
From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu  Fri Oct 20 16:06:04 1995
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1995
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telecomlist-outbound; Fri, 20 Oct 1995 09:19:18 -0500
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TELECOM Digest     Fri, 20 Oct 95 09:19:00 CDT    Volume 15 : Issue 446

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Using *69 To Get Caller's ID (Mike Miller)
    Re: Using *69 To Get Caller's ID (Dave Keeny)
    Re: Using *69 To Get Caller's ID (Steve Cogorno)
    Re: Using *69 To Get Caller's ID (jbreaux@aol.com)
    Re: Using *69 To Get Caller's ID (Andrew B. Hawthorn)
    Re: Cellular Phone Clone Ring Busted (Lynne Gregg)
    Re: Your Name is Copyrighted! (James H. Haynes)
    Re: Your Name is Copyrighted! (Bob Niland)
    Re: Which PBXs Have BRIs Compatible With NI-1? (Steve Cogorno)
    Old Los Angeles Prefixes (David Gershwin)
    Hunt Group Billing (Ted Koppel)
    The Girl from the MCI Commercial (Brian Vita)
    Re: Do Not Call This Phone or Visit This Address (Daniel Dern)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------



Here in Des Moines, this service is provided on a non-subscription basis
as a pay-per-use (75 cents). I have used it to determine an answering
machine call presumably from some telemarketer who's automated system
hangs up on connection to an answering machine. The equipment reads back
the number to you and asks if you would like to make the call. In this
particular case, I did not care to return the call (obvious). I cannot
recall if they charged me for the information only -- I suspect they did
but I find no fault with that. 

For occasional use, it's a lot cheaper than Caller-ID, IMO. Des Moines
is serviced by US West. 


Michael P. Miller   Des Moines
mikemiller@dsmnet.com

------------------------------



Glenn Foote wrote:

>       Can someone explain the exact workings of the Ameritech offering
> of "Call Back" as it is used from a single residential line.  In my
> part of the country, this is the *69 function and calls (dials) the
> last person to call you.

>       According to the friendly people at the business office <humor
> here> it works totally in the central office with the person who
> initiates the call back hearing _nothing_ until the ringing signal is
> passed.  This eliminates the possibility of capturing the actual
> number by recording <decoding> the tones.  This is supposedly mandated
> by the Ohio Public Utility Commission at the request of those
> businesses (battered women and the like) that need this protection.

>       Is this right, or did something get left out in the explanation.

I don't have the answer to the Ameritech question, but as an
interesting (to me) sideline, Bell Atlantic's Frederick, MD service
used to do the same; i.e., DTMF tones were not heard by the *69'er.
Now, *69 does not initiate a callback, but instead gives you the phone
number of the last caller so you can choose to call back or not. This
seems much more useful than a strictly callback feature. As far as
OPUC is concerned, I don't see why they would bother mandating
"anonymous" callback when Caller-ID is so widely available (I am
assuming it is available within OPUC's turf).

A question: if you block your phone number from being transmitted via
Caller-ID, does it also block the *69 feature?


Dave   keenyd@ttc.com

------------------------------



Glenn Foote said:

>       According to the friendly people at the business office <humor
> here> it works totally in the central office with the person who
> initiates the call back hearing _nothing_ until the ringing signal is
> passed.  This eliminates the possibility of capturing the actual
> number by recording <decoding> the tones.  This is supposedly mandated

Well since there are no tones, it would be hard to record them!  The
only time DTMF is used is between your set and your central office.
Between switches, channel signaling is used.  Advanced features like
you describe are called CLASS features and they require the use of
SS7.  SS7 is a signaling protocol used for common signalling among
switches and large PBXs.


Steve   cogorno@netcom.com

------------------------------



US West began offering *69 (last call return) as a "pay-per-use"
feature on my Seattle line earlier this year. For a charge of .75 per
activation, the service will announce the number of the last calling
party and then give you a chance to hang up before placing the call.
Calls that are anonymous are announced as such and cannot be returned
using *69.

US West still charges for each use of *69 even if you hang up before
the call goes through, provided a number has been announced to you.
You are not charged if the caller's ID was blocked.

------------------------------



Here in Atlanta (BellSouth Communications) our *69 feature reads back
the last number and gives you the option of calling it back.  A
cheaper "Caller ID" type option.

------------------------------



You asked for more details.  Here's the UPI article.

UPne 10/18 1413  Cellular phone clone ring busted

   By SASCHA BRODSKY
   NEW YORK, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Authorities announced Wednesday they
have broken up the country's largest known cellular phone cloning
ring.

   Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said three men were
arrested Monday as part of a multi-million dollar ring that sold
numbers used to make free phone calls. Dozens of cell phones and
thousands of stolen numbers were seized as part of the ongoing battle
against the growing fraud industry.

   "The message is you have our number and now we have yours,"
Morgenthau said standing in front of a tangled mass of cellular phones
and computer equipment that was seized in the raid.

   The search took place Monday evening at an Upper Manhttan
apartment.  Three men in the apartment fled through a fire escape.
Winston Urena, 28, Edward Tineo, 19 and Emilio Herrera Diaz, 19 were
arrested and charged with forgery.

   The investigation began in May when police received a tip that cell
phones were being cloned at the apartment. Undercover detectives went
to the apartment and had cellular phones illegally activated for a
cost of about $50 for each phone, Morgenthau said. The cloned phones
are usually sold on the street for $100 each.

   "We have learned that cloned phones are greatly valued by
criminals, especially narcotics traffickers," Morgenthau said. "They
are mobile and because they are being used with legitimate access
numbers, it can be difficult to determine who is actually using the
telephone when a call is made. Once the cloned number is discovered
and disabled, the cloner can simply reprogram the phone to a new
working number."

   Cellular phones broadcast identification codes every 20 seconds so
they can be located for incoming calls. Cloning thieves lie in wait
along major highways with special scanners to snatch the
identification codes out of the air. The codes are then programmed
into unauthorized phones by using a computer equipped with special
hardware.

   "The price of the software used for the cloning is dropping
rapidly, " said Nicholas Arcuri, vice-president of fraud control for
Bell Atlantic.

    Morgenthau said the investigation is continuing.

------------------------------



Way back when, Clarence Saunders invented the supermarket and gave it
the name Piggly-Wiggly.  Somewhere along the line he lost the rights
to that name, so his next venture was a supermarket named "Clarence
Saunders, Sole Owner of My Name".

(A later venture of his was Keedoozle, a robotic supermarket.  This
lasted a year and was then converted to a conventional supermarket
named Zizz-Buzz.  "The customer will zizz right in and buzz right
out.")

------------------------------



Phil Pucci (pdpucci@execpc.com) wrote:

> The CD-ROM people have another twist on this subject.  I have heard
> that some of these companies typically scan (OCR) existing directories
> for their data (rather than pay the publishers such as Ameritech for
> the information).  When one of the publishers (Nynex, Bell South, SBC,
> US West, Ameritech, Pac Bell, etc.) sued them for copyright violation,
> the CD-ROM people came out on top.  I do not remember the exact ruling
> (does anyone out there know?).

The Supremes ruled that simple lists are not creative works of 
authorship,
regardless of the effort involved, and are therefore not copyrightable.

This, like the non-copyrightable status of font bitmaps/vectors, may or 
may
not be a loophole in the copyright law, depending on your point of view.

> Does this mean that someone could legally put the data of one of those
> phone book CD-ROMs on the 'net without fear of recrimination.  Heck,
> they probably did not pay anyone for the data (only the formatting,

Font CD plagiarizing seems to be a major industry.  I see nothing
preventing PhoneCDs from suffering the same fate.


Regards,         1001-A East Harmony Road
Bob Niland       Suite 503  Ft. Collins, CO 80525 USA 
Internet:  rjn@csn.net    

------------------------------



Lars Poulsen said:

> Case in point: We bought a couple of AT&T 8503 voice terminals to play
> with on the public network, but it turns out that these can not be
> made to work with the public service provided out of an AT&T 5ESS
> switch.  (According to the support staff at AT&T's PBX group: This
> voice terminal is specifically for use with System 85 and Definity
> PBXs.)  This surprising information explains why the manual doesn't
> describe how to program a SPID into the units.

I literally spent an hour and a half on the phone with AT&T (being
conferenced with four people at times) trying to get this same question
answered.  Sourcebook says 8503 is ONLY for Definity and System 75/85.
The engineering group that designed the unit said it is for public use
as well because the System 75 is emulating the same protocol as 5ESS.

I took the engineer's word over the customer service droids at
Sourcebook, but hey, it did take the first person I talked to 15
minutes to even FIND the phone in her computer so who knows what's
going on over there.


Steve    cogorno@netcom.com

------------------------------



Does anyone know of a source of information where one can find the
verbal representations of prefixes in the Metro L.A. area?  For
example, in the fifties and early sixties, many Miracle Mile-area
prefixes were designated as WEbster-x-xxxx; many of those "93"
prefixes are still in use today.  I would like to know what the verbal
designations of those prefixes were.


Thanks,

David Gershwin    gershwin@cinenet.net


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One out there that I always liked was
'HOllywood'.    PAT]

------------------------------



When I dial into a hunt group, what shows up on my long distance bill, 
the
number I dialed (the first number of the hunt group), or the actual 
number
I connected to?


Ted Koppel * The UnCover Company * The CARL Corporation * 
tkoppel@carl.org
                  Work: 770 242 8733 Fax: 770 242 8511


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are billed for the number you 
*dialed*
in all cases. It is the same thing when someone has their phone on call-
forwarding. You are only billed for your intentions, not their changes 
or
expansions if any.   PAT]

------------------------------




                                         


A few months ago there was some discussion about the girl who plays
the MCI operator in the "What are you afraid of AT&T commercials".  I
think the original question was if she really was an MCI operator and
it was disclosed that she is, in fact, an actress.

I just came back from a theatre owner's convention and while there
screened an upcoming movie called "Mr. Holland's Opus" that's due out
in December.  She has a substantial part in the film and demonstrates
one hell of a singing voice (then again, Richard Dreyfus sings in the
same movie ...).  It took me ten minutes of watching her to figure out
why she looked familiar.


Brian Vita   CSS, Inc.

------------------------------



Pat,

I'd like to thank you for showing forbearance and restraint in
responding to the recent spam blasts by Mr. Slaton.

I believe that you have set a good role model by helping articulate
many of the acts that you believe would be inappropriate if taken by
Usenet members, and by not promulgating his voicemail password.

I myself am personally surprised that, say, Our Favorite Lawyers in
Arizona, or others, have not had their cars or houses disassembled
while they were out, nor had their credit records and bank accounts
muddled, etc.  It's good to see that we, at least, can show restraint.

If you can think of any more acts that people should be sure to not
do, I am sure that such itemization would be equally instructive.


Daniel Dern


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If nothing else, Mr. Slaton has very
good eyesight: within a short time of my message being posted late
Thursday evening to several groups where there might be interest, it
had been cancelled, including comp.dcom.telecom. Naturally when I
woke up this morning and found that 'article XXXX is unavailable' at
every location I tried, I simply had to post it all over again. Perhaps
it will make some headway and get around the net a bit before he 
wakes up this Friday morning and issues another cancellation on it.
If you are a Usenet reader and did NOT get to see the 'do not visit
this address or call this number' message, let me know and I will
re-issue it yet a third time if necessary later Friday.   PAT]

------------------------------

End of TELECOM Digest V15 #446
******************************

                                                                                                           
