Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id OAA21662; Fri, 17 May 1996 14:21:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 14:21:45 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199605171821.OAA21662@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #244 TELECOM Digest Fri, 17 May 96 14:21:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 244 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Competition and Marketing (was MCI True Lies) (turner7@pacsibm.org) Re: 10-Digit Dialing is Easy (Curtis R. Anderson) Re: What is "Feature Group A"? (Rob Robinson) Re: Cell Towers Don't Have to be Ugly! (Alan Dahl) Re: Cell Towers Don't Have to be Ugly! (Henry Baker) Re: Cell Towers Don't Have to be Ugly! (Scott Alexander) Re: Cell Towers Don't Have to be Ugly! (Zuhair Moin) Re: 800/888 and COCOTS (Mike Seebeck) Re: Bell Atlantic's "Ten Number Number" and Area Code Split (Tom Horsley) Re: Spurious 911 Calls From a PABX (David Devereaux-Weber) Re: Is There a Mexican FCC? (Emilio Osorio Garcia) Re: Is There a Mexican FCC? (intsup@phoenix.net) Re: Outrageous LD 0+ Calls via Oncor Communications Inc. (Ross Mitchell) Re: Outrageous LD 0+ Calls via Oncor Communications Inc. (David Adrian) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: turner7@pacsibm.org (TUrner-7) Subject: Competition and Marketing (was MCI True Lies) Date: 17 May 1996 00:56:34 GMT Organization: PACS IBM SIG BBS One bad thing about competition in a previously regulated monopoly industry is that it brings in hard-ball marketing techniques. This digest has seen many complaints about hard-selling and mispresentation by long distance companies and equipment suppliers. In the old regulated days, the Bell System didn't really have much of an incentative to push customers into new services, and of course everyone was automatically a customer. Employees were encouraged to tell customers about optional equipment (ie color or Trimline phones instead of basic black 500), and services, and the phone company always advertised to encourage people to use the phone "Long Distance is the next best thing to being there." There were occassional abuses, but nothing like today. Since today companies are fighting for market share and the customer, they are aggressive. Instead of using trained service representatives in a strict environment, they use sales people on commission. The sales people might not even be company employees, but rather temps or a contractor. Those people do not care about the company, the company's reputation, or anything else, except to make a sale. Such people will tell you anything to get a sale -- if you later get mad and drop out, that's someone else's problem. Indeed, marketers expect some percentage of dropouts, but they figure they're still ahead using the hard sell. There are many people touting the advantages of competition in the local Bell market -- usually people who want to make a buck out of it. The public should understand there are drawbacks as well -- and a private POTS user may come out behind, not ahead. ------------------------------ From: cra@servtech.com (Curtis R. Anderson) Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 04:42:32 GMT Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing is Easy Organization: Gleepy's Henhouse In article , Mark J. Cuccia decided to enlighten us with: [If this is late, I'm still a bit behind in comp.dcom.telecom!] > Well, intra vs. inter LATA has always been confusing in many areas if > you are only looking at the area code. There are LATA's which contain > all or part of one or more area codes. Likewise, there are area codes > which contain all or part of one or more LATA. The Buffalo, NY LATA, primarily covered by NYNEX, consists of all of Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, and Alleghany Counties, roughly half of Orleans and Genesee Counties, and much of Wyoming County, as well as three additional exchanges in Genesee, Millport, and Shinglehouse, Pennsylvania, whose NPA is 814. The rest of the LATA is part (not all) of NPA 716. The Rochester, NY LATA, primarily covered by Frontier, consists of all of Monroe, Ontario and Livingston Counties, and the remainder of Orleans, Genesee and Wyoming Counties that NYNEX or GTE doesn't cover. > As for Local vs. Toll, this is where the regulatory agencies (FCC/CRTC and > state/provincial) and consumer groups should get togather an NANP-wide > standard: > IMO, there *SHOULD ALWAYS* be a *MANDATORY* '1+' required before *ANY* > toll call. Well, in New York, all intra-NPA calls are dialed as seven digits. There were all sorts of complaints about having to do this. Folks would have prefered to dial "1+" 7 digits so they would understand that they were placing a toll call. Now, a slipped finger can result in a wrong number, which in this LATA, can mean wrong numbers whose toll has to be credited with the subscribers' IXCs when made, and they might not realize this. We, as readers of the Digest, understand the technical implications of these changes and the need to use the "dirty 160" N0X/N1X exchange prefices. But try to explain this to the less educated consumer who thinks of all of this as "change for the sake of change." They are just going to resist change! > But maybe I'm only dreaming ... try to get the regulatory agencies, > consumer groups and the *multiple* number of telcos to all agree on > any kind of a standard! Like trying to get up-to-date list of all the NXXs that are local and toll calls in your NPA. For this example, somebody calls you and gives you a number you don't recognize, being a cellular number, and you scramble to the phone book to look it up. You are on a limited income, with no 'Net access, and are eligible for Life Line service, the cheapest residential rate cut in half, including the FCC access charge. You watch your budget closely so you don't spend needless money on toll calls, but have that option open if necessary. The telco may state in the tariff that the subscriber is responsible for knowing which NPA-NXX combinations are local and which are toll, but how are you going to find that out? Are telcos really going to be that anxious to tell you about local NXXs are associated with switches they don't own (e.g. cellular switches)? Curtis R. Anderson, "Official Chicken Breeder of Hill 10", SP 2.5?, KoX URLs: http://www.servtech.com/public/cra/ mailto:cra@servtech.com ftp://ftp.servtech.com/pub/users/cra/ ------------------------------ From: rob_robinson_at_mu-telecom-fs1@muccmail.missouri.edu (Rob Robinson) Subject: Re: What is "Feature Group A"? Date: 16 May 1996 22:20:52 GMT Organization: University of Missouri-Columbia In article , jasonf@p3.net says: > My questions are these: > 1. What is the purpose of FGA? Feature Groups A, B, C, D are methods of connecting LECs to IXCs. FGA is a subscriber-type line (vs. trunk). IXC is billed at actual usage. Origination must be from a single exchange. FGB is FGA but origination can be anywhere intra-LATA. Has hardware answer supervision. FGC - Is it used? FGD is FDB with ANI. This is the method used for equal access carriers. My 1 1/2 cents worth. Rob Robinson Manager Network Services University of Missouri - Columbia ------------------------------ From: Alan Dahl Date: Thu, 16 May 96 12:54:48 -0700 Subject: Re: Cell Towers Don't Have to be Ugly! madnix.uucp!zaphod@nicmad.nicolet.com (Ron Bean) writes: > Recently I heard a report on the radio about towns that are trying > to use zoning to block big ugly cell towers from being built in their > backyards. It occurred to me that the companies that build these > towers should hire an artist to design some better looking towers. > There is no law of physics that says they have to be ugly. Look at > the big "infrastructure" projects of the 1930's -- they could have make > the Golden Gate Bridge ugly, but they chose not to. Maybe they should > have a contest to design a cell tower that doesn't "uglify" it's > surroundings. The city fathers of Medina, Washington have been arguing over the placement of cell towers in their community because it is located right next to the Hwy 520 Floating Bridge that links Bellevue with Seattle and the existing cell sites are not enough to cover the bridge. Sprint/PCS has suggested hiding the cell tower inside a 100' flagpole they have offered to build at the local fire station. City officials are considering the idea. Alan Dahl Axys Core Development Team alan.dahl@attws.com AT&T Wireless Services Phone: (206) 702-5231 P.O. Box 97060 Fax: (206) 702-5452 Kirkland, WA 98083-9760 http://www.eskimo.com/~adahl ------------------------------ From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) Subject: Re: Cell Towers Don't Have to be Ugly! Organization: nil organization Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 01:06:09 GMT In article , madnix.uucp!zaphod@nicmad.nicolet.com (Ron Bean) wrote: > Recently I heard a report on the radio about towns that are trying > to use zoning to block big ugly cell towers from being built in their > backyards. It occurred to me that the companies that build these > towers should hire an artist to design some better looking towers. > There is no law of physics that says they have to be ugly. Look at > the big "infrastructure" projects of the 1930's -- they could have make > the Golden Gate Bridge ugly, but they chose not to. Maybe they should > have a contest to design a cell tower that doesn't "uglify" it's > surroundings. There is one company advertising cell towers that look like palm trees and church towers. Someone else makes satellite antennas that look like backyard umbrellas. I understand that a good fraction of the surface area of some modern airplanes forms a phased array antenna. There's a wonderful article from the 1930's or 1940's about the proper design of a high performance antenna for the Chrysler building. I think it appear in the Proc. of the IEE (not a typo; IEEE came later). www/ftp directory: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html ------------------------------ From: salex@oilhead.cis.upenn.edu (Scott Alexander) Subject: Re: Cell Towers Don't Have to be Ugly! Date: 17 May 1996 13:51:45 GMT Organization: University of Pennsylvania > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ameritech has been having a fight for > sometime with the village of Winnetka, Illinois regards the placement > of a cellular tower. Telco wants to put the tower at the highest point > in the village they can obviously, and this apparently is on the roof > of a church there. The church is happy to have it (or rather, the rent > money they will collect for it) but the village trustees are in a > snit about it because they say it will be ugly. This argument between > Winnetka and Ameritech has been going on for a couple years. PAT] Near Philadelphia, in Montgomery County, one of the providers was running into these battles over an ugly tower. The resolution is that they have come up with a design that puts it *inside* the steeple of a church. (I know little or nothing about cellular frequency propagation and so don't know if the fact that it's a modern looking steeple where it would be possible to work with the material out of which the steeple is constructed matters.) Apparently the neighbors are happy because it isn't ugly, the church is happy because they can use the rent, and the cellular company is happy because they have a well-sited tower. Scott Alexander salex@dsl.cis.upenn.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 96 08:41:38 PDT From: moinz@la.AirTouch.COM (Zuhair Moin) Subject: Re: Cell Towers Don't Have to be Ugly! We at AirTouch Los Angeles have employed various methods to make our cell sites or towers look pleasing to the eye or to just hide them completely. Some examples are fake palm trees, inside monuments built specifically for such purposes, steeple built on top of a church to hide the antennas (this could also work for Ameritech in case of Winnetka!) etc. The only problem is that the cost of such projects is almost double than usual monopole/tower cell sites and also you are not able to get too much height which of course is not that necessary in Los Angeles with so many existing cells already in the system. Zuhair Moin ------------------------------ From: seebeck@lace.colorado.edu (Mike Seebeck) Subject: Re: 800/888 and COCOTS Date: 17 May 1996 16:45:23 GMT Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS (vantek@northcoast.com) wrote: > Mark J. Cuccia recently wrote: >> Recently there was a question in TELECOM Digest about their local >> telco (I think it was Sprint-Centel or Sprint-United in Florida) >> charging them on their bill for calling 800-555-1212. > The state of Texas (for one) recently passed legislation allowing > payphone operators to charge up to $.25 per call to ALL 800/888 > numbers. In addition, the new charge for all local payphone calls in > that state will also be raised (to $.50). This charge is NOT being > imposed by the AOS, but by the COCOTs themselves, INCLUDING GTE and SW (deleted) It is a poor solution to a payphone company wanting to collect revenue to require users of 800 calling cards to carry change with them in order to use their calling cards. I travel often and use real money as little as possible (it is soooo messy). I do not care to carry a role of quarters so I can use my calling card from airports. ------------------------------ From: tom@ssd.hcsc.com (Tom Horsley) Subject: Re: Bell Atlantic's "Ten Number Number" and Area Code Split Date: 17 May 1996 17:09:44 GMT Organization: Harris Computer Systems Corporation Reply-To: Tom.Horsley@mail.hcsc.com > What upset me is that Bell Atlantic is implementing mandatory > ten-digit dialing, even for local, same-area-code calls. I only wish that Bell South would do this instead of constantly splitting area codes. I've now had three different area codes (and come to think of it, my workplace has too -- not all the same ones either :-), and it is a pain changing everything that has your number on it, calling everyone who has your number and telling them to change it, etc. etc. I would *gladly* dial ten digits to avoid having my area code change again! The most ridiculous thing about splitting area codes rather than overlaying them is the claim that it is inconvenient to have to use ten digits for frequently dialed numbers, but with the geographic size of area codes getting to be about the size of postage stamps (at least in south Florida), you are incredibly likely to have to dial ten digits anyway (in fact, my frequently called number list contains exactly 0 seven digit numbers today, so it sure has been convenient for me to have my area code split :-). Tom.Horsley@mail.hcsc.com or Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net Work: Harris Computers, 2101 W. Cypress Creek Rd. Ft. Lauderdale FL 33309 The 2 most important political web sites: http://www.vote-smart.org (Project Vote Smart), and http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/TomHorsley (Me!) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 10:25:51 -0500 From: David Devereaux-Weber Subject: Re: Spurious 911 Calls From a PABX On Wed, 08 May 1996 22:38:53 -0400, Atri Indiresan related problems of false 911 calls. In one place you say "PABX" and in another "Centrex", but the technology is not clear. Is it Centrex, PABX or a PABX with Centrex trunks? Atri then responded to me: > I guess I used the terms loosely, since I do not fully understand them. > Basically, I am quite sure the exchange is a Centrex, with about 40,000 > numbers (647-, 763-, 764-, 936-, 998-). We have DID, and calling within > the university is 5 digits, calling out requires a 9- prefix. All this > is transparent to inbound calls. I understand now. You have Centrex, and since you are in Michigan, that means that Ameritech is probably your local carrier. The problem is that there are legitimate non-911 dialing sequences that start with the digits 911 -- for example, if a user wanted to make an AT&T long distance call, they could dial: 9-1-10288-areacode-number ^ to use AT&T network ^ for long distance ^ for "outside line" The "switch" needs to know whether to decide the call is a 911 emergency call or to wait for further digits. Now, the phone company could reduce the false 911 calls by increasing the "inter-digit time-out" value in their switch, but that would have the undesirable side effect of delaying the time for real emergencies to connect with 911. For example, if someone dialls 911 and hears silence for 30 or 40 seconds, it is likely that they will conclude that they didn't dial the correct digits or that the call didn't go through, and they are likely to hang up and attempt to dial again. We have had that problem. The result is that the caller hangs up just when 911 gets the call, and they get just the hang-up. Further, the phone company could send calls that time out to only the digits 9-1 to an intercept message, but, again, you have to be careful you don't send legitimate emergencies to an intercept message. Maybe, because of the urgency, the user didn't release the 1 key far enough to stop the tone before they pressed it again. I recommend that your university set up a meeting with the 911 system administrator and the telephone company to look at all the possibilities and decide if changes are necessary. Then they should document the process and decisions so that everybody is protected in case a politician or lawyer wants to make an issue out of it. That group should also explore the possibility of an information program to phone users to stay on the line if an unintended 911 call occurs to inform the 911 dispatcher that it was a dialing error and not an emergency. One solution might be for the the university and the telephone company to set up "least cost routing" on the Centrex switch, use only 8 for both local and long distance access, and let the least cost routing algorithm decide which way to route the call. David Devereaux-Weber, P.E. djdevere@facstaff.wisc.edu The University of Wisconsin - Madison http://clover.macc.wisc.edu Division of Information Technology (608)576-2599(cellular) Network Engineering (608)262-3584(voice) (608)265-5838(FAX) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess I do not understand what the problem is here. To call in an emergency, the user would dial 9-911. That is not the same as 9-1xxxx-whatever for a long distance call. Also you put the '1' (for long distance) *after* the LD carrier code. You would dial 9-10288-1/0-number. So it would seem to me the switch could tell the difference between 9-10-something and 9-911 and 9-1-X where X is the start of some area code. I think the solution would be to educate the users. PAT] ------------------------------ From: oemilio@nexusparc.acnet.net (Emilio Osorio Garcìa) Subject: Re: Is There a Mexican FCC? Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 19:04:55 GMT Organization: A Poorly Internet Site. There suppousedly exists something as the FCC in Mexico, its called Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes, but, as some other government agencies in Mexico, its something to have fear of. I have never managed to get anything officially from the SCT; the info gets buried in beurocracy ... sad ... but true. Greetings from Mexico, Emilio ------------------------------ From: intsup@phoenix.net Subject: Re: Is There a Mexican FCC? Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 18:30:58 GMT Organization: Phoenix Data Net (713) 486-8337 http://www.phoenix.net David Esan <103145.117@CompuServe.COM> wrote: > Is there an organization analogous to the US FCC in Mexico? I want to > be able to purchase TELMEX tariffs, and when competition comes, the > tariffs of their competitors. The SCT -- Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes. They're a mix of our FCC and FTC. International Suppliers Inc. Jos Y. Caedo - Vice President Foreign Gov't Sales Div., Domestic Sales Div., Building Materials Div. Houston, Texas U S A http://WWW.Phoenix.Net/~intsup ------------------------------ From: rem@world.std.com (Ross E Mitchell) Subject: Re: Outrageous LD 0+ Calls via Oncor Communications Inc. Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 14:59:51 GMT In article , Rupa Schomaker wrote: > I received my phone bill today and one page on the end is for a $9.03 > call that lasted two minutes from Beverly Hills CA to Sugar Land TX at > 12:05pm. Over $4.5/min is ridiculous so I called the 800 number on > the bill. How about over $16 for a three minutes call from New Hampshire to Massachusetts! That showed up on my bill last month. My wife, bless her heart, didn't realize that 0+ isn't what it used to be. I don't know if she could have dialed 10288 + 0 +, although, of course, she should be able to. Thanks to the previous writer, I'm going to call Oncor to see what I can get. I'll let the group know how I do. Ross Mitchell ------------------------------ From: adrian@mt-solutions.com (David Adrian) Subject: Re: Outrageous LD 0+ Calls via Oncor Communications Inc. Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 15:21:27 GMT rupa@rupa.com (Rupa Schomaker) wrote: > I received my phone bill today and one page on the end is for a $9.03 > call that lasted two minutes from Beverly Hills CA to Sugar Land TX at > 12:05pm. Over $4.5/min is ridiculous so I called the 800 number on > the bill. > I immediately got a service rep who explained to me that "because > Oncor leases their lines rather than owning them they have > significantly higher costs than AT&T and they just pass their calls > onto the subscribers." After talking some more, it turns out they > just do billing, ie: they are reselling service. I mentioned that > traditionally such resold service is *cheaper* than going through > AT&T. She says "well, we are just passing our costs on." Just passing our costs on? I doubt they pay ten cents per minute. Yeah, they got me too, once. I used my AT&T calling card from a pay phone in Champaign, IL to check my voice mail. They intercepted the call, so I had the operator dial it. When I started entering in my PIN for the voice mail, she picked up again and asked if I wanted to call another number. $4 for the operator "assistance." Total of around $12 for three minutes. Oncor, it turns out, is rather well known for this. The FCC has received thousands of complaints about them but hasn't done anything of use. Oh, the FCC talks a good game: http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Notices/fcc95127.html But do you really think they're there to help you? http://www.usatoday.com/money/index/btr028.htm I don't think I'm overreacting when I say that every employee of Oncor should be rounded up and flogged in public. If you travel much, I recommend getting a cell phone. It's cheaper. adrian [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, except that now many of the cell carriers are now putting massive restrictions on roaming to fight fraud. 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: 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. 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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 #244 ******************************