For your convenience in reading: Subject lines are printed in RED and
Moderator replies when issued appear in BROWN.
Previous Issue (just one)
TD Extra News
Add this Digest to your personal
or  
TELECOM Digest Thu, 14 Jul 2005 14:50:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 322 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Sprint, Nextel Merger Approved by Shareholders (USTelecom DailyLead) For Surfers, a Roving Hot Spot That Shares (Monty Solomon) Enterprise Numbers Still in Use? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Non-Bell ESS? (Fred Goldstein) Re: Non-Bell ESS? (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: A Question About International Country Code Numbers (John Levine) Re: A Question About International Country Code Numbers (A Burkitt-Gray) Re: Well,Duh Re: Mixing Blogging With Work Can Lead to Unemploy (Sobol) Re: New Microsoft Patches Already Getting Exploited (Barry Margolin) Re: Don't Let ID Fraud Happen to You (Alan Burkitt-Gray) Correction on Bernie Ebbers Sent to Prison (Henry) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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, 14 Jul 2005 13:25:17 EDT From: USTelecom dailyLead <ustelecom@dailylead.com> Subject: Sprint, Nextel Merger Approved by Shareholders USTelecom dailyLead July 14, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=23077&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Sprint, Nextel merger approved by shareholders BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * XM buys WCS Wireless to expand offerings * Broadband price war unfolds among cable, phone companies * Alcatel, Shanghai Media strengthen ties USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Just Released: The USTelecom IP Video Implementation & Planning Guide EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Pannaway planning BAS access platform update REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Editorial: Brand X ruling boosts telecom sector * Mobile phone disposal program under discussion Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=23077&l=2017006 Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 08:47:04 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: For Surfers, a Roving Hot Spot That Shares By JOHANNA JAINCHILL When the Sunningdale Country Club in Scarsdale, N.Y., opened its gates last week to a location shoot for "The Sopranos," a new fixture was on display in the mobile dressing rooms - a roving Wi-Fi hot spot. With a device called the Junxion Box, the production company can set up a mobile multiuser Internet connection anywhere it gets cellphone service. The box, about the size of a shoebox cover, uses a cellular modem card from a wireless phone carrier to create a Wi-Fi hot spot that lets dozens of people connect to the Internet. The staff members of "The Sopranos," squeezed into two trailer dressing rooms, needed only the Junxion Box and their laptops to exchange messages and documents with the production offices at Silvercup Studios in Queens. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/technology/circuits/14share.html?ex=1278993600&en=56a56edcee958205&ei=5090 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Enterprise Numbers Still in Use? Date: 14 Jul 2005 07:27:07 -0700 Someone on the railroad newsgroup said Enterprise numbers are still in use. (Enterprise numbers were manually reached through the operator and served as toll-free lines prior to 800 direct dialed service. The operator had a table in which she converted the Enterprise number to an actual telephone number and placed the call, billing the recipient.) I don't think he's correct. He said: > They are still in use, yes. Their purpose is different from 800 > numbers, as it gave the called party the ability to restrict > incoming calls to selected areas of his choosing, areas as small as > a single exchange. That's never been available with 800 numbers. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: He is wrong, but so are you. 'Enterprise' numbers (they were called 'Zenith' in many places; 'Enterprise' was the Bell System word; I think 'Zenith' was the word used by GTE and some others) are now pretty much grandfathered to existing subscribers (basically long time customers since the 1970's?) who wanted to keep them. I do not think you can order new Enterprise/Zenith service, but it is there for people who always had it and wanted to keep it. But if you give it up, (or move, or otherwise change your service) that's it. Don't ask for it back. And he is wrong in saying they were 'different'. They were the same thing, regards restrictions on calling areas, etc. In the earliest days of '800 service', out of the 600-plus possible 'prefixes' possible in any area code (using the exclusion of '0' or '1' as the first digit rule) those three digit code prefixes were assigned to every type of restriction possible: Bands one through six for each state; band eight (intrastate) for your state only' your community only, etc. Band one was always the states immediatly adjacent to your state, _but not including your own (intrastate) calls_; band two was the next 'ring' of states beyond the band one area; the bands got a bit larger as they expanded outward. Essentially the types of 'In-WATS' service were the same as the outward WATS bands. Hawaii and Alaska were not included in WATS; they were coin-rated calls. Sometime in the middle 1970's the band six areas (relative to wherever you were located) were combined with band five points and Alaska/Hawaii were made band six to everyone in the continental USA. The three digit prefix in your 800 number said what was or was not included, i.e. "the number you have dialed is not included in your calling plan" was the intercept message given to people who tried to dial 800-621-xxxx who were not in Illinois, for example, since 800-621 was assigned to in-WATS subscribers in Illinois who had requested Band 8 (Illinois intrastate only) service. On in-WATS (as opposed to out-WATS service) calls were always translated to some 'regular' seven-digit number. For instance at Amoco, in-WATS calls (I forget which band) were actually translated into WELlington-5-1389 if memory serves me. Out-WATS on the other hand went out and were billed to '146-0000' or something equally non-dialable, i.e a 'dedicated line'; they had to be on separate instruments or at least separate lines. Now today, in 2005, we would say, like Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing". The costs for long distance calls have gone down to about nothing anyway, although back then, if you bought long distance service in bulk, by the hour, it was also less expensive than 'regular' service. But there became a time at which it was just totally impractical to keep trying to save money by the way you divided up pennies. You may _possibly_ be able to purchase 'banded' WATS service, either in or out-bound from telco; I just have not kept up on it. I know most telecom companies do not supply banded service any longer (when I was at Amoco in Chicago, quite literally if I had used a 'Band 1' line and dialed 213-anything, the call would have gotten intercepted with a 'not in your calling area' recording, just as people in the 213 area who tried to dial 800-621 anything. Somewhere in our archives there is a chart telling the description of each 800 prefix as to what state it was in, and the limits or range of its incoming calls. I strongly suspect your railroad newsgroup person, unless he was around prior to divestiture (hardly anyone is, these days) would recall 'banded' WATS service. But obviously he remembers all about Enterprise service, which _you_ don't. They were designed to do the _same thing_, only with manual service instead of automated service; that is, place an 'automatically accepted' collect call, no need for an operator to get a verbal okay on accepting the charges. Lisa, would you do me a favor please and post this in your railroad newsgroup as a response for me? Thanks. Oh, by the way, there was a Band Seven also, although rarely used. While one through six were increasing larger geographic areas of the USA (or in the case of Canadian WATS service in Canada) and band eight was always intrastate _your state only_, band seven, as obscure as it was, was _your community only_. If you only wanted to accept collect calls automatically from the Chicago area and _you were in Chicago_ that was treated as band seven. In Enterprise service days, Rate and Route (815+161 when the operator dialed it to inquire what to do) would advise 'in the Chicago exchange only, dial 312-xxx-xxxx'. And where the operators had a 'flip chart' at their fingertips with the most common Enterprise number translations, such as airlines, credit card companies, etc, for more obscure or less well-known Enterprise numbers the operator had to call Rate and Route (in Morris, Illinois 815+161) to get advice. Eventually, band seven was replaced in most places with special prefixes in a regular area code doing the same thing. In other words, anyone in Chicago 312 could dial (I think it was) 312-920-xxxx to get the desired 'auto-collect' place they were calling. In Kansas, until a couple years ago, 620-870 got you a 'free' call to the Cingular Wireless switch here in Independence, then one day Cingular Wireless told customers they would have to pay to stay on that switch since 'we discontinued the special deal we had with Southwestern Bell'. Anyway Lisa, tell your newsgroup person about this won't you please? Thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:23:02 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein <SeeSigForEmail@wn6.wn.net> Subject: Re: Non-Bell ESS? On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 17:11:22 -0400, John Stahl <aljon@stny.rr.com> wrote, >> ... The basic pattern was the same-an unexplained deluge of >> electronic messages shutting down a computer built by DSC >> Communications Corp. of Plano, Texas ... DSC made Signal Transfer Points (STPs), which are the routers, packet switches, in the Signaling System 7 network. Their STPs may have had a problem ... at one point over a decade ago, a bug in the code did bring down some SS7 networks. I think that's what the allusion was to. One of the SS7 network crashes happened when there was a bug in some C code (this might have been AT&T/Lucent's? DSCs?) that exited a loop in a manner that the programmer hadn't intended (the CPU not having a "do what I mean" instruction!). This was executed during congestion, and would cause the link to fail over to its paired link (everything in SS7 is paired), but that would now have congestion from queued messages, so it would execute the flawed code, and the switch at the other end of the line would get the burst of traffic, and if it had that load of code, it would fail over.... nicely metastatic! > To the best of my memory, DSC, whose name was mentioned in the archive > you added (above), never made any type of an ESS switch, which the > original essage questioned a non-Bell switch. DSC, now owned by > Alcatel (France), made a whole line of CPE including multi-line > systems and even some FO based equipment. DSC made toll switches (Class 4), the DEX family, which was the backbone of various LD networks including much of Worldcom. Late in the 1990s, they added some Class 5 features, mainly for CLECs, but never really became competitive in that space. They do get some use for CLEC applications like ISDN PRI, used for dial-in modems, among other things. > So I'm pretty sure in relating again that the (only) non-Bell #5ESS > switch back then was made by AGCS which was the creation of GTE and > AT&T to get around the FCC regulations about Bell selling their > equipment into the ILEC market. I do remember something about a couple > of CO fires which were attributed to these switches but seem to recall > there was some lightening connected with the stories. AGCS was the old Automatic Electric, the company that first sold Strowger switches in the 1890s. It was owned by GTE for decades, and built the GTD-5, a digital central office switch that long-time Digest readers will recall was somewhat less stable than a 5E or DMS... at least in some places. GTE used a lot of them in house, though it was becoming largely a Nortel shop. By the mid-1990s, GTE was tired of AE, so they sold a majority stake in it to AT&T (what became Lucent). This was AGCS. They stopped making GTD-5s, but had a few products of their own (like Roameo and Superline), and eventually became a marketing channel of Lucent, selling Lucent kit to the "independent" ILECs. This had nothing to do with the FCC though; it was just a marketing decision. Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Non-Bell ESS? Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 12:44:48 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article <telecom24.321.5@telecom-digest.org>, John Stahl <aljon@stny.rr.com> wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote about Re: Non-Bell ESS? on Date: 12 Jul > 2005 12:11:16 -0700: >> I'm very sure it was a non Western Electric switch. It was made in >> Plano Tx (forgot the maker's name) and it was used for local calls.... >> ... The basic pattern was the same-an unexplained deluge of >> electronic messages shutting down a computer built by DSC >> Communications Corp. of Plano, Texas ... > To the best of my memory, DSC, whose name was mentioned in the archive > you added (above), never made any type of an ESS switch, which the > original essage questioned a non-Bell switch. DSC, now owned by > Alcatel (France), made a whole line of CPE including multi-line > systems and even some FO based equipment. DSC's main product for the carrier market was a signal transfer point (STP): basically a router for SS7 signaling messages. The other major player in that market was Tekelec, who started to wipe the floor with DSC just before DSC was bought by Alcatel. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "The inconsistency is startling, though admittedly, if consistency is to be abandoned or transcended, there is no problem." - Noam Chomsky ------------------------------ Date: 14 Jul 2005 10:29:02 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> Subject: Re: A Question About International Country Code Number Assignments Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > My question is about international phone-codes. I always wanted to > know: why appointed regions have appointed phone-codes. I'm sure that > it's sequence isn't accidental. What logic lies in this order of > codes? The codes are assigned by an office at the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva. They do indeed try to assign codes with some geographic logic, such as 5x for the Americas, 3x and 4x for Europe, and 2x for Africa, but sometimes there aren't any available codes in the appropriate regions. Hence Greenland is 299 even though it's not in Africa, because there weren't any 3xx codes or 4xx available when Greenland wanted a code. ITU recommendation E.164 describes country code allocation, and somewhere on the ITU site is the list of country codes as a free download. R's, John ------------------------------ Reply-To: alan@burkitt-gray.com From: Alan Burkitt-Gray <burkittgray@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: A Question About International Country Code Number Assignments Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 10:53:59 +0000 dawidov@yandex.ru asked about international phone codes: Look at World Telephone Numbering Guide, wtng.info, or more specifically, for the history, http://www.wtng.info/wtng-hst.html All you could ever want to know. Alan Burkitt-Gray Editor, Global Telecoms Business www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net> Subject: Re: Well,Duh Re: Mixing Blogging With Work Can Lead to Unemployment Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 20:04:43 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com bummer@iecc.com wrote: > I suppose it's all right to proclaim your sexuality, as long as you > aren't criticizing the company! I'm sorry, is there supposed to be something wrong with telling people you're gay or bisexual? I'm neither, but I find your comment pointless at best and rather homophobic at worst. JustThe.net - Steve Sobol / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Coming to you from Southern California's High Desert, where the temperatures are as high as the gas prices! / 888.480.4NET (4638) "Life's like an hourglass glued to the table" --Anna Nalick, "Breathe" ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> Subject: Re: New Microsoft Patches Already Getting Exploited Organization: Symantec Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:37:34 -0400 In article <telecom24.321.1@telecom-digest.org>, News Wire <reuters@telecom-digest.org> wrote: > Microsoft warns of software flaws in Word, Windows. > Microsoft Corp. warned users on Tuesday of three new security flaws in > its Windows and Word software and issued patches to fix the flaws, > which could allow attackers to take over a computer system. Who came up with the Subject line of the message? The article says that it's the *flaws* that are being exploited. The Subject line says that the *patches* are being exploited, implying that there are problems with the patches. That's the exact opposite of the claim -- the patches protect users from the exploits. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But people do not usually say 'the flaws are being exploited', or maybe they do, as a form of verbal shorthand. I think they usually say in this instance, 'the code is being exploited because of the flaws in it.' Same difference IMO, just phrasing it differently. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Alan Burkitt-Gray, London SE3, UK <burkittgray@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: Don't Let ID Fraud Happen to You. Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 10:53:59 +0000 Reply-To: Alan Burkitt-Gray <aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com> Gary Novosielski <gpn@suespammers.org> noticed wireless terminals for credit card authorisation in France. These have been common in France for at least 10 years (though no one was ever sure about the encryption): France pioneered PINs for credit card authorisation in the mid 1990s (hence the domination of the smart card industry by French companies), and introduced the wireless terminals at the same time. Wireless credit card terminals are now fairly common outside France, in other parts of Europe -- in trains, for ticket payment, and in restaurants. Odd that they're not apparently in the US yet. Alan Burkitt-Gray Editor, Global Telecoms Business www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com ------------------------------ From: Henry <henry999@eircom.net> Sent: Thu, July 14, 2005 1:39 AM Subject: Correction on Bernie Ebbers Sent to Prison > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The British Broadcasting Company also > had this same news on their wire this morning. PAT] A word to the wise... 'BBC' is the British Broadcasting _Corporation_. Cheers, Henry ------------------------------ 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 V24 #322 ****************************** | |