TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 Jan 94 00:54:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 6
Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson
Index For 1993 Now Complete (TELECOM Digest Editor)
Brendan Kehoe Seriously Hurt in Car Accident (TELECOM Digest Editor)
Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones (John McDermott)
Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones (Curtis Bohl)
Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones (John R. Levine)
Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones (Steve Wood)
Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones (John C. Fowler)
Re: "Anonymous Call Rejection" - Could be Dangerous (Kelly Bert Manning)
Re: "Anonymous Call Rejection" - Could be Dangerous (Carl B. Page)
Re: "Anonymous Call Rejection" - Could be Dangerous (Jack Decker)
Re: Caller ID in Pennsylvania (Greg Vaeth)
Re: Caller ID in Pennsylvania (Lynne Gregg)
Re: Use a 9600 Baud US Modem in UK? (Linc Madison)
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not
exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere
there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and GEnie.
Subscriptions are available at no charge to qualified organizations
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*
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The Digest is compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson Associates of
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To reach us: Post Office Box 1570, Chicago, IL 60690 or by phone
at 708-329-0571 and fax at 708-329-0572. Email:
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TELECOM Digest is gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 22:30:33 -0600
From: TELECOM Digest Editor <
[email protected]>
Subject: Index For 1993 Now Complete
The 1992-93 Index of Authors and Subjects for TELECOM Digest, Volumes
12 and 13 has now been updated to include all messages through the end
of last year. It is housed in the Telecom Archives sub-directory called
'indices' with a cross-reference located in 'back.issues'.
This is the companion volume to the 1989-91 index which lists all the
authors and subjects for volumes 9, 10 and 11. Look for them in the
indices sub-directory under the title 'authors-subjects.1989-91' and
'authors-subjects.1992-93'. Should you wish to capture these files and
print them out as hard copy for future reference, you should note that
the first volume is 24,939 lines, or about 380-390 pages in length, and
the second volume is 19,760 lines, or about 300-310 pages in length.
The index is split into two volumes for ease in handling in case you
want one part but not the other, etc. Users of anonymous FTP can take
either or both volumes. Users of the Email Information Service will
find that the command SEARCH <argument> checks both volumes in the
process of returning reference results.
Should you obtain a copy of the file(s) for yourself, please note that
the following characteristics apply:
The left column of numbers indicates the volume and *bundle of fifty
issues* to be pulled for the desired topic. For example, if the
reference given is 13/101-150, that means go to the back issues area
and pull volume 13, issues 101-150. 09/501-550 would refer to volume
9, issues 501-550 and so on.
The subjects are then filed in strict alphabetical order, with
instances of 'Re:' ignored where they appear. Where two or more
articles have an identical title (because there was an original
article followed by one or more 'Re: Article Title' responses (and
since 'Re:' is ignored, therefore the articles would appear to
be identical), the sort further continues by author name, again
in alphabetical order *by the first name* of the author. For example,
an article by John Smith would be listed ahead of an article with
the identical title by Paul Brown, because /J/ comes before /P/.
You can also search the indexes (or indices as they are known to
the email server to avoid conflict with the information file 'index')
using the Unix command 'grep -i'. Due to some irregularities in the
way articles were named and author's names included. I suggest a
liberal interpretation of grep when searching the indexes. If your
search criteria is too narrow, you won't get any hits. If your search
criteria is too wide, you will get flooded with article titles you
do not want. Experiment for the best combination.
Technically, these are accelerated indexes because they do not point
to the actual article in question but merely *to other groups of
indexes and batches of issues* wherein the article(s) will be found.
If something you wanted was found in 13/150-200 for example, you would
then get the batch of back issues labled Volume 13 Issues 150-200 and
check the Index contained at the start of each issue of the Digest to
see if your article(s) were found there. Or of course you could then
'grep -i' the batch of fifty issues if you prefer.
One final note: within the two volume index itself resides a limited
help file with a few details to help with your searches. You can read
this help file by grepping (-i) "HELP-". The first fifty or sixty
lines of text in each file is the 'help' part. Each line in the help
section begins with "HELP-".
Whatever you grep for in these indexes is what you will get, so you
can search article titles, key phrases which appeared in several
article titles, author names, or by volume and batch-of-issues number
if you wish. It is up to date through issue 844, the final issue of
1993. This was quite a labor of love, and I am still checking it for
errors in my spare time, but it is pretty well cleaned up and quite
reliable for use as it appears now. Good luck in your searches, and
I hope you find the indexes easy and convenient to use. If you need
a help file for use with the Email Information Service, just ask.
Patrick Townson
TELECOM Digest Editor
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 23:00:52 -0600
From: TELECOM Digest Editor <
[email protected]>
Subject: Brendan Kehoe Seriously Hurt in Car Accident
Word has reached me that well known net participant Brendan Kehoe
was quite seriously injured in an automobile accident in Newton, PA
on December 31. Kehoe wrote 'Zen and the Art of the Internet' and he
is also the archivist for Computer Underground Digest. Apparently the
injuries were quite serious, and there was some question in the very
early period afterward if he would even survive or not. I guess the
doctors are still unwilling to make any commitment regards his recovery
other than to say he will be hospitalized for a long time and perhaps
permanently disabled. Some parts of his body were badly mangled.
Greeting cards and electronic mail messages are being solicited and
I refer you to the current issue of Computer Underground Digest for
a full report on the incident and how to respond with your notes of
sympathy and support. What an awful way to end one year and begin
another.
My best wishes for Brendan's recovery and eventual return to the
net. I imagine all telecom readers agree with my sentiments.
Patrick Townson
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (John McDermott)
Subject: Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones
Organization: Computer Science Department, University of New Mexico
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 15:55:49 GMT
In article <
[email protected]> John C. Fowler <0003513813@
mcimail.com> writes:
> I wonder what kinds of people will be using "caller-pays" cellular
> service.
We've had caller-pays cellular in NM for some time. Those I know who
have it have their phones primarily for "emergency" use or to call
to/from home. Most of these users have a billing plan with little or
no prepaid time. This makes the call more expensive, but quite useful
for someone stranded in a dead car at night.
John McDermott 505/897-2064 H/W
[email protected]
[ UNM only lets me use this account because they are nice. I have no
relationship with them whatsoever (besides being friends).]
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Missouri 4-H Youth Development Programs)
Subject: Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones
Organization: University of Missouri
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 94 10:07:51 CST
In Sedalia, MO, calls to local cellular numbers are always toll calls,
to both the A and B cellular carrier, even though both have locally-
based offices. What I was told is that SWB wanted to take their cut
of the cellular market. (BTW, SWB Mobile does not have the wireline
carrier.) In the city where I work, calls to both cellular systems
here are local calls.
Curtis Bohl Computer Programmer/Analyst
[email protected] 4-H Youth Development
Alternate:
[email protected] Programs
(314) 882-2034 University of Missouri-Columbia
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 94 11:26 EST
From:
[email protected] (John R Levine)
Subject: Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones
Organization: I.E.C.C., Cambridge, Mass.
> [in Colorado]
> If the cellular phone you are calling begins with 1 + 579, you will be
> billed for the cellular airtime charges and also any long distance
> charges associated with the call when applicable.
> If there are any questions about cellular airtime charges that appear
> on your bill, to the above prefix, please call the Customer Inquiry
> Center at 1-800-USW-BILL.
Could someone in Colorado call US West and inquire whether these 579
numbers will be reachable from outside of Colorado? Long-distance
carriers are absolutely unwilling to bill surcharges for other than
900 numbers, so the two likely scenarios are either that IXCs don't
get surcharged, so out of state callers can call at normal toll rates,
or 579 is only reachable from inside the LATA. (In the first case, if
you can divert your call to an IXC, a Colorado caller can avoid the
surcharge, too.) Either way, sounds pretty brain damaged.
I have seen both of these scenarios in different places. Surcharged
numbers like 212-540, 617-550, and <nearly anywhere>-976 aren't
available from long distance. On the other hand, the number in
Chicago which gives reverse D.A. is surcharged if you call it locally
but a normal call from elsewhere.
Regards,
John Levine,
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]
------------------------------
From: Steve Wood <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 94 10:00:00 PST
> I wonder what kinds of people will be using "caller-pays" cellular
> service.
I would definitely have used this in my consulting business if it had
been available. It makes it palatable to freely publish your mobile
phone number and not have to worry about paying for a lot of calls you
don't want. My business clients would have no problem paying for the
airtime. I can also imagine that this would make a lot of sense for
many other service businesses, like PR agencies and law firms. They
typically bill their clients for the airtime charges anyway, many
times with a markup.
Steve Wood
[email protected]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 94 12:51 EST
From: John C. Fowler <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Landlines Pay Airtime To Call Some Cellular Phones
I've gotten copies of a couple of messages asking whether or not the
new 579 prefix (a cellular prefix in Colorado which charges the caller
for airtime) could be dialed from outside Colorado. I checked with
the number on the U.S. West insert, and the first operator who came on
immediately answered "Yes." This seemed a bit suspicious to me (I'm
not used to the first person who answers the telephone actually
knowing something), so I decided to call AT&T to verify. I went
through four operators there, but the best answer I could get was
"Probably Yes."
So I guess all those COCOT owners out there reading the Digest (yes,
both of you) should program their phones not to accept 303-579 or
719-579 for coin calls. Just remember that 579 is a regular prefix
most everywhere else.
John C. Fowler,
[email protected]
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Kelly Bert Manning)
Subject: Re: "Anonymous Call Rejection" - Could be Dangerous
Reply-To:
[email protected] (Kelly Bert Manning)
Organization: Camosun College, Victoria, B.C.
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 08:35:49 GMT
The switch my phone number is on has Caller ID blocked on every line
because it can't provide CLASS services. A friend who is on the same
exchange says that her mother's Caller ID box always shows "unknown
number" when she calls, which is a problem because she can't unblock
the blanket caller ID suppression.
Sounds like this new "service" could run into similar problems.
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Carl B. Page)
Subject: Re: "Anonymous Call Rejection" - Could be Dangerous
Date: 4 Jan 1994 10:05:43 GMT
Organization: Teleport - Portland's Public Access (503) 220-1016
Recently, our esteemed moderator wrote this about calling a phone
that rejects anonymous callers from a blocked phone:
: [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes they do. The person placing the
: call need only dial the appropriate 'unblock code' (what is it,
: typically *67) before dialing his call and it will go through just
: fine. PAT]
Lets not give wrong emergency advice! That won't work in Oregon
or other places where PERMANENT LINE BLOCKING cannot be turned off.
This was deemed a better functionality choice than allowing blocking
to be toggled without any feedback about the final state. (So
you can block safely even if you don't know whether the phone was
already line-blocked.)
In such an emergency your only option is to call the operator and ask
them to put your call thru.
Incidentally, you can also use the operator as a way of making an
anonymous call. US WEST actually suggested this before the Oregon
PUC when they were hoping they could use it as an argument to justify
with-holding per-line blocking.
In an area where no blocking is allowed, although telling an operator
to dial for you lacks a certain feeling of privacy.
(arl
[email protected] Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400, N81)
[Moderator's Note: But placing your call through the operator won't
provide ID to the called party! Calls from the operator always show
up as 'outside'. Of course people who reject 'private' most likely
will accept 'outside' so I guess your call would get through. And in
the case of using the operator to bypass the identification given to
the police when you call 911, the rule is the operator is supposed to
remain on the line until the police answer and then announce the
calling number, as in "... this is the operator, I have an emergency
call for the police from the number 123-4567 ..." Some operators do
that; some don't, but they are supposed to. No such requirement is in
effect for routine calls handled by the operator -- only calls where
you dial the operator, state that an emergency exists and ask for
the police. PAT]
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: "Anonymous Call Rejection" - Could be Dangerous
Date: 4 Jan 1994 03:55:52 GMT
Organization: Youngstown State/Youngstown Free-Net
Reply-To:
[email protected] (Jack Decker)
On Thu Dec 30 11:49:05 1993,
[email protected] (Jack Hamilton) wrote:
>
[email protected] (danny burstein) wrote:
>> A new service offered in the NYC area by NY Tel (soon to be called
>> Nynex) is called "Anonymous Call Rejection." This tariff allows you
>> (at a fee, of course) to take calls coming from caller-id BLOCKed
>> numbers and reroutte them to a recording saying something like:
>> We're sorry, the person you called does not take calls from anonymous
>> callers. If you want to reach this person, please redial from an
>> unblocked line ...
> Do such services offer a way around the blocking in an emergency,
> either by subscriber (911 and other services could call all numbers
> without being blocked) or on a per-call basis through the operator?
[.....]
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes they do. The person placing the
> call need only dial the appropriate 'unblock code' (what is it,
> typically *67) before dialing his call and it will go through just
> fine. PAT]
I would point out that relying on this could be dangerous. Just to
give you one example: I have a dialer on my line (which I use to
convert touch tones to dial pulses, so I don't have to pay GTE $2.00
per month to accept my touch tones directly), and when Caller ID is
offered here, it will be a trivial matter for me to program the dialer
to prepend 1167 to all outgoing calls (and there are "standalone"
units that do the same thing for touch tone lines, that are even less
expensive than dialers).
Now suppose that you are one of those folks who cops an attitude and
says "if you don't call me with your number unblocked, you must be
some sort of scum, and I'm not going to talk to you!" Now suppose you
are my neighbor, and late one night my wife sees a fire starting in
your kitchen window, and I'm not home. She tries to call you to wake
you up, but gets the "please redial from an unblocked line" recording,
and has no idea how to respond to that (and since I'm not home, I
can't even look up the programming to disable the blocking for her,
although your house might be pretty well gone by the time I figured it
out anyway). Sure, she would probably then call 911 and report the
fire, but if you or your family are sleeping upstairs, you might just
have appreciated getting that first call.
If you think that the fire example is farfetched, just consider that
there are other situations where you might want folks to reach you ...
anything from someone responding to a classified ad you've placed to
someone who has found one of your possessions, or your pet, or one of
your kids. When they get your "please redial ..." message, they just
might figure "why bother, I don't know what the ---- that message means
anyway", and take some other action that would be more detrimental to
you or those you care about.
The problem with "Anonymous Call Rejection" is that the folks who take
it assume that if someone wants to reach them, they will know whether
the line they are using is blocked, and if it is, how to unblock it.
In the case of a blocked line, that assumption would quite possibly be
true only for the person who either ordered the per-line blocking, or
installed the device to automatically prepend the "*67" or "1167"
blocking code (and don't think such devices won't become more common
in the future). Even if we assume that person knows how to bypass the
blocking (which is quite an assumption to make), it's not realistic to
assume that every potential user of that line knows how to unblock it.
It's a calculated risk, of course. If you are plagued by nuisance
callers now, you may figure it's worth the risk. But "Anonymous Call
Rejection" is not the sort of service I'd advise anyone to order
unless they are currently having a genuine problem with nuisance
callers, to the point that it's really disrupting their lives (or
their sanity).
By the way, I always get a chuckle out of the folks who say "if you
don't want me to know your number, don't call me!" Believe me, if I
knew that someone I was contemplating calling felt that way, there's
no way I would call them, just because they sound like the sort of
paranoid personality I wouldn't want to deal with. But in at least
some cases, it would quite likely be their loss.
But I can see that there is no way folks are ever going to agree on
this issue!
Jack
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Greg Vaeth at Jerrold Communications)
Subject: Re: Caller ID in Pennsylvania
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 17:00:58 GMT
Is the Bill mentioned under consideration, or has it passed?
Regards,
Gregory Vaeth Jerrold Communications
internet:
[email protected] General Instrument
voicenet: (215) 956-6488 2200 Byberry Road
faxnet: (215) 675-4059 Hatboro, PA 19040
My opinions are my own, and do not represent those of my employer.
------------------------------
From: Lynne Gregg <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re Caller ID in Pennsylvania
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 94 09:06:00 PST
Jeffrey Carpenter's wrote:
> Pennsylvania Act 83 of 1993 ...
> Caller-ID in Pennsylvania as long as both per-line and per-call
> blocking are available.
Jeffrey, thanks for the post.
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