Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA00471; Sat, 17 May 1997 09:04:00 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 09:04:00 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199705171304.JAA00471@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #123 TELECOM Digest Sat, 17 May 97 09:03:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 123 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? (Marvin A Sirbu) Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? (Ben Parker) Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? (Ronald Elliott) Re: Call Display (Caller ID) Formats? (Peter Morgan) Re: City Fire Alarm Pull Boxes (John Nagle) Re: City Fire Alarm Pull Boxes (Martin McCormick) Re: Are Cordless' as Bad as Cellulars? (Robert Casey) Re: Network Switching (Tim Russell) Employment Opportunity: Dallas/Kansas City ATM (Andy Nelson) Working With the Public on the Telephone (Robert S. Hall) 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!) They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Marvin A Sirbu Subject: Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 17:21:41 -0400 Organization: Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Anthony S. Pelliccio wrote: > I have a second line in my home that I use as a second voice line and > as a modem line. Why should I have to pay more for it? In essence I'm > being penalized for having the additional line. Right now you are getting your first line for less than what it costs, with the difference made up by long distance callers. So what you are saying is why shouldn't you be entitled to two subsidized lines instead of only one? Sounds greedy to me. > In my not so humble opinion the FCC should be abolished. The only > thing that needs regulation is RF spectrum, not wired communications. If the FCC were abolished, the first thing that would happen is that prices would begin to approach actual cost, which means the price of _both_ of your telephone lines would go up, instead of the price of only one of them. Actually, since the ILECs do not face effective competition, the prices would likely go up to something substantially above cost. And, since, in the absence of an FCC to enforce interconnection rules, no competitors would be able to get into the local exchange market, prices would likely stay at monopoly levels indefinitely. Are you sure that's what you want? Marvin Sirbu ------------------------------ From: bparker@interaccess.com (Ben Parker) Subject: Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 05:50:56 GMT Organization: Best Effort Co. Reply-To: bparker@interaccess.com On Sun, 11 May 1997 21:17:34 EDT, Wlevant@aol.com wrote: > [... Telephone recorded > announcement services were quite often 1234 or 1515. PAT] Nowadays the Hyatt hotel chain uses the xxx-1234 number for most of its hotels. Ben Parker ............ (Oak Park IL) .......... bparker@interaccess.com ------------------------------ From: Ronald Elliott Subject: Re: What Constitutes a Second Residential Line? Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 21:36:00 -0400 Organization: Sprint Internet Passport Reply-To: ronell@null.net A.T.Sampson wrote: > Here in Atlanta, BellSouth will question you until eternity if you try > to put a second line in an address that has existing service under a > different name. They made my roomate get a notarized letter from our > leasing office stating that we both lived there before they would turn > up his phone line in the apartment! > As for using a second (or third, or fourth) person's name, I'm not > sure how that will work. If your name (and SSN) are on file for 1 > line, and (pretending that you managed to get past the interrogation > about multiple lines in the same residence) your wife's name and SSN > are on the second line -- what happens if you need a third? Use little > Bobby's name and SSN? > Probably a non-issue for most, but I have to wonder because I have > three analog lines and an ISDN line here. > So, (at least in BellSouth land) the question becomes -> what happens > if this FCC ruling is interpreted to mean "first line at one physical > address"? So now we bring in the second line through a competetive carrier, or the cable company, or the electric company. How do we keep this mess equitable? Ronald Elliott ronell@null.net ------------------------------ From: Peter Morgan Subject: Re: Call Display (Caller ID) Formats? Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 06:02:57 +0100 In message robertb@iaw.com (Rob Barnhardt) wrote: > Anyhow, to the question: is there a good source for Caller ID formats > out there? I'm interested in info for any country, any device, just > so long as it's reasonably solid; You'd have fun with the UK (British Telecom) Caller ID ... (some cable companies are not using the BT method of sending the ID data before the ring, so that US modems will work without change). In the UK, we have a number of formats (based on analysis of the codes database which Oftel issues: Format count of areas (approx) Examples 0 abc - dex - xxxx 14000 0161-877 1006 Manchester 0 abcd - exxxxx 58000 01524-8xxxxx Lancaster 0 abcd - exxxx 1000 01695-50202 Skelmersdale 0 abcde - xxxxx 150 015242-xxxxx Hornby 0 abcde - xxx 10 018885-5xx Turriff (dialled from outside UK would miss the leading "0" but I don't know whether any of our numbers are displayed abroad, as yet ... on our caller ID we can see text like "INTERNATIONAL", "PAYPHONE", or get the number, "WITHHELD" or "UNAVAILABLE" [where privacy hasn't been requested by the subscriber but the carriers don't manage to pass ID info, or the exchange doesn't yet send it]) It seems that the originating exchange formats the data which is seen by the recipient, and sometimes the hyphens do not appear in the correct location, though they could just be ignored, as in a Hayes dial string they would be! > Do I have to start reverse-engineering Visual Basic programs? Probably :-) Peter Morgan, North Wales, UK. ------------------------------ From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: City Fire Alarm Pull Boxes Organization: Netcom On-Line Services Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 18:36:43 GMT oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear) writes: > And on the firehouse end, there was equally intersting equipment, > including paper tape printers which, looking like time-recording > seismographs, used spring driven clockworks and ink pens mounted on > the ends of magnetic arms to keep a permanent record of the exact > time and date of each alarm. San Francisco still has some of that gear. A clockwork driven paper tape inker, still part of that system, can be seen in a glass case just outside the front of the Ferry Building. The SFFD is very traditional. I visited the SFFD dispatch center in 1978, and although they had a computerized dispatching system with big display boards that was quite advanced for the day, all the old clockwork inkers for the fire alarm boxes were still functioning. In normal operation, a PDP 11/70 received the alarm signals, looked up the box location, and recommended what to dispatch, but the inkers were still logging the alarms as well. I suspect they're still there. A huge brass telegraph key and brass gong still sat on each console, as a communications backup to the fire stations. John Nagle ------------------------------ From: Martin McCormick Subject: Re: City Fire Alarm Pull Boxes Date: 16 May 1997 20:55:08 GMT Organization: Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK I remember pull boxes in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Little Rock in the sixties. I believe they were mostly gone by the seventies. I lived in the Little Rock area from 1966 through mid 1968 and the had a whale of an ice storm some time during the Winter of 66-67. The Little Rock fire chief got on television and told everybody to not use the pull boxes if there was an alarm because many of them would not operate due to ice in the mechanism. He also said that response time would be much slower because of the large amount of ice coating streets. Martin McCormick ------------------------------ From: wa2ise@netcom.com (Robert Casey) Subject: Re: Are Cordless' as Bad as Cellulars? Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 06:48:16 GMT In article waf6@columbia.edu writes: > My family and I benefited greatly from a research report posted about > the dangers of cellular phone usage in association with brain tumors > and cancers. > I know little to nothing about phones or electronics, so I > would like to know if cordless phones pose a similar threat, or to > understand how the differences in engineering make have not caused a > concern for cordless phones. The power level of the radio frequency energy is much less than that of a cell phone. And the frequencies are different: cell ~850Mhz, some cordless ar 49MHz, some at 900MHz. Not a lot of difference between 850 and 900MHz, but the power level is much lower than cellular. Cellular has a range of a few miles, cordless about a hundred feet. Cordless should be safer, if in fact that there is even a cancer problem involved (it's just one study, and others were inconclusive or negative). ------------------------------ From: russell@probe.net (Tim Russell) Subject: Re: Network Switching Date: 16 May 1997 05:07:13 GMT Organization: Probe Technology Internet Services Simon Edgett writes: > For the > duration of the call the call centre ends up paying for two trunks > plus double the LD. Assuming the outsource partner and the call > center use the same LD and trunk provider for the inbound circuits, is > there an easy way to do network level switching to actually re-route > the call at the network level to the outsource company. Current plans > are to use AT&T US. I worked for a very large 800/900 service bureau for two years ending a couple of years ago, and wrote a few 800 programs that did something close to what you're asking for. As I remember, calls came in to the client's system, and depending on whether or not they had manpower to accept the call volume, the call was given back to AT&T and sent to our system (sorry, West Interactive's.) If my program still didn't get them what they wanted, we gave the call back to AT&T once again to be put in queue on the client's IVR system. Needless to say, these people were a bit anal about getting the customer satisfied, but I suppose that's to be applauded. :-) Anyway, the system worked through touchtones -- my program sent out a *2, I believe, to have the call sent back to the client. Keep in mind that this was done by a very large service bureau who is more than likely AT&T's single largest minute customer -- we broke 25,000,000 minutes in a month while I was there, and the numbers have risen ever since. I'm not sure if they can/will do this for just anyone. The feature name to mention is "Take Back and Transfer". Good luck. Tim Russell System Admin, Probe Technology email: russell@probe.net ------------------------------ From: Andy Nelson Subject: Employment Opportunity: Dallas/Kansas City ATM Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:39:59 -0400 Organization: MR of Reston I have several opportunities for individuals in the Dallas and Kansas City areas. Individuals should have experience with ATM, Sonnet, and using netexpert. This person will be managing devices, creating rules and dialogue for switches for fault set translators in case one fails. H-1 or know af anybody that is interested, e-mail me at mreston@erols.com Pay depends on experience, but I will tell you that he will make you a very fair offer. Andy ------------------------------ From: Robert S. Hall Subject: Working With the Public on the Telephone Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 17:21:31 +0800 Pat: A friend just forwarded this to me. After reading it, I thought you might be interested in it for one of your editions. There are plenty of discussions in the Digest about the technology which makes this person's job possible. Now, for a change, we see things from his perspective. Cheers, Rob Hall Hong Kong (After Surviving 130,000 Calls From The Traveling Public) By: Jonathan Lee-The Washington Post I work in a central reservation office of an airline company. After more than 130,000 conversations-all ending with "Have a nice day and thanks for calling"-I think it's fair to say that I'm a survivor. I've made it through all the calls from adults who didn't know the difference between a.m. and p.m., from mothers of military recruits who didn't trust their little soldiers to get it right, from the woman who called to get advice on how to handle her teenage daughter, from the man who wanted to ride inside the kennel with his dog so he wouldn't have to pay for a seat, from the woman who wanted to know why she had to change clothes on our flight between Chicago and Washington (she was told she'd have to make a change between the two cities) and from the man who asked if I'd like to discuss the existential humanism that emanates from the soul of Habeeb. In five years, I've received more than a boot camp education regarding the astonishing lack of awareness of our American citizenry. This lack of awareness encompasses every region of the country, economic status, ethnic background, and level of education. My battles have included everything from a man not knowing how to spell the name of the town he was from, to another not recognizing "Iowa" as being a state, to another who thought he had to apply for a passport to fly to West Virginia. They are the enemy and they are everywhere. In the history of the world there has never been as much communication and new things to learn as today. Yet, after asking a woman from New York what city she wanted to go to in Arizona, she asked "Oh, is it a big place?" I talked to a woman in Denver who had never heard of Cincinnati, a man in Minneapolis who didn't know there was more than one city in the South ("wherever the South is"), a woman in Nashville who asked "Instead of paying for my ticket, can I just donate the money to the National Cancer Society?", and a man in Dallas who tried to pay for his ticket by sticking quarters in the pay phone he was calling from. I knew a full invasion was on the way when, shortly after signing on, a man asked if we flew to exit 35 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Then a woman asked if we flew to area code 304. And I knew I had been shipped off to the front when I was asked, "When an airplane comes in, does that mean it's arriving or departing?" I remembered the strict training we had received-four weeks of regimented classes on airline codes, computer technology, and telephone behavior -- and it allowed for no means of retaliation. We were told, "it's real hell out there and ya got no defense". You're going to hear things so silly you can't even make 'em up. You'll try to explain things to your friends that you don't even believe yourself, and just when you think you've heard it all, someone will ask if they can get a free round-trip ticket to Europe by reciting 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'." It wasn't long before I suffered a direct hit from a woman who wanted to fly to Hippopotamus, NY. After assuring her that there was no such city, she became irate and said it was a big city with a big airport. I asked if Hippopotamus was near Albany or Syracuse. It wasn't. Then I asked if it was near Buffalo. "Buffalo!" she said. "I knew it was a big animal!" Then I crawled out of my bunker long enough to be confronted by a man who tried to catch our flight in Maconga. I told him I'd never heard of Maconga and we certainly didn't fly to it. But he insisted we did and to prove it he showed me his ticket: Macon, GA. I've done nothing during my conversational confrontations to indicate that I couldn't understand English. But after quoting the round-trip fare the passenger just asked for, he'll always ask: "... Is that one-way?" I never understood why they always question if what I just gave them is what they just asked for. But I've survived to direct the lost, correct the wrong, comfort the weary, teach U.S. geography and give tutoring in the spelling and pronunciation of American cities. I have been told things like: "I can't go stand-by for your flight because I'm in a wheelchair." I've been asked such questions as: "I have a connecting flight to Knoxville. Does that mean the plane sticks to something?" And once a man wanted to go to Illinois. When I asked what city he wanted to go to in Illinois, he said, "Cleveland, Ohio." After 130,000 little wars of varying degrees, I'm a wise old veteran of the communication conflict and can anticipate with accuracy what the next move by "them" will be. Seventy-five percent won't have anything to write on. Half will not have thought about when they're returning. A third won't know where they're going; 10 percent won't care where they're going. A few won't care if they get back. And James will be the first name of half the men who call. But even if James doesn't care if he gets to the city he never heard of; even if he thinks he has to change clothes on our plane that may stick to something; even if he can't spell, pronounce, or remember what city he's returning to, he'll get there because I've worked very hard to make sure that he can. Then with a click of the phone, he'll become a part of my past and I'll be hoping the next caller at least knows what day it is. Oh, and James ... "Thanks for calling and have a nice day." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for passing this along. My friend Jim who operates the bus station in Skokie has related the same things many times: people who call and ask, 'give me a list of all the places you do to and the price for each ...' presumably all 2800-3000 towns. People who ask 'what time does the bus arrive?' without knowing where the bus started from, what time it left, etc. All they know is a friend or relative said they would arrive today 'sometime'. People who say they want to go to (name of a state) with no idea of which town in the state. People who call repeatedly over and over, asking slightly different questions each time, then comparing the answers given each time and trying to start arguments. "Well I called yesterday and was told, etc ..." when the fact is they phrased their question differently the day before and got it answered in the way they asked. Another bunch of people with very thick skins are telephone operators and directory assistance operators. Ask any operator if she does not get cussed several times per day and accused of making wrong connections, charging too much for the call, etc. The American public is difficult to work with at times. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #123 ******************************