Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id VAA15585; Wed, 19 May 1999 21:10:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 21:10:24 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199905200110.VAA15585@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #89 TELECOM Digest Wed, 19 May 99 21:10:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 89 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Some Good News to Report Today (TELECOM Digest Editor) Strange Problem (Jim Gallagher) Airtouch in NYC? (James Gifford) Florida's 941 To Split In September, 1999 (Eric Morson) Degrees of Separation (was: Qwest Sued by Marketing Agent) (G. Hlavenka) Long Island Assigned 631 Area Code (Eric Morson) Re: Long Island Assigned 631 Area Code (Carl Moore) 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? (Mike Ayotte) J1 Signalling Question (Wulf Losee) NPA-NXX & Cities (Robert Ricketts) Re: NPA-NXX & Cities (Eli Mantel) Re: Siemens 2420 (bakie@my-dejanews.com) Re: ADSL, Digital Hybrid System, Cable Types? (Richard Campbell) Re: Postal Telegraph and Cable Corporation (John R. Levine) Re: Postal Telegraph and Cable Corporation (L. Winson) 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 19:17:16 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Some Good News to Report Today Today I do not have anything to complain about ... (surprise!) ... but instead want to tell you about two really great -- at least I think so -- improvements to the http://telecom-digest.org web site. The first is the addition of an updated daily telecom news report compliments of a service called newsreal.com ... now as you well know, you cannot get anything for free from the web these days it seems without at the least a banner-ad on it, if not several places to click if you want to Make Money Fast, buy a used car or turn in your credit card information. But newsreal.com seems pretty decent, with a minimum of advertising, and no advertising I could consider offensive at all. The point is, they have great, very detailed news reports and analysis of interest in the telecom industry each day, and I thought it might be something you would like to see. I get nothing from it, and all they get from me are those of you who feel like clicking on whatever their banner-ad is promoting that day. Look for a link to it on the very top page of the web site, in the paragraph which discusses the other diversions there such as the chat room and the news ticker. A link there says 'read the daily telecom news.' Try it and pass along your opinions on whether I should keep it or dump it. --------------------------------- But that's nothing ... what I *REALLY* want to tell you about is something that finally got done, after I have thought about it for years but got no where on it. The whole thing, all nineteen years of this Digest and the several hundred articles in the archives are finally, once and for all ... *totally indexed* with a search engine just for intra-site searching. Every article, every title, every author, every subject, every phrase, every word ... all the way back to August, 1981, now indexed and ready for searching. Every bit of it with anchors you can click on to go to old articles, etc. Here is what you can do to test it: if you have ever written an article which appeared in TELECOM Digest since 1981, or if you are mentioned in an article, or if you contributed a file which is in the archives, use the link below to go to the search page then enter your name as the search criteria. The Boolean operator used is 'OR', so if you do not want to see hundreds of references to things written by all the people named Linc and hundreds of things written by all the people named Madison, then quote your criteria like this, "Linc Madison" instead, and get just what he has written, at least most of the time. I say 'most of the time' since I do not yet have it totally fine-tuned enough to come up with everything -- leaving nothing out -- without also repeating itself occassionally ... and there have been so many various theories on how the archiving should be done over the years, that in order to get a response to everything substantial, I had to accept responses to a lot of garbage also. For example, if you gave as your search criteria 'massis.lcs.mit.edu' indeed it would find it, thousands of times in headers going back over the years. It tries to put things a little in context so you do not waste time looking at something meaningless, such as (in our example) Linc Madison's name in a reply header somewhere but nothing that he actually wrote. It gives you about ten words on either side of the search string, in the hopes you can detirmine the context and decide if you want to see what it has found or not. Everything that it finds, useful, garbage or whatever has a hyperlink, even those old ancient issues of the Digest, so you can click right over to it and get it if you want it. One thing to watch out for: I have it set to return the 'most rele- vant' items first -- at least it tries -- so it searches first in things like TELECOM_Digest_Online and the most recent recent issues, where if you find our buddy Linc in the results you can go right to the item. Then it continues looking through the special files, and then continues on to the ancient stuff ... but the old issues are packed in groups of fifty issues per file, and I have not yet learned how to unpack those issue by issue automatically without making a terrible mess of it, and I do not intend right now to sit and unpack them all manually into day-by-day-every-day-for-nineteen-years files just so that when the spider runs every day or two, she will will be able to tell you an exact day, date and issue number 'way back when'. So if the spider finds 'Linc Madison' on line 25,539 of a file that is 75,802 lines in length (i.e. fifty of the old back issues in a bundle) it will report an 'untitled page', set a hyperlink to the *top* of the batch, and if you click there, surprise, you get a humongous -- and I mean humongous -- file downloaded to you with apparently no Linc Madison to be found. What you do then is use your own browser's 'find on this page' command to look for him, midst all the articles in that bundle. But it is better -- much better than what we had. I run this all with a javascript located off premises. For those of you who decide to read my source on the /search/index.html page, you'll note I call for a script to begin, then do SRC js.elsewhere, then immediatly close the script. This way there is no involvement with cgi-bin, and no major scripts to keep on that page causing it to take forever to load. Yes, I know, for all the bad things said about Java Script, it can improve the usefulness of a web site such as mine a hundred percent. And yes, I can do better also; give me more time please, to try and improve the search method and the site in general. Anyway, go try it now; I will wait here for you to get back and continue the rest of this issue. Try your name as the search item, even just your last name if you wish. Then tell me what you think. http://telecom-digest.org/search PAT ------------------------------ From: jim gallagher Subject: Strange Problem Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 17:08:30 -0500 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. I recently switched to a new internet connection number which Ameritech described to me as being a 5 cent untimed call within zero miles of my house. The funny business began when Sprint began picking up this local call, attempting to charge me local long distance! I'm outraged by the telco rep who says that these are legitimate charges and that I must have this computer set up wrong. Would someone explain what is going on and how to go about resolving this issue? Thanks. Jim +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + "Goodness is something so simple: always to + + live for others, never to seek one's + + own advantage." + + + + + + Dag Hammarskjold, 1905-1961 + + http://www.spirituality.org/issue01/page07.html + + + +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This very same thing, identical, came up here a couple weeks ago, when our correspondent was able to event- ually prove that the 'competing' telco in his community had gotten the tables mixed up in their switch. Perhaps you guys could exchange notes and find someone at Ameritech who is able to get it corrected with Sprint. PAT ------------------------------ From: James Gifford Reply-To: gifford@nitrosyncretic.com Organization: Nitrosyncretic Press Subject: Airtouch in NYC? Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 21:20:30 GMT I have Airtouch analog cell service, and before a recent trip, I switched to the "no roaming, no long distance" plan. Then I discovered in NYC that the phone wouldn't work (I got a Hell Atlantic operator). I was told by Airtouch that they don't provide service in NYC because of the massive level of cloning-- even their digital plans don't work there because they don't have digital service, so the fallback to analog enables the cloners to work. Anyone know if this is true, or is Airtouch unable to provide service in Da Apple for some other reason? | James Gifford | | Associate Editor, Computer Telephony Magazine | | = Speaking only for myself in this case = | [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Experience has shown that very, very few cellular companies are willing to provide roaming service in New York because as you were told, the fraud level is so great. A few companies with analog service *will* roam there, subject to very tight rules. For example, when I got an Ameritech cell phone once, they asked me 'do you intend to roam?' Not wanting to be in a posi- tion where I could not if I had to, I said yes. They put me on one certain prefix, which they said was the ONLY Ameritech/Chicago prefix enabled to roam in the Rotten Apple, as they laughingly called it. And, said the Ameritech rep, 'if you happen to get a chance to talk to us before you go to New York, let us know you are going to be in NYC; I will speak to someone there.' I had not had that phone two days and found I was unable to make LOCAL calls with it around the Chicago area. I called in to ask, and a technician called be back maybe an hour later. He told me to turn the phone on and wait a minute ... I did .. he then said okay, now I want you to dial something (some three digit code with an asterisk on the front) ... I did ... he said, 'okay thanks, I got you ...'. I asked what he had done and he said he 'took fingerprints' from the phone.' His explanation was 'that prefix you are on is sort of special, we handle it differently than most of the others ...' He would not give me any further explanation. This was a number of years ago. Once several years before that, I was talking to a friend of mine in Boston. We both had cellular phones and I asked him what his cellular number was, which he told me. As we chatted, I took my phone and reprogrammed it to his number and told him to turn his phone off, then a few seconds later I turned mine on (now with his number on it). I told him, with your cell phone turned off, now dial your cell phone number, which he did. Maybe ten seconds later, my phone rang. I had it close enough to the (landline) reciever that he could hear it ring ... my god, he said ... was that your phone in Chicago ringing when I dialed *my* number? Umm, yes it was. That was how loose and wide open the cellular carriers were in the middle 1980's ... they did not check for ESN at all on roamers in those days. And for many years, Cellular One/Chicago did not bother to ESN-check any phones at all in the (old) 312-659-00xx range. 659 was the first cellular prefix in Chicago, and Cell One had all their own administra- tive phones in the -00xx range. So late at night and on weekends when the offices were closed, phreaks would reprogram their own phones to a number like 312-659-00xx both to chat 'at the cheapest rates possible' (grin) ... and for situations where a phone number had to be left on a pager to get a callback a few minutes later when using a real, traceable number would just never, never do ... of course if the caller tried to reach the callee some other time, like the next day, then a Cell One tech might happen to answer who also happened to be seated at his computer terminal ... (even bigger grin) and before long Cell One decided something is amiss here, and closed still another hole that was big enough to drive a Greyhound Bus through. This would have been 1985-86. Not many cellular carriers like dealing with New York City. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Eric@AreaCode-Info.com (Eric Morson) Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 12:40:51 -0400 Subject: Florida's 941 To Split In September, 1999 Florida's south-central and southwest coast 941 area code will split on 9/20/99. Mandatory dialing of the yet unassigned code will begin on 5/22/00. The coastal counties of Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee, Collier, & Monroe will retain 941. The inland counties of Polk, Hardee, Desoto, Hendry, Glades, Highlands, & Okeechobee will be reassigned. See the full text of the press release at: http://AreaCode-Info.com/headline/1999/fl990519.htm or http://www.naplesnews.com/today/local/d324323a.htm Eric B. Morson Co-Webmaster AreaCode-Info.com EMail: Eric@AreaCode-Info.com ------------------------------ From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics, Inc. Subject: Degrees of Separation (was: Qwest Sued by Marketing Agent) Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 10:38:35 -0500 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... I used to sell long distance > for an agency which resold AT&T through some intermediate reseller. I > sold '800 numbers' for another agent who got them third or fourth hand > from Sprint. Old time readers may recall I did so shamelessly right > here a couple of times, around 1989-90. I bought one of those 800 numbers ... The company was "Hogan" and their customer service was great! They actually found a mnemonic 800 number for me, waited a couple of weeks for portability to go into effect, then jumped on it. No extra charge. I still use that number. But, guess who I send my money to? Hogan became Corporate Telemanagement. Corporate Telemanagement became LCI. And LCI became Qwest. And guess who owns a substantial chunk of Qwest? Microsoft. Gordon S. Hlavenka www.crashelex.com nospam@crashelex.com Grammar and spelling flames welcome. Yes, that's really my email address. Don't change it. ------------------------------ From: Eric@AreaCode-Info.com (Eric Morson) Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 12:36:52 -0400 Subject: Long Island Assigned 631 Area Code Suffolk County New York will be split from 516 and assigned area code 631, with mandatory dialing and NXX activations beginning in the Spring of 2000. No specific date details were given in the press release. All 516 Cellular phones will remain in 516, and rate centers that straddle the Nassau/Suffolk County line will be split by the code. In other words, it will literally be a county line split. On day One of the mandatory dialing period, some exchanges will indeed exist in both 516 and 631. See the full text of the press release at: http://AreaCode-Info.com/headline/1999/ny990519.htm Eric B. Morson Co-Webmaster AreaCode-Info.com EMail: Eric@AreaCode-Info.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 14:01:19 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Long Island Assigned 631 Area Code I recall reading it's Amityville, Farmingdale, and Cold Spring Harbor which lie along the Nassau-Suffolk county line. Recall the 612/651 split in Minnesota w/r to splitting a prefix, with the concerns about things like: 1. local calls across the area code border (the old NYC message unit zones included all of Long Island but did not include Fishers Island). They'd need the area code (it's needed for calls in either direction between NYC and current 516). 2. if prefix ABC is to split along the area code border, try going as long as you can before having, say, ABC-wxyz occurring on both sides of the split line. ------------------------------ From: mayotte-usenet@riverview.com (Mike Ayotte) Subject: 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 10:49:41 -0700 Organization: Riverview Systems Group, Inc. Is there a list of 10-10- numbers in use and the companies that "own" them on the net? Thanks in advance. Mike Ayotte Riverview Systems Group, Inc. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the Telecom Archives there is a file of 10xxx carriers which is a bit out of date, however you can generally take any of them, stick another 10 on the front and be okay. For exam- ple, AT&T's old 10288 now is 1010288. Isn't it a shame when carrier access codes now have to be longer than phone numbers themselves used to be years ago? ... On the same topic, has anyone seen the newspaper advertising by Sprint lately warning against 'ten-ten' arrangements? Sprint says consumers had better be careful, some of the ten-tens are as big at ri-offs as any of the old 809/900 areacode guys used to be, with 'free directory assistance' and then an outlandish charge for the call itself, or sometimes the other way around. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 13:49:19 PDT From: Wulf Losee Subject: J1 Signalling Question What are the specifics of J1 signaling that make it distinct from E1 (or for that matter T1) signaling? My searches of the Web haven't yielded anything useful in English, and none of my technical references discuss it. If there are any TELECOM Digest readers who could give me a succint description of J1 signaling, I would greatly appreciate the tutorial. Thanks! --Wulf ------------------------------ From: BV124@aol.com (Robert Ricketts) Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:32:28 EDT Subject: Re: NPA-NXX & Cities The following identifes the source of a nifty WINDOWS application that does what you ask for and more! To order by US-mail: Robert Ricketts The PC Consultant PO Box 42086 Houston, TX 77242-2086 To order by e-mail: Internet e-mail: robert@pcconsultant.com To order by phone: 888/456-7950 Toll Free I am away from the office occasionally. My voice-mail system will answer if I am away. You can leave your name and number to call back (I'm alerted when a message is received) or go ahead and place your order. The latter is faster! To get the latest version, connect to our web site: www.pcconsultant.com If this URL breaks for some reason, please send e-mail to the above address asking for the current URL. ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Re: NPA-NXX & Cities Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 22:29:52 GMT Clay Koontz wrote: > I need information on the Area Code and prefixes ... NPA - NXX > data with Rate Centers (Cities). ... All I need is N. Carolina's > data. An unofficial list of prefixes and cities for each area code is available at http://www.thedirectory.org/ Eli Mantel ------------------------------ From: bakie@my-dejanews.com Subject: Re: Siemens 2420 Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 16:04:42 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. In article , support@sellcom.com wrote: > the_spectre@my-dejanews.com spake thusly and wrote: >> Siemens will begin shipment of the Gigaset 2402 sometime in the near >> future (probably by June). It lacks some of the features of the >> Gigaset 2420 (for example, the wired handset, answering machine, >> auxiliary port, speakerphone), but still supports 8 cordless handsets. >> It also enables users to "bridge" calls (pick up an extension). The >> Gigaset 2420 continues to be a better solution for small office or home >> office users, but the 2402 is ideal for residential users. It also >> will cost less. > The 2402 is very nice, but a giant step backwards from the 2420. For > those who already have a sophisticated voice mail system it could be > real handy and I suppose it could be located in a more ideal position > for extra range since it would not need to be so accessible. I dunno, > time will tell. Everything I have seen Siemens make has been excellent. Any idea of what the price will be on the new 2402 or when it will really be available? Does call bridging fix the annoying extension problem (for residential use) that the 2420 has? I think I want the 2402. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Richard Campbell Subject: Re: ADSL, Digital Hybrid System, Cable Types? Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 09:06:28 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Yeah, Panasonic systems are really inexpensive. Unfortunately you have found out why the hard way. Rich ------------------------------ Date: 19 May 1999 18:47:14 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Postal Telegraph and Cable Corporation Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I'm trying to find out what ever came of the "Postal Telegraph and > Cable Corporation". Western Union bought and absorbed them in 1943. They were the last significant competitor to WU in the telegram and telex business. (Source: Encyclopedia Britannica) John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (L.Winson) Subject: Re: Postal Telegraph and Cable Corporation Date: 19 May 1999 23:09:30 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS According to the book, "The Story of Telecommunications" by George P. Oslin, Western Union was pressure by the Federal Govt to take over the bankrupt Postal Telegraph about 1945. Oslin, a longtime former WU employee, describes the forced merger in very unfavorable terms. WU was saddled with Postal's 35 subsidary companies. All Postal people hired before Mar 1 1941 were guaranteed jobs for five years at increased salaries. WU had 208,000 miles of pole line while Postal had 31,000. WU had 18,677 offices and 13,500 agencies, Post 3,948. "Most Postal lines, offices, and equipment duplicated Western Union's, were useless, and had to be junked. That required years". Oslin's book also details the relationship between domestic and foreign telegrams and AT&T competition from its TWX service. Oslin feels WU got unfavorable breaks from the FCC in many issues. While not a scholarly work, Oslin's book is a good contemporary history of Western Union and is recommended as a starting point. Unfortunately, while WU's 19th century history has been very well documented, it's 20th century history is often overlooked. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #89 *****************************