Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id LAA10584; Tue, 20 Aug 1996 11:25:11 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 11:25:11 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199608201525.LAA10584@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #424 TELECOM Digest Tue, 20 Aug 96 11:25:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 424 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Microwave Rural Phone System? (Robert McMillin) Re: Selecting Local Telco (Fred Goodwin) Re: Books About T-1/E-1 Wanted (Richard Neveau) Re: Voicemail and Unix (Ferdinand Verbelen) Re: Voicemail and Unix (David Crawford) Re: Timed Local Internet Calls (Fred Goodwin) Re: When Was Direct Distance Dialing Cut In? (Ed Ellers) Re: Northern Canada Exchange Profile (Jean-Francois Mezei) The World's Most Northerly Exchange (was Northern Canada) (Martin Kealey) Re: Getting a Semi-Public Pay Phone? (A.E. Seigman) Re: 1+ Dialing and How it's Billed (John R. Levine) Re: Does New Area Codes Mean New Caller Cost? (John R. Levine) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 06:33:49 -0700 From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin) Subject: Re: Microwave Rural Phone System? On 17 Aug 1996 19:47:15 PDT, diamond@viper.nauticom.net (Dave Perrussel) said: > I work for a company that has a field station in the middle of the New > Mexico desert. > We currently have phone service there via two ways: [An old service using bare copper wires with decent data bandwidth, and a new service using VHF/UHF low-power that bites doing data.] > Is there a commercially available product that will do a high bandwidth > (say 14,400 baud or 28,800 baud) using point to point microwave that is > reasonabally priced? I remember reading in the papers here in LA circa 1988 about telephone service in the extremely thinly populated eastern parts of Riverside and/or San Bernardeno Counties. Residents had been petitioning the PUC and Pacific Bell for years to provide service, but Pac*Bell wouldn't do it because of the cost of running the copper, and they wouldn't surrender their monopoly because of what it would mean if competition entered anywhere. Finally, an outfit in Fresno came through for them after the PUC granted a waiver. They planned to install point-to-point microwave, and service was to cost $14.95 a month. I lost touch with the story after that, but maybe someone here knows a bit more than I do about it. Also, if what you're after is a purely data connection, there are dedicated microwave links that aren't too horribly expensive (under $5k, I think). Robert L. McMillin | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: fgoodwin@tri.sbc.com (Fred Goodwin) Subject: Re: Selecting Local Telco Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 09:07:56 -0500 Organization: SBC-Technology Resources, Inc. In article , xred@ix.netcom.com (Theron Derx) wrote: > Are you aware of any legislation pending, or in place now, that > permits a person or a company to select their local telco? For > example, if I live in Southwestern Bell country, but would prefer to > have GTE, is there any legislation that would permit me to do that? > If it is, (or will be in the future) will it work much the same way as > the selection of an LD carrier? I would greatly appreciate any > information you could send me. Thank you in advance for your time. At least in Texas, legislation was passed in 1995 that allows for local competition. Potential competitors for the local exchange business must apply to the Public Utility Commission of Texas for authority to provide local service, whether by resale of the incumbent carrier's service, or by providing their own facilities and services. It just so happens that GTE recently applied for and received permission to provide local service in most of Southwestern Bell's operating territory in Texas. As for how you request service from GTE, you probably need to talk to them. Re: Pat's suggestion about FX service: everything he said is true, but for FX customers here in Texas, an FX line gives the local calling scope of the dialtone exchange, but does not provide local calling within the exchange where the FX customer is physically located. E.g., if you are located in Denton, TX (a GTE exchange) and you want an FX line into Dallas (about 30 miles and a toll call away), SWBT would provide you the FX line for all the local calling you can eat in Dallas, but you cannot use it to make local calls in Denton (because the dialtone is coming from Dallas, get it?) So FX is really a replacement for toll service, not for local service. Hope this helps. Fred Goodwin SBC-TRI Austin, Texas fgoodwin@tri.sbc.com ------------------------------ From: richard neveau Subject: Re: Books About T-1/E-1 Wanted Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 02:36:11 -0500 Organization: DSC Communications Reply-To: rneveau@dp.tpd.dsccc.com Marc Samson wrote: > I was looking through the archives for a good reference on T1 and E1. > I did not find anything, and was woundering if you could point us in > the right direction. We have a strong background in SS7 and are doing > some T1/E1 work. We are looking to get good reference material on the > message structure, differences in implementation You need a bunch of books. Of course you MUST get the Flanagan book. The Guide to T1 Networking (Fourth Edition) William A. Flanagan Telecom Library, 1990. ISBN 0-936648-26-0. I've never seen a good book in English that went into E1 much except the ITU standards. Once you have a grip on T1 you can pick up the basics of E1 with very little effort. Hit the ANSI web site http://www.ansi.org, the ITU web site http://www.itu.ch and Bellcore web site http://www.bellcore.com and shell out big bucks for: {ANSI T1.107} Digital Hierarchy - Formats Specification, 1995 {ANSI T1.231} Digital Hierarchy - Layer 1 In-Service Digital Transmission Performance Monitoring, 1993 *{ANSI T1.403} Network to Customer Installation DS1 Metallic Interface, 1995 {ANSI T1.408} ISDN Primary Rate - Customer Installation Metallic Interfaces Layer 1 Specification, 1990 *{GR-499-CORE} Bellcore Generic Requirements, Transport System Generic Requirements (TSGR): Common Requirements (a module of TSGR, FR-440), 1995 {GR-820-CORE} Bellcore Generic Requirements, General Digital Transmission Surveillance, Issue 1, Nov, 1994. {ITU-T (CCITT) G.703} Physical/Electrical Characteristics of Hierarchical Digital Interfaces, 1991 *{ITU-T (CCITT) G.704} Synchronous Frame Structures used at Primary and Secondary Hierarchical Levels, 1995. *{ITU-T (CCITT) G.706} Frame Alignment and CRC Procedures Relating to Basic Frame Structures Defined in Recommendation G.704, 1991 {ITU-T (CCITT) G.732} Characteristics of Primary PCM Multiplex Equipment Operating at 2048 Kbits/s, 1988. {ITU-T (CCITT) G.736} Characteristics of Synchronous Digital Multiplex Equipment Operating at 2048 Kbits/s, 1993. {ITU-T (CCITT) G.823} The Control of Jitter and Wander within Digital Networks Which are based on the 2048 Kbits/s Hierarchy, 1993. {ITU-T (CCITT) G.826} Error Performance Parameters and Objectives for International Constant Bit Rate Digital Paths At or Above the Primary Rate, 1993. and not sure WHO got the document revenue stream but get ... {AT&T TR 54106} Requirements for Interfacing Digital Terminal Equipment to Services Employing the Extended Superframe Format *{AT&T TR 62411} ACCUNET T1.5 Service Description and Interface Specifications from whatever part of the old empire still sells documents. These standards will point you off in search of others but the basics are all covered pretty well (in great detail) if you start with the documents on this list. The ones with *'s are the base documents or "starter set" you 'gotta' have. You will need a rich uncle before you are done if you are developing a product. An often overlooked source would be framer chip vendors. They might have some good presentations, etc. that go into less detail but use real English words. ------------------------------ From: Ferdinand Verbelen Subject: Re: Voicemail and Unix Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 12:32:40 -0700 Organization: Alcatel Bell Jailbait wrote: > My big switch question is: > WHY haven't they built TCP/IP support into phone switches yet? With a > little bit of work you could make a secure system that could be > programmed from the office of the person who does the programming work > and not just from a dedicated terminal in the same room with the > switch. The Alcatel 4400 PBX is based on a real-time OS with a Posix-compliant Unix look-alike on top of it. The OS is called Chorus/MiX (tm, no doubt). The system is a full-blown Unix machine, with support for TCP/IP networking, including telnet, rlogin, ftp etc. The main processor boards have Ethernet interfaces, allowing the PBX to be connected to the corporate LAN or WAN. Alternatively, dial-in access is possible via a serial port (SLIP). I would be very surprised if the A4400 were the only product out there that is based on Unix and provides this level of integration with TCP/IP networks. After all, Unix was originally dreamed up by AT&T ... > Hell, at a very very minimum, I want NTP (Network Time Protocol) > support built in. Having to reset the time and date manaually on my > (well, my (previous) company's (previous)) switch everytime power went > out or such, and having to check it regularly for drift when we had a > perfectly good ntp server sitting ten feet away from the switch was > always really annoying. Sadly, the A4400 does not support NTP at this time either (although I have suggested that this feature be added on several occasions). However, I'd like to make the point that there is something seriously wrong with a PBX that loses its time-of-day when it is powered down. First of all, a PBX should have batteries providing it with ample autonomy in case of mains power failure. In addition to that, the time of day and other critical information should be maintained by a separate battery, just like in a PC. ****************** A L C A T E L T E L E C O M ****************** Jan Ceuleers Systems Engineer, Defence and Avionics Alcatel Bell, Radio Space and Defence Division Berkenrodelei 33, B-2660 Hoboken, Belgium Tel: (32/3)8295385 Fax: (32/3)8295086 e-mail: ceuleerj@btmaa.bel.alcatel.be X400: C=BE,A=RTT,P=ALCANET,OU1=BELA1,O=ALCATEL,S="Jan",G="Ceuleers" ******************************************************************* ------------------------------ From: David Crawford Subject: Re: Voicemail and Unix Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 16:21:41 -0400 Organization: epix.net Ed James wrote: > Has anyone had any experience hooking a unix box up to a vociemail > system that isn't designed for it? > Specifically. I have a NorTel Startalk of some configuration (floppy, > scsi port on the back, parallel port, one card with two lines > connected, labeled 1-2 and 3-4), and I would like to have it send > email to folks when they get voicemail. > Most of our employees are at client sites, and checking one's voicemail > daily can be cumbersome. I'd like to instead deliver a piece of email > to the mailbox owner that indicates that new voicemail arrived at a > certain time. > If I could hook the unix box up to the parallel port of the Startalk, > and if I could convince the startalk to generate reports on a daily > basis (or more frequently), I could parse the report on the unix side, > and generate the required voicemail. Try Gert Doering's gert@greenie.muc.de http://www.leo.org/~doering/mgetty/ mgetty package. Doing a hack from it wouldn't be too hard. I'm not sure how interfacing it to that box of yours but you might want to at least ask him. Good Luck, David Crawford crawford@pnr.com http://www.pnr.com/ ------------------------------ From: fgoodwin@tri.sbc.com (Fred Goodwin) Subject: Re: Timed Local Internet Calls Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 09:30:13 -0500 Organization: SBC-Technology Resources, Inc. In article , fist@ozemail.com.au (fist) wrote: > I write a weekly column on telecommunications in Australia's national > newspaper "The Australian", and last week I wrote a piece attacking > the claims being made by the CEO of Telstra (ex-Telecom Australia) > that Internet users were costing the carrier money because they locked > up the telephone exchanges through long-held calls. My information > was based on my own knowledge plus confirmation from some > telecommunications consultants. [quoted article and replies deleted for brevity's sake] > Since I am getting different information from Telstra insiders and > Telstra outsider/critics and telecommunications consultants, I'd like > to hear the opinions of those of you who know about these switches, > and who don't have any local vested interest. Well, since I work for a regional Bell company, you may decide to ignore my post; and since I was never a switching engineer, I don't bring those credentials to this discussion. But it layman's terms (which for this topic, I *am* a layman), it is easy to see that central offices (whether digital or not) are not sized for unlimited usage. There are many examples of COs blocking due to heavy, unexpected usage. The one that comes to mind is the case of a CO in Oklahoma, US, where the switch was so swamped by callers to a radio call-in show for concert tickets, that 911 calls were blocked (i.e., either could draw no dialtone or hit an "all trunks busy" signal), and supposedly someone actually died when EMS technicians could not be quickly dispatched. Of course, I exaggerate to make my point (but the incident is true): COs are not sized to handle unlimited usage. I've heard the oft-repeated statistic that the typical voice call holding time is approx. three minutes, which seems reasonable (they obviously have not talked to my spouse!), but Internet calls (and before that, BBS calls) do seem to exceed that greatly. I don't know the answer -- it would seem CO capacity will need to be resized if Internet usage drives typical call holding times upward. Who should pay for this? In another thread, it is said the telcos have been compensated and no one should pay extra for this. I think my example above shows clearly there *is* a cost for extremely high usage, namely that other users are blocked. Should all users pay a portion of the cost of beefing up switch capacity, or should those of us who cause the increased usage pay the cost? I don't know -- but I do know that usage is not free, and extremely high, and long duration usage has tangible effects on the telco and on other users. A final question: if (as some believe) there is no additional marginal or incremental cost to the telco for long-duration calls, why then do so many online and Internet providers charge for usage rather than a flat rate? If there is a cost to online providers, why not a cost to the telco also? Fred Goodwin SBC-TRI Austin, Texas fgoodwin@tri.sbc.com ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: When Was Direct Distance Dialing Cut In? Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 22:34:55 -0400 Organization: Mikrotec Internet Services, Inc. (MISNet) The Old Bear wrote: > At the beginning of "DDD", the "access code" of 1+ was not > required, with the result that many people unknowingly placed wrong- > number toll calls while attempting to dial a local number. (The > newspaper would periodically carry some little story about a toddler > who had managed to place a call to the other side of the country by > playing with the telephone set. I never figured out how the toddlers > managed to give their number to the operator, however.) As Pat mentioned, *some* areas had full-blown ANI early on, while others didn't. In a number of cases the telcos had to send a technician to every location that was on a party line to double-check the ringer wiring on their telephones before an ANI upgrade could be implemented in a given office. > It was only in the 1960s that collect and person-to-person calls > could be placed by direct dialing with the 0+ access code. Until then, > we dialled 211 (?) and asked the long distance operator to place > such calls. We didn't get this in Louisville until the 1970s. Then again, South Central Bell used to be rather slow to add new services (though BellSouth has recently done better in this regard). AFAIK we never had 211 -- we used to place long distance calls through the local "0" operators. Perhaps they weren't overburdened around here. ------------------------------ From: Jean-Francois Mezei Subject: Re: Northern Canada Exchange Profile Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 00:06:47 +0000 Organization: Vaxination Informatique Reply-To: jfmezei@videotron.ca Does anyone know if the Eagle Plains Hotel on the Dempster highway in the Yukon will still have local INUVIK (NWT) dial tone after next year's shuffle? (Inuvik is a few hundred kilometres away from Inuvik, and Fort McPherson is actually closer to Eagle Plains Hotel than is Inuvik.) Is Fort McPherson also a local call to Inuvik? (about 125km away). Another question: A while back, I saw a coverage map for Northwesttel's cellular service and it included much of the Dempster highway. The Dempster is about 750km long with only Eagle Plains Hotel at km 371 and Fort McPherson at about km 620 as "civilisation" spots. (There are a couple of spots such as Arctic Red River fairly near to Fort McPherson.) Does anyone know how many towers they would have setup to cover that whole area (betwen Dawson City and Inuvik), and whether a hand held phone would actually function along much of that road? Another question: Back in the days of Bell providing services to the eastern Arctic, dialing 0 gave you an operator in Montreal. Dialing 0 from Inuvik (Western Arctic, Northwestel) gave you a Whitehorse operator. Are all operator services now provided from Whitehorse or does Bell still provide "0" service for the eastern Arctic? (Has Northwestel completely absorbed the Bell-Arctic services, is the transition still in progress, or has it been abandoned and Bell will continue serving eastern Arctic for the foreseable future?) ------------------------------ Subject: The World's Most Northerly Exchange (was Northern Canada) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 02:26:06 +1200 From: martin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Martin D Kealey) Dave.Leibold@superctl.tor250.org (Dave Leibold) wrote: > 980 Grise Fiord was billed by Bell Canada as the world's most > northerly exchange some years ago. Whether this accomplishment > has been beaten is not known. I don't know about the most northerly, but I believe the most southerly exchange is +64-24099xxx, at Scott Base in Antarctica. Grise Fiord is around 77 degrees North, 82 degrees West, while Scott Base is around 78 degrees South, 168 East - approximately 45' latitude further from the equator. The Scott Base operator is available on +64-24099700 (during "daytime" hours -- assuming timezone UT+1200). McMurdo Base (a few kilometers away) also has a payphone! Calls to and from New Zealand cost NZ$1.58 per minute. Calls from other countries cost the same as calls to New Zealand. Martin ------------------------------ From: siegman@ee.stanford.edu (AES) Subject: Re: Getting a Semi-Public Pay Phone? Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 19:09:33 -0800 Organization: Stanford University Lisa's address was gone from this thread when I came to it, so I can't email her, but: Our vacation condo has a phone service from a company that puts a little box on the line in an inaccessible place, after which you can only dial toll-free local calls directly from the phone (in return for paying the monthly basic service fee to the local telco). Any long-distance or toll-bearing numbers that are dialed are blocked and grabbed by this company and have to be done as credit-card calls. They don't charge the owner of the phone directly for this -- I think they make their money by putting most long-distance calls on some carrier they have an arrangement with. Any caller can, however, still get to AT&T or whatever via the appropriate 800 numbers; and the owner of the line can use a PIN to bypass the block for anything. Has worked well for us, on two different units, for several years. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Aug 96 18:31 EDT From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: 1+ Dialing and How it's Billed Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > Actually, in my case, Yes. If I dial intra-NPA to AC, as in your > example, using 345-xxxx, the charge appears on the LEC portion of my > bill. If I dial using 1-609-345-xxxx, it appears on the LD carrier > portion of my bill (or at least it has been appearing there.) If this is the case, call repair service and report it. It's a programming bug in your local switch. (My local telco just squashed such a bug a couple of weeks ago here. They couldn't figure out why the occasional call to Ithaca, which is a local call from here, was getting routed to toll trunks, until someone mentioned their laptop computer which was programmed with all 11-digit numbers so they'd work regardless of where they were.) > So is my experience a fluke, or is it policy to refer ALL 1+ calls to > my LD provider? The way you dial your calls is not supposed to affect how they're billed or routed unless you force routing with 10XXX. In ancient times (ten years ago) when there were SxS exchanges that sometimes happened, but New Jersey's been all electronic for years. While you're at it try making a local call to Pennington or Princeton and make sure that gets handled as a free local call. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Aug 96 18:35 EDT From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: Does New Area Codes Mean New Caller Cost? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > Right now in NJ - when I dial 411, I can get any telephone number in > the 609 Area code - my cost after six free calls is 20 cents per 411 > call. If 609 is split into two area codes will I need to call long > Distance (NPA-555-1212) to the new area code and then be charged 90 > cents per DA call by AT&T? Of course not. DA in 609 is a bargain, since for your 20 cents you can get a number within either of the 609 area LATAs. You'll continue to dial 411 or 555-1212 for anywhere in south Jersey. After 201 and 908 split, DA worked the same as always. I believe there's still a single DA bureau for north Jersey, so 201-555-1212 and 908-555-1212 reach the same people at the same price. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof ------------------------------ 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. 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