larry@uunet.uu.net (Larry Lippman) (09/12/90)
In article <11592@accuvax.nwu.edu> wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) writes: {can you time up a dial-up line all month?} > An alarm distributor once told me that Sonitrol {sp} tried this. They > offered an alarm system that triggered on loud noises inside the > buildings at night. Then the alarm office could listen, mike by mike, > to hear if it was an intruder, or a burping furnace. > To do they, they used standard dialup lines, and kept them open all > night, or all weekend. Ma took them up the court ladder, and won. I > suspect the tariffs have some catchall phrase about "abnormal use" or > such. I've not heard of the particular instance involving Sonitrol, but I have heard of others. In fact, some years ago I was personally involved with this type of situation (details later in the article). This was indeed a matter of "concern" to the Bell System at one time. Most untimed (one-message-unit-per-call-regardless-of-length or true flat rate) subscriber line service for businesses was eliminated during the 1970's, resulting in businesses being charged for the actual length of calls. Prior to such changes in tariffs, a local call could exist for a virtually unlimited time, tying up CO apparatus and interoffice trunks without any revenue being produced. The Bell System was "concerned" because such usage could deprive it of revenue which should otherwise arise from leased line circuits for say, data, alarm or OPX purposes. Some of this "concern" on the part of the Bell System was no doubt brought on by the (then) comparatively recent offering of telephone network interconnection devices, opening up new possibilities for customers to utilizes apparatus which might deprive the Bell System of revenue from the sale of its traditional products and services. With the introduction of local message timing, the effective "rate" for a continuous call usually exceeded the rate for a leased line. Therefore, the telephone company was "happy" with either subscribers who made long, continuous calls or who obtained leased lines - because either event generated revenue. Quite frankly, I don't believe that potential degradation of service to other customers was ever a *true* concern, although it was certainly THE *voiced* concern. So, the point is, in earlier days the telephone company was not concerned because CO apparatus and interoffice trunks were tied up per se, but because they had neither tariffs nor apparatus to permit billing for such usage. As a result, the telephone company would refer to tariff provisions prohibiting a subscriber from "use of service or facilities that would injuriously effect the efficiency of the Telephone Company's plant, property or service." [actual tariff quote] The intent, of course, was to force such a subscriber into obtaining an appropriate leased telephone circuit. Today, in general, the telephone company extracts its "pound of flesh" from every minute of almost every local business call, and could care less about how long individual calls exist. As an example, in my local calling area based upon business rates, a month-long call would cost around $ 300.00 - which is generally more than the monthly cost of any comparable leased circuit. As a personal aside, in 1970 I designed and prototyped a product which was intended to exploit untimed business calls to create tie lines and OPX's for use with a telephone company-provided cord PBX. This product, which was called "Econo-Tie", would have saved customers money by eliminating the cost of leased lines. Using combinations of burst and continuous inband tone signaling at 500, 700, 1100 and 1600 Hz, the device created supervisory, dial and ringing signals over a dialed-up telephone circuit. One device was required at each customer location. Each pair of devices could be optioned to provide any one of the following: OPX, manual ringdown tie line, automatic ringdown tie line, and one-way dial repeating tie line. The product was only intended for use with cord PBX's, such as 551, 552, 555 and 608 - either as a manual PBX or as a cord board in front of a 701, 710 or 740 SxS PABX. The product was intended to mount next to the cord PBX, and all connections were made using the PBX cords. The device tied up one cord circuit and one CO trunk jack of the PBX at all times to create the CO line connection, with supervisory lamps indicating when the connection was established, or whether it had failed and required redialing. The device provided both station and CO trunk jacks for use with the cord board, and a jack for customer-provided 500-type sets when used for OPX service. In OPX mode, dialing to establish the CO line circuit could only be accomplished at the PBX end. While the above device may sound complex, the control logic and timing was actually simple (if taken step by step), and was provided using only about ten DTL integrated circuits. The most expensive part of the product design was the -48 volt, 20 Hz ringing and logic power supply modules. Isolation from the telephone circuits was maintained using transformers and relays. Seven miniature AE relays were used to provide: CO line CPC supervision, PBX cord supervision sense, PBX cord supervision control, battery feed and loop control, dial pulsing, PBX or station ringing control, and PBX or station ring trip detect. Two fabricated neon lamp optocouplers were used for ringing detection. Today's solid-state optoisolators would have vastly simplified circuit design and reduced cost, but they were not as yet "in" in 1970. Savings in cost could also have been achieved if the product were made specific to each end of each operating mode, but the intention at the time was to build one and one only physical product which was "hermaphroditic" in nature and could be optioned as necessary. The product was admittedly overdesigned, but was intended to be as reliable as possible and to sell for $ 1,600.00 per pair - which represented a typical two year payback for its intended customers. Implementation of the device would have not only eliminated tie line IXC mileage and local CO loop charges, but would have eliminated PBX charges for tie line termination apparatus. In 1970, this was a *very* attractive payback interval for, say, the retail store industry. My original prototype versions had no amplification to compensate for circuit loss (it was still quite usable under most circumstances). I had actually incorporated a Transcom negative impedance repeater in the prototypes to provide about 3 dB of gain at each end, but it was not stable at even this low of a gain setting over the wide range of loop impedance conditions that were encountered. The repeater was therefore bypassed during field testing. Had there been a final design, it would have utilized a more stable hybrid-type repeater. Another loophole exploited by this product was that there was no permanent electrical connection to any telephone company apparatus, so that it could be disconnected (and hidden :-) ) at a moment's notice. There was also no tariffed "interconnecting unit" to go between a PBX cord and customer provided equipment, so this fell through a crack with respect to interconnection "protection" requirements. I ran two sets of prototypes for about three months with some department stores. Retail stores were notoriously *cheap* when it came to telecommunications costs, would do almost anything to save money, and were my primary target market. During this test phase in early 1971, I succeeded in capturing the undivided attention of New York Telephone - as one might imagine :-). New York Telephone management was not amused at the prospect of someone actually manufacturing and marketing this type of a product. Consequently, New York Telephone initiated a 3-pronged attack to "dissuade" me from further pursuit of this product: (1) Threats and Intimidation ... "We will summarily disconnect the telephone service of any customers caught using this device. How would you, Mr. Engineer-turned-Entrepreneur, like to face the consequential liability for that?" (2) Impassioned Plea for Fairness ... New York Telephone was aware that at the time I worked as a consulting engineer who primarily handled engineering requirements of a stable of small independent operating telephone companies. New York Telephone appealed to my sense of "fair play", in that I would be a "traitor" to the operating telephone company industry should I continue with plans to manufacture and market this device. (3) Changing Tariffs ... New York Telephone revealed various plans and proposed tariffs which would be effective within the next two years, with such actions resulting in introduction of message timing for all major cities in New York State. The introduction of local message timing would make this product largely impracticable. Reason #3 (with a little help from Reason #1) persuaded me to drop the project. Reason #2 did indeed make me feel bad - for all of thirty seconds. :-) Telecommunication "progress" was much slower twenty years ago. The thought of marketing a product that would be unusable in as little as two years (other issues notwithstanding) did not seem at the time to make good business sense. As it turned out, the full implementation of New York Telephone's local message timing plans for business service took more like six years rather than the two years that they had represented. Yes, they lied. :-) I have, on occasion, wondered what would have happened had I proceeded with my original plans for this product and tangled with "Ma" over the issue. Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp. {boulder||decvax||rutgers||watmath}!acsu.buffalo.edu!kitty!larry VOICE: 716/688-1231 || FAX: 716/741-9635 {utzoo||uunet}!/ \aerion!larry