[fa.telecom] TELECOM Digest V2 #83

TELECOM@Usc-Eclb (07/08/82)

TELECOM AM Digest       Thursday, 8 July 1982      Volume 2 : Issue 83

Today's Topics:
                   Bouncing Buttons - Double Digits
             One Line Connects Right, The Next One Fails
                     N0X and N1X in Area code 900
 France - Operators Being Replaced By Computers - A TTY In Every Home
                Mailing List For List Of Mailing Lists
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Date: 4 Jul 1982 10:37:35-PDT
From: CSVAX.halbert at Berkeley
Subject: bouncing buttons

We have two phones with phone numbers of the form abc-xxxy. We get
lots of wrong numbers (one a week, say). When we ask, most people say
they are trying to dial abc-xxyz. So I'll bet people stutter on the
buttons, though they could also be mentally stuttering when using a
rotary dial. --Dan

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Date: 5 July 1982 10:46-EDT
From: Richard K. Braun <RKB at MIT-AI>

I found an interesting bug in the local phone exchanges today.  Just
recently, the MIT-OZ system had its phone dialups installed, and I was
given 8 phone numbers to use.  A few days ago, I tried several of
them.  A couple of them got me through (alas, no 1200-baud Bell
compatibility), and the others gave me this message:

	"The number you have reached, xxx-xxxx, has been changed.
	 The new number is 253-1000.  Please make a note of it."

Yesterday, I remarked on this to a friend, who claimed he hadn't seen
that behavior when he used the system.  That seemed a bit weird.

This morning, I tried the number again.  Only I veged on my outgoing
phone-line selector, and was dialing from the "main" house line rather
than my terminal line.  It worked!  Then I tried the second phone
line, and I got the same old message.  So Ma Bell has a bug: I can get
through OK from one phone line in the 497 exchange, but not from
another.

Pretty bizarre behavior!  Can anyone take a guess as to what might
cause that in an ESS system?  I reported the problem to the phone
system repair service, so it'll probably get fixed soon .

rich

P.S.  Could you imagine dialing 617-253-1000 and asking her to connect
	you to OZ?

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Date:     6 Jul 82 14:05:29-EDT (Tue)
From:     Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@BRL>
cc:       cmoore at BRL
Subject:  N0X, N1X & 900 area

I raised the question about that "dial shuttle" 900-410-6272 because
the only other places we have seen N0X and N1X have been in NYC and in
LA area, both of which had been running out of prefixes before adding
these. But I can count on my fingers the number of prefixes I have
found in 900 area.

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Date: 6 July 1982  19:10-EDT (Tuesday)
From: Sam Hsu <FHSU at BBNG>
Subject: French phone system
Cc:   fhsu at BBNG

i was told that the French government was doing some sort of project
where operators would be replaced by computers, and a terminal and
screen would come with a phone so that customers could just query a
local data base instead of calling an operator.

Does anyone have any pointers to documentation that is readily, or
even not readily, available, or who to contact?

thanks in advance,
Sam

[That information would be nice to have in the TELECOM archives, and
if some kind soul is willing to send it to me I will put it up for FTP
distribution. --JSol]

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Date:  6 Jul 1982 2328-PDT
From: Zellich at OFFICE-3 (Rich Zellich)
Subject: Mailing-list for "List of lists" update notices

For those of you not previously aware of it, I maintain a master list
of ARPANET mailing-lists/digests/discussion groups (currently 756
lines or ~29,000 characters) on OFFICE-3 in file:

   <ALMSA>INTEREST-GROUPS.TXT

   For ARPANET users, OFFICE-3 supports the net-standard ANONYMOUS
   login within FTP, with any password.

To keep people up to date on the large number of such lists, I have
established a mailing list for list-of-lists \update notices/.  I do
not propose to send copies of the list itself to the world at large,
but for those ARPANET users who seriously intend to FTP the updated
versions when updated, I will send a brief notice that a new version
is available.  For those counterparts at internet sites who maintain
or redistribute copies for their own networks (DECNet, Xerox, etc.)
and can't reach the master by ARPANET FTP, I will send out the
complete new file.  I do \not/ intend to send file copies to
individual users, either ARPANET or internet; our system is fairly
heavily loaded, and we can't afford it.

There is no particular pattern to the update frequency of INTEREST-
GROUPS.TXT; I will occasionally receive a burst of new mailing-lists
or perhaps a single change of address for a host or mailing-list
coordinator, and then have a long period with no changes.

To get on the list, send requests to ZELLICH@OFFICE-3, \not/ to the
mailing-list this message appears in.

Cheers,
Rich

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End of TELECOM Digest
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