TELECOM Digest Tue, 6 Dec 94 13:54:30 CST Volume 14 : Issue 440 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Cellular Roaming in New York Suspended (Sri Changiana) Re: Cellular Roaming in New York Suspended (Paul Beker) Re: Cellular Roaming in New York Suspended (Rick Duggan) Re: Cellular One Pulls the Plug on Visitors (Richard L Barnaby) Re: Cellular One Pulls the Plug on Visitors (Bradley Ward Allen) Re: Regulation about Microwave Usage in the US? (Dean Heinen) Re: Regulation about Microwave Usage in the US? (Patton M. Turner) Re: DTMF to Serial Port Help Wanted (John Lundgren) Re: DTMF to Serial Port Help Wanted (Mike Morris) Re: Meaning of Line Build Out on CSU (Dave O'Shea) Re: 911 From Unactivated Cell Phone? (Steven H. Lichter) Re: Metered Pulse Call Costing in Europe (Steve McKinty) Re: Rochester Tel Open Market Plan (Chris Calley) Re: 1200 Bell Atlantic Workers Suspended in Labor Dispute (Rick Dennis) Re: 1200 Bell Atlantic Workers Suspended in Labor Dispute (Dale Farmer) Re: 1200 Bell Atlantic Workers Suspended in Labor Dispute (Bill Rushmore) Stupid Things to do at Work (Gavin A. Karelitz) 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. 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. * ********************************************************************** *** Additionally, 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. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: visnet@onramp.net (Sri Changiana Saar Sikorogaeshn Karagadych) Subject: Re: Cellular Roaming in New York Suspended Date: Tue, 06 Dec 1994 11:59:39 -0600 Organization: United Rulers of Mankind, Local 112 In article , Greg Monti wrote: > Outgoing calls may still be made. However, they will > be intercepted by an operator who will request your credit card > information for billing purposes. Call set-up charges and per minute > rates will be significantly higher than todays' standard roaming > rates. Emergency calls to 911 will continue to be free. Is this legal for for them to do? "Hello Valued Customer, we've decided, with no warning, that you will now have to pay us three times the normal fee, and risk having your credit card numbers stolen, in order to use the phone service that you contracted with us to have. What? You didn't read the fine print that allows us to do this? Sorry, stop going to New York then." Listen, I'd be outraged too if someone stole my cellular phone number, and I'd do something about it. But if I had business in Washington and New York to regularly attend to (and they can't pretend no one does...) I'd be even more outraged at having my phone service cut off. If it is such a problem, then let the op-assisted calls be rated at the same as direct dial for their few roaming customers in New York. Jeez, how many Washington Cell One customers can be in NY at any one moment? Couple of thousand at most I'd think. Makes you think Cell One would be delighted to invoke this anti-crime procedure in all their service areas. Can they get around tariffs like this, or are such emergency procedures automatically allowed? If I was up there and had that policy handed down to me, I'd sue Cell One's hind legs off to make them comply with my contract. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They don't care about getting sued. They get sued all the time for one reason or another. That would be a totally meaningless threat to them. And if you want the landline telco to have to eat the difference in charges (as a result of using credit card billing) their answer would be that it was not their idea; they are simply responding in their usual way (and at their usual rate structure) to requests for long distance calls billed on credit cards. They would say its not their fault that the vendor you chose for cellular service is imposing these new terms. This reminds me of when the neighborhood committee to help fight in the War on Drugs (when I used to live in Chicago) got Illinois Bell to change payphones in the area to 'no coin' during evening and overnight hours. Supposedly drug dealers don't have calling cards or third numbers to be billed to, and even if they did, they would not want to leave a paper trail. Legitimate users asked Bell if they would waive the operator surcharge from payphones affected in this way. Heck no said Bell. It was not our idea to restrict those phones, we are just trying to comply with community demands. You'll get the same rap from the landline carrier in New York ... it wasn't their idea to set it up this way, although they'll be glad to have the extra business. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pbeker@netcom.com (Paul Beker) Subject: Re: Cellular Roaming in New York Suspended Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 20:34:55 GMT Greg Monti writes: > I am a Cellular One Washington-Baltimore customer (system owned by > Southwestern Bell). I just got an oversized yellow postcard in the > mail. Verbatim: [ stuff deleted .. PB ] > Outgoing calls may still be made. However, they will > be intercepted by an operator who will request your credit card > information for billing purposes. Call set-up charges and per minute > rates will be significantly higher than todays' standard roaming > rates. Emergency calls to 911 will continue to be free. What a pathetic case of pass-the-buck! So, now Joe Blow with a plain old scanner (no specialized equipment at all) can listen in to a continuous, totally free, and totally safe broadcast stream of credit card numbers, expiration dates, and names instead. Great. Paul Beker - Atlanta, GA pbeker@netcom.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well not really ... if you have spent any time at all illicitly listening to cellular phone conversations in the 850-890 megahertz range on a scanner which has been modified -- you have to get the mods done, they don't sell them with that frequency range intact -- then you would know it is not quite like tuning into a radio talk show host and sitting there listening all day. All you get are whisps of conversations, a few seconds of this one, and a few seconds of that one; maybe with luck a minute or so of some conver- sation. You have 832 channels to be scanned with some on one tower and some on another, etc. As motorists pass from one tower's coverage area to another, the conversation moves from one channel to another and your scanner cannot keep up with any single continuous conversation. When it drops off, your scanner will start searching again, but it will run into half a dozen other conversations before it gets back to the one you were listening to, if it ever finds it again. So you can't just sit there with pencil and paper copying down credit card numbers. This is what annoys me so much where the privacy freaks are concerned in their arguments against giving out credit card numbers over cell phone (either phone cards or 'actual' credit cards). If a person had two or three scanners set up going at one time, trying to listen to all of them and he listened 24 hours per day in a major urban area he *might* -- and I contend even that is unlikely -- he might happen to hear a valuable number being recited over the air. Of course, he also has to be quick enough to grab a pencil and paper and copy it down right away in its proper context (is it a calling card, a VISA card, or what). Now, he listened all day and heard someone give out a calling card number. That is not a very good rate of return for the investment of his time and effort. What is he going to do, rush right over to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and sell it for ten dollars to someone? All the things the privacy freaks contend can happen are theoretically possible -- but they happen so seldom it hardly warrants any concern; not in the overall scheme of things. I would be more upset about having to pay the operator surcharge on a calling card than I would be about the remote possibility that some fool sitting at home with a couple scanners just happened to hit my channel at the instant I was passing a number to the operator and just happened to recognize it for what it was and just happened to be malicious and just happened to have a pencil and paper handy or a tape recorder turned on, etc. Now if you want to talk about *specialized equipment*, that is a little different. Yes, there are a few people around with that stuff but you still are not going to find a 'continuous stream' of information being passed. They are more likely to get your phone's ESN than they are to get (or be too concerned with) your calling card number. They'd rather have the ESN anyway ... and how do you plan to stop that? PAT] ------------------------------ From: duggan@cc.gatech.edu (Rick Duggan) Subject: Re: Cellular Roaming in New York Suspended Date: 6 Dec 1994 11:09:36 -0500 Organization: College of Computing In article , Greg Monti wrote: > Cellular Fraud on the Increase! [information on thieves stealing cell phone info deleted] > Outgoing calls may still be made. However, they will > be intercepted by an operator who will request your credit card > information for billing purposes. Cellular One's response to ESN fraud? Give us your credit card number over your phone. Brilliant. Rick Duggan - duggan@cc.gatech.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In a way it makes sense. With the ESN at hand -- and that is really what they get the most of -- direct dial calls can go all over the world. Add in the requirement to have a calling card and you've put one more obstacle in the way of the freaks. In other words not only must they be properly tuned in with specialized equipment to capture your ESN, but now they have to be listening to just the right conversations; the one out of a hundred or so where they got the ESN and the person happens to be making a long distance call and needs to speak his card number, and they got there just at the right five second period to hear him saying his number to the operator. The average guy with a Radio Shack scanner he bought sitting at home for a couple hours every night snooping is not going to hear very much of value; he certainly will not get the ESN on the phones and he may or may not possibly overhear some number being recited that means something. PAT] ------------------------------ From: barnaby@world.std.com (Richard L Barnaby) Subject: Re: Cellular One Pulls the Plug on Visitors Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 07:02:14 GMT > Do the next-generation digital cellular sets provide any better > security? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think you could cancel your contract > with them on the premises that they had violated the contract or changed > the terms without proper notice when they cut out roaming in the area. PAT] Interesting point. I just drove from Vermont via NYC, Wash DC, across 40 to LA. I was unable to roam in so many places, I just gave up. Sure keeps the phone bill down :-) . They would be happy to complete my call with a credit card. What? Give my card number over the air? I don't think so given the climate. There's an opportunity for someone to figure out how to beat em. barnaby@world.std.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: See my earlier comments. I am not advocating giving your number over the air repeatedly, but once here and once there along the way is not likely to cause a problem, not for the five seconds or so you are 'exposed' in your quick passing of the number to the operator. Anyway, why not instead punch it in using the touchtones on your cellular phone? You know, in the form of 0+AC+number+calling card+PIN. If someone is listening, they are going to wish they had been taping recording those (usually meaningless to the human ear) beeps of your calling card entry. Overall, don't get too uptight about it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ulmo@panix.com (bradley ward allen) Subject: Re: Cellular One Pulls the Plug on Visitors Date: 6 Dec 1994 08:38:45 -0500 Organization: URL:http://www.armory.com/~ulmo/ (see rivers.html for PGP key) This is funny. As with many of these articles, they suggest the solution to the problem of finding another way to steal access: You can no longer do this: > "Cellular One has temporarily suspended a service that allows > out-of-town visitors to use their phones in the New York City area > because cellular bandits have been stealing their phone numbers." So you now have to do this: > "Fraud in New York has reach the point that thieves stole codes of > phones used by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner William > Bratton earlier this year." Gee. Every time I see something like this, I wonder if the reporters *want* me to switch from a paying customer to some other type of customer ... I'll note my average bill went down from $800 to $400 in the last two to three months, with 90% of calls charged being received calls in both cases. The $800 bills were due to a large number of received calls which as soon as I answered the caller hung up. I believe it was not a fraud issue with Cellular One, but it is possible I am wrong. I've never spotted outbound dialed calls which weren't mine. Perhaps the benefit of having a phone model that is not sold locally? (When I accidentally dropped it eight stories and had insurance, I had to wait a week for the replacement (same model) to come in. Argh.) I live in the same neighborhood as Giuliani; perhaps it's someplace else he's going to where his codes get stollen. Finally, LA Cellular credited my account with portions of a claim I made against them; they settled it ``informally'', but I was at least satisfied that they finally admitted to some wrongdoing. I regard them better now. ------------------------------ From: nts@andes.pnw.net (Dean Heinen) Subject: Re: Regulation About Microwave Usage in the US? Date: 6 Dec 1994 16:14:07 -0800 Organization: Pacific Northwest Net Juergen Ziegler (juergen@jojo.sub.de) wrote: > While travelling in the US, I recognized a large number of microwave > links. Mostly to be operated by several telecommunications carriers > like local or long-distance companies. > But it seems to me, that "private" operators had their own links. Such as > one factory plant to be linked to another. > What is the regulation about such microwave links in the US? Under CFR 47, Part 94 Any citizen, or company (corporation) owned by a citizen of the U.S. may apply for license to operate a microwave communications link. There are many bands designated to this, and a user must have the proposed link "coordinated" by an F.C.C. recognized coordination firm. It is also a good idea to have the system designed and installed by a qualified microwave communications company, such as, Dean A. Heinen Northwest Technical Services email address : nts@teleport.com or nts@pnw.net voice address : (509) 452-7997 snail mail address: 623 S. 17th Ave. : Yakima, WA 98902 ------------------------------ From: pturner@netcom.com (Patton M Turner) Subject: Re: Regulation About Microwave Usage in the US? Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 02:27:16 GMT Paul A. Lee writes: Excelent post deleted. Actually the FAA approval is trivial unless you are near the approach surface or an airport. I have an HF antenna that we have to call them if we want to move, because it is 5000' from the end of a runway. Of course the antenna is 30' high and another 20' of tower must be added to install or remove. All of this is on top of a 6 story building. úÿ