TELECOM Digest Sun, 6 Feb 94 04:27:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 62 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson USA Senate Establishes FTP Server (EFF and CPD via MVM@cup.portal.com) Harrassing One-Ring Calls (Bill Garfield) Merg-O-Mania (Van Hefner) ISDN in USA and Electronic Highways (Vermijlen Tom) Two Stories on MCI (Paul Robinson) MCI Joins Mexican Phone Venture (Paul Robinson) Book Review: "Crossing the Internet Threshold" (Rob Slade) Designing Local Phone Number Access to Regional BBSs (Lloyd Brodsky) ROA Can't Cover All My Lines - NYNEX's Fault (Barton F. Bruce) Lebanese Get Drunken Phones (was Re: Lebanon Telephone) (Linc Madison) 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: MVM@cup.portal.com Subject: USA Senate Establishes FTP Server Date: Sun, 6 Feb 94 00:26:19 PST >From the Computer Privacy Digest: ================================= From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: Thu, 27 Jan 1994 11:28:00 -0600 (CST) Subject: US Senate FTP Site On Line Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee The following is taken from the EFFector Online, issue 07.02, Jan. 25, 1993, A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ISSN 1062-9424: Senate FTP Site Online A new FTP site has been put on line to hold the publicly available documents and press releases of our Senators. Chris Casey of the office of Sen. Edward Kennedy says "Some progress is being made here on the Hill. The Senate now has an anonymous ftp server running. It's sparsly populated, only Kennedy and Stevens have posted anything so far, but I imagine the rest will find their way shortly. At least it's a start. The fact that the Senate has an anonymous ftp server is not a secret, but I don't think it's widely known either." You can access the server by FTPing to ftp.senate.gov, logging in as "anonymous" (without the quotes) and giving your email address as password. The site's general information bulletin is as follows: Welcome to the United States Senate's Anonymous FTP Server (ftp.senate.gov). This service is provided by the Office of the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. This server contains general information files about the United States Senate in the directory "general". Directories are also provided for specific Senators' offices, in alphabetical order by two-letter state abbreviations, and for Senate committees and other Senate offices. If an office is not included in the directory, this indicates no files have been posted by that office. No files can be uploaded to this system. Please direct questions about a specific Senate office's use of this service to the Senate office in question. General inquiries not involving a specific Senate office can be directed via Internet e-mail to: ftpadmin@scc.senate.gov Subdirectories for Senator's offices are structured as follows: /member/state_abbrev./senator's_name/releases/filename or /member/state_abbrev./senator's_name/general/filename The "releases" subdirectories contain press releases and related materials, and "general" subdirectories contain information of long-term interest such as office contacts. As of Jan. 24, 1994, the site was not being used very extensively, but individual Senators' directories contained various informational files, such as the following: Ted Stevens (AK): member/ak/stevens/releases -rw-r--r-- 1 1 1321 Jan 21 16:16 Childhood_Immunizations -rw-r--r-- 1 1 828 Jan 21 16:16 Inman_Statement -rw-r--r-- 1 1 3152 Jan 05 11:45 Ketchikan_Subcontractors -rw-r--r-- 1 1 3488 Jan 21 16:16 Seafood_Inspection -rw-r--r-- 1 1 1910 Jan 21 16:17 new_staff -rw-r--r-- 1 1 1661 Jan 21 16:17 tongass_timber Edward Kennedy (MA): member/ma/kennedy/general -rw-r--r-- 1 1 138842 Jan 13 13:49 S1150_Goals_2000 -rw-r--r-- 1 1 1011 Dec 13 15:04 on-line_access -rw-r--r-- 1 1 133477 Dec 27 10:08 s1040.txt member/ma/kennedy/releases -rw-r--r-- 1 1 3591 Jan 14 15:23 Human_Radiation_Experimentation -rw-r--r-- 1 1 1664 Jan 05 11:11 Statement_on_Firearms_Proposal -rw-r--r-- 1 1 16188 Dec 15 14:19 major_accomplishment_93 -rw-r--r-- 1 1 14523 Jan 13 11:58 national_health_reform_debate -rw-r--r-- 1 1 1298 Dec 15 14:18 worker_retraining_grant Please express your interest in this first small step, and encourage your Senators to utilize this new Congressional Internet resource. Ask your Representatives to look into the possibility of a similar system for the House. [Computer Privacy Digest Moderator's note: Rather than logging in with the userid 'anonymous', this system (and many systems like it) permits a login with the userid 'ftp'. This is a small difference, but it does not contain the (incorrect) presumption that no one knows who you are.] ------------------------------ Subject: Harrassing One-Ring Calls From: bill.garfield@yob.com (Bill Garfield) Date: Sat, 5 Feb 94 22:32:00 -0600 Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569 Reply-To: bill.garfield@yob.com (Bill Garfield) OK all you telephone company techno-jocks, I need some help with this. We are being besieged by single-jingle (one ring) calls. My MITEL SX2000SG PBX is served by Houston's "National" CO (SWBT). We have all of the 989-xxxx number block plus the 4000-6899 block in the 627 exchange. Fiber DS-3 terminates in a Rockwell Muldem adjacent to the PBX. Among the numerous facilities therein, there are 96 DINA trunks dedicated to the 4000-6899 block on 4 spans (21DINA7136275401). Here is the problem: For several months, various users have called the PBX room complaining about 1-ringer/single jingles. The offending source, whatever it is, will single out one or two DID extensions to "annoy" and then pound on only these extensions for a day or so, then gradually diminish in frequency of annoyance before moving on to another extension or two to pound on. During the cycle of peak annoyance, call frequency will vary from 3 to 15 calls per hour, per extension, at fairly regular intervals. So far, no extension has ever been singled out to endure this punishment more than once. They're always single jingles ... in other words, if my user doesn't answer, the phone only rings once. If they do answer, the incoming seizure has already released - gone -. We have the incoming SMDR records & have scanned them for repetitious inbound traffic of seven seconds duration or less. Result: The offending traffic is spread fairly evenly across all DID trunks. Hypothesis: Some type of automated dialing equipment has gone awry and is driving us crazy. I would really hate to think something like this would be malicious or intentional. :-( I really don't think we're being scanned. We've been scanned several times over the past four to five years and we recognize -those- calls. Whatever is pounding on us this time locks into one or two extensions and stays there, finally moving on to pester someone else after a day or so. SMDR logs indicate this is only happening during normal working hours, and seldom at nights or on weekends. Also ... this seems to only be hammering on the 627 exchange. None of my 989 group has yet complained. Our local SWB account rep claims SWB is -helpless- in getting this tracked down, due to the extremely short duration and something about it being DID trunk calls and not POTS. Why would that matter? Is the local telco -REALLY- that helpless in putting a lid on this? In some of the really persistent cases, I've been able to mask the problem by programming front-end ring delay against the targeted extension(s). This eats the first two ring cycles before presenting the call, but this is _not_ an acceptable long term fix. I need some help. Has anyone experienced any harrassing calls like this? Any suggestions on what it might be and/or how it could be traced back to its origin? Bill Garfield The PBX guy... Panhandle Eastern Corp. Houston, TX Voice: (713) 627-5228 FAX: (713) 627-5285 Ye Olde Bailey BBS Zyxel 713-520-1569(V.32bis) Hayes 713-520-9566 (V.FC) Houston,Texas yob.com Home of alt.cosuard ------------------------------ From: vantek@aol.com Date: Sun, 06 Feb 94 01:33:24 EST Subject: Merg-O-Mania U.S. Long Distance announces intent to acquire Call America Riverside SAN ANTONIO, TX Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Long Distance Corp. (NASDAQ NMS: USLD) today announced that it signed a letter of intent to acquire Inland Call America, Inc., d/b/a Call America Riverside, a privately owned direct dial long distance services company based in Riverside, California. U.S. Long Distance anticipates that the acquisition will be completed by March 1, 1994. Parris H. Holmes, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "The acquisition of Call America Riverside is an important strategic move for U.S. Long Distance because it expands our direct dial origination capabilities into California. Call America Riverside has provided service in Southern California for eleven years and has an excellent reputation in that region. Mike Vaughn, Vice President and General Manager of Call America Riverside, and his staff will remain with the company, ensuring a smooth transition and providing Call America Riverside's existing client base with the same level of service and support they have been receiving." The letter of intent provides, among other things, that U.S. Long Distance will acquire Call America Riverside for 175,000 shares of U.S. Long Distance Common Stock. This acquisition is subject to certain conditions, including, among other things, the negotiation, execution and delivery of a definitive acquisition agreement and the satisfactory completion of due diligence. Call America Riverside's revenues for calendar 1993 were $3.5 million. Vernon Hall, Chairman of Call America Riverside, said, "We are excited about joining the U.S. Long Distance team. By combining forces, we will increase our technological capabilities and broaden our product line. Our California customers will directly benefit from this partnership." U.S. Long Distance is a fully integrated long distance telecommunications and information services company with three primary areas of business: direct dial (one-plus) long distance services in areas of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest; national operator service for the hospitality and pay telephone industries; and billing clearinghouse and information management services for operator services and direct dial long distance companies. For fiscal 1993 the Company reported $134.1 million in total revenues. Van Hefner - Vantek Communications - DLD Digest - Vantek@aol.com ------------------------------ From: hw43213@vub.ac.be (Vermijlen Tom) Subject: ISDN in Usa and Electronic Highways Date: 5 Feb 1994 14:35:19 GMT Organization: Brussels Free Universities (VUB/ULB), Belgium Hello, is there someone who will converse a bit with me about the electronic highways in the USA and its advantages and disadvantages? hw43213@is1.vub.ac.be (Vermijlen Tom) Student Communicatiewetenschappen Vrije Universiteit Brussel ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 11:46:22 EST From: Paul Robinson Reply-To: Paul Robinson Subject: Two Stories on MCI Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA The following two items appeared on page F1 (The front page of the Business Section) of the {Washington Post}: 1. "MCI Communications of Washington received a three-year, $38 million contract to provide 800 service to Home Shopping Network, Inc." 2. For those of you confused over MCI's ad with some little girl with an English accent, speaking gibberish, you're not alone. The girl is 11-year-old Anna Paquin of New Zealand, who was in the movie "The Piano". As for the ad itself, 'When pressed, [Jerry] Taylor [of MCI] and Tom Messner of Messner Vetere [Berger McNamee Scheterer, MCI's ad agency] explain that "NetworkMCI" is the company's corporate name for services MCI plans to offer someday, such as local phone connections, portable digital communications, and "interactive multimedia" telecommunications such as video phone calls and home shopping.' What it really means is that this is MCI's equivalent to AT&T's "You Will" campaign. Now AT&T can run a sniping ad with Tom Seleck, "Did you ever think one of our competitors would do an ad like this one and make it so you can't understand it? You will, err, or rather, you won't." :) Paul Robinson - Paul@TDR.COM ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Feb 1994 12:00:29 EST From: Paul Robinson Reply-To: Paul Robinson Subject: MCI Joins Mexican Phone Venture Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA The article of this title appeared on page D3 of the 1/26 {New York Times}. Capsule: MCI and the largest bank in Mexico will form a joint venture to build an upgrade to the phone service in Mexico. This is a part of MCI's plan to build a seamless phone network throughout North America. They're not the only American Telephone company interested or who has investments there, due to less than two years remaining on the Mexican telephone company's phone service monopoly. Summary: MCI and Grupo Financiero Banamex Accival, the holding company for Banco National de Mexico, over a three-year-period, will add a fiber-optic network linking Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara, with long-term plans to cover the whole country. This deal would primarily give MCI access to the bank's customer base, although the bank is putting up some (unspecified amount of) money. The deal is valued at $1 billion, with MCI putting up about $450 in startup capital and will direct operations. The local phone company, Tele'fonos de Mexico has a monopoly on all local and long distance service, which by law ends in 1996. American Companies have been very interested; Southwestern Bell put $458 million in 1990 into Tele'fonos for 5% ownership. Bell Atlantic paid $1 Billion last fall for a stake in cellular phone company Grupo Iusacell. MCI will have to get Mexican Government permission (likely), and in a manner similar to Equal Access in the US, will have to negotiate with Tele'fonos over the charges to connect to the phone system. This is part of MCI's long term plan to have a "seamless communication system" over all of North America, since it is already invested in Canada's Stentor. MCI may even be able to use the same brands and perhaps the same equipment in all three countries. Estimates are that of Mexico's $6 billion a year in telephone service (10% of the U.S. Market), 45% is international traffic, 90% going to the U.S. According to an accompanying map, the following are the number of hours of calls traveling among the three countries: Mexico To USA: 10.1 Million; USA to Mexico: 21.3 Million; Canada To USA: 25.2 Million; USA to Canada: 37.1 Million. Paul Robinson - Paul@TDR.COM ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 05 Feb 1994 14:38:57 MDT From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Crossing the Internet Threshold" by Tennant/Ober/Lipow BKCRSTHR.RVW 931229 Library Solutions Institute and Press 2137 Oregon St. Berkeley, CA 94705 510-841-2933 510-841-2636 or 1100 Industrial Road, Suite 9 San Carlos, CA 94070 fax: 415-594-0411 "Crossing the Internet Threshold", Tennant/Ober/Lipow, 1882208013, U$45.00 alipow@library.berkeley.edu jlo-lis@cmsa.berkeley.Edu rtennant@library.Berkeley.Edu This book is useful for newcomers to the Internet. This book is useful for trainers. This book is useful for librarians. Ultimately, this book is most useful for those training librarians who are new to the Internet. The contents cover the basics as an introduction to the Internet. There is an "Internetworking Overview" which is a bit long for a beginner but helpful for a trainer. "Important Information for Beginners" is important, but primarily to those needing either to get a connection to the Internet or to keep current with Internet developments. The bibliography is generally sound and with helpful annotations. (There are some gaps, such as no mention of O'Reilly and Associates "!%@::" (cf BKDEMAC.RVW), but most of the other references one might name are more recent publications.) Three chapters cover email, remote login and file transfers (ftp). There are very helpful "fact sheets" on the basics of related functions, such as archive and gopher, as well as projects such as Freenet. In addition, there are trainers' aids, and appendix materials. A newcomer to the Internet might find this material a bit disorganized, but very definitely helpful and useful. It is heartening to see the very strong emphasis on Internet etiquette and culture which all too often gets short shrift, even in introductory guides. The grouping of discussion lists and electronic journals with email is a logical extension which is not always made. The work is not limited to the novice, though; many Internet users would find the fact sheets to be a handy quick reference. The material here was originally developed for a workshop and, unfortunately, it is all too obvious at some points. The Internet maps and certain other materials could be useful in seminars, but have no associated explanatory materials. The exercises are useful but missing information at certain points. For example, the list of special databases to try out does not always have full information on how to log in. This would, of course, be supplied in the workshop, and can be figured out by an experienced "net surfer," but it would be nice to see more help for novice users. The training resources, as well, would require some work. The "Introduction to Networking" overhead, for example, is far too cluttered, and, realistically, should be subdivided into at least five parts. This is, however, the first of a series of related works. As the material is subdivided, and the different audiences defined, the material will undoubtedly improve. The work shows a fundamental understanding and promise which bodes well for future editions, once organization and isolated materials are improved. Still, the book is useful to all those parties mentioned in the opening paragraph. For those serious about Internet training, or the use of the Internet in a library situation, this should definitely be on your bookshelf. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKCRSTHR.RVW 931229. Resdistribution permitted only via TELECOM Digest and associated newsgroups/mailing lists. ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 DECUS Symposium '94, Vancouver, BC, Mar 1-3, 1994, contact: rulag@decus.ca ------------------------------ From: lbrodsky@teal.csn.org (Lloyd Brodsky) Subject: Designing Local Phone Number Access to Regional BBSs Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc. Date: Sat, 5 Feb 1994 21:49:26 GMT I would appreciate pointers and info about reasonable approaches to provide local phone number access to an on-line service where there are several medium-sized population centers all of which are a toll call from each other and where the service needs to plug into an Internet POP someplace. Given the regulatory complexities (clusters of there are within the same LATA, giving only one choice without running a leased line a long ways away to get inter-LATA pricing, while others are not) and the desire to be able to have a system that is scalable (since it will take a while to build demand) what's the best way to go about this. Pay the telco for central office services and feed the calls into a leased line? Set up a small PBX in each town? Give up? Lloyd Brodsky Internet: lbrodsky@rocksolid.com President, RockSolid Communications P.O. Box 101804 Voice: 303-758-7030 Fax: 303-758-7277 Denver, Colorado 80250-1804, USA ------------------------------ From: Barton.Bruce@camb.com (Barton F. Bruce / CCA) Subject: ROA Can't Cover All My Lines - NYNEX's Fault Date: 5 Feb 94 17:24:01 -0500 Organization: Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc. AT&T promised me all my lines could be on my ROA plan. NYNEX bills folks individually bills for multiple phone lines. AT&T says "Whoops, NYNEX's multiple bills precludes ROA covering all lines (but you can order a second ROA plan if you like ...)" NYNEX says that since their multiple billing does not aggregate all the ten per line free DA calls you are allotted into one pot, *AND* if and ONLY if you have been charged for excess 411 calls on one line but had unused on another and COMPLAINED, they *might* try to get you on a 'combined' billing program. Of course, the 1,000s of trees and $s of postage they waste could concern them less, since every dollar they waste means more they get to markup and have the regulators let them milk out of the customers. So I would be willing to make excess 411 calls on ONE line and NONE on others to be able a month later to scream and get combined billing (since polite reasonable requests are ignored), but they still can't/won't give me combined billing because my classes of service are a tad different even though my lines are all residential and IN ONE HUNT group with adjacent numbers, even. So I have now decided to try another route. What if they could use my MAIN mumber as ANI for any other lines!? That would get ALL LD calls onto the ONE bill that has ROA. The residence business office decided I needed to call the business business office. So I stuck it to someone that was also taking DID tk and other commercial orders from me for work. She understands wink-start and all sorts of other fairly obscure stuff, but when I ask about fixing my home line ANI, sho is **STUCK**. So on to executive appeals ("hello - office of the president"). Normally they do get back in one day. Not this time. ANY useful war stories or suggestions? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Feb 1994 00:02:06 -0800 From: lincmad@netcom.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Lebanese Get Drunken Phones (was Re: Lebanon Telephone Infrastructure) Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) In article Alex Cena wrote: > The Lebanese government has approved contracts to buy one million > telephone lines from Alcatel Alsthom NV, Siemens AG and AB L.M. Ericsson. ^^^^^^^ Well, here in Oakland, "Alcatel" is a liquor store (near the corner of ALCAtraz and TELegraph), so I can't get away from images of phone lines arriving by the keg ... Linc Madison * Oakland, California * LincMad@Netcom.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #62 ***************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253