From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Tue May 9 16:21:18 1995 by 1995 16:21:18 -0400 telecomlist-outbound; Tue, 9 May 1995 13:04:40 -0500 1995 13:04:37 -0500 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu TELECOM Digest Tue, 9 May 95 13:04:30 CDT Volume 15 : Issue 230 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MCI's Intra-LATA Call Director Problems (Scot M. Desort) Telcos, Film Scripts, Vertical Integration (Chris Roth) Caller ID Approved in Anchorage (Ed Bennett) World Cellular Report (Steve Geimann) Frame-Relay to ISDN and ARA - Impossible? (James M. Haar) 555 Prefix Goes Public (Greg Monti) Cell Phones and Monthly Charges (Jonathan Thatcher) One Disaster After Another, it Seems (TELECOM Digest Editor) Job Openings at BellSouth (Chendong Zou) The Way Sprint Does Business (Lionel C. Ancelet) DID: Same as Early SxS Centrex? (Lee Winson) Job Opening - Camarillo, California (Matt Noah) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- An MCI rep visited my office in October of 94 and talked me into switching over from AT&T. After discussing various options, he recommended the VISION plan. He also said they would install Intra-LATA dialers to enable us to route that traffic over MCI (for those who don't know, these boxes provide a false dial tone to you, receive the digits you dial, and do an internal lookup. If the call is an intra-LATA toll call, it prefixes your digits with 10222, seizes CO dial tone, dials the number, then connects you to the call and drops out of the picture. Local calls, 800, and 411/Operator are just passed through to the CO without prefix). Great -- rolling all of our discounts into one plan. Our combined intra/interLATA/800 traffic averages $700 a month. We also have Bell Atlantic's Centrex CustoPak (mini-Centrex). "No problem, the dialers work fine with Centrex ..." says the rep. First bill comes in. It's obvious to me, and the MCI rep at the "Proof Positive" Service Center that we obviously should never have been put on VISION, since VISION volume discounts start at +$1,000. Rep graciously switched me over to MCI Preferred. Switch complete, but 800 traffic still coming over AT&T network. Dialers get installed by sub-contractor. First day, centrex transfer won't work (Centrex custopak designates lines as #XX, XX being 20-49, rather than the traditional XXXX). Three days later, dialers reprogrammed remotely. Over the course of the next two or three months, bills were coming in for the closed VISION accounts, for FAX calling cards that were never ordered, and for 800 service monthly charges (traffic still being carried over AT&T). After 20 or 30 calls to Customer Service (I had also received listings with at least seven different numbers for Customer Service -- I am sure I now know why we are running out of 800 numbers in this country), bills started to get straightened out. Tried to call a support service with a 900 number. Dialers blocked 900 numbers, returning a corny reorder tone. No instruction by me to block 900. We use these services quite often for network support. Called and had the dialers reprogrammed again. Receieved our April VISION bill (remember, this VISION account has been closed since November). To my surprise, there was a *recurring* charge for $700!! The description on the bill -- "INTRALATA CALL DIRECTORS". I flipped! The rep never told me there would be any charge whatsoever for using these dialers to route traffic over *their* network. Called my *always-out-of-the-office* rep and left a furious message on voice mail. In the meantime, we switched our voice mail system, and now needed to utilize the call forwarding feature we get free with Centrex CustoPak. Pick up the line, dial *72. Expecting second dial tone -- got the Intelogic Trace dialer reorder tone. Now, I could *maybe* see them not knowing about the mini-Centrex #XX code, but *72 has been around since the beginning of CLASS services. I cannot believe these dialers would be installed with *XX codes blocked. Calmly I walked into my wire closet and ripped the power cords for the dialers out of the wall. Rep finally called back, left a message for me stating that it was an "error" and would be corrected. Why in the world would I pay $700 per month or quarter for these dialers if their purpose is to save me a few cents on each intra-lata call. If I save, say 5 cents per minute, I would need to talk 14000 minutes to break even on the dialers. Given my intralata volume of $300 per month, this is highly unlikely. Moral of the story -- if you utilize *any* telephone features out of the norm (CF, Centrex,900/976) and are deciding on putting these dialers in, make sure you *explicitly* explain your requirements to a technician. Support for the operation of these dialers is difficult to obtain from MCI. All re-programming requests are routed through the local sales rep (who is never in the office). I know that AT&T is also installing these dialers in NJ and other states where they are tariffed for intra-LATA traffic, but they may use better dialers, or have a better plan in place for supporting the end-users. Also make sure you ask for a written confirmation of the installation and/or recurring charges for the use of these dialers from your carrier. The dialers installed by MCI are made by Intelogic Trace/Mitel. They make a loud annoying clunk when they release the call to the CO (my headset users have complained about this noise, but just started getting used to it before I pulled the plugs on the damn things). Scot M. Desort +1 201-244-1110 Garden State Micro, Inc. +1 201-244-1120 Fax ------------------------------ The Regional Bell Operating Companies are using the First Amendment to demand the right to purchase preexisting cable systems within their service areas. And you thought their Rotary speeches for the last twenty years meant that they'd compete with preexisting cable operators! Will such vertical integration mean that Ameritech, NYNEX, and BellSouth executives will trip over themselves to bankroll scripts similar to Silkwood, Roger and Me, Rollerball, The China Syndrome, Power, The Formula, Norma Rae, Network, the President's Analyst, Bar Girls, and Deal of the Century? No. Telcos will scurry away from such projects. Who wants to be associated with controversy? Vertical and horizontal integration will increase. Concentration of these multinationals will increase. (Multinationals? Yes. Take a look at the foreign holdings of the RBOCs. Ameritech just bought up huge phone systems in New Zealand. Don't they want us to believe that rising prices for phone service are thrown back into local service to lower the price for everyone? Someday?) Let us hope that cross-subsidization will become part of public awareness. Cross-subsidization is when an RBOC uses captive consumers to fund risky and less-necessary services for upscale consumers. Price of "lifeline" POTS (plain old telephone service) rises artificially to artificially lower the price of expensive new services that, by and large, the wealthy want, and could afford in any case. There's no shortage of former FCC, PUC, and PSC commissioners who will tell you that this is widespread and simply cannot be policed even with a small army of investigating accountants. Once the RBOCs start funding motion pictures, the question will be: will cross-subsidization becomepart of public awareness? Perhaps movies are less abstract. And the whole racket will be more relatable and understandable. ------------------------------ On April 28, the Alaska Public Utilities Commission approved a request by ATU Telecommunications, the LEC serving Anchorage, Alaska, to provide Caller ID, Last Call Return, and Continuous Redial. Both per-call and per-line blocking will be offered, and Last Call Return will be configured so it does not work on blocked calls. The initial offering will be for residential and single-line businesses only. ATU expects to have the new services on line by early August. ATU thus becomes the first Alaskan LEC to offer Caller ID. It was the single most requested service in our history. You can expect other Alaskan LECs to file for the service in the near future. Ed Bennett Sr. Communications Specialist ATU Telecommunications, Anchorage AK 907 564-1742 ebennett@atu.com ------------------------------ Scandinavian countries had the highest cellular penetration at end of 1994, with No. 1 Sweden nearly twice as great as U.S., and well-established markets still showed sustained growth, U.S. Dept. of Commerce report showed. Sweden had 1.3 million subscribers out of 8.8 million residents, 14.72% penetration, compared with 23 million in U.S., 8.8%. Report by International Trade Administration showed 52 million subscribers at year-end, 57% gain over previous year. U.S. accounted for 44% of all cellular subscribers. World Cellular Market report showed substantial gains in many developed countries. "This remarkable sustained growth is seen even in the oldest cellular markets," said Stephanie McCullough, analyst, Office of Telecommunications. Data showed substantial growth in Japan, which exceeded 4 million customers recently after expanding to 3.5 million last year from 2 million in 1993. Deregulation and introduction of new digital network "doubled the number of subscribers added in the first 14 years of cellular service," she said. Japan plans to end analog phone sales in April 1996. In Europe, Germany had 2.5 million customers, up from 1.8 million year earlier, Italy grew to 2.2 million from 1.2 million, U.K. to 3.5 million from 1.97 million. Report showed 9 nations exceeding one million, with western nations more than 2 million. "Additional growth is promised in Europe where 4 new competitors will be licensed in Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland and Austria," McCullough said. "Around the world, nearly 50 new networks are scheduled to come on line in 1995." U.S. growth was 43.9% over 1993. Norway followed Sweden in penetration with 13.2%, Finland 12.8%, Denmark 9.8%. Trailing U.S. are Singapore, 8.8%; Iceland, 8.3%; Hong Kong, 7.7%; Kuwait, 6.6%; Canada, 6.5%. Report showed 47 nations had at least 1% of population with cellular telephones, but 63 had rates below 1% with bottom 5 in Ukraine, Ghana, Cuba, Burma, Bangladesh. Greenland, Virgin Islands, Andorra, Barbados, Fiji, Gambia, Nicaragua, Angola, Laos, Cuba and Bangladesh had fewer than 1,000 phones each. Subscriber base more than doubled in Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Korea, Kuwait, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, S. Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Venezuela. Among equipment makers, Ericsson was listed as sole contractor or joint provider on more than 135 of nearly 530 systems, followed by U.S.-based Motorola with just over 118. Both were dominant vendors, followed by Nokia with more than 47, Siemens at 35, Northern Telecom 30, Plexsys 25, AT&T and NEC 20 each, Philips 13. U.S. companies were partners in more than 100 systems, led by AirTouch, AT&T, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, GTE, Millicom, Nynex, SBC, U S West. ------------------------------ Here is my scenario and question: I have two offices, #1 is in Santa Rosa, and #2 is in LA. Both offices have their own LAN of Macs on ethernet. Office #2 in LA has an ISDN set up for a couple of telecommuters, who use ISDN for a high speed ARA (Appletalk Remote Access) line for file sharing and for some client/server applications, such as 4th Dimension databases. Office #2 does not have ISDN internet access. Office #1 in Santa Rosa will have one Mac as a web server. A 128K fraem-relay connection is planned (Netcom). I want to use another Mac on the LAN in Office#1 to connect occassionally to office #2 via their ISDN connection. I do not want to have an ISDN line in addition to the frame-relay line installed at office #1. I would prefer not to have to get ISDN internet access for office #2, nor change the set up in office # 2 at all. What I would like to have happen is to use some of the bandwith in the 128K frame connection to make a connection to Office #2 via ISDN, while not disturbing the web server connection (that is, durring the workstation session with Office #2 in LA, the web server continues to serve to the web). Is this possible? I can't get a consistent answer from either service providers or hardware vendors (Ascend says yes, Netcom says no, for example). I would think that somehow, magically and mysteriously, Pac Bell could peel off the IP packets destined for Office #2, and reconvert them to the ISDN (synchronous from packet based ?) protocol, and then automatically open the ISDN connection to office #2. Thanks in advance! ------------------------------ The following is a summary of a story entitled "Dialing Hollywood's Number" which appeared in the {Washington Post} on May 5, 1995. Telephone numbers in the 555 prefix have frequently been used by Hollywood movie and television writers when one was needed as part of a plot or script. Famous past numbers: the Brady Bunch household 555- 6161; Mary Richards 555-7862; Charlie's Angels 555-0267. Bellcore is now giving out numbers with 555 prefixes to businesses nationwide. About 1,400 numbers with 555 prefix have been assigned so far. 555 numbers work in every North American area code. Bellcore has still set aside 555-0100 through 555-0199 for use in movies and TV, but pre-existing movies will still have numbers outside that range that could now also be assigned to legitimate businesses. Two issues have not been dealt with: -- how to route calls to 555 numbers, which may or may not be toll calls from a given phone; -- how to bill for calls to 555 numbers (some could be toll free -- reverse charged). [Monti note: The story doesn't say whether 555 numbers will be reachable from every area code, i.e., will 615-555-2222 reach the same location of the same company as 415-555-2222 does?] Greg Monti Arlington, Virginia, USA gmonti@cais.com ------------------------------ Can I purchase a cell phone, not pay monthly fees and still have access to 911? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the way the cellular company is set up, and it also depends on whether or not the area where you will be using the cell phone has 911 available to cellular callers. Many areas do not, requiring the caller to dial a seven digit number instead. PAT] ------------------------------ So today, as I write this, much of New Orleans is pretty well under water. Some eighteen inches of rain fell during the day and evening on Monday, and more is expected today. ·_ Anyone from southern Louisiana available among the readership to give a summary of telecom conditions there at the present time? PAT ------------------------------ This is posted for a friend, please use the contact info below: DATE: May 4, 1995 CONTACT: Send text resume to Dr. Eric Kai (eric_kai@snt.bst.bls.com) LOCATION: Atlanta, Georgia COMPANY: BellSouth Telecommunications, which has revenues in excess of $13 billion and assets of over $28 billion, has several R&D positions available in the Wireless Service Integration group of the Science & Technology department. Our charter is to: - provide technical support to BellSouth's business units in developing and implementing the business strategies for wireless market; - conduct technical evaluation, requirement specifications, system/software engineering, prototype/product development and technical/marketing field trials; - R&D technical solutions to offer integrated/enhanced wireless services to BellSouth consumers and/or PCS service providers within our region; - interact with vendor in product selection, requirement definition and/or joint development to support wireless products and services. EXPERIENCE/SKILL: Successful candidates should possess M.S. or Ph.D. in EE, CS, Telecommun- ication, or related disciplines. M.S. with a minimum of three years of experience (or equivalent) in the wireless telecommunication industry having solid working knowledge of wireless networks such as cellular, mobile data and PCS is required. Experience on system engineering, fast prototyping and software development on wireless product and services is highly desirable. Candidates must have expertise in at least one of the area below: RF Design Area: solid experience in frequency planning, system growth planning, cell site traffic analysis and RF propagation to conduct the design/developement of a Radio Planning tool for cellular/PCS network under CDMA, GSM and TDMA. Familiar with the air interface standards. Wireless Data Area: working knowledge with wireless data technologies such as CDPD, PCS data over CDMA and GSM, and/or other mobile data applications. Network Area: knowledge of SS7, ISUP and ISDN signaling and/or transport. Good understanding of HLR/VLR/AM mobility management under cellular/PCS for CDMA, TDMA and GSM. Familiar with IS-41/GSM MAP. R&D experience in the transparency of integrated wireline and wireless services using AIN capabilities and other intelligent network features. OAM&P Area: experience in numbering plan, CDR/AMA, cellular rate plan, billing services and downstream data processing and management. Working background in designing/developing OSS such as PCS/cellular network managment, PCS performance tuning and traffic analysis, customer trouble tracking, etc. PERSONAL: This individual must have: - good interpersonal skills to work in a highly competent technical team; - motivation to understand the business needs of BellSouth and to find effective matches between these needs and emerging technologies; - ability to work in an effective, cooperative manner with other client organizations within BellSouth as well as external companies. OTHERS: - U.S. Permanent Residentship required. - Head hunters please send resume to Joan Powell @404-332-2131 for filing. Chendong Zou Internet: zou@ccs.neu.edu College of Computer Science, Northeastern University 360 Huntington Avenue #23CN, Boston, MA 02115 Phone: (617) 373 3822 WWW: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/zou Fax: (617) 373 5121 ------------------------------ ... looks strange to me. I currently use a Long Distance Carrier which is not Sprint. A few weeks ago I receive a phone call from Sprint, about their great new rates for long distance calls. I say "Send me a letter with the details of these new rates, then I'll let you know if I'm interested in switching to you as a LDC". The next evening, I get another phone call from Sprint. "This is to confirm you're OK to switch to us", they say. I reply "Not at all. I said I want a letter from you with your rates. Until then I stick to my current LDC." They say "OK, we'll send you this letter". Yesterday evening I want to send a fax overseas. I get a message from the local telco "Your long distance service has been disconnected, please call customer service". I call customer service ... and I learn that my line was just switched to Sprint! Needless to say, I asked to be switched back immediately to my original long distance carrier. I wonder I someone else had the same experience with LDCs literally *forcing* business from customers? Lionel [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you have experienced is a very common thing. The unofficial name for the theft of accounts by one long distance carrier from another is 'slamming', and although it does not happen as much as it used to, it still is a well-known practice. Thanks for passing along the warning that Sprint telemarketers are still up to their old tricks. PAT] ------------------------------ Somewhere I read that in the early days of Centrex, step-by-step systems could be used pretty easily -- just allocate a block of it to that subscriber. I believe there were two possibilities. One, where the equipment was in the C.O. and every phone had a line to the C.O. The other, was where the equipment was on the customer's premises, and served by some trunks. Say the customer had 555-1000 to 555-1999. When the C.O. pulsed over to 555-1, the remaining digits would be transmitted over the truck to the the selectors at the customer's location. Isn't this the same principle as DID? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't know about SxS, but a firm I was involved with in the middle to late 1960's had centrex provided from a crossbar office. That particular office did not change to ESS until about 1973 or so, and when it did the company's centrex changed from crossbar to ESS along with it. It was sort of a funny changeover, regards how the handling of calls changed, etc. They also had an ACD (automatic call distributor) behind the centrex both when it was crossbar and when it was upgraded. One thing telco was forced to do was get their records for that subscriber in good order; when operating as crossbar, the subscriber had at one point converted all the rotary dial phones to touch tone. Telco only got about half the records updated (out of about six thousand extensions; this was a good size centrex). Comes the conversion to ESS over a weekend, and Monday morning half the phones on the system can't dial out! Their touchtones, although correcting making sounds to the phone network) were not being recognized because in telco's esteemed opinion, there were not supposed to be touchtones on those particular extensions/lines. After a couple days they had that corrected. PAT] ------------------------------ I am looking to hire a DSP/Telco Systems engineer immediately. The candidate should have B.S. (M.S. preferred) in Electrical Engineering and four to six years experience in DSP systems with an emphasis on telephony. My group works on Voice compression, fax, signaling, telephony (analog and digital) and related systems. E-mail, fax or mail your resume to: Matt Noah, Manager DSP Systems Group A.C.T. Networks, Inc. 188 - Camino Ruiz Camarillo, CA 93012 (805)-388-2474 fax: 388-3504 matt@acti.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #230 ******************************