From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Feb 29 16:24:28 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i1TLOSN11644; Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:24:28 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:24:28 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200402292124.i1TLOSN11644@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 #96 TELECOM Digest Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:24:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 96 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson In Naming Computer Viruses, Speed and Confusion Rule (Monty Solomon) Phones Under Lock and Code (TechNews.com) (Monty Solomon) EFFector 17.6: Tell MEPs to Reserve Tough New IP Enforcement (M Solomon) EPIC Alert 11.04 (Monty Solomon) Enthusiasts Call Web Feed Next Big Thing (Monty Solomon) TiVo-Like Devices to Get Booster Shot (Monty Solomon) The Real TiVo (Monty Solomon) Re: Memories: Enterprise -vs- Zenith Numbers (Herb Stein) Re: Memories: Enterprise -vs- Zenith Numbers (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: The 22 Bell Operating Telcos as of 1984 (Nick Landsberg) Re: The 22 Bell Operating Telcos as of 1984 (Joseph) Re: Nevada Bell (Steven J Sobol) Re: Nevada; Other BOC Oddities (Wesrock@aol.com) Southern/South Central Bell Border, was Re: Nevada (Stanley Cline) Verizon Says That Hawaii and Upstate NY Are For Sale (John R Levine) Re: Verizon Says That Hawaii and Upstate NY Are For Sale (Mark J Cuccia) Re: Verizon Says That Hawaii and upstate NY Are For Sale (John R Levine) "Upstate NY" (Re: Verizon Plans to Sell ...) (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: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 02:47:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: In Naming Computer Viruses, Speed and Confusion Rule Survival Of the Catchiest By Mike Musgrove Washington Post Staff Writer Early one Monday afternoon, Craig Schmugar, virus research manager at computer security firm Network Associates Inc., was at his desk taking a quick look at the programming inside a new computer worm that his team had just discovered, still in the early stages of circulating the Web. As Schmugar scanned through the worm's deciphered code, his adrenaline started pumping. This one had ambitions. The worm disguised itself as a bounced piece of e-mail and had an innovative way of collecting addresses, looking for more potential victims. Schmugar had a feeling this one was going to create a lot of trouble; it was time to sound the alarms -- but first he needed to attach a name. What to call it? Antivirus companies compete with each other fervently in the hopes that their customers will hear about the latest computer-based threat from them first. The result is that when there's an outbreak of a new virus or worm, companies often race to offer competing names for the same bug. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6924-2004Feb25.html http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/02/29/confusion_reins_in_naming_of_viruses_that_bug_computers/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 02:55:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Phones Under Lock and Code (TechNews.com) By Mike Musgrove Washington Post Staff Writer Since last fall, cell-phone users have been able, with some patience, to take their phone numbers with them when they change carriers. But it's still tricky to move a cell phone itself from one service to the next -- even when both carriers use the same wireless standard. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14265-2004Feb28.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 00:50:31 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 17.6: Tell MEPs to Reserve Tough New IP Enforcement EFFector Vol. 17, No. 6 February 25, 2004 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 281st Issue of EFFector: * Action Alert: Tell MEPs to Reserve Tough New IP Enforcement Tools for Real Criminals * EFF Releases File Sharing Recommendations: Suggests Voluntary Collective Licensing at Future of Music Event * Court Endorses Ban on DVD Copy Technology * Trademark Law Shouldn't Prejudice Internet Ads * Let the Sun Set on PATRIOT - Section 206 * Deep Links (13): Critics Hail, EMI Targets DJ Danger Mouse's "Grey Album" * Staff Calendar: 03.02.04 - Seth Schoen speaks at OpenBSD Users Group, San Francisco, CA; 03.03.04 - Fred von Lohmann speaks at Digital Piracy Dilemma Panel, London, UK; 03.04.04 - Gwen Hinze speaks at Digital Divide: New Currents in Digital Downloading, Davis, CA * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/6.php ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 00:51:38 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 11.04 ======================================================================= E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================= Volume 11.04 February 25, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.04.html ====================================================================== Table of Contents ====================================================================== [1] Supreme Court Sides With Government on Privacy Act Damages [2] Agencies Issue Reports on CAPPS II, JetBlue Disclosure [3] EPIC Testifies on Medical Privacy and Banking [4] EPIC Demands FBI Database Accuracy [5] Courts Reject Business "Free Speech" Challenges to Privacy Law [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: The Patriot Act Game [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.04.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 01:07:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Enthusiasts Call Web Feed Next Big Thing By Frank Bajak, AP Technology Editor, 2/27/2004 NEW YORK -- E-mail is crippled, concussed by an irrepressible spam stream. Web surfing can be equally confounding, a wobbly wade through bursts of pop-ups and loudmouthed video ads. And that may explain the excitement these days over a somewhat crude but nifty software tool that automatically delivers updated information to your computer directly from your favorite Web sites. Enthusiasts see these Web feeds as sketching the outline of the next Net revolution. The technology behind them is called RSS and I rely on it daily to consult The New York Times, the BBC, CNET News, Slashdot and a few dozen other Web sites that employ RSS to make the very latest news stories or bits of commentary available for the plucking. Aided by software on my computer that goes out and retrieves my feeds, I swiftly sort through headlines and summaries. By clicking on included hyperlinks, I can visit originating sites for more detail. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/02/27/enthusiasts_call_web_feed_next_big_thing/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 01:50:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo-Like Devices to Get Booster Shot By Ed Frauenheim Staff Writer, CNET News.com Having proved their popularity with American couch potatoes, digital video recorders are about to get a boost in features that will allow them to zap several video streams throughout networked homes. Engineers in the consumer electronics lab of hard-drive maker Maxtor, for example, are working on DVR-type devices that can record or broadcast at least six media streams at a time. That compares to three streams in current DVRs, which are hard-drive-based machines that can record video and temporarily pause live broadcasts. Three-stream machines can simultaneously record two live channels while playing a previously recorded program. DVRs in development not only will be able to serve up video in multiple rooms at the same time, but also handle data from a home video security system, said Jasbir Sidhu, director of engineering for consumer electronics products at Maxtor. The coming DVRs may hit the market sometime in the next 18 months, he said. The strategy of making DVRs more powerful and comprehensive could help cement their place in the household electronics pantheon and hold off competition from PC makers that have unfurled plans to put modified desktops on top of televisions. http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5164465.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 02:32:40 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Real TiVo By Lance Ulanoff One of Amazon's most popular technology books last month was Hacking TiVo. The book's enormous popularity intrigues me because of what it says about TiVo digital video recorders: 1) Geeks love the TiVo; and 2) Many of these same gadget-happy TiVo owners are not satisfied with TiVo in its off-the-shelf incarnation. I've spent many envious minutes listening to people talk about TiVo-ing their favorite shows, and I've wanted to get in on the action for quite some time. I'm also aware that many people think TiVo needs upgrading-myself included. With that in mind, I turned to WeaKnees.com.com, a TiVo upgrade and parts company. WeaKnees.com takes TiVo Series 2 systems, and throws in another hard drive, bumping up the storage capacity from 80 hours (at lowest visual quality) to as many as 320 hours. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1538555,00.asp ------------------------------ From: Herb Stein Subject: Re: Memories: Enterprise -vs- Zenith Numbers Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 23:35:37 -0600 Actually, I can't back it up, but I don't think it happened at divestiture. Linc Madison wrote in message news:telecom23.94.7@telecom-digest.org: > In article , Al Gillis > wrote: >> --- It's interesting to me that in some cases many states were served >> by one company (Mountain Bell and Northwestern Bell, for example) but >> in lots of cases a Bell company was confined to a single state. I >> suppose this was because of taxes or regulation but it might just have >> been some agreements made with previous owners as companies were >> purchased before the Kingsbury Commitment came into the fore. >> So thanks!! PAT! MARK! Anything to add to Nicks information? > There was also at least one exception in the other direction: almost > all of the "Bell" areas of Texas were in the territory of Southwestern > Bell, but the westernmost tip, the area around El Paso, was served by > Mountain Bell. (Roughly the same part of Texas that is in the Mountain > Time Zone instead of Central.) That area was transferred to > Southwestern Bell, now SBC, as part of the Bell System breakup. > Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * lincmad@suespammers.org > * primary e-mail: Telecom at LincMad dot com > All U.S. and California anti-spam laws apply, incl. CA BPC 17538.45(c) > This text constitutes actual notice as required in BPC 17538.45(f)(3). > DO NOT SEND UNSOLICITED E-MAIL TO THIS ADDRESS. You have been warned. Herb Stein Herb@herbstein.com ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 09:19:11 EST Subject: Re: Memories: Enterprise -vs- Zenith Numbers In a message dated Sun, 29 Feb 2004 01:25:12 GMT Tony P. writes: > Rhode Island is an oddity in that there is the big book that is > distributed to Providence rate centers (Ie. those served by PRVDRIWA > and PRVDRIBR which amounts to roughly 85% of the numbers in the > state!) and covers all numbers in the state, while outlying > communities get community directories and in cases have to request the > Providence book. > Why they don't just distribute one book to the entire state I'll never > know. The decision is usually based on maximizing Yellow Pages advertising revenue. > Last I knew there was the Providence book, the Pawtucket book, one for > Wickford, Newport, and Woonsocket. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: hukolau@NOSPAM.att.net Subject: Re: The 22 Bell Operating Telcos as of 1984 Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 03:45:29 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Mark J Cuccia wrote: > And, so now here is a summary of the Twenty-Two BOCs as of the time of > divestiture, grouped according to their seven Regional Bell Holding > Corporations as created in the 1984 breakup of AT&T's Bell System. > The names of the BOCs and RBHCs are as of 1984, with some notes as to > recent developments. [ SNIP - Good list Mark ] Let's not forget the "subsidiaries of subsidiaries" which also were around. I don't know of how many there might have been but I first joined the "Bell System" with .... [drumroll] Empire City Subway Co. Ltd. It was (is still?) a wholly owned subsidiary of the what was then NY Tel and is now Verizon. Way back when, circa, 1890, they signed a contract with the city of NY to provide conduits for "low-voltage electric service". Eventually, they were bought out by NY Tel, but still retained their corporate identity, and had to sell conduit ("underground pipe", thus the term "subway") space to all bona-fide communications providers. Officially, they "sold" space to NY Tel, Western Union and the cable companies, but the huge majority was for NY Tel. The contract was a sweet deal. ECS was allowed to make "up to 10% profit" with the rest going to the City of New York. There were many years when the "profit" was 9.98% :) "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: The 22 Bell Operating Telcos as of 1984 Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 08:42:39 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NONOcom On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:46:58 CST, Mark J Cuccia wrote: > (NYNEX, taken over by Bell Atlantic in the later 1990s, now VeriZon): > - New England Tel & Tel (ME, NH, VT, ME, RI) > - New York Tel (NY, and the towns of Greenwich & Byram in CT) New England Tel & Tel also MA! remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Nevada Bell Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 21:46:33 -0600 Wesrock@aol.com wrote: >> the same redundant instructions listed for each one: "To reach the >> subscribers in xxxx, dial your zero operator and ask for 'xxxx toll >> station number xx'. PAT] > The largest city in Nevada, Las Vegas, was not and is not served by > Bell. And Nevada is not a heavily populated state. Drive from my house in Apple Valley to Las Vegas up Interstate 15 and you drive through a whole lot of nothing up to the state line, and even then there's nothing but a few casinos until you hit the Vegas area. (It's a three hour drive.) Other parts of Nevada border the Death Valley area of California -- also not a very heavily populated area :) JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, Apple Valley, CA Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP: C57E 8B25 F994 D6D0 5F6B B961 EA08 9410 E3AE 35ED ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 09:44:55 EST Subject: Re: Nevada; Other BOC Oddities In a message dated Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:45:11 CST Mark J Cuccia writes: > Maybe Wes Leatherock can share with us some of the pre-1930s era of > the Southwestern Bell states! :) At one time before I retired I could have found this information, but now I can recall only a small part of it. There was a Missouri & Kansas Telephone Company, a Bell company, which also extended its operations into Oklahoma Territory. Meantime a group of four businessmen in my home town of Perry, Oklahoma, organized a telephone company to operate a line between Perry and Pawnee and also a local exchange in Perry. This was, as I recall, originally named the Arkansas Valley Telephone Company, later changing its name to the Pioneer Telephone Company. The Pioneer Telephone Company expanded to various parts of the territory, including to Oklahoma City, where both Pioneer and M & K had exchanges. Apparently both were losing money in Oklahoma, and in 1905 the Bell officers agreed to provide major financing to the Pioneer Company and turn over the M&K properties in Oklahoma to it. The Pioneer Telephone Company changed its name to Pioneer Telephone & Telegraph Company and thus became part of the Bell System. At one time, in the historical files in my office, I had the original "license agreement" between Pioneer T&T and AT&T, the document that made a company part of the "Bell System." Three of the four men who organized the original company in Perry became executives of what eventually was merged into Southwestern Bell, one of them become SWBT president. As I recall, M & K did not include the eastern part of Missouri (St.Louis area), but I don't remember the name of the company that operated there. There was a Southwestern Telephone & Telegraph Company, which is seems to me operated in Texas, and perhaps into Arkansas. In 1917 all the various companies in the territory took the name "Southwestern Bell Telephone Company," but at least at first continued as separate corporations. Exactly when they were merged could never be determined with exactitude. The various corporations continued in existence, however. Probably in the 1970s or early 1980s the lawyers asked me to look into this, since someone had sued the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, an Oklahoma corporation. This corporation still had a legal existence and had an annual meeting once a year in the state vice president's office. The lawyers wanted to, and did, reply that SWBT, an Oklahoma corporation, could not have been at fault since it had no employees, no motor vehicles, and no operations. The other lawyer eventually figured out he should sue the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, a Missouri corporation. As I recall, there were over 100 telephone companies in Oklahoma which eventually became part of the Pioneer T&T Company, later Southwestern Bell (Oklahoma) and, of course, even later, the Oklahoma operations of SWBT (Missouri). Probably similar aggregations occurred in the other states, which would suggest more than 1,000 companies merged or were bought out to form SWBT. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Southern/South Central Bell Border, was Re: Nevada; BOC Oddities Organization: Roamer1 Communications - Dunwoody, GA, USA Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 06:34:41 GMT On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:45:11 CST, Mark J Cuccia wrote: > South Central Bell was created circa 1968/69, carved out of Southern > Bell. So Bell retained NC, SC, GA, FL, while S.C.Bell took over KY, > TN, AL, MS, LA. There is an interesting history to the southestern > part of the US: There were areas of Georgia along the Tennessee and Alabama state lines, and a tiny part of the southwestern corner of North Carolina, that were technically part of Southern Bell territory, but were for actually served by South Central Bell after the SB/SCB split more or less under "contract" with Southern Bell: - Rossville, Tennga, and McCaysville, GA (adjacent to Chattanooga, Benton, and Copperhill, TN respectively) - Liberty (Cherokee County), NC (adjacent to Copperhill, TN) - Georgetown, GA (adjacent to Eufaula, AL) All these areas are served by central offices in TN/AL except for part of the Rossville rate center which is served by a CO in Georgia (which also serves customers in Tennessee and has a CLLI starting with "CHTGTN" = Chattanooga TN even though it's physically in Georgia.) The bills sent to customers in those areas, including my parents and later myself, said in very small letters "agent for Southern Bell" under the SCB name. When everything was folded into BellSouth Telecommunications, the SCB/SB split went away along with the bill verbiage, but the border areas are to this day treated as part of BellSouth-TN/-AL, and customers in the border areas are charged for most, but not all, services under TN and AL tariffed pricing, not GA or NC tariffed pricing. (Which state's rates apply to what is rather inconsistent -- for instance, customers in the GA border areas near Chattanooga are charged TN rates for directory assistance but GA rates for operator-handled calls.) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ Date: 29 Feb 2004 04:17:32 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Verizon Says That Hawaii and Upstate NY Are For Sale Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The next several messages in this issue of the Digest did *not* begin here but were part of a series of messages between John Levine and Mark J. Cuccia which were copied to the Digest, by one or the other of them. PAT] > I read a report from the WSJ about a week ago that VeriZon is > seriously considering selling off (GTE) Hawaiian Telco and also SOME > of its NYTel/NYNEX/BA franchise area in upstate NY! Yes, it said that VZ is thinking of selling Hawaiian Tel and their NY territory outside of metro NY. Hawaiian Tel I can understand, since Hawaii is a long way from the rest of the US, but we're all scratching our heads about upstate NY. It's not isolated, being adjacent to VT, MA, PA, and of course downstate all of which are dominated by VZ, and it's not particularly expensive to serve compared to other rural areas like, say, Maine. It's not even all that rural, since it includes Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany, each of which are considerably larger than any city in Maine. We also can't figure out who they plan to sell it to. The obvious candidate would be Citizens, which recently swallowed a lot of upstate telcos including the one that serves Rochester, but they're in the midst of a sale of their own and aren't about to buy anything. Alltel has only a few small towns, Sprint has nothing in NY at all. The best guess we can come up with is that they think that without downstate, a different owner would get more USF money. Or one cynic thinks that VZ is run by BA guys who only care about Centrex, and there's not enough Centrex upstate to make them happy. And if they want to sell Hawaiian Tel, why aren't they selling Codetel? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 05:58:17 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Re: Verizon says that Hawaii and upstate NY are for sale John Levine wrote: > Mark J. Cuccia wrote: >> I read a report from the WSJ about a week ago that VeriZon is >> seriously considering selling off (GTE) Hawaiian Telco and also >> SOME of its NYTel/NYNEX/BA franchise area in upstate NY! > Yes, it said that VZ is thinking of selling Hawaiian Tel and their NY > territory outside of metro NY. > Hawaiian Tel I can understand, since Hawaii is a long way from the > rest of the US They got out of the dozen or so legacy-GTE ratecenters scattered around Alaska about the time GTE/Contel + BA/NYNEX => VeriZon (circa 2000). So I guess now Hawaii is falling into that same category of being "too far away", according to the current VZ corporate mindset? > But we're all scratching our heads about upstate NY. It's not isolated, > being adjacent to VT, MA, PA, and of course downstate all of which are > dominated by VZ, and it's not particularly expensive to serve compared > to other rural areas like, say, Maine. It's not even all that rural, > since it includes Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany, each of which are > considerably larger than any city in Maine. I wonder if they intend to sell the "rural" areas of upsate NY, while retaining Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany (Tri-Cities), etc? John, what does your local media (radio/TV/newspapers) say in any detail about "upstate New York", regarding NY Tel/ NYNEX/ Bell Atlantic/ VeriZon and plans to sell off certain ratecenters? > We also can't figure out who they plan to sell it to. The obvious > candidate would be Citizens, which recently swallowed a lot of upstate > telcos including the one that serves Rochester, but they're in the > midst of a sale of their own and aren't about to buy anything. Alltel > has only a few small towns, Sprint has nothing in NY at all. Does CenturyTel have any territory in NY State? And also, what might Citizens' Tel. sellng? > The best guess we can come up with is that they think that without > downstate, a different owner would get more USF money. Or one cynic > thinks that VZ is run by BA guys who only care about Centrex, and > there's not enough Centrex upstate to make them happy. > And if they want to sell Hawaiian Tel, why aren't they selling Codetel? And regarding "legacy-GTE" areas outside of the continental/conterminous/ mainland US (CONUS, in military/government terminology) -- i.e., legacy GTE service areas (at one time or another) in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and Canada: CODETEL, in the Dominican Republic, a "legacy GTE" area going back many decades! An acronymn being Espanol, "Compania Dominicana de Telefonos". Also in the Caribbean, GTE-now-VeriZon also took over (or merged with) Puerto Rico Telephone Company/Authority as well a few years ago. And out in the Pacific: The Northern Mariana Islands (Saipan, Tinian, Rota, etc.) but *NOT* Guam, the LEC there is known as "Micronesian Telcommunications" (not to be confused with the one-time US-and-UN possession or territory of the Federated States of Micronesia) is also part of the GTE-now-VeriZon organization. GTE's far-flung "empire" once included the Philippines Long Distance Telephone Company, the largest of several telcos/telecomms serving this once-US possesion. PLDT was a General Telephone System property from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s, at which time GT&E wanted to take over the Mutual Telephone Company of Hawaii, as well as the recently formed (to merge numerous scattered independent telcos in eastern Quebec), QuebecTel. I would think that maybe the FCC/FTC/etc. required or maybe "suggested" to GT&E to sell off PLDT before taking over the Mutual-HTC. (GTE's dozen or so service areas in Alaska and the year 2000 sale of them to ATEAC, is mentioned earlier in this post). And now for "north-of-the-border, up-Canada-way": Telus in Canada has a relationship with GTE-now-VeriZon through the old (mostly) GTE-held "British Columbia Telephone Company" (BC Tel) which merged with (Alberta's) Telus (formerly AGT Alberta Government Telpehones, and also Edmonton Telephones) -- BC Tel (now part of Telus) covering "most" of BC (but not the northern section especially), and also GTE-held QuebecTel of *eastern* Quebec. In Spring 2000, at the time the BZ/NYNEX and GTE/Contel merger took effect to become VeriZon, GTE's QuebecTel and Telus agreed to have GTE's QuebecTel reorganized as now being under Telus as TelusQuebec. GTE-now-VZ still owns a noticeable but now minority share of Telus. And back here in "CONUS", as mentioned in my previous post, VeriZon sold off several legacy-GTE areas to Citizens' Tel, Alltel, CenturyTel in the 2000 to 2002 timeframe, right after GTE and BA merged effective April 2000. Some GTE area (parts of TX, all GTE in OK and NM, and Texarkana AR along with Texarkana TX) were sold off into the newly created "Valor Telecom" (other areas of GTE in Texas have been retained by VeriZon), and all of what was GTE in Iowa was sold to "Iowa Telecom" formerly known as INS, Iowa Network Services, which started off in the 1980s as a support group to the numerous small independent telcos in the state, to provide them with a centralized method of handling "Equal Access" dialing and routing with the new and numerous competitive LD carriers. INS-now-Iowa Telecom has also become a provider of other telecom network-based services, such as Operator and Directory Assistance services, tandem homing and routings, etc, and now is an incumbent (independent) LEC with the purchase of the legacy-GTE service areas in Iowa. Mark J. Cuccia mcuccia@tulane.edu New Orleans LA CSA ------------------------------ Date: 29 Feb 2004 10:22:44 -0500 From: John R Levine Subject: Re: Verizon Says That Hawaii and Upstate NY Are For Sale > I wonder if they intend to sell the "rural" areas of upsate NY, while > retaining Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany (Tri-Cities), etc? The WSJ piece said all of upstate, including the cities. > John, what does your local media (radio/TV/newspapers) say Nothing. I haven't heard anything other than the WSJ piece. > Does CenturyTel have any territory in NY State? And also, what might > Citizens' Tel. sellng? Century Tel has nothing in the northeast at all. Their closest property is 83,000 lines in Ohio, an ex-Centel property. The 2.5 lines that VZ is thinking of selling is bigger than all of Century Tel put together. It'd be a very big gulp. Citizens seems to be selling the whole company in a leveraged buyout. An LBO involves taking on vast amounts of debt, which means that they couldn't buy anything else any time soon and are more likely to be selling bits around the edges to pay down the debt. Other than that they'd be the obvious candidate. They're only a little bigger than Century Tel, but they have over 550,000 lines in upstate NY already. 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: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 13:00:06 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: "Upstate NY" (re VeriZon plans to sell...) John R Levine wrote: > Mark J. Cuccia wrote: >> I wonder if they intend to sell the "rural" areas of upsate NY, while >> retaining Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany (Tri-Cities), etc? > The WSJ piece said all of upstate, including the cities. Now I wonder where the "dividing line" might be? I assume that all of NPA 914 (Westchester County) and a good chunk of the split off 845, will most likely be retained by VZ. At least the NYCity LATA #132 part of NPA 845 ... I wonder if Poughkeepsie NY will stay VZ or not? They are a separate LATA, and split to NPA 845 from 91 a few years back. I guess everything around Albany-Troy-Schnectady and northward/westward, anything that isn't the NYCity Metro LATA #132 (I still wonder about Poughkeepsie), will most likely be sold off... What would be interesting is if Qwest-LEC or SBC (or even BellSouth) would take it over! If BellSouth were to take it over, what *NAME* would BellSouth Corporation use for marketing and as the local operating company, as this area is *NOT* "south"! :-) >> John, what does your local media (radio/TV/newspapers) say > Nothing. I haven't heard anything other than the WSJ piece. I would have been suprised that there was nothing mentioned locally in the news/press/media, but lately I've seen stories elsewhere from other "internet" based sources, other than the "local" news sources even those with webpages of recent local news. On Friday 20 February 2004, the Illinois Commerce Commission announced that they had approved the overlay of NPA 815 in northern IL (except Chicago Metro), to take place "sometime forthcoming, when the new NPA code and numbering resources would be needed". (Some of us estimate that it might be 2005). However, I couldn't find ANYTHING on this in online news sources that were "local" to Chicago or northern Illinois! The Press Release from the ICC (which I transcribed here last week) also mentioned that 779 would be the new overlay area code as assigned by Neustar-NANPA. This was going to be the code that some of us had "guessed" to be a "relief" code for NPA 815 whenever it would need relief in the future ... Anyhow ... even Neustar-NANPA (as of Sunday 29 February 2004) doesn't mention anything of NPA 779 or that 815 is being overlaid, on the "public" area of their website. No mention in the "area codes" lookup and reports section, nothing in the "press release" section, etc. >> Does CenturyTel have any territory in NY State? And also, what might >> Citizens' Tel. sellng? > Century Tel has nothing in the northeast at all. Their closest > property is 83,000 lines in Ohio, an ex-Centel property. The 2.5 lines > that VZ is thinking of selling is bigger than all of Century Tel put > together. It'd be a very big gulp. CenturyTel does indeed tend to stick with rural areas and smaller towns. But they have been growing over the past ten-plus years though! > Citizens seems to be selling the whole company in a leveraged buyout. > An LBO involves taking on vast amounts of debt, which means that they > couldn't buy anything else any time soon and are more likely to be > selling bits around the edges to pay down the debt. Other than that > they'd be the obvious candidate. They're only a little bigger than > Century Tel, but they have over 550,000 lines in upstate NY already. That *IS* interesting about Citizens' Tel. I wasn't aware of thier current financial situation! You'd mentioned in the earlier post that Alltel does have a few small towns in NY. I wonder if they might consider taking over all of that chunk of upstate NY (NYTel/NYNEX/BA/VZ)? > Regards, > John Levine, johnl@iecc.com Thanks for the additional info on the VZ "upstate NY" situation as you know it to be! Mark J. Cuccia mcuccia@tulane.edu New Orleans LA CSA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The [preceeding three or four messages were not originally here in the Digest but were part of personal correspondence between John Levine and Mark J. Cuccia which were copied here the Digest by one or the other of them. 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. 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