Play and Learn 2/19941.ZIP/19941/PUBE/TD10466.TXT

Text File | 1994-02-05 | 16.8 KB | 382 lines

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 3 Jul 90 22:12:14 CDT    Volume 10 : Issue 466

Inside This Issue:                         Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    PacBell Coinphone False Info [Ron Schnell]
    How Are 800 Numbers Assigned? [Jody Kravitz]
    Re: Motorola Plans Global Cellular Thrust [Roy Silvernail]
    Re: FCC Responds to Individual Complaints About AOSs [Paul S. Sawyer]
    Re: What Is Telex? Is There an E-Mail Interface? [Kari Hardarson]
    Re: Sverige Direkt [New Zealand] [Pat Cain]
    Re: Is Santa Barbara Completely Destroyed? [Lars Poulsen]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Ron Schnell <mailrus!gatech!mit-eddie.gatech.edu!mit-eddie!ronnie>
Subject: PacBell Coinphone False Info
Reply-To: Ron Schnell <mailrus!gatech!mit-eddie.gatech.edu!mit-eddie!ronnie>
Organization: MIT EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 90 08:34:51 GMT


While at a country club on Saturday, I needed to make a phone call.  I
found the payphone, and was relieved to see that it was Pacific Bell
and not one of the private companies.  I double checked the
"information card" which all of the coin phones in CA. seem to have
these days, and indeed it said that BOTH coin calls AND calling card
calls would be handled by AT&T.  HOWEVER, when I entered in the
calling card number, I head a male voice saying, "Thank you for using
Com Systems."  I never thought I would see a BOC payphone which
displays misinformation like this one did.  I immediately called AT&T
at [phone] (knowing that this wasn't the right number but
hoping they would know the right number).

After a few minutes, she connected me with someone who asked me for
the phone number and the hours of business.  She then told me that in
the future I should call Pac Bell, and that they are the ones who
should know about it.  I explained to her that AT&T is the one being
hurt by this and they should want to know about it.  She refused to
believe that it had anything to do with AT&T and she kept telling me
that "They can choose any long distance service they want."  Am I
crazy here?


#Ron
[e-mail]
(213) 443 - 9688

[Moderator's Note: No, you are not crazy. You should have heard the
referrals I got when I asked about red-lining certain neighborhoods
last week. I was told to call New York Tel, Pac Bell, GTE, South
Central Bell, you name it. Anybody but AT&T. It was the fault of the
phone companies. One AT&T rep said it was 'The Mexico Telephone
Company which asked us to disallow those calls ...' <snicker> ... and
when I called Corporate Public Relations and asked them, they promised
to call back ... and haven't so far.   PT]

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

Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 00:20:50 PDT
From: Jody Kravitz <foxtail![e-mail]>
Subject: How Are 800 Numbers Assigned?


I recently received a note from my mortgage company explaining that
they had changed long distance carriers. It included a new phone
number which was 800-736-xxxx.  It would appear that which carrier
"gets" which 800 calls is still done on an exchange-by-exchange basis.

It would appear that only one carrier (AT&T ?) can get 800 information
calls.  Has anyone ever been explained in the Digest how 800
information works?

Does anyone know which carrier gets 800-736-xxxx ?


Jody

Internet: foxtail![e-mail]
uucp:     ucsd!foxtail!kravitz

[Moderator's Note: In the Telecom Archives there is a file which
identifies each 800 prefix with the carrier using it. See the Guide to
Area Codes file. The assignment of prefixes within 900 is also
included in that file. The Telecom Archives can be reached from any
Internet location using the command 'ftp lcs.mit.edu'.   PT]

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

From: "Roy M. Silvernail" <cybrspc![e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Motorola Plans Global Cellular Thrust
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 90 04:43:01 CDT
Organization: Villa CyberSpace, Minneapolis, MN


[e-mail] (Michael Gammal) writes:

> I don't trust Motorola's world-wide plans! (World Cellular)
> Sounds like a nice way for espionage!
> Think about it...
> Every single user has their own coding....
> Thus can locate any individual anywhere!

An interesting idea, indeed. The way I saw the plan presented, though,
I'm not sure how closely a sat-cell call could be tracked.

I'd like to find out more about this system. Perhaps someone could
point out some references or post a summary of the technical details
to the Digest?


    Roy M. Silvernail     | Opinions found
    now available at:     | herein are mine,
 cybrspc![e-mail]   | but you can rent
(cyberspace... be here!)  | them.

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

Date: 2 Jul 90 13:24:07 EDT (Mon)
From: "Paul S. Sawyer" <unhd!unhtel![e-mail]>
Subject: Re: FCC Responds to Individual Complaints About AOSs
Organization: UNH Telecommunications and Network Services


In article <[e-mail]> you write:
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 462, Message 4 of 10

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Wm Randolph
>Franklin) writes:

>> >Before writing my letter, I telephoned both ATT and FCC to determine
>> >the law.  FCC said unequivocally that the hotel phones must handle
>> >10xxx properly.  However ATT waffled; they commiserated with me but
>> >didn't they that the hotel had to connect me to them.  Why would they
>> >not assert their rights?

>In article <[e-mail]>, unhd!unhtel![e-mail] (Paul
>S. Sawyer) writes:

>> Maybe it's because ATT's PBX's (e.g. System 85) can't handle
>> 9-10288, etc....

>Of course they can. They can dial any number they have been allowed to
>dial by the dial plan and routing administration. If there was an
>equal access number that had been restricted through hard-coding, I
>can assure you it would not be 10288.

Well, that was MY reaction, too, (as a mostly innocent bystander who
just keeps the billing computers going) but if you know how, I wish
you would tell our telecom specialist who administers the switch, our
ATT account rep, and Carmine at RMATS who have all been trying to
figure it out for some time now.  ATT says it's the switch software,
and the best they have done is suggest some kludgey workarounds using
speed numbers, which so far are not of a kind which the user community
would adapt to.


Thanks.

Paul S. Sawyer              uunet!unh!unhtel!paul     [e-mail]
UNH Telecommunications        attmail!psawyer       [e-mail]
Durham, NH  03824-3523      VOX: [phone]    FAX: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Kari Hardarson)
Subject: Re: What Is Telex? Is There an E-Mail Interface?
Date: 3 Jul 90 19:17:43 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Kari Hardarson)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill


If I want to send someone a telex message from Usenet, is there a
service that will do it for me?  If it has to be Easylink, how do I
get in touch with them from the net? Are there alternatives? (I used
to access a U.K. service called One-to-one from X.25, I wouldn't mind
accessing them from the net either). Thanks to anyone who might reply.


Kari Hardarson
217 Jackson Circle
Chapel Hill, NC 27514


[Moderator's Note: Since Usenet is a 'free' service, and telex
messages require payment, there is no direct connection where someone
will take your message here and convert it to telex. There were a
couple of sneak approaches using the gateway between Internet and AT&T
Mail, but the discovery of this abuse was one reason AT&T Mail clamped
down on accepting Internet traffic. You can obtain a telex number for
incoming telex stuff from AT&T Mail or MCI Mail. You can use either of
those services to send telex messages, at a surcharge. You can do the
same via GTE/Sprint Telemail. You would then send the message from
what you termed a 'Usenet' site to your own account at MCI or AT&T
Mail, and on its arrival there, forward it to a telex address
yourself, at the prevailing rate for the service, billed to your
account on the commercial email service.  PT]


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

Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 19:49 M
From: Pat Cain <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Sverige Direkt [New Zealand]


>Sweden has recently introduced a service called "Sverige Direkt"
>(Sweden Direct) which is a list of free telephone number that you can

New Zealand has recently introduced this service too, although there
seems to be problems with it such as:

* bad connections
* having to wait a long time (several minutes) for an answer
* operators not being able to speak English (I suppose this doesn't
  matter as people calling France would speak French anyway).

>The list of countries and numbers for "Sverige Direkt" are as follows

>    New Zealand        000 946

>It is interesting to see the irregularity of the telephone numbers above,
>which makes it almost impossible trying to remember them.

In New Zealand the 0009 prefix is used for the international
Direct-Dial service.  The format is 0009 <country code> with the
exception of USA & Canada who are 000911 and 000919 respectively.  The
800 number system exists in New Zealand, so I'm not sure why Telecom
didn't use an 800 number.  Perhaps it is because they wanted to keep
the direct-dial service separate from the national free-call system.

I know that Telecom here give out cards that have a list of countries
and the numbers that you can direct dial to New Zealand from.  I think
that most people would rather carry these when going overseas than
trying to remember numbers.

Anyway, most people don't go overseas too often.  If they do it is
often to the same country, so they shouldn't have problems remembering
the direct dial number used in that country to call home.

>As I can understand there are two reasons for this irregularity:
>1. There is no generally used "800-number". Some similar numbers
>are used in

>2. The telephone numbers for each national "800-number" are allocated
>   locally, so it is not so probable that the same number can be used

>An alternative solution that would make it possible to dial the same
>number toll free anywhere in the world would be to introduce a pseudo
>county number for toll free calls. The country code "800" seems to be
>ideal for this purpose.

There are still problems with such an idea.  Many countries have
adopted different standards.  In New Zealand 800 numbers are only 6
digits (eg. 0800 123456), whereas in the States, I think there are 7
digits.  And they are preceded with a 0 whereas other countries have
different prefixes.  New Zealand is moving towards a seven digit
numbering system and cleaning up the strange numbering systems we have
here, so I suppose eventually we will see Direct Dial numbers being
the same throughout the world.


pat cain;   [e-mail] | |  [e-mail]
              Voice [phone]  |   Modem [phone]

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

From: Lars Poulsen <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Is Santa Barbara Completely Destroyed?
Organization: Rockwell CMC
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 20:04:14 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(TELECOM Moderator) writes:

>Word has been reaching us the past few days of the tragic fires
>burning though parts of California, and the most disturbing news is
>that apparently much of the town of Santa Barbara is in ashes. Perhaps
>someone in the area could let us know what the effect has been on
>telco service in that area, and other parts of the state.

The reports .. have been much exaggerated. About 4000 acres of coastal
foothill shrub burned, along with about 525 residences.

The fire started at 18:02 PDT on Wednesday night; it is unclear
whether it was deliberately set, or somebody just tossed a cigarette
out their car window. The area has been suffering under a drought for
about 4 years; water is severely rationed, and the city of Santa
Barbara is checking out pricing for ferrying water down on ships from
Canada.

The chaparral was tinder dry and two days of 100-110 degree
temperatures had brought it to a flash point. A "sundowner" wind
condition (similar to a "Santa Ana") engulfed the hillside along
highway 154 (San Marcos Pass road) in 40-foot high flames in minutes.
The wind carried the flames downhill towards the city; within 40
minutes after it began near the top, it jumped across US-101 (the
Camino Real freeway) near the county jail between Santa Barbara and
Goleta, and a residential area where the railroad crosses "main
street" went up in a firestorm; I heard the gas lines exploding from
my house a half mile away.

Throughout the evening, many neighbourhoods were evacuated. The fear
was that the fire would burn out the Hope Ranch neighbourhood, a
two-acre ranchette subdivision from the 1950's; but shortly before
midnight the wind died down, and the fire stopped spreading.

For the next several days, the hillside kept burning (I believe it was
finally declared "controlled" this morning). Thursday night, there was
some fear that another sundowner wind might drive the fire down
towards the city through a different canyon. But the wind was much
less severe, and actually drove the fire back to the already
burned-over area.  Thursday night around 9PM the wind died down, and
we all breathed easier.

                     ---------------------
                     TELECOM RELATED STUFF
                     ---------------------

The E911 response center was located in the county complex in the fire
zone, and had to be evacuated early on, along with the fire command
post. This created a severe logistic problem, but fortunately, there
were backup sites for both: The city had a command post downtown, and
the county had a backup command post downtown.

The GTD-5 system was heavily loaded; at one point, the dial tone delay
was almost 30 seconds. The system went short on intercity trunks, but
apparently the software can allocate the available trunks on a
priority basis to the class-A emergency lines. My wife was in Texas,
and I tried several times to reach her, alternating between MCI and
ATT; mostly ATT worked better. (Probably due to ATT giving priority to
OUTGOING calls).  The telephone switch never failed, and service has
not been disrupted since the fire.

Our local college station is a training ground for Rock'n'Roll DJs,
and has no useful news staff. Our "local" NPR affiliate is a repeater
for the San Luis Obispo station, and our local APR affiliate is a
repeater for KUSC, a classical station in Los Angeles. But one of the
commercial stations hooked their AM ("talk radio") and FM ("adult
album") transmitters together, and went live-all-news without
commercials for 27 hours. On the second day they started a pledge
drive for a relief fund and raised $80,000 before the sun went down.
The local television station also suspended regular programming, but
did not have quite as good information during the critical hours.
(When the fire zone partitioned the town, and one reporter could not
get back to the studio, he drove 40 miles away to Santa Maria to get
an uplink, and I don't think he ever got back on the fire line).

I am very impressed with the way GTE handled this disaster. This area
may not be typical, but we really have had outstanding service since
the GTD-5 system was installed four or five years ago.


Lars Poulsen,
SMTS Software Engineer
CMC Rockwell  [e-mail]


[Moderator's Note: Your mention of the need to evacuate the emergency
response center and fire command post itself was interesting, and
brings to mind the fire here in Chicago, October, 1871. The Western
Union agent on duty downtown that Sunday night stuck around the office
until is was apparent the building was going to be on fire soon. In an
interview in the {Chicago Tribune} in 1901, he remarked on the bell in
the steeple of City Hall. The City Hall Fire Alarm Office had an
operator on duty at all times to ring the bell alerting residents to a
fire. The bell was actually operated by a mechanical device, and the
setting of the gears detirmined the cadence of the bell, which in turn
gave a coded reference to the fire location. Four rings (pause) was a
general alarm. Long after most of City Hall had burned to the ground
and the fire alarm operator had fled in terror, with the streets in
the area deserted, that bell continued to sound. The Western Union guy
said it was 'the eeriest thing I had ever encountered ... the bell
tolling with no one to listen or heed it ... and finally the steeple
itself caught (fire) and the bell crashed to the ground with a
monstrous clang ... '.  PT]

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End of TELECOM Digest V10 #466
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