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Message Digest 
Volume 28 : Issue 320 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
  Re: Dial-1 and 800 provider for low volume user? 
  Re: no longer Direct dial long distance 
  Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens  
  Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens  
  Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens  
  Re: Direct dial long distance 
  Re: Time Warner Cable Takes Firm Stance on Carriage Deals     
  Old Caller ID Info on New Provider Caller ID 
  Re: Old Caller ID Info on New Provider Caller ID
  Re: Old Caller ID Info on New Provider Caller ID
  Re: Old Caller ID Info on New Provider Caller ID
  Re: Straight Talk by Tracfone 
  Re: Straight Talk by Tracfone 


====== 28 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: 6 Dec 2009 01:45:41 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Dial-1 and 800 provider for low volume user? Message-ID: <20091206014541.828.qmail@simone.iecc.com> > I use Kall8 http://www.kall8.com > which is $2/month for 866/877/888 numbers and $5/month for genuine > 800 numbers. I'm familiar with them and they seem swell, but they don't offer dial-1 service, do they? R's, John PS: Is it just me or has reading comprehension plummeted in recent years? ***** Moderator's Note ***** It's just you.
Date: 6 Dec 2009 01:55:36 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: no longer Direct dial long distance Message-ID: <20091206015536.3468.qmail@simone.iecc.com> >> ... If you use the services of One Suite http://www.onesuite.com > Thanks, Joseph, for this pointer to an interesting competitor to > the IDT dial-around service I use for international calling and > international access, and to the MagicJack. > > Alas, no matter how hard I search on their web site, I find no mention > of their outbound tariffs to Poland, or roaming tariffs from Poland. Odd, I clicked the RATES tab on the home page, picked Poland from the Destination Country list, and in a few moments it told me that the local origination dial-around and VoIP rates are both 4.5cpm to land-lines, 29cpm to mobile. That's pretty good for local origination dial-around, good but not great for VoIP. 800 origination dial-around is 9.5 and 34cpm, OK for 800 origination but you can do better. R's, John
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:57:38 GMT From: sfdavidkaye2@yahoo.com (David Kaye) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens Message-ID: <hff6j1$c08$3@news.eternal-september.org> David Clayton <dcstar@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com> wrote: > I would say that the main point is that technology has (yet again) > allowed us humans to do things that are really not in our best > interests. I still don't see anything wrong or "wrong" with people sending out naked photos of themselves. I also don't see how technology has made things any worse today than before. When I was a kid I read a story about how in the 1920s the telephone was encoraging people to say things that they would never say in person because the telephone was "anonymous". > Give the average person access to that combination, and all sorts of > detrimental things happen (just look at the natural environment.....) I remember when the San Francisco Bay Area was so polluted that you couldn't see across the bay between Oakland and SF on a warm day. The smog was way too thick. Also, people thought you were crazy if you ate anything caught in SF bay. The water was way too polluted, too. Technology has changed all that. Between detectors and clean-up technologies and smog devices, it has been possible to double the population of the Bay Area and yet decrease air and water pollution. I think that ultimately technology versus earlier methods comes out a wash.
Date: 6 Dec 2009 08:49:37 -0500 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens Message-ID: <hfgcph$2p9$1@panix2.panix.com> David Kaye <sfdavidkaye2@yahoo.com> wrote: >hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > >> IMHO, while this practice should be discouraged, kids should not be >> prosecuted under felony charges for this sort of thing. But I've >> heard from some parents who feel aggressive law enforcement is the >> right way to go. > > This whole WINS news story is troubling because it goes on and on > about young people's brains not being as developed, etc., and them not > knowing the consequences of their actions, etc. What WINS fails to > say is that times have changed and today's younger folks really don't > think of naked photos as any big deal. And why should they be? > Bodies are pretty. We're born naked, after all. This sort of thing was going on when I was a teenager, quite a few decades ago. It's just that cellphones didn't exist yet, and all anyone had were Polaroids and the US Mail. And back then you had to count to thirty after pulling the tab, separate the negative and positive, and spread the coater on the print surface.... -- scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 19:17:07 -0500 From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens Message-ID: <MPG.25861392cff78099989bfb@news.eternal-september.org> In article <hfgcph$2p9$1@panix2.panix.com>, kludge@panix.com says... > > David Kaye <sfdavidkaye2@yahoo.com> wrote: > >hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > > > >> IMHO, while this practice should be discouraged, kids should not be > >> prosecuted under felony charges for this sort of thing. But I've > >> heard from some parents who feel aggressive law enforcement is the > >> right way to go. > > > > This whole WINS news story is troubling because it goes on and on > > about young people's brains not being as developed, etc., and them not > > knowing the consequences of their actions, etc. What WINS fails to > > say is that times have changed and today's younger folks really don't > > think of naked photos as any big deal. And why should they be? > > Bodies are pretty. We're born naked, after all. > > This sort of thing was going on when I was a teenager, quite a few > decades ago. It's just that cellphones didn't exist yet, and all > anyone had were Polaroids and the US Mail. And back then you had to > count to thirty after pulling the tab, separate the negative and > positive, and spread the coater on the print surface.... > > -- > scott Or, some of us had access to a darkroom. We could use standard 35mm film. I did mostly B&W but did use color on a few occasions but it was expensive to do so becuase of the increase in number of chemicals required. And where was this darkroom? The local Boys Club.
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 01:39:04 -0500 (EST) From: Dan Lanciani <ddl@danlan.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Direct dial long distance Message-ID: <200912060639.BAA05374@ss10.danlan.com> > Actually, MagicJack doesn't work all that well over lowest-speed > aDSL, like mine -- I get (variably) 35-65 KB/sec on my nominal 768 > Kb service, and MagicJack stutters, in both directions (probably > worse for my listeners than for me). I'd like to understand these problems better. As I've posted before, I now use VOIP for a number of functions within my network. I am happy with the performance. I have DSL which was recently upgraded from 768k/128k to 1M/384k. I've tested several external VOIP connections including IPKall, IPcomms, and sipgate DID; Gizmo via Google Voice; and a localish VOIP dialout. I've tried using my public IP addresses via a tunnel and also running directly through the DSL's NAT box with IAX. In all cases I sometimes get incoming dropouts which I think correspond to the stutters you mention. My end points show a lot of silence fill which suggests packet loss or perhaps reordering outside the jitter buffer limit. (The IAX connection was completely unusable until I forced Asterisk's local jitter buffer on. That made things comparable to the other connections.) I went so far as to write programs to simulate the packet size and rate of a typical VOIP session and look for dropped or re-ordered packets. I found nothing, again regardless of whether I went through a tunnel or direct. One possibility is that the problems are topologically farther away than where I ran my test programs (and definitely not related to my DSL connection), but this seems odd. A more sinister explanation would be that the ISP is recognizing the RTP traffic and dropping some packets. I'm thinking of having my test program do a more complete simulation rather than just making the packets the right size. There are public web sites that offer to test VOIP capability but they seem more interested in the upstream direction where I don't appear to have a problem. Thoughts? Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 02:46:04 -0500 From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Time Warner Cable Takes Firm Stance on Carriage Deals Message-ID: <MPG.25852b48e05dfce6989bf8@news.eternal-september.org> In article <Pine.NEB.4.64.0912051605100.15674@panix5.panix.com>, dannyb@panix.com says... > > In <e5c2983f-3afa-4302-a594-481ecfb2342b@s20g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> writes: >> > >> Further reasons why Comcast may be motivated to rein in the >> retransmission fees: > ..... >>- For years, the cable industry (including Comcast) has been blaming >> rising cable rates on programmers and broadcasters. Certain members >> of Congress (notably Senator Markey of Massachusetts) have noted >> that some cable TV companies (including Comcast) also own >> non-broadcast programming. The question arises: "why are you >> complaining about rates if you own the programming." Comcast has >> enough problems with Congress without giving Senator Markey even >> more ammunition. > --------- > > In the good old daze of "One Bell System - It Works", the local > operating companies used to justify their need for higher rates > because... they had to pay more for the physical instruments. > > That is, Western Electric, a division of AT&T, was charging > the local RBOC, another division of AT&T, more... > > Same for lots of other industries. For example, the NY Times, > which owned lots of the forests and pulp mills in Canada, > claimed that newsprint prices were increasing... Or here in RI, where National Grid provides not only the electricity but the natural gas service. And most of our electricity comes from plants fired by none other than natural gas. And natural gas rates are actually falling. Yet our electricity rates are going UP. This time it's the distribution charges increasing by double-digit percentages. The question I have to ask, what did they do with all the money they collected prior to this increase?
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 03:41:41 -0700 From: "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson@mishmash.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Old Caller ID Info on New Provider Caller ID Message-ID: <004701ca7660$b2ee2550$c800000a@mishmash> I recently switched from one VOIP provider to another. With the old provider, the name of the company showed up in the name field of the caller ID box when I would call someone. With the new provider, my name was supposed to pop up on the caller ID when I would call someone. I've had two of my friends tell me that the name of my old VOIP provider was popping up when I call them. I called my new provider and asked them about it. They invested and told me that it was in the 'cache' of the destination phone company and until they cleared it in their system, it would continue to pop up this way. Anyone care to expand upon this? This seems weird. One would think that they would display the name sent by the originating provider. Regards, Fred
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:11:46 -0800 From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Old Caller ID Info on New Provider Caller ID Message-ID: <hfhdni$gvf$1@news.eternal-september.org> Fred Atkinson wrote: > I recently switched from one VOIP provider to another. > > With the old provider, the name of the company showed up in the name field > of the caller ID box when I would call someone. > > With the new provider, my name was supposed to pop up on the caller ID > when I would call someone. > > I've had two of my friends tell me that the name of my old VOIP provider > was popping up when I call them. I called my new provider and asked them > about it. > > They invested and told me that it was in the 'cache' of the destination > phone company and until they cleared it in their system, it would continue to > pop up this way. > > Anyone care to expand upon this? This seems weird. One would think that > they would display the name sent by the originating provider. > > Regards, > Fred I maybe wrong, but that makes no sense. You CID is sent along with your call under SS7 and would be what your company allows the receiving company to see or not see. -- 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: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 23:15:31 +0000 (UTC) From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Old Caller ID Info on New Provider Caller ID Message-ID: <hfhduj$865$1@reader1.panix.com> In <004701ca7660$b2ee2550$c800000a@mishmash> "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson@mishmash.com> writes: [snip] > With the new provider, my name was supposed to pop up on the caller ID > when I would call someone. > I've had two of my friends tell me that the name of my old VOIP provider > was popping up when I call them. I called my new provider and asked them > about it. > They invested and told me that it was in the 'cache' of the destination > phone company and until they cleared it in their system, it would continue to > pop up this way. > Anyone care to expand upon this? This seems weird. One would think that > they would display the name sent by the originating provider. Eyup, your provider is telling you the truth. The problem is that the various separate telcos, back when CNID first became plausable, did NOT want to send it back and forth from company to company. So after quite a bit of this stupidity, the FCC stepped in and ordered them to send it over, no questions asked, and no game playing. However.... .. However, the FCC order only mandated that the originating telco send across the phone NUMBER. (To be fair remember that this was in the relatively early days of Caller ID). So... the way the process works nowadays if that (when things are working correctly), the originating telco, as part of the call setup, sends over the number. The recipient telco takes that number and does a database "dip" to find the corresponding name. (The process is just about instantaneous and doesnt delay call processing). The problem is that the owners of the database don't give this info out for free. While the best and most accurate info will be at the originating telco (which, remember, did send the number...), it's also generally the most expensive source. Additionally, some originating telcos, especially those providing non traditional connections, may not even have the infrastructure to provide that info. Or may simply provide a generic "cell phone call" or similar vagueness. So... there are all sorts of third party, and cheaper, data services that have sprung up. The recipient telco will often use one of these.... save itself some money, and give the person you're calling a name that could easily be six months old. Or completely mangled. The people you're calling have to complain to their telcos and also to the various oversight agencies, pointing out that they're not getting the service (complete and accurate caller ID) that they're paying for. -- _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 00:36:53 +0000 (UTC) From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Old Caller ID Info on New Provider Caller ID Message-ID: <hfhin4$1vt$1@reader1.panix.com> In article <004701ca7660$b2ee2550$c800000a@mishmash>, Fred Atkinson <fatkinson@mishmash.com> wrote: [...] > I've had two of my friends tell me that the name of my old VOIP provider > was popping up when I call them. I called my new provider and asked them > about it. > > They invested and told me that it was in the 'cache' of the destination > phone company and until they cleared it in their system, it would continue to > pop up this way. > > Anyone care to expand upon this? This seems weird. One would think that > they would display the name sent by the originating provider. Just a WAG, but since the destination phoneco has to pay for the data dip to get the name, it would probably make financial sense for them to cache it, and to assume that if phone number xxxx had a given name yesterday, it will have the same name today. -- 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
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:15:17 -0500 From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Straight Talk by Tracfone Message-ID: <op.u4jpvrg9o63xbg@acer250.gateway.2wire.net> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:34:37 -0500, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote: >>> Anyone have any idea what wireless provider they are acting as an MVNO for? > > The network they use varies from one part of the country to another. > If you can look inside the back of the phone, it's probably AT&T if > there's a SIM chip, and Verizon if not. > > Note that GSM phones do not work on CDMA networks and vice versa, so > your phone will use the network it's built for no matter where in > the country you go. > > R's, > John As far as you know, John (or anyone), will TracFone give you the subsidy-SIM-unlock code for one of their SIM-based GSM handsets (after a suitable time interval as customer, perhaps)? TIA. Cheers, -- tlvp -- Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP
Date: 7 Dec 2009 05:31:52 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Straight Talk by Tracfone Message-ID: <20091207053152.62269.qmail@simone.iecc.com> > As far as you know, John (or anyone), will TracFone give you the > subsidy-SIM-unlock code for one of their SIM-based GSM handsets > (after a suitable time interval as customer, perhaps)? No, they will not. Google around for Tracfone forums and you'll find this is a common question. I can report that the SIM will not work in other phones either, although it did boot up in my V600 enough to let me copy the phone's address book onto the SIM. I just got a Tracfone Moto V376g. It's a decent phone, but it's quite customized for Tracfone, with a constantly updated home page display of minutes remaining and expiration date. Since the phones are sold far below cost, I gather they have chronic problems with people buying them up, unlocking and perhaps reflashing them, and selling them overseas, so they make them as hard to unlock as they possibly can. Considering that most of their phones cost about $20, I can hardly blame them. R's, John
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 Bill Horne. 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 moderated by Bill Horne. 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) 2009 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 (13 messages)

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