TELECOM Digest Mon, 18 Jan 93 23:47:20 CST Volume 13 : Issue 31 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Re: What is Tariff 12 (or is it 11)? (John R. Levine) Re: What is Tariff 12 (or is it 11)? (Dave Levenson) Re: What is Tariff 12 (or is it 11)? (Andy Sherman) Re: What is Tariff 12 (or is it 11)? (Lars Poulsen) Re: Apartment Security Stupidity (Nelson Bolyard) Re: Apartment Security Stupidity (Peter Sleggs) Re: Apartment Security Stupidity (ronnie@media.mit.edu) Re: Phonejak Transmission System (Mike Baptiste) Re: Phonejak Transmission System (Brad S. Hicks) Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ... (Ron Heiby) Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ... (Alex Pournelle) Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ... (Chuck Munro) Re: Sad to Say, Telemarketing Works (Richard Nash) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: What is Tariff 12 (or is it 11)? Organization: I.E.C.C. Date: 18 Jan 93 20:28:48 EST (Mon) From: johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) Hi, it's me again. Tariff 12 is how AT&T cuts special deals with big customers. All of their LD offerings have to be tariffed, but under tariff 12 they make up plans customized to large clients. For example, if they were making a pitch for DEC's business, they'd make a tariff 12 offering for so many leased lines from Maynard to the rest of the world, so much VPN, so much this, and so much that, with pricing determined in some way. They publish it under t-12 and after a short delay to allow for objections to be filed, it goes into effect and the customer buys it. I suppose that if you happened to have the exact same telecom needs as a t-12 customer, you too could buy it under the same terms. In reality, the main point is that it requires AT&T to disclose the special deals they make with large customers so the competition can object if it's predatory and no doubt try to go in and undercut them. Something that may or may not be related is the aggregator business. AT&T has a standard tariff in which many locations get service with the rates determined by the total of all the locations, but bills sent to each location individually, designed for large companies with decentralized accounting. But since resale of LD telephone service is allowed, Fred's Fone Co. can buy service with this deal and then resell it to lots of unrelated companies, with AT&T still billing each location direct and Fred keeping part of the difference between the aggregate rate and the POTS rate. On the one hand, AT&T isn't crazy about having all of the Freds selling their service, since these companies tend to be sort of sleazy and unstable. But on the other hand, this is a way that they can offer competitive rates for companies smart enough to know that POTS is overpriced but not big enough to be worth t-12. I suppose that a really big aggregator could try and cut a t-12 deal of their own, but I'm sure MCI would scream bloody murder. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: What is Tariff 12 (or is it 11)? Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 14:41:05 GMT Tariff 12 describes AT&T's quantity-discount service. It is offered to selected huge companies which spend millions on communications services, and provides very deep discounts. If you happen to be General Motors, American Airlines, or perhaps John Higdon, ask how much you could save on your long distance bill if you want _lots_ of talk time! Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave Warren, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jan 93 23:01:20 EST Organization: Salomon Inc, Rutherford NJ Subject: Re: What is Tariff 12 (or is it 11)? From: andys@internet.sbi.com (Andy Sherman) On 15 Jan 93 00:15:51 GMT, FZC@CU.NIH.GOV (Paul Robinson) said: > AT&T has a special schedule for some customers, which apparently the > customers love and AT&T's competitors hate. I was wondering what it > was. > The name of the schedule is either the infamous "Tariff 11" or "Tariff > 12". It's Tariff 12, and yes, big customers love it and (usually) the competition hates it. Tariff 12 offerings are how AT&T puts together special package deals for big customers. Say you're a big firm and want to bundle a whole lot of various voice and data services together. So you go to MCI or Sprint and they offer you a special deal, just for you. They you comparison shop and go to AT&T. So they offer you a special deal that's maybe a little sweeter than MCI's or Sprint's. *However*, AT&T cannot offer that special deal to just you. No indeed, AT&T is the only player in this game who is still regulated and must file tariffs with the FCC for every price change, and AT&T is not allowed to wheel and deal just for you. But, the FCC lets AT&T go after your business by making sure that anybody buying the same particular bundle of services that you are buying can get the same deal you got. AT&T files a new schedule under Tariff 12 that covers your deal. In the unlikely event somebody can actually use your deal, they can get your deal, since it's tariffed. So, by continually amending Tariff 12, AT&T can meet price competition. Needless to say, the competition is often heard objecting to Tariff 12 filings, since their belief in free markets seems to be limited to their own pricing, not AT&T's. Most of the time the Tariff 12's go through, although recently either the FCC or the courts decided that 800 services could not be bundled into a Tariff 12 offering. (Seems bizarre to me, but hey, what do I know?) Oh yes one other interesting and little known postscript. (BTW, This is *NOT* proprietary information from my AT&T days, it was in the media at the time, but nobody remembers this stuff). Among AT&T's Tariff 12 customers is none other than, (Pat, a drum roll please), ....................... MCI. No fooling. Andy Sherman Salomon Inc - Unix Systems Support - Rutherford, NJ (201) 896-7018 - andys@sbi.com or asherman@sbi.com "These opinions are mine, all *MINE*. My employer can't have them." [Moderator's Note: Do you recall what it is that MCI purchases from AT&T under Tariff 12? Some international circuits to places MCI does not cover, perhaps? PAT] ------------------------------ From: lars@spectrum.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: What is Tariff 12 (or is it 11)? Organization: CMC Network Systems (Rockwell DCD), Santa Barbara, CA, USA Date: Mon, 18 Jan 93 05:52:27 GMT In article TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM writes: > AT&T has a special schedule for some customers, which apparently the > customers love and AT&T's competitors hate. I was wondering what it > was. AT&T is recognized by FCC as "the dominant Inter-Exchange Carrier" and subject to stricter regulations than other carriers, such as MCI or Sprint. In effect, all of AT&T's pricing must be in accordance with published tariffs, approved by the FCC. Occasionally, however, a large customer comes along, who "deserves" special discounts. The deal is worked out ... and then it is written up in the same kind of anonymous-but-specific language that will be familiar to those of you who have read the fine print in the federal tax code (Like how all real property must be depreciated over 20 years except for football stadiums in cities between one and three million west of the Mississippi which started construction during August of 1990; those can be written off over three years ... while this example is fictitious, you'd be surprised at how blatant much of this is). Tariff 12 is a collection of all the special deals, described in anonymous detail. "Regardless of other tariffs, the following rates apply to business with 1000 to 1195 trunks and a call volume of 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 million minutes per day where less than 65% of the call minutes are within the greater New York City Standard Metropolitan Area ....". In the last couple of years, courts have forced AT&T to honor these tariffs whenever somebody else could match the published descriptions, and creative resellers have put together aggregation packages based on these deals. AT&T of course want to see the tariff 12 rules replaced by a simple statement to the effect that "other tariffs notwithstanding, the company shall be free to offer such discounts as it shall deem necessary to secure important customers"; this is essentially the rule under which MCI or Sprint operates. It is fair to allow sweetheart deals? I guess it depends on your political attitudes. Personally, I think we all would be better off, if the system had a mild bias in favor of "the little guy". Thus, I think it is reasonable to place more restrictions on the dominant carrier. I also think the obligation to publish the sweetheart deal and offer the same terms to any customer in similar circumstances is reasonable. Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer Internet E-mail: lars@CMC.COM CMC Network Products / Rockwell Int'l Telephone: +1-805-968-4262 Santa Barbara, CA 93117-3083 TeleFAX: +1-805-968-8256 ------------------------------ From: nelson@bolyard.wpd.sgi.com (Nelson Bolyard) Subject: Re: Apartment Security Stupidity Date: 18 Jan 1993 11:05:25 GMT Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA One of my wife's relatives lives in an apartment building with an entry control device similar to the one described in the cited article. When we went to visit her, we followed the instructions on the intercom box, and dialed her three-digit apartment number on what was obviously a pay-phone keypad, and waited for her to grant entry. We then listened as the device obtained dial tone, and dialed a phone number using touch tone dialing. We heard the phone ringing, and heard her answer her phone, obviously not knowing we were at her doorstep. When she told us she'd unlock the door for us, we could hear a touch tone on the intercom at the same time the door lock buzzed. My first thought was that perhaps a "bad guy" with a "pocket dialer" device (capable of producing the usual 12 dialing tones) could also gain entry, even against the occupant's will. Later in our visit we learned that this device is not only used by visitors but also by the residents of the apartment building (which has roughly 30 apartments) themselves to enter to the building. This is done by pressing the * or # key on the outside keypad, followed by the resident's "password" which (I learned) is set by the apartment manager to the last four digits of the resident's phone number. A listing of the occupants' names and apartment numbers appeared on the front of the intercom box, and it would seem that this information plus a phone book should suffice to grant entry to anyone. But even without the right phone book, one can gain access pretty quickly. This device's "password" protocol does not involve entering the apartment number first, and any resident's password will work. So, given that there are 30 apartments, there are 30 combinations of four digits that will open the door. And given that less than 9000 numbers from a typical "exchange" of 10,000 are used, one has a better than one in 300 chance that any valid phone number will work. It is likely that any single page from a phone book contains a working "password". Before leaving, I advised her to keep her door deadbolted even when home, in case she received any phone calls from any unwanted visitors. Nelson Bolyard nelson@sgi.COM {decwrl,sun}!sgi!nelson Disclaimer: I do not speak for my employer. [Moderator's Note: I am rather surprised that this system actually dialed a seven-digit phone number. Most such arragements simply seize the pair at some point between the CO and the tenant to (1) temporar- ily disconnect the wire from the CO and (2) impose their own battery and ringing current on the line. Under the system where your in-law lives, call-waiting is absolutely necessary; otherwise a visitor at the door might wait a long time to reach someone if the line was busy. Better quality systems such as I described will first test for busy on the CO line (I think tip to ground or something) and if the line is busy with a call from the CO then the device puts its own call-waiting tone on the line (regardless of whether the tenant has it otherwise) and when the tenant flashes the hook, the device will put the CO on hold while connecting itself to the pair (and the tenant's phone). When the tenant either admits the guest or denies entrance, the device re-instates the CO and drops from the line ... the system has its own distintive ring of course, so the tenant knows if the incoming call is from the CO or the front door. Most lobby directories (where these systems are installed) do NOT include the tenant's apartment number in the directory ... merely the two or three digit door code. It is up to the tenant to tell guests how to get where they are going. The systems which offer 'ringback' type admission to tenants typically use a five or six digit code selected at random and changeable at will by the tenants. Even those systems still have a regular lock and key for the door to use as an override as well, and for Fire Department and/ or Post Office use. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Apartment Security Stupidity From: peters@bsc.guild.org (Peter Sleggs) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 10:10:49 -0500 Organization: Bellatrix Systems Corp., Mississauga, ONT Canada > [Moderator's Note: Illinois Bell offers apartment front door security > ... > company called 'Interphone', a division of GTE in Canada which makes > customer premises equipment which does the same thing but instead of > being in the CO is wired up at the demarc where telco's pairs meet up > with building house pairs. I'll elaborate in more detail on both > systems here if anyone is interested. PAT] Please do. Regards, Peter Bellatrix Systems Corp. Mississauga, Ontario Canada peters@bsc.guild.org or beltrix!bsc!peters [Moderator's Note: See my detailed replies in this issue. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ronnie@media.mit.edu Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 13:01:38 -0500 Subject: Re: Apartment Security Stupidity Another problem with these apartment security systems is that some of them leave the microphone on during the dialing. In some cases you can flash the switchhook, get a dialtone, and use your Radio Shack $15 tone dialer to make all the phone calls you want. My friend's building was very surprised to find several calls to expensive 900 numbers from the entry phone! Ron (ronnie@media.mit.edu) [Moderator's Note: To repeat, the better systems do NOT use dialtone from the CO. They generate their own dial tone and only get as far as the box by the basement demarc or wherever. The only calls they can make are to two, three or four digit door code numbers. Even the system from IBT which has equipment housed in the CO uses what would be better described as an 'intercom line' or maybe a special sort of centrex to operate. Those phones do not get near the network. One system I installed for a landlord here about fifteen years ago left nothing to chance. I did not even leave a receiver there for the people to get their dirty hands on. I used a speakerphone mounted in the wall behind a steel plate with touchtone buttons ... sort of like a payphone built into a wall. The touchtone buttons were steel, like the ones on payphones. There were 94 apartments, two offices for the real estate company, the quarters for the building engineer and the manager's apartment. The codes were numbered 01 through 98. They pressed '1', then the two digit code. The first digit pressed turned the speaker on. They could hear the phone ringing in the apartment they were calling, and converse with the tenant over the speakerphone which I had permanently regulated as to sound level, etc. The tenant opened the door with '14'; the digit '1' split the connection leaving the control unit listening only to the apartment. To deny entry, the tenant simply would hang up (or dial '16' to disconnect from the door and return to a call left on hold). If downstairs tried to press '14' all that happened was they cut themselves off, but otherwise, they had no control over the downstairs unit. When the apartment disconnected, the battery dropped off the line and the downstairs unit went dead. The tenants all used keys to open the door as did the postman, and the newspaper delivery man. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 19:23:00 +0000 From: Mike Baptiste Subject: Re: Phonejak Transmission Systems My parents purchased one of these sets (even though I warned them) and the sound quality on a cordless phone is noticably degraded when it is used vs a direct connection. In fact, they tried two different phones (AT&T and Uniden) with the same results. As for modem use, that wasn't tried. Using a standard phone with it worked well with very little if any sound quality problems. Mike Baptiste Bell-Northern Research RTP, North Carolina Net: baptiste@x400gate.bnr.ca My employer knows enough than to agree with my opinions! ------------------------------ From: mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=0205925@mhs.attmail.com Date: 18 Jan 93 15:10:03 GMT Subject: Re: Phonejak Transmission System? In TCD 13.22, davidm@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (David Morgenstern), asking about the Phonejak extension system, mentioned: > The company says that it will support 2400 kbaud data > transmission, ... I doubt that very much. Let's see, 2.4 million baud with trellis encoding to support 4 bits per baud, you could easily squeeze almost 10 million bits per second through that. Round off, we'll call it six and a half full T-1 trunks, or one hundred and fifty 64 kb/sec DS0 channels. Somehow I doubt that you can carry 150 full-quality phone lines as a carrier tone on top of your house electrical wiring, certainly not with such inexpensive hardware. On the other hand, you ought to be able to push 2400 bits per second through it pretty easily. I thought you BMUG guys knew your computer jargon better than that. (Somebody get this man a copy of Newton's Telecom Dictionary.) I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm being a little rough on you, but "2400 kbaud" goes way beyond the usual spelling errors. J. Brad Hicks Internet: mc!Brad_Hicks@mhs.attmail.com X.400: c=US admd=ATTMail prmd=MasterCard sn=Hicks gn=Brad ------------------------------ From: heiby@chg.mcd.mot.com (Ron Heiby) Subject: Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ... Organization: Motorola Computer Group, Schaumburg, IL Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 21:17:29 GMT Paul Robinson writes about playing tones from "Close Encounters" on a line printer. At a Comdex in Las Vegas about eight years ago, a printer company (sorry I don't remember their name) had one of their printers with the cover off and was playing *multi-part* music on it, using the print head, platen motor, print head moving motor, etc., anything that would move, buzz, beep, or otherwise make a sound. It was *very* impressive! Ron Heiby, heiby@chg.mcd.mot.com Moderator: comp.newprod ------------------------------ From: alex@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Alex Pournelle) Subject: Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ... Organization: College Park Software, Altadena, CA Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 02:09:42 GMT Paul Robinson writes: > kstox@admips2.berkely.edu writes in TELECOM Digest 13 #14 about how > someone programmed the IBM 1130 to generate tones on an AM radio. I've got one even even better. How about programming a CDC 3600 to play the Star-Spangled Banner on its tape drives -- in stereo! I hear it, for real. What a great way to waste time! Alex Pournelle, freelance thinker Also: Workman & Associates, Data recovery for PCs, Macs, others ...elroy!grian!alex; voice: (818) 791-7979 fax: (818) 794-2297 bbs: 791-1013; 8N1 2400/12/3 [Moderator's Note: One of the most peculiar concerts I've ever gone to was a program which consisted entirely of "Pictures at an Exhibition" performed four ways in a row. Imagine, first the original piano version ... and then the fun began: a transcription for solo guitar was followed by one for the pipe organ; then came the crown jewel: Several people pushed a Sun computer out on the stage along with a big file server. A man walked over to the console, typed a couple things then walked out to the audience and sat down. The computer did the whole thing. The people in the audience (this was at the Chicago Temple Building auditorium) sat there sort of stunned. When the work was finished, they introduced the fellow who had programmed it. For an encore, the computer performed a piece called 'Concert Variations on the Star Spangled Banner', written by John Knowles Paine. I left the program absolutely higher than a kite; it was so wonderful! PAT] ------------------------------ From: chuckm@canada.hp.com (Chuck Munro) Subject: Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ... Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 14:16:39 GMT Organization: Hewlett-Packard Canada Ltd, Dartmouth, N.S. Well, as a matter of fact ..... When I was a customer of H-P (*many* years ago) I had a program on my HP1000 that would rapidly move the brake solenoid up and down on the paper tape reader. This would result in music (quite loud if you placed an IBM punch card in the reader) which you could play from the console keyboard. This was my first experience with a pre-MIDI computer music system. There, I feel better now that I've defended my employer's honor :-) Chuck p.s. I may work for H-P, but they would probably rather deny it :-)) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 21:38:55 -0700 From: rickie@trickie.ualberta.ca (Richard Nash) Subject: Re: Sad to Say, Telemarketing Works matt@wardsgi.med.yale.edu (Matt Healy) writes: >> 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. Underneath my mail box is the famous recycling "blue-box" where it takes only a matter of seconds to sort the junk from the bills. All junk goes into the blue-box:) :) Richard Nash Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6K 0E8 UUCP: rickie%trickie@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V13 #31 *****************************