Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id WAA09584; Sat, 8 May 1999 22:17:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 22:17:44 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199905090217.WAA09584@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #74 TELECOM Digest Sat, 8 May 99 22:17:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 74 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 150K by 2034: That Was a Typical Too-Conservative Opinion (Paul Robinson) Anouncement: Teletraffic Congress (David Songhurst) Beware of Primus Telecommuntications! (sroyjnospam@yahoo.com) Wanted: Repair Rhetorex & Dialogic Boards (Joseph Elichaa) Re: Area Code For Wireless Urged (Dave Close) Re: New Billing Charge: Local Number Portability (Paul Robinson) Re: Government's Secret Y2K Plans (Lisa Hancock) Re: Forcing MCI to Change Advertising (Danny Burstein) Re: 90# "Feature" on Your Phone? (Alan Boritz) Re: User Commands For Supplementary Services on Analog Lines (L. Erickson) Backround on Networks (Juan Zilveti) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: rfc1394a@aol.com (Paul Robinson) Date: 08 May 1999 14:41:36 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: 150K by 2034: That Was a Typical Too-Conservative Opinion Recently, Moderator Pat opined that by 2034 we could expect standard communication speeds of 150K for communications. Implicitly, this would mean that is what you can normally buy for the current equivalent of a phone line cost and the capital cost of the purchase of a modem. Current telephone line pricing for residential service has been almost constant over the last ten years in the Washington DC area as being about $20 for unlimited local service. Over that same period of time, an analog modem has stayed at about $80 to $100. So basically his opinion is that in 34 years we could see 150K communications speeds on lines that cost the current equivalent of $20 using modems that probably cost about $100. Oh please. In maybe 15 years I've owned my own computer -- 1984 to 1999 -- I've seen the minimum speed go from 1200 baud to 56000, a factor of more than 40 times. Just using this figure as an estimate, figuring the original base figure of 1200 baud and doubling every three years, on average should give us a much higher rate than that. Taking the figure of 1200 baud and giving ten generations of doubling gives us "only" 1228800 bits/second, or about the equivalent of a T1 line. I want to simplify the math, so I'm going to use 30 years, this way I can use 10x figures and so on. Note that these numbers are all theory, and reality will probably be wildly different. But let's see how close using this formula of doubling of capacity in telecommunications data rates every three years fits: If you take 1200 baud and assume the current speed doubles every three years, taking 1984 as the base year, by 1999 the current speed of available modems for $100 or less should be 57,600bps. Current modems using telephone lines can do 56K (and are throttled by law at 53K to prevent overloading the telephone system) Thus this rough estimate is almost exactly right. Thus the estimate of a mere tripling of today's capacity is too conservative. But, absent throttling of technology because someone -- government or telecommunications companies -- intervenes to force some "solution" that makes people use slower speeds, we should see ever faster and faster rates come out. Technology causes other technology and reduces the cost to develop it. This either causes a vicious circle or a feedback loop -- depending on whether you see developments as good or bad -- which means that new technologies can be developed because of the technologies that have been developed in the past making other things cheaper to implement. The retail price of a good compiler to create programs is below the $100 mark (Delphi, Visual Basic), or even free if you use Microsoft's Control Creation Edition. There are two things you can do with these: write application programs to allow people to do things, or you can also create "components" that allow other people who write programs to do things. Those who create applications automate the work of people who use them. Those who create components automate the work of people who create programs that automate other people's work. This, therefore, can increase the development of technology, which because of mass sales, becomes more affordable, making even more development possible, which feeds on itself. We have inexpensive software applications because so many copies of a program can be sold that the cost of development can be amortized over several hundred thousand or several million users, as opposed to several hundred, which is why accounting programs sold to a few hundred banks and insurance companies in the 1960s and 1970s cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and accounting programs sold to hundreds of thousands of small businesses today cost tens or hundreds of dollars. The late Robert A. Heinlein wrote that most people who predict future technologies tend to be too conservative, and think of a graph in which the future trend is that of a line where we are with a slight upward movement, a very small change. But, for most technologies, the correct graph should be a very sharp upward curve, getting steeper as time progresses. If in 15 years we have already seen a 40-fold increase in communications speeds, from 1200 to 56000 baud, then the minimum we should expect to see in 30 or so is an 80-fold increase from current speed, not a three-fold, Pat. 80-fold from 56K is 4800Kbps, roughly the equivalent of 4 1/2 T1s, let's be a bit less conservative and call it 5 megabits/second by 2034. This is what the average consumer will be able to get for two-way communications for the current equivalent of $20 or so. That the modem will cost, again, the equivalent of $100 today. But that's still almost a straight line figure, and may be too conservative. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict much higher numbers. I'll go OC3. I'll spell that out in simple terms. The average two-way communications line for in-home use will be the equivalent of 44megabits/second by 2034. And cost the equivalent of $20 a month, capital cost of $100. It won't happen all at once. First someone will have to pay the high price when it first comes out, then as the product is sold in large quantities, it will become a lot less expensive. First the business market will be saturated as companies buy video telephones to allow their employees to do face-to-face communication with other people without having to spend a lot of money on travel. As the high-end business users get saturated, the not-so-high end businesses will be able to afford it, and as the cost of developing the technology is amortized, it will become cheap enough to sell it to residential customers for chump change. This prediction presumes that companies that have a vested financial interest in selling bigger and bigger pipes to residential and business customers will be able to do so, not cut off at the knees by regulatory restrictions or by telcos who want to keep pretending that physical plant which should have been depreciated to zero value long ago and thus really has a value of zero has value they should be able to include in the rate base and keep prices high and competition out. I'll bet that in places like New York and Chicago, wire loop which was installed 30, 50, 60, maybe even 80 or more years ago is still being carried on the books of the telephone company as having some value and thus entitled to be included in the rate base for setting costs. Phone companies are still -- weakly -- pushing ISDN, which was probably an excellent solution in 1970. Today, it's ridiculously overpriced compared with competitive alternatives. (See below). However, If restrictions are reimposed like they were back before deregulation we may not even see a tripling of current capacity by 2034. I saw a sign on a bus yesterday on the way to work advertising DSL. It said, "ISDN was a great idea in 1984. Then again, so was the Macarena." Paul Robinson ------------------------------ From: David Songhurst Subject: Announcement: Teletraffic Congress Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 11:35:20 +0100 Organization: BT Internet The 16th International Teletraffic Congress (ITC16) will take place in Edinburgh, UK, 7-11 June 1999. ITC deals with performance issues in communications networks, including traffic and reliability, network design and optimisation, and pricing. ITC16 has a full programme reflecting current research in design and performance for Internet, mobile, and broadband multiservice networks. Invited speakers include Scott Shenker, Francois Baccelli, Martin Cave and Alastair Urie. An additional tutorial programme on Sunday June 6 covers Business Perspectives, Web Cacheing, Network Pricing, and Wavelets. Advance Programme and full information on registration are available at http://www.iee.org.uk/Conf/ITC16 Dave Songhurst UK representative, ITC Council ------------------------------ From: sroyjnospam@yahoo.com Subject: Beware of Primus Telecommuntications! Date: 8 May 1999 00:00:15 GMT Organization: Web America Networks Beware of Primus Telecommunications Inc.!!!! After calling to take advantage of an offer advertised in the January edition of Filipinas magazine I started getting billed at more than double the advertised rate. After almost three months and dozens of phone calls to Primus to correct this problem, it is still on-going. Primus is refusing to correct the bill and are demanding payment at a higher rate. I don't even know what they are charging me now because they also are refusing to put anything in writing so I can see how the bill is being adjusted, but I know it is well above the advertised rate. I have started receiving demand letters and harassing phone calls at work demanding payment. Doing business with them has been a nightmare and I would discourage anyone from doing business with them. There are other companies offering similar rates that know how to treat their customers! If you have had a similar experience with Primus, or know someone who has, please email me (remove the nospam from address). And please, warn your friends! Roy [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If they do not understand what you are talking about, you may have to just wait until it goes to collection (if it ever does, there are so few collection agencies these days that want to handle paper from the newer telecom outfits) and then try to settle it at that level. In the meantime, I hope you have taken your business elsewhere. I will tell you a carrier who is getting sued big time right now on account of its unbusiness-like tactics: Qwest, the Denver-based bunch which not long ago bought out LCI is being sued for $25 million dollars by a marketing firm which used to bring them all their customers. LCI seems to go up and down in the ratings, but it stays pretty much around being the fourth largest LD carrier in the USA. Check out National Communications Network vrs. Qwest Communications, International, docket 99-C-397 in Hamilton County, TN filed February 16, 1999 ... NCN says its sales agents and reps got many tens of thousands of customers for Qwest, which then somehow 'forgot to pay' for them. According to NCN's claim, Qwest issued 800 toll-free numbers to all those customers (as well as signing them up for regular long distance service) but then failed to tell the customer what their new 800 number was, or indeed, that they had even been given one. In addition, NCN states that Qwest was to issue each new customer a calling card which never went out. Instead of the customary 10-14 days required to switch the customer's default carrier at the local telco level, it was taking Qwest 30-60 days to do so, and that several thousand such orders were lost and never put through at all. When Qwest merged with LCI now about a year ago in June, 1998, Qwest/LCI absolutely insisted to NCN that 'things will get better', but instead they only got worse, if such is possible. NCN was for all intents and purposes, almost put out of business as a result of the several fiascos in the way Qwest handled their customers, and now they are suing because of it. I may have more to report on this sometime soon. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Elichaa Subject: Wanted: Repair Rhetorex & Dialogic Boards Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 10:29:39 -0400 Organization: TWC Portland, Maine I am looking for some one who can repair Rhetorex or Dialogic Voice cards. Thanks, joee@mainresource.com ------------------------------ From: dave@compata.com (Dave Close) Subject: Re: Area Code For Wireless Urged Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 07:56:11 GMT Monty Solomon writes (quoting the Mercury News): > An area code just for wireless phones or pagers, could 'reduce the > rate of demand that wireless carriers have on the existing area code, > and you might be able to slow down the rate at which you add new area > codes,' said Natalie Billingsley of the commission's Office of > Ratepayer Advocates. ..... > But the concept is one that makes sense to Los Gatos resident Bob > Lipp, particularly because of the mobile nature of wireless phones. > "The way it's going more and more with cell phones, you don't even > have to associate it with an area anymore," said Lipp, whose family > has two cellular phones. "Cell phones have nothing to do with > geography." > Others apparently have the same idea. At public meetings throughout > the state, one or more speakers invariably ask why state officials > have not created an area code just for faxes or wireless providers. Of course, the public thinks a separate code for wireless would solve the problem. The telcos have repeated the lie, that the problem is caused by the proliferation of such devices, so much that most people believe it. But since that is around ten percent of the problem, the remaining ninety percent being competitive carrier assignments, such a code won't make a significant dent in the problem. The public has also noticed that wireless companies use different rate centers than wireline companies. They assume this is inherent to cell phones, but they're wrong. There's absolutely no reason that wireline companies can't change their rate centers, if the CPUC would let them. If competition were more robust, some of them probably would. Local telcos are now blaming their refusal to pool numbers on the Y2K issue. They allege they don't have time to work on pooling because all their resources are devoted to solving Y2K. In the meantime, they repeat the lie about the causes of new area codes, hoping the public will not realize that they really deserve the blame themselves. Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "Politics is the business of getting dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 power and privilege without dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu possessing merit." - P. J. O'Rourke ------------------------------ From: rfc1394a@aol.com (Paul Robinson) Date: 08 May 1999 04:57:25 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: New Billing Charge: Local Number Portability oldbear@arctos.com (Will Roberts) writes black@csulb.NOSMAP.edu (Matthew Black) writes: >> GTE California has started billing this residential customer $0.38 for >> local number portability. I never requested any such service and am >> curious if this is some new universal fee. > Local Number Portability (LNP) is the FCC-mandated ability to keep > your same telephone number even if you switch Local Exchange > Carriers. The idea is that no one would leave the incumbent RBOC if > they had to change to a new phone number. I'd guess that this charge > is a result of GTE attempting to recover the cost of providing LNP. I'd > be curious if this is an across-the-board charge on all customers or > something related to your having taken your phone number to a > different local telco. I have not had phone service with Bell Atlantic since July of 1998 when it became possible to switch. I switched over to Starpower, a CLEC which is 50% owned by PEPCO, the Washington, DC electric utility. I kept my phone number, which was a Maryland 301 exchange. When I moved to Virginia a few months ago, I decided to get my service from Starpower as I had decided to tell Barf Atemetic where to go, in at least one small way. I am also being charged about 29c a month for LNP, in addition to the "usual and customary" charges such as 911 tax, TDD tax, local tax, Federal Subscriber Long Distance access charge and so on and so forth. I'm sure BA customers are charged LNP fees too, just probably charged more for them. Paul Robinson Formerly PAUL@TDR.COM, TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM, FORYOU@EROLS.COM ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Government's Secret Y2K Plans Date: 8 May 1999 20:16:16 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS First, allow me to address the _real_ risk of the Y2k problem: People are worried about disaster at 12:01 am on Jan 1, 2000. But the risk is NOW. Right now, companies are hell bent fixing their computer systems. (The buzzword is "remediation"). Companies are using inexperienced programmers working on complex and undocumented unfamiliar systems. The risk is that during the fixup, they'll introduce new errors in systems otherwise working ok. Further, any business transaction that has a future date in it is at risk now. For example, if you open a bank Certificate of Deposit (CD) (or savings bond or Treasury Bill) that will mature in the future, if the system handling your account is not Y2k complaint now, you can have trouble. My advice to people is simple: check your business transactions carefully. While this isn't as glamorous as stocking water and crackers and opening up your 1960s fallout shelter, it is important. Every month, balance your checkbook carefully. Keep all banking and credit card receipts and balance against the statements. Make sure you didn't get charged twice for a check. Check service charges (banks are really hitting consumers hard with these lately, make sure you're not being overcharged.) Of course check all credit card statements. While calculating interest is cumbersome, it is wise to spot check your accounts (either loans you have or savings accounts). A lot of consumers don't like to bother with this stuff, especially with this kind of detail, but with Y2k it is especially important to do so. Unfortunately, if you find an error, dealing with bank customer service centers can be maddening. Regarding Y2k panic: I think by nature people respond more to glamour news issues rather than substance. It's more exciting for people to talk about a doomsday scenario than balancing their checkbook. The local six o'clock TV news show will show someone's old fallout shelter before it shows someone balancing their checkbook carefully -- they know what is boring to viewers. > midnight on Dec. 31. Yet planning for the worst-case scenario carries > the danger of inciting panic and becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. The act of planning in itself does not incite panic. It was the act of the disclosure that would do so. Like it or not, the government constantly has to play "what if?" games. Many of the scenarios are pretty outrageous, others are disturbing. But if there is civil unrest, do we want it handled the way the cops did at the Chicago Democratic convention in 1968? Our government is not perfect. But in this particular case, I'm glad they are practicing, just in case. It might save some lives and property. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: On more than a few occassions such as > the Pentagon Papers during Vietnam days Jack Anderson has correctly It was the Pentagon Papers that brought down the Nixon Presidency. Even though the Papers dealt mostly with screwups by prior Democratic administrations and not his own, Nixon was furious at their release. Although Daniel Ellsberg (who released them) was being prosecuted, Nixon set up special units (the "Plumbers") to deal with him. The Watergate affair dealt more with covering up the Plumbers and their antics rather than the actual specific Watergate break-in. > are hopelessly screwed up and will never be fixed in time. Consider > just the IRS as one example: they have some well-publicized internal > problems of their own they are having a lot of trouble curing; Whatever problems the IRS has won't affect Y2k. > next year will be worst ever at collection and compliance. The IRS already has to reprogram its computers every year because of tax code changes, so this won't be anything unusual for them. I don't see next year as being any different than prior years for them. > Perhaps you read recently that an IRS employee intercepted several > checks in the mail payable to 'IRS' and forged them to read 'I.R. Smith' > then cashed them. How many employees does the IRS have? I can't help but suspect any large private company (and not so large companies) have had the same problem. > going to be in a shambles early next year also. On the one side, false > arrests based on bogus information; on the other side, people getting > out of jail free. In New Jersey state government, the Governor has taken an active role in ensuring that all systems will be up and running. Generally the deadline is June 30 for full compliance. For critical systems, there are backup plans being instituted. I understand in Pennsylvania the state government is full converted. ------------------------------ From: dannyb@panix.com (Danny Burstein) Subject: Re: Forcing MCI to Change Advertising Date: 8 May 1999 11:25:39 -0400 In wbrownlo@my-dejanews.com (William Brownlow) writes: > I remember SP Comm from the mid 70's. Around '74 - '76 the computer > company I was working for sold Key-to-Disk systems to them for > billing. If I remember correctly, you could only make calls to cities > that were served by Southern Pacific Railroad. Signals traveled over > microwave along their railroad right- of-way. It was sometime between > '76 and '78 they became known as SPRINT. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, something like that. Sprint first > had service to about five or six big cities going south and west of > Chicago on the way to Los Angeles. In the olden days, when wires ran > on poles next to the railroad track, all major locations for Southern > Pacific Railroad were connected through a switchboard via those wires > along the tracks, strung for miles on end. SP comm sold its excess > capactity to companies in those areas only at first; then they decided > to call it Sprint a few years later as you pointed out. And Sprint > only served those same cities with business customers. Maybe it was > about 1980 that Sprint started accepting some residential customers. > They used the same kind of crude dialup system that MCI used. You had > to dial a seven digit number, get their dialtone and take it from > there. They soon learned not to complete calls to 976 numbers also. :) > Both Sprint and MCI had 950 numbers also. Anyone remember those? They > were intended for use at payphones so the caller did not have to use > coins to reach the Sprint or MCI switches. When SP Communications came to the NYC area in about 1980, they provided you with a card giving their two dozen or so dial-up numbers throughout the country, along with a hefty pamphlet showing which areas you could call. i.e. it would have a page with 'area code 212 (NYC)' on it, with the note that 'all numbers were served', and then would have a page for '203' (State of Ct.) showing, perhaps, 75 prefixes. Every couple of months they'd mail us updated cards and pamphlets. Eventually they made two BIG changes: a) they got a "free" '950' number, and standardized on it nationwide; b) they added 'off net' outgoing calls to their system. So ... for awhile there you _could_ call anywhere in the country; if the call was handled by SPC's network it was at one rate, if it had to use AT&T you got charged more. (A couple of years later they eliminated the surcharge.) > Want to hear something REALLY hysterical? Sprint is now mailing out > its bills in certain parts of the country (the bills issued by their > office in Tyler, Texas) with a slogan on the front of the envelope > saying 'Celebrating 100 years of service' ... yes, you read that > correctly ... Sprint is claiming to be one hundred years in business. Welll .... this brings to mind a news story from the early 1980s which I wish I'd have clipped (sigh......). But I think I can rely on my aging memory here. In the early 1980s one of the telcos (AT&T?) sued SP Communications for exceeding its authority by providing phone service. When they showed up in court, Southern Pacific brought in a copy of its original charter from 1870 or thereabouts, which gave it permission to 'operate a railroad' and 'provide communications services' (the latter no doubt related to the telegraph). I distinctly remember the article quoting the railroad gent as saying something like 'we were in the communications business before any of the telcos'... Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe that is what they are trying to say now, that the 'hundred years in service' they are touting on the envelopes mailed to customers pertains to their old days in the business of running a railroad. All I can say now regards their current, rather peculiar at times, ways of handling long distance is that it is 'a hell of a way to run a railroad' as the old saying goes. PAT] ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: 90# "Feature" on Your Phone? Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 10:53:25 -0400 In article , Jeff Wu wrote: > I received a telephone call last evening from an individual > identifying himself as an AT&T Service technician who was conducting a > test on telephone lines. He stated that to complete the test I should > touch nine(9), zero(0), the pound sign (#), and then hang up. > Luckily, I was suspicious and refused... ... > DO NOT press 90# for ANYONE. The GTE Security Department requested... >[TELECOM Digest Editor's Noise, Caused by Head Banging Against the Wall: > Dear Mr. Wu, thank you, and I know you meant well. No, Mr. Wu did not mean well at all by plaigerizing the classic urban legend prank (written as if his friend had experienced it, himself). It's easily recognizable since it's missing a switchhook-flash to reach the 9th level, and quotes GTE security, whose organization would be the least likely to posses a switch that listens to digits on an extended call without a switchhook flash. > For all intents > and purposes, the above scam does not exist. *If* you are on a centrex > type phone system, such as at a large company, or *if* the PBX at your > company is configured to allow 'call transfer' by flashing, dialing > a number and disconnecting, then *if* the telecom admin at that place > has not corrected the problem, then it is possible, but not probable > that *if* the 'prisoner' somehow connected to the extension phone of > a dim-witted person who knew no better (probably the only part of my > scenario so far with any real likelyhood of occurring -- the presence > of a dim-witted person, I mean) that person could be pursuaded to > do as told. Funny you should mention that, but one of my co-workers mentioned that he once worked at a rather large upscale retail establishment that routinely extended incoming calls from customers to outside trunks without the answering party staying on the line. ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: User Commands For Supplementary Services on Analog Lines Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 18:39:54 PST Organization: Shadownet am354@torfree.net writes: > Supplementary services like: Call Waiting, Call Hold, Call Conference/ > Transfer are available on variety of equipment: switches, PBX-es, key > systems, ISDN TAs and access routers. > I noticed that the user interface implemented on analog phone lines in > order to support them (hook flash, double hook flash, various > star/pound prefixed/postfixed numbers) is largely equipment dependent. > Is there any kind of standard in this area? > Is it a unique set of user commands in the case of an analog line > connected to a 5ESS or a DMS100 switch or, to some degree, the command > set is configurable by the switch operator? There's a standard for the switched network. But not for things like PBX systems. There's a list of "Vertical Service Codes" at www.nanpa.com. *00 Inward Voice Activated Services (English) *01 Inward Voice Activated Services (French) *02 Deactivation/Activation of In-Session Activation (ISA)on a per line basis *03 Deactivation of In-Session Activation (ISA) on a per call basis *2X Reserved for expansion to 3digit VSCs *228 Over-the-Air Service Provisioning *3X Reserved for expansion to 3-digit VSCs *40 Change Forward-To Number for Customer Programmable Call Forwarding Busy Line *41 Six-Way Conference Calling Activation *42 Change Forward-To Number for Customer Programmable Call Forwarding Don't Answer *43 Drop last member of Six-Way Conference Call *44 Voice Activated Dialing *45 Voice Dialing Extended Dial Tone *46 French Voice Activated Network Control *47 Override Feature Authorization *48 Override Do Not Disturb *49 Long Distance Signal *50 Voice Activated Network Control *51 Who Called Me? *52 Single Line Variety Package (SVP) - Call Hold *53 Single Line Variety Package (SVP) - Distinctive Ring B *54 Single Line Variety Package (SVP) - Distinctive Ring C *55 Single Line Variety Package (SVP) - Distinctive Ring D *56 Change Forward-To Number for ISDN Call Forwarding *57 Customer Originated Trace *58 ISDN MBKS Manual Exclusion Activation *59 ISDN MBKS Manual Exclusion Deactivation *60 Selective Call Rejection Activation *61 Distinctive Ringing/Call Waiting Activation *62 Selective Call Waiting *63 Selective Call Forwarding Activation *64 Selective Call Acceptance Activation *65 Calling Number Delivery Activation *66 Automatic Callback Activation *67 Calling Number Delivery Blocking *68 Call Forwarding Busy Line/Don't Answer Activation *69 Automatic Recall Activation *70 Cancel Call Waiting *71 Usage Sensitive Three-way Calling *72 Call Forwarding Activation *73 Call Forwarding Deactivation *74 Speed Calling 8 - Change List *75 Speed Calling 30 - Change List *76 Advanced Call Waiting Deluxe *77 Anonymous Call Rejection Activation *78 Do Not Disturb Activation *79 Do Not Disturb Deactivation *80 Selective Call Rejection Deactivation *81 Distinctive Ringing/Call Waiting Deactivation *82 Line Blocking Deactivation *83 Selective Call Forwarding Deactivation *84 Selective Call Acceptance Deactivation *85 Calling Number Delivery Deactivation *86 Automatic Callback Deactivation *87 Anonymous Call Rejection Deactivation *88 Call Forwarding Busy Line/Don't Answer Deactivation *89 Automatic Recall Deactivation *90 Customer Programmable Call Forwarding Busy Line Activation *91 Customer Programmable Call Forwarding Busy Line Deactivation *92 Customer Programmable Call Forwarding Don't Answer Activation *93 Customer Programmable Call Forwarding Don't Answer Deactivation *94 Reserved For Local Assignment *95 Reserved For Local Assignment *96 Reserved For Local Assignment *97 Reserved For Local Assignment *98 Reserved For Local Assignment *99 Reserved For Local Assignment Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Regards *97 in the above list, in Ameritech territory, that is a shortcut or 'speedial' way to reach telco voicemail's front door. If you dial merely *97, your caller ID is passed to voicemail so it knows how it ought to respond, i.e. by telling you if you have messages, etc rather than just a generic greeting. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Juan Zilveti Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 17:06:10 -0400 Subject: Backround on Networks Mr. Patrick Townson (Telecom Digest): I was instructed to your web page by a co-worker of mine. The information I am interested in finding is the basic backround (history) of networks. Would you be kind enough to please instruct me on where I can find this information. Thanks in advance. Sincerely, Ing. Juan Pablo Zilveti O. Proyectos Especiales Direccin de Marketing y Ventas - Entel Mvil Telfono : +591 (2) 313030 Int. 2381 Fax : +591 - 811-2136 Celular : +591 (15) 29027 E-Mail : jzilvet@entelsa.entelnet.bo [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Would one or more of you kindly answer this fellow for me please? Thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #74 *****************************