TELECOM Digest Sun, 19 Dec 93 19:13:30 CST Volume 13 : Issue 829
Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson
Chaos Communication Congress 1993 Schedule of Events (Bjoern Kriews)
Shared 800 Telephone Numbers (Paul Robinson)
Re: The Superhighway and Telcos (John R. Levine)
Re: The Superhighway and Telcos (Nathan Lane)
112 Emergency Calls From a GSM Phone (Juha Veijalainen)
Re: Emergency Services Will be Elsewhere ... (Carl Moore)
Re: Check From MCI; What to Do? (Marshall Levin)
Re: NYC Area Central Office Outage, PSAP Shutdown (Steven H. Lichter)
Re: Research on the Effects of Telecommuting (Peter M. Weiss)
Cellphones and RJ-11 Adapters (Lynne Gregg)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Bjoern Kriews)
Subject: Chaos Communication Congress 1993 Schedule of Events
Date: 19 Dec 1993 23:28:24 +0100
Organization: Digital Island
"Ten years after Orwell"
10. Chaos Communication Congress 1993
- The European Hackerparty -
December 27.-29. 1993 in Hamburg, Germany
Eidelstedter Buergerhaus
Elbgaustr. 12 / Hamburg-Eidelstedt
Information * Discussion * Workshops
Chaos-Cafe * Archive + Photocopier
Hack-Center * Internet-FreePort
Phonenumbers of the Congress :
+ 49-40-5710523 (General)
+ 49-40-5710810 (BBS)
+ 49-40-5714010 (Telefax)
+ 49-40-5710133 (Congress-Editorial / Press)
Dauerkarte: "Normal" 42.- DM
Reduced price 32.- DM
Members of CCC e.V. 23.- DM
Press 77.- DM
Organization Chaos Computer Club e.V. Tel: +49-40-4903757
Schwenckestr. 85 Fax: +40-40-4917689
D-20255 Hamburg Mbx: +40-40-4911085
10. Chaos Communication Congress 1993 Congressschedule -1- Monday 93/12/27
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time Theatre Conf1 Conf2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
09:30 -------------------------------start------------------------------
10:00 +---------------------+
| Opening / Welcome |
| |
+---------------------+
11:00 +--------------------+ +-------------------+
| How do computers | | ISDN - Everything |
| work at all ? | | about a network. |
+--------------------+ | |
12:00 +---------------------+ +--------------------+ | Experience & ideas|
| Internet and Multi- | | Datacommunications | | from its users and|
| media applications | | for beginners | | some programmers. |
| | +--------------------+ +-------------------+
13:00 | MIME / Mosaic | +--------------------+
| Gopher / | | Internet for |
| Worldwibe Web | | Beginners |
+---------------------+ +--------------------+
14:00
15:00 +---------------------+ +--------------------+
| Media & flow of | | Encryption for |
| information - | | beginners. |
| What is left from | | practical PGP |
16:00 | the truth ?! | | |
| direct democracy: | | |
|Informational needs | +--------------------+
| of citizens |
17:00 +---------------------+
18:00 +---------------------+
|alternative netsworks|
|ZAMIRNET (ex-Jugos- |
|lavia), APS+Hacktic |
19:00 |(NL),Green-Net (GB), |
|Knoopunt (B), Z-Netz |
| and CL (D) |
+---------------------+
20:00
20:30 Organizational announcements, sleeping accommodations
21:00 ------------------ End of this day - on congress...------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 13:00 : Editors / press conference
Announcement of congress program and further information.
- starting at 14:00 the women's room offers a continous program.
10. Chaos Communication Congress 1993 Congresschedule -2- Tuesday 93/12/28
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time Theatre Conf1 Conf2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
09:30 -------------------------------start------------------------------
10:00 +--------------------+
| Administrivia, |
| Discus. of schedule|
+--------------------+
11:00 +--------------------+ +--------------------+
| Encryption: | | Modacom-DataCom |
| priciples, systems | | Bernd Mielke |
| and visions. | | presents concepts |
12:00 | Problems of social | | and applications |
| and political | +--------------------+
| relevance. |
+--------------------+
13:00 +--------------------+ +--------------------+
| Electronic Cash | |Mailbox-UI's for |
| | |citizens |
| | |participation |
14:00 +--------------------+ +--------------------+
15:00 +--------------------+
|"Peep Attack" what's|
|left from private |
|communication - |
16:00 |The plan to ban en- |
|encryption. |
|Referents: |
|a.o. / Peter Paterna|
17:00 |(MdB), Peter Schaar |
|stellv. DsB-Hamburg,|
|Gero von Randow a.o.|
+--------------------+
18:00
18:30 Organizational announcements, sleeping accommodations
19:00 +---------------------+
| How does an |
| Intelligence work ? |
| Example: Stasi |
20:00 | |
| Educ.Films from MfS |
| |
+---------------------+
21:00 ------------------ End of this day - on congress...------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- starting at 11:00 the womens room offers a continous program.
10. Chaos Communication Congress 1993 Congresschedule -3- Wednesday 93/12/29
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time Theatre Conf1 Conf2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
09:30 -------------------------------start------------------------------
10:00 +--------------------+
| Administrivia, |
| Discus. of schedule|
+--------------------+
11:00 +--------------------+ +--------------------+
| Thoughts about | | Computerrecycling |
| authorship... | | |
| | +--------------------+
12:00 | | +--------------------+
|Prof. Kurd Alsleben | | Network Stupidity |
+--------------------+ | Electronic Warfare |
+--------------------+
13:00 +--------------------+ +--------------------+
| Lockpicking- how to| |Workgroup for free |
| open non-electric | |Bulletin Boards |
| lock systems. | |introduces itself. |
14:00 +--------------------+ +--------------------+
15:00 +--------------------+
| Ten years after |
| Orwell ... |
| Hacker's & Scene's |
16:00 | visions |
| Final meeting. |
| Goodbye... |
17:00 ------------------------ EOC - End of Congress----------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- starting at 11:00 the womens room offers a continous program.
-----------------
[email protected] - Bjoern Kriews - Stormsweg 6 - D-22085 Hamburg [76] - FRG
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1993 11:36:46 EST
From: Paul Robinson <
[email protected]>
Reply-To: Paul Robinson <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Shared 800 Telephone Numbers
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
Dave Bonney <
[email protected]>, writes:
> Carl Moore <
[email protected]> in writing about changes to local
> dialing plans quoted from a Bell letter to customers:
>> "We thank you for helping us to prepare for Pennsylvania's new
>> area code. If you have any questions, please call our We Can
>> Help Center at 1-800-555-5000, Monday through Friday, from
>> 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m."
> and Carl commented:
>> [I tried that number from Maryland and got U.S. West
>> Communications -- a recording only -- in Denver, Colorado.
>> Darn, I am not in Del. or Pa. now.]
> If you try that number in New England Telephone territory, you get
> the 'New England Telephone Customer Response Center'.
1-800-555-5000 has been in use as a 'shared' telephone number by the
(then) or (former) Bell System entities for many years, possibly even
back before the AT&T Breakup or just after.
Because most companies do not (explicitly) claim to only serve one area,
such a service isn't of much use to them. If a company is, it could be,
but it's more expensive to do that (see below).
> Leading one to believe that despite the TELCO and RESPORG
> claims of 'One Number -- One User', it's another case of
> 'Mother Knows Best' and 'Do As I Say, Not As I Do'.
> Does anyone have any knowledge of a single 800 number being
> used for different customers in different geographical areas??
> (Other than Mother and the Children of course ...)
> Inquiring Minds Want To Know ...
The company Pat Townson uses to provide 800 service has much stricter
credit requirements for 800 numbers than I could meet, so I got an 800
number from Sprint. Cost is $10 a month plus 30c a minute - which is
fine, since I don't expect to use more than a few minutes a month -
and terminates on an ordinary local dial number. And it is listed
with 800 information. For my purposes this service is sufficient. If
I was going to be using a lot of call time, I'd probably want a less
expensive rate.
When setting up the service, I asked the customer representative who
called me about the ability to have a number served by more than one
IXC (long distance company). He said that it can be done and you can
make it as complicated as you want, with the only real restriction
being that each area (not sure if that's as small as any particular
switch or each LATA) can only be served by one IXC. It's also more
expensive.
For example, due to the large number of lines in New York City and
AT&T's heftier presence and larger number of trunks, if I was doing a
lot of calls from there, I could have AT&T handle calls from the area
codes there, and let Sprint handle the rest of the country. Or have a
local company take all calls that occur, say, in DC/MD/VA and have the
rest from Sprint, or however I wanted to do it.
A similar feature can be done by one IXC, for example, if I have
offices in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix and Los Angeles,
then I could have each office handle traffic for its own regional area
and calls are diverted there *until local closing time*. At 5:00 New
York can shunt its calls to Chicago or Dallas depending on volume.
Those offices shunt their calls to Denver or Phoenix when they close,
and perhaps they transfer to Los Angeles as 5:00 rolls around there.
Or perhaps I put my national all-night response center in Phoenix.
Then after Los Angeles closes, all of its calls get shunted there, so
we can have the following map:
East Coast shunts to Chicago at 5:00 then shunts to Denver at 6:00 then
Los Angeles at 7:00 then Phoenix at 9:00 until 7:00 then back to New York
Midwest shunts to Denver at 5:00 then Los Angeles at 6:00 then Phoenix at
8:00 until 7:00 then back to Dallas
Chicago... etc.
Now, since each response center is a different local trunk or terminating
telephone number, there is nothing that says that in each area that same
1-800 number can't be terminated to a different company instead of a
different regional office of the same company.
Since telephone companies currently by law cannot offer service
outside their own area, they have probably decided to each terminate
calls to 1-800-555-5000 to their own service bureau where they use
that number.
The big issue is cost. My 1-800 number costs me $10 a month plus
usage, is listed with 800 information and is "good anywhere in North
America" (which means USA, Alaska, Hawaii and Canada - the represent-
ative asked if I wanted to include Canada and I said yes.) Any other
service, such as shared 800 numbers requires that:
(1) you give up use of the area in question for that 800 number to
someone else;
(2) the area in question is such that you can delineate service in
specific areas to separate companies;
(3) there are no antitrust considerations;
(4) you're wil ling to pay more for a number that is only available to
part of the country.
In short, it would require the company in question only do business in
part of the country, not be interested in (or able to take) calls
outside its service area, and be willing to let someone else take
them. Franchised companies or organizations specially licensed for
specific areas might be able to use such a feature, but they would
need a reason to share the same telephone number. A franchise
operation might be a good idea, but most franchises imply operation
under the same family name with a specific company.
In short, this type of feature is not likely to be used much unless
800 numbers become in short supply, or there is some "special" spelled
number that several organizations in the same business in different
areas all want that they can arrange not to compete in each other's
area.
A plumbing contractor in Philadelphia could possibly use the same 800
number a local plumber advertises here, as could one in Atlanta,
Cinncinati, St. Louis or San Francisco. But it would cost more for
them to do that than to get their own specific 800 number.
Paul Robinson -
[email protected]
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 13:32 EST
From:
[email protected] (John R Levine)
Subject: Re: The Superhighway and Telcos
Organization: I.E.C.C., Cambridge, Mass.
> And the previous post mentioned PSI. Well, PSI just two months ago
> announced the first (I think) venture with a cable company back east
> (I think it was Continental in New York). Their goal is to provide
> 10Mbps (yes, ethernet speeds) to cable customers, bidirectionally, for
> just $100/month. The equipment is installed and I believe they even
> have trial customers now.
I believe that the first IP via CATV is supposed to be here in
Cambridge, but I haven't seen any evidence that it's anywhere near
ready to go, nor have other people I've asked. The existing CATV
wiring only passes signals in one direction, head end to customers,
and nobody has any idea what they're planning to do for the reverse
direction. Indeed, we're not even sure that Continental realizes that
there has to be a reverse direction. Neither Continental nor PSI has
a stellar technical reputation in their respective industries.
They said Ethernet speeds, up to 300 people sharing the same "ether",
DES envceryption to keep us from intercepting each others' traffic.
For $100 per month I'd love to have it, since it'd be faster and
cheaper than what I have now. But what I have now has the distinct
advantage of actually existing, so I'll stick with it.
Regards,
John Levine,
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1993 10:46:30 -0800
From:
[email protected]
Subject: Re: The Superhighway and Telcos
> But what I have now has the distinct advantage of actually existing,
> so I'll stick with it.
Tell me about it. Me too. (I use PSI, and I agree with you when you
say they don't exactly have a stellar technical reputation).
PS - is comp.dcom.telecom still alive? Obviously my post got
through, but since that time (two weeks ago), telecom has been
completely silent.
Regards,
Nathan Lane
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Delivery of the Digest to comp.dcom.telecom
is not happening at this time. Some decision will be made in the near
future on what to do with it. I don't like the mess on Usenet at all, but
several readers have strongly urged the gateway to continue. I've asked
for input from list subscribers on this, and will be reading and consid-
ering what everyone has to say. News later this week on the subject. PAT]
------------------------------
From: JVE%
[email protected]
Date: 19 DEC 93 15:01
Subject: 112 Emergency Calls From a GSM Phone
My GSM phone manual states, that it is possible to make a 112 (911 to
you folks in USA) call even in the areas where normal calls are not
possible (phone sees the network, but considers the signal too weak -
in my phone 'SERV' indicator is flashing).
Does anyone know how this is done? Does the phone boost its power?
Something else?
Juha Veijalainen 4ge system analyst, tel. +358 40 5004402
Unisys Finland Internet: JVE%
[email protected]
>> Mielipiteet omiani ** Opinions are PERSONAL, facts are suspect <<
(dirty look) I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to argue any more.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 17:09:42 EST
From: Carl Moore <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Emergency Services Will be Elsewhere...
What do you mean, "remote forwarding device"? If I were to disconnect
my remote-forward and plug in a regular telephone, I'd have to make
arrangements (including with the phone company) to have a place
available to plug the phone in. That number USED to be in an apartment,
but then I left and converted that number to a remote-forward, and
only in the phone company's facilities with a note of the number to
forward to. So there cannot be any other calls placed from the number
which is now a remote-forward.
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Marshall Levin)
Subject: Re: Check From MCI; What to Do?
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 12:41:22 GMT
[email protected] (John Macdonald) writes:
> But if you try to treat it as a check and cash it, then you are
> accepting the unsolicited offer, just as if you filled in your name
> and sent back an unsolicited subscription request. Trickery about not
> signing the check as a deliberate ruse could be charged with fraud (it
> may be clear in *your* mind that the charge would fail but I sure
> wouldn't bet *my* future on it).
Now hold on one second -- it is my understanding that it is perfectly
legitimate to DEPOSIT a check without endorsing it, and unless you
endorse it, you have not signed anything legally binding. Is this not
true?
Marshall
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That falls under the 'deliberate ruse'
category. You knew what you were doing and attempted to unjustly
enrich yourself by taking advantage of a flaw in the banking system:
that because of the volume of paper processed, immediate return of
unauthorized or improperly prepared documents cannot be done. Why do
you suppose the bank stamp on the back of the check says 'Prior Endorse-
ments Guarenteed'? It is so the paperwork can be hurried along
through the system. But that guarentee means that should the payor
be dissatisfied with the endorsement or lack thereof, he can repudiate
the check and send it back down the line to where it originated. Your bank
could then in turn use its right of offset to recover the money it had
given you from your account and send you the check back in the mail
with a notation 'Refer to Maker'. No one is going to sue you for fifty
dollars and it almost isn't worth the bother to audit all those checks
issued for promotional purposes to insure compliance. But you may get
reprimanded for it and after a few of your 'deposits' get charged back
to your account due to Stop Pay or Refer to Maker your bank may well
send you a letter and tell you that you (and they) would be happier if
you took your checking account somewhere else. What goes around comes
around. PAT]
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Steven H. Lichter)
Subject: Re: NYC Area Central Office Outage, PSAP Shutdown
Date: 19 Dec 1993 11:31:57 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
TELECOM Digest Editor commented on the prudence of having at least one
responsible employee on duty in a CO at all times to avoid disasters
like the fire in Hinsdale, IL in May, 1988.
We have been telling our company that for years, but they don't seem
to be listening, at least not on a level that can take any action. We
have has some outages caused because of the lack of personnel on site;
they could have been worse. The systems are monitored but sometimes
things do get missed.
===========
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The last time I went shopping for a
5-ESS switch, the best price I could find was a couple million
dollars, and that was if I agreed to purchase in quantity from a
certain well-known manufacturer of same on a long term basis. How
many years would it take to amortize that with a single clerk who
worked on the overnight shift and walked around the physical plant
occassionally noticing things that were wrong like a room full of
smoke, or water dripping out of the ceiling from a broken pipe on
the floor above? And if the person had other duties as well, such
as data-entry stuff the day crew had not finished then his salary
could be mostly taken from that budget rather than from some budget
set up specifically for 'watchman' duties and the amortization
would take even longer. Plus, wouldn't it be nice to know that never
again would your subscribers be denied service for even five minutes
in the middle of the night if you had a competent, responsible
employee present to take immediate, emergency remedial action while
notifying others of what was going on? Did you know in the Hinsdale
case, they had to throw away the switch and install an entire new
one from scratch, that's how badly corroded the original one was after
the water damage it suffered while the fire was being put out? PAT]
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1993 08:13:33 EST
From: Peter M. Weiss <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Research on the Effects of Telecommuting
Organization: Penn State University
The LISTSERV list FLEXWORK discusses telecommuting issues too.
To subscribe, send e-mail to:
[email protected] with
a simple body-of-text message (no .sig):
SUB FLEXWORK first-name last-name
Notebook archives of previous e-mail available. To find the naming
convention (file names), include a line in the above e-mail:
INDEX FLEXWORK
Later, when you find the names, issue more LISTSERV commands:
GET FLEXWORK LOGnnnnn
/Pete (
[email protected]) -- co-owner LDBASE-L, TQM-L, CPARK-L, et -L
Peter M. Weiss "The 'NET' never naps" +1 814 863 1843
31 Shields Bldg. -- Penn State Univ -- University Park, PA 16802-1202 USA
------------------------------
From: Lynne Gregg <
[email protected]>
Subject: Cellphones and RJ-11 Adapters
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 12:57:00 PST
[email protected] wrote:
> 1. You can use any cellphone that has an RJ-11 adapter. You can use it
> with any modem.
You can try, but you may see variable results. I recommend and use a
modem with MNP-10. It's a Compaq Speedpaq in my Contura and it works
just great. On the other hand, I've got a Pocket Peripheral 2400 baud
on my PC at home. I've used it with a cellular connection, but you
are apt to see garbled data on your screen.
> 2. The cellular companies suggest that you do this while stopped so you
> don't get handed off.
With the Compaq config, I've tooled around a wide area (Seattle to
Everett and yes, I WAS a passenger) transferring files and sending
email. No problem.
> 3. The RJ-11 adapter for my phone, a Motorola DPC550 "Flip" phone, is
> more expensive than the phone was.
Mmmm. What was the price of the adapter? Your phone was probably
discounted by a retailer. Accessories generally are not discounted.
Regards,
Lynne
------------------------------
End of TELECOM Digest V13 #829
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