Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA12261; Thu, 16 Jan 1997 08:38:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 08:38:03 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199701161338.IAA12261@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #15 TELECOM Digest Thu, 16 Jan 97 08:38:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 15 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Monopoly? (Eric Florack) Re: 10321 = Cheap 20-Minute Calls? (Garrett Wollman) Re: 10321 = Cheap 20-Minute Calls? (Jeffrey William Sandris) Re: 10321 = Cheap 20-Minute Calls? (Fred Atkinson) Var-Tech LD -- $5.00/Month and $.10/Minute (Bill Levant) ISPs and All Circuits Busy at BellSouth (Tad Cook) Book Review: "The Internet Telephone Toolkit" by Pulver (Rob Slade) Re: When Technical Jargon Requires Hyphens (Stan Brown) Re: When Technical Jargon Requires Hyphens (Connie Curts) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 06:01:05 PST From: Eric_Florack@xn.xerox.com (Eric Florack) Subject: Monopoly? Stewart Fist writes to Lisa Hancock: >> A lot of significant changes in the Bell System happened regardless of >> competition. For instance, owning your own sets was a separate decision, >> as was long distance competition. > I've been collecting estimates from around the world for some time, as > to how much telecommunications costs have been dropping over the > years. > These vary widely, of course, but in general they suggest that the > "real costs" of maintaining, improving and introducing telephone > networks and the supporting plant and equipment (ignoring management > and marketing, etc.) has been dropping since 1983 (the year when > digital ICs and optical fibre began to make an impact) by a compound > rate of between 5% and 7.5%. > Thus if the core networks had remained monopolies and efficient > (difficult to do with monopolies, I admit) the prices would now be > much much lower than they are under competitive regimes. Hi Stewart; With respect, II disagree. You fail to account for all the interdependancies. Your argument assumes that the technology would improve at the same rate it has under the more competitive schemes we've had. I suggest that would not happen. Under the monopoly you propose, and necessity being the mother of invention, there would be no need to improve the technology, and so, it would not ahve improved, and so, the operating costs would not have dropped, and therefore, neither would the consumer cost. I propose an admittedly imperfect parallel: Would Computer technology have improved at the rate it has, and would the costs of computer technology go down at the rates they have, had the IBM Clone market not opened up? No. IBM would still have us running on either XT's or with dumb terminals tied to mainframes at costs many times what they are today. In contrast, look at the cost of the Apple Mac, and it's costs reletive to the Clones. True it's costs have come down somewhat, but the cost/capability ratio is nowhere near what you have in the DOS/WINDOWS world. (I'm including the cost of software, and expansion parts, here) The reason? The folks making the MAC know they have a monopoly on MAC hardware. > Enormous over-engineering also results from companies preparing for > competition -- since this is the way to defend yourself against price > cutting wars. With Optus and Telstra, Australia now has 100 fibre > pair between Sydney and Melbourne, while only six are ever used. This > overengineering is duplicated around the country. I'd MUCH rather have that, than the governmental monopoly arranging to /under-design/ as we have now, which results in the capacity arguments such as what I commented on in the last TELECOM Digest of last year. >> I also think companies like MCI got an unfair start by skimming the cream >> -- serving high volume profitable corridors leaving AT&T to serve >> the low end and provide emergency capacity for outages. > Here I disagree. MCI (and Optus) can only skim the cream if there is > cream to be skimmed. While I agree with maintaining government-owned > dominant carriers (on the core network, anyway) where they still > exist, I don't see why anyone should be prohibiting from competing > with them in niche markets, if anyone can find a creamy niche. It is > the carrier's responsibility not to leave any cream. I will agree in effect, but not in principal;, I take a different approach to get to that point; IN the case of the US ; Had AT&T actually acted like they /wanted/ the customers that you refer to as the 'cream' customers, MCI wouldn't have been able to make a dent in that market, now, would they? Fact is, those customers were lost to the first shred of competition to show up in the market, simply because the service provided by AT&T was too rigid, and in the final analysis, unsatisfactory. They had no reason to BE satisfactory, since they had no reason to assume they'd lose the business, being that they had the power and weight of the government behind them, making sure they were the only guys on the block. >> As to owning your own equipment, everybody knows the old Western >> Electric 500 and 2500 sets were sturdy enough to take a direct >> nuclear hit. > Again, I disagree. I'll make a snide/side comment on this point; You complained, above about the telco over-engineering their systems. What are the WE 500 and 2500 units if not over-designed, by a monopoly, at consumer expense? My best regards, /E ------------------------------ From: wollman@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: 10321 = Cheap 20-Minute Calls? Date: 15 Jan 1997 11:20:37 -0500 Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Lloyd Matthews wrote: > Can anyone tell me which company is behind the "10321" code? Their commercials should say that they are ``Telecom/USA'', which is of course MCI. You could have verified this for yourself by dialing 10(10)321-1-700-555-4141. MCI has about 25 10xxx codes registered and configured in this area. They are promoting quite heavily in Boston as well. I wonder if this is the same sort of scam as their `1-800-COLLECT' service, where they talk about ``savings'' compared with a rate (operator-dialed collect) that only a fool would pay to begin with ... I currently give my LD business to Frontier (via Equal Access, so if I need to make an AT&T call I don't get surcharged). Their rates are not the absolute best, but they don't make me play any games to get a good deal. (They also support New Hampshire Public Television, which gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.) Garrett A. Wollman wollman@lcs.mit.edu ------------------------------ From: sandris@shore.net (Jeffrey William Sandris) Subject: Re: 10321 = Cheap 20-Minute Calls? Date: 15 Jan 1997 11:20:59 -0500 Organization: Lurton Stubbs Fan Club Reply-To: sandris@shore.net In article , Lloyd Matthews wrote: > Can anyone tell me which company is behind the "10321" code? 10321-1-700-555-4141 routes to the MCI network announcement. Jeffrey William Sandris sandris@shore.net ------------------------------ From: Fred_Atkinson/SkyTel_at_SkyTelNotesPO@mtel.com (Fred Atkinson) Date: Wed, 15 Jan 97 13:16:00 CST Subject: Re: 10321 = Cheap 20-Minute Calls? > Can anyone tell me which company is behind the "10321" code? They have > been agressively advertising cheap rates for 20-minute or longer > long-distance calls in both Northern and Southern California. I would > appreciate hearing by email from anyone who has used them, and who > have compared their rates to those of the Big Three. I dialed 10321-1-700-555-4141 and believe it or not I got an MCI recording. Fred ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 21:27:23 EST Subject: Var-Tech LD -- $5.00/Month and $.10/Minute ...in Digest #11, brand@nortel.ca wrote.... > VarTech(sp?). Their rate plan is fairly simple. $5.00 a month and 10 > cents a minute in the US, INCLUDING IN-STATE, any time, day or night. > You don't have to sign up for anything. The first time in a calendar > month you use 10811, you get charged the $5.00 monthly fee. So, if > you go a month without making any long-distance calls, you're not out > any money. ... and PAT observed ... > you need maybe two hours of calling per month before it gets > to the point you are at the ten cent per minute rate advertised > by the company making the offer. Uh, Pat ... in order to bring $5.00 a month and $.10 a minute down to an effective rate of __$.11__ a minute, you need __500__ minutes of usage...8.3 hours ! To get down to $.105 a minute you need __1,000__ minutes. Two hours' usage is 120 minutes; the effective rate would be about $.143 a minute ... definitely no bargain, particularly if you don't use that much every month, since you can get $.15 a minute from AT&T 24 hours a day with NO monthly fee. Also, by the way, in Pennsylvania, BOTH parties to a telephone conversation must consent to the recording (unless the call is made by the non-recording party to a number 'generally expected' to be recorded (e.g. radio station call-in lines; the fuzz; etc). If the recording is MADE in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania law would apply to the recording party, regardless of where the other end of the call was located ... Bill [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for doing the math on that one; something I had just guessed at in the thirty seconds or less I spent installing that message in the outgoing queue. Any long distance carrier asking for a monthly charge in addition to whatever they get for your calls per minute is never a bargain since as you point out the Big Three with their 'higher' rates come very close by the time the monthly fee is factored into the overall cost. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: ISPs and All Circuits Busy at BellSouth Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 11:38:23 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Online Calls Cause Telephone Service Disruption Near Nashville By Cree Lawson, Nashville Banner, Tenn. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Jan. 13--You've heard it many times before. First, there's the quick dialing. Then the beeps followed by the static. Finally you have it: The connection. Dialing your Internet service provider is often done with a click and a prayer. But those prayers may be answered increasingly with busy signals. Internet and phone-savvy insiders say that a combination of unlimited accounts, increased traffic and local telephone systems that were not designed for use as a computer network may drive up the number of busy signals. And cyber-junkies aren't the only people who will be getting the annoying tones. When a network is overloaded, voice calls suffer as well, BellSouth Regional Director David May says. "A call is a call is a call," May says. "Our networks don't know the difference." Users of America Online got a case of the "the busies" at the beginning of the year. The company's highly publicized $19.95 unlimited usage rate proved popular with users -- especially the unlimited part. With no incentive to get off the line, users stayed online far longer than usual, dooming other callers who weren't as lucky to rounds of busy signals, according to {The Wall Street Journal}. Subscribers to EdgeNet Media's Internet service also have had a wild ride for the past couple of weeks. A combination of a hardware upgrade, a router failure and a large number of missed connections -- with users trying to sign on in downtown Nashville -- had brought service to a standstill at points. Such accidents happen to Internet service providers, an analyst says. That's just part of the trade. "There are a lot of technical glitches that seem to come up occasionally and bite people in the behind," says Gordon Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Report on the Internet. Some of EdgeNet's technical glitches were beyond the company's control. The volume of calls between Brentwood and downtown Nashville had increased to the point of straining the local telephone network. On Friday, BellSouth and fellow local phone-service provider TDS Telecom announced that they had added capacity because many calls between Brentwood and Nashville had received "fast busy signals." "We had an unfortunate sequence of events in that we were just telling customers that we had completed the upgrade when customers encountered the busy signals -- which were not our fault," says Tim Choate, president of Brentwood-based EdgeNet. "It's created some confusion as to the source of those busy signals." The problems were due to "an overload of circuits in the local telephone network created by a sudden increase in network usage, possibly related to Internet usage," BellSouth stated. While it's not certain that increased Internet usage caused the problem, there are strong indications that it did, May says. "From experience, we can tell that when computers are talking to computers, they tend to talk longer than when people talk to people," he says. "The duration of the calls is increasing." Industry experts say the trend will continue, especially if companies such as AOL offer unlimited access at low, flat rates. "They're the largest Internet provider," May says of AOL. "That's going to have an impact on us." Some local Internet service providers have backed off from the unlimited usage plan and $19.95 rate for one simple reason: profitability. At least two of Nashville's largest providers -- EdgeNet Media and Telalink Corp. -- don't dole out unlimited usage. They also haven't cut back to the $19.95-per-month rate adopted by regional and national providers, such as AT&T, MCI and BellSouth. "It's a bad business model for us," Telalink President Bill Butler says of the rate. His company's decision not to offer the rate was aimed at preventing people from abusing the system. Neither EdgeNet nor Telalink tries to compete with the $19.95 rate, choosing instead to compete by offering higher-quality service and technical support for a higher price. Both companies limit users of their largest accounts to 120 hours a month. Profitability is also an issue, Choate says. Most companies start losing money on the $19.95 plan after providing a customer six hours of access. "If we sold unlimited access for $19.95, we would be losing money," Butler says. "(Large) Internet service providers across the board have negative cash flow." The average residential phone call lasts a little more than three minutes, industry sources estimate. In comparison, a data call, such as the one you make to your Internet provider, can last 22 minutes. The difference has made it difficult for phone providers to forecast the amount of capacity needed at any given time. "The problem seems to be that they've engineered their networks for voice calls, which last two or three minutes," says Mike Miller, spokesman for AT&T's Internet service, WorldNet. WorldNet users must use a local phone provider to get through to AT&T's main computers. May contends that BellSouth's Tennessee network can handle the additional traffic. The company just needs to know where to expect it. "It's not that our network is short (of capacity), it's that it has to be re-balanced," May says. "We have a lot of latent capacity that has to be moved around or changed." BellSouth's network is constantly evolving, May says, but the recent re- balancing process should have taken care of "the busies." "The proof is in the pudding," says EdgeNet's Choate. "Just because some adjustments have been made doesn't mean that the problems have been solved. We know BellSouth is working very hard to fix these problems. "We'll have to wait and see," Choate says. While local phone companies are doing their balancing act, more and more Americans are falling into the Net. Some analysts even project that the number of households online will double each year until 2000. Telalink is counting on that. Butler calls his company's plans for 200 percent growth in gross revenue this year "conservative." He has reason. Last year, his company grew 320 percent. BellSouth can keep up with that, May says. "Our network capacity is robust and more than capable of accommodating even the growth curves that are affecting us today." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 14:07:33 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The Internet Telephone Toolkit" by Pulver BKINTLTK.RVW 961002 "The Internet Telephone Toolkit", Jeff Pulver, 1996, 0-471-16352-X, C$41.95 %A Jeff Pulver jeff@pulver.com %C 5353 Dundas Street West, 4th Floor, Etobicoke, ON M9B 6H8 %D 1996 %G 0-471-16352-X %I Wiley %O C$41.95 416-236-4433 fax: 416-236-4448 %T "The Internet Telephone Toolkit" Internet telephony is still pretty much of a toy, but interest in it is growing all the time. (It is also a very intriguing demonstration of the inefficiencies of current phone systems, but we'll let that go for the moment.) Jeff Pulver, as moderator of the "Free-World-Dialup" mailing list, is in an excellent position to give an introduction to the field, and he does a great job. As well as explaining the concepts, background, functions, and limitations of Internet telephony, Pulver provides a thorough review of a number of net phone software packages. The disk included with the book provides some of these packages so you can try them for yourself. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKINTLTK.RVW 961002 DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca BCVAXLUG Envoy http://www.decus.ca/www/lugs/bcvaxlug.html ------------------------------ From: stbrown@nacs.net (Stan Brown) Subject: Re: When Technical Jargon Requires Hyphens Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 22:37:38 -0500 Organization: Oak Road Systems Reply-To: stbrown@nacs.net Thus spake ccurts@unicom.net (Connie Curts) in : > Please consider sharing this with all your readers, The relevance of this to telecom matters is not clear to me, but since Our Esteemed Moderator has allowed the subject to be broached, I'll post to clear up some misconceptions. > Several professionals have asked me over the years how to properly > write technical phrases, because the use of hyphens confused them. One way to properly write them is to not split no infinitives! (True, many eminent writers have split infinitives on occasion. But few of us can claim the stature of Shakespeare or even Upton Sinclair. For good or ill, many people believe split infinitives are incorrect. This means that a split infinitive calls attention to itself, which is a Bad Thing in technical writing because it distracts the reader from the actual subject matter.) > Until I started writing articles, I did not understand the rules > either. Here's the scoop. Alas, judging from the article Curts still don't understand them. Part of what she said is a gross oversimplification; part is flat-out wrong. I'm sorry to be harsh, but she's misleading the people who follow her advice. > When words are intended to be read together as a single adjective, > those words should be hyphenated. For example: There is an on-line > system. It is a PC-based T1. I have a three-year-old son. In general this is true, when the words _precede_ the noun that they modify. ("When a temporary compound is used as an adjective before a noun, it is often hyphenated [Note: often, not always] to avoid misleading the reader. ... not 'a free form sculpture' but 'a free-form sculpture'. Even though 'form sculpture' has no rational meaning ..., it could cause a moment's hesitation for the reader: after an adjective like 'free' we almost instinctively expect a noun, and there is indeed one there - 'form' - but it is intended to hook up with 'free' as a kind of adjective to modify 'sculpture', the real noun in the phrase. So to bypass this confusion we insert a hyphen between 'free' and 'form' and thus make its adjectival function clear. ... Note that this device is appropriate only before the noun. If the compound adjective occurs after the noun, the relationships are usually perfectly clear, and the hyphen is not needed: 'A piece of sculpture, free form, stood on the terrace.' 'Ths sculpture on the terrace was free form.'" -- _Chicago Manual of Style_, 13th Ed., para 6.31) However, there are a host of exceptions and sub-rules. ("There are, quite literarlly, scores of other rules for the spelling of compound words." -- para 6.32) The Chicago Manual spends considerable space on this issue, including a lengthy table at the end of Chapter 6. For example, "grand prix racing", not "grand-prix racing"; "highly complex issues", not "highly-compex issues" -- but "well-known man", not "well known man". (Chicago Manual 13th Ed., table 6.1. The rules are so complex that the University of Chicago Press has changed its house style. I have read a review that listed many changes of detail between the 13th and 14th editions.) Curts mentioned technical phrases. The Chicago Manual prescribes "sodium chloride solution", not "sodium-chloride solution". > When those same words are to be read as a noun, they are not > hyphenated. For example: We are on line. It is a PC based in the > control room. I have a three year old. But in the first two examples, "those same words" are not nouns. They are prepositional phrases functioning as adjectives ("on line", "in the control room"). Curts is correct that they are not customarily hyphenated in this position, but they are just as much adjectives as when they preceded their nouns. In the third example "three year old" (sic) is indeed a noun, but it is also customarily hyphenated: I have a three-year-old. Authority: _American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language_, Third Edition, first noun definition of "old": "An individual of a specified age: 'a five-year-old'." (The Chicago Manual's table, though lengthy, gave no guidance on this one.) > This rule is followed by most professional publications. I find it > interesting that it is in several English books, but it is seldom > explained or emphasized in English classes. The "rule" Curts gave is not a rule, since it is based on a misstatement of the parts of speech. Perhaps she intended to say something else but did not catch this misstatement when she proofread her article? The rules for hyphenating compound words are complex and are not generally agreed upon. "Hyphenate multi-word adjectives before the noun but not after the noun" is a good starting point, but no more than that. There are many obvious exceptions, such as "two-thirds majority" contrasted with "three hundred members". And the Chicago Manual's table gives quite a number that are to be hyphenated both before and after the noun. Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cleveland, Ohio USA email: stbrown@nacs.net Web: http://www.nacs.net/~stbrown/ USD 500.00 charge for proofreading unsolicited commercial emails. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 22:45:47 CST From: Connie Curts Subject: Re: When Technical Jargon Requires Hyphens (See message above, and Stan Brown's response to Curts) ... Thank you for the comments, but to clear up your question of relevance I state this: The relevance is to make groups of technical words easier to read and comprehend, as punctuation is to the reader what voice inflection is to the speaker. Regarding my references: "The Associated Press Stylebook" and "Write Right!" by Jan Venolia, among others. It is a shame that Mr. Brown sought to denigrate a comment intended as a sincere FYI into a nit-picking finger-pointing display. Perhaps it is because of people like Mr. Brown that most English instructors do not discuss such matters. If Mr. Brown does not wish to use a rule of thumb, by all means, the complex formulas in the multitude of references await all his available time. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #15 *****************************