Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id HAA08852; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 07:04:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 07:04:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199710231104.HAA08852@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #288 TELECOM Digest Thu, 23 Oct 97 07:04:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 288 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: New Cellular Phone Experience So Far (Alan Boritz) Re: New Cellular Phone Experience So Far (tonypo@ultranet.com) Re: Compuserve Spams Own Customers, Refuses To Stop (Adam Atkinson) Re: "Sky Word Plus" - How Does it Work? (J.D. Baldwin) Re: Intro to Data Communications Wanted? (Robert J. Perillo) Re: How to Ask For Internet Service? (David Richards) Re: Question re: ROLM CBX (Keith Abbott) Canada Area 867 Activated Today (Charles Cremer) Caller ID: GTE California to GTE Indiana? (Tom Allebrandi) Last Laugh! Typical Telco Repair Tech Response (Michael Kennedy) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: New Cellular Phone Experience So Far Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 22:32:35 -0400 In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > Recently I got cellular phone service. I previously posted my experiences > dealing with the sales people. Now here's some notes on usage ... > 1) How do people drive and talk? > For me at least, there's no way I can drive my car and talk on the > phone, it's simply too distracting with traffic. How do you walk and chew gum at the same time? > Yes, I know when we > drive we freely talk to the person next to us, but somehow it's > different on the phone. Of course it is. You need to concentrate to carry on a coherent conversation, but you also need to concentrate to drive a car. It's the subject of a whole field of psychological research. People in broadcasting seem to be able to do that well (speak or read while carrying on an unrelated activity at the same time). I did it for a living for almost 10 years. > 2) The clock is deceiving: I am billed from [send] to [end] in whole > minutes. It takes a few seconds to release the call after you hit [end] > which can add another minute to the call. If you think the party didn't > answer and they did, you are billed for the call. This is an unfortunate byproduct of the technology and implementation being used. Some conventional telephone PBX's will do one worse, and *never* let go of the call, after you thought you hung up (a Siemen switch did that to me a while ago). > 3) No quick hangups: From the wired phone, I often call people who I know > have answering machines, and hang up after 3 rings if I don't feel like > leaving a message. You can't do that on a cell phone because of the [end] > delay. How rude! Your friends are probably grumbling behind your back about the click-click-kerchunk noises you leave on their machines. > 4) Ringing delay. When someone calls me, they'll hear at least 3 rings > before the cell phone starts to ring. A lot of people these days don't > let phones ring very long before hanging up. I must instruct any > callers to let it ring a long time. This is more of a paradox, than a problem. How the switch handles an incoming call that has to search for it's destination, will depend upon the engineer's assumptions about what the caller needs to hear to know that a connection is pending (and not immediately refused). Some switches will not return a ring signal until the system find the subscriber on the system, and presents the caller with silence. Some conventional switches, like the old Northern Tel SL-1 will do the same thing when the switch is blocked. Are long periods of silence more agreeable to the user than long periods of (phony) ring tone? Some would say yes, and some would say no. > If I'm driving, I'll need a moment > to get the phone out and to answer it. Hey, wait a minute, didn't you just say you couldn't talk and drive at the same time? What are you trying to do, get into an accident? > 5) No charge for phone off. I once called someone's cell phone via the > roaming number long distance and was billed even though his phone was > off. However, I called myself from a pay phone with the phone off, > got the recording, and got my money back. Callers can be assured no one > will be billed on either end if the cell phone is turned off. That's not exactly correct (that no one will be charged for a phone being off). If the subscriber has voice mail, the caller will *always* pay for the call, the only difference being that the call goes into voicemail sooner with the phone off in the home system. The subscriber, however, will *always* pay for airtime on unanswered incoming roamer calls, since that's how most of those tariffs are set up (it's been like that since the beginning of cellular roamer service). > 6) Be careful charging/recharging. NiCad batteries the phone uses can > develop a memory if not fully discharged then fully charged. They > suggested I leave the phone on to run down, then fully recharge it. > That makes sense to me, although it is a pain since it does require > some advance planning to allow one day to run down and one night to > recharge. How you deal with the memory effect (in which Pat Townson still won't belive, BTW), depends upon how you use it (i.e. make money with it, or use it for personal convenience). You can buy a little conditioner for under $100 (like Ora's), or add a test fixture to an existing nicad tester for (probably under $1,000, but it may be much easier and convenient to merely toss the battery in the gargage and buy a replacement. ------------------------------ From: tonypo@ultranet.com.NOSPAM Subject: Re: New Cellular Phone Experience So Far Date: 21 Oct 1997 03:21:23 GMT Organization: Providence Network Partners Reply-To: bitbucket@null.nul In article , frankie@mundens.gen.nz says... > In fact, it was this additional servicing requrement that made our > airforce move to gel cel lead acid batteries instead. My cellphone has a NiCad battery that seems to be ok after seven months of usage both on and off a charger. I've only had to put it on the wall charge four or five times since I've had it since much of the time it's in the car. But I do like the little lead-acid gel-cell that's in my Sony cordless phone. The thing lasts forever and doesn't seem to have the drawbacks of the NiCad. Of course I'd like to put a Li-Ion battery on my cellphone were it not so prohibitively expensive. The battery would be worth more than the phone. Tony ------------------------------ From: Adam Atkinson Subject: Re: Compuserve Spams Own Customers, Refuses To Stop Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 09:42:41 +0100 Organization: Ericsson Reply-To: etlaman@etlxdmx.ericsson.se Michael Hayworth wrote: > Unless you're dialing through their 800 number, or calling long > distance (your choice, not theirs), you're not paying anything for the > time you spend reading e-mail. Connect time charges don't apply to > e-mail, customer service, and some other places. Unless, of course, you live in a country where local calls cost money. Such as, oh, most places. Certainly the last two countries I've lived in. > Business have to have a way to communicate with their customers, and > I'd much rather they e-mail me than junk mail me. I have to admit, though, that I very nearly agree with you. I have accounts on two ISPs, and I agree that they need to have some way to let me know about changes in terms and conditions of service, phone numbers, etc. In fact they both have internal newsgroups for announcements of this kind, which you are required to read. But I think my ISPs would be within their rights to email me to tell me they were changing their phone number or DNS number or some such thing. I'm on a lot of "product update" mailing lists to do with shareware I use, and am quite happy to be. It's very easy stuff to filter automatically, so it all ends up in a "shareware news" folder rather than in my normal "in" folder. Announcements from my ISPs could obviously be handled the same way. However, if they emailed me a LOT for silly reasons I would get annoyed. Adam Atkinson (etlaman@etlxdmx.ericsson.se) Man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion ------------------------------ From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin) Subject: Re: "Sky Word Plus" - How Does it Work? Organization: Revealed on a need-to-know basis. Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 12:36:29 GMT In article , Mark Brukhartz wrote: > The pager must transmit enough power to be heard from inside of fairly > opaque buildings. Every joule transmitted comes from the one AA cell. > I'm actually impressed that one lasts a month. Of course, because of the ACK required before a page is cleared from the system, you can turn the thing off when you're not wearing it, or when you're out of range, and still be assured that you'll get any pages you "missed" once you turn it on. This is not possible with the SkyWord service (or other traditional paging services), since such pages are sent and just cleared without regard for whether they were received or not. (You know it's the "Information Age" when you can describe a paging service as "traditional.") Since I don't care about getting pages in the middle of the night (except for the special circumstance of being formally "on call" for a client), this is a pretty good battery-saving strategy. Others have complained that coverage is spotty. I can't speak for everywhere in the country (though if you live in Frederick, MD, you can't exactly claim to be surprised by the lack of coverage at home!), but I have been driving back and forth across southern Michigan on I-94, and the coverage throughout that entire corridor is excellent. A few spots of "Storing Messages," substantial stretches of "Basic Service," but by and large most of it is "Full Service" (i.e., two-way connectivity). My verdict on this thing: "Works as advertised." These days, that's pretty high praise for a new and highly-hyped technology. From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I _,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to _|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under \ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer ***~~~~----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 97 00:44 EDT From: Perillo@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL (Robert J. Perillo) Subject: Re: Intro to Data Communications wanted? > Are there any good books that provide an introduction to the realm of > data communications or bookstores that specialize in books of this > type? Most Community Colleges teach a Telecommunications Certificate program, which includes an "Introduction to Data Communications". I have listed the standard texts used, which are available through most bookstores. The Telecommunications program usually consists of five core courses: 1 - Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Survey course. Studies the major aspects of Telecommunications including history, legal and regulatory, technology, and management. Analyzes voice, data, imaging, and video systems. Describes Access-Egress, and Transmission facilities. Overviews carrier services (links and trunks), Traffic Engineering, and the OSI Reference Model. Usually requires three books: "Voice & Data Communications Handbook", Bud Bates and Donald Gregory, McGraw-Hill, 1995, $65.00 . "Signals, the Science of Telecommunications", John R. Pierce and A. Michael Noll, Scientific American Library, 1990, $33.00; A good coffee table book with lots of pictures and diagrams explaining basic telecommunications science. "Newton's Telecom Dictionary 12th edition, the official Dictionary of Telecommunications, Computer Telephony, Data Communications, Internet telephony, Voice processing, Windows 95 & NT communications, LAN, WAN, and wireless networking"; Harry Newton, 1997, $27.95 2 - Telephony Basic Voice Telecommunications, basic voice services and facilities provided by the Telco's, Centrex, PBX, Voice Mail, Wiring and Cabling, Writing an RFP, Computer Telephony, and Automatic Call Distribution (ACD). "The McGraw-Hill Telecommunications Factbook"; Joseph A. Pecar, Roger J. O'Connor, and David A. Garbin, 1993, $29.95 . 3 - Introduction to Data Communications. Explains fundamentals of data telecommunications, the technologies behind Local Area Networks (LAN's), Internet, Public/Private Data Networks, transmission methods and protocols, including Network Management and Administration, plus network security services. Most colleges in the U.S. use: "Data & Computer Communications 5th ed.", William Stallings, 1996, Prentice Hall, $68.00 . The Standard Text, an excellent comprehensive and detailed book, a mandatory reference in most offices. Most universities in Europe use: "Data Communications, Computer Networks and Open Systems, fourth edition", Fred Halsall, Addison Wesley, 1996, $59.95 . Some community colleges use a less rigorous, more introductory, more "why do we do this" text instead: "Business Data Communications, third edition", William Stallings and Richard Van Slyke, Prentice Hall, 1997, $57.00 . An excellent introduction and comprehensive overview of Data Communications. 4 - Network Facilities and Services. Explores in detail the PSTN Network Architecture, SS#7 - AIN, the business WAN architecture, Operations - Administration - Maintenance - Provisioning (OAM&P) concepts, value added features/services. Plus emerging technologies including ISDN, xDSL, Frame Relay, SONET, and ATM and how they fit into the architectures. "Enterprise Networking: Fractional T1 to SONET, Frame Relay to BISDN", Daniel Minoli, Artech, 1992, $89.00 5 - Telecommunications Management and Administration. Studies administrative issues affecting Telecommunications. Integrates the global market place, behavioral, and technical aspects along with business models for the telecommunications industry. Includes budgeting, planning, project management, financial analysis, and decision making for a telecommunications project. Usually requires two texts: "Competitive Telecommunications, How to thrive under the Telecommunications Act", Peter K. Heldman, McGraw-Hill, 1997, $35.95 . "The Art of Strategic Planning for Information Technology", Bernard H. Boar, AT&T/Wiley, 1993, $39.95 . Robert J. Perillo, CCP, CNE Perillo@dockmaster.ncsc.mil Principal Telecommunications Engineer Richmond, VA ------------------------------ From: dr@ripco.com (David Richards) Subject: Re: How to Ask For Internet Service? Date: 21 Oct 1997 05:15:23 GMT Organization: Ripco Internet, Chicago In article , Franky Wong wrote: > Dear fellow guru, > Recently our University is interested to send out a Request for > Proposal for Internet carrier (e.g. T1 line). I would like to make > sure the RFP is technically sound. May I ask what requirements should > I state in the RFP? Working with ISPs, I can state that if you put too many fiddly requirements on the service, you won't get many Ps in response to your RFP. > For example, the followings are concerns that I could think of: > 1 Price schedule for bandwidth upgrade in the future. The upgrade path from a T1 isn't entirely clear, you can go to two T1 circuits load-balanced (a lot of ISPs don't know how to do this right) or pay the local circuit carrier big bucks for fractional T3. Get prices for the circuit and connectivity on both options. Either would require a much higher-end router than a single T1 circuit, which is important if you are buying your router from your ISP- planning to go to higher capicity is one of the few reasons to consider a leased router. You might ask the ISP to specify what they would recommend as an upgrade path. > 2 A certain ratio that would restrict the carrier from selling much > more than the bandwidth that it actually has. > I don't know the correct term, but I think it is not fair if the carrier > sells T1 connections to ten customers when in fact it only > has one T1 link to Internet. All ISPs do some degree of this (overselling or over-committing bandwidth), I wouldn't try to get them to agree to a contract specifying a ratio, but instead look for a performance guarantee, if you're paying for a T1 you should get a T1's worth of bandwidth. > 3 When the line comes to my premise, do I have to waste a subnet when > hooking it up to my router? Or is it recommended that I make use of > some "IP-unumbered" feature available on CISCO or certain routers to > save IP addresses? Or thirdly, is it recommended that I rent the > ip address from the carrier? Have the ISP recommend a router configuration, and if they want to have numbered links, the subnet should come out of _their_ address space at no cost to you, in dollars or IP space. ------------------------------ From: Keith Abbott Subject: Re: Question re: ROLM CBX Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 01:16:32 -0700 Organization: ISPNews I believe Mr. Watson has the gist of it. You dont specify which Rolm CBX you have (9751?, 8000?, Redwood(YAAAHHH)) but generally speaking the '8' series of numbers is dedicated to trunk access codes that allow the switch to select specific (usually dedicated) trunks to remote (or in some cases not) sites. In this case, the 80-store number -- could indeed select either a dedicated trunk up to a hierarchy(er) switch or even (very improbable with 50 stores) the 80xxx could comprise the entire trunk-access code selecting a trunk going directly to that store. The extra digits are then passed through to the switch upline to be used to identify the station being dialed. DISA (Direct Inward System Access) would not be used in a case like this. You can see if your system is using 80 as a trunk access code by looking in your first digit table (on a 9751 anyway) ie cnfg li first_d all... As for back-dooring things, thats probably not the type of information one would be giving over a public forum; and anyway, if the system uses leased lines you'd be better off robbing gas stations ... (that's not a recommendation you start that though.) ------------------------------ From: ccremer@fc.net (Charles Cremer) Subject: Canada Area 867 Activated Today Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 05:18:52 GMT Organization: Freeside Communications The Yukon and Western Territories of Canada now has area code 867. Formerly, the region shared an area code with Alberta. Old Code: 403/819 New Code: 867 Type of Relief: Split Effective Date: 10/21/97 Permissive Dialing End Date: 4/26/98 Test Number(s): 867-669-5448 ------------------------------ From: Tom@Ytram.Com (Tom Allebrandi) Subject: Caller ID: GTE California to GTE Indiana? Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 08:28:41 -0500 Organization: TA Software Systems/Frontline Test Equipment Reply-To: Tom@Ytram.Com Hi! We have caller ID from GTE North Indiana (219-465). Generally, we are getting data from most long distance callers. Except one: A person who calls me from Lancaster, California (805-949). I get a "data unavailble" when he calls. He says that their local telco is GTE, and that he thinks that they have GTE long distance. This is particularly annoying since I work at home and use the caller ID to screen calls during the day. The guy is calling on business, but I can't tell that it is him since I am not getting any caller ID information. Does anyone know anything about this combination (805-949 calling 219-465) or who we can complain to?? Thanks! Tom Allebrandi Frontline Test Equipment | TA Software Systems | Valparaiso, IN USA tallebrandi@fte.com | tom@ytram.com | +1-219-465-0108 ------------------------------ From: Michael Kennedy Subject: Telco Joke Date: 22 Oct 1997 16:43:15 GMT Organization: Great Lakes Technologies A telco guy buys a rifle and promptly goes to his local shooting range to test his abilities. The shooting range attendant hangs a target at which the telco guy proceeds to fire six shots at. The attendant thens takes the unhit target down and yells to the telco guy, "All shots fired were misses!". The telco guy looks at his rifle, covers the end of the barrel with his hand and proceeds to blow off his finger. At which point he yells to the attendant, "Everything works fine here, it must be at your end!" ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #288 ******************************