From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Thu Aug 24 18:43:22 1995 by 1995 18:43:22 -0400 telecomlist-outbound; Thu, 24 Aug 1995 14:04:13 -0500 1995 14:04:09 -0500 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu TELECOM Digest Thu, 24 Aug 95 14:04:00 CDT Volume 15 : Issue 356 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines, 1+ And All That (John Levine) Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines (Stan Schwartz) Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines (Al Varney) Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines (Matthew P. Downs) AT&T Moving Into Local Exchange Market (Neeraj Vora) International Plus North American Area Codes (Richard Shockey) Re: Bell Canada Calling Cards (Mark Williston) Wiltel: No More Caller ID? (B.J. Guillot) Snakes In The Net (was Allnet Tries to Hide....) (Michael Fumich) Reward for Private Line Information (Greg Nemec) New Twist in SJ Network (Steve Cogorno) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@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: 500-677-1616 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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A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > In *most* area where you may dial local across an NPA boundry you dial > 7D. 'The rule' in *most* rural areas is 'if it is local, it is 7D' > regardless of NPA. The exception is in *metropolitan* areas where you > dial 10D or 11D to cross NPAs. Don't you hate it when people think the entire world is just like their neighborhood? In NYNEX territory, you cannot dial any inter-NPA calls with seven digits. None, zero, zip. This is equally true in New York City as it is in Derby Line VT. It used to be the case that local calls across NPA borders such as 617->401 and 802->819 could be dialed with seven digits, but a year or so ago they changed the rules so now all inter-NPA calls are 11D, even free local calls. It seems to vary by operating company: in highly urban New Jersey, they've still managed to protect enough prefixes that all intra-state local calls can be dialed with 7 digits (11D also works) although with the continued growth in 201 and 908 it's hard to say how much longer that'll be the case. In the related area of whether 1+ means toll or means 11D, that's also a deeply religious issue where the religion varies from area to area. In New York, New Jersey, and California, toll dialing was never closely associated with 1+, so in those states you dial intra-NPA calls with 7D and inter-NPA calls with 11D, regardless of whether they're local or toll. But in New England they must have had more SxS exchanges since the PUCs in 5 out of 6 states mandated that all toll calls must be dialed with 11D. (In New Hampshire it's a customer option.) Local inter-NPA calls are dialed 11D as well, so 1+ means "toll, maybe". This leads to some rather silly situations, e.g. if you're in Boston, all but about 25 of the prefixes in 617 are considered local, so you have to remember a special rule for dialing Marblehead, Marshfield, Whitman and a few other places in 617 that are toll from Boston. This is particularly silly since Boston has a peculiar combination of rates so that the message rate charge for a 7D "local" call to Lexington can be considerably higher than for a "toll" call to Marblehead. Regards, John R. Levine, Trumansburg NY Primary perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies" and Information Superhighwayman wanna-be ------------------------------ Linc Madison wrote: > James E. Bellaire (bellaire@tk.com) wrote: >> Q. Why should NPAs be required to split rather than be overlaid? >> A. They should not. NPA overlays have been in use for several years in >> New York and California. This means 10 or 11 digit dialing for local >> calls, with the old users being able to keep their numbers. Sometimes >> 7 digit dialing is allowed IF the area code is the same. > This is utterly false. There are no (zero) NPA overlays in California > and there is only one that is in VERY limited use in New York. The > 415/510 split was a split, not an overlay. The 213/818/310 and > 714/619/909 splits were splits, not overlays. The 212/718/718 split > (I list 718 twice because the Bronx initially kept 212 but later moved > into 718) was a split, not an overlay. The 917 overlay on 212/718 is > used only by a small number of cellular phones. In none of these > cases were old users able to keep their numbers, except to the extent > that the original plan for 917 was abandoned. (The plan was to force > all cellular and beeper numbers into 917.) You'll have to define "small number of cellular phones". As far as cellular is concerned, last year CellOne NY/NJ forced all of its existing 212 customers to have their phones re-programmed for new 917 numbers (the customers did NOT get the same number in 917, as the plan is/was to combine all wireless services from 212 and 718 into 917). They told 718 customers that they would have to be reprogrammed sometime in the future. BAMS/NYNEX "asked" their customers to change earlier this year. As of Jan 1, 1994 (or maybe even earlier), new cellular customers were no longer assigned numbers in 212 or 718. The last I heard, there was talk about moving upper Manhattan land lines to either 917 or a new NPA within the next two years. The problem with moving landlines to 917 NOW is that a customer is not guaranteed the same number in the new NPA, since it has been in use for a few years. Stan ------------------------------ In article , James E. Bellaire wrote: > I, bellaire@tk.com (James E. Bellaire) wrote: >>> Q. Why should users be forced to use area codes when dialing across NPA >>> boundries [sic]? >>> A. They are not. Suprised? In many rural areas users can dial across >>> NPA and state lines with 7 digits. The only time 10 or 11 digits are used >>> is in major metropolitan areas. > goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) replied: >> This latter statement is certainly false. Inter-NPA 7D dialing is the >> exception, not the rule, even in rural areas. > In *most* area where you may dial local across an NPA boundry you dial > 7D. 'The rule' in *most* rural areas is 'if it is local, it is 7D' > regardless of NPA. The exception is in *metropolitan* areas where you > dial 10D or 11D to cross NPAs. In general, 'the rule' is not based on metropolitan vs. rural, but on a state-by-state LEC basis. For example, the "Indiana rule" is for Foreign NPA Local calls is '7D'. The "Illinois rule" is '1+10D'. > The only 1+ NPA requirement I have seen in all of Indiana is from East > Chicago, Hammond, and Whiting, Indiana who can call Calumet City, Illinois, > locally by dialing 1+708. I believe the "1 + NPA local" communities in Indiana are really served by Illinois Bell (or at least are part of the Chicago LATA). So they follow the "Illinois rule". > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is quite interesting that you mention > the Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago area of northern Indiana in your > article. > A similar case existed in Antioch, Illinois and North Antioch, Wisconsin > where 312-395 could dial 414-396 as seven digits and vice-versa. This > did not however prevent the use of 396 elsewhere in northern Illinois; > the rule was that subscribers in Antioch had to dial 1+ to reach anywhere > in northern Illinois *other than their immediate local area*. North Antioch, while in Wisconsin, is served by the Antioch switch, is in Illinois Bell territory and part of the Chicago LATA. They do have to make 'Toll calls' using 1+708 to reach Blue Island, violating the usual Illinois rule of Home NPA Toll calls being '7D'. And they violate the Illinois rule for Foreign NPA Local calls by permitting '7D' to North Antioch. For all practical purposes, Illinois Bell treats North Antioch as part of the 708 NPA, except for taxes, PUC rules, etc. But for MOST purposes, cross-NPA local calls are dialed '1 + NPA' in Illinois, Alabama, Alaska (are there any such calls from Alaska?? To Canada, perhaps?), California, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin and virtually all of the East Coast and the traditional Southern states (Texas excepted). Maryland, part of Virginia 703 NPA (DC area treated like Maryland)), DC itself, Missouri in the St. Louis area (314 NPA), Texas and all of Canada have cross-NPA local calls dialed as '10D'. The rest (most of the West minus Pac Bell/Nevada Bell, and the Plains states) uses '7D' for cross-NPA local calling. Or doesn't have such calling at all. Note that there are exceptions to the 1 + NPA and 10D rules in such states, usually when a Foreign NPA is served by a switch in another NPA. This happens a lot in Independent areas, which are typically 'rural'. Thus the observation that '7D' is a 'rural rule'. Al Varney [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: While Hammond, East Chicago, Whiting and Gary, Indiana *were* part of Illinois Bell in the past, they have been part of Indiana Bell for many years now. How they got to be part of Illinois Bell in the first place is an interesting bit of history. If you go back to the start of this century or before, John Rockefeller had his offices in Chicago, but his refinery in Whiting. William Gary had the offices of US Steel in Chicago, but the steel mill in a small company town named after himself on the shore of Lake Michigan just east of Whiting. As phones increased in popularity and usage and it got to the point that every company had to have at least one , Mssrs. Gary and Rockefeller both thought it would be a good idea to have this new form of rapid communication between their offices in Chicago and their respective plant and refinery superintendents. The Chicago Telephone Company (Illinois Bell's predecessor here prior to its purchase by AT&T in the early 1920's) was more than happy to oblige, and soon wires were strung all the way to the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Telephone directories for the period about 1900 show but one entry each for that area: the Whiting Refinery, ask operator for Whiting Toll Station 1; and the United States Steel Gary Works, ask operator for Gary Works. US Steel also had their 'South Chicago Works' running but it was served by the South Chicago exchange of CTC (which is perhaps why in much more recent years when they were still in business there their phone number was SOUth Chicago-2111.) The CTC was more than pleased to get phone lines installed all across the part of northern Indiana at the southern tip of Lake Michigan with the industrial barons largely footing the bill for the initial work. When AT&T bought CTC and put it into the 'Bell System' family of companies under the name 'Illinois Bell' the existing contracts and arrangements in place were simply kept intact. Earliest instance of 'reseller' that I can think of: when workers in Gary (the company town) inquired about getting telephones of their own -- those who could afford it since Mr. Gary was chintzy with wages and most of the 'salary' earned by the workers went back to US Steel to pay for rent and merchandise from the company store -- who do you suppose supplied it? The Turner Telephone Exchange ... a subsidiary of US Steel run by an executive of US Steel named, ummm .. Turner I think ... In the early 1920's the United States Supreme Court divested US Steel, just as happened to AT&T sixty years later. Part of the deal was they had to divest themselves of the Gary Municipal Corporation and anything to do with the town. CTC/Illinois Bell took over the phone service aspect of it. They all thought so highly of Mr. Turner that they retained his name for the exchange, not once mind you -- but six times as the (now indepen- dent) town of Gary, Indiana grew, prospered and required more and more telephone service; i.e. Turner-2, Turner-3, Turner-4, Turner-5, Turner-6 and Turner-7. The exchange split six times over the next forty or so years, with the subscribers asking the operator for five digit numbers of the form 2xxxx through 7xxxx. Gary 'went dial' in 1956 and it finally evolved to where it is today as 219-882 through 219-887. Things, you see, don't just happen by chance. There are reasons things are numbered the way they are as often as not, especially where the very, very old telephone prefixes are concerned. Then one day US Steel for all intents and purposes closed down its Chicago area operation, and Gary went belly-up. It, like the 'downtown' areas of Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago is now mostly just boarded up storefronts, and deserted streets. Another early 'reseller' of phone service was George Pullman. His company town by the same name was just south of Chicago, and along with rent and groceries which the workers bought at stores he operated in the town he owned, they could get phone service from him also if they could afford it. When he became 'enlightened' and decided to stick to making railroad sleeping cars and servicing them (when attached to railroad trains around the USA) he sold off the town of Pullman to the workers who incorporated with their own government. Eventually the town of Pullman was annexed into the City of Chicago whence it became the Chicago neighborhood known as Pullman as it is today. From the days when the Emperor owned everything in sight and had the telephone exchange named after himself comes our present day 312-785 or PULlman, named after the man who used to own it all. PAT] ------------------------------ To sum it all up, people are not happy about area code splitting, nor are they happy about area code overlays. So damned if you do and damned if you don't. Just suck it up and go to 10 digits for every thing! Matt ------------------------------ There are reports that AT&T is all set to enter the local call arena and provide some fierce competition. According to Newsbytes reports they are ready to take a beating at first to gain ground in the market. What are the implications of this move? How is AT&T going to do it? Can we be looking at an era where we could get local, long distance, cellular, pager, PCS and even online services through the same provider? What about monopoly fears, you think the courts/DOJ/FCC will like this? Neeraj "Nick" Vora Programmer/Analyst Dept of Pathology Unversity of Miami NICKVORA@UMIAMI.IR.MIAMI.EDU [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As long as there are 'several monopolies' to choose from, there should be no objection. There was quite a large article in the {Wall Street Journal} a couple days ago discussing this very same thing. According to WSJ, the 'secret plans' of AT&T call for a massive strike entry into the market early in 1996. I really suspect they must have gone back and studied closely how Ted Vail did business when he ran the company a century ago: move in, take such huge losses at first that you bankrupt all your competition in the process, then consolidate it all back into one large company. Ted Vail was like that, you know. When the patent on the telephone expired, and AT&T no longer could prevent other people from manufacturing them, that is when all the small independent telcos started appearing all over the USA. Vail would send his representatives into a small town with an independent telco to make an offer to buy the company. Some would sell out when the price was good enough but even then, back in the early part of this century, there was sufficient hostility to AT&T that many of the small telcos flatly refused to sell out. Outraged, they would tell anyone who wanted to listen that, 'we will never become part of the Bell ...'. They wanted to retain their independence. Vail's response would be, "then fine, don't sell. See how much value your service is to anyone when you can't interconnect with anyone else." He would pull the plug, literally, and refuse interconnection, leaving a small town telco with just whatever subscribers it had and nowhere to connect ·_ them except each other. Then he would start a competing telco in the very same town and of course, as part of the 'System' it would be interconnected with other 'Bell System' telcos. **Then he would give the service away to all new subscribers for six months or so ... whatever it took.** The day the independent was driven out of business by these tactics was the day the susbcribers to the new 'Bell System' company in that town had to start paying, and paying plenty to make up for the losses to date. What's interesting about this alleged plan by AT&T to 'take over' local service next year is that they already have several new switches in place largely sitting idle waiting for the day to arrive when they go in service and (according to the WSJ story) AT&T plans to do something quite ridiculous and offer their existing long distance customers 'local area service' for some very small amount of money; far less than what the BOCs are getting. Full custom calling features, the works. Interesting times. PAT] ------------------------------ Is there a site that has the current lists (Hopefully in Binary form) of all current and anticipated North American Area Codes as well as all International Dialing Country codes? Richard Shockey Nuntius Coropration 8045 Big Bend Blvd S.110 St. Louis, MO 63119 Voice 314.968.1009 FAX 314.968.3163 Internet rshockey@ix.netcom.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Mr. Shockey, you might look at the Telecom Archives. Our list is as good as any these days with all the changes going on. Use anonymous ftp lcs.mit.edu. When connected, then 'cd telecom-archives'. If you do not have anonymous ftp at your site then use the Telecom Archives Email Information Service by sending email to 'tel-archives@lcs.mit.edu'. If you need the help file for using the email service, just send me a note asking for it. PAT]. ------------------------------ On Mon, 21 Aug 1995 14:34:00 -0600, Chris Gettings wrote: > Stentor thrives on this kind of "dis-information" and other dirty > tricks to try to keep their monopoly grip on Canada. The Stentor group plays the same game the competition plays. And, what do you classify as dirty tricks? Pricing competetive? Thats the name of the game. "Squish the competition!" Like all other companies trying to make it in this world. > Stentor is determined to thwart true competition despite laws > providing for it and the regulators are frustrated and powerless > against Stentor's financial muscle. Stentor has armies of lawyers > and lobbyists to dilatory tactics and obfuscate the truth when > responding to CRTC queries. What the heck is real competition? We have a regulated competition here in Canada. The CRTC regulates the pricing of the Stentor telcos the same as they did when they were not in competition. If we want true competition, get rid of the CRTC. Anything the government touches here always goes to hell. This one will too! > Potential competitors are destroyed by Stentor's predatory > pricing and unfair competition; You mean Stentor's LD pricing is cheaper that the competition. That's not unfair, that's competition! > and Stentor is too stupid, closed minded and anachronistic to > realize that all the Bell Companies and AT&T have benefited from > competition in the United States. Sales and profits are up and > markets are expanding for the Bells in the States. Who suffers in > Canada? Canadian individuals and businesses who can ill afford it > considering the state of their economy. Until the local competition is implemented in a year or three, things are not going to be like the USA up here. After local goes, LD rates here will drop drastically. The Stentor group still has to up keep the local network. Policies of the past dictated that people out in the boon-docks 60 miles away deserved telephone service as did the city dwellers. Since LD traditionally helped upkeep this local network and LD rates now being lowered below this help point, one of two things have to happen. The Stentor group either drops out of local, which won't happen, or the local rates go up. (Way UP!) As this happens, local competition will start popping up because it becomes a viable business. (At this point, it's not.) Then, with local costs not digging into the funds anymore, LD prices go down as the competition comes in. ]\/[ark ]/\[illiston - Freelance Games & Graphics Programmer Author of: Two Bit Poker, Lucky Sevens & Ringing Bells. ------------------------------ Can anyone give me a yes-or-no answer on whether Wiltel has stopped passing Caller ID from one area to the next? I regularly call from Houston to Colorado. The Houston numbers are using a Wiltel reseller, and the Colorado number would always get my Houston telephone number on their Caller ID box. For the past month, the Colorado Caller ID box has been getting "OUT OF AREA" every time I call it. When I call my Wiltel reseller, they are clueless. So, I call the Wiltel operator (00#), and they give me some 800 number to call for more information. At this 800 number, they say they "can't tell me" the answer and that I will have to call my reseller to find out the answer. (Runaround). The funny thing is, when I first signed up with this reseller, I would ask "you transmit Caller ID" and I'd get "you betcha" from everybody. Now, everyone seems to have forgotten what Caller ID is. Caller ID was transmitted, and was very useful, but it's gone, and my reseller even raised by rates about two months ago. Argh! Regards, B.J. Guillot ... Houston, Texas USA ------------------------------ Yesterday I spoke with a high-level AT&T person who has put me on the right information track in the "500" number situation. He informed me of the following. Bellcore is the agency that handles prefix assignments for the 500 NPA. 500-200 & 500-938 are actually ASSIGNED to WKP Communications/ Long Distance. 500-738 is assigned to International Teleservices Ltd. of Los Angeles CA. Brian Cartmell of WKP made the application for the prefixes for both companies, so they may be related. My source indicated to me that there are certain guidelines to be followed with use of the 500 NPA by companies, among them, that they are not to be used by "Adult Services". He said he was aware of Mr. ("an old hand in that business") Cartmell and WKP. My source also stated they were aware of WKP's reputation but that they were assured by WKP that everything would fall within the guidelines. My source said he would forword those guidelines to me and I will post them here when received. He was very disturbed by my report. He stated if there was a FORMAL COMPLAINT and/or WKP was in violation of the guidelines, or they willfully misrepresented themselves in the application, THE PREFIXES CAN BE REVOKED!!! ;+) So, ALLNET/Frontier et al may NOT be directly aware after all of what is going on. Many times the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and my impression is this was so filtered that they truly did not know. They know NOW however :+), as the numerous calls from various VP's indicate. So "tentative" apologies to ALLNET. Pat, you are absolutely right in your analogy of the adult bookstore and the "red light" district. I am not concerned about the content of what they do, in fact I am a STRONG free speech advocate. But it really galls me that these people polluted the 800 "block", and now the "500" block of our neighborhood. You indicated in one response that you thought it would be a good public service of TELECOM Digest to expose these people. I AGREE!! I am willing to act as a clearing house for this information, post file's and "alert" lists to the archives, and to post findings and reports to this Digest. Interested? One further note, (if you would indulge me for a few more lines) the LAMEST phone call I received over the past few days was a d00d (sorry) from "Bank One", whom I have no business relationship with whatsoever. He said please call 800-939-3306 ext xxxx "it's important". WHY do you suppose this number gets a reorder from pay phones and only works from "regular" lines? WHY do you suppose there is no attendant, or live person available anywhere or at any extension? (I don't have any collection agencies after me.) Maybe that person will see this and leave a more detailed message on my Voice Mail. Pretty lame attempt to get a direct voice number (ANI) if you ask me. I wasn't born yesterday! Michael L. Fumich / E-Mail: <3311835@mcimail.com> / Phone: 708-461-5770 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Someone is looking for you apparently. You may have been placed with an agency and don't yet realize it. Remember folks, whenever you get a postcard or a call saying 'call this 800 number to extension xxx' it is very likely the person or company sending it is trying to get your phone number using ANI provided with 800 service. So take care. You might want to call it from some number other than your home. PAT] ------------------------------ I'm working a study which compares the ordering and installation performance of major providers of communications services and I will pay a cash reward to qualified people who will participate in a 15-20 minute phone interview. If you have ordered the following within the past 60 or next 60 days: Interlata private line (DS0 - 56/64K, DS1/T1 - 1.544 Mbps, Fractional T1, or DS3 - 45 Mbps) or Frame Relay service from AT&T, MCI, Sprint, or WilTel (LDDS) and/or Intralata private line from Ameritech, Bell South, or PacTel Please e-mail your name and phone number to gnemec@merle.acns.nwu.edu. You can then be called for a quick phone interview. Thank you, Greg gnemec@merle.acns.nwu.edu ------------------------------ In yesterday's {Mercury}, there was another article about Pacific Bell's new network in San Jose. A San Jose woman refused to allow Pacific Bell to connect her house to the new network. She legally has this right, because Pacific Bell cannot install equipment more than ten feet from the property line. She said she is not interested in video or internet service: though she does own a computer she doesn't have a TV. Pacific Bell finally agreed not to hook up her home, but they also told her that she would lose her POTS service in a year or so when the copper network is abandoned. She said that was fine with her, because she doesn't want any part of the new technology. The CPUC said that Pacific Bell has agreed to not pass network costs on to customers through their basic service phone charges. The article also mentioned that since locla competition may be coming to California, another company may buy Pacific Bell's then obsolete copper network. Steve cogorno@netcom.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #356 ******************************