TELECOM Digest Sat, 25 Dec 93 21:34:00 CST Volume 13 : Issue 838 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Another Prepaid Calling Card (John R. Levine) Area Codes 'n' Public Acceptance (David A. Kaye) Details of AT&T's Divestiture and the MFJ (devalla@astra.tamu.edu) Calling a PBX and Billing (Richard Cox) Re: The Superhighway and Telcos (John R. Levine) Re: The Superhighway and Telcos (Mike Lanza) Re: Info Highway: 21 Companies Don't Announce (Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund) Re: Yellow Pages On-Line Anywhere? (Carl Oppedahl) Re: Yellow Pages On-Line Anywhere? (Mark Edwards) Re: NEC NEAX 2400 Peculiarity (William (Bill) Brownlow) Re: Unique(?) Problem With Voicemail Prompts (Robert Virzi) Re: Unique(?) Problem With Voicemail Prompts (Jon Sreekanth) Re: Unique(?) Problem With Voicemail Prompts (David A. Kaye) Re: San Ramon, CA and PacBell Headquarters (Carl Moore) Re: San Ramon, CA and PacBell Headquarters (David A. Kaye) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and GEnie. Subscriptions are available at no charge to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson Associates of Skokie, Illinois USA. We provide telecom consultation services and long distance resale services including calling cards and 800 numbers. To reach us: Post Office Box 1570, Chicago, IL 60690 or by phone at 708-329-0571 and fax at 708-329-0572. Email: ptownson@townson.com. ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. TELECOM Digest is gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom. It has no connection with the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom.tech whose mailing list "Telecom-Tech Digest" shares archives resources at lcs.mit.edu for the convenience of users. Please *DO NOT* cross post articles between the groups. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Another Prepaid Calling Card Date: Sat, 25 Dec 93 20:30:11 EST The current {Consumer Reports Travel Letter} mentions the Liberty Card from Quest Telecommunications. It works much like the Orange Card: you dial an 800 number, punch in your account number, then the number to call. Rates are 33 cents/min within the US, 69 cents to Canada, higher to other countries. Like the Orange Card, it's quite competitive for short calls from payphones, less so for longer calls where the lower per-minute rate for conventional calling cards dominates. They're for sale direct from Quest at 800-277-7682, charged to a major credit card. They're also supposed to be for sale over the counter at campus-area retailers, and I've seen them at a truck stop. When the card runs low, you can recharge it over the phone, again charged to a major credit card. I've also seen prepaid Sprint cards at convenience stores. Their per-minute rate depends on what size card you get (the higher value ones get you more minutes per dollar) but also seem to be in the range of 33 cents/min. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com ------------------------------ From: dk@crl.com (David A. Kaye) Subject: Area Codes 'n' Public Acceptance Date: 25 Dec 1993 17:53:03 -0800 Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access (415) 705-6060 [login: guest] Jon Kimbrough (jkimbro@hercii.lasc.lockheed.com) wrote: > my experience that the average Joe doesn't have any idea that area > codes can only be made up of certain limited combinations of numbers > and isn't likely to think twice about dialing 520 or 330 as an area > code. When the SF Bay Area was divided again for the 510 area code I remember people saying "What does 510 mean?" They didn't quite grasp the area code thing. When I see number like 415-206-9999 it even gets confusing for me. I'm always reluctant to dial that kind of number because it looks like I'm calling Seattle. And to think they could have just solved it by adding an extra digit to the phone numbers thereby increasing capacity ten-fold. Sheesh. ------------------------------ From: devalla@astra.tamu.edu (Badari) Subject: Details of AT&T's Divestiture and the MFJ - Ten Years Hence Date: 25 Dec 1993 18:26:24 GMT Organization: Texas A&M University. Howdy, It is ten years since Ma Bell was dismantled. Lots of talk now about how this has helped the Telephone Industry and the consumers. While I know sketchy details about the creation of baby Bells, I'd like to know, in detail, what lead to the divestiture in the first place and how this has affected the organisation of AT&T, its effects on the Telco industry as a whole. I request folks out there to please let me know either by posting on this group or via personal mail. I'd appreciate any references (books,articles) that talk about the same. Happy holidays, Badari PS: I have read the December, 1993 issue of {IEEE Commns Mag} - Special report on Divestiture. [Moderator's Note: You might also want to check out back issues of this Digest you are reading now. TELECOM Digest published a number of articles during 1983 and 1984 on divestiture and the pros/cons of same. What I may do to wind up this year or start out 1994 here is reprint some of those articles. A feature I used to do occassionally was called "Ten Years Ago in the Digest" and perhaps a few readers would enjoy some of the comments from the readers who were on our list back then during the final days of the old Bell System and the first few days of the 'new way' of doing things. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mandarin@cix.compulink.co.uk (Richard Cox) Subject: Calling a PBX and Billing Reply-To: mandarin@cix.compulink.co.uk Date: Sun, 26 Dec 1993 00:58:38 GMT andrew@frip.wv.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) wrote: >> Our AT&T Definity system supervises an incoming call immediately. This is bad news. The Definity switches that AT&T are trying to sell over here, also supervise before the call is actually answered. I had to explain to their Sales reps recently, that this was the reason when selecting a PABX for a client, that we didn't buy from AT&T. Sadly, he still didn't seem to understand. In a competitive market, the supplier who meets the needs of the customer is the one who will get the orders. Of course, I so accept that the fact that AT&T is a major LD carrier in the USA (and may be one here, before long) has nothing to do with this policy! Richard D G Cox Mandarin Technology, Cardiff Business Park, Llanishen, CARDIFF, Wales CF4 5WF Voice: +44 956 700111 Fax: +44 956 700110 VoiceMail: +44 941 151515 E-mail address: richard@mandarin.com - PGP2.3 public key available on request ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 93 20:21 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: The Superhighway and Telcos Organization: I.E.C.C., Cambridge, Mass. > What we really need is a new packet-switched network [with faster dialups] ... > In addition, the market is crying out for ubiquitous one-number access, ... Technically, there's nothing standing in the way of 14.4K dialups. Sprintnet has evolved into Sprintlink, a fast multiprotocol net, and is one of the larger pieces of the Internet. They certainly have the bandwidth and the technology. As mentioned elsewhere, 950 access is easy enough, but you have to pay the same rates to the local telco as any other 950 user, about $3/hr, and few data users want that. So I have to believe is that the reason that Sprintnet et al. don't have faster dialups is because there's not much of a market for them. The primary use of packet dialups these days is to access commercial on-line services. (I occasionally call the OAG that way.) The typical pattern of use is that the user types a command or two, the system sends back a screen, the user pages from screen to screen until done. The difference between repainting a screen at 2400 bps and at 9600 bps is noticable, but hardly compelling since even at 2400 it's much faster than you can read. 9600 bps modems are cheaper than they used to be, but they're still four times as much as 2400 bps modems, so 9600 bps will cost more. I wouldn't pay extra for OAG at 9600, I doubt if many others would, either. The main advantage of 9600 and up is for bulk data transfer, uploading, downloading, mountains of fidonet or usenet news, stuff like that, and dialup packet nets are a lousy technology for that. With the delays in packet nets and the ten cent/min nighttime long distance rates that are common, one might as well dial direct and use the full modem throughput. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 93 20:28:14 From: Mike Lanza Subject: Re: The Superhighway and Telcos John Levine writes: > So I have to believe is that the reason that Sprintnet et al. don't have > faster dialups is because there's not much of a market for them. The > primary use of packet dialups these days is to access commercial on-line > services. (I occasionally call the OAG that way.) The typical pattern of > use is that the user types a command or two, the system sends back a > screen, the user pages from screen to screen until done. The difference > between repainting a screen at 2400 bps and at 9600 bps is noticable, but > hardly compelling since even at 2400 it's much faster than you can read. > 9600 bps modems are cheaper than they used to be, but they're still four úÿ > times as much as 2400 bps modems, so 9600 bps will cost more. I wouldn't > pay extra for OAG at 9600, I doubt if many others would, either. The description above assumes an old online service model -- basically command-line and interactive. Three new factors are enabling new online service models which can actually exploit bandwidth greater than 2400 bps: 1) High speed modems have become very inexpensive, and thus they have come into wide use. I've looked at the distribution of modem sales by speed, as well as the distribution of installed base. Over 50% of all sales of modems are currently high speed, and this percentage is constantly increasing. The installed base of high speed modems will approach 50% of all modems in the not too distant future (a year or two). 2) Graphical user interfaces have become the norm on PCs and workstations. Online services with command line interfaces look pretty darned stupid on machines with GUIs. Most online services have realized this and are becoming graphical. (I'm sure Delphi realizes this and is working to change things. If it doesn't, ol' Rupert might be looking real foolish before too long.) In a couple of years we'll be amazed that we ever put up with command-line interfaces to online services. 3) Due to tremendous price drops in mips, a startup can get an online service off the ground with less than $20K in equipment costs (perhaps even less). Thus, it is economically feasible to start an online service whose content is focused rather narrowly, relative to most of today's online services (e.g. Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL, Delphi, Dow Jones News Retrieval etc.). Because of this focus, the user interface to these services can be so easy that the user interaction needed to use it is minimal. At the extreme, no user interaction is needed at all -- the service's sessions consist completely of automated (i.e. programmatic) transactions between a client application (on the customer's machine) and the server application (on the online service's machine). An example of a service such as this is Reality Technology's Smart Investor Network. Users of Reality's investment management application, Wealth Builder, instruct their computer to run a session with the Smart Investor Network, and then Wealth Builder completely takes over. A couple of minutes later, the user has current security prices for the securities in his portfolio, some relevant analysts reports, and some news articles. > dialup packet nets are a lousy technology for that. With the delays in > packet nets and the 10 cent/min nighttime long distance rates that are > common, one might as well dial direct and use the full modem throughput. Not everyone can wait until nighttime. Think about business users! Daytime long distance rates are 20 to 25 cents per minute. ------------------------------ From: sg04@gte.com (Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund) Subject: Re: Info Highway: 21 Companies Don't Announce Reply-To: sg04@gte.com Organization: GTE Laboratories, Inc. Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1993 15:40:34 GMT In article 12@eecs.nwu.edu, Bob Rosenberg writes: > An article that ran in the 13 December {Wall Street Journal} said that > 28 companies were to about to announce their support for the Info > Super Highway. We know that IBM, Apple, BellSouth, AT&T, CitiCorp, > H-P, and Cable Labs were to take part in the announcement, but the > other shoe hasn't dropped yet. > Does anyone know the names of the 21 other companies that are/were > going to take part in this PR fest? Or when/if this announcement will > be made? Most of this stuff is viewed as way to sell current services and hardware. That is, Telcos, etc. announce that they already have the NII in place, and you can buy the stuff from them today. They view things like NII as a marketing ploy and are glad the administration is helping with the advertizing. Sorry, to say this, but that is the way a lot of the entrenched beauracracy sees things. Come the revolution, things will be different :-). Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund sgutfreund@gte.com [MIME] GTE Laboratories, Waltham MA http://www.gte.com/circus/home/home.html ------------------------------ From: oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) Subject: Re: Yellow Pages On-Line Anywhere? Date: 25 Dec 1993 21:23:00 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC In vamsee@softint.com (Vamsee Lakamsani) writes: > It is very convenient to have the yellow pages accessible on-line. Do > any US cities have this facility? Is there any reason not to make > yellow pages accessible on-line? Yes, yellow pages are online. Just telnet to Compu$erve and log in, then type GO YEL-4. Carl Oppedahl AA2KW Oppedahl & Larson (patent lawyers) Yorktown Heights, NY voice 212-777-1330 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However Carl, it should be mentioned that one does not routinely 'telnet to Compuserve'. It *can* be done through a couple of somewhat obscure connections not to widely publicized -- but discussed here in the past -- and in any event the login at CIS is subject to normal customer requirements and billing. In other words, it is not your traditional 'ftp and use/get it for free' arrangments so common om the net. It is, as you point out available on Compuserve if one is a member there and willing to pay for it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: markedwa@news.delphi.com (MARKEDWARDS@DELPHI.COM) Subject: Re: Yellow Pages On-Line Anywhere? Date: 25 Dec 1993 13:32:42 -0500 Organization: General Videotex Corporation vamsee@softint.com (Vamsee Lakamsani) writes: > It is very convenient to have the yellow pages accessible on-line. Do > any US cities have this facility? Is there any reason not to make > yellow pages accessible on-line? Well, the AT&T Yellow Pages are online at CompuServe -- not free, but availible ... Mark Edwards ------------------------------ From: wkb@WHQ.usbm.gov (William Brownlow) Subject: Re: NEC NEAX 2400 Peculiarity Date: 25 Dec 1993 15:54:36 GMT Organization: U. S. Bureau of Mines Will Martin (wmartin@STL-06SIMA.ARMY.MIL) wrote: > When I make an outside-line call on our NEC NEAX 2400 system here at > work (dialing 9 and then the local seven-digit number), the system has > the annoying habit of giving me a ring-sound (in the handset or the > speaker, depending which is turned on) and then a click that sounds > *exactly* like the far end picking up on the call. However, it is not > -- the ring sounds then continue until the called party answers or I > hang up. What is going on that causes this initial ring-tone that I > hear followed by that click? Is it the process of the unit selecting > an outside trunk? If so, why does it give me a ring first? It has been a few years since I worked on a NEAX 2400, but it is beginning to sound as if you have a hardware problem in the switch. Your instrument is connected to a particular line card in the switch which may have an option set wrong, or be improperly configured in the switch's software. Have you reported the problem to your local (in-house) telephone people? > Can anyone tell me just what is going on when I call out? When I dial > the initial "9", am I handed off to a telco trunk then, or does the > NEC just suck up all my dialled digits and only emit them to the telco > switch after I finish? Or am I "talking" to the telco switch right > after I dial the initial 9? I suspect the NEC waits until it detects a > complete and valid-by-its-standards number before it passes it to the > telco. That makes detecting and forbidding 976- and 900- calls easy. > If the NEC holds the numbers and then passes them on later, how fast > can it do this? Are the trunks it has to the telco higher-speed or > special lines, or the same as any generic business-type phone line? > Does it spit out DTMF at some far-higher-than-normal speed, or try to > emulate human-dialling speed? (It would seem there isn't all that much > time between the end of my dialling and that magical click ...) The NEC buffers the digits until it detects the end of your dialing. It uses the digits you input to determine the path it should take out of the switch (least cost routing and call blocking). The system dials the digits you hit, after stripping your access codes, in less than one second. After dialing the digits, your internal trunk is "cut over" to the CO trunk, this may be the 'click' that you are hearing. The telco trunks are not special in that they are high speed, DTMF signaling only needs around 100 msec of tone, but they may be special in the type of electrical handshaking they do with the PBX. In reviewing this, two other possibilities creep to mind. Is the telephone you are using one provided by NEC, or is it a third party phone? The second is that you may be experiencing a polarity reversal on one of the lines which is not guarded. (You could have had your extension wired with tip/ring reversed or a miswired cord between the phone jack and your phone.) If the phone is not a NEC, have a technician measure your on-hook voltage at the phone. If it is higher than a nominal 48v, have them turn off the message waiting lamp from the console and then disable it through software. William Brownlow, Senior Telecommunications Analyst WKB@WHQ.USBM.GOV ------------------------------ From: rv01@harvey.gte.com (Robert Virzi) Subject: Re: Unique(?) Problem With Voicemail Prompts Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1993 15:24:12 GMT In article , wrote: > Someone in our firm is currently experiencing a "different" problem > with our voice mail system. She will be leaving a message in > someone's voice mailbox and the system will interrupt her, saying "To > Send this Message, Press..."- as if she had punched a key, but she > hadn't. The problem has been re-occurring. > Our vendor (Octel) calls it "PROMPT INTERRUPTION", and says it happens > when some individual's voice frequencies are very close to the tones > generated by the keypad. The system interprets the voice as a key > being punched. This problem is not at all uncommon, and it is true that it is more problematic for some people than it is for others. I'll bet that this woman has a particularly clean voice, by which I mean it sounds "musical." BTW -- I have heard this refered to as "Talk off," not "Prompt interruption." Anyway, many systems have a parameter or two that can be tuned to help avoid this situation. I think you want to look for a parameter that controls how long DTMF must be present before a signal is considered valid. Lengthen this by, say, 20 milliseconds, if it is really a big problem. Of course, this will mean you miss some valid keypresses (one's that are too quick). It is basically a signal detection problem and you can reduce the number of false positives if you are willing to accept a higher number of incorrect rejections. On the other hand, if it is just one user on a many person system, you may not want to inconvenience everyone else by slowing down the system. So, how high up the ladder is she, anyway? Bob > times as much as 2400 bps modems, so 9600 bps will cost more. I wouldn't > pay extra for OAG at 9600, I doubt if many others would, either. The description above assumes an old online service model -- basically command-line and interactive. Three new factors are enabling new online service models which can actually exploit bandwidth greater than 2400 bps: 1) High speed modems have become very inexpensive, and thus they have come into wide use. I've looked at the distribution of modem sales by speed, as well as the distribution of installed base. Over 50% of all sales of modems are currently high speed, and this percentage is constantly increasing. The installed base of high speed modems will approach 50% of all modems in the not too distant future (a year or two). 2) Graphical user interfaces have become the norm on PCs and workstations. Online services with command line interfaces look pretty darned stupid on machines with GUIs. Most online services have realized this and are becoming graphical. (I'm sure Delphi realizes this and is working to change things. If it doesn't, ol' Rupert might be looking real foolish before too long.) In a couple of years we'll be amazed that we ever put up with command-line interfaces to online services. 3) Due to tremendous price drops in mips, a startup can get an online service off the ground with less than $20K in equipment costs (perhaps even less). Thus, it is economically feasible to start an online service whose content is focused rather narrowly, relative to most of today's online services (e.g. Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL, Delphi, Dow Jones News Retrieval etc.). Because of this focus, the user interface to these services can be so easy that the user interaction needed to use it is minimal. At the extreme, no user interaction is needed at all -- the service's sessions consist completely of automated (i.e. programmatic) transactions between a client application (on the customer's machine) and the server application (on the online service's machine). An example of a service such as this is Reality Technology's Smart Investor Network. Users of Reality's investment management application, Wealth Builder, instruct their computer to run a session with the Smart Investor Network, and then Wealth Builder completely takes over. A couple of minutes later, the user has current security prices for the securities in his portfolio, some relevant analysts reports, and some news articles. > dialup packet nets are a lousy technology for that. With the delays in > packet nets and the 10 cent/min nighttime long distance rates that are > common, one might as well dial direct and use the full modem throughput. Not everyone can wait until nighttime. Think about business users! Daytime long distance rates are 20 to 25 cents per minute. ------------------------------ From: sg04@gte.com (Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund) Subject: Re: Info Highway: 21 Companies Don't Announce Reply-To: sg04@gte.com Organization: GTE Laboratories, Inc. Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1993 15:40:34 GMT In article 12@eecs.nwu.edu, Bob Rosenberg writes: > An article that ran in the 13 December {Wall Street Journal} said that > 28 companies were to about to announce their support for the Info > Super Highway. We know that IBM, Apple, BellSouth, AT&T, CitiCorp, > H-P, and Cable Labs were to take part in the announcement, but the > other shoe hasn't dropped yet. > Does anyone know the names of the 21 other companies that are/were > going to take part in this PR fest? Or when/if this announcement will > be made? Most of this stuff is viewed as way to sell current services and hardware. That is, Telcos, etc. announce that they already have the NII in place, and you can buy the stuff from them today. They view things like NII as a marketing ploy and are glad the administration is helping with the advertizing. Sorry, to say this, but that is the way a lot of the entrenched beauracracy sees things. Come the revolution, things will be different :-). Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund sgutfreund@gte.com [MIME] GTE Laboratories, Waltham MA http://www.gte.com/circus/home/home.html ------------------------------ From: oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) Subject: Re: Yellow Pages On-Line Anywhere? Date: 25 Dec 1993 21:23:00 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC In vamsee@softint.com (Vamsee Lakamsani) writes: > It is very convenient to have the yellow pages accessible on-line. Do > any US cities have this facility? Is there any reason not to make > yellow pages accessible on-line? Yes, yellow pages are online. Just telnet to Compu$erve and log in, then type GO YEL-4. Carl Oppedahl AA2KW Oppedahl & Larson (patent lawyers) Yorktown Heights, NY voice 212-777-1330 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However Carl, it should be mentioned that one does not routinely 'telnet to Compuserve'. It *can* be done through a couple of somewhat obscure connections not to widely publicized -- but discussed here in the past -- and in any event the login at CIS is subject to normal customer requirements and billing. In other words, it is not your traditional 'ftp and use/get it for free' arrangments so common om the net. It is, as you point out available on Compuserve if one is a member there and willing to pay for it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: markedwa@news.delphi.com (MARKEDWARDS@DELPHI.COM) Subject: Re: Yellow Pages On-Line Anywhere? Date: 25 Dec 1993 13:32:42 -0500 Organization: General Videotex Corporation vamsee@softint.com (Vamsee Lakamsani) writes: > It is very convenient to have the yellow pages accessible on-line. Do > any US cities have this facility? Is there any reason not to make > yellow pages accessible on-line? Well, the AT&T Yellow Pages are online at CompuServe -- not free, but availible ... Mark Edwards ------------------------------ From: wkb@WHQ.usbm.gov (William Brownlow) Subject: Re: NEC NEAX 2400 Peculiarity Date: 25 Dec 1993 15:54:36 GMT Organization: U. S. Bureau of Mines Will Martin (wmartin@STL-06SIMA.ARMY.MIL) wrote: > When I make an outside-line call on our NEC NEAX 2400 system here at > work (dialing 9 and then the local seven-digit number), the system has > the annoying habit of giving me a ring-sound (in the handset or the > speaker, depending which is turned on) and then a click that sounds > *exactly* like the far end picking up on the call. However, it is not > -- the ring sounds then continue until the called party answers or I > hang up. What is going on that causes this initial ring-tone that I > hear followed by that click? Is it the process of the unit selecting > an outside trunk? If so, why does it give me a ring first? It has been a few years since I worked on a NEAX 2400, but it is beginning to sound as if you have a hardware problem in the switch. Your instrument is connected to a particular line card in the switch which may have an option set wrong, or be improperly configured in the switch's software. Have you reported the problem to your local (in-house) telephone people? > Can anyone tell me just what is going on when I call out? When I dial > the initial "9", am I handed off to a telco trunk then, or does the > NEC just suck up all my dialled digits and only emit them to the telco > switch after I finish? Or am I "talking" to the telco switch right > after I dial the initial 9? I suspect the NEC waits until it detects a > complete and valid-by-its-standards number before it passes it to the > telco. That makes detecting and forbidding 976- and 900- calls easy. > If the NEC holds the numbers and then passes them on later, how fast > can it do this? Are the trunks it has to the telco higher-speed or > special lines, or the same as any generic business-type phone line? > Does it spit out DTMF at some far-higher-than-normal speed, or try to > emulate human-dialling speed? (It would seem there isn't all that much > time between the end of my dialling and that magical click ...) The NEC buffers the digits until it detects the end of your dialing. It uses the digits you input to determine the path it should take out of the switch (least cost routing and call blocking). The system dials the digits you hit, after stripping your access codes, in less than one second. After dialing the digits, your internal trunk is "cut over" to the CO trunk, this may be the 'click' that you are hearing. The telco trunks are not special in that they are high speed, DTMF signaling only needs around 100 msec of tone, but they may be special in the type of electrical handshaking they do with the PBX. In reviewing this, two other possibilities creep to mind. Is the telephone you are using one provided by NEC, or is it a third party phone? The second is that you may be experiencing a polarity reversal on one of the lines which is not guarded. (You could have had your extension wired with tip/ring reversed or a miswired cord between the phone jack and your phone.) If the phone is not a NEC, have a technician measure your on-hook voltage at the phone. If it is higher than a nominal 48v, have them turn off the message waiting lamp from the console and then disable it through software. William Brownlow, Senior Telecommunications Analyst WKB@WHQ.USBM.GOV ------------------------------ From: rv01@harvey.gte.com (Robert Virzi) Subject: Re: Unique(?) Problem With Voicemail Prompts Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1993 15:24:12 GMT In article , wrote: > Someone in our firm is currently experiencing a "different" problem > with our voice mail system. She will be leaving a message in > someone's voice mailbox and the system will interrupt her, saying "To > Send this Message, Press..."- as if she had punched a key, but she > hadn't. The problem has been re-occurring. > Our vendor (Octel) calls it "PROMPT INTERRUPTION", and says it happens > when some individual's voice frequencies are very close to the tones > generated by the keypad. The system interprets the voice as a key > being punched. This problem is not at all uncommon, and it is true that it is more problematic for some people than it is for others. I'll bet that this woman has a particularly clean voice, by which I mean it sounds "musical." BTW -- I have heard this refered to as "Talk off," not "Prompt interruption." Anyway, many systems have a parameter or two that can be tuned to help avoid this situation. I think you want to look for a parameter that controls how long DTMF must be present before a signal is considered valid. Lengthen this by, say, 20 milliseconds, if it is really a big problem. Of course, this will mean you miss some valid keypresses (one's that are too quick). It is basically a signal detection problem and you can reduce the number of false positives if you are willing to accept a higher number of incorrect rejections. On the other hand, if it is just one user on a many person system, you may not want to inconvenience everyone else by slowing down the system. So, how high up the ladder is she, anyway? Bob úÿ virzi@gte.com +1 (617) 466-2881 ------------------------------ From: jon_sree@world.std.com (Jon Sreekanth) Subject: Re: Unique(?) Problem With Voicemail Prompts Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1993 20:30:54 GMT In article cambler@cymbal.aix.calpoly. edu (Chris Ambler - Fubar) writes: > fico!fico0!tjo@apple.com says: >> Our vendor (Octel) calls it "PROMPT INTERRUPTION", and says it happens >> when some individual's voice frequencies are very close to the tones >> generated by the keypad. The system interprets the voice as a key >> being punched. > Actually, I design voice mail systems, and so I'm intimately familliar > with this problem. The solution I have found works best is to increase > the touch tone(tm) threshold, if you can. Most systems include a way > to force the hardware to wait longer before registering the tone. > Since a human voice will waver quite a bit (relative to the steady > tone of a phone), this usually does the trick. If your hardware Might this run into problems with phones like many AT&T models, which generate a fairly short (50ms ?) burst of dtmf when a key is pressed, instead of sending dtmf continuously as long as the key is held down? What threshold time have you found works best? 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 ------------------------------ From: dk@crl.com (David A. Kaye) Subject: Re: Unique(?) Problem With Voicemail Prompts Date: 25 Dec 1993 17:59:46 -0800 Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access (415) 705-6060 [login: guest] fico!fico0!tjo@apple.com wrote: > Our vendor (Octel) calls it "PROMPT INTERRUPTION", and says it happens > when some individual's voice frequencies are very close to the tones > generated by the keypad. The system interprets the voice as a key > being punched. > This seems odd, but I have HEARD of it on other systems. Has this Yes. Octel has had problems with it, so has Centigram in both its Voice Memo and Memo II systems. Seems to happen only with women's voices. Another problem may be the talk threshold may be set too low -- many women speak in quieter voices than men do. I don't know much about the tone processing technology, but it seems a little primative -- on both companies' products the response is very quick for touch tones, meaning that the accident rate will also be a little higher. STEVE BAUER (fnbw1100@ink.org) wrote: > 2. Hold the phone a little further away from her lips. This might > reduce the offending frequency so it won't trigger things. I always recommend people to speak slower and closer to the phone, not further away. A couple reasons -- the slowness does enhance the lower tones as you said, but phone mouthpieces are designed to be used closely. Get too far away and it's just too hard to hear the person. Also, the silence sensor tends to kick in. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 93 9:53:17 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: San Ramon, CA and PacBell Headquarters Bishop Ranch is not even a postal name, nor does anything appear in old notes for the 415 area (long before the 510 splitoff). Was it broken out of some other exchange's service area? Mailing address for Bishop Ranch should have a zipcode of the form 945xx. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1993 12:27:44 PST From: David A. Kaye Subject: Re: San Ramon, CA and PacBell Headquarters Carl Moore wrote in the previous message: > Bishop Ranch is not even a postal name, nor does anything appear in > old notes for the 415 area (long before the 510 splitoff). Was it > broken out of some other exchange's service area? Mailing address > for Bishop Ranch should have a zipcode of the form 945xx. Nope. Bishop Ranch is totally synthetic and did not come out of any other exchange. It is in San Ramon. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V13 #838 ******************************  Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253