TELECOM Digest Tue, 3 Jul 90 22:12:14 CDT Volume 10 : Issue 466 Inside This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson PacBell Coinphone False Info [Ron Schnell] How Are 800 Numbers Assigned? [Jody Kravitz] Re: Motorola Plans Global Cellular Thrust [Roy Silvernail] Re: FCC Responds to Individual Complaints About AOSs [Paul S. Sawyer] Re: What Is Telex? Is There an E-Mail Interface? [Kari Hardarson] Re: Sverige Direkt [New Zealand] [Pat Cain] Re: Is Santa Barbara Completely Destroyed? [Lars Poulsen] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ron Schnell Subject: PacBell Coinphone False Info Reply-To: Ron Schnell Organization: MIT EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA Date: Mon, 2 Jul 90 08:34:51 GMT While at a country club on Saturday, I needed to make a phone call. I found the payphone, and was relieved to see that it was Pacific Bell and not one of the private companies. I double checked the "information card" which all of the coin phones in CA. seem to have these days, and indeed it said that BOTH coin calls AND calling card calls would be handled by AT&T. HOWEVER, when I entered in the calling card number, I head a male voice saying, "Thank you for using Com Systems." I never thought I would see a BOC payphone which displays misinformation like this one did. I immediately called AT&T at (800) 222-0300 (knowing that this wasn't the right number but hoping they would know the right number). After a few minutes, she connected me with someone who asked me for the phone number and the hours of business. She then told me that in the future I should call Pac Bell, and that they are the ones who should know about it. I explained to her that AT&T is the one being hurt by this and they should want to know about it. She refused to believe that it had anything to do with AT&T and she kept telling me that "They can choose any long distance service they want." Am I crazy here? #Ron ronnie@eddie.mit.edu (213) 443 - 9688 [Moderator's Note: No, you are not crazy. You should have heard the referrals I got when I asked about red-lining certain neighborhoods last week. I was told to call New York Tel, Pac Bell, GTE, South Central Bell, you name it. Anybody but AT&T. It was the fault of the phone companies. One AT&T rep said it was 'The Mexico Telephone Company which asked us to disallow those calls ...' ... and when I called Corporate Public Relations and asked them, they promised to call back ... and haven't so far. PT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 00:20:50 PDT From: Jody Kravitz Subject: How Are 800 Numbers Assigned? I recently received a note from my mortgage company explaining that they had changed long distance carriers. It included a new phone number which was 800-736-xxxx. It would appear that which carrier "gets" which 800 calls is still done on an exchange-by-exchange basis. It would appear that only one carrier (AT&T ?) can get 800 information calls. Has anyone ever been explained in the Digest how 800 information works? Does anyone know which carrier gets 800-736-xxxx ? Jody Internet: foxtail!kravitz@ucsd.edu uucp: ucsd!foxtail!kravitz [Moderator's Note: In the Telecom Archives there is a file which identifies each 800 prefix with the carrier using it. See the Guide to Area Codes file. The assignment of prefixes within 900 is also included in that file. The Telecom Archives can be reached from any Internet location using the command 'ftp lcs.mit.edu'. PT] ------------------------------ From: "Roy M. Silvernail" Subject: Re: Motorola Plans Global Cellular Thrust Date: Mon, 02 Jul 90 04:43:01 CDT Organization: Villa CyberSpace, Minneapolis, MN gammal@altitude.cam.org (Michael Gammal) writes: > I don't trust Motorola's world-wide plans! (World Cellular) > Sounds like a nice way for espionage! > Think about it... > Every single user has their own coding.... > Thus can locate any individual anywhere! An interesting idea, indeed. The way I saw the plan presented, though, I'm not sure how closely a sat-cell call could be tracked. I'd like to find out more about this system. Perhaps someone could point out some references or post a summary of the technical details to the Digest? Roy M. Silvernail | Opinions found now available at: | herein are mine, cybrspc!roy@cs.umn.edu | but you can rent (cyberspace... be here!) | them. ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jul 90 13:24:07 EDT (Mon) From: "Paul S. Sawyer" Subject: Re: FCC Responds to Individual Complaints About AOSs Organization: UNH Telecommunications and Network Services In article <59819@bu.edu.bu.edu> you write: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 462, Message 4 of 10 >In article <9224@accuvax.nwu.edu> wrf@mab.ecse.rpi.edu (Wm Randolph >Franklin) writes: >> >Before writing my letter, I telephoned both ATT and FCC to determine >> >the law. FCC said unequivocally that the hotel phones must handle >> >10xxx properly. However ATT waffled; they commiserated with me but >> >didn't they that the hotel had to connect me to them. Why would they >> >not assert their rights? >In article <9341@accuvax.nwu.edu>, unhd!unhtel!paul@uunet.uu.net (Paul >S. Sawyer) writes: >> Maybe it's because ATT's PBX's (e.g. System 85) can't handle >> 9-10288, etc.... >Of course they can. They can dial any number they have been allowed to >dial by the dial plan and routing administration. If there was an >equal access number that had been restricted through hard-coding, I >can assure you it would not be 10288. Well, that was MY reaction, too, (as a mostly innocent bystander who just keeps the billing computers going) but if you know how, I wish you would tell our telecom specialist who administers the switch, our ATT account rep, and Carmine at RMATS who have all been trying to figure it out for some time now. ATT says it's the switch software, and the best they have done is suggest some kludgey workarounds using speed numbers, which so far are not of a kind which the user community would adapt to. Thanks. Paul S. Sawyer uunet!unh!unhtel!paul paul@unhtel.UUCP UNH Telecommunications attmail!psawyer p_sawyer@UNHH.BITNET Durham, NH 03824-3523 VOX: +1 603 862 3262 FAX: +1 603 862 2030 ------------------------------ From: hardarso@currituck.cs.unc.edu (Kari Hardarson) Subject: Re: What Is Telex? Is There an E-Mail Interface? Date: 3 Jul 90 19:17:43 GMT Reply-To: hardarso@currituck.cs.unc.edu (Kari Hardarson) Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill If I want to send someone a telex message from Usenet, is there a service that will do it for me? If it has to be Easylink, how do I get in touch with them from the net? Are there alternatives? (I used to access a U.K. service called One-to-one from X.25, I wouldn't mind accessing them from the net either). Thanks to anyone who might reply. Kari Hardarson 217 Jackson Circle Chapel Hill, NC 27514 [Moderator's Note: Since Usenet is a 'free' service, and telex messages require payment, there is no direct connection where someone will take your message here and convert it to telex. There were a couple of sneak approaches using the gateway between Internet and AT&T Mail, but the discovery of this abuse was one reason AT&T Mail clamped down on accepting Internet traffic. You can obtain a telex number for incoming telex stuff from AT&T Mail or MCI Mail. You can use either of those services to send telex messages, at a surcharge. You can do the same via GTE/Sprint Telemail. You would then send the message from what you termed a 'Usenet' site to your own account at MCI or AT&T Mail, and on its arrival there, forward it to a telex address yourself, at the prevailing rate for the service, billed to your account on the commercial email service. PT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 19:49 M From: Pat Cain Subject: Re: Sverige Direkt [New Zealand] >Sweden has recently introduced a service called "Sverige Direkt" >(Sweden Direct) which is a list of free telephone number that you can New Zealand has recently introduced this service too, although there seems to be problems with it such as: * bad connections * having to wait a long time (several minutes) for an answer * operators not being able to speak English (I suppose this doesn't matter as people calling France would speak French anyway). >The list of countries and numbers for "Sverige Direkt" are as follows > New Zealand 000 946 >It is interesting to see the irregularity of the telephone numbers above, >which makes it almost impossible trying to remember them. In New Zealand the 0009 prefix is used for the international Direct-Dial service. The format is 0009 with the exception of USA & Canada who are 000911 and 000919 respectively. The 800 number system exists in New Zealand, so I'm not sure why Telecom didn't use an 800 number. Perhaps it is because they wanted to keep the direct-dial service separate from the national free-call system. I know that Telecom here give out cards that have a list of countries and the numbers that you can direct dial to New Zealand from. I think that most people would rather carry these when going overseas than trying to remember numbers. Anyway, most people don't go overseas too often. If they do it is often to the same country, so they shouldn't have problems remembering the direct dial number used in that country to call home. >As I can understand there are two reasons for this irregularity: >1. There is no generally used "800-number". Some similar numbers >are used in >2. The telephone numbers for each national "800-number" are allocated > locally, so it is not so probable that the same number can be used >An alternative solution that would make it possible to dial the same >number toll free anywhere in the world would be to introduce a pseudo >county number for toll free calls. The country code "800" seems to be >ideal for this purpose. There are still problems with such an idea. Many countries have adopted different standards. In New Zealand 800 numbers are only 6 digits (eg. 0800 123456), whereas in the States, I think there are 7 digits. And they are preceded with a 0 whereas other countries have different prefixes. New Zealand is moving towards a seven digit numbering system and cleaning up the strange numbering systems we have here, so I suppose eventually we will see Direct Dial numbers being the same throughout the world. pat cain; snarky@st1.vuw.ac.nz | | cs200cap@st1.vuw.ac.nz Voice +64 4 698330 | Modem +64 4 661231 ------------------------------ From: Lars Poulsen Subject: Re: Is Santa Barbara Completely Destroyed? Organization: Rockwell CMC Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 20:04:14 GMT In article <59846@bu.edu.bu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >Word has been reaching us the past few days of the tragic fires >burning though parts of California, and the most disturbing news is >that apparently much of the town of Santa Barbara is in ashes. Perhaps >someone in the area could let us know what the effect has been on >telco service in that area, and other parts of the state. The reports .. have been much exaggerated. About 4000 acres of coastal foothill shrub burned, along with about 525 residences. The fire started at 18:02 PDT on Wednesday night; it is unclear whether it was deliberately set, or somebody just tossed a cigarette out their car window. The area has been suffering under a drought for about 4 years; water is severely rationed, and the city of Santa Barbara is checking out pricing for ferrying water down on ships from Canada. The chaparral was tinder dry and two days of 100-110 degree temperatures had brought it to a flash point. A "sundowner" wind condition (similar to a "Santa Ana") engulfed the hillside along highway 154 (San Marcos Pass road) in 40-foot high flames in minutes. The wind carried the flames downhill towards the city; within 40 minutes after it began near the top, it jumped across US-101 (the Camino Real freeway) near the county jail between Santa Barbara and Goleta, and a residential area where the railroad crosses "main street" went up in a firestorm; I heard the gas lines exploding from my house a half mile away. Throughout the evening, many neighbourhoods were evacuated. The fear was that the fire would burn out the Hope Ranch neighbourhood, a two-acre ranchette subdivision from the 1950's; but shortly before midnight the wind died down, and the fire stopped spreading. For the next several days, the hillside kept burning (I believe it was finally declared "controlled" this morning). Thursday night, there was some fear that another sundowner wind might drive the fire down towards the city through a different canyon. But the wind was much less severe, and actually drove the fire back to the already burned-over area. Thursday night around 9PM the wind died down, and we all breathed easier. --------------------- TELECOM RELATED STUFF --------------------- The E911 response center was located in the county complex in the fire zone, and had to be evacuated early on, along with the fire command post. This created a severe logistic problem, but fortunately, there were backup sites for both: The city had a command post downtown, and the county had a backup command post downtown. The GTD-5 system was heavily loaded; at one point, the dial tone delay was almost 30 seconds. The system went short on intercity trunks, but apparently the software can allocate the available trunks on a priority basis to the class-A emergency lines. My wife was in Texas, and I tried several times to reach her, alternating between MCI and ATT; mostly ATT worked better. (Probably due to ATT giving priority to OUTGOING calls). The telephone switch never failed, and service has not been disrupted since the fire. Our local college station is a training ground for Rock'n'Roll DJs, and has no useful news staff. Our "local" NPR affiliate is a repeater for the San Luis Obispo station, and our local APR affiliate is a repeater for KUSC, a classical station in Los Angeles. But one of the commercial stations hooked their AM ("talk radio") and FM ("adult album") transmitters together, and went live-all-news without commercials for 27 hours. On the second day they started a pledge drive for a relief fund and raised $80,000 before the sun went down. The local television station also suspended regular programming, but did not have quite as good information during the critical hours. (When the fire zone partitioned the town, and one reporter could not get back to the studio, he drove 40 miles away to Santa Maria to get an uplink, and I don't think he ever got back on the fire line). I am very impressed with the way GTE handled this disaster. This area may not be typical, but we really have had outstanding service since the GTD-5 system was installed four or five years ago. Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer CMC Rockwell lars@CMC.COM [Moderator's Note: Your mention of the need to evacuate the emergency response center and fire command post itself was interesting, and brings to mind the fire here in Chicago, October, 1871. The Western Union agent on duty downtown that Sunday night stuck around the office until is was apparent the building was going to be on fire soon. In an interview in the {Chicago Tribune} in 1901, he remarked on the bell in the steeple of City Hall. The City Hall Fire Alarm Office had an operator on duty at all times to ring the bell alerting residents to a fire. The bell was actually operated by a mechanical device, and the setting of the gears detirmined the cadence of the bell, which in turn gave a coded reference to the fire location. Four rings (pause) was a general alarm. Long after most of City Hall had burned to the ground and the fire alarm operator had fled in terror, with the streets in the area deserted, that bell continued to sound. The Western Union guy said it was 'the eeriest thing I had ever encountered ... the bell tolling with no one to listen or heed it ... and finally the steeple itself caught (fire) and the bell crashed to the ground with a monstrous clang ... '. PT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V10 #466 ****************************** -----