Software Vault: The Diamond Collection/The Diamond Collection (Software Vault)(Digital Impact).ISO/cdr16/tc15_059.zip/TC15-059.TXT

Text File | 1995-01-31 | 24KB | 571 lines

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 24 Jan 95 15:15:00 CST    Volume 15 : Issue 59

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

 **REMAILED SINCE VARIOUS READERS REPORTED NOT RECEIVING THIS ISSUE
WHEN**
 **FIRST MAILED ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON. IF DUPLICATE TO YOU, PLEASE
DISGARD**

    Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (John Lundgren)
    Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (G. Straughn)
    Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Ed Goldgehn)
    Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Judith Oppenheimer)
    Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Barry Margolin)
    Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Peter Knoppers)
    Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Paul Houle)
    Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? (John Dearing)
    Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? (John Lundgren)
    Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book? (John Levine)

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

From: [e-mail] (John Lundgren)
Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs
Date: 24 Jan 1995 15:08:11 GMT
Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network


Pete Norloff ([e-mail]) wrote:

> I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance
fees
> between long distance carriers and the RBOCs.  I've found casual
> references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the
> RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance
> calls and keep 50% for themselves.  This 25% was referred to as
> something like "line termination charges".  It's the payment to the
> local carrier for connecting one end of the call.

I heard somewhere that this might have something to do with the number
of connections that the RBOC supplies.  There don't have to be as many
connections to the long distance carriers as there are subscribers.

> I'm hoping to find an authoritative reference to help me in an
> argument with a Bell Atlantic engineer.  This engineer believes that
> Bell Atlantic is providing the terminating end of long distance
calls
> to the long distance carriers for free.

I know I'm paying something like $3.50 a month to be connected to the
LD carriers.  At one time, it was something like $2, and was upped to
$3.50.  Maybe the difference at one time was paid by the LD carriers
but it was later shifted to the subscribers.  I think it had something
to do with the old AT&T Long Lines high profits funding the local
exchanges (before breakup).

I know that my next bill will have another couple bucks added to the
basic service charges to make up for the money lost from letting the
LD carriers compete for intraLATA toll calls.  That's going to make a
lot of old ladies unhappy.  I'm not pleased about it either, but I can
afford it.  Our district, with $30K bill, will be getting a four
percent
raise.  That's about $1200 a month.  I guess I should be happy.  But
the Pac Bell reps say that it will be a wash when the toll rates are
factored in.  Hmmm.

> Anyone have any information on this topic?

Just mostly rumor and hearsay, and a decade of faded memories.


John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs
Rancho Santiago Community College District
17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706
[e-mail]\[e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (g straughn)
Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 09:40:06 -0800
Organization: BEST Internet [phone]


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] wrote:

> I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance
fees
> between long distance carriers and the RBOCs.  I've found casual
> references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the
> RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance
> calls and keep 50% for themselves.  This 25% was referred to as
> something like "line termination charges".  It's the payment to the
> local carrier for connecting one end of the call.

In California, Pacific Bell charges $0.0142 per minute of "terminating
access" to all IEC's, this rate is regulated at the FCC and I suspect
Bell
Atlantic has a similar tariff on file at the FCC.


Greg S.

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

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 00:37:58 -0500
From: Fred R. Goldstein <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs


[e-mail] (Pete Norloff) asks,
> I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance
fees
> between long distance carriers and the RBOCs.  I've found casual
> references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the
> RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance
> calls and keep 50% for themselves.  This 25% was referred to as
> something like "line termination charges".  It's the payment to the
> local carrier for connecting one end of the call.

In the olden days (before 1984's FCC-mandated rules change, which
coincidentally was the same time as the Bell breaksup), there were
"separations and settlements" in which the overall toll revenues were
divided based upon a complex formula.  Nowadays, the local companies
use certain formulas to justify the rates they charge for "access" by
LD carriers.  When an inter-LATA call is carried from and/or to a
local carrier, the inter-LATA carrier pays a tariffed rate.

The last time I looked, the lowest rates were just over 3c/minute for
either the originating or terminating end (thus over 6c/minute for
both ends), but up to around 5c/minute for some telcos.  There may
also be a distance charge for intra-LATA calling TO the carrier's POP;
typically this is 1/100 of a cent per minute per mile.  That's their
real "toll" cost base!

In a few obscure cases (very small telcos) the price can be much
higher, so the interexchange carrier is guaranteed to lose money on
it.  (America's Network columnist Art Brothers owns one such telco,
Beehive Tel in Utah, which has extremely high costs and thus can
charge something like 90c/minute to terminate calls there.)

If a customer has direct access to an interexchange carrier switch
(say, a T1 into the POP), thus not using (let's not use the "b word",
bypass, here) the local Bell's switched network, the fee is avoided.
Most big 800 numbers work that way, so only the consumer (caller) end
invokes a Bell charge.

The flip side is that for intra-LATA toll calls, a customer who hooks
up as a carrier gets a lower price (3-5c/minute) than almost anybody's
intra-LATA WATS rate.  This is not impossible for a large user
(there's a game called "rusty switch" in case you need to leave the
LATA) so intra-LATA tolls are being forced down.  NYNEX, at least,
understands this and charges only around 5c/minutes for bulk business
toll, and actually encourages big users to go directly to their own
toll switches and hook up as carriers do for around 3c/minute.

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

From: [e-mail] (Ed Goldgehn)
Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs
Date: 24 Jan 1995 16:10:23 GMT
Organization: The INTERNET Connection, LLC


All fees charges for LD termination can normally be found in the
Feature Group tariffs.  Normally, LD carriers fall under (last I
heard) Feature Group 'D' tariffs due to their method of termination.
You can request a copy of these tariffs from each of the RBOC's or
from the PUC in any State.

BTW, the method of charges is entirely different for LD service in the
cellular industry.  With cellular, it is not unusual for local
cellular
carriers (RBOC's or otherwise) to provide FREE or flat rate
termination
charges to LD carriers.


Ed Goldgehn                           E-Mail:  [e-mail]
Sr. Vice President                    Voice:   [phone]
Open Communication Networks, Inc.     Fax:     [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Judith Oppenheimer)
Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs
Date: 24 Jan 1995 13:56:27 -0500
Organization: Interactive CallBrand(TM)


Pete, you're absolutely right and this is a GIANT issue and always has
been.  This is known as "access charges" and is a basic feature of the
phone charges.  WHY DO YOU THINK THE LD CARRIERS ARE SO INTERESTED IN
WIRELESS?  It bypasses the local access charges and they keep the
whole banana.  This is a major threat to Local that is struggling
anyway.  This is the most likely reason RBOC's will get relief against
the prohibition on doing long distance.  Because:

1.  Technically LD carriers will be providing local service
which is  prohibited too.

2.  Local Service providers will have to jack up rates to
survive and that angers users who for the most part don't make
long distance calls (95% of all  traffic is local, 40% of LD is
to 800 numbers.)

3.  The local rates have already been jacked up because those
companies have lost the off setting revenue they use to get from LD
before divestature, so angry localities are demanding competition for
local service just like there is competition for LD.  To do that would
drive prices down even further and really kill the RBOC's.

4.  Local's revenue stream is from access charges.  To their benefit
though, they do get the fee even if the call isn't completed.

RBOC's will have to be allowed to do long distance, provide
information services, provide video delivery and anything else they
can to off set lost access charges.


Judith  Oppenheimer, [e-mail]

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

From: Barry Margolin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money?
Date: 24 Jan 1995 11:15:26 -0500
Organization: NEARnet, Cambridge, MA


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Michael P. Deignan) writes:

> Can you really say when a fraudulent call is placed that the loss is
> $.50?  Not really. Loss implies that you're depriving the company of
> something that they otherwise couldn't sell. In a cell call case,
its
> bandwidth.  Unless bandwidth is saturated, the "fraudulent" cell
call
> is simply using unoccupied bandwidth that would simply be assigned
to
> a legit call.

It's not quite that simple.  Telecommunications providers generally
engineer their network so that the bandwidth should never be
saturated;
it's common to target something like 40-60% load.  So if fraudulent
calls increase the load on the network, the carrier will have to
increase the capacity to accomodate it.  This costs money, but because
the calls are fraudulent there's no corresponding income to pay for
it.  This is precisely the same as any other kind of theft: the vendor
fails to receive income when someone gets something that the vendor
paid for.


Barry Margolin   BBN Internet Services Corp.  [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Peter Knoppers)
Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money?
Date: 24 Jan 1995 13:37:18 GMT
Organization: Delft University of Technology, Dept. of Electrical
Engineering


The preceding discussion compared cellular fraud with making illegal
copies of software or tapping the signals from the cable television
company. I believe that those cannot be compared because cellular
phone facilities and the cable television signals can easily be pro-
tected from fraud or theft without hampering the legitimate users,
unlike software, where copy-protection invariably reduces the use-
fullness and attractiveness of the product.

A cellular phone or cable television facility is a product that has
value. Protection from fraud is technically feasible and affordable
and does not reduce the usefullness of the system. (In fact increased
protection from fraud _increases_ the attractiveness by reducing the
probability that customers are billed for calls that they did not
make.)

The fact that the providers of cellular phone systems do not protect
their product suggests that said providers make more profit from the
product in its current state than they would if the product was
adequately protected. The legitimate users pay part of the cost of
the fraud. More is paid by the taxpayers through the provision of
police and justice systems that track down and prosecute phreakers.

Using taxpayer's money to track down and prosecute phreakers should
stop until the providers of cellular phone systems add _reasonable_
protection from fraud to their product. Customers of those cellular
phone companies (should) know that each bill must be scrutinized and
anticipate to dispute billing errors. If they do not want the hassle,
customers should select a provider that has a better product.

Cable companies can protect their product from unauthorised use (i.e.
theft) at a reasonable price without hampering legitimate users.
Regretfully, software producers do not have this luxury, therefore it
is acceptable that software producers rely (in part) on the police and
justice systems to control illegal copying.

Generally, everyone is obliged to make a reasonable effort to protect
his or her products and properties from theft, vandalism or misuse.
The police and justice systems are public services for cases where
reasonable protection fails, or is impossible.


Peter Knoppers - [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Paul Houle)
Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money?
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 22:12:09 -0500
Organization: Cornell University


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does it matter, Paul?  Does it really
> matter?  Should stealing someone's 'profits' be any less severe an
> offense than stealing their actual cash? You may not be condoning
cell-
> ular phone fraud, but you sure know how to speak the language of the
> phreaks and hackers.]

       I think it does matter, because when companies hue and cry
about fictional losses they add to the cloud of media distorsions
about technology.

       To take an example, a friend of mine brought an AP story to my
attention today about an "attack" on the internet that makes it
possible for people to "steal information" and makes it sound like it
is a really great crisis that is a fantastic threat to the
"information
superhighway", that people are going to tap future commerical traffic
on the internet to steal credit card numbers and so forth.

       Now it's certainly true that people are doing things like this,
but
our beef with the article is that this has been going on as long as
there
has been an internet,  as long as we've had data networks,  and that
it's
something that we're going to live with as long as we have data
networks.
The media plays up particular incidents as if they were world
shattering,
as if they were warning us that there is a band of cocaine-crazed
Lybian
terrorists hiding an atomic bomb in somebody's basement,  instead of
recognizing individual network 'incidents',  computer viruses and so
forth
as rather common events:  not any more newsworthy in themselves then
would
be individual muggings in central park.

       What the media ought to be doing is to put electronic
intrusion,
vandalism and crime into context, how this is a problem inherent in
our social organization and technology and that it's something that we
have to find ways to live with, instead of something that we should be
cowering in fear about.

       Similarly, every few months, some paper somewhere prints a
story about the discovery of a "vast pornographic computer network"
with 8 million users, thousands of sites and so forth.  That's right,
somebody just stumbled onto the alt.sex hierarchy or a secret cache of
porno GIF's, so now your local paper prints that the local research

·
university has not only been corrupted by post-modernist
deconstructionalist
Marxist English professors, but adding insult to injury, is part of an
international porn conspiracy called USENET.  There's no mention, of
course, that you can also read comp.dcom.telecom,
rec.arts.startrek.tech,
sci.chemistry, comp.os.  linux.announce, or even alt.angst!  [Except
of course, when an AT&T PR man told the media that people from the
"network" (meaning comp.dcom.telecom) who were communicating and
complaining about the USA Today 800/900 incident were people who were
interested in "getting something for nothing".  (Remember that Pat?)]

        More recently, we can consider media coverage of the Canter &
Siegel affair, heroes of the {Wall Street Journal} editorial page
right up
there with Milton Freedman, Arthur Laffer and Margaret Thatcher.

        It hurts the electronic community when software publishers
wildly overestimate their "losses" due to software piracy.  It leads
to alarmism, crippled shareware, and looses dongle-peddling charlatans
on the street.  [Why don't dongle ads show the twenty-odd dongles that
you'd have hanging off your parallel port if every software publisher
used dongles?  A fellow worker had what amounted to a cute little CNC
milling machine that cut traces out of circuit boards; it was
controlled
by a propreitary piece of software that ran on an IBM PC -- and even
though the software was only useful to control a piece of hardware
manufactured by one company, it was still "protected" with a dongle!]

        Digital storage and communications create a crisis in
intellectual
property, this is a technological fact.  Our society needs to find
some way
to protect the rights of people that produce information products and
those that use them -- and when industry screams like chicken little
about hypothetical losses, it doesn't help us think clearly about the
problem.

        It is the same thing with the cellular phone companies; the
problem
of cellular phone fraud is real; but if they want the public
[including the
police, regulators, etc] to be part of the solution, they'd best come
clean
about the economics of cellular phones.

        ObAnswer: To directly address Paul Robinson's question, I had
the impression that an awful lot of cellular phone phraud is directed
out-of-the-country, particularly to third-world countries that have
absurdly high phone rates.  According to a phriend, a cloned phone is
typically going to cost an "end user" something in the $100-$300
range, though people sometimes program phones for less (like $50 or
so); you have to talk a ~long~ time to justify that cost making local
and long distance calls in the US.  Compare this to a typical cost of
$8 or so for a code.

        Unless Colombian Dial-a-Druglord and Bangladesh Telegraph and
Telephone are remarkably forgiving, I think cellular phone carriers
~are~ paying for those calls.

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

From: [e-mail] (John Dearing)
Subject: Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference?
Date: 24 Jan 1995 04:40:12 GMT
Organization: Netaxs Internet BBS and Shell Accounts


Alan Jackson ([e-mail]) wrote:

> What's the difference between the two as far as the user is
concerned?

In a word, SPEED.

In another word, COST.

T1 gives you a 1.544MB/sec circuit. T3 is a 45MB/sec circuit. The
prices for the terminal gear that goes on the end of a T1 have come
down a lot over the last few years as more companies start using T1's.

The end user market for T3 terminal gear is still pretty small (but
growing). One application (besides Internet backbone trunks) that is
pushing the use of T3's is full-motion commercial broadcast quality
video conferencing.


John Dearing   [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (John Lundgren)
Subject: Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference?
Date: 24 Jan 1995 00:04:16 GMT
Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network


Alan Jackson ([e-mail]) wrote:

> What's the difference between the two as far as the user is
concerned?

^$$^  Bye-bye!

Lotsa difference in $.  If you can't afford either one, why bother to
ask  ...

Don't quote me on this, but I think there's a difference of 28 times
the data thruput between them.  T-3 = 28 T-1's and then some.


John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs
Rancho Santiago Community College District
17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706
[e-mail]\[e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (John Levine)
Subject: Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book?
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 02:56:14 GMT


> A typical phone book with both white and yellow pages has a
> map with a large white area surrounding a smaller yellow area.
> What is this map trying to tell me?

Around here, NYNEX makes big bucks by having zillions of different
Yellow Pages, far more than they have white pages.  For example, the
West Suburban white pages are available by themselves, or bound with
three different sets of yellow pages for subareas of the area covered
by the white pages.  So the map means what it seems to, the white
pages cover a larger area than the yellow pages.


Regards,

John Levine, [e-mail]
Primary perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies"

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

End of TELECOM Digest V15 #59
*****************************