Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id NAA09428; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 13:54:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 13:54:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199801091854.NAA09428@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V18 #5 TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Jan 98 13:54:00 EST Volume 18 : Issue 5 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson CLEC's by Neighborhood? (Pat Miller) ... and *I'll* be on the Air Sunday (Ed Ellers) NANPA's Transfer from Bellcore to Lockheed (Mark J. Cuccia) Switch Translation and Default Routing of 911 Calls (P.B. Schechter) Qualcomm's "Prisoner of War" (Bob Goudreau) Book Review: "Cyber Investing", David Brown/Kassandra Bentley (Rob Slade) Help: Anyone w/Realtime Digital Switching Experience (Cynthia Creswell) Telecom Update 1/98 (Digital Wireless Digest) Listen to WGR via the Web (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: Pat Miller Subject: CLEC's by Neighborhood? Date: 9 Jan 1998 05:45:50 GMT Organization: Telephone Answerette Systems Inc. For a preview -- what I envision would be thought of mostly by building owners/businesses who's buildings/organizations may contain hundreds of phone lines. Instead this business now is a group of residence in a neighborhood. Have we ever looked at why there is not a big push for CLEC's in residential areas. They say it is not profitable, but is it. Perhaps not for a big group like AT&T, but for a neighborhood that may get together as a group, have fiber pulled a block to abut the area and plug a slick 96 or something into the CLEC serving larger customers (the neighborhood.) The CLEC with the fiber need not worry about the copper or end customers. Taking care of the end customers is the job of the CLEC (the neighborhood group) buying a connection to the fiber ring. At some point the neighborhood section may be bought out. No matter what the services may be cheaper, and new services may arrive earlier. High quality lines ... direct connections to the Internet, etc. The question I have is what costs would be involved? What equipment might one look for? How would one go about setting up something like this? Why hasn't this been promoted/tried? After all we are talking about doing it neighborhood by neighborhood where someone within the area (ma and pa) encourage it. Where they can possibly get nearly 50% of the phones in a rather dense area. Not leasing lines from Bell (or maybe so.) Not installing broadly where many 10% of the phones switch to the new provider; or the courts come in and say this big company is ignoring the poor area's. NO this is done by residents ... perhaps even poor ones. I just finished watching C-SPAN where one of the big wigs in the government who works with the communications industry said "I like to see Ma and Pop organisations." To paraphrase: They are the ones who make a difference. Pat Miller--Communications Consult+ full/expanded info on web/finger email/finger pmiller@tas-kc.com | http://www.nyx.net/~pmiller backup finger pmiller@nox.nyx.net | email pmiller@nyx.net voiceONEnumber 816-523-2474 | fax 816-968-968-5 (you-you5) ----------------------------------+Heartland TEC #145 155 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you want to run a telephone company for the people in your immediate neighborhood, be my guest. I imagine the established telco in your town would join me in wishing you the best of luck. Believe me, if it was at all profit- able these days (or did you plan to operate a not-for-profit cooperative society) the telcos would be fighting each other to do it. You plan on handling the billing, customer service, operator and directory functions also? Telephone cooperative societies serving small customers (i.e. farmers) were experimented with quite a number of years ago, but almost all of them eventually sold out to Bell as the times got tougher and the going got rougher. If you have a very rich 'mom and pop' who can put some money in it and wait around a few years to see any of it back, go ahead and try your proposal. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: ... and *I'll* be on the Air on Sunday Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 22:16:39 -0500 Organization: Zippo News Service [http://www.zippo.com] The TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Readers in the vicinity of Buffalo, NY may wish to listen to me on > the radio Friday night and call in with questions regarding the new > fee being imposed on telephone subscribers with more than one line. I > was invited by John Otto to be a guest on his program whch is aired on > station WGR, 550 kc on the AM dial. The show will be from 10:10 pm to > 11:00 pm Eastern time this Friday (tomorrow) night. Although WGR is > only a five thousand watt station, late at night the signal gets > around, so readers in other parts of the USA and certainly around the > east coast of Canada should be able to hear it." I'm tentatively set to be a guest on the Dr. Stan Frager show on WHAS (840) in Louisville, Kentucky, starting just after 9 pm (Eastern) on Sunday night. The show runs until midnight, but I expect to be on only the first hour. The topic will be invasions of privacy; my contribution will be to talk about how the Internet might be used by private eyes, stalkers and others to get the goods on a subject. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your show sounds interesting also. Is WHAS on the internet? If it is, people can listen that way if they are outside the signal range. I've found that WGR can be obtained on the internet at www.wgr.com. Good luck with the show! PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Jan 1998 18:20:36 -0600 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: NANPA's Transfer from Bellcore to Lockheed As many of us have known, Lockheed-Martin is taking over Bellcore's duties with regard to the North American Numbering Plan Administration. NANPA's facility at Bellcore in Piscataway NJ will close at 5pm on Friday 16 January 1998. It will open up at Lockheed-Martin's Washington DC facilities at 9am on Monday 19 January 1998. Lockheed is also going to be taking over local Central-Office NXX Code administration for those parts of the NANP under US FCC jurisdiction (all 50 states including Alaska and Hawaii, DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) over the next 12 to 18 months. These assignments have traditionally been handled by the dominant incumbent local telcos in each area code. Lockheed is also going to be handling more duties regarding local number portability/database administration. While at this time the new Lockheed-NANPA website comes up as "Under Construction", the mainpage URL is http://www.nanpa.com (also mirrored at http://www.nanpa.net). Bellcore and Lockheed have prepared various transition planning documents, press releases, etc., including a _FREE_ Bellcore NANP Planning Letter (PL-NANP-106) dated 23-December-1997. Some of these items are available for _FREE_ download from the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry website. The following URL gives a list of links for FTP Download (in MS-Word) of various meetings and documents regarding the transition: http://www.atis.org/atis/nanp/nanpdocs.htm Scroll down to the bottom of this page under "NANP Transition Task Force Documents". A printed/paper copy of the Bellcore PL-NANP-106 can also be ordered for _FREE_ from Bellcore's 800-521-CORE (2673) order center. Although NANPA is being transferred from Bellcore to Lockheed-Martin, Bellcore will continue to maintain the functions of the Traffic Routing Administration (TRA), which includes such documents and databases as RDBS, LERG, NIPC, NNACL/NNAG, BRIDS/BRADS, TPM-VH, etc. NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__HOME:__(USA)__Tel:_CHestnut-1-2497 WORK:__mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu|4710-Wright-Road|__(+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity-5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New-Orleans-28__|fwds-on-no-answr-to Fax:UNiversity-5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail- ------------------------------ From: pb@Colorado.EDU (P.B. Schechter) Subject: Switch Translation and Default Routing of 911 Calls Date: 8 Jan 1998 19:28:20 GMT Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder In Colorado, we are considering rate center consolidation as a means of conserving CO codes. However, rate center consolidation encounters a potential problem because of the way rate centers interact with 911 default routing. Currently, if the 911 tandem gets ANI from the 911 caller's serving central office, that information is used to route the call to the appropriate PSAP. However, if ANI information is not available, then the 911 tandem routes the call to a default PSAP iaccording to its incoming trunk group. This means that there needs to be an assignment of each CO code to a trunk group, depending on the default PSAP associated with the customers served by that CO code. If we consolidate rate centers to one, then there will no longer be a simple correlation between CO codes and PSAPs (since there are about 9 different 911 jurisdictions within the 303 area code -- which is the one in which we are considering rate center consolidation (this is because Colorado has very strong local -- or, anti-central-- government)). We have been informed, however, that at least NorTel (DMS-100 and DMS-10), Ericson, and Siemens switches have a field in translations (EMR, in the NorTel switches) that is specifically for routing 911 calls (one of the smaller companies in Colorado uses this field--they use it first to route a call over a specific trunk group to the 911 tandem, and then, as a backup (if that trunk group, or the 911 tandem, is down), to the appropriate PSAP's serving central office. Finally, my question: Do "all" switches have this "EMR" field in their translations? In particular, do Lucent 5ESS switches? (Representatives of a company that uses 5ESSs think that they do not, but they don't work in translations, specifically.) Thanks in advance for any replies. PB Schechter pb.schechter@dora.state.co.us ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 11:16:09 -0500 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Qualcomm's "Prisoner of War" Wireless Guru (pbdevine@NOSPAM.aol.com) wrote: > During mid-December a California man was arrested for espionage in > Russia. News reports say the man was a technician for a wireless > phone company, installing equipment in Russia. > Here's the news behind the news: Although probably not a spy, > this man is more like a prisoner of war. The war is a global war being > fought over which company will supply most of the world with wireless > digital phones. Actually, he is no longer a prisoner, and it now looks like the Russian federal government is hoping the whole thing (an embarrassing mistake by a local-level government agency) can fade quietly away. The American in question, Richard Bliss, was arrested in November (not December) for the "crime" of using Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment to survey the Rostov-on-Don area for suitable antenna locations to be used by the area's new mobile phone system. None of this should have been a surprise to the local authorities, as Bliss is an employee of Qualcomm, which won the contract to install the system. The Russian government eventually let Bliss return to the US just before Christmas, on the promise that he would return to Russia this month to continue the legal proceedings. This release in itself was a pretty obvious admission that the arrest was a goof-up, since it is inconceivable that the FSB (one of the KGB's successor agencies) would let someone they *really* believed to be a spy to walk free. The latest news (see http://www.newsline.org/newsline/1998/01/080198.html or today's http://www.reuters.com/briefing/) is that the Russian government still hasn't formally asked Bliss to return to Russia, and now looks unlikely to do so. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 08:25:42 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "Cyber Investing", David L. Brown/Kassandra Bentley Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKCYBINV.RVW 970408 "Cyber Investing", David L. Brown/Kassandra Bentley, 1995, 0-471-11926-1 %A David L. Brown %A Kassandra Bentley %C 5353 Dundas Street West, 4th Floor, Etobicoke, ON M9B 6H8 %D 1995 %G 0-471-11926-1 %I Wiley %O 416-236-4433 fax: 416-236-4448 lwhiting@jwiley.com %P 286 %T "Cyber Investing: Cracking Wall Street with Your Personal Computer" I am quite willing to grant you that an investment strategy and plan is better than no plan at all. I am even willing to grant that the strategies outlined in the book are prudent. (I am less willing to be enthusiastic about a book that counsels you to accept a growth rate of 15% but admits that any monkey with a handful of darts can make 13%.) So, why do the first few chapters remind me so strongly of those "get rich quick" infomercials on late night TV? The book is long on strategy, and the strategies can be helpful whether you have a computer or not. Of course, they are far easier to use if you have a computer to do the bull work and searching for you, rather than calculating your way through a bunch of stocks (chosen by dart?) until one matches the strategy. Actually, the computer tools don't get mentioned too often. And what gets the shortest shrift is the fact that you need data -- lots of data -- to make it work. While sometimes producing excellent titles, Wiley does seem to have this predilection for overpriced marketing pamphlets. One of the authors of this book works for the company that makes the software that comes on the included disks. Surprise! Of course, you do get a thirty-day free trial. (Given the recommended complexity of the search strategies, thirty days full-time work would be a bare minimum time to get used to the software.) And buried at the bottom of the book, you find one (1) mention that the online service behind the software costs almost a dollar an hour ... copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKCYBINV.RVW 970408 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 09:35:04 -0500 From: pulaki@aol.com (Cynthia Creswell) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Help: Anyone w/Realtime Digital Switching Experience To whom it may concern, I need some advice with a digital switch I have up and running which is having some problems. SETUP: 166MHz Pentium/128MB ram/512k cache/3GB IDE HD/Ethernet card on a peer-peer OS/2 network; 4 T1s connected to 4 NMS AGT1 cards (96 ports) connected via a DSU for voltage control; OS/2 Warp 4.0, DB/2 ver 2.1, Call processing software programmed using Mastermind Technology's MasterVox program; WHAT WE'RE DOING WITH IT: We process debit cards ... quite successfully until recently. The problem I believe is related to increased traffic. THE PROBLEM: The way we have it set up, we should be able to process 48 simultaneous incoming calls. Until recently, all things were running smoothly on a continuous basis. We were processing up to 34 calls at once without incident. Then, sales increased and our concurrent usage at peek hours increased to 38-40 calls -- and all hell broke loose. I am finding that at peek times when we reach this new ceiling, the computer simply locks up and I need to reboot to get back up and running -- not a good situation when callers are trying to get thru. I am certain that there is plenty of RAM. The processor gauge at the top of the screen is not peeking so I believe the processor speed is adequate. I have adjusted the DB/2 database configuration parameters to the best of my knowledge to allow up to 100 concurrent connections to the DB (although some further tweeking here may be necessary). I'm really not sure what could be the cause of this traffic problem and I can't find anyone else who is doing this. We are toying with the idea of moving the DB to another machine on a peer to peer network to decrease processing on the call processing machine (we also have another switch to hook up to it as well). We are also considering mirroring the switch to cover our butts when the thing locks up, etc. I guess I am looking for anyone with some experience with this to suggest some changes to make (i.e faster machine, different DB, different OS, etc.) I know other people are doing this with even greater traffic than I am looking at, but can't find them. Any thoughts? Thank you kindly for any and all responses. Cynthia Creswell Pulaki@aol.com ( that's Pulaki ) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 21:02:04 PST From: McCarthy_telecom@phoenix.edu (Michael McCarthy) Reply-To: digital_telecom@phoenix.edu Subject: Telecom Update 1/98 DIGITAL WIRELESS DIGEST January 5, 1998 A digital publication for investors and professionals in the field of Telecommunications. ************************************************************************ Chicago Sun-Times: CDMA Orders "Pouring In." TDMA "Out Of The Picture."... The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that CDMA orders are "pouring in" from around the world. In a December 26th story, Sun-Times says telephone manufacturers such as Motorola have a "new edge" with "code division multiple access, or CDMA, which has been generating a lot of interest among the new digital phone services in the United States, Latin America and Asia." According to Motorola's Gene Delaney, "We expected good market acceptance for CDMA. It offers cellular operators greater capacity. And subscribers appreciate the voice quality." "Delaney said the attraction of CDMA is that it allows operators to offer a greater number of calls than possible with other technologies while delivering calls with near-land-line voice quality. Cellular companies that use CDMA can fit three to four times the number of call channels on the same bandwidth as competing digital technologies." Clint McClellan, a wireless industry analyst with Dataquest in San Jose, Calif., said Motorola has chosen wisely in technologies. "They didn't put all their eggs in one basket, and they also didn't invest in more limited technologies," he said. About half of the contracts for new and expanded cellular systems are for CDMA. McClellan said that because they miscalculated CDMA's potential, major competitors, such as Ericcson and Nokia, are out of the picture for the present. ***************************************************************** EL LATINO: "TDMA Would Be A Disaster For Mexico."... As wireless digital phone wars heat up in Latin America, America's largest Spanish-language newspaper, El Latino, has weighed in: "TDMA would be a disaster for Mexico" because of the "damage it would do to Mexican companies and workers who would be forced to try and compete in the world market with a second class system. This new phone system will be the most important piece of industrial infrastructure in Mexico over the next twenty years. It will open up most of Mexico to voice, fax, and computer communications in way that most of us never thought possible." "But today it is possible. And the benefits of getting the best system -- CDMA -- are enormous: Better phones, less expensive phones, and thousands of new jobs. "The drawbacks of installing an out-of-date, inferior, even dangerous TDMA system are equally enormous. We must choose wisely. And not just between CDMA and TDMA. The real choice is whether we want Mexico to have a Third World communications system for an economy whose only asset is cheap labor. Or do we want a new system for the new Information Age, where Mexicans are using the latest technology to learn new skills and create new jobs to fuel a new, growing, economy. It's an easy choice." (Translation provided by author.) ******************************************************************* From Canada's ATLANTIC CHAMBER JOURNAL, January 1998 ... Telecom writer Silas DeMorte tells us to "Forget Fast Track" because the real focus should be on the escalating international business war within the digital wireless arena. "Wireless digital phones are instant infrastructure," says DeMorte. " A quantum leap that, for many countries, will be the most important piece of industrial infrastructure they will ever get. An instant passport into the Information Age. "But not all wireless phones are created equal -- and here is where the battle begins for American companies. Countries around the world are deciding -- even as you read this -- whether to use the newer, more powerful, American-backed standard, called CDMA; or the twenty-year old European standard, variously called TDMA or GSM." DeMorte goes on to state that "European companies like the TDMA standard because they've been using it for more than a decade. It's not as powerful as its American counterpart, but it is more familiar. And because Europeans have billions invested in this technology -- that although outdated, they think is good enough for some of the less demanding countries of the Third World -- they are going to fight to get the most they can out of this investment. "But if the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, the European may be fighting a losing battle. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Korean had created tens of thousands of jobs and become a telecommunications powerhouse in Asia because it had become, early on, the American CDMA standard." He touches upon many documented hazards linked to TDMA, reporting that "...other journals report TDMA systems in Europe cause problems with medical devices such as pacemakers and hearing aids. (So much so that one wag says that TDMA really stands for Telephones Destroy Medical Accessories.)" DeMorte finishes his piece with the observation that "from Forbes to the Los Angeles Times to technical phone journals to foreign language papers in Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, and Korea, the drum beat for the American CDMA technology is getting louder and louder as its superiority is demonstrated over and over throughout the world." ******************************************************************** For related topics or forum postings, go to: "http://members.aol.com/pbdevine/diginews.html" ******************************************************************** Feel free to offer submissions or feedback to: Michael McCarthy, Publisher 1807 Maple St. Wilmington, DE 19805 302-996-2691 mickmcart@prodigy.net ------------------------------ From: ptownson@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Listen to WGR via the Web Date: Fri, 09 Jan 1998 13:45:00 EST Just a reminder to readers that if you want to hear me on the radio Friday night discussing telecom topics in general and the matter of additional charges for second lines you may do so by tuning in to WGR, Buffalo, NY on Friday night at 10:10 pm Eastern (9:10 pm Central) time. WGR is 550kc on the AM band at 5000 watts, so they should be receivable around a lot of the eastern USA and parts of Canada. But you can also listen over internet at http://www.wgr.com ... Actually when I tested it that way yesterday, I was not able to ever connect with their server, but when I went instead to a service like Real Media Guide and entered from their link instead, it went through fine. The show is hosted by John Otto and takes phone calls, so perhaps some of you will want to call in. It will last for fifty minutes, until 11:00 pm. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V18 #5 ****************************