Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id TAA06902; Tue, 20 Jan 1998 19:09:35 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 19:09:35 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199801210009.TAA06902@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V18 #16 TELECOM Digest Tue, 20 Jan 98 19:08:00 EST Volume 18 : Issue 16 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: The Internet and the School Library Media Specialist (R Slade) Problem mit Telefon Euroset 811 von Siemens (J. Rossmann) Conference on Computers, Freedom, & Privacy 1998 (Monty Solomon) How Big is the Internet Today? (Anthony Argyriou) The Barrage Against Microsoft Appears to be Taking Its Toll (Tad Cook) What was SS6, SS5, etc etc... (Nathan Duehr) Meridian SL1 PBX System - FOR SALE (RWGreenwalt) Sony 900MHz DSS Phone (Alistair Lambie) New Book on Telecommunications (Jud Wolfskill) Re: Passing FCC PIC Fee to Customers (D. Larry Martin) Re: AT&T Credit Calls - No VISA (John R. Levine) Re: AT&T Credit Calls - No VISA (T. S. Chomicz) Bell Atlantic Wants Fees on ISPs (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 07:49:37 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "The Internet and the School Library Media Specialist" Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKINSLMS.RVW 970911 "The Internet and the School Library Media Specialist", Randall M. MacDonald, 1997, 0-313-30028-3, U$39.95 %A Randall M. MacDonald macdonr@mail.firn.edu %C 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881-5007 %D 1997 %G 0-313-30028-3 %I Greenwood Press %O U$39.95 203-226-3571 fax: 203-222-1502 http://www.greenwood.com %P 208 %T "The Internet and the School Library Media Specialist" As MacDonald points out, school library and media specialists have both a tremendous need for Internet applications, and a great responsibility for provision of internet services to colleagues and students. I also strongly agree that "[e]ffective planning for Internet services in the media centre first requires an awareness of the `big picture'" (p.115). Which is why this book is so very disappointing. School media specialists uniquely need an informed and practical guide to the investigation and use of a rapidly evolving resource. What they get is a somewhat disorganized, extremely brief, technically suspect, and generally mundane introduction to the net. School librarians do have special needs in respect of the Internet. By and large, though, this work only tangentially touches on those needs. Examples, case study stories, and Web site lists may refer to education, but deeper fundamentals are not given. Librarians, used to indices, cataloguing, and formal classification systems, will likely find that the free form searching tools of the net and Web require new extensions of their existing skills. Yet the closest the author comes to mentioning this is a reference to those students who give up too quickly when conducting a lookup in the computerized "card" catalogue. Management of net access can be both time-consuming and prohibitive to those students who most need the availability, but the book seems to be much more concerned with avoiding pornography. An example unit plan (the only one) uses the net only twice (rather trivially), in five lessons, and would require extensive practice and reworking by the teacher before it could be used in an actual classroom. The book does touch on a range of topics that are of interest to librarians, but the operative word is "touch". Most topics provide little more than an introduction, and would be of no practical use. The "selected" bibliography is of scant help, here. Of the literally hundreds of decent books that could have been cited, few are. The list is padded with magazine articles and private email. (I was intrigued to note that the pre-eminent journal, "The Computing Teacher", is *not* mentioned in the list of periodicals, even though a single article does get into the references.) Of the four Internet guides that I most frequently recommend, none are mentioned, of the next few dozen on the list, only one author gets included, and that is for a lesser work. In some, few, specific cases, there is a detailed and correct "recipe" for a specific activity. In most cases, however, the material, if not actually in error, demonstrates only the most rudimentary grasp of an application, and no real understanding of the reality of the Internet and its related technologies. While I applaud the intent of this book, the execution leaves much to be desired. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKINSLMS.RVW 970911 ------------------------------ From: J. Rossmann Subject: Problem mit Telefon Euroset 811 von Siemens Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 13:15:27 +0000 Organization: University of Dortmund, Germany [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Will someone please read the note which follows, translate it, and deal with it for me. Thanks. PAT] Habe auf dem Trvdel ein nicht mehr funktionsfdhiges Siemens Euroset 811 erstanden. Der Fehler war durch das Reinigen der Kontakte am Kontaktschalter des Hvrers schnell behoben. Allerding habe ich keine Bedienungsanleitung mitbekommen und frage mich jetzt, wer mir sagen kann, was man mit der Taste "Tonruf" und der Taste die mit "M" |berschrieben und mit "Ziel" unterschrieben ist, anfangen kann. Gibts vielleicht sogar die vollstdndige Bedienungsanleitung im Netz? F|r jede Hilfe bin ich dankbar - J|rgen ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 01:27:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Conference on Computers, Freedom, & Privacy 1998 Begin forwarded message: Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 15:32:06 -0400 From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" Subject: Conference on Computers, Freedom, & Privacy 1998 The Eighth Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy - CFP98 It's been called a lot of things over the years, but it still remains the one place where anyone, who is anyone, goes to immerse themselves in the issues surrounding the health and viability of the Internet. Dubbed the "Woodstock of online activism" by veteran attendee Simona Nass, it has been the nexus of discussions of online privacy, free speech, and human rights. If you work for a company in today's economy, these issues have relevance to you. For three days, you can learn about the pressing, cutting-edge issues that are developing today and will affect your future. CFP is an intimate setting with the conference lasting throughout the entire time you're not sleeping. With only a few hundred attendees every years, the conference becomes more of a retreat where law enforcement agents socialize with hackers. Last year saw advocates on both sides of the Internet free speech debate socializing with each other during one of the many spontaneous after-hours parties in the hotel. Below you'll find stories from several members of our community who continue to support and attend CFP. We hope to see you there! This year promises to be just as much fun, with the panels touching on lots of great topics, including privacy implications of biometrics, the Internet in schools, the sale of government records, cryptography, medical records privacy, link licenses, universal access, and library filtering. In addition, there will be a moot court about suing spammers, and a mock wiretap. You can't afford to miss it! To register, simply go to the website at http://www.cfp98.org/ Also, the program is there, and you can check out the issues that will be under discussion! Sincerely, /s/ Shabbir J. Safdar *** Stories from CFP veterans *** Todd Lappin, Editor, Wired Magazine While the panels at CFP '97 were very useful, the most worthwhile part of the conference took place outside the meeting room -- and in the hot tub. Each night during CFP 97, the hot tub at the Burlingame Hyatt became a gathering place for cyberliberties advocates of all stripes -- from authors Paulina Borsook and Ellen Ullman to Joseph Reagle from W3C and Jon Lebkowsky from EF-Austin. The water was hot, the conversation was intense, but the atmosphere was relaxed. A. Michael Froomkin, Associate Professor of Law CFP has great speakers. It has even better audience. The audience congregates in the hallway; this makes for agonizing choices -- do you go see that great debate in the ballroom, or say out here and pick up stuff you would never hear anywhere else. I've tried it both ways, and still can't make up my mind. It's my one "won't miss" conference of the year. Jon Lebkowsky, EF-Austin My favorite story is from CFP '93, when an FBI agent pretending to be a PC Week reporter asked Emmanuel Goldstein and I our opinion of the FBI presentation. CFP '93 was a great one for me...so much was coming together that year. It was the social aspect that I found most stimulating, the conference in the hallways. That was the year that I interviewed Phil Zimmermann and Tom Jennings...interviews that are still alive online. Diana Jarvis, Counsel for VTW Center for Internet Education Aside from the fact that CFP collects together the most wonderful and interesting people I've ever met (and aside from the fact that the gagetry on display is better than Comdex) and great thing about CFP is the way in which the conference cuts through the hype. Take Information War -- only at CFP did I hear people seriously and intelligently criticize the military's hype about how the terrorists of the future will disable our industrial infrastruture by pointing out that networks, powerlines, broadcast communications etc. are much more robust and redundant than they were in the 50's, 60's, and 70's and that those eras saw the multi-hour blackouts, network outages during broadcast, etc. Everyone else merely dutifully reports that our military tells us we must be prepared for this great threat they've dreamed up to stop cutting military budgets. Shabbir J. Safdar, Voters Telecommunications Watch I remember first being introduced to the debate over "Who Owns The Law?", about the issue of the ownership of legal decisions. Currently, West Publishing holds the copyright on most of them, and there aren't really any public domains sources for them. The moderator introduced the panel, which included advocates from both sides, and then stepped out of the way. I never realized debate was a full contact sport. About 45 minutes and a whole lot of screaming later, it suddenly hit me that I had just had the perfect crash course in the topic, and had gotten it from both sides. I'd been able to watch advocates poke holes in each others' arguments, then rebut them. Afterwards at one of the room parties that night, I was able to sit and talk to one of the advocates at length. That sort of intimacy is what makes CFP great for me, and I'll continue to return every year for it. ------------------------------ From: anthony@alphageo.com (Anthony Argyriou) Subject: How Big is the Internet Today? Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 04:15:58 GMT Organization: Alpha Geotechnical Reply-To: anthony@alphageo.com Following a thread from an irreverent e-mail list story, I discovered that Bellcore has a website which tracks the size of the Internet. They're using statistical sampling of the DNS to estimate the number of internet hosts. The estimate as I write is 30,096,400 and growing. The site is http://www.netsizer.com , and you need a Java-enabled browser to see it. Information about the estimate is at http://www.netsizer.com/info.html . Anthony Argyriou http://www.alphageo.com ------------------------------ Subject: The Barrage Against Microsoft appears to be taking its toll Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 10:27:13 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) (Excerpt of an article from the {NY Times}) The barrage against Microsoft appears to be taking its toll By Timothy Egan New York Times Under siege REDMOND, Wash. -- On the campus where food is strictly fuel for another lap around the digital track and a mere eight-hour day is considered slacking off, the Microsoft corporate flag flies as high as ever in a wintry gale. Surrender is not an option. But there is a clear sense, both inside Microsoft and in the region that takes such pride in having spawned a company where perhaps 1 in 5 employees are millionaires, that the world's most powerful software corporation has lost some of its swagger. Employees arrive at work after hearing themselves compared to a tobacco company or a 19th-century trust on the evening news. Many say they are tired of having their integrity questioned every day by the Justice Department, software rivals or neighbors. The computer screen is no escape. More than 100 Web sites devoted to Microsoft hatred cast the company as the Evil Empire and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates as the devil, or much worse. The ever-flashing stock price, a carrot for tough days, has been stagnant for months and is currently down 10 percent from its 52-week high, closing Friday at $135.25, well behind the breakneck growth that inspired dreams of working five years and then retiring for life. "What a lot of people are feeling now is this huge backlash," said Rick Segal, a former department head who left Microsoft last year. "A lot of my friends in the company are wondering if it's all worth it. I mean, how did Microsoft become more hated than the government?" Prospective employees still flock to Microsoft, a company consistently rated among the most admired in America. Its products have many supporters. And its operating system is still used in more than 85 percent of personal computers worldwide. But the long antitrust fight with the Justice Department, highlighted most recently by an embarrassing series of legal and public relations setbacks, has taken its toll. Microsoft has always had passionate enemies within the computer software industry, critics who say the company is predatory and ruthless in crushing all rivals. With the recent legal clash, Microsoft has come under fire from the secular world as well, as people in Redmond sometimes refer to the non-digital. "A few months ago, everyone I met seemed to think that working for Microsoft was a pretty cool thing to do," columnist Jacob Weisberg wrote in a recent posting of Slate, Microsoft's online magazine of public affairs. "Now strangers treat us like we work for Philip Morris." The courtroom tactics, blunders and air of defiance have provided much more than drinking-fountain fodder in the Seattle area, where the enormous wealth created by Microsoft has transformed the region. Of course, there are plenty of Microsoft critics within the Redmond area code as well. But, with charities, museums, home prices and the regional niche in popular culture tied to the software giant, hometown bias prevails. There is considerable concern that the ride may be over. "I went to a dinner party recently with a lot of Seattle people, none of whom worked at Microsoft, but what was so striking was how totally loyal they were to Microsoft," said Michael Kinsley, Slate's editor. "They all felt that there was an effort by the government to get the company." Microsoft has long felt like it is under siege because it is so dominant in the software world, and has produced so much wealth, company officials say. But what has changed of late is that some of the envy, criticism and concern are now coming from loyal customers; more than anything that has caused some quaking at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, where more than 12,000 people work for the company. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's second in command, the executive vice president long known for his scorched-earth attitude toward critics and competitors, last week presented a newly humble corporate face. He said e-mail and focus groups conducted by Microsoft indicated that people with no axes to grind were angry at the company. Gone, for the moment, are fire-breathing comments like the one Ballmer made last year about the Justice Department, when he said, "To heck with Janet Reno," the attorney general. The company has gone so far as to issue an apology, with Robert Herbold, the chief operating officer, saying, "We're sorry if we have made any statements that would suggest we do anything but respect" the Justice Department. It is a long way from remarks just a few weeks earlier, in which Microsoft said Justice Department lawyers were "totally uninformed" about how software works. They also said they could package anything, "even a ham sandwich" with their operating system if they wanted to. The change in tactics shows that many Microsoft officials realize suddenly that the company may be in serious trouble, and -- in their worst-case fear -- could even be broken apart by the Justice Department. "It's always been part of the corporate culture there to write the strongest e-mail, to scream the loudest," said Posy Gering, a Seattle computer consultant. "They love having an enemy. But now, enough people are telling them they haven't got a clue what they're up against." Microsoft's insularity, its focus on hiring stereotypical nerds without an outside life, is what has come back to haunt it, some people here say. "Microsoft has never put any effort into figuring out how to schmooze with people," said Tina Podlodowski, a Seattle City Council member, who left Microsoft in 1992, after six years at the company. "They simply don't understand why people don't see things the way they see things. So I guess they're suffering now for being intellectually arrogant and socially inept." ---------------------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can tell you I do not recall a single item in this Digest in several years -- if ever -- which brought such a HUGE response in the mail as did the comments I made about Microsoft a week or so ago. There were about six hundred pieces of mail on that subject and they are still coming in. Normally I do not devote an entire issue to any topic -- let alone three or four entire issues in a short period of time -- but the replies in the MS thread so over- whelmed my mailbox I thought the only way to show all of you the intensity and volume of replies was by sending a large number of them out to you. And it is not done yet! I am going to put out still one more issue, either tonight or tomorrow totally devoted to responses, and like the others it will be a full, very large issue. If the mail contiues to pour in on the topic, I could see possibly still another issue after that, later this week, but it has to stop somewhere. I really feel bad when so many people write me, and really put some effort into their response, only to pass it to the bit bucket unused, but that is what will unfortunatly happen with the several hundred MS replies which will still be left over even if I devoted every issue this week to nothing but MS ... really, I was shocked at the huge volume of mail; and that is despite the fact that several dozen articles intended for publication arrive in my box daily. Some days there is almost as much material for use in the Digest as there is spam. PAT ------------------------------ From: Nathan Duehr Subject: What was SS6, SS5, etc etc... Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 18:01:42 -0700 Organization: ConferTech International I've got a nagging question. If we have Signalling System 7, what were SS6, SS5, SS4, etc? Were there ever such standards? Were they just inband T1 signalling in some cases, or what? I'm just a young'un, so someone fill me in! Nathan N. Duehr Software Engineer, Frontier ConferTech (800) 525-8244 x3444 ------------------------------ From: RWGreenwalt@juno.com Subject: Meridian SL1 PBX System - FOR SALE Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 12:10:09 GMT Organization: TAB / Answer Network Full system - Includes manuals and documentation. Contact me for details. ------------------------------ From: Alistair Lambie Subject: Sony 900MHz DSS Phone Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 21:39:04 +1200 Organization: CLEAR Net, http://www.clear.net.nz/ Reply-To: alambie@clear.net.nz Hi, I recently bought a Sony SPP-SS950 900Mhz DSS cordless phone on a trip to the US. It works great some of the time, but other times it appears to channel hop a lot, which injects little dropouts into the conversation ... most annoying. As I live in New Zealand it is not real easy to take it back (although I am sure I can get it back before any warranty runs out!), so I am wondering whether this is really a problem with the unit or not. Here are the possibilities I see: 1. The phone is faulty. 2. There is something else that is messing up the band (I thought the band was ok in New Zealand, but ...) 3. There is some real bad interference in my neighbourhood. 4. This model is fundamentally flawed! Does anyone have any ideas about how I could further diagnose things? Thanks, Alistair fn: Alistair Lambie n: Lambie;Alistair adr: 5 The Quarterdeck;;Whitby;Wellington;;;New Zealand email;internet: alambie@clear.net.nz tel;work: +64-4-802 1455 tel;home: +64-4-234 7136 ------------------------------ From: Jud Wolfskill Subject: New Book on Telecommunications Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 17:23:08 +0000 Organization: MIT Press Reply-To: wolfskil@mit.edu The following is a book which readers of this list might find of interest. For more information please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/SCH2CHF97 Coordinating Technology Studies in the International Standardization of Telecommunications Susanne K. Schmidt and Raymund Werle Few modern technologies are designed to stand alone. Because most machines must now fit into systems and be compatible with other technologies, the creation of standards has become a fundamental element of design and engineering. Conflicts such as the 3color television war2 of the 1970s and recent disputes over high-definition television (HDTV) highlight the complexities of the standard-setting process. Susanne Schmidt and Raymund Werle present three case studies from the telecommunications industry to highlight the actors, the process, the politics, and the influence exerted by international organizations in the construction of standards. The case studies include the standards for facsimile terminals and transmission, videotex (a service that, with the exception of the French Minitel service, largely failed), and for electronic mail. The authors follow each trail from the realization by certain actors of the need for a standard, through the complex negotiation processes involving many economic, political, and social interests, to the final agreement on a standard. Throughout their stories, they emphasize the institutional embeddedness of these processes, demonstrating the value of an institutionalist approach to technology studies. Inside Technology series January 1998 324 pp. ISBN 0-262-19393-0 MIT Press * 5 Cambridge Center * Cambridge, MA 02142 * (617)625-8569 ------------------------------ From: nospam.damos@cyberramp.net (D. Larry Martin) Subject: Re: Passing FCC PIC Fee to Customers Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 21:43:05 GMT Organization: posted via: CyberRamp.net, Dallas, TX (214) 343-3333 Per the FCC Access Reform Order, the cap for a primary residential line is $0.53. The cap for a non-primary residential line is $1.50 and the cap for a multi line business line is $2.75. This charge has come to be known as the PICC (Pre subscribed Interexchange Carrier Charge). What bugs me about these carriers passing this charge through is that this is NOT a new charge being assessed to IXC's that they've never paid before. The charge is a new method of recovering the costs of the common line. To that degree, the minute of used based Carrier Common Line Access charges have been reduced. All in all, the cost to the IXC's has decreased as a result of the Access Reform order. Does everyone remember the IXC ads on TV when congress was hammering out the Telecommunications Act saying they would pass on the savings "directly" to the customer. Hmmmm, I wonder where those savings went? D. Larry Martin Remove the "nospam." to reply directly to me via e-mail. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jan 1998 02:52:21 -0000 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: AT&T Credit Calls - No VISA Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. I recall reading somewhere that Visa is trying to start their own Visa phone card system which got them into a fight with telcos including AT&T, with the result that AT&T does indeed take every kind of plastic on the planet other than Visa. It's not red-lining -- they really reject all sorts of Visa cards. I hadn't heard that they'd resumed accepting their own branded Via (which as it happens, they're in the process of selling), and it surprises me. Visa certainly has rules that merchants are supposed to accept all Visa cards if they accept any of them. On the other hand, AT&T seems to be uniquely good at thumbing their nose at the telemarketing do-not-call rules*, so this would be right up their alley. * - I had a supervisor at an AT&T phone spam center explain to me the' other day that AT&T uses lots of call centers, and although each keeps has their own do-not-call list, they don't exchange lists. Sounds just like those "this is a one time message" spams, huh? John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 ------------------------------ From: tomc@marconi.ih.lucent.com (T. S. Chomicz) Subject: Re: AT&T Credit Calls - No VISA Date: 20 Jan 1998 00:15:40 GMT In article , David Schuetz wrote: > After arriving late in a hotel last night, I tried calling home but > had forgotten my MCI calling card. So, I tried the hotel's AT&T > Credit Card option. > I punched in my "Major" credit card number (Citibank Visa), only to get a > couple "invalid card number" errors and eventually an operator. I read > her my number aloud, and she told me that they wouldn't take that visa > card. Thinking it was a problem with the card, I asked why, and she said > that "AT&T doesn't take all Visa cards, just certain ones." She told me > that a while back they'd dropped all Visa, and now they're accepting (she > thought) at least the AT&T Universal cards. I told her that if AT&T > didn't want my money, that was fine with me, and made the call a different > way. [snip] > [Moderator's note: [snip] > It is very likely that something about your call triggered an alarm > to them. It might be the hotel where you were at has had a high > fraud rate. It might be the particular VISA series. It could have > been the time of day, or the destination point. Or it might have been > an operator acting ignorant. > The cute part is how the operators are instructed to lie to the > customer about it. >[continues to discuss a possible connection to discrimination > against people from certain countries] Before you go off the deep end on this... AT&T accepts MC, DC, AX, their own cards, and most LEC cards. They do not accept VISA, regardless of your ethnic origin. Probably what the operator was confused about was that if you have an AT&T Universal VISA, you can use the calling card number printed on the bottom of the card, but not the main VISA number itself. Next time you are at the airport, look at the big signs advertising "1-800-CALL-ATT." They show a picture of an MC, DC, AX, and AT&T card, but no VISA. If you ever fly on American Airlines, check the instructions for the AT&T air to ground phones, VISA is not listed among the acceptable credit cards. This should be indicative of the fact that they do not pick and choose based on your place of national origin when deciding whether to accept VISA. I understand they do this because of some operational restrictions that VISA USA places on telecommunications companies. I do not know the exact details. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: While what you say about the inability to use VISA is correct (there were no references to VISA on the signs at Ohare Airport advertising AT&T) it is also true that AT&T does not even honor its own calling card under the circumstances I noted earlier. If they do not like the country you are calling and/or the inner-city neighborhood you are calling from, then they will not allow you to use their card from a payphone to call that country. Since it is unlikely that someone would go to a payphone in Wilmette, Illinois to place a calling card call to India, but much more likely that a native of India would use the payphones outside the 7/Eleven store on Devon Avenue in Chicago for such a call, it amounts to defacto discrim- ination against people from that country who wish to make telephone calls to their homeland and pay later 'on credit'. Calls to Puerto Rico -- a part of the United States! -- are allowed via payphone and calling card from the north suburbs of Chicago, but the last time I checked, the same type of call was not allowed from payhones serviced by the Chicago-Humboldt and Chicago-Kedzie central offices; both in almost exclusively minority -- black and Latino -- neighborhoods. AT&T says they don't discriminate with credit-granting; that Latino people passing through Wilmette are welcome to stop at a payphone and call Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Panama, etc. I say 'passing through' because no such person lives in that community. Likewise, said the AT&T rep I spoke with, if a white lady goes up to the payphone outside the liquor store on North Avenue near Pulaski Road they would not allow her to place a calling card call either. So you see, no discrimination against individual people of various nationalities, just a block on calling cards as payment when the origin and/or destination of the call has a fraudulent history. You can discriminate against telephones and their locations all you like; but not against the people who use them. And that, as 'they' say, is that. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ptownson@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Bell Atlantic Wants Fees on ISPs Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 17:00:00 EST Tuesday's edition of the Bell Atlantic news (800-647-NEWS) announced that BA has gone to court asking the Court of Appeals to overturn the decision of a lower court giving (what Bell Atlantic called) a 'free ride' to ISPs regarding carrier access/network fees, etc. They went to court in St. Louis to get this matter heard. They are asking the court to force ISPs to 'pay their fair share' based on their volume of traffic over local telco lines. This is a separate and distinct matter not connected with the 'modem tax' proposals we are always hearing about. This is something Bell-Atlantic has cooking on its own. The rationale given in the telephone news report was that BA has spent an enormous amount of money upgrading its s equipment just to keep up with the fast-moving pace of the Internet and its users. They say they need the money since the ISPs s have 'forced them to upgrade.' If you get a chance, listen to the message before it gets changed, and post your thoughts here. Remember that 800-647-NEWS is intended for *internal* use by BA employees, and is not an official media source for news from the company. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V18 #16 *****************************