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The Telecom Digest for July 7, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 165 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Amazon apology for Friday outages (Monty Solomon)
Re: Fiber Is the Key to U.S. Telecom Diet (HAncock4)
Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers ] (Hal Murray)
Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers ] (Barry Margolin)
Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers (PV)
Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers (Pete Cresswell)
Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers (Robert Bonomi)
Car-Pooling Makes a Surge on Apps and Social Media (Monty Solomon)

====== 30 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 Bill Horne 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 that person, or email address owner.
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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: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 10:38:00 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Amazon apology for Friday outages Message-ID: <p0624084acc1aec748ba2@[10.0.1.6]> Summary of the AWS Service Event in the US East Region July 2, 2012 We'd like to share more about the service disruption which occurred last Friday night, June 29th, in one of our Availability Zones in the US East-1 Region. The event was triggered during a large scale electrical storm which swept through the Northern Virginia area. We regret the problems experienced by customers affected by the disruption and, in addition to giving more detail, also wanted to provide information on actions we'll be taking to mitigate these issues in the future. Our US East-1 Region consists of more than 10 datacenters structured into multiple Availability Zones. These Availability Zones are in distinct physical locations and are engineered to isolate failure from each other. Last Friday, due to weather warnings of the approaching storm, all change activity in the US East-1 Region had been cancelled and extra personnel had been called into the datacenters for the evening. ... http://aws.amazon.com/message/67457/
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 17:13:28 -0700 (PDT) From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Fiber Is the Key to U.S. Telecom Diet Message-ID: <b9cd51d8-d07d-4f83-a5b9-031b26f82ac3@h20g2000yqe.googlegroups.com> On Jul 5, 12:20 am, Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote: > The National Regulatory Review Institute reported earlier this month > that between January 2010 and April 2012 intense industry lobbying > had resulted in passage of laws removing or reducing oversight of > telecommunications providers in 20 states. Which is unfortunate, considering the problems that new technology has brought us, such as the flood of illegal telemarketing calls (see separate thread). As discussed here, since there is no incentive for any carrier to do anything about the problem, they won't. It's too bad legislators don't know the history and can't look back at the problems a "free-for-all" marketplace created circa 1900 in the utilities of that era, such as the railroads.
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 13:58:42 -0500 From: hal-usenet@ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net (Hal Murray) To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers ] Message-ID: <G5SdndnYnbt_fmjSnZ2dnUVZ_qSdnZ2d@megapath.net> > My experience is that the national Do Not Call list works very well. I'm on the list. I get several calls per week. Most of them are obviously crooks. The obvious example is the guy with a strange accent who wants to fix my Windows box. Other common examples are Heather from Account Services Attention Public Utility Customers Carpet cleaners I get a few calls from charities and a few claiming to be doing marketing surveys. "We're not selling anything" from the local newspaper. Right... So in some sense, it's working as I don't get a lot of calls from legitimate businesses. On the other hand, it's not working as well as I'd like, and from the repeat pattern of many of the bad guys, it sure would be nice if somebody went after them. -- These are my opinions. I hate spam.
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:21:53 -0400 From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers ] Message-ID: <barmar-9048F4.11215306072012@news.eternal-september.org> In article <G5SdndnYnbt_fmjSnZ2dnUVZ_qSdnZ2d@megapath.net>, hal-usenet@ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net (Hal Murray) wrote: > > My experience is that the national Do Not Call list works very well. > > I'm on the list. I get several calls per week. > > Most of them are obviously crooks. The obvious example is the > guy with a strange accent who wants to fix my Windows box. > > Other common examples are > Heather from Account Services > Attention Public Utility Customers > Carpet cleaners How about the ones that want to help me with my home mortgage? I don't get many telemarketer calls, but for some reason I keep getting these, even though I'm not having any problem paying my mortgage. I used to get calls from Heather at work. -- Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** ***** Moderator's Note ***** I was able to stop the mortgage calls years ago: I would tell them I'm interested, and then confirm that I was interested when the sweat-young-thing called to ask if I really was, and then when the real mortgage brokers called, I'd tell them they just wasted their money on a non-productive lead, and that I don't do business with crooks, and that I don't do business with those the crooks do business with. It took about four months, and I haven't had a mortgage call since. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 11:37:40 -0500 From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (PV) To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers Message-ID: <_tednflbCqRJX2jSnZ2dnUVZ_oSdnZ2d@supernews.com> Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> writes: >Per Steven: >>If you built the SIT generator, you should sell them. > >I was wondering what a "SIT Tone" was until I read this: > >http://tinyurl.com/2xp9vw > > >Sounds like a no-brainer to download a .WAV file and just add it >to the start of the answering machine's message - with a long >enough persistence to trigger the robo caller's response, but >short enough so the actual message comes on before the innocent >caller's "WTF?" response kicks in. Back in the dark days before the DNC list, I used to get more than a dozen telemarketing calls in a day. One of the things I tried was the SIT trick. You don't need any fancy generator, you just need to put a recording of the tone onto your voicemail or answering machine, right at the front of the message. Info here: http://www.yourhomenow.com/sit.html In my experience, you only needed the first tone, and it could be very short. The yourhomenow guy says that some dialers are now listening for the second tone too. If it works, you'll know - the machine on the other end will hang up almost immediately. Personally though, I think this is all obsolete. The companies that are likely to give a crap are already using the do-not-call list. I still get a few calls, but they are ALWAYS scams; "Heather from card services" and other such con games. Put it this way - if you are getting unsolicited calls, they are either going to be surveys, political calls, or scams (note, may be overlap in all categories, grin). None of those people care about the DNC list, and a boiler-room operation probably doesn't have SIT detectors on their dialers (if they're using dialers at all, they could just as easily have people doing the calling). Really the only thing you can do is collect as much information as you can and forward it to the FTC. If you try putting SIT on your machine, by all means tell us if it seems to result in faster hangups and less calls after that, but I think it's fairly doubtful to make much difference. * P.S. Also note: The people that are likely to call you nowadays aren't like the old telemarketers who you could browbeat into submission fairly easily. The kind you get now, if they go to a person, tend to be sociopathic nutters. A few months ago I got fed up with one of the guys who was calling and leaving messages on my machine about fundraising for a (nonexistent) charity, and told him to stop calling. Instead of doing that, he called back immediately and cursed into the machine for a fairly-creative 30 seconds straight. My machine recorded it all so I had a nice piece of evidence to give the cops when he threatened to come over and break my arm, but I really don't think it's worth it to taunt the weirdos anymore. I either let it go to voicemail or hang up without comment. -- * PV Something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews.
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:27:51 -0400 From: Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers Message-ID: <i1mev7pm75s12knsk3opuhrsjkfcsti0hv@4ax.com> Per PV: >Really the only thing you can do is collect as much information as you >can and forward it to the FTC. Devil's Advocate Question: If the Feds can't nail Heather, what can they do? -- Pete Cresswell
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:24:23 -0500 From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers Message-ID: <CradnQIooox6dGjSnZ2dnUVZ_q2dnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications> In article <jt2p5m$ktl$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>, Garrett Wollman <wollman@bimajority.org> wrote: >In article <jsvp1v$gp3$1@pcls6.std.com>, >Michael Moroney <moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com> wrote: >>Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> writes: >>Don't SIT tone generators not work for any phone system using out-of-band >>signalling of stuff like that? (that is, just about anything other than >>POTS) ? Certainly telemarketers run from a call center with a DS-n >>feed. > >>Special Information Tones are in band because they are intended to >>signal to originating-end-point automatic calling equipment that the >>call has failed. > >Why would "automatic calling equipment" pay any attention to them when >they have a trunk-side connection to the phone network that explicitly >tells them otherwise? Because it DOESN'T. grin At least not always, that is. All it takes is one analog trunk circuit -anywhere- in the call path, and the caller's digital trunk signalling dother than oesn't tell them diddly-squat. Specifically consider a PBX with analog DID trunk lines. The only way that PBX has to signal the caller, for 'non working number', or the other 'failure' conditions ('all circuits busy' excluded), is via SIT.
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2012 01:10:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Car-Pooling Makes a Surge on Apps and Social Media Message-ID: <p0624088bcc1c237d145c@[10.0.1.6]> Car-Pooling Makes a Surge on Apps and Social Media By MICKEY MEECE July 4, 2012 The annual ritual of piling into the car for the great American summer road trip has a new twist as more travelers are inviting strangers along for part of the ride. Long-distance travelers as well as commuters are connecting on sites like Zimride.com, Ridejoy.com, Avego.com, Nuride.com, Rideshare.com and eRideShare.com. This summer, a German company with a quintessential American name, Carpooling.com, will try to break into the United States market with a trial run in the Northeast. In June, the company announced that 30 million rides had been offered through its 10-year-old network, which now has 3.8 million registered users. Ride-sharing and car-pooling, it seems, are having a moment in the United States after many fits and starts. "It's been a tough sell in the U.S. for a long time," said David Burwell, director of the energy and climate program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "A lot is due to not only the fact that people have different places they want to go, but also safety and other concerns about going into a car with strangers." What is different now, Mr. Burwell said, is the advancement of digital technology and social networking, "which removed a significant amount of barriers." To that end, eRideShare, which was started in 1999, is testing a mobile app this week for iPhone and Android phones. "I see a lot of new entrants this year" as well as new technology, said its founder, Steven Schoeffler. "I think it will be a very interesting time for ride-sharing." The sites vary in the process of matching drivers with passengers, security protocols and how payment is calculated and made. Some sites allow participants to settle on the cost of a ride; others charge by mile traveled. The profit-making sites take a percentage of the fee charged to riders, but it's free to sign up for the service. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/technology/technology-makes-car-pooling-safer-and-easier.html
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