Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA05188; Sat, 10 May 1997 01:04:14 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 01:04:14 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199705100504.BAA05188@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #116 TELECOM Digest Sat, 10 May 97 01:04:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 116 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Long-Distance Access Charges Draw Scrutiny From FCC (Bradley Allen) Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? (oldbear@arctos.com) Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? (Jeffrey Rhodes) Token Ring Switch Designer Needed (Tony Brown) Re: GSM, SIM Cards, International Roaming (John R. Covert) TV Interview With Two Hackers Banned From Computers (Minor Threat) 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: * subscriptions@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org (WWW/http only!) 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Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bradley Ward Allen Subject: Re: Long-Distance Access Charges Draw Scrutiny From FCC, Users Date: 08 May 1997 09:14:36 -0400 Reply-To: ulmo@armory.com > (including rural areas -- radios can go a long way today (and could > for a while)), This writer piqued my interest. What is the cost to provide service to the "rural" contingent of the USA, including Internet TCP/IP data services, using radio? Or using any techniques? Consider these methods: * Radio transceivers in homes * Radio towers * Radio dishes (microwave) * Satellite - low orbit * Satellite - high orbit * Cable With licensing, equipment, and maintenance, how much would each cost? For instance, how much does it cost to stick a specially prepared dead straight tree trunk in the ground, attach a unit with a metal pole, solar cells, batteries, and a couple of transceivers in it that would relay radio signals as far as 50 miles in each direction? Now there's a question: how much energy can solar cells store up? Is there anyplace in the USA where power utilities are unavailable every 50 miles from that place to anyplace with higher population? If not, then the solar panels could be reduced or omitted. What is the highest cost population density distribution and locality to service? What I'm thinking of here is that radio is cheaper than cable in long distance, and can higher bandwidth in lower population than it can in higher population, and cable is less expensive in higher density and can have higher bandwidth than radio, so the two are basically complimentary and help each other out in various situations. Radio has the biggest physical limitation of airwave congestion, and cost can be minimized around that one variable. What is the highest cost density and distance within the United States? Or even within the Bell Atlantic (new merged company) calling area? I don't know but it seems to me that providing telephone service to everybody is just an exercise in careful airwave use engineering, and the actual equipment costs are rather low. With the necessary technology to use in any particular density/terrain requirements, I can hardly see the equipment necessary to service any one particular normal end-user (2 way voice + interactive real time data) costing more than $2,000. Even a end-user with one relay station dedicated to him would only pay $6,000 for that. Break $6,000 into the life of the equipment, say three years, and suddenly you have $166.00 per month. That's less than I pay for my local phone service, and well worth the cost. If the person doesn't need to surf the web and yack on the phone simultaneously, they can use half the bandwidth for a lower cost -- what is that half the cost? -- and pay much less. One way to deal with the issue of high monthly costs is to have the remote user purchase and own the equipment used (and make maintenance arrangements of their own -- say, subscribing to a service company, or paying a service technician every time something goes wrong with some cheap insurance policy with a three-year deductible which equals the usual wear-and-tear costs, just in case a tree does smash the boxes to smitherines six times in three months). This way, if they are afraid they cannot afford $166.00 per month, they can make an investment that will last them for as long as the equipment is good, usually far longer than three years. Solid state equipment in rough terrain can last about a decade, right? Or am I way off in this estimate? That would make the cost about $50/month, right out of a modern day urban persons' phone bill. If they cannot pay up front for the investment, which is usually the case since new service is usually requested by people who are new in the world (i.e., young), then loans can be taken out to purchase the equipment. (There are all sorts of ways you can word that: "lease to buy", etc.) This seems like the best method: if the person finds themselves in a financial bout of trouble, then the creditor simply asks the debtor to return the unpaid-for portion of the equipment and pay a low time-based storage fee until they regain their ability to make timely payments. If the debtor doesn't bring the equipment into the collateral location, then the creditor charges a reasonable collection fee (not gouging or anything, just the cost to do the work) to do the collection of the unpaid-for equipment themselves (because of this it may be of benefit to have the user pay for his home equipment first), and lacking the ability to do that, proceed with normal lawsuits, etc. The cost for such a loaning institution would be higher than straight-out buying something, because of interest rates and guarding against uncollectible defaults, but then it allows the user to elect to live in the remote area with less start up costs. However, if the remote user still cannot afford the communications services that they require, then they can take that into consideration while they're trying to figure out where they are going to live. If this causes 90% of rural folk to move to the city or suburb, then I think that is an appropriate thing. However, I *really* want to know the actual costs of the equipment: is it really so high that the cost must go up significantly? Remember, I'm not saying these people have to be served with AT&T 5ESS switches sitting in their garage with 5ms ping times via redundant links to local metropolises. I'm saying they can be served with ~8kHz bandwidth full-duplex radio technology, and something that can do data at around the same bandwidth requirements. That's, what, 40kHz of bandwidth to use? How directional can non-line-of-site antennas be? Also, what would be the cost of making short-wave cell sites? Those .5 watts can go a lot further down there, right? The home unit can be stationary, and be of higher wattage. I think 50 watts can go around 30 miles at 600khz, right? Equipment for that isn't that costly. If the user wants a remote unit near his home, he can make a little cell site. A good design would make a cell site usable by passers-by out of every station, even if the station was in someone's home. The home user would decide to set the rates somehow. The passer-by would set up the rate parameters they would accept. Frequently, the passer-bys will be able to use the system at a cost they desire. This would make a sort of wide-area wide-range low-capacity cellular system. Encryption would be only if the passing user was willing to pay for it in equipment and possible bandwidth costs (it could use cryptography then use a modem to use the analog signals to connect to some remote modem that also uses the same cryptography; even the remote stations don't have to be all that sophisticated). Availability is similar: pay more for more frequencies the equipment can handle, and thus a greater range of distance and capacity. Sellers of time would typically consider their liscencing costs for the airwaves, so even some rich people with an extra super-long-range airwave slice could sell this at a premium rate to that person so desiring such connectivity. If the person desires cellular connectivity at lower cost in strange areas, that person can go ahead and arrange for a cell site themselves to be put whereever they need it -- at the cost of about $10,000, it would sure beat what I've paid to McCaw cellular already, and they would be able to yack for far longer than I did! If the costs are less, then that's even better. Consider equipment that is designed to handle transceiving a broader range of frequencies, more than just one persons' voice: at a slightly higher equipment cost, the possibility of another neighbor sharing resources with you makes the costs for both you and them lower, perhaps cutting it by as much as 40% or more (when the squirrel changes the antenna direction this full moon and you're sick in bed this time around, you don't have to pay $100 for your cousin to come fix it; you just have your neighbor do it -- I'm sure a cheapie Morse code radio can go a long ways for reporting such troubles via a low-cost relay service in the area -- when the neighbor also fires up their Morse code later that day trying to figure out what the heck is going on with their connection, the Morse code relay service just repeats the message from the first sick neighbor asking them to take care of the problem; store and forward; works great; if the rural users are so busy they don't have time to learn Morse code and still don't have enough money for redundant radios and healthy drivers to drive around to fix things, then really they are no different from a heroin addicts in my opinion, and if I'm to subsidize their heroin problems, my attitude is let them die). Wait just a fricking second here. What's wrong with a satellite connection? How much would *that* cost? If the user desires less delay, they can pay for the higher cost of non-space based communications. I can think of endless problems and endless solutions, why can't the local phone companies? My knowledge is very low, however even I can see that it is cost effective to let rural users pay for themselves. Finally, let's get real here: even I can see that the decision to subsidize rural users for a particular type and level of phone service that I have in my urban area is a totally essoteric decision with no basis in actual need. Those hick towns with 500 people and their own mom-and-pop telephone company: how much would it cost for their telephone service if it wasn't subsidized at all? (Even if the local big company wanted to charge really high rates for interconnection, it could be beat by a consortium of local mom-and-pops connecting via microwave directly and relaying to a final larger company with a better interconnection cost agreement. Redundancy and capacity would be increased, costs kept reasonable via both companies.) Is the rural costing argument mostly a big lie in order to use it as any good ol' excuse to keep rates higher? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 12:05:15 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? In TELECOM Digest (Vol 17, Issue 114), Jack Decker wrote: > I'm not certain of all the details, but it appears that the latest FCC > regulations will cause additional residential phone lines to be > charged at a higher rate than the primary phone line. > I'm not sure what the rationale was behind this, but my first reaction > was that this is going to cause a lot of headaches for phone companies > and customers alike ... Jack makes a number of good points. However, the reality is that this policy is a workable compromise and clearly was designed to minimize the effect on the single-line POTS customer so that the surcharge will not run contrary to well-established regulatory mission of supporting "universal service." One should not think of this as a surcharge on multiple lines, but instead as a surcharge on *ALL* lines with each "household" getting a single exemption. Under that perspective, it begins to make a little more administrative sense. There are a lot of analogies, ranging from the "one-time capital gains exclusion on the sale of a primary residence" -- for which you will be ineligible if you marry the the widow or ex-spouse of someone who already claimed this while married -- to the fine print on the "free offer" on the cornflakes box that says "one per name, household or address." Sure there are ways of getting around this, and I am sure that some people will tell the business office to list second and third lines in the names of 'ficticious boarders' -- just like some people with home offices current use residential tariffed second lines purely for business purposes. Even so, this compromise has a virtue unusual in regulatory affairs: it is likely that the errors which occur in this system will be in favor of inappropriate exemptions rather than the application of this surcharge to those who reasonably argue that they should be exempt. Cheers, The Old Bear ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 14:31:46 -0700 From: Jeffrey Rhodes Subject: Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? Jack Decker (jack@novagate.com) wrote: > I'm not certain of all the details, but it appears that the latest FCC > regulations will cause additional residential phone lines to be > charged at a higher rate than the primary phone line. > I'm not sure what the rationale was behind this, ... I thought the FCC's rationale was clear. Access charges for long distance calls are a means by which these carriers can contribute to the cost of providing "Universal Service". This subsidy means that the cost of a residential line does not reflect the real cost of installing any line. (Even though the ISP community likes to use the argument that the "profit" of installing a second line to access the Internet, never mind that these lines will in effect not increase long distance usage, should provide the telcos with the additional income to buildout interoffice facilities to the ISPs). So the FCC has lowered long distance access charges but wants to keep the monthly line cost low, so that everyone can continue to afford Universal Service. Additional residential lines are not providing Universal Service, so the new line charge is to better reflect the cost of these additional lines and to offset the decrease in long distance access revenue to subsidize primary lines. It's not easy to be the FCC. Jeffrey Rhodes at jeffrey.rhodes@attws.com ------------------------------ From: Tony Brown Subject: Token Ring Switch Designer Needed Date: 8 May 1997 14:19:18 GMT Organization: The Internet Access Company, Inc. Frame-Relay, or Token Ring, or ATM - SW Engineer-Network Product Development I have been retained by a Chicago-based company to search for a Software Engineer for network architecture development experience for switches (Frame-Relay, or Token Ring, or ATM). This is a development position with a company that is working on cutting-edge technology for the telecommunications industry. If you have Senior Level Experience in Network management product development, please consider getting in touch with me. My client will be very agressive in terms of a compensation package. RESPONSIBILITIES: Responsible for defining and specifying system and new product architectures based upon requirements outlined in the business plan, by customers and marketing. Review and understand current industry capabilities in processors, busses, VLSI and software and determine their applicability for new designs. This individual must be capable of taking a design from the conceptual stages to manufacturing with little or no supervision and will assume a management role for scheduling and activities of a group of engineers. QUALIFICATIONS: Bachelor and/or Masters degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering or computer science. EXPERIENCE: 3-5 years experience in the design and development of complex networking or telecommunications products. Extensive knowledge of telecommunications and/or networking terminology, protocols and architectures. Detailed understanding of current technical issues in communications. CONTACT: This is a permanent position in the suburbs of Chicago. If you are interested, please contact Tony Brown, Ph.D. at the following e-mail address: TJBROWN@TIAC.NET Tony Brown, Ph.D. Owner & Executive Recruiter Omega Consulting http://people.delphi.com/tj_brown FAX: 617-729-7634 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 May 97 10:32:15 EDT Subject: Re: GSM, SIM Cards, International Roaming From: John R. Covert First I'd like to correct yet another error in my first message. The North American 1900 MHz bands consist of 3 30 MHz bands, A/B/C, and 3 10 MHz bands. I had incorrectly stated that only A/B were 30 MHz. In reply to an earlier message, nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) had written: > Why didn't the US carriers (including CDMA) use the same compatible SIM > technology? Would have worked, regardless of air interface! And I had replied: > Utter stupidity, I must say. The only benefit of not using SIM cards > is that it makes the phone slightly cheaper; the cost of the SIM card > slot mechanical and electrical interface probably adds about $20 to > the cost of the phone; well worth it in my opinion. I've done some more research. May I start by reminding everyone that the definition of "compatible" is "different". :-) The GSM SIM cards, it turns out, are not just generic devices storing subscriber information for retrieval by the mobile telephone. The subscriber's key, Ki, is stored within the card and not revealed to a mobile set. Instead, the GSM encryption algorithm, A5, is implemented in the microprocessor on board the SIM card. Revealed details about the A5 algorithm are sketchy, but I read a paper by Ross Anderson (http://chem.leeds.ac.uk/ICAMS/people/jon/a5.html) as well as a better one by David Margrave of George Mason University. The latter paper was more detailed, but has disappeared, possibly only because the person who had posted it may have changed internet providers. In particular, the A5 algorithm is an integral part of the entire GSM standard, using the 22-bit TDMA frame sequence number as one of its parameters. This specific tie-in to a TDMA frame sequence number would appear to make it unusable in the U.S. systems, which in the most common case have to execute the control-channel encryption algorithm used by all AMPS phones manufactured in the past two years (to end cloning). Both AMPS analog and AMPS digital TDMA and CDMA phones continue to do call setup on the same control channel (which was always a digital channel, even with purely analog AMPS phones). The control channel must be compatible for all three modes of operation, AMPS analog, AMPS digital TDMA, and AMPS digital CDMA. And the encryption algorithm for authentication must operate in this environment. There is a copy of the specification for the crypto system used by AMPS systems located at: http://www.replay.com/mirror/cave/ and a detailed discussion of the flaw in the algorithm can be found at the crypto consulting firm Counterpane Systems at http://www.counterpane.com/ My conclusion, based on what I've read so far, is that the U.S. and Canadian Carriers were unable to use GSM SIM card capability because it is _not_ _compatible_ with the existing systems in these two countries in such a fundamental way as to be unusable, first, on the dual-mode systems being built in the existing 850 MHz space, and second, on the new CDMA systems using some of the newer 1900 MHz spectrum (e.g. SprintPCS in Colorado). In addition, the GSM SIM cards are a _licensed_ technology, requiring systems using the SIM cards to implement the GSM standard, and not some different standard designed to meet different requirements. I'm glad that I chose Omnipoint, who _do_ use GSM SIM cards, being one of the 1900 MHz GSM carriers beginning operation in the United States together with Bell South DCS, Sprint Spectrum-APC (Washington, DC), Pac Bell, Western Wireless/Voicestream, Aerial, Powertel, PCS One, Pocket Communications, and (in Canada) Microcell/Fido. Customers of Omnipoint (and eventually the others) will be able to roam all over the world simply by taking their SIM card out of their 1900 MHz phone and inserting it into a 900 MHz or 1800 MHz phone. Information on Omnipoint, including nationwide and worldwide roaming information with links to some of their partner carriers in the U.S. and worldwide is available at http://www.omnipoint.com/welcome.htm (Omnipoint just added France this week to the list already shown on their web site.) /john ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 18:55:50 -0400 From: Minor Threat Subject: TV Interview With Two Hackers Banned From Computers TV.COM is a weekly, 30-minute television show devoted to topics of the Internet, online services, web pages and new computer technology. The May 17th show will feature interviews with two hackers who have been ordered by federal judges to stay away from computers after they were found guilty of committing computer and other crimes. Minor Threat will discuss the details of his ban from the Internet and how it will affect him when he is released and why he feels it is unfair. His crime was not computer-releated, but the judge believed he had the capability to electronically retaliate against the arresting officer by altering his credit rating and so, ordered an Internet ban placed on him. Minor Threat was interviewed early April at FCI Bastrop where he is currently serving a 70-month sentence. His web page is at www.paranoia.com/~mthreat/. Notorious computer hacker Kevin Poulsen was released from federal prison last summer after serving 51 months and is now struggling to cope with a life without computers. Having been surrounded by computers up until his capture in 1991, his life has drastically changed since he is currently prohibited from touching or being in the same room as one. He will discuss the difficulties he faces as a non-computer user in a high-tech environment. His web page is at www.catalog.com/kevin/. Please check the TV.COM web site (www.tv.com) for local time and channel listings in your area. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #116 ******************************