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Volume 29 : Issue 26 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
 Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
 Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
 Re: Do you have room for a museum?
 Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
 Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
 Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch
 Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
 Re: SMS rip-off in Australia


====== 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: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:46:13 -0800 From: "Jack Myers" <jmyers@n6wuz.net> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign? Message-ID: <5pgv27-h3t.ln1@n6wuz.net> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > ... Back then people were afraid the big AT&T would have too much > power and the Baby Bells might become too weak and fail. People > thought the ownership and management of the long distance network, > Bell Labs, and Western Electric were extremely valuable assets. As > things turned out, long distance became a cheap commodity, Bell Labs > not a big deal, and Western Electric nearly bankrupt as it evolved > into Lucent. The fast changing world of technology surprised > everyone, including AT&T's own management. Is it true that AT&T management had the opportunity to decide whether to retain the local operating companies or everything else? AT&T expected computer manufacturing to be the wave of the future, and Western Electric was their captive manufacturer. Initially WE received a windfall because each new LATA required a brand-new "equal access" tandem switch. That played out and the new computer offerings were unimpressive. Meanwhile the Canadian switching manufacturer, Northern Telecom, and the competitive long-distance providers, GTE Sprint and MCI, proved to be a strong competitors. -- Jack Myers / Westminster, California, USA
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:34:17 EST From: Wesrock@aol.com To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign? Message-ID: <26699.495271ea.388faea9@aol.com> In a message dated 1/25/2010 9:09:23 AM Central Standard Time, jmyers@n6wuz.net writes > Is it true that AT&T management had the opportunity to decide > whether to retain the local operating companies or everything else? Almost certainly true. > AT&T expected computer manufacturing to be the wave of the future, > and Western Electric was their captive manufacturer. Initially WE > received a windfall because each new LATA required a brand-new > "equal access" tandem switch. They had to divest W.E., too. Certainly in Oklahoma it did not require new tandems - the Tulsa and Oklahoma City 4A machines did the job. The LATAs in Oklahoma pretty much followed the area code boundaries, which dated back to about 1950, and adding equal access capabilities was indeed something new, but soluble. The engineer planning the equal access for Oklahoma had his desk backing up to mine, and I heard all kinds of discussions about how quick the data dip had to be performed, what reliability was promised by the vendor (99.8-something percent up time, as I recall) which he thought was not adequate and the Bell idea of reliability was well above that. Think about how many calls would be lost nationwide for every second of downtime. Anyway, they made it work. By that time the Bell Companies were buying from various vendors with a bid process, and with a slight anti-W.E. bias. > That played out and the new computer offerings were > unimpressive. Meanwhile the Canadian switching manufacturer, > Northern Telecom, and the competitive long-distance providers, GTE > Sprint and MCI, proved to be a strong competitors. Northern Telecom was originally Northern Electric, the Canadian counterpart of Western Electric, supplier to Bell Canada, and it had access to all the Bell patents and licenses. In Tulsa because of W.E. backlogs, W.E. arranged to get a badly needed 5XB machine for an overloaded end office and the Oklahoma Chief Engineer said the only difference between it and W.E. equipment was the Northern Electric gear was painted beige instead of the dull blue of W.E. equipment. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:10:22 -0500 From: Michael Muderick <michael@muderick.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Do you have room for a museum? Message-ID: <4B5D7C1E.8000204@muderick.com> Bill is right. The original poster of the "available museum" has no idea that this was posted. I saw it in the on-line Antique Trader Newsletter, and posted it here. So if you have suggestions for them, let them know. Most likely they were unaware of the Telecom Digest (?); that's why it wasn't posted here first.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:35:06 -0800 (PST) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <e409328c-c58d-438d-9e08-08c5ea51d2bb@a5g2000yqi.googlegroups.com> Is it true that the LA area was intentionally laid out with a patchwork of phone companies. That is, a Bell exchange would be here, a GTE next to it, then a United, etc.? Was this the reason LA, despite being a large city, was stuck with all step by step and they needed to come up with some sort of 'common control" that would work on SxS to allow for high call volume to many different exchanges? Supposedly the entertainment industry always lived by the telephone. I wonder if in the past the big studios had unusually large PBXs or other specialized telephone services. On Jan 23, 6:06 pm, Thad Floryan <t...@thadlabs.com> wrote: > Clarification is required: those are Southern California colloquialisms. > Proper American English is spoken in Northern California (at least by > those who speak English natively). :-) A TV sitcom capitalized on that issue. A transplanted easterner noticed his new LA friends were eagerly watching the news hoping to have the day off due to a "chase day". There were reacting just as easterners do with 'snow days'. A 'chase day' was when the cops were chasing a vehicle on the freeway and everything was shut down to allow for the chase. Not long after that episode aired the LA area actually had a 'chase day'. It made the national news. Highways were closed.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:52:00 EST From: Wesrock@aol.com To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <26edb.2335d776.388fb2d0@aol.com> In a message dated 1/25/2010 2:23:46 PM Central Standard Time, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes > Is it true that the LA area was intentionally laid out with a > patchwork of phone companies. That is, a Bell exchange would be > here, a GTE next to it, then a United, etc.? > > Was this the reason LA, despite being a large city, was stuck with > all step by step and they needed to come up with some sort of > 'common control" that would work on SxS to allow for high call > volume to many different exchanges? > > Supposedly the entertainment industry always lived by the telephone. > I wonder if in the past the big studios had unusually large PBXs or > other specialized telephone services. Clearly LA just "growed." Telephone service never appeared [to be] planned. You forget all the other telephone companies. California Water and Telephone Company, Sunland-Tujunga Telephone Company, and many others. I remember when Sunland-Tujunga Telephone Company bought a 5XB--ssaid to be the first ommon control office in the LA area. As you note, the common control step-by-step senders that Pacific Bell developed on their own were the result of the unplanned growth by many companies that started out when the LA area was not considered a big city and eastereners (and many Californisns) did not see prospects for LA beoming a big city. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:37:56 -0800 (PST) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <4279a54a-568d-43a7-a0e1-4f70b4be8810@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com> On Jan 24, 9:06 am, "Bob Goudreau" <BobGoudr...@nc.rr.com> wrote: > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > Remember Star Wars? "This is the bird that made the run to Alderan in > thirty parsecs!" Don't get it, could you elaborate? > ... and I've lost count of the number of movies where some actor picks > up the receiver of a "Field" phone and starts talking without cranking > the magneto... I've lost count of movies--where within the _same movie_ -- the same office desk or living room table has a different telephone set in different scenes. The scratchy sound of older Bell dials made for good dramatics as the character slowly dialed the police. ***** Moderator's Note ***** A "Parsec" is a unit of DISTANCE, not time: according to Wikipedia, it means "parallax of one arcsecond", (symbol: pc); and it is a unit of length, equal to just under 31 trillion kilometres (about 19 trillion miles), or about 3.26 light-years. Saying "This bird made the run to Alderan in 30 parsecs" is like saying "My car made the run to Chicago in 300 miles". If Han Solo had said "This bird made the run to Alderan AT 30 parsecs PER", it would have made sense, and Luke Skywalker could have looked up at the Millenium Falcon and said "30 parsecs per WHAT"? (I'm available to consult on future Star Wars scripts). Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:12:35 -0600 From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (PV) To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign? Message-ID: <mtmdnQsypr_elMPWnZ2dnUVZ_tOdnZ2d@supernews.com> "Bob Goudreau" <BobGoudreau@nc.rr.com> writes: > ... possibly ever have encountered Ma Bell in their adult > lives. Perhaps some of those oldsters still mistakenly conflate > today's AT&T with the old Bell >System, but many (myself included) > have no such confusion. I think it's much more likely they confuse the "new AT&T" with what was a not-so-popular cable, long distance, and mobility company. Nobody really thinks about ma bell anymore. As someone else said, AT&T pre merger was a pale shadow of itself, having sold off most of the good bits years prior. * -- * PV Something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews.
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:06:29 +1100 From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: SMS rip-off in Australia Message-ID: <pan.2010.01.25.22.06.21.681545@myrealbox.com> On Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:21:44 +0000, John Levine wrote: >>> I doubt that many people really pay that much. Don't they have >>> bundles like everyone else in the world? >> >> Yes, but the same SMS charges are included in the bundle. > > I gather that the prices are just notional, e.g., they claim that > they give you $300 of SMS as part of a $49 bundle or something like > that. If so, the $300 isn't money, it's just tokens to count the > SMS. Exactly. > The SMS on my phone is charged in minutes, where each SMS costs 0.3 > minutes. The translation from money to minutes is rather obscure, > depending on coupons, bundle sizes, and whether your phone came with > the double-all-credits feature, but it's not hard to buy minutes for > 10 cents (US) each which means the real cost for an SMS is a not too > excessive 3 cents. If you do similar arithmetic, what's an SMS cost > in oz? Difficult to say now, a few years ago mobile calls were generally charged in per-second billing with a small flagfall, now most (every?) Australian mobile carrier now charges in 30 or 60 second increments with a far larger flagfall - but because of the bundles the charges vary so much it becomes really tough to work out the actual call/SMS costs. I currently pay 15c for each SMS sent from my phone, and 39c/minute (no flagfall, per second billing) for calls in Australia on a "top-up" plan, and this is pretty good value. Smaller resellers (like the one I am currently with) who made the mobile market here more competitive seem to be disappearing. The reseller I am with was bought out by Optus a couple of years ago and is now being closed down by them - which means I have to find a new deal which will probably cost me twice as much as my current one. -- 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.
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 (8 messages)

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