Received: by bu-cs.BU.EDU (5.58/4.7) id AA24385; Tue, 31 Jan 89 04:12:11 EST Message-Id: <8901310912.AA24385@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 89 3:57:50 EST From: The Moderator Reply-To: TELECOM@bu-cs.BU.EDU Subject: TELECOM Digest V9 #38 To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Jan 89 3:57:50 EST Volume 9 : Issue 38 Today's Topics: Re: USA-Direct Re: USA-Direct Re: PINs and Calling Cards as credit cards Re: PINs and Calling Cards as credit cards Re: Excuses instead of info More Thoughts on Starlink [Moderator's Note: system 'dockmaster' seems to be gone. With it went three users: eshoo@docmaster.arpa; fishman@dockmaster.arpa; neufeld@ dockmaster.arpa. In addition, system 'pioneer.arc.nasa.gov' has been unreachable in recent days. From there we have lost a user: jerry@ pioneer.arc.nasa.gov. Will anyone familiar with these users please notify them to contact me with a new address. Thank you. P. Townson] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 29 Jan 89 22:13:06 EST From: harvard!ima.ISC.COM!johnl (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: USA-Direct In article gast@CS.UCLA.EDU (David Gast) writes: >I also fail to see how using USADIRECT saves time or hassle. If you >have to go to a special phone, it almost certainly does neither. It >might save money, but it might not. From the above country X, it is >possible to use a pre-paid phone card or coins at many phones to call >the U.S. at direct dial rates. Depending on how long you talk, it may >be cheaper than USADIRECT. ... I guess you've never tried to make a credit card call from Country X (which, for the purposes of argument, we'll call France.) You pick up the phone, then you dial 19-3311 to make an operated assisted call to North America. (This is in the phone book, but if you have trouble reading French or your hotel room doesn't have that volume of the phone book, that might not be much help.) An operator answers, and you explain what you want, in French, repeating everything about three times if you have an American accent like mine. Fine, they say, we'll call you back. Wait about 1/2 hour. They call you back, then your call is completed. With USA Direct, I dial 19-0011 from any phone and three seconds later a voice says "AT&T, may I help you." You can indeed use a phone card, but the standard 40 unit phone card is only enough for about three minutes and I don't believe you have the opportunity to stick in a fresh card when the old one runs out. You can use 10 franc coins, but the phones don't make change* so if your call costs 11 francs you lose the other nine. It's true that calling card calls from France aren't discounted by time of day (a holdover from the bad old days, these days in France you get the evening rate even from noon to 1PM because everyone's at lunch) and the direct-dial evening rate may be slightly cheaper, but USA Direct is so much easier, particularly if you're traveling on business and can get reimbursed for calls if you have a recipt, that I'll never use anything else. Regards, John Levine, johnl@ima.isc.com * - In Germany, if you use a large coin to make a cheap call, there's a button on the phone you can push, put in the actual amount the call cost, and get your large coin back. Only in Germany do they expect people to understand that. ------------------------------ From: rja Date: 30 Jan 89 12:19:41 GMT To: comp-dcom-telecom@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Re: USA-Direct In article , gast@CS.UCLA.EDU (David Gast) writes: [ stuff deleted here for bandwidth ] > For the country I inquired about, it is the same price every minute > of every day. That rate is fairly reasonable too (except for the > fact that there is no reason that there should not be off peak use > discounts) and the mandatory operator assisted charges. > [ more stuff deleted here] > > Based on the above information, I would say that the 'no extra > charge' is just marketing hype. They set the rates and then > they say there is no *EXTRA* charge. The charges are definitely > not the same from X to USA as from the USA to X, even if both > are operated assisted. > For USA Direct calls placed from Hong Kong, the call is billed at the US rate meaning the same cost as if the call had been placed from the receiving US number, including any time-of-day discounts. This can be a big savings in HK since all calls originating in HK are billed at the 'standard' rate otherwise. The HK Telco is also prone to lie and say that it is cheaper to call from HK to the US than from the US to HK. For 16 hours a day calls from the US are cheaper than calls from HK, and for the remaining 8 hours the cost is the same either way. Moreover, since HK is 12 hours away then afternoon phone calls from HK get billed at the midnight-7am night US rate if you use USA Direct -- this is great for FAXes. My experience is that it is cheaper to use USA Direct during most of the day than it is to call the US directly (whether by cash or phonecard). As an aside, the HK Telco is the least helpful of any Telco/PTT I've had to deal with anywhere in the world. I suspect that each country overseas imposes slightly different rules on AT&T so that looking into each country's situation would be advisable. ______________________________________________________________________________ rja@edison.GE.COM or ...uunet!virginia!edison!rja via Internet (preferable) via uucp (if you must) ______________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ To: comp-dcom-telecom@rutgers.edu Date: Mon Jan 30 09:36:21 1989 From: karl@ddsw1.mcs.com (Karl Denninger) Subject: Re: PINs and Calling Cards as credit cards In article comdesign!ivucsb!steve@apple.com (Stevie Lemke) writes: >X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 36, message 2 > >Sorry if this has already been discussed (don't know how I could've missed >it, but anyway...): > >Is the four digit PIN on a calling card computed from some sort of algorithm >or is it randomly assigned for each phone number? It just seems strange that >just about any phone anywhere can instantly tell if you dialed the correct >PIN that corresponds to your calling card number. A few years back I knew a person who had a matrix (on paper) of the mapping for these numbers. It was _SIMPLE_; only one or two digits of the "PIN" controlled whether the number you entered worked, and those digits mapped to your phone number. The algorythm was also 'dense' in that more than one mapping was valid (I got curious about the table and mapped my own phone number -- the number calculated did NOT match the one the Telco had issued but BOTH worked!) Thus it was possible (but highly illegal) to bill calls to numbers like "1-555-000-0000"! These calls would COMPLETE -- who knows where the bill went to. I assume that eventually these calls would end up in the "no such account" bin, and someone would get interested in them..... The worst part of this, of course, is that given a person's phone number you could bill calls to their line (!) Supposedly the information came from a group of people at a local university that had done a computer analysis on a large number of valid CC #s to derive the algorythm. Who knows if that part was true..... or where they got the "large number of valid CC#s" to start with..... for all I know he figured it out himself. I've no idea if this kind of thing is possible anymore - - but some years ago it certainly was! I would assume the telephone companies have something better than a simple digit-mapping scheme now if it is still based on an internal computation at all. -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, ddsw1!karl) Data: [+1 312 566-8912], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality solutions at a fair price" ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Jan 89 22:24:49 EST From: harvard!ima.ISC.COM!johnl (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: PINs and Calling Cards as credit cards In article comdesign!ivucsb!steve@apple.com (Stevie Lemke) writes: >Is the four digit PIN on a calling card computed from some sort of algorithm >or is it randomly assigned for each phone number? ,,, It's random. My cousin who runs a little telco in western Vermont had to write a program for his computer to make up PINs for his few customers who want calling cards. The PINs are all stored in a huge replicated data base. He said that there is a very complicated multi-step procedure to get his updates into the data base. As has been noted before, AT&T shares calling card numbers with the local operating companies, other LD companies generally don't although they are starting to now. Regards, John Levine, johnl@ima.isc.com ------------------------------ To: ulysses!comp-dcom-telecom From: jbh@mibte.UUCP (James Harvey) Subject: Re: Excuses instead of info Date: 30 Jan 89 13:26:36 GMT In article , childers@avsd writes: > In article mcgp1!donn@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Donn Pedro) writes: > > >If I gave out the ringback codes to everyone who asked it would > >not be available for our use for testing. People used it to > >busy out their phones so as not to be disturbed. > > Can you document this, or is this what your supervisor told you to say ? > > > Donn F Pedro {the known world}!uw-beaver!tikal!mcgp1!donn > > -- richard YES, supervisors tell you to say this, it's TRUE. More frequently, people use the ringback numbers as an intercom, (call ringback, wait till somebody upstairs picks up extension, talk). -- Jim Harvey | "Ask not for whom the bell Michigan Bell Telephone | tolls and you will only pay 29777 Telegraph | Station-to-Station rates." Southfield, Mich. 48034 | ulysses!gamma!mibte!jbh ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Jan 89 03:02:20 EST From: telecom@bu-cs.BU.EDU (TELECOM Moderator) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: More Thoughts on Starlink Actually, after 'putting the Digest to bed' early Monday morning with issue 37, I did some more thinking about the pricing. I did this after getting ready for bed when I had my shoes off so I could count higher than ten by using my toes. If you consider strictly the dollar amount -- no other factors -- then Starlink becomes more expensive than Telenet PCP after about 12 hours per month. I would not recommend it to anyone merely as a way to 'save money on data calls'. I'd say the only advantage to Starlink is if you find a place on the chart published yesterday which is not served by PCP which you call regularly. Or, if you want to make use of their own service including the links to the various news services, etc. Your $10 or $25 per month fee is not purely an administrative charge: they do give you time 'for free' on their own system to offset the monthly fee. I'd like to hear the experiences of some of you who subscribe to Starlink after a month or so of using it. They also claim their 'throughput' is much faster than Telenet, meaning you would probably spend less time on line each day. Who knows, maybe you could get done in 12 hours what formerly took 30 hours on PCP? Patrick ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************