TELECOM Digest Mon, 10 Jan 94 00:43:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 21 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: California ANI Question (Clive D.W. Feather) Re: California ANI Question (Ed Ellers) Re: California ANI Question (Jon Edelson) Re: Hayes' New Modem (Michael P. Deignan) Re: Hayes' New Modem (ssatchell@bix.com) Re: Info on Cellular One NACP (Dave Levenson) Re: Info on Cellular One NACP (Gib Henry) Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? (Mark Brader) Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? (Lars Poulsen) Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? (Clarence Dold) Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? (Laurence Chiu) Re: Federal Telemarketing Laws (John Palmer) Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped (Scott Dorsey) Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped (Chris Labatt-Simon) Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped (John R. Levine) Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped (Dave Niebuhr) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: California ANI Question Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 20:47:10 GMT From: Clive D.W. Feather In TELECOM Digest: Volume 14, Issue 17, Message 5 of 15, Jon Edelson says: > For a small monthly fee, your 800 calls will go through, but _you_ will have to pay for them. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But they do this already. You simply > dial the regular ten digit number for the person or company; you pay > for the call; everyone is happy. PAT] SCREAM. Some of us would *love* to be able to call US 800 numbers and pay for the calls. Or have a way to find out the POTS number. Even in UK-only publications, I *still* see US companies only quoting their 800 numbers. Clive D.W. Feather | Santa Cruz Operation clive@sco.com | Croxley Centre Phone: +44 923 816 344 | Hatters Lane, Watford Fax: +44 923 817 688 | WD1 8YN, United Kingdom [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But those are stupid companies run by stupid people. Why would you want to purchase any of their stupid products? Anyone who cannot figure out that they have to provide a valid dialing sequence for the location in which their advertising appears deserves to lose whatever money they spent on the adverts. If you must begin your relationship with some firm by fighting with them trying to figure out how to reach them, then find someone else to do business with. Lots of companies in this country are run by intelligent people and many are run by stupid people. Choose to do business with the former. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: California ANI Question Date: Sat, 8 Jan 94 16:33:28 EST Organization: Delphi Internet So what if a given state orders telcos to allow per-call blocking on 800 calls using the same code (*67 or whatever) as is used for Caller ID? Ed Ellers, KD4AWQ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is a moot point simply because the state cannot issue such a directive. They lack the jurisdiction to do so. Individual states do not control interstate commerce or communica- tions. I suspect most telcos would simply refuse to implement this. PAT] ------------------------------ From: winnie@flagstaff.princeton.edu (Jon Edelson) Subject: Re: California ANI Question Organization: Princeton University Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 05:38:03 GMT In article winnie@flagstaff.princeton. edu (Jon Edelson) writes: > [About paying for 800 number calls] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But they do this already. You simply > dial the regular ten digit number for the person or company; you pay > for the call; everyone is happy. PAT] Actually this has already come up in the context of international callers who cannot use the 800 service. Some companies would publish _only_ their 800 numbers, and thus reduce the value of your suggestion. I suppose that most folk have wised up to the fact that some customers cannot or will not use the 800 service, and provide both 800 and regular numbers in their ads. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: See my earlier message. The companies which cannot figure this out don't deserve your patronage. PAT] ------------------------------ From: md@maxcy2.maxcy.brown.edu (Michael P. Deignan) Subject: Re: Hayes' New Modem Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 15:44:31 GMT hummes@osf.org (Jakob Hummes) writes: > Yes, it is. But there is an absolute limit (Shannon's Law). The > question was about the transmission over a *real* phone line. And that > means there exists *noise*. The limit of bps is proportional to the > logarithm of the signal to noise ratio. Unfortunately I don't remember > the constant factors. You are correct. Shannon's Law is defined as C=W * LOG [1 + (P/N)] 2 Where P is the power in watts of the signal through the channel, N is the power in watts of the noise out of the channel, and W is the bandwidth of the channel in hertz. One typical values for a voice-grade analog circuit are: W=3000hz, P=.0001 watts (-10dBm), N=.0000004 watts (-34dBm). This would yield: C = 3000 * Log2(1+250) = ~24,000 bits per second. Due to the nature of the Log function, its easier to increase the value of C more easily by increasing the value of W , rather than P or N. Michael P. Deignan Population Studies & Training Center Brown University, Box 1916, Providence, RI 02912 (401) 863-7284 ------------------------------ From: ssatchell@BIX.com (ssatchell on BIX) Subject: Re: Hayes' New Modem Date: 8 Jan 94 18:55:38 GMT Organization: Delphi Internet Services Corporation Actually, if you really want to find out how the Hayes Optima 288 and the GDC V.F modems work, get Draft Recommendation V.34 ... ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: Info on Cellular One NACP Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Mon, 10 Jan 1994 03:02:29 GMT In article , psw@carillon.mitre.org (Phil Wherry) writes: > 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? The cell site can send a mobile audit request -- basically a 'ping' of a mobile unit which does not result in a ring. The cell site typically sends an autonomous registration request message from time to time, causing all mobile units which receive it to respond. Roamers and home-system mobiles are addressed separately for this one. This is one of the ways in which the system attempts to keep track of which mobiles are turned on, and where they are ... so it knows where to page them in case it has in incoming call. Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave Stirling, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 ------------------------------ From: gibhenry@cscns.com (Gib Henry) Subject: Re: Info on Cellular One NACP Organization: Community_News_Service Date: Sun, 9 Jan 1994 15:13:12 GMT In article , peter.gregory@asix.com (Peter Gregory) wrote: > The secret is this: as soon as you turned on your phone in Austin, the > local switch picked up your ESN; when a local database lookup failed, > it requested your profile from the main database, which was then sent > to the local switch. Whooh! This has some scary implications of the Big Brother variety! If Cellular One keeps this info, it could be a real invasion of privacy. Gib Henry [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now come on and try to be for real! What do you expect the rest of us to do who roam, manage somehow to get by when a call is made to us while the switches fumble around at some later point trying to exchange information? If you think this is such a darned invasion of your privacy then either quit roaming, don't turn on your phone (when roaming) until you get ready to originate a call, or get out of cellular altogether. Exactly what do you find so 'scary' about cellular companies attempting to coord- inate with each other in an effecient way? PAT] ------------------------------ From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada Date: Sat, 8 Jan 94 20:26:05 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... If you mean 800 (toll free > numbers), the answer is that generally you cannot call them from > outside the USA. Most of the subscribers to 800 service only pay to > accept calls from places inside the USA. As has often been pointed out, this is only half an answer. The caller might be willing to pay for an overseas call, after all. And the other half of the answer is that even in if you're willing to pay, you *still* can't do it. As was noted, > ... One exception to this is that you can call the 'home direct' > services of the various carriers and some of these carriers will > handle it so that you pay for a call to the USA and the 800 subscriber > on this end pays only for the portion of the call which is in the USA. > You need to match carrier with 800 number... But as I understand it, this requires you to have a USA phone number yourself, so that it can be billed to. Is that still true? Actually, in all of the foregoing, "USA" should read "USA and/or Canada, as appropriate for the particular number". Some 800-numbers in each country can be called from the other in the usual way. In fact, some can *only* be called from the other country. Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can get a calling card from some carriers like AT&T without having a phone in the USA, and use that for 'home direct' style calls. PAT] ------------------------------ From: lars@Eskimo.CPH.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? Organization: CMC Network Products, Copenhagen DENMARK Date: Sun, 9 Jan 94 22:53:39 GMT In article MAARUF ALI writes: > Could someone please tell me how to phone US 0800 numbers from the UK? The short, general answer is "You can't get there from here !!" > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We do not have '0800' numbers. If you > mean 800 (toll free numbers), the answer is that generally you cannot > call them from outside the USA. Most of the subscribers to 800 service > only pay to accept calls from places inside the USA. > If you otherwise see (in advertising or whatever) a number in the > USA marked 800-something, you *cannot* call it from outside the USA > under normal conditions. They don't want to accept your call and have > to pay for it. One exception to this is that you can call the 'home > direct' services of the various carriers and some of these carriers > will handle it so that you pay for a call to the USA and the 800 > subscriber on this end pays only for the portion of the call which is > in the USA. You need to match carrier with 800 number for this > however; the carrier of the 800 number is the carrier who's 'home > direct' service you need to connect with, *and not all of them will do > this*, although I think AT&T and MCI will. PAT] 1) There is no way that a customer in a foreign country can find out which carrier services a particular (800) number. 2) Only the "big three" carriers have "home direct" services. 3) All of the people asking this question are quire willing to pay USD 5.00 + USD 1.50/minute (or whatever the operator-assisted rate is) to talk to these companies (who then will often gladly leave the call on hold for 5 to 15 minutes before answering it. About ten years ago, AMerican industry started telling people, that for our own good, they were moving manufacturing to South East Asia. The American workforce would henceforth be retrained for jobs in: (a) Service (b) Development and Engineering (c) Sales and Marketing In the meantime, the marketing departments of America's "Fortune 500" companies are now staffed with people who have difficulty thinking straight (to put it VERY politely). How else can I describe my experience last October, when I was attending a large international trade show in Paris with 400 American companies displaying their products to 23,000 visitors, and many of them were handing out product data sheets with only an 800-number for contact information? A dozen (American) trade magazines had printed special editions for the show, filled with glossy color ads and press releases, which generally had only the company name (no mailing address, no city name) and an 800 number? Given that the IXCs fall down on their face and refuse to route calls to these numbers, I have only two pieces of advice: I. To the customers: Don't buy anything from a company that has an "International Marketing Manager" who orders up such ads. If they treat customers this way in the "buttering-up" phase, how will they treat you after the sale ? II. To the telecom gang: There should be a business opportunity in setting up a (toll restricted) call diverter line to route calls to 800-numbers. Maybe make the caller listen to a 30 second blurb for TelePassport before giving them a dial tone good only for 800 numbers, or for long distance calls paid for with Orance cards. (Which "home direct" service will accept calls from Europe for 800-numbers served by Orange ?) In light of the inflammatory content above, I should explicitly say that my employer, Rockwell International is very unlikely to agree with these opinions! Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@CMC.COM CMC Network Products Phone: (011-) +45-31 49 81 08 Hvidovre Strandvej 72 B Telefax: +45-31 49 83 08 DK-2650 Hvidovre, DENMARK Internets: designed and built while you wait [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Bravo! Bravo! You are absolutely correct. They spend *millions of dollars* in advertising with all sorts of glossy full page ads then are too stupid to include a phone number people can call. To heck with them! I hope their stupidity causes them to go into bankruptcy and close their doors. To Clive and others: don't worry about the fact that you cannot call these idiots. So what! As Lars says, if this is how they act when you are a new prospect, how will they act when you are an old customer? PAT] ------------------------------ From: dold@rahul.net (Clarence Dold) Subject: Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? Organization: a2i network Date: Sun, 9 Jan 1994 22:35:11 GMT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We do not have '0800' numbers. If you > the call which is in the USA. You need to match carrier with 800 number With portable 800 numbers, that strikes me as being nearly impossible, short of calling the company on its regular business line, and asking what their long distance carrier is. And while you're on the line, you might as well ask them whatever you wanted in the first place ;-) Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - Milpitas (near San Jose) & Napa CA. ------------------------------ From: lchiu@crl.com (Laurence Chiu) Subject: Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? Date: 9 Jan 1994 20:24:15 -0800 Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access, California Reply-To: lchiu@crl.com In article , MAARUF ALI wrote: > Could someone please tell me how to phone US 0800 numbers from the UK? MCI will, but AT&T will only connect you if it's their 800 number. I don't know about MCI. Laurence Chiu | Walnut Creek, California Tel: 510-215-3730(wk) | Internet: lchiu@crl.com ------------------------------ From: jp@tygra.Michigan.COM (John Palmer) Subject: Re: Federal Telemarketing Laws Organization: John Palmer's Private Box Date: Sun, 9 Jan 1994 20:37:50 GMT In article johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) writes: >> 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. Thats probably why the NSFNet's Acceptable Use Policy is widely held to be unconstitutional. The part which says that "no commercial use allowed" restricts speech based on content. Last I heard, the attorneys general from nine states (MI included) have given opinions that the policy is unenforcible. Its really a moot point since the policy is going away in the spring anyhow, last I heard. ------------------------------ From: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped Date: 9 Jan 1994 02:08:51 GMT Organization: NASA Langley Research Center and Reptile Farm In article pribik@rpi.edu (Chris Labatt-Simon) writes: > I have a friend in Islip (Nassau County) who has touchtone. I though > this was a capability that was in all switches manufactured in the > last umpteen (how much is an umpteen anyway?) years, and that if a > customer wanted pulse service, the phone company had to disable > touchtone. Anyone? Anyone? We got it last year when they upgraded our crossbar to some sort of 1ESS system. I figure we should have ISDN here some time around 2030, if the installation of other features is any example. This is in southern VA. scott ------------------------------ From: pribik@rpi.edu (Chris Labatt-Simon) Subject: Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped Date: 9 Jan 1994 18:37:29 GMT Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, USA pribik@rpi.edu (Chris Labatt-Simon) writes: > I have a friend in Islip (Nassau County) who has touchtone. I though > this was a capability that was in all switches manufactured in the > last umpteen (how much is an umpteen anyway?) years, and that if a > customer wanted pulse service, the phone company had to disable > touchtone. Anyone? Anyone? Oops ... my mistake. Islip is in Suffolk County. How about Garden City? Anyone? Anyone? Chris Labatt-Simon Internet: pribik@rpi.edu Design & Disaster Recovery Consulting CIS: 73542,2601 Albany, New York PHONE: (518) 495-5474 FAX: (518) 786-6539 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jan 94 12:31 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped Organization: I.E.C.C., Cambridge, Mass. > Of course, the biggies (Compu$erve, Plodigy, etc.) will have 800 > numbers and just pass the cost along ... Unlikely. An 800 number costs at rock bottom ten cents a minute, while message rates are usually more like two cents. Even with metered local service, calling direct is considerably cheaper. Note that in New York City, the calls are metered, but local calls are charged one unit (about a dime) per call, no matter how long the call is. If ever there were a rate plan that favors modem users, that's it. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jan 94 19:06:23 EST From: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (Dave Niebuhr) Subject: Re: Surcharge for Tone Dialing to be Dropped In TELECOM Digest V14 #19 oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) writes: > In Eric De Mund > writes: >> Dave Niebuhr in TELECOM Digest V14 #15: >>> 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. >> Given that backwards state of affairs, maybe my dad *is* telling me >> the truth when he says that he can't even *get* touch-tone service at >> his home in central Nassau County (Westbury), Long Island, New York, >> telephone number (516) 333-xxxx. Incredible. This might not be relevant but what type of phone does he have? Rotary or tone dial? > I don't know the situation now, but a few years ago a friend in > Westbury had three lines in the house, one of which was a 516-333. > The 516-333 had been in place for a decade or more, and he kept it > because it was a flat-rate line -- no charge for local calls. Flat Rate is available to all residence customers and maybe some small businesses. pribik@rpi.edu (Chris Labatt-Simon) writes: > I have a friend in Islip (Nassau County) who has touchtone. I though Nope and Carl Moore is bound to comment on it; Islip is in Suffolk County. > this was a capability that was in all switches manufactured in the > last umpteen (how much is an umpteen anyway?) years, and that if a > customer wanted pulse service, the phone company had to disable > touchtone. Anyone? Anyone? There has never been a choice of pulse, rotary and tone; just the latter two. According to NYTel, the standard offering is rotary only with a surcharge for tone even though most, if not all, lines can handle tone quite nicely. I intend to call the business office next week and make an attempt to find out if 516-333 is tone enabled which I think it is. I seem to remember that 516-333 was mentioned in the first deployment of SS7 which, at least to me, means that it has either a DMS-100 or a 5ESS switch and is able to handle either touch tone or rotary dialing. I also find it hard to believe that tone isn't deployed in that exchange since tone has been around on Long Island since 1965 or before. Here are the exchanges in the 33X series for Area Code 516: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ------------------------------------------------------------- 33X | |PtJef|GdnCy|<----Westbury--->|Hksvl|GdnCy|Wstby| | Code: PtJef - Port Jefferson; Hksvl - Hicksville (a small tale here); GdnCy - Garden City. Note that all except 331 are in Nassau County and all are next door so to speak from each other and there are a plethora of businesses and government offices is that area. I don't think that they'd put up with rotary only dialing. 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 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #21 *****************************