djcl@contact.uucp (woody) (01/19/91)
It's all but official ... I'll be spending much of 1991 in the U.S.,
getting out of the Great White North in March. This will be a half-to
3/4-year stint at the company branch office in Boca Raton, FL. Now the
opportunity arrives to experience the U.S. dereg experience
first-hand, equal access, COCOTS, LATAs and everything that has been
shielded from sensitive Canadian eyes that haven't seen TELECOM
Digest.
There are a few things that could be set up before the big move,
though ... (e-mail to djcl@contact.uucp, please don't flood the
Moderator with mail).
1) I might be able to set up a UUCP link at the company; any UUCP feeds
local to Boca Raton? If so, under what circumstances?
2) Are BBSs charged business rates down there? Boca Raton, I believe,
is Bell South (the BOC there??) territory, but GTE and Centel are all
over Florida as well.
3) Presumably, I wouldn't select ITI for a default carrier here... :-)
4) I have heard that AT&T and MCI have comparably good plans,
particularly for dialing Canada. Any further advice, ideas on carriers
other than the big three (AT&T, MCI, Sprint)? I've picked up much on
how to access things like 10xxx, heard tales of FONcards and
residential 800 service etc. but anything specific to FL would be
appreciated (intra-LATA stuff, telco trivia, etc)
5) If all else fails, any tips on things like ATT Mail, MCI Mail, PC
Pursuit?
My thanks in advance for any and all information; looks like
communications are really going to get interesting over the next
several months in my case ... hopefully, I'll catch the Digest one way
or another when I leave contact here.
djcl@contact.uucp... soon djcl@attmail, djcl@mcimail,
... djcl@epcot.com ????!?!??!
[Moderator's Note: Good luck. If nothing else, I'll send you the
Digest via any email service you join. Just let me know where. PAT]Dave Leibold <Dave.Leibold@f126.n480.z89.onebdos.uucp> (04/27/91)
Some findings since coming down from the north a few weeks ago to the U.S. of A.... Installing a local line can be particularly expensive. Southern Bell will grab USD$142 to install a new line. Bell Canada would be hard pressed to charge a third of that for an install (definitely not on extra Toronto line I had installed). Southern Bell could be reached from Canada at 1 800 753.0710 for purposes of arranging new service; the live operator who came on (after running through a bunch of touch tone selections on the automated call director) asked how she could provide "excellent" service. Bodacious! Bill and Ted's "Excellent" BOC :-) After many questions (including default long distance carrier, which most Canadians wouldn't be too well versed on), plus a request for a "social security" number (they took the Canadian equivalent; the social insurance #), things were set for an install. Of course, they tried to go after me rather heavily to add on the Call Waiting service to all the other detailed charges. MCI seems to be working out quite well so far. The Customer Service is good, though there is a tendency to take many, many rings before getting an operator live. COCOTs are everywhere ... and fortunately so are Southern Bell's "real" payphones (so far). The COCOTs for the most part seem to allow access to the carriers, though 10288 (AT&T) is the only 10XXX code that seems to be accepted by these things. 950 and 800 number access can be done on at least some of them. The worst COCOTs will attempt to bill for 800 number Directory Assistance (on Southern Bell payphones, 1 800 555.1212 is free). The worst COCOT found thus far was outside a Burger Thing in Boca Raton. The name of the COCOT operator wasn't mentioned (just a phone number in NPA 305). A robot voice would actually come on and ask for $3 for calls to currently non-operational area codes like 909, 706, etc and a lesser fee for "directory assistance" to those area codes. It wouldn't have done much good to talk to the management anyway as they didn't have their act together enough to be able to sell any Whoppers at the time. Sometimes you gotta break the rules :-) A bizarre switching bug happens when 1 700 555.4141 is dialed on a Southern Bell payphone: a canned voice will come out and actually ask for 65c. Weird thing to happen for a carrier check (which I was able to do free from Detroit not too many months earlier). '00' will do quite nicely, though ... default carriers can range from AT&T to MCI, Sprint and Metromedia/ITT. COCOTs like ITI and Telesphere for their "carriers". As a final note, the PBS Nova program featuring a re-creation of the tracing of the German/KGB hacking ring was broadcast. Cliff Stoll played himself in the program, as well as the other participants in the trace, complete with location shots in Germany. Check your local PBS station or TV listings... David Leibold dleibold@attmail.com IMEx 89:480/126 or c/o The Super Continental BBS +1 407 731 0388 Dave Leibold - via IMEx node 89:681/1 Dave.Leibold@f126.n480.z89.onebdos.UUCP [Moderator's Note: Long-time Digest readers will recall that David Leibold corresponded with us regularly from Canada while he was living there. He submitted the Canadian area code and prefix tables available in the Telecom Archives (ftp from lcs.mit.edu). PAT]
drmath@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> (04/27/91)
Dave.Leibold@f126.n480.z89.onebdos.uucp (Dave Leibold) writes: > Installing a local line can be particularly expensive. Southern Bell > will grab USD$142 to install a new line. Bell Canada would be hard > pressed to charge a third of that for an install (definitely not on > extra Toronto line I had installed). That's a little out of line; I've lived in Pac*Bell and Indiana Bell territories and it's right around $40 ($20 additional in Pac*Bell for various options and first month's service). > COCOTs are everywhere ... and fortunately so are Southern Bell's > "real" payphones (so far). The COCOTs for the most part seem to allow > access to the carriers, though 10288 (AT&T) is the only 10XXX code > that seems to be accepted by these things. Strange as it sounds, I have found that the IndianaBell payphones will only allow 10288; while it is possible to dial other access codes, they all get you AT&T. I called to complain, but I don't think anything will be done.
Bill Woodcock <woody@ucscb.ucsc.edu> (04/29/91)
> As a final note, the PBS Nova program featuring a re-creation of > the tracing of the German/KGB hacking ring was broadcast. Cliff > Stoll played himself in > the program, as well as the other > participants in the trace, complete with location shots in > Germany. Check your local PBS station or TV listings... I talked to Cliff not long after they'd finished filming it, and he didn't seem too happy about it. Specifically, they shot one scene in the forest where the German hacker was found burned to death, and the director apparently kept trying to get him to be more "lighthearted" which he found to be in rather poor taste. He said the whole thing was shot on 16mm film, rather than video, but was low budget, so they couln't do more than one or two takes of any scene. Also, apparently almost all the people at Laurence Berkeley Labs played themselves, and got a big kick out of it. He said that only the Intelligence types wouldn't agree to appear in the documentary, and that the producers got some football coaches to play them, although I don't know whether he was thrying to make a joke on that one. :-? bill.woodcock.iv..woody@ucscb.ucsc.edu 2355.virginia.st..berkeley.ca.94709.1315