Telecom-Request%usc-eclc@brl-bmd.UUCP (12/20/83)
TELECOM Digest Tuesday, 20 Dec 1983 Volume 3 : Issue 121 Today's Topics: Cellular vs. public phones SPRINT drops monthly service fee. Airport Pay phones Blue boxes Cordless phones and stupidity... July 1983 Chicago call guide Re: MCI Charge-a-call phones voice-grade service ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Friday, 16 Dec 1983 13:19:05-PST From: decwrl!rhea!donjon!goldstein@Shasta Subject: Cellular vs. public phones MCI and AT&T may be having a nice time with public phones, but I'd hate to discount them just because cellular is coming out. Cellular means we'll have lots of new channels available in cities like NY and Chicago, which long ago ran out of IMTS slots. But in return, radios are even more expensive, about three grand apiece. And the hand-helds aren't in real production yet (lots of battery drain to worry about!). Then you pay about a quarter a minute for channel time, plus tolls. And it'll be a few years before the small markets & boonies are on cellular systems. So I'll just hang on to my dimes (in Mass., you outlanders pay more, I realize) and make my calls on the cheap. Heck, up here in the home of the Bean & the Cod, there's no waiting list for cheap, old-fashioned IMTS, and Cellular isn't even running yet. Admittedly it's hard to do decent hand-held at 150 MHz, full duplex (my Yaesu handheld does great hdx, tho), but only someone whose middle name is Croesus will use Cellular when coin is available! Fred ------------------------------ Date: 16 Dec 1983 14:51-PST Subject: SPRINT drops monthly service fee. From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow <Geoff @ SRI-CSL> n012 0711 16 Dec 83 BC-SPRINT (BizDay) (ART TO LASER 2 CLIENTS) By STEVEN J. MARCUS c.1983 N.Y. Times News Service New York - The GTE Corp. announced Thursday that it would drop the monthly service fee it charges users of its long-distance Sprint service on Jan. 1 and offer its discount long-distance phone service to any city in the United States. The policy change is Sprint's attempt to increase its market share quickly as competition for lucrative long-distance calling increases with the breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. ''We will be offering a single type of service at low rates with no monthly fee,'' said Dale F. Pilz, president of GTE Sprint. This will enable the company ''to compete directly for all customers who spend over $5 a month on long distance,'' he said. The current long-distance market is worth about $50 billion a year, according to Harry Edelson, an analyst with the First Boston Corp. in New York. The market is dominated by the American Telephone and Telegraph Co., with an estimated 94 percent share of the business. The MCI Communications Corp., Edelson estimates, is second with 3 percent, and Sprint is third with 1.5 percent. Given the great gap between the front-runner and the rest, most analysts, as well as Sprint itself, say that the major target of the runners-up is AT&T. Each is trying to erode its huge customer base, with special emphasis on grabbing business customers who spend far more than residences on long-distance calls. Even with their small overall market shares, MCI's revenues in 1983 will be about $1.8 billion and Sprint's will approach $1 billion, Edelson said. ''We view our competitor to be AT&T,'' said Tom Bestor, a spokesman for GTE Sprint. ''Pricewise, we're about equal with MCI, with average savings of 10 to 25 percent on a total bill'' compared with AT&T. ''And by eliminating the monthly fee and start-up costs, we expect to increase affordability even further.'' Gary Tobin, a spokesman for MCI, said his company was ''mystified'' as to why Sprint was cutting rates now when access charges are not yet settled. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission have yet to agree on the access charges that long-distance carriers will pay local phone companies for access to their systems. And Tobin said that Sprint's strategy might backfire if it had to increase its rates once those new charges were set. Beginning Jan. 1, all customers in Sprint network cities will be able to call any city in the United States, whether it is in the network or not, at rates that vary only with mileage and the time of day. Customers with bills of more than $25 will receive a discount on all calls, with the discount increasing as the volume goes up, and Home Sprint and Business Sprint will be combined in a single service. But analysts say that Sprint's elimination of a start-up charge and monthly service fee - there will be a minimum use charge of $5 a month - will have the greatest impact. Sprint now has a service charge of $5 a month for home users and a minimum of $25 a month for businesses. ''This makes an enormous difference'' to the many low-volume users across the country, said Edward M. Greenberg, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. ''By eliminating the $5 charge, Sprint is broadening the market it appeals to.'' But Edelson also expressed some surprise that GTE Sprint would cut its prices now, before the access charge question is settled. He said the new charges would likely require Sprint and its competitors to revise their rates. Still, ''they are cutting their rates now,'' Edelson said, ''so that when customers get to choose'' the long-distance carrier they wish to use in conjunction with their local phone service, the hope is they will choose Sprint. ''GTE has enough cash to do a loss-leader now and make it up later on,'' he said. nyt-12-16-83 1001est *************** ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Dec 83 11:01 EST From: Steven Gutfreund <gutfreund%umass-cs@CSNet-Relay> Subject: Airport Pay phones When I was last at Homdel, the folks doing pay phones were very worried about MCI's intention to enter the airport pay phone business. It turns out that Airport pay phones are the only net income source in the pay phone business, the rest of the pay phones are losers. Collection costs are the worst part of it. They were looking into magnetic strip cards and "smart cards" (those with the chip inside them). But since they expected to still have to provide those that collected the change, they were worried by this move. (oh yes, they have elaborate histogram and statictics that tell them how often to visit each phone to pick up the money). - steve ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Dec 83 22:16:26 pst From: The tty of Phil Lapsley <jlapsley%D.CC@Berkeley> Subject: Blue boxes I personally wouldn't think that the proliferation of Radio Shack Touch-Tone generators would lead to many more blue boxes being used. After all, most people who would use a blue box would not use it in a public place. Perhaps having more people with portable Touch-Tone generators might let people with blue boxes use them with a bit less secrecy, but I don't really think that will add to the number of people using blue boxes. Around here (Bay Area), the blue box situation is quite neatly sewn up by Pac Tel. The equipment is set up in such a way that any call made with a blue box drops a trouble card or triggers a printer somewhere, so they have the time the call was made, as well as the number it was made from, and the number it was made to. While this certainly doesn't stop the call from being made, it effectively limits what a person can do with a blue box -- that is, he cannot call anyone, since they will simply get a call the next day from the Security division, and of course, he must call from a pay telephone. To me, this seems a very good solution to the problem. As far as actual laws refering to blue boxes, you might check California Penal Code 502.7. It does not actually make the posession of a blue box illegal, but it does make doing anything with it a misdemeanor. I quote: 502.7(b) "A person who ... sells, gives, or otherwise transfers to another, or offers, or advertises, plans or instructions for making or assembling an instrument, apparatus, or device described [above, which mentions the actual intent to avoid a charge with the device] with knowledge ... that they may be used to make or assemble such an instrument ... is guilty of a misdemeanor." Next comes 502.7(g) "An instrument, apparatus, device, plans, instructions, or written publications described in subdivision (b) or (c) of this section may be seized under warrant or incident to a lawful arrest, and, upon the conviction of a person for a violation of [the above laws], such instrument [etc] may be destroyed as contraband by the sheriff of the county..." They don't say what happens if they don't get a conviction. But in any case, with the advent of CCIS and the ESS, blue boxes should be rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Phil (jlapsley%D.CC@Berkeley) ------------------------------ Date: 18 Dec 1983 1325-EST From: John R. Covert <RSX-DEV at DEC-MARLBORO> Subject: Cordless phones and stupidity... An article in the Boston Globe tells of some people in Woonsocket, Rhode Island who were stupid enough to discuss illegal activities over a cordless phone for an extended period of time (six weeks after they were discovered by the police who taped some 100 hours of conversations). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Dec 83 8:50:37 EST From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@brl-vld> Subject: July 1983 Chicago call guide On Friday night, I looked it up on microfiche at U of Del library. Pages 32 & 33 list 312-area prefixes, and even though 1+ was implemented for out-of-area calls from 312, I find no N0X or N1X. Area code map points out 212 & 718 in NYC, but area code list shows only 212 for NYC. No mention in either of 818 (to be split from 213). I could not find CNA number on p. 2, which lists phone-co. numbers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Dec 83 9:02:19 EST From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@brl-vld> Subject: Re: MCI Charge-a-call phones I don't understand your comment about "just about everything is interstate" from Washington National Airport. The airport is in Virginia, not DC. It can be reached using area 202 (which is good for all except outermost Md. & Va. suburbs), but I understand that intrastate rates would apply if you are calling long-distance between Va. suburbs and other parts of Virginia. 202-936 was or is the weather report from (or based on info from) Washington National, but Richmond, in 703 area until 703/804 split in June 1973, also had a 936 for the weather. ------------------------------ Date: 19 December 1983 23:47 EST From: Minh N. Hoang <MINH @ MIT-MC> Subject: voice-grade service This is in response to a question that was raised in the Telecom Digest a while ago. I joined recently and didn't see too many responses to it in the later digests. The typical phone channel has about 3 Khz bandwidth (.5 - 3 Khz). Most analog signals within the band will be passed except for a few special signalling frequencies (like 2600 Hz), subject to the usual channel distortions. The phone companies do have a basic specification for their connections but this seems pretty much self-imposed on the local level. I don't know whether the FCC specs minmum channel performance on interstate circuits. But the international lines are specified by CCITT in terms of noise, nonlinear distortions etc... Going digital actually improves the phone's performance. As long as an analog signal is sampled at least twice as fast as its highest freq (Nyquist criteria), it can be reconstructed exactly. The tel. lines are sampled at 8 Khz and as long as the bits don't get screwed, the signal gets through w/ less distortion (some quantizing noise and freq. shift) after the digital-to-analog conversion at the local central office. Also digital signals are easier to switch and can be transmitted w/o the additive noise effect like their analog counter parts. Further more, once the analog signal is in digital format, it can be put through fancy signal processing schemes which bring us the $300 1200-baud modem in 3 chips. The fastest rate for dial line, full-duplex is 2400 bps, the 224 modems. The fastest rate for dial line, one way is 9600 bps. (The real state-of-the-art modem coming in 1 or 2 yrs is dial line, full-duplex 9600 bps each way, conforming to the recently adopted CCITT Rec. V.39. By the way, Bell 212 is equiv. to CCITT Rec. V.22; the 224's conforms to CCITT Rec. V.22 Bis. Modem's handshaking protocols have to be set before anybody make them.) Anyhow, for leased line, the fastest advertised speed if 19.2 Kbps. But the real working speed is around 14.4 Kbps. Needlessly said here, these modems cost bundles (A dollar a bps). You can do a lot in 3 Khz... On the other hand, say the phone company is digitizing our signal into 8-bit samples at 8 Khz. That means in the system, the nominal rate is 64 Kbps. If the telcos can just extend their lines to those who are sending digital data, the modems can be eliminated w/ much improvement in service and little extra switching cost. Direct digital service.... And then I'm still using a 300-baud modem... *Sigh* ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************