Telecom-Request%mit-mc@brl-bmd.UUCP (Telecom-Request@mit-mc) (02/07/84)
TELECOM Digest Sunday, 5 Feb 1984 Volume 4 : Issue 21
Today's Topics:
MIscellany
death rattle exchange (cont'd)
Re: MCI-Mail Tymnet access
ANI
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Date: 3 Feb 84 17:15:21 EST
From: Hobbit <AWalker@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: MIscellany
Time for another three-month backlog update...
Back when I was part of the TSPS game, I was told to let phones ring
''5-7 times''. In other words don't let it ring all day long, such
that the boards get tied up.. but they did allow some leeway, and if
the customer requested to ring longer, in case they were calling
Grandma who takes ten rings to get to the fone, we could stay on
longer. Nothing to complain to the super about.
[This is directed in Lauren's general direction] Since when must one
have a ''contact'' at the PUC [or BPU, as it is here]? Does not that
agency exist for the public good? Can't anyone call with tariff
questions or flames or whatever? The answer as far as I can tell is
*yes* - I called the office in Newark, and got a guy who was very
helpful and informed me that if NJ went to usage-sensitive pricing,
you'd pay about $17 a month for basic service. Naturally, NJB is stil
charging an additional $.95 for touch-tone recognition... and as if
that wasn't insult enough, if you want to *change* your service from
rotary to touch-tone, you lay out $25 or so!!! And for what?
*Nothing*. The ESS lines by default have the TT bit set anyway, so
basically they do nothing at all except push some paper and tell the
CO wizards to at least make sure your bit is still on.
Re: intrastate call blocking: Outfits like MCI and ITT Citicall [I
think] implement this, but it isn't LATA-driven. You can't use ITT to
call next door, but you can call from Piscataway to Hoboken, which is
indeed in the same LATA. A small table rewrite could easily set them
on the straight and narrow....
Someone asked about passing the calling number to the called end.
This raises some interesting questions. Back in the good ol' days,
long-distance billing was handled by the local CO - you'd make a call,
the office would watch the supervision, and do the timing right there
on-site. The punched paper tapes [!!] that were generated were
forwarded to the billing department and that's how they charged you.
No need existed for any calling-number forwarding unless you went
through TSPS, where they needed it for their local billing records.
Now, since the split, how is the billing done? Does the central
office determine if you're making a long distance call, and if so,
pass on a packet containing your number as well as the called number
to the carrier?? Or is it still done locally for direct-dial? If the
former is the case, then it appears on the surface that to pass the
packet all the way to the far end would be relatively trivial, and
some arrangement could be made to parse off the calling number and
hand it to the customer. You'd never have crank calls again.... But
everyone knows that what looks easy is undoubtedly incredibly hairy.
Remember what happened when the Arpanet went to long leaders???
So, I went ahead and ordered fone service today... That silly tariff
that says you can't have mixed billing types in the same dwelling
still exists, so rather than a low-use measured second line, I had to
get what's known as a Secondary Line [teenage-phone type] which is a
dollar cheaper rather than three... oh well. It took a long time to
get the lady to believe that I can screw pairs on to the big connector
block in the basement of the complex. You know how they handle
''customer-provided wiring'' in this case?? They unscrew the existing
pairs, install a protector, and then leave the pairs dangling for you
to connect yourself, and *charge* you for the site visit. I asked her
wouldn't it just be simpler to turn on the lines at the block, and
tell me which pair numbers they were so I could hook up... Why do they
have to make life so complicated??? I hope at least the installer
understands what I want to do when he shows up.
_H*
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Date: Fri, 3 Feb 84 11:57:00 EDT
From: haddock!johnl%ima@BRL-BMD.ARPA
From: John Levine@BRL-BMD.ARPA, INTERACTIVE@BRL-BMD.ARPA,
Subject: death rattle exchange (cont'd)
The Woodstock (802-457) exchange may well be step, but I doubt it. We
have a touch phone and there's no clicking sound when we dial, nor any
delays that might result from such. The strange symptoms were
(again):
Sometimes there seems to be ANI and sometimes not. That's right --
sometimes an operator cuts in to ask for the number and sometimes a
call goes through directly. When I dial 0+number, sometimes a
machine invites me to dial my calling card number and sometimes it
goes directly to (beep) an operator. Perhaps only some of their
trunks have been upgraded. Is this possible?
When I tried dialing 950-1088, a funny access number, it directly
went to a "your call cannot be completed as dialed" recording the
same way whether or not I dialed 1 first.
We have a private line, albeit a long and noisy one. The 60HZ num
before and during dialing is deafening, but gets better once it starts
to ring.
John
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Date: 4-Feb-84 01:15 PST
From: William Daul - Tymshare Inc. Cupertino CA <WBD.TYM@OFFICE-2>
Subject: Re: MCI-Mail Tymnet access
Walt,
I work at TYMSHARE (but not with the TYMNET folks). I would like to
talk with the person you talked with. Do you happen to remember the
name? We (AUGMENT - office automation division) have or are close to
interfacing our mail system with that of ONTYME. I did stumble across
the gateway I mentioned last issue of TELECOM. I was thinking how
easy it would be to interface our mail system with TELENETs mail
system. It should be interesting to find out what "the prowers that
be" think of it when we approach them.
I see no valid reason to not interface existing mail systems. It
would be like not allowing the USPS to send mail outside the US. That
seems so ridiculous to me. Thanks for your note, --Bi<<
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Date: Sat, 4 Feb 84 12:51:23 est
From: ulysses!smb@Berkeley (Steven Bellovin)
Subject: ANI
Ah yes, phone systems without ANI. About 10 years ago, I lived in
Durham, NC, an area served by GTE. They didn't have ANI at the time,
and getting a phone bill was always an adventure. (So was dialing
from a DTMF phone -- you could hear the pulse converter at the CO
clicking away, and you had to be careful not to overrun it....) Once
(when I was at 919-544), a call to '% Fayetteville' showed up on our
bill. Now, we *knew* none of us had called Fayetteville, but we
wondered about the '%' -- we'd never seen it before. So we called the
Business Office, only to be told that their records showed that that
was a call that had been challenged on a previous bill and found to be
correct. Blatant horse-puckey, of course -- we had all our bills for
the last several years, and told them so. At that point, we were told
to forget about the charge. I never did figure out what was going on,
but there was a rumor current at the time that they randomly assigned
challenged calls to other bills.... About a year or so after that
episode, they installed ANI equipment on orders from the PUC (which
they fought vigorously). But it flaked out every time it rained, and
the DTMF converters still weren't any better. (Some other time, I'll
tell some stories of Chapel Hill Telephone, which was owned by the
University of North Carolina.)
--Steve
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End of TELECOM Digest
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