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TELECOM Digest     Tue, 3 Oct 95 13:50:00 CDT    Volume 15 : Issue 413

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Dead Line, Annoying Red Tape (Linc Madison)
    911 as quid pro quo (Mike Wengler)
    Citizen Intercepts 911 Calls; Assists Police (Steve Bauer)
    1996 ACM SIGOPS Workshop on Wide-Area Distributed Systems (Andy 
Tanenbaum)
    New US Area Code Test Numbers (Clarifications) (Michael Fumich)
    Universal Service Policy Documents Available (Robert Deward)
    What's With This 814 Prefix in New York? (John Levine)
    AT&T's New Role with Unitel in Canada (Martin Stewart)
    Trouble With NPA 860 (Alan Lange)
    Speakers Wanted: Data Over Digital Cellular - CelluComm '96 (K. 
Zsigo)
    DateLine NBC to Air Segment on How to Stop Junk Calls 
(prvtctzn@aol.com)
    Programmer Position/Job offering (Ibis Fontes)
    What to Call the Three Parts of AT&T? (John R. Levine)

TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not
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should not be considered any official expression by the organization.

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



Well, this has been quite a fun and exciting weekend for my telephone.
A few months ago, I finally got a separate line for my modem.  I also
got a two-line phone.  My directory listing is the modem number.

Saturday morning at about 8:15, my (non-listed) voice number rang, to
bring me word from a delightful gentleman who wanted to know how I plan
to pay the $992.73 in delinquent charges on my credit card.  Yes, it
happens that someone else with the same first and last name and middle
initial, with some other coincidental details with my life, has skipped
out on yet another creditor.  I told him (although I didn't get the
impression he was convinced) that I have never had a credit card from
the bank he named, nor have I ever lived in the city where his deadbeat
last listed an address.

Sunday morning (clearly one day too late), I discovered that my voice
line was dead.  My two-line phone has the "in use" light burning
steadily for that line, but gives dead air.  My single-line phone when
attached to that line gives dead air and dead keypad.  I called 611 and
filed a service request, and assured the clerk that I had tried
disconnecting all of my subscriber equipment and that the fault
persisted.  The clerk performed a basic line test (during which the "in
use" light blinked off momentarily) and reported that the line was
"open" but that he couldn't isolate the fault specifically.  There was
the usual warning about the charge if the fault were with my equipment
and so forth.  A technician is supposed to check on it tomorrow.

The annoying red tape is yet to come, though.  I picked up the working
line and dialed the non-working number.  It just rings away merrily with
no indication of a problem.  I thus called back to 611 and asked them to
divert my number to a "temporarily out of service" recording until they
fix it.  NO CAN DO.  That requires approval from the Business Office,
which isn't open on Sunday.  Apparently this is to prevent the repair
office from making an unauthorized diversion of my line to a recording,
in case some scofflaw calls up impersonating me and reports trouble on
my line just to harrass me.  Now, let us bear in mind that the repair
clerk I spoke to had my billing name and address on his screen and had
also run a test of the line which verified that there was in fact
trouble on the line.  He had already verified my identity as the owner
of the line.  Thus, they have NO EXCUSE for refusing to put the
recording on my number, but they still refuse.

If my line isn't fixed tomorrow, I will certainly raise a stink about
that fact, and also about the repair office's refusal to take a
perfectly logical and obvious step.  There is no justification for
placing that function with the business office; clearly, it MUST reside
with the repair office.


Linc Madison   *   San Francisco, California   *   LincMad@Netcom.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Perhaps they would have been willing to
forward the bad line to your other line for the day or so needed.  PAT]

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



Talking about Bell Canada's Soft Dial Tone allowing 911 calls for two
months only, I wrote:

In the article describing Bell Canada's introduction of soft dialtone on
unsubscribed lines, it was stated:

>> A secondary benefit of Soft Dial Tone is that, in the event of an
>> emergency, students can call 911 emergency service without having
>> regular phone service during September and October.

I wondered:

> Can Bell Canada really be so cavalier to only provide 911 service for
> two months?

PAT replied:

> I don't think telco is required to provide its services for free on
> an unlimited basis. Where would you draw the line?

A reasonable question.  If I owned the facility (University dorms in the
Canadian message) I would inform the phone company that if the line was
alive *at all* it would carry 911 to something other than an intercept
telling you to call the business office to subscribe.  And that failing
that, they could get their lines off my property.

If I were Bell, and I left a live line laying around, while I was busy
making sure it could connect to the business office I'd program in
going right through to 911 as well.

Telco doesn't have to come and give me phone service if I don't want
to pay for it.  But I'll be damned if I'll let them leave *their*
outside plant in my apartment, house, or dorm room all set to take a
business order, but not working on 911.  This isn't a matter of taking
something "as a right" from the phone company.  This I would justify
as "quid pro quo", they get to leave live lines around to make it easy
for people to sign up for service is the quid, and those same live
lines don't give me an intercept when I'm lying helpless on the floor,
hoping I don't die until their business office reopens Monday morning
to process my order.

Just my Humble Opinion.


Mike Wengler
http://www.he.net/~wengler/VoiceNet/ or 
ftp://he.net/pub/wengler/index.txt
Phone/Fax: (716) 244-0238

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



Forwarded FYI to the Digest. A great report about someone getting 
involved.

911 phone line crossed

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- When Rosa H. Dickson answered her telephone, the
caller requested an ambulance.

It took only a moment to figure out that the caller had dialed 911 and 
got 
Dickson instead.

"When I realized what happened, I dialed 911 and couldn't get 911," she 
said 
Monday.

For a half-hour last Wednesday, Dickson tried to help 911 callers as
best she could by passing them on to police. She received two calls
for rescue crews and one for police between about 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m.

The first thing she did, however, was alert police that there was a 
phone 
problem.

Gene Scott, account manager for Bell Atlantic, said the phone system
was upgraded in July and the mix-up occurred during maintenance. He
said a company computer mistranslated some of the phone numbers and
routed the 911 calls to Dickson, whose number doesn't include a 9 or a 
1.
"We've done this 100 times and never had a problem. It's not going to
happen again," Scott said.

One woman misrouted to Dickson apparently gave her a wrong number.
When police couldn't reach her, they called Dickson back. About the
same time, the woman called 911 again and got Dickson again. Dickson
got the woman's correct number and relayed it to police.

The City Council honored Dickson with a proclamation Monday night and
she received a standing ovation from a City Hall audience.

"I was just doing my duty," she said.

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



                               Call for Papers
                     Seventh ACM SIGOPS European Workshop
                  Systems Support for Worldwide Applications
                    2-4 September 1996, Connemara, Ireland

     In the past, each computer had its own users and jobs.  The task
of the operating system was to allocate resources among competing
users.  With the advent of LANs and the Internet, multiple computers
could collaborate to per- form specialized tasks for a modest number
of sophisticated users.  In the future, most computers will be
connected to what is often called the "Information Superhighway."
This as-yet-unbuilt system will allow hundreds of mil- lions of
ordinary citizens to access global information and participate in
applications of unprecedented scale.

     The requirements of the system software will change accordingly.
The emphasis will shift from enforcing local kernel-user protection
boundaries to enabling groups of users to collaborate and access
information efficiently.  New models, tools, and other software will
be required. In this workshop, we will explore these issues.  Possible
topics include:

        - Wide-area distributed systems for millions of users
        - Tools, models and infrastructure for global applications
        - Life after the World Wide Web
        - Caching and replication
        - (Distributed) management of (distributed) services
        - Resource and information discovery services
        - Systems support for multimedia applications
        - Systems aspects of security and reliability

     Attendance is limited to 50 people, by invitation only. The
workshop will be held at the Renvyle House Hotel in Connemara,
Ireland.  It is a small, secluded site on the Renvyle Peninsula,
surrounded by water on three sides and 200 acres of hotel land and
mountains on the remaining side.

     Papers will be selected on the basis of ability to foster
discussion, originality, and appropriateness to the workshop topic.
Accepted papers will be distributed to the workshop attendees and via
the web.  A few papers may be selected for publication in Operating
Systems Review.

     For additional information,  submission instructions,  and 
photographs of
the workshop site, see the workshop's web page:

                http://plastique.stanford.edu/sigops96/


Program chairman                         Program Committee

Andrew S. Tanenbaum                     Ozalp Babaoglu, Univ. di Bologna
Dept. of Math. & Computer Science       Jean Bacon, Cambridge University
Vrije Universiteit                      Mary Baker, Stanford University
De Boelelaan 1081a                      Yolande Berbers, Kath. Univ., 
Leuven
1081 HV Amsterdam,Holland               Andrew Black, Oregon Graduate 
Inst.
Email: ast@cs.vu.nl                     Frans Kaashoek, MIT
FAX: +31 20 4447653                     Barbara Liskov, MIT
                                        Karin Petersen, Xerox PARC
Important dates:                        Willy Zwaenepoel, Rice 
University
Position papers due: 1 March 1996       
Acceptance notice: 15 May 1996          General chairman
Final 8-page papers: 15 July 1996       ----------------
Workshop date: 2-4 Sept. 1996           Andrew Herbert, ANSA 
(ajh@ansa.co.uk)

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



Recently I submitted to TELECOM Digest (Issue #406), a list of test
numbers which are used to determine whether calls to the new-style US
area codes are being completed properly. Several people wrote me with
questions and comments. I hope the following clarifies things a little.

This list was compiled from LEC and Bellcore sources only, not news
report or advertisements. In addition, I have personally completed
calls to ALL the numbers on the list thru the Bermuda (441) split on 1
Oct 95. This includes the 562-317-0317 So. California test number
which several have reported as not working. If the number does "not"
work from your location, it may be that the new area code is not yet
loaded into your exchange.  I have found that the LEC's do not always
meet the deadlines required.  If this is the case, call your local
repair service and report the problem to them. And get a Trouble
Ticket number too! When I couldn't get thru to 360 (WA) I reported the
matter to Ameritech repair (611). I had a feeling I wasn't being taken
seriously and got the stock "your problem should be resolved before
5:PM tomorrow" reply. When I asked for a report number, suddenly there
was furious keybourd pecking. "One moment sir, the computer suddenly
went down. What was the problem again?" ;+)

Successful completion of these calls will get a LEC recording which 
states
that you are reaching the XXX test number.

Calling some of these numbers may incur a charge. Calls to the 334 (AL) 
and
770 (GA) test numbers have been reported as chargable by AT&T and 
Sprint. 

The numbers on the list are all that I have available at this time. I 
will
post updates to this newsgroup as additional information becomes 
available.

                                                                       
Michael L. Fumich   / E-Mail: <3311835@mcimail.com> / V-Mail 708-461-
5770

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



There's been a lot of discussion online about Universal Service.  But
most of the talk concerns whether people should be entitled to
wideband or broadband and what information they should be able to
access free.

That's putting the cart before the horse!  Here in California -- and
California is not the only state -- no plan exists to fund even voice
service at its present level of penetration when competition blasts
away the old subsidy system.

Whether your interest is education, health care, or promoting
representative government, Universal Service is a key concern.  Some
documents raising fundamental Universal Service issues are now
available free from Pacific Telesis.

On the Pacific Telesis Home Page (http://www.pactel.com) look in "What's
New."

If you prefer a fax, phone toll free (nationwide) 1-800-704-4636, pick 
any
category, and then punch in one of these numbers and your fax number:

970 for Basic Facts about Pacific Bell's Universal Service plan
971 for a summary of Pacific Bell's Universal Service position
972 for a brief history of Universal Service.


Bob Deward, Pacific Telesis External Affairs, S.F.
voice:  415-394-3646

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




                                                                                                           


I note that the New York NPAs 315, 516, 518, 607, 716, 718, 914, and
917 (that is, all of them except 212) just gotten new "814" prefixes.
Most of those NPAs still have plenty of NNX prefixes left, and it's
unusual to assign the same prefix everywhere at once.

I'd guess that NYNEX is planning some new category of rip-off, er,
added value service. Anyone know anything?


Regards,

John R. Levine, Trumansburg NY
Primary perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies"
and Information Superhighwayman wanna-be

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



Pat,

I was just wondering if you had heard anything or received anything
concerning the recent announcement by AT&T of their intended
additional investment into Unitel in Canada.  Unitel is essentially
owned by three banks due to its enormous debt.  AT&T has agreed to
purchase up about 48% of the ownership into Unitel from Rogers and
Canadian Pacific.  They are able to increase their ownership above the
regulated 33% foreign ownership clause stipulated by the CRTC somehow
by having various AT&T owned shell companies purchase into Unitel.

Anyways, I haven't seen any mention of this in your news group and as
it is quite a newsworthy event, I figured I would inquire.


Regards,

Martin    CTI Telecommunications


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Very little has come this way on this,
so perhaps some of our Canadian readers with knowledge will contribute
to the thread.   PAT]

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



The front page of {The Hartford Courant} on Saturday 9/30/95 reports
on trouble with the new NPA in Connecticut.  It appears that not all
calls using the new code are being completed.  Several businesses who
have already changed their advertising and stationery are finding some
of their customers cannot reach them.  AT&T and SNET both deny that it
is a problem in their switches.  SNET says they receive around five
complaints each day about the problem.  SNET is handling each complaint 
by contacting the company that handled the outgoing call.

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

'96


We are looking for panelists to speak at a particular session in the
upcoming CelluComm '96 Cellular Data Conference. The panel is focused
on the transmission of data over digital cellular networks, including
upbanded GSM (PCS-1900), CDMA, TDMA, and Omnipoint.  We would like to
hear commentary about the availability of both circuit-switching,
packet-switching, short-message services, and channel/time aggregation 
for video-over-cellular.  The audience would also be very interested
in the availability of equipment for these systems, as most are either
carriers, manufacturers, or corporate customers.

We consider "cellular" for this conference as either 850 or 1900MHz
systems deployed in North America. Other sessions will consider CDPD
over AMPS, CS/CDPD over AMPS/N-AMPS, and basic circuit-switched
cellular with special modem protocols and other radio-level
enhancements.  Audience members range from engineers to upper
management to data specialists. Therefore, discussions should contain
a balance of both technical and marketing issues, as we do not have
separate engineering/marketing tracks by design.

CelluComm is the only industry conference dedicated exclusively to
cellular data. It will be held in St. Louis, MO USA on May 20-22,
1996. For more information about speaking opportunities, exhibiting or
attending, please contact Zsigo Wireless at 517-337-3995, or send
electronic mail to kzsigo@ix.netcom.com. Fax information to
517-337-5012. Surface mail to 2875 Northwind Drive, Suite 232, East
Lansing, MI 48823 USA.

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



On Friday, October 6th, DateLine NBC will air a segment about the
Telephone Consumer Protection Act. (TCPA).  It will feature two
members of Private Citizen, Inc. that have collected thousands of
dollars from telemarketers ... just for calling.

One, a grandmother, who sued a newspaper and collected $2000. The
other, a guy in California who has collected over $6000 from
telemarketers, in out-of-court settlements within the past 14 months.
If you want to learn more about cutting junk calls, tune in DateLine
NBC on Friday, or call Private Citizen, Inc. at 1/800-CUT-JUNK today.

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



Presently seeking programmers to design, code, and implement telephony 
applications which involve networking with a DCO, TCP/IP and utilizing 
the X.25 network.  Will work on several platforms including UNIX System 
V, 
AIX, Informix and New Era.  Must be willing to take on a project and 
perform by a set deadline.  Enthusiasm is a definite requirement. 
C programming knowledge is mandatory. Accounting knowledge a plus.

Submit your resume along with a list of educational accomplishments
and/or pursuits, list your GPA and specify your salary requirement.
This position may require relocation to Culpeper, Virginia. Applicants 
may fax the above information to 305-372-0435 or via e-mail to 
ifonte01@fiu.edu. 

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



I see in the press releases that after the three-way AT&T split, the
piece that handles telephone service and stuff like that will be
called AT&T.  The other two pieces, the one that builds equipment and
the one that sells computers, remain unnamed.  Clearly, this is a job
for The TELECOM Digest.

The obvious names, of course, are Western Electric and NCR.  Can we
come up with anything better?


Regards,

John R. Levine, Trumansburg NY
Primary perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies"
and Information Superhighwayman wanna-be


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think there is a better choice 
than 'Western Electric'. Sorry John, you won't get any better than that.
But, I'll listen to suggestions.   

As I write this, the 'trial of the century' with OJ Simpson has ended 
with a verdict of innocent on all counts. What a complete spectacle the
entire thing has been. The closing press conference with Fred Goldman
was particularly touching to me. Of course it is only partly over. The
analysis and commentary will go on for a long time.    PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V15 #413
******************************

                 
