Pat, the Editor

27 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981

Classified Ads
TD Extra News

Add this Digest to your personal   or  

 
 
Message Digest 
Volume 28 : Issue 123 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
  Re: AT&T to discontinue CallVantage voip service 
  Re: News readers, was Re: AT&T doubling 3G capacity 
  Re: FiOS in MDU Buildings 
  Re: Waveguide (was "size a major consideration...") 
  Re: Waveguide (was "size a major consideration...") 
  Re: Waveguide (was "size a major consideration...") 
  Re: Nebraska commission loses appeal on Internet call fees   
  Re: AT&T doubling 3G capacity 
  The archives are coming back 


====== 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: Mon, 04 May 2009 03:32:41 GMT From: tlvp <PmUiRsGcE.TtHlEvSpE@att.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: AT&T to discontinue CallVantage voip service Message-ID: <op.utdysy14wqrt3j@acer250.gateway.2wire.net> On Sat, 02 May 2009 09:42:43 -0400, danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote: > In <20090501210958.74983.qmail@simone.iecc.com> John Levine > <johnl@iecc.com> writes: > >>> Can someone recommend another VOIP service? > >> I didn't like Vonage either, but I've been reasonably happy with Lingo, >> the voip service from Primus Telecommunications, a largish international >> long distance telco. > >> If interested, write me directly and I'll send you a coupon. > > Vonage is certainly more expensive than the new comers, but let's > give them credit where it's due - they pretty much are the folk > who pushed this whole technology out there to the public. > > So I'll give them a bit more of a look than I would the others. > > That being said, the economics of most VOIP companies are very, > very, shaky, and are based on _huge_ dept loads. Oh, and their > business model can colapse very quickly with some regulatory > changes. > > I personally would recommend two services. The first > is Skype, which is "free" to any other Skype account and > pretty cheap to a PSTN number. They've got a rate card, with > plenty of options at http://www.skype.com > > The second is available to folk who already have a t-Mobile > cellular account. They'll provide you with a special router which > accepts a SIM card, and that'll give you a psuedo-landline jack > out the back of it (which you can hook up to a landline > phone, or a wireless unit, or others stuff). Cost is $10/month > plus taxes and fees, which winds up totalling about $15 month. > Again, this is only applicable if you've already got a t-Mobile > cellular account. > > I'm mentioning the latter one because t-Mobile is a valid fullscale > telco, thus the VOIP portion isn't likely to disappear without notice. > > Disclosure: I'm a t-mobile user and shareholder. > > Oh, one related point. It's pretty important to have a router > that has a "quality of service" option for the VOIP packets. Otherwise > anything else going on at the same time, such as your e-mail or web > browsing, could easily cause you grief. (The QOS isn't perfect, but > it makes a big difference). And it helps to have an ISP offering high speeds without a phone line. DSL users, in particular, are caught in a classic Catch-22: once you're on t-Mobile's Phone@Home plan, you no longer need your phone; but without your phone, you no longer have the DSL you need for the hi-speed internet connection Phone@Home requires :-) . Yeah, there'e "dry" DSL -- if offered at a reasonable rate (but for me dry DSL would cost the same per month as my local loop + DSL is costing); and there's my cable ISP -- at just a little more than the previous. So: not for me, thanks anyway. Cheers, -- tlvp [PS: You the Danny Burstein who used to write a column for "The Processor"?] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 17:07:55 +1000 From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: News readers, was Re: AT&T doubling 3G capacity Message-ID: <pan.2009.05.04.07.07.54.333388@myrealbox.com> On Sun, 03 May 2009 09:46:28 -0400, John Levine wrote: >>Please publish a list of the newsreaders and combined email/news clients >>available for open source users. I'm particularly interested in software >>for the KDE environment. > > Evolution and Thunderbird come to mind. Evolution is for Gnome, not KDE. Pan is a very good stand-alone newsreader. -- Regards, David. David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 10:43:59 GMT From: "Tony Toews \[MVP\]" <ttoews@telusplanet.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: FiOS in MDU Buildings Message-ID: <rdhtv4hqa74jcv7fetoafoed5486i5t1cg@4ax.com> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >Further, if there was a serious extended power failure the cell towers >probably would be dead, too, since their batteries aren't so great. 8 Hours is a Long Time WirelessWeek - January 15, 2008 FCC's order for more backup power at cell sites sparks questions, innovations. http://www.wirelessweek.com/Article-8-Hours-Long-Time.aspx Down a ways - "Soon, three days of backup power will be required." Ah but then Scuffle About Cell Site Backup Power Put On Hold WirelessWeek - July 09, 2008 The FCC must bring its rules for backup power at cell sites back to the drawing board, a federal appeals court said yesterday. http://www.wirelessweek.com/Cell-Site-Backup-Power-On-Hold.aspx?terms= So who knows where it's at. Tony -- Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/ Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 07:36:08 -0500 From: Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Waveguide (was "size a major consideration...") Message-ID: <49FEE138.4050501@annsgarden.com> I wrote: > I think what you're seeing on cell towers is flexible waveguide > ("Heliax"): http://tinyurl.com/cudezg Howard Eisenhauer <howarde@REMOVECAPShfx.eastlink.ca> wrote: > Wave guide would be a lot more efficient but for the frequencies > used for cellular (850-900 Mhz), or even the PCS bands (~2000 MHz) > it would be impractical due to size. > "Heliax" (Andrews trade name) as used on cell towers is actually a > hard line coax, not wave guide. There is a w/g product thats very > hard to tell from the hardline from more than a few feet away but > the w/g generally has an oval cross section where the hardline is > round. The lowest frequency I've seen the w/g used for is 6 GHz. I stand corrected. And I understand your point about size: clearly, waveguide would have to be much larger at the low frequencies used by cell and PCS. David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote: > I thought the big "lightning flash" was a generic warning logo for > any microwave transmitter? (having seen them on the Telco towers > here in Australia). The red lightning flash is Andrew Corporation's corporate logo. Andrew is now a subsidiary of CommScope, but it still uses the same logo. http://www.commscope.com/andrew/eng/index.html Neal McLain ------------------------------ Date: 4 May 2009 14:10:02 -0400 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Waveguide (was "size a major consideration...") Message-ID: <gtnb1q$p0q$1@panix2.panix.com> Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> wrote: > >I stand corrected. And I understand your point about size: clearly, >waveguide would have to be much larger at the low frequencies used by >cell and PCS. I have seen 450MHz waveguide used for early satellite antenna systems. It wasn't big enough to walk inside, but you could climb through it. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ***** Moderator's Note ***** Given the cost of Heliax, and the losses of generic coax at 70cm, is it possible/advisable to homebrew waveguide? A previous post mentioned circular waveguide, and I wonder if I could feed 70cm or 23cm antennas with waveguide made from copper pipe. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 18:18:24 +0000 (UTC) From: David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Waveguide (was "size a major consideration...") Message-ID: <gtnbhg$lr2$1@reader1.panix.com> Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> writes: > > Wave guide would be a lot more efficient but for the frequencies > > used for cellular (850-900 Mhz), or even the PCS bands (~2000 MHz) > > it would be impractical due to size. > > "Heliax" (Andrews trade name) as used on cell towers is actually a > > hard line coax, not wave guide. There is a w/g product thats very > > hard to tell from the hardline from more than a few feet away but > > the w/g generally has an oval cross section where the hardline is > > round. The lowest frequency I've seen the w/g used for is 6 GHz. >I stand corrected. And I understand your point about size: clearly, >waveguide would have to be much larger at the low frequencies used by >cell and PCS. I was sure Heliax implied coax, but I looked.... There are both coaxial and waveguide products in similar looking jackets. As the poster said; the key is the shape. Coax shall always be round. If it's not round, I'd say it's gotta be waveguide. I was amazed to hear of the cable co. stringing miles of waveguide. At the cost, I'd assumed they used microwave links or coax. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 05:37:55 -0700 (PDT) From: "harold@hallikainen.com" <harold@hallikainen.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Nebraska commission loses appeal on Internet call fees Message-ID: <aec245ed-b455-42b6-8036-ea766dcb1d84@d39g2000pra.googlegroups.com> On May 3, 2:48 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > On May 3, 9:58 am, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" <fgood...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > > > A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling exempting > > Internet phone service provider Vonage Holdings Corp. from paying a > > state telephone fee. > > All traditional phone companies pay into the Universal Service Fund. > > But Voice over Internet Protocol - or VoIP - providers such as > > Holmdel, N.J.-based Vonage say they provide an information service > > rather than a telecommunications service. > > Nonsense.  They're providing telecommunications service. This "telecommunications service" versus "information service" is very strange. I've seen it come up many times before, largely for internet service providers. As far as I can figure out, we might consider an "information service" to be something like a newspaper that produces content and delivers that content, but does not deliver content for others. A "telecommunications service" would be more like UPS, which produces nothing, but delivers for others. So, how much "information" does Vonage provide as part of their service? How much "delivery of information for others" do they provide? Same for ISPs. The original Compuserv or AOL which provided a lot of their own content might be considered information services who did their own delivery. This whole "telecommunications service" versus "information service" needs to be revisited by the FCC. Harold ------------------------------ Date: 4 May 2009 13:38:49 -0400 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: AT&T doubling 3G capacity Message-ID: <gtn979$1es$1@panix2.panix.com> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote: > >Please publish a list of the newsreaders and combined email/news >clients available for open source users. I'm particularly interested >in software for the KDE environment. Damn, that would be literally hundreds of different entries, for probably hundreds of different operating systems. The most common text based ones are the family of programs that were derived from readnews: rn, trn, trn4, tin, etc. There is still Vnews and the EMACS newsreader. These have been ported to everything under the sun for the most part. If you want a graphical one, anything that uses X11 will run under KDE and there are dozens of those including xrn, newsfish, pan, etch and I don't know what else. There is some KDE-specific one called knode, though I have never actually seen it. Personally, I still use rn, which is fast and convenient. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ***** Moderator's Note ***** I've never cared for the emacs newsreader (Sorry, RMS), and (for reasons I don't understand) everytime I try to install something like openoffice on KUBUNTU, the systems changes to Gnome instead of KDE. If knode is intended for KDE, then I'll try that. Thanks! Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 15:33:22 -0400 From: Telecom digest moderator <redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: The archives are coming back Message-ID: <20090504193322.GC27218@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Gentle reader, As time allows, I've been working on reconstructing the online portion of the archives, and that work is now complete for the Telecom Digest issues which have been published this year. The format of the archive page isn't the same as Pat used in years past: I still haven't figured out how he did what he did, but I'll get there. For now, you'll see a list of issue numbers, and clicking on any one of them will bring up that issue, just as it originally appeared. The link is on the Digest's home page, http://telecom-digest.org/ . I'll put 2008 and the rest of 2007 up RSN. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications 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. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom 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 Copyright (C) 2008 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 The Telecom digest (9 messages) ******************************

Return to Archives**Older Issues