Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA07948; Mon, 24 Nov 1997 22:10:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 22:10:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199711250310.WAA07948@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #330 TELECOM Digest Mon, 24 Nov 97 22:10:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 330 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Announcing a New Sponsor ... (TELECOM Digest Editor) LEC Emergency-Break Capability (Michael Hayworth) Re: Ericsson TDMA Cellphones: Gimme A Break! (Alan Boritz) Re: Service Map of Local Carriers in Southern California (Anthony Argyriou) Re: Monopolies and Microeconomics (Linc Madison) Digital TV Towers (Roy Smith) Re: Payphone Operator Compensation for Coinless Calls (Stanley Cline) Re: COCOTs Misprogrammed (Stanley Cline) 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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 21:42:52 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Announcing a New Sponsor ... Actually, he is not new around here; he has been part of the TELECOM Digest for a few years now, and he has had a sponsored link on the Telecom Web Page for awhile also, but he recently made a contribution which enabled me to replace a bit of old obsolete equipment and make production of the Digest run a bit more smoothly. I am referring to Mike Sandman, whose mail order service of telecom- related supplies and parts here in the Chicago area is well known to many of you. Refer to: http://www.sandman.com for more details. He has a fascinating catalog which he will be glad to send to any of you who request it. For those of you who read the Digest version of this newsgroup each day and who read the information in the masthead you will see a new reference there to Mike as one of the people whose financial help has insured the continued publication of this Digest. Mike was a telephone installer/repairman prior to opening his own company a few years ago, and judging from the huge array of stuff he now sells via mail order, I'd say he made a smart choice to get out of installing and repairing on someone else's payroll and into business for himself. Please order a catalog today if you do not have the current one already (many/most readers here may have already received it.) Thanks again Mike! PAT ------------------------------ From: Michael Hayworth Subject: LEC Emergency-Break Capability Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 16:43:07 -0600 Organization: Innovative TeleSolutions Got an emergency page the other night from the babysitter, and when I called, the line was apparently busy, because it forwarded to our voice mailbox. Tried to get the operator to do an emergency break on the line. After nearly ripping the phone out of the wall because she held me up for ten minutes while I told her that, no, I don't have a Southwestern Bell calling card she could charge it to and I didn't have several dollars worth of change in my pocket to feed the blasted pay phone, she put me on the line with her equally unhelpful supervisor. The supervisor told me that, since we have Call Forward Busy on the line, she couldn't do an emergency break anyway, because she'd just end up forwarded to our second line. Is that an accurate description of how CFB affects the CO's emergency break capability? I've never seen that mentioned before, but with two small children at home, I'm sort of questioning the wisdom of having CFB on my line if it means that I can't have the operator break in on the line in case of emergency. The payment issue is another item, and I'm unbelievably steamed over that, but I want to understand the technology issues first. Thanks, Michael Hayworth ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: Ericsson TDMA Cellphones: Gimme A Break! Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 18:30:57 -0500 In article , ted_klugman@usa.net (Ted Klugman) wrote: >> To add to disappointment, I found that the great digital messaging >> built into this phone won't work outside of the NYC metro area > The sales rep should have told you this when you subscribed. I just called AT&T customer service and they repeated the pitch. They say that it should work in Boston, though it doesn't. They say it should work in Philadelphia, though it doesn't. Guess they should not be continuing to repeat this pitch if it's not true. > Think of it this way -- at least the phone works out of the AT&T PCS > area. Some other PCS phones can't roam on analog systems. Think of it this way, a Bell Atlantic CDMA phone works everywhere this one doesn't, and both phones are cellular, not PCS. The system holds the digital message data until you return, but it's fairly useless if you travel out of the area frequently. > And rumor has it that they'll be setting up an agreement with > Comcast Cellular, who covers South Jersey. Comcast already has IS-136 > deployed "unofficially" Customer service is telling customers it's working *now*, not at a future date. >> (my voice mail was happily announcing to leave a numeric message >> that I wouldn't see for another three days, while out of town on >> business). I also found that even while in range of the system, >> digital messaging has been extremely slow (last night I got a >> voicemail alert two hours after returning to the area, and an hour >> after a two-day-old text message finally reached me). > This shouldn't be the case -- but maybe it has something to do with > the Ericsson phone. When I travel into the AT&T coverage area I > usually get my messages within about ten minutes. If it's the phone, then it's *all* the Ericsson phones on the system. A friend with the same model phone is experiencing the same problems, though he doesn't travel outside of the area as much as I do. ------------------------------ From: anthony@alphageo.com (Anthony Argyriou) Subject: Re: Service Map of Local Carriers in Southern California Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 05:47:47 GMT Organization: Alpha Geotechnical Reply-To: anthony@alphageo.com On Sat, 22 Nov 1997 19:33:55 +0000, Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: > GTE Consumer Relations has one of their area it can safelly be assumed > that what is not theirs is Pac Bell. Also CPUC has a CO and LATA map > that shows carriers for the whole state you will need to call the SF > office for it though. Not quite -- there are other carriers in California. That CPUC map shows about ten different companies, and I think that one is really a loose group of small independents. The first place that comes to mind as neither GTE nor PacBell is Roseville (Placer County) and Citrus Heights (Sacramento County) which have the "Roseville Telephone Company" as their local provider. I don't know LA well enough to tell you where the independents are down there. I would assume that the original poster would like a street-level description of the borders of the service areas -- does the CPUC have such a thing? Anthony Argyriou http://www.alphageo.com ------------------------------ From: Telecom@LincMad.NOSPAM (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Monopolies and Microeconomics Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 23:19:33 -0800 Organization: LincMad Consulting; change NOSPAM to COM In article , ahk@chinet.chinet.com (Adam H. Kerman) wrote: > [many paragraphs of misinformation about the U.S. Postal Service] 1. The U.S. Postal Service is *NOT* an agency of the U.S. government. In some respects, it's a fine or even meaningless distinction, but still you erred in describing it as such. 2. The U.S. Postal Service is *NOT* supported by *ANY* tax revenue *AT ALL*. 100.000% of its revenue is from postage, fees, and marketing. Has been for many years now. 3. The classes of mail are for the most part NOT defined by law. The only class of mail defined by law is first class letter mail, to which the U.S. Postal Service is granted a monopoly. Other classes of mail are defined by postal regulations, which are not law. There are certainly problems with the USPS, but your argument is diluted by getting fundamental facts wrong. ** Do not send me unsolicited commercial e-mail spam of any kind ** Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom@LincMad-com URL:< http://www.lincmad.com > * North American Area Codes & Splits >> NOTE: if you autoreply, you must change "NOSPAM" to "com" << ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 11:47:08 -0500 From: roy@mchip00.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) Subject: Digital TV Towers Organization: NYU School of Medicine, Educational Computing There has been a lot of talk in the aviation mass media about digital TV towers. The problem is that with the advent of digital TV, we are going to see (if you can believe the aviation press) an explosion of new TV transmission towers, and not only that, but taller ones. These towers present a hazard to air safety, especially when built near airports. My question is why? What is do different about digital TV that requires the building of new towers? I would think it would be fairly straight forward to just add additional transmitter antennas to the same tower structures that exist today for conventional TV transmiss- ion, with no net increase in the number of towers (and thus, no net increase in the air navigation hazard). Why would this not be the case? Roy Smith New York University School of Medicine 550 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 ------------------------------ From: roamer1@pobox.com (Stanley Cline) Subject: Re: Payphone Operator Compensation for Coinless Calls Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 02:10:36 GMT Organization: By area code and prefix (NPA-NXX) Reply-To: roamer1@pobox.com On Fri, 21 Nov 1997 08:39:23 EST, in comp.dcom.telecom NBJimWeiss@ aol.com (Jim Weiss) wrote: > In October the FCC approved a payment of 28.4 cents per call to be > paid to payphone operators by the long distance companies for coinless > calls (800/888, dial-around, etc). The long distance carriers are > apparently going to pass this charge through to their customers by > charging them $.30 to $.35 for each 800/888 call received from a > payphone. > Where do the carriers (AT&T, MCI, Sprint, WorldCom, etc.) stand in > implementing procedures and notifying their customers of this new call > "surcharge?" AT&T is explicitly surcharging calls from payphones. Specifically, they are adding either 28, 29, or 35 cents (depending on jurisdiction, i.e., state PSC/PUC vs. FCC) for EACH AND EVERY call placed from a payphone -- calling-card, collect, 500, subscriber 800/888, everything. And no, they haven't provided bill notices/inserts, but I called AT&T to question a specific calling card charge, and the rep reminded me about the payphone surcharges. There is ONE exception to the surcharge: Calls from AT&T's own coinless cardphones. According to the FCC, AT&T *is* entitled to compensation for calls placed from its cardphones, but it seems as if they are NOT surcharging calls handled by AT&T, at least not yet. (I don't know if they are requesting compensation for calls handled by other carriers.) I haven't heard much about MCI and Sprint, but it seems as if they are heading the same direction. These explicit pass-along policies are going to result in at least some businesses, especially paging companies (see post about SkyTel earlier this week), blocking their 800/888 numbers from payphones. A better solution, at least for subscriber 800/888 calls, may be to average the compensation into general rates, either increasing rates or decreasing profit slightly. That wouldn't penalize individual calls and would probably ensure universal access to 800/888, but may upset some customers or carriers by causing them to pay for other customers' calls. Nonetheless, I expect to see explicit surcharges on calling-card and collect calls to continue, regardless of what happens with subscriber 800/888. Stanley Cline somewhere near Atlanta, GA, USA roamer1(at)pobox.com http://scline.home.mindspring.com/ what's up with payphones?.......see http://cocot.home.mindspring.com/ spam not wanted here!....help outlaw spam - see http://www.cauce.org/ ------------------------------ From: roamer1@pobox.com (Stanley Cline) Subject: Re: COCOTs Misprogrammed Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 02:10:38 GMT Organization: By area code and prefix (NPA-NXX) Reply-To: roamer1@pobox.com On Sat, 22 Nov 1997 12:09:22 -0500, in comp.dcom.telecom aboritz@ CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) wrote: > No, David, those COCOT's were intentionally set up to do what they > did. The teleslime operator in Arizona told me (literally) that it > was tough, and they could basically do what they wanted in that state. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ No, they may not. *Federal* regulations bar COCOTs from blocking calls to any number used to access long distance carriers, including 800/888 numbers such as 1-800-CALL-ATT, etc. They may not reroute calls destined for one carrier to another carrier, as has been known to happen as well. A few states, notably Texas and North Carolina, have allowed charges for calls to 800/888 numbers -- but under Federal regs, there can be no more charge for calls to reach other carriers than to reach the COCOT's preferred carrier, so in practice, most phones in those areas didn't charge. If they did, calls to common access numbers such as AT&T's and MCI's would be allowed free -- but users of smaller carriers' services might have problems. As for Arizona allowing COCOT owners to "do what they want" -- I have a feeling it's more a matter of lax enforcement of regulations already on the books, instead of no regulations at all. Tennessee, for one, seems to be excessively lax with policing payphones (they're clueless too -- one TRA bureaucrat sent me an outdated copy of a BellSouth 10xxx list, saying "that's valid"), even though TN's regulations seem fairly strict; Georgia and other states are *much* more vigilant. But even in the "good" states such as Georgia, some companies and phones fall through the cracks. I've talked to the people responsible for COCOT enforcement in several states; as with other state agencies, they tend to be overworked and can't get to everything. Typically, large COCOT companies (Peoples, CCI, etc.), companies that provide service to schools/government buildings/etc., and companies flagrantly and openly violating the regs get the most attention, while small, quiet companies that are in out-of-the-way locations get substantially less attention. > The property owner in the NYC suburb didn't care whether customers > liked it or not. Same thing with the COCOT operators in Oradell, NJ. > I think that with the virtual explosion of portable phones in the > marketplace, and the PCS companies starting up to increase competition > in that area, we'll see a lot more COCOT abuses with fewer complaints Don't forget the payphone local-call deregulation, and other shifts in the telecom environment in general. Payphone owners can now charge what they want -- in "captive audience" situations such as malls and schools, phones may charge *much* more than phones in other locations. The FCC didn't build in safeguards for such environments, which could certainly lead to more and more rate abuse. The push for expansion of local calling areas in some states points to more and more COCOTs charging "toll" for calls that are really local calls (this is already a major problem in Atlanta, Chattanooga, and some other places.) Even more importantly: The increasing demand on numbering resources -- new NPAs, the 101XXXX CIC/CAC format, mandatory 10-digit dialing in some areas, etc. -- will lead to phones unable to reach some areas or carriers, or unable to place local calls at all. I've run across MANY payphones, mostly from one *manufacturer*, that are incapable of 101XXXX, and many others that can't handle 10-digit dialing of local calls (even when Atlanta will go mandatory 10-digit on January 1!), NPA 888 as toll-free, and the like. COCOTs tend to be "behind the times" with numbering -- not necessarily because of old CPE, but often because some COCOT owners are just too cheap and/or lazy to update rate tables for their phones. > (fewer people using them who would be inclined to file complaints > with state regulatory agencies). Most people outside of the telecom biz haven't a clue about filing complaints against payphone companies. (Hence my payphone info web page, see below for URL.) Stanley Cline somewhere near Atlanta, GA, USA roamer1(at)pobox.com http://scline.home.mindspring.com/ what's up with payphones?.......see http://cocot.home.mindspring.com/ spam not wanted here!....help outlaw spam - see http://www.cauce.org/ ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #330 ******************************