From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 2 15:52:38 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 375B12200; Mon, 2 Oct 2006 15:52:38 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #351 Message-Id: <20061002195238.375B12200@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 15:52:38 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 2 Oct 2006 15:55:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 351 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson EU Welcomes Auomony Plan for Internet Governance (Reuters News Wire) 'Screaming' Cell Phones to Cut Down Theft (Marc Jones, Reuters) Google Buys Garage Where its Empire Began (Michael Liedtke, AP) Online Gambling in Crisis Over USA Ban (Pete Harrison, Reuters) Cordless Phone Recomendation Wanted (S.Dickson@shos.co.uk) Microsoft Beefs up Home-Networking Portfolio (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update (Telecom Direct) Re: Non Partison: Just a Question and You Only Get One Answer (A Troll) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 11:52:17 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: EU Welcomes Auomony Plan for Internet Governance The European Commission welcomed on Monday U.S. government moves to make the company that manages Internet domain names independent by 2009, but said it would monitor the process carefully. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which controls addresses including ".com" and country domain names such as ".cn" for China, now reports to the U.S. Commerce Department. On Friday, the Commerce Department said it would retain oversight for three more years, renewing an agreement that was scheduled to expire last weekend. But a lighter regime was introduced, with ICANN no longer having to file reports with the Commerce Department every six months or having its work prescribed for it, the European Commission said. "A new and final chapter opened this weekend. We welcome that ICANN will be set free in a process over the next three years," Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr told a news briefing. The Commission criticized ICANN's decision this year to reject a new .xxx Internet domain for pornography sites, saying that was U.S. political interference in the Web's governance. The United States has fought off attempts to wrest control of the domain-name system from the Commerce Department. U.S. control of ICANN had become a sticking point for countries such as Iran and Brazil, which argued it should be managed by the United Nations or another global body. The United States argued that such a body would stifle innovation with red tape. "The European Commission will follow closely ICANN's transition to full independence in the next three years," EU Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement. "With our advice, we will contribute to this transition to ensure that it takes place transparently, reflecting the interests of industry and civil society alike," Reding said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 11:58:11 -0500 From: Marc Jones Subject: 'Screaming' Cell Phones to Cut Down Theft By Marc Jones A UK firm is hoping a cell phones security system it has developed which sets off a high pitch scream, permanently locks the handset and wipes all data if stolen, will halt the spiraling rise in phone theft. The Remote XT technology, designed to make phones unusable, and therefore worthless if they are stolen, works by installing software onto the operating system of the phone which is then activated via a call to a call center once users realize their phone has been snatched or lost. The phone is then remotely disabled, all the data held on the device is wiped and a high pitched screech is triggered. "It makes a loud squealing noise which is enough to distract a restaurant if it went off and it completely locks the phone," Remote XT Managing Director, Mark Whiteman told Reuters. "We also then set a small bomb off, if you like, that completely wipes the data ... if it has genuinely been stolen then it renders the phone useless to the thief," he added. The screaming noise can be stopped by taking out the phone's battery but starts again as soon as it is put back in, while replacing the SIM card has no effect. The system also automatically backs up data held on a device once a day, meaning users can re-load their information onto a replacement handset. According to the latest UK government statistics, mobile phone theft has risen 190 per cent in recent years, with one third of all UK robberies now solely involving mobile phones. Insurer Halifax estimates a mobile handset is stolen every 12 seconds in Britain costing UK consumers around 390 million pounds ($735 million) every year. The police and Home Office backed software currently only works on so called "smart phones" which run operating systems such as Symbian or Windows Mobile, but it is expected to be suitable for the majority of phones within two years as mobile technology advances. "While primarily aimed at the business market...any product which adds a level of security for the user and a barrier for the thief has to be good news," said Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF) Chairman Jack Wraith. Costing around 120 pounds ($224.3) a year the technology is not 100 percent fool proof however, with organized tech savvy thieves likely to have the equipment and know how be able to get round the security measures. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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, For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:02:48 -0500 From: Michael Liedtke, AP Subject: Google Buys Garage Where its Empire Began By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer Internet search leader Google Inc. has added a landmark to its rapidly expanding empire; the Silicon Valley home where co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented a garage eight years ago as they set out to change the world. The Mountain View-based company bought the 1,900-square-foot home in nearby Menlo Park from one of its own employees, Susan Wojcicki, who had agreed to lease her garage for $1,700 per month because she wanted some help paying the mortgage. Wojcicki, now Google's vice president of product management, didn't work for the company at the time and only knew the Stanford University graduate students because one of her friends had dated Brin. During Google's five-month history there, the garage became like a second home for Page and Brin. The entrepreneurs, then just 25, seemed to be always working on their search engine or soaking in the hot tub that still sits on the property. They also had a penchant for raiding Wojcicki's refrigerator -- a habit that may have inspired Google to provide a smorgasbord of free food to the 8,000 employees on its payroll. When Page and Brin first moved in the garage, Google had just been incorporated with a bankroll of $1 million raised from a handful of investors. Today, Google has about $10 billion in cash and a market value of $125 billion. The company's astounding growth has imbued its birthplace with the same kind of mystique attached to other hallowed Silicon Valley spots like the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett-Packard Co. started in 1938 and the Los Altos garage where Steve Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak first began to build Apple computers in the 1970s. HP paid $1.7 million for 12-by-18-foot garage that co-founder William Hewlett first rented for $45 per month. Google declined to reveal how much it paid for its original home, but similar houses in the same neighborhood have been selling in the $1.1 million to $1.3 million range. That's a small fraction of the $319 million that Google paid earlier this year for its current 1-million-square-foot headquarters located six miles to the south. Although the Google garage isn't considered a historic site quite yet, it already has turned into a tourist attraction. The busloads of people that show up to take pictures of the house and garage have become such an annoyance that Google asked The Associated Press not to publish the property's address, although it can easily be found on the Internet using the company's search engine. Google may use the home as a guest house, but nothing definitive has been worked out. "We plan to preserve the property as a part of our living legacy," said Google spokesman Jon Murchinson. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:09:10 -0500 From: Pete Harrison Subject: Online Gambling in Crisis Over USA Ban By Pete Harrison Online gambling firms faced their biggest-ever crisis on Monday after U.S. Congress passed legislation to end Internet gaming there, threatening jobs and wiping 3.5 billion pounds ($6.5 billion) off company values. Britain's PartyGaming Plc, operator of leading Internet poker site PartyPoker.com, and rivals Sportingbet and 888 Plc said they would likely pull out of the United States, their biggest source of revenue. "This development is a significant setback for our company, our shareholders, our players and our industry," PartyGaming Chief Executive Mitch Garber said. The House of Representatives and Senate unexpectedly approved a bill early on Saturday that would make it illegal for banks and credit-card companies to make payments to online gambling sites. The measure was sent to President George W. Bush to sign into law, which most analysts see as a certainty. "We believe that this will have a very material impact on the long-term prospects of online gambling, and in particular poker," said analyst Julian Easthope at UBS. "This will lead to a rapid decline in the use of online poker sites." PartyGaming generates about 78 percent of its revenue from the United States, while Sportingbet gets about 62 percent there. CRACKDOWN Shares in PartyGaming, which rakes in nearly $4 million a day from its 19 million customers, fell 57 percent by 1155 GMT. Sportingbet, which owns sportsbook.com and ParadisePoker.com, lost 60 percent, 888 was down 33 percent and Austria's bwin.com fell 24 percent. Bwin could be pushed to the brink, having paid heavily for Swedish online poker site Ongame earlier this year to gain access to the U.S. market, said Leopold Salcher, an analyst at Austria's RCB. "This could break their neck," he said. Online gaming exploded in 2005 with a string of high-profile company flotations in London, which has become the industry's corporate center. The bulk of revenue has always come from U.S. players, but the firms were located in offshore jurisdictions like Costa Rica and Antigua for fear of prosecution in the United States, where the legal status of online gaming and betting was uncertain. Shares in Sportingbet and BETonSPORTS had already been hammered after recent arrests of senior executives on charges of illegal gambling in individual U.S. states, but investors remained hopeful online betting and gaming would not be completely banned at a federal level. Meanwhile, big American corporations like Las Vegas-based Harrah's Entertainment Inc. were forced to sit on the sidelines as gaming money streamed out of the country. PartyGaming said in a statement, "If the President signs the act into law, the company will suspend all real money gaming business with U.S. residents." "Any such suspension would also result in the group's financial performance falling significantly short of consensus forecasts for 2006 and 2007," it added. MERGER SCRAPPED Stephen Whittaker, joint chief investment officer at Britain's New Star Asset Management, said the likely ban could be challenged. "This represents protectionism, and the WTO have said you can't do that," said Whittaker, whose portfolio includes about 2 percent of online gaming stocks. "Overall, we'll probably remain with most of our holdings." "We'll probably reduce one, maybe two," he added. "We want to let the dust settle a bit -- it will take a few days." Sportingbet said a ban would hit trading and it would scrap a planned merger with World Gaming as a result. 888 Plc said the move would hit its results, as did gaming software provider Playtech, whose shares fell 42 percent. But Paul Leyland at Arbuthnot Securities said Playtech was relatively well positioned. "The only company for which you could categorically say that redeployment is easy is Playtech," he said. "But for the others it's much more difficult." A ban would also hit payment processors such as Neteller Plc and Optimal Group's FireOne subsidiary. (Additional reporting by Laurence Fletcher in London and Alexandra Schwarz in Vienna) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: S.Dickson@shos.co.uk Subject: Cordless Phone Recomendation Wanted Date: 1 Oct 2006 02:46:54 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Could someone please recomend a good cordless phone for my house. I am wanting 2 or 3 of them. Thanks, Simon ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:48:29 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Microsoft Beefs up Home-Networking Portfolio USTelecom dailyLead October 2, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ezuofDtusXdupoNAXV TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Microsoft beefs up home-networking portfolio BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cingular files lawsuit against alleged pretexter * Nortel homes in on WiMAX * Analysis: Mobile ESPN's experience reflects competitive nature of wireless business * Buyout firm nears deal to buy all of China Network Systems USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * CALEA Compliance: Obligations, Risks & Strategies, Part III HOT TOPICS * Verizon: FiOS to generate operating profit by '09 * IBM launches IP telephony service for businesses * Nortel sees higher demand for fiber-optic gear * VoIP attracts small-business customers * Cavalier acquires Talk America for $251M TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Analysis: Gaming is red hot in India REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Will FCC turn its focus to Video over IP? Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ezuofDtusXdupoNAXV ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 02, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:06:54 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 02, 2006 ******************************** Siemens Bosses Defer Pay Rise, Offer Millions to Help BenQ Workforce http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20210?11228 BERLIN -- Siemens AG said Monday it will defer an executive pay hike and contribute the proceeds to a E 35million (US$44.3 million) fund to help employees of its former cell phone business. The German electronics and engineering conglomerate ceded its unprofitable handset business to Taiwan's BenQ Corp. a year ago as part of ... The Tools of Cooperation and Change http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20204?11228 Employers can choose from lots of tools when they want to encourage employees to work together toward a new corporate goal. One of the rarest managerial skills is the ability to understand which tools will work in a given situation and which will misfire. Cooperation tools fall into four major categories: power, management, leadership, ... Samsung SGH-X820: Thin, Thinner, Thinnest http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20203?11228 One day, a cell phone manufacturer will produce a model that's as thin as a sheet of paper. Until that day arrives, the Samsung SGH-X820 will have to suffice. The SGH-X820 is a triband (GSM 900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) phone that's a scant 0.27 inches thick (thin?). At 4.4 inches long and 1.9 inches wide, and weighing only 2,4 ... Verizon Fishes for Pretexters http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20201?11228 Verizon Wireless, looking to get ahead of the Hewlett Packard (HP) pretexting scandal, filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against some of the individuals and companies who allegedly obtained HP board of directors' telephone records. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, doesn't name specific defendants, ... Congressmen Tell DoJ: Hold AT&T/BellSouth Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20198?11228 Judiciary committee members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are asking the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) to delay clearing AT&T's proposed $67.1 billion purchase of BellSouth as other opponents of the colossal deal make similar appeals to U.S. lawmakers and government agencies. Reps. James Sensenbrenner (... All About Optimization http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20194?11228 When Charles Cox, manager of telecommunications systems at Parker Drilling, began looking for a replacement for the company's outmoded UHF/VHF radio communications system in 2000, the requirements were stringent. The Houston-based drilling company operates oil and natural-gas rigs in some of the world's most remote ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: A Troll Subject: Re: Non Partisan. Just a Question, and You Only Get ONE Answer Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 04:44:27 UTC Organization: news.code-werk.net for www.open-news-network.org Krusty wrote in news:1159763865.900349.182420 @k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com: > What do you think is the single *most* important issue in the upcoming > election? > I'm just looking for ONE issue. We all agree that there are more than > one. I'm not going to list one or any, because I just wanna know what > issue is the TOP of your list, if you have one. If you think there's > only ONE issue this election, then just list that one. > So, what's the most important issue in your head, when you step into > that booth? Net neutrality. The above post was written by A Troll. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are _many_ issues in the forthcoming election; net neurality is just one of many good, important issues before us. Like yourself, I would say if I had to pick just one thing, I also would choose net neutrality. The telcos all hasten to assure us not to worry about it; nothing is going to change. But I know full well that telcos can and do lie about such things. I have read some pretty dire illustrations of what could or probably would happen if the telcos had their way on this. It all gets quite complex at times; much of it is too much for even me to comprehend, so I can see why many/most of our congresscritters would be in the dark on it. What do other readers think about net neutrality and other issues regards 'computers' in the fortoming election? PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #351 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 3 17:26:15 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B2F6B2221; Tue, 3 Oct 2006 17:26:15 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #352 Message-Id: <20061003212615.B2F6B2221@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 17:26:15 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 3 Oct 2006 17:30:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 352 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Opens Full Scale New York Office (Eric Auchard, Reuters) Online Gambling Firms Look East After USA Ban (Pete Harrison, Reuters) The Times Thinks Outside the Browser (Monty Solomon) Standard Voice Mails to Email Service? (tom@heartmath.com) Eircom Shuts Down Service to Small Carrier (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 03, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: 'Screaming' Cell Phones to Cut Down Theft (RadicalModerate) Re: Cordless Phone Recomendation Wanted (David Quinton) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 12:54:08 -0500 From: Eric Auchard Subject: Online Gambling Firms Look East After USA Ban By Pete Harrison Britain's online gambling firms switched their sights away from the United States to look for new growth areas on Tuesday after the U.S. Congress passed legislation to end Internet gaming in their biggest market. Their shares continued to bleed after news of the impending ban wiped out $6.5 billion in share values on Monday. Sector leader PartyGaming fell more than 11 percent, extending Monday's 58 percent drop, aftenr it canceled its interim dividend to reinvest $115 million, possibly in acquisitions. Chief Executive Mitch Garber had already stressed the need to reduce the company's dependence on the risky U.S. market last month and hinted at deals in Europe and Asia. Interactive Gaming Holdings was the sector's only gainer on Tuesday after the small-cap firm announced a move into South Asia through a deal with Curacao-licensed Maharajah Club. "The alliance will provide IGH with access to the South Asian gaming market at an elementary stage of its development, with a partner who understands its inherent cultural differences," said IGH Chief Executive John Heaton. "We believe that the South Asian gaming market will be of great significance in terms of IGH's future," he added. But analyst Paul Leyland at Arbuthnot Securities warned that the transition into Asia would not be easy for other companies without knowledge of the market. "Asia's not one place, and Asians are not the backward people the U.S.-facing gaming companies hope they are," he said. CRACKDOWN Gaming companies were left in shock when the House of Representatives and the Senate unexpectedly approved a bill early on Saturday that would make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites. The measure was sent to President George W. Bush to sign into law, which most analysts see as a certainty. 888 shares lost as much as 7.2 percent on Tuesday after it said the move would set the company's performance back to mid-2004 levels. But 888 reassured investors it would continue its planned expansion in Europe and Asia and would try to convert its U.S. division to one of legal online entertainment. Sportingbet, owner of the ParadisePoker Web site, remained silent on Tuesday, as did Empire Online. But analysts pointed out Empire had a cash pile of $260 million and was better placed than most to switch its geographical focus or invest outside the gaming sector. Analyst Paul Leyland warned that a move into Asia and Europe would not be smooth, particularly in countries such as France where state prosecutors recently arrested two executives from Austria's Bwin.com over alleged gambling offences. "The U.S. is one of the easiest gambling markets to make money in," he said. "The rest are harder -- just ask the people at Bwin." Last week, European Union Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said eight EU countries might be added to a list of seven already facing legal action for refusing to open their betting markets. France is said to be among them. "McCreevy is an acolyte of free trade ... but at the end of the day, it's the nation states who get to decide their laws," said Leyland. As gaming companies struggled to realign their strategies, investors struggled to identify those that might not survive. Shares in World Gaming Plc were down 23 percent at 12-1/2 pence by 1438 GMT after falling as low as 6p when it said it might be in technical default. "The directors believe it may be in technical default of its loan conditions due to a material adverse change in the circumstances of the business, arising from proposed changes in legislation in the United States," World Gaming said in a statement. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 01:20:25 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Times Thinks Outside the Browser The Times Thinks Outside the Browser; Finally, a readable online newspaper. By Jack Shafer About six months ago, I canceled my New York Times subscription. It wasn't an act of protest, nor was I canceling because, like so many moderns, I don't have time to read a newspaper. I stopped my home delivery because I had discovered in the newspaper's redesigned Web site a product much superior to the newsprint Times. Fickle bastard that I am, I've now abandoned the Web version for the New York Times Reader, a new computer edition that entered general beta release today and is currently free. The Times Reader succeeds-as no other software has-in cramming a daily newspaper into a computer and making it 1) readable and 2) navigable. And if you're lucky enough to have once had an employer with deep pockets who bought you a $2,000 Tablet PC, the Times Reader is as portable as the paper version. Times Reader shouldn't be confused with the Times Electronic Edition, that admirable failure that accurately bills itself as an "exact digital replica" of the newsprint Times, or any of the other static PDF-ish treatments newspapers and magazines have experimented with. Times Reader exploits new software from Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation to do its work, and the less I say about WPF-a subset of Windows Vista, Microsoft's oft-postponed new operating system-the better. Suffice it to say that WPF and the Times-Microsoft collaboration has liberated the newspaper from the design constraints Web browsers place on designers. http://www.slate.com/id/2149888/ ------------------------------ From: tom@heartmath.com Subject: Standard Voice Mails to Email Service? Date: 3 Oct 2006 10:05:01 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com A few months ago I found a company on the Web that has a service that can pick up voice mail messages from an AT&T, Verizon, etc. voice mail box and deliver them via email. I can't find the company now. Does anyone know of companies that do this? Tom [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Are you talking about taking the voice mail message and repeating it _in audio format_ in an email box, or transcribing it into (for example) ASCII, changing it into an email message? If it is the former you are interested in, Vonage has a scheme for delivering voicemail messages to your computer _as voicemail_ and sending a link to same via email to other locations. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 12:49:14 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Eircom Shuts Down Service to Small Carrier USTelecom dailyLead October 3, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eAegfDtusXdzgYvQDp TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Eircom shuts down service to small carrier BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cingular completes integration of AT&T Wireless network * BT adds Sony BMG music video to Vision package * FCC backs Alltel-Midwest Wireless deal * BelAir snags another $21.4M * T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel bet on high-speed wireless USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Asset Management in the Telecommunications Converged Environment TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Nokia reveals short-range wireless technology * "Digital native" generation thrives on connectivity * Report: Carriers worldwide spending big on broadband REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Qwest may push for statewide franchise law in Colorado * Report: Vote delayed on FCC chairman's second term DIVERSIONS * Paris la Nuit * Give Your Computer's Idle Time to Charity * A Lot More Firepower for BMW's 6-Shooter * David Lynch Returns: Expect Moody Conditions, With Surreal Gusts * Gaudi and the Beach, With Tapas for Dinner in Barcelona Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eAegfDtusXdzgYvQDp ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 03, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 11:19:25 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 03, 2006 ******************************** SFR Wades into French Fixed Market with US$451.6 mil. Takeover of Tele2 France http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20243?11228 Pan-European alternative telecoms operator Tele2 has opted to quit the French fixed-line market, offloading its entire fixed-line operations in France to mobile operator SFR for 3.3 billion Sweden kronor (US$451.6 million). Under the deal, SFR would take over Tele2's fixed-line operations including its broadband unit, and would have ... France Telecom Plans US$1.91 bil. Push into Convergence in Spain http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/11228 France Telecom plans to invest 1.5 billion euro (US$1.91 billion) in Spain over the next three years. The telco seeks to develop a new convergence strategy for its Spanish operations. These include fixed-line and internet operations Wanadoo Espana and the mobile business Auna, which is currently being rebranded as Orange. ... FCC Approves Alltel Acquisition of Midwest Wireless http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20238?11228 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved the US$1.1-billion acquisition of Midwest Wireless by Alltel, adding conditions that assets in four cellular market areas would need to be divested. The acquisition adds spectrum covering a footprint of 2 million potential customers in southern Minnesota, northern and eastern Iowa,... Telecom Italia Workers Strike Against Reorganization Plan http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20235?11228 MILAN, Italy -- Telecom Italia SpA workers went on strike Tuesday to protest against plans to reorganize Italy's largest telecommunications company. Thousands of workers blew whistles and waved red union flags as they demonstrated outside Telecom that 80 percent ... Telephone Company Eircom Shuts Down Rival's 40,000 Lines Over Unpaid Bills http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20232?11228 DUBLIN, Ireland -- Ireland's dominant telephone company, Eircom PLC, shut down services Tuesday to smaller rival Smart Telecom in a dispute over unpaid bills, leaving 40,000 households and businesses unable to make calls. Eircom, which has been threatening to cut off Smart Telecom since May 2005, said it withdrew Smart ... Taiwan's BenQ Blames Poor Product Management for Demise in German Unit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20228?11228 TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan's BenQ Corp. on Tuesday blamed poor product management for the demise of its mobile unit in Germany. BenQ, the world's No. 6 mobile phone vendor by market share, filed for insolvency last week for the German operations it took over from Siemens AG in October 2005, endangering 3,000 jobs. Cingular Wireless Files Pretexter Suit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20225?11228 Cingular Wireless joins Verizon Wireless as the latest carrier to take legal action with regards to the pretexting scandal involving Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP). Cingular's lawsuit focuses on private investigators involved in the pretexting efforts. HP is under scrutiny by Congress for using pretexting tactics to uncover the source ... New Research: Telecom Manufacturers Shift Focus To Growing SMBs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20223?11228 A number of leading telephone system manufacturers are addressing the capacity and migration needs of growing businesses by adding newer and larger platforms to existing families of business telephony systems. Distributed work environments with branch offices and remote workers continue to be the workplace trend, and leading ... Intel/Nokia Deal Gets Mixed Reactions http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20219?11228 Responses to last week's news that Nokia Corp. will partner with Intel Corp. on HSDPA modules have ranged from 'this changes everything' to 'Intel is in retreat.' Briefly, Nokia said on Thursday that it will supply an HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) module that Intel will include as part ... Cisco Tunes in With Cognio http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20217?11228 Cisco Systems Inc. has teamed up with startup Cognio Inc. to provide users with tools to enable them to get more information on what could be causing radio problems on their wireless LAN networks. Cisco will use the Natick, Mass.-based company's Spectrum Expert, a WiFi spectrum analysis and monitoring tool, alongside its ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com (RadicalModerate) Subject: Re: 'Screaming' Cell Phones to Cut Down Theft Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 20:27:37 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Marc Jones wrote: > Costing around 120 pounds ($224.3) a year the technology is not 100 > percent fool proof however, with organized tech savvy thieves likely > to have the equipment and know how be able to get round the security > measures. That works out to #10 (~$16.50) a month for nightly address book and memo backup plus disabling a phone before a crook can rack up your bill. And you still need to buy a new phone. In the US, they'd have to charge no more than $5 a month. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ From: David Quinton Subject: Re: Cordless Phone Recomendation Wanted Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 07:47:53 +0100 On 1 Oct 2006 02:46:54 -0700, S.Dickson@shos.co.uk wrote: > Could someone please recomend a good cordless phone for my house. I am > wanting 2 or 3 of them. I see you're in the UK. BT do some sets of 2 and 4 -- but I can't see a set of 3! But If you buy GAP compatible DECT phones, they normally will work with each other. e.g. http://www.bizorg.co.uk/shopping/BT/item/cay294 - BT Freestyle 7110 Quad SMS digital cordless phone w/ caller display Locate your Mobile phone: http://www.bizorg.co.uk/news.html Great gifts: http://www.ThisBritain.com/ASOS_popup.html ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #352 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 4 17:13:35 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 195132241; Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:54:38 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #353 Message-Id: <20061004205438.195132241@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:54:38 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:55:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 353 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman and Others Face Felony Charges (AP News Wire) It is Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet (Reuters News Wire) Google Offers Mini-Programs For Use on Other Sites (Reuters News Wire) AOL To Lauch New Version of Software (Reuters News Wire) TiVo Statement on Decision by U.S. Court of Appeals to Stay (Monty Solomon) Telemarketer 888-695-9405 (JCL) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 04, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: 'Screaming' Cell Phones to Cut Down Theft (DevilsPGD) Re: Net Neutrality? (Rick Merrill) Re: The Times Thinks Outside the Browser (W Howard) Re: The Best Way to Answer a Business Phone (Bill Ranck) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:47:22 -0500 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman and Others Face Felony Charges HP Insiders to Face Criminal Charges California's attorney general will seek criminal indictments Wednesday against former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and four others involved in the corporate spying scandal, according to news reports. Citing people familiar with the case, The New York Times and BusinessWeek reported that Ms. Dunn, Kevin Hunsaker, HP's ousted chief ethics officer, and Ronald DeLia, a Boston-area private investigator, would each face criminal charges. Two other outside investigators -- Joseph DePante of Melbourne, Fla. and Bryan Wagner of Littleton, Colo. -- were also being charged, the Times said. They each will face four felony charges: use of false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility; unauthorized access to computer data; identity theft; and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. The scandal erupted last month when HP disclosed that detectives it hired to root out a series of boardroom leaks secretly obtained detailed phone logs of directors, employees and journalists. The detectives used a potentially criminal form of subterfuge known as pretexting to masquerade as their targets and trick telephone companies into turning over the records. Dunn -- who initiated the investigation -- said she didn't know until after the fact that the detectives went to such extremes to unearth clues about the leaker's identity. She resigned from HP's board last month amid the uproar over the spying campaign, which has also prompted the resignation of two other board members. Dunn, 53, who has survived breast cancer and melanoma, will begin chemotherapy treatments for advanced ovarian cancer on Friday at the University of California, San Francisco, according to a person close to Dunn who asked to remain anonymous because a formal announcement wasn't planned. Lawyers for Dunn and the others expected to be charged did not immediately return calls seeking comment. HP did not immediately comment, nor did a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Hunsaker, who directed the investigation, left the company on Sept. 26; DeLia runs a Boston-area detective firm called Security Outsourcing Solutions, a longtime HP contractor commissioned to conduct the leak probe. DeLia in turn hired DePante's company to gather information, and DePante hired Wagner to obtain the private phone records of HP directors and journalists. HP eventually identified director George Keyworth II as the source of a leak to a Cnet Networks Inc. reporter. Keyworth resigned after the scandal went public in early September. Another director, venture capitalist Thomas J. Perkins, resigned from the board in May after learning about the tactics used by HP's investigators. He then pressured the company to publicly disclose the reason for his departure, leading to the regulatory filing that revealed the investigators' use of pretexting. The FBI and a congressional panel are also looking into the HP pretexting scandal. Dunn testified last week before the panel, saying she didn't know about any potentially illegal tactics used in the investigation and wasn't responsible for the probe. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:25:34 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: It is Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet Point-click-drink: It's that easy for teens The Internet is providing a new avenue for underage drinking. Results of a new survey confirm that millions of teenagers either buy alcohol online or know an underage friend who does. A related audit of states shows that many state legislators are easing restrictions on online alcohol sales with little monitoring or oversight. "This is a dangerous situation," said Stan Hastings chairman of the Wine and Spirits Wholesales of America, Inc. (WSWA), the trade group that commissioned the survey. "For the first time, we have hard evidence that millions of kids are buying alcohol online and that the Internet is fast becoming a high-tech, low-risk way for kids to get beer, wine and liquor delivered to their home with no ID check," Hastings said in a statement. The survey results are "alarming," he added, "because state legislators are rushing to allow wine and other online alcohol sales at a time we know regulatory agencies are telling us they are unable to monitor these types of sales because they lack manpower and resources." Conducted in 2006 by Teenage Research Unlimited, the survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,001 young people between the ages of 14 and 20 years revealed that 2 percent (representing 551,000 nationally) reported having personally bought alcohol online. Moreover, 12 percent, equivalent to 3.1 million minors, report having a friend who has ordered alcohol online. The survey also shows that alcohol purchased online is shared among friends. Roughly 3 percent of 14- to 20-year-olds (equivalent to 735,000 nationally) admit to drinking alcohol purchased by someone else online or by phone. And more than half of those with friends who have obtained alcohol illegally online or by phone say those friends share it (80 percent), drink it themselves (79 percent), or give to another underage person (53 percent). Researchers warn that as awareness and exposure to online alcohol sales increases, even more minors can be expected to buy beer, wine, and liquor on the Internet unless steps are taken today to address the problem. This is consistent with a 2003 National Academy of Sciences report that concluded that minors are buying alcohol over the Internet and that increasing use of the Internet will make this problem worse in the future. Compounding the problem, at least 20 states passed laws expanding online sales of alcohol in the past year, according to WSWA. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:51:11 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Google Offers mini-Programs For Use on Other Sites Google offers mini-programs for use on other sites By Eric Auchard Google Inc. said on Tuesday it is making it easier to add hundreds of miniature programs to independent Web sites, in a move that brings handy features to users instead of making users rely on Google.com. The Web search leader has jumped ahead of rivals -- such as Apple Computer Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. -- who offer mini-applets or "gadgets" when the user has installed special software on individual computer desktops. Google Gadgets, which have previously been available for users to add to a Web user's personalized Google homepage or their own computers via Google Desktop software, are now available for Web page owners to add to their own sites. "Instead of making people come to Google, now Google can be found everywhere," Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said of the push to make such programs available via other sites. Web site publishers can choose from a gallery of 1,220 so-called "Google Gadgets" -- small bits of code that function as dynamic applications when installed on a Web page. Less than two dozen of the applications come from Google. Most are built by outside programmers seeking distribution for the programs. Google Gadgets range from a miniature look-up for Google Maps or Google Calendar to independent applications ranging from financial information to sports to communication tools and jokes, horoscopes or geometric puzzle game Tetris. A list of Google Gadgets can be found at http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open/ . To add a particular gadget to a Web page, users can with a few clicks locate the HTML source code of the program and insert it into their own Web sites using standard Web publishing tools. "This is part of the movement to make the Web into a platform rather than forcing users to rely on desktop software," Li said. Google calls these new Web-based programs "Universal Gadgets" to distinguish them from existing "Desktop Gadgets" designed to run only on Google sites or on a user's own computer desktop. "Gadgets are nothing more than HTML and a little bit of Javascript," Adam Sah, who carries the title Google Gadgets architect, said in an interview. "Gadgets are easy to create so it's something (programmers) can do in their spare time." Yahoo, through its acquisition of the Silicon Valley start-up Konfabulator last year, boasts more than 3,244 Widgets, or mini programs, that range from Web search tools to games, news feeds and video-watching utilities. But users must install and run an 11-megabyte program on a PC for such programs to work on Windows-based computers http://widgets.yahoo.com/ Similarly, Apple Computer and Microsoft offer hundreds of such programs to Web users. While Google has jumped out ahead of rivals, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are likely to make their own collections of mini-applications ready to run on other Web sites, Li said. Before these mini-Web based applications can go mainstream, however, Google and the others will have to do away with the need to "cut and paste" code and make it possible to install such programs on Web sites in a few clicks, she said. Eventually, Web users can look forward to a time when they combine such mini-applications from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft or others to create hybrid applications, known as mashups. Start-ups like Widgetbox http://www.widgetbox.com/ are pointing the way by offering a marketplace of different mini-applets for users to add to sites, while Ning http://www.ning.com/ , a company begun by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen, offers a simple way for users to create whole sites out of such Web-based applications, Li said. "We are not ready at this point to discuss that," Google's Sah said. "Gadgets and Widgets are all moving very quickly." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more tech news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:53:35 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: AOL To Lauch New Version of Software AOL on Wednesday plans to launch a new version of its software that lets users access their e-mail, instant messaging, search and media on the same screen. The new software, dubbed AOL OpenRide, comes after it announced plans this summer to offer most of its services for free in an effort to boost online advertising sales. It also stopped marketing its Internet dial-up access service, but continues to maintain and charge for it. OpenRide, which lets users check e-mail from rivals such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. reflects a new approach to courting users. Although it has made most of its services free, AOL now also aims to have users rely on its software for other functions, such as viewing photos or listening to a music collection stored on the PC using the OpenRide. The software screen is divided into four parts that change size depending on what the user is viewing. Elements of one window, an e-mail message for example, can be dragged and dropped into another window, such as the contact name on a buddy list. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 09:43:18 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Statement on Decision by U.S. Court of Appeals to Stay Permanent Injunction Issued by District Court in Lawsuit Against EchoStar ALVISO, Calif., Oct 03, 2006 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO), the creator of and leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVR), today announced that U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted the request of EchoStar Communications Corp. ("ECC") to stay the permanent injunction imposed by the U.S. District Court to prevent ECC from making, using, offering for sale or selling in the United States the DVR products involved in the case (DP-501, DP-508, DP-510, DP-721, DP-921, DP-522, DP-625, DP-942, and all EchoStar DVRs that are not more than colorably different from any of these products) pending the outcome of ECC's appeal. TiVo sued EchoStar in Federal District Court on January 5, 2004, alleging that ECC and certain subsidiaries are violating a key TiVo patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,233,389 issued to TiVo in May 2001, known as the "Time Warp" patent). The Time Warp patent discloses systems and methods for the simultaneous storage and playback of programs, supporting advanced capabilities such as pausing live television, fast-forwarding, rewinding, instant replays, and slow motion. On April 13, 2006, a Marshall, Texas jury concluded that EchoStar had willfully infringed TiVo's Time Warp patent. - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=61478188 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 10:58:18 -0700 (PDT) From: JCL Subject: Telemarketer 888-695-9405 I saw your article on-line re: 888-695-9405. I called my phone company's nuisance call center on 10-4-06, and they tracked the number to Intella Systems, Inc., of Cleveland, OH. Their phone and fax info is listed at http://www.intellasystems.com Also, they have an office in Canada. This is significant because Canadian companies don't have to follow US laws. I was advised to put my name on the Canadian Marketing Assoc. Do Not call list at http://www.The-CMA.org. I would advise people to call their respective phone companies to make sure they identify the proper offender, b/c as someone on your site pointed out, it is possible to list a fake IDs for a phone call. Thanks for posting your digest on-line! JCL - FL ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 04, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 11:21:01 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 04, 2006 ******************************** British Regulator's Q1 Market Snapshot Vodafone, Orange Struggle http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20269?11228 The British telecoms regulator has released its research findings for the state of the U.K. mobile and fixed market for the first quarter of 2006. The regulator has used a 90-day threshold in the calculation of its figures for active subscribers. In most cases, it has also left out the ... Is VoIP WIthout E9-1-1 Worth the Risk? : Challenges, Approaches, and Recommendations for VoIP Service Providers. http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20261?11228 When your subscribers dial 9-1-1, they expect a public safety responder to answer and dispatch help in a matter of seconds. However, when it comes to 9-1-1, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services do not always deliver. This paper details the importance of Enhanced 9-1-1 (E9-1-1) to VoIP's future success and the challenges VoIP ... Optical Antenna Promises More Storage Capacity http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20258?11228 Can an antenna lead to increased optical disc storage? It can when it's a plasmonic laser antenna. The new optical antenna, designed as a metallic nanostructure, is built into a commercial semiconductor laser. "The optical antenna collects light from the laser and concentrates it to an intense spot measuring tens of ... Cingular: 3G Rollout on Track http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20257?11228 Cingular Wireless is refuting a Bloomberg story that its high-speed network rollout plans are behind schedule. The carrier also announced it has completed the integration of the AT&T Wireless network into its operations. Cingular announced that it is on track to reach most of the top 100 markets with its high-speed downlink ... Broadcom Vs. Qualcomm: The Plot Thickens http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20254?11228 Irvine, Calif-based wireless device maker Broadcom says it is now taking several legal counter measures to fight Qualcomm in their complex, long-running, multi-venue patent dispute, emulating the back-and-forth battle Qualcomm and Nokia are waging against each other in comparable litigation in several courts. Broadcom says a ... Nokia Readies Bluetooth Buster http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20251?11228 You know WiMax, you've heard of WiBro, now meet Wibree -- the new short-range wireless specification from Nokia Corp.. The number one cellphone maker is hoping the new technology will supplant Bluetooth for personal-area networking (PAN) applications. Wibree shares many of the same characteristics of Bluetooth -- it has a range ... Huawei Signs Up Former BT Guru http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20249?11228 Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has scored something of a coup by signing up former BT Group plc; group technology officer Mick Reeve as an advisor and public representative. Reeve, who retired from BT in May this year, was one of the British carrier's best known and most respected executives, with a wealth of knowledge and ... WLAN Security Still Weak in Most Businesses http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20246?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Despite the ratification of key wireless standards, the actual use of stronger security mechanisms in current WLAN deployments is low, reports In-Stat. That may soon change, however, as many companies will bolster WLAN security over the next several years, the high-tech market research firm says. Within wireless ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: 'Screaming' Cell Phones to Cut Down Theft Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 19:36:49 -0500 Organization: Disorganized In message nospam4me@mytrashmail.com (RadicalModerate) wrote: > Marc Jones wrote: >> Costing around 120 pounds ($224.3) a year the technology is not 100 >> percent fool proof however, with organized tech savvy thieves likely >> to have the equipment and know how be able to get round the security >> measures. > That works out to #10 (~$16.50) a month for nightly address book and > memo backup plus disabling a phone before a crook can rack up your > bill. And you still need to buy a new phone. That's pretty high ... Unless your phone gets stolen more then once a year, wouldn't it be cheaper to just self-insure (put the money in savings, buy a new phone when needed)? -- I'm sorry sir, you can't park your van on the diving board. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:28:17 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Net Neutrality? > Funding the roll out of such high-priced services led the corporations > to propose "tiered pricing" models for services, where higher paying > clients could get faster Internet service and prioritized access to > bandwidth. > Consumer groups, content providers and technology advocates opposed the > move on the principle of "net neutrality." By prioritizing Internet > traffic according to who pays more, they argued, anyone who doesn't pay > up will be consigned to the "slow lane" of Internet access and degraded > service. > - http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/10/ca_cable.html I thought the term "net neutrality" also applied to companies carrying one another's traffic. ------------------------------ From: whoward@login3.srv.ualberta.ca (W Howard) Subject: Re: The Times Thinks Outside the Browser Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 04:32:14 UTC Organization: University of Alberta In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > The Times Thinks Outside the Browser; Finally, a readable online newspaper. > By Jack Shafer [ snip of praise for new NYT online edition ] > Times Reader shouldn't be confused with the Times Electronic Edition, > that admirable failure that accurately bills itself as an "exact > digital replica" of the newsprint Times, or any of the other static > PDF-ish treatments newspapers and magazines have experimented with. > Times Reader exploits new software from Microsoft Windows Presentation > Foundation to do its work, and the less I say about WPF-a subset of > Windows Vista, Microsoft's oft-postponed new operating system-the > better. Suffice it to say that WPF and the Times-Microsoft > collaboration has liberated the newspaper from the design constraints > Web browsers place on designers. > http://www.slate.com/id/2149888/ I suppose one of those constraints is that the WWW has a set of vendor-neutral standards, so it works on all platforms instead of just the ones sold by Microsoft. Some people, including author Jack Shafer, fail to understand why that is an enormous advantage. It is also true that most of the readability advantages he claims, are available in HTML too. Shafer's bad-mouthing of PDF also smacks of ignorance, but then, PDF also works on most platforms. I am surprised that any company with a lick of sense would go into partnership with Microsoft. Most who have done that haven't survived, and those that did (IBM, Kodak, ...) have been badly wounded by the experience. >> Walt ------------------------------ From: ranck@vt.edu Subject: Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone? Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 20:10:48 UTC Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA Mr Joseph Singer wrote: > I've made it my policy that if I'm waiting in line to be served and > the sales clerk thinks it's *more* important to take a telephone > interruption than to serve me I'll put down my purchase and walk out > of that store. Telephone customers do not have any more clout than > customers who are in front of you. This is why the phone at my wife's chocolate shop has an answering machine that picks up after 2 rings and gives the hours and a chance to leave a message. I made it a point to instruct employees that the phone is *not* to be answered if they are already dealing with a live customer. More than half the time the caller just wants to know how late the shop is open, so that's in the greeting. Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V25 #353 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 5 16:07:50 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id EDFBA220D; Thu, 5 Oct 2006 16:07:49 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #354 Message-Id: <20061005200749.EDFBA220D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 16:07:49 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 Oct 2006 16:09:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 354 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Tech Gadgets Banned in USA (Elizabeth Millard, Newsfactor) Google Launches Search Service for Computer Code (Eric Auchard, Reuters) Skype-Only Phones Bring a New Mobility To Free Online Calls (Monty Solomon) Pearl BlackBerry Offers Video, Camera, Music, As Well as Great (M Solomon) The Q Review (Monty Solomon) Novatel Laptop Cards Can Access Internet, But Services Vary (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 05, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Charges Filed Against HP Executives (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet (John Levine) Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone? (davidesan@gmail.com) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 14:25:09 -0500 From: Elizabeth Millard, Newsfactor Subject: Tech Gadgets Banned in USA by Elizabeth Millard, newsfactor.com There's no doubt about it: foreign technology can whet your appetite. Super-lightweight laptops from Japan, feature-packed smartphones from Europe, and shiny, gotta-get-it devices designed in India, South Korea, and Taiwan are but a few of the items that currently reside on tech's cutting edge. But chances are you will never see those gadgets on store shelves here in the U.S. A trip to the typical U.S. electronics store suggests many Americans would gladly shell out some extra cash for high-end lightweight products. Smaller, lighter, and more-expensive laptops are occupying an ever-increasing amount of shelf space. Even if a larger percentage of Japanese and European consumers reach for higher-end products than their U.S. counterparts, a small percentage of Americans could still spell big sales. Why, then, do some innovative products never make it to our shores? The Corporate Quarantine Many manufacturers prefer to introduce new electronics in their own countries, to see what problems may arise before exporting the goods. There is a strong interest in catching and repairing previously unknown design defects before hitting the U.S. mass market, where the cost of a product recall could be disastrous. Companies must also gauge consumer reaction locally before exporting. Manufacturers realize that despite extensive consumer testing, it is important to float a limited quantity of a product and see how well consumers react to it before opening the floodgates-only to find less demand than anticipated. Some products are at a performance disadvantage in the U.S., like cutting-edge smartphones that do not mesh well with the current state of American telecom services, and videophones that operate much better in countries that have higher-speed wireless networks. The faster the network, the smoother the video will appear. In general, Japanese and Korean telecommunications companies have been quicker to provide faster connections than those offered in the U.S., so consumers in those countries are presented with more-advanced phones and more-advanced services. Plus, according to a major player in this game, the U.S. tech market tends to take its cue from big business, not John Q. Public. "In Japan, where a majority of the cutting-edge innovation occurs, they're driven by consumer demand. In the U.S., we're mainly driven by business needs. That's why you see more of an emphasis on cheap laptops than on lightweight machines," says Douglas Krone, chief executive of Dynamism.com, an online site that sells technology not found on the shelves of U.S. retail stores. Smaller, Faster, Better? In addition to corporate strategies driven by the bottom line, there are cultural preferences to consider. Japanese consumers do not flinch at spending the equivalent of $3,000 or more on a laptop as long as it has the most up-to-date technology and weighs less than 2 pounds, Krone says. Consumers in Japan, and many in Europe, will spend more to enjoy the fruits of innovation rather than use a laptop or gadget that is just "good enough" for their purposes. American consumers, on the other hand, are more interested in lower prices than lighter weights, which makes top-of-the-line electronics a difficult sell in this country, Krone says. Yuni Sucippo, vice president of I-Cube, another Web site offering products from beyond U.S. borders, agrees. "Americans, in general, tend to like big, powerful notebooks," she says. "They want everything in there, as much storage as they can get, as fast as it can go, as big as possible. But they end up carrying around 10 pounds of computer." Shoppers on I-Cube value lighter notebooks that may not offer as much performance or capacity as those preferred by the typical American consumer, but instead boast ultra portability. To be sold on the site as a light notebook, a computer must weigh less than 4 pounds, and most units meeting that requirement are not available in the United States. The same holds true at Dynamism.com. For example, the lightest PC on the global market, the 1.2-pound Sony Vaio U50, is not sold in America. The U50 is smaller than a portable DVD player and has an external foldable keyboard. Although this laptop might appeal to people who crave the ultimate in mobility, most U.S. corporate users would pass on it, Krone says. Too Much To Chew Some companies in Europe and Japan do not enter the U.S. market because their profit margins are razor-thin. Even U.S. companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard have stepped away from certain kinds of equipment in favor of technology that produces more revenue. Foreign companies that decide to sell their most-innovative products to Americans would have to set up extensive customer-service operations, which could be cost-prohibitive given the massive size of the U.S. market. Dynamism.com tries to fill this gap by providing customer service and tech support for all the equipment it sells, acting as a go-between for consumers and companies like Sony, Nuvo, Xacti, and Fuji. Even if sufficient demand for these products emerges, there are legal issues to consider. For example, patent law in Japan and Europe is different than in the U.S. Exporting a wealth of technology and then trying to protect valuable patents might be more trouble than many companies are willing to undertake-especially smaller manufacturers that might not yet have a corporate presence in America. "Sometimes, it just doesn't make sense for a company to spend the time and effort to get patents here and do the enforcement necessary just to sell here," says Steve Kelber, an attorney at the law firm of Merchant & Gould. That could change with the Patent Reform Act of 2005, which would make the U.S. law so similar to that in other countries that it would be much easier for companies to protect their rights. The bill was introduced in June of last year by Rep. Lamar S. Smith (news, bio, voting record) (R-TX) and is still awaiting passage. On the Horizon Even if patent reform takes hold in the U.S., shoppers seeking niche items will likely continue to visit sites like Dynamism.com and I-Cube. Some people may want the hard-to-find gadgets because no one else has them-kind of the geek equivalent of haute couture. But, Sucippo says, most customers are simply frustrated by the lack of truly portable options at their local computer retailers. I-Cube attracts tech aficionados who buy items as soon as they become available, she says, even if they have recently purchased a similar product on the site. "The ones who buy like this are a smaller group, but they're growing," she says. "With the amount of people who travel and work now, there's more appreciation for lighter, more-portable notebooks." I-Cube also features accessories, PDAs, and Tablet PCs. Gadget lovers who are disappointed that Sony stopped selling Clie handhelds in the U.S. need only surf over to I-Cube, which buys the PDAs directly from Japan and then converts most of the operating system into English. One downside: About 40 percent of the OS is still in Japanese. Used in Japan, New to You Kurns & Patrick also specializes in ultralight technology from Japan. One aspect of the site that sets it apart is its used section, which gives cash-strapped tech lovers the chance to buy a "previously loved" computer or gadget that is still in decent condition. Every used item comes with a three-month warranty. In general, however, the question of a warranty is a potential deal-breaker for Kurns & Patrick and other imported-technology sites. If someone buys an item from Best Buy, it can be taken to the store for service or sent back to the manufacturer directly. But computers purchased on a site such as Kurns & Patrick come with a one-year Japanese domestic warranty, which means it must be returned to Japan-or to Kurns & Patrick-for repair. The good news, according to the company, is that some manufacturers, like Panasonic and Sharp, honor their warranties globally. Others, like Toshiba, do not. Even if U.S. buyers take it on faith that the item works perfectly, they should consider another potential drawback: Some of the machines have Japanese keyboards, which are very close in layout to English-language keyboards, but aren't a spot-on match. Kurns & Patrick offers English stickers for the keyboards on some models. In general, though, such quirks are unlikely to put off folks who treasure a 2-pound notebook or a super-slim DVD drive. Stock Answers Despite the possible sales to be gained from these niche customers, large retailers in the U.S. get their marching orders not only from consumers, but also from shareholders. That's where the economics of mediocrity come into play. High-end products command a high-end price. Most shoppers tend to make middle-of-the-road selections at middle-of-the-road prices. Catering to that mentality will produce the kind of returns stockholders demand. It's an economic reality that further diminishes the chances certain top-of-the-line tech goodies will reach U.S. shores anytime soon. The bottom line: If you want the newest, coolest show-stopping gadgets, you can click your way to the handful of online stores that will satisfy your lust for hard-to-get tech, right from the comfort of your home. But for the true beyond-borders electronics experience, you'll need to pony up for a plane ticket to Tokyo. And if you bring your notebook computer, just make sure you have a sturdy shoulder strap. "People understand the need for mobility the second they have to carry a heavy laptop through an airport," says Sucippo. "After that, they come to us." Copyright 2006 NewsFactor Network, Inc. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 14:22:52 -0500 From: Eric Auchard Subject: Google Launches Search Service for Computer Code Eric Auchard Google Inc. is introducing a new search service that only a geek could love. The Web search leader said late on Wednesday it is introducing Google Code Search, a site that simplifies how software developers search for programming code to improve existing software or create new programs. Google product manager Tom Stocky said the Mountain View, California-based company is set to help programmers sift through billions of lines of computer source code using its familiar search box to uncover snippets of reusable software. "For a long time it has been sort of an unsolved problem," said Stocky, a product manager in the developer products group. "It is hard to find references to this sort of data." Google is applying the same machine-driven techniques it uses to help consumers search the Web for text, images, video and books to help professional programmers as well as computer enthusiasts overcome stumbling blocks to writing code. Searchers can seek out specific programming terms or computer languages and dive deep into compressed code to locate specific features. Users also can narrow a search to find software code based on specific licensing requirements, which is a big deal in warding off future patent litigation. Similar to how a consumer might type a few words into a standard Google search box for answers, programmers can seek out relevant lines of code at http://google.com/codesearch -- except the results are for machine-readable phrases such as "go 2}gle" "hello,\ world" or "^int printk." NO SECRET CODE It's commonplace, when looking to improve a particular line of software, for most code writers to search the Web for quick tips. But finding actual programming code rather than just discussions about a particular coding problem is tough. To meet this need, sites such as Koder, O'Reilly Labs or ProgrammingIsHard.com have sprung up that offer repositories of code. Most are small, require membership and are often devoted to only a specific class of software or problem. Some programmers say Google Code Search answers some of the nightmares of building software, by creating a central place to trawl for publicly available code. "(Google Code Search) may come in handy when looking for different ways of approaching a particular programming problem," said Niall Kennedy, a San Francisco technical blog commentator. Others were less impressed: "Functional and simple, but therein lies the problem," said the writer of a site called "Digital Alchemy," who sees few advantages over existing sites. Google searches through code repositories that are popular among programmers -- CollabNet's Subversion and another alternative called CVS, Stocky said. The service began as a way for Google programmers to search through internal company code. It added a search of publicly available code and recently Google decided it might as well open up the service to others. Google Code Search is in test mode on Google's Labs site. Initially, Google Code Search is free of advertising. Should the site prove popular, Stocky said Google may consider running pay-per-click advertising along search results, the way it makes money from its more mainstream search services, he said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 21:53:12 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Skype-Only Phones Bring a New Mobility To Free Online Calls By Sarmad Ali All over the world, people are increasingly using the Web to make phone calls, if not free, then for a few pennies a minute. One of the most common ways of doing so is with Skype, the free software whose parent company was bought last year by eBay. In fact, Skype has become so popular that electronics makers have begun selling cordless or lightweight phones specifically designed for making Skype calls without having to be chained to a computer. But only for Skype calls; these models don't work on regular phone networks. I tested three of these new Skype-compatible phones: Belkin's Wi-Fi Phone from Belkin, Free-1 Skype USB phone from Ipevo, and SkyTone RST501 cordless USB Internet phone from Radian Technologies. Overall, the three phones worked well, though often the sound quality on domestic calls to cellphones could have been better. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060921.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 21:56:49 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Pearl BlackBerry Offers Video, Camera, Music, As Well as Great Email By Walter S. Mossberg When you think of a BlackBerry phone, what usually comes to mind is a squat, bland, all-business device that is great at email and fair at phone calls, but does little else well. BlackBerry models have been mostly aimed at big businesses, and they have lacked cameras, multimedia capabilities and style. Even their model names have been boring designations like "8700c." But that image will change radically next week when the BlackBerry's maker, Research in Motion, introduces a sleek but powerful model called simply the Pearl. It's not only the smallest BlackBerry ever made. It's also the smallest smart phone from any maker with a keyboard for typing emails and other text. All shiny black and silver, the slender Pearl looks more like a fashion phone than a keyboard-equipped smart phone. It is shorter, narrower and lighter than the much-admired Motorola Q, though a bit thicker. And, like the Q, the Pearl, which is being launched next Tuesday by T-Mobile, costs $199 with a two-year contract. The Pearl is squarely aimed at consumers who need powerful email capabilities, but also want style and bells and whistles. When it comes to email, the Pearl is a true BlackBerry. The email interface is essentially the same as on larger BlackBerrys. It can be used with a traditional corporate BlackBerry email system, and, for consumers, it works with the BlackBerry Internet Service offered by T-Mobile. Still, for hard-core BlackBerry addicts, the Pearl is a shocking departure. The iconic side scroll wheel has been replaced by a tiny, light-up trackball beneath the large, bright color screen. It's the first BlackBerry with a camera, the first with a memory card slot (though no card is included) and the first to play songs and videos. And then there's the keyboard, where the slim new design has required a major compromise. As on the older and bulkier BlackBerry 7100 series, the full keyboard has been replaced by a smaller version that squeezes two letters onto most keys. To avoid repetition and error, the Pearl uses smart software called SureType that has the uncanny ability to guess the word you meant to type in almost all cases. But it doesn't work if you're entering a new Web address or a person's name that the phone hasn't memorized. To find out if RIM can actually be cool, I've been toting around a Pearl, testing all its functions. In general, I like it, and can recommend it to anyone who wants real BlackBerry email capabilities in a great-looking multimedia phone. Voice quality was excellent and the interface for making phone calls, once a big problem on BlackBerrys, is now decent. There's even a Treo-like universal silencer button, and the speaker phone function turns on and off with a single key press. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060907.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 21:59:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Q Review By WALTER S. MOSSBERG RECENTLY, THE PALM TREO has been the product of choice in high-end smart phones. The Treo can not only make phone calls, but also send and receive email, surf the web, play music, take pictures and handle Microsoft Office documents, with the aid of a small built-in keyboard. The latest Treo 700 models are more capable than most of Research in Motion's BlackBerrys, which many companies dole out to employees. But the Treos are fairly bulky and pretty expensive, often costing $400 apiece, depending on the carrier and the service plan. Now the Treo has a new high-end competitor from Motorola and Microsoft that's much thinner and cheaper, yet promises to match it feature for feature. It's called the Motorola Q, and it's popping up in the hands of more and more power users, intrigued by its stylish looks. I tested the Q, comparing it mainly with the newest Treo, the 700p. I loved the Q's hardware design and its price. At $199 (with a two-year service plan), it's half the cost. And while a little wider, the Q is just half as thick as the Treo 700p and more than one-third lighter. It's a heck of an engineering achievement by Motorola. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/report-200609.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 22:16:30 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Novatel Laptop Cards Can Access Internet, But Services Vary By Walter S. Mossberg For traveling laptop users who rely on the Internet, one of the best developments in recent years has been the emergence of high-speed wireless data networks offered by cellphone companies. Unlike commercial public Wi-Fi services, which require users to be near a "hot spot," these services can be used anywhere in a metro area, even in a moving car or train. And the cellular broadband services, such as Verizon Wireless's BroadbandAccess, can operate at speeds roughly equivalent to, and sometimes well beyond, the speed of basic wired home DSL service. That means you can surf the Web, and get email and large attachments pretty efficiently. A small percentage of users hook up to these cellular broadband networks using laptops that have the necessary gear built in. Another small group uses a cellphone as a modem. But most users of these networks use external cellular-modem cards that plug into a standard slot on the side of their laptops. Therein lies a problem. The computer industry is in the process of dumping that standard slot, called a PC Card slot, for a new, incompatible slot called ExpressCard. So, buyers of many new laptops are finding their cellphone modems are obsolete. Now, Novatel, a leading maker of these cards, has come out with aq couple of new ExpressCard versions for cellular broadband networks. One, which works on Verizon Wireless's network, is already on the market, sold by Verizon and by Dell. The second, which works on Cingular's BroadbandConnect high-speed network, will go on sale from Dell and possibly Cingular later this year, likely late November. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060831.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 05, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 11:16:13 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 05, 2006 ******************************** Pirelli Buys 9.54% Stake in Olimpia; Edges Closer to Full Control of Telecom Italia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20293?11228 Pirelli yesterday paid 1.17 billion euro (US$1.49 billion) for two 4.77% stakes in Olimpia, the holding company that controls Telecom Italia. Pirelli bought out Banca Intesa and UniCredit to take its stake in Olimpia to 80%, leaving Edizione Holding, controlled by the Benetton family, with 20%. Olimpia is the largest single ... Motorola Hits Moscow's Red Square http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20290?11228 Leading global mobile equipment supplier, Motorola, has announced the opening of a new Global Flagship Store, Red Square MOTO, in Moscow's Red Square area. A Motorola statement describes the new outlet as a 'consumer-centric' departure from the additional shopping experience, which will allow customers to ... Perspectives: An interview with Qualcomm's Paul E. Jacobs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20287?11228 San Diego, California-based QUALCOMM has been the leading developer of CDMA-based wireless technologies and remains at the forefront of many of the latest wireless technological developments behind the launch of 3G networks around the globe. Having overseen QUALCOMM since July 2005 as its chief executive officer, Dr. Paul E ... Covad, Cisco Team to Sell VoIP Bundle Through Channel http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20286?11228 COVAD COMMUNICATIONS GROUP INC. announced at the Fall 2006 Channel Partners Conference & Expo that it has extended is co-marketing agreement with Cisco Systems Inc. to include sales and support of a voice and data bundle for the SMB market through the companies 'indirect' sales channels. The new offer pairs Cisco's ... Helio Takes a Hybrid Approach http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20283?11228 Helio unveiled Helio Hybrid, a new service that marries 3G and Wi-Fi technology to enable its subscribers to access what they want without having to fuss with several logins, the MVNO says. Helio Hybrid enables subscribers to switch between a nationwide 3G network, private and free Wi-Fi signals and a global network of Wi-Fi hot ... AT&T Targets SMB Consulting Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20278?11228 AT&T is marketing a package of network, communications and information technology (IT) consulting services to the small and medium sized business (SMB) segment, extrapolating a number of the offerings from a similar portfolio previously reserved mostly for its government and global, multinational corporate (MNC) accounts. ... Globalcomm & TelecomNext Rejoin Forces http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20272?11228 Like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton giving it another go, telecom's two biggest trade organizations have decided to combine tradeshows once again, after a year of kvetching from the industry. What once was known as Supercomm, and then later as two separate shows -- Globalcomm and TelecomNext -- is being reincarnated in 2007 ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 13:17:58 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Charges Filed Against HP Executives USTelecom dailyLead October 5, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eBbQfDtusXdFshEbqk TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Charges filed against HP executives BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * USTelecom, TIA to co-host NXTcomm * Verizon's FiOS gets 37 international channels * Analysis: Alvarion in for tough fight in mobile WiMAX * Qwest announces stock buyback * Google hosts top media executives at think tank USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * USTELECOM and TIA Announce Single, New Venue: NXTcomm TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * VoIP's move to mass market brings out new technologies * Trend: More Americans working outside office * Showtime, Fox following streaming trend REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * NTT's fixed-mobile plans spark regulatory concerns DIVERSIONS * The Global Gourmand * Hope, at $4,200 a Dose * Germany Bonds With Australia * Meet the Neighbors * Where the Moon Stood Still, and the Ancients Watched Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eBbQfDtusXdFshEbqk ------------------------------ Date: 5 Oct 2006 00:06:20 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet > The Internet is providing a new avenue for underage drinking. Results > of a new survey confirm that millions of teenagers either buy alcohol > online or know an underage friend who does. This is completely unbelievable. I know a certain number of people in the wine business, and without exception they ship UPS and require an adult signature upon delivery. In case you hadn't looked, the cost of shipping is high enough that it's only worth online orders for high priced stuff, ten bucks a bottle and up. the typical online order is a hundred bucks or more, hardly attractive to kids. > "This is a dangerous situation," said Stan Hastings chairman of the > Wine and Spirits Wholesales of America, Inc. (WSWA), the trade group > that commissioned the survey. And that's your answer. The wholesalers currently have a stranglehold on alcoholic beverage sales in the US, with a three-tier system from maker to wholesaler to store. The wholesalers realize that the value they provide is vastly less than the high markup they command, and they are desperately trying to kill online sales and anything else that will allow consumers to avoid going through them. Hence this totally bogus survey. R's, John ------------------------------ From: davidesan@gmail.com Subject: Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone? Date: 5 Oct 2006 07:51:50 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > Mr Joseph Singer wrote: >> I've made it my policy that if I'm waiting in line to be served and >> the sales clerk thinks it's *more* important to take a telephone >> interruption than to serve me I'll put down my purchase and walk out >> of that store. Telephone customers do not have any more clout than >> customers who are in front of you. I'm a little more lenient. I figure the caller has no idea that there's a queue for the clerk's attention. I let the clerk answer the phone, and if they're good, they'll put the person on hold, and then apologize for the delay. No real loss of time or attention for me. If they begin to talk to the person, then I can get upset. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #354 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 6 20:30:57 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5ED562208; Fri, 6 Oct 2006 20:30:57 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #355 Message-Id: <20061007003057.5ED562208@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 20:30:57 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 6 Oct 2006 20:35:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 355 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Some Youths Rethinking Online Communications (Martha Irvine) Telecom Update #549, October 6, 2006 (John Riddell) VOIP Software Application Able to Play a Soundfile (Christian Drewing) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 06, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Fiber-Connected Homes Pass 1M (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet (mc) Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet (Sam Spade) Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone? (mc) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2006 13:07:00 -0500 From: Martha Irvine Subject: Some Youths Rethinking Online Communications By MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer For some, it would be unthinkable -- certain social suicide. But Gabe Henderson is finding freedom in a recent decision: He canceled his MySpace account. No longer enthralled with the world of social networking, the 26-year-old graduate student pulled the plug after realizing that a lot of the online friends he accumulated were really just acquaintances. He's also phasing out his profile on Facebook, a popular social networking site that, like others, allows users to create profiles, swap message and share photos -- all with the goal of expanding their circle of online friends. "The superficial emptiness clouded the excitement I had once felt," Henderson wrote in a column in the student newspaper at Iowa State University, where he studies history. "It seems we have lost, to some degree, that special depth that true friendship entails." Across campus, journalism professor Michael Bugeja -- long an advocate of face-to-face communication -- read Henderson's column and saw it as a "ray of hope." It's one of a few signs, he says, that some members of the tech generation are starting to see the value of quality face time. As the novelty of their wired lives wears off, they're also are getting more sophisticated about the way they use such tools as social networking and text and instant messaging -- not just constantly using them because they're there. "I think we're at the very beginning of them reaching a saturation point," says Bugeja, director of Iowa State's journalism school and author of "Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age." Though he's not anti-technology, Bugeja often lectures students about "interpersonal intelligence" -- knowing when, where and for what purpose technology is most appropriate. He points out the students he's seen walking across campus, holding hands with significant others while talking on cell phones to someone else. He's also observed them in coffee shops, surrounded by people, but staring instead at a computer screen. "True friends," he tells them, "need to learn when to stop blogging and go across campus to help a friend." In the meantime, he says, many professors have begun setting their own limits, banning students from surfing the Internet during lectures. Of course, these forms of communication continue to dominate. In the October issue of the journal Pediatrics, for instance, researchers at Stanford University released findings from an ongoing study of students at an upper-middle income high school in the San Francisco area. One written survey found that the large majority of students were members of at least one social networking site -- 81 percent of them on MySpace. They also found that 89 percent of those students had cell phones, most of them with text and Web surfing capabilities. They are more wired than ever -- but they're also getting warier. Increasingly, they've had to deal with online bullies, who are posting anything from unflattering photos to online threats. Privacy issues also are hitting home, most recently when students discovered that personal updates on their Facebook pages were being automatically forwarded to contacts they didn't necessarily want to have the information. Facebook was forced to let users turn off the data stream after they rebelled. Increasingly, young people also are realizing that things they post on their profiles can come back to haunt them when applying for school or jobs. "Maybe everything we thought was so great wasn't as great as we thought," says Tina Wells, the 20-something CEO of Buzz Marketing, a New York-based firm with young advisers all over the world. She is among those who wonder if, sometimes, simple face-to-face communication might work better. In many instances, says 27-year-old Veronica Gross, it does. "By and large, I would say most of my very geeky social circle prefers face-to-face interaction to mere Internet communication," says Gross, an avid online gamer who is also a doctoral student studying neuroscience at Boston University. She sees faceless communication as a supplement to everyday interactions, not a replacement. This sentiment also was the conclusion of a study done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The study, released earlier this year, found that Internet users tend to have a larger network of close and significant contacts -- a median of 37 compared with 30 for nonusers. Indeed, Steve Miller, a sophomore at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., says social networking can be an "extremely effective" way to publicize events to large groups -- and even to help build a sense of community on campus. He joined Facebook as a way to meet people before he started school, but also quickly learned that it had limitations, too. "I discovered, after meeting many of these (online) friends, that a good Facebook profile could make even the most boring person somewhat interesting," says Miller, who's 19 and now a sophomore. He's also not always thrilled with text messaging via cell phones, which can be a quick way to say "have a good day" or to coordinate a plan to meet up at a noisy concert. "Text messaging has become the easy way out," Miller says. He's had friends cancel a night out with a text message to avoid having to explain. He's also seen some people ask for dates via text to escape the humiliation of hearing a "no" on the phone or in person. "Our generation needs to get over this fear of confrontation and rejection," he says. The focus, he and others say, needs to be on quality communication, in all formats. Back in Iowa, Henderson is enjoying spending more face-to-face time with his friends and less with his computer. He says his decision to quit MySpace and Facebook was a good one. "I'm not sacrificing friends," he says, "because if a picture, some basic information about their life and a Web page is all my friendship has become, then there was nothing to sacrifice to begin with." On the Net: Social networking sites: http://www.myspace.com, http://www.facebook.com, http://www.impnow.com, http://www.linkedin.com Martha Irvine is a national writer specializing in coverage of people in their 20s and younger. She can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #549, October 6, 2006 Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 14:11:58 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 549: October 6, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca/home/Home_Business.page ** BIG PIPE: www.bigpipeinc.com ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.ca/communications/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** MTS to Cut 325 More Jobs ** Canadian Rates Up, U.S. Rates Down ** Bernier Wants Cabinet to Deregulate VoIP ** Shaw Renames Four Subsidiaries ** AMEC Employees Embrace Cellphone Ban ** Dryden Weighs Sale of Civic Telco ** SaskTel Intros Voice Texting ** Telus Launches Location Services ** Rogers Wants Reversal of "Comma Ruling" ** Telus Seeks Change in Local Forbearance Rules ** Court Agrees to Hear Winback Appeal ** Price Cap Hearing Begins Next Week ** Cisco to Spend $100 Million on Awareness ** Rogers Launches BlackBerry Pearl ** Ontera Gets New GM ** Alcatel Expands Switch Portfolio ** Consultants Plan Forum on Wireless MTS TO CUT 325 MORE JOBS: MTS Allstream plans to eliminate 325 jobs from its Manitoba operations this year through a voluntary buyout plan. The cuts, additional to 750 announced last November, are part of a $100 million a year cost reduction program. (See Telecom Update #508) CANADIAN RATES UP, U.S. RATES DOWN: A study by SeaBoard Group finds that Canadians still pay less for residential wireline phone service than Americans, but the gap has narrowed over the past three years -- mainly because Canadian prices have risen substantially, while U.S. prices have fallen slightly. ** Residential telephone service is least expensive in Saskatchewan, the province where telecom competition is weakest. ** Seaboard says that Canadian VoIP services providers charge more than U.S. and European VoIP providers for equivalent services. www.seaboardgroup.com/main/index.php?option=3Dcontent&task=3Dview&id=3D52 2&Itemid=3D157 BERNIER WANTS CABINET TO DEREGULATE VoIP: The Globe & Mail reports that Industry Minister Maxime Bernier has asked the provinces for their input on changing the CRTC's VoIP rules. The Minister was not pleased with CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-53, in which the Commission last month reaffirmed the VoIP rules it set last year and, for the second time, declined to deregulate the incumbent telcos' VoIP services (see Telecom Update #544). ** The Telecom Act allows Cabinet 90 days to "vary or rescind" such a decision, and requires provincial consultation as part of the process. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-53.htm SHAW RENAMES FOUR SUBSIDIARIES: Shaw Communications is renaming four subsidiary companies to include the Shaw name. Big Pipe becomes Shaw Business Solutions; Star Choice Communications becomes Star Choice, a Shaw Company; Cancom Tracking becomes Shaw Tracking; and Cancom Broadcast becomes Shaw Broadcast Services. ** The rebranding will be completed by December 31. AMEC EMPLOYEES EMBRACE CELLPHONE BAN: One year ago AMEC, a B.C.-based project management company, banned the use of cellphones by employees while driving. The company now reports that 95% of its 4,000 employees across North America say the ban has had no effect on their productivity, and 83% say they have also stopped using cellphones while driving outside working hours. DRYDEN WEIGHS SALE OF CIVIC TELCO: The City of Dryden in northwest Ontario has begun a review of strategic options for its municipal phone company, including a possible sale of the business. Dryden Municipal Telephone Services has 5,930 wireline customers. SASKTEL INTROS VOICE TEXTING: SaskTel's new Say & Send service allows postpaid cellular users to send voice messages to other SaskTel Mobility customers. Messages cost 15 cents each; heavy users can send 100 for $10/month or unlimited messages for $15/month. There is no charge to receive a Say & Send message. ** The service uses sayTEXT Audio SMS, developed by New Jersey-based uReach Technologies. TELUS LAUNCHES LOCATION SERVICES: Telus is offering two new cellphone-based GPS services: Navigator provides audio and visual turn-by-turn directions similar to in-car navigation systems, and Kid Find helps locate a cellphone user on an interactive map. The services use Telus's 1X network in Alberta, B.C., and Ontario's Golden Horseshoe. ROGERS WANTS REVERSAL OF "COMMA RULING": Rogers Communications has asked the CRTC to reverse its previous ruling in which, based on the placement of a comma, it allowed Aliant to end a pole-usage agreement with Rogers early. Rogers argues that Telecom Decision 2006-45 was incorrect on several grounds, and that the agreement should continue until May 2007. (See Telecom Update #542) ttp://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2006/8662/r28_200612326.htm TELUS SEEKS CHANGE IN LOCAL FORBEARANCE RULES: Telus has asked the CRTC to change its criteria for deregulating local service. Telus wants the CRTC to either eliminate the requirement that the telco has met Competitor Quality of Service indicators for six months, or to apply it more narrowly. (See Telecom Update #524) COURT AGREES TO HEAR WINBACK APPEAL: The Federal Court has agreed to hear an appeal by Aliant, Bell Canada, SaskTel, and Telus of the CRTC's winback restrictions. The telcos argue that these restrictions violate commercial freedom of speech guarantees under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The CRTC previously denied a similar application. (See Telecom Update #524) PRICE CAP HEARING BEGINS NEXT WEEK: The CRTC's oral hearing on Price Caps begins on Tuesday in Gatineau, Quebec. The hearing, which will include cross-examination of witnesses, is expected to last two weeks. The Commission's website sets out the agenda, and will provide a live audio feed and transcripts of the hearing. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/process/2006/oct10.htm CISCO TO SPEND $100 MILLION ON AWARENESS: Cisco Systems has launched a US$100 million advertising campaign to boost consumer awareness of the company and its products. The company believes that the campaign will boost sales to businesses, because corporate end-users have an increasing influence on technology buying decisions. ** Magazine, newspaper, and TV ads will feature the company's new logo, which has been simplified to be more readable on a wide variety of displays. ROGERS LAUNCHES BLACKBERRY PEARL: Rogers Wireless is now selling the BlackBerry Pearl for $249.99 on a three-year voice/data contract. (See Telecom Update #545) ONTERA GETS NEW GM: Ontario Northland has named a new general manager for Ontera, its operating phone company. Paul Goulet, formerly the telco's CIO, replaces Marc Rancourt, who has left the company. ALCATEL EXPANDS SWITCH PORTFOLIO: Alcatel has added OmniSwitch 9600, a "full-featured" model that is priced lower and has a smaller chassis, to its OmniSwitch 9000 portfolio of 10 Gbps Ethernet switches. CONSULTANTS PLAN FORUM ON WIRELESS: The Canadian Telecommunications Consultants Association will hold a forum on current and future developments in wireless communications on October 26 in Toronto. For information, go to http://www.ctca.ca/EventDetails.asp?R=3D5&EV=3D68. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There=20 are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html . COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2006 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: Christian Drewing Subject: VOIP Software Application That is Able to Play a Soundfile? Date: 6 Oct 2006 05:19:07 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I need a VOIP internet telephone software that can play a specified soundfile to the number I dial. It would be great for transferring greetings messages to my cell phone's answering machine. Kind regards, Christian. ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 06, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 11:13:21 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 06, 2006 ******************************** Vodafone Dials IBM, EDS in Billion-Dollar Outsourcing Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20319?11228 Global mobile giant Vodafone has selected two U.S. companies -- IBM and EDS -- out of 11 companies that expressed interest in February for a global IT outsourcing deal to manage its application development and maintenance services. Although the deal is yet to be concluded, Vodafone confirmed it spent 560 million pounds ... SkyLink Announces Mobile TV Plans in Russia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20318?11228 Russia's leading CDMA operator SkyLink has plans to launch a mobile TV service early in 2007, reports Prime-Tass, citing a company spokesman. The operator launched a test mode of such services in August this year. Presumably satisfied that this will be a profitable enterprise, SkyLink now intends to introduce TV broadcasting in ... Vodafone Expects to Launch Broadband Internet Access Services in Spain http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20316?11228 Spain's number-three mobile operator Vodafone Espana is planning to offer broadband internet access services for Spanish residential customers. Its move into the Spanish broadband market is likely to occur via a wholesale ADSL deal with incumbent Telefonica, rather than through an acquisition. Significance: ... The Year of the Hosted PBX ... Eventually http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20313?11228 As a parent of three, including a freshly ordained teenager whose first act of her 13th year was to commandeer the car radio, I repeat myself quite a bit -- too often over the tortured-cat crooning of Kelly Clarkson. The only good thing about saying the same things over and over again, of course, is that eventually you're ... Crown Castle to Buy Rival Cell Phone Tower Company Global Signal for $4B in Cash and Stock http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20307?11228 Cell phone tower company Crown Castle International Corp. agreed to buy smaller rival Global Signal Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, the companies said Friday, creating a behemoth with more than 24,000 wireless sites. Including the assumption of $1.8 billion in debt, the deal is valued at $5.8 billion. Global Signal... FCC Calls on CTIA http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20306?11228 At the request of the FCC, CTIA will act as a cost-sharing clearinghouse for relocating wireless licensees as a result of the 2006 Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) auction. The clearinghouse will be set up to administer fair and equitable cost-sharing functions for the relocation of Broadband Radio Service, Fixed Microwave... Orange Targets Multinationals With Mobile Mail http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20303?11228 Orange Business Services -- the new umbrella operation for what had been a multiplicity of operating units owned by France Telecom -- today launched a managed mobile-push-mail solution aimed at multinational companies. The service, built using Nokia's Intellisync Mobile Suite, enables automatic synchronization between mobile ... Selling Telco TV: You Got $99? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20300?11228 Telco TV's moment of truth is just around the corner in the U.S., and some of the biggest players in the movement still have consumers. Some believe the market will be won with fancy features and capabilities. But at least for now -- many realists point out -- ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 13:37:39 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Fiber-connected Homes Pass 1M USTelecom dailyLead October 6, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eBnsfDtusXdKmLVUuL TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: Fiber-connected homes pass 1M BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * T-Mobile USA details next-gen network plans * Comcast to pay majority of group's cost for wireless airwaves * Analysis: Broadband growth will shift focus to killer apps * FTTH deployments surge in Japan * Cisco kicks off $100M branding campaign * BellSouth launches wireless broadband service in two new markets USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * NEW from Steven Shepard -- WiMAX Crash Course TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * WiMAX potential on display in rural Canadian town * Telstra launches nationwide HSDPA network * Google plans to integrate video into search results VOIP DOWNLOAD * Chilean VoIP provider launches combo service REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * No action on Pennsylvania franchise legislation * FCC to vote on AT&T-BellSouth merger Oct. 12 DIVERSIONS * 36 Hours in Las Vegas * Scorsese's Hall of Mirrors, Littered With Bloody Deceit * For the Biggest Yachts, More Than a Dock * In a Flash From the Past, a Digital Camera With Knobs * Checking In on Britain's Children of 1964 Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eBnsfDtusXdKmLVUuL ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 17:38:29 -0400 Or to put it more bluntly: If it's such a common practice, why have we never heard of it from anybody except this "survey"? ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2006 01:12:26 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com John Levine wrote: >> The Internet is providing a new avenue for underage drinking. Results >> of a new survey confirm that millions of teenagers either buy alcohol >> online or know an underage friend who does. >> This is completely unbelievable. I know a certain number of people in >> the wine business, and without exception they ship UPS and require an >> adult signature upon delivery. In case you hadn't looked, the cost of >> shipping is high enough that it's only worth online orders for high >> priced stuff, ten bucks a bottle and up. the typical online order is >> a hundred bucks or more, hardly attractive to kids. Just out of curiousity why do the all slip UPS? FedEx is the preferred shipper of many folks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is some confusion on this thread. The _original_ message was 'it is easy for teenagers to buy alcohol on internet'. John Levine responded 'Re: it is not easy for teenagers to buy alcohol on the net'. With his reply, I emphasized the word '_not-'. That is why we have a sort of double-negative effect here, and I hope that clears up the confusion. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone? Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 17:37:34 -0400 wrote in message news:telecom25.354.10@telecom-digest.org: >> Mr Joseph Singer wrote: >>> I've made it my policy that if I'm waiting in line to be served and >>> the sales clerk thinks it's *more* important to take a telephone >>> interruption than to serve me I'll put down my purchase and walk out >>> of that store. Telephone customers do not have any more clout than >>> customers who are in front of you. > I'm a little more lenient. I figure the caller has no idea that > there's a queue for the clerk's attention. I let the clerk answer the > phone, and if they're good, they'll put the person on hold, and then > apologize for the delay. No real loss of time or attention for me. If > they begin to talk to the person, then I can get upset. In fact, the same goes for face-to-face service. I once walked into a picture frame shop and the owner (who was the only person working there) would not even acknowledge my presence -- he just continued an ongoing conversation with other people. After 10 minutes of this, I walked out and wrote him an angry letter. How much would it have cost him to say, "Hello, I'll be with you in a minute"? It cost him $200 in business not to do so. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #355 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Oct 8 02:05:04 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8FFD32207; Sun, 8 Oct 2006 02:05:03 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #356 Message-Id: <20061008060503.8FFD32207@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 02:05:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 8 Oct 2006 02:05:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 356 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson $100 Laptop May be at Security Forefront (Brian Bergstein, AP) Marines Now Missing a Laptop Also (Associated Press News Wire) Re: Pirate Radio Stations Challenge Feds (Neal McLain) Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone? (DevilsPGD) T-Mobile to Launch Mixed-Signal Phone (Monty Solomon) Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet (Wesrock@aol) Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet (John Levine) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 21:43:36 -0500 From: Brian Bergstein, AP Subject: $100 Laptop May be at Security Forefront By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer The $100 laptops planned for children around the world might turn out to be as revolutionary for their security measures as for their low-cost economics. The One Laptop Per Child project, a nonprofit begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aims to improve education by giving children bright-colored, hand-cranked, wireless-enabled portable computers. Governments are to buy the laptops -- beginning in 2007 with up to 7 million machines in Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina -- and hand them to kids for them to own. The machines have garnered the most attention -- and some skepticism -- for the design elements helping to keep their price low. Among other things, the computers will employ the free Linux operating system, flash memory instead of a hard drive and a microprocessor that is slow by today's standards but requires minimal power. But programmers also have been taking advantage of the start-from- scratch nature of the project to design security protocols that they hope will greatly surpass those found in mass-market computers today. The designers are still testing their approach with outside security experts -- which is widely considered wiser than keeping such matters secret. But already they believe the security setup could make it unnecessary for the laptops to have anti-virus software. Standard computer design generally lets most any program access any file stored anywhere on the machine. That is one reason why flaws in programs can be exploited by outsiders to steal or erase private information. By contrast, the $100 laptops will force any application to run in "a walled garden" and limit the files it can access, said Ivan Krstic, a software architect at One Laptop Per Child focused on security. Even if the security were to fail, Krstic believes a specialized encryption technology will prevent the BIOS — the software that runs a computer when it is initially turned on — from being overwritten. That means the PC could not be rendered unable to boot up. "It's essentially unbelievably difficult to do anything to the machine that would cause permanent hardware failure," Krstic said. Extensive security measures are necessary because so many of the machines are expected to be built, making them a large target for mischief. One particularly thorny potential problem is that the laptops can communicate with one another in a "mesh" network, sharing data and programming code. A computing Web site reported this week that Krstic had described that setup to the ToorCon security conference as "very scary." But he contended to The Associated Press that the comment was taken out of context. "We have code-sharing in the machines, which is really scary if we were not paying attention to it," he said. "But we think we have solutions to all of these problems." One of the principal organizers of ToorCon, George Spillman, said Krstic's presentation was "very well received" because the $100-laptop designers have thought a great deal about security but "they're not arrogant enough to believe they have everything locked down." Spillman believes at least some of the measures Krstic described are likely to be successful, though he cautioned: "There's always going to be some kind of a hole somewhere." Walter Bender, a co-founder of MIT's Media Lab who is overseeing software and content on the $100 laptops, said children should be able to tinker with the laptops and learn how they work. To that end, these security measures can be turned off by the PCs' owners. To protect against that leading to disaster, the laptops will automatically back up their data up on a server whenever the machines get in wireless range of the children's school. If a child loses data, the files can be restored by bringing the laptop within wireless range of the server. On the Net: http://laptop.org Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 21:45:53 -0500 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Marines Now Missing a Laptop Also A laptop computer loaded with personal information on 2,400 residents of the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base has been lost, authorities said Friday. The computer was reported missing Tuesday by Lincoln B.P. Management qInc., which helps manage base housing. The company and Camp Pendleton are investigating. As of Friday, investigators had not found evidence that the data had been accessed, the base said in a statement. Authorities would not disclose what kind of information was on the computer. Lincoln B.P. officials were notifying residents. "We take this matter very seriously and are working closely with Lincoln Properties to find out what happened and to safeguard the personal information of our Marines, sailors and their families," said Col. James B. Seaton III, the base's commanding officer. Camp Pendleton is the Marine Corps' largest West Coast expeditionary training facility, located north of San Diego. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. ------------------------------ From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Pirate Radio Stations Challenge Feds Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 08:13:03 -0400 mc www.ai.uga.edu.for.address wrote: > Martha Mendoza wrote in message > news:telecom25.342.2@telecom-digest.org: >> By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writer >> To Stephen Dunifer, it was yet another revolutionary >> moment. But to the untrained eye, it looked more like >> a geek fest. Over four days, a dozen men and women >> shyly bumped shoulders as they studied schematics and >> tinkered with romex connectors, resistors, microphone >> cords, meters, sockets and capacitors -- the stuff of >> illegal radio stations. [snip] >> Some opt to broadcast on the Internet as well, opening >> up their audience to the entire globe. > That, of course, requires no license at all and should > be encouraged. I agree that it doesn't require a *broadcast* license from the FCC. > It still requires the permission of music copyright holders. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it doesn't require "permission of music copyright holders." But it does require a "compulsory license" from U.S. Copyright Office. It also requires payment of a copyright royalty fee of 0.07 cents ($0.0007) per "performance" per internet listener. http://www.copyright.gov/carp/webcasting_rates_final.html That may not sound like much, but if 100 listeners listen to 10 songs over the course of one hour, the originator owes the Copyright Office $0.70. Extrapolate that over a year, and the originator owes over $6,000. Licensed non-commercial broadcast stations get a break for internet streaming if (and only if) the stream is concurrent with the broadcast. This exception allows WCPE (a non-commercial station owned by a non-profit corporation) to continue streaming. But WFMT (which holds a commercial license even though it's owned by a non-profit corporation) is subject to the full royalty fee. Which is why WFMT now charges internet listeners. http://www.wfmtstreaming.com/ Neal McLain [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although WFMT chooses to charge internet listeners, most other classical stations do not access that charge. For example, KOSU/KOSN our classical music station here in southeast Kansas continues to stream totally free of any charge, and while they were operating, WNIB in Chicago likewise made no charge for their music. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone? Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:38:55 -0500 Organization: Disorganized In message mc wrote: > wrote in message > news:telecom25.354.10@telecom-digest.org: >>> Mr Joseph Singer wrote: >>>> I've made it my policy that if I'm waiting in line to be served and >>>> the sales clerk thinks it's *more* important to take a telephone >>>> interruption than to serve me I'll put down my purchase and walk out >>>> of that store. Telephone customers do not have any more clout than >>>> customers who are in front of you. >> I'm a little more lenient. I figure the caller has no idea that >> there's a queue for the clerk's attention. I let the clerk answer the >> phone, and if they're good, they'll put the person on hold, and then >> apologize for the delay. No real loss of time or attention for me. If >> they begin to talk to the person, then I can get upset. > In fact, the same goes for face-to-face service. I once walked into a > picture frame shop and the owner (who was the only person working > there) would not even acknowledge my presence -- he just continued an > ongoing conversation with other people. Other customers, or just shooting the shit? > After 10 minutes of this, I > walked out and wrote him an angry letter. How much would it have cost > him to say, "Hello, I'll be with you in a minute"? It cost him $200 > in business not to do so. While true, would it have made that much of a difference? -- I read usenet for the articles ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 00:30:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: T-Mobile to Launch Mixed-Signal Phone NEW YORK, Oct 07, 2006 (XFN-ASIA via COMTEX News Network) -- T-Mobile USA is set to launch by year's end a new breed of mobile phones that can pass live phone calls between cellular and Wi-Fi networks, a top executive told The Associated Press on Friday. Robert Dotson, chief executive of the U.S. subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG, declined to disclose the specific market where T-Mobile planned to introduce the technology, known as UMA or Unlicensed Mobile Access. But he did say it would likely be "a city near and dear to our hearts," a likely reference to the company's home city of Seattle. UMA is designed to hand off calls without interruption from a cell network to a Wi-Fi router, or vice versa. So if a user arrives home while talking on a cell phone and the handset detects a Wi-Fi broadband connection in the house, the call is automatically switched to the wireless Internet signal. The only difference is that the call is then transmitted using VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, the technology used by Internet phone companies such as Vonage Holdings Corp. - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=61560496 ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 21:33:54 EDT Subject: Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet In a message dated Fri, 06 Oct 2006 01:12:26 GMT, Sam Spade writes: >> This is completely unbelievable. I know a certain number of people in >> the wine business, and without exception they ship UPS and require an >> adult signature upon delivery. In case you hadn't looked, the cost of >> shipping is high enough that it's only worth online orders for high >> priced stuff, ten bucks a bottle and up. the typical online order is >> a hundred bucks or more, hardly attractive to kids. > Just out of curiousity why do the all slip UPS? FedEx is the > preferred shipper of many folks. Perhaps because both UPS and FedEx ground make a charge for pickups from a business and the sender does not wish to pay for two pickups. Both UPS and FedEx make contracts with businesses for reduced rates based on the volume of shipments, and to split the business would provide a lower volume, and resulting higher rates, from each carrier. FedEx ground has something like 20 per cent of the package ground delivery business, I read somewhere, with UPS dominating the remainder. If you'e talking about air service, the weight would make shipping charges exceedingly high. The Postal Service, of course, is prohibited by law from carrying alcoholic beverages. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: 7 Oct 2006 15:25:45 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: It is _Not_ Easy for Teens to Buy Alcohol on the Internet >>> This is completely unbelievable. I know a certain number of people in >>> the wine business, and without exception they ship UPS and require an >>> adult signature upon delivery. > Just out of curiousity why do the all slip UPS? FedEx is the > preferred shipper of many folks. They may do so now. I think that UPS was better set up for adult signature, and for heavy parcels like wine, they at least used to be cheaper. R's, John ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #356 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 9 18:09:10 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B0DE02207; Mon, 9 Oct 2006 18:09:09 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #357 Message-Id: <20061009220909.B0DE02207@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 18:09:09 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 9 Oct 2006 17:10:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 357 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Sprint Beefs Up Wireless Security Services (Denise Pappalardo) Cellphone Dead? AA Batteries to the Rescue! (Clayton Collins) Can You Help ID This Problem: Caller Speaks Nothing But Noise (denizturkme) Report: Google in Talks to Acquire YouTube (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 09, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:31:46 -0500 From: Denise Pappalardo Subject: Sprint Beefs Up Wireless Security Services By Denise Pappalardo Sprint Mobile Security enforces password policies using personal identification numbers and other user-specific credentials for authentication. Customers also have the option of encrypting specific files, a device or memory card. This same encryption can be used by mobile customers to securely access their corporate virtual private network, the service provider said. Sprint Corp. recently announced a new suite of security services for its wireless users that includes authentication, threat protection and policy enforcement on smart phones from any wireless service provider. Sprint announced its Sprint Mobile Security service at Interop in New York. The company is teaming with wireless security company Mobile Armor LLC to support its new suite of services. The service not only better secures smart phones and laptops for Sprint customers, but it also can be used on the same devices on any wireless carrier's network, said Barry Tishgart, a director of product marketing at Sprint. Sprint Mobile Security enforces password policies using personal identification numbers and other user-specific credentials for authentication. Customers also have the option of encrypting specific files, a device or memory card. This same encryption can be used by mobile customers to securely access their corporate virtual private network, the service provider said. The service also scans, identifies and removes viruses, worms and other malware from mobile devices using a firewall that resides on the handheld or laptop, the company said. This firewall can be used to block denial-of-service attacks. The offering lets customers set up to 150 security policies, which that employees comply with industry regulations or verify that they have the latest virus-scanning software. The system will automatically update devices with the software so users are not blocked from the network for noncompliance. Sprint has incorporated some previously supported features with its Sprint Mobile Security package such as its ability to remotely lock a wireless device if reported lost or stolen and the ability to remotely erase all data from that device in an effort to protect corporate information. The wireless service provider says it has been testing its mobile suite of security offerings with some business customers, but it would not name those users at press time. The service is available now for $9 per month, per user. Copyright 2006 Network World. Copyright 2006 NewsFactor Business. 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 For more tech news of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 13:50:54 -0500 From: Clayton Collins Subject: Cellphone Dead? AA Batteries to the Rescue! By Clayton Collins, Christian Science Monitor Cellphone-toters dread the sound: a hand-held device chirping its complaint, often far from home base, about needing to be recharged. Now on the market: a lipstick-size brass canister that holds one AA battery and offers reserve power. Run a short adaptor from the tip of a Turbo Charge to your phone, and a blue light indicates that a charge is flowing. You're back in business long enough to get to a plug -- the device's maker, Voxred International, claims "up to 40 hours" of standby time or two hours of talk, and touts patent-pending technology that protects devices' batteries from damage. It is designed to work with PDAs as well. We tested Turbo Charge -- about $20 at stores including Best Buy, Sports Authority, and Office Depot, $5 more with a bundle of adaptors and a carrying case -- on a Samsung SCH-A630 phone. Getting the right adaptor took some doing. In a service the firm says it extends to all customers, it sent us an adaptor not in the original bundle, and then walked us through the extra wiggling that first use required. When the depleted Samsung started scolding one night around 8, we attached the device. The phone quieted and began indicating a charge. We made a 20-minute call. Then we left the phone on and plugged into the charger. By 3 a.m. it was indicating low battery again; but we were using an alkaline AA rather than lithium. Verdict: a sensible spare with some novelty appeal. Copyright 2006, The Christian Science Publishing Society. 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 For more news each day from the Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times and National Public Radio, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ From: deniz.turkmen@gmail.com Subject: Can You Help ID This Problem: Caller Speaks up; Nothing But Noise Date: 9 Oct 2006 12:28:44 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, We have 8 landlines in an office in San Diego. Local & Long distance services are from AT&T. All the lines are connected to a phone system (TalkSwitch, to be more specific) I tested all the lines and extensions one by one, calling from my cell phone with no problem. AT&T also tested from their end and saw no problems what so ever. Here is the annoying problem: Once in every 9-10 calls, caller's voice is so bad we cannot understand anything. The line itself sound very clear, but caller's voice is all staticy. Sounds like a radio that is little out-of-frequency. No static/humming on the line itself, but it's the voice that is terrible. When we tell them to call us back again, and if they do, there is no problem at all (even if the receiving line and extensions were exactly the same as before) This suggests either phone system is bad/configured wrong and acting randomly, or long distance calls have problems. I don't know if this question sounds stupid but, is it possible to have such a bad connection because of some switch/circuit that is available for that particular call between point A and point B (like recalling the ISP to get the next available modem to eliminate the bad modem) My knowledge is limited about phones and I am expected to troublshoot this, but I don't know exactly where to start. I also have some settings on the phone box that can be set for the lines (600 ohms, 600 complex, 900 ohms, 900 complex -- set to 900 complex by itself -- not sure what it is). Thanks in advance. - Deniz [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your problem, that of intermittent noise, is a very difficult one to diagnose, but here is a starting point, based on a real-life experience of mine from thirty or thirty five years ago. I would make calls wherever, late at night, and every second or third call I made, this god-awful noise and rattling sound came back at me right after I dialed the seven digits but before the call had set up. Not _every_ time, but 'only' every second or third call attempt. No set pattern, and all I could do was abandon the call and dial again. Bell never could figure it out (nor did they try very hard, IMO) but I finally got to speak with a tech in the local Bell office one day. His question to me was, don't you have two lines there? I said I did, so his response to that was, the next time this happens, do me a favor; keep that line 'up', put it on hold and use your other line to call me at (a direct number to reach him in the frames). It happend again (admittedly I tried to make it happen) and when that terrible noise started, I lifted the plunger on my phone (I had one of the old two-line/life the plunger/twist the turn button style phones) and called this technician direct as he had asked. Good, he said, now stay put a minute, I am going to trace your line here in the office. When he came back with the report about five minutes later, it really surprised me. He said there was a bad line 'selector' between the office where I was located, and the office I was attempting to call. He continued saying the 'bad' equipment was the 'first choice' in a group of several trunks running from the one office to the other one. He further said that during the daytime hours, only quite rarely would someone land on the first selector (the one which was in trouble), they would get the same noisy conditions, hang up in disgust and dial again. But in the middle of the day -- the busy hours -- the troubled first selection trunk was having repeated seizures by various subscribers; no one ever managed to land on it twice in a row; no way to pin it down. When the subscriber dialed a second time, naturally their call would hunt right past the troubled selector (which had then been seized by some other subscriber) so of course their call went through normally. But, he said, you, Mr. Townson, insist on making your calls during the off hours, very late at night, time and again you are going to land on that first selected trunk line, and get the trouble over and over. I have 'busied it out' at my end, now _no one_ is going to land on that line, until it gets fixed. Sure enough, that was the end of my troubles. Keep the above in mind, please. Now you talked about modems and your 'phone box'. Is there any order or organization in which your inbound calls arrive, sort of like a 'first selected trunk', etc? Load up all your incoming lines with calls, somehow isolate the line with the noise and investigate that line completely. Try to detirmine if the trouble is at your end or if it is arriving from AT&T on one of their incoming lines. If you are able to isolate the disturbance _on your own equipment_ using this method, then do whatever you need to do. If you find that the trouble continues even when your own equipment is out of the way on that line, then the problem goes to AT&T. But be prepared to have the troubled line 'up' or in use when you notify AT&T about it, so they can zero in on the trouble. Yes, I know you shouldn't have to go to that much trouble, of isolating the specific line, etc, but you know most telco repair guys are _not_ going to do anything about it otherwise. And anyway, it may well turn out to be your 'privately owned equipment' in trouble, so you may as well eliminate all that so Bell has no excuses for fixing the trouble it it turns out to be their problem. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 13:01:41 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Report: Google In Talks to Acquire YouTube USTelecom dailyLead October 9, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eBykfDtusXdNqGcTff TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: Google in talks to acquire YouTube BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Changes in telecom market lead to consolidation * Dolan family makes new bid to take Cablevision private * Cable eyes the small-business prize * Alcatel out of WiMAX gates early; must now focus on landing contracts * Target voices pricing concerns over DVD downloading * VoIP provider Jajah to sign 1M customers in '06 USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * NEW! CALEA and Lawful Intercept Compliance Guide HOT TOPICS * AT&T changes DSL pricing structure * Report: Fiber-connected homes pass 1M * Microsoft beefs up home-networking portfolio * Nortel hones in on WiMAX * T-Mobile may plan UMTS announcement, sources say TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Tellme teams with Cingular for advanced phone directory services * Cool factor of phones becomes big part of buying decision DIVERSIONS * Footloose in Spain's Capital of Style, Barcelona * What's New at Pininfarina? The Do-It-Yourself Ferrari * $100 Laptop May Be at Security Forefront * Ground Rules: Renting Out Your House * In Georgia, a Pilgrimage to the Cradle of Wine Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eBykfDtusXdNqGcTff ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 09, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 11:39:19 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 09, 2006 ******************************** France Telecom Plans to Turn Russia Orange http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20354?11228 International telecoms group France Telecom (FT) is to launch its 'Orange' brand in Russia on 10 October 2006. FT will offer services through its Moscow-based, 100%-owned subsidiary, Equant. Billboards bearing the Orange logo have begun appearing in Moscow, and while the official cost of the rebranding campaign has not ... FM Modulators are HOT! http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20351?11228 FM modulators -- those devices that allow your iPod or your XM Radio receiver to play through your car radio -- are hot! Not only are they hot in the sense of being popular, but they're also hot in the RF sense, transmitting with illegally high power levels. And there are some that want even higher power! Now, we ... Regulator Sets Deadline for 3G Licence Application http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20346?11228 France's telecoms regulator ARCEP has set 17 November 2006 as the deadline for applications for the country's last remaining 3G licences. In a statement, ARCEP said it needed to ascertain the number of 3G players in the market while sharing the GSM 900 and 1800 MHz bands to be reused for 3G services. "This ...will be the" ... Orange, HP Win EU IT Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20342?11228 France Telecom's business services division, Orange Business Services, and computer manufacturer HP have won a 210 million euro (US$264.6 million) IT contract from the European Union. The contract is for the creation and management of sTESTA (secured Trans European Services for Telematics between Administrations), the EU's ... T-Mobile Set to Launch Mixed Cellular-Wi-Fi Phones in One Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20338?11228 T-Mobile USA is set to launch by year's end a new breed of mobile phones that can pass live phone calls between cellular and Wi-Fi networks, a top executive told The Associated Press on Friday. Robert Dotson, chief executive of the U.S. subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG, declined to disclose the specific market where ... T-Mobile USA Gets the 3G Message http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20333?11228 E-mail, social networking and wireline displacement, but not mobile TV. That's how T-Mobile USA sees its coming 3G network being used in the future. At a press conference on the carrier's plans to spend $2.66 billion over the next three years on a UMTS/HSDPA network, T-Mobile USA CEO Robert Dotson said that the operator ... DoJ Quiet As FCC Readies AT&T/BellSouth Decision http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20330?11228 Amid reports that the U.S. government is set to approve AT&T's proposal to buy BellSouth for $67.1 billion with minimal or no conditions, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has put the merger item on its Oct. 12 meeting agenda, raising speculation that the regulator's green light likely will be coordinated with ... Symbol Gets Sued http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20326?11228 Enterprise wireless networking firm Symbol Technologies Inc. says that some shareholders are trying to prevent the proposed $3.9 billion buyout of the company by Motorola Inc. The Holtsville, N.Y.-based company put out a statement on Friday saying that 'putative class action lawsuits have been filed against the company in ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #357 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 10 16:18:21 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8161E21EE; Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:18:20 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #358 Message-Id: <20061010201820.8161E21EE@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:18:20 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:20:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 358 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Spamhaus Warns of More Junk Email on the Way (Ashley M Heher, AP) Who Really Controls the Internet? (BBC Feature Writers) Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion (Michael Liedtke, AP) Google Buys Web Video Phenomenon YouTube (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Can You Help ID This Problem-Caller Speaks; Nothing But Noise (Lichter) Re: Can You Help ID This Problem-Caller Speaks: Nothing But Noise (turkmen) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:10:11 -0500 From: Ashley M. Heher Subject: Spamhaus Warns of More Junk Email on the Way By ASHLEY M. HEHER, AP Business Writer The anti-spam group Spamhaus Project warned more junk e-mail could be on the way as it prepares to lose its domain name thanks to a company it has accused of sending spam. Executives at the U.K.-based Spamhaus Project said Monday they expect a federal judge in Chicago will soon sign an order that would suspend the domain http://www.spamhaus.org because the group has refused to recognize the U.S. court and comply with a $11.7 million judgment. Spamhaus warned the order could unleash up to 50 billion junk e-mails a day on computer users worldwide, though legal and technology experts were skeptical the effect would lead to millions of clogged inboxes. According to Spamhaus, more than 650 million Internet users -- including those at the White House, the U.S. Army and the European Parliament -- benefit from Spamhaus' "blacklist" of spammers that helps identify which messages to block, send to a "junk" folder or accept. Losing the domain name would make it more difficult for service providers and others to obtain the lists. "If the domain got suspended, it would be an enormous hit for the Net," said Steve Linford, Spamhaus' chief executive officer. "It would create an enormous amount of damage on the Internet." But experts said even if the order filed Friday is executed, it's unlikely people would suddenly see much more junk mail. Experts note Spamhaus' blacklist already is widely available online, and a suspension at most would provide a hiccup Web-savvy systems administrators could easily work around. "Suspending a domain name isn't the same as suspending a Web site," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard and Oxford universities. "Spamhaus is intended for use by people who run mail servers -- in other words, technically inclined people. If Spamhaus wanted to, it could simply pick a new domain name, or use no name at all." Domain names are merely shortcuts to access a site's true, numeric Internet address. Spamhaus could simply distribute that address instead of the domain name. And it's not even clear U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras could easily order such a suspension because the Domain Name System is in the hands of organizations and companies that are not parties to the lawsuit. They could challenge any such attempt. Spamhaus CEO Linford said the group has backup plans in place to keep spam filters functioning, but alerting its customers to change the address their system uses to reference the blacklist would be daunting. Linford said "mail servers will simply fall over" from a deluge of spam if the filters stop working. Wheeling-based e360 Insight sought the order after Spamhaus refused to comply with a September ruling that required it to pay $11.7 million and post a notice on its Web site stating that e360 Insight is not a spammer. Spamhaus officials did not bother defending themselves in the case, arguing that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction and that doing so would open the organization to a tidal wave of lawsuits by spammers that want to fight those who block their e-mails. Bart Loethen, a lawyer for e360, insists his client does not engage in spamming and said he had to go after Spamhaus' domain until it removes the company from the blacklist. "They are thumbing their nose at an order of the court," Loethen said. "What else can we do?" On the Net: http://www.e360insight.com http://www.spamhaus.org Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:05:15 -0500 From: BBC Feature Writers Subject: Who Really Controls the Internet? Who is really in charge of the internet? US laws to clamp down on online gaming show that the internet can be controlled, argues Bill Thompson. The myth of the borderless internet, never very credible to those who had any real understanding of the interplay between politics and technology that underpins the network, took another hit last week when the US Congress voted to ban bank and credit card payments to gambling firms. If President Bush signs the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act into law, as he is expected to do, then within months US credit card companies and banks will be forced to check for and refuse payment for most forms of online gambling. This has already had a catastrophic effect on UK-based companies like Sportingbet and PartyGaming, who face the loss of a major part of their market. Share prices are tumbling, directors are worried and revenue projections are being hastily scaled down. Whether or not you approve of gambling or online gambling, and whether or not you think that this move smacks of hypocrisy or is a blatant attempt to protect the US gaming industry from overseas competition, the law provides a good example of how governments can control the internet. Instead of trying to manage the technology by banning poker-playing software or insisting that service providers block online gaming sites - neither of which would be effective anyway - the law puts pressure on the banks who actually move the money around. The internet has always been a bordered network, and we ignore this geopolitical reality at our peril It's a method discussed in some detail by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu in their recent book Who Controls the Internet?. They point out that "the rise of networking did not eliminate intermediaries, but rather changed who they are", and governments can pass laws which control them. Whenever people use the network to act there are always local intermediaries, especially where money is changing hands. And that means there is no way that a company that wants to trade in a territory can do so and remain immune from local laws and practices. Clamped down We've seen this before. In 2005 the US government clamped down on the sale of cigarettes over the net by using the same strategy, successfully restricting people from buying from states that had lower taxes. It does not stop the trade completely, but makes it much harder work and so effectively deters most people. It's the same in the People's Republic of China, where the government knows that the vast expenditure on its 'Great Firewall' and apparatus of censorship and control can never be completely effective but still thinks it worth doing. There may be ways around the law and the technical measures, but they are too complex or risky for most people to use them. It's interesting to note that none of the online gaming companies is proposing to commission gambling anonymisers or cloaked poker games that would allow people to use their services without being observed by the authorities. Falling foul Nor are UK credit companies stepping forward to offer oppressed US gamblers a way of paying for their flutters without falling foul of the law. Perhaps this is because these companies, many of them listed on the Stock Exchange, want to remain respectable, or perhaps it is because they know that such techniques would not work. Perhaps they fear that if pushed US lawmakers might follow the path taken by the music industry and go after the users directly. Instead we hear of threats to take the US to the World Trade Organisation, the WTO, on the grounds that the new law is an attempt to protect the US gambling industry from foreign competition rather than anything to do with morality. The government of Antigua, host to many offshore gambling companies, has successfully challenged the US on the issue in the past, and is reported to be considering further action. Expensive lobbying One aspect of the new law that would seem to support the claim of protectionism is that betting on horses is explicitly permitted, a reflection of the intense and expensive lobbying that the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) has undertaken over the years. Unlike online poker, the NTRA has friends in high places and they have ensured that it will not be affected by the restrictions, so online betting on horse races will still be allowed. Of course this just makes it even clearer that the issue is one of politics, not technology. The banks were targeted because companies offering financial services need to look honest. Deliberately flouting the law is bad for customer and investor confidence, so they can be relied on to follow even unreasonable rules. Whether or not they are effective in the long term, the new laws highlight the point made by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu when they say that the "dream of self-governing cyber-communities that would escape geography forever" has been replaced by "a bordered network where territorial law, government power and international relations matter as much as technological invention". The "dream" sounds more like a nightmare to me, so I can't say that I regret its passing. The internet has always been a bordered network, and we ignore this geopolitical reality at our peril. If we want to make the network free, open and accessible to all we need to engage with it on these terms instead of resorting to virtual techno-utopianism. The US Congress may have done us all a service by drawing our attention the reality of today's internet and the ease with which it can be controlled. Bill Thompson is a regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/5412980.stm Copyright BBC 2006. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:07:15 -0500 From: Michael Liedtke Subject: Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer SAN FRANCISCO -- The founders of YouTube Inc. built this year's standout Web phenomenon by figuring out how to make online video sharing easier than ever. What they hadn't yet figured out was making money from their site. Google Inc. took that problem off their hands Monday, by agreeing to buy the site for $1.65 billion. The all-stock deal makes YouTube by far the most expensive purchase made by Google during its eight-year history. Last year, Google spent $130.5 million buying a total of 15 small companies. Although some cynics have questioned YouTube's staying power, Google is betting that the popular video-sharing site will provide it an increasingly lucrative marketing hub as more viewers and advertisers migrate from television to the Internet. "This is the next step in the evolution of the Internet," Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said during a conference call Monday. YouTube will continue to retain its brand, its new headquarters in San Bruno and all 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Meanwhile, Google will continue to run a less popular video service on its own site. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year. "We are excited to have the resources to move faster than ever before," Hurley, YouTube's 29-year-old CEO, said during a Monday interview. Schmidt thinks so highly of Hurley and Chen, 28, that he compared them to Google's now 33-year-old co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Brin sees the similarities too. "It's hard to imagine a better fit with another company," Brin said during Monday's conference call. "This really reminds me of Google just a few short years ago." The two companies even share a common financial bond: Sequoia Capital, an early Google investor that owns a roughly 30 percent stake in YouTube. Menlo Park-based Sequoia remains a major Google shareholder and retains a seat on the company's board -- factors that might have helped the deal come together after just a week of negotiation. YouTube has drawn less flattering comparisons to the original Napster, the once-popular music sharing service that was buried in an avalanche of copyright infringement lawsuits filed by incensed music companies and artists. While most videos posted on YouTube are homemade, the site also features volumes of copyrighted material -- a problem that has caused some critics to predict the startup eventually would be sued into oblivion. But Hurley and Chen have spent months cozying up with major media executives in an effort to convince them that YouTube could help them make more money by helping them connect with the growing number of people who spend most of their free time on the Internet. As its negotiations with Google appeared to be near fruition, YouTube on Monday announced new partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corp. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Those alliances followed a similar arrangement announced last month with Warner Music Group Inc. The truce with Universal represented a particularly significant breakthrough because the world's largest record company had threatened to sue YouTube for copyright infringement less than a month ago. While Google has been hauling away huge profits from the booming search market, it hasn't been able to become a major player in online video. That should change now, predicted Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. "This gives Google the video play they have been looking for and gives them a great opportunity to redefine how advertising is done," she said. Investors applauded the prospect of an acquisition as Google Inc. shares climbed $8.50 to close at $429 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, then added another $2 in extended trading, after the deal was announced. Several other suitors, including Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and News Corp., reportedly had discussed a possible YouTube purchase in recent weeks. "This deal looks pretty compelling for Google," said Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler. "Google has been doing a lot of things right, but they are not sitting on their laurels." Google's YouTube coup may intensify the pressure on Yahoo to make its own splash by buying Facebook.com, the Internet's second most popular social-networking site. Yahoo has reportedly offered as much as $1 billion for Palo Alto-based Facebook during months of sporadic talks. "Yahoo really needs to step up and do something," said Roger Aguinaldo, an investment banker who also publishes a dealmaking newsletter called the M&A Advisor. "They are becoming less relevant and looking less innovative with each passing day." Selling to Mountain View-based Google will give YouTube more technological muscle and advertising know-how, as well as generate a staggering windfall for a company that was running on credit card debt just 20 months ago. To conserve money as it subsisted on $11.5 million in venture capital, YouTube had been based in an austere office above a San Mateo pizzeria until recently moving to more spacious quarters in a neighboring city. Since the company started in Hurley's garage in February 2005, YouTube has blossomed into a cultural touchstone that shows more than 100 million video clips per day. The video library is eclectic, featuring everything from teenagers goofing off in their rooms to William Shatner singing "Rocket Man" during a 1970s TV show. Most clips are submitted by users. YouTube's worldwide audience was 72.1 million by August, up from 2.8 million a year earlier, according to comScore Media Metrix. Li and Kessler expect even more media companies will be lining up to do business with YouTube now that Google owns it. "It's going to be like, 'You can either fight us or you can make money with us,'" Li predicted. Copyright 2006, The Associated Press. 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 For more headlines and news each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: US Telecom Daily Lead Subject: Google buys Web video phenomenon YouTube Date: Oct, 10 2006 00:00:00 GMT USTelecom dailyLead October 10, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eChEfDtusXdQdEXoVh TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Google buys Web video phenomenon YouTube BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Sprint Nextel chairman to retire * Google's acquisition may leave competitors by the wayside * Investors split over Cablevision buyout offer * Ruckus wins funding from Motorola, T-Online * Vodafone boosts offerings in New Zealand with ISP acquisition * Pingtel snags major Amazon.com VoIP contract USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Pandemic Influenza's Impact on Telecommunications TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Report: Smartphone sales rising * Wi-Fi/Cellular convergence could spell trouble for traditional phones * Survey: More than a third of U.S. college campuses have Wi-Fi REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Malaysia to issue WiMAX licenses * Hawaiian Telcom's broadband service reclassified * Aussie government launches Telstra sale DIVERSIONS * Travel: Thailand Tourists: 'Coup? What Coup?' * A Chorus Line: From the Top: Five, Six, Seven, Eight! * 2007 Volkswagen Eos: In Praise of a Convertible Goddess * A Great March to See the Penguins Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eChEfDtusXdQdEXoVh ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. Subject: Re: Can You Help ID This Problem: Caller Speaks up; Nothing But Noise Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:46:11 GMT deniz.turkmen@gmail.com wrote: > Hi, > We have 8 landlines in an office in San Diego. Local & Long distance > services are from AT&T. All the lines are connected to a phone system > (TalkSwitch, to be more specific) I tested all the lines and > extensions one by one, calling from my cell phone with no > problem. AT&T also tested from their end and saw no problems what so > ever. > Here is the annoying problem: Once in every 9-10 calls, caller's voice > is so bad we cannot understand anything. The line itself sound very > clear, but caller's voice is all staticy. Sounds like a radio that is > little out-of-frequency. No static/humming on the line itself, but > it's the voice that is terrible. When we tell them to call us back > again, and if they do, there is no problem at all (even if the > receiving line and extensions were exactly the same as before) > This suggests either phone system is bad/configured wrong and acting > randomly, or long distance calls have problems. I don't know if this > question sounds stupid but, is it possible to have such a bad > connection because of some switch/circuit that is available for that > particular call between point A and point B (like recalling the ISP to > get the next available modem to eliminate the bad modem) > My knowledge is limited about phones and I am expected to troublshoot > this, but I don't know exactly where to start. I also have some > settings on the phone box that can be set for the lines (600 ohms, 600 > complex, 900 ohms, 900 complex -- set to 900 complex by itself -- not > sure what it is). > Thanks in advance. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your problem, that of intermittent > noise, is a very difficult one to diagnose, but here is a starting > point, based on a real-life experience of mine from thirty or thirty > five years ago. I would make calls wherever, late at night, and every > second or third call I made, this god-awful noise and rattling sound > came back at me right after I dialed the seven digits but before the > call had set up. Not _every_ time, but 'only' every second or third > call attempt. No set pattern, and all I could do was abandon the > call and dial again. Bell never could figure it out (nor did they > try very hard, IMO) but I finally got to speak with a tech in the > local Bell office one day. His question to me was, don't you have two > lines there? I said I did, so his response to that was, the next > time this happens, do me a favor; keep that line 'up', put it on > hold and use your other line to call me at (a direct number to reach > him in the frames). It happend again (admittedly I tried to make it > happen) and when that terrible noise started, I lifted the plunger > on my phone (I had one of the old two-line/life the plunger/twist > the turn button style phones) and called this technician direct as > he had asked. Good, he said, now stay put a minute, I am going to > trace your line here in the office. When he came back with the > report about five minutes later, it really surprised me. He said > there was a bad line 'selector' between the office where I was > located, and the office I was attempting to call. He continued > saying the 'bad' equipment was the 'first choice' in a group of > several trunks running from the one office to the other one. He > further said that during the daytime hours, only quite rarely would > someone land on the first selector (the one which was in trouble), > they would get the same noisy conditions, hang up in disgust and > dial again. But in the middle of the day -- the busy hours -- the > troubled first selection trunk was having repeated seizures by > various subscribers; no one ever managed to land on it twice in a > row; no way to pin it down. When the subscriber dialed a second > time, naturally their call would hunt right past the troubled > selector (which had then been seized by some other subscriber) so > of course their call went through normally. > But, he said, you, Mr. Townson, insist on making your calls during > the off hours, very late at night, time and again you are going to > land on that first selected trunk line, and get the trouble over and > over. I have 'busied it out' at my end, now _no one_ is going to > land on that line, until it gets fixed. Sure enough, that was the > end of my troubles. Keep the above in mind, please. > Now you talked about modems and your 'phone box'. Is there any order > or organization in which your inbound calls arrive, sort of like a > 'first selected trunk', etc? Load up all your incoming lines with > calls, somehow isolate the line with the noise and investigate that > line completely. Try to detirmine if the trouble is at your end or > if it is arriving from AT&T on one of their incoming lines. If you are > able to isolate the disturbance _on your own equipment_ using this > method, then do whatever you need to do. If you find that the trouble > continues even when your own equipment is out of the way on that line, > then the problem goes to AT&T. But be prepared to have the troubled > line 'up' or in use when you notify AT&T about it, so they can zero > in on the trouble. > Yes, I know you shouldn't have to go to that much trouble, of > isolating the specific line, etc, but you know most telco repair > guys are _not_ going to do anything about it otherwise. And anyway, > it may well turn out to be your 'privately owned equipment' in > trouble, so you may as well eliminate all that so Bell has no > excuses for fixing the trouble it it turns out to be their problem. PAT] You may have a bad circuit in the CO, it may only be hit a times when the others are busy, it may have nothing to do directly with your line. You have to get to a tester, not the people handling the incoming repair calls. Are the calls coming from the same person or same calling office, then it could be a trunk circuit between offices. We had a problem where we could not call one number in an office and they kept closing the ticket with no trouble found, that is until I got a tester who understood me, I'm retired telephone company, within a short time they found that it was a single translation in the switch and fixed it. You have to get to a person within the company who knows the trunking, not just some of the computer geeks that they have now. The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Steve, basically you told him the same thing as I, but with more work involved for him. Whenever there is any complexity to the problem at all, telco is _always_ going to pass the buck. It helps a lot if the subscriber can put his finger directly on the trouble when requesting repair service. PAT] ------------------------------ From: deniz.turkmen@gmail.com Subject: Re: Can You Help ID This Problem: Caller Speaks up; Nothing But Noise Date: 10 Oct 2006 09:20:22 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks for the response. I will try to isolate the problem. Thankfully phone system comes with an internal logging system so when someone reports a bad call I can look it up and find which landline was having that problem. So far I don't have enough data to find a pattern (well, yes first 2 lines are the one with most problems so far but it could be just because they are used the most). I am going to hook a phone to line 1 directly and bypass the phone system, and have my friend call until I have the problem again. Once I have the problem I will call the technician. You asked if any other company involved, and the answer is yes. We have another company for toll-free number. i.e. when customer calls 1-800 number our first line rings, if it's busy line 2 rings, if line 2 is busy line 3 rings etc. I mentioned to that AT&T and the customer rep told me those companies have nothing to do with line-quality related problems. Is that true? Deniz [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is not necessarily true either. The trouble could be with the originating telco equipment or the terminating telco's equipment, although I will grant you since the tragedy known as 'divestiture' and the follow-up tragedy twenty years later (AT&T coming back together again under 'new management' via SBC) originating and terminating telco is probably one and the same, i.e. AT&T, but still, you should not be mentioning _anything_ to a customer service rep which is likely to short out their little one-volt brains. Most 800 number suppliers are usually just wholesale distributors of some distant telcos, and do not handle 'line quality' issues as such. So I guess she was technically correct in saying that. I suggest however that you follow instructions recieved here, and try to isolate the problem to a specific inbound line. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #358 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 11 17:36:09 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id F2A362201; Wed, 11 Oct 2006 17:36:08 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #359 Message-Id: <20061011213608.F2A362201@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 17:36:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 11 Oct 2006 17:40:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 359 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Gets DOJ Approval on BellSouth Buyout (Lara Jakes Jordan, AP) Singapore Beginning Free Wireless Broadband Service (Agence France Presse) DOJ Approves AT&T-BellSouth Merger (USTelecom dailyLead) VoIP Voice Quality - Not There Yet But Not Too Far Away (FreedomFireCom) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 11, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Can You Help ID This Problem: Caller Speaks; Nothing But Noise (deniz) Re: Copyright Royalties (was Pirate Radio Stations...) (Neal McLain) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:42:54 -0500 From: Lara Jakes Jordan, AP Subject: AT&T Gets DOJ Approval on BellSouth Buyout By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer AT&T's $78.5 billion buyout of BellSouth Corp. won Justice Department approval Wednesday, a decision that sets the stage for further reuniting modernized parts of the old Ma Bell phone monopoly broken up by the government in 1984. The Justice Department approved the deal without conditions, which leaves the Federal Communications Commission as the final hurdle to the merger creating the nation's biggest provider of phone, wireless and broadband Internet services. The decision was immediately criticized by the FCC's two Democratic members Jonathan S. Adelstein and Michael Copps, who characterized it as "a reckless abandonment of DoJ's responsibility" to protect consumers and smaller businesses. Copps called it a "lights-off" decision. Said Adelstein: "By failing to issue a complaint, consent decree, or condition, it appears DoJ took a dive on one of the largest mergers in history just to avoid further court scrutiny." The FCC is scheduled to vote on the matter Thursday, though there's been speculation the agency may hold off because of a possible deadlock. In addition, members of Congress have raised questions about the deal's possible impact on market competition. If the deal wins final government approval, the merger would give San Antonio-based AT&T Inc. total control over the nation's largest cellular provider, Cingular Wireless, a joint venture of the two phone companies that serves 57.3 million customers. "After thoroughly investigating AT&T's proposed acquisition of BellSouth, the Antitrust Division determined that the proposed transaction is not likely to reduce competition substantially," said Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett, who heads the division. The department's unconditional approval "underscores the competitive nature of our industry and the pro-competitive benefits of this merger," AT&T General Counsel James D. Ellis said in a statement. BellSouth said, "We look forward to getting approval from the Federal Communications Commission in the very near future." Critics claime the government is well on its way to reconstituting the old Ma Bell monopoly, which was broken up after a lengthy court battle. The House Judiciary Committee's chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and other members of Congress had asked that the deal be held up until details related to two previous telecommunications mergers are settled and other concerns are addressed. A coalition of consumer groups issued a statement condemning the Justice Department, saying the merger is "likely to leave consumers with fewer choices and inflated prices for a host of services." The Bush administration "has surrendered the rights of the public to have a competitive and democratic broadband media system," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "The public should be alarmed about a handful of broadband giants controlling much of the U.S. digital distribution system." DoJ's Barnett said Justice Department lawyers looked at all areas where AT&T and BellSouth currently compete, including local and long distance phone and Internet service for residential and business customers. It also examined the merger's impact on future competition for wireless broadband service. Justice Department lawyers concluded that with other competitors in the marketplace, combined with changing regulatory rules and new emerging technology, the merger was unlikely to hurt consumers, Barnett said. Instead, he said, the merger "would likely result in cost savings and other efficiencies that should benefit consumers." The outcome at the FCC was far from certain. Republican Chairman Kevin Martin circulated an order recommending approval of the merger last month and probably will receive support from fellow Republican commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate. With Adelstein and another Democrat, Michael Copps, criticizing the merger and Robert McDowell, the third Republican on the commission, prepared to recuse himself because he once lobbied on behalf of communications firms, Thursday's vote could result in a 2-2 deadlock. Historically, in that type of situation, the item is pulled from the FCC's meeting agenda until a compromise can be reached. "In this largest of all telecom mergers, why wasn't the Department of Justice able to suggest one safeguard for protecting consumers and ensuring a competitive marketplace?" Copps said. "With the lights off at the Justice Department, it becomes all the more important for the FCC to ensure that consumer interests have a seat at the table." The merger of San Antonio-based AT&T and Atlanta-based BellSouth would create a company of 300,000 employees with operations in 22 states. AT&T estimates that about 10,000 redundant jobs would be phased out over three years. The Justice Department decision came just seven months after AT&T announced its intentions to buy BellSouth — a breakneck pace for a merger of its size and scope. Combined, the companies generate $117 billion in revenue, operate 68.7 million local phone lines across 22 states stretching coast to coast across the southern United States and up through the Midwest. The merged company would employ 309,000 people, though AT&T said it plans to eliminate up to 10,000 jobs over three years to cut costs. The deal will further the reunification of the Baby Bells, the seven regional telephone operators and one long-distance provider that were spun off from the national AT&T monopoly under a federal court order designed to introduce competition. Including BellSouth, the new AT&T would consist of four Baby Bells and the long-distance business, which was acquired by the company late last year. The other two Bells are Verizon Communications Inc., which dominates the eastern United States, and Qwest Communications International Inc., the phone company for most of the Rocky Mountain and Northwest regions. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers John Dunbar in Washington, Bruce Meyerson in New York and Harry Weber in Atlanta. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So it would appear the 21st-century reincarnation of Ma Bell is now mostly complete, following this sellout by DOJ and FCC. I wonder if FCC can be counted on to make any effort at all to protect telephone customers? Probably not. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:52:06 -0500 From: Agence France Presse Subject: Singapore Beginning Free Wireless Broadband Service Tech-savvy Singapore will offer free wireless broadband service in public areas from next year, the government said. The program will increase the number of wireless hotspots from 900 currently to 5,000 over two years, allowing Singaporeans wireless connectivity beyond homes, offices and schools where the service is currently available, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore said in a statement late Tuesday. The hotspots will be located in strategic areas including the central business district, the Orchard Road shopping and tourist belt, and community centres, the statement said. It will offer free wireless connection for Internet surfing at speeds of up to 512 Kbps. Those who want faster speeds and more sophisticated services including video conferencing will have to pay a premium. Three telecommunications firms, including Southeast Asia's biggest telecom operator Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, have agreed to participate in the project and will invest about 100 million dollars (63 million US). Singapore is Southeast Asia's most advanced economy and is among the most wired countries in Asia. "As we move forward in the digital age, we must broaden the opportunities for all segments of the population to access and benefit from technology. We must create digital opportunities for Singaporeans and never allow a digital divide in our society," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said late Tuesday. The wireless project is part of a 10-year masterplan to develop Singapore's next-generation national information and communication infrastructure, the government said. Copyright 2006 Agence France Presse. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:23:24 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: DOJ Approves AT&T-BellSouth Merger USTelecom dailyLead October 11, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eCsIfDtusXdSveCibuddQaNv TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * DOJ approves AT&T-BellSouth merger BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Carphone Warehouse snaps up AOL's U.K. assets * Analysis: Samsung makes its presence known in WiMAX market * Judge rules Qualcomm chips infringed Broadcom patent * Analysis: Complications of merger bog down Sprint Nextel * Avaya announces strategy changes USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Pandemic Influenza's Impact on Telecommunications TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Skype, The Cloud team up to offer VoIP-over-Wi-Fi in Europe * Analysis: Google's success contrasts Yahoo!'s recent setbacks REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * High Court rules for Cox, Comcast in @Home case DIVERSIONS * BMW Has Maxi Expectations for Its Next, Slightly Larger Mini Cooper * Seaside Living * There's Simply No Excuse for Being Bored on a Trip * Lessons I Have Learned in My 15 Minutes of Fame * Street Vendors: International Cuisine, a la Cart Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eCsIfDtusXdSveCibuddQaNv ------------------------------ From: FreedomFireCom Subject: VoIP Voice Quality - Not There Yet But Not Too Far Away Date: 11 Oct 2006 12:57:24 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Here's an openly honest hype free discussion of the current -- and possible future -- state of VoIP voice quality. Includes a series of cut to the chase questions and answers to make you think, and learn. Also offers some predictions on where VoIP may be headed. http://broadband-nation.blogspot.com/2006/10/voip-voice-quality-not-there-yet-but.html God Bless, Michael Lemm FreedomFire Communications http://DS3-Bandwidth.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/freedomfirecom ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 11, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:24:44 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 11, 2006 ******************************** United States - United Kingdom: Global Crossing Acquires Fibernet http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20416?11228 Following its 25 August 2006 offer to shareholders, Global Crossing has announced the formal acquisition of Fibernet Plc. Global Crossing will pay £0.78 (approximately US$1.48) per share for a total value of US$94.6 million. This represents a 100% premium on the share price over the previous month, when it had fallen as low as ... Mtel Readies for Vodafone Live! Launch http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20414?11228 Bulgaria's number-two mobile operator MTel, part of Telekom Austria, is planning to launch the 3G multimedia service Vodafone Live! in co-operation with the United Kingdom's mobile group Vodafone. Significance: The launch of Vodafone Live!, which will enable MTel customers to watch TV on their mobile handsets, signals that ... Justice Department Approves AT&T-BellSouth Merger Plan http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20411?11228 WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department approved AT&T's buyout of BellSouth Corp. on Wednesday, clearing a major hurdle for reuniting two modernized parts of the old Ma Bell phone monopoly that the government broke up in 1984. The decision leaves the Federal Communications Commission as the final hurdle for a $78.5 billion ... Sony Ericsson to Report Net Profits Nearly Tripled to 298 M http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20407?11228 STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson will report that its third-quarter earnings nearly tripled because of consumer demand for its improved camera and music phones. The results were scheduled to be released Thursday but a copy of an internal company e-mail detailing the earnings report was sent out Wednesday to ... Nortel Takes WiMax MIMO http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20404?11228 Nortel Networks Ltd. is trying to get a jump on the competition with an 'all singing, all dancing' MIMO WiMax base station developed in collaboration with Runcom Technologies Ltd. Displaying its new equipment line at the WiMax World show in Boston this week, the firm says the MIMO product has significant performance ... Sprint's Powerful Vision http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20401?11228 Barry West, CTO and President of 4G Mobile Broadband Sprint Nextel, said to me in an interview yesterday that Sprint is 'building a network and an eco-system that point to a future of the Internet anywhere.' The long view is that Sprint Nextel no longer wants to be just a voice communications company. "We have a ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: deniz.turkmen@gmail.com Subject: Re: Can You Help ID This Problem: Caller Speaks up; Nothing But Noise Date: 11 Oct 2006 11:21:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I contacted AT&T, they could not locate any local problems so they said it must be either (1) caller's long distance company or (2) our toll-free provider. I contacted toll-free provider and told them the problem, next day their customer rep said "problem was fixed" (which was written on her screen, so we don't know the technical details.) In both cases I supplied the same phone number which I believe the problematic one, according to my own records (but again, I assume I isolated the problem just because I heard the bad static when I bypass the phone system on that particular line). No static calls so far, fingers crossed. Thanks for all the help. - Deniz deniz.turkmen@gmail.com wrote: > Thanks for the response. I will try to isolate the problem. Thankfully > phone system comes with an internal logging system so when someone > reports a bad call I can look it up and find which landline was having > that problem. So far I don't have enough data to find a pattern (well, > yes first 2 lines are the one with most problems so far but it could be > just because they are used the most). ------------------------------ From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Copyright royalties (was Pirate Radio Stations...) Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 16:12:34 -0400 I wrote: > Licensed non-commercial broadcast stations get a break > for internet streaming if (and only if) the stream is > concurrent with the broadcast. This exception allows WCPE > (a non-commercial station owned by a non-profit > corporation) to continue streaming. But WFMT (which > holds a commercial license even though it's owned by a > non-profit corporation) is subject to the full royalty > fee. Which is why WFMT now charges internet listeners. > http://www.wfmtstreaming.com/ PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although WFMT chooses to charge > internet listeners, most other classical stations do not access that > charge. For example, KOSU/KOSN our classical music station here in > southeast Kansas continues to stream totally free of any charge ... KOSU holds a non-commercial broadcast license, and it's owned by a non-profit entity (Oklahoma State University). So, like WCPE, it falls under the exemption for licensed non-commercial broadcast stations. It still incurs some copyright liability, but not nearly as much as commercial licensees incur. > ... and while they were operating, WNIB in Chicago likewise made no > charge for their music. PAT] Neither did WFMT, at the time. The problem that WFMT now faces stems from the fact that it holds a commercial broadcast license. As such, it's permitted to sell advertising, but it's also liable for the full $0.0007-per-listener- per-performance royalty fee. As I noted in my previous post, that may not sound like much, but multiply the number of "performances" that a commercial licensee broadcasts in one year by $0.0007 and you get some idea of the cost involved. Assuming ten "performances" per hour, a listener who listens four hours per day would generate a royalty fee of about $10 per year. A listener who listens 24 hours per day would generate a fee of about $61 per year. In order to accurately calculate its annual copyright liability, the station has to keep track of the instantaneous number of internet listeners on a minute-by-minute basis. That takes a lot of storage space. Add to that the cost of running the streaming operation itself (internet access, administrative overhead), and the station incurs a total liability of around $20 to $30 per internet listener per year. Faced with these costs, commercial licensees have two choices: cover the costs from advertising revenue, or charge for their internet streams. Most classical stations now charge: -- WFMT Chicago charges $60 per year for members of its Fine Arts Circle" -- listeners who also pay $40 (or more) to support general station operations. https://www.wfmtstreaming.com/ -- WQXR New York has managed to stream its signal without charge (so far), but it's apparently rethinking that approach. Its website currently states "WQXR is close to concluding a complete evaluation of our stream options, and will report on the results soon." http://www.wqxr.com/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html -- KING-FM Seattle offers its stream through Realnetworks.com's "RadioPass" subscription service which costs $59.99 per year after a 14-day free trial. http://www.king.org/listen/index.aspx costs if it still existed. I doubt that WNIB's advertising base would have been able to support free streaming. Of course, there are plenty of free classical streams from sources outside the USA, where the DMCA doesn't apply. "Classical Live Online Radio" offers an extensive compilation at http://classicalwebcast.com/index.html Neal McLain ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #359 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 12 15:13:37 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 207D72256; Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:13:36 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #360 Message-Id: <20061012191336.207D72256@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:13:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:15:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 360 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 60 Billion Emails Daily, Mostly Spam / Scam (Reuters News Wire) BT Busts Zombies and Spammers (Tim Ferguson, BBC) Spam Beginning to Spell Trouble For Wireless Phones (Frommer & Lerer) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 12, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Covad buys Chicago's DataFlo (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Cellphone Dead? AA Batteries to the Rescue! (David B. Horvath, CCP) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 13:15:11 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: 60 Billion Emails Daily, Mostly Spam / Scam http://www.reuters.com BERLIN - Internet users around the world send an estimated 60 billion e-mails every day and many of these are spam or scam attempts, business leaders said recently. Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Kai-Uwe Ricke said cyber criminals were growing more active and sophisticated, and the vast e-mail traffic meant industry, government and Internet users had to be vigilant and work together. "This figure was new for me as well; worldwide there are around 60 billion e-mails sent every day," Telekom Chief Executive Kai-Uwe Ricke told an Internet security conference. "A large percent of it -- in excess of 80 percent is spam," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer added. German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned of the recent growth in "phishing"; fishing for passwords, often via fake e-mails that especially target online banking. "In 2005, the attempts at phishing (globally) dramatically increased, by 300 percent compared with the previous year," he said. "According to international estimates, phishing is successful with up to 5 percent of all Internet users. Its running quite high again in 2006." He said this success rate caused inestimable economic damage worldwide. Internet security firm Symantec Corp registered some 8 million phishing attempts last year. Germany's BKA federal crime office said this month it had shut a "phishing" ring of Germans and Lithuanians, sparing online banking customers millions of euros of potential losses. The BKA said the phishing ring obtained online banking customers' user names and passwords and other sensitive data from their victims' computers by means of a "Trojan horse", a self-circulating, virus-like program that spreads by e-mail and sends data from the infiltrated computer back to the "phisher". Schaeuble said many Germans used no form of Internet protection, exposing themselves needlessly to phishing and other criminal attempts to infiltrate their computers. "One out of every four Germans is without anti-virus protection and more than half had no firewalls," he said. Ballmer said this situation was probably worse in the United States, but there were signs Internet users were becoming better educated about protecting themselves from cyber criminals. (MSNBC.com is a Microsoft -- NBC joint venture.) He said it was important for software developers like Microsoft to make their products as secure as possible. But he warned that improved security would require the combined efforts of authorities, the industry and users themselves. "The hackers out there are really are smart and getting smarter. We all have to run in front of them," Ballmer said. To improve U.S. cyber security, Ballmer said Microsoft would launch an initiative next month in the United States modeled on a German program, "Germany Safe on the Net", set up a year ago by Telekom, Microsoft, the government and Internet-related firms to improve Internet safety. Copyright Reuters 2006. 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 For more headlines and news each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can say that in this little corner of the world -- i.e. telecom -- the spam continues to roll in, usually hundreds of such items daily. Sometimes, the ratio of spam/scam to legitimate email here is in excess of 95 percent. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:59:25 -0500 From: Tim Ferguson Subject: BT Busts Zombies and Spammers BT busts zombies and spammers; Who you gonna call? By Tim Ferguson BT has launched a new 'spam buster' system which it hopes will clamp down on junk email within the telco's broadband network. The Content Forensics system, which was developed by StreamShield Networks, is designed to combat professional spammers as well as botnets -- rogue software that infects computers and transforms them into spam-generating networks. The 'spam buster' scans and analyses the content of millions of emails every day to identify potentially problematic messages. The system spots spam in real-time, as messages are sent through BT's mail servers, so BT can contact affected customers as soon as the problematic emails reach their inboxes and help them rectify the issue. BT can also track down professional spammers operating within their network and terminate or blacklist these rogue accounts. Previously, spam not only hogged network bandwidth and caused an annoyance -- after becoming infected by botnets, some BT customers were identified as known sources of spam and thus ended up on industry-wide blacklists. The new anti-spam system, which went into action this week, will help to limit these problems which BT said made business customers "extremely grateful". According to Gartner, 80 per cent of email on the internet is spam, while security software maker Trend Micro estimates that around 6.5 billion separate items are sent per day. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 13:05:00 -0500 From: Dan Frommer and Lisa Lerer Subject: Spam Beginning to Spell Trouble For Wireless Phones From MSNBC.com Spam could spell trouble for wireless industry Providers counting on text messaging to boost the bottom line By Dan Frommer and Lisa Lerer, Forbes Everyone with an e-mail box knows about spam: junk messages hawking porn, Viagra deals or Nigerian get-rich-quick schemes. But now spam is going mobile, chasing after cellphone users who use text messaging services. Earlier this month, some Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel subscribers received unsolicited text messages promoting penny stocks First National Power and Encore Clean Energy. "Subject: the end of oil? First National Power (OTC: FNPR) invents new patent for green energy intiative," reads one message, sent from Otto@comcast.net. "Encore Clean Energy unveils a new patent for green energy alternative to oil! Exxon, get out of the way!" reads another, sent from nelda@dimensional.com. It's unclear who actually sent the messages: Mutual fund company Dimensional Fund Advisors, which owns the dimensional.com web address, has a disclaimer on its Web site stating that it has nothing to do with the spam. The phone number listed in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents for Vancouver-based Encore Clean Energy is not in service. First National Power's SEC documents describe it as a Bellevue, Wash.-based company, but an August press release lists a British Columbia telephone number. Calls to Darryl Mills, described in First National's press releases as both president and the company contact, were not returned. On Friday afternoon, Verizon Wireless sued whoever has been sending the messages via a "John Doe" complaint, which allows an accuser to begin court proceedings against an unknown defendant. In court documents filed in a federal court in New Jersey, Verizon said someone promoting First National Power, Encore Clean Energy, W2 Energy and Armor Electric had sent about 550,000 messages over the carrier's network since Sept. 24. While spam sent via e-mail is an annoyance, text message spam has a real cost. U.S. wireless subscribers generally pay about 10 cents for each message they receive. If the problem gets bad enough to discourage text message use, it could ultimately cause a problem for the wireless business, which is counting on text message users to boost their bottom line. U.S. wireless carriers will generate about $3 billion of their overall $140 billion in service fees from text messaging this year, projects the Yankee Group research firm, which also predicts that text messaging revenue will stay flat in the next four years. But text spam is on the rise. Ferris Research analyst Richi Jennings estimates that spammers will send 1.1 billion text spams next year, up 38 percent from this year. Wireless carrier spokesmen says that customers who receive text spam should call their customer service centers, who may offer them a refund on a case-by-case basis. But Sprint Nextel spokesman Travis Sowders acknowledges that spam texts are not only a consumer nuisance, but a sore point for carriers, too. If customers find too much spam clogging their data services, he says, "people are not going to want to use them." An influx of junk messages could also crimp carriers' plans to pad revenues by selling legitimate advertising on their mobile data services. Telecommunications and media research group Informa projects that marketers will spend more than $11 billion on mobile advertising by 2011. But that estimate is predicated on customers who trust that they're only receiving messages they want to see. Few investors seem interested in either First National Power or Encore Clean Energy; both stocks trade for less than a quarter a share. First National Power, which describes itself in SEC filings as a company with plans to "purchase and deploy green energy solutions that are new to the market," had an earlier life as Capstone International, "a full service death services" company. It has yet to record revenues from the energy business. Encore Clean Energy has not filed an annual report for 2005 or a quarterly report for the first quarter of 2006. Its most recent financial report, filed in September 2005, said the company had "negative work capital" of $3.6 million; the company has received public letters questioning its “financial controls.” Wireless carriers are already taking measures to minimize junk messages. Like popular e-mail providers such as Yahoo! and Google, wireless companies have filters meant to screen out junk messages. They are also employing a low-tech rebuttal: In February, Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone, won a $10,000 judgement against Florida-based Passport Holidays. Verizon had alleged that Passport sent about 100,000 text spam messages via its wireless network. In 2004 Verizon won an injunction against a Rhode Island-based spammer it said had sent millions of spam text messages. Yet determined spammers can still easily get their messages onto wireless phones, a process that can be even easier than sending junk mail to conventional e-mail accounts. Some buy mobile phone number databases over the Internet. Others can simply try a brute force approach by mass-messaging random numbers, targeting certain prefixes that tend to be used for mobile phones. To skirt the messaging fee, the spammers send the text message through the Internet. Spam text messages are more common in Europe and Asia, where many subscribers don't have to pay for incoming messages. In Europe, Short Message Service Centers, or SMSCs, manage mass text messaging. While an authorized advertiser can pay up to send mass messages, spammers sometimes sneak through, connecting with stolen credit cards and false credentials, says Ferris' Jennings. Text spam also differs in content from e-mail spam. Text spammers, limited to 200 characters per message, have to make their point quickly to maximize return. As a result, junk messages are either a stock tip or often a solicitation to call a strange phone number, which ends up being a costly 900-number call. That 200-character limit should make text messages an ineffective way to send spam, says Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Oxford University. Zittrain recently conducted a study that found a positive correlation between e-mail stock spam and a rise in stock prices, but says it's hard to imagine a text message stock tip having much effect. "It really would have to be the odd person who would listen to the spam and not be outraged," says Zittrain, "Even a spammer has to worry about the palatability of the message." Then again, one man's spam may be another's financial advice. First National Power shares began the week at 5 cents but now trade for 8.5 cents, a 70 percent increase. And Encore Clean Energy shares traded this week for 15 cents, up from 10 cents in mid-September. Copyright 2006 Forbes.com URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15201089/ Copyright 2006 MSNBC.com ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 12, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:51:35 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 12, 2006 ******************************** Under the Spotlight Carphone Warehouse's Broadband Revolution http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20445?11228 Carphone Warehouse yesterday announced two different landmarks that have ultimately catapulted it to the number three position in the United Kingdom's retail broadband market behind NTL and BT. Firstly, the company stated that its third quarter broadband customer base has soared to 625,000 although about 200,000 remain ... Neuf Cegetel Targets US$955 mil. from IPO http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20442?11228 French alternative fixed line telecoms group Neuf Cegetel has unveiled plans to float 18.5% of its shares in an initial public offering (IPO) expected to raise about 761 million euro (US$954.8 million). Neuf Cegetel said the IPO, which will include a 201 million euro capital increase, will be priced by 24 October, with shares priced ... BCE Scraps Holding Company in Conversion to Income Trust; Government Concerned http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20439?11228 BCE Inc. has announced that it plans to end the holding company structure used to control Bell Canada and convert fully into a tax-efficient income trust, the Bell Canada Income Fund. A number of components of Bell Canada are already run as an income trust in conjunction with Aliant and Bell Nordic. The elimination of the holding company ... The Myth of Constant Revenue Leakage http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20436?11228 There's a pervasive myth in the world of telecommunications revenue assurance that a standard benchmark exists for revenue leakage. In fact, the question asked most often at conferences and meetings is, "What is the average amount of leakage?". The people asking that question are generally interested in determining a ... Low Noise Oscillator Has Multiple Applications http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20435?11228 Oscillators lie at the heart of all radios. Beating out repetitive electronic signals, they allow cell phones, microwave transmitters and other radio-based devices to generate steady and reliable signals. Oscillators are also found in a wide range of other electronic devices, including computers and audio amplifiers. Researchers at ... Wherefore Wi4? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20434?11228 Compared to Wi-Fi, which is unlicensed spectrum, WiMAX represents a carrier class offering, complete with quality of service, security and capabilities for service such as VoIP. For developing companies with limited copper or cable infrastructure, like Pakistan, WiMAX is an opportunity to leapfrog into the modern era with broadband ... DoJ Vets AT&T/BellSouth Deal; FCC To Follow? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20431?11228 Now that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has given its public blessing to the proposed merger of the former Ma Bell and her daughter, will the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) act in kind at tomorrow's open meeting? Placed on the docket last week, the full commission (unless former CompTel executive and Hill lobbyist ... Real World WiMax http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20427?11228 WiMax World, BOSTON -- Big names in technology are out in force today at the opening of the WiMax trade show in blustery Beantown. New technology and talk from the likes of Intel Corp., and Nokia Corp. start to reveal what WiMax will be when it grows up. There are some distinct trends emerging at the show, with vendors talking ... Alcatel Embraces Tispan's IMS http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20424?11228 PARIS -- Broadband World Forum Europe -- Alcatel laid down the gauntlet to its major vendor rivals Tuesday by announcing the commercial availability of a full set of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) capabilities for mobile and fixed line carriers. The ability to cater to both fixed and mobile operators is important. IMS was ... Surprising New 3G Killer App; Compatible Handsets Now the Key Ingredient http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20421?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- After years of eagerly anticipating video would be the killer application for 3G, a new survey from In-Stat finds that existing and potential 3G customers are much more interested in high-quality mapping and navigation services. However, 3G carriers that want to capture that market will have to ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:47:16 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Covad Buys Chicago's DataFlo October 12, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eDgwfDtusXdYpeCibuddClgm TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Covad buys Chicago's DataFlo BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Alcatel: 100M IPTV subscribers by 2010 * Nokia to sell WiMAX phones in '08 * Commentary: Analysts weigh impact of a potentially private Cablevision * Palm unveils newest member of Treo family * Cisco, MetaSwitch sign up CLEC customers with joint SIMPLE/IP-NGN solution USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * NEW! CALEA and Lawful Intercept Compliance Guide TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Broadband wireless on its way * Ask.com rolls out mobile search engine REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC moves AT&T merger vote to Friday DIVERSIONS * Rugged Pathways to a Simpler Time * Satan or Savior: Setting the Grape Standard * The House on Autopilot * Lift Every Over-50 Voice and Sing, Ladies, Sing * This Mouse Kills Viruses That Infect You, Not Your Computer Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eDgwfDtusXdYpeCibuddClgm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 19:38:39 -0400 From: David B. Horvath, CCP Subject: Re: Cellphone Dead? AA Batteries to the Rescue! 2 AA battery units at $1 store ... David B. Horvath, CCP Information Technology -- Data Services ING DIRECT l 1 S. Orange St., Wilmington, DE, 19801 w - 302.255-3926 | f - | david.horvath@withheld www.ingdirect.com | 1-800 ING DIRECT PAT: Please obscure my email address. Name is OK. On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 13:50:54 -0500, Clayton Collins wrote: > By Clayton Collins, Christian Science Monitor > Cellphone-toters dread the sound: a hand-held device chirping its > complaint, often far from home base, about needing to be recharged. > Now on the market: a lipstick-size brass canister that holds one AA > battery and offers reserve power. Run a short adaptor from the tip of > a Turbo Charge to your phone, and a blue light indicates that a charge > is flowing. You're back in business long enough to get to a plug -- the > device's maker, Voxred International, claims "up to 40 hours" of > standby time or two hours of talk, and touts patent-pending technology > that protects devices' batteries from damage. It is designed to work > with PDAs as well. > We tested Turbo Charge -- about $20 at stores including Best Buy, OK, but devices like this (using 2 AA or AAA batteries) have been on the market for a while. My wife bought me one as a bit of a joke at the local $1 store. I doubt it had any special circuitry but I expect my phone to handle the charging details, not the power-source. - David ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #360 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 13 22:16:06 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 38386225A; Fri, 13 Oct 2006 22:16:06 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #361 Message-Id: <20061014021606.38386225A@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 22:16:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 13 Oct 2006 22:20:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 361 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson YouTube Confusion Shuts Down Utube Site (John Seewer, AP) OnLine Brokerage Acccount Scams on Internet Worry SEC (Reuters News Wire) Who Killed TiVoToGo? (Monty Solomon) Telecom Update #550, October 13, 2006 (John Riddell) Convergence at the Heart of New Telecom Paradigm (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 13, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Phone Line Noise Question (nospam.phone@none.com) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 16:16:32 -0500 From: John Seewer, AP Subject: YouTube Confusion Shuts Down Utube Site By JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press Writer YouTube's enormous popularity has created a big headache for another "utube" -- a company that sells used machines that make tubes. Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corp.'s Web site, http://utube.com , was inaccessible for most of the week, overwhelmed by millions of people looking for the popular online video site. The confusion took off a couple of months ago, said Ralph Girkins, Universal Tube's president. The company with just 17 employees got 68 million hits on its site in August, making it one of the most popular manufacturing Web sites. The site shut down last weekend just before Google Inc. announced plans Monday to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion. A move to a new server didn't help, but by late Thursday Universal Tube's site was back up after the company added more capacity. "We couldn't work on it, couldn't do anything," Girkins said Friday. At least 50 customers called during the week to point out the problem, he said. He hasn't figured out yet how much it has cost to get the site running. "Just get me going. I don't care." Girkins said. "If I miss a $300,000 sale because of a Web site problem, it doesn't make any sense to not to fix it." Universal Tube, based in suburban Perrysburg and founded in 1985, has about $12 million in annual sales. The company is looking to sell the Web address and find a new home for its Web site even though the company uses the utube.com name to advertise to customers overseas, Girkins said. "We know we can't keep it," he said. "It's going to be a never-ending problem." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 16:19:56 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: OnLine Brokerage Acccount Scams on Internet Worry SEC High-tech crooks are hijacking online brokerage accounts using spyware and operating from remote locations, sometimes in Eastern Europe, U.S. market regulators said on Friday. The computer "incursions" are a growing problem, said Walter Ricciardi, deputy enforcement director at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "It's something we're very concerned about," he said in remarks at a legal conference in Washington. About 25 percent of U.S. retail stock trades are made by online investors through roughly 10 million online accounts, according to brokerages regulator NASD. Crooks will load a victim's computer or a public PC with a spy program to monitor a user's activities and capture vital information, such as account numbers and passwords. The program then e-mails the stolen information back to the thief, who can use it to open victim accounts. Once inside, the thief may sell off an account's portfolio and take the proceeds. Or electronically hijacked accounts may be used for "pump-and-dump" schemes to manipulate stock prices for profit, Ricciardi said. Public computers in such places as Internet cafes and hotel rooms are especially vulnerable to incursions. But home computers may also be hit as spyware can be imported simply by opening an e-mail attachment, said John Stark, chief of the SEC's Office of Internet Enforcement. Incursion scams under SEC investigation are far-flung. "We're seeing these frauds in offshore entities and persons, including those located in Eastern Europe," Stark said. The SEC is working to track down the hackers and to educate online investors, he said. Steps to fight incursions include securing an online account by changing passwords frequently and never using an unfamiliar computer to enter an account number or password. To fight a similar problem, U.S. banks are exploring new online banking security technologies since a study showed identity theft via online banking is a fast-growing crime. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 08:02:23 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Who Killed TiVoToGo? Digital Cable and Satellite DRM Harms TV Fans and Innovators It's the latest digital media murder mystery: TiVo Series2's TiVoToGo1 enabled limited portability of recorded content to PCs and other devices, but the TiVo Series3 HD did not include this feature when recently released.2 In other words, if you want to upgrade to HD, you have to downgrade your TiVo's features. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to guess that this story somehow involves Hollywood, the FCC, and "digital rights management" (DRM) restrictions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has opposed these restrictions every step of the way, and, in this article, we'll explain digital cable DRM's sordid history, how digital cable and satellite DRM may affect you, and what you can do to fight back. In short, get ready for copying limits on cable and satellite content that won't stop "Internet piracy"3 but will stop you from making legitimate use of lawfully acquired content. You'll be forced to only buy devices with limited features, and restricted digital outputs could break compatibility with your current HD displays and receivers, even though you may have already invested thousands of dollars in them. Innovators will have to beg permission before inventing new digital devices that help you get more from your satellite and cable content. Unfortunately, TiVoToGo's disappearance is just the tip of the iceberg. http://www.eff.org/IP/pnp/cablewp.php http://www.eff.org/IP/pnp/eff_cablewp.pdf ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #550, October 13, 2006 Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 13:22:13 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 550: October 13, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca/home/Home_Business.page ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.ca/communications/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** SHAW BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: www.shawbusinesssolutions.ca ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Bell Canada Takes the Income Trust Road ** BCE -- R.I.P. ** Vonage Expands Coverage ** Ontario Bill Seeks New-Driver Cellphone Ban ** Bell and Bell Aliant File 8-1-1 Tariffs ** More Time to Comment on Bell, Telus Rate Hikes ** Industry Canada Tests VoIP Security ** Fido Opens Burnaby Call Centre ** Mitec Raises $4 Million ** U.S. Carrier to Trial Wi-Fi/Cellular Phone ** U.S. to Allow Low-Power Devices in TV Spectrum ** AT&T/Bellsouth Merger Gets Antitrust Okay ** Applications Invited for Jeanne Sauve Awards ** Communications Institute Sets Program ** Telehealth Experts Gather in Edmonton ** Rx for Network Planning Nightmares BELL CANADA TAKES THE INCOME TRUST ROAD: In a move that could reduce the company's annual tax bill by hundreds of millions of dollars, BCE is proposing to convert Bell Canada into an income trust. After approval by regulators and by a shareholders' meeting in January, BCE common shares will be exchanged on a one-for-one basis for units in the new Bell Canada Income Fund, and Bell will buy back all preferred shares. ** Simultaneously, Bell Aliant is proposing to acquire the 36.4% of Bell Nordiq it doesn't now hold, a move that would merge those two income funds into one company. BCE -- R.I.P.: As part of the income trust conversion, Bell Canada will eliminate its holding company, BCE Inc., which was created in 1983 to shield Bell's non-telco operations from CRTC regulation. Over the years BCE has purchased companies as diverse as Trans Canada Pipelines, Montreal Trust, Teleglobe, and CTV -- and in every case took substantial losses when it sold them. ** CEO Michael Sabia says that elimination of BCE reflects "our plan to focus on Bell and our communications operations. That is the business we know. That is the business we will stick to." VONAGE EXPANDS COVERAGE: Vonage Canada has added 25 communities in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and PEI to the list of locations where it offers local phone numbers. The VoIP provider now offers local numbers in 70 Canadian cities and towns. ONTARIO BILL SEEKS NEW-DRIVER CELLPHONE BAN: A private member's bill that would ban new drivers from using cellphones while driving has received second reading in the Ontario legislature. The Ontario government has not indicated whether it will support the proposal. Similar measures have been implemented in 11 U.S. states. (See Telecom Update #519) BELL AND BELL ALIANT FILE 8-1-1 TARIFFS: Bell Canada and Bell Aliant have filed tariffs for 8-1-1 service, which will route calls to the appropriate "non-urgent health teletriage service providers" within a province. (See Telecom Update #488) The telcos have requested approval by October 20, with six months notice required to implement the service. ** The telcos' nomadic VoIP services will not be able to route 8-1-1 calls. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/8740/eng/2006/B2.htm#200612441 http://www.crtc.gc.ca/8740/eng/2006/B54.htm#200612459 MORE TIME TO COMMENT ON BELL, TELUS RATE HIKES: As promised, the CRTC has combined into one proceeding the Telus and Bell Canada/Bell Aliant proposals to raise local rates while eliminating connection charges for = new or moving customers. The public now has until December 11 to comment on the applications. (See Telecom Update #547) ** So far, the CRTC has received nearly 1,700 complaints from Bell and Bell Aliant customers regarding their proposed increases. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2006/pt2006-11-1.htm http://support.crtc.gc.ca/applicant/applicant.aspx?pn_ph_no=3Dpt2006-11&lang=3DE INDUSTRY CANADA TESTS VoIP SECURITY: Industry Canada's Protocol Analysis Lab is testing software that protects against security breaches in VoIP networks. The host-based software, developed by Ottawa start-up Third Brigade Inc, inspects traffic streams for malicious code and protocol anomalies. FIDO OPENS BURNABY CALL CENTRE: Rogers' Fido division says it will employee 130 staffers in the $2.4-million call centre it has just opened in Burnaby, B.C. MITEC RAISES $4 MILLION: Mitec Telecom, a Montreal-based wireless equipment maker, has raised $4.3 million in equity and hopes to raise an additional $3.5 million by October 16. U.S. CARRIER TO TRIAL WI-FI/CELLULAR PHONE: T-Mobile USA says it will soon begin trials of a mobile phone that can hand off calls between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Introduction of such phones has been long delayed by opposition from most cellcos. U.S. TO ALLOW LOW-POWER DEVICES IN TV SPECTRUM: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has agreed to let new low-power wireless devices operate in parts of the TV broadcast spectrum that are not used for other purposes. Marketing of the devices won't be allowed until February 18, 2009, the date when full conversion of U.S. broadcast television to digital is supposed to be complete. AT&T/BELLSOUTH MERGER GETS ANTITRUST OKAY: U.S. antitrust authorities have approved AT&T Inc's US$79 billion purchase of Bell South Corp. A ruling by the federal telecom regulator is expected today. ** The deal will create the largest U.S. carrier, combining the six formerly separate telecom giants: AT&T, Bell South, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, Ameritech, and Cingular Wireless. (See Telecom Update #467, 520) APPLICATIONS INVITED FOR JEANNE SAUVE AWARDS: Canadian Women in Communications is inviting women managers in telecommunications and broadcasting to apply for the 2007 Jeanne Sauve awards, which provide intensive internships in communications policy. Application deadline is 5 pm, December 6. http://www.cwc-afc.com/show-content.cfm?section=3Dwha-pro&subsection=3Djea COMMUNICATIONS INSTITUTE SETS PROGRAM: The Canadian chapter of the International Institute of Communications will hold its annual conference in Ottawa December 4-5. Program and registration information is available now at the IIC's website, http://www.iic-canada.ca. TELEHEALTH EXPERTS GATHER IN EDMONTON: The Canadian Society of Telehealth is holding its ninth annual conference October 14-17 at the Shaw Convention Centre in Edmonton, Alberta. http://www.cst-sct.org/en/index.php Rx FOR NETWORK PLANNING NIGHTMARES: The unruly mix of emerging products and services, changing suppliers, and new applications can create a planning nightmare for enterprise telecom and networking. Henry Dortmans, John Riddell, and Michael Dunne head the roster of top telecom experts at "Enterprise Networks 2006," which offers exclusive insights into maximizing the effectiveness of your IP systems and networks. ** Enterprise Networks 2006 will be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre October 24-25. Register online at http://www.enterprisenetworks.ca/register.html. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2006 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 13:08:43 -0500 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Convergence at the Heart of New Telecom Paradigm USTelecom dailyLead October 13, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eDuMfDtusXebklCibuddSBis TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Analysis: Convergence at the heart of new telecom paradigm BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Telefonica to offer VoIP, IPTV in Germany * Sprint picks Chicago, D.C. for WiMAX trials * Palm CEO says company is not for sale * Microsoft looks to gain ground in TV business USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Boost Business Results of Your Enterprise Customers via IMS-Based FMC TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Fox News uses Palm Treo to break NYC plane crash story * Israel's ECI aims to double broadband speeds * YouTube looking for ways to stop pirated videos VOIP DOWNLOAD * Nortel takes VoIP to a new level * Analysis: Inability to link with office PBX hinders Skype in business market REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Federal agencies, telecoms step up fight against pretexting * FCC to assess competition in video market * EC may impose penalties on 8 EU states for anticompetitive telecom markets DIVERSIONS * Pulled Pork, Pulled Corks in North Carolina * What You Get for ... $200,000 * Trying Again to Make Books Obsolete * A Lonely Petit Four of a Queen * 36 Hours in Shanghai Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eDuMfDtusXebklCibuddSBis ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 13, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:17:47 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 13, 2006 ******************************** EU Slams 13 Governments for Violating Telecom Rules http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20477?11228 The European Commission yesterday threatened legal action against 13 member governments for violating EU telecoms rules, Dow Jones reports. The Commission said that the 13 countries - Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, on a variety of ... Vodafone Drops Carphone Warehouse in Mobile Retail Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20474?11228 Vodafone yesterday dumped a partnership with Carphone Warehouse to sell contract mobile phones, opting instead to sign an exclusive deal with Phones4U, Carphone Warehouse's arch rival. Vodafone said that Carphone Warehouse was charging too much commission to market Vodafone's contract lines and has opted for Phones4U, who have ... The rise of lifestyle media: Achieving success in the digital convergence era http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20470?11228 The rise in online advertising can be distilled into two words: reach and relevance. Internet search engines such as Google have redefined the concept of targeted advertising. Their emphasis on measurement and direct accountability, in which advertisers pay-for-performance (click-through) rather than impressions alone, has changed ... BellSouth-AT&T Vote Expected Today http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20466?11228 WASHINGTON -- The Federal Communications Commission faces charges from consumer advocates and some lawmakers that it's on the path to re-establishing a communications monopoly as it considers AT&T Inc.'s buyout of BellSouth Corp. The FCC's OK represents the final major regulatory hurdle in AT&T's bid to ... Making a Run for It http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20462?11228 Enhancing Alcatel's Open CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) Policy, Alcatel and Runcom actively collaborated in different areas such as the development of end-to-end solutions including the integration of Runcom chipsets into Alcatel's Evolium WiMAX solution infrastructure as well as into terminals, interoperability testing, and ... FCC Ponders How To Fill Up 'White Spaces' http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20458?11228 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today unanimously took several first-step actions, including the partial grant of a Qualcomm petition, to start considering new broadband, video and other potential uses of the 700 MHz analog RF bands being freed by the U.S. broadcasters' digital-television (DTV) transition in February ... Thomson Fuses VOIP & IPTV http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20455?11228 PARIS -- Broadband World Forum Europe -- Thomson is the latest company to fly the convergence flag with news of a new product combination that pulls together two of the industry hot technologies -- VOIP and IPTV. The French company also announced a fixed/mobile convergence deployment at French competitive operator Free . ... A Treo Your Mom Could Love http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20451?11228 Playing catch-up to rival device manufacturers, Palm Inc. today said it is launching the Treo 680, the company's first truly consumer-focused device. The new Treo, targeted at a broader market than Palm's traditionally business-user focused products, comes in a variety of colors, offers an array of consumer-friendly ... China's Consumer Electronics Manufacturing Will More Than Double by 2010 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20448?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Low labor costs and a fast-growing domestic market will spur China's consumer electronics manufacturing industry to more than double by 2010, reports In-Stat. The industry will grow from $71.5 billion in 2006 to $167 billion in 2010, the high-tech market research firm says. China's mature supply chain, a ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: nospam.phone@none.com Subject: Phone Line Noise Question Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:08:55 UTC Organization: CSUA What causes the subtle hissing/background noise on phone lines? Is it due to the internal phone wiring pickup noise? Or inherent to analog telephones? When I press a number to start the dialing sequence, the background low-hiss noise becomes more noticeable. This morning I tried connecting my phone directly to the phone junction box outside, and I noticed the line noise is somewhat lower, to the point where I don't really notice it. (But it's still there ...) My phone lines are running in the crawl space. I remember last time I was down there, I saw some open connections and the lines were laying on the ground. Now if some of the wires are touching the ground, will that cause the hiss noise? The wires are those more rigid types, probably from the 1960s.. Last year I had a connection problem where I can call in, but can't dial out, when the raining season is here, so I was wondering if there's some kind of short to ground in part of the wire. (But doesn't short to ground will get rid of noise?) Thanks. Raymond ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #361 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Oct 14 23:55:04 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 4321E226D; Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:55:03 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #362 Message-Id: <20061015035503.4321E226D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:55:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:56:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 362 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Stalls AT&T-BellSouth Deal For at Least Another Week (John Dunbar AP) Cambridge [MA] Public Internet (CPI) Initiative (Monty Solomon) Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday (Stephen Ohlemacher, AP) A Telephone Magazine from Eighty Years Ago (TELECOM Digest Editor) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 21:41:24 -0500 From: John Dunbar, AP Subject: FCC Stalls AT&T-BellSouth Deal For at Least Another Month By John Dunbar The Associated Press WASHINGTON - The proposed buyout of BellSouth Corp. by AT&T Inc. hit a snag on Friday when the two Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission asked for more time to study last-minute concessions proposed by AT&T. The commission had been scheduled to vote Friday, but the timing of any decision was thrown into doubt by the development; now such a decision is at least a few weeks away. An FCC spokeswoman, Tamara Lipper, said that commission Chairman Kevin Martin was studying a request by Democrats Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps to delay any action while the commission evaluates AT&T's proposal and it is made available for public comment. Further complicating the issue, Martin was scheduled to leave the country on Saturday. Lipper said she did not know when he would return. The proposed deal already was under fire by consumer advocates and some lawmakers who said it would go a long way toward re-establishing a communications monopoly that the government broke up more than two decades ago. The FCC's approval would have removed the final major regulatory hurdle in AT&T's bid to extend its dominance as the nation's largest provider of phone, wireless and broadband Internet services. When the deal originally was announced in March, it was worth about $67 billion. But the rising price of AT&T's stock had pushed the value to $80.8 billion at the close of trading Thursday. The Justice Department approved the deal without conditions on Wednesday. Despite the scale of the purchase, the Justice Department found no potentially adverse effects on competition. At that time, Adelstein called the department's decision "a reckless abandonment of DoJ's responsibility to protect competition and consumers." Copps, the commission's other Democrat, said the "Justice Department has packed its bags and walked out on consumers and small businesses by refusing to impose even a single condition in the largest telecom merger the nation has ever seen." Copps and Adelstein were in an unusually strong position on the five-member commission, which has three Republicans. One of those GOP commissioners, Robert McDowell, was a potential tie-breaking vote who withdrew from the deliberations because he was a lobbyist who represented competitors of AT&T and BellSouth. Republican Deborah Taylor Tate had been expected to vote with Martin in favor of the acquisition. If the deal ultimately wins all the government endorsements necessary, the San Antonio-based AT&T Inc. would get total control over the nation's largest cellular provider, Cingular Wireless, a joint venture of the two companies that serves 57.3 million customers. Consumer advocates and some lawmakers claim the government is well on its way to reconstituting the old Ma Bell monopoly, which was broken up in 1984 after a lengthy court battle. The newly expanded AT&T would have operations in 22 states. AT&T estimates that about 10,000 jobs would be phased out over three years. Combined, the companies generate $117 billion in revenue and operate 68.7 million local phone lines stretching coast to coast across the southern United States and up through the Midwest. The merged company would employ 309,000 people before any job cuts. The deal would further the reunification of the seven regional Bell telephone operating companies and one long-distance provider that were spun off from the national AT&T monopoly under a federal court order designed to introduce competition. Including BellSouth, the new AT&T would consist of four former Bells and the long-distance business, which was acquired by the company late last year. The other two companies created from Bells were Verizon Communications Inc., which dominates the eastern United States, and Qwest Communications International Inc., the phone company for most of the Rocky Mountain and Northwest regions. Copyright 2006 The Seattle Times Company Copyright 2006 Associated Press 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 01:40:32 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cambridge [MA] Public Internet (CPI) Initiative The City of Cambridge, Masssachusetts in partnership with MIT, Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge Housing Authority, Harvard, and volunteers from the community, is embarking on a project to provide wireless coverage to many residents via a mesh network. This service will, resources permitting, be free to all residents of Cambridge and their visitors. It is currently in the proof of concept phase with a usable pilot expected later in 2006 and into 2007. http://www.cambridgema.gov/wifi/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 22:18:45 -0500 From: Stephen Ohlemacher, AP Subject: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer America's population is on track to hit 300 million on Tuesday morning, and it's causing a stir among environmentalists. People in the United States are consuming more than ever -- more food, more energy, more natural resources. Open spaces are shrinking and traffic in many areas is dreadful. But some experts argue that population growth only partly explains America's growing consumption. Just as important, they say, is where people live, what they drive and how far they travel to work. "The pattern of population growth is really the most crucial thing," said Michael Replogle, transportation director for Environmental Defense, a New York-based advocacy group. "If the population grows in thriving existing communities, restoring the historic density of older communities, we can easily sustain that growth and create a more efficient economy without sacrificing the environment," Replogle said. That has not been the American way. Instead, the country has fed its appetite for big houses, big yards, cul-de-sacs and strip malls. In a word: sprawl. "Because the U.S. has become a suburban nation, sprawl has become the most predominant form of land use," said Vicky Markham, director of the Center for Environment and Population, an advocacy group. "Sprawl is, by definition, more spread out. That of course requires more vehicles and more vehicle miles traveled." America still has a lot of wide-open spaces, with about 84 people per square mile, compared with about 300 people per square mile in the European Union and almost 900 people per square mile in Japan. But a little more than half the U.S. population is clustered in counties along the coasts, including those along the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. Also, much of the population is moving away from large cities to the suburbs and beyond. The fastest growing county is Flagler County, Fla., north of Daytona Beach; the fastest growing city is Elk Grove, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento; and the fastest growing metropolitan area is Riverside, Calif., about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. "In New York City, people tend to think of that as an urban jungle, but the environmental impact per capita is quite low," said Carlos Restrepo, a research scientist at New York University. "It tends to be less than it is for someone who lives in the suburbs with a big house where they need more than one car." The Census Bureau projects that America's population will hit 300 million at 7:46 a.m. EDT Tuesday. The projection is based on estimates for births, deaths and net immigration that add up to one new American every 11 seconds. The estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are included in official population estimates, though many demographers believe they are undercounted. The population reached its last milestone, 200 million, in 1967. That translates into a 50 percent increase in 39 years. During the same period, the number of households nearly doubled, the number motor vehicles more than doubled and the miles driven in those vehicles nearly tripled. The average household size has shrunk from 3.3 people to 2.6 people, and the share of households with only one person has jumped from less than 16 percent to about 27 percent. "The natural resource base that is required to support each person keeps rising," Replogle said. "We're heating and cooling more space, and the housing units are more spread out than ever before." The U.S. is the third largest country in the world, behind China and India. The U.S. is the fastest growing of the industrialized nations, adding about 2.8 million people a year, or just under 1 percent. India is growing faster but the United Nations considers it to be a less developed country. About 40 percent of U.S. population growth comes from immigration, both legal and illegal, according to the Census Bureau. The rest comes from births outnumbering deaths. "It's not the population, it's the consumption that can do us in," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "These are the luxuries we have been able to support until now. But we're not going to be able to do it forever." On The Net: Census Bureau population clock: http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:04:31 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: A Telephone Magazine from Eighty Years Ago [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For our archives feature this weekend, we take a look at an ancient magazine from a predecessor of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. The magazine is 'Southwestern Telephone News, October, 1926.' This was given to our archives by Jim Haynes thirteen years ago, in August, 1993. I hope you will enjoy checking it out once again. PAT] ========================================================= >From telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Wed Aug 18 15:19:39 1993 Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU via TCP with SMTP id AA02118; Wed, 18 Aug 93 15:19:34 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA10469 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ptownson@gaak.lcs.mit.edu); Wed, 18 Aug 1993 14:19:29 -0500 Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1993 14:19:29 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199308181919.AA10469@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: ptownson@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: telephone.magazine.from.1926 Status: RO >From telecom Wed Aug 18 01:22:53 1993 Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA20146 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for \telecom); Wed, 18 Aug 1993 01:22:49 -0500 Received: from rodan.UU.NET by delta.eecs.nwu.edu with SMTP id AA18536 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Wed, 18 Aug 1993 01:22:06 -0500 Received: from relay1.UU.NET by rodan.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-mail-drop) id AA19991; Wed, 18 Aug 93 02:22:01 -0400 Received: from darkstar.UCSC.EDU by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA27287; Wed, 18 Aug 93 02:21:58 -0400 Received: by darkstar.UCSC.EDU (4.1/1.34) id AA17931; Tue, 17 Aug 93 23:19:49 PDT To: comp-dcom-telecom@uunet.UU.NET Path: cats.ucsc.edu!haynes From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Telephony in 1926, Part 1 of ??? Date: 18 Aug 1993 06:19:46 GMT Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz Lines: 200 Message-Id: <24shm2INNhg9@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> Nntp-Posting-Host: hobbes.ucsc.edu Status: RO ender: Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz Keywords: I was recently given a copy of the Southwestern Bell employee magazine "Southwestern Telephone News", issue of October 1926, which was Volume 13, No. 10 and hence must have started publication about 1913. This article will be a summary of the contents; perhaps I'll type in or review particular articles later. The front cover shows a cable splicer hanging from a strand as he splices an underground cable to an aerial cable in Dallas. Repeated several times througout the issue is, "New Long Distance rates and practices went into effect on October 1st. Pamphlets giving full information on these changes are available for all employees. Study the rates carefully so that you can answer the questions of subscribers." I remember this attitude, that all employees should be prepared to represent the company to the public, was later embodied in a slogan, "To the public _you_ are the telephone company," that was constantly presented to employees. On page 2 is a photograph of sheep with their heads in the grass, and an amusing caption: "Sheep (Eating) In July, our explanation that the folks in the frontspiece were stacking wheat brought a protest from Kansas that they were not stacking but were shocking wheat. This time we take no chances. Grazing, as we remember, is the right term, but we are not sheepherders. (Texas panhandle, please note.)" The first article is a bio of Charles P. Cooper, former president of Ohio Bell who was just elected vice-president of AT&T. Next there are five pages with pictures reporting on a Telephone Pioneers meeting in New York City. Among other activities they visited AT&T headquarters, Bell Labs, and New York Telephone headquarters and were greeted by executives of those companies. The highlight was an address by Thomas A. Watson, who told of his experiences as a colleague of Alexander Graham Bell. This was followed by a demonstration of talking movies, including one depicting the invention of the telephone and narrated by Watson. Then there is an article "Efficient and Courteous" by an anonymous "counterman". He tells of receiving a letter of commendation from a customer. Even though he had had to turn down the customer's request for service he had fully explained why there was a shortage of facilities in the customer's area, and the problems of the company in extending its lines. Then the medical director of AT&T writes to those who have just returned from vacations, urging them to use their spare time during the week as a "vacation all year." He suggests they get out of doors, do the essential chores, of course, but do something recreational. " ...forget as far as possible that you ever worked for the Telephone Company." The telephone exhibit at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition is described, with a reminder that the telephone was first exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia 50 years earlier. The 1926 exhibit includes a showing of motion pictures, two of which are talking. One of these features Thomas A. Watson [and is presumably the same film that was shown to the Pioneers]; and the other "contrasts the noisy operating room and crude apparatus of the eighties, when boys were operators, with the central office of the present." I guess in those days AT&T stock was marketed through telephone offices, as there is an article about how an AT&T rights offering was handled. There are accounts of company employees persuading the public to buy stock, and also of people who threw away the rights documents, not realizing they had monetary value. There's a sort item about telephone operators assisting when there was an explosion at a high school, and another showing the first installation of a P.A. system in a school, with switching so that music or voice can be had in any combination of rooms. Then there is the second part of an article reprinted from _Telephony_ by an operator, Manta J. Elder, about her experiences. There were annual floods when the Marais-des-Cygnes overran its banks near Ottawa, Kansas. Many operators lived across the river from the telephone office and had to cross the river in canoes and stay at the office so they would be available. Also severe winters when the streets were impassable to vehicles and the company sent horses to the residence of each operator to bring them to work. Sleet storms in February took lines down, so things were very quiet at the switchboard until service was restored; and then everybody wanted to use the telephone. She tells of working the last day at an old switchboard before cutover to a new one in a new office. "The next day i went by the old office, and my feet naturally led me up the old stairway. If I had known that I should see the salvaging force at their work, I would never had have the courage to enter the old room. The board was already sadly wrecked. It seemed to me that I was looking upon something almost human, which was being made to suffer after years of patient and loving service to a public which now gives it no thought. "As I walked on toward my home, I fell to thinking of the many and varied messages that had been carried through that old public servant. The first news of special interest to all people handled through its channels was the news of Admiral Dewey's victory at Manila Bay, which occurred about three weeks after the installation of the board. "Service began on this old switchboard June 13, 1898, and except for one hour during President McKinley's funeral, until December, 1915, it was a living part of the community it so faithfully served." She goes on to tell of the World War, and of the influenza epidemic. Says that in earlier times the telephone operators often complained that they were not appreciated by the public, but at the time of writing most people are truly appreciative of their services. A little of the history of the company, which was originally the Kansas City Telephone company, called the "Home" Company; at the time of abandonment of the old switchboard the "Home" and "Bell" companies were consolidated under the name of "The Kansas Telephone Company", in the spring of 1915. On January 1, 1926, the company was transferred to Southwestern Bell. Then there are three pages of managerial personnel changes, with some portraits. Then an article about formation of the Charles S. Gleed chapter of Telephone Pioneers in Kansas City, and an article about the switchboard in St. Louis being extremely busy in the aftermath of the St. Louis Cardinals winning the National League pennant. A page of short items: Clemenceau quoted on the need for technical experts to be aware of matters outside the scope of their expertise; a comment on the article by "a counterman"; an article about the recent AT&T stock issue; and a repeat of the item about new long distance rates and practices. Four pages with pictures about Bell Telephone Laboratores, and some unrelated pictures of employees enjoying their summer vacations. Two pages about Texas beginning a new billing method: instead of billing all customers on the same day of the month they will spread the billing dates throughout the month to smooth out the workload. Two pages about handling mail in the headquarters mail room, the need for good addresses, and the problem of customers sending cash in the mail when paying their bills; an average of $15 a day is found in the mail room when the supervisor has to open inadequately addressed mail. Then a rather technical article, with schematic diagram, of a circuit to simplify cutting phantom transpositions. (When a phantom circuit is added to two existing circuits it is necessary to alter the way the wires are transposed on the poles. This must be done without interrupting service on the exiting circuits any longer than necessary.) Two pages of service records, including portraits of seven men who have worked a total of 185 years. One page about the "first annual" Watermelon Festival in Hope, AR. An article about keeping score on collection work; teams get points for minimizing the need to communicate with subscribers to get them to pay their bills. Photographs of the new Norman, OK office, and an open house for visitors. Suggestions for Halloween costumes (illustrations) and two pages of illustrations of ladies' fashion suggestions. A page of cartoons by "Stack", with a Halloween theme. Three pages telling where every construction crew is working and what jobs they are working on. Some photos, including a cable splicer and his helper with what appears to be a push cart containing their tools and supplies. A page with a map of the company's territory, showing the locations of all lost-time accidents for the year. Four pages of social news: parties, retirements, contests won, other activities. "Anyone at St. Louis Toll who wants a thrill, should let Miss Hogan take them riding in her Ford. She misses other cars by a fender." A page "What I Did Today" containing stories by operators of how they assisted the public. A page of poetry written by telephone people. Inside back cover, a list of the principal management officers of the company and their titles. Back cover, an AT&T advertisement. This one shows operators being delivered to their office in a truck in a howling blizzard; and the text tells how people take the telephone for granted, how different life would be without it, and how 300,000 telephone people work to maintain dependable service. haynes@cats.ucsc.edu haynes@cats.bitnet "Ya can talk all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was!" "No it aint! But ya gotta know the territory!" Meredith Willson: "The Music Man" ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #362 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 16 16:48:32 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 891E9222E; Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:48:31 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #363 Message-Id: <20061016204831.891E9222E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:48:31 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:50:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 363 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Air America Files Bankruptcy (Paul Farhi, Washington Post) Phony Identification (Monty Solomon) Italy Adopts Microsoft Anti-Child Pornography Software (Reuters News Wire) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 16, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Cellphone Dead? AA Batteries to the Rescue! (Raqueeb Hassan) Re: Phone Line Noise Question (Raqueeb Hassan) Re: Telephone Magazine From Eighty Years Ago (jhhaynes@earthlink.net) Re: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday (Sam Spade) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:32:42 -0500 From: Paul Fahri Subject: Air America Files Bankruptcy By Paul Farhi Washington Post Staff Writer Air America Radio, which has tried to create a liberal talk and news network to challenge the dominance of conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, yesterday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection but said it would remain on the air. Air America has battled financial turbulence since its launch in early 2004. Despite the star power of Al Franken -- the comedian and best-selling author who hosts one of its weekday programs -- the privately owned company has lost almost $42 million since its inception, including $13.1 million so far this year, according to its bankruptcy filing. Franken himself is owed some $360,000 on his $2 million annual contract. The New York-based service has also struggled to get and keep affiliate stations with strong signals. It was recently dropped by its flagship station in New York, the nation's largest radio market, which forced Air America to move to a weaker outlet. It isn't heard at all in Dallas, Philadelphia and Houston, three of the nation's 10 largest radio markets. In all, Air America's programs are heard on 92 stations and on Washington-based XM Satellite Radio. The liberal network says it has about 4 million listeners. In the Washington area, several Air America programs, including Franken's, are carried on WWRC (1260 AM), which has a limited broadcasting range. During the most recent quarterly ratings period, "Progressive Talk 1260" didn't attract enough listeners to rank among the region's top 35 stations. Dave Pugh, who oversees WWRC and other local stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, said he expected Air America to continue broadcasting. "We're committed to the format," he said. "Unless we hear something different, the network will continue. It's business as usual." Air America, as well as independent observers, said the bankruptcy filing -- which enables a company to reorganize its finances while freezing claims from creditors -- doesn't suggest liberal-oriented talk can't compete with Limbaugh or other conservatives such as Sean Hannity. "This has more to do with how [Air America] structured its business," said Tom Taylor, the editor of Inside Radio, an industry newsletter. "They had to invent the business model because no one else had, and they made some mistakes. ... It's like they say about pioneers -- they're the ones with arrows in their backs." Indeed, although conservatives have dominated the talk format for decades, liberals have made some inroads in recent years and are popular in many cities around the country. For example, Washington-based Jones Radio Networks has syndicated talk shows featuring liberal hosts Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller and Bill Press, with more than 180 stations carrying the programs. "The format is healthy and here to stay," said Amy Bolton, general manager of news and talk programming for Jones. Air America said it sought bankruptcy court protection after being unable to work out an agreement to settle a debt with a creditor it would not name. People at the company identified the creditor as MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting, a New York company that had been the landlord of Air America's studios in Chicago and Los Angeles. In a dispute over rent payments that erupted soon after Air America began broadcasting, MultiCultural locked out Air America's employees from the two studios, giving the fledgling company a public-relations black eye. "[We] do not think this says anything about the viability of progressive talk," said Air America spokeswoman Jaime Horn. "We had a cost structure that did not support the revenue. We are confident that this transition will enable the business to grow." Court papers show Air America had $4.3 million in assets and $20.3 million in liabilities, according to Reuters news service. The bankruptcy filing came with the disclosure by Air America yesterday of a succession of executive and board defections. Rob Glaser, the founder of RealNetworks Inc. who owns 37 percent of the company and is its chief financial backer, resigned as a director yesterday along with two others. Air America said it has named a new chief executive, Scott Elberg, who has been with the company since mid-2005. Elberg is the third person to hold the CEO's job since April, following the resignation of the former top executive and his replacement by an interim manager. Furthermore, Air America said two other board members left in August, that its president quit in June and that its executive vice president and chief operating officer departed in July. In addition to Franken, Air America syndicates shows hosted by Randi Rhodes and Jerry Springer, among others. Franken, who was traveling yesterday, was unavailable for comment. Copyright 2006 The Washington Post Company 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:47:03 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Phony Identification PERSPECTIVE Phony Identification Caller ID lets us avoid those we deem annoyances. But how annoying is it when someone spoofs the system? By Tom Keane | September 24, 2006 The number on my Caller ID reads 617-000-0000, and I pick it up, half-thinking it might be James Bond. A little disappointingly, the call is from the Suffolk County district attorney's office. Law enforcement types, apparently, can manipulate the telephone system to hide their real numbers. It makes sense. There are bad guys out there, and prosecutors don't necessarily want them phoning back. Some months later, I get another call from the same number. I answer, visions of DA Dan Conley with a martini -- shaken not stirred -- on the other end. Instead, a recorded message starts up, and I hear a sonorous voice: "I know we can do better . . ." It's from gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli. Now I really am disappointed. Since it was introduced about 20 years ago, Caller ID has evolved from an amusing gimmick ("Hello, Bill." "How did you know it was me?!") to a ubiquitous tell-all. At home, we use it to avoid telemarketers; at work, it lets us hide from annoying customers. Teenagers love the cellphone feature that creates a different ring depending on whether one is friend, foe, or, worst of all, Mom or Dad. Of course, it's possible to block one's identity on a call (press *67), but many of us have set up our phones to automatically reject anyone who does. Businesses have taken advantage of the technology as well. Call from home to activate your new credit card and there's no need to type in your card number. Phone for a late-night snack and the pizzeria already knows your name, address, and, one suspects, whether you tip well or not. The telephone once allowed us to be nameless, then Caller ID seemed to change all that. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/09/24/phony_identification/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:37:03 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Italy Adopts Microsoft Anti-Child Pornography Software Italy became the first European country to adopt a Microsoft system for combating child pornography on the Internet, something the government and the computer firm believe the whole continent is set to take up. At a news conference on Monday, the Italian police's special communications unit said the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), which is already in use in Canada and Indonesia, will speed up its investigations into Web pornography by 80 percent. "In substance, we want to oppose pedophile rings with an international network of cyber-police," said the head of the police postal and communications squad, Domenico Vulpiani. Microsoft developed the system after a Canadian police officer working in the field wrote to the company for help in what investigators say is a constantly increasing field of crime which preys on young users of the Internet. A spokesman for the software giant said Britain and Spain were likely to adopt the system -- a database to help investigators sift through suspect Web site and electronic communications -- in the coming months and that five other European countries were not far behind. Microsoft has spent $7 million developing the system and is giving it free-of-charge to governments. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 16, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:59:04 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 16, 2006 ******************************** T-Mobile Eyes U.K. Broadband Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20504?11228 T-Mobile UK is considering a shift away from its mobile-only strategy, with particular focus on entering the British fixed broadband market. Quoting a T-Mobile spokesman, Robin O'Kelly, Dow Jones reports that the prospect of offering converged services is of interest to the company. "Fixed broadband is always a ... The Sony Ericsson K790i: A Photo-Savvy World Phone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20496?11228 It sounds like the perfect traveling companion for the weary globetrotter: a world phone that incorporates a high-quality camera. After all, in these hectic days, who wants to carry both a digital camera and a cell phone while traveling? The Sony Ericsson K790i combines both image capture and global calling capabilities into a neat ... Palm Aims for Consumers, Maps Google http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20494?11228 As expected, Palm officially unveiled its Treo 680, which is part of its effort to extend the reach of its Treo smartphone into the consumer market. Palm also announced plans to deliver Google Maps technology into its Treo smartphones. The Treo 680, like the recently unveiled BlackBerry Pearl from Research In Motion, aims to take ... U.S. Investors Grab A Chunk Of Idea Cellular http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20491?11228 Investment house Providence Equity Partners picked up a 16-percent stake in India's Idea Cellular Ltd., the fifth largest cellular carrier in that country, for $400 million. The Aditya Birla conglomerate, which owns 98.3 percent of Idea, had said back in April that it planned to sell off about one third of its equity in order ... FCC Balks at AT&T/BellSouth Merger Vote http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20489?11228 On Friday the 13th, the day of the big vote at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the merger of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp., three of the voting commissioners apparently got spooked. Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps issued statements Friday asking that the vote be postponed, and for the ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Raqueeb Hassan Subject: Re: Cellphone Dead? AA Batteries to the Rescue! Date: 15 Oct 2006 07:53:25 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com David wrote: >> By Clayton Collins, Christian Science Monitor >> Cellphone-toters dread the sound: a hand-held device chirping its >> complaint, often far from home base, about needing to be recharged. >> Now on the market: a lipstick-size brass canister that holds one AA >> battery and offers reserve power. Run a short adaptor from the tip of >> a Turbo Charge to your phone, and a blue light indicates that a charge >> is flowing. You're back in business long enough to get to a plug -- the >> device's maker, Voxred International, claims "up to 40 hours" of >> standby time or two hours of talk, and touts patent-pending technology >> that protects devices' batteries from damage. It is designed to work >> with PDAs as well. >> We tested Turbo Charge -- about $20 at stores including Best Buy, > OK, but devices like this (using 2 AA or AAA batteries) have been on > the market for a while. My wife bought me one as a bit of a joke at > the local $1 store. I doubt it had any special circuitry but I expect > my phone to handle the charging details, not the power-source. > - David That brings me the thought, I haven't seen any solar cellphone charger, have you? It should be a lifesaver where there's no power source around! Raqueeb Hassan Bangladesh ------------------------------ From: Raqueeb Hassan Subject: Re: Phone Line Noise Question Date: 15 Oct 2006 08:16:03 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com nospam.phone@none.com wrote: > What causes the subtle hissing/background noise on phone lines? Is it > due to the internal phone wiring pickup noise? Or inherent to analog > telephones? > When I press a number to start the dialing sequence, the background > low-hiss noise becomes more noticeable. This morning I tried > connecting my phone directly to the phone junction box outside, and I > noticed the line noise is somewhat lower, to the point where I don't > really notice it. (But it's still there ...) > My phone lines are running in the crawl space. I remember last time I > was down there, I saw some open connections and the lines were laying > on the ground. Now if some of the wires are touching the ground, will > that cause the hiss noise? The wires are those more rigid types, > probably from the 1960s.. Last year I had a connection problem where I > can call in, but can't dial out, when the raining season is here, so I > was wondering if there's some kind of short to ground in part of the > wire. (But doesn't short to ground will get rid of noise?) > Thanks. > Raymond Bad weather mostly if it's raining and has been raining for couple of days; then water seems to penetrate your phone line causing line noise. Bad cabling, electrical interfereance and poor connection points may add to that. Please make sure that you use good quality cable which has better shielding. The phone cable shouldn't be close to electrical applicances like TV and heater. When talking on the phone, should you hear static of any sort, the phone line may be earthed. Raqueeb Hassan Bangladesh ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:48:07 CDT From: jhhaynes@earthlink.net Subject: Re: Telephone magazine from Eighty Years Ago Since I got that magazine I now have a scanner. If I can ever find the magazine again I will scan it for the archives. But it must be under a lot of paper here. Jim Haynes jhhaynes at earthlink dot net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But, I want to thank you in any event for the work you did when you sent the original article, now twelve or thirteen years ago. It was interesting and exciting to read the first time, and again over this past weekend. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:36:26 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Stephen Ohlemacher wrote: > By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer > America's population is on track to hit 300 million on Tuesday morning, > and it's causing a stir among environmentalists. Strange, I never hear those environmentalists complain about the untracked 3 or 4 illegal immigrants to an apartment in many metro areas of the U.S. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No, we do not hear much about that; but someone had better wake up and do something; the Census Bureau claims that at our present rate of growth, we can expect to see the 400-million mark sometime around 2020-2025. They say the spurts of a hundred million will get closer and closer together. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #363 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 17 15:05:54 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id EFA6D2224; Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:05:42 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #364 Message-Id: <20061017190542.EFA6D2224@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:05:42 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:07:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 364 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Music Industry Strikes Again! 8000 New Lawsuits Filed (Kate Holton) The Web is a Terror Training Camp in the USA, Chertoff Claims (Reuters) Google to Convert Headquarters to Solar Power (Michael Liedtke) Just What Is SIP and SS7 and How Do They Work With VoIP? (FreedomFireCom) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 17, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Last Laugh! Re: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday (Ken Wheatley) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:21:10 -0500 From: Kate Holton Subject: Music Industry Strikes Again! 8000 New Lawsuits Filed By Kate Holton The music industry has launched a fresh wave of 8,000 lawsuits against alleged file-sharers around the world, escalating its drive to stamp out online piracy and encourage the use of legal download services. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the world's music companies, said on Tuesday the new cases were brought in 17 countries, including the first ones ever in Brazil, Mexico and Poland. The trade group said more than 1 billion music tracks were illegally downloaded last year in Brazil, the largest market in Latin America. Record company revenue has nearly halved in Brazil since 2000, IFPI said. IFPI has said some 20 billion songs were illegally downloaded worldwide last year. The industry has now filed about 18,000 lawsuits in the United States, the largest market for music sales, and 13,000 in the rest of the world. The legal proceedings involve both criminal and civil suits and are aimed at "uploaders" -- people who put copyrighted songs onto Internet file-sharing networks to offer to music fans without permission. The IFPI said many of those targeted for legal action were parents whose children had been illegally file-sharing. Others facing law suits included a laboratory assistant in Finland and a German parson. The group added that more than 2,300 people had already settled their case for illegally file-sharing copyrighted material with an average payout of 2,420 euros ($3,034). John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI, told Reuters in an interview he was encouraged by the group's progress, although he said the fight against online piracy would be an ongoing battle. "It's not getting easier but we are encouraged enough by the results to keep on going," he said via the telephone from a trip to Brazil. "It will never go away completely." He said the success of high-speed broadband was combining with the threat of legal action and fears of computer viruses to encourage more and more users to opt for legal online services. While the cost of pursuing individual legal cases has been very expensive, he said the music industry had benefited from its settlement of more than $100 million in July this year with long-time antagonist Kazaa, one of the world's best known file-sharing networks. "It put some money back into the war chest to try to clean up the online world," he said. "Legal offerings will only thrive and open in different countries if there is a chance of them succeeding." Legal downloads represent about 11 percent of total music sales, but still do not make up for declining CD sales. Total music sales declined 4 percent in the first half of 2006. Kennedy said the drive to see digital sales make up for the loss in the physical format was the "holy grail" for the music industry and said he hoped to see it happen by 2007. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:31:58 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: The Web is a Terror Training Camp in the USA, Chertoff Claims Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday. "We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet," Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police. "They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites." Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London's transit system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat. To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into "intelligence fusion centers," where they would work with local police agencies, and cooperative ISPs in identifying dissident users. By the end of the next fiscal year, he said the department aims to up that to 35 staffers. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about an _honest_ re-write of this news item, like this: " Michael Chertoff has stated that people who get most of their news from truthful sources on the internet instead of relying on the highly sanitized news presented as 'news' by the New York Times and the talking heads on television are more likely to have a realistic view of the world and a certain amount of anger built up inside them when they realize how politicians and other 'authorities' have defrauded and humored them while attemptng desparately to maintain their own fraud, called 'law and order' in the USA. Long ago, we got the newspapers and the Talking Heads on televison and the radio to toe the line, but that damn Internet! It is a bunch of people talking and thinking for themselves, and we cannot have that if _we_ are to maintain control. There ought to be a law against things like Internet!" PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:52:05 -0500 From: Michael Liedtke Subject: Google to Convert Headquarters to Solar Power By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer Google Inc. is converting its renowned headquarters to run partly on solar power, hoping to set an example for corporate America. The Internet search leader announced what is believed to be the largest solar project undertaken by a U.S. company during a solar energy conference in Silicon Valley on Monday. Google believes the sun eventually can deliver as much as 30 percent of the power at its 1-million-square-foot campus in Mountain View — a suburb about 35 miles south of San Francisco. The ambitious project will require installing more than 9,200 solar panels on a high-tech mecca nicknamed the "Googleplex." After leasing the offices for several years, Google bought the campus for $319 million earlier this year. Once they're in place next spring, the solar panels are expected to produce about 1.6 megawatts of electricity, or enough power to supply about 1,000 homes. The job is being handled by Pasadena-based EI Solutions, part of a high-tech incubator run by entrepreneur Bill Gross, whose idea to link ads to search engine requests during the 1990 inspired the business model that generates most of Google's profits. Google wouldn't disclose the project's cost, but it won't strain a company with nearly $10 billion in cash. The anticipated savings from future energy bills should enable Google to recoup the solar project's costs in five to 10 years, estimated David Radcliffe, the company's vice president of real estate. "We hope corporate America is paying attention. We want to see a lot of copycats" of this project, Radcliffe said. Energy costs are a major concern at Google, which already consumes a tremendous amount of power to run the computer farms that keep its search engine humming. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin also are big supporters of alternative energy. The billionaires began driving hybrid cars shortly after they hit the mass market. Page also is among the investors in Tesla Motors Inc., a Silicon Valley startup developing a sports car that runs on electricity. Despite technological advances since the first photovoltaic cells were invented 50 years ago, solar power is still two to three times more expensive than fossil fuels in the U.S. and relies on government subsidies to compete. The solar energy industry nevertheless is expected to grow from $11 billion in 2005 to $51 billion in 2015, estimated Clean Edge Inc., a market research firm. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: FreedomFireCom Subject: Just What Is SIP And SS7 and How Do They Work With VoIP? Date: 16 Oct 2006 16:11:04 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Signaling System 7 (SS7) are the common protocols used for transmitting voice across networks. Just how they work with VoIP ... or not ... opens the door for both concerns and opportunity. You can read the rest of this article here: http://Broadband-nation.blogspot.com God Bless, Michael Lemm FreedomFire Communications "Helping YOUR Business....DO Business" http://DS3-Bandwidth.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/freedomfirecom ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 17, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:00:17 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 17, 2006 ******************************** Europe Maintains Lead in OECD's Broadband Penetration Index http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20538?11228 Denmark has jumped to the top of the June 2006 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) fixed broadband penetration league table, displacing Iceland from the number one spot, but maintaining Europe's sterling performance as a broadband haven. Denmark's broadband penetration edged up from 25% at end-2005 to ... Mobile Operators Enter Polish Fixed Voice Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/20532?11228 PTC has joined Polkomtel in entering the fixed-line market. Pawel Szarkowski, a spokesman for the company, was cited in local news sources as saying that the company planned to win tens of thousands of subscribers by the end of 2006. Significance: According to industry regulator UKE, the country had 11,803,000 subscribers, of which ... Telenor Wins Major Tax Case in Norwegian Supreme Court http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20529?11228 OSLO, Norway -- Norwegian telecoms group Telenor ASA won a nearly 3 billion kroner (US$448 million; E353 million) tax settlement in the supreme court on Tuesday. Telenor sued Norwegian tax authorities for rejecting a tax deduction in 2001 when the group sold shares at a loss in Danish mobile phone operator Sonofon Holding A/S ... Nokia, Turner Broadcasting in Pact to Enable Users View Cartoon Network on Mobile Phones http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20526?11228 HELSINKI, Finland -- Nokia Oyj, the world's largest cell phone maker, said Monday it entered an agreement with Turner Broadcasting for mobile phone users to view Turner's Cartoon Network on mobile handsets in Europe. Cell phone subscribers, using Nokia's Content Discoverer, will be able to browse, download and ... Sprint Gets Reprieve in iPCS Case http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20523?11228 Sprint Nextel's iDEN network will continue to operate in iPCS territories following the stay of a Circuit Court ruling. Sprint also announced that Qualcomm's Qchat will power next-generation push-to-talk (PTT) services when its CDMA2000 1XEV-DO Revision A network gets up and running. Sprint mounted an appeal in its legal ... AT&T: We're Sticking With FTTN http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20517?11228 Rumors that AT&T Inc. is abandoning the fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) part of its Project Lightspeed broadband access network makeover are being shot down by the carrier and industry analysts this week. Following a fiber-to-the-home conference and the Broadband World Forum, analysts, equipment makers, and competitors once again ... FON's $5 WiFi http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20513?11228 Hotspots get a whole lot cheaper and potentially more secure, while converged devices get more ruggedized and mesh goes solar in this week's new-product roundup. FONtime: WiFi chipmaker Atheros Communications Inc. is working with wireless upstart FON to provide potential customers with a souped-up 802.11g router for public ... Booming Camera Phone Sales Drive Image Sensor Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20510?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- In 2005, the image sensor market continued its strong growth, spurred by the booming camera phone market, reports In-Stat. Camera phones comprised over 70% of all digital cameras that shipped in 2005, and the vast majority of these devices used Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) sensors, with the ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Ken Wheatley Subject: Last Laugh! Re: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:53:03 +0100 Our population? Comp.dcom.telecom users? Pat, you're a star! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No, its not the number of C.D.T. readers! I could only wish that were so. It is 'merely' the estimated population of the USA as of 7:30 AM Tuesday morning. And those same authorities claim we will reach 400+ million population in a lot less time than the 39 years it took to reach 300. As more and more Americans reach the age to begin breeding (or doing whatever nature tells them to do -- thank God there are many of us who are not 'that way') -- the stats will go topsy-turvy and we -- or rather those of you who plan on sticking around a couple more generations at least -- will find more of us in prison, and considerably more of us per mile (on average, 84 per mile now), and more of us waiting for trains and busses in the morning than at present. As for me, I expect to be gone sometime soon, and when it does happen, it won't be a minute too soon for me! But thanks for the laugh today! PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #364 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 18 14:36:35 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 1FDF3222C; Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:36:34 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #365 Message-Id: <20061018183634.1FDF3222C@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:36:34 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:40:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 365 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsoft Opens Virtual Drives for Free (Reuters News Wire) Microsoft Engaging With Hackers (Jonathan Kent, BBC News) IEC's World Forum on Broadband Closes (Lisa Reyes) Level 3 Buys Broadwing (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 18, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: The Web is a Terror Training Camp in the USA, Chertoff Claims (S Sobol) Re: Just What Is SIP And SS7 and How Do They Work With VoIP? (Ken Wheatley) Re: Phony Identification (mc) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:25:37 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Microsoft Opens Virtual Drives for Free Microsoft said on Tuesday it would allow anyone to use its specifications for "virtual" drives, which enable one computer to run several operating systems, with the promise never to sue for infringement of its legal rights. The Microsoft virtualisation software has been available for more than two years, but as computers become more powerful the use of virtualisation is expected to mushroom, the company said at a news conference. The software permits the easy use of several operating systems on one machine. So, for example, dangerous software could be installed on a virtual machine without affecting the host computer. The company's specifications will be made available to anyone who wants to use them under an "Open Specification Promise," introduced last month. The company said the license was "an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to every individual and organization in the world to make use of this patented technology for free, now and forever when implementing specified open standards." Earlier this year, Microsoft said it would team up with Linux supplier XenSource to supply the virtual specifications to permit Windows and Linux to run on the same machines. Such virtual software is also made by VMWare, a unit of EMC Corp., which helped pioneer the market. The question of making software open to others has been at issue in Brussels, where the European Commission has ordered Microsoft to share protocols with rival makers of servers. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:31:17 -0500 From: Jonathan Kent Subject: Microsoft Engaging With Hackers By Jonathan Kent BBC Click reporter, in Malaysia In a few weeks time Microsoft is expected to launch Vista, its new operating system, and in January we will all get to play with the finished version. But how safe will this brave new world be? Given the number of attacks Windows usually attracts it is not surprising that Microsoft has been speaking to anyone they think can help. A team from Microsoft headquarters went to Malaysia for Asia's biggest gathering of hackers - not to confront the enemy - but to throw the hackers a party. But behind the charm offensive, said Microsoft's Security Programme Manager Sarah Blankinship, lies a serious purpose. "We come to conferences like Hack in the Box to engage with the security researcher community, to deepen our existing relationships, to understand new technologies, tools and methodologies, and ultimately to help us make our products more secure and to keep our customers safer." Open relationship Hack in the Box brings together hackers, security professionals and the companies who rely on their expertise. Together they may determine whether 2007 is a good or bad year for Microsoft, because security will probably make or break Vista, its first new operating system since XP's security-plagued release six years ago. "I still don't feel that Microsoft is going to take it very seriously", said Joanna Rutkowska, Security Researcher. As Mike Davis from Honeynet explained, there has been a shift of culture that has led Microsoft to open up and engage with the hackers. "Everybody sees them as the big evil empire that nobody's ever going to be able to change, but in actuality they are changing. They're making a lot of strides to communicate more with researchers, the community. "They're inviting people into their home, to the Microsoft campus to tell them what's wrong with their code, how they can fix it. "They're asking for help instead of just standing at the top of their mountain and saying 'we are the best'." The Microsoft team's top priority is a discussion about an apparent flaw in Vista security. They say they are here to listen -- but are they? Joanna Rutkowska, a security researcher for Coseinc, is not so sure. "After I presented my findings at the Ciscern conference in Singapore in July, about how to bypass Vista kernel protection, I still don't feel that Microsoft is going to take it very seriously. "I talked to some Microsoft engineers a couple of days ago and they say they're not sure that they're going to do anything about this." Competition concerns At Hack in the Box, Microsoft's Doug MacIver gave an insiders take on security flaws in Vista. He is an expert in the platform's BitLocker Drive Encryption. Integrating tighter security features into the new OS seems a logical step, but is it fair? The European Union has already voiced concern that by including features traditionally bought from independent suppliers, Microsoft is being anti-competitive. John Viega from McAfee also seems to think so: "I think it's pretty unfortunate that Microsoft is here to cosy up to the security industry when they're working so hard to lock security vendors off their platform. "With Vista, their new operating system, they're trying to keep vendors off by putting security technologies on that ensure that they have control over who can offer protection and who can't." While the security software firms may feel cold-shouldered, the hackers are happy to enjoy a drink with Microsoft, especially when the "evil empire" is buying. But the question is: will the hackers still respect Microsoft in the morning? If there was an answer at Hack in the Box it was a resounding "maybe". They like the charm offensive, they are just not sure how long it is going to last. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/click_online/5413792.stm Copyright 2006 BBC News. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html ------------------------------ From: Lisa Reyes Subject: IEC's Broadband World Forum Europe Closes in Paris Date: WED, 18 OCT 2006 12:51:33 -0500 Reply-To: lreyes@iec.org U.S. Contact: Lisa Reyes Phone: +1-312-559-3325 E-Mail: mailto:lreyes@iec.org European Contact: Brian Dolby Phone: +44 (0)115 948 6917 E-Mail: mailto:brian@gbcspr.com European Contact: Howard Jones +44 (0)115 948 6917 E-Mail: mailto:howard@gbcspr.com IEC's Broadband World Forum Europe Closes in Paris with Record-Breaking Attendance and 2007 Exhibition Floor Nearly Sold-Out The International Engineering Consortium’s (IEC) Broadband World Forum Europe closed last week with nearly 6500 information and communication technology professionals and more than 110 exhibiting companies PARIS -- 18 October 2006 -- The International Engineering Consortium (IEC) today announced that its Broadband World Forum Europe closed with attendance of nearly 6500 telecom professionals from 120 countries. Sixty different service providers attended the conference and exhibition, which hosted more than 110 equipment vendors on the exhibition floor. The event took place at CNIT La Defense, Paris with France Telecom as the official host sponsor. IEC President John Janowiak stated, "It's satisfying to know we've created a rich marketplace for broadband opportunities in Europe. Exemplifying this is the strong exhibitor response in rebook." Janowiak continued, "We sold out ninety-five percent of next year's exhibition floor in Berlin, Germany before the show ended last week." Key sponsors of the show presented leading-edge technologies on the exhibition such as France Telecom (official host sponsor), Alcatel, Siemens, Accenture, Ericsson, Huawei, Cisco Systems, ECI, Italtel, Keymile, Motorola, NEC, PacketFront, ZTE, ADVA, AVM, Nokia, Pirelli, Tellabs, Visionael, Texas Instruments, Operax, radialpoint, Redback Networks, and more. More than 250 leading industry experts spoke at the event providing the world-class programming at the educational conference including Keynoters Didier Lombard, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, France Telecom Group; Francois Loos, Minister Delegate for Industry France; Alain Maloberti, Vice President, Network Architectures and Design, France Telecom Group, Mike Quigley, President and Chief Operating Officer, Alcatel; Jong-Lok Yoon, Senior Executive Vice President, Research and Development Group, KT. In addition to its focus on broadband, the event included the co-located event, the WiMAX Global ComForum, devoted to the technology and business challenges in implementing WiMAX wireless broadband networks for fixed-wireless access and mobile broadband. The InfoVision Awards also took place at the show recognizing the industry's top innovators and the most successfully deployed products, services, and applications in broadband. Nearly 300 industry journalists and analysts covered breaking news and product announcements that place at the Broadband World Forum Europe. For complete information including recordings of keynote addresses, photos, news coverage, executive interviews, InfoVision-winning products, TecPreviews, and more, visit http://www.iec.org/events/2006/bbwf/ or contact Lisa Reyes at mailto:lreyes@iec.org or Howard Jones in Europe at mailto:howard@gbcspr.com. About the Broadband World Forum Europe: Initiated in 2001, the Broadband World Forum Europe conference and exhibition has grown proportionately since its inception, offering a wide range of information and communication technologies topics under the large umbrella of broadband. This year's World Forum features more than 250 industry leaders to speak in nearly 70 sessions, complemented by more than 100 top vendors from around the globe displaying the latest products and services in broadband technology. Additional featured annual programming offered includes the WiMAX Global ComForum, a co-located event, and the InfoVision Awards. With the support of France Telecom as the official host sponsor, the IEC drew nearly 6500 executives, industry professionals, academia, and high-technology press to the CNIT La Défense in Paris this past 9-12 October. Next year’s Broadband World Forum Europe will take place in Berlin, Germany. Visit http://www.iec.org/events/2006/bbwf/. About the IEC: The International Engineering Consortium (IEC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to catalyzing technology and business progress worldwide in a range of high-technology industries and their university communities. Since 1944, the IEC has provided high-quality educational opportunities for industry professionals, academics, and students. In conjunction with industry-leading companies, the IEC has developed an extensive, free on-line educational program. The IEC conducts industry-university programs that have substantial impact on curricula. It also conducts research and develops publications, conferences, and technological exhibits that address major opportunities and challenges of the information age. More than 70 leading high-technology universities are IEC affiliates, and the IEC handles the affairs of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association and Eta Kappa Nu, the honor society for electrical and computer engineers. The IEC also manages the activities of the Enterprise Communications Consortium. For more information, visit http://www.iec.org/. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:48:37 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Level 3 Buys Broadwing USTelecom dailyLead October 17, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eGoYfDtusXejelCibuddTtgC TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Level 3 buys Broadwing BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Deutsche Telekom rolls out IPTV * L.A. cable viewers cope with confusion * Motorola names new CMO * Sprint Nextel signs deal with Qualcomm to offer PTT on CDMA * IPTV firm Interactive Television Networks picks NXP platform for set-top box USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * On the Road to IMS: Consolidate. Converge. Innovate. TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Panel: If Grandma can run it, the technology is ready for everyone * Symbian CEO: PC era over in five years * Texting, for better or worse, is here to stay * More laptops outfitted with HSDPA REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Boston forges ahead with Wi-Fi plans Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eGoYfDtusXejelCibuddTtgC ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 18, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:04:22 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 18, 2006 ******************************** Orange Broadband Hit by Outages http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20563?11228 France Telecom's Orange broadband unit has suffered a major outage in the United Kingdom affecting over 100,000 users this week. According to the BBC, Orange said that the problem affected only customers using their unbundled local loop connections, although the company has restored service to many customers. However, by late ... Regulator Plans WiMAX Tender at End-November in Bulgaria http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20560?11228 The Bulgarian telecoms market regulator (CRC) is planning to hold a tender for licences for the point-to-multi-point WiMAX technology in the 26 GHz frequency range at the end of November this year. The deadline for submitting bids is 27 October. So far four operators have purchased the tender documents, mobile operators GloBul and ... Telecom Separates Vehicles and Animals http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20556?11228 Telecom technology can play a key role in preventing animal-vehicle collisions, which kill hundreds of people in the U.S each year. Various roadside animal detection systems use passive or active infrared signals, lasers, microwaves or seismic sensors to activate warning signs that urge drivers to slow down and/or be more alert when ... Strategies for Two-Sided Markets http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20555?11228 If you listed the blockbuster products and services that have redefined the global business landscape, you'd find that many of them tie together two distinct groups of users in a network. Case in point: The most important innovation in financial services since World War II is almost certainly the credit card, which links consumers ... Nokia Closes Loudeye Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20554?11228 Nokia has completed its previously announced purchase of Loudeye, which will put Nokia on pace to deliver an integrated mobile music experience to its customers next year. Separately, Nokia snagged a deal for downloadable Cartoon Network content. Nokia announced its intentions to purchase Loudeye in August. At the time of the ... AT&T Adds Net Neutrality Promise To BellSouth Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20551?11228 Network-neutrality advocates may have seen a small but symbolic victory as AT&T added a promise of adherence to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) open Internet principles as part of the condition and "concession" package aimed at getting regulatory approval for its takeover of BellSouth and their Cingular ... Cable TV Infrastructure Market Driven by Three-Screen Quest and Fixed Mobil= e Convergence http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/20547?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The worldwide cable TV industry is in a race to provision a 'three-screen' service that starts with HDTV sets, maps over to broadband-connected PCs, and follows subscribers around during the day on cell phones or other portable devices, reports In-Stat. As a result, the high-tech market research firm ... Level 3 Buys Broadwing for $1.4B http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20544?11228 Fiber-hungry carrier Level 3 Communications Inc. has gobbled up yet another network, this time acquiring Broadwing Corp. for $1.39 billion in cash and stock. Level 3 will pay $8.18 in cash plus 1.3411 shares for each Broadwing share -- the equivalent of $741 million in cash and $649 million in stock and a 15 percent ... Motorola's Mixed Bag http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20540?11228 Motorola Inc. built up its cellphone market share in the third quarter of 2006 but saw a slight decline in the average selling price of handsets, according to the firm's latest earnings figures. The networking giant reported third quarter 2006 overall revenues of $10.6 billion, marginally missing its guidance of $10.9 ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Steven J. Sobol Subject: Re: The Web is a Terror Training Camp in the USA, Chertoff Claims Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:34:29 UTC Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com In article , Reuters News Wire wrote: > Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical > ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that > could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland > Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday. DHS is a toothless organization. Chertoff has to earn his pay somehow, so he's producing "facts" that will make it easier to justify the Bush administration screwing us out of more of our civil rights. Bend over, folks, and pull your pants down, if you aren't already sore back there. > things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff > said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to > detect with spies and satellites." Your agency couldn't find its collective bureaucratic ass with both hands; you are not competent enough to detect terrorists. > Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London's transit > system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat. Other types of crime are perpetrated using the Internet too. Let's just switch the stupid thing off, eh? Chertoff needs a clue implant. > into "intelligence fusion centers," where they would work with local > police agencies, and cooperative ISPs in identifying dissident users. And woe be unto ISPs that have a backbone and refuse to cooperate. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about an _honest_ re-write of this > news item, like this: " Michael Chertoff has stated that people who > get most of their news from truthful sources on the internet instead > of relying on the highly sanitized news presented as 'news' by the > New York Times and the talking heads on television are more likely to > have a realistic view of the world and a certain amount of anger > built up inside them when they realize how politicians and other > 'authorities' have defrauded and humored them while attemptng > desparately to maintain their own fraud, called 'law and order' in > the USA. Long ago, we got the newspapers and the Talking Heads on > televison and the radio to toe the line, but that damn Internet! It > is a bunch of people talking and thinking for themselves, and we > cannot have that if _we_ are to maintain control. There ought to be a > law against things like Internet!" PAT] Bless you, Pat, that's exactly what I was thinking! >:) Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room. ------------------------------ From: Ken Wheatley Subject: Re: Just What Is SIP And SS7 and How Do They Work With VoIP? Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:54:06 +0100 On 16 Oct 2006 16:11:04 -0700, FreedomFireCom wrote: > Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Signaling System 7 (SS7) are the > common protocols used for transmitting voice across networks. Just how > they work with VoIP ... or not ... opens the door for both concerns and > opportunity. > You can read the rest of this article here: > http://Broadband-nation.blogspot.com Interesting article, but I'm not sure I agree with 'SIP ... does not use a separate signalling path', in that the media certainly need, and usually does not, follow the same path as the SIP dialogs. ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Phony Identification Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:09:44 -0400 > The number on my Caller ID reads 617-000-0000, and I pick it up, > half-thinking it might be James Bond. A little disappointingly, the > call is from the Suffolk County district attorney's office. Law > enforcement types, apparently, can manipulate the telephone system to > hide their real numbers. It makes sense. There are bad guys out there, > and prosecutors don't necessarily want them phoning back. Can one rely on areacode-000-0000 to be a nonexistent number? If so, I might put it in the first position of my autodialer, which sometimes gets triggered accidentally. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is interesting how numbers like that, such as 000-000-0000 are obviously incorrect, and are intended only as a way to defeat caller ID, yet some of the telcos -- SBC comes to mind -- refuse to do anything about it. SBC is much more dedicated to their large commercial accounts than they are the vast majority of their subscribers. For a period of a couple months I was receiving several calls daily (from AT&T of all people, and this was long before the merger of that company and Southwestern Bell) trying to collect on a bill from someone who had my special ring-ring number long before I had it. When it finally got to the point I had to make appeal to the chairman's office at SBC to try and get those calls stopped, the lady who took my call insisted there was nothing SBC could do. "And as long as they provide their number to you, we cannot stop their call merely because you subscribe to anonymous call rejection." I kept telling her they were not 'providing their number' to me; they were providing all zeros; but, according to SBC, that was good enough ... 'they are giving you a number'. I asked her why didn't telco do a database-dip on all obviously incorrect numbers, and decline those with no ID available. She said that was not how they did things. No, I guess not. It ended as a stalemate. I was free to either keep their service as is, or get my phone turned off. The way I settled it was to switch away from SBC to one of their competitors, which still did not eliminate the problem of people plugging in bogus numbers (to get around those of us who block _deliberatly withheld_ (using *67 before dialing) but it did eliminate the problem of ignorant people responding for the chairman. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #365 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 19 14:58:06 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 639652264; Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:58:06 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #366 Message-Id: <20061019185806.639652264@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:58:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 19 Oct 2006 15:00:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 366 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsoft Releases Explorer 7 (Daisuke Wakabayashi, Reuters) First IE 7 Security Flaw Already Found! (Peter Sayer, IDG) Verizon to Spin Off Directories Business (USTelecom dailyLead) Toll Free Number to Share (Charles Gray) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 19, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom Update for the UK ? (duncan@2u.co.uk) Re: The Web is a Terror Training Camp in the USA, Chertoff Claims (Dorsey) Re: The Web is a Terror Training Camp in the USA, Chertoff Claims (Oxley) Re: Microsoft Opens Virtual Drives for Free (Danny Burstein) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:11:20 -0500 From: Daisuke Wakabayashi Subject: Microsoft Releases Explorer 7 By Daisuke Wakabayashi Microsoft Corp. released Internet Explorer 7 on Wednesday, the first major upgrade to its Web browser since 2001 with new features aimed at preventing online fraud and improving ease of use. Microsoft's IE remains the most widely-used software to surf the Web, but the long gap between major releases allowed for the emergence of the company's most formidable browser competitor since it vanquished the once-dominant Netscape. Mozilla Firefox, a free open-source browser, has steadily gained users since its introduction in 2004 with features such as an integrated search window to allow users to do a Web query without opening another page, tab browsing to toggle between different sites and a pop-up window blocker. These features are included in the new Internet Explorer and Microsoft also touted the security improvements to the browser including color-coded warnings in the address bar to indicate whether a Web site can be trusted. IE 7 is available immediately to Windows XP users and it will eventually serve as the default browser for Microsoft's much- anticipated Windows Vista operating system, due out to consumers in early 2007. According to analysts, consumers increasingly identify the quality of an operating system with the quality of its browser and that makes a well-received browser important for Microsoft -- even if it is not sold as a separate product. "How would it look if Microsoft didn't have a good browser as part of Windows? It wouldn't look good," said Forrester Research analyst Colin Teubner. Microsoft said it is already at work on the next version of Internet Explorer to ensure that long gaps between updates do not occur again. "Should we have done more, sooner, earlier? It's rare to not say that in hindsight," said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft. Internet Explorer registered an 86 percent global share in October, Mozilla Firefox 11.5 percent and both Apple Computer Inc.'s Safari and Norway's Opera Software, less than 2 percent, according to OneStat.com. "It's exciting to see Microsoft reenter the browser space after leaving for five years," said Christopher Beard, vice president of products for Mozilla. "It's great to see that IE is adopting the features that we popularized." Mozilla said it also plans to release an upgraded browser, Firefox 2, within the next few weeks. The upgrade will include a feature to allow users to restore work done online if the browser or PC crashes, a spell check function for e-mails or blog postings and suggestions for search queries. Microsoft's Windows Live is the default search engine on Internet Explorer 7, but users will have the option to change to competing search engines. In Mozilla Firefox, the default search engine in the U.S. is Google Inc. Competitors raised objections to Microsoft making its own search engine the default setting over concern that it would unfairly drive traffic to Windows Live, but analysts said consumers will eventually gravitate toward the search engine that produces the best results. The new browser will be sent as an automatic security update and then users will have an option to install the new Internet Explorer onto their PC. Companies also have the option to block its workers from installing the new browser. IE 7 is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/ie. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:15:01 -0500 From: Peter Sayer, IDG Subject: First IE 7 Security Flaw Already Found! by Peter Sayer, IDG News Service Less than 24 hours after the launch of Internet Explorer 7, security researchers are poking holes in the new browser. Danish security company Secunia reported today that IE7 contains an information disclosure vulnerability, the same one it reported in IE6 in April. The vulnerability affects the final version of IE7 running on Windows XP with Service Pack 2. If a surfer uses IE7 to visit a maliciously crafted Web site, that site could exploit the security flaw to read information from a separate, secure site to which the surfer is logged in. That could enable an attacker to read banking details, or messages from a Web-mail account, said Thomas Kristensen, Secunia's chief technology officer. "A phishing attack would be a good place to exploit this," he said. One of the security features Microsoft touts for the new browser is the protection it offers users from phishing attacks. Flaw Not Easy to Exploit Secunia rates the security flaw as "less critical," its second-lowest rating, and suggests disabling active scripting support to protect the computer. The flaw could result in the exposure of sensitive information and can be exploited by a remote system, Secunia said in a security advisory posted on its Web site. It is hard to exploit the flaw because it requires the attacker to lure someone to a malicious site, and for the attacker to know what other secure site the visitor might simultaneously have open, Kristensen said. "A quick user browsing through our Web site using IE7 found it failed one of our tests," he said. The company then verified the information, notified Microsoft and published a proof-of-concept exploit on its Web site. Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. 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 For more tech news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:44:18 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon to Spin Off Directories Business USTelecom dailyLead October 18, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eHbEfDtusXemlnCibuddKEQa TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon to spin off directories business BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Time Warner Cable files for IPO * AT&T aims to shake up video business with U-verse * Motorola's Q3 sales fall below expectations * Symbian chief predicts U.S. smartphone adoption will rise * EarthLink, Telkonet plan BPL test in D.C. USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * On the Road to IMS: Consolidate. Converge. Innovate. TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Like Google and TiVo, YouTube is becoming a verb * Chinese Web gets its MTV REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * India hatches broadband deployment strategy * AT&T teams with MetroFi to build Wi-Fi network Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eHbEfDtusXemlnCibuddKEQa ------------------------------ Subject: Toll Free Number to Share Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 07:26:28 -0500 From: Gray, Charles Pat, the toll free number listed below may be of some use to Digest readers. Regards, Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications Oklahoma State University - Tulsa (918) 594-8433 -----Original Message----- From: eqvuoo [mailto:livenlearn13@lhep.unibe.ch]=20 Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 5:32 PM To: gosnell@okstate.edu Cc: gpjohns@okstate.edu; grahamm@okstate.edu; graycg@okstate.edu Subject: Re: Office closed; No work tomorrow Hey, Find out how to make 1.5 - 3.5k a day from your house. 800.691.4528 Contact me at my number if you can return phone calls. Regards, sounoiv [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mr. Gray, I am sure other readers of the Digest will be as thrilled as I to discover this great money- making opportunity, and I encourage everyone to call the number and learn about this new scheme. Wasn't it also great how the message sender, Mr. Souniov, carefully chose an appropriate subject line for his message? I receive _so_ many such messages where the subject line in no way corresponds to the message enclosed. It really makes one wonder what these guys do for brains. Of course, I guess I should be talking about brains; after all, I am still doing this Digest after a quarter-century. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 19, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 11:21:55 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 19, 2006 ******************************** EU Gets Roaming Charges Boost; Telefonica Drops Charges for Calls Received Abroad http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20597?11228 Telefonica's O2 and Movistar have become the first mobile operators to drop charges for incoming calls received across Europe. Global Insight Perspective Significance ... BenQ German Mobile Phone Unit to Cut Nearly 2,000 Jobs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20589?11228 MUNICH, Germany -- The German mobile phone unit of Taiwanese electronics company BenQ Corp. will shed nearly 2,000 jobs in a bid to salvage the business, an insolvency administrator said Thursday. BenQ Mobile filed for insolvency protection on Sept. 29 after its Taiwanese parent abandoned an attempt to turn around the ... Wanted: Recruits For Emergency Communications Panel http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20577?11228 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is seeking nominations for membership on a new advisory panel for wireless-oriented emergency communications mandated by a port security bill signed into law by President George Bush last Friday. The regulator's upcoming formation of a Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory ... Content Filtering Options Proliferate http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20574?11228 A variety of scenarios can and do happen with enough regularity that a new market segment's arisen to deal with them. Products are emerging in what's generally called the content monitoring and filtering arena to help IT pros ensure that in-house messaging won't have unpleasant or even catastrophic ... Nokia, Ericsson Face Off http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20570?11228 As earnings week for the world's major mobile phone makers continues, Nokia Corp. and Ericsson AB -- whose cell phone joint-venture with Sony Corp., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications , reported surging sales of its mobile devices last week -- are expected to report strong results tomorrow. Consensus estimates ... Ericsson Plugs Marconi Progress http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20568?11228 Ericsson AB says its acquired Marconi business has reached breakeven, that an order backlog is building, and that its fixed-line business is picking up, especially in Europe. That assessment came from Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg during a third-quarter earnings press conference Thursday morning. Ericsson's numbers -- ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: duncan@2u.co.uk Subject: Telecom Update for the UK Date: 19 Oct 2006 08:42:47 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com This is a great outline of the Canadian telecoms situation. Do you have any such info on the UK market. That would be much appreciated. Thanks, Duncan http://www.mobile-phone-upgrade.com ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: The Web is a Terror Training Camp in the USA, Chertoff Claims Date: 18 Oct 2006 14:59:08 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Steven J. Sobol wrote: > In article , Reuters News Wire > wrote: >> Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical >> ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that >> could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland >> Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday. > DHS is a toothless organization. Chertoff has to earn his pay somehow, > so he's producing "facts" that will make it easier to justify the Bush > administration screwing us out of more of our civil rights. Well, it's true. Disaffected people WILL develop radical ideologies and violent skills. That's what they do. They used to it it at the local public library, but now they'll be doing it on the internet instead. Perhaps the government would do well to investigate why so many people are disaffected. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com (Herb Oxley) Subject: Re: The Web is a Terror Training Camp in the USA, Chertoff Claims Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:47:45 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC It might be time for folks to look into alternative technologies such as FidoNet (which still exists mostly in parts of the world where broadband is nonexistant and all phone calls are metered) along with dialup networking. My nickname for this concept is "BBS 21" combining the function of the 1980-1995 (mostly) MS-DOS BBS software with modern user interfaces and TCP/IP. BBS 21 would have dialup access, offline messaging (via Simple Offline Usenet Packet technology) to minimize user connect time. Now there is a possible weak spot for BBS 21; that is the continued ability to use a modem over the Public Switched Telephone Network . Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Microsoft Opens Virtual Drives for Free Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 03:55:00 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Reuters News Wire writes: [ snippage ] > The Microsoft virtualisation software has been available for more than > two years, but as computers become more powerful the use of > virtualisation is expected to mushroom, the company said at a news > conference. > The software permits the easy use of several operating systems on one > machine. So, for example, dangerous software could be installed on a > virtual machine without affecting the host computer. To add a bit of useful clarification here ... if you're using Windows XP as your operating system, you can set up a virtual machine inside it running, yes, Windows XP, and if something Goes Wrong, you (should ...) be able to simply shut down that portion and close it out without any harm to your main operation. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #366 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 20 18:45:20 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8A4B12221; Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:45:20 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #367 Message-Id: <20061020224520.8A4B12221@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:45:20 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:47:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 367 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Nortel Claims Video Hungry Users Could Push Net to Brink (Wojtek Dabrowski) Microsoft Partners Angry About Vista (Jordan Robertson, AP) Ma Bell or Ma Cell? (Owen Thomas) France Telecom's Orange to Launch Windows Live (USTelecom dailyLead) Vonage Trying to Reuse my SC Number (Fred Atkinson) Cisco Steadily Building Advanced Technology Portfolio (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 20, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom Update #551, October 20, 2006 (John Riddell) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:31:35 -0500 From: Wojtek Dabrowski Subject: Nortel Claims Video Hungry Users Could Push Net to Brink By Wojtek Dabrowski Soaring demand for games, video and music will stretch the Internet to its limits, Canada's Nortel Networks Corp. says, and it expects service providers will make big investments in its technology to avoid a crunch. But the telecom equipment giant, still struggling to turn its fortunes round after the tech bubble burst, is treading carefully as it prepares for what it sees as a looming buildout of capacity by telecommunications companies. Massive overbuild of Internet bandwidth capacity helped lead to the meltdown six years ago, and the company says it doesn't want things to go wrong again. "It's driven by caution, because none of us want to repeat the mistakes of 1999 to 2001," Nortel's chief technology officer, John Roese, told Reuters in a recent interview. The mistakes he refers to saw billions of dollars in Nortel losses, as well as tens of thousands of job cuts and a precipitous plunge in its stock price. Nortel stock peaked at more than C$120 a share in 2000. They are worth about C$2.50 a share today. But perhaps ironically, Roese also believes the capacity bubble helped service providers cope with the surge in demand for bandwidth that came with the advent of online video Web sites like YouTube.com. "The only reason YouTube didn't destroy the Internet is because there was a bit of a bubble in terms of excess capacity out there," Roese said. "But, boy, don't take that for granted." Nortel believes its Metro Ethernet unit, which uses technology similar to the one used to connect local, short-distance networks to build Internet infrastructure, will soon draw carriers that need more capacity and let them stay safely ahead of the demand curve. This curve has been growing steeper as users demand more bandwidth for online video, music, games and, increasingly, television. "That's our underlying fear," he said. "If the industry cannot keep up with the demand because we kind of take it for granted after the buildout in the 2000 timeframe, if we ever hit a wall, the impact on global economies, the impact on innovation is just profound." He said market research into trends like Internet video had led the Toronto-based Nortel to believe the surge in demand for bandwidth capacity is real. "Over the last six months we've absolutely convinced ourselves -- and we think we have a lot of empirical data to back it up -- that this is not a short-term trend," he said. Tim Daubenspeck, who covers Nortel for Pacific Crest Securities, thinks the company has got the right idea. "I fully believe in the video thesis, both kind of over-the-top video, browser-based video, as well as the coming Internet protocol television trend ... as telcos push video to the home," Daubenspeck said. "If you look at the bandwidth demand that video drives, it's an order of magnitude more than what we're used to." LOW-COST COMPETITORS AWAIT Nortel faces competition, not least from low-cost Asian competitors like Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.. But it insists that its strength lies in its people and their ability to plan, deploy and operate networks and says Huawei cannot provide that. Huawei declined to comment. Daubenspeck agrees that there is a shift away from price as the ultimate factor determining where a telecom company puts its network infrastructure dollars. "We've seen Huawei make inroads into the European market using cost or price as a competitive advantage, but I think functionality and performance is going to be increasingly important," he said. "So just pure raw price is not going to be a differentiator like it was a year or two ago." He said carriers now favor vendors who can deliver a complete network package. "In periods of dramatic technology change, which is what's going on, being driven by things like video and the requirement to reduce costs. You tend to go back to the guys who are more end-to-end, more solutions-focused, as opposed to just a cheap-point product company." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:36:15 -0500 From: Jordan Robertson, AP Subject: Microsoft Partners Angry About Vista Microsoft partners fuming over Vista By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Business Writer Microsoft Corp. is no stranger to antitrust skirmishes and complaints from competitors about unfair business practices. But the latest fight over its upcoming Vista operating system pits Microsoft against an unlikely adversary: the security software vendors who are some of its most intimate partners in protecting its notoriously vulnerable systems from attacks. As Vista's planned release nears, the company is facing a backlash from such vendors as Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc., which argue that even the concessions Microsoft recently made to appease European antitrust regulators won't do enough to help them best protect their customers. "We've been talking to them for over two years on this issue," said Rowan Trollope, Symantec's vice president for consumer engineering. "And now (with) basically a very short amount of time before the operating system comes out, we're not in a good position to provide that security to our customers." Ultimately, consumers will decide whether Microsoft's own security measures are adequate to combat increasingly sophisticated Internet threats and keep personal data safe from hackers and online criminals. But the showdown also marks an important turning point in how computer users buy security software. Microsoft now competes directly with Cupertino-based Symantec and Santa Clara-based McAfee with its own product, called OneCare, posing a substantial threat to vendors who have been vital to protecting generations of Microsoft operating systems. European antitrust regulators have warned Microsoft not to shut out rivals in security software and other markets, and the European Union so far has fined the Redmond, Wash., company $970 million over the current flavor of Windows. To quell EU concerns about Vista, Microsoft pledged to make key changes, but the vendors remain unsatisfied and have threatened antitrust lawsuits. McAfee issued a statement Thursday complaining of the company's failure to live up to "hollow assurances." Industry analysts said Microsoft's new dual role could inadvertently make the operating system more vulnerable. "Microsoft's priority should be simple: Fortify the operating system, make it secure, make it as impenetrable as possible, but work with the third parties," said Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research. Vista will be Microsoft's first major upgrade to its flagship operating system since Windows XP's release in 2001. The company touts Vista's sleeker looks, improved search capabilities and simplified organization as key upgrades over previous systems. But several key security changes prompted Symantec and McAfee officials to launch withering public attacks in recent weeks. Executives accused Microsoft of unfairly promoting its own security software with a dashboard that couldn't be disabled by vendors. The company pledged technological information to turn off the feature, designed to help customers easily see what protections are switched on. Vendors also howled over an icon on the welcome screen linking to Microsoft security products. Microsoft refused to remove the link but has vowed to link to other security companies. The biggest -- and currently unresolved -- fight hinges on vendors' claims they have been locked out of access to the core, or kernel, of higher-end, 64-bit versions of Vista. A new feature called PatchGuard is meant to protect the most sensitive information in the guts of the system. While blocking out hackers, PatchGuard also keeps out security vendors that have traditionally been allowed inside to retrieve necessary information. Vendors said their products will thus lack advanced security features for 64-bit users (The 32-bit version that consumers are likely to get does not include PatchGuard and thus offers access to the disputed data). Microsoft said the methods previously used were undocumented and unsupported and left the system less secure and less stable. Customers, the company said, demand better security. The company has agreed to permit limited kernel access, but will not provide a "blanket exception" or turn off the feature entirely, said Stephen Toulouse, a senior program manager in Microsoft's Security Technology Unit. "We did look at that, but we got consistent feedback that that wouldn't be a good option for the customer," he said. "We want to make clear that we will work with those vendors. It will take some time, but we're committed to making that happen." Microsoft held online briefings with security vendors on Thursday to address their concerns, though technical difficulties booted some vendors out. Security vendors said their engineers are going to have to scramble to update their software once the technical tools they need become available, which could be months away. Vista begins shipping to computer manufacturers and larger businesses next month. Consumers should be able to buy the new operating system in January. "We're turning blue holding our breath waiting for something to happen," McAfee chief scientist George Heron said in an interview. "And frankly so are the users. This is the 11th hour. Now is not the time to crack open the designs." In the meantime, third-party vendors said their products will work but won't have maximum protection. Microsoft said its products will adhere to the same rules and won't have an unfair advantage. Security experts said it's unclear whether Microsoft's stance on protecting the kernel will make Windows more secure, though it will likely challenge hackers to try to crack it. "No matter how secure any operating system is, if it has been built by man, it can be broken by man," said Ken Dunham, director of the rapid response team at VeriSign Inc.'s iDefense Intelligence. "While it might be a major improvement, there is no silver bullet." Vendors said customers are likely to agree. "It's a little bit like the fox guarding the hen house," Symantec's Trollope said. "If Microsoft can control the ways that companies can innovate, if they can control the dialogue of security with the customer, you end up with a security monoculture. And that's unacceptable." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:16:16 -0500 From: Owen Thomas, Business 2.0 Subject: Ma Bell or Ma Cell? Forget Ma Bell, think Ma Cell AT&T's $81 billion Cell deal is all about wireless. When it happens, the world of big-business telecom sales will never be the same. By Owen Thomas, Business 2.0 Magazine (Business 2.0 Magazine) -- AT&T's bid to acquire BellSouth has run into a few snags lately, but make no mistake: The $81 billion dealwill happen -- and when it does, the impact will be far bigger on corporate America than on consumers. This deal isn't about a return to Ma Bell, the telephone monolith that was famously broken up two decades ago. It's about Ma Cell and the future of wireless communication for businesses. Both AT&T and BellSouth have been key players in the $100 billion market for big-business telecom services. Together they just might be unstoppable. The future of connectivity How so? Because consolidating control over their Cingular Wireless joint venture will transform the mobile operator into a far more nimble competitor. But there's another reason: a new technology known as IMS. It promises to cure the perennial IT headache of making sure that employees stay connected and productive on the go. With IMS technology, CIOs won't have to think about equipping employees with landlines and e-mail pagers and calling cards and cell phones and laptop network cards. They'll just buy connectivity, plain and simple. Both Cingular and AT&T separately have invested heavily in IMS. "IMS is where the industry is headed," says John Byrne, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "It makes perfect sense for [those parallel efforts] to be integrated."' An AT&T spokesman declined comment for this story, citing the pending merger. The deal's expected Federal Communications Commission approval last week has been held up by last-minute conditions sought by some regulators. But AT&T's past statements, analysts, and industry sources paint a clear picture of what's ahead for the combined company and its corporate customers. Hanging up on separate networks To be sure, IMS won't alleviate any IT migraines anytime soon. The technology is somewhat complex: it promises to seamlessly route voice and data over any network whether it's wired, wireless, 3G or Wi-Fi. Ultimately the information will travel over the same secure backbone. But Byrne, for one, thinks it will take a few years before engineers work out all of the kinks. IMS is just one factor driving the AT&T-BellSouth merger. The other is the advantage of having their currently separate wired and wireless phone networks under one roof. Full control over a cellular network will enable AT&T to offer and sell services far more quickly than when Cingular was a joint venture -- and subject to the inevitable limits of two competitors trying to work together. Take AT&T's pending rollout of a citywide Wi-Fi network in Riverside, Calif. Before the merger deal, a project like this could be seen as competing with Cingular's 3G network and the partners could easily have squabbled over it. Now AT&T can freely sell customers access to either its 3G network or Wi-Fi hotspots - or both. Indeed, expect to see AT&T selling business customers combination phones that work on Cingular's cellular network, over corporate Wi-Fi networks, and at AT&T-managed Wi-Fi hotspots. It's a key advantage. AT&T archrival Verizon (Charts), which owns 55 percent of Verizon Wireless, doesn't have that freedom. It still has to dicker with Verizon Wireless joint venture partner, U.K.-based Vodafone (Charts), over who gets paid for what. Rebirth of a salesman AT&T will also have another advantage -- its large corporate salesforce that's used to cultivating Fortune 500 customers and selling packaged deals. These salespeople have had to operate at arm's length with Cingular, bringing in a Cingular representative to sell a deal that includes wireless services. After it takes control of Cingular, AT&T salespeople will be able to sell wireless directly to their existing accounts. "The fact that you even have to ask who owns the account points out why it makes sense for the Cingular venture to go away and be brought into AT&T," says Byrne. And it's not just Cingular as a corporate entity that's set to disappear: AT&T has said that the Cingular brand itself will fade away. Some consumers may miss the Cingular brand, which seemed younger and hipper than AT&T. But for corporate customers, the seriousness and solidity of the AT&T brand is more reassuring. Who needs Cingular? And as technological change makes the distinction between wired and wireless connections less meaningful, it's not clear what value a separate wireless brand would have in a few years anyway. So goodbye and good riddance, Cingular. Getting rid of the separate wireless brand -- and separate wireless technology -- is a great example of the simplicity that the newly expanded AT&T promises. Here comes Ma Cell: A network that's everywhere, and that you don't have to think about. Ubiquity and stability. When you think about it, that doesn't sound that different from the Ma Bell of old. 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 For more news each day from the media, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:21:24 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: France Telecom's Orange to launch Windows Live USTelecom dailyLead October 19, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eHqQfDtusXeqcQCibuddfWqU TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * France Telecom's Orange to launch Windows Live BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cingular launches 3G service in Orlando * CBS launches channel on YouTube USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Are You Ready for the CALEA Deadline? TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Boost Mobile launches Text to Landline * Small businesses turning to VoIP * Google offers Japanese-language news to handsets * Millions of episodes being streamed online, networks say REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Suit against Qwest dismissed ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:04:17 -0400 A few minutes ago, I got a call (on my SC line) from someone asking to speak to Nancy. She confirmed that she had dialed my number. I told her that there has never been a Nancy here. A few minutes later, I got a call from someone named Nancy who said that she had just gotten Vonage service and Vonage had assigned her this number. Since I originally had that number from Vonage, I explained to her that I had ported the number from Vonage to Carolina Net quite some time ago. She said she'd have to call Vonage and request a new number. I called Vonage and spoke to Tina. After I explained that that number was no longer available for Vonage to re-assign, she called the appropriate people. They are going to assign Nancy a new telephone number. Tina opened a ticket for me on this. I told Tina to make sure they didn 't do anything to cause my SC number any problems. She said they wouldn't interfere with my number. I called Carolina Net to let them know what is happening. I got music on hold for a good little bit before they came on the line. I called Carolina Net and informed them of this phenomenon. Caroline (Carolina Net) said that she is opening a ticket on this and will inform the porting department to make sure that I don't lose my number. Can anything else this simple to handle go wrong? Fred ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:27:03 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Cisco Steadily Building Advanced Technology Portfolio USTelecom dailyLead October 20, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eHBkfDtusXeuwBCibuddEkcw TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Cisco steadily building advanced technology portfolio BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * JibJab lands Landis as director, Verizon as distributor * Ericsson CEO details Marconi progress * Google expands search lead as it doubles profits TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Report: Mobile phones shipments may reach 1B in 2006 * GSM technology touted for public safety * Report: Business wireless IM use rising VOIP DOWNLOAD * Europe surpassing U.S. with mobile VoIP * Cable targets business services market Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eHBkfDtusXeuwBCibuddEkcw ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 20, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:58:06 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 20, 2006 ******************************** Megafon in Trouble with Regulator over Interconnection Fees http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20624?11228 Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has charged Russia's third-largest mobile operator, Megafon, with violation of antitrust legislation. Similar charges against the country's two largest operators, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) and VimpelCom, have been dropped. Megafon has issued a press release outlining its plans to ... Telus CEO Pitches for Deregulation http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20621?11228 Darren Entwistle, the CEO of Telus, Canada's number two telco, pitched for greater deregulation of the Canadian telecoms market in a speech reported by Reuters on 18 October 2006. Entwistle described current regulations as out of date with current technology, which is inhibiting capital spending on new technologies. Citing the ... NOTHING LEFT TO ANALYZE BUT THE CUSTOMERS THEMSELVES http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20615?11228 In the telecom industry there has been an engineering-driven 'build it and they will come' mentality that often puts technology and product ahead of customer and marketing. But the technologies being put in place today-like IMS and content delivery systems-will rely on a much more sophisticated understanding of customers and ... Verizon Aims to Cast a Wider V CAST Net http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20609?11228 Verizon Wireless hopes to open up its V CAST multimedia wireless service to a larger group of its customers by offering a newly launched daily subscription service. A 24-hour trial of the mobile video service will run Verizon Wireless customers $3. A monthly subscription costs $15. As with the monthly service, daily subscribers ... Top 10 Tips for Managing an RFP http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20606?11228 They can be three sentences long or 300 pages. They can be broadcast across the supplier landscape or limited to a shortlist of preferred vendors. Some public companies and regulated utilities are required to make them public, but most companies prefer to issue them on the QT. Regardless, most companies put out request for proposals ... Alphabet Soup: SITA Offers ATI Mobile VoIP http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20605?11228 According to one estimate, the air-transport industry (ATI) is spending 'billions of dollars' a year on fixed and mobile telephony services. A Swiss company now says it can save the wireless day with a mobile Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offering. Geneva-based SITA, which claims to be 'the world's leading ... Verizon's Tough Zone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20602?11228 Verizon Wireless is taking on Sprint Nextel Corp. on its home turf with a new ruggedized handset from UTStarcom Inc. The G-One Type-V ruggedized mobile phone blends water-, heat-, and drop-resistant features that are typically the domain of phones aimed at blue collar workers and vertical enterprise applications, with ... Cingular's Subs-stantial Quarter http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20600?11228 Cingular Wireless LLC reported profits up 282 percent for the third quarter as it added another 1.4 million subscribers to its books. The top cellular carrier in the U.S. reported this morning that net income grew to $847 million from $222 million in the same quarter a year ago. Cingular's total revenues were $9.6 billion, up 9.2 ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #551, October 20, 2006 Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:53:47 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 551: October 20, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca/home/Home_Business.page ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.ca/communications/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** SHAW BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: www.shawbusinesssolutions.ca ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE:=20 ** B.C. Area Code Plan Proposed ** CRTC Okays Centrex Rate Hike ** SaskTel First to Launch IP High-Definition TV ** Canada Drops in OECD Broadband Rankings ** Cogeco Cable Phone Subscriptions Jump 64% ** Videotron Wireless Launches in Montreal ** Bell Offers Personal Online Storage ** Winnipeg Mayor Makes Wi-Fi Promise ** CRTC Revokes International LD Licences ** Price Cap Hearing Concluded ** Distributel Files CLEC Tariff ** FCC Delays AT&T-BellSouth Vote ** RIM to Miss Filing Deadline ** Telecom Hall of Fame Honours New Laureates ** Last Chance for "Enterprise Networks 2006" B.C. AREA CODE PLAN PROPOSED: The NPA 250 Relief Planning Committee has agreed on a plan to solve the looming phone number shortage in B.C. (See Telecom Update #548) The proposal, one of 24 considered, would expand Area Code 778 (currently Lower Mainland only) to cover the entire province, and eliminate current restrictions on where new 604 numbers can be assigned in the Lower Mainland. This would delay the need for a new Area Code in British Columbia to 2017. ** The committee's proposal, which now goes to the CRTC for approval, envisions implementation by June 2007. CRTC OKAYS CENTREX RATE HIKE: CRTC Decision 2006-281 gives final approval to a 10% increase in Bell and Bell-Aliant monthly rates for Centrex locals, EEWD locals, and related services, in Ontario and Quebec. The Commission rejected an argument, made by the Department of Justice, that it was unfair for Bell to increase rates shortly after it won a competitive RFP process to provide EEWD (Enhanced Exchange-Wide Dial) service to the federal government. ** Centrex and EEWD rates are uncapped; telcos do not have to provide cost justification for rate increases. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2006/o2006-281.htm SASKTEL FIRST TO LAUNCH IP HIGH-DEFINITION TV: SaskTel says it is the first provider in North America to offer High Definition TV over an Internet Protocol network. Max HD Ultimate, which includes 27 HD channels, is $59/month for the first four months. (See Telecom Update #514, 532) CANADA DROPS IN OECD BROADBAND RANKINGS: The OECD's latest statistics on broadband penetration in member countries show that Canada is still first in the G7 in broadband penetration, but due to much faster gains by other countries Canada is now ninth in the OECD, down from second place in 2003. ** In the past six years, Canada has increased from 8.5 to 22.4 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. http://www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband COGECO CABLE PHONE SUBSCRIPTIONS JUMP 64%: Cogeco Cable added a net 20,394 phone lines in the quarter ended August 31, to bring the total to 52,315. Service is now available to 66% of homes passed. ** Overall revenue of $174.9 million was 25% higher than the previous year, reflecting Cogeco's recent acquisition in Portugal. Profits tripled to $34.0 million. (See Telecom Update #532) VIDEOTRON WIRELESS LAUNCHES IN MONTREAL: Videotron has launched cellular service in Greater Montreal, the fifth Quebec region to receive coverage. BELL OFFERS PERSONAL ONLINE STORAGE: Bell Canada now offers Personal Vault, an online storage service designed for consumers' music or photo files. Price for three gigabytes of space: $6 per month. WINNIPEG MAYOR MAKES WI-FI PROMISE: Winnipeg's incumbent Mayor, Sam Katz, says that if he is re-elected on October 25 he will initiate a project to deploy Wi-Fi Internet access throughout the city's downtown area. CRTC REVOKES INTERNATIONAL LD LICENCES: The CRTC has revoked the licences of 21 international long distance carriers and resellers that have failed to submit required reports. Under the Telecom Act, anyone who provides international LD service without a licence faces summary conviction and penalties up to $100,000 for an individual or $1 million for a company. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2006/pt2006-13.htm PRICE CAP HEARING CONCLUDED: The CRTC's hearing on Price Caps ended on Wednesday, October 18. Volume 6 of the hearing transcripts presents the parties' oral final arguments. Written arguments are due next week, reply comments on November 6. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/transcripts/2006/tt1018.htm DISTRIBUTEL FILES CLEC TARIFF: Distributel Communications has notified the CRTC that it intends to become a competitive local exchange carrier. It has filed a proposed tariff for interconnecting to other local carriers. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/8740/eng/2006/D11.htm#200612681 FCC DELAYS AT&T-BELLSOUTH VOTE: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has postponed its vote on AT&T's plan to acquire BellSouth for US$79 billion. The delay resulted from a request by two Democratic Party commissioners for more time to get public input on concessions offered by the two telcos. (See Telecom Update #550) RIM TO MISS FILING DEADLINE: Research In Motion says its review of stock option practices has found additional errors beyond those outlined two weeks ago. As a result, RIM will miss the October 17 deadline for filing its quarterly report with regulatory authorities. TELECOM HALL OF FAME HONOURS NEW LAUREATES: On October 16, 340 telecom industry leaders and supporters attended a Gala Dinner in Toronto. Ted Rogers, his father Edward S. Rogers Sr, Leila Wightman, Donald Hings, Ernie Saunders, and Francis Dagger were officially inducted into Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame. A Special Recognition Award went to Digital World, the 1970s digital switching initiative of Bell-Northern Research and Northern Telecom. (See Telecom Update #546) ** The next Telecom Laureate Awards gala will be held October 16, 2007, at Windsor Station in Montreal. http://www.telecomhall.ca/ LAST CHANCE FOR "ENTERPRISE NETWORKS 2006": The Enterprise Networks 2006 educational conference, organized by Angus Dortmans Associates, begins next week, on Tuesday October 24, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The meeting, co-located with Canada's top call centre conference, ICCM Canada, focuses on the practical issues that managers in end-user organizations must understand to survive and prosper at a time when rapid change is the only constant. Confirmed speakers include: ** Henry Dortmans, President, Angus Dortmans Associates ** Mario Belanger, President, Avaya Canada ** Tom Moss, VP, Bell Security Solutions ** Tony Rybczynski, Director Enterprise, Nortel ** Mike Hall, Senior Director, Shaw Business Solutions ** John Riddell, Senior Consultant, Angus Dortmans Associates ** Stuart Curzon, Regional Vice-President, Verizon Business=20 ** Deepak Chopra and Greg MacDonald, Senior VPs, National Bank Financial ** Nitin Kawale, Senior VP, Cisco Systems Canada ** Stan Tyo, VP, Telus For a full conference program, and to register, visit http://www.enterprisenetworks.ca. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2006 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #367 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Oct 21 19:00:25 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 4DAB32270; Sat, 21 Oct 2006 19:00:25 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #368 Message-Id: <20061021230025.4DAB32270@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 19:00:25 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 21 Oct 2006 19:05:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 368 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Fire Knocks Out Phone Service in St. John's, NL (jwillis) Spam Trojan Installs Own Anti-Virus Scanner (Ryan Naraine) Intermittant Caller ID Problem (Mike M.) Re: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number (John Levine) Re: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number (DevilsPGD) When Our Nation Reaches 400 Million People (Erin Texeira, AP) Wanna Direct? Get Out Your Cell Phone (Jenny Barchfield, AP) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 9:52:20 -0400 From: jwillis Subject: Fire Knocks Out Phone Service in St. John's, NL Phone service is back to normal in Newfoundland after it was knocked out in about one third of the island late Friday night. The outage, lasting more than five hours, began when a power cable at a telephone switching station in St. John's shorted out and started a small fire, Bell Aliant said. The fire, reported at the Bell Aliant building in the Allandale neighbourhood of the city, broke out around 10 p.m. local time. A technician at the scene extinguished the fire quickly before firefighters arrived, said Bell Aliant spokeswoman Brenda Reid. With no 911 service, ambulances had to roam the streets looking for emergencies. People couldn't use automated bank machines or credit cards because of the outage. An estimated 150,000 customers in and around the city were without phone and internet service. Flights continued to land at St. John's airport throughout the evening, but controllers were unable to contact other airports. Technicians worked for hours on the problem, and by 3 a.m. local time Saturday, Aliant said phone service had been restored. Internet service was back a few hours later. Parts of this report are copyright 2006 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 16:24:31 -0500 From: Ryan Naraine eWeek Subject: Spam Trojan Installs Own Anti-Virus Scanner by Ryan Naraine - eWEEK Veteran malware researcher Joe Stewart was fairly sure he'd seen it all until he started poking at the SpamThru Trojan -- a piece of malware designed to send spam from an infected computer. The Trojan, which uses peer-to-peer technology to send commands to hijacked computers, has been fitted with its own anti-virus scanner -- a level of complexity and sophistication that rivals some commercial software. "This the first time I've seen this done. [It] gets points for originality," says Stewart, senior security researcher at SecureWorks, in Atlanta, Ga. "It is simply to keep all the system resources for themselves; if they have to compete with, say, a mass-mailer virus, it really puts a damper on how much spam they can send," he added. Most viruses and Trojans already attempt to block anti-virus software from downloading updates by tweaking hosts file to the anti-virus update sites to the localhost address. Malicious hackers battling for control over an infected system have also removed competing malware by killing processes, removing registry keys, or setting up mutexes that fool the other malware into thinking it is already running and then exiting at start. But, as Stewart discovered during his analysis, SpamThru takes the game to a new level, actually using an anti-virus engine against potential rivals. At start-up, the Trojan requests and loads a DLL from the author's command-and-control server. This then downloads a pirated copy of Kaspersky AntiVirus for WinGate into a concealed directory on the infected system. It patches the license signature check in-memory in the Kaspersky DLL to avoid having Kaspersky refuse to run due to an invalid or expired license, Stewart said. Ten minutes after the download of the DLL, it begins to scan the system for malware, skipping files which it detects are part of its own installation. "Any other malware found on the system is then set up to be deleted by Windows at the next reboot," he added. At first, Stewart said he was confused about the purpose of the Kaspersky anti-virus scanner. "I theorized at first that distributed scanning and morphing of the code before sending the updates via P2P would be a clever way to evade detection indefinitely," he said, but it wasn't until he looked closely at the way rival malware files were removed that he realized this was a highly sophisticated operation working hard to make full use of stolen bandwidth for spam runs. Stewart also found SpamThru using a clever command-and control structure to avoid shutdown. The Trojan uses a custom P2P protocol to share information with other peers including the IP addresses and ports and software version of the control server. "Control is still maintained by a central server, but in case the control server is shut down, the spammer can update the rest of the peers with the location of a new control server, as long as he/she controls at least one peer," he said. Stewart found that the network generally consists of one control server (running multiple peer-nets on different ports), several template servers, and around 500 peers per port. There appears to be a limit to how many peers each port can effectively control, as the overhead in sharing information between hosts is fairly large, he added. "The estimated number of infected hosts connected to the one control server we looked at was between one and two thousand across all open ports," Stewart added. The operation uses template-based spam, setting up a system where each SpamThru client is its own spam engine, downloading a template containing the spam, random phrases to use as hash-busters, random "from" names, and a list of several hundred e-mail addresses to send advertising. The templates are encrypted and use a challenge-response authentication method to prevent third parties from being able to download the templates from the template server. Stewart also found that the Trojan was randomizing the GIF files -- changing the width and height of the images -- to defeat anti-spam solutions that reject e-mail based on a static image. "Although we've seen automated spam networks set up by malware before, this is one of the more sophisticated efforts. The complexity and scope of the project rivals some commercial software. Clearly the spammers have made quite an investment in infrastructure in order to maintain their level of income," Stewart said. During his analysis, Stewart found that SpamThru was being used to operate a spam-based pump-and-dump stock scheme. Check out eWEEK.com's Security Center for the latest security news, reviews and analysis. And for insights on security coverage around the Web, take a look at eWEEK.com Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer's Weblog. Copyright 2006 Ziff Davis Inc. 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 For more news and headlines, please go go: http://telecom-digest.news/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Mike M Subject: Intermittent Caller ID Problem Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 17:16:26 -0500 Organization: NewsGuy - Unlimited Usenet $19.95 A while back my caller id began intermittently not showing up. I'm in Austin, Tx on AT&T/Bell lines. I have 2 POTS lines. I have a number of phones which all display caller ID as well as a voice modem on each line for answering machine functionality. Previous to the past year or so the caller ID worked 100%. I don't have any idea what happened to cause this problem. My (DirectTV) satellite receivers are supposed to pick up caller ID and flash 'em on the TV screen. But this has never worked even when there was no intermittent problem. When the caller ID is dropped, it's not showing private or anonymous, it's simply not there, as if I don't subscribe to it. This happens about 50% of the time. Can something in my house cause this? Or is it a Bell problem or what? Anything I can do? I appreciate any advice. Thanks, Mike ------------------------------ Date: 20 Oct 2006 23:31:04 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number > A few minutes later, I got a call from someone named Nancy who said > that she had just gotten Vonage service and Vonage had assigned her > this number. The same thing happened to me. I ported my number away and Vonage didn't notice. For many months the only effect was that Vonage users couldn't call me, but they eventually reissued it to a college student nearby and I got some rather perplexed calls from her father. I happen to know a Vonage board member, and a note to him got it fixed in about 12 seconds, but we're not all so lucky. R's, John ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:47:05 -0500 Organization: Disorganized In message Fred Atkinson wrote: > A few minutes ago, I got a call (on my SC line) from someone asking to > speak to Nancy. She confirmed that she had dialed my number. I told > her that there has never been a Nancy here. > A few minutes later, I got a call from someone named Nancy who said > that she had just gotten Vonage service and Vonage had assigned her > this number. > Since I originally had that number from Vonage, I explained to her > that I had ported the number from Vonage to Carolina Net quite some > time ago. She said she'd have to call Vonage and request a new > number. > I called Vonage and spoke to Tina. After I explained that that number > was no longer available for Vonage to re-assign, she called the > appropriate people. They are going to assign Nancy a new telephone > number. > Tina opened a ticket for me on this. I told Tina to make sure they > didn 't do anything to cause my SC number any problems. She said they > wouldn't interfere with my number. > I called Carolina Net to let them know what is happening. I got music > on hold for a good little bit before they came on the line. > I called Carolina Net and informed them of this phenomenon. Caroline > (Carolina Net) said that she is opening a ticket on this and will > inform the porting department to make sure that I don't lose my > number. > Can anything else this simple to handle go wrong? Vonage doesn't officially support porting numbers out. It's against the AUP too, actually. However, they can't really stop you either. Their system simply cancels your service but someone has to go through to make sure they don't reassign it. Watch carefully over the next couple weeks, your number might magically get ported back to Vonage as a result of this. "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college" -- Lewis Black ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 16:13:48 -0500 From: Erin Texeira, AP Subject: When Our Nation Reaches 400 Million People By ERIN TEXEIRA, AP National Writer Now that the nation officially numbers more than 300 million, what next? What will 400 million look like? If demographers are right, we'll hit that mark by 2043 or maybe sooner. They and other futurists envision a typical American neighborhood that year will be something like this: More than likely it'll be located in the South or West, despite scarce water resources and gas prices that make $3 a gallon look like a bargain. Barely half of the community's residents will be white, and one in four whites will be senior citizens. Nearly one in four people will be Latino and multiracial Americans will be commonplace. "We're going to be growing for the next 50 or 100 years, but it's not because of the birthrate," said John Bongaarts, vice president of the Population Council, a nonprofit in New York. "If the birthrate were to drop we'd have a very different future ahead. If we were not living longer and had no migrants we wouldn't be growing at all." The U.S. will keep getting more racially and ethnically diverse; by 2043, it will be about 15 percent non-Hispanic black, 8 percent Asian and 24 percent Hispanic. Ideas about race that hold sway now, simply won't then, just as the attitudes of 30 years ago have changed. For example, in the 1970s one in three whites favored laws that barred marriage between blacks and whites; in recent years it's barely one in 10. More than 7 million Americans reported in Census 2000 that they were multiracial -- 42 percent of them were under age 18. "The racial lines will basically be blurred," said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. "It's hard to say what the different classifications will be. ... The stark racial categories now won't hold." Mixing and melding will be the norm for today's children, who by 2043 will be moving into positions of power across society as the last baby boomers close in on 80. "Think of the electoral base," said C. Matthew Snipp, a sociologist and demographer at Stanford University. "It seems likely that the power structures will change." Demographers say some of today's trends will continue: Rust Belt cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland will probably keep losing population, though some argue that lower costs of living may attract people who can telecommute to jobs elsewhere. The fastest growing states will continue to be Nevada, Arizona and Florida. Census projections through 2030 show the Sun Belt continuing to gain population. With some cities and suburbs becoming more densely populated, far-out exurban areas will keep growing — which will probably mean longer commutes and more demand for gasoline. Demographers predict costs for gas and water, now relatively inexpensive, will mushroom. Lifesaving drugs and technologies will help Americans stay alive longer than ever -- and the nation overall will age. In 2000, 12.4 percent of Americans were aged 65 and older -- but that percentage is projected to jump to 20 percent by 2043. More than one in four residents of Florida, New Mexico, North Dakota, Maine, Montana and Wyoming will be over age 65. Here's another way to think of the senior boom: Between 2000 and 2050, the group of Americans who are 85 and older will nearly quadruple to almost 21 million. The good news is this will help revitalize rural, retirement-friendly places with lots of natural amenities like the nation's Western mountains and some Great Lakes areas, said Kenneth Johnson of Loyola University-Chicago. "These tourist and retirement destinations are the fastest-growing rural areas," he said, adding that this is attracting workers -- many new immigrants -- to build houses and tend hotels. But a big bubble of elderly Americans also will strain Social Security and Medicare, and there will be "big battles" over how to pay for them, Bongaarts said. Demographers repeatedly warned that projections are iffy; things change. Expected medical breakthroughs may not happen. World events -- wars, diseases, economic ups and down -- can stop or speed up immigration. Americans could stop having enough children to replace themselves, which they're just barely managing now. Things that seemed a lock just a short time ago can be thwarted. Two years ago, for example, California officials downgraded by 15 percent their predictions for state growth, mainly because Latino families were having far fewer babies than expected. When the U.S. hit 200 million people in 1967, the nation was supposed to reach 300 million before the end of the century. "Nobody really knows for certain where this will go," Snipp said. "All this is premised on many, many assumptions." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 16:33:19 -0500 From: Jenny Barchfield, AP Subject: Wanna Direct? Get Out Your Cell Phone By JENNY BARCHFIELD, Associated Press Writer "Silence on the set," ordered movie director Xavier Mussel as he grabbed his cell phone -- not to make a call but to film another scene for his short film. Cheap, easy and accessible, mobiles-as-movie cameras are breaking the motion picture mold, putting a touch of Hollywood into amateur filmmakers' hands. How-to workshops have sprung up from Boston to Abu Dhabi to Rio de Janeiro, and Paris just held its second film festival devoted exclusively to movies shot with cells. Some 8,500 visitors attended screenings at the recent three-day Pocket Films Festival at Paris' Pompidou modern-art museum. In addition to nearly 100 shorts, the fare included three feature-length films — all shot on cells. "What we're seeing is the democratization of filmmaking," said festival director Laurence Herszberg. "Now, you don't need expensive equipment and years of training to make a movie. All you need is your phone, that little object you carry around in your pocket all day." Purists complain that poor image quality makes such films virtually unwatchable, but cell filmmakers insist the advantages of shooting on mobiles far outweigh the drawbacks. "First and foremost, it's a matter of cost," said Leonard Bourgois-Beaulieu, whose short, "Busy," won Pocket Films' audience-choice award for best film. "You save on the camera, which can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of euros and you also save on all the trappings that go with an expensive camera, from operators to lighting designers to makeup artists," said the 23-year-old director, who wrote, shot and acted in his lighthearted comedy about harried twentysomethings. "Busy" took less than a week to shoot, Bourgois-Beaulieu said, for the cost of a Metro ticket and two coffees (one scene takes place in a cafe). He acknowledged that cell cameras can't match their conventional digital counterparts for image quality -- particularly when blown up to fill a full-size movie screen. While close-ups and still shots in "Busy" were remarkably sharp, sudden movement and traveling shots reduced the image to a pixelated fog. Still, Bourgois-Beaulieu said, there is an upside to the graininess. It allowed him to play multiple roles in the movie. "With the pixels distorting my face, you can't tell it's me," he said with an impish grin. Brazilian-born director Louise Botkay-Courcier, whose poetic silent film "Mammah" is set in a Turkish bath, also said she liked cell cameras' low definition. "Just like in painting, in film there are different styles," said Botkay-Courcier, 28, who added that she was inspired by the fluid, blotchy style of the Impressionists. "Not everything is about hyper-realism." Festival-goer Stephanie Woldenberg agreed. "I was expecting the grainy images to drive me crazy," said the lawyer from Switzerland. "But in a lot of the films, it added something mysterious, almost beautiful." Cell-phone cameras have been around for nearly five years. Nokia, the world's No. 1 cell-phone maker, was first to integrate a camera in 2001, said Nokia France spokesman Xavier des Horts. That initial model took only stills, but built-in video soon followed and is now near-standard. Though cell films are easier to shoot than conventional movies, they can be harder to edit, said Pocket Films' artistic director, Benoit Labourdette. Uploading footage from phone to computer can be tedious, as editing programs often have to convert the format. The process can take hours, even days, depending on the amount of footage. "Once you upload the footage, you go through exactly the same editing process as with any other digital movie," Labourdette said. Films screened at the festival were edited on Vegas, a video and audio production program by Sony or on I-Movie, software that is standard on new Apple computers. Most free Internet-based editing software is still not equipped to recognize cell phone footage, Labourdette said. Because built-in microphones in cell phones pick up background noise, most dialogue must be added in post-production. "It's a real pain in the neck," said director Bourgois-Beaulieu, who spent weeks re-recording and re-synching all the dialogue in his chatty, 10-minute-long film. While cell-phone cameras have radically simplified shooting movies, the crux of filmmaking -- finding the right story -- remains as complicated as ever, he said. "Just because everyone has a cell phone in our pockets doesn't make us all Spielbergs," said Bourgois-Beaulieu, who is hard at work on his second cell movie. "You've still got to have an artistic vision, or else it's just so much dumb footage." Copyright -- 2006 The Associated Press. 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 ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V25 #368 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 23 17:39:52 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 7ED71223C; Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:39:51 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #369 Message-Id: <20061023213951.7ED71223C@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:39:51 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:40:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 369 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Government Defends 1998 Anti-Porn Law (Maryclaire Dale, AP) China Moves Toward "Real Name System" on Web (Reuters News Wire) Call for Papers: IAENG International Conference on Data Mining (IDMA 2007) Book Review: "SSH The Secure Shell", Barrett/Silverman (Rob Slade) AT&T's Q3 Profit Jumps 74% (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 23, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number (Fred Atkinson) Re: Fire Knocks Out Phone Service in St. John's, NL (JohnWmAustin) Re: Intermittent Caller ID Problem (Dave Garland) Last Laugh! Spoofing your Caller ID (Patrick Townson) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:14:34 -0500 From: Maryclaire Dale, AP Subject: Government Defends 1998 Anti-Porn Law By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer Eight years after Congress tried to criminalize material deemed "harmful to children," free speech advocates and Web site publishers took their challenge of the law to trial Monday. Salon.com, Nerve.com and other plaintiffs backed by the American Civil Liberties Union are suing over the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. They believe the law could restrict legitimate material they publish online -- exposing them to fines or even jail time. The Justice Department argues that it is easier to stop online pornography at the source than to keep children from viewing it. The law, signed by President Clinton, requires adults to use some sort of access code, or perhaps a credit-card number, to view material that may be considered "harmful to children." It would impose a $50,000 fine and six-month prison term on commercial Web site operators that publish such content, which is to be defined by "contemporary community standards." It has yet to be enforced, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice granted preliminary injunctions, including one in June 2004 in which it ruled 5-4 that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail. The ACLU argues that filters are a more effective way of policing the Internet. It notes that the law would not regulate any material posted overseas. The government "will argue that parents are too stupid to use filters. It's an insulting argument and it's wrong," ACLU attorney Chris Hansen said in his opening statement Monday. Eric Beane, a government attorney, acknowledged that it is tempting to defer to families on the question of what is appropriate for children, but said the patchwork of filters used by parents don't work. "The evidence will show that a shocking amount of pornography slips through to children," Beane said, noting "The internet is so full of porn stuff these days.". The nonjury trial in front of U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed is expected to take about a month. The plaintiffs, technology experts and even Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy have expressed concerns that the law has already been surpassed by technology and the growth of the Internet. Kennedy noted, for example, that filters can block Web material posted offshore, but the law cannot control what foreigners post online. In preparing for its defense of the law, the Justice Department sought internal files from search engine companies and Internet service providers. Google Inc. refused one such subpoena for 1 million sample queries and 1 million Web addresses in its database, although it primarily cited trade secrets, not privacy issues. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:19:46 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: China Moves Toward "Real Name System" on Web China moves toward "real name system" for blogs. The Internet Society of China has recommended to the government that bloggers be required to use their real names when they register blogs, state media said on Monday, in the latest attempt to regulate free-wheeling Web content. The society, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, said no decision had been made but that a 'real name system' was inevitable. "A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardize and develop its blog industry," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general, Huang Chengqing, as saying. "We suggest, in a recent report submitted to the ministry, that a real name system be implemented in China's blog industry," Huang said. China has already imposed some controls on Internet chatter about politically sensitive subjects, which often goes far beyond what is permissible in the country's traditional state-run media. Last year, the Ministry of Information Industry issued regulations on Internet news content that analysts said was aimed at extending rules governing licensed news outlets to blogs and Internet-only news sites. Participation in university on-line discussion groups has also been restricted to students. Bloggers anonymously disseminating untrue information on the Internet brought about a negative influence on society, the Xinhua report said. Under the proposed rule, users would be required to register under their real name to open a blog but would still be allowed to write under a pseudonym. Copyright 2006 Reuters 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: imecs___2007@iaeng.org Subject: Call for Papers: IAENG International Conference on Data Mining Date: 22 Oct 2006 23:19:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com CFP: The IAENG International Conference on Data Mining and Applications ICDMA 2007 From: International Association of Engineers The 2007 IAENG International Conference on Data Mining and Applications 21-23 March, 2007, Hong Kong http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2007/ICDMA2007.html The conference ICDMA'07 is held under the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2007. The IMECS 2007 is organized by the International Association of Engineers (IAENG), and serves as good platforms for the engineering community members to meet with each other and to exchange ideas. The last conference in 2006 has attracted a total of over four hundred participants from over 30 countries. All submitted papers will be under peer review and accepted papers will be published in the conference proceeding (ISBN: 978-988-98671-4-0). The abstracts will be indexed and available at major academic databases. The accepted papers will also be considered for publication in the special issues of the journal Engineering Letters, in IAENG journals and in edited books. Important Dates: Draft Manuscript submission deadline: 12 December, 2006 Camera-Ready papers & Pre-registration due: 2 January, 2007 ICDMA 2007: 21-23 March, 2007 Submission: ICDMA 2007 is now accepting manuscript submissions. Prospective authors are invited to submit their draft paper in full paper (any appropriate style) to imecs{at}iaeng.org by 12 December, 2006. The submitted file can be in MS Word format, PS format, or PDF formats. The first page of the draft paper should include: (1) Title of the paper; (2) Name, affiliation and e-mail address for each author; (3) A maximum of 5 keywords of the paper. Also, the name of the conference that the paper is being submitted to should be stated in the email. The topics of the ICDMA'07 include, but not limited to, the following: Soft Computing Data Mining Tools: Artificial intelligence Artificial neural network Fuzzy logic Automatic Learning Data Mining Tools: Machine learning Nearest neighbor (pattern recognition) Pattern recognition Statistical Data Mining Tools: Hypothesis testing Linear discriminant analysis Logistic regression Principal components analysis Regression analysis Data Mining Applications: Business intelligence Business performance management Database Data stream mining Data warehouse Decision tree Descriptive statistics Document warehouse Relational data mining Text mining ICDMA Conference Co-Chairs and Committee Members: Chin-Chen Chang (co-chair) IEEE Fellow, IEE Fellow Chair Professor in Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taiwan Dr. Qingfeng Chen School of Information Technology Deakin University, Australia Chao-Chang Chiu The Department of Information Management Yuan Ze University, Taiwan Francisco Herrera Triguero (co-chair) Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Granada, Spain JunWei Hsieh Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering Yuan Ze University of Taiwan, Taiwan Gwo-Jen Hwang Professor, Department of Information and Learning Technology Dean, College of Science and Engineering National University of Tainan, Taiwan Dr. Rolly Intan Lecturer, Informatics Engineering Department, Petra Christian University, Indonesia Alejandro Murua Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Montreal, Canada Associate Editor, International Journal of Tomography and Statistics Didier Nakache (co-chair) CNAM de Paris, France Dr. Apostolos N. Papadopoulos Lecturer, Department of Informatics Aristotle University, Greece Junping Sun (co-chair) Professor, Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences, Nova Southeastern University, USA Yufei Tao (co-chair) Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science City University of Hong Kong Dr. Dat Tran Senior Lecturer in Computing, School of Information Sciences and Engineering, University of Canberra, Australia Fu Lee Wang, PhD Lecturer, Department of Computer Science City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Hsiao-Fan Wang (co-chair) Chair Professor of Engineering Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan Dr. Jiying Wang Instructor 1, Department of Computer Science City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong More details about the IMECS 2007 can be found at: http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2007/index.html More details about the International Association of Engineers, the journal Engineering Letters and the IAENG International Journal of Computer Science can be found at: http://www.iaeng.org/about_IAENG.html http://www.engineeringletters.com http://www.iaeng.org/IJCS/index.html It will be highly appreciated if you can circulate these calls for papers to your colleagues. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:15:40 -0800 From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "SSH The Secure Shell", D.J. Barrett/R.E. Silverman Reply-To: rMslade@shaw.ca Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User BKSSHLDG.RVW 20060910 "SSH The Secure Shell", Daniel J. Barrett/Richard E. Silverman, 2001, 0-596-00011-1, U$39.95/C$58.95 %A Daniel J. Barrett dbarrett@oreilly.com %A Richard E. Silverman res@oreilly.com %C 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472 %D 2001 %G 0-596-00011-1 %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. %O U$39.95/C$58.95 800-998-9938 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596000111/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596000111/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596000111/robsladesin03-20 %O Audience a+ Tech 2 Writing 2 (see revfaq.htm for explanation) %P 540 p. %S Definitive Guide %T "SSH The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide" The preface states that the book is intended for system administrators (who may be called upon to support SSH, or use it within their networks), users (who may wish to use SSH out of concern for their own privacy or the security of their transactions), and developers (who may be able to use SSH in order to provide robust and reliable security to their own applications at little development cost). The authors also note that there may be confusion between the protocol (denoted SSH), various products, and individual utilities and programs (indicated by lowercase: ssh). Chapter one outlines what SSH is, and isn't, the basic services it provides (authentication, encryption, and integrity protection), and also notes other protocols and products that provide similar services. Basic operation of the most common clients (ssh and scp) is covered in chapter two, along with a terse but reasonable introduction to asymmetric key pairs. The internals of SSH, and a more extended discussion of cryptographic concepts, such as symmetric encryption, asymmetric, and hashing, are examined in chapter three. (The section concludes with a useful list of threats against which SSH provides little or no protection.) Extensive installation and configuration options are given in chapter four, with server configuration choices in five. Chapter six seems to move the subject to operational issues, addressing key management, and particularly SSH agent use of keys. Advanced topics governing client use are provided in chapter seven. Chapter eight outlines alternative settings for the use of SSH with user accounts. Chapter nine discusses forwarding, which can be used in both network administration (providing a secure tunnel within an unsecured environment) or development (adding encryption or integrity functionality to an application). While previous material gave details of configuration options, chapter ten furnishes the beleaguered sysadmin with a recommended initial configuration. Chapter eleven details options and setups for a variety of applications and situations. Troubleshooting guidance, and a list of common problems, is supplied in chapter twelve. Chapter thirteen equips the reader with tables of settings and features pertinent to the various implementations of SSH. Since SSH is often seen as limited to the UNIX world, details of the Okhapkin SSH1 Windows port are given in chapter fourteen, with SecureCRT in fifteen, F-Secure SSH (for Windows and Mac) in sixteen, and NiftyTelnet (Mac) in seventeen. Too many of the mature and useful security technologies languish in obscurity. Everybody knows that SSH exists, but too few people use it. Hopefully this reference might give more developers and users a chance to try it out, and administrators some resources to support it. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2006 BKSSHLDG.RVW 20060910 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org It is unclear what national interest is served by security agencies propagating this lurid urban myth [that terrorists have steganographically hidden messages in pornographic images]. Perhaps the goal is to manufacture an excuse for the failure to anticipate the events of September 11th. Perhaps it is preparing the ground for an attempt at bureaucratic empire-building via Internet regulation, as a diversionary activity from the much harder and less pleasant task of going after [terrorists]. Perhaps the vision of [accused terrorists] as cryptic pornographers is being spun to create a subconscious link, in the public mind, with the scare stories about child pornography that were used before September 11th to justify government plans for greater Internet regulation. - Ross Anderson, cryptome.org/al-stego-rot.htm Dictionary of Information Security www.syngress.com/catalog/?pid=4150 http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 12:45:08 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T's Q3 Profit Jumps 74% USTelecom dailyLead October 23, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eIjkfDtusXexkeCibuddVMyg TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T's Q3 profit jumps 74% BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cisco pushes into emerging telepresence business * EchoStar debuts broadband service * Report: Cable to spend $2B on infrastructure by 2010 * Goldman, Hearst singing Jingle's tune to $30M * Verizon Business connects Ethernet to six Asian countries USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Where Television Meets the Internet Tomorrow, Oct. 24, 1:00 p.m. (ET) * Mark your calendars for NXTcomm! HOT TOPICS * Level 3 buys Broadwing * The meaning of "GooTube" * Cisco steadily building advanced technology portfolio * AT&T aims to shake up video business with U-verse * Deutsche Telekom rolls out IPTV TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * YouTube only the beginning of video revolution * Microsoft touts Windows Mobile growth * Yahoo! adds programming expertise to amateur video REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * First checks to arrive soon in WorldCom settlement ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 23, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:33:22 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 23, 2006 ******************************** Drillisch Plans Merger with Rivals to Fend Off T-Mobile and Vodafone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20650?11228 German telecoms services provider Drillisch is considering a merger with four rivals to create a group to rival market leaders, T-Mobile Germany and Vodafone Germany, according to Paschalis Choulidis, Drillisch CEO (Chief Executive Officer), who was interviewed by the German daily, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Drillisch is ... FCC Releases Telephone Subscriber Report http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20646?11228 The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued the annual report on telephone subscription in the United States using data from the current population survey (CPS) undertaken by the Census Bureau in March 2006. The key questions utilised in this survey examine whether a household has any type of telephone service-fixed, ... European Ombudsman Probes O2 Complaint on Roaming Charges http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20640?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Union's Ombudsman said Monday he had opened an inquiry into a complaint by O2 over an EU antitrust probe that found the British mobile phone operator charged excessive roaming fees. O2 complained that the European Commission failed to grant proper defense rights or access to documents ... Cingular, Siemens Support 3G/IMS R&D http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20638?11228 Siemens Networks and Cingular Wireless are joining forces in an effort to better equip university students and researchers to push the envelope on third-generation IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) convergence applications. The 3G/IMS lab is being set up at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The goal of the lab will be to research the ... French Telcos Buy Themselves Presents http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20635?11228 Rival French telecom operators Iliad Group and France Telecom (FT) have signed small acquisition deals during the past 24 hours in moves to boost their competitive positions in widely divergent markets. Iliad is to acquire fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) operator Citefibre, while FT is picking up majority control of IT service house ... Cisco Dials Up Videoconferencing http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20628?11228 Who hates videoconferencing? Cisco Systems Inc. hates videoconferencing. "There's such a disdain in upper management here for videoconferencing," says Randy Harrell, a director of product marketing for Cisco. He tells of one executive who intentionally shows up 15 minutes late for any videoconference, hoping that ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 21:31:17 -0400 > Vonage doesn't officially support porting numbers out. It's against > the AUP too, actually. This is a concept I don't understand. How can their (and Voicepulse's) AUP to prevent their customers from porting numbers out? I believe the FCC mandate is to require number portability. If they can escape this responsibility by simply adding a clause to their policy, then what is the point? > However, they can't really stop you either. Their system simply > cancels your service but someone has to go through to make sure they > don't reassign it. That sort of makes sense. It suggests an administrative/managerial weakness in their process. However, Voicepulse did stop me from porting a number. > Watch carefully over the next couple weeks, your number might > magically get ported back to Vonage as a result of this. It wouldn't surprise me. But as I stated, I called Vonage about it. They've assured me they will do nothing to hijack my number. And I called Carolina Net (my current provider). They are asking their porting folks to be sure my number isn't ported again. Would it be possible for a VOIP company to port away someone's number without a copy of their bill and a signed authorization? If so, that stinks. Fred ------------------------------ From: JohnWmAustin@gmail.com Subject: Re: Fire Knocks Out Phone Service in St. John's, NL Date: 23 Oct 2006 04:35:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com jwillis wrote: > Phone service is back to normal in Newfoundland after it was knocked > out in about one third of the island late Friday night. > The outage, lasting more than five hours, began when a power cable at > a telephone switching station in St. John's shorted out and started a > small fire, Bell Aliant said. I noticed this at the time as I was configuring a firewall and my ISP (Rogers cable) began to supply an invalid address to the WAN side of the box. 192.168.100.1 is definitely not an address that Rogers would normally issue. Calls to tech support returned fast busy. All calls outside the town of Portugal Cove returned fast busy. I went to sleep knowing I could reach the local firehall if I needed to. Things were chaotic in St John's; virtually ALL telecom was affected. There was a fire in a power cable tray on the 2nd floor of the (6 floor) Allandale Rd central office and the tech on-site decided to cut off power to the entire building to fight it. This prevented normal back-up systems and knocked out cell service, most of 911, long distance and internet service to the mainland. St John's is the capital and largest city on the Island of Newfoundland off the east coast of Canada, which has a population of more than 500,000. This is the second major outage I have experienced here. The first was due to simultaneous cuts to the fibre optics cable crossing the island. That one occurred during a labor dispute. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Intermittent Caller ID Problem Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 18:19:50 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Mike M wrote: > I have a number of phones which all display caller > ID as well as a voice modem on each line for answering machine > functionality. I believe that, as with ringers, there is a limit to the number of caller ID devices you can put on the line and still have them work. It is quite possible that, for the purposes of this question, modems count as caller ID devices. No, I don't know what that number is. Likely it depends on the particular hardware, as with ringers, and the particular telco equipment and wiring. I'm sure someone else here will be able to provide a more authoritative answer. Dave ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2006 16:39:00 -0500 From: Patrick Townson Subject: Last Laugh! A Web Site Used to Spoof Caller ID Here's a web site you can use for that purpose: http://www.ospenterprises.com/phone/ You begin by telling it the name and number to be shown on the called party's ID display. Then you continue by telling it the message to be delivered, and the type of voice (male, female, age) to use when delivering the message. The owner of the web site advises you that they _do_ capture your IP address and that threat messages or obscene calls are dealt with by authorities. Don't get into trouble!!! PAT ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #369 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 24 16:44:13 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5620E2260; Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:44:13 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #370 Message-Id: <20061024204413.5620E2260@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:44:13 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:45:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 370 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson USA Hosts Most Internet Child Abuse (Matthew Jones, IWF) Telmex Targets US Hispanic Market With Directories Acquisition (USTelecom) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 24, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Sprint EV-DO Revision A Mobile Broadband Network (Monty Solomon) How to Block Display of Phone Number When You Dial an 800 Number (D Saklad) Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phone Use, Low Sperm Count (fatkinson) Re: Fire Knocks Out Phone Service in St. John's, NL (Steven Lichter) Re: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday (Henry Cabot Henhouse III) Re: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number (DevilsPGD) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:44:21 -0500 From: Matthew Jones IWF Subject: USA Hosts Most Internet Child Abuse IWF By Matthew Jones The United States and Russia host the bulk of the world's child abuse Web sites, according to a British-based Internet monitoring group which identifies the UK as one of the countries with the best enforcement records. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) reported on Tuesday that just over half (51 percent) of child abuse content was traced back to the United States and 20 percent to Russia. This compared with just 0.2 percent of potentially illegal content that appears to be hosted in Britain, down from 18 percent in 1997. "The UK has benefited from a concerted effort from the online industry which has sought to take down these Web sites and from the authorities which have demonstrated a determination to tackle the problem," said the IWF's Peter Robbins. "In Britain, hosts are told about content and told to take it down. Additionally the government has done its part in bringing in tough legislation," the group's chief executive told Reuters. New laws enacted in 2003 introduced the application of reverse burden of proof -- people have to prove they are innocent if they have downloaded obscene material. The British authorities were also very active in arresting and prosecuting individuals as part of Operation Ore, an international police operation targeting viewers of child abuse images. That the United States has such a high proportion of abuse Web sites is partly attributed to the fact the country has a large number of Internet users, servers and ISPs. The enforcement approach also differs from the British model. In the United States law enforcement officials prefer to track down the people behind the Web sites by leaving them live for a period. In contrast, British police shut down the Web sites first and then track down the perpetrators using computer records. Robbins said the problem in Russia was a lack of any centralized authority to take ownership of the problem. He said there was no hotline that people could use to report Web sites. In total, more than 31,000 sites with abusive material have been removed since 1996 when the IWF was set up, but challenges remain. The growth of pay-per-view sites was worrying because they tend to be more technologically sophisticated and keep moving around the world to avoid being shut down. They also often host the most extreme images. "Some of these Web sites have been bragging about how they have been around since 1995/1996. We have got to track them down and then shut them down," Robbins said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder if 51 percent -- slightly more than half -- of those sites are actually in USA, or that they are working with 'USA-style' net addresses, i.e. 'com', 'net' etc, but located in other countries? I know that Yahoo turns a blind eye on a huge amount of porn, if my unwanted email from there is any indicator. I toss out huge amounts of it from Yahoo each day. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:02:15 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Telmex Targets U.S. Hispanic Market With Directories Acquisition USTelecom dailyLead October 24, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eIucfDtusXezvcCibuddrrDb TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Telmex targets U.S. Hispanic market with directories acquisition BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * AT&T projects U-verse growth * Advice for AOL * Analysts: Sprint Nextel a buyout target? * Motorola's Russian saga takes another turn * Time Warner Cable picks Siemens for VoIP contract * Lucent, Alcatel, BellSouth report earnings: * Vivendi sues T-Mobile over PTC investment USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Transforming the Launch of Next Generation Services Thursday * Got a Question about NXTcomm? TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * T-Mobile tests converged service in Seattle * NBA focuses on Web for new season * Streaming video draws a crowd REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * TVUPlayer popular online, but copyright issues loom Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eIucfDtusXezvcCibuddrrDb http://www.dailylead.com/ustelecom/ustelecom_passiton.jsp ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 24, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:51:52 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 24, 2006 ******************************** Regulator Gives Initial Approval to Allocation of 3G Frequencies in Russia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20674?11228 Russia's Telecommunications Ministry has announced that frequencies for 3G services will be allocated to mobile operators, reports Dow Jones International News. The news follows a meeting of the State Radio Frequency Commission yesterday (23 October). Details have not been revealed regarding either the amount of frequencies available ... Vivendi Files Corruption Complaint Against T-Mobile http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20670?11228 PARIS -- Vivendi SA said Tuesday it filed a complaint against T-Mobile in the U.S., claiming the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary illegally appropriated its US$2.5 billion investment in one of Poland's leading mobile telecommunications operators. The suit, which claims T-Mobile took over Vivendi's investment in Polska ... T-Mobile to Participate in Hiwire Trial http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20664?11228 When Hiwire launches its DVB-H trial in the 700 MHz spectrum in Las Vegas next month, wireless operator T-Mobile USA will be part of the high-profile trial. According to a Hiwire executive, within 60 days of Hiwire's formation, T-Mobile signed on to participate in the trial. However, the operator is only participating in the trial ... NTT, TransTeleCom Ink Link Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20661?11228 Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) and Russia's TransTeleCom yesterday disclosed an agreement to exchange traffic and to work jointly to develop international data- transmission services. Tokyo-based NTT says its main NTT Communications Corp (NTT Com) operating subsidiary and Moscow-based TransTeleCom signed ... Verizon: Make Way for ViOS http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20658?11228 First there was FiOS. Now, there's ViOS. In an exclusive LRTV interview taping at Light Reading's Ethernet Expo on Monday, Verizon Business's VP of Advanced Data and IP Services, Tom Roche, let slip that his company is cooking up a new brand of fiber-based services for business called ViOS -- Verizon Integrated Optical ... Colubris Grabs $14M http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20655?11228 WiFi vendor Colubris Networks Inc. has scored an additional $14 million in venture funding as it makes another run at the enterprise wireless LAN market, specifically targeting verticals such as healthcare and manufacturing. All of the current Colubris investors participated in the new round. The company has gathered $50 million ... Wi-Fi in Consumer Electronics Devices: Embraced by Some, Shunned by Others http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20653?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- With Wi-Fi appearing in mobile PCs, home routers, and phones, there has been much hype around Wi-Fi crossing over into the Consumer Electronics (CE) space, reports In-Stat. But the CE space is just warming up to Wi-Fi, with some device segments, such as gaming consoles and handheld games, welcoming Wi-Fi with ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:14:00 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sprint EV-DO Revision A Mobile Broadband Network --Upgraded network will provide users in San Diego with significantly faster upload speeds and a more robust experience than other mobile data networks --20 additional markets to launch during 2006 --Revision A-capable device portfolio will expand in November with Sprint Mobile Broadband USB Modem Media Contact: Scott Sloat, 301-951-2816 Scott.sloat@sprint.com OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - 10/24/2006 Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced that it has upgraded the Sprint Power Vision Network(SM), the nation's largest wireless broadband network covering more than 164 million people, with the faster EV-DO Revision A technology in the San Diego market - making it the first market in the country to have the technology commercially available. With the upgraded mobile broadband network, customers in San Diego will ultimately be able to utilize richer applications and services such as high-speed video telephony, music on demand, video messaging and large file uploads. San Diego is the first of 21 markets where Sprint will roll out EV-DO Revision A this year with coverage expected to reach more than 40 million people. Sprint Power Vision users in these markets should experience significantly faster average upload speeds of 300-400 kbps (compared with 50-70 kbps of current EV-DO networks). Average download speeds should also increase to 450-800 kbps from 400-700 kbps. By 3Q 2007, Sprint's Power Vision network is expected to be completely upgraded to the faster EV-DO Revision A. The other markets scheduled to launch this year are: Baltimore Boston Buffalo, N.Y. Denver Detroit Hartford, Conn. Kansas City, Mo. Las Vegas Los Angeles Milwaukee New York City Newark/Trenton, N.J. Philadelphia Pittsburgh Providence, R.I. Sacramento, Calif Salt Lake City San Francisco Seattle Washington, D.C. http://www2.sprint.com/mr/news_dtl.do?page=show&id=13980 ------------------------------ From: don warner saklad Subject: How to Block Display of Phone Number When You Dial 800 Number Date: 24 Oct 2006 10:49:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com How do you block the display of your telephone number when you dial an 800 toll free telephone number? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Essentially, in general, you _cannot_ block your number ID, nor name ID when calling an 800 number, nor when calling 911, nor a 1010+ number. That is because when you dial one of those numbers, although the end result is the same, the transport mechanism is different. When your name/number shows up on their 'caller ID' device, it is not 'caller ID', it is something known as 'ANI' (Automatic Number Identification) from which there is no hiding. As I noted above, the end results are the same, however. Whenever the called party is expected to pay for your call, i.e. an 800 number or 911, etc. then the person paying for the call rightfully expects to know _who_ is calling ... there are a few ways to get around this, but their legality is questionable. We discussed one of these methods in this space on Monday in the message on 'Spoofing your Caller ID', for example by using http://www.ospenterprises.com/phone/ but that seems like a tedious method, and the ospenterprises people say they gladly cooperate with authorities on request. Say, you were not thinking about making a lot of hang-up calls to someone's 800 number were you? PAT] ------------------------------ From: fatkinson@mishmash.com Subject: Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phone Use, Low Sperm Count Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:46:52 -0000 Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phone Use, Low Sperm Count FOX News Click on the URL below for the rest of this story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,224401,00.html ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. Subject: Re: Fire Knocks Out Phone Service in St. John's, NL Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:30:26 GMT JohnWmAustin@gmail.com wrote: > jwillis wrote: >> Phone service is back to normal in Newfoundland after it was knocked >> out in about one third of the island late Friday night. >> The outage, lasting more than five hours, began when a power cable at >> a telephone switching station in St. John's shorted out and started a >> small fire, Bell Aliant said. > I noticed this at the time as I was configuring a firewall and my ISP > (Rogers cable) began to supply an invalid address to the WAN side of > the box. 192.168.100.1 is definitely not an address that Rogers would > normally issue. Calls to tech support returned fast busy. All calls > outside the town of Portugal Cove returned fast busy. I went to sleep > knowing I could reach the local firehall if I needed to. > Things were chaotic in St John's; virtually ALL telecom was > affected. There was a fire in a power cable tray on the 2nd floor of > the (6 floor) Allandale Rd central office and the tech on-site decided > to cut off power to the entire building to fight it. This prevented > normal back-up systems and knocked out cell service, most of 911, long > distance and internet service to the mainland. > St John's is the capital and largest city on the Island of > Newfoundland off the east coast of Canada, which has a population of > more than 500,000. This is the second major outage I have experienced > here. The first was due to simultaneous cuts to the fibre optics cable > crossing the island. That one occurred during a labor dispute. I can tell you from working in a telephone offices and going though the 1971 Sylmar, California Earthquake, the cutting of the power is the only way to deal with a DC electrical fire in a CO, better to lose service; which then can be brought back up, then getting hit with 1000 amps or higher. I had an a capacitor years ago short and got white hot and exploded in flames. I guess the CO did not have a fire suppression system in it? The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: Henry Cabot Henhouse III Subject: Re: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:10:15 -0700 I seem to recall a spot on the tube in the mid to late 60's, around the 200 million mark, suggesting "planned parenthood/population control"... the memorable line in the ditty was "we'll all be a doublin' in twenty five years" ... stir up any memories? Stephen Ohlemacher AP wrote in message news:telecom25.362.3@telecom-digest.org: > By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer > America's population is on track to hit 300 million on Tuesday morning, > and it's causing a stir among environmentalists. > People in the United States are consuming more than ever -- more food, [snip] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Vonage Trying to Reuse My SC Number Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 23:24:06 -0500 Organization: Disorganized In message Fred Atkinson wrote: >> Vonage doesn't officially support porting numbers out. It's against >> the AUP too, actually. > This is a concept I don't understand. How can their (and > Voicepulse's) AUP to prevent their customers from porting numbers out? > I believe the FCC mandate is to require number portability. If they > can escape this responsibility by simply adding a clause to their > policy, then what is the point? And AUP can say whatever it wants, that doesn't make it legal or enforceable. A: Maybe because some people are too annoyed by top-posting. Q: Why do I not get an answer to my question(s)? A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #370 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 25 20:10:09 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2ED42225E; Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:10:08 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #371 Message-Id: <20061026001008.2ED42225E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:10:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:12:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 371 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Hackers Disrupt On-Line Brokers (Jonathan Keehner, Reuters) Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again (Robert McMillan) Chicago Voter Info Vulnerable to Hackers (Michael Tarm) Cellphone GPS Services Find Their Way Into Market (Monty Solomon) Verizon Mates Inroads With Triple-Play Bundle (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 25, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: How to Block Display of Number When You Dial 800 (Scott Dorsey) Re: How to Block Display of Number When You Dial 800 (gb) Re: Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phone Use, Low Sperm Count (Weller) Re: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday (Paul) Cell Phones and Haunted Houses (Carl Moore) Late October Weather Extremes (Patrick Townson) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 17:25:45 -0500 From: Jonathan Keehner Subject: Hackers Disrupt On-Line Brokers By Jonathan Keehner and Kevin Drawbaugh High-tech crooks using spyware are costing U.S. discount brokerages millions of dollars to repay clients who have been victimized by fraud, the brokerages said in recent days. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warned earlier this month that scammers were hijacking online brokerage accounts using spyware and operating from remote locations. TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. on Tuesday became the latest brokerage to confirm the problem. It said it cost $4 million in the third quarter to make whole customers whose accounts had been hacked. Harder hit was rival E*Trade Financial Corp., which last week said its fraud losses ballooned by $18 million in the third quarter from swindlers who stole clients' identities and manipulated their accounts. Both brokerages guarantee to repay clients who lose money through such frauds. A spokesman for a third discount brokerage, Charles Schwab Corp., said the company hasn't seen "anything unusual enough to merit a disclosure." "During the quarter E*Trade, like a number of our competitors, experienced a significant increase in losses resulting from fraud relating to identity theft," said Jarrett Lilien, president and chief operating officer, on last week's conference call. TD Ameritrade Chief Executive Joseph Moglia told Reuters that all those who stole clients' identities did so by using public computers rather than hacking into the Omaha, Nebraska-based company's internal systems. He called the $4 million hit "not material at all." "This gets a lot of attention but it's not affecting the share price," he said. TD Ameritrade shares fell 79 cents, or 4.8 percent, to close at $15.84, making them the top decliner on the Amex Securities Broker Dealer index. Moglia blamed the share price fall on a cut on its projections for 2007 earnings. Both firms said they were strengthening their defenses. "We've seen that level of fraud in the last three weeks or so reduced to almost zero as a result of the changes we're making," E*Trade CEO Mitchell Caplan said in last week's conference call. But Gwenn Bezard, an analyst with Boston-based consultant Aite Group, said E*Trade had previously made big efforts to bolster security and the $18 million increase was a sign of hackers' resiliency in flouting fraud prevention efforts. "It's a reminder that though you may have stronger authentication it may not protect you from other types of scams," he said. Both E*Trade and TD Ameritrade said they are working with investigators at the SEC, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to crack down on the scammers. About 25 percent of U.S. retail stock trades are made by online investors through roughly 10 million online accounts, according to brokerages regulator NASD. In many of the schemes outlined recently by SEC officials, crooks will load a victim's computer or a public PC with a spy program to monitor a user's activities and capture vital information, such as account numbers and passwords. The program then e-mails the stolen information back to the thief, who can use it to open victim accounts. Once inside, the thief may sell off an account's portfolio and take the proceeds. Or electronically hijacked accounts may be used for "pump-and-dump" schemes to manipulate stock prices for profit, SEC officials have said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 17:28:15 -0500 From: Robert McMillan, IDG Subject: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again by Robert McMillan, IDG News Service Source code to Diebold Election Systems voting machines has been leaked once again. Last week, former Maryland state legislator Cheryl C. Kagan was anonymously given disks containing source code to Diebold's BallotStation and Global Election Management System (GEMS) tabulation software used in the 2004 elections. Kagan, a well-known critic of electronic voting, is Executive Director of the Carl M. Freeman Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in Olney, Maryland. The disks were created and distributed by two federal voting machine testing labs run by Ciber and Wyle Laboratories. They had been testing systems on behalf of the state of Maryland, Diebold said in a statement. Earlier Breech This is not the first time that Diebold source code has been leaked. In early 2003, Diebold critic Bev Harris uncovered similar source code while conducting research using Google's search engine. Soon after, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University published a damning critique of Diebold's products, based on an analysis of hacks to the software. They found, for example, that it is easy to program a counterfeit voting card to work with the machines and then use it to cast multiple votes inside the voting booth. Diebold says it has since introduced security enhancements to its products, but the fact that the company's sensitive source code has again leaked out and been hacked is not a good sign, according to Avi Rubin, a computer science professor with Johns Hopkins and one of the authors of the 2003 report. The first leak should have taught Diebold a lesson on securing its source code, he said. "You would think that given the amount of embarrassment that caused them, they would do a better job of protecting it." Evaluating Criticism Rubin, who was shown the latest source code by a reporter at the Washington Post, said that it appeared to be "just another version" of the code that was published in 2003. The disks came with a letter that was highly critical of Maryland State Administrator of Elections Linda Lamone, Rubin said. "It read like it was from somebody with a very, very serious axe to grind," he said. "It was one of the more outlandish things I've read." The researcher has commented further on the source code leak on his blog. Rubin believes the disks were given to Kagan because of her past criticism of electronic voting machines. "I guess whoever did this knew she would pursue it doggedly, which she did." Diebold said the source code was for BallotStation 4.3.15C, which is no longer being used in the U.S., and for GEMS 1.18.19, which is being used in a "limited number of jurisdictions." The FBI is investigating the leak, Diebold said. Ready for Election The leak comes with just three weeks before elections in the U.S., but Maryland Board of Elections Deputy Administrator Ross Goldstein expressed confidence in the Diebold voting machines. The leaked code was "not software that's in use in this election," he said. "The software now is different and has many more security features." Diebold echoed Goldstein's comments. "Voters and election officials can be confident that on Election Day, votes and vote totals will be safe, secure and accurate," the company said. Kagan, however, wasn't so sure, saying that the security of the source code raised concerns. "The idea that it could be that readily available and could be delivered to me and who-knows-who-else around the state [is disturbing]," she said. "Who know what any other people may be doing with it?" Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. 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 For more news and headines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:04:20 -0500 From: Michael Tarm, AP Subject: Chicago Voter Info Vulnerable to Hackers by MICHAEL TARM, Associated Press Writer The city is investigating a security glitch in its elections Web site that hackers could have used to swipe Social Security numbers and the personal information of about 1.3 million voters, officials said. It wasn't immediately clear if anyone actually stole or misused any of the information, Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Tom Leach said. He said the problem had been fixed and a forensic computer expert would be brought in to examine the site's logs for any signs of illegal access. "Obviously, we are very concerned," Leach said Monday. "We have no reason to believe there was (theft), but we want to be able to assure people there wasn't." A watchdog group, the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project, exposed the vulnerability and alerted officials last week, Leach said. "This was a very serious vulnerability," project member Peter Zelchenko said. A malevolent hacker could have tampered with voter registration data, such as inactivating certain voters' registration or changing their polling places in the online database, as well as accessed Social Security numbers, names, birth dates and addresses, the group said. The Web site is designed to enable Chicago residents to register to vote online. It also explains how and where to cast ballots. About 1.3 million former and current registered voters have personal information on the site, which includes about 780,000 Social Security numbers, Leach said. Leach said the site cannot be used to access the city's electronic vote-counting systems. "Everyone can be assured there votes will be counted and counted accurately," he said. On the Net: Board of Elections: http://www.chicagoelections.com/ Illinois Ballot Integrity project: http://www.ballot-integrity.org/ Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:34:50 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cellphone GPS Services Find Their Way Into Market 3 of 4 major providers offer plans to aid navigation in service areas By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | April 19, 2006 The Global Positioning System devices that can help people navigate an unfamiliar city or find the nearest pizza joint are moving off the dashboard and into the cellphone. Cellphones with location technology are already a hit in Japan and South Korea. In the United States, millions of cellphones already contain GPS technology by order of the federal government, which sought to ensure that emergency workers could locate cellphone users who place emergency 911 calls. Now, three of the four leading cellphone providers are beginning to widely market phones that include location-based services, or LBS, which allow subscribers with GPS-capable phones to navigate from wherever they are to wherever they want to go with the push of a few buttons. Sprint Nextel sold its first GPS telephone in 2002 but marketed it only for use by truckers and other mobile businesspeople. "All of the phones will have GPS capability in the future," said John Redman, spokesman for Sprint Nextel Corp. of Reston, Va., the nation's third-largest cellular carrier, which offers 30 GPS-capable phones. Meanwhile, the most-popular cellphone carrier, Cingular, introduced its first navigation phone in October. In January, Verizon Wireless introduced a new Motorola Inc. GPS handset with software that can generate driving instructions for a traveler in any part of the United States served by Verizon. The company has since added a second GPS phone made by LG Electronics of South Korea. It's all a part of Verizon's plan to eventually introduce all its customers to location-based services. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/04/19/cellphone_gps_services_find_their_way_into_market/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:06:42 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon Makes Inroads With Triple-Play Bundle USTelecom dailyLead October 25, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eJfcfDtusXeCwBCibuddyFQa TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon makes inroads with triple-play bundle in North Texas BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Embarq deploys FMC * Sprint launches Rev A * BT snaps up security provider * Cablers see billion-dollar opportunities in enterprise services * Analysts: Dolans unlikely to sell Cablevision * Inter-Tel shareholders said to vote against founder's buyout bid USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Transforming the Launch of Next Generation Services Tomorrow, Oct 26 1:00 p.m. ET * Mark your calendars for NXTcomm! TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Report: Mobile ad spending to double to $2.9B by 2011 * Without closed captions, online video ignores deaf users * Verizon Wireless to deploy Flash REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Vivendi uses racketeering statutes in lawsuit over stake in Poland's PTC Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eJfcfDtusXeCwBCibuddyFQa ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 25, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:02:21 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 25, 2006 ******************************** Dutch Parliament Approves Landmark "Cable Network Unbundling" Bill http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20716?11228 Dutch parliamentarians yesterday voted to approve a proposal that forces domestic cable companies to share their networks with rivals, triggering what could become a global strategy for regulating the cable industry. In a move that would greatly appease the country's dominant telecoms company KPN, a majority of legislators voted ... T-Mobile and Radiokomunikace Launch DVB-H Trials http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20710?11228 The Czech Republic's number-two mobile operator T-Mobile Czech Republic has launched trials of the Digital Video Broadband Handheld (DVB-H) technology in co-operation with telecoms company Radiokomunikace. The new offering will be called 'TV in Your Pocket' and will comprise 10 TV channels, including CT24, EuroNews, ... Government in China Issues Technical Standard for Mobile Broadcasting Content http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20706?11228 China has issued a technical standard for broadcasting multimedia content such as television programmes to mobile devices, the Wall Street Journal reports. The newspaper quoted a statement by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television as saying the home-grown standard "is very important for the growth of our ... Enpower ENP680: An Entry-Level Laptop http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20702?11228 While everybody would love to own a high-end laptop featuring plenty of power and the latest networking bells and whistles, real world financial concerns force most of us to seek lower priced, less capable machines. But trading off features against cost requires a careful balancing act. After all, cutting away too many ... Deutsche Telekom to Create New Service Units http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20701?11228 BERLIN - Deutsche Telekom AG announced Tuesday that it will set up new service units in an effort to improve efficiency, and also said it has no new job cuts in the pipeline beyond existing plans to cut 32,000 staff. The Bonn-based company said it would hire around 4,000 additional staff for call centers and customer service ... Japan's Security-lock Cellphone Knows When Owner Strays Too Far http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20700?11228 TOKYO -- A new mobilephone in Japan locks automatically when its owner moves too far away and can be found via satellite navigation when it goes missing. The P903i from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile carrier, comes with a small black card about the size of a movie-ticket stub that works as a security key by connecting wirelessly ... BT Group Says it Bought Counterpane to Expand its Services http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20698?11228 LONDON -- BT Group PLC, the former British state phone monopoly, said Wednesday it bought Counterpane Internet Security Inc., a provider of managed networked security services, as it seeks to expand its professional services business. Financial details were not disclosed. Counterpane currently monitors 550 networks worldwide ... Sprint Picks San Diego for First Rev A Launch http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20696?11228 Sprint Nextel customers in San Diego will be the first to experience the carrier's commercial EV-DO Revision A service, which is available today. Sprint, which previously announced an aggressive Rev A rollout for this year, also unveiled other markets where Rev A will be available before the end of 2006, with coverage ... New Handset Company Targets Motorola, Nokia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20691?11228 NEC Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., using its Panasonic brand name, have created the joint cellular-handset company agreed on this summer as the companion to a larger joint venture that includes Texas Instruments. The partners are calling their joint venture Esteemo, a name that was 'coined from a ... T-Mobile Pilots WiFi/Cell Service http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20688?11228 With little fanfare, T-Mobile USA has launched its long-anticipated dual-mode WiFi-cellular service, known as 'HotSpot@Home' in a pilot program aimed at residential customers in Seattle. The pilot, which got underway yesterday, marks a milestone in the company's drive to make good on CEO Robert Dotson's pledge to ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: How to Block Display of Phone Number When You Dial 800 Number Date: 24 Oct 2006 19:14:13 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) don warner saklad wrote: > How do you block the display of your telephone number when you dial an > 800 toll free telephone number? You call from a payphone. Alternately you MIGHT be able to use some of the cheap VoIP calling cards. Many of these provide bizarre ANI to the remote end. But you cannot block ANI because it is used for billing, and since the remote party is being billed for the call, they need evidence that the billing is correct. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, ettres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: gb Subject: Re: How to Block Display of Phone Number When You Dial 800 Number Date: 25 Oct 2006 02:34:46 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Try calling from a pay phone. ------------------------------ From: bob Weller Subject: Re: Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phone Use, Low Sperm Count Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:32:35 -0700 Exposure to the modest RF energy from a cell phone is highly unlikely, in my view, to cause reduced sperm count. Even if you place the cell phone at your belt line and use a headset, there is insufficient energy to cause temperature elevation sufficient to impact male fertility. A more likely explanation is that people typically use cellphones while sedentary. More cell phone use may equate with a more sedentary lifestyle, and poor fitness leads to decreased fertility. [Magnusdottir, et al., Persistent organochlorines, sedentary occupation, obesity and human male subfertility, Human Reproduction 2005 20(1):208-215]. Sedentary lifestyles also lead to many other factors that can result in decreased fertility. Bob Weller IEEE Committee on Man and Radiation (COMAR) International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety, SC4 (RF) ------------------------------ From: Paul Subject: Re: Our Population Hits 300 Million on Tuesday Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:34:04 UTC Organization: Me Henry Cabot Henhouse III wrote in news:telecom25.370.8@telecom-digest.org: > I seem to recall a spot on the tube in the mid to late 60's, around > the 200 million mark, suggesting "planned parenthood/population > control"... the memorable line in the ditty was "we'll all be a > doublin' in twenty five years" ... stir up any memories? To help remember: http://www.peteseeger.net/wellallb.htm It was also Pete Seeger who said, "When will they ever learn?" Paul ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:36:25 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Cell Phones and Haunted Houses At this time of year, there are haunted attractions in operation. A problem coming to my attention was the use of cell phones. In a haunted house I was in, I noticed: - 2 people talking on cell phones (each to people not there) - use of a cell phone display to throw light into a dark passage. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:35:13 -0500 From: Patrick Townson Subject: Some Interesting Weather Extremes Late-October weather extremes according to Old Farmers Almanac: October 24, 1878 -- A hurricane hit Philadelphia. Much damage done. October 25, 1919 -- Bismarck, North Dakota, recorded its earliest below-zero reading, minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. October 26, 1963 -- The temperature in Boston was 84 degrees Fahrenheit. October 27, 1843 -- A storm deposited snow and sleet on Mississippi. October 28, 1973 -- The Georgia mountains received five inches of snow. October 29, 1963 -- A snow hurricane in Maine. Cold air on the western portion of a storm circulation caused snowfall of 6 to 18 inches in western Maine mountains. October 30, 1844 -- Buffalo Barracks, New York, received 30 inches of snow in a three-day storm. October 31, 1971 -- New York City experienced an October high temper- ature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. October 29 -- Daylight Saving Time ends at 2:00 A.M. Daylight Saving Time was first observed in the United States during World War I and then again during World War II. The time change was enacted to provide more light in the evening hours. Since 1987, Daylight Saving Time has begun at 2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in April and has ended at 2:00 A.M. on the last Sunday in October. Be aware, there will be a change next year. Daylight Saving Time will start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #371 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Oct 26 17:57:52 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 4BDCA2278; Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:57:52 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #372 Message-Id: <20061026215752.4BDCA2278@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:57:52 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:59:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 372 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Phoney Finance (Economist News Wire) Newfoundland Pondering Last Week's Telephone Exchange Fire (Canadian) Skype Founders Plan to Launch Web TV Service (Reuters News Wire) Call for Papers: IAENG International Conference ICEE 2007 (imecs___2007) Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH (Lukas2005) AT&T Offers Home Monitoring System (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 26, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Some Interesting Weather Extremes (George Berger) Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again (Scott Dorsey) Re: Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phones and Low Sperm Count (Dorsey) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:48:04 -0500 From: Economist News Wire Subject: Phoney Finance From The Economist print edition Most South Africans do not have bank accounts. But most do have mobile phones. LIFE is now easier for Andile Mbatha, who owns a hair salon in Soweto. Gone are his days of trekking to his bank, which could take two hours by minibus, to send money to relatives. Nor does he keep piles of cash in his salon any more. Last year, he opened a bank account with Wizzit, an innovative provider of financial services. He now sends money to his sister in Cape Town whenever he wants, from wherever he wants, using a simple menu on his mobile phone. Half his customers no longer pay cash for their haircuts. They use their phones to move money from their accounts to his, in a few seconds. This has taken out a lot of stress, says Mr Mbatha. About half a million South Africans now use their mobile phones as a bank. Besides sending money to relatives and paying for goods, they can check balances, buy mobile airtime and settle utility bills. Traditional banks offer mobile banking as an added service to existing customers, most of whom are quite well off. But Wizzit, and to some extent First National Bank (FNB) and MTN Banking (a joint venture between Standard Bank and a mobile-phone network), are chasing another market: the 16m South Africans, over half of the adult population, with no bank account. Significantly, 30% of these people do have mobile phones. Wizzit hired and trained over 2,000 unemployed people, known as Wizzkids, to drum up business. It worked: eight out of ten Wizzit customers previously had no bank account and had never used an ATM. Mobile banking is just one example of a wider phenomenon in South Africa. With its odd mix of advanced capitalism and developing-world economics, the country is successfully luring people who hitherto dealt only in cash or barter to the world of formal finance. A simplified kind of account called Mzansi was launched in 2004 to reach the unbanked, and portable banks and ATMs have been rolled out in townships and in the countryside. To this fast-changing scene, mobile-phone banking looks to be a promising addition. Millions of South Africans send money to their relatives in other parts of the country. And most of these sums, which add up to about 12 billion rand ($1.5 billion) each year, still move informally. South Africa is not the first place to use mobile-phone banking: countries such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines have had it for a while. But the potential is probably bigger in the developing world, and in countries in which migrants remit money to their families in relatively poor homelands. In Greece, a European Union member that is now awash with migrant labour, Albanians or Bulgarians often send money home by putting crumpled banknotes in the hands of a trusted compatriot, who takes a cut. If they could do it all by pressing buttons, they would. In most of Africa, meanwhile, only a fraction of people have bank accounts -- but there is huge demand for cheap and convenient ways to send money and buy prepaid services such as airtime. Many Africans, having skipped landlines and jumped to mobiles, already use prepaid airtime as a way of transferring money. They could now leap from a world of cash to cellular banking. In Kenya, a pilot scheme called M-Pesa is being used to disburse and pay micro-loans by phone. Meanwhile Celpay, which FNB bought last year from Celtel, a mobile-phone company, is offering platforms for banks and phone companies in Zambia and Congo. In countries like Somalia, with chaotic conditions at home and a huge diaspora, cash transfers by phone would be a boon. For banks, persuading people not to use branches for simple transactions such as balance enquiries or transfers should reduce operating costs. So far, they charge the same for mobile as for traditional banking, though Wizzit says its services are at least a third cheaper than those of a traditional bank. But drawing the unbanked into the joys of cell-finance isn't always easy. Many think banking too expensive and complicated, and helping new customers become financially literate takes time. The technology remains clunky in some cases, with downloads requiring dozens of text messages. Several rival platforms are still in the fight, but so far those that emphasise simplicity and ease-of-use over state-of-the-art technology and security have made the greatest strides. A lot also hangs on putting in place the right laws and regulations. They need to be tight enough to protect vulnerable users and discourage money laundering, but open enough to allow innovative mobile banking to grow. If the transfer of money by mobile phone between countries as well as within them takes off, it could have implications far beyond the salons of Soweto. In 2005, according to the United Nations, global migrants remitted $232 billion, of which up to 20% was lost on the way, mostly in bank charges or fraud. If cellular transfers could slash that figure, mobile banking would prove to be a good call. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:50:55 -0500 From: Canadian Press Subject: Newfoundland Pondering Last Week's Telephone Exchange Fire Newfoundland pondering second line to Nova Scotia in wake of phone outage Canadian Press ST. JOHN'S, N.L. (CP) - Newfoundland is considering the construction of a second fibre-optic link to Nova Scotia to prevent phone and 911 services from shutting down as they did last week. Premier Danny Williams says the province is scrutinizing the proposal by Rogers Communications, MTS Allstream Inc. and Persona Communications Inc. Williams says a fire at a Bell Aliant switching station last Friday underscores the need for an alternative connection. "It could have been much worse," Williams said Thursday. A six-week-old child stopped breathing for several minutes during the outage, and had to be driven to a nearby hospital for help after calls to 911 failed. "That alone is a significant, serious situation," Williams said. "There could've been a loss of life, so any time you're talking safety and life loss, that's obviously paramount." An estimated 100,000 customers in the St. John's area were left without telephone and 911 services for five hours after a small electrical fire. Internet access for all of Newfoundland was also wiped out. Police have said it appeared no major emergencies were missed during the outage. A spokeswoman for Bell Aliant said the station's main power supply and a backup were shut down to prevent the electrical fire from spreading. A technician extinguished the blaze with a fire extinguisher. The company is investigating what happened to determine whether changes are needed to its system. Copyright The Canadian Press 2006 Copyright 2006 CanWest Interactive 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:35:33 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Skype Founders Plan to Launch Web TV Service The founders of file-swapping service KaZaA and Internet calling program Skype plan to launch advertising-supported Internet television shortly, Skype co-founder Janus Friis told a Danish newspaper. The project, code-named Venice, will bring quality TV programmes for free to consumers who have a broadband Internet connection, he told Boersen financial newspaper. "We will simply present it to the public when we feel that it works well enough and there is enough content. And it will not be much longer before it is out. It is a question of a month or two," Friis was quoted as saying when he attended Boersen's Executive Club on Wednesday night in Copenhagen. "This is a system where people with professional content can put it out (on the Internet). And that can be anybody," said Friis, who currently has "a lot of people" negotiating with TV production companies around the world. "We don't want any more lawsuits," Friis said, referring to the days when he was running KaZaA, which was used by people to freely share copyrighted songs. The success of the new venture depends on perfect timing, but Internet users appear to be ready for video services given the popularity of YouTube as well as delayed viewing of news bulletins and other public TV programmes in many countries. YouTube, which shows mainly short clips, was bought by Google for $1.65 billion in Google stock earlier this month. Internet calling and messaging service Skype, which Friis set up with his partner Niklas Zennstrom, was sold to eBay for up to $4.1 billion last year. "The timing has to be right. Otherwise it will not work. We have been lucky with KazaA and Skype, where it was absolutely right. Now we hope that will also be the case with our next project," Friis was quoted as saying. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: imecs___2007@iaeng.org Subject: Call for Papers: IAENG International Conference ICEE 2007 Date: 26 Oct 2006 07:31:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com CFP: IAENG International Conference on Electrical Engineering ICEE 2007 From: International Association of Engineers The 2007 IAENG International Conference on Electrical Engineering 21-23 March, 2007, Hong Kong http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2007/ICEE2007.html The conference ICEE'07 is held under the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2007. The IMECS 2007 is organized by the International Association of Engineers (IAENG), and serves as good platforms for the engineering community members to meet with each other and to exchange ideas. The last conference in 2006 has attracted a total of over four hundred participants from over 30 countries. All submitted papers will be under peer review and accepted papers will be published in the conference proceeding (ISBN: 978-988-98671-4-0). The abstracts will be indexed and available at major academic databases. The accepted papers will also be considered for publication in the special issues of the journal Engineering Letters, in IAENG journals and in edited books. Important Dates: Draft Manuscript submission deadline: 12 December, 2006 Camera-Ready papers & Pre-registration due: 2 January, 2007 ICEE 2007: 21-23 March, 2007 Submission: ICEE 2007 is now accepting manuscript submissions. Prospective authors are invited to submit their draft paper in full paper (any appropriate style) to imecs{at}iaeng.org by 12 December, 2006. The submitted file can be in MS Word format, PS format, or PDF formats. The first page of the draft paper should include: (1) Title of the paper; (2) Name, affiliation and e-mail address for each author; (3) A maximum of 5 keywords of the paper. Also, the name of the conference that the paper is being submitted to should be stated in the email. The topics of the ICEE'07 include, but not limited to, the following: Biotechnology: such as EEG, ECG, and EKG, various other monitoring equipment. Electronics: such as integrated circuit, computer, electronic amplifier Power engineering: such as electrical generators, electric power transmission. Telecommunication: such as television, radio, mobile phone, optical multiple access technologies. Control engineering: such as auto pilot, cruise control, climate control, space exploration, smart bomb. Signal processing: such as electronic filter, digital filter, video and audio codec, radar, sonar, beamforming. ICEE Conference Co-Chairs and Committee Members: Mu-Song Chen (co-chair) Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering Da-Yeh University, Taiwan Yen-Wen Chen Associate Professor, Dept. of Communication Engineering National Central University, Taiwan Yung-Sheng Chen Professor, Electrical Engineering Department Yuan Ze University, Taiwan Jong-Sheng Cherng Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering Da-Yeh University, Taiwan T.S. Chung, FIEE (co-chair) Professor, Electrical Engineering Department The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Yi-Nung Chung (co-chair) Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering Da-Yeh University, Taiwan Feng-Li Lian Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering National Taiwan University, Taiwan Chih-Min Lin (co-chair) Chair and Professor Department of Electrical Engineering Yuan-Ze University, Taiwan Prof. A.B. Rad (co-chair) Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Huan-liang Tsai Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Da-Yeh University, Taiwan Tsung-Han Tsai (co-chair) Associate Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering National Central University, Taiwan Rong-Jong Wai Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan G.C. Yang Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering National ChungHsing University, Taiwan More details about the IMECS 2007 can be found at: http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2007/index.html More details about the International Association of Engineers, the journal Engineering Letters and the IAENG International Journal of Computer Science can be found at: http://www.iaeng.org/about_IAENG.html http://www.engineeringletters.com http://www.iaeng.org/IJCS/index.html ------------------------------ From: lukus2005@gmail.com Subject: LF: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH Date: 26 Oct 2006 08:54:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com My girlfriend in New Hampshire is looking for a long distance provider that offers unlimited long distance calls for a flat fee. I'd like to know if there's a similar provider there to what I have here in Canada http:// www.worldline.ca which offers unlimited long distance calls for $3.95 within Canada or $13.95 including the U.S. The plan must include long distance calls to Canada as well. Any suggestions? TIA ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:47:42 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T Offers Home Monitoring System USTelecom dailyLead October 26, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eJrcfDtusXeHkmCibuddUsAg TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T offers home monitoring system BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cisco buys mobile software firm Orative for $31M * AT&T wins $37M Lockheed Martin deal * Sprint Nextel, Comcast report earnings: * Telecom Italia forges ahead with convergence plan USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Are You Ready for the CALEA Deadline? TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Analyst: The age of the portal may be over * Study: U.S. consumers with 3G phones not using services REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * China to launch homegrown mobile video standard Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eJrcfDtusXeHkmCibuddUsAg ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 26, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:59:56 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 26, 2006 ******************************** France Telecom's Q3 Revenue Nudges Up 1.2%, Thanks to 5% Rise in Mobile Revenues http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20748?11228 France Telecom has posted a 1.2% year-on-year (y/y) rise in third-quarter revenue, thanks to a 5% rise in revenue at its mobile division. Total revenue for the quarter rose to 13.1 billion euro (US$16.54 billion) with mobile services accounting for 7.15 billion euro. Gross Operating Margin (GOM), however, fell 3.5% to 4.9 billion ... Telecom Italia Reiterates Convergence Strategy http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20746?11228 Telecom Italia yesterday effectively ended speculation of a potential sale of its mobile unit, as it reiterated its commitment to the strategy of accelerating convergence between fixed telephony, mobile, broadband internet and media content. In a statement after a meeting of the Board of Directors presided over by the new chairman Guido ... AT&T Launches Video Monitoring Service http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20738?11228 NEW YORK -- AT&T Inc. is introducing a home monitoring service that includes live video surveillance on a computer or cellphone, as well as lighting controls and detection sensors for motion, temperature changes and flooding. The service being launched Thursday, priced at $9.95 per month, is compatible with any broadband ... Norway's Telenor Telecoms Group Reports 72 Percent Increase in Third Quarteqqr Net Profits http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20736?11228 OSLO, Norway -- Norwegian telecommunications group Telenor ASA on Thursday reported a 72 percent increase net profits for the third quarter, citing strong growth in the mobile phone sector. The group said net profit for the July through September quarter was 3.78 billion kroner (US$567 million, E450 million), compared to 2.2 ... Verizon Goes for the Flash http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20733?11228 Verizon Wireless, Adobe Systems and Qualcomm have something new to talk about at Adobe's annual user conference this week: the availability of Adobe Flash Lite via Verizon's network. Flash Lite for BREW facilitates Flash content to run on Verizon Wireless' Get It Now-enabled phones and enables over-the-air (OTA)... BT Buys 'Bruce Bonus' http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20730?11228 In one of the most interesting acquisitions to be announced recently, BT is buying U.S. security firm Counterpane Internet Security (and its personnel) in a move to expand and develop its global managed-security-services capabilities. Word is that the deal is as much to bring on board the company's security gurus as it is to ... Aricent Crashes Telecom Software Party http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20726?11228 The world of telecom software, already developing into a scrap between a number of big hitters, has a new major player, Aricent Inc. But this isn't an ambitious startup. Aricent, which has 6,700 staff and annual revenues of $300 million, is the new name for Flextronics Software Systems (FSS) , a business unit created in ... Base Stations Drive Wireless Economics http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20723?11228 New technology such as WiMax and user trends such as increased wireless data downloads are changing the nature of base-station design, according to the latest research from the Unstrung Insider. The new report -- 3G Base Station Design; Wireless Network Economics -- highlights the steady evolution of a new breed of faster, ... North American Households Rate Broadband as Most Important Wireline Service http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20719?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- According to the results of a new survey of US and Canadian consumers that segments households by demographics, all segments rated broadband the communication service they can least live without, reports In-Stat. Survey results also give clues about how next-generation consumer applications, ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: George Berger Subject: Re: Some Interesting Weather Extremes Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:31:23 -0400 Organization: Heller Information Services In article , Patrick Townson wrote: > Since 1987, Daylight Saving Time has > begun at 2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in April and has ended at 2:00 > A.M. on the last Sunday in October. Be aware, there will be a change > next year. Daylight Saving Time will start on the second Sunday in > March and end on the first Sunday in November. Trust the Government gnomes to make a change for change's sake. George (The Old Fud) I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. -- Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman (attributed) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When the government makes changes, it is usually to Save Us From Ourselves, Because the Public Servants Know Best. Prior to 1987, wasn't DST always between last Sunday in April and first Sunday in October? They keep squeezing it together (or stretching it out, whichever you wish to say). A reader wrote to my personal email address to note that the Old Farmer's Almanac next year may decide to include the blizzard snow storms in New England a couple weeks ago in their book of extremes. I hope they do! And somewhere on the net I read today that now Colorado has a major blizzard this week, with several inches of snow on the ground, and it is still October. We have already had a frosty morning or two here in Independence this 'winter' now approaching. Yet, our town authorities continue on bravely with their Neewollah festivities, damn the weather and all that! Neewollah (which is 'Halloween' spelled backwards) is our very traditional Octoberfest celebration each year, the last ten days in October, when everyone throughout southeast Kansas has a 'good time', drinks in far too much excess, and the street merchants make a killing on selling their souvenier trinkets and high-priced food and carnival rides, etc. It has gone on now for more than seventy-five years. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again Date: 26 Oct 2006 16:00:06 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Robert McMillan, IDG wrote: > Kagan, however, wasn't so sure, saying that the security of the source > code raised concerns. "The idea that it could be that readily > available and could be delivered to me and who-knows-who-else around > the state [is disturbing]," she said. "Who know what any other people > may be doing with it?" Who knows what Diebold is doing with it? The source code for all voting machines NEEDS to be freely available, and citizens need to be able to look at it. If the source code is not available, how can anyone be sure that the voting machine is doing what it is supposed to be doing? And how can being able to look inside the voting machine in any way be a security breach? If seeing inside the operation of the voting machine is a security problem, we have given up on democracy. The whole point of the democratic election process is that everyone SHOULD be able to look inside every part of the voting process. How can I be sure that my vote is being counted if I am casting it into a black box whose internal software is a complete unknown? As long as the voting machine is a closed mystery, how can we be sure elections are free and fair? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No one can be positive on this at all. That's one reason I have never been too harsh with Diebold and thier work with elections. Either they can be trusted or they cannot be trusted. But beleive me you, coming from a background in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, in my lifetime I saw so many _totally outrageous_ things done in _supposedly_*fair* elections, I was thrilled to see the first sign of progress when they began automating elections. You want to complain about Diebold in elections? Why not complain about all the dead people voting and police officers who hang around polling places ostensibly to 'help' voters in Chicago with their choices? Election fraud did not begin with Diebold, believe me. The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners -- supposedly a non-partisan operation intended to secure the integrity of elections in that city -- turns a blind eye at the shenanigans which go on there intended to insure that the 'right' people get elected. What about 'precinct captains' (little minature politicians with loud, yapping mouths who drive bus loads of elderly voters from nursing homes to the polling places) who then walk inside the polling places with their passengers while wearing their buttons or T-shirts telling for whom to vote? The rules about 'no electioneering within 100 feet of the polling place' mean nothing to them. By the way, when the polling place is inside a school or church, they start counting the 100 feet from the door of the room being used rather than the outside street entrance to the building. What about the television and radio stations who announce the winner the very _instant_ the polls close in the east, in effect discouraging the west coast voters from bothering to vote at all? No, I have no objection to Diebold as such; any automated and relatively secure (and 'relatively secure' is the keyword here) voting scheme is fine with me. After all, the computer does not care who gets elected, only people care. I saw way too much crap in manual elections in the past to worry that much about Diebold. At least with Diebold, if the intent is to have an honest election, the Diebold machines (if not rigged) will eliminate human error in vote counting, etc. Try voting in Chicago for Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and the three or four following, observe all the nonsense and see if you care. Scott, is your complaint about computerized elections in general, or Diebold specifically? PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phone Use, Low Sperm Count Date: 26 Oct 2006 16:02:12 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) bob Weller wrote: > Exposure to the modest RF energy from a cell phone is highly unlikely, > in my view, to cause reduced sperm count. Even if you place the cell > phone at your belt line and use a headset, there is insufficient > energy to cause temperature elevation sufficient to impact male > fertility. This is true, > A more likely explanation is that people typically use cellphones > while sedentary. More cell phone use may equate with a more sedentary > lifestyle, and poor fitness leads to decreased fertility. > [Magnusdottir, et al., Persistent organochlorines, sedentary > occupation, obesity and human male subfertility, Human Reproduction > 2005 20(1):208-215]. Sedentary lifestyles also lead to many other > factors that can result in decreased fertility. Not to mention of course that correlation does not imply causation. Possibly men with higher sperm counts have better things to do than spend their time talking on the phone. It would be interesting to see if that study was corrected for age, as well. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #372 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Oct 28 00:21:18 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8A2D8222B; Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:21:17 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #373 Message-Id: <20061028042117.8A2D8222B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:21:17 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:22:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 373 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cell Phone Takes Security to New Heights (Yuri Kageyama, AP) VoIP Voice Quality - Not There Yet But Not Too Far Away (FreedomFireCom) AT&T in VOD Deal For Warner Bros. Movies (USTelecom dailylead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 27, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom Update #552, October 27, 2006 (John Riddell) Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again (Scott Dorsey) Re: Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phone Use Low Sperm Count (Garland) Re: Call for Papers: IAENG International Conference ICEE 2007 (Crispin) Re: LF: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH (FreedomFireCom) Re: LF: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH (John Levine) Last Laugh! Who in Hell Would Pay for This? (Lisa Baertlein, Reuters) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 20:54:02 -0500 From: Yuri Kageyama Subject: Cell Phone Takes Security to New Heights By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer A new mobile phone in Japan takes security pretty seriously: It can recognize its owner, automatically locks when the person gets too far away from it and can be found via satellite navigation if it goes missing. The P903i from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile carrier, comes with a small black card about the size of a movie-ticket stub. The card works as a security key by connecting wirelessly with the cell phone. If an owner keeps the card in a bag or pocket, the phone recognizes when the card moves too far away and locks automatically to prevent someone from making a call. The user can choose to have the phone lock when it is 26 feet, 66 feet or 130 feet away. People who lose their security cards can punch in a password to unlock the phone. But they will have to buy a new card to set the lock again. The extra security is handy because, like other recent Japanese phones, the P903i can be used as a credit card or a prepaid cash card. Of course, the new security feature won't prevent snoops from getting information from the phone -- reading personal e-mails, say -- if it is within the set distance of the security key. To guard against such intruders, users can activate the phone's facial identification feature. Here's how that works. Owners must first take at least three photos of themselves with the phone's camera. Up to 10 can be shot, in various situations: with and without glasses, with and without makeup, indoors and outdoors. Then, if the facial-recognition feature is turned on, before accessing the handset a user has to take a picture of himself with the camera. The phone analyzes features such as distance between the eyes and unlocks if the image matches the stored data. A separate function recognizes whether the eyes are blinking -- in case someone tries to show the owner's photo to gain fraudulent entry. Not only that, a four-letter password can be added to this process, to guard against an identical twin getting unauthorized access. "Security is increasingly a key function for mobile phones as they become loaded with more sophisticated features," said NTT DoCoMo spokeswoman Mamiko Tanaka. "Handset makers are all competing to come up with interesting ways to strengthen security." Should the P903i get lost, the user can track it with its onboard Global Positioning System. After entering the phone number into a Web site, the owner will see a map showing the phone's rough location -- directions via GPS can be off by several hundred feet. Pricing for the phone, which is manufactured by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and planned for sale in the next few months, has not yet been announced. Using the GPS service to look for a missing phone will cost $2.50 a pop. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: FreedomFireCom Subject: VoIP Voice Quality - Not There Yet But Not Too Far Away Date: 26 Oct 2006 17:52:24 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Here's an openly honest hype free discussion of the current ... and possible future ... state of VoIP voice quality. Includes a series of cut to the chase questions and answers to make you think ... and learn. Also offers some predictions on where VoIP may be headed. http://broadband-nation.blogspot.com/2006/10/voip-voice-quality-not-there-yet-but.html God Bless, Michael Lemm FreedomFire Communications http://DS3-Bandwidth.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/freedomfirecom ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:20:33 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T in VOD Deal For Warner Bros. Movies USTelecom dailyLead October 27, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eKbgfDtusXeJuDCibuddGvmm TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T in VOD deal for Warner Bros. movies BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * FON gives away Wi-Fi routers in San Francisco * AT&T filing shows three companies looking at divestitures * Alltel's Q3 net rises 11% * MySpace founder invests in video firm Flurl USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Using Point Code Emulation to Transition Your Network Efficiently TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Copyright issues linger for YouTube VOIP DOWNLOAD * EQO offers Skype via BlackBerry, Windows Mobile * A primer on VoIP handsets REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * New Orleans prepares for Wi-Fi shutdown Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eKbgfDtusXeJuDCibuddGvmm ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 27, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 11:56:52 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 27, 2006 ******************************** Rostelecom and Beltelecom Construct Fibre-Optic Communications Line http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20765?11228 Russia's fixed-line, long-distance incumbent Rostelecom and Belarusian fixed-line monopolist Beltelcom have agreed a deal for the construction of a fibre-optic communications line, reports Novecon. When the project is completed the line will have a capacity of 400 Gbps. Fibre-optic cables have already been laid on the border between ... Professor Calls for Spectrum Reform http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20758?11228 WASHINGTON -- The coming transition of spectrum from broadcasting applications to commercial wireless applications presents a unique opportunity to change the way spectrum is managed in the United States, said a noted public policy professor today. In a paper presented at a conference on public safety spectrum and communications, ... Cisco Adds More Mobile To Convergence Plans http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20756?11228 Earlier this week, Cisco said it was writing a $31 million check to buy privately held Orative Corp., which comes with an application that will allow Cisco to extend its Unified Communications portfolio to such wireless handhelds as cellphones and smartphones. The deal is set to close in Cisco's 2007 fiscal second quarter ... September Funding Flows Toward Mobile http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20753?11228 Of the 39 digital media startups that received venture capital funding in September, 15 are developing products and services around mobile devices. That factoid comes from San Francisco-based Rutberg & Co. , which keeps tabs on venture capital and merger events involving digital media companies. "The pace of venture ... Sprint Nextel Struggles Continue http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20750?11228 Sprint Nextel Corp. reported another downbeat quarter today, with earnings down 52 percent and poor subscriber numbers for the three months that ended on September 30th. The No. 3 U.S. cellular operator, Sprint reported net income of $247 million for the quarter -- down from $516 million a year earlier, despite a 35 percent ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #552, October 27, 2006 Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:57:25 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 552: October 27, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca/home/Home_Business.page ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.ca/communications/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** SHAW BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: www.shawbusinesssolutions.ca ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** 911 Fails in St. John's Phone Outage ** Policy Review Wrong on Wireless -- CWTA Report ** Solution Proposed for Alberta Number Shortage ** Mandatory 10-Digit Dialing Hits Montreal ** MPs Want Regulatory Changes Delayed ** Cisco Intros High-Def Videoconferencing ** Second Fibre Link to Newfoundland Proposed ** NEC Intros Converged Mobility ** Telus Seeks Local Forbearance in Fort McMurray ** MTS Expands Wi-Fi Coverage ** Look Retains Financial Advisors ** Spotwave Boosts Home Cell Reception ** Bell Aliant Revenue Stable ** Shaw Cablephone Expansion Speeds Up 911 FAILS IN ST. JOHN'S PHONE OUTAGE: Residences and businesses across Newfoundland lost 911 service and Internet access for five hours on October 20. The outage, triggered by an electrical fire in a Bell Aliant switching centre, cut all phone service to over 100,000 customers in St. John's. ** Provincial Emergency Measures Organization Director Fred Hollett said "We expect the telephone systems to work in times of emergency" and announced an investigation. POLICY REVIEW WRONG ON WIRELESS -- CWTA REPORT: A report prepared by Wall Communications for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association says that the report of the Telecom Policy Review used "limited and selective data" in its analysis of Canadian wireless deployment and pricing. As a result, it "mischaracterizes the relative position of Canada to other OECD countries including the U.S." ** The Wall report says that setting aside spectrum for new entrants, as proposed by the TPR, may "have distorting market effects" and that it is "questionable whether the Canadian market can support a fourth mobile wireless entrant." http://www.cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/pdf/WallTPRP.pdf SOLUTION PROPOSED FOR ALBERTA NUMBER SHORTAGE: The NPA 403/780 Relief Planning Committee has agreed on a plan to solve the looming phone number shortage in Alberta (see Telecom Update #548 http://www.angustel.ca/update/up548.html#NUMBER SHORTAGES LOOM IN B.C., ALBERTA . If approved by the CRTC, the proposal would leave the existing codes (403 and 780) unchanged, and add a new code (probably 587 or 825) as an overlay on both. ** This proposal would result in mandatory 10-digit local dialing throughout Alberta, beginning early in 2009. MANDATORY 10-DIGIT DIALING HITS MONTREAL: 10-digit dialing for local calls becomes mandatory in the 514 and 450 area codes on Saturday, October 28: local calls dialed without the area code will no longer go through. The change enables introduction of a new area code, 438, as an overlay. MPs WANT REGULATORY CHANGES DELAYED: Over the opposition of Conservative MPs, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has voted to ask Cabinet to delay any changes to telecom regulation until the committee completes its report on Industry Minister Bernier's proposals. (see Telecom Update #530, 536) CISCO INTROS HIGH-DEF VIDEOCONFERENCING: Cisco Systems says it will begin shipping a new high-definition corporate videoconferencing system in December. The company announced two models: TelePresence 1000, for small meetings, is US$79,000 per station, and TelePresence 3000, for meetings of 12 or more people, is US$299,000 per station. ** Cisco also announced the acquisition of Orative Corp, a 33-person company whose technology will allow Cisco to add cellphones and smartphones to its Unified Communications portfolio. SECOND FIBRE LINK TO NEWFOUNDLAND PROPOSED: A consortium that includes Rogers Communications, Allstream, and Persona Communications is seeking provincial government support to build an $82 million fibre-optic link from Newfoundland to the mainland. At present Bell Aliant carries all telecom traffic from Newfoundland. NEC INTROS CONVERGED MOBILITY: NEC Unified Solutions has announced a portfolio of enterprise Wi-Fi systems that combine voice, data, multimedia, and business applications. The "Univerge Assured Mobility" products will be launched by March 2007. TELUS SEEKS LOCAL FORBEARANCE IN FORT MCMURRAY: Telus has asked the CRTC to deregulate its residential phone service in the Fort McMurray, Alberta exchange, where the telco believes Shaw and Vonage now have more than 25% market share. This is the first application for local forbearance since the CRTC issued Telecom Decision 2006-15 (see Telecom Update #524). ** Telus argues that the Fort McMurray exchange is the appropriate geographic area for forbearance, not the larger Wood Buffalo/Cold Lake area. ** Telus says that it has met competitor QoS standards for six months on residential LNP, the only Telus service used by local competitors in the exchange. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2006/8640/t66_200613069.htm MTS EXPANDS WI-FI COVERAGE: MTS Allstream now offers Wi-Fi Interne access at more than 60 hotspots in Manitoba, double the number when service was launched in July. Customers can also use 300 FatPort locations across Canada. Price: $20/month. LOOK RETAINS FINANCIAL ADVISORS: Look Communications has retained Greenhill & Co. to assist in "the strategic repositioning of Look" and in "maximizing shareholder value." Look's principal asset is 92 MHz of licensed bandwidth in the 2.5 GHz band. (See Telecom Update #538) SPOTWAVE BOOSTS HOME CELL RECEPTION: Ottawa-based Spotwave Wireless says its new Z1900 Intelligent Wireless Signal Booster will improve cellular reception and maximize wireless download speeds in homes and small offices of up to 2,500 square feet. The device, said to be easy to install out of the box, will retail for $399. BELL ALIANT REVENUE STABLE: Bell Aliant's first quarterly report shows third-quarter operating revenue of $818 million, up 1.8% from that of its components a year earlier. A 9.6% rise in data/Internet revenue outweighed declines in local and long distance sales. SHAW CABLEPHONE EXPANSION SPEEDS UP: Shaw Communications added 43,744 phone lines in the quarter ended August 31, half again as many as in the previous quarter: it now has 212,707 phone customers. ** Revenue of $632 million for the quarter was up 12.2% from a year earlier. Net income tripled--or doubled, if one- time items are excluded. ** CEO Jim Shaw told reporters that his company has no plans to offer wireless service. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2006 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again Date: 26 Oct 2006 23:30:11 GMT Organization: Aracnet Internet Services In article , Scott Dorsey wrote: > How can I be sure that my vote is being counted if I am casting it > into a black box whose internal software is a complete unknown? As > long as the voting machine is a closed mystery, how can we be sure > elections are free and fair? They could take a lesson from the gambling industry. Manufacturers of gambling devices used in Nevada (and elsewhere) have to meet strict requirements and pass thorough inspections before they can be used. Among other things the manufacturer has to submit both the source code (and all required build tools) and the executable image (which is retained for later verification) for analysis and testing. The box has to meet certain physical requirements, such as running the code out of ROM (not Flash memory) or be able to verify a copy running in RAM against a ROM copy, must keep circuit boards inside a protective cover that has a security locking mechanism, and a slew of other hardware, software and communication requirements. Believe me, the gambling industry takes "trust" seriously. (for the curious, http://gaming.nv.gov/stats_regs.htm#regs, specifically Regulation 14) John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again Date: 27 Oct 2006 10:59:57 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Scott Dorsey : > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No one can be positive on this at all. > That's one reason I have never been too harsh with Diebold and thier > work with elections. Either they can be trusted or they cannot be > trusted. No. You cannot EVER trust a black box. Computers are designed by humans and humans are flawed. As long as systems are designed by humans, they will have errors in them. Because we know all systems have errors, it's important that critical systems be open so that those errors can be seen and dealt with. > But beleive me you, coming from a background in Chicago, Cook > County, Illinois, in my lifetime I saw so many _totally outrageous_ > things done in _supposedly_*fair* elections, I was thrilled to see the > first sign of progress when they began automating elections. You want > to complain about Diebold in elections? Why not complain about all the > dead people voting and police officers who hang around polling places > ostensibly to 'help' voters in Chicago with their choices? Election > fraud did not begin with Diebold, believe me. The Chicago Board of > Election Commissioners -- supposedly a non-partisan operation > intended to secure the integrity of elections in that city -- turns a > blind eye at the shenanigans which go on there intended to insure > that the 'right' people get elected. I'm not just talking about fraud ... although fraud is an issue, there is also the substantial issue of error. Things go wrong in complex systems. When things go wrong, we need to be able to figure out what went wrong and figure out how to deal with it. The possibility of fraud is ANOTHER reason why systems need to be open, but computerizing election machines doesn't inherently do anything to prevent fraud or to make fraud easier. Locking up the design of voting machines, computerized or not, DOES make fraud easier. It also means that inadvertent errors either are never detected or cannot be dealt with when detected. You would never accept a mechanical voting machine that was a proprietary system that was sealed by the manufacturer and could not be looked inside, checked, verified, or repaired? Why should you accept a computerized one? I have nothing against Diebold per se, other than the fact that their systems are sealed boxes that nobody can look inside, and that this is bad and is something they need to remedy. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here you see an example of where the two of us were talking in different directions, with different goals in mind. I was thinking in terms of fraud, Scott was thinking about the possibility of errors. Chicago, with which I am familiar, has election fraud galore. They've had it for many years. Therefore, it seemed to me that a relatively 'fraud proof' method of voting would be a welcome relief. But Scott's issues are equally important, at least to people who do not live around nor endure Chicago politics. Now, there are a lot of voters who contend that Diebold -- Mr. Diebold himself is a staunch Republican I am told -- is not above and beyond some shady tricks. Yet who else has offered that sort of software for the administration of voting? I do not know of anyone. I'd like to see a system where a truly non-partisan commission was in charge of voting; one of their duties -- and I would force Diebold to go along with it if they wanted to be allowed to bid for the contract -- would be (a) a full inspection of their software/hardware _only_ by employees of this non-partisan commission (who would be sworn to secrecy as to the workings, etc), if you will, sort of like the old-style election judges who sat as observers in the polling place. Any voter who asked for assistance or asked a question, then a judge from each party got up to answer his questions, etc. and (b) staggered voting hours so that everyone voted in essentially the same absolute! time frame as everyone else, i.e. polls on the east coast open from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, and in California from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Voters in Alaska/Hawaii would vote on Monday night from 8:00 PM to midnight and again on Tuesday morning from 6 or 7 AM to around noon. (As it is currently configured, voters in Guam and that area wind up voting [if they bother at all] on 'their' Tuesday anyway, before the rest of us have gone to bed on Monday night.) I also happen to think voting could be done from home computers if security precautions were taken, but that would require some effort to _carefully identify_ voters AND assure that voting remained anonymous like it is now. A number of years ago, I wrote a paper on this very topic and submitted it to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, but there were a couple things wrong: (a) computers and the internet were not nearly as advanced as they are now, and (b) who is going to listen to anything an ignorant old man in a tin-foil hat has to say anyway. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Study Suggests Link Between Cell Phone Use, Low Sperm Count Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 20:59:44 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when bob Weller wrote: > Exposure to the modest RF energy from a cell phone is highly unlikely, > in my view, to cause reduced sperm count. Even if you place the cell > phone at your belt line and use a headset, there is insufficient > energy to cause temperature elevation sufficient to impact male > fertility. That does assume that the only possible mechanism by which RF can interact with the human body is heating. And that the only site of interaction that can possibly affect fertility is the testes. Though I must admit that my first reaction to the news story was "I'm sure glad I don't talk on the phone from that end of me!" Dave ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Call for Papers: IAENG International Conference ICEE 2007 Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:20:34 -0700 Organization: University of Washington Pat, would you mind not approving these spams for fake conferences? -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now here is an example of how little I know about real life compared to (perhaps) my theoretical knowledge on many topics. "IAENG International Conference ICEE 2007" is apparently a spoof and I fell for it with the publication here of their 'conference'. Mark explained it like this to me: > IAENG has been spamming newsgroups for *years*. It's a popular game > with students to send IAENG (and other fake conferences) nonsensical > papers and watch them get accepted: > http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ Does anyone know what 'IAENG' means, if anything? PAT] ------------------------------ From: FreedomFireCom Subject: Re: LF: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH Date: 26 Oct 2006 17:45:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com You're generally only going to find flat rate unlimited .. at those prices ... with a broadband phone provider. Here's a info on a couple options: Packet8 ... http://cognigen.net/packet8/?mscprez Sun Rocket ... http://broadband-nation.blogspot.com/2006/09/sunrocketkeep-eye-on-this-broadband.html God Bless, Michael Lemm FreedomFire Communications http://DS3-Bandwidth.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/freedomfirecom lukus2005@gmail.com wrote: > My girlfriend in New Hampshire is looking for a long distance provider > that offers unlimited long distance calls for a flat fee. > I'd like to know if there's a similar provider there to what I have > here in Canada http:// www.worldline.ca which offers unlimited long > distance calls for $3.95 within Canada or $13.95 including the U.S. > The plan must include long distance calls to Canada as well. > Any suggestions? > TIA ------------------------------ Date: 28 Oct 2006 02:40:19 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH > My girlfriend in New Hampshire is looking for a long distance > provider that offers unlimited long distance calls for a flat fee. If her local telco is Verizon, some of their Freedom packages include unlimited calling to the US and Canada. The package price is $55 including local service, hard to tell from their web site how much of that is LD and how much is the local service she's paying anyway. If she has DSL or cable, most of the VoIP providers offer flat rate or large bundles to US and Canada. I'm reasonably happy with Lingo, a subsidiary of Canadian telco Primus which is $15/mo for 500 outbound minutes or $22 for unlimited outbound to the US, Canada, and most of western Europe. R's, John PS: If interested in Lingo, I can send you a referral code which gives each of us a free month. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 20:56:33 -0500 From: Lisa Baertlein Subject: Last Laugh! Who in Hell Would Pay for This? Who on earth would pay $1 million for hell? By Lisa Baertlein, AP writer No one was buying hell on Friday -- or at least its red-hot Web address. HELL.com was among hundreds of Internet domain names up for auction in Hollywood, Florida, by domain asset management provider Moniker.com, a unit of marketing services firm Seevast Corp. The owner put a minimum price of $1 million on the underworld's domain, confident of high interest after the salacious address, Sex.com, sold for about $12 million earlier this year. But there were no takers with bids failing to reach the reserve price. "The world is still alive and well. Nobody is going to hell right now," Seevast Chief Executive Lance Podell told Reuters, adding that the domain would now be part of a silent auction. Moniker was selling HELL.com on behalf of a group called BAT Flli LLC, whose founder Kenneth Aronson registered the name in 1995. It's not the first time that Aronson has tried to sell HELL.com. He put the address on the auction block in April 2000, at a starting bid of $8 million. In an interview with Reuters in 2000, Aronson said members of The Final.org, an enigmatic collective of digital artists and creative visionaries, were using HELL.com as a private destination for their work. According to the site, HELL.com is a "private parallel web" not accessible with a Web browser. The auction on Friday included a list of domain names such as cameras.com, which pulled in $1.5 million. Sexeducation.com that sold for $120,000 and babies.net which went for $26,000. Flowers.mobi, an address with the new extension for mobile devices, went for $200,000, while fun.mobi pulled in $100,000. A boom in Internet advertising driven by companies such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have sent prices for sought-after domain names soaring. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe the good folks in the village of Hell, Michigan need a municipal web site. Hell is a small town, north by northwest of Ann Arbor, MI a few miles; north on Highway 23 or east out of Lansing, MI then switch to County Road 19 going south. Population is a hundred people more or less; their only industry seems to be a tourist shop which sells a variety of trinkets and ashtrays and T-shirts all of which proudly note "I've been through Hell" along with highway maps with arrows on them which point out the fastest way to go 'Straight to Hell'. Maybe some day someone will pay the slight fortune being asked for the domain name. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #373 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 30 16:02:39 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id C80372238; Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:02:38 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #374 Message-Id: <20061030210238.C80372238@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:02:38 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:04:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 374 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson My Space to Block Illegal Use of Copyrighted Music (Reuters News Wire) Text Messaging Catches on in Music Business (Bruno-Walsh, Reuters) New Frontier For Spammers - Text Messaging (David Lazarus) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 30, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Verizon's Q3 Net Buoyed by Wireless (US Telecom Daily Lead) Researchers See Privacy Pitfalls in No-Swipe Credit Card (Monty Solomon) Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again (mc) Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again (Dave Garland) Re: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH (gb) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:13:49 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: My Space to Block Illegal Use of Copyrighted Music News Corp.'s MySpace.com on Monday said it had licensed a new technology to stop users from posting unauthorized copyrighted music on the social networking Web site and oust frequent violators of its policy. The move comes amid pressure from major studios and record labels against popular online sites like MySpace and YouTube, which they accuse of infringing the copyrights of their artists' music and videos. MySpace, one of the most popular sites on the Internet, licensed technology from privately-held Gracenote allowing it to review music recordings uploaded by community members to their profiles. The technology compares those filed with Gracenote's database of copyrighted material and can block uploads without proper rights. Terms of the licensing agreement were not disclosed. Popular sites like MySpace and YouTube are littered with copyrighted music and video posted by their legions of users, who hope to share them with friends and strangers alike. Both say they remove unauthorized copyrighted material when notified. But MySpace, increasingly seen as a destination to see and hear music and video, will soon begin selling songs from nearly 3 million unsigned bands. It aims to eventually offer copyright-protected songs from major record companies. Once Gracenote's technology is integrated into its service, users who repeatedly try to upload unauthorized music will have their accounts deleted, MySpace said. YouTube, which recently agreed to be acquired by Google Inc., has similar aspirations to cash in on Web video use and protect itself from legal challenges. EMI, Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG own around 75 percent of mainstream popular music. Most of this music is only available on MySpace for live streaming as a promotional tool. MySpace was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $580 million less than a year ago. It now boasts more than 90 million active users. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:17:04 -0600 From: Antony Bruno & Chris Walsh Subject: Text Messaging Catches on in Music Business By Antony Bruno and Chris M. Walsh Students at Chula Vista (Calif.) High School near San Diego were treated to a particularly nice surprise on a recent Tuesday. Rather than the standard fare of reading, writing and arithmetic, the school doled out a healthy dose of Diddy, who made a guest appearance courtesy of local hip-hop station XMOR-FM (Blazin 98). The student body won the visit by sending the most text messages to the radio station as part of a campaign to promote his new album, "Press Play." The station opened the contest to all high schools in the area, asking students to send a text message with the word "Diddy" during a four-day period. Chula Vista won the contest, logging 34,000 messages. Some students reported sending in hundreds of messages each. In all, the station received more than 170,000 text messages. The Diddy campaign is just one implementation of many that show how record companies and radio stations use text messaging as a promotional tool. Once considered a service used only in Europe and Asia, text messaging is emerging as an important form of communication in the United States, with 40% of the nation's 220 million mobile phone users sending text messages regularly, according to research from NPD Group. By comparison, about 21 percent of U.S. subscribers have downloaded a ringtone (although only about 10% can be considered "active" downloaders), while about 9% have downloaded a mobile game. According to CTIA-The Wireless Assn., U.S. subscribers sent close to 65 billion text messages through the first half of this year. That's about double the number sent in the first half of 2005. Record labels have latched onto this trend to sell ringtones and other mobile content directly to fans, rather than relying solely on wireless operators to generate sales. "Every artist with every track, and all the merchandising and all the advertising, we're using (text messaging) to try and drive business," says David Ellner, executive VP of operations for Universal Motown/Republic Group. "The consumers, from a texting standpoint, are completely literate with this." Typically, this takes the form of a CD insert listing a special "short code" to which fans can send a text message to buy ringtones and other content. "I don't think you will see a (marketing) tool coming out of Atlantic Records -- anything from an album, flier or advertisement -- that doesn't have some sort of mobile promotion," says Cyndi Allnot, Atlantic Records' mobile marketing manager. Labels also are incorporating text-message responses in their TV, radio and print advertising as sort of a mobile URL, and consumers are responding. According to October figures from mobile traffic measurement firm M:Metrics, 7% of the U.S. mobile subscriber base has used text messaging to respond to such ads. Compared with Spain and the United Kingdom, which boast a 29% and 18.5% response rate respectively, that number may seem low. But it's on par with the 10% reported in France and actually beats the 3.5% reported in Germany. Of that 7% who responded to ads using text messaging, 38% did so to download some type of content, while 36% replied to a contest or promotion. TV ads were the most successful at generating a response, at 64%, while radio came in a distant second at 15%. "Brands are intrigued by this medium, particularly those trying to reach 18- to 34-year-olds who are media-literate and tech-savvy," M:Metrics founder Seamus McAteer says. Compared with other entertainment industries, like film or TV, the music industry is more sophisticated in its usage of text messaging as a promotional tool, according to Dov Cohn, VP of product management and strategy at Motricity, which helps operate text-message campaigns on behalf of such labels as Universal Music Group and Wind-up Records. "The music industry is more progressive because they are able to immediately see the financial gain" through ringtone sales, he says, "and they're looking to take more control over it and build their brands more directly." Labels are also using text messaging as a push marketing tool, sending messages directly to the mobile phones of fans who have opted in to receive alerts about their favorite artists. "It's a huge priority for us because kids are moving off of e-mail and onto text messaging and instant messaging," Atlantic's Allnot says. "It basically has a 100% open rate." In some cases, labels can even charge a fee for the text messages sent in response to recoup their marketing costs, without selling a thing. For instance, RCA Group ran a sweepstakes in conjunction with the launch of Monica's new album earlier this month. With Adidas as a sponsor, RCA invited fans to enter to win a $5,000 online shopping spree by texting the word "Monica" to a short code. At 99 cents per message, RCA is able to put that money back against other marketing costs. "This is probably the first promotion we ever ran where we didn't lose money on prizing, advertising and things like that," says Sean Rosenberg, director of mobile marketing at RCA Music Group. Reuters/Billboard Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Subject: New Frontier For Spammers; Text Messaging Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:29:16 EST From: David Lazarus by David Lazarus Nearly 10 billion text messages are sent by U.S. cell phone users every month. If you don't think that's caught the attention of spammers, think again. One recent study indicates that millions of text-message spams are in circulation already. The majority target younger cell phone users who send the most text messages. But experts say it could be just a matter of time before text spam becomes more widespread. What's more, many cell phone subscribers face the double whammy of having to pay 10 cents for every text message received, whether read or unread, solicited or unsolicited. "Spam is a growing concern in the wireless realm," acknowledged Heidi Flato, a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless. She said her company filters up to 50,000 spam messages every day before they can reach customers' cell phones. Palo Alto resident Bill Zaumen is one of numerous wireless customers to see a recent increase in the amount of spam arriving via his cell phone. He told his service provider, Cingular, to block all text messages, which it did. But the experience got Zaumen thinking. Why is it, he wondered, that protecting himself is an all-or-nothing proposition? Why does he have to block all text messages, cutting off any legitimate messages that may come his way? Moreover, Zaumen wondered if the wireless companies aren't accomplices to a crime. Since 2003, federal and state laws have prohibited the sending of unwanted text messages. "These companies are charging for an illegal activity," Zaumen said. "They're profiting from it. Shouldn't they be more responsible for upholding the law?" William Baker, a Washington attorney and expert in telecom law, says no. He said unwanted text messages might be an annoyance, and a costly one at that. But unless consumers are comfortable with having wireless companies read each text message before it arrives, he doesn't see how the carriers can be charged with abetting a crime. "Legally, their job is to deliver messages," Baker observed. "They deliver them. They've done their job." However, consumer advocates say the situation isn't so cut-and-dried. Cell-phone companies can do a lot more, they say, to ensure that customers aren't paying through the nose for wireless spam. "They haven't done very much to make it easier for people to block messages from some sources but allow them from others," said Joe Ridout, a spokesman for Consumer Action in San Francisco. The reason, he said, is simple: Wireless companies make money from every message sent and every message received. "They have a profound disincentive to do anything about this problem," Ridout said. "That's why we've seen more foot-dragging than proactive efforts to help customers." According to CTIA, a wireless industry group, 48.7 billion text messages were sent domestically in the second half of last year -- almost double the amount sent in the corresponding period a year before. CTIA says there are about 208 million wireless subscribers in the United States, and they send roughly 10 billion text messages each month. The Pew Research Center found in a separate study last year that 28 percent of people who send text messages are receiving spam -- and being charged in most cases for each unwanted message spilling into their phones. The Federal Communications Commission prohibits the sending of unwanted "commercial messages" to cell-phone users. The loophole, however, is that the rule doesn't apply to any company with which a consumer has had a prior relationship. California enacted a similar law in 2003. "It's a serious enough problem that we're taking steps to make sure it doesn't become more widespread," said Lauren Garner, a Cingular spokeswoman. She declined to elaborate. A common example of text-message spam occurs when people download new ring tones to their cell phones. Often, the ring tones are accompanied by a blizzard of text messages offering other services, which the consumer might not notice until his or her next phone bill arrives. Text messages can accompany other cell-phone transactions as well, such as voting for "American Idol" contestants or playing wireless games. One such game was promoted by Verizon recently as part of marketing efforts for the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." This is legal under federal law. What's illegal is when a marketing company obtains the cell-phone numbers for thousands of customers of any given provider and starts sending out pitches. "We've been getting more and more complaints about this happening," said Ridout at Consumer Action. Most wireless companies focus their filtering efforts on known spammers. Customers are typically given the option of blocking messages from specific senders. This, of course, leaves the door open for other spammers to get through -- at 10 cents a pop for cell-phone customers without costlier plans that accommodate more text messages. The more consumer-friendly approach would be for all text messages to be blocked except for those from senders given a green light by individual customers -- a "safe list" that could be regularly updated online by the wireless customer. That way, you're charged only for the messages you send and the ones you want to receive. Everything else falls by the wayside. Not one major wireless company gives customers this option, although Cingular offers a service that blocks all text messages except those sent to a separate address created by the subscriber. Laura Marriott, executive director of the Mobile Marketing Association, an industry group, said such a system is unnecessary because of various safeguards already in place, such as spam filters and guidelines for association members that consumers "opt in" before receiving any text messages. "We have done an extraordinary job as an industry to protect consumers from spam," she said. But Mark Cooper, research director for the Consumer Federation of America, said the association's efforts won't prevent unscrupulous marketers from obtaining consumers' cell-phone numbers and sending out a torrent of spam. "Relying on a code of conduct doesn't protect consumers," he said. Cooper said a safe list of designated text senders would remedy the situation. But he said this is unlikely as long as wireless companies profit from every message that makes its way to customers' cell phones. "The problem is that the companies would have to administer the safe list," he said. "They're not going to want to administer it." After all, what's in it for them? David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com. URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/04/MNGILKB9L51.DTL Copyright 2006 San Francisco Chronicle ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 30, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:46:40 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 30, 2006 ******************************** Free-for-All from FON with Wi-Fi Router Giveaway http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20796?11228 Big-name-backed Spanish start-up FON launched a promotion in the U.S. market last Friday as it gave away 'hundreds' of Wi-Fi routers. The company has pushed into San Francisco as the touted municipal Wi-Fi network to be provided by Google and EarthLink has stalled. The next promotion is slated to hit New York as FON tries to ... EU Warns It Will Sue Germany If It Adopts Law Shielding Deutsche Telekom http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20791?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Union reiterated Monday that it would take Germany to court if its parliament passes a law that allows Deutsche Telekom AG to shut out rivals from its high-speed broadband network. The former state monopoly wanted a three-year exemption from rules that would prevent it recouping its initial 803 ... Fiber Optics Reach for the Sky http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20787?11228 On an airplane, a little short circuit can lead to big trouble. In 1996, a spark caused by faulty wiring insulation exploded fumes inside TWA Flight 800's fuel tank, leading to a horrific explosion and crash that killed 230 people. In an effort to make aircraft safer, researchers have created an optical on-off switch. The ... Bang & Olufsen Teams with Samsung http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20785?11228 Attention, minimalists with disposable income: Bang and Olufsen America, with help from Samsung Electronics Mobile Business, may have the phone for you. Their partnership is bringing one of the more unique phones to the North American market next month. Marking the first cell phone to launch through Bang and Olufsen America, ... Sierra Wireless Turns It Around http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20782?11228 Sierra Wireless, buoyed by the growth of wireless data services and the introduction of widgetry to use the new technologies -- which it supplies to both Cingular and Sprint, among others -- reported a strong third quarter, with sales nearly doubling and a profit to boot. The company now has turned in four profitable quarters in a ... Talk Like an Egyptian http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/20778?11228 As a small importer doing business with partners in the Middle East, Steve Collins, owner of Discoveries, Inc. in Alexandria, Va., has lived through the slow evolution of overseas telecommunications in the last quarter-century. After founding Discoveries in 1980, Collins first began working with his Cairo-based affiliates by telex, ... IP PBX Adoption Rate Dependent Upon New Services, Software http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20776?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- With the move to IP, the PBX is no longer a standalone system, but rather just one component of a larger unified corporate communication system that includes e-mail, IM/presence, dual-mode phones, video conferencing, etc., reports In-Stat. Full IP PBX deployments across the entire scope of the enterprise remain ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:05:54 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon's Q3 Net Buoyed by Wireless USTelecom dailyLead October 30, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eKmUfDtusXeMwJCibuddIOoA TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon's Q3 net buoyed by wireless BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Supreme Court to review case involving AT&T patents * Comcast to launch gore-filled broadband site * Narus snags $30M funding * Cox rolls out phone service to all customers USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Using Point Code Emulation to Transition Your Network Efficiently , Oct. 31, 1 p.m. (ET) HOT TOPICS * AT&T offers home monitoring system * Analysts: Sprint Nextel a buyout target? * Verizon makes inroads with triple-play bundle in North Texas * AT&T filing shows three companies looking at divestitures * EchoStar debuts broadband service TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Online networks serve up TV platforms * More viewing options than ever on the Web REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Opinion: Reforms needed to boost broadband deployment * Calif. governor sets up task force to speed broadband growth * Emirates blocks Skype, other VoIP services Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eKmUfDtusXeMwJCibuddIOoA ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 00:39:04 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Researchers See Privacy Pitfalls in No-Swipe Credit Cards By JOHN SCHWARTZ The New York Times October 23, 2006 AMHERST, Mass. - They call it the "Johnny Carson attack," for his comic pose as a psychic divining the contents of an envelope. Tom Heydt-Benjamin tapped an envelope against a black plastic box connected to his computer. Within moments, the screen showed a garbled string of characters that included this: fu/kevine, along with some numbers. Mr. Heydt-Benjamin then ripped open the envelope. Inside was a credit card, fresh from the issuing bank. The card bore the name of Kevin E. Fu, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was standing nearby. The card number and expiration date matched those numbers on the screen. The demonstration revealed potential security and privacy holes in a new generation of credit cards -- cards whose data is relayed by radio waves without need of a signature or physical swiping through a machine. Tens of millions of the cards have been issued, and equipment for their use is showing up at a growing number of locations, including CVS pharmacies, McDonald's restaurants and many movie theaters. The card companies have implied through their marketing that the data is encrypted to make sure that a digital eavesdropper cannot get any intelligible information. American Express has said its cards incorporate "128-bit encryption," and J. P. Morgan Chase has said that its cards, which it calls Blink, use "the highest level of encryption allowed by the U.S. government." But in tests on 20 cards from Visa, MasterCard and American Express, the researchers here found that the cardholder's name and other data was being transmitted without encryption and in plain text. They could skim and store the information from a card with a device the size of a couple of paperback books, which they cobbled together from readily available computer and radio components for $150. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/business/23card.html?ex=1319256000&en=76401b1601fc06e3&ei=5090 ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again Organization: BellSouth Internet Service Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 11:04:46 -0400 wrote in message news:telecom25.373.6@telecom-digest.org: > In article , Scott Dorsey > wrote: >> How can I be sure that my vote is being counted if I am casting it >> into a black box whose internal software is a complete unknown? As >> long as the voting machine is a closed mystery, how can we be sure >> elections are free and fair? Bingo. > They could take a lesson from the gambling industry. Manufacturers of > gambling devices used in Nevada (and elsewhere) have to meet strict > requirements and pass thorough inspections before they can be used. > Among other things the manufacturer has to submit both the source code > (and all required build tools) and the executable image (which is > retained for later verification) for analysis and testing. ... > Believe me, the gambling industry takes "trust" seriously. But with a voting machine, I don't want to have to "trust" a small group of experts far away. I want a machine where there are mechanics in every small town who can verify that it's working as intended, and complex rigging is physically impossible in the first place. Part of the problem with microprocessor voting machines is that they could be rigged in very complex ways (e.g., throw the election only if the 2nd candidate is winning after 3000 votes) so that any reasonably brief test would not show the tampering. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 21:58:54 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when PAT wrote: > Yet who else has offered [Diebold's] sort of software for > the administration of voting? I do not know of anyone. Standard (majority) voting should be fairly simple to write software for, and there is no reason it could not be Open Source software. There is in fact Open Source software for Single Transferrable Vote/Instant Runoff elections, which are rather more complex to keep track of (IRV and STV are systems used in a few jurisdictions where voters rank the candidates, and the voting is processed as a series of runoffs with the lowest candidate being dropped until winner(s) are determined. http://stv.sourceforge.net/ > I also happen to think voting could be done from home computers if > security precautions were taken, but that would require some effort to > _carefully identify_ voters AND assure that voting remained anonymous > like it is now. As with absentee ballots, with online voting it is virtually impossible to ensure voting remains private. Not only is there the problem of the vote being submitted to the government together with identifying information, how do you deal with the husband who watches while his wife votes, or the vote buyer who insists on supervising the vote to ensure he gets his money's worth? Dave [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, what you need to do is require that _all_ employees of the election (computer workers, clerks, etc) be required to take the same oaths required of any professional who deals with members of the public. They are required under most circumstances to work on a 'client privilege' basis. How do you keep what you tell your pychiatrist for example from becoming public knowledge? Those people _presumably_ are ethically motivated to maintain the trust. How do you deal with insurance company which is paying for someone's mental treatment who insists on making sure _they_ are getting their money's worth? You basically would have to use two computer systems; the first system is intended to identify the person's right to vote; his name, address, etc and to make sure his identification is not presented two or more times. Upon validating the voter, he is given an anonymous 'ticket' to use in voting. This part is basically what the election judges do now; you announce your name, the clerks find you in their books; then and only then are you permitted to walk past them to the voting booth where no record is maintained of how you voted, just that you _had_ used your entitled vote. So the first computer satisfies itself that you are (a) entitled to vote, and (b) have not done so previously in this election. Then the second computer (or a different function of the same computer) accepts your right to vote 'ticket' and accepts your vote. All it knows (or could ever tell anyone) was that ticket number whatever cast a vote. And all the first computer knows is that you presented yourself and requested admission to the voting process and it found you eligible or not. Needless to say, neither computer volunteers any information to any voter. If the first one is satisfied, it generates a 'ticket' in the form of some extremely long, very elaborate encryoted number; your 'authorization' to vote. If it is not satisfied (a) driver's license or other ID does not correctly match up or (b) it issued a 'ticket' for this same person from an 'unlikely' location for this voter elsewhere five minutes ago, then it does NOT deny you the right to vote; it merely suggests manual voting will be required, first call phone number xxx so an experienced election worker can shake you down on required details, and possibly then unlock your computer or suggest that you present yourself and all requisite identification at the manual polling place. Its easy enough to do; what margin of error in the results would be tolerated has to be decided. Everyone would be required (if they wish to vote by computer) to use a computer associated with either an IP address or phone number of record to get their voting 'ticket'. Of course there will be some cheating; I am not sure what level of cheating there would be or if the cheating was any more or less than at present, but it could be tried at first with a minor or mock election, and the process fine-tuned as it was being done, trimming back on the fraud as it was being honed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: gb Subject: Re: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH Date: 29 Oct 2006 12:12:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I respectfully disagree about Lingo ... their customer service sux... I have been owed a 29.95 refund from them for over a year, and continue to get dunning notices from their lawyer for something they owe me. So, stay away from them ... get either Vonage or ATT Callvantage if you want VOIP. BTW, I don't have any referral codes (so no financial interest, blah, blah, blah). ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #374 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 30 21:38:32 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5FC8B223C; Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:38:32 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #375 Message-Id: <20061031023832.5FC8B223C@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:38:32 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:40:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 375 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Two Strange Phone Calls Today (TELECOM Digest Editor) Web Terrorism Course is Sellout With Security Pros (Reuters News Wire) Verizon Profits Up But Internet Additions Disappoint (Ritsuko Ando) If Google Demotes Your Web Page, Can You Sue? (Ziff Davis E-Week) Re: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH (Rick Merrill) Re: New Frontier For Spammers; Text Messaging (Mr Joseph Singer) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Two Strange Phone Calls Today Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:02:10 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) I thought it would be a good idea to make note of this while it was fresh in my memory. At about 3:45 PM a message went to my voice mail where the person said "are you still there?" That was all he said, but the voice-driven caller ID (on Vonage voicemail) said the call was from 512-220-2013. Then almost immediatly, the same voice called again and I saw his number this time on my own caller ID from the same 512-220-2013 number. This person did not identify himself, but seemed interested in speaking to "John Dunbar", who I gather is a reporter from a newspaper, maybe in Seattle. He did not have the message ID or any sure way of telling me _where_ to look for the old message (in the hopes of finding a clue as to 'John Dunbar' I thought maybe I could find the message somewhere. He said the email address he saw on the message was 'john dunbar ap@telecom-digest.org' Well that tipped me off it must have been an item from the RSS feed used here of AP/Reuters/other services. I told him I had no such person as "John Dunbar" here; that it probably was a newswire feed item and to try the Associated Press or Seattle newspaper to reach his party. Anyway he hung up. I kept searching for the item and finally found it from October 13, and indeed it was in the feed for that day. So, good citizen that I try to be I decided to call him back now that I had the message in hand. Guess what? The number 512-220-2013 is apparently Austin, TX and not only is it a bogus number of some kind, it produced various results on dialing it a few times. A couple times I was told (with tones) number not in service; and a couple of times I recieved a recording saying, "all lines are busy, please try later". Once I got _both_ recordings! The not in service version first, then after a few seconds of sitting there in silence, I heard the 'all lines are busy, try later' version. I hung up and decided to just write it off as some sort of a sneaky prank call when lo-and-behold, the phone line reserved for calls on Digest things (602-402-0134) rang again, and it was the same voice, but this time the caller ID said the call was from Irvine, CA and the number given was 949-296-0549. This was a _real_ number of some automobile dealer or perhaps a automobile financial lending service. The woman who answered the call that time was evasive also; she hastended to assure me 'they had several lines there' and no way of telling who called about what. I told her thanks and was about ot hang up, when she said "wait a minute; I will see if I can help". She vanished from the line, it started ringing again, and this time a different man answered; full of questions for me about who I was, and then 'please hold on' which I did for all of thirty seconds or so and the line went completely dead again. Thinking maybe I had misdialed the second (949 Irvine, CA) number I tried that one again, got the same lady and told her excuse the ring and hung up. Now, the mystery message which I finally located written by John Dunbar was the one published October 14 around midnight where Mr. Dunbar reported that AT&T had gotten stalled on their plans to take over all telephony service in the USA once again. I assume that is the message the man was complaining about; he was so very secretive otherwise. And since the original call(s) -- there were two, remember, one picked up by voicemail and the next one immediatly following both came from a bogus number in Austin, TX amd what major corporation do we know which is located there in recent months having merged with another infamous bunch? I think the man may have been using a voice-changing device on his phone since calls two and three (512 number) were different than the voice(s) on calls one (to voicemail only) and four (my call back to the Irvine, CA number). Its all very strange to me ... very, very strange. This email got the whole thing started: Date: Oct 30 2006 03:28:32 PM From: Outside Caller (15122202013) To : Patrick Townson (16204020134) You have 1 unreviewed message(s). Anyone have any ideas on it? PAT ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:18:41 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Web Terrorism Course is Sellout With Security Pros Security professionals from around the world have snapped up places on a Scottish university's pioneering new terrorism course, which went live on Monday via the Internet. Organizers said some 140 people have so far signed up for the University of St Andrews's Web-based "Certificate in Terrorism Studies," with about half starting on Monday and bookings now running into 2007. Participants include police, military, coastguard and aviation officials from Britain, Australia, Canada, Scandinavia and Thailand, among other countries. "A lot of the training they undergo is very operational -- which bag to open, and so on. What they would like deepened is their background understanding of what these (terrorist) movements are about -- the modus operandi, the philosophy," said Oliver Gadsby of publishing and training group Informa Plc, which launched the new course in collaboration with St Andrews. The venture, whose homepage is at www.terrorismstudies.com, is billed as the first transnational e-learning course of its kind. It requires about four hours of study each week and is designed to last 16 weeks. Participants have the chance to contact leading academics and each other, although Gadsby said it was possible some would not want to disclose their real names. "Some will be fully comfortable to share information. Others won't want to, and it's entirely in the students' control," he said. He did not rule out applications from the general public, but said all candidates were carefully scrutinized for security reasons. "I'd probably better not spell out what we do, but there is a vetting process." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:24:20 -0600 From: Ritsuko Ando Subject: Verizon Profits Up But Internet Additions Disappoint by Ritsuko Ando Verizon Communications Inc. on Monday posted a higher quarterly profit on strong wireless growth, but shares fell as Internet subscriber additions disappointed some analysts, and higher expenses underscored concerns about its costly high-speed network project. Analysts said Verizon Wireless' subscriber growth had exceeded their high expectations, but growth in high-speed Internet customers was weaker than expected amid fierce competition from cable operators. "One of the specific disappointments is the lack of strong growth in broadband Internet subscription, although overall the results were good," said Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research. Verizon's third-quarter income excluding some special items rose to $2.0 billion, or 68 cents per share, from $1.8 billion, or 66 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Wall Street on average expected earnings before items of 66 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates. Including special items such as pension settlement charges and costs related to the merger and integration of MCI, it reported quarterly earnings of 66 cents per share, compared with 67 cents per share in the same quarter a year earlier. Verizon Communications' third-quarter operating revenue rose to $23.3 billion, up 25.8 percent year-on-year. Verizon said it added 448,000 net high-speed Internet connections, which include digital subscriber lines (DSL) and the more advanced fiber-optic lines, known as FiOS. Some analysts said they had expected around 500,000 net additions. Some analysts also said the 7.5 percent fall in domestic wireline subscriptions was higher than expected. Shares in Verizon, the second-biggest U.S. telephone company, fell 3 percent to close at $37.65. They had risen 30 percent since the start of the year on expectations of growth in FiOS Internet and television services. FiOS CONCERNS Analysts were also concerned about spending on FiOS, the fiber-optic network for Internet and television services, although most agreed the investment was needed for long-term growth amid declining traditional phone subscribers. FiOS TV, together with Verizon's Internet and phone services, is also aimed at competing against cable operators' all-in-one packages of video, Internet and phone services. Verizon said it had 118,000 FiOS TV customers by the end of the third quarter, exceeding its target of 100,000. It said last month it expects to attract 175,000 TV customers by year-end. It expects FiOS to cut earnings by between 31 cents and 32 cents a share for full-year 2006, compared with its previous forecast of 28 cents to 30 cents. Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben said FiOS will hurt earnings by the same amount in 2007. The company, like its bigger rival AT&T, has benefited from strong growth in mobile phone subscriptions in the past few years, as traditional phone line users decline. Verizon Wireless, of which Verizon owns 55 percent, added 1.9 million net customers in the third quarter, bringing the total to 56.7 million customers. The market had expected 1.7 million in net additions, according to a Reuters survey of nine analysts. Verizon Wireless revenues grew 18.2 percent to $9.9 billion, the company said. Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L) holds the remaining 45 percent stake in the wireless venture. "It was a very strong quarter for wireless. I wouldn't want to minimize that importance. It's just that wireless strength was somewhat expected," said A.G. Edwards analyst Kent Custer. Some analysts cited worries about slowing U.S. economic growth as an overhang on the stock after data on Friday showed third-quarter GDP grew at its slowest pace in over three years, although Toben said she had not seen an impact. "I know what the GDP numbers say but companies have strong earnings. At the moment, we're bullish," she told Reuters. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:33:25 -0600 From: Ziff Davis Subject: If Google Demotes Your Web Page, Can You Sue? SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday questioned whether Google Inc. defamed a small company by cutting it from its Web search ranking system or whether Google is free to choose which sites it features. Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California heard arguments in a lawsuit by KinderStart.com LLC that seeks to challenge the fairness of how Google calculates the relative popularity of Web sites. KinderStart, a Norwalk, Connecticut-based Web parenting site that features links to information about raising children, alleges violations of antitrust, free speech, unfair competition and defamation and libel laws in its suit. Fogel said in opening comments that he was concerned attorneys for plaintiff KinderStart had not met the legal standard for defamation at the core of its complaint. "I guess I am still not convinced ... that a provably false statement has been alleged," Fogel said during a court session on whether the suit should advance to the evidence discovery stage or be dismissed outright. The judge asked whether Google has a free speech right to prioritize some sites over others in how it constructs computer formulas in its search system. "Assuming Google is saying that KinderStart's Web site isn't worth seeing. Why can't they say that? That's my question," Fogel said. KinderStart argues the site's sudden demotion in March 2005 to a "zero" ranking in Google's search system has severely harmed its business. It seeks class action status on behalf of what is says are many other sites that have suffered the same fate as Google regularly fine-tunes its rankings. "The fact that they (Google) have used a computer shouldn't affect whether it is defamatory," KinderStart counsel Gregory Yu said after the hearing. "Using a computer to do that is a smoke screen," he said. Fogel said he would take until at least the end of the year to render a formal ruling on whether the case should proceed or be dismissed, either with right of appeal or for all time. "Judge Fogel's comments make it clear that he has read the papers very carefully," Hilary Ware, Google's senior litigation counsel, said. "We look forward to his ruling." Apart from the basic way it counts the number of inbound links to any particular Web page, Google zealously defends the secrecy of the complex mathematical algorithms it uses to determine a site's ranking. Earlier this year, Google went to court to protect those trade secrets in a successful bid to limit a U.S. Justice Department request for search data. Google maintains that such secrecy is necessary to prevent the manipulation of its search system to gain attention. "This is a case that challenges Google's very right to operate," Google outside legal counsel David Kramer told the court. "It is not a case about KinderStart's free speech." Copyright 2006 Ziff Davis Inc. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:43:03 -0500 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Unlimited Long Distance Provider in NH gb wrote: > I respectfully disagree about Lingo ... their customer service sux... I > have been owed a 29.95 refund from them for over a year, and continue > to get dunning notices from their lawyer for something they owe me. > So, stay away from them ... get either Vonage or ATT Callvantage if > you want VOIP. > BTW, I don't have any referral codes (so no financial interest, blah, > blah, blah). I agree and have CallVantage. They screwed up bigtime in failing to correctly port the number, but they made up for it and the result is a great service. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:48:07 PST From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: New Frontier For Spammers; Text Messaging Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:29:16 EST David Lazarus wrote: > Nearly 10 billion text messages are sent by U.S. cell phone users > every month. If you don't think that's caught the attention of > spammers, think again. > One recent study indicates that millions of text-message spams are in > circulation already. The majority target younger cell phone users who > send the most text messages. But experts say it could be just a matter > of time before text spam becomes more widespread. Mr Lazarus failed to differentiate between text messages that are sent from phone-to-phone and text messages that are sent to the phone's email address e.g. phone to phone might be sent to 3118675309 and email sent to a phone might be sent to 3118675309@tmomail.net for reaching a T-Mobile subscriber. Generally sending phone-to-phone text messages will cost the sender. Email text messages for the sender more than likely has not cost but the recipient will of course be dinged for each message received. It's important to not that there *is* a difference. If someone spreads arouncd their phone's email address without carefully considdering who's going to have that phone number they may be a little more careful where they give out the phone email address. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #375 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 31 15:23:40 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 6C7B02238; Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:23:40 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #376 Message-Id: <20061031202340.6C7B02238@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:23:40 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:25:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 376 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Viacom Asks YouTube to Remove Certain Clips (Kenneth Li) Yahoo! Watchers Wonder if Deal is Afoot (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 31, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today (Bob Goudreau) Doubt Regarding GSM CDMA and GPRS (sree) Re: Text Messaging Catches on in Music Business (B. Wright) Re: Researchers See Privacy Pitfalls in No-Swipe Credit Cards (B Wright) Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again (Scott Dorsey) Re: If Google Demotes Your Web Page, Can You Sue? (mc) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:14:18 -0600 From: Kenneth Li Subject: Viacom Asks YouTube to Remove Certain Clips By Kenneth Li Viacom Inc. has requested that video Web site YouTube take down some Viacom videos, including shows by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as part of ongoing discussions on how the two companies can work together, a Viacom source said on Monday. It is not known which clips YouTube was asked to remove. But on Monday, thousands of Viacom clips of varying lengths of up to about 10 minutes each remained available on the top video-sharing service. The source said Viacom, owner of the Comedy Central cable network, had sent a letter last Friday requesting that some of its shows -- including the popular "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "The Colbert Report" and those from MTV Networks and BET -- be purged from the site. Viacom and YouTube declined to comment on the matter. YouTube user Jeff Reifman, founder of Web site NewsCloud and a former Microsoft Corp. employee, said YouTube informed him in two letters of the removal of Comedy Central clips he had uploaded. YouTube received "a third-party notification by Comedy Central" of copyright infringement, according to the letters, he said. Viacom's demand comes after Google Inc. agreed this month to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion, which analysts said would intensify a push by media companies to seek a way to seek reimbursement for pirated clips or seek legal recourse. Most top music companies and several U.S. TV networks including NBC Universal and CBS Corp. have inked advertising deals with YouTube. News Corp.'s social network site, MySpace, said on Monday it had licensed a new technology from Gracenote to block the uploading of copyrighted music files. Unlike MySpace, YouTube's policy is to leave it up to users to determine what to upload, but it will take down videos at the program owner's request. Its user agreement asks users to seek permission from copyright owners before uploading clips. YouTube, which carries tens of millions of clips, also restricts regular user accounts from uploading more than 100 megabytes of video or clips longer than 10 minutes. Professional producers, musicians and "amateur filmmakers" who register with YouTube are permitted to upload longer video clips, according to its Web site. Internet observers including Reifman noted the irony of pulling down clips from Stewart and Colbert. Bloggers note that Colbert joked that he deserved $700 million of the $1.65 billion in stock Google plans to pay for YouTube. The video clip of that particular Colbert episode had been removed by the user, according to YouTube's site. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 12:30:26 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Yahoo! Watchers Wonder if Deal is Afoot USTelecom dailyLead October 31, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eKxMfDtusXePhmCibuddGYpg TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Yahoo! watchers wonder if deal is afoot BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Swisscom rolls out IPTV * Verizon offers wireless version of Plaxo * Comcast deal hints at TiVo's future * Qwest, Vonage, Charter report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * New: The USTelecom IMS Implementation Guide TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * CE companies to cooperate on wireless HD standard * Media can't decide if YouTube is positive or negative force REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Cisco, Microsoft defend dealings with China, other countries Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eKxMfDtusXePhmCibuddGYpg ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - October 31, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 11:50:31 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For October 31, 2006 ******************************** Electronics Giants Team Up to Create Wireless HD Video Technology http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20814?11228 SAN JOSE, California -- The world's leading electronics makers have teamed up to develop a wireless technology to carry high-definition video and eliminate some of the tangle of cables that link televisions with set-top boxes and other equipment. Seven companies were to announce Tuesday that they formed the WirelessHD ... Broadcom Vs. Qualcomm: The Saga Drags On http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20804?11228 In the latest chapter of their ongoing, multiple-venue, wireless-patent fight, Qualcomm says a U.S. court has 'enjoined' Broadcom from 'any further solicitation, use or dissemination of Qualcomm's confidential WCDMA trade secrets, including source code.' According to Qualcomm, Broadcom agreed to the ... Narus Nails $30M for DPI http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20802?11228 Software-based deep packet inspection (DPI) specialist Narus Inc. has raised $20 million in new funding and secured a $10 million credit line as it seeks to capitalize on the increasing demand for IP traffic management systems. The new cash round is led by American Capital Strategies Ltd. and includes existing VC backers such ... Verizon Claims Q3 Wireless Supremacy http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20800?11228 Verizon Communications Inc. reported that its net earnings had been boosted by good wireless growth from Verizon Wireless in the third quarter. Verizon now claims that its wireless arm is number one in the U.S. -- in terms of revenues -- although Cingular Wireless LLC still has it beat on subscriber numbers. Excluding one time ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:37:12 -0500 [Please obscure my email address as always.] PAT wrote: > And since the original call(s) -- there were > two, remember, one picked up by voicemail and the next one > immediately following both came from a bogus number in Austin, TX > and what major corporation do we know which is located there in > recent months having merged with another infamous bunch? I give up Pat -- what major corporation could you be referring to? It certainly isn't AT&T Inc. (the former SBC, which bought AT&T Corp.), because that company is based in San Antonio, not Austin. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is what makes it a puzzle for me also. I would assume the caller was inquiring about the Associated Press mention of 'AT&T Gets Stalled on Purchase of BellSouth' and it seemed odd he would get so far in his research of what was written to call me asking for Mr. Dunbar (author of the AP story). But it also seemed odd to me that the caller (whomever he was) had sufficent control over his phone lines and ID of same to call me from an Austin, Texas number one minute and call back ID'ing himself as a California number a couple minutes later; both times on an inbound line of mine known to no one except Digest readers. But if the caller had control over a non-existent number in Austin, Texas and a working number in Caifornia _and_ he was greatly interested in a Digest message about AT&T, then whom might it have been? PAT] ------------------------------ From: sree Subject: Doubt Regarding GSM CDMA and GPRS Date: 31 Oct 2006 01:12:59 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi friends, If you know the difference between GPRS GSM CDMA (with pictures you have or Demos) please send me the information regarding to this. Please mail your answers to these three following ids. srikanth_nlr_p@yahoo.com sree033@yahoo.com srikanth.nlr.p@gmail.com Thanks in advance, Srikanth.P ------------------------------ From: B. Wright Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:46:12 UTC Organization: XMission Internet http://www.xmission.com Subject: Re: Text Messaging Catches on in Music Business Antony Bruno & Chris Walsh wrote: > By Antony Bruno and Chris M. Walsh > Students at Chula Vista (Calif.) High School near San Diego were > treated to a particularly nice surprise on a recent Tuesday. > Rather than the standard fare of reading, writing and arithmetic, the > school doled out a healthy dose of Diddy, who made a guest appearance > courtesy of local hip-hop station XMOR-FM (Blazin 98). > The student body won the visit by sending the most text messages to > the radio station as part of a campaign to promote his new album, > "Press Play." The station opened the contest to all high schools in > the area, asking students to send a text message with the word "Diddy" > during a four-day period. > Chula Vista won the contest, logging 34,000 messages. Some students > reported sending in hundreds of messages each. In all, the station > received more than 170,000 text messages. The Diddy campaign is just > one implementation of many that show how record companies and radio > stations use text messaging as a promotional tool. Wow, and they picked such a fine role model, a rap star who seems to always be under arrest for something or other, to send to the school didn't they? I wonder if he was packing when he showed up or if he decide to leave the Glock at home that day? My guess would be that the charitable record company/radio station was also requiring the text messages be sent to a premium rate destination and charging the kids up to about $1 per message; you do the math. Nice. ------------------------------ From: B. Wright Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:12:31 UTC Organization: XMission Internet http://www.xmission.com Subject: Re: Researchers See Privacy Pitfalls in No-Swipe Credit Cards Monty Solomon wrote: > By JOHN SCHWARTZ > The New York Times > October 23, 2006 > Tom Heydt-Benjamin tapped an envelope against a black plastic box > connected to his computer. Within moments, the screen showed a garbled > string of characters that included this: fu/kevine, along with some > numbers. > Mr. Heydt-Benjamin then ripped open the envelope. Inside was a credit > card, fresh from the issuing bank. The card bore the name of Kevin E. > Fu, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts, > Amherst, who was standing nearby. The card number and expiration date > matched those numbers on the screen. > The demonstration revealed potential security and privacy holes in a > new generation of credit cards -- cards whose data is relayed by radio > waves without need of a signature or physical swiping through a machine. > The card companies have implied through their marketing that the data > is encrypted to make sure that a digital eavesdropper cannot get any > intelligible information. > But in tests on 20 cards from Visa, MasterCard and American Express, > the researchers here found that the cardholder's name and other data > was being transmitted without encryption and in plain text. They could > skim and store the information from a card with a device the size of a > couple of paperback books, which they cobbled together from readily > available computer and radio components for $150. I had Chase send me one of their "Blink" cards as a "favor". Not only was the replacement sent well before the expiry date (years before, not just months) it was also completely unsolicited. Why is it that, for some stupid marketing or re-branding, these companies send out cards you are not expecting? This just increases the amount of fraud possible due to the fact that you're not expecting it to arrive and if it doesn't show up you'll be none the wiser until it's too late. Now with RFID enabled cards maybe you'll receive it and not even realize someone already stole the information without signs of tampering. The card they sent was not just a credit card either, it was linked to my bank accounts. At least with a credit card you have a lot better protection against liability for fraudulent charges, with a debit card it could turn into a nightmare situation. Their marketing literature tried to sell me on how great the benefits of the card were. The only "benefit" they could really point out was that it might be 20 seconds faster in the checkout line because you didn't have to swipe the card or sign for transactions about some small amount. This is ridiculous because chances are you've already pulled your wallet and card out anyway (especially if you have multiple RFID based cards, you couldn't just stick them all on the swipe pad at once unless you like playing card roulette), so why not just swipe the mag stripe? I doubt you'll notice the claimed "20 second time savings". The only benefit I saw, that they didn't even point out, is that the mag stripes wear out or become unreliable sometimes (very infrequently) and RFID shouldn't. I don't care how secure they claim these are, how short they claim the range to be, or anything else for that matter. I am confident they will be compromised from a distance sooner or later. I told Chase to stick their card where the sun doesn't shine and send me a new one without the RFID chip or if they can't do that to close my accounts. I did get a replacement card without the chip, but I do wonder if at some point they will try to force the issue onto people with no choices. If you are concerned about your security and privacy and your bank does the same I suggest you reject their card and ask for a replacement. I really wonder how much money these companies waste on ad-hoc card replacements like this just for non-value ideas dreamed up by their marketing people. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Diebold Source Code Leaked Once Again Date: 31 Oct 2006 09:48:48 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) > Yet who else has offered [Diebold's] sort of software for > the administration of voting? I do not know of anyone. Give me an afternoon with an Apple ][ and I'll toss something together in BASIC that will do the job perfectly fine. We aren't talking about tremendously sophisticated procedures here. This is stuff that was handled by years by punch card tabulators. I really _am_ surprised that Diebold doesn't have much competition out there. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: If Google Demotes Your Web Page, Can You Sue? Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:05:54 -0500 The crucial question is what Google *claims* to be doing. If Google's search pages are presented as, in essence, Google's *opinion* of what you would most like to see, then I think they are in the clear. If they are presented as some kind of objective survey results, *and* if Google is manipulating them so that they aren't really what's claimed, then there's a problem. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It really is too bad when internet folk (and that includes me) come to rely _so much_ on the revenue they receive from Google AdSense that they really begin to suffer when it is gone and they think in terms of lawsuits to force things back 'as they were'. Like many other people, I was (am) depending on Google AdSense for a few dollars each month. And like Kinderstart, my own internal records (based in large part on Google's calculations) and money began to dry up several months ago. Google's readership count (_always_ too conservative, IMO) and their formulas for making payouts got even more conservative than in the past. Unlike Kinder- start I do not claim that Google owes me anything, but something, somewhere is going wrong with their system, that much is fact. I think I am looking realistically at their 'click-through' ratio. I see about a one percent ratio each day, and other sources have told me two or three percent ratio is doing quite well, and I know that every page with a Google ad on it is going to get crawled and indexed. But, I still maintain that 'things' are not as they were with Google AdSense even a year or so ago. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #376 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 1 14:57:59 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 81DDD2274; Wed, 1 Nov 2006 14:57:59 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #377 Message-Id: <20061101195759.81DDD2274@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 14:57:59 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 1 Nov 2006 15:00:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 377 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson People Complaining About Poor Phone Service, High Prices (Newsnet News) Seven People Arrested in Cell Phone Fraud Scheme (Yang Lifei) Tip: The Basics On T1 Line Solutions For Small Business (FreedomFireCom) US Intelligence Unveils Spy Version of Wikipedia (Reuters News Wire) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 01 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Cisco Operator (Fred Atkinson) AT&T Plans Big Wireless Component For U-Verse (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Text Messaging Catches on in Music Business (AES) Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today (Wesrock@aol.com) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:39:30 -0600 From: Newsnet News Subject: People Complaining About Poor Phone Service, High Prices Outcry over poor service by telecomms providers The public has expressed concern over the lack of seriousness on the part of the country's mobile and fixed telephone providers in providing an efficient service delivery to their customers. People who spoke to Newsnet in Harare said the services they are getting are not commensurate with the charges they are paying to the providers. Having a fixed or a mobile phone is no longer a luxury but a necessity especially in a country like Zimbabwe which has a well educated human resources base. However most subscribers are complaining of poor service delivery being offered by the providers especially the country's three mobile phone providers. A snap survey conducted by Newsnet in Harare revealed that most subscribers are bitter about the service they are getting especially now when the providers are constantly increasing tariffs. Others revealed that they are losing out in some business opportunities because of lack of communication with potential customers. The problems has also affected fixed telephones which are never repaired after developing technical faults with some subscribers complaining that although they have reported their faults to the relevant authorities nothing has been done by the providers in the last three months. The sprawling phone shops have not spared the consumers either as their unilaterally increasing tariffs making it impossible for the ordinary people to make calls. Cases have been heard of phone shops overcharging customers with no action being taken by the service providers. The public has not been spared as Zimbabwe might be the only country where mobile telephone lines are not readily available on the legal market. The country opened up the telecommunications industry and to date Zimbabwe has three mobile phone operators and one fixed telephone operator. Article Url:http://www.newsnet.co.zw/index.php?nID=8928 Copyright 2006, Newsnet 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:42:45 -0600 From: Yang Lifei Subject: Seven People Arrested in Cell Phone Fraud Scheme Published on ShanghaiDaily.com (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/) http://www1.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/10/31/295791/Seven people held in cell phone fraud scheme.htm Yang Lifei POLICE in the city working with their counterparts in Beijing and Guangdong Province have detained seven people for allegedly sending cell phone messages to people in Shanghai, threatening to hurt their family members if they didn't deposit money into an assigned bank account. The Shanghai Public Security Bureau said yesterday that it received many reports about the fraud scheme on October 19 and 20. Police said the intended victims were asked to deposit 3,000 yuan (US$375) each into a bank account, but they don't know how many actually paid the money. Zhuang Liqiang, a bureau official, said the short messages usually read: "You are allowed one day to deposit 3,000 yuan into the following bank account at the Bank of Agriculture, otherwise your children will be hurt." A special task force was set up and within hours investigators managed to trace down two people suspected of sending the messages. In cooperation with their counterparts in Guangdong Province, city police seized two suspects there who were allegedly in charge of sending the threatening information randomly to Shanghai cell phone users. Based on their confession, police captured the other five alleged accomplices in Beijing five days later. "Suspects took advantage of victim's psychology of money for peace to commit fraud of small value," Zhuang said. Copyright 2001-2005 Shanghai Daily Company 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 For more headlines and news, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But of course, most of us know exactly how to deal with such a phone call: If you wish to do so (optional) be sure to bless the caller, and courteously replace the receiver. PAT] ------------------------------ From: FreedomFireCom Subject: Tip: The Basics On T1 Line Solutions For Small Business Date: 31 Oct 2006 18:00:01 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com T1 Lines have been the primary source of mission critical bandwidth for companies of all sizes for nearly 20 years. With so much history, a basic understanding of the T1 line should be common knowledge among business owners who are looking for reliable bandwidth for Internet access, data communications, or multiple telephone lines. Unfortunately it thta's not the case. This article makes a brave attempt to at least provide some of that basic foundation. http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Basics-On-T1-Line-Solutions-For-Small-Business&id=133217 God Bless, Michael Lemm FreedomFire Communications http://DS3-Bandwidth.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/freedomfirecom ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 02:22:36 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: US Intelligence Unveils Spy Version of Wikipedia The U.S. intelligence community on Tuesday unveiled its own secretive version of Wikipedia, saying the popular online encyclopedia format known for its openness is key to the future of American espionage. The office of U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte announced Intellipedia, which allows intelligence analysts and other officials to collaboratively add and edit content on the government's classified Intelink Web much like its more famous namesake on the World Wide Web. A "top secret" Intellipedia system, currently available to the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, has grown to more than 28,000 pages and 3,600 registered users since its introduction on April 17. Less restrictive versions exist for "secret" and "sensitive but unclassified" material. The system is also available to the Transportation Security Administration and national laboratories. Intellipedia is currently being used to assemble a major intelligence report, known as a national intelligence estimate, on Nigeria as well as the State Department's annual country reports on terrorism, officials said. Some day it may also be the path intelligence officials take to produce the president's daily intelligence briefing. But the system, which makes data available to thousands of users who would not see it otherwise, has also stirred qualms about potential security lapses following the recent media leak of a national intelligence estimate that caused a political uproar by identifying Iraq as a contributor to the growth of global terrorism. "We're taking a risk," acknowledged Michael Wertheimer, the intelligence community's chief technical officer. "There's a risk it's going to show up in the media, that it'll be leaked." Intelligence officials say the format is perfect for sharing information between agencies, a centerpiece of the reform legislation that established Negroponte's office as national intelligence director after the September 11 attacks. They also said it could lead to more accurate intelligence reports because the system allows a wider range of officials to scrutinize material and keeps a complete, permanent record of individual contributions including dissenting points of view. That might help avoid errors of the kind that led to the widely criticized 2002 national intelligence estimate that said Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence officials are so enthusiastic about Intellipedia that they plan to provide access to Britain, Canada and Australia. Even China could be granted access to help produce an unclassified intelligence estimate on the worldwide threat posed by infectious diseases. "We'd hope to get down to the doctor in Shanghai who may have a useful contribution on avian flu," senior intelligence analyst Fred Hassani said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 01, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 11:56:54 -0500 (EST) ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 01, 2006 ******************************** Rogers Boasts Operating Profits 33%, Revenue 15%; Income Triples on Growth in All Units http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20863?11228 Rogers has reported results for the third quarter of 2006, with consolidated revenue growth of 15% to C$2.35 billion (US$2.09 billion) while operating profits rose 33% to C$784 billion and net income tripled from C$48.9 million to C$154.0 million. Breaking down growth by operating segment, wireless drove revenue up during the third ... Nortel, Neuf Cegetel Partner for FMC Roll-Out http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20860?11228 Neuf Cegetel has confirmed that its latest fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) service TWIN is running on Nortel's IMS-ready Multimedia Communication Server 5200 (MCS 5200) which seamlessly integrates voice with video, collaboration, and presence services. Customers using TWIN mobile devices will be able to make calls, charged at the ... German Government Pre-Registers Potential Bidders for WiMAX Lice http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20855?11228 Germany's Federal Network Agency has started pre-registrations for companies seeking to participate in the planned auction of point-to-multipoint broadband wireless licences in the 3.4-3.6 GHz band. The German government has scheduled the beginning of the auction for December this year. Companies have until 8 November to ... Remote Control http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20852?11228 As telcos seek ways to reduce costs and to enter new markets, some are moving their non-core and even core activities offshore to lower-cost locations and, in some cases, outsourcing to a third-party supplier. Successful outsourcing is all about approaching the initiative as a transformation and not just as a ... Gateway M255-E: Vista-Ready Laptop http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20849?11228 As Microsoft Vista works its way into the PC mainstream, a growing number of laptop users are beginning to look for machines that can exploit the new operating system to its full potential. These individuals could do a lot worse than considering the Gateway M255-E. Based on Intel's snazzy Core 2 Duo processor, featuring a ... Mobilephone Carrier Softbank Mobile to Modify Advertising http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20848?11228 Japan's mobilephone carrier Softbank will modify the content of its advertising to make sure it doesn't mislead customers at the request of the country's fair trade watchdog, a company official said Wednesday. The move by the Tokyo-based Softbank Mobile Corp. comes just a few days after the Fair Trade Commission called in ... Tele2 Posts a Loss for Third Quarter, Raises Earnings Guidance http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20845?11228 Swedish telecom company Tele2 AB posted a loss for the third quarter on Wednesday after taking a charge related to the sale of its French unit and writedowns. The shares jumped, however, after the company gave an optimistic forecast. The loss came to 3.66 billion kronor (US$506 million) in the three months through ... Swisscom Finally Launches Microsoft-Based IPTV http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20837?11228 In one of the most closely watched IPTV launches to date, Swisscom tomorrow will deploy its long-delayed Microsoft TV-powered service. The repeated delays of Swisscom to launch what it is calling 'Bluewin TV' have been tracked by the industry as an indication of Microsoft's difficulty in getting to market. The ... AT&T Set to Expand its U-verse http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20832?11228 AT&T Inc. has said it will roll out its U-verse broadband video service, which includes high-definition television, in 15 to 20 markets before the end of 2006. Light Reading now has the skinny on where that's likely to happen. The project is a huge move for AT&T, which up until now has offered service to 30,000 people ... Road Warriors Leading Charge to SmartPhones http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20828?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.- Next-generation, richly featured handsets capable of both voice and high-speed data are still at the early stage of adoption, but are starting to win mindshare and regular usage among high-usage US business travelers, reports In-Stat. According to a recent In-Stat survey, business travelers spending $300 per month ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 07:43:48 -0800 From: Fred Atkinson Reply-To: fatkinson@mishmash.com Subject: Cisco Operator Folks, I just called Cisco a few minutes ago and asked to speak to someone about the fact that their Academy Locator is hopelessly out of date. I keep finding listings for schools that offer Cisco training. But when I call them, they've not offered the training in years. The operator's name was Shila (sp?). She said she was the 'global' operator and couldn't find a department. She only had employee names by listing, not by department. She said without me giving a name, that she wouldn't know where to transfer my call. This is high technology? Regards, Fred Atkinson ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 12:33:26 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T Plans Big Wireless Component For U-Verse USTelecom dailyLead November 1, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eLhEfDtusXeUwGCibuddAwvq TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T plans big wireless component for U-verse BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Analysis: Telecom, cable thrive amid increased competition * Verizon Wireless deploys EV-DO in Hawaii * Chicago schools switch to VoIP * Some lose Net service during Comcast-Time Warner transition USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * NEW from Steven Shepard -- WiMAX Crash Course TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Nokia makes dual-mode phones more efficient * Seattle's Hotel 1000 to use VoIP for cutting-edge services * Microsoft aims new Xbox Live features at nongamers REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC to move on BPL Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eLhEfDtusXeUwGCibuddAwvq ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Text Messaging Catches on in Music Business Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:03:15 -0800 Organization: Stanford University In article , B. Wright wrote: >> received more than 170,000 text messages. The Diddy campaign is just >> one implementation of many that show how record companies and radio >> stations use text messaging as a promotional tool. > Wow, and they picked such a fine role model, a rap star who seems to > always be under arrest for something or other, to send to the school > didn't they? I wonder if he was packing when he showed up or if he > decide to leave the Glock at home that day? My guess would be that > the charitable record company/radio station was also requiring the > text messages be sent to a premium rate destination and charging the > kids up to about $1 per message; you do the math. Nice. Could well be -- and in any case, the immensely more reprehensible behavior here is the record companies and radio stations using -- and being allowed by school authorities to use -- the schools and school facilities as essentially advertising and marketing tools to the students (following the lead, of course, of soft drink and fast food vendors, and anyone else who can get their corporate hooks into the educational system). ------------------------------ From: Steven J. Sobol Subject: Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:42:21 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com In article , Bob Goudreau wrote: > [Please obscure my email address as always.] > PAT wrote: >> And since the original call(s) -- there were >> two, remember, one picked up by voicemail and the next one >> immediately following both came from a bogus number in Austin, TX >> and what major corporation do we know which is located there in >> recent months having merged with another infamous bunch? > I give up Pat -- what major corporation could you be referring to? > It certainly isn't AT&T Inc. (the former SBC, which bought AT&T Corp.), > because that company is based in San Antonio, not Austin. Dell is based in Round Rock, just outside Austin. That's the biggest company I can think of in that area. I'm sure there are others. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:16:37 EST Subject: Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today In a message dated 10/30/06 8:48:19 PM Central Standard Time, editor@telecom-digest.org writes: > ... And since the original call(s) -- there were > two, remember, one picked up by voicemail and the next one > immediatly following both came from a bogus number in Austin, TX > amd what major corporation do we know which is located there in > recent months having merged with another infamous bunch? Are you talking about AT&T (formerly SBC)? Its headquarters are in San Antonio (area code 210), not Austin (area code 512). Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #377 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Nov 2 18:26:27 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 44C052216; Thu, 2 Nov 2006 18:26:27 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #378 Message-Id: <20061102232627.44C052216@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 18:26:27 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 2 Nov 2006 18:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 378 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Backs Airline's Free Wi-Fi at Logan International (Jeremy Pelofsky) Trusty Connections in a Wireless World (Roberto Rocha, Reuters) Real-Time Arrest Made in Internet Child Porn Case (Reuters News Wire) Air Force to Create Cyberspace Command (Jim Wolfe, Reuters) CEO of MSP Provider Compulinx Under Arrest (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update November 02, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecoms' DSL Subs Rise in Q3 (USTelecom dailyLead) Internet Fax Services? (Mark Atwood) Re: People Complaining About Poor Phone Service (Bob Goudreau) Re: Spam Beginning to Spell Trouble For Wireless (Koos van den Hout) Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today (Wesrock@aol.com) How to Sue Auto Dialers (Jim Stewart) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:13:03 -0600 From: Jeremy Pelofsky Subject: FCC Backs Airline's Free Wi-Fi at Logan International Airport By Jeremy Pelofsky WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Continental Airlines won a battle to offer high-speed Internet service in its frequent flier club at Boston Logan International Airport, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission ruled on Wednesday. The FCC ruled against the Massachusetts Port Authority, or Massport, which ordered airlines in 2005 to unplug their wireless and wireline high-speed Internet services in their lounges and instead use the airport's fee-based system. "Today's decision ensures that the Wi-Fi bands remain free and open to travellers, who can make productive use of their time while waiting to catch their next flight in an airport," FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said in a statement. A spokeswoman for MassPort was not immediately available for comment. Massport argued that Continental's free service would interfere with its network, raise safety concerns and violate lease agreements. Continental appealed to the FCC. The airline was backed by the industry, wireless providers and cargo shippers like United Parcel Service. The FCC agreed in its ruling that the agency's Over-the-Air Reception Devices regulations allowed airlines to offer the Wi-Fi service. Wireless communications provider T-Mobile USA withdrew its service from American Airlines' lounge at Boston airport in response to Massport's objections. Copyright Reuters 2006. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:16:49 -0600 From: Roberto Rocha Subject: Trusty Connections in a Wireless World Radio IP software's programs allow networks, satellites and devices to talk to one another seamlessly. Roberto Rocha The Gazette Wednesday, November 01, 2006 A businessperson on a train turns on a laptop and responds to e-mails the same way he would at an airport with a wireless hotspot. The experience is seamless, and he's blissfully unaware of the mind-numbing complexity of bringing high-speed Internet to a fast-moving vehicle. Montreal-based Radio IP Software Inc. wants to keep it this way. As more companies and governments go mobile, they need a way to make wireless devices and applications talk to each other and be constantly connected. This kind of back-end interoperability can be a pain for IT departments. Radio IP is making its fortunes alleviating that pain. "We don't make the end solution. We make the end solution work better," said Radio IP's vice-president of marketing Mike Bourre. In a modern city, there is a mishmash of wireless networks and an even bigger ecosystem of devices connected to them. Radio IP's products allow any device to tap into any network, be it Wi-Fi, a high-speed EvDO cellular net such as those by Bell Mobility and Telus, or satellite signals. This allows critical services like police to be constantly connected, even if they leave a coverage zone. It also compresses and encrypts data for faster and safer transfers. "Let's say the police receive a 911 call," Bourre explained. "The dispatcher punches in the information onto the computer and it's sent to the police car closest to the call." This can spare the responders precious time checking the location of units and repeating the information over a radio. Among their clients are the Surete du Quebec, the city of Laval, the Edmonton Police Services, the city of San Francisco and the city of Portland, Ore. Oddly for the firm, they became better known in the U.S. than in their own backyard. "Worldwide, people recognize Montreal as being very strong in wireless research," Bourre said. "But in the beginning, we were having trouble getting local people's attention." The privately-funded company posted revenues of $2.6 million last year, and expects $4 million for fiscal 2006. "With the boom in the wireless business, we wouldn't be surprised if it's double that next year," Bourre predicted. While their clients have been mostly in the public safety and government sectors, Radio IP is looking into courting transport and utility companies. Hence the scenario with a Net-surfing train passenger, or a meter reader going house to house. The company calls its software and servers "connectionware," a variation on what Bourre says is the overused "middleware" buzz word. Middleware, he argues, is any computer that helps other computers communicate. "Connectioware has to do with wireless business that we're in," he said. Copyright The Gazette (Montreal) 2006. Copyright © 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:19:42 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Real-Time Arrest Made in Internet Child Porn Case A Canadian man has been charged with child sexual abuse after an undercover officer watched via the Internet as an assault on a young girl took place, Toronto police said on Thursday. "It was horrible," Detective Constable Paul Krawczyk, who posed as a pedophile during a lengthy undercover investigation, told a news conference on Thursday. "At that moment, what I recall is my heart racing out of control, sweating and feeling like ... I was going to throw up," Krawczyk said from Toronto Police Service's Child Exploitation Section. He immediately notified the police, who made the arrest shortly afterwards on October 29 in St. Thomas, Ontario, about 200 km (125 miles) west of Toronto. The preschool-aged child was reportedly in the man's house at the time of his arrest. Police said the child is now with her family and receiving necessary help to recover. No other details were given in order to protect the victim. A 34-year-old man has been charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and child pornography. He is due to appear in court on Thursday. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:38:06 -0600 From: Jim Wolf Subject: Air Force to Create Cyberspace Command By Jim Wolf The U.S. Air Force plans to set up what could become a major command aimed at safeguarding U.S. military and civilian cyberspace, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said on Thursday. Wynne, speaking at a military communications and intelligence conference, said U.S. vulnerabilities in cyberspace included financial networks, satellite communications, and radar and navigational jamming. "The capital cost of entry to the cyberspace domain is low," Wynne said. "The threat is that a foe can mass forces that weaken the network that supports our operations." Wynne said the new command would be part of the 8th Air Force based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, a unit made famous during the combined armored offensive in Europe during World War II. The mission of bombers now within the 8th Air Force would remain, and the new cyber-command reflects the Air Force's growing reliance on computer networks, data and electronic warfare. Wynne said he hoped the new command would eventually be on par with such major Air Force units as the Space Command and the Air Combat Command. In creating what could become a unit led by a four-star Air Force general, the Air Force would set the stage for significant budget resources and congressional interest. The new command will be led by Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, who would reach across all Air Force commands to draw the right people and capabilities, Wynne said. The Air Force will seek funding for the cyber-command in fiscal 2009, which begins October 1, 2008, he said. In December 2005, the Air Force mission statement was amended to include cyberspace as an operational area, along with air and space. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 14:55:47 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CEO of MSP Provider Compulinx Under Arrest By Chris Gonsalves, VARBusiness VARBusiness, Wed. November 01, 2006 Federal law enforcement officials Tuesday arrested the well-known CEO of White Plains, N.Y.-based MSP provider Compulinx on charges of stealing the identities of his employees in order to secure fraudulent loans, lines of credit and credit cards, according to an eight-count indictment unsealed by the U.S. Attorney's office in White Plains. Terrence D. Chalk, 44, of White Plains was arraigned in federal court in White Plains, along with his nephew, Damon T. Chalk, 35, after an FBI investigation turned up the curious lending and spending habits. The pair are charged with submitting some $1 million worth of credit applications using the names and personal information -- names, addresses and social security numbers -- of some of Compulinx's 50 employees. According to federal prosecutors, the employees' information was used without their knowledge; the Chalks falsely represented to the lending institutions, in writing and in face-to-face meetings, that the employees were actually officers of the company. Terrence Chalk is also charged with racking up more than $100,000 in unauthorized credit card charges. If convicted, he faces 165 years in prison and $5.5 million in fines, prosecutors say. Damon faces a maximum sentence of 35 years imprisonment and $1.25 million in fines. http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/news/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=193500991 ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 02, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 12:02:39 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 02, 2006 ******************************** Carphone Warehouse Posts 40% Rise in H1 Revenue; Start-Up Losses Reach US$86 million http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20890?11228 Carphone Warehouse has posted a 40.2% rise in revenue for the half-year ending on 30 September 2006, thanks to strong growth in its broadband offers in the United Kingdom. Revenues for the half-year rose to £1.81 billion (US$3.45 billion) compared to £1.29 billion at the same time in 2005. Carphone Warehouse has witnessed an... FCC Backs Leaseholders over Landlords on Right to Wi-Fi http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20888?11228 The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has ruled in favour of Continental Airlines in the fight to allow it to host a free Wi-Fi hotspot in the Presidents Club executive lounge. This had been fought by the Massachusetts Port Authority under the terms of an airport lease, but under the FCC's Over-the-Air Reception Device (OTARD) ... Eircom Looks Set to Capture 3G Licence as Smart Telecom Loses Legal bid http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20886?11228 Irish telecoms company, Smart Telecom, has lost its legal appeal against the regulator's decision to revoke its 3G licence. Ireland's telecoms watchdog ComReg had withheld the licence because Smart Telecom failed to come up with the 100 million euro (US$127.62 million) bond. Smart Telecom has 28 days to mount another appeal at ... Nokia in US$230 Million Deal With Vodafone Australia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20882?11228 HELSINKI, Finland -- Nokia Corp. has signed a US$230 million (E180 million) deal with Vodafone Australia to maintain its digital networks for seven years, the Finnish company said Thursday. The agreement includes engineering, operations and maintenance of Vodafone's networks, Nokia said. Outsourcing the ... Cingular to Offer 25 XM Radio Streams http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/20879?11228 WASHINGTON -- XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., a provider of satellite radio, and Cingular Wireless LLC, a wireless carrier with more than 58 million customers, announced a partnership Thursday to stream 25 XM music channels to Cingular handsets. Beginning Nov. 6, Cingular Wireless customers will be able listen to a variety of ... Alltel Revises 3Q Results http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20874?11228 Just a few days after reporting its third-quarter results, Alltel says it is adjusting the results for discontinued operations, but the changes won't affect the company's earnings or equity-free cash flow. In its third-quarter earnings release, Alltel reported the July 2006 spin off and merger of its wireline business as a ... Think Tank Rousts FCC On Merger-Conditions Legality http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20872?11228 Two days before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is due to vote on the AT&T/BellSouth merger proposal, a Washington, D.C., think tank has issued a white paper essentially taking the regulator to task on its authority to impose diverse conditions on such transactions. The Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & ... Symbol Debuts New RF Switch http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20869?11228 Taking its push to enable the "next generation of enterprise mobility to a new, more pervasive level, Symbol Technologies Inc. today introduced its new radio-frequency switch, the RFS7000, which the company calls the first wireless switch that connects different RF technologies including WiFi, RFID, and WiMax. ... IBM, EDS Share Vodafone Spoils http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20866?11228 IBM Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) have landed equal shares of a monster back-office outsourcing contract awarded by mobile giant Vodafone Group plc, which is on a cost-cutting crusade.  A month ago, Vodafone announced IBM and EDS as the companies that will take over the development and maintenance of ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 12:21:04 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Telecoms' DSL Subs Rise in Q3 USTelecom dailyLead November 2, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eLucfDtusXeYhGCibuddYgea TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Telecoms' DSL subs rise in Q3 BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Qwest wins $100M defense contract * Time Warner's Parsons wants to keep AOL * Report: Russian conglomerate seeks major deal with Vodafone * Microsoft offers free domain registration * Google offers Gmail service for basic handsets * Cable industry waits to see how HBO will play online USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Are you ready for the CALEA deadline? TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * YouTube has plans, albeit vague, for mobile content * Wireless carriers pitch smartphones to mass market REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Continental may offer free Wi-Fi at Boston's Logan, FCC rules Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eLucfDtusXeYhGCibuddYgea ------------------------------ Subject: Internet Fax Services? From: Mark Atwood Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:31:35 GMT Vonage has started tacking on a ten dollar surcharge if you want to receive faxes over their service. There used to be a whole bunch of internet "free fax" services, where you would get assigned a phone number, and faxes received on that number would get emailed to you. They made their money on the arbitrage of call settlement. But I can't seem to find any such services anymore. They all have free 30 day trials, but then require a monthly subscription fee. Have I overlooked anyone? Mark Atwood When you do things right, people won't be sure me@mark.atwood.name you've done anything at all. http://mark.atwood.name/ http://fallenpegasus.livejournal.com/ ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: People Complaining About Poor Phone Service, High Prices Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 00:27:19 -0500 [Please remove my email address. Thanks.] The Digest recently ran an article from Newsnet News Service about phone service in Zimbabwe: > The public has expressed concern over the lack of seriousness on the > part of the country's mobile and fixed telephone providers in > providing an efficient service delivery to their customers. ... > A snap survey conducted by Newsnet in Harare revealed that most > subscribers are bitter about the service they are getting especially > now when the providers are constantly increasing tariffs. Gee, I wonder why people in Zimbabwe are experiencing rising prices and poor service. Could it be that the country's inept yet thuggish authoritarian government has reduced the economy to a shambles with the world's highest inflation rate (about 1000 percent) where businesses have to constantly boost prices just to avoid bankruptcy? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the government's confiscatory exchange rate policies and import tariffs make it extremely difficult for legitimate businesses to import equipment? Funny that Newsnet didn't mention either of those possibilities. Oh wait, here's why. A little digging on Newsnet's web site reveals that "Newsnet (Private) Limited is a subsidiary of Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings, a Government of Zimbabwe wholly-owned Company." So Newsnet is to Zimbabwe what TASS was to the Soviet Union. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: Koos van den Hout Subject: Re: Spam Beginning to Spell Trouble For Wireless Phones Date: 2 Nov 2006 13:09:53 GMT Organization: http://idefix.net/~koos/ Dan Frommer and Lisa Lerer wrote in : > From MSNBC.com Which doesn't have a good option to reply to the author of the article to do certain homework. > Earlier this month, some Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel > subscribers received unsolicited text messages promoting penny stocks > First National Power and Encore Clean Energy. "Subject: the end of > oil? First National Power (OTC: FNPR) invents new patent for green > energy intiative," reads one message, sent from > Otto@comcast.net. "Encore Clean Energy unveils a new patent for green > energy alternative to oil! Exxon, get out of the way!" reads another, > sent from nelda@dimensional.com. [..] > Then again, one man's spam may be another's financial advice. First > National Power shares began the week at 5 cents but now trade for 8.5 > cents, a 70 percent increase. And Encore Clean Energy shares traded > this week for 15 cents, up from 10 cents in mid-September. Someone should enlighten Dan Frommer and Lisa Lerer about the workings of "Pump'n'dump" scam / spam. They would have written a totally differrent last paragraph, something with people still being stupid enough to actually fall for this, therefore making this kind of spam worth the bother for the scammers. Koos Camp Wireless, wireless Internet access at campsites| Koos van den Hout http://www.camp-wireless.org/ | http://idefix.net/~koos/ PGP keyid DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263 or RSA/1024 0xCA845CB5| Fax +31-30-2817051 ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 21:27:45 EST Subject: Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today In a message dated Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:42:21 UTC, Steven J. Sobol writes: > Dell is based in Round Rock, just outside Austin. That's the biggest > company I can think of in that area. I'm sure there are others. When I lived in Austin in the 1950s, Round Rock was a small town 20 or 30 miles north of Austin noted primarily as the place where Sam Bass, notorious robber of stagecoaches, trains and banks, engaged in a gun battle with Texas Rangers, in which Bass was wounded. The next morning he was found lying helpless in a pasture north of town and was brought back town where he died two days later on his 27th birthday. The last time I was through Round Rock a few years ago it was office and research buildings and laboratories; development was continuous between Austin and Round Rock. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:25:40 -0800 From: Jim Stewart Subject: How to Sue Auto Dialers Patrick, Here's an interesting story on how to sue auto dialers: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/01/1316231 -jim ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #378 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 3 15:59:52 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 29A9A2209; Fri, 3 Nov 2006 15:59:51 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #379 Message-Id: <20061103205951.29A9A2209@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 15:59:51 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Nov 2006 16:00:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 379 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Texas Puts Virtual Border Watch Cameras Online (Associated Press Wire) U.S. Closes Web Site Believed to Reveal Nuclear Guide (David Morgan) How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? (Nehmo) FCC Rebukes Logan, Says Continental Can Offer WiFi (Monty Solomon) Verizon Teams With Intel on Gaming Service (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update November 03, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom Update #553, November 3, 2006 (John Riddell) Re: Internet Fax Services? (Joshua Fenton) Re: Internet Fax Services? (Dave Garland) Re: Internet Fax Services? (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Internet Fax Services? (John Schmerold) Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today (daryl.gibson@gmail.com) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:53:56 -0600 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Texas Puts Virtual Border Watch Cameras Online Texas has started broadcasting live images of the U.S. border on the Internet in a security program that asks the public to report signs of illegal immigration or drug crimes. A test Web site went live Thursday at http://texasborderwatch.com with views from eight cameras and ways for viewers to e-mail reports of suspicious activity. Previously, the images had only been available to law enforcement and landowners where the cameras are located. "There is only one way to test it, and that's open it up for business," said Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw. Some civil rights groups have criticized the "virtual border watch," saying it will instill fear in border communities and could lead to fraudulent crime reports and racial profiling. The cameras will operate at hot spots for illegal activity, such as Amistad Reservoir in Del Rio and Falcon Lake in Zapata, and other active border areas such as highway rest stops and inspection stations, officials said. Information e-mailed by viewers goes to the state's operations center and local law enforcement in that area. McCraw said the project will eventually grow to include at least 70 cameras throughout South Texas, some with zoom lens and thermal capacity. The state is using $5 million in federal security grants that have been earmarked for the web camera program. On the Net: http://www.texasborderwatch.com Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:58:03 -0600 From: David Morgan Subject: U.S. Closes Web Site Believed to Reveal Nuclear Guide By David Morgan The Bush administration closed a government Web site set up to publicly display pre-war Iraqi documents on weapons of mass destruction after experts said its content included details for building a nuclear bomb, officials said on Friday. The unclassified site was established by U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte in March under pressure from Republicans, who believed the captured documents would illustrate the dangers of Saddam Hussein during an election year marked by increasing voter disaffection over the Iraq war. But Negroponte's office shut down the site, known as the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal," after the New York Times informed the Bush administration about expert concerns over posted accounts of Iraq's nuclear research before the 1991 Gulf War. The New York Times, which broke the story late on Thursday, reported that the site's contents in recent weeks had begun to "constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb." Negroponte's office said in a statement on Friday that it had suspended access to the site "pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing." "The material currently on the Web site, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again," the statement said. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asked about the issue in a radio interview, suggested the controversy supported President George W. Bush's assertion that Saddam harbored dangerous nuclear ambitions before the March 2003 invasion. "The interesting thing is that there clearly were an awful lot of nuclear documents floating around Iraq which suggest that this is someone who'd not given up on his ambitions," Rice said in the interview. EXPLICIT CONTENT Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and a leading proponent of the Iraq documents' release, said he welcomed the public discussion generated by the debate. "This only reinforces the value of these documents in understanding the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime," he said in a statement. Meanwhile, independent experts and diplomats expressed shock at the appearance of the material on a U.S. Web site. A diplomat affiliated with the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency told Reuters IAEA inspectors were "shocked by the explicitness of the content" on the Web page and that a senior agency official conveyed the concerns to U.S. diplomats in Vienna. U.S. officials denied that U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte had received any protest or expression of concern from the IAEA. "For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible," former U.S. Energy Department official A. Bryan Siebert told the New York Times. Negroponte warned in Senate testimony last February that al Qaeda was actively seeking WMD for use against the United States. He said nuclear proliferation posed the greatest concern for U.S. national security. Hoekstra and Republican Sen. Rick Santorum (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania spearheaded the lobbying campaign for the release of the documents. The captured material had already been examined by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group. But Republicans wanted it released quickly to the public, including political "blogs," saying it could provide fresh details about pre-war Iraqi WMD or links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Those allegations helped justify a war that has become increasingly unpopular among U.S. voters who will decide next week whether Republicans retain control of Congress. No WMD have been located in Iraq and independent investigators have found no evidence that Saddam had a collaborative relationship with al Qaeda. (Additional reporting by Sue Pleming in Washington and Mark Heinrich in Vienna) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Nehmo Subject: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: 2 Nov 2006 20:57:57 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Someone *identifying himself* as "Mike" from http://www.dishnetwork.com/ called me to sell me a $49.95 TV satellite dish installation. They call at random times and frequency, but it seems to be about two calls per day, usually in the evening. I've politely told them to take me off their list several times. It doesn't work, of course. The calls start with a recorded pitch, and then a prompt will lead you to a live person sometimes. If the call leads to a live person, I always repeat my request. They're seldom polite in return. Apparently, they've been instructed to hang up immediately if someone questions them. I don't have caller ID, but I'm sure nothing will show up. However, today, Mike, who thought he was making a sale and was just about to get my card number, gave me 949 295 4344 . Unless, they're using a VoIP area code or some spoof, the phone is in http://www.whitepages.com/maps/SCA Irvine or Laguna Beach. Considering the voicemail prompt, I think it's his own personal cellphone. If you call the number, you may get him. Go ahead. But usually I just get his voice mail. I use Skype to call him, but all the calls from them to my home have been to my AT&T land line. Anyway, I don't know who these people are. Probably, they are simply an operation to steal credit card numbers. Yes, I realize, I could pay AT&T a few extra bucks and block calls without ID, but that would be incurring a cost and this company would still be harassing, and stealing from, other people. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to proceed to do something to this company? Call them at 949 295 4344. I got an idea. I'm going to post the number to some porn groups. How do I find out what phone company 949 295 4344 belongs to? This question is why I crossposted to news:comp.dcom.telecom (||) Nehmo (||) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 00:29:56 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Rebukes Logan, Says Continental Can Offer WiFi By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | November 2, 2006 A two-year effort by Logan International Airport officials to shut down private alternatives to the airport's $8-a-day wireless Internet service was decisively rejected yesterday by federal regulators, who blasted airport officials for raising bogus legal and technological arguments. The Federal Communications Commission unanimously sided with Continental Airlines Inc. in a challenge Continental brought. The FCC ruled the airline has a clear right to offer WiFi access in its Terminal C lounge, and the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan, had no authority to order Continental to shut it off. Massport activated its own WiFi service in 2004. "Today we strike a victory for the WiFi revolution in the cradle of the American Revolution," FCC commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein said in a prepared statement. Evoking more Revolutionary War symbols, he added: "The WiFi movement embodies the spirit of American freedom, and in our action we say 'Don't tread on me.' " The FCC rejected Massport's claims that letting airlines provide WiFi service in their lounges could jam airline and public-safety radio systems. Commissioner Michael J. Copps , in a separate statement, said: "The record is clear -- in fact, uncontested -- that allowing multiple WiFi operators in the airport will cause no interference to the safety-of-life communications that the airport authority conducts on its dedicated, separate, and licensed public safety channels." http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/11/02/fcc_rebukes_logan_says_continental_can_offer_wifi/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 12:24:06 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon Teams With Intel on Gaming Service USTelecom dailyLead November 3, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eMcYfDtusXfbdvCibuddbGkx TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon teams with Intel on gaming service BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * YouTube finds playing by the rules is a massive hassle * MobiTV attracts big-name investors * Comcast emerges as winner of Broncos sponsorship USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Successfully Deploy a Hosted Key System for Small Business in 8 Weeks Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1:00 p.m. (ET) TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * AirPlay game lets users play along with NFL matchups * Pseudowire emerges as crucial tool for backhaul support VOIP DOWNLOAD * Analysis: Wireless/VoIP marriage means greater efficiency for companies * Report: VoIP equipment sales to soar REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC delays AT&T-BellSouth vote again * Verizon files for statewide cable franchise in New Jersey Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eMcYfDtusXfbdvCibuddbGkx ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 03, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 11:57:36 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 03, 2006 ******************************** Under the Spotlight=E2=80=94Russian Telcos' European Ambitions http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20914?11228 This week has seen two major Russian telecoms holdings linked with potential partners in the Western European market. Sistema, which counts Russia's leading mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) among its assets, is rumoured to have been in talks with Deutsche Telekom. Press reports suggest that Sistema is offering control of its ... BSkyB Signs Up 74,000 Broadband Customers, Extends Mobile TV to Orange http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20911?11228 Satellite pay-TV provider BSkyB has posted an 11% rise in revenue for the quarter ending in September 2006. Revenues rose to £1.1 billion (US$2.04 billion) thanks to strong growth in its traditional pay-TV market. Three months after launching its broadband offer in July 2006, BSkyB said it had connected 74,000 broadband customers ... Taking VoIP for a Walk http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/20907?11228 A NEW BREED OF VOIP is looking for a home - with mobile users. The application offers wireless savings and new functionalities, like presence management, making for an interesting opportunity for wireless dealers and VARs. While off-portal application providers dominate the discussion for now and the reach of dualmode phones is ... Eliminating the Middleman http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20905?11228 In the early days of mobile entertainment, aggregators played a critical role in the wireless content ecosystem. Aggregators worked with record labels, movie studios, game developers and other content shops to build a vast portfolio of mobile content. These middlemen then sold that content through the wireless carrier's deck to ... Rogers Lights up HSDPA Network http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20900?11228 Feeling the need for speed, Rogers Wireless has launched a high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) network in the Golden Horseshoe. The rollout, according to the company, represents Phase I of its HSDPA plans. The Golden Horseshoe region spans from Oshawa to Niagara Falls and includes the Greater Toronto area, including Brampton, ... Amp'd Mobile: The Brains Behind The Hype http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20898?11228 Youth-oriented and vastly under-subscribed mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Amp is trying to energize a secondary revenue stream by distributing its content to other carriers and to other markets. 'Live' will be a collection of the service's existing music, video, gaming, sports and lifestyle content ... The Year of Calling Convergedly http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20895?11228 Though vendors and service providers have yet to agree on how fixed-mobile convergence will take shape in the enterprise -- or, for that matter, on what exactly is meant by the term 'fixed-mobile convergence' -- the next year will be a watershed for deployments of converged handsets and networks, according to a quartet of ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #553, November 3, 2006 Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 13:58:07 -0500 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 553: November 3, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca/home/Home_Business.page ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.ca/communications/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** SHAW BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: www.shawbusinesssolutions.ca ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Telco Plans Shaken by Trust Ruling Telus Bell Canada Bell Aliant ** BCE Profits Down by a Third ** Telus Net Income Up 68% ** Rogers Adds 106,000 Phone Lines ** Videotron CEO Urges Cable Deregulation ** Rogers Begins HSDPA Roll-Out ** Dalfen Confirms Departure from CRTC ** Rogers Plans Wi-Fi Enabled Cellphone ** CRTC Finalizes 2006 Contribution Rate ** Quebecor Winback Challenge Rejected ** Small Telcos Seek CLEC Status ** Shaw Claims Fastest Internet Access ** Aliant Expands EV-DO Coverage ** Vonage Adds 14 Ontario Cities ** Glentel Buys Ottawa Wireless Firm ** Avaya Puts IP Telephony in Juniper Routers TELCO PLANS SHAKEN BY TRUST RULING: Though neither has yet said so, it seems likely that Canada's two largest telcos will cancel their plans to convert into income trusts, following Finance Minister Flaherty's October 31 announcement of new tax rules. ** Telus CFO Robert McFarlane called Ottawa's action "unfair and inappropriate, particularly as it relates to Telus." He argued that Telus should be grandfathered until 2011, but Flaherty said that only trusts that were actually trading on October 31 would get a four-year exemption on paying the new trust distribution tax. ** Bell Canada CEO Michael Sabia said Ottawa's policy change "has a significant impact on our proposed conversion," so the company will evaluate its options. The plan to eliminate BCE's holding company structure will go ahead. ** Bell Aliant Communications, which was spun off as an income trust earlier this year, says it is reassessing its proposal to take Bell Nordiq Income Fund private, although it believes that the "strategic rationale" for the transaction remains valid. BCE PROFITS DOWN BY A THIRD: BCE reports third quarter revenue of $4.42 billion, 0.3% more than a year ago. EBITDA rose 1.3% to $1.84 billion. Net income declined 35% to $285 million. ** Wireless sales rose 14.3% and made up 21% of total revenue. Average revenue per user (ARPU) increased $3 to $66/month. Bell Canada added a net 114,000 wireless subscribers. ** Bell ended the quarter with 2.40 million high-speed Internet subscribers, up 12.6% on the year. ** The number of local lines declined by 71,000 in the quarter, and was 3.7% lower than a year ago. TELUS NET INCOME UP 68%: Telus reports third quarter revenue of $2.21 billion, 7.2% more than a year ago. EBITDA rose 13.4% to $952 million. Net income rose 68% to $320 million. ** Wireless sales rose 17% and made up 45% of total revenue. ARPU increased $2 to $66/month. Telus added a net 137,000 wireless subscribers. ** Telus ended the quarter with 1.1 million high-speed Internet subscribers, up 18.5% on the year. ** The number of local lines declined by 40,000, and was 2.8% lower than a year ago. ROGERS ADDS 106,000 PHONE LINES: Rogers Communications reports third quarter revenue of $2.35 billion, 14.7% more than a year ago. Operating profit increased 33.1% to $784 million. Net income was $154 million, compared to $49 million a year ago. ** Wireless sales rose 18.4% and made up 54% of total revenue. ARPU increased $4 to $70/month. Rogers added a net 203,000 subscribers. ** Rogers ended the quarter with 1.25 million Internet subscribers, up 16.1% on the year. ** Rogers added 106,100 cable telephony subscribers in the quarter. It now has 270,800 cable phone lines and 552,300 circuit-switched lines in service. VIDEOTRON CEO URGES CABLE DEREGULATION: Addressing a telecom conference in Ottawa this week, Videotron CEO Robert Depatie said that if local phone service is deregulated, then the CRTC should also "free cable companies from the regulatory burden preventing them from offering better choice and prices to consumers." ROGERS BEGINS HSDPA ROLL-OUT: Rogers Communications has deployed High Speed Downlink Packet Access through southern Ontario's Golden Horseshoe area, between Niagara Falls and Oshawa (see Telecom Update #517) At present it operates only with a Sierra Wireless AirCard 860, sold by Rogers for $49.99 (3-year contract) or $349.99 (1- or 2-year contract). ** Rogers says it will extend the HSDPA network to "top Canadian markets" next year, and plans to introduce HSDPA-enabled phones. DALFEN CONFIRMS DEPARTURE FROM CRTC: Speaking to reporters this week, CRTC Chairman Charles Dalfen confirmed that he will not be seeking a second term when his five-year contract expires at the end of this year. (See Telecom Update #547) ROGERS PLANS WI-FI ENABLED CELLPHONE: Ted Rogers told analysts October 31 that by late 2007 or early 2008 Rogers aims to introduce a cellular phone that switches to wireless LAN transmission when it comes within range of a Wi-Fi network. CRTC FINALIZES 2006 CONTRIBUTION RATE: Telecom Decision 2006-70 confirms that the contribution rate for 2006 is 1.03% of telecom revenue, and sets the interim rate for 2007 at the same amount. This charge is paid by telecommunications service providers with telecom service revenues over $10 million a year, to subsidize residential local service in high-cost serving areas. ** The decision sets out the amount of per-line subsidy payable to carriers providing residential local phone service in high-cost serving areas in 2006. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-70.htm QUEBECOR WINBACK CHALLENGE REJECTED: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-69 rejects Quebecor's argument that Bell Canada's new customer appreciation card violates the Commission's winback rule. (See Telecom Update #536) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-69.htm SMALL TELCOS SEEK CLEC STATUS: Following the lead of Wightman Telecom, several small independent phone companies in Ontario are seeking to offer local phone service beyond their home territories. Bruce Telecom, Nexicom, Huron Tel, and North Renfrew Telephone Company have filed CLEC tariffs and agreements with the CRTC. SHAW CLAIMS FASTEST INTERNET ACCESS: Shaw Communications says its new Internet service, with 25 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload, is the fastest access service available in Canada. "Nitro Internet" will be launched in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Victoria on November 15, at $99.95/month plus a purchased modem. ALIANT EXPANDS EV-DO COVERAGE: Aliant has begun offering its High-Speed Wireless service, using EV-DO technology, in the Truro to Halifax corridor, as well as in five additional communities in Nova Scotia (Sydney, New Glasgow, Wolfville, Kentville and Coldbrook) and two in New Brunswick (Florenceville and Bathurst). VONAGE ADDS 14 ONTARIO CITIES: Vonage Canada has begun offering local service in Aurora, Campbellford, Fort Erie, Galt, King City, Maple, Milton, Newmarket, Niagara Falls, Oak Ridges, Peterborough, Port Colborne, Waterdown, and Welland. It now offers local numbers in more than 50 Ontario cities. ** Across North America, Vonage now has over two million lines in service, up 200,000 from three months ago. Its churn rate was 2.6% per month in the third quarter. GLENTEL BUYS OTTAWA WIRELESS FIRM: Glentel has bought all shares of Ottawa-based Time Mobile Communications Inc. for $4.5 million. Time MCI, which provides wireless service and equipment, operates a two-way radio network with 50 tower sites in eastern Ontario. AVAYA PUTS IP TELEPHONY IN JUNIPER ROUTERS: Avaya says it will integrate its IP voice gateway and communications applications into Juniper Networks' new J4350 and J6350 enterprise branch routers. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com=20 To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send=20 an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2006 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representationsacy. whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 14:10:39 -0500 From: Joshua Fenton Subject: Re: Internet Fax Services? PAT, please omit my email address. On 11/2/06, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Subject: Internet Fax Services? > From: Mark Atwood > Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! > Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:31:35 GMT > Vonage has started tacking on a ten dollar surcharge if you want > to receive faxes over their service. > There used to be a whole bunch of internet "free fax" services, where > you would get assigned a phone number, and faxes received on that > number would get emailed to you. They made their money on the > arbitrage of call settlement. > But I can't seem to find any such services anymore. They all have > free 30 day trials, but then require a monthly subscription fee. > Have I overlooked anyone? > Mark Atwood When you do things right, people won't be sure > me@mark.atwood.name you've done anything at all. > http://mark.atwood.name/ http://fallenpegasus.livejournal.com/ I've been using http://OneSuite.com for prepaid LD for years, and they offer a product called MessageOne that can receive voice and fax messages and send them to an email address. I've only been able to get one number per account, the system picks it for you, and it's $1/month for the service, but that's better than some of the alternatives. The only connection I have to them is as a customer. I'm not aware of any other truly 'free' providers, although I haven't looked in about a year. Good luck, and let us know what you settle on! Joshua ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Internet Fax Services? Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:56:22 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Mark Atwood wrote: > There used to be a whole bunch of internet "free fax" services, where > you would get assigned a phone number, and faxes received on that > number would get emailed to you. They made their money on the > arbitrage of call settlement... > But I can't seem to find any such services anymore. They all have > free 30 day trials, but then require a monthly subscription fee. eFax http://www.efax.com/en/efax/twa/productOverview still does that. If you receive over 20 pages/month I think you get bumped to their pay service, though. Dave ------------------------------ From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Internet Fax Services? Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 05:07:46 GMT Mark Atwood wrote: > There used to be a whole bunch of internet "free fax" services, where > you would get assigned a phone number, and faxes received on that > number would get emailed to you.... > But I can't seem to find any such services anymore. Try this one: http://www.efax.com/en/efax/twa/productOverview I've been using their "eFax Free" service for five years or so. They used to be pretty liberal with their incoming faxes but have tightened up in the past couple of years. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com What if there were no hypothetical situations? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 01:04:38 -0600 From: John Schmerold Subject: Re: Internet Fax Services? Since 2000, I have used and continue to use faxwave's callwave alert service for inbound -- runs $18 per year I just signed up for send2fax's product, it runs $2 per month + $.15 per page. If things work out for a couple years, we'll eliminate the Faxwave service. > Subject: Internet Fax Services? > From: Mark Atwood > Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! > Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:31:35 GMT > Vonage has started tacking on a ten dollar surcharge if you want > to receive faxes over their service. > There used to be a whole bunch of internet "free fax" services, where > you would get assigned a phone number, and faxes received on that > number would get emailed to you. They made their money on the > arbitrage of call settlement. > But I can't seem to find any such services anymore. They all have > free 30 day trials, but then require a monthly subscription fee. > Have I overlooked anyone? ------------------------------ From: daryl.gibson@gmail.com Subject: Re: Two Strange Phone Calls Today Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 04:57:45 -0000 TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > I thought it would be a good idea to make note of this while it was > fresh in my memory. At about 3:45 PM a message went to my voice mail > where the person said "are you still there?" That was all he said, > but the voice-driven caller ID (on Vonage voicemail) said the call > was from 512-220-2013. Then almost immediatly, the same voice called > again and I saw his number this time on my own caller ID from the > same 512-220-2013 number. This person did not identify himself, but > seemed interested in speaking to ... > I hung up and decided to just write it off as some sort of a sneaky > prank call when lo-and-behold, the phone line reserved for calls on > Digest things (602-402-0134) rang again, and it was the same voice, > but this time the caller ID said the call was from Irvine, CA and > the number given was 949-296-0549. T Neither of these numbers are from AT&T, but both are from various resellers/small switch owners. Probably both telemarketing calls where your switch has picked up the originating switch's number, not the valid Caller ID. Doesn't smell quite like a conspiracy, just a bunch of clueless callers. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #379 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Nov 4 01:32:25 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0B01C226B; Sat, 4 Nov 2006 01:32:24 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #380 Message-Id: <20061104063224.0B01C226B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 01:32:24 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 4 Nov 2006 01:35:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 380 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Blundering Politicians and the Internet (Paul Farhi) Cingular Wireless Now Boosting Music Subscriptions (Antony Bruno) A New Form of Trickery (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? (Lisa Hancock) Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? (Goudreau_Bob) Re: How to Sue Auto Dialers (Sam Spade) Re: Internet Fax Services? (Fred Atkinson) Re: Internet Fax Services? (Carl Navarro) FTC and Novel Concept (NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 23:35:30 -0600 From: Paul Farhi Subject: Blundering Politicians and the Internet By Paul Farhi Washington Post Staff Writer First it was a TV spectacle. Now it's part of the Internet's growing archive of Embarrassing Political Moments Caught on Tape. John Kerry's "stuck in Iraq" comment has been YouTubed. In a scenario that is increasingly familiar this election season, Kerry's botched jab at President Bush on Monday has become another viral phenomenon. Even as television reporters have moved on to other stories, Kerry's remark keeps resonating on video file-sharing sites, drawing tens of thousands of viewers who missed it on the airwaves. Although better known as the home of TV-show snippets, music videos and goofy amateur clips, file-sharing sites such as YouTube and Google Video have matured this year into powerful tools of political ambush, enabling almost anyone to post recordings of slips that the mighty would rather forget. This new twist on the old game of gotcha has rapidly become known as "YouTube politics." The trend might have reached its most explosive moment when amateur video of Sen. George Allen's infamous "macaca" comment was posted in August. This week, Allen (R-Va.) was a bystander in another piece of video, in which a heckler is shoved against a plate-glass window by Allen's supporters after shouting at the senator in a Charlottesville hotel. Sens. Conrad Burns, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman have been recent Internet video stars, too. Burns (R-Mont.) popped up this summer on YouTube in a grainy clip from a campaign rally in which he says that "a nice little Guatemalan man" was painting his house -- implying that the worker and others he'd hired might be in the country illegally. The video was shot by a worker for Burns's Senate rival, Democrat Jon Tester. Burns's campaign, which is pushing for immigration controls, had to scramble to tamp down the controversy, denying that the workers were undocumented immigrants. "YouTube has put every campaign on notice that someone's watching," says Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who managed Sen. Robert Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. "This has been a real wake-up call to a lot of candidates who shoot from the lip when there isn't a big TV affiliate standing in the room. ... Now they have to realize that every day is game day." Or as Democratic consultant Jim Jordan, a manager of Kerry's presidential campaign, put it, "It's easy to wander off message after a long day ... and now it's more dangerous than ever." Then there's the video of Biden (D-Del.), a potential presidential candidate in 2008 whose exchange with a supporter at a June event was caught by C-SPAN. After learning that the young man was Indian American, Biden lauded his relationship with Delaware's Indian American community, then said: "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts [in Delaware] unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking." The offhand comment made its way onto the Internet, forcing Biden to explain and defend himself. It's not new for candidates to employ "trackers" to act as a kind of political paparazzi, in hopes of catching their opponents in something embarrassingly newsworthy. Until recently, though, a campaign typically had to rely on middlemen -- often the mainstream media -- to make the unflattering material public. And when news organizations chose to report such comments, they usually did so for a limited period. File-sharing sites have changed the political-media ecosystem in fundamental ways. Ordinary users -- not just media and campaign professionals -- can shoot, edit and upload clips themselves using cellphones or digital cameras, bypassing traditional media gatekeepers. President Bush's spoken gaffes are so numerous that they could fill their own online library -- from his mangling of the adage "Fool me once, shame on you" to his hesitancy over what to call the State of the Union address ("in my State of the -- my State of the Union -- or State -- my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it"). Those clips were from 2002. Perhaps the most powerful demonstration of online video was supplied by supporters of Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont of Connecticut. To underscore Lamont's claim that the incumbent Lieberman was too closely allied with President Bush, his campaign posted a brief clip of Bush kissing Lieberman before this year's State of the Union speech. Another clip showed Lieberman jumping up to lead a standing ovation for the president during the same speech. In all, dozens of pro-Lamont/anti-Lieberman videos flooded the Internet during the primary campaign, which Lamont won in an upset in August. What's changed, too, is the speed with which the public can view this kind of footage. When Burns commented during his 2000 reelection campaign that some Montanans were without health care coverage because they "choose not to be insured," his opponent, Brian Schweitzer, used the comment in a TV ad that aired three days later. Nowadays, such video likely would be posted in a few hours. Unlike a "negative" campaign commercial, online video is typically cheap to produce and distribute. Video clips also aren't subject to campaign finance limits or Federal Election Commission disclosure requirements (the ubiquitous "My name is [blank] and I approve this message"). Since YouTube allows users to post videos under aliases, it can be nearly impossible to tell exactly who is disseminating a particular clip. Even so, political professionals say online video isn't a substitute for traditional forms of communication, such as advertising and news coverage. The difference is sheer numbers: A 30-second TV spot for a candidate can reach hundreds of thousands of would-be voters at once, as can a newspaper story or an evening news report. The Internet, though, has become a part of the media mix. Many campaigns upload their TV commercials to file-sharing sites. Footage of Kerry making his "stuck in Iraq" comment was viewed about 35,000 times in the first 24 hours after being posted on YouTube. That is a modest figure, at least compared with the potential audience that saw it on news channels. But until last year, it would have been impossible to see Kerry on YouTube at all. The company, based in San Mateo, Calif., didn't exist until February 2005, and didn't have measurable traffic until the middle of that year. Since then, it has vaulted into the ranks of Internet superstars. According to the Internet tracking firm comScore Media Metrix, the site had 16 million unique U.S. visitors in July, making it one of the Web's 40 most visited sites. Google Inc. agreed to buy YouTube last month for $1.65 billion. Video file-sharing "completes the technological infrastructure for personal video," says Michael Cornfield, an adjunct professor at George Washington University who studies technology and politics. "Before, everyone had cellphones and video cameras and broadband, but no way to share what they shot. YouTube is the keystone in the bridge." What this means, he says, is that "every [politician] now has to check YouTube in addition to monitoring Google and Wikipedia." Warns Cornfield: "They better be prepared to live with it." Copyright 2006 Washington Post. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 23:31:16 -0600 From: Antony Bruno Subject: Cingular Wireless Now Selling Music Subscriptions By Antony Bruno On Monday (November 6), Cingular Wireless will become the first U.S. operator to provide mobile access to online digital music services such as Napster, eMusic and Yahoo Music. Unlike rivals Sprint and Verizon Wireless, which operate their own branded a la carte download stores, Cingular is instead taking a partnership approach with subscription music services as the cornerstone of its mobile music strategy. It's a risky move that the operator believes will rescue music subscription services from their current relative obscurity by solving two major market impediments: the lack of a popular portable subscription device and consumers' reluctance to "rent" their music. "We can double their base in the next 12 months," Cingular senior vice president of consumer data services Jim Ryan says. "I think we have a shot at actually offering a service experience that rivals, if not exceeds, what you get with an iTunes." This strategy will be executed in two phases. For starters, in an industry first, Cingular is adding digital rights management technology from Microsoft -- known as PlaysForSure -- into five models of mobile phones, enabling users to transfer tracks from subscription services to the phones just like any other portable subscription device, all at no charge. This includes music downloaded from every music service using Microsoft's subscription DRM technology -- AOL Music, Napster, Rhapsody, Urge and Yahoo Music. SERVICE CALL Additionally, Cingular is working with the services individually to offer wireless access to their various account services, the extent of which varies. Napster, eMusic and Yahoo Music subscribers, for instance, can access their account, browse their respective libraries and tag which songs they want to later load onto the device when synced with a PC, all from a Cingular phone. Napster subscribers have the added benefit of being able to listen to 30-second clips, buy songs a la carte for 99 cents each and use Cingular's MusicID service to identify songs heard on the radio so they can then acquire them via Napster. AOL Music, Rhapsody and MTV's Urge services, meanwhile, are not yet accessible through Cingular, and won't be until those companies develop a wireless portal, something that is in various stages of development. What's missing from all this is the ability to download over-the-air tracks directly to the phone. Ryan says he expects to add this capability during the next six months and points to eMusic as the likely first to go live. Once Cingular can deliver music right to the phone, the second phase of Cingular's strategy would go into effect. Ryan says he then wants to integrate the monthly music subscription fee into the Cingular phone bill and split the revenue with its partners. Exactly what the revenue split would be or how the deal would be structured is not something Cingular or its partners are discussing at this time, but the interest is certainly there. Convincing customers to pay for music as a service instead of as a product has proved a significant challenge for music subscription service providers. Cingular believes wireless customers used to paying a monthly bill for phone services -- which increasingly include entertainment content -- will be more open to the concept if presented with it on their wireless phone. Consumers who have been slow to buy portable subscription devices may be more willing to experiment with them if they are compatible with a device they already own, like a mobile phone. Reuters/Billboard Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Subject: A New Form of Trickery Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 01:01:19 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) I got a piece of email here at massis Friday night which tricked me into going to an unfamiliar site ... the letter I received was from a 'Jayson' although that probably does not matter, and this 'Jayson' said "I accidentally found a photo of you at (site) amd was wondering if you could tell me anything about the background in the photo?" Independently, I went to (site) and found nothing there except a note sent from Flickr saying they were investigating to find out _who_ was sending that notice out and that it had a virus attached to it. Had I clicked on the link provided in the email, of course I would have inherited the virus. I have never seen that particular fraud before. PAT ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: 3 Nov 2006 13:34:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Nehmo wrote: > Call them at xxx-xxx-xxxx.. I got an idea. I'm going to post the number > to some porn groups. It's entirely possible the number you quoted belongs to some innocent person and is just being used to give out to prospects who ask too many questions. It would not surprise me if these people figured out how to fake out caller-id. I agree with the frustration of constant sales calls, but we don't want innocent people to get harassed in the process of fighting back. There was a letter published in the newspaper complaining about all the soliciting calls from politicians, which are exempt from all the rules. I've already been honored by calls from the President, past president, governor, senators, etc., except all were recordings. One call was from a real person volunteer working locally in a campaign whom I think actually dialed the call herself, not using a machine, but those are rare. Many unscrupulous companies make sales calls or unsolicited faxes knowing it's too hard for ordinary consumers to fight back. (I don't know the law on faxes, but we get lots of scam faxes; we just thrown them out but it irks me since its our paper/toner being wasted.) Unsolicited faxes should be illegal. No "one time" exception, no excuses. Telemarketing, including political calls and charity calls should be illegal. ------------------------------ From: Goudreau_Bob@notchur.biz Subject: Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 17:32:47 -0500 [Please obscure my email address as usual. Thanks.] Nehmo wrote: > How do I find out what phone company 949 295 4344 belongs to? The reverse lookup feature of 411.com reports: (949) 295-4344 is a cell phone based in Laguna Beach, CA The registered service provider is T-Mobile USA**. Detailed listing information is not available. Regards, Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: How to Sue Auto Dialers Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 08:06:43 -0800 Organization: Cox What a waste of time and money. Jim Stewart wrote: > Patrick, > Here's an interesting story on how to sue auto dialers: > http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/01/1316231 > -jim ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: Internet Fax Services? Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 17:12:53 -0500 I've been using a very inexpensive pay service called 'FAX It Nice' at http://www.faxitnice.com. They have a variety of plans. You can send and receive faxes for a few cents a fax. They have plans for you to have your own toll-free fax number. They email the faxes to you as PDFs. They have a secure client so that you can initiate faxes from your desktop. laptop, or you can do it from the Web. I tried the Efax service. They kept cutting off my service each time my SPAM protection kicked out some piece of advertising they sent you. Getting those SPAM messages are they way you pay for the service. Try FAX It Nice. I think you'll like it. Regards, Fred Atkinson ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Internet Fax Services? Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 21:11:47 -0500 On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:31:35 GMT, Mark Atwood wrote: > Vonage has started tacking on a ten dollar surcharge if you want > to receive faxes over their service. > There used to be a whole bunch of internet "free fax" services, where > you would get assigned a phone number, and faxes received on that > number would get emailed to you. They made their money on the > arbitrage of call settlement. > But I can't seem to find any such services anymore. They all have > free 30 day trials, but then require a monthly subscription fee. Would about $14 a year be O.K? I switched from efax to maxEmail (www.maxemail.com about 3 years ago. It works fine for incoming and I have yet to use up my $3.00 outbound fax credit. They have some limit for free faxes on the plan, but I have never exceeded it, (200 or 500 I think). Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: FTC and Novel Concept Date: 3 Nov 2006 18:13:37 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com "Consumers' computers belong to them, and they shouldn't have to accept any content they don't want," see http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/11/zango.htm [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wow, that is a unique and interesting theory. Too bad it would never play in Peoria, as 'they' say. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #380 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Nov 4 20:37:52 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id D3A79227E; Sat, 4 Nov 2006 20:37:51 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #381 Message-Id: <20061105013751.D3A79227E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 20:37:51 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 4 Nov 2006 20:40:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 381 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Again Delays AT&T/Bell South Vote (Associated Press News Wire) FCC Votes to Classify Transmission Over Power Lines as Information (AP) FCC Drops AT&T/Bell South From Agenda Once Again (TELECOM Digest Editor) Comptel Applauds FCC For Removing AT&T/BelllSouth Merge (Comptel) Voip Spam - Any Statistics? (Liam) Test of Texas Border Webcams Off to a Rocky Start (Liz A. Peterson) Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? (Sam Spade) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 18:44:50 -0600 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: FCC Again Delays AT&T/Bell South Vote The Federal Communications Commission has once again delayed its vote on AT&T's $82 billion merger with BellSouth Corp., with Chairman Kevin Martin admitting that negotiations are not progressing as fast as expected. "We have made progress," Martin told reporters after publicly meeting with other FCC commissioners. "I always try to work with my colleagues, but I think we're still pretty far apart and I think the progress has slowed." Martin and his fellow Republican commissioner, Deborah Taylor Tate, are having trouble reaching a deal with Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps., two Democratic FCC members who favor putting a greater number of conditions on the merger's approval. If this deadlock continues, Martin is open to the idea of obtaining a ruling from the FCC's general counsel that would allow Robert McDowell, another Republican who is sitting out because of his previous involvement with AT&T's competitors, to vote on the issue. "I've been focused up until now, up until today, on just trying to make sure that we work through all the different alternatives that any of the commissioners have proposed," Martin said. "We're going to continue to end up doing that; but we do have to take a step back and try to figure where we should end up going from here." Copyright 2006 Associated Press News Wire 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 18:52:50 -0600 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: FCC Votes to Classify Transmission On Power Lines as 'Information' As most industry watchers expected, American regulators have voted to classify the transmission of data over power lines as an 'information service,' allowing providers of this groundbreaking technology to avoid a number of regulatory constraints traditionally associated with telecommunications in the U.S. The United Power Line Council's (UPLC) first filed for FCC classification almost a year ago, and has since been promoting Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) as the regulatory equivalent to DSL and cable, which already qualify for 'information service' exemptions. As BPL gains widespread among internet users, it is expected to add a new dimension of competition to the broadband industry, challenging well-established providers of DSL and cable modem service. Copyright 2006 Associated Press 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Subject: FCC Drops AT&T/Bell South From Agenda Once Again Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 19:38:03 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission had planned to take up the matter of the AT&T/Bell South merger. But then, at almost the last possible minute, the commission decided once again to drop it from the agenda; to defer it once again. I think it has become such a controversial matter the commission is probably going to eventually forward the matter to an Administrative Law Judge for a decision. Comptel, for one, thought that was an admirable decision by the FCC as they explain in the next message today. But, what the FCC may do is simply keep moving it forward on its agenda until the 'proper' ratio of commissioners is present, i.e. a Republican majority. As things stand now, the vote would probably end in a tie anyway. For sure, this is one really 'hot potato' to deal with. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:55:55 -0600 From: Comptel Press Release Subject: Comptel Applauds FCC For Removng Proposed AT&T/BelllSouth Merger For Immediate Release November 2, 2006 Media Contact: Margaret Boles COMPTEL (202) 296-6650 (202) 296-7585 COMPTEL Applauds FCC for Removing Proposed AT&T/BellSouth Merger from Agenda WASHINGTON, DC November 2, 2006 -- FCC late today removed the proposed AT&T/BellSouth merger from the agenda for tomorrow's open meeting. The following statement may be attributed to Earl Comstock, COMPTEL's President and CEO: "COMPTEL applauds the FCC for choosing not to consider the proposed merger of AT&T and BellSouth at its Nov. 3 open meeting. Given AT&T's failure thus far to make a good faith effort to address legitimate public interest concerns, COMPTEL is heartened that the Commission did not bend to AT&T's pressure tactics. It remains to be seen whether AT&T ever engaged in any meaningful attempt to resolve those concerns but we look forward to seeing what, if any, last-minute proposals they may have made to the Commission. "Despite the FCC's best efforts to conclude that this transaction is in the public interest, COMPTEL fully expects that the Commission will take the next steps designated under federal law. The law mandates that when the Commission is unable to reach a decision on the public interest merits of a proposed merger, the matter is to be put before an administrative law judge for hearing and recommendation on whether the merger promotes the public interest. We look forward to continuing to work with the Commission to ensure that, if the merger is approved, it is done so with conditions which protect the public interest." * * * * * About COMPTEL COMPTEL is the leading industry association representing communications service providers and their supplier partners. Based in Washington, D.C., COMPTEL advances its member's business through policy advocacy and through education, networking and trade shows. COMPTEL members are entrepreneurial companies building and deploying next-generation networks to provide competitive voice, data, and video services. COMPTEL members create economic growth and improve the quality of life of all Americans through technological innovation, new services, affordable prices and customer choice. COMPTEL members share a common objective: advancing communications through innovation and open networks. For more information, call COMPTEL at 202/296-6650. ------------------------------ From: Liam Subject: Voip Spam - Any Statistics? Date: 4 Nov 2006 04:58:42 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, I'm trying to collect statistics on voip spam. One of the only paper I have found on the net is http://www.worldnews-factory.net/voipspam/index.html is dated 2004 and is therefore probably out of date. Could please you give me some good references? Many thanks, Liam [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Considering that spammers generally like as much of a free ride as they can get at everyone else's expense (consider _how little_ they pay for email, for example), and considering that spam via email is at an all time high (it was bad in 2004, even worse in 2005 and 2006) I should imagine it is rather bad now with VOIP as well. I have no specific data to back me up on this, but spam isn't going to stop anytime soon, IMO; why not clutter up VOIP as well? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 17:55:05 -0600 From: Liz Austin Peterson Subject: Test of Texas Border Webcams Off to a Rocky Start By LIZ AUSTIN PETERSON, Associated Press Writer Texas launched its ambitious effort to use Internet users to watch the border for illegal immigrants. But the network of surveillance cameras Friday was plagued by technical problems, the images were grainy and the cameras were placed so high that it was hard to distinguish a person from, say, a bush. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who announced plans over the summer to spend $5 million on the virtual posse, asked for "forgiveness on the front end of this," but dismissed the problems as routine computer glitches. "I'm sure that as you start a big program like this that you will have some glitches," Perry, who is up for re-election, said in Brownsville, along the Mexican border. "My wife's computer is not working this morning." The cameras will operate at criminal hotspots. Members of the public who see something suspicious over the Web cameras can e-mail authorities. However, the Web site does not work on some Internet browsers. The images were grainy and it was difficult to tell whether, say, a group of people on the screen was a family crossing a crowded parking lot or a band of smugglers with their human cargo. The view from one camera on the Rio Grande was largely obscured by a bush. In another, all that was visible was the license plates on passing cars. When he announced the program in June, Perry said the images would be available online in a month. While the first cameras were installed within a month, and law enforcement officers have been watching them since then, the public Web site was not up and running until late Thursday. Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said that it proved more difficult than expected to get the public site running and that the launch so close to the election was a coincidence. Law enforcement officials have access to footage from about 15 cameras, Walt said, but only eight appear on the Web site. Walt said authorities have been trying to work out technical issues, such as the proper distance and how to achieve good picture quality. Since much of the border is undeveloped land, the designers of the system also had to figure out how to use batteries or solar power and how to transmit by wireless signal. Six companies have donated their time and camera equipment, Walt said. The state paid a seventh company $100,000 to create and run the Web site. Within a few days, the state plans to ask companies to submit proposals to install dozens of additional cameras. Since the cameras were installed, local law enforcement officers have spotted some suspicious doings, including water crossings and nighttime activity at rally points, Walt said. Some civil rights groups have criticized the virtual border watch plan, saying it will instill fear in border communities and could lead to fraudulent crime reports and racial profiling. Associated Press writer Kelley Shannon contributed to this report from Brownsville, Texas; AP Technology Editor Matthew Fordahl contributed from New York. On the Net: http://www.texasborderwatch.com. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Even though I am not a Texas resident, I applied for an acount on their system on Friday, thinking it might be interesting to have the camera images om a blog site somewhere. Trouble was (and maybe this is a premature judgment on my part) I was not able to get a single one (of the eight cameras on line) to display any images. Also, I tend to use a 'standardized' password on such things and the Texas system insisted on assigning a very long, hard or impossible to remember password to me and sending it to my email box. And the example images they did have on line were not very good, IMO. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 07:15:14 -0800 Organization: Cox Goudreau_Bob@notchur.biz wrote: > [Please obscure my email address as usual. Thanks.] > Nehmo wrote: >> How do I find out what phone company 949 295 4344 belongs to? > The reverse lookup feature of 411.com reports: > (949) 295-4344 is a cell phone based in Laguna Beach, CA The > registered service provider is T-Mobile USA**. Detailed listing > information is not available. > Regards, > Bob Goudreau > Cary, NC With the usual disclaimer that the number may have been ported to another carrier, perhaps a landline carrier, and perhaps to another geographical location. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In other words, nothing from nothing leaves nothing. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #381 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 6 16:52:36 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 49A3C223F; Mon, 6 Nov 2006 16:52:36 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #382 Message-Id: <20061106215236.49A3C223F@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 16:52:36 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Nov 2006 16:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 382 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson A Followup to the Justin Berry Story (John Farmer) KurtEichwald.com : The Back Story About Justin Berry (Jack Shafer,Slade) Wikipedia Reference Article on Justin Berry (Wikipedia Reference) American, Others Look to Add WiFi at Airport (Monty Solomon) Starbucks Loses Laptops With Worker Data (Monty Solomon) An Urban Fiber-Optic Challenge / Verizon to use Dorchester (M Solomon) Miles Away, "I'll Have a Burger" / Fast Food Drive-Throughs (M Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 06 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Internet Fax Services? (Raqueeb Hassan) Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? (Steven Lichter) Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? (admin35) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 12:47:00 -0600 From: John Farmer Subject: A Followup to The Justin Berry Story (Mothers of the World, Beware: TEEN SEX SELLS!) by John Farmer Justin Berry is becoming something of a media darling. At last count, he was the subject of a major expose in The New York Times in December, he appeared on Oprah in February, was featured on The Today Show, and he has testified before Congress. This kid gets anymore free press, he's going to start thinking he's Paris Hilton. For those of you who know the Berry story, that may seem like a bit of a cruel thing to say. But I think that as a general rule, anytime The New York Times and religious-right groups agree, there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. For those of you unfamiliar with the Justin Berry media blitz, I will try to give an as condensed a summation as possible. The official story is that Berry signed up for EarthLink web service in 2000, when he was thirteen years old, so he could get a free webcam that was offered as an incentive. In the NYT piece, he says that he wanted to use the webcam because he didn't have many friends, and was hoping to meet other kids his age. (This was my first red flag). After signing on to a webcam service, Justin began receiving instant messages from older men. This contact initially began as simple messaging back and forth. However, after some time, one of the men Berry regularly communicated with offered him $50 to chat on the webcam shirtless. Berry reported that the man talked him through how to set up a PayPal account, and once he did, the man made good on his promise. Berry complied by chatting without his shirt on. As time passed, Berry established an Amazon.com Wish List and would offer to pose nude, and later to masturbate, on his webcam for men who would purchase him items from his list. With the assistance of another adult male online friend, Berry registered his own domain to host his webcam performances. He later accepted an offer to meet a man in Las Vegas for thousands of dollars. This same man would also assist Berry in renting an apartment near his home where he would be allowed greater privacy in operating his webcam business. He would also begin to film himself having sex with a male friend and offering it for sale online. Berry was around sixteen at this time, and used the bulk of his profits to participate in a local street racing clique. However, video of Berry fellating himself began to circulate around his hometown, and he left to go live with his father in Mexico. Berry was still sixteen years old when he moved in with his father, and shortly thereafter he confessed to him what he had been doing. In a shocking twist, his father actually colluded with him to not only continue the webcam business, but to extend it, and increase profits. The two procured female prostitutes for Berry to have sex with on his webcam. Berry and his father supposedly made hundreds of thousands of dollars from this operation. According to the article, Berry then developed a serious marijuana and cocaine habit. When he was seventeen, he decided to quit the business and replaced his webcam sites with links to religiously-themed websites. However, after about a year, he reentered the business, setting up more webcam sites for other teenage boys. During this time, Berry had been contacted by a NYT reporter. The reporter moved Berry from California to Washington D.C., where he was able to set him up with an apartment and get him access to medical care, counseling services, and an attorney. The attorney later aided Berry in turning over all the info on his approximately 1,500 clients in exchange for immunity from any prosecution. The story broke in the NYT on December 19th, and the ensuing media coverage began, culminating in Berrys testimony before Congress on April 4th. The testimony is part of a series of Congressional hearings regarding what the Federal government should do about the exploitation of children on the internet. As I watched the testimony on C-Span, the heading under Berry's face as he spoke was Sexual Predator Victim. Though this story has been told and re-told on all types of media, the angle is the same. Berry is portrayed as the hapless victim of adult sexual predators. Let me offer a slightly askew interpretation. Before we delve into the murky realm of childhood sexuality, let's consider a few practical parenting points. Notice that Berry's mother was not subpoenaed by Congress to answer for how her son ran an internet porn site from her home for close to three years without her knowing. You see, that's called "blaming the victim", and it's not allowed. What you will get, however, is a bunch of excuses. She is a single mom who has to work too much to properly supervise her son. She is from an older generation and does not have the computer savvy to properly supervise her son. The explanations go on and on. You do not need a computer science degree to have the PC placed in a common area of your home, like a living room or a den, as opposed to your kid's bedroom. Or how's about restricting the hours it can be used? No computer use after 8:00 pm, for instance. When eight o'clock rolls around, you take the computer's power cord and put it away. And none of this even begins to speak to how his mother never became suspicious after her teenage son began receiving cash and merchandise worth thousands of dollars. This may simply be stacking deck chairs on the Titanic, as proponents of increased internet regulation never hold parents liable for anything and want government to prevent everything. I think the deeper question here is: How much of a victim was Berry really in all of this? The media apparently wants to paint Berry as a lonely thirteen-year-old who wanted a webcam to make new friends. Quotes of Berry always have him qualifying the statement with the words 'my own age.' Is it not feasible, if not probably, that Berry wanted to sign on to a webcam service in the hope of meeting females willing to disrobe live on the internet? The media would never pursue such a possibility, of course, because it would shatter their portrait of Berry as an innocent cherub, untouched by all the icky sexuality in the world. A thirteen-year-old boy is quite capable of lascivious thoughts, without the influence of anyone. Nature assures that. I have no doubt that Berry was surprised by the fact that his webcam drew the intention of adult men. I am also fairly certain that a teenager growing up in a single-mother household likely enjoyed the attention of older men. The point at which it went from idle chat to sexually- charged propositioning is murky. No doubt these men began conversations with Berry in the hopes that he would deliver sexually on his webcam. But the extent of the manipulation seems to be that the men offered him money and merchandise, and Berry did as they asked. I do not think Berry performed out of sexual manipulation, but rather, naive opportunism. The marketplace is Darwinian, without concern for values. Berry realized he had a commodity that certain people were willing to pay for, and he placed himself on the market. I do not think any thirteen-year-old has the emotional or intellectual wherewithal to begin such an enterprise, but I also do not think Berry was a hapless pawn in a sea of sexual predation. Like I said, he was most certainly a very naive kid who entered into a business enterprise he was nowhere near ready to handle. But that is no reason to canonize this kid as the poster boy for internet pedophilia. That the news media makes its money on this kind of salacious sentimentality is nothing new. It is when people like Berry get placed center stage in a Congressional hearing that I get worried. It is very reminiscent of when Linda Lovelace, at the urging of feminist activists, testified before Congress that all of her sex scenes in Deepthroat essentially depicted her being raped as she was being threatened with a gun off camera. The fact that the dozens of crew who worked on the film refuted this story never made its way into the official transcript. Here's what we can expect: First, the writer of the original article for The New York Times is going to expand the story into a book, which, as far as media outlets are concerned, will make him an expert on internet child pornography. The story will also be fictionalized into a made-for-TV movie titled Seduced: The Justin Berry Story, which will originally air on Lifetime, with repeat airings on Oxygen. Moms across the country will be convinced that their children are being cyber-raped and will join some pro-family group in order to urge Congress to tighten up on internet regulations. In the shuffle, the word 'child' will be dropped from the phrase child pornography, and the intent will be to get rid of all obscene material online. Congress will respond by proposing the Webcam Sluts Prevention Act. No politician or pundit will publicly oppose this legislation for fear of being called a pedophile on national television. The law will get passed and end up doing absolutely nothing to protect anyone anywhere. The government cannot protect kids online. Pro-regulation activists argue that the Internet is an intrusive technology, and is so readily accessible to children of all ages that legislators must step in and help shield children's eyes from potentially offensive materials. Of course, in years past, they've said much the same thing about television, radio, cable TV, and even comic books, so in one sense, their tune hasn't changed all that much. But how intrusive is the Internet in reality? After all, parents must first purchase a computer, obtain an Internet access provider, set the system up, log on, and take a host of other steps before the Net is available to their children. If parents have taken such steps to bring this technology into the home, they should not then expect regulators to assume the remainder of their parental obligations once the kids get online. In the name of 'protecting children', policymakers oftentimes end up treating us all like juveniles. The groups and political leaders that are encouraging this renewed censorship crusade need to start taking their own first principles of personal responsibility and parental decision-making more seriously. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 12:49:38 -0600 From: Jack Shafer Subject: KurtEichwald.com : The Back Story KurtEichenwald.com: The Back Story How a reporter's source came to design his eponymous Web site. By Jack Shafer http://KurtEichenwald.com ... Reporters are supposed to get close to their sources, but what's too close? I criticized New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald for achieving extreme proximity to primary source Justin Berry in the process of investigating his expose on Web-based child pornography. In the Dec. 19 package, Eichenwald writes of persuading the 19-year-old Berry to quit using drugs and leave the pornography business, into which he was "lured" at the age of 13. Eichenwald also referred Berry to an attorney last summer, introduced him to a doctor, and suggested he seek counseling, which he did. Thanks, in part, to the reporter's efforts, Berry became a witness for federal prosecutors and was granted immunity. In my piece and in a civil e-mail dialogue with Eichenwald that followed (attached to the bottom of my piece), I argued that his intervention into Berry's life had left him too invested in his source's fate to report the story faithfully. Reporters can do good while doing good journalism, but the former can subtly overtake the latter if they're not careful. ===================== After my Eichenwald article appeared, a reader pointed me to KurtEichenwald.com, a professional-looking Web site promoting Eichenwald's books, his newspaper journalism, and his availability as a speaker through the Lavin Agency. "Copyright 2005-2006 Kurt Eichenwald," read the legend at bottom of the home page. http://Xpertcreations.com ... According to the Whois page on NetworkSolutions.com, KurtEichenwald.com is registered to the author's publisher, Random House, and the page's DNS servers include ns1.xpertcreations.com and ns2.xpertcreations.com. When I browsed to http://Xpertcreations.com, I found a Web developer and Internet marketing concern by that name promoting the http://KurtEichenwald.com page as one of its September "Clients of the Month." http://Xpertcreations.com listed Justin Berry as the firm's president as well as his phone and fax numbers and e-mail address. Eichenwald says that nobody assigned Berry to design http://KurtEichenwald.com, and nobody paid for his work. http://KurtEichenwald.com isn't even the journalist's official Web site. That distinction belongs to http://ConspiracyOfFools.com, named after Eichenwald's recent book of the same name, and is also registered to Random House. Eichenwald, who described Berry's computer talents in the Times, says the young man presented him with a mock-up design for an Eichenwald site in late August 2005, when the Times story was still in process. When Berry asked if he could put the site up on http://KurtEichenwald.com, the reporter says he didn't give the issue "much consideration" before securing permission from Random House to use the address. (The publisher had purchased http://KurtEichenwald.com to prevent a Web squatter from taking the name.) After a couple of weeks, Eichenwald says he was no longer "comfortable" with the site being up. He explains that Berry was in a volatile emotional space during those weeks, and he was glad to give the young man something constructive to do. After Berry had gotten "his head on straight," the creation of the Web site had served its purpose. Eichenwald asked him to pull the plug, which he says Berry did. What caused the site's resurrection? Eichenwald, who didn't know the site was live again until I notified him, says he called Berry, who explained that he wanted to display his work to someone. Both http://xpertcreations.com and http://KurtEichenwald.com went dark this afternoon following my inquiries to Eichenwald. Berry did not return a call for comment. Eichenwald doesn't regret letting Berry use the address to showcase his skills. "In the same circumstances, I'd probably do it again." Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large. Copyright 2006 Slate.com 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 For this and other articles of interest, please go to: http://slate.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 12:52:28 -0600 From: Wikipedia Reference Article Subject: Wikipedia Reference Article on Justin Berry From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Entry for Justin Berry Image of Berry (left) from http://mexicofriends.com, one of his websites Born July 24, 1986 Bakersfield, California, United States Justin Berry (born 24 July 1986) is an American who operated a teenage pornography Internet site featuring his own erotic performances beginning at the age of 13. Over the course of five years, more than 1,500 people paid Berry to appear naked and engage in sex acts on camera. In the process of operating his for-pay sites, he met several of his website's members in real life, accepted money and gifts from them and later raised allegations of molestation by them in an interview with The New York Times. Berry abandoned his business in 2005 and became a witness for both federal and state investigators in a large scale child pornography investigation. Berry's national notoriety was increased by his February 15, 2006 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and 4 April 2006 appearances, first on C-SPAN while testifying before Congress, and later for an interview on Larry King Live. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Meanwhile, the feds keep huffing and puffing, announcing their intention to punish the 'pedophiles' involved, and indeed, there are some men in federal custody right now because of this young man. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 14:44:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: American, Others Look to Add WiFi at Airport By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | November 4, 2006 Wireless Internet access appears poised to take off at Logan International Airport after federal regulators this week thwarted a two-year effort by airport officials to shut off private alternatives to airport-controlled $8-a-day WiFi service. American Airlines , the biggest carrier at Logan by passenger volume, will "move as fast as we can" to resume offering WiFi at its Admirals Club lounge in Terminal B, an American spokesman, Ned Raynolds, said yesterday . Service was being offered there by T-Mobile USA before the Massachusetts Port Authority , which runs Logan, ordered it shut off. T-Mobile, which American would most likely use, charges $6 for an hour, or $30 for a monthly subscription that offers access at thousands of sites nationwide. JetBlue Airways said it will look into offering free WiFi to passengers in Terminal C. JetBlue currently offers free WiFi at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and the Long Beach, Calif., airport. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/11/04/american_others_look_to_add_wifi_at_airport/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 14:44:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Starbucks Loses Laptops With Worker Data By Elizabeth M. Gillespie, AP Business Writer | November 5, 2006 SEATTLE --Starbucks Corp. said Friday it had lost track of four laptop computers, two of which had private information on about 60,000 current and former U.S. employees and fewer than 80 Canadian workers and contractors. The data, which includes names, addresses and Social Security numbers, is about three years old, dating prior to December 2003, said Valerie O'Neil, a spokeswoman for the Seattle-based coffee retailer. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/11/05/starbucks_loses_laptops_with_worker_data/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 14:44:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: An Urban Fiber-Optic Challenge / Verizon to Use Dorchester Verizon to use Dorchester as a test site for bringing high-speed Net into cities By Keith Reed, Globe Staff | November 2, 2006 Verizon Communications Inc. is installing fiber-optic Internet service in Dorchester, using Boston's biggest, and one of its most diverse neighborhoods, as a test site for the challenges the company will face in bringing "FiOS" to urban areas nationwide. But relatively few Dorchester residents will be able to get the high-speed service, which promises download speeds up to 10 times faster than Verizon's popular digital subscriber line service, any time soon. Verizon says installation is moving at a snail's pace because it's harder to run lines in an urban setting than in the neat, suburban grids where most of the more than 100,000 Massachusetts residents live who already subscribe to FiOS. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/11/02/an_urban_fiber_optic_challenge/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 14:44:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Miles away, 'I'll have a burger' / Fast food drive-throughs go Miles away, 'I'll have a burger' Fast food drive-throughs go long distance By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff | November 5, 2006 NASHUA -- When Jairo Moncada pulled up to the drive-through at Wendy's in Burbank, Calif., for his usual cheeseburger, fries, and soda, he knew things looked different. There was an extra lane. But the 25-year-old could not see the biggest change: The woman taking his lunch order was sitting 3,000 miles away at a computer terminal in Nashua, and fielding calls from Wendy's customers at drive-throughs as far away as Florida and Washington, D.C. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/11/05/miles_away_ill_have_a_burger/ ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 06, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 11:34:16 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 06, 2006 ******************************** LLU Lines Reach 1 mil. Mark http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20938?11228 The number of local loop unbundled (LLU) lines in the United Kingdom has reached the one million mark following a rapid acceleration in unbundling activities since the beginning of 2006. According to the United Kingdom's Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA), the total number of unbundled lines reached 968,656 on 29 ... Deutsche Telekom Not Interested in WiMAX Licences in Germany http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20932?11228 Germany's fixed-line incumbent, Deutsche Telekom, has decided not to participate in the planned auction of WiMAX licences. Last week, the German Federal Network Agency started pre-registrations for companies seeking to participate in the planned auction of point-to-multipoint broadband wireless licences in the 3.4-3.6 GHz band. ... Vivendi Shares Edge Lower After Company Says Buyout Talks Failed http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20930?11228 PARIS -- Vivendi SA shares fell Monday after the French media and telecom group said talks on a tentative buyout offer from investment fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts had ended without a firm proposal. Shares in Vivendi fell 1.2 percent to E29.96 (US$38.23) in Paris as the market digested a statement in which Vivendi confirmed on ... Cingular 3125: A Sleek Smart Phone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20928?11228 The days of the clunky, ugly smart phone are ending. Thanks to sleek, sexy models like Motorola's Q, smart phones are becoming stylish as well as highly intelligent. One of the latest smart phones to combine beauty and brains is the Cingular 3125. Featuring a slim clamshell-style design, the Cingular 3125 packs an impressive ... Leap Introduces Unlimited Mobile Web http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20927?11228 In an effort to spruce up its Cricket Communications brand, Leap Wireless International announced the availability of an unlimited wireless Web plan. The plan will cost interested customers $50 per month. With the new product launch, Cricket customers can have unlimited access to Cricket's Mobile Web Portal. Subscribers also ... Shunning Merger Vote Yet Again, FCC Grants BPL Dereg Parity http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20925?11228 Although the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today delayed its vote on the AT&T/BellSouth merger for the second time, the regulator nevertheless partially tackled another sticky issue by deregulating a portion of the emerging U.S. broadband over power line (BPL) business. In a 4-0 unanimous decision (with the new GOP ... Aruba Outlines FMC Strategy http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20923?11228 Wireless LAN startup Aruba Wireless Networks has laid out a five-stage plan for bringing fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) to enterprise users. Aruba says that the move to FMC has already begun. The firm belives that the market will continue to grow and evolve over the next few years. Initially this involves scaling networks to handle ... Time Warner VOIP Growth Slows http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20920?11228 Time Warner Cable Inc. , the cable industry's leading VOIP player, may be reaching a limit on how many IP phone subscribers it can sign up. In its Q3 earnings release Wednesday, the nation's second largest cable operator reported that its 'Digital Phone' product turned in its second straight quarter of decidedly ... ZigBee Emerges as the Wireless Mesh Network of Choice http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20918?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- In-Stat believes that because of the clarity of the ZigBee standard, the organizational strength of the ZigBee Alliance and the involvement of several of the world's largest semiconductor companies, ZigBee will emerge as the dominant wireless mesh networking technology. Wireless mesh networks ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Raqueeb Hassan Subject: Re: Internet Fax Services? Date: 4 Nov 2006 22:43:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com On Nov 4, 8:11 am, Carl Navarro wrote: > On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:31:35 GMT, Mark Atwood > wrote: >> Vonage has started tacking on a ten dollar surcharge if you want >> to receive faxes over their service. >> There used to be a whole bunch of internet "free fax" services, where >> you would get assigned a phone number, and faxes received on that >> number would get emailed to you. They made their money on the >> arbitrage of call settlement. >> But I can't seem to find any such services anymore. They all have >> free 30 day trials, but then require a monthly subscription fee. >> Would about $14 a year be O.K? I switched from efax to maxEmail >> http://www.maxemail.com about 3 years ago. It works fine for >> incoming and I have yet to use up my $3.00 outbound fax credit. >> They have some limit for free faxes on the plan, but I have never >> exceeded it, (200 or 500 I think). >> Carl Navarro I used efax couple of times, they seem to be okay even as free service. You might like to see the comparison of different fax services here at ... http://www.a2.com/telecom/freefax.html Raqueeb Hassan Bangladesh ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. Subject: Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 04:36:14 GMT Sam Spade wrote: > Goudreau_Bob@notchur.biz wrote: >> [Please obscure my email address as usual. Thanks.] >> Nehmo wrote: >>> How do I find out what phone company 949 295 4344 belongs to? >> The reverse lookup feature of 411.com reports: >> (949) 295-4344 is a cell phone based in Laguna Beach, CA The >> registered service provider is T-Mobile USA**. Detailed listing >> information is not available. >> Regards, >> Bob Goudreau >> Cary, NC > With the usual disclaimer that the number may have been ported to > another carrier, perhaps a landline carrier, and perhaps to another > geographical location. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In other words, nothing from nothing > leaves nothing. PAT] I got an automated message and doing a track on the number told me it was a Sprint PCS number, when I contacted Sprint, the told me it was not theirs, so it was either total bogus and or it had been ported to a land line. Having retired from GTE, I plan on calling s friend of mine with Verizon in the security department since it came from a phone that could be located in their service area, after that point I intend to make the lives at that number like hell, if I'm sure that is where it came from. When I redial it is busy all the time. The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: admin35 Subject: Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 15:55:20 GMT Was the call received on your cell phone? Does your cell phone company (or any cell phone company) retain any SS7 "out of band" information on incomming calls? If so, then you could get that information from your cell phone company. On 2 Nov 2006 20:57:57 -0800, Nehmo wrote: > Someone *identifying himself* as "Mike" from > http://www.dishnetwork.com/ called me to sell me a $49.95 TV satellite > dish installation. They call at random times and frequency, but it > seems to be about two calls per day, usually in the evening. I've > politely told them to take me off their list several times. It doesn't > work, of course. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #382 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 8 00:07:32 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 257FB2283; Wed, 8 Nov 2006 00:07:31 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #383 Message-Id: <20061108050731.257FB2283@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 00:07:31 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Nov 2006 00:10:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 383 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Plans Move into US Radio Market (Sue Zeidler, Reuters) New Hampshire Makes GOP Stop its Automated Calls (Katharine Webster) New Telemarketing Ploy Steers Voters on Republican Path (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 07 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Verizon in Talks With YouTube (USTelecom dailyLead) Definitions And Background Of Telecom Internet Terms (FreedomFireCom) Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? (Linc Madison) Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People (support@sellcom) Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? (Raqueeb Hassan) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:38:16 -0600 From: Sue Zeidler Subject: Google Plans Move into US Radio Market By Sue Zeidler Web search leader Google Inc. is hiring scores of radio sales people and is spending heavily in a bid to expand its position in the $20 billion radio industry. Google spokesman Michael Mayzel said this week that the company will begin a public test of Google Audio Ads by the end of the year. Advertisers will be able to go online and sign up for targeted radio ads using the same AdWords system they use to buy Web search ads. Google is generally testing its ability to move into offline media, this week saying it would help customers buy advertisements in 50 U.S. newspapers. It made a clear move into radio in January when it agreed to pay more than $1 billion, depending on performance, for dMarc Broadcasting Inc., which connects advertisers to radio stations through an automated advertising system. It's all part of what Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has said is an investment in radio advertising that could grow over time to include up to 1,000 Google employees -- not just in ad sales, but also in engineering and operations. The fast-growing Silicon Valley Internet company had 9,378 employees in September. "Google is hiring salespeople in most major markets and they're hiring sales people to sell radio. They're paying about 50 percent more than a typical radio sales person might make," said Bill Figenshu, chief operating officer of Softwave Media Exchange Inc, a unit of SWMX Inc. Figenshu said three people he had spoken with believed Google was in talks to buy about $1 billion in radio advertising inventory from Clear Channel Communications Inc. Softwave Media Exchange sells radio ads online and competes with Google's dMarc. Google declined to elaborate on its plans. Google's move into radio comes at a time when Clear Channel, the biggest radio station operator, is weighing a possible sale of the company. Clear Channel, which controls an estimated 20 percent of local radio industry revenues, declined to comment on recent reports that Google could take a stake in the radio company, perhaps as part of a buyout led by private equity firms. Clear Channel's stock closed up 9 cents to $34.54 a share on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, while Google's stock fell 0.92 percent, or $4.38, to $472.57 a share on Nasdaq. In a recent research report, RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank said he was perplexed by Google's hirings, since they are being made before it has significant radio advertising inventory to sell. "While there are other possibilities, we believe there's a reasonable chance Google Audio is establishing critical mass in anticipation of a major acquisition of prime inventory. Our sense from recent discussions with industry players has been most radio operators are reluctant to offer prime inventory to Google Audio," he said. Bank said Clear Channel's size and potential sale make it a likely source of inventory for Google, either through Google taking a modest investment in a leveraged buyout or by taking a stake in the company's current incarnation. Two private equity consortia are looking into making bids for Clear Channel, sources familiar with the matter said late last month. Analysts estimated an offer could approach $40 per share, valuing the company at just under $20 billion. Other industry sources said Google had been approaching all the radio operators in recent weeks. "They've been going around to all the radio groups, trying to do deals. It seems like a good time to be doing this because business is so slow, There's a lot of inventory," said one industry executive. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:37:28 -0600 From: Katharine Webster, AP Subject: New Hampshire Makes GOP Stop its Automated Calls By KATHARINE WEBSTER, Associated Press Writer A Republican organization agreed to stop making automated phone calls to New Hampshire residents on the federal do-not-call list. But the Democrats said Monday that the calls still violate federal rules. The National Republican Congressional Committee agreed on Sunday to stop calling homes on the registry after a citizen complained to the state attorney general. Under New Hampshire law, political campaigns can contact people on the do-not-call list, but cannot use automated recordings. The calls criticize Democratic congressional challenger Paul Hodes, who is locked in a tight race against Republican Rep. Charles Bass. Bass issued a statement Sunday asking all outside groups to stop the calls and said he was pleased that the NRCC had agreed. But a spokesman for Hodes said the calls also violate a Federal Communications Commission rule that says automated calls must identify their source at the beginning of the message. One of the calls features a woman who opens by saying, "Hello. I'm calling with information about Paul Hodes," according to a recording released by the state Democratic Party. She goes on to criticize Hodes' position on taxes and ends by saying the call was paid for by the NRCC and was not coordinated with the Bass campaign. Alex Burgos, an NRCC spokesman, said the group believes its messages comply with all federal laws. The NRCC is using "robo calls" in at least 53 competitive House races nationwide. The calls have led to a few complaints to the FCC. "This is the same kind of dirty tricks we've seen up here in the last couple of election cycles," Hodes spokesman Reid Cherlin said. In May, a former Republican National Committee official, James Tobin, was sentenced to 10 months behind bars for his role in the jamming of New Hampshire Democrats' telephones on Election Day 2002. He was the third person sent to prison in the case. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 02:13:50 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New Telemarketing Ploy Steers Voters on Republican Path By CHRISTOPHER DREW The New York Times November 6, 2006 An automated voice at the other end of the telephone line asks whether you believe that judges who "push homosexual marriage and create new rights like abortion and sodomy" should be controlled. If your reply is "yes," the voice lets you know that the Democratic candidate in the Senate race in Montana, Jon Tester, is not your man. In Maryland, a similar question-and-answer sequence suggests that only the Republican Senate candidate would keep the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. In Tennessee, another paints the Democrat as wanting to give foreign terrorists "the same legal rights and privileges" as Americans. Using a telemarketing tactic that is best known for steering consumers to buy products, the organizers of the political telephone calls say they have reached hundreds of thousands of homes in five states over the last several weeks in a push to win votes for Republicans. Democrats say the calls present a distorted picture. The Ohio-based conservatives behind the new campaign, who include current and former Procter & Gamble managers, say the automated system can reach vast numbers of people at a fraction of the cost of traditional volunteer phone banks and is the most ambitious political use of the telemarketing technology ever undertaken. But critics say the automated calls are a twist on push polls -- a campaign tactic that is often criticized as deceptive because it involves calling potential voters under the guise of measuring public opinion, while the real intent is to change opinions with questions that push people in one direction or the other. The calls have set off a furor in the closing days of a campaign in which control of Congress hinges on a handful of races. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/us/politics/06push.html?ex=1320469200&en=06a858f9dc43fcaa&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 07, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 12:25:22 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 07, 2006 ******************************** Telecom Italia Q3 Revenue Up 4.6%, Thanks to European Broadband, Brazilian Mobile http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/20968?11228 Telecom Italia has posted a 4.6% year-on-year (y/y) rise in third-quarter revenue thanks to strong growth in its European broadband operations and continued strong sales at its Brazilian mobile unit. Revenues for the quarter rose to 7.77 billion euro (US$9.92 billion) from 7.43 billion for the same period in 2005. Telecom Italia said its ... Deutsche Telekom Offers Loyalty Bonus for Triple-Play Customers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20966?11228 Germany's fixed-line incumbent, Deutsche Telekom, has launched a loyalty bonus system, which is expected to save its customers between 50-150 euro (US$64-191) per month. The bonus system is targeted at customers of both its fixed-line and mobile units, T-Com and T-Mobile, opting to combine fixed-network telephony, mobile and ... FCC Classifies BPL as Information Service http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20963?11228 The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has clarified the regulatory situation with broadband over powerline (BPL) with the declaration that it is to be regulated as an information service, on an equal footing with other broadband services. The regulatory order finds that "the transmission component underlying BPL-enabled ... Take Action: New Gear From Actiontec Gets VoIP Down to Business http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20960?11228 About 98 percent of businesses in the United States are SMBs, and less than 10 percent of those businesses today use VoIP. But a little company called Actiontec Electronics Inc. is trying to change that by educating the SMB set on the benefits of VoIP and by offering some neat new PBX gateways designed for small-scale applications based ... Samsung Electronics Unveils New Communication Device Tailored for Wireless = Broadband http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20957?11228 SEOUL, South Korea -- Samsung Electronics Co. on Tuesday showed off a new three-way foldable combination of phone, personal computer and music player tailored for an emerging wireless broadband technology the company is pushing as a global standard. The gadget was unveiled at a Samsung-sponsored industry conference on Mobile ... EU Commission Tells Tourists to Switch Off Mobiles to Avoid "Excessive" Fees http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20954?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Union executive commission on Tuesday urged EU tourists to switch off their mobile phones on foreign trips, saying the operators were still charging 'excessively high' prices for calling from abroad. EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said current roaming ... Vodafone Turns to Microsoft Platform http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20951?11228 Looking to cut costs while still enhancing the consumer mobile experience, Vodafone has inked a deal with Microsoft to develop software that will enable the introduction of new mobile services. The agreement will bring together Microsoft Windows Mobile and Vodafone live! The Windows Mobile platform marks the third mobile platform ... Verizon Intensifies European VoIP Push http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20948?11228 Verizon Business, in a major expansion of its VoIP offerings overseas, has released its entire VoIP portfolio to the international market. Verizon Business is the operating unit Verizon Communications created when it bought MCI earlier this year. Verizon VoIP is aimed primarily at Europe right now plus Canada and South Africa, ... Cingular Speeds Up http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20945?11228 3G PDAs, WiFi location boxes, and convergence from a food retailer (!) make up the menu for this week's new-product roundup. Cingular Claims 3G First: No. 1 U.S. mobile carrier Cingular Wireless LLC says that it is the first operator in the U.S. to ship a wireless PDA that runs over a 3G HSDPA/UMTS network. The $400 ... Tektronix Buys VOIP Test Firm http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20942?11228 Test vendor Tektronix Inc. has opened its purse again to snap up VOIP service monitoring specialist Minacom for $27 million in cash. Montreal-based Minacom, which has about 35 on staff, 60 customers, and revenues of $5 million a year, is 100 percent owned by its founder and CEO Michel Nadeau, who is now good for a drink ... Wireless Users Regularly Carry Redundant Devices http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20940?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Conventional wireless industry wisdom is that consumers seek a single wireless device with multiple capabilities built into the handset, however, studies show that most users carry redundant devices, reports In-Stat. For instance, more than 15% of people carry two wireless phones, the high-tech market research ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 12:40:29 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon in Talks With YouTube USTelecom dailyLead November 7, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eMAMfDtusXfIlLCibuddqmhs TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon in talks with YouTube BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Xbox Live to offer TV, movie downloads * NTP sues Palm * Nortel, EchoStar report earnings * Aruba Networks launches converged VoIP/Wi-Fi/cellular offering for business USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * New: The USTelecom IMS Implementation Guide TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Samsung demos WiMAX device * Cable posts stronger broadband numbers in Q3 * Yahoo! hopes for banner day with mobile ad test REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FTC's top official pushes for minimal oversight of Internet Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eMAMfDtusXfIlLCibuddqmhs ------------------------------ From: FreedomFireCom Subject: Definitions And Background Of Telecom And Internet Service Terms Date: 7 Nov 2006 16:44:01 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Here's a link to a fairly comprehensive listing of Telecom and Internet Service Terms ... with definitions and/or background info for each. Hopefully you'll gain the necessary understanding from these that you need for whatever your application(s) http://broadband-nation.blogspot.com/2006/11/definitions-and-background-of-telecom.html God Bless, Michael Lemm FreedomFire Communications "Helping YOUR Business....DO Business" http://DS3-Bandwidth.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/freedomfirecom ------------------------------ Subject: Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 15:09:42 -0800 From: Linc Madison Reply-To: lincmad@suespammers.org I got a call this afternoon with caller ID of "POLITICAL CALL," which I thought was unusually candid of them. It was area code 571, which is the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. (overlay with 703). Lincoln Madison * San Francisco, California * t+elecom@LincMad.com +/- Telephone numbering information: since 1997! Read my political blog, "The Third Path" US, California, and Washington State laws apply to LINCMAD.COM e-mail. ------------------------------ From: support@sellcom.com Subject: Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:35:28 -0500 Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Steven Lichter said on that big USENET thingie: > I got an automated message and doing a track on the number told me it > was a Sprint PCS number, when I contacted Sprint, the told me it was > not theirs, so it was either total bogus and or it had been ported to > a land line. Here is an interesting situation we had. Some number kept calling and hanging up. I called the number on the caller ID. They had a message about how they didn't make outgoing calls from that number and some telemarketer had been using their number in the caller ID. I had a trace on the number so I hope the security people were able to find who it really was. You can't trust CID anymore. Steve www.sellcom.com for firewood splitters, ergonomic chairs, office phone systems, "non-mov" surge protection, Exabyte, CA, Minuteman, Brave Products, Fisch, TMC, Panasonic and more Check out http://www.guardian.name ------------------------------ From: Raqueeb Hassan Subject: Re: How Do I Do Something to Phone Solicitation People? Date: 7 Nov 2006 09:09:12 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com admin35 wrote: > Was the call received on your cell phone? > Does your cell phone company (or any cell phone company) retain any > SS7 "out of band" information on incomming calls? If so, then you > could get that information from your cell phone company. > On 2 Nov 2006 20:57:57 -0800, Nehmo wrote: >> Someone *identifying himself* as "Mike" from >> http://www.dishnetwork.com/ called me to sell me a $49.95 TV satellite >> dish installation. They call at random times and frequency, but it >> seems to be about two calls per day, usually in the evening. I've >> politely told them to take me off their list several times. It doesn't >> work, of course. Well, I don't know what happens when some numbers get ported to another carrier and then to another, shouldn't that parent provider or FCC (as these are under some regional dial plan) keep some records like where these numbers have been ported to and/or records of change or ownership? I think most numbers are bound to SSN of individuals or some corporates. I might be wrong. Just curious. Having said that we still can't port numbers between carriers. Wish we could have our old numbers back! Raqueeb Hassan Bangladesh ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #383 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 8 20:28:57 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 386AF222D; Wed, 8 Nov 2006 20:28:57 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #384 Message-Id: <20061109012857.386AF222D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 20:28:57 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Nov 2006 20:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 384 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Says Some Obscenities Can Be Used on News Shows (Jim Puzzanghera) Ingraham Urges Listeners to Jam Democratic Phone Lines (Media Matters) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 8, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) U R Not Listening (Monty Solomon) Telecoms, Cable Operators Turning to Video Clips (USTelecom dailyLead) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 23:17:41 -0600 From: Jim Puzzunghera Subject: FCC Says Some Obscenities Can Be Used on News Shows By Jim Puzzanghera, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The Federal Communications Commission agreed it may be OK to swear on a news show, but profanities on other programs are still verboten. On Tuesday, the agency reversed a March ruling it made that use of the word "bullshitter" on the CBS program "The Early Show" was indecent. That decision was particularly controversial because news shows traditionally have wide leeway on language. The incident involved a live 2004 interview with a contestant on CBS' "Survivor Vanuatu" who used the word to describe a fellow contestant on the reality show. But this week the FCC said it was deferring to a "plausible characterization" by the network that incident was a news interview, which merits a higher standard for indecency violations. The agency also rejected a complaint about coarse language on several episodes of ABC's "NYPD Blue," but did so on a technicality because the complaint was made against a TV station by a viewer outside of its market. Finally, the FCC upheld the main focus of the March ruling: unscripted profanities uttered during Fox's broadcasts of the "Billboard Music Awards" in 2002 and 2003 were indecent. In the 2002 show, Cher used the "F-word" after accepting an award. In 2003, Nicole Richie used the "F-word" and the "S-word: in presenting an award. FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin defended the new rulings. "Hollywood continues to argue they should be able to say the F-word on television whenever they want ... the commission again disagrees," he said. The new ruling, decided on Monday, comes in the wake of a lawsuit by the four major broadcast TV networks challenging the March action. The federal court handling the suit gave the FCC until Monday to reconsider those indecency decisions because of some unusual circumstances. Broadcasters, who had challenged the original ruling as unconstitutional, were pleased with the two reversals, but reiterated their long-standing complaint that FCC guidelines remain inconsistent and murky. And one commissioner, Jonathan S. Adelstein, alleged that the reversals were not made on merit, but to improve the agency's chances of winning the broadcasters' lawsuit by jettisoning its weakest parts. "Litigation strategy should not be the dominant factor guiding policy when First Amendment protections are at take," Adelstein said. Adelstein did not vote against Monday's ruling, but dissented to those parts of it, the only one of the five commissioners who raised any objections. Even with the ruling, experts said the FCC still has major problems with its case. "This makes it all the harder to claim we've got a set of clear consistent rules, which is what the FCC's claim has been all along," said Stuart M. Benjamin, a Duke University law professor and an expert on telecommunications law. Broadcasters have alleged that the FCC inconsistencies, combined with its more aggressive enforcement and Congress' recent tenfold hike in maximum indecency fines, to $325,000 per violation, have chilled the industry. The March ruling stemmed from an earlier reversal of FCC policy. In 2003, the FCC's staff concluded that the "F-word" was allowed as an adjective, rejecting complaints about U2 singer Bono's use of the word in that way during the 2003 Golden Globe Awards telecast. But in March 2004 -- amid public outcry after Janet Jackson's breast was briefly exposed during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime telecast -- the FCC reversed itself, ruling any variation of the F-word referred to sexual activity and was almost always indecent. The FCC used that new standard in March to pronounce the incidents on "The Early Show," "NYPD Blue" and "The Billboard Music Awards" indecent. But because of its mixed messages on the issue, the FCC said it was not fining those incidents, and therefore did not give the broadcasters a chance to convince the agency the ruling was wrong. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 23:22:26 -0600 From: Media Matters Newsletter Subject: Ingraham Urges Listeners to Jam Democratic Phone Lines As the weblog Firedoglake first noted, during the November 7 edition of her nationally syndicated talk radio show, Laura Ingraham urged listeners to jam the phone lines of 1-888-DEM-VOTE, a voter assistance hotline sponsored by the Democratic Party. Ingraham stated: "I want you to call it and I want you tell us what you get when you call 1-888-DEM-VOTE. They're on top of all of the shenanigans at the polling stations. One problem: you can't get through." Minutes later, while talking with a listener who called the hotline, Ingraham said: "Let's keep 'dem' lines ringing." Ingraham, a frequent Fox News contributor, is scheduled to appear on the November 7 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto. According to Firedoglake, the voter assistance hotline is "now being flooded with calls from crank callers." From the November 7 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Laura Ingraham Show: INGRAHAM: Multiple callers are calling the 1-888-DUMB-VOTE line and they said that the line is now broken. That you can't get through. MATT FOX (technical producer): The Democrats can't even do that right; they can't even do a help line. INGRAHAM: First of all, you're telling people that their vote is being suppressed at all these polling stations across the country. Vote is being suppressed, what are you talking about? You want to see voter suppression? Try to vote in Iraq when you have snipers on rooftops, OK? Those people walk to the polls; they don't care about the snipers. So don't talk to me about voter suppression. That is the biggest bunch of baloney that we've been sold, and we've been sold it election after election by desperate Democrats -- 1-888-DEM-VOTE. I want you to call it, and I want you tell us what you get when you call 1-888-DEM-VOTE. They're on top of all of the shenanigans at the polling stations. One problem -- you can't get through. [...] CALLER: Hey, Laura, I called the 888 number. I think I cost the Democrats at least 25 cents. INGRAHAM: What happened? CALLER: Well, you get the number, they ask you to put in your zip code; they ask you, of course, English or Spanish. INGRAHAM: Blood type? CALLER: And, you know, they say that they'll trace back to your phone. They give you options as to do you want to find your polling place, did you have trouble voting? INGRAHAM: Do you know what zip code you live in? CALLER: Oh yeah, I did. I'm pretty sharp. INGRAHAM: So you never got through, you never got through to talk to a real live dumb poll helper? CALLER: No, I just got voice mail. I figured I was gonna cost as much money as I could. Well, finally, when they couldn't answer my questions electronically, they said, "We'll forward your call to the local election office." INGRAHAM: 1-888-dim -- or dumb -- VOTE. No, it's really DEM-VOTE. Let's keep "dem" lines ringing. Copyright 2006 Media Matters. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, it all seems to have been for naught, anyway ... President Bush made a speech Wednesday morning on National Public Radio (and apparently) the other news networks. The gist of his message: there has been a change; you now have a Democratic government, rather than a Republican version of same. He also announced a change in personell: Mr. Rumsfeld had resigned his position and Bush gave the name of the new person for that office. Bush was also asked by reporters if Mr. Cheney would be leaving anytime soon. Bush replied that he (Bush) still had confidence in Mr. Cheney. So, Laura Ingraham and her friends can continue to play games with the telephone if they wish. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 08, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 11:25:49 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 08, 2006 ******************************** Xfera Awards W-CDMA Contract to Ericsson http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20990?11228 Nordic telecoms group TeliaSonera's Spanish mobile unit, Xfera, has awarded a three-year managed services contract for its new W-CDMA network to Sweden's telecoms equipment vendor Ericsson. Under the terms of the deal, Ericsson will be fully responsible for the operations, management and maintenance of Yoigo's 3G network, ... German Telecoms Regulators Bend to EU Pressure to Reexamine Wholesale Lines http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/20985?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- German telecoms regulators bent to EU pressure Wednesday, saying they would keep looking at competition problems in the German market for wholesale leased lines -- dominated by former state monopoly Deutsche Telekom AG. The European Commission said the Bundesnetzagentur, or BNetzA, had withdrawn an... Fighting Spam at the Network Level http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20983?11228 E-mail content is important to message recipients, but not very useful for spam filtering. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Computing suggest that Internet service providers (ISPs) could better fight unwanted junk e-mail by addressing it at the network level rather than by using currently available ... Yahoo!, Google Make Wireless Strides http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20981?11228 Internet rivals Yahoo! and Google continue to further entrench themselves in the wireless space. The latest: Yahoo! is ready to try out its graphical advertising platform for its Mobile Web service, while Google has forged a wireless agreement with Leap Wireless International. Yahoo! acknowledges that the graphical advertising ... New Group Advances Wireless Device Management, Security http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20978?11228 U.K.-based Synchronica is throwing its support to the new Device Management Forum and to its associated portal that was launched Oct. 31. The mobile-device management and synchronization software company says the DMF is the first group to focus on the key issue of mobile-device management, and it reportedly involves a group of ... Strix Retracts Some NTT Claims http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20976?11228 Wireless mesh startup Strix Systems Inc. has issued a retraction of some its statements about the major Japanese deal with NTT Data Corp. subsidiary, NTT West, it announced earlier this month. The brief statement retracts information that was 'inaccurate' or [issued] without full authorization of NTT West, such as 100 ... NTP Takes Another Shot http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/20974?11228 Having scored against Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), NTP Inc. is going after another big name in mobile messaging: Palm Inc. NTP, a patent-holding company based in Arlington, Va., said today it has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Palm for violating intellectual property relating to mobile email. Palm, the maker of the ... Worldwide Cable TV Households Continue to Grow as Cable Operators Expand Offerings http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20971?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Cable TV operators continue to expand the reach of their cable video and high-speed data services, reports In-Stat. While this service expansion is delivering only modest total household growth, it is being offset by solid service revenue gains. Overall, rising consumer demand for more TV content, ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 13:07:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U R Not Listening http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/11/06/u_r_not_listening/ GLOBE EDITORIAL U R not listening The Boston Globe November 6, 2006 ANYBODY WHO addresses a boardroom or a lecture hall these days is asking for disappointment, for a glance out over the typical audience reveals a frenzy of e-mailing and text-messaging. People pretend to pay attention. All the while, they're pecking at their BlackBerrys, trying but failing to be discreet. Busy professionals are the worst offenders. Sherry Turkle, an MIT psychologist and sociologist who studies how people relate to technology, describes a conference she attended in a remote part of Japan. "It was grueling to get there," she says. Yet for all the trouble participants took to meet up , many spent the session fiddling with their handhelds. Watching people thumb away, one wonders: What are they doing ? Buying stocks? Making snarky comments about what others are wearing? Trading electronic mash notes -- "i think about u 24-7 " -- with secret paramours thousands of miles away ? There is a mitigating factor: Often , the podium jockey who's being tuned out is showing a PowerPoint presentation -- and reading from slide after interminable slide. Those who hoped to influence a roomful of people used to try to be interesting . Not anymore; there are too many bullet points to project on the wall. Maybe audiences should be polite enough to sit there glassy-eyed and slackjawed, but they don't. So a battle is underway: PowerPoint vs. BlackBerry. This is the Iran-Iraq war of passive aggression -- whom to root for? In this same circle of hell, the Yankees play the Lakers for all eternity, and condemned Bostonians are required to choose sides. In truth, surreptitious text-messaging is just an outgrowth of several social trends, none of them good. People work too hard . They get dragooned into attending events they'd prefer to avoid. And, as Turkle points out, people like the feeling of control that comes with experiencing life onscreen. "It's not just during boring PowerPoints," she says. "Increasingly, people define their media bubble as being their primary community." In theory, BlackBerrys bring people together, just as presentation software gets ideas across clearly. But people can do both the analog way -- by actually talking to each other. In practice, certain so-called advances merely let us have unsatisfying interactions with multiple people at the same time. No thanks. Overscheduled Americans need to play hooky from PowerPoint, put down the handhelds, and enjoy life off the grid. Let's all text-message ourselves: u need 2 relax. Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 12:31:56 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Telecoms, Cable Operators Turning to Video Clips USTelecom dailyLead November 8, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eNiYfDtusXfKwTCibuddWxwl TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Telecoms, cable operators turning to video clips BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Telefonica eyes PCCW stake * Skype sets sights on enterprise customers * France Telecom to produce films * Analysis: YouTube could be what mobile video needs USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * New! The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * AOL looks to embed IM service in Web sites * Net world watching Web 2.0 conference * Wireless industry sees growth in music phones REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Op-ed: FCC must address broadband "crisis" now Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eNiYfDtusXfKwTCibuddWxwl ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #384 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 10 17:55:05 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E22392259; Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:55:04 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #385 Message-Id: <20061110225504.E22392259@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:55:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 385 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Prairie Stream Out of Business (TELECOM Digest Editor) Communication Breakdown Betwen Telcos and Customers (CMS Magazine) Skype Tests New Features (Eric Auchard, Reuters) Verizon FIOS Wiring (beedude@gmail.com) Cisco Profits Beat Expectations (USTelecom dailyLead) Vodafone Reveals Detail of UK. Broadband Strategy (USTelecom dailyLead) Telecom Update #554, November 10, 2006 (John Riddell) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 09 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 10 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Prairie Stream Out of Business Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:00:34 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Many of our readers know that about five years ago, when Southwestern Bell (d/b/a SBC) was the telco of record for southeastern Kansas, a new 'upstart' company called Prairie Stream Communications came along as a 'competitor' and their angle was to lease _all_ the equipment, etc. from SBC and co-locate in SBC's central office here in town. Lots of people here in Independence chose to jump ship from SBC and go with Prairie Stream, keeping their same phone number, but getting decent, reasonable service from Prairie Stream. In effect, we were still SBC/AT&T customers, but handled through Prairie Stream. Now today, a letter came in the mail from Prairie Stream which said, "For those who do not know, we have been in a contract dispute with AT&T since October 25, 2006. The dispute has ended, and we regret to inform you we will no longer be providing telephone service after this month. We are just not able to continue providing telephone service at a competitive rate. For those customers that have Internet service billed through Prairie Stream, you will need to call 1-620-332-1616 if you plan to keep the Internet service. You will be receiving a letter from AT&T stating that you will have 30 days to switch your service to a new provider or the line will be disconnected. We at Prairie Stream Communications would like to thank you for the loyal business you have given us for the last five years." The letter did NOT include any suggestions or referrals as to whom local telephone service would be provided by ... just the note mentioned above saying that "AT&T will give you thirty days to switch your service to a 'new provider' or get disconnected." Well, gee, I wonder what 'new provider' AT&T would have in mind? So to try and stay ahead of this mess, I did a search on Google for 'local phone service for 620-331' and came up with several suggestions, including Sage, which I am sure is not exactly what AT&T has in mind. But when I called Sage to inquire about switching my service away from Prairie Stream I was advised that they were/are unable to do transfers away from Prairie Stream. They said they can do transfers out of companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and others like that, but not out of Prairie Stream. She suggested that I default myself back to (now) AT&T and then after a month or so give the account to Sage. Then I looked at a company called 'Trinsic' 877-237-6278. They claimed they _were_ able to switch accounts away from Prairie Stream, and while I waited on hold, she pulled up my existing account and told me all about it. This is getting more and more confusing ... however she had no record on file of my existing 'distinctive ring' (ring-ring) number and could not get it transferred over, but I was to 'give her a couple hours' and call back about 5 PM today. She did say they could mirror my account exactly otherwise, so I gave her the order to do so, and she said it would take place by November 14. I guess we will see how this all works out during the next week. I had _thought_ one of the terms of AT&T buying out BellSouth was that they were required to continue showing mercy on the little guys still out there; I guess that I was mistaken on that. If someone comes along who tells me I must take SBC/AT&T for phone service or do without, then I will switch back to them, but not until. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:10:15 -0600 From: CMS Magazine Subject: Communication Breakdown Betwen Telcos and Customers CNS Magazine, 11/6/2006 Communication breakdown exists between telcos and customers, says Analysys Customers are baffled by unclear bills and as a result telecoms companies risk lower revenues and increased churn, according to a new report, The Next-Generation Bill: Commercial and Technical Strategies, published by Analysys, a telecom research firm based in the U.K. The report argues that there is a gap between what telecoms companies believe customers value and what customers actually value. Service providers put huge amounts of effort into developing new services and competing with each other on price, but much less into ensuring that bills are clear. "What we are hearing repeatedly is that residential and business customers are increasingly frustrated by bills that make no sense," says Teresa Cottam, the report's author. "Marketing strategies are falling at the first hurdle: people are so worried about the cost of new services that they don't even try them. They dread receiving their bills because they are unpredictable, and become frustrated because they don't know how to change matters." The report argues that the bill is a unique opportunity for telecoms companies to communicate with customers and offers several commercial opportunities. "To deliver the optimal next-generation bill, service providers need to shake off outdated assumptions about their customers and gain a clearer understanding of their needs," Cottam says. "If they do not change, powerful competitors from outside the telecoms industry are waiting in the wings to show them how." Copyright 2006 Business Information 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:49:36 -0600 From: Eric Auchard Subject: Skype Tests New Features By Eric Auchard Web telephone-calling company Skype on Wednesday unveiled new software with automatic click-to-call features designed to make shopping easier and that also encourages users to join group conversations. Skype Chief Executive Niklas Zennstrom said in an interview that features in the new Skype 3.0 -- available in a public test version starting on Wednesday -- can help the company move beyond its dependence on communications revenue. The company has said it expects $195 million in revenue, up 225 percent from $60 million it took in 2005. "You are also going to see new services which are more targeted to e-commerce," Zennstrom said. Skype-calling software allows users to place free phone calls to other Skype users on computers. It also offers cut-rate prices for calls to conventional landline or mobile phone users from either computers or a new generation of Skype-ready phones now available worldwide. Click-to-call allows calls to be to be placed the moment a Skype user clicks on a phone number listed on any Web page. The promise of such features for use in Web-based customer service or closing sales was a big selling point that online auctioneer eBay Inc. had highlighted when it acquired Skype a year ago in a deal worth more than $4 billion. Skype 3.0 automates this process by allowing users with only one click to make ordinary phone calls from Web pages. FREE CALLS "Our long-term goal is to have much more balance between e-commerce and telecommunications revenues," he told Reuters. Speaking to an audience of Internet industry insiders at the annual Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Zennstrom reiterated that Skype must move to replace communication revenue as phone calls eventually become free. Two significant partnerships should help drive Skype business in 2007: Skype's parent eBay has struck partnerships with Yahoo Inc. in the United States and with Google Inc. outside U.S. territory. "There are other e-commerce services that I cannot talk about today that we are working on as well," he said. Skype 3.0 software is designed to run on Microsoft Corp. Windows-based computers. Another feature allows users to set up text-based chats with up to 100 Web users, whether Skype users or not. This text chat feature complements an earlier group audio feature called Skypecast, which allows live, moderated audio conversations with up to 100 participants. "When Skype started out, people communicated with people who knew each other already, one-to-one," Zennstrom said. "Now you can host a public conversation on any topic." The public chat feature, which can be initiated and moderated by any Skype user to control who else takes part, also can be embedded into blogs or Web pages to encourage such conversations to take place across the Web, Zennstrom said. Skype had 136 million users registered users at the end of the September, up 23 million in the three months from June. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: beedude@gmail.com Subject: Verizon FIOS Wiring Date: 9 Nov 2006 10:31:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have question about the wiring for FIOS TV. I assume at some point they go from fiber to coax. Where is that transition done? Is it at the set top box (MDVR)? How do the remote set top boxes talk to the MDVR ... through the coax? Is it "star" wiring and do they use coax splitters? Where is the head of the coax (input end). -d ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 12:56:38 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Cisco Profits Beat Expectations USTelecom dailyLead November 9, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eNxAfDtusXfQkmCibuddsMTj TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Cisco profits beat expectations BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Telstra fires up ADSL2+ network * Motorola looks to maintain Razr's edge in Q4 * BT, Cablevision, Deutsche Telekom, DirecTV, Iowa Telecom report earnings * Windstream adds DSL subs, targets broadband and TV as growth areas USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Take a Stephen Shepard Crash Course in WiMAX, IMS, VoIP and Telecom TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * MTV's playing games for Sony, Nintendo * Skype 3.0 beta goes live REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Analysis: Tech outlook in new Congress Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eNxAfDtusXfQkmCibuddsMTj ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 12:50:37 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Vodafone Reveals Details of U.K. Broadband Strategy USTelecom dailyLead November 10, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eOgUfDtusXfTgpCibuddhqve TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Vodafone reveals details of U.K. broadband strategy BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Analyst doubts Comcast will bid for Sprint Nextel * Analysis: The real plan at Google * Nokia CEO touts China's massive potential * Data growth impressive, but questions remain * Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-shing to buy 12% PCCW stake USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * WiMAX -- The Road to SuccessTuesday, Nov. 14, 1:00 p.m. (ET) TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * TBS selects new encoders to allow IPTV * Paris tunnels its way to fiber-optic growth VOIP DOWNLOAD * Yahoo!, Linksys roll out VoIP phone REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Denver-area cities forge ahead with Wi-Fi project * Injuries from PDA overuse could result in lawsuits Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eOgUfDtusXfTgpCibuddhqve ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #554, November 10, 2006 Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:42:53 -0500 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 554: November 10, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca/home/Home_Business.page ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.ca/communications/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** SHAW BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: www.shawbusinesssolutions.ca ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Entwistle: No Conversion Without Exemption ** TWU President Reinstated by CLC ** Newfoundland to Fund Fibre Link ** CRTC to Review Essential & Wholesale Services ** Competition Bureau Proposes Telecom Approach ** Videotron Bundles Cable Phones and Wireless ** Dell to Double Ottawa Call Centre ** OSC Investigates RIM Stock Options ** MTS Doubles the Speed of Light ** Most Telecom Providers to Pay CRTC Fees ** Winback Prohibition Remains at Three Months ** Europeans Want Roaming Fees Controlled ** Nortel Ethics Officer Resigns ** 68% Think Bundles Favour Suppliers ** MTS Revenue Down 6% ** Videotron Sales, Operating Income Soar ** Nortel Sales Up 17%, Loss Reduced ** Cisco Profit Up 25% ENTWISTLE -- NO CONVERSION WITHOUT EXEMPTION: Telus President/CEO Darren Entwistle told reporters this week that the company will not proceed with plans to become an income trust unless Ottawa gives it the same exemption from taxes that has been promised for existing trusts. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has said repeatedly that the exemption applies only to trusts that were already trading on October 31, which excludes Telus. (See Telecom Update #553) TWU PRESIDENT REINSTATED BY CLC: An ombudsperson appointed by the Canadian Labour Congress has ruled that the Telecommunications Workers Union violated its own constitution when it removed President Bruce Bell from office in August (see Telecom Update #541). His ruling instructs the TWU to reinstate Bell and pay his back salary. NEWFOUNDLAND TO FUND FIBRE LINK: The Newfoundland and Labrador government has agreed to pay $15 million to help fund a new fibre optic link to Nova Scotia, planned by Rogers Communications, Allstream, and Persona Communications. Total cost of the project is estimated at $82 million. (See Telecom Update #552) CRTC TO REVIEW ESSENTIAL & WHOLESALE SERVICES: CRTC Telecom Public Notice 2006-14 opens a proceeding to consider redefining "essential services," and to review the classifications and pricing principles for all wholesale services provided by telcos, cablecos, and CLECs to each other. To participate, notify the Commission by January 2, 2007. ** The proceeding will include an oral hearing in October, 2007. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2006/pt2006-14.htm COMPETITION BUREAU PROPOSES TELECOM APPROACH: The Competition Bureau has outlined the approach it proposes to use in reviewing complaints of anti-competitive behaviour in deregulated telecommunications markets. The Bureau invites comments on its draft bulletin by December 29, 2006. http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/internet/index.cfm?itemID=3D2195&lg VIDEOTRON BUNDLES CABLE PHONES AND WIRELESS: Videotron's new Duophone package provides cable telephone service and wireless service including 300 anytime minutes, for $49.95/month. The package includes unlimited local calls to other users of Videotron wireless service, and unlimited LD in Quebec between users of Videotron cable phone service. DELL TO DOUBLE OTTAWA CALL CENTRE: Dell Inc. says that over the next few years it will "nearly double" the size of its Ottawa Customer Contact Centre, which supports customers in the U.S. and Canada. The Centre currently employs about 1,200 people; a new three-story facility is scheduled for completion in September 2007. OSC INVESTIGATES RIM STOCK OPTIONS: The Ontario Securities Commission says it is reviewing Research In Motion's practice of awarding stock options. The investigation is separate from a previously announced internal review by RIM. (See Telecom Update #548) ** 66 RIM executives and employees are currently banned from trading the company's stock, because the company has not yet filed its most recent quarterly results. MTS DOUBLES THE SPEED OF LIGHT: Einstein said it wasn't possible, but ... Manitoba Tel has doubled the download speed for its $26.95/month High Speed Internet Light service to 256 Kbps. All existing customers are being upgraded. MOST TELECOM PROVIDERS TO PAY CRTC FEES: The CRTC believes that its operating costs should be paid by all telecommunications service providers with more than $10 million in Canadian telecom revenues, not only by carriers that file tariffs, as is now the case. The change will require Treasury Board approval and must be published in the Canada Gazette for public comment. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-71.htm WINBACK PROHIBITION REMAINS AT THREE MONTHS: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-72 denies Primus's application to require incumbent telcos to wait 12 months before attempting to win back local phone customers from competitors, rather than three months as set in April 2006. (See Telecom Update #533) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-72.htm EUROPEANS WANT ROAMING FEES CONTROLLED: A survey conducted for the European Commission finds that high roaming charges are the main reason why most Europeans limit their use of mobile phones when traveling outside of their home countries. 70% of respondents want the European Union to implement regulations to ensure "that prices for making and receiving calls on mobile phones when traveling in other EU countries are not a lot higher than those at home." ** The EC's website says that it costs carriers less than 20 cents/minute to support roaming, but consumers are charged an average of 1.15 euros/minute, and up to 3.5 euros/minute in some cases. http://tinyurl.com/y7gncl http://tinyurl.com/yxsspu NORTEL ETHICS OFFICER RESIGNS: Nortel Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer Susan Shepard, appointed in January 2005, has resigned to "pursue other interests." (See Telecom Update #464) 68% THINK BUNDLES FAVOUR SUPPLIERS: According to a survey conducted by Decima Research on behalf of Vonage Canada, 68% of Canadians believe that bundled service packages combining Internet, home phone, mobile, and TV benefit the service providers more than consumers. 66% said that bundles force them to pay for services they don't want or need. MTS REVENUE DOWN 6%: MTS Allstream reports third quarter revenue of $477.9 million, 5.9% less than a year ago. EBITDA edged up 1.1%; net income dropped 10% to $40.5 million. Enterprise sales were unchanged from the previous quarter. Revenue from local service declined 9.4%; from long distance, 15.9%. VIDEOTRON SALES, OPERATING INCOME SOAR: Quebecor says that its cable operations brought in third quarter revenue of $331 million, 22.6% more than last year. Operating income rose 30.4%. Videotron added 60,900 phone lines, about the same as in each of the four previous quarters, to reach a total of 344,000. NORTEL SALES UP 17%, LOSS REDUCED: Nortel Networks reports third quarter revenue of US$2.96 billion, 17.5% higher than a year ago. Enterprise sales rose 14% to $609 million. Gross margin of 38% was down from 39% a year ago. The net loss was reduced to $99 million from $136 million. CEO Mike Zafirovski said the company "should and will be moving faster" to achieve "profitability improvements." CISCO PROFIT UP 25%: Cisco Systems reports net sales of US$8.2 billion for the quarter ended October 28, a 24.9% increase from the same period last year. Scientific Atlanta, which Cisco acquired this year, accounted for a third of the gain. Net income rose 27.5% to $1.6 billion. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There=20 are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2006 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 09, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 11:50:01 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 09, 2006 ******************************** Deutsche Telekom Posts 20.4% Y/Y Fall in Q3 Net Profit on Customer Exodus http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21019?11228 German incumbent Deutsche Telekom posted a 20.4% year-on-year (y/y) fall in its third-quarter net profit to 1.94 billion euro, from 2.44 billion euro in the same period last year, on a 2.8% y/y increase in revenues to 15.48 billion euro, from 15.06 billion euro respectively. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation ... Verizon Launches FiOS and MPLS-Capable VPN WAN for Businesses http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21016?11228 In conjunction with the announcement that Verizon is to launch a new VPN WAN product aimed at business customers, it has been reported that Verizon is to utilise the fibre network currently being deployed mainly for consumer oriented services-FiOS internet and FiOS TV-for the roll-out of new business oriented offerings. The VPN WAN ... BT Says Q2 Profit Rose 28 Percent on Global Services http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21011?11228 LONDON -- British telecommunications company BT Group PLC said Wednesday that fiscal second-quarter profit rose 28 percent as results from the company's global services technology consulting and management unit pushed up earnings. Net income came to 475 million pounds (US$904.7 million; E708.6 million) from 371 million ... Case Study: Telenet's Broadband Service Offering http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21007?11228 Belgium's largest cable and Internet provider enticed subscribers to pay above and beyond their flat-rate charges but at the same time boosted customer satisfaction through personalized, self-managed plans. Telenet-Belgium's largest provider of Internet service and CATV-has a portfolio that includes broadband Internet access, ... Analysis: Telecom Bill Unlikely Under New Congress http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21001?11228 At least one analyst firm believes the Democratic turn in Congress could bring more scrutiny to telecommunications issues, particularly merger activity and possibly spectrum, but it won't bring a major shift in telecommunications policy in general."We believe Democratic victories in the mid-term elections point to more ... C&W: 'The Plan Is Working' http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/20999?11228 Cable Wireless (C&W), releasing financial results for the first half of its fiscal year this morning, says its turnaround plan is working and, indeed, is ahead of schedule. The company took a 65-percent hit to net profits in order to pay for some of the massive layoffs involved in its plan, but it nonetheless handily beat ... Cisco Soars in Q1 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/20996?11228 Cisco Systems Inc. appears to be firing on all cylinders, as the company beat analyst estimates with its first-quarter earnings and claimed solid growth on all fronts. Pro forma earnings per share hit 31 cents, compared with analyst estimates of 29 cents as tallied by Reuters Research . Moreover, for its second quarter, which ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 10, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:55:38 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 10, 2006 ******************************** Vodafone Loses Bid to Acquire Portuguese Fixed-Line Telco http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21042?11228 Vodafone has lost out on a chance to take over Portuguese fixed-line provider, Oni, derailing its ambitions to kick off its fixed-mobile strategy in Portugal. Energias de Portugal (EDP) yesterday opted to sell its fixed-line telecoms unit Oni for 160 million euro (US$206.1 million), to Win Reason SA, a company currently owned by the ... Telefonica to Acquire 8% of PCCW Stake - Report http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21040?11228 Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica is planning to buy a 8% stake in PCCW, as part of a consortium led by financier Francis Leung that has agreed to buy 23% of the Hong Kong fixed-line operator, Dow Jones reports, citing people familiar with the situation. The newspaper also commented that Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, father ... Is Cell Data Revenue Growing Enough? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21036?11228 NEW YORK -- For the billions they've spent to upgrade their wireless networks, cell phone companies are now trumpeting quarter after quarter of strong gains in revenue from services other than phone calls -- from messaging and games to music and video clips, as well as wireless Internet access for laptops. But a closer ... EC, German Regulator To Scrutinize DT's Leased Lines http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21028?11228 The European Commission (EC) and Germany's regulator say they have agreed that the national agency will prepare for what the EC calls a 'deeper analysis of the wholesale leased lines markets' in the country -- an analysis that is widely construe to be onerous for the dominant carrier Deutsche Telekom (DT). A ... WiMax: The Real Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21024?11228 Although widespread enterprise deployments probably won't occur until at least the second half of 2008, CIOs and IT managers 'are kidding themselves if they believe they won't have to address mobile WiMax at some point. That's the conclusion of Mobile WiMax: Who's Doing What, the latest report from ... Alcatel, Lucent Face Security Grilling http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21022?11228 Representatives from Alcatel and Lucent Technologies Inc. have been called to a hearing organized by the House Armed Services Committee to answer questions about the national security implications of their proposed merger. The hearing, organized by the Committee's chairman, Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, and ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V25 #385 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Nov 12 01:47:15 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B7B962254; Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:47:14 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #386 Message-Id: <20061112064714.B7B962254@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:47:14 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:50:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 386 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson For Veterans Day: Remembering Korean War Dead (Jamie Stengle, AP) Google Faces Legal Challenges Over Video Service (Eric Auchard, Reuters) Customers to Shop by Image on Web Site (Asssociated Press News Wire) Re: Prarie Stream Out of Business (Mike Sandman) Re: Verizon FIOS Wiring (John Dearing) From Archives: Nipper, the RCA Dog (TELECOM Digest Editor) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:52:16 -0600 From: Jamie Stengle, AP Subject: For Veterans Day: Remembering Korean War Dead Korean War dead memorialized on the Web By JAMIE STENGLE, Associated Press Writer The message was simple: Write a letter to someone lost in the Korean War. Within a day, responses started pouring in for the latest effort by brothers Hal and Ted Barker to remember the war their father didn't like to discuss. In the three weeks since their plea went out, more than 500 letters and e-mails have arrived -- from daughters who lost their fathers to veterans who lost friends to schoolchildren thanking those who died for their freedom. "It's been a catharsis for a lot of people," said Hal Barker, 59. "They write a letter telling the person who was lost how their life turned out." It's been 11 years since the Barkers, inspired by their father's reticence, started the Korean War Project, an online memory bank for the 1950s conflict that claimed about 36,500 U.S. lives. They have helped comrades reconnect and tried to get relatives of the missing to submit DNA to the U.S. government to help with identification. The brothers have long struggled for funding to maintain the site, and they said recently they are about to give up. That prompted Hal Barker to ask those on their e-mail list -- 44,000 strong -- to send "Letters to the Lost." It was an idea that resonated with others. "It's a stack that's 18 inches high now," Hal Barker said. The letters appear on the project's Web site. Janis Curran said it was difficult to write to her father, who went missing on May 18, 1951. "I tried it so many times, and I kept getting bogged down because I wanted to say so much," said Curran, 59, of Diamond Bar, Calif. "It was one of the most difficult things I had to do." Curran met the Barkers when they helped her find out more information about her father, Lt. Charles Garrison, a Navy pilot whose plane was shot up, forcing him to bail out. "We have missed you every single day that you have been gone, over 55 years now," she wrote. "Some days are harder than others, especially the happiest days like weddings, and the births of your grandchildren and great grandchildren, even one great-great grandchild. I wish you could have known them." Mark Hartford, 58, of Columbus, Ohio, wrote to the 19 people who died during the 13 months he was stationed along the Demilitarized Zone, which separates North and South Korea. "I was in the zone the nights you were attacked and killed. I was in the zone during the days you were ambushed and killed," wrote Hartford, who served in the zone about 14 years after the war. "I've carried the names of 19 teenage soldiers in my heart for 40 years now," Hartford said Thursday from Washington, where he is lobbying to get a plaque placed near the Korean War Veterans Memorial to commemorate the soldiers who served in the Demilitarized Zone after the war. Hartford planned to go to the memorial Saturday for a ceremony to honor those who served in the zone. On the Net: Korean War Project: http://www.koreanwar.org Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:47:00 -0600 From: Eric Auchard Subject: Google Faces Legal Challenges Over Video Service By Eric Auchard Google Inc.'s video service faces at least one copyright infringement lawsuit, the company confirmed on Friday, and the Web search leader faces a separate subpoena tied to the service. Copyright infringement has become a hot topic as pirated video from TV, films and music videos has proliferated across the Web. Google runs its own service known as Google Video and last month agreed to buy video site YouTube for $1.65 billion. Investors are concerned that Google could be financially liable for videos appearing on sites it runs, while the company has said it did not face financial recriminations if it acts quickly to take down copyrighted material once alerted to it. A report on the Online Media Daily site said the lawsuit, which was filed in France, is seeking 150,000 euros ($193,000). It is related to a documentary video that appeared on Google Video, the media industry site said. "This is a small lawsuit over a single video that appeared briefly," Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes said in a statement. "We have procedures in place that allow copyright owners to tell us if their content is placed on Google Video without authorization. When we receive appropriate notice, we quickly remove the content from Google Video," he said. The lawsuit came to light on Wednesday in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in which Google listed Google Video among a number of businesses that were subject to legal action. It gave no details in the quarterly report. The Google spokesman declined to confirm further details of the suit. Separately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a technology rights advocacy group, said subpoenas had been sent to Google Video, YouTube and a third video site, seeking to identify who posted a controversial documentary to the Web. The subpoena involved a documentary film that aired on French TV in 2004 that was critical of Landmark Education, also known as the Landmark Forum, or simply "The Forum," according to a statement on the EFF's site. EFF spokeswoman Rebecca Jeschke said she was unaware of any tie between the Google Video lawsuit and the subpoena. Her organization is siding with Google Video, YouTube and the Internet Archive in seeking to quash the subpoena. Google declined to comment on whether there was any connection. The film, entitled Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous (Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus), was produced by a French TV news program, Pis Conviction. It features hidden camera footage shot inside a Landmark Forum event in France and a panel discussion on whether or not the organization is a "cult." The video was posted on Google Video, YouTube and the Internet Archive, among other Web locations. Landmark's subpoenas seek to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force Google Video and others to identify who posted the film. Landmark, which was founded in 1991, is a descendant of the 1970s motivational guru Werner Erhard's EST training seminars. Landmark describes itself as an organization devoted to personal and organizational effectiveness. More than 850,000 people had participated in its programs in more than 20 countries, according a statement by the company in late 2005. Calls to Landmark's corporate office and general counsel in San Francisco as well as a spokeswoman in New York were not returned. ($1 = 0.779 euros) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:49:04 -0600 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Customers to Shop by Image on Web Site So you want those sleek pair of black boots worn by supermodel Tyra Banks or the bling bling sported by Paris Hilton? This holiday season, customers can get their chance with a new Web site called Like.com that bills itself as the first visual search engine, allowing consumers to search for items by appearance instead of just text and then purchase similar versions -- at all price points -- from 200 merchants' Web sites. The site, operated by San Mateo, Calif.-based Riya, an expert in visual computing, allows customers to click on images of celebrities wearing accessories or on pictures of handbags, jewelry, shoes and watches. In a few weeks, the site will add clothing, according to Riya's CEO and co-founder Munjal Shah. Eventually, customers will be able to download their own images onto the site. Shah said that the site features about two million different products from such merchants as http://zappos.com and http://landsend.com, and the company is adding 30,000 different products a day. http://Like.com uses face recognition technology; it looks inside a photo and creates a digital signature that describes the photo's content and enables a more accurate search for similar looking items. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 09:38:25 -0600 From: Mike Sandman Subject: Re: Prairie Stream Out of Business That's a terrible story about Prairie Stream. While it's a real blow to lose phone and broadband service for Prairie Stream subscribers, it shouldn't be a surprise. It's going to happen across the country, in a disruption of service for millions of broadband subscribers. The FCC deregulated the DSL business a couple of years ago, telling RBOCs that they don't have to offer any discounts to broadband providers who co-locate their equipment in the CO to provide DSL. That pretty much spelled the end of non-RBOC DSL. If a company is reselling an RBOCs telephone service or they're an agent for an RBOC, how long they can do it is setout in the contract they signed with the RBOC. It's likely the contract can be cancelled by either party, so building a business based on getting a specific deal from the RBOC (or any big company?) seems like a real risk. The biggest threat coming down the line is for customers of Covad, who has definitely built their business on using the phone company's copper to get their broadband and T1 service to the premise. Covad has begun offering dedicated ADSL, which brings ADSL service down a dedicated pair they lease from the RBOC (similar to SDSL or a T1). Is that safer than providing ADSL on top of an RBOC phone line? Probably not much, since if Covad goes away a zillion businesses in the US are in deep stuff -- whether the DSL (or T1) was on top of a phone line or on a dedicated pair. The RBOCs (there really aren't many left, maybe I should just say LEC?) are offering incredible deals on Broadband. So are the cable companies. This isn't because it's got suddenly cheaper for them to provide service. It's because they're looking at the big picture. The big picture for all of us is that if we want to get a fast Internet connection to Google or some other big company's web site, that big company is going to start having to pay a toll to the RBOC for the privilege of letting you or I get to that site (fast). Actually, if the company doesn't pay the toll, the RBOC will still let us get to the site, but it will be slowed to the point that we probably won't want to use that site. The bottom line is that while ten years ago the phone companies were looking like they had a questionable future, today they're poised to make more money than anybody would have ever dreamed of -- assuming that we're all going to want to get to the Internet faster rather than slower (a pretty good assumption?). So the RBOCs give us a great deal on broadband to get us as a customer. They are even providing better DSL service than in the past, although if you need support you should still probably ask your dog first. When the end of net neutrality comes (sooner rather than later), where different services will take different (faster) paths in exchange for a toll, the RBOCs will be able to hold us hostage in exchange for companies like Google paying big bucks to get to us (on the faster path). The same thing will happen with cable companies who will also go for the toll, since that have a ton of subscribers to hold hostage. Ditto Broadband Over Power Line providers (if it ever comes to pass), and even Covad if they're still around. If Google and other companies on the Internet have to pay extra for us to be able to see their content faster, there's no question that we're going to end up paying more than our currently cheap broadband bill, one way or another. So why is all this happening? Only one reason ... the stock market. The guys who run these big companies have a horrible job. They can't just make a reasonable profit. They have to make sure they make significantly more money every quarter than the previous quarter. If they don't do it, the stockholders will demand their head -- and they'll either be headless or be out of a job. The real question is whether subscribers are going to be willing to pay for faster stuff on the Internet. I'm personally not downloading movies or big files, so I literally can't see any difference between my 728K DSL at home, the 1.55 Meg SDSL at the office, or the 3 Meg ADSL at the office. That might be because every DSLAM in the Central Office (where the Internet is connected to your phone line) is fed by one or more T1s to the Internet. If there are 20 customers on that DSLAM all browsing the Internet at the same time, but there's just one T1 on the DSLAM connected to the Internet, even if everybody on that DSLAM had 3 Meg ADSL -- they're limited by the bandwidth the 20 users are simultaneously using off the single 1.55 Meg T1 to the Internet. There's a similar situation with cable broadband -- it slows down when more neighbors are using it. For Google's core business, that's a good story. When I do a search, I send very little information to Google's computers, the computer has to find the results fast, and Google sends me back a page of results -- which I'd get quickly even on a dial-up modem. If Google wants me to download videos and their path to me is only 56K because it's crippled by my Internet provider, they're going to have to pay the toll or I'm going to have to find a different way to get movies (drive to Blockbuster?). For You Tube or any other company offering downloads of short videos or music, the speed of the path to us isn't going to matter much unless they really cripple it down to maybe 128K or even 56K, which could be a possibility. The end result is that big companies are going to get bigger, and small companies are in peril. The real reason? We're all looking for the cheapest deal right now, without thinking about the big picture. Whether the big picture is putting all of our communications eggs in the phone company's basket, buying most of our oil from the Middle East, or buying everything else from China, we're going to pay later for the deal we get today. Mike Sandman [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mike Sandman has been a friend of the Digest for about a decade now, and offers an excellent line of telecom- related peripherals and accessories at his web site http://sandman.com PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Dearing Subject: Re: Verizon FIOS Wiring Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 21:40:15 -0500 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server beedude@gmail.com wrote: > I have question about the wiring for FIOS TV. > I assume at some point they go from fiber to coax. Where is that > transition done? Is it at the set top box (MDVR)? How do the remote > set top boxes talk to the MDVR ... through the coax? Is it "star" > wiring and do they use coax splitters? Where is the head of the coax > (input end). Almost any question you might have about FiOS can be answered at: http://www.fiosfaq.com But to give you some quick answers. The fiber stops at the ONT on the side of your house. Inside the ONT are POTS connections (for dialtone) an Ethernet connection (for Internet) and a coax connection (for TV). The current installations are getting an Actiontec router which supports MoCA. This provides a connection between the Ethernet and coax portions and is what allows the on-demand features and the channel guide to work. See the FAQ for much more detailed information John ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:01:04 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Nipper, the RCA Dog In case you missed or had forgotten about Nipper -- we talked about him in Volume 24 Issues 319 and 320 History of Nipper, RCA Dog -- I am reprinting three delightful accounts of his history. You may choose among them to decide the most accurate version. PAT From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: RCA Victor Nipper Statues Adorn Town Date: 11 Jul 2005 19:21:04 -0700 The Victor phonograph company, which became part of RCA, created a logo "His Master's Voice" showing a dog, with his ear lifted, listening to a phonograph. This logo became very famous, AFAIK remains in use to this day on whoever owns RCA-Victor compact disks label (BMG?) (The modernized RCA logo is owned by Thomson consumer electronics of France). Anyway, the founder of Victor, Eldridge Johnson, was from Moorestown NJ. To celebrate its heritage, many residents have set up statues of Nipper throughout the town this summer. RCA made quite a bit of telephone equipment. Some of it appeared to look exactly like Western Electric products. TV crews wore headsets similar to that of Bell System operators. Others were built for the military and contained security features. RCA also made computers but didn't do well in that and sold that business to Sperry Univac. In the postwar years, RCA gained more and more income from defense and industrial products (ie televsion cameras and transmitters) and less from consumer goods (record players). Eventually all consumer lines were dropped and later TV lines were dropped. Defense systems were a big business. The huge RCA-Victor plant complex was located in Camden NJ. RCA-Victor was sold to GE which it turn split it up and sold off to various parties. Lockheed Martin took over some defense electronics and still runs some plants in the Moorestown area. However, virtually all of the original Camden complex has been torn down. One building is now a fancy apartment house (and has the Nipper logo in stained glass on the roof). One other bldg is in use as a school district office building. Camden as a city has seen much better days. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: RCA Victor Nipper Statues Adorn Town Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 01:47:23 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > The Victor phonograph company, which became part of RCA, created a > logo "His Master's Voice" showing a dog, with his ear lifted, > listening to a phonograph. This logo became very famous, AFAIK > remains in use to this day on whoever owns RCA-Victor compact disks > label (BMG?) Actually, the logo came from an 1898 painting by Francis Barraud first titled "Dog looking at and listening to a phonograph" and later retitled "His Master's Voice". Mr Barraud tried to sell the painting to the Edison Bell Company, the leading manufacturer of phonographs, but they weren't interested. However, the Gramophone Company was interested, providing that he painted out the Edison phonograph and inserted a picture of their model instead. They bought the revised painting and the copyright in 1899. A few years later, they merged with another company to become the Victor Talking Machine Company, and eventually that company was bought by RCA. The dog's name was Nipper, because he bit. Nipper died in 1895, a few years before the painting. http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/event.php?taid=&id=3456893&lid=1 http://www2.danbbs.dk/~erikoest/nipper.htm ------------------------------ Reply-To: alan@burkitt-gray.com From: Alan Burkitt-Gray, London SE3, UK" Subject: Re: RCA Victor Nipper Statues Adorn Town Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:38:14 +0000 hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: "The Victor phonograph company, which became part of RCA, created a logo "His Master's Voice" showing a dog, with his ear lifted, listening to a phonograph." Watch it, Lisa Hancock, get your hands off our dog!!! Nipper was a British dog. painted by a British artist, and first used by a British company -- the Gramophone Company, which later became part of EMI. The logo was then exported around the world. Full story from http://www2.danbbs.dk/~erikoest/nipper.htm ... Nipper the dog was born in Bristol, England in 1884 and so named because of his tendency to nip the backs of visitors' legs. When his first master Mark Barraud died destitute in Bristol in 1887, Nipper was taken to Liverpool in Lancashire, England by Mark's younger brother Francis, a painter. In Liverpool Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording and playing machine and Francis Barraud "often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from". This scene must have been indelibly printed in Barraud's brain, for it was three years after Nipper died that he committed it to canvas. Nipper died in September 1895, having returned from Liverpool to live with Mark Barraud's widow in Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey, England. Though not a thoroughbred, Nipper had plenty of bull terrier in him; he never hesitated to take on another dog in a fight, loved chasing rats and had a fondness for the pheasants in Richmond Park! In 1898 Barraud completed the painting and registered it on 11 February 1899 as "Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph". Barraud then decided to rename the painting "His Master's Voice" and tried to exhibit it at the Royal Academy, but was turned down. He had no more luck trying to offer it for reproduction in magazines. "No one would know what the dog was doing" was given as the reason! Next on Barraud's list was The Edison Bell Company, leading manufacturer of the cylinder phonograph, but again without success. "Dogs don't listen to phonographs," the company said. Barraud was given the advise to repaint the horn from black to gold, as this might better his opportunity for a sale. With this in mind, in the summer of 1899 he visited 31 Maiden Lane, home of the newly formed Gramophone Company, with a photograph of his painting and a request to borrow a brass horn. As Barraud later wrote in an article for The Strand magazine: "The manager, Mr Barry Owen asked me if the picture was for sale and if I could introduce a machine of their own make, a Gramophone, instead of the one in the picture. I replied that the picture was for sale and that I could make the alteration if they would let me have an instrument to paint from." On 15 September 1899, The Gramophone Company sent Barraud a letter making him a formal offer for the picture, which he immediately accepted. He was paid 50 pounds for the painting and a further 50 pounds for the full copyright. The deal was finally confirmed on 4 October 1899 when a representative from The Gramophone Company saw the amended painting for the first time. This painting made its first public appearance on The Gramophone Company's advertising literature in January 1900, and later on some novelty promotional items. However, "His Master's Voice" did not feature on the Company's British letter headings until 1907. The painting and title were finally registered as a trademark in 1910. It was also in 1900 that a seemingly innocuous request led to the eventual disappearance of "His Master's Voice" as a label trademark. Emile Berliner (1851 - 1928), U.S. inventor of the gramophone, born in Germany, asked Barry Owen to assign him the copyright of "His Master's Voice" for America. Owen agreed, as he did in 1904 to a similar request from Japan. Some eighty years later, when the arrival of the Compact Disc prompted record companies to start manufacturing centrally for the world, EMI paid the price of losing its rights in these two vital territories -- and EMI Classics was created as a successor to "His Master's Voice". Meanwhile Francis Barraud spent much of the rest of his working life painting 24 replicas of his original, as commissioned by The Gramophone Company. Following his death in 1924 other artists carried on the tradition until the end of the decade. During its long active life, the "His Master's Voice" label has enjoyed a unique reputation with both the music business and the public. Over the years a healthy market has developed in collecting the vast array of items produced in its image. A Collectors' Guide, originally published in 1984, has been now updated for publication in 1997. Though only used by EMI today as the marketing identity for HMV Shops in the UK and Europe, the "His Master's Voice" trademark is still instantly recognised and sits proudly and firmly in the Top 10 of "Famous Brands of the 20th Century". Nipper Facts: Did you know that ... The "His Master's Voice" painting is now displayed at EMI Music's Gloucester Place headquarters and when viewed in the right light, the original phonograph can still be seen underneath the second layer of paint. When asked if EMI could place a commemorative plaque on the wall of Nipper's house in Bristol, the owner's reply was "Yes, if you buy the house!" Nipper the dog was buried in Kingston upon Thames, in an area that is now the rear car park of Lloyds Bank in Clarence Street. As one enters the bank there is a plaque on the wall stating this. The British naval officer and antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868 - 1912) re-created the famous picture during his exploration to the South Pole (1910 - 1912), capturing one of the huskies looking at the HMV gramophone presented to him by The Gramophone Company. There have been false rumours that the original painting had Nipper sitting on a coffin listening to a recording of his dead master's voice. In 1980 HMV Shops found a Nipper lookalike called Toby for in-store personal appearances but Toby didn't find friends everywhere and in 1984 he was banned from entering Crufts. By 1900, 5,000 printed copies of the painting had been produced and sold to dealers for 2s6d (12.5p) each. The first souvenirs featuring the Dog & Trumpet were a "handsome paperweight -- an exact reproduction in bronze with onyx mount of our well-known picture His Master's Voice" (2s6d/12.5p) and "a handsome mahogany stand with fittings all nickelled, for cigars, cigarettes and match and well as a frosted crystal ash disc. The whole is surmounted with well finished group, representing the well-known subject His Master's Voice." (10s/50p). In 1900 the German Branch of The Gramophone Company produced a mutoscope film of a Nipper lookalike. The drum of this film remains in the EMI Music Archives. Alan Burkitt-Gray Editor, Global Telecoms Business aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #386 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 13 15:29:19 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 04D652279; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:29:18 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #387 Message-Id: <20061113202918.04D652279@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:29:18 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 387 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Motorola Putting Qualcomm Chips in High Speed Phones (Reuters News Wire) Lycos Seeks Rebirth as a 'Virtual Living Room' (Kenneth Li) Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching (Lee Hudson, MSNBC) Deutsche Telekom CEO Resigns (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 13 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:20:14 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Motorola Putting Qualcomm Chips in High Speed Phones Motorola Inc., the world's second-biggest cellphone maker, plans to use Qualcomm Inc.'s chips in future high-speed wireless handsets the companies said on Monday. Qualcomm shares rose more than 3 percent after the news, which expands its share of the market for chips based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) high-speed wireless technology that operators in Europe and other parts of the world are using to deliver everything from Internet and video to music and game downloading to cellphones. Qualcomm, the main supplier of chips based on CDMA, the most popular wireless standard in the United States, has also been working to build a business in UMTS chips, where it trails market leader Texas Instruments Inc. Qualcomm said it had incorporated the Motorola pact "as much as it could" into the forward looking guidance it gave with its recent quarterly report. A Qualcomm executive said the agreement was "largely a 2008 and beyond opportunity," during a Webcast of a meeting for analysts in London. "For Qualcomm, the benefit is clear to us," Prudential analyst Inder Singh said in a research note. "The company strengthens its relationship with the No. 2 mobile handset vendor, and it adds to the UMTS growth potential." Singh noted that Motorola's share of the UMTS market is currently less than 10 percent but said he expects that to improve over the next year. Qualcomm shares were up $1.29, or 3.7 percent, at $36.53 in morning trade on Nasdaq. The companies gave no details on the value of the pact. Motorola already uses Qualcomm's chipsets for CDMA. Freescale Semiconductor Inc, a spin-off from Motorola which has agreed to be bought by private investors, has been its main chip supplier to date but analysts had long speculated about a UMTS deal between Motorola and Qualcomm. Freescale shares were up 1 cent at $39.69 on the New York Stock Exchange. Texas Instruments shares were up 37 cents at $29.11 also on the NYSE. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more tech news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:24:34 -0600 From: Kenneth Li Subject: Lycos Seeks Rebirth as a 'Virtual Living Room' Lycos Inc., a U.S. Internet portal that survived the bursting of the late 1990s dot-com bubble, plans to resurrect itself as a teen broadband video channel with a built-in text chat room. Having missed much of the explosive growth of its rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Lycos, now part of the second largest Korean Internet portal Daum Communications Corp. will launch a high-speed Internet video channel this week and let viewers watch movies simultaneously across the Internet and discuss them. The service, called Lycos Cinema http://cinema.lycos.com/ aims to combine two tenets of new Internet businesses -- online video and social networking, embodied by popular sites YouTube Inc. and News Corp.'s MySpace social network. The ability to upload your own videos will come as early as December or early next year, Lycos Chief Operating Officer Brian Kalinowski told Reuters in an interview on Friday. "The technology we've created allows for the virtual living room," Kalinowski said. Lycos said it is using proprietary technology to enable viewers to watch synchronized videos on the Web. The company compared its ability to offer such a service with massive, never-ending online games such as Warcraft and Second Life, which host hundreds of thousands of players. Lycos users will be able to watch films and create public chatrooms to invite other potential viewers. Viewers in any one particular viewing room can type comments on the window, while watching the movies that are streamed at the same time. Kalinowski said its service differs from others as it offers feature length films, unlike YouTube, which limits uploaded videos to about 10 minutes. But he is the first to admit that the roster of films at launch leaves much to be desired. Relatively unknown films including "Legit," "Munich Mambo," and "Triple Threat," are among the 500 titles available at launch. Kalinowski said it has licensed about 1,000 titles and is in negotiations to obtain 3,000 more. Lycos also plans to launch an online video service featuring television programming and another service that lets users rent or buy obscure films. LICENSING BUSINESS One analyst who viewed the pre-launch service said Lycos may have more success courting other businesses to use the company's technology. "They're trying to position this not just as a portal, but (a service for) potential partners who might be interested in licensing their platforms," Parks Associates analyst Michael Cai said. "Content might not be the most important." Kalinowski said it is working with a major music label to launch a new artist on the service. Users will be able to chat with the artists and watch the video at the same time. He declined to name the company. Cai said such a service could be interesting to an online dating service such as Match.com, which could let its users go on virtual movie dates before meeting in person. "We put together a video player, tied in with a chat and we're using what Barry Diller (IAC/InterActiveCorp CEO) calls 'hybrid content."' Kalinowski said. "We have text, multimedia playing and real time chat." Kalinowski's reference to Diller is ironic. Diller's company attempted to buy a majority stake in Lycos at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999 for an estimated $4 billion. But investors rejected the deal. It was purchased for $12.5 billion by Terra Networks a year later, and sold to Korea's Daum for about $95 million in 2004. "This is an effort to become cool again, in the Web 2.0 era," Cai said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:00:49 -0600 From: Lee Hudson, MSNBC Subject: Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching Cell Phones: Viruses Are Catching Newsweek Nov. 20, 2006 issue - Trojan horses, worms and other nasty viruses have gone wireless and could be targeting your cell phone. CNET.com called 2006 "the year of mobile malware," and software experts say the number of known viruses has more than doubled since January. Phone bugs infect your handset, then multiply via text or picture messages sent to your contacts. Your phone might still function, but all those texts can spike your bill and clog the network. Phone companies and service providers are scrambling to block mobile malware. Jan Volzke, an executive at McAfee, says some mobile-phone companies now implant virus protection directly in handsets—but adds that the vast majority of users remain vulnerable. Some 30 million devices are protected, he says, but there are 2.6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide. No stand-alone antivirus software is currently available to consumers. Experts say the most important protection may be caution -- not opening odd-looking text messages, for starters. But most people remain unaware there's a threat. "Anything that abuses this naivete could really hit big time," says Volzke. Lee Hudson URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15674988/site/newsweek/ Copyright 2006 MSNBC.com 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 For more news and headlines, please to to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:03:47 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Deutsche Telekom CEO Resigns USTelecom dailyLead November 13, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eOskfDtusXfWoDCibuddvBIp TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Deutsche Telekom CEO resigns BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Telefonica, two foundations to acquire stake in PCCW * Verizon plans TV ad-sales division * Motorola to acquire Good Technology * Wall Street looks closer at Comcast-Sprint merger speculation * Chinese distributor to buy $1.6B worth of Motorola phones USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * WiMAX -- The Road to SuccessTomorrow, Nov. 14, 1:00 p.m. (ET) HOT TOPICS * Cingular 8525 about to hit shelves * Verizon in talks with YouTube * Telecoms, cable operators turning to video clips * Injuries from PDA overuse could result in lawsuits * Skype sets sights on enterprise customers TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * LX.TV goes stylish and narrow to find broadband success * Report: Personalization to become hallmark of mobile TV REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * 'Tis the season for retrans fights Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eOskfDtusXfWoDCibuddvBIp ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 13, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:00:35 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 13, 2006 ******************************** Qualcomm and Motorola Extend Collaboration to UMTS Handsets http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21071?11228 Motorola has announced that it is to extend the existing collaborative agreement with Qualcomm to include Qualcomm's mobile station modem (MSM) chipsets in Motorola's UMTS handsets. The MSM range comes in a variety of formats including value, multimedia, enhanced multimedia, and convergence. Many MSM chipsets include integral ... Deutsche Telekom Names Obermann as New CEO, Shares Rise http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21066?11228 FRANKFURT, Germany -- Deutsche Telekom AG named Rene Obermann, the head of the companys T-Mobile wireless division, as its new chief executive on Monday. Europe's biggest telecommunications company by sales announced the decision following a meeting of its supervisory board and after CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke tendered his ... UK Telecom Company Seeks Indian Government Nod for National, International Phone Services http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21063?11228 NEW DELHI -- British telecommunications company BT Group PLC said Monday it has applied for licenses to offer national and international long distance services in India. BT also announced that it has formed a joint venture with India's Jubilant Enpro Ltd. to offer these services in the country. BT will own 74 percent stake ... Spain's Telefonica Joins Tycoon in Buying Controlling Stake in Hong Kong's PCCW Ltd http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21060?11228 HONG KONG -- Spanish telecom giant Telefonica SA and two charitable foundations run by tycoon Li Ka-shing will join another Hong Kong businessman in buying a controlling 22.7 percent stake in local phone operator PCCW Ltd., the parties said. Telefonica will purchase an 8 percent stake in PCCW, while Li's two charitable ... TI Aims to Make Multimedia Phones Cheaper http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21057?11228 Texas Instruments (TI) took the wraps off of its 'eCost' single-chip platform. The chipmaker believes the solution will help make the development of multimedia-rich wireless phones more affordable. The single-chip solution is geared toward emerging markets and helping handset manufacturers deliver low-cost multimedia ... Vodafone Unveils Its U.K. Broadband Play http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21054?11228 Wireless giant Vodafone late last week took the wraps off its coming assault on the British broadband market, outlining a relatively inexpensive service bundle that encompasses both voice and data. Vodafone isn't playing the 'free' broadband game but not to fear -- it instead threw in a few different gimmicks, ... Motorola Gets Good http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21051?11228 Dramatically recasting the fiercely competitive wireless messaging sector, the acquisition of privately held Good Technology Inc. today by Motorola Inc. represents arguably the biggest competitive threat yet to the dominant BlackBerry mobile email device -- and a potential game-ender for Treo-maker Palm Inc. , whose continued ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #387 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Nov 14 23:19:10 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id AF77E2291; Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:19:10 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #388 Message-Id: <20061115041910.AF77E2291@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:19:10 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:20:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 388 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Getting a Handle on Internet Crime (Paul Horn) Google Sends a Virus to 50,000 Users (David Garrett) BT Plans Major India Push, Sets Goal of $250M (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 14 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching (Linc Madison) Re: Lycos Seeks Rebirth as a 'Virtual Living Room' (Linc Madison) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:48:04 -0600 From: Paul Horn Subject: Getting a Handle on Internet Crime By Paul Horn Policy is not purely a go-it-alone concept, especially in our increasingly interconnected online world. A group of more than 40 organizations, including American Express, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and IBM, has formed the Data Governance Council. This global effort is aimed at going beyond traditional approaches to security, privacy, compliance, and operational-risk policy, in an effort to promote a more complete approach to data governance. Last year for the first time, proceeds from cyber crime were greater than proceeds from the sale of illegal drugs, according to recent comments by Valerie McNiven, an adviser to the U.S. Treasury Dept. "Cyber crime is moving at such a high speed that law enforcement cannot catch up with it," she says. The profile of the typical cyber criminal is changing fast, too. If you think that's a lone hacker sitting in a college dorm or a basement recreation room, think again. Cyber crime is rapidly evolving from the domain of misguided pranksters, to elaborate, profit-driven schemes involving organized-crime syndicates that may be based around the block, or halfway around the world. It's estimated that 85% of malware today is created with profit in mind. The sobering corollary to that statistic: only 5% of cyber criminals are caught and prosecuted. Just as crime will prevent people from moving into a neighborhood, so also will cyber crime make people reluctant to enter and trust the electronic world. This will hinder interchange between people, businesses, and governments, impacting everything from education to commerce. Inside the Mind So, if cyber criminals are more organized today than ever before, our response to them must also take on new structure and focus. Individuals, organizations, law enforcement, and info-tech solutions providers must all join to take on the evolving challenge of cyber crime. Specifically, new strategies and solutions are needed in three key areas -- people, policies, and technology. Let's start with the people factor. One key to thwarting cyber criminals: figure out what makes them tick. In the mid-1990s, high-tech companies realized that a key step to improving the security and privacy of a business' IT infrastructure was to try to break into it. This resulted in a new job category: "the ethical hacker." These are highly trustworthy individuals and teams who understand how malicious hackers work and who use their skills to detect vulnera- bilities and devise ways to mitigate, or even eliminate, security weaknesses. And it's done all in cooperation with clients or law enforcement. Look in the Mirror In the early days of ethical hacking, these professionals were able to successfully break into their targets 80% of the time. It's unfortunate that this rate of success has not notably decreased, a sign that today's systems remain vulnerable as hackers continue to adapt to new security measures. However, the lessons learned by these early ethical hackers are being incorporated into the practices of modern law enforcement around the world. Just as today's law-enforcement agencies deploy specialized teams in counterterrorism and white-collar crime, cyber-crime expertise has become a requirement as well. The FBI has already identified fighting cyber- and high-technology crimes as No. 3 among its top 10 priorities. Aside from better understanding how criminals are thinking and acting, the "people factor" also means achieving a better understanding of the potential implications of our own behavior. Organizations must look at their security programs, not only at a technical level, but down to the actions of each person and how he or she interacts with the online ecosystem. Behavioral insight will help fight not only intrusions into the network but extrusions in which users may, inadvertently or knowingly, permit data to fall into the wrong hands. Global Campaign Then there's the matter of policy. Security policy deals with the hundreds, even thousands, of laws and regulations with which organizations must comply. Equally important, however, security policy refers to the policies organizations create for themselves, their business partners, and customers: expectations for behaviors and outcomes that an organization has in place to create a secure environment in which to do business. Security policies enable the governance that protects one of the most valuable assets of a company -- its data, relating to both corporate secrets and the private data of its employees and customers. But policy is not purely a go-it-alone concept, especially in our increasingly interconnected online world. A group of more than 40 organizations, including American Express, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and IBM , has formed the Data Governance Council. This global effort is aimed at going beyond traditional approaches to security, privacy, compliance, and operational-risk policy, in an effort to promote a more complete approach to data governance. Data Flood Data governance helps organizations fix decades of indulgent data-collection practices. Companies have more data than they need -- they don't know where it is, what it's worth, who owns it, who maintains it, or what it will cost the organization if it's stolen. They're concerned about governing access to confidential data such as legal contracts, patents, trade secrets, software code, financial data, stock trades, merger-and-acquisition activity, and patient records. The council is working to define technology and policies for helping companies get a grip on the data deluge. Finally, no approach to fighting cyber crimes is complete without careful consideration of technology. No one should underestimate the technical capabilities of today's cyber criminals. So new technology must be developed to go beyond rapid response, to anticipating and heading off new cyber-crime techniques. One approach involves broader use of an established capability: cryptography. Simply defined, cryptography is the process of translating data into a format that can be read only by authorized users. This can be used, for instance, to protect customer information stored on tapes, so it can't be read if the tapes fall into the wrong hands. Strength in Numbers Encryption has been a mainstay of mainframe computing for decades. But today's challenge is how to extend it to every touchpoint on the network. More than half of all corporate data doesn't reside on a server, but on someone's PC, PDA, or cell phone. The economics of protecting data with cryptography must be addressed to keep it cost-effective, wherever that data lives. The use of cryptography is one example of how we in the IT community must also take more seriously the need for "security engineering" in the design and development of our hardware and software systems. You wouldn't want to add air bags to an automobile after you bought it, but too often that's how the IT industry has treated security: as an add-on. Enhanced security capabilities, including ease of use and performance, must be a part of the mindset from the ground up. As a recent report from the Center for Strategic & International Studies stated, cyber crime "is the organized crime of the 21st century." Yet, the bad guys are hardly the only ones to have figured out that there's strength in numbers. By marshalling the collective skills and expertise of individuals and organizations in both the private and public sectors, we can equip the people, implement the policies, and deploy the technologies that will help secure our networked world. Copyright 2006 Business Week Online. Copyright 2006 NewsFactor Network. 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 For more technical news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Just a couple of personal thoughts about 'living in this neighborhood' as Mr. Horn referred to being active on the Internet and dealing with the crime found here: He is correct in saying 'not many people want to live here and deal with the (cyber) crime. The cybercrime rate is getting much, much worse than it used to be in the 1980-90's days -- what is often times referred to as the 'golden age of Usenet'. Although I personally look at Usenet very rarely, I still notice how much of the spam/scam which gets plugged up here in my inbox each day originally came addressed to a 'mailbox' intended to distribute messages to the world via Usenet. And if 'comp-dcom-telecom@moderators.whatever' gets two to three hundred of these things for me to toss out each day, I cannot help but wonder what the various _unmoderated_ newsgroups look like. It must be pretty horrible. Does anyone these days bother with unmoderated newsgroups any longer? I know it is quite rare that any of the web-based discussion groups allow for open posting any longer. They nearly always use at the minimum some form of challenge system and require users to be registered with the webmaster or group leader.I guess lots of users are beginning to grow weary of it all, eh? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:52:59 -0600 From: David Garrett Subject: Google Sends a Virus to 50,000 Users By David Garrett The Kama Sutra worm, also called W32/Kapser.A@mm by some security companies, was sent out by e-mail last Wednesday to some 50,000 users of Google's Video Blog group. Security experts say the worm is not a significant threat to people who have current antivirus updates installed on their computers, given that the Kama Sutra worm has been around for quite some time. Google http://www.newsfactor.com/search.xhtml?query=%22Google Viruses http://www.newsfactor.com/search.xhtml?query=%22Viruses Symantec http://www.newsfactor.com/search.xhtml?query=%22Symantec McAfee http://www.newsfactor.com/search.xhtml?query=%22McAfee Microsoft http://www.newsfactor.com/search.xhtml?query=%22Microsoft On Wednesday, Google gave users something it didn't mean to: a virus. Some 50,000 users of Google's Video Blog group, which updates them about new posts to the blog by e-mail, received a copy of W32/Kapser.A@mm, also known as the Kama Sutra virus. The virus is a worm -- a small program that can replicate itself, in this case by hijacking a user's e-mail system and sending itself to the user's correspondents. The Kama Sutra worm arrives as a pornographic e-mail -- hence its name, a reference to an ancient Sanskrit text on sex believed to be written sometime between the first and sixth centuries A.D. But oddly enough, the Kama Sutra virus -- and not just the ancient book it was named for -- is long in the tooth. The virus was first released in the early part of 2006, meaning that most companies have long since updated their antivirus programs to detect it. Google's Video Blog Group is maintained by Google employees. Precisely how the worm slipped onto their machines is unknown. Danger or Dud? Expert Natalie Lambert said that few companies should be affected by Google's mishap. "Any enterprise worth its salt has been updating its antivirus components," she said. "They do this on a daily basis." But according to Lambert, the picture for consumers was less sanguine. "The problem," she said, "is if you think about who the Google e-mail video group is likely to be, it's a lot of consumers. And consumers are the least likely to update their antivirus signatures." In fact, many consumers don't invest in antivirus programs at all, according to Lambert. Instead, they leave their systems exposed to well-known attacks that can be simply and quickly prevented -- attacks for which a defense was formed months ago. Heal Thyself Even those who do own antivirus programs often fail to update them frequently. Lambert noted that next-gen security products from Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee, and other companies address this problem by looking at new strategies for antivirus protection. Instead of selling users standalone software and expecting them to update it themselves, or even respond to update alerts that software vendors provide, products such as Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare build greater automation -- and thus greater protection -- into their systems. "That's what consumers need," said Lambert. "They need to be handed something that will essentially fix itself." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe some of you have noticed that Grisoft AVG anti-virus is no longer going to have a *free edition* after early in January, 2007. If we want to use it, we will need to pay for it effective after next month. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 12:13:47 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: BT Plans Major India Push, Sets Goal of $250M in Revenues by '09 USTelecom dailyLead November 14, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ePaUfDtusXgbxtCibuddRDOa TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * BT plans major India push, sets goal of $250M in revenues by '09 BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * University picks Alcatel for $300M voice/data network upgrade to replace Cisco * TiVo to add Web-video feature * Motorola snaps up Netopia * Cable companies ready wireless offerings * Canada's TELUS signs deal with content-protection firm * Cingular unveils new smartphone for holiday season * Google CEO: Ads could pay for users' mobile phones * Motorola to use Qualcomm chips in high-speed handsets USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * The USTelecom IMS Implementation Guide TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Satellite firms seek to bridge rural broadband gap * Lycos launches classic-show platform * Kagan sees solid growth potential in VOD REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Telecom reform not on Democratic agenda Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ePaUfDtusXgbxtCibuddRDOa ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 14, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 11:27:52 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 14, 2006 ******************************** Regulator Refuses 3G Licences to Mobile Operators http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21098?11228 Ukraine's National Commission for Communications Regulation (NKRS) has refused to grant 3G licences to the country's four leading mobile operators, according to press reports citing a NKRS statement. Leading operators Kyivstar and Ukrainian Mobile Communications (UMC), as well as smaller players Astelit and Ukrainian RadioSystems ... Process Promises Better Solar Cells http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21090?11228 Solar energy would be just the ticket for cell phone and laptop computers and their batteries, which tend to run out of power at the most inconvenient times. Yet conventional solar technology simply can't deliver enough power in a small enough form factor for practical use. But researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer ... Cingular Deals Blackjack http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21089?11228 Cingular announced today it will start selling what it calls a cross-over HSDPA smartphone, dubbed the Blackjack, which it expects to appeal to both consumers and business users. The Blackjack is made by Samsung and runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0. Kent Mathy, president of the Business Markets Group with Cingular, says the ... BT Strikes Back In U.K. Broadband Battle http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21086?11228 BT this morning outlined plans to slash its wholesale broadband prices by as much as 12.5 percent come May 2007 in a counterstrike against the likes of 'free' broadband provider Carphone Warehouse and new broadband market entrant direct-to-home (DTH) satellite video operator BSkyB, among many others. The price cut, on ... Blue Coat Secures Mobile Devices http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21082?11228 While wide area file service (WAFS) and WAN optimization has been making their way to branch and remote offices over the past few years, the growing legion of mobile workers have, for the most part, been forced to wait. That should change soon, as WAFS/WAN optimization vendors are moving to broaden their target base. Blue Coat today ... Cisco Goes Greenfield http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21080?11228 Founders of Ethernet chip vendor Greenfield Networks are getting a second go-around with Cisco Systems Inc., which announced today it's acquired the startup for an undisclosed sum. Greenfield's four founders hailed from Grand Junction Networks, a 1995 Cisco acquisition. They added a fifth Grand Junctioneer, Bill Rossi, to ... Broadcom's Buffer Problem http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21078?11228 Broadcom Corp. is the latest WiFi vendor to have its security cast into doubt, with the discovery of a potential flaw by one of the researchers that showed off a now-notorious hack against Apple Computer Inc.'s Macbook recently. Jon Jon Ellch, aka Johnny Cache, has now reported a WiFi driver vulnerability to chipmaker ... APAC Smartphone Market Entering Mass Adoption Stage http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21075?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The APAC smartphone market is entering the mass adoption stage, with shipments in 2006 expected to double from 2005, reports In-Stat. In 2006, 18.8 million smartphones will be sold in the APAC region, and that figure is expected to surge to 64.2 million in 2010, the high-tech market research firm says. ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:56:32 -0800 From: Linc Madison In article , Lee Hudson, MSNBC wrote: > Cell Phones: Viruses Are Catching > Newsweek Nov. 20, 2006 issue - Trojan horses, worms and other nasty > viruses have gone wireless and could be targeting your cell phone. > ... Phone companies and service providers are scrambling to block > mobile malware. Jan Volzke, an executive at McAfee, says some > mobile-phone companies now implant virus protection directly in > handsets, but adds that the vast majority of users remain vulnerable. > ... Experts say the most important protection may be caution -- not > opening odd-looking text messages, for starters. But most people > remain unaware there's a threat. "Anything that abuses this naivete > could really hit big time," says Volzke. This story raises a fundamental question for me, akin to the question I asked when the Microsoft Office macro viruses first emerged about 11 or 12 years ago. In that case, the question was why anyone would ever want to be able to silently erase the entire hard disk with an auto-run macro in a Word or Excel document -- why did the macros have unlimited access to all system functions in the first place, when there is no possible benign use for the capability? Why would I want a macro in one document to be able to change _anything_ outside that document? Why on EARTH would I ever *WANT* my cellphone to be programmable via a text message I received? The cellular company has -- or is culpably negligent if it doesn't have -- some other means to send programming updates to my phone. Things like ringtones should be compartmentalized, if not strictly limited to non-executable data. Games and other programs should also have some other point of entry to the absolute exclusion of text messages. No program should ever be able to initiate a message of any kind without specific and explicit confirmation by the user. It's not as if the potential for abuse was unforeseeable. No software is ever perfect, but these products are apparently designed without the slightest attention to basic security issues. It's like worrying about the latch on the gate when there's a fifty-foot [15m] hole in the fence. One of the very first questions in designing the software for a device like this should be, "What programs might the user want to download and why?" That leads into, "How should programs be allowed access into the device?" and "How do we make sure that unauthorized programs don't sneak in?" That's your fence; *then* you can worry about the gate. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom at Linc Mad dot com URL: < http://www.lincmad.com > * North American Area Codes & Splits Read my political blog, "The Third Path" US, California, and Washington State laws apply to LINCMAD.COM e-mail. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Lycos Seeks Rebirth as a 'Virtual Living Room' Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:13:13 -0800 From: Linc Madison Organization: Linc Mad dot com In article , Kenneth Li wrote: > [Lycos] was purchased for $12.5 billion by Terra Networks [in 2000], > and sold to Korea's Daum for about $95 million in 2004. Wow -- that's 0.76 cents on the dollar in about four years. Pretty good return on investment, huh? I can't check out the new "Lycos Cinema," of course, because I use a Mac, besides which I use Firefox. Lycos Cinema only runs on Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom at Linc Mad d0t c0m URL: < http://www.lincmad.com > * North American Area Codes & Splits Read my political blog, "The Third Path" http://LincMad.blogspot.com US, California, and Washington State laws apply to LINCMAD.COM e-mail ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #388 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 15 17:51:44 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2EE162247; Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:51:43 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #389 Message-Id: <20061115225143.2EE162247@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:51:43 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 389 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AOL Upgrades Messenger (reuters@telcom-digest.org) Percent of Rotary Dial Households (jmargolese@gmail.com) AVG Free Edition Will Continue (Herb Oxley) Clearwire to Debut WiMAX in Seattle Area (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 15, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Lycos Seeks Rebirth as a 'Virtual Living Room' (Steven Lichter) Re: Google Sends a Virus to 50,000 Users (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Google Sends a Virus to 50,000 Users (Claude Ortega) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 15:26:38 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: AOL Upgrades Messenger AOL upgrades messenger, integrates social network AOL said on Wednesday it will launch an upgrade to its instant messenger software with new features that let users track some of the online activities of their friends. The debut of AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM 6.0, lets users link to "Really Simple Syndication," or RSS, feeds of their friends that keeps track of friends who upload videos or posts pictures to sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube or Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)'s Flickr. The upgrade, which also provides easier-to-find links to AOL's own take on social networks, popularized by rival service MySpace, comes amid a restructuring of AOL announced this summer. Eyeing the surge in online advertising sales growth, the online unit of the world's biggest media company Time Warner Inc. decided to give away most of its services for free. It continues to operate a dial-up Internet service, but no longer markets the service. Early signs of progress came at the end of the third quarter when it reported a 46 percent growth in online ad revenue. "This version (of AIM), and a lot of what we are doing in AIM Pages, is extending the user-generated communications platform on their terms with what people care about," AOL Vice President Marcien Jenckes said. Other features of the upgrade include the ability to leave messages for friends even if they have logged off and a feature that lets users save text logs of their conversation. AIM users can also add up to 1,000 friends on their buddy list. More than 42 million messaging users are on the AOL Network. Over 30 million of these use AIM. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: jmargolese@gmail.com Subject: Percent of Rotary Dial Households Date: 15 Nov 2006 06:55:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Does anyone have any good (or even not so-good) statistics on how many households, with phone service, in the U.S. still use rotary phones (no touch-tone service) as their primary service? I don't know that any does (or can) track this, but someone must have an estimate from the last few years. Thanks in advance! Joel ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com (Herb Oxley) Subject: AVG Free edition will continue Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:14:18 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe some of you have noticed that > Grisoft AVG anti-virus is no longer going to have a *free edition* > after early in January, 2007. If we want to use it, we will need to > pay for it effective after next month. PAT] I downloaded AVG Free 7.5 last night. You must have gotten the popup from AVG that support for version 7.1 was going to end Jan 2007. The web page the popup takes you doesn't have a link to AVG Free 7.5, just the payware AVG Pro 7.5 . However if you go to http://free.grisoft.com , you'll find a download link for AVG Free 7.5 Cheers ... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:57:59 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Clearwire to Debut WiMAX in Seattle Area USTelecom dailyLead November 15, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ePlMfDtusXgexaCibuddKTMX TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Clearwire to debut WiMAX in Seattle area BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * AT&T service lets user control bandwidth use * Ericsson eyes acquisitions in multimedia * Verizon unveils integrated portal * Vodafone signals interest in buying rival 3 * Cingular to offer wireless banking service * Microsoft to play key role in Portland Wi-Fi rollout * NFL Network sues to get off Comcast's sports tier USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * What you need to know about IPTV TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Microsoft "bets" on Web services development * Teenagers aren't the only ones watching Web video * Social networking goes mobile REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Malaysia plans 2007 WiMAX tender Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ePlMfDtusXgexaCibuddKTMX ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 15, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:05:09 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 15, 2006 ******************************** Telefonica Posts 84.2% Y/Y Jump in Q3 Net Profit, Raises End-2006 Guidance http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21130?11228 Spanish telecoms group Telefonica saw its third-quarter net profit jump by 83.8% y/y to 2.61 billion euro (US$3.34 billion), from 1.42 billion euro in the same period last year, boosted by the 1.84 billion euro sale, in July, of its 60% stake in the directories unit, Telefonica Publicidad Informacion (TPI), to U.K ... Orange Trials FMC Service http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21128?11228 Poland's number-two cellco, Orange-part of France Telecom-backed fixed-line incumbent Telekomunikacja Polska (TP)-is planning to launch a fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) service. The company will start FMC trials at the end of this month. The FMC service will be offered under the Unifon brand. Significance: The move, which ... Tutorial: EAP Methods for 802.11 Wireless LAN Security http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21120?11228 Because they broadcast data on the open airways, wireless networks present unique challenges for authentication mechanisms not encountered on wired networks. This tutorial explores how wireless networks are different from wired networks with regard to authentication and presents the requirements that an authentication method must meet in... TeliaSonera Restructures to Improve Growth http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21117?11228 STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- TeliaSonera AB said Wednesday it will reorganize into four product-based units to tap into growth in mobility and broadband services and achieve annual sales of 100 billion kronor (E11 billion; US$14 billion) in two years. The Nordic region's largest telecommunications operator said the new business ... AT&T Expands Corporate Networking Services to Vietnam in Deal With Local Telecom http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21114?11228 HANOI, Vietnam -- AT&T Inc. said Wednesday it has expanded its global networking services for multinational companies to Vietnam through an agreement with Viettel Corp., a telecommunications company run by the military. The agreement will allow AT&T to use Viettel's domestic network to provide the same level of data ... Vodafone, Yahoo! Unveil Mobile Search Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21111?11228 Vodafone has turned to Yahoo! to launch a new mobile advertising initiative that will deliver savings to Vodafone customers who opt-in to the service. As part of the agreement, Yahoo! has signed on Vodafone's exclusive display advertising partner in the United Kingdom. According to Vodafone, Yahoo! will use the latest ... U.S. Court Shuts Spyware Purveyor http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21107?11228 A federal court yesterday ordered the shutdown of one of those secret 'spyware' activities that now annoy so many Internet users and the development prompted Microsoft -- often grilled about its product line's online security breaches and holes but a collaborator in the government case -- to take its own legal action against ... Note Takers Rejoice http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21104?11228 Israeli startup EPOS Technologies has grabbed $10.5 million in new funding from Intel Capital and domestic VC firms Walden Israel and Jerusalem Venture Partners as it prepares to bring its first wireless digital positioning products to market by the end of the year. The company has developed a pen that can track and transfer ... Motorola Gobbles Up Netopia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21101?11228 Expanding its IPTV product portfolio for telco clients, Motorola Inc. today agreed to acquire Netopia Inc. for $208 million in cash, or $7 per share. The companies hope to close the deal early next year. The announcement sent Netopia shares skyrocketing, up $1.24 (22.1%) to $6.83. Motorola shares were less exuberant, ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. Subject: Re: Lycos Seeks Rebirth as a 'Virtual Living Room' Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 04:29:19 GMT Linc Madison wrote: > In article , Kenneth Li > wrote: >> [Lycos] was purchased for $12.5 billion by Terra Networks [in 2000], >> and sold to Korea's Daum for about $95 million in 2004. > Wow -- that's 0.76 cents on the dollar in about four years. Pretty good > return on investment, huh? > I can't check out the new "Lycos Cinema," of course, because I use a > Mac, besides which I use Firefox. Lycos Cinema only runs on Internet > Explorer 6 or higher. > Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom at Linc Mad d0t c0m > URL: < http://www.lincmad.com > * North American Area Codes & Splits > Read my political blog, "The Third Path" > US, California, and Washington State laws apply to LINCMAD.COM e-mail. That sucks, that type of discrimination leaves a lot of net users out. Most of the streaming radio stations now work with the Mac. Even the Blueroom with AT&T is working on it, but no date as of now. My Palm Cell phone now even works with my Mac on HotSync. The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Google Sends a Virus to 50,000 Users Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 05:51:08 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe some of you have noticed that > Grisoft AVG anti-virus is no longer going to have a *free edition* > after early in January, 2007. If we want to use it, we will need to > pay for it effective after next month. PAT] I think you read their announcement wrong, Pat ... From the Grisoft website at http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 : >> GRISOFT is announcing a new version of the AVG Anti-Virus Free >> Edition. This new 7.5 version with improved performance and full >> compatibility with the latest Windows Vista version is available. >> Users that are using AVG Free 7.1 will be provided with a specific >> dialog, within the next few weeks, with the opportunity to choose the >> right option fulfilling their needs. AVG Free 7.1 version will be >> discontinued on 15th of Jan 2007. So AVG Free 7.1 _is_ being discontinued as of 1/15/2007 -- because it's being replaced by AVG Free 7.5 which is available now :-) Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com What if there were no hypothetical situations? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:00:37 -0600 From: Claude Ortega Subject: Re: Google Sends a Virus to 50,000 Users > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe some of you have noticed that > Grisoft AVG anti-virus is no longer going to have a *free edition* > after early in January, 2007. If we want to use it, we will need to > pay for it effective after next month. PAT] Pat, A followup to my last post. Here is the URL for the freeware version of AVG, with instructions. http://free.grisoft.com/doc/39791 Claude ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #389 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 15 23:22:14 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B9036224D; Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:22:13 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #390 Message-Id: <20061116042213.B9036224D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:22:13 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:25:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 390 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Canada Wants Deregulated Internet Phone Service (Wojtek Dabrowski) Physicist Moots Wireless Electricity (Australian Broadcasting Company) Too Hot to Touch! FCC Now Mum on AT&T/Bell South Merger (CNETNews.com) Re: Google Sends a Virus to 50,000 Users (Rich Greenberg) Re: Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching (Gordon Burditt) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:11:01 -0600 From: Wojtek Dabrowski Subject: Canada Wants Deregulated Internet Phone Service By Wojtek Dabrowski TORONTO, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The Canadian government has told the country's telecoms regulator to keep hands off some types of Internet phone services because it wants to open up further competition in the sector, a move that drew praise from Canada's two biggest phone companies. Industry Minister Maxime Bernier said on Wednesday that the minority Conservative government has called on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to start deregulating Internet telephone services that are considered access independent, or available over any broadband connection. "We firmly believe that eliminating unnecessary economic regulation will stimulate competition in this new and fast-growing market. It will mean lower costs, fewer regulatory proceedings, and more competitive markets," Bernier said in a speech in Toronto. "Barriers to entry in this market are very low. There is no reason to regulate it." Telus Corp. (T.TO), Canada's No. 2 telephone company, does not have a Internet telephone product in the consumer market yet and had delayed launch due to concerns over regulatory disadvantages. "Today's announcement will really encourage companies like ours to bring competing (Internet telephone) services to consumers," said Janet Yale, Telus's executive vice-president of corporate affairs. Telus rose C$1.17, or 2 percent, to C$57.17 on the Toronto Stock Exchange as investors bet the company would soon wade into consumer Internet telephony, also known as Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP. Market heavyweight Bell Canada , which already offers access independent VoIP service, also lauded Bernier's statements. "I thought it was a very encouraging speech, both in the specifics of VoIP but also in the general direction that (Bernier) set out," Bell Canada executive vice-president Lawson Hunter told Reuters. "This is one more step in the necessary reform." Bell Canada stock finished 2 Canadian cents higher at C$27.01. The government is aiming to deregulate access independent VoIP services, which are available on any broadband connection, as opposed to other types of VoIP provided over a managed network. Deregulating all Internet telephone service would be "like deregulating the local telephone market," Bernier told reporters following his speech. In September, the CRTC upheld a previous ruling that allows it to set prices for voice over Internet services. Bell Canada and Telus argued this was unfair because it restricts their ability to compete with cable firms and smaller rivals in the sector. In 2005, the regulator decided Internet phone service should be subject to the same regulatory framework as traditional phone services because of similarities between the services. This meant that generally, large incumbent companies would be subject to regulation, while new-entrant competitors would not. "In a competitive sector, there is no reason to regulate some companies, while others can offer the services they want at the prices they want," Bernier said in his speech. "It is time to have a level playing field from which consumers and small businesses will benefit." Copyright 2006 Reuters. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:05:29 -0600 From: Australian Broadcasting Company Subject: Physicist Moots Wireless Electricity You may one day be able to recharge your laptop or mobile phone without having to plug it into the wall, says a US physicist. But others say there are many hurdles before such transfer of energy means we can say goodbye to wires. Assistant Professor Marin Soljacic, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present his team's work at the American Institute of Physics forum in San Francisco this week. Today's wireless transfer of energy, such as the transfer of light energy from the Sun for solar power or the transfer of microwaves from transmitters for communication, involve relatively low levels of energy. But recharging devices like laptops requires a much higher level of energy. And if this was routinely zapped through the air it could 'fry' any living organisms that get in the way. But Prof Soljacic says he has found a way of transmitting energy so that only the devices that it is recharging will pick it up, so it will not affect humans. Instead of using traditional radiation, he wants to use the part of the electromagnetic field that is 'non-radiative'. He says devices can be tuned to the frequency of this field and thus act as a sink for all the energy the transmitter gives out. Prof Soljacic says this would prevent energy radiating out to areas it does not need to go to, providing an efficient and safe method of wireless energy transfer. "The team calculates that an object the size of a laptop could be recharged within a few metres of the power source," he says. "Placing one source in each room could provide coverage throughout your home." Prof Soljacic also thinks the technology could be used to power freely roaming robots in a factory. Finding a 'magic' frequency -- But Australian physicists, yet to see the full details of Prof Soljacic's work, are sceptical of his claims. They say the challenge is finding a 'magic' frequency that does not also affect living organisms and thus pose possible health risks. "You would be reintroducing all the problems that we went through with mobile phones," says Dr Geoff Anstis of the University of Technology, Sydney, referring to the uncertainty surrounding any long-term health effects of using mobiles. "And it wouldn't be until a couple of decades that you may be happy that there isn't a significant problem." His colleague Professor Geoff Smith agrees and says there are also technical challenges to keeping the devices tuned with the transmitters, thus preventing the general release of stray energy. "I think this is nice physics but there's a way to go before it would be possible," says Prof Smith. He says any changes in the surrounding environment could "de-tune" the system and stop the safe and efficient transfer of power. Electrical engineer Dr Trevor Bird of CSIRO's ICT Centre says attempts so far to develop wireless power transfer have not been very successful. He agrees that safety and technical barriers to wireless power systems are huge and would like further details on Prof Soljacic's proposal. Dr Bird also says that, depending on the frequency of the field, the antenna on the device being recharged may have to be very large. Source: ABC Copyright 2006 ABC 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 For more tech news please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If I understand this correctly, they are saying solar power could be used, but not in sufficient voltage to keep the phone fully charged, etc. Why not provide both types of power inputs to the units; both *wired* electricity (as at present) and solar power. The solar power would provide a nice, slow -- but constant -- source of additional power all day long while the phone was in use or sitting idle. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:17:20 -0600 From: CNETNews.com Subject: Too Hot to Touch? FCC Now Mum on AT&T/Bell South Merger WASHINGTON--A Federal Communications Commission official who may hold the deciding vote on a pending merger between AT&T and BellSouth declined to say Wednesday whether he plans to participate in the process. Analysts scrutinizing the deal's progression have speculated that Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell would recuse himself from the decision on whether to approve the controversial $80 billion deal. McDowell spent seven years as an executive with the trade association Comptel, which lobbies for competitors of the Bell telephone companies, before assuming the FCC post six months ago. But now that the FCC has thrice postponed its vote because the remaining two Democrats and two Republicans are reportedly at an impasse on conditions for the deal, some have said he may be forced to weigh in. Following a luncheon speech at an event hosted here by the Federal Communication Bar Association, McDowell told reporters he had "no news" to report on the deal. The U.S. Department of Justice gave its unconditional blessing to the melding of the telecommunications giants in October, but now the FCC is apparently stalling on the matter, with no date in sight for a final approval or disapproval ... As for how the agency plans to handle the hot button issue of Net neutrality, McDowell also had nothing new to offer Wednesday. Proponents of the concept, which include Google, eBay and a number of consumer advocacy groups, would like to see Congress pass new laws prohibiting network operators from charging Internet content companies extra fees for premium delivery. Telephone and cable companies have said they need the option of using such a business model to recoup investments in new broadband infrastructure. "We're going to collect more data and study the marketplace," he told CNET News.com. Letting the marketplace trump government regulation was a recurrent theme in McDowell's 11-minute speech to representatives from communications companies -- including AT&T and Verizon -- and law practices. Sometimes government must step in to address market failures, he said, but those actions must be "narrowly tailored and sunsetted." McDowell did, however, issue a vague warning to companies contemplating interference with consumers' ability to access and upload content as they please. "Those who act to frustrate this new wave of democracy do so at their own peril," he said. The speech was light-hearted at times -- "fluffy chitchat," as McDowell described it -- as the lawyer-turned-commissioner cracked jokes about regulatory filings that only fellow communications attorneys could appreciate. When asked by an audience member how the FCC's policymaking would be influenced by the new Democratic majority in Congress, he quipped, "I'd written about that in my speech and included a joke that my staff made me take out." When the crowd's laughter died down, the Republican appointee regrouped with a stock answer: "We will continue to march forward, and we'll keep the dialogue going." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is no word yet on exactly how -- if at all -- AT&T is dealing with this matter. I am sure they wish it was over, with a ruling favorable to themselves, but that may not come to pass. It would be a real shame (snicker) if the FCC ruled against it (snicker, guffaw!) and AT&T had to start from scratch. PAT] Copyright 2006 CNETNews.com ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Google Sends a Virus to 50,000 Users Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:53:36 UTC Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Gordon S. Hlavenka wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe some of you have noticed that >> Grisoft AVG anti-virus is no longer going to have a *free edition* >> after early in January, 2007. If we want to use it, we will need to >> pay for it effective after next month. PAT] > I think you read their announcement wrong, Pat ... From the Grisoft > website at http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 : >>> GRISOFT is announcing a new version of the AVG Anti-Virus Free >>> Edition. This new 7.5 version with improved performance and full >>> compatibility with the latest Windows Vista version is available. >>> Users that are using AVG Free 7.1 will be provided with a specific >>> dialog, within the next few weeks, with the opportunity to choose the >>> right option fulfilling their needs. AVG Free 7.1 version will be >>> discontinued on 15th of Jan 2007. > So AVG Free 7.1 _is_ being discontinued as of 1/15/2007 -- because > it's being replaced by AVG Free 7.5 which is available now :-) That's not what they tell you. The nagger screen says no AVG free past Jan 15. I just gave them $29.95. Rich Greenberg N Ft Myers, FL, USA richgr atsign panix.com + 1 239 543 1353 Eastern time. N6LRT I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val, Red, Shasta & Casey (RIP), Red & Zero, Siberians Owner:Chinook-L Retired at the beach Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching Date: 15 Nov 2006 14:37:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Linc Madison wrote: > This story raises a fundamental question for me, akin to the question > I asked when the Microsoft Office macro viruses first emerged about 11 > or 12 years ago. ... These are excellent questions and points and I'd love to know the answers to all of them myself. Recently we had a discussion on this and it was explained that for PCs and the Internet, much of it was legacy protocols and connection methodologies never intended for public use. There was too much of an installed base now to change it. However, that explanation doesn't apply to cell phone macros which is all new technology. As stated, the experience of remote sabotage was well known. My own speculation is that cell phone providers allowed this because (1) they want their phones to be easy yet sophisticated for non-technical users and (2) easy automated features encouarge callers to make use of them consuming toll minutes and feature charges which leads to profits. Let's face, pretty much everything we do in Windows could be done in upgraded DOS, and not that hard with pre-written .BAT files or menu screens. But the old "C:>" and typing in a command with proper syntax and operands terrified people. If we required lay users to go through a step-by-step process to download procs, music, messages, etc., on their cell phones they wouldn't bother and wouldn't like it. Face it, the everyday user _wants_ things to be automated. Thus our dilemma. My cell provider mails me new shortcut services all the time, available for a small fee and airtime. Those small $1 fees can add up. (Should cell phone directory assistance really cost $1.25 per use, plus airtime?) ------------------------------ From: gordonb.qzh9j@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) Subject: Re: Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:24:24 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > This story raises a fundamental question for me, akin to the question > I asked when the Microsoft Office macro viruses first emerged about 11 > or 12 years ago. It now asks about macros every time I open something, and I always disable them. Is there any way now to globally disable macros: don't ask, don't enable, not even on internal parts of Office, or stuff I'm composing, ever again? Or at least not until a full OS reinstall? > Why on EARTH would I ever *WANT* my cellphone to be programmable via a > text message I received? > The cellular company has -- or is culpably > negligent if it doesn't have -- some other means to send programming > updates to my phone. Nextel seemed to use this as a way of updating an address list from a web interface. The guy at my company responsible for updating the corporate list of company phones would push the list out when important changes happened. At least I *was* asked whether to accept it - but it wasn't very verbose about who it came from before I had to decide, and the guy sending them out didn't announce it ahead of time. I do not know whether it was possible to send such a message from outside Nextel to one of their phones. I suspect it was, if you knew how. > Things like ringtones should be compartmentalized, if not strictly > limited to non-executable data. Games and other programs should also > have some other point of entry to the absolute exclusion of text > messages. No program should ever be able to initiate a message of > any kind without specific and explicit confirmation by the user. Agreed. I will note, however, that Outlook allows sending email that can put stuff in other people's calendar when it is opened, and there is no warning that it is such an entry before you open it. I expect soon I will have hourly reminders to "order Natural Male Enhancement" ... Security seems to go out the window in favor of user convenience. I'm surprised there aren't complex passwords, and you are given three multiple-choices for the password, and the correct one is always the middle one. > It's not as if the potential for abuse was unforeseeable. No software > is ever perfect, but these products are apparently designed without > the slightest attention to basic security issues. It's like worrying > about the latch on the gate when there's a fifty-foot [15m] hole in > the fence. One of the 1400-mile holes in the 2100-mile border is the ability to double-click on something from an external source and execute it. I consider that a fundamental mistake for a web browser or email client. Another fundamental mistake is not being able to tell what it is beforehand. > One of the very first questions in designing the software for a device > like this should be, "What programs might the user want to download > and why?" That leads into, "How should programs be allowed access into > the device?" and "How do we make sure that unauthorized programs don't > sneak in?" That's your fence; *then* you can worry about the gate. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #390 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Nov 16 16:05:07 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id D542F2251; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:05:06 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #391 Message-Id: <20061116210506.D542F2251@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:05:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:08:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 391 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Watch TV on Your Cell Phone? Sometime Soon (Bruce Meyerson, AP) Camera Phones Focus on Police Misconduct on Los Angeles (Jill Serjeant) Wikipedia Gets Unblocked in China After Year-Long Ban (Reuters News Wire) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 16, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) NBCU's Falco Named to Head AOL (USTelecom dailyLead) R&D in the ICT / Telecommunication Industry (Thomas) Electrical Grounding (Dan) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 14:06:36 -0600 From: Bruce Meyerson, AP Subject: Watch TV on Your Cell Phone? Sometime Soon By BRUCE MEYERSON, AP Embracing a technology that has unnerved media and telecommunications companies, a major European wireless provider will let customers watch their home cable TV on a cell phone if they also have a device called the Slingbox back at the house. 3 Group will launch the new service in Britain first, starting Dec. 1, followed by three more of its 11 markets in early 2007, the wireless company announced Thursday. Two new handsets running on 3's next-generation wireless network will feature the Sling application, which customers can use to watch any channel available on their cable TV at home. The phones also can be used to control a digital video recorder at home, pausing and rewinding live television, playing previously recorded shows, or setting up the DVR to record a program. The partnership with 3 is a watershed for Sling Media Inc., the first sign of official recognition from the industry "establishment" for a renegade device that the California-based company began selling a year ago. The Slingbox, hooked up simultaneously to a set-top cable box and a broadband connection, can stream live and recorded video over the Internet to any laptop or handheld equipped with SlingPlayer software. The gadget is the latest in a line of devices that have reshaped the way people watch television over the past few decades. Before the VCR, catching a TV show required viewers to conform to a schedule set by networks. More recently, digital video recorders such as the TiVo made it possible to skip commercials and even rewind a live program. Now devices and software like the Sling not only make it possible to watch TV anytime but also anywhere. But much as TV networks and movie companies initially questioned the rights of viewers to record their content on a TiVo, they also have objected to the notion that monthly cable fees paid by subscribers entitle them to view cable programming in more than one location. In the case of TiVo, however, cable companies quickly moved past their objections and began offering DVRs of their own to customers, generating new revenue. Slingbox presents a potential problem not only for the media companies that own the content, but for phone and cable companies worried that streaming video and other high-bandwidth uses may clog their networks — while generating no extra revenue for them. In the United States, for example, Verizon Wireless and other cellular companies put clauses in their contracts restricting the way subscribers can use their wireless Internet connections on phones and laptops. 3, a unit of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., plans to offer Sling access as part of a premium service called X-Services, though usage will not be unlimited. Details of the pricing and additional fees for extra bandwidth use were not immediately available. The British version of the Slingbox sells for 180 pounds ($340). The first two 3 handsets loaded with the SlingPlayer software will be the Nokia N73 and the Sony Ericsson w950i. Prices weren't disclosed. 3 also didn't say where it would offer Sling next. It has upgraded its wireless network with the required broadband technology in Italy, Australia, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Hong Kong, Israel and Ireland. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 14:10:25 -0600 From: Jill Serjeant Subject: Camera Phones Focus on Police Misconduct on Los Angeles By Jill Serjeant One cell phone video shows Los Angeles police beating a man repeatedly in the face. Another shows a handcuffed, homeless man being blasted with pepper spray in the face. A third grainy video has campus police using a Taser stun gun on a student who refused to leave a Los Angeles university library. Once regarded as a toy for rich teens, the ubiquitous camera cell phone is becoming a powerful community tool in the debate about police conduct. Some Los Angeles grass-roots groups are training citizens to use cameras, video cell phones and the speed and Internet sites like YouTube to get their voices, and pictures, heard. "We urge everyone to have a camera on them at all times so if anything happens it can be documented. The concept of patrolling the police is something we are trying to push as a form of direct action," said Sherman Austin, a founder of Cop Watch L.A., which launched its Web site three months ago. The three videos shot on cell phones or small recorders capturing Los Angeles police using apparently excessive force to restrain suspects all surfaced within a week. The images recall the 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King by four police officers, which was caught by on home video by an Argentine plumber. ACTIVISTS' TOOL Fifteen years later, black and Latino activists in tough Los Angeles neighborhoods are leaving nothing to chance. "We have tried civilian review boards, we have tried going to City Hall and going to the police and all we have seen is more brutality," said Austin, 23. "Technology makes it all the easier now. There are little digital cameras you can buy for 20 bucks in a drugstore that take good enough photos in daylight. And then there's the Internet that gets it out there." Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton is investigating the officers' conduct but cautioned against quick conclusions. "I cannot make judgments based solely on videos or portions of videos," Bratton said this week. He contended there is no U.S. government agency that "has more policies, procedures, guidelines and independent oversight with respect to use of force than the LAPD." Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Southern California chapter of the ACLU, said the latest incidents underlined the case for more citizen oversight. "This police department was a cowboy department, a department that was very quick on the trigger and it is hard to root out those practices from the past. That's why the cameras are important," Ripston said. "If the police were not overreacting there would be no photographs to take." Austin, a dreadlocked African-American with a police record, said he had been detained, followed and framed. "I don't remember how many times I have been pulled over by police or had the light shined in face because of the way I look. I am sick and tired of it. That's why I thought it was necessary to start this organization because I can't take it any more." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 14:28:27 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Wikipedia Gets Unblocked in China After Year-Long Ban Online enyclopedia Wikipedia was accessible again in China on Thursday after being blocked for more than a year, a move hailed by free media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. The main page of the Chinese-language version of Wikipedia http://zh.wikipedia.org could be displayed and searches for apolitical terms turned up results, but searches for subjects taboo to China's Communist leadership, such as "June 4," remained blocked. June 4, 1989, was the date that China's military crushed a student-led movement for political change centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds and possibly thousands. The incident remains among the most sensitive subjects for the country's state-controlled media. China routinely blocks access to Web sites it deems subversive and filters Internet pages for sensitive words. It was unclear why Wikipedia, blocked since October 2005, was again accessible. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said she had not heard of reports regarding Wikipedia, but added that China supports the development of the Internet and now has 123 million users, making it the world's second-largest Internet market. "We manage the Internet according to our laws and regulations. This is the usual practice for all the countries in the world," spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news conference. Rights groups have accused Western Internet companies of compromising their principles by censoring searches and blog titles in order to do business in China. But Reporters Without Borders said the example of Wikipedia, whose founder Jimmy Wales has preached a strategy of patience in dealing with Chinese authorities, showed that if a foreign company stood firm, Beijing would eventually yield. "The Chinese government is pragmatic and does not want to do without foreign businesses in the Internet sector," the Paris-based group said in a statement. "There is therefore obviously room for negotiation for the U.S. companies." Despite the ban on Wikipedia, which anyone can edit, a small community of Chinese users had used proxy servers and other tricks to gain access to the site. Analysts have said it was not only the encyclopedia's content that worried the Chinese government, but Wikipedia's open editorial process, which they say has a community-building effect among armchair editors who can quickly mobilize to create content. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 16, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:42:18 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 16, 2006 ******************************** Acer Aspire 9800: Bigger is Better? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21164?11228 Like a 'jumbo shrimp', a super-sized laptop is an inherent contradiction. After all, a laptop computer is designed to be an easily portable, go-anywhere system. The Acer Aspire 9800, on the other hand, is portable, and can indeed go anywhere, but only with a considerable amount of physical effort. Featuring a ... Fixed-Line Tariff Hikes Imminent in Russia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21163?11228 Tariff hikes are imminent for residential fixed-line subscribers in Russia, in the wake of amendments to the country's communications law. The amendments stipulate that fixed-line operators must give residential subscribers a choice of three tariff plans. One of these will offer unlimited minutes for a monthly fee, one will offer ... Mobile Number Portability Being Considered in Belarus http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21160?11228 Belarus' third mobile operator, BeST, has indicated that mobile number portability (MNP) could one day be introduced in the country, reports Prime-Tass Belarus. BeST Deputy General Director Sergei Poblaguyev broached the topic at a mobile services forum earlier this week. However, he mentioned that such a scheme could cost up to ... KDDI to Start Mobile-Video Distribution via Digital Radio Waves http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21157?11228 KDDI, Japan's second-largest mobile operator, said today it will start video distribution for mobile phones using digital radio waves, according to a Reuters report. The new service will allow mobile users to download songs and video clips from online sites while watching free broadcasts that are scheduled to start in Japan from ... Watch Cable TV on Your Cell Phone? Soon. http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21153?11228 NEW YORK (AP) - Embracing a technology that has unnerved media and telecommunications companies, a major European wireless provider will let customers watch their home cable TV on a cell phone if they also have a device called the Slingbox back at the house. 3 Group will launch the new service in Britain first, starting Dec. 1, ... Cingular Takes the Cell Phone to the Bank http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21149?11228 Cingular Wireless is teaming with mobile banking and payments facilitator Firethorn Holdings to deliver online banking capabilities to the cell phone. Visa USA also is making further inroads in the mobile payment sector. The service will enable Cingular customers to conduct mobile banking as well as make payments via their ... Jury's Out on Email Scrutiny http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21145?11228 Does email surveillance really work? Securities broker/dealer firms surveyed in a new report say it pays off, but critics say it may also breed a false sense of security. More than half the respondents to the survey -- 63 percent -- say email surveillance has given them greater visibility into their legal or regulatory risks ... Microsoft Takes Muni WiFi Plunge http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21142?11228 In its first foray into the municipal WiFi sector currently occupied by search-engine giant Google, Microsoft Corp. said today it will collaborate with MetroFi Inc. on the citywide network for Portland. MetroFi will build and operate the network, using WiFi equipment from provider SkyPilot Networks Inc., and Microsoft's ... IPTV Triggers Test Action http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21138?11228 As test and measurement (T&M) vendors scramble to position themselves as movers and shakers in the telco TV world, Alcatel has just helped four firms gain extra credibility and, most likely, more business by announcing them as IPTV ecosystem partners. (See Alcatel Teams With Testers.) "Realizing the critical role ... WiMAX Poised For Rapid Growth Despite Major Challenges http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21134?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., - WiMAX technology is entering a rapid growth phase, as service providers are now able to buy WiMAX Forum-certified equipment, reports In-Stat. Worldwide subscribers are estimated to reach 222,000 in 2006 and are forecasted to grow to 19.7 million by the end of 2010, the high-tech market research firm says. Most of ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:46:48 (CST) From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: NBCU's Falco Named to Head AOL USTelecom dailyLead November 16, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ePzEfDtusXghwCCibuddVGqR TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * NBCU's Falco named to head AOL BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Report: IMS faces hurdles despite widespread acceptance * Comcast announces new HD channel * Hawaiian Telecom's Q3 loss narrows * Report: WiMAX poised for big growth * HBO, AOL create broadband comedy channel * India's Reliance seeks to increase Net users via mobiles * Report: Apple places iPhone order USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * CALEA Compliance Webinars On-Demand TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Sprint to use Microsoft search on its handsets * Universal Music artists to perform online, via Control Room * Hutchison Whampoa's 3 launches X-Series 3G service REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * India's WiMAX deployment stalled by spectrum conflict Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ePzEfDtusXghwCCibuddVGqR ------------------------------ From: Thomas Subject: R&D in the ICT / Telecommunication Industry Date: 16 Nov 2006 08:35:49 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello! Everyone who is somehow involved in the ICT / Telcom business: Which managerial issues do you regard as being most pressing in R&D in the ICT / Telcom business nowadays ? Which role does a modular product architecture play? Looking foward to your comments. Kind regards, Thomas ------------------------------ From: Dan Subject: Electrical Grounding Date: 16 Nov 2006 12:43:27 -0800 What is the effect of having an electrical ground close to a telecom (telephone land line) ground and what is the recommended distance they should be apart. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #391 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 17 15:10:06 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id D41EA2250; Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:10:05 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #392 Message-Id: <20061117201005.D41EA2250@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:10:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:10:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 392 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Sony Lauches PlayStation 3 (Franklin Paul, Reuters) Man Shot While Waiting to Buy PlayStation 3 at Walmart (Reuters News Wire) Man Jailed for Britain's First 'Web Rage' Attack (Reuters News Wire) Digital Wireless Phone Hearing Aid Compatibility (FCC Public Service Msg) New Phone Uses GPS to Locate Your Friends (Zonk) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 17, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom Update #555, November 17, 2006 (John Riddell) Verizon's FiOS to Carry Rainbow Media's (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Electrical Grounding (Scott Dorsey) Re: Electrical Grounding (Thomas D. Horne, FF EMT) Re: Electrical Grounding (Bob Vaughan) Re: Electrical Grounding (Neal McLain) Re: Electrical Grounding (Carl Zwanzig) Re: Camera Phones Focus on Police Misconduct on Los Angeles (Lisa Hancock) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:46:37 -0600 From: Franklin Paul Subject: Sony Lauches PlayStation 3 Midst Crowds of Shoppers and Violence By Franklin Paul Thousands camped outside of stores on Friday to be among the first U.S. buyers of Sony Corp.'s new PlayStation 3 video game machine, but violence marred the debut when one man was shot outside a Connecticut store. Connecticut state police said two armed men confronted the 15 to 20 people waiting a Wal-Mart to buy a PlayStation at about 3:15 a.m. EST and demanded their money. The wounded man refused to handover his wallet and was shot, police said. The man, who was not further identified, was in serious condition at a Massachusetts hospital. Police were looking for the suspects. But in most places, U.S. gamers who flocked to electronics stores turned the wait into a social event as they camped out, some for several days, in a test of Sony's (6758.T) grip on the $30 billion gaming industry. Thumping music and finger food were showered upon weary shoppers outside of Sony's midtown Manhattan store. They turned discarded bags of shredded office paper into billowy chairs and a lamp shade sheltered one man from the rain. Sony is sure to rake in millions of dollars in revenue on Friday alone, with some 400,000 units expected to be available, one week after the initial launch in Japan. Depending on the hard drive, each PlayStation 3 sells for either $500 or $600 and Sony aims to make 1 million units available in the United States by the end of the year. Some gamers also sought to turn their wait into a quick profit, hawking new consoles for up to $5,000 on Internet auction site eBay Inc., with outlying bids reaching $30,000. Friday morning's generally celebratory tone overshadowed what had been a tough year for Sony, following a recall of nearly 10 million of its computer batteries, delays in the PS3 and a growing price war in the flat screen TV market. Sony shares closed 1.3 percent higher at 4,770 yen in Tokyo on Friday. PS3 PARTY KEY TO TURNAROUND Sony is expected to lose money at first on each PS3 sale. The unit can also surf the web, download video and music and play movies with an advanced Blu-ray high-definition disc drive. But high production costs have dragged Sony's game unit into a deep loss for the year through March. Shrugging off his company's woes, Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer made light of himself before a crowd of gamers, most dressed in sweatshirts, jeans and T-shirts. "I know I'm standing here in a stupid suit, but I'm actually happy," he told the crowd. Experts suggest each PS3 could last 10 years and go a long way toward helping Sony stay atop the gaming market, as well as make Blu-ray the standard for next-generation DVDs. "Gaming is our primary focus, but the PS3 does so much that it can become the center piece of a home entertainment system," Kaz Hirai, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America said in an interview. But some analysts say the PS3's high price could deter non-gaming consumers and open Sony up to stronger competition from Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s (7974.0S) Wii. U.S. sales of the Wii start this weekend. "They will sell out of the 400,000 (units), with the hard core gamers," said IDC analyst Danielle Levitas. "But with Blu-ray, they are betting their strongest business unit on a technology that it's not clear most consumers want." Only about 500 PS3s were available for sale at the midnight Friday launch, officials said, leaving hundreds out in the rain holding on to promises that more boxes would be made available when the store reopened at dawn. In Boston, hundreds of gamers were turned away from a Best Buy store after police said the outlet didn't have a permit to open at midnight. Angel Paredes, who waited four days through rain storms in New York, was the first to buy a PS3 in the U.S. and vowed he would not put it up for sale. Kamau Romero, 24, an educator, who was No. 3 on the line, was not so certain. "It would take a lot to get it out of my hands, but it is possible. You never know," Romero said. (Additional reporting by Kenneth Li and Nick Olivari in New York, Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Eric Auchard in San Francisco and Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston). Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:43:39 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Man Shot While Waiting to Buy Playstation 3 at Walmart A man was shot early on Friday morning outside a Wal-Mart store in Connecticut while waiting to buy a new Sony Playstation 3, Connecticut State police said. He was one of 15 to 20 people lined up outside the store when confronted by two armed men who demanded money at around 3:15 a.m., Lt. J. Paul Vance said in a press release. Police said the victim had confronted the armed suspects and was shot. He was treated at the scene and transported to the University of Massachusetts Medical Center across the state line. Police were searching for the two suspects. Gamers were lined up by the thousands across the United States and Canada early on Friday, aiming to be among the first in North America to buy Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news).'s (6758.T) PlayStation 3, the coveted multimedia and video game machine considered key to the future of the beleaguered electronics and media conglomerate. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:50:42 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Man Jailed for Britain's First 'Web Rage' Attack A British man convicted of what has been described as the country's first "web-rage" attack, was jailed for 2-1/2 years on Friday for assaulting a man he had exchanged insults with over the Internet. Paul Gibbons, 47, from south London, admitted he had attacked John Jones in December 2005 after months of exchanging abuse with him via an Internet chatroom dedicated to discussing Islam. The Old Bailey heard that Gibbons had "taken exception" to Jones, 43, after he had made the claim that Gibbons had been "interfering with children." After several more verbal and written exchanges -- with Jones threatening to track him down and give him a severe beating -- Gibbons and a friend went to his victim's house in Essex, armed with a pickaxe and machete. Jones decided to arm himself was armed with a knife but Gibbons took Jones' weapon away, held it to his throat and "scratched" him across the neck. Gibbons, who the court heard had previous convictions for violence, admitted unlawful wounding on the first day of his trial last month. Other charges of attempted murder and issuing online threats to kill four other chatroom users were not pursued but could be reactivated in future if he reoffends. Media reports said it was the country's first case of "web-rage" and Judge Richard Hawkins described the circumstances as "unusual." "This case highlights the dangers of Internet chat rooms, particularly with regards to giving personal details that will allow other users to discover home addresses," said Detective Sergeant Jean-Marc Bazzoni of Essex Police. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:20:28 -0600 From: FCC Public Service Message Subject: Digital Wireless Phone Hearing Aid Compatibility As more and more American consumers have come to rely on their wireless phones for safety, business, and personal reasons in the past few years, it has become critical that access to digital wireless phones increases for the hearing disabled community. Unfortunately, because of interference and other technological issues, not all digital wireless phones are currently accessible to people who wear hearing aids or have cochlear implants. The FCC recently took an important step to increase the hearing disabled community’s access to the benefits of wireless telephones by requiring equipment manufacturers and wireless service providers to make available more digital wireless phones that are hearing aid compatible. What prevents me from being able to hear well on my wireless phone when wearing my hearing aid? Hearing aid users often experience a buzzing sound that makes it difficult or impossible for them to hear conversations over a digital wireless phone. This buzzing typically occurs when the electromagnetic energy emitted by a digital wireless phone's antenna, backlight, or other component, commonly know as RF emissions, interferes with a hearing aid's or cochlear implant's ability to process sound clearly. People who wear hearing aids containing telecoils will often experience additional difficulties using digital wireless phones. Hearing aids with telecoils avoid unwanted background noise by turning off the microphone and receiving only magnetic fields generated by telecoil-compatible telephones. As most digital wireless phones are not equipped to emit magnetic fields, they do not work with hearing aids containing telecoils. How will the new FCC rules ensure that hearing aids and wireless phones work better together? In order to ensure the timely availability of digital wireless phones that are compatible with hearing aids and cochlear implants, the FCC has adopted the following deadlines for the availability of digital wireless phones: Late summer, 2005: Most digital wireless service providers and phone manufacturers will offer consumers two digital wireless phone models that have reduced RF emissions. Nationwide wireless service providers will offer 25 percent of their digital phone models with reduced RF emissions. Late summer, 2006: Most digital wireless service providers and phone manufacturers will offer consumers two digital wireless phone models that are telecoil compatible. February 18, 2008: At least half of the digital wireless phone models offered by most digital wireless service providers and manufacturers will have reduced RF emissions. How will the new FCC rules work to limit interference and promote compatibility between my hearing aid and my digital wireless phone? To assist you in finding a hearing aid compatible digital wireless phone, the FCC adopted a uniform hearing aid compatibility scale on which digital wireless phones and hearing aids are rated. Specifically, this scale provides: Type of phone Best Performance Least Interference Worst Performance Most Interference Telecoil U4T U1T Non-Telecoil Coupling (Acoustic) Mode U4 U1 Type of Hearing Aid Best Immunity to Interference Least Immunity to Interference Immunity Rating U4 U1 You can use these performance ratings to find a digital wireless phone that works well with your hearing aid. If adding the immunity rating of your hearing aid to the emissions rating (or telecoil coupling capability rating) of a wireless handset equals 5 or higher (e.g., a U2 hearing aid and a U3 wireless phone), the two should provide for normal use. If, however, the performance ratings of the phone and your hearing aid add up to less than 5 (e.g., a U2 hearing aid and U1T wireless phone), you will most likely still have trouble hearing phone conversations. As part of its rules, the FCC has mandated that, according to the implementation schedule described above, most of the hearing aid compatible digital wireless phones offered by wireless service providers and phone manufacturers meet the U3 performance rating, and that a certain number of digital wireless phones meet the U3T performance rating. In addition, the Hearing Aid Industry Association has pledged that all of its members will start producing hearing aids with a U2 or higher immunity rating. This means that, in the near future you will be able locate digital wireless phones that are compatible with your hearing aid. However, recognizing that not all hearing aids will work with all hearing aid compatible phones, the FCC has encouraged service providers and manufacturers to adopt flexible trial use and return policies. In addition, in order to assist you in locating hearing aid compatible digital phones, the FCC is requiring all hearing aid compatible phones to be labeled with the appropriate rating on their packaging, in their product manual, and for service providers to make this information available to consumers through appropriate means, such as on their websites. The FCC has also encouraged hearing aid manufacturers to label their products in a similar manner. What can I expect when I purchase a new digital wireless phone? As the deadlines for digital wireless phone manufacturers and service providers near, you should be able to purchase phones that work with your hearing aid from any wireless service provider or manufacturer. If the provider does not have a given handset available for purchase on site, it is required to do its best to provide you with that wireless phone within 48 hours. In addition, the FCC has encouraged service providers to offer at least one hearing aid compatible handset that is a lower-priced model and one that has higher-end features. In this manner, you should be able to find an appropriate model that fits your service and budgetary needs. Other than an appropriate hearing aid compatibility rating, what other features should I look for to improve my wireless phone's ability to work with my hearing aid? You may also find increased compatibility of digital wireless phones with your hearing aid by focusing on the design and operation of the phone itself. Experience has demonstrated that consumers who purchase digital wireless phones that distance the antenna from the hearing aid, such as those with a 'clamshell' (or flip) design, and phones that allow the user to turn 'off' the backlight of the display screen and keypad experience minimized interference and better performance with their hearing aid. How can I learn more? The FCC website contains information about the Commission's new digital wireless hearing aid compatibility rules at http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/accessiblewireless.html. In addition, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association website contains frequently asked questions about hearing aid compatibility, a list of hearing aid compatible digital wireless phones, and a message board at www.accesswireless.org/reference/WirelessPhonesandHearingAidAccessibility.htm. For more information on hearing aid compatibility, you can visit the FCC's website at http://www.fcc.gov or call the FCC's Consumer Center at 1-888-CALL-FCC (voice) or 1-888-TELL (TTY). You may also e-mail the FCC at fccinfo@fcc.gov. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:23:52 -0600 From: Zonk Subject: New Phone Uses GPS to Locate Your Friends New Phone Uses GPS To Locate Your Contacts Posted by Zonk on Thursday November 16, @03:19PM from the oh-crap-here-comes-ted dept. Salvance writes: "Palo Alto-based Loopt Inc. has announced an agreement with Sprint Nextel to immediately begin offering their cell phone mapping service to all 3.8 Million Sprint Boost subscribers (Sprint Boost is a service specifically targeting the under-25 market). This service will notify users when another subscriber in their contact list is within 25 miles, providing a real-time map displaying their contacts' locations. According to the article, the only apparent privacy safeguard is to provide users the option to 'temporarily cut out from being spotted by their friends.' Given a retailer's propensity to package together extra services, and the average user's lack of knowledge regarding their phone's capabilities, this new service seems ripe for abuse." ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 17, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:38:56 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 17, 2006 ******************************** North American Wireless Services Move Forward http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21191?11228 A number of deals have been announced in the past week that illuminate the growing moves by wireless carriers to develop compelling content and service offerings that will increasingly drive consumers to use mobile data services. Significant deals in the North American region this week have included Microsoft winning the mobile search ... Bridging the Gap http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21184?11228 A widespread perception holds that regulation is about constraining what companies can do rather than creating opportunities and enabling innovation. However, the fact is that regulators play a pivotal role in creating an environment in which the communications industry can develop and grow. And the ultimate beneficiaries of ... Sprint, Microsoft Forge Alliance http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21180?11228 Sprint Nextel and software giant Microsoft are joining forces to form a strategic alliance. The first initiative to come out of the partnership is the launch of Microsoft's Windows Mobile Live search capabilities on Sprint handsets. The Windows Live mobile search is a location-based search service that enables users to key in ... Regulator Overruled As Canada Deregulates VoIP http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21176?11228 In a surprise move the Canadian federal government, over-ruling its own regulatory agency, has ordered the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to immediately deregulate VoIP services. The move ends a year long-battle between Canada's incumbent Telcos and the CRTC, and spells potential disaster for ... 3 Plots Mobile Broadband http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21173?11228 Pure-play 3G operator 3 Group outlined its latest vision for mobile data services with the launch of its X-Series wireless Internet strategy at a glitzy media event in London today. X-Series is an attempt to deliver mobile broadband services with flat-rate access to the Internet by taking advantage of the improved economics offered ... Cablevision, Verizon Team on Content http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21170?11228 Here's a strange one: Even though they're going head-to-head for video, broadband, and phone subscribers in the New York metro area, Cablevision Systems Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. have managed to strike a key TV programming deal. Verizon announced a multi-year pact earlier today with Cablevision's ... Digital TV Conversion Sweeping the World and Impacting TV Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21167?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The international migration from analog broadcasting to digital terrestrial television (DTT) marches on with a significant impact on the television set market, reports In-Stat. Many nations have announced an analog broadcast shutoff date, but how they implement this change varies, the high-tech market research ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #555, November 17, 2006 Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 13:01:47 -0500 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 555: November 17, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca/home/Home_Business.page ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.ca/communications/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** SHAW BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: www.shawbusinesssolutions.ca ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Cabinet Overrules CRTC on VoIP ** CRTC Implements Cabinet Order ** Peterborough Hospital Deploys Bedside Terminals ** Union: Bell Threatens to Close Expertech ** Global Roaming with One Phone ** CWC, ITAC Partner to Advance Women ** Three Carriers Seek Satellite Slots ** Comments Filed on 3.6 GHz Spectrum Licensing ** Avaya Launches Unified Communications Portfolio ** Aliant Offers Taxi Dialing ** Motorola to Buy Good Technology ** March Sells Health Care Division ** SR Telecom Postpones Report, Seeks New Investment ** Vecima Posts Sales, Profit Gains ** Cisco Offers Municipal Wi-Fi Technology ** Consultants Call for Speakers CABINET OVERRULES CRTC ON VOIP: On November 9, Cabinet overturned par of the CRTC's 2005 VoIP decision. The order-in-council allows the incumbent telcos to offer "access independent" retail VoIP services without getting CRTC approval for rates and terms of service. (See Telecom Update #481, 544) ** The order says that these ILEC services are to be subject to no more regulation than CLEC retail services, but all "non-economic" rules for VoIP services will still apply. ** This is the first time that Cabinet has overturned a CRTC decision since 1988, when it intervened to allow Call-Net to keep operating as a long distance reseller. Ironically, Call-Net's lawyer at the time was Charles Dalfen, now CRTC chairman. http://tinyurl.com/y8ryzh http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2005/dt2005-28.htm CRTC IMPLEMENTS CABINET ORDER: CRTC Telecom Circular 2006-10 notes that the Cabinet order means that the tariffs for Bell Canada's Digital Voice Lite and Business IP Voice for Broadband, and SaskTel's WebCall, are no longer in effect. ** The Commission says it is still reviewing whether the order will affect any of its other rules or determinations. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Circulars/2006/ct2006-10.htm PETERBOROUGH HOSPITAL DEPLOYS BEDSIDE TERMINALS: Peterborough Regional Health Centre plans to install 500 Integrated Bedside Terminals that will be used by both patients (TV, radio, phone, Internet) and clinical staff (medical records and updates). The $11 million contract with Telus, said to be the first such installation in Canada, uses Siemens technology. UNION -- BELL THREATENS TO CLOSE EXPERTECH: The Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union says that Bell Canada has threatened to close down its Expertech subsidiary if current contract negotiations don't result in major concessions. Expertech installs and maintains carrier telecom networks; it employs about 1,400 people in Ontario and Quebec. GLOBAL ROAMING WITH ONE PHONE: Customers who buy a Motorola A840 handset from MTS Allstream ($250 on a two-year contract) can use the phone on North American CDMA networks under their regular calling plans. The same phone will work on GSM networks in 140 other countries, where MTS International Roaming Service charges $2.49 per minute, including all airtime and LD charges. CWC, ITAC PARTNER TO ADVANCE WOMEN: Canadian Women in Communications (CWC) and the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) have announced a partnership to promote the participation and advancement of women in the information and communications technology sector. The CWC hopes to extend the focus of its programs, such as mentorship, "career accelerator," and "Women on Boards," to include more women in ICT careers. ** The application deadline for the CWC's 2007 Jeanne Sauve professional development programs, open to women in telecommunications and broadcasting, is December 6. http://www.cwc-afc.com/show-content.cfm?section=wha-pro&subsection=jea THREE CARRIERS SEEK SATELLITE SLOTS: Telesat Canada, Ciel Satellite Group, and Canadian Satellite Radio Investments have all submitted applications for new satellite orbital positions. Industry Canada opened 29 new satellite positions in July: the applications announced to date cover only 17 of them. (see Telecom Update #537) http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insmt-gst.nsf/en/sf08711e.html COMMENTS FILED ON 3.6 GHz SPECTRUM LICENSING: Industry Canada has posted the comments it has received on proposed policies for licensing spectrum in the 3650-3700 MHz band for wireless broadband applications. (See Telecom Update #541) http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insmt-gst.nsf/en/sf08709e.html AVAYA LAUNCHES UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS PORTFOLIO: Avaya has launched a new Unified Communications product family that delivers "the right applications to the right devices for various segments of workers with different communications needs." ALIANT OFFERS TAXI DIALING: Users of Aliant cellphones can now reach a taxi dispatcher by dialing #TAXI (#8294). A similar service was launched in Canada by Rogers Wireless in 2001. (See Telecom Update #312) MOTOROLA TO BUY GOOD TECHNOLOGY: Motorola has agreed to buy Good Technology, which makes wireless email software that competes with RIM's BlackBerry system. Good's software is used by 12,000 companies worldwide and claims about 10% of the U.S. wireless email market. ** Motorola is also buying Netopia, which makes broadband home network equipment, for about US$208 million. MARCH SELLS HEALTH CARE DIVISION: Ottawa-based March Networks has sold the assets of its eHealth unit for US$1 million. March closed the unit down in April, as part of a move to focus on digital video technology. SR TELECOM POSTPONES REPORT, SEEKS NEW INVESTMENT: SR Telecom is delaying release of its third quarter results while it seeks "additional financing from existing lenders and stakeholders." (See Telecom Update #523) VECIMA POSTS SALES, PROFIT GAINS: Victoria-based Vecima Networks (formerly VCom), which makes broadband access gear, reports third quarter revenue of $20.1 million, 14% more than a year ago. Net income of $8.3 million was mostly due to a one-time gain related to Vecima's purchase of WaveRider in July. CISCO OFFERS MUNICIPAL WI-FI TECHNOLOGY: Cisco Systems has announced ServiceMesh, a network infrastructure for municipal Wi-Fi providers. CONSULTANTS CALL FOR SPEAKERS: The Canadian Telecommunications Consultants Association will hold its Spring 2007 Conference at the Chateau Champlain, Montreal, on February 23-24, 2007. Proposals for presentations at the conference are due by November 24. For information, write ctca.speakers@ctca.ca or visit http://www.ctca.ca. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2006 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:09:23 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon's FiOS to carry Rainbow Media's USTelecom dailyLead November 17, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eSjwfDtusXgneTCibudddhJW TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon's FiOS to carry Rainbow Media's networks, VOD services BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Microsoft puts its massive toe in broadband waters * AT&T debuts mobile WiMAX in Nevada * NetZero to sell DSL * BT system searches worldwide for innovative technologies * RealNetworks trots out security products USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * MPLS Management of Your DreamsTuesday, Nov. 21, 1 p.m. (ET) TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Poll: Viewers now watching sports because of HD * Slingbox to let European cell phone users watch cable programs * Wii brings the Web to TV VOIP DOWNLOAD * Thomson to launch VoIP phones * Skype inks mobile deal with 3 Group * Lessons in VoIP from Gold's Gym REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Canada removes VoIP price restrictions Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eSjwfDtusXgneTCibudddhJW ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Electrical Grounding Date: 16 Nov 2006 17:42:20 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Dan wrote: > What is the effect of having an electrical ground close to a telecom > (telephone land line) ground and what is the recommended distance they > should be apart. There should be no effect if it's a good ground ... no reason they can't share a rod, even, if the ground resistance is low. That's what grounds are FOR, after all. But, of course, the key is to get a megger and actually make sure it IS a good ground in the first place. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Thomas D. Horne, FF EMT Subject: Re: Electrical Grounding Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 23:42:59 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Dan wrote: > What is the effect of having an electrical ground close to a telecom > (telephone land line) ground and what is the recommended distance they > should be apart. Electrically speaking the answer is zero. The most important thing about power and communications grounding electrodes that serve the same structure is that they should be bonded together to form a single grounding electrode system. If the two grounding electrodes are not combined into a single system then differences between them will equalize destructively through expensive electronic equipment and appliances. Best practice is to build one grounding electrode system and use it for all of the wire carried utilities that enter your home. -- Tom Horne Well we aren't no thin blue heroes and yet we aren't no blackguards to. We're just working men and woman most remarkable like you. ------------------------------ From: techie@tantivy.tantivy.net (Bob Vaughan) Subject: Re: Electrical Grounding Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 04:02:37 UTC Organization: Tantivy Associates In article , Dan wrote: > What is the effect of having an electrical ground close to a telecom > (telephone land line) ground and what is the recommended distance they > should be apart. The grounds for all utilities should be the same point. This is required by the NEC (article 250, 800, 810, 820, and 830). The maximum distance allowed is 20' before supplemental grounding in required, which must be tied into the grounding system. The reason for this is that the resistance of the earth varies, and by using the same grounding point, we can make sure that the electrical relationship between the grounded devices is maintained within the system. Within any building, the goal is that (ground) = (ground) = (ground), and not (ground) = (ground +2 volts) = (ground +4 volts). Voltage differential between grounds = current flow = electrical noise when grounds are connected together thru the connected equipment. If the voltage differential is high enough, damage to equipment can occur, or injury to humans can occur if they are connected between grounds. For this reason, all utilities (water, gas, electrical, telephone, catv), and all other metallic cabling (antennas, etc) should all be grounded to the main building ground, which may be multiple grounds tied together as a common ground system. -- Welcome My Son, Welcome To The Machine -- Bob Vaughan | techie @ tantivy.net | | P.O. Box 19792, Stanford, Ca 94309 | -- I am Me, I am only Me, And no one else is Me, What could be simpler? -- ------------------------------ From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Electrical Grounding Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 02:51:44 -0500 Dan wrote: > What is the effect of having an electrical ground > close to a telecom (telephone land line) ground and > what is the recommended distance they should be apart. The "recommended distance they should be apart" is zero: both grounds should be bonded together at a common ground point. In the United States, the National Electrical Code specifies that ALL electrical systems entering a building must be bonded together and grounded to an approved grounding conductor at the point of entry. This includes: - Electrical power neutral conductor - Exterior electrical circuits for lighting, water pumps, etc. - Telephone lightning protector - Telephone shield and/or messenger, if any - Cable TV shield - External antennas (amateur radio, radio, TV, DBS, etc.) It also includes fire and police alarm wiring systems if any. It might be a bit embarrassing if a fire alarm system started a fire. There's an excellent article about all this at http://tinyurl.com/tq485 Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: zbang@radix.net (Carl Zwanzig) Subject: Re: Electrical Grounding Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:31:07 -0000 Organization: RadixNet Internet Services Dan wrote: > What is the effect of having an electrical ground close to a telecom > (telephone land line) ground and what is the recommended distance they > should be apart. Usually they should be zero inches apart. That said, the ground that you find in an outlet should not be trusted, run a wire directly to a metalic water pipe (but not a sprinkler), building steel, or back to the electrical system grounding conductor. (IIRC, in some cases, which I'm not going to look up at the moment, you're -required- to bond to the electrical system ground.) z! ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Camera Phones Focus on Police Misconduct on Los Angeles Date: 16 Nov 2006 13:17:26 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jill Serjeant wrote: > Some Los Angeles grass-roots groups are training citizens to use > cameras, video cell phones and the speed and Internet sites like > YouTube to get their voices, and pictures, heard. The danger is that a partial video or picture can be very misleading. I've personally seen cops get attacked by troubled people and it's not pretty. The attackers are disturbed and not rational, they do not obey commands to stop and keep violently flailing away at the officers. The cops have no choice but to use force to subdue the person for their own protection. Showing only the second half--which is what usually only gets filmed--is not accurate. Not all suspects are quiet and cooperative. (Our area had a suspected drunk driver in handcuffs still steal a cop's gun, kill him, and shoot other people in a hospital emergency room.) Some police departments have placed cameras in police cars. They have captured motorists attacking a cop who pulled them over. A second danger is such amateur videos could work in reverse and hurt innocent civilians. It could become a 1984 Big Brother situation. Sadly, race politics played a role in this as well. Our local news had a video -- a full one from start to finish -- showing a cop clearly abusing a civilian bystander for no reason. But since they were the same race no one cared and nothing happened. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #392 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Nov 19 01:07:26 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E4B4B226E; Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:07:25 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #393 Message-Id: <20061119060725.E4B4B226E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:07:25 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:10:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 393 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Stashes Away $200 Million For Lawsuits With YouTube (Jonathan Thaw) Robot, Heal Thyself -- Welcome to the Future (Will Dunham) Trinsic Really Makes a Mess of my Service (TELECOM Digest Editor) TiVo Introduces New Service Feature That Allows Home Movies (Monty Solomon) TiVo Allows Viewers to Choose Broadband Video Delivered to TV (M Solomon) Re: Electrical Grounding (w_tom) Re: Electrical Grounding (Julian Thomas) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 23:08:41 -0600 From: Jonathan Thaw Subject: Google Stashes Away $200 Million For Lawsuits With YouTube By Jonathan Thaw Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc.'s decision to establish a reserve of more than $200 million for possible lawsuits against YouTube underscores the company's concern over the use of copyrighted clips at the video-sharing Web site. Google, the most-used Internet search engine, said yesterday it set aside 12.5 percent of the shares issued to buy YouTube for one year to "secure certain indemnification obligations." The company is trying to protect itself against lawsuits over copyrighted material on YouTube, a Web site where people watch everything from fountains made with Diet Coke and Mentos to dancing men on treadmills. YouTube is removing clips of shows including NBC Universal's "The Office" and creating software that lets media companies pull unauthorized videos or share in advertising sales. "It's inevitable that they'll be making use of copyrighted material," said Lee Bromberg, an intellectual property attorney at Boston-based law firm Bromberg & Sunstein. It's 'awfully hard' to get permission from everyone whose content may appear on the site, he said. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said last week Google 'has talked to everybody' about licensing video. His remarks came a day before Mountain View, California-based Google said in its quarterly report that 'substantial harm' may result from copyright lawsuits. Shares of Google rose $8.27 to $489.30 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading and are up 18 percent this year. YouTube's Policy YouTube officials weren't available to comment, the company's outside public relations firm said. Google spokesmen Gabriel Stricker and Ricardo Reyes didn't respond to phone calls or e-mails seeking comment. YouTube says it removes material from the site when copyright owners protest. It would be impossible to screen each of the 65,000 clips added each day, and the law is designed to protect the company from having to do that, spokeswoman Julie Supan said in a Nov. 6 interview. Unauthorized clips are being scrubbed from YouTube. A search this month for NBC's 'The Office,' a spoof documentary about a paper supplier in Scranton, Pennsylvania, produced a message that said, "This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner NBC Universal because its content was used without permission." The clips, posted by users, were removed even as NBC and YouTube work together. YouTube agreed in June to promote NBC's fall television lineup and create an official NBC channel on the site. NBC, a unit of Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric Co., agreed to promote YouTube on the air. Kathy Kelly-Brown, a spokeswoman for NBC Universal, didn't have a comment on the network's relationship with YouTube. Music Videos YouTube is also brokering other deals. The San Bruno, California-based company signed licensing agreements with music companies including Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment in the past two months. YouTube also is showing news, sports and entertainment clips from CBS Corp., owner of the most-watched U.S. television network. New York-based CBS is the first TV network to test YouTube software that identifies copyrighted clips on the site. CBS can then decide whether to take down the content or leave it and share advertising revenue. YouTube will need more of those agreements to preserve the site's diversity, a feature that spurred its popularity. "You could go there and be fairly confident you could find anything," said Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence in Oakland, California. If users find too many error messages or too much that has been taken off the site, that could create a 'real vulner- ability,' he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Thaw in San Francisco at jthaw@bloomberg.net . 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 23:11:23 -0600 From: Will Dunham Subject: Robot, Heal Thyself -- Welcome to the Future By Will Dunham It's an achievement that inspires notions of robots with consciousness and independent minds. Scientists said on Thursday they created a brainy, four-legged robot resembling a starfish that can sense damage to its body and, on its own, think up a way to recover. Researchers Hod Lipson and Victor Zykov of Cornell University and Josh Bongard of the University of Vermont made a robot that observed its own motion using built-in sensors in its joints and then generated its own concept of itself, or at least its physical structure, in its internal computer. It used this internal model of itself to figure out how to walk on its four legs and eight motorized joints. "In the beginning, the robot starts off and does not know what it looks like. You look at it, and you see that it's a four-legged machine. But the robot itself doesn't know that. All it knows is that it could be a snake, it could be a tree, it could have six legs," Lipson said in an interview. Lipson said the robot used various movements of its joints, first to generate hypotheses and then to formulate an accurate conception of itself. The researchers then tested the robot's ability to adapt to new situations -- in this case injury -- by shortening one of its legs. "The robot knows something's wrong," Lipson said. Animals can compensate for injury by changing movements, like limping to favor an injured leg. Machines can be programmed to react to a problem in a certain way. But when they are damaged in unexpected ways, they usually are doomed. This plucky robot responded by generating on its own a new concept of its structure, accurately sensing it had been altered, and then devising a new way to walk using a different gait to compensate for the injury. The robot's smarts, awareness of itself and ability to adapt on its own separates it from its mechanical brethren. The study was published in the journal "Science." 'THINKING ABOUT ITSELF' "We don't really think this is self-consciousness, which is a robot thinking about itself thinking," Lipson said. "But I do think it is moving in the direction of consciousness, like a cat, that kind of level." Aside from contributing to a philosophical debate, the research has practical implications -- giving hope to people who envision sending robots that can adapt to unforeseen circumstances to explore other worlds or the ocean floor. "There is a need for planetary robotic rovers to be able to fix things on their own," Bongard said in a statement. "Robots on other planets must be able to continue their mission without human intervention in the event they are damaged and cannot communicate their problem back to Earth." Christoph Adami of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, California, wrote a commentary accompanying the research titled, "What Do Robots Dream Of?" -- an allusion to science fiction writer Philip Dick's 1968 novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Adami described how a robot like this one might perform in unknown territory, exploring the landscape and then "dreaming" of new methods to overcome obstacles it had encountered. "And even though the robots ... seem to prefer to dream about themselves rather than electric sheep, they just may have unwittingly helped us understand what dreams are for," he said. Reminded of malicious robots and computers turning on their human masters in movies like "The Terminator" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," Lipson was not worried. "We just pull the plug out of the robot. That's all," Lipson said. "There are more immediate things to worry about than to worry about that." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra./internet-news.html ------------------------------ Subject: Trinsic Really Makes a Mess of my Service Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 00:36:45 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) I told you here about a week ago that Prairie Stream announced they are going out of business at the end of November. I mentioned also that after a little shopping around, I decided to try 'Trinsic', another reseller of SBC/ATT service in this area. Well ... they turned me on last Wednesday, so far so good ... even though their service is a wee bit more expensive than I want, with many more bells and whistles than I need. But the one thing I _do_ need they managed to screw up! I definitly need my 'distinctive ring' line, since I have some services (toll free 800 number, fax line, and front door intercom) all ringing in on that distinctive (ring- ring) line. Trinsic also managed to lose my privacy features such as 'blocked caller-ID blocking'. I found out about these losses in my service late Saturday afternoon, and when calling into the '24 hour service' number for Trinsic was told no one would be able to help me -- or even take my call -- until Monday morning. This was after Trinsic had assured me that my entire account was being 'mirrored' over exactly from Prairie Stream. The lady I did get to talk to Saturday afternoon told me that there were no positive assurances Southwestern Bell (after all, the ultimate boss in the whole affair) would agree to give me back my distinctive ring number 'although Trinsic would ask them for it'. Sounds to me like I got a real screwing from Trinsic, and I intend to protest it mightily on Monday morning when I can reach someone in their office who may or may not be interested in my problems. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:33:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Introduces New Service Feature That Allows Home Movies TiVo Introduces New Service Feature That Allows Home Movies to Be Sent Over the Internet Directly to Television Sets - Nov 14, 2006 08:31 AM (PR Newswire) NEW YORK and ALVISO, Calif., Nov 14, 2006 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO), the creator of and leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVR), today announced that it will debut a break-through new service early next year which will provide friends and families scattered across the country with an easy way to share their home videos, by sending them directly to the television. Rather than burning and mailing DVDs, or viewing videos uploaded on a computer, friends and family will now be able to set-up their own private channel to send home videos directly to a TiVo subscriber's TV set. TiVo has partnered with One True Media (www.onetruemedia.com), an online service that helps people easily turn their video and photos into online video stories, to create a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for the person who took the home movies and to whomever he or she would like to show them. After uploading their home movies to One True Media, consumers will be able to edit their videos online and will receive a personal TiVo channel code which they can then distribute to other TiVo subscribers. With a few clicks of the TiVo remote, and the personal TiVo channel code, friends and family will be able to get a Season Pass(TM) recording that will deliver to their TiVo all the current and future home movies from the video creator. Videos will be displayed in the TiVo subscriber's Now Playing List -- the same location all of their favorite television programming is stored within TiVo today. - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=62402988 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:34:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Allows Viewers to Choose Broadband Video Delivered to TV SET TiVo Allows Viewers to Choose Broadband Video Delivered to TV SET - Nov 14, 2006 08:31 AM (PR Newswire) NEW YORK and ALVISO, Calif., Nov 14, 2006 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- In keeping with its mission to provide subscribers unprecedented control over their television viewing experience, TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO) announced today it will enable TiVo subscribers to easily convert and transfer broadband video from their PC to their television sets. Through an expansion of its Desktop PC software later this year, TiVo subscribers will be able to view videos from the Web on their TVs, even if they are not originally in a format that televisions can display. This is in addition to the broadband programming delivered via TiVo's TiVoCast direct delivery feature. TiVo, the creator of and leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), is the first and only DVR to offer this kind of access to broadband video on the television. - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=62403142 ------------------------------ From: w_tom Subject: Re: Electrical Grounding Date: 18 Nov 2006 08:54:43 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dan wrote: > What is the effect of having an electrical ground close to a telecom > (telephone land line) ground and what is the recommended distance they > should be apart. Once they did not even have to be the same earthing electrode. But transistors did not exist then. Others have cited wire resistance as a reason for short distance. However that voltage different would be still near zero if the distance was 20 feet or 200 feet. They are discussing a common ground for resistance. However wire impedance is why wire distance must be short. Wire too long, with sharp bends, inside metallic conduit, or with splices would have little effect on wire resistance but would adversely affect wire impedance. Code calls for a distance less than 20 feet. You really want a ground wire to common electrode of 'less than 10 feet'. Furthermore, you want that wire routed separate from all other non-grounding wires AND not meet other grounding wires until all meet at the earthing electrode. Furthermore, if telco earth ground electrode is not same as earthing electrode for cable or AC electric, then consider this recommended solution. Figures show good, recommended and bad earthing solutions: http://www.cinergy.com/surge/ttip08.htm Carl Zwanzig wrote: > That said, the ground that you find in an outlet should not be > trusted, run a wire directly to a metalic water pipe (but not a > sprinkler), building steel, or back to the electrical system grounding > conductor. (IIRC, in some cases, which I'm not going to look up at > the moment, you're -required- to bond to the electrical system > ground.) Do not connect a grounding wire to a water pipe. That connection is not permitted by code and suffers same problem of a grounding wire that is too long. Required connection to water pipe is only to remove electricity from that pipe for human safety. But again, earthing is also for transistor safety. That means wire impedance - length of that wire must be short. Mike Holt article cited by Neal at http://tinyurl.com/tq485 says: > Grounding is the intentional connection to earth through > a connection of sufficiently low impedance. Impedance -- not resistance as others have posted. With impedance, transient current can result in voltages too far from zero. A shorter wire means less impedance - voltage closer to zero. Essential that all wires entering a building be at same voltage potential - for transistor safety and for human safety. That means all earthing (which is only one type of grounding) must be to a single point earthing electrode. Impedance is also why grounding to wall receptacle safety ground is not sufficient for grounding telecom equipment. That telecom ground must be low impedance. AC electric safety (equipment) ground is low resistance -- but not low impedance. Do not ground to water pipes. Once that connection was acceptable. Today grounding to water pipes is a violation and typically not a good low impedance ground. ------------------------------ From: Julian Thomas Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 18:56:06 -0500 Subject: Re: Electrical Grounding Date: 16 Nov 2006 12:43:27 -0800 > What is the effect of having an electrical ground close to a telecom > (telephone land line) ground and what is the recommended distance they > should be apart. See signature. Julian Thomas: jt at jt-mj.net http://jt-mj.net In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! -- -- Switching is a science, radio is an art. Grounding is Black Magic. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #393 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 20 19:46:44 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 48A832260; Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:46:44 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #394 Message-Id: <20061121004644.48A832260@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:46:44 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:50:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 394 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Nigerian Scams Cost Britons and the Internet Millions Annually (M.Jones) Telephone Museum (Dave Garland) VOIP Load Handle - Internet capable (karthikbg) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 20, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Lucent-Alcatel Merger Approved After Security Measures Pledged (USTelecom) Re: Internet Fax Services? (Jules) This Time Around, I am Trying Sage Telecom (Patrick Townson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:21:50 -0600 From: Matthew Jones Subject: Nigerian Scams Cost Britons and the Internet Millions Annually By Matthew Jones Internet scams, credit card fraud and money laundering operations originating in Nigeria cost Britons millions of pounds a year, a report on Monday said. The problem has become so prevalent that Nigerians in Britain are in danger of being widely seen as corrupt, the study from the Chatham House think-tank added. But neither Britain nor Nigeria are taking the problem seriously, it said. "Private-sector fraudsters and corrupt public officials and British companies have profited from the general Western focus on terrorist financing, drugs and people trafficking," it said. Britons now closely associate the African country with the so-called "advance fee" scam whereby people are contacted by e-mail and offered the opportunity to earn millions of dollars. The recipient is told they will earn a commission in exchange for aiding the sender in transferring funds. The victim has to send bank details or even cash, ostensibly to help pay off corrupt officials, and then the victim's bank account is stripped. "The frauds are often mischievously inventive and run on an industrial scale," the report said. Among the variations, victims have been offered the chance to benefit from a share of Saddam Hussein's family savings and even money "looted" from the rubble of the World Trade Center after the September 11 attacks. According to the Chatham House report, an analysis by Dutch-based consultancy Ultrascan concluded the total losses from advance fee fraud scams to British companies and individuals in 2005 was $520 million (275 million pounds). Only the United States was worse off, losing $720 million that year. Nigeria was not the only source of such scams. Although the scam has been widely publicized, people still fall for it through a mixture of greed, naivete and a sense of racial superiority, the British study said. "The fraudsters play on the enduring myth of African infantilism and simple-mindedness: a European who believes in this might find it unremarkable that a Nigerian holding tens of millions of dollars would be clueless about what to do with it. In such circumstances, what could be more natural than to turn to the clever white person for help?" Nigeria is also becoming a center for "phishing" attacks in which people receive e-mails, purportedly from their banks, asking for account details and PINs. Other Nigerian-origin crimes include forged checks and postal orders, with 20 million pounds ($38 million) worth of such items found in one day at Heathrow Airport during a spot check. Corrupt Nigerian officials have also traditionally used London to launder embezzled money, the study says, noting about $1.3 billion looted by the late Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha was processed via British financial institutions. Britain and Nigeria must work closer together if there is to be any chance of tackling the problem, the report concluded. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Telephone Museum Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 14:05:07 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information A brief museum review that might be of interest: PhoneCo [Galesville, Wisconsin] is a museum which grew out of some guy's weird hobby, in this case hunting and capturing telephones. It is a working business -- for example, they supply film and television sets with historically correct telephones. They also do repairs and house an impressive array of telephones and related equipment. The 'museum' is crammed into hallways, spare rooms, the PhoneCo business office, and the shipping room. It is grubby and poorly lit, so I may or may not have seen cockroaches. There is no admission fee, and visitors are welcome to wander about at will, the lines between business and museum happily blurred. http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/2943 ------------------------------ From: karthikbg Subject: VOIP Load Handle - Internet Capable Date: 19 Nov 2006 22:22:44 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, Currently less people use VOIP. Will internet be able to handle the load due to VOIP when the number of users increase due to data flow overload. How ? Karthik Balaguru ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 20, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 11:38:05 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 20, 2006 ******************************** Canada: VoIP Prices Deregulated http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21217?11228 In the first action overruling the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in a decade and only the 23rd use of the government's powers since 1976, the Canadian government has announced that VoIP services are no longer to be regulated under the CRTC's mandate to regulate VoIP services in the same manner as ... Europe Telecoms Eye InternetProtocol TV http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21209?11228 AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Dutchman Wart Fransen points a remote control at a little box atop his television and firmly presses down on the button to change the station. There's a delay of about a half-second, and then the new channel comes on. The image is frozen in place for an instant before it begins to run smoothly. ... Portable RFID Traffic Management System http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21206?11228 RFID tags that help drivers zip through tollbooths are now being used for an ad hoc, portable traffic flow monitoring system. In New York State, transportation researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are testing an array of wireless, solar-powered readers to monitor traffic flow. In the coming months, the units will be ... Martin Wins Senate Nod As FCC Chairman http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21205?11228 The full U.S. Senate last night unanimously approved the nomination of Kevin J. Martin to a second stint as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), quickly removing the item from its agenda before any post-election lame-duck mindset impacts Capitol Hill over future Democratic control. The Senate, however, didn't ... US to Watch Alcatel Lucent http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21202?11228 Alcatel and Lucent Technologies Inc. have agreed to leave their merger open to further review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) after their merger is complete, as part of a security deal struck with various U.S. government agencies. The two companies announced late Friday that the office of ... What Will Moto Buy Next? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21199?11228 Another week, another multi-million dollar Motorola Inc. acquisition. While it's not directly related to wireless, Motorola spent $208 million this week on Netopia Inc. in a move to improve its DSL capabilities. The next company Motorola picks up could very well be wireless, however. The networking giant has recently ... Verizon Wireless Gives ETF Details http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21197?11228 Verizon Wireless, after promising to prorate its early termination fee (ETF) in July, made good on the details of that promise yesterday. As part of a larger 'worry-free' guarantee program announcement that rolled out free online account management features, the company unveiled a 'declining early' termination ... Smartphone Sales Rising Fast http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21195?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Smartphone unit sales almost tripled from 2004 to 2005, and increased by 50% in the first half of 2006 over 2005, reports In-Stat. The stakes are high; as well as the escalating battle for smartphone operating system dominance, the growing acceptance of smartphones offers new competition to established ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 11:55:57 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Lucent-Alcatel Merger Approved After Security Measures Pledged USTelecom dailyLead November 20, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eSuAfDtusXgriOCibuddYXsg TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Lucent-Alcatel merger approved after security measures pledged BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Telstra sale signals strengthening global telecom sector * Study: Handset prices hit 12-year high * Analysis: Nintendo ready to challenge Sony * Will sports programming drive growth of mobile TV? USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * MPLS Management of Your Dreams Tomorrow, Nov. 21, 1 p.m. (ET) HOT TOPICS * Clearwire debuts WiMAX in Seattle area * Report: Apple places iPhone order * AT&T service lets user control bandwidth use * NFL Network sues to get off Comcast's sports tier * Cable companies ready wireless offerings TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Internet Protocol TV gains ground in Europe * Study: iPod owners prefer music to video REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Senate reconfirms FCC's Martin for second term Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eSuAfDtusXgriOCibuddYXsg ------------------------------ From: Jules Subject: Re: Internet Fax Services? Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:52:35 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net > I've been using http://OneSuite.com for prepaid LD for years, and they > offer a product called MessageOne that can receive voice and fax > messages and send them to an email address. I've only been able to > get one number per account, the system picks it for you, and it's > $1/month for the service, but that's better than some of the > alternatives. The only connection I have to them is as a customer. > I'm not aware of any other truly 'free' providers, although I haven't > looked in about a year. > Good luck, and let us know what you settle on! > Joshua I second OneSuite's fax services, been using them for a few months now with no hidden surcharges. Good luck! ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: This Time Around, I am Trying Sage Telecom Date: 20, Mon Nov 2006 18:00:00 CST Monday morning, I woke up sort of angry at how basically useless Trinsic had been in swapping over my account from Prairie Stream. I spent about 45 minutes more or less right after waking up on hold waiting for a Trinsic rep to come on the line, and another ten or fifteen minutes explaining to her what the company's main offense had been: Telling me that my Prairie Stream account was going to be 'mirrored exactly' to them, then finding out later (once service had been started) that in fact my distinctive ring number (people dialing it makes the phone go ring-ring) was _not_ cut over, nor where various of my other requirements such as stopping anonymous calls (where the person had dialed *67 prior to the remainder of the number) from getting through. Well, she claimed she was sorry about all that, and she could get it all repaired but there was no guarentee I would recieve the distinctive ringing number back which I had used for a long time. She said, and I quote, "SBC will not re-assign that same number, but I can get you _another_ number." I told her this meant I would have to do at least three things: reprogram my fax machine (which always responds to the distinctive ring line only); call my 800 toll free vendor and get the toll free number reporgrammed at some expense to myself (after all, it's not that vendor's fault that the termination line was snatched away unannounced); try to get my front door bell reprogrammed. So I asked her _will you please tell SBC we want the original number used for distinctive ring re-assigned?_ Nope, she says, sorry, but SBC will not do it that way; even though _we_ took it off your service in error, SBC will not give it back. After my first meals-on-wheels for today, I then put in a call to Sage Telecom, another sort of local company based out of Wichita, and spent about thirty minutes with her going through the whole thing over again. She said SBC _would_ return the erroneously removed number, and the other features which I had wanted would be put back in place. She said their $29.95 per month service would actually come to about $44.00 per month when 'fees' were taken into account, unlike Trinsic, whose highly-touted $56 per month plan would wind up costing me about $95 per month according to the voice mail message I got on Monday . I wonder if Trinsic intends to try and collect this $95 for the (less than) one week I experimented with their service? Oh, plus which, Trinsic had assigned my long distance service to (you guessed it!) AT&T on one of that company's more expensive plans. So my week with Trinsic was not a very happy one. I am holding my breath to see if in fact Sage Telecom can retrieve my distinctive ring number so I do not have to pay the vendor of that service to reprogram my 800 line. Sage claims it will all be cut over on Friday, November 24, but I guess we will have to see it that holds true or not. PAT ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #394 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Nov 21 21:59:31 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 7E2222279; Tue, 21 Nov 2006 21:59:31 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #395 Message-Id: <20061122025931.7E2222279@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 21:59:31 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:00:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 395 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson California Court Expands Immunity for Bloggers (Reuters News Wire) Judge to Rule on Landmark Internet Porn Law (John Hurdle, Reuters) E-Mail Service For Basic Mobile Phones Unveiled (Eric Auchard, Reuters) Seeking New Unlocked VOIP Router (mike7411@gmail.com) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 21, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Report: Global Telecom Revenues to Hit $1.3 Trillion (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: VOIP Load Handle - Internet Capable (Robert Bonomi) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:49:06 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: California Court Expands Immunity for Bloggers Individuals who use the Internet to distribute information from another source may not be held to account if the material is considered defamatory, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a reversal of a lower court decision. The ruling supports federal law that clears individuals of liability if they transmit, but are not the source of, defamatory information. It expands protections the law gives to Internet service providers to include bloggers and activist Web sites. "We acknowledge that recognizing broad immunity for defamatory republication on the Internet has some troubling consequences," California's high court justices said in their opinion. "Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area, however, plaintiffs who contend they were defamed in an Internet posting may only seek recovery from the original source of the statement," the decision stated. The opinion, written by Associate Justice Carol Corrigan, addressed a lawsuit by two doctors who claimed defendant Ilena Rosenthal and others distributed e-mails and Internet postings that republished statements the doctors said impugned their character and competence. Rosenthal operates a San Diego-based Web site known as the Humantics Foundation http://www.humanticsfoundation.com , which is critical of silicone breast implants. Rosenthal had countered that her statements were protected speech and immune under the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It holds that: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." A California appeals court had ruled that Internet service providers and users could be held liable if they republish a statement if it is known to be defamatory. California's high court took that decision up for review because the lawsuit against Rosenthal involved an individual instead of a service provider, and opted for a broad view of immunity under the Communications Decency Act. "Requiring providers, users, and courts to account for the nuances of common law defamation, and all the various ways they might play out in the Internet environment, is a Herculean assignment that we are reluctant to impose," the court's justices held in their opinion. "By declaring that no 'user' may be treated as a 'publisher' of third party content, Congress has comprehensively immunized republication by individual Internet users," they added. Mark Goldowitz, the defense counsel who represented Rosenthal, said in a statement that the ruling offers protection against those who would chill free speech on the Internet. "The soapbox is not liable for what the speaker has said," said Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who filed a brief arguing free speech protections should cover individuals, not just Internet service providers. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:47:47 -0600 From: John Hurdle Subject: Judge to Rule on Landmark Internet Porn Law By Jon Hurdle A U.S. law designed to prevent children from viewing pornography online would undermine the free speech of millions of adult Internet users, opponents of the measure said on Monday. The law is so imprecisely written it would restrict most adult Internet users to material that is only suitable for children, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs said in closing arguments of a four-week trial. The ACLU and others sued the U.S. government, claiming the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 violates the Constitution, and they argued on Monday that filtering was a more effective tool that does not curtail free speech. But attornies for the U.S. government called the law necessary to protect young people from sexually explicit material and said Internet filtering technology was not good enough to block offending Web sites from personal computers. "Evidence shows that many parents do not actively use the filters," said Joel McElvain, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department. Judge Lowell Reed of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is expected to rule in spring 2007, and lawyers said the ruling was likely to be appealed because the case is seen as an important test of free speech limits on the Internet. Among those suing are Nerve.com, an online magazine about sexual literature, art and politics that claims 1 million readers a month, and Urban Dictionary, an online dictionary of contemporary slang with 40 million readers. The law, known as COPA, could force them to stop publishing, ACLU attorney Chris Hansen said. "That's an awful lot of speech that would be chilled by COPA going into effect," Hansen said. The law has never been implemented because it was challenged in court immediately after its signing by former President Bill Clinton. It was held to be unconstitutional by federal district and appeals courts. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed an injunction against enforcement to stand, and referred the case back to the Pennsylvania court for a full trial. The law would impose a maximum fine of $50,000 a day and up to six months in prison for anyone who uses the Internet to "make any communication for commercial purposes that is available to any minor and that includes any material that is harmful to minors." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:44:20 -0600 From: Eric Auchard Subject: E-Mail Service For Basic Mobile Phones Unveiled By Eric Auchard A start-up founded by a group of successful European entrepreneurs is set to bring e-mail, instant messaging and other communications services to low-cost mobile phones, its chief executive said on Tuesday. Babur Ozden, the head of Berggi Inc., said his company plans to offer a simplified alternative to the Blackberry e-mail delivery service from Canada's Research In Motion, which dominates the mobile professional market. Berggi aims to offer messaging services for basic mobile phones that still represent two-thirds of the U.S. mobile market. Users of Blackberry or rival e-mail services on Palm or Microsoft software need more expensive, so-called smartphones. Consumers can send and receive e-mail on their phones from Internet services such as Yahoo, Microsoft or Google, along with popular instant-messaging services. Berggi delivers any text in the body of an e-mail, but not document attachments. "Our uniqueness is that we are the only application that runs on mid- to lower-end phones," Ozden said in an interview. U.S. consumers can sign up on the company's Web site at http://www.berggi.com, beginning on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. Mobile phone users in Spain can start using Berggi on Friday. During the first half of next year, Berggi plans to offer the service in Britain, Italy, Mexico and Turkey, Ozden said. The U.S. service costs $9.99 a month. European users pay by the data they consume. One euro covers 10 or 20 e-mails. While targeting the price-sensitive end of the consumer market, Berggi is essentially trying to encourage users to bypass the billing systems that mobile carriers use to lock consumers into rates. "For the majority of consumers with fixed-rate data plans, that's a risk," said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin. Ozden said Berggi works as a simple download on most U.S. mobile carriers, except for Verizon Communications and the Nextel service of Sprint Nextel, which have billing system conflicts. Berggi also assumes that Blackberry or Palm users will rely on higher-end services for these devices. "My customer is a private e-mail user or a small business user," Ozden said, in contrast to corporate e-mail users. Forrester's Golvin said Berggi is looking to partner with established consumer brands to help them allow consumers to stay connected with like-minded mobile phone users in wireless versions of social networks like MySpace. Ozden said initial U.S. distribution partners are Blinko USA, a unit of Italian mobile entertainment company Buongiorno S.p.A.., and the America One Television, a Western U.S. TV network gearing up to launch its own mobile service. Berggi was founded by Jorge Mata, who is now chairman. He sold MyAlert.com, a Spanish company that delivers marketing via text message to mobile phones, to Italy's Buongiorno in 2001. Ozden, who joined Berggi in May, is a serial entrepreneur who in 1993 founded SuperOnline, Turkey's biggest Internet service, a unit of top mobile carrier Turkcell. The Houston-based company, which employs 18 and operates a research facility in Madrid, received $3 million in April through a funding round led by Adara Venture Partners, which makes early-stage investments in mobile consumer services. Oz Communications of Montreal offers similar e-mail and instant message services through major U.S. and European carriers. The difference is that Berggi offers service directly to consumers instead of relying on carrier partners. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: mike7411@gmail.com Subject: Seeking New Unlocked VOIP Router Date: 21 Nov 2006 09:45:22 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm looking for a modern (i.e. not discontinued) unlocked VOIP router. Can someone recommend one? Thank you. ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 21, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 12:02:14 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 21, 2006 ******************************** Vodafone UK Boosts "Mobile Plus" Strategy with Acquisitions http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21242?11228 Vodafone UK has acquired two companies and signed an exclusive deal with a third as part of its drive towards becoming a 'Total Communications Provider' through its Mobile Plus strategy. The company said it has signed a conditional contract to acquire Aspective Limited and Isis Telecommunications Management Limited, and signed ... France's Alcatel Sues Microsoft for Alleged Patent Infringement http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21237?11228 PARIS -- French telecommunications gear maker Alcatel SA said today it has sued Microsoft Corp. in a U.S. federal court for patent infringement. Alcatel filed Friday two complaints with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas seeking compensation for what the Paris-based company believes to be a violation of ... Survey Sez: Wireless Devices Maximize Productivity, Playtime http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21233?11228 A new Sprint subscriber survey says that while nearly all of them (93 percent) bring work-related wireless devices on vacation, the majority says they have achieved work-life balance (73 percent) and are more productive today than they were two years ago (67 percent). Being a 24/7 news organization, we at TelecomWeb news break are ... Fixed/Mobile Handover Vexes Carriers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21230?11228 Major carriers all over the world are launching fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) voice services that enable customers to place calls over mobile networks and WLAN access points using the same dual-mode wireless handset, yet many of them can't hand over calls between the two different networks. That's one of the findings of a ... Data That Doesn't Drip ... Drip ... Drip ... http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/21227?11228 You've heard of data leakage, but what about data seepage? That's when your desktop applications are set to connect to your internal mail server or shared folders -- for instance, when you boot up your machine -- and your corporate network is then exposed to a targeted attack. "Data seepage is one of the things ... Sony, NXP to Standardize Contactless Chip Cards http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21225?11228 Standardization will pave the way to adoption. At least that's the thinking behind a new joint venture (JV) between Sony and NXP Semiconductors designed to create a global standard for contactless chip cards. The JV hopes to spur use of smart card applications in mobile phones. The two companies are joining forces to develop, ... Check Point Spends on Protection http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21222?11228 Network security vendor Check Point made its first move into the data protection space today, spending $586 million for Protect Data, which owns Swedish mobile and storage security specialist Pointsec. Until now, Check Point has focused on firewall and VPN software, although Gil Shwed, the vendor's CEO has his eye on ... HDMI Heads for Sustained Growth, While DVI Begins Decline in 2007 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21220?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Digital visual interface (DVI) and high definition multimedia interface (HDMI) are both experiencing record growth, but the future is much brighter for HDMI, reports In-Stat. HDMI-enabled device shipments will grow 78% per year through 2010, while DVI will begin to decline in 2007, the high-tech market research ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 12:31:59 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Report: Global Telecom Revenues to Hit $1.3 Trillion in 2007 USTelecom dailyLead November 21, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eTdUfDtusXgujeCibuddiaUP TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: Global telecom revenues to hit $1.3 trillion in 2007 BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Vodafone buys two companies to boost biz offerings * Nortel wins Iraqi network contract * Dell, Sprint join for mobile broadband * Golden Telecom applies to get WiMAX frequencies in Russia USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Ethernet in the First Mile TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Analysis: Mobile access could have huge impact on wireless industry * Nielsen: iPod users not going to the video REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Canada changes VoIP pricing * California court decision limits Internet liability Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eTdUfDtusXgujeCibuddiaUP ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: VOIP Load Handle - Internet Capable Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:00:00 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , karthikbg wrote: > Hi, > Currently less people use VOIP. > Will internet be able to handle the load due to VOIP when the number of > users increase due to data flow overload. How ? Easy. Reliance on strict compliance with RFC 2549 will ensure that VOIP loads remain managable. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Call me curious, I guess ... but what _assurances_ are there that companies either into (or going into) VOIP will follow this _voluntary_ RFC? For many of the RFSs around now, compliance is only a half-hearted thing isn't it? PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #395 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 22 17:50:26 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2F3E6226B; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:39:41 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #396 Message-Id: <20061122223941.2F3E6226B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:39:41 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:40:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 396 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Banks Face Growing Threat of Identity Theft (Andrew Hurst) Microsoft Sues 129 Phishers (Reuters News Wire) Police Close in on Identity Theft Ring (John Ellement) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 22, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Comcast Buys Disney Stake in E!, Signs Distribution (USTelecom DailyLead) Re: Judge to Rule on Landmark Internet Porn Law (Herb Stein) Re: Judge to Rule on Landmark Internet Porn Law (ellis@no.spam) Re: E-Mail Service For Basic Mobile Phones Unveiled (Steven J. Sobol) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:41:55 -0600 From: Andrew Hurst Subject: Banks Face Growing Threat of Identity Theft By Andrew Hurst, European Banking Correspondent Banks are pouring money into building formidable defenses against computer hackers but are only just waking up to what may be a bigger threat -- the physical theft of client information by criminals in the office. "You can have a fortress-like security system, but if you are not terribly discriminating with consultants and temporary employees, that is a terrible vulnerability," said Carmen Oveissi Field, a New York-based consultant on computer crime. "If people can get physical access (to a bank's systems), the game is over," said Oveissi Field, managing director of Daylight Forensic & Advisory, a security consultancy. Banks, especially in Europe and the United States, are investing vast sums to make computer systems impregnable and have been warning customers of the dangers of being duped into giving away confidential information about their accounts. Under one of the most widely used methods known as "phishing," a spoof e-mail is sent out, leading recipients to a bogus bank Web site where they may be fooled into keying in account usernames and passwords. The information can then be used by criminals to ransack bank accounts over the Internet. Many banks have placed written warnings about phishing on their electronic banking Web sites and are encouraging clients to forward suspicious e-mails to them so they can then identify the phony Web sites and have them closed down. "It's like hosing down spray paint from vandalized walls," said Ken Allan, an information technology expert based in Ernst and Young's Glasgow office. If phishing attacks go unchecked, they could undermine public confidence in Internet banking, which is far less costly than branch banking, and drive customers back to their local branches for even the most simple banking operations. DATA "WALKING OUT OF THE DOOR" "Surveys show customer concerns about security are one of the biggest obstacles to increased Internet use by the general public," said Chris Potter, a partner at PWC in London who advises financial institutions on technical risks. Banks should be far more active in informing their customers against the dangers of Internet crime, said Oveissi Field. Warnings on bank Web sites are "the moral equivalent of sending your grandmother down a dark alley with instructions on how not to get mugged," she said. While banks are confident they can deal with phishing attacks by constantly warning customers of the dangers, they are now getting increasingly concerned about the physical theft of confidential client data by insiders or impostors. "Identity theft can happen through hacking into a bank system or internally with someone walking out of the door, and that worries me more than phishing," said a security officer at a major European bank who asked not to be identified. Widespread outsourcing of data management and other services has exposed some weaknesses and made it harder to prevent identity theft by insiders. "There are lots of weak links," said Oveissi Field. Back-up tapes are being sent to offsite storage sites or being mailed and getting into the wrong hands or are lost through carelessness." In what many regard as the biggest wake-up call in recent memory for financial institutions, thieves disguised as cleaning staff last year narrowly failed to steal the equivalent of more than $400 million from the London branch of Sumitomo Mitsui. They installed programs to record keystrokes on computers that were used to handle international wire transfers of money. After analyzing user identifications and passwords recorded by the keylogging programs, they used the information to make a huge money transfer to an Israeli bank but were foiled at the last minute when police were tipped off. "What banks worry about is that they may have a combination of weaknesses such as staff vetting and physical security, which when put together can let a sophisticated attacker get at their real crown jewels," said Potter. Banks are starting to respond to the threat by combining teams working on physical and information technology security, which have traditionally been separate functions, said Potter. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:44:07 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Microsoft Sues 129 Phishers Microsoft brings 129 lawsuits against phishers Microsoft is helping law enforcers hunt down criminals who try to steal bank account details on the Internet and has initiated 129 lawsuits in Europe and the Middle East, the software company said. One court case in Turkey has already led to a 2.5-year prison sentence for a so-called "phisher" in Turkey, and another four cases against teenagers have been settled out of court, Microsoft said on Wednesday, eight months after it announced the launch of a Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative in March. "Sometimes we initiate our own legal action, but more importantly we work with law enforcement agencies," said Nancy Anderson, deputy general counsel at the software company. Of the 129 lawsuits that have been initiated, 97 are criminal procedures in which Microsoft and other technology companies have provided information. The announcement was made at a European Union conference on identity theft in Brussels. Phishing has mushroomed over the last few years, with the number of attempts to trick citizens into handing over their bank account details almost doubling in the first half of 2006 to 157,000, according to a recent report from security software vendor Symantec. The total amount of damages from phishing is expected to be $2.8 billion in 2006 alone, research group Gartner estimates. Phishers send emails, in which they pretend to be a financial institution or other legitimate organization, asking people to verify personal information such as account numbers and passwords. "Like most other cases of fraud, they prey on people's behavior," Anderson said. They also scour social networking sites and personal Web sites looking for personal information. ANGRY PARENTS While criminal complaints are aimed at what Microsoft believes to be real criminals, the civil lawsuits are aimed mainly at young people without criminal intent. For them, settlements of 1,000 to 2,000 euros ($1,290-$2,570) are deemed to be enough of a deterrent, Microsoft said. "It's certainly enough to make their parents very angry," a spokesman said. Microsoft can initiate civil lawsuits even when it is not the target of identity theft, because legal systems in many countries allow anyone suffering from attacks to claim damages. "There are damages to our ability to conduct business. There are damages to our trust with the consumer," Anderson said. The U.S. company has an investigative team at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, which uses Web-crawling software and customer complaints to find out where attacks are taking place. Old-fashioned investigative techniques are then used to discover the identity of the phishers. Before legal action was taken, 253 cases were investigated. Most of the investigations and 50 of the criminal complaints were filed in Turkey. Germany was second with 28 criminal complaints and France third with 11. Britain led the civil orders with 18 out of a total 32. Cases were also filed in Dubai, Italy, Morocco and the Netherlands. Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:46:43 -0600 From: John R. Ellement Subject: Police Close in on Identity Theft Ring Alleged Leader Remains at Large By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff The interstate pursuit of a sophisticated identity theft ring allegedly responsible for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars led Boston police to a pulsating pile of clothes in a Hyde Park apartment. Police Detective Steven F. Blair said he found Carol Silva in a closet Friday night and that her hiding place was discovered because the mass of clothes she used to cover herself rose up and down with her breathing. Blair said Silva is the alleged sixth member of a seven-member ring active in Boston, Rhode Island, New York, Washington, D.C., and Maryland -- and the hunt is now on for the ring's alleged mastermind, Charles Belin of Boston. "We only have one person left to go, and that's Charles Belin," Blair said. "We need help from the community. If they see him, give us a call. We'd love to arrest him. " Blair said the ring was connected to a recent wave of pocketbook thefts along Newbury and Boylston streets and that the arrest of Silva and five others has dramatically decreased that type of crime in downtown Boston. Belin, 55, and Silva, 54, according to Blair, are targets of a federal investigation in Maryland. A spokeswoman for the US attorney's office in Maryland would neither confirm nor deny the investigation, but she said Silva had not been charged federally in Maryland. Blair said Silva's task in the multilevel ring was to pose as an identity theft victim -- complete with fake driver's license -- and withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from banks before the victim and banks learned they had been targeted. He said the sophisticated ring has members who specialize in portions of the criminal network. Someone steals a pocketbook, another person makes up fake identification using the name on checks found in the stolen purse, and another person then poses as the legitimate bank customer to quickly withdraw thousands from inflated bank accounts. Silva was arraigned yesterday in West Roxbury Municipal Court as a fugitive from justice in Maryland and charges unrelated to the identity theft ring. Boston police said they had received a tip Friday that Silva was staying at an address on Madison Street in Hyde Park. Investigators saw her enter the residence before they asked permission to search for her there. Silva was ordered held without bail by Judge Mary Ann Driscoll and is to be arraigned tomorrow in Boston Municipal Court, where she is charged with stealing $23,900 using a fake ID in October 2004. Her defense attorney, Paul V. Marino, said after the arraignment that Silva did not know Boston police were looking for her and was unaware that images of her cashing checks had been posted on the department's website. But Blair said Silva returned to Boston earlier this year after authorities in Maryland released surveillance photos of her in that region. "She knew it was getting hot, so she came back to Boston," he said. The key to the ring's success is finding checking account information inside a pocketbook, Blair said. The thieves take checks from one victim to deposit tens of thousands of dollars into another victim's bank account. And before bank security is alerted, they withdraw the cash with fake identification. Blair said people need to be vigilant about protecting their personal information. "A pocketbook today is now worth a quick $30,000," he said. "They lose their identification -- that's the most important thing in this world." Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company 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 For more news and headlines each day from New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 22, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 10:54:07 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 22, 2006 ******************************** TelecomDirect News will take an editorial holiday on November 23-24. We will resume publishing on November 27. We wish everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving. Speculation Deepens on Hutchison Whampoa's Possible Sale of the 3 Group http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21275?11228 Hutchison Whampoa has refuted speculation that it is in talks with France Telecom's Orange about a deal that could lead to a sale of the 3 ... VimpelCom to Make a Beeline for Armenia's Mobile Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21273?11228 Russian mobile operator VimpelCom plans to introduce its 'Beeline' brand into Armenia as soon as possible, reports the news agency Prime-Tass, quoting the company's vice-president, Nikolai Pryanishnikov. VimpelCom acquired a 90% stake in the fixed-line and mobile operator, Armentel, for US$463.3 million, plus around ... A Status-Seeker's Cell Phone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21268?11228 Like it or not, we are all judged by the home we live in, the clothing we wear, the car we drive and, increasingly, the phone we carry. For those of us who wish to make a loud, ostentatious statement about our lifestyle and identity, there's the Motorola Razr V3i Dolce & Gabbana. Make no mistake about it, people ... Private Equity Firm Expresses Interest in TelecomItalia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21266?11228 The chairman of Blackstone Group, the world's largest private equity company, said Thursday he would consider buying a minority stake in TelecomItalia. If the shareholders are willing to sell we would be interested, in TelecomItalia, Tony James told reporters on the sidelines of a private equity conference ... ITV Rejects Takeover Bid From NTL, Saying Proposal Makes Little Strategic Sense http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21263?11228 ITV PLC, Britain's largest commercial broadcaster, on Tuesday rejected a 4.7 billion pound (US$8.9 billion (806.9 billion) takeover offer from cable operator NTL Inc., saying the proposed combination made little strategic sense and undervalued the business. NTL offered to pay 122 pence (US$2.31) a share _ 105 pence ... Investors Throw More Cash At Mobile TV Chip Startup http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21260?11228 Startup Newport Media, which is developing mobile TV chips for use in cell phones and other handheld devices, had closed a $30 million third round of venture financing. The new cash brings to $66 million total funding for the company, which won't even celebrate its second birthday until January. The latest round was led by ... Taxing Times for WiFi? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21257?11228 The Australian government has won the first skirmish in a legal battle that could allow it to charge vendor royalties for all WiFi equipment and deployments. Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) claims that U.S. patent 5487069, which it obtained in 1996, covers technology used in ... Poll: Vonage IPO Gets Thumbs Down http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21254?11228 Readers didn't have many definitive opinions about upcoming IPOs, based on the latest Light Reading poll, but they do know what they don't like: Vonage Holdings Corp. (NYSE: VG). Asked which recent IPO would prove the biggest dud, a little more than half of the 182 respondents picked Vonage over Acme ... Business and Consumer IP Phone Markets Will Accelerate by 2008 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21250?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., - The mass migration to IP-based services is finally happening in both the business and consumer markets. Even though the adoption of IP phones is currently lagging, reports In-Stat, the growth of IP phones will accelerate significantly beginning in 2008, the high-tech market research firm says. The ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:28:29 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Comcast Buys Disney Stake in E!, Signs Distribution, VOD Deal USTelecom dailyLead November 22, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eTqQfDtusXgzoWCibuddFLdr TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Comcast buys Disney stake in E!, signs distribution, VOD deal BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Vodafone in talks with social-networking sites * Report: Siemens can't find buyer for Enterprise Networks division * Motorola, Nokia increase lead on Asian demand * Wireless a mixed bag for some cable companies * Wireless service deal reached for Boston's Big Dig tunnels * CBS finds success with YouTube-branded channel USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Do you have a continuity plan? TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Finland's Elisa, with Canal Digital, to offer IPTV service * Imagination licenses mobile-TV platform to Mavrix REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Judge upholds injunction against EchoStar EDITOR'S NOTE * The dailyLead will not be published Thursday or Friday Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eTqQfDtusXgzoWCibuddFLdr ------------------------------ From: Herb Stein Subject: Re: Judge to Rule on Landmark Internet Porn Law Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 03:53:48 GMT Pat- If you post this, feel free to snip out the stuff that isn't pertinent. John Hurdle wrote in message news:telecom25.395.2@telecom-digest.org... > By Jon Hurdle > A U.S. law designed to prevent children from viewing pornography > online would undermine the free speech of millions of adult Internet > users, opponents of the measure said on Monday. > The law is so imprecisely written it would restrict most adult > Internet users to material that is only suitable for children, lawyers > for the American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs said in > closing arguments of a four-week trial. > The ACLU and others sued the U.S. government, claiming the Child > Online Protection Act of 1998 violates the Constitution, and they > argued on Monday that filtering was a more effective tool that does > not curtail free speech. > But attornies for the U.S. government called the law necessary to > protect young people from sexually explicit material and said Internet > filtering technology was not good enough to block offending Web sites > from personal computers. > "Evidence shows that many parents do not actively use the filters," > said Joel McElvain, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department. Not a problem for Federal law. Simply a case of incompetent parents. It's a very important free speech issue. We can't reduce all of society to the lowest common denominator. > Among those suing are Nerve.com, an online magazine about sexual > literature, art and politics that claims 1 million readers a month, > and Urban Dictionary, an online dictionary of contemporary slang with > 40 million readers. > The law, known as COPA, could force them to stop publishing, ACLU > attorney Chris Hansen said. > "That's an awful lot of speech that would be chilled by COPA going into > effect," Hansen said. > The law has never been implemented because it was challenged in court > immediately after its signing by former President Bill Clinton. > It was held to be unconstitutional by federal district and appeals > courts. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed an injunction against > enforcement to stand, and referred the case back to the Pennsylvania > court for a full trial. > The law would impose a maximum fine of $50,000 a day and up to six > months in prison for anyone who uses the Internet to "make any > communication for commercial purposes that is available to any minor > and that includes any material that is harmful to minors." > Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. ------------------------------ From: ellis@no.spam Subject: Re: Judge to Rule on Landmark Internet Porn Law Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 07:33:27 -0000 Organization: S.P.C.A.A. In article , John Hurdle wrote: > A U.S. law designed to prevent children from viewing pornography > online would undermine the free speech of millions of adult Internet > users, opponents of the measure said on Monday. It wouldn't do anything to prevent children from viewing porn away. There are plenty of off-shore porn site and US law can't do anything about them. http://yosemitephotos.net/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Since the world seems to thrive on money -- with porn being no exception -- the _one_ thing which the US Government could try is prohibiting services like credit cards and PayPal from transferring money to pornographers in many cases. The government has already done that with internet gambling and the end result has been you see much less internet gambling. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J. Sobol Subject: Re: E-Mail Service For Basic Mobile Phones Unveiled Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 19:14:46 UTC Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com In article , Eric Auchard wrote: > By Eric Auchard > A start-up founded by a group of successful European entrepreneurs is > set to bring e-mail, instant messaging and other communications > services to low-cost mobile phones, its chief executive said on > Tuesday. Uhhhhhh ... My relatively low-cost T-Mobile Motorola PEBL already does instant messaging. I can't send huge emails via SMS, but I can send short ones, and I can attach videos, sounds and photos to messages that I send. My piece-of-crap $0.00-with-activation Motorola V188 did that too, although it couldn't *create* pictures or videos because it doesn't have a camera. What's the difference? Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #396 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Nov 24 19:48:11 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id DD50C2268; Fri, 24 Nov 2006 19:48:10 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #397 Message-Id: <20061125004810.DD50C2268@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 19:48:10 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 24 Nov 2006 19:50:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 397 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Court Says No Verdict Against Google Before 2007 (Reuters NewsWire) French Film Producer Latest to Sue Google (Wendlandt & Emmanuel) Italy Also Opens Google Probe (Silvia Aloisi) Telecom Update #556, November 24, 2006 (John Riddell) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 12:05:52 -0600 From: Reuters News Service Subject: Belgian Court Says No Verdict in Lawsuit Against Google Before 2007 A Belgian court said on Friday it would wait until after the new year to decide whether to cancel an injunction forbidding Web search leader Google Inc. from reproducing extracts from Belgian press reports. Google, which faces a parallel case in a U.S. court filed by Agence France-Presse, argued on Friday that the injunction, granted by Brussels's Tribunal des Referes, should be cancelled. "It will be after the Christmas holidays," the judge told lawyers after a three-hour hearing during which Google lawyers argued that the Belgian Google News service did not infringe on copyright laws. Lawyers for Copiepresse, an organization which manages copyrights for French and German language newspapers and which brought the case, said that Google had no right to make any copy of content without prior consent. Copiepresse general secretary Margaret Boribon, who was present at the hearing, said her organization was open to talks. Google also offered an olive branch. "Google is always open to better its relations with authors. We are trying to resume dialogue," Yoram Elkaim, the legal head of Google France, told Reuters after the hearing. Elkaim said he believed the case was did not threaten the viability of the Google News business overall. "This case in Belgium has triggered a debate in Europe but does not question this activity. It is more a question of method," he added. "If people want us to remove them from our service we do it," he added. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines please go to: http://telecom-digest.org.td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 12:09:56 -0600 From: Astrid Wendlandt & William Emmanuel Subject: French Film Producer Latest to Sue Google By Astrid Wendlandt and William Emmanuel The producer of "The World According to Bush" has taken legal action against Google for distributing the film for free, becoming the latest media company to seek compensation for lost business on the Internet. French production house Flach Film said on Thursday it had issued a writ against the U.S. Internet search engine and its French arm, Google France, for copyright infringement before a Paris commercial court. "The World According to Bush" is a two-hour film investigating President George W. Bush's administration and the Bush family, including its connections with the Bin Laden family. In a statement, Flach Film also warned that a legal Internet video market could not develop if such practices were allowed. "Flach Film requests the court to sentence Google to provide compensation for the loss resulting from these illegal acts," Flach said, adding that it alleged Google had "not acted as a simple host but as a fully responsible publisher." A spokeswoman for Google France confirmed it had received a complaint from Flach Film after which Google had removed links to the film from its sites. "Our terms and conditions specify that users (Internet surfers) don't have permission to use videos which they don't own the rights to," she said. MEDIA COMPLAINTS While online social networking and file-sharing sites such as YouTube and MySpace enjoy strong popularity, they are also dogged by media companies seeking compensation for downloading of their films, music and videos. Flach said its film was accessible for free on Google Video France through a simple click, as a stream or a download, and according to Google's own sources, had had in excess of 43,000 hits in "a very short period." "We made estimates of the prejudice, and it goes well beyond 500,000 euros ($648,700). The film has been downloaded about 50,000 times, and it has certainly been copied afterwards," Jean-Francois Lepetit, producer of the film, told Reuters in a telephone interview. Earlier this month, Google closed its $1.65 billion acquisition of top online video-sharing site YouTube. At the time, Google said one-eighth of the equity, or roughly $200 million, would be held in escrow as security on certain unspecified indemnification obligations. On November 7, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt denied that his company had set aside $500 million to settle copyright claims by media companies as part of its deal to acquire YouTube. The legal action against Google comes after Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company which is part of Vivendi, last week filed a suit against MySpace for infringing copyrights of thousands of its artists' works. The lawsuit accuses News Corp.'s MySpace of allowing users to upload videos illegally and taking part in the infringement by re-formatting the videos to be played back or sent to others. MySpace has said its procedures for removing illegal downloads live up to laws protecting digital rights. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 17:51:53 -0600 From: Silvia Aloisi Subject: Italy Also Opens Google Probe Italy opens probe into Google over bullying video By Silvia Aloisi Italian prosecutors on Friday put two Google Italy representatives under investigation as part of an inquiry into how a video of teenagers harassing an autistic classmate surfaced on its Video site, a judicial source said. The two are being investigated for allegedly failing to check on the content of the video posted on the Internet search engine's Web site. The video, which sparked outrage in the country, showed four teenagers beating and poking fun at a 17-year old disabled boy in a classroom in the northern Italian city of Turin. Prosecutors have already put the four students and a school teacher under investigation. The students have also been suspended until the end of the school year. Being put under investigation does not imply any guilt in Italy. A spokeswoman for Google in Europe said the Internet search engine was sorry for the distress caused by the video and had acted swiftly when it was informed of its content. "There was this very disturbing video which was posted on Google Video a couple of weeks ago and we promptly took it down when we were notified," said Google's Rachel Whetstone. "We've been helping Italian police with the investigation and we're happy to cooperate." In Europe, Google is facing a growing number of legal challenges by plantiffs seeking to enforce local laws that seek to rein in the free flow of information on which the Internet relies. U.S. law generally treats Google as a distributor of information rather than having editorial responsibility for the content that appears on its automated Web sites. Italy's Education Minister Giuseppe Fioroni said the prosecutors had been right to apply to the Internet the same legislation that in Italy regulates what can be published in newspapers or broadcast on television. "I've said repeatedly that there can't be double standards, one for the press and television and another for the Internet," Fioroni told ANSA news agency. The Internet search engine shared the same duty as other forms of media in distributing "responsible" content, he said. Google's policy bans the uploading of violent content, but with thousands of videos posted every day on the Internet the search engine relies largely on users to ensure that is adhered to, Whetstone said. In a separate case in Brussels, a Belgian copyright group has challenged Google News for copyright infringement. Earlier this month, Google faced a copyright infringement suit by filmmakers over a pirated documentary that was temporarily posted on the Google Video site. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #556, November 24, 2006 Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 13:48:21 -0500 From: John Riddell *********************************************************** TELECOM UPDATE *********************************************************** published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 556: November 24, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous=20 financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca/home/Home_Business.page ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.ca/communications/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** SHAW BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: www.shawbusinesssolutions.ca ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca *********************************************************** IN THIS ISSUE: ** CRTC Allows Price Ranges for Local Services ** SaskTel Cuts VoIP Price in Saskatchewan ** Telecom Exports Rise ** Bell Aliant Lowers Nordiq Bid ** Canada Called a Better Host for Banking Transfers ** More WNP Implementation Rules Approved ** Feds to Cut Out One Cellco ** Telecom Places Eight Women Among 100 "Most Powerful" ** Cablecos, Telcos Unite on Broadcast Fees ** RIM Buys Management Software Developer ** Dell Notebooks to Offer Telus Modems ** Expertech Denies Closure Threat ** Moody's Raises Bell Rating ** UBS Posts Decline in Revenue, Losses ** Correction CRTC ALLOWS PRICE RANGES FOR LOCAL SERVICES: In Telecom Decision 2006-75, the CRTC says it is willing to approve price ranges, rather than single prices, for most local services offered by the incumbent telcos. Previously this had been allowed only for certain VoIP services. (See Telecom Update #520) ** The upper and lower limit of a price range will be confidential. The telco can change prices within the range at will, but must issue a revised tariff page on the day the new rate takes effect. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-75.htm SASKTEL CUTS VoIP PRICE IN SASKATCHEWAN: Responding quickly to the Cabinet-ordered deregulation of access-independent local VoIP service (see Telecom Update #555), SaskTel has begun offering its $15.95/month WebCall Basic service in Regina, Prince Albert, and Saskatoon. That package and price was previously offered only to customers outside the province. Other competitive developments in Saskatchewan: ** Access Communications Cooperative, which has 80,000 Cable TV customers in Saskatchewan, plans to offer a digital phone service, based on MTS Allstream VoIP technology, within two years. ** Shaw Communications is now offering its Digital Phone service in Saskatoon at an introductory price of $29.95/month. ** SaskTel's IP-based TV service now has more than 50,000=20 customers. TELECOM EXPORTS RISE: The Export Development Corporation says Canada's exports of communications equipment will grow by 4% in 2006, building on gains of 13.7% in 2005 and 11.2% in 2004. The rise is "all the more remarkable," EDC says, in view of the 30% increase in Canada's dollar during these years. ** In 2005, 69% of telecom exports went to the U.S. BELL ALIANT LOWERS NORDIQ BID: Bell Aliant has reduced its offer to purchase the 36.4% of Bell Nordiq Income Fund units it does not already own, from $19 to $15.36 -- $4 in cash and 0.4113 of a Bell Aliant unit. (See Telecom Update #550) CANADA CALLED A BETTER HOST FOR BANKING TRANSFERS: A European Union monitoring agency says that the Swift banking transfer consortium has breached the EU's privacy rules by giving the U.S. government access to records of private financial transactions in Europe. Several European lawmakers have called on Swift to safeguard European civil liberties by transferring its U.S. operations to Canada. MORE WNP IMPLEMENTATION RULES APPROVED: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-74 approves three consensus reports filed by CISC on Wireless Number Portability, in preparation for WNP implementation on March 17, 2007. (See Telecom Update #511, 530) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-74.htm FEDS TO CUT OUT ONE CELLCO: The federal government has issued an RFP for a new contract on its cellphone and PDA services, to begin in March 2007. The contract will awarded to two carriers instead of the current three. Since Wireless Number Portability begins in March, it should be possible for the losing bidder's numbers to be ported to the winners. TELECOM PLACES EIGHT WOMEN AMONG 100 "MOST POWERFUL": The Women's Executive Network's 2006 list of the most powerful women in Canada, announced this week, includes eight women from the telecommunications industry: Isabelle Courville, Karen Sheriff, and Martine Turcotte (Bell Canada); Karen Radford, Judy Shuttleworth, and Janet Yale (Telus); Cathy MacDonald (Rogers); and the late Elaine Minacs (Minacs Worldwide). http://www.wxnetwork.com/images/Top100/WXN%20Awards%20Book.pdf CABLECOS, TELCOS UNITE ON BROADCAST FEES: Canada's major phone companies have joined with Rogers and the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance (a cableco purchasing group) to protest a bid by some broadcasters to charge fees to distributors that carry local channels. The collective cited a survey showing that 81% of TV subscribers do not want to pay $5 a month more for this purpose. ** More surprisingly, 84% of survey respondents had heard of the CRTC. And even more surprising, 12% were in favour of paying $5 more and "getting nothing extra for it." RIM BUYS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE DEVELOPER: Research In Motion has bought Epoch Integration Inc, a Toronto company that makes management software tools for the BlackBerry enterprise service. The purchase price was not disclosed. DELL NOTEBOOKS TO OFFER TELUS MODEMS: Dell Canada has agreed to include modems providing access to Telus's EVDO high-speed wireless service in some of the computer maker's lines of notebooks and mobile workstations. EXPERTECH DENIES CLOSURE THREAT: Last week we reported a union statement that Bell was threatening to close its Expertech subsidiary if contract negotiations didn't lead to major concessions. A company spokesman subsequently told Telecom Update that although the company needs to reduce labour costs, "there are no threats from Bell to close Expertech." MOODY'S RAISES BELL RATING: Moody's Investors Service has changed its rating outlook for Bell Canada to "stable" from "negative" on the basis of BCE's announcement last month that the holding company will be wound down and merged into Bell. (See Telecom Update #531) UBS POSTS DECLINE IN REVENUE, LOSSES: Unique Broadband Systems, owner of Look Communications, had sales of $29.9 million for the year ended August 31, down 21% from the previous year. Net loss: $3.6 million. UBS pins its hopes on selling its licensed spectrum and mobile broadcast licence. (See Telecom Update #538) CORRECTION: Last week we incorrectly stated that Cabinet has not overruled the CRTC since 1988. In fact, the CRTC has been reversed on telecom matters at least twice since then, most recently in 1996 when Cabinet ruled that competing directory publishers must have the same access to telephone listings as the telcos. (See Telecom Update #42) HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2006 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V25 #397 ****************************** NOTE: No issues of the Digest over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Nov 27 15:47:38 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 53F422262; Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:47:38 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #398 Message-Id: <20061127204738.53F422262@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:47:38 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:50:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 398 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Linkin Park Fan Hacks Phone Data (Associated Press News Wire) Email Gangs Bombard us in 'Spam Wars' (Peter Griffiths) EU Commission Urges Members to Fight Spam, Internet Fraud (Sabina Zawadski) EU Says Spam Now 70-80 Percent of all Email (Associated Press News Wire) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 27, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Surge in VoIP Patents Signals Market for Litigation (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Cell Phones; Viruses are Catching (Forrester Batt) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 19:20:48 -0600 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Linkin Park Fan Hacks Phone Data Albuquerque, N.M. (AP) -- A woman is accused of using a computer at a national laboratory to hack into a cell phone company's Web site to get a number for Chester Bennington, lead singer of the Grammy-winning rock group Linkin Park. According to an affidavit filed by the Department of Defense Inspector General, Devon Townsend, 27, obtained copies of Bennington's cell phone bill, the phone numbers he called and digital pictures taken with the phone. Investigators said she also hacked into the e-mail of Bennington's wife, Talinda Bennington, and at one point called her and threatened her. Talinda Bennington told federal authorities last month that someone had accessed their Verizon Wireless account online, according to the affidavit, and expressed concern that a "stalker" had access to personal information. Townsend waived her right to a preliminary hearing Tuesday in U.S. District Court and was released to her mother's custody. She is accused of using a computer at her former workplace, Sandia National Laboratories, to access Bennington's cell phone information. Lab spokesman Michael Padilla said Wednesday that she no longer worked there. Townsend's attorney, Ray Twohig, said that investigators were still analyzing his client's computer and that it remains to be seen what exact violations will be alleged. "This is the Internet version of a groupie hiding in Mick Jagger's dressing room," Twohig said. "We're in a different age, and fans have more skills than they used to." Townsend's computer wasn't connected to classified data, Padilla said. The affidavit says that during a search of Townsend's home in Albuquerque, investigators found Linkin Park posters, autographed band memorabilia, pictures of Townsend with Chester Bennington, bootlegged Linkin Park music and copies of messages and photographs intercepted from the Bennington family's e-mail accounts. A person who answered the phone Friday at Time Warner -- Linkin Park's label is Warner Bros. Music -- said no one would be available to comment until Monday. Linkin Park has sold more than 36 million records worldwide. In February, Linkin Park and rapper Jay-Z shared a Grammy Award for best rap/sung collaboration for "Numb/Encore." In 2001, the band won a Grammy for best hard rock performance for "Crawling." Copyright 2006 Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:20:03 -0600 From: Peter Griffiths Subject: Email Gangs Bombard us in 'Spam Wars' By Peter Griffiths Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted emails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips in Britain. The number of "spam" messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 emails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini. As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer. "Email systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam," said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini. His company has detected 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June. Spam in Britain has risen by 50 percent in the last two months alone, according to Internet security company SurfControl, and in the United States about the same amount. The United States, China and Poland are the top sources of spam, data from security firm Marshal suggests. About 200 illegal gangs are behind 80 percent of unwanted emails, according to Spamhaus, a body that tracks the problem. Experts blame the rise in spam on computer programs that hijack millions of home computers to send emails. These "zombie networks," also called "botnets," can link 100,000 home computers without their owners' knowledge. They are leased to gangs who use their huge "free" computing power to send millions of emails with relative anonymity. While "Trojan horse" programs that invade computers have been around for years, they are now more sophisticated, written by professionals rather than bored teenagers. "Before it was about showing off, now it's about ripping people off," said SurfControl's Harnish Patel. Spam costs firms up to $1,000 a year per employee in lost productivity and higher computing bills, according to research published last year. Home computer users are at risk from emails that ask them to reveal their bank details, a practice known as "phishing." The latest programs mutate to avoid detection and send fewer emails from each machine. Fast broadband Internet connections, which are always connected, help the spammers. The gangs send millions of emails, so they only need a fraction of people to reply to make a profit. "This is a constant game of cat and mouse," said Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs, an email security company. "The bad guys will not stand still." They disguise words to try to outfox filters searching for telltale words. So, Viagra would become V1@gra. When anti-spam experts clamped down on this, the spammers began to send messages embedded in a graphic instead of plain text. It is harder for filters to scan pictures. Random extracts from classic books are often included to confuse filters looking for keywords. Anti-spam laws have had mixed results. The first U.S. convictions came last year, while Britain has yet to charge anyone under 2003 anti-spam legislation. It is difficult to fight spam because the problem crosses international borders, said a spokesman for the UK Information Commissioner's Office, the body which enforces the law. Some believe laws and filters won't defeat spam. It will only end when people stop buying diet pills, herbal highs and sexual performance enhancers, said Dave Rand, of Internet security firm Trend Micro. "The products they are selling by spam are exactly the same products that they sold in the Middle Ages," he said. "This really is a human problem, not a computer problem." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please to to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:25:09 -0600 From: Sabina Zawadzki Subject: EU Commission Urges Members to Fight Against Spam, Internet Fraud By Sabina Zawadzki European Union countries are doing too little to enforce EU rules banning unsolicited emails, or spam, which are becoming increasingly fraudulent and criminal, the European Commission said on Monday. Spam accounts for as much as 80 percent of the content in an inbox in Europe, some of which are emails that lure recipients into giving away personal financial details. The Commission said a 2002 EU law against spam should be enough legislation for now, but that member states still needed to step up the fight against such emails. In a report, it urged national regulators, governments and industry to work together more efficiently to combat the problem. "What we need to beef up in the European Union (is) our enforcement activities and that requires in particular well-equipped national regulators," Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr told journalists. The Commission will revisit the issue next year to see whether more laws are needed, he said. EU countries should follow the lead of the Netherlands which has cut locally generated spam by 85 percent since 2003, thanks to the work of just four full-time staff at an anti-spam agency and 570,000 euros ($748,600) in investment, Selmayr said. Netherlands puts spammers in jail. Finland reduced spam to 30 percent of emails received, down from 80 percent in 2003, by applying filtering policies and assuring good online commercial practices. They also are agressive in their actions. In other countries, the cost of spam is huge -- 3.5 billion euros a year in Germany and 1.9 billion euros in Britain. Globally, spam costs 39 billion euros, according to U.S.-based Ferris Research in 2005. "From a mere nuisance, unsolicited email has become increasingly fraudulent and criminal in nature," the EU executive said in its report. It said governments should lay down clear responsibilities for regulators, ensure they have the resources to do their job and help out in cross-border investigations. The paper called for email services suppliers to apply a filtering policy and for the industry to inform customers better of the dangers and software solutions. An existing EU agency, the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), could co-ordinate the collection of data detailing security incidents, the Commission said. The Commission will also increase cooperation with non-EU countries, including the United States from where the EU receives the most amount of spam. The Commission has asked pointedly, "Why hasn't the USA done more to get tough with spammers and fraud email?" Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:29:06 -0600 From: Associated Press news Wire Subject: EU Says Spam Now 70-80 Percent of all Email Unsolicited e-mails continue to plague Europeans and account for between 50 and 80 percent of all messages sent to mail inboxes, the European Commission said Monday, but the Commission noted that "in the USA, spam, porn and fraud email has been holding at 80-90 percent for some time." EU Media Commissioner Viviane Reding called on EU governments to step up their fight against spam, spyware and other illegal online activities and implement EU rules to improve Internet safety. An EU report found that only two EU nations -- the Netherlands and Finland -- were making inroads in enforcing the 2002 law to crack down on spam. Both those nations have said they just will not tolerate it. "Spam is still ... making up to between 50 and 80 percent of the mails that we are receiving in Europe and two-thirds of that is coming from outside the European Union, mainly the United States," said EU spokesman Martin Selmayr. Selmayr said Dutch authorities were able to reduce spam by 85 percent by using fines to get businesses to fall in line with the EU rule. The Dutch telecommunications watchdog OPTA slapped euro60,000 ($78,500) in fines on three companies late last year for sending spam, and the Commission wants other governments to act as well, Reding said. Dutch OPTA also suggests 'jail time for offenders may be needed.' "I'd like to see other countries achieving similar results through more efficient enforcement," she said in a statement. EU officials have said they will put forward new legislation next year to make it easier to prosecute spammers on an EU-wide basis. Monday's EU report said spam cost euro39 billion ($51.1 billion) worldwide last year, according to San Francisco-based Ferris Research Institute. Selmayr said the biggest culprit of spam remains the United States, which accounts for 21.6 percent of spam coming into the 25-nation EU. China is the second-biggest producer with 13.4 percent, while EU member France is third with 6.3 percent. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. 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 For more news and headlines, please to go: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 27, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:48:12 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 27, 2006 ******************************** U.S. Copyright Office Gives Go-Ahead for Phone Unlocking http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21306?11228 Following the third review of exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA), the U.S. Congress Copyright Office has given the go-ahead for phones to be unlocked from networks without fear of prosecution under the act's anti- circumvention provisions. The anti-circumvention provisions of the DCMA make it illegal to ... New CEO to Reshuffle Deutsche Telekom Top Management http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21297?11228 Deutsche Telekom's new chief executive officer (CEO), Rene Obermann, is planning to restructure the management board of Europe's leading telecoms group. The management changes will be unveiled on 5 December, when Obermann will present his new management team to Deutsche Telekom's supervisory board. The new CEO is likely to ... The Rocky Road to IMS Adoption http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21294?11228 Most carriers and vendors view the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture as the telecom industry's great unifying technology. So that means the path to IMS adoption will be smooth and trouble free, right? Well, of course not. After all, this is the telecom industry we're talking about, and the words 'smooth' and ... Cingular Unveils Palm Treo 680 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21292?11228 Just in time for the kick off of the holiday shopping season, Cingular Wireless plans to take the wraps off of the latest addition to Palm's Treo line on Friday. The Treo 680 will be available from Cingular for as low as $199.99. Cingular plans to market the quad-band world phone, which operates on the Palm OS platform, to both ... FCC Buys More Time To Air ICC 'Missoula Plan' ... Again http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/21289?11228 For the second time in fewer than three months, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is giving the telecom service-provider business additional time to digest and to comment on the sticky and sometimes indigestible 'Missoula Plan' for revamping the intercarrier compensation (ICC) and access charge arrangements for ... Vodafone's 3G Broadband Service http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21286?11228 Thought mobile broadband was a thing of the future? Wrong! With endless speculation, on these pages and elsewhere, about wireless mesh, municipal WiFi, and Mobile WiMax, you may not have noticed that mobile broadband is already here -- in the shape of HSPA a.k.a. 3G Mobile Broadband. Unstrung had the chance (and made the ... Energizing Exchange http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21283?11228 Exchange is about more than email these days -- it's a business-critical application for most organizations. That means it has to be available, managed, and secured at all times. When there is a problem with Exchange, the entire company knows about it, so do many people who communicate with your company from the outside. ... T-Mobile Awards 3G Deals http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21280?11228 As anticipated, Ericsson AB and Nokia Corp. have been chosen by T-Mobile USA to provide the infrastructure for its 3G network rollout. The two Scandinavian firms had been earmarked as the most likely winning vendors after T-Mobile snapped up 120 new wireless spectrum licenses in September's AWS (Advanced ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 12:40:00 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Surge in VoIP Patents Signals Market for Innovation and Litigation USTelecom dailyLead November 27, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eTBkfDtusXgDjzCibuddJzcd TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Surge in VoIP patents signals market for innovation and possible litigation BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Report: U.K. regulator to issue new rules for VoIP suppliers * Verizon to sell new smartphone at lower price point * Companies rush to capture text message short codes * Phone and cable companies battle for customers USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * The USTelecom IP Multimedia Subsystem Implementation Guide HOT TOPICS * Lucent-Alcatel merger approved after security measures pledged * Report: Global telecom revenues to hit $1.3 trillion in 2007 * Nortel wins Iraqi network contract * Report: Siemens can't find buyer for Enterprise Networks division * Internet Protocol TV gains ground in Europe TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Mobile-phone service via Wi-Fi offers opportunities and challenges: * China preps for 3G rollout * Global survey reveals preferences for mobile data services Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eTBkfDtusXgDjzCibuddJzcd ------------------------------ From: ForessterBATT Subject: Re: Cell Phones: Viruses are Catching Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:21:27 GMT > (Should cell phone directory assistance really cost $1.25 per > use, plus airtime?) I always thought this was an injustice charging for directory assistance. I found a 1 800 number you can use for free for the service, it is 1-800-FREE-411. I have used it for several months and it works and no hidden charges when I get the cell phone bill. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, _someone_ has to pay the service bureaus who provide the lookup service. Don't expect AT&T/SBC to pay for it; they are too cheap. I doubt the bill for same comes to $1.25 per call; in fact there was a company doing it for the 'cost' of one or two ten second advertisements played to you, the inquirer as you waited for a response. But, the last time I tried, it was out of business. Your 800-FREE-411 sounds like a good one also. Maybe our readers will try it and see how it works for them. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #398 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Nov 28 15:42:10 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 4C3DD2253; Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:42:10 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #399 Message-Id: <20061128204210.4C3DD2253@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:42:10 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:45:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 399 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Verizon Wireless to Offer YouTube on Cell Phones (Carew & Adegoke, Reuters) Sprint and Microsoft Bring Convenience to Mobile Search (David Garrett) Critical Firefox Hole Allows Password Theft (Monty Solomon) Free Services to Inspire Your Cellphone (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 28, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) AT&T's U-verse to Carry NBCU Content (USTelecom dailyLead) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:44:46 -0600 From: Sinead Carew & Yinka Adegoke Subject: Verizon Wireless to Offer YouTube on Cell Phones By Sinead Carew and Yinka Adegoke Verizon Wireless said on Tuesday it would deliver selected video clips from YouTube to cell phones starting in December in a bid to increase subscriptions to its mobile media service. YouTube, the leading online video sharing site which was bought by Internet search leader Google Inc. this month, said it hopes to expand beyond computers to phones. It did not reveal the financial terms of the deal. Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc, has been betting increasingly on text messaging and advanced services like music and video for growth as phone call prices keep falling. But so far only a small minority of U.S. consumers use features like video on their cell phones. Verizon Wireless hopes the huge popularity of many home videos shown on YouTube could help boost use of its Vcast wireless media service. "The user-generated content space is a very important sector in media," said Robin Chan, marketing director at Verizon Wireless, who believes the deal could help increase its service revenue. "Vcast subscribers tend to be higher-value customers in terms of ARPU (average revenue per user) versus traditional voice subscribers," Chan said. Under the YouTube agreement, consumers who pay a $15 monthly fee for Vcast will be able to use their cell phones to view consumer-generated content posted on YouTube's Web site. Chan also said customers would also be able to post videos from their phones to YouTube more easily than before by using a five-digit short code instead of an e-mail address. Verizon said about 20 million of its customers have phones that could support Vcast. But only about 10 percent of these phone users have subscribed to Vcast, according to estimates from Ovum analyst Roger Entner. YouTube said the pact with Verizon was exclusive for a short period. It did not say when it would be free to pursue additional deals with other wireless providers. YouTube, which gets more than 100 million views of its videos a day, is exploring whether it can integrate YouTube into a variety of handheld devices with Internet connections. "Mobile is just one of the things we're looking at," said YouTube's co-founder, Steve Chen. He did not give details. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:47:46 -0600 From: David Garrett Subject: Sprint and Microsoft Bring Convenience to Mobile Search by David Garrett, newsfactor.com It's the day after Thanksgiving -- the biggest shopping day of the year -- and you need a sandwich after a morning spent fighting the crowds. If Sprint and Microsoft have their way, you won't use the phone book to find it. You'll use your phone. Last week, the two firms announced a partnership to bring Microsoft's Windows Live Search, which returns local business information, to Sprint phones. How does it work? Just enter your address, zip code, or city and state into your phone, along with a search term, such as "pastrami." In response, you'll get a list of every sandwich shop and grocery store in your neighborhood, as well as any ring tones, games, or screensavers that deal with eating. In the future, Sprint will add features that let the phone determine your location and enter it for you, so you don't have to fumble with a tiny keyboard. "In recent years, the search box has fundamentally changed the way people interact with the Internet, but we have only just begun to scratch the surface for what search and live Internet services can do in the mobile space," said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Services Group, in a statement. Sticky Fingers Berkowitz added that Sprint's new service is designed to give users "the information they want, when they want it, where they are," in a nod to the fact that today's gadget users expect their information to move as quickly as they do. William Ho, senior analyst at research firm Current Analysis, said that Sprint and Microsoft are selling convenience and not merely information. After all, local searching has always been available, although with more effort. "A person on their Sprint phone would just invoke their WAP browser and point their URL to Google," he said. (A WAP browser is a Web browser designed for use on mobile phones.) Now, users can search without a browser at all, reducing the effort it takes to find information. The concept is known as stickiness -- keeping users within your service (or on your Web site) so they consume more of what you're selling, without leaving to find it elsewhere. It is a common strategy on the Web -- mobile and nonmobile alike. "If you're a Yahoo user, all the links point within the Yahoo domain," said Ho. "Why would you go outside?" More Minutes Indeed, Sprint's new search feature might be sticky enough to entice users to talk more. Once they find the restaurant or business they want, they simply "click on it to make a call directly, as opposed to copying the number down," said Ho. Bottom line? Added convenience means more minutes. While the new search features are free to current users of Sprint's data plans, the extra time they spend talking is not. And that means a better bottom line for Sprint. Copyright 2006 NewsFactor Network, Inc. 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 For more tech news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:07:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Critical Firefox hole allows password theft http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=17&articleId=9005379 http://www.info-svc.com/news/11-21-2006/ http://secunia.com/advisories/23046 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:07:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Free Services to Inspire Your Cellphone State of the Art Free Services to Inspire Your Cellphone By DAVID POGUE The New York Times November 23, 2006 Thanksgiving, is it? Well, despite occasional headaches, technology has also brought us plenty to be thankful for: safety, convenience and entertainment on the go. Next time you're running late, lost or lonely, ask yourself: aren't you grateful for your cellphone? Actually, don't answer yet. With every passing month, cellphones are becoming even more useful. Sure, it's nice that they let you call people from the road. But lately, their reach has grown, thanks to clever programmers making links between the cellular world and the Internet. Here, for your gratitude-generating pleasure, is a rundown of some of the most exciting and powerful services awaiting your cellphone at this very moment. Better yet, at the moment, they're all free. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/technology/23pogue.html?ex=1321938000&en=ba3051e78eb059e5&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 28, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 12:15:07 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 28, 2006 ******************************** Swiss Regulator Probes Mobile Interconnection Fees http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21331?11228 The Swiss competition watchdog has criticised the country's mobile operators for the high fees they charge other operators for connecting to their networks. The move will enable the telecoms regulator to probe the current situation and introduce price cuts in the mobile interconnection rates. Significance: The Swiss mobile market ... Supreme Court Hears Antitrust Suit Against Bell Companies http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21329?11228 A case brought against the incumbent telecom operators in the United States went before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, reports Reuters. The class action lawsuit alleges that following Bell's break-up and the opening up of network exchanges to competitors in 1996, the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCS), in this particular ... Mobile Operators Race to Embrace Retail Models http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21326?11228 The vision of becoming the main touchpoint for myriads of services begins with the hype around IMS and service delivery platforms (SDPs), as they establish a means for moving away from solely network operations to dynamic, retail-focused strategies where operators monetize content and become the applications and content providers of ... Verizon Wireless to Feature YouTube Videos http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21323?11228 NEW YORK -- YouTube videos will be viewable on cell phones for the first time under a deal with Verizon Wireless, which will also allow users to upload videos shot with their camera phones. The partnership, to be announced today, marks the first big distribution deal for YouTube since the young video-sharing Web site was ... Ericsson, Nokia Tapped For U.S. 3G Buildout http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21320?11228 Deutsche Telekom (DT) subsidiary T-Mobile USA gave Ericsson and Nokia the nod to provide the infrastructure for its planned $2.75 billion U.S. 3G rollout. The 3G rollout is a key part of T-Mobile's stated goal of expanding its current U.S. customer base of approximately 23 million to between 35 million and 40 million by 2015. ... Alltel, Seven Give RAZR a Push http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21316?11228 Alltel Wireless has turned to Seven to enable delivery of real-time e-mail to its enterprise customers' BREW handsets, including the popular Motorola RAZR. At launch, Alltel is offering the Seven solution, dubbed Office Sync for BREW, on the Motorola RAZR V3c and the Kyocera Strobe K612B. The carrier plans to add support for ... NeuStar Buys Followap for $139M http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21313?11228 IP peering and ENUM (electronic numbering) specialist NeuStar Inc.has bought British firm Followap Inc. for a cool $139 million in cash to improve its mobile messaging capabilities, particularly in Europe and Asia. Followap has developed technology that enables mobile operators to offer instant messaging (IM) and ... OZ Locks Down $34M http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21311?11228 Canadian mobile messaging startup OZ Communications Inc. has grabbed $34 million in a second round of VC funding. While that may seem large, compared to many other wireless ventures, it's becoming more common in the mobile messaging space, where a recent spate of acquisitions and anticipation of major market growth have investors ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:48:35 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T's U-verse to Carry NBCU Content USTelecom dailyLead November 28, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eUjkfDtusXgFoGCibuddqtaV TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T's U-verse to carry NBCU content BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Judge declares mistrial in $10 billion suit against Motorola * Verizon to offer TV services in Western Pennsylvania * BT begins 21CN rollout * Ericsson to cut up to 400 jobs in Sweden * Alcatel, Sequans to produce WiMAX devices for developing countries USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * A Clear Picture of the IPTV Future Thursday, Nov. 30, 1 p.m. (ET) TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Verizon to offer YouTube channel * T-Mobile chooses Ericsson, Nokia for 3G network * Telefonica de Argentina launches Wi-Fi service * Analysis: Carriers seek to meet capacity challenge REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Telecom companies find video legislation on hold * EchoStar loses bid to rewind case in TiVo lawsuit Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eUjkfDtusXgFoGCibuddqtaV ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 2006 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 ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V25 #399 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 29 14:58:10 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 665212223; Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:58:10 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #400 Message-Id: <20061129195810.665212223@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:58:10 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:00:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 400 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Oracle Develops Standards for Identity Security (Reuters News Wire) Epson Stops Ink-Makers (Martyn Williams, IDG) I am Now a Sage Telecom Customer (TELECOM Digest Editor) AT&T Partner II R4.1 w/ Avaya Partner Mail VS R5 (VMS Hunt Help) (Ryan) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 29, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) AT&T to Sell DSL Through Wal-Mart (USTelecom dailyLead) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:06:29 -0600 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Oracle Develops Standards for Identity Security Software maker Oracle Corp. said on Wednesday that it is developing a group of standards that businesses can use to help control and monitor the flow of sensitive personal data within corporate computer systems. Oracle has dubbed the project the Identity Governance Framework. CA Inc., Novell Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have reviewed a draft of the standards and plan to help develop the full specifications, Oracle said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. 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 For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:09:17 -0600 From: Martyn Williams IDG Subject: Epson Stops Ink-Makers by Martyn Williams, IDG News Service Fewer Epson-compatible ink cartridges from third-party manufacturers will be available, because the printer vendor has convinced a number of manufacturers and importers to stop producing and marketing them. Sued Vendors Last February, Epson filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission against 24 companies that manufacture, import, or distribute after-market ink cartridges for sale in the U.S. The complaint sought to ban the companies from importing or selling the cartridges in the U.S. At the same time Epson filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Portland against the same companies seeking damages for the alleged intellectual property infringement. Of the 24 companies, five have agreed to settle with Epson at both the ITC and district court. A further three companies have agreed with the ITC to stop importing cartridges, but will have their cases heard at the district court. Another eight companies have had default judgments filed against them at the ITC because they failed to respond to the complaint within the time allowed, said Epson. Trials against the remaining companies at the ITC will begin in January. Latest Settlements The settlements and judgments are the latest in a line of legal victories by Epson against third-party ink-cartridge makers, distributors and vendors. In June, a court in Taiwan barred a local manufacturer of continuous ink supply systems from producing models for Epson printers after receiving a petition from the Japanese company. A month earlier Epson succeeded in getting four German online retailers of printer ink cartridges to stop selling a number of third-party ink cartridges designed for use in Epson printers. The company won a similar legal action against a Japanese manufacturer in June 2005. Printer makers like Epson typically rely on a business model that sees them selling printers at little or no profit, then making money down the line on ink cartridges and other consumable items. Epson sells its own replacement cartridges and licenses a number of companies to make and sell Epson-compatible products. The third-party vendors targeted by Epson have no relationship with the printer-maker and so it doesn't directly gain from any of their business. Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. 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 For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Subject: I am Now a Sage Telecom Customer Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 01:38:27 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) I told you a couple weeks ago that Prairie Stream (a local telecom service here in Independence) was going out of business at the end of November. Frankly, that startled me quite a bit; I had thought they were in better shape financially than apparently they were. Their owner, and the other half of the business, Terra World (an ISP here) will be remaining in business. Its just the telephone side of the operation which is gone. I 'jumped the gun' you might say, and immediatly set about finding a replacement local carrier; I chose a company called 'Trinsic', which was a very bad mistake. First I tried to go with Sage Telecom, but the response I got from Sage was that they were 'not allowed to swap in customers from Prairie Stream', that the tariff did not allow it. She referred me to a list of five different carriers from whom they _were_ allowed to swap with. One of the carriers was SBC/ATT, (_damned_ if I am going to go to that bunch again!), four others, and one called 'Trinsic' which turned out to have rather high rates. Admittedly I did not feel very well that day, and in a panic to assure I did not lose my service, I went with Trinsic. I _assumed_ Trinisic knew what they were doing: they told me they intended to 'mirror' my account directly from Prairie Stream. I assumed they knew what they were talking about; when I first called them the lady who took my order already had my number on her computer there. She quoted to me all the service I already had and said they would duplicate it as it was, 'in two or three days'. Sure enough, as Trinsic claimed, they took over my line and my 620-331 number three days later. Trouble was, they were missing a few things which I needed very much: none of my star features were on the line unless I wanted to pay extra for them (as if $57 per month was not steep enough) and more important -- the most important of all -- my 'distinctive ring' line -- (the 620-331 number which goes ring-ring) was missing. Now, the ring-ring number is important to me; my 800 toll-free line rings into that; my front door intercom rings into that; my fax machine responds to that ringing cadence. All of these things would have to be reprogrammed to whatever new ring-ring number Trinsic wanted to come up with. Trinsic insisted that they would have to 'ask SBC for a new number' for me; and that SBC would not re-assign me the same ring-ring number I had had all along. I told the lady that my 800 number would be out of service until whenever, that my front door would be unanswerable until whenever, and that my fax machine was likewise out. Her response was 'well I am sorry but there is nothing I can do ... you will need to call back on Monday' (this was late Friday afternoon when I discovered things were down) and 'maybe they will be able to help you.' I got the same song and dance when I called back to Trinsic on Monday morning. In fact, on Monday morning the woman I spoke with insisted that my 800 number was a different thing and should not have been affected. Dumb! However that did not prevent Trinsic from sending me a bill for about a hundred dollars (based on a monthly service estimate of fifty dollars from when I had ordered their service several days earlier). On Monday morning I also called into Prairie Stream and chatted with a woman there who told me 'it is true; we are all out of a job as of the end of November' and when I told her about my experience with Sage (their claim they were unable to take accounts from Prairie Stream) she replied that had been true, but as of that same day, Sage had filed an 'amended tariff' which allowed them to do so; 'try them again and see what you get now.' My next call was to Sage Telecom in Wichita. The woman there (at Sage) typed my phone number into _her_ computer and said 'yes, we can swap you out' give me four days to have it done.' I warned her explicitly, 'mirror the account EXACTLY as it was at Prairie Stream, including the distinctive ring-ring number, which is 331-xxxx.' I do not want to have to pay to have the 800 number vendor re-program me, nor screw around with my front door intercom and all that stuff. She assured me it would be done, and 'I am sorry but it will take us a week to do it, Thanksgiving is in this week, a day lost from work for all our people.' I told her, that's fine; but do it EXACTLY as it is set up now. Very effeciently she said it would all work out okay. True to her word, late Monday I tried 'double zero' as she suggested and got a 'Welcome to Sage' message. Still unbelieving, I followed up with a call to 331-xxxx my distinctive ring-ring line, and I tried calling my 800 number and I sent Raymond out to ring the front door intercom ... they all worked just fine! Just as they always had back when Prairie Stream had been my carrier. So it would seem if I had not been so anxious and jumped the gun to make certain I had phone service, and waited until Sage got their tariff in place, the swap-out would have gone as planned. (In fact, once I made my second call to Sage, it was handled correctly and quite quickly.) In addition to monthly rates of $25-$30 for _unlimited_ local calling service and anywhere from 60 to 180 minutes per month of free long distance (depending on the basic package you choose) you also always get to call other Sage customers for -free- at all times. And, every time you mention you were referred by me, I get a ten dollar credit on my bill. The way that paragraph reads is this "Tell your friends about Sage and save even more. We will automatically credit your Sage bill up to $25 for each new customer you refer. Tell your friends to be sure to mention _your name_ and _your number_ to get the credit. They have to use our service for at least 30 days or longer. Your friends should call 1-888-972-7243." So, if Sage seems interesting to you, and you must be in the operating territory of SBC/ATT (which is almost everywhere these days it seems), then send me an email - ptownson@telecom-digest.org - and I will tell you my home number to use as your reference. Sage cannot take you if you are not in SBC/ATT local operating territory. PAT ------------------------------ From: Ryan Subject: AT&T Partner II R4.1 w/ Avaya Partner Mail VS R5 (VMS Hunt Help) Date: 28 Nov 2006 15:08:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com My VS R3 module died. Power light doesn't come on, nothing. Dial Int-777 get slow busy. I've got a new R5 on the way so I decided to start reading on installation. It seems the VMS Hunt Group 7 has to be set. It says I should have a Form B1 and Form B2, which I have neither of. So I dont know how the original install was set up. Is there a way to determine which extensions to assign my new 4 Port R5 to? I've my setup goes like this: I've got two 5 "port" racks for the system. Rack 1: Slot 1 - 206E (10/11/12/13/14/15) Slot 2 - 206E (16/17/18/29/20/21) Slot 3 - System Processor / Partner II R4.1 Slot 4 - 206E (22/23/24/25/26/27) Slot 5 - 206E (28/29/30/31/32/33) Rack 2: Slot 1 - 206E (34/35/36/37/38/39) Slot 2 - 206E (40/41/42/43/44/45) Slot 3 - Expansion Processor Slot 4 - Partner Mail VS R5 (soon) Slot 5 - 206E (no numbers) So would that make my PMVS5 use 46/47/48/49 and have 50 as the next open extension? Thank you for your time, Ryan Please reply. ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - November 29, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 11:36:43 EST ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For November 29, 2006 ******************************** TeliaSonera Projects End of Fixed-Line Telephony in Next Ten Years http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21363?11228 Traditional fixed-line telephony services will be completely be extinct in the next ten years, according to Swedish-Finnish telecoms group TeliaSonera's chief executive officer (CEO), Anders Igel, speaking at a private investor conference in Stockholm. With the continuing downward trend in the usage of fixed-line telephony, the ... BT Ready for IP TV Launch http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21358?11228 BT has confirmed that it will launch its long-awaited IP TV service on 4 December, according to media reports. A company spokesman said the BT Vision service will 'only be available to BT broadband customers initially,' but he did not comment on how soon that could change. The service will allow end-users to watch Freeview and ... Tutorial: Wireless Application Protocol http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/21355?11228 Wireless application protocol (WAP) is an application environment and set of communication protocols for wireless devices designed to enable manufacturer-, vendor-, and technology-independent access to the Internet and advanced telephony ... After Partnering With YouTube, Verizon Wireless Adds Revver to Stable of User-Generated Videos http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21353?11228 NEW YORK -- A day after saying it will bring YouTube videos to cell phones, Verizon Wireless is announcing a similar deal with Revver.com, a Web site that shares ad revenue with the people who upload the video clips. The mobile Revver service to be announced Wednesday will be launched in early December. It will be available for ... Treo Delay Weighs on Palm http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21350?11228 Shares of Palm took a tumble after the company yesterday said it expects revenue to be lower in the second fiscal quarter than earlier projected, due largely to the delayed shipment of the Treo 750 to a U.S. carrier. Shares were down more than 7 percent at mid-day Eastern time today. Palm now expects revenue to be in the range of ... EC Okay's Telecom Italia/AOL Germany Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/21347?11228 European regulators this morning gave their blessings to Telecom Italia's $856 million acquisition of Time Warner's AOL Germany -- a purchase that positions Telecom Italia as Germany's second-largest broadband provider, girding to do battle with incumbent Deutsche Telekom and its T-Online International subsidiary. ... The Gorilla That Ate the Carriers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21343?11228 Chad Hurley is the sort of Internet entrepreneur who gives established media moguls flop-sweats: the YouTube Inc. founder is young, brash, and enormously wealthy since Google bought his Internet-video company for $1.65 billion. As of today, with the announcement that Verizon Wireless will give its V-CAST subscribers access to limited ... AT&T Launches HDTV http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21340?11228 AT&T Inc. said Tuesday it has begun delivering high-definition (HD) TV services as part of its U-verse IPTV offering. AT&T says its San Antonio customers can now buy a package of 25 HD channels for an extra $10 a month. Local rival Time Warner Cable Inc. says it's offering 24 HD channels. Sources say the ... Business VoIP Users Must Focus on Security http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/21337?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- With businesses poised to rapidly adopt IP PBXs and IP phones, companies need to revamp their security strategies to accommodate VoIP, reports In-Stat. The number of business IP phones sold will grow from 9.9 million in 2006 to 45.8 million in 2010, the high-tech market research firm says. Many companies are not ... Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to: TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 11:53:39 CST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T to Sell DSL Through Wal-Mart USTelecom dailyLead November 29, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eUwsfDtusXgKllCibuddFbgc TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T to sell DSL through Wal-Mart BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * EU approves sale of AOL German access business * Maryland counties OK Verizon's FiOS TV * 3Com to acquire Huawei's stake in joint venture * Ericsson to acquire Entrisphere for $290 million, reports say * TeliaSonera sees fixed-line telephony fading * Motorola launches low-cost phone in India * Comcast pitches wireless service USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * A Clear Picture of the IPTV Future Tomorrow, Nov. 30, 1 p.m. (ET) TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * BSNL, Intel to offer WiMAX services in India * Report: WiMAX unlikely to challenge 3G in Asia-Pacific this decade * NTT DoCoMo joins Japanese broadcasters on mobile TV * Alcatel broadcasts mobile TV using S-band Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eUwsfDtusXgKllCibuddFbgc ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. 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