From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 12 15:24:52 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7CJOpn09874; Thu, 12 Aug 2004 15:24:52 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 15:24:52 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408121924.i7CJOpn09874@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 #377 TELECOM Digest Thu, 12 Aug 2004 15:24:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 377 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Jack) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Eric Friedebach) Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? (charlie3) Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? (John McHarry) Re: Strange Spoof E-Mails (Barry Margolin) Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? (Tony P.) Re: Vonage Traffic Clarification (John Levine) Re: NorVergence Having Popular Leasing Hound, Threaten Me (nospamwanted) US to Allow SBC, BellSouth to Buy Back Spectrum (Monty Solomon) Cisco Systems Ships Its Millionth Internet Protocol Telephone (Solomon) Check 21 (Marcus Didius Falco) Correction by Editor: was Re: Internet Connection (Gary Novosielski) 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 are 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: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:20:02 -0400 From: Jack Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Pat, please conceal my e-mail address. Before things get too far out of hand, I'd like to comment on some of the comments that have been made by you and Mr. Paul Vader. Both of you seem to have missed an important paragraph in the original story that Monty Solomon sent. It clearly stated: Paul Timmins, 23, pleaded guilty to a single count of unauthorized access to a protected computer. HE WAS CLEARED OF MORE SERIOUS CHARGES OF PARTICIPATING IN A SCHEME ORGANIZED BY HIS ROOMMATE AND ANOTHER MAN TO LATER USE THE WIRELESS NETWORK TO HACK INTO LOWE'S COMPUTERS AND SIPHON CREDIT CARD NUMBERS. (Emphasis added) Now, I happen to know Paul Timmins' uncle (and have known him since he was in high school), and I've also met Paul and have talked to him directly on a few occasions, although not that much about this case. However, what I've been able to deduce from various comments that have been made over the past few months is that the only reason Mr. Timmins was involved at all was due to a case of mistaken identity. Paul definitely knew the two men who were in the car at the time the crime was committed, but he was not personally present (in fact he was in the process of leaving for a business trip to the west coast). As I understand the situation, when the attempt to steal the credit card numbers occurred, there were two men in the car in the Lowes parking lot. One of the men, the passenger, was the one who allegedly attempted to hack into Lowes system and steal credit card numbers. The other, the driver, just happened to be Paul's roommate. There were FBI field agents present at the store and they managed to obtain a description of the car (including the license plate number) and the two occupants, but did not apprehend the perpetrators at the scene. One of the occupants, the passenger (who was the one who actually attempted the break-in) had long sideburns and this was noted in the FBI's description. Mr. Timmins has never had long sideburns. The FBI then ran the license plate, and this led them to the apartment complex in which the driver and Mr. Timmins lived. They then proceeded to run every license plate of every car parked in the apartment complex. Now, in Michigan, when you apply for a driver's license they take a digital photograph, and that record is tied in the database to the records of all the vehicles you own. So apparently, the FBI could pull up each plate and then display the driver's license photo of the owner. Unfortunately, when they ran the plate on Paul's car, his photo somewhat matched the description of the passenger in the car in the Lowes parking lot, and when they discovered that Paul and the driver of the car at Lowes happened to be roommates, they just assumed (incorrectly) that Paul had been the passenger. Of course, Paul didn't have the long sideburns, either on his drivers license photo or at the time they apprehended him, and both he and his roommate were able to give the FBI the correct identity of the passenger in the car, and at least in Paul's case he did so without hesitation. So you would think that once the FBI discovered the mistake, they might apologize and release Mr. Timmins and that would be the end of it, right? Especially since Paul fully cooperated, and without his assistance they probably would have not been able to successfully prosecute the real offender (or at least would have had a much more difficult time of it). Well, except that I guess that would have been embarrassing, and the FBI had already spent a considerable sum of money on the investigation (some estimates put it at well over a million dollars), and besides, somehow it came out that Paul had once loaned the perpetrator a wireless network card -- not the one that was used at the scene of the crime, mind you, but apparently that was sufficient to tie him to the other two in some way, *********************************************** and thereby save the FBI the embarrassment of having to drop the charges against Mr. Timmins completely. In the final analysis, it appears that Paul may have agreed to a plea bargain for a very minor charge, a misdemeanor, rather than going through the trouble and expense of having to pay more than the legal fees he had already spent (in excess of $35,000) trying to fight "the man." The access mentioned in the article (where he checked e-mail) had occurred months earlier, and had it not been for the events that transpired later, would probably never have been noticed. ************************************************** [Offset emphasis added by TELECOM Digest Editor.] Unfortunately, too many of the stories that have been published on this incident have mentioned Mr. Timmins' name without mentioning that he was nowhere near the scene of the crime, and that he probably had no foreknowledge of what the perpetrator was planning (in fact, I'm told that even the driver of the car really had no idea of what his passenger was actually up to -- I don't say that to excuse them, because I'm sure that both driver and passenger knew they were doing something illegal; I'm just not sure that the driver was aware that his companion was planning to heist credit card numbers. Apparently the courts felt that was the case because the driver only got a five year sentence, whereas the actual perpetrator will probably spend a good portion of his life in prison). Mr. Vader's moralizing, where he says, "at worst, you're in jail like Mr. Timmins" shows his total ignorance of the case. My understanding is that Mr. Timmins was in jail only long enough to be booked and arrange bail, and if he somehow winds up spending any more time in jail over this it will be a real travesty of justice, given that many people (including writers for various magazines) have done exactly the same thing that Mr. Timmins did, which is to take his laptop and see if he could access any open networks. If you were to do a Google search, I'll bet you could find a lot of people who openly admit to having done exactly the same thing that Paul did. In fact, I'm told by Paul's uncle that the local FBI agents apparently even expressed some interest in using Mr. Timmins as an expert witness in future cases, because of the level of cooperation he gave them in this case. So it seems to me that the whole plea bargain thing was a way for everyone to extract themselves from a bad situation without "losing face", as they say in parts of Asia. Mr. Timmins never should have been charged; had the driver of the car not been his roommate, or if his physical appearance had been significantly different from that of the perp, or if he'd never loaned that wireless card (which as I understand it was a cheap, low-grade card to begin with) to the perp at some point in the past, he might never have been charged at all. Had he been rich and able to afford better legal representation, his case would probably never have gone to trial (I'm not saying he had bad lawyers, but I can't imagine a rich person being put through this under similar circumstances). Something to think about -- if you sit in the parking lot outside a business that offers a wi-fi "hotspot" and check your e-mail, have you committed a crime? Remember, if that access is provided for customers of that business, and if you're just sitting in the parking lot, you're technically not a customer. Well, as best I can tell, that's just about the extent of what Paul did all those months ago (granted that Lowes doesn't advertise wireless access, but on the other hand they don't put up signs saying "do not access our wireless network", and apparently they didn't bother much with security either). Now admittedly, what I have written above is partly my own speculation based on hearsay. For a long time Paul avoided discussing the case at all, on the advice of his attorney. So a little bit of what is above I heard from him directly, and some was from his uncle or someone else familiar with the case, and some is probably me trying to fill in the blanks. Some of the above may even be wrong, but I'll bet it's a lot more factual than some of the stories I've seen in the press. One reason I have an interest in this is that all of this had a ripple effect that affected me personally. A few years ago my friend (Paul's uncle) had set up a web server that housed several web sites, including (among other things) my "Resources for Michigan Telephone Users" page and the associated MI-Telecom mailing list. After some time this server was moved to Paul's apartment, because he had better connectivity there. Well, the night all this happened, the FBI apparently raided the apartment and carted off all the working computers (I guess if a computer was powered up, they took it). And those computers have yet to be returned to Mr. Timmins. So my web site and the mailing list went down for several weeks until I could get them re-established elsewhere, and I suspect that several other people were similarly inconvenienced -- including users of the telcodata.us database, which was on a different computer at Paul's apartment that was also seized. Pat, imagine how you would feel if one night you tried to access the Telecom Digest web site and archives and found that they were gone, and your entire subscriber list was gone, and your mailing list software was gone -- in short, everything that is the Telecom Digest was gone through no fault of your own. And then you found out that the server was carted off in the middle of the night by the authorities. It is a real sickening feeling. I had backups of the web site but no place to put them. I had a very stale list of subscribers to the mailing list, and no way to contact anyone who'd subscribed in the few months prior to the seizure. I have to tell you that I was pretty depressed for a few days. Not only that, but since Paul had been advised not to discuss the case with anyone, I couldn't even explain to anyone why the site went down, because I didn't have all the facts myself. And beyond all that, I have a theory that some segments of the media attempt to sensationalize stories of this type as much as possible, because they realize that people who spend time on the Internet might not feel the need to buy their newspapers or watch their television news. So any time they can say anything bad about the Internet or the people who use it, they're right there and they don't tend to let silly things like facts get in the way of their sensational story! In this case, there was some incorrect information released by the authorities to the press early on, which implicated Mr. Timmins as one of the actual perpetrators. Most later stories have simply copied and built upon the incorrect information in the earlier stories. How would you like it if any time someone did a Google search on your name they'd pull up news stories saying that you were, for example, a major car thief when all you had ever really been convicted of was a minor traffic offense? So maybe people should not be so quick to rush to judgment based on what they read in a newspaper or on some wire service. And that's all I will say about it. Jack [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Jack, I know **exactly** what you speak of; the observations I made in my note were based on the assumption that Paul *was* in the car; after all, the newspapers do not lie or take short cuts on stories. They get their data from police, and police do not lie or take short cuts in justice either. And I assumed that if Paul pleaded guilty, he must have been guilty. With his excellent legal representation (police are certain to give that to everyone, the very finest in public pretenders -- oops, I meant defenders -- in the system), I was certain the thought of pleading guilty just to expedite the matter instead of being detained for years on end and having an equal number of years of his life ruined by prison, and spending many thousands of unavailable dollars on a lawyer whose work would mainly consist of making a swap of one guy for another with the prosecutor (plead that one guilty but let me have this one be innocent) never occurred to him. If he pleaded guilty, then By God, he must have been guilty, because police and prosecutors do not lie about those things and neither do any citizens who care about Truth, Justice and the American Way. Yes, Jack, please excuse me for my asssumptions; I spend far too much time reading the trash in the newspapers also, and believing in the honesty and concern in newspaper reporters and their unimpeachable sources, the police. PAT] ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: 11 Aug 2004 23:59:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com PAT noted in TELECOM Digest V23 #374: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think in any shopping center > parking lot his argument would be very convincing. Please correct me > on this as needed, but I have been told that wireless routers only > have an optimal range of 200-300 feet. When I put mine in recently, I > was told I could go outside my house and maybe the house on either > side of me or the house across the street and still reach it. But the > house on my west side is vacant, a large size double lot separates me > from the house on the east side, and I know the people directly > across the street from me are very unlikely to know about or care > about computers at all, let alone wireless ones. When I go out on my > own back porch with a laptop, depending exactly on how I sit in my > chair allows me to keep or lose the connection. And this is a very > rural area; I would notice almost immediatly any car parked in front > of my house or in the alley on my west side. Plus which I have told > the router to only respond to the name given to the card, and I have > told the card not to broadcast its name, plus I use some encryption, > so I feel relatively safe. > Now my friend who got me the card and wireless router did say if I > mounted a highly directional antenna out of my window I could probably > go 'one mile or so' and still get the signal. Is that correct? So when > a person parks in a parking lot at a shopping center, how likely is it > they will receive signals from some store in the mall? My frame of > reference is the only thing like it we have here in town, the Walmart > Super Center on the west side of town, and I just cannot picture such > a scene there, but maybe I am wrong. PAT] I would guess that the type of equipment that Lowe's uses are a bit more robust than consumer grade stuff as far as signal range goes. A friend of mine works for Lowe's, traveling to various stores doing audits. I'll ask him just what the expected range he gets with his company laptop. Quite a few truck stops offer wireless connections, and they are *huge*. They would need to have signal coverage bigger than a few hundred feet. Last month, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car doing some work on my own new laptop while driving through a metro interchange. It amazed me how many spots kept popping up. Where they protected? Who knows. Since then, I have disabled the connection. I have my own PCMCIA card from Sprint, so I don't need to search for available spots for reasons other folks have posted in response to the original article. Eric Friedebach /Favorite OnStar commercial: crying woman drops keys in toilet/ ------------------------------ From: charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) Subject: Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? Date: 11 Aug 2004 17:59:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I just got through a number porting glitch between SBC and Vonage. I did the paper work then went out of town. I took my Vonage box along and left the home phone forwarding to the Vonage box. Then several days went by without any incoming calls. Turns out SBC disconnected my home phone service but the home phone number was not immediately connected to Vonage. People who tried to call me got a busy signal. I called Vonage when I noticed this and they got things fixed in 24 hours. Appears to me the number porting process is a big headache for everyone involved. I'm glad I can keep my old SBC number. I'm not being hard on SBC or Vonage about this, it's over. In the meantime if you port a number to a VOIP service be alert to the possibility that the number doesn't port properly and no one can call you on the ported number until you notice that and alert the new carrier and they fix it. Having said all that, on balance, I'm very satisfied with my Vonage service despite a few glitches. (I would not rely on VOIP without a backup, cell phone, land line, or nearby pay phone regardless of who is the provider.) But, advantages like simultaneous ring and portabil- ity of the Vonaage box more than compensate for the few glitches I've seen so far. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 01:48:34 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net > What have people experienced with other transfers, to CLECs or wireless? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our local CLEC, Prairie Stream Communi- > cations does it all the time. Existing customers who move away from > SBC on our local 620-331 exchange keep the very same number. The > transfer is transparent. Does Prairie Stream do their own switching, or are they a reseller? If the latter, there would be no change in call routing, just in the billing arrangements. Maybe I should have confined my enquiry to wireless. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They have been a UNI-P type CLEC, which is to say they lease *everything* (not just a few parts) from the incumbent carrier, SBC. But they are now in the process of converting to a full-fledged carrier in their own right. They are now in the process of pulling fiber through the utility holes around town and constructing a central office directly across the alley from the SBC central office at 6th and Maple. They hope to have the conversion finished at the end of this year or early in 2005. At the present time they work out of a cage at the SBC switch, and SBC, in true fashion, is making it extremely difficult and expensive for them to continue the arrangement. New -- that is non-SBC or other telco customers -- who wish to go with Prairie Stream were being assigned numbers in the 620-714 exchange. Existing -- that is SBC Independence customers, all of whom are in the local exchange (out of 6th and Maple) -- wishing to go with Prairie Stream keep their existing 620-331 number. After all, 'EDison-1' (331) is the only exchange here in town with a few exceptions for centrex subscribers and cell phone customers who are '330' or '332', and people want to keep their same number if possible. I know when I switched to Prairie Stream now more than a year ago, SBC made a terrible stink about it: They told Duane (PS owner) "you can't have him since he is a DSL customer". I told SBC in that case just pull the DSL out. Mike Flood over at CableOne put me on internet the same day by tapping a few keys on his computer, and when SBC finally got around to 'allowing it', Duane cut me onto Prairie Stream with a few taps on his keyboard. Never a minute of downtime on phone or internet. Prairie Stream 'mirrors' my entire phone account on their system for $24.95 per month, not the hundred dollars plus per month that SBC wanted. Would you believe I still, now a year later, keep getting 'we want you back' letters in the mail from SBC with one kind of outrageous offer and another? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Strange Spoof E-Mails Organization: Symantec Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 22:14:09 -0400 In article , Neal McLain wrote: > Within the past week, I've received two spoof e-mails, one purporting > to be from CityBank and one from USbank (and I'm not even a USbank > customer). They're obviously fake attempts to get me to enter > confidential information. But they differ from previous spoofs I've > received in two curious respects: > - They include a couple lines of random words that > aren't visible in the message (white text on white > background, I assume). Example (from the USbank > spoof): "in 1842 Geena Davis Not bad. Leonardo Di > Caprio in 1814 in 1969 Download in 1900 Nascar > Personals Tool Atkins Diet NY Yankees Harley Davidson." > - The actual message is a .gif image, not text. > Furthermore, it isn't even a link, so I couldn't > click on it even if I wanted to! These are both attempts to get past spam filters. If the filter looks for words in text, it won't be able to find them in the GIF image (unless spam filters start using OCR technology). And the random white-on-white sentences are presumably intended to make Bayesian filters screw up. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** ------------------------------ From: "Tony P." Subject: Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 21:39:35 GMT In article , a_user2000@yahoo.com says: > Tony P. wrote in message > news:: >> In article , chrispchang@yahoo.com >> says: >>> Hi, I'm new to this group but seems like there are a number of >>> knowledgeable telecom folks here. I am opening a small office (6 >>> people with potential to expand to max of 15). In looking at phone >>> systems, we want basic voicemail functionality, caller id and call >>> waiting caller id. >>> I am thinking about using Centrex offered by Verizon NJ instead of >>> purchasing a phone system. Was wondering if anyone had any opinions >>> from experience with using this? We intend to get Centrex compatible >>> display phones so users don't have to deal with switchook/flash button >>> stuff. >>> Appreciate any responses. >> From an accounting perspective, the Centrex is a month to month expense, >> while buying a system gives you the depreciation over time plus the cost >> of the loops as a monthly expense. >> I don't like Centrex because you're on the hook to Verizon until you >> decide to put your own system in. >> Right now you can get systems that will expand to what you need for >> < $1000. >> You don't mention how many CO lines you'll be using. There is a >> difference. WIth Centrex, every phone is a CO line that you'll pay >> for. With you own system, you only pay for those CO lines you tie >> into the KSU or PBX. >> Let's say you have 6 extensions with 4 CO loops at $30 a month using a >> KSU or PBX. >> Your initial cost going in is $1000, with a recurring monthly expense >> of $120, or $1,440 a year. So your cost in the first year is $2,440. >> Subsequent years would be $1,440. At year three you fully staff to 15 >> people and add 5 CO lines. Perhaps you'll spend $800 or so to upgrade >> the switch. Monthly your cost would now be $300 a month, $3,600 a year. >> Six Centrex loops at $25 a month, plus a rental fee on the phones of >> roughly $10 each per month comes out to $210 a month, or $2,520 a >> year. All subsequent years would cost approximately the same. >> When you fully staff, the cost now comes to $525 a month, or $6,300 a >> year. >> So you can see that in the long term, Centrex is a losing bet. Unless of >> course you want to increase your expenses. > What you have failed to account for in your business case is the cost > of maintenance on the PBX unit. Service calls on your PBX will cost > you an hourly rate that will vary depending on the local area and the > vendor providing the service. If you opt for a maintenance contract, > then it is an annual charge that may be billed on a monthly basis. > Costs for maintenance contracts vary depending on the type of coverage > required, but average, at least in our market, around $180 per port. Ah, that's my experience showing through. Haven't met a PBX or KSU that I couldn't fix yet. That's without the vendor. Usually having the vendor docs is all you need. Allocate what, a couple hundred a year for broken phones etc. Otherwise it's less expensive over time. $180 per port is ridiculous. At my last job we had a Definity G3i -- and Avaya was raping us on maintenance, charging pretty much what you state for 280 port system. Thing was, another agency got rid of their G3i and we took it. Had all the line cards, station cards, tone clocks, CPU's etc. that we'd ever need. And we had the craft password for the system so we could reset alarms. In the end we cut our maintenance from almost $4000 a month to $800 a month. All we covered were the CPU, tape drive and power supplies. Still excessive as far as I'm concerned but a heck of a savings. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Aug 2004 22:11:10 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Vonage Traffic Clarification Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA In article you write: > In one of the posts PAT had mentioned that Vonage to Vonage traffic > goes completely over Vonage network. Vonage claims that they do not > have any network infrastructure. Is my understanding of Voange's claim > wrong or Vonage's traffic is carried over public IP network? All of Vonage's traffic is carried over the public IP network. If you call a normal phone, it goes from your terminal adapter box over the net to Vonage's servers in New Jersey, where it hops onto the regular phone network. If someone calls you, the call goes to the CLEC switch that handles your phone number, which (as far as I can tell) then sends the call to your TA over the net. In my case, for example, I have an Ithaca, NY number and the switch is in Syracuse, in the same building as all the other toll switches for this LATA. But if one Vonage customer calls another, Vonage tells the two TAs to talk directly to each other over the net, without routing the call through Vonage's servers at all. This is nice and efficient, but makes calls hard to tap since there's no central switch where one could make a copy of the data. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ From: nospamwanted Subject: Re: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound and Threaten Me Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 21:52:02 -0400 Organization: NETPLEX Internet Services - http://www.ntplx.net/ On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:58:17 GMT, L wrote: > Pelco Sales & Service wrote in message > news:telecom23.374.10@telecom-digest.org: > Do you have any consumer rights? NOPE. The contract you signed for the > equipment lease specifically states you are a BUSINESS and WILL NOT be > using it for personal use. Businesses don't have consumer protection > laws. In theory, a business owner should be a bit more (intelligent? knowledgeable?) than the small percentage of consumers who are at the lower end of the IQ scale. Certainly, business owners should have insisted on an escape clause, and rejected many of the (alleged) terms of the lease. > Firstly, you need insurance for that equipment. The sales spiel was > that you were not obligated to purchase from the leaseholder, you > could research getting your own. As you have most likely found out, > your insurance company could not provide insurance for 10-60 times > actual value. Your leaseholder does. That smacks of insurance fraud to > me ... and wouldn't it be the civic thing to provide your state's > insurance board with copies of your insurance policy and lease > agreements for that equipment? Some properly worded letters, CC'd to > the leaseholder of course, might raise some state agency eyebrows. Sounds like a sure-fire proposition ;-> > And what about the fact that the equipment is leased at different > amounts to different businesses. Doesn't that point to some complicity > on the part of the lending agencies? Of course, the banking commission > might be interested in a lease that is so overvalued ... what happens > if you default and the bank has to repo the equipment? Banks usually > have strict guidelines as to how much risk they can take. The fact that the equipment is leased at different amounts is not really an issue. Telecom equipment may often be leased at different amounts because it has different capabilities. e.g. a PBX may have 4 or 400 lines. Plus, the down payments may differ. Norvergence made a lot of noise about "patented technology" and having a unique solution. So how was the bank supposed to know the fair market value of the equipment? Norvergence was the only distributor, and Adtran's name was not mentioned. The banks and leasing companies probably just used the values other people paid for the equipment. Thus, the people who signed the leases put the value on the equipment for themselves, and for each other. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is why I suggested the small > business owner *freeze all accounts payable to Norvergence and Scam > Associates* and mitigate their own losses by paying **nothing** until > instructed to do so by a court or their attorney. PAT] Pat, Occasionally, someone would find my name in the archives and call me to ask about Norvergence. I've kept my eye on Norvergence from the beginning, although at first their proposition seemed reasonable -- they claimed to use VoATM to save 20% on your phone bill. (However, I'll bet many small businesses can save 20% just by changing carriers.) As the questionable practices started to become public, a few people called. I mentioned the lease, and they were not concerned by it, they were only concerned with saving money. One guy was more concerned by the fact that he had to act within the week or he'd have to wait another three months. I don't have as much sympathy for the guys who signed the leases as you do. These people should have read the leases, and should have been able to understand them. If they rejected Norvergence's offer entirely, the worst that would have happened would have been that they continued to pay for telecom services at their existing rate. Instead the customers were also motivated by greed. Norvergence is not without blame, but then neither is the customer. Is there anyone who did a proper contract review, and asked "what happens if the service is so lousy I can't use it, or Norvergence goes out of business" and then still signed up with Norvergence? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I tend to support the little guy. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 17:21:23 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: US to Allow SBC, BellSouth to Buy Back Spectrum WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. antitrust authorities said on Wednesday they would allow SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) and BellSouth Corp. (NYSE:BLS) to buy back some of the wireless licenses they were forced to divest when forming Cingular Wireless four years ago. The Justice Department said it had agreed to modify a 2000 agreement with the companies that had barred them from reacquiring spectrum licenses in California and Indiana, removing a potential obstacle to the deal. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission are still reviewing Cingular's $41 billion cash bid for AT&T Wireless Services Inc.(NYSE:AWE) The department's antitrust division is studying whether it would hobble competition in the wireless business. Without the modification, Cingular's proposed acquisition of AT&T Wireless would put SBC and BellSouth in violation of the earlier agreement, the department said. The change is subject to the condition that the companies not buy control of some other spectrum currently being used by AT&T Wireless in parts of Indiana, the department said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43051683 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 17:20:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cisco Systems Ships Its Millionth Internet Protocol Telephone Cisco Systems Ships Its Millionth Internet Protocol Telephone in Europe to BEC Denmark - Aug 11, 2004 02:44 PM (BusinessWire) COPENHAGEN, Denmark--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 11, 2004-- Danish Customer Bankernes EDB Central (BEC) to Deploy IP Communications in 78 Banks; Largest Project of its kind in Denmark Cisco Systems today announced that it has shipped its one millionth Internet Protocol (IP) telephone in Europe. The recipient is Bankernes EDB Central (BEC), a leading Danish technology provider to 78 banks in the country. The millionth IP phone is part of a shipment of 6,000 IP phones being installed over the next three years, making this the single largest IP telephony project in Denmark to date. To mark this milestone, Tim Stone, Head of IP Communications Marketing for EMEA, Cisco Systems, awarded Leo Svendsen, Director, BEC, with a commemorative phone at a special ceremony at BEC headquarters in Roskilde, Denmark on 9th August. With the majority of BEC's customers being small- to medium-sized banks in Denmark, it is important the solutions provided to them are cost effective and installed with minimum disruption to business. In a close alliance with Cisco Systems and NetDesign, a leading Danish IT and telephony systems integrator, BEC now has the full capability to deliver IP enabled solutions including data centres, PCs, routers and operational systems, which Danish banks of any size can take advantage of. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43047145 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 19:40:44 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Check 21 Consumer's Union recommends that you have your bank send you "substitute checks" for all your checks, and that you find a bank that will do this for free. They say that legally, a photocopy of a check isn't actual proof, but a substitute check will be. * Original: FROM..... Dave Farber Begin forwarded message: From: Monty Solomon < > Date: August 11, 2004 1:31:33 AM EDT Subject: Check 21 Questions and Answers About the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, "Check 21" http://www.consumersunion.org/finance/ckclear1002.htm Banks No Longer Will Return Original Cancelled Checks http://www.consumerlaw.org/initiatives/check21.shtml NCR Check 21 Resource Center http://www.ncr.com/solutions/payment_solutions/check21.htm Federal Reserve http://www.frbservices.org/Retail/check21About.html http://www.frbservices.org/Retail/Check21.html ABA http://www.aba.com/About+ABA/CheckTruncationAct.htm Electronic-Check.org http://electronic-check.org/ ------------------------------ From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Correction From Editor: was Re: Internet Connection Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 21:00:54 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Where did you get that one? I saw it > also, but you did NOT get it from TELECOM Digest. I did not pass it. > PAT] Well, it sure as heck LOOKS like I got it from Telecom Digest. Here are the headers: Path:nwrddc04.gnilink.net!cyclone2.gnilink.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!128.230.129.106!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!telecom-digest.org!ptownson Date: 9 Aug 2004 09:19:19 -0700 From: codemonkey74@yahoo.com (CodeMonkey74) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Internet Connection Message-ID: Organization: http://groups.google.com Sender: editor@telecom-digest.org Approved: [comp.dcom.telecom/e29e4a8fbb9059c4356072c008715cf1] X-URL: http://telecom-digest.org/ X-Submissions-To: editor@telecom-digest.org X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 23, Issue 371, Message 20 of 21 Lines: 11 Xref: cyclone1.gnilink.net comp.dcom.telecom:21469 X-Received-Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 14:13:56 EDT (nwrddc04.gnilink.net) Just thought I'd drop by and say thanks to all the people who tried to help me with my internet problems. AAARGH!!!! I almost missed turning in my HUGE psych paper, and Kenna was suffering from nickjr.com withdrawals ;). I finally just gave up and switched (in case you were wondering, it's Comcast 19.99 for 6 months, 75 bucks cash back and a free modem http://specials.comcastoffers.com). The guy I talked to said the online place was the only way to get the free modem. Anyway, it's fast!!!! I downloaded a coloring book for Kenna in like 2 secs. Thanks again, time to study. KM [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct; I stand corrected and apologize. Now and again spam does get through. 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'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #377 ******************************