Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id PAA10908; Tue, 30 Apr 1996 15:51:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 15:51:41 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199604301951.PAA10908@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #207 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Apr 96 15:51:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 207 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Worldnet Service Works Great For Me (John Stahl) Canada Direct Homepage on WWW (Cole Cooper) Cellular Service in Milwaukee (Joseph C. Kirschling) Area Code 619 (Southern CA) Split Details Released (Pierre Thomson) Local Service Costs in Major US Cities (Bill McMullin) Information Requested on T1 Carrier Pricing (Tom Montgomery) Information Wanted on Telemate Software (Pete Holler) Non-LEC Payphones (John Mayson) Telephone Headset to SoundBlaster Interface Wanted (Foster Schucker) Information Wanted on Finland Telecomms? (Johannes Kiehl) Re: Information Wanted on Tymnet (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: Information Wanted on Tymnet (Stefano Cazzani) Re: Bits Don't Go High to Some 800s (John Nagle) Re: Bits Don't Go High to Some 800s (jensoft@blarg.net) Re: Fire in PDX US West Office Kills Phone Service (Mark Brader) Last Laugh! Robin Loyed Has a Long Commute Each Day (Minister of Truth) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 14:01:07 GMT From: John Stahl Subject: AT&T Worldnet Service You will note by my email address, I am a subscriber to AT&T's new Internet service and can report to you that so far, I'm very happy with the service they offer. Both the Internet connection and the AT&T 800-number dial in help service line has been superb! No, I'm not an AT&T employee nor do I have any connection what so ever with AT&T; I'm just a user. Here's a bit of what I have observed so far: When you receive the software package - 3 disks (or CD if you want it) including a modified version of Netscape (there are AT&T logo's throughout), a special AT&T dialer program (very nice; I would say better than Winsock), Eudora Light ver 1.5.2 and a couple of other programs including a special program to help you set-up and trouble shoot the installation called "Customer Care Tools" - the installation under Windows 3.0, 3.1 or 3.11 is very easy. Incidentally, I have found that I can run any Internet type (TCP/IP) program once connected by the dialer. You don't even have to use the Netscape version supplied by AT&T; I use ver. 2.0. I have also run the Microsoft Internet Explorer and run News-Express for the Newsgroups access. After installation, the program asks if you want to register? If yes, it dials an 800-number, goes on line and it takes you through a series of questions (have your credit card available - it doesn't bill your phone account). One of the questions asked is what type of service you want. One of the options is for a small monthly fee you get the 5 free hours of access they tout, after which you pay by the hour similar to AOL and the others. The other option, for big users of the Internet, is an unlimited usage account for $19.95/month. I chose that one. They do charge something like $0.08/min to use their 800 number for Worldnet access if you are not in a local access number area. Also, if you don't subscribe to AT&T long distance service, the monthly access rates are higher - for example the $19.95 is $24.95/month. The 800 number for getting info to order the software, for help and to check to see if there is a local node in your local calling area is: 800-400-1447. There you will get a whole set of options to access most everything you will need. If you go to the access number area, you can ask for as many access numbers you desire by giving the AC and the exchange. If you travel, pick motels/hotels at your stops, get their phone numbers and see if there is a local access number before you go, I did! I have 'surfed' for many happy hours since signing up in February. The only down time thus far is their scheduled maintenance period, Thursday mornings from something like 2:00 AM to 7:00 AM when the service is off. This is in comparison to the local ISP I used to use who experienced - especially on weekends when there was no one in the office - much down time. AT&T so far seems to always be there, 24 hours a day, both for call-in help and the ISP service! Enjoy - I do! John Stahl ------------------------------ From: Cole Cooper/srci/Stentor Date: 30 Apr 96 10:04:33 Subject: Canada Direct Homepage on WWW Announcing a new web site of Interest to Candians travelling overseas. www.stentor.ca/canada_direct Canada Direct is a FREE service from the Canadian companies that connects you to a Canadian network so you can place your long distance overseas calls at low Canadian rates. In the Website: Tell Me More! - Find out everything you need to know about this FREE service before you travel. What's New - The latest details on avoiding telephone fraud, and up to the minute listings of Canada Direct access numbers. Don't miss it! E-mail Updater - Sign up to be alerted by e-mail of any changes to the Canada Direct access numbers. Your Personal Reference Card - Build your customized Canada Direct Reference Card featuring the access numbers you choose. For a complete card, e-mail or call us at 1-800-561-8868. Not all the telcos who can have made the link yet, but they will soon. The French should be up May 8, and English phase 2 (travel tips, useful links etc.) should be up May 10. C.M. (Cole) Cooper - ISS Services Manager Stentor Resource Centre Inc. Alberta and British Columbia Floor 3 W 3030 2nd Avenue S.E. Calgary, Alberta T2A 5N7 Telephone: 403-531-4205 Cellular: 403-540-5387 Facsimile: 1-800-269-7571 Internet: cooperc@stentor.ca ------------------------------ From: lycaeum@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (Joseph C Kirschling) Subject: Cellular Service in Milwaukee Date: 30 Apr 1996 15:07:05 GMT Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee I may be getting a cellular phone in the next week or so. I was wondering what cellular providers people favor in the Milwaukee area. I've been told to stay away from Cellular One and a friend just got shafted by Ameritech. Any suggestions, horror stories? Thanks, Joe Kirschling lycaeum@csd.uwm.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you don't mind buying a cellular phone at the regular price from any dealer of your choice in exchange for a no-contract, month-by-month arrangement at $10 per month for the service fee and rates of 35/18, then you might want to sign up with Frontier. That long distance carrier, previously known as Allnet has a cellular division. They resell Ameritech at corporate rates, so it is a pretty good deal. I use them here in the Chicago area and have not only a Chicago number but a Milwaukee number as well on my dual-NAM phone. You get billed each month on a credit card, and you are required to have at least one of your landlines defaulted to them for long distance, but that is not a bad deal. I gave them one of my lines and left the others with AT&T. I got a nice cellular phone several months ago for $150 from a mail order place which Frontier uses. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Pierre Thomson Subject: Area Code 619 (Southern CA) Split Details Released Date: 30 Apr 1996 12:46:30 GMT Organization: MHVNet, the Mid Hudson Valley's Internet connection I just got the lowdown on the upcoming split of 619 in the San Diego area, in Bellcore Information Letter IL-96/04-009. Briefly, the city of San Diego and its immediate surroundings will keep the 619 area code, and the remaining part of 619 will get the new 760 area code. Permissive dialing starts on Mar. 22, 1997 and ends Sept. 27, 1997. The list of affected exchanges can be found at: http://www1.mhv.net/~mmommsen/npanxx.htm Pierre Thomson Telecom Manager Rifton Enterprises ------------------------------ From: Bill McMullin Subject: Local Service Costs in Major US Cities Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 21:40:17 -0300 Organization: Info-InterActive Inc. I am attempting to determine the all in cost of "local phone service" in the major US cities. Is there a single source of such data? If not, maybe some of you who have a phone :-) could help. By local phone service I mean the total fixed monthly charge for the average touch-tone phone line in an urban centre, with average local calling area. I'd be curious about the taxes and installation charges as well. Responses appreciated, Bill McMullin ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 09:54:55 CDT From: Tom Montgomery Subject: Information Requested on T1 Carrier Pricing Can anyone tell me who the lowest price T1 carriers are. Is there a list? Thank you in advance, T. Montgomery ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 09:23:37 CDT From: Pete Holler Subject: Information Wanted on Telemate Software Hello all, I was wondering if anybody was familiar with a company called Telemate Software. They are a provider of telemanagement software for large and small companies. We are very interested in purchasing this software for our call accounting platform, and would like to hear any pros/cons about it. Please let me know what you can, and thank you in advance. Pete Holler Telecom Tech. Quad/Graphics, Inc. pholler@qgraph.com ------------------------------ From: jmayson@p100dl.ess.harris.com (John Mayson) Subject: Non-LEC Payphones Date: Tue, 30 Apr 96 9:26:31 EDT I needed to call my wife on our cellular phone the other day, so I pulled off at the nearest pay phone. This was a non-BellSouth pay phone. I think the company's name was LTI, but I won't swear to that. We live in the Melbourne, Florida exchange. Our cell phone has a Cocoa, Florida exchange. According to BellSouth, a call from Melbourne to Cocoa is a local call. I put my 25 cents in, dialed 427- and got a message saying "please dial 1 plus the area code for this long distance call." I dialed "0" (knowing I would get a BellSouth operator), verified Cocoa was in the local dialing area, then dialed 211, pay phone repair and refunds. The woman who answered didn't sound too knowledgeable about much of anything. I tried to explain to her that her company's pay phone was trying to turn a local call into a long distance one. All she did was ask me a couple of times for my name and address so she could mail me my refund. I hung up and went and found a BellSouth pay phone. Here's my question. Just because BellSouth has decided Melbourne to Cocoa is a local call, are non-BellSouth pay phones obliged to place this call for as a local call? Isn't this company simply leasing BellSouth phone lines for their pay phones? Would complaining to the company or the Common Carrier Bureau of the FCC help? John Mayson | Palm Bay, Florida | john.mayson@harris.com ------------------------------ From: foster@voicenet.com (Foster Schucker) Subject: Telephone Headset to SoundBlaster Interface Wanted Date: 29 Apr 1996 18:00:28 GMT Organization: Voicenet - Internet Access - (215) 674-9290 I'm looking for an interface that will allow me to connect a telephone headset to a Soundblaster (tm) card. I'd like to be able to play sounds on the ear phone and use the microphone. I've tried some telephone supply places and have drawn a blank. Thanks!!! Foster Schucker ------------------------------ From: jokifedi@cetus.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE (Johannes Kiehl) Subject: Information Wanted on Finland Telecomms Date: 29 Apr 1996 18:11:25 GMT Organization: Technical University Berlin, Germany Can someone from Finland please give me the name (and maybe a phone number?) of the national telecomms company? (I understand there's a telecommunication monopoly in Finland?) Thanks all, Johannes Kiehl In der Nacht zum 29. Februar 1896 ist ein junger Computerlinguistik/Phonetik bartloser Mann in dunkler Kleidung in der Wiener Web Home: http://www.cs. Strasse unterwegs. Er schiebt einen auffallend tu-berlin.de/~johannes grossen, blauen Handwagen (Polizeibericht) ------------------------------ From: fgoldstein@bbn.com (Fred R. Goldstein) Subject: Re: Information Wanted on Tymnet Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 10:17:52 EST Organization: BBN Corp. In article kshaw@plight.lbin.com (kendall shaw) writes: > 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. I don't remember Tymnet's offering that; PC Pursuit was Telenet's. > 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. Tymnet is still around. It has gone through a number of owners. It began in the mid-'70s as an arm of Tymshare, Inc., a computer time-sharing bureau. Back in those pre-PC days, time-sharing was the only way for little guys to use a computer. Tymnet connected remote terminals to Tymshare's mainframes. The time-sharing business changed and most of the old players went away, the notable exception being CompuServe, which repositioned itself with new services geared to PC users. Tymnet became part of McDonnell-Douglas by the early '80s, was later purchased by British Telecom (and operated as "BT Tymnet"), and a couple of years ago went to MCI as part of the BT-MCI semi-merger (sort of a keiretsu deal). It's still widely used for corporate remote access, credit-card validation terminals, on-line service access, etc. They have numbers in all sorts of little burgs, probably the biggest Foreign Exchange collection in the USA. Then, TELECOM Digest Editor added his two cents: > 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. There were three big packet-switched network operators in the USA in the late '70s. Telenet was founded by BBN (we invented all sorts of packet-switching technology), but ran independently with minority partner ownership before being acquired by GTE in 1980 or so. They called it "GTE Telenet". GTE bought Sprint from the Southern Pacific and put the two together. Then GTE sold part of Sprint and Telenet to United Telecom ("US Sprint"), and finally the rest of them. Now the former United Telecom uses the name Sprint Corp., calls Telenet "Sprintnet", and operates both the "United" and "Centel" (a more recent acquisition) telephone companies. The third of the big three was Graphnet, run by Graphic Scanning Inc. It seemed to fade away by the early '80s. AT&T's X.25 efforts ("Accunet", I think, though they use that name on lots of things) were never huge. Some Bells also bought in during the mid 80s, never to dominate. Fred R. Goldstein k1io fgoldstein@bbn.com BBN Corp., Cambridge MA USA +1 617 873 3850 ------------------------------ Date: 30 Apr 96 10:18:40 EDT From: Stefano Cazzani <100010.3371@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Information Wanted on Tymnet > 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. I believe Tymnet was bought by BT (British Telecom) a few years ago. They marketd their X.25 network in Europe as BT-Tymnet for a while. I think it is now part of their Concert (BT-MCI alliance) offering. Regards, Stefano Cazzani Milano, Italy ------------------------------ From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: Bits Don't Go High to Some 800s Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 01:28:58 GMT Antilles Engineering writes: > We've noted that when our guys overseas call through the switch to > some 800 numbers (for example, American Airlines Advantage 1 800 848 > 4653), the call doesn't "connect" and yet information is being > conveyed by AA. You are prompted to enter a DTMF to access a > particular branch, then put on hold. *Only* when a live body at that > particular AA branch picks up do the signal bits go high and a > "connect" actually happens. > Technically, I can see how this can be done, but can *we* do it > legally, or do you have to have the concurance of your LD carrier, > *or* is someone out there being cute without the knowledge of the > carrier? I just saw some ITU documents on this, on the ITU web server. There are some documents on who pays for annoucements and such. The traditional rule for international is that charging begins when the voice connection goes bidirectional, but that's not enough to cover all the situations any more. John Nagle ------------------------------ From: jensoft@blarg.net (Genuine Softness) Subject: Re: Bits Don't Go High to Some 800s Date: 30 Apr 1996 03:32:42 GMT Organization: Blarg! Online Services 206/441-9109 Antilles Engineering (antilles@madriver.com) wrote: > the call doesn't "connect" and yet information is being > conveyed by AA. You are prompted to enter a DTMF to access a > particular branch, then put on hold. *Only* when a live body at that > particular AA branch picks up do the signal bits go high and a > "connect" actually happens. One of our local paging companies in Bellevue, Washington, doesn't return supervision on calls to pagers until *after* the data entry phase and a "thank you for calling" annoucement. So, if you can get in, dial in your message, and hang up before the terminal announcement is made, you've made a free call. I've often wondered about this. What do they care if they gyp US West or GTE out of a quarter? Wicker ------------------------------ From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: Fire in PDX US West Office Kills Phone Service Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 23:50:27 GMT The Moderator writes: > Telcos are notorious for leaving millions > of dollars in switching and other sophisticated equipment unattended > for days at a time. In their penny-wise and pound-foolish budgets, they > would rather have a fire or other disaster every now and then costing > them several million dollars and a lot of bad customer relations than > to simply hire someone for twenty or thirty thousand dollars per year > and have them stay in the CO at night or on weekends... I don't dispute the general tenor of these remarks, but let's get the math right, please. Twenty or thirty thousand dollars per year times how many locations? Several million dollars every how often? Just what *is* the financial tradeoff here? Mark Brader, msb@sq.com, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto C unions never strike! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The math is particularly evasive because one does not sit down and factor in a major fire every X years at X million dollars each. Likewise, it is very difficult to put a firm dollar amount on customer goodwill. However, a very good estimate of the costs at Hinsdale is about ten million dollars. The entire switch had to be scrapped although originally they hoped to restore it. The last time I went shopping for a switch, the best price I could find was about five million dollars. To that you add in repair of the building in general, replacement of lots of cable, a month's worth of wages and overtime wages for people taken off of regular assignments to work on restoration of the disaster. Then you add in the costs of the emergency cellular service and equipment you provided to the most important customers during the outage, i.e. police, fire, hospitals. Then you pay for a few lawyers to fend off the inevitable lawsuits of customers which begin afterward. Did you know for example they were *still* settling lawsuits based on Hinsdale as of late last year, a full seven years later? I think ten million might be a good estimate of the 'cost'. What about the customers who did not sue you but just sat there for the duration very unhappy and who will jump ship when the opportunity arises. I guess they are worth something. So if you will for the moment at least stipulate that ten million dollars is reasonable, then let's go with that figure. Now if you pay a clerk five hundred dollars per week including fringe benefits you can reasonably expect to get a fairly sharp person in return. That is quite a cut above minimum wage. I do not think you would have to pay that much. Five hundred per week is about twenty-five thousand per year. If twenty such people covered the ten or so most important and critical company locations (remember, you have to cover days off and sick days and such; you are looking at three shifts some days of the week and one or two shifts other days of the week), then your expense would be about five hundred thousand per year. At that rate, you have twenty years of coverage for what Hinsdale 'cost'. You cannot say they would totally eliminate the cost of a disaster since fires would still get started and water pipes would still break, etc. But their *presence and immediate reactions* would greatly mitigate the loss. Maybe the cost of Hinsdale would have been as little as a few hundred thousand dollars and perhaps several hours to a day off line. Maybe there would have been no downtime except to a few customers. So you say well maybe Hinsdale did not cost that much and maybe you can't get people at that price. Okay, squeeze the two ends a little and cut my figures by fifty percent. Is ten years of protection still a good start? The other thing to remember also is that if those people employed for that purpose did *nothing but that* and their entire cost had to be budgeted to one department (let us call it plant security) then it is expensive. But suppose you transferred one or two people off of their daytime position and placed them on nights and weekends letting them spend about half the time on 'plant security' and the other half of their time at some routine task such as data entry or telephone message taking or janitorial duties ... something they had been doing all day long anyway but now would be doing all night long. You would continue to chargeback a great portion of their salary to the original department. In other words, maybe you don't really hire twenty people at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars, you merely juggle around the ones you have. This now cuts the expense down to a matter of the 'night shift differential' you would pay and the fact that you would be getting only about half as much work out of the person at their original task. For many years, telcos had during the evening and overnight shift a single clerk and technician in most central offices. The clerk answered customer calls to 611 and the technician did simple testing and repairs based on those calls in the frames. The clerk also did typing and filing and assorted tasks. Usually the clerk did stuff 'left over by the day crew' that they did not get to; i.e. an excessive amount of filing or data entry that day. Maybe the person pulled all the microfiche requests made that day and got them out to the requesting employees. Maybe they sorted and stapled and distributed computer printouts which were to be on the desks of certain executives each day. Routine, very rote work to fill out the time, but they would still manage to loaf, watch television and read the newspaper for about half their shift, thinking management was not aware of how little they had to do. It was actually a very cushy job; the person had no supervisors nagging at them, no absolute set periods for lunch or breaks, etc. It was great for people who liked working alone, and did not need any supervision at all. Don't you suppose if there were someone like that in the central office all night now that between their infrequent answering of calls to 611, their trips to the vending machines and the bathroom, their watching television and smoking cigarettes and occassional pecking at a keyboard they'd have enough wits about them to smell smoke coming from a room down the hall or see water dripping out of the ceiling and go to investigate, especially if a specific part of their job assignment was to specifically be alert for unusual conditions, etc? I suggest that you really would not wind up spending *anything* for the needed protection; you'd just juggle the existing clerical staff around a little. In any event, even if you had to start from scratch and pay large amounts of money, hire new people, etc ... how many years would it take before it became more expensive than Hinsdale in 1988 or lower Manhattan back in the 1970's ... and who is next? PAT] ------------------------------ From: dc@panix3.panix.com (Minister of Truth) Subject: Last Laugh! Robin Loyed Has a Long Commute Each Day Date: 30 Apr 1996 21:54:08 -0400 Organization: Woo Studios Ltd. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Minister of Truth has revealed this latest wisdom to us. PAT] www.switchboard.com reports precisely one Robin Loyed in all of America: Loyed, Robin...5187 W 114th Pl...Shawnee Msn, KS 66211-1795 Phone: (913)469-xxxx Sure hope this isn't the Sprint man with the Dallas office number. David W. Crawford (c) 1996 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Shawnee Mission .... hmmm ... now what large, well known long distance carrier has their headquarters around that area? Hmmm ... United Telephone? Hmmm ... some company they bought out? Let me think, maybe it will come to me. According Southwestern Bell, the above number is now listed to the 'Deemer' (spelling?) residence. An entire check of 816/913 produced only one listing for 'Loyed', a person named Randy who lives in Missouri. I changed it to 'xxxx' because there is no reason to speak with the Deemer family. Maybe Randy is a relative, and perhaps Robin lived there in Shawnee Mission before getting transferred to Texas. I really cannot imagine him driving such a long distance to work each day, although it may explain why he is never at his desk or available on the phone. I guess we have to keep trying him at 214-405-5404, since it would certainly verge on harassment to involve the Deemers or Randy Loyed, whoever that might be. In the meantime, you do have a *total freeze* on all accounts payable to Sprint I assuume ... they'll eventually get around to asking why and what needs to be done to resolve the dispute. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #207 ******************************