

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 7 Jan 94 11:33:00 CST    Volume 14 : Issue 16

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Rate of Change (Gordan Palameta)
    Re: Communication Over Power Lines? (James H. Haynes)
    Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack (Kriston J. Rehberg)
    Book Review: "The Phone Book" by Carl Oppedahl (Al Varney)
    Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack (John S. Roberts Jr.)
    Re: Hayes' New Modem (Michael P. Deignan)
    Re: Radio Religion in Canada (Rich Wales)

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

From: gord@nmx701.attmail.com
Date: 7 Jan 94 05:06:37 GMT
Subject: Re: Rate of Change


Stewart Fist wrote:

> Computers and modern communications technologies might be revolutionary 
> to the half-million technologists, but to the five billion users these
> chips and fibres are just creating marginal improvements on the
> adequate 'service facilities' they had before.  Computers produce a
> very evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change to our culture
> when you compare them to the impact of something like the motor car.

> My mother was ten before she saw her first motor car, 18 before she
> saw an aeroplane, but she lived to fly the Concorde and see a man step
> on the moon.  How does this pace of change compare with my life span,
> when cars, aeroplanes and space travel are reasonably commonplace?

> And it all happened in about the same period of time that we have been
> dealing with the computer revolution -- about 20 years.  I think we
> need to get our feet back on the ground and stop imagining that we are
> more important than we are.

Hmm, perhaps in the year 2040, someone will write an article about the
rapidly-changing 1940s.  Atomic bombs and computers were invented
then, and just look at the impact computers have had on society: why,
we can use our wristwatch PDAs to download the Encyclopedia Galactica
directly into our brain cells.  By contrast, this newfangled
teleportation technology is just an evolutionary change ...

The point is, when we consider the impact of airplanes, automobiles,
etc. from our perspective, we are really compressing eighty years of
history.  A fair comparison with computers would require a similar
eighty-year perspective.

It was some time, for instance, before automobiles could be driven
reliably by someone who was not a skilled mechanic.  It took even
longer for automobiles to change society in fundamental ways (the
suburbanization of America, etc).

The same is even more true for airplanes.  It was decades before the
invention of jet aircraft and other developments made flying widely
available.  As recently as the late 40s, a transatlantic flight cost
the same as a semester at Harvard.  Cheap flights for the masses
didn't become a reality until US deregulation barely a decade ago.

On the one hand, computers are still an "elite" technology, as
user-unfriendly to the average user as the Model T was to the
mechanically challenged.  We can anticipate that computers, just like
cars and planes, will need a few more decades before they become
widespread and commonplace enough to truly change the way we live.

On the other hand, however, in a very real sense, it won't take a few
more decades; it's already happened.  Computers have already had an
enormous impact on the way we live, but it's overlooked because it's
indirect and behind the scenes.

Computers are ubiquitous and invisible, embedded in other products and
(especially) services.  The fact that you are able to book a flight
tomorrow (not to mention a hotel room and rental car) is thanks not
just to aircraft technology but to computerized reservation and
scheduling systems.

You could argue that this is merely a quantitative change, not a
qualitative change: computers merely make the process more efficient.

But this is not so: a sufficiently large quantitative change
eventually becomes a qualitative change.  Instead of merely doing
the same thing more efficiently, you can do new things that would
never have been considered previously.

For instance, a modern, mechanically reliable car lets you commute
fifty miles a day to work and back, every day.  You can't do that with
a horse.  Early cars were merely faster horses; modern cars are
something qualitatively different.

Without computers, even an army of airline clerks couldn't manually
synchronize takeoff and landing times across the continent, not unless
air traffic levels were several orders of magnitude smaller than they
are today.

Again, this represents a qualitative change.  No one would fly on
routine overnight business trips, or fly home for Christmas.  The
tourism and hospitality industry, one of the largest employers, would
hardly exist in its present form.

We can generalize this: computers make high-volume applications
practical, and make it possible for companies to offer many services
widely and cheaply.  Without computers, many such services wouldn't
even exist because the market wouldn't be large enough to outweigh the
fixed overhead costs.  Others, such as air travel, would be restricted
to an elite or moneyed group, and would therefore have very little
impact on society as a whole.

When considering the impact of technology, we tend to focus too much
on things that are flashy and highly visible.  A generation ago,
people figured that by now we'd be zipping around in rocket ships and
flying to work with our own personal jet packs.  Few bothered to
predict simple things like fax machines.

And similarly, when we look back on the twentieth century, we tend to
focus on cars and planes and space shuttles, while we overlook the
unobtrusive things that have had an enormous indirect impact.

Consider plastics: one of the most important inventions of the 20th
century, yet often overlooked because they too are behind the scenes
and "internal" to other products.  Consider air conditioning: without
it, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Las Vegas simply wouldn't exist in their
present form as business centers, and the massive ongoing population
shift to the Sunbelt wouldn't be taking place.

And consider computers.  In the future, they will be embedded into
other products in ways that would seem extravagant or preposterous to
us (consider the intelligent volleyball and the smart spray paint in
Vernor Vinge's "Marooned in Real Time").  And their impact on society
will be as great then as it is now.

(I'll let someone else argue the case for telecom technologies; this
is already far too long).


Gordan Palameta       (416) 979-7700 x134    Numetrix Ltd.  Suite 1700
gord@numetrix.com     (416) 979-7559 fax     655 Bay St. Toronto, Ont. M5G 2K4
[or gord@nmx701.attmail.com]

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

From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (James H. Haynes)
Subject: Re: Communication Over Power Lines?
Date: 6 Jan 1994 23:00:18 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz


Back in the days when you could walk into a telephone office and pay
your bill in cash, there were a bunch of pamphlets in a rack on the
wall giving things like tips on telephone usage, the history of the
telephone, how the telephone works, etc.  I remember one of these had
an illustration of rural telephone service using a carrier system
operating over the power wire.  In this case they used the
high-voltage line for the carrier, isolated from the telephone
equipment by a high-voltage capacitor presumably installed by the
pwoer company for the purpose.  The booklet didn't go into detail as
to whether there were multiple carrier frequencies so that several
subscribers could be served on one power line.

Then there are articles in magazines from time to time, and maybe
commercial products you can buy, that use the 120v house wiring for
conductors; but in that case the interest is in communicating just
within the building, or maybe to nearby houses connected to the same
transformer.  I don't think you'll get carrier frequencies to go
through a power transformer and on to the high-voltage side and back
through another transformer to the 120v side on another circuit.

I believe the power companies also use carrier current for signaling
and controlling their relays and things, again working on the high-voltage 
side of things so they don't have to go through transformers.


haynes@cats.ucsc.edu   haynes@cats.bitnet

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

Subject: Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack
Reply-To: krehberg@vnet.IBM.COM
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 94 17:35:21 EST  
From: V2ENA81%OWEGO@zeta.eecs.nwu.edu


Quoted from mcneill@ngt.sungard.com's message of Wed, 5 Jan 94
10:03:42 EST:

> On a side note, I recently called NY Telephone (or NYNEX as they want
> to be called now) about getting a second phone line installed in my
> apartment. I was shocked to get a quote of $185 for the second line
> (first line costs about $60).  This is the price for installing a
> totally different phone line in the apartment. I complained a little
> that they didn't need to do that as there was a perfectly good second
> pair coming into the apartment I didn't get very far as the customer
> service rep wasn't technical.  Is there really any need to get a
> totally seperate line into my apartment?  Diamond State Telephone
> (Delaware) was able to put a second line on the second pair.  Is NYNEX
> just trying to gouge me?

Perhaps they were trying to sell you installation of the wire INSIDE
your house.  That is the extra $80-$100 or so.  If you just want them
to put a wire up to your network interface (typically in the basement
of your apartment) that will cost you more like $85 from NYNEX.  They
will always assume the most expensive option, so you say "just hook
your wire up to my building's interface box and activate my service".
It's then your responsibility for the inside wiring.

On your point about four-wire hookups, NYNEX will almost never install
a second telephone line onto the second pair in a typical residential
phone cable (probably) for reasons discussed on the Digest earlier in
which noise can leak between the lines due to induction.  They also
want to have an extra modular jack inside their network interface for
quick connect/disconnect if things go wrong.  Not only that, they do
want to make money installing inside wiring, which they are NOT
obliged to do BY LAW, but are not really itching to tell you that you
don't need them to do it for you.

You have to be an educated consumer.  Read on.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not necessarily. Telco outside plant
> records are in notoriously bad condition in some places. The rep may

As I said earlier, the NYNEX (formerly NY Telephone) telco doesn't
seem particularly fond of second pairs.  I actually looked into the
network interface when they were done with it and they actually
installed an extra interface jack and had cut off the second pair on
the original wires so I couldn't hope to use them ... those bastards.
Anyhow, you can probably hook it up to the second pair after the line
is hooked up (and they leave) by using that same Radio Shack converter
with your existing phone line inside the network interface and saved
yourself some wiring headaches.

Remember to tell NYNEX only to bring the wire to the network interface
box in the basement.  I told them I wanted them to do that in my old
house, and they were more than happy to charge me the cheaper $85 for
simple pole-to-house hookup and activation.  I now live in an
apartment in a semi-suburban/rural area and just recently checked with
the local business office and the phone book, and nothing has changed
even though it has to go to the basement of the house.  In an extreme
case, if there aren't any extra wires coming in (kinda unlikely in an
apartment) and/or there aren't any more terminals on the pole (in a
house situation) they're supposedly allowed to charge you an extra
$30-$50 or so bringing the cost to more like $85 + $50 = $135.  Then
the optional charge for installing the wires in the house would
probably bring the cost up to the $185 you stated.

Don't let the bean counters cheat you!

oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) wrote:

> In some states the steps the moderator describes are exactly right.  In
> New York, things are a little different.  Telco is obligated to provide
> a network interface jack (if that is what you want) *in your apartment*,
> for a price that is fixed -- unaffected by how long it takes to do.
> This is the case regardless of whether their records show a previous
> second line in your apartment;  all that changes is the amount of the
> fixed price.  Last I checked the cost for your situation (where they
> claim there was never a second line) is $88.

It's $88, but if there aren't any more terminals on the pole they will
charge you an extra $30 to $50 (depending on the work needed) to add
that extra line terminal to the pole.  This is information from the
technicians and the business office here in Binghamton, NY.

These are the same idiots who replaced our two pole-to-house lines
twice.  Once with two wires, and the second time two months later with
a single two-line cable (we lived in a house with two dwellings in
it).  I think they were training their technicians at the time.


Kriston J. Rehberg                  Internet External :krehberg@vnet.ibm.com
Associate Programmer/Analyst        FSC Internal RSCS :V2ENA81 AT OWEGO
ENSCO, Incorporated                 FSC Internal AFS  :v1ena81@legend.endicott
Loral Federal Systems Co, Owego, NY Tel: 607-751-2180 :Tieline: 662-2180

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

Date: Thu,  6 Jan 94 12:31:52 CST
From: varney@ihlpe.att.com
Subject: Book Review: "The Phone Book" by Carl Oppedahl
Organization: AT&T


In article <telecom14.12.12@eecs.nwu.edu> oppedahl@panix.com (Carl
Oppedahl) writes:

> The state-to-state differences are discussed in my book about phone
> service.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What's this about your book about phone
> service? Please review it for us and tell us how to obtain copies.   PAT]

   What's this, Pat?  Surely you are aware that Carl is a multi-talented
lawyer, author on telecom and all-around consumer advocate?  And a ham?

   Assuming Carl is too modest to review his book, I'll provide:

                            BOOK REVIEW

        The Phone Book : How to get the Telephone Equipment
               and Service You Want - and Pay Less
                       by Carl Oppedahl,
                   a Consumer Reports Book
                ISBN 0-89043-364-X (pb), 1991,
          a revision of the book originally published
        by Weber Systems, Inc in 1987 as "The Phone Book"

   This book is a non-technical, "consumer-oriented" collection of
information on telephones, telephone service, long-distance carriers,
cellular carriers, and reference lists of PUC/Consumer Advocates for
each state.  The most technical content is a GOOD summary of what an
REN is (and why a consumer might be interested), what the USOC codes
like RJ11 mean (with pin/wire color information) and how to parse the
FCC Part 68 registration number on equipment.

   The remaining 300+ pages consist of about 200 pages on how to wire
one- and two-line telephones and troubleshoot the installation,
intermingled with 100 pages of useful (and probably well-known to
Digest readers) information on long-distance carriers, cellular/fax/
answering-machines and typical problems in connecting them, dealing 
with the Phone Company and how to read a phone bill.

   There is probably more information in this book than most consumers
need, but it tends to be information they would not otherwise easily
find.  Those who need only wiring information might feel more at home
with some Radio Shack-style publication, but they would be missing out
on the substantial background information mingled in with the
technical.

   Occasionally, there are little anecdotes to illustrate a point.
For example, p. 96 mentions "Ruth's" inability to get Equal Access of
any form when she moved to Townsend, Tennessee [pop. about 300, so
this isn't an oblique PAT reference -- or is it?].  Carl indicates
here that even without Equal Access, Ruth may be able to save money by
using one of AT&T's discount plans.  (It may not occur to many such
captive customers that the discount plan can apply even if they have
no choice in IXCs.)

   Some complaints:

 -ANI is defined as the service we here call "Caller ID", which will
  be confusing when talking to those who know the difference.

 -Quad wire is blessed as a method of installing 2-line telephones, and
  as a general inside wiring method.  (Modems and their problems are not
  high-lighted in the book, but Carl does mention how to get around the
  A-lead control some modems have, for example.)

 -The cellular information should include information on ESN-cloning
  and other problems with cellular service.

 -Information (see below) useful to apartment dwellers is indexed under
  the term "multiunit buildings", not under "apartment".  (In general,
  there is little "lawyer-speak" in the book.)

  SUMMARY: For its audience, this is an excellent reference book.

   BIO:  Carl Oppedahl is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a
   practicing patent attorney.  As a consumer activist, he has
   championed the interests of consumers in obtaining cost-effective
   telephone service.

     +++++++++

   To get back to the original topic, Carl's book has several pages of
information on various Network Interfaces and FCC/state rules on
where/how such interfaces and demarcation points interact.

   On p. 29, describing NI Jacks in multiunit buildings:

    "In New York, for instance, the jack is located within the
     premises of each individual tenant.  In Illinois the jack
     is located at the point where the telephone wiring first
     enters the building, generally in a basement room.  (In a
     state like Illinois, you and not the local telephone company
     are responsible for the maintenance of the wiring running
     from the basement to your premises even though the landlord
     may not allow you access to such wiring. ..."

   Carl does indicate that such wiring should be maintained by the
landlord at no cost to you, just as such electrical wiring is
maintained.  (Check your lease.)  He lists 14 "renter-beware" states
that make the renter responsible for running from the basement any
wiring needed for service, such as a second line.  He also lists 2
"interface- unfriendly" states that do not require TELCO to install
(at little or no charge) a network interface at customer request on
new service orders.


Al Varney - I have no connection with Consumers Union, except as
            a happy customer.  I have no connection with any lawyer,
            except as an unhappy customer.

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

From: John S. Roberts Jr. <johnr@ms.uky.edu>
Subject: Re: Connecting Two Phone Lines to One Phone Jack
Date: 6 Jan 1994 13:42:02 -0500
Organization: University of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences


John S. Roberts Jr. <johnr@ms.uky.edu> writes:

> I connected up the "other two wires" on all the lines running through
> my house.  Now, I can hear line two when using line one and vice-versa.
> Is there any solution to this?

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The solution is that somewhere in the 
> loop you (or someone long gone before you) cross connected the wires
> and what you think is the 'other two wires' is really just part of
> the first two wires. You don't really have 'line one' and 'line two';
> you have one line wired in multiple so to speak. Go to each box as
> well as to the head end and find out where the cross connection is
> in place. It may be nothing more than a real messy box with some
> loose wires which are touching the connectors for the first set of
> wires. Clean up that mess, and your 'other two wires' will suddenly
> go dead again unless/until you have an actual second phone line
> brought up to them.   PAT]

I DO have two phone lines.  That is the problem.  I know that they are
not shorted because I can make two seperate calls on each of the
lines, however I can HEAR the line one conversation when I am using line
two.  I have heard people talking about how when you run four conductor
wire (like from Radio Shack) and use two conductors for one line and two
conductors for the other you often get bleed over.  I am looking for a
solution to this other than running another set of wires to seperate
the two lines from being so close.


Thanks so much,

John S. Roberts, Jr.    100 McVey Hall  Work: 257-2275 +=-
University of Kentucky  Home: 272-1417 - FAX: 272-7105 +=-


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ah, okay, that clarifies things. Indeed
then, the thing you want to be careful about is the choice of wire you
use. Some wire tends to 'bleed' more than others. You don't need two
separate cables -- one set with four or more wires in it will do -- but
be careful about what you use, as others have noted.   PAT]

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

From: md@maxcy2.maxcy.brown.edu (Michael P. Deignan)
Subject: Re: Hayes' New Modem
Reply-To: mpd@anomaly.sbs.com
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 17:54:39 GMT


In article <telecom14.10.6@eecs.nwu.edu>, yatesc@eggo.usf.edu (Charles
Randall Yates) writes:

>> Have any of you heard about the Hayes Optima 288 V.FC + FAX modem? It
>> can allegedly transmit data over a phone line at 28.8 kilobits per
>> second *WITHOUT COMPRESSION*!!!! I thought you guys told us the upper
>> limit was in the low 20's. What gives?

Quite easy, actually.

These new modems use a combination of phase-shift and amplitude
modulation to transmit four, eight, even twelve bits for each baud.
So, given a standard 2400 baud modem using a modified quadrature
amplitude modulation scheme, you could conceivably get this level of
thruput. Its all a matter of how sensitive your equipment is to
detecting minute phase shifts and amplitude changes in the carrier,
then it could be quite easy to get twelve bits of data transmitted
with each baud.

Think of it this way: Each baud is represented by a 360 degree sine
wave.  You can vary the phase of the sine wave to actually transmit
multiple bits for each baud. For example, early "dibit phase shift
keying" was a modulation scheme used by 1200bps modems. The modems
were really 600 baud modems, but each baud transmitted two bits,
depending on how much "out of phase" the baud's sine wave was. For
instance:

0 degrees out of phase  = hex 00
90 degrees out of phase  = hex 01
180 "       "   "   "  = hex 10
270 "       "   "   "  = hex 11

So, by varying the phase of each baud's sine wave, you could technically
transmit two bits of data for each baud.

Early 9600bps modems used this same method. 9600bps modems are still
technically 2400baud modems - there are only 2400 signal samples (or
sine wave occurances) in each second. Using a modified phase shift
keying, you could transmit 4 bits of data for each baud, hence,
9600bps.

Now, sine waves have more than a phase charactistic. They also have an
amplitude. You can modulate a carrier wave's signal via amplitude -
tune to a local AM broadcast station, they're using amplitude
modulation to transmit their signal.

If you combined the two methods -- phase shift and amplitude -- you
can transmit many bits simultaneously by modifying those two
characteristics.

For example (and I don't know if this is technically feasible, given
our current technology) if you could measure a 1-degree shift in the
phase of a carrier wave, in conjunction with 23 different amplitudes,
then theoretically you could transmit one of 360x23 unique "values".
360x23=8280, so we could then use this combination to represent one of
2^13, or 8196, different values. Since we're transmitting 13 bits per
baud, multipled by 2400 baud per second, we're getting an effective
throughput of 13x2400, or 31200 bits per second, uncompressed.

Of course, I don't know if this is how Hayes does it, but remember,
you can only modulate a sine wave one of three ways: amplitude, phase,
and frequency.

Ain't technology wonderful?


Michael P. Deignan
Population Studies & Training Center 
Brown University, Box 1916, Providence, RI  02912 
(401) 863-7284

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

Date: Thu, 6 Jan 94 13:03:01 EST
From: richw@mks.com (Rich Wales)
Subject: Re: Radio Religion in Canada
Reply-To: richw@mks.com (Rich Wales)
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada


Gene Fornario <genef@netcom.com> wrote:

> BTW, have you noticed that Canada doesn't either have or license
> all-religious stations?

Up till recently at least, the CRTC (Canadian FCC-analogue) would not
license so-called "single-faith" radio or TV stations.  I think
there's one religious radio station in Newfoundland that was there
before the province became part of Canada and got grandfathered, but
that's all.

However, I heard a few months ago that the CRTC had changed the rules
and will now permit religious radio stations.  I don't have the
details, though, and I don't know how soon these stations might start
appearing.


Rich Wales (VE3HKZ, WA6SGA/VE3)    Mortice Kern Systems Inc.
richw@mks.com                           35 King Street North
+1 (519) 884-2251          Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2J 2W9

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

End of TELECOM Digest V14 #16
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