Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id AAA11022; Wed, 21 Aug 1996 00:06:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 00:06:15 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199608210406.AAA11022@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #428 TELECOM Digest Wed, 21 Aug 96 00:06:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 428 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Alex Mandl Hangs it Up (TELECOM Digest Editor) Shortwave Radio in the USA (TELECOM Digest Editor) No Local Phone Competition in 'Small' Markets (Greg Monti) Why is the Internet So Slow? (Mark Friedman) What is "Number Portability"? (Michael Graff) Re: Will Full Number Portability Occur? (Al Varney) Re: Area Code Confusion (John Cropper) Re: Getting a Semi-Public Pay Phone? (Brian Brown) Re: "Genuine Nynex Payphone" Limiting Number of Touch Tone (Henry Baker) Re: Encryption and Telnet (Thor Lancelot Simon) Correction: Re: Anniversary of First Singing Telegram (David Whiteman) Re: Timed Local Internet Calls (Bill Ranck) Re: Timed Local Internet Calls (Jean-Francois Mezei) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 20:35:02 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Alex Mandl Hangs it Up Alex J. Mandl gave up a chance to lead the world's biggest communications company, AT&T, saying he would rather start a telephone company of his own instead. Mandl has resigned as president and chief operating officer of AT&T, ending a five-year tenure in which he helped engineer the biggest aquisition ever of the company, McCaw Cellular Communications. He was a top candidate to be the next chief executive of AT&T. Instead he decided to chairman and chief executive officer of Associated Communications, a brand new unit of the Associated Group, a company located in Pittsburgh, PA with significant investments in Mexican wireless firms, and Tele-Communications, INc, the biggest USA cable television operator. His resignation takes place immediatly, but he will assist AT&T as needed in making an orderly transition of management responsibilities. Good luck, Alex ... I think AT&T was the loser in this deal. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 22:31:52 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Shortwave Radio in the USA A question or two for shortwave radio enthusiasts among the readership ... Is it just me, or does it seem that the various shortwave broadcasters who specifically target the Americas lately are overrun by some very strange people and programming ideas? Yesterday I purchased a small little shortwave radio for my seven year old nephew who lives here with his father (my brother) and myself. I know as a child I enjoyed listening to shortwave radio and seeking out stations I had not heard before. Our little guy may still be a bit too young, but he is smart and he learns fast, so the little $39 shortwave I got him at Radio Shack will be a good 'show and tell' item when he goes into the first grade at school next month. With the radio came a 'listeners guide' with the time of day broken down by five or ten-minute intervals from 0000 GMT through 2359 GMT, a time conversion chart, etc. In each time period was listed around eight or ten major broadcasters and what they do on each day of the week at that time. The listener's guide made a point of saying that stations which were exclusively of a religious nature at all times were not included, and it listed the usual bunch: WYFR, Family Stations, Inc, Oakland, CA WINB, World International Broadcasters, Red Lion, PA WJCR WGTG KTBN Speaking of Family Stations, Inc, d/b/a Family Radio, those people have become *huge*. They now seem to own a couple dozen AM or FM stations all over the United States to complement their shortwave station *and* lots of transponders (?) to complement all the local stations. I hear their station WJCH, Joliet, IL at 90.5 FM all the way up here in Skokie many miles away, and when they give their station ID they give the call letters and then follow up with a list of the transponders for just that station alone. I guess all the 'affiliate stations' as they call them are mostly unmanned and operate by remote control with Oakland turning them on and off, etc. But I digress ... Anyway, the listener's guide said it was only including stations which were not *exclusively* religious, and then proceeds to include the listings minute by minute of such powerhouses as HCJB in Quito, Equador, and what I call the Unholy Trinity in Nashville, TN: WWCR-1 and WWCR-3. World Wide Christian Radio's transmitters one and three had all their programs listed but the guide noted that since WWCR-2 is devoted 24 hours per day to the teachings of Dr. Gene Scott they would not include that. There was some nice stuff like the BBC World Service and the Voice of America service to the Americas, as well as Monitor Radio International from Boston (although really in Greenville, SC) but it seems like almost all of 41, 49 and 60 meters was nothing but one hate-monger after another, interspersed with conspiracy theories, Liberty Lobby programs and *very strange* preachers. It went on all night long ... no matter where I would tune on this little (admittedly poor band spread, very cheap) shortwave radio, all I would get was this sort of junk. There were these call-in programs where all they would talk about was their theories about the murder of John F. Kennedy and the Federal Reserve System, etc. WWCR seemed to be the worst of the bunch. Maybe I have just forgotten things in my own life over the past forty years or so, but I do not remember shortwave radio being as full of junk like this years ago. The World Harvest people on WHRI-1 and WHRI-2 were also loud and obnoxious, but not nearly as bad as that Tom Valentine guy with his Radio Free America program on WWCR. By comparison, Family Radio was rather mild; and they certainly did not ask for money via your credit card every couple of minutes. I know there is a limit to what one can expect from a $39 shortwave battery operated radio which fits in the palm of your hand, but I really thought that BBC, VOA and Monitor Radio International (although I am not extremely fond them then like I used to be) -- to name just three good examples -- would be as easy for a child to tune in as would be Tom Valentine with all that march music of Sousa he plays and that other guy who was everywhere on the dial promoting the various militia/vigilante organizations. Has shortwave radio really filled up with a lot of this junk? I knew local 'talk radio' on the AM band was pretty bad, but still ... PAT ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 21:31:17 -0400 From: cc004056@interramp.com (Greg Monti) Subject: No Local Phone Competition in 'Small' Markets In a story, entitled, "Why Phone Rivals Can't Get Into Some Towns," in the _Wall Street Journal_, August 19, 1996, page B1, writer Leslie Cauley explains that not all areas of the U.S. will be subject to local phone company competition. The gist of the story is that the new federal Telecommunications Law exempts rural phone companies and small companies from the competition requirements put on the baby Bells, Sprint and most of GTE. The definitions of "small" and "rural" exempt some multibillion dollar telcos from competition. Examples: Southern New England Telephone, with 2.1 million access lines and $1.8 billion in 1995 revenue, is exempt from competition. Little Rock, Arkansas, based Alltel, with 1.6 million access lines and 1995 revenue of $3.1 billion is, too. So is $2 billion Frontier, with almost a million lines. Same with Cincinnati Bell and Century Telecommunications, each with over $600,000,000 in annual revenue. In fact, most of the 1,300 "independent" telcos are exempt. These companies cover 10% of the U.S. population, or about 26,000,000 residents. A rule also allows small, rural divisions of large telcos (those with less than 50,000 accesss lines in a "market," whatever that is) to also apply to be exempt from competition. In some parts of the country, that rural company is none other than GTE, the largest local telco in America. A carrier with less than 2% of the nation's access lines (like Frontier) or those with fewer than 3,000,000 lines company-wide can apply to become exempt from competition. The story quotes a Houston woman, who moved from SBC territory, where basic local service was $11.05 per month, into Alltel territory in Sugarland, Texas, where the same service is priced at $20.65. The story notes that call waiting is $6.50 per month from Alltel, and $2.80 from SBC. The story notes that Alltel feels it provides good service at good rates in all of its markets. A consumer advocate in Pennsylvania is quoted as saying that most of the rural companies in his state will apply for and get the exemption, which he laments will mean that 20% of the the population will not see local competition in the foreseeable future. Greg Monti Jersey City, New Jersey, USA gmonti@interramp.com ------------------------------ From: Mark Friedman <71534.332@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Why is the Internet So Slow? Date: 21 Aug 1996 01:00:17 GMT Organization: Demand Technology I am performing some research and am interested in hearing from anyone with an interesting theory of why Internet access is so slow? For instance, Is it the data com backbone, the protocol, the routers, the Servers, or the browsers? Thanks, Mark Friedman email: markf@demandtech.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Aug 96 17:09:37 PDT From: Michael Graff Subject: What is "Number Portability"? In TELECOM Digest V16 #417, Tad Cook submitted two press articles about California area code splits. Both talk about "number portability", and each article gives a different definition of that term. In "California Peninsula to Get New Area Code", it says: > "number portability," which allows customers to keep their numbers > should they opt to change phone companies In "415, 916 Area Codes to Split in Two", it says: > number portability -- where a person's phone number stays with them > no matter where they go Which of these definitions is correct? Michael Graff [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It refers to keeping your phone number **within the same local community** regardless of which telco you choose to use. It does not mean you can take your phone number all over the USA. There would be no way to keep track of long distance versus local calls, etc. Of course you can get something like a 500 number from AT&T and take *that* all over the country. PAT] ------------------------------ From: news@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com Subject: Re: Will Full Number Portability Occur? Date: 20 Aug 1996 19:34:38 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies In article , Lou Jahn <71233.2444@CompuServe.COM> wrote: > While the FCC has just started LEC's moving toward Number Portability > several of us were arguing whether "Full" Portability will ever occur > (or how far does the FCC plan to go)? Within an area code the FCC is > stating that in two-three years I can keep my telephone number as I > move amoung local LECs, but does the FCC and industry plan to go > eventually to "Full" portability so I can take my NPA-NXX-#### with me > to Cailifornia, PA or FL? > If this can occur someday -- why keep on expanding NPAs -- aren't they > about to become just part of the routing game? Once I can take my > number across a LATA boundary, dont' we have universal routing similar > to 800/888 services? Who pays for re-engineering the full network to > provide such service? Current short-term plans for Number Portability limit movement of your telephone connection to the Rate Center associated with the number. This allows NPA-NXX to continue to be used for charging/rating/ separations and call restrictions. The major thrust of "portability" is making the number portable between service providers, not in making the number portable across large geographic areas. The level of changes needed for the next step in Geographic Portability would support portability within an NPA (or a block of overlay NPAs), or even within a LATA. This has major implications on call restrictions and charging/rating, and some messy interactions with IntraLATA Toll Presubscription (one has to determine the "toll-ness" of an intraLATA call to determine if an IXC is to carry the call). Some human complexity is also introduced with the idea that "1+ means Toll" in an environment where each service provider can define the "local call" boundaries, and can start timing calls after usage reaches some pre-defined limit. Does that mean a call may the dialable without "1+" at the beginning of the month, but you have to add "1+" after your monthly credit is used up? Long-term Geographic Portability beyond a State boundary (even within a LATA) has some politics attached, since Number Portability is being driven primarily at the State level (the FCC has some ground rules, but the State PUCs have a lot of flexibility). It's unlikely States will look favorably on the idea of their traditional "NPAs" leaving -- New York is very possessive of "212", for example. GTE has proposed that folks wanting very-movable numbers be assigned numbers in well-defined non-geographic NPAs, similar to NPA 500. But even this doesn't address the problem of people wanting to understand the per-minute cost of a call prior to dialing. In some cases, it may be the moving party that pays the "extra" toll charges (like FX, but probably cheaper than 800 inbound). > First -- can I assume "local Number portability" will occur no matter > the cost? No -- but portability constrained to a Rate Center is probably not extremely expensive. Expanding the area of portability for a given number raises those costs considerably. Going beyond the LATA raises it even more. > If that is a definite, can anyone shed a longer term > prognosis for number portability beyond a given LATA? Suppose you > move to the next town in a diffeent LATA, do you need to take on new > numbers yet someone moving within a LATA will not? How will it be > Handled in "overlay area codes"? Don't see how overlays complicate anything for NP. Moving to another LATA probably won't happen so long as the LATAs are meaningful. If they disappear (from competitive pressure or edict), then portability will probably be available within a State. > I'd love to see a "Dick and Jane" story version of the longer term > industry plans for portability ... sounds like we are headed for ten > digit dialing either due to increasing NPAs or from portability. The ten-digit dialing will come from 1) overlays and 2) movement to more-than-ten-digit NANP numbers. Portability won't be driving it, but (per California PUC) overlays are more attractive in areas of portability, because you can select a service provider without changing to a "new" NPA for your existing phone number. In that sense, portability makes overlays more likely, and overlays make 10-digit dialing more likely. By the way, number portability is not just a USA issue. Canada is moving forward on plans similar to the USA, and several other countries are looking at portability along with other pro-competitive changes in their telecommunications infra-structure. Al Varney [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Al, what I do not understand is how anyone could be expected to know where they were calling or how much it would cost if phone numbers could be taken all over the USA. If I took my 847 number and moved to California then what would happen when my next door neighbor in California wanted to call me? I assume they would dial my 847 number but would telco in California first assume the number was in Illinois and look over here to the telco to get instructions on forwarding it back to California, etc? I think portability in a geographic sense would be a disaster. PAT] ------------------------------ From: psyber@usa.pipeline.com (John Cropper) Subject: Re: Area Code Confusion Date: 20 Aug 1996 23:52:59 GMT Organization: Pipeline On Aug 20, 1996 09:29:21 in article , 'Tad Cook ' wrote: > PG&E service fails; so does wake-up call > By Mark Leibovich [snip] > For his part, Branham said he'll wait for the utility to master single > wake-up calls -- never mind basic energy service -- before he places > faith in any new PG&E technology. [snip] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am sorry but I cannot be sympathetic > with Mr. Branham. I thought *everyone* knew that when you buy a digital > clock which has to serve a critical function -- like waking you up in > the morning -- you always get the kind with the backup battery. My > digital clock from Radio Shack has a place for a nine-volt battery > which is there to do two things: keep the clock on time for when the > power is restored (avoid the blinking twelve o'clock) and sound the > alarm at the time indicated if it has been set. PAT] I did one better ... I took an old 250VA UPS I had lying around and put a light and a clock radio on it. With the intermittent storms and other outages, it comes in real handy... :-) John Cropper * NiS / NexComm PO Box 277 Pennington, NJ USA 08534-0277 Inside NJ : 609.637.9434 Outside NJ: 888.NPA.NFO2 (672.6362) Fax : 609.637.9430 email : psyber@usa.pipeline.com ------------------------------ From: bfbrown@csn.net (Brian Brown) Subject: Re: Getting a Semi-Public Pay Phone? Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 21:48:48 GMT Organization: SuperNet Inc. +1.303.296.8202 Denver Colorado hancock4@cpcn.com (Lisa) wrote: > My condominium has a swimming pool and clubhouse. There is an > extension phone (from the office line) for emergency calls from the > pool. We are finding more requests by people to use that phone to > check their home machine for messages, call friends, etc. Also, > guests at clubhouse events want to call home to check the babysitter, > etc. The emergency phone is abused -- we get overseas calls on it. In college, my fraternity house had similar problems -- people making long distance and overseas calls by grabbing a phone during parties. However, at one point we had documented (via registered mail, etc.) our request to the LEC that our three phone lines have NO long distance carrier, and that all long distance, 900, etc. calls be totally blocked from those lines. Anyone who wanted to call long distance from one of these lines had to use a calling card. Whenever long distance charges showed up on the bill, we made a phone call, faxed a copy of the letter sent years back requesting the line restriction, and had the charges removed immediately, no problem -- what could they say? (Nynex, believe it or not). Has your association thought of or investigated this? Of course, you'd still have to pay the $20 or $30 a month for the extra basic phone line (since, I presume, you want to be able to make long distance phone calls from the office) ... As another possibility, I have heard of this (but can't verify it - can anyone else): There are these phones you can buy that will dial only a preset number of digits, after which the tones become useless. Of course, the old way to get around this was to manually pulse the tones by pressing the hook repeatedly; this phone I heard about, however, enforces a three-second on-hook every time its hook is depressed (eliminating manual pulse dialing). This solution, however, means that touch tones are disabled for the remainder of the call, so checking answering machines or making calling card calls is not possible. In addition, someone with a hand-held DTMF tone producer could defeat this phone too. Brian Brown Visionary Consulting ------------------------------ From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) Subject: Re: Genuine Nynex Payphone" Limiting Number of Touch Tone Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 00:13:21 GMT In article , I-Contact Media wrote: >> Maybe someone could explain the rationale behind this one? I can't >> figure out any. To make this even more ironic I discovered the problem >> when calling a Nynex number ... >> About two thirds of the way through the menu sequences I got a synthesized >> voice announcement which said something like "no additional digits may >> be dialed at this time". >> And sure enough, anytime I hit a touch tone key I heard the tone, then >> got the same msg. > I'm glad somebody else has noticed this -- and this is not an effort > to fight drug dealers, it's an effort to render most prepaid cards > practically useless. Of course, it also renders a lot of other calls > useless as well, such as dialing in for voice mail messages, etc. A number of payphones in Europe don't support the '*' and '#' touchtones, thus making it difficult to retrieve voice mail internationally. Don't throw out those portable touch tone (DTMF) generators just yet ... ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Encryption and Telnet Date: 20 Aug 1996 19:24:40 -0400 Organization: Panix Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Derek Balling wrote: > We have a customer who has international locations using the Internet, > and I'm at a loss on who to turn to for help in my dilemma. The usual > places I might expect to find an answer have yielded none, so I'm > hoping that the readers of the digest may be able to help me out. If you're looking for an encrypted version of telnet, you should be aware that there is a standard for authentication in Telnet, and accompanying encryption support, but that for various reasons the protocol is considered not to be entirely secure; it is vulnerable to attack as the session begins, though still useful against passive sniffers. I do not know where you could get a telnet client with support for the ENCRYPT option outside the U.S., but I know that such clients exist. Another good option is 'ssh'. It's not actually telnet, but it does quite a bit more, is available worldwide, and has good Windows support. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@panix.COM ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 18:54:53 -0700 From: dbw@autopsy.com (David Whiteman) Subject: Correction: Re: Anniversary of First Singing Telegram Originally I wrote: >> I just heard on the radio that July 28 was the anniversary of the >> first singing telegram which was sent on July 28, 1933 to the singer >> Rudolph Valentino for his birthday. Carl Moore wrote to me in response: > But didn't Valentino die in 1926? Yes I made a mistake, it was Rudy Vallee ... the guy who sang with a megaphone. I heard a replay of the radio announcement after I made the posting, and realized I made a mistake. David Whiteman ------------------------------ From: ranck@joesbar.cc.vt.edu Subject: Re: Timed Local Internet Calls Date: 20 Aug 1996 19:53:21 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia Jack Decker (jack@novagate.com) wrote: > But okay. If the problem is really that the SWITCHES can't handle the > traffic, then what they (or you) should be asking the goverment to do > is to let (or force) them to sell you a dedicated line pair to your > ISP at the same amount (or less) than what a switched line would cost. This moves the switching problem to the ISP. Either that or the ISP has to dedicate a modem to each customer, which is inefficient use of their resources. > Consider that you have a dedicated pair of wires to the central > office. Your ISP also has a dedicated line to their modem (the one > you are using at the modem pool). This passes through a phone company > switch. But for many uses, it would be just as adequate to have a > "dry" line going straight through to the ISP. Then you'd be using > ZERO capacity in the switch, you'd have a 24 hour per day connection > to your ISP, and you could probably even use higher capacity modems in > many cases. Yes, you make an interesting point, but it still just moves the switching and capacity problems to another location, and in fact makes them worse. Queuing theory says that as the subscriber population goes up you need a lower percentage of simultaneous connections to meet demand. The ISP's subscriber base is much smaller than the telco's so they would need much closer to 100% simultaneous connection ability. I've seen this first hand. When our campus had a couple hundred users we had to have ports on the system available for about 50% of them to be logged on at a time. When the user population went up to 10,000 or so the number of ports needed only went up to about 10%. > It never fails to amaze me that a phone company can dedicate a pair of > wires to a customer's telephone and still make money, but if you and I > want to lease that exact same pair for data, background music, alarm > system monitoring or whatever, the price jumps way up! Something is > seriously wrong there. Uh, the problem would be another capacity crunch. If leased copper was as cheap as phone lines then there would be a sudden demand for lots of leased circuits, but not enough pairs to fill the demand. Thus, the telco would suddenly have to spend *lots* of money to install lots of wire over top of existing plant. Although you do make a somewhat valid argument. Bill Ranck +1-540-231-3951 ranck@vt.edu Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Computing Center ------------------------------ From: Jean-Francois Mezei Subject: Re: Timed Local Internet Calls Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 21:14:45 +0000 Organization: Vaxination Informatique Reply-To: jfmezei@videotron.ca Fred Goodwin wrote: > 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. Being a layman too, I will venture to say the following: I probably don't monopolise my phone line any more than my mother does when she talks for hours on end. Another point to consider: phone systems are designed to widthstand the busy hours. So, if the worst usage is at 10:30 am, would atypical phone calls to an ISP during non-busy hours really cause havok? In other words, if those long "internet" phone calls occur at night when telco infrastructure is not overwhelmed by business calls, I wonder if they have such an impact. ------------------------------ 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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Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #428 ******************************