TELECOM Digest Wed, 20 Apr 94 02:46:00 CDT Volume 14 : Issue 179 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Telecommunications Development in Asia (Cedric Hui) Re: Neat Tricks! (kris%sanctum%paladin@uunet.uu.net) Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet (John Hall) Re: Internet and the Info Highway (Garrett Wollman) Re: Operator Assisted Sent-Paid Coin Calls (Ken Weaverling) Re: GSM and Airbags (Alex Veller) 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. TELECOM Digest is gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom. It has no connection with the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom.tech whose mailing list "Telecom-Tech Digest" shares archives resources at lcs.mit.edu for the convenience of users. Please *DO NOT* cross post articles between the groups. 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: chui@netcom.com (Cedric Hui) Subject: Re: Telecommunications Development in Asia Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 1994 06:36:05 GMT Here is some information on Hongkong Telecom. It is not meant to be a technical reference on the HK telecommunications infrastructure nor a objective view on the current communication policy and choice of technology deployment in the territory. The information is based on the HongKong Telecom's publication "Hong Kong - The Communications Hub of Asia". I believe it was published in 91 or 92, definitely before 1993. Hope the information is usefully to you and of interest to others, and I am looking forward to your paper on the telecommunications development in Asia. Company background: The Territory's domestic and international carrier. Publicly listed in New York, London as well as on the local stock exchange. About half of the public float, or 10% of the company's equity, is held by American investors. The two primary shareholders are Britain's Cable and Wireless (57.5%) and China International Trade and Investment Corporation (17.5%) CITIC is one of China's premier vehicles for overseas investment. The communications hub of Asia: According to the Information contains in the publication, of the 600 multinational companies that have regional headquarters in Asia, more than half are active in Hong Kong and nearly 500 use the territory as their Asian telecommunications hub. HK Telecom's annual investment on capital projects amounts to US$300-400 million and all the major fibre trunks that traverse Asia pass thru HK, providing both the capacity and the diversity that multinationals seek in a regional hub and those fibre links are backed up by one of the Asia's largest satellite earth stations with 10 dishes. Almost 200 International Private Leases Circuits (IPLCs) link HK Telecom customers with their offices or business partners in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen at speeds up to 64K bps. The number of IPLCs between HK and China is growing at around 50% a year. HK Telecom has forged strong ties with both national and provincial telecommunications authorities in the PRC. Some figures: The territory has nearly three million telephone lines; one for every two people. One resident in 10 has a pager. One in 25 a mobile phone. Nearly 200,000 fax lines (second only to Japan in fax penetration). The network is all digital. Local calls are free (residential and commercial). HK people make 11 million overseas telephone or fax calls a month, approximately half of them to China. International Direct Dailing is available to more than 200 countries and to more than 1,000 cities in China. (China traffic is growing at an annual rate of 35%). Services: Datapak: an X.25 based public data network supporting transmission at up to 64Kbps and a digital data service that offers dedicated circuits at speeds up to T3. Datapak International extends the domestic X.25 network to 175 public data networks in 84 countries, providing access to thousands of international messaging and information services. Value-added options such as Call Waiting, Conference Call or Do Not Disturb. Citinet (Centrex). Paging, cellular and CT2 services are licensed but subject to competition; multiple vendors are active in each sector. SUREFAX provides auto redial, auto resend and broadcast calls, comprehensive call tracking and accounting for high-volume fax users. HK Telecom's sole franchise for the domestic telephone service ends in 1995, when limited competition is expected to emerge, while its international valued-added services are already deregulated and have become intensely competitive. Sister company HK Telecom CSL operates one of the largest cellular telephone networks in the territory. It offers a unique roaming agreements that enable customers to use their portable phone in over 100 roaming destinations in China. International private leased circuits at speeds up to 2 Mbps between HK and 24 counties and is the dominant supplier into China. (no specific detail given) Direct optical fibre links with China. The cable between HK and Guangzhou can carry up to 47,000 voice channels simultaneously, while a 565 Mbps cable links HK with Shenzhen and connects to similar cable from Shanghai to Guangzhou. Newly introduced service: ISDN, VPN, GMDS, FNA and Banwidth on Demand services. A domestic frame relay service designed for LANs is also available ATM and SONET is under testing and are expected to become HK Telecom's core network technologies during the 1990s. Others: FMit: Asia's only comprehensive outsourcing service for users of private telecommunication network. Tariff: HK Telecom claims that following the recent tariff reductions agreed between the company and the HK government, it is cheaper to call every country in the world from HK than the other way round. The tariff differential can be as high as 30%. No comparison numbers were given though. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Neat Tricks! Reply-To: kris%sanctum%paladin@uunet.uu.net From: sanctum!kris@uunet.UU.NET (Kris) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 1994 23:47 EDT Glen Roberts writes: > PROTECT YOURSELF WITH THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE'S TELEMARKETING TRICK [...] > Why not use it to protect your privacy? Get your second line setup by > the phone company that way, place all your out-going calls on it and > bam no body can return call or redial your number. Yeah, the phone > company will probably tell you they can't do that for you. Tell them > to call 1-312-670-4113 as proof that it can be done. I don't agree with the idea that this may be an "intentional" call-back blocker. When I dial on our (old, outdated) PBX and hit 9 qto get an outside line, I actually get an *actual* *outside* *line*. Hitting 0 gives you the NYNEX operator, 00 gives AT&T operator, and you can even play with * codes. CNID blocking codes give you an almost instant "this number is not equipped to receive incoming calls". What I am saying is that this is a common arrangement with PBX systems. The "number" the telemarketers are calling out on probably does not accept incoming calls (it isn't even a "number" by that definition). A more modern ROLM CBX system (all digital, dials itself after you dial on the keypad, etc, etc) calling to one of the tracer 800 numbers gives you yet another fake "number". > Also, here's another way to block caller-id. Dial 10288EEE-NNNN where > EEE is your exchange and NNNN is the number. For example, from my > home, if I call the surveillance hotline: (708) 356-9646... by dialing > "356-9646" Caller ID gets my home phone. Yet, if I dial"10288356-9646" > it comes in as out of area (yeah and I probably get billed the same as > calling long distance). Not in all areas! National CNID is trying to correct this, and it may be fixed in most "hip" local telcos. If you can receive calls via AT&T (using the 10288 code) with caller-ID on them you can usually receive them with caller-ID on them even with this method. The tried-and-true method is to use a Mom & Pop 10-XXX code or 800 number (which presumably wouldn't be suitably equipped, but good luck finding one that doesn't rent lines from a major prime), or using a PBX. With a PBX they will get the famous fake calling "number", but dialing it will give you the error message regarding "no incoming calls" or just a constant ringing. Note that using AT&T through their 800 number won't win you much because 800 numbers always have ANI on them (and ANI is the big daddy of CNID). Have fun. This stuff is lots of fun. Kris kris%sanctum%paladin@uunet.uu.net uunet.uu.net!paladin!sanctum!kris ------------------------------ From: john@pixel.kodak.com (John Hall) Subject: Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet Organization: Eastman Kodak Date: Tue, 19 Apr 1994 16:33:49 GMT In article Paul Robinson writes: > Internet White Pages". Someone started collecting E-Mail addresses > and names for people from public messages, probably those posted on > newsgroups and heavily circulated mailing lists and put them in > alphabetical order. > ... > trying to avoid being judgemental here, because I don't see it as that > big a problem. My E-Mail address is not my street address and doesn't > tell you where I live or what I do or how much money I make or how > educated I am. But this practice does annoy some people and I wanted > ... > Here's some questions to think about: What do you think about the > practice? Is it right or wrong and why? Does this impact people's > security? Are there risks involved if your E-Mail address becomes > well known or if it is misprinted in a published "white pages"? Are > there other considerations to think about? I agree with Paul. As long as the names and addresses are gleaned from public messages, no harm is done. Anybody who posts their address publicly, whether in a newsgroup or on the local supermarket notice board has no grounds for complaint about what others do with that information. On the other hand, if he's scanning headers of mail messages that are routed through his machine, or worse, reading packets that fly by on a net backbone, that's slimy. Rather like opening people's mailboxes to read the return addresses on their mail, or hooking a pen recorder up to their phone line. John Hall - john@kodak.com ------------------------------ From: wollman@ginger.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Internet and the Info Highway Date: 19 Apr 1994 22:54:18 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , wrote: > Does anyone have any thoughts on how the Internet will relate to the > Information Highway? Very little (probably less than it does now). The so-called ``Information Superhighway'' is, for the most part, the biggest load of unmitigated bull**** which this country has seen in quite some time. From what I've seen and read of the public statements of so-called ``Industry Leaders'' in recent years, the entire Superhypeway is little more than an attempt by telephone and cable companies to get regulators to permit them to waste untold billions of ratepayers' money on projects of highly questionable utility or customer value. What the cable companies are interested in, for the most part, is one-way saturation of customers' homes with a huge amount of garbage beyond even what currently passes for television programming in this country, most if not all of which is produced by companies which are majority owned by the cable operators themselves. There are a few welcome exceptions, but by and large, this appears to be the pattern. All you have to do is read some of the testimony of the cable operators corporate officers about how they couldn't /possibly/ let customers actually attach their own equipment to ``The Network'', and it begins to take on a somewhat more sinister tone. At one television industry symposium, a speaker recounted his conversation with the managers of one of those new, digitally- compressed ``500-channel'' systems currently under testing. The speaker had asked this person what they were using all that extra capacity for; the manager replied, ``Well, we're currently running /Basic Instinct/ at five-minute intervals.'' The goals of the telephone industry are somewhat more difficult to discern, but most of their statements seem to revolve around a desire for de-regulation of their business environment, while simultaneously being allowed to continue to own most of the services for which they are primary providers. (I think the Rochester Tel proposal is quite a bit more forward-thinking than most of the ones I've seen lately.) Unfortunately, so long as they are unwilling to give up on their current business model, I think any attempt at de-regulation would result in a disaster of the first order. The telephone system does have one extremely significant advantage: the phone network is already two-way. This puts it miles ahead of most television systems, which are designed for delivery of huge volumes of data in one direction only. Although the phone system is of significantly lower capacity, it is much closer to being able to handle the needs of one-to-one and many-to-one communications than cable technology is. (You only need to compare the fraction of today's Internet that is connected together by telco technology as compared to cable...) The Clinton Administration's current rhetoric leaves me wondering whether anyone in the White House actually understands the fundamental principle of networking technology (perhaps they've been listening too much to cable and telco executives?). This principle is basic to why the Internet is as sucessful as it is today, and it's also fundamental to the misunderstanding that the ``Communications Industry'' appears to have. I generally express it, somewhat ungrammatically, as ``Bits is bits.'' That is to say, the most important and fundamental fact about digital communications networks is that they really /don't care/ what sort of information you are using them to transmit, whether it be digitized voice, video, text, exciting synthetic-aperture radar images from the Shuttle, encrypted mail, or random garbage you happen to be picking up on your microwave antenna. When you understand this principle, then you can quickly come to an understanding of some of the other chasms separating the Internet and the Superhypeway. Fundamentally, it simply doesn't make sense to build a network capable of delivering five hundred channels of television, two channels of voice without video, and one rather slow channel of data, when the average home has three televisions, 1.5 VCRs, and a single phone line. By contrast, in the Internet community, we have developed a tradition of (as Van Jacobson put it) ``You get what you pay for.'' In this typical home, you will never need more than more than five channels of video and one of voice, and it makes sense to permit the occupants to turn off a TV set and use the extra capacity to download a book from the public library, or scan the 'net for distant ``radio stations''. In the Internet community, researchers have also made significant strides in modeling one-to-one communications as a special case of many-to-many communications; our networks of the future should be designed to work well for the many-to-many case, and everything will win automatically, whereas the plans which the telephone and cable companies currently seem to be pushing concentrate on keeping the same model of operation that their executives are used to dealing with. This is a fundamental mistake, and continuing down this path will result in an very undemocratic and high-cost-to-entry information marketplace, which is clearly undesirable. Another significant difference between the Internet and the rest of the networking world is a fundamental shift in charging models. When I get my connection from NEARnet or AlterNet or PSI (or any one of a hundred other providers), what I pay for is NOT the service of ferrying my data from point A to point B. Rather, what I am paying for is access to all the other customers of all the other providers, at a certain specific line capacity. Those other customers in turn are paying their providers for the ability to talk to me (and lots of other people). This fundamental difference in what one buys from an Internet service provider as opposed to a telephone company or a cable operator has enabled the Internet to develop its now well-known settlement-free conectivity and charging model, which SIGNIFICANTLY reduces the tremendous amounts of overhead involved in accounting, billing, settlements, and collection which are inherent in the way telcos and cable companies do business. This model also has the substantial privacy advantage that my Internet service provider does not insinuate itself into the financial relationships I have with other entities, in the way that telephone and cable companies do. If Bill wants to sell me a data product, then we work out means of payment, execute the transaction, and I have my data, Bill has his money, and my service provider is none the wiser. If, on the other hand, Bill wants to sell me a video product, then I have to convince my cable operator to do business with Bill, then they buy the product from Bill, and I buy Bill's product from them, at an inflated price. Of course, if my cable operator is TCI, then they won't buy anything from Bill unless he is really their agent anyway, so our transaction never gets off the ground. The solution, it seems to me, is something that we need to work long and hard at developing, because whatever we end up with, we'll likely be stuck with it for at least the next twenty to fifty years. My preference would be to see the vertical de-integration of both telephone and cable companies, somewhat along the lines of Roch Tel's trial balloon. To wit, the telephone and cable companies should be de-regulated, with the significant proviso that they must first make a choice as to whether they want to be in the connectivity business or the service business, and divest themselves completely of the one they don't wish to concentrate on. Then, in each market, when a competitive environment can be said to exist for each sort of business, that business would be de-regulated. Only under these circumstances can we expect to have a true Information Superhighway to live up to the hype and qhopes of business, individuals, and their government. Garrett A. Wollman wollman@lcs.mit.edu formerly known as wollman@emba.uvm.edu ------------------------------ From: weave@hopi.dtcc.edu (Ken Weaverling) Subject: Re: Operator Assisted Sent-Paid Coin Calls Date: 19 Apr 1994 09:18:04 -0400 Organization: Delaware Technical & Community College In article , Paul Robinson wrote: > I'm guessing here, but what it probably refers to is a historical > issue. The coin holding tray (the part that keeps coins until the > call supervises, not to be confused with the fare collection box) on > pay telephones in the U.S. can't hold more than three dollars, I have > been told. If an overseas call costs more than that, the operator has > to process it manually. This reminds me of a time about 20 years ago when I was about 15 and had the hots for a girl in England. I called her constantly, so my parents eventually forbade me to ever call her again! :-) So I'd save up money, buy two rolls of quarters, and head for a pay phone. Then one lucky day I found a "busted" pay phone that, when loaded with $2.50 (what I thought was the max it could hold before collecting), when the operator "collected" the money, it'd fall through to the coin return! It went like this. The first three minutes cost $5.65, and each minute thereafter was $1.15. The operator began by asking me to deposit $2.50 and then she'd place the call to see if the party answered on the other end. When they answered, she'd ask them to hold, then collect the $2.50 (it'd go to the coin return for some reason), ask me to put in another $2.50, collect that (back to the coin return), and then finally 65 cents (which *did* drop into the coin box). After six minutes, an operator came on again, and asked me to deposit $3.35 for the three minutes overtime I had. I'd deposit $2.50, it'd fall through to the coin return, then 85 cents, which would drop into the coin box. Needless to say, it was a gold mine for me. I talked about an hour a day for a week. Until, as is usual with clueless persons, I got greedy. One day I was speaking for about two hours when a supervisor came on the line. The conversation went like this. Supervisor: Do you realize that you have been on the line for over two hours. Me: Yes, I have a lot of quarters Supervisor: Pretty fascinating, since, by my calculations, you would have already spent over $150 on this call ... Me: My daddy is rich, what can I say ... Supervisor: What is REALLY fascinating is that the coin box can't hold that much money. Did you know that? Me: Pretty stupid of me, looking back, since I went back the same time as usual the next day, and made a call again. This time, the pay phone was fixed. Of course, the telco could have figured out easily my calling pattern and been waiting for me. I'm sure a "crime of opportunity" would not be a valid defense for a kid. I never phreaked before, I just stumbled on it. I also never even heard of red boxes back then. I wonder if the telco thought I had one or something. Regardless, they fixed it, so they figured out the problem quickly. But I am curious. What type of fault could exist that would only cause $2.50 to fall back to the coin return? Anything less collected into the coin box as it should. This was a standard Bell armored pay phone, I believe it was touch-tone (memory isn't THAT good...) Ken Weaverling weave@dtcc.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Forty years ago when I was a kid, pay phones did not have trap doors on the coin return slot as they do now. It was quite easy back then to wiggle a bent coat hanger up there and trip the collection table to the left (by pushing upward from underneath on the right side) with the piece of wire before it occurred to the oper- ator to electrically dump it in the other direction (into the box). So if a long distance call cost $1.50 and we had three quarters between us, those three quarters would go in (bong bong bong!) then while the coat hanger was busy up the slot retrieving the same three quarters to use over again we would plead with the operator, "Just a minute please! I am looking for more change! Nimble fingers could maneuver that piece of wire and get the money back usually within five to ten seconds of its deposit. Once in a second time, we would *try* to retrieve it again before the operator dumped it, not always successfully. From certain payphones downtown in the Chicago-Wabash CO, the operator handling the call for whatever reason was unable to return the coins in the event of no-answer or busy condition. To get the coins back she would tell you to hold on a second; you'd hear a click as she connected to some other operator who answered saying 'Wabash trunking' or words to that effect; your operator would then say "Return on xxxxx" where xxxxx was some circuit number. In your ear you would hear an absolutely horrid 'CLACK' -- a loud noise for a second or two, and the money would fall into the return slot. For the longest time after we generally had the one-slot, trap-door style payphones here there remained two or three of the old-style three slot (5/10/25 cent) phones with no trap-door on them in the lobby of the Insurance Exchange Building. Guess where we always went to make payphone calls! :) PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 1994 09:52:29 +0200 From: alexa.veller@fundp.ac.be (A. Veller) Subject: Re: GSM and Airbags Organization: Cullen In article , Stewart Fist <100033.2145@ CompuServe.COM> wrote: > It is headlined "Mobile phone set off airbag" and the story is about a > couple of instances where (it is claimed) GSM handsets have set off > airbags in luxury cars in Europe. These "stories" have even been circulated in a BELGACOM publication in Belgium (BELGACOM is our national telecoms operator). GSM telephones alledgedly also interfere with some types of hearing aides. > [...] BMW, VW and Mercedes are also reported to have had airbag > blow-outs with GSM, but they also all deny it. There was also some reference in the press to the Renault Safrane. As to whether this is a true story or an urban myth, I wouldn't know. But in an article I recently read (don't remember the magazine though) the journalists reported that the issue was being tested and that no correlation had been found between the expanding airbags and GSM phones. In controlled tests airbags were not triggered when the phone was used. So its possible that airbags trigger for no reason, but it could be something else that is causing this (or the airbag technology is just not up to standard). Note that GSM phones are still very expensive, you'll find them almost exclusively in luxury cars, which all have standard airbags. The statistical chance that an airbag blows up and a GSM phone is present is therefore automatically high. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #179 ****************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------