Telecom-Request%usc-eclc@brl-bmd.UUCP (Telecom-Request@usc-eclc) (09/29/83)
TELECOM Digest Thursday, 29 Sep 1983 Volume 3 : Issue 64
Today's Topics:
AT&T Breakup Issues
Re: long-distance carriers (in Telecom V3 #59)
touch-tone phones as a terminal
connecting up 6 wire phones -- question of hal@mit-mc
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From: vortex!lauren at RAND-UNIX
Date: Tuesday, 27-Sep-83 18:18:13-PDT
Subject: AT&T Breakup Issues
I can't see why anyone would be surprised that AT&T no longer wants to
offer free long distance directory assistance. After all, the whole
point of that service was that enough "actual" calls were made based
on the D.A. calls to help pay back for the D.A. calls themselves.
Once people are using alternate long-distance carriers, AT&T is simply
providing a free D.A. service and those persons never create revenue
by making an "actual" billable call.
On the other hand, I seriously doubt that they'll get anything like
$.75/call. Much more likely is that part of the universal service
fund will be used to fund some sort of inter-carrier
directory-assistance operation. Remember, it's looking very much like
ALL of the alternate carriers will be forced (quite rightly, in my
opinion) to pay money into the U.S.F. to help support "universal"
service and local service in general. This will of course tend to
force their rates up. In the end, I expect to see very little
disparity between long distance service rates from AT&T and the other
carriers. Yep, long distance will be cheaper. But your local calls
will cost you a pretty "penny" per minute and your monthly rate will
be sky high. This is the price you'll pay for competition in
telecommunications. Also likely is that the less well-known alternate
carriers who are attempting to garner business exclusively from large
business concerns will also be forced to pay money into the fund.
By the way, many of the alternate carriers are still largely useless
for modem operations higher than 300 baud (if that!) over long
distances, primarily due to poor circuit quality and (in some cases)
the use of statistical multiplexing on carrier circuits.
To put it bluntly, I consider the AT&T breakup to be one of the most
ill-conceived and short-sighted fiascos in recent history. Some will
most certainly gain, but ultimately I expect that most consumers will
be paying far more overall for services which are not worth,
relatively, the massively increased costs.
Of course, the places to complain about telecommunications issues are
not only this digest, but include the FCC and your local PUC's.
Overall, amazingly few people *do* bother to complain, so those who do
speak out have a good chance of having someone listen to them, at
least to some extent.
--Lauren--
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Date: 28 Sep 1983 00:31:05-EDT
From: grkermit!chris at mit-vax
From: chris
Subject: Re: long-distance carriers (in Telecom V3 #59)
Sprint has recently announced that their service is now availabe from
anywhere in the United States to anywhere in the United States. This
is a dramatic improvement from their earlier service in which you had
to call from one of about 50 Metropolitan areas to one of about 100
Metropolitan areas (as I recall the old service.) Unfortunately,
since I've stopped using Sprint, I threw away the announcement, and
can't give more details.
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Date: 28 Sep 1983 0851-PDT
From: Richard M. King <KING at KESTREL>
Subject: touch-tone phones as a terminal
I have an application in mind where a computer we would own
would need to contact each of 100,000 places of business with varying
frequencies ranging from once per year to a couple of times per week.
Because of the volumes involved it would be impossible to place a
terminal at these sites, so I propose to conduct the dialog by having
the computer speak over an ordinary phone line using something like a
TI voice synthesis unit, and letting the business respond with their
touch-tone phone. (A complication is that they might only have
impulse <gasp!>)
This certainly is technically feasable. Does anyone know, on
the one hand, whether there is a company that already makes the
hardware so we don't have to cobble it together by ourselves, or on
the other hand whether it has been tried and already been found
impractical for human-factors reasons? I can see, for example, that
people might hang up the phone when they find out they're talking to a
computer, or they would try to talk to it, or they wouldn't understand
the verbal instructions so they would have to have printed
instructions which would invariably be unfindable when needed because
they only get used once per year.
Thanks in advance for any info.
Dick
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Date: Tue, 27 Sep 83 22:16:27 PDT
From: Theodore N. Vail <vail@UCLA-CS>
Subject: connecting up 6 wire phones -- question of hal@mit-mc
How should one hook up a six-wire phone set (red, yellow, green,
black, blue, white) to a 4-wire connector (red, yellow, green, black)?
It doesn't seem to work to simply ignore the blue and white.
The usual use of a six wire phones is as a single-line extension of a
key set. Normally the wires are used in pairs as follows:
red-green talking-dialing
black-yellow A1-A2 (shorted when phone is off-hook)
blue-white ringer
The red and green serve the usual purpose (tip and ring) for talking
and dialing. The black and yellow are shorted when the phone is taken
off-hook (this disables the hold circuit on a key phone) and the
blue-white operate the ringer (be sure that you have a ringer and not
a low-voltage buzzer -- in this case replace it by a ringer or simply
disconnect the buzzer). So, if the phone is connected normally, you
should (1) not use, but tape, the black and yellow leads; (2) connect
both the red and blue leads from the telephone to the red-lead of your
phone circuit; and (3) connect both the green and white leads from the
telephone to the green lead of your circuit.
Unfortunately, these phones are not always wired in this standard way.
However, this pairing is almost always used. You can expect red and
green to be the normal talking circuit. The two wires you don't use
can be verified using an ohmeter: when the phone is on-hook they
should be open and when the phone is off-hook they are shorted.
With a little experimentation, you should be able to make the phone
work.
The key points are that two wires form the talking-dialing circuit;
two others form the ringer circuit (which is the same as the talking-
dialing circuit in ordinary telephones) and two others are shorted
when the phone is taken off-hook (these are not used on ordinary
telephone circuits). Note that, if the phone is touch tone, there is
a possibility of polarity reversal, and if everything but the
touch-tone dialer works, you should interchange the red and green
wires from the telephone.
Good talking!
vail
p.s. Where did this telephone come from? I have never seen one on
the
new or used telephone market.
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End of TELECOM Digest
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