Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id PAA17491; Thu, 20 May 1999 15:02:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 15:02:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199905201902.PAA17491@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #90 TELECOM Digest Thu, 20 May 99 15:02:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 90 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Data and Telecommunications Dictionary", Peter (Rob Slade) Bell Atlantic Service Problem Inquiry (Bill Feidt) Net Scam-o-Rama: Datek Censured; Searches Hijacked; BigHub's (M. Solomon) U.S. FCC Seeks Good Way To Separate Cable, Net (Monty Solomon) Re: 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? (John R. Levine) Re: 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? (Eli Mantel) Re: 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? (John R. Covert) Re: 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? (Bob Goudreau) Help Needed Researching Polish Telecom (Steffen Beil) I Want to Become a Telecom Reseller (Antique & Estate Jewelry and Watches) Re: Strange Problem (Steven J. Sobol) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 08:34:14 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "Data and Telecommunications Dictionary", Julie K. Peter Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKDTTLDC.RVW 990326 "Data and Telecommunications Dictionary", Julie K. Petersen, 1999, 0-8493-9591-7, U$49.95 %A Julie K. Petersen abiogen@abiogenesis.com %C 823 Debra St, Livermore, CA 94550 %D 1999 %G 0-8493-9591-7 %I CRC Press/Auerbach Publications %O U$49.95 +1-800-950-1216 auerbach@wgl.com orders@crcpress.com %P 820 p. %T "Data and Telecommunications Dictionary" Whichever other communications dictionary you have, you can make room for this one. In fact, it is so distinctive as to make comparison with other glossaries very difficult. Like Weik (cf. BKCMSTDC.RVW) and Shnier (cf. BKCMPDCT.RVW), a number of the entries are more encyclopedic than simply defining. The subject range is quite broad. Many fields of communications are covered, but there is also ample coverage of the computer domain and of scientific realms touching (sometimes quite tangentially) on communications. The strongest emphasis in this work is the historical background, giving information on a great deal of early development, as well as quick biographies of pioneers in the area. It is difficult to determine an area of professional specialization in this work. Telephony and radio get good overviews, but more in past development. Current technologies are not examined in great depth, although history is. A number of popular historical myths are corrected, although there are some assertions with which I'm not quite comfortable, and for which I would have liked to see specific references. Slang is included. At times this may lead to some dispute over the definitions which are, after all, rather informal. For example, cheapernet is defined as any inexpensive LAN technology, while I always heard it used referring specifically to the thinner (RG-58 and RG-62) version of coaxial cable that became popular for Ethernet (and, for a brief time, ARCnet). (And "spam" makes no mention of Vikings.) I was delighted at the number of entries for Canadian technology and inventors. (Not surprised, of course, but delighted.) The entries for "top level" national Internet domains seem to be a bit of a waste of space, especially since the domains are listed in Appendix D. Not all of the explanations are functionally complete. For example, Daniel Bernoulli is described as having done work with fluid dynamics, and Bernoulli's Theorem mentions the constant sum of the pressure head, velocity head, and height. The Bernoulli box is described as using technology pioneered by Bernoulli, but this material does not explain the use of a high speed air jet which maintains an air gap while keeping it vanishingly small. Since Bernoulli's bio also mentions electronics, some readers could be forgiven for assuming that this was his contribution to the Bernoulli drive, rather than the same principle that keeps planes in the air. I noted a slight, but general, weakness in regard to the UNIX operating system, and systems derived from it. (UNIX has, of course, a great many connections to modern networking, and particularly the Internet, so there are a number of related entries.) Explanations are not necessarily incorrect, but are often clumsy, in a manner very similar to those given by people not quite familiar with the technology. Virus is not defined: it isn't even included. The cookie monster program is characterized as a virus, when the program described was a completely non-reproducing prank which had to be initiated by a colleague (generally while you left the terminal unattended but logged on). (There was a Spanish "cookie" [galleta] virus, but it ran on MS-DOS rather than VMS.) A trojan horse is described only as a password collector. Worm is defined only as the Internet Worm, which is defined as a virus, and refers one to virus. Which is not defined ... Errors, additions, and corrections will be noted at http://www.abiogenesis.com/telecomdict/Docs/notes.html. CRC Press is not exactly common on bookstore shelves (and this cover isn't snappy), which is a great pity, because this book is written at the right level, and with the right scope, for the home market. Get this as a present for your favorite techie, and I can pretty much guarantee that they will not be disappointed. Old ham operators and telephone workers will be ecstatic. Professionals may or may not find it useful in their work, but they will most certainly find it fascinating reading, with a great many historical points and canned biographies. Despite the gaps, I hope a bunch of you buy it, because I am dying to see what the author can do with good sales and some feedback on topics to include. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999 BKDTTLDC.RVW 990326 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com One virus, two virii, three viriii, four viriv ... http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ From: wfeidt@cpcug.org (Bill Feidt) Reply-To: wfeidt@cpcug.org Subject: Bell Atlantic Service Problem Inquiry Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 13:29:32 GMT Organization: Heller Information Services Recently I've begun to have an intermittant service problem with my second Bell Atlantic POTS (I use it for data) line. Periodically, I lose dial tone on the line and hear a loud hum in its place. The condition comes and goes, apparently without BA intervention. It happens frequently enough (4 times so far this week) and for suffiently extended periods (up to 12 hours continuous) to be very disruptive. I've reported the problem to BA three times so far. They send a service tech out and by the time he arrives the problem has gone away. BA has installed a demarc box and I've used that to verify that the problem is "outside the house". Can anyone suggest a way I can hold BA's feet to the fire on this? They're always very pleasant when I talk to them, but they're completely ineffectual when it comes to solving the problem. Any advice will be gratefully accepted. Thanks, Bill wfeidt@cpcug.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had *exactly* the same problem with my phones in Skokie, Illinois last year. Not only would some lines just have a 'loud humming noise' for several minutes at a time, but occassionally two of the lines would be bridged together. I filed complaints daily for a couple weeks, and the techs could never find the problem. Now and then a line would be 'dead' i.e. in the sense of no battery or side tone, then if someone dialed that line it would ring and the call would come through, then the line would be okay. Then a tech had a good idea. He asked if I remembered when the work was being done on the storm sewers that summer. Indeed I did, they had Dempster Street dug up for several blocks, a trench down the middle of the street; every day they would work their way east and finally came past me. Well, the tech said he felt certain 'they' had damaged the underground cable, because his testing showed that the cable had an 'intermittant ground' on it. He said they finally had actually caught it acting up themselves. I asked how they planned to repair it; he said they would not bother, that he was just going to put in an order to move everyone off of it (six or eight phones in that vincinity) and instead put them on an 'arial drop from down the street'. Thinking the worst, I asked how long that would take and he said he would put in a work order for the 'guys who do that' and it would probably be 'later the same day', which in fact it was. Where before where the box was mounted on the outside wall of the building and a conduit came up out of the sidewalk right next to the wall and into that box, what I saw later was that a wire from the utility pole several feet away now led over to the same box on the wall and into it. Inside the box, a thick bundle of wires which had come out of the conduit was cut off right where it entered the box and the new stuff was all connected. Also in the box, some cryptic notes on tags tied with strings around the various wires saying approximatly, 'cable 17, multipled at (some street address down the block) underground pairs opened, (date).' Everything was fine after that. I saw the guy a couple days later and asked him how he managed to figure it out so fast and make the neccessary trades, etc. He said it was quite simple, you just had to be a 'phone man' for about thirty years; then you can look at a large junction box and the cable coming in to it and 'see where it all goes in your head a couple seconds later'; 'where it would take you several hours to figure out if you ever did' ... Ask your telco to look at the possibility of an intermittant ground on the cable, which comes and goes literally like the weather. If it rains, water goes in the ground and gets the cable wet, etc. Or a strong wind yanks the overhead wires around, and one someplace is just barely connected, or getting grounded under certain conditions. When they are looking into that, also ask them to make sure all the multiples between you and the central office are open, that none of them were accidentally left connected. As an example of this, if a multiple on the cable is forgotten about, maybe it terminates in the basement of some building down the street from you. If there is a problem in that building, such as a flood in the basement, or a fire burns the place down, or whatever, a couple of phone wires may get damaged, and guess what? You down the street lose your service as a result until telco swaps the cable and/or pairs. Also, next time it happens try to *immediatly* get repair service on the line, and ask them to 'go in on' that pair and test it right then and there. If *they* can hear it, and assess the trouble, they will have a better idea what to do. They have tools which are sophisticated enough that they can identify within a matter of a couple yards where an underground cable has gone bad; even sitting in their office at a computer terminal a two miles away. I hope this helps. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 22:39:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Net Scam-o-Rama: Datek Censured; Searches Hijacked; BigHub's http://www.thestandard.com/articles/mediagrok_display/0,1185,4594,00.html Net Scam-o-Rama: Datek Censured; Searches Hijacked; BigHub's Secret Plan Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the Web . . . [cue the "Jaws" theme], the press was happy to report scams aplenty. You like trading stocks online? Datek Online, the No. 4 e-broker, was censured and fined by the SEC for allegedly dipping into customer accounts to pay bills, and falsifying a financial report last year. Or maybe you like cheapie over-the-counter Net stocks? MSNBC's Christopher Byron [Roy Scheider in "Jaws"?] harpoons OTC company BigHub.com for a secret plan to sell cheaper shares to Wall Street, undercutting current shareholders. Or perhaps you're not a financial type and just like using AltaVista's search engine? MSNBC's Brock Meeks [the Richard Dreyfuss character?] says the latest "snake in the grass" scam involves porn sites hijacking links to legitimate sites by tricking search spiders. Despite the hue and cry about the latest Net scams, as Microsoft might say: "Where's the harm?" Datek Online reached an agreement in which it admits no wrongdoing, and fined CFO Moishe Zelcer already resigned last July. Though Datek looks like it dipped into customer money, it didn't lose any in the process. CBS MarketWatch's William Watts saw the punishment as a follow-up to SEC chair Arthur Levitt's warning to e-brokers to keep pace with increased trading activity. Datek was fined $50,000 and Zelcer $10,000. Zelcer was also suspended from the brokerage industry for 90 days. The New York Times' David Barboza noted that Datek used customer money improperly on 12 occasions, according to the SEC, and exposed it to greater risk in the case of a market downturn. Barboza gave a nice capsule on the firm: "Datek began as a small Brooklyn brokerage firm that specialized in day trading and developed a long history of fines and suspensions related to, among other things, manipulating the stocks of small companies." After a scotched IPO, the company revamped its image with a new set of execs formerly at Waterhouse Securities. Datek says it was all just "flawed calculations," and that back-end systems have been fixed. SEC officials aren't the only feds with a heavier workload because of the Internet. Over at the Federal Trade Commission, agency officials are matching wits with clever porn scammers. In a wire story run by the Miami Herald and other newspapers, AP writer Kalpana Srinivasan reported FTC officials filed suit on Tuesday against perpetrators of a scheme that had prompted 20,000 complaints to America Online. The defendants are as yet unnamed, but the FTC says they will be soon. The elaborate scam spammed Web surfers with warnings that their credit cards were about to be hit by big charges unless they dialed a long- distance telephone number. Callers to the number heard a breathy come-on for more than routine customer service - and also got a pricey international call on their phone bill. Tracking the complex scams is like the Whack-a-Mole arcade game, Ray Everett-Church of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail told Srinivasan: No sooner does the mole get hit by the mallet in one place than it pops up in another. Meanwhile, MSNBC went Net-scam crazy with its pair of stories. Byron has had a field day with OTC stocks (chum in the water to him), and he drubs BigHub for failing to disclose financial details. Of course it's all legal, since penny stocks don't have to file disclosures with the SEC and have free rein to goose stocks with press releases. In this case, Byron found that a special confidential offering for Street insiders lets them buy convertible preferred shares that become $4-per-share common stock in 30 days. The problem? The stock is now trading at an inflated $15 per share, so they'll net a 300 percent return overnight, while diluting everyday shareholders' stock by 50 percent or more. MSNBC's Brock Meeks finds that a man traced to Portugal had set up porn sites under the .nu domain, from the tiny Polynesian island of Nuie. Apparently, he copied pages from legitimate news and even kids' gaming sites, so that search spiders would find terms like "news" or "kids games" and associate his URLs. When unsuspecting surfers searched for the benign keywords, they ended up jumping to his porn pages by being redirected seamlessly from the duped pages. Meeks says the extent of the scam isn't known, but that it extends to engines beyond AltaVista. He notes that it's offensive and likely illegal, but mainly for stealing trademarked material - so the onus is on the purloined sites to take action. Of course, the overtaxed FTC is working overtime to keep up with all the online scams, but that's getting harder by the day. SEC Fines Datek http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/current/datek.htx SEC Punishes Online Broker in Fund Shift http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/biztech/articles/19brok.html FTC Pursues Case Against Unnamed Sender of Junk E-mail http://www.herald.com/content/today/business/brkdocs/013015.htm How BigHub Raised Big Money http://www.msnbc.com/news/byron.asp Scam Diverts Surfers to Porn Sites http://www.msnbc.com/news/270689.asp ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 23:37:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. FCC Seeks Good Way To Separate Cable, Net By Aaron Pressman WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard said Wednesday his agency had authority to prevent discrimination by cable companies offering high-speed Internet service but added that he had not yet heard an appealingly simple proposal to do so. The comments by the top U.S. communications regulator came at a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill where America Online Inc. Chairman Steve Case argued for either an FCC rule or a new law prohibiting cable companies from requiring their customers that buy high-speed Internet access to also buy Internet services like e-mail and Web page hosting from a cable-owned firm. "I do think the FCC has jurisdiction," Kennard, the top U.S. communications regulator, said disputing the cable industry's view that the FCC lacked such authority. "The more difficult question, in my view, is if we assert jurisdiction what do we do? I don't agree with Steve Case that it's a real easy matter to just craft some regulations that ensure nondiscrimination." Case, who is backed by other Internet service providers and consumer groups, argued that the cable industry's bundle of high-speed access and Internet service would eliminate healthy competition on the Internet. "We just want consumers to have a choice when they want an ISP (Internet service provider)," Case said. "There is an easier route. It doesn't require onerous regulation ... But even if it wasn't easy -- and I think it would be -- that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. The question is more a question of right or wrong as it relates to developing this medium." Milo Medin, chief technology officer at AT&T Corp.'s AtHome Corp. Internet unit, responded that requiring cable companies to allow other Internet service providers onto their network would drive up costs and lead to a difficult regulatory tangle. "You get into the same kind of regulatory Vietnam that's happened with the phone companies," Medin said. The FCC considered the issue twice earlier this year, in assessing AT&T's acquisition of cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. and in a congressionally required review of high-speed services. In both cases, the agency declined to impose any unbundling or nondiscrimination rules. During those proceedings, many people, including AOL, brought unbundling proposals to the FCC, but all would have led to complex and difficult regulations, Kennard said. Kennard said the best response was for regulators to ensure the development of more high-speed pathways into consumers homes. Such new paths could come from wireless, satellite or electric utility companies. Kennard conceded that different rules currently applied to cable firms and telephone companies, which are prohibited from limiting consumer Internet service choice on their high-speed offering known as digital subscriber line or DSL. "We have a disparity -- that's clear -- and it's stark and there is a certain unfairness about it," he said. "So we're faced with the problem of whether we're going to regulate up or not regulate at all and just hope for new competition." "From where I sit, it makes a lot of sense to try to promote as much competitive entry as we can through new pipes and new services so that we can get out of the business of regulation ultimately," he added. "That's the ultimate long-term solution ... but it's now a question of timing and how we get there." ------------------------------ Date: 19 May 1999 21:38:57 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA In article was written: > Is there a list of 10-10- numbers in use and the companies that "own" > them on the net? This page has the definitive list: http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/carrier_id_codes.html It has about 1,860 defined numbers along with the owning carrier, contact person, and the contact's phone number. Keep in mind that many IXCs don't want dial-around customers, and either reject call attempts from non-customers or charge a price intended to make you not want to come back. 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: Eli Mantel Subject: Re: 10-10 Dial-Around Company List Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 04:30:29 GMT The following page provides links to downloadable files containing carrier access codes and a variety of other "number resources": http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 09:22:05 -0400 From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? There is a complete list at www.nanpa.com, the official site for the North American Numbering Plan Administration. /john ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 09:28:19 -0400 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Re: 10-10- Dial-Around Company List? mayotte-usenet@riverview.com (Mike Ayotte) wrote: > Is there a list of 10-10- numbers in use and the companies that "own" > them on the net? NANPA (who administers the 101-XXXX Carrier Identification Code number space) keeps a fairly up-to-date list of CIC assignments online at http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/text_db/dcic_990430.zip . Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: Trainee_Tokyo@asia.hypovereinsbank.com Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 15:06:21 +0900 Subject: Help Needed Researching Polish Telecom Hi there, As you can see, I am a trainee in Tokyo, working for the German HypoVereinsbank. I am working on collecting information about the East European Telecom market, especially Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic. Your homepage is definitely the largest and covers so much information -- great. I've searched through it, but couldn't find anything on the Polish market. I'm pretty good supplied with info about the other two countries, but I still have a lack on Poland. I am sure one reason is the underdevelopement compared to other European countries. Do you have any information on this topic? Can you help me out? Or do you know where I can find any information. I've checked the Polish homepage, the largest Telecom companies. I am looking for figures concerning future expectations, size and development of the market so far and of companies in it. Governmental stockholding on such companies, just any information would be fine. Please respond. Thanks a lot in advance, Steffen Beil ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 20:10:58 -0400 From: Antique & Estate Jewelry and Watches Subject: I Want to Become a Telecom Reseller Could you please direct me to info regarding how to become a reseller of long distance service. Thank you, Alex [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: By my printing your request, perhaps a few of the people who do marketing and/or have reselling agreements and are looking for agents will contact you with their plans. Good luck with it. Who knows, maybe in ten years you will have grown to be the fourth largest carrier in the USA, and whoever is running this Digest at that point in time will print all sorts of scurrilous attacks about you every week or so ... (grin) ... and some telecom historian will write that 'Alex Long Distance got its start many years ago in the watch and jewelry business.' PAT] ------------------------------ From: sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steven J Sobol) Subject: Re: Strange Problem Date: 20 May 1999 02:35:18 GMT Organization: North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.INET On Wed, 19 May 1999 17:08:30 -0500, gallagher@sprintmail.com allegedly said > 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? I am in Ameritech territory. If you're in the Northeast Ohio area I may be able to provide some information for you. I would need to know: (a) the city from which you are dialing, and (b) the city you're calling Disclaimer: I'm not a telco employee. I'm just someone who runs an ISP, has more contact with the phone company than he'd like to have, and sometimes has the type of information you're asking for. :) > [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 The ISP whose dialups I resell set up a couple dialup banks at the ICG Communications facilities in Garfield Heights, Ohio, just outside Cleveland. They have a number, 440 424-0032, which is a local call for Cleveland and all of Cuyahoga County, and additionally is local to western Geauga County. They ran into problems with Alltel customers in Geauga County being billed long distance because 440-424 is a new exchange, and Alltel screwed up when they entered the information for that exchange into their billing system. Perhaps the same thing is happening here? Is the originating phone or the line being called serviced by Ameritech, with the other line being serviced by someone else, perhaps a CLEC? If so, this could be a simple mistake. (Wait. Ameritech doesn't make mistakes. ) Steve Sobol - President, North Shore Technologies Corp. 888.480.INET [4638] North Shore is your authorized SkyTel reseller, combining the power and unmatched convenience of SkyTel's nationwide paging network with North Shore innovation and customer service! Call or e-mail today for details. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now you are speaking the truth. Ameritech does not make misteaks and I do not make misteaks either. It is my computer that makes all the misteaks, just like Ameritech's computer. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #90 *****************************