TELECOM Digest Wed, 26 Jan 94 15:04:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 45 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Unmetered Local Service (Jack Decker) Re: Unmetered Local Service (Gary W. Sanders) Re: Unmetered Local Service (Christian Weisgerber) Re: Unmetered Local Service (David G. Cantor) Re: Unmetered Local Service (Pawel Dobrowolski) Re: ISDN NT1 Power Source (William H. Sohl) Re: ISDN Primer and Video Uses (William H. Sohl) 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: ao944@yfn.ysu.edu (Jack Decker) Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service Date: 26 Jan 1994 12:16:20 GMT Organization: Youngstown State/Youngstown Free-Net Reply-To: ao944@yfn.ysu.edu (Jack Decker) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: After the mess I had here last week and the interupption in service over the weekend due to the conversion at the site, I thought it prudent to try and move forward with new messages which are arriving now at the rate of about 1000-1500 per week for the Digest. I suggested maybe the old threads could be closed out. One reader, Jack Decker was furious to hear this. He was, and apparently remains convinced that all these events were merely a ploy on my part to censor and silence his difference of opinion regarding 'unmeasured local service.' Even though Jack was given space for two large articles on the topic including one to specifically rebut what I said, and even though one issue of the Digest was devoted entirely to replies, most of which rebutted what I had said, Jack feels this was not enough and that I deliberatly cut off the topic before he could say his piece for yet a third time. He wrote a nasty flame article to c.d.t.t. (where flames about you-know-who are always received graciously) telling how he was censored. He does not like having his work edited, and he said to me he thinks I should publish 'everything anyone writes to me' with no comments. He wants to see it all ... so for the next 12,000 bytes more or less, I present Jack Decker's unedited (and third) article on why he opposes measured local service. Then following, in the same amount of space *or less*, a few more sentiments on local measured service. Jack has stated in the future he won't be writing to me and that he intends to send his stuff to c.d.t.t. where obviously -- since it is a Usenet newsgroup -- anything goes, and usually does. Sounds okay to me. :) I will respond to only one of his remarks; see the end of his message. PAT] ------------------- Pat, I will agree with the sentiment that has been expressed by others here. I fail to understand why you defend the idea of mandatory measured service when in fact it has cost not only you, but many other Chicagoians much additional expense. With your indulgance, I would like to respond to a couple of things you said, but also add another dimension to this discussion. That dimension is this: As a matter of public policy, do we want to encourage or discourage people from communicating with each other? There is a saying (especially popular among those of a conservative political bent) that when you want to discourage an activity, you tax it. If, for example, you don't like privately-owned business, then you tax privately-owned businesses heavily. If you don't want people to smoke or drink, you put high taxes on those activities. Now a tax is really a fee based on some activity, imposed by the government. Whenever you take some activity that was formerly free, and then put a fee or tax on that activity, the number of people who engage in that activity will drop. For example, fewer people (as a percentage of the total population) engage in fishing and hunting when those activities are taxed. By the same logic, if we impose usage-based fees on telephone calls, a certain number of people will decide not to make a certain number of calls. And in at least some cases, those will be calls that should have been made, or that would have been of benefit to someone, maybe even to you. (As a side note, most billing in the United States pretty much assumes that the beneficiary of a call is the caller, therefore the caller pays for the call. But in some cases the primary beneficiary of a call is the called party. That raises a whole separate set of issues that I won't go into now). My question is whether we really want to discourage phone calls. The only possible benefit that I can see from discouraging calls is that the phone companies can get by with installing slightly smaller switches. I say "slightly" because as you know, peak usage occurs during the business day and most business calls are already measured and would be made anyway. So while the total call volume may decrease, I think the actual peak calling volume would drop very little, and telephone company switches have to be engineered to handle peak calling volume. I also suspect there's not a great cost difference in over-engineering a switch, when you amortize the switch cost over its lifetime and the number of customers served. On the other hand, if we discourage local calling, it could have some negative side effects, such as causing people to become more isolated from one another. Pat, you've often bemoaned the condition of some neighborhoods in Chicago; maybe part of the reason that some people there are acting with less regard for human life is that they aren't getting the daily calls from grandma or their parents or siblings anymore. Sometimes lonely people tend to strike out. I'm certainly not saying this is responsible for all the crime in Chicago, but if you could avert even 1% of the criminal activity by making it easier (that is, less expensive) for people to communicate with each other, would you do it? When you think about it, people have become pretty isolated from each other. We don't sit on front porches and talk to passers-by anymore (you might get shot doing that!); instead we hide behind our walls at home and watch TV, which is a one-way medium (and I'll avoid a diatribe about program content for the moment). TV comes into our homes for free (if we use antennas) or at least on a mostly usage-insensitive basis (yes, I know that pay-per-view exists, but few people spend much time watching it). Now we have this other technology that lets us reach out and talk to others, including friends and loved ones, and THAT we are starting to charge for. The technology that tends to tear us apart is free, the technology that brings us together is "taxed" (in the broad sense of that word; I realize it's not really "taxes" but it's the same effect. Even the government is calling new taxes "user fees", so they can tell folks they didn't raise taxes!). Then there are also the environmental concerns. Put simply, if calls are free, you are more like to call "just to make sure" that someone is home, or that a business is open. I can remember times that I "knew" that a certain business was still open, but decided to call anyway "just to make sure". Had I had to pay for the call, I would probably just have driven over there (and been unpleasantly surprised to find that I "knew" wrong). My point is that it is much better for the environment to make a phone call than to drive someplace on a wild goose chase, and again, usage based charges discourage this. (I want to interject here that I KNOW there are people in the world who don't care what a call costs; they just call whomever they want and worry about the bill when it comes. But there are also a lot of people who will in fact decide NOT to make a call if it costs money. Neither group is going to convince the other to change its ways!) In my opinion, we should encourage people (especially residential customers) to use the telephone, rather than discourage it. We do that by providing service in a way that does not penalize usage. If that means that telco has to spend a few extra bucks on switches that have adequate capacity, let them amortize that in the monthly phone bills over the life of the switch (I'll bet it would amount to over ten cents per month per customer, probably a LOT less). Besides, you might really wish you had that extra capacity during the next emergency in your area. Now a couple quick comments on what you said: [Comments on temperature in the Windy City deleted...] > ..... None the less, it warms my heart to read > messages from you guys singling out telco as the one utility service > which you feel should be an exception to the 'pay for what you use' rule. > > Would you like to pay for your electrical service based on some average > amount that all your neighbors, including the big factory across town > uses? The factory would love having the electric bill averaged out to > some community-wide fee per month. Would you object to paying a flat rate > for your gas or your water based on some amount which includes the public > laundry down the street with all the washers and dryers running all the > time? Betcha the owner of the laundry would consider it to be 'fair'. Pat, you say this but then later you acknowledge the crux of the argument, but then go on to do what in my opinion is some really wild speculation: > Jack contends that the use of the > phone does not affect telco's costs, and while that is partly true > (and more true than it is in the case of the gas, electric or water > utilities, all of whom have to obtain and pay for (or 'manufacture' in > the case of electricity) the product they are passing along), it is > not entirely true since the size and extent of the *common equipment* > telco must install and maintain DOES depend on the extent to which it > is used. The general public does not know this, but I would expect > most telecom readers to realize that telco does not have wires from > every phone to every other phone and that said wires sit there idle > in between calls. The common equipment is continually being swapped > around among users of the moment. Typically, a telco has the physical > capacity to serve only about ten to fifteen percent of its customers > at any one time. If its customers tie up the common equipment for long > periods of time then more common equipment is needed. Consider the > car rental business: Hertz had a couple million customers last year. > They do not own a couple million cars, but rather, they own a few > thousand vehicles which are constantly being shuffled around among > customers and locations (where the company operates) to meet the > demand at the company's busiest times. Ditto with telco. Pat, where on earth did you get the idea that "a telco has the physical capacity to serve only about ten to fifteen percent of its customers at any one time"? Even if that were true, and I seriously doubt it is, it would be true only of the central office switch, and that is only a small part of telco's total costs. With very few exceptions, the wires, cables, and other physical plant dedicated to bringing phone service to your home are reserved for your use 24 hours a day, for as long as you have phone service, whether you ever place a call on it or not. Telco doesn't assign my wire pair to someone else when I'm not using my line, the way Hertz assigns cars. As for the switch itself, I would again point out that it has to be engineered to meet peak calling demand, and that generally happens during the business day when relatively few residential customers are using their phones, and in many places business customers are already forced to have measured service. You compare telephone service to electric or gas service. The only thing that telephone service has in common with these is that it is provided by a regulated utility. But with gas or electric service, it costs the utility more money to produce more of the product. Electricity or gas is essentially a product (a certain amount of energy is delivered), while telephone is a SERVICE. Pricing them differently is therefore appropriate, especially given that the telephone company's costs are either not increased at all, or only a very minute amount when people make more calls. I suggest that a more appropriate comparison might be that of renting an appliance, such as a refrigerator. When you have phone service, you are essentially renting the use of the phone lines (and other outside plant) and the central office switch. In both cases the equipment may wear out over time, but not with any particular correlation to usage. When you rent a refrigerator, the rental company could put a unit counter on the door, and charge you a few cents every time you opened the door. That would be the equivalent of measured telephone service. But in a free market where more reasonable rental plans are available, no one would rent a refrigerator under those terms. And the fact is that rental companies are free to rent refrigerators this way, but they do not. One other quick point: You said: > Jack Decker agrees with me that frequently (but only 'at first' in his > opinion) the costs to many subscribers are lower, and on this point he > apparently would be in disagreement with Bill Pfieffer and Cliff Sharp > who feel the bills always are more. Actually, I was going by what you had said, simply accepting that particular statement at face value so that we could get on with the discussion. Since it appears that some of your fellow Chicagoians disagree with you on this point, perhaps I was a bit hasty in "agreeing" that the costs to many subscribers are lower. Revise it to read that the costs to SOME (perhaps relatively few) subscribers are lower... and I still stand by the statement that this is only at first, until telco feels that they can get away with raising the rates. By the way, you thought it was cold in Chicago... about the time you were feeling distressed at the cold, it got down to 29 below zero (Farenheit) in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (the HIGH for that day was -12!). We had it warmer here, I think it only got down to about -4 here (near Muskegon). I think I am glad I no longer live in the frozen tundra! :-) Jack [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There you go Jack. More or less the last word on the topic, unedited, raw, just like you sent it. I had to dig around in my bit bucket to find it. One response: telcos have the physical capacity to serve at most 10-15 percent of their customers at one time. They plan their capacity based on their 'busy hour'. Maybe someone will be so kind as to write to Jack and explain how the common equipment in a CO is arranged. Five million subscribers in Chicago do not have five million dialtones and five million possible connections *all at one time*. Will someone please explain that to Jack? Thank you. PAT] ------------------------------ From: gary.w.sanders@astt.com Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 14:06:10 GMT Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service Organization: AT&T In article ao944@yfn.ysu.edu (Jack Decker) writes: > On Wed Jan 12 08:35:33 1994, lars@Eskimo.CPH.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen) > wrote: > that there is no charge for individual local calls, that is not the > case in many areas. Ameritech in particular has tried to do away with > no-charge local calls; they've been successful in Wisconsin and (I > think) parts of Illinois. They tried this in Ohio but a the legislature passed a bill that prohibits the removal of flat rate service. Gary W. Sanders (N8EMR) gary.w.sanders@att.com AT&T Bell Labs 614.860.5965 ------------------------------ From: naddy@mips.ruessel.sub.org (Christian Weisgerber) Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 12:48:38 +0100 ao944@yfn.ysu.edu (Jack Decker) writes: > 2) If you consider the components of local telephone service, charging > on a per call or per-minute basis generally doesn't make sense (except > as an artificial means of raising revenue). [...] This depends on your approach to charging in general. > The two major components > involved in the provision of local telephone service are outside plant > (the wires, cables, and terminal blocks and similar equipment that > carry service to your home) and the central office switch. That's the technical approach: pass through the cost actually caused by the customer. Telcos are service providers. An approach probably often found with European telcos (certainly here in Germany) is to charge a fee for every service, the more useful the service is the more expensive it gets, with no regard to the actual cost (except that there should be a net profit altogether). >> Hahahaha hahaha ha ha ... he ho hummmm ... Here in Denmark, local >> calls have been metered for many, many years -- by the pulse method. Same in Germany. Oh, if you want to receive charging pulses (16kHz beeps) on your end, well, that's another service to pay for (DEM 1.-/month). >> Itemized billing is NOT available, and there would be an uproar from >> office workers -- on privacy grounds -- if the telco were to start Same here. Well, actually it is available but somewhat expensive. (Unfortunately, I can't find the tariff.) > I am sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I do not trust telco to do > correct billing without having some way to check up on them. What do > you folks do in Denmark when you get a bill that says you've used > 100,000 units (meter pulses?) of service and you think it should be > more like 1,000? Rule #1: The Telco is never wrong. Rule #2: If the Telco should happen to be wrong, apply rule #1. Actually cases like this have happened. The outcome depends on your persistency, your region's Telco personal persistency, and the mood of the judge. Some people had to pay those absurd charges. I mean, it's pretty clear: you have to prove the Telco wrong. The only body approved to prove the Telco wrong is the Telco. Simple, isn't it? Christian 'naddy' Weisgerber, Germany naddy@mips.ruessel.sub.org ------------------------------ Reply-To: dgc@math.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 10:13:34 -0800 From: David G. Cantor Local telephone charges are regulated because (at least until very recently) the local telco has a natural monopoly. It would be interesting to determine what charges might be if there were real competition. Say, three or four companies each capable of providing local service and with a minimal real cost (to the telco) of switching a customer to that telco. In truly competitive situations, rates tend to more closely reflect real costs, with the exceptions that those customers who have the least choice get charged the most. A good example of this is airline ticket charging on competitive routes or grocery store pricing. In a truly copetitive situation, what would the telcos' strategies be for charging? how much would they charge for switching? Would they meter local charges? Would there be telephone discount coupons, modem coupons, earthquake spcials? One might even argue that the regulated rates of today should be based on what truly competitive rates should be. David G. Cantor University of California Department of Mathematics Los Angeles, CA 90024 ------------------------------ From: dobrowol@husc8.harvard.edu (Pawel Dobrowolski) Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service Date: 26 Jan 1994 01:27:45 GMT Organization: Harvard University Science Center > None the less, it warms my heart to read messages from you guys > singling out telco as the one utility service which you feel should be > an exception to the 'pay for what you use' rule. Correct me if I am wrong but local call costs are very usage insensitive (the costs of running a local telephone exchange will be virtually the same if we are calling all the time or if we never use our telephones). Pawel Dobrowolski [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are costs involved with the common equipment and the amount of it in place which to large extent detirmined by how much the phone is used. Even so, why shouldn't telco get paid for the value of the service? PAT] ------------------------------ From: whs70@cc.bellcore.com (sohl,william h) Subject: Re: ISDN NT1 Power Source Date: 26 Jan 1994 13:21:22 -0500 Organization: Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) In article , Paul D. Guthrie wrote: > I'm looking for a couple of answers about some ISDN questions that > experience and Stalling's ISDN book have both left me unclear on. > First, a CPE can be line powered (the AT&T 7506 e.g.), but my > experience with NT1's are that they must be DC powered (but I've only > dealt with rack mounted units). Can NT1's be line powered? I am unaware of any "line powering" of ISDN CPE in the USA. Perhaps what is meant by "line powering" of the AT&T 7506 is that the NT-1 and associated power supply is located in a telephone equipment closet somewhere at a customer location and that is the power supply for the 7506. As to NT1s, the same applies. In the USA, there is no power provided via the ISDN line to power either the NT1 or any CPE behind it. > Next, where are the RBOCs putting NT1s for normal residential ISDN > hookups? Since the U interface range is much longer than the T > interfaces, it would make sense to put NT1s at the customer site > (especially for multipoint ISDN hookups, which shorten the T > interface). Is this being done in practice? The NT1 is provided (in the USA) by the customer, so there is no option on the part of the telephone company. Any residential ISDN line brings the 2 wire U interface directly to the customer's residence and then the customer (or an authorized agent) installs the NT1 and all other equipment. > My reasons for asking about this are to determine whether ISDN > residential lines are "lifeline" capable in all cases. I.E. can they > make outgoing operator and 911 calls when powere to the residence is > out? Simple answer is ... not at this time. That concept, however, is being studied to see if a combination of "load shedding" and/or a reversion to a POTS only capability may be a possibility. It is not, however, a current capability. Other scenarios include battery backup for the NT1 and the telephone capability of the CPE, etc. Bill Sohl (K2UNK) BELLCORE (Bell Communications Research, Inc.) Morristown, NJ email via UUCP bcr!cc!whs70 201-829-2879 Weekdays email via Internet whs70@cc.bellcore.com ------------------------------ From: whs70@cc.bellcore.com (sohl,william h) Subject: Re: ISDN Primer and Video Uses Date: 26 Jan 1994 13:52:02 -0500 Organization: Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) In article , Lee Sweet wrote: > 1. Anybody know of a good primer re ISDN: uses, options, equipment > required/optional? (I saw only one book at the local tech bookstore, > and that was a 1/4" volume for USD 79.00 (!) with way-too-technical > contents. Maybe I want Carl's _Phone_Book_ updated for ISDN ;-) ? Try "A Catalog of National ISDN Solutions for Selected NIUF (National ISDN Users Forum) Applications," Issue 2 draft, Document # GP-1. You can order it from Bellcore ($43) at 1-800-521-2673. > 2. (1) above caused by request to immediately install two ISDN BRI [I > do know these are basic rate lines: 2 X 64 kbps + 16 kbps control, > right?] lines for evaluation a video-conferencing system (from > PictureTel, I believe). Question: Is ~128kbps enough for usable > video? I though good video needed at least T1-level data? I believe > the application is for consulting, which needs much more detail than > just showing the 'talking heads'. That depends on the amount of motion you expect to have. The 128Kbs videoconferencing has proven to be more than acceptable for video meetings, even though some "smearing" may occasionally happen if the motion in the picture is too much for the encoding algorithim to keep up with at 128Kb. > 3. Can I assume that the twisted-pair we have installed is fine for > ISDN? It works for 10base-T ethernet, so ... should be fine, right? > Lee Sweet Internet *lists* - leesweet@datatel.com The twisted pair you have is probably OK. ISDN was designed to be deployed over conventional telephone lines, so anything that would work for a plain old telephone service should be OK for the ISDN line. Bellcore ISDN Hotline: 1-800-992-ISDN Bill Sohl (K2UNK) BELLCORE (Bell Communications Research, Inc.) Morristown, NJ email via UUCP bcr!cc!whs70 201-829-2879 Weekdays email via Internet whs70@cc.bellcore.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #45 *****************************