0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (01/20/91)
In recent Digest issues, readers have queried how CNN might have
maintained its own broadcast quality audio lines back to the U.S.,
even when the "major powers" of network broadcasting could not.
Others have raised issues about AT&T's presence in Baghdad, the
use of "four-wire lines," and finding "four-wire" telephone subscriber
sets.
Here's my attempt to mingle practical background with recent
news, in the hope it provides an accurate description of how such
things are done. Along the way, I'll interject some oblique responses
to the posts of several readers, in the hope it avoids a number of
discontinuous postings. I hope those readers will catch the answers
to their questions along the way:
First, one must, if one does not already understand it, know that
AT&T is *not* the powerhouse in foreign nations, particularly the
Second and Third worlds that it is in North America. Each sovereign
nation has its own national "telephone and telegraph" operation.
These comprise the "Administrations" (notice the capital "A") of the
CCITT; they are the only members of the CCITT with voting privilege.
Even AT&T is not an "Administration" and does not get a vote. Any
stockholder-owned communications company is merely a "Recognized
Private Operating Agency," which can participate in discussion, but
cannot vote on the standards. (In the case of the U.S., a delegate
from the State Department casts *one* vote for the "Adminstration" of
the U.S.; a vote that must represent the summed attitudes of all the
*many* U.S. firms participating in discussion there.
The point of all this is to make clear that the Iraqi PTT is
*the* "phone company" in Iraq, and it has a stature equal to that of
any other nation in the world, so far as the politics of
telecommunications goes. Any circuits from other nations connected to
Iraq's public telecommunications are simply "partners" from the
distant end; the structure is virtually identical to railroads, in
which each company owns half the track distance and splits the take
with the other. How these splits are made is a significant part of the
work of the CCITT.
Thus, such communications channels as reach(ed) the U.S. from
Iraq via AT&T, or MCI or Sprint or others, were simply "partner" deals
along with the "partner" deals between the Iraqui PTT and perhaps
dozens of other nations. In fact, it's doubtful that any U.S. carrier
ever had enough traffic with Iraq to warrant owning its own "tracks"
to Baghdad. In such cases, light dial traffic is simply switched via a
third nation that does have its own facilities, in return for payment
of a "transit fee" to that nation. Then, if traffic volume is
sufficient, a deal will be struck with the third-party "transit"
nation's common carrier to permanently wire through via tranmission
channels of that nation, creating "direct" switched circuits (a great
deal like the "direct" but non "non-stop" flights airlines like to
tout).
Thus, it is doubtful AT&T ever had a presence in Iraq to warrant
having its own multi-story building in Baghdad to be bombed, as was
posited in one post attributed by Ken Jongsma to wire service reports.
Reporters have no better understanding of the structure of interna-
tional communications than the general public, so calling the PTT
building, "AT&T's building" is an understandable press error.
Second, there's some need to understand somewhat how loose and
cozy matters of importing and establishing telecommunications can be
in some nations...when one is doing something desired by the politi-
cal "powers that be." In this case, CNN had been doing something
Saddam Hussein desired, for some time. They had been operating from
Baghdad using fairly recent technology in what has been called "fly-
away" transportable satellite earth stations. These have emerged in
almost single (rather large) suitcase-sized earth stations, capable of
both transmitting and receiving using rather small dishes. One reader
mentioned that possibility, alluding to "maritime satellite" devices.
In fact, Marisat, with its own globe-spanning fleet of transponder
capacity up there in the sky, has been a leading promoter of sales for
low-density (compared to public network needs) satellite communications
to remote parts of the globe. (Yes, even Intelsat's "monopoly" is
under competitive fire these days.) CNN had even previously used
that technology in the Tienamen Square riots.
What CNN had been doing in Baghdad was not only sending but re-
ceiving its distribution program via satellite, much to Saddam Hus-
sein's pleasure. I noticed a wire story just a day or so prior to the
first attack on Baghdad describing how Hussein was enjoying seeing the
U.S. news coverage and White House attitudes by way of CNN's "satellite
station" in Baghdad. So, make up an equation of modern technology
combined with some good old-fashioned politicking, and one can see how
CNN was permitted to do so. No need to obtain rented facilities from
"the phone company" in such a setting at all. So much for the
surmises of rented transmission channels out to Amman or elsewhere.
In a similar vein, there have also been ABC reports from Tel Aviv
that seem to emanate from a similar privately-run earth station on the
roof of ABC's location in that city. ABC seems to be somewhere down
the road of making use of technology similar to CNN's.
As to how CNN could have broadcast-quality audio and IFB from the
stateside studio back (as you'll notice in those ABC feeds from Tel
Aviv), a video link has typically two (and sometimes more) audio chan-
nels multiplexed in with the video signal, so as long as CNN could
keep its baseband on the satellite, even if there were no video being
transmitted, they could maintain audio transmission of high quality,
while, as several readers observed, the others were reduced to noisy,
telephone-speech-quality circuits.
It was possible to hear the early effects of bombing of the Iraqi
PTT, as at first, the channels of the others, while limited to
telephone channel bandwidth, were quite noise-free, then as facilities
were destroyed, one could hear the connections made were coming via
noisier and noisier facilities. This is consistent with the Iraqui
PTT falling back to get transit connections via its nearby partner
countries, perhaps Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, the Emirates,
and using its older, shorter-distance plant normally used for direct
calls to those nations, and asking for transits to the U.S. In the
Third World, such transits are not unusual and done (under permanent
prearrangement) as a courtesy.
"Courtesy? They're under attack from the world!" you say. But,
one must bear in mind that getting a chance to hear anything juicy
about what one of the belligerents is up to is something *every* gov-
ernment (read "government PTT") wants to hear. Turn down a phone call
from Iraq that just *might* tip off who Hussein is talking to; where
he personally might be, is something nobody would miss the opportunity
to intercept and report to their own government, in the hope of being
remembered at salary review time!
I personally found my calls to the U.S. from Zambia were tran-
siting South Africa in a period when the South Africans were captur-
ing guerillas from Zambia daily. It was obvious the wily South Af-
ricans would extend that telecommunications courtesy in hopes some-
thing of intelligence use might be intercepted.
The history of intelligence intercepts must go back at least to
the Romans learning to read smoke signals of the Picts in Britain. In
the electrical era, an immediate action was to cut your enemy's
submarine telegraph cable and pull it ashore to a friendly nation.
The U.S. did this to Germany in both WWI and WWII, and the U.S. Army
even had its own cableship into the Korean War era. Somehow, all the
hype of today loses sight that the basic principles of telecommuni-
cations signal intelligence (SIGINT) didn't wait for today's
technology to be thought of.
As to CNN reporters being "secretive" about their methods, it's
more likely in my mind, they really didn't understand the techno-
political methods that worked to their advantage any better than the
average person, this they were much less secretive than unable to
describe what CNN's "hit" had been. What was the "problem" of the
other networks? More likely technology lag than anything else. You
can bet there have been some hot meetings at NBC and CBS since the
"CNN Baghdad event," and some flyaway earth station vendors probably
already have orders with New York shipping addresses.