TELECOM Digest     Tue, 31 May 2005 02:30:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 240

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Will My Cingular SIM Card Work in Other Phones? (rockstarr0105)
    Do Not do Business With Sprint PCS! (pierreberto@yahoo.fr)
    Re: Octothorpe (Digest Reprints from 1988 and 1995)] (Paul Coxwell)
    Re: What Happened to Channel 1 (Paul Coxwell)
    Re: 25 cps Power was: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange Lines (AES)
    Re: 25 cps Power was: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange Lines (Wesrock)
    Re: 25 cps Power was: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange Lines (Levine)
    Re: 25 cps Power was: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange Lines (Coxwell)
    Re: Foreign Exchange (FX) Lines Still in Use?] (Paul Coxwell)
    Re: Phone Outage Costs Fort Wayne Store to Lose Business (Greenberg) 
    Re: Corton Payphone??? (Tony P.)
    Re: Last Laugh! 86 Year Old Woman Taken to Jail Account of 911 (S Sobol)
    Re: Schools Prohibit Personal E-mail Sites (DevilsPGD)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: rockstarr0105@gmail.com
Subject: Will My Cingular SIM Card Work in Another Brand of Phone?
Date: 30 May 2005 18:33:20 -0700


I Dropped my Cingular Motorola V220 in water ... OOps! Will the
Cingular sim card work in a Nokia or other type of Motorola? Please
Help!!! And what are the cheapest phones that are cingular and SIM
compatible, THANKS!!

------------------------------

From: pierreberto@yahoo.fr
Subject: Do Not do Business With Sprint PCS !
Date: 30 May 2005 13:14:02 -0700


I went to the same company-owned store I bought my Sanyo 7400 from a
couple of months ago, starting a new two-year contract.  The earpiece
got progressively worse in sound-quality, as for me to hardly
understand the conversation.  I asked for a replacement or repair.

After they looked at it, they said no, as there was "nothing wrong
with the phone."  There sure was, with the sound quality absolutely
terrible.  While waiting for my phone, I tested other Sanyo phones in
the store.  Many sounded bad too, my mine sounded the worst.  The
phone in its present condition is worthless to me.  So I call up
Sprint directly.  They said they couldn't help me.  So I said fine,
just cancel the account, refund the purchase price for my phone after
the $150 rebate they sent me (I offered to send the phone back to
them), and don't charge me a $150 early termination fee, since they're
not honoring their warranty or conditions to my contract, since I have
a phone I can't call from and can't do a thing with.  They refused,
even after talking to two supervisors.  I've been a customer of them
for four years, but it took four years for me to suddenly figure out
what an unethical company Sprint is.  They're awful.  Avoid them at
all costs!

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 22:35:52 +0100
From: Paul Coxwell <paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Octothorpe (Digest Reprints from 1988 and 1995)]


> from CCITT recommendation E.161 (Arrangement of Figures, Letters and
> Symbols of Telephones and other Devices that can be used for Gaining
> Access to a Telephone Network) as revised for the Blue Book:

>    3.2.2 Symbols
>     ...
>      [drawings, with angle between horiz. and vert. strokes, length of
>    strokes, and length of protruding nubbies labelled alpha, b, and a
>    respectively]
>      in Europe alpha = 90 degrees with a/b = 0.08 (looks funny to a
> N.A.ican)
>      in North America alpha = 80 deg. with a/b = 0.18

    The symbol will be known as the square or the most commonly used
>   equivalent term in other languages.*
>    *... alternate term (e.g. "number sign") may be necessary...

> I suppose it's useful to have a translatable term. That approach
> worked for "star", but it seems to have failed here. Does anyone refer
> to '#' as a "square"? Anywhere? Enquiring minds want to know...

British Telecom likes to call it "square," and uses the term in many
system prompts, e.g. "Dial the telephone number followed by square."

They do use hash as well.  For example when calling into BT's U.K.
direct service or using the euivalent card service from within Britain
you'll hear the prompt "Dial your card number and PIN followed by the
hash key."

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 22:35:08 +0100
From: Paul Coxwell <paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: Fwd: Re: What Happened to Channel 1


> In November of 1970, I heard BBC1 TV audio in the 41.5 MHZ range for
> the first time here in the very center of the contiguous 48 United
> States.

> A few other notes are in order.  The BBC wasn't the only television
> service audible during those exciting times.  The French also had a
> Band-I service whose audio was at 41.250 MHZ plus or minus offsets.
> More often than not, both the British and French television audio were
> simultaneously receivable so it is good that they weren't on the same
> exact frequencies.

> If you consider the distance between Oklahoma in the middle of the
> continental US and the UK or France, one would expect the propagation
> to be almost identical, but the path tended to favor the French
> system.  Either their transmitters were run at a higher power level or
> the angle of propagation for the signals was more favorable to France
> than to England.  Also, various transmitters in the UK would be
> booming in loud and clear while others were barely audible.

I have no idea about the power levels of the French transmitters on
these frequencies, but the Crystal Palace (London) BBC transmitter ran
with a vision ERP of around 200kW, and Divis (Northern Ireland) was
listed for 35kW ERP.

If I recall correctly, the sound transmitters were generally run about
10dB below vision, so you would have been looking at about 20kW ERP
from London and 3.5kW from N. Ireland on the 41.5MHz frequency.
Crystal Palace also used vertical polarization while Divis used
vertical.

There were several other BBC transmitters on ch. 1, although at much
lower power levels.

Mike Brown's transmitters webpage has a full list of the old
VHF/405-line British transmitters:

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/info/index.asp


> The audio, by the way, for both the British and French systems was AM
> or amplitude modulated.  The video for at least the British system was
> 405 lines at 50 fields per second.  A few hobiests in the US actually
> cobbled together modified monochrome television sets and tuners and
> were able to get scratchy images.  I was told that without modification
> to the video circuits, the images were reverse polarity because the
> 405-line system used the opposite signal levels for black and white
> than do modern PAL or NTSC systems.

The 405-line system did indeed use positive video modulation.  The
French at that time still had their 819-line system, with very wide
channel bandwidths.  In fact the French channels had a degree of
overlap to fit them all in the band, with alternate channels having
the sound carrier above and below the video carrier.  They used
positive vision modulation too, as indeed they still do with their
modern 625-line system.

Paul Coxwell
Eccles on Sea
Norfolk, England.

------------------------------

From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: 25 cps Power, was: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange Lines
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 15:36:08 -0700
Organization: Stanford University


In article <telecom24.239.4@telecom-digest.org>, Danny Burstein
<dannyb@panix.com> wrote:

> (All primary lighting is now courtesy of the regular 120/208/240v
> utility grid feeding fluorescent fixtures. There's a modest amount of
> incandescent stuff around for small areas.

Is it true that some subway 110V incandescent light fixtures used 
left-hand threads to deter bulb snatchers?



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know that in Chicago long ago, all
the station lighting and platform lighting they did left hand threads
to inhibit people from stealing the bulbs if they needed them at their
own houseand also the voltage was sufficiently different the bulbs
generally would not work in your home electrical outlets anyway.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: Wesrock@aol.com
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 20:26:52 EDT
Subject: Re: 25 cps Power, was: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange Lines


In a message dated Sun, 29 May 2005 21:58:31 UTC, Danny Burstein
dannyb@panix.com> writes:

> Parts of some passenger stations tapped into this 25 cycle grid for
> use by the incandescent lamps. This led to quite noticable flickering
> whenever the temperature dropped ...

As a teenager, in the 1940s, I stayed with my folks at the Fred Harvey
Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico.  I pondered about why the flickering
(more noticeable from the corner of your eye than looking directly at
it, then realized the power supply was no doubt from the Santa Fe
Railroad facilities adjacent, probably installed years before Gallup
had commercial power.

I'm not sure about the relationship to temperature.  This was in the
middle of summer and there was certainly no drop in the temperature.

(Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe Railroad were associated from some time
in the late 1800s.)


Wes Leatherock
wesrock@aol.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Remember also the "Harvey Girls" who
were like 'stewardesses' on the Santa Fe trains and the 1940's movie
about the Harvey Girls, and they were always singing that song about 
the railroad ... how did it go?  Something about " ... my day, and the
Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe ..." It was a very famous movie in 
the 1940's and a very popular song.  PAT]n

------------------------------

Date: 30 May 2005 21:10:20 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
Subject: Re: 25 Hz power Re: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange Lines
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA


> Doesn't Amtrak still have some 25 Hz power plants from its predecessor
> lines in the Northeast Corridor?

Not any more.  I believe the last 25 Hz area was in Connecticut,
powered by the ancient Cos Cob power plant which shut down in about
1970.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 22:28:48 +0100
From: Paul Coxwell <paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: Re: 25 cps Power, was: Tie Lines was Re: Foreign Exchange Lines


I raised the issue of non-60Hz power in North America in another forum
just a couple of months ago.  It was after I acquired a book dating
from 1959 (3rd edition, the 1st being 1950) which stated that 25Hz
power was still in use in parts of upstate NY, and that many West
Coast cities had 50Hz power.

I know from previous discussions we've had that the Los Angeles area
used 50Hz at one time, and converted over to 60Hz during the 1930s.
Apparently there was a city-wide program to help everybody replace
synchronous clocks.

Somebody else recalled that when his grandfather worked as an
electrician in the West Virginia mines in the early 1950s that they
had 25Hz power.

We also came up with the following link to an interesting article
about frequency converters.  This seems to confirm that 25Hz power was
indeed generated in the Niagara/Buffalo region of New York, as well as
elsewhere.

http://services3.ieee.org/organizations/pes/public/2003/sep/peshistory.html

It would be interesting to know just how widespead the use of 50Hz was
in California in earlier times.

Here in England, 25Hz was used on some electrified railroads in the
npast, although the high-voltage lines now in use take their power from
our regular 50Hz power grid.


- Paul.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One of my earliest terminal monitors
was the H-19 from Heathkit (also known as Z-19 if you bought it
already put together from Zenith. There as a little switch on the
back which allowed you to 'default into' 50/60 cps, and you could also
switch between 50/60 cps mode using keystrokes.    PAT]

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 22:36:32 +0100
From: Paul Coxwell <paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Foreign Exchange (FX) Lines Still in Use?


>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As Robert knows, those four additional
>> touch tone keys were known as A,B,C, and D. I forget the exact
>> meaning of each, but my question is, did anyone with 'regular'
>> service but with an Autovon phone ever try pressing those keys in
>> a regular call?  I did a couple times, and the immediate result was
>> a 'fast busy' signal; the call would not complete.   PAT]

Modern BT exchanges here in England reject them and go to the standard
(and irritating) "The number you have dialed has not been recognized"
recording.  It's not always an immediate dump to the recording; it
depends upon the position.

> I never encountered a _telco_ C.O. that implemented any
> user-accessible functionality on them.  I've got a vague recollection
> of some telco 'test' systems that used em _after_ the call to the test
> system was connected.  Of course, that _wasn't_ the switch doing it.

The BT automated dial/keypad test has an option for them here (for UK
readers, this is the line tester reached by dialing 175).  After the
line test and ringback when the system prompts you to "Dial next
test," the normal method for checking a DTMF keypad is to dial a 1,
then when you get "Start test" followed by a dialtone, you dial
123456789*0#.

If, however, at the "dial next test" prompt you dial A, you will get
the same "Start test" folowed by a dialtone, but the tester then
expects to receive just the four extra TouchTone digits ABCD in
sequence.

Paul Coxwell
Eccles on Sea
Norfolk, England.

------------------------------

From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg)
Subject: Re: Phone Outage Costs Fort Wayne Store to Lose Business
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 20:54:20 UTC
Organization: Organized?  Me?


In article <telecom24.239.8@telecom-digest.org>, Robert Bonomi
<bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com> wrote:

> Depending on the telco, and depending on the length of time you needed
> 'overlapping' service, there may, or may *not* have been a charge for
> it.

I did this a few years in Bellsouth territory.  The first 30 days were
no extra charge, but I used it for longer (slow move) and there was a
charge which I don't recall the amount of.  Relatively small ISTR.


Rich Greenberg Marietta, GA, USA richgr atsign panix.com    + 1 770 321 6507
Eastern time.  N6LRT  I speak for myself & my dogs only.   VM'er since CP-67
Canines:Val, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky                   Owner:Chinook-L
Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/  Asst Owner:Sibernet-L

------------------------------

From: Tony P. <kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net>
Subject: Re: Corton Payphone???
Organization: ATCC
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 18:40:18 -0400


In article <telecom24.239.10@telecom-digest.org>, 
michael.muderick@verizon.net says:

> The designations in the phone are L1, L2, and G, not T, R, and G.  So
> I am assuming they are for power, but at what polarity, voltage, etc.
> I don't want to blow it out.

Someone correct me on this but I believe L1 = T, L2 = R and G = G. 

------------------------------

From: Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net>
Subject: Re: Last Laugh! 86 Year Old Woman Taken to Jail Account of 911 Call
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 13:30:03 -0700
Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com


DevilsPGD wrote:

>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So many things about USA law
>> enforcement these days have a sort of tinge or a smell of Nazi-Germany
>> to them, don't they ...  PAT]

> How do you figure?  Who would be held responsible if one of her 20 calls
> caused a caller with a real emergency to be put on hold?

> It sounds to me like she should have been charged with assaulting a
> police officer too, which would raise the stakes from a "resisting a
> public officer" charge.

But EVERYONE should be allowed to call 911 to complain about a pizza
place, just like Pat says. :P

I think the US is becoming more of a police state -- there's no
question.  However, the woman who repeatedly called about pizza needs
to be disciplined.

The story makes me wonder if the pizza place didn't have a good reason
to not deliver to her in the first place. Kinda wonder what kinda of
calls she made to them ...


JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"The wisdom of a fool won't set you free"
     --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle"

------------------------------

From: DevilsPGD <spamsucks@crazyhat.net>
Subject: Re: Schools Prohibit Personal E-mail Sites
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 23:25:00 -0600
Organization: Disorganized


In message <telecom24.239.9@telecom-digest.org> mc <mc_no_spam@uga.edu>
wrote:

> Sad.  The school my daughter attends (admittedly a private one)
> *provides* personal e-mail service.

Sure and many schools limit access to from within the school, and/or
allow teachers and administration to read the email.

Personally, I consider both to be unacceptable solutions.

------------------------------


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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #240
******************************