TELECOM Digest Thu, 6 Jan 94 12:05:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 15 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped (Dave Niebuhr) Re: US Digital Cellular Standards (Alistair Munro via Weiyun Yu) Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones (Olaf Seibert) Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones (John R. Levine) Re: How are VCR Plus+ Numbers Generated (Arthur Rubin) Re: Info on Cellular One NACP (Phil Wherry) Re: "Anonymous Call Rejection" - Could be Dangerous (Jorge Lach) Re: 500 Channel Cable TV (Randy te Velde) Re: Federal Telemarketing Laws (John R. Levine) Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack (Carl Oppedahl) Re: California ANI Question (Carl Oppedahl) Re: Dialing 1 First Prohibited in Dallas (Scott Pelham) Re: Brendan Kehoe Seriously Hurt in Car Accident (Carl Moore) 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. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 6 Jan 94 12:40:00 EST From: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (Dave Niebuhr) Subject: Re: Sucharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped > In TELECOM Digest Volume 14 : Issue 13 : padgett@tccslr.dnet.mmc.com > (A. Padgett Peterson) writes: > It was announced yesterday that Southern Bell has agreed to drop the > U$1.00/line/month surcharge for tone dialing in the Orlando area that > had been in effect since the introduction of touch-tone dialing > service. > It is not known exactly when this change will take place other than it > is expected "within 60 days". NYTel, as part of a multi-million dollar rate rollback has been ordered to reduce the cost of touch-tone dialing from $1.35 to $.50 per month which is still not enough. In addition, it is phasing out the optional business Flat Rate and untimed Message Rate plans for businesses in upstate NY and imposing timed message rate for them. Other charges that are reduced are Intra-LATA calls that are Inter-Region (the NY Metropolitan LATA has Lower Westchester (AC 914), NYC (212/718/917) and Nassau County, West Suffolk County and East Suffolk County (AC 516). There were more changes involved in Upstate NY but I can't recall them now. Dave Niebuhr Internet: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (preferred) niebuhr@bnl.gov / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl Senior Technical Specialist, Scientific Computing Facility Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973 (516)-282-3093 ------------------------------ From: weiyun@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Weiyun Yu) Subject: Re: US Digital Cellular Standards Organization: Information Services, Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 16:22:21 GMT This is a posting on behalf of Alistair Munro in relation to my original posting... From: Alistair Munro Subject: US Digital Cellular standards Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 14:33:03 +0000 (GMT) To expand on Dan Leclerck's reply: > In article , Weiyun Yu ucc.su.OZ.AU> wrote: > 1. What are the pro and cons of the US standards vs GSM. > N-AMPS, ADC, and DS-CDMA all offer, at least, 2x the capacity of GSM. > NAMPS and CDMA do not have the pulsed-noise interference of GSM. CDMA > has the potential to have a longer talk-time. There is a paper by David Goodman: "Second Generation Wireless Information Networks", IEEE Trans on Vehicular Technology, Vol 40, No 2, May 1991; this describes key aspects of GSM compared with IS-54 (sort of digital AMPS) and might be useful for you. > GSM has terrible data services vis-a-vis' Group 3 Fax. GSM specifies terminal adaptation functions for both asynchronous (V.21, V.22, V.23, I.420, V.25) and synchronous (V.22, V.22bis, V.26ter, V.32 X.21, X.25, X.32, V.25, I.420) bearers. This seems to cover almost every packet or character mode interface in the CCITT world at least. As far as I know, they are not implemented yet by any of the operators. Whether they are terrible or not, time will tell, but I expect they will be dire. One of the main technical issues seems to be that they are very expensive to provide with TDMA, and with the GSM TDMA in particular. There is a new project in the the ETSI GSM group called GPRS (GSM packet radio services?) which might provide a multiple access scheme more suited to data traffic. If you want a comparison, try the US CDPD spec that provides data with AMPS. There is also a data message service (SMS) and I believe that this is is available from some operators. >> 2. Is there going to be some degree of compability encorporated into >> the 2 standards so that international roaming could be achieved. >> 3. What is the future of digital cellular? Is there going to be a third >> standard that can be used world wide? > The frequencies and access methods (GSM is TDMA/GMSK each channel is > 200 KHz, ADC is TDMA/QPSK channels ea 30 KHz, CDMA is DS-CDMA ea > channel 1.25 MHz) are completely incompatible. GSM is like ISDN over > the air, whereas the other standards aren't so rich. As Dan says, compatibilty is zero at the signalling level. However it is conceivable that manufacturers could agree on control and management protocol that would permit subscribers to have a single telephone number that they could move between handsets for the respective systems. I would prefer to have it said that GSM call-control protocol is like ISDN D-channel call-control. Obviously they diverge at the physical level. Perhaps you could pass this on to the newsgroup as I don't get near such things normally. Dr. Alistair Munro, Centre for Communications Research, Bristol University Rm 1.3 Queen's Building, University Walk, BS8 1TR UK E-mail: A.Munro@bristol.ac.uk Tel: +44-272-291403 | +44-272-288620; Fax: +44-272-255265 ----------- Dr Weiyun Yu "Why Me?" | Internet: weiyun@ucc.su.oz.au Dept of Surgery, Uni of Sydney, Australia | Voice: 61+2-692-3851 ------------------------------ From: rhialto@mbfys.kun.nl (Olaf Seibert) Subject: Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 16:07:42 GMT In John C. Fowler <0003513813@mcimail. com> writes: > I wonder what kinds of people will be using "caller-pays" cellular > service. As far as I know, in the Netherlands calls to or from cellular phones (or car telephones as they are usually called here) have always been more expensive than regular calls. I don't know about the rates for calls *between* cell phones. Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert rhialto@mbfys.kun.nl ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 94 11:14 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones Organization: I.E.C.C., Cambridge, Mass. > Charging the land-line caller to a cellular number makes > perfect sense to me. In the abstract, it makes some sense. On the other hand, surcharged numbers are a pain for callers, local telcos, and long distance carriers since the prices tend to be mysterious and the bills at the end of the month often an unpleasant surprise. How long do you think it will take for someone to complain to US West "nobody told me that a call to 1-579 cost 65 cents* a minute"? If it's as much as two days after the first bill is sent, I'll be surprised. The day after that, people will demand 579 blocking, like 900 and 976 blocking. In concrete terms, it's basically impossible to implement long distance calls to surcharged given the way that toll charging works in the U.S. Inter-LATA toll rates are based entirely on distance. There's no provision for passing around surcharges from one carrier to another -- that's why surcharged numbers like the notorious 212-540 only work from points where the local telco carries the call. The only exception is 900 numbers, which have an extremely complicated billing setup that would be impractical for individual cellular customers. I suppose that we could reserve a prefix in each area code (900, perhaps) to be used for local surcharged numbers and try to set up some arrangement for settling the surcharge amounts among various carriers, but it seems like a awful lot of mechanism for a small set of users. Also, experience with 900, 976, and 540 numbers suggests that a lot of callers will be extremely displeased to find yet another kind of phone number that costs extra and has to be blocked, passworded, etc. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com * - a plausible guess, 50 cents for airtime plus 15 cents for toll ------------------------------ Subject: Re: How are VCR Plus+ Numbers Generated From: a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (Arthur Rubin) Date: 6 Jan 94 16:55:30 GMT Organization: Beckman Instruments, Inc. In TELECOM Digest Editor responded to oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl): > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Has anyone ever been completely successful > with this yet? Radio Shack has a VCR+ thing they sell now which does > not even have written documentation with it. All the 'instructions' tell > you to do is (after you buy it, shoplift it or whatever) take it home > and call a certain 800 phone number to speak with someone who will then > *program it over the phone* for you based on what you tell them about > your VCR/television equipment. PAT] Well, you do need to program in the translator from the "published" channel numbers (the ones used to encode the VCR+ code) to the channel numbers your VCR and/or cable box use, and to program the box to learn how to program your VCR and/or cable box, but I don't THINK there's anything more that needs to be done. (Of course, all of this was intended for those people whose VCR is blinking "12:00" (actually, mine blinks "--:--" when not set), so do you really expect them to attempt to tell you how to program a "universal remote".) 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) ------------------------------ From: psw@carillon.mitre.org (Phil Wherry) Subject: Re: Info on Cellular One NACP Date: 6 Jan 1994 15:44:31 GMT Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, Va Reply-To: psw@carillon.mitre.org (Phil Wherry) The talk about automatic cellular call delivery raises an interesting question: under what circumstances can a cellular telephone transmit when "on-hook." The response to a poll (ring) message is one obvious example where this happens -- what are the others? Phillip Wherry Member of the Technical Staff The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA psw@mitre.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When a cellular phone is first powered on (even if just in the standby mode instead of in calling mode) it immediatly announces itself to the nearest tower and makes it known that it is available to receive calls. When the tower sees that this new arrival on the scene is not one of its own kind, then it passes the information along and the database is queried to see who the newcomer might be part of. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jorge@erex.East.Sun.COM (Jorge Lach - Sun BOS Hardware) Subject: Re: "Anonymous Call Rejection" - Could be Date: 6 Jan 1994 15:53:28 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc. - BDC Reply-To: jorge@erex.East.Sun.COM It would seem to me people keep trying to find compelling reasons for and against each one of these services: how it won't work, under what circumstances it's counterproductive, how it protects potential victims, etc ... Now, let's just call this services (and most/all other new services) what they really are. With a fully software-controlled telephone network, a bunch of people in the central office can come up with uncounted software options to suit anyone's desires ... all at a price. The phone companies are just milking the infrastructure they built. They'll offer products for everybody. At 3.95/month, that's roughly $50 per year, out of a potential market of 100 million-plus phones, you figure out how much money that is. I see this as being analogous to buying clothes at the mall. There are stores for every taste, and styles for everybody. You don't have to understand or rationalize it. Producers try to figure out which thing people like, get them made and then try to sell them. Consumers will buy some and reject others ... for what reasons, nobody knows. So, this "Anonymous Call Rejection" is just another way for the phone companies of making an honest buck. Nothing more. Jorge Lach Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation Jorge.Lach@Sun.Com East Coast Division, Chelmsford, MA Phone: (508) 442-0214 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: True, but where it becomes critical for the anti-Caller-ID crowd is that the automatic blocking of anonymous calls cuts into their ability to control their calling universe. That is, they are suddenly no longer able to call anywhere they please anytime they please on their own terms ... in order for them to regain that one hundred percent control over where/who/when they call, they have to give up that extra bit of privacy they regard so highly: the with- holding of their telephone number. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 10:40:35 EST From: Randy te Velde Subject: Re: 500 Channel Cable TV On Wed, 5 Jan 1994, rrb@deja-vu.aiss.uiuc.edu (Bill Pfeiffer) wrote: > Michael Jacobs wrote: >> There will be no choice to make as to which of 500 different channels >> to watch, rather it will be a choice as to what to program on the one >> available video dialtone line, much as one chooses who to call on the >> current voice telephone line. ALL SOFTWARE WITH NETWORK ACCESS will >> be available to the subscriber on demand! > Well that will be a real kick in the teeth for couch potato(e) channel > surfers, won't it :-). I think I'll take my cable-clicker (which I > can use to sample the wares on several channels quickly) over this > system. Again, it looks like we're ignoring both the interactivity and the power of the upstream capacity. You wouldn't want to control your computer with a cable-clicker, would you? Remember that interactive software for use on a widely deployed broadband network hasn't been invented yet. No one wrote groupware applications until ethernet cards were cheap and widely deployed. >> The revolutionary concept here is that instead of some programmer in >> NY or LA deciding what I should watch, it will be me choosing what to >> watch. > No, the same programmers will determine what you watch, just like a > restaraunt manager decides what choices are on their menu... It's true that the list of options will have _some_ limitation. But I think the prevailing metaphor would be the white pages, not a resturant menu. >> If the cable companies think that they can compete with a fixed 500 >> channel system against on-demand video dialtone, they are doomed to go >> the way of the dominant telecommunications company in the US of 100 >> years ago, Western Union, namely technological and competitive >> obsolescence. > Well, Mike, I am old enough to remember all the fancy claims that > 'cable-tv' would put over-the-air tv out of business, would make > networks obsolete, would transform our very lives, would offer > first-run movies, would offer live video from foreign countries, would > bring the classroom to the living room, would offer access to niche > programming, fine arts, etc etc etc. What we wound up with is re-run > mills, home shopping channels, music videos, 24 hour weather channels, > preachers, pay-per-view wrestling and more commercials than ever. _Univeral_ _access_ to programming a public network is the key ingredient missing from this comparison. No one wants more infomercials and PPV wrestling. These are the best arguments I can think of to open the network up for _everyone_ to provide content. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 94 11:34 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: Federal Telemarketing Laws Organization: I.E.C.C., Cambridge, Mass. > I just read through the archives from late 1991 looking for info on > congressional action regarding automated telemarketing. The current {Privacy Journal} has a lead article entitled "Can the telemarketers' autodialers be controlled at all?". It details court action all over the country against both the federal law and 22 similar state laws. Judges in Oregon and New Jersey found such laws to be an unconstitutional abridgement of free speech, while in Minnesota it was upheld. The issue appears to be that restrictions on time, place, and manner of speech are OK, while restrictions on content are not. The federal law permits the FCC to exempt some types of calls such as random surveys and political calls, but that's a content distinction. Presumably a law that outlawed all unsolicited robot dialing would be constitutional. We can only hope. FYI, {Privacy Journal} is an excellent monthly newsletter. It costs $109/yr, but is usually discounted to $69 if you pay in advance. Phone is +1 401 274 7861, e-mail 5101719@mcimail.com. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com ------------------------------ From: oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) Subject: Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack Date: 6 Jan 1994 11:43:00 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC In John S. Roberts Jr. writes: > I connected up the "other two wires" on all the lines running through > my house. Now, I can hear line two when using line one and vice-versa. > Is there any solution to this? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The solution is that somewhere in the > loop you (or someone long gone before you) cross connected the wires > and what you think is the 'other two wires' is really just part of > the first two wires. You don't really have 'line one' and 'line two'; > you have one line wired in multiple so to speak. Go to each box as > well as to the head end and find out where the cross connection is > in place. It may be nothing more than a real messy box with some > loose wires which are touching the connectors for the first set of > wires. Clean up that mess, and your 'other two wires' will suddenly > go dead again unless/until you have an actual second phone line > brought up to them. PAT] Let's reread the original post. I think he is able to use both lines and is merely getting crosstalk. If that is the case, it is not a "touching conductors" problem at all. It is probably just a case of someone whose house was wired with quad wire (back when Y & B was power for the lights on the Princess phone) who will always have crosstalk. Until, that is, he goes back and installs some new pairs, hopefully with true twisted pair. Carl Oppedahl AA2KW Oppedahl & Larson (patent lawyers) Yorktown Heights, NY voice 212-777-1330 ------------------------------ From: oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) Subject: Re: California ANI Question Date: 6 Jan 1994 11:47:54 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC In co057@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Steven H. Lichter) writes: > I have an 800 number coming into my BBS for a few friends and myself > to use and have the call reports from AT&T. They are overwelming each > month, but I'm able to see all the wrong numbers (under 30 seconds) > and the phone hackers looking for a DID trunk (New York, New Jersey). > I sure wish they would finally get CID here in California. I have a similar 800 number (I am in New York). Each month I get the call detail and each month there are twenty or so calls from crackers (not hackers) trying to see what mischief they can get into. What's interesting is that my cracker calls all come from Florida. Sometimes I get curious and try calling the origin phone numbers listed on my 800 call detail. One of them, ending in either -0002 or -9998, I forget which, was aswered with the name of a telephone company. If the person at the other end was telling the truth, I had reached a phone company frame room or switch room. Carl Oppedahl AA2KW Oppedahl & Larson (patent lawyers) Yorktown Heights, NY voice 212-777-1330 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Considering that -9998 is as often as not a number assigned for internal use at telco, your assumption is probably correct. What's that you say? You didn't know that crackers and phreaks often times have jobs working for telcos? Makes you feel real good about the security and integrity of the telephone network in the USA doesn't it ... PAT] ------------------------------ From: /G=J.SCOTT/S=PELHAM/O=GTE/PRMD=GTEMAIL/ADMD=TELEMAIL/C=US/@sprint.com Date: 6 Jan 94 12:05:44-0500 Subject: Re: Dialing 1 First Prohibited in Dallas David L Kindred writes: > My parents lived in the SWB part of the Dallas area a few years ago. > During the time they lived there, the dialing requirements not only > varied due to area code and "localness", but also by whether the > "other" phone company was involved. I don't remember the particulars, > but dialing a local SWB-SWB call was different than dialing a local > SWB-GTE call. As I recall, you needed at least ten, if not eleven > digits, to call a GTE 214xxxxxxx number from a SWB 214xxxxxxx number, > even if the call was to the next exchange (or next house...). To clear up how it works in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, I'll just expain it then respond to David's comments. Dallas county is mostly in 214 area code, Tarrant county (Fort Worth) is mostly included in 817 area code. The area in between the two cities is all suburban towns. The two cities just sort of run together. When dialing within one area code, in the Metroplex, you only dial seven digits regardless of whether it is a GTE or SW Bell number. When dialing from one area code to the other you dial 1+, just like you would from any other two area codes. The difference is when the number being called, *or* the number being called from, is a "Metro" number. "Metro" number means the call is no longer a long distance call, rather the owner of the Metro number is paying a higher monthly charge, but can call or receive calls from 214 or 817 without paying long distance rates. In this case you dial the area code and exchange, without the leading 1. I personally don't have a metro number so I can't give any particulars about the cost. These metro numbers were provided so that people and businesses can be reached easily and inexpensively by friends and customers outside their area code, but potentially next door. I have lived in Dallas/Ft Worth for almost three years and I have never dailed any differently when I lived in SW Bell or now that I live in GTE service area. > One major annoyance was the percentage of calls into GTE that went > high-and-dry. Again in nearly three years I have never had a call end "high and dry", in GTE or SW Bell. > Has any of this changed recently? Apparently much has changed or you didn't understand it in the first place. Scott Pelham ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 94 12:08:55 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Brendan Kehoe Seriously Hurt in Car Accident Some of you may remember reading that Jan Berry (singer, and the "Jan" of Jan and Dean) was seriously injured, with brain damage, in a 1966 automobile accident not far from "Dead Man's Curve". He had go through long therapy, and I have personally seen him twice in concert with Dean in the last 13 years. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: From what we are told so far, it appears Brendan Kehoe is in for the long term with a lot of time needed for basic recovery then a period following of therapy. I have no more recent details than what has appeared here in the past couple of days, but his is not going to be a quick and easy return to his usual lifestyle ... if there is a return at all. :( PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #15 ***************************** ****************************************************************************** Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253