Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA27999; Sat, 8 Nov 1997 21:52:09 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 21:52:09 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199711090252.VAA27999@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #306 TELECOM Digest Sat, 8 Nov 97 21:52:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 306 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Random Thoughts on Payphone Deregulation (Dave Levenson) Ameritech ISDN Warning (Kyler Laird) New Brunswick, Canada Toll-Free Directories on Web (Nigel Allen) Wireless Quiz & Information (David Crowe) Telco Racks (Adept Care) Re: Phase-Out of 10XXX Codes? (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: Phase-Out of 10XXX Codes? (Al Varney) Re: Phase-Out of 10XXX Codes? (Brett Frankenberger) Re: How Does Cable (as in "Cable Address") Work? (Tom Watson) Re: How Does Cable (as in "Cable Address") Work? (Jack Hamilton) Re: How Does Cable (as in "Cable Address") Work? (Roy Smith) Re: How Does Cable (as in "Cable Address") Work? (oldbear@arctos.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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Random Thoughts on Payphone Deregulation Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 21:39:45 EST From: Dave Levenson Organization: Westmark, Inc. Reply-To: dave@westmark.com By way of introduction, I own a small business which operates approximately 50 payphones in urban northeastern New Jersey. Our payphones still charge 20 cents for local calls, as they did in the days of state regulation. They sell long distance calls to any point in the continental U.S. for $0.25 per minute. Zero-plus calls, by default, go to Bell Atlantic for intraLATA, or AT&T for interLATA and interstate destinations. We do not ask either of these carriers to impose any surcharge on these calls, though AT&T has recently announced a 35-cent surcharge on calls from payphones. On October 7, the New Jersey BPU no longer regulated the prices we charge for local calls. (They never regulated non-local calls.) The press covered this change in regulation, and mentioned that some telephone companies had already increased the price of local calls; the number 35 cents was mentioned. Over the last three or four weeks, as I have made my rounds cleaning, collecting, and repairing our payphones, I have been asked (by passers-by, and by the proprietors of several small businesses where our phones are located) when our price would go up to 35 cents. My answer is that we have no plans, at present, to increase prices. The public seems to like this answer. The proprietors (who receive a commission from us, based upon the operating profit of the phone) sometimes don't. When asked by proprietors, I usually ask them something like: "If you increased the price of that can of beans from $0.79 to $1.40, would you make more money or less money?" Their answer is always that they would make less money -- because there is another grocer only a block away. "There's another payphone, even closer!" is my reply. The real answer, of course, is more complex. There are other payphones. There are also wireless phones. In the past, state-imposed rate regulations were based upon a subsidy which was paid to the local exchange carrier by all telephone service subscribers, and subsidized the carrier's payphones. By law, that subsidy ended last April. (Your local telephone service cost has gone down, now that your're no longer subsidizing your carrier's payphones, hasn't it? No? Well isn't that interesting!) We don't subsidize carrier-owned payphones, or COCOTs, or cellular service; this is a level playing field and we are all competing with each other. If our costs for the service we sell via payphones are increased, we'll probably have to increase our prices...but we're beginning to be able to shop around for that in a competitive market, also. If our location-providers ask us to increase prices, we may be forced to comply. On the other hand, we used to be forced to use the revenues from local coin calls to subsidize the provision of 800 calls from our payphones, but now we're entitled to share in the carrier's revenue for those calls. They make up about 25% of the total traffic from all of the payphones, and over 90% at one or two phones. We plan to stay below the price of cellular, and below or equal to the price of coin calls from Bell Atlantic payphones. We're above the price of calls from most residential phones -- but if you have a residential phone, then you pay a fixed monthly charge in addition to the per-call price. You pay this charge even if you only call 800 numbers (which means that those calls are not `free' from home, either). ------------------------------ From: laird@freedom.ecn.purdue.edu (Kyler Laird) Subject: Ameritech ISDN Warning Date: 8 Nov 1997 18:24:36 GMT Organization: Purdue University My wife is back in school at IU and I'm still at Purdue, so she has a townhouse in Bloomington, Indiana. I've finally gotten her hooked on using e-mail and she uses it at work, so I decided to get a SS10 for her townhouse (so I can have something nice to work on when I'm there, too). ISDN is the only way to go in Bloomington. CDPD isn't available (RAM is, but...), the cable co. hasn't yet discovered the Internet and the telco doesn't appear to have any other xDSL plans. (I did investigate an "alarm circuit" with HDSL modems, but it just got too difficult.) So ... I signed up with the only reasonable ISDN provider in town, BlueMarble.net, and they helped me order my ISDN line. Just ordering it was an ordeal. The woman who took the order (with the ISP and me both on the line) was a moron. She had great difficulty and let someone else just take care of it. Later that week, I received a call from Ameritech with the details. It would take over three weeks to install. My wife was getting anxious, but this gave me time to get the computer purchased and set up. The line was installed when promised, Oct. 24. Unfortunately, no one was home, so the installer decided not to connect the line to the inside wires. I spent the evening on the (cellular) phone with my wife trying to figure out why she couldn't get a signal. So ... she called back to get the wires connected since I wasn't going to be down there for over a week. Eventually the installer showed up again. This time, however, he told her that she could not use ISDN at all unless she had RJ-45 jacks installed at every existing jack. She was tired of waiting, so she believed this idiot and he proceeded to *stick* RJ-45 jacks on the freshly-painted walls. Unfortunately I wasn't available when this was happening, but I went ballistic when I heard. Now I'm down in Bloomington learning the fine art of drywall repair and painting because this jerk coerced my wife into letting him install jacks that we did not want or need. (I have no use for any RJ-45 jacks except for Ethernet and I'll take care of that later -- and not with stick-on jacks.) I'm waiting to see if we get billed for this fiasco. I'm tempted to bill Ameritech for my time and materials to repair the damage. Enough venting for now ... My advice: 1. Don't let an Ameritech phone installer inside your house. 2. Don't leave your wife alone with an Ameritech phone installer. 3. Do everything you can yourself if you want it done correctly. --kyler ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 15:13:18 EST From: Nigel Allen Subject: New Brunswick, Canada Toll-Free Directories on Web You may already be aware of the Canadian directory assistance listings available free of charge at http://canada411.sympatico.ca/ These listings are provided by the participating telephone companies, but may be out of date and incomplete. (I couldn't find a listing for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, for example.) The New Brunswick Telephone Company recently announced that it will be providing its own free directory database at http://www.nbtel.nb.ca/powerpages The NBTel service appears to be more current than the Canada411 service. As well, some Canadian toll-free (800 and 888) listings are available at http://canadatollfree.sympatico.ca/ Some, but not all, Canadian toll-free numbers can be reached from the U.S. Nigel Allen, 8 Silver Ave., Toronto, Ontario M6R 1X8, Canada ndallen@interlog.com http://www.ndallen.com/ ------------------------------ Subject: Wireless Quiz & Information From: crowed@cnp-wireless.com (David Crowe) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 23:17:21 -0500 Organization: CADVision Development Corporation (http://www.cadvision.com/) Cellular Networking Perspectives is a monthly standards and technology bulletin. Our quiz for November is available at: http://www.cnp-wireless.com/quiz.html Prizes include T-Shirts, Standards "Trading Cards" and free back issues! Articles in this month's issue of the newsletter are on CALEA, Calling Party Pays, IS-136 TDMA ("Digital PCS") features and a list of TR-45.5 CDMA standards, published and under development. The titles and a short description of all issues are listed at: http://www.cnp-wireless.com/backissue.html For more information or a free sample, please reply to this posting or fill out a request at: http://www.cnp-wireless.com/order.html David Crowe, Editor ------------------------------ From: *NOSPAM*adept@aspi.net*NOSPAM* (Adept Care) Subject: Telco Racks Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 22:32:42 GMT Organization: The Destek Group, Inc. Reply-To: *NOSPAM*adept@aspi.net*NOSPAM* Can anyone point me to a manufacturer of 19" telco racks in the New England area? If replying by e-mail remove the *NOSPAM* Thanks, Noel ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: Phase-Out of 10XXX Codes? Date: 8 Nov 1997 06:16:39 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On 7 Nov 1997 16:42:07 GMT, Jay R. Ashworth wrote: > On 5 Nov 1997 23:44:25 GMT, Al Varney wrote: >> In article , Linc Madison >> wrote: >>> Is there a phase-out date set yet for the elimination of the existing >>> 10XXX carrier codes in favor of the new 101XXXX codes? I got a mailing >>> from the "Dime Line" folks (whom I do not recommend, BTW) and noticed >>> that the little stickers now say "DIAL 1010-811" instead of "DIAL 10811". >> You'll find this at: >> >> The answer is: June 30, 1998 > Well, as I noted in a post that PAT apparently ditched because I > cross-posted it to .tech, my latest Nortel News says that the end of > permissive is 31 Dec 97. > Alas, the post didn't make it into .tech either, for some reason, so > here it is again. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The fact that it did not make it into > the .tech group either implies perhaps it never got to either place; > that perhaps it got lost leaving your machine for some reason. There > are times I will cross-post here from .tech; no hard rule about it. PAT] I so assumed ... and I'm not sure the problem wasn't just that my newsfeed didn't get it _back_; in any event, it seems Al was correct in the first place ... I didn't check his source, and it was dated later than mine. Well, if you're gonna look foolish, do it for the widest possible audience, and get it over with ... and piss off the host in the process. Sorry all. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Pedantry. It's not just a job, it's an Tampa Bay, Florida adventure." -- someone on AFU +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ From: varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney) Subject: Re: Phase-Out of 10XXX Codes? Date: 8 Nov 1997 15:28:07 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL Reply-To: varney@lucent.com In article , Jay R. Ashworth wrote: > On 5 Nov 1997 23:44:25 GMT, Al Varney wrote: >> The answer is: June 30, 1998 > Well, as I noted in a post that PAT apparently ditched because I > cross-posted it to .tech, my latest Nortel News says that the end of > permissive is 31 Dec 97. Nortel News is one day off on the original end date. The FCC originally, in an Order dated April 11, 1997, stated the "end of permissive dialing" date as Jan 1, 1998. They changed their mind in the above-referenced Order, released on Oct. 22, 1997. Nortel News probably has a couple of weeks lag between writing articles and delivery. Al Varney ------------------------------ From: brettf@netcom.com (Brett Frankenberger) Subject: Re: Phase-Out of 10XXX Codes? Organization: Netcom On-Line Services In article , Jay R. Ashworth wrote: > Well, as I noted in a post that PAT apparently ditched because I > cross-posted it to .tech, my latest Nortel News says that the end of > permissive is 31 Dec 97. > Alas, the post didn't make it into .tech either, for some reason, so > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The fact that it did not make it into > the .tech group either implies perhaps it never got to either place; > that perhaps it got lost leaving your machine for some reason. There > are times I will cross-post here from .tech; no hard rule about it. PAT] Cross-posts between a moderated and unmoderated group do not "automatically" appear in the unmoderated group. The "design" of Usenet is that when an article is cross-posted to two groups, it travels around the 'Net as one article with two lines in the newsgroups line. So if you cross-post to a moderated and unmoderated gorup, the message is only mailed to the moderator of the moderated group -- it does not appear in the unmoderated group. If the moderator approves of the post, he can then post it in both the moderated and unmoderated group, so it remains one article. If the posting machine split the article into two -- one to send to the moderator and one to put in the unmoderated groups, then, should the moderator approve the post, there would be two copies out in Usenet, taking up twice as much disk space, and appearing twice in the newsreaders of people who subscribed to both groups. (Obviously, this gets interesting if a post is to multiple moderated groups. I don't have personal knowledge how that works.) Brett (brettf@netcom.com) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As long as *any* moderated group is shown in the newsgroups line, then the moderator of the moderated group controls the message. If more than one moderated newsgroup is shown then the first moderated group's moderator is the controlling party. Because the volume of mail coming to this Digest is such that I rarely get to deal with more than twenty or thirty percent of it, I discourage having general posts to Usenet come through with comp. dcom.telecom in the newsgroups line since there is a very likely chance the message will never make it further. It is far better, at least in the case of this Digest, to handle it as two separate postings; one for Usenet in general except c.d.t. and one for the Digest, c.d.t. and the website bulletin board 'TELECOM_Digest_Online'. This reminds me to advise all readers that if you do not like or wish to receive the Digest for whatever reason, yet at the same time you are not fond of Usenet or get poor propogation, there is a third alternative: http://telecom-digest.org/TELECOM_Digest_Online provides message-by-message reading just like Usenet, but without, let's say, the mess that so much of Usenet has become in recent years. Messages go there at the very same instant that Usenet prop- ogation begins on each (parsed single message style) issue of the Digest, and is available even before email reaches most users. You might want to check it out. Of course, there is also the telecom chat area, a webchat interface available for posting short questions and comments and hopefully receiving responses to same without waiting for the Digest itself to include your message. To use this feature: http://telecom-digest.org/chat ... and the times you will most likely find other users on line is around 10-11 pm Eastern USA Time most nights. PAT] ------------------------------ From: tsw@cagent.com (Tom Watson) Subject: Re: How Does Cable (as in "Cable Address") Work? Date: Fri, 07 Nov 1997 20:49:13 -0800 Organization: CagEnt, Inc. In article , roy@mchip00.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) wrote: > No, I'm not talking about cable TV. I'm talking about the old cable > message system. > Our letterhead says "Cable Address: NYUMEDIC". <<>> The reason for a "cable address" was that unlike domestic telegrams, international telegrams had the words in the address billed. If you sent a cable to "John Smith MACONSULT" (similar? to a cable address I know), it was charged as only TWO words. The full address which may be many words cost considerably more. This was in the days when the "art" of short cables was in full bloom. In the 40's a cable could be just the "word" DEAL. Everyone knew what it meant, and that is all that was needed. At international costs of upward to $1.00 per word, and no transatlantic telephone cable (that happened in the 50's) this was a VERY common method of doing things. Remember, credit cards weren't around then, and every carried local currency. Even more of a bother. I suspect a message like "SENDBUX" would have been even more common, who knows. Fast forward to the 90's. Now we have domain names that are registered with Internic. Nobody likes raw IP addresses, but they too work. The concept is VERY similar. I don't know the cost for maintaining a "cable address" but it probably isn't that much (in today's terms). Now I suspect it is a prestige thing, and if you ever get to some out of the way third world country that only has a telegraph office, you are in luck. tsw@cagent.com (Home: tsw@johana.com) Please forward spam to: annagram@hr.house.gov (my Congressman), I do. ------------------------------ From: jfh@alumni.stanford.org (Jack Hamilton) Subject: Re: How Does Cable (as in "Cable Address") Work? Date: Sat, 08 Nov 1997 04:00:03 GMT Organization: Copyright (c) 1997 by Jack Hamilton On Fri, 07 Nov 1997 08:07:00 -0500, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to roy@mchip00.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith): > Are you sure you are not using some *very old* stationary? Do you > still have telex service there at your school? Honestly I am not sure > cable addresses still exist, even if some modicum of telex/TWX service > is still around. They certainly did ten years ago. At that time, I worked for a large defense and medical equipment company with civilian and military customers all over the world. I wrote an interface between the old Telex system and our then-new PROFS electronic mail system from IBM. We sent dozens of telexes every day. Fax would have been faster, and probably cheaper, but a telex had the advantage of providing legal proof of receipt. PROFS' moment of fame came during the Nixon/Watergate days, when some incriminating email memos were found in the White House PROFS system. I haven't heard anything about PROFS recently; I don't know whether IBM dropped it, or just renamed it to something sexier. Jack Hamilton PGP ID: 79E07035 jfh @ alumni . stanford . org ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 08 Nov 1997 07:53:17 -0500 From: roy@mchip00.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) Subject: Re: How Does Cable (as in "Cable Address") Work? Organization: New York University School of Medicine TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response: > Are you sure you are not using some *very old* stationary? The stationary is new. But, given the way things work around here, it's entirely likely that nobody else has had a clue for decades what this was all about, so every time the stationary was reprinted, it was just carried along. "Hey, Bob, do we still need the cable address on the letterhead?", "Beats me, it's always been there, I have no idea why, but we might get in trouble if we drop it." > Do you still have telex service there at your school? Well, we've still got lots of KSR-33's all over the place, but they are just hooked up to old pieces of lab equipment. It's anybody's guess what goes in the administrative offices :-) > WUTCO used to charge their hardwired customers (those with telegraph > equipment on their premises) about one or two dollars per month to > maintain the 'address' in their database. Sort of like being charged $100/year to maintain a DNS entry today, no? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Very, very similar to DNS entries. PAT] ------------------------------ From: oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear) Subject: Re: How Does Cable (as in "Cable Address") Work? Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 15:31:36 -0500 Organization: The Arctos Group - http://www.arctos.com/arctos Pat wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In brief, a 'cable address' was simply > a short form or abbreviated form of a longer telex/TWX number much > like 'Enterprise' was a short form of a business telephone number. > You rarely see cable addresses any longer for the simple reason you > rarely see telex/TWX/telegram messages any longer. Consider them if > you will as simply an alias address used for business purposes to > make the recipient easier to remember/correspond with. Lots and lots > of business places had cable addresses when telegraphy was a common > method of communication. As I recall, the "cable address" was a carryover from the days of telegraphy when time and economics dictated that the number of telegraphic characters transmitted be minimized. I seem to recall that there was a slightly lower charge for international messages to registered cable addresses because all messages were charged by the word ... including the address. Hence the run-together cable addresses like westmoco or beaconhill. Along the same lines (no pun intended), is a favorite trivia question of mine: Q. What actor played a the character of the frontier west known for his pioneering use of electronic mail? A. Richard Boone, who played Paladin in the TV series "Have Gun - Will Travel" -- and who, as hired gun, would give his clients a business card reading with the image of a chessman and the words "WIRE: PALADIN - SAN FRANCISCO" That was a "cable address." Cheers, The Old Bear [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So many people are simply amazed to find out that indeed 'email' -- although that term itself is relatively new -- has been around more than a century. It is just that now-days everyone is his own telegrapher. Fifty or a hundred years ago that was not the case; we went to a central location and handed over scraps of paper with messages to be sent to someone somewhere. The community telegrapher then tapped it out over the wire much like we do today. Certainly there were not as many long- winded and frivilous messages as now, and as was pointed out many messages consisted of just a few words, sent at considerable ex- pense. Regarding Paladin and his business card which allegedly said, "Have gun, will travel ... wire Paladin, San Francisco" there is an obscene joke which I dare not repeat *completely* in this family-oriented Digest but it went something like this: You have to fill in the missing word .... "Have cr___, will shack, 'til Paladin gets back -- wire Mrs. Paladin, San Francisco." Well, I thought it was funny, albiet a bit crude and out of style for here. Have a nice weekend! PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #306 ******************************