TELECOM Digest Thu, 26 May 94 06:55:00 CDT Volume 14 : Issue 250 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Itemized Billing in UK (Peter Campbell Smith) Re: Itemized Billing in UK (Jonothan Green) Re: Itemized Billing in UK (John Slater) Re: Itemized Billing in UK (samjam@mary.iia.org) Re: Itemized Billing in UK (Clive D.W. Feather) Re: Hunting Service From GTE (Joe Collins) Re: Hunting Service From GTE (Steve Forrette) Re: LD Carrier's Message Delivery Service (Nathan N. Duehr) Re: LD Carrier's Message Delivery Service (Steve Cogorno) Re: Cellular Privacy? (Neil Weisenfeld) Re: Cellular Privacy? (Bennett Z. Kobb) Re: No 911 Available as Tot Drowns (Andrew C. Green) Re: No 911 Available as Tot Drowns (Ed Ellers) Re: No 911 Available as Tot Drowns (Rob Levandowski) Re: Government Regulates Modem Redial Attempts (Steven Bradley) 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. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 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 edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** 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. 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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: campbellsm@lish.logica.com (Peter Campbell Smith) Subject: Re: Itemized Billing in UK Organization: Logica, London Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 08:40:22 GMT In article , RANDY@MPA15AB.mv-oc.Unisys. COM wrote: > An episode of "Eastenders," shown last week in Southern California > (which runs about a year or more behind the U.K.) featured a character > quite shocked to learn that his phone calls to his mistress now show > up as itemized call detail on their phone bill. These were local toll > calls from the East End to the West End, which I assume are expensive > calls. > Did the U.K. implement itemized local billing? BT offers itemised billing for calls that cost more than 9 units, a unit costing about 5p (7 US cents) and buying varying numbers of seconds according to distance and time of day. If you choose that (free) option, these calls are itemised and the rest lumped together as some (large) number of units. The local calling area from London covers all of Greater London, plus the neighbouring suburbs (about 10 million people or so). 'Local' calls are not toll-free however, so a long local call will show up as an itemised one: to be precise, a unit buys 80 seconds from 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 220 seconds at other times, so we may deduce that your character spent over 12 minutes by day or 33 minutes in the evening chatting to his floozie. The rival operators (Mercury and the cable-TV lads) offer itemised billing on all calls. Peter Campbell Smith, Logica plc, London. Voice: +44 71 637 9111 Fax: +44 71 344 3638 Internet: campbellsm@lish.logica.com ------------------------------ From: J.M.Green@bnr.co.uk (Jonothan Green) Subject: Re: Itemized Billing in UK Date: 26 May 1994 07:51:12 GMT Organization: BNR Europe Limited, Harlow, GB In article RANDY@MPA15AB.mv-oc.Unisys. COM writes: > An episode of "Eastenders," shown last week in Southern California > (which runs about a year or more behind the U.K.) featured a character > quite shocked to learn that his phone calls to his mistress now show > up as itemized call detail on their phone bill. > Did the U.K. implement itemized local billing? I don't watch Eastenders, but I do have a 'phone :-) In my case, I automatically get itemised billing of any calls over a certain **COST** (can't remember what the figure is) regardless of what type of number I'm calling, this means that if I made a **LONG** call on a local tariff it would be shown as a seperate item on the bill, but if I made a very short call on a low cost tariff (eg BT's super-cheapo weekend rate) then it wouldn`t ... confused? You will be :-) I make all my long distance calls through Mercury, which does give full details of **ALL** calls made, (so it's a good job I haven't got a mistress in Manchester :-) Jonathon Green. BNR Europe Ltd, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK Email: J.M.Green@bnr.co.uk (Work) JayGee@cix.compulink.co.uk (Home) Fax: +44-279-451866 Phone: +44-279-402510 (direct line) ------------------------------ From: johns@scroff.UK (John Slater) Subject: Re: Itemized Billing in UK Date: 26 May 1994 05:38:53 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems (UK) Reply-To: johns@scroff.UK In article 5@eecs.nwu.edu, RANDY@MPA15AB.mv-oc.Unisys.COM writes: > An episode of "Eastenders," shown last week in Southern California > (which runs about a year or more behind the U.K.) featured a character > quite shocked to learn that his phone calls to his mistress now show > up as itemized call detail on their phone bill. These were local toll > calls from the East End to the West End, which I assume are expensive > calls. First of all, East End and West End are areas of London, so it's a local call. (I believe Greater London is the largest geographic calling area in the world). Now on the the charging and billing system : British Telecom charges by the unit. 1 unit costs around 5p (7c in your Earth money) and buys a length of time that varies according to distance and time of day. For instance, on a local call at off-peak times, a unit buys 220 seconds (3min40sec). On a call to the USA a unit charge buys between 8 and 10 seconds. An Intelsat call, to give an extreme example, uses up a unit every 0.7 seconds or so. BT offers itemised billing for calls over 10 units (= 50p cost). A local cheap-rate call of over 33 minutes falls into this category, so would appear on the bill. At standard rate during the day, a shorter call than this would do it. A lot of people don't like the unit charging system because callers are charged in whole units even if they only use part of it. (for example a 221 second off-peak local call costs 2 units). This translates to an average overcharge of half a unit per call, at 2.5p each, which adds up to many millions of pounds per year. (Does anybody have the call volume numbers to work out just how much?) John ------------------------------ From: samjam@mary.iia.org (Anne's Fiance) Subject: Re: Itemized Billing in UK Date: 26 May 1994 00:43:19 -0400 Organization: International Internet Association > Did the U.K. implement itemized local billing? Yes. Not all of the country has itemised billing availabkle. The itemisation is based on the cost/number of units of the call, not the physical distance. If the call is more than 50p cost or more than 5 units in length or if the call was made halfway through another call (via 3 way calling) then it will be itemised. Calls less than 50p or 5 units are not itemised, though for a small fee users can dial a prefix to have calls itemised on a per-call basic. A scam around this is to dial an 800 number (pick one with a robot voice, not a human on the end) and then immediatly interrupt that call to place your legitimate call, which will therefore be itemised. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Itemized Billing in UK Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 09:00:46 BST From: Clive D.W. Feather > An episode of "Eastenders," shown last week in Southern California You admit to watching "Eastenders"? That's your street-cred gone. > (which runs about a year or more behind the U.K.) featured a character > quite shocked to learn that his phone calls to his mistress now show > up as itemized call detail on their phone bill. These were local toll > calls from the East End to the West End, which I assume are expensive > calls. > Did the U.K. implement itemized local billing? East End to West End [of London; note that these are not the east and west edges of the London area] is a local call. Assuming he has normal BT phone service, this call will be charged at between 3 and 8 minutes per unit (I forget the exact numbers); a unit costs about 5p (7.5 cents) including tax. If he has "full itemization", then all calls of 10 or more units are listed, giving the complete number called, time, date, duration, and cost; I often see local calls itemized on my bill. If the call was special in some way (for example, it was the second call of a three-way call, or was dialed with the "call me back afterwards with duration and cost" prefix code), then it will be listed no matter how many units it took. Other phone companies have different policies: I use Mercury for my non-local calls, and they itemize all calls (and are cheaper). I access Mercury by dialling "1320aaannnnnn" instead of "0aaannnnnn". Clive D.W. Feather | Santa Cruz Operation clive@sco.com | Croxley Centre Phone: +44 923 816 344 | Hatters Lane, Watford Fax: +44 923 210 352 | WD1 8YN, United Kingdom ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 May 94 14:52:04 -0400 From: Joe Collins Subject: Re: Hunting Service From GTE I hope GTE can solve your problem because Bell Atlantic can't solve ours. We have a large multiline dial-in network and wanted to break our lines down into multiple dial-in groups. We also wanted to be able to control the number of lines in each group so as the situation demanded we could change the group size. Enter Bell Atlantic, one droid says "Sure, we can do that", another does not know and the last says "Yes, except that you can't control the call forwarding feature only WE can program the number". Yes, Call Forwarding on Busy, Don't Answer is a solution for many but sadly Bell Atlantic does not care enough to offer the service. Just send them money, they are the only game in town. Joe Collins ------------------------------ From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: Hunting Service From GTE Date: 26 May 1994 19:13:39 GMT Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc. Reply-To: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) In , wpcallah@rwasic17.aud.alcatel.com (Paul Callahan) writes: > I want to get a second line and have it hunt to the first, or vice-versa. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is called rotary hunting service. ..... > Please note there is a more expensive (and charged-for) service > called 'transfer on busy/no answer'. 'Transfer on busy' does about > the same thing as hunting does, but the way it is done -- the > mechanics of it -- are a little different. PAT] There are a couple of other issues here. In many states, GTE does not offer hunting to residential customers at any price (here in Washington State is an example), even though the RBOC in the same area does. Another issue is that on measured rate lines, busy transfer will rack up message units, whereas hunting does not. Also, the monthly charge for hunting sometimes applies to all lines in the hunt group, including the terminating line that doesn't do any hunting itself (and only termin- ates hunting calls from the previous line). Pacific Bell bills this way. Busy transfer is only charged on the lines where the tranfserring originates. Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What an odd way to go about billing for hunting. We don't have any charge for hunting at all, residence, business or otherwise. Hunting can go either direction you want, backward or forward. For example, I have my second line hunt to my first when it is busy. My first line then has call-waiting. You can't have both call-waiting and hunting on the same line however; the two are incompatible, but we can hunt from one end of our group of lines to the other at no charge and have call-waiting on the final line for just the small fee charged for the call-waiting feature. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nduehr@netcom.com (Nathan N. Duehr) Subject: Re: LD Carrier's Message Delivery Service Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 10:39:17 GMT Mark E Daniel (mark@legend.akron.oh.us) was talking about LD Carrier's Message Delivery Services: MCI is offering one of these services via their calling cards, and in the three occasions I have tried it, all three parties have not received their messages. In one case, the party may not have been home within the allotted eight hour time frame in which the call must have been completed. In another case an answering machine answered the phone. I am personally very unimpressed with MCI's service, and will not be using it again. Regards, Nate Duehr nduehr@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: cogorno@netcom.com (Steve Cogorno) Subject: Re: LD Carrier's Message Delivery Service Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 03:55:18 PDT Said by: Mark E Daniel > The person writing about this prompted me to try an experiment. I > believe it might be a nice idea if the LD carriers offering this > service automaticly detected the busy signal and offered me the option > of leaving a message or hanging up or dialing another number. Sprint > offers a similar service to AT&T's costing the same as far as I can > tell. At least delivery in the US is at the same price. I was > unable to use AT&T's service. I received a message stating that all > representatives were busy and that I should try my call again later. On an AT&T call, if it is busy or no answer, all you have to do is hit #123 and you will be connected to AT&T Message Service. It is not handled by live operators unless you hit 0 to request one. Also, if you use the #123 mode to access Message Service, you do not need to enter the calling number, nor chargeback number (because the original call was placed with a calling card). Steve cogorno@netcom.com #608 Merrill * 200 McLaughlin Drive * Santa Cruz, CA 95064-1015 ------------------------------ From: weisen@alw.nih.gov (Neil Weisenfeld) Subject: Re: Cellular Privacy? Organization: NIH Div of Comp Rsrch and Technology Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 20:59:32 GMT Steven Bradley (steven@sgb.oau.org) wrote: > However there is no enforcement of the importation ban, since U.S. > customs are not an authority to pass judgement of the technical > capabilities of a receiver, that is the FCC's job. But with the use > of FCC form 740, the FCC does not even need to see or certify a > receiver, hence there is no problem with importing these units. That I can't comment on the enforcement side of things, but I do want to point out that it is important to oppose an unenforcable law if you oppose what the law says. You never know when the law may become enforcable. About form 740, I was told that form 740 could not be used to get around the law. Again, maybe not enforcable, but still illegal. > the 800 mhz band), no re-tuning is needed. In theory, if they made > the EPROM replacable for purpose of field upgrades, and sold the > cellular full access EPROM as an after-market item, it would certainly > get around the dumb restriction. It does not stop you from getting > the scanners, nor does it stop the modifications, merely makes it more > difficult, but does not stop it. I doubt that this would work as the ready availability of plug-in parts to reenable cellular on the radio would render the radio "easily modifiable" and, therefore, supposedly illegal to import/manufacture. Neil Weisenfeld, Computer Engineer Internet: weisen@nih.gov Nat'l Insts. of Health, 12A/2033 Voice: 301/402-4030 Bethesda, MD 20892 Fax: 301/402-2867 ------------------------------ From: bkobb@newsignals.com (Bennett Z. Kobb) Subject: Re: Cellular Privacy? Organization: New Signals Research Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 13:46:57 GMT > However there is no enforcement of the importation ban, since U.S. > customs are not an authority to pass judgement of the technical > capabilities of a receiver, that is the FCC's job. Say what? The Customs Service's role is to bar importation of RF products illegal to market in the U.S. Customs does not have to pass technical judgement on a receiver. They have only to examine the importer's declaration of the FCC's permitted import categories for the device. As the rules put it: "Failure to properly declare the importation category for an entry of radio frequency devices may result in refused entry, refused withdrawal for consumption, required redelivery to the Customs port, and other administrative, civil and criminal remedies provided by law." > But with the use of FCC form 740, the FCC does not even need to see or > certify a receiver, hence there is no problem with importing these units. > That includes receivers which directly receive cellular -and- units which > can be modified easily. Form 740 had nothing to do with the ban on cellular-capable scanners, which the FCC and Customs are bound to enforce if they don't want to hear from the Hill and cellular industry lawyers. The FCC does have to see it and certify it unless you can straight-faced claim other pretenses and get away with it. And Form 740 was superseded by Customs ABI (Automated Broker Interface) -- more efficiently barring funky import attempts. Why risk breaking Customs and FCC regs to get a scanner that can pick up cellular? Buy a spectrum analyzer or a scanner that is already in the country under the previous rules, should you have a compelling need to do this. > It is also legal to import receivers for the purpose of exporting > them. Companies -can- import them and sell them to others in the > U.S. and stamp the invoice or have printed on the invoice the sale is > for export purposes. But this is an ancient scam with which the enforcement folks are well acquainted. BK ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 12:57:55 CDT From: "Andrew C. Green" Subject: Re: No 911 Available as Tot Drowns Dave.Leibold@f730.n250.z1.fidonet.org (Dave Leibold) writes: > {The Toronto Star} reports of a 14-month-old boy in Barrie, Ontario > who drowned while his mother attempted to dial 911. Unlike many > centres in Canada, Barrie does not have a 911 service, thus calls to > 911 are usually completed to a not-in-service recording. I have encountered this myself occasionally in the past when I had to call 911 from some unfamiliar location, and precious seconds would be wasted slamming down the phone and redialing for the Operator. This sort of begs the question, naive though this may be: Instead of routing the call to an intercept, can't it be routed to an operator instead? Any operator anywhere would probably be better than a recorded intercept telling the caller to hang up and guess again. Andrew C. Green Datalogics, Inc. Internet: acg@dlogics.com 441 W. Huron Chicago, IL 60610-3498 ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: No 911 Available as Tot Drowns Date: Wed, 25 May 94 13:55:11 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Dave Leibold writes: > {The Toronto Star} reports of a 14-month-old boy in Barrie, Ontario > who drowned while his mother attempted to dial 911. Unlike many > centres in Canada, Barrie does not have a 911 service, thus calls to > 911 are usually completed to a not-in-service recording. The family > recently moved to Barrie and didn't realise that local emergency > numbers needed to be dialed direct. Seems to me that they should have let 911 calls go through to the local operator. South Central Bell used to do that with ESSs in non-911 areas (since 911 was built into the software), but not with SXS or crossbar (which would have had to be modified). We have a small-area situation in the Louisville area as well; a few homes in neighboring Oldham County are served by a CO in Jefferson County. SCB was apparently unable to break out those customers as being across the county line, so if they dial 911 they get the Jefferson County center. (Which is nothing more than a clearinghouse that forwards calls to the appropriate agency, so they just pass Oldham County stuff to the 911 center in LaGrange.) ------------------------------ From: rlvd_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Rob Levandowski) Subject: Re: No 911 Available as Tot Drowns Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York Date: Wed, 25 May 94 13:11:26 GMT [article about child drowning because parents dialed '911' in an area with no '911' service deleted] My parents have a cottage in southern New Hampshire, in a town whose full-time population is perhaps 500, but whose population swells to around 5000 in the summer because of the summer homes on the lakes. That region -- Cheshire County -- does not have widespread 911 service. There is a regional emergency dispatch center in Keene, but you have to dial 352-1100 to reach it. This is probably in part due to the fact that the equipment in the region seems pretty antiquated; only recently was the local office switched from mechanical switches to electronics (perhaps four or five years ago). This was in large part due, no doubt, to the presence of PC Connection/MacConnection in a neighboring town -- soon thereafter they started using ANI to speed orders. In any case, I'm sure the following bit of information is as true in other rural non-911 areas as it is in Cheshire County: If you can't get through to 911, you should try dialing 0 for the operator. The operator can connect you more quickly than it would take you to look up the number in a phone book or try to dredge it out of memory when you're in a panic. The gossip I've heard is that Cheshire County will jump directly to Enhanced 911 once all of the local offices install modern switches. Since virtually all emergency calls are handled out of the Mutual Aid center in Keene as it is, the political-boundaries question Pat mentioned is already resolved. Rob Levandowski macwhiz@cif.rochester.edu Computer Interest Floor associate / University of Rochester ------------------------------ From: steven@sgb.oau.org (Steven Bradley) Subject: Re: Government Regulates Modem Redial Attempts Organization: The Forest City Exchange, Forest City, Florida Date: Wed, 24 May 1994 22:19:27 GMT John Harris (joharris@io.org) wrote: > Quoting Tdgilman@iris-1.ce.berkel: >> I was trying out new modem software yesterday, and under the option >> where one can specify the number of redial attempts before giving up, >> somthing like the following reads: "Governement regulations may limit >> you to 10 redials maximum." > The rules apply to any telephone device, fax or modem. The TIA should > be petitioning the FCC for adoption of the new Part 68/CS-03 any time > now. Actually, there is a way around this, if it is software for a faxmodem, such as a fax server, the card itself in firmware is under government regulation, therefore, if you are a developer, do NOT use the internal redial option in the faxmodem, use the BUSY, VOICE, NO ANSWER result codes to re-dial it using the software command to redial last number or even A/ if the last was a dial attempt. This way the meddling FCC can keep its nose out it and allow unlimited and unregulated re-dialing. This is possible because the FCC regulates DEVICES, not SOFTWARE, therefore you can program software to redial 100s of times and the FCC could do nothing to prevent it. That is why they have BUSY, NO ANSWER, RRING, VOICE, etc. Internet: steven@sgb.oau.org | Steven G. Bradley steven@gate.net |---------------------------- GEnie: s.bradley6@genie.geis.com | Don't you think it's about CompuServe: 73232.505@compuserve.com | time we FIRED the Federal America Online: sgbradley@aol.com | Communications Commission? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I hope you are the next victim of someone's 'unregulated and unlimited redialing' rather than me. And no, I do not think 'it is about time we fired the FCC ...'. I think it is time we gave the agency even greater enforcement powers in a few instances that I will not go into here at this minute. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #250 ****************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------