From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Aug 12 11:23:13 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id LAA00901; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 11:23:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 11:23:13 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199608121523.LAA00901@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #401 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Aug 96 11:23:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 401 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Republicans Come to Town - The Lights Go Out! (Stephen Satchell) Re: Republicans Come to Town - The Lights Go Out! (Steven Lichter) "Genuine Nynex Payphone" Limiting Number of Touch Tone Digits (D. Burstein) "Wrong numbers" in Britain (Dave Close) Help Needed With Apartment Building Wiring (scorpio1@interport.net) Re: 612/320 and Beyond (John Cropper) Re: 612/320 and Beyond (Rob Wood) Re: Pay Phone 800 Number Charge? (Kyle Rhorer) Re: Satellite TV Services (Larry Irons) Re: Number Crunch (Ron Kritzman) Re: Number Crunch (Clint Gilliland) Re: ISDN D-Channel Data and Internet Voice (John Agosta) Re: How Low Can Loop Voltage Go? (Jean-Francois Mezei) Re: Why Do US Online Phone Directories Only Have Stale Data? (Mike Fox) Re: Caller ID: Names Passed Between LECs? (Art Kamlet) Re: Caller ID: Names Passed Between LECs? (Tony Harminc) Re: Touch Tones in Movies? (Ed Ellers) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 01:45:21 -0700 From: satchell@accutek.com (Stephen Satchell) Subject: Re: Republicans Come to Town - The Lights Go Out! Organization: Satchell Evaluations In article , ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: > So, the weekend brought another major power outage to the western USA > once again. Millions of people without power -- most important perhaps > their lights and air-conditioning in hundred degree temperatures -- > for several hours. Tsk, tsk ... > As the Republicans were arriving in southern California for their > convention, the power went out. What a great way to greet your visitors, > guys! > Anyone have the true story/facts/excuses made this time around? From San Francisco radio station KCBS during the coverage (I was at ISPone during the fiasco): At the Oregon/California border, the monitors on the Pacific Intertie detected that there was a frequency mismatch, and the breakers operated as they were supposed to. This caused a HUGE load-shedding event in nine states as the local generators could not begin to keep up with demand. The interesting point about this is that the shedding was spotty. For example, the area around Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco (the center itself, and the traffic lights around it) had power, but two blocks away in just about any direction the power was GONE. Even more funny, as area by area would be restored, sometimes the newly-restored area would drop again, sometimes only after minutes. My home in Incline Village (Lake Tahoe) never lost power, based on the fact that my VCR and microwave oven all show the correct time and not "blinking 12s". I don't know if Reno, Virginia City, or Carson City lost power, but I'll find out on Monday when I compare notes at the local restaurant here. Footnote: when I was driving home, I discovered that Vacaville -- on I-80 about 50 miles east of SF -- had lost power *today*. Stephen Satchell, Satchell Evaluations http://www.accutek.com/~satchell ------------------------------ From: slichte@cello.gina.calstate.edu (Steven Lichter) Subject: Re: Republicans Come to Town - The Lights Go Out! Date: 12 Aug 1996 05:34:21 -0700 Organization: GINA and CORE+ Services of The California State University ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) writes: > As the Republicans were arriving in southern California for their > convention, the power went out. What a great way to greet your visitors, > guys! > Anyone have the true story/facts/excuses made this time around? The power outage I'm sure you know effected everyone from Canada to Mexico and as far east as Texas. They are saying it was a fire that caused wires feeding California to short which in turn caused breakers all over the west to shut down and operate on their own, leaving California with not enough power and the northwest with too much. The outage was from a few seconds to several hours with a couple of areas being out over 24 hours. It caused a bit of a problem because I saw where many stop lights went nuts once the power came back on and all the electronic ran gas pumps had to be reset; I was getting gas at the time and was a little annoyed even thought the power came back right away since I had to wait another five minutes for them to reset. My systems at home stayed on since I have a rather large UPS that was made for a Lan, so all was fine here, with the exception of my air conditioner being a little confused for a while. SysOp Apple Elite II and OggNet Hub (909)359-5338 2400/14.4 24 hours, Home of GBBS/LLUCE Support for the Apple II and Macintosh computers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 05:26:05 EDT From: danny burstein Subject: "Genuine Nynex Payphone" Limiting Number of Touch Tone Digits Maybe someone could explain the rationale behind this one? I can't figure out any. To make this even more ironic I discovered the problem when calling a Nynex number ... Earlier today I paid my (home) Nynex bill at an authorized payment location. (These are "outsourced" by Nynex, which has very, very, few of their own offices, or employees, anymore). After getting my receipt I called Nynex's automated accounting system to let it know I had paid. This involves a 1-800 number, then punching in the billing number, a code, etc. About two thirds of the way through the menu sequences I got a synthesized voice announcement which said something like "no additional digits may be dialed at this time". And sure enough, anytime I hit a touch tone key I heard the tone, then got the same msg. I suspect that the tone I heard was _not_ sent over the link, and that the voice I heard was generated by the payphone itself, but I can't readily verify this. Anyway, I've been scratching my head to come up with a reason why a "genuine Nynex payphone" (i.e., not a cocot) would have any use for such a limit, and can't come up with any that warrant the disruption and annoyance such a "feature" provides. Oh, I'll be sending off a PSC complaint a bit later today, as I can easily see this blocking my access to other voicemail systems as well as my long distance carrier. dannyb@panix.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Hint ... it has something to do with drug dealers using payphones and the other nemesis of society, toll fraud. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dave Close Subject: "Wrong numbers" in Britain Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 23:01:28 -0700 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California To avoid copyright infringement, I'll merely send along the URL. This article discusses the issue of phone number exhaustion in Britain and the continent. http://www.economist.com/issue/10-08-96/br3.html Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu ------------------------------ From: scorpio1@interport.net Subject: Help Needed With Apartment Building Wiring Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 10:06:42 -0400 Organization: Interport Communications Corp. I have is this question; I'm in NY my telco is NYNEX. Where I live there are two buildings, that share a inside wall, and other things. We have a main line that come from a pole, to one of the building's basement; like 150ft to 200ft, from the pole to the building basement. From there the main line splits in to two, one for each building going like 75ft each apart to each box. These are the old terminal boxes that need a nut wrench to connect the wires. There is so much of a mess in the boxes with a bunch of wires every- where, that when telco comes to repair or connect a new service always they break someone else's line. I told them that if this happen again I not going to let anyone go there and work in the lines; they better fix it from the street. Usually when some line is not working, the first thing they said is that the problem is in the basement. I know for a fact that the problem is not there; the problem is where the other telco men are working on the street someplace else and breaking the lines on there. Later they want to come to the building and try to find an empty pair so they can change the line to other pair. 1) Can I tell NYNEX to put a new box (one 66 block or two 66 blocks ) where the main cable enters the basement; just there instead of the two boxes? I think one place is much better, so all the lines from each building can go to only one place. Can I specify what type of block like cat 4 or 5 or can I buy a 66 block myself, install it there and tell NYNEX to put all the wires in there? 2) Can I make them change the old main line, and put a new from the basement box to the pole or some where else? Can I specify what type and how many wires, I think 100 to 200 pairs is enough, since there is a total of 24 apartments between buildings. 3) Right know the main line that is coming to the buildings sucks. In that line are I think ten exchanges. None of them offers ISDN or some of the other services like CALL ANSWERING, etc. The problem is that the line routes to some place and that place don't support this services, some of the exchanges do, but since they route to that place is not way to get some of the services. Is there anything that I can do about it?. 4) Is there going to be any charge to the building or that is the telco responsibility. Any ideas, or other things that I can ask them. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You raise a lot of questions and I will answer just a few and pass the others along to whoever wants to answer them. First of all, you do not indicate if you are the landlord (or the landlord's representative) or simply a tenant in the building. If you are the latter, there is nothing at all you can do. If you are the landlord's representative, i.e. caretaker for the property, then I would suggest the best thing you might do is speak to a foreman or supervisor at Nynex responsible for outside plant and tell them what you said here. Tell them you believe it is time to install a new demarc and completely organize/identify the wire pairs coming in to the buildings because of the repeated problems with service interupptions and other problems identifying each subscriber's wires. I do not think you can force them to change any of their own equipment/wiring, and it does belong to them until it reaches the terminal box. From that point on throughout the building is sort of a grey area: some telcos define 'demarc' as the point where the wires enter each individual tenant's apartment. In other cases 'demarc' is the spot in the building where all the 'house pair' wires take over from the wires coming in from outside the building. Typically in real old buildings such as yours, most telcos are willing to make a liberal definition of 'demarc' and not hold the landlord/tenants responsible for the costs of replacement/repair, particularly if telco did all the inside wiring as well how ever many decades ago. See if you can speak with someone in authority at Nynex involved in outside plant repairs and maintainence and relate what you said here. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 06:23:05 GMT Subject: Re: 612/320 and Beyond From: psyber@usa.pipeline.com (John Cropper) On Aug 08, 1996 23.53.40, '"Rob Wood" ' wrote: > I recently had the opportunity to review a US West flyer relating to > NPA 320 and found out that 612 will be down to its final 54 prefixes > by late August. Hopefully Round 2 will not cut it as close. If 612 keeps adding prefixes at the rate it has the first two quarters of this year, US West should begin another permissive period NO LATER than 4Q96, to be mandatory 4Q97. Given the reduced area, I'd have to recommend an overlay this time around ... > Once the permissive period ends, I count 244 prefixes comfortably > available. Therefore, I would anticipate that at the rate we're > using phone numbers, Round 2 may start late 1997 since relief may be > needed perhaps summer 1998 ... Much sooner, I'm afraid ... AT&T's "big experiment" in local service will be in Chicago (they'll actually be laying their *own* fiber). I'm sure they'll want to test the waters in other nearby markets, and this could intensify number consumption. > The vast majority of 612's NXX's will consist of the Twin Cittes > calling area. All calls between any number in the region are local > calls. Therefore, I expect the debate over the next relief to be a > contentious one, since we would be looking at ten-digit local calls. As I said above, an overlay would probably be the recommendation of anyone with common sense. Unfortunately, the heavy hitters (AT&T, MCI, et al.) won't let it happen without a fight. John Cropper * NiS / NexComm Content is the sole property of the * PO Box 277 originating poster. Please relegate * Pennington, NJ USA 08534-0277 ALL on-topic responses to this * Inside NJ : 609.637.9434 newsgroup. Unsolicited private mail * Outside NJ: 888.NPA.NFO2 (672.6362) is prohibited, and will be referred * Fax : 609.637.9430 unabridged to sender's ISP. * email: psyber@usa.pipeline.com ------------------------------ From: Rob Wood Organization: Rob Wood - Minnetonka, MN USA Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 09:01:12 -0500 Subject: Re: 612/320 and Beyond John Cropper responded: > AT&T's "big experiment" in local service will be in Chicago (they'll > actually be laying their *own* fiber). I'm sure they'll want to test the > waters in other nearby markets, and this could intensify number > consumption. >> The vast majority of 612's NXX's will consist of the Twin Cittes >> calling area. All calls between any number in the region are local >> calls. Therefore, I expect the debate over the next relief to be a >> contentious one, since we would be looking at ten-digit local calls ... > As I said above, an overlay would probably be the recommendation of anyone > with common sense. Unfortunately, the heavy hitters (AT&T, MCI, et al.) > won't let it happen without a fight. Given that Minnesota considered an overlay this time, I would be surprised to see an overlay in this case. Mandatory dialing of the NPA for long distance in all cases came in September 1994 - to all parts of Minnesota at the same time, and I doubt that mandatory ten-digit local dialing will sell well outside the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Hence, I am thinking split instead of overlay. However, I am envisioning a lengthy battle with various municipalities jockeying for position on the matter - CO's do not seem to respect city or county boundaries to a major extent. I anticipate that the dialing scheme will be akin to the Seattle area following the three-way split in Round 2. Rob Wood robwoo19@skypoint.com Minnetonka, MN USA ------------------------------ From: rhorer@phoenix.net (Kyle Rhorer) Subject: Re: Pay Phone 800 Number Charge? Date: 11 Aug 1996 23:55:14 GMT Organization: KB5IMO Wes Leatherock (wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com) wrote: > You must not have visited Texas recently. I did, a month or > month and a half ago, and did not find a single pay phone which did > not charge for calls to 800 numbers. (I also did not find a single > SWBT [RBOC] pay phone, although I noted a few such indicated by > signs at places where I did not need to make a call.) I have lived in Texas my whole life, and have only encountered ONE pay phone that wanted money to complete an 800 call. I'm sure that just like everything else, policies vary from region to region (and Texas *is* a big state), but generally speaking it has been my experience that 800 calls from Texas pay phones are still free. Kyle Rhorer rhorer@phoenix.net http://www.phoenix.net/~rhorer ------------------------------ From: Larry Irons Subject: Re: Satellite TV Services Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 23:07:46 -0600 Organization: Qadas Online Curtis Wheeler wrote: > On another note. While this is not really laid out in black and > white, you don't necessarily have the right to do what you wish with > radio signals coming into your back yard. At least this is the > argument I would use if I was representing the government in court. The > way I look at it, when the communications act of 1934 was adopted, and > the FCC was created, the radio spectrum in the U.S. was, for practical > purposes, comdemned by the government under what may be called it's > imminent domain. Just like they can condemn your house and force you > to move so they can put in a freeway. Essentially the regulated > "airwaves" have an easment in your back yard. The government took > over because it was obvious that technologies were going to require > that the spectrum be managed and regulated if it was going to do the > public any good. > Could you imagine what it would be like today if there was no management > of radio spectrum and everyone just did as they please? When the federal govenrment condemns property, they must compensate the individual for its fair market value. That's written in the Bill of Rights. If the Federal government seized all radio frequencies for their own use, did they take something without due process and without due compensation. In other words, have they compensated my ancestors, myself, and my descendants for the control of the airwaves. Obviously, prior to the FCC, the airwaves were unregulated and free to be used by anyone without payment. Today, the government auctions off the frequency bands to the highest bidder. Where is my royalty? Now that's a case that I await. Larry Irons irons@qadas.com Lakewood, Colorado [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No more smart talk like that from you if you please. If you keep making suggestions like that, you will get listed as one of those 'extreme right' type people the government is trying so hard to get rid of right now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ron Kritzman Subject: Re: Number Crunch Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 09:15:22 GMT Organization: Kritzman Communications Lauren Weinstein wrote: > First, it is far too easy for entities to reserve huge blocks of > numbers for services before they are needed, eating up large segments > of the numbering space. My many years in the beeper business confirm this. If you want the telcos to connect you as a telco rather than as an end user, you get whole prefixes and take T spans (or higher) from the tandems. When you're running 30,000 calls per hour through your paging switch, you can hardly sit there as an end user hanging off of whatever CO is local to your office building. However, when you hit subscriber 50,001 you need 10,000 more numbers. As early as 1980 someone suggested going back to "overdial" paging to avoid a future number crunch. (Overdial is where instead of each pager having a phone number the caller dials an access number to get into the paging system, then punches in the pager number.) The phone companies, he said, could set up a special three digit access code instead of a seven digit number. This would allow the callers to dial three digits, then the pager number. Hey ... wait a minute ... that sounds like an overlay areacode for wireless. DOH! Ron ------------------------------ From: clintcrg@aol.com (Clint CRG) Subject: Re: Number Crunch Date: 11 Aug 1996 14:10:30 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: clintcrg@aol.com (Clint CRG) There are costs to reserving numbers. Pacific Tel charges us $45 per 100 numbers for our DID blocks. There is a $1500 charge if we release the numbers before two years. You can't tie up large blocks of numbers without some cost. This prevents frivolus hoarding. Clint Gilliland TCI/BR Communications Sunnyvale, CA ------------------------------ From: jagosta@interaccess.com (John Agosta) Subject: Re: ISDN D-Channel Data and Internet Voice Date: 11 Aug 1996 16:01:05 GMT Organization: Agosta and Associates In article , azur@netcom.com says: > Does anyone know which states have tariffed D-channel service, and how > they are priced? Ameritech has D channel packet service available, and you can access thier WEB page for pricing and other specifics. However, I don't think you'll be able to use the Dx.25 service for voice calls, internet or not. ja ------------------------------ From: Jean-Francois Mezei Subject: Re: How Low Can Loop Voltage Go? Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 00:31:12 +0000 Organization: Vaxination Informatique Reply-To: jfmezei@videotron.ca I have an accoustic coupler which provides an RJ11 so that a normal modem thinks it is plugged into a phone line when in fact, it is accoustically plugged into a telephone handset. The accoustic coupler works on a 9vdc battery. If the idle line voltage is anywhere between 30 and 80 volts, how does this affect a modem when the voltage provided by the accoustic coupler wouldn't be much higher than 9vdc? Is the high voltage required because of the very long lines between the CO and the telephone? ------------------------------ From: Mike Fox Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 08:33:12 GMT Subject: Re: Why Do US Online Phone Directories Only Have Stale Data? >> Some of my friends moved *months* ago, as well as some businesses I deal >> with. Their new addresses don't show yet in online directories. > I moved 19 months ago. One of the directories (switchboard.com) still > lists the old number, even though at least one (perhaps two) new > editions of the phone book have appeared since then. Of course they > can't find a new number for me, which may be why they keep the old > one. Or they may have lost interest. I moved from a listed number to another listed number in the same city in February, 1995. New phone books with the correct information have been out for six months. But Switchboard is still not up to date, even though their homepage says they were refreshed in August, 1996 (maybe the refresh is ongoing?). Infospace (http://206.129.166.101/people.html) does give my old address, the date it was last updated, and a notation that "this is the last known address before a note of change of address was received." I wonder where they got the fact that my address changed, but didn't get the new information? I wonder what source they are using. wyp.net was shut down because they were using a commercial phone disc for their data; the phone disc maker found out about it and sued. I would imagine that other pages like this that are using phone discs are pretty short-lived. I don't think these web listing services are any good. I have yet to find one that has my correct information, and I moved 18 months ago! I'm not impressed with the completeness or usefulness of these directories. Later, Mike ------------------------------ From: kamlet@infinet.com (Art Kamlet) Subject: Re: Caller ID: Names Passed Between LECs? Date: 11 Aug 1996 11:54:11 -0400 Organization: InfiNet Reply-To: kamlet@infinet.com In article , Jeffrey Rhodes wrote: > This is where the magic takes place. The delivered CPN can be used to > locate the calling CO. It would be very intensive to have every CO > "know" the SS7 point code of every NPA-NXX, in order to send the TCAP > query message. This is where Global Title Translation at the STPs is > used. The CO only needs to know the SS7 address of its supporting STP > and only the STPs need to keep track of the NPA-NXX SS7 point > codes. A few questions (This is fascinating.) - Who owns the STP? (LEC? Bellcore? IEC?) - I know GTT is based on ten digits for 800 numbers (and I assume 888 numbers too.) With Local Number Portability (the ability of a subscriber to keep his local telephone number when he changes to another local carrier, e.g., from Ameritech to Warner) will GTT have to be ten digits for every NPA? - Who will own those STPs? Who will update those STPs? When will this happen? Art Kamlet Columbus, Ohio kamlet@infinet.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 96 18:06:53 EDT From: Tony Harminc Subject: Re: Caller ID: Names Passed Between LECs? Jeffrey Rhodes wrote: >> When the IAM arrives at the CO that serves the called number, that CO >> returns an Address Complete message (ACM) back through the built-up >> string of CO's, and the circuits are actually connected together >> "backwards" from the called CO to the calling CO as the ACM message is >> passed back to the calling CO. > This opens the talk path in the forward direction so that the caller > can "hear" the audible ringing generated from the called CO. The > called CO is able to keep the audible ringing separate from the power > ringing that the called phone receives. These do not necessarily > occur simultaneously. This is what I would call the backward direction -- that is from the called to the calling end. >> When the call is answered an Answer message (ANM) is returned. > This opens the talk path in the backwards direction and marks every > billing record at every office used in the call as "answered". Surely *this* is the forward direction. Your terminology conflicts with all other usage I've read. >> Calls to busy numbers don't return an ACM. Instead, they return a >> Release Complete message which includes a Cause Code of Subscriber >> Busy. All trunks are released, and the originating CO gives the >> caller a busy signal. > Correct. Contrary to popular opinion, trunks are unusable for billable > calls during the period of time between IAM and REL when the called > number is "busy" or "out of service". The SS7 signals are quite a bit > faster than the MultiFrequency signaling methods that they replace, so > there is about a 7% trunk efficiency gain as a result of faster "busy > handling". Surely the efficiency arises not from faster signalling, but because MF signalling has no provision for releasing trunks on busy, or generating calling-end busy signals in the first place. Tony Harminc ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Touch Tones in Movies? Date: Sun, 11 Aug 96 22:16:51 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lionel Ancelet writes: > I see a great potential market for a VCR that would pause recording during > advertising, using CC2 signals! Then the networks would just change their procedures. This happened in Japan a while back, when Mitsubishi introduced a VCR that would automatically pause during commercials, *if* the program had bilingual audio (as do many U.S. shows and movies shown in Japan). This worked because Japanese TV stations shut off the "bilingual" pilot signal during commercials, since those don't have bilingual audio. Of course, when these VCRs appeared the TV stations started leaving the encoder in bilingual mode during commercial breaks (unless a commercial was in stereo). ------------------------------ 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 America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #401 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Aug 12 12:47:14 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id MAA09473; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 12:47:14 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 12:47:14 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199608121647.MAA09473@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #402 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Aug 96 12:47:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 402 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Mike Morris) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (David W. Tamkin) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Bill Walker) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Nevin Liber) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Matthew B. Landry) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Sam Ismail) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Christopher J. Whaley) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Marc Schaefer) Is Moderator Having Memory Loss? (jeichl@acxiom.com) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Mark Brader) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: morris@cogent.net (Mike Morris) Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 16:35:47 PDT In article ptownson@massis.lcs. mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) writes: > Last Sunday night I got on line about 10:00 p.m. here to do some work > on the Digest and I had a bright idea about a new script I wanted to > try out. Well the script flubbed, which was not anything unusual for > scripts that I write or try to hack on, but the main annoyance was > it left me with a directory full of about a hundred .h, .c. and .o > files to clean out when I decided to quit the experiment. > Now, I try to be smart with potentially disasterous commands like > 'rm' and I personally have 'rm' aliased to 'rm -i' meaning to not > erase a file without asking for confirmation. The problem is, if > you have a whole directory full of garbage files to get rid of > then if you go to that directory and do 'rm *' it will stop over > and over again, asking about each file. The command 'rm -f' will > NOT overrride 'rm -i' on this machine at least, although 'rm -f' > will work in a script running in the background with its own shell > regardless of what arguments I happen to have attached to 'rm' > for my use in the foreground. (rest clipped to save space) Yeah, I've had bad cases of brain fade too. I used to have a shell account and the admin had rm aliased to a script that moved the files into a /save-for-delete directory (in the users own space), and a chron job that flushed anything over 14 days old. I don't know enough shell script to write something like that, but maybe you do, or know somebody who can. (If you do, please email me a copy -- I'll be getting a Linux machine runnig here in a month or two and would like to have that functionality). Mike ------------------------------ From: dattier@wwa.com (David W. Tamkin) Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 19:04:51 CDT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: David wrote me to say that creating an alias which was the name of the command itself was a very bad arrangement. That letter is not available now, however I wrote back to him asking why it was bad. PAT] ptownson responded to dattier: > What is the 'bad arrangement' where aliasing rm -i to rm is concerned? > It has caught me a couple times when I almost erased something in error. It's a very good idea to have an alias for "rm -i" and to be in the habit of using the alias instead of the name of the executable most of the time. It's shortsighted, though, to name the alias "rm". The time can come when: (1) you're using a different system and don't have your aliases in place; (2) your own system for some reason didn't source your alias definitions; (3) somehow your aliases got unset; or (4) you're advising someone else who doesn't have your aliases in his or her environment, and you'll type or dictate "rm" in expectation of your tame substitute but get the feral /bin/rm instead. That's why the alias for "rm -i" should be named something like "delete" or "del" or "erase"; you won't get into the habit of typing "rm" to mean some- thing that isn't the same as rm(1). If any situations like those four exam- ples come up, the worst that will happen is a "delete: not found" message. As a general rule it's not advisable to make an alias name supersede a pro- gram's name, but with something destructive like rm it's especially risky. Because I was used to typing "scratch" for local files on my Commodore equip- ment, I named my alias "scr". Sheer dumb luck (I didn't know at the time that aliases outrank names of executables, so I didn't know that it was possible to alias "rm -i" to "rm") kept me from doing it; I can't claim to have acted out of knowledge or foresight. But if ever my aliases weren't in place for some reason and I were to type "scr *", I'd get "scr: not found" and lose no files. Of course now, after years of typing "rm" to get "rm -i", if you changed it suddenly you'd still be in the habit of typing "rm" instead of your new alias, and then you'd still end up with feral /bin/rm. [I know that this is not what happened to you on Monday. "/bin/rm *" in the wrong directory will have the same results no matter what your alias for "rm -i" is called.] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 17:14:31 -0700 From: wwalker@qualcomm.com (Bill Walker) Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Organization: QUALCOMM, Inc. In article , ptownson@massis.lcs. mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: > Losing all the processing scripts in a clumsy session at the > keyboard! What a way to wind up fifteen years of this Digest! > And this weekend approaching does mark fifteen years of it and > the start of year sixteen. Thanks to my heroes at lcs, I'll be > around to annoy you, abuse you and otherwise amuse you for > another year I guess. Pat, here's a safety tip: change the file attributes on all your valuable scripts (and other "permanent" files) and make them read-only, so that you have to go change the file attributes before you can delete them. That way, an inadvertant "rm *" won't blow them away. I'm not a Unix guy, but I know you can do this on DOS and VMS, so I've gotta assume you can do it on Unix. I mean, really, if _MS-DOS_ can do it, how hard can it be? :-) Bill Walker, QUALCOMM, Inc., San Diego, CA USA WWalker@qualcomm.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All the archives files (except those which rely on scripts to update them regularly) are set as you suggest for read only. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 07:18:32 -0700 From: nevin@cs.arizona.edu (Nevin Liber) Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Organization: University of Arizona CS Department, Tucson Arizona I do an accidental rm about once a year. Welcome to Unix. :-( The current trick I use (which saved me last month) is to do a mkdir ./-i chmod 000 ./-i in every directory I create. Now, when you do an rm -rf * it either (depending on your shell and settings) expands to rm -rf -i ... (since "-" is relatively early in sorting order) and the "-i" usually overrides the "-f" since it appears later on the command line, or it expands to rm -rf -i/ ... which is an error, since "-/" is not a command line option to "rm". Note: I found that aliasing rm to "rm -i" doesn't work for me, since I end up ignoring the messages if I am prompted for them each and every time. Nevin ":-)" Liber nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU (520) 293-2799 http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/nevin/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 15:42:05 EDT From: Matthew B Landry Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Organization: Flunkies for the Mike Conspiracy In article TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > laughing, believe me you. Now all that remains is one of these > days I should make a pilgrimage to Boston, where after an I've wondered for a while now ... why is the Digest hosted on a site at MIT, when you're in Chicago? It's not like Chicago is lacking in quantity of local ISPs, and I'm sure any number of them would clamor for the right to have their domain stamped on every issue. MIT doesn't need publicity to survive ... most ISPs do. > And this weekend approaching does mark fifteen years of it and the > start of year sixteen. Thanks to my heroes at lcs, I'll be around to > annoy you, abuse you and otherwise amuse you for another year I > guess. Congratulations. The Digest's history truly is an impressive achievement, of which you should be proud. However much some of us may disagree with some of your opinions, we all appreciate the work you put in to make this medium work, and keep quality up. (BTW, if that Zip+4 with no address trick really works, you should see a $20 bill from me in the next couple of days. That is the "suggested subscription fee", right? I just figured ... why not kill two birds with one stone ... check out a neat hack, and finally get off my arse and pay my share to help the Digest and c.d.t.) Matthew Landry Well, yeah. Actually I do sometimes speak for Msen. But not from THIS account. O- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for your kind note of support. The 'suggested amount' of $20 is because only about one out of every twenty readers send anything. About five percent of the readership participates in all. I'd be happy if everyone who reads the Digest sent a dollar per month. Seriously; I'd be happy if half of them sent a dollar a year. If I were to give a Treasurer's Report, it would go like this: my income is about $1200-1500 per month, and this comes from (1) the ITU grant; (2) royalties from the CD-ROM; and (3) reader support. It is hard to live in the rich, white, northern suburbs of Chicago on that sort of income. Having two heart attacks in two years with an accumulated indebtedness to Rush/North Shore Medical Center of about $51,000 did not help. I'm told they wrote that off under Hill-Burton, and from time to time I go see the village food pantry and social worker. I am the village's favorite poor person; they get to practice their liberal social policies on me, and I don't complain. They do mumble occassionally when the water bill is not paid on time. I am fully aware that MIT has no need of me, and I have a very great need of them. MIT has housed the archives since 1988 (they were at Boston University when the archives were much smaller) and although I have done my production work from other locations (including bu.edu in the beginning and at Northwestern University for quite a few years) I happen to like MIT and the great technical support they give me. I've got a Sparc-20 workstation pretty much to myself (massis) and *lots* of storage space for the archives; more than I will use for awhile. I am not really interested in being on the .com domain although to hear Mr. Pfieffer tell it, that's the only way to go. I could move Digest production and distribution to an account at bu.edu anytime I wanted to do so or to berkeley.edu at any time, as I am a user at both sites. PAT] ------------------------------ From: dastar@crl.com (Sam Ismail) Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Date: 11 Aug 1996 13:04:27 -0700 Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access (415) 705-6060 [Login: guest] TELECOM Digest Editor (ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu) wrote: > Last Sunday night I got on line about 10:00 p.m. here to do some work > on the Digest and I had a bright idea about a new script I wanted to > try out. Well the script flubbed, which was not anything unusual for > scripts that I write or try to hack on, but the main annoyance was > it left me with a directory full of about a hundred .h, .c. and .o > files to clean out when I decided to quit the experiment. Duh. Can you say "backup"? DON'T LEAVE ALL YOUR IMPORTANT FILES IN JUST ONE PLACE. (Sorry, PAT. Don't mean to be so rash but you need to learn your lesson :) Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 12:44:19 -0500 From: Scot E. Wilcoxon Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things You neglected to mention if you finally decided to make backups of your recovered files. Scot E. Wilcoxon sewilco@fieldday.mn.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Backups? What are those? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 13:15:30 -0400 From: cwhaley@calsun.gtri.gatech.edu (Christopher J. Whaley) Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Reply-To: chris.whaley@gtri.gatech.edu The way around the rm -i alias is to use the direct path to the command, e.g., "/bin/rm *". That bypasses the alias. Two other suggestions. First, change the permissions on all of the files you have which are "permanent" by using "chmod -w .*". This will take write permission away from you and if you try to delete a file it will prompt you with a message about "over-riding" the lack of write permission. Second, make a copy of all of your dot files and other scripts in another directory and on your hard disk. Christopher J. Whaley chris.whaley@gtri.gatech.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 00:11:27 +0200 From: schaefer@vulcan.alphanet.ch (Marc SCHAEFER) Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things In article , ptownson@massis.lcs. mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) writes: > Now, I try to be smart with potentially disasterous commands like > 'rm' and I personally have 'rm' aliased to 'rm -i' meaning to not > erase a file without asking for confirmation. The problem is, if That's very dangerous, because you get used to answering yes anyway. > you have a whole directory full of garbage files to get rid of > then if you go to that directory and do 'rm *' it will stop over > and over again, asking about each file. The command 'rm -f' will > NOT overrride 'rm -i' on this machine at least, although 'rm -f' > will work in a script running in the background with its own shell > regardless of what arguments I happen to have attached to 'rm' > for my use in the foreground. Do a \rm which overrides any alias you did. Or type unalias rm > did 'unalias rm' then I did 'rm *' -- but the trouble is I had > ** forgotten to change directories to the one I wanted **. Go to your friendly system administrator and ask for backups :-) > "In the future we will not use tape backups to restore > individual files. We will use them only for restoration > after a disk failure or other major system problem. I have > 400 other users to support here besides you." There are automated backup software, like Networker for UNIX, allowing any user to backup their own files and restore their files. BTW: I suggest you take the backup tape with you. ------------------------------ From: JEICHL@acxiom.com Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 09:06:13 CDT Subject: Is Moderator Having Memory Loss? > I decided just this one time I would unalias 'rm' instead. > So I did 'unalias rm' then I did 'rm *' -- but the trouble is > I had ** forgotten to change directories to the one I wanted **. > Ooops! Pat, They say that loss of memory is a sure sign of advancing age. Hope this does not apply in this case ;) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What was it I was going to say? I seem to have forgotten. Oh yes! Senile Dementia strikes 75 percent of all newsgroup moderators over the age of fifty. ummm ..... ------------------------------ From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 00:53:02 GMT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For the final item in this issue, I saved the best for last. If this does not get your juices stirred up and moving, I do not know what will. You might like to save this article and put it up on a few bulletin boards around your office. PAT] Pat (ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu) writes: > So I did 'unalias rm' then I did 'rm *' -- but the trouble is ... (The audience leaps to its feat shouting "No!") > I had ** forgotten to change directories to the one I wanted **. Gee, you'd think he'd be nervous about typing *'s like that now. :-) I'm reminded of the following article, which first appeared on Usenet back in 1986. Familiarity with UNIX is assumed; that's what most of Usenet ran on in those days. -------------------------- Mario Wolczko wrote: Have you ever left your terminal logged in, only to find when you came back to it that a (supposed) friend had typed "rm -rf ~/*" and was hovering over the keyboard with threats along the lines of "lend me a fiver 'til Thursday, or I hit return"? Undoubtedly the person in question would not have had the nerve to inflict such a trauma upon you, and was doing it in jest. So you've probably never experienced the worst of such disasters ... It was a quiet Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday, 1st October, 15:15 BST, to be precise, when Peter, an office-mate of mine, leaned away from his terminal and said to me, "Mario, I'm having a little trouble sending mail." Knowing that msg was capable of confusing even the most capable of people, I sauntered over to his terminal to see what was wrong. A strange error message of the form (I forget the exact details) "cannot access /foo/bar for userid 147" had been issued by msg. My first thought was "Who's userid 147?; the sender of the message, the destination, or what?" So I leant over to another terminal, already logged in, and typed grep 147 /etc/passwd only to receive the response /etc/passwd: No such file or directory. Instantly, I guessed that something was amiss. This was confirmed when in response to ls /etc I got ls: not found. I suggested to Peter that it would be a good idea not to try anything for a while, and went off to find our system manager. When I arrived at his office, his door was ajar, and within ten seconds I realised what the problem was. James, our manager, was sat down, head in hands, hands between knees, as one whose world has just come to an end. Our newly-appointed system programmer, Neil, was beside him, gazing listlessly at the screen of his terminal. And at the top of the screen I spied the following lines: # cd # rm -rf * Oh, shit, I thought. That would just about explain it. I can't remember what happened in the succeeding minutes; my memory is just a blur. I do remember trying ls (again), ps, who and maybe a few other commands beside, all to no avail. The next thing I remember was being at my terminal again (a multi-window graphics terminal), and typing cd / echo * I owe a debt of thanks to David Korn for making echo a built-in of his shell; needless to say, /bin, together with /bin/echo, had been deleted. What transpired in the next few minutes was that /dev, /etc and /lib had also gone in their entirety; fortunately Neil had interrupted rm while it was somewhere down below /news, and /tmp, /usr and /users were all untouched. Meanwhile James had made for our tape cupboard and had retrieved what claimed to be a dump tape of the root filesystem, taken four weeks earlier. The pressing question was, "How do we recover the contents of the tape?". Not only had we lost /etc/restore, but all of the device entries for the tape deck had vanished. And where does mknod live? You guessed it, /etc. How about recovery across Ethernet of any of this from another VAX? Well, /bin/tar had gone, and thoughtfully the Berkeley people had put rcp in /bin in the 4.3 distribution. What's more, none of the Ether stuff wanted to know without /etc/hosts at least. We found a version of cpio in /usr/local, but that was unlikely to do us any good without a tape deck. Alternatively, we could get the boot tape out and rebuild the root filesystem, but neither James nor Neil had done that before, and we weren't sure that the first thing to happen would be that the whole disk would be re-formatted, losing all our user files. (We take dumps of the user files every Thursday; by Murphy's Law this had to happen on a Wednesday). Another solution might be to borrow a disk from another VAX, boot off that, and tidy up later, but that would have entailed calling the DEC engineer out, at the very least. We had a number of users in the final throes of writing up PhD theses and the loss of a maybe a weeks' work (not to mention the machine down time) was unthinkable. So, what to do? The next idea was to write a program to make a device descriptor for the tape deck, but we all know where cc, as and ld live. Or maybe make skeletal entries for /etc/passwd, /etc/hosts and so on, so that /usr/bin/ftp would work. By sheer luck, I had a gnuemacs still running in one of my windows, which we could use to create passwd, etc., but the first step was to create a directory to put them in. Of course /bin/mkdir had gone, and so had /bin/mv, so we couldn't rename /tmp to /etc. However, this looked like a reasonable line of attack. By now we had been joined by Alasdair, our resident UNIX guru, and as luck would have it, someone who knows VAX assembler. So our plan became this: write a program in assembler which would either rename /tmp to /etc, or make /etc, assemble it on another VAX, uuencode it, type in the uuencoded file using my gnu, uudecode it (some bright spark had thought to put uudecode in /usr/bin), run it, and hey presto, it would all be plain sailing from there. By yet another miracle of good fortune, the terminal from which the damage had been done was still su'd to root (su is in /bin, remember?), so at least we stood a chance of all this working. Off we set on our merry way, and within only an hour we had managed to concoct the dozen or so lines of assembler to create /etc. The stripped binary was only 76 bytes long, so we converted it to hex (slightly more readable than the output of uuencode), and typed it in using my editor. If any of you ever have the same problem, here's the hex for future reference: 070100002c000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000dd8fff010000dd8f27000000fb02ef07000000fb01ef070000000000bc8f 8800040000bc012f65746300 I had a handy program around (doesn't everybody?) for converting ASCII hex to binary, and the output of /usr/bin/sum tallied with our original binary. But hang on---how do you set execute permission without /bin/chmod? A few seconds thought (which as usual, lasted a couple of minutes) suggested that we write the binary on top of an already existing binary, owned by me...problem solved. So along we trotted to the terminal with the root login, carefully remembered to set the umask to 0 (so that I could create files in it using my gnu), and ran the binary. So now we had a /etc, writable by all. From there it was but a few easy steps to creating passwd, hosts, services, protocols, (etc), and then ftp was willing to play ball. Then we recovered the contents of /bin across the ether (it's amazing how much you come to miss ls after just a few, short hours), and selected files from /etc. The key file was /etc/rrestore, with which we recovered /dev from the dump tape, and the rest is history. Now, you're asking yourself (as I am), what's the moral of this story? Well, for one thing, you must always remember the immortal words, DON'T PANIC. Our initial reaction was to reboot the machine and try everything as single user, but it's unlikely it would have come up without /etc/init and /bin/sh. Rational thought saved us from this one. The next thing to remember is that UNIX tools really can be put to unusual purposes. Even without my gnuemacs, we could have survived by using, say, /usr/bin/grep as a substitute for /bin/cat. And the final thing is, it's amazing how much of the system you can delete without it falling apart completely. Apart from the fact that nobody could login (/bin/login?), and most of the useful commands had gone, everything else seemed normal. Of course, some things can't stand life without say /etc/termcap, or /dev/kmem, or /etc/utmp, but by and large it all hangs together. I shall leave you with this question: if you were placed in the same situation, and had the presence of mind that always comes with hindsight, could you have got out of it in a simpler or easier way? Answers on a postage stamp to: Mario Wolczko Dept. of Computer Science ARPA: miw%uk.ac.man.cs.ux@cs.ucl.ac.uk The University USENET: mcvax!ukc!man.cs.ux!miw Manchester M13 9PL JANET: miw@uk.ac.man.cs.ux U.K. 061-273 7121 x 5699 ------------------------------------------ When I reposted the item in 1993, by the way, Hugh Grierson noted in a followup that in addition to booting off tape or diskette, one might have a spare "miniroot" partition on the hard disk, normally unmounted. If you can boot off that partition, you're all set; if not, if you can copy files you at least have a place to copy them from. Mark Brader, msb@sq.com | "True excitement lies in doing SoftQuad Inc., Toronto | 'sdb /unix /dev/kmem'" -- Pontus Hedman My text in this article is in the public domain. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There! I told you you would love it! Thanks very much for a nice close to this issue, Mark. PAT] ------------------------------ 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 America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #402 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Aug 13 01:30:38 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA06865; Tue, 13 Aug 1996 01:30:38 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 01:30:38 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199608130530.BAA06865@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #403 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Aug 96 01:30:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 403 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: AT&T (NY) Adding Extra Charges to 'Casual' Users (Art Kamlet) Re: AT&T (NY) Adding Extra Charges to 'Casual' Users (Jeremy S. Nichols) Re: How Low Can Loop Voltage Go? (Tom Watson) Re: A Short History of 911 Service (Michael D. Adams) Re: USA Technology is Awfully Backward (Roger Marquis) Re: USA Technology is Awfully Backward (Zev Rubenstein) Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? (Tye McQueen) Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? (Tony Harminc) Re: Cable Companies (Christopher Wolf) Re: "Genuine Nynex Payphone" Limiting Number of Digits (Michael Schuster) Re: SOS - TAPI, Caller ID, and Visual C++ (Chris Sells) Re: Need Help Fast With Voice Mail (Craig Owens) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: kamlet@infinet.com (Art Kamlet) Subject: Re: AT&T (NY) Adding Extra Charges to 'Casual' Users Date: 12 Aug 1996 12:07:01 -0400 Organization: InfiNet Reply-To: kamlet@infinet.com In article , Henry Baker wrote: >> This filing proposes to introduce a Non Subscriber Service Charge. A >> service charge is applicble for Dial Station Calls originated from >> residential lines which are presubscribed to an interexchange carrier >> other than AT&T, or are not presubscribed to any interexchange >> carrier. This charge is in addition to the initial period charges for >> calls within the state of New York. >> Non-Subscriber Service Charge: Per Call: $.80 > Has ATT lost their (its?) mind? If I'm at someone's home and want to > call using ATT, why would ATT want to penalize me for this? I am guessing, but it seems AT&T prefers customers to pick AT&T as its PIC, and so would not have this charge. And AT&T has been withdrawing from billing arrangements with many RBOCs, and likely wishes to avoid paying RBOCs for billing services. Dialing 10(10)288 could cause a billing charge from RBOC to AT&T. Or could cause a bill to be generated to a customer of unknown credit worthiness, and possibly for a single call a month. So AT&T may wish to avoid those customers. And it seems to be working. Their last quarterly report showed decreased small residence subscriber income :^( One more item: If the non AT&T PIC goes out of service, many callers might suddenly try to use AT&T as its fair weather friend, placing a sudden high load on AT&T circuits. Isn't is fair to charge those who are only fair weather friends more? Like a delayed insurance premium. After all, AT&T is sitting there providing "insurance" in case of other PIC failure, but is otherwise not receiving any premium for this service. > Is this also true for 1-800-CALL-ATT? They have been encouraging people to use 800 CALL ATT instead of 10(10)288, and since that probably involves using an AT&T calling card, the calling card use aleady has a charge built in. Besides, they don't have any other charge today for 800 CALL ATT so it seems like the answer to your question is no. Art Kamlet Columbus, Ohio kamlet@infinet.com ------------------------------ From: jsn@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Jeremy S. Nichols) Subject: Re: AT&T (NY) Adding Extra Charges to 'Casual' Users Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 01:27:02 GMT Organization: University of Minnesota hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) wrote: > Has ATT lost their (its?) mind? If I'm at someone's home and want to > call using ATT, why would ATT want to penalize me for this? They aren't penalizing you, they're penalizing the person whose phone you're using. Jeremy S. Nichols, P.E. jsn1@rsvl.unisys.com Minneapolis, MN jsn@maroon.tc.umn.edu ------------------------------ From: tsw@3do.com (Tom Watson) Subject: Re: How Low Can Loop Voltage Go? Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 19:51:39 -0700 Organization: The 3DO Corporation In article , Lawrence Rachman <74066.2004@CompuServe.COM> wrote: > My employer is working on a product that will simulate a telephone > exchange, and the question of what is a reasonable battery voltage for > worldwide applications has come up. In North America, the open loop > voltage is 48 volts nominal (I believe that's what part 68 demands). > In Europe, 62 volts seems to have a strong following. My Panasonic PBX > at home measures approximately 24 volts. > Now, if all you've got is a POTS telephone, none of this is typically > an issue. But nowadays, there are gadgets like fax machines and > answering machines that monitor the open loop voltage to determine if > another extension is off hook, or possibly for other reasons. Obviously, > if one of these gadgets considers >36 volts to be on-hook and <36 to > be off-hook, its going to get seriously confused by my Panasonic PBX. > Does anyone out there have any personal or anecdotal experience with > telephone devices that sense line voltage this way? Just how low can > the open loop voltage go? The ON HOOK voltages can (and do) vary all over the place. Modern CO's are usually in the 48 volt range, but if you are on a "line extender" it could go up as high as 72 (even more) volts. Sometimes this is over the trigger voltage of a neon lamp (sometimes used to detect ringing voltage), and can cause false trips. Be sure to put a capicator in series with the ring detector!! As for OFF HOOK voltage, this is a fairly constant thing. The set wants to draw a constant current, and will take the voltage down quite a bit. I have a small PBX at home, and it runs single phones with a 12 volt (open circuit) battery. Now it won't run two phones in parallel, but ti works just fine. The problem is that some equipment that has "busy lights" looks at the tip-ring voltage and if it is "low" it thinks that someone else has a phone off hook. If the battery voltage is low to begin with, the indicator is lit up all the time (yes, it happened to me!!). The threshold for on-hook to off-hook voltages should be somewhere about 10-20 volts (lower is better). I'd experiment by putting a resistor in series with my home set and seing when the central office thinks it is on/off hook. Always an interesting subject. Tom Watson tsw@3do.com (Home: tsw@johana.com) ------------------------------ From: mda-960812b@triskele.com (Michael D Adams) Subject: Re: A Short History of 911 Service Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 01:34:33 GMT Organization: Triskele Counsulting Reply-To: mda-960812b@triskele.com On Sun, 11 Aug 1996 23:31:27 GMT, wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com (Wes Leatherock) wrote: >> Almost all postal address (and the addresses on the phone bill) were >> encoded similar to "Rural Route 15 Box 428" referring to the postal >> carrier route and the box number along the route. There was no street >> name nor street address associated with the location of the phone. To >> implement E911 first required that the post office go through the >> entire county and assign street address to rural and semi-rural homes, >> and in a few cases, assign street names where none had existed. This >> process took over a year of time. Then, each resident, had to notify >> their personal or business contacts of new mailing addresses. > I was involved or an observer in many of these addressing > projects in Oklahoma exchanges, and I never heard of the post office > having anything to do with making the assignments. That may depend on the locality. I just recently moved from a town in rural Alabama which formerly had no house numbering standards. Whenever a new building went up inside street delivery area of the post office, or when the post office expanded its street delivery area, the property owner usually "inferred" the new house number from surrounding properties or distance to the nearest numbered property, and then advised the town postmaster, making the number official. This of course led to a few interesting numbering schemes along some roads, as the town grew. On one street in particular, there is a string of houses on similarly sized lots that are numbered: 201, 203, 205, 301, 401, 401.5, 403, 451, 501, 601, 661. Across the street from 661 is 662, and from there it's 664, 700, 668 ... 700 on that street is a new church, and for some reason they didn't want the number "666". :) When the town got E911 service, it was decided to extend that service to include the police jurisdiction zone (special taxing district, officially unincorporated, but receives city police and fire protection and city cable TV), so street addresses had to be assigned. The town government provided the maps, residents provided street names where necessary, and the postmaster provided the actual house numbers. > Local authorities, committees, whatever, decided what they would > do, just as happens in cities. I have seen the same thing in Texas, > too. I witnessed a number of E911 implementations in that part of Alabama (usually a lead story on the local newscast; many slow newsdays down there). In many cases it was the county or town government that assigned street names and house numbers. In a few cases, the utility company assigned them. In a couple of cases, it was the post office's responsibility. In one case rural routes were retained, but the E911 system reported a map coordinate in addition to the mailing address -- the local police, fire, and ambulance agencies were already familiar with the rural routes, and decided that having a map coordinate "just in case" would be sufficient. > Are you sure the postal addresses changed at all? Most of > them are still Route xx, Box xx. That also probably depends on the jurisdiction. In all but one (guess which one :) of the cases I described above, it was announced that the new E911 address was to be the official mailing address, and that the USPS would honor rural route addresses for only a year after the changeover. Also, at my prior job (at an insurance company), I was sometimes drafted to help open mail. I saw an awful lot of "new E911 address" notices coming from Alabama and Georgia. Michael D. Adams Triskele Consulting Baltimore, Maryland ma@triskele.com ------------------------------ From: marquis@roble.com (Roger Marquis) Subject: Re: USA Technology is Awfully Backward Date: 13 Aug 1996 04:32:46 GMT Organization: Roble Systems (http://www.roble.com) Anthony (HXM3@PSUVM.PSU.EDU) wrote: > simply impossible in USA because companies like the big three simply > would not bother to put billions of dollars in upgrading their out > dated technology. Sad for Americans. It is unfortunate but at least we have the most reliable telephone system in the world, if not the most sophisticated. > And I wonder when would the US Congress approve some extra money > so USA can adapt the international metric system and catch up with the > rest of the world? Why Americans still use the length of the feet of a > British King who died thousands of years ago to measure the length of > every thing? The reason we're no longer making progress towards the metric system is because Ronald Regan canceled the metric program. Anyone know of an interest group behind this one? Roger Marquis ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 18:42:02 GMT From: zev@attmail.com (Zev Rubenstein) Subject: Re: USA Technology is Awfully Backward Anthony wrote: > And I wonder when would the US Congress approve some extra money > so USA can adapt the international metric system and catch up with the > rest of the world? Why Americans still use the length of the feet of a > British King who died thousands of years ago to measure the length of > every thing? Under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a law was passed to convert the US to the Metric system over ten years. During that time the auto manufacturers began putting km/h along with mph on speedometers and the now-ubiquitous two-liter soda bottles appeared. We were on the way. Unfortunately, when President Reagan was elected, one of his first acts was to put an end to metrication. That is why we are still behind the rest of the world. Many companies applauded what Reagan did (just as they applauded his evisceration of the EPA and other so-called pro-business acts that took place under his administration). Unfort- unately, as US industries have gone increasingly global, the cost of manufacturing to two standards hampers their competitiveness. I don't know what, if any, initiatives exist today to speed up metrication. The last time I complained about Reagan's killing metrication II was told that one item that Reagan signed before leaving office was to move government procurement to a metric-based standard. The logic used was that since the US government is such a large purchaser of nearly everything it would pull the rest of the US toward a defacto metrication. Well, it hasn't happened, has it. Zev Rubenstein Nationwide Telecommunications Resources ------------------------------ From: tye@metronet.com (Tye McQueen) Subject: Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? Date: 12 Aug 1996 16:32:37 -0500 Organization: Texas Metronet, Inc (login info (214/488-2590 - 817/571-0400)) James E Bellaire wrote: > Of course in the United States we do have the FCC, which has shown > interest in protecting phone numbers as property of the user. singular@oort.ap.sissa.it (Poll Dubh) writes: > But not area codes, it would seem, or else overlays would be the rule. No, here the _courts_ are to blame. They have decided that old area codes are "pretty" and forcing potential future competitors or cell phone providers to use (mostly) new "ugly" area codes would be an unfair competitive advantage. It really upsets me that the courts think it is more important to protect potential future competitors from some perceived disadvantage by instead forcing thousands of businesses to incur real costs associated with changing their phone number. And that doesn't even count the harder-to-quantify costs of the residents and of those who call these businesses and residents. Tye McQueen tye@metronet.com || tye@thingy.usu.edu http://www.metronet.com/~tye/ (scripts, links, nothing fancy) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about in downtown Chicago, where a mere half-dozen or so *very large* companies gobbled so many numbers that Ameritech is starting area 773? They would have had to start it anyway, but my point is that handful of very large corporations absolutely refused to consider having downtown Chicago get the new code so the rest of the 2.9 million residents and business places could stay 312. Instead, the majority of the city is being forced to change area codes to 773 in order that a few businesses downtown can keep 312 instead. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 96 15:52:44 EDT From: Tony Harminc Subject: Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? mandarin@cix.compulink.co.uk (Richard Cox) wrote: > Er, no. Psychologists confirm that eight digits is the maximum number > of digits that can be reliably remembered and dialled by the average > user. Introduction of ten-digit numbers (which is effectively what the > result of splitting an Wz1 NPA means) will lead to greater incidence > of misdialling. Citation, please! I've dealt with eight-digit numbers in Paris, and I have great trouble remembering them long enough to copy from one place to another. But I have little or no trouble with NANP ten-digit numbers. I'm sure this is because I mentally partition the area code from the easy-to-remember seven-digit number. In Paris, I mentally pull the leading digit (usually 4) off the front, and then remember (say) 42 34 56 78 as 4 234-5678. Much much easier for my brain to deal with. In Toronto I do much the same thing -- except that instead of a leading 4 it's a leading 416 or 905. > So a change by the US to eight-digit local dialling, eliminating all > overlays and NPA splits, would actually reduce the proportion of calls > that end up reaching a wrong number. I very much doubt it. I think the "eight is easier than ten" claim misapplies the research. Three plus three plus four is easier, IMO. Tony Harminc ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 15:11:34 CDT From: Christopher Wolf Subject: Re: Cable Companies Curtis Wheeler wrote: > On another note. While this is not really laid out in black and > white, you don't necessarily have the right to do what you wish with > radio signals coming into your back yard. At least this is the > argument I would use if I was representing the government in court. The > way I look at it, when the communications act of 1934 was adopted, and > the FCC was created, the radio spectrum in the U.S. was, for practical > purposes, comdemned by the government under what may be called it's > imminent domain. Just like they can condemn your house and force you > to move so they can put in a freeway. Essentially the regulated > "airwaves" have an easment in your back yard. The government took > over because it was obvious that technologies were going to require > that the spectrum be managed and regulated if it was going to do the > public any good. On a (only) slightly related note, is it legal for a cable company to tell subscribers in it's area that they cannot get one of those small dishes to pick up satellite broadcasts? Says they interfere with their satellite dish's pickup. The cable company that supplies to my apartment complex (in Texas) made them sign a form stating they will not allow anyone to use the satellite dishes -- that we have to buy from them to get cable. This seems fishy to me. Anyone have some facts? Short Story: Two people in this small complex got the dishes, and when I saw them I asked the people in the office about getting one. They said they would ask us to remove them, and told us the story about the agreement with the cable company. A few days later, the two dishes disappeared. I checked out our lease (standard lease) and since it in no way mentions cable connections or things handing on our balcony, I went back and asked them again. I let it die after the only thing I could get them to say (after pointing out the lease) was "we'll ask you to take it down". Funny enough, the two dishes in the complex re-appeared a few days later, so I assume they had the same idea I had. (Note: cable is $35 for ABC/NBC/CBS, FOX/NICK/CNN, every shopping channel, Mexican oriented channel, and religious channel known to man, while five miles away with a "real" cable company its $20 for twice as much -- which is why nobody wants to pay for it.) Then again, to get phone service from them also requires you use their long distance service, and if you dial 1-800-CALL-ATT on their payphones, you get put through to their operators. Wolf ------------------------------ From: schuster@panix.com (Michael Schuster) Subject: Re: "Genuine Nynex Payphone" Limiting Number of Touch Tone Digits Date: 12 Aug 1996 14:46:51 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC In article , danny burstein wrote: > About two thirds of the way through the menu sequences I got a synthesized > voice announcement which said something like "no additional digits may > be dialed at this time". > And sure enough, anytime I hit a touch tone key I heard the tone, then > got the same msg. This happened to me, while using a NYNEX pay phone to check my NYNEX voice mail. There's a certian irony there. Mike Schuster schuster@panix.com | 70346.1745@CompuServe.COM schuster@shell.portal.com | schuster@mem.po.com ------------------------------ From: csells@teleport.com (Chris Sells) Subject: Re: SOS - TAPI, Caller ID, and Visual C++ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 96 19:34:36 GMT Organization: Sells Brothers Actually, it turns out there's more to using a USR Sportster Voice with Unimodem/V then I had thought (I just installed one myself). For a full report, go to http://www.teleport.com/~csells/sportv.html. Chris Sells Windows Software Consulting and Development http://www.teleport.com/~csells ------------------------------ From: ctooffcon@aol.com (CTO OFFCON) Subject: Re: Need Help Fast With Voice Mail Date: 12 Aug 1996 16:00:22 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: ctooffcon@aol.com (CTO OFFCON) TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to John M Elliott (stellcom@ ix.netcom.com): > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Have you considered the use of a single > 800 number which terminates in an answering service? Each pet's tags > would say something like, "Animal is registered with a pet identification > service. Please call 800-xxx-xxxx and notify the operator that pet # xxxx > has been rescued." Each person who purchases your product would be > automatically enrolled with their name/number on file at the answering > service, or perhaps with your office. When the rescuer of the animal > called the answering service, the service would in turn notify your > office or the animal's guardian/caretaker. Pat -- you must have been talking with one of our customers! This is exactly how we have established numerous such programs. It's quick, cost-effective, relatively simple to update, and (fairly) painless! Craig Owens -- Office Concepts Phone 800-604-9839 Email OffConGR@aol.com Office Concepts provides complete business support services including live telephone answering and voice mail services, and customized telemessaging solutions. ------------------------------ 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 America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #403 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Aug 13 03:09:12 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id DAA12756; Tue, 13 Aug 1996 03:09:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 03:09:12 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199608130709.DAA12756@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #404 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Aug 96 03:09:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 404 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Expansion to Longer-than-Ten-Digits in NANP (Mark J. Cuccia) International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Jim Polikoff) Convention Attendees Receive Wireless Welcome to San Diego (Mike King) New Wireless Phone Network Comes Through Power Outage (Mike King) Requesting Internet Fraud List (DVIEI1@jcpenney.com) Re: Reselling Cellular Airtime (Michael P. Mullineaux) DTMF Tone Keypads Wanted (David Michael) Telecom Instructors Needed at UC Berkeley Extension (course@berkeley.edu) Mixing Voicemail and Unix (Ed James) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Christopher Wolf) Re: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things (Jon Solomon) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 13:28:16 -0700 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Expansion to Longer-than-Ten-Digits in NANP No, I don't have any specific plans, yet. The INC mailings I have been receiving talk about *various* possibilities for expanding from ten-digits, some of which include a "national destination code" (i.e. there would be a two-digit or three-digit code inserted between '+1' and the area code, indicating US, Canada, particular Caribbean location, etc), four (or more) digit area codes, four (or more) digit central office codes, five (or more) station line numbers, etc. There were also combinations of such, as well as discussions of *where* to tack on the additional digit(s) in a particular subset code. But I had been under the impression that we would tack a '0' or a '1' to the end of existing three-digit area codes, and that there would be a permissive period. Also, during the permissive period, I would have thought that N9X0, N9X1, and/or N9XN would have been the 'new' four-digit area codes. *IF* this would have been the case (current NPA codes using NXX-1 or NXX-0 as four digit area codes, during the permissive period), I was curious as to how non-line-number-based RAO/CIID calling cards would have been handled, unless *all* calling cards had gone to the mandatory use of the '89' format, described in earlier issues of the Digest. Since presently, no 0XX/1XX codes are used for *customer* dialable NANP POTS numbers, they are used for "special" calling cards, of the form NXX-1XX/0XX-xxxx plus PIN (nxxx). The first group, the NXX here, is the RAO or the beginning of the CIID in these card numbers. Also, operators and network test people use 0XX/1XX codes for internal network/system code purposes. All of this could cause a code ambiguity. However, James Bellaire recently stated what seems to be the most likely (and completely overlooked by me) way to give permissive dialing of current area codes into a four digit format. Since the N9X range are reserved for expansion purposes, current area codes (NyX, where y is not '9') would be permissively dialed as N9yX and as NyX. When mandatory use started, they would *have* to be dialed as N9yX, and new four-digit NPA codes would be assigned NyXX, where 'y' is any digit except '9'. I don't know what they would then reserve for *further* expansion from that, other than probably reserving another possible digit in the new 'four-digit' format. This method allows continued use of 1XX and 0XX codes for special calling cards as well as network/system routing codes without any ambiguity. I also recently spoke with someone (who wishes to remain nameless), who used to be with Bell Labs for some decades, and retired from Bellcore a few years ago. His area of work was in switching, but the areas related to the Numbering Plan. He had suggested a few years ago that the easiest way to expand to four-digit area codes, as far as memorization of rules goes, would be that when the NNX format of area codes was being planned for, to *reserve* those codes where the first and second digit are identical. i.e. 22X, 33X, 44X, 55X, 66X, 77X, 88X, 99X This is eighty codes, the same number reserved when using N9X. When the time comes when permissive dialing of four-digit area codes would come about, before any *new* four-digit area codes would be actually assigned, tell the customer to *double* their first digit. i.e. 312 would become 3312, 630 would become 6630, 847 would become 8847, 708 would become 7708, etc. There would not be any three-digit area codes 331, 663, 884, or 770 since those *would have been* reserved. The thinking was that it would be easier for everyone involved (telco and customer) to simply 'double' their NPA's first digit, rather than 'inserting' a specific digit somewhere inside the area code or tacked on to the end (such as what most likely will be happening, placing a '9' between the present first and second digits). However, Bellcore/NANPA/ICCF/etc. didn't follow that plan, as we've seen the introduction of: 330 Ohio, 334 Alabama, 440 Ohio, 441 Bermuda, 443 Maryland, 664 Montserrat, 770 Georgia, 773 Illinois, 880 "Caller-pays-800", 881 "Caller-Pays-888", 888 additional toll-free, and the various other codes in these ranges now reserved for "easy-to-recognize" (888, 777, 666, 444, 333, 222; 555 is now "unassignable"); and the 99X codes are more of the use of '9' in the middle reserved for expansion. With that never adopted proposal aside, If I remember correctly, all expansion plans for the total number of digits of an NANP number being discussed by the INC and other industry forums assume that the final length will be a *fixed* length number. True, we presently do have dialable strings of various lengths (0, 00, N11, 1/0+ten-digits, ten-digits, *-XX/11-XX prefixes, etc.), and a permissive period of three-digit and four-digit area codes would appear to be 'mixed' length, but an existing three-digit area code permissively dialed as three or four-digits would eventually (one year? six-months?) become a mandatory four-digit area code, as new codes assigned would be four-digits, thus a fixed-length system. It is always nice to know how many digits to expect when dialing a number, visually reading a number, or when quoting a number or hearing a quoted number. Use of timeouts, as well as instructing the use of the '#' to cancel/cut-thru right away is IMO always a nuisance. Of course, all of the above assume that we will continue to use 'traditional numbering', rather than some form of new technology or scheme, such as an "electronic directory" (similar to using a webpage to click a choice of URL's to visit). Also, other factors involved include number portability, etc. Whatever does happen during the evolution is the fact that 'numbering' or 'identification' will become less-and-less associated with the actual *switches* involoved, as well as geography or location. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ From: polikoff@asel.udel.edu (Jim Polikoff) Subject: International Conference on Spoken Language Processing Date: 12 Aug 1996 17:24:03 -0400 Organization: AI duPont Institute ICSLP 96 -- Update and Reminder Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing ****** October 3-6, 1996 Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel Philadelphia, PA, USA ****** There is still time to register for ICSLP 96. ICSLP 96 offers a strong and diverse program covering all aspects of spoken language processing. ICSLP 96 presents an opportunity to keep up with the latest research and developments as well as network among other speech professionals. Registration information, as well as other information about the conference, can be found on our WWW site at http://www.asel.udel.edu/icslp/. This site provides registration forms, information about hotel accomodations, airfare information, and general information about Philadelphia as well as listings of the full contents of the technical program. _____________________Registration Information______________________________ Full registration includes: Admission to technical sessions, Reception, Banquet, Proceedings (printed & CD-ROM) Limited registration includes: Admission to technical sessions, Reception, Proceedings on CD-ROM Early Registration fees: Member* Non-Member Student Full $425 $525 $250 Limited $300 $400 $150 Late registration: After July 1, add $60 After August 9, add $100 Additional Tickets: Banquet $60 Reception $50 Additional Proceedings: Printed $125 CD-ROM $15 * Sponsoring and Cooperating Organizations: The Acoustical Society of America The Acoustical Society of Japan American Speech and Hearing Association Australian Speech Science and Technology Association European Speech Communication Association IEEE Signal Processing Society Incorporated Canadian Acoustical Association International Phonetic Association Linguistic Society of America ICSLP 96 A.I. duPont Institute P.O. Box 269 Wilmington, DE 19899 E-mail: ICSLP96@asel.udel.edu URL: http://www.asel.udel.edu/icslp/ Phone: +1-302-651-6830 Fax: +1-302-651-6895 ------------------------------ From: Mike King Subject: Convention Attendees Receive Wireless Welcome to San Diego Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 14:40:32 PDT Forwarded to the Digest FYI: Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 11:39:38 -0700 From: sqlgate@list.pactel.com Subject: Convention Attendees Receive Wireless Welcome to San Diego FOR MORE INFORMATION: Linda Bonniksen (213) 975-5061 John Britton (619) 237-2430 Convention Attendees Receive Wireless Welcome to San Diego Mayor Golding Uses Pacific Bell Mobile Services PCS Phone to Send a Text Message SAN DIEGO, Calif. - Using PCS, a digital wireless telecommunications technology from Pacific Bell Mobile Services, Mayor Susan Golding today delivered a short-text message welcoming the Republican National Convention to San Diego. Message Sent to 600 PCS Phones Mayor Golding sent her welcome message at 6 a.m. The 85-character message appeared on the screens of approximately 600 PCS phones being used at the convention. "San Diego is America's city of the future so it couldn't be more appropriate for PCS to premiere here at the same time we host the Republican National Convention," Mayor Golding said. "I am thrilled that Pacific Bell Mobile Services brought this exciting new technology to our city first." "Since July 1, more than 200,000 calls have gone through the Pacific Bell Mobile Services network," said Lyn Daniels, president and chief executive officer of Pacific Bell Mobile Services. "When it comes to technology, PCS is the hot property." The digital wireless technology is called Personal Communications Service (PCS), a more reliable and secure alternative to cellular. The service makes its California debut this week at the Republican National Convention where Pacific Bell Mobile Services is the official provider of wireless telecommunications services. The Republican National Convention and Pacific Bell Mobile Services have distributed more than 600 PCS phones among convention organizers, party officials, candidates, security agencies and media. Pacific Bell Mobile Services activated PCS service for the convention last month. The coverage area includes the San Diego Convention Center, downtown hotels, tourist attractions, the airport, major transportation corridors and the coastline. Convention attendees are using their PCS phones to send and receive calls and short-text messages. The phones can also be plugged into laptop computers for wireless faxing and Internet access. After the convention closes, Pacific Bell Mobile Services will prepare for a consumer product launch in California and Nevada in early 1997. The company plans to broadly distribute PCS phones through drug stores, consumer electronics stores and warehouse retailers. Industry analysts expect PCS to cost less than existing cellular service, particularly in California where cellular subscribers pay among the highest rates in the nation. Pacific Bell Mobile Services is the wireless communications subsidiary of Pacific Bell. Pacific Telesis Group, the parent company of Pacific Bell and Pacific Bell Mobile Services, is a diversified telecommunications company headquartered in San Francisco. ------------- Mike King * Oakland, CA, USA * mk@wco.com ------------------------------ From: Mike King Subject: New Wireless Phone Network Comes Through Power Outage Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 14:41:04 PDT Forwarded to the Digest FYI: Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 11:48:44 -0700 From: sqlgate@list.pactel.com Subject: New Wireless Phone Network Comes Through Power Outage FOR MORE INFORMATION: Linda Bonniksen (619) 917-0951 - PCS Phone (619) 237-2430 John Britton (619) 917-1048 - PCS Phone (619) 237-2430 New Wireless Phone Network Comes Through Power Outage Pacific Bell Mobile Services Reports 100 Percent Increase in Call Volumes at Republican National Convention SAN DIEGO, Calif., -- Pacific Bell Mobile Services announced today that its new wireless phone network serving the Republican National Convention performed flawlessly through yesterday's power outage affecting nine western states. When the power outage occurred at 3:45 a.m. Saturday, 25 antenna sites in San Diego automatically switched from a commercial power source to their on-site back-up batteries. Additionally, the company's master switching center in San Diego and its network operations center in Pleasanton, Calif., switched to diesel generators. As a result, the company's new Personal Communications Services network stayed on the air to process 8,000 calls from 3:45 p.m. to 7:15 p.m., a 100 percent increase in calls from the same time period Friday. Pacific Bell Mobile Services is the official provider of wireless telecommunications services for the Republican National Convention. "The network didn't miss a beat," said Frank Casazza, operations vice president for Pacific Bell Mobile Services. "We built back-up power sources into the network for exactly these types of crises, and our planning paid off. More than 600 people using our Personal Communications Services at the Republican Convention made call after call after call without any interruption or delay." Personal Communications Services (PCS) is a new wireless telecommunications technology that offers a secure and private alternative to cellular. Unlike cellular, PCS is 100 percent pure digital. Being digital, PCS offers superior sound quality and reliability, as well as built-in complex encryption for maximum privacy and protection from cloning. The Republican Party and Pacific Bell Mobile Services have distributed more than 600 PCS phones to party officials, candidates, their staffs, event organizers, city officials, security agencies and the news media. Pacific Bell Mobile Services is the wireless communications subsidiary of Pacific Bell. Pacific Telesis Group, the parent company of Pacific Bell and Pacific Bell Mobile Services, is a diversified telecommunications company headquartered in San Francisco. ------------ Mike King * Oakland, CA, USA * mk@wco.com ------------------------------ From: DVIEI1@jcpenney.com Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 11:38:44 -0500 Subject: Requesting Internet Fraud List Would somebody know if there is a list of actual cases in which the Internet was used as a fraud tool against enterprises? (i.e.: theft, viruses, security breaches, etc...) Thanks. Cordially, Demian Vieira de Souza - Comm Analyst JCPenney Communications Systems 12700 Park Central Place M/C 6009 Dallas, TX 75252, USA Office:(214)591-7361 FAX:(214)531-7361/591-6721 Internet: DVIEI1@JCPENNEY.COM / PROFS ID: DVIEI1 ------------------------------ From: michael.p.mullineaux@arthuranderson.com Date: 12 Aug 96 11:48:06 GMT Subject: Re: Reselling Cellular Airtime Dear Readers, I am searching for additional information on cellular reselling; have your inquiries/responses generated any addtional data that you might share? Kind Regards, Mike ------------------------------ From: David Michael Subject: DTMF Tone Keypads Wanted Date: Tue, 09 Aug 1996 04:08:37 +0100 Organization: OiT Ltd. Hi, I want to purchase about 1,000 DTMF tone keypads (you know the things you get with your answerphone), but I only want to spend about $3 max. Does anyone know of a good cheap supply? Thanks, David Michael http://www.oit.co.uk/~david Technical Director, OiT Ltd. tel: +44 1865 785002 Oxford OX4 2JZ, UK fax: +44 1865 785100 ------------------------------ From: course@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Telecom Instructors Needed at UC Berkeley Extension Date: 13 Aug 1996 01:10:06 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley INSTRUCTORS NEEDED for... *** UC BERKELEY EXTENSION'S *** Telecommunications Engineering 4-Month Diploma Program UC Berkeley Extension is seeking part-time instructors to teach daytime credit courses in Berkeley. The 4-Month Diploma Program in telecommunications engineering is an intensive, focused program, developed for both international and residential students to complete in a concentrated time frame. The curriculum is designed to provide an in-depth understanding of telecommunications essentials and to develop a technical awareness of current practices and future directions. If you are a highly-qualified and experienced telecommunications professional, with a bachelors or higher degree, successful teaching/ training experience, and the desire to teach, we would like to hear from you. We are particularly looking for people with experience in: Data Communication; Computer Networks; Digital Telecommunications; Broadband Communications; Advanced Local Area Computer Networks; Internetworking; Wireless/Mobile Communications; Design and Applications of Mobile Data Networks. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED ... FAX your resume to (510) 642-6027 with a covering note mentioning your interest in teaching in the 4-Month Telecommunications Engineering Diploma Program. Please be sure that the resume specifies your experience as it relates to this program. Or send your resume ELECTRONICALLY to course@garnet.berkeley.edu (attn: 4-Month Telecommunications). Please mention your interest in teaching in the 4-Month Telecommunications Engineering Diploma Program. You may send your resume to us by snail mail at the following address: 4-Month Telecommunications Engineering Diploma Program c/o UC Berkeley Extension Engineering 1995 University Avenue Berkeley, CA 94720-7010 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 18:29:48 -0700 From: Ed James Organization: Migration Software Subject: Voicemail and Unix Has anyone had any experience hooking a unix box up to a vociemail system that isn't designed for it? Specifically. I have a NorTel Startalk of some configuration (floppy, scsi port on the back, parallel port, one card with two lines connected, labeled 1-2 and 3-4), and I would like to have it send email to folks when they get voicemail. Most of our employees are at client sites, and checking one's voicemail daily can be cumbersome. I'd like to instead deliver a piece of email to the mailbox owner that indicates that new voicemail arrived at a certain time. If I could hook the unix box up to the parallel port of the Startalk, and if I could convince the startalk to generate reports on a daily basis (or more frequently), I could parse the report on the unix side, and generate the required voicemail. I have no idea how to make the startalk do this, though. Does anyone out there have any experience with the startalk? Can it be made to generate reports regularly, and can they be easily directed to the parallel port for "printing"? Thanks in advance, ed ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 09:53:41 CDT From: Christopher Wolf Subject: Re: Speaking Ahout Crashes and Doing Dumb Things On Thu, 8 Aug 1996, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Last Sunday night I got on line about 10:00 p.m. here to do some work > on the Digest and I had a bright idea about a new script I wanted to > try out. Well the script flubbed, which was not anything unusual for > scripts that I write or try to hack on, but the main annoyance was > it left me with a directory full of about a hundred .h, .c. and .o > files to clean out when I decided to quit the experiment. > Now, I try to be smart with potentially disasterous commands like > 'rm' and I personally have 'rm' aliased to 'rm -i' meaning to not > erase a file without asking for confirmation. The problem is, if > you have a whole directory full of garbage files to get rid of > then if you go to that directory and do 'rm *' it will stop over > and over again, asking about each file. The command 'rm -f' will > NOT overrride 'rm -i' on this machine at least, although 'rm -f' > will work in a script running in the background with its own shell > regardless of what arguments I happen to have attached to 'rm' > for my use in the foreground. > So far so good. Instead of having to answer 'y' a 120 times for > every garbage file in the garbage directory I am abolishing, I > decided just this one time I would unalias 'rm' instead. So I > did 'unalias rm' then I did 'rm *' -- but the trouble is I had > ** forgotten to change directories to the one I wanted **. Pat, I use the idea of a trashcan when I activate remove. I alias rm to be the following script, which actually moves files to a hidden directory called .trashcan in my home directory and removes directories and symbolic links. Doesn't handle the more complex forms of rm, but it works fine. BTW: I also run a crontab job to clean out the directory every morning ... 20 4 * * 1-5 (/bin/rm /home/cwolf/.trashcan/* /home/cwolf/.trashcan/.??* > /dev/null ) If you use tcsh or csh like I do, you can then use \rm when you want to override the alias. A backward slash before a command means to ignore any aliases for it. #!/usr/local/bin/tcsh -f foreach i ($*) if (-d $i) then echo Removing directory $i /bin/rmdir $i else if (-l $i) then echo Unlinking symbolic link $i /bin/rm $i else if (-f $i) then if (`/bin/ls -l $i | /bin/cut -c23-31` > "500000") then set SIZE=`/bin/ls -l $i | /bin/cut -c23-31` echo -n "NUKING $i of size $SIZE. " /bin/rm $i echo "BOOM! No Backup." else echo Removing file $i to temporary trashcan. /bin/mv $i ~/.trashcan endif endif end ------------------------------ From: jsol@eddie.mit.edu Subject: Speaking About Crashes and Doing Dumb Things Date: Mon, 12 Aug 96 16:53:02 EDT Here's how to avoid this in the future: % mkdir .backup Copy all the files you want to save into that directory. Put the dot before it so you don't accidentally delete it. Then make .backup2, which should contain a copy of all incoming mail in .backup2/inbox. Clean this out every so often. This way you should not need the backups. ------------------------------ 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 America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #404 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Aug 13 18:53:20 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id SAA01366; Tue, 13 Aug 1996 18:53:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 18:53:20 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199608132253.SAA01366@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #405 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Aug 96 18:53:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 405 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Three Charged in Telephone System Scam (Tad Cook) Cellular Service! Flat Rate! Scam? (Raymond B. Normandeau) When Was Direct Distance Dialing Cut In? (Paul Houle) Phone Privacy: Collecting Damages From Solicitors (Ken Hamel) Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? (Spyros C. Bartsocas) Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? (Linc Madison) Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? (Jim Jordan) Re: USA Technology is Awfully Backward (Mark Tenenbaum) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tad Cook Subject: Three Charged in Telephone System Scam Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 10:51:39 PDT Three Floridians Charged in Telephone System Scam By Simon Barker-Benfield, The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Aug. 13--State officials said yesterday three people have been charged in a nationwide scam headquartered in Jacksonville that sold dealerships for telephone answering systems. Three people associated with Commercials on Hold of America Inc. were arrested over the weekend and charged with racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering, said Florida Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford. Arrested were Ray Lynn, 53, and Amber Yvonne Lynn, 46, both of Jacksonville, and Philip Axt, 52, of Neptune Beach. "Other arrests are pending," Crawford said. The company offered answering systems that were supposed to play customized, pre-recorded advertisements for a business while callers were on hold, Crawford said. The dealerships were offered in packages priced from $12,995 to $19,995 and included training, equipment and supplies. The company is accused of defrauding victims of more than $350,000 by falsely claiming to manufacture a unique system, setting up false testimonials, misrepresenting how much money could be made and not providing the systems in accordance with the dealer contracts. Crawford said the scheme operated through 1992 and most of 1993. Commercials on Hold of America does not have a telephone number in the Jacksonville area. The company has no connection with Commercials on Hold in Macon, Ga. (c) 1996, The Florida Times-Union. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Aug 96 13:29:18 EDT From: Raymond B. Normandeau <73770.121@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Cellular Service! Flat Rate! Scam? Pat: This smells like a scam: [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It certainly does seem strange. You will notice he did not include any 800 number in his message ... ... but that in and of itself does not prove anything. Let's see what the other Digest readers think of this offer ... PAT] Date: 08-06-96 (09:54) Number: 126730 of 126994 (Refer# NONE) To: RAY NORMANDEAU From: azimuth@loop.com, AZIMUTH Subj: Re: Cellular Service! Flat Rate! FREE Phone with Signu Read: 08-06-96 (22:33) Status: RECEIVER ONLY Conf: email (500) Read Type: GENERAL HAS REPLIES Message-ID: <32075B77.68D6@loop.com> Date: Tue, 06 Aug 1996 07:49:27 -0700 From: azimuth Reply-To: azimuth@loop.com To: Ray Normandeau Subject: Re: Cellular Service! Flat Rate! FREE Phone with Signu AZIMUTH ONLINE SERVICES AND WESTERN CELLULAR, INC. ARE HERE, SERVING YOUR CELLULAR NEEDS! WE'RE ONLY A PHONE CALL AWAY! Dear Mr. Normandeau, Thank you for responding to our online ad for a new cellular service and pricing plan that has until now, been unheard of. Flat rate cellular airtime! I know this may sound too good to be true, and truly there must be a gimmick. Well I can tell you this is not one of them. This is quite possibly the best cellular service and pricing available anywhere. We are Azimuth Online Services, and we represent Western Cellular and their phenomenal pricing plan for people just like you who want and need to stay in touch. Western Cellular, Inc. is offering cellular service, cellular service with UNLIMITED AIR TIME in your metro or rural cell area for only $450.00 a year! that is only $37.50 per month, and that price will not change if you use it on weekends, weekdays, weeknights, or holidays. This does, however, apply to local usage. If you use long distance, then your long distance carrier will bill you on their bill, not ours. You no longer need to worry about how much your bill is GOING to be per month, because you are paid up for a whole year, with your subscription of $450.00. Nor do you need to continue to pay high prices for air time. (Of course, you will be billed for long distance, but from the Carrier of your choice.) Some cellular bills will cost that much in just a couple of months, and for using only local service! Whether you are a business traveler, business owner, salesperson, parent, or student, you9ll appreciate the convenience and low, low price of just $450.00 a year for unlimited local calls! We also have several value-added services such as voice-mail, call forwarding, three-way calling, and toll free numbers (888 area code) with some of the lowest rates available for your new cellular phone and service! We service all area codes, and every calling area in the nation! Your new cellular service even comes equipped with a free cellular phone! Choose between two different makes and models! The bottom line is this: 1.) You pay a flat rate for cellular service that is $450.00 for your first year of service. 2.) You get a choice of two different makes and models of cellular phone. 3.) You DO NOT get charged roaming fees, relay fees, or have to pay ANYTHING for receiving a call while out of your calling area. 4.) You do not get charged roaming fees, relay fees, or have to pay ANYTHING extra for making a call while out of your calling area EXCEPT for long distance charges that are billed to you from the long distance carrier of YOUR CHOICE. 5.) Your second, third, fourth, and every year after that will cost you $400 a year for all of the above (except the free phone, because you already have one). Still sound too good to be true? Call us and see for yourself, I can promise you, this is the way to go when it comes to low cost cellular service! We are so confident that you will like our service that we are offering a 30 day money back guarantee with no questions asked, if you are not completely satisfied with your new cellular service from Western Cellular, Inc. There are a couple of ways to reach us: Give us a call TODAY at 818-295-3746 Or Send us an e-mail at: azimuthos@aol.com with your name, city, state and telephone number and we will call you (please also specify the best hours to reach you). I would like you to know that these two options are temporary, due to the fact we are waiting for our toll-free line to be installed. Please be sure to include your city, state and telephone number in your e-mail, so that I can take a survey of what regions need our services the most. I would very much look forward to talking to you about this exciting service plan. Please feel free to call anytime I can be of service in providing you and those you know with superior cellular service that cost less than you ever thought possible. Thank you for your interest in Azimuth Online Services and Western Cellular, Inc. Sincerely, Jess Medina, Jr. President, Azimuth Online Services ------------------ Date: 08-07-96 (00:55) Number: 127077 of 127083 (Refer# NONE) To: RAY NORMANDEAU From: azimuth@loop.com, AZIMUTH Subj: Re: Cellular Service! Flat Rate! FREE Phone with Signu Read: 08-07-96 (02:02) Status: RECEIVER ONLY Conf: email (500) Read Type: GENERAL Message-ID: <32082E9F.2789@loop.com> Date: Tue, 06 Aug 1996 22:50:23 -0700 From: azimuth Reply-To: azimuth@loop.com To: Ray Normandeau Subject: Re: Cellular Service! Flat Rate! FREE Phone with Signu >> Is Western Cellular the carrier, or are they a reseller? >> If a reseller, whose service are they reselling? >> Is your service available right now or is this something in the future. >> Which counties of NYC do you consider local? >> Thanks. Hi Mr. Normandeau, Western Cellular is the carrier, I am the reseller. They are not reselling service, they are providing satellite cellular coverage to all of their subscribers across the country. They do have an affiliation with AT&T and are considered a subagent, but they do not resell directly to consumers. This service is available right now with a standard 10 day waiting period for service to take effect after signup. We service all counties in all states of the country. What is considered a local call depends on where you want your service to stem from. For example, if you want a particular area code with a particular prefix (like your prefix on your home phone, with a different last four digits) then the local calling area would be all the prefixes that are considered local for your home telephone service. The best way to determine that, I always suggest, is to look at your phone book and look at what prefixes in your home service calling area are local and not billed as toll, local toll, or long distance. The prefixes that are local are what would be your local calling area for your cell phone (provided you and your phone are physically in that local region as well). If you are physically out of the region, then you incur a long distance call and are billed from the LD carrier of your choice. No extra charges apply. You will NEVER receive a bill from Western Cellular. I hope that answers all your questions. Thank you for your interest. Jess Medina [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does anyone want to investigate this a bit further and tell us what is known about Jess Medina, his company, and the company he is an agent/reseller for? That phone number he gives is of interest, as is loop.com. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Paul Houle Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 18:25:57 GMT Subject: When Was Direct Distance Dialing Cut In? I have a historical question which I hope isn't a FAQ in this group, but which I have not been able to find an answer on the web or the telecom archives. I'm trying to find out exactly when DDD (direct distance dialing) was cut-in in the US. I have the impression that there was a specific date in the late 50s or early 60s but I've had bad luck looking for it. This surprises me because of the fact that such a date may be a good watershed for the development of our civilization -- the first moment when it was possible for an individual to make a connection across a continent without human attention. ------------------------------ From: hamelk@rintintin.Colorado.EDU (Ken Hamel) Subject: Phone Privacy: Collecting Damages From Solicitors Date: 13 Aug 96 13:52:10 GMT Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder Hello: I have been checking out the Telephone Consumers Protection Act (USC Title 47 Section 227 online at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.html) and it sets forth $500 damages for telemarketers that phone you back after requesting not to be called. Can anyone give me a step-by-step to how one would begin collecting the damages? Has anyone reading this group successfully collected damages from telemarketers? I'm expecting AT&T will try yet again: I documented their previous calls and am ready to pounce! Please respond via email. Cheers, Ken Hamel --==*==-- Ken.Hamel@Colorado.EDU --==*==-- Boulder, CO --++*++-- http://rintintin.Colorado.EDU/~hamelk --++*++-- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The person you want to speak with is Robert Bulmash of the Private Citizen organization. He has a directory of people like yourself which he circulates to telemarketers each year, and when the telemarketers break the rules, he helps the members of his organization collect the penalty they are due. Bob is a regular reader here, so I expect he will see this and be in contact with you, however you can call him if you want. He is listed in the phone book for northern Illinois in the 847 area code under 'Private Citizen'. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 17:12:08 GMT From: Spyros C. Bartsocas Subject: Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? > In Europe, the area code can be of variable length as can the number. > Here everything is fixed. Why? > ie - in Germany a firm's fax number has more digits than the voice > number. A rural area code has more digits than an urban one in > Greece. Although, I can not comment on German numbers, numbers in Greece have a fixed length of 8 (i.e. Length of AreaCode+Length of Number is always equal to 8). The following cases exist: The Athens Metropolitan Area is 1+7 Major Cities and Mobile phones are 2+6 Other Areas and Services are 3+5 Athens used to have a 2 digit area code and six digit numbers, but when it was running out of numbers a couple of decades ago, its area code was changed from "21" to "1", and seven digit numbers were introduced. Also for billing purposes Telex numbers, regardless of their location appear in Area code 1 and start with a 0 (e.g. Telex 234567 is 1+0234567). Total length is still 8. Spyros Bartsocas scb@hol.gr ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 10:43:49 -0400 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? One of the management fads that the "Dilbert's Bosses" was the phrase "thinking outside the box". They stopped talking about it when they realized, I suspect, that they were the boxes. Most of the discussion of NANP numbers has focused on two details, overlays and the possible alternative of eight-digit numbers, and the difficulty of changing the phone network itself. The real cost of a change is largely outside of the network. The Bell System adopted the 3+3+4 numbering plan back in the days when its high-end CO switch was the crossbar. A crossbar switch had a sort of relay processor (marker) which could "translate" a dialed digit string into an action. But it only worked on fixed-length strings. So prefix codes had to be 3 digits, and line numbers had to be 4. These numbers were arbitrary but locked into hardware. Newer processor-controlled systems are compatible with this assupumtion. Remember that the cost of software is MUCH greater than the cost of computer hardware these days, especially when it changes! So while new switches are "programmable", it's by no means simple or cheap to change fundamental assumptions. I've written automatic route selection tables for many PBXs. In America, most of them are written around three and six digit translation tables. It's hard coded. You dial 1617 and it knows that the 1 means area code follows; 617 is thus the fixed-length area code, and it translates that. If it needs to, it'll then translate on the next three digits. Toll restriction tables are similar. Switches designed for other countries are "flexible". Thus the European software releases for, say, the Meridian SL-1 are different in this regard from the North American ones. The Mitel SX-2000, a "world" switch, was unusual in allowing a flexible translation scheme into the NorAm market, where it matches on arbitrary-length digit strings. That was interesting to look at, as it was the first time I saw how a European switch would be translated. Of course it works fine here too ... but I suspect there's an efficiency boost in fixed-length scans, and PBX CPUs were until recently notoriously weak. But as I said it's not the switches that matter. It's the rest of the world. Europe grew up with mixed-length phone numbers, so every data base that has a phone number in it allows variable-length fields. Here, most data bases and the applications that feed them (insurance, bank, credit, employer, cash register, utility company, newspaper subscription, whatever, you name it!) are based on FIXED-length numbers. If you think the Year 2000 problem is big, just try to switch over to variable-length phone numbers! It'll take decades. Europe didn't have many crossbars; they did more with steppers, which accomodaste variable-length numbers. This affected their expectations, including data bases, point-of-sale software, etc. What started as a switch architecture decision by telco monopolies took on a life elsewhere! What's simple for Europeans, like adding a digit, is thus nigh-on impossible here. Back outside the box: Why do we always assume, as telcos are quick to do, that overlays mean ten-digit dialing? New York's 917 overlay didn't affect seven-digit dialing. Why should others? I agree that ten digits is too many to handle. I also don't like mini-areas. But we also assume that a seven-digit number is always one in the same area code as one is in. How silly! It is quite possible even in today's technology to have seven-digit numbers default to one's *primary* area code, with ten-digit numbers for one's *own* area code if that happens to be less-often dialed. Look in the Manhattan phone book for a 917 number. Not there. They're unlisted! Who lists cellular phones? (Remember, non-US readers, that here, the cellular user usually pays airtime for all calls in both directions.) Let's extend that. We put in overlays. We reserve the remaining numbers in the old code for LISTED numbers and perhaps some residential unlisted ones. (Resi line growth is not the problem!) We put all new BULK numbers (DID blocks, PBX trunks, pagers, fax servers, cellular, SMDS, ATM, etc.) in the overlay. But we allow them to choose a default seven-digit local-destin- ation-NPA that is not their own. So my home unlisted "data" ISDN line might be in the overlay but it can still dial 7 digits and get 617, or 11 digits for itself. And if a business NEEDS a non-overlay unlisted number, then it can have it FOR A PRICE; this safety valve will cover ISPs, etc, who need say ten numbers in a DID or MSN block, as well as hospitals, etc., who provide a sort of "tenant service" to medical practices who locate there. Fax server users don't want to pay extra for a "familiar" NPA; most business DID users won't either. Competitive LECs should get to share the last remaining prefixes in the old non-overlay codes. Bells should recycle the codes they have, migrating most bulk users to the overlays over time. This is consumer-friendly (seven-digit dialing plus the old number doesn't change) and competition-friendly (CLECs get dibs on what's left until number portability moots the issue). And it doens't muck with ingrained assumptions about 3+3+4 which will take DECADES to change! Fred R. Goldstein fgoldstein@bbn.com BBN Corp. Cambridge MA USA +1 617 873 3850 ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: Why Not Eight-Digit USA Numbers? Date: 12 Aug 1996 16:16:57 GMT