TELECOM Digest     Wed, 20 Apr 94 02:46:00 CDT    Volume 14 : Issue 179

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Telecommunications Development in Asia (Cedric Hui)
    Re: Neat Tricks! (kris%sanctum%paladin@uunet.uu.net)
    Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet (John Hall)
    Re: Internet and the Info Highway (Garrett Wollman)
    Re: Operator Assisted Sent-Paid Coin Calls (Ken Weaverling)
    Re: GSM and Airbags (Alex Veller)

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From: chui@netcom.com (Cedric Hui)
Subject: Re: Telecommunications Development in Asia
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 1994 06:36:05 GMT


Here is some information on Hongkong Telecom.  It is not meant to be a
technical reference on the HK telecommunications infrastructure nor a
objective view on the current communication policy and choice of
technology deployment in the territory.  The information is based on
the HongKong Telecom's publication "Hong Kong - The Communications Hub
of Asia".  I believe it was published in 91 or 92, definitely before
1993.  Hope the information is usefully to you and of interest to
others, and I am looking forward to your paper on the
telecommunications development in Asia.

Company background:

The Territory's domestic and international carrier.  Publicly listed
in New York, London as well as on the local stock exchange.  About
half of the public float, or 10% of the company's equity, is held by
American investors.  The two primary shareholders are Britain's Cable
and Wireless (57.5%) and China International Trade and Investment
Corporation (17.5%) CITIC is one of China's premier vehicles for
overseas investment.

The communications hub of Asia:

According to the Information contains in the publication, of the 600
multinational companies that have regional headquarters in Asia, more
than half are active in Hong Kong and nearly 500 use the territory as
their Asian telecommunications hub.  HK Telecom's annual investment on
capital projects amounts to US$300-400 million and all the major fibre
trunks that traverse Asia pass thru HK, providing both the capacity
and the diversity that multinationals seek in a regional hub and those
fibre links are backed up by one of the Asia's largest satellite earth
stations with 10 dishes.  Almost 200 International Private Leases
Circuits (IPLCs) link HK Telecom customers with their offices or
business partners in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen at
speeds up to 64K bps.  The number of IPLCs between HK and China is
growing at around 50% a year.  HK Telecom has forged strong ties with
both national and provincial telecommunications authorities in the
PRC.

Some figures:

The territory has nearly three million telephone lines; one 
for every two people.
One resident in 10 has a pager.
One in 25 a mobile phone.
Nearly 200,000 fax lines (second only to Japan in fax penetration).
The network is all digital.
Local calls are free (residential and commercial).
HK people make 11 million overseas telephone or fax calls a 
month, approximately half of them to China.
International Direct Dailing is available to more than 200 
countries and to more than 1,000 cities in China.
(China traffic is growing at an annual rate of 35%).

Services:

Datapak: an X.25 based public data network supporting transmission at
up to 64Kbps and a digital data service that offers dedicated circuits
at speeds up to T3.  Datapak International extends the domestic X.25
network to 175 public data networks in 84 countries, providing access
to thousands of international messaging and information services.

Value-added options such as Call Waiting, Conference Call or 
Do Not Disturb.

Citinet (Centrex).

Paging, cellular and CT2 services are licensed but subject to
competition; multiple vendors are active in each sector.  SUREFAX
provides auto redial, auto resend and broadcast calls, comprehensive
call tracking and accounting for high-volume fax users.  HK Telecom's
sole franchise for the domestic telephone service ends in 1995, when
limited competition is expected to emerge, while its international
valued-added services are already deregulated and have become
intensely competitive.  Sister company HK Telecom CSL operates one of
the largest cellular telephone networks in the territory.  It offers a
unique roaming agreements that enable customers to use their portable
phone in over 100 roaming destinations in China.  International
private leased circuits at speeds up to 2 Mbps between HK and 24
counties and is the dominant supplier into China.  (no specific detail
given) Direct optical fibre links with China. The cable between HK and
Guangzhou can carry up to 47,000 voice channels simultaneously, while
a 565 Mbps cable links HK with Shenzhen and connects to similar cable
from Shanghai to Guangzhou.

Newly introduced service:

ISDN, VPN, GMDS, FNA and Banwidth on Demand services.  A domestic
frame relay service designed for LANs is also available ATM and SONET
is under testing and are expected to become HK Telecom's core network
technologies during the 1990s.

Others:

FMit: Asia's only comprehensive outsourcing service for users of
private telecommunication network.

Tariff:

HK Telecom claims that following the recent tariff reductions agreed
between the company and the HK government, it is cheaper to call every
country in the world from HK than the other way round. The tariff
differential can be as high as 30%.  No comparison numbers were given
though.

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

Subject: Re: Neat Tricks!
Reply-To: kris%sanctum%paladin@uunet.uu.net
From: sanctum!kris@uunet.UU.NET (Kris)
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 1994 23:47 EDT


Glen Roberts writes:

> PROTECT YOURSELF WITH THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE'S TELEMARKETING TRICK
[...]
> Why not use it to protect your privacy? Get your second line setup by
> the phone company that way, place all your out-going calls on it and
> bam no body can return call or redial your number. Yeah, the phone
> company will probably tell you they can't do that for you. Tell them
> to call 1-312-670-4113 as proof that it can be done.

I don't agree with the idea that this may be an "intentional"
call-back blocker.  When I dial on our (old, outdated) PBX and hit 9
qto get an outside line, I actually get an *actual* *outside* *line*.
Hitting 0 gives you the NYNEX operator, 00 gives AT&T operator, and
you can even play with * codes.  CNID blocking codes give you an
almost instant "this number is not equipped to receive incoming
calls".  What I am saying is that this is a common arrangement with
PBX systems.  The "number" the telemarketers are calling out on
probably does not accept incoming calls (it isn't even a "number" by
that definition).  A more modern ROLM CBX system (all digital, dials
itself after you dial on the keypad, etc, etc) calling to one of the
tracer 800 numbers gives you yet another fake "number".

> Also, here's another way to block caller-id. Dial 10288EEE-NNNN where
> EEE is your exchange and NNNN is the number. For example, from my
> home, if I call the surveillance hotline: (708) 356-9646... by dialing
> "356-9646" Caller ID gets my home phone. Yet, if I dial"10288356-9646" 
> it comes in as out of area (yeah and I probably get billed the same as 
> calling long distance).

Not in all areas!  National CNID is trying to correct this, and it may
be fixed in most "hip" local telcos.  If you can receive calls via
AT&T (using the 10288 code) with caller-ID on them you can usually
receive them with caller-ID on them even with this method.

The tried-and-true method is to use a Mom & Pop 10-XXX code or 800
number (which presumably wouldn't be suitably equipped, but good luck
finding one that doesn't rent lines from a major prime), or using a
PBX.  With a PBX they will get the famous fake calling "number", but
dialing it will give you the error message regarding "no incoming
calls" or just a constant ringing.  Note that using AT&T through their
800 number won't win you much because 800 numbers always have ANI on
them (and ANI is the big daddy of CNID).

Have fun.  This stuff is lots of fun.


Kris   kris%sanctum%paladin@uunet.uu.net  uunet.uu.net!paladin!sanctum!kris

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

From: john@pixel.kodak.com (John Hall)
Subject: Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet
Organization: Eastman Kodak
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 1994 16:33:49 GMT


In article <telecom14.175.6@eecs.nwu.edu> Paul Robinson <PAUL@TDR.COM> writes:

> Internet White Pages".  Someone started collecting E-Mail addresses
> and names for people from public messages, probably those posted on
> newsgroups and heavily circulated mailing lists and put them in
> alphabetical order.
> ...
> trying to avoid being judgemental here, because I don't see it as that
> big a problem.  My E-Mail address is not my street address and doesn't
> tell you where I live or what I do or how much money I make or how
> educated I am.  But this practice does annoy some people and I wanted
> ...
> Here's some questions to think about: What do you think about the
> practice?  Is it right or wrong and why?  Does this impact people's
> security?  Are there risks involved if your E-Mail address becomes
> well known or if it is misprinted in a published "white pages"?  Are
> there other considerations to think about?

I agree with Paul.  As long as the names and addresses are gleaned
from public messages, no harm is done.  Anybody who posts their
address publicly, whether in a newsgroup or on the local supermarket
notice board has no grounds for complaint about what others do with
that information.

On the other hand, if he's scanning headers of mail messages that are
routed through his machine, or worse, reading packets that fly by on a
net backbone, that's slimy.  Rather like opening people's mailboxes to
read the return addresses on their mail, or hooking a pen recorder up
to their phone line.


John Hall - john@kodak.com

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

From: wollman@ginger.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman)
Subject: Re: Internet and the Info Highway
Date: 19 Apr 1994 22:54:18 GMT
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science


In article <telecom14.177.3@eecs.nwu.edu>, <scott_pope@wiltel.com>
wrote:

> Does anyone have any thoughts on how the Internet will relate to the
> Information Highway?

Very little (probably less than it does now).

The so-called ``Information Superhighway'' is, for the most part, the
biggest load of unmitigated bull**** which this country has seen in
quite some time.  From what I've seen and read of the public
statements of so-called ``Industry Leaders'' in recent years, the
entire Superhypeway is little more than an attempt by telephone and
cable companies to get regulators to permit them to waste untold
billions of ratepayers' money on projects of highly questionable
utility or customer value.

What the cable companies are interested in, for the most part, is
one-way saturation of customers' homes with a huge amount of garbage
beyond even what currently passes for television programming in this
country, most if not all of which is produced by companies which are
majority owned by the cable operators themselves.  There are a few
welcome exceptions, but by and large, this appears to be the pattern.
All you have to do is read some of the testimony of the cable
operators corporate officers about how they couldn't /possibly/ let
customers actually attach their own equipment to ``The Network'', and
it begins to take on a somewhat more sinister tone.

At one television industry symposium, a speaker recounted his
conversation with the managers of one of those new, digitally-
compressed ``500-channel'' systems currently under testing.  The
speaker had asked this person what they were using all that extra
capacity for; the manager replied, ``Well, we're currently running
/Basic Instinct/ at five-minute intervals.''

The goals of the telephone industry are somewhat more difficult to
discern, but most of their statements seem to revolve around a desire
for de-regulation of their business environment, while simultaneously
being allowed to continue to own most of the services for which they
are primary providers.  (I think the Rochester Tel proposal is quite a
bit more forward-thinking than most of the ones I've seen lately.)
Unfortunately, so long as they are unwilling to give up on their
current business model, I think any attempt at de-regulation would
result in a disaster of the first order.

The telephone system does have one extremely significant advantage:
the phone network is already two-way.  This puts it miles ahead of
most television systems, which are designed for delivery of huge
volumes of data in one direction only.  Although the phone system is
of significantly lower capacity, it is much closer to being able to
handle the needs of one-to-one and many-to-one communications than
cable technology is.  (You only need to compare the fraction of
today's Internet that is connected together by telco technology as
compared to cable...)

The Clinton Administration's current rhetoric leaves me wondering
whether anyone in the White House actually understands the fundamental
principle of networking technology (perhaps they've been listening too
much to cable and telco executives?).  This principle is basic to why
the Internet is as sucessful as it is today, and it's also fundamental
to the misunderstanding that the ``Communications Industry'' appears
to have.  I generally express it, somewhat ungrammatically, as ``Bits
is bits.''  That is to say, the most important and fundamental fact
about digital communications networks is that they really /don't care/
what sort of information you are using them to transmit, whether it be
digitized voice, video, text, exciting synthetic-aperture radar images
from the Shuttle, encrypted mail, or random garbage you happen to be
picking up on your microwave antenna.

When you understand this principle, then you can quickly come to an
understanding of some of the other chasms separating the Internet and
the Superhypeway.  Fundamentally, it simply doesn't make sense to
build a network capable of delivering five hundred channels of
television, two channels of voice without video, and one rather slow
channel of data, when the average home has three televisions, 1.5
VCRs, and a single phone line.  By contrast, in the Internet
community, we have developed a tradition of (as Van Jacobson put it)
``You get what you pay for.''  In this typical home, you will never
need more than more than five channels of video and one of voice, and
it makes sense to permit the occupants to turn off a TV set and use
the extra capacity to download a book from the public library, or scan
the 'net for distant ``radio stations''.  

In the Internet community, researchers have also made significant
strides in modeling one-to-one communications as a special case of
many-to-many communications; our networks of the future should be
designed to work well for the many-to-many case, and everything will
win automatically, whereas the plans which the telephone and cable
companies currently seem to be pushing concentrate on keeping the same
model of operation that their executives are used to dealing with.
This is a fundamental mistake, and continuing down this path will
result in an very undemocratic and high-cost-to-entry information
marketplace, which is clearly undesirable.

Another significant difference between the Internet and the rest of
the networking world is a fundamental shift in charging models.  When
I get my connection from NEARnet or AlterNet or PSI (or any one of a
hundred other providers), what I pay for is NOT the service of
ferrying my data from point A to point B.  Rather, what I am paying
for is access to all the other customers of all the other providers,
at a certain specific line capacity.  Those other customers in turn
are paying their providers for the ability to talk to me (and lots of
other people).  This fundamental difference in what one buys from an
Internet service provider as opposed to a telephone company or a cable
operator has enabled the Internet to develop its now well-known
settlement-free conectivity and charging model, which SIGNIFICANTLY
reduces the tremendous amounts of overhead involved in accounting,
billing, settlements, and collection which are inherent in the way
telcos and cable companies do business.

This model also has the substantial privacy advantage that my Internet
service provider does not insinuate itself into the financial
relationships I have with other entities, in the way that telephone
and cable companies do.  If Bill wants to sell me a data product, then
we work out means of payment, execute the transaction, and I have my
data, Bill has his money, and my service provider is none the wiser.
If, on the other hand, Bill wants to sell me a video product, then I
have to convince my cable operator to do business with Bill, then they
buy the product from Bill, and I buy Bill's product from them, at an
inflated price.  Of course, if my cable operator is TCI, then they
won't buy anything from Bill unless he is really their agent anyway,
so our transaction never gets off the ground.

The solution, it seems to me, is something that we need to work long
and hard at developing, because whatever we end up with, we'll likely
be stuck with it for at least the next twenty to fifty years.  My
preference would be to see the vertical de-integration of both
telephone and cable companies, somewhat along the lines of Roch Tel's
trial balloon.  To wit, the telephone and cable companies should be
de-regulated, with the significant proviso that they must first make a
choice as to whether they want to be in the connectivity business or
the service business, and divest themselves completely of the one they
don't wish to concentrate on.  Then, in each market, when a
competitive environment can be said to exist for each sort of
business, that business would be de-regulated.

Only under these circumstances can we expect to have a true Information 
Superhighway to live up to the hype and qhopes of business, individuals, 
and their government.


Garrett A. Wollman  wollman@lcs.mit.edu 
formerly known as   wollman@emba.uvm.edu

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

From: weave@hopi.dtcc.edu (Ken Weaverling)
Subject: Re: Operator Assisted Sent-Paid Coin Calls
Date: 19 Apr 1994 09:18:04 -0400
Organization: Delaware Technical & Community College


In article <telecom14.175.7@eecs.nwu.edu>, Paul Robinson <PAUL@TDR.COM> 
wrote:

> I'm guessing here, but what it probably refers to is a historical
> issue.  The coin holding tray (the part that keeps coins until the
> call supervises, not to be confused with the fare collection box) on
> pay telephones in the U.S. can't hold more than three dollars, I have
> been told.  If an overseas call costs more than that, the operator has
> to process it manually.

This reminds me of a time about 20 years ago when I was about 15 and
had the hots for a girl in England.  I called her constantly, so my
parents eventually forbade me to ever call her again! :-)

So I'd save up money, buy two rolls of quarters, and head for a pay
phone. Then one lucky day I found a "busted" pay phone that, when
loaded with $2.50 (what I thought was the max it could hold before
collecting), when the operator "collected" the money, it'd fall
through to the coin return!

It went like this. The first three minutes cost $5.65, and each minute
thereafter was $1.15.  The operator began by asking me to deposit
$2.50 and then she'd place the call to see if the party answered on
the other end.  When they answered, she'd ask them to hold, then
collect the $2.50 (it'd go to the coin return for some reason), ask me
to put in another $2.50, collect that (back to the coin return), and
then finally 65 cents (which *did* drop into the coin box).

After six minutes, an operator came on again, and asked me to deposit
$3.35 for the three minutes overtime I had. I'd deposit $2.50, it'd
fall through to the coin return, then 85 cents, which would drop into
the coin box.

Needless to say, it was a gold mine for me. I talked about an hour a
day for a week. Until, as is usual with clueless persons, I got
greedy. One day I was speaking for about two hours when a supervisor
came on the line. The conversation went like this.

Supervisor: Do you realize that you have been on the line for over two
hours.

Me: Yes, I have a lot of quarters

Supervisor: Pretty fascinating, since, by my calculations, you would
have already spent over $150 on this call ...

Me: My daddy is rich, what can I say ...

Supervisor: What is REALLY fascinating is that the coin box can't hold 
that much money. Did you know that?

Me: <click>

Pretty stupid of me, looking back, since I went back the same time as
usual the next day, and made a call again.  This time, the pay phone
was fixed. Of course, the telco could have figured out easily my
calling pattern and been waiting for me.  I'm sure a "crime of
opportunity" would not be a valid defense for a kid.  I never phreaked
before, I just stumbled on it.

I also never even heard of red boxes back then. I wonder if the telco
thought I had one or something. Regardless, they fixed it, so they
figured out the problem quickly.

But I am curious. What type of fault could exist that would only cause
$2.50 to fall back to the coin return?  Anything less collected into
the coin box as it should.  This was a standard Bell armored pay
phone, I believe it was touch-tone (memory isn't THAT good...)


Ken Weaverling  weave@dtcc.edu 


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Forty years ago when I was a kid, pay
phones did not have trap doors on the coin return slot as they do now.
It was quite easy back then to wiggle a bent coat hanger up there and
trip the collection table to the left (by pushing upward from underneath
on the right side) with the piece of wire before it occurred to the oper-
ator to electrically dump it in the other direction (into the box). So
if a long distance call cost $1.50 and we had three quarters between us,
those three quarters would go in (bong bong bong!) then while the coat
hanger was busy up the slot retrieving the same three quarters to use
over again we would plead with the operator, "Just a minute please! I
am looking for more change! Nimble fingers could maneuver that piece
of wire and get the money back usually within five to ten seconds of
its deposit. Once in a second time, we would *try* to retrieve it again
before the operator dumped it, not always successfully. From certain
payphones downtown in the Chicago-Wabash CO, the operator handling the
call for whatever reason was unable to return the coins in the event
of no-answer or busy condition. To get the coins back she would tell
you to hold on a second; you'd hear a click as she connected to some
other operator who answered saying 'Wabash trunking' or words to that
effect; your operator would then say "Return on xxxxx" where xxxxx was
some circuit number. In your ear you would hear an absolutely horrid
'CLACK' -- a loud noise for a second or two, and the money would fall
into the return slot. For the longest time after we generally had the
one-slot, trap-door style payphones here there remained two or three
of the old-style three slot (5/10/25 cent) phones with no trap-door
on them in the lobby of the Insurance Exchange Building. Guess where
we always went to make payphone calls!   :)    PAT]

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

Date: Tue, 19 Apr 1994 09:52:29 +0200
From: alexa.veller@fundp.ac.be (A. Veller)
Subject: Re: GSM and Airbags
Organization: Cullen


In article <telecom14.177.7@eecs.nwu.edu>, Stewart Fist <100033.2145@
CompuServe.COM> wrote:

> It is headlined "Mobile phone set off airbag" and the story is about a
> couple of instances where (it is claimed) GSM handsets have set off
> airbags in luxury cars in Europe.

These "stories" have even been circulated in a BELGACOM publication in
Belgium (BELGACOM is our national telecoms operator). GSM telephones
alledgedly also interfere with some types of hearing aides.

> [...]  BMW, VW and Mercedes are also reported to have had airbag
> blow-outs with GSM, but they also all deny it.

There was also some reference in the press to the Renault Safrane.

As to whether this is a true story or an urban myth, I wouldn't know.
But in an article I recently read (don't remember the magazine though)
the journalists reported that the issue was being tested and that no
correlation had been found between the expanding airbags and GSM phones.
In controlled tests airbags were not triggered when the phone was used.

So its possible that airbags trigger for no reason, but it could be
something else that is causing this (or the airbag technology is just
not up to standard).  Note that GSM phones are still very expensive,
you'll find them almost exclusively in luxury cars, which all have
standard airbags. The statistical chance that an airbag blows up and a
GSM phone is present is therefore automatically high.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V14 #179
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