TELECOM Digest Thu, 15 Sep 94 12:43:00 CDT Volume 14 : Issue 365 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Help Needed on Losing Telephone Connection (Chris Hardaker) Re: Help Needed on Losing Telephone Connection (Carl Oppedahl) Re: Help Needed on Losing Telephone Connection (Travis Russell) Re: 1957 Note on Pagers (Martin McCormick) Re: 1957 Note on Pagers (David Breneman) Re: 1957 Note on Pagers (John Botari) Re: Mixed Service, Same Premises (Noel Moss) Re: Secretary, Dept. of Telecom (India) Replaced (H. Shrikumar) Re: Cell One NY/NJ is Becoming "Hell One" (clawsona@yvax.byu.edu) Re: Cell One NY/NJ is Becoming "Hell One" (Bradley Allen) Re: Cell One NY/NJ is Becoming "Hell One" (museums@aol.com) Re: Cell One NY/NJ is Becoming "Hell One" (Douglas Reuben) Re: Security Deposit From Local Phone Carrier (Carl Oppedahl) Eye Catching Names (Andrew C. Green) 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 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Help Needed on Losing Telephone Connection From: HARDAKER@clear.co.nz (Chris Hardaker) Date: 15 Sep 94 08:35:34 EDT In response to Peter Li's trouble -- Telecom In New Zealand has deployed a cute little system called MITS (Don't ask me what it stands for). This system consists of one test set per 10000 lines (This lines are grouped by equipment not phone number). This little system accesses the line via the test cross connect found on the mother board of all Line Modules (NEAX 61 Generic siwtches) and runs a routine test of the cable and terminal block. This test consisits of capacitance, A-B A-Ground and B-Ground resistance and noise. During this test the line is unavailable to the customer. During deployment of this system Telecom had two major problems with the system. The first was during the capacitance test, the older phone bells 'tinkled' and the second was some systems ignored the busy line condition and just interupted the call in progress. To achieve it's test schedule (one test per night per line) the system kept a rigid schedule and you could set your watch by your phone 'tinkle'. If your local service provider has something similar, this could be a line of investigation. Chris Hardaker Network Management CLEAR Communications Auckland New Zealand Ph +64 9 9124286 DDI Fax +64 9 9124451 Email HARDAKER@CLEAR.CO.NZ ------------------------------ From: oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) Subject: Re: Help Needed on Losing Telephone Connection Date: 14 Sep 1994 18:13:58 -0400 Organization: Oppedahl & Larson In peterli@dev.gdb.org (Peter Li) writes: > My suspicion is that nothing is wrong physically with the wire, but > something is happening at the switching center in the telephone > company. The people who answer the problem number (611) doesn't seem > to know anything about it and nor do I. If any of you have an idea why > this is occurring, please respond so that I might be able to jarr some > engineer in Bell Atlantic to get this fixed. (Switching to use the > other line is out of the question, that one is my wife's line :-). Yes, I suspect that there is some sort of automated line testing going on. You will *never* get a meaningful response from 611 on this sort of thing, I predict. Call 611, and ask them to arrange for a frame foreman to call you back. Carl Oppedahl AA2KW Oppedahl & Larson (patent lawyers) Yorktown Heights, NY oppedahl@patents.com ------------------------------ From: russell@tekelec.com (Travis Russell) Subject: Re: Help Needed on Losing Telephone Connection Date: 15 Sep 1994 12:50:35 GMT Organization: Tekelec, Inc. In article , peterli@dev.gdb.org (Peter Li) says: > I have this problem with my telephone line, it drops everynight around > 11:00pm. I wonder if someone on the net can help me out. Here is the > scenerio: I have encountered many strange problems such as this one, and have never had any success in getting them fixed through the normal channels. I have since developed a standard rule of thumb. If 611 cannot fix the problem after two visits, I ask for the first line supervisor. This draws a lot of attention within the rank and file. I then explain the problem to them. Chances are, they are checking your line at the wrong end. There needs to be some testing at the other end. If the first line supervisor cannot find the problem, and the trouble occurs again, I then escalate to the second level manager. This raises big flags in the C.O. and almost always has positive results. Problems of this nature are difficult to find. When a technician gets dispatched on this type of problem, they have no other recourse but to test the line and log a NTF (No Trouble Found). Thats how the system works. Escalation puts more visibility on your unique problem, and will get the necessary resources at the 11th hour to at least monitor the problem from the C.O. Frankly, I am a little surprised (not really) that the telco did not do this already, since this is a repeat trouble. Good Luck! Travis Russell russell@tekelec.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Sep 94 15:58:58 CDT From: martin@datacomm.ucc.okstate.edu (Martin McCormick) Subject: Re: 1957 Note on Pagers Organization: Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 20:58:53 GMT One of the very popular paging systems between the late fifties and early eighties was a system in which the transmitter plaid a continuous loop of tape which ran for 30 seconds or so in which the answering service operator read a list of subscriber's ID's with short messages for them. The tape for the RadioCall paging Service in Oklahoma City which used to be on 35.58MHZ went something like: "This is RadioCall Paging Service in Oklahoma City paging: 124R Call home. 316 Call Bill at 555-2703. 614 813 257 Over." The transmitter used 250 Watts of AM and frequently interfered with any sound systems in the down-town area that weren't well protected against RF. The voice messages were supplemented with tone-only signalling which was sent, as needed. I don't believe that there were any receivers which used a tone-activated muting circuit so the tones were for a different class of service such that when the beeper went off, one had to call the answering service to find out the message. In the sixties and seventies, there were four frequencies which were used for these systems. They were 35.22, 35.58, 43.22, and 43.58 Megahertz. When sporadic E skip caused the VHF low band to open wide, I can remember hearing paging systems from all over the United States and even one in South America, maybe Chile or Argentina since there was a 50HZ power supply hum on it. As a shortwave listener and later a ham, it was a great way to tell when the band was open and to where because most of the tape-loop paging systems identified themselves as to their city. By the mid to late seventies, the tape loop systems began to go out of service in droves. They were replaced by the kind of direct-dial access services that we have, today. I can remember that by 1980, when there was a sporadic E opening, one could hear all kinds of dial-up systems, but no more continuously-running tape loops. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group ------------------------------ From: daveb@jaws (David Breneman) Subject: Re: 1957 Note on Pagers Date: 14 Sep 94 22:51:50 GMT Organization: Digital Systems International, Redmond WA Carl Moore (cmoore@ARL.MIL) wrote: > Wilmington (Del.) Morning News, Tuesday, April 9, 1957; page 27, > column 6 of 8 > CALLING DR. KILDARE. BOSTON (AP) -- A $10,000 doctor-radio paging > system has been installed at Beth Israel Hospital. Pocket radios are > now standard equipment for all physicians serving the hospital. A > doctor's code number is beeped to the radio clipped to his pocket. > This signal comes from a transmitter installed near the telephone > switchboard. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My first experience with pagers was > around 1960 or so when I was working at the University of Chicago and > they installed a paging system in the hospitals. My first personal pager > was a few years after that when Illinois Bell started selling a service > called 'Page Boy'. It was just a beeper without voice or text capability. ^^^^^^^^ Sure that wasn't "Bell Boy"? That's what US West called theirs, anyway. And, of course, it was a nice tie-in because it had the once-familiar Bell logo on it! The one my mother had (she ran the local blood bank lab, and they all took turns being "on call" in case of an emergency -- the person on call got the pager) was about the size of a current VCR remote control, and had to be left in a charger base over night. David Breneman Email: daveb@jaws.engineering.dgtl.com System Administrator, Voice: +1 206 881-7544 Fax: +1 206 556-8033 Product Development Platforms Digital Systems International, Inc. Redmond, Washington, U. S. o' A. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yep that was my error. "Bell Boy" was the telco name for the unit on a national basis. All the telcos were then in the Bell System and they all used "Bell Boy". The pager itself came from Motorola, and Motorola's name for the unit was "Page Boy". Very same unit; just a different metal cover on the front with a Bell logo and telco's name for the device. If you got yours through an answering service which bought them direct from Motorola then it said "Page Boy". If you got your unit from the telco -- even though it was identical, and in some instances on the very same frequency, but with different 'cap codes', then it had their logo and name instead. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Botari Subject: Re: 1957 note on pagers Date: Thu, 15 Sep 94 10:31:47 CST Back around 1986/87, when I was living in Toronto, a friend of mine (who worked for what was, at that time, still CNCP Telecommunica- tions -- now Unitel) still had one of those early tone-only pagers referred to by Pat in his comments. His was a Bell Canada "Bellboy"; Bell had gone out of marketing its pager service some years previously, but they were still supporting their few remaining users ... and the pager truly was quite large -- about 6 x 2 x 1 inches, so the only practical place to carry it was in the inside pocket of a blazer or suit jacket. (Even so, it lent one a bit of a lopsided look ...) My friend had evidently been carrying the same one since the late '60s (he was one of the technical people in CNCP's store-and-forward mes- sage switching division ... but _that's_ another by-gone technology ...) John Botari Environment Canada - Informatics Saskatoon, SK, Canada jb@desoto.wxe.sk.doe.ca [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, they were quite large by today's standards. My tone-only pager was a very long (six inches?) rather slender thing; when I got a voice unit it was rather large and bulky and weighed about a pound. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nmoss@slacc.com Subject: Re: Mixed Service, Same Premises Organization: SLACC STACK BBS - St. Louis, Missouri Date: Thu, 15 Sep 94 09:10:59 EST In issue 364 of the digest, T. Stephen Eggleston related his problems in obtaining both measured and flat rate service on the same premises. I am in Southwestern Bell territory and operate a BBS for a local computer user group. The system is located in my residence. Approximately one year ago, I contacted SWBT to inquire about converting five of the lines used by the system to measured service from flat rate service (These lines are in a hunt group). I anticipated difficulty with the request but the SWBT rep stated that it would not be a problem if those five lines were billed on a separate bill under the pilot number for the hunt group. Consequently, I have two flat rate lines and five measured lines at the same premises and receive two separate bills. No problems and no hassle from SWBT! Noel Moss nmoss@slacc.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 20:03:37 -0400 From: H. Shrikumar Subject: Re: Secretary, Dept. of Telecom (India) Replaced Organization: UMass, Amherst MA + Temporal Systems Bombay India In article anil@axcess.net.in wrote: > Just a few hours ago, the Government of India reshuffled secretaries > to the various departments. Perhaps the most surprising change was > that relating to the Department of Telecommunications which has been > in the news for the last several months, due to it's (vocal) (ex) > secretary, the Chairman of the Telecom Commission, India, for his > progressive (read heretic) reform agenda. So it did finally happen ! Yup .. Vittal was also very high profile, (as was Sam Pitroda before him). But Vittal was an old hand at the Indian style of bureaucracy, and knew how to work it in its unique way, so one thought he would last longer. > N. Vittal has been replaced by A.K. Thakkar. Vittal will go back to > his earlier full-time job as the Secretary of the Department of > Electronics. I wonder if it means that the Dept. of Telecom would go back to its earlier full-time role of a ordained-monopoly-with-guaranteed-profitability- no-matter-what. And if the Department of Electronics will go back to its earlier fulltime job as ordained-foil-to-the-DoT ! I would suppose it is too late for that (thankfully). Already it is getting competitive to complete a Delhi-Bombay call via the US. (No kidding, I have actually done that! And you get a free conference with a soul in the US as a bonus :-) And during the brief telecom-spring just past, enough resources have been invested by more than one multi-national-in-partnership, in lobbying for various basic voice service proposals, which run into several billions of dollars. The giant machinery of a mega-corp like Reliance is on the act, ... so the combined forces are probably too strong to counter. However, the loss of a vocal arguer, especially one who preferred bringing high visibility to discussions, rather than parleys behind the closed teak door, would be surely felt. The coming months will say ... Compared to these swinging of the bureaucratic yo-yo, the big cable-IXC-LEC wars in the US seem like a straight Greek play -- build-up, climax and conclusion. Someone will buy the other, and they will live happily ever after. Out there, what you have is more like a unending soap, season after season of the same stuff -- changing relationships, swinging partnerships, with no purpose other than to keep sponsors pouring in, ... and no scriptwriter in his right mind wishing to scribe an end-game. :-) shrikumar ( shri@cs.umass.edu, shri@shakti.ncst.ernet.in, X.400 G=Shrikumar S=Hariharasubrahmanian P=itu A=arcom C=CH (yea right :) ------------------------------ From: clawsona@yvax.byu.edu Subject: Re: Cell One NY/NJ is Becoming "Hell One" Date: 14 Sep 94 18:35:43 -0700 Organization: Brigham Young University Well, you have a couple of options with your problem. The easiest is to just leave the phone at home and get a pager. Really. What possible consequence would stem from not being able to talk to somebody for the five minutes that it would require to find a pay phone? That way would be cheaper as well ... ------------------------------ From: ulmo@panix.com (Bradley Allen) Subject: Re: Cell One NY/NJ is Becoming "Hell One" Date: 14 Sep 1994 22:43:15 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC At least Cellular One is better than LA Cellular in regards to fraud prevention, in my experience: I was a paying customer of LA Cellular, and regularly could not receive, or even make, calls using the >only< cell tower I ever used, simply because I had the combination of living, working, playing, eating, shopping, bureaucrating and breathing exclusively in western Hollywood and eastern West Hollywood. I remember many times standing at a payphone and calling my own number ten times with signal strength high and call contention low, and two out of the ten calls would sometimes actually ring on my phone. Replacing the phone with an identical model once, and with another model another time, didn't help. I currently have a claim with the CPUC -- apparently the first with LA Cellular according to the Accounting Dept?! I hardly think so ... anyway, I have to call and see its status. While I get some strange behaviors such as this from Cellular One NYC, thank God it is not >nearly< as bad at LA Cellular, seeing as how 100% of my income comes via calls placed >to< my cellular phone. BTW, the failures usually come in various forms -- with LA Cell, it was trunk busy, forward to voicemail, or an intercept saying I'm not in the coverage area (the last one was rare) when receiving, or no-circuit-available tone when originating, or being unable to reset the forwarding during non-daylight times (the worst!). With Cell One, it is mostly in the form of intercepts saying I'm not in the coverage area (even though I have voicemail) receiving, and my problems with Cell One have been so much less than LA Cell that I can't even remember what other kinds of problems I've had (although I have had a few others). While NYNEX seems to have better coverage in some areas of Manhattan (my primary everything area), I'm scared to deal with them. Bradley Allen , desperately waiting for a land line so I don't have to pay for $600 monthly local receiving call bills ... or for calling-party-pays-call cellular receive or CID or ... ------------------------------ From: museums@aol.com (MUSEUMS) Subject: Re: Cell One NY/NJ is Becoming "Hell One" Date: 14 Sep 1994 23:44:08 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) I am sorry that you are having so many problems. I am just starting a job with the company and I was not aware that there was such a serious problem. Maybe they should do a thorough check to see if your ESN is on some sort of barring lists. I knew that *350 does not work in Canada ... it is in the book ... but you can call customer service to turn that on. What is the fraud protection thing? Do they make you turn it on ... please explain it throughly. I don't know what it is. Thanks, Richard ------------------------------ From: dreuben@netcom.com (Cid Technologies) Subject: Re: Cell One NY/NJ is Becoming "Hell One" Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 15:25:45 PDT On Thu Sep 8 18:06:15 1994, stans@panix.com (Stan Schwartz) wrote: > A couple of months ago, I posted my dissatisfaction with attempting to > use my cell phone in Montreal, Canada while roaming from NY with a > "Fraud Protection Feature" on my account. [...] The resolution was to: > A: Have me call customer service before I plan to travel to Canada > again to have them remove my FPF before I travel there. > B: Make a notation on my account so that when I call under condition "A" > I won't get a hard time. > So I believed them. [...] > Saturday night in Toronto, I tried to make a call and I alternately > got a re-order or a CanTel operator. When trying to call in from a > pay phone, I got my voice mail. Ok ... if you tried to dial OUT and got a re-order/fast busy or operator, then I would say that they just didn't remove the Fraud Protection Feature. But you SHOULD have been able to RECEIVE calls and use the Do Not Disturb commands of *350/*35. They DO work in Canada, and all over the NACN, for that matter. (And also in CT and Western Mass for CO/NY customers roaming on Bell Atlantic/Metro Mobile). Did you have Do Not Disturb set to not allow calls while roaming, ie, *35? This would explain why your calls went to voicemail. Yet you SHOULD be able to hit *350 EVEN IF you have the Fraud Protection Feature engaged, and thus bring calls into the Cantel/Toronto system. > I tried to activate call delivery (*350) and that code was not valid in > Toronto. The CanTel rep couldn't tell me what the equivalent code was > there and he wouldn't/couldn't connect me to Cell One NY. The code IS *350 to turn on call delivery. Note that you and most everyone else would NOT need to use this if McCaw were to show a bit more elacrity in having unanswered calls in roaming markets bounce back to your home voicemail. I've found that even in US NACN systems like Albany that frequently the *350/*35 mechanism is either slow or totally inoperative, and thus can't receive calls or force them back to voicemail based on my current needs. This would all *not be necessary* if calls were to bounce back to voicemail between markets where the DOJ does not prohibit this, and NYC <-> Albany would be one of them. > I went down to a pay phone (Bell Canada, with the neat two-line display), > and I called 1-800-242-7327 (CellOne NY customer service). I got the > menu choices and was holding for a rep for about 30 seconds when a > recording came on to tell me that the number I dialed could not be > reached from my calling area. BUT I HAD!!! Unless the Millenium (?) Bell Canada phone was defective, I can't understand why you got that. I've called CO/NY a number of times from Quebec and Ontario, and always got through. Can someone verify that it still works? If not, I'll call them and ask them when they removed it when they are obviously having so many problems in Canada. > [...] I called Cell One's Paramus number and was lucky enough to find that > their switchboard has a voice response option to reach customer > service. Send Cell One/NY the bill for these calls, and explain to them that you couldn't call them any other way. > The rep there tried calling my phone a few times (at one > point she said, "Let me try another way. Hold on."), put me on hold, > and returned to tell me that Toronto IS a NACN city, but because of > the large amount of fraud in the NYC area, I am in a "Pooled Region". > This means that CanTel's system sees that my home area code (516) is > in a high-fraud area and won't complete calls. Nice, eh? "Imagine No > Limits" indeed!!! (The limit is when you reach the Canadian border). Sounds like nonsense to me. I would suggest: 1. Next time you get a rep who doesn't seem too helpful, immediately ask to speak their manager and/or someone in the tech department. Although most CO/NY customer service reps are above average for the cellular industry, very few of them ever seem to use their phones, let alone use them while roaming, and have very little knowledge of what goes on out there. 2. If you are indeed being denied service due to fraud, call CO/NY, tell them the reason you got service with them is because you wanted to receive calls automatically in Toronto, and that whether or not there is a lot of fraud on your range of numbers, YOU want YOUR phone active there. (They can do this, for a very limited range with YOUR number in it.) If they chose not to allow you to automatically roam there due to fraud, tell them they are modifying their contract with you and that you wish to cancel service immediately with NO cancellation penalty to you. (I doubt it will come to this, but just in case...) 3. It sounds to me like you are having a problem with the Fraud Protection feature in addition to the problem with *350/*35 for call delivery which I reported in the Digest over a year ago has not yet been fully fixed. When I was trying out the feature, I noticed a degree of conflict between the two (Fraud Protection and Do No Disturb), but there wasn't a high enough correlation to determine any sort of pattern which I could report to CO/NY. But when I got rid of the Fraud Protection Feature, things went back to more or less normal, and I am encountering only sporadic (although highly annoying) *350/*35 problems in Canada and elsewhere on the NACN. I would suggest that you tell CO/NY to once and for all REMOVE the fraud protection feature from your account PERMANENTLY, or at least until they get their system fixed. I did this, and they totally understood why I was asking to do it and agreed that since I did roam a lot it made sense to do it. You can verify that the feature has been removed if you try to activate/deactivate it in the NY (00025) system and get an error recording. In general, the Fraud Protection Feature has always been buggy -- CO/NY initially wanted it to work everywhere (or everywhere that had auto call delivery). But when they instituted this feature last year, their customers could not place calls in Philly and the rest of ComCast, Connecticut/Western Mass, and some other NACN markets (I had trouble in LA, but LA Cellular was very happy to bill me for lot of calls that just got a re-order ... utter slime down there! LA Cell is an embarrassment to the industry and if they fall into the Pacific as a result of the next unfortunate quake we can take some solace in the fact that it wasn't a total loss! :( ). So eventually CO/NY (which I believe is the east coast test market for the fraud protection feature) decided to implement the feature ONLY within their system. Presently, it should only have an effect on CO/NY customers in the CO/NY system. It may also work in other *Ericsson-based* NACN systems, but it will not have any effect systems operating on other switches, like the Motorolas in ComCast's system. I'm not even sure why they have Fraud Protection -- anyone can clone a phone in NY and then drive to ComCast and make free call from there! Perhaps its easier to spot roamer fraud? I've suggested in the past that McCaw make greater strides towards having ALL NACN markets respond appropriately to the Fraud Protection codes and have a HIGH degree of confidence in the reliability of the feature while roaming before rolling it out. Yet my experiences with the feature were so disapointing that I immediately cancelled it, and its a shame to see that so little progress had been made. The feature is a useful one, and had I been in charge of the project (:) ) I'd make a more diligent effort to implement it in the US and Canada without any of the problems which initially occurred. > CellOne NY/NJ is probably _THE_ most expensive carrier in the country, You should be glad you don't live in LA! Pac*Hell and LA Cell are THE WORST carriers the country -- the FCC should throw away their licenses and start all over again. (Pac*Bell is *slightly* better than LA Cell, though ...) > doesn't offer discounted/unlimited weekends, and they can't provide > dependable roaming. What's the deal!?? Well, I wouldn't go that far: CO/NY has the most comprehensive and low-cost roaming airtime package in the northeast (home airtime, no dailies from Boston to Poughkeepsie to NYC to DC), with reliable call delivery to most of these markets (except Boston, which is WAY behind schedule; Litchfield, CT, which McCaw owns, beats me why no call delivery; and Poughkeepsie. NYNEX has delivery to all of these markets.) CO/NY also offers the use of all of your features in MOST of these markets (no call-waiting in CT yet :( ), AND, if you are in NJ or any ComCast system unanswered calls received while roaming WILL bounce back to voicemail, which is something that NYNEX can't offer. (NYNEX NY also has some pathetic excuse about not offering call forwarding while roaming due to fraud ... yeah, right ...) So I wouldn't say that Cell One/NY is all that bad. What I will say is that despite the good deal of progress which they have made towards making roaming more seamless, they still have a long way to go. The fact that they are STILL having problems with Do Not Disturb (*350/*35) and/or Fraud Protection in Canada many months if not years after being put on notice about this is inexcuseable. What's even more inexcusable is run-around you got when you tried to call them and assist them in correcting the problem for you. All I can say is that if and when *I* run my own cellular company (sure...:) ) my customers will never get silly, ill-informed answers, and I will make sure that advertised features, such as call delivery, worked properly BEFORE I enticed customers to subsribe to my service. Doug Reuben dreuben@netcom.com / CID Technologies / (203) 499 - 5221 P.S. If anyone else is experiencing problems like the above in Canada or in other NACN markets, I'd be interested in hearing about it. Thanks! ------------------------------ From: oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) Subject: Re: Security Deposit From Local Phone Carrier Date: 14 Sep 1994 17:36:44 -0400 Organization: Oppedahl & Larson In ae446@freenet.carleton.ca (Nigel Allen) writes: > dong@umiacs.umd.edu writes: >> Does anybody know any information about the regulation for >> local phone company charging security deposits? > This varies from telephone company to telephone company, and > individual state public utility commissions may have their own rules > as well. In New York State, the PSC has set a standard list of questions the telco is allowed to ask, and if they get the requisite answers no deposit may be imposed. (The PSC regs list exactly how the answers are to be scored.) In recent years, however, various rules have changed so that the telco is no longer at risk for unpaid long-distance bills -- the long-distance carrier takes the risk. Thus the telco is only at risk for the local calls. This, I believe, is the simplest explanation for why New York Telephone no longer bothers to ask the questions, and yet does not bother to ask for a deposit. Despite all this, New York Telephone is quite insistent that the potential new customer reveal his or her Social Security Number. The customer who wants to get new service without having to reveal the number has to put up quite a fight. Generally the way to shut up the representative who is so pushy about the SSN is to (!) offer to pay a deposit instead. Since New York Tel apparently no longer has convenient mechanisms in place for taking deposits, the rep is stuck, unable to pass the red-faced test; unable to fabricate a compelling reason, given the willingness to pay a deposit, why it is essential to get the SSN. Carl Oppedahl AA2KW Oppedahl & Larson (patent lawyers) Yorktown Heights, NY oppedahl@patents.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Sep 1994 05:46:02 CDT From: Andrew C. Greeb Subject: Eye Catching Names woody writes (quoting from Bell News, Bell Canada/Bell Ontario, 29 August 1994): > Name display - an option for use with Call Display, one of our > SmartTouch[tm] services - will allow customers to see the name in > addition to the telephone number of the person or business calling > them. Idle thought occurs: Presumably the name displayed is the official billing name of the calling party? Is there a character limit to the length of the displayed text? If I were a telesleaze marketer, it would be nice to take advantage of this feature by going into business under the name "POLICE DEPARTMENT Services, Inc.", "FEDERAL GOVERNMENT Calling, Inc.", or perhaps the more desperate "ANSWER THIS PHONE, Inc." Just wondering. :-) Andrew C. Green (312) 266-4431 Datalogics, Inc. Internet: acg@dlogics.com 441 W. Huron Chicago, IL 60610-3498 FAX: (312) 266-4473 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It has been tried, but the company always loses. Federal law forbids the use of any name which implies, to any person with reasonable intelligence, that the user of the name is connected in any way with the federal government. Nor can you use acronymns or abbreviations which make that implication. For example, a company known as Fat Boy, Inc. could not use 'FBI' as an abbreviation. Here in Chicago several years ago, a fellow started a company called 'The Phone Company' and ran a boiler room operation getting people to sign up for extended warranties on the phones they owned. If you bought one of his warranties you got a monthly bill which very closely resembled your bill from Illinois Bell, even to the extent of having such verbiage as 'other charges and credits' and 'monthly service in advance' (for your warranty coverage) printed on it. As might be expected, Illinois Bell sued him and won the case. They admitted he had the right to repair telephone instruments and offer warranties for the same -- subject to other applicable laws and regulations -- but they vigorously objected to his use of the name 'The Phone Company', which, as it turns out they do not have copyrighted. Telco does not own the phrase 'The Phone Company', but the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Bureau here none the less contended that such a name was misleading, and forbade him to use it. This story appeared in detail here in TELECOM Digest in 1989. Whatever else you do in life, one thing you do NOT do is claim to be a police officer or a government employee/agent unless you really are one. And where large companies and/or utility services like telco, gas, electric and water are concerned, you tread very lightly when it comes to making claims or using similar sounding names. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #365 ******************************