Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA00999; Thu, 11 Dec 1997 23:41:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 23:41:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199712120441.XAA00999@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #347 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Dec 97 23:41:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 347 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Are Cookie Files Public Record? (Monty Solomon) Fifty Years of Transistors (John R. Levine) Wireless Telephone Systems Seminar (Jerry Kaufman) Bay Area Telecom (Babu Mengelepouti) Locking the Phone Line - Help (Gary Brummond) Bibliography: European Reports on Intelligent Networks (Robin Haberman) Pay Phone Fraud Begins! (Keith Jarrett) Story of MCI Savings Certificates (Eli Mantel) Do Cell Phones Affect Learning? (oldbear@arctos.com) How to Test Coax Cable (RG6)? (Timothy Iafolla) Re: Let Local Competitors Build Their Own Local Loop Plant (Nick) Re: Let Local Competitors Build Their Own Local Loop Plant (Jack Decker) 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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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: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 00:38:11 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Are Cookie Files Public Record? By Dan Goodin December 9, 1997, 4:05 p.m. PT As it moves toward its first court hearing tomorrow, a novel case testing just how far public records law extends into cyberspace appears destined to be a long, drawn-out battle, one of its attorneys said. As reported previously, a weekly newspaper in Tennessee is suing a local municipality in an attempt to obtain files that are automatically stored on employees' computers when they surf the Internet. Plaintiff Geoffrey Davidian, editor of the Putnam Pit, said in court documents that officials in the town of Cookeville turned him down when he tried to obtain the files under Tennessee's public records act. In addition to seeking an order forcing the disclosure of the so-called cookie files, Davidian's suit also seeks unspecified punitive awards and attorneys' fees. The case -- which appears to be the first to test whether cookie files are considered public under a state's public record law -- receives its first court hearing tomorrow. But Sam Harris, the attorney representing Davidian, said little is likely to come out of it. "I've made the offer we will drop any claim to monetary damages if they will agree that any Internet file is public information," said Harris. Attorneys for the city have rebuffed the offer, he added, and are now stalling for time. Last month, the U.S. district judge in Nashville hearing the case postponed a preliminary injunction hearing until after tomorrow's case management conference. At the informal meeting, the judge will set deadlines and iron out other procedural matters, but Harris said he may use the hearing to file an expedited motion for access to the files, called a temporary restraining order. Cookeville officials appear to be digging in their heels. Michael O'Mara, city attorney for the 26,500-person city about 75 miles east of Nashville, said he has obtained a written opinion from Tennessee's attorney general that the computer files Davidian is seeking are not considered public under that state's laws. Specifically, O'Mara points to provisions in the law that make exceptions for temporary records and working papers. A cookie "is about the equivalent of scratching notes on a yellow pad and at the end of the day throwing them away," said O'Mara. "We don't think that the documents the Putnam Pit are requesting are public documents." O'Mara declined to discuss the possibility of a settlement in the case, citing city policy. Many Webmasters use cookies as a way of tracking information about the people visiting a site. Cookies are especially helpful in automating sites that are activated by passwords or that customize content based on a user's preferences. Because the files are automatically stored and updated on the user's hard drive each time a site is accessed, cookies can provide detailed information about a user's browsing habits, such as which sites are visited and when. In a press release posted on his Web site, Davidian said he is seeking the files in an attempt to hold public employees accountable. "The cookie files could show whether taxpayers are footing the bill for city employee access to Internet sites focusing on such issues as white supremacy, pornography, [or] white slavery," Davidian explained. Karl Olson, a California attorney who practices media law, said that on the surface, Davidian's case appears solid. Tennessee's law defines a public record broadly as any media, "regardless of physical form or characteristics [that is] made or recorded...in connection with [the] transaction of official business by any governmental agency." He said it was predictable that the city would contend that cookies are temporary records that are exempt from public record laws. Such arguments are common, but by no means foolproof, said Olson, an attorney at Levy, Ram & Olson in San Francisco, adding, "To me there's a pretty good argument in favor of disclosure." Predictably, Harris, the plaintiff's lawyer, agreed and vowed to press on. "I think the legislature wrote a statute that gives a lot of leeway as to how you interpret it [a public document]," said Harris, a solo attorney in Cookeville. "To me, this is really a First Amendment case. Can public officials subvert the press simply by storing information using modern technology?" [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is just a thesis of mine. The city may have examined those cookie files in the process of deciding what to do in response to the suit and what they found would prove very embarassing. City employees might have been reading the types of things suggested by the newspaper or participating in other non-work related activities on the net. They might have been visiting sex sites or even god-forbid, reading TELECOM Digest. Now the city is stuck with trying to delete the files (or at least the most embarassing parts of them) or deal with the backlash. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 23:56:33 EST From: John R Levine Subject: Fifty Years of Transistors Next Tuesday, December 16th, marks the 50th aniversary of the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs. It's hard to think of an invention that has had a more profound effect on the modern world. Without transistors, we couldn't have fast cheap computers, nor the modern digital telephone network. Lucent, which now owns Bell Labs, has a nice web site on transistor history at http://www.lucent.com/ideas2/heritage/transistor/ Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 ------------------------------ From: Jerry Kaufman <"JerryKaufman@worldnet.att.net"@worldnet.att.net> Subject: Wireless Business Telephone Seminar Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 19:00:59 -0700 Organization: Alexander Resources Reply-To: "JerryKaufman@worldnet.att.net"@worldnet.att.net Wireless Business Telephone Systems Seminar A new, comprehensive, two day educational seminar for telecommunications professionals who need to understand the applications, benefits and limitations of: * WIRELESS CENTREX * IN-BUILDING CELLULAR * WIRELESS PBX * ON-PREMISES/UNLICENSED PCS Location: Orlando, FL Hotel: Sheraton Orlando North Dates: February 5 & 6, 1998 Presented by: Alexander Resources Contact: Carole Kaufman Telephone: 972-818-8225 Fax: 972-818-6366 Seminar Web site: www.alexanderresources.com e-mail:seminars@alexanderresources.com The two day seminar will be taught by Jerry Kaufman, President of Alexander Resources. Mr. Kaufman is an internationally recognized expert on wireless communications and the foremost authority on wireless telephone systems. Alexander Resources Co. 15851 N. Dallas Pkwy, Suite 500 Dallas, TX 75248 USA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 12:36:21 -0500 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: Bay Area Telecom I visit relatives annually in the bay area, which, as a college student with no car, is invariably a very dull experience. I was wondering if there was anything interesting to telecom enthusiasts in or near the area that is accessible by public transportation. That would give me a reason/excuse to leave, so I could get a break from answering the endless questions about the nontraditional academic program at the school I attend ("what do you mean they have NO GRADES?") and the specific academic program I have chosen (So what exactly IS "water resources?"). I have heard that the Roseville Telephone Company has an excellent museum for instance, but how far is that from Mountain View? Any input on that, or anything else of interest in the Bay Area would be very appreciated. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 16:11:42 -0800 From: Gary Brummond Reply-To: tma*uni@unidial.com Organization: Telephone Management Associates Subject: Locking the Phone Line - Help A co-worker of mine has three teenagers who use the telephone on a regular basis. It is their own line, but he limits their incoming and outgoing calls to everything prior to 9:30pm. At 9:30pm, every night, he turns a key which cuts off the telephone line. The problem, he says, is that he has to physically do it at 9:30pm every night. He was wondering if there was the same type of device, only with a timer. This way, he could set the timer, and not have to get up at 9:30pm each time. Thanks for your help! Gary Brummond Telephone Management Associates (888) 444-4TMA tma@unidial.com ------------------------------ From: robineh@ibm.net (Robin E. Haberman) Date: Tue, 09 Dec 97 19:51:41 Reply-To: robineh@ibm.net Subject: Bibliography: European Reports on Intelligent Network The following seven references are on published proceeding, journals and a book on the Intelligent Network in Europe. 1. @inproceedings{BMSB97-PACT, author = {Volker Braun and Tiziana Margaria and Bernhard Steffen and Friedrich--KarlBruhns}, title = {Service Definition for Intelligent Networks: Experience in a Leading--edge Technological Project Based on Constraint Techniques}, booktitle = {3rd Int. Conf. on Practical Application of Constraint Technology (PACT'97)}, year = {1997}, month = {April}, editor = {The Practical Application Company}, address = {London (UK)}, 2. @inproceedings{BrKM-ICIN96-Tut, author = {F.--K.~Bruhns and V.~Kriete and Tiziana Margaria}, title = {Service Creation Environments: Today and Tomorrow}, booktitle = {4th Int. Conf. on Intelligent Networks (ICIN'96)}, year = {1996}, month = {November}, address = {Bordeaux (France)}, 3. @techreport{MIP9604, author = {Tiziana Margaria (Hrsg.)}, title = {Advanced Intelligent Networks '96}, year = {1996}, number = {MIP--9604}, institution = {Fakult\"{a}t f\"{u}r Mathematik und Informatik, University of Passau}, number = {MIP--9604}, 4. @inproceedings{MKMMSB-IWWC97-Tut, author = {Tiziana Margaria and V.~Kriete and B.~Massion and C.~Molic and J.~Sch\"{u}tt and F.--K.~Bruhns}, title = {Women and Intelligent Networks: Experience in a Leading--edge Technological Project}, booktitle = {WWC'97, 6th International IFIP--Conference on Women, Work and Computerization}, journal = {LNCS}, year = {1997}, month = {May}, publisher = {Springer Verlag}, address = {Bonn (germany)}, 5. @article{SMCBR96-IECAnnRev96, author = {Bernhard Steffen and Tiziana Margaria and Andreas Cla\ss{}en and Volker Braun and Manfred Reitenspie\ss{}}, title = {An Environment for the Creation of Intelligent Network Services}, journal = {Annual Review of Communication, Int. Engineering Consortium Chicago (USA), EIC}, year = {1996}, pages = {919--935}, note = {also invited Contribution to the book ``Intelligent Networks: IN/AIN Technologies, Operations, Services, and Applications -- A Comprehensive Report'' IEC, 1996, pp. 287--300.}, 6. @inproceedings{SMCBR96-AIN, author = {Bernhard Steffen and Tiziana Margaria and Andreas Cla\ss{}en and Volker Braun and Manfred Reitenspie\ss{}}, title = {An Environment for the Creation of Intelligent Network Services}, booktitle = {Int. Workshop on Advanced Intelligent Networks (AIN'96)}, year = {1996}, pages = {117--136}, month = {March}, address = {Passau (Germany)}, 7. "The Intelligent Network Standards - their application to service" by Igor Faynberg Lawrence R. Gabudza, Mare P. Kaplan, Nitin J. Shah; published by McGraw Hill (Series on Telecommunication) ISBN 0-07-21422-0, $50 Robin E. Haberman ------------------------------ From: remove_this_part_to_email_keith@tcsi.com (Keith Jarrett) Subject: Pay Phone Fraud Begins! Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 00:41:49 GMT Organization: NetVista Info Corp From a page 1 article in the December 8 issue of RCR (ww.rcrnews.com): [Paging] Dispatch centers across the country already have reported instances of mass auto-dialing from pay phones to their 800-number dispatch lines since the compensation scheme [good choice of words, don't you think?] went into effect. The calls are recorded messages that say, "What's that? (pause) I'm sorry, I must have dialed a wrong number," and then disconnect. Each call lasts about 5-6 seconds and blocks the dispatch centers' caller identification systems [how is this possible if the dispatch center has ANI?]. Dispatch centers believe that the calls are being made by pay-phone [pay-phoney?] service providers looking to cash in on the surcharge. "Whoever this is, they know what they are doing," Kane [VP of All Office Support] said. "Most long-distance carriers bill in 6-second increments, so they will be very difficult to spot." [I don't understand that last comment, since even a 5-second call will be charged as 0.1 minute.] Because the pay-phone compensation scheme makes no provision for wrong numbers, 800-number operators have no choice but to pay up. In the petition, the dispatching parties suggest the FCC that there should be no compensation for calls lasting less than 15 seconds, eliminating the wrong-number issue. [This change would eliminate recorded auto-dialed calls, too, guaranteeing employment for human callers in these fraudulent operations. :-) ] BTW, if you don't subscribe to RCR, check it out. RCR and Wireless Week are the two leading trade publications for the wireless industry. Keith Jarett keith "at" tcsi.com ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Story of MCI Savings Certificates Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 00:37:38 PST I attempted to redeem my MCI Savings Certificate in September. These Savings Certificates were MCI's answer to AT&T's offer of cash for customers willing to come back to AT&T. I called up MCI Customer Service tonight asking them to show me the money that they promised me. What they told me was a real surprise, one that I wanted everyone to hear about, so I've made it the lead story on my Cagey Consumer web site: http://www.geocities.com/wallstreet/5395 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 13:27:38 -0500 From: The Old Bear Subject: Do Cell Phones Affect Learning? As summarized in {Edupage} for 12/11/97: DO CELL PHONES AFFECT LEARNING? European regulators are taking a hard look at research by University of Washington professor Henry Lai that indicates exposure to microwave radiation hampered the ability of lab rats to learn a maze. Lai found that exposing the rats to 45 minutes of microwave radiation similar to levels that might be absorbed by a typical cell phone user slowed the rats' ability to master the task. The effects of the waves could be ameliorated by pretreating the rats with drugs that target two neurochemical systems in the brain -- the endogenous opioid system and the cholinergic system, leading Lai to propose that these systems are affected by microwave-frequency fields. The Wireless Technology Research Group, an industry-funded group, is now planning its own experiments. Meanwhile, at least one company in Germany already began advertising "low-radiation" cell phones this past summer. source: {Scientific American} December 1997 ------------------------------ From: Timothy Iafolla Subject: How to Test Coax Cable (RG6) ? Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 08:12:03 -0500 Organization: Erol's Internet Services After crimping on a coaxial connector, is there an easy way to test for continuity, shorts, etc, using a multimeter? Thanks, Tim Iafolla ------------------------------ From: Nick Subject: Re: Let Local Competitors Build Their Own Local Loop Plant Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 01:24:26 -0500 Organization: @Home Network Lee Winson wrote: > After reading the MCI sleaze post I had a thought: To be truly fair in > local telephone competition, let's make it TRUE competition. Let each > player build their own local loop plant and central office facilities. > blah blah blah Then Pat added ... > ... Remember, it took Bell a hundred years to get where they were at > at that point in time. I would argue that the truly fair course of action would be to take the local loop away from the RBOCs. Sure, AT&T and the RBOCs built it up over a hundred years, but with whose money? The people of the United State's money, that's who. Since it was a monopoly (not at first, but during the massive post war build-up at least), the people had no choice but to fund AT&T and the RBOCs. The local loop belongs to the people. It should have been taken over by the government. I hate the waste and inefficiency of government agencies as much as anyone, but the government couldn't do a worse job of building the phone system than the locals. They're quasi-government agencies anyway. People are just blind to their failures because they have nothing to compare them to. Perhaps if the government had taken control, we would have a decent telephone 'backbone' and energetic, competitive companies offering services using it. We'll never know. As things stand now, nothing's going to improve. We may all see a 15 to 20 % decrease in local phone charges, but that's where it will level off, because that's the discount mandated by congress. The RBOCs, at worse, will become wholesalers of local phone service, but that service will still be way too expensive. If the local telephone companies employed new technology and took calculated risks which could cut phone costs 200%, 400%, who knows? But they don't because they're not required to. Instead they plug along, putting band-aids on an antiquated local loop that's still mostly aging copper wire. Makes me sick. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 00:54:28 -0500 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: Let Local Competitors Build Their Own Local Loop Plant The moderator sayeth thusly: > Remember of course that Judge Harold Greene had his noise out of > joint to start with where AT&T was concerned. He made no pretense > of having a fair 'trial' or proceedings and early on before the > divestiture case even came to court he let it be known among his > cronies in the US Injustice Department that if they wanted to > 'take on Bell' they'd find his courtroom a friendly venue. So > the story goes, he lost a dime in a payphone and got sassed by > the operator when he asked about a refund; he went away angry and > detirmined to break up their monopoly. I just can't let this one go by. I don't know if the story is true or not; I suspect that it took more than just losing a dime at a payphone to upset the honorable judge, although if the operator really sassed him that might well have been the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." However, I have often contended that one reason that large companies sometimes receive their comeuppance is because they finally manage to offend the wrong person. For example, if the local cable company fails to show up on two separate occasions when scheduled to do a cable hookup, and then then when they finally do arrive, they drill a hole through the sidewall of the home (rather than down into the basement or crawl space and then out) so that the homeowner now has a hole in his siding and an ugly wire running down the side of their house - well, if the cable company does that to most of us we might get upset but there is not much we can do about it. However, if that sort of thing is the usual practice rather than the rule, then one day they will pull this stunt at the home of the mayor or a city council member, or if perhaps they have been careful to make sure that city high officials get only the best possible service, then they'll do it at the mayor's mother's home or at the home of someone else that the mayor or an influential council member cares about. Or maybe they'll do it at the home of the local newspaper editor, or the owner of the local radio or TV station. My point is that if a company makes a practice of treating their customers like dirt, sooner or later they're going to do it to someone who has the authority to get them where it hurts. The next time our hypothetical cable company's franchise expires, they may find that the city leaders are no longer willing to grant them an exclusive franchise; they might even consider themselves lucky if their existing franchise is renewed. The thing that I recall about the Bell System of old is that if there was some irregularity on your bill -- long distance calls that you didn't make, for example -- their first reaction was to insist that the customer must have made those calls, or that someone in their family must have, or that perhaps a visitor to the home had made the calls (in which case the customer was held responsible). I remember one particular case where there was a call on my bill to a place where I knew no one; I called the business office and got all the usual garbage about how those calls *had* to have come from my line because after all, their computers had recorded the origin of the call and their computers didn't make mistakes (yes, the representative actually said this!). Since I was in essence being called a liar, and was also being told that a machine was more credible than I was, I got pretty hot and threatened to call down the wrath of the Public Service Commission upon their heads if she didn't remove that call from my bill. Even then she told me that I'd have to wait while she investigated further. Well, after about five minutes on hold she came back and told me she had pulled the record on the call and it had originated from an eight-party line. Since I had a private line at the time, that was a pretty obvious discrepancy, so she did remove the charge, and even gave me a rather weak apology (which must have ruined her whole day, given her previous tone of arrogant superiority). Note that she hadn't even bothered to check my claim in any way prior to my threat of bringing the matter before the PSC, she just assumed that she was going to stick me with the charge, come what may. I can tell you that after that experience, I was ready to believe anyone who told me that the phone company was trying to charge them for calls they didn't make. The reason that the old Lily Tomlin "Ernestine" character (whose trademark line was, "We're the phone company - we don't have to care!") resonated with the public was because so many of us had dealt with arrogant, inflexible phone company representatives. Granted that there were the repair guys who put their lives on the line to restore service after emergencies, but these were not the people that the average customer had frequent contact with. Most customers, if they had a reason to talk to a phone company employee at all, dealt with either operators or business office employees and while many of those were fine folks, there were those who simply assumed that if a customer disputed a charge on their bill the customer was lying, even if (as in my case) the charge was relatively small and the customer had no history of missing bill payments (or even being late with a payment). No one likes being called a liar, and if a department store or supermarket treated customers that way, many customers would resolve never to shop there again, but of course you didn't (and in most places, still don't) have the option of not dealing with your local phone company, unless being without a phone wasn't a problem for you. I'm not saying that Judge Greene was always "fair" in the way he dealt with AT&T. But I do think this was definitely a case of "what goes around, comes around" and there is a lesson to be learned here, one that perhaps a few of today's long distance companies ought to take note. If you are going to make it a practice to treat customers badly, sooner or later you are going to offend the person who has the ability to cause you some serious damage down the road. It may be a judge, or a state regulator, or a lawyer, or a congressman or senator, or someone who will be holding one of those positions in a few years, or perhaps a close relative of one of those folks, or someone else that they care deeply about. I think that as today's major long distance companies adopt policies that infuriate more and more people, they are going to find that they have fewer and fewer "friends in high places" when the time comes that they really need some! Jack [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is very, very true that much of the early success of MCI -- going back now to the middle/late seventies and even the early eighties -- must be credited to the distaste so many people had for AT&T and the 'phone company' in general in those days. The idea of 'getting one over on the phone company' was quite appealing. People did not really bother to differentiate between the locals and AT&T, and they loved Ernestine because she reminded them of so much they disliked about Bell. If you recall, New York Telephone (to name one example) was having a *horrible* time keeping up with repair requests and new installations throughout the seventies. There was a period of time in those years that you could walk down the streets of Manhattan for a couple miles without finding a single working payphone. Most of the central office equipment was still either crossbar or stepper in those days, it was getting old and in need of maintainence and because people who like to defraud telco knew so much about the old system, fraud was at an all time high. Speaking again about New York Telephone, who was it made the comment about payphones in the big apple saying, "So I stood there in that stinky, smelly payphone booth with graffiti all over the walls and standing in someone else's piss all over the floor waiting for fifteen rings for the operator to answer so I could ask for credit on the last call I made when I lost my money. After fifteen rings, an operator answers who says it is not her fault and she could do nothing for me. I tried to explain what I wanted, she said to hold on a minute and while I was waiting she cut me off, 'accidentally' I am sure." So there was a preponderance of these incidents along with other things that had the public pretty annoyed. Was it all Bell's fault? Probably not; all of us came into the 1970's together at the same time after the very tumultuous 1960's; attitudes were much different, and admittedly 'good help was hard to find', leaving telco and lots of other large major corporations in some tight squeezes. Demand for telecom services was growing, and telco had trouble getting good dedicated workers. Remind me sometime to tell you about the backoffice hellhole at the Amoco/Diners Club Credit Card Processing Center in those days and the kinds of *creepy* jerks working there. Telco also had a lot of *strange* people; anti-war (Viet Nam) protestors, phreaks, etc on the payroll. Service was not at its best, and that is an understatement. First National Bank of Chicago had a couple dozen thieves and people convicted of mail fraud working in its mailroom which the bank did not know about until it finally caught on and fired eighteen employees in one single day. All big corporations were enemies of the people and responsible for the war, etcetera ad nauseum. I recall also one day it made the newspapers when Illinois Bell did a good housecleaning and dumped a couple hundred employees who it was alleged were not 'looking after the best interests of the company'. Of course that just left them that much shorter on 'good help'. But for whatever reason, lots of folks in those days hated AT&T. It was a 'multi-national corporation involved in war-mongering,'; it was 'guilty' of all sorts of things. Add in broken payphones in booths that someone had vandalized and peed in; long delays in getting installations and repairs done and calls on your phone bill that you did not make ... when MCI came along and offered its services many people flew AT&T's coop just out of retaliation. It was said in an editorial in {Telephony Magazine} about 1976 that MCI's customer base consisted of people who hated AT&T and others who simply did not know any better and actually thought they would save money. You are right, Jack; what goes around comes around. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #347 ******************************