From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Thu Aug 31 22:27:36 1995 by 1995 22:27:36 -0400 telecomlist-outbound; Thu, 31 Aug 1995 18:43:22 -0500 1995 18:43:19 -0500 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu TELECOM Digest Thu, 31 Aug 95 18:43:00 CDT Volume 15 : Issue 367 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wireless Modem and Data Compression Equipment For Pictures (Liu Young) PacBell Presents ISDN Seminar, Sept 26 (Cherie Shore) Unblockable Called-ID (Ken Levitt) Phone-Mail Woes (RISKS Digest via Monty Solomon) Re: Area Code Crisis -- A Different Viewpoint (David Hough) Correction to Bell Atlantic Article (Paul Robinson) About Errors in Articles Posted (Paul Robinson) Ringing Signal and Service Tones (Ang Swee Koon) AT&T Telemarketing Not Same as Service! (Mike Wengler) New NPA in CT (jlbene@aol.com) Caller ID Status in CA? (Don McLaughlin) Tone Decoders (Richard T. Mills) 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. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************ * * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent- * * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************ * In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Trade opportunities from China. Wireless modems and equipements of data compression for moving pictures wanted. We're now developing a real-time wireless image transmission system, used in fire reporting, traffic reporting, public security, emergency treatment, etc. This system mainly consists of two parts. The first part is data compression equipments for moving pictures, either color or BW. The second part is wireless modems. Good stability and large covering area (40km in radius) are required. We're now searching for the suppliers of this equipement. Fax or air mail reply are prefered. Thanks. Fax: +86 755 2243055 Tel: +86 755 2240079 Mail: Liu Young Shenzhen Information Center 1 Tongxin road, Shenzhen, P. R. of China E-mail: lauyung@hk.linkage.net ------------------------------ Pacific Bell is proud to announce another in our very popular series of ISDN seminars. The seminar will include an overview of ISDN, how it can be used, where it is available and Pacific Bell's ISDN rates. Our guest vendor will be Digi International, one of the leaders in ISDN remote LAN access equipment market, who will provide an overview of their product line and a live demonstration of ISDN Internet access. This seminar will be held on: September 26, at 9:30am at: 1010 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles. Parking is provided in our parking structure on St Paul St, 1/2 block North of the building. To reserve your seat, contact Kay at 818-578-4353. Cherie Shore cashore@pacbell.com ISDN Technology Manager, PacBell ------------------------------ In TELECOM Digest V 15 # 363 Tony Pelliccio writes: > A call from an associate in MA shows as OUT OF AREA. I called my > long distance provider (who is also the friend's LD provider) and > they've verified that their network will indeed pass Caller-ID > information along. I call Nynex and ask them what the deal is. Turns > out, according to some droid that Nynex "Doesn't have the technology > to do that.". I have the opposite problem. I have Caller-ID sent on long distance calls with no way to block it. This may be happening to other people without their knowledge. My local exchange does not have SS7 and does not have Caller-ID. The blocking code for Caller-ID produces an error message. When I call from MA (508) to CT (203) my number appears on the ID box in CT. Nynex confirmed that they are not generating any Caller-ID information and are only passing the billing information the the LD carrier. My LD carrier (Corporate Telemanagement Group) at first insisted that what I was saying was impossible. I went through several people and finally ended up with their technical person who also insisted it was impossible. After I insisted several times the it WAS happening, he finally admitted that they subcontract their New England traffic to another carrier (WIL-TEL) who may be doing something strange. They promised to check it out and get back to me. If any interesting information comes back, I'll send it along. Ken Levitt - On FidoNet gateway node 1:16/390 UUCP: zorro9!levitt INTERNET: levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org or levitt%zorro9.uucp@talcott.harvard.edu ------------------------------ FYI. Excerpt from RISKS DIGEST 17.30. In anticipating traveling internationally, I decided to get CO-based phone mail since I thought it would be more reliable to connect to than my analog answering machine. Because I've got two lines, I decided that I'd put the service on the second line and then forward the first to the second when I need to. I tried testing the forwarding and found that when I called the first number, instead of just giving me voice mail, it asked me to key in a number, presumably the number I was calling -- the first number. So I obliged, and got a message from someone saying he was in Central America and couldn't answer the calls. * The request to key in the number is clearly a bug since the caller doesn't know that I've forwarded the call nor the number to which I forwarded the call. * Since my ownership of both number predates the installation of the switch, it seemed that the caller gets directed into hyperspace. * When asking for the service, I was told that they were planning to drop the stutter dialtone since it didn't work reliably! * I did not test the interactions with distinctive ringing numbers. I feared the worst but didn't have the time. In speaking to the service people about this, the basic response is that this is a problem with the DMS-100 (Northern Telecom) switch and not necessarily the ATT ESS switches. This is the same DMS that, on my ISDN line, requires two numbers for a 2B call whereas the ESS needs only one. I don't know what profound lessons there are to learn except that I'm amazed out the presence of such a gross bug in an expensive production CO. It would never be tolerated in a $29.99 software package. This is a feature interaction but unlike the problems with ad-hoc interaction between separately produced features, this should be testable. Note, though, that voice mail is often provided by a third party, such as Octel, and the bug could be due to version interactions between two disparate systems. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something is wrong here with his account of what happened (is happening) ... generally the reason it asks for the caller to enter the number he is calling is because somehow the network did not deliver ANI properly to voicemail. Had voicemail known who was being called, the proper greeting would have played out rather than the generic 'please enter the number' message. Anyone can forward their line to whatever number is used in their community for voicemail, however if the incoming call is not from someone calling a recognized voicemail subscriber, the voicemail system is going ask them in effect what they are doing there and what they want. I imagine voicemail must have seen the number of his first line (which as I understand is not subscribed to voicemail) and was in effect asking 'how did you get here?', not realizing that an actual subscriber (his second line) was transferring the call there. It would be interesting also to find out if he conducted his tests using *the same phone lines involved* or if he went to some third-location where the response might be different. PAT] ------------------------------ In article rbarry@iol.ie (Richard Barry) writes: > There is no long term numbering strategy in the UK - it changes > virtually every year, which is great for the printing industry! Not quite that bad - and a lot of it comes from needing overlap periods between old and new. Previous to the recent '01', the last major change in the UK scheme was shifting London numbers from 01-xxx-yyyy to 081- and 071-. By doing this, it freed up the whole of the 01 number space which allowed the most recent change to occur. Other minor changes have been steadily taking place, which often mean the changing of numbers to have the same number of digits and reducing the number of area codes in use. > The UK has several codes for toll-free and similar numbers including > 0800, 0500, 0345 and 0645. In surveys, about 20% of the population > don't know that 0800 is toll free and nearly half the population don't > know that 0500 is toll-free. > Mobile phone numbers, paging, and premium rate numbers are found all > over the numbering space. The eventual plan, according to the consultative document, is for all mobile prefixes to be grouped together, all toll-free numbers to be grouped together etc. Obviously this couldn't happen until after the 01 change on geograpic numbers because until then you couldn't prefix all mobile codes with 03 (which I believe i suggested for mobiles). Now the numbering space has been freed up, it may be that 0336, 0860 etc will change to 03336, 03860 etc, thus showing them to be mobile numbers. There is method in the madness somewhere -- you just have to look hard for it! > *Distinctive non-geographic codes* so that anyone can tell a mobile > number or a pager or a premium rate number from a regular phone number > easily. > *A single code for a single function* - all toll-free numbers should > begin with the same code to assist public recognition. So if you run > out of numbering space in the 800 range, add an extra digit to the > bit that follows 800 - (ie 800 nnnn nnnn). This goes back to > variable number length flexibility. As mentioned, this principle was in the original plan. From memory, the suggestions were: 01 and 02 for geographic codes, 03 for mobiles, 07 for portable numbers, 08 for toll-free and 09 for premium rate. Whether it actually happens like that remains to be seen ... Dave djh@sectel.com Tel +44 1285 655 766 Fax +44 1285 655 595 ------------------------------ In a prior article which I realize had no correction, dealing with the practice of the back-office contractor staff taking unprocessed telephone service orders and throwing them into the wastebasket undone, I reported that Bell Atlantic, the local telephone company for DC, MD, VA, PA, WV and NJ (and perhaps other states) was headquartered in Richmond, VA. According to an anonymous Bell Atlantic employee who called me to tell me something about the story I wrote, and by a reader of the Digest, The actual headquarters of Bell Atlantic Corporation is in Philadelphia, PA. Paul Robinson General Manager Tansin A. Darcos & Company/TDR, Inc. ------------------------------ I'd like to add a followup item to a recent correction of an article I submitted here. Let me note that in any kind of publication - a digest such as this, regular Usenet Newsgroup Articles, and especially in the daily papers and weekly magazines - there are going to be errors, mistatements, and misquotations of material. This point was brought home to me by the cablecast yesterday of the tv series "Lou Grant," in which the same reporter had exclusive stories on two days in a row, and both stories were wrong. In the case involved, the reporter had the facts correct, but what he read from those facts gave him a conclusion -- which, given what had happened, a reasonable person of intelligence, without biases, would have made the identical one -- and his conclusion was wrong. In other cases, facts are in error, or are misunderstood, or in some cases are intentionally reported wrong, either to prevent someone from becoming subject to blame or sanctions, or to allow someone to determine if blame or sanctions should be placed on someone else, and/or to preserve the ability to investigate or punish some wrongdoing. And sometimes it's done to cover up for someone or to make some scapegoat take the fall for someone else. One example being when I wrote up some of my comments regarding the Oklahoma City Bombing and the effect on telephone service there as well as changes here in the Washington, DC. Area. Almost every story that came out required changing because as more information became known, the facts became more substantial, and could be better substantiated (or those who were hiding things had more time to practice their lies). I do not remember hearing any serious criticism of this constant requirement to change erroneous or misreported facts, and I believe the reason is simple: people who watch TV or read newspapers can understand that not all the evidence is available right away, and in some cases what is reported is discovered to be incorrect or was incomplete. We have to accept this inaccuracy as part of the "cost of doing business" in order to have very-fast reporting of information. Checking and rechecking details from multiple sources is time consuming. Where the results of the error could be harmful or injurious to others, it should, if reasonably possible, be checked for accuracy. It may still be wrong, but at least rechecking shows that they are acting responsibly. In some cases, if a fact is received from a reasonable source, ·_ reporting it as it stands with the realization (whether or not stated) that it may be wrong, is reasonable. For example, in any similar incident involving a disaster, reporting there are 20 dead when there are actually 80, or estimating deaths to be 3,000 when the number was around 300, is not going to be as serious as misreporting a specific person was dead when they were not, especially for the relatives of the victim. So, a small suggestion to people -- when you read something in this Digest or *especially* on Usenet -- if you notice something is wrong, you should report that if you have evidence to suggest otherwise, but you should not be flaming or insulting someone for their errors (you shouldn't be doing that anyway, but that's another issue altogether). None of us is omnipotent, we all make mistakes and errors. The correct stance is to learn to understand that not all incorrect material is the result of intentional bias (although, I'm sure that some is), but can often can be traced back to simple misunderstanding or human error of a minor detail. In short, take it easy, and don't take things you see or read in the media all that seriously. And sometimes consider if what you are reading is true, a lot of people intentionally lie or misstate the facts in order to promote some social goal, and you may or may not support that particular goal. In the end, your best judge of the truth is your own intelligence: does what they say seem reasonable? Is what they are saying is happening true? Is what they want to happen soon, and what does happen now in the world compatible with each other? And most importantly, does their own lifestyle or standard of living capable of being sustained if what they want is proposed? The first tells you if they are truthful. The second tells you if they are demanding the impossible, or want to impose things on the public, even if it means shoving an unwanted standard upon people down their throats whether they want it or not. The third tells you if they are hypocrites. You can't know all the answers to everything; there's not enough time to learn enough to know the correct side of the issue. But you can try to find out why some people support some sides. Or you can listen to some people that you agree with on a large number of points and hear their opinions. But in the end, whatever you choose to believe, is your own responsibility, and if that belief in whatever fact or opinion you accept as valid is wrong, then you have to take the consequences. Paul Robinson General Manager Tansin A. Darcos & Company/TDR, Inc. ------------------------------ I am trying to find more information on the dial tone, ringing tone and busy tone ie their standard. Is there any different for difference country around the world? Are the frequency and periodicity the same? If anyone has any informations, pls email at the following address. Thanks, Ang Swee Koon cwcangsk@leonis.nus.sg ------------------------------ >> A rep called me one night and I wanted time to think about the package >> and compare what I'd pay (and the "rewards") against what I currently >> pay (and the rewards I get) using Sprint. I asked for a number to call >> back once I'd decided, and the rep gave me a number, but cautioned that >> the people at the inbound call center do not have the authority to >> offer the same deals as the reps at the outbound call center. (snip...snip...snip) > Maybe the rep who offered me the deal could have made a entry in > their data bases against my phone number, so that when I called back > whoever received the call would know that. I was under the impression > that AT&T service was better than the others ... AT&T *hires* or *contracts* out their telemarketing! My mother has been solicited with "business opportunities" to telemarket AT&T on contract. Guess what ... if a telemarketer can make money by signing you up, but you want to think about it and call back, they will not make that money. (Plus there's the old thing in sales about "CLOSE THE DEAL!", once you're off the phone you are probabilistically history anyway.) Even if AT&T *service* is or is not any better than the competitors, its *marketing* is constrained by the same pirhanic laws of nature as everybody elses. Benefits of competition and all that. The are *selling* you their reputation for serice. Their reputation. Not the service itself. That would go on the cost side of the balance sheet, not the revenue. > ...now I would think twice before switching to AT&T (with or withour > $100 !) Months of investigation have lead me to conclude you should ALWAYS cash those checks. Then take the next incentive to switch to the next place. With a small residential account, those checks are the ONLY way to cut your long distance "rates" significantly ... that $100 check probably pays three to five months of your LD bill! Mike Wengler Phone/Fax: 716 244-0238 Cell: 716 748-1930 ------------------------------ I am very unhappy about the decision to split the NPA in CT, adding 860 to the current 203, especially because MY phone number has to change. I would rather have an overlay and dial 10D to a local call. (But I also seem to easily remember numbers like my car's VIN, my driver's license number, etc.) Anyway, now that this change is happening, I need to reprogram my cell phone. I could just go to the dealer to have it done, but that's the easy way out. Why can't the manual that came with my phone tell me ALL of the functions? I have a Motorola flip phone -- I know there are various models -- can anyone tell me how to reprogram it, or if there is an ftp site full of data on cell phones? I feel rather useless when I must depend on the technician or salesperson at the phone dealer for such a trivial matter. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The September/October, 1995 issue of Tom Farley's magazine {Private Line} has an article on this very topic written by Damien Thorn entitled "Cellular Test Mode Scanning", and although at first glance one might think the purpose of the article was to help instruct phreaks in ways to defraud cellular phone carriers and invade the privacy of cellular phone users, I suppose a point could be made that the article can also help persons in the same situation as yourself. You can send email to 'privateline@delphi.com' to inquire about subscriptions to the magazine. PAT] ------------------------------ Does anyone know the status of Caller ID for California? I heard a rumor that it would be available in October '95. Don McLaughlin ------------------------------ Does anyone know of a way of decoding telephone dialing codes? Is there any way of doing it by using a soundblaster card? I have the recorded tones on tape. Thanks, Richard ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #367 ******************************