The World of Computer Software/World_Of_Computer_Software-02-385-Vol-1of3.iso/t/tc13-028.zip/TC13-028.TXT

Text File | 1993-01-19 | 19KB | 467 lines

TELECOM Digest     Sun, 17 Jan 93 23:20:00 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 28

Index To This Issue:                     Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Gonna Miss Contel (John Higdon)
    Telemarketer Conviction Overturned on Appeal :-( (Jack Winslade)
    Do You Think This is a Fraudulent Ad? :) (Paul Robinson)
    Re: MF Signaling Test Gear (Pat Turner)
    What is dBm0? (Ching-Chang Liao)
    Sprint Can't do Switched 56k (?) (Eric Pearce)
    Help Needed With Novatel 8320 Transportable Cellular Phone (Joe Smooth)
    Correction: AT&T Buys 20% of Unitel (Dave Leibold)
    AT&T PRI (was 800 Numbers and Live ANI Advice Sought) (David G. Lewis)
    ISDN Modems/Boards? (Sid Stuart)
    What is GTE NorthNet? ([e-mail])
    Info Wanted on Telecom Exhibitions and Conferences (Cliff Featherstone)
    Source For Used Panasonic 616 Wanted (Steve Gaarder)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Jan 93 19:31 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Gonna Miss Contel


This past week has been a study in contrasts. All three of the LECs
with which I have service have had an opportunity to show what it is
made of.

Torrential rains (at least for here) have come down and many circuits
have failed. The first to go was an audio circuit to Mt. Loma Prieta
which is used by an Iranian programming outfit to get program audio to
a transmitter site for SCA broadcasts. Pac*Bell was called, a repair
person picked up the keys, and the circuit was repaired.

Day before yesterday, all the data circuits and the telephone quit up
at another transmitter facility served by GTE. First, it took a good
half-hour waiting on hold to find out that I had called the wrong
number to find out the right number for "priority repair". I ended up
calling corporate headquarters in Thousand Jokes. Good thing it was a
weekday during business hours!

Then I reported the list of circuits to someone at a number in Long
Beach. An hour and a half later, someone called back to tell me that
the circuit IDs were incorrect -- did I have other numbers? No. Thirty
minutes after that, someone called to tell me that everything tested
fine and that they were closing the tickets out. I reopened the
tickets.  Later in the day, I was told that someone would have to
visit the site but that due to the rain and mud, it would have to be
some other day.  Since I had just made two trips to the site myself, I
gave the person an earful and told him what would be acceptable was
complete repair in one hour -- after that major complaints would be
filed.

The next excuse involved keys. Someone would have to let them in. I
told them to use the keys that I had provided years ago for this very
purpose. I silenced the whining by pointing out that a new data
circuit had been installed the week before without anyone letting in
the installer, so they obviously still had the keys.

Sometime that night the circuits (except for the telephone itself)
started working and some repair person woke me up at 7:30 AM to tell
me that everything was fixed. Another call to the 310 number got the
phone working by noon.

Today, I discovered that our 800 number in Victorville was
"disconnected" and called the Contel business office to find out why.
I was told that there was no reason for it to be that way and the
person offered to report it to repair service. Within fifteen minutes,
I received a call from repair service telling me that it had been
corrected. Fifteen minutes after that a very apologetic person from
the Contel business office told me that it had been out of service for
over a week and that she would credit me with the entire monthly
service charge as compensation.

(If this had been GTE, it would have been days before anyone would
have even called me back. It would have somehow been my fault and
there would have been no compensation granted whatsoever. With GTE,
dollars win out over customer relations every time.)

BTW, it should be pointed out that Pac*Bell gives toll-free numbers to
call techs back on. Contel invites you to call collect. GTE just gives
you toll numbers and expects you to pay. I have no idea how much I
spent calling 714, 310, and 805 numbers the other day.

When Contel falls into the GTE sewer here in California, the only
major phone company left (that knows anything about service) will be
Pac*Bell.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   [phone]     |       FAX:
[e-mail] | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | [phone]

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

Date: Sun, 17 Jan 93 02:57:27 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jack Winslade)
Subject: Telemarketer Conviction Overturned on Appeal :-(


According to the {Omaha World-Herald}, Friday, Jan 15, 1993, evening
edition, an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel has said that
evidence was insufficient to prove that Bedford Direct Marketing, and
its president, Ellis B. Goodman, had defrauded telephone users who had
called a 900 number.  This decision voids a two-year sentence for
Goodman and a $750,000.00 fine for the firm.

'The case has been watched closely by prosecutors and postal
inspectors eager to stop what they regard as abuse of 900 phone
numbers.'

As I reported here some time ago, Bedford Direct Marketing sent cards
to thousands of people telling them they had won a prize -- a cash
prize or a 'discount shopping spree' {yeah, sure} from Bedford's
catalog, and that they must phone a 900 number to claim the prize.

The judges stated that the plan was not a scheme to defraud because it
accurately and fully explained the costs that people deciding to
participate would pay.  The dissenting judge stated that 'the court's
assessment of the record misses the mark in the real world where
schemers like Goodman and Bedford prey upon ordinary people they deem
ripe for plucking.'


Good day.

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

Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: Paul Robinson <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993  19:34:50 EST
Subject: Do You Think This is a Fraudulent Ad?  :)


An advertisement on page 3 of the January, 1993 issue of "Midrange
Computing" mentions Exabyte Corporation's new 2.5 Gigabyte EXB-8200.

The ad claims that the Bit Error Rate (BER), number of 1017 bits
before an error occurred, is now 1 in 10.  The ad further states
that:

   The new BER means that a user will encounter on
   average one unrecoverable error in 1017 (sic)
   bits of data read.  This reliability specification
   amounts to one error in the information contained
   in 100 million years of {The Wall Street Journal}.

I found that hard to believe.  I don't have the WSJ here, but I do
have the {Washington Post}.  The Post is a six-column newspaper and a
rough estimate is that it is 100 lines deep and 180 characters across.
To compensate for pictures, call it 20K per page.

10 ** 17 is 100,000,000,000,000,000 bits.  Assume 10 bits are needed
for each character (or picture image point, to compensate for the
higher amount of data that pictures require.)  That amounts to 10e16
bytes of data.

As I stated the average page has 20K, so that figure is 500,000,000,000
pages.  If the Journal does 50 pages an issue, that's 10,000,000,000
issues.  There are roughly 250 business days a year (I know the number
is higher, but this is fairer to them and it divides evenly.)  That
translates into 40,000,000 years.

This is a 150% inflation of the number of issues that you could read
before you'd find an error!  I resent this; if I only read 40 million
years' worth of the {Wall Street Journal} before I discovered an
error, I'd not be pleased.


Paul Robinson -- [e-mail]
These opinions are mine alone

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

Date: Sun, 17 Jan 93 20:00 EST
From: rsiatl![e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: MF Signaling Test Gear


Bob Turner writes:

> Does anyone know of test gear available to test CPE that uses MF (NOT
> DTMF) signalling? It can be for two or four wire circuits.  I know
> such a device exists, I just don't know who manufactures it.

Several transmission test sets will generate MF.  The Ameritec AM-48
($3k) and AM-44 ($2k) both do.  At least one of Ameritec's
non-handheld units does also.  Some of Hekimian's test sets will too,

if a signaling option is purchased.  If you don't need to purchase a
new TIMS, I would look at one of the Hacker {insert color} boxes that
will generate the tones.  I have considered purchasing one, as my
Ameritec was stolen, and I now use a recently purchased HP 3591A (no
DTMF or MF).  I was looking at the one sold by Hack-Tic.  I'm sure
Bill would send you info.  You will need to add a xformer, and maybe a
DC blocking cap.

As far as grabbing MF digits, the digit grabbers double in price with
the MF option.  As an example: Metro-Tel TPM-32 (DTMF, DP) $250,
Metro-Tel TPM-32/MF $700.  I think Ziad also makes MF digit grabbers.
They do make a butt set that has a digit grabber built in (pHD or PHd)
I am considering buying rather than a TS22A.  If anyone knows anything
about their quality, I would appreciate a note.  Some AT&T CPE techs
use a Ziad combination digit grabber and level meter, that they seem
to have had good luck with.


Pat Turner KB4GRZ   [e-mail]

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

From: Ching-Chang Liao <[e-mail]>
Subject: What is dBm0?
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 93 20:54:28 CST


I just read a paper taken from AT&T Technical Journal. The subject of
this paper is "THE 32 KB/S ADPCM CODING STANDARD". In this paper the
author use "dBm0" as a unit to represent the level of input signal. I
don't know what the definition of "dBm0" is. Is "dBm0" same as "0
dBm"? Is there anyone who knows the answer and can answer this
question for me? I will be appreciated if someone answer my question.


NAME: Stephen  REAL NAME: CHING-CHANG LIAO
SCHOOL: University of Missouri-Rolla
HOME ADDRESS: 607 E. 12TH ST., Rolla, Mo 65401
TELEPHONE: [phone]    E-MAIL: [e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 16:21:43 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Eric Pearce)
Subject: Sprint Can't Do Switched 56k (?)


We have a Sprint T1 with 16 channels for voice and 1 56k dedicated
data line.  I want to add a single switched 56k line out of the same
channel bank (since there are spare slots).  The reasoning behind
getting a CB was to be able to mix and match various types of service.

Sprint sales says they can't do it, as their "switched 56k network is
too advanced for PacBell and won't be able to talk to it" (we are in
northern CA).  They also volunteered that AT&T and MCI are be able to
provide this even though Sprint can't.  Does this make any sense?

Right now I'm looking at buying a separate SW56 from PacBell
(connected to a Adtran DSU 2AR).  If I was able to go through the
Channel Bank (a Telco Systems Route 24), would I need a OCU card?  It
seems like the motivation for this would be to avoid a separate
termination fee from PacBell, right?


Thanks,

Eric Pearce | [e-mail] | O'Reilly & Associates
Publishers of Nutshell Series Handbooks and X Window System Guides
103 Morris St, Sebastopol, CA 95472  1-800-998-9938 or 707-829-0515

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

From: Joe Smooth <[e-mail]>
Subject: Help Needed With Novatel 8320 Transportable Cellular Phone
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 03:51:49 GMT


Hi if anyone has ANY information what-so-ever on the Novatel 8320
transportable phone, please let me know. I am extremely interested in
technical information and programming information. Thanks a lot!

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

Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 23:50:02 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Dave Leibold)
Subject: Correction: AT&T Buys 20% of Unitel


In my previous post on Unitel, I wrote:

> service so far. Bell Canada revenues last year were $2.2 million,
> Unitel's $400 million.

Hmmm ... well, maybe Unitel picked up a bit more market share than it
bargained for :-) ... actually, Bell should get $2.2 *billion* rather
than million.

Other than typos like that, the source of info on this one was
{The Toronto Star}.


Dave Leibold - via FidoNet node 1:250/98
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (david.g.lewis)
Subject: AT&T PRI (was 800 Numbers and Live ANI Advice Sought)
Organization: AT&T
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 14:36:01 GMT


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

> 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 there are other peices of CPE equipiment that will
> handle it.

There certainly are: AT&T operates a conformance testing lab, testing
CPE against TR 41459 (the AT&T ISDN PRI specification), and while I
don't know the exact numbers, I would estimate that several dozen
different products have been certified compatible with 41459.

> I would imagine that as AT&T complies with the newer ISDN-1
> standards, most any PBX could handle it.

SR-NWT-001937, National ISDN-1, has the following to say about Primary
Rate Access:

"The switch shall support Primary Rate Access.  The detailed
requirements on primary rate access for each application are in the
process of being defined... The B-channels shall be able to support
voice, circuit-switched data, and provisioned packet-switched data.
On Demand B-Channel packet on Primary Rate Access is not required for
National ISDN-1.  The D-Channel initially will only be used for
signaling to control B-Channels; therefore, support of packet-switched
data on the C-Channel is not required for National ISDN-1.

"A transition plan to move from current Layer 1 implementations to
TR-754 and the current ANSI T1 Standard at Layer 1 is being worked.
Layer 2 shall follow TR-793.  The layer 3 network/PBX interface
requirements are expected to be a subset of TR-268, Issue 3..." (note:
these have since been published in TR-1268.)  "In general, current
Primary Rate access implementations that are substantially in
agreement with the documents listed in this paragraph are acceptable,
in Bellcore's view, for National ISDN-1."

If I were a marketing type, I would claim that that means that my
implementation, which is substantially in agreement with TR-1268,
Q.931, T1.607, and NIU.302, is already NI-1 compliant.  But I'm not,
so instead I'll point out that SR-1937 doesn't really specify in any
kind of detail any requirements for PRI for NI-1, leaving that to
NI-2, and that while it's possible to talk about PRIs being NI-1
compliant, that can't be interpreted as meaning you can take an "NI-1
compliant PBX" from vendor A and an "NI-1 compliant network switch"
from vendor B, hook them up, and expect them to work.  That has to
wait until NI-2.

That said, I will reiterate that not only AT&T products are capable of
connecting to AT&T network PRIs.  Most PBXs, from my knowledge, allow
the user to provision which flavor of PRI protocol is to be supported
on a given trunk, and AT&T 4ESS is usually one of the options.

> The AT&T service is called INFO-2 and is part of their Megacom
> service.

Minor correction: MEGACOM 800 service.  MEGACOM service is an
outward-calling, WATS-type service.

> 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.

Of course, so can the B-channels on a PRI; additionally, with PRI, you
can use call-by-call service selection, so instead of having to
dedicate, say, 8 DS0s to 800 and 12 DS0s to WATS, you can have a
call-by-call group of, say, 18 channels and take advantage of the fact
that one large trunk group will require fewer trunks to handle the
same traffic volume with a given blocking probability than will
multiple small trunk groups.

Disclaimer: I do work on this stuff, but I'm not in Product
Management, so nothing I say has the Ring of Authority.  I'm just a
simple protocol nerd ...



David G Lewis    AT&T Bell Laboratories
[e-mail] or !att!goofy!deej     Switching & ISDN Implementation

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

From: [e-mail] (Sid Stuart)
Subject: ISDN Modems/Boards?
Date: 17 Jan 1993 18:22:27 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA


New England Telephone is starting to establish ISDN services in the
Boston area. We would like to make use of this service to connect NCD
Xterminals, Macintosh's and PC's(running DOS/Windows) to Sun dialin
servers. I am trying to find out what equipment is available to do
this.

I know of two pieces of equipment that have ISDN interfaces, but doubt
they are compatible. SparcStation 10's have an ISDN port, but I am not
sure what, besides another SS10, it will connect with. I have also
seen ISDN modems from Black Box that will deliver 38400 bps aync. It
looks like they will cost ~$2,000 for each side of the connection
though.

Are there better solutions out there? Will an ISDN card in a PC
running TCP/IP interact with an SS10 ISDN port?


Sid Stuart, Thinking Machines Corp.
[e-mail]    {uunet,harvard}!think!sid

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

Organization: Penn State University
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 14:01:28 EST
From: Doug <[e-mail]>
Subject: What is GTE NorthNet?


I recently came across a few documents which mentioned a "GTE
NorthNet".  Is this a big private network of GTE, or is it something
the public has access to?  If so, where/how do you get connected to
it?

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

Date: 17 Jan 93 05:01:09 EST
From: Cliff Featherstone <[e-mail]>
Subject: Info Wanted on Telecom Exhibitions and Conferences


'ello

I am looking for information on international conferences and
exhibitions relating to telecommunications in general and voicemail
technology in particular.

Any information / pointers (preferebly via e-mail) would be appreciated.


Cliff Featherstone
SERCH (Specialised Electronic Research)
South Africa

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

Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 02:10:44 -0500
From: anarres![e-mail]
Subject: Source For Used Panasonic 616 Wanted


A local coop grocery is looking for a new phone system. The Panasonic
616 seems to fit the bill nicely, but is a little too pricey.  Does
anyone know of a good source for a used unit?


Thanks,

Steve Gaarder <[e-mail]>

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #28
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