a Unix user group, we found most of this "ho-hum" and were wondering aloud "where are the workstations?" :-). The tour guide (a middle-manager, as far as we could tell), noted that most of the maintenance headaches with the billing system came from 1.) integrating the billing systems of the three local Bells that became US West (Northwestern Bell, Mountain Bell, and Pacific Northwest Bell) and 2.) conforming to the sometimes vagarious requirements of the Public Utilities Commission (an interesting perspective from the other side of the customer service counter). The overall goal of the Data Center is to provide fault-tolerant, self-sufficent computing power (totalling over 200 MIPS) 24 hours a day, seven days a week with no down time. One of the solutions to this end is a half-a-dozen V-16 Cummins Diesel generators, providing about 1.75 MW apiece. They are mounted on spring-mounted concrete slabs, and the springs themselves were mounted to a solid concrete floor that had about 2000 three-inch-thick bronze screws that were used during construction to raise the floor a little under a foot (to better cushion the lower floors from the noise). Reliable power in a place like Omaha (which doesn't really have it) was a major concern. Remembering the AT&T New York incident, I asked the guide if there were any formal or informal arrangements with the local utilities to go off city power during periods of high demand. He said that he didn't know of any off-hand, nor has US West been asked to yet (I tried not be too smart-assed, lest they realize that I was a Digest reader and sic Security on me :-). The center is not even dependent on city water for its air-conditioning system, having drilled a 650-foot-deep well as a backup. As a side note, the presence of the Communications Workers of America union was quite noticable, ranging from the arbitration bulletins sprinkled on bulletin boards, to the occasional "Union Yes!" bumper sticker stuck on various physical-plant assets, all the way to the fact that everyone we were introduced to was a "Specialist" of some sort or another. Others have done a good job of "union-bashing" on this forum, so I will defer to their, ummm, "wisdom" on this matter. All-in-all I was quite impressed. On one hand, I applaud US West for reaffirming its committment to keep a major part of its operations in Omaha (a sore spot for many of us who saw 13 out of 14 Omaha VP's move to Denver over the past ten years). On the other, I have to wonder what they are "up to." Any deeper speculations from other Digest readers? Paul W. Schleck pschleck@unomaha.edu ------------------------------ Date: 29 Jun 92 08:41:13 EDT From: tim gorman <71336.1270@CompuServe.COM> Subject: SWBT Organizational Changes 6-26-92 (Any spelling errors are mine! TPG) SOUTHWESTERN BELL CORPORATION ANNOUNCES ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES ST. LOUIS, June 26, 1992 -- Southwestern Bell Corporation announced today that it is reorganizing its largest subsidiary, Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, into three separate operating units. "The restructuring is another part of Southwestern Bell's commitment to continuing to meet rapidly increasing competition in the telecommunications business and to keep our focus on the needs of our customers," said Edward E. Whitacre Jr., chariman and chief executive officer of Southwestern Bell Corporation. The reorganization becomes effective on July 1. Under the reorganization: - Royce S. Caldwell, 53, currently group president of Southwestern Bell Corporation, becomes president of Southwestern Bell Services, which will have headquarters in St. Louis and be responsible for providing network, marketing, finance, planning and other staff and operational services to Southwestern Bell Telephone. - William E. Dreyer, 54, president of the Texas division of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, becomes president of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company of Texas. This organization will be headquartered in Dallas. - J. Cliff Eason, 44, currently president of Metromedia Paging Services, a subsidiary of Southwestern Bell Corporation, becomes president of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company of the Midwest. This organization will be responsible for the provision of telephone services in Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, and will be headquartered in St. Louis. Under this organization, Messrs. Eason, Dreyer and Caldwell will be members of Southwestern Bell's Executive Policy Council and report directly to Whitacre, who additionally assumes the role as chairman and CEO of Southwestern Bell Telephone. In other changes announced today James E. Adams, 53, currently president of Southwestern Bell Telephone, becomes group president of Southwestern Bell Corporation and will be responsible for all of the company's international operations. Adams replaces Caldwell, and will continue as a member of the EPC and report to Whitacre. Metromedia Paging Services also announced the appointment of John M Kesley, 33 as president, replacing Eason. ------------------------------ From: khx@se44.wg2.waii.com (K Husain) Subject: An Oops in ncomb.c Date: 29 Jun 92 22:25:41 GMT Reply-To: khx@se44.wg2.waii.com Not too many flames to me just yet about this one. In the source file digit 9 is assigned WXZ whereas it should be assigned WXY. Sorry about that ... but since only one person has caught it so far I guess I wont be needing my asbestos suit for a while! ;-) Kamran [Moderator's Note: Kamran submitted another version of his program with the change noted above, and also changes to allow for older compilers. It is presented below. PAT] ------------ cut -------------- /* This program is for fun, not profit. If you can miraculously figure out a way to make money off this, let me in on it for a percentage. :-) Just do please do keep the authorship around should you decide to make copies. Feel free to copy. I assume NO responsiblities, etc. for use, etc. In other words Use At Your Own Risk! Kamran Husain, MPS Inc. Sugarland, Texas khx@se44.wg2.waii.com */ #include #include typedef struct Letter { int count; char list[3]; } LTR; LTR map[10] = { { 1, '0', '0', '0'}, { 1, '1', '1', '1'}, { 3, 'a', 'b', 'c'}, { 3, 'd', 'e', 'f'}, { 3, 'g', 'h', 'i'}, { 3, 'j', 'k', 'l'}, { 3, 'm', 'n', 'o'}, { 3, 'p', 'r', 's'}, { 3, 't', 'u', 'v'}, { 3, 'w', 'x', 'y'} }; /* global variables */ int lpr, /* columns printed so far */ charspercombo, numberFlag = 0, callme(); /* recursive function */ void usage(); /* main begins here This program generates combinations of letters from strings of telephone numbers. It is useless really except that you might want to know some of the words YOUR phone number might come up with. The output can be passed to the uniq filter to parse out duplicates. */ main(argc, argv) int argc; char *argv[]; { register int len, i; char *tcp, *cp; if(argc < 2) usage(); cp = argv[1]; if(*cp == '-') { cp++; if(*cp != 'n') usage(); numberFlag++; cp = argv[2]; } tcp = cp; len = strlen(cp); for(i = 0; i < len; i++, cp++) if((*cp < '0') || (*cp > '9')) exit(2); charspercombo = len + 2; callme(tcp, 0); printf("\n"); } void usage() { printf("\nUsage:\n ncomb [-n] #####\n\n"); exit(1); } /* Recursive function to try all combinations of phone number given null terminated string and current location within string */ callme(str, i) char *str; int i; { int j, ndx; char ch; if(str[i] == '\0') { if(lpr > 80) { /* print if more than about 80 columns */ lpr = 0; printf("\n"); } printf("%s ", str); lpr += charspercombo; return; } ch = str[i]; ndx = ch - '0'; /* try numeric combinations as well if flag is set */ if(numberFlag) callme(str, i + 1); /* try all combinations for this digit */ for(j = 0; j < map[ndx].count; j++) { str[i] = map[ndx].list[j]; callme(str, i + 1); } str[i] = ch; } ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 17:50:53 EDT From: andrew m. boardman Subject: Bix Block Punch-Down Tool I am in need of a punch-down tool for NTI's almost-but-not-quite-110 Bix blocks. All of the usual sources say that Northern Telecom is the only source of these. Can anyone out there tell me who to talk to at NTI? andrew boardman amb@cs.columbia.edu ------------------------------ Subject: Response to "Legal Hacking" From: bill@hacktic.nl (Bill Squire) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 21:41:03 WET/D Organization: Hack-Tic Magazine I was really caught off guard by a piece of private mail getting posted to such a public group. This topic has been pounded into the ground on this group as my mailbox has been filled with fire. I'm no expert on any of the "soft sciences" like politics and psychology and tend to skip over what is not of a technical nature on this group. Politics are boring! Politics get in the way of "hard science". Politics are an excuse for not getting things done, etc., etc, etc. I am not a lawyer, and I have no interest in law except to stay away from it and out of trouble. I've accepted the fact some time ago that 'mis-use' of the phonenet is in the grey of the law. I also agreed some time ago there would be no more posts to this or any other group on that subject. I have no control of what people re-post or in the case of this group what Pat decides is appropriate. IMHO this was not! If anyone cares to hear more on this topic they can purchase a copy of the next {2600 Magazine} where some technical aspects of phone switching will be discussed with a warning that there may be specific laws against certain aspects it in some countries. From here on out my posts on this group will be of a technical nature only. I apolgize to Pat or anyone who may have been offended by that post, since even if it wasn't mine, the subject was. Bill ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 18:13:44 CDT From: Paul Fuqua Subject: The Depths of Sliminess I thought I'd heard everything about telemarketing slime, until I read a column in the {Dallas Morning News} a couple of weeks ago. This is really the pits: Bob Harshaw, a 63-year-old resident of Garland, has been retired due to disability (multiple sclerosis) for twelve years. Since he's home all day and is tired of phone solicitors, he's somewhat impolite with them -- he says, "Get lost," and hangs up. One day a solicitor called, representing one of the many law enforcement associations (the subject of an earlier column, these groups solicit donations via the phone, but 75% or more goes to the solicitors rather than the group). Mr Harshaw hung up. The solicitor called right back, claiming to represent another group. Mr. Harshaw hung up again. The man called again. During the next several days, the man called repeatedly. Then he changed strategy: apparently, whenever he encountered an answering machine during his calls, he left a fictitious message and Mr. Harshaw's number. One man received an obnoxious and obscene complaint about a (nonexistent) barking dog. Others were told Mr. Harshaw could give them a high-paying job. Another was told that Mr. Harshaw had details of his girlfriend's infidelities. Mr. Harshaw's phone has been ringing off the hook, and all he wanted was to be left alone. Paul Fuqua pf@hc.ti.com, ti-csl!pf Texas Instruments, Dallas, Texas [Moderator's Note: Very dramatic story, but is it really the truth? What telemarketer do you know with enough spare time on his hands to waste call after call on someone who obviously is not buying anything? To those boys, time *is* money, and people (who they call) wasting their time 'looking for a pen', etc are anathema. Usually the quota they keep requires several dozen calls per hour, and at least a few positive results per hour. He is giving up all this money and messing up his quota in order to play games with Harshaw? How could he be making all these calls without someone along the way identifying him or detirmining what organization employs him? How come Harshaw and/or telco haven't trapped him by now? Has Harshaw heard the taped messages left in his name and identified the voice with the person who originally called him? Are Harshaw and the {Dallas Morning News} each complimenting the other's story for their own reasons; Harshaw for his fifteen minutes of fame and the newspaper in a campaign to dump on telemarketers? I don't believe their story. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #520 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa12147; 30 Jun 92 1:22 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA29557 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 23:42:28 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA11739 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 29 Jun 1992 23:42:14 -0500 Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 23:42:14 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206300442.AA11739@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #521 TELECOM Digest Mon, 29 Jun 92 23:42:16 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 521 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Cordless Phones in the Business Environment? (Laird P. Broadfield) Corrections to USA Area Code List (Paul Robinson) Where is the Best Place to Find a Used Office Phone System? (David Kovar) Can't Reach ANAC or 700-555-4141 From My Dorm (Frank T. Lofaro) Caller ID in Southern California? (Javier Henderson) Survey: Is Big Brother Watching You? (Lorrayne Schaefer) Still 1-800-1-RECYCLE ! (Carl Moore) Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 (Bill Mayhew) Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 (John Higdon) Re: Motorola Watch Pager (Mark Earle) Re: Where to Buy Special Gadgets, One-of? (William Degnan) Re: Pay Phones in San Francisco (Paul W. Schleck) Re: You Can Ring My Bell (Vance Shipley) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: lairdb@crash.cts.com (Laird P. Broadfield) Subject: Cordless Phones in the Business Environment? Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 02:03:59 GMT I saw a couple of pseudo-nano-cell systems at TCA, but they weren't quite out yet, and a couple of IR based ones, too, but I'm really looking for something a little more casual. We've got a cuple of people using conventional cordless sets, and I keep expecting them to pick up on each other (I didn't think they had ESNs (or anyhting like it); why does this work?) In any case (unless I *really* don't understand) we would be contending among ten channels, and I'm looking for 20 or 30 ideally. Any suggestions? Laird P. Broadfield lairdb@crash.cts.com ...{ucsd, nosc}!crash!lairdb ------------------------------ Reply-To: TDarcos@mcimail.com From: Paul Robinson Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 20:12:01 EDT Subject: Corrections to USA Area Code List Last month I uploaded the list of North American Area Codes for The U.S. and its posessions, carribean countries and Canada. This list is essentially the same as the list which has appeared in our agency's telephone book for two years. Not once did anyone make a correction. I posted this area code list to TELECOM Digest and I have gotten more than a dozen corrections to the list. I will shortly post a revised and corrected list, to cover all the corrections, new numbers and changes people have given to me. All of you who sent me a correction will receive a thank you for your corrections. ------------------------------ From: kovar@world.std.com (David C Kovar) Subject: Where is the Best Place to Find a Used Office Phone System? Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 00:07:38 GMT It would be a Meridian since a company we work closely with has a Meridian and we might link the systems. Where is the best place to pick one of these up used, or should I just keep an eye on the local papers and hope to see one show up there? David ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 01:31:56 -0400 (GMT) From: Frank T Lofaro Subject: Can't Reach ANAC or 700-555-4141 From My Dorm I can't reach 700-555-4141 or the ANAC for the area in Pittsburgh I'm in, 711-6633 (I should send it to the people maintaining the ANAC list, if they still do.) from my dorm. I get hit with an intercept (all these intercepts are the standard "(three tones) Your call can not be completed as dialed, Please check the number..." so I don't know where the problem is). Who'd fix those problems? They'd probably deny the ANAC unavailability was a problem, and G*d knows what about the 700-555-4141 number. Also, now it seems phones here on the CMU system which can reach the ANAC can use 711-XXXX (whereas elsewhere 711-anything other than 6633 doesn't work, it gives strange tones or silence). The ANAC and 700 number worked fine until we switched to a new phone system (both the old and new systems are PBX/Centrex type systems where you dial 9 for outside lines, etc. but I don't know much beyond that, like whether we have our own equipment or whether the telco controls it). By the way, both the ANAC and 700 number are free, so blocking them seems like it would not be a useful idea, so it might not be intentional that those numbers couldn't be reached. I think I might be that if the system is configured to know that a specific exchange is valid, it won't go through (and 711 is not a "real" exchange). ------------------------------ From: jhenderson@pomona.claremont.edu Subject: Caller ID in Southern California? Organization: Pomona College Date: 29 Jun 92 21:28:27 PDT Hello, good people, I tried calling GTE on this, twice, and both times I got basically the same answer: "what are you talking about???" (okay, so it's a question actually). SO I will ask the net: is caller ID available/will be available soon in So Cal, in the GTE areas? Specifically, the Pomona Valley. Thank you. You may now continue with your regularly scheduled news reading. Javier Henderson jhenderson@pomona.claremont.edu ------------------------------ From: lorrayne@smiley.mitre.org (Lorrayne Schaefer) Subject: Survey: Is Big Brother Watching You? Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 17:42:09 GMT For your information, this has been posted on some newsgroups a few months ago. This survey has also been distributed to various conferences over the past few months. All results will be in the form of statistical information and keywords. All partipants will remain anonymous. SURVEY: MONITORING IN THE WORKPLACE The purpose of this survey is to collect data for a presentation that I will give at this year's National Computer Security Conference in October. I would like to thank you for taking the time to fill out this survey. If you have any questions, you can call me at 703-883-5301 or send me email at lorrayne@smiley.mitre.org. Please send your completed survey to: Lorrayne Schaefer The MITRE Corporation M/S Z213 7525 Colshire Drive McLean, VA 22102 lorrayne@smiley.mitre.org 1. What is your title? 2. What type of work does your organization do? 3. Does your organization currently monitor computer activity? (Yes/No) a. If yes, what type of monitoring does your company do (e.g., electronic mail, bulletin boards, telephone, system activity, network activity)? b. Why does your company choose to monitor these things and how is it done? 4. If you are considering (or are currently) using a monitoring tool, what exactly would you monitor? How would you protect this information? 5. Are you for or against monitoring? Why/why not? Think in terms of whether it is ethical or unethical ("ethical" meaning that it is right and "unethical" meaning it is wrong) for an employer to monitor an employee's computer usage. In your response, consider that the employee is allowed by the company to use the computer and the company currently monitors computer activity. 6. If your company monitors employees, is it clearly defined in your company policy? 7. In your opinion, does the employee have rights in terms of being monitored? 8. In your opinion, does the company have rights to protect its assets by using a form of monitoring tool? 9. If you are being monitored, do you take offense? Managers: How do you handle situations in which the employee takes offense at being monitored? 10. What measures does your company use to prevent misuse of monitoring in the workplace? 11. If an employee is caught abusing the monitoring tool, what would happen to that individual? If your company is not using any form of monitoring, what do you think should happen to an individual who abused the tool? 12. Is it unethical to monitor electronic mail to determine if the employee is not abusing this company resource (e.g., suppose the employee sends personal notes via a network to others that are not work related)? Why or why not? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 18:10:00 EDT From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) Subject: Still 1-800-1-RECYCLE ! The 1-800-1-RECYCLE (where the second 1 should be an I) is still posted on those recycling bins on Kent Island, Maryland (just east of the Bay Bridge). I passed by there eastbound and remembered to go back over and check them yesterday (June 28). [Moderator's Note: Isn't it always amusing how much money some companies waste in advertising with wrong phone numbers, etc ... and how they are always the outfits with some snippy arrogant person on the incoming phones to insure that someone like yourself, willing to save them, oh, several thousand dollars by pointing out their error is never able to speak with anyone who knows anything ... how many more thousands of dollars do you suppose they will waste before they catch on, if they ever do? In a way, do you hope they never do? :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (Bill Mayhew) Subject: Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 04:12:08 GMT The switch uses heuristic rules to route things resembling 911 to the dispatcher. The presumption is that people may misdial when in a state of panic. This is the basis of the folklore that cordless phones mysteriously dial 911 as the battery dies. What actually happens is that probably something more like 1-1-1 gets pulse dialed as the power falters. Bill Mayhew NEOUCOM Computer Services Department Rootstown, OH 44272-9995 USA phone: 216-325-2511 wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (140.220.1.1) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 23:56 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 bms@penguin.eng.pyramid.com (Bruce Schlobohm) writes: > I didn't realize that 91 can be detected by the 911 circuitry. I > wonder how often this type of thing happens? > (For the curious, this person lives in the Los Gatos or Campbell area; > I'm sorry I can't be more precise at the moment.) Well, it certainly makes a BIG difference which of those two towns that person lives in. Campbell (the offical exchange -- remember, telco boundaries do not necessarily precisely track political boundaries) is served by two Pac*Bell offices: ANdrews and ALpine. Los Gatos is "served" by three GTE offices: two with GTD-5s, one with a DMS-10. The DMS-10 serves the rural mountain area. The Campbell/Los Gatos political and telco boundaries criss-cross in several places. It is anyone's guess what GTE does with '911'. Since the Pac*Bell offices that serve Campbell do not require the access code '1' when calling long distance, it would not make a lot of sense to have things perform in the manner you describe. How many people might abandon a call to Kansas (913) or North Carolina (919) and find the gendarmarie suddenly at the door? I am served out of ANdrews here at home and I have just dialed '91' waited several seconds and then hung up on each of nine lines. There has been no reaction. No police. No calls back. The only conclusion that I can reach is that your friend is served by GTE and that GTE in its infinite stupidity and ineptitude has somehow programmed its _wonderful_ GTD-5 switches to behave in such a manner. Needless to say, if this is true, GTE has set a new standard in buffoonery. What a waste of emergency resources! What a waste of a telephone customer's time! And for what purpose? My curiousity is arroused. Next time I am up on the mountain, I think I will try this out. No flames, please. Save them for GTE who may have programmed this silly nonsense! John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 21:03:51 CDT From: mearle@pro-party.cts.com (Mark Earle) Subject: Re: Motorola Watch Pager I've heard no comments good or bad on the watch pager. A similiar product might fit your needs, and I have used this one. Motorola makes a small pager designed to fit in the pocket, which takes up the space of about two pencils. The display is on the side. The unit uses either rechargeable batteries that last 10-15 hours per charge (depending on the number of pages). They are a button type battery. They also offer a longer lasting disposable battery. The pager can be purchased / configured with either an audio annunciator or a vibrator. It can also be set to not vibrate or beep, and stores incoming pages in memory (four numbers max) You can also 'lock' a number so that incoming pages do not overwrite it. Overall, compared to a BP-2000 and Bravo pager, I found 'range' missed pages, etc about the same. This pager however can be worn only in a shirt pocket or carried in a purse. In a "fanny pack" or typical men's garment pocket it would get bent/broken, probably. I really liked the light weight, performance etc. mearle@pro-party.cts.com (Mark Earle) [WA2MCT/5] FidoNet at Opus 1:160/50.0 Bitnet adblu001@ccsu.vm1 Internet 73117.351@compuserve.com ------------------------------ From: William.Degnan@mdf.FidoNet.Org (William Degnan) Date: 28 Jun 92 16:48:03 Subject: Re: Where to Buy Special Gadgets, One-of? On NaC Token Ring Program (mitton@dave.enet.dec.com ) wrote: > I'm looking to buy one RJ31-X jack for a home security alarm system. > This jack hooks the alarm in series to the circuit, if the connector > is engaged. (it even has some spare contacts to sense this, if you > care) This information is from the alarm installer's manual. > The local AT&T store gave me the national number. The national AT&T > 800 number said they don't stock it. The reason they don't sell it is that it doesn't become an RJ31-X until it is installed as one. Until that moment, it is something else. For example: Leviton's 20278-SBI, 41018-IQS, 20298-SBI, and 40198-SBI can be wired as an RJ31X (also as RJ32X, RJ33X, RJ34X, RJ35X, RJ36X, RJ37X and RJ38X). You'll find a number of manufacturer's products with some "635" series stock numbers that will do the job. Suttle's 635A8 (in several colors and designs) will do just fine. Origin: Private Line - Stealth Opus in Austin (1:382/39.0) William Degnan, Communications Network Solutions Independent Consultants in Telecommunications and Technology P.O. Drawer 9530 | wdegnan@mdf.fidonet.org | mfwic@mdf.fidonet.org Austin, TX 78766-9530 | !wdegnan@attmail.com | Voice +1 512 323 9383 ------------------------------ From: pschleck@odin.unomaha.edu (Paul W Schleck) Subject: Re: Pay Phones in San Francisco Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 03:51:50 GMT In response to yet another article about municipal pay phone bans and other foolishness, our Esteemed Moderator writes: > [Moderator's Note: This is a good example of how rotten to the core > municipal government can be. All those permits and foot-dragging by > the city to do something of value -- install a telephone -- for the > residents. I could tell you dozens of stories about how abusive the > City of Chicago is to the few people still around who own real > property and pay taxes, etc. The idiots in our city council are now > trying to put all sorts of requirements on pay phones here, as if that > would solve the myriad of problems we endure. PAT] In other words, the Moderator is inviting us to ask, "OK Pat, how abusive *ARE* they?" At the risk of sounding like a kiss-up, Pat's occasional forays into political activism and his accounts of ongoing city-politics are part of what makes reading the Digest worthwhile (in addition to the well-summarized technical information). In other words, yes Pat, please tell us! :-) Paul W. Schleck pschleck@unomaha.edu [Moderator's Note: Well, its the same old story I have told here before many times. About a third of the members of our city council have been sentenced to prison in the past decade. Quite a few of the others should be committed to the Reed Mental Health Center. They visit the Cook County Jail to register people to vote (I haven't been in jail in such a long time I forgot what a bologna sandwich tastes like!) while systematically working to neutralize the votes of people who want to see a third-party candidate who can make a difference. I have no complaint coming, I guess; I haven't voted in 30 years. PAT] ------------------------------ From: vances@xenitec.on.ca (Vance Shipley) Subject: Re: You Can Ring My Bell Organization: SwitchView Inc., Waterloo, Ontario Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 18:03:01 GMT Northern Telecom market a software product called Telecenter. It currently runs on Macintosh computers and works with Meridian 1 PBX sets as well as Centrex sets. I was fooling around with this last year and had a lot of fun. I turned the ring off on my telephone and had the Macintosh doing the alerting for me. Telecenter offered a number of choices, my favourite was the bell. This bell sounded like a single gong unit from a '30's telephone. The ringing would vary in intensity sounding like it was about to fail at any moment. This was quite a contrast to the high tech environment it was in! Although I never did get it to work (I didn't try too hard) you are supposed to be able to get the Mac to pronounce the names of callers to alert you. This works with Calling Party Name Display. All in all a fairly neat toy. Supposedly available soon in Windows. Vance Shipley vances@xenitec.on.ca vances@ltg.uucp ..uunet.ca!xenitec!vances ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #521 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa17203; 30 Jun 92 3:05 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA27427 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Tue, 30 Jun 1992 01:26:56 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA01981 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Tue, 30 Jun 1992 01:26:46 -0500 Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 01:26:46 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199206300626.AA01981@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #522 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Jun 92 01:26:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 522 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Jon Baker) Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Kevin W. Williams) Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Jacob DeGlopper) Re: "Choke" Prefixes (was Concert Goers Blast 911) (Robert L. McMillin) Re: "Choke" Prefixes (was Concert Goers Blast 911) (John Nagle) Re: Pac$Bell Tentacle-Stretching (was Pacific Bell Car Theft) (Nick Sayer) Re: Pac$Bell Tentacle-Stretching (was Pacific Bell Car Theft) (John Higdon) Re: United Telephone/Sprint (Bill Huttig) Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (John R. Ruckstuhl,Jr) Re: Ringer Equivalency Numbers (Julian Macassey) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 07:54:04 MST From: bakerj@gtephx.UUCP (Jon Baker) From: bakerj@gtephx.UUCP (Jon Baker) Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, Arizona Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 14:53:43 GMT TELECOM Moderator notes: > [Moderator's Note: Yes, true IF your local CO can get around to > providing you with a dial tone and IF the CO can then find time to > look at and translate what you have dialed. Until that point -- if > there are delays in that stage -- HOW is telco supposed to know you > want to call 911? Once it is ascertained calling party wants 911, > then fine -- give the customer what he wants. But what about the > calls lost before that point? People don't have direct lines to 911, > you know. PAT] Excepting a very poorly engineered CO, this also should not be a problem unless you have a very significant percentage of your subscribers going offhook all at the same time. This is not the case in a concert ticket hotline, or a radio station giveaway, but might occur during some sort of emergency (power failure, weather disaster, large nearby explosion, etc.) In such a case, certain lines within the neighborhood can be designated to be 'hot' lines, or 'A' lines, which get preferential treatment. The idea being, if we can't serve 100%, and if we tried we'd serve 0%, then let's pick 10%-20% and give them service. The rationale being, it's not necessary for every one of 500 residents in a neighborhood to call 911 to report a fire. J.Baker asuvax!gtephx!bakerj ------------------------------ From: williamsk@gtephx.UUCP (Kevin W. Williams) Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Organization: gte Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 16:40:32 GMT In article , rice@ttd.teradyne.edu writes: >> [Moderator's Note: Come now, do you *really* think US West or any >> telco relishes these situations and ignores them 'because they are the >> phone company'? And had telco known in advance (did any of the >> concert promoters advise telco of the times, etc?), what in your >> estimation might telco have done about it, other than possibly block >> off access from certain exchanges when traffic was heavy? PAT] > I'd have to disagree. Proper design of a "Life and Death" emergency > system should preclude ANY intruption of that service based on trunk > loading. 911 trunks should be Independent of any other traffic. Let's be a little realistic here. I could, indeed, design a 911 system which was indpendent of any other request for service. Unfortunately, I would have to run a separate phone to each house which only served the emergency service bureau. In real life, line service needs to compete for timeslots or codecs, and get the attention of the servicing processor. In a GTD-5, a group of 768, 1152, or 1536 lines competes for only 192 timeslots. If 192 of the subscribers in the group are calling for tickets, the 193rd simply cannot get through, no matter how important his call may be. Other machines have their concentrators on even smaller groups (64 lines competing for 16 codecs, etc.). There are statistical differences in the behavior of small groups vs. large ones, but the fundamental math remains the same: depending on engineering, between 1/8 and 1/4 of your subscribers can talk at once. If you want a feature that would work, it would be possible to cut off any subscriber that called for a ticket, and not allow him to reoriginate for five minutes or so. This would free up a lot of resources. Unfortunately, it would also open up the telco for lawsuits ("Aunt Tilly keeled over right after I called for a ticket, and I couldn't get through."). Choke prefixes, call gapping, and similar network management treatments are a compromise for an insoluble problem. No switch manufacturer can sell totally non-blocking line equipment, because the telcos won't pay the costs. We cannot predict who is going to call 911 and who is going to call Larry King. The best we can do is make the machine survive the peaking, give fairly distributed service to all originators, and try to deal with the problem during routing and termination. Kevin Wayne Williams AG Communication Systems nee Automatic Electric ------------------------------ From: jrd5@po.CWRU.Edu (Jacob DeGlopper) Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Reply-To: jrd5@po.CWRU.Edu (Jacob DeGlopper) Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 13:39:58 GMT > calls lost before that point? People don't have direct lines to 911, > you know. PAT] Well, most people don't. I happened to be on the direct line to our communications center from the rescue squad yesterday when a strange thing happened. I got a few clicks on the line, silence, and then to my surprise "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again or call your operator to help you.", followed immediately by the obnoxiously loud "hang up NOW" signal. I didn't think the direct line was supposed to do this sort of thing! Anyone have an idea why? Jacob DeGlopper, EMT-A, Wheaton Volunteer Rescue Squad -- CWRU Biomedical Engineering - jrd5@po.cwru.edu -- +1 703 538 7624 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 09:20:20 -0700 From: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) Subject: Re: "Choke" Prefixes Lauren Weinstein wrote about 'choke' prefixes with respect to their ability, or lack thereof, to help maintain reasonable phone service in an area affected by unusually heavy phone usage, such as during phone-ins for tickets to popular concerts. On a related matter: during the recent riots, I was able to get dial tone out of a pay phone in the part of West Torrance that is served by GTE, even though my own phone wouldn't give me dial tone after ten minutes off hook. Do pay phones have a higher priority within the switch in terms of getting dial tone? ------------------------------ From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: "Choke" Prefixes (was Concert Goers Blast 911) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 20:02:58 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Overloads due to massive redialing should be fixable by programming originating switches to apportion originating registers using some measure of "fairness", such as number of requests for dialtone in the last N minutes, tallied for each line. This would effectively guarantee that if you haven't made multiple call attempts in the last few minutes, you get dialtone ahead of everyone who has. This seems a reasonable feature for modern switches, and I'm surprised that something like this isn't already implemented. Perhaps the areas experiencing problems are on 1ESS machines, or even crossbar. With the rise of mass-media initiated calling storms, future switch software will have to have something like this, at least until switches have enough control capacity that everyone can have dialtone (or ISDN call-control capability) simultaneously. John Nagle ------------------------------ From: mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer) Subject: Re: Pac$Bell Tentacle-Stretching (was Pacific Bell Car Theft) Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'. Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 14:31:02 GMT mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer) writes: > "tariffed" customers. Gee whiz, Pat, you ruined a perfectly good pun! "tarrified" "terrified" Get it? Nick Sayer N6QQQ @ N0ARY.#NOCAL.CA.USA.NA 37 19 49 N / 121 57 36 W +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest' [Moderator's Note: What Nick is referring to is my unwitting editing of his earlier message. When it was put in the Digest, the non-word shown above was changed to a 'correct' word without my catching on to Nick's intentions. Sorry! PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 09:15 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Pac$Bell Tentacle-Stretching (was Pacific Bell Car Theft) mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer) writes: > Pac$Bell seems to want to get its greasy little fingers on every sort > of enterprise possible, save that of providing good service to its > "tariffed" customers. You aint seen nothin' yet. The latest round of "institutional" advertising is designed to anesthetize you into accepting Pac*Bell into many aspects of your daily life. These are very slick ads that talk about how "different" California is and about how Pac*Bell is ready to introduce "new products and services" that fit in with the California lifestyle. Using the slogan, "Good enough isn't", the spots have already mentioned "RealtyLink", an information service that allows propective buyers to "tour" properties without leaving the Realty office. And this is just the beginning. The major crisis around the bend for Pac*Bell and other LECs is that of bypass. And we are no longer just talking about shorthaul long distance. I know of companies that now import local dial tone through various schemes. As Pac*Bell becomes too lazy to keep its entire plant up to date, firms are no longer going to accept the excuse that this feature, or that one is "not available in your area". Most analysts agree that the latest talk about spinning off the LEC from the Pacific Telesis empire was a lot of hot air designed to remove some heat. ("Well, if Pacific Telesis was even willing to TALK about divesting Pac*Bell, it must not be as evil as we thought.") It may happen somewhere down the road after the LEC has been run into the ground, at which point only a massive rate increase or government intervention would save it. But for now, Pacific Telesis desperately needs the revenues to finance all these wonderful new services with which it hopes to eventually make a killing. > Meanwhile, _REAL_ residential ISDN is nowhere to be found. Watch out. Last time I pointed that out I got taken to task because I was not just forking over for business service. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Jun 92 14:47:18 -0400 From: wah@zach.fit.edu (Bill Huttig) Subject: Re: United Telephone/Sprint Organization: Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne USA In article mw1@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Mike Wells) writes: > Distance. Since UT is owned by Sprint, I'm assuming that UTLD is just > another name from Sprint LD service. It is kinda of strange but I think the UTLD is really a separte comany or at lease use to be. Before July 1, 1985 GTE Sprint was one company and US Telecom was owned by United Telecom (United Telephone). They merged 7/1/85 to form US SPRINT (along with GTE Telenet and UniNet GTE and Uniteds packet networks). GTE sold its part to United over the last seven years. Now United owns the whole thing and decided to rename itself to SPRINT. Anyway in the meantime I noticed a LD carrier spring up called United Telephone LD which I called once and they claimed not to be connected with Sprint. It seems they just offered service to United Tel customers ... I assume now with the final take over of Spint that the would merge UTLD into it ... (seems stupid to compete with yourself). > UTLD claims one of its advantages over MCI is that UTLD charges can be > placed on the same bill as UT local charges. (AT&T charges can also be > placed on the UT bill). Isn't this unfair? Doesn't this action give > UTLD an unfair advantage over MCI because UT does not directly bill > MCI calls? I think so but even when the local Exchange Carrier does bill as in the case of Southern Bell it is still unfair. For example my bill cut off date is the 18th of the month ... bill dated 19th. All the AT&T calls show up through the 18th (except calling card calls) while MCI would have to cut off the calls on the 8th so that they could get the calls to the BOC. There is also the problem where I have two numbers on different exchanges ... if MCI uses the oposite one from the BOC the billing will be cut off even earlier ... over three weeks. That's why I get my bills directly from MCI, and their format is nicer. > Sprint's purchases of small telephone companies (Centel, United > Telephone) is an interesting contrast to the forced breakup of AT&T. Sprint did not purchase United Telephone ... United Telephone purchased the rest of US SPRINT and renamed itself. Bill wah@zach.fit.edu ------------------------------ From: ruck@alpha.ee.ufl.edu (John R Ruckstuhl Jr) Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Organization: EE Dept at UF Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 00:34:47 GMT In comp.dcom.telecom rmintz@ecst.csuchico.edu (Rich Mintz) writes: > if your phone number is 345-1234, there is an alternate xyz-1234 > number which connects you to this "test" number. > I've found this "alternate" prefix many times through sequential > dialing with my modem and uning the Hayes 'W' command to wait for a > dial tone after the number is dialed (that's what you get when the > test number answers). Hopefully, Rich (and others who use this method) remember to restrict their testing to those prefixes which are not in use for valid telephone numbers. One might find such a list in the beginning of the telephone directory. Regards, John R Ruckstuhl, Jr ruck@alpha.ee.ufl.edu Dept of Electrical Engineerin ruck@cis.ufl.edu, uflorida!ruck University of Florida ruck%sphere@cis.ufl.edu, sphere!ruck ------------------------------ From: julian%bongo.UUCP@nosc.mil (Julian Macassey) Subject: Re: Ringer Equivalency Numbers (R Date: 29 Jun 92 02:04:07 GMT Reply-To: julian@bongo.info.com (Julian Macassey) Organization: The Hole in the Wall Hollywood California U.S.A. In article sbrack@jupiter.cse.UTOLEDO.edu (Steven S. Brack) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 515, Message 6 of 13 > I recently made a tour of my new home, and added up all the RENs of > all the phones, just to see what I would get. > Total RENs: 7.4 *!* (Must really increase Ma's electric bill 8) The Telco guarantee to ring a total of 5.0 REN. If you have an REN of 7.4 ringing, it indicates that either the numbers are untrue (possible) or you are near the CO (most likely). > Highest rated device: ConAir "prestige" phone, 1.7B "Con"Air make some of the worst phones I have seen. But then they are really an importer of cheap and nasty hair dryers, so why should they sell a decent phone. > Lowest rated device: Genuine Bell answering machine, 0.3B > Lowest rated phone: AT&T 100 pushbutton phone, 0.7B > Anyway, this brought up some questions. > 1) Some phones give their REN as X.XA (X being any number), > while others give theirs as X.XB. What do the A & B mean? These numbers are referenced in FCC Part 68 and Bell Pub 48005 as well as EIA Doc RS-470. Briefly, the letters refer to the frequency response of the ringer. So A which is usually found on old brass gong ringers, is responsive to 20 Hz +&- 3 Hz and 30 Hz +&- 3Hz. Most ring frequencies in the U.S. are 20 Hz. Yes there are exceptions, often on party lines. The B, usually found on warble ringers means the ringer is responsive between 15.3 and 68.0 Hz. Often B ringers will happily work at 100 Hz and above. The standard gong ringer has an REN of 1.0 and Frequency response A. > 2) Why should the least feature-filled phone, a $15 one-piece > phone have a higher REN than the AT&T phone, which does quite > a bit more, and rings more loudly, as well? Because the $15.00 phone is a cheaply made piece of crap. When you sell a phone for $15.00 it means that it has $3.75 worth of parts and labour in it. The reason some stuff costs more is that it is better designed and better built. Yes, you do get what you pay for. I have seen some junk phones with RENs of 3.0. > 3) Does the length of wire run figure into REN calculations? > (I have an extension phone connected to a 250' cord.) Yes, but the wire in your house, is a minor fraction of the total length. The length of wire between your house and the CO is often three miles or more, so another 300 feet doesn't mean much. Julian Macassey, julian@bongo.info.com N6ARE@K6VE.#SOCAL.CA.USA.NA 742 1/2 North Hayworth Avenue Hollywood CA 90046-7142 voice (213) 653-4495 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #522 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa16947; 1 Jul 92 0:42 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA24279 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Tue, 30 Jun 1992 22:29:14 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA32159 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Tue, 30 Jun 1992 22:29:05 -0500 Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 22:29:05 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207010329.AA32159@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #523 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Jun 92 22:29:09 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 523 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Dave Niebuhr) Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Peter Chrzanowski) Re: More Strange 710 Stuff (was Funny Intercept) (Terry Kennedy) Re: More Strange 710 Stuff (was Funny Intercept) (Jacob DeGlopper) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (G.T. Stovall) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (John De Armond) Re: AGT Cellular Gets First North American Digital Cellular (Serdar Boztas) Re: Combinations of Names From Phone Digits (Bob Izenberg) Re: Two Questions From a Newcomer (Rich Greenberg) Re: Two Questions From a Newcomer (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: AT&T Knows I am Moving. How? (Byron Burke) Re: Interactive Cable TV (Bruce Klopfenstein) Re: No Obvious L.A. Telecom Effects From Yucca/Big Bear Quakes (R McMillin) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 07:26:28 EDT From: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (Dave Niebuhr) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) In a recent post, Jack.Winslade@ivgate.omahug.org (Jack Winslade) writes: > Back in NYC in the days of the mechanical announcers, the time number > was published as 637-1212 but EVERYONE knew that to get the time, the > word N-E-R-V-O-U-S would be dialed. Every phone enthusiast knew that > 637-anything would get the time. I just tried 9-637-1212 (Area Code 516) from my office phone and got a recording stating that I had dialed my own number in Area Code 718 (Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens, or the start of 718 in the Bronx). Dave Niebuhr Internet: niebuhr@bnl.gov / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973 (516)-282-3093 ------------------------------ From: chrz@tellabs.com (Peter Chrzanowski) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: Tellabs, Inc. Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 22:35:37 GMT In article , rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes: > Can you tell us how they 'patched together' the digits prior to > digital recording? I envisioned two dozen or more very short tape > loops all run by some kind of switch. I don't know how this was done, but I do remember the insides of a talking alarm clock from the pre-digital era. The clock had what appeared to be two floppy disks in it, one for hours and one for minutes. There was one full track devoted to each number, and the position of the access arms was mechanically controlled. The magnetic recording was analog, however. ------------------------------ From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy) Subject: Re: More Strange 710 Stuff (was Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212) Date: 29 Jun 92 05:35:21 EDT Organization: St. Peter's College, US In article , fl0p+@andrew.cmu.edu (Frank T Lofaro) writes: > Strange thing is if I dial a bogus area code and number I get the > intercept right away after the last digit is dialed (and before I can > get to enter my security code), but if I dial the 710 area code and a > number, it asks for my code, and only then does it give me the > intercept. If your phone service is Centrex-style, or if you have a telco-provided PBX, one of the things that comes with it is an accurate listing of area codes. As 710 seems to be assigned, it would be accepted by your switch or PBX, only to get you the same intercept once the CO tried to route it. Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA terry@spcvxa.spc.edu +1 201 915 9381 ------------------------------ From: jrd5@po.CWRU.Edu (Jacob DeGlopper) Subject: Re: More Strange 710 Stuff (was Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212) Reply-To: jrd5@po.CWRU.Edu (Jacob DeGlopper) Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 14:51:28 GMT In a previous article, fl0p+@andrew.cmu.edu (Frank T Lofaro) says: > My dorm phone (at CMU) uses AT&T ACUS service (a college > if I dial the 710 area code and a number, it asks for my code, and > only then does it give me the intercept. > So maybe 710 isn't only using line-based access control. Why an > eight-digit security code related to a college calling plan would be > involved in access granting/denying is beyond me, if that is the case Interesting. Our ACUS system at CWRU uses a seven-digit code, which provides fairly good security, since there can't be more than 5000 or so students living on campus. I think the billing and code validation are done locally, since the 800 number to check your account balance is updated from school records on a non-real-time basis. The calls seem to go out on a trunk from the school telecom office -- for example, although all the dorm phone numbers are 216 754 nnnn, and 800 ANI returns correct numbers, the 404-whatever readback returned 216 368 2000 -- normally the number of the campus operator, and the phone number listed in the phone book for CWRU! The 368 prefix is our administration. Maybe someone at CMU has a reason to be able to call 710 and the switch is only seeing the outgoing trunk at first? Jacob DeGlopper, EMT-A, Wheaton Volunteer Rescue Squad -- CWRU Biomedical Engineering - jrd5@po.cwru.edu -- +1 703 538 7624 ------------------------------ Date: 30 Jun 92 10:33:00 CDT From: Greg (G.T.) Stovall Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess The telemarketing firm was known, but not identified in the original article in order to give the firm and the sponsoring agency (the Garland Police Officers' Association) a chance to respond to the allegations. In a subsequent article, the columnist revealed the information and stated that repeated phone calls to the telemarketers and the police association have not been returned. He ended the article with a challenge to the officers' association to refute the story. Apparently, according to the original story, Mr. Harshaw was sufficiently rude (possibly obnoxious) to really tick the telemarketer off. I have no independent verification of the story, but am unsure as to why you doubt the article. There is no discernable campaign by the newspaper; this story is by one local columnist. Yes, he has spent the last couple of months investigating telemarketing firms in Texas, and has turned up some whopping cases of misdirection (fake police officer associations hiring telemarketing firms owned by the owners of the officer association, etc). As a result, many officer associations are changing the way they solicit funds. I can easily imagine some person pulling a stunt like that. Telemarketers are people, after all, and *some* of them have to be unhinged. Telemarketers are not working *all* the time; if one was sufficiently peeved, he might stay after his shift to wreak some havoc. Gregory T. Stovall gstovall@bnr.ca Bell-Northern Research ESN 444-7009 Richardson, Texas, USA (214) 684-7009 ------------------------------ From: jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 18:33:59 GMT Organization: Dixie Communications Public Access. The Mouth of the South. pf@islington-terrace.hc.ti.com (Paul Fuqua) writes: [ Teleslime harrassment story deleted] > [Moderator's Note: Very dramatic story, but is it really the truth? > What telemarketer do you know with enough spare time on his hands to > waste call after call on someone who obviously is not buying anything? > To those boys, time *is* money, and people (who they call) wasting > their time 'looking for a pen', etc are anathema. Usually the quota > they keep requires several dozen calls per hour, and at least a few > positive results per hour. He is giving up all this money and messing > up his quota in order to play games with Harshaw? How could he be > making all these calls without someone along the way identifying him > or detirmining what organization employs him? How come Harshaw and/or > telco haven't trapped him by now? Has Harshaw heard the taped > messages left in his name and identified the voice with the person who > originally called him? Are Harshaw and the {Dallas Morning News} each > complimenting the other's story for their own reasons; Harshaw for his > fifteen minutes of fame and the newspaper in a campaign to dump on > telemarketers? I don't believe their story. PAT] Pat, I know that running this mailing list gives you an all-seeing overview of the world not available to Paul or the reporter who investigated the story but consider for a moment the fact that you don't know all there is to know about teleslime. Consider that not all teleslime works in boiler rooms and against quotas. Consider the increasing problem we have here in Atlanta with casual teleslime who work out of their homes (judging by the screaming kids and blaring TV in the background) to make a little extra money. They have neither the quota to drive them nor the thick skin to let 'em weather insults. These people get mad at being cussed at or even hung up on. They do waste their time getting even by calling back. And when they call me back, their number from the Caller*ID box goes in Dixie's UUCP Systems file for day or two. Yes, it is entirely believable that a teleslime would do such a thing as described in the media article. John De Armond, WD4OQC Rapid Deployment System, Inc. Marietta, Ga jgd@dixie.com Need Usenet public Access in Atlanta? Write Me for info on Dixie.com. ------------------------------ From: serdar@fawlty4.eng.monash.edu.au (Serdar Boztas) Subject: Re: AGT Cellular Gets First North American Digital Cellular Running Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia. Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 05:10:53 GMT DLEIBOLD@VM1.YorkU.CA (David Leibold) writes: > AGT Cellular in Alberta, Canada, announced that it has North America's > first digital cellular system in operation, beating out other cellular > companies including its competitor, Cantel. AGT Cellular placed ads in > recent newspapers trumpeting this achievement, stating that the heavy > use of digital technology in AGT's network helped establish digital > cellular service, and joked about digital not being in "Mister Rogers > Neighbourhood" (a reference to Rogers Communications which owns AGT's > competitor Cantel, which had announced plans to go digital, but hasn't > put them into effect yet). What multiaccess method are they using? Does anyone have more information about this system? I am interested in things such as transmission rates for digitized voice, method of voice compression, etc. Have they started marketing dual-mode or all digital mobile phones? Serdar Boztas \\ serdar@fawlty1.eng.monash.edu.au \\ +(61)3-565-5722 ------------------------------ From: bei@dogface.austin.tx.us (Bob Izenberg) Subject: Re: Combinations of Names From Phone Digits Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 1:32:32 CDT In TELECOM Digest Issue 517, PAT observed of K Husain's program, > [Moderator's Note: I tried the above and could not get it to work. > Maybe I did something wrong. Readers with questions should address the > author direct. PAT] It gave some of the compilers here trouble as well, but gcc didn't have any trouble with it. Bob WORK: bobi@dangermouse.sps.mot.com HOME: bei@dogface.austin.tx.us ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 00:33:53 PDT From: richg@hatch.socal.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Two Questions From a Newcomer Organization: Hatch Usenet and E-mail. Playa del Rey, CA In article is written: > I have two questions: > 1). Is there a forum on the Internet that is dedicated to ISDN? What > about ATM? Try comp.dcom.isdn. > 2). Has anyone heard of an ISDN interface for Macintosh computers? Ask on comp.dcom.isdn. Rich Greenberg - N6LRT - 310-649-0238 - richg@hatch.socal.com ------------------------------ From: goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein) Subject: Re: Two Questions From a Newcomer Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 17:00:00 GMT In article , sami@scic.intel.com writes: > 1). Is there a forum on the Internet that is dedicated to ISDN? What > about ATM? comp.dcom.isdn and comp.dcom.cell-relay. Fred R. Goldstein goldstein@carafe.tay2.dec.com k1io or goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com voice:+1 508 952 3274 Standard Disclaimer: Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission. ------------------------------ From: burke@cs.purdue.edu (Byron Burke) Subject: Re: AT&T Knows I am Moving. How? Date: 29 Jun 92 14:43:24 GMT Reply-To: burke@cs.purdue.edu Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University In article , MASSOUD@AMERICAN.EDU writes: > About a week ago I notified US Sprint (my LD carrier) and C&P > telephone (local carrier) to disconnect my service on June 30th, > because I am moving. Today I received junk mail from AT&T offering me > a "$50 long distance savings bond" if I select them as my LD carrier > for my new home. Am I correct in assuming that C&P telephone gave > them the information, probably so that my Bell Atlantic phone card > stops working after this date? > [Moderator's Note: AT&T probably buys information like that from the > local telco also. PAT] I was amazed to get something similar -- an offer of a free hour of long distance if I keep Reach Out America service -- if I keep AT&T when I move. However, the only people I've told (other than friends and relatives) is the apartment complex I'm moving into and the one I'm moving out of. I haven't called and hooked up phone/electric service yet. I suppose this is more of a privacy issue then telcom but it is amazing (scary?) what these companies will do for a bit of service. (Although I have been making many long long distance calls to my girlfriend in Massachusetts so I suppose I'm an ideal customer :). byron burke@cs.purdue.edu ------------------------------ From: klopfens@andy.bgsu.edu (Bruce Klopfenstein) Subject: Re: Interactive Cable TV Date: 29 Jun 92 14:46:38 GMT Organization: Bowling Green State University B.G., Oh. sichermn@beach.csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman) writes: > I would appreciate references to articles, books, journals on the > technology and applications of interactive cable-TV and any case > studies of systems that have been tried. Here are three quick text cites: Baldwin, Thomas F. and McVoy, D. Stevens. (1983). Cable Communications. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-110171-4 Slater, James N. (1988). Cable Television Technology. New York: John Wiley and Sons. ISBN #0-7458-0108-0 Deschler, Kenneth T. (1987). Cable Television Technology. New York: McGraw-Hill. A doctoral student of mine, Dana Roof, has been studying Qube's interactive cable systems and has chosen that as her dissertation topic. She might be an excellent resource as well. Bruce C. Klopfenstein klopfens@andy.bgsu.edu Department of Telecommunications klopfenstein@bgsuopie.bitnet 322 West Hall klopfens@bgsuvax.UUCP Bowling Green State University (419) 372-2138; 372-2224 Bowling Green, OH 43403-0235 fax (419) 372-8600 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 09:29:41 -0700 From: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) Subject: Re: No Obvious L.A. Telecom Effects From Yucca/Big Bear Quakes The Moderator writes: > [Moderator's Note: John Higdon has also checked in with me and noted > that Sunday morning's quakes were a bit too close -- and too strong -- > for comfort in his 'desert hideaway'. But he was unharmed and will be > writing to us again soon. Just as we have all heard the 'AIDS is God's > punishment for homosexuals' routine, one clever writer suggested to me > that the earthquake was God's punishment for having the LA Gay Pride > Parade yesterday ... but his aim was a little off and he forgot that > his watch was set on Vatican Time. :). PAT] Some of us here thought it was God's reaction to reading the news in the Saturday {Los Angeles Times} Business section that another 6000 Hughes employees are to be dismissed. Robert L. McMillin Voice: (310) 568-3555 Hughes Aircraft/Hughes Training, Inc. Fax: (310) 568-3574 Los Angeles, CA Internet: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com [Moderator's Note: The Chicago papers made mention of it Sunday, and that is a pretty awful scenario. I hope the people involved are able to deal with it and find other work. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #523 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa18630; 1 Jul 92 1:19 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA21296 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Tue, 30 Jun 1992 23:22:45 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA03069 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Tue, 30 Jun 1992 23:22:34 -0500 Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 23:22:34 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207010422.AA03069@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #524 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Jun 92 23:22:38 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 524 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: 900Mhz Cordless Phones: Which One? (Irving Wolfe) Re: Newfoundland Province Code 709 (cavallarom@cpva.saic.com) Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? (Shuang Deng) Re: MCI Phone Bill (Steve Forrette) Re: Fiber Channel Standards Info Wanted (Jim Smith) Re: 1-xxx-555-1212 From Overseas? (Bill Squire) Re: Caller ID in Southern California? (Jim Tavakoli) Re: Caller ID in Southern California? (John Higdon) Re: Contemporary Remote Controls (Doug Humphrey) Re: Ringer Equivalency Numbers (John Higdon) Re: Bix Block Punch-Down Tool (Barton F. Bruce) Re: No Obvious L.A. Telecom Effects From Yucca/Big Bear Quake (M Terribile) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: irving@happy-man.com (Irving_Wolfe) Subject: Re: 900Mhz Cordless Phones: Which One? Reply-To: Irving_Wolfe@happy-man.com Organization: Happy Man Corp., Vashon Island, WA 98070-7399 Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 15:35:17 GMT As far as I know, only the Tropez and Panasonic phones are out. Both have been reviewed on the net, though perhaps only the Tropez in this newsgroup. (The other may have been misc.consumers.) The review of the Panasonic was _very_ negative. It is also much more expensive than the Tropez and has fewer features. My personal experience with conventional cordless phones suggests that Panasonic tends to be good on user-interface and poorer-than-average on overall robust engineering and quality. (This differs from their quality in answering machines and wired phones and systems, which is quite good.) The two reviews of the Tropez were slightly negative to neutral. The only real complaints were "dropouts" of communication and inadequate volume. I bought a Tropez and liked it enough to order a second one for the office. Yes, there are environmentally-effected dropouts. Yes, I wish the maximum volume (it's adjustable) were higher. On the other hand, sound quality was great and range was perhaps ten times that of a conventional cordless, maybe 400 to 600 feet. To get the higher range so I could use it between buildings here and reduce dropouts, I put the base unit in the attic. I noticed that the dropouts were only bad enough to prevent conversation when I was using it in the hot tub, so I no longer do that. (I wired in a conventional phone to that location.) I like the Tropez. Irving_Wolfe@Happy-Man.com Happy Man Corp. 206/463-9399 x101 4410 SW Pt. Robinson Rd., Vashon Island, WA 98070-7399 fax x108 ------------------------------ From: cavallarom@cpva.saic.com Subject: Re: Newfoundland Province Code 709 Date: 29 Jun 92 12:25:10 PST Organization: Science Applications Int'l Corp./San Diego In article , cmoore@BRL.MIL (VLD/VMB) writes: > incorporated as a province of Canada until 1949. Newfoundland (which > includes mainland Labrador) is area code 709. Notice that the French > islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon are right next to Newfoundland, but > have country code 508. > [Moderator's Note: Someone said to me that despite the different > country code noted above, there is 'local community dialing' between > some points in southern Newfoundland and the islands. Either a > straight seven-digit connection, or some code followed by the local > number on the islands. Can anyone comment on this? PAT] Pat, This is pretty straightforward to implement. A trunk group is established in the cooperating COs and the switch is programmed to route traffic to the trk grp when appropriate. The use of a straight seven-digit connection vs a code then seven-digit would tell you whether there were conflicts due to common exchange numbers in the cooperting COs. Of course, the toughest part of this whole setup is to get it past the regulators. ------------------------------ From: Shuang Deng Subject: Re:What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 13:46:33 MDT [Moderator's Note: 'NorTel' is most likely Northern Telecom, a prominent manufacturer of telco stuff in the USA ...] Or, more perciesly, Northern Telecom is a *Canadian* company with subsidies in many places of the world, including the USA. Shuang Deng (shuang@idacom.hp.com) ------------------------------ From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: MCI Phone Bill Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 23:14:38 GMT In article jon@ncrbeth.bethlehempa. NCR.COM (John Staub) writes: > I received my phone bill on Saturday. There were $148 worth of phone > card charges. I called MCI. They checked and told me that my local > company had assigned my phone number to another person. MCI had then > gived them a phone card. They were the ones that made the calls. They > took the charges off the bill. Fine and dandy. I have had the number > for 24 years. I am going to be checking my phone bill very closely > from now on. I wonder HOW that could happen or *how many times * it > could have happened in the past. This is apparently one of the many "advantages" of getting service from MCI. Some of you may remember my posting about a month ago about being unable to reach a certain prefix using AT&T. I was able to successfully call the same prefix using both US Sprint and MCI. Well, the bill for that day finally arrived. As expected, in addition to my local and AT&T charges, there were two additional pages of my bill, from US Sprint and MCI. The US Sprint page was for a one-minute call priced at $.14, and the MCI page was for a one-minute call priced at $.13, with an additional charge of over $6 for "PrimeTime Plus" or some such thing, for a grand total of almost $7 for a one-minute call. Of course, I called MCI to get to the bottom of this. I was told that according to their computer, my number belonged to someone else, and they subscribed to the "PrimeTime Plus" plan. The previous months had no charges for this plan, as no calls had been placed via MCI. Apparently, the person who previously had my number was an MCI subscriber, and MCI had old data in their database. Combined with John Staub's message, I gather that this is not an isolated problem with MCI. I guess they get neither disconnect or "new service" notifications from the LEC, or discard them. I should also note that the MCI rep needed to verify that I was telling the truth when I said that this was my number and no longer belonged to Mr X. How did they do this? They checked with Directory Assistance! The rep came back on the line "Mr. Forrette, your number was not listed with Directory Assistance, so I was unable to verify what you've told me. But, Mr. X is not listed with the number in question either, so I'll take your word for it." I'm really glad that they took the extra effort to verify the facts of the case for certain! :-) Apparently, MCI's method of getting billing names and addresses for their customers is taking the information directly from the customer (and not the LEC computer), and verifying it with DA. Also, I was given a hard-sell by the MCI rep to switch to MCI long distance. Especially touted was Friends and Family. I responded "Oh, so you can call up all my friends with a bunch of sales calls and hassle THEM to switch too?" She replied "No, that's NOT what we do! When you give us your list of numbers, we now have an option for each number you give us. 1) call that person and ask if they want to switch, 2) mail them literature about switching, or 3) do nothing. In any event, you get the 20% FAF discount for the first three months for everyone on your list regardless of their carrier." Needless to say, I declined her generous offer. Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com ------------------------------ From: jes@storage.tandem.com (Jim Smith) Subject: Re: Fiber Channel Standards Info Wanted Organization: Tandem Computers Inc., Cupertino CA Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 00:32:01 GMT In article , alfredo@quickt2.it12. bull.it (Alfredo Cotroneo) wrote: > I am looking for the ultimate ANSI specs of the Fiber Channel > standards, but I could not find either the exact document number, nor > where could I obtain a copy from. The Fibre Channel standard has not yet been published by ANSI. The latest working draft, Rev 3.0, is available from the following source: Global Engineering 2805 McGaw St. Irvine, CA 92714 (800) 854-7179 (714) 261-1455 > Can anybody help, please? I suppose that the standard document numbers > should be available from ANSI. Fibre Channel Physical and Signaling Interface (FC-PH) Rev 3.0 X3T9/91-062 X3T9.3/92-092 FC-P/92-001R3.0 > Does anybody have the address of ANSI (phone/fax/email) handy?. Use the Global Engineering address until the document is published by ANSI. For future reference, ANSI's address is: American National Standards Institute 1430 Broadway New York, NY 10018 Jim Smith smith_jim@tandem.com jes@storage.tandem.com ------------------------------ From: bill@hacktic.nl (Bill Squire) Subject: Re: 1-xxx-555-1212 From Overseas? Date: 30 Jun 92 05:02:37 GMT Organization: Hack-Tic Magazine naddy@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Christian Weisgerber) writes: > Several times when toying around a friend and I tried to call an > American directory assistance at 1-xxx-555-1212. (We're here in Germany, > for that matter). Now, I'd assume that international calls to these > numbers are generally impossible, however, our results were somewhat > different: > (1) "Your international call can not be completed as dialed [...]" > (2) BUSY > (3) We got through! > I think we tried area codes 213, 708 and a few others. There seems to be > no rule for results (1)-(3). Call now, try again a few minutes later, > and you may get any of the above. I also wonder whether (2) is a > variation of (1) or (3). Same here in Holland. All NPA + 555-1212 work to California. Hawaii always gives a "call cannot be completed as dialed ..." recording. Most return a busy and some return a recording out of Rotterdam saying (in Dutch) "The number is not in use, check and call again ..." Its like most are caught right here, but to those places that will accept or soon accept 555-1212 on international trunks, the PTT has chosen to let them thru, to the relief of the long distance operator. On some exchanges (out of Holland) dialing 001 + NPA + 131 will do the trick. This is how directory inquiries is reached out of North America and it is up to your own CO if such calls are allowed. Beware you will be charged normal international rates for these calls. In the rest of the world where code 11 is used to get the operator, DTMF "A" often translates to code 11. You may or may not be charged for these calls; again it is up to the program in your central, if it works and if you get charged. Bill [Moderator's Note: The thing here is AT&T charges $3.00 for overseas directory assistance, and you cannot talk to the overseas operator and must trust the AT&T operator to state the request correctly if she splits the connection, which is often the case. I've found a few countries where 011-xx-555-1212 works from the USA. For example Guam (670) and Australia (61) both connect 555-1212 with their directory bureau. Unlike AT&T's $3.00 charge, a minute to either of those places is much less, even if I do get charged. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nsc!tavakoli@decwrl.dec.com (Jim Tavakoli) Subject: Re: Caller ID in Southern California? Organization: National Semiconductor, Santa Clara Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1992 22:55:15 GMT Dear Net readers, As you may know, California telephone companies now support Caller-ID. I waswondering if anybody out there has any information or references to the design and implementation of Caller-ID. I understand there is a spec published by Bell. If you could send me the name of the publication, I would really appreciate it. Has anybody done an implementation of the Caller-ID on a DAA (NCU) card? Any information would be greatly appreicated. Jim ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 00:59 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Caller ID in Southern California? jhenderson@pomona.claremont.edu writes: > SO I will ask the net: is caller ID available/will be available soon > in So Cal, in the GTE areas? Specifically, the Pomona Valley. GTE has announced that has dropped all plans for Caller-ID. (Actually, GTE was desperately hoping that it could find some excuse or another to avoid having to reveal its complete incompetence. The PUC decision requiring free per-line blocking was the answer to its prayers.) Specifically, if you live anywhere in California and have GTE as your LEC, you can kiss Caller-ID goodbye. Maybe forever. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ From: dougnews@access.digex.com (Doug Humphrey) Subject: Re: Contemporary Remote Controls Organization: Express Access Public Access UNIX, Greenbelt, Maryland Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 02:27:32 GMT Sony VCR remotes have a switch on them that allows selection of one or three different units. Doug ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 01:48 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Ringer Equivalency Numbers julian%bongo.UUCP@nosc.mil (Julian Macassey) writes: > The Telco guarantee to ring a total of 5.0 REN. If you have an > REN of 7.4 ringing, it indicates that either the numbers are untrue > (possible) or you are near the CO (most likely). Also, if you are exceeding 5.0 REN watch out for a characteristic of some offices (notably the 1/1AESS equipped ones). What these switches do for a self-protection measure is to simply shut off ringing current to the over-RENed line. The caller gets ringback as usual, but nothing makes a peep at the called end. Years (and years) ago, before my PBX-in-home days, I used to have all kinds of things hanging on the line such as dialers, weird bedside clock radio phones (with RENs like 1.75), and other gadgets. One day someone asked where I had been all day since I did not answer the phone. Upon checking, I discovered that no ring voltage was being delivered during a call. A call to 611 brought a repairman to the door who informed me that they "saw" a lot of ringers on the line and if I took some of them off, things would start working again. They did. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ From: Barton F. Bruce Subject: Re: Bix Block Punch-Down Tool Date: 30 Jun 92 04:52:51 EDT Organization: Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc. In article , amb@cs.columbia.edu (andrew m. boardman) writes: > I am in need of a punch-down tool for NTI's almost-but-not-quite-110 > Bix blocks. All of the usual sources say that Northern Telecom is the NTI has just figured that lack of general availability of that tool (and maybe its price) may be loosing them block sales. I was told at a very recent trade show to watch for trade mag ads for an upcoming promotion where buying some number of blocks gets you a tool either free or very cheap. ------------------------------ From: mat%mole-end@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Re: No Obvious L.A. Telecom Effects fFom Yucca/Big Bear Quakes Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 04:18:37 GMT > [Moderator's Note: ... Just as we have all heard the 'AIDS is God's > punishment for homosexuals' routine, one clever writer suggested to me > that the earthquake was God's punishment for having the LA Gay Pride > Parade yesterday ... but his aim was a little off and he forgot that > his watch was set on Vatican Time. :). PAT] Pat, this unworthy of you. And even if it weren't, most of the people who are heard making this statement are the same ones who would call the Catholic Church the `Whore of Babylon.' Know thine enemy, please. (Iran is not Iraq, fer instance.) And remember, in NYC there is one nursing home for Ps'WA. It is NOT run by the city; it is NOT run by the GMHC, it is run by the Archdiocese of NY. Me? Weeelll ... the earthquake MIGHT be punishment for people who build near active seismic faults ... but I won't say _whose_ punishment. (This man's opinions are his own.) From mole-end Mark Terribile uunet!mole-end!mat, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ [Moderator's Note: Some people call me the Whore of Usenet. :) You are correct though; here The Catholic Charities of Chicago spends huge amounts of money to assist PWA's and other endeavors. I only wish that the church had done something about all those pedophile priests who (blush) bother young boys years ago without waiting for the newspapers here to stink up the place. Thus far, sixteen priests in Chicago have been fingered. I think that even beats the record in Newfoundland a couple years ago when they had the same problem there. :( PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #524 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa11434; 3 Jul 92 3:15 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA19872 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Fri, 3 Jul 1992 01:45:55 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA11331 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Fri, 3 Jul 1992 01:45:35 -0500 Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1992 01:45:35 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207030645.AA11331@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Subject: Technical Problems Halt TELECOM Digest Production Due to difficulty on this end with software which won't work and/or hardware which is out of order (undetirmined by me as of yet), all output from TELECOM Digest has been halted for the time being. I have spend much time this evening attempting to produce the Digest only to be constantly greeted with the message "Memory Fault - Core Dumped". I have no idea what is going on. All I know is the queue is overloaded with mail (200 plus messages), nothing is moving, and with the holiday weekend upon us, I may not find anyone who knows how to fix the problem until next week. This system is at present simply refusing to make Digests. I do not think it is the software. I will resume the Digest if/when the problem has been corrected. I must ask for the time being *** do not send mail to telecom **. I have more than I can possibly deal with and unfortunatly most will have to be dumped unread/unused simply to resume a normal flow once things get moving again. Send no further submissions until further notice. In addition, something is wrong with the mailer which sends copies of the Digest to Bitnet sites (I work at delta.eecs.nwu.edu but the Bitnet copies are mailed from nuacvm.acns.nwu.edu), and Bitnet readers are getting 20-30 copies of each issue and have been for several days. I know this is happening because I get a copy returned to me from a Bitnet site ... and I am getting the same 20-30 copies ... and finally, there is still some cross connection somewhere with alt.dcom.telecom aliased into comp.dcom.telecom, and I am getting all that stuff sent to me in droves with reciepts going out to those people who then write and ask me why I sent them a receipt when they did not submit anything to me ... So when some of this mess gets straightened out the Digests will resume, but I am overwhelmed by it all at present. Perhaps after the holiday things can be worked on. Patrick Townson TELECOM Moderator   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa20923; 3 Jul 92 18:24 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA14225 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Fri, 3 Jul 1992 16:34:08 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA22684 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Fri, 3 Jul 1992 16:33:59 -0500 Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1992 16:33:59 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207032133.AA22684@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #525 TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Jul 92 16:34:03 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 525 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Roommates and Long Distance Doesn't Mix (Chris Sherman) Satellite Usenet Newsfeeds Available Now (Manfred Frey) Trying to Locate Bellcore (Sam Isrealit) Help Wanted With AT&T D401A Display Unit (Michael Bender) Executive TeleCard (Tom Hofmann) Extending Cordless Phone Coverage (Dan Pearl) 2500 Set and the Local Phone Store (Joshua E. Muskovitz) Funny Advertising Goof-Ups (Wrong Numbers) (Mark Walsh) CWA-IBEW-AT&T Reach Settlement (Phillip Dampier) NBS DES and After? (H. Shrikumar) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: sherman@unx.sas.com (Chris Sherman) Subject: Roommates and Long Distance doesn't mix Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1992 00:10:36 GMT Organization: SAS Institute Inc. I have roommates, and the utilities (including phone) are in my name. I would like to shut off the dial-1 long distance access from my phone, yet still have the ability to use LD charge cards for making LD calls. (Kind of like a payphone, but with the local calls still billed like normal). But, Southern Bell says that they can't do this. They can block LD calls completely, for $22 setup, and $2 a month, but this means no long distance calls PERIOD. But, they say, if AT&T (or whoever) offers something called a 950 service (I hope I got the numbers right), I could get a special number that only I could use to dial LD numbers. But I can only get one of these special numbers, and if I gave it to the others, then I would be right back where I started. Are there any creative options which would give me what I want without too much extra cost? (I could do the LD blocking, I suppose, and get a payphone ... or, is there a card you can get for a PC that you plug the phones into which can pre-scan the numbers dialed?) [I'm asking because I have a roommate that now owes me >$600 for 2 months of LD calls, and he doesn't have the money. Not surprising, actually. Now I have to kick him out (not being able to pay his bills is only one of his many problems) and take him to small claims, etc etc. What I'm trying to do is protect myself from these evil-roommates.] Considering how many college-types live together in similar arrangements, I'm surprised that Southern Bell doesn't already have this ability offered as an optional college/dorm service. It would sure save a lot of problems like the one I'm having. Chris Sherman sherman@unx.sas.com [Moderator's Note: Why don't you purchase a toll-restriction device such as the ones sold by Hello Direct? These allow you to program the unit to only allow calls made with a special password. Hello Direct will send a catalog if you call them: 1-800-HI-HELLO. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pagesat@netcom.com (Manfred Frey) Subject: Satellite Usenet Newsfeeds Avaialable Now Date: Fri, 03 Jul 92 20:33:40 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) ISS is now transmitting and offering for sale their Usenet newsfeeds via satellite. If you are tired of late news,dropped articles or having only a limited selection of newsgroups, search no longer. We have the answer! A small Ku-Band satellite antenna and indoor satellite receiver/ modem that delivers approximately 40 megabytes of data to your machine in a 24 hour period. Full U.S. continental coverage as well as southern Canada, and northern Mexico. Cost $1800 per system. Visa,Mastercard,Checks accepted. For orders,information, etc. send mail to pagesat\@netcom.com ... please include full name, address, and telephone number when contacting ISS via electronic mail. For faster response, call 1-800-227-6288 9AM 5PM PDT ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1992 15:29:14 -0800 From: sami@scic.intel.com Subject: Trying to Locate Bellcore Can anyone out there tell me how to get in touch with Bellcore? Specifically their publications division. Thanks in advance for any assistance. Sam Israelit Intel SCIC (503) 531-5072 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Jul 92 15:34:15 PDT From: Michael.Bender@Eng.Sun.COM Subject: Help Wanted With AT&T D401A Display Unit I was cleaning up my office this afternoon, in itself a remarkable feat :-), and I came across a box with an AT&T D401A display, with additional markings of 88321/Series 1. This looks to be a single-line flourscent character dot martix display with eight membrane-type push buttons below the display, one of which says "ON/OFF". I was wondering if anyone knew anything about this beast and how I could supply power to it and communciate with it. mike ------------------------------ From: wtho@ciba-geigy.ch (Tom Hofmann) Subject: Executive TeleCard Organization: Ciba-Geigy Ltd., Basel, Switzerland Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1992 07:29:10 GMT Last week I got an ad for the ``Executive TeleCard''. They provide cashless phone calls in about 20 countries (via toll-free numbers) and charge one's credit card. Has somebody experience with this service and can tell the pros and cons? Are there alternatives for cashless phone calls worldwide? Tom Hofmann wtho@ciba-geigy.ch ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Jul 92 08:24:21 EDT From: pearl@spectacle.sw.stratus.com (Dan Pearl) Subject: Extending Cordless Phone Coverage A friend of mine is a manager of a multi-acre summer camp. She would like to roam around the property with her cordless phone, but of course she would be out of range from the base station farily quickly. Is there a way (via wired-in supplementary antennas, scattered around the property) to extend the coverage of the phone? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Jul 92 14:29:59 EDT From: Joshua E. Muskovitz Subject: 2500 Set and the Local Phone Store A sign of the times: I went into the local AT&T phone store and asked if they had any 2500 sets. The person said "I've never heard of that. What is it?" I had to explain it to them. They did, in fact, have some which they still lease, and they did have some for sale, but only in the uglier colors. They save the nicer colors for the bigger profit (read lease) customers. $49.95. If I had the need, I'd shop flea markets first, but it's still worth it, even at that price, when you amortize it over the next 20 years. josh. "2500? What's that?" Sigh. [Moderator's Note: That's not surprising. Most of them know nothing about what they are selling and even less about the company they work for or its traditions and practices, etc. That's one reason why the company was trying to lower their obscene wages down to what clerks in other stores in the area are getting. If you want one of the 'prettier colors' then lease it -- for a month -- and convert the lease to a buyout. You should see the misinformation they spread when it comes to their more complex products, ie cordless phones, answering machines, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Jul 92 11:10:04 PDT From: walsh@optilink.com (Mark Walsh) Subject: Funny Advertising Goof-ups (Wrong Numbers) telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) noted: > [Moderator's Note: Isn't it always amusing how much money some > companies waste in advertising with wrong phone numbers, etc ... and > how they are always the outfits with some snippy arrogant person on > the incoming phones to insure that someone like yourself, willing to > save them, oh, several thousand dollars by pointing out their error is > never able to speak with anyone who knows anything ... how many more > thousands of dollars do you suppose they will waste before they catch > on, if they ever do? In a way, do you hope they never do? :) PAT] When I was in college, my phone number was 457-5611. Well, many flyers were distributed for Wednesday Night Bingo at a nearby church with my number printed on them. At first, I thought I was the victim of some silly prank because I was getting lots of calls from old people wanting to know about the bingo games, and was the food a pot luck affair, etc. Suspecting some misrouting of signals, I called the operator, who wisely told me to find out the name of the establishment that the people were actually trying to call, and then to look it up in the phone book. I did, and the church's number was 457-6511. Before I decided what to do, somebody from the church called me up, profusely appologized for the error (5000 flyers had already been distributed), and invited me over for a free night of Bingo! Mark Walsh (walsh@optilink) -- UUCP: uunet!optilink!walsh -- AOL: BigCookie Amateur Radio: KC6RKZ -- USCF: L10861 (was M25220) "What, me worry?" -- William M. Gaines, 1922-1992 [Moderator's Note: The passing of William Gaines was a loss for everyone who enjoyed his humor. Does anyone know who is/will be taking over the reigns at {Mad}? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Phillip.Dampier@f228.n260.z1.fidonet.org (Phillip Dampier) Reply-To: phil@rochgte.fidonet.org Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1992 14:36:36 -0500 Subject: CWA-IBEW-AT&T Reach Settlement CWA-IBEW-AT&T TENTATIVE NATIONAL SETTLEMENT Communications Workers of America A tentative three-year national contract settlement covering 127,000 AT&T workers was announced by the unions and the company today. Bargaining on local issues for specific groups of workers is expected to be completed next week, after which time a complete settlement package will be submitted to members for ratification. The mail-ballot ratification procedure will take several weeks. Negotiations began March 30 on a new national settlement covering 100,000 AT&T non-management employees represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and 27,000 represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). The two unions bargain jointly with AT&T -- a practice that began with the last bargaining round in 1989. Upon contract expiration on May 30th, the parties agreed to extend the old contract on a day-to-day basis and continue negotiations, even though both unions had received strike authorizations from their members. Last week, the parties accepted an offer from Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Bernard DeLury to help facilitate the talks. Among key issues in the talks, the unions spotlighted employment security as their top goal in the wake of tens of thousands of layoffs in recent years by AT&T. Details of the national settlement are outlined in the following statement by CWA President Morton Bahr and Vice President James Irvine, who serves as chief CWA negotiator at AT&T. "We want to thank FMCS Chairman Bernard DeLury as well as his assistant Paul Stuckenschneider and Mediator Lynn Sylvester for the enormous assistance they gave the parties over the past two weeks. Their ideas, recommendations, and skillful prodding played an important role in reaching settlement. We are pleased that this tentative national settlement achieves the three major objectives set by our Executive Board and rank-and-file Bargaining Council. First, this settlement meets, and perhaps exceeds, the wage and benefit parameters of our settlement last year with NYNEX, which we set as a pattern for the industry. Second, it greatly enhances the employment security of our members. And third, it provides organizing neutrality and access by the unions to new AT&T business units and subsidiaries that currently are non-union. The settlement provides economic justice to the workers who have built AT&T's great profitability. Wage rates will be increased by four percent, three point nine percent, and three point nine percent in each of the three years of the agreement. These increases are the maximum of each job classification -- and 85 percent of the workers are at the max. Compounded over term, this represents a 12.3 percent wage boost. The profit sharing plan negotiated in the last contract will be phased out and a new one will be negotiated three years from now. In the meantime, workers will receive $1,500 this September and another $1,800 in September of 1994. The payments will be made in AT&T shares with the employees protected against any drop in the share price in 1994. The base wage and cash payments together amount to just over 24 percent. Pensions will be increased 13 percent. Highlights of the employment security package include a whole range of strong improvements. The worker transfer system negotiated three years ago didn't work as well as we envisioned, as evidenced by the fact that some 15,000 employees were hired off the street while thousands of workers were being laid off. The settlement provides for two union representatives, paid for by the company, to run the transfer system. We believe this kind of close monitoring -- along with several enhancements in the transfer program -- will bring greater job opportunities to our members. We have broken down some of the barriers to jobs that have previously been off limits to the union workers. Our people will now have access to jobs at three of AT&T's subsidiaries -- Universal Credit Card, American Transtech, and Paradyne. A new program called Re-Link is being introduced. An employee who is declared surplus will have the option of receiving termination pay on a weekly basis for up to 104 weeks depending on service, and also receive all benefits and accrue seniority. During that period, the worker has access to the transfer system in seeking a new permanent job, and the worker also has first call on temporary jobs. While working in a temporary job, the worker continues to draw weekly termination pay plus wages. With AT&T's five percent turnover rate, Re-Link gives surplussed workers a much better shot at finding new jobs at AT&T. One of the issues that has prolonged these talks centered around the treatment of seniority in layoff situations for our 13,000 communications techs and system techs. And the reason we are able to announce a settlement today is that their seniority rights have been preserved. In the area of subcontracting, the provision for expedited arbitration reinforces protections we negotiated previously. Justice will no longer be denied because it has been delayed. A cornerstone of employment security in the presence and strength of the union within AT&T, which is now enhanced by the neutrality agreement in this new settlement. It gives the unions fair access to organize workers in non-union units such as Universal Card, Transtech, and Paradyne, and it applies to any new acquisitions. The unions weren't successful in having the provision cover NCR, but we have commitments that AT&T management will try to persuade NCR management to accept these principles. Further, we have agreement that bargaining unit work won't be shifted to NCR. Among other major highlights of this settlement is agreement to ban secret monitoring of workers, which has been an objective of CWA for more than 30 years. Any monitoring for training purposes or quality checks can't be done without the employee's knowledge, and can't be used for disciplinary action. Funding for the jointly-administered Alliance for Employee Growth and Development is doubled in this agreement from $40-$80 million. We hope to be able to expand education benefits to spouses of members under certain conditions. Also, the company will guarantee at least 40 hours job-related training for each employee at AT&T. Family care provisions were improved in several ways, including an increase in the Family Care Fund to $7.5 million and expansion of elder care and adoption programs and extended benefits for family or child care leave. The settlement also provides improvements in dental and vision care, broadening of the pre-paid legal plan to cover adoptions and legal problems impacting on children, and other gains for our members. Among the tough issues we have been wrestling with the past week of two has been the company's demand to move toward commission programs for the phone center and commercial marketing workers -- and our own determination that these workers not have their living standards destroyed overnight by a drastic change in the rules. We have reached a compromise that provides a phasing in of commissions, and with less base pay put at risk than the company sought, as well as cash payments to longterm phone center workers to cushion the impact of the change. These have been very tough talks. To some degree, the company and the unions appeared to be on a collision course, with AT&T seeking greater "flexibility" to meet competitive challenges, and the unions holding firm for employment security demands in the face of the steady layoffs and disruptions our members have suffered. AT&T spoke of creating a "workplace of the future." And we said, fine -- but our members and the unions want to make sure that we're a part of AT&T's future plans. AT&T spoke of building a "partnership" with its workers. And we said, okay -- but let's start laying down the basis of mutual trust that will be necessary for a true partnership. The collective bargaining process has been tested, and in the end, we think it has met the test of producing a fair bargain, an agreement that makes winners out of both sides. But the real test for the future of labor relations at AT&T is what lies before us. Our settlement today is a positive step toward forging a true partnership, a successful workplace of the future. But the next 1,095 days of this contract, our dealings day in and day out in the workplace, will determine whether we can build mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation. We sincerely hope that is the case. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Jul 92 22:04:19 GMT From: shri@iucaa.ernet.in (H. Shrikumar) Subject: NBS DES and After? Now that NBS has decertified DES, ... what now ? More specifically, my guess is that several of the financial and trade community would still be using DES, since one has not heard that "DES is broken". I do see quite a few flyers and glossies for DES products but steadily I also see an increase in 512 bit and bigger cypher systems which claim to be "better than DES". Also, hows the reaction to the NBS digital signature proposal? Are there some reasons why they did not use RSA? Is it getting murkier or clearer? shrikumar ( shri@iucaa.ernet.in ) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #525 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa11920; 4 Jul 92 3:05 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA32247 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 01:23:53 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA21751 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 01:23:45 -0500 Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 01:23:45 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207040623.AA21751@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #526 TELECOM Digest Sat, 4 Jul 92 01:23:49 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 526 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: United Telephone/Sprint (Ben Harrell) Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 (Scott Colbath) Re: SWBT Organizational Changes (Metromedia) (Guy Hadsall) Re: Telecom Things to See Across the USA (Guy Hadsall) Re: Motorola Watch Pager (Guy Hadsall) Re: "Legal" Phreaking? (Bill Sohl) More AOS Slime: "ATC" (olsen@eos.ll.mit.edu) Re: "Choke" Prefixes (Dick Rawson) Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 (Tim Gorman) Re: What Are These Specs? (Toby Nixon) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: bharrell@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu (Ben Harrell) Subject: Re: United Telephone/Sprint Organization: North Carolina State University Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 12:19:12 GMT In article mw1@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Mike Wells) writes: > Distance. Since UT is owned by Sprint, I'm assuming that UTLD is just > another name from Sprint LD service. United Telephone Long Distance is not one IEC. The name is trademarked by Sprint (United Telecom) and was used by each United Telephone System telco to incorporate a separate unregulated subsidiary for the purpose of providing long distance (interLATA) service to that telco's subscribers. It is a non-facilities based reseller of Sprint's long distance services, as are many of the other IEC's. It has to obey all the rules that other IEC's do. The marketing advantage it has, which is one of the primary reasons for its existence other than increasing Sprint's LD business, it that the local United telco can offer true interLATA LD service (unlike the BOCs) under it's own name. > UTLD claims one of its advantages over MCI is that UTLD charges can be > placed on the same bill as UT local charges. (AT&T charges can also be > placed on the UT bill). Isn't this unfair? Doesn't this action give > UTLD an unfair advantage over MCI because UT does not directly bill > MCI calls? No, this is not unfair because under United's interLATA access tariff (as with the BOCs) all IECs are offered the billing and collection services of the United telcos. Some choose to use it and some don't. UTLD buys this service from the United telco under this tariff, just like any other IEC. How do I know these things? I worked for a United telco for about 12 years, wrote the interLATA (I called them GMAs for Geographic Marketing Areas) filling for the telco I worked for which was used as the standard for the other companies, and was a part of the Access Tariff Task Force for United. Ben Harrell | bharrell@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu Project Manager | Compuserve: 71477,74 Costing and Tariffing Support | Voice: (919) 992-7647 Public Networks Marketing | Fax: (919) 992-3835 Northern Telecom Inc. | My opinions are my own and do Research Triangle Park, NC | not represent the views of NTI ------------------------------ From: scol@scottsdale.az.stratus.com (Scott Colbath) Subject: Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 Date: 04 Jul 92 13:17:05 GMT In article bms@penguin.eng.pyramid.com (Bruce Schlobohm) writes: > At work, our PBX requires that we dial 9 + 1 + areacode+ phone-number > for calls outside of the 408 areacode. A colleague here has become > very adept at starting most phone calls with 9 + 1. A couple of days > ago, he was at home, and started dialing 9 + 1, and then remembered he > was not at work so he hung up. A few minutes later he received a call > from a dispatcher asking if he was in any trouble, and that there was > a police car on its way to help him out! > After things calmed down, the dispatcher told him that they knew he > had only dialed 91, and not 911, and had debated as to whether to > consider it to be a distress call or not. > I didn't realize that 91 can be detected by the 911 circuitry. I > wonder how often this type of thing happens? Something like this happened to my 12 year old daughter more than once. In Scottsdale, Az., we have a 991-xxxx exchange. One of her friends has this 991 prefix for a phone number. Sometimes while dialing, my girl dials a 911 instead of the 991 thing and you know what happens next. The phone rings and it's 911 emergency on the other end asking if everything is alright. One time, she ignored the call waiting tone and the next thing I knew, there was a police car at my door. The 911 operators have said it happens quite frewquently due to the 991 exchange. It sounds to me like the this exchange should be changed to aviod this. Is that something which is difficult to do? Scott Colbath Stratus Computer Phoenix, Az. (602) 852-3106 Internet:scott_colbath@az.stratus.com ------------------------------ Organization: The American University - University Computing Center Date: Saturday, 04 Jul 1992 01:26:49 EDT From: GHADSAL@AMERICAN.EDU Subject: Re: SWBT Organizational Changes (Metromedia) It appears to me that SWBC changes reflect the "spinning off" of the corporations paging company Metromedia Paging (hdq - New Jersey). They have successfully moved the brain of the company into the corporate staff and replaced the much younger and inexperienced 33 year old. Sounds as if the increased competition is driving them out of radio paging. Whitacker once admitted that the primary reason for the purchase of Metromedia from John Klugh almost a decade ago was for its Cellular division commonly known as Cellular One (though its a franchised name). The president of SWBMT has not been retrenched back to St. Louis, hum?! Maybe I am guessing ... but thats what it looks like to me. PageNet 1, Metromedia 0. Guy Hadsall ------------------------------ Organization: The American University - University Computing Center Date: Saturday, 04 Jul 1992 01:16:52 EDT From: GHADSAL@AMERICAN.EDU Subject: Re: Telecom Things to See Across the USA Ed, From the sounds of the latest press reports out of Missouri (not Missoura or Missery) you may be spending *alot* of time in that state. It appears that SWB and UT have succeeded in denying that fair state the right of dependable and technologically sound service. SWB is headquartered in St. Louis MO and United Telecom is headquartered in Overland Park KS (suburb of Kansas City). I would venture to say that if asked the corporate staff might arrange a tour. Good luck, and please take notes or keep a journal. I for one would be most interested. :-) Guy Hadsall ------------------------------ Organization: The American University - University Computing Center Date: Friday, 04 Jul 1992 01:36:55 EDT From: GHADSAL@AMERICAN.EDU Subject: Re: Motorola Watch Pager The pager Mark is discussing is/was called the "sensar". It came in both radio paging formats; pocsag and golay. The sensar was basically a numeric display unit, though the earlier version was "tone only". Motorola stopped making them about two years ago due to their durability. The sensar is a small unit and thus the internal componets are more likely to be broken if worn in a "butt pack". Replacement parts for the sensar were always late, and most national repair shops no longer service them because of that delay.Once nice thing about the sensar was that it also came in 24 K gold ! Retail in 1989 was $399 for the gold one. Now it appears that the wave in the market is "alpha" or alphanumeric display paging. A radio pager would have all the capability as the previous tone, voice, and numeric display pagers, but now it could recieve actual ASCII text. The input comes from one or all other the following; touchtone phone, Modem, remote TTY, or an operator dispatching service (if you pay $.75 each). Voice recognition technologies are still a little far off (five years) for a user to simply call a pager and tell it what to display, but its an option. Should this technology be improved I would put my money on a resurgace of Voice Paging due to the idea of cheap, stored, digital voice messages. Digital voice nets are expensive though. I hope this help, I would be happy to answer a question or two if asked. Guy Hadsall ------------------------------ From: dancer!whs70@uunet.UU.NET (24411-sohl) Subject: Re: "Legal" Phreaking? Reply-To: dancer!whs70@uunet.UU.NET () Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ Date: Sat, 04 Jul 92 04:40:37 GMT In article system%coldbox@uunet.UU.NET (Bryan Lockwood) writes: > Anybody care to comment on this? It's a very *interesting* philosophy > of law, one that seems to lead to startling practices if applied to > other areas of life! I was a bit startled by such a concept ... I > suppose my upbringing is showing. > [Moderator's Note: Yes I guess your upbringing is showing. The fellow > in Holland has written to us here at TELECOM Digest on a few > occassions also, expressing much the same philosophy. If what he says > is true -- I don't think it is -- then why in the world would *any* > telecom organization want to do business in Holland; or for that > matter, any business at all if it is, as the fellow suggests, > perfectly legal to rip off a company 'for personal use'. I wonder if > he subscribes to the same ethics where other businesses are concerned > in his country: clothing, food, household supplies, other utility > services, places of entertainment, etc? Pat, I think you are taking the gentleman from Holland's perspective far beyond what he discussed. In my opinion, what the viewpoint has to do with leaving the barn door open, not with specific and deliberate (probably not the best words to use) theft in the classic sense (ie. going into a store and shoplifting.) As to the telco "phreaking" situation, the perspective seems to be (in Holland) that if the network can be activated/manipulated by the mere dialing of certain tones, then the cure is for the network to safeguard itself. Here in the USA, that means going to an CCIS signaling network. The writer from Holland said the Dutch court views the theft of the "open" network services in a much lower light than say stealing a car. Another good example I'd suggest is satellite TV. Many folks, myself included, see nothing wrong with receiving satellite transmission and not paying for it because the signal is there to be received. It became the responsibility of the satellite broadcasters to encrypt their signal in order to protect what they previously broadcast in the clear. As a comment, I do not have or care to receive satellite transmission, I just believe that any radio transmission that I can receive on my property is fair game if I choose to receive it. Another example might be the computer hacker. I'd suspect that Dutch courts would look at what happens and if a company's computer system had no or minimal security to avoid or eleiminate the possibility of unauthorized access, then I'd guess the Dutch court wouldn't view an unauthorized access as being or requiring legal protection. A perhaps crude analogy/example/question might be you are a Peeping Tom if you trespass on someone's property to peek in their window while they are undressing. Are you also a Peeping Tom if you do the same thing with a pair of binoculars while on your own property? Just my thoughts, 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!dancer!whs70 201-829-2879 Weekdays email via Internet whs70@dancer.cc.bellcore.com [Moderator's Note: Let me ask those of you who persist in the belief that it is the system operator's fault if there is a break-in to a system with weak security, do you feel the same way about physical assaults on other people? That is, if you are attacked by a person much larger and stronger than yourself, can't we conclude that if he robs you it is really your fault? After all, you could have taken a course in judo, karate or some other self-defense procedure if you were that interested in your safety and your possessions, etc. Should the court find you guilty, or the person who attacked you? The answer is rather obvious ... why then is a computer different? Why should a new or inexperienced sysadmin take the rap for a hacker intrusion merely because the hacker is more sophisticated at it? It seems to me the law is intended to protect the *weakest* members of society. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: More AOS Slime: "ATC" Date: Sat, 04 Jul 92 01:06:31 -0400 From: olsen@eos.ll.mit.edu Just when I thought the slimy AOS industry was disappearing, I ran across a new one, calling itself "ATC". At a restaurant the other night, I needed to make a long-distance call. The New England Tel. payphone proudly proclaimed that long-distance service was offered by ATT, so I just dialed 0 + . I was surprised to hear a synthesized voice weloming me to "ATC". I quickly hung up and completed my call by dialing 10288 +0 + . My curiosity piqued, I dialed 00 and tried to find out how much "ATC" would have soaked me for the call, had I been less alert: "AT Operator. May I help you?" After I asked for rates, the AT operator put me on hold "for a supervisor" for two minutes, followed by another operator who did the same thing (for three minutes), followed by a "supervisor" who gave me an 800 number to call. The 800 number was just a voice-mail system, where I could have left a message I hadn't been so disgusted with the whole thing. ATC's rates must be truly astronomical, if they're so ashamed that they won't tell callers about them. Does anyone have more information about these folks? ------------------------------ From: drawson@sagehen.Tymnet.COM (Dick Rawson) Subject: Re: "Choke" Prefixes Date: 04 Jun 92 05:08:48 GMT Organization: BT North America (Tymnet) > Do pay phones have a higher priority within the switch in terms of > getting dial tone? Yes, at least if the pay phone is a public phone, in Pac*Bell land. Certain lines are considered "essential service lines", and given normal access to dial tone during overloads when dial tone access is being rationed. Public telephones, hospitals, emergency services, and so on, are classed as essential service lines. An emergency service employee's HOME phone may be classed that way, too. These are examples; I don't have a complete list. Dick Rawson ------------------------------ Date: 04 Jul 92 01:03:31 EDT From: tim gorman <71336.1270@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 jrd5@po.CWRU.Edu (Jacob DeGlopper) writes in TELECOM Digest V12 #522: > I happened to be on the direct line to our > communications center from the rescue squad yesterday when a strange > thing happened. I got a few clicks on the line, silence, and then to > my surprise "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check > the number and dial again or call your operator to help you.", > followed immediately by the obnoxiously loud "hang up NOW" signal. I > didn't think the direct line was supposed to do this sort of thing! > Anyone have an idea why? Do you truly have a direct phone-to-phone line? Wired with ringing generators and all? Or do you have a "nailed-up" connection through the central office (when you go off-hook, your line is automatically connected to another line without dialing)? If you have a nailed-up connection and the switch had no paths available to get you to the other line, you could very well get such an announcement. Tim Gorman - SWBT *opinions are mine, any resemblance to official policy is coincidence* ------------------------------ From: Toby Nixon Subject: Re: What Are These Specs? Date: 04 Jul 92 00:52:10 GMT Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA In article , weare@bostech.com (Ged Weare) writes: > We are trying to locate some specs that were referenced in a recent > article in IEEE Communications Magazine (Feb 92). ... > The specs are listed in the article as: > [9] IS-41.1, .2, .3 and .4, Rev B December 1991 > [10] ETSI TC GSM, Recommendations GSM 3.09 and 3.12, Feb 1990. > Both are related in some way to cellular phones or ISDN. [10], we > think, is put out by a European body, but we have no clue about [9]. [9] is referring to a multipart Interim Standard [IS] from the Telecommunications Industry Association. Here is the information from the catalog: EIA/TIA/IS-41.1 Cellular Radiotelecommunications Intersystem Operations: Functional Overview ($30) EIA/TIA/IS-41.2 Cellular Radiotelecommunications Intersystem Operations: Intersystem Handoff ($32) EIA/TIA/IS-41.3 Cellular Radiotelecommunications Intersystem Operations: Automatic Roaming ($48) EIA/TIA/IS-41.4 Cellular Radiotelecommunications Intersystem Operations: Operations, Administration, and Maintenance ($35) EIA/TIA/IS-41.5 Cellular Radiotelecommunications Intersystem Operations: Data Communication ($58) These documents can all be ordered through Global Engineering Documents at 800-854-7179 or 714-261-1455. The ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) GSM documents can probably be ordered through them as well. Toby Nixon, Principal Engineer | Voice +1-404-840-9200 Telex 401243420 Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. | Fax +1-404-447-0178 CIS 70271,404 P.O. Box 105203 | BBS +1-404-446-6336 AT&T !tnixon Atlanta, Georgia 30348 | UUCP uunet!hayes!tnixon Fido 1:114/15 USA | Internet tnixon@hayes.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #526 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa25449; 4 Jul 92 10:25 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA13893 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 08:39:55 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA19080 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 08:39:46 -0500 Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 08:39:46 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207041339.AA19080@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #527 TELECOM Digest Sat, 4 Jul 92 08:39:42 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 527 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Contemporary Remote Controls (John Rice) Re: Motorola Watch Pager (John Gilbert) Re: You Can Ring My Bell (Patton M. Turner) Re: AGT Cellular Gets First North American Digital Cellular (Ben Harrell) Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted (Rich Mintz) Re: Telecom Things to See Across the USA (Ken Thompson) Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? (Ben Harrell) Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? (Gord Deinstadt) Re: More Strange 710 Stuff (was Funny Intercept on 1-710-555) (J. Hibbard) Re: Caller ID in Southern California? (Rich Mintz) Re: Caller ID in Southern California? (R. Kevin Oberman) Re: Newfoundland Province Code 709 (John R. Levine) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (Mitch Wagner) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: rice@ttd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: Contemporary Remote Controls Organization: Teradyne Inc., Telecommunications Division Date: Sat, 04 Jul 92 02:54:45 GMT In article , jrd5@po.CWRU.Edu (Jacob DeGlopper) writes: > Technics audio products certainly don't! That's one reason our > college radio station hangs on to the remote controls for any new > equipment we get. For example, when we installed a pair of new CD > players about two months ago, of course the techs got to play with > them before anyone else :). Pointing one remote at the two players > would make both open at once, or start playing, or (worst for on-air > operations) stop. Since we have glass walls between the studios, you > could sit in the next studio and make the CD players do strange things > ... all the remotes are locked up in the tech shop where only some can > get at them. A better bet would be to put a piece of tape over the photodiode sensor. Technics remote controls are pretty easy to come by. John Rice K9IJ "Did I say that ?" I must have, but It was rice@ttd.teradyne.com MY opinion only, no one else's...Especially (708)-940-9000 - (work) Not my Employer's.... (708)-438-7011 - (home) ------------------------------ From: johng.all_proj@comm.mot.com (John Gilbert) Subject: Re: Motorola Watch Pager Organization: Motorola, Inc. Land Mobile Products Sector. Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 00:18:26 GMT In article mearle@pro-party.cts.com (Mark Earle) writes: > I've heard no comments good or bad on the watch pager. A similiar > product might fit your needs, and I have used this one. Motorola makes > a small pager designed to fit in the pocket, which takes up the space > of about two pencils. The display is on the side. The pager you describe is called a "Sensar." It is no longer a current Motorola product. It is available used from most paging carriers, however. This pager stores five messages but does not have a vibrate mode. It can be programmed to be silent and store the page ("mem-o-lert mode") or to give a single chirp when paged. I visited a local RCC yesterday and asked about the price of the wrist watch pager. They are selling it for $219. It had been $199, but they recently raised the price. I have a friend who has used one and has been happy with it. He even wears it while water skiing, although Motorola does not claim the pager is waterproof. John Gilbert Secure and Advanced Conventional KA4JMC Systems Division johng@ecs.comm.mot.com Motorola LMPS post: CPGR17 Schaumburg, Illinois ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Jul 92 23:28:05 CDT From: Patton M. Turner Subject: Re: You Can Ring My Bell Bill Mayhew writes, refering to ITT clear 2500 sets: > The classic 2500 has a lot > more soul than those cheap esatz trimline-like phones with clear > plastic. It also lasts longer, probally has a lower REN. has greater EMI resistance, and costs only a few dollars more. It can also be had from telcom supply houses accross the USA, rather than from mail order yuppie techno-toys catalogs. > ITT only made one desinger concession; the coiled cord for > the hand set has color coded wires instead of all the same color that > would be usual. The Cortello (aka ITT Corinth Mississippi Works) set on my desk has color coded wire (red, black, and two white). This is very helpful when you have to crimp on a new modular (RJ-22?) plug, as there is no "molded line" as with some other coiled cords. [Interesting notes about changes in 2500 sets deleted.] Pat Turner KB4GRZ pturner@eng.auburn.edu ------------------------------ From: bharrell@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu (Ben Harrell) Subject: Re: AGT Cellular Gets First North American Digital Cellular Running Organization: North Carolina State University Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 01:43:41 GMT serdar@fawlty4.eng.monash.edu.au (Serdar Boztas) writes: > What multiaccess method are they using? Does anyone have more > information about this system? I am interested in things such as > transmission rates for digitized voice, method of voice compression, > etc. Have they started marketing dual-mode or all digital mobile AGT Cellular uses our DMS-MTX digital cellular switching system and radio cell systems. They have converted to our new analog/digital (TDMA) dual mode radio channel equipment. It is based on a digital signal processor (DSP) design which allows each radio channel's multiplexing and signal format to be software controlled on a call by call basis. Each channel will support one analog channel and three TDMA channels (in the future, six TDMA channels). Sorry, but I don't know the specifics of the TDMA protocol, other than it is digital and that three TDMA channels occupy the same frequency band as one analog channel. Ben Harrell | bharrell@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu Project Manager | Compuserve: 71477,74 Costing and Tariffing Support | Voice: (919) 992-7647 Public Networks Marketing | Fax: (919) 992-3835 Northern Telecom Inc. | My opinions are my own and do Research Triangle Park, NC | not represent the views of NTI ------------------------------ From: rmintz@ecst.csuchico.edu (Rich Mintz) Subject: Re: Call Own Phone Back Number Wanted Organization: California State University, Chico Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 12:39:21 GMT In comp.dcom.telecom ruck@alpha.ee.ufl.edu (John R Ruckstuhl Jr) writes: > Hopefully, Rich (and others who use this method) remember > to restrict their testing to those prefixes which are > not in use for valid telephone numbers. A very good point, and one I forgot to mention. Once I forgot to have the dialing script skip over trying the number 911-wxyz and was greeted by a police officer at my door a few minutes later asking me if everything was okay! He said 911 had received an emergency call from my number and that the caller (my modem) had just hung up. Fortunately for me, he knew exactly what I was referring to when I explained I was trying to find the "alternate prefix" number for getting a ringback, and why the accident had happened. I was very glad his only source of information about computers and phone lines was NOT the movie "War Games!" 8-) I was lucky ... the policeman just took my name, wished me goodnight, and left. I think he could have charged me with breaking the law that deals with making calls to 911 in non-emergency situations. So be careful with the prefixes you choose to test dial people! Rich -> rmintz@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ------------------------------ From: Ken Thompson Subject: Re: Telecom Things to See Across the USA Date: 4 Jul 92 02:36:59 GMT Organization: NCR Corporation Wichita, KS *** Stop at the Museum of Early Telephony in Abilene, Ks. off I-70 20 miles east of Salina ( 130 miles west of Kansas City :-) Ken Thompson N0ITL ncr Corp. Peripheral Products Division Disk Array Development 3718 N. Rock Road Wichita KS 67226 (316)636-8783 Ken.Thompson@wichitaks.ncr.com ------------------------------ From: bharrell@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu (Ben Harrell) Subject: Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? Organization: North Carolina State University Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 02:42:40 GMT shuang@idacom.hp.com (Shuang Deng) writes: > [Moderator's Note: 'NorTel' is most likely Northern Telecom, a > prominent manufacturer of telco stuff in the USA ...] > Or, more perciesly, Northern Telecom is a *Canadian* company with > subsidies in many places of the world, including the USA. Northern Telecom LTD is actually a *North American* company. It has corporate offices in both Washington, D.C. metro area and in the Toronto, Ottawa, Canada metro area. It is a Canadian corporation, but reports its results in US$ only. It is very unique in that it reports its "domestic" results as sum of Canada and US, with everything else reported as "international". Centrex can be described *roughly* as a virtual PBX or key system service provided by the local telephone company (also competitive access providers in New York state). In Centrex, every station set has a physical or derived voice equivalent channel from the user's desk to the serving central office line interface circuit (sometimes called line relay). For customers larger than 50-100 station sets, Centrex is often provided using digital remote line concentrators or switching systems on the customer's premise. Ben Harrell | bharrell@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu Project Manager | Compuserve: 71477,74 Costing and Tariffing Support | Voice: (919) 992-7647 Public Networks Marketing | Fax: (919) 992-3835 Northern Telecom Inc. | My opinions are my own and do Research Triangle Park, NC | not represent the views of NTI ------------------------------ From: gordd@geovision.gvc.com (Gord Deinstadt) Subject: Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? Organization: GeoVision Systems Inc., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 06:31:55 GMT In shuang@idacom.hp.com (Shuang Deng) writes: > Or, more perciesly, Northern Telecom is a *Canadian* company with > subsidies in many places of the world, including the USA. ^^^^^^^^^ Ack! NoNoNo! He meant "subsidiaries"! Please, don't tell anyone he said that word!!!! Keep away the lawyers! Ack! Gord Deinstadt gdeinstadt@geovision.gvc.com ------------------------------ From: jeff@bradley.bradley.edu (Jeff Hibbard) Subject: Re: More Strange 710 Stuff (was Funny Intercept on 1-710-555-1212) Organization: Bradley University Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 06:57:56 GMT fl0p+@andrew.cmu.edu (Frank T Lofaro) writes: > It then asks for your personal access (used for > billing) code and connects you. Strange thing is if I dial a bogus > area code and number I get the intercept right away after the last > digit is dialed (and before I can get to enter my security code), but > if I dial the 710 area code and a number, it asks for my code, and > only then does it give me the intercept. I don't see how this demonsatrates any special handling of 710 calls. Since the security code is only used for billing, there's no point in requesting it when you dial a "bogus area code", because the call cannot possibly complete and incur charges. If you dial a valid number not recognizable as a free call, then standard procedure is to get a billing code before continuing to process the call. The only thing you can safely infer from this behavior is that the local CO recognizes 710 as a valid area code, and that nobody has ever told the people programming it that 710 calls are guaranteed not to incur charges (not surprising ... nobody probably tells them much of anything about 710). Jeff Hibbard, Peoria IL ------------------------------ From: rmintz@ecst.csuchico.edu (Rich Mintz) Subject: Re: Caller ID in Southern California? Organization: California State University, Chico Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 13:32:48 GMT My telco in Northern CA is Pacific Bell. Has caller ID been made legal in California yet? I've yet to come across any store that sells phone equipment with any devices which make use of caller ID, and the guy at Radio Shack seems to believe it's still illegal in CA. While I'm on the subject, if it *is* legal here (and even if not 8-) I'm interested in getting a device that will relay the caller ID information via serial or other port to my computer. Any recommendations on a manufacturer, source, price info? Whether or not it has been made legal here, I seem to remember a Pacific Bell customer service rep telling me that the various services you lucky people in some other parts of the country have like caller ID blocking and "blocking blocking", as well as the simpler features of the "call back the last person that called you" sequence and the "send ID about prank call to telco investigations" sequence, etc, will not be available here until 1996. Didn't know how good I had it in Atlanta with BellSouth 8-) Thanks, Rich -> rmintz@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ------------------------------ From: oberman@ptavv.llnl.gov Subject: Re: Caller ID in Southern California? Date: 4 Jul 92 01:33:09 GMT In article , nsc!tavakoli@decwrl.dec.com (Jim Tavakoli) writes: > As you may know, California telephone companies now support Caller-ID. > I was wondering if anybody out there has any information or references > to the design and implementation of Caller-ID. I understand there is a > spec published by Bell. If you could send me the name of the > publication, I would really appreciate it. Don't get too excited, Jim. As noted by John H, GTE has already they will not be providing Caller-ID. And maybe they will be dropping the whole CLASS service proposal. While Pac Bell has stated that CLASS implementation will go on, they are re-evaluating any implementation of Caller-ID. Can't say that I blame them. Under the CPUC ruling where unlisted numbers will automatically have per-line blocking of CLID, and realizing that in Alameda county (Oakland, Berkeley and surrounding area) most home numbers are unlisted, Caller-ID starts to look like a questionable value. So I would suggest that you don't put too much effort into something that may never be used. R. Kevin Oberman Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Internet: oberman1@llnl.gov (510) 422-6955 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Newfoundland Province Code 709 Organization: I.E.C.C. Date: 4 Jul 92 00:55:50 EDT (Sat) From: johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) St Pierre, being part of France, has six digit phone numbers and doubtless uses French phone equipment which has somewhat different inter-office interfaces than North American equipment does. Clearly adapters between the two exist, since you can dial back and forth between Canada and Europe, but are they simple enough that it'd be worth it for the small amount of traffic between N.F. and St Pierre? The numbering would be the least of the problems -- I believe that all of the St Pierre numbers start with the same digit, so there's really only a five digit number space. Going the other way, there are already a whole bunch of dialing hacks in France (19 for international, 16 for elsewhere in France, etc.) that another one for N.F. wouldn't be hard. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl ------------------------------ From: wagner@utoday.com (Mitch Wagner) Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 00:38:20 EDT From: wagner@utoday.com (Mitch Wagner) Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Organization: UNIX Today! Date: Wed, 01 Jul 92 20:38:13 GMT In article jih@crane.aa.ox.com (John I. Hritz) writes: > Kind in the same vane. I periodically get recordings on my > machine that consist of a and then a pause of about five > seconds. This repeats for a couple of minutes. That's it nothing > else. I'm pretty sure that's the sound of a fax machine announcing itself to another fax machine (which of course you're not). It's kind of like the way baby ducks imprint on the first thing they see and think it's their mother ... :-) Mitch Wagner wagner@utoday.com CIS:70212,51 GEnie:MITCH.WAGNER ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #527 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa21255; 4 Jul 92 23:14 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA29490 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 21:33:01 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA16365 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 21:32:52 -0500 Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 21:32:52 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207050232.AA16365@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #528 TELECOM Digest Sat, 4 Jul 92 21:32:55 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 528 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) (Andrew C. Green) Re: Jane BARBE (was Jane Barbie) (Ralph Neutrino) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Mark Cavallaro) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Robert S. Helfman) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Mike Coyne) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Andrew C. Green) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Justin Leavens) Re: Batman Well Connected? (Allen Robel) Re: Ameritech/IBT (Allen Robel) Re: "Choke" Prefixes (Gordon D. Woods) Re: What is Iridium Project? (John C. Fowler) Re: What is Iridium Project? (Charles Neveu) Re: Pac*Bell Posturing (Justin Leavens) Re: AT&T Knows I am Moving. How? (Justin Leavens) Re: RFC For Fax Specs? (H. Shrikumar) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat 04 Jul 1992 11:36:23 CDT From: acg@hermes.dlogics.com Reply-To: acg@hermes.dlogics.com Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) ccoprfm@prism.gatech.edu (Monte Freeman) writes: > When we went through and did our repeater upgrade two or three > years ago, someone made the comment that it would be nice to > have "Ms. Calabash's" voice back. (Ms. Calabash is the name > someone gave to this mysterious sexy voice shortly after it > went into use on the repeater, and it just sort of stuck ...) Would that someone have been Jimmy Durante? ("Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!") Always wondered who he meant. Andrew C. Green Datalogics, Inc. Internet: acg@dlogics.com 441 W. Huron UUCP: ..!uunet!dlogics!acg Chicago, IL 60610 FAX: (312) 266-4473 ------------------------------ From: octela!!shaun@uunet.UU.NET (Ralph Neutrino) Subject: Re: Jane BARBE (was Jane Barbie) Organization: Octel Communications Inc., Milpitas Ca. Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1992 18:49:11 GMT In article 0004056081@mcimail.com (George S. Thurman) writes: > With all of the messages recently about "Jane Barbie", I thought that > I would let everyone know that the correct spelling of her last name > is BARBE. I can confirm this -- we have a signed photo, last name spelled "Barbe." Shaun ------------------------------ From: cavallarom@cpva.saic.com Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: 4 Jul 92 07:50:58 PST Organization: Science Applications Int'l Corp./San Diego In article , jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes: > Consider that not all teleslime works in boiler rooms and against > quotas. Consider the increasing problem we have here in Atlanta with > casual teleslime who work out of their homes (judging by the screaming > kids and blaring TV in the background) to make a little extra money. > They have neither the quota to drive them nor the thick skin to let > 'em weather insults. These people get mad at being cussed at or even > hung up on. They do waste their time getting even by calling back. > And when they call me back, their number from the Caller*ID box goes > in Dixie's UUCP Systems file for day or two. > Yes, it is entirely believable that a teleslime would do such a thing > as described in the media article. Pat, I can verify that "teleslime" _do_ engage in this sort of activity. I have personally suffered from this harassment one year when I was solicited by a local PA. I indicated no interest, said good bye and hung up. The phone rang again in a few moments, same guy. He made some vaguely threatening remarks. I hung up. Then I received dozens of "hangup" calls over the next several days. Eventually he got bored and went away. But this sort of thing does happen. Regards, Mark ------------------------------ From: helfman@aero.org (Robert S. Helfman) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1992 16:21:35 GMT In article jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes: > Consider that not all teleslime works in boiler rooms and against > quotas. Consider the increasing problem we have here in Atlanta with > casual teleslime who work out of their homes (judging by the screaming > kids and blaring TV in the background) to make a little extra money. > They have neither the quota to drive them nor the thick skin to let > 'em weather insults. These people get mad at being cussed at or even > hung up on. They do waste their time getting even by calling back. PAT, they sure as hell DO call back and harass people. It's happened to me. Some creep called and tried to give me the hard sell. I said (brusquely, but not rudely), "I'm not interested" and just hung up (loudly -- bringing the handset down at Warp 9). He called back and said "you're rude". I said "it's MY telephone and you're the one who's rude" and then hung up again. He called back immediately and I just let the answering machine get it. He gave up after that. ------------------------------ Date: Saturday, 4 July 1992 6:05pm CT From: coyne@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess >[Moderator's Note: Very dramatic story, but is it really the truth? >What telemarketer do you know with enough spare time on his hands to >waste call after call on someone who obviously is not buying anything? >To those boys, time *is* money, and people (who they call) wasting >their time 'looking for a pen', etc are anathema. > ... I don't believe their story. PAT] I believe this story. It is my policy also to give telemarketers a little hell. "What do you tell your family you do for a living? Do you admit to them you are a profeessional nuisance? ..." I read, perhaps in this forum, about someone who tries to sell them telemarketing supplies. That sounds amusing but I dont know enough to fake that one. About one in 20 calls back and hangs up several times. Unfortunately caller ID is an invasion of the caller's privacy in Texas. I can not even discover who will accept complaints about megadialers (which are not legal) and take action. Grrrrr! I hate cold call telemarketers. On a more conciliatory note: would someone please give more information about CPC and how I can tell if I have it? Does it eliminate those please hang up and dial again messages on your answering machine? Mike.Coyne@utxvm.cc.utexas.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 11:32:25 CDT From: acg@hermes.dlogics.com Reply-To: acg@hermes.dlogics.com Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers jms@misvax.mis.arizona.edu (Joel M Snyder) writes: > ZIP + 4 normally selects at the block level (there's a ZIP + 4 book in > your post office for your town); for some places, obviously, the + 4 > gets it a lot closer, such as a PO Box (mentioned previously), a > single office building, etc. I couldn't let this go by ... a few years back, I lived in Apartment 401, 800 Hinman Avenue, Evanston, IL. This is an eight-story building with approximately 16 apartments per floor. The ZIP+4 for my address was something like 60202-2322, which I obtained from the Post Office manuals. Curiously, my neighbor in Apartment 402 had a completely different ZIP+4 extension; in fact, there were several different extensions used over and over in the building, depending on what the apartment number was, and this took a fair amount of space to list in the ZIP Code manual. The kicker was: like most apartment buildings, all the mailboxes were in the lobby anyway. Andrew C. Green Datalogics, Inc. Internet: acg@dlogics.com 441 W. Huron UUCP: ..!uunet!dlogics!acg Chicago, IL 60610 FAX: (312) 266-4473 ------------------------------ From: leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers Date: 4 Jul 1992 12:28:20 -0700 Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA In article lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein) writes: > Greetings. Someone asked if the subscribers had any choice in the > selection of new numbers, in the situation of being forced to change > numbers by telco. In the case of the Woodland Hills event I > originally mentioned, I believe the subscribers were allowed to pick > their new four digit numbers in the new prefix, but could only choose > numbers within fairly limited ranges, i.e. they did not have the > entire 10,000 possibilities from which to choose. Pacific Bell offers you six numbers to choose from when establishing your service. If at that time, or any time before your service is established, you want a specific number, you can have it for a one-time $10 charge (provided it hasn't been in use for six months to a year, depending on whether it was a business or residence in a previous life). After your service is established, it will cost you $20 for a number change, and $10 for the personalized number. GTECA gives you one number, but if you ask and there are more available, they will give you four more choices for free. If you want a personalized number, it requires a 24 hour callback to verify that it is available, a one time $35 charge, and $1.50/month charge. In addition, Pacific Bell is very helpful in checking numbers for you to see if they are available. They'll take several of your number combinations at once and call their center to see if they are available, as well as handling "can I get these four numbers in any available prefix?" or "how about something with repeated digits?" type requests. They'll also tell you when the number you want will become available if it's not in use, and try to find good, memorable numbers if you just simply ask for one of those. Justin Leavens University of Southern California (818) 985-2001 ------------------------------ From: robelr@ucs.indiana.edu (Allen Robel) Subject: Re: Batman Well Connected? Reply-To: robelr@mythos.ucs.indiana.edu Organization: Indiana University Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 13:15:42 GMT In article stapleton@misvax.mis. arizona.edu (Dr. Ross Alan Stapleton) writes: > I just saw "Batman Returns" over the weekend, and am almost positive I > saw the following: there are several scenes in the Batcave, with > various high-techy devices arrayed around ... in one, Batman is standing > in front of some telecom-looking equipment, and one of the many > lighted red buttons on the panel reads "AUTOVON" ... There is another scene that impressed me more as far as being "well connected." How about that full motion interactive video in the Batmobile! Allen Robel robelr@mythos.ucs.indiana.edu University Computing Services ROBELR@IUJADE.BITNET Network Research & Planning voice: (812)855-7171 Indiana University FAX: (812)855-8299 ------------------------------ From: robelr@ucs.indiana.edu (Allen Robel) Subject: Re: Ameritech/IBT Reply-To: robelr@mythos.ucs.indiana.edu Organization: Indiana University Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 13:19:05 GMT In article Matthew Holdrege writes: > BTW, the IBT tariffs for ISDN seem to be among the best in the country > and decidely better than Pacific Bell. So what are the tariffs? I've yet to see real pricing information for our area. Allen Robel robelr@mythos.ucs.indiana.edu University Computing Services ROBELR@IUJADE.BITNET Network Research & Planning voice: (812)855-7171 Indiana University FAX: (812)855-8299 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 09:22:38 EDT From: gdw@gummo.att.com (Gordon D Woods) Subject: Re: "Choke" Prefixes Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories From article , by rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin): > On a related matter: > during the recent riots, I was able to get dial tone out of a pay > phone in the part of West Torrance that is served by GTE, even though > my own phone wouldn't give me dial tone after ten minutes off hook. > Do pay phones have a higher priority within the switch in terms of > getting dial tone? I do know that on loop carrier systems with traffic concentration (per call sharing of channels) that conventional (non-COCOT) coin units get permanently assigned channels and therefore, have priority within the carrier system. I would guess they also have their own traffic group within the CO switch because they use special interface circuits. ------------------------------ From: jfowler@beta.lanl.gov (John C. Fowler) Subject: Re: What is Iridium Project? Date: 4 Jul 92 13:28:14 GMT Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory In article <714@capmkt.COM> charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu) writes: > Telecommunications Magazine has a article that makes passing mention > of Motorola's Iridium Project and its 77 satellites that are going to > be launched. What is the Iridium Project? Think of Iridium as "Worldwide Cellular." Once launched, you will be able to make a phone call from just about anywhere in the world -- even where telephone systems are controlled by the government or are just too archaic to be trusted. I imagine that once it's launched, there will be a scramble to be the first to make a phone call from the top of Mt. Everest. :-) John C. Fowler, jfowler@lanl.gov ------------------------------ From: charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu) Subject: What is Iridium Project? Date: 4 Jul 92 02:50:28 GMT Organization: Capital Market Technology {Telecommunications Magazine} has a article that makes passing mention of Motorola's Iridium Project and its 77 satellites that are going to be launched. What is the Iridium Project Charles Neveu neveu@pupil.berkeley.edu ------------------------------ From: leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) Subject: Re: Pac*Bell Posturing Date: 4 Jul 1992 16:18:26 -0700 Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA Pacific Bell is saying that the features Last Number Callback, Selective Ringing, and Selective Call Forwarding will be available right around July 20. From what I was told by a couple of Pac Bell people, the reason that Caller-ID implementation was going to take longer than the other features was that they need "sufficient time to inform the public regarding the privacy issues involved in making their telephone numbers available". I think this issue hinges on the importance that people place on "features" like Caller-ID. For most readers of c.d.t., Caller-ID is an added function to our telephone service. To a lot of people, Caller-ID represents a major change in how telephones work. Just like the implications of being able to purchase items/services via phone and have them charged to your phone bill weren't researched well enough before implementation (IMHO), I think it would be dangerous and not in anyone's best interest to suddenly offer a service like this when not everyone may understand what it is and how it works. Especially since the default setting will be to give out your number. If it defaulted the other way, I don't think it would be an issue (and there'd be no real use for Caller-ID either. I'd like to pose another related question: How can it be an invasion of privacy for people to get your phone number (via Caller-ID or whatever) if the phone company "owns" the number? What real rights does the phone user have regarding their home phone number? Justin Leavens Microcomputer Specialist University of Southern California ------------------------------ From: leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) Subject: Re: AT&T Knows I am Moving. How? Date: 4 Jul 1992 16:46:55 -0700 Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA In article burke@cs.purdue.edu writes: > I was amazed to get something similar -- an offer of a free hour of > long distance if I keep Reach Out America service -- if I keep AT&T > when I move. However, the only people I've told (other than friends > and relatives) is the apartment complex I'm moving into and the one > I'm moving out of. I haven't called and hooked up phone/electric > service yet. I suppose this is more of a privacy issue then telcom I'm always amazed whenever I move that I get a note from TRW (I belong to their Credentials service) confirming the fact that I've moved and to make sure that they've got my correct address. Of course, it's always correct. Two out of three times this letter has arrived on the day I moved in. It's a little unnerving. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 22:39:16 GMT From: shri@iucaa.ernet.in (H. Shrikumar) Subject: Re: RFC For Fax Specs? >> I need the RFC (or some other type of "oficial document" ) that >> gives the specs for fax transmissions. A description of the protocol, >> Preferably in on-line Internet accessible format ... > See rfc1314, "A File Format for the Exchange of Images in the Sure, this RFC might help, but perhaps you mean fax as in "please fax it to the number on my card". In that case, you are better of getting it from the horse's mouth, the horse in question being CCITT. You'd need T.3 and T.4. and perhaps V.21, V.27 and V.29, depending on how deep into the analog part you wish to get in case of Group III fax. Of course, its not on-line (some would even question if any CCITT document is even readable :-) shrikumar ( shri@iucaa.ernet.in ) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #528 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa23937; 5 Jul 92 0:23 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA23914 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 22:41:13 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA06619 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 22:41:05 -0500 Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 22:41:05 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207050341.AA06619@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #529 TELECOM Digest Sat, 4 Jul 92 22:41:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 529 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: A Positive COCOT Experience (Steve Howard) Re: Longest Phonecall (H. Shrikumar) Re: 911 in Australia (Ash Nallawalla) Re: National Security and 710 (Ken Abrams) Re: National Security and 710 (Aubrey Philipsz) Re: Trying to Locate Bellcore (Alan L. Varney) Re: Can't Reach ANAC or 700-555-4141 From My Dorm (Gordon Hlavenka) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (H. Shrikumar) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (Jack Decker) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 Jul 92 00:37:55 MDT (Sat) From: steveh@breck1.breck.com (Steve Howard) Subject: Re: A Positive COCOT Experience In I said: > At the end of the ski season I will calculate the percentage of calls > dialed using 10XXX, 950, etc. -- if there is any interest, I'll post > it. > [Moderator's Note: Yes, please! An actual breakdown of AT&T, Sprint, > MCI and other OCC calls would be quite interesting. PAT] The breakdown is listed below. This is for 11 payphones connected to our PBX (that charge AT&T rates :-) ). They were installed in early March so the information below only reflects about seven weeks of traffic. Unfortunately the breakdown of 10XXX vs 950 is not accurate. When possible the phones translate 10XXX into their 950-xxxx or 1-800 counterparts (presumably this is so that they can remain consistent with the phones that are in nearby areas that don't have equal access). This will be changed -- we have equal access so it isn't necessary here. Also, these numbers are based on call *attempts* -- whether supervision was received or not. Percentage Number Dialed Of Total 950-0244 .98% 950-0488 .35% 950-0638 .35% 950-0675 .14% 950-1022 12.43% MCI (This includes 10222-0-xxx) 950-1477 .07% 800-877-8000 19.59% US Sprint (This includes 10333-0-xxx) 800-950-1022 6.67% AT&T 29.28% (These people inserted an AT&T card into the reader, or dialed 0+ and entered an AT&T card number, or for some other reason got handed off to AT&T). 10288-0-xxxx 30.13% (These people entered 10288 even though the phone would have passed them to AT&T when they entered an AT&T Card number). I find the last number interesting. Half of all AT&T callers dialed the 10288. (I always do :-) ). I wonder how many of these people learned to dial 10288 the hard way? :-( Steve Howard steveh@paradise.breck.com Breckenridge Ski Corporation Disclaimer=The opinions above do not necessarily represent those of my employer. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 22:32:43 GMT From: shri@iucaa.ernet.in (H. Shrikumar) Subject: Re: Longest Phonecall Hi, > One evening I called a friend in Illinois from Virginia. We talked > for maybe 20 minutes, said goodbye, .... [and did not hang up properly] .. > In about a month, our phone bill arrived. There was a nearly 24 hour > long distance phone call to Illinois billed on it. When my housemate, .. > hours. We could prove that all of us were at work all day, and that .. > removed it from the bill. Were this in India, even if one indeed was a mere victim of wrong billing, you'd have been billed anyway, and would have been required to *first* pay up, "under protest" if you wish, and then complain, and wait ... and wait ... and wait.... hoping that your file would move thru the monopoly's redtape. (the law as it stands is clear on that, time for a change here I guess.) (Things might get changing now, with some talk of liberalisation, but I would not hold my breath! :-) But that reminds me ... Two brothers, partners in business, stationed in Lucknow and Delhi, had "learnt" that the long-distance (STD) call meter would wrap around after a certain (close to an hour) time interval. So they'd always make sure that their calls were that period plus three minutes, and they'd get billed for just three minutes. Of course, this amounts to a fraud, but they apparently got away with it for far too long. And of course, the wonders of pulse dial pay phones. Instead of replacing the phone on-hook to disconnect, if you dial 1 very s-l-o-w-l-y, the extended pulse would trigger a disconnect and a new dial tone without releasing the coin from the slot where it gives battery current to the carbon mike. Not to forget the fact that on these pay phones, the coin enables battery current to the carbon mike to let you talk. but if you don't mind bellowing in half-duplex, you can shout into the moving iron earpiece and be heard the other side. (Won't cost you anything for a call. I've had to resort to this once, when one coin box was so full right up to the slot, so you just could not drop a coins.) (In most metro's now we have pay phones with a man in attendance, and a device that meters and bills the call. That's made making public calls so much better, it is quite easy to make long distance calls to from these.) shrikumar ( shri@iucaa.ernet.in ) ------------------------------ From: ash@mlacus.oz.au (Ash Nallawalla) Subject: Re: 911 in Australia Organization: Australian Centre for Unisys Software, Melbourne Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 02:34:59 GMT dbw@crash.cts.com (David B. Whiteman) writes: > The radio had a news story about a fellow in Australia who loved to > watch the TV show Rescue 911. When his house was on fire he kept > frantically trying to dial 911 without sucess. He forgot that where > he lived one dials "0 0 0" (three zeros) for emergency services. Sounds like an urban legend in the making. In Australia they have William Shatner (sp?) telling viewers that 000 is the number to use in Oz -- I believe this is repeated more than once during the hour-long programme. Ash Nallawalla Tel: +61 3 550-1638 BH; Fax +61 3 742-4566 ZL4LM/VK3CIT Postal: P.O. Box 539, Werribee VIC 3030, Australia ash@mlacus.oz.au Contact me if you belong to a PC User Group! ------------------------------ Subject: Re: National Security and 710 Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 9:19:30 CDT From: Ken Abrams [John Draper asked why Ken Abrams was talking about 710. PAT] "I" didn't start the discussion. I don't moderate this group and decide what gets published and what does not. My message was an attempt to quash the discussion. Why did you see fit to direct your comments to ME? I absolutely agree with you. Please direct additional comments and complaints to Pat Townson, the conference Moderator or to those folks who seem bent on continuing the discussion. Apparently my advice fell on deaf ears. Ken Abrams nstar!pallas!kabra437 Springfield, IL kabra437@athenanet.com (voice) 217-753-7965 [Moderator's Note: Actually, my experience has been that telling people on Usenet that a certain topic is forbidden discussion only causes the discussion to go on that much longer and more heated than before. PAT] ------------------------------ From: aub@access.digex.com (Aubrey Philipsz) Subject: Re: National Security and 710 Organization: Express Access Public Access UNIX, Greenbelt, Maryland USA Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 22:01:42 GMT In article crunch@netcom.com (John Draper) writes: >> 710 is indeed assigned for "Government Special" use. It's actual >> function is highly classified. Doesn't surprise me that you couldn't >> get any information without a need to know. I respectfully suggest >> that you not pursue the matter any further, least someone from the >> Government might start asking YOU a lot of questions!! > If you are SO concerned about national security, then why are you > broadcasting to the world that 710 has anything special in it at all? Hi John! Long time no see. Without saying anything technical, the 710 situation concerning *publicity* is a lot like that of Inward. A lot of people are aware that something called Inward exists, there are a fair number of people who have to deal with it on a daily basis, but in general there is little technical knowledge floating around in public about it. This is because you can't get ahold of Inward from most "normal" phones. The 710 situation is sort of the same. There are a fair number of people who know something about it, because it is hard to hide something that big. There is some general knowledge floating around that it exists, but no real technical knowledge about it ... > Now every phone hacker on the net will be encouraged to start > "scanning" the 710 area code for their "special classified" numbers. I dare say that there have been people calling those numbers for years. This is nothing new. Aub Philipsz aub@digex.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 17:31:42 CDT From: varney@ihlpf.att.com (Alan L Varney) Subject: Re: Trying to Locate Bellcore Organization: AT&T Network Systems, Inc In article sami@scic.intel.com writes: > Can anyone out there tell me how to get in touch with Bellcore? > Specifically their publications division. TAs, TRs and other "standard" documents can be ordered from: Bellcore Document Registrar 445 South Street - Room 2J-125 P. O. Box 1910 Morristown, NJ 07962-1910 or by calling the menu-monster at 1-800-521-CORE (1-800-521-2673); they take plastic. If you don't have a document number handy, they can send you a catalog of technical documents. If you want to talk to the "pub" folks, or a technical person, the numbers/addresses are in the front of any TR (and the "Catalog"). Al Varney - the above represents my opinion, and not AT&T's.... ------------------------------ From: cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us (gordon hlavenka) Subject: Re: Can't Reach ANAC or 700-555-4141 From My Dorm Organization: Vpnet Public Access Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 16:18:11 GMT > 711-XXXX (whereas elsewhere 711-anything other than 6633 doesn't > work, it gives strange tones or silence) ... (and 711 is not a "real" > exchange). Well, in my area (708-573) "enhanced" 911 was turned on on 9-11-91. Sometime in August of '91 (for the math-impaired, this would have been _before_ September 11) I was playing around at the office in response to another post on this group, dialed '711', and was connected to 911! Stupid me, I hung up immediately. The operator called back and interrogated our receptionist. The operator wouldn't hang up until someone had gone to each office and made sure everyone was OK. This was chalked up as a glitch in the new 911 equipment and/or our cheap office key-phones. A bit off the subject, last week I actually had need to call 911 from my house (708-832). We have been paying a $.50 surcharge for quite some time to cover the "enhanced" 911 that is (supposedly) in service now. When I called, the operator had to ask me for my address and phone number! I'm _really_ impressed (not). Gordon S. Hlavenka cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 21:56:52 GMT From: shri@iucaa.ernet.in (H. Shrikumar) Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine > [Moderator's Note: There are answering machines available with CPC > (called party control) which abort on detecting a hangup. PAT] How does the CPC work ? > [Moderator's Note: Someone calls and the phone rings. Just before your > answering machine picks up, they disconnect, but too late to stop your > machine from answering. Telco sees you have gone off hook, and sends > dial tone, which plays through your outgoing message. After 15-25 > seconds or so, you have not dialed a number -- your machine is still > talking to no one with an outgoing message. Telco decides you are not > going to place a call and must have left your phone off hook, or if > you are going to call it is too late this time around, 'so please > hang up and try your call again ... ' Too sad you in US don't have polarity reversal on your calls !! The phone lines all over India seem to have that. You get one polarity when you talk to the exchange, or when their equipment talks to you, and the opposite polarity when you talk to your party. (After a few posts of India bashing, I could not help get a little patirotic !) shrikumar ( shri@iucaa.ernet.in ) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 16:53:41 CST From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Speaking of stupid pranks, here's one that perhaps wasn't as stupid as it first seemed. Maybe 20 years ago a guy was being plagued by prank calls from junior high kids. But he recognized one of the voices as a neighbor kid, so he hooked up a tape recorder to the line and every time one of the calls came in, he taped it. It wasn't long until he got what he wanted -- a perfect recording of the kid saying "You're a real....." followed by a string of profanity that would make a sailor, or the kid's parents, turn beet red. What do you suppose he did with that tape? No, he didn't take it to the cops ... he had a more perverse idea in mind. It just so happened that this guy had worked at a radio station and had enough electrical expertise to figure out how to play the tape back into the phone line in such a way that it sounded fairly live to the person on the other end of the connection. So he waited until one night when he was sure that the kid wasn't home and the kid's mother WAS, dialed up the family home and let the tape rip. Imagine mama's surprise to hear her little darling calling her some very nasty things and making some obscene suggestions, in what was obviously his own voice, and then hanging up on her! You can imagine what must have transpired when the kid got home ... even if mama related enough of the message for the kid to figure out what happened, he couldn't very well admit to making obscene calls to the neighbors. The way I hear the story, the kid wasn't seen outside much (except when mowing the lawn or doing other chores) for a while. The prank calls also came to a screeching halt! Now, with answering machines and Caller-ID, you wouldn't even need to know the caller to return similar prank messages to the parent. Of course, if the parents also had Caller-ID (and you didn't block transmission of your number for the call), they could figure out that you had sent the message, not their kid, but you'd still be in a position to ask why their little darling was leaving such messages on your answering machine. But I have to admit, I'd love to see the expressions on the faces of some of the parents when they hear what was really coming out of the mouths of their kids ... especially if they thought (even for a few seconds) that the kid was saying it directly to THEM! Jack Decker jack@myamiga.mixcom.com FidoNet 1:154/8 [Moderator's Note: This same technique was useful in clearing the airwaves of an obnoxious CB'er here many years ago. He was one of those types who liked to send his modulations through a reverb unit or echo box then into a 100 watt linear amplifier. His modulations sounded this way: 'Break ake ake ake ake ake for a radio check eck eck eck ...' One of those idiots. I mean, my radio was loud, but that guy was incredible. You could hear him over in Michigan across the lake. If he barely heard two kids with 100 milliwatt walkie-talkies a mile away through the hash, he'd have the nerve to key up his radio with all that modulation and power and tell *them* 'hey! back it down out there! ... '. This guy walked all over the locals in Joliet, some 40 miles away. One day when he had a mean streak and was cussing up a storm someone tape recorded it on a two minute endless loop tape, and played it back to him over the air -- anonymously of course, like most CB transmissions -- and over, and over, and over, and over. That tape was played on all forty channels (and then some! heh heh! Early forty channel radios with the Motorola 02-A chip were easily -- and quite illegally -- programmable over the entire 10/11 meter band. The FCC finally put the heat on Motorola to quit making that chip.) That must have spooked him good; little was heard out of him after that. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #529 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa24931; 5 Jul 92 0:52 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA07872 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 23:12:38 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA31452 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sat, 4 Jul 1992 23:12:30 -0500 Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 23:12:30 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207050412.AA31452@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #530 TELECOM Digest Sat, 4 Jul 92 23:12:30 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 530 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (John Rice) Re: Roommates and Long Distance Doesn't Mix (Larry Autry) Re: Satellite Usenet Newsfeeds Avaialable Now (Larry Autry) Re: Funny Advertising Goof-ups (Wrong Numbers) (John Higdon) Re: Can't Reach ANAC or 700-555-4141 From My Dorm (Gordon Hlavenka) Re: Telecomics (Alan Gilbertson) Involuntary Phone Number Changes (Scott Fybush) ISDN Availability to Residence Customers in Chicago Area (Bill Nickless) NER-VOUS Gives Time of Day (was Jane Barbie) (David W. Barts) Factoid From Playboy (Stephen J. Friedl) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: rice@ttd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Organization: Teradyne Inc., Telecommunications Division Date: Sat, 04 Jul 92 04:47:25 GMT In article , bakerj@gtephx.UUCP (Jon Baker) writes: > Excepting a very poorly engineered CO, this also should not be a > problem unless you have a very significant percentage of your > subscribers going offhook all at the same time. This is not the case > in a concert ticket hotline, or a radio station giveaway, but might > occur during some sort of emergency (power failure, weather disaster, > large nearby explosion, etc.) In such a case, certain lines within > the neighborhood can be designated to be 'hot' lines, or 'A' lines, > which get preferential treatment. The idea being, if we can't serve > 100%, and if we tried we'd serve 0%, then let's pick 10%-20% and give > them service. The rationale being, it's not necessary for every one > of 500 residents in a neighborhood to call 911 to report a fire. Well, I'd sure hate to be one of the 80%-90% trying to call for an ambulance for my parent with a heart attack. Who decides who get's 'preferental' service? In my opinion, the 'Concert Ticket' phoenomena is 'misuse' of the phone system (right up there with telemarketing and charity solicitation). In article , williamsk@gtephx.UUCP (Kevin W. Williams) writes: > In article , rice@ttd.teradyne.edu > writes: >>> [Moderator's Note: Come now, do you *really* think US West or any >>> telco relishes these situations and ignores them 'because they are the >>> phone company'? And had telco known in advance (did any of the >>> concert promoters advise telco of the times, etc?), what in your >>> estimation might telco have done about it, other than possibly block >>> off access from certain exchanges when traffic was heavy? PAT] >> I'd have to disagree. Proper design of a "Life and Death" emergency >> system should preclude ANY intruption of that service based on trunk >> loading. 911 trunks should be Independent of any other traffic. > Let's be a little realistic here. I could, indeed, design a 911 system > which was indpendent of any other request for service. Unfortunately, > I would have to run a separate phone to each house which only served > the emergency service bureau. (Technical paragraph deleted) > If you want a feature that would work, it would be possible to cut off > any subscriber that called for a ticket, and not allow him to > reoriginate for five minutes or so. This would free up a lot of > resources. Unfortunately, it would also open up the telco for lawsuits > ("Aunt Tilly keeled over right after I called for a ticket, and I > couldn't get through."). Is this any different than a lawsuit "Aunt Tilly keeled over while that "Damned Radio Station" was running it's contest and I couldn't get through." > Choke prefixes, call gapping, and similar network management > treatments are a compromise for an insoluble problem. No switch > manufacturer can sell totally non-blocking line equipment, because the > telcos won't pay the costs. We cannot predict who is going to call 911 > and who is going to call Larry King. The best we can do is make the > machine survive the peaking, give fairly distributed service to all > originators, and try to deal with the problem during routing and > termination. My original comment related to 'Trunk Blockage' not whether the subscriber could receive dial tone. In the 'Concert Ticket' scenario, it's more likely that all outgoing trunks are blocked. It's the 'natural disaster' scenario in which dial tone becomes hard to get. I stand by my original statement. "I'd have to disagree. Proper design of a "Life and Death" emergency system should preclude ANY intruption of that service based on TRUNK LOADING. 911 trunks should be Independent of any other traffic. " John Rice K9IJ "Did I say that ?" I must have, but It was rice@ttd.teradyne.com MY opinion only, no one else's...Especially (708)-940-9000 - (work) Not my Employer's.... (708)-438-7011 - (home) ------------------------------ From: autry@relay.sgi.com (Larry Autry) Subject: Re: Roommates and Long Distance Doesn't Mix Organization: Silicon Graphics, St. Louis, MO Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 00:21:51 GMT In article sherman@unx.sas.com (Chris Sherman) writes: > I would like to shut off the dial-1 long distance access from my > phone, yet still have the ability to use LD charge cards for making LD > calls. > But, Southern Bell says that they can't do this. They can block LD > calls completely, for $22 setup, and $2 a month, but this means no > long distance calls PERIOD. Ask if the option allows you to block long distance but allow 800 numbers. If so, what about using Sprint's FON card. They require you to call this 800 number then your LD number + authorization number. Larry Autry Silicon Graphics, St. Louis autry@sgi.com ------------------------------ From: autry@relay.sgi.com (Larry Autry) Subject: Re: Satellite Usenet Newsfeeds Avaialable Now Organization: Silicon Graphics, St. Louis, MO Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1992 00:25:50 GMT In article pagesat@netcom.com (Manfred Frey) writes: > A small Ku-Band satellite antenna and indoor satellite receiver/ > modem that delivers approximately 40 megabytes of data to your machine > in a 24 hour period. What if one already owns a Ku-band satellite dish? I suppose a modem would be in order though. Is that priced separately? Larry Autry Silicon Graphics, St. Louis autry@sgi.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 20:30 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Funny Advertising Goof-ups (Wrong Numbers) walsh@optilink.com (Mark Walsh) writes: > Before I decided what to do, somebody from the church called me up, > profusely appologized for the error (5000 flyers had already been > distributed), and invited me over for a free night of Bingo! Wouldn't it be nice if it always turned out that way? Some time ago, I had a number that was very close to 800 HILTONS. At one point I became innundated with calls from people trying to book reservations. When I called the hotel chain to see if there had perhaps been an ad with a mistake or some other contributing factor for the wrong numbers, I got the royal brush-off. Since the Great Big Corporation was not interested in little old me or my problems, I used a retaliatory method that if nothing else made me feel better. I am sure you can imagine what it was. Later, I changed the number. That ended the wrong numbers until relatively recently. Suddenly, people started calling at ungawdly hours wanting information about glass treatment. Turns out that a company in Chicago had an ad in a national magazine with my number in it! But this time, the firm came hat in hand profusely apolgizing and made a deal with me. I agreed to allow the use of MY number outside of the state of California (my 800 number is CA only) for a limited period. Also, when I get that occasional wrong number from within California, I refer the caller to the correct number. It is amazing how one's attitude can be affected by willingness for cooperation. I still have a bad taste in my mouth over the Hilton inconvenience, but I gladly give out the glass treatment company's correct number to callers (calling on my nickel, no less) several times a week. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ From: cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us (gordon hlavenka) Subject: Re: Can't Reach ANAC or 700-555-4141 From My Dorm Organization: Vpnet Public Access Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 16:18:11 GMT > 711-XXXX (whereas elsewhere 711-anything other than 6633 doesn't work, > it gives strange tones or silence) ... (and 711 is not a "real" exchange). Well, in my area (708-573) "enhanced" 911 was turned on on 9-11-91. Sometime in August of '91 (for the math-impaired, this would have been _before_ September 11) I was playing around at the office in response to another post on this group, dialed '711', and was connected to 911! Stupid me, I hung up immediately. The operator called back and interrogated our receptionist. The operator wouldn't hang up until someone had gone to each office and made sure everyone was OK. This was chalked up as a glitch in the new 911 equipment and/or our cheap office key-phones. A bit off the subject, last week I actually had need to call 911 from my house (708-832). We have been paying a $.50 surcharge for quite some time to cover the "enhanced" 911 that is (supposedly) in service now. When I called, the operator had to ask me for my address and phone number! I'm _really_ impressed (not). Gordon S. Hlavenka cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us ------------------------------ From: Alan.Gilbertson@f230.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Alan Gilbertson) Subject: Re: Telecomics Date: Sat, 04 Jul 92 22:58:08 EDT Organization: FidoNet node 1:3603/230 - CSFSO Telecomm, Clearwater FL Monday June 29 1992, David Leibold writes: > Any other examples of telecom references in the funnies? My all-time favorite is a Gary Larson (The Far Side) cartoon showing two cows in their living room. In the foreground, and telephone is ringing. One of the cows looks at the phone and says, with a brittle smile that suggests forced cheerfulness in the face of utter defeat: "Well, there it goes again, and here we sit without opposable thumbs." Alan Internet: Alan.Gilbertson@f230.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG UUCP: ...!uunet!myrddin!tct!psycho!230!Alan.Gilbertson ------------------------------ From: fybush@unixland.natick.ma.us (Scott Fybush) Subject: Involuntary Phone Number Changes Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 15:56:47 EDT The recent thread on involuntary phone number changes has set me thinking about three which I recall involving Rochester Telephone. The first took place circa 1975. It was part of a general realignment of service areas with RochTel, which also moved Canandaigua NY from 315 to 716. ThisCanandaigua customers at least kept their old numbers. Customers in Avon were not as lucky. They were moved, en masse, from 716-926 to 716-226. I don't know why this was done. [Around the same time, the service number was changed from 113 to 611 for these customers as well.] The second took place around 1982. The University of Rochester had heretofore used part of 716-275, I believe 275-2000 through 275-8999. U of R internal users dialed four digits for on-campus calls. Around this time, the system at the University was expanded. To give the U of R the rest of 275, residential and business customers off-campus had to be moved from 275-0XXX, 275-1XXX, and 275-9XXX. I knew a few people with 275-9XXX numbers. They were all moved to 461-9XXX, with the same XXX. Thus, WWWG radio at 275-9212 moved to 461-9212. As 461 had been in service for a few years already, I don't know why the 9XXX block was still available. The U of R dialing system, now on a ROLM PBX, requires five digits for on campus calls, 5-XXXX for 275 numbers, 4-XXXX for 274 numbers (the U of R has only part of the 274 exchange), and 7-XXXX for some on-campus numbers which can't be dialed from outside using DID. [A similar change happened at Brandeiss University around 1986. The campus [PBX/Centrex?] on 617-647 was replaced with a new Northern Telecom SlSL-1 PBX. To clear enough numbers for the new PBX, which would for the first time put a phone in every dorm room, the whole campus was moved to 617-736.] The third move affected the greatest number of customers. It took place around 1983. The "Rochester" dialing area is actually served by several different COs. Each has the same local dialing area (quite large at that), but a customer in the town of Brighton, served by the 244-256-271-274-275-442- 461-473 CO, would have to get FX service to have a number on any other "Rochester" CO, and vice-versa. That Brighton CO originally also served an area along NY route 252 in the northern part of the town of Henrietta. (The southern part of Henrietta is served by the distinct "Henrietta" exchange, 716 321-334-359, with a different local calling area.) In 1983, with the opening of the Marketplace Mall, the northern Henrietta area exploded with growth. Roch Tel was forced to put in a new CO for the area, originally 716 424-427- 475 (with 475 also serving the Rochester Institute of Technology PBX), later adding 272 and 292. All the customers in the area were forced to change their numbers. Most of the new 424-427 numbers did not even have the same last four digits as the old "Brighton" numbers! I've never seen anything like *that* happen in RochTel land. For the most part, RochTel is pretty stable with numbers. My grandmother has had the same number, originally GR3-XXXX, now 473-XXXX, since 1955, at two locations. My parents have had the same 442-XXXX number since 1969. Scott Fybush -- fybush@unixland.natick.ma.us ------------------------------ From: nickless@antares.mcs.anl.gov (Bill Nickless) Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 12:22:51 -0500 Subject: ISDN Availability to Residence Customers in Chicago Area I just got off the phone with a "data specialist" who got my name from Illinois Bell. She was most helpful and informative. It seems that there really are two tariffs in place for ISDN service from Illinois Bell; one for Centrex customers and one that's not. It further seems that if you get the "Direct ISDN" tariffed offering, it's only about $100 installation charge for Basic Rate Interface (2B+D). It's sensitive to usage, to the tune of $6/hour. Of course, if you use the "Centrex" offering, and set up "extensions" out in the various places you want to connect, then it's not sensitive to usage. Evidently Ameritech has committed to 80% of subscribers having ISDN available by 1995. This is supposedly better than the other RBOC's, but nothing like Germany or Japan. So I guess I'm retracting my grumbling. I can still gripe that the CO that serves my house isn't ISDN capable, but it might/should happen eventually. Thanks to Neil R. Ormos for giving me the incentive to really track down the information. He had different information than I did, so I was forced to track it down. Bill Nickless System Support Group +1 708 252 7390 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Jul 92 21:02:09 -0700 From: David W. Barts Subject: NER-VOUS Gives Time of Day (Was Jane Barbie) In article , dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (Dave Niebuhr) writes: > I just tried 9-637-1212 (Area Code 516) from my office phone and got a > recording stating that I had dialed my own number in Area Code 718 > (Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens, or the start of 718 in the Bronx). NER-VOUS may not be the time-of-day number in NYC, but it will give the time of day in Boston (at least it did last winter when I tried dialing 1-617-NER-VOUS). And the 13 cents that call to Boston cost me was less than the 1-206-976-1616 time-of-day ripoff listed in the Seattle phone book would have been. (As as aside, I almost never dial time-of-day services anyhow -- I just tune in WWV, WWVH, or CHU on one of my four shortwave sets.) David Barts N5JRN UW Civil Engineering, FX-10 davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu Seattle, WA 98195 ------------------------------ Subject: Factoid from _Playboy_ Date: 04 Jul 92 17:46:14 PDT (Sat) From: friedl@mtndew.Tustin.CA.US.From.the"Raw Data"column (Stephen Friedl) _Playboy_, August, 1992 "Reach out and put the touch on someone: 18,000,000 unsolicited sales calls are made to private homes in the US each day" Stephen J Friedl | Software Consultant | Tustin, CA | +1 714 544 6561 3b2-kind-of-guy | I speak for me ONLY | KA8CMY | uunet!mtndew!friedl ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #530 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa16281; 5 Jul 92 11:52 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA19839 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 10:07:25 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA30249 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 10:07:17 -0500 Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 10:07:17 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207051507.AA30249@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #531 TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Jul 92 10:07:10 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 531 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (Carl Neihart) Whose DDS DSU/CSU Does 57.6 Async? (Barton F. Bruce) AT&T Educational Presentations by Satellite (Bill Mayhew) Arranging For "Local" Calls Between Adjacent Exchanges (Daniel Schneider) Calling US From Mexico (upsetter@mcl.ucsb.edu) Sky Pager (Adam Mottershead) More on ISDN Availability to Residence Customers in Chicago Area (N. Ormos) +__ 5551212 (was 1-xxx-555-1212 From Overseas?) (Carl Moore) Surplus Phone Stuff Sources? (Tom Adams) Payphones With Bogus DTMF Tones? (Peter Clitherow) Vendor Products for 56K Circuits (Kathy Rinehart) Candidates E-Mail Addresses (Robert Virzi) Any Experience With New Amex Gold Card/MCI Service? (Henry Mensch) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: neihart@ga.com (Carl Neihart) Subject: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach Organization: gerber alley Date: Sun, 05 Jul 1992 09:20:04 GMT I just got my info from AT&T on my personal 700 number recently. Unfortunately, after getting the info on the 700 number, the whole reason I got the number in the first place was negated - I got the number because an easy-to-remember seven-digit 700 number was mine for the taking. I thought it was worth $7 per month to have folks be able to remember my number easily. However, when AT&T mailed me the info, along with it came que cards to send to my freinds & relatives, so they would know how to dial me. It turns out AT&T has implemented the 700 service such that only those phones connected to AT&T as their default equal access carrier can call a 700 number; all other customers must dial 102880 before dialing 700-xxxxxxx. This means I must give different dialing instructions to folks depending on who provides their long distance service, and even if someone has AT&T as their carrier at home, they still must know how to dial me using the long equal access method should they be unfortunate enough to get a payphone not connected to AT&T. This is a radical departure from 800 and 900 service, where the caller does not need to keep track of the carrier that provides the service for the person/company they are calling, they simply dial the number. When I asked the person at AT&T why they did it this way, they said it was the only way it could be done, because of the complex network required to setup 700 service. Something like "800 numbers only go to one place, whereas 700 numbers can go anywhere, depending on where the phone is forwarded to." Right. Like I really believe that answer! I think the real reason AT&T set it up this way is a marketing gimic; gee what better way to get people talking about your company, than to make them say they are using you when giving out a phone number! Like it is no longer OK to say "Yeah, call be at xxx-xxxxxxx"; now you must say "yeah, call me at xxx-xxxxxxx if you're smart enough to be on AT&T, and if you aren't on AT&T, select AT&T for the call using 102880 then dial xxx-xxxxxxx. And, oh, by the way, to simplify your dialing procedure, switch to AT&T." I find this to be a troubling decision on AT&T's part. Sure they're upset at the divestiture; sure they're upset they have to go drum up business like everyone else instead of having it dropped in their lap, but making users say what service provider they're using, and telling others how to get the same service provider before calling them, this is taking it too far. We want to have one phone system in the U.S., not dozens. I simply do not understand why the 700 service cannot be implemented like the 800 or 900 service, where the number is dialed simply using 1+x00+xxxxxxx without worrying about who is the supplier of the service ... Gee what a nightmere for all our Rolodeck programs, now, besides specifying area code, we must also specify carrier! Just my two cents worth ... Regards, Carl Neihart Gerber Alley Technologies 6575 The Corner's Parkway Norcross, GA 30091 404-441-7793 x2916 (voice) 404-662-5674 (fax) carl_neihart@ga.com or neihart@ga.com (email) [Moderator's Note: Well seriously, you should believe her, because that is the way 700 is set up and it was Bellcore, not AT&T which made it that way. Every carrier is entitled to use *all* of the 700 space. Of necessity, one must specify which carrier's 700 space you wish to use. The default is always for the carrier you are subscribed to. The difference with 800/900 service is that the prefix (three digits which follow the area code) designate the carrier; thus a 10xxx code on the front end would be redundant or contradictory. Regardless of the 10xxx chosen (if your local telco even allows it), on 800/900 calls the prefix detirmines the carrier. 800 is getting filled up, and 900 is historically NOT where you would want to be located. Thus, 700 had to be used. Anyway, EasyReach is intended as a specialty service for AT&T customers, not the world at large. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barton F. Bruce Subject: Whose DDS DSU/CSU Does 57.6 Async? Organization: Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc. Date: 05 Jul 92 03:26:54 EDT Organization: Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc. When I didn't need one a few months ago, I kept seeing ads for someone's DDS DSU/CSU that goes 57.6kb async (with the start and stop bits stripped, the remainder easily fits on 56kb). Many go to 19.2 in ASYNC mode, some go to 38.4kb, one I know of will have 57.6 in a few months. Now that I need it I can't find who makes the one that goes to 57.6. Any pointers would be appreciated. Email is best. If enough others ask, I will post. Thanks, Barton F. Bruce - bruce@camb.com ------------------------------ From: wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (Bill Mayhew) Subject: AT&T Educational Presentations by Satellite Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Date: Sun, 05 Jul 1992 05:02:55 GMT I had the day off today, so I was flipping around looking for interesting stuff on my TVRO. I happened upon an AT&T presentation on Telstar 302, transponder 3H. It was a basic marketing-like presentation on the DMS-2000 SONET fiber terminal equipment. For telco outsider such as myself it was fairly interesting becuase it did not go into minute technical detials. AT&T acknowledged home and business viewership outside of internal channels at the open of the program; interesting. The program aired 0930-1115 on 6/30/92. At the end, they mentioned that AT&T eduational materials are available by calling 800-TRAINER and selecting 2 on the voice mailbox. The program was uplinked by a TOC in Dublin, OH. If I get a chance, I'll give them a call to see if a schedule is available; I'll send any info I receive along to the telecom readership here. The program was live, and thus much more enjoyable than watching a pre-taped sanitized sales pitch. Bill Mayhew NEOUCOM Computer Services Department Rootstown, OH 44272-9995 USA phone: 216-325-2511 wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (140.220.1.1) ------------------------------ From: dans@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Daniel L. Schneider) Subject: Arranging For "Local" Calls Between Adjacent Exchanges Date: 5 Jul 92 07:40:00 GMT Reply-To: dans@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Daniel L. Schneider) Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX Is it possible to arrange "tollfree" calling to an area just outside the local tollfree calling area? I'll be taking a job in Killeen, TX (as a high school math teacher) and I am working on figuring out how to maintain access to the internet without paying long-distance tolls. PC Pursuit seemed to be the best solution, as they have a dial-up in Temple, TX which is in the same county as Killeen. Unfortunately, I just discovered that telephone calls between Temple and Killeen are long-distance. Killeen and Temple are in different, but adjacent exchanges. They're like 15 miles apart. Normally, calls between the two are long-distance. Is there any way I can get around this? My net access depends on it. Thanks, Dan dans@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu ------------------------------ From: upsetter@mcl.ucsb.edu (jason H) Subject: Calling US From Mexico Date: 05 Jul 92 02:35:20 GMT I'm going to be travelling in Mexico for six weeks. I will be mostly in rural areas. On previous trips, I have called the US from long distance telephone offices that are normally in small towns. What are some other ways to make calls from Mexico to the US? Any advice or slick tricks appreciated. Jason upsetter@mcl.ucsb.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 05 Jul 1992 05:26:00 -0400 From: adammot@r-node.gts.org (Adam Mottershead) Subject: Sky Pager Organization: R-node Public Access UNIX System (416-636-2026) 24hrs. Well, not being to versed in Paging Systems, I decided that I should throw this question to the net. Now, aside from traditional paging systems which use standard brodcast techniques, can anyone give me information about Sky Pager? From what I understand it is some kind of Country Wide or Continent Wide paging system. Is this done through cell sites or is there satellites involved here? Can it be received here in Canada? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 07:12:17 -0600 From: "Neil R. Ormos" Subject: More on ISDN Availability to Residence Customers in Chicago Area In the above-referenced post, I recited pricing information I had received from Illinois Bell for ISDN service to my residence. Further inquiries from other readers indicate that the information I posted was ambiguous. To set the record straight, the approximate costs were (excluding tax): Installation-- $ 95 (one time). Monthly service charge-- $ 37 (per month). * Usage: for calls you receive, whether voice or data-- no charge; for "local" (apparently intra-LATA) data calls you originate-- $ 0.12 for the first minute and $ 0.10 for each additional minute; for "long-distance" data calls you originate-- as tariffed by the "long-distance" carrier; for voice calls you originate-- the "normal" charge for that call; i.e. the cost is the same as it would be if you originate the call on a regular analog line. * The monthly charge varies depending on whether you want zero, one, or two of the B channels to be voice-capable; the above-cited price assumes one. As always, your mileage may vary. I am a residential telephone subscriber of Illinois Bell, but I have no other business relationship with them and am not authorized to speak for them. Don't ya love the inconsistency between Illinois Bell's advertising jingle ("Relax. We're all connected.") and that legal disclaimer at the bottom of their long-distance bills ("There is no connection between Illinois Bell and AT&T")? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 00:11:40 EDT From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) Subject: +__ 5551212 (was 1-xxx-555-1212 From Overseas?) A Moderator's Note has mentioned +61-555-1212 . Here is what I have for +61 55: 61 Australia 55 Warrnambool (Victoria) I recall it also mentioned +670-555-1212 , but +670 is not Guam (that's +671 and does not require city codes). Under +670, I have only one entry starting with 5, and it does not start with 55: 670 North Mariana Islands (Saipan) 532 Rota Island ------------------------------ From: tadams@sbctri.sbc.com (Tom. Adams 529-7860) Subject: Surplus Phone Stuff Sources? Organization: Southwestern Bell Technology Resources, St.Louis, MO Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 05:42:26 GMT Could anyone share sources of surplus or otherwise cheap telephone supplies? I could use a 66 block punch down tool, but don't want to pay the $40 prices I see in catalogs. There's a raft of other stuff I'd like to keep an eye out for too. I'd appreciate it if you could reply via mail. I'm about to go on vacation and this group expires too quickly here. I'll summarize if the subject is of general interest. Tom Adams tadams@sbctri.sbc.com adams@swbatl.sbc.com 314-529-7860 ------------------------------ From: pc@ALEX.ims.bellcore.com (Peter Clitherow) Subject: Payphones With Bogus DTMF Tones? Reply-To: Organization: Bellcore - IMS, Morristown, NJ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 05:26:59 GMT I was in Whitefish, Montana at a payphone a couple of days ago, (in a casino, perhaps indicitively) trying to make a long distance call to Missoula. Being wise to the usual scams, I prefixed things with 10288+ but wasn't surprised to note that it was intercepted with "your call cannot be completed as dialed". What was strange though, was that the DTMF tones appears to have been hacked: (after dialing numbers often enough, you get to recognise the tones.) Is this yet another way to finess upcoming FCC requirements for equal access to all long distance carriers by allowing a "connection" but forwarding incorrect information? peter clitherow (201) 829-5162, DQID: H07692 bellcore, 445 south street, room 2f-085, morristown, nj 07962 ------------------------------ From: rinehart@aedc-vax.af.mil Subject: Vendor Products For 56K Circuits Date: 5 Jul 92 06:56:00 GMT Organization: Arnold Engineering Development Center I have an interest in DSUs for a possible upcoming application. I have access to the September, 1991 issue of "Data Communications", but I am interested in any "real-life user" stories that anyone would like to share with me. Particularly, I am interested in any problems/bugs/ incompatabilites that were encountered, especially in the mixing of vendors. Should this application become a reality, an upgrade to T1 is a possibility, so I would like feedback regarding vendors with flexible products. My thanks in advance to anyone who would like to provide info. Kathy Rinehart Rinehart@AEDC-VAX.AF.MIL ------------------------------ From: rv01@gte.com (Robert Virzi) Subject: Candidates E-Mail Addresses Date: 5 Jul 92 07:54:58 GMT Organization: GTE Laboratories Incorporated, Waltham MA Someone posted the following e-mail addresses for the presidential candidates to the net. Unfortunately, I lost the header to the message and cannot give proper attribution. The addresses, as posted, are: Jerry Brown: 75300.3105@compuserve.com brown92@igc.org brown92@well.sf.ca.us Pat Buchanan: 76326.126@compuserve.com George Bush: [no public e-address known at this time] Bill Clinton: 75300.3115@compuserve.com Andre Marrou (Libertarian): 75300.3114@compuserve.com Ross Perot: 71511.460@compuserve.com I tried to mail to Perot from a unix machine on the internet, and it bounced. The message indicated 'postage due', as shown below. + From: Electronic Postmaster + To: + Subject: Undeliverable message + Message-Id: <920701152349_515664.456256_DHI17-17@CompuServe.COM> + Status: RO + + Re: ? EMDRPD - Mail Delivery Failure. Refused -- Postage Due. >EPX [71511,460] I thought some readers of this Digest might want to know the addresses. I hope you have better luck than me getting to the Compuserve accounts. If there is a way to get from the Internet to Compuserve, I'd like to hear about it. Bob Virzi rv01@gte.com ...!harvard!bunny!rv01 [Moderator's Note: You *can* get from Internet to Compuserve using the addresses you specified. It is always . The catch is, CIS insists on being paid for all mail by someone. Unlike many other services which handle each other's email at no charge to the end user for incoming mail, CIS requires their users to agree in advance to accept 'collect charges' on incoming mail from the Internet. Obviously, Mr. Perot failed to give that permission on his account. Since he has been known to read this Digest in the past, perhaps he or an associate will see this and fix the CIS account so we can write to him. In a recent development in the Perot campaign, secret photos published by the {World Weekly News} last week show Perot meeting with space aliens. These are the same space aliens who met with Bush recently. Thus far the aliens have expressed no interest in meeting with Governor Clinton. PAT] ------------------------------ From: henry@ads.com (Henry Mensch) Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 06:20:25 -0700 Subject: Any Experience With New Amex Gold Card/MCI Service? Reply-To: henry@ads.com This is a service which lets you use your Amex Gold Card, along with a user-set pin, to make MCI LD calls which appear on your Amex bill. I just signed up today and should get my materials soon, but am interested in impressions and anecdotes about this service. Thanks, # henry mensch / booz, allen & hamilton, inc. / ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #531 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa18007; 5 Jul 92 12:37 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA28991 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 10:54:16 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA00422 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 10:54:07 -0500 Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 10:54:07 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207051554.AA00422@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #532 TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Jul 92 10:54:08 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 532 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson 1-800 DISA Hacking - A Waste of Time and Money (Bill Garfield) Alarm Bells (David Lesher) Company Uses Caller-ID to Identify Customers (Sam Israelit) Switch Question (Todd Langel) Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Robert Horvitz) International FAXes (Andy Rabagliati) Answering Machine Problem (Kelly Schwarzhoff) Way Cool MCI Mail Binary File Handling (John R. Levine) Trying to Locate Telenet Company (Drew Letcher) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 1-800 DISA Hacking - A Waste of Time and Money From: bill.garfield@yob.sccsi.com (Bill Garfield) Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 01:35:00 -0600 Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569 Reply-To: bill.garfield@yob.sccsi.com (Bill Garfield) I speculate that there is more than a slight possibility that the hacker/phreaker sub-culture follows c.d.t. in hopes of one day gleaning an occasional tidbit. Therefore, I will ask our Esteemed Moderator to consider posting this, on the good chance it will possibly reach the person to whom it directly applies. As I write this, 5-05-92, one of my tandem machines has been playing host for the past few weeks to a hackling from (212) 234-849x who has been pounding randomly on one of my DISA ports which terminates on 1-800-755-xxxx using the PIN codes 3321, 6654, 7892, 8090, 9080 and numerous others. However, what the hackling has yet to figure out, is that there is _no_ outbound path. There is _no_ back door. The effort is futile. He is wasting his time, my inwats dollars, and I assure you he is calling a tremendous amount of attention to himself with his activities. In hopes that the hackling might read this and then go away, I freely offer the following points of information about the system upon which the assualt is currently taking place. The hackling is entering the machine on Trunk Group #27 which terminates a full 1.544 span from Sprint. Here are some notes about Trunk Group 27 (1-800-755-xxxx): All area code 809 is blocked - always has been, always will be. All "011" international access is blocked. All 10xxx access is blocked. All 950-xxxx access is blocked. All 1+555 and 1+NPA+555 d/a access is blocked. (a recent change) (there'll be no D/A call-completion at my expense ...) All 1-700 access is blocked. (also a recent change) All 1-800 access is blocked. All 1-900 access is blocked. All 976-xxxx access is blocked. All 1+ (toll) access is blocked. All local (9+) access is blocked. All zero-plus access is blocked. Star (*) and pound (#) codes will take you *absolutely# nowhere. The DTMF receivers do not understand AUTOVON and MF tones. In-band ANI is being delivered in real time. The four-digit PIN codes are for _accounting_ purposes, not security. From the above, an intelligent individual might reasonably conclude that the DISA port the hackling is banging on is _inbound only_ for intra-company trunks and extensions. That conclusion is 100% correct. There is no way out. The entire trunk group he is entering from is _interconnect restricted_ from the outbound routes. Yes, of course there _are_ outbound routes, but access to those require the caller to enter the machine from an entirely different trunk group (different 1-800 number) than the hackling is now on. And that one, my friends, is *well protected* from the likes of hacklings by multiple ring answer delay, silent answer and 12-digit PIN numbers which are _very_ closely monitored. Right now the hackling is banging on a door which exists only in his mind. There is no "doorway" available to Trunk Group 27. Certainly the amount of reorder tone he's received and the number of intercept recordings he's been dumped will some day begin to convey that message, won't it? Persistent devil, I'll say that! ------------------------------ From: David Lesher Subject: Alarm Bells Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 08:22:11 EDT Reply-To: wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu (David Lesher) Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex It looks as if is not just the newspapers that are worried about Ma's deregulated subsidiaries. (Not that those of us reading c.d.t. ever thought so.) The 7-1-92 {Wall Street Journal} has a story about how the security industry is worried. Their concerns are familiar to readers here: 1) They are mostly small businesses - 98% of the 12,000 companies in the US have less than ten employees. This compared to Bells with $10 billion revenues, and 50,000 employees. 2) The burglar and fire alarm service companies are captives of the Bell's; They, at least at present, cannot lease service from an alternative supplier. But just as John [keep PacBell shaking ;-] Higdon has observed in the PBX and voicemail markets, the Bells are free to offer services that guarantee them exclusive advantages. 3) Past history shows how the Bells' "arms-length" unregulated subsidiaries are really mostly close-dancing, if not sleeping with, the regulated LEC's. 4) An obvious Bell-advantage: they can use billing information to find everyone who called a private alarm company's numbers, and solicit them to change to "Illinois Bell & Security Company" or similar. While we may say, "Can't ever happen!", Cincinnati Bell did such a search for its largest customer, a soap and diaper company, not so long ago. The story goes on to discuss how Nynex is presently in cahoots with the Irish PTT, Telecom Eirann, to the extent that they are attempting to get the government to change the EC's existing standards, so their equipment will be approved. In a paragraph anyone of us with the experience can relate to, Carl Spiegel of Alarm Security Protection in Waterford, CT talks about problem of trying to get a leased circuit fixed by Bell. Sure no surprises there, folks ... wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu [Moderator's Note: In fairness to CinBell however, they conducted the search only because they were ordered to do so by a judge. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 03:22:25 -0800 From: sami@scic.intel.com Subject: Company Uses Caller-ID to Identify Customers I recently had an interesting set of conversations. I called MacConnection in New Hampshire to order a RAM upgrade. I told the operator that I had an account with them and she said,"Mr. Israelit is your address in Portland, OR still valid for the shipment?" I was a bit surprised that she new all of this since I hadn't given her any information. After talking with her for a little while I learned that: 1). They were using Caller-ID to present account information to the operators as they answered the phone. Multiple phone numbers are mapped into a given account [Note: This could cause some problems if a number of people share a line in a small company, but that is probably a small percentage of the businesses.] 2). They have the ability to ignore Caller-ID for a given customer if that customer tells them to disable it. She said that very few people have asked for this option. The company announced the use of Caller-ID on the order desk in its catalog. [Shows how well I read the fine print!] 3). The system has really improved their customer service capabilities significantly when it comes to tracing orders, tracking addresses, etc. ------------------------------ From: Todd.Langel@f230.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Todd Langel) Subject: Switch Question Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 00:00:04 EDT Organization: FidoNet node 1:3603/230 - CSFSO Telecomm, Clearwater FL > Crews from AT&T and Southern Bell have been installing what I assume > is a switch outside the building where I work. A large (maybe > 25'x10'x8') metal-and-concrete unit has been placed in a hole that was > dug to accomodate it. The outer part of the unit is a concrete shell > that is split into a lower and upper half. The lower half of the > shell consists of a series of equipment racks framed together . The > metal frames are blue, and the equipment in them looks -- well-- like > the equipment one sees in a phone closet, except more of it. The top > half of the concrete shell has what looks like a large air conditioner > unit on the top that will be above ground when the hole is filled in. > I have a couple of questions I hope someone might be kind enough to > address. The switch was an AT&T product (based on the number of > things that came in AT&T boxes and the AT&T techs who were running > around). What kind of switch might this be? A: If the bays you saw were blue at the top, with white doors, and were about 2 1/2 feet wide and 2 feet deep, it is probably a 5ESS Remote Switch. B: If they were blue metal frames with equipment racks mounted in them, and had white circuit packs showing, it is probably a Slick-5 Multiplexer / Or a Fiber Regen Bay. (If you can, give a little more detail about the bays (ex. how many - size - color) The building you described sounds like a CEV Hut. I don't know the exact meaning for CEV but I think it stands for Concrete Equipment Vault. As for the exchanges you asked about -- I don't know. That is usually up to the local telco. Todd ... OFFLINE 1.38 * Internet: Todd.Langel@f230.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG UUCP: ...!uunet!myrddin!tct!psycho!230!Todd.Langel ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 00:26:04 MDT From: Robert Horvitz Subject: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor The lead article in the May/June issue of {Microwave News} says that NEC America and GTE Mobilnet of Tampa have been sued for damages arising from a brain tumor allegedly induced in Susan Reynard, who was described as a frequent user of cellular phones. The suit argues that "The tumor was the result of radiation emitted by a cellular telephone [or] the course of the tumor was accelerated and aggravated by the emissions from the telephone ..." This is believed to be the first lawsuit against a cellular phone company concerning electromagnetic hazards. Lawyer John Lloyd Jr. said it was prompted by the deaths from brain cancer of three Tampa-area doctors who were also described as heavy users of cellular phones. According to David Reynard, Susan's husband, (quoting from {Microwave NEWS}), "If an outline of the phone were superimposed on the [magnetic resonance image of her head which] showed his wife's tumor, the malignancy would be at the middle of the antenna ..." The radio wavelengths used in cellular phones are similar to the dimensions of the human skull, so that resonance could provide an efficient transfer of energy. {Microwave News} is the leading newsletter concerned with reports of biological effects of non-ionizing radiation. Subscriptions are $285 per year (6 issues; $315 per year outside the US). Order from P.O. Box 1799, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163 USA. My only connection to MN is as a reader for the past eight years. Robert Horvitz Prague, Czechoslovakia Radio Consultant, The Soros Foundations ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 51 Jul 92 01:11:56 -0400 From: wizzy!andyr@uunet.UU.NET (Andy Rabagliati) Subject: International FAXes I was on vacation in West Africa earlier this year and had trouble with my return tickets. The easiest way to sort it out was to fax my sister in the US, and accordingly went to the telephone office in Dakar, Senegal, with a fax. Too late I remembered that her fax machine is a Panasonic combined answering machine and fax -- being a French-speaking country they didn't understand the message and told me that it would not work. My explanation (in quite reasonable French) was not good enough for them -- the girl behind the desk told me not to waste her time as she was busy, and other customers patiently explained to me that it was an answering machine. The French!! So, I went to the other main office, and told them the fax machine was a little different than most, and that they should press the send button when they heard the ring ... ring ... ring. I thought that might save a lot of explanation. Of course she didn't, and held the handset up so I could hear it was not a fax machine. I stabbed the # button, and they were back on familiar territory, with a fax warble in the handset. They charged 4,000 CFA ($16) per page to send, 300CFA ($1) per page to receive. In comparison, a one minute phone call was about 1,500 CFA ($6). So, when sending / receiving faxes to third world countries, 1) Use fax machines this end that sound like fax machines 2) No header pages, just cram it on as few pages as possible. Oh, and another anomaly I found -- a letter from Nigeria to U.S.A was 1 Niara (6 cents) - how do they do that? Cheers, Andy Rabagliati | W.Z.I. RR1 Box 33, Wyalusing PA 18853 | (717)746-7780 ------------------------------ From: kellys@iat.holonet.net (Kelly Schwarzhoff) Subject: Answering Machine Problem Organization: HoloNet (BBS: 510-704-1058) Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 03:28:07 GMT I'm trying to install an answering machine on a phone system that runs a key service unit -- the Panasonic KX-T61610 in particular. The problem is that I'm trying to set the answering machine to pick up the SECOND line. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it will only pick-up the first line I believe. Any suggestions? Kelly Schwarzhoff Internet: kellys@orac.holonet.net Fidonet: 1:161/445.0 [Moderator's Note: Most devices built to serve only one line usually default to serving 'line one'. What you need to do is get in the little box on the wall where the answering machine plugs into the phone line and swap the red/green wires with the yellow/black wires so that yellow/black feed out to the modular plug on 'line 1'. If you have a phone on that line as well (through something like a 'Y-connector' plugged in down there, then you will need to open the phone and make an offsetting swap the other way to keep 'line 1' and 'line 2' in their proper alignment on the phone itself (unless you don't mind having them reversed on that instrument only.) ------------------------------ Subject: Way Cool MCI Mail Binary File Handling Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 00:34:44 EDT From: John R. Levine MCI Mail has recently upgraded their support for binary files in messages. They have long allowed you to send and receive binary message segments, but only through the batch X.PC interface used by programs like Lotus Express and Norton Desktop. Now they've extended binary file support to the standard interactive interface and the Internet gateway. You can transfer binary or text files interactively using zmodem or Kermit with the UPLOAD and DOWNLOAD commands. When a file with a binary piece is in your mailbox, attempts to read it with the regular READ command warn you that there's a binary part, so you use DOWNLOAD to retrieve it. You can download non-binary parts of messages as well, which is often a more reliable way than screen capture to get MCI messages into your local computer. What's really cool is that binary attachments even work for files passed to and from Internet mail! Binary segments appear as uuencoded data, e.g. //BEGIN BINARY MAIL SEGMENT: begin 600 filename M'YV04][(D9,'1!(09-*0<7."#H@S91R*"3-F#8@Y;]ZX*2.'!8@V!@mcimail.com, the gateway decodes the binary part and turns it into a binary message segment. They've also changed their rates to make large messages cheaper: 1-500 characters $.50 501-1,000 characters add .10 1,001-10,000 characters add .10/1,000 characters 10,000 characters or greater add .05/1,000 characters Finally, they've added 9600 bps V.32 MNP, access, which is handy since binary files can be fairly large. The number is 800-967-9600 and there appears to be no connect time charge, the same as with their other 800 numbers. Kudos to MCI for doing such a thorough job on this useful new feature. Regards, John ------------------------------ From: dletcher@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (Drew Letcher) Subject: Trying to Locate the Telenet Company Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 00:02:00 GMT Does anyone know of how to contact the company that runs the Telenet public data network or other similar systems? We would like to hook up a host to the system so people can dial-in to our system just like people can dial-in to CompuServe. Drew Letcher | Specializing in PC network application programming. Systems Programmer | DOS, Netware, NetBIOS, IPX/SPX, etc. drew-letcher@uiowa.edu | [Moderator's Note: Telenet has been part of Sprint for a few years now. They are also the folks who operate PC Pursuit. Their corporate office is in Reston, VA. Phone 703-689-6000. But I'll tell you their connections are not cheap ... you need *big* traffic to justify the connection. PC Pursuit on the other hand is a real bargain. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #532 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa19293; 5 Jul 92 13:11 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA32082 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 11:31:04 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA31768 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 11:30:55 -0500 Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 11:30:55 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207051630.AA31768@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #533 TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Jul 92 11:31:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 533 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson More Details on Canadian Long Distance Competition (David Leibold) Phone Keypad Interfaces to Enhanced Telephone Services (H. Shrikumar) Data Out Port on Caller ID Box (Rick S. Tuzinowski) Caller ID via Switch Emulation? (Russ Latham) Bell South, NT Test New Services and Screen-Based Phone (FIDO via J Decker) Digital Cellular (FIDO via Jack Decker) Matching Vanity Phone Number and Zip Code (Nigel Allen) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 08:26:57 EDT From: David Leibold Subject: More Details on Canadian Long Distance Competition I reviewed much of the document known as Telecom Decision CRTC 92-12, otherwise known as the decision to allow competitive long distance carriers in Canada. Some interesting details come out of this decision: * Unitel, BCRL and Bell Canada/Stentor would need carrier identification codes (CICs) to allow for 10xxx and 950.xxxx dialing. Unitel wants three CICs, specifically. Bell Canada mentioned the concern that CICs will soon exhaust and that Bellcore is trying to reclaim old CICs and restrict carriers to only one CIC. * Unitel and BCRL also want prefix codes for 800 and 900 service, with at least one NXX code request per carrier per service code (ie. 800, 900). As for the 700 service code (currently in the U.S. each carrier can assign NXXs in 700 freely), Bell Canada wants to have the 700 NXXs in Canada co-ordinated by a proposed industry numbering plan group. It appears that Stentor (formerly Telecom Canada consortium) "will assign discrete NXXs within the 800 and 900 SACs in accordance with industry practice." Stentor is Bellcore's agent in Canada with respect to numbering plan matters. * Operator services are to be provided by the pre-subscribed (ie. default) carrier. Bell Canada did propose to have all 0+ traffic sent through its own TOPS switches where carrier preference will be handled from there, under a scheme known as Billed Party Preference (BPP). The CRTC decided that the BPP method would not be introduced at the outset, while prohibiting any interexchange carriers from connecting payphones unless tariffs are submitted that incorporate "adequate consumer protection in respect of rates, access and confidentiality of consumer information." * The CRTC requires all payphones to be able to access all carriers. For any payphones to be operated by Unitel, such phones are to provide access to local emergency (ie. 911) services. * Directory Assistance handling was a point of much agreement between the competitors and the incumbent telcos. Unitel and BCRL proposed to deliver 1+NPA+555.1212 calls over their networks to the terminating area code where the telco's Directory Assistance service would accept such calls. 800 Directory Assistance would be handled by Stentor as it is today, with Bell Canada supporting the addition of any Unitel 800 numbers to Stentor's 800 number database. * Unitel would bill calls from its default customers (ie. pre-subscribed phones to Unitel's service). Unitel wanted Bell Canada/BC Tel/existing telcos to handle the billing for "casual" calls (ie. from phones defaulting to a carrier other than Unitel) or calls billed to cards of the existing telcos. The telcos, needless to say, weren't thrilled at the prospect of having to handle some of the billing for Unitel. Unitel, in response, gave Southern New England Telephone as an example of a company that provides billing services to carriers under equal access arrangements. Furthermore, Unitel stated that Bell Canada, BC Tel, etc. already performed such billing functions for U.S. carriers, by reason of their interconnection. The CRTC weighed a few approached to the billing problem and decided that the respondent telcos (Bell, BC Tel, etc) should bill and collect charges for casual or non-default calls to competing carriers. Refusal to allow such a billing arrangement would imply an undue advantage for the telcos mainly due to the highly integrated nature of their billing systems. There were also privacy and security concerns over passing billing information from telco databases to competing carriers. * Unitel was denied its request to gain access to telco calling card databases to verify card numbers and to allow for Unitel calls to be placed on the telco calling card tab. The CRTC noted that calling cards are used mainly for long distance and could be considered a competitive tool, though calling card validation to U.S. services was seen as a convenience to Canadian travellers, rather than a reason to grant Unitel such validation access. * However, the CRTC did approve of allowing carriers to have access to line information database (LIDB) information, since collect and third-party calls have need of such verification to avoid fraud (eg. attempts to call payphones collect need to be blocked). The exact method of providing such verification was to be determined, as long as such information could be obtained by carriers without undue difficulty, while keeping confidentiality and security concerns in check. * CRTC has mandated joint technical committees (JTCs) among competitors and telcos to ensure proper relations and to ensure orderly introduction of new services. And those are some of the more technical details on how Canadian long distance competition will develop, notwithstanding appeals to the decision as announced by Bell Canada and BC Tel. dleibold@vm1.yorku.ca ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 03:15:27 GMT From: shri@iucaa.ernet.in (H. Shrikumar) Subject: Phone Keypad Interfaces to Enhanced Telephone Services > That is, *70 seems to pretty universally suppress call waiting, but I > don't know if the code to retrive messages from your answering service > is the same everywhere, North-America-wide, or just across a single > company's jurisdiction. Are there FCC standards for this, or CCITT > standards? Not the kind of thing that CCITT cares to standardize. Even the numbering plan is left to each administration. Only country codes are specified, but even then, as we all know, international access codes are left to local administration. CCITT does not believe in the dilution of national boundaries. BTW, it was interesting to hear abot PCS being tried in Ameritech areas. Wish they had selected this for India ... rather than the so very expensive GSM. (not that the GSM plan has taken off yet !! :-) shrikumar ( shri@iucaa.ernet.in ) ------------------------------ From: rick@lancc.uucp Subject: Data Out Port on Caller ID Box Date: 5 Jul 92 01:56:02 EST Organization: LANcc, Louisville KY I'm using a Bell South Products Caller-ID box (MHE20). It has a four pin modular jack on the back labeled "data out" but the manual gives no pinouts. Anybody know how it might be interfaced with a serial port? After calling Bell South and talking to another place about it I have been unsuccessful in finding the pinouts. It says in the manual "Incorrect serial connection will damage the unit" or else I'd just start trying combinations. Any help would be appreciated. rick@lancc.uucp (coplex!lancc!rick) rstuzi01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu rstuzi01@ulkyvx.BITNET Rick S. Tuzinowski * PO Box 5296 * Louisville KY 40255 ------------------------------ From: rlatham@hpmail1.fwrdc.rtsg.mot.com (Russ Latham) Subject: Caller ID via Switch Emulation? Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 00:40:27 CDT Someone was recently telling me that Radio Shack had a device on the market not too long ago (before it was pulled for legal reasons) that you could connect to your home telephone line, and when someone would call you, the device would send a message request to the terminating central office switch requesting the calling number identification. This was done in the same way that the terminating CO would request that info from the originating CO. The switch would then send the identification data on your home phone line, for decoding by the device. The device was then able to display the phone number of the person calling you (basically the same thing that Caller-ID does). Is it possible to send such requests through the standard home phone line, to the CO telephone switch? I personally don't believe it can be done. Any information appreciated ... Thanks, Russ Latham Motorola, Inc. rlatham@mailbox.fwrdc.rtsg.mot.com -or- latham@taupe.rtsg.mot.com [Moderator's Note: Believe me, if there were such a device on the market, and if it were possible to get the calling party's number by merely asking the CO to give it to you, such a device would be the best seller in Radio Shack's history. I have never seen anything like this in the RS catalog. Anyone want to comment on whether or not it is possible to trick a CO into handing you that information? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 00:52:08 CST From: Jack Decker Subject: Bell South, NT Test New Services and Screen-Based Phones This message was seen in the Fidonet MDF echo: * From : Dan J. Rudiak, 1:134/68 (22 Jun 92 06:22) * To : All * Subj : Bell South, NT Test New 920616 BellSouth, NT Test New Services and Screen-based Phones Chicago, June 16 -- BellSouth and Northern Telecom today announced a market test in which consumers will use display-based residential telephone services designed to make calling features easy and convenient to use. The market test involves advanced services provided on a DMS-SuperNode central office switch and prototype screen-based phones, all from Northern Telecom. The screen on the phones will display call options generated by the switch in BellSouth's central office. During the test, BellSouth will gather market research data on combinations of services, including Call Waiting, Caller ID, Caller ID-Deluxe (calling name identification) and the company's MemoryCall service (voice mail), as well as data on some new services. Approximately 500 customers will participate in the test. This is the first network-based market test of interactive services consistent with the proposed framework of Bellcore's Analog Display Services Interface (ADSI) Technical Advisory. ADSI calls for service information to be delivered to a user's phone using existing Custom Local Area Signaling Service (CLASS) technology and from the phone using touch-tone dialing. Because ADSI uses existing technology, phone companies and other information service providers can deploy services without investing in new computer platforms. "In developing the phone of the future, it is important for us to produce equipment that is easy to use, works well with current and future services and meets cost expectations," said David Thomson, general manager, Residential and Business Terminals and Services, Northern Telecom Inc. Customers will use a new enhanced service combining Call Waiting with Caller ID that lets them see who is calling without interrupting their current call. In some of these homes, the customer will be able to push one of the network-defined buttons to deliver a short message to the second caller or direct the caller to leave a message. Customers will be able to see both the incoming calling number and the name associated with that number on their telephone sets. Additional features to be tested include Call Log and Visual Call Block. Call Log allows customers to review the names and numbers associated with unanswered calls. Unlike call logging on today's Caller ID telephones and adjuncts, the network-based Call Log feature also records calls that were forwarded to another number or which received a busy signal. Visual Call Block lets customers view and edit a list of numbers associated with callers from whom they do not wish to receive calls. Today's Call Block service requires users to edit this list by listening to audio commands and pushing the appropriate keys. Jack Huber, assistant vice president, Market Research for BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc., said that listening to customers is crucial in the development of new services in the 1990s. "We have a modern network that can deliver a number of services to the home," he said. "If we are to be successful, however, we must know what services people want and -- just as important -- what they are willing to pay for them. We hope that this test will result in new service offerings for our customers." "This market test will demonstrate the power of creating a link between public network-based services and telephones in the home," said Paul Brant, assistant vice president, Northern Telecom Public Networks. The prototype phones used in the test feature a three-line screen that displays prompts and context-sensitive soft-keys to make activating and using services easy. Soft keys, similar to buttons found on bank automatic teller machines, change their function as the user progresses through a service. The user can also move around the screen using vertical and horizontal scroll buttons. A speaker lets the user monitor the progress of a call and respond to both visually displayed and audible prompts. BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc., with headquarters in Atlanta and Birmingham, provides unified direction and support for the local telecommunications operations of BellSouth in the southeastern United States. BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. does business as Southern Bell in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida and as South Central Bell in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. These companies serve over 18 million local telephone lines and provide local exchange and intraLATA (Local Access and Transport Area) long distance service over one of the most modern telecommunications networks in the world. Northern Telecom is a leading supplier of telecommunications switching equipment to telephone companies and offers a full range of CLASS, Custom Calling Features and other advanced services. Northern Telecom has been manufacturing and marketing telephones since 1882. This market test supports the company's goal of simplifying access to telephone network features and services. * BWave/QWK v0.96 * Huc Accedit Zambonis. --- Maximus/2 2.00 * Origin: The Computer Connection BBS (1:134/68) -------- Jack Decker jack@myamiga.mixcom.com FidoNet 1:154/8 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 00:50:35 CST From: Jack Decker Subject: Digital Cellular The following message was seen in the Fidonet MDF echomail conference. AGT = Alberta Government Telephone, the provincial telephone company in Alberta. * From : Bill Boogaart, 1:134/14 (26 Jun 92 21:38) * To : All * Subj : Digital Cellular AGT Cellular yesterday announced the first North American digital cellular service, and the world's first cellular service meeting the industry endorsed TDMA standards. Digital cellular customers benefit from a higher level of call security, improved network access, improved hand-off between adjacent cells, and noise free digital transmission. The first to benefit are the AGT cellular subscribers in Calgary, with the service becoming available to the rest of Alberta before the end of August. The new digital cellular phones will operate in both digital and analog modes. Present analog phones will be compatible with the digital technology until the year 2000 when analog service will be phased out. Bill msged 2.07 Origin: Gorre & Daphetid BBS - Calgary AB Canada HST DS (1:134/14) ----------- Jack Decker jack@myamiga.mixcom.com FidoNet 1:154/8 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 03:29:44 -0400 From: Nigel.Allen@f438.n250.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Nigel Allen) Subject: Matching Vanity Phone Number and Zip Code Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto The American College of Emergency Physicians has a telephone number ending in 911. (The full number is (214) 250-0911.) I thought at first that this might be an amusing coincidence, but then I saw that the group's mailing address was P.O. Box 619911, Dallas TX 75261-9911: both the P.O. Box number and the nine-digit zip code also end in 911. (Somehow, I had thought that nine-digit zip codes ending in 99xx were reserved for internal U.S. Postal Service use, but I guess not. The last three or four digits of the nine-digit zip code for a P.O. Box normally match the last three or four digits of the P.O. Box itself.) Nigel Allen nigel.allen@f438.n250.z1.fidonet.org via FidoNet node 1:250/98 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #533 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa22151; 5 Jul 92 14:17 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA17605 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 12:38:23 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA30689 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 12:38:15 -0500 Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 12:38:15 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207051738.AA30689@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #534 TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Jul 92 12:38:17 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 534 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! (Phydeaux) Sprint (Actually MCI) Bill Case (Charlie Mingo) Check Digits (Rich Goldschmidt) Looking For SS-7 Books (James R. Saker Jr.) Re: ISDN Mailing Lists (Mike Bray) Re: With NETel, is it an UPgrade or a DOWNgrade? (Jonathan A. Solomon) Re: Funny Advertising Goof-ups (Wrong Numbers) (Charles Stephens) Re: Pac*Bell Posturing (John Higdon) Re: Cellular / Video Help! (John Rice) Re: NER-VOUS Actually NER-xxxx (Patrick Tufts) Re: ISDN Availability to Residence Customers in Chicago Area (John Higdon) Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine (Jim Rees) Re: Payphones With Bogus DTMF Tones? (David Sternlight) Re: Telecomics (Charles Stephens) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 00:11:09 -0700 Subject: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! Reply-To: reb@Ingres.COM Organization: E 4th St Home For The Overeducated Underemployed - Chicago Div. From: reb@ingres.com (Phydeaux) Some of you may remember about a month ago when I posted that a friend had called me from a GTE Airphone on an AT&T 'call me' card I had given him. Well, today our phone bill arrived and the plot thickened. Over $50 in AT&T calls from GTE Airphone appeared on the June phone bill. Only one of these calls was made to the "one number" authorized for the card. The rest were made to numbers across the USA. First AT&T told me that it was impossible for the all of calls to have been made with the "call me" card because it was only authorized to my number. (Why did they think I was calling?) The AT&T representative told me, "The calls must have been made using your Illinois Bell card." Sure, when all else fails pass the buck. After some insistance on my part she checked into it a little further and told me that "There is a small possibility that GTE Airphone let the calls go through. So we will credit you for $43.26..." all but the one call made to my house. Fine. 20 minutes on the phone for them to admit to a *possible* mistake and to credit me. What *really* got my goat was what she told me next. It seems that even though the card is a new-fangled AT&T card with *no* trace of what my home number on it, and contrary to *ALL* the marketing hype about how the card can *ONLY* be used to call *one* number, it can "... Still be used by some carriers to numbers other than the one specified." Obviously this includes GTE Airphone. I thought the whole idea of these new cards was so that the billing verification *HAD* to go through AT&T, who would catch fraudulent use. I mean what's the point in issuing millions of new cards and touting a wonderful new system of verification if you're not going to check the verification completely? To top this all off, I was told that they "COULD NOT GUARANTEE" that additional calls to numbers other than the one "call me" number would be blocked and that A) If I did not like this I could cancel my card and B) If any such charges *did* appear on the bill that they would *NOT* give me credit for them. I could go into my recent experiences with AT&T's Universal Card customer "service" but I won't ... reb -- *-=#= Phydeaux =#=-* reb@ingres.com or reb%ingres.com@lll-winken.llnl.GOV ICBM: 41.55N 87.40W h:828 South May Street Chicago, IL 60607 312-733-3090 w:reb Ingres 10255 West Higgins Road Suite 500 Rosemont, IL 60018 708-803-9500 ------------------------------ From: Charlie.Mingo@p4218.f70.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Charlie Mingo) Date: Sun, 05 Jul 1992 02:10:19 -0500 Subject: Sprint (Actually MCI) Bill Case wb8foz@SCL.CWRU.Edu (David Lesher) writes: > This is a bit out of date, but some time back there was a thread about > a "Fatal Attraction" type case in which a Sprint bill was a vital > piece of evidence. The defense introduced one bill, and the > prosecutation another. The defense's version came under scrutiny > because it lacked the proper advertising blurp line for that month. > Well, I read that the defendant was convicted, and additional charges > were pending regarding forgery of evidence. Just to fill in a few details ... The woman's name was Carolyn (?) Warmus, a public school teacher who was having an affair with another (married) teacher. She was charged when her lover's wife was murdered. This all took place back in 1986 (or thereabouts). The first trial was two years ago. The defense introduced an MCI (not Sprint) bill to establish that she was in Connecticut when the prosecution witness had testified she was purchasing ammo in New Jersey (using the identification of Warmus's co-worker who had had it stolen the day before). The prosecution tried to discredit the MCI bill, but the jury was still hung, so they had to have a retrial. At the second trial a few months ago, she was convicted of murder (with no phone bill in evidence) and she was sentenced just last week to (I believe) 25 to life. I don't think they bother going after lifers for perjury. ------------------------------ From: golds@fjc.GOV (Rich Goldschmidt) Subject: Check Digits Date: 5 Jul 92 16:53:11 GMT Organization: Federal Judicial Center, Washington, D.C. I am looking for source code for a relatively well know and understood problem. I want to use check digits to make sure that data entry of a relatively short string of numbers (ten digits or less) using either OCR or typing does not create an error in the data. It must be sensitive to transposed adjacent digits, the most common typing error. I need code to add the check digits to the outgoing string, and code to verify the accuracy of the incoming data entered. Any pointers are welcomed. Please respond via email since I do not usually read all the groups posted to. Thanks. Rich Goldschmidt: uunet!fjcp60!golds or golds@teo.ao.gov Disclaimer: I don't speak for the government, and it doesn't speak for me... ------------------------------ From: jsaker@odin.unomaha.edu (James R. Saker Jr.) Subject: Looking For SS-7 Books Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 00:16:59 GMT I'm looking for some good reading material on Signaling System 7 (SS7) and also on packet switching. Could anyone recommend recent books they've read on these subjects? Thanks. Jamie Saker jsaker@odin.unomaha.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 00:14:08 PDT From: mike@camphq.FIDONET.ORG (Mike Bray) Subject: Re: ISDN Mailing Lists A few Digests ago, someone asked about a mailing list for ISDN topics. There are two independent ones. Contact: isdn-request@List.Prime.COM and / or Per.Sigmond@teknologi.agderforskning.no ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 00:56:43 EDT From: jsol@klinzhai.rutgers.edu (Jonathan A. Solomon) Subject: With NETel, is it an UPgrade or a DOWNgrade? The problem you have is that NET service to Boston is less expensive than the service to your local calling area across the area code boundary. So, if you get Metropolitan service you will get hundreds and hundreds of exchanges local, many in 508. I think Waltham has the biggest LCA of the whole mess. If you don't call Boston you can save about $10/month by ordering suburban service. Calls to Cambridge are free but Boston is about a two message unit call. Unlimited local service would be just Waltham and the immediate vicinity, but watch out. You can still call Boston or Cambridge without a 1+ and it costs! Measured service is the only service which is required to be completely uniform, given that if you order measured and metropolitan you can receive all your calls on the measured line for next to nothing and use your metro line for data. Unlimited local is a decent compromise but make sure you know what you want. Metro: $25 Suburban: $17 Unlimited local: $12 Measured $3 If you want more you can get "Bay State East" (formerly Bay State Service). This service will let you call into the 508 lata for less. This is great for data users if you call, say, mMrlborough. It INCLUDES metro service; you really get a bargain on it. Bay State costs about $29-30 plus gouges. jsol [Moderator's Note: Jon Solomon was the founder of TELECOM Digest, and the Moderator here from 1981-1988. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Funny Advertising Goof-ups (Wrong Numbers) From: cfs@cowpas.waffle.atl.ga.us (Charles Stephens) Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 00:54:58 EDT Organization: COW Pastures > [Moderator's Note: The passing of William Gaines was a loss for > everyone who enjoyed his humor. Does anyone know who is/will be taking > over the reigns at {Mad}? PAT] Oh no! How horrible! I know who ever it is, {Mad} will probably make him the butt of Max Korn jokes. Oh well, I guess he would want it that way. Question: how did he die? Charles Stephens, SysOp COW Pastures BBS, Kennesaw, GA +1 404 421 0764 cfs@cowpas.waffle.atl.ga.us [Moderator's Note: I guess it was just from old age. I don't know what the owners will do now with {Mad}. I think Time-Warner is the parent company, and they always let Gaines do his thing independent of the rest of the Corporation, ie no advertising, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 22:34 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Pac*Bell Posturing leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) writes: > I'd like to pose another related question: How can it be an invasion > of privacy for people to get your phone number (via Caller-ID or > whatever) if the phone company "owns" the number? What real rights > does the phone user have regarding their home phone number? The only "invasion of privacy" involved is to the called party. It is HIS privacy that is disturbed with the telephone rings, his activities disrupted, sleep terminated, or whatever. THIS is invasion of privacy. When the caller's number is displayed to the called party, the caller relinquishes his ANONYMITY, not his privacy. The caller is always in control. He is the one who makes the decision to call. He determines the time of the call. He determines the destination of the call. He knows the number of the called party. Please, once again: Caller-ID is NOT a privacy issue; it is an anonymity issue. Further discussions may or may not be in order concerning a person's right to remain anonymous. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! [Moderator's Note: Follow-ups should be directed to comp.privacy if you please. And if you aren't pleased, see Figure 1. More on that later today. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rice@ttd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: Cellular / Video Help! Organization: Teradyne Inc., Telecommunications Division Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 03:46:29 GMT In article , Todd.Langel@f230.n3603. z1.FIDONET.ORG (Todd Langel) writes: > (Also - I am Guessing that NTSC stands for National Television > Standard C????????) Anyone??? In Europe, they define "NTSC" as "Never The Same Color" John Rice K9IJ "Did I say that ?" I must have, but It was rice@ttd.teradyne.com MY opinion only, no one else's...Especially (708)-940-9000 - (work) Not my Employer's.... (708)-438-7011 - (home) ------------------------------ From: zippy@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Patrick Tufts) Subject: Re: NER-VOUS Actually NER-xxxx Organization: Brandeis University Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 06:57:05 GMT In Boston, NER-xxxx gets you the time of day (where xxxx is any four digits). Pat ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 01:29 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: ISDN Availability to Residence Customers in Chicago Area nickless@antares.mcs.anl.gov (Bill Nickless) writes: > It's sensitive to usage, to the tune of $6/hour. Of course, if you > use the "Centrex" offering, and set up "extensions" out in the various > places you want to connect, then it's not sensitive to usage. The same is true for Pac*Bell's offering, but if you call outside of your Centrex group, you do not pay anything other than normal usage. If that means local then it is $0.60/hr. Toll is the going rate. I would not be real excited about $6/hour for a local call! > Evidently Ameritech has committed to 80% of subscribers having ISDN > available by 1995. This is supposedly better than the other RBOC's, > but nothing like Germany or Japan. Oh, and how IS it in Germany and Japan? I suspect that ISDN availability in Japan is not what you might think. And I know for a certainty that ordinary old POTS is far superior here. > So I guess I'm retracting my grumbling. I can still gripe that the CO > that serves my house isn't ISDN capable, but it might/should happen > eventually. And I guess that I will partially retract my grumbling. My Pac*Bell CO IS ISDN equipped; I live within the requisite distance; and I could have it installed next week if I became willing to pay business rates on the two lines. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ From: rees@dabo.citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees) Subject: Re: Strange Message on Answering Machine Reply-To: Jim.Rees@umich.edu Organization: University of Michigan IFS Project Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 14:31:29 GMT In article , shri@iucaa.ernet.in (H. Shrikumar) writes: > How does the CPC work ? It's a brief interruption in loop current signalling that the far end has disconnected. > Too sad you in US don't have polarity reversal on your calls !! But we used to, right? I can remember seeing polarity reversal as answer supervision back before our CO cut over to a 1A ESS. I don't know what the switch was back then, and I don't remember whether we got this on all calls, just local calls, or just calls within the switch. I'm also pretty sure we used to get it on our 1 ESS, which is still in service but no longer does this. The 1 used to reverse the polarity briefly then switch it back to normal, but the electromechanical switch just left it reversed. I remember this because we had a 2500 set with no polarity guard. Am I right or am I imagining this? > (After a few posts of India bashing, I could not help getting a little > patriotic!) The Indian phone system is not all bad. Although it can be very difficult to make a local phone call in the big cities (the standard greeting is "Hello?" : "Hello, is it 2345678?" to make sure you got the number you dialled), international calls from smaller towns are a snap. And you can pay cash for a phone call, something you can't do here in the oh-so-high-tech US of A. Speaking of which, exactly how does a visitor to the US make a phone call back home? [Moderator's Note: Well all I know is when I try to call India late on Sunday evening for business at my firm (Monday morning over there) I ask the AT&T operator for New Delhi directory assistance and always get a stunned silence as if she is thinking to herself, "Why me, Lord? ...". Speaking of *long* waits for DA, I love that new gimmick being used in France: Where before DA rang endlessly with a five minute wait not uncommon, now we get connected immediatly to a holding queue, with a recorded message of about six bars of music and a man speaking English with a British accent saying "Telecom Services! Please hold ... We're trying to extend your call! ..." and this eight or ten second blurb repeats not once ... not twice ... but endlessly, with only a five second or so pause between cycles. It repeated 67 times (yes, I counted them out of boredom) the other day before I was extended to DA. PAT] ------------------------------ From: analyst@netcom.com (David Sternlight) Subject: Re: Payphones With Bogus DTMF Tones? Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 16:17:24 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) In article writes: > I was in Whitefish, Montana at a payphone a couple of days ago, (in a > casino, perhaps indicitively) trying to make a long distance call to > Missoula. Being wise to the usual scams, I prefixed things with 10288+ > but wasn't surprised to note that it was intercepted with "your call > cannot be completed as dialed". What was strange though, was that the > DTMF tones appears to have been hacked: (after dialing numbers often > enough, you get to recognise the tones.) There's an AT&T 800 number for reporting such things. Dunno what it is but you could start with 800-CALL-ATT and see if they do. AT&T's attornies are death on this sort of thing, and will go after them. David Sternlight analyst@netcom.COM Netcom - Online Communication Services San Jose, CA ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Telecomics From: cfs@cowpas.waffle.atl.ga.us (Charles Stephens) Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 09:20:33 EDT Organization: COW Pastures Monday June 29 1992, David Leibold writes: > Any other examples of telecom references in the funnies? In another Far Side you see a split view of an operator who is says, "Will you except a collect call from Mr. Aaaaeeeeeeeeeee?" and on the other side you see an office with the phone cord going out the window. Hilarious. Charles Stephens, SysOp COW Pastures BBS, Kennesaw, GA +1 404 421 0764 cfs@cowpas.waffle.atl.ga.us ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #534 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa24582; 5 Jul 92 15:16 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA22077 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 13:34:45 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA08891 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 13:34:37 -0500 Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 13:34:37 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207051834.AA08891@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #535 TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Jul 92 13:34:40 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 535 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Administrivia: Things Seem Back to Normal (TELECOM Moderator) New 900 Gimmick: Psychoanalysis by Phone (TELECOM Moderator) "Telephone Scrambler" Plans Available (Stephen Friedl) Re: Sky Pager (ghadsal@american.edu) Summary Re: Interesting Phone Circuit (Augustine Cano) Centel Problem in NC (Bill Huttig) x00 Numbers and EasyReach (Bill Huttig) Re: EasyReach 700 Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (John Higdon) See Figure 1 (Mike Bray) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 12:46:07 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Subject: Administrivia: Things Seem Back to Normal This is just a note to say the various production problems here of the past week seem to be corrected, and Digest output has run smoothly all day yesterday and today. There was quite a bit of backlogged stuff I was unable to use, but the queue has been zeroed out once again. Maybe it will stay that way, at least until sometime tonight! :) PAT ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 13:03:37 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Subject: New 900 Gimmick: Psychoanalysis by Phone If you feel down in the dumps, and find that Dial-A-Prayer, phone sex or the suicide hotline isn't enough, we now have a service based in Chicago called Dial-A-Shrink. Psychiatrists on duty around the clock will gladly listen to your troubles for $3 per minute. The service, which was launched in June, invites callers to pour out their troubles to licensed counselors who will provide analysis and advice over the phone. There is no time limit of course; you are free to stay on line for a full hour -- not the fifty minutes normally given in 'an hour' reclining on the couch in your analyst's office. The service, known as CounseLink, is intended for people too shy or busy to go to an office, lie down and talk about themselves. To assure confidentiality, fees will appear on your telephone bill under the name Telelink Companies, Inc. of Des Plaines, IL. The service is different from the many telephone hot lines that offer counseling for people in crisis. Hot line counselors, whose services are usually free to the caller, talk to people about suicide, abortion, drugs or other serious problems. According to Gerri Jakobs, CounseLink's administrative director, while counselors will talk to people in crises, it is expected that most callers will have less pressing problems, such as problems in your marriage. They'll help you try to find solutions. CounseLink expects many or most of its calls to be the sort of thing Ann Landers would discuss with readers. Callers to 1-900-454-HELP (454-4357) will hear a recording describing the $3 per minute charge and then be switched to the first available counselor. If all counselors are busy, the caller will be advised to call later and won't be charged for the call. In defense of the $3 fee per minute, CounseLink points out that their rate per hour is $180, comparable to the charge for psychoanalysis in the psychiatrist's office ... but you do get a full hour, not just 50 minutes. Some people have to be in therapy for years ... I know a couple like that myself. PAT ------------------------------ Subject: "Telephone Scrambler" Plans Available Date: 5 Jul 92 02:45:25 PDT (Sun) From: friedl@mtndew.Tustin.CA.US (Stephen Friedl) Hi folks, The August, 1992 issue of {Radio-Electronics} (soon to be called {Electronics Now}) has plans for a telephone scrambler. It uses the Standard Microsystems COM9046 scrambler/descrambler IC, and the article has the following description of it: "To render the speech channels unintelligible, the incoming audio signal is passed through a GTE phone switch..." No, wait! That's not it! Let's try to get it right this time: "The IC contains two identical speech channels that perform full-duplex operation when connected between two telephones. Each channel is capable of scrambling and descrambling voice communications. "To render the speech channels unintelligble, the incoming audio signal is inverted by the ICs internal double-sideband modulator. While one channel accepts the normal frequency spectrum from the handset microphone, inverts and transmits it, the other channel accepts the incoming inverted signal, normalizes and sends it to the handset speaker." That's more like it :-) The plans have all the stuff you need to make it -- schematic, circuit board diagrams, and they sell a kit for about $60, an assembled and tested unit for $80, and the COM9046 chip by itself for $18. Just thought there might be interest ... Stephen J Friedl | Software Consultant | Tustin, CA | +1 714 544 6561 3b2-kind-of-guy | I speak for me ONLY | KA8CMY | uunet!mtndew!friedl ------------------------------ Organization: The American University - University Computing Center Date: Sunday, 5 Jul 1992 12:21:44 EDT From: GHADSAL@AMERICAN.EDU Subject: Re: Sky Pager Here goes a simple explaination, if there is such a thing, of a paging system. A paging system has a "paging terminal" (BBL Industries is the standard) and a few "towers" that transmitt the digitally (voice is analog) coded information to radio receivers (pagers). SkyTel has established a national data network via leased lines and satellite (redundant) from their paging terminal and towers. As a single tower can cost *alot* to put up (could be put on an established tower) and the frequencies SkyTel has been alotted by the FCC (National Radio Paging Freq's) are in the 90 0 MHz range the "economic economy of Scale" is *very high*; SkyTel initally put all their towers (antenna) around large metropolitan airports. Thus, their claim that "you can get a page inside your plane" is true. As time and money has increased (Bell South bought a *bunch of them*) SkyTel has increased the total number of their towers and cities of coverage. In most major metropolitan cities they have begun to "saturate" the area for better coverage (less "holes"). As of this date SkyTel offers only Digital Paging, howe rever I *know* they have both voice and Alphanumeric paging capabilities. Will they release them for the common user? I dunno, probably as a premium. National Paging vendors are; SkyTel (MTel), PageNet (regional), Metromedia (re gional & SWBT), MetroCall (regional), and another national using a flaky FM network called QUE. About two years ago a *great* network went belly up calle d Metrocast (all alpha and international). Oh! International paging: SkyTel offers primarily US and Canada (eastern) only but they have established relations with a few UK, German, and African companies to potentially start up there too. International paging is gonna cost you through the *ear*. Good Luck, email me if you like. ------------------------------ Subject: Summary: Re: Interesting Phone Circuit Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 10:53:10 CDT From: afc@shibaya.lonestar.ORG (Augustine Cano) First of all, thanks to those who replied to my posting. It turns out that what I thought was a non-standard circuit (possibly the famous Harmonica bug) was in fact a polarity guard used in old WE phones to insure that the touch tone pad worked when the phone was hooked up either way. My visual inspection also got a couple of the components wrong. The correct schematic (thanks to Michael Sullivan) follows: inductor 75 ohms bridge rectifier brown wire --0-\\\\\\\\-+-R3---+-----------+--------+ | | | | --- --- | / \ \ / | --- --- --- | | capacitor --- -----+ +----- | white | | green | wire --- --- wire | \ / / \ | --- --- | | | white wire --0--R1--+---R2-----+-----------+--------+ 3.9 3.9 ohms ohms Now, this circuit makes more sense! Augustine Cano INTERNET: afc@shibaya.lonestar.org UUCP: ...!{ernest,egsner}!shibaya!afc ------------------------------ From: wah@zach.fit.edu ( Bill Huttig) Subject: Centel Problem in NC Date: 5 Jul 92 18:07:42 GMT Organization: Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne USA I have a friend in Walkertown, NC who has Centel phone service. She received a new phone book today and her unlisted/unpublished number was listed with her full address. Does she have any legal recoarse against Centel? (She has been paying a monthly fee not to be listed.) [Moderator's Note: She is entitled to (a) keep her existing number and discontinue paying the monthly fee for non-pub service or (b) to have her number changed at no expense to herself and some method of referring calls to her new number if desired. She probably would not want the referral, since anyone looking in the book and calling her old number would get the new one ... but that is her choice. PAT] ------------------------------ From: wah@zach.fit.edu (Bill Huttig) Subject: x00 Numbers and EasyReach Date: 5 Jul 92 18:15:27 GMT Organization: Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne USA I was wondering what the plan was when the 800 numbers run out? Why was a new x00 area code not opened for universal numbers? I would like to see 500/300 open for EasyReach type services and 400/600/200 for toll-free type services ... maybe set one for voice only calls and one for data only calls (fax, modem, digital video etc) in each catagory. That would leave 700 for each carrier's internal use and solve the EasyReach Problem. Maybe dial as a 500 -EEE-NNNN the caller paid and 600-EEE-NNNN the called party pay. (Optional PIN required or a pre-selected list of numbers that can call). Bill ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 11:11 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach neihart@ga.com (Carl Neihart) writes: > Unfortunately, after getting the info on the 700 number, the whole > reason I got the number in the first place was negated - [Long diatribe about how AT&T is bad and wrong for creatively using the 700 service the way God and Bellcore intended, deleted.] I thought Carl would be discussing the REAL reason for the subject title. The two deficiencies with the service are related: the calling telephone must be FGD compliant; and there are some (even FGD compliant) offices that seem to have a problem with 700 implementation. Naturally, certain of my associates had to be first on the block with this service. But I find that my desert hideaway (Contel) cannot call out to these numbers. Oddly enough 700 555-4141 works just fine but nothing else does in the 700 block. The GTE influence is beginning to make itself known in Contel Land. Calls to repair service result in nonsense explanations as to why it does not work (and why it is not telco's fault). Example: there is something wrong with the telephone instrument at the 700 subscriber's end. It might be interesting to see if there are other areas that cannot "reach out" to an EasyReach number that should in fact be able to. Remember, if you cannot dial 10XXX codes, you probably cannot call one of these numbers. Otherwise, it should work just fine. Personally, I think EasyReach is a lot of bang for the buck. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 02:22:30 PDT From: mike@camphq.FIDONET.ORG (Mike Bray) Subject: See Figure 1 I wish I could remember who sent this to me, and when they did, but I don't. :( So see figure 1. :) AT&T Customer Service Memorandum Please stop submitting compliants. This is our system. We designed it, we built it, and we use it more than you do. If there are some features you think might be missing, if the system isn't as effective as you think it could be, TOUGH! Give it back, we don't need you. See figure 1. *-------------------------------* | _ | | { } | | | | | | | | | | .-.| |.-. | | .-| | | |.-. | | | | | ; | | \ ; | | \ ; | | | : | | | | | | | | | | | *-------------------------------* Figure 1. Forget about your silly problem, let's take a look at some of the features of your AT&T computer system. * Options We've got lots of them. So many in fact, that you would need two strong people to carry around the documentation if we had bothered to write it. So many that even we don't know what most of them do. Don't ask us for any of these options, because we probably can't find the PEC for it anyway. Even if we find the PEC, we probably can't order it either (just TRY asking for nroff on a 3B2). If you don't like it, call Technologies. They'll tell you to see Figure 1. * Hot Lines If you need technical help, call our hotline. You say that the guy at the other end doesn't know any more than you do? Too bad. If we could afford to pay qualified people to answer the phones, we'd be paying them to make our computers work in the first place. Besides, you don't ever need to do anything sophisticated anyway. If you do, see Figure 1. * Integrated Voice and Data What the hell is integrated voice and data? All it means is that you can talk on the phone while you are typing on your terminal. So what if the terminal and the phone aren't integrated; that's not what we advertise. Besides, you probably can't even walk and chew gum at the same time, much less talk and type. If you can, see Figure 1. * Unix We invented it; it's perfect, and we're the only ones who do it right. We're so happy with it, we put it on every kind of computer we make. We even try to keep it the same from release to release, but usually we blow it. If you want a computer with stable filesystems, get a VAX. Another thing: those nerds from Berkeley are just troublemaking hackers who have a productivity complex. They took our operating system and made it useful, so we told them to see Figure 1. * Applications Software We give you MS-word; what else do you want? So what if it is a clumsy port from another operating system, it works doesn't it? Well, OK, it sort of works. If you want applications software, get an IBM PC. You can get lots of it and they even support it sometimes. If you already bought one of our computers and are unsatisfied, you're stuck with it. We spoke with our applications software people about this, and they think a lot like we do; they said "see Figure 1." * Shells We have two shells; one we sell and one we use. The Bourne shell is plenty good for trivial little hacks, which is all you do anyway. Don't ask for the Korn shell either. It's great, everybody at AT&T has a copy, but we won't give it to you. Besides, if you want to do anything important, write it in C. We told our shell programmers to see Figure 1 a long time ago. * The C Programming Language We like it so much we named a book after it. You can do anything our machines can do, which is not very much. Where else can you put so much unreadable code in such a small space? Besides, you probably should be programming in the shell anyway; C is too hard for you. We told our C programmers to see Figure 1 a long time ago anyway. * Floating Point Hardware We have the WE32106 Math Accelerator Unit, one of the fastest chips around. It's so special that you need a special compiler to use it. Nobody knows how to get you a copy of the compiler? That's right. We don't release it because we are writing another one. When it's ready, we might give it to you, but probably not. In the meantime, you have to stick with the interpreter, live with the slowness, and see Figure 1. * Support We have thousands of service people out there, but most of them are busy. If your computer breaks, you will just have to wait. Our techs are rehashed phone installers, so don't expect them to be very helpful unless it involves tip and ring. Oh, if something breaks between 5:00 PM and 9:00 the next morning, don't waste your time calling us, we're out. We also take lots of lunch breaks. If you need real support, see Figure 1. In conclusion, stuff your complaint. Love your AT&T computer or leave it, but don't bitch to us. We don't give a shit. We don't have to. We're the phone company. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #535 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa26422; 5 Jul 92 16:08 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA25852 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 14:28:43 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA09306 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 5 Jul 1992 14:28:36 -0500 Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 14:28:36 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207051928.AA09306@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #536 TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Jul 92 14:28:31 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 536 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Ringer Equivalency Numbers (Henning Schulzrinne) Workshop: Designing Telecommunications Art Events (Adele Julia Ponty) Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 (Pushpendra Mohta) Multi-Line Phones in a Home Environment (Bill Seward) Per Call Charge on Caller-ID Dropped in Michigan (Jack Decker) Re: "Legal" Phreaking? (Paul Houle) Seeking Cell Relay Standards (Ruben M. Marquez-Villegas) Wiring Standards Information Wanted (Gerard White) Really GOOD Speakerphones Wanted (Franklin Antonio) Crimestoppers Textbook (Edward Floden) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: hgschulz@gaia.cs.umass.edu (Henning Schulzrinne) Subject: Re: Ringer Equivalency Numbers Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 12:18:46 EDT Even though the central office may still supply ringing current even with a large total REN, some not-so-well-designed modems may not pick up with the reduced ringing voltage. I learned this the hard way: I had just purchased and installed a fax modem (Dallas Fax). The next night at 2 and 3 AM I got weird phone calls, with nobody answering, sometimes with tones. I figured that it might be a fax machine, turned on the computer, but could not get the fax modem to pick up the connection. A call to the Dallas Fax tech assistance didn't get me anywhere except advice to return the unit. For some reason, I got the idea to to disconnect one of our three phones (all REN 1.0, btw) and things started to work. Afterwards, I just disconnected the ringer in one of the old 500-style phones -- no need to have the whole house ringing. The ironic part of the story: the calls in the middle of the night were from my father, whose office fax machine was dutifully trying again and again and again to reach me. I told him to use my office fax number instead from now on ... Henning Schulzrinne (hgschulz@cs.umass.edu) [MIME mail welcome] Dept. of CS and Dept. of ECE; Univ. of Massachusetts at Amherst Amherst, MA 01003 - USA === phone: +1 (413) 545-3179 (EST); FAX: (413) 545-1249 ------------------------------ From: aponty@utcs.utoronto.ca (Adele Julia Ponty) Subject: Workshop: Designing Telecommunications Art Events Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 12:35:26 -0400 Designing TELECOMMUNICATIONS ART Events An advanced workshop with Brazilian artist Artur Matuck Workshop fee $75.00 Location: InterAccess 1179A King St. W., Toronto phone 416-535-8601 Inter/Access is pleased to present a workshop for artists who are interested in producing telecommunications projects. The workshop will be conducted by Brazilian artist Artur Matuck, assistant professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the School of Communications and Arts, University of San Paolo, Brazil. Artur is a respected artist and teacher who has produced numerous telecommunications projects. Most notably, the REFLUX PROJECT for the 21st San Paolo Biennial. In this intensive seven-day workshop, Artur will discuss the historical, theoretical technical and aesthetic aspects of telecommunications art. He will also assist participants in the development of a telecommunications event. The workshop will be conducted in two parts. Part One will take place July 6th through 10th. Originally planned for 7-10 pm, the hours can be altered to suit the participants. A number of discussions, demonstrations and hands-on activities will be offered. Additionally, critiques and evaluations of former telecommunications events will lead to the design of participants projects. The second part of the workshop will take place on July 23rd and 24th, hours again flexible but planned for 7-10 pm. This segment will focus on the actual production and final analysis of the events, designed and planned in the first part. To register for this workshop, call 416-535-8601 or contact Dale Barrett for further information. ------------------------------ From: pushp@nic.cerf.net (Pushpendra Mohta) Subject: Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 Date: 5 Jul 92 10:22:45 GMT Organization: CERFnet In article bms@penguin.eng.pyramid.com (Bruce Schlobohm) writes: > At work, our PBX requires that we dial 9 + 1 + areacode+ phone-number > for calls outside of the 408 areacode. A colleague here has become > very adept at starting most phone calls with 9 + 1. A couple of days > ago, he was at home, and started dialing 9 + 1, and then remembered he > was not at work so he hung up. A few minutes later he received a call > from a dispatcher asking if he was in any trouble, and that there was > a police car on its way to help him out! Speaking of 911 stories, this happened a couple of years ago: I was calling my folks in New Delhi, India and not having much success connecting, I gave up on manual dialing and started to hit the redial button. Now, I would hear ringing halfway through the dialing process and I would hang up thinking something was amiss. This happened a few times, so I gave up and dialed manually and was connected. I was on the phone for about 15 minutes. As soon as I hung up, my phone started ringing. It seemed that the 911 operators had received a couple of hangup calls from my address, and when they called back the phone was busy. A cop car was on its way. Well, the country code for India is 91 and the area code for New Delhi is 11 and I had (cancel) call waiting. The string being redialed was *70 011 91 11 xxxyyyy Those of you who have cancel call waiting will recall that there is brief pause after you enter the cancel code and before the dial tone returns. During the redial process, that pause ate the 011 tones ... The rest is left as an exercise to the reader. Oh, and the cops did show up and the doughnut stories are all true :-) Pushpendra Mohta pushp@cerf.net +1 619 455 3908 (NEW) CERFNet +1 800 876 2373 [Moderator's Note: My experience here has been that with either *67, *70, *71 or *72 (all return stutter dial tone) you can 'dial through' ... that is, no pause is required in the modem string, etc. Other places are different on this? PAT] ------------------------------ From: seward@ccvax1.cc.ncsu.edu (Bill Seward) Subject: Multi-Line Phones in a Home Environment Reply-To: seward@ccvax1.cc.ncsu.edu Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 19:07:13 GMT I'll be building a new house soon, and will have three (maybe more) phone lines installed. Is there a multiline phone setup available, at some reasonable (<$150 per station) cost, that would also support station-station intercom? I specifically don't want anything along the lines of a small PBX, or any type of system that is primarily marketed to a small business. If you'd email me directly, I'll summarize and post if there seems to be sufficient interest. Bill Seward SEWARD@CCVAX1.CC.NCSU.EDU SEWARD@NCSUVAX.BITNET ------------------------------ From: Jack@myamiga.mixcom.com Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 13:49:15 CST Subject: Per-Call Charge on Caller-ID Dropped in Michigan Just the "what", I have no idea "why": From the June, 1992 "News & Views" billing insert that comes with our Michigan Bell phone bills: "Caller ID, the phone option that lets you know the number of the person calling -- before you answer the phone -- just got more attractive. "Effective June 1, the service allows unlimited calls to be displayed each month -- for no additional charge beyond the monthly fee of $6.50. "A one-time start-up fee of $7.50 also applies, but that fee will be waived for the first 30 days the service is available in a given area. "When Caller ID service was announced in March, the monthly fee covered only the first 300 calls displayed. Numbers beyond 300 a month then cost two cents each. "Because the service now offers display of unlimited calls, customers will no longer have to de-activate their Caller ID service to control call volume. "Caller ID allows subscribers to see the number of an incoming call on a display device that's attached to, or built into, their telephone. "Currently available in parts of the greater metropolitan Detroit area, the service should be available to about a third of Michigan Bell's customers next year. "If you live in an area where your phone number can be displayed over Caller ID, you can block your number from appearing, free of charge. "If you have a touch-tone phone, dial *67 before placing a call in order to block your number. If you have a rotary phone, dial 1167. "For more information, or to order Caller ID, call 1 800 482-8055, extension 743." [End of quote from insert.] As I say, I have no idea why they did it but I'm glad they did ... Caller ID is not available in my area yet but I would have never ordered it will a per-call charge attached, whereas now I would strongly consider it. I still think $6.50 per month is a bit steep, but I'd much rather pay that and know for sure what the monthly cost will be than to pay a smaller monthly charge and just hope I don't get on someone's auto-redial list when I'm not home to deactivate the service. Once in a great while, Michigan Bell actually does something right! Now if they'd just drop the extra monthly charge for Touch-Tone, and expand some of the ridiculously small local calling areas in some of the less-populated areas of the state, I'd be a lot happier with them ... Wonder if Pat will call Illinois Bell and ask when they intend to drop the per-call charge there (since that's also an Ameritech company)? Jack Decker jack@myamiga.mixcom.com FidoNet 1:154/8 [Moderator's Note: I'll watch eagerly for each issue of "Telebriefs" in my mail to see what it has to say. Lord knows I could use a reduction in my phone bill. :) PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 04:15:38 MDT From: houle@jupiter.nmt.edu (Paul Houle) Subject: Re: "Legal" Phreaking? Organization: New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology In article TELECOM Moderator notes: > [Moderator's Note: Let me ask those of you who persist in the belief > that it is the system operator's fault if there is a break-in to a > system with weak security, do you feel the same way about physical > assaults on other people? That is, if you are attacked by a person > much larger and stronger than yourself, can't we conclude that if he > robs you it is really your fault? After all, you could have taken a > course in judo, karate or some other self-defense procedure if you > were that interested in your safety and your possessions, etc. Should > the court find you guilty, or the person who attacked you? The answer > is rather obvious ... why then is a computer different? Why should a > new or inexperienced sysadmin take the rap for a hacker intrusion > merely because the hacker is more sophisticated at it? It seems to me > the law is intended to protect the *weakest* members of society. PAT] Although I'd agree that cracking and phreaking are wrong, and should be prosecuted, I think that the owner of a computer must accept some legal blame if he does maintain some basic level of security. Suppose that I get insurance against theft for the posessions in my house, and then leave for a week, leaving the front door open. Somebody comes and takes my TV set, but the insurance company will not pay my claim for it, because I didn't take reasonable precautions against thief. Granted, the thief did something that was immoral and illegal as well, but to some extent I could take the blame for not taking reasonable precautions. I did a little hacking when I was a teenager, and I broke into my first computer with the first username/password that I tried. It was uucp/. I also discovered that a large number of computers still had default passwords and other easy methods of entry -- methods that a 14-year old kid with a C-64 can use. As such, I'd say that many computer systems maintain a level of security that is comparable to leaving the door of a house closed but unlocked. This, to me, is simply unacceptable for a company that holds records that are supposed to be private. I personally don't mind my credit information being on file at TRW -- I feel that, for myself, the loss of privacy is worth the convenience of being able to do business on credit with total strangers with a good deal of confi- dence. I know that the phone company has to keep a log of my long distance calls, and that many other companies may have a legitimate reason to keep confidential information about me on computers. Some people may feel differently because they put different values on certain kinds of privacy. Yet, just about everyone would be outraged if just anybody could break into a computer and read or alter my credit information at TRW, or if a gang of hackers could break into a telephone company computer and find out who I call. I think that in cases such as this, the customers of a company would be justified in bringing a class-action suit against it when it is discovered that a company fails to take reasonable precautions to protect confidential information. This doesn't mean that we can or should sue a company just for getting hacked, because someone who is skilled enough and motivated enough and who has the resources can probably breach any kind of security, but yet, if a company fails to take the most basic precautions, as many do, I believe that is potentially criminal negligence. Any company that holds confidential information about it's customers should be legally bound to protect it. In other environments, such as acadamia, this might not be the case. If hackers broke into the workstation that I use at work, the only things they could steal would be useless to them -- a least squares solver code that I'm writing, software to interpret data tapes from a one-of-a-kind instrument, atmospheric data from satellites and text files containing directions for mountain bike rides. We would probably give this stuff to anyone who asks for it. Here the issue would be damage done by hackers, which opens up an entirely different can of worms. ------------------------------ From: R.M.Marquez-villegas1@lut.ac.uk Subject: Seeking Cell Relay Standards Date: 5 Jul 92 17:59:23 GMT Reply-To: RM Marquez-villegas Organization: Loughborough University, UK. Does anybody knows if there is any agreed standard in cell relay services like ATM, the protocols, header structure, services provided or expected to be provided, technologies and techniques of implementation? Where and how can I get a copy of this papers? I also need to know how long is the maximum acceptable delay in a packet/frame/cell switching network for voice and video communica- tions. What I mean is, how much is an acceptable transmission delay for a cell across the network? How much is an acceptable delay between arrivals of a pair of cells/frames/packets in one of these networks? If your answers are related to the expected ATM standards it will be perfect. My e-mail address is : R.M.Marquez-villegas1@uk.ac.lut Thank you to all for your help. Ruben ------------------------------ From: gerard@engr.ucs.mun.ca Subject: Wiring Standards Information Wanted Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 09:25:40 GMT For a standard six-pin phone jack, does anyone out there know what pins 1 and 2, 5 and 6 are used for? Is there a standard? (i.e. when used with a PBX). Tip and Ring are usually found on pins 3 and 4. G. White [Moderator's Note: I think 3/4 are for line 1; 2/5 are for line 2, and 1/6 are for line 3 or some other feature such as an intercom buzzer or a transformer to light the dial, the buttons, etc. I think the color scheme would be 3/4 = red/green; 2/5 = yellow/black; and 1/6 = white/ blue. That's how I have mine wired. PAT] ------------------------------ From: antonio@qualcomm.com (Franklin Antonio) Subject: Really GOOD Speakerphones Wanted Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 00:03:07 GMT I'd like to find a really GOOD speakerphone. Last year, I bought a couple of the Shure speakerphones that look like flying saucers. (Sorry, I don't have the model number handy.) These are the best speakerphones I've found to date. They work reasonably well in small meetings (fewer than ten people). However, if the meeting is large (meaning some persons are farther than about five feet from the saucer) then the voice detection circuit often doesn't do the right thing, and the people far away from the saucer cannot be heard well. I also have the problem that I often use the speakerphone to connect a meeting to MORE THAN ONE remote person, meaning that I'm using a conference call. This also seems to confuse the voice detection circuit (ie echo suppresser) in the phone. What i'd really like to find is a speakerphone that uses real echo cancellation rather than echo suppression, and is actually designed to work in large meetings, and doesn't interact badly with conference bridges, etc. Been thinking of building my own ... but would rather purchase. Any advice welcome. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 09:23:42 CDT From: edward@pro-ren.cts.com (Edward Floden) Subject: Crimestoppers Textbook Organization: Technological Renaissance User Group From today's (Sunday, 5 July) edition of _Dick Tracy_: "Crimestoppers Textbook "Get Their Number - Some 900-number phone scams have switched to using 800 numbers; watch carefully for any charges when dialing an 800 number." I feel much safer now. :) Internet: pro-ren.cts.com!edward | UUCP: ...crash!pro-ren!edward ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #536 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa19834; 6 Jul 92 2:26 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA20043 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 6 Jul 1992 00:30:16 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA08373 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 6 Jul 1992 00:30:07 -0500 Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 00:30:07 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207060530.AA08373@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #537 TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Jul 92 00:30:04 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 537 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! (Steve Forrette) Re: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! (Phil Howard) Re: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! (Peter M. Weiss) Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (Andy Finkenstadt) 700 EasyReach Service is Not Usable (Phil Howard) Alternative to EasyReach 700 (Phil Howard) Re: Roommates and Long Distance Doesn't Mix (Rich Greenberg) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 03:49:04 GMT In article reb@Ingres.COM writes: > Some of you may remember about a month ago when I posted that a friend > had called me from a GTE Airphone on an AT&T 'call me' card I had > given him. Well, today our phone bill arrived and the plot thickened. > Over $50 in AT&T calls from GTE Airphone appeared on the June phone > bill. Only one of these calls was made to the "one number" authorized > for the card. The rest were made to numbers across the USA. I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to get to the bottom of this one -- here's the scoop: The new AT&T cards (non-phone-number based) can only be used on the AT&T network, LEC networks for intra-LATA calls, and perhaps a few "specialty" networks, such as GTE Airphone. They can't be used on other IXC's, however, such as Sprint, MCI, or AOS slime. When you use the card on a non-AT&T carrier, that carrier's calling card system sends a query to the AT&T database with the called number and card number, and possibly the calling number. For regular calling cards, the called number is ignored -- the answer depends only on the validity of the card number. The new Custom Calling card introduces a new problem. The Custom Calling card is much like the old Call Me card, except that any 10 numbers may be allowed, instead of the old rule of "only the billing number," and none of the numbers has to be the billing number. (For my card, I have only my cellular number, which can't be directly billed by AT&T for normal calls). The problem is in the handling of sequence calls. US West does this incorrectly for intra-LATA calls, and it now sounds like GTE Airphone does it wrong as well. What happens is that as long as the initial call is to a valid number for the card, then sequence calls to any number the carrier handles will be allowed. For US West (or any other LEC), this will only be to other intra-LATA calls, and requires that the caller be in the same LATA as at least one of the valid numbers to start with. But with GTE Airphone, the problem quickly expands to international scale. When the first call is attempted, the called number and the card number are sent to the AT&T database for verification. Since everything is okay, the AT&T database responds with "okay." Now, the user hits # and enters another number. The incorrectly-programmed calling card systems (such as those of US West and GTE Airphone) falsely assume that since the card number was valid just a moment ago, it's still going to be valid, so they don't bother to query the AT&T database again. They don't take into account that with the new Custom Calling card, that the validity now depends not just on the card number, but on the called number as well. (The old Call Me cards that were based on the subscriber's phone number had a special bit that was set in the "okay" reply to indicate that calls to no other numbers were allowed. This can no longer be used, as the cards can now have more that one valid number that can be called). The correct implementation for non-AT&T carriers that accept AT&T cards is to query the AT&T database for each call attempt, including sequence calls. It is up to each LEC (and GTE Airphone) to insure that their calling card systems conform to this standard. IMHO, it would be nice if AT&T refused to accept the bad calls from the carriers when they were presented for billing. This would cause the carriers to fix their systems in short order, I would say! What they do now, just put them on the customer's bill, is a "bad thing." At the very least, they should filter these calls from the customer's bill and turn up the heat to the offending carriers. The attitude AT&T's customer service department is taking on this issue is the worst part of the problem. It sounds like the person with the GTE Airphone problem got a response similar to mine - that this is the customer's problem, not AT&T's, that they don't guarantee the restrictiveness of the card, and why would you give the card to someone you don't trust to use it properly in the first place. I tried to explain to them that if I could trust the person I'm giving the card to, I'd just give them my regular, unrestricted card. The entire purpose of the restricted card is that you can give it to people you DON'T trust! Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 22:19:00 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) reb@ingres.com (Phydeaux) writes: > It seems that even though the card is a new-fangled AT&T card with > *no* trace of what my home number on it, and contrary to *ALL* the > marketing hype about how the card can *ONLY* be used to call *one* > number, it can "... Still be used by some carriers to numbers other > than the one specified." If the other carriers choose to carry the call and bill you themselves, or via the local phone company bill, then you should refuse the payment on the grounds that you have no arrangement with that company for doing any such business. If the other carriers refer the billing to AT&T (do they do this?) then it should be AT&T's job of filtering out such calls (based on the type of card it was made from) and not pay out on the invalid calls (and not charge you, either). > To top this all off, I was told that they "COULD NOT GUARANTEE" that > additional calls to numbers other than the one "call me" number would > be blocked and that A) If I did not like this I could cancel my card > and B) If any such charges *did* appear on the bill that they would > *NOT* give me credit for them. Are you SURE this wasn't GTE? Before I start thinking about recommending a class-action lawsuit, can someone explain the mechanisms under which a card issued by one company (e.g. AT&T) can be utilized by another company to place the calls? How are these calls billed? A few years ago when I had a series of fraudulent calls on a calling card, there were several other carriers involved. All of the calls from the other carriers were billed as being from those carriers, and aside from cancelling the card number, AT&T was really not involved except for the numbers they billed, which they granted credit for. Many of those other carriers refused to grant credit at all and I had to threaten legal action (and pointed out some mistakes they made in this as well) against Illinois Bell. Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com | "The problem with | ------------------------------ Organization: Penn State University Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 16:08:13 EDT From: Peter M. Weiss Subject: Re: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! In article , reb@ingres.com (Phydeaux) says: > Some of you may remember about a month ago when I posted that a friend ****** > had called me from a GTE Airphone on an AT&T 'call me' card I had > given him. Well, today our phone bill arrived and the plot thickened. > Over $50 in AT&T calls from GTE Airphone appeared on the June bill ... > To top this all off, I was told that they "COULD NOT GUARANTEE" that > additional calls to numbers other than the one "call me" number would > be blocked and that A) If I did not like this I could cancel my card > and B) If any such charges *did* appear on the bill that they would > *NOT* give me credit for them. or c) you could change friends so that they don't use your card in ways in which you are defrauded. Pete [Moderator's Note: But as is pointed out, he thought he had the card for the untrustworthy people he must associate with. I guess the answer is he/you/all of us should avoid those types of transactions when some other method is possible for making the calls. PAT] ------------------------------ From: andy@homebase.vistachrome.com (Andy Finkenstadt) Subject: Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach Reply-To: andy@homebase.vistachrome.com Organization: Vista-Chrome Incorporated Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 20:24:53 GMT neihart@ga.com (Carl Neihart) writes: > I just got my info from AT&T on my personal 700 number recently. > Unfortunately, after getting the info on the 700 number, the whole > reason I got the number in the first place was negated - [ Bandwidth conserved about the initiating phone requiring AT&T as the presubscribed carrier, or dialing 10ATT0 +700 + etc ] In addition to this, I attempted to get Not-so-Easy Reach service on my residential line at home. I am a loyal AT&T customer to the tune of several hundred dollars per month, but AT&T has this problem: I don't live in an old AT&T now-RBOC service area. AT&T has no billing arrangement with CenTel (merging with US Sprint), and so I was told, "I'm sorry sir, we can't do that; we have no billing arrangements with your area." Imagine, now in addition to being pre-subscribed to AT&T, you also have to live in an RBOC area like Southern Bell, and not in an independent telephone company area like CenTel. "No billing arrangements" my foot -- they manage to bill me for my credit card (14 random digits) and my long distance service (several hundred calls per month, the net habit is hard to feed). Oh well, I guess the days of 700-222-ANDY are not to come anytime soon. Andrew Finkenstadt | Vista-Chrome, Inc. | GEnie: ANDY GEnie Unix Sysop/Manager | The Printing House | NIC Handle: AF136 +1 904 222 2639 home | 1600 Capital Cir SW | ...!uunet!rde!andy +1 904 575 0189 work | Tallahassee FL 32310 | andy@homebase.vistachrome.com [Moderator's Note: I think the rep was mistaken in any case because AT&T has had miscellaneous billing accounts in place for many years, for example with non-subscriber calling cards. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: 700 EasyReach Service is Not Usable Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 21:46:18 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Some others have complained that one needs to dial 102881700 prior to any AT&T EasyReach number. I don't see that as much of a problem. However where I do see a problem with AT&T's service is that one is required to have a local phone number in their name, with AT&T as the default carrier. I strongly prefer having no default carrier, as this adds slightly to the security level of my home phone. I am already used to dialing the carrier access code when I call out, and in fact almost always call through AT&T as it has been providing me with the best service. So I see EasyReach as (in part at least) a "scam/ploy/trick" to get people to switch their default carrier to AT&T. However the BIG reason that I was in a hurry to get an EasyReach number is because I anticipate being without a local phone number for a while in the near future. AT&T so far will not offer this service to me on that basis. I have tried to get the sales droids to get me in contact with someone that makes the decisions on this. I suspect that they are not going to be too interested in addressing this since the whole service is probably oriented to acquiring the customer base with AT&T as the default carrier. I have an AT&T credit card, and they are not even willing to bill me on that, so it's obviously more than a problem with billing (as the sales droid tried to convince me as being the problem). I already get all my 10288 dialed numbers billed on my local bill anyway, w/o AT&T as my long distance carrier. The engineering people at AT&T do an excellent job, but IMHO the marketing people are lowering themselves down closer to the scum level. I'd like to solicit comments regarding what might happen in these scenarios: 1. I get an EasyReach number, then local telephone service is disconnected for: a. A short time while moving from one town to another. b. A long time while: I. On a long trip out of the country. II. While living with someone else during move transitions. 2. I get an EasyReach number, then after my local phone line is switched to AT&T as the default carrier, I call the local company and have it changed to something else ("none" is my preferred carrier). Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com | "The problem with | [Moderator's Note: In the case of disconnected service although the local telco might attempt to bill you anyway on a miscellaneous billing statement, they might instead charge it all back to AT&T which would definitly sound an alarm there. In the case of attempting to switch the default carrier elsewhere, I suspect AT&T would put a hold on the account so the local telco could NOT change the default without notifying AT&T. These holds are what all the LD carriers did to get around the fraud problem of people who sign up, cash the inducement check and then switch back again right away. Your account would be flagged that AT&T had a contract with you and they had to be notified of any change in status on the account. Speaking of miscellaneous billing accounts, AT&T *could* set up 700 service that way; after all they have had non-subscriber calling cards for many years. Probably the rep you talked to did not know how to do it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard ) Subject: Alternative to EasyReach 700 Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 21:55:32 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) There is obviously some mechanism in place for a seven digit number that is prefixed by 800 to be routed to the correct long distance carrier. With the concept of portability of these numbers, it will have to capable of doing this with fully discrete mapping, e.g. the "exchange" prefix alone cannot be the basis. Someone somewhere has to be operating the database where the lookup of the potentially ten million entries resides. Now why can't this same mechanism be used on a PORTABLE version of the type of service AT&T is operating now as EasyReach? Given that portability is an issue with holders of 800 numbers that want to keep their number and change carriers, wanna bet that this issue will eventually come up from holders of 700 numbers? However this is more of a problem since the 700 space is carrier distinct. But why not use some other [1-6]00 prefix and establish a portable number service. There are of course complications, but portable 800 service will have to address many of these anyway, and I suspect most of the solutions will be the same (such as the mechanism for assigning a new vanity number). Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com [Moderator's Note: You are forgetting that EasyReach is a specialized service for AT&T customers. It is intended as a convenience for their customers, not the caller. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 15:25:56 PDT From: richg@hatch.socal.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Roommates and Long Distance Doesn't Mix Organization: Hatch Usenet and E-mail. Playa del Rey, CA In article sherman@unx.sas.com (Chris Sherman) writes: > I would like to shut off the dial-1 long distance access from my > phone, yet still have the ability to use LD charge cards for making LD > calls. > But, Southern Bell says that they can't do this. They can block LD > calls completely, for $22 setup, and $2 a month, but this means no > long distance calls PERIOD. One possibility is to get a toll restriction device. Hello direct 800-HI-HELLO (aka 800-444-3556) sells several models of what they call "Call Controllers" which can block various types of outgoing calls (976, 900, 011, etc). The middle model (Call Control Plus @ $99.95) should do the job for you. It can be bypassed by you with a password, and at Bell's $2/mo, a year pays for it. The cheaper model at $49.95 is less versatile, but may do the job for you. CAUTION: Whereever you install it and from there out to the CO must be physically secure or a knowledgable person could defaet it with little problem. Rich Greenberg - N6LRT - 310-649-0238 - richg@hatch.socal.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #537 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa21638; 6 Jul 92 3:08 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA12630 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 6 Jul 1992 01:25:45 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA19202 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 6 Jul 1992 01:25:35 -0500 Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 01:25:35 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207060625.AA19202@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #538 TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Jul 92 01:25:36 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 538 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson CompuServe Candidategrams (David Tamkin) Re: Pac*Bell Posturing (Peter da Silva) Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 (Steve Forrette) Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service (Alan L. Varney) Re: "Choke" Prefixes (was Concert Goers Blast 911) (Phil Howard) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (John Higdon) Re: 1-xxx-555-1212 From Overseas? (Jan Richert) Re: Zip Extensions (was The Telco Owns the Numbers) (David Tamkin) Re: Factoid from _Playboy_ (Steve Forrette) Re: Telecomics (David Lesher) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (David Tamkin) Subject: CompuServe Candidategrams Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 20:27:06 CDT In recent submissions one reader posted a list of email addresses for presidential candidates. Those for Clinton, Marrou, and Perot were on CompuServe, and their user ID's were numerically very close. Another reader attempted to write to one of them, but the letter was bounced on grounds that the box could not receive remote mail. Pat Townson commented that when CIS accepts mail from the Internet, someone has to pay them for it. That's not *exactly* what is happening. After the email from the Internet was refused, I suspected something and a visit to CompuServe confirmed it. The candidates do not have real CompuServe accounts. CompuServe, to the best of my knowledge, does not refuse to let users in good standing receive email from the Internet. CompuServe is running a Candidategram (CANDIDATEgram they write it) program. You select the candidate's number from a menu and compose or upload a letter, and for $1.50 charged to your CompuServe account they'll print it and mail the hardcopy. The actual user ID's of the mailboxes that receive each hopeful's Candi____grams got into the user directory somehow. The reason those accounts cannot receive remote email is not that CompuServe has to charge somebody for the costs of receiving email and holding it for a user; it's that CompuServe has to bill somebody for the costs of printing the letters out and mailing them to the various candidates' campaign offices. David W. Tamkin Box 59297 Northtown Station, Illinois 60659-0297 dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com CompuServe: 73720,1570 MCI Mail: 426-1818 [Moderator's Note: You are not quite correct. Clinton and Marrou were close numerically, and both in the 75300.xxxx series which as we all know are 'sponsored' accounts -- that is free accounts given by CIS to desirable users. Perot was 71xxx.xxxx, or some distance away. He pays for that account I suspect; Clinton and Marrou do not. Likewise, Brown had a 75300 number but Pat Buchanan was in the 76xxx series, meaning he pays for his box. If these are only mail drops for CandidateGrams, where was the one for President Bush? PAT] ------------------------------ From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: Pac*Bell Posturing Organization: Taronga Park BBS Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1992 21:55:28 GMT In article leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) writes: > understand what it is and how it works. Especially since the default > setting will be to give out your number. If it defaulted the other > way, I don't think it would be an issue (and there'd be no real use > for Caller-ID either. If Blocked-ID-Blocking was available, it'd be fine. People with the "no ID" default would get a message saying "You must first enable Caller-ID before dialing this number". In fact, this would be even more useful than just plain Caller-ID, since you could get the deterrent affect without paying for a display unit. Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX +1 713 568 0480/1032 ------------------------------ From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 02:26:32 GMT > [Moderator's Note: My experience here has been that with either *67, > *70, *71 or *72 (all return stutter dial tone) you can 'dial through' > ... that is, no pause is required in the modem string, etc. Other > places are different on this? PAT] It depends on the switch type. 1AESS and 5ESS allow dialing over the stutter dialtone, but the DMS-100 requires a pause. (GTD-5, as operated by GTE, require a pause, and an extra $1.50/month, for cancel call waiting). Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 22:07:12 CDT From: varney@ihlpf.att.com (Alan L Varney) Subject: Re: Concert-Goers Blast 911 Service Organization: AT&T Network Systems, Inc. In article rice@ttd.teradyne.com writes: > In article , bakerj@gtephx.UUCP (Jon > Baker) writes: >> Excepting a very poorly engineered CO, this also should not be a >> problem unless you have a very significant percentage of your >> subscribers going offhook all at the same time. This is not the case >> in a concert ticket hotline, or a radio station giveaway, but might >> occur during some sort of emergency (power failure, weather disaster, >> large nearby explosion, etc.) But the problem really IS that a significant percentage go off-hook at about the same time, over and over. The TELCo can gap "concert" calls at the originating switches and, at least for repeating numbers such as the radio station, use a choke trunking network to prevent tying up normal inter-office circuits. But until you get dial tone and dial your number, there is NO WAY to determine if the next call you make is somehow more important than the ticket caller. So dial tone delays are a fact of life for such high-volume call demands -- no one would want to engineer a CO for two-second holding time calls and line occupancy near one Erlang for 20% of the lines. >> In such a case, certain lines within >> the neighborhood can be designated to be 'hot' lines, or 'A' lines, >> which get preferential treatment. > Well, I'd sure hate to be one of the 80%-90% trying to call for an > ambulance for my parent with a heart attack. Who decides who get's > 'preferental' service? In my opinion, the 'Concert Ticket' phoenomena > is 'misuse' of the phone system (right up there with telemarketing and > charity solicitation). Preferential service is usually given to hospitals, doctors, police and other emergency-related services. Maybe a few high-profile officials? But not the average residential line. > In article , williamsk@gtephx.UUCP > (Kevin W. Williams) writes: >> In article , rice@ttd.teradyne.edu >> writes: [ regarding overload of circuits ] >>> I'd have to disagree. Proper design of a "Life and Death" emergency >>> system should preclude ANY intruption of that service based on trunk >>> loading. 911 trunks should be Independent of any other traffic. >> Let's be a little realistic here. I could, indeed, design a 911 system >> which was indpendent of any other request for service. Unfortunately, >> I would have to run a separate phone to each house which only served >> the emergency service bureau. Making 911 trunks independent isn't hard, since most of the current E911 systems require special signaling on the circuits to a central tandem. But trunks aren't the problem -- dial tone is. >> Choke prefixes, call gapping, and similar network management >> treatments are a compromise for an insoluble problem. No switch >> manufacturer can sell totally non-blocking line equipment, because the >> telcos won't pay the costs. We cannot predict who is going to call 911 >> and who is going to call Larry King. The best we can do is make the >> machine survive the peaking, give fairly distributed service to all >> originators, and try to deal with the problem during routing and >> termination. > My original comment related to 'Trunk Blockage' not whether the > subscriber could receive dial tone. In the 'Concert Ticket' scenario, > it's more likely that all outgoing trunks are blocked. It's the > 'natural disaster' scenario in which dial tone becomes hard to get. I > stand by my original statement. Believe me, dial tone is a problem even for the "concert ticket" scenarios. I've seen the traffic numbers for one of the "Garth Brooks ticket hour" events. Wow! And this was with the ticket number call- gapped at almost every switch. Unfortunately, with current call gap methods, the caller knows almost immediately that the call was killed. So they hang up, wait for dial tone and hit "REDIAL". The switch that was the target for all these calls handled about 2X engineered busy hour incoming attempts, with most receiving busy tone. Still not convinced? Let's say a given switch can handle 360K calls per hour with 60,000 lines. That's 100 calls/second. If half are originating calls (needing dial tone), we need to provide 50 dial tone/ digit receivers for each second it takes for the average caller to dial. If that's six seconds, we need 300 receivers (this is back-of-envelope engineering, not Erlang-B). But it takes less than 1000 ticket callers with a three-second holding time to use up all those receivers. That's less than 2% of the lines. Many ticket callers ask their friends to call, just to increase their odds of getting some. Result? Severe dial tone delay. A friend in telco support agrees the best we can do with today's switches is route the gapped calls to a very quiet announcement, with some background clicking, so that callers believe their call is going to EVENTUALLY complete. But denying them an equal shot at dial tone when they re-originate is expensive in real time, and might lead to as many lawsuits as it solves. Al Varney -- just MY opinion, and not an official AT&T opinion. ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: "Choke" Prefixes (was Concert Goers Blast 911) Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 22:55:55 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) writes: > Overloads due to massive redialing should be fixable by programming > originating switches to apportion originating registers using some > measure of "fairness", such as number of requests for dialtone in the > last N minutes, tallied for each line. This would effectively > guarantee that if you haven't made multiple call attempts in the last > few minutes, you get dialtone ahead of everyone who has. What about having callers to choke prefixes not get dial tone back for X seconds? More sophsiticated systems could increment X on a per caller line basis if the next call is made to a choke prefix within 2*X seconds. Expiration of 2*X would reset X. A starting value of five to ten seconds seems to me like it might work. Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 11:30 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Robert Horvitz writes: > According to David Reynard, Susan's husband, (quoting from {Microwave > NEWS}), "If an outline of the phone were superimposed on the [magnetic > resonance image of her head which] showed his wife's tumor, the > malignancy would be at the middle of the antenna ..." If people are going to start trading in this psuedo-scientific clap- trap, at least they might check out a few laws of physics before putting foot in mouth. The center of radiation is NOT at the center of a cellular antenna. > The radio wavelengths used in cellular phones are similar to the > dimensions of the human skull, so that resonance could provide an > efficient transfer of energy. Except that the skull makes a much more effective shield than a waveguide. I see it all happening again: many good, useful products have been taken away because of this sort of voodoo. No acceptable studies have been able to prove or disprove any of these beliefs or theories concerning non-ionizing radiation. Here we go again with emotionalism and scare tactics for the ignorant. I have worked around high power RF for over a quarter-century. I install and maintain 950 MHz equipment that is many, many times more powerful than even a car-mount cellular phone. I have been using cellular phones, including handhelds, since day one. So where is MY brain cancer? (My mental defectiveness is a separate issue and long predates any exposure to RF :-) > {Microwave News} is the leading newsletter concerned with reports of > biological effects of non-ionizing radiation. Subscriptions are $285 > per year (6 issues; $315 per year outside the US). Order from P.O. > Box 1799, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163 USA. My only > connection to MN is as a reader for the past eight years. There is a lot of money to be made peddling this horse manure. It is occasional fun reading because of the technical and scientific mistakes that are frequently made and are so obvious to those in the industry. But whatever turns people on ... John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! [Moderator's Note: You may be safe because of a very thick skull. :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: jrichert@krefcom.ish.de (Jan Richert) Subject: Re: 1-xxx-555-1212 From Overseas? Date: 5 Jul 92 13:41:49 GMT Organization: Krefcom UUCP Server, Krefeld, FRG The cheapest way to call the U.S. directory assistance from Germany is to call the AT&T operator toll free at 0130/0010 and ask him to connect you to XXX-555-1212. I'm always connected without any questions on how I'd like to bill for it ... Greets, Jan Richert (NIC-ID: JR482) | Internet: jrichert@krefcom.ish.de Krefeld, FRG | BTX: 02151399843-0001 Voice & FAX: +49 2151 313124 | IRC-Nick: jrichert ------------------------------ From: dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (David Tamkin) Subject: Re: Zip Extensions (was The Telco Owns the Numbers) Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 13:10:10 CDT acg@hermes.dlogics.com (Andrew C. Green) shared in volume 12, issue 528: > I lived in an eight-story building with approximately 16 apartments > per floor. Curiously, my neighbor had a completely different ZIP+4 > extension; in fact, there were several different extensions used > over and over in the building, depending on what the apartment > number was, and this took a fair amount of space to list in the ZIP > Code manual. The kicker was: like most apartment buildings, all the > mailboxes were in the lobby anyway. And in that lobby the mailboxes no doubt are in banks, each bank opened for delivery access with a single postal service lock. Usually when the zip extension pattern for the units in an apartment or condo buidling repeats and repeats illogically in a straight numerical listing of unit numbers, you'll find a lot of logic if you look at which units' mailboxes are in the same bank: one zip extension, one bank, one lock, one key, one group of boxes whose mail is thrown separately from those with other zip extensions. It is set up for the convenience of mail carriers rather than that of zip directory perusers. After all, the USPS, not the postal patrons, owns the zip extensions. In fact, one building in a complex where I used to live had all its zip extensions suddenly changed from a numer- ically simple arrangement to one that followed the banks in the lobby. I doubt that they were given any notification, just as residential addresses were sent nothing to say what their zip extensions would be when zip + 4 was introduced. David W. Tamkin Box 59297 Northtown Station, Illinois 60659-0297 dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com CompuServe: 73720,1570 MCI Mail: 426-1818 ------------------------------ From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: Factoid from _Playboy_ Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 03:04:00 GMT In article friedl@mtndew.Tustin.CA. US (Stephen Friedl) writes: > _Playboy_, August, 1992 > "Reach out and put the touch on someone: > 18,000,000 unsolicited sales calls are > made to private homes in the US each day" Gee, I wonder how this compares with the number of battered-wife- calls-home-from-shelter-and-is-worried-that-husband-will-beat-her- if-he-knows-what-number-she's-calling-from calls that happen each day? Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com ------------------------------ From: David Lesher Subject: Re: Telecomics Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 19:10:16 EDT Reply-To: wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu (David Lesher) Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex About 12 years ago, there was a series that ran with good, make that GREAT, telco humor. I can't recall the name of the strip, but the episode plot went like this: Man holed up in his apt - refuses to pay his Ma bill. SWAT team (all in familiar colored trucks) shows up. Several exchanges by bullhorn... Ma-SWAT:Come out now! We'll write off the local message units. All you have to pay is the LD calls... Subscrib:You'll never take me alive! (and he sacrifices a hostage:) Ma-Swat:Oh God, the inhumanity - He's torn his Yellow Pages in half, and THROWN them out the window! Has he no heart at all? Finally they shoot in tear gas, and rescue the poor 2500 set. They take away the sub in handcuffs to court: Judge: I hereby sentence you to imprisonment in the county jail. You shall remain there, on the phone, until Repair Service answers. sub: But your Honor, that will be YEARS! What about my family? Judge: Take him away.... Dan da dan dah..... wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #538 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa22789; 6 Jul 92 3:42 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA26622 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Mon, 6 Jul 1992 01:50:21 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA21534 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Mon, 6 Jul 1992 01:50:10 -0500 Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 01:50:10 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207060650.AA21534@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #539 TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Jul 92 01:50:11 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 539 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson CCITT Documents Available (Joshua Hosseinoff) Looking For a Device to Log Calls (T. Govindaraj) FGB, FGD Trunks (Steven S. Brack) AGT Digital Cellular (Dan J. Rudiak, FIDO via Jack Decker) Looking For Supplier of Telephone Jack Converters (Eric Engelmann) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 05 Jul 1992 21:24:57 -0400 (EDT) From: JOSHUA HOSSEINOFF Subject: CCITT Documents Available Anyone with Telnet access can get CCITT documents through the Gopher System. Here's what you do: Telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu Login as gopher or anet if you are using an anet system. No password is required From the main menu select 8. Other gopher and info services. Then option 2. Europe Then option 4. Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden Then option 7. Swedish University NETwork (SUNET) Finally, option 3. CCITT Blue Book Below is the readme file for the CCITT blue book which describes what specific files are available and how it is set up. Joshua Hosseinoff Eaw7100@acfcluster.nyu.edu ------------ Contents of the CCITT Blue Book The Blue Book is divided by volume and fascicle. Our naming scheme is vol_fascicle_part.format. For example, Volume 3, Fascicle 1, Part 1 in Ascii format would be: 3_1_1.txt The volumes are divided as follows: Volume 1 Fascicle 1.1 - Minutes and reports of the Plenary Assembly Fascicle 1.2 - Opinions and Resolutions Fascicle 1.3 - Terms and Definitions Fascicle 1.4 - Index of Blue Book Volume 2 Fascicle 2.1 - General tariff principles. Series D Recommendations. Fascicle 2.2 - Telephone network and ISDN - Operation, numbering, routing and mobile service. Recommendations E.100- E.333. Fascicle 2.3 - Telephone network and ISDN - Quality of service, network management and traffic engineering. Recommendations E.401-E.880. Fascicle 2.4 - Telegraph and mobile services - Operations and quality of service. Recommendations F.1-F.140. Fascicle 2.5 - Telematic, data transmission and teleconference services. Operations and quality of service. Recommendations F.160-F.353, F.600, F.601, F.710-F.730. Fascicle 2.6 - Message handling and directory services - Operations and definition of service. Recommendations F.400-F.422, F.500. Volume 3 Fascicle 3.1 - General characteristics of international telephone connections and circuits. Recommendations G.100-G.181. Fascicle 3.2 - International analogue carrier systems. Recommendations G.211- G.544. Fascicle 3.3 - Transmission media - Characteristics. Recommendations G.601-G.654. Fascicle 3.4 - General aspects of digital transmission systems ; terminal equipments. Recommendations G.700-G.795. Fascicle 3.5 - Digital networks, digital sections and digital line systems. Recommendations G.801-G.961. Fascicle 3.6 - Line transmission of non-telephone signals. Transmission of sound-programme and television signals. Series H and J Recommendations. Fascicle 3.7 - ISDN - General structure and service capabilities. Recommendations I.110-I.257. Fascicle 3.8 - ISDN - Overall network aspects and functions. ISDN user-network interfaces. Recommendations I.310-I.470. Fascicle 3.9 - ISDN - Internetwork interfaces and maintenance principles. Recommendations I.500-I.605. Volume 4 Fascicle 4.1 - General maintenance principles: maintenance of international transmission systems and telephone circuits. Recommendations M.10-M.782. Fascicle 4.2 - Maintenance of international telegraph, phototelegraph and leased circuits. Maintenance of the international public telephone network. Maintenance of maritime satellite and data transmission systems. Recommendations M.800-M.1375. Fascicle 4.3 - Maintenance of international sound-programme and television transmission circuits. Series N Recommendations. Fascicle 4.4 - Specifications for measuring equipment. Series O Recommendations. Volume 5 Fascicle 5.1 - Telephone transmission quality. Series P Recommendations. Volume 6 Fascicle 6.1 - General recommendations on telephone switching and signalling. Functions and information flows for services in the ISDN. Recommendations Q.1-Q.118 bis. Fascicle 6.2 - Specifications of Signalling Systems Nos. 4 and 5. Recommendations Q.120-Q.180. Fascicle 6.3 - Specifications of Signalling System No. 6. Recommendations Q.251-Q.300. Fascicle 6.4 - Specifications of Signalling Systems R1 and R2. Recommendations Q.310-Q.490. Fascicle 6.5 - Digital local, transit, combined and international exchanges in integrated digital networks and mixed analogue- digital networks. Recommendations Q.500-Q.554. Fascicle 6.6 - Interworking of signalling systems. Recommendations Q.601- Q.699. Fascicle 6.7 - Specifications of Signalling System No. 7. Recommendations Q.700-Q.716. Fascicle 6.8 - Specifications of Signalling System No. 7. Recommendations Q.721-Q.766. Fascicle 6.9 - Specifications of Signalling System No. 7. Recommendations Q.771-Q.795. Fascicle 6.10- Digital subscriber signalling system No. 1 (DSS 1), data link layer. Recommendations Q.920-Q.921. Fascicle 6.11- Digital subscriber signalling system No. 1 (DSS 1), network layer, user-network management. Recommendations Q.930- Q.940. Fascicle 6.12- Public land mobile network. Interworking with ISDN and PSTN. Recommendations Q.1000-Q.1032. Fascicle 6.13- Public land mobile network. Mobile application part and interfaces. Recommendations Q.1051-Q.1063. Fascicle 6.14- Interworking with satellite mobile systems. Recommendations Q.1100-Q.1152. Volume 7 Fascicle 7.1 - Telegraph transmission. Series R Recommendations. Telegraph services terminal equipment. Series S Recommendations. Fascicle 7.2 - Telegraph switching. Series U Recommendations. Fascicle 7.3 - Terminal equipment and protocols for telematic services. Recommendations T.0-T.63. Fascicle 7.4 - Conformance testing procedures for Teletex Recommendations. Recommendation T.64. Fascicle 7.5 - Terminal equipment and protocols for telematic services. Recommendations T.150-T.390. Recommendations T.65-T.101. Fascicle 7.6 - Terminal equipment and protocols for telematic services. Recommendations T.400-T.418. Fascicle 7.7 - Terminal equipment and protocols for telematic services. Recommendations T.431-T.564. Volume 8 Fascicle 8.1 - Data communication over the telephone network. Series V Recommendations. Fascicle 8.2 - Data communication networks: services, facilities, and interfaces. Recommendations X.1-X.32. Fascicle 8.3 - Data communication networks: transmission, signalling and switching, network aspects, maintenance and administrative arrangements. Recommendations X.40-X.181. Fascicle 8.4 - Data communication networks: Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) - Model and notation, service definition. Recommendations X.200-X.219. Fascicle 8.5 - Data communication networks: OSI - Protocol specifications, conformance testing. Recommendations X.220-X.290. Fascicle 8.6 - Data communication networks: interworking between networks, mobile transmission systems, internetwork management. Recommendations X.300-X.370. Fascicle 8.7 - Data communication networks: message handling systems. Recommendations X.400-X.420. Fascicle 8.8 - Data communication networks: directory. Recommendations X.500-X.521. Volume 9 Fascicle 9.1 - Protection against interference. Series K Recommendations. Construction, installation and protection of cable and other elements of outside plant. Series L Recommendations. Volume 10 Fascicle 10.1- Functional Specification and Description Language (SDL). Recommendation Z.100 and Annexes A, B, C, and E, Recommendation Z.110. Fascicle 10.2- Annex D to Recommendation Z.100. Fascicle 10.3- Annex F.1 to Recommendation Z.100. Fascicle 10.4- Annex F.2 to Recommendation Z.100. Fascicle 10.5- Annex F.3 to Recommendation Z.100. Fascicle 10.6- CCITT High Level Language (CHILL). Recommendation Z.200. Fascicle 10.7- Man-Machine Language (MML). Recommendations Z.301-Z.341. ------------------------------ From: tg@chmsr.gatech.edu (T. Govindaraj) Subject: Looking For a Device to Log Calls Date: 5 Jul 92 18:53:18 GMT Reply-To: tg@chmsr.gatech.edu (T. Govindaraj) Organization: Center for Human-Machine Systems Research - Georgia Tech Recently we have begun to doubt the call durations shown on the bills from a certain long distance carrier (who shall remain nameless). This seems to happen on calls to India. (This may happen in domestic long distance calls too, but since there are not so expensive we don't keep track of them.) Is there a device I can hook up to the phone (or junction box) that will keep an accurate log? I remember seeing such a device in the Hello Direct catalog sometime ago, but the current catalog does not list one. I would like something that is relatively inexpensive ($100-150). It can be standalone or work with a NeXT machine. Ideally I would like to use it to log calls on two lines. Any information will be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. govind T. Govindaraj +1 404 894 3873 tg@chmsr.gatech.edu,NeXTmail welcome. Member, League for Programming Freedom (write league@prep.ai.mit.edu) School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology 765 Ferst Drive, ISyE-0205, Atlanta, GA 30332-0205. ------------------------------ Date: 05 Jul 1992 17:59:28 -0400 (EDT) From: sbrack@jupiter.cse.UTOLEDO.edu (Steven S. Brack) Subject: FGB, FGD Trunks After hearing a good deal about trunks described as: Feature Group B --> 950-XXXX access Feature Group D --> 10XXX access, etc., I wondered what other Feature Groups there were, and what "Features" such labelling indicated. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jul 92 13:48:26 CST From: Jack@myamiga.mixcom.COM (Jack Decker) Subject: AGT Digital Cellular This message was seen in the Fidonet MDF echomail conference: * From : Dan J. Rudiak, 1:134/68 (30 Jun 92 06:30) * Subj : AGT Digital Cellular 920625 AGT Cellular Offers First Commercial TDMA Service Schaumburg, Ill., June 25 AGT Cellular of Calgary, Alberta today announced availability of the world's first commercial TDMA digital mobile cellular telephone service, using unique, dual-mode cellular base station radio equipment supplied by MOTOROLA NORTEL Communications. MOTOROLA NORTEL has substantially completed a $4.3 million upgrade to AGT Cellular's existing network of Northern Telecom cellular systems, adding TDMA (time division multiple access) base station radio equipment to its "digital ready" cell sites. "This enhances AGT Cellular's position as Alberta's leader in cellular technology," said Harry Truderung, president, AGT Cellular. "There's no doubt digital is going to become a competitive factor in the marketplace over the next year, and we're proud to be taking the lead." Digital cellular service coverage is available to 80 per cent of AGT Cellular's subscribers today, and virtually all by the end of August. "Mobile telephone users in the province of Alberta will be among the first in the world to take advantage of the quality, reliability, security, and future advanced features of digital cellular," said William Spencer, chief executive officer, MOTOROLA NORTEL. "We're very pleased to participate with AGT Cellular in turning the promise of digital cellular service into a reality," Spencer said. Digital technology converts analog voice into more compressed and efficient binary signals, initially offering as much as a three-fold increase in capacity, as well as noise-free calls, cleaner call handoff between cells, and enhanced security. In the future, digital technology will also enable cellular systems to offer advanced networking features such as caller identification. The digital radio equipment MOTOROLA NORTEL is supplying to AGT Cellular is Northern Telecom|s unique dual-mode cellular radio channel unit, manufactured in Calgary. It consists of a digital signal processor-based (DSP) transceiver, capable of loading application-specific software for analog or digital operation, and for future enhanced cellular services. It supports either a single analog radio channel, or a TDMA digital channel capable of handling three, simultaneous conversations today, and eventually up to six. And it allows the cellular system operator to allocate analog and digital radio channels dynamically on a call-by-call basis to meet changing subscriber demand. "This is the only radio channel unit available for cellular networks that can operate in either analog or digital mode, yet it's competitively priced with analog-only systems," said John Roth, president, Wireless Systems, Northern Telecom. "It allows AGT Cellular to offer the benefits of digital while continuing to offer the highest level of service to its loyal installed base of analog mobile customers," Roth said. TDMA is the current industry standard access method for digital cellular systems in North America. AGT Cellular is Alberta's leading supplier of cellular and paging services, and a subsidiary of publicly-traded, Alberta-based TELUS Corporation, one of Canada's largest telecommunications companies. MOTOROLA NORTEL Communications, headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois, is a joint venture company of Motorola and Northern Telecom which sells, services, and supports cellular telephone networks in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. MOTOROLA NORTEL draws on the research, manufacturing, and marketing expertise of both parent companies to provide its customers with world-class cellular network systems supporting current and emerging standards. ---------------- One more from the Fidonet MDF echomail conference. I was sorry to read this, since I had the hope that the digital cellular systems would offer some real security: * From : Dan J. Rudiak, 1:134/68 (30 Jun 92 06:30) * To : Dave Leibold * Subj : Re: Agt cellular now run @PTH 1:154/9@fidonet 8 @MSGID: 1:134/68.0 2a4fff6e In a fit of brilliance, Dave Leibold blurted out to All: > AGT Cellular in Alberta, Canada, has apparently scored the first > digital cellular system in service in North America, beating out > Cantel and other companies which have stated their > intention to go digital cellular (as opposed to the current > analog voice transmissions which can be intercepted with > scanners, etc). AGT has placed ads joking that digital is Calls can still be intercepted ... I sat in a session where the instructor had a plain-jane cell phone with a "maintenance" package installed in it. He was able to tune to any of the channels within the cell, and listen in on both sides of the conversation. You'll be able to do the same thing with the digital cellular. Digitial cellular was created for the Celco, not the customer ... Dan Origin: The Computer Connection BBS (1:134/68) ------------- Jack Decker jack@myamiga.mixcom.com FidoNet 1:154/8 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 04:18 -0500 From: Eric Engelmann Subject: Looking For Supplier of Telephone Jack Converters The World Bank sends a lot of people to remote ends of the Earth with notebook PCs and built in FaxModems. These countries have a variety of non RJ11 wall jacks. I once saw a set of universal telephone jack converters (an idea similar to the AC adapters for small appliances used overseas which are readily available in many stores). I've lost the vendor's name. None of the modem or telephone vendors I've spoken with can direct me to a collection of adapters (RJ11 to XXX). Can anyone help? ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #539 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa25066; 7 Jul 92 3:26 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA22272 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Tue, 7 Jul 1992 01:36:18 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA10175 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Tue, 7 Jul 1992 01:36:09 -0500 Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 01:36:09 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207070636.AA10175@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #540 TELECOM Digest Tue, 7 Jul 92 01:36:02 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 540 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (John Butz) Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (Irving_Wolfe) Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (Alan Toscano) EasyReach 700 Glitch (Herr Cerny) Re: Answering Machine Problem (Peter da Silva) Re: AT&T Educational Presentations by Satellite (Alan L. Varney) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Gregory Youngblood) Re: 1-800 DISA Hacking - A Waste of Time and Money (Martin McCormick) Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? (Mike Seebeck) Re: Crimestoppers Textbook Carl Moore) Re: Crimestoppers Textbook (Tony Safina) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jbutz@homxa.att.com Date: Mon, 6 Jul 92 10:06 EDT Subject: Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach In article , neihart@ga.com writes: > It turns out AT&T has implemented the 700 service such that only those > phones connected to AT&T as their default equal access carrier can > call a 700 number; all other customers must dial 102880 before dialing > 700-xxxxxxx. This means I must give different dialing instructions First, let's separate: 1. The Easy Reach Service 700, from 2. The Problems all IECs will experience providing service with 700 numbers, before this discussion is taken any further. I'll let AT&T's Easy Reach 700 service speak for itself. It's a good service, and has gotten good reviews. Next, unlike 800 and 900 numbers, 700 numbers are NOT shared between IECs. That is, the range of 800 and 900 numbers (ie 800-000-0000 thru 800-999-9999 and likewise for 900) are shared resource, where the range is divied up among all the Long Distance carriers. The 800-NXX (or 900-NXX) tells the LEC switch which IEC "owns" the 800 (or 900) number. (Though I understand, this will change for 800 service in the future ... ie "portable" 800 numbers). The "intelligence" for 800 and 900 numbers lies in the LEC switch, not in the subscriber. This is not true for 700 numbers. Each IEC "owns" its own range of 700 numbers (700-000-XXXX thru 700-999-XXXX), so it is possible that 700-NEI-HART could exist on AT&T's network, MCI's network, Sprint's Network, etc, etc, all at the same time! The subscriber now has to know which IEC owns the number and dial the appropriate access code OR be "piced" to the particular IEC. Mind you, that this is not the fault of AT&T, AT&T Easy Reach 700, MCI, Sprint, etc. This was (to the best of my knowledge) a Bellcore decision. 800 and 900 numbers are a limited resource. Giving each IEC its own range of 700 numbers (and maybe 600, 500, 400, etc in the future) allows room for growth, while trading off ease of dialing and the possibility that one or more unique 700 numbers can exist. In article , john@zygot.ati.com writes: > this service. But I find that my desert hideaway (Contel) cannot call > out to these numbers. Oddly enough 700 555-4141 works just fine but > nothing else does in the 700 block. Try the Easy Reach 700 service 800 access number for those times when the LECs, pay phones, or cellular phones block 700 dialing. 1-800-824-5621. For Customer service, 1-800-982-8480. Many thanks john@zygot.ati.com for the compliments on the service. John Butz Easy Reach 700 System Engineering AT&T Bell Labs jbutz@homxa.att.com [Moderator's Note: It is important to point out also that all EasyReach numbers must be dialed zero plus 700 -- not one plus. They are always in effect 'operator assisted'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: irving@happy-man.com (Irving_Wolfe) Subject: Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach Reply-To: Irving_Wolfe@happy-man.com Organization: Happy Man Corp., Vashon Island, WA 98070-7399 Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 02:15:58 GMT In the Moderator notes: > [Moderator's Note: I think the rep was mistaken in any case because > AT&T has had miscellaneous billing accounts in place for many years, > for example with non-subscriber calling cards. PAT] Unfortunately, I think the problem is real. We are stuck here on Vashon Island with a horrible phone company, part of PTI, that also doesn't have general billing arrangements with AT&T, only a few standard long distance billing plans. In fact, my business subscribed to AT&T's "Pro-Watts-Plus" (or some such) and inquired about getting their 5% discount for signing up for 18 months. It couldn't be done because no billing arrangement with PTI exists for that. Apparently, AT&T just tells PTI by some code to discount our bill, and PTI hasn't elected to write the software to apply the discount. We have other billing problems with PTI; supposedly, the right total amount is being charged, but many calls appear twice on the bill because they aren't real good at programming computers. Except for very large customers, AT&T doesn't like to direct-bill. It's a pity! Irving_Wolfe@Happy-Man.com Happy Man Corp. 206/463-9399 x101 4410 SW Pt. Robinson Rd., Vashon Island, WA 98070-7399 fax x108 ------------------------------ From: atoscano@attmail.com Date: Mon Jul 6 13:34:54 CDT 1992 Subject: Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach In a reponse to an article posted by neihart@ga.com (Carl Neihart), john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: > ... The two deficiencies with the service are related: the calling > telephone must be FGD compliant; and there are some (even FGD > compliant) offices that seem to have a problem with 700 implementation. > ... But I find that my desert hideaway (Contel) cannot call > out to these numbers. Oddly enough 700 555-4141 works just fine but > nothing else does in the 700 block. > ... Remember, if you cannot dial 10XXX codes, you probably cannot > call one of these numbers. Otherwise, it should work just fine. Since you're able to reach the "You have reached the AT&T long distance network" recording, perhaps either you or your end-office switch are placing the EasyReach 700 calls in a 1+ fashion. EasyReach calls must generally be dialed as 0+. In non-equal-access (non-FGD-compliant) towns, 10XXX codes aren't permitted, but most long distance calls will default to AT&T anyway, so dialing 0 700 NXX-XXXX will *probably* work. If it doesn't, or if you're calling from an uncooperative COCOT/PBX, you can use one of AT&T's 800 access codes to reach OSPS: 1 800 824-5621 option 1. Note that while non-FGD-compliance may not be an obstacle to EasyReach, the lack of DTMF may well be: To place an ER700 call from a rotory phone, the call must be dialed 0+ or 10ATT-0+ (no 800 access), must be billed to the calling number (you can't enter a PIN or card number without DTMF), and the calling line must not have a restriction on sent-paid calls. Changing your ER700 Service routing *always* requires DTMF. A Alan Toscano - atoscano@attmail.com ------------------------------ From: noname@crash.cts.com Date: Mon Jul 6 04:26:23 1992 From: bill@toto.info.com (Herr Cerny) Subject: EasyReach 700 Glitch Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1992 11:26:21 GMT I've been hacking around with my new EasyReach 700 service, especially the selective routing feature for PIN coded callers. But I've uncovered a glitch in the call forwarding feature for a specified number of hours: after the specified time elapses, calls are not routed to the default ("home") destination. Instead, both anonymous and PIN coded callers reach a network announcement, "I'm sorry, the EasyReach 700 subscriber is not available." I reported the glitch, and AT&T acknowledged it, advising that they are going to fix this within a week. Until then, other EasyReach folks should be aware of the work-around: program call forward indefinite back to the "home" number after your call forwarding period elapses. Btw, if you're still thinking about getting a 700 number, you better move fast: 700-EAT-SH*T and other favorites are already gone. ;-) Bill Cerny | 10288-0-700-FON-BILL ------------------------------ From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: Answering Machine Problem Organization: Taronga Park BBS Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 11:03:43 GMT In article kellys@iat.holonet.net (Kelly Schwarzhoff) writes: > [Moderator's Note: Most devices built to serve only one line usually > default to serving 'line one'. What you need to do is [heath-robinson [slash rube goldberg modification to the phone jack AND phone deleted] Alternatively, just get a two-line adapter from Radio Shack. It's designed to let you plug a two-line phone into two one-line jacks, or two one-line phones into a two-line jack. Cheap, self-documenting, and you can select which line the answering machine uses on a moment's notice. (Query: does anyone make phone cable that puts the separate lines on twisted pairs? Like twisted-pair ribbon cable, you'd need to have periodic flat sections, but I see no reason it wouldn't work.) Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX +1 713 568 0480/1032 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jul 92 08:52:14 CDT From: varney@ihlpf.att.com (Alan L Varney) Subject: Re: AT&T Educational Presentations by Satellite Organization: AT&T Network Systems In article wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (Bill Mayhew) writes: > I had the day off today, so I was flipping around looking for > interesting stuff on my TVRO. I happened upon an AT&T presentation on > Telstar 302, transponder 3H. It was a basic marketing-like > presentation on the DMS-2000 SONET fiber terminal equipment. For > telco outsider such as myself it was fairly interesting becuase it did > not go into minute technical details. AT&T acknowledged home and > business viewership outside of internal channels at the open of the > program; interesting. The program aired 0930-1115 on 6/30/92. Are you sure it was "DMS"-2000; Northern Telecom uses this acronym for it's switching products, and I've never heard of the DMS-2000 as an AT&T transmission product. It could have been a DDM-2000, that's a single-shelf SONET/OC-3 multiplexer that handles VT-G, DS3, STS-1, STS-3 and DS1/B8ZS interfaces. The literature calls DS3 a "low-speed" signal! > At the end, they mentioned that AT&T eduational materials are > available by calling 800-TRAINER and selecting 2 on the voice mailbox. > The program was uplinked by a TOC in Dublin, OH. If I get a chance, > I'll give them a call to see if a schedule is available; I'll send any > info I receive along to the telecom readership here. Dublin, OH is the primary craft/operations training center for AT&T switching and transmission products. It, like the 7 other product training centers in the USA, trains both customers and employees. Dublin tends to be the "hands-on" training center, and the Hickory Ridge facility in Lisle, IL (near Bellcore TEC) tends to focus on classroom training for managers and technical support folks. There are also 20 sites offering computer software training. Dublin's full-motion satellite broadcasts began in 1992. It's called the AT&T Classroom of the Future (it might be a service mark). These are interactive classes with about 2000 sites around the world. They also offer basic telecommunications training via VHS tape combined with PC-based animation. The main number is 1-800-TRAINER (1-800-872-4637). In Canada, it's 1-800-221-1647. A non-800 contact number is 614-764-5539. Glad you enjoyed the presentation. Al Varney - just MY opinion -- but I must say that I do work with the Dublin folks occasionally on switch training. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor From: zeta@yngbld.gwinnett.COM (Gregory Youngblood) Date: Mon, 06 Jul 92 07:34:32 EST Organization: TCS Consulting Services, Peachtree City, GA ANTENNA@CSEARN.BITNET (Robert Horvitz) writes: > The lead article in the May/June issue of {Microwave News} says that > NEC America and GTE Mobilnet of Tampa have been sued for damages > arising from a brain tumor allegedly induced in Susan Reynard, who was > described as a frequent user of cellular phones. The suit argues that > "The tumor was the result of radiation emitted by a cellular telephone > [or] the course of the tumor was accelerated and aggravated by the > emissions from the telephone ..." > This is believed to be the first lawsuit against a cellular phone > company concerning electromagnetic hazards. Lawyer John Lloyd Jr. > said it was prompted by the deaths from brain cancer of three Tampa-area > doctors who were also described as heavy users of cellular phones. > According to David Reynard, Susan's husband, (quoting from {Microwave > NEWS}), "If an outline of the phone were superimposed on the [magnetic > resonance image of her head which] showed his wife's tumor, the > malignancy would be at the middle of the antenna ..." Just out of curiousity ... How much actual on-the-air airtime did she and the others use each month, and for how many months?? How many technicians for cellular carriers, as well as other staff, have been diagnosed with brain cancer/tumors thought to be possibly from the heavy usage of cellular phones? I'm not downplaying the dangers of the frequency. From what I understand the 800Mhz has the potential to do some significant damage to the human brain if exposed long enough. I'm what I consider to be a heavy user. I use my phone (an NEC P300 handheld in and out of a carkit) several thousand minutes each month, and have done so for roughly for the last 24 to 30 months. Before then, I used various handhelds w/out car kits several hundred minutes a month. [I'm just glad I get free airtime. :) The bills would be unmanageable if I didn't]. Considering my usage, and my idea of heavy users, the posting of the lawsuit has made me curious. Thanks, Gregory S. Youngblood The opinions expressed above are my own and Cellular One does not mean my employer feels the same way. 26-A Bullsboro Drive Newnan, GA 30263 zeta@yngbld.gwinnett.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: 1-800 DISA Hacking - A Waste of Time and Money Date: Mon, 06 Jul 92 09:07:31 -0500 From: martin@datacomm.ucc.okstate.edu Partial quote follows: > host for the past few weeks to a hackling from (212) 234-849x who has > been pounding randomly on one of my DISA ports which terminates on It would seem that given the ANI from this guy, one could track him down and do a little pounding on him. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group ------------------------------ From: lens@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Mike Seebeck) Subject: Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 15:52:36 GMT In article bharrell@garfield.catt. ncsu.edu (Ben Harrell) writes: > shuang@idacom.hp.com (Shuang Deng) writes: > Centrex can be described *roughly* as a virtual PBX or key system > service provided by the local telephone company (also competitive > access providers in New York state). In Centrex, every station set > has a physical or derived voice equivalent channel from the user's > desk to the serving central office line interface circuit (sometimes > called line relay). For customers larger than 50-100 station sets, hout their own OPE it is not uncommon in my neck off the woods to find the local RBOC has sold centrex lines to a customer who has their own PBX or key system. In this case the Centrex lines look like trunks from the central office. Rather like a network on a network. The customer may or may-not know the significance of the service and was sold the lines as a cost savings without reference to the cost of the NARS. Michael Seebeck RMH Group, Telecomm Dept. (303)239-0909 *DISCLAIMER: Its mine, all mine(D.Duck?) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jul 92 11:10:46 EDT From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) Subject: Re: Crimestoppers Textbook OK out there, if you know you dialed an 800 number and you get billed, check to see what number appears on your phone bill. ------------------------------ From: disk!tony@uunet.UU.NET (tony) Subject: Re: Crimestoppers Textbook Organization: Digital Information Systems of KY Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1992 13:21:12 GMT edward@pro-ren.cts.com (Edward Floden) writes: > Some 900-number phone scams have switched to using 800 numbers; > watch carefully for any charges when dialing an 800 number." What if you call these "800" numbers from a pay phone? Can they _still_ bill you? -=- Tony Safina -=- disk!tony@uunet.UU.NET -=- [Moderator's Note: Well our experience with the Mystic Marketing Company of Nevada was they tried to bill the phone, and of course the telco owners of the phone were the ones to get billed and refuse payment. Mystic soon wised up; I think they have abandoned billing to the telephone via 800. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #540 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa25980; 7 Jul 92 3:51 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA22578 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Tue, 7 Jul 1992 02:02:13 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA19476 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Tue, 7 Jul 1992 02:02:05 -0500 Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 02:02:05 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207070702.AA19476@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #541 TELECOM Digest Tue, 7 Jul 92 02:02:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 541 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: See Figure 1 (Stephen Friedl) Re: See Figure 1 (Tom Perrine) Re: See figure 1 (Bryan Lockwood) Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? (Mike Seebeck) Re: Funny Advertising Goof-ups (Wrong Numbers) (Bill Gripp) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Ang Peng Hwa) Re: Looking For SS-7 Books (Dick Rawson) Re: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! (Phydeaux) Re: "Legal" Phreaking? (Tony Safina) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: friedl@mtndew.Tustin.CA.US (Stephen Friedl) Subject: Re: See Figure 1 Date: 6 Jul 92 20:39:59 GMT Organization: Steve's Personal machine / Tustin, CA Mike Bray writes: > I wish I could remember who sent this to me, and when they did, > but I don't. :( So see figure 1. :) > AT&T Customer Service Memorandum > Please stop submitting compliants. This is our system. I am sure that I created this in 1986 or so. I had seen one for "VMS Version 3" in the very same format, and decided that AT&T needed one as well. I was with an AT&T VAR back then, and most of the things that this little memorandum mentions are no longer the case: you can get ksh now, they really do support the math chip very nicely, and the data techs that have supported my customers and me have been first-rate (Hi Larry Duffy!). Stephen P.S. - You AT&T management types that got hot the last time this was posted can definitely see Figure 1. Lighten up, OK? Stephen J Friedl | Software Consultant | Tustin, CA | +1 714 544 6561 3b2-kind-of-guy | I speak for me ONLY | KA8CMY | uunet!mtndew!friedl ------------------------------ From: tep@tots.Logicon.COM (Tom Perrine) Subject: Re: See Figure 1 Date: 6 Jul 92 23:21:56 GMT Organization: Logicon, Inc., San Diego, California In article mike@camphq.FIDONET.ORG (Mike Bray) writes: > I wish I could remember who sent this to me, and when they did, but I > don't. :( So see figure 1. :) Well, well, well. Figure 1 returns! I first encountered this diagram and text in a Honeywell internal memo, For the Honeywell CP-6 Release B03 HOST Software Release Bulletin, in 1982. The diagram is almost exactly the same, and some of the text is identical: The first paragraph is identical. So is most of the one on options. The rest of the Honeywell memo is just as funny. Naw, its funnier. If you don't think so, or you want me to type it all in, See Figure 1. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) Tom E. Perrine (tep) | tep@Logicon.COM | Voice: +1 619 597 7221 Logicon, Inc. | sun!suntan!tots!tep | or : +1 619 455 1330 4010 Sorrento Valley Blvd| San Diego CA 92121-1498 | FAX: +1 619 552 0729 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: See figure 1 From: system%coldbox@uunet.UU.NET (Bryan Lockwood) Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 15:12:53 PDT Organization: The Coldbox- +1 907 633 6828. World's northernmost site? Ah. I recall seeing this a LONG time ago. In fact I'm pretty sure I still have a copy floating around on disk (and on around and around again, if you want to get technical). But the version I saw had to do with the VAX VMS operating system, rather than with AT&T. Which is why I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read the part that refers to the VAX. I suppose I could make the VAX version available if anyone wanted it. Use email, PAT probably wouldn't want me to post it here. I wonder if the guy who originally wrote this will be writing to the fellow who rewrote it, telling him to (see Figure 1)? Author: Bryan Lockwood (system@coldbox) Originating system: The Coldbox- +1 907 633 6828. World's northernmost site? WWIVnet: @501 | Usenet: uunet!coldbox!system | Direct: (907)633-6828 ------------------------------ From: lens@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Mike Seebeck) Subject: Re: What are "NorTel" and "Centrex"? Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 15:52:36 GMT In article bharrell@garfield.catt. ncsu.edu (Ben Harrell) writes: > shuang@idacom.hp.com (Shuang Deng) writes: > Centrex can be described *roughly* as a virtual PBX or key system > service provided by the local telephone company (also competitive > access providers in New York state). In Centrex, every station set > has a physical or derived voice equivalent channel from the user's > desk to the serving central office line interface circuit (sometimes > called line relay). For customers larger than 50-100 station sets, hout their own OPE it is not uncommon in my neck off the woods to find the local RBOC has sold centrex lines to a customer who has their own PBX or key system. In this case the Centrex lines look like trunks from the central office. Rather like a network on a network. The customer may or may-not know the significance of the service and was sold the lines as a cost savings without reference to the cost of the NARS. Michael Seebeck RMH Group, Telecomm Dept. (303) 239-0909 *DISCLAIMER: Its mine, all mine(D.Duck?) [Moderator's Note: The above message was mangled when I got it. His reply starts out just as you see it; I could not figure it out. PAT] ------------------------------ From: billg@bony1.bony.com (Bill Gripp) Subject: Re: Funny Advertising Goof-ups (Wrong Numbers) Organization: LA&W RR Date: Mon, 6 Jul 92 15:25:06 GMT In article John Higdon writes: > Wouldn't it be nice if it always turned out that way? Some time ago, I > had a number that was very close to 800 HILTONS. At one point I became > innundated with calls from people trying to book reservations. When I > called the hotel chain to see if there had perhaps been an ad with a > mistake or some other contributing factor for the wrong numbers, I got > the royal brush-off. Since the Great Big Corporation was not > interested in little old me or my problems, I used a retaliatory > method that if nothing else made me feel better. I am sure you can > imagine what it was. So how many bogus reservations did you make??? =B^] [Moderator's Note: I don't think he made reservations; I think he took them instead ... I told him it would have been only fitting had at least a few of the 'guests' then arrived unexpectedly at Higdon House and demanded a room. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Jul 92 00:01:40 SST From: Ang Peng Hwa Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor John Higdon is an agnostic about non-ionizing radiation who seems to have been no worse for it bouncing off his skull :) But here are are my two cents of fears. The "theory" of non-ionizing radiation was discovered accidentally by a researcher who was looking for the cause of leukemia. He/she (can't remember) found nothing until one day, looking around her, saw that there were lots of power lines. Redrawing her subjects, she found that virtually all lived within 100 yards of either a substation or a high voltage line. True, no study has vindicated those findings. But as a researchers, I am inclined to take findings that were discovered, more seriously than those one set out to find. Then there was the PC Magazine editor Winn Rosch who did a pretty decent article on the subject of emissions from the computer monitor. Like John, he concluded that there was no definitive study. But at the end of the article, Rosch said he now sits five feet away from the monitor. ------------------------------ From: drawson@sagehen.Tymnet.COM (Dick Rawson) Subject: Re: Looking For SS-7 Books Date: 6 Jul 92 16:28:53 GMT Organization: BT North America (Tymnet) > I'm looking for some good reading material on Signaling System 7 (SS7) > and also on packet switching. Could anyone recommend recent books > they've read on these subjects? See "Knocking on users' doors: Signalling System 7", by Walter Roehr, in Data Communications for February 1989. I saw a more technical article more recently, but I can't remember where. It wouldn't hurt to read this for orientation. Dick ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jul 92 09:32:02 PDT From: reb@ingres.com (Phydeaux) Subject: Re: Beware: The AT&T "Call Me" Card Works to *ANY* Number! > The problem is in the handling of sequence calls. US West does this > incorrectly for intra-LATA calls, and it now sounds like GTE Airphone > does it wrong as well. What happens is that as long as the initial > call is to a valid number for the card, then sequence calls to any > number the carrier handles will be allowed. For US West (or any other Interestingly, the bill I received had about eight calls and the one to my home number was the *third* call. The only way I can see this happening is if the calling party uses the card to ring my house and then sequence to a few more calls (before I answer) and *then* call my house. In this case, the phone did *not* ring (and was not busy) before the call came in to the one authorized number. > The attitude AT&T's customer service department is taking on this > issue is the worst part of the problem. ... The entire purpose of > the restricted card is that you can give it to people you DON'T trust! My thoughts *exactly*. >> To top this all off, I was told that they "COULD NOT GUARANTEE" that >> additional calls to numbers other than the one "call me" number would > Are you SURE this wasn't GTE? Well, when I got off of the phone she said "Thank you for calling AT&T" "Your are welcome." reb -- *-=#= Phydeaux =#=-* reb@ingres.com or reb%ingres.com@lll-winken.llnl.GOV ICBM: 41.55N 87.40W h:828 South May Street Chicago, IL 60607 312-733-3090 w:reb Ingres 10255 West Higgins Road Suite 500 Rosemont, IL 60018 708-803-9500 ------------------------------ From: disk!tony@uunet.UU.NET (tony) Subject: Re: "Legal" Phreaking? Organization: Digital Information Systems of KY Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1992 13:17:31 GMT houle@jupiter.nmt.edu (Paul Houle) writes: > I did a little hacking when I was a teenager, and I broke into > my first computer with the first username/password that I tried. It > was uucp/. I also discovered that a large number of > computers still had default passwords and other easy methods of entry > -- methods that a 14-year old kid with a C-64 can use. As such, I'd > say that many computer systems maintain a level of security that is > comparable to leaving the door of a house closed but unlocked. > This, to me, is simply unacceptable for a company that holds > records that are supposed to be private. I personally don't mind my > credit information being on file at TRW -- I feel that, for myself, > the loss of privacy is worth the convenience of being able to do > business on credit with total strangers with a good deal of confi- > dence. I know that the phone company has to keep a log of my long > distance calls, and that many other companies may have a legitimate > reason to keep confidential information about me on computers. Some > people may feel differently because they put different values on > certain kinds of privacy. Yet, just about everyone would be outraged > if just anybody could break into a computer and read or alter my > credit information at TRW, or if a gang of hackers could break into a > telephone company computer and find out who I call. > I think that in cases such as this, the customers of a company > would be justified in bringing a class-action suit against it when it > is discovered that a company fails to take reasonable precautions to > protect confidential information. This doesn't mean that we can or > should sue a company just for getting hacked, because someone who is > skilled enough and motivated enough and who has the resources can > probably breach any kind of security, but yet, if a company fails to > take the most basic precautions, as many do, I believe that is > potentially criminal negligence. Any company that holds confidential > information about it's customers should be legally bound to protect > it. Granted, you made many good points -- if I borrow my friend's bicycle and it gets stolen because I negligently leave it on my front lawn UNLOCKED while I go in the house to eat lunch, I am responsible for the loss because I failed to take the most minimal of precautions (say, chaining it to a tree or other secure objject). If I do that and someone still steals it, then I am still ethically responsible for the loss, but my minimal effort to protect against theft would probably prevent a charge of negligence to boot (although if it were a _new_ bicycle, the plaintiff might be able to successfully allege that merely locking it was insufficient protection, that I should have rolled it into the house for maximal security while I was eating [God Forbid if I left the front door open _and_ enjoyed my dinner on a different floor of the house as an intruder rolled the bike out the front door as I was dining! Alas! Negligent again!!]). I think the same argument applies, the one which you made, if someone steals personal data which I have entrusted to a third party for whatever reason. They have the bicycle, they are responsible for its safekeeping. If they have a code, say something on the order of the security code for new cordless telephones, one that changes every time the account is accessed, then I would say they are doing their job by taking greater than minimal precautions and should not be held negligent if that data is stolen. I feel they are still morally/ethically responsible for the loss (just as I would be if I lived on the South Side of Los Angeles and left my friend's new bike chained to a tree in my front yard). Regarding the "phreaker's" liability, however, is he/she blameless if they are caught in the act of theft? Isn't their act analogous to the act of the bicycle theif who gets caught trying different size hacksaw blades on the chain which secures my friend's bicycle to the tree in my front yard? Is it a valid analogy? I am undecided on this point myself. The difference is in the fact that when the bicycle thief make that very first tiny little nick in my bicycle chain, they have at that point already damaged my property (or property that had been entrusted to me -- the chain). When a "phreaker" tries out his/her first password, is it the same thing? Nowadays with phone numbers to BBS systems being posted everywhere, some neophytes may not know if the system they are trying to get access to is an open board or a closed board. There may be non-malicious reasons that a person tries to get access to a particular board. A person may even try to get access to a corporate data base just because they know that company has data which concerns them and they want to see how well it is protected. Looking at it from this point of view, say I have borrowed my friend's bicycle. Instead of chaining his bicycle to a tree, I have chained his bicycle to other bicycles in my front yard (other bikes being analogous to other people's data). The lock belongs to me, it is a very simple three-digit combination lock. My friend comes back to my house before I finish my meal and he wants his bicycle (property he has entrusted to me). He doesn't want to ring the doorbell and ask me for the bike because he's afraid he'll wake my mom who works nights. Instead, he starts fiddling around with the combination lock which secures his property (as well as property which belongs to other people [though it is my property while it is in my care]), ... after an hour of fiddling (I guess I fell asleep on the couch) he gets the combination, takes his bicycle, resecures the other bicycles, then leaves a note wedged inside my screen door saying that he took his bicycle. Did my friend committ an act of theft? Would any court of law hold him responsible for his actions? These are ques- tions I don't really know the answers to, I'm not even certain this analogy applies, but it seemed to make sense as I was writing it. I think there are different degreees of culptitude(sp?) and one "phreaker" may not be as negligent as the next. There are also different degrees of moral/ethical responsibility for securement of another's property. I would think, however, that a company holding personal data I have entrusted to them would take better precautions with it than attempting to secure it with a three-digit bicycle lock. -=- Tony Safina -=- disk!tony@uunet.UU.NET -=- ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #541 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa19050; 8 Jul 92 9:01 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA22455 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Wed, 8 Jul 1992 07:04:01 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA31464 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Wed, 8 Jul 1992 07:03:53 -0500 Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 07:03:53 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207081203.AA31464@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #542 TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Jul 92 07:03:55 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 542 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (Mike Coleman) Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (Phil Howard) Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach (Alan L. Varney) Re: Alternative to EasyReach 700 (Phil Howard) A Comment From Wales About EasyReach (Richard Cox) EasyReach NOT (Cincinnati Bell) (Ralph Hyre) Some EasyReach Comments (Ed Greenberg) Re: What is Iridium Project? (Gantt Edmiston) Re: What is Iridium Project? (Shah Jahan) Re: What is Iridium Project? (David W. Barts) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: coleman@bi.twinsun.com (Mike Coleman) Subject: Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach Organization: Twin Sun, Inc Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 01:21:04 GMT jbutz@homxa.att.com writes: > Each IEC "owns" its own range of 700 numbers (700-000-XXXX thru > 700-999-XXXX), so it is possible that 700-NEI-HART could exist on AT&T's > network, MCI's network, Sprint's Network, etc, etc, all at the same time! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuggggggghhhhhh!!!!! (sounds of junior telegeek shrieking while running around the room and bumping his head against nearby walls.) No, no, no, no, no!! All of this money spent on all of this whizzy telecom technology, and we're headed back to party lines. Only *this* time, someone will be answering your calls and you'll never even hear the phone ring. ("I'm sorry, sir. That was 'two clicks and a plop' (700) 345-6789?" "No, ma'am. It was 'a plop and two clicks' (700) 345-6789.") It's so *easy*! One man, one vote. One "entity", one phone number. Mike ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach Date: Tue, 07 Jul 92 20:47:05 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) > [Moderator's Note: It is important to point out also that all EasyReach > numbers must be dialed zero plus 700 -- not one plus. They are always > in effect 'operator assisted'. PAT] What causes this? Is it just a mechanism to allow some sort of interrupted rerouting, with the EasyReach computer system doing the role of the operator? irving@happy-man.com (Irving_Wolfe) writes: > Except for very large customers, AT&T doesn't like to direct-bill. > It's a pity! They direct-bill just fine ... in the form of their Universal-Card. There is already a mechanism in place on the Universal-Card for charges for which the grace period does not apply, e.g. the calling card charges, which are integrated into the bill, but are not a part of the CREDIT card aspect of the card. So why can't they offer to do the billing of EasyReach service to holders of the AT&T Universal Card, through the non-CREDIT side of that service? When I've talked to the business people at the EasyReach center, they tell me they can't. I understand that to mean they WON'T ... anything can be done if you want to, and it's even easier if it is all within the same company (or at least it should be). Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com [Moderator's Note: They also have direct billing for non-subscriber calling cards, leased products, phone center merchandise paid for in installments and cellular long distance calls. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jul 92 14:36:11 CDT From: varney@ihlpf.att.com (Alan L Varney) Subject: Re: 700 Easyreach Service Should be Called Hard to Reach Organization: AT&T Network Systems In article jbutz@homxa.att.com writes: > Next, unlike 800 and 900 numbers, 700 numbers are NOT shared between > IECs. That is, the range of 800 and 900 numbers (ie 800-000-0000 thru > 800-999-9999 and likewise for 900) are shared resource, where the > range is divied up among all the Long Distance carriers. But like all such numbers, the 700 spectrum can only handle around ten million subscribers. If it is wildly successful, some other number space must be found. Future PCN services will hit this wall as well (it'll take multiple NPAs to handle all the users, especially for those that want ten distinctive ring numbers to flaunt). Unfortunately, today there is no other NPA than 700 that a carrier is free to allocate. The alternative is tone dialing of an ID after dialing a ten-digit call, as some 800-number providers use. Another alternative: I once proposed using International numbers and a new XXX carrier code as a way of getting a private numbering space (no intra-LATA screening on 01--- calls, and you can get 12 digits). This was a packet network provider that wanted the dialed digits to not be screened. But this means 10XXX dialing to select the carrier for such calls, since most folks wouldn't want to pre-subscribe to such a carrier. And the carrier couldn't handle REAL international traffic. There really aren't any easy answers to providing short dialing sequences to reach "non-geographic" numbers for large populations. And people are accumulating numbers like crazy. FAX numbers, beeper numbers, multiple cellular numbers, private 800 numbers, etc. CCITT is also concerned about the use of parts of numbers to select features, carriers, services, etc. Their latest suggestion is that telephone numbers (as opposed to dialing plans) should only designate the intended recipient, and prefix digits or other means should be used to signal the other stuff. Followed literally, that means the use of two numbers for "distinctive ring" service violates the CCITT "rules". Of course, so do Remote Call Forwarding numbers (for FX). For the future, CCITT is banking on "supplementary numbers" that can be delivered to ISDN sets to select services or terminals. > The 800-NXX (or 900-NXX) tells the LEC switch which IEC "owns" the > 800 (or 900) number. (Though I understand, this will change for 800 > service in the future ... ie "portable" 800 numbers). 800 number "portability" will not change the number of 800 numbers, so in general it only changes from using NXX to identify the IXC to using NXX-XXXX to identify the IXC. (There are other enhancements, such as using ANI, type-of-line, traffic rate and time-of-day to select the IXC, but that's just frosting.) Al Varney - just MY opinion, not AT&T's ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: Alternative to EasyReach 700 Date: Mon, 06 Jul 92 19:42:05 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard ) writes: > But why not use some other [1-6]00 prefix and establish a portable > number service. There are of course complications, but portable 800 > service will have to address many of these anyway, and I suspect most > of the solutions will be the same (such as the mechanism for assigning > a new vanity number). > [Moderator's Note: You are forgetting that EasyReach is a specialized > service for AT&T customers. It is intended as a convenience for their > customers, not the caller. PAT] My suggestion is the creation of a national inter-carrier service in the same sense that 800 and 900 services now are. I don't know who's role it would be to set it up (how was 900 created?) but suspect it might have to be the FCC itself (I guess they are the ones pushing the 800 service into portable mode). This idea would not conflict with the 700 services which any carrier can setup more independently if they want. It obviously cannot use 800 numbers (since the caller can be billed ... at least we would not want that) and probably cannot use 900 either, so I had suggested the [1-6]00 range. I realize EasyReach is a specialized service. I'm proposing something that is different (but might resemble it). Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jul 92 20:22 GMT From: Richard Cox Subject: A Comment From Wales About EasyReach Reply-To: mandarin@cix.compulink.co.uk I hope you'll pardon a comment from Wales about your new Easyreach service. If I understand it (like, if I've been reading this Digest properly !) each carrier has their own set of 700-YYY-ZZZZ numbers ... and you all have to dial the 10XXX prefix if you're not with the carrier serving the customer that you want. Two questions: does this preclude Easyreach numbers being called from outside the NANP (or even outside the mainland USA ?) When I dial into the USA from the UK, I canNOT preselect a carrier. Should these numbers be called Easy(but only from inside the US)reach numbers? And how are they tariffed? What is the caller charged? Do your payphones handle the calls and their charges correctly (I mean payphones run by telcos, not COCOTS -- that's a separate can of worms). We have a lot of problems over here right now trying to decide how to handle portable numbers which could be anywhere on this tiny island (so the code prefix doesn't tell much about the cost of the call). A lot of our payphones rely on the code digits to decide what to charge, instead of pulses from the telcos. People won't like having to pay "national" call charges for what is really a local call, just because the person we are calling wants to have a portable number. What thoughts ? Richard Cox at Mandarin Technology, Llanishen, Cardiff, Wales (011) 44 399 870101 or mandarin@cix.compulink.co.uk ------------------------------ From: proty!ralphw@cinpmx.attmail.com Date: Tue Jul 7 17:06:24 EDT 1992 Subject: EasyReach NOT (Cincinnati Bell) Apparently Cincinnati Bell territory is one of those areas where EasyReach is not available. I confirmed this by calling the customer service number. I wonder if SNET (Southern New England Telephone, the other semi-BOC that was unaffected by divestiture) is similarly crippled. I'd think that the product manager for this service wouldn't have launched it without having all the relevant agreements in place with all the Bell-shaped companies. I don't know if the option of having cellular service would help here, or not. I would be interested in finding out what is 'special' about Cincinnati Bell (ie whether the delay is political (tariffs), or technical (the billing system can't handle it.)) Ralph Hyre unhappy Cincinnati Bell customer ------------------------------ From: edg@netcom.com (Ed Greenberg) Subject: Some EasyReach Comments Date: Tue, 07 Jul 92 23:31:18 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Here are some comments on my EasyReach service after having it for a few weeks. I got it because I'm taking a 40 day motorcycle trip, and I plan to program it each night for the motel I'm in. During the day, I'll point it at my voicemail. So, if you get my voicemail, I'm not "in for the night yet." * I wish you could have different billing and default numbers. For instance, I wish my default number could be my voicemail, not my home. That way, each night I could set eight hour forwarding to the hotel and just let it expire. No can do though, I must manually reforward the number in the morning. * The menu tree changes depending on the state of things. It's different if you are forwarded or not, or if you are calling from a number that is enabled for sent-paid or not. This makes it impossible to type ahead. * The number seems eminently reachable for me. I was able to access it from: Behind my work PBX (with 9 + 10288 + 0 + 700...) Etna, CA, on Siskayou Telephone Company (0 + 700...) McCloud, CA on Citizens Utilities Co. (0 + 700...) Harrah's Hotel, Reno, NV (9 + 0 + 700..., $1 charge) Pacific Telephone coin phone, Shasta, CA (couldn't reliably hang up ... got AT&T operator who confirmed that my call had been disconnected. Perhaps I wasn't hanging up long enough, but I _was_ and was waiting to hear the phone reset.) 10xxx compilant COCOT (10288 + 0 + 700...) * Could not access from: COCOT that wouldn't give AT&T COCOT that cut off tone and cut to AT&T operator immediately after dialing 102880. I asked the operator to dial the call and got "can't complete your call." Was going to ask her to dial it again with 0+ but realized that with no tone it was futile anyway. * It would be nice if AT&T would sell it with integrated voicemail as the default when not programmed. I'd pay .15 or .25 (nite or day) to play back my messages, and, of course, my callers would have to pay it to leave messages. * It would be nice if I could add, change and delete PINS automagically using the DTMF interface. * It would be nice if I could set my own variable length master pin. * It would be nice if 1 + 700 (or 10288 + 1 + 700) would complete the call sent-paid, and 0 + 700 (or 10288 + 0 + 700) would complete the call with a calling card or pin without any prompts. (Entering the master pin would log you into "command mode") Everybody knows how to enter a calling card or pin at the AT&T-Beep-Bong prompt and most everybody knows how to dial 10288 these days. (See the article published a few days ago about the breakdown of calls at the telecom-friendly COCOT at the ski resort. People are dialing 10288 without even checking first to see if the call goes AT&T.) The benefit of this would be that you could give simpler instructions. "The number is 700-xxx-xxxx and you must select AT&T." Or, "Do it just like a calling card call on AT&T, but enter this PIN instead." * How about being able to get back to command mode with a long # tone after calling home. * This could be the start of an integrated remote long distance system. For instance, how about the ability to complete outgoing calls from the command mode? This could include a repitoire of speed calling numbers. AT&T could charge you in the EasyReach portion of your bill, with a calling card surcharge. If they REALLY wanted to be snazzy, they could let you complete such calls WITHOUT a calling card surcharge. Coupled with voicemail mentioned above, this becomes a really powerful mobile office. * Some people have suggested that the reason that EasyReach is limited to AT&T subscribers is to build a base of presubscribed users. Maybe so. The shortsightedness of this approach is apparent though, since EasyReach is a really useful thing for people with no local phone service. I hope that you AT&T Marketing and Technical Gurus out there will pick up on some of these ideas. Ed Greenberg Home: +1 408 283 0511 | edg@netcom.com P. O. Box 28618 Work: +1 408 764 5305 | DoD#: 0357 San Jose, CA 95159 Fax: +1 408 764 5003 | KM6CG (ex WB2GOH) ------------------------------ From: sasbge@unx.sas.com (Gantt Edmiston) Subject: Re: What is Iridium Project? Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 01:47:01 GMT Organization: SAS Institute Inc. In article <714@capmkt.COM> charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu) writes: > Telecommunications Magazine has a article that makes passing mention > of Motorola's Iridium Project and its 77 satellites that are going to > be launched. What is the Iridium Project? Iridium is one of the elements. It has 77 electrons in the outer shell circling the nucleus. The plan, as I read about it a while back, was to launch 77 satellites in geosyncronous orbit around the world. This would allow cellular contact from *any* point on the globe. The concept of "cells' remains the same, just more coverage per cell. The article also said that the FCC had blessed the project and that it would be implemented by 1996. I'm not holding my breath or my cellular calls .... =-) Gantt Edmiston QA Host Systems, V416 x6091 SASnet: ------------------------------ From: Shah_Jahan@sat.mot.com (Shah Jahan) Subject: Re: What is Iridium Project? Organization: Motorola Inc. - Satellite Communications Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 14:58:55 GMT charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu) writes: > What is the Iridium Project? The Iridium project will provide worldwide personal communications using a constellation of 77 Low Earth Orbit Satellites. It will have a number of Gateways at strategic locations on the planet for providing interconnection to PSTN networks. Shah Jahan Iridium Systems Engineeering Motorola Satellite Communications Chandler, AZ 85248 (602) 732-3134 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jul 92 16:55:55 -0700 From: David W. Barts Subject: Re: What is Iridium Project? > Think of Iridium as "Worldwide Cellular." Once launched, you will be > able to make a phone call from just about anywhere in the world -- > even where telephone systems are controlled by the government or are > just too archaic to be trusted. I imagine that once it's launched, > there will be a scramble to be the first to make a phone call from the > top of Mt. Everest. :-) Too late, that's already been done. Sir Edmund Hillary's son called his father from Mt. Everest several years ago. The call was carried via two-way radio to a satelite phone (presumably INMARSAT) at base camp. David Barts N5JRN W Civil Engineering, FX-10 davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu Seattle, WA 98195 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #542 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa20774; 8 Jul 92 9:40 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA25435 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Wed, 8 Jul 1992 07:33:03 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA19630 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Wed, 8 Jul 1992 07:32:54 -0500 Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 07:32:54 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207081232.AA19630@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #543 TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Jul 92 07:32:52 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 543 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Paul Eggert) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Tony Kennedy) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Irving Wolfe) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Justin Leavens) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Mark R. Rubin) Re: Candidates E-Mail Addresses (Gary Segal) Re: Candidates E-Mail Addresses (Eric Thompson) Perot Compuserve Account (Robert Virzi) Re: See Figure 1 (Eric Woudenberg) Re: See Figure 1 (Mike Whitaker) Re: See Figure 1 (Jeff Hibbard) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: eggert@farside.twinsun.com (Paul Eggert) Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Organization: Twin Sun, Inc Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 19:40:38 GMT MCMANGPH@NUSVM.BITNET (Ang Peng Hwa) writes: > The "theory" of non-ionizing radiation was discovered accidentally by > a researcher who was looking for the cause of leukemia. He/she (can't > remember) found nothing until one day, looking around her, saw that > there were lots of power lines. Redrawing her subjects, she found that > virtually all lived within 100 yards of either a substation or a high > voltage line. That story has certainly grown in the telling. The original study found a relatively small effect (not even close to `virtually all'). The study itself has been attacked on methodological grounds: e.g. poorer people tend to have more illnesses, and tend to live next to power lines, but that doesn't mean power lines cause illnesses. Most followup studies have not found significant effects, but informed opinion on the subject is far from unanimous. It's too bad that important public policy issues like this are so often decided in the courts, which do not use the scientific method to arrive at their results. ------------------------------ From: adk@sun13.SCRI.FSU.EDU (Tony Kennedy) Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Date: 7 Jul 92 22:12:45 GMT Organization: SCRI, Florida State University >> Ang Peng Hwa writes: > The "theory" of non-ionizing radiation was discovered > accidentally by a researcher who was looking for the cause of > leukemia. He/she (can't remember) found nothing until one day, > looking around her, saw that there were lots of power lines. > Redrawing her subjects, she found that virtually all lived > within 100 yards of either a substation or a high voltage > line. One objection to this is that it indicates a correlation between leukemia and power lines, not a causal connection. A reasonable explanation might well be that poverty is correlated with leukemia, and houses near power lines are cheaper. Perhaps people who are susceptible to brain tumors are predisposed to use cellular telephones ... maybe the larger telephone bills cause stress which induces tumors? BTW, do you realize that eating butter reduces your chances of dying of cancer? ------------------------------ From: irving@happy-man.com (Irving_Wolfe) Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Reply-To: Irving_Wolfe@happy-man.com Organization: Happy Man Corp., Vashon Island, WA 98070-7399 Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 13:45:34 GMT In MCMANGPH@NUSVM.BITNET (Ang Peng Hwa) writes: > The "theory" of non-ionizing radiation was discovered accidentally by > a researcher who was looking for the cause of leukemia. He/she (can't > remember) found nothing until one day, looking around her, saw that > there were lots of power lines. Redrawing her subjects, she found that > virtually all lived within 100 yards of either a substation or a high > voltage line. There is an extremely well-written (truly delightful to read despite the subject matter) book on this subject by Paul Brodeur. He's not a scientist, but a writer; however, he's very bright and thorough and took the trouble to read everything available and interview actual workers in the field. I wish I remembered the book's title, but you should be able to find it under the author's name. Irving_Wolfe@Happy-Man.com Happy Man Corp. 206/463-9399 x101 4410 SW Pt. Robinson Rd., Vashon Island, WA 98070-7399 fax x108 ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 07:12:41 GMT Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC In article John Higdon writes: > Robert Horvitz writes: >> According to David Reynard, Susan's husband, (quoting from {Microwave >> NEWS}), "If an outline of the phone were superimposed on the [magnetic >> resonance image of her head which] showed his wife's tumor, the >> malignancy would be at the middle of the antenna ..." > If people are going to start trading in this psuedo-scientific clap- > trap, at least they might check out a few laws of physics before > putting foot in mouth. The center of radiation is NOT at the center of > a cellular antenna. >> The radio wavelengths used in cellular phones are similar to the >> dimensions of the human skull, so that resonance could provide an >> efficient transfer of energy. > Except that the skull makes a much more effective shield than a > waveguide. I see it all happening again: many good, useful products > have been taken away because of this sort of voodoo. No acceptable > studies have been able to prove or disprove any of these beliefs or > theories concerning non-ionizing radiation. Here we go again with > emotionalism and scare tactics for the ignorant. On the other hand, there really may be something to worry about here. Last time this came up in RISKS, it was pointed out that before the advent of cellular phone service, the same frequencies were used in some cities for short-range police radios. As I recall, in more than one case handheld transciever units were replaced with belt-mounted + handset or the like because of large-scale problems with glaucoma. Tumors didn't factor into this, however, as I recall. Does anybody remember more of this discussion? As I recall another interesting tidbit was mentioned tangetally to all this -- many of the same products that are accused of "emitting excess electromagnetic radiation causing health damage" also contain many plastic components, and get very hot. (The perfect example of this, of course, is the electric blanket!) Heat many common plastics enough and they start to give off their volatile components. Many of these are potentially Very Very Bad For You. I found it to be an intriguing hypothesis, though probably not any better than the ones about 60Hz, etc. radiation. Your mileage may vary. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@panix.COM ------------------------------ From: leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: 7 Jul 1992 13:03:26 -0700 Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA In article coyne@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU writes: > I believe this story. It is my policy also to give telemarketers a > little hell. "What do you tell your family you do for a living? Do > you admit to them you are a profeessional nuisance? ..." I know telemarketers are pretty much regarded as slime here in this forum, but personally, I consider it better that these people are working than unemployed. I worked as a telemarketer for a brief stint back in high school, trying to sell {USA Today} by phone. Sure, I got the same kind of lines: "Is this really what you do with your life?", "Don't you have anything better to do?","Why do you waste my time like this?"... Well, the answer is that telemarketing is a legal method of marketing a product, and just like the people who leave the little slips on your doors that you always throw right in the trash, telemarketers are generally either students trying to make some extra cash, or people who can't find other work and are lured by the high wages that are paid to telemarketers. And even though telemarketers are generally paid much better than minimum wage, very few people last more than a couple weeks on the job because it is grueling to have to deal with that much rejection every day. Just like in any other sales job there are going to be people who are very persistent and people who are going to be fraudulent. But the bottom line is that the call costs you nothing, you don't have to answer the phone if you don't want to, and if you don't want what is being sold, then say so right away, cutting them off if you have to (and you usually will), and end the call. Most telemarketers would prefer that you did that anyways, saving them breath for their next call. The bottom line is that unless a telemarkter is _rude_ to you, there is no reason to be _rude_ to them. They're not doing anything illegal, they may just be trying to pay their rent this month, and not everyone has their pick of the job market these days. Justin Leavens University of Southern California Microcomputer Specialist [Moderator's Note: I agree with you completely, Justin. I've always felt the reaction here from some people, calling them 'slime', etc. was a bit much. They are just people earning a living, and it is quite easy to pick the phone up, say 'no thank you' and disconnect. After all, when we see a commercial on television we are free to change the channel and watch something else. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mark@phineasjpl.nasa.gov (Mark R. Rubin) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 18:15:09 GMT o One more data point re: "Do telemarketers harass the public?" o Received a typical telemarketing call. Handled it as usual (listened for a few seconds to make sure it wasn't important, broke in with "I don't accept unsolicited calls.", and hung up). o Phone rings seconds later. Same guy. Started saying, "You don't realize how great an offer this is ...". I cut him off, loudly told him that he was harassing me, and that if he called again I would report it to the phone company and the police, and hung up. o For the rest of the evening I put up with a string of petty harassments. A home-delivery pizza ordered in my name. A non-existent neighbor calling to curse me out for parking "my" car (description of a car other than mine) in front of his house. o Eventually I called the police, wanting to make a record in case the harassment escalated. They wouldn't take a complaint over the phone, and we left it that I'd fill out an in-person report if it continued for another night, which it didn't. o Yeah, I love the "caller ID is an invasion of privacy" argument. Mark mark@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jul 92 14:18:37 CDT From: segal@oscar.rtsg.mot.com (Gary Segal) Subject: Re: Candidates E-Mail Addresses rv01@gte.com (Robert Virzi) writes: > Someone posted the following e-mail addresses for the presidential > candidates to the net. Unfortunately, I lost the header to the > message and cannot give proper attribution. The addresses, as posted, > are: { addresses deleted } I've have seen these e-mail address reported in three different places now in the space of under one week; here in Telecom, posted on an internal Motorola net, and in e-mail from a friend at Microsoft. In all cases no authentication off the addresses or history of where they came from was given. Someone here at Motorola attempted to send mail to the Perot account and recieved a responce from a former Perot campaign worker who is being SWAMPED with e-mail because of this post. I have a feeling that we are dealing with YAUR (Yet Another Usenet Rumor), as it meets all the classic tests for such things: (1) Something everyone wants to know, (2) Something everyone will forward/post to others, (3) No forwarding history given, (4) No authentication given and (5) it is spreading faster than John Sunnunu on a "government" trip. I'm pretty sure that the Perot address is not going to make it to HRP's desk or even his campaign staff. I have no information on the addresses for the others, but given the profile of this post I wouldn't trust them. If anyone can verify the authenticty of these address, please do so! But until then, I'd recomend that if you really want to reach the candidates, use the U.S. mail. Gary Segal Motorola Inc. segal@oscar.rtsg.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Division ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 22:57:53 -0700 From: Eric Thompson Subject: Re: Candidates E-Mail Addresses Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility TELECOM Moderator noted: > In a recent development in the Perot campaign, secret photos published > by the {World Weekly News} last week show Perot meeting with space > aliens. These are the same space aliens who met with Bush recently. > Thus far the aliens have expressed no interest in meeting with > Governor Clinton. PAT] Snarfing comedy tidbits from Dennis Miller, eh? :-) ------------------------------ From: rv01@gte.com (Robert Virzi) Subject: Perot Compuserve Account Date: 8 Jul 92 11:38:44 GMT Organization: GTE Laboratories Incorporated, Waltham MA I attempted to send mail to the account I submitted for Ross Perot. It finally got through, and I received a response from David Bush. Although the account used to be a quasi-official Perot account, it is no longer used for that purpose. David has asked me to please not use or publish the account information, as he is being swamped by the volume of mail. So, I am sorry I submitted that information. I would ask readers of this Digest to please refrain from sending mail to the account, as it is no longer an official Perot-connected account. If I do find an address that can be used, I will post it to this Digest. Bob Virzi rv01@gte.com ...!harvard!bunny!rv01 ------------------------------ From: eaw@alliant.com (Eric Woudenberg) Subject: Re: See Figure 1 Organization: Alliant Computer Systems Corp. Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 07:40:09 GMT In article system%coldbox@uunet.UU.NET (Bryan Lockwood) writes: > I wonder if the guy who originally wrote this will be writing to the > fellow who rewrote it, telling him to (see Figure 1)? The original (for VAX/VMS) was written by Herb Jacobs, who was at DEC at the time. He showed it to me when we worked together at Alliant. It really is pretty funny ... someone should post it. Eric Woudenberg ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Jul 92 12:33:47 +0000 From: Mike Whitaker Subject: Re: See Figure 1 I first saw a variant of this on the wall backstage at my fiancee's amateur operatics society -- it was a detailed exposition of the response you were likely to get from the actors, the techies, the director. Mike Whitaker - mikew@sdl.mdcbbs.com ------------------------------ From: jeff@bradley.bradley.edu (Jeff Hibbard) Subject: Re: See Figure 1 Organization: Bradley University Date: Tue, 7 Jul 92 17:49:59 GMT Various people write: > Ah. I recall seeing this a LONG time ago. But the version I saw had > to do with the VAX VMS operating system, rather than with AT&T. > Well, well, well. Figure 1 returns! I first encountered this diagram > and text in a Honeywell internal memo, For the Honeywell CP-6 Release > B03 HOST Software Release Bulletin, in 1982. I also first saw this in the early-to-mid 80's, but it was on Control Data Corporation letterhead of the type normally used to distribute information about software problems. The diagram and some of the text is identical, only the version I saw was longer and funnier. I wonder if we'll ever know who wrote the original. Jeff Hibbard, Peoria IL [Moderator's Note: 'Figure 1' is like so many of those stories which get passed around from one office to the next with copies made on the copy machine in each office it reaches until finally everyone who sees it has a copy of a copy of a copy; no one knows for sure who put it out, and everyone who sees it changes it a little to meet circumstances in their company, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #543 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa28190; 8 Jul 92 12:18 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA10704 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Wed, 8 Jul 1992 08:02:31 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA08973 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Wed, 8 Jul 1992 08:02:23 -0500 Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 08:02:23 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207081302.AA08973@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #544 TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Jul 92 08:01:30 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 544 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Calls ITEMIZED Charged by LEC? (Douglas Scott Reuben) Report From Siskiyou (Ed Greenberg) Modem Interface for NOKIA Cellular Sets (Europe) (Alfredo Cotroneo) Foreign Directory Assistance (was "Strange Message... ") (Charlie Mingo) SWBell Marketing Voice Mail (Peter da Silva) Fixed Call Forwarding (Steve Kass) Whatever Happened to the Wiretap Bill? (Les Bartel) Call-Waiting Killing With *70 (Michael Ho) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 1-JUL-1992 17:14:30.05 From: Douglas Scott Reuben Subject: AT&T Calls ITEMIZED Charged by LEC? I just got my bill from Southern New England Telephone (SNET), the (psuedo-) Bell LEC in Connecticut. I noted, under the SNET portion of the bill (IE, the pages that SNET has its logo on which AT&T can NOT see) a whole set of calling card calls, ALL of which were either out-of-state (INTER-LATA) or totally had nothing to do with CT, as in the case of INTER-LARA calls from Maine to Boston, etc. As an example: "SNET Calling Card Calls:" June 8 11:10PM To West Hartford CT 203-233-xxxx NC 2 $1.04 Fr Randolph MA 617-986-xxxx June 11 2:04AM To Waltham MA 617-633-7626 NC 1 $.92 Fr York ME 207-363-9708 (Also, of course, the calls were made over AT&T, I heard "Thank you for using AT&T" after each call (there were others as well), and they were all intER-LATA, etc ... ie, I'm SURE that they were handled by AT&T in manner normal and similar to all other AT&T Calling Card calls.) Now I am aware that AT&T has issued its own cards, which they claim will appear on the AT&T section of the bill, but after calling AT&T about this, who then put me on a three-way-call to the manager of billing services at SNET, we couldn't agree on who's surcharge I am to pay regardless of who's card I use. CT levies a $.50 surcharge on Calling Card calls, while AT&T says it is 80 cents. That is, AT&T is claiming that a call placed via 10288 within CT (this is possible to certain area of the state, e.g., Greenwich, Byram, etc.) will have an 80 cent surcharge plus toll, while SNET says that if you use THEIR card it is only 50 cents, plus toll. The SNET manager stated that "If you use our card, even for out-of-state (Inter-LATA) calls, you will pay our surcharge, if you use AT&T's, you will pay their surcharge." I told him this doesn't quite ring true in light of the (above) charges, as they reflect AT&T's rate of approx 12-13 cents per minute (night) and the 80 cent surcharge, thus $.92 for a one minute call or $1.04 for a two minute call. The AT&T rep, who was listening in on us, confirmed that those were AT&T's rates. It is my impression that you pay the rates of the carrier you are using. Thus, if you use an AT&T card in CT, you can only charge the maximum allowed by the Connecticut Dept. of Public Utility Control, or $.50 plus toll. I thus think that AT&T is wrong in stating that there is an 80 cent surcharge for calls within CT (intRA-lata). My experience with the Universal Card in other states reflects this -- I am billed at the standard LEC rates. It thus stands to reason that SNET will levy the AT&T 80 cent surcharge on calls outside of CT (yet not handled by another LEC), assuming I am using AT&T. If in fact this is true, and the info of both the SNET manager and the AT&T rep is wrong, then the only "change" is that SNET is itemizing LD (IXC) calls made on "its" calling card. So even if you hear "Thank you for using AT&T" or "Thank you for using US Sprint" or whatever your carrier of choice is, you will be billed by SNET, itemized along with LEC-handled (local) calling card calls, and have NO idea who handled your call when you examine your bill. So if you went to some slimey COCOT, and used Rip-Me-Off AOS and get a nice fat $17 charge for a three-minute state-to-state call, these charges will be mixed in with AT&T, Sprint, SNET, Pac*Bell (assuming you used the card for a local (LEC-handled) call in CA), and other legitimate phone companies. As a matter of fact, unless you remember who you called and what service you used (any many people may not make it a practice to always hit 10288 first), you will get a mess of a bill with no idea of who is to be accountable for the call. (Is SNET supposed to take care of these calls now, as they are, after all, BILLING you for them, and apparently not acting as agents for the IXC's in this regard?) Thus if I get a $17 charge for the COCOT call, but in fact when I placed the call no one answered and thus should not be billed, do I call SNET and tell them to remove the call, without having to call to COCOT/AOS firm? (Does SNET know what it is getting into here??? :) ) I realize that this is pretty recent, but has this happened to anyone else from other LECs? With all this nonsense going on, one would HOPE that the FCC speeds up the billing number database scheme where a customer has one calling card which has a "preference" for a single IXC, and thus calls will either be handled by the LEC or the designated IXC, ONLY! (Unless the customer specifically overides this with 10xxx dialing). Doug dreuben@eagle.wesleyan.edu dreuben@wesleyan.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: 06 Jul 92 11:38:49 EDT From: Ed Greenberg <76703.1070@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Report From Siskiyou Telecom readers will remember my visit to the Pinnicles Telephone Company a few years ago, when I knocked on the CO door and obtained a tour. Well, today's adventure is a little more tame, but it's interesting nonetheless. My wife and I are visiting the Mount Shasta area for the fourth of July weekend, and we took a ride that took us past Etna, CA and the Etna office of the Siskiyou Telephone Company and an owner of that telco, Ms. Eleanor Hendricks. We met Ms. Hendricks as she was walking home from the post office with the phone company's mail. Naturally, when visiting a small town, many of us will check out the local pay phone, and this Telecom reader is no exception. I found a Northern Telecom single slotter with touch tone, 10xxx dialing, and AT&T for the default carrier. My 0+700 call went through just fine, quicker than Pacific Bell was putting them up in Mount Shasta City. Siskiyou Tel has been in Eleanor Hendricks' family since the turn of the century, and Eleanor earned her first five dollars working for the company in 1923. Siskiyou converted to dial in 1961, and was the first California telco north of Sacramento to abandon manual service. Up to that point, all the lines were terminated in Etna, but the central part of the operation was moved to Fort Jones at that time for easier access to Pacific Bell's point of presence in Yreka. Until a few years ago, Siskiyou had their own operator service, but has recently abandoned it in favor of operator service from Pacific Bell. Now there are electronic offices wherever Siskiyou serves, connected by microwave to Fort Jones. By the way, for a look at this area, check your Northern California map for Redding, and go north on I5 to Yreka. Now look parallel to that route and find State Route 3. South of Yreka on 3, You'll see Ft. Jones, and south of that is Etna. Etna, by the way, is said to have the northernmost brewery in California. We didn't have any Etna Beer, but our inkeeper, Bill Larson, says that it's well thought of. A look at the Siskiyou Telephone Book yields lots of interesting telecom tidbits. STC operates seven exchanges, at least those served by this directory. Eleanor stated that the area covered is roughly that of the state of Connecticut. From the looks of the map in the book, she's not far off. Of course, the population is lots less, which means lots of long wire runs out to rural areas. This brings me to a part of the directory that I've never seen before. Each exchange is described in terms of the roads served in outline form from the main road, down to smaller side roads. This gives a fascinating view of the extent of STC's rural outside plant. Another interesting section is the offering of special services. No mention is made of any of the new features coming out, but the usual suspects like call waiting, call forwarding, 3-way (8 & 30), etc, are offered under the unregistered tradename of "The Magic Touch." ("Your Phone Has Learned Some New Tricks.) All these services are described, and work in the standard fashion, including cancel call waiting. Along with these services are two odd ones. What we typically call Ringmate is offered under the name of "Extra Line." It's interesting how the telco can sell one party both sides of a two party line :-) A feature I've never seen before is called "Warm Line." Here's the description: "This feature means that you can have your phone set up to automatically dial a predesignated telephone number after a specified amount of time (30 seconds.) Simply knock the receiver off the hook and after 30 seconds it will automatically dial the specific number that you had the telephone company program." All in all, the Siskiyou Telephone Company is a breath of fresh air. They provide modern service, with good Northern Telecom equipment, and will probably present to the telecom literate subscriber an understanding ear. Whether they're up to such tings as multiple private lines in the boonies is not known, but I wouldn't mind living in Fort Jones and getting my service from them. Reply-to: edg@netcom.com [Moderator's Note: Centel here in the Chicago area offers 'warm line' as you describe it. Go off-hook and wait 15-20 seconds for automatic dialing of one pre-selected number. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jul 92 10:42:19 +0200 From: alfredo@quickt2.it12.bull.it (Alfredo Cotroneo) Subject: Modem interface for NOKIA cellular sets (Europe) Hello there from Milano, Italy. I am looking for information on the modem interface for the NOKIA Cityman (2+ years old model, not the newest, I think it's model no. 200?) cellular set. This model is one of the most popular portable sets in Italy, and should also be available elsewhere in Europe. I would need the modem interface both for data communication and ESPECIALLY to be able to record interviews (calls) made with the cellular phone. I expect the interface would provide a standard phone line interface (the same provided by the phone company in home/office phone lines with ring voltages and standard connectors) but nobody was able pass me more detailed info at this regard. I would prefer to attach conventional modem/fax/answering machine rather than dedicated cellular ones (even if I know the limits, but the cellular phone will not be moving while making/answering the call.) Please answer by email, and if there is interest I will be glad to summarize to the net. Thanks. Alfredo E. Cotroneo, Milano, Italy email: 100020.1013@compuserve.com (private) or: a.cotroneo@it12.bull.it (office) ------------------------------ From: Charlie.Mingo@p4218.f70.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Charlie Mingo) Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1992 03:33:44 -0500 Subject: Foreign Directory Assistance (was "Strange Message... ") Our Esteemed Moderator writes: > Speaking of *long* waits for DA, I love that new gimmick being > used in France: Where before DA rang endlessly with a five minute wait > not uncommon, now we get connected immediatly to a holding queue, with > a recorded message of about six bars of music and a man speaking > English with a British accent saying "Telecom Services! Please hold > ... We're trying to extend your call! ..." and this eight or ten > second blurb repeats not once ... not twice ... but endlessly, with > only a five second or so pause between cycles. It repeated 67 times > (yes, I counted them out of boredom) the other day before I was > extended to DA. PAT] Were you paying for the transatlantic call while those 67 messages were being repeated? If you have a personal computer and a modem handy, you can always use Minitel to look the number up yourself. There are freely distributed Minitel emulators for the Mac and the PC. It costs about $.17/minute, it can be billed to your credit card, and there are no charges other than for time actually used. Of course, this mught not make sense for one call to French DA, but if you do this more than a few times a year, it could save time (and your sanity). I'm a bit surprised AT&T doesn't have the French telephone directory available on their screens. I can get it on mine, and I assume they are at least as technically advanced ... [Moderator's Note: No, this was one of the times when I dialed the AT&T operator and paid their flat rate of $3 for directory assistance. You'd think the French operators themselves would use Minitel for faster service. Maybe they do, who knows. PAT] ------------------------------ From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: SWBell Marketing Voice Mail Organization: Taronga Park BBS Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 11:15:58 GMT SWBell is starting to market voice mail. It's apparently a test-market spot, with a free month, but since I already have an answering machine, alarm clock, and personal computer I declined participation in their system. On another topic, we've got these "How does it work" books. I was going through one with my son and came upon a description of a stepper switch, and a map of the phone system in the Federal Republic of Germany. Is there anyone on the Digest with access to historical information about the German phone system that could be used to date the book (there's no date anywhere on any of the four volumes). Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX +1 713 568 0480/1032 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 10:38 EST From: KASS@drew.drew.edu Subject: Fixed Call Forwarding New Jersey Bell is now offering Answer Call (SM). The brochure they sent says that if I subscribe now, they will waive the usual connection fee ($21) for "Fixed Call Forwarding, recommended" [I suspect required] for Answer Call to work. Here's what I think Fixed Call Forwarding is: On busy or no answer, with the number of rings before no answer selectable as 4 or 6, a call to the subscriber number is forwarded to another number, but that number can't be changed as with Call Forwarding, nor can (?) the forwarding be turned on or off. According to NJB, Fixed Call Forwarding is _not_ available except in combination with Answer Call, but the Answer Call brochure seems to indicate that Fixed Call Forwarding is at least tariffed as a separate service (it's $2/month). (Presumably, NJB sets it up with Answer Call to go to the Answer Center, and CLID enables the Answer Center to handle the call appropriately. I want Fixed Call Forwarding, but I don't want Answer Call, since I'd like busy/no answer calls to go to my ASPEN voice box at work, keeping all my messages in one place. I don't want regular Call Forwarding, since I'd have to do a lot of button pushing for it to do the same job (turn it on before, and off after, every call I make for busy forwarding, for example). Can anyone tell me if Fixed Call Forwarding is available either here (was the service rep wrong?) or anywhere else (just because I'm curious). I can understand why NJB doesn't want me to get it. They want me to get Answer Call instead. But is there any chance that since it's tariffed, that they might have to let me have it the way I want it? Or can I pull any other tricks, like subscribe to Answer Call and FCF, then drop Answer Call, but not FCF (and change the forwarding number)? Steve Kass Math/CS Department Drew University Madison NJ 07940 skass@drew.drew.edu (201) 408-3614 [Moderator's Note: We have it here in Chicago on cellular service and on wireline service only for connection to voicemail. You tell them how many rings to program it for when you sign up. PAT] ------------------------------ From: b11!lester@naomi.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Les Bartel) Subject: Whatever Happened to the Wiretap Bill? Reply-To: b11!lester@naomi.b23b.ingr.com Organization: Dazix, An Intergraph Company Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1992 14:38:53 GMT What is the status on the wiretap bill that would force telco equipment manufacturers (or was it telcos?) to provide a means of phone line access by law enforcement? Where can I read this bill (or any other pending bill for that matter)? My local public library was of no help. That's not to say they don't have the info, they couldn't find it. Les Bartel lester@naomi.b23b.ingr.com Dazix, An Intergraph Company uunet!ingr!b23b!naomi!lester ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jul 92 21:57 PDT From: mikeho@seeker.mystic.com (Michael Ho) Subject: Call-Waiting Killing With *70 PAT asked in a previous issue if *70 acted differently in other areas than his own. My experience: Yes. In Omaha, US West territory, *70 (and other features such as *72 for call-forwarding) yields a stutter dialtone that can be dialed through. Constructs like *70 1 976 SMUT are legal without pauses. But in Lincoln, under the independent local telco, *70 and *72 yield a double high-pitched tone (sorry, don't know its name or frequency). This tone eats anything fed to it, and no digits dialed before the new dial tone (after the high-pitched thing) will be registered. To top things off, there is a variable-length pause before the tones! Aarrrrgh! Second interesting note: Lincoln Telephone suggests using 70# and 72# rather than *70 and *72. Both work. Both have the same flaky behavior. Third interesting note: Lincoln Telephone's rate of return last year was over 18 percent. Michael Ho, Eastern S.F. Bay Area, California Internet: mikeho@seeker.mystic.com UUCP: ...!seeker!mikeho ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #544 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa05577; 9 Jul 92 12:24 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA14144 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Thu, 9 Jul 1992 01:47:29 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA26531 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Thu, 9 Jul 1992 01:47:21 -0500 Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 01:47:21 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207090647.AA26531@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #545 TELECOM Digest Thu, 9 Jul 92 01:47:24 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 545 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Roy Smith) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Harry P. Haas) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Fred Wedemeier) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Phil Howard) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Leonard Erickson) Hang Up on This Scam (From the Company News Letter) (Ken Sprouse) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Jul 92 11:15:14 EDT From: Roy Smith Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: Public Health Research Institute (New York) In article is written: > But the bottom line is that the call costs you nothing, you don't have to > answer the phone if you don't want to, How do I know it's a telemarketer until I answer the phone? It costs me the annoyance of stopping whatever I am doing and having to go answer the phone. It's invasive. roy@wombat.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA [Moderator's Note: How do you know? Simple. You say to your telco and your utility commissioners, "I want Caller-ID available in our phone exchange now. I want control of my phone instead of telemarketers, phreaks and other people having control of it." When installed, then you answer those calls you wish and ignore the others. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hhaas@RAIL9000.gatech.edu (Harry P. Haas) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: 8 Jul 92 13:52:04 GMT Organization: Georgia Tech Research Institute In article leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) writes: > I know telemarketers are pretty much regarded as slime here in this > forum, but personally, I consider it better that these people are > working than unemployed. To me, a "telemarketer" is a company that uses telemarketing as their primary marketing technique. I do not consider the person on the phone a "telemarketer", just an employee of one. > The bottom line is that unless a telemarkter is _rude_ to you, > there is no reason to be _rude_ to them. A telemarketer is ALWAYS rude to me by DEFINITION. I DO NOT EVER want someone to use my private phone for their business. I do not EVER want to leave the dinner table only to hear an ad on my phone. The person on the phone IS rude in my opinion, the key is that they are being PAID to be rude (perhaps under duress), and that the TRUE jerk is the guy paying the person on the phone. (BTW, I'm not rude to them - unless . . )( > They're not doing anything illegal Yet ... of course, SOME forms of telemarketing ARE illegal in some states. > [Moderator's Note: I agree with you completely, Justin. I've always > felt the reaction here from some people, calling them 'slime', etc. > easy to pick the phone up, say 'no thank you' and disconnect. There is a tedency on the net to be overly harsh. > They are just people earning a living, and it is quite > all, when we see a commercial on television we are free to change the > channel and watch something else. PAT] Yeah, right, PAT. I guess if everytime you hear a commercial on the TV you get right up, go into the other room, and look to see if it's your mother on the TV. This is NOT the same. I do not use my TV as a personal communications device. I do not pay a month fee for having television service. I actually USE my phone for my own purposes, and the telemarketers are FORCING me to screen them. I can turn off the TV, I CAN'T turn off the phone without losing my communications device AND my service charge. I DO however agree that there is no reason to be rude to a "nice" person calling you from a telemarking agency. I personally tell them, nicely, that I do NOT respond unsolicited advertising and to please remove me from their list (which they probably don't have -- I'm sure they call everyone.) I also report any and all callers which break Georgia regulations to the GPSC. Harry Haas GTRI/RIDL/EB Georgia Tech Research Institute Research Engineer II Georgia Institute of Technology 404-528-7679 Atlanta Georgia, 30332 hh2@prism.gatech.edu ------------------------------ From: fcw@pioneer.telecom.ti.com (Fred Wedemeier) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: TI Telecom Systems, Dallas Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 17:50:53 GMT In article , leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) writes: > In article coyne@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU > writes: >> the answer is that telemarketing is a legal method of marketing a >> product, and just like the people who leave the little slips on your >> doors that you always throw right in the trash, telemarketers are and... > But the bottom line is that the call costs you nothing, you don't > have to answer the phone if you don't want to, and if you don't want > what is being sold, then say so right away, cutting them off if you > have to It's not really the same. You would get mighty PO'd if the people leaving slips on your door would instead ring the doorbell and _hand_ them to you rather than stuffing them in a crack for you to see when you came home or left. You generally answer the doorbell when it rings -- at least in my neighborhood -- and most everyone used to answer the phone when it rang. In both cases, you could expect some benefit from doing so. There _ain't no_ benefit in answering a call from a telemarketer, and it's a distraction and annoyance for me to do so. Yeah, once a month or once a week, no problem. But depending on the demographics, you can get half a dozen or more of these d!!n things in one evening. So you start screening calls with an answering machine, which is a rudeness to family, friends, and associates whose calls you want to receive. (Is Fred really not there, or is he listening to me talking while he decides if he'll honor me by picking up the phone??) An upside to all this? A friend of mine has an insurance agency and he makes cold calls to drum up business (yeah, two strikes against him but he's still a friend). He sometimes gets hold of shut-ins who haven't heard a real human voice in days and _want_ to talk. He'll spend 5-10 minutes just talking even though he knows he won't sell insurance. Fred Wedemeier pho: 214-997-3213 fax: 214-997-3639 timsg: fcw inet: fcw@pioneer.telecom.ti.com ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: Wed, 08 Jul 92 19:06:04 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) writes: > I know telemarketers are pretty much regarded as slime here in this > forum, but personally, I consider it better that these people are > working than unemployed. This kind of "work" does not contribute to the national resource. In fact it is my opinion that any advertising that goes beyond giving useful information to the public is another example of waste of resource. While advertising that diverts purchasing dollars from one brand to another certainly helps the company getting the purchases, on the whole, it does not contribute, unless of course one is actually and truly getting more for their money where their purchases are going. If the telemarketers are working for what is in fact an actual scam, then they are going to end up being jobless anyway. They are also probably being ripped off themselves, as in the "boiler room" operations and likely no real benefits from their "employer". > I worked as a telemarketer for a brief stint back in high school, > trying to sell {USA Today} by phone. Sure, I got the same kind of > lines: "Is this really what you do with your life?", "Don't you have > anything better to do?","Why do you waste my time like this?"... Well, > the answer is that telemarketing is a legal method of marketing a > product, and just like the people who leave the little slips on your > doors that you always throw right in the trash, telemarketers are > generally either students trying to make some extra cash, or people > who can't find other work and are lured by the high wages that are > paid to telemarketers. Lots of people take a variety of jobs for short terms that are not in their career line (assuming the even have an idea at the time of what it might be). There is nothing wrong with it, especially if it is for a legimate product and their is not scam/slime/sleaze aspect to it. My mother got a call once from a telemarketer wanting to sell her a subscription to "Money Magazine". She told them she already had a subscription, but it turns out they put it through anyway. Now she has TWO and is getting billed for TWO. The people at the magazine itself were slow to delete the second one but eventually did. So just because what is being peddled is itself a legitimate product does not mean the peddler is. BUYER BEWARE!! CALLEE BEWARE!! > And even though telemarketers are generally paid much better than > minimum wage, very few people last more than a couple weeks on the job > because it is grueling to have to deal with that much rejection every > day. Just like in any other sales job there are going to be people who > are very persistent and people who are going to be fraudulent. But the > bottom line is that the call costs you nothing, you don't have to > answer the phone if you don't want to, and if you don't want what is > being sold, then say so right away, cutting them off if you have to > (and you usually will), and end the call. Most telemarketers would > prefer that you did that anyways, saving them breath for their next > call. I agree. This is what I do with such calls. Even if the product sounds interesting to me (it really has happened a couple times) I now cut it off politely anyway. In the two cases, I asked for something to be mailed to me with the offer, so that I would have it in writing and know who I was dealing with. They did not want to take my address and nothing ever arrived anyway. They actually missed a possible sale. Now all such calls are screened by my answering machine, since I really do not want to have to interrupt whatever I am doing just to say "no thanks". If they are serious enough, they can announce who they are and I can pick up, or they can leave a message with a toll free number for me to call. > The bottom line is that unless a telemarkter is _rude_ to you, > there is no reason to be _rude_ to them. They're not doing anything > illegal, they may just be trying to pay their rent this month, and not > everyone has their pick of the job market these days. I fully agree. > [Moderator's Note: I agree with you completely, Justin. I've always > felt the reaction here from some people, calling them 'slime', etc. > was a bit much. They are just people earning a living, and it is quite > easy to pick the phone up, say 'no thank you' and disconnect. After > all, when we see a commercial on television we are free to change the > channel and watch something else. PAT] In many cases it is the telemarketing operating that is slime and the telemarketers are just as much a victim. There are also cases on both extremes as well, some fully legitimate, and some fully slimy rip-off. The slimy give the legit a bad reputation. I have to disagree that it is "easy to pick the phone up, say 'no thank you' and disconnect". I've missed the important part of a TV show because of this in the past. I've had dinner interrupted, and my guests disturbed. Once I even missed an important incoming phone call. It's NOT like direct mail advertising, where I can deal with the item when I have the time to (except in the couple of cases where it caused my mailbox to be filled up and some real mail bounced back). So far *NO* telemarketers have left a message on my answering machine. If they really don't want to be a nuisance, but get a possible sale anyway, they should go ahead and do that. Their employer should have a script ready for them to put on an answering machine, perhaps even a pre-recorded one so they can take a breather or go on to yet another call. I have an hour recording capacity on my answering machine (three minute maximum per call) so it would take an awful lot of these to be a nuisance to me. BTW, I can also choose to ignore the commercial on TV. I have a MUTE button, too. And I know the commercials are coming, so no matter what the subject of the commercial is, it won't be an interruption ... they don't leave the program running behind the commercial (except for one TV station I know of, but that's another matter). Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com [Moderator's Note: I make numerous calls each day on behalf of the attornies who employ me and I am sometimes mistaken for a telemarketer which is always quite humorous to me. We *never* give out our 800 number on callbacks, and a lady today said to me that unless I had an 800 number, her boss would not return my call. I told her he had best invest the 15 cents to call me back, because if I had to call him again I was going to place him with a local attorney in his town for suit based on an NSF check I was holding. And then there are the ones who want to know what I am selling ... :) I always respond 'Law suits. And unless you quit screening my call and put your boss on the phone right now you can tell him you bought one for him.'. :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon. Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 20:50:08 GMT leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) writes: > You don't have to answer the phone if you don't want to, This is a *stupid* comment. Until I answer the phone, I don't know who is calling. It could be someone I want a call from. (Note that a *lot* of people still just hang up if they get an answering machine, so "screening" is not workable). Or what if you are "on call" or expecting important calls? One type of sales call that I detest is the people calling to try to sell extra services for the local cable company. They start out by saying "This is Paragon Cable calling ..." So I have to listen quite a bit longer before I can be sure that it's a sales call, not a call about a billing problem or some such. Leonard Erickson leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com CIS: [70465,203] 70465.203@compuserve.com FIDO: 1:105/56 Leonard.Erickson@f56.n105.z1.fidonet.org (The CIS address is checked daily. The others infrequently) [Moderator's Note: Fifty years ago there was a breed of person known as the 'door-to-door salesman', who literally went house to house selling things. People then had to get up and answer the door only to slam it shut again or invite the person in or whatever. And those guys going door to door sold everything under the sun including pots and pans, insurance, women's lingerie, shoes, brushes, you name it. People would look through a peephole in the door and remain quiet, pretending to not be at home. But the modern day equivilent of the peephole, Caller-ID, is still banned in some places at the behest of a a few people who keep squalling about their fantasy of a woman in a shelter somewhere whose husband will come to get her if he knows where she is. So for you folks that don't like answering the phone blind and risking a call from (oh my God!) a 'telemarketing slime', I suggest you put up or shut up. This is not directed to you, Leonard, because I don't know where you stand ... but amazingly, many people gripe about intrusions on the phone and condemn the most effecient way of dealing with it also. I think it is because they don't want the intrusions *they* make on the phone to be easily detected or stopped. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Hang Up on This Scam (From the Company News Letter) Date: 8 Jul 92 15:53:49 EDT (Wed) From: sprouse@n3igw.pgh.pa.us (Ken Sprouse) We have an internal news letter that comes out once a week and todays edition has the following article in it. ------ Employes should beware of a telemarketing scam that can potentially cost the Corporation nearly $10 every time an employee participates in it. Corporate Secruity is aware of one of our locations that recently received approximately 2,500 calls from an audio response unit. The uint's message attempts to entice the called parties to dial an 800 number to find out what prize they have won. Once the 800 number is dialed, a call processing system answers and instructs the caller to press "1" on their keypad. For a charge of $9.95 billed to their phone, the caller then may find out their prize. At this point, the processing system apparently transfers the inbound 800 call, along with the Automatic Number Identification, to a 900 number. In this manner, PBX restrictions on dialing 900 numbers are circumvented. Please be alert to the possibility of such a scheme. If you receive this type of call, do not participate. --------- I don't know if its just coincidence but while at lunch today I was browseing thru {USA Today} and found an article along the same lines on the front page of the Money section. Beware the telescum! Ken Sprouse / N3IGW sprouse@n3igw.pgh.pa.us Oakmont, Pa. GEnie mail KSPROUSE / Packet radio n3igw@w2xo.pa.usa.noam [Moderator's Note: Thanks Ken, but its an old scheme we have covered here before, in almost painful detail a few months ago. Still, it is worth mentioning to new readers. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #545 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa08368; 9 Jul 92 13:26 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA20141 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Thu, 9 Jul 1992 02:12:02 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA00746 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Thu, 9 Jul 1992 02:11:54 -0500 Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 02:11:54 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207090711.AA00746@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #546 TELECOM Digest Thu, 9 Jul 92 02:11:55 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 546 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: FGB, FGD Trunks (Alan L. Varney) Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 (Jeff Hibbard) Re: CompuServe Candidategrams (Steve Forrette) Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers (Alan Boritz) Re: Way Cool MCI Mail Binary File Handling (Alan Boritz) Re: Way Cool MCI Mail Binary File Handling (Paul Robinson) Re: "Telephone Scrambler" Plans Available (Nick Sayer) Re: 900Mhz Cordless Phones: Which One? (Erez Levav) Re: Looking For Supplier of Telephone Jack Converters (Julian Macassey) Re: Company Uses Caller-ID to Identify Customers (Ken Weaverling) Re: Company Uses Caller-ID to Identify Customers (Leonard Erickson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Jul 92 13:02:05 CDT From: varney@ihlpf.att.com (Alan L Varney) Subject: Re: FGB, FGD Trunks Organization: AT&T Network Systems In article sbrack@jupiter.cse. UTOLEDO.edu (Steven S. Brack) writes: > After hearing a good deal about trunks described as: > Feature Group B --> 950-XXXX access > Feature Group D --> 10XXX access, etc., > I wondered what other Feature Groups there were, and what "Features" > such labelling indicated. Most of the following comes from SR-TSV-002275, "BOC Notes on the LEC Networks - 1990", by Bellcore. The Feature Groups use a single letter to label the "group" of interface capabilities that can be ordered by an IC/INC. I have no idea who made up the actual letters. FG-A provides "line-side" access to an IXC. Almost any local number can be used for access -- but you need to tone-dial the actual called number and other ID, such as an IXC calling card number. This was the basic form of access before MCI won their case and Trunk Access was available. There is no ANI, no line ID, no answer supervision. But it's cheap ... FG-B provides "trunk-side" access to an IXC, usually by dialing a 950-0XXX or 950-1XXX number. If direct trunks are provided to the originating CO, a form of ANI and rotary-dial service may be possible. You still get a second dial tone or announcement, and then must dial the actual called number. Transmission quality is not as stringent as FG-D. Usually cheaper than FG-D. Was called "interim" access in many divestiture-related documents, because it was to be replaced with FG-D -- but the tariffs didn't have a sunset provision, and many users want the cheaper access. Answer supervision provided. FG-C provided AT&T Long Lines with a tariff for their old pre- divestiture circuits. AT&T "must" convert such circuits to FG-D when the EO or Tandem is capable of "equal-access" signaling. Very few such trunks remain in use. FG-D (aka "equal access" trunks) is a high-quality, low-blocking access method providing the IXC with answer supervision, carrier pre-subscription, 10XXX access and overlap outpulsing. ANI and line ID are optionally provided. The line ID (II digits) provide information on the type of line (Hotel, Inmate, Coin, etc.). A "transitional" 950-0/1XXX capability is provided to allow FG-B carriers to move to FG-D without blocking customers using the older 950-dialing access. So while 10XXX is always uses FG-D trunks, 950-dialing may go over either FG-B or FB-D trunks. Al Varney -- just MY opinion.... ------------------------------ From: jeff@bradley.bradley.edu (Jeff Hibbard) Subject: Re: 911 Circuitry Can Detect 91 Organization: Bradley University Date: Wed, 8 Jul 92 18:19:17 GMT > [Moderator's Note: My experience here has been that with either *67, > *70, *71 or *72 (all return stutter dial tone) you can 'dial through' > ... that is, no pause is required in the modem string, etc. Other > places are different on this? PAT] I'm in the habit of forwarding one of my home phone lines to my cellular phone whenever I leave the house. To make this easier, I set one of my phone's memory buttons to "72#" (with no waits programmed). This worked just fine until a few weeks ago when Illinois Bell replaced the 5ESS serving my home with a DMS-100. Now, there is an annoyingly long pause after dialing "72#" before I get the stutter dial tone, and anything I dial without waiting for it is ignored. So far, the only other changes I've noticed have also been for the worse. Can anyone tell me what the alleged benefits of this new switch are? Illinois Bell has yet to even inform its residential customers that there has been a change. I guess they (incorrectly) thought that the differences were so slight as to go unnoticed. Jeff Hibbard, Peoria IL ------------------------------ From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: CompuServe Candidategrams Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 18:31:18 GMT > [Moderator's Note: You are not quite correct. Clinton and Marrou were > close numerically, and both in the 75300.xxxx series which as we all > know are 'sponsored' accounts -- that is free accounts given by CIS to > desirable users. Perot was 71xxx.xxxx, or some distance away. He pays > for that account I suspect; Clinton and Marrou do not. Likewise, Brown > had a 75300 number. So Brown has a 'sponsored' account he does not pay for? I wonder if he's received more than $100 from CompuServe in free services? :-) Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com ------------------------------ Date: 08 Jul 92 14:46:48 EDT From: Alan Boritz <72446.461@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: The Telco Owns the Numbers jms@misvax.mis.arizona.edu (Joel M Snyder) writes: > ZIP + 4 normally selects at the block level (there's a ZIP + 4 book in > your post office for your town); for some places, obviously, the + 4 > gets it a lot closer, such as a PO Box (mentioned previously), a > single office building, etc. Zip + 4 goes beyond the block and sometimes narrows down where inside a building the addressee is located. Sometimes there's a special Zip + 4 just for one company. There are a series of Zip + 4's for groups of floors within the Empire State Building, and some tenants, who receive high volumes of mail, have their own code, just to name one example. Postnet bar codes go further to include some digits from the street address. Alan Boritz 72446.461@compuserve.com ------------------------------ Date: 08 Jul 92 14:47:24 EDT From: Alan Boritz <72446.461@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Way Cool MCI Mail Binary File Handling johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes: > MCI Mail has recently upgraded their support for binary files in > messages. They have long allowed you to send and receive binary > message segments, but only through the batch X.PC interface used by > programs like Lotus Express and Norton Desktop. "x.pc" is not a batch interface. It's a link-level protocol that supports multiple logical sessions and only works with Tymnet's x.pc servers. Chuck Forsberg, author of Professional Yam, and DSZ, wrote a special version of ProYam that will talk to Tymnet's x.pc. The only implication of using x.pc is multiple connect time charges (when connected to more than one port on a host that charges for connect time), but it has no binary file transfer cabability by itself. Alan Boritz 72446.461@compuserve.com ------------------------------ Reply-To: tdarcos@mcimail.com From: Paul Robinson Date: Thu, 09 Jul 92 04:44:22 GMT Subject: Re: Way Cool MCI Mail Binary File Handling In a message of from John R. Levine : > MCI Mail has recently upgraded their support for binary files in > messages...Now they've extended binary file support to the > standard interactive interface and the Internet gateway. You can > transfer binary or text files interactively using zmodem or Kermit ... > What's really cool is that binary attachments even work for files > passed to and from Internet mail! Binary segments appear as uuencoded > data ... DEC runs a gateway that allows a user on internet to send a script of an FTP transaction and the gateway will do an FTP for the user and E-Mail him whatever files were requested by GET or any directory listings. I've been using UUENCODE/UUDECODE to use DEC's FTP to E-Mail service to allow me to get files from some systems via FTP as E-Mail to me; if it does the conversion automatically, that will be nice, as long as the system knows when I'm getting several messages constituting a single file. Otherwise this feature will be useless as a file sent to me as UUENCODEd data will end up being pressed into a form I am unable to restore as the original information. Paul Robinson - These opinions are mine (Who else would want them?) ------------------------------ From: mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer) Subject: Re: "Telephone Scrambler" Plans Available Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'. Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 03:16:55 GMT friedl@mtndew.Tustin.CA.US (Stephen Friedl) writes: > To render the speech channels unintelligble, the incoming audio > signal is inverted by the ICs internal double-sideband modulator. If anyone's going to go to the trouble of tapping your phone, they're likely to have one of those as well. Serious voice encryption no doubt starts with a digital channel as a substrate. It has been reported that it is possible to make speech that is intelligeable, if slightly lower quality, with only a quarter of a 64 kbps voice channel. If that is true, it means that 16 kbps is all that is necessary. v.32bis comes fairly close. v.fast will probably have that 16 kbps and enough extra for a little error correction to go along with it. Digital things are comparatively easy to scramble. Though I doubt DES wouldn't seriously inconvenience the NSA, I bet it would be sufficient for most people paranoid enough to want to scramble their phone. Of course if the Cellular industry paid their engineers as much as their lobbiests, digital cellular (with encryption) would probably already be making secure (radio-)telephony a reality. Instead, we have the ECPA, which makes it a myth. Nick Sayer N6QQQ @ N0ARY.#NOCAL.CA.USA.NA 37 19 49 N / 121 57 36 W +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest' ------------------------------ From: levave@pizzabox.dialogic.com (Erez Levav) Subject: Re: 900Mhz Cordless Phones: Which One? Organization: Dialogic Corporation Date: Wed, 08 Jul 92 23:09:41 GMT In article Irving_Wolfe@happy-man.com writes: > As far as I know, only the Tropez and Panasonic phones are out. Both > have been reviewed on the net, though perhaps only the Tropez in this > newsgroup. (The other may have been misc.consumers.) I bought the Tropez a few months ago, had it for a week, and returned to the store. I liked the features - but the sound quaility was horrible. It was very distorted as well as not loud enough. I (and my friends) compared it to the Panasonic 3910 and AT&T ??? cordless-s we have - the Panasonic was way better. Also, the Tropez has 4 different possible rings, but no volume control on any of them. Erez Levav AT: Dialogic levave@dialogic.com Xpress Software 300 Littelton Rd. ...!uunet!dialogic!levave (201) 334-1268 x105 Parsippany, NJ 07054 [if none of these work:] (201) 884-4289 erez@axion.attmail.com ------------------------------ From: julian%bongo.UUCP@nosc.mil (Julian Macassey) Subject: Re: Looking For Supplier of Telephone Jack Converters Date: 9 Jul 92 04:02:12 GMT Reply-To: julian@bongo.info.com (Julian Macassey) Organization: The Hole in the Wall Hollywood California U.S.A. In article EENGELMANN@worldbank.org (Eric Engelmann) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 539, Message 5 of 5 > The World Bank sends a lot of people to remote ends of the Earth with > notebook PCs and built in FaxModems. These countries have a variety of > non RJ11 wall jacks. I once saw a set of universal telephone jack > converters (an idea similar to the AC adapters for small appliances > used overseas which are readily available in many stores). The fact is that power plugs have just a few iterations. Phone plugs vary from country to country and some countries have none at all, they just hard wire the phone. The sure fire solution that works everywhere in the world is outlined below. Using the kit I describe below, I was once even able to unscrew the wall plate from a phone in a hotel, not two miles from the world bank, and call my machine in California. A U.S. Modular plug to "Universal" Line Cord This is a system that will allow a modem or phone with a U.S. modular socket to be connected to any telephone line anywhere in the world. Users of modems, laptop computers and fax machines will find this device useful. Here is what you need: A line cord with a modular plug on one end and spade lugs on the other. A pair of aligator (crocodile) clips. A small phillips and flat blade screwdriver to open foreign jacks and loosen screws. The parts list and Radio Shack part numbers are below: Line cord 25-Ft Modular-to-Spade 279-364 or Line cord 12-Ft Modular-to-Spade 279-310 Aligator Clips with screw terminals 270-347 Phillps/Flat Screwdriver 64-1950 These part numbers are suggestions. Parts may be purchased at most electronics stores, even some supermarkets. Total cost should be no more than $12.00 How to use: Locate a wall socket or junction block. Open it up. There will be two wires that carry the phone signals. There may be other wires in the plug - you won't need them. Locate the two you need, they will have about 48V DC on them, or will give you dialtone when a phone or off hook modem is connected accross them. Having located the wires needed, either un-screw the terminals holding the wire down and slip the line cord spade lugs under and tighten, or attach the aligator clips to the line cord and clip on the terminals. So there you have it, a modem/phone connector that works anywhere in the world -- even U.S. hotels with no modular plugs in the guest's rooms. Julian Macassey, julian@bongo.info.com N6ARE@K6VE.#SOCAL.CA.USA.NA 742 1/2 North Hayworth Avenue Hollywood CA 90046-7142 voice (213) 653-4495 ------------------------------ From: weave@bach.udel.edu (Ken Weaverling) Subject: Re: Company Uses Caller-ID to Identify Customers Organization: University of Delaware Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 15:43:12 GMT In article sami@scic.intel.com writes: > I recently had an interesting set of conversations. I called > MacConnection in New Hampshire to order a RAM upgrade.... > 1). They were using Caller-ID to present account information to the > operators as they answered the phone... They are using ANI, and not Caller-ID to get the phone number. They just say it is Caller-ID because the public understands this term better than ANI. I usually order software from my office phone. Caller-ID reports the phone number of the outgoing trunk I manage to get. Therefore, if it was possible to pass CLID info up to New Hampshire, they would see one of 16 different phone numbers. ANI delivers the billing number. Curious, since everyone who calls from here to MacConnection would have the same number delivered. I wonder how they handle that. Ken Weaverling (Delaware Tech College) weave@dtcc.edu -or- weave@bach.udel.edu ------------------------------ From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Company Uses Caller-ID to Identify Customers Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon. Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 06:56:05 GMT sami@scic.intel.com writes: > 1). They were using Caller-ID to present account information to the > operators as they answered the phone. Multiple phone numbers are > mapped into a given account [Note: This could cause some problems if a > number of people share a line in a small company, but that is probably > a small percentage of the businesses.] This *isn't* Caller-ID, it's ANI. And it is pretty standard for companies with 800 number order desks. It's just that the company you dealt with is being *open* about it. Leonard Erickson leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com CIS: [70465,203] 70465.203@compuserve.com FIDO: 1:105/56 Leonard.Erickson@f56.n105.z1.fidonet.org (The CIS address is checked daily. The others infrequently) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #546 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa17155; 10 Jul 92 3:16 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA23130 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Fri, 10 Jul 1992 01:07:03 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA22938 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Fri, 10 Jul 1992 01:06:53 -0500 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1992 01:06:53 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207100606.AA22938@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #547 TELECOM Digest Fri, 10 Jul 92 01:06:56 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 547 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Alleged Phreakers Indicted in New York (Nigel Allen) Some Hackers We Know (John De Armond) Re: "Legal" Phreaking? (Michael A. Covington) Re: "Legal" Phreaking? (Alan Boritz) Re: "Legal" Phreaking? (jdelancy@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Subject: Alleged Phreakers Indicted in New York Date: Thu, 9 Jul 92 22:38:49 EDT The following press release was issued by the U.S. Justice Department, as far as I can tell. The obvious disclaimer: I have no involvement with the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI, or any of the individuals indicted in this matter. ------------- Group of "Computer Hackers" Indicted; First Use of Wiretaps in Such a Case Contact: Federico E. Virella Jr., 212-791-1955, or Stephen Fishbein, 212-791-1978, of the Office of the U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York; or Betty Conkling of the U.S. Secret Service, 212-466-4400; or Joseph Valiquette Jr. of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 212-335-2715 NEW YORK, July 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A group of five "computer hackers" has been indicted on charges of computer tampering, computer fraud, wire fraud, illegal wiretapping, and conspiracy, by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, resulting from the first investigative use of court-authorized wiretaps to obtain conversations and data transmissions of computer hackers. A computer hacker is someone who uses a computer or a telephone to obtain unauthorized access to other computers. The indictment, which was filed today, alleges that Julio Fernandez, a/k/a "Outlaw," John Lee, a/k/a "Corrupt," Mark Abene, a/k/a "Phiber Optik," Elias Ladopoulos, a/k/a "Acid Phreak," and Paul Stira, a/k/a "Scorpion," infiltrated a wide variety of computer systems, including systems operated by telephone companies, credit reporting services, and educational institutions. According to Otto G. Obermaier, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, James E. Heavey, special agent in charge, New York Field Division, United States Secret Service, William Y. Doran, special agent in charge, Criminal Division, New York Field Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Scott Charney, chief of the Computer Crime Unit of the Department of Justice, the indictment charges that the defendants were part of a closely knit group of computer hackers self-styled "MOD," an acronym used variously for "Masters of Disaster" and "Masters of Deception" among other things. The indictment alleges that the defendants broke into computers "to enhance their image and prestige among other computer hackers; to harass and intimidate rival hackers and other people they did not like; to obtain telephone, credit, information and other services without paying for them; and to obtain passwords, account numbers and other things of value which they could sell to others." The defendants are also alleged to have used unauthorized passwords and billing codes to make long distance telephone calls and to be able to communicate with other computers for free. Some of the computers that the defendants allegedly broke into were telephone switching computers operated by Southwestern Bell, New York Telephone, Pacific Bell, U.S. West and Martin Marietta Electronics Information and Missile Group. According to the indictment, such switching computers each control telephone service for tens of thousands of telephone lines. In some instances, the defendants allegedly tampered with the computers by adding and altering calling features. In some cases, the defendants allegedly call forwarded local numbers to long distance numbers and thereby obtained long distance services for the price of a local call. Southwestern Bell is alleged to have incurred losses of approximately $370,000 in 1991 as a result of computer tampering by defendants Fernandez, Lee, and Abene. The indictment also alleges that the defendants gained access to computers operated by BT North America, a company that operates the Tymnet data transfer network. The defendants were allegedly able to use their access to Tymnet computers to intercept data communications while being transmitted through the network, including computer passwords of Tymnet employees. On one occasion, Fernandez and Lee allegedly intercepted data communications on a network operated by the Bank of America. The charges also allege that the defendants gained access to credit and information services including TRW, Trans Union and Information America. The defendants allegedly were able to obtain personal information on people including credit reports, telephone numbers, addresses, neighbor listings and social security numbers by virtue of their access to these services. On one occasion Lee and another member of the group are alleged to have discussed obtaining information from another hacker that would allow them to alter credit reports on TRW. As quoted in the indictment, Lee said that the information he wanted would permit them "to destroy people's lives ... or make them look like saints." The indictment further charges that in November 1991, Fernandez and Lee sold information to Morton Rosenfeld concerning how to access credit services. The indictment further alleges that Fernandez later provided Rosenfeld's associates with a TRW account number and password that Rosenfeld and his associates used to obtain approximately 176 TRW credit reports on various individuals. (In a separate but related court action, Rosenfeld pleaded guilty to conspiracy to use and traffic in account numbers of TRW. See below). According to Stephen Fishbein, the assistant United States attorney in charge of the prosecution, the indictment also alleges that members of MOD wiped out almost all of the information contained within the Learning Link computer operated by the Educational Broadcasting Corp. (WNET Channel 13) in New York City. The Learning Link computer provided educational and instructional information to hundreds of schools and teachers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Specifically, the indictment charges that on Nov. 28, 1989, the information on the Learning Link was destroyed and a message was left on the computer that said: "Happy Thanksgiving you turkeys, from all of us at MOD" and which was signed with the aliases "Acid Phreak," "Phiber Optik," and "Scorpion." During an NBC News broadcast on Nov. 14, 1990, two computer hackers identified only by the aliases "Acid Phreak" and "Phiber Optik" took responsibility for sending the "Happy Thanksgiving" message. Obermaier stated that the charges filed today resulted from a joint investigation by the United States Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "This is the first federal investigation ever to use court-authorized wiretaps to obtain conversations and data transmissions of computer hackers," said Obermaier. He praised both the Secret Service and the FBI for their extensive efforts in this case. Obermaier also thanked the Department of Justice Computer Crime Unit for their important assistance in the investigation. Additionally, Obermaier thanked the companies and institutions whose computer systems were affected by the defendants' activities, all of whom cooperated fully in the investigation. Fernandez, age 18, resides at 3448 Steenwick Ave., Bronx, New York. Lee (also known as John Farrington), age 21, resides at 64A Kosciusco St. Brooklyn, New York. Abene, age 20, resides at 94-42 Alstyne Ave., Queens, New York. Elias Ladopoulos, age 22, resides at 85-21 159th St., Queens, New York. Paul Stira, age 22, resides at 114-90 227th St., Queens, New York. The defendants' arraignment has been scheduled for July 16, at 10 a.m. in Manhattan federal court. The charges contained in the indictment are accusations only and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. Fishbein stated that if convicted, each of the defendants may be sentenced to a maximum of five years imprisonment on the conspiracy count. Each of the additional counts also carries a maximum of five years imprisonment, except for the count charging Fernandez with possession of access devices, which carries a maximum of ten years imprisonment. Additionally, each of the counts carries a maximum fine of the greater of $250,000, or twice the gross gain or loss incurred. ------ In separate but related court actions, it was announced that Rosenfeld and Alfredo De La Fe have each pleaded guilty in Manhattan Federal District Court to conspiracy to use and to traffic in unauthorized access devices in connection with activities that also involved members of MOD. Rosenfeld pled guilty on June 24 before the Shirley Wohl Kram, United States District Judge. At his guilty plea, Rosenfeld admitted that he purchased account numbers and passwords for TRW and other credit reporting services from computer hackers and then used the information to obtain credit reports, credit card numbers, social security numbers and other personal information which he sold to private investigators. Rosenfeld added in his guilty plea that on or about Nov. 25, 1991, he purchased information from persons named "Julio" and "John" concerning how to obtain unauthorized access to credit services. Rosenfeld stated that he and his associates later obtained additional information from "Julio" which they used to pull numerous credit reports. According to the information to which Rosenfeld pleaded guilty, he had approximately 176 TRW credit reports at his residence on Dec. 6, 1991. De La Fe pled guilty on June 19 before Kenneth Conboy, United States District Judge. At his guilty plea, De La Fe stated that he used and sold telephone numbers and codes for Private Branch Exchanges ("PBXs"). According to the information to which De La Fe pleaded guilty, a PBX is a privately operated computerized telephone system that routes calls, handles billing, and in some cases permits persons calling into the PBX to obtain outdial services by entering a code. De La Fe admitted that he sold PBX numbers belonging to Bugle Boy Industries and others to a co-conspirator who used the numbers in a call sell operation, in which the co-conspirator charged others to make long distance telephone calls using the PBX numbers. De La Fe further admitted that he and his associates used the PBX numbers to obtain free long distance services for themselves. De La Fe said that one of the people with whom he frequently made free long distance conference calls was a person named John Farrington, who he also knew as "Corrupt." Rosenfeld, age 21, resides at 2161 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. Alfredo De La Fe, age 18, resides at 17 West 90th St., N.Y. Rosenfeld and De La Fe each face maximum sentences of five years, imprisonment and maximum fines of the greater of $250,000, or twice the gross gain or loss incurred. Both defendants have been released pending sentence on $20,000 appearance bonds. Rosenfeld's sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 9, before Shirley Wohl Kram. De La Fe's sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 31, before Conboy. ------------------------------ From: jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) Subject: Some Hackers We Know Date: Thu, 09 Jul 92 22:09:34 GMT Organization: Dixie Communications Public Access. The Mouth of the South. Some familiar names from the net have made the {New York Times.} New York -- Five computer hackers have been indicted on federal charges of breaking into computer systems run by telephone companies, credit reporting services and educational institutions, officials said Wednesday. The hackers, in their teens and 20s, did it to show off for their peers, to harass people they didn't like, to obtain services without paying and to get information they could sell said U.S. Attorney Otto Obermaler. During these invasions, they obtained 176 credit reports from the TRW credit information company, destroyed an education series of a television station, and left electronic graffiti on an NBC television news show. The defendants were part of a group of hackers -- people adept at using computers to get into other computers or data systems -- who called themselves MOD, for "masters of disaster" or "masters of deception." Mr. Obermaier said MOD's members include Julio "Outlaw" Fernandez, 18; John "Corrupt" Lee, 21; Mark "Phiber Optik" Abene, 20; Elias "Acid Phreak" Ladopolous, 22; and Paul "Scorpion" Stira, 22. All are New Yorkers. Several charges. They are charged with computer tampering, computer fraud, wire fraud, illegal wire tapping and conspiracy. Each count is punishable by up to five years in prison. The indictment charges that in November 1989, MOD destroyed the information in WNET Channel 13's Learning Link computer in New York City. Learning Link provided educational and instructional material to schools and teachers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The hackers also allegedly broke into telephone switching computers operated by South western Bell, New York Telephone, Pacific Bell, US West and Martin Marietta Electronics Information and Missile Group. " -------- end of exerpt ------- It's going to be interesting to see the excuses developed by certain users on this network to justify these (alleged) hackers (allegedly) did. (If you don't like my use of the term "hacker", tough. This word, like the word 'gay' has been prostituted and I'm tired of fighting it.) John De Armond, WD4OQC Rapid Deployment System, Inc. Marietta, Ga jgd@dixie.com ------------------------------ From: mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) Subject: Re: "Legal" Phreaking? Organization: University of Georgia, Athens Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 05:22:19 GMT > [Moderator's Note: Let me ask those of you who persist in the belief > that it is the system operator's fault if there is a break-in to a > system with weak security, do you feel the same way about physical > assaults on other people? ... > the law is intended to protect the *weakest* members of society. PAT] Good point. Our draft computer regulations here contain a comment that impermissible snooping is still impermissible "even if the operating system or other software permits these acts." More simply, computers aren't required to defend themselves (although most can do so, to some extent). But I think our Dutch friend's point was quite different. The way I read it, he was claiming that the penalty for phone phreaking should be propor- tional to actual monetary loss, and that personal exploration often cost the phone company nothing. I seem to recall, too, that he was refuted by some facts about the ways phone companies have to pay each other for long distance calls! Michael A. Covington, Ph.D. | mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu | ham radio N4TMI Artificial Intelligence Programs | U of Georgia | Athens, GA 30602 U.S.A. ------------------------------ Date: 09 Jul 92 14:48:03 EDT From: Alan Boritz <72446.461@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: "Legal" Phreaking? In article TELECOM Moderator notes: > [Moderator's Note: Let me ask those of you who persist in the belief > that it is the system operator's fault if there is a break-in to a > system with weak security, do you feel the same way about physical > assaults on other people? Oh, come on, Pat. That's not a fair analogy. There's a big difference between a vicious destructive electronic attack on system resources, and a curious experimenter who doesn't realize the full extent of his actions. It's not always as absurd as you suggest. > That is, if you are attacked by a person much larger and stronger > than yourself, can't we conclude that if he robs you it is really your > fault? If you're a cop walking a beat could we conclude that you were at fault if a perpetrator does you in because you didn't know how to fire your weapon? An MIS director, or system manager, is responsible for his facility and should take system security issues seriously to protect sensitive material or resources from unauthorized access. If he doesn't, or won't, then he should pay -- with his job. There are too many qualified and responsible professionals currently available in today's ailing job market for companies to get along with anything less. Alan Boritz 72446.461.compuserve.com [Moderator's Note: Don't you think these latest allegations describe a 'vicious destructive electronic attack'? I can tell you now the crock of baloney which will be presented on Usenet ad infinatum over the next two years: One bunch of messages will claim the proprietors of the victimized computers are the ones really at fault who should be punished. Others will say that by punishing the naughty children our government is engaged in some sort of vendetta against computer users in general. Still other fools will observe how the government's actions will stifle and chill the intellectual curiosity of hacklings everywhere, and where would we be today without Apple Computer, et al ad nauseum. Let's listen to the shrill chatter from the EFF and its Socially Responsible membership as they defend the darlings against the evil government, credit bureaus, telcos, etc. By the way, has the EFF announced who the attorney will be to represent these young 'victims' yet? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Jul 92 05:22:38 GMT From: jdelancy@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil Subject: Re: "Legal" Phreaking Want to read something fascinating about "phone phreaks" "dark side" hackers and other "high-tech" rebels and outlaws? Get a copy of CYBERPUNK by Katie Hafner and John Markoff (Simon and Schuster, 1991). ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #547 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa19333; 10 Jul 92 4:27 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA06676 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Fri, 10 Jul 1992 02:03:13 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA28185 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Fri, 10 Jul 1992 02:03:04 -0500 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1992 02:03:04 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207100703.AA28185@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #548 TELECOM Digest Fri, 10 Jul 92 02:03:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 548 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: 1-800 DISA Hacking - A Waste of Time and Money (Bill Garfield) Re: "Legal" Phreaking? (James J. Menth) Re: "Legal" Phreaking? (Holt Sorenson) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (James J. Sowa) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Peter da Silva) Phone Phraud Publicity (John Winthrop) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Michael Masterson) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (John Higdon) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Tony DeSimone) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Jon Krueger) Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor (Robert L. McMillin) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: 1-800 DISA Hacking - A Waste of Time and Money From: bill.garfield@yob.sccsi.com (Bill Garfield) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 92 00:50:00 Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569 Reply-To: bill.garfield@yob.sccsi.com (Bill Garfield) > It would seem that given the ANI from this guy, one could track him > down and do a little pounding on him. You would think so, wouldn't you? The problem is, you send a team of investigators out to the address associated with the number and you find zero. The hackling, it seems, has broken into the basement of one of several apartment buildings. The cable pairs loop from building to building, and the hackling merely bridges onto any working pair and he's off and running. Once the telco trucks show up on the block, the hackling is long gone only to surface the next night from a different cable and pair. NYNEX and Sprint security have both told us this thing, believe it or not, has direct ties to organized crime ... yes, the Mafia. On the occasion that they HAVE been able to track down the half-tap, they break down the door only to find a vacant, deserted apartment with a card table and chair and just maybe a 2500 set along with it. But the hackling and his very basic computer gear (typically Commodore 64 and modem) are long gone. Like trying to rid the sewers of rats. Our best defense is just what we've done ... lock it down tight as a drum and monitor it daily. My only reason for the recent post was to hopefully get our current hacker to realize the futility of his efforts and for God's sake go away. We typically get hacked on for two or three days at a time and then they're gone for a month or so, but this current pest has been banging steadily away for the past five weeks and I'm getting a little sick of it. Our IXC can block inward from area 212 for us but that undermines much of the usefulness of our circuits. Maybe when they reassign the Bronx to its own NPA we'll look at that option again. [Moderator's Note: Do you see why so many hackers (geeze, I hate the way that word has been confiscated!) absolutely despise Caller-ID and its cousin ANI? It keeps them on the run too much. So the next time you hear someone carrying on about 'a woman in a shelter whose husband is looking for her so he can beat her up' or the one about 'companies will make lists so they can practice teleslime on people who call them if they are allowed to see the caller's number' -- in short, all the silly comments you read on Usenet from one day to the next -- just look the person squarely in the eye and ask them point blank, "Are you a hackerphreak, or just trying to be Socially Responsible?" :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: jjm@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (james.j.menth) Subject: Re: "Legal" Phreaking? Organization: AT&T Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1992 14:12:42 GMT In article houle@jupiter.nmt.edu (Paul Houle) writes: > Although I'd agree that cracking and phreaking are wrong, and > should be prosecuted, I think that the owner of a computer must accept > some legal blame if he does maintain some basic level of security. ----------- I think if you said 'civil liability' instead of 'legal blame' you would be correct. This is called 'contributory negligence' ( like proposals for limiting recoveries for being injured while not wearing seat belts ) and may reduce your chances, or degree of recovery, for your damages. While I agree with Paul about hacking damage I don't think that the criminal penalty of the offender should be reduced. The TV thief should be charged with burglary, no matter how easy the entry was. The hacker doing damage should be charged with whatever the law allows, without regard to what protection scheme was in place. ------------------------------ From: hps@sdf.lonestar.org (Holt Sorenson) Subject: Re: "Legal" Phreaking? Organization: sdf Public Access UNIX, Dallas--unrestricted free shell access Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1992 06:21:24 GMT In article houle@jupiter.nmt.edu (Paul Houle) writes: > I did a little hacking when I was a teenager, and I broke into > my first computer with the first username/password that I tried. It > was uucp/. I also discovered that a large number of > computers still had default passwords and other easy methods of entry > -- methods that a 14-year old kid with a C-64 can use. As such, I'd > say that many computer systems maintain a level of security that is > comparable to leaving the door of a house closed but unlocked. I had my days doing such things. In fact, that's where I learned UNIX. I can unfortunately report that my first break in was root, nopassword. This IS negligence. The company that I got into had very detailed records about their customers that were there for the taking. So, system security on anything from computers to PBX controllers is very important. The System Administrators have to take some responsiblity or else they, their business, and it's customers will be taken advantage of. Holt Sorenson ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jul 92 08:54:14 EDT From: jjs@ihlpf.att.com (James J Sowa) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: AT&T - Network Wireless Switching Systems In article leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) writes: > In article coyne@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU > writes: > But the bottom line is that the call costs you nothing, you don't have to > answer the phone if you don't want to, and if you don't want what is > being sold, then say so right away, cutting them off if you have to > [Moderator's Note: ... easy to pick the phone up, say 'no thank > you' and disconnect. Pat, What seems to be missed is, that people are interrupted by these sales tactics ringing their telephone. I believe that many people drop whatever they are doing to go and answer a ringing telephone (Maybe this would be another good thread to decide if this is sane behavior or not). But there is this feeling that is missed in the previous posts that this is not an inconvenience on the called person. Jim Sowa att!cbnewsc!jjjs (708) 713-1312 ------------------------------ From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: Taronga Park BBS Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1992 00:37:47 GMT In article leavens@mizar.usc.edu (Justin Leavens) writes: > [Moderator's Note: I agree with you completely, Justin. I've always > felt the reaction here from some people, calling them 'slime', etc. > was a bit much. They are just people earning a living, and it is quite > easy to pick the phone up, say 'no thank you' and disconnect. After > all, when we see a commercial on television we are free to change the > channel and watch something else. PAT] I find this an odd contrast to your reaction to people who ring and hang up. I'll take them over a telemarketer any day, at least they didn't deliberately interrupt me for something they can be almost certain I don't want (I don't know what the return rates are, but if it's like other advertising a few percent would be high). Yes, it makes a difference if the behaviour is deliberate or accidental. As for "it's better they have a job than nothing at all"... I don't buy that argument. Unless a person is doing productive work, contributing to the economy, their job is worthless. Yes, that includes Dan Quayle. Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX +1 713 568 0480/1032 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Jul 92 00:53:34 From: wixer!johnw@cs.utexas.edu (john winthrop) Subject: Phone Phraud Publicity Last night I saw a little segment on CNBC's Steals-N-Deals about phone fraud. It seems like most of the press is still behind the time in reporting about fraud such as this ... maybe someone should send them a copy of the Digest showing how 800 numbers can be forwarded to 900's and such ... John Winthrop (Wixer!JohnW@Cactus.Org) ------------------------------ From: mmaster@parnasus.dell.com (Michael Masterson) Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Organization: Dell Computer Co Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 14:35:24 GMT tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) writes: > ... some cities for short-range police radios. As I recall, in more > than one case handheld transciever units were replaced with > belt-mounted + handset or the like because of large-scale problems > with glaucoma. Tumors didn't factor into this, however, as I recall. > Does anybody remember more of this discussion? I've got one of those radios, it operates in the same band as cellular, and there's very stringent warnings about not holding the antenna too close to the face, or touching it to your face/eyes/forehead while transmitting. This radio is much more powerful than a portable cellular phone, however, and more importantly (from the glaucoma/cataract angle), it's typically held right in front of the face, while cellular antennas are on the side of the head above and to the rear; they have much lower power, and are much further away from the eyes. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of any other person. Michael Masterson mmaster@parnasus.dell.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jul 92 10:19 PDT From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor eggert@farside.twinsun.com (Paul Eggert) writes: > It's too bad that important public policy issues like this are so > often decided in the courts, which do not use the scientific method to > arrive at their results. Another non-scientific place that these issues are decided is in the pool of bureaucrats in Washington. For instance, there are some VERY strict rules regarding permissable RF radiation at the base of FM towers. Radio stations must be in compliance with these standards in order to get renewal on the license. But note several things. The "limits" are figures drawn out of thin air, loosly based on what some ANSI personel probably discussed over coffee one day. The "public" does not go to mountain top transmitter sites, so apparently these regulations are meant to protect maintainence personel. The problem here is that there is not one credible report of any malady whatsoever associated with long term exposure to high 100 MHz fields (of the strength associated with transmitter site locations). In other words, these rules are based upon fantasy. Sometimes complying with these rules can be very costly and become great hardship to a marginal enterprize. And for what? If the crackpots do not burden us with garbage, then sympathetic government bozos will. tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) writes: > On the other hand, there really may be something to worry about here. > Last time this came up in RISKS, it was pointed out that before the > advent of cellular phone service, the same frequencies were used in > some cities for short-range police radios. Ah, yes. I read RISKS occasionally. It is great comedy. But before you go off totally immersed in terror, consider this: if you could focus (such as with a magnifying glass) the superlative power of a handheld cellular phone (0.6 watt) into a microscopic concentrated dot, you MIGHT be able to cause (through heating effects) cell changes in an organism. However, at the antenna itself the energy is thousands of times more dispersed than that required to even be detected by an organism's physical make up and every millimeter removed makes the dispersal even greater. Do you have any idea how LITTLE power 0.6 watt is? > As I recall, in more than > one case handheld transciever units were replaced with belt-mounted + > handset or the like because of large-scale problems with glaucoma. ^^^^^^^^^^^ The clip-on two-way "microphone" is much easier to use than holding on to the radio. Perhaps you could point us to the studies linking glaucoma to the use of police radios. I am unaware of any such thing. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jul 92 21:55:51 GMT From: tds@hoserve.att.com (Tony DeSimone) Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Reply-To: tds@hoserve.att.com (Tony DeSimone) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories On Tue, 7 Jul 1992 13:45:34 GMT, irving@happy-man.com (Irving_Wolfe) said: > There is an extremely well-written (truly delightful to read despite > the subject matter) book on this subject by Paul Brodeur. He's not a > scientist, but a writer; however, he's very bright and thorough and > took the trouble to read everything available and interview actual > workers in the field. I wish I remembered the book's title, but you > should be able to find it under the author's name. "Currents of Death : Power Lines, Computer Terminals, and the Attempt to Cover up Their Threat to Your Health". Never read it, but I have decided it's a piece of trash (how's that for being open-minded). I read a review in IEEE Spectrum by someone who *is* a scientist, and she savaged the book. Anyway, the sensationalist title is enough to turn me off. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 20:09:34 -0700 Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Reply-To: jpk@Ingres.COM Organization: Ask Computer Systems Inc., Ingres Division, Alameda CA 94501 From: jpk@ingres.com (Jon Krueger) Ang Peng Hwa writes: > [discovers that] virtually all [people] lived within 100 yards of > either a substation or a high voltage line. True, no study has > vindicated those findings. But as a researcher, I am inclined to take > findings that were discovered, more seriously than those one set out > to find. Indeed science moves forward by noticing trends and anomolies. But it moves in circles if it fails to test them under controlled conditions. The findings to take seriously are the ones that replicate. > Then there was the PC Magazine editor Winn Rosch who did a pretty > decent article on the subject of emissions from the computer monitor. > Like John, he concluded that there was no definitive study. But at the > end of the article, Rosch said he now sits five feet away from the > monitor. And what should we conclude if he sat six feet away? What should we conclude if another user saw the same facts and decided to sit two feet away? The Rosch standard isn't calibrated. The anecdote is interesting but learning that Rosch's monitor gets a Rosch 5 does us no good. Jon Krueger jpk@ingres.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jul 92 07:35:29 -0700 From: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (Robert L. McMillin) Subject: Re: Suit Alleges Cellular Caused Brain Tumor Tony Kennedy writes: > Ang Peng Hwa writes: >> The "theory" of non-ionizing radiation was discovered >> accidentally by a researcher who was looking for the cause of >> leukemia. He/she (can't remember) found nothing until one day, >> looking around her, saw that there were lots of power lines. >> Redrawing her subjects, she found that virtually all lived >> within 100 yards of either a substation or a high voltage >> line. > One objection to this is that it indicates a correlation between > leukemia and power lines, not a causal connection. A reasonable > explanation might well be that poverty is correlated with leukemia, > and houses near power lines are cheaper. The confusion of cause and effect is more than a little common among the scientifically illiterate. To paraphrase Ambrose Bierce, this is not unlike someone who has only seen a hare when persued by a dog declaring the dog the cause of the hare. > BTW, do you realize that eating butter reduces your chances of dying > of cancer? Regardless of whether this assertion is true, it IS a fact that eating lots of butter increases your chances of arteriosclerosis, and thus being felled by a heart attack. This raises another good point: assessment of relative risk is yet another skill virtually unknown to the technophobic. According to a recent article in {Forbes}, thanks to the many lawsuits that dominate the environmental regulation process, we now have laws on the books that cost several millions of dollars per potential life saved; some even total in nine figures. For instance: which will more likely kill people, the potential risk of acquiring cancer from nitrates, a preservative commonly used in bacon and other pork products, or the bacterial infections (ptomaine, salmonella, etc.) that would result if the bacon were left unpreserved? For too long, we have lived with the "Bambi" view of nature: nature as essentially benign, and indeed generally beneficial. She is not, and has never been thus. Nature is neutral. She slays as easily as she nurtures. In this century, we have tamed a good many of the worst diseases thrown at man. Nature, never content to stand still, responded with AIDS. Those people who fear technology and see "man-made" as a curse would do well to remember this. Robert L. McMillin | Voice: (310) 568-3555 Hughes Aircraft/Hughes Training, Inc. | Fax: (310) 568-3574 Los Angeles, CA | Internet: rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #548 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa19784; 10 Jul 92 4:46 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA19418 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Fri, 10 Jul 1992 02:26:09 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA23593 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Fri, 10 Jul 1992 02:25:59 -0500 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1992 02:25:59 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207100725.AA23593@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #549 TELECOM Digest Fri, 10 Jul 92 02:26:00 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 549 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson AT&T New Rate Table (Paul Robinson) Surprise Calling Card Fraud (Mark Schuldenfrei) Re: Some EasyReach Comments (Phil Howard) Re: Fixed Call Forwarding (Steve Forrette) New 5ESS(tm) Here (Dave Levenson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply-To: tdarcos@mcimail.com From: Paul Robinson Date: Fri, 10 Jul 92 00:37:28 EDT Subject: AT&T New Rate Table The following now gives us the current rates for all AT&T interstate calls. I forgot to post it sooner on this newsgroup, sorry. From page 2D of the May 19 1992 {USA Today}. NOTICE TO AT&T CUSTOMERS AT&T has filed with the Federal Communications Commission to increase interstate domestic daytime direct dial usage charges between 1.6% and 2.3% and to make changes in interstate domestic Evening and Night/Weekend direct dial usage charges resulting from reductions of 2.4% to increases of 4.4% on the following services: (R) (R) (R) AT&T MEGACOM WATS Service, AT&T PRO WATS I, AT&T PRO WATS, sm AT&T Plan D Service (AT&T CustomNet Service, sm AT&T Plan Q Service (AT&T Small Business Options Area Code Plan), AT&T WATS Domestic, AT&T WATS-OneLine Access and AT&T WATS. In addition, AT&T has also filed to increase usage charges by 1.5% for (R) the following AT&T 800 Services: AT&T 800 READY LINE and AT&T MEGACOM 800 Service. NOTICE TO AT&T CUSTOMERS Effective May 29, 1992, AT&T will change the international calling rates to 11 countries for certain AT&T services. The new rates increase the charges for the additional 6-second billing periods by 5% on direct-dialed calls to: Haiti Malta Honduras Morocco Iran Namibia Israel Trinidad & Tobago Ivory Coast Turkey Libyan APSJ The new rates apply to all international rate periods for AT&T (R) (R) PRO WATS, AT&T MEGACOM WATS , and AT&T Software Defined Network - International (switched access and dedicated access). Any customer who has a question about this rate change can call AT&T at 1 800 222-0900. NOTICE TO AT&T CUSTOMERS On May 15, 1992 AT&T filed with the Federal Communications Commission to change dial station day, evening and night/weekend prices for interstate calls within the U.S. and calls between Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands and the U.S. Mainland. Dial station rates apply when the person originating the call dials the telephone number desired, completes the call without the assistance of a Company operator, and the call is billed to the calling station. These rates are scheduled to become effective on June 1, 1992. DIAL STATION - U.S. INTERSTATE RATES DAY EVENING NIGHT/WEEKEND Proposed Proposed Proposed ------------------ ------------------ ------------------ Rate Initial Additional Initial Additional Initial Additional Mileage Minute Minute Minute Minute Minute Minute --------- ------------------ ------------------ ------------------ 1-10 $0.20 $0.20 $0.13 $0.13 $0.11 $0.11 11-22 0.22 0.22 0.13 0.13 0.12 0.12 23-55 0.22 0.22 0.13 0.13 0.12 0.12 56-124 0.22 0.22 0.14 0.14 0.12 0.12 125-292 0.22 0.22 0.14 0.14 0.13 0.13 293-430 0.23 0.23 0.14 0.14 0.13 0.13 431-925 0.23 0.23 0.15 0.15 0.13 0.13 926-1910 0.24 0.24 0.15 0.15 0.13 0.13 1911-3000 0.25 0.25 0.15 0.15 0.13 0.13 3001-4250 0.30 0.30 0.21 0.21 0.16 0.16 4251-5750 0.33 0.33 0.22 0.22 0.17 0.17 DIAL STATION RATES - PUERTO RICO / U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS to/from U.S. MAINLAND DAY EVENING NIGHT/WEEKEND Proposed Proposed Proposed ------------------ ------------------ ------------------ Rate Initial Additional Initial Additional Initial Additional Mileage Minute Minute Minute Minute Minute Minute --------- ------------------ ------------------ ------------------ 926-1910 0.24 0.24 0.15 0.15 0.13 0.13 1911-3000 0.25 0.25 0.15 0.15 0.13 0.13 3001-4250 0.30 0.30 0.21 0.21 0.16 0.16 Puerto Rico to/from Virgin Islands 0.22 0.22 0.14 0.14 0.12 0.12 ------------------------------ From: schuldy@progress.COM (Mark Schuldenfrei) Subject: Surprise Calling Card Fraud Organization: Progress Software Corp. Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 17:30:44 GMT I received a surprising call from AT&T's Calling Card Fraud unit this past weekend, and thought I would solicit some advice, and warn the unsuspecting. My wife returned to Miami for graduation ceremonies for her Phd this spring, in early May. (I'll name some names here.) She stayed in the Lesley Hotel, managed by Art Deco Hotels and one Mister Ardati. She never uses her AT&T calling card, and has one only at my insistence. Before she left, I suggested strongly to her that to eliminate theft, she use the card only from her motel room, paying the surcharge if necessary, and only use the keypad to self-dial the calling card number. She assures me that the card was in her possession the whole time, never spoke the calling card number, and only dialed from within the room. You can guess the rest. Several calls from Miami to Costa Rica have now been placed on her calling card number. We still have possesion of the card, and it has not been used before or since (and AT&T cancelled it, once the fraud was detected.) (And, they promised to waive the fraudulent calls.) I called the manager, and mentioned the circumstances to him, and told him I suspected the SMDR call logs were being poached. He assures me (although he had never heard of SMDR) that his employees and his Hitachi PBX are above reproach, that I am making false accusations, and the hotel will "go after me" if I pursue this. I find such a threat hollow, but I'm willing to bet that it means he is taking no action. The local (Boston) FBI office took a complaint, but the gentleman assured me that the over-extended staff in Miami will not be able to look into it. (I appreciate his courtesy and honesty, if not the reality behind it). He suggested that it's the defrauded parties responsibility (ie AT&T). AT&T's fraud control people have promised to escalate this, and call me back if they wish to pursue the matter. The representative who handles only individual cases of fraud assured me this is commonplace in Miami, and implied it is common in larger cities around the US. The implications of for individuals and industry are rather frightening. If public places are not safe for the use of calling cards, if neither speaking the number nor touch-tone entry are secure, if private hotels and motels are not secure, how does one make phone calls when on the road? Call Me cards are too limited, and Custom Calling cards are not much better. More specifically, does anyone have suggestions for what I can or should do about this situation? I'd like to think that some action can be taken: this is a special case of a calling card that has never been used for another purpose or time that I can recall. Can anyone suggest an officer, or person that I should contact, or either AT&T or Federal or State authorities? Or, as I suspect, should I treat this as an untreatable symptom of a racing crime rate? Mark Schuldenfrei, definitely not speaking for his employer today, but reachable at work as schuldy@progress.com ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: Some EasyReach Comments Date: Wed, 08 Jul 92 19:43:11 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) edg@netcom.com (Ed Greenberg) writes: > * I wish you could have different billing and default numbers. For > instance, I wish my default number could be my voicemail, not my home. > That way, each night I could set eight hour forwarding to the hotel > and just let it expire. No can do though, I must manually reforward > the number in the morning. We just need to get them to add another field in the data record which might be called the "fall back number" as opposed to the "home base" number, which is the billing number under their current system. The only technical reason I can see for not doing this is it does increase the memory required by some amount, and of course this does mean going back and hacking on the code. More likely I suspect it is some manager who wears his ties too tight that is making the decisions. > * The menu tree changes depending on the state of things. It's > different if you are forwarded or not, or if you are calling from a > number that is enabled for sent-paid or not. This makes it impossible > to type ahead. This can be annoying. > * It would be nice if AT&T would sell it with integrated voicemail as > the default when not programmed. I'd pay .15 or .25 (nite or day) to > play back my messages, and, of course, my callers would have to pay it > to leave messages. One of these days, someone high up in AT&T (like maybe a stockholder) will realize the potential of integrating the entirety of services, including reading TELECOM Digest :-) > * It would be nice if I could add, change and delete PINS automagically > using the DTMF interface. You can't???? > * It would be nice if I could set my own variable length master pin. You can't???? > * This could be the start of an integrated remote long distance > system. For instance, how about the ability to complete outgoing > calls from the command mode? This could include a repitoire of speed > calling numbers. AT&T could charge you in the EasyReach portion of > your bill, with a calling card surcharge. If they REALLY wanted to be > snazzy, they could let you complete such calls WITHOUT a calling card > surcharge. Coupled with voicemail mentioned above, this becomes a > really powerful mobile office. In almost no organization do the technical people that understand such abstract concepts make the marketing decisions. Too bad. > * Some people have suggested that the reason that EasyReach is limited > to AT&T subscribers is to build a base of presubscribed users. Maybe > so. The shortsightedness of this approach is apparent though, since > EasyReach is a really useful thing for people with no local phone > service. Perhaps someone with a "new idea" got it through the upper management with that as an excuse. Given the excuses I've heard from the people there, it sure seems like one of these is the case. > I hope that you AT&T Marketing and Technical Gurus out there will pick > up on some of these ideas. The technical people probably will, if they hadn't already thought of it themselves. The marketing people apparently are not. Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: Fixed Call Forwarding Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 22:07:30 GMT In article KASS@drew.drew.edu writes: > Here's what I think Fixed Call Forwarding is: On busy or no answer, > with the number of rings before no answer selectable as 4 or 6, a call > to the subscriber number is forwarded to another number, but that > number can't be changed as with Call Forwarding, nor can (?) the > forwarding be turned on or off. According to NJB, Fixed Call > Forwarding is _not_ available except in combination with Answer Call, > but the Answer Call brochure seems to indicate that Fixed Call > Forwarding is at least tariffed as a separate service (it's $2/month). > Can anyone tell me if Fixed Call Forwarding is available either here > (was the service rep wrong?) or anywhere else (just because I'm > curious). > [Moderator's Note: We have it here in Chicago on cellular service and > on wireline service only for connection to voicemail. You tell them > how many rings to program it for when you sign up. PAT] It has been commonly available as a separate tariffed service in both US West and Pacific Bell territory for several years, long before either of them offered their own voicemail. In fact, I've subscribed to it from both carriers, and it seems to work fine. Both carriers allowed me to choose any ring interval I wanted (one to eight rings), although choosing one ring seemed to let it ring three rings before it transferred, so the pratical choices available were anywhere from three to eight rings. In both cases, I was served from a 1AESS, so your mileage on other switches may vary. US West was somewhat more flexible in the ways you could order it than Pacific Bell. For example, with US West, you could have Call Waiting on the same line as busy/no answer transfer. If you were already on the line and a second call came in, you would get the call waiting beep, and if you didn't answer after the preset number of rings, it would transfer to the no-answer destination. Also, if you had invoked Cancel Call Waiting and another call came in, it would busy-transfer immediately. Pacific Bell does not allow Call Waiting to co-exist with either busy or no-answer transfer on the same line. Also, they require that the destination number be at the same address and billed to the same name (in my situation with US West, it was to other service at the same address but billed to a different person). I pressed Pacific Bell about the "incompatibility" with Call Waiting, and was (of course) told that "the equipment can't handle it." I persisted, and told them how I had had exactly this configuration on a 1AESS in US West territory, and since my Pacific Bell exchange at the time was also a 1AESS, I could not accept this explanation. I finally got in touch with someone who read me a clause word-for-word from the tariff, which clearly stated that Call Waiting cannot co-exist with busy or no-answer transfer on the same line. I was also told that since the CPUC sets the tariffs, there was nothing that Pacific Bell could do about this. Of course, I could not let this explanation stand. I asked, "So, you wanted to provide this service, but the CPUC told you that you couldn't, because some customers might find this TOO useful?" I also corrected him by observing that the CPUC approves or rejects the tariffs that Pacific Bell submits, and it is extremely unlikely that there would be any reason for the CPUC to put this restriction in themselves. In the end, he seemed to realize that there really are some customers out there that know about all of the dirty tariff tricks that are pulled, and how the blame gets shifted away from the "innocent" Pacific Bell and to the CPUC. Unfortunately, I was never able to order the service I wanted. Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: New 5ESS(tm) Here Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 02:03:48 GMT In the wee small hours of July 4th of this year, the Millington, NJ central office switch was replaced by a nice new 5ESS switch. It replaced a 1A-ESS switch which had been installed there approximately ten years ago. A New Jersey Bell employee claims that this early-retirement of the analog switch was the result of pressure from AT&T. They wanted ISDN service at the Bell Labs Liberty Corner location, which is served by this switch. Apparently, if you're a big enough customer, you can get the local telco to supply you with ISDN, even if they have to replace the whole central office to do it! I haven't asked NJ Bell if this means that we can get ISDN residence or small business service, but when I get a chance to call the local business office ... I was out of town when the cut occurred. When I returned home, I first noticed that local call-setup seemed faster. I also noticed that when I use three-way calling, there are no CO-induced clicks as additional parties are added to or removed from the conversation. So far, I haven't noticed any of the problems reported earlier in this forum by Mr. Higdon. Our voice and data service continue to function as well as they did before, and the Caller*ID service works as well as it did. Our 800 inbound calls still arrive as they did. The local number for a quiet termination seems to have changed. The dial tone (but not the audio on a conversation) is about 1 dB below the level I measured a couple of months ago. This seems to be the case on all six trunks that terminate here -- those with SLC-96 and the metallic loaded loops. The metallic circuits used to show 52 volts on-hook, and now show 48. Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave Warren, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #549 ******************************   Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by mintaka.lcs.mit.edu id aa19744; 12 Jul 92 14:19 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA20766 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist-outbound); Sun, 12 Jul 1992 00:11:13 -0500 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA27740 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for telecomlist); Sun, 12 Jul 1992 00:11:03 -0500 Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1992 00:11:03 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199207120511.AA27740@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: "\\telecom"@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V12 #550 TELECOM Digest Sun, 12 Jul 92 00:11:08 CDT Volume 12 : Issue 550 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Robert S. Helfman) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Peter da Silva) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Art Hunter) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Mike Coyne) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Tony Kennedy) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Phil Howard ) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Clint Ruoho) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (John De Armond) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Syd Weinstein) Re: The Depths of Sliminess (Roy Smith) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: helfman@aero.org (Robert S. Helfman) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1992 14:56:11 GMT In article Roy Smith writes: > In article is written: >> But the bottom line is that the call costs you nothing, you don't have to >> answer the phone if you don't want to, > How do I know it's a telemarketer until I answer the phone? > It costs me the annoyance of stopping whatever I am doing and having > to go answer the phone. It's invasive. > [Moderator's Note: How do you know? Simple. You say to your telco and > your utility commissioners, "I want Caller-ID available in our phone > exchange now. I want control of my phone instead of telemarketers, > phreaks and other people having control of it." When installed, then > you answer those calls you wish and ignore the others. PAT] PAT, I agree that Caller-ID would be nice, but for those of us with less settled lives (and less settled friends), knowing what phone number is calling only works for folks who call you from their home or office or some other number you recognize. What about: 1) Friends who call from a random payphone to say they're "in the 'hood" (as we say in L.A.) and want to drop by for a visit (at least three times a month this happens to me -- in L.A. it's considered really gauche to just drop in unannounced); 2) The tradesman who's on his way to your house and can't find his way through the maze of streets and calls from a payphone; 3) Your bank or the video store or any of those other ad-hoc calls whose origin phone number would be meaningless to you if it popped up on your Caller-ID LCD? Yeh, you'll say: "Let the answering machine get it." Well, PAT, that takes just as long (longer, in fact) to listen to their blabbing so you can determine who it is before picking up. That's one reason I don't screen all the time -- it actually distracts me longer from whatever I was doing. I can't imagine life without a phone, but I'll bet it's really peaceful. ------------------------------ From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: Taronga Park BBS Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1992 03:47:02 GMT TELECOM Moderator notes: > [Moderator's Note: Fifty years ago there was a breed of person known > as the 'door-to-door salesman', [...] Telemarketers are worse than door-to-door salesmen. With door-to-door salemen you can look through the door and see who's there before opening it (and we don't have caller-ID here and YES I've called Southwestern Hell and bitched about it) and you get to see the person you're dealing with and they can't contact nearly as many houses per day and they usually have an actual product (they're not often doing surveys) and they're very rarely computers or robots (I can't say as I've ever had a robot knock at my door ... I'd probably invite it in). We still get door-to-door guys selling religion. It can be amusing on occasion. "Oh, I'm a Pagan and it just so happens we need a virgin for our next service ... you look like a likely candidate ...". I don't do that to the local Jehovah's Witnesses guy because he was nice enough to ask me before parking his car in front of my house. I don't buy his product, but courtesy begets courtesy. Telemarketeers don't deserve any. Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX +1 713 568 0480/1032 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess From: art@aficom.ocunix.on.ca (Art Hunter) Reply-To: art@aficom.ocunix.on.ca (Art Hunter) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1992 06:22:40 -0400 Organization: AFI Communications - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada > How do I know it's a telemarketer until I answer the phone? > It costs me the annoyance of stopping whatever I am doing and having > to go answer the phone. It's invasive. I use a CallerID product that permits me to add a name to the phone number sent by the Telco. Further, this permits me to automatically terminate the calls I preselect as telemarketers or whoever I don't wish to communicate. I can have this change as a function of day of week and time of day. Further, I can group callers into ten groups and have them managed according to day/time as well. There is the ability to have a screen of notes, automatic or manual switch to an answering machine, records of all inbound and outbound calls and a host of other features. I have been using it for over a year now and find it very useful. It is a DOS machine board that takes up one slot and can be run as a TSR or as a dedicated machine. Terminating a telemarketer's call, once you know the number they are calling from, is easy. ------------------------------ From: CCEB001@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: 10 Jul 92 19:47:58 GMT Organization: The University of Texas at Austin Justin Leavens writes (edited heavily): > I know telemarketers are pretty much regarded as slime here in this > forum, but personally, I consider it better that these people are > working than unemployed ... well, the answer is that telemarketing > is a legal method of marketing a product ... telemarketers are > generally either students trying to make some extra cash, or people > who can't find other work and are lured by the high wages that are > paid to telemarketers. > The bottom line is that unless a telemarkter is _rude_ to you, > there is no reason to be _rude_ to them. They're not doing anything > illegal ... Our Moderator seconds these thoughts with: > ... it is quite easy to pick the phone up, say 'no thank you' and > disconnect. After all, when we see a commercial on television we are > free to change the channel and watch something else. PAT] I completely disagree with these arguments. Cold call Telemarketers are considered a nuisance by most telephone subscribers as well as by me. Subscribing to telephone service does NOT imply permission for them to call any more than leaving my door unlocked implies permission to come in and originate a call on my phone. I subscribe to the phone service to facilitate communication with friends, relatives, and businesses. The businesses advertise in the yellow pages which does imply permission to conduct the advertised business over the phone. My listing in the white pages does not imply consent to all business calls. The fact that telemarketing is legal does not prove that it is ok. It is legal to shout, "Show us your tits" at women, but it is not ok. (This practice is reportedly common for some motorcycle groups and auto races.) In either case legality only proves there is no consensus that you should go to jail for it. The argument that you can just hang up is unfair. I must pick up the phone to achieve the purpose for which I subscribed. Why should I have to shed myself of these people trading parasiticly on my purpose for subscribing? Why should I pay for "my share" of the switch capacity? The comparison of telemarketing to TV ads also fails. TV advertising is inserted into programming paid for by the advertiser. We get our quid pro quo. You can escape that, with varying success, by paying for the programming yourself, as in renting a movie, subscribing to PBS or HBO, or reading a book. Further, it matters nothing how worthy the individual telemarketer is. They are committing a nuisance on millions of people a day, and it may be a worthy nuisance, but it is a nuisance. Also "the business will fail without telemarketing" does not work. If you have to commit a mass nuisance to make your business survive, that is a message from a free market that you are in the wrong business. Personally, I am flexible about calling for political issues and candidates or legitimate charities. I can even handle bill collectors and landlords. :-( An unsolicited call from a real estate agent, photographer, or carpet cleaner really steams me. Universal access is a major regulatory goal. The use of caller id, answering machines, call blocking, answering services, unlisted numbers and more to cope with nuisance calls is a serious threat to universal access. Why not just stop the threat at the nuisance call source? Mike.Coyne@utxvm.cc.utexas.edu ------------------------------ From: adk@sun13.SCRI.FSU.EDU (Tony Kennedy) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: 10 Jul 92 22:35:47 GMT Organization: SCRI, Florida State University > [Moderator's Note: How do you know? Simple. You say to your telco > and your utility commissioners, "I want Caller-ID available in our > phone exchange now. I want control of my phone instead of > telemarketers, phreaks and other people having control of it." When > installed, then you answer those calls you wish and ignore the others. Do you define telemarketers to be anyone whose telephone number you don't know in advance? [Moderator's Note: No, not at all. I don't refuse to answer a call just because I do not recognize the number. As we all know, that could be a mistake. The purpose of Caller-ID is not to insure you only answer calls from numbers you recognize, but to give you as the recipient of the call some recourse against the caller later if needed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: Sat, 11 Jul 92 03:07:26 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) > [Moderator's Note: How do you know? Simple. You say to your telco and > your utility commissioners, "I want Caller-ID available in our phone > exchange now. I want control of my phone instead of telemarketers, > phreaks and other people having control of it." When installed, then > you answer those calls you wish and ignore the others. PAT] Saying you want something does not get it. Illinois Bell actually knows when Caller ID will be available here, and that is still nearly two years away. I doubt anything can get it any sooner. In the mean time telemarketer calls continue to be an annoyance. Caller ID is also not a solution. It only tells me where someone is calling from, not who is calling or why. A relative or friend I want to talk to may be calling from a phone I have no knowledge or record of. Should I have to brush them off by not answering just because the telemarketers also call from numbers I don't know about (at least the first time)? fcw@pioneer.telecom.ti.com (Fred Wedemeier) writes: > It's not really the same. You would get mighty PO'd if the people > leaving slips on your door would instead ring the doorbell and _hand_ > them to you rather than stuffing them in a crack for you to see when > you came home or left. You generally answer the doorbell when it rings I'm as much against leaving the flyers as I am against telemarketing phone calls, but for different reasons. The flyers attract attention to homes and apartments that are currently unoccupied, making them a possible target for burglars, especially when these flyers get left for a day or more because you are on vacation. > So you start screening calls with an answering machine, which is a > rudeness to family, friends, and associates whose calls you want to > receive. (Is Fred really not there, or is he listening to me talking > while he decides if he'll honor me by picking up the phone??) At least MY message says I might be there listening. > An upside to all this? A friend of mine has an insurance agency and he > makes cold calls to drum up business (yeah, two strikes against him > but he's still a friend). He sometimes gets hold of shut-ins who > haven't heard a real human voice in days and _want_ to talk. He'll > spend 5-10 minutes just talking even though he knows he won't sell > insurance. Sounds like something their relatives should be doing. jjs@ihlpf.att.com (James J Sowa) writes: > What seems to be missed is, that people are interrupted by these sales > tactics ringing their telephone. I believe that many people drop > whatever they are doing to go and answer a ringing telephone (Maybe > this would be another good thread to decide if this is sane behavior > or not). But there is this feeling that is missed in the previous > posts that this is not an inconvenience on the called person. My "call screening system" works this way. An ordinary answering machine is set to answer on the first ring and has a message that suggests that the telephone does not ring (it actually does, but I don't react to it, though that would be longer to explain on the announcement). I ask the calling party to announce who they are so I might pick up the phone, or if I don't pick up they can leave a message (three minutes available from the beep). The only problem I have encountered with this is that many people are not leaving sufficient time for me to actually get up and go answer the phone. So far these cases have only occurred when I was not at home anyway. I should probably upgrade the message to ask that sufficient time be allowed to answer starting from when they say who they are. If you are tempted to look up my listed phone number and call me to see what my message says ("your dime"), you might at least leave a message saying that it was just a TELECOM Digest reader checking the announcement. Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 10 July 1992 19:50:21 GMT From: Clint Ruoho Organization: Farpoint Development Group Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Peter de Silva writes: > As for "it's better they have a job than nothing at all"... I don't > buy that argument. Unless a person is doing productive work, > contributing to the economy, their job is worthless. Yes, that > includes Dan Quayle. I would consider telemarketing productive work ... it certainly contributes to the economy. And still, I'd rather have somebody working as a telemarketer instead of collecting welfare. I had the oppurtunity (I'm not sure if that's the best word) to work as a Telemarketer for a local newspaper this summer. My job lasted just over a week, as my low salary didn't justify the stress of a phone sales job. Most of the people I called weren't rude to me, and I only had a few impolite responses in the whole week. Most people were satisfied by saying "I'm not interested" and hanging up. Clint Ruoho ------------------------------ From: jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Date: Sat, 11 Jul 92 00:59:56 GMT Organization: Dixie Communications Public Access. The Mouth of the South. > [Moderator's Note: How do you know? Simple. You say to your telco and > your utility commissioners, "I want Caller-ID available in our phone > exchange now. I want control of my phone instead of telemarketers, > phreaks and other people having control of it." When installed, then > you answer those calls you wish and ignore the others. PAT] Ok Pat, tell us how to do that. I've got Caller-ID on all my phones and can even log the data to a computer if desired. I want to talk to just about anyone who calls EXCEPT teleslime. The phone is ringing and a number appears on the screen that I don't recognize. Explain to me how to use that magic Caller-ID box to make the distinction between a friend whose number I don't recognize or a potential customer calling and teleslime? Now tell me how I can make that distinction now that the phone company here in Atlanta is allowing per-line blocking and the teleslime numbers come up as "private"? As usual, the PUC and the phone company have done just the opposite of what is proper for the private citizen. Instead of requiring Caller-ID information be transmitted from any commercial account and allowing per-call blocking only on private lines, they've allowed the business users to defeat the whole purpose of Caller-ID. John De Armond, WD4OQC Rapid Deployment System, Inc. Marietta, Ga jgd@dixie.com ------------------------------ From: syd@dsi.com (Syd Weinstein) Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Reply-To: syd@dsi.com Organization: Datacomp Systems, Inc. Huntingdon Valley, PA Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1992 14:15:22 GMT Roy Smith and Pat talk about answering the phone re telemarketers ... > [Moderator's Note: How do you know? Simple. You say to your telco and > your utility commissioners, "I want Caller-ID available in our phone > exchange now. I want control of my phone instead of telemarketers, > phreaks and other people having control of it." When installed, then > you answer those calls you wish and ignore the others. PAT] And I still say, as Roy does, having to interrupt myself to go look at the phone display to see whether its someone I know, or an unknown (most telemarketers are 'unknown' to me normally) is still an invasion. An example (contrived) "I used to be able to put up a sign, saying no soliciting" and if a salesman called on me, at my door, I could have him arrested and tried for trespassing. That would stop me from having my door bell rung and interrupting me. (Of course it wont work for political and some other sub classes, but most salesman) What do I do that is similar for telemarketers? Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP Elm Coordinator - Current 2.3PL11 Datacomp Systems, Inc. Projected 2.4 Release: Oct 1,1992 syd@DSI.COM or dsinc!syd Voice: (215) 947-9900, FAX: (215) 938-0235 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Jul 92 11:47:54 EDT From: Roy Smith Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess Organization: Public Health Research Institute (New York) First off, unless I seriously misunderstand the technology, all CID will do for me is tell me the phone number of the person who's calling. Do you really think I remember and recognize the phone numbers of all the people I am willing to accept phone calls from (even assuming it was a finite set)? Second, if I'm eating dinner, or sitting on the throne, or whatever, I still have to interrupt what I'm doing to go look at the damn CID display. Once I've gotten myself over to the phone to look at the display, I might as well have just picked the handset up and listened for ten seconds. My private time has still be invaded. Third, CID would be just another electronic gadget I'd have to pay for. Why should I pay for a service to screen out annoying calls when it makes a lot more sense (to me, anyway) to cut the annoying calls off at the source by making them illegal. Which makes more sense: to make it illegal to urinate on the sidewalk, or to build an industry selling rubber boots and nose filters to protect innocent people from the annoyances of walking through the puddles? roy@wombat.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V12 #550 ******************************