[fa.telecom] TELECOM Digest V4 #4

Telecom-Request%usc-eclc@brl-bmd.UUCP (Telecom-Request@usc-eclc) (01/07/84)

TELECOM Digest           Thursday, 5 Jan 1984       Volume 4 : Issue 4

Today's Topics:
                            Rate Comparisons
                                UK Codes
                            Phone CenteStores
                           800 number question
                       inside wiring cost recovery
                  British postal codes & phone prefixes
                            welcome area 818
                         Intra-LATA competition
                          Long Distance Service
           Various unrelated requests from holiday cogitation
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Date: 3-Jan-84 14:35 PST
From: Pam Bicknell  <PAMV.TYM@OFFICE-2>
Subject: Rate Comparisons

I live in Sunnyvale, CA and most of my relatives live in Massachusetts
- my telephone bills are therefore outrageous.  Does anyone have 
references to written items or any online data regarding long distance
rate comparison between Sprint/MCI/AT&T?  I would VERY much appreciate
the info.  Pam Vittum (please send reply copy to: vittum@office)

------------------------------

Date: 3 Jan 1984 1846-EST
From: John R. Covert <RSX-DEV at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: UK Codes

Carl Moore has pointed out that in the U.K., seven digit phone numbers
are of the NXX form rather than the NNX form which was formerly a 
restriction in the U.S.

The restriction in the U.S. was a result of the absence of letters on 
the 1 and 0 position of the dial, which happened because any letter on
the 1 or zero could not have been used as the first character of an 
exchange name.  "1" as a first digit was avoided because of the danger
of a false pulse as an operator inserted a plug into a jack (I kid you
not, I have read 1927 AT&T documentation stating this) and the 
reservation of zero as the code for reaching the operator.

However, in the U.K., in order to avoid the confusion of 0 and O, the 
letter O was placed on the zero.

Thus exchanges such as MOOrgate (they used a three letter scheme, 
rather than our scheme) were 600.

New telephones in the U.K. no longer have letters.

In London, no exchanges began with the letter O.

In Paris, however, ODEon was a valid exchange, 033.  Within France, 16
is the prefix used before the city code for national calls, and 19 
before the country code for international calls.

When international direct distance dialing was first introduced in the
sixties, the lettering plans posed quite a problem.  Germany had to 
publish all the exchanges in London and Paris in its dialling code 
booklet.

Most countries use 0 for national and 00 for international, but the 
U.K. uses 010 for international, we use 01 or 011 depending on the 
type of call, Australia uses 0011, parts of Austria use 00 and other 
parts use 900, Denmark uses 009, El Salvador uses 0, Finland uses 990,
Ireland uses 16, Japan uses 001, the Netherlands use 09, Norway uses 
095, Lisbon uses 097, Qatar uses 0, Senegal uses 12, Singapore uses 
005, South Africa uses 091, Spain uses 07 and Sweden uses 009.

In France, a fixed length numbering scheme is used, as in the U.S., 
Belgium, Norway, Spain, Turkey.  Exchanges in the U.S. knew which 
countries had which length numbers and needed not wait for the "#" or 
the four-second timeout for these countries.  No 1 ESS only knew the 
minimum number of digits on countries with variable length codes, but 
No 2 ESS knew minimum and maximum.

With the disconnection of AT&T and its overseas administration from 
the operating companies, an order went out making all countries 
variable length with the minimum ever used, 7 digits (starting 
counting at the first digit of the country code).

------------------------------

Date: 3 Jan 1984 1532-PST
From: STERNLIGHT@USC-ECL
Subject: Phone CenteStores

Yes, something is going on with AT&T's phone center stores.  The 
Pasadena, CA store was also closed on December 23 and the sign there 
refers people to the Glendale, CA store, about 5-10 miles away by 
freeway.

--david--

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Date: Wed 4 Jan 84 04:03:53-PST
From: David Roode <ROODE@SRI-NIC>
Subject: 800 number question
Location: EJ286    Phone: (415) 859-2774

Is the same 800 number ever used multiply for intrastate WATS in two 
different states (and for two different purposes)?  -------

------------------------------

Date: Wed 4 Jan 84 04:26:29-PST
From: David Roode <ROODE@SRI-NIC>
Subject: inside wiring cost recovery
Location: EJ286    Phone: (415) 859-2774

In California, is the current billing surcharge that is supposed to 
recover customer plant costs over a 10 year period designed to mean 
that each consumer now owns his wiring?  It might be double billing to
levy this charge and also claim continued ownership of the wiring.  
All customers pay the same surcharge percentage, even if they have 
ordered service very recently and did their own wiring.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 4 Jan 84 9:27:55 EST
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@brl-vld>
Subject: British postal codes & phone prefixes

In the U.S., the phone exchange will NOT NECESSARILY match the address
required by postal service.  It is no surprise, because phones and 
mail are handled by different organizations.  What of countries where 
the postoffice does also handle the phones? (I believe UK is one of 
the latter.)

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 4 Jan 84 10:10:56 EST
From: cmoore@brl-vld
Subject: welcome area 818

1st state to have a double-digit number of area codes: California!  
New 818 area, formed by splitting 213, is the 10th area code there.

------------------------------

Date: Wednesday,  4 Jan 1984 14:13:18-PST
From: decwrl!rhea!donjon!goldstein@SU-Shasta
Subject: Intra-LATA competition

Actually, the BOCs don't have a monopoly on intra-LATA calls.  They 
are only precluded from Inter-LATA toll (non-local) traffic.  In 
Mass., for example, MCI has applied for both inter-LATA and intra-LATA
permission to operate.  ATTCOM has only asked for inter-LATA so far, 
but will if you want provide intra-LATA private lines. (NET, the BOC, 
is cheaper though.)  They may join the intra-LATA competition if the 
state DPU permits.

The divestiture didn't restrict AT&T from anything.  It just left the 
BOCs out alone with restrictions on them.

------------------------------

Date: 4-Jan-84 16:05 PST
From: MJM.TYM@OFFICE-2
Subject: Long Distance Service

Have there been any recent comparison studies done for long distance 
services?  SPRINT and MCI may be cheaper, but will the service be on 
par?  Will AT&T become cheaper as competition grows?

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 3 Jan 84 23:10:19 pst
From: sun!gnu@Berkeley (John Gilmore)
Subject: Various unrelated requests from holiday cogitation

Subject: Wargames breakin techniques that work -- or don't

I found it very interesting that of the 7 or 8 techniques the kid hero
of "Wargames" used to break in to systems, only one of them doesn't 
work in the real world.  Examples of ones that work:

        Finding passwords written down next to terminals Investigating
        peoples' backgrounds, kids, etc as potential passwords Using
        'help' commands before login (got me onto the Arpanet years
        ago!)  Scanning many phone numbers looking for interesting
        things

The one that doesn't work is: making a free pay phone call by 
unscrewing the microphone cover and grounding it to the phone (!).  
[Even if it had the potential to work, the covers are glued on so 
nobody will steal the crummy microphone.]

Somehow the movie scripters and producers believed that (1) nobody 
important would get upset if they showed good techniques for breaking 
into computers, and (2) somebody very important would get upset if 
they really showed a few ways of making free phone calls.  Now where 
would they get an idea like that?

--------- Subject: Telco defenses against scanning?

While on the subject --

Does anyone know how the phone companies protect themselves and their 
customers against scanning?  I'm sure that after being shown the 
example in a major movie, plenty of kiddies have written the 10-line 
Basic program to call a few thousand free local numbers and record 
whether their modem said "CONNECTED" or not.

It could be detected as a pattern of high usage, or of sequential 
calls, or of calls to large numbers of different destinations.  But 
all of the above are valid uses of phones -- I suspect our uucp lines 
are busy that much, though they only call about 50 numbers.  A phone 
ad service would do as well, though, and many of them are 
computer-dialed too.  Sequential call detection would be easy to 
program around, of course.

Does the phone company even notice this kind of thing?  Being a 
high-tech company in a prime Silicon Valley exchange, I'm curious how 
many such calls we've gotten -- we haven't detected any, but that 
means nothing.


---------- Subject: dial-out data calls

Do any public data networks offer dial-out calls, e.g. connections 
which are completed on the remote end by having the network dial a 
local call with a modem?  It seems to me that this would bring 
significantly more business into the data nets.  I know Sun probably 
can't affort a direct connect to Telenet (hefty up-front charges, a 
box in your machine room, a leased line to the Telenet C.O., and needs
a good bit of traffic to be reasonably priced) but it seems a shame to
send (and pay for) 56kbps to decvax when 1kbps is all we need.

Of course the per-packet cost of such a link would be greater than on 
a dedicated link, due to increased use of shared capital equipment, 
but should still be much lower than Bell long distance.  A call could 
be billed to the caller or could be a collect call if the receiving 
node has an account with the data net.  Under those terms it would be 
easy for companies like Sun (or even individuals who make many long 
distance data calls) to become PDN customers.  (How many non-Bell 
sites are on Usenet?  Conservatively, hundreds -- and they spend most 
of the night calling each other, when the PDNs are relatively 
unloaded.)

If the PDN's wanted to go thru the hassle, the could contract with the
local telcos like long distance voice providers, to avoid peoples' 
having to set up billing, etc, ahead of time.

I originally conceived of this as a service of the alternate L.D.  
providers, but they aren't set up for it -- the packet switch 
companies already have the facilities to move the data efficiently 
cross-country, they just can't get it across town cheaply.


----------- Subject: Detection of data calls by telco equipment?

Can ESS equipment detect whether a data call or voice call is in 
progress?  Do they care (except for echo suppressor disable)?  If the 
volume of calls became sufficiently high it would be a win to switch 
those calls to modems at a point near the source, and just send bits 
at low bps rather than 56kbps to the other end.  The error rate would 
hopefully be lower, too.

Is the pattern of a data carrier easy to detect in digitized 56/64kbps
audio?  Could this determination even be done by software?  I guess 
not, or somebody would have built a modem with a codec and a single 
chip micro.

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End of TELECOM Digest
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