Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA21574; Tue, 28 Oct 1997 22:02:22 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 22:02:22 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199710290302.WAA21574@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #296 TELECOM Digest Tue, 28 Oct 97 22:02:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 296 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: InTRA-LATA Carrier Verification (Ed Ellers) Re: InTRA-LATA Carrier Verification (James Bellaire) Re: InTRA-LATA Carrier Verification (Leonid A. Broukhis) Re: Is Southwestern Bell Allowed to do This? (Michael Gutteridge) Re: Caller ID: GTE California to GTE Indiana? (Linc Madison) Re: Caller ID: GTE California to GTE Indiana? (Matt Holdrege) Re: Caller ID: GTE California to GTE Indiana? (Marshall A. Levin) Re: New Cellular Phone Experience So Far (Dan Johnson) Re: New Cellular Phone Experience So Far (Michelle Durbin) Re: Slamming: Some Results (David Jensen) Re: Canada Area 867 Activated Today (John David Galt) Re: Old Bell System "Underground Cable" Warning Sign (Lee Winson) Re: Old Bell System "Underground Cable" Warning Sign (Anthony Argyriou) Re: Old Bell System "Underground Cable" Warning Sign (Jeffrey W. Sandris) Re: Pac Bell High Installation Charges for "HiCap" (allword@ix.netcom.com) 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. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: InTRA-LATA Carrier Verification Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 21:33:30 -0500 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Bill Levant wrote: > BTW, if you're lucky (?) enough to have BA inTRA-LATA toll, dialing > 700-4141 gets you the dulcet tones of James Earl Jones thanking you for > using CNN, er ... BA. It's ALMOST worth switching to BA just for that ;-)." Sometimes he does both at once -- Jones did the voiceovers announcing Bell Atlantic's sponsorship of closed captioning on several CNN programs. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 11:26:20 -0500 From: James Bellaire Subject: Re: InTRA-LATA Carrier Verification Marty Tennant wrote: >> At one point, Worldcom told us to dial 700-4141 (we're in area code >> 610) to verify our inTRA-LATA toll PIC assignment. I did; it works >> just like (700) 555-4141. >> I've never seen that mentioned here; does it work anywhere else? > I tried dialing only 700-4141. No go, "your long distance carrier > cannot complete your call as dialed". I then tried 1-803-700-4141, > since I am in NPA 803. It worked, but said "thank you for using GTE". > GTE is not my intralata carrier, but they are my local exchange > carrier. I don't get bills from them anymore for intralata, but they > tried to bill me once for a call that was also billed by my real > intralata carrier. Never could figure that one out. > Anyone else with intralata presubscription out there with anything > to report on this new verification code? It works in 219-293 Elkhart Indiana (GTE), except that 1-219-700-4141 says 'Thank you for choosing MCI' since I picked them for Inter and InTRA-LATA. A call to 1-700-555-4141 returns 'Thank you for choosing LDDS Worldcom as your long distance carrier.' Yikes! I've been slammed! (I'm glad I check occasionally.) Maybe they grabbed my number from an NPA test call? My wife and I haven't signed anything or even answered a sales call. (Someone tried to slam my domain the other day too, sending in a fake DNS change to InterNIC. It's been a bad month.) Welcome to the 90's !!! James E. Bellaire (JEB6) bellaire@tk.com Telecom Indiana Webpage http://members.iquest.net/~bellaire/telecom/ * Note new server - old URL should still work * ------------------------------ From: leob@best.com (Leonid A. Broukhis) Subject: Re: InTRA-LATA Carrier Verification Date: 28 Oct 1997 16:33:57 -0800 In the PacBell area (510) 700-4141 gives "You have reached the test 700 verification network" over very heavy static. Leo ------------------------------ From: Michael Gutteridge Subject: Re: Is Southwestern Bell Allowed to do This? Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 09:25:27 -0800 Organization: ONYX Software Corp. Reply-To: mikeg@spam.onyx.com I don't know about the specific legal ramifications, but to throw my $0.02 in ... We are setting up an office in Roswell, GA. We are a medium sized company with offices in all sorts of places -- not exactly a fly-by-night outfit. When I called BellSouth to set up service, they requested some credit information since we had no previous account. I'd expect this. I actually have a bank-info type sheet with all the relevant information regarding our status as a corporation, bank info, tax id's, references, etc. for just such a purpose. Nope ... they wanted the SSN of one of our board members! I briefly explaned the nature and purpose of a corporation to the representative (brick wall) to no avail. They simply weren't going to give us the lines without this. We were finally able to get them to drop the SSN requirement by putting up a $1000 deposit. To me, this seems really goofy. I'd be very interested in hearing what the PUC has to say about this. I haven't yet gotten around to writing that letter of complaint to the people at BellSouth (and maybe the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the Govenor, et al). Unfortunately, my favorite method of complaint (taking my business *elsewhere*) doesn't seem to be available in the region our office is located. Or did we just do it wrong? We were working with a local vendor, who seemed to regard it as "Standard Operating Procedure", so I think we were in the proper channel. Michael Gutteridge System Administrator ONYX Software Corp. mikeg@spam.onyx.com 425.519.4118 www.onyx.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your various accounts in other locations with 'traditional' telcos in those places should have been sufficient to have service started at your new location; in fact, it should have been turned on and waiting for you. It sounds like you got stuck with a real dumbo of a service representative. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Telecom@LincMad.NOSPAM (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Caller ID: GTE California to GTE Indiana? Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 11:48:13 -0800 Organization: LincMad Consulting; change NOSPAM to COM In article , Rich Courtney wrote: > I think California is prohibited from sending CID. It is due to > privacy issues. No, that issue has been completely resolved in the courts. If you dial *67, or if you have per-line blocking, then your call will be flagged as "private" (or "anonymous"). If you dial *82, or if you don't have per-line blocking, your call should be sent with caller-id. That all assumes that the originating switch is capable of sending CLID, and that the carriers along the way correctly relay it to the other end. If you get "no data" or "out of area," then somebody dropped the ball. ** Do not spam e-mail me! ** Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom@LincMad-com >> NOTE: if you autoreply, you must change "NOSPAM" to "com" << ------------------------------ From: holdrege@eisner.decus.org (Matt Holdrege) Subject: Re: Caller ID: GTE California to GTE Indiana? Organization: DECUServe Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 17:42:00 GMT In article , Tom@Ytram.Com writes: > 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. Lancaster is out in the desert so I'm not too surprised. I don't think there are any regulatory issues. I'm in GTE-CA and recently got calling name ID from someone in GTE-Hawaii. ------------------------------ From: Marshall A. Levin Subject: Re: Caller ID: GTE California to GTE Indiana? Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 11:03:28 -0400 Organization: Acunet Internet Commerce Reply-To: Marshall A. Levin I'm having a similarly annoying problem here in 617. Someone calls me (I'm in 617 -- Boston) from Medford (until recently this was 617 -- now it is 781). I always get "out of area" information for this call. Just last week I got a flyer in my phone bill (from Bell Atlantic, which just recently merged with NYNEX) which boasted that now that NYNEX and Bell Atlantic were one company, Calling number AND name would be delivered throughout Bell Atlantic's area (something like Virginia to Maine). Seems strange that I can't get this calling number and name data from a few miles away, in what was always NYNEX area and in what was until recently the same area code. Anyone have any ideas? ML ------------------------------ From: panoptes@iquest.net (Dan Johnson) Subject: Re: New Cellular Phone Experience So Far Date: 28 Oct 1997 03:11:31 GMT Organization: IQuest Internet, Inc. In article , Christopher Herot wrote: > My theory is that the person in the seat next to you is as caught up > in the driving experience as you are. Any human-factors students out > there might find it an interesting research project to see if the > nature of the conversation is different whether the other party is in > the car or remote on the phone. This might be what you mean, but there is also the fact that someone in the car with you is likely to be aware of driving situations that call for your complete attention and shut up accordingly. A couple friends of mine are definite non-drivers and exceptions to this. I've had to block them out when they tell me to look at something off the side of the road while driving in traffic at 40 MPH. Once or twice, I've had to tell them to shut up. Daniel W. Johnson panoptes@iquest.net http://www.members.iquest.net/~panoptes/ 039 53 36 N / 086 11 55 W ------------------------------ From: Michelle Durbin Subject: Re: New Cellular Phone Experience So Far Date: 28 Oct 1997 17:06:59 GMT Organization: West Coast Online's News Server - Not responsible for content Lisa Hancock wrote in article : > 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. Yes, I know when we > drive we freely talk to the person next to us, but somehow it's > different on the phone. Considering all the times I was nearly > hit by a distracted driver talking on the phone, I don't know how > people do it. Some cell phones have a headset jack on them that would allow you to talk hands free. Some phones without headset jacks, such as Motorola flip phones, have kits available to make them headset compatible. For info on cell phone headsets, you can check out www.hello-direct.com. Of course, even with a headset, dialing can still be a problem, but many phones have speed dial. > 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. You don't need to worry about memory if you use a negative pulse charger. Memory develops when gas bubbles form on the charging plate. Negative pulse chargers force the bubbles off of the charging plate, restoring the battery's talk time. Also, NiMH batteries don't develop memory the same way, although they don't keep their charge as long as NiCd. ------------------------------ From: djensen@madison.tds.net (David Jensen) Subject: Re: Slamming: Some Results Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 01:57:15 GMT Organization: At My House Reply-To: djensen@madison.tds.net On Mon, 27 Oct 1997 22:45:45 -0500, in comp.dcom.telecom jim@newmediagroup.com (Jim Youll) wrote: > GTE (my LEC), and I admit I'm surprised to say this, was the most > helpful of any of the involved parties. While they had LOST my PIC > restriction (which allowed this to happen) they did expedite the > signature form to me, called today to followup, didn't call with > pandering niceties, promised to remove the PIC-change charges, will > recourse all LD charges back to Sprint for the slammer period, and > flagged my account for a followup in a few weeks. From what I can tell, asking your LEC to recourse billing for slamming or for AOS overcharges seems to be an excellent strategy. If everyone who was slammed or AOSlimed asked that their bill be recoursed, you would find that the number of bad actors would drop dramatically. There is no way the unscrupulous will be able to profitably collect the bills that are recoursed, especially since many jurisdictions will not allow them to collect anything. David Jensen ------------------------------ From: jdg@but-i-dont-like-spam.boxmail.com (John David Galt) Subject: Re: Canada Area 867 Activated Today Date: 28 Oct 1997 17:51:39 GMT Organization: Sacratomato Cynics Quoth Charles Cremer : > 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 No one has mentioned this, but I doubt that folks _in_ the territories have permissive dialing, because lots of prefixes in Alberta probably conflict with those in the eastern (former 819) part of 867; and lots of prefixes in Quebec/819 probably conflict with those in the western part of 867. As with the recent 916/707 realignment (Dixon, CA), permissive dialing can exist for people dialing into the affected area from outside, but not for people within the new 867 area: if they dial a seven-digit number now, it will be treated as an 867 number. John David Galt ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) Subject: Re: Old Bell System "Underground Cable" Warning Sign Date: 28 Oct 1997 00:09:02 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS > Along major roads/highways in some parts of New Orleans, I've always > seen these yellow signs on utility poles indicating that there is > underground wiring in the vicinity, and to please contact the utility [snip] > TODAY, I noticed a much _older_ sign still attached to a utility pole. > It had the _OLD_ (pre-1970's) Bell System logo (the one which REALLY > LOOKED like a bell), and the following text.... There are plenty of old such signs for various utilities all over in the Philadelphia area. Some say to call Repair Service at 611 (Bell Atlantic had to discontiue "611" on account of local competition-- because it was unfair and confusing to Bell to have that number when other carriers would have full numbers.) In downtown Philadelphia, there are a great many heavy manhole covers with "KTCo" (Keystone Telephone Company, which was an independent company closed after WW II), and PRT (Philadelphia Rapid Transit, which changed its name in 1940.) Mark, would you like me to send you a photo of an old Bell sticker? ------------------------------ From: anthony@alphageo.com (Anthony Argyriou) Subject: Re: Old Bell System "Underground Cable" Warning Sign Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 02:21:42 GMT Organization: Alpha Geotechnical Reply-To: anthony@alphageo.com On Wed, 22 Oct 1997 09:31:55 -0500, Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > Along major roads/highways in some parts of New Orleans, I've always > seen these yellow signs on utility poles indicating that there is > underground wiring in the vicinity, and to please contact the utility > company PRIOR to digging or dredging. {more history and uselessness of numbers snipped} In California and Nevada, there is an outfit known as USA, Underground Service Alert. Most utilities which have underground lines are members of the service. Before conducting _any_ excavating or drilling on public property or utility easments, one is supposed to call their 800 number, and have the areas to be dug marked. Calling USA is required by LAW in California. If you damage any utility by digging or drilling without having the specific location marked out and there is no USA call, you will be liable for _all_ damages. Pacific Bell (or AT&T?) nailed a geotechnical consultant for drilling through a cable which carried most of downtown San Francisco's LD calls. Final settlement was in the $millions, for a 4-hour interruption. Not all utilities are members of USA, since the service is paid for by utility company dues, and is not mandatory at the utility end. The dues are sometimes more than small, rural outfits can afford. However, calling USA gets a list of utilities which will include the local phone co, electric co, gas co, water district, sewer agency, cable TV monopoly, several LD carriers, railroad companies (SP has many pipelines, not all near existing track), private companies (especially near refineries), and smaller agencies, like irrigation districts. There are several phone numbers for USA, depending on the age of the sign or directory listing, but last I checked, they all still work. Anthony Argyriou http://www.alphageo.com ------------------------------ From: sandris@shore.net (Jeffrey William Sandris) Subject: Re: Old Bell System "Underground Cable" Warning Sign Date: 28 Oct 1997 14:03:52 -0400 Organization: The Alliance of Independent Burlingham Sisters In article , Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > About ten years ago, AT&T put up some of their own such signs (with > the post-divestiture 'fried-brain' AT&T logo) Is this referring to the current logo (AKA "Death Star"), or did they have a different logo immediately post-divestiture? (I seem to remember the "American Bell AIS" ads that AT&T used before they lost the rights to the Bell name had the current logo, but I could be mistaken.) Jeffrey William Sandris sandris@shore.net ------------------------------ From: Tommy Boy Subject: Re: Pac Bell High Installation Charges for "HiCap" Date: 28 Oct 1997 04:16:35 GMT Organization: Netcom Carlos, How old is your house/neighborhood? Residential homes generally only have two copper "drops" to each of them. Makes sense from investment standpoint. Very few T1s to Joe Consumer. Because you are one of those telecommuters (look like business customer), Telco would have to bring extra copper pairs to the Network Interface box at your home. Depending on how you are served (aerial or underground), the property owner is generally responsible for all trenching from the property line to your residence. This would be de-regulated work that the telco can perform or any contractor. Pac Bell would generally farm that out anyway to a sub using time and materials. In terms of special construction, the state regulators and the feds have pretty straightforward definitions of what it is. Telcos are allowed to charge special construction for any investments that would be STRANDED or not reusable in the event you would discontinue service (i.e. move away and typical consumer take residence). PacBell would likely have to file a tariff or the contract with the PUC. I doubt it is arbitrary. I would suggest SIGNING A LONG TERM CONTRACT and the charges may become a moot point. If the Telco is guaranteed a sufficient return on investment, you may not have the problem. Pure economics. I know in the Ameritech region, there are no install charges on T1s if you sign a three or five year contract. If you disconnect early, then you have to pay them back. Did you ask for a Term Plan on the Hicap? ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #296 ******************************