
From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu  Fri Sep 22 20:03:21 1995
by
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telecomlist-outbound; Fri, 22 Sep 1995 16:16:05 -0500
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To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu


TELECOM Digest     Fri, 22 Sep 95 16:15:30 CDT    Volume 15 : Issue 402

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Beach House Payphone (Atri Indiresan)
    Re: Beach House Payphone (Steve Bunning)
    Fire Alarm Telegraphs (was Re: Dialing 911 Instead of 7-D) (Peter 
Laws)
    Re: Pole Mounted City Fire Alarm Boxes (Paul S. Sawyer)
    Re: Pole Mounted City Fire Alarm Boxes (Tony Harminc)
    Re: Pole Mounted City Fire Alarm Boxes (S.J. Slavin)
    CFP For March 96 Conference on Telecom Systems (Bezalel Gavish)

TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not
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----------------------------------------------------------------------



In TELECOM Digest V15 #398, collin@hpjsdivb.kobe.hp.com (Collin Park)
said:

> The second experience, which is second hand: a friend of mine
> lives in a "company dorm" here in Japan.  The telephone
> "service" there is also very interesting.  All phone calls go
> thru Axxx telephone service, which charges more for
> long-distance calls than NTT or KDD do.  This is absolutely
> astonishing.  Anyway, use of the touch-pad after a call is
> completed results in the call's being disconnected!!  This
> prevents use of some call-back services, as well as preventing
> employees from using the company's voice-mail system.

> Making use of a particular rip-off telecom carrier a condition
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> of rental is probably illegal in the US, but here in Japan I
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> believe it to be a not uncommon practice.  The goverment's
> official position seems to have nothing to do with consumer
> welfare here, which as an American I find a little annoying.

Not exactly. The FCC does allow large aggregators (hotels, universities, 
companies, prisons etc.) to set their own telephone policies and
rates. While 10-XXX-0-NXX-XXXX dialing is available in general (and
access to carriers via their 800 numbers or calling cards or to their
operators), Dial-1 or 10-XXX-1 access can be restricted legally. This
is not as bad as the situation you described, but not the best
situation here for people like me who live on University property.

You described the accomodation as a "company dorm". Perhaps private
companies might have even greater latitude in restricting equal
access? Does anyone know the exact legal status? PAT has often
described telephone service in prisons which allows only ripoff
COCOTs, and so, I guess equal access is not for everyone.


Atri Indiresan

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



In my original posting on this subject, our Moderator commented:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wouldn't it have been easier to just 
unplug
> or bypass the dialer somehow?    PAT]

and collin@hpjsdivb.kobe.hp.com (Collin Park) added:

> A fascinating idea. Is it a foregone conclusion that the dialer had to
> be on the premises?  In the rental house we used, there was a locked 
closet
> for which we weren't given the key. Could that have been the location
> of the mystery dialer?  Maybe if we had cut off the main breaker, the
> dialer would have automagically just become a straight-thru connect to
> the local phone company?  I wonder.

> The second experience, which is second hand:  a friend of mine lives
> in a "company dorm" here in Japan.  The telephone "service" there is
> also very interesting.  All phone calls go thru Axxx telephone 
service,
> which charges more for long-distance calls than NTT or KDD do.  This
> is absolutely astonishing.  Anyway, use of the touch-pad after a call
> is completed results in the call's being disconnected!!  This prevents
> use of some call-back services, as well as preventing employees from
> using the company's voice-mail system.  

The dialer used by the operator service provider in this beach house
was installed in the locked "owners" portion of the house along with
the circuit breakers.  I did go out to the back of the house and
checked the telco demarc.  The demarc was the modern type with an
RJ-11 jack that could be used to separate the inside wiring from the
outside line.  However, the person who installed the dialer bypassed
the telco wiring to the RJ-11 jack and rewired the demarc so that the
dialer connection was crimped _directly_ onto the incoming telco line.
Kind of defeated the whole demarc idea, but made it more difficult to
bypass the dialer.

I also had an experience like the one mentioned above where a
touch-pad caused a call disconnect.  Again, I was at a beach house,
but this time I was dialing a voice mailbox via an 800 number.  The
problem seemed to be that the mailbox system gave back a second
dialtone which caused the beach house phone to disconnect the call.
After much hair pulling, a lot of experimenting, and more than a
little practice, I found I could beat the dialtone detect circuit in
the phone by quickly hitting a digit on the phone key-pad just as the
voice-mail system was giving back dial-tone.  The voice-mail system
would then remove the dialtone before the local phone could detect it.
As the phone allowed free use of the key-pad as long as it didn't
detect another dialtone, I was able to access my voice-mail.


Steve Bunning    | American Computer and Elec. Corp.| 301 258-9850 
(voice)
Product Manager  | 209 Perry Parkway                | 301 921-0434 (fax)
TEL*COMM Division| Gaithersburg, MD USA 20877       | bunning@acec.com
          "Your real-time CDR experts."  See us at TELECOM '95


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What business did the owner have locking
up the circuit breakers where you could not get to them? What if you had
blown a circuit somehow and had to get in there and reset it?  What if
there was some emergency and the power had to be turned off quickly for
the entire house?  In Illinois, owners are NOT permitted to refuse 
access
(via locked closet or whatever) to the circuit breakers or the gas and
water meters/cutoffs, etc.)    PAT]

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

D)


Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu> writes:

> What happened was something that dates back to the 1840's.

> credits the city of Boston with having the first alarm box system in
> the 1840's.  

April 29, 1852, actually.  I know 'cause I happen to be wearing my 
Boston
Fire Alarm tee-shirt today. :-) To the best of my knowledge, it still
continues 'til this day. 

> that they had their street boxes tied directly in to the radio system
> so that when somebody pulled a box, one would hear a long tone to get

Actually, the alarms are recieved at the FAO and then retransmitted on 
the
station circuits.  That prevents pulls from adjacent boxes from going to
the stations and gives the FA Operators some discretion over the level 
of
response.  

I think this is a Class B fire alarm system, if I remember my NFPA 
studies
correctly (I took the civil service test for Fire Alarm Operator in 1988 
:-).
A Class A system send the box directly to the stations.  BFD stopped
multicasting on 33.740 MHz in the late 80's, BTW. 

I'm trying to compile a list of cities that still use pull boxes (like 
most in Mass).  Please reply privately.


Peter Laws<plaws@comp.uark.edu>| Note: This .sig not Windows95(tm) 
compatible 
n5uwy@ka5bml.#nwar.ar.usa.noam |<A
HREF="http://comp.uark.edu/~plaws/">geek</A>

All original portions of this posting are Copyright 1995, Peter Laws

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



In article <telecom15.398.8@eecs.nwu.edu> Tony Harminc 
<EL406045@BROWNVM.
BROWN.EDU> writes:

> Toronto lost its pole-mounted fire alarm boxes as recently as 1980,
> as I remember.  There are still a few poles with strips of red paint
> around them to be found.  One point that has perhaps not been made
> clear is the reason these boxes had clockwork code senders in the
> first place: they were all connected in parallel on the same wire.
> (Well, there were subsets, of course, but typically all the boxes
> that rang in one station were on one line.)  

Actually, they were in series!  Some small towns had a wire that left
the fire station in one direction, looped around town, and returned to
the station from the other direction (called a "balloon loop"). If the
boxes had been in parallel, there would have been no way to have
supervised against a wire break in the system.  The circuit had a
nominal 100mA current flowing normally; an interruption was a "stroke"
on a bell, paper punch, or other alarm indicator, and some small towns
had the clockwork timed slow enough to operate an outside air horn
directly.  One stroke by itself indicated a circuit opening, to be
tracked down and fixed immediately, although one open in such a system
automatically reconfigured the circuit for ground return signalling.
The boxes also sensed whether another box on the circuit was
signalling, and would wait its turn politely so as not to interfere.

> If each box had had a direct wire back to the station there would
> have been no need for pulses and clockwork.

A direct pair like this was used some places, but I think the 100mA
telegraph loop was much more popular.

> As I remember, the wires on the Toronto poles were very thick --
perhaps 10 gauge or thicker.  These wires were strung on the
municipally owned Hydro (electric power) poles and not on telephone
poles.  I have no idea what voltage was used.

Much of the technology was taken from telegraphy, so 10 gauge single
iron wire on glass insulators was used, later 10 gauge Copperweld,
then paired C-rural 10/12/14 gauge, usually with a red vinyl coating.
Underground and in cable, as small as 16 gauge may be used - since
current is 0.1 Amp, the size is for mechanical reliability rather than
electrical requirements.  Voltage is whatever it would take to get 100
mA thru the loop, but usually under 120 VDC.  Around here they share
space on poles above all other communications (Tel, CATV) and below
power.  Older systems are typically on insulators on a short,
white-painted crossarm, while the newer installations are the red
C-wire on J hooks.

Many of these systems are still in use, but many others have been
driven out of existance by a combination of (perceived) high
maintenance, increased municipal non-involvement ("privatization"),
and sales pitches by "The Phone Company" that their services are
everywhere, so the old boxes are no longer needed.  Some time after a
city gives up its own alarm box system, "TPC" decides to remove public
phones, at least in the "worst" neighborhoods where the fire alarm
boxes were needed most ...

Oh, well ...


Paul S. Sawyer                   Paul.Sawyer@UNH.edu
UNH Telecommunications        Voice: +1 603 862 3262
50 College Road                 FAX: +1 603 862 4545
Durham, New Hampshire  03824-3523


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I remember once as a child watching
them fix one of those boxes which was broken. The repairman took a
phone handset with alligator clips and hooked onto the wire and was
chatting with someone at the other end which I thought at the time
was quite funny. How can you talk over that box, I asked him.   PAT]

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



Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu> wrote:

[Fire alarms boxes that pulsed out their location]

> The alarm boxes vanished from streets in Tulsa and Oklahoma
> City as well as many other places as soon as 911 became the method of
> choice to report emergencies.  I also remember that many of the street
> boxes had a glass window that one had to break with an attached hammer
> to activate the alarm.  This always seemed dumb and dangerous to me,
> but I am sure there was a good reason for it.

Even today many fire alarm pull handles have a glass strip or other
device that doesn't automatically reset itself.  It's to ensure that
misuse can be punished: there can be no excuses like "I was just
looking at it to see how it worked, and I accidently set it off".  You
have to take a very positive action to give the alarm.  It (the
dangling handle and/or broken glass) also makes it obvious to the
repair/inspection people that the unit has been set off and needs
work.

Toronto lost its pole-mounted fire alarm boxes as recently as 1980, as
I remember.  There are still a few poles with strips of red paint
around them to be found.  One point that has perhaps not been made
clear is the reason these boxes had clockwork code senders in the
first place: they were all connected in parallel on the same wire.
(Well, there were subsets, of course, but typically all the boxes that
rang in one station were on one line.)  If each box had had a direct
wire back to the station there would have been no need for pulses and
clockwork.  As I remember, the wires on the Toronto poles were very
thick - perhaps 10 gauge or thicker.  These wires were strung on the
municipally owned Hydro (electric power) poles and not on telephone
poles.  I have no idea what voltage was used.

Tony Harminc

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



As Tony covered -- the old boxes were 19th centurt paper tape coded
signalling; usually over City lines but sometime telco pairs;
maintenance intensive; had to be reset after each use; Current units
are narrowband pulsed, or use cellular phones. (California just arrested
two guys for stealing 220 cellular units and recoding the ID for L.D>
calls).

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



         C A L L  for  P A P E R S
       4th International Conference on Telecommunication Systems
   Modelling and Analysis
     March 21-24, 1996 Nashville, TN

Sponsored by:   Bell South Telecommunications
    INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications
    INFORMS College of Information Systems
    Owen Graduate School of Management

The 4th International Conference on Telecommunication Systems -
Modelling and Analysis will be held in Nashville, Tennessee on March
21-24, 1996.  The conference location will be the Bell South Tower in
downtown Nashville.  The conference will build on the tradition of the
earlier conferences with a few changes in format due to the new
conference location.  The general idea is to limit the number of
participants, concentrate on a few topics, present new problems and
problem areas, encouraging informal interaction and exchanges of
ideas. The objective is to advance the state of the modelling and
analysis in telecommunications by stimulating research activity on new
and important problems.

The conference will be divided into segments with each segment devoted


                                                                                           

to a specific topic.  This will allow for little conflict between
segments. All papers will be screened by the program committee
to ensure the quality of presentations. A decentralized paper handling
process will be used, the Program Committee has been divided along
geographical areas with a separate Program Subcommittee assigned to
each area.  Abstracts and papers should be submitted directly to
Program Committee Chair of the appropriate area. It is expected
that this will expedite the paper review process.  In response to
suggestions made by last year's participants, social and cultural
activities will be included in the 1996 agenda.

Lead Speakers and Keynote speakers include:

Leonard Kleinrock, "Nomadic Computing and its Implications for Network
Support"

Alan Konheim, "A Monitor for Controlling Peak and Average ATM Input 
Traffic"

Bezalel Gavish, "Low Earth Orbit Satellite Based Communication Systems -
Research Issues"

The Chairmen of the geographic Program Committees are:

Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia:
  Prof. Richard Harris
Department of Communication and Electronic Engineering
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
GPO Box 2476V    Tel: 61 3660 2457
Melbourne, 3001    FAX: 61 3660 1060
Australia    Email: richard@catt.citri.edu.au

Europe:
  Prof. Guy Pujolle
Laboratoire PRiSM
Universite de Versailles - Saint-Quentin
45, avenue des Etats-Unis  Tel: 33 1 39 25 40 61
78 035 Versailles Cedex   FAX: 33 1 39 25 40 57
France     Email: guy.pujolle@prism.uvsq.fr

North America:
  Prof. Andre Girard
INRS-Telecommunications
16, place du Commerce   Tel: 514-765-7832
Verdun, Quebec    FAX: 514-765-8785
Canada H3E 1H6    Email: andre@inrs-telecom.uquebec.ca

North East Asia:
  Prof. Yutaka Takahashi
Department of Applied Mathematics and Physics
Faculty of Engineering
Kyoto University   Tel: 81 757535493
Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606 FAX:
Japan     Email: yutaka@kuamp.kyoto-u.ac.jp

South and Central America:
  Dr. Ernesto Santibanez-Gonzalez
School of Industrial Engineering
Catholic University of Valparaiso Tel: 56 32 257331
Av. Brasil 2147    FAX: 56 32 214823
Chile     Email: esantiba@aix1.ucv.cl
 and Prof. Henrique Pacca L. Luna
Department of Computer Science
Federal University of Minas Gerais Tel:
31270-901 Belo Horizonte - MG  FAX:
Brazil     Email: pacca@dcc.ufmg.br

Chairman of the Economics track:
  Prof. Jeffrey Mackie-Mason
Department of Economics   Tel: 313-764-7438
University of Michigan   FAX: 313-763-9181
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1220  Email: jmm@umich.edu
 and Prof. William W. Sharkey

All other geographic areas:
  Prof. Bezalel Gavish
Owen Graduate School of Management
Vanderbilt University   Tel: 615-322-3659
401 21st Avenue South   FAX: 615-343-7177
Nashville, TN  37203   Email: gavishb@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu


Listed below are some of the potential segments:

Configuration of ATM networks
Internet and its impact on commerce
Topological Design and Network Configuration Problems
Design and Analysis of Local Access Networks and Outside Plant Problems
Low Earth Orbit Satellite communication systems
Cellular Systems and PCS Modelling and Configuration
Time Dependent Expansion of Telecommunication Systems
Designing Networks for Reliability and Availability
Network Design Problems in Gigabit and Terabit Networks
LAN, WAN Global Network Interconnection
ATM, ISDN, BISDN Modeling and Analysis Issues
Artificial Intelligence/Heuristics in  Telecommunication Systems
Quantitative Methods in Network Management
Pricing and Economic Analysis of Telecommunications
Impact of Telecommunications on Industrial Organization
Performance Evaluation of Telecommunication Systems
Distributed Computing and Distributed Data Bases
Security and Privacy issues in Telecommunications
Virtual reality, Multimedia and their impact

The Program Committee is open to any ideas you might have regarding
additional topics or format of the conference.  The intention is to
limit the number of parallel sessions to two.  The conference is
scheduled over a weekend so as to reduce teaching conflicts for
academic participants, take advantage of weekend hotel and airfare
rates and of the many events that take place in the downtown area.

Due to the limit on the number of participants early registration is
recommended.  To ensure your participation, please use the following 
steps:

1.  Send to the appropriate Program Committee Chair by October 1,
1995, a paper (preferable), or titles and abstracts for potential
presentations to be considered for the conference. Sending more
than one abstract is encouraged, enabling the Program Committee to
have a wider choice in terms of assigning talks to segments.  Use
E-mail to expedite the submission of titles and abstracts.

2.  Use the form at the end of this message to preregister for the
conference.  Let us also know if you would like to have a formal duty
during the conference as: Session Chair, or Discussant.

3.  You will be notified by December 1, 1995, which abstract/s has
been selected for the conference.  Detailed instructions on how to
prepare camera ready copies will be sent to authors of accepted
presentations.  January 30, 1996, is the deadline for sending a final
version of the paper.  Participants will receive copies of the
collection of papers to be presented.  All papers submitted to the
conference will be considered for publication in the
"Telecommunication Systems" Journal.

The Program Committee looks forward to receiving your feedback/ideas.
Feel free to volunteer any help you can offer.  If you have
suggestions for Segment Leaders (i.e., individuals who will have a
longer time to give an overview/state of the art talk on their segment
subject) please E-mail them to Prof Gavish.  Also, if there are
individuals whose participation you view as important, please send
their names and E-mail addresses to the Program Committee Chairman, or
forward to them a copy of this message.

I look forward to a very successful conference.

Sincerely yours,
Bezalel Gavish

     Cut Here

 Fourth International Conference on Telecommunication Systems
    Modelling and Analysis
Location: Nashville, TN
   Dates: March 21, 1996 (afternoon) to March 24, 1996

       Name: ________________________________________ Title:
__________________

Affiliation:
__________________________________________________________________

    Address:
__________________________________________________________________

      __________________________________________________________________

      Phone: ____________________________  FAX:
_______________________________

     E-mail:
__________________________________________________________________

Potential Title of Paper(s):
__________________________________________________

    ____________________________________________________________________


I would like to Volunteer as     Comments
A Session Chair   :  Yes  No  
________________________________________________
A Discussant   :  Yes  No   
________________________________________________
Organize a Session:  Yes  No  
________________________________________________
          ________________________________________________



REGISTRATION RATES and DEADLINES

     Last Applicable   Participant Type
          Date    Academic  Industry
    ----------------   --------  --------
1. Preregistration   Until   Dec. 1, 1996      $ 350     $ 450
2. Registration    Until   Feb. 1, 1996      $ 400     $ 500
3. Registration       After   Feb. 1, 1996      $ 450     $ 650

Mail your registration form and check to:

        Mrs. Dru Lundeng
        Owen Graduate School of Management
        Vanderbilt University
        401 21st Avenue, South
        Nashville, TN 37203, USA
The check should be addressed to:
        4th Int'l. Telecomm Systems Conference

Refund Policy: Half refund, for requests received by February 1, 1996.
        No refund after February 1, 1996.

If you have any questions regarding the conference, please contact Dru 
Lundeng
at 615-322-3694 or through E-mail at lundeng@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu.


Bezalel Gavish
Owen Graduate School of Management
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN, 37203
Bitnet: GAVISHB@VUCTRVAX
Internet: GAVISHB@CTRVAX.VANDERBILT.EDU
Tel: (615) 322-3659                Home: (615) 370-0813
FAX: (615) 343-7177

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

End of TELECOM Digest V15 #402
******************************

                        
