From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Tue May 9 20:16:46 1995 by 1995 20:16:46 -0400 telecomlist-outbound; Tue, 9 May 1995 17:17:08 -0500 1995 17:17:05 -0500 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu TELECOM Digest Tue, 9 May 95 17:17:00 CDT Volume 15 : Issue 232 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Oregon Area 503 Split Details (Stuart Friedberg) Re: Oregon Area 503 Split Details (Robert Hansen) Re: Oregon Area 503 Split Details (Randal L. Schwartz) Re: Comm Problems With USR Sportster V.34 (ccruz@prime.planetcom.com) Re: Comm Problems With USR Sportster V.34 (Todd Koenig) Re: Comm Problems With USR Sportster V.34 (hihosteveo@aol.com) Re: Comm Problems With USR Sportster V.34 (Jerry Eckler) Re: Good Grief - Caller ID is Back! (hihosteveo@aol.com) Re: Rural Phone Companies (Bill Leidy) Re: PacBell to Offer CID (Steven H. Lichter) Re: PacBell to Offer CID (Lauren Weinstein) Re: Annoying Calls: Can We Deal With Them? (Benjamin P. Carter) Re: Calls From Australia to US 800 Not Delivering DTMF (John Combs) Wanted: Quality Residential LD Program (Bill Egel) External Antenna For DPC550 (Ken Levitt) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************ * * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent- * * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************ * Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > The new NPA for Oregon was announced today -- 541. It is > a split, not an overlay, and it will cover all of the state except > for northwestern Oregon, leaving Portland, its suburbs, Salem, > Newport, Hillsboro, and St. Helens (among others) in 503. I found this fascinating, as US West just sent out a few days ago a subscriber information pamphlet that indicated that the decision between split and overlay had not yet been made, and inviting public comment of the choice(s). ------------------------------ Oregon will gain a new area code, 541, on November 5. The following exchanges will remain in the 503 area code (geographic area defined as roughly the NW corner of the state, south on the coast to just north of Lincoln City, east through Falls City, Salem, Scio, Mill City and Detroit, and north through Mount Hood Meadows): Aloha, Amity, Astoria, Aumsville, Aurora, Banks, Bay City, Beaver, Beaver Creek, Beaverton, Burlington, Canby, Cannon Beach, Carlton, Charbonneau, Clatskanie, Cloverdale, Colton, Corbett, Dallas, Dayton, Detroit, Estacada, Falls City, Forest Grove, Garibaldi, Gaston, Gervais, Government Camp, Grand Island, Grand Ronde, Gresham, Hillsboro, Hoodland, Independence, Jewell, Knappa, Lake Oswego, Lyons, McMinnville, Mill City, Milwaukie, Molalla, Monitor, Mount Angel, Mount Hood Meadows, Needy, Nehalem, Newberg, North Plains, Oregon City, Oak Grove, Pacific City, PORTLAND, Rainier, Redland, Ripplebrook, Rockaway, SALEM, Sandy, Scapoose, Scholls, Scio, Seaside, Sheridan, Sherwood, Silverton, St. Helens, St. Paul, Stafford, Stayton, Sunnyside, Tigard, Tillamook, Tualatin, Turner, Valley View, Vernonia, Warrenton, Westport, Willamina, Wilsonville, Woodburn, Yamhill. All other Oregon exchanges (197 in total) will move to 541. The permissive dialing period will be November 5, 1995 through June 30, 1996. ROBERT A. HANSEN Telecommunications Department Oregon Health Sciences University Portland, Oregon USA (503) 494-9160 ------------------------------ Lincoln City went 541 so that the county would be one area code. Name: Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 flying Email: Snail: (Call) PGP-Key: (finger merlyn@ora.com) Web: My Home Page! ------------------------------ In article , thorst@login.eunet.no says ... > I am having some problems with my PPP internet hookup. After about > 10-15 min online, my V.34 Sportster just "hangs up". I use trumpet > winsock and netscape software, and I have set the internal baud rate > to 115.200, in order to handle compession. Is this a hardware problem, > or what? I to am experiencing the same problem. This only happens the first time I dialup after I have powered up my PC. After the auto disconnect, if I attempt to login again without powering the PC down completely, the sync. tones sound really distorted and I can not re-establish the PPP session. After speaking to the people at US Robotics about this, they informed me that there is a new ROM chip that should take care of this problem. They will mail you this new ROM (4 to 6 weeks delivery) if your modem has an earlier version. Their tech support will walk you through determining which ROM version your using. Unfortunately I have yet to receive my upgraded ROM so I cannot tell you if this fixes the problem. If you here of another possible solution please let me know. Regards. ------------------------------ In article , thorst@login.eunet.no (Thor Stromsnes) says: > I am having some problems with my PPP internet hookup. After about > 10-15 min online, my V.34 Sportster just "hangs up". I use trumpet > winsock and netscape software, and I have set the internal baud rate > to 115.200, in order to handle compession. Is this a hardware problem, > or what? Give U.S. Robotics a call. There was some sort of problem with some of the sporsters that required and upgrade. Something to do with higher speeds and disconnections. In the mean time, drop your speed down to 19200 and see if that works. ------------------------------ USR tech support 1-800550-7800, 0800 - 1800 CST (Chicago). ------------------------------ Have you got the upgrade chip for the USR modem? I had the same problems and after calling USR they sent me a free upgrade chip. No further problems. Name: Jerry Eckler E-mail: jeck@onramp.net ------------------------------ No sooner had the FCC prempted California PUC problems, and PacBell indicated they would go ahead -- finally -- then the STATE of CA has appealed to the Circuit Court -- Good Grief -- back to ground zero. ------------------------------ In article , jackm@pmafire.inel.gov says: > I would appreciate hearing about technical issues which are unique to > phone companies serving sparsely populated areas. I imagine that the > smaller companies could become quite innovative in dealing with > problems specific to their business. This is a subject that would fill a book. I will try to give a brief outline of the issues as seen from the perspective of the MIS Director of an independent telephone co. 1. History The government decided some 40+ years ago that basic telephone service was a necessity, not a luxury, and that affordable basic service should be made available in all areas of the United States (The doctrine of "Universal Service"). Ma Bell showed no interest in pursuing development in rural areas at the time, so the government encouraged entrepeneurs to develop service in rural areas. This was accomplished through two means: a. Low-cost loans made available through the REA. b. The promise of a "return on investment" based revenue model subsidised by the Universal Service Fund. 2. Divestiture Up until 1982, the independents had an informal "child-parent" relationship with Ma Bell. Most of the independents were basically care-takers for their customers, and not too involved with industry issues. This has changed! In the first few years following divestiture, there was an industry shake-out. A lot of "Ma & Pa" companies were bought out by more aggressive independents who realized that we had progressed from being care-takers to being risk-takers. The successful independents were quick to learn the industry game, using the "return on investment" revenue rules to update their plant and provide the best (and most competitive) service possible. Also, the successful companies were quick to form separate corporations to handle those activities (telephone sales and repair, for example) which were no longer subject to regulation. Now, the typical aggressive independent telephone company may have as many as nine or ten "sister companies", dealing in everything from long distance to paging. 3. Technology The Bell companies today still show little interest in the rural areas. Exchanges serves by independents tend to be much more technologically advanced than rural Bell exchanges (all nine of our exchanges, for example, are into their second generation of digital switches, while several neighboring Bell exchanges are still using step-switching). The reason you see the Bell companies selling rural exchanges, is that they are facing fierce pressure from the State Public Utility Commissions to upgrade all of their exchanges to minimum standards, i.e. digital switching (Can you imagine that there are still a lot of people out there with no touch-tone? Would you believe most of them are Bell customers?). In many cases, Bell has decided that it is easier to sell than upgrade. 4. The Future The independents will always be heavily dependent on subsidies like the Universal Service Fund. There is simply no way to maintain the local loop in rural areas on the revenue produced by reasonably rated local service. Competition for local service can be a good thing, but a completely free market economy for local phone service would mean the end of universal service. Bill Leidy MIS Director Chickasaw Telephone Co. Sulphur, OK ------------------------------ All the phone companies will have caller ID in California in 1996, that is if the FCC gets the regulations in place and the fools that have been holding it up don't manage to go to court and delay it again. Though I agree that all have the right to disagree; that is why the PUC holds hearings which no one can go to except people that have a financial interest or nothing better to do; but when they go to court and cause a delay they should be made to pay for all the costs involved, if they had to do that then they would think twice about putting everything they own by doing it. I believe both the PUC (ha ha) and the FCC have looked at all sides the having it is much better then not having it. By the way all of the GTE offices have the options in place and all it would take is an update to each customer who wants it; they same type of command update a customer would need for any other option they want. All our CO phones have it in place, but there are only a couple of places that have the phones; these are for internal use only. Sysop: Apple Elite II -=- an Ogg-Net Hub BBS Home of GBBS/LLUCE support (909) 359-5338 12/24/14.4 V32/V42bis ------------------------------ Greetings. I posted a longer article with details regarding this over in my PRIVACY Forum digest. True, PacBell will be offering CNID. Note however, that they made this decision following the new FCC order which apparently now *permits* per-line CNID blocking on interstate calls. The earlier FCC decision which was stayed specifically prohibited per-line ID blocking on interstate calls, which effectively called into question the ability of states to legislate any per-line ID blocking at all -- it only allowed (mandated) per-call blocking. It is expected that in those states where per-line ID blocking availability has been legislated or otherwise mandated, an extremely high percentage of subscribers will request it, even among people who want CNID service for themselves! In California, where a large majority of lines are non-published, it is expected that almost all of them will ultimately request per-line ID blocking. It could well be the case that within a couple of years 80%+ of total lines request per-line ID blocking given responses people give to polls on this subject. Since the FCC did not mandate that non-published lines would be per-line ID blocked by default, it will take a definitive action on people's part to be blocked. Percentages will vary depending on whether or not a charge is associated with such blocking (in California I *believe* there is to be no charge the last I heard). The telcos are promising an education campaign to inform people about these issues. The upshot of all this is, I predict, that CNID services will generally be a rather small niche market with limited usefulness for most of the touted applications. Whether or not you consider this to be a good outcome depends on your point of view, of course. ·_ --Lauren-- P.S. For information about the PRIVACY Forum digest, please send the text: information privacy as the first text in the *body* of a message to: privacy-request@vortex.com --LW-- ------------------------------ heath roberts writes: > I think what happened in California is that when the telcos wanted to > offer CLID, the California Public Utilities Commission (your > representative government) placed so many different kinds of > restrictions on what offering it would allow The PUC had ruled that an unlisted number would not be disclosed unless the caller chose to disclose it. That's all. Pac Bell asserted that too few customers would order caller ID under that rule to make it profitable. And now the FCC has decreed that the calling number will be disclosed unless the caller specifically choses to block it. This makes a difference because many (perhaps most) residential customers will ignore the whole issue of caller ID, doing nothing to either allow or block the display of their numbers when they make phone calls. By default, their numbers will be displayed under the FCC rule. The rule goes into effect December 1, 1995. Pac Bell is happy with this rule and will offer CNID in 1996. Ben Carter internet address: bpc@netcom.com ------------------------------ Serge Burjak writes in TELECOM Digest Volume 15 Issue 226: > I have a problem getting through to some automated attendants using > DTMF from Australia. As the title says, after the connection the line > appears not to pass DTMF tones ie., "press 1 for this service, press 2 > for that service." > This happens with both Telecom and OPTUS. The customer service droids > will not escalate the problem to anyone at an 'Engineer' level, but > only to techs who make comments like, well "the US is probably > translating these into something different, sorry cannot help you". > Am I being unreasonable asking to pass in voice band information? I > know it's not my phone, I can use Cyberlinks dial back for this or > AT&T's USA direct with a credit card. The Cyberlink solution is not > totally satisfactory for other resaons. The attendant requires a # key > after the some transactions and Cyberlinks interprets this as a new > call request. The DTMF receivers in automated attendants are usually not up to the same quality as a Central Office DTMF receiver. It sounds as if there is more loss on the Telecom and OPTUS connections than there is on the AT&T USA direct. This surprises me, as I would assume that all are using digital transmission systems, which are "lossless!" In North America, network design guidelines call for a maximum local loop loss of 8.5dB, although 9dB isn't too unlikely. A digital CO has 0dB through-loss, and an older, analog CO, such as a GTE #1 or #2 EAX will have a through-loss of 0.8dB. Then, don't forget, we have a loop on the other side of the CO going to the called modem, so our maximum dB loss on a local call using a pair of loosely-engineered loops through an analog CO is (9+0.8+9) = 18.8dB. These numbers come in part from EIA/TIA-464-A, which describes the North American Loss Plan for analog and digital PBXs. I don't know if Australian loop design is identical to this or not, but let's assume it is. Now, single line DTMF phones typically sends tones at levels of 0dBm to -6dBm. -6dBm through a facility loss of 18.8dB gives us a received signal level at the automated attendent of -24.8dBm. Even a poorly-designed DTMF receiver on an automated attendant should be able to handle this. But, what if the DTMF tones are lower, as might be true from a digital phone on a PBX, as the PBX could possibly send DTMF tones as low as -12dBm. In this case the DTMF level reaching the receiver would only be -30.8dBm, and many automated attendants, as well as answering machines, would have a problem with this. So, Serge, the only thing I can suggest is to call from a single line telephone, not a PBX, and try to pick a phone with a "hot" DTMF pad. John Combs, Project Engineer, TestMark Laboratories, testmark@mcimail.com ------------------------------ I am looking for a quality Residential LD Program that can meet the following criteria: 1. Preferrably LEC billed (although this is not critical); 2. Prefer WilTel as underlying carrier, however will consider others; 3. Competitive rate (nothing over 16 cents peak - and that is stretching it a bit - unless the night/evening rate is great); 4. No monthly fees over $1.00; 5. Calling card with no bong and rate no more than 25 cents/minute; 6. 6 second billing (if not, it better have a great rate); 7. Personal 800 numbers with no monthly fees and competitive rates; 8. Easy enrollment procedure. This program is to be offered to employees as a value-added service and to organizations as a fund-raiser. I have not found the ideal program in any one package, although there must be one out there. Thanks, in advance, for all responses. Please direct your response to my E-mail address - no direct phone calls please. Bill Engel P.S. If you have spoken to me about Residential programs in the past, and your program can meet the above criteria, please contact me again. P.P.S. No Excel agents need respond. Engel Strategies Group, Inc. * 11414 N. 69th Street, Ste. 103 * Scottsdale, AZ 85254 E-mail: Engel2@ix.netcom.com Phone: 602-948-9768 Fax: 602-948-4788 ------------------------------ I have a Motorola DPC550 cell phone. My car power adaptor connects to an 8 pin connector at the bottom of the phone. I would like to connect an external antenna to the phone and I'm guessing that one or two of those eight pins are for that purpose. I know they make docking stations for cars, but I don't want the external mike and speaker. And I also want to use this same setup while not in the car. Is there a connection for an external antenna? If so ... What pin(s) is it on? From which side are pins counted? Can the plug that plugs into the phone be purchased separately? If not, is there any way or product that will connect external power antenna and not cost me over $100? Ken Levitt - On FidoNet gateway node 1:16/390 UUCP: zorro9!levitt INTERNET: levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org or levitt%zorro9.uucp@talcott.harvard.edu ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #232 ******************************