TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Feb 95 00:28:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 83 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Allocates Data-PCS Spectrum (Bennett Z. Kobb) 911 Access in Jeopardy (Jim Conran) Speculations Regarding AT&T True Connections (John Shelton) Where are the CTI Environments? (Scott Sanbeg) The Philosophy of CallerID (Malcolm Slaney) Special Alert! Unreasonable Network Policing Proposed (Carlos Amezaga) Who Belongs to 10732 Five-Digit Access Code? (Thomas Grant Edwards) Survey of IT-Consumption in USA (Morgan Widung) Custom IVR (Jack Pestaner) Motorola Flip Phone and Low Battery (Erik P. Larson) Human Intrusion (Dale Neiburg) 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. 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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: bkobb@newsignals.com (Bennett Z. Kobb) Subject: FCC Allocates Data-PCS Spectrum Organization: New Signals Press Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 22:31:31 GMT Here is the news release issued by the FCC today on the 2.4 GHz allocation. (The full text of the decision has not yet been released.) Congratulations to all concerned for a job very well done. Bennett Kobb bkobb@newsignals.com Editor and publisher Spectrum Guide Federal Communications Commission NEWS February 7, 1995 Action in Docket Case (ET Docket No. 94-32) The FCC has allocated 50 Megahertz of spectrum, at 2390-2400 MHz, 2402-2417 MHz, and 4660-4685 MHz, that was transferred from Federal Government to private sector use. The allocations adopted by the Commission today will benefit the public by providing for the introduction of new services, such as wireless local area networks, and the enhancement of existing services. Among other things, these services will allow companies to operate more efficiently by communicating through wireless networks that are flexible enough to operate almost anywhere. They also will allow low cost access to Internet services and other information networks for schools, libraries, telecommuters and home offices. In addition, these services will allow for better health care through wireless health care monitoring devices and allow the instantaneous updating of health care records and databases. The Commission stated that this 50 MHz is the first of at least 200 MHz of spectrum required to be reallocated from Federal Government to private sector use in accordance with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. The Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 required the Commission to adopt allocations for and propose regulations to assign this first 50 MHz of spectrum by February 10, 1995. The Commission allocated the 2390-2400 MHz bad for use by unlicensed Personal Communications Services (PCS), provided for continued use of the 2402-2417 MHz band by unlicensed devices operating in accordance with Part 15 of the Rules, maintained the availability of both of these bands for use by the Amateur service, and allocated the band 4660-4685 for Fixed and Mobile services. The Commission stated that unlicensed PCS devices, which include wireless networking and data transfer devices, operating in the 2390-2400 MHz band will be governed by the same rules that apply to PCS devices operating in the 1910-1920 MHz band. Power levels, emission limits, and spectrum etiquette for unlicensed PCS devices operating at 2390-2400 MHz are identical with requirements for asynchronous (data) devices operating at 1910-1920 MHz. The Commission believes that allocating the band for unlicensed data-PCS, and providing for use of 2402-2417 MHz by Part 15 devices, will provide for the continued development and implementation of a new generation of advanced communications devices and services, such as wireless local area networks, digital cordless telephones, electronic article surveillance equipment, utility metering devices, fire and security alarm devices, and wireless bar code readers. In addition to offering the potential for providing greater safety and security to citizens and allowing business to operate more efficiently, this new family of devices offers the potential to directly benefit a large percentage of the public by providing a new "on-ramp" to the information superhighway. Corresponding to the Fixed and Mobile allocation for the 4660-4685 MHz band, the Commission proposed technical, assignment and service rules. Action by the Commission February 7, 1995, by First Report and Order and Second Notice of Proposed Rule Making (FCC 95-//). ------------------------------ From: jconran@watson.policy.net (Jim Conran) Subject: 911 Access in Jeopardy Date: 7 Feb 1995 21:08:23 GMT Organization: Capital Area Internet Service info@cais.com 703-448-4470 Cellular phone users throughout the country could have their 911 emergency access in jeopardy if action is not taken immediately. The FCC issued a proposed rulemaking on October 19, 1994 that to look into the matter of revising FCC rules and regulations to ensure compatibility to 911 enhanced services. Comments to the FCC from concerned citizens will be accepted until February 8, 1995. Your action is greatly needed on this matter if 911 services are to be accessible by all cellular users. Please do not wait until a natural or other disaster strikes before you realize how valuable full accessibility to 911 emergency services is for all citizens. To learn how to take immediate action on this issue: http://watson.policy.net/cf/cf.html gopher://watson.policy.net:70/11/.cf email: jconran@911.policy.net Jim Conran Executive Director Consumers First jconran@911.policy.net P.O. Box 2346 Orinda, CA 94563 510/253-1937 510/253-1359 (Fax) ------------------------------ From: John Shelton Subject: Speculations Regarding AT&T True Connections Date: Tue, 7 Feb 95 13:39:55 PDT Here are some speculations re: AT&T True Connections service: * Use of SS7 to better judge whether a phone is answered or busy or whatever. - Note: AT&T says if you have a sequence of numbers, and one is busy, they will skip to the next one. - Note: AT&T says sequencing option is not available to some customers, *yet*. * AT&T sees this as a way to keep customers loyal. - $1/mo isn't very much revenue for the basic service. But you need to have AT&T service on that line. - Those of us with multiple phone lines can of course keep AT&T service on one line (for TrueConnections billing) and use MCI or whatever for the other lines. * Some PBX systems will continue to block calls to NPA 500 for quite a while. They won't see the utility, and may even be suspicious that it's "like 900". * Other carriers will not charge the same rates for calls to NPA 500. The 500 number space will become a big mess for a while, until things settle down and some consortium addresses the issue. (Who does set the rate for such a call; the caller's LD company, or the destination's LD company??) John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: AT&T sets the rates (or whatever company offers the 500 service, such as Ameritech also proposes to do) for calls since you are connecting to them. It is much like calling an 800 number in that the billing is done by the company whose prefix you dial into. All your local telco will be doing is handing the call off to AT&T (or other 500 carrier.) I think from now on the *only* phone number I am going to give out (on forms I complete, etc) is my 500 number. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ssanbeg@coho.halcyon.com (Scott Sanbeg) Subject: Where Are the CTI Environments? Date: 8 Feb 1995 00:05:19 GMT Organization: NW NEXUS, Inc. -- Internet Made Easy (206) 455-3505 A lot has been happening with CTI ... it was happening last year when I attended the conference in Dallas and much is hyped over in the industry rags. However, my company has looked into many environments over the past year and have, so far, found only one that seems it will be suitable (when it's completed). A full featured application out of Florida is called Dimi/TAS. Agent stations are MS-Windows (or ...) clients connecting to a central server or more. I've reviewed AmTelco's Infinity system where telephony and data are on seperate networks altogether, using MS-Windows DDE capabilities to automatically hot-key between the two nets. We're familiar with Eve, Startel, TASCOM, others. But, our call center environment is too large for entry-level network topologies. We look like this: _______ |-------| Fiber | | __| MUX | | | |_______| T1's, ISDN, # Call Center | | Other WAN Server 1 | | (FDDI RING #1) Connections | * Router ||| # Call Center | (Firewall) # Communications ||| Server 2 | Server ||| | ||| (FDDI RING #2) # Call Center | |----| ||| Server 3 | | |Modem Pool ||| |____| |(192 ports)________ ** Bigger Router @@@@@@... |____| (Firewall) 65 Agent Stations Beyond that, we have used the telco approach with -48 volt power supplies, everything is redundant, we generate our our AC and have a large natural gas generator for when and if city utilities go out, a wall of batteries dual-homed/dual-attached/dual counter-rotating ring FDDI switches connecting the servers and dedicated 10Mbps Ethernet going to each Agent Station. One Call Center Server is a fault- tolerant Tandem. We have many T1 spans and have been in business for 58 years. We just don't need an entry-level topology, as you may see. What we do need is a client-server based product that will run well on 65 Windows-for-Workgroups clients, and understand Tandem's CAM (for telephony integration, screen pops, etc.). The product we need incorp- orates functions of an answering service and a call center (message taking and order taking), with the ability to send data out via fax, remote printer, PC pickup, etc. Who knows such a critter? Scott Computer Systems Engineer, Seattle, WA ssanbeg@halcyon.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 19:35:53 +0000 From: malcolm@interval.com (Malcolm Slaney) Subject: The Philosophy of CallerID The article listed below (with abstract) does an incredibly good job of discussing the issues in CallerID and Anonymous call-rejection. The article's primary purpose is to define four types of privacy and how they relate to CallerID: Anonyminity - public place but no ID Solitude - Don't be disturbed Reserve - Mental distance Intimacy - Screening To make the issue more interesting, who wins and loses depends on who has access to the technology. This article should be required reading for anybody who wants to enter into the debate. I think the definitions and framework are a valuable starting point. Malcolm ----------------------- Caller ID and the Meaning of Privacy Laurie Thomas Lee (Univ of Nebraska-Lincoln) Robert LaRose (Michigan State) The Information Society, Volume 1, pp 247-265, 1994. Caller ID service continues to be controversial issue in the U.S. because of its privacy implications. State and federal regulators, legislaters, scholars, and the courts have examined and responded to the privacy issue from a policy perspective, but perhaps without a complete understanding of the meaning of privacy in the context of the debate. What types of privacy are involved, how signifiant are these interests, and how might privacy needs compare and be balanced? This article explores privacy in the context of the Caller ID debate from a social science perspective. It examines motives for seeking and preserving privacy and explores the dynamic relationship between the caller and the called party positions. It then provides an analysis of current and proposed Caller ID features and policies with a view towards understanding how these proposals balance competing privacy needs. This article establishes an analytic framework and a foundation for further study of caller and called party privacy that should lead to a better understanding of the privacy debate and the privacy implications of Caller ID. ------------------------------ Organization: Megalith Mail/News Server - Miami, FL USA Reply-To: overlord@megalith.miami.fl.us From: overlord@megalith.miami.fl.us (Carlos Amezaga) Subject: Special Alert! Unreasonable Network Policing Proposed Date: Tue, 07 Feb 1995 20:57:00 EST -> EMA ALERT <- News For and About the Members of the ELECTRONIC MESSAGING ASSOCIATION ============================================================ February 3, 1995 -- Number 18 <----------------------------------------------------------> ***** SPECIAL ALERT ***** - Congress to consider making all system operators liable for messaging content. Bill would force employers to monitor message content. ACTION NEEDED NOW! <----------------------------------------------------------> UNREASONABLE NETWORK POLICING PROPOSED Yesterday, Senator Jim Exon (D-NE) introduced S.314, the Communications Decency Act of 1995, in the United States Senate. In an effort to stamp out digital pornography, it makes all telecommunications providers doing business in the United States (from the telephone companies all the way down to offices that use LANs) liable for the content of anything sent over their networks. To avoid the possibility of tens of thousands of dollars in fines and up to two years in jail, business owners would be forced to police their networks and monitor in advance all messages sent over them. WITHOUT ACTION - COULD BE LAW IN MONTHS This bill is substantially the same as the one he put forward last year. He will offer it as an amendment to the pending telecommunications deregulation legislation in the U.S. Senate, which is expected to be enacted by July. Last year, his amendment was adopted even though many thought it hastily drafted and poorly thought out. Fortunately, the telecommunications deregulation legislation died. This year, a more conservative U.S. Congress may be even more reluctant to challenge a "morality" amendment; and its legislative vehicle, the telecommunications deregulation legislation, stands a much better chance of passage this year. úÿ ACTION NEEDED NOW Action by the business community is needed now. Please notify your corporate government affairs office and/or your legal counsel. This measure could be adopted as an amendment to the telecommunications bill IN A MATTER OF WEEKS (or potentially added to any legislation pending on the U.S. Senate floor), if business does not mobilize against it. S.314 will not stop digital pornography, but it could devastate the messaging business. If you are interested in further information or are able to participate in lobbying efforts over the next few weeks, contact Sarah Reardon at EMA (see below). --------------------------------------- EMA ALERT is published and copyrighted (1995) by the Electronic Messaging Association. Permission to reproduce and/or redistribute with attribution is hereby given to all EMA members. For more information about anything in EMA ALERT, contact EMA via e-mail - use either X.400 (S=info; O=ema; A=mci; C=us) or Internet (info@ema.org) address, facsimile (1-703-524-5558), or telephone (1-703-524-5550). Any EMA staff member can be addressed directly via e-mail by using, for X.400, G=; S=; O=ema; A=mci; C=us, and, for Internet, @ema.org. EMA's postal address is 1655 N. Fort Myer Dr. #850, Arlington, VA 22209 USA. -- % __A500 % UUCP: postmaster@megalith.miami.fl.us % I Tried MS-DOS Once % % __/// 030 % DATA/FAX: +1.305.559.3145 % But Didn't Inhale. % % \\//Amiga % System Administrator - PGP on Request % --D.Atkin-- % ------------------------------ From: tedwards@src.umd.edu (Thomas Grant Edwards) Subject: Who Belongs to 10732 Five-Digit Access Code? Date: 7 Feb 1995 14:44:15 -0500 Organization: Project Glue, University of Maryland, College Park Recently an "urban rumor" has been going around: If you want to know whether your phone has been tapped in the last six months, dial in the following: 107 321 404 988 966 4 What you will get back is a digital recording consisting of (a) your phone's area code; (b) your 7-digit phone-number; (c) the digit 8; (d) a pause of a few seconds; (e) 9 zeroes in three groups of three -- 000 000 000; and (f) a digit. If the digit (f) is a 2, your phone is clear. Otherwise, if it is any other digit (usually it's a 1 in that case), your phone has been tapped in the last six months. OK - obviously this number is 10732-1-404-988-9664. Which provider is the 5-d code 10732? Anyone know mroe details on the 1-404-988-9664? Thomas [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Gosh, what a mystery! If you will be so kind as to dial 10732-1-700-555-4141 the recording which answers will tell you that you have reached 'a private network', and that if you want to get more information you can dial your account representative. For anyone wishing to make a call, we are told to dial (here comes the clue!) 10288 and the number. 10732 is used by AT&T's largest customers. I don't know everything about it that makes it different than 10288, but it does have a few things different. In case you had not noticed, 404-988-9664 cannot be dialed via any other carrier. You can try it; all you will get is a busy signal. This tells us that AT&T is grabbing incoming calls to that number via 10732, intercepting them and delivering them somewhere (probably to themselves at their office in Atlanta) on a T-1, and that the actual phone 988-9664 is just left off the hook all the time. After the recitation of your phone number -- or more precisely, your ANI -- then your account number is read back. It is all zeros because you don't have an account with AT&T, at least not where this particular network is concerned. I don't know what the final digit is, but that bull about 'your phone has been or is being tapped' is just exactly that: Bull! How would AT&T know if some customer of Sprint (for example) had his phone tapped by his local telco, at (for example) the request of law enforcement. Whoever spreads these stories (you perhaps? 'urban legend', indeed!) should stop it now. I don't know what the AT&T private network uses that number for, but I can almost assuredly advise you it has nothing to do with phone taps. PAT] ------------------------------ From: e91mw@efd.lth.se (Morgan Widung) Subject: Survey of IT-Consumption in USA Date: 7 Feb 1995 15:05:34 GMT Organization: Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden Is there anyone out there who knows what companies /organizations/ universities that make investigations about the IT-consumption in the US market (everything from multimedia to mobile phone consumption)? Also, where are those investigations made? Sara Fortea work +4646181085 Ericsson Mobile Communications AB memo: ECS.ECSSAFO Ideon Alpha 232 70 LUND SWEDEN PS. As I have no internetaccess from Ericsson, kindly respond via e91mw@efd.lth.se (Morgan Widung) ------------------------------ From: jackp@ogitel.net (Jack Pestaner) Subject: Custom IVR Date: 7 Feb 1995 16:04:31 GMT Organization: OGI Telecomm; Beaverton, Oregon I am evaluating several solutions to an IVR application, and it occurs to me that developing our own using visual voice software may be a cost effective solution. We want to integrate with our NEC2400 PBX, which has an RS232 connection they call Infolink which provides realtime status information from the ACD processor to external IVR equipment. Apparently,it is an open application and NEC will provide documentation. Our initial application is pretty simple--we want to provide queue status information to the caller, and allow the caller after a predetermined time to exit the queue to voice mail, or be returned to the queue. Commercial IVR companies offer systems but want about 40K to do this. I would like to contract with an experienced developer to do this for us if we benefit from it. Please let me know if you or any associates are interested. ------------------------------ From: larsone2@clunix.cl.msu.edu (Erik P. Larson) Subject: Motorola Flip Phone and Low Battery Date: 7 Feb 1995 17:02:27 GMT Organization: Michigan State University I have a Motorola Omega Series flip phone. I've been satisfied with it for the most part, but does anyone know how to disable the low battery warning beep? It's really annoying and it's very easy to check the status of the battery. Thanks, Erik Larson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 11:19:28 EST From: DNEIBURG@npr.org Subject: Human Intrusion In TELECOM Digest V15 #70, David McCord wrote: > Passed along FYI (For Your Insomnia?) ..... > From: "Mark D. Baushke" > From: fred@cisco.com (Fred Baker) > Subject: Human Intrusion > At a symposium at MIT earlier this year, a representative of the > Communications Workers of America (CWA) began a presentation bemoaning > the loss of union craft jobs among telcos by drawing on the chalkboard > a sketch representing the telco C.O. of the future: [Graphics snipped] > In this picture, there is a single man, a dog and a computer. The > man's job is to feed the dog and the dog's job is to bite the man if > he touches the computer. Years ago, when I first moved to Baltimore, Maryland, I was living in a pretty rough, run-down neighborhood. The only building of any size was a C&P (now Bell Atlantic) CO that towered over the area. To protect vans and other company vehicles, they were parked overnight in an adjoining enclosure, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. As an additional safeguard, there were two very unfriendly guard dogs released in the enclosure overnight. That continued for about a year after I moved in. The practice ended when, one night, someone stole the dogs ... Dale Neiburg, STC National Public Radio Phone: 202-414-2640 635 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001 Internet: dneiburg@npr.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Dogs make excellent security assistants. The City of Chicago has an auto pound over at 30th and California Avenue right behind Cook County Jail. Anyone whose auto is towed out of a place it should not be parked, along with autos which were stolen, stripped and then abandoned on a street somewhere wind up there in the city auto pound. It is a dreadful place. Along with high barbed wire fences, signs warn against trespassing and caution that vicious dogs roam the premises all night. So walking down the sidewalk past there at night, or a Sunday afternoon or other time when the place is deserted, you see these mountains of stripped, rusted out cars, piles of tires and motor parts everywhere, and three or four really vicious, nasty German Shepherds who constantly jump at the fence, growl, bark and bare their teeth at you as you walk past. You can see the hatred in their eyes. Occassionally, I am told, some fools still climb the fence at night, go in and try to strip an auto left there by the police towing or just outright steal it. On the other hand, it is *good* seeing the dogs with the security people on the subway and elevated trains at night. The rate of crime on public transportation at night -- violent or non-violent -- has gone down quite a bit as a result. Those dogs are kept on a strong leash/strap, with wire muzzles around their nose and mouth so they cannot just go up and take a bite out of someone. But let one of them stand next to you on the train at night looking at you; you *know* the dog would love to take a bite out of your leg if he could. Consequently, people are behaving themselves quite nicely on the subway these days, or rather, these nights and early mornings. Coming home from downtown Chicago on a Saturday night, I went in the subway at Jackson Street about 1:00 AM. Nothing surprises me there; that station is like a zoo at night all the time. A very tall man who appears to be intoxicated and high on something has finished drinking beer. He smashes the bottle on the concrete floor and holding the bottle by its neck is menacing anyone and everyone there with the broken peice of glass. Someone has told the fare collection agent upstairs about this and she has started frantically ringing the security bell; very loud bells with big gongs wired in parallel in all the downtown stations. She presses a doorbell button in her cage with a certain cadence to produce a ringing signal on all the bells to say which station needs assistance. Meanwhile downstairs this fellow is on a rampage, screaming and cursing and threatening anyone who comes near him with that broken bottle he is waving and the overhead bells are ringing loudly, two short, one long ... two short, one long. A woman who is one of the Chicago Transit Authority security representatives comes up about that time with Bruno, her dog. She has no gun, but she does have a club I would hate to be on the wrong end of. She stands about ten or fifteen feet away from this guy and looks him right in the face and yells at him: "You scum! Put down that bottle now! Toss it out on the track! He looks at her and stands there. "I told you to put down that bottle! Sit it down there on the floor or toss it out on the track!" Instead of doing either, he starts toward her waving it. In about two seconds she had bent down and pulled the muzzle off Bruno. All the dogs are trained to respond *only* to a word said by their owners. The word is obviously not 'kill', because all sorts of practical jokers on the trains look at the dogs and say that to them; the dog just keeps watching them, but does not respond. In Bruno's case, the secret word was 'love'. "Go love, Bruno! Love!" To the dog, this meant great fun was at hand. He lunges at the dude, knocked him over and was snarling and fighting with him as the woman kicked the beer bottle out of the way and handcuffed the guy. About this time, Chicago Police tactical officers arrive to back her up; they hussle the guy off into the catacombs, some of the odd, desolate little rooms in the bowels of the subway which connect with the remains of the old tunnel system from a century ago. They take prisoners there to 'interview' them sometimes, and no doubt to administer discipline on the spot, knowing quite well that in our overcrowded court system, the only punishment to be meted out to miscreants on public transportation -- the purse snatchers, pick pockets and others -- will be the punishment afforded them by the police officers who arrested the 'asshole', as in "The asshole was threatening other passengers with a broken bottle. My dog had to take him down ..." It doesn't quite go in the official report in those exact words, you understand. .... PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #83 *****************************