Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA18576; Tue, 30 Apr 1996 01:31:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 01:31:45 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199604300531.BAA18576@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #206 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Apr 96 01:31:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 206 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bay Area Wired (Tad Cook) Status of ACTA's FCC Filing to Stop Internet Phone? (Bill Sohl) BellSouth and The Prudential Bank Introduce BellSouth Visa(R) (Mike King) Employment Opportunity: Telecommunication Positions (Mehdi Ashraf) Mitel SX2000 Lite Voice Mail Integration (Paul Crick) Required PIN Dialing over Cellular Phone (Jeff Rodrigues) CDPD in Los Angeles? (Blair Shellenberg) Information Wanted on Tymnet (Kendall Shaw) What is Turnpike Effect? (Eva Fung) Does Caller-ID Hunt or Call-Forward? (Rich Chong) Insight Research Online (Tara D. Mahon) Cellular Data Communications (Lynne Gregg) NBC News Search For Show Topic (Deborah Levinson) Canada: ATCI / Telecoms Inter-Cite Info Needed (Rosemary Warren) 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: Tad Cook Subject: Bay Area Wired Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 14:08:31 PDT Bay Area's Wired -- it's a hotbed of modem mania By Mike Antonucci Mercury News Staff Writer IN the Bay Area, that screech from next door may not be a reason to call 911. Instead, it's increasingly likely to be the ear-piercing sound of your neighbor's modem. Nationally, only 20 percent of households have a modem, according to a January survey by Odyssey, a San Francisco research firm. But in Santa Clara County, the figure is a staggering 42 percent, according to Mercury News research. That statistic is a dramatic indicator of how Bay Area households have become an extension of Silicon Valley's high-tech business environment. While there's little conclusive data available on home computer and Internet use for regions smaller than a state, the Bay Area is widely believed to have the highest concentration of computer- and Internet-friendly inhabitants in the country. Researchers and others routinely see the Bay Area as being both physically and psychologically wired to innovations in technology and telecommunications. Indeed, some see the region -- particularly San Francisco, the Peninsula, the East Bay and the South Bay -- as the pre-eminent place for testing or introducing services of that nature. "That's where we go for focus groups when we want to look at early adoption. For us, the Bay Area is No. 1," says Tom Miller, a vice president at the FIND/SVP research company. "Early adoption" is industry jargon for the quick acceptance of new activities or products. Studying the reactions of people who are the first to spend time and money in a different way can offer important hints about larger consumer audiences. In other words, the way the Bay Area acts today is how other parts of the country might act tomorrow. Area residents who fret about keeping up with the Joneses electronically may be the best evidence of the Bay Area's preoccupation with computers and cyberspace. At Los Altos Library, for instance, more than 500 people have taken beginning Internet instruction. Head librarian Carol Tefft says she has seen people both eager to learn -- and concerned that they're being left behind. "I think they sometimes feel a sense of standing on the side of the road while everybody is whipping by them," says Tefft. Well, not everybody. But apparently a huge percentage. Nationally, an estimated 35 percent to 40 percent of households have at least one computer. But in the 415 area code, one estimate puts the figure at almost 58 percent; in the 408 area code, the figure is 52 percent. (The New York research firm providing the numbers, IDC/LINK, cautioned that it was working from a very small statistical sample.) The Mercury News research, though, compiled in late 1995, shows even higher figures for Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley. For instance, approximately 60 percent of the county's households have a computer. Reflecting the region's techno-savvy, Tele-Communications Inc., the cable-TV giant that is expanding into virtually all areas of the video, phone and data businesses, has long targeted the Bay Area as a key territory for rolling out advanced interactive services. "We think there's a natural receptiveness that goes beyond the industries that are prevalent there," says Bob Thomson, TCI's senior vice president for communications and policy. That's one of the major reasons TCI picked Sunnyvale to launch @Home, a venture that hopes to provide high-speed Internet access over cable-TV lines. It's also noteworthy that Pacific Bell's test area in Northern California for a newly wired video-and-phone network is San Jose. "We looked at a pretty long list of factors," says Steve Harris, Pacific Bell's vice president for external affairs. "But certainly, when we looked at the potential for interactive video and high-speed data, there's a strong sense that on average people in the Bay Area are more computer literate and more technology friendly." The Bay Area's reputation as an on-line hotbed can also be seen in the many Internet "commercial domains" in the 415, 408 and 510 area codes. These are Internet addresses ending in ".com" that generally, though not exclusively, represent businesses. According to the Virginia firm Internet Info, the top domain totals as of mid-April were in the 415 and 408 area codes, with 23,703 combined. The 212 area code, which covers the Manhattan borough of New York City, was third with 10,822. No other area code in the New York vicinity appeared in the top 20, but the East Bay's 510 was 10th, at 5,434. Domains don't correlate to individuals users. The more than five million subscribers to the Virginia-based America Online service, for instance, all have a single domain address -- "aol.com" -- for e-mail. But researchers have followed domain patterns as a clue to understanding markets. Miller suggests the Bay Area's fascination with technology may even be carrying over into what keeps people awake at night. He wonders, not entirely tongue-in-cheek, just how much they love their software. On the East Coast, he says, "they may be using the Internet to talk about politics at one in the morning. In the Bay Area, they may be talking about the latest iteration of Netscape." -------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is interesting to watch the migration of users around the world as they log in and out of the net -- particularly the large commercial sites and their chatting services -- as one in the morning becomes two in the morning and then to five and six in the morning, eastern USA time. I'll resist the temptation to say much about the Americans still online on chat at four in the morning except perhaps some of them are getting pretty desparate ... but as time marches on, we see systems like Compuserve go from nearly three thousand people on CB at 1:00 a.m. (10:00 p.m. for California people) to about a hundred users or less by 5:00 a.m. eastern time, and most of them being west coast folks. By 5:00 a.m. eastern, even the hardy Brits who wanted to chat with the Americans and have to stay up all night to do it have pretty much had to get off line and get on with their lives otherwise. The chat services are predominated by the Americans, meaning our 7-8 p.m. through about 3:00 a.m. next morning time period is when the system will be loaded, and even more so on Friday and Saturday night. 5:00 am eastern however is not a great time anywhere in the world regard- less of the time it happens to be locally as far as online chat is concerned, so the systems are pretty quiet. It is mid-day in Europe and the people there are in school or work; in other places, people have not woke up yet, etc. Then an interesting phenomenon occurs. After an hour or so of relative quiet from about 4 to 6 a.m. eastern, with most of the users being from the far east (a lot of Japanese, Hong Kong, Singapore logins making up the bulk of it along with a few from our west coast), about 6:00 a.m. things start to speed up again. Compuserve CB fills with people from Europe, primarily Germany and UK. If you check the user log you'll see almost entirely user-id's of the form 100xxx,xxxx which are the accounts issued in Germany and the UK. You'll hardly see any Americans on there at all until about 9:00 a.m. One day about 8:00 in the morning I logged in and parked on one of the channels where there a dozen or so people chatting, all of the 100xxx variety. Seeing my login, one of them types in a message to the others, 'oh oh! Here come the dumb Yankees; they're getting an early start today.' On a couple channels, several German people were conversing in their own language. An early-rising American logged in and had the nerve to go on the same channel and complain that 'when you are on this CB you are supposed to type in English so everyone can understand what you are talking about ...' The Germans roundly condemned him both in their own language and ours, suggesting if he had no place of employment where he ought to be at that time of day, perhaps he was on the American welfare system, and using his welfare checks to buy his computer. They also asked him if he used drugs regularly or had mugged and killed any tourists from Europe recently. The conversation then dealt with 'the stupid Americans and how they think everything should be in English but they can't even speak or write in that language very well.' There seem to be two varieties of chat users from other countries: those who *do* want to talk to the predominantly American users in chat (and who keep weird schedules by their own clocks to do it), and those wish the 'dumb Yankees' would go away completely. On the Compuserve CB channel for teenagers for example, one would not expect to see any American kids on there at nine or ten in the morning on a weekday. It will have quite a few users, but all kids from Europe where it is mid- to late- afternoon who got home from school and like their American counterparts, logged in with their computers. But always amid the dozens of youthful 100xxx accounts on CB at that hour, a few USA users as well. The British kids will start fights with uncomplimentary remarks about the Americans, saying something like, "Look, one of those Yankee bast--ds logged in. What are you doing home from school, Yankee Doodle? Are you too dumb to go to school; did they toss you out?" Regretably, the American kids who are on CB during the day usually are dropouts or kids playing hookey for the day under guise of 'sickness' or whatever; they're not the future leaders of America. They'll respond in kind with crude remarks of their own. As the morning turns into afternoon here in the USA, the 100xxx kids begin to fade away and CB fills up with American teenagers, and European adults on the 'adult CB' channels. By much past seven or eight in the evening eastern time, most all of the 100xxx'ers are gone and CB is loaded with Americans once again. Not all Europeans are into 'cybersex' by any means however, and one lady in the UK remarked to me one evening that, "I never stay on past midnight my time; that is about when all the American men are coming home from work and logging in looking for sex." She claimed that 'when it gets past midnight here, Compuserve is loaded with American men and all I get are crude instant send messages from them every five minutes or less.' But some like the great American CB party which goes on night after night in USA time zones. Last Saturday night at 11:00 pm here in Chicago I chatted for a few minutes with a fellow in New Zealand where it was about 5:00 pm Sunday afternoon. He said when he first got on the net he quickly learned 'if you want to party with the Americans on line you just remember to start logging in Sunday afternoon when it is Saturday night in the United States ... and my 'fellow perverts' in the UK and Germany know that to get in on the action they have to log in at three in the morning, like it or not.' And those who do not like it just get on when the Americans are all asleep or at work. Time and again they are amused when the 'dumb Yankees' have no concept of time zones and are so amazed to find out it is not 11:00 pm on Saturday night everywhere. They have no concept of geography either. The New Zealand fellow mentioned when he tells an American CB'er where he is from, about half say they never heard of it and ask what state it is located in. I'm being serious. The net never sleeps; the users come and go and the net takes on different characteristics as the hours go by each day. PAT] ------------------------------ From: billsohl@planet.net (Bill Sohl) Subject: Status of ACTA's FCC filing to Stop Internet Phone? Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 22:43:07 GMT Organization: BL Enterprises Pat, et al Anyone know what the latest is on the ACTA filing with the FCC to stop the sale of Internet Phone software? I believe the ACTA was going to be meeting and discussing the issue because there was not a consensus of the ACTA members as to if, and or how, the issue should be pursued. Anyway, an update, if available would be appreciated. Bill Sohl (K2UNK) billsohl@planet.net Internet & Telecommunications Consultant/Instructor Budd Lake, New Jersey [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe a couple of readers who are in that organization can bring us up to date. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike King Subject: BellSouth and The Prudential Bank Introduce BellSouth Visa(R) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 09:01:17 PDT Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 08:54:55 -0400 From: BellSouth Subject: BellSouth and The Prudential Bank Introduce BellSouth Visa(R) Reply-To: info@corp.bellsouth.com BellSouth and The Prudential Bank Introduce the BellSouth VISA(R) Small Business Card ATLANTA -- Small business owners can now carry one card for all their business needs. Jointly introduced by BellSouth Small Business Services and The Prudential Bank, the BellSouth VISA Small Business Card is a combination calling card and credit card designed especially for small business customers. "Tailored to meet the specific and unique demands of the small business customer, the card offers many outstanding advantages," said Scott Studier, manager in BellSouth Small Business Services. "It carries higher available credit limits than most cards available today, offers cash back on phone charges and purchases, has no annual fee and provides a year-end report for financial management." In addition to the standard features of telephone calling cards and VISA credit cards, the BellSouth VISA Small Business Card will pay cash back when it is used as a calling card, as well as when used as a credit card. As a telephone calling card, the BellSouth VISA Small Business Card is accepted virtually anywhere in the world from any phone. By using the card for BellSouth calling card calls, customers will receive 20 percent cash back. If they elect to pay their monthly business phone bills with their card, they will receive an additional two percent cash back based on their total monthly BellSouth phone bill amount. Used as a credit card, the BellSouth VISA Small Business Card will also pay one percent cash back on every purchase made with the card. Customers can also transfer existing credit card balances to the card and earn one percent cash back on the transferred amount. The amount of cash back accrued is shown on the monthly BellSouth VISA Small Business Card statement. A check for the total amount earned will be sent to customers shortly after their card anniversary date. There is a $300 cap on rebates, excluding calling card charges. Small business customers can also enjoy the convenience of cash advances through the Cirrus(R) and VISA(R) ATM networks worldwide, or use the handy Convenience Checks to pay bills or make purchases. As an added benefit, customers will be able to manage their expenses with the annual detailed expense report provided at no additional charge. Small business customers may apply for the BellSouth VISA Small Business Card by calling toll free 1-888-4SB-VISA (1-888-472-8472). As a special introductory offer, the card will feature a low variable annual percentage rate (APR) and no annual fee. In addition to the card's cash-back features, low introductory APR, and an easy-to-remember calling card number (office phone number plus PIN), it also offers: * available credit line up to $25,000 (financial statement required to determine credit lines over $15,000); * emergency medical referral assistance; * lost luggage insurance; * auto rental insurance; * extended warranty protection of up to a full year on purchases. Studier added, "This is just further proof that when it comes to helping small businesses communicate, BellSouth is the only name to remember." The Prudential Bank, a subsidiary of one of the nation's largest financial institutions, is issuing the BellSouth VISA Small Business Card. The Bank also partnered with BellSouth last year in issuing a card for consumers and BellSouth employees. BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. (BST), provides telecommunications services in the Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. With headquarters in Atlanta, BellSouth serves approximately 21 million local telephone lines and provides local exchange and intraLATA long distance service over one of the most modern telecommunications networks in the world. For Information Contact: Karen M. Roughton (404) 330-0188 Pager: 1-800-946-4646 PIN 2776190 Mike King * Oakland, CA, USA * mk@wco.com ------------------------------ From: Mehdi Ashraf Subject: Employment Opportunity: Telecommunication Positions Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 10:45:19 -0400 Organization: Durability, Inc. Integral Technologies, Inc. (ITI) is an Information System (IS) and Telecommunication Consulting firm headquartered in Vienna, VA. We are currently looking for a number of qualified telecommunication engineers familiar with Cellular technologies. A full description of these positions is currently available at our World Wide Web Site at http://www.durability.com/integral. With Best Regards, Niloo Mehrabian V.P. of Business Development Integral Technologies, Inc. http://www.durability.com/integral Tel: (703) 893-4071 Fax: (703) 893-5049 e-mail: Integral@ix.netcom.com ------------------------------ From: paulc@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Paul Crick") Subject: Mitel SX2000 Lite Voice Mail Integration Organization: IVC Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 15:13:30 GMT I have a customer who has a Mitel SX2000 Lite system. I'm doing some IVR work for them and they've asked if they could have voicemail within one department. I can do it no worries, but want to know if I can get tight integration with the PABX so they could divert on no reply to the IVR system and the caller get a personalised greeting. Is it possible to designate some extensions as voice mail ports, then have the SX2000 send some DTMF digits on answer corresponding to the original extension number dialled? I'm told it's possible but my guy can't find anything about it in the manual. I suppose you could do it if you had a Dialogic D/42-SX card but we're working on small scale stuff at the minute. Replies here or by mail to paulc@itl.net. Thanks in advance, Paul Crick: paulc@cix.compulink.co.uk -- +44-1534-287213 (24 hours) paulc@bickler.demon.co.uk -- PO Box 783, Jersey JE4 0SH, UK ------------------------------ From: jeff777@netcom.com (Jeff Rodrigues) Subject: Required PIN Dialing Over Cellular Phone Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 21:59:29 GMT Here's a question regarding dialing a PIN number over a cellular service that not only requires a PIN number to be dialed, but also requires the PIN number to be entered after first dialing the phone number and hitting the SEND button. This applies more to cellular carriers in the northeastern U.S. When the PIN number is being sent to the carrier, is the PIN number being transmitted to the carrier via DTMF tones or through a control channel? Whichever way the PIN number is transmitted, is this process consistent with all carriers that require the PIN number to be dialed after sending th phone number first? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jeff Rodrigues (jeff777@netcom.com) jeff777@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: blair@instep.bc.ca Subject: CDPD in Los Angeles? Reply-To: blair@instep.bc.ca Organization: InStep Mobile Communications Inc. Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 18:53:55 GMT Is there or will there be CDPD coverage in Los Angeles any time soon? If you know the answer to this question, will you please e-mail me at blair@instep.bc.ca. I have found nothing about CDPD coverage in LA, the areas that are covered, to the best of my knowledge are San Fran.-Oakland, San Diego, Sacramento, San Jose, Fresno and Bakersfield. Any information on CDPD in L.A. will be appreciated. Sincerely, InStep Mobile Communications Inc. Blair Shellenberg ------------------------------ From: kshaw@plight.lbin.com (kendall shaw) Subject: Information Wanted on Tymnet Date: 29 Apr 1996 11:23:11 -0700 Organization: shwa and squaw There was a company called Tymnet who offered a service which was popular with computer users, whereby you would call in and then be able to call out to internet service providers or other services. I think it was an X.25 network. What has become of that? I thought it became Sprintnet, but when I called sprintnet they said they have no such service and they were never Tymnet. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Beginning about 1970 or maybe in the late 1960's, GTE offered a data network which was quite large called 'Telenet' which should not be confused with the Unix feature 'telnet' (without the /e/ in the middle). The customers were large computer systems in the 'military/industrial complex' and universities. Each comptuer site had a six digit address of the form 312567 where the first three digits were the telephone area code and the last three digits were the site identifier. Computers could connect to this network and call each other. There were also gateways to the data networks in other countries including Canada. Calls over the network were charged to the computer originating the connection however there were provisions to call 'collect' just as in the voice telephone network. Telenet was in fact quite huge; it was to computers what AT&T was/is to voice traffic; i.e. a big central switching system and network. There were numerous 'dialups' or numbers on the voice telephone network which connected to the data network for the early users of modems with computers at home, etc. Those calls were always 'collect' or charged to the site receiving the connection since Telenet had no way of knowing who the originating party was. When you connected with the network either via a telephone 'dialup' or a fixed circuit located at your premises, Telenet answered with this symbol '@' which was essentially analogous to 'computer dial tone'. You then typed in your connection instructions and waited for a response from the system you were calling. Response messages might be that you were connected, or that the other end did not respond, or that the other end was 'busy', i.e. its circuits all in use. A competitive service started around 1970-75 called 'Tymnet' pronounced 'Time Net'. It operated much the same way and it came down basically to a 'do you prefer MCI, Sprint or AT&T' sort of thing. Either one you picked had about the same rates; each served a few slightly differ- points than the other when you got out in the boondocks, etc. Both the services were used heavily in the day, and seldom at night or weekends. They both offered email; in Telenet's case at the @ sign the command @C MAIL (meaning connect to mail) got you into a combination electronic bulletin board/email area. Telnet got the idea of selling their excess capacity all night long and on weekends to 'home computer enthusiasts' as we were sometimes called back about 1980-81. They knew they were getting hacked all night long anyway by people with modems who were just fooling around, so what they were selling all day long for $4-5 per hour to large computer sites they decided to sell for $25 per month for unlimited usage to 'home computer users' via the dialups at night and on weekends. They called their program 'PC Pursuit'. You were specifically NOT authorized to connect with of the large mainframes; their daytime customers got pretty antzy about that. You were only authorized to call through the network to other dialups, which when used from the network side were called 'dialouts'. So if you wanted to call a BBS in Chicago from New York, you called the New York City dialups with your modem and did @C 312 or some similar command. You then reached a modem over here which let you do ATD and the desired local number. For only $25 per month for unlimited use between 6:00 PM and 6:00 AM daily plus all day Saturday and Sunday, it was an excellent deal. Some people literally stayed connected from 6:00 PM Friday through 6:00 AM Monday and because of the extreme amount of use the personal PC users gave Telenet's 'PC Pursuit' program, eventually the rates were changed and the terms were changed. At some point, Tymnet jumped into it with an offering of their own which was quite competitive. I do not recall which company owned Tymnet, although I beleive there are some very old files in the Archives which discusses it and makes a comparison study between it and Telenet's PC Pursuit. Eventually, Sprint bought Telenet from GTE and renamed it SprintNet. They continued to operate the PC Pursuit program for a couple years after that, but the immense popularity of the program led to its downfall. It became so popular the network suffered from extremely slow connections and transmission. The night and weekend thing toward the end had thousands of customers where the original service for which the network was configured and had been in operation for many years never had more than a few hundred large corporate accounts. At some point Tynmet either went out of business or changed its name our was bought out. I know the very same phone numnbers from the Tymnet days are still in service as dialups, and to a large extent by AOL. The fastest baud rate you can get on any of those older dialups is 1200. You get to pick that or 300, your choice ... ... also the PC Pursuit program allowed those two choices of baud rates. I think Tymnet may still be around, but you do not connect with them per se ... you use software from the service you subscribe to which places a call via the dialups and handles all the login (to Tymnet) details transpar- ently. SprintNet is still around, and I notice in the Compuserve phone number listings quite a few of their dialups are shown as ways to connect with @C 614something, the Columbus, Ohio location of CIS. I cannot imagine who would use it at 300/1200/2400 baud when there are now so many other methods of connection at speeds much greater. So the person you talked to at SprintNet was partly right and partly wrong. They did have PC Pursuit when they called their network Telenet. They no longer offer it and have not for a few years. It has nothing to do with Tymnet, which was a competitor with a similar program for small PC users, who I have no idea where they went or when, just that they are not around now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Eva Fung Subject: What is Turnpike Effect? Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 16:35:05 -0500 Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington I read a book talks about network design lately and it mentions that network designers should forecast the data volume of three to five years in the future. Then, it talks about turnpike effect. But it never mention what turnpike effect is ... Can anyone tell me what is turnpike effect please? Thanks, Eva [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think it is a rule which says 'if you give something to people they will use it.' Prior to President Eisenhower putting on a *big* push to build the interstate highway system in the United States, people traveled where they wanted to go on local roads and highways such as the famous 'Route 66' between Chicago and Los Angeles. It took people in automobiles between four and five days to get across the country; Greyhound Bus made the cross country trip in a little over five days. Since airplanes were not yet in real common use by civilians, the train was the way to travel long distances. The New York Central Railroad brought you to Chicago in a day. You changed trains here and the Santa Fe Rail- road got you to the west coast two days later. Eisenhower said let's build big fast roads and they did. I remember as a teenager the grand opening of the Indiana Toll Road and its eventual connection to the Ohio Turnpike on one side and Interstate 55 on the other side. I remember before Interstate 90/94 people going to Milwaukee driving up US 41 with an all-day trip to get there. A street on the far northwest side of Chicago is called 'Northwest Highway'. It is now seldom used but fifty years ago it was the road to the far away suburbs by the Wisconsin border. Back then, certainly you passed cars on Route 66 or Route 54 on your travels, but nothing like now with the highways packed solid at times. Preident Truman had also talked about building a massive highway infrastructure in the USA but Eisenhower accomplished it. They had no concept of just how much traffic there would be on the interstates, or how the new highway system plus the airplanes would effectively put the passenger rail- roads out of business. President Truman scoffed at the idea of immense amounts of traffic on the roads. He once said, "my advisors tell me we need to plan for a time when there will be thousands of machines on the roads, all at one time, mind you! Why, that is ridiculous! Thousands of machines, all going down the road in all directions. That would be insanity. What if one of the machines goes out of control and crashes into another?" But finally he agreed the interstate expressways and turnpikes might be necessary. With the opening of the interstate highways through the late 1950's and into the 1960's, people started traveling by car to all sorts of places they had never visited before. Like the rail- roads, Greyhound got hurt in it but their survival plan included closing about five thousand of the contract agency bus stations which were up and down every rural highway in America and telling many of the remaining three thousand or so to either move to within about a half-mile of the nearest expressway or they would find another agent to provide 'bus station services' who would open up by the interstate, saving precious minutes in station stops so they did not have to drive all the way through town to get to the local bus station. They trimmed their five/six day cross country trips down to three days, but still have only about half the passengers they had forty or fifty years ago. Unlike the passenger railroads, they are still in business however. I think the quote in your book means if you give people lots of virtually unlimited resources, like the interstate highways, they will use them because it is convenient. If you fix it so people can have telephones turned on and off at a minute's notice and the service is dirt cheap, people will make more and more phone calls. Like Truman and his disbelief that there would ever be 'thousands of machines on the road one time driving in all directions and crashing into each other', who fifty years ago could predict what our telephone network would be like today? Who would like to predict fifty years from now? The Turnpike Theory therefore says build your infrastructure with the most extreme forecasts you can design in mind. Chances are likely you will be 'more correct' than with a conservative design. PAT] ------------------------------ Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago, ADN Computer Center Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 06:02:06 CDT From: Rich Chong Subject: Does Caller-ID Hunt or Call-Forward? 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. Thanks, Rich [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 direct into your back lines, you are perfectly safe in having things like caller-id and call screening on your first, main, listed number only. Now if calls come in at some point in your rotary other than the very top -- that is, some people dial the number for your third or fourth or eighty-nine line or whatever -- then you have to equip that line also, but if all those numbers are secret and never given out with customers knowing only your top or main number, then you are covered because telco will always come looking for that line when a call is recieved. It will bring along whatever privileges or services are associated with that line on incoming calls. If it has to hand them off to another line or return a busy signal to the caller or whatever, that does not matter. Obviously you need to have a Caller-ID display box on each line; there still has to be a way to display what telco is presenting; you just don't have to pay the monthly service fee. Service reps are trained to tell you things like Caller-ID and Call Screening 'will not work correctly' on multi-line arrangements unless you buy those services for each line. You can tell them that is not true as long as you have no 'independently delivered' calls into those lines. Now, let your customers/employees/others find out the numbers for those back lines and then all bets are off. Ditto on a call-forwarding situation. The central office 'finds out about' your request to forward the calls after it has already decided what privileges or services are to be provided you on your incoming call. Naturally the final end stopping point still has to have a Caller-ID box. When you want to turn on call screening or turn on call forwarding, you do have to do it from the lead number in your group however, the one which telco always tries first to deliver your calls to before deciding on other ways to handle them, because if it can drop a call on that line, it will do so. Cellular phones usually do not send or receive caller-id, regardless of what features you have on your landline phones. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Apr 96 12:30:57 -0400 From: Tara D. Mahon Subject: Insight Research Online Dear Pat and the Digest, The new Insight Research Corporation World Wide Web site has been officially launched! Many thanks to our friends LDDS Worldcom for hosting the site.* Please bookmark our address: http://www.wcom.com/Insight/insight.html The site has been reorganized for easier navigation, and we have added excerpts from several research reports, including full tables of contents. A search engine will be operational in early May. Choose the "Insight Reports" link to read report excerpts -- we have included our market research reports from 1994 and 1995, all the way up to our most recent 1996 study, "Business Online Services, Change, and the Internet." You can also find out what reports we have planned for the coming months. As soon as a new report is published, you'll be sure to find the table of contents and further information online at the web site. Our philosophy has remained simple: we prefer sharing information with the Internet community rather than blanketing our pages with advertising. Our site is not full of marketing hype, but examples of the work we do here at Insight -- information we hope will assist you in your quest to understand the rapidly changing telecommunications marketplace. The excerpts we have online are just a small portion of much larger research reports which identify market trends, market shares, business strategies, and five-year projections of equipment and service revenue. We hope if a report is of interest to you, you'll contact us directly at 201-605-1400 to further discuss that study. Our 1996 reports are priced at $3,495 each, but we have discount packages and a comprehensive subscription program to deliver our services at a reduced cost. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and reactions to the new WWW site. Best Regards, The Insight Research Corporation 354 Eisenhower Parkway Livingston, NJ 07039-1023 201-605-1400 tel 201-605-1440 fax reports@insight-corp.com *The Insight Research Corporation is not affiliated with LDDS Worldcom. ------------------------------ From: Lynne Gregg Subject: Cellular Data Communications Date: Mon, 29 Apr 96 10:28:00 PDT I know there are many TELECOM Digest readers who use cellular networks for data communications. I'm interested in your use of circuit switched cellular (not CDPD). Specifically: are you using the Cancel Call Waiting (CCW) feature when doing a dial up? I'm trying to determine if there any problems in inconsistency in Feature Code assignments. Specifically, wireline telcos have pretty much standardized on the use of *70 for CCW. However, most cellular carriers do not use that code. Is that a problem? Feel free to post your comments to me directly. Regards, Lynne lynne.gregg@attws.com ------------------------------ From: DeborahLevinson Subject: NBC News Search Date: 27 Apr 1996 18:12:59 GMT Organization: Internet Online Services Have you or someone you know been able to cash in on the phone wars? What are the best deals? $75 checks? $100 checks? Beepers? Frequent flyer miles? Please contact Jack Styczynski at jstyczyn@nbc.com or 1-800-NBC-NEWS ext. 5308 if you would like to participate in a story we are doing. If you are comfortable e-mailing your phone number (to the above address, NOT the one this message was posted from), that will speed up the participation process. Thank you. ------------------------------ From: ra_warr@alcor.concordia.ca (Rosemary from Montreal) Subject: Canada: ATCI / Telecoms Inter-Cite Info Needed Date: 30 Apr 1996 01:59:36 GMT Organization: Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Greetings to all readers, I write the Canadian column for Moneycard Collector Magazine, an American publication which deals with the North American prepaid phonecard industry. The magazine is preparing a catalog of all American and Canadian phonecards ever issued, and I am researching the Canadian portion. I am looking for some information regarding a Canadian telecom company. I have some information but I need assistance to fill in some holes. ATCI was based in Etobicoke, Ontario and not only produced debit cards but offered various long distance services under the Econocall and Teleconomie brands. An affiliate was Telecommunications Inter-Cite of Brossard, Quebec, producers of the Telesphere debit card. Both of these companies have gone out of business, and I am looking for someone who might know something about their cards. I own one Telesphere card, 10 mil plastic, pale blue with red writing. It had a horrid prompting system, using whines instead of voices, which led me to believe it may have been a test card. I have been told a total of 15 different designs were issued -- the key for me is to find out about them, the release dates and mintages to include in the catalog. Please contact me at the email address above, or by phone at the numbers below, with any pertinent information. I will be going to the magazine's offices in Sidney, Ohio in May to work on the catalog. I only wish to hear from USA/Canadian readers on this. 514-725-4826 before May 17 (evenings eastern time) - or - 800-645-7456 option 3 (touch tone needed) between May 18 and May 31 Thank you, Rosemary Warren Canadian Columnist, Moneycard Collector Magazine ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #206 ******************************