TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 15:15:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 59 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson **REMAILED SINCE VARIOUS READERS REPORTED NOT RECEIVING THIS ISSUE WHEN** **FIRST MAILED ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON. IF DUPLICATE TO YOU, PLEASE DISGARD** Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (John Lundgren) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (G. Straughn) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Ed Goldgehn) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Barry Margolin) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Peter Knoppers) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Paul Houle) Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? (John Dearing) Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? (John Lundgren) Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book? (John Levine) 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: 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: 24 Jan 1995 15:08:11 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Pete Norloff (eyegaz1@ibm.net) wrote: > I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance fees > between long distance carriers and the RBOCs. I've found casual > references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the > RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance > calls and keep 50% for themselves. This 25% was referred to as > something like "line termination charges". It's the payment to the > local carrier for connecting one end of the call. I heard somewhere that this might have something to do with the number of connections that the RBOC supplies. There don't have to be as many connections to the long distance carriers as there are subscribers. > I'm hoping to find an authoritative reference to help me in an > argument with a Bell Atlantic engineer. This engineer believes that > Bell Atlantic is providing the terminating end of long distance calls > to the long distance carriers for free. I know I'm paying something like $3.50 a month to be connected to the LD carriers. At one time, it was something like $2, and was upped to $3.50. Maybe the difference at one time was paid by the LD carriers but it was later shifted to the subscribers. I think it had something to do with the old AT&T Long Lines high profits funding the local exchanges (before breakup). I know that my next bill will have another couple bucks added to the basic service charges to make up for the money lost from letting the LD carriers compete for intraLATA toll calls. That's going to make a lot of old ladies unhappy. I'm not pleased about it either, but I can afford it. Our district, with $30K bill, will be getting a four percent raise. That's about $1200 a month. I guess I should be happy. But the Pac Bell reps say that it will be a wash when the toll rates are factored in. Hmmm. > Anyone have any information on this topic? Just mostly rumor and hearsay, and a decade of faded memories. John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs Rancho Santiago Community College District 17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706 jlundgre@pop.rancho.cc.ca.us\jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com ------------------------------ From: gregs@best.com (g straughn) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 09:40:06 -0800 Organization: BEST Internet (415) 964-2378 In article , eyegaz1@ibm.net wrote: > I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance fees > between long distance carriers and the RBOCs. I've found casual > references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the > RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance > calls and keep 50% for themselves. This 25% was referred to as > something like "line termination charges". It's the payment to the > local carrier for connecting one end of the call. In California, Pacific Bell charges $0.0142 per minute of "terminating access" to all IEC's, this rate is regulated at the FCC and I suspect Bell Atlantic has a similar tariff on file at the FCC. Greg S. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 00:37:58 -0500 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs eyegaz1@ibm.net (Pete Norloff) asks, > I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance fees > between long distance carriers and the RBOCs. I've found casual > references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the > RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance > calls and keep 50% for themselves. This 25% was referred to as > something like "line termination charges". It's the payment to the > local carrier for connecting one end of the call. In the olden days (before 1984's FCC-mandated rules change, which coincidentally was the same time as the Bell breaksup), there were "separations and settlements" in which the overall toll revenues were divided based upon a complex formula. Nowadays, the local companies use certain formulas to justify the rates they charge for "access" by LD carriers. When an inter-LATA call is carried from and/or to a local carrier, the inter-LATA carrier pays a tariffed rate. The last time I looked, the lowest rates were just over 3c/minute for either the originating or terminating end (thus over 6c/minute for both ends), but up to around 5c/minute for some telcos. There may also be a distance charge for intra-LATA calling TO the carrier's POP; typically this is 1/100 of a cent per minute per mile. That's their real "toll" cost base! In a few obscure cases (very small telcos) the price can be much higher, so the interexchange carrier is guaranteed to lose money on it. (America's Network columnist Art Brothers owns one such telco, Beehive Tel in Utah, which has extremely high costs and thus can charge something like 90c/minute to terminate calls there.) If a customer has direct access to an interexchange carrier switch (say, a T1 into the POP), thus not using (let's not use the "b word", bypass, here) the local Bell's switched network, the fee is avoided. Most big 800 numbers work that way, so only the consumer (caller) end invokes a Bell charge. The flip side is that for intra-LATA toll calls, a customer who hooks up as a carrier gets a lower price (3-5c/minute) than almost anybody's intra-LATA WATS rate. This is not impossible for a large user (there's a game called "rusty switch" in case you need to leave the LATA) so intra-LATA tolls are being forced down. NYNEX, at least, understands this and charges only around 5c/minutes for bulk business toll, and actually encourages big users to go directly to their own toll switches and hook up as carriers do for around 3c/minute. ------------------------------ From: edg@ocn.com (Ed Goldgehn) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: 24 Jan 1995 16:10:23 GMT Organization: The INTERNET Connection, LLC All fees charges for LD termination can normally be found in the Feature Group tariffs. Normally, LD carriers fall under (last I heard) Feature Group 'D' tariffs due to their method of termination. You can request a copy of these tariffs from each of the RBOC's or from the PUC in any State. BTW, the method of charges is entirely different for LD service in the cellular industry. With cellular, it is not unusual for local cellular carriers (RBOC's or otherwise) to provide FREE or flat rate termination charges to LD carriers. Ed Goldgehn E-Mail: edg@ocn.com Sr. Vice President Voice: (404) 919-1561 Open Communication Networks, Inc. Fax: (404) 919-1568 ------------------------------ From: producer@pipeline.com (Judith Oppenheimer) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: 24 Jan 1995 13:56:27 -0500 Organization: Interactive CallBrand(TM) Pete, you're absolutely right and this is a GIANT issue and always has been. This is known as "access charges" and is a basic feature of the phone charges. WHY DO YOU THINK THE LD CARRIERS ARE SO INTERESTED IN WIRELESS? It bypasses the local access charges and they keep the whole banana. This is a major threat to Local that is struggling anyway. This is the most likely reason RBOC's will get relief against the prohibition on doing long distance. Because: 1. Technically LD carriers will be providing local service which is prohibited too. 2. Local Service providers will have to jack up rates to survive and that angers users who for the most part don't make long distance calls (95% of all traffic is local, 40% of LD is to 800 numbers.) 3. The local rates have already been jacked up because those companies have lost the off setting revenue they use to get from LD before divestature, so angry localities are demanding competition for local service just like there is competition for LD. To do that would drive prices down even further and really kill the RBOC's. 4. Local's revenue stream is from access charges. To their benefit though, they do get the fee even if the call isn't completed. RBOC's will have to be allowed to do long distance, provide information services, provide video delivery and anything else they can to off set lost access charges. Judith Oppenheimer, Producer@Pipeline.com ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: 24 Jan 1995 11:15:26 -0500 Organization: NEARnet, Cambridge, MA In article md@pstc3.pstc.brown.edu (Michael P. Deignan) writes: > Can you really say when a fraudulent call is placed that the loss is > $.50? Not really. Loss implies that you're depriving the company of > something that they otherwise couldn't sell. In a cell call case, its > bandwidth. Unless bandwidth is saturated, the "fraudulent" cell call > is simply using unoccupied bandwidth that would simply be assigned to > a legit call. It's not quite that simple. Telecommunications providers generally engineer their network so that the bandwidth should never be saturated; it's common to target something like 40-60% load. So if fraudulent calls increase the load on the network, the carrier will have to increase the capacity to accomodate it. This costs money, but because the calls are fraudulent there's no corresponding income to pay for it. This is precisely the same as any other kind of theft: the vendor fails to receive income when someone gets something that the vendor paid for. Barry Margolin BBN Internet Services Corp. barmar@near.net ------------------------------ From: knop@dutecai.et.tudelft.nl (Peter Knoppers) Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: 24 Jan 1995 13:37:18 GMT Organization: Delft University of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering The preceding discussion compared cellular fraud with making illegal copies of software or tapping the signals from the cable television company. I believe that those cannot be compared because cellular phone facilities and the cable television signals can easily be pro- tected from fraud or theft without hampering the legitimate users, unlike software, where copy-protection invariably reduces the use- fullness and attractiveness of the product. A cellular phone or cable television facility is a product that has value. Protection from fraud is technically feasible and affordable and does not reduce the usefullness of the system. (In fact increased protection from fraud _increases_ the attractiveness by reducing the probability that customers are billed for calls that they did not make.) The fact that the providers of cellular phone systems do not protect their product suggests that said providers make more profit from the product in its current state than they would if the product was adequately protected. The legitimate users pay part of the cost of the fraud. More is paid by the taxpayers through the provision of police and justice systems that track down and prosecute phreakers. Using taxpayer's money to track down and prosecute phreakers should stop until the providers of cellular phone systems add _reasonable_ protection from fraud to their product. Customers of those cellular phone companies (should) know that each bill must be scrutinized and anticipate to dispute billing errors. If they do not want the hassle, customers should select a provider that has a better product. Cable companies can protect their product from unauthorised use (i.e. theft) at a reasonable price without hampering legitimate users. Regretfully, software producers do not have this luxury, therefore it is acceptable that software producers rely (in part) on the police and justice systems to control illegal copying. Generally, everyone is obliged to make a reasonable effort to protect his or her products and properties from theft, vandalism or misuse. The police and justice systems are public services for cases where reasonable protection fails, or is impossible. Peter Knoppers - knop@duteca.et.tudelft.nl ------------------------------ From: ph18@crux2.cit.cornell.edu (Paul Houle) Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 22:12:09 -0500 Organization: Cornell University > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does it matter, Paul? Does it really > matter? Should stealing someone's 'profits' be any less severe an > offense than stealing their actual cash? You may not be condoning cell- > ular phone fraud, but you sure know how to speak the language of the > phreaks and hackers.] I think it does matter, because when companies hue and cry about fictional losses they add to the cloud of media distorsions about technology. To take an example, a friend of mine brought an AP story to my attention today about an "attack" on the internet that makes it possible for people to "steal information" and makes it sound like it is a really great crisis that is a fantastic threat to the "information superhighway", that people are going to tap future commerical traffic on the internet to steal credit card numbers and so forth. Now it's certainly true that people are doing things like this, but our beef with the article is that this has been going on as long as there has been an internet, as long as we've had data networks, and that it's something that we're going to live with as long as we have data networks. The media plays up particular incidents as if they were world shattering, as if they were warning us that there is a band of cocaine-crazed Lybian terrorists hiding an atomic bomb in somebody's basement, instead of recognizing individual network 'incidents', computer viruses and so forth as rather common events: not any more newsworthy in themselves then would be individual muggings in central park. What the media ought to be doing is to put electronic intrusion, vandalism and crime into context, how this is a problem inherent in our social organization and technology and that it's something that we have to find ways to live with, instead of something that we should be cowering in fear about. Similarly, every few months, some paper somewhere prints a story about the discovery of a "vast pornographic computer network" with 8 million users, thousands of sites and so forth. That's right, somebody just stumbled onto the alt.sex hierarchy or a secret cache of porno GIF's, so now your local paper prints that the local research úÿ university has not only been corrupted by post-modernist deconstructionalist Marxist English professors, but adding insult to injury, is part of an international porn conspiracy called USENET. There's no mention, of course, that you can also read comp.dcom.telecom, rec.arts.startrek.tech, sci.chemistry, comp.os. linux.announce, or even alt.angst! [Except of course, when an AT&T PR man told the media that people from the "network" (meaning comp.dcom.telecom) who were communicating and complaining about the USA Today 800/900 incident were people who were interested in "getting something for nothing". (Remember that Pat?)] More recently, we can consider media coverage of the Canter & Siegel affair, heroes of the {Wall Street Journal} editorial page right up there with Milton Freedman, Arthur Laffer and Margaret Thatcher. It hurts the electronic community when software publishers wildly overestimate their "losses" due to software piracy. It leads to alarmism, crippled shareware, and looses dongle-peddling charlatans on the street. [Why don't dongle ads show the twenty-odd dongles that you'd have hanging off your parallel port if every software publisher used dongles? A fellow worker had what amounted to a cute little CNC milling machine that cut traces out of circuit boards; it was controlled by a propreitary piece of software that ran on an IBM PC -- and even though the software was only useful to control a piece of hardware manufactured by one company, it was still "protected" with a dongle!] Digital storage and communications create a crisis in intellectual property, this is a technological fact. Our society needs to find some way to protect the rights of people that produce information products and those that use them -- and when industry screams like chicken little about hypothetical losses, it doesn't help us think clearly about the problem. It is the same thing with the cellular phone companies; the problem of cellular phone fraud is real; but if they want the public [including the police, regulators, etc] to be part of the solution, they'd best come clean about the economics of cellular phones. ObAnswer: To directly address Paul Robinson's question, I had the impression that an awful lot of cellular phone phraud is directed out-of-the-country, particularly to third-world countries that have absurdly high phone rates. According to a phriend, a cloned phone is typically going to cost an "end user" something in the $100-$300 range, though people sometimes program phones for less (like $50 or so); you have to talk a ~long~ time to justify that cost making local and long distance calls in the US. Compare this to a typical cost of $8 or so for a code. Unless Colombian Dial-a-Druglord and Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone are remarkably forgiving, I think cellular phone carriers ~are~ paying for those calls. ------------------------------ From: jdearing@netaxs.com (John Dearing) Subject: Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? Date: 24 Jan 1995 04:40:12 GMT Organization: Netaxs Internet BBS and Shell Accounts Alan Jackson (alan@sccsi.com) wrote: > What's the difference between the two as far as the user is concerned? In a word, SPEED. In another word, COST. T1 gives you a 1.544MB/sec circuit. T3 is a 45MB/sec circuit. The prices for the terminal gear that goes on the end of a T1 have come down a lot over the last few years as more companies start using T1's. The end user market for T3 terminal gear is still pretty small (but growing). One application (besides Internet backbone trunks) that is pushing the use of T3's is full-motion commercial broadcast quality video conferencing. John Dearing jdearing@netaxs.com ------------------------------ From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? Date: 24 Jan 1995 00:04:16 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Alan Jackson (alan@sccsi.com) wrote: > What's the difference between the two as far as the user is concerned? ^$$^ Bye-bye! Lotsa difference in $. If you can't afford either one, why bother to ask ... Don't quote me on this, but I think there's a difference of 28 times the data thruput between them. T-3 = 28 T-1's and then some. John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs Rancho Santiago Community College District 17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706 jlundgre@pop.rancho.cc.ca.us\jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John Levine) Subject: Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book? Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 02:56:14 GMT > A typical phone book with both white and yellow pages has a > map with a large white area surrounding a smaller yellow area. > What is this map trying to tell me? Around here, NYNEX makes big bucks by having zillions of different Yellow Pages, far more than they have white pages. For example, the West Suburban white pages are available by themselves, or bound with three different sets of yellow pages for subareas of the area covered by the white pages. So the map means what it seems to, the white pages cover a larger area than the yellow pages. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com Primary perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies" ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #59 *****************************