SPGDCM@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (04/17/87)
MSG:FROM: SPGDCM --UCBCMSA TO: NETWORK --NETWORK 04/17/87 12:33:42 To: NETWORK --NETWORK Network Address From: Doug Mosher <SPGDCM at UCBCMSA> Title: MVS/Tandem Systems Manager (415)642-5823 Office: Evans 257, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 Subject: system 36-pc, FCC registrations, standards activities To: telecom@xx.lcs.mit.edu System 36-pc connection IBM provides some sort of interconnect for pc's which I think does what the requester wants. Contact the IBM support people for the System 36 owner. If they aren't helpful shake them till they call their daddies/mommies. FCC registrations; how ETCO did it In about 1982 or so, I used to buy telephones and terminal blocks etc. from "ETCO" who had a thick surplus electronics pulp catalog. (Since then you can buy these things at all rad shacks and for that matter drugstores so ETCO became relatively less needed and more expensive than alternatives). Several miscellaneous old-fashioned standard used phones I bought, of clearly different styles (e.g. including both bell and Gen Telephone types) all had the same FCC registration sticker on them, identical. I always wondered whether ETCO or others got a broad FCC registration for the whole grandfathered set, or whether they were cheating. Just curious. Standards activities In past times, MA bell was a focal point for a lot of telephone activity, but even then there were other companies. Now it's the known mess. How in the past, and how now, does anyone coordinate? Such matters as protocols, assignment of area codes, plans for new service offerings, etc. Are there agencies such as ANSI involved? Do they all meet with some sort of trust-busting exemption? Are we worse off after the bustup in terms of coordinated development? Do companies copy each other to some extent to coordinate service offerings? An example of an issue would be this: "call-waiting" has been out long enough now for "the public" to begin to have some understanding of what it is and what those funny beeps mean etc. This was an advantage of a new concept disseminating itself into the populace over time. (But, answering machines are also now widely understood even though they required no particular standards activity.) I wonder about the developments such as passing the caller's number, call screening, etc. It would seem advantageous to have some aspects of the form of this service comprehensible to "the populace", and more specifically for instrument makers to know what to look for on the line no matter where the call originated. Thanks, Doug system 36-pc, FCC registrations, standards activities