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

Add this Digest to your personal   or  

The Telecom Digest for April 27, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 90 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Wireless access expands in NYC subway (John Levine)
Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? (Brian Gordon)
Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? (John Levine)
Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? (HAncock4)
Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? (danny burstein)
Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? (HAncock4)
Re: The Shame of Boston's Wireless Woes (Joseph Singer)
HTC's new phone, the One, is a winner (Monty Solomon)
Re: "Fiber-backed" - mean anything specific, or marketing buzz? (Stephen)
just like the real beneficiary of Food Stamps is Big Agriculture... (danny burstein)
Re: just like the real beneficiary of Food Stamps is Big Agriculture... (John Levine)

====== 31 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.
Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without the explicit written consent of the owner of that address. 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: 26 Apr 2013 03:07:45 -0000 From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Wireless access expands in NYC subway Message-ID: <20130426030745.67949.qmail@joyce.lan> >IMHO, this is not a good idea. Subway stations now have a liberal >complement of pay telephones for emergency or urgent phone calls. >When trains pass through the stations become very noisy making >conversations almost impossible. Passengers talking on their phones >will be very distracted and at risk for taking the wrong train, >blocking the path of other passengers, falling down the many >staircases, falling into the platform gap, or even falling into the >tracks. ... A large number of stations on the NYC subway, probably the majority of them, are at or above grade, so people's cell phones have always worked there. If the phones are so dangerous, why don't we hear about distracted people plunging from trestles?
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:06:17 +0000 (UTC) From: briang@panix.com (Brian Gordon) To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? Message-ID: <kldu49$nh1$1@reader1.panix.com> In article <1366898374.93671.YahooMailClassic@web121903.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>, Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com> wrote: >Phones have come a long way since the old landline days. Our >smartphones are light, fast, and have more computing power than NASA >used to put a man on the moon.* Some advances came not by adding >things to the phone, but by taking things away. Noticeably missing for >anyone of a certain age is the dial tone. What happened to it? We >don't need it anymore. Or, at least the phones don't. > Many cellphone users are still billed by the minute for all connect time. You have to connent to your cellphone network for them to send you a dialtone, so it is cheaper for the user to not have one. That's my guess, anyway. -- +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | Brian Gordon -->briang@panix.com<-- brian dot gordon at cox dot net | | brianggordon@hotmail.com Bass: Lexington "Main Street Harmonizers" chorus | +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Date: 26 Apr 2013 20:53:24 -0000 From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? Message-ID: <20130426205324.74864.qmail@joyce.lan> >Many cellphone users are still billed by the minute for all connect >time. You have to connent to your cellphone network for them to send >you a dialtone, so it is cheaper for the user to not have one. That's >my guess, anyway. Interesting guess, but wrong. The point of a dial tone on a landline is to tell the subscriber that your line has been connected to the equipment at the central office that handles dialed digits. But that's not how cell phones work. When you turn on a cell phone, it looks for a tower, registers with the tower, and then indicates that it's online, typically by showing a signal strength icon or the like. It pings the tower every once in a while and may switch towers if another tower has a stronger signal. (Things are a little messier with CDMA, but the principle is the same.) When you make a cell call, the digits you dial are buffered in the phone until you hit send, at which point the phone sends them in a packet to that tower, which then responds by assigning a channel or the CDMA equivalent. The phone then switches to that channel and I believe that all of the call progress tones come from the switch. So there's no dial tone because there's no point. If your phone weren't already talking to a tower it wouldn't let you make the call. R's, John PS: I gather there are phones like the Jitterbug which provide a fake dialtone for the benefit of users who like that sort of thing. But it's generated in the handset, and tells you nothing useful.
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:59:04 -0700 (PDT) From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? Message-ID: <05f1192c-69dd-4790-8a6d-75a720b69f84@e13g2000yqp.googlegroups.com> On Apr 25, 9:59 am, Joseph Singer <joeofseat...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Phones have come a long way since the old landline days. Our > smartphones are light, fast, and have more computing power than NASA > used to put a man on the moon.* Some advances came not by adding > things to the phone, but by taking things away. Noticeably missing for > anyone of a certain age is the dial tone. What happened to it? We > don't need it anymore. Or, at least the phones don't. Cell phones did not have a dial tone. Here is an index to the BSTJ covering their early development (very comprehensive description of all facets of the technology). http://www3.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/vol58-1979/bstj-vol58-issue01.html For those interested in radio wave propagation, the following may be of interest: January 1953--Comparison of Mobile Radio Transmission at 150, 450, 900, and 3700 Mc http://www3.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/vol31-1952/articles/bstj31-6-1068.pdf The original mobile phones, back in the late 1940s, were manual. However, in the 1960s an improved system came out where the subscriber sets had dials. Would anyone know if that system offered a dial tone? ***** Moderator's Note ***** The Improved Mobile Telephone System (IMTS) predated the computer revolution, and the dial pulses were sent via tone-based signalling, in real time. Each customer had their own "tip & ring" connection to a Class 5 office at the location of the IMTS terminating unit. Ergo, each customer was connected to their own telephone line when they picked up the handset in their car, which meant that they needed to hear dial tone to know when to dial. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:00:04 +0000 (UTC) From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? Message-ID: <kle4pk$mnd$1@reader1.panix.com> [snip] >> things to the phone, but by taking things away. Noticeably missing for >> anyone of a certain age is the dial tone. What happened to it? We >> don't need it anymore. Or, at least the phones don't. A couple of years ago one of the news programs had an "anniversary review", so to speak, of cellphone history. One clip in it (which I wish I'd have been able to record..) showed an early demo of cellphone to a room of reporters. They were walked through the process of picking up the handset and pushing the key pad. And... when they picked up the handset, the speaker advised them to, yes, listen for the dial tone. So the concept, at least, was there. Whether the first practical and marketed units had a dial tone, I can't say. In my own case I had a mobile unit that was silent, but that was already a few years after the rollouts. -- _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:54:00 -0700 (PDT) From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? Message-ID: <485656ef-6e26-4c55-8e21-f96de751ed8e@t5g2000yql.googlegroups.com> On Apr 26, 11:00 am, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote: > And... when they picked up the handset, the speaker advised > them to, yes, listen for the dial tone. > So the concept, at least, was there. Whether the first practical > and marketed units had a dial tone, I can't say. In my own > case I had a mobile unit that was silent, but that was already > a few years after the rollouts. The BSTJ article that describes the prototype test set in 1979 makes use of the SEND function in the same way it is used today. There was no dial tone. http://www3.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/vol58-1979/articles/bstj58-1-123.pdf (11 meg) Perhaps the newsclip being shown for the anniversary was for a cordless phone, not a cellphone. Newscasters aren't that accurate on subtle technical matters, and often 'historical' clips aren't the right ones for what they're discussing. For instance, articles on central office telephone operators often have a picture of what is clearly a PBX switchboard, not a central office switchboard (eg 555/556 or 608, which were distinctive designs and AFAIK were only used as PBXs). News articles dealing with railroads often have a photo of a train completely different than the subject of the news story. P.S. Now I remember that the 1969 Metroliner public telephone did have dial tone, but that was a specialized service. Those phones had automatic handoff from one radio segment to the next, though most of the segments were large.
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:32:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: The Shame of Boston's Wireless Woes Message-ID: <1366950758.97447.YahooMailClassic@web121906.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:50:05 -0400Monty Solomon referred to an Atlantic article: > Almost immediately after Monday's tragic bombings at the Boston > Marathon, the city's cellular networks collapsed. The Associated > Press initially reported what many of us suspected, that law > enforcement officials had requested a communications blackout to > prevent the remote detonation of additional explosives. But the > claim was soon redacted as the truth became clear. It didn't take > government fiat to shut down the cellular networks. They fell apart > all on their own. Let's be a little bit realistic here. It's impossible to predict when a major event is going to happen whether that's natural disaster such as hurricane, tornado, earthquake, "9/11 bombing" or a terrorist bombing a public event such as the BAA marathon. Do they really expect telco to provide 500 or 1000% increase in traffic and maintain that level of service 100% of the time? I'd say no. It's just not practical to provide 100% up time through all kind of events that come down the pike (in this case Interstate 90.)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:58:09 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: HTC's new phone, the One, is a winner Message-ID: <p06240883cda037e606c9@[10.0.1.5]> The One could be the one By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff The latest sales figures for Apple Inc.'s iPhones are out, and they look just fine. But for how long? People keep buying the iPhone 4 and 4S and 5 in the confident belief that Apple makes the best smartphones in the world. But the latest hardware from Taiwan's HTC Corp. could change that. The company's new phone is simply called the One. And it is. ... http://www.boston.com/business/technology/2013/04/24/htc-new-phone-the-one-winner/HYaSYfNKnjqsF7ZiJyPTQK/story.html
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:30:51 +0100 From: Stephen <stephen_hope@xyzworld.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: "Fiber-backed" - mean anything specific, or marketing buzz? Message-ID: <o6ikn85qn0g21hnmsbedvo59so3rlohum4@4ax.com> On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:34:45 -0400, Jim Bennett <ajbcommconsulting@frontier.com> wrote: >On 2013-04-22 13:00, Matt Simpson wrote: >> Considering that almost any internet service is probably going to >> involve some fiber somewhere, when is it appropriate to call a service >> "fiber-backed"? And how much more fiber do you need to be "100% >> fiber-backed"? Does this statement mean anything specific? Or just >> that they've buried some more fiber? > >You have pretty much nailed it. All of the real backbone of both the >internet and the PSTN are fiber. Closer to the customer, virtually all >of the remote switches and DSLAMs used in small CO's, and the packet >switches that are quickly replacing them, connect to the higher level >switches over fiber. There is microwave backhaul in use in very remote >areas, such as rural cell towers and very rural CO's, but that is >irrelevant to this discussion. FWIW rural bits of many countries still use micriwave backhaul some modern kit still seems to work in SDH chunks of 155 Mbps, but will present some or all of them as Gigabit Ethernet [Moderatro snip] -- Regards stephen_hope@xyzworld.com - replace xyz with ntl
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:30:12 -0400 From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: just like the real beneficiary of Food Stamps is Big Agriculture... Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1304252229440.11886@panix5.panix.com> A nice little hatchet job from a Bloomberg reporter pointing out that Carlos Slim is a major beneficiary of the "free" phones for the poor program, aka the completely misnamed "obamafones". ("free" in quotes because the US taxpayer, and/or the US phone utility payer, is the source of funding) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-25/richest-man-slim-cited-for-profiting-from-phones-for-poor.html _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: 26 Apr 2013 15:42:23 -0000 From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: just like the real beneficiary of Food Stamps is Big Agriculture... Message-ID: <20130426154223.74045.qmail@joyce.lan> >A nice little hatchet job from a Bloomberg reporter >pointing out that Carlos Slim is a major beneficiary >of the "free" phones for the poor program, aka >the completely misnamed "obamafones". > >("free" in quotes because the US taxpayer, and/or >the US phone utility payer, is the source of funding) > > >http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-25/richest-man-slim-cited-for-profiting-from-phones-for-poor.html > Indeed. As the story points out later, this is the lifeline phone service program, which dates back to the Reagan admininstration. Slim is involved because he owns Tracfone, the largest prepaid MVNO. It's also probably because the program only pays $9.25/mo and Tracfone is one of the few wireless carriers that can provide a useful amount of service at that price. (I have one, and pay $100/yr for about 1000 minutes.) Beyond that it's just typical right wing grandstanding and demonizing the poor. Evidently the Republicans have never had to look for a job, or have too little imagination to envision how hard a job search would be if you don't have a number where employers can call you back to schedule an interview or let you know you got the job. 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
339-364-8487
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) 2013 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 (11 messages)

Return to Archives ** Older Issues