
From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu  Tue Sep 19 20:16:08 1995
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telecomlist-outbound; Tue, 19 Sep 1995 16:25:02 -0500
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TELECOM Digest     Tue, 19 Sep 95 16:25:00 CDT    Volume 15 : Issue 390

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (sp@questor.org)
    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (Martin McCormick)
    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (Mark Brader)
    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (Robert Levandowski)
    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (Wes Leatherock)
    Re: Bell Canada Calling Cards in the USA (Mark Brader)
    Re: Bell Canada Tests "Soft" Dial Tone (Kevin Paul Herbert)
    Re: Bell Canada Tests "Soft" Dial Tone (Steve Granata)
    Re: Bell Canada Tests "Soft" Dial Tone (Robert Levandowski)
    Re: Bell Canada Tests "Soft" Dial Tone (Garrett A. Wollman)

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

4777


In article <telecom15.386.7@eecs.nwu.edu>, Greg Abbott 
<gabbott@uiuc.edu> 
wrote:

> TELECOM Digest Editor noted:

>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something I have never been able to 
under-
>> stand in Chicago is the apparent contradiction in instructions given 
on
>> the one hand by 911 supervisors (themselves police officers) and the
>> instructions given at the local police station level. On the one hand 
we
>> are told that 911 is for *emergency use only* when immediate 
intervention
>> by police/fire/paramedic people is required; ie. my house in on fire 
now
>> or I am having a heart attack now or someone has invaded my home and 
is
>> standing here with a gun pointed at me now. We are not to use 911 for
>> trivial matters. That makes good sense!  But on the other hand, when 
we
>> attempt to discuss trivial (by comparison) matters with the police at
>> the local district police station on their direct phone, we are told 
we
>> must call 911 to get a police officer to come out.

We have an almost identical situation here in Vancouver, BC.  Upon
calling the administrative 7D number listed in the phone book, we are
generally referred to the 911 number instead, the resaon stated is
that they cannot connect you anyhwere from the 7D number.  I have a
suspicion that what they want is access to the CallerID database so
that they have your name, address and phone number on all incoming
calls (for they certainly do have it when you access them on 911).


FREE ACCESS TO E-MAIL & NEWS at +1 604 681 0670.  INFO on Environment,
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------------------------------



 In Oklahoma, there has been very little controversy about how
to properly use 911.  The idea is that it is only to be used for
situations that effect the safety of people or property in which very
quick response is needed.

In Stillwater, there are no 911 operators as such.  The voice you hear
answer the 911 line is a police and fire dispatcher who is also the
same voice you will hear if you dial the seven-digit number for the
police station.

 The 911 lines terminate at a console in the dispatchers' office in
the basement of City hall.  Since we have enhanced 911, the dispatcher 
sees
the name and address of the caller before the telephone is even 
answered.

 One of our local amateur radio clubs toured the dispatcher's
office at around 8:00, one evening.  It was very quiet and orderly
with three or four people at their work stations taking the occasional
telephone or radio call.  There were no 911 calls while we were there,
but the usual routine radio and telephone traffic for a town of 30,000
people was in full swing.

 I said something to one of the dispatchers about those cases
in which people have accidentally dialed 911 while trying to program a
telephone or through some other mistake.  He said that dispatchers are
much more understanding if you stay on the line long enough to explain
what happened than if you just hang up because they don't know whether
somebody just got hit over the head or they are having telephone
trouble or what.

 When enhanced 911 came to Tulsa and Oklahoma City, the media
featured many stories about what it did and how to use it.  One of the
things that was repeated several times was an admonition to the public
not to test it since this would clog the lines with unnecessary calls.

 Both Tulsa and Oklahoma city have had the occasional minor
problems with equipment failures and human mixups, but we are fortunate 
not to have had some of the more terrifying scandals as have happened
in other cities.


Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 36.7N97.4W
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Data Communications 
Group

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



> 911 is put on the front page whereas the seven-digit numbers
> are relegated to alphabetical listings in the middle ...

This is true here in Toronto, but a few years ago it certainly was not.

The emergencies pages at the front used to show 911 (and before that
361-1111 and before that EM1-1111) for emergencies, all right.  But
right below that, in smaller print, they used to give the regular police
number (324-2222, and before that 967-2222).  Seems eminently sensible
to me.  Anyone know why Bell decided to change it?  It's not as if a
call to 324-2222 couldn't be transferred to the dispatchers at 911.

They added those hideous hyphens in the middle of 911, too.  Is there
any actual evidence for the popular account of someone so stupid they
looked for an 11 key?  (But presumbly not so stupid as to look for a
hyphen key?)

Incidentally, the EM exchange was really EMpire.  The EMergency number
continued to be written with the EM for years after other 36- numbers
were written with digits.

> ... with no indication which ones are for police dispatchers, which
> ones are administrative, which ones are for which communities, and
> so forth.  ...

At least we don't have that problem, at least not if you can figure
out how to use the "easier to use" government pages.  Right there in
the Metro Toronto section: "METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE .. 324-2222".
Interestingly, there is no listing for 911 there.

In the business section we have both:

 METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE
   40 College ..................... 324-2222
   EMERGENCIES
     Life Threatening ................ 9-1-1
     Crimes in Progress .............. 9-1-1
     TDD-Only ........................ 9-1-1

before it continues with the administrative and individual department
numbers.  There is also a listing under P:

 POLICE
   EMERGENCY CALLS - APPELS D'URGENCE  9-1-1
 Police Commission (Metropolitan Toronto)
   40 College ..................... 324-2222

(The police commission is not actually the same as the police, but as
they have the same address and phone number...)

And not to forget, they also have:

 AMBULANCE EMERGENCY CALLS -
                     APPELS D'URGENCE  9-1-1
 FIRE
   EMERGENCY CALLS                     9-1-1

The residential section also has the last two listings.  Their listing
under P is sort of amusing:

 POLICE Emergency Calls - Appels
                            d'Urgence  9-1-1
   Ray 31 Upper Canada Dr ......... XXX-XXXX

I suppress Mr. Police's number.


Mark Brader  msb@sq.com           
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto 

My text in this article is in the public domain.

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

Down


In <telecom15.384.4@eecs.nwu.edu> Greg Abbott <gabbott@uiuc.edu> writes:

> We in the 9-1-1 community are really our own worst enemy.  We drill
> the 9-1-1 number into the heads of citizens as the only number they
> need to know to get help.  Then when someone calls (like in this case)
> and the response is slow or an error occurs, the 9-1-1 system failed.
> The 9-1-1 number is nothing more than a telephone number with some
> fancy caller ID built in.  The basic emergency response system has not
> changed substantially because of 9-1-1 telephone number.  An
> additional problem occurs when people call the 9-1-1 number for every
> kind of assistance they need.  We get hundreds of 9-1-1 calls per day
> which are for things like stopped up toilets, barking dogs, loud
> music, etc.  These calls clog up the 9-1-1 lines and tie up the 9-1-1
> operators.  We are to blame for this though, in most cases we do not
> take the time to educate the citizens that 9-1-1 is for life
> threatening emergencies *ONLY*.

As a human-factors psychologist in training, I found this paragraph
very, very interesting.  It makes a good point: 9-1-1 is good human
factors, because it is short, easy to remember, and CONSISTENT across
most of the United States.  If you're in a strange city, you can feel
pretty confident that 9-1-1 will work.

The flip side is: there is no NON-emergency police number which is 
consistent across wide geographic areas.  That's bad human factors; it
requires a person to have fairly extensive customized knowledge about
abstract digits in order to get non-emergency help.  Since people are
fundamentally lazy, they dial what they can remember: 9-1-1.  If you're
in a strange city at a payphone with no phone book and you don't have
the change for directory assistance, the operator will probably put
you through to 9-1-1 anyway.

So, I think that a nationwide standardized NON-emergency police number
should be established.  I'm not sure what it should be, but it should
be easy to remember, preferably by way of being composed of bits of
knowledge that people already have.  IF there are no good technical 
reasons why not, I'd suggest 555-5911 as a possibility -- pick up a 
phone
in any city, dial 555-5911, and it will redirect you to the 
geographically
appropriate non-emergency telephone number.  That would be a local 
police
number if it could be determined, or state police for cellular or other
indeterminate locations.  People know 555 -- it's in virtually every
TV show and movie, after all.  They know 555-1212 is information.  They
know 911 is police.  So, 555-5911 would be easy to remember, because 
it's
made up of chunks of knowledge that people probably already have, so it
can be easily reconstructed.

What do the telecom experts think?  Am I reinventing a wheel that's 
already
been discarded?  Or has 9-1-1 overload not yet been considered *that* 
big 
a problem?


Rob Levandowski
News Administrator and UNIX Technical Assistant, UNIX Group
University of Rochester Computing Center -- Rochester, New York
rlvd_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu      [Opinions expressed are mine, not 
UR's.]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For how many ever years, things used to
be pretty standard around here with xxx-2121 for the police and xxx-2131
for fire. If there were two small towns each with their own police and
fire departments but served by the same phone exchange, then one of them
got 2161/2171 instead. 1212 and 1313 were also commonly used. In 
Chicago,
the numbers were POLice 1313 and FIRe 1313. Later the L and the R were
replaced by 5 and 7 respectively. 312-765 and 312-347 have long since 
been
assigned to other uses, but back then they had a most interesting way of
telling where you were calling from. In the case of police, your 
telephone
central office saw your request for 765-1313 and translated it to 
another
number entirely, *then* sent it to the police dispatchers on that 
number.
It would always be some other exchange-1313 when the police got it, and
a large map in the dispatcher's office had lights on it that would flash
to tell them where (in general) the call was coming from. So if the
police got a call on their HARrison-1313 line the area on the map known
as Rogers Park would illuminate. On the other hand if the call came in
on WABash-1313 then another neighborhood would light up. There were ten
or fifteen such general geographic areas in the city, each with its own
exchange-1313 phone line, but all the public had to remember was to dial
POlice-5-1313. The dispatchers would then notify officers by radio as
they do now. When Chicago was using that system until about the early
1970's, a lot of the neighborhood police stations still had xxx-2121 as
their local phone, since many older people still insisted on calling the
local station direct, and 2121 was left over from a much earlier time
when there was no consolidated dispatch; indeed many of the older police
stations in the neighborhoods had been the location of the police in 
the village or town prior to its annexation as part of Chicago.

In the case of the Fire Department, all central offices north of 39th 
Street
translated their calls to the number DEArborn-1313 which rang at the
main fire alarm office in City Hall. Central offices south of 39th 
Street
translated their calls to TRIangle-0002 for some odd reason, which was
the number of the Englewood Fire Alarm Office on the south side. 39th 
Street
roughly divides the city in half since the south side is much, much
larger than the north side. The dispatchers would notify the local fire
stations by radio and an alarm signal they could set off. The fire
stations all had 'annunciator' boards -- large mechanical devices with
lights and buzzers which would go off when one of the 'pull boxes' on
a street corner had been activated. A common method of calling the Fire
Department fifty or sixty years ago was to run out of your (presumably
on fire) house and up to the corner where a red box was mounted on a
telephone pole. You pulled open the little trap door and yanked down a
lever. A spring-wound mechanism inside started doing whatever, and the
firemen got the signal in their station. The annunciator told them what
general vicinity (within a block or so) to go to. 

I cannot praise 911 highly enough when it works properly. Having the 
full
name, address and a narrative about the circumstances (such as a map or
details of nearby streets, etc) displayed on the screen is very helpful.
In the old days, people would get panicy and forget what their address
was ... seriously ... the fire phone would ring, and the dispatcher 
would
hear someone on the other end screaming for help because their house was
on fire ... 'hurry to 2503 Halsted Street' the person would scream and
then slam their phone down as they were running out the door. Well the
problem was ..*which* 2503 Halsted?  2503 North Halsted or 2503 South
Halsted ... and of course they had to dispatch men and equipment to both
locations knowing that one would report back a false alarm. 

Speaking of false alarms: they went down to almost zero -- at least 
those of a malicious nature -- once 911 was implemented. In the 1960's
the Chicago Fire Department used to receive as many as 150-200 false
alarms some days; just malicious and/or sick people who got off hearing
the sirens and watching all their neighbors in a panic, etc. Of course
they had to respond to each one, to the detriment of someplace where 
they were really needed. During 1968 and the considerable amount of
discontent that was present all over due to Vietnam, and the riots we
had twice that year, there were days we listened to the sirens all
day long as firemen would rush from one place to another only to be
greeted (at best) with a false alarm and other times (at worst) with
shots fired at them, their tires flattened while they were inside
a building looking for a non-existent fire, or their fire station 
looted of their personal possessions, food, etc while they were all
out. Citizens would volunteer to go stand watch at the fire house while
all the men were out just so that when they returned, their food
would still be in the refrigerator and their television set had not
'walked off'.  Most false alarms were written off as 'mistaken citizen
trying to be helpful' but now and then they caught someone at it.

911 was most welcome here when it was installed, although the usual
group of privacy freaks and ACLU'ers were just postive this would mark
the end of freedom as we know it; i.e. people would be 'afraid' to
call the police to snitch their neighbors if the police knew who they


                                                                                                               

were. People would 'not want to get involved' in reporting accidents, 
etc. for the same reasons.  PAT]

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



plaws@comp.uark.edu (Peter Laws) wrote:

> wa2ise@netcom.com (Robert Casey) writes:

>> I don't know if a half minute is that important in reporting an
>> accident (someone was injured) or a fire or some other emergency.
>> Think I'll dial up the 7D police number when another situation 
occurs.

> Instead of dialing the 7D of the PD, you should be dialing the 7D of
> the 9-1-1 authority and raising a stink.  Let them know that as a
> taxpayer you're unhappy with the service.  E9-1-1 provides the town,
> the system should be routing the call automatically to the appropriate
> PSAP.  Raise a stink.

        I don't find in Mr. Casey's post where he said the service was
E911.  There are several other versions of 911 which do not have all
those features and cannot route the call to the right agency, only to
a central PSAP.  The central PSAP often the police or fire dispatcher
in the largest city in the area, and in some cases they may be less
diligent with calls from other jurisdictions and agencies they're
taking calls for.  At least some people have so claimed.

nick hingtgen <ndanger@bnr.ca> wrote:

> I suggest you call your parent's local telephone company and demand an
> explanation.  Expedient routing of a 911 call may mean the difference
> between life and death.  Notice that the 911 operator did not
> specifically ask you for the city you were calling from according to
> the dialog you supplied in your post.  Either the address you were
> calling from was available to the operator or the operator was
> somewhat familiar with the geographic area and assumed that the corner
> of Oradell and Summit is located in Oradell, NJ.  How many Main
> streets are there in NJ?

         I'm not sure why you would call the local telephone company
to demand an explanation.  The telephone company provides the service
that is ordered.  While they might like to provide a better type of
911 service, it's a matter of what the cities, etc., are willing to
pay for.

        "The 911 operator" does not work for the local telephone
company but is an employee of whatever agency operates the PSAP.
Unless there was a failure on the part of the local telephone company
(possible, but not likely since the type of operation described is
used in many places) calling the telephone company would not be of
value.


Wes Leatherock   wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com                            
wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu                       
wes.leatherock@f2001.n147.z1.fidonet.org           

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



>> BUT, what is this '302' code plus the (ten-digit?) Canadian
>> telephone number to access Canada from the US that Terry Flanagan
>> refers to?

> Sorry ... somehow "0" got changed to 302 when I posted to this group.

The moral of which is, when posting to Usenet, *keep to the 7-bit
ASCII character set*.  Terry obviously used some 8-bit character set
where hex B2 and B3 are left and right quotation marks, and the top
bit got deleted along the way.

Actually, a lot of Usenet these days is 8-bit clean; in my experience
lately it tends to be email channels where 8-bit characters get
mangled (either losing their high bit, or being converted to MIME in
the hope that the recipient can read that).  This being a moderated
newsgroup, of course its postings *are* emailed.

But even 8-bit-clean transmission doesn't help unless the *same* 8-bit
character set is used by sender and recipient.  In my case, if the
characters had gone through intact, I would have seen them as
superscript-2 and superscript-3, which is what hex B2 and B3 are in
ISO 8859-1.

ObTelecom (and please change the Subject line if you answer): When are
they going to start using city codes in Britain that don't start with
(0)1?


Mark Brader, msb@sq.com 
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto  

My text in this article is in the public domain.

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



In article <telecom15.385.9@eecs.nwu.edu>, kph@cisco.com (Kevin Paul
Herbert) wrote:

> ...  By the way, what kind of intercept *is* given out on other
> calls?  Do you receive a 'call cannot be completed as dialed' message,
> or a rapid re-order tone, or some other message, tones, etc?  PAT]

You receive a special intercept informing you to dial 611 to activate
your phone service, and 911 for emergencies. The switch waits until
you dial 7D to give this message. The number readback code also works,
yielding a valid 7D number in the switch that when called from a
working phone provides a vacant (not in service) message.


Kevin

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



> Within the next year, field trials for Soft Dial Tone on single line
> residential services are planned for residential and business
> locations in Ontario and Quebec.

I commend Bell Canada for this great leap forward in customer service. 
I can think of a few 'Bell' companies here in the U.S. who could stand
to take a lesson from Bell Canada.  My local Bell Operating Company
just treated me to a $38.50 off-site (i.e. on-line) activation charge
to turn up service at my new townhouse - a substantial charge to
accomplish roughly the same thing Bell Canada is doing with its "Soft"
Dial Tone.

My recent experience points to the overwhelming need for deregulation
and competition.  With the $38.50 "activation" charge, my RBOC is
selling the perception that it is installing a new line that didn't
exist previously.  In fact, they are selling an installation in
cyberspace, that will occur with a few strokes of the keyboard.

This selling of services based on the perception of technolgical or
other synergies reminds me of the pre- and early-divestiture AT&T,
charging for line conditioners and customer premises equipment, and
maintaning market share through brand-name recognition, etc.  I welcome
the day when market competition will drive our RBOCs to Bell Canada's
level of customer service.


Steve Granata

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



In <telecom15.385.9@eecs.nwu.edu> kph@cisco.com (Kevin Paul Herbert) 
writes:

> US West has been using soft dialtone on some of its switches for about
> a year now. When a line is set for soft dialtone, it can only call
> "611" for the business office, and "911" for emergencies.

> Interestingly, US West does not use "611" at all for lines which are 
not
> set soft dialtone. Although you can dial "611" when you move into your
> house to establish service, once they turn up the service, "611" no 
longer
> works, and you have to dial an 800 number for customer service.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think the reason for that choice of 
> numbers might be that some people, on hearing dialtone, would be 
confused
> and think perhaps the line was working normally. On attempting to make
> calls and never getting connected anywhere, a logical response would 
be
> to call 'repair service' which often times is 611.  By the way, what
> kind of intercept *is* given out on other calls?  Do you receive a
> 'call cannot be completed as dialed' message, or a rapid re-order 
tone,
> or some other message, tones, etc?    PAT]

Pat, I think you missed the point ... it's good that the soft-dialtone 
phones can dial 611, because it's a pseudo-standard.  Like you said,
most areas use 611 for repair.  However, it's bad that once you get
real dialtone, 611 doesn't work anymore, and you have to dial some
other number.  How unnecessarily confusing!  Your first experience
with your new phone is "611 is for repair/service."  The next time you
have a problem, most likely you think, "611 is for repair" -- and it
doesn't work.  You probably get a recording or a reorder tone, and
perhaps you have to find the phone book and look up the number, which
probably isn't easy to remember.

If the company is NOT going to use 611 for most repair calls, they
shouldn't use it for soft-dialtone, either.  That way, it won't be
confusing, and it won't encourage new users to start out by learning
the wrong number.

Rochester Telephone is one of those companies that doesn't use the 611
standard.  Instead, you need to dial 777-1611 -- 777 is RochTel's
internal prefix, but until you play a few games of phone tag with the
phone company, you probably won't realize that. :) At least they used
"611" in the number ... but IMHO, they should've just used "611" to
begin with.


Rob Levandowski
News Administrator and UNIX Technical Assistant, UNIX Group
University of Rochester Computing Center -- Rochester, New York
rlvd_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu      [Opinions expressed are mine, not 
UR's.]

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



In article <telecom15.385.9@eecs.nwu.edu>, Kevin Paul Herbert
<kph@cisco.com> wrote:

> [stuff about `soft dial tone' in USWEST land]

My recollection is that NYNEX has been using this for at least three
years (although they still called themselves "New England Telephone"
at the time).  Probably implementation varied depending on the kind
and maintenance record of the switch.  Certainly this was the case
back in 1992 when I moved into a new apartment in Burlington, Vermont,
and last year when I left there and came to Boston.


The PAT asks:

> By the way, what kind of intercept *is* given out on other calls?
> Do you receive a 'call cannot be completed as dialed' message, or a
> rapid re-order tone, or some other message, tones, etc?

<SIT> If this is an emergency, dial 9-1-1.  If you would like to
establish telephone service on this line, please call NYNEX customer
service at NXX-XXXX.  If you would like to speak to an operator, dial
0.

(This is from memory, so the exact wording is probably wrong, but
those were the three choices given out.)


Garrett A. Wollman   
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  
Opinions not those of
MIT, LCS, ANA, or NSA

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

End of TELECOM Digest V15 #390
******************************

                                                                                                                      
