Telecom-Request@Mit-Mc.ARPA (04/06/84)
TELECOM Digest Thursday, 5 Apr 1984 Volume 4 : Issue 41
Today's Topics:
phone bills
calling card fraud
New multiple-carrier phones
A new form of divestiture
Cordless on FM broadcast?
[Geoff at SRI-CSL: A new form of divestiture.]
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Date: 31 Mar 84 21:19:45 EST
From: Liz <SOMMERS@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: phone bills
Has anyone noticed that their phone bills are not arriving on time?
Our past two bills covered 2 and 3 months apiece (respectively). Are
the mini-bells having problems or what?
liz
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From: vortex!lauren at RAND-UNIX
Date: Sun, 1-Apr-84 17:15:21 PST
Sender: Lauren Weinstein <vortex!lauren@RAND-UNIX>
Subject: calling card fraud
Someone asked what the probability was that somebody would "guess"
their calling card number and start using it. Very low.
Unfortunately, that's not how people get those numbers. I strongly
suspect that most numbers are ripped off by people who hang around
airports and watch people punching in (or listen to them reading out)
the numbers. Remember that:
a) The new style payphones most frequently seen in airports
(i.e. the exposed vertical pedestals) offer virtually no privacy.
Especially in a busy airport, a person seemingly waiting for a free
phone can often look over your shoulder and note the number being
entered.
b) Most people make no attempt to cover the number that they're
"dialing", and often punch slowly and clumsily -- giving the
crooks plenty of time to see what's going on. I've noticed similar
behavior with people entering PIN's at Automated Tellers.
If people would take some modest precautions to avoid having people
see what they're entering on those phones, I'll bet that calling card
fraud could be drastically reduced quite quickly. The magstripe AT&T
cards will help (though it indeed would have been better not to have
the PIN on the card) but people have to take some responsibility onto
themselves as well.
--Lauren--
P.S. I recently got a phone bill from Pacific*Bell with a calling
card call ($2.50 or so) that I had not made. This was particularly
interesting since there is no calling card associated with that
particular phone line. The poor billing rep couldn't figure out how
the call could have billed to me. My own suspicion is that some
operator on a manual cordboard somewhere made a mistake while making
out a billing ticket. Apparently the tickets are never checked
against the existing calling card database.
--LW--
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Date: 2 Apr 1984 1321-EST
From: Robert Scott Lenoil <G.LENOIL at MIT-EECS>
Subject: New multiple-carrier phones
Upon arriving at Boston's Logan airport yesterday, I noticed that
new multiple-carrier public telephones had been installed. They had
all the usual functionality of regular credit card only phones; but
they also allowed you to place long-distance calls with other
carriers, by first pressing the appropriate button for your carrier.
Feeling curious, I picked up the handset, received a dialtone, then
pressed the button marked SPRINT. I then heard some muted tones, and
several seconds later, the SPRINT dialtone. Obviously, the phone
simply dialed the local SPRINT access number.
Oddly enough, I don't recall seeing a button for AT&T; it seems
that it is the default carrier. Also, the instruction card said that
alternate carriers could also be chosen by dialing the appropriate
10xx prefix.
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Date: 2 Apr 84 18:59:13-PDT (Mon)
From: Larson @ Sri-Unix
Subject: A new form of divestiture
***** sri-unix:net.jokes / pyuxn!rlr / 7:11 am Mar 30, 1984 April 1
1984 - Washington DC
After the huge success surrounding the divestiture and reorganization
of the Bell System, the Justice Department has sought to expand the
logic to other public service functions. As a first step, the postal
system will be reorganized in a similar fashion to the new Bell
System.
Under the new scheme, the currently existing US Postal Service will be
divided into regional post office companies (RPOCs) serving the local
communities. The RPOC will service customers solely on a local basis,
moving letters only between the mailbox and the local postal facility
(central office). If the point of delivery is within the scope of the
local central post office, then delivery is the sole responsibility of
the RPOC local office. However, if the item is to be sent to a
location outside the realm of the local post office, the customer must
be given a choice as to which non-local carrier service he/she wishes
to use. The choices will include USMail (a fully separated entity
from the RPOCs), UPS, Federal Express, Emery Air Express, and the Pony
Express (which will be divested from the USMail corporation). The
RPOCs may not show any favoritism toward their former parent
organization, now called USMail, and must allow other carriers
complete accessibility to their customer base. This is being done to
foster a free market environment in the mail industry, and to promote
competition and free enterprise amongst the carriers, many of whom
felt that USMail had limited such practices in the past.
The question arose as to which organization, the RPOCs or the national
postal service, would retain the name 'U. S. Mail', especially in
light of the widely held reputation surrounding that name. In the
end, the issue was settled by a coin toss, which the national postal
service lost. Since they get to keep the name, the national postal
service has been compensated by allowing them to divest themselves of
the Pony Express service, which has been a great burden on them what
with having to feed the horses and all. This will make the Pony
Express a fully separated service from USMail, and will allow the Pony
Express to venture forth into new technological areas previously
unentered by the Postal Service due to governmental regulation. These
areas will include the use of modern equipment for sorting and filing
pieces of mail employing new technologies such as electricity, the use
of well-trained and literate personnel to route mail to its proper
destination, and the development of a new service which will guarantee
(for a fee) that the mail you send will arrive at its intended
destination in readable/usable condition. (No guarantee is made
regarding how long it takes for the mail to arrive, and trampling or
other mutilation of the mail by horses is not covered under the
guarantee.)
One problem with the new scheme is that, without the financial support
of the national postal service, the RPOCs may not have enough capital
to survive in the new marketplace. Thus local mail rates will
probably increase in the near future. However, long distance mail
rates will generally fall into line with the rates of competing
carrier services, which means that, more than likely, they will go up
as well...
-- "I'm not dead yet!" "Oh, don't be such a baby!" Rich Rosen
pyuxn!rlr
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Date: 3 Apr 84 00:21:23 EST
From: Hobbit <AWalker@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: Cordless on FM broadcast?
I'd love to know how this was done. According to some dude at the
local Rat Shack, and a little research of my own, cordless fones use
the 49.8 MHz FM band [''new'' CB, also used by those little headset
communicator frobs] handset -> base, and 1.75 or so *AM* ???? base ->
handset. I can't verify the latter part since my ghetto blaster only
tunes down to 2.something, but I *have* heard the origination half
faintly on the scanner, on the same channels as the toy
walkie-talkies. Anyone owning one of these suckers care to comment
further? I don't see, except via vicious harmonics, how the neighbor
could hear it all on FM.
_H*
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Date: Tuesday, 3 April 1984, 13:47-PST
From: Marc Le Brun <MLB at SPA-NIMBUS>
Subject: [Geoff at SRI-CSL: A new form of divestiture.]
I've heard that as part of the Mail Service disvestiture there will be
new "Mail Center Stores" springing up in shopping malls around the
country, where you can buy designer mailboxes shaped like Mickey
Mouse, and stamps in decorator colors!
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End of TELECOM Digest
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