From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jan 7 02:21:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i077LsR15298; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 02:21:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 02:21:55 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401070721.i077LsR15298@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #10 TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Jan 2004 02:17:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 10 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bonanza for Errors [Diebold] (Marcus Didius Falco) Internet Telephones Challenge Social Contract (Marcus Didius Falco) Caller-ID on Regular Phones Using a PBX (Chainsman) Automated Attendant Systems (JamminDJ) Re: Using PIX 501 With Vonage VoIP (Chainsman) Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! (Marcus D Falco) ReplayTV Apologizes for Service Flap (Monty Solomon) Delphi Unveils Mobile Satellite TV Antenna System at CES (Monty Solomon) Intel Launches $200 Million Fund For 'Digital Home' (Monty Solomon) Re: NANP Numbering and Splits (John Levine) The NANP, and Comments by the Digest's Editor (Mark J Cuccia) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk is definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 22:52:52 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Bonanza for Errors [Diebold] By DER SPIEGEL http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/international/europe/05SPIEGEL.html Published: January 5, 2004 America's Electronic Voting Machines Are Susceptible to Manipulation Walden O'Dell is entitled to call himself a "Pioneer." The business leader from North Canton, Ohio, has qualified for the honorific because he collected 600,000 dollars for George W. Bush's election campaign. He accompanied this with a pledge to do everything possible to help Ohio "deliver its electoral votes to the president" in 2004. But with this statement O'Dell has caused more of a stir than he could have wished. For the "Pioneer" is also chief executive of Diebold Inc., a company that among other things manufactures voting machines. About 40,000 of these are installed in 37 states and are supposed to record and count votes on November 2. Diebold is in second place, right behind the market leader, Election Systems and Software which achieved its top ranking under Chuck Hagel before he, a Republican, was elected senator from Nebraska. Recently the states have left decisions about the technological side of voting procedures to private companies. It is shocking enough that the giants of the trade are vying to get close to the government. But in addition, O'Dell has inadvertently called attention to how susceptible the machines are to manipulation. In principle, voting machines work like ATMs: The voter touches the name of his candidate on the screen. But instead of receiving some sort of receipt at the end of the transaction as he does from a money machine, he gets no receipt at all for the vote he has cast. Thus there is no way to check whether the machine has really recorded what it was supposed to have recorded. And discrepancies are not rare, as was revealed a year and a half ago during spot checks performed in Dallas and Georgia: in thousands of cases the computerized voting machines had either allocated votes to the wrong candidate or not counted them at all. The lame excuse was that the screen had wrongly calibrated itself because of frequent use. In the meantime, legions of computer freaks have tackled both the computers' software and hardware, discovering plenty of sources for errors. Since the exact time of the transaction is not recorded as it is with ATMs, some sinister forces could arrange ex post facto for a desired result without attracting attention during the customarily low voter turnout. Diebold even admitted that the database had not been encoded before the counting of the votes -- a windfall for hackers. Ironically, the electronic voting machines are supposed to prevent a repetition of the embarrassments that occurred in Florida in 2000, and which tinged the election of Bush with suspicion. Antiquated equipment was unable to read voting cards that had not been properly punched - and consequently they were not counted. The U.S. Congress is spending just under four billion dollars on modernization of the voting process. A changeover to the digital era will be complete by 2006. By November 2nd this year, new computer screens should be operational at about 20 percent of all polling places. Now Diebold is thrashing about with all sorts of inadequate explanations for the defective software. Yet the company could learn a lesson from its small, keen competitor. The Avante company combines digital high tech with old-fashioned paper statements. In this way each voter can make sure that the computer has really done what the voter wanted it to do -- and manipulation is, at least for the most part, made more difficult. [translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo] Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 23:52:30 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Internet Telephones Challenge Social Contract It's a not terribly accurate description of the subsidies in the past, or the current issues. But, can the good grey Times be wrong? http://www.iht.com/articles/123613.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/technology/05voip.html Matt Richtel Monday, January 5, 2004 Charles Davidson, a self-proclaimed gadget freak in Tallahassee, Florida, began using Internet-based telephone service last week. He can call anyone -- not just the other 100,000 pioneers around the United States using such service, but also any of the millions of people still making do with conventional telephones, like his parents in Elizabethton, Tennessee. But Davidson is more than an adventuresome consumer. He is also a member of the Florida Public Service Commission, a regulator who is anxious to see Internet telephone service spread because he predicts it can make the nation's phone services less expensive and richer in features. That is why Davidson wants the U.S. and state governments to allow Internet-based phone service to blossom, free from regulation, taxes and surcharges. Like a growing number of officials who advocate minimal oversight of the service -- including Michael Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission -- Davidson says Internet telephone service should be treated just like other unregulated Internet services, like e-mail messaging and Web surfing. But unlike some proponents of deregulation, Davidson also has a nagging concern. Because Internet-based phone service currently rides over traditional telephone or cable lines, it simply will not work unless the conventional phone network is intact. The government has long regarded that network as a national asset akin to roads and highways, and it is a communications system whose reliability and virtual ubiquity make it the envy of most of the rest of the world. So Internet telephone service raises a key public policy question: If the government does not continue to play a role in ensuring that the telephone network is reliable and universally available, does the nation risk losing a vital asset? Davidson, a former antitrust lawyer appointed to the Florida commission by the Republican governor, Jeb Bush, says he tends to believe that markets are more efficient than regulators. But some of Davidson's counterparts in other states sound just as certain that only government referees can preserve the decades-old tradition of universal, reliable telephone service. "If somebody doesn't regulate this, it's buyer beware," said Loretta Lynch, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission, who was appointed by the former governor, Gray Davis, a Democrat. Lynch, a lawyer, said the telephone's role in society was too important to leave in the hands of market forces. "Telecommunications is essential to our democracy," she said. "It's essential, in fact, to keeping an informed populace." The communications commission has embarked on a series of public hearings around the country on whether and how to regulate Internet telephony. The policy questions go to the heart of a social compact born in the 1930's. Back then, the government granted regulated monopolies in individual markets to AT&T and other, smaller companies. In exchange, policy makers exacted a price: the telephone monopolies had to meet service-quality standards and collect taxes and surcharges to support affordable, universal access even in rural areas where free-market economics would not have made it cost-effective. Some of the lower costs of Internet telephone service are a result of the underlying architecture. In the conventional telephone network, voice calls travel over a line that stretches from the home to a piece of phone company equipment called a circuit switch. The switch, and many others like it along the way, routes the call to its destination over local or long-distance networks. The switches can be expensive, as much as $10 million apiece, said John Hodulik, a telecommunications analyst with UBS Securities. Were telephone companies to build a network from scratch today, they likely would do so using the less expensive Internet architecture that has enabled start-up companies like Vonage Holdings, based in Edison, New Jersey, to enter the market. Vonage, the industry leader, has invested a mere $12 million in technology, according to Jeffrey Citron, the company's chief executive. That, he said, is a far cry from the $75 million to $100 million that some companies must spend to begin offering conventional telephone service. But some critics say a big reason Vonage and other Internet-based phone providers can cut costs is because they do not have to adhere to the same rules and regulations as the conventional telephone companies on whose local and national networks the Internet providers depend. Even an Internet telephony fan like Jeff Pulver, who was formerly on the Vonage board, acknowledged that a substantial amount of cost savings comes from avoiding the taxes, surcharges, and access fees used to support the traditional phone network. The fact that Vonage is not regulated and did not pay to build the national network may obscure the real cost of providing Internet-based phone service. Likewise, the cost to customers is not as low as it may seem. While consumers may pay less each month for Internet telephone service than for regular phone service, they cannot obtain the service unless they first have high-speed Internet access -- on which they are likely to spend $40 to $70 a month. That is why policy makers like Lynch of the California regulatory panel resist the idea that Internet telephone service will lead to a telecommunications market so competitive that government regulation becomes unnecessary. She said that if conventional telephone companies like Qwest were allowed to avoid regulation by moving their business to Internet-based service, it would drain money from the universal service funds that have enabled low-income residents, as well as schools and libraries, to afford basic phone service. The New York Times Copyright 2003 the International Herald Tribune All Rights Reserved *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, International Herald Tribune and the New York Times Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Chainsman Subject: Caller-ID on Regular Phones using a PBX Date: 6 Jan 2004 19:27:59 -0800 Organization: http://netscape.net/ Hi, I have a home telephone system which I'm very pleased with but my family is distraught that it won't pass caller-ID to their regular phones. I have looked around for systems that pass caller-ID to regular old phones but haven't found any so far. I have heard that there is a new Panasonic unit that will pass caller-ID to regular phones. Does anyone know of any systems that will do this? My requirements are for a minimum of 2 outside lines and 6 extensions. Thanks! ------------------------------ From: JamminDJ Subject: Automated Attendant Systems Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 02:30:33 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com Hello, I am a tech consonant for a computer help desk at a mid to large size university. Currently all calls to the centre go through an initial auto attendant system, then are forwarded to dept. depending on need. One of these options is password change. This is all done by human operator right now, we take their SSN numbers and get fed a new password out. This becomes quite tiresome, and some higher ups have actually threatened to quit due to the infinite number of calls for change password requests. My question is, is there a piece of software or hardware, capable of taking a purely numeric SSN number, feeding to one of our mainframes, and spit out the purely alphaic password? I know it can be done, this is evident in the CVS 'Rapid Refill' system. I just wonder if there is any third party software that can do this, and do it at a university price. Thank you for your time, Paul Miller ------------------------------ From: Chainsman Subject: Re: Using PIX 501 With Vonage VoIP Date: 6 Jan 2004 19:34:14 -0800 Organization: http://netscape.net/ Hi, I use Vonage VoIP with my home telephone system in a NATted and firewalled network and it works fine. If you order Vonage now, the current device has a simple firewall and NAT function so you can use it like a gateway. The most important reason to do this is that your firewall will probably not pass-through the Quality-of-Service (QoS) tagged packets. If you use the Vonage device between your gateway and your cable/DSL modem then the QoS tags are used and, probably more importantly, the VoIP network activity gets the highest priority over your networks' internally-generated traffic. The layout that gives VoIP the highest priority (via QoS over the cable modem network and priority over all your internal network's traffic): network --> gateway/router --> Vonage device --> cable modem I have used it in both modes and if you are doing online games you will probably not like the firewall and NAT function but if you depend on the Vonage for your primary phone line (I do not) you will want it as the last device before the modem. It should be noted that Cisco was not interested in adding the NAT/Firewall feature to their VoIP box so that's why Vonage is only using the Motorola box now. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 23:39:41 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) wrote about Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! > 'free_money@cox.net writes: <> > But still, this one part always boggles me: >> chain-letter at all. In fact, it was completely legal according to US >> Postal and Lottery Laws, Title 18, Section 1302 and 1341, or Title 18, >> Section 3005 in the US code, also in the code of federal regulations, >> Volume 16, Sections 255 and 436, which state a product or service must >> be exchanged for money received. > Those references are correct, and there is indeed that last sentence > in them. But if you read the rest of the law, which you're bound to > do if you've bothered to look it up, you know the 'reports' figleaf > will not work. I understand that the postmaster general just *loves* > to get copies of chain letters that mention this, because it makes > proving fraud fairly trivial. You might claim ignorance of a law and > get leniency, but when a cite to the law is right in your pitch, > documenting that what you're doing is illegal ... Unfortunately, the post office isn't set up to deal with Email spam, or wasn't the last time I checked. And the IRS isn't set up to deal with Email that purports to show how you don't have to pay taxes. And the FCC doesn't care about the cable boxes that allow you to pirate CATV. The SEC does seem to care (or at least respond) when I forward spam investment opportunities (or faxed ones, though these now have to be faxed to the SEC because their incoming mail is irradiated and this destroys non-plain-paper faxes. The FTC is supposed to be doing something about spam, and I just heard of another large case filed. And some of the 419 frauds sent to the secret service <419.fcd@usss.treas.gov> do seem to get prosecuted. But, mostly, there isn't much point in forwarding spam to the authorities other than the SEC, FTC or USSS. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:18:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ReplayTV Apologizes for Service Flap SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- Digital video recorder maker ReplayTV is apologizing to customers after many were lured to buy a machine through an offer of three years' of free service that the company now says it made by mistake. The Santa Clara-based company said Tuesday that boxes of its lowest-end model were "mistakenly labeled" with the reduced price offer, which has been rescinded. In addition, ReplayTV says the company's call center employees mistakenly told some customers the new lower $149 price for the unit included three years of service. ReplayTV said it would honor the three years of service offer "for those customers who were confused by these mistakes." A spokeswoman was unsure how many customers qualified. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401070256_APO_V6448 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:34:15 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Delphi Unveils Mobile Satellite TV Antenna System at CES Delphi Demonstrates Consistent TV Reception That Will Bring the 'Best Seat' Into the Vehicle LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Delphi Corp. (NYSE:DPH) will display another industry-first at the 2004 International Consumer Electronics Show this week (Las Vegas Convention Center, North Hall, Booths #5206 and #5213). Delphi's innovative antenna system tracks a geo-stationary satellite from a moving passenger vehicle. The technology is the first-known application to achieve this functionality while adhering to the stringent compact packaging and styling, cost and performance constraints associated with passenger car requirements. While there are currently military and other specialty vehicles that utilize geo-stationary satellite tracking technologies with large radomes, none exists in low-profile form or without modifications in the vehicle contour. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401061500_PRN__DETU008 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:37:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Intel Launches $200 Million Fund For 'Digital Home' By Ben Berkowitz and Daniel Sorid LAS VEGAS/SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC), the world's largest microchip maker and an eager entrant into the consumer electronics business, is backing up its vision of a PC-centric digital home with a new $200 million investment fund. The fund, to be operated by Intel's venture capital arm, will focus on technologies that allow content such as movies and music to travel wirelessly between electronic devices around the home, Intel said on Tuesday. Intel stands to profit handsomely should PC technology, which is heavily reliant on Intel chips and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) software -- spread into televisions, DVD players and stereos. Major PC makers and computer chip companies, unsatisfied with thin margins and slowing sales in traditional computer businesses, are pushing actively into consumer electronics. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40133201 ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jan 2004 05:43:58 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: NANP Numbering and Splits Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > From a technical perspective, it would have been easier to put > wireless services in their own unique NPAs, as the growth in wireless > is what drove many NPA splits. The wireless folks fought this > politically. The conventional wisdom is that wireless, fax machines, and dialup modems were the main reason for all those area code splits, but in this case the conventional wisdom is wrong. The main reason was local competition. Because call routing and billing were both based on NPA-NXX, every CLEC had to get an entire prefix in every rate center where it planned to offer service, even if it really only needed a few dozen numbers. Lots of CLECs started up, they all got allocated prefixes all over the place, which needed a whole lot of area codes. Since then the number of CLECs has shrunk, and a combination of local portability and thousands allocation has vastly slowed the rate at which new prefixes are needed, but you still have inane situations like Middlebury VT, with a population of less than 10,000, having eleven prefixes (three Bell, one each for three cell carriers, and five for other carriers.) Putting wireless in separate NPAs would have been a terrible idea for both policy and technical reasons. It'd have been bad policy since it'd have maintained an increasingly irrelevant distinction between the two, and the price and service competition we're now seeing between wireline and wireless wouldn't have developed as fast if it all. With integrated numbering, cell carriers could hook up to the existing phone network either like PBXes for small locations or like an non-Bell ILEC switch in larger ones, with no changes to the existing wireline switches other than what they already did anytime a new prefix was opened. If they'd made separate area codes, they'd have had to overlay a new area code on top of every existing area code, forcing switches to upgrade to permit overlays long before they actually did. It would have used up a lot more area codes than actually happened, since there are plenty of NPAs where all the cell numbers fit into the existing area code and no overlay or split has been needed. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl Sewer Commissioner "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 22:51:50 -0600 (CST) From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: The NANP, and Comments by the Digest's Editor The Digest editor had interjected comments at the end of two submissions in a recent Digest issue (issue #9), on the subject of the NANP. The editor first commented at the end of my previous submission: > ... it seems to me NANP is not such a great deal; there were lots of > politics played in who got to be included, and why. Patrick, my reply post was MOSTLY concerned with the numbering and dialing aspects of the NANP, not so much the politics involved. And for the most part, the politics wasn't so much governmental as BUSINESS associations and relationships. Yes, government policy did have some influence (i.e., Cuba and Mexico), but for the most part it wasn't the US government as much as it was the *CUBAN* and *MEXICAN* governments that didn't want to be part of the NANP back in the 1960s/70s/era, and that has all become legacy. SP&M is FRENCH (as are Guadeloupe, Martinique, etc. in the Caribbean) and again, it was the *FRENCH* that wanted European-French-like telephone aspects on those islands. Geography is mostly centered around the mainland US/Canada, even though there are the US-Pacific (and AK/HI states) and NANP-Caribbean. Yes, I probably erred in saying that the US/Canada is the most populated part of the world, when in actuality it would be China. I should have known because I have always heard all of those "old sayings" about the number of Chinam ... Chinese ... But the US/Canada is the largest in *TELEPHONE* population of the world, i.e., telephone penetration, in the world, as far as I can tell. So, as the MAIN intent of my posts was the actual NUMBERING/DIALING aspects of the NANP (with geography and "some" politics" thrown in), I'll reply to one of your comments in that light ... if you don't think that the NANP is "such a great deal" afterall, I don't know what you've been placing calls on for the past 50-some years. Maybe you should move to the UK (especially LONDON) or some other country where there are *wholesale* numbering changes in the major cities (locally too) or even nationally, every few years. And later on, the Editor makes a comment at the end of Joey Lindstrom's reply post; > There you go, Earle! Did Joey get you straightened out, or didn't he? > Don't you just love Canadians who like to pretend they are arrogant USA > citizens, with their general dislike for so much of the customs of the > rest of the world? Actually, Patrick, it's the other way around. Pot calling the kettle black here, me-thinks. YES, I will admit that there are those US/Canadians who travel to Europe/etc. and try to run their lives. I also admit that the US government has *FOR DECADES* tried to "run the world" and *THAT* is why most-of-the-rest-of-the-world (especially many Arab countries and Arabs IN EXILE) seem to HATE "us" for the foreign policy of the US Government (which seems to be managed by a certain foreign country anyhows! :( ) BUT ... I really want to get back to TELEPHONY, mainly numbering/dialing. MY obsevations are that for the most part, most of us in the NANP are mostly happy with our own numbering and dialing plan. Those of us who "know" the telephone industry are well aware of what other parts of the world had, as well as currently have, or will be modifying to, in the way of numbering/dialing/etc. And it does make for some intersting comparison. But we here in the NANP, while "happy" to advise/consult WHEN ASKED, are NOT really all that interested in chaning or "forcing" NANP-like policies on other parts of the world. HOWEVER ... It certainly seems to me that the Euros (and other "rest-of-the-worlders") or at least CERTAIN individuals from those non-NANP parts of the world, who post to TELECOM Digest AND another telecom (numbering) forum on the Internet, seem to take an arrogant attitude towards the NANP *EVERY TIME THEY THINK THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT*, especially when "unprovoked". And there are those of us in the NANP who are quite defensive of our own numbering/dialing systems, and don't like to see it WRONGLY "trashed". ESPECIALLY when most of us really keep to ourselves and try NOT to dictate NANP policies on other countries, but ALSO we can come up with FACTUAL refutations to those other "claims" from non-NANP-ers. And, Patrick (and others), as a matter of fact, the trend in "other parts of the world", FOR THE MOST PART, but probably not "universally" nor "ironclad", seems to be in their current numbering/dialing modifications of the 1990s+, is to become more "NANP-like" in the fact that they are migrating to fixed-length "overall" numbering, whether or not "parsing" is becoming uniform. And in some cases, there is fixed-length *dialing* in some of these countries. It might not be a "carbon copy" of the NANP, but it is migrating to fixed-length aspects which have mostly been a major aspect of NANP "numbering" (and to a great but not universal extent, dialing) since the NANP's inception. AGAIN, I will say (especially because the Editor here who has lived in the NANP all his life, makes the statement that he doesn't think the NANP is "such a great deal") ... the NANP has most CERTAINLY stood up to the test of time over the past five-plus decades, and will probably stand up to the test of time over the NEXT five (maybe even more) decades, in the fact that it remains a ten-digit format, only now generalized to NXX-NXX-xxxx. AND NO OTHER COUNTRY/NUMBERING PLAN can make such a claim, at least not for anything in the PAST years/decades. (I can't speak for the future because I dont know what the growth trend projections are in other parts of the world). Mark J. Cuccia New Orleans LA CSA (in the LAND of DIXIE!) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can always tell when Mark becomes angry because (a) he spends an entire line or more yelling (large case) and (b) because he takes my name in vain, using it in every paragraph or two. I do not know what you are talking about when you say our numbering system is stable. So stable, in fact, that during the 1990-2000 time period I had to change my number four times on account of changes in area codes. I started out in 312, had it for many years, along with all of northern Illinois. Then it became 773 because the crybaby banks and financial houses downtown kept wanting more and more and more and more phones, and *they* thought it was unfair to make *them* change to 773, so everyone else in Chicago had to move to 773 to accomodate them (maybe so they would quit crying about what an expense it would be to make *them* have to change their stationary, etc ... so a few million rest of us had to change ours instead). If we had had a 'flexible' numbering system such as parts of Europe, then the stupid bankers could have had fifteen digit numbers if they wanted to cover all their PBX-extensions and the rest of us would have stayed in 312, since the banks and large corp- orations downtown refused to give it up. Well then they changed to 708 for the suburbs -- all of them. Well okay, so I had to start dialing ten digits to the McDonalds right across the street, literally less than fifty feet away, to order my lunch and have it delivered. Or eleven digits if you count the damnable '1' on the front of different (than yourself) area codes. Then as I started to wise up to Chicago politics, etc and fled to live in Skokie I myself became a 708-er ... but it doesn't stop there. Soon after moving to Skokie and handing out my 'new' telephone number, more crybabies came along and said now you will be 847 (as in 'VIP') and only the south and close in west suburbs will keep 708. Again, the very idea of making *them* dial additional digits just wouldn't do. After all, we have this fabulous NANP system, and *they* want more phone numbers for their faxes, their cell phones, their teenager lines, etc so YOU will move to 847 ... I don't live there now, but I understand that now the 847 people have all been evacuated once again to 224 along the lakefront area. The stench from politics in Chicago got to be so awful I knew I had to move *really far away* in order to breath fresh air once again, so I came to 316-ville. No sooner had I gotten here, give or take a few months, and the Boeing Aircraft people in Wichita and the state government people in Topeka all decided they wanted more, more, more, more phones, so after making sufficient stink with the Kansas Commission they got to keep 316 and I got moved to 620. Then South- western Bell, in their wisdom, decided I had to go back to dialing '1' before *anything* that was not in the City of Independence itself. Even directory assistance, '1411'. Even rinky-dinky Prairie Stream Communications is not that insane. And you say that NANP is a stable system that has served me well? Oh, by the way, in case of dire emergency, which is the only valid reason for calling '911' it is still shorter and easier for users of rotary phones to dial '112' (four pulses/pulls) than 911 (eleven pulses/pulls). But that would involve some changes in our system, in our way of doing things, right Mark? PAT] ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #10 *****************************