From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Wed Sep 13 23:49:48 1995 by 1995 23:49:48 -0400 telecomlist-outbound; Wed, 13 Sep 1995 20:10:05 -0500 1995 20:10:03 -0500 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Sep 95 20:10:00 CDT Volume 15 : Issue 381 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Beach House Payphone (Steve Bunning) Pacific Bell Pay Phones (Robert Deward) UCLA Short Course: Multirate Digital Filters and Applications (B. Goodin) UCLA Short Course: Advanced Communication Systems Using DSP (Bill Goodin) Cellular Service Along NY Route 17 (Aninda DasGupta) Nortel Goes to Vietnam (Dave Leibold) ACC Buys Metrowide (Dave Leibold) Employment: OSI/CMISE Object Modeling, SNMP, HP OpenView (sccstech@mars) Area Code News (Steve Grandi) Online Services: Technology, Applications, Vendors (S. R. Sadasivam) California: Outrageous Telephone Rates (Jerald Pendleton) DSC Transcoder Enhancement (Tyler Proctor) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A couple of weeks ago, I was vacationing at Corolla in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The rental house I stayed in had an interesting arrangement for phone service. As you might imagine in a rental house, the phone did not allow 1+ dialing. 00 and 0+ calls went to an operator, but after that things started to get more interesting. 10XXX0- and 10XXX0+ calls did not complete and _certain_ 800 calls also did not complete. The 800 numbers that were blocked included 1-800-OPERATOR, 1-800-CALL-ATT, and 1-800-COLLECT. I did some additional checking and found that the operator services were being handled by Teltrust (operators located in Salt Lake City). The line restrictions and operator connections seemed to be accomplished via a dialer installed in the house by a company called ATI. When I spoke to the ATI customer service reps about the trouble I had dialing certain 800 numbers, they said something about not having the 800 numbers "programmed in". I have to believe that they are deliberately "programming out" specific 800 numbers rather than programming in all of the 800 numbers in the US. The rep provided 800 access numbers for AT&T and MCI which worked, but they weren't the well known ones. My more obscure 800 access number for Cable & Wireless long distance also worked without a problem. The Teltrust/ATI 0+ (credit card, no operator) rates for a call from Corolla to Washington, D.C. (about 300 miles) were quoted as $2.75 for the first minute and $.45 for each additional minute. Not what I would call cheap. This caused me to wonder if this form of service (beach house, dialer based, coinless payphone) is regulated? If so, is the service provider permitted to block or impede 800 access to other carriers? I suppose the service provider would claim it was still possible to reach the other carriers even though most people would just give up and dial 0+ after their initial 800 attempts didn't work. To my mind, this is another example of the ongoing war against consumers some of the operator service providers seem to be engaged in. Steve Bunning | American Computer and Elec. Corp.| 301 258-9850 (voice) Product Manager | 209 Perry Parkway | 301 921-0434 (fax) TEL*COMM Division| Gaithersburg, MD USA 20877 | bunning@acec.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wouldn't it have been easier to just unplug or bypass the dialer somehow? PAT] ------------------------------ I want to respond on behalf of Pacific Bell to two postings: The first was by Bob Jacobson on August 30 wherein he alleged that Pacific Bell doesn't want to locate coin phones in high crime areas because these phones don't bring in enough money. He said telcos seek 'to maximize profit by limiting service to high-security, high-spending venues (like airports, upscale shopping malls, and tourist hotels).' He added that a bill to remove coin phones was watered down (presumably at telcos' urging) to make it difficult for customers to interfere with a coin phone's removal by giving them little time to object. First of all, it is an unwarranted assumption that coin phones in high crime areas are not profitable. In fact, if city authorities cause Pacific Bell to remove a coin phone in such an area, a competitor, who is not governed by the same rules as Pacific, frequently moves in to claim the revenue. When the Chicago City Council decided in October 1994 to ban outdoor coin phones on residential streets, outside liquor stories and on vacant buildings and lots, Pacific Bell voiced its opposition. Pacific believes concerns about crime need to be balanced with the very real need of people, especially those with low or limited incomes, to have access to the local telephone network for local and long distance calls and for reporting 9-1-1 emergencies. In some cases, these pay phones are the only way people have to communicate with others. Pacific Bell has not removed any coin phone for the past five years for providing a low payout or being unprofitable unless a site owner has demanded it. To keep its coin phones in areas having problems with public order, Pacific Bell cooperates with police, neighborhood groups, and local government to address noise, loitering and crime concerns. Furthermore, where there is a public need but little likelihood a coin phone would ever be profitable, another procedure exists to establish what are called 'public policy pay telephones.' Pacific is the only pay phone provider to install stations primarily for public health, safety, and welfare where there otherwise would not be a public phone. Pacific Bell maintains some 900 of these in California including such remote sites as along desert highways and mountain trails. A few years ago I looked at the cost of maintaining a policy phone booth out in the Mojave Desert. It ran close to $200 per month! Users are few. But when they need it, they need it indeed. Concerning Jeff Gottlieb's experience -- where the (allegedly) Pacific Bell coin phone in a Los Angeles restaurant had an inoperative touch tone pad -- , Mr. Gottlieb was right when he said he didn't expect that from Pacific Bell: We don't do that. But he is not the first to be fooled. Competitors' phones often resemble ours. Here are the countermeasures Pacific Bell applies to retain coin phones in high crime areas: eliminate incoming calls; relocate the station to a nearby but more observable site; install a lock-up box or a cut-off key to confine use to specific hours; modify the existing phone enclosure; install high intensity lighting; or convert to a charge-a-call (calling card, collect, third-party billed) phone, and establish remote call screening. In the latter case we can deny incoming calls, deny coin calls, deny calling card calls, deny international dialing, and provide screening by time of day. Anyone having further questions about PacificUs coin phone policies is welcome to contact me directly. Bob Deward, Pacific Telesis External Affairs, S.F. voice: 415-394-3646 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks very much for taking the time to write to the Digest with this clarification. Here in Chicago, Illinois Bell has likewise denied at one time or another that they tamper with payphone arrangements -- as to location or number of phones; how the phones operate, etc -- for any reason other than in response to concerns voiced by the community and the police. And you are quite correct about how 'slick' some of the competitors have become in making their phones look *exactly* like Genuine Bell to anyone without a very trained eye. They've done it that way on purpose, knowing that you always follow what the winner is doing, and that the 'average user' won't know one operator service from another, nor be in a position to make a sophisticated response to the price gouging so many COCOTS engage in. PAT] ------------------------------ On November 29-December 1, 1995, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Multirate Digital Filters and Applications", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructor is Professor frederick harris, Electrical and Computer Engineering, San Diego State University. This course is an introduction to multirate digital filters, which are variants of non-recursive filters, and incorporate one or more resamplers in the signal path. These embedded resamplers affect changes in sample rate for upsampling, downsampling, or combinations of both. Changes in sampling rate as part of the signal processing is a feature unique to sampled data systems. and has no counterpart in continuous signal processing. Benefits include reduced cost for a given signal processing task and improved levels of performance for a given computational burden. This economy of computation has become an essential requirement of modern communication systems, particularly battery-operated equipment. Specific course topics include: Introduction to sample rate conversion, Non-recursive (finite impulse response) filters, Prototype FIR filter design methods, Decimation and interpolation, Multirate filters, Two-channel filter banks, M-channel filter banks, Proportional bandwidth filter banks and wavelet analysis, Polyphase recursive all-pass filter banks, Multirate filter applications. The course fee is $1095, which includes extensive course materials. For additional information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu ------------------------------ On December 4-8, 1995, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Advanced Communication Systems Using Digital Signal Processing", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructors are Bernard Sklar, PhD, Communications Engineering Services, and frederick harris, MS, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, San Diego State University. As part of the course materials, each participant receives a copy of the text, "Digital Communications-Fundamentals and Applications", by Bernard Sklar. This course provides comprehensive coverage of advanced digital communications. It differs from other communications courses in its emphasis on applying modern digital signal processing techniques to the implementation of communication systems. This makes the course essential for practitioners in the rapidly changing field. Error-correction coding, spread spectrum techniques, and bandwidth-efficient signaling are all discussed in detail. Basic digital signaling methods and the newest modulation-with-memory techniques are presented, along with trellis-coded modulation. Topics that are covered include: signal processing overview and baseband transmission; bandpass modulation and demodulation; digital signal processing tools and technology; non-recursive filters; channel coding: error detection and correction; defining, designing, and evaluating systems; signal conditioning; adaptive algorithms for communication systems; modulation and coding trade-offs and bandwidth-efficient signaling; and spread spectrum and multiple access techniques. The course fee is $1495, which includes the text and extensive course notes. For additional information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu ------------------------------ I will be doing a lot of driving along Route 17 in New York State (between Westchester county and the Finger Lakes region). With the coming Winter, I want peace of mind in case of roadside emergencies. I was wondering if anyone knows what kind of cellular coverage exists along the Catskills mountains region of Route 17 if I sign up with one of the following two carriers: AT&T Wireless/Cellular One NY Bell Atlantic/NYNEX Mobile. Among the pros and cons of the two carriers that I am considering are the following (in decreasing order of importance): - Bell Atlantic/NYNEX Mobile being the "second carrier," I may not get good coverage in all parts of Route 17 -- they couldn't tell me how good is their coverage; - Bell Atlantic covers all of NY and NJ (I will pay no roaming charges along NY Route 17); with AT&T, I will end up paying 99c/min if I use my phone outside my county; - Bell Atlantic requires (or so the representative told me) that I use a Motorola Flip phone that they will sell to me, while with AT&T I can use any phone of my choice. I'd appreciate any comments from those familiar with the area, or those who use Bell Atlantic/NYNEX Mobile or AT&T/Cell One NY in general. Aninda DasGupta (add@philabs.philips.com) Ph:(914)945-6071 Fax:(914)945- 6552 Philips Labs 345 Scarborough Rd Briarcliff Manor\n NY 10510 "Err.., Phillips Petroleum gives you gas; fortunately Phillips Chemical makes antacid. Philips is with one "el"; we make lightbulbs, and other stuff." ------------------------------ [from Bell News, 4 Sept 1995 - Bell Canada's version of events] Nortel to build network in Vietnam Our sister BCE company, Northern Telecom, has sealed a deal to build the major portion of Vietnam's fiber-optic telephone network. Northern will lay 3000 miles of fiber-optic cable and install switches to meet the demand of Vietnam's businesses for state-of-the-art telecommunications. "The network will allow Vietnam to significantly strengthen its access to the global business community," points out James Deas, president of Nortel Asia South Pacific. Northern was chosen to build the network by Australia's Telstra International Ltd., the prime contractor of the Vietnamese project. Fidonet : Dave Leibold 1:250/730 Internet: Dave.Leibold@superctl.tor250.org ------------------------------ [from press release via CNW] úÿ ACC TELENTERPRISES ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF METROWIDE COMMUNICATIONS TORONTO, Aug. 14 /CNW/ - ACC TelEnterprises Ltd. (ACC) has announced that it has acquired Metrowide Communications. Metrowide is based in Toronto and provides local and long distance services to Ontario based customers. The purchase is expected to add over $10 million to ACC's annualized revenue. ACC is scheduling a teleconference at 2pm, today, August 14, 1995. Parties interested in more detail on the acquisition are asked to dial (416) 695-5801 five minutes prior to conference time. Commenting on the acquisition, Steve M. Dubnik, Chairman, President and CEO of ACC TelEnterprises said, "The purchase of Metrowide Communications strengthens our ability to be all things to some people. ACC's acquisition of Metrowide will add several significant telecommunication services to the company's current product lines including Centrex resale and wide area local calling. The fit between ACC and Metrowide, in addition to its traditional long distance services, is that while primary local service provides business consumers with the ability to receive and place local calls at a fixed monthly rate, it does not provide any of the advanced telecommunication services of Centrex service or PBX equipment." Metrowide currently buys Centrex services from Bell Canada in bulk, and resells them at a discount to businesses that require under 100 local lines per office. The offshoot of Centrex provisioning allows Enhanced Extended Area Service or EAS which is the expansion of local free calling areas. Metrowide also provides packages for inbound calling similar to a Foreign Exchange Service whereby the call is free to the originating caller anywhere within approximately 30 miles of Toronto. In addition, we expect this acquisition will have a positive impact on operating cash flow and operating income in 1996." ACC TelEnterprises Ltd. is a publicly traded telecommunications holding company headquartered in Toronto. The stock is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Montreal Exchange under the symbol ACL. Business operations and service is provided across Canada by its wholly owned subsidiary ACC Long Distance Inc. ACC Long Distance Inc., together with its affiliates, ACC Long Distance Corp. in the United States and ACC Long Distance UK Ltd. in the United Kingdom, is a multinational provider of enhanced telecommunications services. As one of the nation's premier non-facilities based carriers, the company has an annualized revenue run rate in excess of $110 million. ACC provides worldwide voice and data long distance services to over 100,000 businesses and residential customers in Canada. Fidonet : Dave Leibold 1:250/730 Internet: Dave.Leibold@superctl.tor250.org ------------------------------ SCCS Technologies, Inc is a provider of information technology products and services to telecommunications, engineering, and financial/banking industry clients. The rapid merging of the telecommunications, video/cable and entertainment industry has created one of the fastest growing markets for new technology. SCCS is poised be an industry leader. If you have the right skills and interests, let us know! If you know people with this background, please mention to them. We do have referral arrangements. EXCELLENT COMPENSATION and FREE TRAINING for qualified candidates! These exist in Central New Jersey, Current Opportunities: Network Mgmt: HP OpenView, NetView, SunNet Manager, TMN6000, X.25, SNA, TCP/IP Network Element Mgmt: OSI/CMISE object modeling, SNMP Systems Eng: Telecom (SONET, ATM, Broadband, AIN), Loop Maint Send resume to: SCCS Technologies, Inc., Parag Rastogi, 100 Jersey Ave Suite-D, New Brunswick, NJ-08901 email them : sccstech@mars.superlink.net ------------------------------ Some news on the area code front: The split of AC 904 in North Florida has been clarified. Contrary to earlier reports, the new AC created in the split will be 352 and not 850. The southern part of AC 804 will become 352, the Panhandle retains 904. Daytona Beach (and Volusia Co.) were originally to be moved to the new code, but the consortium of landline and wireless companies planning the split decided to keep it in 904, at least for a while. 352 will contain Gainesville, Leesburg, Ocala; 904 will retain Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, Panama City, Pensacola, Tallahassee; The split is effective 12/3/95 and the permissive period ends 5/20/96. AC 320 has been assigned to the split of AC 612 in central Minnesota (to take place sometime in March 1996). Metro Minneapolis/St.Paul will keep 612, the rest of Central Minnesota will move to AC 320. As part of the the 612/320 split, 5 communities SE of the Twin Cities (the biggest of which seems to be Red Wing) will switch from AC 612 to AC 507. My complete file on area code changes in 1995 may be obtained by anonymous FTP to gemini.tuc.noao.edu in pub/grandi/npa1995.txt Steve Grandi, National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tucson, Arizona USA Internet: grandi@noao.edu Voice: +1 520 318-8228 ------------------------------ I am doing a research paper on "Online Services: Technology, Applications, and Vendors." If anyone has information that may help or know places where I can find information, please send the details directly to my e-mail address: ssadasiv@ix.netcom.com Thanks in advance for your help. ------------------------------ I recently recieved a bill I incurred during a recent vacation. I made several phone calls from my motel room to numbers within the state of california. They charged me $9.13 for a four minute call (apparently four minutes is the minimum). I was billed through Pac-Bell by Communication Telesystems International for this. I have absolutely no intention of paying this bill. Can anyone suggest grounds by which I can get this overturned at the PUC? The phone was blocked (we tried 102880). Thanks, Jerald R. Pendleton (Jerry) - Tech Support Lead Engineer - Wind River Systems Corporate Headquarters: 1010 Atlantic Ave, Alameda, Ca. 94501 email:jerald@wrs.com phone:1-510-814-2563 Non-WRS- email:pendleto@ix.netcom.com ------------------------------ DSC Communications (214-519-4358) will announce enhancements to it's TC421 Transcoder at Cellucomm 95. The enhancments will improve performance in transmitting data over voice networks. Since data traffic does not lend itself to voice-style compression, previous four to one transcoders, designed primarily for voice traffic, have been limited to a data rate of 9.6 kbs or lower. The enhancements to this product will improve performance dramatically. The TC421 Transcoder is a part of the comprehensive DSC transmission product portfolio, which is integrated via DSC's network management line. DSC is a leading designer, developer, manufacturer and marketer of digital switching, transmission, access and private network system products for the worldwide telecommunications marketplace. DSC's new transcoder is one of many exciting products being announced and displayed at Cellucomm 95. If you would like information on attending, e-mail 75260.710@compuserve.com or call 517-337-3995. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #381 ******************************