Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA05675; Tue, 31 Mar 1998 01:56:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 01:56:21 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199803310656.BAA05675@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V18 #48 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Mar 98 01:56:00 EST Volume 18 : Issue 48 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bell System Practices / SPAM Blocking (Lauren Weinstein) French Minitel Hinders Internet Deployment (oldbear@arctos.com) NYS (Bell Atlantic) to Get 'Per Activation' 3-way Calling (Danny Burstein) E-mail 'Spammer' Settles Lawsuit For $2 Million (oldbear@arctos.com) Washington Governor Serves Up `Spam' Bill (Tad Cook) BellSouth Billboards Ring up Wrong Area Code (Stan Schwartz) FCC Adds Flexibility For Troubled Cellular Firms (Monty Solomon) Harvard Offers Legal Cybercourse (Monty Solomon) Wireless Phones in a Parking Lot (Alan Bunch) Recent Victim in Phone Scam (Lisa Watson) 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. 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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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bell System Practices / SPAM Blocking Date: Mon, 30 Mar 98 21:04:32 PST From: Lauren Weinstein Greetings. Yes, two unrelated topics... First, a recent message in the digest commented on the high quality of old Bell System Practices (known as BSPs in the trade). They were indeed a marvel of detailed technical writing, and are great fun to review. They were also even practical. One of my favorites was the instructions for setting the "totalizer" (coin counter) on 70's-era payphones (paystations). The text ran something along these lines: "To adjust the totalizer to the desired amount, use a KS-1234567-L2 paystation totalizer adjusting tool or a bent paper clip." I don't know anyone who ever even saw the official adjusting tool. The bent paper clip was a crucial item in most telephone craftspersons' toolboxes. - - - Another recent item in the digest mentioned the problems that PacBell has been having with SPAM. As most readers will know, these problems are epidemic around the net. SPAM and other forms of UBE (Unsolicited Bulk E-mail) continue to grow in both sheer volume and in the range of resources (machine, human, time, you name it...) that they consume. These messages frequently promote various frauds, get-rich-quick schemes, illegal merchandise, a remarkable range of pornography, and in general a whole pile of garbage, to use polite terminology. Judging from concerns I hear and see every day, many persons consider SPAM/UBE to be a direct invasion of their privacy and a matter of greatly increasing concern to the telecommunications and computer industries, and to their subscribers and customers. I've been taking steps here at the PRIVACY Forum to at least cut down on the quantity of received SPAM/UBE for quite sometime. The PRIVACY Forum Digest is moderated, but I still have to plow through all the received SPAM/UBE. Due to the continuing requests for details, I've now made the complete e-mail block list for the PRIVACY Forum (the VORTEX.COM block list) available, along with additional information which may be of interest to anyone concerned about these issues. The block list itself is updated daily. For the complete details, please see: http://www.vortex.com/mailblock.html --Lauren-- Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Moderator, PRIVACY Forum http://www.vortex.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:16:43 -0500 From: The Old Bear Subject: French Minitel hinders Internet deployment Summarized from the {Wall Street Journal}, March 26, 1998: I WANT MY MINITEL! Almost 20 years ago, France became the first networked nation with the deployment of the Minitel, a low-tech terminal that citizens could use to do everything from check the weather to order a pizza. Now, the country's 35 million subscribers are loathe to give up their beloved Minitel and go online with the Internet: "The Minitel... could end up hindering the development of new and promising applications of information technology," warned Prime Minister Jospin last summer, adding that France's technology gap "could soon have dire repercussions on competitiveness and employment." To bring the populace up to speed, Minitel owner France Telecom is planning to deploy next-generation terminals that will access both Minitel and the Internet, but French Internet-industry executives say such hybrid solutions merely encourage users to keep thinking "Minitel," rather than "Internet." "While we sit and worry about the Minitel and ways to get around it, we could be throwing our whole future away," says one. as summarized in {EduPage} ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:52:26 EST From: Danny Burstein Subject: NYS (Bell Atlantic) to Get 'Per Activation' 3-way Calling From the "notice of proposed tariff", found in the {NY Daily News}, 25-Mar-1998. Notice is hereby .... effective April 12, 1998... Customers have the option to subscribe (on a monthly flate rate), ... or use Usage Threeway Calling on a per-activation basis. Residence Business Per activation: $0.75 $0.75 Monthly cap: $6.00 $7.50 Note, by the way, that this monthly cap is roughly twice as much as the flat rate option, which, in the general scheme of pricing, seems a reasonable compromise to me. (especially compared to other telcos that don't cap these expenses...) Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There should be a provision to remove it entirely from the lines of subscribers who do not want it at all as well. Ameritech had more or less the above plan, but allowed for complete removal if a call was made to the business office. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 08:42:44 -0500 From: The Old Bear Subject: E-mail 'Spammer' Settles Lawsuit For $2 Million LOS ANGELES (AP) - March 29, 1998 - A company that once sent as many as 25 million unsolicited e-mail ads a day has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit aimed at ending the so-called "spamming." Under a consent decree filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Cyber Promotions Inc. also must stop sending unsolicited bulk e-mailings to customers of Earthlink Network Inc., {The New York Times} reported Sunday, citing documents that Earthlink released Friday. "The most important benefit of this judgment is the message we've sent to spammers that illegally tap our resources and clog up the Internet with this trash -- we won't stand for it," said Charles Garry Betty, chief executive of the Pasadena-based Earthlink, which provides Internet service to more than 450,000 people. Cyber Promotions, based in Dresher, Pennsylvania, was considered the largest purveyor of unsolicited e-mail ads. A similar injunction against the company was issued last year in a lawsuit filed by America Online, the world's largest online service. Cyber Promotions has been inactive for several months since its own Internet provider refused to continue providing a connection, the Times said. Critics complain that the junk e-mails slow down receipt of genuine messages and invade the privacy of e-mail users. Programmers continually are upgrading computer programs designed to block the unwanted messages. California is one of about a dozen states considering laws to limit unsolicited commercial e-mail. Last week, Washington became the first state to enact such legislation. Congress also is looking into the matter. ------------------------------ Subject: Washington Governor Serves Up `Spam' Bill Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 08:19:40 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Washington Governor Serves Up `Spam' Bill By Peter Lewis, The Seattle Times Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News SEATTLE--Mar. 26--Gov. Gary Locke on Wednesday signed into law a bill aimed at curbing unsolicited commercial bulk e-mail, popularly known as spam. As a result, Washington becomes the first state in the nation to have passed legislation that will curb, if not eliminate, what many e-mail users consider to be an annoyance or worse, according to California lawyer David Kramer. A recognized expert on Internet e-mail and legislative efforts to control it, Kramer has testified before a state House committee in favor of a tougher version of Washington's anti-spam bill. He also has collaborated on bills proposed in Congress and in four other states. The new law, which will take effect in 90 days, makes it a violation for spammers to send e-mail messages that hide their point of origin, mask the transmission path, or contain misleading information in the message's subject line. Spam dispatches, named after the often-derided Hormel meat product, usually contain such false information in their "headers," or address fields, and promote get-rich-quick schemes, miracle health cures or explicit pornographic material. The new law bans both sending e-mail with such deceptive header information from computers located in Washington, and sending such e-mail to an electronic mail address that the sender knows, or has reason to know, is held by a Washington resident. It puts the burden on the sender to find out whether the intended recipient lives in Washington. Individuals who receive such e-mail could collect up to $500 per violation; Internet service providers, the companies that provide computer users access to the Internet, could receive up to $1,000. Assistant State Attorney General Paula Selis on Wednesday said the state will aggressively enforce the new law, but she declined to elaborate, saying her office generally doesn't like to disclose its enforcement strategies. She called the new law "better than nothing." With the support of the Washington Association of Internet Service Providers (WAISP), Selis had drafted a more vigorous law that would have flatly banned sending spam -- unless there was an existing relationship between the sender and the recipient, or the recipient had requested or consented to receive it. But powerful interests, including the Direct Marketing Association and Microsoft, testified against that version of the bill. Microsoft lobbyist Deborah Brunton said her company is "very concerned about unsolicited junk e-mail, but we also are a company that used legitimate e-mail practices to reach out to our customers." She said Microsoft was concerned that the bill's original language was ambiguous, and might have prohibited the company from developing new markets. Meanwhile, in his column posted on the Microsoft Web site Wednesday, Chairman Bill Gates skewered spam, writing in part: "Wasting somebody else's time strikes me as the height of rudeness. We have only so many hours, and none to waste. That's what makes electronic junk mail and e-mail hoaxes so maddening." The new law also calls for creation of a three-member task force, consisting of two members of the House Energy and Utilities Committee and a person appointed by Locke, to identify technical, legal and cost issues related to spam, and to evaluate whether existing laws are sufficient to cope with it. It sets a Nov. 15 deadline for completion of the report. Meantime, WAISP executive director Gary Gardner said local Internet providers would review the new law when they gather April 17 at Bell Harbor Conference Center on the Seattle waterfront. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now $500 per violation; that sounds like good news to me :) I'd get several thousand dollars per day, and I could quit asking for money from readers of this Digest. Heck, I would not have to even send any extortion letters to Bill Gates demanding a monthly stipend, etc. ... but so often, laws like the one passed in Washington turn out to be useless; symbolic and well-intended but useless. How do you suppose recipients of the spam are going to collect in any sort of timely and painless way? The spammers won't pay voluntarily, I'm sure. And a spammer could easily argue that he had no way of knowing that the address xxx@isp.com delivered mail to someone in Washington State if the ISP happened to be located in Oregon or Idaho for example. It makes about as much sense as the people who put threats against spammers in .signature files saying the spammer will be charged for reading the mail, etc. Rarely are those collectible short of hiring an attorney in the location of the spammer and suing. And as a general rule, one simply does not sue someone out of state for less than a couple thousand dollars, by the time the papers are filed and the attorney gets his cut, etc. But maybe it will work. I was glad to hear the news about Cyber Promotions' latest litigation. If people keep bashing Spamford long enough, he may eventually give up entirely and find some legitimate employment, maybe washing dishes in a restaurant somewhere. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:00:08 PST From: Stan Schwartz Reply-To: stannc.no@spam.yahoo.com Subject: BellSouth Billboards Ring up Wrong Area Code {The Charlotte Observer} Published Friday, March 27, 1998 BellSouth billboards ring up wrong area code By DAVID BORAKS and FOON RHEE Staff Writers Just what BellSouth needs -- more befuddlement about the Carolinas' new area codes. Two dozen new BellSouth billboards in the Charlotte and Gastonia areas tell residents: ``Your new area code is 828.'' Sorry, wrong number. Charlotte and Gastonia remain in the 704 area code. It's Western North Carolina -- including Asheville, Hickory, Morganton and Shelby -- that switched to the 828 area code Sunday. BellSouth plans to remove the wrong signs in the next few days. ``We will be taking them down as quickly as we can,'' spokesman Clifton Metcalf said Thursday. `` ... We don't want to confuse folks.'' The billboards, which went up this week, are supposed to be among about 50 along roads in the mountains. The signs in Mecklenburg and Gaston counties are supposed to say: ``Western North Carolina's new area code is 828.'' ``I don't know where the mistake was made,'' Metcalf said. ``It could be anywhere in the process. At this point, we're not worrying about where the mistake happened. We're focusing on getting the right information out there.'' Besides the billboards, BellSouth is also using newspaper ads, radio announcements and phone-bill inserts to make sure residents know of the new area codes. The Carolinas added two other area codes Sunday, for nine total: northeastern North Carolina split from the 919 area code to become 252, and eastern South Carolina left 803 to become 843. Most calls dialed with the old area codes will still get through until fall. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 01:24:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Adds Flexibility For Troubled Cellular Firms By Aaron Pressman WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission has offered a more flexible bailout plan for financially strapped companies that won valuable wireless licenses in 1996. Eighty-seven firms bid $10.2 billion in the 1996 C-block auction of licenses to offer the advanced cellular service known as personal communications services, or PCS. But the high prices bid and a dearth of investors put a financial squeeze on the leading companies that won licenses. The key change in the FCC's plan, revised from a proposal issued last September, allowed companies to choose different bailout options for different geographical regions. Under last year's plan, for example, a company could not keep licenses for one city and give back licenses for other cities. The revised plan, now available to all the troubled PCS firms, is similar to a reorganization plan the FCC endorsed Monday for bankrupt Pocket Communications, the second leading bidder at the auction. That plan allowed the sale of licenses for Chicago and Dallas to a group including Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson and Siemens Telecom Networks, with other licenses returned to the government. "For the original Pocket license holders, who are now out of the wireless business, bankruptcy has been a disaster," FCC Chairman William Kennard said. "I hope that today's order will help others avoid the same experience." NextWave Telecom, Pocket and General Wireless Inc. -- the top three bidders -- together account for more than $7 billion in winning licenses. Pocket and General filed for bankruptcy last year. Like last year's plan, the FCC's revised plan allows companies to choose from among four options. A company may resume paying for its licenses over ten years, pay for all licenses immediately, return the licenses to the government without penalty, or keep licenses in one spectrum band and return those for another. Nextwave said it was reviewing the revised plan. "Nextwave will review the full range of restructuring alternatives that the FCC is making available and will make its decision by the date prescribed by the FCC," the company said in a statement. The FCC said all bidders must decide which options to choose within 60 days. The agency also postponed indefinitely conducting a new auction to sell any spectrum licenses returned under the bailout plan. Commissioner Susan Ness, the only member of the five-member panel who considered last September's plan, voted against the new plan's revisions, calling them "excessive and potentially counterproductive". "Judges and legislators, lawyers and economists all speak to the need to promote competition, not competitors," Ness said in a statement. "Today's decision crosses the lines to favor specific competitors over others." Ness maintains the bailout plan offers too much help to troubled auction winners, which she says is not fair to auction winners which paid for their licenses under the original terms of the sale. ------------------------------ Reply-To: Monty Solomon From: Monty Solomon Subject: Harvard Offers Legal Cybercourse Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 18:15:31 -0500 Excerpt from CBS Marketwatch ... Harvard offers legal cybercourse The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is offering a free, online course open to the public. Professor William W. Fisher will moderate "Intellectual Property in Cyberspace." Fisher, an expert in copyright, patent, and trademark law, says the course will "address the controversial and volatile question of who should own what on the Internet." Students will present and refine their own views on these issues by participating online in a variety of virtual seminars and threaded conferences. The course is the second in a series to be offered by the Berkman Center, and has been made possible by a donation from the Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr LLP. More information is available at property.berkmancenter.org. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:43:34 -0600 From: Alan Bunch Subject: Wireless Phones in a Parking Lot Check out the Qualcomm webpage. They make a device that is a pop in a box. It has POTS port on one side and a cellular attenna on the other. What this does is lets a regular phone work on a cellular "circuit". You would need cellular service that could only dial 911 but that shouldn't be hard. Also the devices that you see here in the US are emergency call boxes on the roadside. They seem to be solar powered and only call the police I think. In a submission to telecom-digest was written: > I need to provide a solution to a college that is putting emergency > telephones into thier various parking lots around the campus. There > is lots of power outlets, but running telephone lines to the > locations is going to be very expensive. Does anyone know of a > wireless solution that would accept inputs from an emergency > telephone? I know there are site-wide wireless telephone solution > but they all seem to require a proprietary handset. I figure this way > they can use it both for emergency phone and phones for the mtce. > people at the same time. > Dale Laluk, C.E.T. > Lunar Communication Services > P.O. Box 569, Hudson's Hope, B.C. V0C 1V0 > 250-783-5365 or 1-800-227-5912 voice > 250-783-5790 fax > lunarcom@netbistro.com internet Alan Bunch President alabun@spyderinc.com Spyder Enterprises Inc. http://www.spyderinc.com Small sigs save bandwidth ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 09:07:37 -0800 From: Lisa Watson Organization: Nestle USA Subject: Recent Victim in Phone Scam I found this website by doing a search under USP&C -- it seems (after reading all of this) that I too have been hit by a scam. I'm in the process of contacting the company whose service I supposedly used. However, I never used this "DAMI Teleservices"; they are hitting me for $10.97 which reads "Tes Svc Plan-10 min debit card". How can I fight this? Will copying the FTC, BBB and/or Attorney General help? Any suggestions will be appreciated. Lisa in Dallas, TX ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V18 #48 *****************************