Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA28180; Fri, 5 Dec 1997 22:40:39 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 22:40:39 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199712060340.WAA28180@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #341 TELECOM Digest Fri, 5 Dec 97 22:40:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 341 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom on the Toronto Transit Commission (David Leibold) Book Review: "The Internet Strategy Handbook" by Cronin (Rob Slade) UCLA Short Course on "Evolutionary Computation" (Bill Goodin) Speech Enabled Telephone Stock Trading System (Bruce Pennypacker) Winstar Experiences Wanted (Robert L. McMillin) LCI Offers Long-distance Billing by the Second (Keith Knipschild) Radio Modem For WAN and Serial Port Communication (Kurt Miller) 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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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: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 23:44:01 EST From: David Leibold Reply-To: David Leibold Subject: Telecom on the Toronto Transit Commission A report from the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) from its 18th November 1997 meeting (report #15) demonstrates the variety of telecommunications services used in a large transit system. The report (dated 23 October 1997) recommended that the TTC budget $2,519,800 for Bell Canada services in calendar year 1998. Last year the TTC approved $2 524 800 in funds to pay for these services. The TTC relies not only on Centrex services, but also lines for business, data and fax. Special services such as TimeLine and the CIS vehicle contact system also require Bell services. Other telecom activities include telephone moves and installs, changes to phone systems programming, repairs, long distance (with mention of "1-800" service). With its many locations for subway, administrative and operational facilities, the TTC concludes that Centrex is best suited for the backbone of its telecommunications system. TimeLine reads back times of upcoming buses to callers. Each bus stop is assigned a telephone number, usually on the 416-539 NXX (I don't know if any other 416-NXX is used in TimeLine service). +1 416 539 2737 is a good sample number to try for curious callers. As for subway phones, there is a "PAX" system used in the stations which is likely a subset of the TTC's entire Centrex service. Phones are located on ends of the station platforms, normally near the third rail power emergency cutoff switch. The phones can be used for emergencies or staff calls. Some other factoids from the report: * There were 3290 office and subway lines; * ... and 4055 telephone sets; * ... and 255 data lines (admin. and operations computer networking); * 11 additional data lines were budgeted in 1997-8 for new systems such as Sheppard Subway Project or Metro Police Link (costing an extra $20,500 in 1998); * 47 data lines were budgeted in 1998 for subway station "media sales" (tickets, tokens, Metropasses) - no other details were given, though this could be for credit/debit card authorisations or other accounting or staff contact functions; * TimeLine receives 9 million calls/year; a slight cost decrease is expected due to recent voice line rate reductions; * There are 155 fax lines currently; another 4 were budgeted for 1998; * The Justification statement in the report stated: "In order for the Commission to communicate effectively internally and externally, communications in the form of business, computer data, facsimile lines, and special communication services are required to maintain its current operating standard." The main TTC telecom category costs of this year's projections and next year's budget are compared: 1997 projection 1998 budget %change --------------- ----------- ------- Telephone Services $1 616 800 $1 781 300 +10.2% Data Lines 273 300 333 300 +22.0 CIS Lines (except cell) 206 100 187 600 -9.0 TimeLine 69 700 63 600 -8.8 Fax Lines 80 800 89 000 +10.1 Voice Processing Lines 24 100 65 000 +169.7 --------- --------- ------ Total 2 270 800 2 519 800 +11.0 [Voice Processing refers to the OCTEL voice mail system used by TTC. This was upgraded October 1996 with another upgrade scheduled for 1998. The expansion to the Marketing and Public Affairs department is expected in first quarter 1998 - that department is responsible for the TTC's main customer information line (416) 393.4636.] There is also a fully-automated TTC information line at (416) 393.8663 (393.TONE) designed for continuous access to general transit information. Curious long distance callers are cautioned that there is a fairly lengthy opening spiel about Metropass subscription program arrangements before the menu of options. This can be interrupted by keying in a '1' or other digit to get to one of the options. ----------------- Meanwhile in other TTC telecom-related news, Report #25 of that same 18th November meeting deals with plans for "microcell" sites that Cantel/AT&T wants to set up on two TTC sites. One would be at the Yonge/Steeles bus loop and the other would be on the Warden subway station grounds. These are needed to clear up some rough spots in the Cantel/AT&T wireless coverage. A microcell consists of a cabinet for the electronics, a steel monopole antenna, and a microwave antenna. According to blueprints in the report, these consist of a "'REL TEC' DEC70 Radio Cabinet" and a "VMP2-370A Microwave Antenna" (subject to any errors from transcribing the small and fuzzy diagram wording). The plan is for Cantel/AT&T to have a five-year lease on the sites, with option for up to three five-year renewals. The TTC expects to receive $8000 in rent the first year for the two new sites, with rents escalating to accumulate $42 473 for the first five years. Previous microcells have been installed at TTC subway stations (Queen's Park, Davisville, Eglinton West) and at the King/Parliament streetcar loop grounds. -------------------- And finally, there are signs that an official TTC web site may finally spring to life (transit services in many other places have long ago set up their websites). http://www.ttc.on.ca/ currently gives an "under construction" message, though. There are numerous unofficial webpages with Toronto transit data. Meanwhile, the Metro Toronto government, responsible for TTC operations, has some TTC service information on its website (http://www.metrotor.on.ca). David Leibold aa070@freenet.toronto.on.ca ------------------------------ From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:32:34 +0000 Subject: Book Review: "The Internet Strategy Handbook" by Cronin Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKINSTHB.RVW 970803 "The Internet Strategy Handbook", Mary J. Cronin, 1996, 0-87584-720-X, U$29.95 %A Mary J. Cronin cronin@bcvms.bc.edu %C 60 Harvard Way, Boston MA 02163 %D 1996 %G 0-87584-720-X %I Harvard Business School Press %O U$29.95 617-495-6947 smcconville@hbsp.harvard.edu %O www.hbsp.harvard.edu %P 296 %T The Internet Strategy Handbook: Lessons from the New Frontier of Business Cronin's "Doing Business on the Internet" (cf. BKDBSINT.RVW) is one of the leading texts on commercial use of the net. It contains case studies of Internet success stories, how they developed, what worked, and what didn't. It was, however, effective because of the research and editing of Cronin herself, who did not simply ignore inconvenient facts. Success, apparently, breeds contempt. This book is a collection of case studies of business uses of the net. The individual pieces, though, were written by employees of the companies involved. In many cases, by employees from Program Offices, Information Resources, Corporate Communications, Information Specialties, Business Development, and other euphemisms for flack. The results are, unfortunately, predictable. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKINSTHB.RVW 970803 ------------------------------ From: Bill Goodin Subject: UCLA Short Course on "Evolutionary Computation" Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:15:38 -0800 On March 4-6, 1998, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Evolutionary Computation: Principles and Applications", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructors are Melanie Mitchell, PhD, Research Professor, Santa Fe Institute; Lawrence Davis, PhD, President, Tica Associates; and Una-May O'Reilly, PhD, Research Fellow, AI Laboratory, MIT. Each participant receives a copy of the book, " An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms", M. Mitchell (MIT Press 1996), and extensive course notes. This course introduces engineers, scientists, and other interested participants to the burgeoning field of evolutionary computation. Evolutionary computation -- genetic algorithms, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, and genetic programming -- is a collection of computational techniques, inspired by biological evolution, to enhance optimization, design, and machine learning. Such techniques are increasingly used to great advantage in applications as diverse as aeronautical design, factory scheduling, bioengineering, electronic circuit design, telecommunications network configuration, and robotic control. Three of the leading experts in this field present the fundamentals of evolutionary computation which should enable participants to write their own evolutionary computation applications. The course includes detailed descriptions of many applications, as well as how to design genetic algorithms and other methods for problems of interest to the participants. Comparisons of genetic algorithms with other search and learning methods are discussed in the context of the example applications. The final day focuses on identifying promising areas for genetic algorithm optimization, and creating a genetic algorithm that performs well on your optimization problems. Course participants who wish to present a problem on the last day are encouraged to contact Dr. Davis (davis@tica.com; phone [617] 864-2292) prior to the course to determine its usefulness as an example. The instructors hope to use two examples to illustrate the points made on the final day. The course fee is $1395, which includes extensive course materials. These materials are for participants only, and are not for sale. For a more information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu http://www.unex.ucla.edu/shortcourses This course may also be presented on-site at company locations. ------------------------------ From: Bruce Pennypacker Subject: Speech-Enabled Telephone Stock Trading System Date: 5 Dec 1997 20:39:06 GMT Organization: Applied Language Technologies INTERVOICE AND ALTECH COMBINE TO DEVELOP E*TRADE'S SPEECH-ENABLED TELEPHONE INVESTING SYSTEM - E*TRADE Customers Now Need Only Voice and Telephone to Access Services - DALLAS, December 4, 1997-- Dallas-based InterVoice, Inc. (NASDAQ:INTV), the leading global supplier of call and business process automation solutions, and Boston-based Applied Language Technologies, Inc. (ALTech), the leading provider of speech-activated solutions for transactional telephony applications, announced today the use of their combined technologies to develop and deploy E*TRADE Group Inc.'s (NASDAQ:EGRP) speech-enabled TELE*MASTER investing system. E*TRADE Group Inc., a leading branded provider of online investing services, has completed the nationwide rollout of the industry's first fully speech-enabled, natural language investing services system that goes beyond basic securities quotes to empower customers to place stock orders, get quotes, check account balances and positions and access portfolio information 24 hours a day, seven days a week from any telephone anywhere. By combining state-of-the-art technologies from InterVoice and ALTech, the E*TRADE system understands over 50,000 words, allows callers to interrupt the system's prompts at any time and enables callers to interact using speech or touch tone. The system is sophisticated enough to understand complex voice commands such as "buy 1,350 shares at the market price." "While transaction-based applications have become ubiquitous through the use of IVR, and speech recognition-based applications are slowly being deployed, they have typically been confined to digit recognition or command and control applications," said Nancy Jamison, principal with San Jose, CA-based Dataquest. "E*TRADE's system is the first real speech-enabled natural language application that facilitates transactions that we have seen on this scale for the common user. From an industry perspective, the tight bundling of ALTech's SpeechWorks with InterVoice's InVision graphical application development tool represents a quantum leap forward in terms of the time to market for this type of application." "The proprietary system we have developed with our technology partners, InterVoice, Inc. and Applied Languages Technologies, is simply amazing in its capability to understand exactly what customers are saying. For example, it even knows that "Big Blue" is International Business Machines and will provide the information or place orders as requested," said Christos M. Cotsakos, president and chief operating officer of E*TRADE Group, Inc. "We are proud, and our customers seem quite pleased, that E*TRADE is the first online investing service to offer its customers a fully speech-enabled telephone investing system. The unsolicited feedback we have had from customers is enthusiastic, appreciative and supportive of our efforts to add yet another option for the empowered investor. Their satisfaction is obvious with the number of customers accessing the system and volume of orders increasing daily," he added. Over the past year, E*TRADE purchased and deployed a number of InterVoice systems. At the same time, ALTech integrated its flagship speech recognition engine, SpeechWorks, with InterVoice's OneVoice platform, InterSoft runtime software, and InVision, InterVoice's graphical user interface (GUI)-based application and call flow development environment. "Its been our belief that Internet-enabled and voice-enabled IVR and call center applications will propel the industry's next growth phase," said Mike Barker, InterVoice's president and chief operating officer. "Though we've offered fully integrated speech recognition as an option to our OneVoice Platform for almost ten years, the large E*TRADE implementation, which showcases our most advanced technologies, is the first of what we expect to be many mainstream voice-enabled services." "The E*TRADE system has raised the bar for automated securities systems by making investing possible anytime, anywhere," said Stuart Patterson, president, ALTech. "Our technologies enable TELE*MASTER callers to place orders not just get quotes without talking to a broker. While other companies have talked about speech-enabling business transactions, E*TRADE, InterVoice and ALTech have done it." Applied Language Technologies, Inc. (ALTech) is a leader in the development and implementation of advanced speech recognition and voice processing solutions for the telephony and call center markets. ALTech's SpeechWorks software provides a comprehensive set of features for automating telephone-based transactions and services in industries such as financial services, travel, and telecommunications. ALTech is a privately held corporation based in Boston, Massachusetts. Additional information is available on the Internet at http://www.altech.com. InterVoice, Inc. (NASDAQ:INTV) is the leading global supplier of automated call processing solutions, with an installed base of over 9,100 systems in 49 countries. InterVoice systems are used in inbound and outbound call centers across virtually all industry sectors to increase revenues and customer service levels, while lowering associated costs. With capacities ranging from six to thousands of ports, InterVoice systems integrate with virtually any telephone and IS environment, and are available in both customer premise equipment (CPE) and telco-compliant configurations. InterVoice, an ISO 9001 certified company, is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, USA and has representative offices in Canada, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. Company information and interactive product demonstrations are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.intervoice.com. --------------- FYI, you can try out part of the stock trading system by calling (888) SAY-DEMO (729-3366) and trying our free stock quote line. Just say the name or ticker symbol of any company listed on any of the US exchanges and you'll get a current quote (20 minutes delayed). We have a second demo, called the Music Mall that you can also call. Full instructions for that one are at http://www.altech.com/demos . Bruce Pennypacker Applied Language Technologies Remove .noagis from my address to reply 695 Atlantic Ave. http://www.altech.com Boston, MA 02111 ------------------------------ From: Robert L. McMillin Subject: Winstar Experiences Wanted Date: Fri, 05 Dec 1997 09:53:11 -0800 Organization: Syseca, Inc. I would like to hear from anyone currently using Winstar for CLEC services. I am considering recommending them for our company's short-haul communications needs. They have a pretty good story: using point-to-point millimeter wave (38 GHz) or fiber depending on location, they bypass the LECs and their existing, expensive infrastructure to provide T1 and T3 services. This looks like the only real way that competitive LEC service will ever get off the ground, but I still have questions. Is it reliable? Are their directory assistance operators useful? If (heaven forbid) you have a failure, how is it to deal with their technicians? Do they keep their NPA database updated so that routing calls to the one-a-week split NPAs don't fail? What about billing? And so on. Horror stories and happy endings alike are welcome. 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. ------------------------------ From: Keith Knipschild Subject: LCI Offers Long-distance Billing by the Second Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 10:39:31 -0500 LCI International Inc. says it is the first major long-distance company to bill customers for the exact length of a long-distance phone call -- right down to the second. The company said that, according to TeleChoice Inc., a telecom consulting firm, charging by the second can save consumers an average of 10.7 percent over the practice of full-minute rounding for long-distance calls. "We don't charge customers for time they don't use on the phone by rounding their calls up to the next full minute, like most other carriers do," John Taylor, senior vice president of LCI's consumer business unit, said Wednesday. According to Taylor, customers will be charged in single-second increments, after an initial 60 seconds, for all "LCI Difference" calling services, including state-to-state, international, in-state, local toll, residential 800 and calling card calls. A spokeswoman for the company, which is based in McLean, Va., said LCI has been testing exact billing since the end of the summer over its American Communications Network ( ACN ) Enjoy, Keith <=================================================> Keith@unix.asb.com == SLIP-PPP Internet Address Http://www.asb.com/usr/keith == WWW Page URL Address Http://www.asb.com/usr/keith/video == New Release Video Dates N2NJS@amsat.org == HAM Radio AMSAT EMail N2NJS@KC2FD.NY.USA.NA == Ham Radio AX25 Packet <=================================================> ------------------------------ From: millerk@akamail.com (Kurt Miller) Subject: Radio Modem For WAN and Serial Port Communication Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 10:02:31 +0700 Organization: KJM I am looking for two different products for two different applications: 1. I am looking for a radio link product that can be used to extend a terminal port (low speed serial either 9600 or 19.2K) to a remote location about two miles away. I need the capability of one or several terminal ports. These will be connected to a unix box (probably Sun Ultra) at one end and simple terminals at the other. 2. I am looking for a low to medium speed radio link for a WAN application. I am looking at speeds of 19.2K or slightly faster. I need something that is relatively affordable on a per/port basis and operates in either S-band or L-band. Does anyone have recomendations as to products they have used in the past that are reliable / easy to set up? Please send replys via e-mail to millerk@dnet.net.id Thanks in advance, Kurt Miller millerk@dnet.net.id ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #341 ******************************