telecom@ucbvax.ARPA (06/29/85)
From: Moderator <Telecom-REQUEST@MIT-XX.ARPA> TELECOM Digest Saturday, June 29, 1985 12:00AM Volume 4, Issue 207 Today's Topics: MCI/IBM/SBS Re: long distance directory assistance Penril woes AJ-4800 modem catches ctrl-S? autodial on synchronous modems LATA billing on calling cards Various ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27-Jun-85 16:09:35 PDT From: vortex!lauren@rand-unix (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: MCI/IBM/SBS My personal opinion is that this is the best thing that could have happened for AT&T at this point! It seems counter-intuitive, but it's true. MCI was going to go ahead and get funding from somewhere to continue their current plans--and their recent disappointment with the award in their suit against AT&T forced them to go along with a substantial buyout by IBM. But the point is that they would have found funding somewhere, and even IBM isn't an infinite purse of money (as MCI will no doubt learn). IBM also makes its share of rather "questionable" business/pricing decisions, as we also all know. Now, the end result of all this is that the push for full deregulation of AT&T will be greatly enhanced. Already there are murmurings from the Commission on this point--that with IBM in the game there isn't much reason to worry about problems when AT&T is fully deregulated. In fact, the regulatory approval cycle for AT&T had been shortening anyway--but this can't help but speed up the process--to AT&T's ultimate advantage. An unleashed AT&T might be interesting to behold in the competitive marketplace. The real losers in all this will almost certainly be the smaller carriers--maybe even up to and including GTE Sprint. What ends up happening, of course, is that we end up with two giant corporations selling both telecommunications and computers, when originally we had, uh, two giant corporations selling telecommunications and computers (but each was only involved in one aspect, not both). The little guys will really suffer, though. --Lauren-- ------------------------------ From: dual!islenet!bob@Berkeley Date: Fri, 28 Jun 85 02:45:16 pdt Subject: Re: long distance directory assistance John Levine asks "Who do directory assistance operators work for .. How about when I dial 809-555-1212 and the operator says 'what island, Please'". The local telcos. For example, if you call 808-555-1212 (and you'll also be asked "which island?", but it's Hawaii, not the Carribean), you'll be talking to a directory assistance operator working for Hawaiian Telephone Company downtown here on Bishop Street. Happens to be a GTE subsidiary. HawTel will be reimbursed by AT&T (or whoever) for handling your query, AT&T (or, again, whoever you placed the call thru) keeps track of the fact that you placed the call and charges you (perhaps thru your local telco). A considerable fraction of the cost of directory assistance here is reimbursed this way. I believe that non-AT&T long-distance carriers often tend to use AT&T for directory assistance calls rather than set up separate agreements and connections with the local telcos involved ... not too sure about this last, though. ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 21 June 1985 07:33-MDT From: Steven Taylor <decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!taylor@Ucb-Vax.ARPA> Subject: Penril woes There are at least 3 prom sets for the Penril autodialers in question. The "vanilla" prom set does indeed keep cd high (as best I remember) in order to keep terminals happy. (It was designed to be used with dumb crt's as an outgoing device.) A second version was designed specifically to work with Develcon dataswitches in a bidirectional mode. That is, they could be used on the switch for outgoing calls or incoming calls on the same port. I KNOW that this prom set does not keep cd high, but brings it up in response to DTR coming high. (Remember, the dataswitch does not bring dtr high until it is trying to initiate a call. This difference may be the root of the problem mentioned.) If you need more detailed info on this, I'll be glad to discuss this firmware in detail. Finally, there is also, I understand, a "Hayes compatible" firmware set available now as well. Your Penril rep should be willing to work with you on getting a prom that will work, but you may have to get hin to do some investigation before he will admit that the three version (minimum) really exist. Steven Taylor Distributed Networking Associates Charlottesville, VA 22901 (804) 979-0656 ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 24 June 1985 21:42-MDT From: mark@maryland.ARPA (Mark Weiser) Subject: AJ-4800 modem catches ctrl-S? I have an Anderson-Jacobson 4800 baud modem which uses the ordinary phone lines. It works pretty well, except for one thing. It seems to interpret ctrl-S and ctrl-Q. I have not found this documented anywhere in the manuals, but it is obviously happening. After a ctrl-S typed at my keyboard (in emacs, naturally), no other chacacters appear until a ctrl-Q is typed. But then, the ultimate strangeness: The ctrl-S HAS been passed on from my terminal to emacs, and so has the ctrl-Q! This has got me baffled. How in the world can a modem get away with interpreting ctrl-S/ctrl-Q, and then passing them on as well? Am I misinterpreting something? Is there a way to turn this off, other AJ-4800 baud owners out there? On a related note, I can't seem to get 8=bit data through the AJ. My terminal has a meta-key which turns on the 8th bit on all characters. By the time these characters get through the AJ modem they have somehow been transformed to have proper parity, which is a disaster. Any way to turn off this mode? Thanks in advance. -mark -- Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@maryland Phone: +1-301-454-7817 CSNet: mark@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!mark USPS: Computer Science Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 24 June 1985 16:22-MDT From: Mark Roddy <harvard!talcott!panda!enmasse!mroddy@Seismo.ARPA> Subject: autodial on synchronous modems I'm faced with a design question on implementing autodial for low speed synch modems (i.e. 4800 bps.) The only synchronous modem I've got a spec for is a UDS 4800 model. Dialout is accomplished by: 1) driving pin 12 high; 2) driving DTR high; 3) waiting a specified time; 4) raising pin 25 high for 3.5 seconds; 5) providing high and low pulses on pin 25 corresponding to bell standard pulse dial signals. The questions are: 1) does anyone manufacture synchronous modems with some analogy to the Hayes protocol for async dial out? 2) Is UDS's method done by anyone else? (i.e. is this a standard?) 3) If the answer to question 2 is no, then is there a standard? 4) If the answer to 2 and 3 is no, then what dialout interface do other netlanders provide for their intelligent comm boards? 5) In fact, even if the answer to 2 or 3 is yes, I'd be interested in knowing how other people provide autodial for comm. boards. Please send mail, if there is interest I will post a summary of responses to the net. Thanks. -- Mark Roddy (harvard!talcott!panda!enmasse!mroddy) ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 28 Jun 1985 06:02:59-PDT From: goldstein%donjon.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (Fred R. Goldstein) Subject: LATA billing on calling cards Re: V4I206; Sunnyvale and Mill Valley are both in the same LATA (Bay Area), so PacBell carries the call. Area codes have no particular relationship to LATAs except in New England, or where states are LATAs. All of 415, most of 408 and a some of 707 are in one LATA. When a calling card call is intra-LATA, the BOC who owns the call passes the bill to the cardholder's BOC, hence the call appears on the "New England Telephone" page. When the call is inter-LATA, AT&T keeps the billing under their own aegis. Technically, one could have viewed the call as "Pacific Bell", but New England Tel doesn't have a page for them! ;-) Fred ------------------------------ Date: Fri 28 Jun 85 12:28:40-PDT From: HECTOR MYERSTON <MYERSTON@SRI-KL.ARPA> Subject: Various Multi-NPA LATAS. Some LATAS, more correctly, Serivice Areas, do indeed split NPAs. The SF Bay service area includes all of NPA 415 and most, though not all of NPA 408. Part of 408 is in the Monterey Ca serice area. The last I heard the split on operators is as shown below. Substitute your local telco for Pacbell. Operators.................. AT&T ................... PacBell............. Dial 0- Calls Handle, charge Pacbell Dial 0+ Calls Handle 411 Calls Handle 555-1212 Handle, charge AT&T (*) ........................................................................... 0 - = Regular Operator Assisted calss 0+ = 0+NPA NXX XXXX (ie credit card calls * = Other IEC may also contract with LEC for 555-1212 service Reference equal access. Those who believe carrier sales pitches that "With equal access we will have the same quality as AT&T" should examine the question of what constitutes an end-to-end connection. No amount of improvement in the local acess will compensate for badly engineered networks, satellite delays or kludgy compression techniques designed to wring the Nth channel out of a marginal system. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************