33 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981Copyright © 2015 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.The Telecom Digest for May 3, 2015
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| Date: Sat, 2 May 2015 03:42:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Los Angeles Streetlights to Be Controlled via Cellular Network Message-ID: <db942f6c-387c-42ce-a973-92bef081ccf6@googlegroups.com> On Friday, May 1, 2015 at 8:30:26 PM UTC-5, Gordon Burditt wrote: >[Moderator wrote]: >> If I had to guess, I'd say that you're both right: a GPS transponder >> and logic would allow any streetlight within the bounds of a specified >> area to respond to an "all on" command for that area. > > I'm not so sure that a command to a rectangular area would be the > right thing to do in even most cases. Let's suppose that they need > to turn the lights on full blast over a 5-mile stretch of I-20 in > the evening because (a) they have to land a CareFlite helicopter > there to pick up an accident victim, and want everyone to see > backed-up traffic, (b) the highway is closed to demolish and/or > install a bridge over it, and they want people to see the signs > directing them to exits, or (c) this part of the highway is flooded. > I think all of these have happened several times on parts of I-20 > in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in the last 10 years. It's also > problematic that a rectangular area with one most-significant-bit > flipped could shut off half of the city, or country. You shouldn't > have to update all the lamps should the route of a small section > of I-20 change to know the new route of I-20. Only a few of those > lamps will move. Where did "rectangular area" come from? There's nothing in the original CNN article or in any previous post in this thread about "rectangular area". If they can control each streetlight individually they can define any geometric shape desired to control two or more lights. A linear grouping would be more likely than any two-dimensional shape, but if a rectangular shape is desired it can be defined in software. > Highways tend to curve around a lot, and sometimes the difference > between a light on a highway and a light on an access road are > distinguishable only by altitude (My TomTom GPS makes similar > mistakes regarding traffic cameras at intersections of access roads > and warns me about them on the highway itself). Also, some lights > on the same pole (and very close together, perhaps too close to > distinguish with GPS) are aimed in different directions and shine > on different roads. If they can control each streetlight individually they can distinguish between two city-owned lights on the same pole. In my experience if there are two or three lights on the same pole only one (at most, two) is owned by the city anyway. Private lights aren't the city's responsibility. > How easy is it to do a "cellular broadcast" to a bunch of lamps > in an area, without having to make individual calls to each lamp, > and without including any non-lamps? Are you assuming that each light has a separate NANP telephone number? It seems to me that IP address would be a lot easier to implement and faster to use. Of course the idea of assigning an entire area code to streetlights has a certain perverse fascination... > Can this be made to cost less > than one cellular minute per lamp? How do you prevent telemarketers > (or terrorists) from making (possibly collect) calls to the lamps > and changing their state? Hey -- I love that idea. Forward your favorite telemarketer to a streetlight! > You can solve some of this by putting smarts in the lamp database, > not the lamps themselves. For example, you define an area called > "I-20" subdivided by mile markers which resolves to dozens or > hundreds of small rectangles, another one for the convention center > which often needs lights on when special events get out. Sure. As I noted above, if they can control each streetlight individually they can define any geometric shape desired to control two or more lights. > I presume that there are multiple laptops for workers to use, and > that under normal circumstances they are returned to the office to > get re-sync'd overnight, or they get live updates for the entire city. Or each worker just logs into the central database. > Moving lamps might set off an alarm for suspected lamp theft or the > pole getting hit by traffic (or blown over by a tornado) so the > lamp is lying in the middle of the road. Sure. Assuming that the light's transponder still works after crash-landing in the middle of the road. > >> And, it would also simplify and speed up maintenance: work crews are >> prone to manage records badly, so having a stock of "one size fits >> all" lights in a truck, which can be put in place and automatically >> tracked, would speed up road crew work and assure more accurate >> recordkeeping. > I still think individual identification of each lamp, by something > other than GPS location, is needed. You need to be able to separately > control lamps which GPS thinks are at the same location. IP address. Neal McLain | ||||||||||||
Date: Sat, 2 May 2015 16:38:17 +0000 (UTC)
From: David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Is it legal to sell some area code 408 numbers?
Message-ID: <mi2uho$d27$4@reader1.panix.com>
"John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
>In article <f562725b-af6b-459c-b7ef-2e795c20fb2d@googlegroups.com> you write:
>>I have a few phone numbers in area code 408 (San Jose, California, area)
>>that I'd like to advertise for sale, with an eye to persuading small businesses
>>to buy them because they're good business phone numbers (they end in 000).
>I think you will find that the problem isn't whether they're legal,
>it's whether telcos will let you transfer them. But I suppose that
>now that all numbers are portable, if you sold them to someone who
>ported them to a random CLEC, it'd work.
The usual ploy was to "sell the business" and just include the
phone number.....
--
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