Date: 20 Oct 2000 06:15:10 -0400 Message-ID: <20001020101510.19410.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> From: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org (Telecom Digest) To: telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Subject: Telecom Digest V2000 #94 Reply-To: editor@telecom-digest.org Sender: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Errors-To: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Precedence: bulk X-UIDL: 93f36e0b69fc26e3485ed5daa8e52987 Status: RO X-Status: Telecom Digest Friday, October 20 2000 Volume 2000 : Number 094 In this issue: California's area code mess from an outsider looking in More on pay phones (pre-pay and post-pay) Re: California's area code mess from an outsider looking in eager to know about site. Re: California's area code mess from an outsider looking in Government groups at odds on Net filtering The Throwaway Credit Card 10/19/00 ICBTollFree.Com HEADS UP HEADLINES PCS service below the ground Re: California's area code mess from an outsider looking in Re: PCS service below the ground Re: PCS service below the ground dot tel = ENUM + ICANN-granted policy authority over E.164 + trademark rights ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Oct 2000 07:18:04 -0400 From: John Grossi Subject: California's area code mess from an outsider looking in >The thing about a one area code overlay for a whole region is that you >don't waste codes as they are doing in eastern Massachusetts. By the end of 2001 MA will have 10 area codes. Once they figure out what to do w/413. I'm betting for an area code split myself. The Pioneer Valley keeping, and the Berkshires getting a new one... but your right, it's a waste... 79 million phone numbers locked up by a state of slightly greater than 6 million folks. BUT this has all been good for competition, since we now have a competitive local phone market or so the PUC voted when the gave Verizon LD approval earlier this week. Maybe now Verizon can hurry up and buy Genuity back... - -John - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 07:20:53 -0400 From: Diamond Dave Subject: More on pay phones (pre-pay and post-pay) Reading the recent posts on post pay pay phones.... The only post-pay pay phones that I'm aware of are in Breezewood, Pennsylvania (Frontier/Global Crossing, formerly the Breezewood Telephone Company), though as recently shown, there are obviously more scattered around the country. In the Breewood area, this dates back to the days when they were step by step (they're now Nortel DMS-100). With so few pay phones, I guess it would make sense to not bother having equipment to provide full pre-pay service to their pay phones. Though many of their pay phones have been replaces with COCOTs, the few telco ones that are left work great. Of course, when you make a long distance phone call from one of these pay phones, the AT&T operator that comes on the line is startled to find that you're calling from a post-pay pay phone and don't immedately know how to handle the call (AT&T, the charge is.... uh, what do I do now??) Local calls are 35 cents. When the called party answers, the telco switch reverses line polarity and mutes the mouthpiece until the money is inserted. There used to be a pay phone that would work without inserting in any money :-) Directory assistance in their home NPA (814) is 35 cents also. When the directory assistance system returns answer supervision, there is again line reversal. So you have to quickly insert 35 cents and say the informatio to the now automated service before it drops you to an operator! In regards to another post, I remember the town where my grandparents lived (Onaga, Kansas - (785) 889 prefix) where it was a really small central office (step by step at the time) where you dialed 0-NPA-XXX-XXXX for any call outside the local area, even on 800 toll free calls (went to the operator, drove them nuts!) Speaking of post-pay, does anyone remember PRE-pay? These were common on many #5 crossbar systems and some step by step offices where you had to insert money to even get a dial tone! Even to call the operator or 911 you had to insert a dime (later a quarter). Not all #5 crossbar offices had pre-pay, (as some were more modernized with "dial tone first") but there were many that did. Ah, the good ole days... BEFORE COCOTs! Dave Perussel Webmaster - Telephone World http://phworld.tal-on.com - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 08:22:31 -0400 From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: California's area code mess from an outsider looking in Joseph Singer writes: > Now here's my question in this why is it necessary in California, New York, > Chicago (among the places that I know) is it necessary to dial 11 digits > (1+area code+number) to make a "local" call. Why is it not just area code > plus 7 digits? Does it have something to do with the local "toll" > thing/message unit thing or combination of both? Because they use "1 means areacode follows" rather than "1 means long distance" (which is the way Washington and Oregon do it). It *may* go along with the mindset that allows them to accept *mandatory* residential measured service. Me, I'm glad that mandatory measured service is *illegal* in Oregon, and that we can't dial a long distance call without adding a 1 on the front. - -- Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 13:42:10 -0400 From: "VIJAY NARAYAN" Subject: eager to know about site. am a little curious about this site. it does not load on my browser. would like u to tell me more about it. i do not know how i got to this page. what does the site provide. Vijay ay - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 15:20:43 -0400 From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: California's area code mess from an outsider looking in Leonard Erickson wrote: : It *may* go along with the mindset that allows them to accept : *mandatory* residential measured service. Which mandatory measured residential service would that be? I've been in California for a while, and I've never had measured service. - -- - --- Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - San Jose & Pope Valley (Napa County) CA. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 15:49:58 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Government groups at odds on Net filtering Government groups at odds on Net filtering WASHINGTON--A congressional commission is set to recommend voluntary Internet filtering in schools and libraries, but Congress itself is poised to pass a bill that would go a step further and mandate such technology. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-3237543.html - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 15:56:33 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Throwaway Credit Card October 18, 2000 The Throwaway Credit Card MBNA, the largest independent Visa and MasterCard issuer, says its service offers a more secure way to shop online. By Ronna Abramson Following American Express 's launch of a similar product last month, MBNA , the world's largest independent credit card issuer, announced plans Wednesday to give consumers a more secure way of shopping online, with a disposable credit card number. http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,19505,00.html - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 19:04:13 -0400 From: "Judith Oppenheimer" Subject: 10/19/00 ICBTollFree.Com HEADS UP HEADLINES ************************************************************************ ICBTollFree.Com HEADS UP HEADLINES ************************************************************************* from ICB Toll Free News - Daily News and Intelligence covering the Political, Legal and Marketing Arenas of 800 and Dot Com. ************************************************************************* CONTENTS - - DOT TEL WANTS TO SET E.164 NUMBER POLICY Top level domain applicant .tel wants to rule global telephone numbering. It wants to assign trademark property rights to end users. Its got substantive backing, and it knocks ENUM off the plate. For a limited time this premium-level article is available for free. http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=4661 - - IRISH FIRM SEEKS .AFRICA TLD - - YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION - - TRANSPARENCY, ICANN STYLE: SECRET WHOIS COMMITTEE - - CHINA WILL FIGHT CNN SQUAT CLAIM - - .XXX/.KIDS APP SOLICITS POLITICAL SUPPORT ************************************************************************ CUSTOMER SERVICE NOTE: ICB HeadsUp Headlines was not emailed yesterday October 18 as our host server experienced an outage. Articles posted yesterday are included today. ************************************************************************ REGISTRATION: Access to all articles, Free and Premium, requires registration. Registration contact information is not sold, leased, or rented. ICB is a popular research destination, with all content archived indefinitely. Find all ICB headlines, current and archived, at http://www.icbtollfree.com/icbheadlns.cfm. ************************************************************************ ARTICLE ACCESS CODE LEGEND ICB Toll Free News offers two valuable service options: F = Free - News and Features articles P = Premium - Unlimited Site Access including all Articles and Documents. ************************************************************************ !!! YOUR TEXT AD HERE !!! 18,000+ weekly readership, over 154,000 targeted impressions every month! Space is limited -- ORDER NOW! -- email editor@icbtollfree.com. ************************************************************************ HEADLINES for October 19, 2000 F - DOT TEL WANTS TO SET E.164 NUMBER POLICY "The policies iTAB seeks authority over are the core policies that define the utilization of ".tel" as a shared resource for bridging the addressing gap between legacy telephone numbers and emerging standards of the Internet- Telephony industry." Though perhaps in denial, this TLD application (a technical mirror of ENUM) provides a look into the policy potential of ENUM. CONTINUED HERE: http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=4661 F - IRISH FIRM SEEKS .AFRICA TLD Andrew McLaughlin, ICANN's chief policy officer, says the fee may have discouraged applications from African countries with unfavorable exchange rates, but that it was a necessity. CONTINUED HERE: http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=4657 F - YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION ICANN is a government, the first true world government with real power, because it can seize your domain name, your business and your online life. CONTINUED HERE: http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=4656 ************************************************************************* **************************************************advertisements********* >>>>>>>>>>>>> http://1800TheExpert.com <<<<<<<<<<<<< 800 & Domain Name Acquisition Management, Lost/Stolen 800 # Retrieval, Litigation Support, Regulatory Navigation, Correlating Domain Name & Trademark Matters. ************************************************************************* Are you a local or regional business that advertises in newspapers, direct mail, on radio or tv? 1 800 BRAND IT shared use marketing programs can help your sales skyrocket! http://www.1800BrandIt.com ************************************************************************* FT Telecom Conferences In its 20th year, this event will bring leading personalities in the telecomms industry to discuss opportunities and challenges which technological advancement, increased competition and restructuring will pose to the future of global telecommunications. Register online to receive your 10% discount. http://www.ftconferences.com/dynamic/conferences/ftwt00.htm?bn=icb ************************************************************************* EVERY 3.6 SECONDS SOMEONE DIES FROM HUNGER http://www.hungersite.com/ ************************************************************************* ************************************************************************* more HEADLINES for October 19, 2000 P - TRANSPARENCY, ICANN STYLE: SECRET WHOIS COMMITTEE The subject of an apparently secret Whois Committee came up during today's Names Council meeting when NC Chair and Afilias spokesmodel Ken Stubbs mentioned that he sat "on the DNSO's Whois Committee." CONTINUED HERE: http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=4659 F - CHINA WILL FIGHT CNN SQUAT CLAIM CNN has sent a legal letter to the mainland portal, www.cnmaya.com, asking that it stop using its domain name before October 16 or face legal action, according to the China News Service. Maya Online provides Chinese-language news items under the domain name www.cnnews.com. The firm rejected CNN's claims. CONTINUED HERE: http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=4660 F - .XXX/.KIDS APP SOLICITS POLITICAL SUPPORT "The words 'sex' and 'porn' are consistently at or near the top of the list of words entered into search engines, and lead quickly to free samples of hard-core material," said Bruce Watson, president of Internet watchdogs Enough is Enough. "We agree with the concept of an adult domain, which would make the content easier to isolate." CONTINUED HERE: http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=4658 ************************************************************************* **************************************************advertisements********* TelecomCareers.net - Cutting Edge Telecom Careers, #1 Telecom Job Site! http://TelecomCareers.net ************************************************************************* P.A.T. - a real Live person inside your voice mail? Yes. P.A.T.LiVE, a division of ATG Technologies, Inc., rents live secretarial services through a toll free number. P.A.T. (Personal Assistance Team) can enhance your productivity and image with rates as low as 3 cents per minute. http://www.patlive.com or 800.775.7790 ************************************************************************* Free Timely Time Management Tips to increase your personal productivity and give you more time and balance for your personal life. Subscribe now at: http://www.topica.com/lists/timemanagement ************************************************************************* Read TOLLFREE-L online at http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html ************************************************************************* ABOUT ICB ICB HeadsUp Headlines Daily Email is sent by request. Subscriptions to Daily Email are free to qualified applicants. Visit http://www.icbtollfree.com/reg.cfm?NextURL=Index.cfm to sign up. Please feel free to pass along a copy to a friend, within reason so long as the message is not modified or used unfavorably. To unsubscribe mailto:editor@icbtollfree.com, subject: unsubscribe. *************************** ADVERTISING INFORMATION *************************** For information on advertising in ICB HeadsUp Headlines emails, see http://www.icbtollfree.com/ArticleId4415.html ************************************************************************* Only subscribers or registered users of ICB Toll Free News web site will be able to access all or some of the full text of URLs provided. ************************************************************************* Copyright © 2000 ICB, Inc. All rights reserved. ************************************************************************* ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 19:15:08 -0400 From: Ted Koppel Subject: PCS service below the ground Background: I have Sprint PCS service in Atlanta (dual band phone). I sometimes take the local transit system (MARTA) to get to work. Most of the stations are above ground; the five stations just north of downtown are all below ground. One in particular (Peachtree Center) is 185 (?) feet below ground level, and there are some tremendously long escalators to get from street level to train level. My PCS phone loses service when I am deep in that station. Not a surprise. What does surprise me is that other people waiting for the train *do* have service. Are they using analog phones? Could their service (Verizon? BellSouth? Powertel?) have put local antennas in the underground stations? How is it that my phone announces "Looking for service" but theirs continue to work? - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 20:39:53 -0400 From: John David Galt Subject: Re: California's area code mess from an outsider looking in Leonard Erickson wrote: > Joseph Singer writes: >> Now here's my question in this why is it necessary in California, New York, >> Chicago (among the places that I know) is it necessary to dial 11 digits >> (1+area code+number) to make a "local" call. Why is it not just area code >> plus 7 digits? Does it have something to do with the local "toll" >> thing/message unit thing or combination of both? > Because they use "1 means areacode follows" rather than "1 means long > distance" (which is the way Washington and Oregon do it). Right so far. We standardized on this at a time when some parts of the state could dial any call as 7 or 10 digits, and other parts used 1 + seven digits for calls within the same code that weren't local. It was a big improvement. California also, sensibly, allows 1 + 10 digits for ANY call, even if it's local, without causing any change in how the call is charged. This should be required throughout the NANP, it makes life MUCH easier for laptop users. > It *may* go along with the mindset that allows them to accept > *mandatory* residential measured service. California has never had that, though we do have mandatory BUSINESS measured service. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 22:06:22 -0400 From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: PCS service below the ground Ted Koppel wrote: >My PCS phone loses service when I am deep in that station. Not a >surprise. What does surprise me is that other people waiting for the >train *do* have service. Are they using analog phones? Could their >service (Verizon? BellSouth? Powertel?) have put local antennas in the >underground stations? How is it that my phone announces "Looking for >service" but theirs continue to work? My guess is that Sprint just has poor service. When I was in Atlanta earlier this year, my phone worked only intermittently in my hotel room (the downtown Marriott). It works only sporadically in Indianapolis. Coverage drops here at various places in Sacramento and Oakland, and along the heavily traveled I-5, I-80, and US 50. So why am I still with Sprint? I'm not sure. I guess it's too much trouble to change phone numbers, which is what they're counting on. I wish they had a flat-rate dual-mode phone plan. - -- Jack Hamilton Broderick, CA jfh@acm.org - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 23:25:47 -0400 From: scsmediafmp@aol.com (Steven Scharf) Subject: Re: PCS service below the ground Being able to chnage service at will is why I never gave out my cell number, but forwarded as needed. After moving my office to my home, it was forwaded semi permanetly. Having now moved to Maine, I have gone back to only forwrding when I go out. And wouldn't you know it, Verzion gave me an excellent easy to remeber cell number that any business would kill to get. 207-233-9191 and I was able to get just as easy a business line number 207-774-9393. Folks in New York would kill to get those two numbers. And I don't even have to pay for a vanity number. Steven Scharf SCS Media Services PO Box 4135 Portland, Maine 04101 Tel: 207-774-9393 Fax: 207-774-1819 SCSMedia@aol.com Jack Hamilton jfh@acm.org answered: My guess is that Sprint just has poor service. When I was in Atlanta earlier this year, my phone worked only intermittently in my hotel room (the downtown Marriott). It works only sporadically in Indianapolis. Coverage drops here at various places in Sacramento and Oakland, and along the heavily traveled I-5, I-80, and US 50. So why am I still with Sprint? I'm not sure. I guess it's too much trouble to change phone numbers, which is what they're counting on. I wish they had a flat-rate dual-mode phone plan. - -- Jack Hamilton Broderick, CA jfh@acm.org - -- Ted Koppel wrote: >My PCS phone loses service when I am deep in that station. Not a >surprise. What does surprise me is that other people waiting for the >train *do* have service. Are they using analog phones? Could their >service (Verizon? BellSouth? Powertel?) have put local antennas in the >underground stations? How is it that my phone announces "Looking for >service" but theirs continue to work? The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 2000 23:45:15 -0400 From: "Judith Oppenheimer" Subject: dot tel = ENUM + ICANN-granted policy authority over E.164 + trademark rights New York, NY October 19, 2000 (ICB TOLL FREE NEWS) Buried among and receiving little notice within the 47 new TLD applications under public review is .tel, "A Top-Level Domain For The Emerging Internet-Telephony Industry" sponsored by Pulver.com and iTAB (Internet Telephony Addressing Board.) Its premise is ENUM with a twist. ENUM is E.164 telephone numbers, currently accountable to the ITU, to ride the .ARPA top level domain space, which is accountable to ICANN/Commerce, resulting in one global VoIP network, accountable to -- who? While ENUM portends to trickle down authority through the FCC's of the world, .tel can read the dot on the wall and specifies, "iTAB seeks authority from ICANN ... over the core policies that define the utilization of ".tel" as a shared resource for bridging the addressing gap between legacy telephone numbers and emerging standards of the Internet-Telephony industry." Furthermore, "Following the current practice with all Internet top-level domains, the registration of E.164 numbers in the DLS will be managed by a single trusted "Registry". It is assumed that this exclusive Registry function will fall under the regulatory control of ICANN." Two levels below ICANN in the .tel food chain is the "E.164 Registrant: E.164 Subscriber or designated representative that registers numbers and an associated ADS in the top-level DLS." Bodacious doesn't come close -- and yet architecturally speaking, .tel is on the mark. The process starts with an end-user picking up a phone and dialing a telephone number. The IP-PBX looks at the number and tries to make a least cost routing decision. The least cost option is to connect the call over the Internet. The higher-cost back up is to send the call out over the existing telephone network (PSTN). In order to send a call out over the Internet the IP-PBX needs to check a global directory to determine if the telephone number can be translated into an Internet address for an IP-PBX or IP-phone at the distant end. The .tel TLD is the top-tier of a globally distributed directory solution that enables end-users to register their phone numbers on the Internet and associate those phone numbers with any number of IP-enabled communications devices (phone, fax, e-mail, PDA, etc.) As the top-tier of the global system, the .tel TLD simply provides a pointer to the appropriate location where authoritative Internet address information is stored for a given number. The IETF-ENUM working group is engaged in defining an implementation standard for representing a legacy telephone number as a domain name on the Internet. .tel TLD will utilize the ENUM naming approach. But that's where they part ways. "One of the core tenets of our registration policies is to reinforce the property rights of "subscribers" in the E.164 name space," David Peek, Directory of Technology Strategy, tells ICB. Whereas "the e164.arpa (ENUM) structure delegates control of all registration functions to the 240+ government entities that regulate the PSTN today," Peek says. Gordon Cook (http://cookreport.com) confirms this, reporting, "... since ENUM becomes a single point of control and also a single point of failure, the way in which services are provisioned will be absolutely critical... Under the ENUM business model there will be only a single ENUM provisioning authority for each nation state." Cook reports that ENUM chair Richard Shockey says the IETF and ITU have agreed not to break the e164 mould which means that each national telephone numbering authority will be asked to decide who will provision ENUM services within its borders. Shockey had advised ICB similarly of the IETF's intent to come to accord with the ITU, and politically, ITU cooperation is necessary to move ENUM forward. But architecturally, ENUM is e164.arpa - that's "dot" arpa. Dots are ICANN dominion, and like it or not, the IETF ranks below ICANN in the dot food chain, though Cook says the ultimate source of authority is unclear. Is it DOC's Karen Rose? Is it ICANN's Louis Touton? The Internet Engineering Committee? Perhaps we should be looking at the World Intellectual Property Organization - WIPO. Peek tells ICB, "By comparison [with ENUM], our ".tel" structure gives registration control to subscribers on a global basis." How? By indulging ICANN's WIPO-steroidic demands for trademark protection, promising that "E.164 numbers are being viewed as Intellectual property and/or trademarks of the subscriber who maintains "day-to-day" control over the services for an E.164 number." Try as we might, ICB hasn't been able to find one trademark attorney among the myriad of trademark attorneys roaming the net, that finds this statement credible, or even viable. Per one particularly colorful esq, " E.164 numbers - telephone numbers - are not trademarks. They are excluded from protection as being functional," concluding, "I don't give a rat's pitootie if they say the they say, "the registrants' body odors are being viewed as IP and/or trademarks". That does not make it so - and can't." But Peek and his .tel may be onto something. In its Sponsoring Organization's Proposal, .tel "seeks authority from ICANN" to establish trademark status for .tel names because its a core policy "that define[s] the utilization of ".tel" as a shared resource for bridging the addressing gap between legacy telephone numbers and emerging standards of the Internet-Telephony industry." A quick look at WIPO/ICANN activity including the excesses of the UDRP, reminds one that this isn't your father's food chain any more. ICANN assign trademark status? Stranger things have happened. Cook also writes of ENUM's proposed policy that the consumer must be given absolute and total control over his ENUM services which may become the single tool set to controls his business and personal communications. But ENUM doesn't tell us how this will be done. And a closer look at ENUM standards reflects that "service provider" and "consumer" as discussed in this context, can be used somewhat interchangeably. Both ENUM and .tel are pandering, we believe, to corporate interests. Neither quite gets there -- but there's a storm brewing in ICB's crystal ball. In past articles ICB has raised the issue of fundamental paradigm shift from telephone governance to internet governance with regard to ENUM. .tel conveniently helps to bring the point home. Let's suppose for a moment that our trademark attorney friend is mistaken, and the tm fairy WIPO leaves .tel trademark status under .tel's pillow. Taken one level up from the subscriber to simple trademark characteristic assigned to the .tel "property", its not much of a stretch to envision trademark owners of translating alpha marks, challenging the subscriber of E.164 digit strings and matching .tel assignments. The .tel application reads, "Advocates of the "e164.arpa" [ENUM] PSTN-centric model support the vision that telephone numbers are "owned" by (and should be exclusively controlled by) the regulatory entities that created the numbers in the first place. This is certainly a valid statement from the PSTN perspective." By comparison, ".tel" imbues the end user subscriber with trademark characterized property rights. We agree with .tel that assignment of "property rights" to the E.164 digit string and matching .tel assignment would be a welcome relief from the traditional PSTN "public resource" ownership. But layering on WIPO-infested "IP" and "trademark" law could be a disaster. Its unfortunate that ICANN requires the tld applicants, .tel included, to play on WIPO’s turf, but that is part of the problem, and its certainly not the solution to true concerns about outdated PSTN control. Especially when you factor in the ICANN domain revocation policies that remove ownership of all domain names, including those belonging to trademark owners, from the domain holder, up the food chain to ICANN. Peek, like Richard Shockey, is an IETF ENUM working group participant, and tells ICB, "We support the vision that ICANN and the IETF must have a close working relationship to provide proper governance to the Internet community. Within this vision we support ICANN’s authority to create an appropriate TLD, like ".tel", for the Internet Telephony industry. In addition we support the IETF’s authority to define technical standards that utilize a TLD, like ".tel", created by ICANN." But Peek rejects Shockey's vision of nation-state authority over ENUM/.tel. And Shockey, with all due respect, gets apoplectic at the mere mention of an ICANN-controlled ENUM. Yet the actuality is the same whether .arpa or .tel: no matter which, ICANN regulates domains, and folding phone numbers into the dot environment, places phone governance subservient to internet governance. And until internet governance rids itself of ICANN self-interest and WIPO domination, it is not a user-friendly alternative to nation-state regulatory authority. Peek and his .tel partners are (mistakenly, or intentionally) only replacing PSTN with ICANN, and adding in a layer of WIPO at that – whether above ICANN, or between ICANN and end users, depends on your politics. In the U.S. portable toll free arena, while the FCC claims the numbers are a public resource, it nonetheless grants end users "control" over their subscribed numbers and service. Something starkly missing from ICANN regulation of domain names. In fact, in lieu of granting domain owners control, ICANN imposes blanket revocation policies, which do not exempt trademark owners nor their domain names. Shockey's ENUM may fall short of escaping ICANN's grip, but for the moment he's got the better idea, even as the promise of .tel's "property interest for end-user subscribers" makes us wish it were so. POSTSCRIPT ENUM's .arpa has been assigned for use by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). There's no love lost between these standards groups and ICANN, but ultimately we believe that ICANN sits at the top of the food chain. ENUM states it does not want ICANN's policy rule, but rather "nation-state" authority. As noted above, this may be contractually feasible, but is architecturally questionable. And the nation-state authority over ENUM in the U.S., could be ICANN-daddy Commerce. .tel, on the other hand, put its $50,000 on the tld application table. It not only accepts, but covets ICANN's rule, or at least ICANN's authority to make its own rules. And its board of directors is none too shabby.** A birdy whispers that .tel is dead in the water, the protocol supporting organizations telling ICANN's Louis Touton to trash the application or forget about their support. It's ICANN's decision. It's Commerce's decision. It's WIPO's decision. We shall see ... **in addition to Jeff Pulver and David Peek: Joseph Rinde, AT&T Labs: Joe is the Director of Internet Technology at AT&T Labs and he brings a lifetime of data network technology development expertise to the iTAB Board. From 1974 - 1983 Joe was the architect of the Tymnet network as it grew from 150 nodes to over 1,500 nodes. Joe wrote the central control program for the network and later managed the development of all the network internals and CCITT interfaces. >>From 1983 to 1985 Joe was Director of Advanced Product Development at Amdahl's data division. From 1985 to 1989 Joe was a marketing Director at Equatorial Communications, the pioneer of the VSAT industry. From 1990 - 1991 Joe was VP of Marketing for PEER Networks, a start-up that designed network based computer platforms. From 1991 - 1993 Joe was an independent consultant. Among his assignments was a key roll in the development of MCI's Hyperstream Frame Relay network. In 1993 Joe joined MCI as a Director in data services engineering. In 1995 Joe joined Vint Cerf's data architecture group where he has worked on universal dial access networks, World Wide Web based services and IP Telephony services. In 1999 Joe joined AT&T to lead their IP Telephony architecture efforts including long distance, local access over cable and other technologies. Ike Elliot, Level3: Ike is Sr. Vice President of Softswitch Services for Level 3 Communications. Mr. Elliott, a recognized leader in the development of multi-service IP networks, is Chairman of the International Softswitch Consortium, and in 1998 was chairman of the Technical Advisory Council that produced the IP Device Control specification for media gateway control. Also, he is co-author of the Media Gateway Control Protocol specification. Prior to joining Level 3 Communications in 1997, Mr. Elliott held several positions with MCI Communications for 8 years, including positions in management, architecture development, research, and software development. Mr. Elliott holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from James Madison University (1986), and a master’s degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University (1992). Mr. Elliott holds seven patents in the fields of network monitoring, intelligent networks, billing, and Internet multimedia. Ami Amir, RADVision: Ami is the Founder and CEO of RADVision an Israeli company that is at the forefront of pioneering real-time communications over packet networks. Amir is heavily involved in defining the direction and the future of VoIP, with a heavy focus on open standards based solutions. RADVision was the first company to build VoIP gateways, was the first to offer gatekeepers, was the first to provide a reliable V2oIP (Voice and Video over IP) solution, and is a leader in providing the underlying protocols for VoIP. Under Ami's leadership, RADVision has grown to over 250 people, achieved a market leadership position and gone public on the NASDAQ exchange (RSVN). Eric Sumner, President and CEO Dynamicsoft: Eric brings to DynamicSoft the management skills and Internet telephony expertise honed during a 15-year career at Lucent and AT&T. As the first chief technology officer of Lucent's Service Provider Networks group - a $30 billion plus global business delivering a full range of products and services to telecom service providers - Sumner drove Lucent's voice-over-IP strategy. Most recently, as vice president, ventures, Sumner built a portfolio of high-growth ventures, including elemedia, Lucent Echo Solutions, Lucent Speech Solutions and Excel Switching. Previously at Bell Labs, Eric's accomplishments included establishing the research organization that created VXML; leading one of the first research teams to study IP telephony; and founding the AT&T InfoLab, the largest research organization focused on service provider information technology. Eric earned a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. in engineering sciences from Harvard University. Ofer Gneezy, President & CEO, iBasis: Founded in 1996, iBasis is a global leader in advance Internet-based communications for international service providers. As a co-founder of iBasis, Ofer is one of the true visionaries of the IP telephony industry. Ofer was an early believer in the power of the Internet to change global telecommunications and quickly established iBasis as the first provider of toll quality voice-over-IP service. As a result, 11 of 12 U.S.-based carriers, including Tier One carriers, are iBasis customers today. Ofer has forged powerful strategic alliances with industry leaders including Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, EMC Corp. and Software.com. The iBasis Network is the world's largest Cisco Powered Network for Internet telephony. In 1999, Ofer lead iBasis through a highly successful IPO followed by an even more successful secondary offering in early 2000 raising more than $500 million in total. Prior to founding iBasis, Ofer was president of Acuity Imaging, Inc., a multinational leader in industrial automation technology. Ofer lead Acuity to achieve significant increases in earnings, revenues and stockholder equity before successfully orchestrating the company's acquisition by RVSI, the second largest company in the industry. Ofer is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School and has an M.S. in engineering from M.I.T. and a B.S. in engineering from Tel-Aviv University. Alistair Woodman, Director, Marketing Packet Telephony Solutions, Cisco Systems: Alistair has been working in the communications industry for over 10 years and has a broad background in defining and marketing products in the data and telephony protocols space. Alistair started his career managing multi-protocol products for Apple Computer and About Software Corporation before joining Cisco Systems in 1996 to define strategy and product direction for Cisco's Internet-Telephony products. Alistair has been involved with the Voice over IP industry since it's inception. He has a B.A. in Physics from Trinity College, Oxford and an M.Sc in Industrial Robotics & Manufacturing Automation from Imperial College, London. Jerry Chang, President, CEO and Founder, Clarent Corporation: Prior to co-founding Clarent Corporation, Jerry was chief architect of voice and message system development at OnLive! Technologies, where he developed industrial strength real-time voice chatting via the Internet. Prior to OnLive! Jerry spent more than ten years managing software engineers in the development of database and data management software. Seven of the ten years were spent as manager and developer of Gupta's client server database solution. Jerry holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Chiao-Tung University in Taiwan, and a Masters of Computer Science from Penn State University. Copyright © 2000 ICB, Inc. http://www.icbtollfree.com All rights reserved. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ End of Telecom Digest V2000 #94 *******************************