TELECOM Digest Fri, 7 Jan 94 11:33:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 16 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Rate of Change (Gordan Palameta) Re: Communication Over Power Lines? (James H. Haynes) Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack (Kriston J. Rehberg) Book Review: "The Phone Book" by Carl Oppedahl (Al Varney) Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack (John S. Roberts Jr.) Re: Hayes' New Modem (Michael P. Deignan) Re: Radio Religion in Canada (Rich Wales) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gord@nmx701.attmail.com Date: 7 Jan 94 05:06:37 GMT Subject: Re: Rate of Change Stewart Fist wrote: > Computers and modern communications technologies might be revolutionary > to the half-million technologists, but to the five billion users these > chips and fibres are just creating marginal improvements on the > adequate 'service facilities' they had before. Computers produce a > very evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change to our culture > when you compare them to the impact of something like the motor car. > My mother was ten before she saw her first motor car, 18 before she > saw an aeroplane, but she lived to fly the Concorde and see a man step > on the moon. How does this pace of change compare with my life span, > when cars, aeroplanes and space travel are reasonably commonplace? > And it all happened in about the same period of time that we have been > dealing with the computer revolution -- about 20 years. I think we > need to get our feet back on the ground and stop imagining that we are > more important than we are. Hmm, perhaps in the year 2040, someone will write an article about the rapidly-changing 1940s. Atomic bombs and computers were invented then, and just look at the impact computers have had on society: why, we can use our wristwatch PDAs to download the Encyclopedia Galactica directly into our brain cells. By contrast, this newfangled teleportation technology is just an evolutionary change ... The point is, when we consider the impact of airplanes, automobiles, etc. from our perspective, we are really compressing eighty years of history. A fair comparison with computers would require a similar eighty-year perspective. It was some time, for instance, before automobiles could be driven reliably by someone who was not a skilled mechanic. It took even longer for automobiles to change society in fundamental ways (the suburbanization of America, etc). The same is even more true for airplanes. It was decades before the invention of jet aircraft and other developments made flying widely available. As recently as the late 40s, a transatlantic flight cost the same as a semester at Harvard. Cheap flights for the masses didn't become a reality until US deregulation barely a decade ago. On the one hand, computers are still an "elite" technology, as user-unfriendly to the average user as the Model T was to the mechanically challenged. We can anticipate that computers, just like cars and planes, will need a few more decades before they become widespread and commonplace enough to truly change the way we live. On the other hand, however, in a very real sense, it won't take a few more decades; it's already happened. Computers have already had an enormous impact on the way we live, but it's overlooked because it's indirect and behind the scenes. Computers are ubiquitous and invisible, embedded in other products and (especially) services. The fact that you are able to book a flight tomorrow (not to mention a hotel room and rental car) is thanks not just to aircraft technology but to computerized reservation and scheduling systems. You could argue that this is merely a quantitative change, not a qualitative change: computers merely make the process more efficient. But this is not so: a sufficiently large quantitative change eventually becomes a qualitative change. Instead of merely doing the same thing more efficiently, you can do new things that would never have been considered previously. For instance, a modern, mechanically reliable car lets you commute fifty miles a day to work and back, every day. You can't do that with a horse. Early cars were merely faster horses; modern cars are something qualitatively different. Without computers, even an army of airline clerks couldn't manually synchronize takeoff and landing times across the continent, not unless air traffic levels were several orders of magnitude smaller than they are today. Again, this represents a qualitative change. No one would fly on routine overnight business trips, or fly home for Christmas. The tourism and hospitality industry, one of the largest employers, would hardly exist in its present form. We can generalize this: computers make high-volume applications practical, and make it possible for companies to offer many services widely and cheaply. Without computers, many such services wouldn't even exist because the market wouldn't be large enough to outweigh the fixed overhead costs. Others, such as air travel, would be restricted to an elite or moneyed group, and would therefore have very little impact on society as a whole. When considering the impact of technology, we tend to focus too much on things that are flashy and highly visible. A generation ago, people figured that by now we'd be zipping around in rocket ships and flying to work with our own personal jet packs. Few bothered to predict simple things like fax machines. And similarly, when we look back on the twentieth century, we tend to focus on cars and planes and space shuttles, while we overlook the unobtrusive things that have had an enormous indirect impact. Consider plastics: one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, yet often overlooked because they too are behind the scenes and "internal" to other products. Consider air conditioning: without it, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Las Vegas simply wouldn't exist in their present form as business centers, and the massive ongoing population shift to the Sunbelt wouldn't be taking place. And consider computers. In the future, they will be embedded into other products in ways that would seem extravagant or preposterous to us (consider the intelligent volleyball and the smart spray paint in Vernor Vinge's "Marooned in Real Time"). And their impact on society will be as great then as it is now. (I'll let someone else argue the case for telecom technologies; this is already far too long). Gordan Palameta (416) 979-7700 x134 Numetrix Ltd. Suite 1700 gord@numetrix.com (416) 979-7559 fax 655 Bay St. Toronto, Ont. M5G 2K4 [or gord@nmx701.attmail.com] ------------------------------ From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (James H. Haynes) Subject: Re: Communication Over Power Lines? Date: 6 Jan 1994 23:00:18 GMT Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz Back in the days when you could walk into a telephone office and pay your bill in cash, there were a bunch of pamphlets in a rack on the wall giving things like tips on telephone usage, the history of the telephone, how the telephone works, etc. I remember one of these had an illustration of rural telephone service using a carrier system operating over the power wire. In this case they used the high-voltage line for the carrier, isolated from the telephone equipment by a high-voltage capacitor presumably installed by the pwoer company for the purpose. The booklet didn't go into detail as to whether there were multiple carrier frequencies so that several subscribers could be served on one power line. Then there are articles in magazines from time to time, and maybe commercial products you can buy, that use the 120v house wiring for conductors; but in that case the interest is in communicating just within the building, or maybe to nearby houses connected to the same transformer. I don't think you'll get carrier frequencies to go through a power transformer and on to the high-voltage side and back through another transformer to the 120v side on another circuit. I believe the power companies also use carrier current for signaling and controlling their relays and things, again working on the high-voltage side of things so they don't have to go through transformers. haynes@cats.ucsc.edu haynes@cats.bitnet ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack Reply-To: krehberg@vnet.IBM.COM Date: Thu, 06 Jan 94 17:35:21 EST From: V2ENA81%OWEGO@zeta.eecs.nwu.edu Quoted from mcneill@ngt.sungard.com's message of Wed, 5 Jan 94 10:03:42 EST: > On a side note, I recently called NY Telephone (or NYNEX as they want > to be called now) about getting a second phone line installed in my > apartment. I was shocked to get a quote of $185 for the second line > (first line costs about $60). This is the price for installing a > totally different phone line in the apartment. I complained a little > that they didn't need to do that as there was a perfectly good second > pair coming into the apartment I didn't get very far as the customer > service rep wasn't technical. Is there really any need to get a > totally seperate line into my apartment? Diamond State Telephone > (Delaware) was able to put a second line on the second pair. Is NYNEX > just trying to gouge me? Perhaps they were trying to sell you installation of the wire INSIDE your house. That is the extra $80-$100 or so. If you just want them to put a wire up to your network interface (typically in the basement of your apartment) that will cost you more like $85 from NYNEX. They will always assume the most expensive option, so you say "just hook your wire up to my building's interface box and activate my service". It's then your responsibility for the inside wiring. On your point about four-wire hookups, NYNEX will almost never install a second telephone line onto the second pair in a typical residential phone cable (probably) for reasons discussed on the Digest earlier in which noise can leak between the lines due to induction. They also want to have an extra modular jack inside their network interface for quick connect/disconnect if things go wrong. Not only that, they do want to make money installing inside wiring, which they are NOT obliged to do BY LAW, but are not really itching to tell you that you don't need them to do it for you. You have to be an educated consumer. Read on. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not necessarily. Telco outside plant > records are in notoriously bad condition in some places. The rep may As I said earlier, the NYNEX (formerly NY Telephone) telco doesn't seem particularly fond of second pairs. I actually looked into the network interface when they were done with it and they actually installed an extra interface jack and had cut off the second pair on the original wires so I couldn't hope to use them ... those bastards. Anyhow, you can probably hook it up to the second pair after the line is hooked up (and they leave) by using that same Radio Shack converter with your existing phone line inside the network interface and saved yourself some wiring headaches. Remember to tell NYNEX only to bring the wire to the network interface box in the basement. I told them I wanted them to do that in my old house, and they were more than happy to charge me the cheaper $85 for simple pole-to-house hookup and activation. I now live in an apartment in a semi-suburban/rural area and just recently checked with the local business office and the phone book, and nothing has changed even though it has to go to the basement of the house. In an extreme case, if there aren't any extra wires coming in (kinda unlikely in an apartment) and/or there aren't any more terminals on the pole (in a house situation) they're supposedly allowed to charge you an extra $30-$50 or so bringing the cost to more like $85 + $50 = $135. Then the optional charge for installing the wires in the house would probably bring the cost up to the $185 you stated. Don't let the bean counters cheat you! oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) wrote: > In some states the steps the moderator describes are exactly right. In > New York, things are a little different. Telco is obligated to provide > a network interface jack (if that is what you want) *in your apartment*, > for a price that is fixed -- unaffected by how long it takes to do. > This is the case regardless of whether their records show a previous > second line in your apartment; all that changes is the amount of the > fixed price. Last I checked the cost for your situation (where they > claim there was never a second line) is $88. It's $88, but if there aren't any more terminals on the pole they will charge you an extra $30 to $50 (depending on the work needed) to add that extra line terminal to the pole. This is information from the technicians and the business office here in Binghamton, NY. These are the same idiots who replaced our two pole-to-house lines twice. Once with two wires, and the second time two months later with a single two-line cable (we lived in a house with two dwellings in it). I think they were training their technicians at the time. Kriston J. Rehberg Internet External :krehberg@vnet.ibm.com Associate Programmer/Analyst FSC Internal RSCS :V2ENA81 AT OWEGO ENSCO, Incorporated FSC Internal AFS :v1ena81@legend.endicott Loral Federal Systems Co, Owego, NY Tel: 607-751-2180 :Tieline: 662-2180 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 94 12:31:52 CST From: varney@ihlpe.att.com Subject: Book Review: "The Phone Book" by Carl Oppedahl Organization: AT&T In article oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) writes: > The state-to-state differences are discussed in my book about phone > service. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What's this about your book about phone > service? Please review it for us and tell us how to obtain copies. PAT] What's this, Pat? Surely you are aware that Carl is a multi-talented lawyer, author on telecom and all-around consumer advocate? And a ham? Assuming Carl is too modest to review his book, I'll provide: BOOK REVIEW The Phone Book : How to get the Telephone Equipment and Service You Want - and Pay Less by Carl Oppedahl, a Consumer Reports Book ISBN 0-89043-364-X (pb), 1991, a revision of the book originally published by Weber Systems, Inc in 1987 as "The Phone Book" This book is a non-technical, "consumer-oriented" collection of information on telephones, telephone service, long-distance carriers, cellular carriers, and reference lists of PUC/Consumer Advocates for each state. The most technical content is a GOOD summary of what an REN is (and why a consumer might be interested), what the USOC codes like RJ11 mean (with pin/wire color information) and how to parse the FCC Part 68 registration number on equipment. The remaining 300+ pages consist of about 200 pages on how to wire one- and two-line telephones and troubleshoot the installation, intermingled with 100 pages of useful (and probably well-known to Digest readers) information on long-distance carriers, cellular/fax/ answering-machines and typical problems in connecting them, dealing with the Phone Company and how to read a phone bill. There is probably more information in this book than most consumers need, but it tends to be information they would not otherwise easily find. Those who need only wiring information might feel more at home with some Radio Shack-style publication, but they would be missing out on the substantial background information mingled in with the technical. Occasionally, there are little anecdotes to illustrate a point. For example, p. 96 mentions "Ruth's" inability to get Equal Access of any form when she moved to Townsend, Tennessee [pop. about 300, so this isn't an oblique PAT reference -- or is it?]. Carl indicates here that even without Equal Access, Ruth may be able to save money by using one of AT&T's discount plans. (It may not occur to many such captive customers that the discount plan can apply even if they have no choice in IXCs.) Some complaints: -ANI is defined as the service we here call "Caller ID", which will be confusing when talking to those who know the difference. -Quad wire is blessed as a method of installing 2-line telephones, and as a general inside wiring method. (Modems and their problems are not high-lighted in the book, but Carl does mention how to get around the A-lead control some modems have, for example.) -The cellular information should include information on ESN-cloning and other problems with cellular service. -Information (see below) useful to apartment dwellers is indexed under the term "multiunit buildings", not under "apartment". (In general, there is little "lawyer-speak" in the book.) SUMMARY: For its audience, this is an excellent reference book. BIO: Carl Oppedahl is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a practicing patent attorney. As a consumer activist, he has championed the interests of consumers in obtaining cost-effective telephone service. +++++++++ To get back to the original topic, Carl's book has several pages of information on various Network Interfaces and FCC/state rules on where/how such interfaces and demarcation points interact. On p. 29, describing NI Jacks in multiunit buildings: "In New York, for instance, the jack is located within the premises of each individual tenant. In Illinois the jack is located at the point where the telephone wiring first enters the building, generally in a basement room. (In a state like Illinois, you and not the local telephone company are responsible for the maintenance of the wiring running from the basement to your premises even though the landlord may not allow you access to such wiring. ..." Carl does indicate that such wiring should be maintained by the landlord at no cost to you, just as such electrical wiring is maintained. (Check your lease.) He lists 14 "renter-beware" states that make the renter responsible for running from the basement any wiring needed for service, such as a second line. He also lists 2 "interface- unfriendly" states that do not require TELCO to install (at little or no charge) a network interface at customer request on new service orders. Al Varney - I have no connection with Consumers Union, except as a happy customer. I have no connection with any lawyer, except as an unhappy customer. ------------------------------ From: John S. Roberts Jr. Subject: Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack Date: 6 Jan 1994 13:42:02 -0500 Organization: University of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences 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] I DO have two phone lines. That is the problem. I know that they are not shorted because I can make two seperate calls on each of the lines, however I can HEAR the line one conversation when I am using line two. I have heard people talking about how when you run four conductor wire (like from Radio Shack) and use two conductors for one line and two conductors for the other you often get bleed over. I am looking for a solution to this other than running another set of wires to seperate the two lines from being so close. Thanks so much, John S. Roberts, Jr. 100 McVey Hall Work: 257-2275 +=- University of Kentucky Home: 272-1417 - FAX: 272-7105 +=- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ah, okay, that clarifies things. Indeed then, the thing you want to be careful about is the choice of wire you use. Some wire tends to 'bleed' more than others. You don't need two separate cables -- one set with four or more wires in it will do -- but be careful about what you use, as others have noted. PAT] ------------------------------ From: md@maxcy2.maxcy.brown.edu (Michael P. Deignan) Subject: Re: Hayes' New Modem Reply-To: mpd@anomaly.sbs.com Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 17:54:39 GMT In article , yatesc@eggo.usf.edu (Charles Randall Yates) writes: >> Have any of you heard about the Hayes Optima 288 V.FC + FAX modem? It >> can allegedly transmit data over a phone line at 28.8 kilobits per >> second *WITHOUT COMPRESSION*!!!! I thought you guys told us the upper >> limit was in the low 20's. What gives? Quite easy, actually. These new modems use a combination of phase-shift and amplitude modulation to transmit four, eight, even twelve bits for each baud. So, given a standard 2400 baud modem using a modified quadrature amplitude modulation scheme, you could conceivably get this level of thruput. Its all a matter of how sensitive your equipment is to detecting minute phase shifts and amplitude changes in the carrier, then it could be quite easy to get twelve bits of data transmitted with each baud. Think of it this way: Each baud is represented by a 360 degree sine wave. You can vary the phase of the sine wave to actually transmit multiple bits for each baud. For example, early "dibit phase shift keying" was a modulation scheme used by 1200bps modems. The modems were really 600 baud modems, but each baud transmitted two bits, depending on how much "out of phase" the baud's sine wave was. For instance: 0 degrees out of phase = hex 00 90 degrees out of phase = hex 01 180 " " " " = hex 10 270 " " " " = hex 11 So, by varying the phase of each baud's sine wave, you could technically transmit two bits of data for each baud. Early 9600bps modems used this same method. 9600bps modems are still technically 2400baud modems - there are only 2400 signal samples (or sine wave occurances) in each second. Using a modified phase shift keying, you could transmit 4 bits of data for each baud, hence, 9600bps. Now, sine waves have more than a phase charactistic. They also have an amplitude. You can modulate a carrier wave's signal via amplitude - tune to a local AM broadcast station, they're using amplitude modulation to transmit their signal. If you combined the two methods -- phase shift and amplitude -- you can transmit many bits simultaneously by modifying those two characteristics. For example (and I don't know if this is technically feasible, given our current technology) if you could measure a 1-degree shift in the phase of a carrier wave, in conjunction with 23 different amplitudes, then theoretically you could transmit one of 360x23 unique "values". 360x23=8280, so we could then use this combination to represent one of 2^13, or 8196, different values. Since we're transmitting 13 bits per baud, multipled by 2400 baud per second, we're getting an effective throughput of 13x2400, or 31200 bits per second, uncompressed. Of course, I don't know if this is how Hayes does it, but remember, you can only modulate a sine wave one of three ways: amplitude, phase, and frequency. Ain't technology wonderful? Michael P. Deignan Population Studies & Training Center Brown University, Box 1916, Providence, RI 02912 (401) 863-7284 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 94 13:03:01 EST From: richw@mks.com (Rich Wales) Subject: Re: Radio Religion in Canada Reply-To: richw@mks.com (Rich Wales) Organization: Mortice Kern Systems Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Gene Fornario wrote: > BTW, have you noticed that Canada doesn't either have or license > all-religious stations? Up till recently at least, the CRTC (Canadian FCC-analogue) would not license so-called "single-faith" radio or TV stations. I think there's one religious radio station in Newfoundland that was there before the province became part of Canada and got grandfathered, but that's all. However, I heard a few months ago that the CRTC had changed the rules and will now permit religious radio stations. I don't have the details, though, and I don't know how soon these stations might start appearing. Rich Wales (VE3HKZ, WA6SGA/VE3) Mortice Kern Systems Inc. richw@mks.com 35 King Street North +1 (519) 884-2251 Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2J 2W9 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #16 ***************************** ****************************************************************************** Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253