Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id NAA09773; Sat, 21 Dec 1996 13:34:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 13:34:03 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199612211834.NAA09773@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #674 TELECOM Digest Sat, 21 Dec 96 13:34:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 674 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Still Another LA Area Code (Tad Cook) Bell Canada's Operac - Comments (J.F. Mezei) Re: Canadian Use Of N11 Codes (Steve Gaarder) Re: How Business Almost Derailed the Net (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: WebTV and CoyoteNet; a Minority Report (Craig Nordin) Re: WebTV and CoyoteNet; a Minority Report (Ron Bean) Re: COCOT 800-Access Charges (Nils Andersson) Re: GSM is GSM is GSM - Not (Martin Baines) Re: Parollees and the Net (Gary Sanders) 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Still Another LA Area Code Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 00:06:32 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Los Angeles to Get New Area Code, Implementation Date Not Yet Revealed By Susan Pack, Press-Telegram, Long Beach, Calif. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Dec. 21--Downtown Los Angeles will retain its 213 area code, but the surrounding area will get a new one, the California Public Utilities Commission decided Friday. Neither the new code nor the implementation date was determined, however. The new doughnut configuration retains 213 for central Los Angeles, including downtown, USC, Westlake, Echo Park and Koreatown. Among the cities due for a new code are South Gate, South Pasadena and Hollywood. The split was one of two options considered by commissioners. They rejected an overlay, which would have assigned a new area code to new telephone lines in the area. In fact, with the possible exception of the 310 area code, the commission decided to continue to use geographic splits rather than overlays to establish new area codes through the year 2000. Three consumer surveys concluded splits were preferable to overlays, which could result in different area codes within the same business or household if a new line was installed. Overlays also require all customers in the area to dial 11 digits (one plus the area code plus the seven-digit number) on all calls, even when they're placed within the same area code. On Jan. 25 the 310 code will split, with callers east of the Los Angeles River acquiring a 562 area code. If the 310 code runs out of numbers again, however, the commission left open the possibility of an overlay instead of yet another split. ------------------------------ From: jfmezei Subject: Bell Canada's Operac - Comments Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 05:02:45 -0500 Organization: SPC Reply-To: jfmezei@videotron.ca Last month (November) Bell Canada introduced its Operac services for users of the Nortel Vista 350 telephones. These include the basic Bell services which were available before, as well as automatic advertising displays as well as access to banking services from various banking institutions. I tried it for a short while and have comments: 1- NONE of the services can be removed (as the NT manual says they should). So if you don't like one, you have to reset the whole phone and forget about the other services. 2- The "Bell Services" still disable the LINK key, make the "redial" button less usable and in short were not improved a bit. 3- The "advertising" is interesting. You can subscribe to various "groups" and "someone" regularly calls your phone (without it ringing it seems) and downloads the ads that scroll on your screen. In my case, before these were downloaded, I had already reset the phone, but the next morning, they had been reprogrammed :-) ! Frankly, I do not see how this can be interesting for the customer. 4- I tried the Royal Bank banking system. It is a direct tie in to their existing Royal Direct voice system. The only difference is that when you select it, it dials a (different) phone number. However, the service is much less usable than the pure voice system. - It constantly switches between voice and data, with the annoying "beep" and then the wait for the data to load. So, instead of saying " you account balance is ten dollars and 20 cents", it goes "beep", waits a while and you see the balance on the screen, and then switches back to voice, and says "press 6 to get account balance of another account, or 9 to return to the previous menu". The big disadvantage is that you cannot press keys as quickly as you can with the pure voice system to make it faster because of the constant switches between voice and data modes. In other words, the Royal Bank's use of the Vista 350 is a hindrance and adds no new functions. On the other hand, if it had been a purely data system where you could have filled out a screen-full of info, and press the "enter" key and have the whole transaction then go through in purely data mode, it may have been quicker than the voice system. Some of the Bell Canada advertising says that you can inquire about your account balance and current rates for long distance calls with these functions. I did not see this functionality, although I may have thougt that the "Bell Services" in the services menu were those "make phone less usable" features. ------------------------------ From: gaarder@lightlink.com (Steve Gaarder) Subject: Re: Canadian Use Of N11 Codes Date: 20 Dec 1996 11:47:12 -0500 In article , D Banks wrote: > Was BC the only place in North America to use 112+Number for LD > instead of 1 + number? No, I think a lot of places did. In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, you had to dial 112 plus a party ID digit to call long distance up until 1974. This was a Kellog K60 crossbar. As for other 11x codes, I'll quote myself from the TELECOM Digest of 1991: 113 got you directory assistance, 114 repair, and 116 ... well, that was weird. At first, it was some sort of dial speed test, responding with a dial tone and accepting one digit. One day, though, the dial tone stopped happening. The switch would accept quite a number of digits, then I'd get recordings from other places. It finally dawned on me that it was acting just like 112 -- making a long distance call! So I went and tried it from a pay phone and I got my dime back. Only catch was that only one person in town could use it at a time. So, when word got around about this, the circuit was constantly busy. Finally, it stopped working, and I heard through the grapevine that someone had been ordered off the circuit by a rather gruff craftsman. To this day, I have no idea why that circuit was ever set up. Perhaps it was a mistake. Steve Gaarder, Ithaca, N.Y., USA gaarder@lightlink.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 13:42:50 -0500 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Re: How Business Almost Derailed the Net It's always fun to hear these differing economic theories try to explain history. Maybe there's some truth to be gained from several of them. But the history of the Internet itself has some little- remembered details. In the world of "economic theory" arguments, one can describe government intervention into the economy, and in this case the net, in at least three different ways: 1) The government sponsors research and/or development. 2) The government regulates something. 3) The government is a customer and its purchasing power is influential. The ARPAnet was in large part a mix of cases 1 and 3. It was actually building a network for its own use, and for use in performing government contracts. Since the technology didn't exist, they paid private industry to develop it. Of course the rules for this kind of development encourage private use of the technology, so it is in effect sponsored R&D, but not in the "pure subsidy" sense. It's a win/win situation when the government develops something for itself that has spinoff value. Some conservative economists decry case 1 as "industrial policy", unless of course it's in an area they want to see ... The regulatory issue is separate. Henry Baker's argument about venture capital is interesting, but no amount of venture capital could have created today's Internet under 1975's rules! The only practical medium for high-speed (9600 was high-speed then!) data transfer then was leased lines. Ma Bell had a tariff clause (common among all telcos in those days) stating that leased ("private") lines were only for the use of *one* customer, intra-company use only. You couldn't run a leased line to anyone else. Dial-up data was capped at 300 bps (1200 was being invented; 2400 could be done over a pair of calls). The ARPAnet had one customer, Uncle Sam, so Ma Bell couldn't complain. When the public packet switching business began around then (X.25 and the like), each provider had to get an FCC license to become a common carrier. They created a new class of "value added network" to accomodate them, but it was still a tough nut to crack -- getting the license required lots of proving yourself to the FCC, and you had to file tariffs. Once you had the common carrier license, Ma Bell could then provide bandwidth to your subscribers under a "service to other common carriers" tariff. BBN thus establshed Telenet (later sold to GTE, thence to Sprint) and Tymshare established Tymnet (later sold to McDonnell Douglas, thence to BT, thence to MCI). A couple of others started up too but weren't as big. Compare this to today's wide-open Internet market, with thousands of domestic providers. In 1978, the FCC overturned the "no sharing" clause. The voice-centric telephone companies thought that leased lines existed as a way to evade toll charges. Data was incidental. But when the FCC intervened and made "sharing and resale" legal, and stopped regulating "value-added networks", the market could be opened up. A decade later, the Internet went commercial. Fred R. Goldstein fgoldstein@bbn.com BBN Corp. Cambridge MA USA +1 617 873 3850 ------------------------------ From: cnordin@vni.net (Craig Nordin) Subject: Re: WebTV and CoyoteNet; a Minority Report Date: 20 Dec 1996 00:41:05 -0500 Organization: Virtual Networks I think that TV would be alot different if there were unlimited numbers of channels to broadcast from and the cost of a broadcasting office were $5,000 -- that one person could run. I expect that there will be a wonderful diversity and mix of the WebTV Wall-Marts and the Brilliant One-Person Pages. Quite a bit like the way books come out as polished corporate product or as personal statements. There is room enough for all of it ... Jobs - Graphic Arts - Commercial Production -> http://studio.vni.net/jobs/ Virtual Networks Premier Internet Services cnordin@vnii.net Indianapolis Indianapolis Indianapolis Metro http://www.vnii.net/ Indiana Indiana Indiana Washington DC Washington DC Washington DC Metro http://www.vni.net/ Virtual Networks Incorporated Virtual Networks of Indiana, Incorporated ------------------------------ From: Ron Bean Subject: Re: WebTV and CoyoteNet; a Minority Report Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 17:37:07 CST hisys@rmi.net writes: > Allow me to be the curmudgeon for a moment ... Ok ... > And all the hand-wringing charges of elitism aren't going to > change any facts, either way. For a minute there I wasn't sure which side was being 'elitist': people who think content from peons like us doesn't count, or people who think content from the megamedia companies doesn't count. > This message will be quickly labeled as > doomsaying and other predictable dismissals by some. It's hardly doomsaying since it basically describes the status quo (in general, not on the net-- but the net will catch up). So the net won't save the world (are we surprised?). But it won't make things any worse either. If you find my comments predictable, feel free to surf to the next channel ... > A somewhat more interactive version of the same intellectual and > spiritual wasteland (with islands otherwise). The old "net culture" never reached very many people. The island just *appears* to be shrinking because the ocean is expanding. You might have to swim a little further to find it. The loss of the "pioneer spirit" is inevitable in any maturing industry, I'm sure you can think of any number of examples. > Oh, another prediction: personal websites will become the message > doormats, bumperstickers, painted mailboxes, answering machine > messages, and "personalized greeting cards" (ref Target or Kmart) of > the future. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as nobody is preventing you from doing it any other way. Which is better: A car with no bumper stickers that looks like hundreds of thousands of other cars, or one with a mass-produced bumper sticker on it? I claim that the latter is ever-so-slightly better (certainly enough to justify the cost of the bumper sticker). A can of paint and a paintbrush would be even better, but nobody's stopping you ... > "Look it up on the Web" educational assistance will in many, perhaps > most, cases become another tool for kids to regurgitate rather than > learn. In other words, no worse than what we have now. > [Re: Bandwidth]... it's not clear yet whether we'll go to some form > of volume-based charge, universal access-time charges, or corporate > financing of infrastructure like television (at which time it becomes > "theirs" and serves their purposes). The question is whether they'll do it in such a way that it prevents peons like us from having our own web pages. If not, no problem; the few who care to think will be able to find each other. It's a bit like asking whether the USPS will stop delivering first class mail because it's not presorted (not likely, but not entirely out of the question either). The "Compuserve model" has already failed several times, but the "cable TV model" might work, and might serve to exclude the rest of us (imagine an "internet" that only connected to Compuserve, AOL, and other large services. In some ways we're already moving in that direction). > And it may "penalize" atypical interests. "Geraldo Online" is going > to be quick to download, because six other people on your block are > viewing it too, after that reference on TV this evening. But you may > have to wait for anything non-faddish and uncached to download. Well, back in the BBS days I used to call at 4am because that's when the lines weren't busy. Later my computer was able to do this unattended (UUCP worked that way too). And now we have multitasking OS's, so we can do other things while we wait. > The best I can hope for now is to keep alive some "commercially > unviable" niches of intelligent and thoughtful discussion ... This kind of thing exists in the print world, and there's no reason to think it won't happen online as well. > We can be an insignificant (volume wise) "rider" on the tidal wave > of the corporate media information model. This is a big point in our favor. Compare this to the cost of, say, public access TV. > I hope there will still be paths of access for the black kid on the > South Side of Chicago, who can't afford a network computer but whose > family does have WebTV, and who is actually trying to learn, > self-educate, and enculturate into an intellectually vibrant > subculture absent at home or in the public schools. But it's OK with > me if they have to learn to read and conceptually integrate more than > 3 short paragraphs before jumping to another subject, in order to get > into this niche. If the public schools can get them that far, that's probably enough. The real problem is not the schools, but that once they graduate they're too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads to think about anything else. Once "the system" lets them have that few hours a week of spare time, it's up to them to do something with it. With TV, all you could do was turn it off, but with WebTV, you can at least surf to a non-mainstream channel. ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: COCOT 800-Access Charges Date: 20 Dec 1996 01:48:20 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com In article , dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) writes: > The set-use fee is now $45.85 per month regardless of the number of > calls. As of 9/1/97 it becomes $0.35 per call. This amount is set by > the FCC. As of 9/1/98 it becomes the initial deposit amount for local > calls at the payphone. It is not an arbitrary amount. A payphone > which imposes an arbitrarily high fee for local coin calls will > probably not stay in business very long! Since the debate about reimbursement is over (and FCC has decided anyway), this poses some interesting questions. 1) What is to prevent a payphone operator from generating a large amount of 800 calls, even autodialled, just to push up revenue? (Yes, I understand that this might be illegal, but how do you enforce that?) The owner could even just pay somebody to stand there and dial away! You could probably make at least a call a minute, works out to about 20 bucks an hour. Enough for the dialler and the payphone operator! 2) What if I am at a pay phone, and would like to place an 800 call to somebody that does not accept pay phone calls? Assume I am quite willing to pay the 35c or even more? If I am telco adept, I might try the AT&T 800-321 0288, dial the 800 and give them my credit card number, but the ANI transmitted to the destination is still that of the originating phone (I tested that), and would presumably be rejected! I can think of several routes to solve this, but I do not know to what extent they are technically possible and/or legal: a) The payphone operator with or without assistance from the local telco figures out the situation and I get a voice prompt to put in 35 cents (or more). The 800-owner needs to get a spoofed (non-payphone) ANI. b) I)This does not work, and I get a voice prompt as to what to do, see below. b) II)There is no voice prompt, but a sign on the phone on what to do, see below. b) III) What to do: Dial some special number (could be a local number posted on the phone), costs me 35 cents, fine, and I get a new dial tone good for 800 only, and I dial the number. The ANI sent to the 800 owner is some local trunk (non-payphone). c) I get a voice prompt (or there is a sign as under roman I-II-III above) giving a special number, local or 800, where some computer will accept local telco and AT&T/MCI/Spring LD cards. Works like 800-321 0288, except the ANI is spoofed to non-payphone. Similar to b), but payment is by credit card, not coin. Note that if AT&T or somebody provides this with a special-800-good-for-calling-other-800 only, they get to pay the paypone op 35c, and recover that (and, knowing them, probably more) from the caller by charging his card. Regards, Nils Andersson ------------------------------ From: Martin Baines Subject: Re: GSM is GSM is GSM - Not Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 11:19:11 +0000 Organization: Silicon Graphics Lloyd Matthews wrote: > I have a GH388 GSM phone from Sprint Spectrum/DC which I'd like to use > in PacBell's GSM service area in Los Angeles (and someday all of CA). > But they use a CF388 phone, and possibly a different frequency (1800 > vs 1900 MHz)? The people at PacBell Mobile Services said the phones > were not compatible, and that their GSM was "better" than in Europe or > DC. You'd think they'd go with the majority standard so they could > collect roaming fees, unless the later phases of GSM service will only > work with PacBell's system? In most of the World GSM mean GSM900 and all the systems interwork pretty seamlessly froma user view point. More recently in Europe the new "PCN" systems are using GSM1800 and again the few services that are around and have set up roaming seem pretty seamless. I have no idea of the detailed implementation in the US, but from what I recall some of the PCS operators are using GSM1900. I didn't think the 1800 band was available in the US, but I could be wrong. I know a number of operators are looking at roam from GSM800/1800 to GSM1900 by either SIM card swapping or (not yet available) multi-frequency phones; this would imply the systems are more or less compatible. I suspect what you are seeing is simply two operators who do not have a roaming agreement. Although if that were the case, I would expect the phone to find the network if you do a manual search, but just not be able to log in to it. Maybe that is what the "No Access" message you get means -- it pretty similar to what happens if I use my (GSM800) phone and try and connect to the UK operator I *don't* have a contract with. As for one GSM being "better" than another -- that just sounds like spurious marketing/service speak! Martin Baines - Telecommunications Market Consultant Silicon Graphics, Arlington Business Park, Reading, RG7 4SB, UK email: martinb@reading.sgi.com SGI vmail: 6-788-7842 phone: +44 118 925 7842 fax: +44 118 925 7545 URL: http://reality.sgi.com/martinb_reading/ Silicon Surf: http://www.sgi.com/International/UK/ ------------------------------ From: gws@monroe.cb.att.com (Gary Sanders) Subject: Re: Parollees and the Net Date: 20 Dec 1996 14:17:23 GMT Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Columbus Ohio. Reply-To: gary.w.sanders@att.com In article , Jack Decker wrote: > On Tue, 17 Dec 1996 14:33:12 PST, in comp.dcom.telecom is written: >> The Justice Department announced Monday that the panel voted this >> month to authorize such restrictions as requiring certain parolees to >> get prior written approval from the commission before using an >> Internet service provider, computerized bulletin board system or any >> public or private computer network. What next; parolees need permission to go to a 7/Eleven?. If they are that worried that the person is going to commit another crime why are they being let out in the first place? Gary W. Sanders (N8EMR) gws@sunray.cb.att.com AT&T Columbus,Ohio 614-860-5965 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #674 ******************************