Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA17053; Tue, 18 Mar 1997 08:39:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 08:39:08 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199703181339.IAA17053@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #69 TELECOM Digest Tue, 18 Mar 97 08:39:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 69 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Phone Service in Mexico (Tad Cook) Calling USA from Mexico (Jeff Shaver) The Definitive Story on New Domains (Thom Stark) Book Review: "Internet Protocols Handbook", by Roberts (Rob Slade) Balancing Out Incoming 800 Traffic Between Offices (David Katz) Re: Marketers With 800 Numbers Fear 888 Prefix Invasion (Peter Morgan) Re: Marketers With 800 Numbers Fear 888 Prefix Invasion (Hendrik Rood) For Sale: PBX Phone System (Gent Cav) For Sale: Merlin Plus 820D + 16 Phones (Steve Bagdon) 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. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Phone Service in Mexico Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 00:39:39 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) AT&T and MCI Position to Enter the Mexican Long-Distance Market By Paul de la Garza, Chicago Tribune Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News MEXICO CITY--Mar. 17--For the past eight months, auto parts distributor Miguel Perez Saavedra has had to use a pay phone to do business because Mexico's lone telephone company, Telmex, has failed to reconnect his line. Without notice and without explanation, Perez said, his telephone was disconnected. After six visits to the Telmex offices, and about 30 hours of his time, the phone back at the shop is still dead. "They have no interest in solving your problems," Perez, 58, said the other day outside a company branch south of the city. "One person blames the other. The other person blames someone else." Probably not for long. For the first time in 50 years, Perez and millions of other phone customers who see Telmex as a costly and mediocre monopoly have an opportunity to vote for change. In January, Mexico opened long-distance service to competitors, and nine companies, including AT&T Corp. and MCI Communications Corp., are stepping all over each other for a piece of the $4 billion-a-year pie. By 2000, analysts expect that figure to triple. In Round 1 of competition, which affects Mexico's 60 largest markets including Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City, customers have until June to submit ballots. Customers eligible for conversion this year amount to about 70 percent of Telmex's 8.8 million client base. According to industry officials, telephone customers across the country should have an opportunity to vote by the turn of the century, and after years of neglect, first by a government-owned monopoly and now by a privately owned one, many can't wait to cast their vote. Like Perez, 27-year-old Olga Ivete Gonzalez said she planned to switch to a new long-distance carrier. She, too, was at the Telmex offices trying to get her telephone reconnected. She said she had paid her bill in Mexico City for a telephone line she has outside town, but that Telmex had told her there was no way to alert the branch office there. "For me, Telmex is not the greatest," said Gonzalez, a cashier who goes home on weekends. "I pay my bill here, and they'll receive my payment, but I have to report the problem in Toluca? It doesn't make any sense." People like Perez and Gonzalez are exactly the type of customers the competition is pursuing aggressively. The telecommunications giants, which call repeatedly, offer to come to the house to explain the new rates and to pick up the ballot. Some even come equipped with CDs, T-shirts and baseball caps. The number of long-distance calls between the United States and Mexico is second only to the number of long-distance calls between the United States and Canada, and with the stakes so high, charges of dirty tricks abound. Just this month, Mexico's postal service reportedly issued a warning to its carriers after one of its employees allegedly sold a duffel bag full of blank ballots to one of the competitors. In another case, representatives from two competing companies got into a confrontation on the street. They apparently ran into each other as they solicited business door-to-door. Telmex, or Telefonos de Mexico, which has spent more than $12 billion upgrading its network since the government sold it to Mexico's richest man in 1990, says it has the advantage over the others because it's home-bred. (Never mind that it's one of the most actively traded stocks on Wall Street.) In television spots, Telmex appeals to Mexico's celebrated sense of nationalism, urging its customers to support the native company, not one run by gringos. The strategy, early government figures show, has netted mixed results. In Monterrey, for example, which has 530,177 telephone lines, about 45 percent of people who cast ballots chose Telmex; 40 percent chose Alestra, a partnership of AT&T and two large Mexican firms; and 14 percent chose Avantel, a joint venture between MCI and Mexico's largest financial group. At the same time, however, roughly 65 percent of customers in Monterrey did not vote, which means Telmex keeps their business. Some folks on Wall Street are not surprised, but they point out that the voting has just begun, and that the number of people switching may not necessarily translate into bigger revenues for the winning company. Although scores of people have a horror story about Telmex, analysts -- and some customers -- say the company has made progress after Carlos Slim Helu, with partners SBC Communications Inc. and France Telecom, paid $1.8 billion for a controlling stake in Telmex from the government in 1990. With money coming in from shares that are now traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Slim's group pumped billions of dollars into fiber optics and new telephone lines and expanded telephone service for thousands of small towns. Which is why, Telmex says, it is poised to provide the best local and long-distance service in Mexico. Then there's the matter of convenience. Unlike the United States, where customers get one bill for local and long-distance calls, customers who switch here will get two separate ones. Customers accustomed to paying in cash, and in person, won't be able to pay for a competitor's long-distance bill at Telmex, already notorious for long lines. Ray Ligouri, a telecommunications analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York, said that Telmex under its new owners deserved credit for providing better service than Telmex did when it was government owned, but that it still had a ways to go. He also praised Telmex for adhering to the Jan. 1 deadline on open competition, which allowed it to get a jump on six of its eight competitors. "Telmex is doing a good job in protecting what it has," he said. Still, Ligouri said that by the time the counting is done this year, he expects Telmex to lose 15 percent of the market share and eventually up to 50 percent. He said Avantel and Alestra are beginning to do a better job of reaching consumers, setting up booths at shopping malls, for example. But more important, Ligouri said, AT&T and MCI will be in a better position to snatch up business from calls made to Mexico from the United States and vice versa. Telmex, however, hopes to dash those hopes, too. Earlier this month, Sprint Corp. and Telmex announced they had formed a joint venture to market long-distance service to Hispanic markets in the United States. Daniel Crawford, operations director for Avantel, said that in the next five years the company expects to spend $2 billion on building a 12,000-mile fiber-optic network across Mexico. Early news reports gave Avantel the advantage over Alestra because its telecommunications network was ahead of schedule, but Crawford said AT&T's name recognition has posed a formidable challenge. Nonetheless, Crawford said, "we're very pleased with the results. The balloting was the start of the process, not the end." At Alestra, spokesman Guillermo Munoz de Baena said the reason the company is running so strongly is because AT&T has a proven track record. The difference between Alestra and the others, he said, is quality. The company plans to invest about $1 billion in its network by 2000, Munoz said. "Every day something new comes out," he said, "and the future is limitless." Even if Telmex loses a big chunk of the long-distance business, it won't be crying poor mouth. Though outside companies have been allowed to provide local service since 1990, no one has stepped up because of the enormous cost of laying the groundwork. As a result, the companies will be playing piggyback on Telmex's network. The competition, Crawford said, will end up paying Telmex a fee of about 5.3 cents per minute to use the lines. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 22:45:46 -0600 From: Jeff Shaver Reply-To: jshaver@navix.net Subject: Calling USA From Mexico I'm going to be studying in Puebla, Mexico this summer and I have never used the telephone network there before. I have checked with AT&T, Sprint, MCI, and Frontier, but their calling card rates for calls to the US seem rather high. Does anyone know of any other companies with better deals? I have heard that simply using coins in the payphones is comparable in cost to using a calling card. If this is so, is it reliable? Call-back services will probably not be an option. Thanks for your help! Jeff Shaver jshaver@navix.net ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 00:09:30 -0800 From: Thom Stark Subject: The Definitive Story on New Domains Murphy really *does* rule the computing universe. Just as I completed work on what I immodestly think is *the* definitive story on the IAHC proposal to expand the Internet's Top Level Domain namespace, the bean counters at Cardinal Business Media pulled the plug on Internetwork magazine, which commissioned me to write it. And I mean the very day I submitted the story. That means it will never be printed on dead trees. However, since my contract with Internetwork specifically gives me the right to publish it on my Web site, you can read the unedited, exhaustively-hyperlinked story I call "The New Domain Name Game at: While you're there, you also may want to take a look at my third (and last) Web Technologies column (also originally scheduled for the now-cancelled April Internetwork issue) entitled "Numbering the Beast" at: As always, there is NO charge for this service and there is NO advertising on my Web site. Regards, Thom Stark Email: thomst@netcom.com URL: http://www.dnai.com/~thomst finger thomst@netcom.com for my PGP Public Key (510) 526-9600 voice STARK REALITIES fax (510) 526-9063 POB 457 El Cerrito, CA ZIP 94530-0457 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 12:22:21 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Internet Protocols Handbook", by Roberts BKINTPRT.RVW 961118 "Internet Protocols Handbook", Dave Roberts, 1996, 1-883577-88-8, U$39.99/C$55.99 %A Dave Roberts dave@droberts.com %C 7339 East Acoma Drive, #7, Scottsdale, AZ 85260 %D 1996 %G 1-883577-88-8 %I Coriolis %O U$39.99/C$55.99 800-410-0192 +1-602-483-0192 fax: +1-602-483-0193 %P 448 %T "Internet Protocols Handbook" This is a reference book listing dozens of the lower level Internet protocols. Roberts attempts to standardize the view of each by giving basic identifying information, and providing tables of technical details. RFCs (Requests For Comments), the official Internet standards, are included on a CD-ROM. While the material is clear enough in most cases, examples would help in some instances. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKINTPRT.RVW 961118 roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca link to virus, book info at http://www.freenet.victoria.bc.ca/techrev/rms.html Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 17:29:12 -0800 From: David Katz Subject: Balancing Out Incoming 800 Traffic Between Offices I received your name from "Stuff Software". We are a 32 office cosmetic surgery group with an office soon-to-be-opened in Canada. We currently do a significant amount of national marketing and have one "800" number that we use in all our marketing materials. Here is the problem. AT&T routes all calls to our "800" number based on the area code and exchange of the calling party. Our goal is to even out the calls that we get. Example - We have an office in Orlando and one in Tampa. We assign area codes and prefixes for each off so that they presummably get the same number of calls generated from our national ads. Ideally we want each office to get approximately the same number of calls. Is there software that will allow us to measure population and area codes/exchanges so that we can accomplish this task? Please let me know if you can help us or if there is a forum or newsgroup that this question can be posted to. For your convenience, please e-mail me or call me at (800) 662-4284. Thank you in advance for any information you can provide. David Katz Bosley Medical Institute, Inc. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Stuff Software has been a regular financial supporter of this Digest for quite some time and I encourage readers to check out their link on the telecom web page. Go to http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives and click on the page listing sponsors for details. Readers with solutions for Mr. Katz are requested to write him directly. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Peter Morgan Subject: Re: Marketers With 800 Numbers Fear 888 Prefix Invasion Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 21:23:27 GMT In message J. Oppenheimer writes: > It's not only a US brand, but a global one. Why do you think the > ITU insisted on 800 for the global toll-free (universal freephone) > code? I don't know what codes are for "freephone" and which are "premium" now in Holland, but there seemed to be a number which were close to one another, and none, AFAICR, had 800 in them :-( It may appear global to you, but in the UK at least, for quite a few years, BT kept 0800 for itself, and Mercury (the first, and still major competitor) was stuck with 0500. We have the wierd situation of initially there being: 0800 +6 digits (and the unusual 0800 1111 for Childline to allow children to report abuse/neglect/emergencies) but now have 0800 +6 (BT) and 0800 +7 (several other carriers) with Mercury still tied to 0500 +6 [ and 0800 1111 remains] Meanwhile, some "national" rate charged numbers have been set up, BT managed to get 0990 while Mercury has the unmemorable 0541. We have some "regional" rate charged numbers -- I cannot recall any of the many codes, but they're all pretty silly. We also have some "local" rate charged numbers :- BT 0345 Mercury 0645 Energis 0845 The long term plan was for 08xxx to be for special services, freephone calls, national/local rate charged calls, and information. Right this minute we have some "900" style numbers like 0898, which is meant to be protected by PIN so children shouldn't be able to use them, some "information" numbers, which are cheaper, but we also have some other number like 0897 which is approx US$2.25/minute. I think Mercury is 0660, which can be confused for BT's 0990 - look at 0990 111 111 and then 0660 111 111 :-( Close to 0800 (free) is 0802 (60c/minute) [for cellular phones]. The UK numbering scheme is, and has been, chaotic for years, so if someone in authority at least copies some aspects of your system, I'd be happier !! :-) I think that the use of "800" and "888" is much better, and I see that the updated "San Francisco Lodging Guide" includes both, so foreigners, such as myself, will be kept aware. Peter Morgan, UK. ------------------------------ From: hrood@xs4all.nl (Hendrik Rood) Subject: Re: Marketers With 800 Numbers Fear 888 Prefix Invasion Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 01:33:27 GMT Organization: XS4ALL, networking for the masses Reply-To: hrood@xs4all.nl Judith Oppenheimer enlightened me about: > The phone industry created the 888 prefix last year, with the pool of > 7.71 million available 800 numbers quickly running out. In January > the Clinton administration's new budget proposed raising $700 million > by auctioning off 888 numbers -- an idea that had also cropped up last > year but withered amid opposition by business groups. I was surprised by the auctioning of numbers. It might be of interest to you that in contrast to this USA policy, most countries in the European Union has taken up in their draft policy directives for the liberalisation of the telephone industry, that there is no auctioning allowed for (vanity) numbers (contrary to auctioning spectrum). When scarcity arises the numbering plan must be expanded, which is a decision of the government appointed numbering regulatory authority, which can not be appealed. Most EU-countries are rewriting there laws this year and adopt this line. Especially the European Commission is very cautious about number-auctions because they do not like governments starting to use artificial scarcity in their numbering plans to become an additional "tax-raising" source. It might be of interest that in the Netherlands and Norway, you can not get vanity numbers (alfanumeric handsets are not quite common here) but you can get short "golden numbers" (four digits) for 800-services instead of the standard numbers (seven digits). Of course the monthly rentals of golden numbers are much higher (around a factor of thousand). This is another way to let the market work out the item, and an alternative to auctioning. A Singapore Telecom official once told me at a conference that auctioning of vanity numbers is a normal procedure in Singapore by the opening of every new number block. The money raised in this way is given to charity funds, not to the government! These are just some examples on how these issues are dealt with, in other parts of the world. Hendrik Rood ir. Hendrik Rood Consultant Stratix Consulting Group BV, Schiphol NL tel: +31 20 44 66 555 fax: +31 20 44 66 560 e-mail: Hendrik.Rood@stratix.nl ------------------------------ From: Gent Cav Subject: For Sale: PBX Phone System Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 19:02:53 -0500 Organization: NHCO, Inc. - Metro2000, Inc. - WebTown.Net Reply-To: gent@nhco.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Usually I do not print 'for sale' messages in the Digest unless they seem to be of special interest to readers and are not 'too commercial' in nature. Today I got the two which follow in the mail and thought some people might be interested. PAT] Tie Communications 1648 Key Phone System 4 Trunk Lines (incoming) upgradeable to 16 48 Extension Lines ( 40 standart line 2500 series, 8 executive sets) RS-232 Management port for programming and SMDR Power Supply Manuals Looking for reasonable offers. Gent Cav gent@nhco.com (603) 656-4120 300 Bedford Street Manchester, NH 03101 ------------------------------ From: bagdon@rust.net (Steve Bagdon) Subject: For Sale: Merlin Plus 820D + 16 Phones Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 17:31:36 -0400 Organization: Rust Net - High Speed Internet in Detroit 810-642-2276 After buying a house, I looked for a phone system. As usual, never ask for something, you'll get it. I got hold of the system *cheap*, and though I'd make a fair attempt at selling it, before blowing my next few weekends installing it. Think of all the trouble I'll save myself if I sell it. It appears to be a fully configured Merlin Plus 820D, with 16 phones. Merlin 820D, fully configured, all cards present 8 lines 20 extensions paging music-on-hold memory module. (2) BIS-34 (2) SP-34 (2) HFAI-10 (5) BIS-10 (1 DOA) (4) 5-buttons (1) SP-10(?) * 8-line/2-power AT&T surge protector * bases, wall mounts, etc * Powermat (for external paging speakers) * SAA - have to look it up * cabling, handsets, cords, phone templates, etc Anybody want to make me a fair offer, and free up my next few weekends? :-) Steve B. bagdon@rust.net (h) USFMDDKT@ibmmail.com (w) http://www.rust.net/~bagdon ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #69 *****************************