TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Jan 93 01:45:00 CST Volume 13 : Issue 23 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: Sprint 800 Residential (Gary Morris) Re: Sprint 800 Residential (Steve Elias) Re: 800 Numbers and Live ANI Advice Sought (Pat Turner) Re: New Call Feature (was Sad to Say, Telemarketing Works) (Steve Forrette) Re: Mission Impossible: IBT Getting My Order Correct (Dave Niebuhr) Re: More Idiocy From GTE (Charles Mattair) Re: Intra-lata LD and COCOTs (Matt Healy) Re: Wanted: List of Active & Proposed Undersea Cables Worldwide (S. Loftus) Re: Sad to Say, Telemarketing Works (Matt Healy) Re: Bell Canada Calling Card Fraud (Eric R. Skinner) Re: Another Payphone Mystery? (David Esan) Re: Panasonic KXT-123211 Software (Phil Wherry) Re: Baby Bell Breakups (John Higdon) Re: Frequently Asked Questions re Telecom Stuff (Don McKillican) Re: Suggestions Wanted For Phone Device to Restrict Toll Charges (Klossner) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: garym@telesoft.com (Gary Morris @pulsar) Subject: Re: Sprint 800 Residential Organization: Alsys Group, San Diego, CA, USA Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 00:40:32 GMT In jongsma@esseye.si.com (Ken Jongsma) writes: > About a month ago, a Sprint rep called and asked if I wanted to try > Sprint's Residential 800 service... They offered to waive the installation > charge as well as the monthly service charge for the first six months... > I'm confused about the monthly service charge. I thought the rep said > it was $5 a month, ... I also signed up to try this out. I was told the monthly charge would be $5, and that after the 6 month free trial (except for usage), that if we had at least $45 per quarter in usage charges then we would not be charged the monthly $5 charge after that, just usage charges. I haven't had any wrong numbers yet but have only had it for about two weeks. Gary Morris Internet: garym@telesoft.com Ada Software Development UUCP: uunet!telesoft!garym Alsys West (TeleSoft) Phone: +1 619-457-2700 San Diego, CA, USA Fax: +1 619-452-2117 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Sprint 800 Residential Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 07:52:48 PST From: Steve Elias I used Sprint 800, a few years before this "Sprint residential" thang became available. The wrong numbers were quite annoying, Get ready for lots more. Some telemarketers are slimy enough to demon dial 800 numbers trying to sell fax toner paper, etc. I now use MCI residential 800. Their security code feature is a Good Thing for residential use. eli ------------------------------ From: turner@Dixie.Com Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 00:05 EST Subject: Re: 800 Numbers and Live ANI Advice Sought Reply-To: turner@dixie.com The Moderator wrote a good comment, but I thought I would add a few things. Since mail to Greg seems to bounce, I'll reply to the Digest. As Pat stated 800 service with Real Time ANI is available from the big three. As far as I know this always involves a dedicated trunk to their POP. AT&T is the least flexible, offering to deliver it only out of band with PRI ISDN. At one time this required a AT&T switch, now I suspect their are other peices of CPE equipiment that will handle it. Coastcom makes a channel bank just for 800 service, though I don't know if it will dump the ANI data out a RS-232/V.35 port or not. I would imagine that as AT&T complies with the newer ISDN-1 standards, most any PBX could handle it. The AT&T service is called INFO-2 and is part of their Megacom service. The ANI delivery adds $.02/call up to a limit, past which it is $.01/call. Sprint will deliver ANI with in band MF and MCI will deliver it with your choice of MF or DTMF. If you can't deal with a T span, any dumb channel bank will do. The extra DS0's can be used to taste to joys of LEC bypass. Pat Turner KB4GRZ turner@dixie.com ------------------------------ From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette) Subject: Re: New Call Feature (was Sad to Say, Telemarketing Works) Date: 13 Jan 1993 09:32:06 GMT Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA With the upcoming introduction of Caller ID in Washington State, I've been evaluating how I will put it to use to screen calls at home. Since the WA implementation will include calling name delivery, as well as calling number, I've thought of what I think is a clever way to differentiate business callers from residential callers. Any number that's not in my local database can have each word of the calling name run against an English dictionary. Business names are quite likely to have one or more words of the directory listing in the dictionary, whereas residential listings are likely to have no parts in the dictionary. While not perfect, this in combination with rejecting private calls, as well as a local database of known numbers, should work quite well at filtering out the junk. To get fancy, I could always allow calls from names that contain "police", "fire", etc. Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 09:01:22 EST From: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (Dave Niebuhr) Subject: Re: Mission Impossible: IBT Getting My Order Correct My latest NYTel bill showed a number 890-6611 that I could call for repair service in addition to 611 (I think that's the way it goes). Quite by accident a few months ago, I found that 890-XXXX is a NYTel exchange in each area code. The XXXX varies by area code for the same office. An example is 890-1100 for the billing office in area code 516, but not in area code 212. Dave Niebuhr Internet: niebuhr@bnl.gov / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973 (516)-282-3093 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 09:58:30 CST From: mattair@sun44.synercom.hounix.org (Charles Mattair) Subject: Re: More Idiocy From GTE Organization: Synercom Technology, Inc., Houston, TX On 28 Dec 92 15:07:25 GMT, mattair@sun44.synercom.hounix.org (Charles Mattair) said: > As I'm at a friend's house, I decide to put the call on calling > card. 102880+10D. GTE. Huh...? I know this is intralata > but I told them to use AT&T. They can't override my choice of carrier > can they? Try it again except as 102880+7D (713 has gone 1/0+10D on > all LD calls but who knows what GTE is doing). GTE. > Call the operator to see whats going on - it should work, you must be > misdialing, etc. > Finally, in disgust, 1028800. AT&T. Placed the call and nobody > answered :-( Several people sent me Email suggesting this is proper and expected behaviour on the part of GTE. After doing some checking, I think is more a case of permissible (sp?) behaviour. SWB appears to always hand off -- I have started using 102881+ on all intralata calls from my house; an examinination of my last three phone bills shows 0 LD routed thru SWB. SWB will even hand off within the Houston EMS. A call from my house to 713 288 -- both ends within the EMS (288 is a non-EMS exchange) routes thru AT&T which curiously enough is tariffed for the call. Calls to AT&T indicated they see both types of behaviour: the LEC reserving LD service for intralata (GTE) and the other as I see with SWB. Indicentally, this whole mess started when I found out SWB charges 35 cents versus AT&Ts 22 cents for an intralata call I make a lot. Charles Mattair mattair@synercom.hounix.org Any opinions offered are my own and do not reflect those of my employer. ------------------------------ From: matt@wardsgi.med.yale.edu (Matt Healy) Subject: Re: Intra-lata LD and COCOTs Organization: Yale U. - Genetics Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 19:15:31 GMT In article , Jay.Ashworth@f8649. n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Jay Ashworth) wrote: > Since these phones automagically route LD calls to the phone owner's > preferred AOS/IXC, (which I'm told is no longer illegal), _all_ calls > go there. Even calls that would normally go through the LEC. > Is there an equal access code that routes calls through whatever LEC > owns the line? Or specific ones for each LEC -- although I suspect that > would be impossible to administer. I also would like to know if there's any such code! Recently I was in an airport whose LD carrier was not AT&T. I wanted to make a short (about 100 km) toll call. When I tried 10-ATT-0 I got a recording saying this call cannot be carried by AT&T, I suppose because they are not allowed to handle intra-LATA calls. The phone would not accept my AT&T card when I dialed 0-xxx-xxx-xxxx or 0-xxx-xxxx. I had to dial 0-0 and tell a human operator the number I was calling and my AT&T card number. Matt Healy matt@wardsgi.med.yale.edu ------------------------------ From: George Loftus Subject: Re: Wanted: List of Active and Proposed Undersea Cables Worldwide Date: 12 Jan 1993 19:16:36 GMT Organization: Brown University - CIS In article Frank Vance, airgun!fvance@ uunet.UU.NET writes: > I am looking for a list of all the intercontenental undersea cables, > both active and proposed. I would like to know such things as > capacity, ownership, and where the cable terminates. ------------------------------ From: matt@wardsgi.med.yale.edu (Matt Healy) Subject: Re: Sad to Say, Telemarketing Works Organization: Yale University--Genetics Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 23:19:33 GMT > BTW, Some mail carriers will not deliver 4th class junk if you ask > them, but it is illegal for them to not deliver it. In my apartment building, there's a bin next to the mailboxes where the carrier puts all "extremely obvious" junk mail (ie, 27 identical envelopes arriving bulk rate to various apartments). Every couple of days it gets emptied of anything nobody has claimed. May not be technically legal, but it sure is handy. How I wish junk phone calls were so easily screened! Matt Healy matt@wardsgi.med.yale.edu ------------------------------ From: ers@XGML.COM (Eric R. Skinner) Subject: Re: Bell Canada Calling Card Fraud Organization: Exoterica Corporation Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 18:07:16 -0500 In article Tony Harminc writes: > But note that Bell Canada is disallowing such calls to all foreign > countries except the United States. They are not picking a small (and > troublesome) subset as AT&T seems to have done. I think it would be > pretty hard to make a case of discrimination against everyone except > American immigrants. > [Moderator's Note: Are you *positive* that if you try to use a Bell > Canada card on a call to the UK, Australia or New Zealand it won't go > through? Forget what their literature says for a moment and try it. > If it does go through on the card, then the very same situation exists > in Canada as here: discrimination against what you term a 'troublesome > subset' Just two weeks ago I tried calling Australia from a payphone in downtown Toronto; I got the familiar "bong", and punched in my card number. After a few seconds, an operator came on the line, asked me for my number again, then told me that I was unable to make a call to Australia using my card. I tried a few minutes later from a business line at a nearby office and it went through fine. On Bell Canada's new "Millenium" phones which have a card swipe slot, the LED display has been running a message lately to the effect that International calling card calls should be prefixed with "011" instead of the usual "01". I don't know why ... Eric R. Skinner ers@xgml.com Exoterica Corporation Tel +1 613 722 1700 Ottawa, Canada Fax +1 613 722 5706 [Moderator's Note: '011' is for direct-dial international calls and '01' is for operator-assisted international calls, i.e. collect, credit card, third-number billing, etc. Anyway, if calls to other countries are disallowed using calling cards from payphones, why did the operator bother asking you to repeat the number? What difference would it have made if she understood it correctly the first time or not since the call would not be allowed anyway? PAT] ------------------------------ From: de@moscom.com (David Esan) Subject: Re: Another Payphone Mystery? Date: 12 Jan 93 19:40:13 GMT Organization: Moscom Corporation, Pittsford NY In article schmidt@auvax1.adelphi.edu (JOHN SCHMIDT) writes: > I recently visited my Alma Mater, WPI in Worcester, Mass. (A/C 508). > When I got there, I wanted to call my mother in Ahmerst Mass. > (413-253****).