TELECOM Digest Sat, 12 Mar 94 01:09:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 128 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Competition and Technology (Andrew Hassell) Re: Competition and Technology (Bob Goudreau) Re: Question About Random Dialing (James Gray Walker) Re: Question About Random Dialing (John R. Levine) Re: Internet Conferencing (Lars Poulsen) Re: Digital Cellular Phones (puma@netcom.com) Re: Measuring Network Availability (Al Varney) Re: ISDN BRI to IXC? (Al Varney) Re: ISO Country Codes (Aaron Leonard) Re: Why Caller-ID Instead of ANI? (Clarence Dold) Re: Prisoner Starts Own 900 Number (Steve Forrette) Re: New Area Code Change Question (Mike Quinlin) Obscene Caller Nabbed by Voicemail (Milwaukee Journal via puma@netcom.com) 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 GEnie. Subscriptions are available at no charge to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson Associates of Skokie, Illinois USA. We provide telecom consultation services and long distance resale services including calling cards and 800 numbers. To reach us: Post Office Box 1570, Chicago, IL 60690 or by phone at 708-329-0571 and fax at 708-329-0572. Email: ptownson@townson.com. ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: synaptec@netcom.com (Andrew Hassell) Subject: Re: Competition and Technology Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 00:49:40 GMT Stewart Fist <100033.2145@CompuServe.COM> writes: > Jerry Leichter writes: >> I have great respect for competition, but I have yet to see a sound >> argument that the advance in services available *since* deregulation >> is signficantly different from the advance *before* deregulation - >> AFTER CONTROLLING FOR THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVANCE IN APPLICABLE >> TECHNOLOGY. > I couldn't agree more. I've just spent a lot of time analysing the > long-distance charges (and the changes thereof) from country A to country B > using a range of figures produced by the OECD, for a commissioned report. > It is difficult stuff to analyse, but one thing became quite clear. > There's been no more drop in international long-distance call prices > in advanced (OECD) countries with competitive regimes than there has > in those with monopoly regimes. I must say I was surprised at these > findings, because the monopolies actually did slightly better -- > although the difference wasn't significant. Hmm. I would probably be in the contra camp based on recent Australian experience with the adjustment from monopoly to duopoly for mainstream long distance carrier services. Did your report cover this market Stewart? > When you dig down to the bottom, the problem is that in an era where > long-distance connection abundance is the norm (except that in many > cases this is being deliberately knobbled) the normal competitive > market forces do not apply in the way that conventional economics says > it should. I'd interested to know if your report will be available to folks outside your commissioning parties. For my 2c worth here, I think there is a lot of economic sense in monopolizing elements of infrastructure to take advantages of economies of scale. A beautiful example would be the information hype-a-highway. Does it make sense to have multiple fibre connection by multiple carriers? This must be regulated for sure. Maybe a first carrier in best dressed situation with Government regulated access and cross access provisions would be optimal. However, what about outlying areas, less economic areas, rural areas etc. Would some form of monopoly handle this more efficiently that a tightly regulated duopoly or oligopoly? Who knows. These issues are tough but I think you hit it on the head in part of your post. How can regulators ensure that excessive profit taking is eliminated in telecommunications? Argument one that you will probably never escape from alive is the politics of this, you communist! -) [sic] Argument two is how you actually achieve the objective through structuring the industry and regulating it. The objective could be to allow a small fair return on investment, thus encouraging maximum investment in capital works. ... but enough nonsense on a lazy Saturday morning. This is la la land. Andrew Hassell synaptec@netcom.com - a technology marketer Sydney NSW, Australia Tel: +61 2 555 9560 Fax: +61 2 818 2878 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 16:32:02 -0500 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Re: Competition and Technology Stewart Fist <100033.2145@CompuServe.COM> writes: > It is difficult stuff to analyse, but one thing became quite clear. > There's been no more drop in international long-distance call prices > in advanced (OECD) countries with competitive regimes than there has > in those with monopoly regimes. Sure, but ask yourself what's driving those monopoly PTTs to cut their international calling prices: competition from the "competitive regimes"! A recent example of this phenomenon showed up recently in the telecom newsgroups from an Italian reader, who noted that the Italian telco had recently cut its international rates to levels competitive with the international call-back services that had been recently capturing so much of its business. The advent of those call-back services meant that Italtel effectively *lost* its monopoly and was thus forced to compete by cutting prices. Now, how many people think those rates would have been cut in the absence of such competition? A more interesting analysis would be to compare the costs of *intra*-national long distance calling. Most monopoly PTTs still do enjoy true monopolies in that market, while there's certainly plenty of competition for that business in the US. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: walkerj@muc.de (James Gray Walker) Subject: Re: Question About Random Dialing Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 01:06:36 +0100 Organization: MUC.DE e.V. - Individual Network in Muenchen (Munich) In article , wrote: > Is there a shareware program or commercial program available that can > dial randomly within a given area code and when it comes across a fax > machine log that fax number into a database. If anyone has any > pointers I would appreciate it. I find this idea appalling for reasons most anyone can imagine. Perhaps someone who lives closer to Fannie Mae than I could bring up the issue of the posting with the poster's employer directly. I'm fairly sure Fannie Mae has a policy which would preclude the use of their equipment for a posting of such questionable ethicality for the friend of an employee. WALKER, James Gray - walkerj@muc.de ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 19:13 EST From: John R. Levine <0001037498@mcimail.com> Subject: Re: Question About Random Dialing People planning to troll for fax numbers should keep in mind these two aspects of a recently passed Federal law: -- All fax calls must have the caller's number displayed on the cover page and/or at the top of each page. -- Sending junk faxes (generally described as faxes not requested or permitted by the recipient) is forbidden. Violations are punishable by fairly severe federal penalties. Regards from 9600 feet, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com ------------------------------ From: lars@Eskimo.CPH.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: Internet Conferencing Organization: CMC Network Products, Copenhagen DENMARK Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 22:59:18 GMT In article Ralph E. Todd writes: > Greetings. I am a graduate student in the Telecommunications program > at George Mason University; Fairfax, Virginia. In preparation for a > term project dealing with organizational learning, I am in search of > information regarding conferencing on the Internet. > Specifically, I envision a moderated forum supporting concurrent > access for at least 30 user sessions. > Is anyone aware of the existence of such a forum? Any knowledge of > technology or building blocks which could support it? IRC = Internet Relay Chat is the distributed equivalent of CIS's "CB simulator" conference tool. Setup a "private" channel, and there will be room for up to a couple hundred, located anywhere in the world. IRC has provisions for a moderator who can kick people out of the group if needed. It also has support for logging the session to a transcript file. Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@CMC.COM CMC Network Products Phone: (011-) +45-31 49 81 08 Hvidovre Strandvej 72 B Telefax: +45-31 49 83 08 DK-2650 Hvidovre, DENMARK Internets: designed and built while you wait ------------------------------ From: puma@netcom.com (puma) Subject: Re: Digital Cellular Phones Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 23:18:20 GMT In article stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) writes: > In , jrg@rahul.net (John Galloway) writes: >> But if this key is fixed (since it is not transmited I assume it is) >> then all the cellular blue box builder need to is disect a phone to >> get it. This might not be a trivial opeation, but these crooks are >> pretty smart fellows. > Are you assuming that the key is the same for all phones? If the key > is different for each phone, then the crook would have to get a hold I think the intention here is that each phone has a unique key known to that phone and the home service provider. When the phone makes a call, it encrypts part of the request using the key. The system either has the key for that ESN/phone number or asks the home system for it, and uses it to decode the encoded portion of the request. If the decode works, then obviously you are talking to the *real* phone. Seems pretty foolproof, unless you have enough data and time to break the encryption for a particular phone, or inside information. It would at least stop the casual grabbing of ESN/MIN combinations off the air. puma@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 18:06:09 CST From: varney@uscbu.att.com Subject: Re: Measuring Network Availability Organization: AT&T Network Systems In article stacy@sobeco.com (Stacy L. Millions) writes: > I was involved in a project, where we helped to migrate a companies > user base from an IBM mainframe / SNA / 3270 terminal environment to a > UNIX / TCP/IP / vt220 / terminal server environment. I can remember > one of IBM network type people made a comment about how they guarantee > their users 99.8% network availability and he was skeptical that we > would be able to match that in the new environment. > Now my question is simply this: > How do you > a) define > and > b) measure > 'network availability'? Particularly in the context of > LANs and WANs. For some insight into this issue within the public telephone network, I recommend: "Public Networks - Dependable", by John C. McDonald in April 1992 issue of IEEE Communications Magazine. He defines and defends the concept of measuring the "reliablilty" of public networks using a log(10) scale of "user lost Erlangs" times "outage time in hours". In other words, it is a measure of user impact. The June 1993 issue of IEEE Communications magazine has several papers on the measurement of "dependability" and "availability" of telephone networks. The consensus seems to be that one must measure this from the user (or user-to-user) perspective. Network problems that have no user impact (because of redundancy, etc.) do not affect availability. Problems that prevent a user-to-user connection of sufficient quality and duration to accomplish a "transaction" do have an effect on availability. Al Varney ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 18:25:31 CST From: varney@uscbu.att.com Subject: Re: ISDN BRI to IXC? Organization: AT&T Network Systems In article John McHarry writes: > If I have an ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) from my local exchange > carrier and want to place an interexchange data call, how does the LEC > interconnect with the IXC? Somebody told me that this has to be ^^^^ Don't know what "this" refers to -- CPE, the LEC CO or what??? > hooked to a switched 56kb trunk, but I don't see why the LEC couldn't > just send it in a regular Feature Group D and tell the IXC it was a > data call in the SS7 message. Am I missing something? Assuming the BRI SETUP specified 56K data rate, the call can travel over SS7 trunks to the IXC or over "switched 56K" MF trunks. For the purposes of data transmission, these trunks are equivalent. At the far end of the call, a BRI called party will receive an "ISDN originator" indication along with the 56K data rate request IF the call used only SS7 trunks. A non-ISDN 56K destination will not know (or care) if the call was ISDN-originated. In most cases, there should be no problem interworking with SS7 and/or "switched 56K" MF trunks. The opposite is also possible: A non-ISDN 56K originator can call an ISDN BRI/PRI number. The SETUP delivered to the destination will indicate a "non-ISDN originator" and the 56K data rate request IF the call used only SS7 trunks. Otherwise, the SETUP will just indicate 56K data rate request. Again, the B-channel data looks the same as from an ISDN 56K origination. Note that whether or not the IXC wishes to accept such data calls is up to the IXC. The LEC CO routing software can provide different routing for different bearer capabilities -- and it can block certain bearer capabilities if the IXC or trunk facility can't handle them. Also, "Feature Group D" usually refers to an MF-signaled trunk. For clarity, and to avoid confusion with MF-only FG-D tariffs, the preferred term is SS7 NI (Network Interconnect) trunk or SS7 EA (Equal Access) signaling/trunk. I admit some documents use the expression FG-D trunk with the SS7 option or with SS7 signaling. Al Varney ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 17:45:03 MST From: Aaron Leonard Subject: Re: ISO Country Codes Reply-To: Leonard@Arizona.EDU > A few issues back a woman asked for a list of the two-letter and > three-letter ISO 3166 codes for most countries. > While it does not include the codes for the countries that have been > created as a result of others being broken up (such as the Soviet Union > and Czechslovakia) one place to look is in my Internet RFC 1394, which > also shows international telex codes and worldwide telephone area codes. RIPE maintains an up-to-date table of ISO 3166 codes. It has all the FSU countries and everything. The document is available via anonymous FTP from ftp.ripe.net, in ripe/docs/iso3166-codes. Aaron Leonard (AL104), University of Arizona Network Operations, Tucson AZ 85721 ------------------------------ From: dold@rahul.net (Clarence Dold) Subject: Re: Why Caller-ID Instead of ANI? Organization: a2i network Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 19:01:27 GMT Steve Forrette (stevef@wrq.com) wrote: > In , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in > response to baers@agcs.com (Scott Baer): >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think you misunderstood the results of >> your prepending 10222 to a local seven digit number. In all probability, >> your local telephone exchange probably *ignored* the 10222 and handled >> the call themselves. They have the right to do that. PAT] If you follow the carrier selection with #, you will actually draw dial tone from the carrier's switch. I can dial 10xxx#, wait for dial tone from my switch, then follow with the rest of the number. PcaBell never gets the opportunity to route the call, except to my switch, because they don't see the rest of the digits until after my switch has the connection. Merely dialing the same 10xxx without the #, gives me a "not neccessary" message and SIT reorder. Dialing one long string, with #, but no wait for dialtone, causes an incomplete phone number to be heard by my switch. Some carriers don't allow such access. 10288# draws a reorder, but it is an AT&T reorder, not PacBell. Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - Milpitas (near San Jose) & Napa CA. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It used to be the case here that a couple of the 10xxx codes worked the way you mention, with # causing the call to be given the carrier's dial tone. This is not so any longer, at least on the two or three I tried at random just now. As you point out, 10288# gets re-order. You say it comes from AT&T, so I assume that is correct. 10333# got me a recording saying my call could not be completed as dialed and to try again or call 'customer service'. 10222# got me a re-order also. I think at one time, maybe in the early days of 10xxx what you say was more common; there might have been some tie-in with the equivilent 950-1xxx; ie, 10222 and 950-1222 both got MCI dial tone; the latter when you dialed it and the former when you allowed it to time out with no further digits. Illinois Bell seems to not allow it at all now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: Prisoner Starts Own 900 Number Date: 12 Mar 1994 02:27:55 GMT Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc. Reply-To: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) The Moderator wrote: > Now I do not have any love in my heart for prisoners and unlike some > liberal thinkers I could name (but won't) who are constantly whining > about 'all the innocent people in prison', my attitude is there are no > innocent people in prison, by definition absolutely, and most likely > in reality as well. But these AOS ripoffs are also found in jails, where newly-arrested people that have not been convicted or even charged are housed (in addition to convicted non-felons). Many jails restrict the phones so they can't call an 800 number, can't use the arrestee's own calling card, can't use coins for a local call, or any other method than the AOS's collect call service. I guess you could say that the jails have the inmates right where they want them. Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In real practice, persons who have not been charged with a crime are usually held in police lockups, and the ones here all have Genuine Bell payphones. Those who have been charged with a crime are usually free on bond (either because they posted the bond or were given freedom based on their Recognizance). It is *hard* to get into Cook County Jail ... very hard. It helps if you are a murderer, a rapist and very violent as well as being a second or third time offender. As with the prisons in the USA, there are no innocent people in jail. Despite this, I agree that the captive customer base consisting of families and loved ones of prisoners is getting shafted in the process where the phones are concerned. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mike.quinlan@phant.boise.id.us (Mike Quinlan) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 22:22:00 -0700 Organization: Phantasia BBS Subject: Re: New Area Code Change Question In message , TELECOM Digest Editor Noted: > Since the general public has never probably understood the way area codes > were constructed in the past, the general public will probably not notice > the difference starting next year. The general public may notice that they will have to dial the area code when making long-distance calls within the same area code. mike.quinlan@phant.boise.id.us (Mike Quinlan) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 17:57:28 PST From: puma Subject: Obscene Caller Nabbed by Voicemail "System Snares Alleged Caller" from the {Milwaukee Journal}, Friday March 11, 1994 La Crosse (WI) - An obscene caller has been caught by his own call, thanks to some high-tech telephone equipment, police say. The caller, 30 year-old Richard Armstrong of La Crosse (WI), had left sexually explicit messages on the victim's voice mail system, authorities said. The system is similar to a telephone answering machine, but it includes a way of retrieving the caller's telephone number if that party also is a voice mail subscriber, which is what the victim said she did. puma grins > Bravo! One for the good guys! puma@netcom.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #128 ****************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253