Received: by bu-cs.BU.EDU (5.58/4.7) id AA21993; Tue, 13 Dec 88 01:42:59 EST Message-Id: <8812130642.AA21993@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: Tue, 13 Dec 88 1:11:04 EST From: The Moderator Reply-To: TELECOM@bu-cs.BU.EDU Subject: TELECOM Digest V8 #199 To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Dec 88 1:11:04 EST Volume 8 : Issue 199 Today's Topics: Touch-Tone around the world Touch-Tone At United Telephone Re: Laser Beam as a ethernet backbone Finding Someone At Telco Who Will Listen/Understand Re: Modem Noise Re: splitting area codes Re: Toll charges and call forwarding ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: covert%covert.DEC@decwrl.dec.com (John R. Covert) Date: 11 Dec 88 10:46 To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu, westmark!dave@rutgers.edu Subject: Touch-Tone around the world >Also, does anybody know if the tone-dial equipment there [U.K. and Europe] >uses the same tone-pairs as we do here? Yes. It is CCITT standard Q.31. There are now a few (very few) U.K. exchanges which provide DTMF service to subscribers. Although System X can do it, very, very few exchanges permit subscribers to use it. DTMF is fairly common in PBXs, however, the U.K. requires the DTMF level to be set quite low to prevent crosstalk, which also tends to prevent transatlantic end-to-end signalling from working. DTMF is much more common in France -- there are even DTMF payphones in a few rare places. In Germany, there is no DTMF in the public network, but essentially all PBXs use DTMF. /john ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 88 08:09:07 est From: David M. Kurtiak To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Another Name For Touch-Tone Cc: dmkdmk@uncecs.edu I live in an area served by United Telephone (a non-Bell independant telco - I think th 3rd largest in the USA). They call thier touch-tone equivalent of a service mark as "U-TOUCH". None of the advertisements for the phones or services refer to it as "touch tone", but always as "U-TOUCH". I'm pretty sure that is still a registerd trademark. Guess somebody in thier marketing department was a real genious for this one. :-) -- David M. Kurtiak Internet: dmkdmk@ecsvax.uncecs.edu BITNET: DMKDMK@ECSVAX.BITNET UUCP: dmkdmk@ecsvax.UUCP {gatech,rutgers}!mcnc!ecsvax!dmkdmk ------------------------------ To: comp-dcom-telecom@decwrl.dec.com From: jbn@glacier.stanford.edu (John B. Nagle) Subject: Re: Laser Beam as a ethernet backbone Date: 11 Dec 88 23:08:24 GMT This comes up every once in a while, and the definitive information is as follows. The FCC has jurisdiction over "Radio", according to the Communications Act of 1934, as amended. "Radio Waves or Hertzian Waves" are defined in 47 CFR Ch. 1 part 2 subpart A section 2.1 as "Electronic waves of frequencies arbitrarily lower than 3,000 GHz, propagated in space without artificial guide." So FCC regulation stops at 3,000 GHz. The 3,000 GHz limit is by international agreement (Radio Regulations, Geneva, 1982). This limit is in the very long infrared range. In article donp@apollo.COM (Don Preuss) writes: >X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp >X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 8, issue 196, message 6 > >The National Institutes of Health has one of these set up >between two buildings. It took the company a few >trys to get it right, and the latest I heard was that they >are still getting a large number of retransmits. Rain and snow are serious problems. One thing that helps is to use large collecting optics at both ends, so that the beam occupies a physically larger diameter but remains collimated. Usually a large parabolic reflector is used. This will improve operation in light rain and snow. In heavy precipitation, though, optical systems just don't work. To get through heavy rain, you must use a wavelength bigger than raindrops. John Nagle ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 88 02:59:00 EST From: Miguel_Cruz@ub.cc.umich.edu To: telecom%bu-cs.BU.EDU@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Finding Someone Technical To Speak With Re: Bill Chen 'Trying to talk to someone technical within the phone company is next to impossible.' That's because there aren't any technical people in the phone company. It's just wall after wall, level after level, layer after layer of "service representatives" and other bureaucrats. I have spent continuous hours on the phone trying to talk to someone who knew any fact not in the inside few pages of the phone book, and have never had any luck. My theory is, with the divestiture, AT&T got all the technical people, and the BOCs were just left with some pretty foolproof equipment and a whole lot of middle management. Miguel Cruz Miguel_Cruz@ub.cc.umich.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 88 05:30:05 PST From: early%css.DEC@decwrl.dec.com (Bob Early CSS/NSG dtn 264-6252) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu, EARLY%css.DEC@decwrl.dec.com Subject: Re: Modem Noise >From: chen@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu (Bill Chen) >Subject: Modem noise >Date: 11 Dec 88 00:28:10 GMT >We've been having progressively worsening noise problems on our dial : : >such as MNP although our modems are equipped to do it. The noise >seems to be generally one way, from the host side to the terminal side. Noise is just that. Random impulses being picked up by the telco lines as they pass through an 'electrically' noisy environment. Some such causes are elevator shafts; rotary machines (a such as motors, generators, and 'dynamos'), other wires such as HVAC transmission, poor grounding of the computer vequipment,; archaic telco equipment (step-and-select strowger swithches, etc). If you have the option of using MNP, use it. >Telco people haven't been too helpful. Calling 611 is useless. Trying >to talk to someone technical within the telephone company is next to >impossible. With most telephone companies you must be persistent,and give the impression that you *know* it is in the central office, and they *must* fix it. (I personally had a defective phone service, and it took three months to get it fixed.) >Are there any people out there that may have seen this problem? I have >been told by some people that there might be some notch filters that This is a common problem with BELL 212A implementations. The "{{{" or 'curly bracket' isn't *really* the true character. The curly bracket is the modems interpretation of the noise impulses it is seeing, in much the same manner if you privide a string of randoms 'ones and zeros' to a computers operating system you will see many 'odd' charcters as the CPU attempts to 'parse' the charcters. >Bill Chen Bob Early "Long live the Scholar-Plus" [Moderator's note: The phone company seems to think their customers are all dumb. Remind me to tell you about the time I spent several days convincing Repair Service that a bummed out interoffice trunk between Chicago-Kenwood and Chicago-Wabash was not '...a problem with my instrument, which will require our representative to visit your premises a week from next Tuesday...'. I was finally able to sneak in through the 'back door' and speak to the supervisor in night plant about two in the morning. I held up the troubled trunk on one of my lines while he went in the frames, found me and busied it out. But should customers have to do this sort of thing for Bell? Pat Townson] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Nov 88 16:47:54 EST From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Re: splitting area codes Many digests ago, I had a note in about a song lament which included "when we were 212"! I also heard of some uproar that outsiders might not recognize a 718-area number as being a "New York City number". As has been said earlier, phone co. reserves the right to change phone numbers (this includes area code, right?) if required in the course of its operations, and it's only by courtesy that they give some advance notice to businesses in the affected areas. The need to minimize such adverse impact does cause a conservative approach: "Don't change if you don't have to"; for example, if an area code is split, the local 7-digit number is not changed (although this was bent in some cases to avoid splitting some towns along the 213/818 border in California; I don't know specific cases there). ------------------------------ To: comp-dcom-telecom@rutgers.edu From: ron@ron.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) Subject: Re: Toll charges and call forwarding Date: 12 Dec 88 19:19:31 GMT (The original question was) Station A, in area ONE, makes call to station B in area TWO. (This is a normal toll call for station A) However, station B is set to forward to station C back in area ONE, where station C is in the normal free calling zone of station A. How will this call be charged? 1> as a local call 2> as an toll call for the around trip A -> B -> C 3> other... Neither 1 or 2. A pays for a toll call from A -> B and then B gets billed for the forwarded call from B -> C. -Ron ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************