Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA18871; Tue, 30 Sep 1997 21:37:06 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 21:37:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199710010137.VAA18871@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #267 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Sep 97 21:37:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 267 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Toll Free Domains (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem (Bruce Pennypacker) Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem (Jeff Carter) Re: Spam Analysis (mustang@acy.digex.net) Re: Two ISDN Devices on One Line (Lars Poulsen) Re: Two ISDN Devices on One Line (Gordon Croft) Re: Radio Vigilantes (Ed Ellers) Re: Radio Vigilantes (Bill Newkirk) Re: Security Alarm Problem due to Area Code Change (Stanley Cline) Re: Security Alarm Problem due to Area Code Change (Bill Fenner) Kidnap Victim Phoned From Car Trunk (Tad Cook) Silly Me! I Lost the Number ... (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: * telecom-request@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. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 11:07:31 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Reply-To: joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Subject: Re: Toll Free Domains Greg Monti wrote: > I've been reading with interest postings in TELECOM Digest advocating > a concept of toll-free domains. Correct me if I'm wrong. You advocate > that business sales departments and customer service centers should be the > only parties allowed to have NANP telephone numbers beginning with the > magical digits 1-800. I'm advocating that, along with your suggestions: > - Customers should have ownership rights in their toll free numbers. > - Let 'em hoard as many numbers as they want. [for the sake of clarity, in RespOrg-speak this is called "reserved numbers." In the rest of the business world it's called "inventory."] > - Let 'em pay $100 for two years to reserve a number, same as they do with > domain names from InterNIC. The $100 charge would apply to telcos as well > as to end user customers. Every time a number is removed from the pool and > taken posession of by any entity, it's another $100. No refunds if used > less than 2 years. When it changes hands from telco to end user customer, > it's another $100. Every time it changes hands, another $100 to the > database administrator. I've no problem with that. > - Let people buy, sell, reserve, lease and trade toll free numbers at will, > at any price the market will bear. That just as 900 is for pay-per-call, and 500 will follow you around, 800 should be for toll-free voice of the commercial variety, whether your commercial entity is a small consulting firm or IBM. The marketplace has defined 800 as toll-free, many-to-one, for purposes of responding to advertising, marketing, customer service, etc. It's worked just fine for 30 years, to everyone's benefit -- telco's that carry the traffic, customers that receive and pay for the calls, and consumers that get the services they need. I call this a win/win/win situation. Pages and other primarily one-to-one toll-free applications, that have every right to the *utility* of toll-free, and have no need for the brand of 800, and indeed often suffer when confused with branded 800 numbers, would be much better served with non-branded toll-free SACs of 888, 877, etc. > All other users currently having 1-800 numbers shall be summarily booted > out into one or more other Special Access Codes, such as 1-888 or 1-877. Yes, pagers can be moved (as I was myself years ago for my pager from 212 to 917.) And as individuals and companies are today, across the country, with all the area code changes. > When a new user requests a toll free number from his or her long distance > carrier of choice, he or she will be asked (under penalty of what?) just > what the new number will be used for. If it will be for a sales > department, the user will get a number beginning with 1-800. If it is for, > say, a pocket pager, the user will get one beginning with, say 1-888. I don't want a 900 or 700 or 500 number for my 800 applications. Similarly, why would I request an 888 or 877? I again remind you here, as stated above, your reference to "sales department" is misguided. I'm neither suggesting, nor would I condone, any discrimination in this regarding small vs. large businesses. It's not size, but application that I'm distinguishing. > If the user *lies* to get a number beginning with 1-800 and routes it to a > pocket pager, what happens then? The benefit to this "liar" would be what? If I'm a home-based business requesting an 800 number for customers to reach me, (a) there's no lie, and (b) I have a good reason to want that number. If, however, I'm a parent seeking a toll-free number for my child to call home from college, why in heavens name would I want a number that is going to be mistaken for an advertised number and cost me in misdials, rather than a number that I'm only giving to my children anyway? The truly residential user (personal use) doesn't WANT a lot of calls. The business-residential user does. I don't see where anyone would benefit from asking for other than what they need. > Does the customer go to Telecom Jail and > do penance by being strapped to a step-by-step switch until his or her > hearing is nonexistent? What new government agency will administer this > punishment? Will the taxpayers pay for this enforcement? Yes, in the cell next to those found guilty of violating the FCC's April Report & Order. ;o) > Doesn't your plan of dividing toll free numbers into groups based on > what they are used for simply postpone the inevitable? Here's where your suggestions kick in. If I want a particular 800 number -- and it's already in the secondary marketplace, as most are -- and I can approach the user of that number and negotiate to transfer it to me -- I've not depleted the resource at all. I'll also remind you that as of only one year ago, the two largest marketshare telco's, AT&T and MCI, had between them only 3.5 million toll-free numbers in service out of 7.8 million possibles, and that included both residential and business, 800 and 888. All the rest are on pagers and other data applications. Separate out pagers alone, and watch the resource replenish demonstrably. > Let the owner of 1-800-FLOWERS sue the owner of 1-888-FLOWERS to enforce > his property rights, just like they would do with a real estate boundary or > a brand name logo. Here I agree with you. BUT, under current law, were 888 FLOWERS to go to some small business as a haphazard assignment, it carries the freight for the misdials, and so is not well served at all. Also under current law, it cannot sell that number to 800 FLOWERS, but must return it to the pool, to be picked up by some other poor fool to go through the same thing. There is no business sense in this, and no one served. What's worse, what happens when a large marketer is assigned an 888 where the matching 800 is already in the marketplace? Aer Lingus recently started advertising 1 888 IRISH AIR, a new number for them. However, the 800 version has been with a financial firm in Wisconsin for years. All of a sudden, this Wisconsin firm started getting the airline's phone calls -- tying up their lines, and costing them plenty in non-revenue-producing dollars. Who benefits here? Not the airline. Not the 800 user. Not the telco's. Certainly no consumers seeking either travel or financial services. So Aer Lingus bought the 800 number from the financial firm, in order to self-correct the misguided call-traffic pattern. Above and beyond unnecessary cost and inconvenience to both companies, they were literally forced to break the law (as did the participating carrier, who facilitated -- aka brokered -- the transfer.) Is anyone suggesting to me that this makes any sense at all? 800/888 ICB TOLL FREE NEWS 800/888 ...today's regulatory news for tomorrow's marketing decisions. TRY US FREE FOR 15 DAYS !!! http://icbtollfree.com (ph) 212 684-7210. (fx) 212 684-2714. 1 800 THE EXPERT. ICB Headlines Autosponder: mailto:headlines@icbtollfree.com ------------------------------ From: Bruce Pennypacker Subject: Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem Date: 30 Sep 1997 16:02:42 GMT Organization: Applied Language Technologies Jeremy Radlow wrote in article ... > Robb Topolski wrote: >> I don't know about you but I'm not getting SPAM from Ford, Intel, or >> Avon. I'm getting SPAM from RGG at Box 14A in Anytown USA. RGG >> doesn't care about PR. He's happy with the 0.5% of return on 14 >> million basically free e-mail ads. > But now that nobody in the US will host spamhouses, maybe solutions > that were rejected out of hand a year ago can be utilized today. Am I being paranoid, or are we all jumping to a big conclusion here? Phil Lawlor, the head of AGIS still thinks that spam can be a good thing and that they can come up with a reasonable way of handling it. About the only thing that we know for certian is that the spammers were kicked off and that AGIS is going to revise their AUP (see the press release at http://www.agis.net). For all we know, AGIS finally decided to strictly enforce the IEMMC guidelines requiring all spammers on AGIS to filter through the IEMMC SMTP server. Since Scamford and others weren't doing this they may have finally pissed off AGIS enough (what with the continuing complaints, etc.) that AGIS finally reacted and canned them. For all we know, AGIS could take Scamford and the others back as long as every single piece of UCE sent out by them and their customers is routed through the IEMMC server. All AGIS would have to do is modify their AUP so that it says something about a single complaint regarding spam that didn't go through IEMMC or that contained forged headers, etc. being grounds for immediate termination of service. Bruce ------------------------------ From: Jeff Carter Subject: Re: Spamford Leaving Won't Solve the Problem Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 12:47:41 -0400 Organization: Interware, Inc. J.D. Baldwin wrote: > I hope you're right, but the early indications aren't good. Barnes & > Noble and amazon.com are "real" companies and engage in spamming. And > over the weekend, I got spam from Bell South. Grrrrrrrr. Well, my reaction to almost any spam from a "real" company is to reply to the source, and explain that due to their spam I will not buy any products from them. Real companies understand that annoying their customers is not a good business strategy (it helps if you are actually a current $$-spending customer and inform tham that you are taking your business elsewhere). I've never gotten a second spam..... Most non-scam spammers are less-than-savvy new Internet users who have heard about the "great bucket o money" to be made on the Internet, and have been duped by SPAMFORD and his ilk. I use the opportunity to educate them. A useful URL is the Internet Black List: http://www-math.uni-paderborn.de/~Eaxel/BL/ ------------------------------ From: mustang@acy.digex.net (Todd) Subject: Re: Spam Analysis Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 15:39:47 GMT On Sun, 28 Sep 1997 19:02:54 -0400, Bear wrote: > Unfortuantely, 'professional' spammers eventually will figure out the > filtering algorithms much like professional tax advisors have figured > out what provokes an electronic IRS audit flag, or how shrewd job > applicants have figured out what will get their resumes flagged by > personnel departments which use electronic scanning. You may be interested in the filter I've been working on. Instead of filtering based on undesirable key words, it filters based on desirable key words. For instance, anyone who sends me a message with my first name "Todd", "mail-key", or "qwer" is automatically added to my "accept list." Once on the accept list all mail from them will not be filtered. It's been extremely effective over the last 2 weeks since I started working on it. There are still some bugs with my implementation, but I think I can get around most of them. If you're interested at all, there's a link to the procmail filter at: http://g27.goes.com/zerospam The neat thing about this reversed method of filtering is that it will make it much harder for spammers to get into my mailbox. Sure, a spammer could read my Usenet posts and realize that all they have to do is type "qwer" in a message to get through the filter. Of course, this is a lot harder to do than having a spam-bot harvest addresses from newsgroups. I am convinced that there is a technological solution to spam. I'm also convinced that a technological solution is the only one that will be completely effective. I think if people start thinking along the lines of a "secure" mailbox system they might be on the right track. I've been trying to envision how such a system would work. If every mailbox had a "welcome message" associated with it, the sender's client could access it to see what "key" is required to send mail to the mailbox. The welcome message would have to be read by a person to determine what the key is. Now, when I receive the e-mail (assuming the sender entered a key,) my e-mail client has a thumbs-up and a thumbs-down button. Thumbs-up, the sender is added to my "accept list" and doesn't have to be concerned with entering keys. Thumbs-down, the sender is added to my "deny list" and all future e-mail from the sender is bounced. One down-side to this is that you'd have to manually add any mailing lists or auto-responders to your accept list. For some people this won't be a bother, for others it could be somewhat annoying. I'd be interested in hearing any ideas on how such an implementation could work. I've already been flamed by plenty of CAUCE activists who seemed irritated by the idea that a technological solution might be more effective than a law. So, please, no flames :) Todd Type "qwer" anywhere in your message if responding by e-mail. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 13:51:11 -0700 From: lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: Two ISDN Devices on One Line Organization: RNS / Meret Communications In article is written: > A quick ISDN question: I have ISDN to my house with RJ45 outlets in 4 > locations. ... Can 2 NT-1's be connected to separate outlets? No. The intended wiring plan is to have the NT1 where the line enters the premises, then have S/T-type devices attach behind that. The S/T bus is designed for attachment of multiple devices. Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@OSICOM.COM OSICOM Technologies (Internet Business Unit, formerly RNS) 7402 Hollister Avenue Telefax: +1-805-968-8256 Santa Barbara, CA 93117 Telephone: +1-805-562-3158 ------------------------------ From: Gordon Croft Subject: Re: Two ISDN Devices on One Line Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 17:53:31 -0700 Organization: BCTEL Advanced Communications Reply-To: gordon_croft@bc.sympatico.ca Sorry Steve, only one NT1 at the U interface (your RJ45 outlets) at one time. You can connect multi-devices at the S/T interface, but that's not easy. gordon_croft@bc.sympatico.ca Gordon Croft Surrey, British Columbia Canada ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Radio Vigilantes Date: 30 Sep 1997 21:07:56 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Our Moderator noted in reply: > Thank you, and I stand corrected. But as we have noted here in the > past, accuracy of the details is not all that important > ... anyway, it was that very popular song in the middle/late 1970's > about the convoy of truckers running through the toll-plaza without > stopping to pay the toll which caught the ear of so many people and > made CB very popular." Actually the CB boom started in 1974 -- a year or so before "Convoy" came out -- apparently touched off by network TV news stories about truckers using CB radios to trade "Smokey reports" so as to evade the new 55 mph speed limit. "C.W. McCall" was a character that first appeared in local commercials for Old Home Bread in Omaha; the song was actually performed by Chip Davis, later known for his Mannheim Steamroller group, though he didn't disclose until 1983 that the two were connected. (Details can be found at American Gramaphone's Web site at http://www.amgram.com.) ------------------------------ From: Bill Newkirk Subject: Re: Radio Vigilantes Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 13:53:36 -0400 Organization: Rockwell Collins, Inc. Reply-To: wenewkir@collins.rockwell.com Tom Watson wrote: >> once the general public found out about CB radio then shortly after >> that (with Johnny Cash's song) it was ruined for everyone. PAT] > It wasn't Johnny Cash, it was "C.W. McCall". > "The rubber duck". AKA Mannheim Steamroller. Bill Newkirk Collins General Aviation Division Publications Department Rockwell Collins, Inc., Melbourne Florida wenewkir@collins.rockwell.com ------------------------------ From: roamer1@pobox.com (Stan Cline) Subject: Re: Security Alarm Problem due to Area Code Change Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 16:43:17 GMT Reply-To: roamer1@pobox.com On Wed, 24 Sep 1997 10:52:41 -0400, The Old Bear wrote: > The state's area code problems appear to be far from over, as=20 > alarm companies warned yesterday that tens of thousands of their=20 > customers won't have working alarms if the initial phase-in=20 > period for the new area codes is not extended beyond Dec. 1. The same arguemnts came up in the Atlanta overlay/split argument, largely because of the requirement for 10-digit dialing. Alarm companies complained that they would not have enough time to fix everyone's alarm systems, for those that needed to be reprogrammed (i.e., any in 770 that were dialing numbers within 770, and any in 404 that were dialing numbers within 404.) What I find strange is: Why were the alarms originally programmed to use 7-digit dialing, even though 10-digit dialing has been allowed permissively from the start of the *404/770* split? If the alarm companies had thought ahead, they would have used 10-digit dialing in the first place, and they would not have a problem now. Or they could have switched to 800/888 or 950 numbers, which are not affected by 7/10/11-digit dialing. (Many large national alarm companies with regional/national dispatch centers already use 800/888/950 numbers; it is the smaller companies that still use normal local numbers and are unhappy.) The Georgia PSC did give a special six(?)-month extension for numbers used to reach alarm companies' central stations -- such numbers, and ONLY such numbers, may STILL be dialed permissively as 7 digits even after January 1 (the date at which 10-digit dialing becomes mandatory in the area.) That will give the alarm companies more time to fix everyone's alarm systems -- not enough time, say the alarm companies. Stanley Cline somewhere near Atlanta, GA, USA roamer1(at)pobox.com http://scline.home.mindspring.com/ spam not wanted here! help outlaw spam - see http://www.cauce.org/ ------------------------------ From: fenner@parc.xerox.com (Bill Fenner) Subject: Re: Security Alarm Problem due to Area Code Change Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 13:02:39 PDT Organization: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center In article , Roger Fajman wrote: > That's a rather odd position for Bell Atlantic to take, since we've > had 10 digit dialing for local calls for some time now in the > Washington, DC area, which is Bell Atlantic territory. Well, Bell Atlantic inherited that system when they acquired C&P Telephone. Changing it to whatever Bell Atlantic thinks is not confusing would have been confusing =) Bill ------------------------------ Subject: Kidnap Victim Phoned From Car Trunk Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 17:57:09 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Kidnap victim saved by the bell GENEVA (Reuter) - Swiss police at the weekend foiled a hijacking attempt after receiving a distress call -- from the trunk of a car. Police in the capital Berne were able to act after a telephone tip-off from the victim himself, a Serbian man who had been bundled into the back of a car by his Macedonian kidnapper. The 21-year-old Serb managed to call the police from inside the trunk using his cellular telephone as his kidnapper drove away, police officials said. Shortly afterwards, he was rescued by a police patrol that chased the car in the back streets of Berne. The victim knew his kidnapper and was able to give the police the necessary information. The motive behind the incident was not known. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 21:10:44 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Silly Me! I Lost the Number ... I had the number to NAVOBS modem line in a 'clock program' script on an old DOS 386 machine. It would call that number every day or so to adjust the time on the computer. Somehow it got erased; the file it was in got zapped. Someone give it to me please. Also, what about Fort Collins' modem number? Thanks, PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #267 ******************************