Aucbvax.2949
fa.telecom
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!telecom
Fri Sep 4 21:45:30 1981
TELECOM Digest V1 #10
>From JSol@RUTGERS Fri Sep 4 21:38:30 1981
TELECOM AM Digest Saturday, 5 Sep 1981 Volume 1 : Issue 10
Today's Topics:
The HART Line & Foreign Exchanges
Interactive Speech Synthesis - Crossbar and TSPS
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Date: 31 Aug 1981 1222-PDT
Subject: The Hart Line
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)
This message appeared in Human Nets Vol 4, #37; it really belongs
in TELECOM as it is phone-oriented:
Date: 27 Aug 1981 2022-PDT
From: Lynn Gold <G.FIGMO AT SU-SCORE>
Subject: Has anyone else heard anything about the Hart Line?
It's a new phone service which has been out for a few weeks.
How it works:
1) You call up toll-free (800) number (a list is given to all members;
numbers vary from state to state).
2) After hearing a beep, you enter your 7-digit code
3) After hearing another beep, you then enter 1 + area code and number
you want to dial
My father got such a number, and after checking it out myself, I
would like to share my findings:
Advantages:
1) You pay a flat fee of $65. per month. There are no connect
charges.
2) The service is new enough to not have hackers (yet). Even if
someone DOES find out your number, you don't get billed for it.
3) You can use it anywhere in the continental United States.
4) You can use your Hart Line number 24 hours a day.
5) You can use your Hart Line number as frequently as you like.
Disadvantages:
1) It is only supposed to be used by its owner and not family members
of the owner, as is permitted by several other systems.
[Note: I don't know if they actually can catch anyone who violates
this without a great deal of difficulty, since it IS allowable for
someone to use it from anywhere...]
2) Once phone hackers DO figure out how to crack this one, they
probably will.
3) The quality of the connection provided is poor. Voices are
sometimes barely audible. Data transmission would be impossible.
4) The connections only last 15 minutes, after which you and other
party are suddenly disconnected with no warning. (Of course, as
mentioned above, you CAN call again right away and resume your
conversation...)
5) It is difficult to get onto the line. It seems to take anywhere
from five to ten minutes just to get to the first tone, and
sometimes there is a wait of over a minute after the second tone
has been punched in. (Either they are inadequately set up or they
are unusually popular.)
The people I know who are using it are satisfied with it, since they
tend to ring up huge long distance bills, rarely spend more than 15
minutes on the phone to anyone, and aren't interested in data trans-
mission.
--Lynn
------------------------------
Date: 3 Sep 1981 1039-PDT
Subject: A bit more info on Hart Line
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)
The following information was spotted in the August issue of
AUDIOMART, a little leaflet devoted to ads for hi-fi equipment,
most of the trading of which depends on phone calls. I reproduce
it exactly as given, and this is all I know:
"A tip that Hart Industries offers a computer-controlled pooled
WATS line service w/unlimited calling continental US from any
phone for $100 fee + $65/month. Call (305)561-3754, check it out
to see."
Will Martin
------------------------------
Date: 4 Sep 81 15:42:50-EDT (Fri)
From: Jcp.bmd70 at BRL
Subject: "Foreign exchanges"
In my area (Maryland), the telco offers a service called "foreign
exchange connection", whereby you can have a phone in one area act as
a phone on a non-local exchange. (Very popular for people living
between Baltimore and DC, and wanting to call locally in both cities,
etc). This isn't available from all CO's, just the newer ones (ESS, I
think). They charge a fee per mile of distance from the foreign
exchange per month. Could anyone tell me how this is done, and is the
cost to the telco related to the distance involved? Also, is there a
better way to do this?
-Joe Pistritto-
jcp.bmd70@brl
------------------------------
Date: 4 Sep 1981 14:29:12-PDT
From: vax135!hpk at Berkeley
>From vax135!hpk, Howard Katseff at Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ.
Another interactive speech system can be found at
800 225-6261, 800 392-6215 (Massachusetts).
This is the Fidelity Information Phone, which gives the latest
information on their investment funds. A good fund number to try is
55 (five-five).
The biggest problem with this system is that it is often down.
When this happens, you get a message asking you to wait for
somebody to help you.
------------------------------
Date: 4 Sep 1981 1530-PDT (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Crossbar and TSPS, voice response
The examples of Xbar<->TSPS interaction I mentioned (which were local
L.A.) are now probably defunct. My friend at telco cannot even
remember the prefixes anymore, though he does verify that these hacked
up prefixes DID exist for awhile. As was stated by someone else,
however, ATT frowns on that sort of thing, and they were early
conversions to ESS. Oh well, sorry about that.
Most of the operational dialup speech input systems use an (expensive)
system from Verbex Systems (an Exxon affiliate), which used to be
called Dialog, Inc. or some such. It can handle the spoken digits,
yes, and no, with fair accuracy on a speaker independent basis. When
I was originally doing research on this a couple of years ago, the
only working system I knew of was for the State of Illinois
communications system to allow state workers to access WATS lines and
such (one of the project heads gave me a demo -- pretty nice, though
Touch-Tone is far faster!)
Currently, there is at least one Money Market Fund type operation that
allows users to interrogate the computer for various prices via the
same sort of equipment.
--Lauren--
------------------------------
End of TELECOM Digest
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