Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id GAA13387; Fri, 10 Jan 1997 06:48:09 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 06:48:09 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199701101148.GAA13387@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #5 TELECOM Digest Fri, 10 Jan 97 06:48:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 5 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Call Tracing For Suicide Attempts (Michael Dillon) Re: ISP's Will Get *NO* Refunds (Bob Schwartz) Re: This Day in Telecom History - the Telegraph (John Cropper) Re: This Day in Telecom History - the Telegraph (Jim Cornelius) Re: "True" Cost of Local Telephone Service? (Lisa Hancock) Re: "True" Cost of Local Telephone Service? (Jeremy Parsons) Bell Atlantic ISDN Maryland Rate Meetings (John Cropper) Re: Japanese Signal Modulation Problem? (David Clayton) Cell Phone Hell (Tad Cook) Cellular Billing For Business/Personal Use (jeffq@ix.netcom.com) 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. 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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: Michael Dillon Subject: Internet Call Tracing For Suicide Attempts Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 08:36:06 -0800 Organization: Memra Software Inc. - Internet consulting There was a recent incident in which Internet operators were called on to help trace an Internet user who had made the Internet equivalent of a suicide call in a chat system. Any comments? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 11:27:11 -0500 From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" To: Jon Zeeff Subject: Followup--lessons learned in a NANOG Context Let me, now that things have calmed down, try to relate some lessons learned to the general operations environment. In a separate message, I will also forward some traffic- and spam-related information, which actually is relevant but has me laughing so hard I find it hard to even write, much less talk. Poor victimized cyberpromo ... their AUP was violated ... the evil spammers are out to get them ... The pace of events in the emergency did not allow for an explanation of how the individual was located. Jon's comment below is a reasonable one, and, with some further details of how the individual was located, I can: 1) Give at least a starting point for reasonable policies of disclosure when a possible medical emergency exists, 2) Suggest that such situations might be reasonable things to have thought about before an emergency, such that they can be put into a carrier's internal operational procedures. At 9:58 AM -0500 1/7/97, Jon Zeeff wrote: > I'd like to point out that such things can be an invasion of privacy. > While person A might claim that person B threatened to commit suicide, > it is possible that person A wants to locate person B for other, > not so good reasons. > This will happen if all one has to say is "suicide" and everyone will > ignore their normal privacy policies. >> Thanks to everyone who responded. I was eventually able to reach one of >> the providers, who was able to identify the callers through logs, and >> passed the information to the local emergency people. The patient >> is now under treatment, and did not take a lethal dose. >>> I'd just like to point out the similarity between this event and the use >>> of the phone company to track down suicide callers. This reminds me of Ehud Gavron also commented: > Can we just change the NANOG charter to "Let's do nothing useful for > real problems that bother providers, but if someone on IRC says they > took an overdose, or threatens to kill themselves, let's fall all over > ourselves revealing private info"? I personally consider both situations -- the provider and the individual -- within scope. I would like us to consider the general case in both situations,with an eye to reasonable provider policies, as opposed to being stuck in speeific cases. 1. Operational Details of the Case ----------------------------------- In the specific case, the suicide message appeared primarily in a monitored chat room, and secondarily in a private email. I did not myself see the message in real time, but was called in shortly afterwards. Part of the problem involved time zone differences -- both the person attempting suicide and most of the providers were in Pacific time, and neither the person's ISP nor the chat room had 24x7 coverage. The event was at approximately 7:40 Eastern US time, four to five hours before the providers involved opened their offices. While my specific efforts focused on tracking back an email address to a physical one, for lack of a better way to handle the situation, the actual resolution came when the chat room operator was contacted, and given specific text strings in the suicide message. Luckily, this operator has a well-controlled, audited system, and was able to do a text search through logged messages, and independenly verify that the threat was issued. In other words, the chat operator did not depend on an unverified third party statement that a threat had been issued. The operator also records IP addresses associated with messages, so the operator now had a verified message from a specific address. The provider for this address was verified with inverse lookup. Again luckily, this was an at least partially subscription-based chat room, and the provider had a database of names (verified by credit card) and email addresses for subscribers. The provider revealed by inverse lookup above matched the provider on the subscriber's email address. Obviously, a reasonably adept hacker could have worked around many of these verifications. Obviously, in many other cases, there would not have been subscription information that could be verified. In many respects,this was an optimum case. Based on what was considered verified information, the chat room operator contacted local police in the subscriber's area, who sent an officer to the home. A family member found the attempted suicide at approximately the same time, and medical treatment initiated. 2. Potential Operational Considerations (see? NANOG tie-in) ------------------------------------------------------------- Here's a start on an internal provider policy for dealing with requests to deal with potential disclosure of privacy in a claimed emergency. Content and transit providers may be contacted by individuals or organizations seeking normally private information in the case of a life-threatening emergency. The need here is to balance privacy against other human values. Basic principles of when to disclose information might include: -- the person requesting the information must have a known and verified identity. -- in claimed medical emergencies, the person requesting information should be asked if emergency services in the location of the person endangered have been notified. Operations staff should request information by which this notification can be verified. -- in the case of content providers that might be able to retrieve the actual message traffic of concern, the caller should be asked for specific identifying information. This might extend to access providers that could identify that a call was made to a given dialup server port at a specific time, but obviously is impractical for transit providers. Comments and questions welcome. Obviously, local legal considerations will apply. I don't have a telco trace authorization procedure, which could be a good guideline. Howard Berkowitz PSC International (703)998-5819 ------------------------------ From: Bob@BCI.NBN.com (Bob Schwartz) Subject: Re: ISP's Will Get *NO* Refunds Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 10:22:03 +1200 Organization: BCI Monty, What you say is true however don't throw out the baby with the bath water. I review bills for "Refundable Events" and Cost Reduction opportunities. We have recently completed a job for one of the larger nationwide internet companies and successfully recovered over $ 400,000.00 (four hundred thousand dollars) in refunds for our client! Most of this amount was "access" charges. Some was from sundry other "Refundable Events". In one instance the refunding company offered $ 93,000. and we declined the offer. A year later they issued a refund of over $250,000. This represents an excellent example of why companies should use outside auditors. This was an "access" charge. (Sorry, I won't be more specific.) There are many types of circuits and several types of "access" charges. I've never heard of IDEA. Bob Schwartz Consulting, Auditing, Optimization Bill Correctors, Inc. Contract Negotiations, Research, & More. P.O. Box 316 Quality Services and Solutions Since 1983. Woodacre, CA 94973-0316 ------------------------------ From: John Cropper Subject: Re: This Day in Telecom History - the Telegraph Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1997 16:17:37 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Reply-To: psyber@mindspring.com Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > I heard on the radio this morning, that on this date (today) January > 6, in 1838, Samuel B. Morse publically demonstrated the electrical > telegraph machine, in Morristown NJ! (and Bellcore has had offices in > that town as well!) - just a bit of this date in telecom history! Morse's first message: "What hath God wrought?" John Cropper voice: 888.NPA.NFO2 LINCS 609.637.9434 PO Box 277 fax: 609.637.9430 Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 mailto:psyber@mindspring.com http://206.112.101.209/jcbt2n/lincs/ ------------------------------ From: Jim Cornelius Subject: Re: This Day in Telecom History - the Telegraph Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 18:32:35 -0700 Organization: Desert Data Reply-To: jimcor@desertdata.com There is a nice telegraph museum near Morristown that is worth a visit. Jim Cornelius ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: "True" Cost of Local Telephone Service? Date: 8 Jan 1997 03:30:48 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS Calculating utility costs, especially telephone costs, is tough. I know this doesn't answer the question, but let's look at the issues involved ... The telephone industry, more so than electric, gas, or water, has a very low marginal cost per call. That is, the actual DIRECT cost of making a phone call is extremely low -- a trifling amount of electricity to carry the call. The cost of the call is virtually the amortization of the central office machines, inter office trunks, and local loop to your home (plus something for administrative overhead, engineering, etc.) Determining that "amortization" is highly debatable. First is the issue of the length of time the cost should be spread -- the phone company wants it as short as possible to maximize revenues, while the public wants it as long as possible to minimize cost. The second issue is how and where the cost should be assigned, which is not simple. For example, a basic party-line rotary dial customer making very few calls a month doesn't use as much of the switch as say a phone used by a teenager with Call Waiting, Caller ID, Call Forward, 3-way Calling and other features. How much more should those premium services cost? Another issue is time of day when plant is used. One reason business customers pay more is that they generally use the plant during the busiest 9-5 hours while residential users use the plant more evenings nad weekends. Obviously a lot of costs are averaged out over all the customers. For instance, a customer next door to the central office has less of a loop than the customer furthest away. Some customer have complex "drops", others are simple. A crackpot residential customer could call the business office to go over his $7.00 bill, while a business with a $1,000 bill might not call for months. Who's paying for the service rep and who's receiving the services? Another issue is load on the central office. If the phone company over estimates need, it will have built unnecessary excess capacity. Who is to eat those costs, the customers or the stockholders? Or, a company could underestimate, requiring emergency construction to catch up, that is expensive. Again, who should pay? Commercial electricity billings are complex. Commercial meters have time plots -- power used during peak times is billed at a sharply higher rate than off peak times, and your rate is largely based on your "demand" -- the maximum PEAK power you used during the month, on the grounds that the power company had to have that capacity to serve you, even if you used it only briefly. People interested in analyzing telephone charges should also study billing of other utilities to compare methods. ------------------------------ Reply-To: Jeremy.Parsons@iname.com From: Jeremy Parsons Subject: Re: "True" Cost of Local Telephone Service? Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 17:15:05 -0500 > I've often heard cited by Telcos and others citing Telco billing > practices that flat-rate local calling plans are either too low (for > heavy users) or too high (for infrequent users) and are the cause of > other dubious economics in telephone costs (LD termination fees, etc). > Does anyone know what the actual cost per minute of local telephone > service is? I'm sure it varies by region, but what are some close > estimates? And are the residential costs calculated based on > residential infrastructure and operations costs? Or do they include > costs from operations which have nothing to do with residential phone > service (business data and infrastructure, long-distance infrastructure, > etc). Although I realize that access that the residential service has > to pay for it's "share" of the network outside of the local loop. > My phone bill lists "RESIDENCE LINE $14.71" as the basic charge for > phone service. Assuming 15 hours of use per month, it's about $.016 per > minute which seems pretty cheap. Dropping my modem use would about > double the cost to $.032, which I would assume is about average for most > non-computing households served by US West in Minnesota. How close or > far is this from what it actually should cost? As with most such questions, the answer (if it exists) depends on a whole chunk of definitions! It's fairly obvious that it's possible to say 'zero incremental cost, to a good approximation' (forget 'local', by the way!). The main triumvirate of technology cost-contributing factors are clearly demand density, peak demand magnitude and quality requirement (one idea I toy with is - why not bump free local calls off the network on an 'oldest in, first ejected' basis when there's severe congestion ;-) ?). However, billing and collections costs are usually a significant proportion of costs for relatively low-using customers - and how will you assign those per minute?? Still, there are lots of sources for cost models, historic cost data and the like to which I have no doubt you will be pointed - good luck! Jeremy Parsons ------------------------------ From: John Cropper Subject: Bell Atlantic ISDN Maryland Rate Meetings Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 16:54:16 -0500 Organization: MindSpring Reply-To: psyber@mindspring.com The following are dates and times to discuss ISDN rates with Bell Atlantic before Maryland PSC examiner McGowan. Wednesday 1/8/97 7:30:00 PM - Case No. 8730 - BELL ATLANTIC-MARYLAND, INC. - ISDN Rates. - 16th Floor Hearing Room, 6 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD. Before Examiner McGowan. Thursday 1/9/97 7:30:00 PM - Case No. 8730 - BELL ATLANTIC-MARYLAND, INC. - ISDN Rates - Third Floor Council Hearing Room, Montgomery County Office Building, 100 Maryland Avenue, Rockville, Maryland 20850. Before Examiner McGowan. John Cropper voice: 888.NPA.NFO2 LINCS 609.637.9434 PO Box 277 fax: 609.637.9430 Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 mailto:psyber@mindspring.com http://206.112.101.209/jcbt2n/lincs/ ------------------------------ From: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au (David Clayton) Subject: Re: Japanese Signal Modulation Problem? Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 22:16:53 GMT Organization: Customer of Access One Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia J Rehman contributed the following: > A friend of mine in Fukushima Japan has been having trouble > connecting to the local internet provider (niftyserve) in her > neigboring town (Koriyama). The modem dials, connects, and then > nothing. All settings for the session are correct N-8-1 for this > instance and ANSI or VT100 terminal. But we get no prompt. Post the modem(s) involved and other technical details - in another newsgroup, probably comp.dcom.telecom.tech - and you will probably get a lot of assistance. But anyway, if you get connect ok but no data transfer, login prompt etc., it is possible that the modems are not negiotating flow control properly. Try "AT&K0" in your initialisation string, (just before the number is dialled), and see how you go. Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ------------------------------ Subject: Cell Phone Hell Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 00:35:43 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) From the "Denver Post" Online: Cell phone hell coming By Stephen Keating Denver Post Business Writer Jan. 9 - The enduring mid-century movie image of courthouse reporting is an out-of-shape scribe scrambling to the nearest phone and dialing up an editor with the hot news. With today's saturation coverage of murder trials and other media events, the preferred tool of the trade is a portable phone. And that promises to create an airborne tangle this spring and summer as hundreds of reporters and other cellular-phone-toting citizens descend on downtown Denver, straining the area's transmission capacity. The high-profile events in question are one of the Oklahoma City bombing trials, scheduled to begin March 31 and last several months; the Colorado Rockies, whose home opener is April 7; and the G-7 meeting of world leaders and an 8,000-person entourage here June 20-22. Print, TV and radio journalists covering preliminary hearings in the Oklahoma City case have already had cell calls jammed outside the courthouse at 19th and Stout streets. "Any time there's a hearing, the phones get fired up and the cell sites go into tilt," said Wayne Wicks, media coordinator for the Oklahoma City bombing trial, who expects up to 2,000 journalists when the trial starts. "We've also eaten up every microwave and two-way radio frequency." Similar cell jamming occurred in downtown Denver last year, when Rockies games coincided with rush-hour traffic, said Mary Ireland of AT&T Wireless Services. "You can't build out your system for the three or four days a year that happens," said Ireland. "But when we heard that the trial was going to be held in Denver, we put a new sector on our existing cell site across from the courthouse." Currently, AT&T's downtown cellular system, with three sites, can handle 65 incoming and outgoing cellular calls at any time. "A typical cellular call takes one or two minutes, so people are continually dropping off and on," said Ireland. "There is also the potential to increase our capacity." US West's Air Touch Cellular, which competes with AT&T in Colorado, did not pinpoint its maximum call volume, but said it has increased capacity to handle 54,000 additional cell calls per day in downtown Denver. Capacity problems have hit cities across the country, and while marketing and sales of cell phones have hit record levels, reports of unhappy users are also on the upswing. A recent survey of 1,000 people by the Illinois Superconducter Corp. found that nearly four out of five cellular users had not experienced any improvement in service quality in the past year, or that service had declined. Wicks has a more personal reason for hoping that the crush of cell phone calls connect when the national media covers the bombing trial: "If they don't work, I'm the guy that gets yelled at.'' Stephen Keating can be reached at business@denverpost.com. ------------------------------ From: Jeff Subject: Cellular Billing for Business/Personal Use Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 05:26:30 -0500 Organization: Clark Internet Services, Inc. Reply-To: jeffq@ix.netcom.com Hello all, Most companies that reimburse employees for business use of cellular phones seem to require some kind of accounting for business vs. personal use. Although it's a rather reasonable requirement, cellular billing statements make it a real pain. Does anyone know of any mechanisms used by any providers that make this easier? My thought was that the cellular system could allow you to add a prefix to your call (like the *XX prefixes for services like Call Forwarding) that would flag the call as a personal call. Your bill could then be separated into calls with and calls without the prefix. (Conceivably, you could even have multiple prefixes to allow account-based charging, etc.) Breaking down the total metered charges into percent prefixed and non-prefixed (i.e., personal and business), and possibly even prorating the non-metered costs (e.g., monthly rates, taxes, etc.) would make it a breeze to expense business costs. Is anything like this in place anywhere? Or is any alternative in the works? (I know one way would be to have two cell phones, but that seems like a needless expense. Two numbers for one phone might not be bad.) Comments, anyone? Regards, Jeff ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #5 ****************************