A Beginner's Guide to the Internet/INTERNET.ISO/text/telediag/tc13-121.txt

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TELECOM Digest     Sun, 21 Feb 93 09:55:15 CST    Volume 13 : Issue 121

Index To This Issue:                      Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Hotel Surcharges Again -- Survey? (Laird Broadfield)
    Repair Center Numbers (Dave Niebuhr)
    Hotlines in Nepal - Literally (Dave Leibold)
    Quality of Telco Services (was AT&T Are You Listening? (Mike Schenk)
    Zipcode, City, State, and Area Code List (John Villalovos)
    Different Rates in Same Home? (Doug Granzow)
    Scanners That Pick up Cellular Phones (Hans C. Klinger)
    Cable's Future Role in Telephony (Matt Lucas)
    Re: 800 Numbers That Charge (Carl Moore)
    Strange Ringing Behaviour (Linc Madison)
    Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted? (Bruce Albrecht)
    Re: What Number do I Dial From My Phone to Get Phone to Ring? (K. Thompson)
    A Civil Servant Responds to Moderator Bias (John W. Shaver)
    Re: National Data Super Highways - Access (George Gilder)
    Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones (Alan Furman)
    Re: Pagers, Cellphones and War on Drugs (John Higdon)
    Re: Bell Canada Charging For 411 (Dave Niebuhr)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Hotel Surcharges again -- Survey?
Date: 21 Feb 93 11:14:45 GMT


Okay, I stayed in *another* hotel with >=$.50 charges for *any* calls
(800, CC, local, everything) and I'm getting tired of it.  (BTW, the
last time I stayed at this hotel it didn't have charges for anything
except direct-dialed LD, and they had to revise my bill when I checked
out because 10XXX confused the billing program.)

I've been thinking for a while about maintaining a list of hotels and
chains and their sleazy/good policies; I'm not quite ready to do it
mostly because my Usenet mail access is by courtesy of a friend right
now and I'd like to keep the traffic down.  However, in the interests
of exploring this, what am I missing from the following form?

HotelName:
ChainName:
HotelNumber:
ChainNumber:
Carrier800Surcharge:
Other800Surcharge:
CCSurcharge:
LocalSurcharge:
ChainwidePolicy?:
Submitter:
SubmitterComments:

I know some of us (c.d.t et al) travel a lot, and some of us
administer phone systems for companies that might be interested; is
this a worthwhile project?  (Also, would anyone like to leap forward
and do the work, now that I've thought of it?  :-)

Oh yes, the hotel was the Comfort Inn on Diversey in Chicago, part of
the Days Inn chain.


Laird P. Broadfield     [e-mail]    ...{ucsd, nosc}!crash!lairdb


[Moderator's Note: And Comfort Inn is not even that great of a place.
For the first fifty years or so (it is an older building), it
functioned as the 'Diversey Arms Apartment Hotel'. I think they only
sold the building to Days Inn as of a couple years ago. I do want to
remind everyone that I am now marketing the 'Orange Calling Card' to
earn money to buy food for myself and my cats. This is a no-surcharge,
25 cent per minute calling card from Orange Communications, and if you
would be interested in signing up, write to '[e-mail]'
for an application. It is a great deal for short calls from payphones
and hotel phones, etc, and uses an 800 number for access.  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 08:24:59 EST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Niebuhr)
Subject: Repair Center Numbers


Some time back (last year, I think) there was a discussion about
calling repair service for a home phone problem from an out-of-area
phone, ie. another area code.

NYTel is publishing two numbers for this: 611 and 1-890-6611 (area
code 516 only, I don't know about the other area codes that NYTel
serves, nor Rochester Tel.).

So, if I were experiencing problems at home and I was in, say Maryland
(AC 301), I would call 1-516-890-6611 and should be connected to the
NYTel repair center.

I was going to post this sooner, but forgot about it at the time of
the discussion or didn't have the bill handy.


Dave Niebuhr      Internet: [e-mail] / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973  (516)-282-3093

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

Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1993 04:06:44 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Dave Leibold)
Subject: Hotlines in Nepal - Literally


The Independent News Service, by way of {The Toronto Star}, reports of
warnings in Nepal regarding connections made between the telephone
system and power lines. The Nepal Telecommunications Corportation
refers to the incidents as accidental; meanwhile the telco issued
bulletins that phones with prolonged ringing are not to be picked up
lest it be on the receiving end of 600 volts.

At least one Katmandu resident was killed by the crossed connections
with other reports of telephones burning up and at least one fax
machine melted "to the consistency of yak butter".


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

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

Date: 21 Feb 1993 11:12:42 +0000 (GMT)
From: [e-mail] (Mike Schenk [phone])
Subject: Quality of Telco Services (was AT&T Are You Listening?)
Organization: PTT Research, The Netherlands


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Andy
Sherman) writes:

> On 13 Feb 93 20:02:50 GMT, [e-mail] (Jack
> Decker) said:

>> AT&T spends a LOT of money on advertising to convince you that their
>> quality is better.  In my mind, this is just about as valid as the
>> advertising that oil companies used to run to convince you that one
>> brand of gasoline was better than another.  In many cases, all the gas
>> stations in a town got their gas from the same source!  It was the
>> same gas, yet they all tried to convince the public that theirs was
>> better!

> But the analogy doesn't hold.  Phone companies don't get their
> infrastructure from the same source.  They lay their own transmission
> lines, and they deal with different vendors for switching and
> transmission equipment.  To say that with all the variation in supply
> and design that quality is obviously identical is arrent nonsense.

More importantly, people tend to forget that it's not the quality of
the transmission and switching systems that counts. Nowadays, probably
all of these systems are of good quality. But what really matters is
the way in which operators manage their (often very complex) networks.
Ultimately, this will be the distinction between operators and not the
quality of their transmission and switching systems.


Mike

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

From: [e-mail] (John Villalovos)
Subject: Zipcode, City, State, and Area Code List
Date: 21 Feb 93 09:45:52 GMT
Organization: Oregon State University, Computer Science Dept.


Previously I posted a request for a data base listing of Zipcodes to
City, State, and Area Codes.  I didn't get any answers about it but
did get a lot of requests from people asking me to send them info if I
found anything.  Well ...

I wrote a program (in VBDOS) which with the program ZipKey will output
two data files.  One is a listing of state abbreviations and
corresponding full state names (this also includes territories i.e.
Guam).  The next data file is a listing of all known zipcodes, city,
state, and area code.  There are around 41000 zipcodes listed with the
version of zipkey I used.  There is an updated zipkey database which I
haven't tried yet.  If anyone is interested in the program they could
send me some email or preferably someone could give me a site to send
it to via ftp.  You will also need to locate a copy of zipkey.  I
found a copy on simtel20.army.mil in the database directory called
ZK*.ZIP.  There are two files, one is the program and the other the
data.


Later,


John Villalovos    [phone]     [e-mail]
Computer & Network Consulting   Mobile Disk Jockey
Certified Netware Engineer      Parties, Dances, and Weddings

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Different Rates in Same Home?
Organization: ProLine [pro-cynosure]
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 04:46:47 EST


Paul Robinson <[e-mail]> writes:

> Here's the details from C&P Telephone of Maryland:

> Unlimited residential service is quoted as $20 a month.  I note that
> because I already have unlimited local service, the new lines must
> also be installed that way; the sales clerk told me that this was the
> case.  Her exact words were that it was "a violation of tariff
> schedules to install measured and unmeasured service at the same
> house."

Is this true?  We have two lines where I live (C&P area).  One is a
flat monthly rate plus $.09 per call, the other is $20/monthly for
unlimited calls. The only difference here is that we get two seperate
bills and the lines are registered under two different names.  But
they are in the same home, and both lines run to all of our phones.
Has the phone company allowed us to go against the tariff?


Doug Granzow         [e-mail]  or  ...crash!pro-cynosure!dig
Call: The Cynosure BBS | Free | Internet | 14.4kbps USR DS | [phone]

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

Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1993 01:48:20 -0500 (EST)
From: Hans C. Klinger <[e-mail]>
Subject: Scanners That Pick Up Cellular Phones


    I was told by a Radio Shack salesman that they sell scanners that
can intercept cellular phone transmissions.  Then I learned from a
reliable source that the scanner does not come out of the box ready to
scan cellular frequencies, but rather it has to be modified (clip a
diode or something).  Can anyone verify this?  Can any scanner be
modified and what is the procedure for doing so?

I realize that creating such a device to listen to phone users is
borderline illegal but this is for a research project involving the
ease of eavesdropping of cellular phones and I would appreciate any
information on how it is accomplished.


Thanks,

Hans


[Moderator's Note: It is not 'borderline illegal' -- it is illegal. I
am surprised the RS salesperson openly admitted what could be done.
Usually they wait until you buy the unit then mention that 'they heard
it could be done ...' and that 'a customer' left 'these notes and
schematic here in the store one day ...' or words similar. We have
covered this several times here in the past, and yes, modifications to
scanners are quite easily accomplished for the most part. I do not
know about the unit in question since you did not mention a model
number, but with the PRO-34 (now discontinued) it was as simple as
pulling a couple diodes (D-3 and D-4) off the circuit board. The radio
then lost 30-50 megs as a result, but picked up full 800 coverage.  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 00:40:42 -0500
From: matt lucas <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cable's Future Role in Telephony


The February issue of {TeleStrategies Insight} features an article by
Dr. Jerry Lucas entitled "Cable's Future Role in Telephony: or how the
Cable MSO' can eat the RBOC's Lunch." It is an in-depth analysis of
where cable is today regarding telephony; why cable companies must
partner and who they must partner with to succeed; and how the cable
industry should define their business to establish a winning vision
for the 21st century.

If you're interested in receiving an email copy of this article, send
your request to [e-mail].


Thank you,

Matt

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

Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 14:09:36 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: 800 Numbers That Charge


I tried 1-800-555-4578 from a pay phone which defaults to AT&T, and it
said could not complete the call with the area code or number I had
dialed. 10222 plus the above said could not be completed with the
access code I had dialed.  No mention of any charge.

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

Date: Sat, 21 Feb 93 22:41:13 GMT
From: Linc Madison <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Strange Ringing Behaviour


I recently moved into a shared flat in London, and set about
modernizing the telephony of the place.  Prior to my arrival, the only
instrument in the place was an old, old black rotary-dial desk phone.
The first addition to the family was an answering machine, but we
noticed that it was very difficult to catch the phone before the
machine did.  This was causing problems, as the phone and machine were
on different jacks and therefore the machine didn't reset when the
phone went off-hook.

At the same time, though, I also got a telephone for my room, to run
off the jack extension I ran for my modem.  I kept the ringer off at
first, but then turned it on one day.  I discovered something quite
strange: the "old reliable" set (rented from BT) DOES NOT RING on the
first ring!  The ringing cadence in the UK is a double burst; the
first ring is often just a single burst, but even in cases where it's
a double burst the old phone doesn't ring at all.  The behaviour is
entirely consistent in all observed instances.

What could cause the phone not to ring on the first ring?


Linc Madison  ==  [e-mail]
              ==  [e-mail]
59 Stourcliffe Close, London W1H 5AR  Tel. [phone]

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

Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 23:22:18 CST
From: [e-mail] (Bruce Albrecht)
Subject: Re: Second Line Non-Pub/Unlisted?


> [e-mail] (Paul Barnett) writes:

>> This is indeed specific to the local telephone company.  In Mpls-St.
>> Paul, which is served by US West, you HAVE to publish the number, or
>> pay an extra charge.

> That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. So, if I wanted to
> avoid paying unlisting charges on my residence lines, the phone book
> would look something like this (?):

This is not true.  I live in St. Paul, and have two phone lines.  Only
the first line is listed, and I do not pay an extra charge for not
listing the second.  If I only had one line, I would have to pay for
being unlisted.


[e-mail]

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

From: Ken Thompson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: What Number do I Dial From My Phone to Get My Phone to Ring?
Date: 21 Feb 93 15:02:32 GMT
Organization: NCR Corporation Wichita, KS


) [Moderator's Note: Telco need not provide an automated service for
) this purpose or tell you how to access the automated service. They
) need only to make your bell ring on request. In other words, the
) business office could have told you to ask the operator to ring you

 ... and cost me $1.25.

Ken Thompson    N0ITL
NCR Corp.  Peripheral Products Division   Disk Array Development
3718 N. Rock Road  Wichita KS 67226   [phone]
[e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: But as a writer pointed out yesterday, you are free
to set up your own arrangements if you want to be in the telephone
installation and repair business. No one says you have to use telco to
do this. You can have your own personnell to ring phones and identify

lines like any other repair/installation service. Lots of companies
use private vendors for their phones instead of telco.   PAT]

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

Date: 21 Feb 93 00:19:22 MST
From: Mr John W Shaver <[e-mail]>
Subject: A Civil Servant Responds to Moderator Bias


Pat,

As an employed Civil Servant, you did not elect me, but you elected
idiots who passed laws which make it difficult to do anything in the
Government. There are some regulations which civil servants enact or
cause to be generated but most of these are in response to the
legislators.

I probably am just as irritated as you are at stupid government
actions, but the source is the lawmaking ability. Sorry Pat, It is
still your fault.:<<>


            John W. Shaver
602 538 7622 // DSN 879 7622 // FTS 658 7622
FAX [phone] // DSN 879 0656_// FTS 658 0656

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

Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 20:34 GMT
From: George Gilder <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: National Data Super Highways - Access


The article described in Robert L. McMillin's entry in V13 #107
discussing the future of Dark Fiber was entitled Into the Fibersphere
and appeared in the December issue of Forbes/ASAP.  It was written by
me, George Gilder, and will be part of my new book Telecosm.  The
issue of ASAP can be acquired by calling 415-802-6880.

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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: FCC Proposed Ruling on Scanners That Receive Cellphones
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 16:31:22 PST


Mr./Ms. Stony Brook Press writes:

> Not only that, In this country you only have a choice between
> Republicans and Democrats.

Imagine my surprise.  I have been voting Libertarian for years, and
occasional TELECOM Digest contributor Toby Nixon has been a
Libertarian Party candidate for the Georgia legislature.


Alan T. Furman    [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: My sympathies are with the Libertarians also, but a
lot of good it does to vote for them. The television news does not
even bother to report the Libertarian election results.  PAT]

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

Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 22:07 PST
From: [e-mail] (John Higdon)
Reply-To: John Higdon <[e-mail]>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Pagers, Cellphones and War on Drugs


[e-mail] (Robert Masse) writes:

> Now my old high school is full of kids with them, and I hear that the
> teachers are getting fustrated of hearing beep-beep-beep or dring
> dring in class.  They aren't doing anything about it either because
> they are too scared now.  Mind you all of these high school kids are
> using them for status symbols.

Of course. When in any kind of public meeting situation (movie
theater, conference, PUC hearing :-), or staff meeting), I set my
pager to vibrate rather than beep. But then that defeats one of the
main reasons for a high school student having the thing in the first
place. How can you impress your peers if it does not beep once in
awhile, particularly during class.

> I hope it doesn't come to outlawing them like previous posters
> mentioned, where in my opinion a person's right to carry one shouldn't
> be denied.

I agree fully. But then maybe the kids ought to be informed about
"pager courtesy" in public meetings and classroom situations. No place
like school to learn about proper real world behavior.


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

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

Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 08:19:23 EST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Niebuhr)
Subject: Re: Bell Canada Charging For 411


In TELECOM Digest Volume 13 : Issue 118 [e-mail] (Bob
Goudreau) writes:

> Charles Stephens writes:

>>> In most parts of the US it's a fact of life. You're allowed roughly
>>> five free calls, and then after that it's around 25 cents a pop.

>> Well Southern Bell only gives you three freebies before they charge
>> you US$.30!!!

> Perhaps in Georgia.  Here in NC, Southern Bell allots five monthly
> freebies, after which the charge is *fifty* cents per call.

Come up north to NYTel land where a 411 call is $.48 *per pop*, no
freebies, nada, zilch or whatever else you want to call it.

Remember that this is the same NYTel that is part of NYNEX which got
ripped by Judge Greene, the same NYTel that still can't get it's
routing tables straight for some of it's customers.


Dave Niebuhr      Internet: [e-mail] / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973  (516)-282-3093

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

End of TELECOM Digest V13 #121
******************************