Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA08633; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 22:25:21 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 22:25:21 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709170225.WAA08633@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #252 TELECOM Digest Tue, 16 Sep 97 22:25:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 252 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Indian Cabinet Clears Private ISP Policy Leaving Details to DoT (R Ghosh) Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh (H. Peter Anvin) Re: ISP Subsidy? Yes (Fred Goodwin) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (F Goldstein) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (M Chance) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (R McMillin) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Michael Kagalenko) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Clive D.W. Feather) Re: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert (Bruce Wilson) Re: Nextel Cellular? (Michael D. Sullivan) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Indian Cabinet Clears Private ISP Policy Leaving Details to DoT Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 17:53:12 PDT From: rishab@dxm.org (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Reply-To: rishab@dxm.org Organization: Deus X Machina, New Delhi The Indian Techonomist - bulletin, September 16, 1997 Copyright (C) 1997 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Indian Cabinet clears private ISP policy * Broad outlines cleared, details left for later * Telecom capacity shortage: $250 mil backbone plan * Power utility, railways long-distance telecom networks September 16, 1997: The Indian Cabinet in a meeting today cleared the policy proposal to allow private Internet service providers. As predicted by The Techonomist (August 31), what was cleared by the Cabinet makes up the broad outlines of the new Internet policy environment: no licence fees for two years, reduced telecom tariffs, traffic to be routed through the international telecoms monopoly (and till now the Internet monopoly), VSNL. The devil is certainly in the details here, and Department of Telecoms (DoT, the telecoms monopoly) has apparently evaded others' attempts to get it to include specific licensing terms in the policy approved by Cabinet. It is now up to the DoT to decide what exactly the new tariffs should be, and to whom they will apply. It remains unclear whether private operators' traffic must be routed through VSNL's TCP/IP gateway, or through transcontinental telecom capacity (also leased through VSNL). The policy on direct interconnectivity between private operators has not been clearly specified - the DoT has always preferred to act as intermediary, or penalise links between separate private operators with especially increased telecom tariffs. However, DoT Secretary A V Gokak had earlier this month said that interconnections would probably be allowed, ending the ridiculous situation where traffic between to geographically proximate nodes in separate networks has to take a path half-way round the world. Mr Gokak had also indicated that private operators would be free to set tariff structures for their customers, with the market, rather than the DoT determining prices. (Previously, private e-mail operators had to stick to DoT-specified tariff bands.) DoT "backbone" unlikely to ease capacity constraints There is no doubt that the growth in Internet users will take off rapidly - there are about 50,000 commercial subscribers today. Given the continuing restraints on operators, and capacity constraints, the number of Internet hosts will probably remain pitiful (barely a thousand), and Indian web sites will continue to be hosted off US-based servers. The DoT is also being urged to build telecom capacity specifically for an Internet backbone. It is not particularly keen to do so, given the far higher profit margins in extending India's limited infrastructure for telephony traffic. There is a proposal to build an Internet backbone, budgeted at roughly $250 million, but DoT cannot reasonably be expected to find the money on its own. It is, of course, spending several billion dollars on expanding its telecom network, and part of that may go into a dedicated Internet backbone - if someone else pays for it. Telecom capacity off power utility, railways' networks might Proposals have been floating around the corridors of government for alternative long- distance networks operated by the railways (a government Ministry) and the electricity transmission utility (Power Grid Corporation of India, PGCL). Both have huge property giving rights of way across the country, and the Ministry of Railways already runs a vast internal telecoms network. Both see long- distance telephony as a money-spinner rather more profitable than their core operations, and would like to build bulk capacity for either the DoT or private operators. India is expected to end the DoT's monopoly on domestic long-distance traffic in 1999 (the DoT's local monopoly has been in the process of ending since 1995, the first private local wireline operator plans to start operations this November). For the moment, the government is not allowing the Railways or PGCL to go ahead with joint-ventures with private or foreign companies, it is "studying the issue." Perhaps a good experimental first step would be to let the Railways sell the spare capacity on its telecoms network - much of it optical fibre - to new private Internet operators. As a compromise, the Railways could do this at non- competitive rates, sharing some revenue with the DoT. Given the DoT's attitude to new services - which is paranoid rather than welcoming - this solution to the shortage of available telecoms capacity is not very likely. The Indian Techonomist - http://dxm.org/techonomist/news Copyright (C) 1997 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Reproduction permitted with this notice attached ------------------------------ From: hpa@transmeta.com (H. Peter Anvin) Subject: Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh Date: 16 Sep 1997 08:54:46 GMT Organization: Transmeta Corporation, Santa Clara CA Reply-To: hpa@transmeta.com (H. Peter Anvin) In belfert@citilink.com (Brian Elfert) wrote: > The CCITT no longer exists. It was replaced by the ITU. > The ITU is not refusing to standardize 56K. They are currently > working on the standard, possibly to be called V.PCM. Because the ITU > is a political committee, it does take them quite a while to decide on > a standard. I can imagine the biggest political hurdle is probably two major corporate entities trying to get the standard as close as possible to their particular already existing nonstandard implementation ... hpa PGP: 2047/2A960705 BA 03 D3 2C 14 A8 A8 BD 1E DF FE 69 EE 35 BD 74 See http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/ for web page and full PGP public key Always looking for a few good BOsFH. ** Linux - the OS of global cooperation I am Baha'i -- ask me about it or see http://www.bahai.org/ ------------------------------ From: Fred Goodwin Subject: Re: ISP Subsidy? Yes Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:18:34 -0500 Eric Ewanco wrote: > In article Eric Florack > writes: >> Objection: Your use of the word "subsidy" suggests that the money >> lost to this (How can you lose something you never had?) is being >> gotten from some other source. That's simply not true. And yet, the >> telco's are hardly going broke over this. > Here I absolutely agree with you: the author employs a subtle shift in > language. He refers to price controls as "subsidies". So simply > because the tariffs are set low, he declares this a subsidy. A > subsidy is when the government forks over money to keep a profitless > but necessary effort afloat. It's not when it regulates a monopoly's > prices. > Even if we were to grant this, a flaw in his argument is that because > ISPs don't pay per minute for receiving calls, this amounts to a > "subsidy". But this is the same tariff all businesses pay. If the > ISPs are subsidized, so are other businesses. If it really did cost > the telco some rate per minute to maintain a connection, then they'd > be losing money on other business calls, too. But one can hardly > argue that the LECs would structure their business rates below cost! > Besides, the model for telco charges is that the one who places the > call usually pays for it. If the telcos are losing money, then why do > they offer flat rate residential service, that makes this possible? > Wouldn't the responsibility lay more logically with flawed tariff > structures on the calling end, rather than on the receiving end? Well, the flat-rate tariffs you refer to were built on a cost-model that assumed much lower holding times than are seen for ISP traffic. Does anyone in this group deny that residential calls are typically of shorter duration than calls to an ISP? If not, then there is no point in my making any additional comments, because you will never be convinced. OTOH, if you do agree that ISP calls are of longer duration, and that blockages can and do occur as a result, then I would submit the ISP (or its customers) should be the ones the foot the bill for the switch upgrades the telco must make in order to restore the required grade of service to its other, non-ISP customers. Because neither the ISP nor its customers are willing to pay for more than a flat-rate connection (which, again, assumes a much lower holding time), then the cost of the telco switch-upgrades necessitated by them is instead borne by all and that, to me, sounds like a subsidy. Fred Goodwin CMA SBC-Technology Resources, Inc. fgoodwin@eden.com Opinions are my own, not SBC-TRI fgoodwin@tri.sbc.com 9505 Arboretum, 9th Floor Dallas Cowboys Training Camp Page Austin, TX 78759 http://www.eden.com/~fgoodwin/cowboys.htm ------------------------------ From: fgoldstein@bbn.NO$LUNCHMEAT.com (Fred R. Goldstein) Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: 15 Sep 1997 16:25:18 GMT Organization: GTE Internetworking - BBN Technologies In article , hicom@oldcolo.com says: > What is Nathan (and indeed the RBOCs who cry in their beer about > overloaded switches) going to say when the 4,500 ISPs in the US wake > up to the fact that they can already, and soon will be able to do ever > faster and cheaper, drop the use of local loop telco services and > convert their customers to no-licence digital wireless? Bypassing the > local wired common carriers entirely? ... > When the shoe is on THAT foot, watch the RBOCs start bitching about > the 'bypass' technologies, and Internet phone. > *REAL* competition and open marketplace anyone? Interesting digression. Telcos' (specifically, ILECs') collective market power is eroding under both technological and regulatory weight. Alas, the vast majority of dial-up Internet users (especially the low-volume residential recreational users) are stuck with ILEC phones as their only option at the present time. So it is important to keep that channel available. But yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus on the horizon. The catch is that no one gift works for everyone. Wireless answers are getting better. Last winter the FCC gave us a wonderful gift in the "Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure" (U-NII) band, allowing up to 4 watts ERP for unlicensed wideband high-speed data in the 5.7 GHz range. This is too new for equipment to be available yet but there is huge potential for cellular-style (in topology, not pricing, but hey those towers look nice) "community networks". This goes back to Apple's 1995 petition. There's also a 2.4 GHz "unlicensed PCS" band medium-speed data; a fair amount of gear is now available for this. The 902 MHz "junque band" is still there but rather a bit noisy for longer-range (non-LAN) uses. Trouble is, these radio frequencies (the term "microwave" scares off civilians who think of ovens and thus danger) are somewhat limited to "line of sight". If you have a high tower or hilltop surrounded by the plains of Colorado or Arizona, then you'll do well. But here in New England we have rolling hills (tougher to get line-of-sight) and big trees (foliage fade). Some areas have serious rain fade problems. So a wireless solution typically ends up missing substantial areas. Still worth pursuing though. Two other gambits stem from the Communications Act of 1996, based on the status afforded to Competitive LECs. A CLEC who owns a switch negotiates a "reciprocal compensation" agreement with the Bell. This is sort of like what the UK and now Holland have -- the LEC recipient of a call is paid to terminate it. (US IXCs, on the other hand, pay the LEC at both ends.) The ILEC and CLEC are peers and pay each other. An ISP on a CLEC switch therefore generates "terminating minutes of use" revenue for the CLEC -- why do you think MFS (CLEC) bought UUNET (ISP)? Typical MOU reciprocal compensation rates are .3 - .7 cents/minute. Some ISPs are becoming or are creating data-oriented CLECs to take advantage of this. The second approach is "Unbundled Network Elements" (UNEs). Here, ILECs must rent CLECs elements of their network (the FCC defined the list) at cost-based prices. Local loops, switch ports, and LEC switch and trunk minutes-of-use are all included as UNEs. Incoming switch use is generally free, and ISDN PRI ports and interoffice mileage under UNE agreements are a fraction of tariff rates. Same network, different price. So the ILECs have less incentive to try to screw ISPs than they did a year ago, because the ISPs have CLEC alternatives (switched or switchless). And radio technology is making the local-loop bottleneck less critical than it used to be. I suppose an ideologue can call anything a subsidy, but enough lawyers have pounded on these rules to make for a very tender cutlet. Fred R. Goldstein k1io fgoldstein"at"bbn.com GTE Internetworking - BBN Technologies, Cambridge MA USA +1 617 873 3850 Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission. ------------------------------ From: Michael Chance Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 15:57:18 CDT Robert L. McMillin wrote: > What I have to wonder about here, though, is the idea that monopolies > are necessarily bad. In the long run they tend to be unsustainable; > and in any event, anti-trust legislation seems to me to be a > blunderbuss aimable at any politically convenient target (unions were > the first such target in the U.S.). While I could be wrong, I believe that the first anti-trust efforts were directed at such targets as Rockefeller's Standard Oil, J. Paul Getty's empire, Carnegie's U. S. Steel, and the big railroads. Those were the targets of Pres. Teddy Roosevelt and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Except for the Grange, the unions didn't get big enough to notice until the 1920s-1930s. Michael A. Chance Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., St. Louis, Missouri Tel.: (314) 235-4119 Email: mc307a@helios.sbc.com ------------------------------ From: Robert L. McMillin Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 15:03:48 -0700 Organization: Syseca, Inc. -- a Thomson company Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > It would have been nice if Newman got his facts right -- but it's not > really necessary. In other words, proponents of market regulation (or outright nationalization) don't have to worry about the accuracy or truthfulness of their arguments -- all they have to do is make the right noises. Down with The Man! Feh. > While correcting his errors, all you've done is reiterate the need > for government regulation to ensure that prices bear some relation to > costs (your comparison with Europe is apt) and to ensure free > competition. That probably makes Newman satisfied. What??? Last time I checked, last-mile service is *required by law* to be provided by goverment-selected monopolies. That bears no resemblance at all to "free competition". Honestly, I'm astonished that Newman continues to get airtime around here. He is the Lyndon Larouche of Telecom. Robert L. McMillin | Not the voice of Syseca, Inc. | rlm@syseca-us.com Personal: rlm@helen.surfcty.com | rlm@netcom.com Put 'rabbit' in your Subject: or my spam-schnauzer will eat your message. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I run his stuff (I keep a little of it around in stock here) whenever I hear snoring coming from the direction of your terminal and realize that you must have fallen asleep, or other- wise gotten bored with the discussions. :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael Kagalenko Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 21:40:29 EDT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > I'll grant you there are dishonest IP's. But quite a few are honest > even if their information or service is essentially useless and they Now wait a minute. You assume some very interesting meaning of the word "honest" here. I would be interested to see how you could possibly consider honest someone who bills for worthless service. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, what you and I may consider to be worthless in our lives may be a treasure to someone else. For example, I have absolutely no use for astrology; I have no use for Tarot and other similar things. But there are people who believe stongly in these things and there are IPs who legitimatly provide these services to the believers. Not every IP who operates a religious phone service is a fraud. Granted, many are. Some IPs sincerely believe they are providing a great public service at a reasonable cost, and they have documented call counts to show they are getting inquiries, etc. Perhaps I should have qualified that by saying 'worthless as far as I am concerned ...' Here is another example: let's consider yours truly. I am an IP, albiet not using the phone or billing via telco. I send out this Digest every day to a few thousand names on the mailing list plus to a newsgroup and a few specialized other lists, etc. I maintain a web site with all the back issues. I say to whoever reads this, 'hey how about sending a donation every year or so in the suggested amount of twenty dollars ...' Now, you and some others think my rants mixed with news and reviews in the telecom scene are really great and you send me the money as encouragement to continue. On the other hand I get letters saying 'your stuff is useless; totally worthless to me; I would not send you five cents if you downloaded the entire archives to me ...' but they do not (in most cases, although some have) suggest I am dishonest for publishing 'useless' information. That is what I meant. There *are* many -- maybe most -- telephone IPs who sincerely believe in what they are doing and the service they are providing. Perhaps most people would disagree, but the IP did make good on delivery of information, etc. HaHa! I just remembered: I got another notice today asking me to cease and desist from sending spam to a site, despite the fact that the user at that site is on the mailing list. I removed the user's name from the list and sent him a note cc'd to his admin saying 'here, you guys work it out; I do not send out spam'. I'll let the user yell at his admin about it. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 06:18:02 +0100 From: Clive D.W. Feather Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Organization: Clive's laptop (part of Demon Internet Ltd.) In article , Bob Holloway writes > 2) there is no easy way, currently, for 900/976 service > providers to know whether the person calling is authorized to use the > phone that he/she is calling from. Obviously, they would like to > assume that they do -- but this isn't always the case. I see this as > particularly a problem that prevents sex lines from screening their > calls to make sure they are from adults In the UK these lines are on 0898 numbers. Before these numbers can be dialed, the subscriber has to obtain a specific PIN from BT. No PIN, no calls, no charges. Problem solved. Clive D.W. Feather | Director of Software Development | Home email: Tel: +44 181 371 1138 | Demon Internet Ltd. | Fax: +44 181 371 1037 | | Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address | ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 02:33:28 -0400 From: blw1540@aol.com (Bruce Wilson) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert In article , jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) writes: > You mean someone actually BOUGHT the "Help, I've fallen and I can't > get up" gadget? And it costs them a long distance call every time the > neighbor opens his garage door? And they're still working? Somehow, > these have always seemed to be in the same realm as Chia pets and the > Clapper. You obviously are neither a senior citizen nor have a parent who's one. My late father, who died July 1 in his 82nd year, subscribed to a service provided by a local ambulance company; and one of the first things I did on arriving at his apartment was to see if he was wearing the pendant or find it and lecture him if he wasn't. The "base station" was effectively a radio-controlled speaker phone which autodialed the ambulance dispatch center on activation. Its pickup was sensitive enough to hear him anywhere in the apartment; and I got a call if he didn't respond when the dispatcher came on the line to ask him what was wrong. (Having more than one line, they could keep his open while calling me on another one.) Getting back on-topic for this discussion, I don't see why the base units can't be programmed (or reprogrammed) to dial *any* number, including changing the area code, if necessary. Bruce Wilson ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Nextel Cellular? Date: Tue, 16 Sep 97 09:30:23 -0400 Organization: DIGEX, Inc. Reply-To: Michael D. Sullivan On Sun, 07 Sep 1997 19:27:44 GMT, Ben Parker wrote: > All the discussion in the Digest here recently on CDMA/TDMA/GSM and > various cellular and PCS carriers and such has been very interesting > and informative. However, nobody has mentioned Nextel in this > discussion yet and I'd like opinions about there place in the overall > scheme. > Nextel seems to offer a nationwide digital/analog network (TDMA) that > is free of roaming charges. Additionally their phone sets offer text > paging functions and also have a unique 2-way radio capability that > allows you to connect to specific handsets anywhere in their network > for much less than usual rates. In essence this is long-distance > radio, using their cellular (850mhz) network. Seems like it delivers > today what most PCS promises for tomorrow. Too good to be true? I haven't used Nextel, but they don't use the cellular or PCS bands; they use the 800 MHz Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) bands, which are in the same vicinity as cellular. Their phones cannot roam on cellular systems; just on Nextel's own network (and potentially on other enhanced SMR networks using compatible technology, if and when there are such systems). Before Nextel, SMR frequencies were used for high-power, area-wide dispatch communications; Nextel bought up lots of these systems and "cellularized" the system architecture (lots of lower-power transmitters in a cellular grid). Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Maryland, USA mds@access.digex.net, avogadro@well.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #252 ******************************