TELECOM Digest     Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:00:00 EST    Volume 24 : Issue 557

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Economist.com How the Internet Killed the Phone (Marcus Didius Falco)
    The Meaning of Free Speech  Economist.com (Marcus Didius Falco)
    Foreign Residential Listing (Verizon Again) (Fred Atkinson)
    Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Fred Atkinson)
    Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin)
    Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (harold@hallikainen)
    Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Robert Bonomi)
    Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (Barry Margolin)
    Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (Scott Dorsey)
    Re: Many Domains Registered With False Data (Robert Bonomi)
    Re: Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? (Robert Bonomi)
    Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Steve Sobol)
    Re: MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers (Robert Bonomi)

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and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest.  

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

Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:58:02 -0500
From: Marcus Didius Falco <falco_marcus_didius@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Economist.com How the Internet Killed the Phone


http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3DE1_QQDTVJQ
http://economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=3D4401594

Economist.com

Telecoms and the internet

 From The Economist print edition

Almost-free internet phone calls herald the slow death of traditional
telephony

THE term 'disruptive technology' is popular, but is widely misused. It
refers not simply to a clever new technology, but to one that
undermines an existing technology and which therefore makes life very
difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of
doing things. Twenty years ago, the personal computer was a classic
example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing,
and eventually brought IBM, one of the world's mightiest firms at the
time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for
another disruptive technology, voice over internet protocol (VOIP),
which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit
to consumers, than personal computers (see article).

VOIP's leading proponent is Skype, a small firm whose software allows
people to make free calls to other Skype users over the internet, and
very cheap calls to traditional telephones -- all of which spells
trouble for incumbent telecoms operators. On September 12th, eBay, the
leading online auction-house, announced that it was buying Skype for
$2.6 billion, plus an additional $1.5 billion if Skype hits certain
performance targets in coming years.

This seems a vast sum to pay for a company that has only $60m in
revenues and has yet to turn a profit. Yet eBay was not the only
company interested in buying Skype. Microsoft, Yahoo!, News
Corporation and Google were all said to have also considered the
idea. Perhaps eBay, rather like some over-excited bidder in one of its
own auctions, has paid too much. The company says it plans to use
Skype's technology to make it easier for buyers and sellers to
communicate, and to offer new =93click to call advertisements, but
many analysts are sceptical that eBay is the best owner of
Skype. Whatever the merits of the deal, however, the fuss over Skype
in recent weeks has highlighted the significance of VOIP, and the
enormous threat it poses to incumbent telecoms operators.

For the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than
the death of the traditional telephone business, established over a
century ago. Skype is merely the most visible manifestation of a
dramatic shift in the telecoms industry, as voice calling becomes just
another data service delivered via high-speed internet
connections. Skype, which has over 54m users, has received the most
attention, but other firms routing calls partially or entirely over
the internet have also signed up millions of customers.

A price of zero.

The ability to make free or almost-free calls over a fast internet
connection fatally undermines the existing pricing model for
telephony. If you believe that you should not have to pay for making
phone calls in future, just as you don't pay to send e-mail, says
Skype's co-founder, Niklas Zennstrom. That means not just the end of
distance and time-based pricing it also means the slow death of the
trillion-dollar voice-telephony market, as the marginal price of
making phone calls heads inexorably downwards.

VOIP makes possible more than just lower prices, however. It also
means that, provided you have a broadband connection, you can choose
from a number of providers of VOIP telephony and related add-on
services, such as voicemail, conference calling or video. Many
providers allow a VOIP account to be associated with a traditional
telephone number or with multiple numbers. So you can associate a San
Francisco number, a New York number and a London number with your
computer or VOIP phone and then be reached via a local call by anyone
in any of those cities.

Furthermore, your phone (or computer) will ring wherever you are in
the world, as soon as it is plugged into the internet. So you can take
your Madrid number with you to Mumbai, or your San Francisco number to
Shanghai.  Skype and other VOIP services, in other words, are leading
to lower prices, more choice and greater flexibility. It is great news
for consumers but terrible for telecoms operators. What can they do?

Watching the elephants dance

As is always the case with a disruptive technology, the incumbents it
threatens are dividing into those who are trying to block the new
technology in the hope that it will simply go away, and those who are
moving to embrace it even though it undermines their existing
businesses.  Since VOIP will cause revenue from voice calls to wither
away, the most vulnerable operators are those that are most dependent
on such revenue.

In particular, that means mobile operators, which have been struggling
for years to get their subscribers to spend more on data services, but
are still hugely dependent on voice. Worse, the very third generation
(3G) networks that are supposed to provide future growth for these
firms could now undermine them, because such networks make mobile VOIP
possible too.  Least vulnerable, by contrast, are those fixed-line
operators that are now building new networks based on internet
technology, which will enable such firms to benefit from the greater
efficiency and lower cost of VOIP compared with traditional telephony.

These operators are taking an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"
approach and getting into the VOIP business. While their voice
revenues will slowly evaporate, they will then be well placed to offer
fee-based add-on services over their new networks. Again, this is a
common pattern with disruptive technologies: forward-looking
incumbents can end up giving upstart innovators a run for their money.

It is now no longer a question of whether VOIP will wipe out
traditional telephony, but a question of how quickly it will do
so. People in the industry are already talking about the day, perhaps
only five years away, when telephony will be a free service offered as
part of a bundle of services as an incentive to buy other things such
as broadband access or pay-TV services. VOIP, in short, is completely
reshaping the telecoms landscape. And that is why so many people have
been making such a fuss over Skype, a small company, yes, but one
that symbolises a massive shift for a trillion-dollar industry.


Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. 

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the
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owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without
profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the
understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic
issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I
believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the U.S.  Copyright Law. If you wish
to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go
beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner, in this instance, Economist.com

For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

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

Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:58:46 -0500
From: Marcus Didius Falco <falco_marcus_didius@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: The Meaning of Free Speech  Economist.com


http://economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3DE1_QQDDSDQ
http://economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=3D4400704

Sep 15th 2005 | LONDON AND SAN FRANCISCO

 From The Economist print edition

The acquisition by eBay of Skype is a helpful reminder to the world's
trillion-dollar telecoms industry that all phone calls will eventually
be free

NIKLAS Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, which
distributes software that lets people make free calls from their
computers to other Skype users anywhere in the world, don't usually
travel to America.  Legally, they probably could. But they prefer to
avoid that jurisdiction, since they also founded (and subsequently
sold) KaZaA, a peer-to-peer software company whose product many people
use to share copyrighted songs.  So setting foot in America could
invite some legal trouble. This does not mean, however, that they
cannot appear at conferences in Silicon Valley, where Skype which uses
the same basic idea of KaZaA, but applies it mainly to voice
communication=97is considered the next big thing.

Thus, in July, Mr Zennstrom appeared, via a Skype video call, on the
screen of a packed auditorium at Stanford University, while sitting in
Estonia next to Tim Draper, a venture capitalist who invested $10m in
Skype. Mr Draper is the ultimate loud American, whereas Mr Zennstrom
is a sombre Swede. He's already taken down one industry and he's on to
the next one, hollered Mr Draper referring to recording studios and
telecoms companies.  Mr Zennstrom started shifting uncomfortably. I
never wanna sell my stock until it's a hundred billion, Mr Draper
yelled, then started singing and dancing. The blushing Mr Zennstrom
was speechless.

Of course, Mr Draper was posturing. That became clear on September
12th, when Skype announced that it had agreed to be taken over by
eBay, based in Silicon Valley and the world's largest online
marketplace. Mr Draper and Skype's other investors will get nothing
like $100 billion, but eBay is paying a hefty sum $2.6 billion in cash
and shares and perhaps more if certain criteria are met nonetheless.

This pairing took many people by surprise. There have been rumours that
Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies were also
interested in buying Skype. Any of these might have made a more obvious
fit, since each also has instant-messaging software that can be used for
free phone calls (or 'voice chats', as opposed to text chats) between
computers. Google, the world's most popular internet search engine,
launched its own voice-chat software in August. A week later, Microsoft
bought Teleo, a San Francisco company that lets people call conventional
telephones from their computers (as Skype also does, for $0.02 a minute).
Yahoo! had already bought Dialpad, another Skype-like firm, in June. AOL,
Apple and others have similar products.

As Meg Whitman, eBay's boss, and Mr Zennstrom explain it, a
combination of eBay and Skype is not all that far-fetched. From eBay's
point of view, placing cute Skype buttons on the web pages where
people trade used cars, houses and other items that usually require
voice bargaining =93reduces friction=94, says Ms Whitman. Buyers can
simply click on the button and talk to sellers. Another idea is to
make money from 'pay-per-call' advertising, where advertisers would
place voice links (ie, Skype buttons) on certain pages just as they
now place text links on, say, the search-results pages of
Google. Whenever a web surfer clicks on one of these links and talks
to a salesperson, the advertiser would pay eBay and Skype a
fee. Google got rich by doing this in the text world; there is no
reason why eBay might not be able to do it in the voice world.

  From Skype's point of view, the deal strengthens its existing link
with PayPal, eBay's online bank, which it uses to charge for services
such as calls from computers to conventional telephones (called
SkypeOut) or from conventional phones into Skype (called
SkypeIn). This involves prepaid accounts, which Skype users can top up
via PayPal with their credit cards.

For Skype, however, the main attraction may be that eBay, unlike the
other potential suitors, plans to leave it largely alone, both as a
brand and as a business. When Yahoo! and Microsoft buy companies,
they typically disintegrate them, says Mr Zennstrom. His vision for
Skype, by contrast, is to become the world's biggest and best platform
for all communications 'text, voice or video' from any
internet-connected device, whether a computer or a mobile phone.

This is every bit as audacious as it sounds. Mr Zennstrom, in general,
is a modest man. But his company is only three years old, will
probably make only $60m in revenues this year, and will certainly not
turn a profit. So it is the fact that his ambition is not nearly as
ridiculous as it sounds that should make incumbent telecoms firms
everywhere break out in a cold sweat.

That is because Skype can add 150,000 users a day (its current rate)
without spending anything on new equipment (users 'bring' their own
computers and internet connections) or marketing (users invite each other).
With no marginal cost, Skype can thus afford to maximise the number of its
users, knowing that if only some of them start buying its fee-based
services such as SkypeOut, SkypeIn and voicemail, Skype will make money.
This adds up to a very unusual business plan.

"We want to make as little money as possible per user," says Mr
Zennstrom, because we don't have any cost per user, but we want a lot
of them.  This is the exact opposite of the traditional business model
in the telecoms industry, which is based on maximising the average
revenue per user, or ARPU. And that has only one logical
consequence. According to Rich Tehrani, the founder of Internet
Telephony, a magazine devoted to the subject, Skype and services like
it are leading inexorably to a future in which all voice
communication, near or far, will be free.

End of the line

The technical term that encompasses all forms of voice communication
using the internet is voice-over-internet-protocol, or VOIP. This
includes pure computer-to-computer calling as well as the various
hybrid states, such as a Skype user connecting to the traditional
telephone network, or even two people talking on seemingly
conventional phones that are linked, behind the scenes, via the
internet. It also includes residential VOIP providers such as Vonage,
based in New Jersey and the market leader in America with over 1m
subscribers, that supply their customers with adapters so they can
plug ordinary telephones into their broadband connections without
using a= computer.

Sandvine, a telecoms-equipment firm, estimates that there are 1,100
VOIP providers in America alone. But the trend is worldwide. IDC, a
market-research firm, predicts that the number of residential VOIP
subscribers in America will grow from 3m at the end of 2005 to 27m by
the end of 2009; Japan already has over 8m subscribers
today. Worldwide, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm, the
number of residential VOIP subscribers will reach 197m by 2010. Even
these numbers, however, do not include people using VOIP without
subscribing to a service (ie, by downloading free software from
Google, Skype or others). Skype alone has 54m users.

Even before VOIP makes 100% of telephone calls in the world completely
free (which may take many years), it utterly ruins the pricing models
of the telecoms industry. Factors such as the distance between the
callers or the duration of a call, the key determinants of cost today,
are simply irrelevant with VOIP. Vonage already lets its customers
choose telephone numbers in San Francisco, New York or London, no
matter where they live. A Londoner calling the London number is making
a 'local' call, even if the Vonage subscriber is picking up the phone
in Shanghai. As when checking e-mail on, say, Hotmail, the only thing
needed is a broadband-internet connection, but it can be anywhere in
the world. Sooner or later, people will discard their unwieldy phone
numbers altogether and use names, just as they do with their e-mail
addresses, predicts Mr Zennstrom.

Call duration is also becoming irrelevant. A lot of people open a
Skype audio channel and keep it open, says Mr Zennstrom. After all, it
costs nothing. Many people with Apple computers are already accustomed
to this.  They open an application called iChat, which is a video and
voice link, and stay connected to their loved ones far
away. Increasingly, members of a family or a business team can stay
online throughout the day, escalating from unobtrusive instant-
messaging (Can you talk?) to a conference call, a video call and back
to a little icon on their screen.

It is thus altogether wrong to call this phenomenon the end, or death, of
telephony. "Calling it the death of telephony suggests people aren't going
to make calls, but they are," says Sam Paltridge, a telecoms guru at the
OECD. "It's just the death of the traditional pricing models. In short,
all this is great news for consumers and awful news for telecoms operators.
"VOIP will destroy voice revenues faster than most analysts' models
predict," says Cyrus Mewawalla, an analyst at Westhall Capital. Voice will
very rapidly cease to become a major revenue generator for all telecoms
operators, fixed and mobile.

That said, some telecoms carriers are much more vulnerable to VOIP than
others, says Mr Mewawalla. Telecoms operators offer and charge for a number
of services besides pure voice calls. Because VOIP will cause only the
revenues from voice calls to shrink, it will hit those operators hardest
that are most dependent on their revenues from voice (see chart 2).

For pure mobile operators, such as Vodafone or Taiwan Mobile as it
 happens, Taiwan is the country with the highest ratio of Skype users
 'VOIP could be an enormous problem', says Mr Mewawalla, because voice
 accounts for over 80% of their revenues. By contrast, VOIP is less
 threatening to integrated operators (ie, those offering both fixed
 and mobile services) such as Deutsche Telekom or Japan's NTT. And
 those carriers such as BT, France Telecom or KPN that are currently
 building next-generation networks based on internet technologies will
 be able to offer VOIP services themselves, bundled with other
 offerings, and might emerge relatively unscathed.

Some operators are taking an unenlightened view by trying to delay the
advance of VOIP. China Telecom has been blocking access to Skype from
Shenzen, according to local newspaper reports. Vodafone has introduced
wording into new contracts for some German subscribers reserving the right
to block VOIP in future, though a spokesman for the company says it is not
doing so at the moment. Clearwire, an American wireless-broadband provider,
also reserves the right to block VOIP traffic. In February, Madison River
Communications, a rural phone company in North Carolina, was fined $15,000
by regulators for blocking access to Vonage's VOIP service. Occasionally,
operators have even blocked access to Skype's website, thus preventing
people from downloading the software or topping up their calling credit.

The more enlightened approach which most operators in rich countries,
to varying degrees, accept is to compete with VOIP openly or even to
embrace it. Already, says Mr Paltridge, pricing of traditional phone
services is changing quite radically as operators try to adjust and to
compete with the Skypes of this world. Operators are moving towards
flat-rate pricing plans for traditional telephone service, so that the
marginal price of making calls falls to zero. Many American regional
operators offer unlimited local and national calling for a fixed
monthly fee, and such schemes are also becoming popular in other
countries.

Several incumbent operators have also launched their own VOIP
services, such as Verizon's VoiceWing and BT's Broadband Voice. These
offer lower prices than traditional telephone service but are
generally not as cheap as a call between Skype and a regular
phone. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," says John Delaney of Ovum, a
consultancy. Such services are an admission that a less lucrative VOIP
customer is better than no customer at all. Switching to VOIP also
helps operators by lowering their own costs dramatically. BT and
others are building new, internet-based networks behind the scenes,
which will carry all voice traffic as VOIP even if the calls start or
end in the traditional way.

The other argument for embracing VOIP is that the incumbents can then start
offering the fun new services that VOIP makes possible and charging for
them. This goes far beyond traditional voicemail. Video-conferencing and
unified messaging whereby all forms of communication, from voicemail and
video messages to e-mails or entire electronic documents go into one
virtual inbox will become common, says Wendy McMillan-Turner, head of
voice services at BT. Since all of these features are essentially software
programmes, they can all be integrated with applications that people today
use on their computers, such as Outlook calendars and contacts files.

The service that many telecoms operators are most excited about,
however, is IPTV, which refers to television (and entertainment in
general) being delivered over new and super-fast broadband-internet
connections into homes. This would allow them to charge for a bundle
of services, including broadband access, entertainment and voice. The
voice component could then atrophy gracefully and eventually be thrown
in for nothing.  Ultimately -- perhaps by 2010 -- voice may become a
free internet application, with operators making money from related
internet applications like IPTV, says Mr Mewawalla.

Cable operators are coming at VOIP from exactly the opposite
direction.  They already offer television and entertainment, as well
as broadband access, so they might as well offer cheap telephony as
well. This puts the cable companies in a good position. Unlike the
telecoms operators, they do not depend on voice for their revenues
today, so they can use cheap VOIP service as a competitive weapon to
make life difficult for the telecoms operators, who are increasingly
their only competition. In California, for example, most people have a
choice between one cable company, Comcast, and one traditional
telecoms carrier, SBC. Since voice uses very little bandwidth compared
with television, the cable companies need not even add a lot in the
way of bandwidth.

The result, says Mr Mewawalla, is that voice service is fast becoming
a marketing freebie to make customers 'sticky' to keep them loyal. "I
would expect people to advertise free calls with VOIP, subsidised by
other elements of the package,' says Ms McMillan-Turner. Thus, BT will
consider value-added services sold around VOIP as voice revenues in
future, she says. BT hopes that selling such services will offset the
inevitable decline in traditional voice revenue. Evalueserve, a
consultancy, predicts that American and European fixed operators'
long-distance voice revenue will decline by around 40% by 2008, and
that in Europe 50% of broadband users will give up their voice lines
by 2008.

Mobile operators face a far greater challenge than fixed-line
carriers.  Voice accounts for the bulk of their business and they
cannot (at least today) offer broadband access as easily as the cable
and fixed-line companies. New =93third-generation=94 (3G) networks
were supposed to make possible whizzy new data services to compensate
for flat and even declining revenues from voice calls, but consumer
adoption has been slow.

Worse, those very 3G networks that are supposed to provide future
growth for the industry could now undermine it, since they make
possible VOIP calling over mobile networks. Already, one mobile
operator, E-Plus in Germany, has announced a deal that will allow
subscribers to use Skype on its 3G network. Users would thus pay only
for the internet connection, while making free calls to other Skype
users and to other telephones for very little. E-Plus hopes to win
valuable business customers and to put pressure on much bigger but
less agile rivals such as Vodafone.

Today, VOIP calling over 3G networks is still very much a minority
sport, but as 3G coverage and transmission speeds improve something
the industry is racing to achieve, it will become common. This
represents a mortal danger for mobile operators. VOIP on mobile is the
first real threat they are going to face, and they are in a state of
shock, says Mr Mewawalla. Mobile operators generally charge three to
five times as much as fixed operators for each minute on the phone, so
they have far more to lose from falling voice prices. International
travellers will use VOIP over hotel-room broadband links or Wi-Fi
hotspots in airports to save on the roaming charges by their
mobile-phone company.

Vodafone counters that, like BT, it is moving towards internet-based
networks that will reduce its own cost of carrying calls and make
possible new value-added services. But this sounds unconvincing. Much
more so than fixed-line operators, mobile operators would have to
cannibalise their current business in order to generate new revenues
from VOIP. Ironically, this means that BT, once regarded as a
dinosaur-like incumbent, is now being held up as a shining example of
an operator that is embracing the future, while Vodafone, whose
pure-mobile strategy once seemed visionary, now stands accused of
being on the wrong side of history. At the end of the day, there is no
getting around the reality, as Skype's Mr Zennstrom says, that
"something that is a great business model for us is probably a
terrible business model for them."


Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All
rights reserved.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the
use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without
profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the
understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic
issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I
believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the U.S.  Copyright Law. If you wish
to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go
beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner, in this instance, economist.com

For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

Direct replies are unlikely to be read. To reply use the address below:
falco(underscore)md(atsign)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk

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

From: Fred Atkinson <fatkinson@mishmash.com>
Subject: Foreign Residential Listing (Verizon Again)
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 19:44:14 -0500


Well, as a result of not getting my billing for my foreign residential
listing straightened out, I escalated to the NC PSC to get help.  I
have been on the phone monthly with Verizon trying to get it resolved.
My listing is with directory assistance, but I haven't been paying for
it.  I'm fairly certain that sooner or later someone doing an audit
will discover that they are not getting any money for it and delete
it.  Each month, they tell me they've now fixed it and I'll get a
correct bill the next month, but I don't.

Well, I got a call from a very well mannered young lady from Verizon.
She investigated and is now telling me that I will be billed for a
year forward when the directory is published in March.  So, I'm
getting free listing with directory assistance until then.  Somehow, I
don't think that's right.  As even in spite of the enormous number of
people I have talked with, I still can't get them to straighten it
out.

I can't be without a directory assistance listing.  Someone from my
past may need to track me down for any one of a number of positive
reasons.  I'm going to have to call that young lady back and push this
further.

This is ridiculous.

Fred Atkinson

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

Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 08:28:36 PST
From: Fred Atkinson <fatkinson@mishmash.com>
Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List
Reply-To: fatkinson@mishmash.com


Lena wrote: 

> It's a great idea, but wouldn't work for us who have so many lame-
> brained friends who would never remember any code. We can't even get
> our friends to remember to change their email addressbook when we
> change our email provider.

Not just those who can't remember a four digit code, but how about
those who never got your code?  I tried to call an old friend the
other night whom I hadn't spoken to in years.  He's got that feature
installed and I have no idea what his code is.  So, I didn't get to
talk to an old buddy I hadn't been in contact with in a very long
time.  And there's no way to leave him a message letting him know I
called.

> There is also an item called "Caller ID Manager" from Privacy Corps.
> It looks like a separate Caller ID box, but can be set to block
> whatever numbers you program into it, including all 800 numbers, all
> 888 numbers, unidentified numbers, etc. Costs about $100. From the
> description, it looks like it works on one phone and one would have to
> add "remotes" for other phones. (Google it).

There are always technological solutions out there.  Sad we have to
pay to keep telemarketers from calling us.

> I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to
> prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or
> political organization, from calling any number more than once a year.

They've done one better than that.  They've passed a law allowing you
to have your number listed as a number that telemarketers are not
allowed to call.  And when they do call, you can report it to the FTC.
When they get enough complaints, they can take action against them.
I've got all of my home numbers (and I have a few) listed on it.  I
can't even remember when was the last time I received a telemarketing
call.

> Lena

Fred Atkinson 

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

From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 08:28:57 -0800
Organization: University of Washington


On Fri, 9 Dec 2005, Lena wrote:

> It's a great idea, but wouldn't work for us who have so many lame-
> brained friends who would never remember any code.  We can't even get
> our friends to remember to change their email addressbook when we
> change our email provider.

Leaving aside whether you'd want to have friends like that, there is
still the out of having the "*" for emergency break-through.

In my experience, the least techo-savvy of my contacts are the ones
who had the least problem in coping with my line's password.  Their
questions are never about how to get through to call me, but rather
about how to set it up on their own phone line!

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

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

From: harold@hallikainen.com <harold@hallikainen.com>
Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously
Date: 9 Dec 2005 19:59:14 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


I seem to recall a router that had two WAN connections and a dial-up
connection. I think it did some sort of load balancing between the two
WAN lines and switched to dial-up if both WAN lines failed. I don't
remember who made it, but I THOUGHT they were sold to Symantec, but I
can't find it on their website. I'm not sure how it worked, but I have
the impression that it routed web page requests out the two WAN lines
and then put them back together on the LAN side. Since most web pages
contain (too many) lots of images, the image loading was split between
the two WAN lines, so the user saw faster loading. It did not, as far
as I know, try to spread out packets from the same transaction, but,
instead, spread out the transactions (file requests, etc.). I was
considering buying one a few years ago, but never got around to it.

Harold

FCC Rules updated daily at http://www.hallikainen.com

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

From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi)
Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:30:14 -0000
Organization: Widgets, Inc.


In article <telecom24.556.10@telecom-digest.org>, James Carlson
<james.d.carlson@sun.com> wrote:

> bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) writes:

>> "Incoming" traffic is an entirely different problem.  And
>> load-balancing _that_ traffic cannot be done in anything approaching a
>> satisfactory manner without 'help' from the 'upstream' end.

> Indeed.

>> And it requires that both DSL circuits terminate at the same
>> 'upstream' provider.

> Not necessarily.  There are at least two other possibilities here,
> both of which allow for connections to multiple providers:

> - NAT in use, and load balancing on a per-connection basis.  This
>    automatically balances the return traffic as well, as everyone on
>    the net thinks you're actually two separate independent IP nodes.

NO, it does _Not_.  You cannot change the NAT translation _during_ a
'session' (a single TCP connection). And if the 'incoming' data
characteristics change radically _during_ that session, the 'balance'
goes out the window.

Consider a scenario where there is -one- durable connection presently
in progress, which is, say, 'streaming audio' to laptop #1, and coming
in over circuit #1.

Now, the over the space of a minute, other 19 laptops each initiate a
web request to a trivial text-only web-page with the Windows XP SP2
update _information_ on it, including a link to a copy of the actual
service pack which resides on that same server.  Oh, yeah, those
requests have the HTTP 'keepalive' protocol flag set. Circuit #2 is
'unused' at the moment, so -- based on traffic levels -- _all_ these
HTTP sessions are going to go on circuit #2, using 'source' addresses
that will cause return data to come in over that selfsame circuit #2.
Which _is_ reasonable at this point, the overall traffic from
retrieving the 19 copies of that text web-page is likely less than the
the one-minute block of streaming-audio.

*BUT*, now each laptop decides to download the actual service pack.
BAM!  usage on circuit #2 goes through the roof.  And circuit #1 is
still loafing along at a small fraction of capacity.  Yes, this is an
extreme case, but it illustrates the point that there is
_no_PRACTICAL_way_ to balance the incoming load without active
co-operation from the 'upstream' end(s) of the circuits.

You (on the receiving end) *cannot* unilaterally (meaning "without
active cooperation from the remote end[s]) change which circuit those
packets are coming in over.  You cannot suddenly switch the IP address
the laptops are using; "keepalive" is in effect, the request goes as
part of the _same_ connection, and of course, once the download
request was sent, the laptop is only doing 'listen and ack'.

>  - You're a big company and you can afford to arrange BGP peering
>    with the ISPs and inject routes into the backbone.

THAT doesn't solve the "problem", either. Not even 'mostly'.

Again, the original scenario was a 'site' with a maximum of 20
machines (all laptops) at the location.  In _that_ situation, "good
luck" in getting a BGP announcement for a /27 (or smaller) propagated
past an immediate upstream.  IF _they_ will agree to accept it.  To
get a moderately-reliably 'forwardable' announcement, you're going to
have to use "gross overkill" sized blocks.  you'll have a _terrible_
time providing adequate 'justification' to get PA space for that
application from an upstream.  And you're way too small to qualify for
your own PI space, for _this_ application alone.  Now, if you're big
enough that you've got a PI /16, say. *and* can afford to dedicate a
couple of /24s to this inefficient (at best, approximately a
_four_percent_ utilization of the address-space), you _can_ 'play
games' to influence the inbound traffic.  *BUT*, to re-route
individual hosts, *without* changing their IP address, you are likely
to have to BGP 'announce' routes for a /32.  Over time, this _will_
lead to fracturing of the space, and you _will_ be announcing separate
routes for most of those hosts, *individually*.  *OR* you get _really_
wasteful of address-space, and _use_ only one address in each /24 --
thus needing about a /19 to support 20 laptops.  With an address-space
utilization of approximately 0.25%.  Yeah, this would work, but I
can't imagine that anyone would classify it as a "practical" solution.

We won't even go into 'what happens' to a pre-existing connection with
an _active_ stream of traffic when a route 'withdrawal' (for an
address presently routed via circuit #1) arrives at an intermediate
router before the 'announcement' for routing via circuit @2 arrives.

Note: if you already announce an 'inferior' grade of route through
circuit #2 for that address, you cannot ensure that inbound traffic
will come through circuit #1 -- it _is_ "guaranteed" that "somebody"
will be using a 'policy' bias in their routing that causes them to
select the carrier supplying circuit #2 over that or circuit #1.
*sigh*

> There are others as well that involve just living with the fact that
> you'll appear to be separate nodes on the net, and remaining
> multihomed -- this is what you'd probably do if you were doing this
> for (say) a web server with multiple A records.

Review the original context -- site supporting "a maximum of 20
_laptops_", wanting to load-balance the two circuits.

How many folks run servers (web, or otherwise)
_with_multiple_A_records_ on laptops?  <*grin*>

Absent any specifications of the data flow, a reasonable "first guess"
is that the traffic will be mostly: web-page retrieval, e-mail
reading/sending, possibly some RSS feeds, along with some other
'streaming' incoming data.

Not guaranteed, of course, but absent better data for that scenario,
it is 'betting odds' that at least 95% of the total traffic is
'incoming'.  Which means that the 'easy' approaches -- which are for
balancing _outgoing_ traffic -- aren't of much use.  Especially since
 -- for the aforementioned kinds of traffic -- there is _very_little_
correlation between incoming and outgoing traffic on a
machine-by-machine, or even connection-by- connection basis.

Obviously, the "more you know" about the actual traffic generated, the
better your chances of designing a policy that works effectively for
_that_ traffic mix.  Caveat: even a minor change in traffic
characteristics can utterly invalidate a 'carefully tuned/optimized
for one particular scenario' balancing policy.

As soon as you have any form of 'durable' connection involved, any
attempt to balance things based solely on conditions at the time of
connection _initiation_ is doomed to to lead to 'far less than
optimal' balancing at a point later in time.  'Things change', and the
circuit assignment for that already established connection cannot be
modified to adapt to the fact that "the world has changed out from
under it".

>> *BUT* the 'standard' routing code _in_the_kernel_ of most operating
>> systems does =not= support multiple equal-priority routes to the same
>> destination, *with* rotating use of those routes on a per-packet
>> basis.

> Doing it on a per-packet basis ("round robin") is a mistake.  It
> causes poor performance by reordering packets and often causes trouble
> with various middleboxes.  Instead, you want to hash based on flow
> identification, which some systems can do.

THIS depends on what your objectives are. :)

If you're interested in maximizing your link utilization, _without_
regard to impact on QOS (as it were) to the users, the performance
hits due to out-of-order packet reception are "not my problem".

Packet re-ordering _may_ occur in some instances, *BUT* it is not a
guaranteed problem.  Furthermore, if the pair of lines are 'bonded'
into a single logical circuit -- which requires cooperation from the
remote end -- then this "possible" issue effectively disappears.

If the circuits go to different end-points, you do get a whole raft of
other possible issues -- including, but not limited to, remote servers
that are multi-homed _on_ both of the networks you are connected to.
They see packets that are part of the same 'connection' arriving on
different interfaces.  This _can_ confuse some kinds of systems,
notably 'load balancers' that exist in front of a 'farm' of
"identical" servers.

Also, if the circuits go to different end-points, then you _are_
likely to have issues with 'larger than single packet' communications
to "anycast" servers. They may well be routed to _different_ servers.
Available evidence suggests that this would be a 'vanishingly small'
issue for 'typical' _laptop_-origin traffic.

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

From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails
Organization: Symantec
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:29:03 -0500


In article <telecom24.556.2@telecom-digest.org>, Jennifer C. Kerr
<ap@telecom-digest.org> wrote:

> About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month
> that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting
> consumers, a study says.

Only one in four?  I figure almost all netters get spam, and at least
75% would get phishing spam.

Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

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

From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails
Date: 10 Dec 2005 15:31:54 -0500
Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000)


Jennifer C. Kerr  <ap@telecom-digest.org> wrote:

> About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month
> that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting
> consumers, a study says.

Who did this study?

Pretty much all of my users get at least a couple dozen a day.  Some
of them get a couple dozen an hour.

Where can I go where only a quarter of the users get them a month?

--scott

"C'est un Nagra.  C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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

From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi)
Subject: Re: Many Domains Registered With False Data
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:29:15 -0000
Organization: Widgets, Inc.


In article <telecom24.555.4@telecom-digest.org>,
Zonk  <zonk@telecom-digest.org> wrote:

> Posted by Zonk on Thursday December 08, @01:01PM
> from the seekrit-webmaster-conspiracy dept.

> bakotaco writes "According to research carried out by the US
> Government Accountability Office (GAO) many domain owners are hiding
> their true identity. The findings could mean that many websites are
> fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals. The
> report also found that measures to improve information about domain
> owners were not proving effective." From the article: "The GAO took
> 300 random domain names from each of the .com, .org and .net
> registries and looked up the centrally held information about their
> owners. Any user can look up this data via one of the many whois sites
> on the net. The report found that owner data for 5.14% of the domains
> it looked at was clearly fake as it used phone numbers such as (999)
> 999-9999; listed nonsense addresses such as 'asdasdasd' or used
> invalid zip codes such as 'XXXXX'. In a further 3.65% of domain owner
> records data was missing or incomplete in one or more fields."

> To discuss this matter further, please go to:
> http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As the official Keeper of the Records,
> ICANN was asked for a comment on this report, but they refused any
> discussion of it.  PAT]

"Figures don't lie, but liars can figure."  The last line of the cited
report is a particularly egregious example of this.  One of the domain
owner fields is a for a 'fax' number for contact.  If you don't have a
fax then, *of*course*, that field is going to be 'incomplete' -- or
filled with some registrar 'default', recognizably *invalid*, data --
e.g. (000) 000-000, or (999) 999-999.  The '5.14%' number is similarly
suspect, _if_ the 'phone numbers' examined include the 'fax phone
number' field.

And, unless the GAO restricted the check to domains registered to
addresses in the USA, 'defective' and/or 'missing' *ZIPCODE* data is
to be expected.  Even Canada doesn't have _ZIP_ codes.  that said, I
figure that this one is a gratuitous error on the part of the person
writing the review of the GAO report, rather than a procedural flaw in
the GAO analysis.

That said, I expect the GAO report did find evidence of real problems
in the registration process.  Too much 'trust', and not enough
'*trust*but* *verify*'.  For U.S.A. based addresses, there is simply
no excuse for accepting a registration where the street address and
"postal code" do not match.  The USPS has an on-line look-up tool
where the full ZIP+4 can looked up for any particular address.  Now,
admittedly, some addresses may have multiple ZIP+4 codes -- e.g. my
building has distinct zip+4 for each of several groups of residents,
_and_ a 'catch all' ZIP+4 that is valid for any address in the
building.  I think there may be yet another '+4' that identifies
'some/any building on this block'.

A number of other countries have similar publicly accessible tools for
validating addresses, postal codes, and/or the combination thereof.

The fact that registration services do -not- make use of things like
that to make even a 'minimal' attempt to keep the database 'clean'
*is* an outrage, and an abomination, no doubt about it.

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

From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi)
Subject: Re: Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones?
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:36:40 -0000
Organization: Widgets, Inc.


In article <telecom24.554.5@telecom-digest.org>,
<donotemailme@ekkinc.com> wrote:

> A little advice needed:

> For a new office I am helping to setup, we are installing a 384k T1
> line, and are planning on using vonage over that T1 line for our phone
> service.  We plan to have at least 2 and maybe 3 phone lines through
> vonage.  We are looking into cordless multi-line phones.  We figure
> we'll need 1 base station and 4-8 handsets.  Vonage offers a call-hunt
> feature that will ring the second or third line if the first line is
> busy.  Will this multi-line service from vonage work with 1 mutli-line
> base station?

"Probably".  Most residential-grade type equipment is designed to work
with multiple (single-line) POTS lines from the telephone service
provider.

Vonage provides a single-line POTS line, on the 'telephone' side of the
'adapter'.  

Note, be sure to co-ordinate wih whomever is installing the Internet
'fractional' T-1, to arrange for an enhanced QOS, or at least
priority, for the VOIP traffic on your T-1. Three simultaneous voice
conversations can tie up 50% or more of that pipe. That's a big
enough share that you don't want the risk of 'non-real-time' traffic
pigging the bandwidth.

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

From: Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net>
Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 17:10:18 -0800
Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com


Ron Kritzman wrote:

> cnnmoney@telecom-digest.org wrote:

> SBC has joined forces with AT&T and taken its name ...

> Okay. Illinois Bell, Ameritech, SBC, and now AT&T, in area codes 312,
> 708 and 847. So I've had 4 phone companies 3 areacode swapped out from
> under me while living in the same house with the same phone number.

All of my friends living back home, too (old Ohio Bell territory).

Not my parents now, they live out in the sticks in Alltel land ... but most 
of THEIR friends are still in AT&T land :)


Steve Sobol, Professional Geek   888-480-4638   PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

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

From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi)
Subject: Re: MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:47:05 -0000
Organization: Widgets, Inc.


In article <telecom24.555.1@telecom-digest.org>,
David Caruso  <ap@telecom-digest.org> wrote:

> By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer

> Every evening rush hour, hustlers lugging bags full of bootlegged
> movies walk the subway train aisles, calling "two for five dollars!"
> as brazenly as if they were selling hot dogs at Yankee Stadium. At
> those prices, the DVDs, often of current Hollywood blockbusters, sell
> well, despite laughable sound and picture quality. Few customers seem
> to care the copies were made illegally.

> Bootleggers apparently have little to fear. Under state law, people
> caught videotaping inside a movie theater face a maximum fine of $250.

Of course, under Federal copyright infringement statutes, which such
taping _does_ also violate, the penalties are *much* higher.

All the copyright owners have to do is file the _appropriate_ lawsuits.

But that's a civil tort.  and _they_ have to do the investigation and
suit prosecution themselves.

A criminal violation, -that- is the responsibility of 'somebody else'
to investigate/prosecute.  and they get the benefits _without_ having
to 'do anything' themselves.

> As part of its worldwide campaign against piracy, the film industry is
> pushing for tougher penalties for smuggling a camcorder into a cinema
> in New York, which has the country's worst bootlegging problem and
> some of the weakest penalties.

> A bill pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America would make
> operating recording equipment inside a theater a criminal misdemeanor,
> raising the maximum punishment to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

> Making the crime a misdemeanor also would empower police to arrest
> violators on the spot, rather than simply issuing a summons.

> People caught a second time would be charged with a felony.

> "We have to do something, because right now there's no risk," said
> William J. Shannon, a Yonkers-based deputy director of the
> association's U.S.  anti-piracy operation. "Right now, you're looking
> at something about the same as a parking ticket."

*IF* they filed a civil lawsuit against every person to whom a
'summons' was issued, I bet the problem would go away _really_
quickly.

Amazing, isn't it, how they want 'somebody else' to solve their
problem for them, but aren't willing to use the _existing_ remedies
available to them, whereby they could clean up the problem themselves?
<cynical grin>

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


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