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Message Digest Volume 28 : Issue 17 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Re: AT&T drops Appleton, WI time/temp service - local guy picks it up Re: AT&T drops Appleton, WI time/temp service - local guy picks it up Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Circuit City going out of business Re: Any user reviews of the Magic Jack? Re: long distance, was Any user reviews of the Magic Jack? Re: Payphone Surcharge Re: Teen sends 14,528 text messages in one month Re: Steve Jobs medical leave of absence Re: Nortel Seeks Bankruptcy Protection ====== 27 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, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:49:22 -0500 From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: AT&T drops Appleton, WI time/temp service - local guy picks it up Message-ID: <MPG.23db113c7e0398cf98989d@reader.motzarella.org> In article <20090115233745.8360.qmail@simone.iecc.com>, johnl@iecc.com says... > >Would anyone know of such time/temp services still available elsewhere > >in the U.S.? Bell made a half-hearted effort to standardize them at > >936-1212 but many places had their own number. > > In Boston, time is 617-637-xxxx and weather is 617-936-xxxx, for any xxxx. > I just called them, both say they're Verizon. > > R's, > John > > That's interesting. RI never had a phone company sponsored time/temp, instead the Providence Journal did ours. It was on 401-776-2700. Just SIT tones now. But then my computer gets time via NTP, and weather via Yahoo widgets. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:32:07 -0800 (PST) From: "harold@hallikainen.com" <harold@hallikainen.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: AT&T drops Appleton, WI time/temp service - local guy picks it up Message-ID: <fc93ffef-3cf5-4e15-9645-9adb661326f8@w1g2000prk.googlegroups.com> When I was growing up in the San Francisco bay area, we had 936-1212 for weather. I remember at one time the operators went on strike, so the usual female voice giving the weather became a male voice. One ended the weather with the word "Peace." This made the papers. Not quite the same as 936-1212, there's a company "Tell Me," which I think Microsoft may have bought, that does voice recognition software. They have an information service that includes weather. The number is 800 555 8355. It really works pretty well. sipphone.com routes #411 to this. Harold ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:13:14 -0800 (PST) From: MB <mattb19020@yahoo.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Message-ID: <4fe57c34-0240-400e-bafd-ed0cf885ae39@k19g2000yqg.googlegroups.com> On Jan 16, 8:59 pm, Frank Stearns <franks.pacifier....@pacifier.net> wrote: > And all this time I thought cell phones were > networked-synched for their time-of-day displays. > > For the 10 years I've carried a cell phone (two qualcomms > and now a Samsung), the time-of-day has been reliable and > accurate. > > That ended on Christmas eve day, when I temporarily lost my > phone, decided to get a replacement (another Samsung) and > discovered that its clock was 4-6 minutes slow. The > T-mobile store people assured me this "happened all the > time" -- some clocks were on, others were off. "That > doesn't make any sense," I said. Frank, I know you said that you can set your clock manually in the phone but make sure your phone is set to "Network" as opposed to "Phone" for time source. This seems to be only an option on GSM/GPRS phone carriers such as T-Mobile and AT&T. The phones you saw on display in the store may have been set to "Phone" or "Manual", which is why they may have been off. The phone's time from the Network comes from the cell tower which is either all in sync via the MSC (switch) or via the GPS antennas that all cell sites have. (As an aside, some people thing the GPS on the site is so they know where the site is....well, the site doesn't move so they know where it is - the GPS is used for time sync across the network). Matt ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:30:46 -0800 From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Message-ID: <gkrjec$1fc$1@blue.rahul.net> Frank Stearns wrote: > I can manually set the clock in the phone, but within a few > moments it is updated back to the wrong time. That means it is not the phone itself. The cell system is sending wrong time settings to your phone. See if there is an option in the phone's setup menus that will turn off the network's ability to change the time on your phone. This should cure the problem (up to the accuracy limit of the clock in the phone itself, and you can set that manually every month or so if the need arises). This will also eliminate the annoying behavior where your phone will silently reset its clock when you cross a time zone boundary (and sometimes get the boundary wrong, thus leaving you wondering which time zone it is really giving you) -- a problem I've found especially vexing in the Rocky Mountain states where coverage is sparse anyway. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:03:50 -0600 From: Frank Stearns <franks.pacifier.com@pacifier.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Message-ID: <LoidnSMrYeAr2u_UnZ2dnUVZ_jGdnZ2d@posted.palinacquisition> John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> writes: >Frank Stearns wrote: >> I can manually set the clock in the phone, but within a few >> moments it is updated back to the wrong time. >That means it is not the phone itself. The cell system is sending >wrong time settings to your phone. This is one of the first things I tried to check: went to a friend who is 14 miles away and also on T-mobile. Surely I was sync'd to his local tower. Powered my phone on/off - my time was still wrong, his was right. Leads me to believe the phone is wrong, but the mechanism is unclear. Does the phone have to do some sort of time calculation based on a raw time signal? Perhaps something akin to a UNIX computer's clock based on a 32-bit number counting microseconds from 1970 or some such -- the display time of day is derived from that value. (As an aside there'll be a Y2K-like rollover issue with UNIX boxes in 2038, or something like that, IIRC.) If so, seems odd unless there was a "failure in the silicon" inside my phone such that some intermediate place value in a CPU register (or perhaps the firmware holding some time calculation constant) is now stuck on or off, or has the wrong value, and this means there's always this 4-6 minute error. >See if there is an option in the phone's setup menus that will turn >off the network's ability to change the time on your phone. This >should cure the problem (up to the accuracy limit of the clock in the >phone itself, and you can set that manually every month or so if the >need arises). I did find the manual setting with no updating; thanks to the poster who gave the details on this. That helps; I'll find out how much the phone time drifts. >This will also eliminate the annoying behavior where your phone will >silently reset its clock when you cross a time zone boundary (and >sometimes get the boundary wrong, thus leaving you wondering which >time zone it is really giving you) -- a problem I've found especially >vexing in the Rocky Mountain states where coverage is sparse anyway. This actually worked for me reasonably well this past September during a time-zone crossing road trip. But I can see how this could get iffy if crossing times zones a lot. Thanks to all who had suggestions on this issue. Frank -- . ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:38:43 -0800 From: Steven Lichter <diespammers@ikillspammers.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Message-ID: <9pccl.18635$ZP4.1263@nlpi067.nbdc.sbc.com> Frank Stearns wrote: > And all this time I thought cell phones were > networked-synched for their time-of-day displays. That really sounds strange, the phone is always in contact with the switch which has a network clock, and that must be right or other problems will be caused. The switch clock is also updated with other clocks. Also each time a call comes in the clock will update as all phone do with CID. I checked all 3 of my cell phones 1 each of a Palm, Samsung and Sanyo, all 3 have the same time, my CID box seems to be also the same. I checked my computer which is on a network clock and updates every 5 minutes and also is the same, or at least the same miute, the seconds could be off. I know that when I had worked on CO Switches we had a cross between the network clock and a backup and the switch would not work correctly until we found and reversed the cables. -- The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:22:03 +0000 (UTC) From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Message-ID: <gkrptr$1r5u$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu> Keywords: cell phone clock inaccuracy In article <tO2dnUBg84qFfe3UnZ2dnUVZ_srinZ2d@posted.palinacquisition>, Frank Stearns <franks.pacifier.com@pacifier.net> wrote: >So now I'm trying to understand just how this is happening, >assuming a network time sync signal, and moreover, how it >can be fixed. (T-Mobile Tech Support said they wouldn't >even consider generating a trouble ticket until "enough" >people complained.) Only CDMA (used by Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS, for now, but not Sprint iDEN) requires accurate time synchronization. GSM systems, like your T-Mobile service, work just fine with time synchronization at the level of "whatever the MTSO technician's watch says". A number of companies make precision timing receivers based on CDMA technology; at the office I have an NTP stratum-1 using an EndRun Technologies Praecis Ct (no longer sold) with good results. (The server currently reports an offset for that source of 50 microseconds with jitter of 15 microseconds, which is not bad considering that the server and the timecode generator both have uncompensated quartz crystal oscillators.) -GAWollman -- Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 06:28:28 GMT From: tlvp <PmUiRsGcE.TtHlEvSpE@att.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Message-ID: <op.unv1l4wawqrt3j@acer250.gateway.2wire.net> On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:59:05 -0500, Frank Stearns <franks.pacifier.com@pacifier.net> wrote: > And all this time I thought cell phones were > networked-synched for their time-of-day displays. [Moerator snip] > So now I'm trying to understand just how this is happening, > assuming a network time sync signal, and moreover, how it > can be fixed. (T-Mobile Tech Support said they wouldn't > even consider generating a trouble ticket until "enough" > people complained.) All I can tell you, Frank, is that my T-Mobile-supplied Nokia 6610 has a setting "Auto-update of date & time" with options "On", "Confirm first", and "Off". You reach it by selecting, in turn, "Menu", "Settings", "Time and date settings", and "Auto-update of date & time". I run with the "On" option. Whenever the local time changes (EST/DST changeover, or I'm in a new timezone), it's not long before that Nokia reflects the new time, which seems to be about as accurate as the carrier handling me cares to make it. Same thing, more or less, for my wife's T-Mobile Moto RAZR V3. Hope this has helped at least a little. Cheers, -- tlvp ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:42:06 -0600 From: gordonb.ste5p@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Cell Phone Clock Inaccuracy Message-ID: <PvidnTihM9ETqe_UnZ2dnUVZ_ovinZ2d@posted.internetamerica> >All I can tell you, Frank, is that my T-Mobile-supplied >Nokia 6610 has a setting "Auto-update of date & time" with >options "On", "Confirm first", and "Off". > >You reach it by selecting, in turn, "Menu", "Settings", >"Time and date settings", and "Auto-update of date & time". > >I run with the "On" option. Whenever the local time changes >(EST/DST changeover, or I'm in a new timezone), it's not long >before that Nokia reflects the new time, which seems to be >about as accurate as the carrier handling me cares to make it. > >Same thing, more or less, for my wife's T-Mobile Moto RAZR V3. My T-Mobile Moto RAZR V3 has settings under "Settings | Initial Settings | Time and Date" of "Autoupdate", which can be set On or Off. (I don't see a "Confirm first" setting.) If you set it to "Off" options to manually set the time and date appear. I tried setting the time off by 5 minutes, then switching it back to autoupdate. The time got switched back immediately. I've checked the time occasionally and it seems to be pretty close to my NTP-synchronized computer, but since the phone doesn't display seconds it's hard to be sure. I haven't crossed time zones with the phone yet so I don't know what happens then. Something a little funny happened at one of the DST transitions. I think the transition happened half an hour off or so (I don't remember whether it was early or late) but it transitioned in one jump. If I was having trouble with the time jumping around between time zones, say, travelling at an airport on a time zone boundary (does that happen at any actual airport? I do seem to remember being at one airport which was divided down the middle by an area code boundary, and your cost for calls varied a lot based on the area code of the pay phone. That was a couple decades ago.), it looks like I could set it to manual fairly easily and stop that from happening, provided I realized it was an issue. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:03:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Circuit City going out of business Message-ID: <p06240834c59724810e5a@[10.0.1.6]> Circuit City would like to thank all of the customers who have shopped with us over the past 60 years. Unfortunately, we announced on January 16, 2009, that we are going out of business. Please check back later for updates about the status of our website. In the meantime, we hope the information below will help answer most of your questions. What's going on at Circuit City? * Due to challenges to our business and the continued bleak economic environment, Circuit City is going out of business and the company's assets will be liquidated to pay off creditors. * The process was extremely difficult and we were left with no other choice but to liquidate. Circuit City had a proud heritage of serving the public for 60 years and we deeply regret the impact this decision will have on our associates, our customers and the communities where we have operated stores and other facilities. * We had hoped to be able to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a stronger, more competitive company and we made significant progress during the reorganization to improve our business. Unfortunately, the economic climate is so poor that we have no choice other than liquidation. * Liquidators will start arriving in our 567 stores across the U.S. over the weekend, and closing sales will start as early as Saturday, January 17. Closing sales will run as long as it takes to sell existing inventory, but are expected to wrap up by the end of March. When the liquidation sales are completed, the stores will be closed. ... http://www.circuitcity.com/closed.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:08:18 -0800 (PST) From: Stephen <stephencole7@gmail.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Any user reviews of the Magic Jack? Message-ID: <ae345781-0a49-4259-bfa9-a84df893c53d@35g2000pry.googlegroups.com> On Jan 9, 10:40 am, John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote: > >> Lingo has a $7/mo plan with free incoming calls, free outgoing to > >> US/Canada toll-free numbers and other Lingo customers, and about 3 cpm > >> for most other calls. > > >I useOneSuite, [which has] no monthly charge, and [I] never pay more > >then 3CPM. Since I use my regular POTS all incoming calls are free, > >[and] I don't have to leave a computer on. > > You're comparing apples and oranges. > > Onesuite's main offering is a calling card that you use for outbound > calls in connection with an existing phone, or over the net via a > softphone that runs on your PC.  It's a perfectly decent calling card, > but 3cpm is not particular cheap these days.  It happens to be the > same price Lingo charges for outbound calls on its $7 plan. > > If you want incoming phone service fromOnesuite, they have something > called SuiteAdvantage for $3/mo extra, but that ties up your PC since > you have to be running their softphone to accept calls.  I'd use the > Magicjack dongle instead. > > R's, > John Actually, Onesuite prepaid calling card rates via local access numbers across the US [are] only 2.5 cents per minute [when] calling a US number and only 1.9 cpm to Canada. The .5 cents and 1.1 cents difference (versus the 3 cents you mentioned) adds up if you make [a lot of] calls. About their SuiteAdvantage: yes, you use softphone in your PC, which only consumes about 14 MB of RAM (it doesn't use [many] PC resources), and, like MagicJack, you also need a PC to use it, but SuiteAdvantage can [also] be set up (though Onesuite [won't] give support) on a regular ATA device (Grandstream, Linksys, etc) so you can leave your PC turned off and still use their VoIP service. On MagicJack, there's no way you can use it without a PC, and that's really a drawback, especially if you are trying to save money (the very reason you are using voip) [because] you need your PC to be on 24/7. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Jan 2009 23:10:11 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Cc: redacted@invalid.telecom-digest.org Subject: Re: long distance, was Any user reviews of the Magic Jack? Message-ID: <20090117231011.47854.qmail@simone.iecc.com> >Actually, Onesuite prepaid calling card rates via local access numbers >across the US [are] only 2.5 cents per minute [when] calling a US >number and only 1.9 cpm to Canada. The .5 cents and 1.1 cents >difference (versus the 3 cents you mentioned) adds up if you make [a >lot of] calls. If you make a lot of calls, why not get a flat rate VoIP plan? Lingo has one under $20/mo if you pay a year at a time. >and, like MagicJack, you also need a PC to use it, but SuiteAdvantage >can [also] be set up (though Onesuite [won't] give support) on a >regular ATA device (Grandstream, Linksys, etc) so you can leave your >PC turned off and still use their VoIP service. There's lots of services that will terminate a phone number on a SIP device. That's not unusual either. R's, John ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:13:53 -0800 (PST) From: Stephen <stephencole7@gmail.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharge Message-ID: <02711684-8695-42b8-a53e-b63d0b3ab737@a26g2000prf.googlegroups.com> On Jan 11, 12:46 pm, Randall <rv...@insightbb.com> wrote: > > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > > My son regularly uses a pay phone to call me from his school, using > > prepaid phone cards. I have yet to find one that doesn't add a > > surcharge - as much as 75 cents in one case - for any pay phone call, > > so keep in mind that most advertised prices assume you're calling from > > a non-public phone. > > When ATT was split up and COCOTs were allowed into the mix, someone   > noticed that his payphones were being used by people to make "toll- > free" calls and he wasn't getting paid for it, though the owner of   > the "toll free" number was. > > The FCC imposed a per-call "dial-around compensation" surcharge to be   > added to the cost of those calls; the "toll free" carrier charges it   > to the line owner for every call which originates from a payphone --   > and the carrier traditionally cheats the COCOT owner out of it. Most   > COCOT owners are small businesses with only a few phones, and it's   > just not worth the trouble for them to chase a dollar or two a month   > per phone. > > Enter groups like the APCC, which is an umbrella group that   > represents small payphone owners to even the scales a bit. > > They've been somewhat successful at recovering dial-around   > compensation for COCOT owners:  http://tinyurl.com/8bvhpk Very nice info. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:17:15 -0800 (PST) From: Stephen <stephencole7@gmail.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Teen sends 14,528 text messages in one month Message-ID: <5af64d1f-3521-4b45-a7c1-04d2552c5274@t26g2000prh.googlegroups.com> From: http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/teen-sends-14528-text-messag... > Teen sends 14,528 text messages in one month Wow! I can barely send 10 messages a day. The most is about 20 and half of those are business related. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 07:43:45 -0800 (PST) From: alex.puxley@gmail.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Steve Jobs medical leave of absence Message-ID: <54a37961-6789-447c-b289-dfd5b644274f@e1g2000pra.googlegroups.com> That's sad. He is a smart guy, but everyone wants him dead. Extracts from Bloomberg's premature Steve Jobs obituary: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2639343/Extracts-from-Bloombergs-premature-Steve-Jobs-obituary.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 07:47:47 -0800 (PST) From: alex.puxley@gmail.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Nortel Seeks Bankruptcy Protection Message-ID: <a651d1db-bb49-45db-b124-0ab858b444dd@w39g2000prb.googlegroups.com> Given the fact that Nortel has been constantly losing money for the past 10 years and the bad management, I [would] be surprised if Nortel hadn't gone bankruptcy. Some say Nortel is a corporation run like a government - http://theglobeopinion.com/article/corporation-run-government ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition 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. The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while Pat Townson recovers from a stroke. 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