From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 21 15:34:09 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7LJY9q05806; Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:34:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:34:09 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408211934.i7LJY9q05806@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 #393 TELECOM Digest Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:33:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 393 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson SS7 via Cable/Air? Factor Deciding This Medium? (qazmlp) Verizon Cable TV? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Joseph) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Jack Hamilton) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Mark Crispin) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Joseph) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (John Levine) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Kyler Laird) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Ken Abrams) Re: Rotary Step Relays (DonS) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Joseph) Re: Number Not in Use (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (Scott Dorsey) Last Laugh! was Re: VOIP Firm Tussles With States (John Levine) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: qazmlp1209@rediffmail.com (qazmlp) Subject: SS7 via Cable/Air? Factor Deciding This Medium? Date: 21 Aug 2004 01:44:24 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com What exactly is the medium of transferring SS7 messages? Is this via Fiber optic cables? Is it possible to transfer SS7 messages via air? Also, I would like to know about what exactly is the factor that mainly decides about the mode of communication like whether via cable or air etc. Is it the frequency of the messages? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Verizon Cable TV? Date: 21 Aug 2004 11:06:05 -0700 Verizon is stringing new wires in our neighborhood and we've heard rumors (unconfirmed) that they're planning to introduce Cable TV and other services. I presume this is now legal due to deregulation of both cable and telephone industries. Many of the neighbors are excited about this prospect. When cable was regulated, an intermediate-teir customer paid $35/month, just a few years later it's up to $50/month under deregulation. The cable company is very profitable. Anyone have any experience with Verizon cable TV or other new services? ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: 21 Aug 2004 07:31:56 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Joseph wrote: > Well, it's pretty evident that you're going to believe what you want > to believe so even if the NYT says that they won't send you > unsolicited offers if you opt out when you register you believe they > will so it appears that there's no way to mollify you. You're better > off not registering and using someone else's registration or not going > to NYT links. I suspect it's a matter of being burned so often that eventually you decide you can't trust anyone, regardless of their reputation or the testimonials. I mean, how often are you going to be Charlie Brown, trusting Lucy to hold the football? Privacy policies can change, without notice. Yahoo added a bunch of marketing preferences to their user accounts and automatically opted everyone in as the default. Most account sign-ups that offer opt-in selections have them checked by default, so if you don't look very, very closely you opt yourself in to their marketing. Think about it; why require an email address at all? There's only one reason, really. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am well aware, very mindful of the *excellent* reputation NYT has in many circles. I read it often times myself. I am also aware of the very good reputation Yahoo used to enjoy a few years ago before they changed their policy on privacy and advertising. I am also aware that Yahoo attempts to slip in a spy cookie when you call their page; I deliberatly reject their attempts to install 'Avenue A' cookies on my computers when I use Yahoo daily for news and a free email service. Yahoo never talks about it, except in an oblique way in their 'privacy notice', but day after day, the Avenue A spy cookie shows up when I use one of the Yahoo properties. I only get notice of it because *my* computer and *my* copy of Ad- Aware tells me Avenue A was sent away. No one who ever uses those cookies ever bothers to tell you about it; they just slip it in place. But note how if you attempt to login to a Yahoo site with a heavy Proximotron filter in place, Yahoo won't even accept your login. And your point about 'why does NYT even need email addresses' is a good one also. In the registration process, if you decide to opt out on receiving notices or advertising it ought to be sufficient to simply *not* give an email address, rather than have to give it and then add your opt-out as well. If NYT was so pure in their motives, why not just put the news on display on the web site and let anyone go in and read without registration at all? If they want to count the number of 'hits' each day on their pages, that's understandable, or if they want to have a *purely voluntary* system of registration (like a 'guest book' approach) that's okay also. I do not mean to pick on NYT about this, but as the web grows in size and sophistication I have seen many, many otherwise good sites fall victim to the lure of 'easy money'. Google, for example, would love to have a crack at advertising to the eight thousand more or less daily viewers of telecom-digest.org and have tried to encourage me to get on the band wagon. They have invited me in, and discouraged me telling readers here of what I am doing. "Just take this bit of code we send you, and install it here and there around your site. Don't bother telling the readers what you did; many will just complain about it anyway." There are many, very powerful people in the world who want to see the Internet become a totally commercial thing. There are still a few of us who want to see Internet stay as a cooperative free thing among the people. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:11:46 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:39:31 -0700, Telecom Digest editor wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Any number of companies which send > spam out make that claim, i.e. "you must have mistakenly agreed to > accept our stuff." PAT] As I said you will believe what you want to believe. ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 23:56:41 -0700 Organization: Copyright (c) 2004 by Jack Hamilton. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and > AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T > rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be > swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the > Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same > thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close > to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on > their network with no success. PAT] What that often means is that the phone is required to use a SIM card from the provider from which you bought the phone. It doesn't really have anything to do with roaming. There seems to be a healthy market for phone unlocking programs and codes -- try Googling "unlock cingular SIM", for example. Sometimes it's possible, and sometimes it's not -- rumor has it that no one outside the factory knows how to unlock certain ATTWS phones. ATTWS seems to have the worst attitude towards unlocking phones, by the way -- they won't unlock a phone even after your contract is over and the phone is paid for, and they refuse to admit that it might even be possible to do so. I was once told by an ATTWS technician that I couldn't be talking to him, because the phone I was using wouldn't work on their network. True, I might as well not have been talking to him for all the good it did me. That phone was an unlocked Cingular Nokia 6340i I bought on eBay. It said "Cingular" on the display, but worked fine with an ATTWS SIM. I finally got sick of ATTWS's deteriorating coverage and poor customer service and switched to Verizon Wireless. Jack Hamilton jfh@acm.org In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted comfort and security. And in the end, they lost it all - freedom, comfort and security. Edward Gibbons [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I first re-located here to Independence, Kansas from Chicago I had a Nokia 6100 cell phone programmed onto AT&T Wireless with a Chicago area (630) number, in the 'national no-roaming charges' plan. AT&T served us here as an 'extended' point (closest major city is Tulsa) on the Cell One tower out of Liberty, KS. We are *barely* in the AT&T extended area of coverage; it was pretty awful service. Then one day, AT&T decided to close up our local shop here, and the AT&T service rep that was here in town told me that she was going to become an agency for Cingular Wireless instead, and 'her employees' there would become Cingular Wireless employees also as of some date. She converted my Nokia 6100 phone over from area 630 Chicago to an area 620 southeast Kansas number, put me on a local plan (no more free roaming) but kept me on AT&T. I think she said I was her last customer while she represented AT&T. A week or so later, I went past her shop downtown; it now had a 'Cingular Wireless' sign on the front of it and a huge stack of Nokia 6100 series phones in the window for a 'close out' sale. Take a year contract on Cingular Wireless and get one of those phones for free. I told her since I already have a Nokia 6100 phone which I like, just cut it over to Cingular for me. She said "AT&T has that phone of your's locked up tight. No way to do it; but the same phone is on close out now through Cingular Wireless; take one of them for free." I told her I did not want to lose my phone listings or the other features I had programmed into *my* phone. She said most of what was in there she could 'suck out' and move it into the new phone (directory items; she pointed at a device on her desk with a jumper which went from one Nokia 6100 phone to another Nokia 6100 phone), "but not the transmission software, which is why you have to get a new phone". Before I agreed to that, I went to the other cell phone agencies around town (Cell One, Alltel, US Cellular) and had them look at my phone. They had the same answer: "If you choose to not stay with AT&T then you may as well junk the phone. It is good for nothing else." (I wanted to make sure it was not just the Cingular Wireless lady with a grudge against her former employer AT&T). I took her offer of a 'new' Nokia 6100 phone and a new one year contract with Cingular Wireless. I then had the 'old' Nokia 6100 phone converted to AT&T Wireless Prepaid service and buy about ten dollars in advance every three months or so to keep it active with an area 316 number (AT&T never did offer any 620 numbers) and I use it (quite rarely) as a standby phone in emergencies. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 03:10:31 -0500 John Levine wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and > AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T > rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be Yes. Locking is one thing. The technology is still compatible. Sprint locks its phones too, but if you can social-engineer the Master Subsidy Lock code out of them, you can use a tri-mode Sprint phone on Alltel or Verizon. Both of those carriers use CDMA like Sprint and both are willing to activate other carriers' handsets as long as those handsets use CDMA. > thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close > to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on > their network with no success. PAT] Well, of course; Alltel doesn't run GSM and the 6100 is a GSM phone. If the 6100 has analog you MIGHT be able to get it to run in analog if Alltel has analog coverage. Maybe. JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/ Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED) Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids. ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 01:28:43 -0700 Organization: University of Washington On Fri, 21 Aug 2004, John Levine wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and > AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T > rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be > swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the > Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same > thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close > to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on > their network with no success. PAT] Unlike CDMA, TDMA, or analog phones, "reprogramming" a GSM phone is simply a matter of changing the SIM card in the phone. ATTWS "SIM locks" their handsets, so that the handset will not accept a non-ATTWS SIM card. Unlike most GSM carriers, ATTWS will not unlock your handset for any reason (not even if you're a long-time customer and/or are willing to pay for the privilege); nor will they sell you an ATTWS SIM card to put into an existing unlocked GSM phone. It is for this reason, among others, that I would not consider buying GSM service from ATTWS. If you look at the used cell phone market, you'll see that an "unlocked" (either officially or by hackers) GSM phone commands a premium over one which is still SIM locked. Hacker SIM unlocking is a big business in Europe, although I believe it's actually illegal in some countries over there. It's legal in the US as long as you're not doing so for fraudulent purposes; when you buy a phone, title transfers to you, and the only recourse the selling phone company has is to make you sign a service commitment and hit you with an early cancellation penalty if you break it. I wonder what Dobson's policy is on GSM unlocking. My Alaska cell phone service is currently TDMA with Dobson. I'm in no rush to switch it to GSM, and by the time the plug is pulled on TDMA I'm going to give serious consideration to satellite instead of GSM. At least Verizon has decided that handset locking is silly, and doesn't do it; all modern Verizon phones have a "security code" or "unlock code" of 000000. It's good press for them, and it doesn't really matter since most other CDMA carriers (at least, SprintPCS and Telus) will not active an ex-Verizon phone on their networks even though technically it will work. Verizon *will* activate an ex-SprintPCS or ex-Telus phone on its network as long as you get the security code for it and accept the risk of it not working right. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:09:29 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 21 Aug 2004 02:03:21 -0000, John Levine wrote: > My Cingular phone is quad mode, GSM 1900, GSM 800, TDMA 800, and > analog 800, and roams just fine onto AT&T in places like Pittsburgh > where Cingular has no service. My plan offers national roaming, so it > doesn't cost any extra when I do so. Your cingular phone is not quad *mode*! It is tri-mode with dual band GSM, TDMA (IS-136) and AMPS. If it was quad mode it would have to be able to do four separate types of mobile/cell technologies such as GSM, TDMA, CDMA and AMPS. It's multi *band* but that is not the same thing. Telecom Digest Editor went on to comment: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and > AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T > rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be > swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the > Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same > thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close > to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on > their network with no success. PAT] AT&T "SOC" locks their phones to work with their system. I've heard (but haven't personally experienced it) that they can be programmed over the air to use the other company's network, but the problem lies in that it will work fine when you're not in the other company's area, but when you are in the company's area that the phone originally was on there are problems. You could probably "fix" the problem by having the phone re-flashed with the firmware that the other company uses, but you'd have to do it independently from the manufacturer since they probably wouldn't put another company's firmware on someone else's phone even though the actual phones are exactly the same. The firmware is different and is customized for a particular carrier. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Aug 2004 16:09:34 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular > and AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? No, the Cingular ones are programmed to look for Cingular systems and the AT&T ones are programmed to look for AT&T systems, but in each case if they can't find their favorite, they can and do roam on the other since they're both TDMA and GSM. The GSM handsets are also locked so that they only work with SIM cards of the carrier that sold it to you. All handsets can be unlocked with the cooperation of the selling carrier, some can be unlocked without. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? From: Kyler Laird Organization: Insight Broadband Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 12:53:36 GMT Doug McIntyre writes: > As such, you won't find any telco offering it, because its a special > mode that Asterisk has for its FXO cards on a plain old loopstart > telephone line. And yet others make money selling devices to detect it from "most modern electronic COs". http://www.sandman.com/cpcbull.html --kyler ------------------------------ From: Ken Abrams Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 13:54:23 GMT Tony P. wrote > What ever happened to CPC? I forget exactly how it worked but the > switch would actually reverse polarity on the line to indicate the > call had dropped or some such. On a pots, loop start line, the reversal occurs at answer (on an outgoing call). This indicates answer supervision to a connected PBX. ------------------------------ From: Don_Shoemaker@HotMail.com (DonS) Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 12:10:13 GMT Organization: Road Runner - NC In article , John Schuch wrote: > Does anyone know of a source for rotary stepping relays? AKA Step > relays, sequencing relays, Strowger relays. I need several that have > at least two poles, and 10 positions. Yea, I know I could accomplish > the same thing fairly simply with electronics, but this is an "art > project", and the coolness is the sound and action of the old relays. > I searched the web ad-nausium with no luck. An alternative to the suggestions in the other posts may be to use a stepper mech from an old electro-mechanical pinball (1977 or earlier). Check on eBay or the classified section of www.MrPinball.com. -don ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:14:28 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 03:20:58 GMT, William Warren wrote: > What we need to succeed in business (or, for that matter, > International Politics) is knowledge about people, not places. But people live in places! And just to inform the country in South America is *not* Columbia it is Colombia!!!!! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A lady in Colombia called me on the phone once and in our discussion (about something else) she complained to me that "most people in the USA think our country is spelled the same as 'District of Columbia' because they do not know better." PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:18:14 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Tony P. wrote: >> Even after they used a separate ringing tone, it was usually >> operated by the same relay that applied ringing current to the >> called party. > Not anymore. I tried a test and called my home number from my cell -- > heard ring tone on the cell but the home phone rang about a second AFTER > ring tone had ended. Of course, "not anymore." The reference was to how the ringing tone was changed on step-by-step switches. On electronic switching, which is all there is around these days, the ring voltage and ring tone have always been independent functions, since circa 1965. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: 21 Aug 2004 11:46:15 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) John McHarry wrote: > The reference has to be to photons, or any emf for that matter (lower > frequency photons are rather porcine and more wave like at our scale) > in a vacuum. They are always somewhat slower in media, since, like > dogs, they tend to pause to sniff things as they pass. Transmission > lines tend to give 65-80% of c as velocity constants. No. A _pulse_ travels at that rate, but the rate of an actual electron is much slower. Imagine a row of golf balls. You tap on the back one, and almost instantly the one at the front shakes. But it takes a lot of tapping for the whole row to move forward to the front. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: 21 Aug 2004 17:23:53 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Last Laugh! was Re: VoIP Firm Tussles With States On Phone Numbers Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Without an unfettered supply of phone numbers from NANPA, SBC IP >> argues, it and other carriers' rollouts of Net phone service will be >> hampered. > Employees of Vonage, VoicePulse and other VoIP services would laugh > at that. SBC continues as the absolute lamest telecom company in > existence. Oh, you just don't understand. The RBOCs have always had a sooper-sekrit agreement that they won't invade each other's territories. For example, a few years back they were all complaining that the wholesale rates for CLECs that wanted to resell local phone service were so low that they were below cost. So someone asked the obvious question: If they're that low, why aren't you making big buck$ reselling each other's services, since you just told us that would be more profitable than selling your own? The only answer was a fairly sniffy "we don't do that." So they can't file as CLECs in each other's territories since We Don't Do That. They sure don't want to buy service through existing CLECs as Vonage et al do, since those are the very same CLECs they've been shafting for the past decade or two who would be unlikely to pass up an opportunity to turn the tables. What's a poor RBOC to do? Go whine to the FCC and hope that Chairman Mike will make things all better. He's always given them all of the nonsense they wanted in the past. Why should he stop now? John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Was anyone else as amused as I was by hearing SBC referred to in the header as a 'VOIP Firm'? So now that they have called the shots for so many years, all of a sudden they want to be known as an underdog? Poor, pitiful, put upon SBC! 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. 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