Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id EAA10112; Tue, 29 Apr 1997 04:38:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 04:38:16 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199704290838.EAA10112@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #105 TELECOM Digest Tue, 29 Apr 97 04:38:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 105 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Rural Telcos and the Internet (oldbear@arctos.com) Book Review: NetSuccess: How Real Estate Agents Use the Internet (R Slade) Qualcomm Gets OK on Q Phones (Tad Cook) Re: Where Are the Numbers? (Greg Monti) Re: Where Are the Numbers? (John B. Hines) Re: Where Are the Numbers? (nwdirect@netcom.com) Re: Where Are the Numbers? (Bob Goudreau) Why Both 1+10 and 10 on my CID (Dave Yewell) Original Called Number Delivery on 800 Calls (Bill McMullin) Talk or Drive, But Not Both at Same Time (Witold Dziewaltowski-Gintowt) Re: Incredible Chutzpah (Seymour Dupa) Re: Florida PSC to Revisit 904 Split (Linc Madison) Re: Radio Call-In Contest Regulations (Eric Florack) Manual Conversion (Carl Navarro) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 16:00:19 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: Rural Telcos and the Internet I just had a request for some information from some grade school kids working on a school project and was curious about where they were located. I checked the name of their school's internet access provider in the internic and discovered they are in northern Montanta and that their ISP is part of a rural telephone cooperative. From what I could tell from their ISP's web pages, Three Rivers Telephone Cooperative servers about 16,000 subscriber lines. The co-op has been around since 1953 and now serves 26 exchanges -- and offers internet access in all but one of these exchanges at what appears to be competitive rates to those which we find in many more urbanized areas. (They maintain a web site at http://www.3rivers.net which includes some pages about their internet services, a map of their service area, their newsletter, etc.) While rural cooperatives are not that unusual, I have not been sufficiently close to them to know what they have been doing in the area of internet connectivity for their subscribers. If this is typical, I am both pleased for what it portends for rural access to the net -- and deeply disturbed about the whining coming from the Baby Bells who continue to complain about net access being a problem rather than an opportunity. Cheers, The Old Bear ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 11:02:27 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "NetSuccess: How Real Estate Agents Use the Internet" BKNETSUC.RVW 961219 "NetSuccess", Scott Kersnar, 1996, 1-56592-213-1, U$34.95/C$49.95 %A Scott Kersnar skersnar@wco.com %C 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472 %D 1996 %G 1-56592-213-1 %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. %O U$34.95/C$49.95 800-998-9938 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com %P 214 %T "NetSuccess: How Real Estate Agents Use the Internet" What the heck, I mean, some of my *relatives* are real estate agents. But, you must admit, this is a pretty specialized interest. When one has been reviewing books for a while, one gets a bit cynical about specialized topics. Not to worry. Kersnar has done an excellent job of presenting the net in a realistic, detailed, and helpful fashion. Although the book does present case studies of realty companies connecting to the net, it doesn't fall into the trap of becoming simply a series of Web site screen shots. (Than which there is nothing more boring.) Email is given primacy--as it should, given that email is the most immediately useful resource. The overview of software tools even includes the all important, but often unmentioned, dialer. Definitely one of the better business-on-the-Internet books. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKNETSUC.RVW 961219 roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca link to virus, book info at http://www.freenet.victoria.bc.ca/techrev/rms.html Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ Subject: Qualcomm Gets OK on Q Phones Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 01:11:45 GMT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Published Saturday, April 26, 1997,in the {San Jose Mercury News}. Qualcomm gets OK on `Q' phones as Motorola loses suit Mercury News Wire Services SAN DIEGO -- A federal judge has ruled that Qualcomm Inc. can move ahead with plans to produce palm-sized wireless telephones that rival those offered by Motorola Corp. in a decision that could help drive down prices and expand services for such extremely lightweight, compact devices. The judge Thursday night denied claims by Motorola that San Diego-based Qualcomm copied its designs. Qualcomm officials said Friday that work will resume immediately on its "Q" phones, five-ounce devices that Motorola contended were illegally patterned after its popular StarTAC model. U.S. District Judge Napoleon Jones Jr. ruled Thursday that Motorola has "no likelihood of success on the merits of its claims" in its infringement case. Motorola officials said the company has already filed a petition to appeal Jones' decision. The Qualcomm phone, which is expected to cost about $800 when it goes on sale this summer, has a similar size and clamshell shape to the Motorola device, which costs up to $899. The antennas, batteries and keypads also are in the same positions. But there are differences. The StarTAC's "send" and "end" keys are laid out differently. And unlike Motorola, Qualcomm will offer e-mail and other Internet features on its "Q" phones. The San Diego company said it did not intentionally mimic the StarTac, but placement of its features were dictated by function. Jones agreed that the "Q" phone did not infringe on most "points of novelty" attributed to the Motorola model. For instance, the "Q" phone's rectangular screen is similarly located on the StarTAC, but the placement was dictated by the phone's functions rather than industrial theft. But the decision could damage Motorola's bottom line because the StarTac is such an innovative and unusual design, said analyst Bradley Williams of Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc. Qualcomm shares rose $2.13 Friday to $45.13. Motorola shares fell $2.63 to $55.38. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 00:38:48 -0400 From: gmonti@mindspring.com (Greg Monti) Subject: Re: Where Are the Numbers? On 22 Apr 97, bob.savery@hawgwild.com (Bob Savery) wrote: > Perhaps I'm missing something somewhere. Last time I looked, there were > 890 possible area codes There are about 710 possible area codes in the North American system at it stands, with the 1XX, N11 and N9X combinations excluded. > (Why is 1xx reserved anyway? Because the initial digit would be confused with the "1" which is used to indicate "area code next" in some, but not all, cases. Suppose area code 144 were assigned. So, 144-367-9949 wouild be a legitimate NANP number. Now, a subscriber dials a toll call to 1-443-679-9498 in Maryland. Should the subscriber's central office accept the first ten digits dialed as if they are the whole number and connect him to 144-367-9949? Or should the switch wait for 5 or 6 seconds to see if he dials one more digit, and route it to Maryland? Switching decisions should *never* be based on time-outs on domestic calls. > Why is N9x required > to be reserved for additional digits for local numbers??). So that there is unambigious room to expand the system to four-digit area codes. My area code here in New Jersey is 201. Someday, when all the 3-digit area codes run out, there will need to 4-digit area codes. A specific 4-digit combination has already been reserved to convert 201 to the 4-digit format. It will be 2901. In order for this to work, there can be no 3-digit area codes in which the second digit is a 9 (because that, too, would be ambiguous). Therefore, those with a second digit of 9 are not assignable. This only sets aside 10% of all possible area codes, which is is not a huge deficit. > that 890 times 999 exchange codes times 10000 numbers in each exchange, > there should be 8,891,100,000 possible phone numbers available. Actually, it's 710 area codes times 780 exchange codes times 10,000 numbrs, which is only 5.5 billion possible numbers ... > Yes, I know not all of those can be used (you wouldn't want exchange > numbers starting with 911 for instance), but the vast majority of > those should be good numbers. Yes. But you haven't considered all the things that really affect numbering. In North America, each central office is assigned a "rate area" for determining the mileage of long distance calls in and out. All subscribers to that central office are considered to exist at one single point on the surface of the earth. All mileages for rating calls are measured to and from that point. The billing system used by North American telcos (ranging from the smallest rural co-operative up to the giant local telco GTE, to the long distance giant AT&T) look up the rates for each call by looking only at the first six digits of the called number (after the "1"). Those six digits are the area code and prefix. In the small town of Spearfish, Wyoming, those six digits are 307-643. Without exception, all 307-643 numbers MUST be in the Spearfish central office (or in a rural switching office which is connected to and within about 10 miles of) it. Even if all of the numbers in 307-643 cannot be used because the population of the area is not large enough, those numbers cannot be used anywhere else. This cannot be changed without changing the software at every central office and telephone billing center in North America. All it would take would be time and money. In the US and Canada, there are tens of thousands of towns with populations under a few thousand. In these towns, the 10,000 possible phone numbers in a single prefix may *never* all be used up or assigned. But all 10,000 numbers are assigned to that town (and mileage point) and cannot be used anywhere else. Each prefix runs out of numbers when about 90% of the 10,000 numbers are used. In those cases, a second prefix is overlaid on the town. Each area code runs out of prefixes when about 780 prefixes are used (regardless of how full or emtpy those prefixes are). In those cases, a second area code is added by splitting or overlaying. Another North American rule is that area codes do not cross state lines. So you cannot combine the small populations of Montana and Wyoming into a single area code to save assigning one. Also, each time a new phone company starts up in an area, whether it is a landline company, a new competitor, a cellular or PCS company, it must be assigned a block of numbers, usually 10,000 numbers (one prefix) to begin serving its customers. So, here we are in Spearfish, with maybe 500 access lines connected to the 307-643 central office. And two cellular carriers move in and want blocks of numbers. The A and B carriers have 100 customers each. And they also have one prefix apiece. So the small town has 3 prefixes (30,000 numbers) serving 700 paying customers. Tough. That's just the way it is. > Where am I off in my figuring?? If I'm even halfway close, we couldn't > possibly run out of numbers for a long time, if ever! Let's look at the beginning of 1995. There were about 150 area codes in service then, which was all the possibilities that could exist without the center digit being allowed to expand beyond 0 or 1. Since early 1995, 28 months have passed, and about 60 new area codes have been assigned in North America. That's about two new area codes per month. Let's do the math. We know that there can be about 710 area codes if we exclude the ones of the forms X11, 1XX, 0XX and N9X. How many months' supply do we have until we run out of the 710 possible codes? 710 minus 150 equals 560 codes still unassigned. At two codes per month, the three-digit area code system has 280 months left to live. That's 23.3 years. So, in 23.3 years from January, 1995, give or take 50%, the area code system will need to go to four digits: March, 2018. We're taking bets that it will be sooner than that. > What prompted this was the BellSouth Press release announcing they now > have 6 million access lines in Florida. By my figuring, you could fit 6 > million lines into a single area code. Yes. You absolutely can, if thay are all in big cities in which each prefix uses all 10,000 numbers. > And yet Florida has 10 [area codes] and says they need more??! Don't forget, BellSouth is not the only phone company in Florida. It does not serve the boom-towns of Tampa-St Pete (which are GTE), or Fort Myers Naples (served by Sprint) or Tallahasse (I forget who serves them). There are plenty of other companies serving Florida, too, all of which are outside of the 6 million lines counted by BellSouth. Greg Monti Jersey City, New Jersey, USA gmonti@mindspring.com ------------------------------ From: jhines@enteract.com (John B. Hines) Subject: Re: Where Are the Numbers? Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 12:47:03 GMT Organization: The Conspiracy bob.savery@hawgwild.com (Bob Savery) wrote: > Where am I off in my figuring?? If I'm even halfway close, we couldn't > possibly run out of numbers for a long time, if ever! There just isn't > 9 billion ports available in the telephone network! Nor will there be > anytime in the near future! (I don't think??!) The problem is in the way the phone system does phone number routing and billing. This is done by the exchange part of the number, so that in order to establish a Point Of Presence (POP) on the phone network requires an entire exchange, 10,000 numbers at a time. When MFS, TCG and other alternative phone companies want to setup in a new CO, they take phone numbers 10,000 at a time, even if they only have a couple of hundred actually assigned. Even then numbers are often assigned in large blocks within the large blocks for companies, etc. A smarter routing system, similar to what is used for 800 number portablity, would make number allocation more efficent. One thing I would like to see, is a "shadow" overlay area code for large metropolitan areas. This would be a voluntary assigned at the request of the line owner, and would be intended for non-human use numbers like modems, ATM and POS machines. I know the FCC has struck down mandatory overlays, so thats why it would be optional. If I was a tele/data com manager, with lots of machines that used the telephone network to communicate, not having to re-program everything when there were splits in the "human" numbers would be big advantage. It would also be a signal to telemarketers not to call, since there isn't a human to answer. Such numbers would not be listed in the phone book, or directory assistance to simplify things, and discourage human use. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something I have also wondered about is why all the lines in a hunt group on a switchboard (or any multi-line phone for that matter) have to have actual, dialable numbers assigned to them. It seems like a waste of numbers for a switchboard with thirty or forty incoming trunks on it to have a number for each trunk. Usually people just dial into the first line. Couldn't quite a few numbers in each area code be salvaged in that way, by making the back lines in a hunt group just be 'circuits' which were hunted down as needed? Give them non-dialable numbers like 012-3456. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nwdirect@netcom.com Subject: Re: Where Are the Numbers? Organization: Netcom On-Line Services Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 15:24:40 GMT For starters many of the numbers that are assigned are not actually used. It is quite inexpensive for a paging company or other entity to take an entire prefix and use just a few numbers in it. That wastes the entire prefix. The phone companies should assign numbers in blocks of 1,000 and once they use those they can have another 1,000. These would be in prefixes already in use. The phone companies can reserve specific prefixes for this purpose if they want to but share them with all similar companies. How can they force the issue? Very simply. Charge the current prices to do it this way and quadruple the price if they want to hog an entire prefix. The problem now is that the telcos are practically giving the prefixes away. I heard that anyone can have an entire prefix for around $10,000 a month, a dollar a number. At those rates it is easy to pay for an entire prefix. The telcos don't really care if they have to keep adding new area codes. It is up to the public to say enough is enough and for the telcos not to issue new area codes until the usage percentage of the numbers they already have is sufficiently high enough. With the proliferation of new phone companies, each taking several prefixes and using just a very small portion of the prefixes assigned to them will just exacerbate the problem. The way we are going now it is quite possible that we could exhaust all the available area codes within the next 11 years. We need a federal law or FCC ruling to stop this insanity before it is too late. * Internet Access Providers - Web Presense Providers - BBSes * * http://www.thedirectory.org/ - largest directory on the web * * tens of thousands of listings - over 7,500 Access Providers * * Telephone Prefix Location Finder - "The BBS Corner" * ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Apr 1997 11:52:28 -0400 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Re: Where Are the Numbers? bob.savery@hawgwild.com (Bob Savery) wrote: > Perhaps I'm missing something somewhere. Last time I looked, there were > 890 possible area codes Ahh, but you looked a little too far, and counted many more codes than are possible :-) ... Taking your questions in order: > (Why is 1xx reserved anyway? Because direct-dialing 1-1XX-NXX-XXXX would conflict with special service codes that start with "11" (and which are also dialable with the "*" key if you have tone-dialing). For instance, 1167 (or *67) blocks transmission of Caller ID. Likewise, dialing an operator- assisted number as 0-1XX-NXX-XXXX would conflict with international calls, which begin with 011 (direct-dialed) or 01 (operator-assisted). The 00X range is also off-limits, since 1-0XX-NXX-XXXX would conflict with the 10XXX (soon to be 101XXXX) set of carrier-selection codes (e.g., prefix your call with 10288 or 1010288 to choose AT&T as the carrier). > Why is N9x required to be reserved for additional digits for local > numbers??). Umm, because *something* has to be reserved for number expansion, and N9X is as good as anything else? To be more precise, the N9X NPAs are reserved for general "future number expansion". This may include longer local numbers; it may include longer area codes; it may include both. But the NANP Administration would be extremely foolish to paint itself into a corner by using up all the number space with no smooth upgrade path for number space expansion, during which new longer numbers can be phased in and old 10-digit numbers phased out. > If you take that 890 times 999 exchange codes times 10000 numbers in > each exchange, there should be 8,891,100,000 possible phone numbers > available. Yes, I know not all of those can be used (you wouldn't > want exchange numbers starting with 911 for instance), but the vast > majority of those should be good numbers. The actual total, while still a large number, is only about half of what you suppose. First, there aren't 999 possible exchange codes. For reasons similar to the previously-discussed impediments to 0XX and 1XX area codes, 0XX and 1XX exchanges cannot work, unless all 7-digit dialing within the NPA is eliminated. Even then, there are extra complications: some of those numbers have long been used as the billing numbers of non-dialable points; and some telephonic equipment is apparently unable to handle dialing a 10-digit number that has 0 or 1 as its fourth digit. Also, the N11 series of exchanges (and NPAs) is generally unavailable, due to special numbers like 911 (emergency), 411 (directory assistance), 611 (telco repair) and 311 (the proposed new non-emergency police number). There are a few places where some N11 exchanges (such as 811) exist as the prefix for normal 7-digit numbers, and NPAs which have no 7-digit dialing (such as 800, 888 and 900) now also allow N11 exchanges (though even they exclude 911). But in most cases, N11 numbers aren't available, and the number of usable 3-digit prefixes within a given NPA is only 792 (and 799 for non-geographic NPAs such as 800). Second, the area code space is much smaller than 890 codes. As discussed above, 0XX, 1XX and N9X are unavailable. NANPA has also put a few other codes off-limits or reserved them for specific service uses (thanks to Mark Cuccia for providing these details last year). Here's a list; note that "aa" refers to a pair of digits that match each other: N11: barred because N11 special numbers must still be dialable even in areas with 10-digit dialing. 37X: reserved for future (as-yet-uconceived) services that might require an entire block of 10 contiguous NPAs. 96X: reserved for same purpose as 37X 5aa: PCS (expansion of existing NPA 500) 8aa: toll-free (expansion of NPA 800) 456: international inbound 521, 524->529: Mexico Roaming, Temp. 600: Canadian Telex and other data services 700: IC services 710: US GETS (Government Emergency Telephone System) 881, 881: international access to NPAs 800, 888 883, 885, 886, 887, 889: reserved for NDTP (Non Dial Toll Point) relief > Where am I off in my figuring?? If I'm even halfway close, we couldn't > possibly run out of numbers for a long time, if ever! There just isn't > 9 billion ports available in the telephone network! Nor will there be > anytime in the near future! (I don't think??!) > What prompted this was the BellSouth Press release announcing they now > have 6 million access lines in Florida. By my figuring, you could fit 6 > million lines into a single area code. And yet Florida has 10 and says > they need more??! That's an average of 16.65 numbers per line! Even > figuring DID numbers into business trunks, I don't see that many numbers > being used. Even though you are about "halfway close" to the correct number, the thing to keep in mind is that it represents only the maximum *possible* phone numbering space, only reaching that maximum if usage density is 100 percent and there is no wastage. However, until NPA numbers are fully commerically and geographically portable (i.e., until the first six digits of an NXX-NXX-XXXX phone number have no more association with particular telcos or geographic zones), there will continue to be a large amount of wasted number capacity. There is a significant amount of slack capacity at both the NPA and the local exchange level. Even in these days of explosive phone number growth, there are a number of NPAs with a fairly small number of local exchanges, which might never come close to using up the whole NPA. Waste is probably much worse at the local level, since (with a few exceptions) each local central office, even for podunk towns with a few dozen phone lines, uses an entire exchange of 10,000 phone numbers. And in the past few years, exchange density has gotten even lower due to a proliferation of new telcos, such as cellular providers and competitors for local service. The latter are a big source of number usage, since they have been reserving at least one exchange for *every* billing point in their service areas, even when they have few or no customers in those locations yet. Hopefully, local number portability will restrain such profigacy, since it will allow customers to switch to a different local telco without having to change phone numbers. On the other hand, some of the mechanisms being mooted to implement local number portability might make the problem even worse, since they involve mapping "logical" numbers to telco-specific physical numbers. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would think area code 401 serving Rhode Island is mostly wasted. Certainly quite a few exchanges are in use there, but I'll bet there are lots and lots of unused numbers. Ditto 406 for Montana and 208 for Idaho. Is there any reason the entire North American continent has to stay as a group in country code 1? For example, suppose we had country code 12 for the eastern part of the USA, country code 13 for the western part (let the Mississippi River be the dividing point, like it is for the 'K' and 'W' radio stations) and perhaps country code 14 for Canada. Now each 'country' gets to use the entire bunch of area codes internally, and like existing area codes, subscribers would only need to dial 011-12-XXX or 011-13XXX plus seven digits if they were dialing to the other side of the country or to Canada. Admittedly we would have to dial fifteen digits if calling the other side of the USA but only seven or eleven digits for most calls instead of twelve digits everywhere if a four digit area code is imposed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dave Yewell Subject: Why both 1+10 and 10 on my CID Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 21:54:44 -0700 Organization: Netcom I just received a new CID from BellSouth. There are two buttons to dial long distance based on the number sent: "dial 10 digits" which I assume are the ten digits which CID delivers and "dial 1+10 digits" Isn't all 10 digit dialing in the US "1+10"? Appreciate your info. Dave ------------------------------ From: Bill McMullin Reply-To: bill@interactive.ca Subject: Original Called Number Delivery on 800 Calls Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 23:37:28 -0300 Organization: InfoInterActive Inc. We are trying to determine which, if any, US telcos provide the Original Called Number to the 1-800 network provider. In other words, if a phone is Call Forwarded to a 1-800 number and the termination location has PRI ISDN or SS7 connectivity, does the Original Called Number get delivered when the forwarding station receives calls? In case there is no definitive answer or only some telcos and areas offer the service, we have set up a test 1-800 number. We are looking for US volunteers who subscribe to Call Forwarding on their home phone. For those which want to help you simply need to forward your phone to 1-800-214-4728 then call yourself or have someone call you. Only one test call is necessary and after it is done you can turn off Call Forwarding. Based on the logs we produce we will be able to tell whether or not the Original Called Number is delivered. Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to help. Regards, Bill McMullin InfoInterActive Inc. Halifax, Nova Scotia Ph: 902-832-1611 Fx: 902-832-1015 ------------------------------ From: Witold Dziewaltowski-Gintowt Subject: Talk or Drive, But Not Both at Same Time Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 18:42:48 -0400 Organization: Cognos Incorporated This could be a first (or at least one of the first few) in legislation related to cellphones and driving: According to latest press reports from Poland the newly adopted Highway Act, a legislation regulating the usage of public highways, PROHIBITS the use of cellular phones (as well as smoking :-)) while driving in populated ("urban" or "residential" might be better translations) areas. Safety appears to have been the deciding factor for adopting the new rules. More on the subject as news rolls in ... Witold Dziewaltowski-Gintowt Software Engineer voice: (613) 738-1338 x. 4664 Cognos Incorporated fax: (613) 228-1448 Ottawa, Ontario mailto: dziewalw@cognos.com CANADA ------------------------------ From: grumpy@en.com (Seymour Dupa) Subject: Re: Incredible Chutzpah Date: 28 Apr 1997 15:15:26 GMT Organization: Exchange Network Services, Inc. In comp.dcom.telecom Andy Sherman wrote: > It seems some relatively small LD carrier has applied to do business > in Florida under the trade names of "I Don't Care" and "It Doesn't > Matter". I once head a person shanged his name to "None of the Above". He then ran for political office. On the ballot, his name appeared ... John ------------------------------ From: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.NOSPAM (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Florida PSC to Revisit 904 Split Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 22:03:58 -0700 Organization: No unsolicited commercial e-mail! In article , Tom.Horsley@worldnet. att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) wrote: > Either that, or terrible news coverage of the issues, with reporters > implying that everyone would have to start dialing 10 digits for every > number they ever call. It's really very simple: With an overlay, *no* > number you currently dial will change in the slightest. With a split, > odds are good (and they get better with every split) that some of the > numbers you call will have to change and you will have to dial 10 > instead of 7 digits. So explain again why the PSC thinks a split is > more "convenient"? The reason that the news reporters have been saying that with an overlay you will have to dial 10+ digits for every call is that it is TRUE. In an overlay, 7-digit dialing is prohibited. There are two very strong reasons for this rule: (1) It is very important to force everyone in an overlay to think of their phone number as the full 10-digit number, not just the last 7. The only practical way of doing that is to require them to DIAL all 10. (2) Allowing 7-digit dialing within the same overlay area code gives the incumbent LEC a huge advantage over the entering competitors. For both of those reasons, the FCC has mandated that all overlays must be accompanied by 10-digit (or 11-digit) dialing. So, contrary to your assertion, in an overlay, *EVERY* local number in your own area code will change in the manner you dial it. ** Do not spam e-mail me! ** Linc Madison * San Francisco, Calif. * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best-com >> NOTE: if you autoreply, you must change "NOSPAM" to "com" << [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am sick of hearing all this crapola about how 'allowing seven digit dialing within same overlay code gives the incumbent LEC a huge advantage ...' That has *never* been demon- strated or proven. Are not the competitor's customers going to be calling one another just as often as the existing LEC's customers call one another (within the same code)? Is not the LEC going to be assigning its own customers to the new overlay code as well? If I am an existing customer of LEC and you choose to go with a competitor and we wish to talk to each other, I'll need to dial your area code as often as you need to dial mine. In the meantime both of us can continue to dial seven digits for many of our calls. Now I have no particular objection to simply dialing ten digits for all calls, and in fact if the entire nation went to a dialing scheme of area code plus seven digits for everything, we would be able to get by with ten digits instead of eleven because there would no longer be any ambiguity about the meaning of the first three digits dialed; they would always be an area code, and as a result no need to pull a one to start with to provide context. What I do object to however is the constant whining and complaining by the competitors, wireless and landline alike, that everything done to them is 'unfair', and that the rest of us must be imposed upon with every change in the technology no matter how inconvenient it is for us to change area codes, etc once a month more or less. In the northwest suburban (Chicago) community of Schaumburg, IL about half the people in town had to get completely new telephone numbers -- all ten digits! -- because they could not be worked conveniently into either 847 or 630 with their existing numbers. In Chicago itself, there might as well be an overlay between 312 and 773; the essence of one is present anyway on the north side boundary line between the two codes as it juts in and out, up and down side streets and between houses on the same block over a range of about a mile along Armitage Avenue. But ask Joe Diddly's phone company and its half-dozen customers to accept a different area code or to share a prefix with P. Yunies phone company and its three customers?? Why god forbid, that would be unfair! It would give LEC an unfair advantage ... or so it is claimed. Only a tiny minority of the existing customers of LEC will ever give any consideration at all to going to a competitor, and if they are saavy enough to know how to do that, then they are saavy enough to know how to dial between area codes and understand the reasoning behind receiving a new number/area code to start with. The burden on this should go to the people who have caused the problem, not all the other subscribers. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 00:44:08 PDT From: Eric Florack Subject: Re: Radio Call-In Contest Regulations John Higdon writes in #97, > scs@eskimo.com (Steve Summit) wrote: >> I've speculated that special contest numbers are >> used which are known to all of the switches in a metropolitan area, so >> that the load of returning busy signals to N-1 callers can be >> distributed among all of the CO's, rather than swamping the one switch >> attached to the contest line (and tying up lots of trunks). > This practice (yes, it did exist -- I even hosted a radio talk show > dedicated to the topic back in the seventies) was known as a "choke > network". A prefix was designated as a "high volume" exchange and all > radio stations using lines for contests and requests were required to > obtain numbers in that special exchange. Stations not served by that > particular central office were required to haul it in via foreign > exchange. In the case of Rochester Tel, they used 222 for this purpose. Since 222 was not serving ANY area in 716, it was a new exchange set up for the purpose and all radio stations air lines were run through it. Thing was that 222 wasn't really an exhange, I don't think, since none of the numbers for any of the dozen or so stations I worked for, ever terminated in 222. Instead, invariably, they'd be terminated in the exhange in service for that area. IE: Downtown Rochster studios would be served by 454 and 232 numbers, studios in Brighton 442/461, and so on. I've always assumed it was some kind of map routing, which would send any 222 calls to the Stone Street site (our biggest telco operation) and then back out to whatever the real number was from there, on a call-forward basis. Always seemed to me a bit of a waste of switch power. -----&<----snip-------- > I speak of all this in the past tense because in the era of SS7 and > intelligent routing networks, trunk management can be done on the > fly. A virtual choke network can be created instantly. As a result, > the old choke exchange has fallen into disuse. Since Stone street was all ESS by the time this was in place, in our case, it was a simple proceedure to simply add the 222 routings to the xbar exchanges. It's a system still in use today, even with all the switches now being ESS. Why bother to change it, I guess... =0= There is no such thing as 'shades of grey', no 'grey areas', only black and white spots, some of which are very small. If you see grey, you're not getting close enough to what you're looking at to know it's true nature.Every grey area is merely a number of componant questions you're not close enough to see. ____________________________ __________________________________ /Eric Florack, SysOp of the /\ /Internet:eflorack@servtech.com /\ / FREE FILE FARM BBS / /\ / or eric_florack@xn.xerox.com _/ /\ /716-352-6544 or 352-1629 / \/ / 'A day without Clinton is like / \/ /GT Network 041/003,041/007 /\ / a day without hemorrhoids' / /___________________________/ / /_________________________________/ / \___________________________\/ \_________________________________\/ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ ------------------------------ From: Cnavarro@wcnet.org (Carl Navarro) Subject: Manual Conversion Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 11:23:42 GMT > Ameritech will need to keep some Centel employees on hand to operate > the nonstandard (from Ameritech's perspective) switches! I wonder if ITT made any of those switches. It had a manufacturing plant right in the heart of Centel territory in Des Plaines. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > It seems to me also that Centel was the last part of the old area > 312 to be dialable from anywhere else in the area. They had dial > phones also, it is just that they were not connected with Bell for > dialing purposes. We could dial everywhere in Chicago as of 1951 > and the final manual office cutover, but for a few years after Maybe the North Side had no manual exchanges, but not so on the South Side! My parents moved to the PROspect exchange in 1952. I distinctly remember common battery phones (we still had a dial) until sometime in 1955. It seems to me than my friend (ABerdeen 4-0967) had common battery too. Two years ago, when my father passed away, we still had a WECO phone with the old dial showing PROspect 3549 as the telephone number :). Carl Navarro [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I beg your pardon but I am certain that the last manual office in Chicago was cut in 1951 on the north side. The office was called 'Avenue' (as in 283) and it served (still serves) the area around Ohare Airport. The dial conversion started here in 1939 but was suspended about half way done in 1942 when Western Electric was nationalized by the federal government for the war effort. When WECO was given back to AT&T in 1946 and was able once again to resume production for civilian use, Illinois Bell was able to resume manual --> dial conversion. During 1943-45 the telephone company went around to people who had extension phones in their house and asked them to give up their extension phone so that telco could install that instrument in a residence where the people had no phone at all; they had to do this because phone instruments were in very short supply while WECO was doing war production. All during the last half of the 1940's the telephone operators were very discontented. Rumors were rampant that when conversion to automatic dialing was completed, 'the company was going to fire all the operators'; there would no longer be any need for them. Within about six months of the Avenue CO getting cut, Ohare Airport (then known as Orchard Field) opened; despite being dial, Avenue CO had about twice as many operators as before. As an aside, for those of you who wonder how Ohare got the aviation location abbreviation 'ORD' it goes back to when it was called Orchard ... You are correct that PROspect was one of the last to be cut also, but it had to be prior to 1955 by at least a few years. Some phones had dials on them for a year or more prior to the dials being used for anything. While one group of people were converting the offices, another group were going door to door mounting dials on existing dial-less manual instruments. After installing the dial, they put a little sticker on the phone saying 'dial will not be in service until 2:00 AM Saturday, (date) ... until that time do not use the dial, simply lift the receiver and speak to the operator as in the past.' And sure enough, 2:00 AM on the Saturday morning stated, the operator disappeared and dial tone took her place. I remember the cut in Whiting, Indiana when I was around 11-12 years old. Wanting to see how it would work, I stayed awake and deliberatly made some calls both ways. About 1:58 AM I asked the operator for 1234, which was the recorded message line at the Hoosier Theatre giving movie schedules. I asked again at 1:59 AM and got it a second time. At 2:00 AM I lifted the receiver a third time and got nothing. At 2:01 I lifted the receiver and got dial tone, and dialed 659-1234 to hear the message. I probably was the first user of the automated system in Whiting. But a friend of mine who tested it from the Chicago side said the results were somewhat different. Our house in Chicago had had dial service for a few years, and to call Whiting (where my grandparents lived) it was necessary from Chicago to dial '911' and then sit there and wait in dead silence for anywhere from ten to twenty or so seconds until an operator answered saying 'Whiting!' and then passing the desired number to her. He said he tried dialing 659-xxxx starting the day before (Friday) and a strange thing would happen. It would ring, the party in Whiting would answer the phone, but within a couple seconds the Whiting operator would go on the line thinking her subscriber had gone off hook (which he had). The operator was expecting to get a call from her subscriber. Apparently the dial system was wired and in place but the manual switchboards were not yet disconnected. Oddly enough, and as just a bit of historical trivia to close this issue of the Digest, the Amoco Oil Company (then called Standard Oil) had -- still has -- their major refinery facility in Whiting and they had a dial PBX for several years before the town of Whiting had dial service overall. If you are used to picking up an extension to dial 9 and get a new dial tone, imagine dialing 9 on your PBX extension, hearing a click and waiting until an operator responded asking 'number please' ... on the other hand, Amoco PBX users could dial the '8 level' and get dial tone from the Chicago FX lines, or they could dial '7' and get dial tone from the 'StanoTel' national phone network Amoco operated. But dial 9 to make a local call and you waited until an operator came on to ask 'number please'. For incoming calls, officially the lead number on the PBX was given as (Whiting) 2111 (they had about ten or fifteen lines in a hunt group, even in the manual days) but most people just asked the operator for 'the refinery ...' Amoco (as Standard Oil) *was* the telephone company in Whiting in the very early years, from about 1890 to 1900. The reason the extreme northwest corner of Indiana was always *Illinois* Bell rather than Indiana Bell was just a quirk of history also. In the early days, the predecessor to Illinois Bell was a company called Chicago Telephone Company; all the industrial heavyweights of those days -- i.e. John Rockefeller, William Gary of US Steel, others, all had their offices in Chicago but their refineries, foundries, mills and other plants on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. They all wanted the new inven- tion in their offices of course, and when they found out they could use the phone to stay in touch with their plant superintendents over in Indiana -- provided someone installed lines 'that far away' -- they were more than happy to make the capital investment needed. Mr. Gary saw to it that wires were strung to 'his' town of Gary, Indiana and JDR happily paid to string a wire from his office to that of his refinery superintendent in Whiting. The Chicago Telephone Company said thank you very much (big smile no doubt) and with circuits in place, the rest was easy. When AT&T made a big power play in the early 1920's and was gobbling up lots of telcos they got Chicago in the process, along with all of Chicago Tel's customer base, central offices, etc. That included Whiting/Hammond/Gary/East Chicago, Indiana, with original compliments to the industrialists who made it possible for Chicago Tel thirty years earlier. See you tomorrow! PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #105 ******************************