Received: by bu-cs.BU.EDU (5.58/4.7) id AA25025; Mon, 6 Feb 89 00:41:48 EST Message-Id: <8902060541.AA25025@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 89 0:16:15 EST From: The Moderator Reply-To: TELECOM@bu-cs.BU.EDU Subject: TELECOM Digest V9 #49 To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Feb 89 0:16:15 EST Volume 9 : Issue 49 Today's Topics: Starlink/Tymnet vrs. PC Pursuit: Plot Thickens Re: A Comparison of Starlink and PC Pursuit Re: General purpose, programmable phone switch Re: General purpose, programmable phone switch Looking for good DISA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 5 Feb 89 23:58:35 EST From: telecom@bu-cs.BU.EDU (TELECOM Moderator) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Starlink/Tymnet vrs. PC Pursuit: Plot Thickens Well, I got the Official Agreement in the mail over the weekend. There were a few 'minor points' I had not known about, and will discuss them in this message. Nothing is quite as simple as it seems. 1. SIGN UP FEE: Starlink gets $50 to sign up. I was advised to enclose a check for that amount when I returned my check-free authorization form. This is in addition to the $10/$25 per month maintainence fee. Telenet/PC Pursuit charges $30 to sign up for *new* users. If you are an existing user, the fee to open additional accounts between now and May is waived. As pointed out earlier, the '$4.50 per hour after 30 hours' charge on Telenet is only if you don't buy adequate bundles of time to begin with. You have from now until May to decide how many such accounts, or bundles of time are appropriate for your use. 2. CALL DETAIL: Starlink will post a message for you on their bulletin board system telling you the *total amount* to be charged to your account each month. Call detail costs $5 extra per request. I do not know if the call detail then comes in printed form, or simply as another email message. Telenet/PC Pursuit will provide call detail free of charge to all users who exceed their monthly allowance, be that 30, 60, 90 hours or whatever. It will come in printed form in the mail as a credit card debit advice prior to the charge going through. Call detail will not be available until April or May, however overtime won't be billed until May. Between now and then, users can adjust their account status as they see fit. 3. PASSWORD/ID CHANGES: Starlink charges $20 for each time this is done. Telenet/PC Pursuit does not charge for password/user id changes at the present time, according to a lady I spoke with in their Customer Service group on Sunday night at 10 PM. 4. ACCESS TO ADMINISTRATIVE PERSONNEL: Starlink will give two hours of free time each month to access Galaxy BBS; to read your account status and I assume conduct other business with them. After that, the charges are $2 per hour, plus $1/$1.50 for the obligitory connection via Starlink. In my chat a week ago, I was told the DDD lines into Galaxy will be discontinued soon, and all calls will have to come via Starlink. Telenet/PC Pursuit gives free access at all times to the Net Exchange. Admittedly, Net Exchange is not in the same league as Galaxy, but you would think the folks at Galaxy might figure out a method to accept collect calls via Starlink specifically to deal with Starlink user enquiries. That, or leave their 804 numbers open for calls via PC Pursuit or DDD. 5. MINIMUM USAGE PER CALL/GRACE PERIOD: Starlink has a five minute minimum connect time with an outdialer. According to the Agreement, if you connect to an outdialer and disconnect without connecting to a host computer, five minutes will be charged. Apparently the fact of the BBS or whatever you are calling being busy is not relevant. I do not know how, or if they plan to adjust the billing for out of order telco lines and out of order modems, etc. Telenet/PC Pursuit understands that there are frequent problems in connecting from an outdialer. Per their memo in mid-January, an automatic forgiveness of one minute will be applied across the board on all outdial connections. If the modem is out of order; the telco line is down; or the remote host is busy/having snit fits or whatever *IF YOU DISCONNECT WITHIN ONE MINUTE YOU WILL NOT BE CHARGED. This is reminiscent of the way Sprint/MCI handle things, lacking the call supervision ability of AT&T. 6. ABOUT THOSE TELCO CHARGES FROM THE OUTDIALER: Starlink was originally advertised saying that 'calls outside the local area' of each outdialer would be accepted and billed to your account at telco rates. I noted that in a conversation with a Tymnet sales rep several months ago, I was quoted 110 percent of telco; the surcharge covering billing administration, etc. David Tamkin questioned this in an article a few issues ago; and it is still unresolved. But the Agreement said a little bit more on the subject: Here is just the way it reads: "In some cities, there are surcharges imposed by the local telephone company called MESSAGE UNITS. *These charges are also billed to you.* You are responsible for all long distance charges made from the outdial port to a host computer." End of quote. No kidding! Any telco NOT charging message units now? So now we find we will not only pay for long distance (or one plus, or whatever) made from the outdials at 100-110 percent of telco rates, but we will also pay for local message units on local calls if it is a community which has them. If Tymnet was not able to convince the local telco that they were really using residence service (ha ha!) then the outdialers are business lines, subject to business rates. In Chicago, business telephones pay units on a minute by minute basis even for local calls. Units cost 4-5 cents each here. If a call goes to a suburb, then it may cost 3-5 units *per minute* -- or about 12-20 cents *per minute*. I can call via Reach Out America anywhere for 13 cents a minute without having data network charges on top of that!! Telenet/PC Pursuit makes no charge for calls from the outdialers. They are careful about where they let you call, but using Chicago as the example once again, a call from downtown to Oak Park, which is dialable through a PC Pursuit outdialer, is timed, with so many units per minute. This is perhaps the most damning aspect of the Starlink plan: I have to assume the agreement means what it says: Subscribers will pay for local unit charges in communities were they are charged. And whose word do we take on that: Tymnet of course. Not that they are dishonest; not by any means. But lines have been known to not get disconnected properly, and telcos have been known to incorrectly bill these things. My thinking now is that unless you are a *very, very casual user* of data networks, you would be best to stick with Telenet. And don't think for one minute that 'being able to make extended area calls via the outdialers' is going to be any bargain. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ From: ki4pv!tanner@bikini.cis.ufl.edu To: uflorida!bu-cs.bu.edu!telecom Subject: Re: A Comparison of Starlink and PC Pursuit Date: Sat Feb 4 08:52:41 1989 The area codes shown on the comparison appear bogus. Neither Longwood nor Orlando are in 305 any more. The northern part of 305 got split off and is now 407. Dr. T. Andrews, Systems CompuData, Inc. DeLand PS: Longwood? Come on, why not just say Sanford. No one outside of the area is likely to know where Longwood is. --- ...!bikini.cis.ufl.edu!ki4pv!tanner ...!bpa!cdin-1!cdis-1!ki4pv!tanner or... {allegra killer gatech!uflorida decvax!ucf-cs}!ki4pv!tanner ------------------------------ To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu From: westmark!dave@rutgers.edu (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: General purpose, programmable phone switch Date: 3 Feb 89 04:49:33 GMT A recent article in this group asks about a general-purpose programmable telephone switching system. Basically, a PBX designed to let the end-user design the call-processing features. Check out Redcom (they're in New York state, but I've forgotten the city, and I don't have the info handy). They sell building blocks of the kind described... A general-purpose programmable digital switch, implemented as a backplane with available trunk, station, and other interface modules. An RS-232 interface is available. If your computer is connected to that interface, it can receive a text message for every event detected by the switching machine (every switchhook state-change, touch-tone detected, trunk ring or seizure signal, etc.). By sending messages to the switching machine, your computer can control signalling and switching functions. Basically, a PBX in kit form, with an external call-processor. Check it out! -- Dave Levenson Westmark, Inc. The Man in the Mooney Warren, NJ USA {rutgers | att}!westmark!dave ------------------------------ To: watmath!comp-dcom-telecom From: vances@egvideo.UUCP (Vance Shipley) Subject: Re: General purpose, programmable phone switch Date: 4 Feb 89 05:00:00 GMT In article AI.CLIVE@MCC.COM (Clive Dawson) writes: >More and more often over the last several months, we have seen >messages to TELECOM inquiring whether or not a box exists which >will do "x", where x is some function dealing with counting >the number of rings on a line, connecting two lines together >in various configurations, automatically answering, automatically >have to be mechanisms to detect busy signals, etc. (One thing I'm >not sure about is how to detect when a remote phone hangs up; is there >an in-band signal for this?) there is a device made by Mitel Datacom called the SMarT-1 (sic) which has precision tone detectors, DTMF generators, DTMF recievers, control (loop or ground start), as well as a bidirectional rs-232c port. it is quite flexible in programming and could be used to help you accomplish many different ideas. it was designed to handle complex routing situations using varied carriers. as for the 'detect when a remote phone hangs up' question, this is called CPC or 'Calling Party Control' and is often found on normal loop start lines. when a caller hangs up the circuit to the phone that was rung is reversed in polarity for a short period of time (milliseconds). many answering machines watch for this and reset when a caller hangs up. the trouble is that it is'nt part of a normal tarriffed service so you can't count on it. on a ground start line (as is used on a PBX) it is much simpler and _is_ an integral part of the service, when the other end hangs up, whether you called or answered, the loop is broken. >I suspect that all of this functionality exists in one form or another >in various answering machines, automatic dialers, call screening >boxes, etc. The question is, has anybody thought of putting it all >into a single box and making it programmable by the user? well the SMarT-1 is quite programable, but that would depend on the user :-) -vance shipley ------------------------------ To: comp-dcom-telecom@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU From: decvax!decwrl!apple!denwa!jimmy@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Jim Gottlieb) Subject: Looking for good DISA Date: 5 Feb 89 06:26:04 GMT Does anybody know of a decent DISA unit that doesn't use switched-gain amplification? Buscom makes one, but their use of switched-gain makes it unacceptable for data, or even decent voice. The alternative is to buy a PBX that has a DISA feature, but even the Panasonic KX-T1232, the cheapest of the lot, would cost about $1500 to equip this way and that's a little more than I wanted to spend. For those so uninformed, a DISA (Direct Inward System Access) unit, also called a "WATS Extender", allows dial-up access to a remote PBX or CO dial tone. I would also like to find a device that will take one PBX trunk and one station, and convert it to a 2-wire E&M Tie Trunk, for use in those situations where a PBX is not equipped with special E&M Trunk Cards. If anyone knows of anything along these lines, please let me know. Thanks... -- Jim Gottlieb E-Mail: or or V-Mail: (213) 551-7702 Fax: 478-3060 The-Real-Me: 824-5454 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************