TELECOM Digest     Wed, 4 May 94 00:20:00 CDT    Volume 14 : Issue 199

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Question About Digital Telephony and Delayed Dial Tone (John Lundgren)
    Re: Internet Access in Kenya (John Lundgren)
    Re: Unwelcome AT&T "Feature" (David H. Close)
    Re: NPA Optional in 818 - it Works! (David H. Close)
    Re: Motorola "Advisor" Pager Information Wanted (Thomas Baird)
    Re: Help: Programming Motorola 550 and Fujitsu Cmdr (Hans-Gabriel Ridder)
    Re: Any Modem Decode DTMF? (puma@netcom.com)
    Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Probably Dead (Supak Lailert)
    Re: Government Regulates Number of Modem Redial Atttempts? (Dave Niebuhr)
    Re: DID Loophole or I'm Screwed up? (Alan Leon Varney)
    Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet (John Anderson)
    Re: Equal Access in Canada (Tony Harminc)
    Re: Bell Atlantic Gets Maryland Competition (Carl Moore)
    Re: Bell Atlantic Gets Maryland Competition (Gregory P. Monti)
    Re: Fight A*vertising! Petition! No, Don't. (John R. Levine)
    Re: CO's and Disasters (Tom Board)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com (John Lundgren)
Subject: Re: Question About Digital Telephony and Delayed Dial Tone
Date: 03 May 94 18:22:01 GMT
Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network


My understanding was at this time, if you have ISDN, or 2B+D, you have
a full channel all the way to the CO.  That goes for POTS too, even if
your pots line runs into a SLIC channel bank at the corner.  You still
get a dedicated 'bit in the bitstream'.  It seems obvious to me that
this can't continue when the home gets a coax to the nearest 'muxer',
and then the muxer talks to the central office using fiber optics.
But still, if the telco expects to offer the mythical 500 channels and
all the other stuff too, then the bandwidth of all the links to the
CO, and beyond will have to be increased.  To offer T1 to the home,
where the home already has ISDN, would mean an increase in bandwidth
of appx. 12.  That doesn't sound unreasonable, and could be done by
the telco.

------------------------------

From: jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com (John Lundgren)
Subject: Re: Internet Access in Kenya
Date: 03 May 94 18:51:12 GMT
Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network


Elmar Bob (elmar@bug.co.jp) wrote:

> I am posting this for a friend who will be going to Kenya very soon and
> would like to find out whether she can gain access to the internet somehow
> over there.

My ex-boss's wife is in Kenya.  They have a FIDO Net setup, according
to what info I can find.  She says that the last few miles of phone
lines is so bad that it's difficult to do anything serious by modem.
I think the name of the city/town/place/oasis/water hole she's in is
Athi River.  Best of success ...

------------------------------

From: dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu (David H. Close)
Subject: Re: Unwelcome AT&T "Feature"
Date: 3 May 1994 05:27:10 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena


Re the cut off of unanswered calls: my answering machine is designed
to be able to turn itself on, if I forget to, upon receiving rings for
a long time. (I don't remember the time but my experience is that it
takes about 12 rings. I then have to enter my code to complete the
activation.)  Seems to me that AT&T's feature would make this nice
feature unusable.


Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa  dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu 
dave@compata.attmail.com 


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No, not at all. Your machine turns itself
on after 12 rings, or approximatly one minute. AT&T is letting calls
ring for at least two or three minutes before cutting them off. Anyway,
how often would it be the case that you forgot to turn your machine on
and an out-of-town call was the first one to arrive thereafrer (instead
of say, a local call, or your own call checking for messages, etc?)  PAT]

------------------------------

From: dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu (David H. Close)
Subject: Re: NPA Optional in 818 - it Works!
Date: 3 May 1994 05:30:56 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena


justfred@netcom.com (Fred Heald) writes:

> My phone is in 818 (but I'm travelling all over LA, 213, 909, 310,
> 714, 805, 619, and all.  Not 524 yet, but soon I'm sure.  So I tend to
> always dial the entire number (1-NPA-NXX-XXXX) first, and get the
> ridiculous message "We are sorry, it is not necesary to dial one and
> the area code for this call".  Well, this morning (in fact, calling
> Netcom) I accidentally dialed the 1-818, and the call went through!

I just tried it in 714 and it worked for me. I think this is great!


Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa   dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu 
dave@compata.attmail.com 

------------------------------

From: tmb1@SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM (Thomas Baird)
Subject: Re: Motorola "Advisor" Pager Information Wanted
Organization: AT&T GIS (San Diego, CA)
Date: Tue, 3 May 94 16:51:00 GMT


Pat_Barron@transarc.com wrote:

> Does anyone have technical info on the Motorola "Advisor" alphanumeric
> pager?  Specifically, any sort of configuration or status report
> modes, and/or what one can do with the serial port that seems to be on
> the bottom of the unit.

Also has Motorola published the interface information for accessing
the "advisor" from an IBM PC? I talked to a salesman and his only
knowledge was it could be accesed from a PC and the maximum message
size was 2000 characters per message.


Tom

------------------------------

From: ridder@zowie.zso.dec.com (Hans)
Subject: Re: Help: Programming Motorola 550 and Fujitsu Commander
Date: 3 May 1994 17:35:13 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation - DECwest Engineering


In article <telecom14.194.8@eecs.nwu.edu> puma@netcom.com (puma) writes:

> In article <telecom14.182.7@eecs.nwu.edu>, Lance Ware <lware@voxel.com> 
> wrote:

>> I need help with programming these two cell phones. Specifically I
>> need to program the phone numbers, and get the ESN so that I may have
>> them both put on the same phone number.

>> This is legitimate, I am not interested in going to jail for many
>> years!

> You may consider it legitimate, but it's a violation of federal
> regulations and also contrary to your contract with the service
> provider.

[...]

> The ESN's are supposed to be a permanent part of the phone, and not
> changeable without replacing the ROM.

I don't know what the regulations or contracts say, but I can read.
Note that Mr. Ware asks only how to "get" the ESN, not "change" it.  I
don't believe merely *knowing* the ESN violates any federal law.  It's
also hard for me to believe that changing the phone number is illegal
(although his phone may cease to function.)

Please don't overreact to people simply wanting information about the
programming of their phone.  No doubt Mr. Ware should be talking to
his service provider to arrange the phones the way he wants.


Hans-Gabriel Ridder <ridder@rust.zso.dec.com>
DECwest Engineering, Bellevue, Washington, USA

------------------------------

From: puma@netcom.com (puma)
Subject: Re: Any Modem Decode DTMF?
Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 18:31:49 GMT


In article <telecom14.195.6@eecs.nwu.edu>, mark boylan <boylanm@iia.
org> wrote:

> Is there a modem that can accept and decode DTMF tones after it's
> answered an incoming call?  And also, how can I send the output of a
> SoundBlaster card over the same phone line?  I'm trying to write an
> app that will allow a caller to select a .WAV file from just a phone,
> and then listen to it.

There are several modems that will do that, mostly the better (read,
higher priced) ones.  The USR dual standard will, with the following
commands ...

 ATH1%T

The H1 takes the modem off-hook, the %T reads the touchtone.  Sending
a character or dropping DTR will hang up the line.


puma@netcom.com

------------------------------

From: lailert@ucssun1.sdsu.edu (Supak Lailert "spk")
Subject: Re: AT&T Public Phone 2000 Probably Dead
Date: 3 May 1994 18:40:44 GMT
Organization: San Diego State University Computing Services


Hans (ridder@zowie.zso.dec.com) wrote:

> I was in the Alaska Airlines terminal at the Seattle-Tacoma airport
> two weeks ago, and saw a couple of Public Phone 2000's *with
> keyboard*.  I didn't have time to check them out ... I assume they
> were working since after the tariff problems all the keyboards seem to
> have been removed.

Yes, keyboard is there but it won't work as data terminal. It works
only as a TDD device. 8-(


Supak Lailert -- MBA (Information System) Program, San Diego State University
lailert@ucssun1.sdsu.edu     lailert@aol.com

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 3 May 94 14:53:54 EDT
From: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (Dave Niebuhr)
Subject: Re: Government Regulates Number of Modem Redial Attempts?


In TELECOM Digest V14 #195 tdgilman@iris-1.CE.Berkeley.EDU (Tim D.
Gilman) wrote:

> I was trying out new modem software yesterday, and under the option
> where one can specify the number of redial attempts before giving up,
> something like the following reads: "Governement regulations may limit
> you to 10 redials maximum."  I had never heard anything about this.
> Out of simple curiosity, could someone enlighten myself (or others as
> well) on this matter?

and the TELECOM Digest Editor noted:

> That has been the case in Canada for quite
> a few years and I think it is true here in the USA also now. The reason is
> a modem has no way of knowing it is dialing a wrong number and being
> offensive to the human victim at the other end ... and some owners of
> modems could care less :

Text deleted for brevity.

> But the way they have it now with limits on the redial attempts is
> the next best solution.  PAT]

With my modem, which has a ten memory location, I could easily
misoprogram the unit and not know it unless I caught it during a
dialing sequence.  Looking away or being otherwise occupied during the
dialing, I would not be aware of a misdail and just call up the
number's location.

Granted, there are problems with these types of calls.  I sure
wouldn't want to be the recipient of them and hopefully won't in the
future.


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  1+(516) 282-3093
                                          FAX   1+(516) 282-7688

------------------------------

From: Alan.Leon.Varney@att.com
Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 14:27:49 +0600
Subject: Re: DID Loophole or I'm Screwed up?
Organization: AT&T Network Systems


In article <telecom14.194.4@eecs.nwu.edu> Jonathan <jdl@wam.umd.edu>
responded to TELECOM Digest Editor:

>> TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only asked to correct the problem,
>> but in some instances if telco really wants to get tough about it they
>> may choose to back-bill an estimated amount lost on completed calls
>> which went unsupervised. Illinois Bell found a company here in Chicago
>> deliberatly playing games like that and back-billed them a
>> half-million dollars covering calls over a five year period. The
>> company protested of course, but all the facts pointed to them doing
>> it on purpose as toll-avoidance; they were slow to answer their phones
>> because they did not want to hire the help needed to do so promptly
>> and they were playing a tape recorded music on hold 'all positions
>> busy please wait for an available agent' message to their callers for
>> five or ten minutes at a time. Their customers squawked about the cost
>> of *their* calls as a result so the company gerry-rigged the system to
>> not supervise until they got ready to handle the call.
>> ....  Telco did not get all they asked for, but they collected a nice
>> chunk of it. So be careful about playing games with supervision. If
>> telco wants to do so, they'll work you over good to show who is boss.

> Sounds pretty ingenious to me.  I would like to note a few things:

> 1.  No meaningful conversation occurred until after the company turned
> supervision on.

   Per FCC Part 68 and TELCo tariffs, anything other than audible ring
and busy tone (with some exceptions) is "meaningful" -- and the call
must be supervised (answered).  This includes calls routed to
TELCo-operated Voice Mail systems, which have been known to forget ...

> 2.  The telephone company could have been nicer about the whole thing.
> Instead of waiting for five years and then billing for half a million
> dollars, why not send a warning to the company within one month and
> then bill them shortly thereafter?  There must be a way for the
> telephone company to automatically detect this kind of stunt.

   Nope.  Nothing automatic until a bunch of PBXs started playing this
game several years ago, probably as the result of a "PBX underground"
passing the word.  But the tariffs are usually very clear about when
supervision must be returned.  There have been arguments about the
"glitch" in busy tone during call forwarding to voice mail, etc.  I
don't know if supervision must be returned at the time of forwarding
or not -- but certainly anything beyond busy/audible ring REQUIRES
supervision.

   TELCos today would not take five years to find the culprit.  Nor
would they be likely be nice enough to accept less than the full
settlement.  Maybe they would throw in a little extra for the
investigation's costs.  Just waving around the tariff and talking
"fraud" with the CEO and the DAs office will usually get the matter
resolved quickly.


Al Varney

------------------------------

From: andrsonj@rtsg.mot.com (John Anderson)
Subject: Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet
Date: 3 May 94 20:08:38 GMT
Organization: Motorola Cellulsr Infrastructure Group


andrsonj@rtsg.mot.com (John Anderson) writes:

> Here's an example of how to get a list of all users named "anderson":

> mail mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
> Subject:
> send usenet-addresses/anderson

I have learned that to use the above service, it is preferable to mail
to:
  "mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu"


Regards,

John D. Anderson, M.S.          Motorola, Inc.                   
Internet: andrsonj@rtsg.mot.com 1475 W. Shure Drive              
          johnanderson@acm.org  Arlington Heights, IL, USA 60004 
Phone:    +1-708-632-4259       Mail Stop: IL75-1C5              


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Just my curiosity -- why is it better or
preferable to write to the one address instead of the other?   PAT]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 03 May 94 18:45:55 EDT
From: Tony Harminc <EL406045@BROWNVM.brown.edu>
Subject: Re: Equal Access in Canada


Carl Moore <cmoore@BRL.MIL> wrote:

> Back in January, I went to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. before turning
> around back into the U.S.  I got to a pay phone on 705-759 there, and
> 10288 didn't work (I then omitted it, got the "boing" for Bell Canada,
> then punched in my AT&T card number and the call, going to the U.S.,
> went through).  The call didn't make it to my phone bill until March,
> and it was in the AT&T part of the bill.  So there are no 10xxx codes
> currently useable in Canada?

Right now - no.  They are coming on 1st July.  But see below.

> The Orange Card did work from there.  That went through as being from
> "800" as happens in many places in the U.S.

The proprietors of the Orange Card have chosen to allow their 800
number to be reached from Canadian points.  Once the call is in their
system they can do what they like with it.  They are doubtless paying
fairly outrageous rates to (currently) the local monopoly 800 carrier
in whatever part of Canada you call from.  Whether their charge to you
reflects this is an interesting question.

Moderator's note to a following post:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have been told it will by and large
> follow the USA numbering scheme; i.e. 10288 for Mother, 10222 for MCI,
> etc. with Canadian-only carriers getting a few numbers as well.   PAT]

Well I'm not so sure.  The national and regional Canadian carriers
will have their own 10xxxs, but it's not clear to me that US (or any
other foreign) carriers will suddenly find that their 10xxx codes work
 from Canada.  Are all these US carriers really going to install
facilities at all the access tandems across the country?  Who in
Canada is going to dial those US 10xxxs?  It seems an unlikely
investment just to keep US visitors like Carl happy when they use a
payphone on their trip.  And it seems highly unlikely that US carriers
are going to pull fibre across the country just for this.  So presumably 
if they do want a point of presence they'll lease capacity from the exist-
ing carriers in Canada.

I'm sure the 10xxx (or should we be saying 10xxxx?) numbers will not
clash across the border, but I wouldn't bet on your favourite US
carrier magically starting service on 1st July.


Tony Harminc

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 3 May 94 16:44:41 EDT
From: Carl Moore <cmoore@BRL.MIL>
Subject: Re: Bell Atlantic Gets Maryland Competition


How would local telephone directories' lists of prefixes, calling
areas, etc. be affected?  (I now live in Maryland, but away from the
DC area.)


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll tell you what is done here in Chicago
although technically it is not 'competition' and there is no overlapping
of territory. Centel has Park Ridge/Des Plaines, IL along with a very
tiny section of Chicago. Their Chicago subscribers are listed in the
Illinois Bell directory for Chicago (it is transparent, just the address
and phone number like any other listing which is actually IBT) but in
addition, Centel has their own directory entitled "Chicago-Newcastle".
Their switching equipment for Chicago customers is in the Newcastle CO
on Miner Street. And while they have one set of tariffs for their sub-
scribers in Park Ridge and Des Plaines, they have a different tariff
for their Chicago subscribers which closely parallels that of IBT.   PAT] 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 19:18:01 EDT
From: Gregory P. Monti <gmonti@cap.gwu.edu>
Subject: Re: Bell Atlantic Gets Maryland Competition


On Mon, 2 May 1994, Carl Moore wrote:

> How would local telephone directories' lists of prefixes, calling
> areas, etc. be affected?

This is one of many issues that were not mentioned in the story I
summarized.  I suspect there are a host of them.  For example, if MFS
elects to use a smaller number of central offices than Bell Atlantic,
but covers a larger land area with each one, what does that do to
local calling areas?

It could be that a call in one direction from one company to another
will be local, but it would be toll in the other direction.

This is not unlike cellular.  My cell phone is 'databased' to
Bethesda, Maryland, but has an enormous local (airtime charges only)
calling area consisting of the entire Washington and Baltimore LATAs
approximately.  A call from the Bethesda cellular to Aberdeen, MD, is
local.  But a call from a landline phone in Aberdeen to Bethesda
(about 75 miles) is toll.

Same issue if a cable operator installs a telephony CO in his
head-end.  Arlington is served by six telco COs (which are not all in
the same rate zone) but only one cable head-end.

I guess we're going to have to learn a whole new mess of rules.


Greg Monti   Arlington, Virginia, USA

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 3 May 94 17:09 EDT
From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine)
Subject: Re: Fight A*vertising! Petition! No, Don't.
Organization: I.E.C.C., Cambridge, Mass.


> I support legislation against advertising on the internet.

Oh, Lord.  One bozo bombs the net with tacky advertising, and now we
want to start passing laws.

Before we do that, it would be nice to decide what's the Internet
(Usenet?  That includes large amounts of UUCP, Fido, etc. directly
connected Internet?  E-mail? Who knows?)

And for that matter, what's advertising?  If I post a message in a
telecom group about some used phone equipment I'm selling, is that an
ad?  What if I have a Gopher or WWW server that returns such info on
demand?

I'm as cheezed as anyone about Canter's junk news bombing, but the
solution is for Internet providers to get more sophisticated about
regulating their users (as Internet Direct has now done), and perhaps
some technical fixes so that we can decline to receive news and mail
from known antisocial sites.

Incidentally, if we can figure out to deal with Canter, we can deal
with anyone.  Someone recently posted a note reporting that he was
effectively disbarred in Florida (actually, resigned before they
disbarred him) due to unethical and possibly illegal dealings with
immigration clients.  He can fairly be described as a slimeball.

> We must stop happenings like this with legislation so that the 'infor-
> mation highway' ... doesn't become expensive and riddled with a*vertisi*g.

Expensive?  Advertising generally makes media cheaper -- newspapers
are delivered for far below the cost of production, and TV is delivered 
free courtesy of ads.  There are cogent arguments to be made about adver-
tising on Usenet and Internet, but cost to the users isn't one of them.

I note that the primary backbone Internet carriers are now Sprint,
MCI, and AT&T, roughly in that order, so I expect that the Information
Supercollider will end up fused with the phone system more than with
the TV biz.  This suggests that it won't be advertiser sponsored.


Regards,

John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com

------------------------------

From: tboard@nwu.edu (Tom Board)
Subject: Re: CO's and Disasters
Date: 4 May 1994 00:36:07 GMT
Organization: Northwestern University


In article <telecom14.197.16@eecs.nwu.edu>, tsw@cypher.apple.com (Tom
Watson) wrote:

> ......  This load-leveling (there is a snazzy term for it, but I
> don't remember) usually relates to the priorities in getting dial
> tone.  

In the DMS-100 central office switch, this feature is called Line Load
Control (LLC).  It is assigned to a line like any other feature (e.g.,
call waiting).  During an emergency, when the CO switch is having
difficulty completing calls or delivering dialtone, the controlling
technician can force the switch into Line Load Control mode via a
console command.  At that point, the switch will not recognize
off-hook events unless the line has the LLC feature programmed.  This
has the effect to reducing demand on the switch and stabilizing
service to those lines with the feature attached.


Tom Board    tboard@nwu.edu

------------------------------

End of TELECOM Digest V14 #199
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