[fa.telecom] TELECOM Digest V3 #22

TELECOM@Usc-Eclb.ARPA (04/07/83)

TELECOM AM Digest      Friday, 8 April 1983    Volume 3 : Issue 22

Today's Topics:       American Bell Speaker Phones
                       Phone Rate Restructuring
                        Headsets Vs. Headsets
                  Centrex/FRS - Routing Table Games
    [The date of this digest is one day ahead (so was Yesterday's)
           I will adjust for this over the weekend. --JSol]
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Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1983  11:11 EST
From: Chuck Weinstock <Weinstock%Tartan-20@CMU-CS-C>
Subject: Speaker Phones [TELECOM Digest V3 #21]

American Bell has a new "speaker phone" they call the Quorum.  It is
designed to be used in a conference room, and has a rather strange
appearance, being a rod sticking straight up into the air (I assume
this is the microphone).  It apparently doesn't suffer from the
problems of echo and voice lockout.  Drawback: they want over $1,700 +
$250 installation!

Chuck

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Date: 6 Apr 83 10:32 PST (Wednesday)
From: Thompson.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V3 #21
cc: Thompson.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA

More regarding the whole phone rate flap.

I agree with Lauren that the whole system as proposed will not wash
with the public. I, too, think that the current system being imposed
will produce a different political, rather than regulatory solution in
fairly short order. I can't imagine that the public is willing to
throw away the concept of a phone for every home without a major flap.

I was of the opinion, all along, that if it wasn't broke they
shouldn't have tried to fix it.

On long distance access charges. I am hard pressed to see the
rationale that we should get stuck with flat rate for long distance
access when they are no longer willing to give us flat rate for local
access. If this is supposed to be true dereg then the whole thing
should be moved to "cost of service". In that case, access to a long
distance carrier is a half of a local call. The long distance carrier
should then be billed a half measured charge at the other end and pay
it to the terminating, far end local company.

Geoff

[I think you miss the point, it's not Flat Rate Long Distance, it's a
charge to get on, and a metered charge to use the service. Perhaps
that metered charge will be the same no matter where you call
(eventually?), but imagine paying $7.00/mo + measured rates per call
for local service, and $7.00/mo + measured rates per call for long
distance. --JSol]

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Date: 6 Apr 83 13:42:04 PST (Wednesday)
From: Hamilton.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Headsets
cc: Hamilton.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA

How come everybody and his brother isn't clamoring for headsets?  This
"pinch handset between ear and shoulder" business is for the birds.
And these kludges that you clamp on a handset to rest on your shoulder
are utterly worthless.  Why aren't headsets the default?  Anybody know
where I can get a CHEAP, LIGHTWEIGHT headset with a modular jack that
I can carry around with me?  Especially with all these cordless
portables coming out -- why are they all handsets instead of headsets?
Seems like it sort of defeats half the purpose...

--Bruce

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Date:  7 Apr 1983 0333-EST
From: Hobbit <AWalker@RUTGERS>
Subject: Routing table games

Interesting recent bug: Rutgers is on a centrex in a split ESS office,
no less, and the software to keep it straight must be hairy.  Lots of
the phones have toll restriction patterns.  One type, arbitrarily
named a B phone, may call a limited out-of-area radius, about 100
miles worth.  This includes distinctions within our own area code
[201], in that you can't call places way up in North Jersey near the
NY border, but you can call New York City, Philly, and spots in South
Jersey.  It is really a table built to include a roughly circular
calling limit.

Recently I noticed that the error return for an attempted out-of-area
call was being handled wrong: Instead of giving a recording or
reorder, the calls were being *passed* to a couple of exchanges in
Union, NJ.  Specifically, anything with an area code ending in 7 would
map the next 4 numbers into the 687 exchange.  NPAs ending in 6 wound
up in 686.  Therefore if you dialed 617-253-6062 you'd get
201-687-2536.  It took a while to figure out that this was happening,
because not all numbers dialed mapped to real defined numbers in those
offices [were met with a really crufty crossbar reorder signal].
Finally I made a wild guess as to who was in what central office in
New Brunswick, and hit it on the first shot: I got a nice friendly guy
at the SCC who I explained the problem to [Repair was no help, because
as soon as I said something about an unpure routing table they got
*very* confused!].  He actually understood, after I gave him an
example number at Rutgers that was doing this.  He had a look at that
extension's status bits and realized what was going on.  He told me to
call back in an hour and by that time he should have had it fixed.

An hour later I duly called back.  He explained things as follows:
There exists a service called Flexible Route Selection, which is
basically an optimizer.  If you have a centrex with tie lines to X,
and some WATS lines, and some other regular ones, FRS will figure out
where your call is going and route it the cheapest possible way.  The
service costs a lot, and is only sensible for large business
applications.  The B phones have something similar to this service,
apparently, which is how they worked out the restriction tables.  If
you dial a number that is in the ''more expensive'' table, you get
routed into limbo which tells you that you can't call there.  A small
fix could let such calls grab a different trunk and be completed; a
*bug* could let calls get misrouted to Union, NJ.  The guy was really
nice about it, first really human switchman I've ever talked to.  He
did indeed fix the problem; it took all of 5 minutes to install a
small patch in the table.

The problem with FRS, as I see it, is that it takes forever to do the
table search to find out if you can make your call or not.  When you
dial a number that is near the edge of the calling area [where it
therefore can't consult the *local* tables], even by ''confirming''
the call with the # key doesn't help the as much as 3-second delay
before it gets out of the office.  Well, crufty algorithms aside,
apparently the demand for such a thing is enough for it to be
implemented.  Does anyone know more specifics about it?  The switching
type didn't really go into intense detail about how it worked or why;
I've reproduced what he did say as best I can.

_H*

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End of TELECOM Digest
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