Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA16723; Fri, 10 Oct 1997 22:01:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 22:01:07 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199710110201.WAA16723@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #278 TELECOM Digest Thu, 9 Oct 97 22:00:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 278 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Sets $0.28 as Kickback to Payphones For "Tollfree" Calls (P.Townson) Another Unverified Integretel Charge on Bill (Steve Kastner) Lucent G2 to G3 Upgrade Problems (Jim Hurley) TDMA = Terminate Departmental Manufacturing Assemblers (30K!) (B. Devine) Re: Question About PacBell SuperTrunk ANI (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: Question About PacBell SuperTrunk ANI (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: Wall Street Journal: Electric Outlets Could Be Link (John Stah) Re: Wall Street Journal: Electric Outlets Could Be Link (Bill Ranck) 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. 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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: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 21:40:08 EDT From: Patrick Townson Subject: FCC Sets $0.28 as Kickback to Payphones For "Tollfree" Calls FYI from the Associated Press late Thursday evening: Pay phone access fees to toll-free numbers fixed at 28 cents By JEANNINE AVERSA The Associated Press 10/09/97 7:33 PM Eastern WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday set a new rate of 28 cents a call for long-distance companies to pay owners of pay phones for toll-free and access code services. The new, lower rate is effective immediately and will last for two years. It will apply only to companies that can't negotiate a rate with pay phone owners. The FCC's action does not affect local pay phone calls. A federal appeals court in June struck down the FCC's earlier rate of 35 cents a call. It's unclear how pay phone customers ultimately will be affected because long-distance companies can recover these expenses in a variety of ways. But AT&T said customers' rates will go up and vowed to appeal the ruling. "We're extremely disappointed that the FCC is determined to grant pay phone operators an unjustified windfall at the expense of customers," said Rick Bailey, AT&T's vice president of federal government affairs. AT&T said the new rate is too high and should be 12 cents a call. The appeals court had rejected the way the commission figured compensation for the 800 toll-free calls and access codes calls -- when a caller dials an 11-digit code to reach his or her preferred long-distance company, thus bypassing the company that is providing service to the phone. The court said the commission hadn't adequately justified its rate of 35 cents a call and instructed the FCC to rewrite its rate rules. A 1996 telecommunications law required the FCC to ensure that AT&T, MCI, Sprint and other companies that supply long-distance service to pay phones fairly compensate pay phone owners for all calls. Various companies had suggested a wide range of rates -- from zero to 63 cents a call, said a FCC attorney, speaking on condition of anonymity. The FCC said it arrived at the new rate by using the predominate rate for local pay phone calls in states that have deregulated rates -- 35 cents a call -- and adjusting it for costs differences associated with long-distance calling. AT&T, Sprint and MCI had challenged the FCC's original rates in court. Sprint and MCI had no immediate comment on the FCC's action. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 09 Oct 1997 18:54:44 -0600 From: Steve Kastner Reply-To: aats4@airmail.net Organization: AAccess Technical Support Subject: Another Unverified Integratel Charge on Bill I got a new one for ya: I got my phone bill and saw a charge on behalf of Integretel. Having never heard from them I called and was told that I was being billed by them on behalf of Associated Transmissions for my own personal 800 number. Well, I have never ordered an 800 number in my life. I have no need for one and have never heard of Integretel prior to getting this bill. I called 'em up and was connected (after about a ten minute wait) to some insolent "customer service agent". I explained to her my situation. I was then shocked to hear her say that if I did not want to pay for the service I should not have ordered it. The day that this order was apparently placed happened to be my birthday and I remember that I was gone that whole weekend. I was not even home to place the order for the 800 number which they said was traced to my phone number. This went on for another ten minutes before she offered to cancel the 800 number service still leaving the charge for the line on my current bill. Well, I spent another ten minutes arguing with her about this and finally flat out told her I wouldn't pay it and then asked to talk to someone in authority. I waited yet another ten minutes and finally this customer service robot returned and said she would do a "one time courtesy removal" of the charge. In other words she is going to do me a favor by not charging me for something I never asked for in the first place. On top of all this I was told that I could not even have the phone number or address of this Associated Transmissions company. They couldn't even tell me what my 800 number was. So apparently someone either broke into my apartment on my birthday and called Associated Transmissions to order me an 800 number or these guys are involved in some big time fraud. Steve K. skastner@rocketmail.com ------------------------------ From: Jim Hurley Subject: Lucent G2 to G3 Upgrade Problems Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 01:35:29 GMT Reply-To: hurls@world.std.com Organization: James Hurley & Associates Hi all, I support a piece of CPE equipment for a large Chicago hospital. They are upgrading to a G3 switch. The first piece of equipment is the one I support. It has a T1 interface to an IVR application. It runs fine on the G2 using 'wink/wink' supervision. Lucent claims that they can't configure the G3r to perform the same way. We get about 4 seconds of dial tone on the line before the call is completely connected. Lucent has not let me speak with anyone knowledgable about this switch configuration. Can anyone help? Jim Hurley (hurls@world.std.com) ------------------------------ From: sdmort@electriciti.com (Brian P. Devine) Subject: TDMA = Terminate Departmental Manufacturing Assemblers (30K!) Date: Thu, 09 Oct 1997 18:38:18 GMT Organization: ElectriCiti, Inc. I wonder if this explains the recent run-up of Qcomm stock ... I recently came across an article that everyone may find quite interesting: It's a translation of a piece written by Johan Wallqvist, in the Swedish evening paper Expressen -- June 1, '97 -- about Ericsson and the mobile telephony industry: Wallqvist states that 30,000 jobs can disappear when the new technology takes over... Ericsson, Sweden'ss most successful company, is one of the leaders in mobile telephony. More and more experts are now asking themselves: Has Ericsson gone for the wrong technique? He goes on to say that Ericsson might have to close down more factories ... due to the fact that Ericsson is mainly investing in another technique, TDMA, in their digital GSM telephones. Today more and more commentators ask themselves: Has Ericsson made a catastrophic decision, that in the long run will threaten tens of thousands of jobs in Sweden? Wallqvist points out that the newcomer in the arena, Qualcomm, in San Diego, California, is challenging Ericsson with a CDMA system, which they declare is better than Ericsson's GSM system. Qualcomm has less than two million subscribers in their systems, to be compared with 20 million in digital GSM systems from Ericsson ... He explains that Motorola, Philips, Siemens, Sony, Sharp, Samsung, Sanyo, and NEC are all going to CDMA due to the fact that CDMA has got a better capacity and is more economical. You can cover a city with half as many transmitting installations on the ground compared to what is needed with GSM, Jack Scanlon, manager at Motorola explains. Wallqvist ends the expose by answering the question: Is Qualcomm's CDMA technology a serious threat against Ericsson? Yes, and we should possibly make mobile phones for CDMA systems too. But the governing body of this concern has not taken any decision yet, says John Siberg, in charge of Ericsson's mobile telephone division. Telia, Sweden's number one telecom operator, also supports the CDMA technology. CDMA is the technique for mobile phone systems of the future. GSM is out of date already, says Frank Arnoldsson at Telia. The board of directors at Ericsson is aware of this, but won't say it in public until the year 2000. E-Mail me for a copy of the article! pbdevine@aol.com ------------------------------ From: fgoldstein@bbn.NO$LUNCHMEAT.com (Fred R. Goldstein) Subject: Re: Question About PacBell SuperTrunk ANI Date: 9 Oct 1997 19:07:59 GMT Organization: GTE Internetworking - BBN Technologies In article , billdietrich@voiscorp.com says ... > We just installed SuperTrunk (voice T1) service from PacBell, in the > San Francisco Bay Area (Sunnyvale, CA). > We thought we could get ANI (Caller ID) on this T1, but PacBell says > they don't offer that service; you have to get Primary Rate ISDN to > get ANI. > I find this hard to believe; I thought one of the main uses of voice > T1 was for 800 numbers, and ANI would be extremely common in that > situation. Most big-volume 800 numbers are delivered in PRI format. The big IXCs have had PRI for almost a decade, long before the Bells did. In practice, you can't get ANI on Channelized T1. The CO has no way to deliver it. For DID incoming, there is a defined touch-tone protocol for it, but there is none for non-PRI subscriber-loop ANI. ANI is normally sent on inter-CO trunks, using "Feature Group D" signaling, but that uses "MF", not "DTMF" (touch-tone) tones, is rarely supported in PBXs, and letting subscribers use it makes telcos edgey -- that's what "Blue Boxes" used! Theoretically they could negotiate a "special assembly" of FGD/ANI but it wouldn't fall under the SuperTrunk tariff. > Side note: they can't just type a command somewhere to change us from > voice T1 to PRI; they have to un-install and re-install wiring, and > charge us money. Correct. Channelized T1 just goes into a trunk port of the CO. PRI goes into the trunk port but also connects a Packet Handler port for the D channel. > Another side note: the monthly fee for PRI is LOWER than the monthly > fee for voice T1 ! Seems backwards. The FCC has ruled that a CT1 is subject to 24 subscriber line charges ($6 apiece and rising), while PRI is subject to 5 of them. That often tilts the numbers in favor of PRI. From a strict cost viewpoint, PRI costs telcos around $50-100/month more to provision, because of the packet handler port. Actual tariff prices go all over the place. 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: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: Question About PacBell SuperTrunk ANI Date: 9 Oct 1997 20:34:09 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On Wed, 08 Oct 1997 15:45:34 -0700, William Dietrich wrote: > We just installed SuperTrunk (voice T1) service from PacBell, in the > San Francisco Bay Area (Sunnyvale, CA). > We thought we could get ANI (Caller ID) on this T1, but PacBell says > they don't offer that service; you have to get Primary Rate ISDN to > get ANI. Hmmm ... > I find this hard to believe; I thought one of the main uses of voice > T1 was for 800 numbers, and ANI would be extremely common in that > situation. This much is true. > We do get incoming digits (after winking), but they are DID (last 4 > digits of our T1's phone number). Aha. The problem is that there's a limited amount of time available there. It may well be that they can't give you DNIS _and_ ANI on a T-span at the same time: remember all the signalling is _analog_. > Side note: they can't just type a command somewhere to change us from > voice T1 to PRI; they have to un-install and re-install wiring, and > charge us money. Yeah; different line cards. > Another side note: the monthly fee for PRI is LOWER than the monthly > fee for voice T1 ! Seems backwards. Switch. It's worth it. Just make _sure_ you get the name and number of someone in their switch department who understands ISDN translations. > Can anyone tell me if my PacBell representative is right or wrong? > Is it possible to get ANI on a PacBell SuperTrunk? I'm speculating, of course, but no doubt, someone else will know for sure. If you can terminate a PRI into your switch, though, it's worth the change over fees, more than likely. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ From: aljon@worldnet.att.net (John Stahl) Subject: Re: Wall Street Journal: Electric Outlets Could Be Link Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 19:23:58 +0000 The latest from Nortel has startled the ILEC's (and probably a whole lot of others in the business) with the announcement of Internet service over the electrical power grid. Several with whom I've talked with (I travel around to the Independent Telcos in the Northeast US), have already contacted Nortel to find out what they have to offer as sort of a defensive mechanism. After all, if DATA can be sent via the power lines, can VOICE be far behind? I can think of one CLEC who probably is right in the (potential) middle of it: RCN (the new CLEC break-off from CTEC - who owns Commonwealth Telephone in PA). They have reportedly signed agreements with Boston Edison and Potomac Electric to "partner-up" to supply local telephone service. I'm sure that they will review their agreements before Nortel gets to their partners! There appeared (10/9/97) from Reuters News Service, another view of this potentially revolutionary transmission idea. It tells a bit more about the methodology and the probable costs: ---------------------- - - - Coming Soon: Net Access Through Power Lines - - - by Reuters October 8, 1997 "Canada's Northern Telecom (Nortel) and Britain's Norweb Communications today unveiled new technology allowing reliable, low-cost, high-speed access to the Internet through the domestic electricity supply. In a move heralding the first competition between electricity companies and telecommunications carriers, the two groups said their patented technology would allow power firms to convert their infrastructures into information access networks. Having reduced electrical interference on power lines, the companies said they could shunt data -- and possibly voice -- over power lines into the home at up to 1MB per second. This is up to ten times faster than ISDN, the fastest currently available speed for domestic computer users. Although it is slower than rival ADSL technology being developed by British Telecommunications, which upgrades copper wires, Norweb and Nortel's technology is much cheaper for operators to install. All consumers need is the equipment developed by Nortel and Norweb -- an extra card for personal computers, some software to handle subscription, security, and authentication services, and a small box that is installed next to the electricity meter. This will send and receive data and is in turn linked to a personal computer through an ordinary coaxial cable. Peter Dudley, vice president of Nortel, said the groups had an "absolutely spectacular" amount of interest from electricity companies in Britain and abroad that are keen to offer the service to consumers. "The race is on to be first," he told Reuters. Prices will be set by electricity companies that offer the service. But consumers currently spend an average of 20 to 30 pounds ($48.60) per month for Internet access -- and the new service offers permanent access without telephone costs. "Assuming they continue to spend at that rate, it is not unreasonable to assume that is the kind of tariffing that may be submitted," Dudley said. The Canadian telecoms equipment maker, and Norweb, part of England's multiutility United Utilities, said their technology was fast enough for most future domestic or small office applications and was cost effective enough to allow operators returns on investments. "As one of the first practical, low cost answers to the problem of high speed access to the Internet, this technology will unleash the next wave of growth," Dudley said. The two companies have developed a "specialized signaling scheme" that allows them to carry data traffic between local power substations and homes, effectively turning the electricity supply into a communications network. Each substation is then linked by fiber-optic circuits to a central switch -- and from there into the worldwide computer network. After 18 months of refining and upgrading a prototype and promising "oodles of bandwidth," the companies said they planned to market the technology in Europe and the Asia Pacific region. "We are ready to ship in volume," said Ian Vance, vice president and chief scientist at Nortel Europe. Banking on high growth and good economic returns, Norweb hopes to attract around 200 customers in a marketing pilot in northwestern England in the second quarter of 1998 before rolling out the service." -------------------- You note that their plans seem to not include the US market -- wanna bet? Notice the statement about bandwidth -- will they stop at data? How about video and voice and who knows what else? Time will tell but you can bet if the system is competitive, they will push it everywhere for every 'service' - voice, data, video, etc. Here's a real potential competition to all the markets: telephone and CATV. After all, everyone has electrical lines connected to their homes and businesses. John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecommunications and Data System Consultants email: aljon@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ From: ranck@joesbar.cc.vt.edu (Bill Ranck) Subject: Re: Wall Street Journal: Electric Outlets Could Be Link Date: 9 Oct 1997 19:52:44 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia TELECOM Digest Editor (editor@telecom-digest.org) wrote: > Electric Outlets Could Be Link To the Internet > By Gautam Naik The Wall Street Journal 10/07/97 > LONDON -- Engineers claim to have developed a breakthrough technology > that would let homeowners make phone calls and access the Internet at > high speeds via the electric outlets in their walls. Hmmm, let's see what kind of data rates and how do they get by the local tranformers? > high-speed access. And for the new system to be commercially > feasible, a power utility would have to sign up 40% or more of homes > and offices in a particular neighborhood, Mr. Henderson says. Ah ha! Looks like they need to install some fairly expensive gadget to bridge the signal around the neighborhood transformer. Still, this isn't a show-stopper. Economies of scale should bring the price per tranformer down. > While electric lines have been used before to zap tiny amounts of > data between computers, their capacity has always been limited, > making commercial applications unfeasible. Now United Utilities' > telecom arm, Norweb Communications, has found a way to transmit data > at a speed of more than 384 kilobits per second over regular > electricity lines -- more than 10 times the speed of Internet modems > used by most households with regular telephone lines. Sounds impressive until one thinks about dividing that bandwidth up among x voice cicuits plus y data circuits. One medium busy Web server in a neighborhood could impact 384Kbit when added on top of some digitized voice traffic it seems to me. I'm somewhat skeptical about how well this will scale up. Of course 10 or 15 years ago I didn't think I would ever see regular voice grade phone lines carrying more than about 2400 BPS, so maybe they have something. I hope it works out, because I don't have much faith in the concept of cable-TV "cable modems." I've seen that technology in the past and it did not scale up well at all. Bill Ranck +1-540-231-3951 ranck@vt.edu Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Computing Center ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #278 ******************************