Received: by bu-cs.BU.EDU (5.58/4.7) id AA08955; Sat, 14 Jan 89 01:08:00 EST Message-Id: <8901140608.AA08955@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: Sat, 14 Jan 89 0:40:19 EST From: The Moderator Reply-To: TELECOM@bu-cs.BU.EDU Subject: TELECOM Digest V9 #14 To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu TELECOM Digest Sat, 14 Jan 89 0:40:19 EST Volume 9 : Issue 14 Today's Topics: Re: AT&T alleges dumping Sleazebag 970 Numbers with Automatic Harrasment Re: Race conditions in a PBX "Antique" phone numbers Re: Time marches on... [Moderator's Note: Here's hoping your weekend is pleasant. If you are getting a three day holiday out of it for MLK's birthday observed, then you are a lot luckier than me. Watch for something *really special* in the next issue of the Digest: an up-to-date, complete listing of North American area code assignments, prepared by Alexander Dupuy. You should have your copy sometime over the weekend. Patrick Townson] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To: uunet!comp-dcom-telecom@uunet.UU.NET From: algor2!jeffrey@uunet.UU.NET (jeffrey) Subject: Re: AT&T alleges dumping Date: 11 Jan 89 18:44:09 GMT I was very sad to read that AT&T has descended to Japan-bashing. It is a company for which I have the greatest respect. They have been a generous client, and even if that had not been the case, as a UNIX programmer I would still owe them my livelihood. Their ability to plan for the long term is unequaled. However, it seems clear that the Japanese equipment is not underpriced, except in comparison to the AT&T stuff. I had looked at the AT&T phone systems, and the sales people acted as if they already had a government enforced monopoly. The system was completely incompatible, even with other AT&T equipment. In short, AT&T has yet to make a serious attempt to compete with the foreign systems, in price or openness, and their recent "anti-dumping" action seems to indicate they would rather solve the problem with lawyers than engineers. Unfortunately, we expect this sort of thing from American firms, but I had every reason to hope AT&T would be an exception. Phone systems, even Japanese ones, still are high priced, and tend to lock customers into the vendor's equipment, and limit the customer's expansion options. The solution for this is competition. Phone systems could be an important source of innovation in our economy, rather than a major overhead. However, if foreign makers are locked out, this innovation will be slowed in the United States. Our foreign competitors are going to have access to cheaper and better phone systems than Americans. I would hope our "solution" to the DRAM "dumping problem" would have taught all involved a lesson. Our chip prices skyrocketed, sales of thousands of U.S. products were hurt, the Japanese companies did just fine without our markets, thank you, and the two American companies that did make money are spending it on suing each other. I am not sure my business could survive many more attempts to protect my job. AT&T is perfectly capable of beating the Japanese by producing a quality, reasonably priced product--and of selling it in Japan. Not to even try is unworthy of a company which represents the very best of business in America, and therefore the world. -- Jeffrey Kegler, President, Algorists 1788 Wainwright DR, Reston VA 22090 jeffrey@algor2.UU.NET or uunet!algor2!jeffrey ------------------------------ To: rutgers!comp-dcom-telecom@cucard.med.columbia.edu From: eravin@dasys1.UUCP (Ed Ravin) Subject: Sleazebag 970 Numbers with Automatic Harrasment Date: 12 Jan 89 19:12:34 GMT A couple of months ago, I came home to find a message on my machine from an automatic sales call machine. The message went something like this: "Please answer the following questions and listen carefully to the contest rules. You may win a vacation trip to sunny FLORIDA!" Machine asks some dumb questions about my desires to go on vacation. "Now please listen carefully. If you answer this contest question correctly, you will WIN an EXPENSES PAID TRIP TO FLORIDA! blah blah blah blah blah blah... "Who is the famous Star Personality that turns the letters on the TV hit 'Wheel of Fortune'? Is it: a) Barbara Streisand b) Barbara Walters c) Vanna White ????" "If you think you know the answer to this question, then call 970-xxxx. That's 970-xxxx. Yes, call 970-xxxx and if you have the correct answer you will win the trip to FLORIDA!" After repeating the number and the exhortation to call a few more times, the machine says, in a faster and less understandable voice: "cost is $5.95 per call" And then repeats the phone number five more times trying to con you into call. This seems about as on the level as those postcards I've gotten every now and then telling me I've won a trip to Florida and when you call them for more information it turns out it actually costs at least $89.95. What I find most disturbing about this is that it sure is easy to miss their announcement of the price of the call, and get snookered into calling back and dropping six bucks into these crook's pockets. If I didn't have it recorded on my answering machine I very well might have missed hearing how much the call was and if I was a little dumber than I am I might have called thinking that I was real smart knowing who Vanna White was and for my smartness I was getting a trip to Florida. -- Ed Ravin | cucard!dasys1!eravin | "A mind is a terrible thing (BigElectricCatPublicUNIX)| eravin@dasys1.UUCP | to waste-- boycott TV!" --------------------------+----------------------+----------------------------- Reader bears responsibility for all opinions expressed in this article. [Moderator's Question: This was printed the way I got it. Mr. Ravin, do you mean 970 or 976 as the prefix? What area code is this? PT] ^ ^ ------------------------------ To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu From: westmark!dave@rutgers.edu (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: Race conditions in a PBX Date: 13 Jan 89 02:09:11 GMT In article , hiraki@ecf.toronto.edu (Lester Hiraki) writes: > Does anyone know how to solve the following problem? > > Consider a simple PBX which works as follows: > All incoming calls from trunks are routed to the attendant console. > Outgoing calls are processed as follows... ... > Imagine now that an incoming call arrives at a trunk but the CO has not > yet applied the ring voltage - ie connexion was made during the silent > window (ringing is usually 2s on and 4s off, say). Just at this moment > someone within the PBX is making an outside call & the PBX seizes > this trunk before ringing starts, in effect answering the call. The > incoming caller is connected to the person waiting for his outside call > to be completed. > > Assuming loop-start lines, can this race condition be avoided? Note, > not all business have ground-start lines. I understand ground-start > lines eleminate this very problem? Can someone explain how ground- > start lines work? Lester's question refers to what telephony people call glare. When bi-directional trunks are used between two switches, either end may seize a trunk at any time. How do we handle the case where both ends of the same circuit are seized at the same time? Ground-start lines are typically used between PBX and Central Office switches. A separate mark-busy channel in each direction is provided, as follows: The CO marks the circuit busy by applying a high-impedence ground to the TIP side of the loop. The customer equipment marks the circuit busy by applying a high-impedence ground to the RING side of the loop. Either end may send its busy-mark to the other end while testing the other end's busy-mark. The standard protocol is that the PBX tests the CO's busy-mark (by checking for the ground on TIP) before it bids for the line (by grounding RING). The CO does the same thing in reverse. If the PBX and the CO both bid at the same time, the standard protocol requires that the PBX release the circuit and seize another outgoing trunk, and the CO will complete the incoming call. The probability of glare is reduced, if possible, by having the PBX hunt for a trunk from the top down, while the CO hunts from the bottom up. If ground-start service is not available, the usual practice is to use two trunk groups, one for incoming service, and the other for outgoing service. If this is not done, there is no reliable way of avoiding glare. -- Dave Levenson Westmark, Inc. The Man in the Mooney Warren, NJ USA {rutgers | att}!westmark!dave ------------------------------ From: covert%covert.DEC@decwrl.dec.com (John R. Covert) Date: 12 Jan 89 15:57 To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: "Antique" phone numbers > Operator: That's Spencerville 269, and you're calling > Milford Sound 6. > >Antique? What's antique? We still have plenty of those here, and if it's possible when not doing a transferred call charge to Milford Sound 6 to dial it directly, the NZ system is less antique than ours. The Patrick Creek Lodge, near Crescent City California, is "Idlewild 5." To call this you must call your operator (I suspect if you're outside the LATA you've gotta call AT&T; Sprint operators almost certainly can't put the call through). BTW, the number is listed with normal 707 555-1212 directory assistance. It's a magneto phone on a ring down. Although the last full magneto exchange was removed from Bryant Pond, Maine, several years ago, there are still quite a few phones in remote places which have to be called via special ring-down magneto circuits on the local intra-LATA toll board. /john [Moderator's Note: And don't forget northern Nevada. There are dozens of these 'toll stations' as they are called; tiny communities with two, three or maybe four telephones in total. I think the entire state of Nevada is in a single telephone directory, called logically enough, "Nevada Bell". An entire town with all five telephones -- or sometimes three entire towns! -- will be listed on a single page. For billing purposes, they are called 'other places' and connection is from your long distance operator via Reno, NV Microwave (702+181) ------------------------------ Date: 13 Jan 89 16:18:00 GMT To: att!comp-dcom-telecom Subject: Submission for comp-dcom-telecom From: editor@chinet.chi.il.us (Alex Zell) To: teleco@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Re: Time marches on... Date: 13 Jan 89 16:17:58 GMT In article jbn@glacier.stanford.edu (John B. Nagle) writes: >X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp >X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 7, message 7 > > > The John Crerar Library at IIT in Chicago had, and probably still has, >a number of classic pamphlets and books on early telephony. The John Crerar library is no longer at IIT. It has been a part of the University of Chicago library system for several years. The library is open to the public. There are, of course, restrictions on withdrawals. -- Alex Zell editor@chinet editor@igloo Pictou Island, NS ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************