Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id NAA21080; Mon, 6 May 1996 13:51:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 13:51:25 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199605061751.NAA21080@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #219 TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 May 96 13:51:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 219 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Fire in PDX US West Office Kills Phone Service (foole@earthlink.net) Re: US West Cutbacks Shake Oregon Employees (Leonard Erickson) Re: US West Cutbacks Shake Oregon Employees (Elana Beach) Re: Does Caller-ID Hunt or Call-Forward? (Lynne Gregg) Re: Does Caller-ID Hunt or Call-Forward? (Steven Bradley) Information Wanted on "Cordless Miracle" (Dub Dublin) Does Sprint Provide NYC Local Service? (Vasos Panagiotopoulos) Re: ANI Information From D-Channel (Brett Frankenberger) Re: Third Number Billing No Longer Being Verified? (Eric Kammerer) Re: Third Number Billing No Longer Being Verified? (Babu Mengelepouti) 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: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is 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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: foole@earthlink.net Subject: Re: Fire in PDX US West Office Kills Phone Service Date: Mon, 06 May 1996 15:53:06 GMT Organization: Earthlink Network, Inc. On Sun, 28 Apr 1996 15:34:15 GMT, elana@netcom.com (Elana who?) wrote: > Sometime last week, there was a fire in a Portland, Oregon (PDX in > airport lingo) US West office ... it burned thru some phone cables and > knocked out phone service in most of the northeastern part of the > city. > The outage lasted about eight hours. One of the ISPs I have an > account with, agora.rdrop.com, temporarily lost their Internet > connection as well, even though they are physically located rather far > south of the outage area. (go figure). > The reaction of the locals, according to the paper, seems to be that > this is the last straw for a lot of these Portlanders. US West has > already angered a lot of people here because of incident upon incident > of bad service and too-long waits for new numbers. And now this. > Hmmm ... US West has not yet annoyed me at all ... (cautiously fearful > emphasis on "yet") > I have no idea about this incident other than what I've scanned in the > local paper. Perhaps a fellow Webfoot ( that the Oregonian > slang for other Oregonians) who more technical than I, *and* knows > more about this incident can post more news about it. I work for a company whose service was completely severed by this outage. My account exec at USWest informs me that an electrician was cutting a power cable that everyone KNEW to be off. Guess, what? It wasn't. There was no information forthcoming from USWest as to the condition of the electrician, but he was injured. Western Electric was brought in to complete the repairs. The incident happened around 10 am on Wednesday, April 24th. Service was restored about eight and 1/2 hours later. This outage was sheer negligence on the part of USWest and the electrician. There is test equipment that would have told them that the cable was live, if they only would have chosen to use it. Tom Lynn ------------------------------ Subject: Re: US West Cutbacks Shake Oregon Employees From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Date: Sun, 05 May 1996 18:08:05 PST Organization: Shadownet Another thing you don't hear regarding the downsizing is that (at least here in Portland) the "technical" folks have been working *mandatory* 12 hour shifts (60 hour weeks) for over a year. I have this from a friend who works there (and who shall remain nameless as he'd like to keep his job!) I've worked at places that used 12 hour shifts. But it is normally used for areas that need 24 hour a day, 7 days a week coverage. And they work things so that nobody does more than 4 days in a row, and the average hours per week are around 48. But US West seems to be doing this *solely* to avoid having to hire more people. I rather suspect that overtime comes under a different category than "base" per employee expenses. That would allo management to look good for cutting the "base" expenses, even though the overtime pay was eating up all the savings. US West just doesn't get it. We have local competition coming, and they are providing *lousy* service. BTW, the fire here in Portland was due to *outside* contractors who had been hired to install some new switching gear. They cut a power cable that was "live" and the resulting short is what started the fire. They also managed to disconnect the battery backup! There was very little damage, mostly just the one cable that got hot enough for the insulation to catch fire. It didn't damage adjacent cables, but they had to check that anyway, clean up the cable run, and get the power back to the areas that lost it. So it only took a couple of days to get it all straightened out. But this too shows the sort of problems the downsizing has caused. Why else would outside contractors be installing switch gear *without* some phone company techs keeping an eye on things? Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: elana@netcom.com (Elana who?) Subject: Re: US West Cutbacks Shake Oregon Employees Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Sun, 5 May 1996 18:08:53 GMT In article , Tad Cook wrote: Quote from some US West VIP-type: > "In order for us to be competitive in this new environment we had to > increase service and reduce costs," Miller said. WAITAMINNIT!!! "Competitive" with whom?? If ever I have a problem with US West, I can't go calling some other local telco like I can with long-distance companies and say "Hi! I am tired of having US West as my local telco! Sign me up with your outfit instead!" They are the only game in town and they know it. Is this a case of corporate doublespeak or is there something I don't quite understand here??? E. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think what you don't understand is that competition is >thisclose< to becoming reality. It already is in place for very large telecom customers, which is all most of the telcos care about anyway. There may not be any competitors out there now soliciting your business, but they will be soon enough. The existing or 'traditional' telcos all see it coming, and in their various ways are digging in and trying to reform themselves to meet the challenge. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Lynne Gregg Subject: Re: Does Caller-ID Hunt or Call-Forward? Date: Mon, 06 May 96 08:01:00 PDT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: (excerpt) > Cellular phones usually do not send or receive caller-id, regardless > of what features you have on your landline phones. PAT] Just to clarify, AT&T Wireless and a few other cellular carriers offer TRUE Caller ID services. This means that the cellular number *is* sent on outbound calls. It also means that cellular subscribers having a proper cellphone can subscribe to Caller ID service and see inbound calls. One advantage of Cellular Caller ID is that it operates today with Call Waiting. Very nice for call screening, if you handle many inbound calls on your cellular phone. Now as to forwarding, the intermediate point or points (lines) DO NOT have to subscribe to Caller ID in order for the originating caller's number to be passed. What's needed is ISUP connectivity end-to-end. I only have Caller ID on my cellular phone. I forward my desk phone and my residential phone to my cellular. Both of those wired lines are ISUP to and through the CO. Therefore all calls coming to my cellular show the number (except when blocked or out of area). In order to decrease the number of "out of area" displays on business calls, I instruct frequent callers to have their Telecom Managers configure their PBX's to send either the main office number or station numbers of system users. By doing this, the vast majority of my inbound calls actually DO display numbers. AT&T passes Calling Party Number on long distance calls, so many of my out-state calls display Caller ID, too. Regards, Lynne ------------------------------ From: steven@bbbcfl.oau.org (Steven Bradley) Date: Mon, 6 May 96 06:21:27 EDT Subject: Re: Does Caller-ID Hunt or Call-Forward? Organization: The Better Business Bureau of Central Florida, Inc. Rich Chong wrote: > Let's say I have two lines. A and B. Line A doesn't subscribe to > caller-id. Line B does. If line-A busy is set up to hunt to line-B, > what caller-id info if any is presented to B? Same question for a > call-forwarded line. Oh, lets toss in the same question for cell > phones (as line A) immediate, busy, and no-answer call-forwarding. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No information is provided to B since > it is only being used as an overflow/alternate for A, and A does not > subscribe to the service. The 'decision' in the software as to which > custom calling features to extend to a subscriber with an incoming > call are made before any 'decision' is made how to dispose of the > call if the specifically called line is unavailable for whatever > reason. As long as you *never* have incoming calls which were dialed Pat, I take exception to this, as I have caller ID on my _last_ line with fwd/busy on two lines ahead of it. If those two lines are busy and it is forwarded to line three, which has caller id, I will receive the caller id information, even though the call came in on line one or two and that line was unavailable. I know for a fact (DMS 100 I think, for switch) this works for my Sprint/United lines as I have used it before -- take lines one and two off hook and all calls come to line three and provide caller id data, hence a persistent caller of line one or two can be indentified (ie if a nuisance call) with only caller id on the last line. Steven Bradley Better Business Bureau of Central Florida, Inc. Systems Administrator 1011 North Wymore Road, Suite 204 Winter Park, Florida 32789 steven@bbbcfl.oau.org (407) 621-3300 x310 Fax (407) 629-9334 ------------------------------ From: Dub Dublin Subject: Information Wanted on "Cordless Miracle" Date: Sun, 05 May 1996 18:20:33 -0500 Organization: infowave.com I'm looking for some information on the "Cordless Miracle" (goofy name, huh?), a $300 (4 line) or $400 (8 line) box that lets a cordless phone (or any other analog single line device, one supposes) pick up or access for dialing any of the lines going through it. I have a photo of the box in Damark's new catalog, and it looks like the CO lines feed into the unit and are passed on to your regular office KSU (or distribution for a regular analog loop?), and there is a single jack marked "cordless phone" which is somehow switched between the 4 or 8 lines available. If anyone has info on exactly what this thing does and how it works, I'd appreciate it. First-hand reports would be especially nice, since web and news searches have turned up pretty empty. (There was one web hit saying that someone at a college in Oklahoma gave it an award as an innovative product at a show there.) Thanks, Dub Dublin -or- ------------------------------ From: vjp2@dorsai.dorsai.org (Vasos Panagiotopoulos) Subject: Does Sprint Provide NYC Local Service? Date: 6 May 1996 06:00:47 -0400 Organization: Samani Marions Panyaught NYC 11357-3436-287 USA Does anyone know anything about Sprint providing local service in NYC? Any chance I can get a Sprint local line call forwared automatically (ie no physical connection) to an existing nynex-connected number? Anyone have any telephone numbers? (pls cc e-mail..tnx) Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bioengineer-Financier, NYC Bach-Mozart ReaganQuayleGramm Evrytano-Kastorian Cit:MarquisWhWFinanc&Indus [0003536867@mcimail.com , 76530.1430@CompuServe.Com, vjp2@dorsai.org] ------------------------------ From: brettf@netcom.com (Brett Frankenberger) Subject: Re: ANI Information From D-Channel Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 03:54:53 GMT In article , Dishu wrote: > I'm a lab supervisor for a Macintosh Lab at the University of > Connecticut. In the very near future, this lab is going to be > connected to the rest of the campus via a 56.6 ISDN network. It is my > understanding that the D-Channel provides an ANI service that can be > linked to telephones for the purposes of Caller ID. > Is it possible to pass this information to a program residing on my > server, perhaps? I wish to basically monitor incoming calls, to > discern whether or not my staff is taking a greater number of personal > calls or work related calls. The short answer is yes. But what you really want is more of a CDR type thing, as you don't need the info in real time. There are lots of ways to do that. But this hits on one of my pet peeves :), which is my real reason for responding. This is a waste of technology and resources. Technology is very useful for many things, and I am a big proponent of its use in such cases. But to "check up" on employees like this is not one of those uses, IMO. So you implement this caller-ID thing to track personal calls. What do you plan to do to make sure they don't instead talk in-person with people about on-work-related things. Who makes sure *you* don't take too many personal calls on the job? How do you monitor your staff now? Or do you not monitor them now? And if not, does that make you an incompetent manager? If you aren't monitoring them now, and there are no problems, why do you need to start? What happened to telling them not to take too many personal calls, then trusting them, and if a problem turned up, firing or reprimanding them? Are you such an aloof manager that you couldn't notice that there was a problem except with a CDR listing? If you don't trust them, what are you doing hiring them in the first place? (This is not a personal flame of you ... It's just a sample of some of the questions I think people ignore when they jump to a technological solution to their classical managerial problems.) Also, from a technical stand-point, it's trivial to defeat what you are talking about. I am assuming that you will generalize that, for example, calls from on-campus numbers are work related and off-campus numbers are personal. Ok, so staff member #1 gets a ton of off-campus calls and is reprimanded (or fired) by you. Now the staff knows you are monitoring CDR (or, in the alternative, you tell them in advance, so they know from the beginning. Either way, they end up knowing). So what do they all do now? Stop getting personal calls? I doubt it. Instead, then tell everyone to, instead of calling direct, to call "person X" (who is in on the operation) at an on-campus number, and person X (whose incoming calls are presumably not being monitored) can then transfer them. The result is that the calls appear to come from person X's on-campus number (at least with most switches), and don't look like personal calls to you. Bingo! They've circumvented your technological solution. (That might not really work in this situation ... for example, all the calls from "X" ight look suspicious ... or your switch might pass the true originating number instead of the number doing the transfer ... but my point is that they will find a way around your technological solution, even if the example I gave above isn't they way that they untimately come up with. Remember, they don't all have to be smart enough to think it up ... just one of them does, and that one can tell the rest.) Brett (brettf@netcom.com) Brett Frankenberger [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This reminds me of the case of a very large centrex here (so large, it has two prefixes on it; for internal calls five digits are required) which has a number of special arrange- ments on it. Some of the numbers on the centrex are set up for outgoing calls only; some for incoming calls only; and in a couple of cases for *internal use only*. That is to say, if you dial into those extensions from outside the organization (i.e. I call from my house to that organization dialing the full number) you get an intercept from telco which says "the number you dialed, xxx-xxxx cannot be reached from outside the customer's premises". The number can place/receive calls only to/from other extensions at the organization. I've heard of restricted extensions which could not make outside calls, but never on incoming calls and never on calls both ways not part of the centrex. The switchboard is large enough the operators have no particular knowledge of what extension goes where except by rote training and their experience after working there for awhile, handling a large number of incoming calls each day. If you call the main number and then ask for one of the restricted to within the customer's premises extension numbers the call still fails to complete, with the centrex operator getting the same recording you would have gotten had you dialed it (as you probably tried to do) direct. What is annoying is the operators work so quickly they leave the line the instant they have dialed the five digits. They assume if it is BY/DA the call will come back to them anyway in a few seconds, but these don't. It rings a few times and goes to that same old intercept you would have gotten by dialing direct. You can listen to it repeat itself or you can hang up and dial into the centrex operator all over again. The operator never will return to the line otherwise. Furthermore, if you dial direct into an extension which is not restricted to internal use and ask them to transfer you to the restricted extension, they cannot do it either. But for some reason, if you call the centrex operator and ask for an unrestricted extension and then get on that line only to ask that line to further transfer you to a restricted one it will go through. I assume somehow whatever controls are in place which the system 'sees' to prevent the connection get lost in the network by that point. The restricted-to- premises extensions are used for workers in the organization who would have absolutely no legitimate reason to receive calls pertaining to business from outside; i.e. lookup clerks who search microfilm records for other departments making inquiries, etc while the other department waits on hold for the information, i.e. file number or account number they are seeking, etc, from the lookup clerks. I have no idea how they wire the centrex to accomplish this. The only other time I have seen anything similar was one day when I had to place a call to a point in the Carribbean; some little island country down there which was on area 809. They discriminated against international calls. When I dialed the phone number of the person I wanted, a recording came on saying, "The subscriber you are calling does not accept international calls. This is a Cable & Wireless recording." I have no idea why they did not accept international calls on that number or how C&W was able to differentiate one incoming call from another. This was about six years ago. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 May 96 10:43:25 PDT From: erick@sac.AirTouch.COM (Eric Kammerer at Sac Net) Subject: Re: Third Number Billing No Longer Being Verified? > Incidentally ... what if you were to do this from a cellphone? An > interesting loophole exists where in areas that SS7 isn't linked to > the cell switch. One can call a Sprint operator, have the Sprint > operator bill a call to anywhere in the *world* to the "number you're > calling from," and the *cell carrier* gets the bill -- because Sprint > gets the number of the trunk you're calling from rather than your > mobile number. Even more murky if you were to third-party bill a > number using Sprint or another carrier from your cellphone -- Sprint, > like AT&T, often doesn't verify acceptance of third-party billed > calls. Of course, all of this is patently illegal and there's no way > of knowing whether you'll get away with it or not without first trying > it (minor technicality), which could result in an unpleasant surprise. > You also still will be billed for airtime on those calls -- even > though you might manage to get around long distance. I haven't tried > this -- a naughty phreak suggested I try it, and I politely declined. Actually, the cellular carrier can request blocking of collect and 3rd-party calls. We certainly do (for obvious reasons). Anyone can request such blocking from their LEC. Any calls that are 3rd-party billed to our trunks are the LECs problem, not ours -- we aren't required to pay for them, and we won't. Cellular calls _are_ flagged as such for the IECs, and their employees do get a screen pop which indicates a cellular call. AT&T, Sprint, and MCI all claim that their system won't allow operators (or even supervisors) to connect a 3rd-party call without a valid calling card -- a defense against "social-engineering". SS7 is _not_ required for this to work. It'll be interesting to see what happens with 3rd-party calls when the cellular carriers start providing caller-ID... Long distance billing is separate from airtime billing. Regardless of how you bill the long distance, you will get charged for airtime. In most cases, the billing is generated from two different switches owned by two different companies. However, if you are subscribed to a long distance service provided by your cellular carrier, the billing may be generated by the same switch. Eric Kammerer erick@sac.AirTouch.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 11:11:00 -0500 From: walkerrb@www.hendrix.edu (Babu Mengelepouti) Subject: Re: Third Number Billing No Longer Being Verified? Eric writes: > Actually, the cellular carrier can request blocking of collect and > 3rd-party calls. We certainly do (for obvious reasons). Anyone can > request such blocking from their LEC. Any calls that are 3rd-party > billed to our trunks are the LECs problem, not ours -- we aren't > required to pay for them, and we won't. Of course -- it's added to the lidb, but that assumes that the ld carrier honors the lidb. The carrier in question in this case was Sprint. Incidentally WilTel doesn't have a Canadian lidb and I've heard that it's possible to collect bill calls to Canadian phones... I have a friend in Canada with a cell and we should try it and see how the billing works. The Canadian lidb apparently blocks this type of call because such calling isn't possible through AT&T/MCI (1800-COLLECT). In areas where you've deployed SS7 is there still an actual pots number associated with your trunks, or is the mobile number dynamically assigned? In that case, how would it be possible to "bill your trunks" b23 or collect? Or does this only apply in the areas in which you've not yet deployed SS7? > Cellular calls _are_ flagged as such for the IECs, and their > employees do get a screen pop which indicates a cellular call. AT&T, > Sprint, and MCI all claim that their system won't allow operators (or > even supervisors) to connect a 3rd-party call without a valid calling > card -- a defense against "social-engineering". SS7 is _not_ required > for this to work. Incidentally this is being used currently in both US Cellular and Century Cellunet (which I think is an offshoot of Sprint, am I correct?). Sprint operators do *not* get a screen pop indicating cellular in those areas. They can claim all they like, they *are* getting phreaked for international calls. Most cell carriers (for obvious reasons) block international calling; Sprint has no such block and in those areas is not aware that the calling phone is a cell. Even worse, I am not sure if they actually get the cell number as the number being billed or the carrier's TRUNK as the number being billed--as this is being used from (cloned) roaming phones. > It'll be interesting to see what happens with 3rd-party calls when the > cellular carriers start providing caller-ID... Hmmm ... that would be interesting. Do you think the "third" number will show up? > Long distance billing is separate from airtime billing. Regardless of > how you bill the long distance, you will get charged for airtime. In > most cases, the billing is generated from two different switches owned > by two different companies. However, if you are subscribed to a long > distance service provided by your cellular carrier, the billing may > be generated by the same switch. In my cell carrier's case, they don't allow equal access and they bill for AT&T -- all the billing is done through their switch, to make it "easy" so they claim. The only thing that isn't "easy" is paying the outrageous charges! The rates billed are AT&T's basic rates and AT&T won't allow any discount plans because the carrier is "not equal access" -- meaning, I guess, that they know you have little or no choice, so why do they need to be nice about it? I'm calling from Saudi Arabia ... walkerrb@www.hendrix.edu ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #219 ******************************