TELECOM Digest Mon, 20 Feb 95 23:52:30 CST Volume 15 : Issue 110 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson David Noble on the Information Highway (D. Shniad) 500 Place-A-Call Working (David L. Oehring) List of Carrior Access Codes (Scott Mehosky) Wireless LAN's (A.D. Brinkerink) Re: Security of Cordless Phones? (John Lundgren) Re: Security of Cordless Phones? (Travis Russell) Re: GETS - Government Emergency Telecommunications Service? (Mark Ganzer) Cell Service in NY Metro Area Notes (Stan Schwartz) Re: Typical Rates for Campus Phone Systems (John Lundgren) Re: Typical Rates for Campus Phone Systems (David G. Cantor) 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. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 17:10:04 -0800 Reply-To: pen-l@ecst.csuchico.edu From: D Shniad Subject: David Noble on the Information Highway From Issue 013 of CPU: Working in the Computer Industry 02/15/95 An electronic publication for workers in the computer industry THE TRUTH ABOUT THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY by David Noble At the end of November, the truth about the information highway finally got out. Protesting the announcement of another 5600 layoffs, 1200 Bell-Atlantic employees in Pennsylvania wore T-shirts to work which graphically depicted themselves as Information Highway Roadkill. The layoffs were just the latest round of cutbacks at Bell-Atlantic, which have been matched by the elimination of jobs at the other giants of the telecommunications industry -- ATT, NYNEX, Northern Telecom -- supposedly the very places where new jobs are to be created with the information highway. In reality, the technology is enabling companies to extend their operations and enlarge their profits while reducing their workforce, and the pay and security of those who remain, by contracting out work to cheaper labor around the globe and by replacing people with machines. The very workers who are constructing the new information infrastructure are among the first to go, but not the only ones. The same fate is facing countless workers in manufacturing and service industries in the wake of the introduction of these new information technologies. What is most striking about the Bell-Atlantic episode is not just the provocative fashion statement of the workers, members of Communication Workers of America District 13. Rather, it was the company's exaggerated response. Bell Atlantic demanded that the workers remove the T-shirts and when they refused, their employer suspended them without pay. According to Vince Maison, president of the union, the employer suspended the employees out of expressed fear that their message would be seen by the public. Significantly, management was concerned about adverse publicity not just for Bell Atlantic but, more importantly, for the information highway itself. This was the first time the information highway was unambiguously linked with unemployment, by a union and workforce presumably best situated to reap its promised benefits. Apparently the company believed there was too much riding on the information highway bandwagon to allow this sober message to get around. But it did anyway. The (probably illegal) management action backfired. Rather than a few hundred customers catching a glimpse of the T-shirts during the course of the day's work, millions throughout North America saw them through the media coverage of the suspensions; within hours, the union was inundated with phone calls of support and orders for the T-shirts. The truth was out. By now probably everyone has heard of the information highway, as a result of the massive propaganda blitzkrieg of the last year. Announcements heralding the dawn of a new age emanate incessantly and insistently from every quarter. The media gush with the latest info highway traffic reports (but not the fatalities), all levels of government are daily pressured into diverting public monies into yet another private trough, every hi-tech firm, not to mention every hustler and con artist in the business and academic worlds is rushing to cash in on the manufactured hysteria. The aggressive assault on our senses is aimed at securing public support and subsidy for the construction of the new commercial, infrastructure. Its message, which has become the mind-numbing multinational mantra, is simple and direct: We have no other choice. Our very survival, it is alleged as individuals, a national, a society, depend upon this urgent development. Those without it will be left behind in the global competition. And those with it? A recent "Futurescape" advertisement supplement to the Globe and Mail by Rogers Cantel and Bell Canada warned that the information highway "raises the ante in competition. If we don't act, Canada and Canadian companies will be left behind.... the information highway is not a luxury technology for the rich. It is the way of the future. And those who do not get on the highway will not have any way of reaching their ultimate destination." And what exactly is the destiny advanced by the information highway? Ask the Bell-Atlantic employees. The propaganda never mentions the roadkill, of course, but that is the future for many. Most people in Canada instinctively seem to know this already. According to a 1993 Gallup poll, 41% of those currently employed believe they will lose their jobs. But, despite this intuition, people have been terrorized into a hapless fatalism. It's inevitable. Or else they have been seduced by the exciting array of new tools and diversions: home-shopping, home-videos, home-learning, home-entertainment, home-communication. The operative word is home, because home is where people without jobs are -- if they still have a home. The focus is on leisure, because there will be a lot more of it, in the form of mass unemployment. (Some lucky few will get home-work, as their job takes over their home in the sweatshops of the future). This is where we are headed on the information highway. To see where we are headed requires no voodoo forecasting, futuristic speculation, much less federally-funded research. We just need to take a look at where we've been, and where we are. The returns are already in on the Information Age, and the information highway promises merely more of the same, at an accelerated pace. In the wake of the information revolution (now four decades old -- the term cybernetics and automation were coined in 1947). People are now working harder and longer (with compulsory overtime), under worsening working conditions with greater anxiety, stress, and accidents, with less skills, less security, less autonomy, less power (individually and collectively), less benefits, and less pay. Without question the technology has been developed and used to deskill and discipline the workforce in a global speed-up of unprecedented proportions. And those still working are the lucky ones. For the technology has been designed above all to displace. Structural (that is, permanent and systemic as opposed to cyclical) unemployment in Canada has increased with each decade of the information age. With the increasing deployment of so-called "labor-saving" technology (actually labor-cost saving) official average unemployment has jumped from 4% in the 1950's, 5.1% in the 1960's, 6.7% in the 1970's, and 9.3% in the 1980's, to 11% so far in the 1990's. These, of course, are the most conservative estimates (actual unemployment is closer to double these figures). Today we are in the midst of what is called a jobless recovery, symptomatic and symbolic of the new age. Output and profits rise without the jobs which used to go with them. Moreover, one fifth of those employed are only part-time or temporary employees, with little or no benefits beyond barely subsistence wages, and no security whatever. In 1993, an economist with the Canadian Manufacturers Association estimated that between 1989 and 1993, 200,000 manufacturing jobs were eliminated through the use of new technology -- another conservative estimate. And that was only in manufacturing, and before the latest wave of information highway technology, which will make past developments seem quaint in comparison. None of this has happened by accident. The technology was developed, typically at public expense, with precisely these ends in mind by government (notably military), finance, and business elites -- to shorten the chain of command and extend communications and control (the military origins of the Internet), to allow for instantaneous monitoring of money markets and funds transfer, and to enable manufacturers to extend the range of their operations in pursuit of cheaper and more compliant labor. Thus as the ranks of the permanently marginalized and impoverished swell, and the gap between rich and poor widens to 19th century dimensions, it is no mere coincidence that we see a greater concentration of military, political, financial, and corporate power than ever before in our history. In the hands of such self- serving elites -- and it is now more than ever in their hands -- the information highway, the latest incarnation of the information revolution, will only be used to compound the crime. Visions of democratization and popular empowerment via the net are dangerous delusions; whatever the gains, they are overwhelmingly overshadowed and more than nullified by the losses. As the computer screens brighten with promise for the few, the light at the end of the tunnel grows dimmer for the many. No doubt there has been some barely audible and guarded discussion if not yet debate about the social implications of the information highway focusing upon such issues as access, commercial vs. public control and privacy. There is also now a federal advisory commission on the information highway although it meets in secret without public access or scrutiny, doubtless to protect the proprietary interests of the companies that dominate its membership. But nowhere is there any mention of the truth about the information highway, which is mass unemployment. For decades we have silently subsidized the development of the very technologies which have been used to destroy our lives and livelihoods, and we are about to do it again, without debate, without any safeguards, without any guarantees. The calamity we now confront, as a consequence, rivals the upheaval of the first industrial revolution two centuries ago, with its untold human suffering. We are in for a struggle unlike anything any of us have ever seen before, as the Bell-Atlantic employees testify, and we must use any and all means at our disposal. It's time we came to our collective senses, while there is still time. We must insist that progress without people is not progress. At the very least, as a modest beginning, we pull the public plug on the Information Highway. [David Noble is a professor at York University and a historian of technology. He taught for nearly a decade at M.I.T. and was curator of the industrial automation at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He is the author of numerous books, including _Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation_ (Oxford University Press) and, most recently, _Progress Without People_ (a Canadian edition will be published this spring by Between the Lines). He lives in Canada.] ================================================ Online subscriptions to CPU are available at no cost by emailing listserv@cpsr.org with a blank subject and a single line in the body of the message: SUBSCRIBE CPSR-CPU For example: SUBSCRIBE CPSR-CPU Subcomandante Marcos To cancel your subscription, send to listserv@cpsr.org: UNSUBSCRIBE CPSR-CPU CPU back issues can be found via anonymous FTP at cpsr.org in the directory /cpsr/work. PLEASE RE-POST THIS FREELY, especially at work. CPU material may be reprinted for non-profit purposes as long as the source is cited. We welcome submissions and commentary. Mail sent to the editors or to CPU will be treated as a "letter to the editor" and considered printable, unless noted otherwise. Editors for this issue: Michael Stack and Jim Davis. We may be contacted by voice at (510) 601-6740, by email to cpu-owner@cpsr.org, or by USPS at POB 3181, Oakland, CA 94609. ------------------------------ From: David.L.Oehring@att.com Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 20:05:51 +0600 Subject: 500 Place-A-Call Working I dialed my True Connections(sm) 500 Number to update my reach list this past Saturday, and noticed that the first-level prompt (following entry of the master PIN) had been changed. Previously, option #2 was to "Call Home", but is now "To place a call". I tried out the "Place-A-Call" feature and it worked (from the 312/708 area). It looks like the post cards announcing the feature were only a little (one week?) early. Old Main menu: - To change where your calls are going, press 1. - To call home, press 2. - For True Connections Voice Mail, press 3. . . . New Main menu: - To change where your calls are going, press 1. - To place a call, press 2. - To call home, press 1. - To call a different number, press the # key. - What number do you want to call? Enter the area code and number followed by the # key. - For True Connections Voice Mail, press 3. . . . David Oehring david.l.oehring@att.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried it from here also now that you mentioned it, and mine is working also. That prompt 'to call a different number' also has a condition where you can call the override number if one is installed. The prompt does not mention it if one is not in place. I also get 'press 9 for other options' which includes the ability to change the number of times my phone will ring before the call is passed along to the next number on the reach list. Did you notice by the way that it never refers to your home number by their digits ... only by the phrase 'your home number'. If you enter #H she says you entered your home number .. if you punch in those digits instead, instead of reading back the digits to confirm as is done with other entries, she still says 'you entered your home number'. But when I entered my second line, she read back the digits, apparently not knowing that was also at home. PAT] ------------------------------ From: yidam@ccs.neu.edu (Scott Mehosky) Subject: List of Carrior Access Codes Date: 20 Feb 1995 01:01:13 GMT Organization: College of Computer Science, Northeastern University. Hello, I am wondering if anyone out there has a list of all the carrior access codes, (10xxx) in the US along with the name of the company the code belongs to. Thanks in advance for your help. Sincerely, Scott Mehosky - yidam@ccs.neu.edu - http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/yidam/top.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As a matter of fact, we do. Check in the Telecom Archives in the /carriers sub-directory. Use anonymous ftp to lcs.mit.edu. PAT] ------------------------------ From: A.D.Brinkerink@uni4nn.iaf.nl Subject: Wireless LAN's Date: 19 Feb 1995 13:37:46 GMT I am investigating the allocation of radio spectrum for wireless LAN's in Europe. Any information from IT companies, manufacturers of radio equipment and users are welcomed on the following items: 1 Do current allocations fulfil the needs of the IT users? 2 Which new applications does the IT community envisage and will these still fit in existing frequency bands? 3 What is the best technology to use in wireless LAN's in terms of spectrum efficiency? The results of this investigation will be brought to the attention úÿ of European regulatory authorities. Please forward info to: ------------------------------ From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: Security of Cordless Phones? Date: 20 Feb 1995 10:05:36 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Jeffrey A. Porten (jporten@mail2.sas.upenn.edu) wrote: > Having just gotten a new cordless phone (BellSouth 46mHz), and living > in the paranoid environs of Washington, DC, I find myself wondering > just how likely it is that the world is listening to my calls. > The phone has ten channels, and a security code feature which, so far > as I understand, exists mainly to prevent another cordless handset > from tapping into my base unit, but does nothing to scramble the > signal from the handset. > I live in an apartment building, with a few others nearby, so consider > this a high-density area. Should I go on the assumption that people > are always listening in? Sometimes? Almost never? > I have a corded set that I keep hooked up for confidential calls; as a > stopgap, I sometimes scan channels on my cordless so any eavesdropper > will at least have to fiddle to find me again. Does this help, or am > I kidding myself? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Corded or cordless, the assumption should > be that your telephone calls are never secure. In actual practice, it > may not matter to you; if you are just in idle chatter with someone you > aren't going to bother with the trouble of special precautions. My personal > belief is the use of scanners to listen to cordless phones is still a > relatively rare thing; how many people do *you* know that own scanners > who are within range of your cordless phone? And of those, how many are > sophisticated enough to know how to program the scanner for cordless? > So my feeling is generally its not a big deal, and if you do have something > very important and personal to say, you might want to go to a payphone > anyway. PAT] But there are several other ways to eavesdrop on cordless telephone conversations without using a scanner. One is to use another cordless telephone. Some of them can hear other channels without butting in on the conversation. Then there are wireless baby monitors and walkie-talkies, which can receive conversations easily. And these are just a few of the more common ways of doing this. Treat your cordless phone as if there were others listening all the time. Don't give out credit card numbers on the cordless phone. And don't say anything you might regret. 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: russell@trussell.pdial.interpath.net (Travis Russell) Subject: Re: Security of Cordless Phones? Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 17:09:45 +0000 Organization: Travis Russell Reply-To: russell@trussell.pdial.interpath.net (Travis Russell) In article , jporten@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Jeffrey A. Porten) writes: > Having just gotten a new cordless phone (BellSouth 46mHz), and living > in the paranoid environs of Washington, DC, I find myself wondering > just how likely it is that the world is listening to my calls. I recently have discovered my calls were being listended to both by a neighbor (who lives about an acre away) and by some kid down the street. The neighbor called to inform me that my telephone conversation was being broadcast over his kids baby monitor, one of those cute little wireless units that hangs on babies crib (glad I wasn't calling a 900 number). And the kid down the street? He was showing my kids how to use a transistor radio to listen in on our calls, and demonstrated by listening in on one of my calls. Seems to be one of his favorite pasttimes. If its wireless, never assume it is secure. It ain't! Travis Russell russell@trussell.pdial.interpath.net ------------------------------ From: ganzer@ludwig.nosc.mil (Mark Ganzer) Subject: Re: GETS - Government Emergency Telecommunications Service? Organization: NCCOSC RDT&E Division, San Diego, CA Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 04:42:50 GMT BOSWELL, RICHARD S (rsb9883@zeus.tamu.edu) wrote: > Has anyone ever heard of "GETS"? What kind of priority service do > they offer; who is offering it? Pat, I don't have much info on this, but I did see a booth on GETS at the recent Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) show in San Diego. Just about anybody could get into this show. There were about 500 high school kids that paraded through one of the days. We also did a worked with GTE last November on a demonstration for a GETS Symposium of distributed collaborative planning in support of disaster relief operations using high speed ATM data networks. None of this was classified or "top secret" in any way. Unfortunately, I don't have the complete picture of GETS to speak intelligently about it. I was just responsible for seetting up the ATM connections at our end. Mark Ganzer Naval Command, Control & Ocean Surveillance Center, ganzer@nosc.mil RDT&E Div (NRaD), Code 4123, San Diego, CA Ph: (619) 553-1186 FAX: (619) 553-4808 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't absolutely know that it was ever secet; one writer here said when he mentioned this to someone in Defense *that person* claimed it was 'top secret'. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 18:03:47 EST From: Stan Schwartz Subject: Cell Service in NY Metro Area Notes From: dreuben@interpage.net (Doug Reuben) > After hearing about NYNEX/NY's (Boston too?) "Free Weekend Airtime", > which allows toll and airtime free calling to anywhere in 212, 718, > 917, most (all?) of 201, most (all?) of 908, (609 too?), and most > parts of lower 914, I broke down and had a friend of mine who was > going to cancel with Metro Mobile in CT sign up with NYNEX/NY rather > than Cellular One. While NYNEX/NY is offering free weekends until 7/31/95, BAMS/NJ is offering free OFF PEEK until 8/31/95! (It still makes me think about using my second NAM). I wonder, though, how BAMS gets away with charging a .04/minute landline charge when THEY ARE the wireline carrier. The free off-peek time from them ends up being .04/minute. > (Although CO/NY does bill for incomplete calls over 40 seconds, so in > some rare cases I will suggest that a person use NYNEX instead of CO > if they make a lot of calls where the party they are calling takes > over 40 seconds to answer.) I got a pitch letter from CO/NY this week to remind me to renew my annual contract. A quick sentence buried in the letter mentions that CO/NY no longer charges for incomplete calls! Re PINs: > Anyone test this? I'm interested in finding out because if I find that > NYNEX/NY is billing people from the time they *initially* hit SEND to > place the call rather than when a caller enters his/her complete PIN, > I will call NYNEX/NY and demand to have the PIN feature removed. Does NYNEX require a PIN for each call? When I had PIN service with CO/NY, it only required the PIN once and that was if the phone was turned off for more than 20 minutes. Stan ------------------------------ From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: Typical Rates for Campus Phone Systems Date: 20 Feb 1995 07:38:29 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network We get charged (previous to Jan 1) $17.25 a month for a Pac Bell centrex line, with something like $75 one time fee for establishing dial tone. But then we also have our own voice mail system, and a PBX, which all cost money to run. A single measured business line is $15.00 a month. So with all the charges added up, it would probably cost about the same. Prices of phone service went up as of Jan 1, but the cost of toll calls went down. Supposedly, the two should balance out. But being that most of the calls are within our district and are not toll, I would say that that isn't true. We have a marketing agreement with Pac Bell, so there is some negotiation and fixing of prices. The PBX system, and the phone instruments are under a service contract. The user has to pay about $300 to purchase a phone. There are also the wages for me and my cohorts in our department that work on the phone and data network, which have to be taken into account. BTW, the voice mail system is cheaper than Pac Bell's, but it doesn't have as many features as theirs, and I don't believe it is as user friendly, either. 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 ------------------------------ Reply-To: dgc@math.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Typical Rates for Campus Phone Systems Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 15:19:54 -0800 From: David G. Cantor In Volume 15, Issue 106 of TELECOM Digest, Anthony E. Siegman comments on the high (recharge) cost of telephone-service provided by the Stanford University Centrex and asks, among other things, "Is the Centrex type campus service really worth four times what the phone company could give me?" The recharge rate at UCLA for telephone and many other services is higher than the prevailing rates in the local community. I have often wondered if this over-charging, at least for State Universities, is a way of transferring charges from the University Administration to the University Departments. State Legislatures prefer that funds go to Departments rather than Administration. However the major user of telephone service, and many other services, is the Administration. For a variety of reasons, most of the University operator services are used by the administration. For example, the administration is the principal user of operator services because people calling departments and faculty usually know the direct-dial number while numerous inquiries go to the administration. By bundling charges and thus over-charging departments and under-charging administrative services, the administration can, in effect, transfer money intended for education to administrative services. Perhaps this over-charging occurs at private Universities for similar reasons? David G. Cantor Department of Mathematics dgc@math.ucla.edu University of California Los Angeles, CA 90024 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #110 ******************************