Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id NAA15228; Fri, 17 May 1996 13:07:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 13:07:19 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199605171707.NAA15228@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #243 TELECOM Digest Fri, 17 May 96 13:07:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 243 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson India's Booming Market in Paging Services (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) ATM QoS Issues (Terje Myhre) Are You a Displaced AT&T or MCI Professional? (James Gorak) Telephone Extensions Using Existing Fast IP Link (Phil Lewis) CDPD Enabled ATM's (75260.710@compuserve.com) U.S. Wiretapping Laws (John Combs) Regulations in Utah? (Blair Shellenberg) One Western Union Telegraph Clock: Received! (Kent Borg) SDH/PDH Network Planning Tool Wanted (Claes Gussing) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 17:19:53 -0700 From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: India's Booming Market in Paging Services The Indian Techonomist: bulletin, May 15, 1996 Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. All rights reserved Easycall enthusiastic about India's pager boom May 15, 1996: Since India's first licensed paging service started last March, the market has grown to 200,000 subscribers; it is expected to cross 600,000 by the end of this year according to Motorola, which has an 80% market share in pagers. In the US it took 15 years to reach a similar subscriber base. That was 40 years ago, of course; more recently in the late 1980s, South Korea took six years to cross 400,000, a figure expected to be crossed in 18 months by India - arguably the fastest growing market today. The Indian Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has treated paging services very differently from cellular and basic telephony privatisation. It received bids for as many as four service providers in each of 15 cities; three in 11 cities; and two in the last of 27 cities put to auction. That was in July 1992 - it took three years of disputes clarifications before service could begin last year. In the meanwhile, All India Radio, India's state broadcaster, issued licenses for FM RDS paging (using excess capacity of its FM radio channels) which started before DoT's licensees but are likely to fall behind now due to their technological problems. Last year the DoT issued further licences for paging services for the rest of the country (beyond these 27 cities), and service is expected to commence in those areas by 1997. India's paging market is unusual in ways besides its exceptional growth. It overwhelmingly prefers alphanumeric pagers, which hold more than 95% of the market (as against below 20% in more developed markets). And demand has largely been, so far, from individuals - professionals and people with small businesses - with under 25% corporate subscribers. These figures are surprising only when seen in isolation, but not when placed in the larger context of the country's poor telecommunications infrastructure. India has less than one phone per 100 persons, though in the 27 cities with pager services the density is much higher. Even there, it costs between $100 and $1,000 to acquire a phone (and these are only the official rates; bribery is commonplace). A telephone no longer takes years to install, but can easily take months. Compared to these problems, a pager is heaven. It is cheap to buy - between $150 and $300, which should reduce once the new government lowers duties from the current 80%. It is cheap to run - under $5 per month for unlimited use was the upper limit allowed by the DoT, though this has been raised to a still low $8. It has some snob value (though much less than a cellular phone). Finally, of course, it is mobile and can take messages - hence the alphanumeric preference. A pager can also be your office - such is the promise of Easycall, which launched India's only personalised (secretarial) paging service earlier this month. Easycall started late, building fairly sophisticated infrastructure through the 25 cities where it has paging licences. Easycall is actually four companies: Matrix Paging India, ABC Communications, Telesistems India and Easycall Communications. They can safely be treated as one, for they are each promoted by the Indian Natelco Group, and 49%-owned (the maximum foreign holding permitted in a telecom service provider) by Easycall International. Natelco (1995 group sales: $125 million) specialises in telecom equipment manufacturing and service (trunk radio, VSAT), and has joint ventures with Australia's Telstra, Japan's NEC and America's Glenayre Inc, among others. With Glenayre, Natelco's consultancy division has already built 56 paging networks across the country according to company figures - including, obviously, for competitors of Easycall. Singapore-based Easycall runs paging services across Asia and Eastern Europe; it was earlier known by the name of its holding company, Australia-based Matrix Telecom. Easycall is taking the pager-as-office concept to its logical conclusion: when an Easycall pager number is called, the operator reads out a personalised message, decided by the Easycall subscriber. This alone is likely to attract customers in droves - it has proven popular in Hong Kong, and will do so even more in India. Beyond customised greetings, Easycall's other services (not all of which are as yet operational) include separate numbers for business and personal calls; message broadcast to subscribers groups; client line identification (pager terminal and management software installed at a major client's premises); fax- to-pager and e-mail-to-pager interfaces; cheap roaming across 25 cities (where another Natelco company's VSAT service will help). Being largest network, and the only service capable of offering such personalisation - it has invested over $40 million in infrastructure - Easycall expects to have 120,000 subscribers by the end of the year, with about 50% of new subscribers. Sajive Kanwar, President and CEO of ABC Communications (which operates Easycall services in the Northern parts of India) says that his region alone attracted over 3,000 subscribers in the first two weeks of operation. Yet they may not make any money for quite a while, due to DoT-specified flat monthly tariffs; all additional services will be offered by Easycall at no extra charge for the moment. To charge for any service beyond basic paging, Easycall will - like any other provider - have to approach the DoT to ask for clearance, perhaps on a case-by-case basis. Indian paging companies will have to do this soon, for as Mr Kanwar admits, profits will not be found in simple paging services. In fact, paging companies are running huge losses. The economics of Indian paging are as follows: each message costs about $0.04 to process, thanks to relatively low labour costs. But even with operators being paid about $120 a month, more than four messages per subscriber per day results in a loss: the average subscriber, paying $8, costs over $25 a month. Of course, volumes help. While the projected turnover (across 25 cities) of $20 million in its first year of operation will mean a proportionally higher operational cost for Easycall, it expects to break even in 1998. India will have several cellular services running nationwide by the end of the year, in addition to the year-old services in the country's four biggest cities. Assuming that the new government behaves itself, next year should see a huge growth in the availability ordinary telephone - installed within seven days of an order according to the licensing conditions, not months. The DoT is holding trial runs of CT2 (cordless telephone 2, another gadget popular in East Asia) in cooperation with France's Dassault; these may translate into cheaper mobile communications. Will the pager market be affected? Nobody expects a 200% annual growth rate to last for long, but nor should it fall below 50% for some years. The secret of India's pager potential lies in the exceptionally long per message time, which crosses 60 seconds, as callers interrogate operators on the mechanisms of paging. "Why can't I hear messages, if you send them by radio?" is an anecdotal caller's query, but not without basis. Pagers have already begun to reach a market quite ignorant of the concept, and the frequent prime time advertisements by the Indian Paging Services Association should help to educate an even wider market. Most impressive of all, the phenomenal growth seen and projected so far is - unlike most other new markets - for pagers in English. Motorola for one has announced its plans for pagers in Hindi and Gujarati soon, which should reach the small- business market of western India. As manufacturers break through the complexity of India's 15 official languages and make displays for at least some of the dozen distinct scripts, the tantalising prize of a 900 million-plus population is brought - ever so little - closer. Perhaps it is significant that the Paging Services Association's promotional advertisements are in, not English - the language of today's pagers - but Hindi. More on Motorola can be found in the Techonomist bulletin of March 18, at http://dxm.org/techonomist/news/ Information on cellular and basic telephony privatisation is at http://dxm.org/techonomist/news/bids.html The Indian Techonomist: weekly summary. http://dxm.org/techonomist/news/ Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@techonomist.dxm.org) Tel +91 11 6853410; Fax 6856992; H-34-C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA May be distributed electronically provided that this notice is attached ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 15:07:08 +0100 From: Terje Myhre Reply-To: Terje Myhre Subject: ATM QoS Issues Organization: Manasus Consulting AB Hello, I'm working on a concept development project regarding ATM services. The project deals both with service definition and pricing aspects. The issues below are fairly unclear to me, and I would appreciate if anyone could lead me in a direction towards clarity, either with comments, answers, or with pointers. 1. In case an ATM network has defined a QoS class which can be regarded as a deterministic bit rate, and one want to define less bit- deterministic QoS classes on the same network, to which extent can these lower grade QoS connections use bandwidth which the ATM network simultanously has contracted to the higher QoS? 2. In case there are two QoS classes operating on the ATM network; and both have allocated the same bandwidth (sustainable cell rate), how is it more economic for the network to use the lower grade QoS class. My assumption is that the lower grade QoS connections can be allowed larger buffers, thereby increasing the total delay of the cells, and the delay variation. However, the degree to which one should actually be able to price the lower grade QoS lower than the higher grade QoS - based on network utilisation, is for me fairly clouded. 3. In a case, three different ATM networks should be connected, one connecting to customer site A, one connecting between two ATM-local-loop networks, and one connecting to customer site B. Would the three networks need to have exactly the same QoS definitions. Or could the long-distance ATM network have a higher speficied QoS, without that bringing any quality degradation to the ATM-local-loop networks? Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please copy my private e-mail address if you answer this mail. Regards, Terje Myhre Manasus Consulting AB London N1, UK Mob. +46 70 512 7573 Fax / answ.mach. +44 171 713 5499 E-mail: myhre@manasus.demon.co.uk WWW: http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/manasus ------------------------------ Subject: Are You a Displaced AT&T or MCI Professional? Date: Fri, 17 May 96 07:56:25 -0500 From: James Gorak Pat, This message (spam?) appeared in my e-mailbox. I would be interested to hear more about this business and their offering. Regards, James Gorak jgorak@execpc.com ------- FORWARD, Original message follows ------- Date: Thursday, 16-May-96 07:14 PM From: Press Release \ Internet: (exd61469@interramp.com) To: Multiple Addresses Suppressed \ Internet: (multiple addresses suppressed) Subject: Are You a Displaced AT&T or MCI Professional? Are You a Displaced AT&T or MCI Professional? Do You Know One? Telecommunications Act of 1996 Bears Fruit Here is the first evidence of the coming revolution in the telecommunications industry - privately held and operated small phone companies. The telecommunications act of 1996, signed by the President in February of this year, specifically encourages entreprenuers to enter the telephone industry. LaraMar Communications, Ltd., a privately held company from Albuquerque, New Mexico, is making quite a commotion as they roll out "IQ MiniTel," a "turn-key" private telephone company. IQ MiniTel can be established in any city and offers an incredible array of products and services that go head to head with the local phone companies. LaraMar's Co-founder, Larry Host, says "the advantages of an IQ MiniTel are that feature for feature they exceed the offerings of most local phone companies." Mr Host went on to explain, "The public has almost an infinite number of long distance options but has had little or no access to extended calling features beyond those provided by the local telephone company. IQ MiniTel, provides an unusual assortment of enhancements to 800, voice mail, fax and other business telephone products and services at highly competitive rates. LaraMar, will be conducting a two day seminar on the IQ MiniTel in Albuquerque New Mexico, beginning Saturday, June 1st 1996. For more information call 1-800-944-3366. LaraMar Communications, Ltd. 625 Silver S.E., Suite 191 Albuquerque, NM 87102 1-800-944-3366 Non-disclosure document required before presentation ------- FORWARD, End of original message ------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It's just spam. Gee, who do we know in Albuquerque, NM who likes to send out worthless junkmail all over the net? That 800 number is an old, familiar one also, with the same voicemail machine setup they were using before, and the same cast of characters behind the different buttons you can press. Try pressing '0' as soon as it answers, or go through the various options. Do not press '#' or '*' when it answers, any other numbers not listed in the menu. Remember, calls to 800 numbers do render the calling number to the recipient when he gets his phone bill if not immediatly when calling in, so use good judgment when investigating this wonderful new business opportunity. Remember, I have warned you against pressing buttons not authorized for your use when you call that number. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Phil Lewis Subject: Telephone Extensions Using Existing Fast IP Link Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 15:35:11 +0800 Organization: Pacific Internet, Singapore Hi, We have two buildings linked by a 3Mbit/sec microwave link which is basically a wireless ethernet bridge. I would like to know if anyone knows anything which will allow us to use this link for PABX telephone extentions in addition to the existing IP traffic. We only require at most 10 channels and with speech compression 8kbps should be suffiecient for each thus giving 80kbps which is quite acceptable for the link we have. Basically I guess I need two 'boxes' which have 10 phone jacks and one UTP (10baseT) connector and a power supply. It would also be feasible if there is a card that can plug into a PAABX that can do this. Thanks in advance, Phil Lewis Please Email responses also. ------------------------------ From: 75260.710@CompuServe.COM Subject: CDPD Enabled ATM's Date: 16 May 1996 19:02:48 GMT Organization: CompuServe, Inc. (1-800-689-0736) CDPD Enabled ATM at CelluComm 96 May 16, 1996 EAST LANSING, MI - Sayer Advanced Systems will be exhibiting their CDPD enabled Automatic Teller Machine technology at CelluComm 96. Developed by GUI-Tech, the new ATM technology simplifies the task of using an ATM in an area for a short duration of time. "Wireless technology makes it economical to use an ATM in area where it was not previously possible", says Jim Solomon, Vice President of Advanced Systems. "Installing land based telephone lines for ATM use at events like fairs or sporting events was just too cost prohibitive. Using CDPD eliminates this expense". Sayer will be display their 24 foot "Rolling Branch Office" on the CelluComm exhibit floor. Included in this display will be the new ATM technology. Sayer Advanced Systems also provides solutions for other vertical markets such as Public Safety. Wireless ATM's have been a primary target market for CDPD since it's inception but the technology to make this application real has not been available... until now! It's not too late to make the decision to attend CelluComm 96. Call to register today! CelluComm is the only industry conference dedicated exclusively to cellular data. It will be held in St. Louis, MO USA on May 20-22, 1996. For more information about exhibiting or attending, please contact Zsigo Wireless at 517-337-3995, or send electronic mail to zsigo@netcom.com. Fax information to 517-337-5012. Surface mail to 2875 Northwind Drive, Suite 232, East Lansing, MI 48823 USA. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 11:24:50 -0400 From: John Combs Subject: U.S. Wiretapping Laws My boss told me that he recently read an article that mentioned that current U.S. Federal wiretapping law requires that telcos and IXCs be able to tap up to 1% of their total circuits in-service, _and_ deliver the calls to wherever the FBI requires. Can anyone point me to where I can learn more about this, plus the wiretapping requirements that the digital PBX manufacturers have to meet? John Combs, Senior Project Engineer, Inchcape Testing Services Email: john@testmark.com URL: http://www.testmark.com ------------------------------ From: blair@instep.bc.ca Subject: Regulations in Utah? Reply-To: blair@instep.bc.ca Organization: InStep Mobile Communications Inc. Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 16:37:29 GMT Hi there, I am inquiring as to whether or not anyone know about any regulations in Utah regarding frequencies, wireless data transmission, etc. I recently talked to a company in Utah about a wireless dispatch system and I was told that it is regulated by the airport authority and the city. If you can provide me with details, it will be appreciated. Sincerely, Blair Shellenberg ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 20:54:33 -0400 From: kentborg@borg.org (Kent Borg) Subject: One Western Union Telegraph Clock: Received! One Western Union Telegraph Clock w/Sweep Second Hand: Received! Cool! (It is big too.) I got the clock today. You can relax, I am no longer on any pestering list for you. The clock looks to be in good shape. Clearly it is not new, but all the essential parts seem to be there and Pat posted that nice piece on how to hook these things up, I should be able to get it working. (Even if one of the windings was toasted this is low enough tech I could rewind it. Low-tech has some real advantages.) Now I am all the more going to need to get my house on the internet so I can synch this to the Naval Observatory and make the legend true. Thanks, (The Kent who really likes that the internet is, in some ways, still a small town where he can mail off a check for $190 to a stranger three time-zones away and not be ripped off.) Kent Borg H: +1 617 776-6899 W: +1 617 374-2493 kentborg@borg.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'm glad you like it. Have fun with it. I don't think the coil should be burned out unless some fool who had it before you applied *far* too much voltage. Supposedly three volts is all it should have, but I have put six volts there with no trouble however I did have the little light bulb to absorb some of that. Try wiring the light so it illuminates when the clock winds. If you have the same version as me, that will be for one second at a time every five minutes. Don't waste a lot of money on those great big 'telephone cell' type batteries the clock originally used. Those are now several dollars each. Just go with regular little 'C' batteries and a holder for them, or else use a AC/DC transformer at 3 to 4.5 volts DC output. The little batteries will last nearly a year if you have the light bulb wired in; if not they will probably last two or three years. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Claes Gussing Subject: SDH/PDH Network Planning Tool Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 12:43:01 -0700 Organization: ABC-Klubben Hi, I've been crawling around the network in search of a tool for dimensioning SDH/PDH telecom networks regarding traffic, synchronization, datacom (ECC), etc; without any success. Is there any such tool? Claes cg@abc.se ------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #243 ******************************