Software Vault: The Diamond Collection/The Diamond Collection (Software Vault)(Digital Impact).ISO/cdr16/tc15_017.zip/TC15-017.TXT

Text File | 1995-01-22 | 32KB | 797 lines

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 9 Jan 95 16:43:00 CST    Volume 15 : Issue 17

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Cellular Telecommunications - GAO Report (Keith Bonney)
    MCI Paging Announcement ([e-mail])
    FCC Proposes to Restrict Access to Cellular 911 (Doug Reuben)
    DQDB and SMDS (Kristoff Bonne)
    Looking for X.25 Concentrator (Paul D. Guthrie)
    Wireless CO's Challenge New NPAs? (Linc Madison)

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From: [e-mail] (gao-docs)
Subject: Cellular Telecommunications - GAO Report
Date: 9 Jan 1995 08:42:46 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway


The U.S. General Accounting Office, the Congressional watchdog
agency, has recently released the following report:

  *** ASCII Full Text Access and Ordering Info Follows ***

TITLE:    Telecommunications: Status of Research on the Safety of
Cellular
          Telephones
          RPTNO: RCED-95-32                  DOCUMENT DATE: 11/04/94

ABSTRACT:

On the basis of present scientific knowledge, federal agencies have no
reason to take regulatory action on the use of portable cellular
telephones because no research has been completed on long-term human
exposure to the low levels of radiation generated by these phones and
research findings on exposure to other sources of low-level
radio-frequency radiation are inconclusive. According to the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Science Foundation, both
epidemiological and laboratory studies are needed to determine any
link between cellular telephone use and human diseases.  The cellular
telecommunications industry plans to do both types of studies. If
federal regulators want to use this research, they need assurances
that it will be carried out objectively.  FDA is working with ellular
telephone manufacturers on the possibility of redesigning portable
cellular telephone and on providing users with instruction for proper
use.  The Federal Communications Commission has proposed revising
standards set by the American National Standards Institute for
radio-frequency radiation; this standard may be applied to cellular
telephones.

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

Date: Mon, 9 Jan 95 09:36 EST
From: Hardwire <[e-mail]>
Subject: MCI Paging Announcement


CONTACT:  Ed Bergstraesser/Frank Walter
          MCI Business Markets
          1-312-938-4958
          1-800-644-NEWS

          Carol Aarhus
          MCI Consumer Markets
          1-800-436-9749


MCI ENTERS NATIONAL WIRELESS MARKET THROUGH MAJOR PAGING INITIATIVES

Agreements with SkyTel and PageNet to make wireless messaging services
more available to MCI residential and business customers


WASHINGTON, DC, January 6, 1995 -- Capitalizing on the continued
growth of the wireless messaging market, MCI today announced
agreements with the nation's leading paging companies, Paging Network,
Inc. (PageNet) and SkyTel Corporation, to provide wireless messaging
services nationwide to consumers and businesses under the MCI brand
name.

     "MCI's goal is to provide, through one-stop shopping for
consumers and businesses, an ever-broadening range of communication
services under the MCI brand name," said Timothy F. Price, executive
vice president and group president, MCI Communications Services.


·
     "Already, the wireless marketplace has attracted 20 million
customers.  In ten years, the market will skyrocket to nearly 90
million people and be valued at 40 billion to 50 billion dollars.
Through alliances like these -- and many more on the way -- MCI
expects to capture a significant share of that market."

     With this announcement, MCI is the first major long distance
company to offer paging and wireless messaging services with the
nation's largest wireless messaging companies.

         Paging Integrated with Friends & Family Service

     Leveraging its own successful marketing and branding strategies,
MCI will provide local and nationwide messaging services to its
millions of Friends & Family customers as part of the company's
just-announced Friends & Family Connections program.  Friends & Family
Connections is the industry's first package of services designed to
meet the total communications needs of today's teleconsumer by
offering E-mail and residential 800 services -- and now paging -- to
complement its long distance telephone services.

            Wireless Services Also Target Businesses

     Targeting the growing mobile work force, MCI will market paging
and messaging services to businesses under the brand name, networkMCI
Paging.  The company will utilize its extensive national sales
organization to market networkMCI Paging to businesses of all sizes.
In addition to offering businesses paging along with long distance
services, MCI will integrate paging with MCI's latest business
communications software package, networkMCI BUSINESS.  Users of
networkMCI BUSINESS will be able to send and receive wireless messages
via the package's e-mail component and also receive news bulletins on
the pager from the package's news service, infoMCI.  Business
customers of networkMCI Paging will be able to customize the scope of
their paging services to reflect their individual local or national
requirements.

     "The two agreements have immediate and significant appeal to both
mobile professionals and consumers who want the convenience of paging
and messaging services, along with simple bill payment," added Price.
"Customers reap the benefit of unparalleled customer service and
responsiveness provided by MCI and the integrity of its network.  In a
sense, MCI is creating a new market, one where paging services combine
with traditional telephone service to become part of everyday
communications."

     The agreements extend already strong relationships between MCI
and the two companies.  MCI is already primary provider of 800 phone
service for both companies in separate contracts.

     SkyTel, the pioneer in nationwide and international messaging,
offers the broadest range of service options to meet the needs of
business professionals who travel locally, regionally or nationwide.
With the SkyTel network, customers receive text messages, electronic
mail, fax and voice mail notification, and news and information
updates wirelessly using paging and computing devices.  The SkyTel
network offers service to all major business corridors.  SkyTel will
also offer, in the second half of 1995, the first two-way paging and
messaging services using its Destineer network.  In 1994, the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) awarded the first-ever Pioneer's
Preference License solely to Destineer, SkyTel's sister subsidiary.
Destineer also purchased two additional licenses at the narrowband PCS
auctions.

     PageNet owns and operates the country's most extensive nationwide
digital transmission network covering more than 90 percent of the U.S.
population.  The company was recently awarded three nationwide
licenses at the narrowband PCS auctions conducted by the Federal
Communications Commission.  With more than 4.1 million subscribers,
PageNet is the largest wireless messaging company in the United
States.  The company provides messaging services to the United States,
Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  It also markets local,
regional and nationwide paging services as well as news and stock
updates, voice mail, fax forwarding and wireless data transmission to
palmtop computers.  PageNet expects to begin testing the world's first
wireless pocket answering machine, VoiceNow (R), in the second half of
1995.

     MCI, headquartered in Washington, D.C., has grown from its core
long distance business to become the world's third largest carrier of
international calling and a premier provider of data communications
over the vast Internet computer network.  With annual revenues of $12
billion, the company today provides a wide array of consumer and
business long distance and local services, data and video
communications,
on-line information, electronic mail, network management services and
communications software.

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

From: [e-mail] (CID Tech/INSG)
Subject: FCC Proposes to Restrict Access to Cellular 911
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 02:31:09 PST


I saw this post (which is somewhat edited for Telcom relevance) on the
Telecommunications Roundtable Policy Forum ([e-mail] FOR
POSTS!), and thought that the Digest may be interested in this recent
FCC
cellular proposal. My comments/responses to the Roundtable are
included
below the commented text.

Doug
                  -----------------------------

Recently,  Jim Conran <[e-mail]> wrote:

> The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Notice of
Proposed
> Rulemaking (Notice)(Docket Number 94-102) on October 19, 1994 in the
> Matter of Revising the FCC Rules to ensure Compatibility with
Enhanced 911
> Systems. [...] The proposed rulemaking requires wireless carriers to
> provide this service only to "service initialized" users or users
that
> purchase their cellular phones from a wireless service provider.

This is an innane idea, probably suggested by some of the more stingy
cellular companies who want to squeeze every dime of airtime out of
customers that they can. They basically don't want people getting a
phone on their commission, dropping service after the minimum service
period, and as a result gaining an essentially free (or close to it)
phone which they can always call emergency services with "just in
case" and not have to ever pay a monthly charge.

This ruling is also contradictory (I suspect) with the FCCs "roaming
operator" regs. which seem to require carriers to allow non-validated
roamers to place credit card or calling card calls while roaming on a
system. Typically, this is encountered when a roamer enters a non-home
service area where there is no service on the same "side" (A/B) as the
roamer's home serive provider, and thus he/she is forced to switch to
the other side to place calls through the roaming operator. Since all
calls are placed and paid for by use of a credit card or calling card,
there is no need to validate a given user. (I've used the roaming
operator on phones with totally invalid ESN/MIN combos, such as a MIN
with 312-000-1212, and it worked fine.)

Does this new FCC proposal take this into consideration at all?

> This proposed arcane requirement is quite contradictory to the FCC's
> ultimate objective of providing "broad accessibility" to 911
services.
> Cellular users will have the expectation that when they use their
phone to
> contact 911 during an emergency, they will have immediate contact
with the
> operator.  Consumers will not think to question the reliability of
their
> cellular phone or the wireless service providers, instead public
> confidence on the 911 emergency system will be jeopardize.

Indeed ... one of the main reasons I tell people NOT to lock out the
"other side" from their phones is that if they ARE in a dead spot
with, for example, the "A" carrier, the phone will seek the "B"
carrier while the "A" carrier signal is too weak, and thus a call to
911 will then go through.  If a phone IS locked to one's preferred
"side", and they encounter a dead spot, it will at best take them some
time to switch sides (if they know how to do so), and at worst be
tragic if they are unable to report an emergency in time.

> The Alliance for Public Access to 911 (Alliance) believes that in
order
> for the FCC's proposed rulemaking on the "broad availability of 911
and
> enhanced 911 services" to be fully recognized, the FCC must require
all
> cellular switches to accept all 911 calls.

Hmmm ..."require" all "switches"? Don't you mean "carriers". The
switches can
accept anything, including state police numbers, non-emergency numbers
for
disabled motorists (#77 in MD for example), etc. I think the
regulations
should:

A) Mandate that ALL carriers allow access to 911/*911/etc. services
and
that they can NOT block access to these services for non-validated
phones.
They may, however, block access to phones on the STOLEN ESN list (not
just ESN deny, you can get ESN deny for a lot of reasons other than
true
fraud, and you don't want to prevent people who are erroneously placed
on
the "denied" list [it happens a lot!] from making 911 calls while they
wait for their carrier to fix the "deny" situation.)

B) Allow local authorities (state DPUCs, etc.) to mandate further
codes
which as in "A", state that cellcos MUST allow free and unrestricted
911
access, and which manadate that they are not allowed to block such
calls,
except for STOLEN ESN phones. This would allow MD to keep #77, Mass to
keep *MSP, etc.

(You don't want to create a market for stolen phones: If 911 would
work
even from stolen phones where the actual physical equipment were
stolen,
people would have a reason to take them. By preventing 911 on stolen
phones, you prevent this from ever becoming a problem, even if it
would
only be a limited problem anyhow.)

> In addition, the FCC should require all cellular phones to be
> equipped to access the strongest cellular base station signal when
911
> is called.

Just 911? There are a lot of codes which shoulds be allowed, and in
some cases 911 won't even work. How will this work in Canada? Won't
the CRTC have to go along with this change in the AMPS format treats
911 calls? I don't think it's a good idea to mess with the AMPS
protocol after the fact. Cell phones (well, the switches) normally
seek the strongest signal path when available, so the only important
thing here is to make switching from A to B easy (ie, have simple
codes or mechanisms by which a customer can override the "A" only or
"B" only settings.)

What you MAY want to do is have the FCC require that user equipment
manufacturers ALLOW 911 calls to go through from a given phone even if
the SID for a given roaming system is blocked. Frequently, the "A"
carrier in a given market will block the "B" carrier in the same
market by blocking out the "B" carrier's SID code when the phone is
being programmed. So, if a given user encountered a dead spot on the
"A" side and tried to use the "B" side to place a call, the call would
be denied by the PHONE, not the switch. As a result, no call is even
SENT to the switch, and the cell customer is stuck without a way out
unless he/she knows how to reprogram the phone on the spot (not likely
for most customers.)

> Finally, the FCC should make the 911 provision an issue as it
> currently reconsiders cellular license renewal applications.  The
> issue of safety and security for all Americans is too important an
> issue to be compromised.

Indeed ... as it is they "overlook" a great deal too many things when
reconsidering a cellular license; universal 911 access should NOT be
one
of them.


Doug Reuben             [e-mail]             (203) 499 -
5221
Interpage Network Services Group
E-Mail/Telnet Gateway to Faxes, Alpha and/or Numeric Pagers.

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

Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 17:54:56 +0000
From: [e-mail]
Subject: DQDB and SMDS


Greetings to all,

Can anybody explaine me what the difference and/or connection is
between DQDB (Distributed-Queue dual-bus) and SMDS (Switched
Multi-Megabit Data Service).


Many thanks in advance,

Kristoff Bonne, BelgaCom IS/TeLaNet           netwerk planning en -
beheer
(C=BE;A=RTT;P=RTTIPC;S=Bonne;G=Kristoff)      fax         :  +32 2
2025497
[e-mail]    voice mail  :  +32 70
615492

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

From: [e-mail] (Paul D. Guthrie)
Subject: Looking For X.25 Concentrator
Date: 9 Jan 1995 12:37:06 GMT
Organization: Vorpal Software


I'm looking for a piece of equipment that I can best term as an X.25
concentrator.  I have a need to connect a number (4 would be good) of
X.25 host connections at low speeds (up to 56K) into a single X.25
host connection (again low speed - 56K).  I can't use stat muxs, etc,
because I need a single X.25 channel at the other end.  I don't really
term this as a switch because I will only be making calls from one
direction, from the individual ports to the "multiplexed" port.  In
theory, this should be simple to do because there is no address
resolution to be done (any inbound call goes out a single port).  This
is essentially to support a multidrop X.25 type setup for devices that
do not support multidrop X.25.

Has anyone seen something that can do the above?  Price is important
because I would buy quite a few.  I've looked at low end switches,
such as the Netrix series 100, but at $4K approx entry price, this is
a little too pricy for the small amount of functionality I am looking
for.

Please email any suggestions.


Paul Guthrie   [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 06:26:20 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Linc Madison)
Subject: Wireless CO's Challenge New NPAs?


In some of the recent discussions of the swarm of new area codes
coming this year, I've seen notations that the wireless companies are
challenging plans to move wireless services (cellular, beepers, etc.)
into an overlay area code.  The challenges are being made to the state
regulators and/or to the FCC.

My question is, on what grounds are they challenging the overlays?  It
seems to me that the tariffs have always been pretty clear that the
telco does not in any way guarantee that you will be able to keep a
given number or area code.

It seems to me that the wireless companies are being very silly in
fighting the new area codes.

One of the places where I saw such a footnote on the area code list
was Chicago, where 630 was supposed to enter service yesterday with
wireless services from 708, but the wireless companies are fighting
it.  What is the status?  Is 630 up and running or delayed?


Linc Madison  *  Oakland, California  *  [e-mail]



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 630 was put in service over the
weekend,
although I don't think there are any subscribers in that 'area code'
yet. The wireless people are fighting it because they say it will
impose
a hardship on just their customers who will *always* have to dial an
eleven digit number to call elsewhere in what is essentially one large
metro area. On the other hand the people in 312 or 708 will
presumeably
be able to dial seven digits for many/most of their calls, needing
only
to go eleven digits when calling the other code or *any* wireless
number.

So the wireless people are saying let's spread the grief out equally
among everyone. If necessary, divide northern Illinois in three parts
(in place of the present two) and have a more or less equal
distribution
of 312/708/630 (and of course bits of 815, but not many) among both
land
line and wireless customers. The last report I recieved early Monday
was
that Ameritech has agreed to put 'some of' the new subscribers
'beginning
next year sometime' in 708 into 630. They have not said what
communities
will be affected. They did say all existing 708 subscribers would be
grandfathered 'if they wanted it' in 708. It will probably be one of
those
deals where if you move then you lose your grandfather status and wind
up
in 630. I can't really say for sure. No one has contacted me about
changing
the 708 number on my pager, and the local Radio Shack manager says no
one
at the pager or cellular offices he works with have told him very much
about
giving out 630 numbers ... yet here it is the day after it has
officially
been started. The local RS guy does not sell that many pagers or cell
phones so that may be why. He said they told him next time he calls in
to
get a new subscriber turned on they will 'probably' give him a 630
number.

My feeling is you won't see much activity out of 630 for several
months
to a year. I tried a few known cellular exchanges at random just now
with
630 as the area code; every single one was intercepted 'not in
service'.
However 630-555-1212 *is* working; at least I *think* I reached it as
dialed ... she told me she was in downtown Chicago (312)!  It could be
the local central office plucked it away when it saw the 630-555 and
simply handed me to local directory assistance.    PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V15 #17
*****************************