TELECOM Digest     Fri, 14 Oct 94 12:41:00 CDT    Volume 14 : Issue
397
 
Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. 
Townson
 
     Re: Calculating Cost of Cellular Call While Roaming (Bob Beck)
     Re: Calculating Cost of Cellular Call While Roaming (Robert 
Virzi)
     Re: Calculating Cost of Cellular Call While Roaming (Bob Keller)
     Re: "Cost of Call" Indication? (Pawel Dobrowolski)
     Re: "Cost of Call" Indication? (Olaf Seibert)
     Re: "Cost of Call" Indication? (Kaita Seikku)
     Re: 1-800-CALL-INFO (Jody Kravitz)
     Re: 1-800-CALL-INFO (Daryl Gibson)
     Re: MCI's 1-800-CALL-INFO (Brian Brown)
     Re: NANP Nightmare (Daniel E. Ganek)
     Re: NANP Nightmare (Joe Haggerty)
     Re: NYNEX to Stop Charging For Touch-Tone! (Russell E. Sorber)
 
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 08:45:12 -0500
From: rab@vienna.ssds.com (Bob Beck)
Subject: Re: Calculating Cost of Cellular Call While Roaming
 
 
Over the summer I took my family on a two week trip from the
Washington DC suburbs of Virginia to Denver and back.  Since we were
traveling with four kids, it was difficult to determine how far we
could drive each day and be certain that we would get to a hotel/motel
where reservations had been previously made.  Hence we decided not to
make reservations prior to departure and, instead, made reservations
on the road using our cell phone in the van (which has a 703 area
code) to locate overnight accomodations.  Our route to/from Denver was
primarily Interstate 70.
 
I just received the bill from my service provider, Nationwide
Cellular.  For each "service area" where we used our cell phone there
is a corresponding "service charge" of $3.  In addition to the service
charge, there are the local air time charges for that area, and
associated state and local taxes.
 
During the trip we received two calls.  Each time it was a commercial
announcement from the local service provider instructing "roamers" on
how to contact authorities and encouraging you to use their system.
After getting the bill, I see why.
 
 
Bob Beck     SSDS, Inc.
8150 Leesburg Pike, #1100
Vienna, VA 22182
703.827.0806 x152
703.827.0716 FAX
 
------------------------------
 
From: rv01@gte.com (Robert Virzi)
Subject: Re: Calculating Cost of Cellular Call While Roaming
Date: 14 Oct 1994 12:49:07 GMT
Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA
 
 
In article <telecom14.396.6@eecs.nwu.edu>, Sheldon W. Hoenig <hoenigs@
gsimail.ddn.mil> wrote:
 
> My daughter and my wife are going to travel to a number of colleges 
in
> the midwest in a few weeks so that my daughter can be interviewed 
for
> grad school.  When each interview is complete, my daughter wants to
> call my wife on the cellular telephone so that my wife can pick her
> up.  The cellular telephone has a 703 area-code telephone number.  
If
> the telephone is set for roaming in each city, what type of
> call -- local or long distance -- will be charged to the cellular
> telephone number and to my telephone credit card for the pay-phone
> call that my daughter will make?
 
> I assume that my daughter will dial the true cellular telephone 
number
> which, of course, will be a long-distance telephone number.
 
My understanding of this is that it depends, on how you roam.  If you
are using Follow-me-roaming (or one of its equivalents like automatic
call delivery) two long distance charges will apply.  (1) is your
daughters call to 703.  The other is a LD charge by your cellular
company to forward your call from 703 to the area code your wife is
in.
 
A cheaper alternative is to use the roamer access port in the city
your family is in.  Your daughter would then make a local call to the
access number, then enter your cellular phone number.  You would not
be charged a long distance call on the cellular side because the call
isn't being fowarded from 703 to the traveling city.  For this to
work, you need to use the older variant of roaming, not FMR or ACD.
You may also want to check on differences in daily roamer surcharges.
In some circumstances (don't ask me to explain, its too obscure) it
may be cheaper to use ACD because the roamer charges are less/dropped.
 
Best thing to do is to call your cellular provider and ask about the
rates for the various kinds of roaming in the specific cities of
interest.  If regular roaming is cheapest, be sure to get the roamer
access numbers in those cities and give them to your daughter.  Find
out if you have to disable FMR/ACD when travelling to those cities.
 
Not bad for someone that doesn't even have cellular service, huh?
 
 
Bob Virzi    rvirzi@gte.com   +1(617)466-2881
 
------------------------------
 
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 10:14:39 EDT
From: Bob Keller <rjk@telcomlaw.com>
Reply-To: Bob Keller <rjk@telcomlaw.com>
Subject: Re: Calculating Cost of Cellular Call While Roaming
 
 
In TELECOM Digest V14 #396 Sheldon W. Hoenig <hoenigs@gsimail.ddn.mil>
inquired about roaming charges.
 
From the message I gather that these calls would be placed by your
daughter from a landline phone in the midwest to your wife on a
703 area code (VA) cellular unit roaming in the midwest.
 
If that understanding is correct, the charges will most likely be as
follows:
 
Long Distance:
 
If your daughter dials the 703 cellular number directly, she would
incur a toll charge for a call from the midwest to 703, which means
she will need a calling card, reversed charges, third party billing,
or a bucket of quarters.
 
In addition, since that call will be going into the cellular switch
back in 703, your wife's cellular account will most likely get charged
for a long distance call to route the call back from 703 to the
midwest.
 
One call, two LD charges ... such a deal!
 
The way to avoid this is to find out the local roamer port number for
the system where your wife will be at the time.  Then, your daughter
would call this number (which might even be a local number, depending
on where she will be vis-a-vis the cellular system your wife is
roaming on) and, when she hears the tone, dial in the 703 cellular
number (sort of like the early days of competitive long distance
carriers, or the current days of many calling card arrangements).  The
roam port number for most cellular carrier is AC + NXX + 7626, where
AC + NXX is the area code and exchange assigned to most of the local
cellular subs on the system, and 7626 is ROAM.  There are exceptions,
however, so you will have to check in advance.
 
2.  Roaming Charges:
 
No matter which calling method is used by your daughter, your wife
will still incur cellular roaming charges.  These range anywhere from
merely usurious all the way up to $3 per day plus 99 cents per minute.
(Depending on the arrangements, if any, between your wifes 703 carrier
and the midwest system(s) where she will be roaming, you might get
away for no daily surcharge and only 75 cents or 50 cents a minute,
but don't hold your breath.
 
Even if you decide to grin and bear it, you should still prepare
yourself for sticker shock when the bill arrives (which, BTW, will be
on the local 703 cellular bill, but will probably not show up until 1
or 2 billing cycles after the trip due to the lag time involved in
the carriers clearing roaming data back and forth).  In addition to a
minute seeming a lot shorter when you are talking than it does when
your are looking at the bill <g>, you may be surprised to find
multiple $3 surcharges on a single day.  This will almost certainly be
true if they will be moving any considerable distance in a single day.
The daily surcharge applies to each system, and the cellular carrier's
use their own logic in deciding that the area covered in a nearby
county, even though it is otherwise integrated into the system serving
the neighboring big city, is still considered a separate system for
roaming purposes.
 
I use my cellular phone constantly, regardless of where I am on the
road, and it is darned convenient.  But it sure as hell ain't cheap!
I am fortunately in a line of work where the majority of my income is
computed on the basis of an hourly billing rate, thus making the
payment of even $3 per day and 99 cents per minute justifiable in most
cases.  But I honestly believe there is a HUGE number of potential
roamer usage minutes out there that the cellular industry is losing
even at no daily surcharge and 45 cents a minute.  But, then again, if
I knew only half as much about business as I thought I did, I guess I
would not still be working for a living <g>.
 
 
Robert J. Keller, P.C. (Federal Telecommunications Law)
<rjk@telcomlaw.com> Tel: 301-229-5208 Fax: 301-229-6875
4200 Wisconsin Ave NW #106-261 Washington DC 20016-2146
finger me for info on F.C.C. Daily Digests and Releases
 
------------------------------
 
From: dobrowol@fas.harvard.edu (Pawel Dobrowolski)
Subject: Re: "Cost of Call" Indication?
Date: 14 Oct 1994 14:41:17 GMT
Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
 
 
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Its the same kind of thinking where 
online
> commercial services are concerned: you never see a clock -- digital 
or
> otherwise -- displayed right on your screen in front of you all the 
time
> with the elapsed time and charges. You can ask for the detail of 
course
 
  Not entirely true.  When I log onto Compuserve I get a clock
that shows time since log in.  And I am sure that if enough people
threatened to leave Compuserve unless it started to show a number for
total charges incurred in a single sesion they would give it to us.
 
------------------------------
 
From: rhialto@mbfys.kun.nl (Olaf Seibert)
Subject: Re: "Cost of Call" Indication?
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 01:00:09 GMT
 
 
In <telecom14.379.14@eecs.nwu.edu> knop@duteca8.et.tudelft.nl (Peter
Knoppers) writes:
 
> For the technically inclined:
> The cost pulse is a short AC common mode signal, about 60 Volts, 
about
> 50 Hz. Duration of the pulse is about 0.5 seconds. Normal phones are
> immune to common mode signals, therefore you should not be able to
> hear it.
 
To this I may add that this is going to be/has been changed. The new
system uses 15 kHz tones, as I read somewhere.
 
Personally I suspect this is being done to make old mechanical
counters useless. Oh, the joys of a state monopoly going commercial,
combining the worst of both worlds.
 
 
Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert    rhialto@mbfys.kun.nl     Ooey-Gooey-Fluffy-
Barfie
 
------------------------------
 
From: spk@proffa.cc.tut.fi (Kaita Seikku)
Subject: Re: "Cost of Call" Indication?
Date: 14 Oct 1994 09:15:46 GMT
Organization: Tampere University of Technology, Computing Centre
 
 
Sam Spens Clason (d92-sam@dront.nada.kth.se) wrote:
 
> In <telecom14.379.12@eecs.nwu.edu> oleh@eskimo.com (Ole Hellevik) 
writes:
 
>> Lee Ziegenhals (lcz@dptspd.sat.datapoint.com) wrote:
 
>>> I'm wondering whether there is any work being done on a real-time
>>> display of the cost of a call.
 
>> It has been available (for a quarterly fee) in Norway for as long 
as I
>> can remember, a little box next to the phone with two counters, on
>> resettable, one not, indicating number of 'periods' (One period 
always
>> has the same price whether the call is local or LD, but the length 
in
>> time would be different.)  This box would receive a pulse from the
>> local switch when you enter a period, and would in effect be 
parallell
>> with a similar counter in the local exchange.
 
> Same thing in neighbouring Sweden.  Until a couple of years ago all
> calls were measured in 0,29 krona units, just as in Norway.  But
> nowadays everything except local calls is either billed by the 
second
> or has a fixed price-tag (calling a pager is 1,5 or 6 krona "flat
> rate").  This applies to ~2/3 of the Swedish PSTN.  I don't know if
> the old unit measurers understands this kind of billing.
 
This seems to be a chorus of Nordic people telling the U.S. guys they
should get some REAL telecom equipment... ;-) -- Here in Finland the
service has been available for tens of years, too. Unfortunately only
if you order it.  Techincal implementations is that subscriber lines
are moved to a special register that repeats the charging events to
the subscriber line as short pulses of 16 kHz tone, which are detected
and counted by a small box at the subscribers end.
 
 
internet : spk@proffa.cc.tut.fi        voice-mail ->pager : +358 -40 
498 0297
real life: Seikku P. Kaita                 phone (or FAX) : +358 -31 
265 6865
visit at : Saastajankuja 4b32 TAMPERE         On The Air  : OH3NYB
             ^^  ^ ^  ..these four a's should have double dots above 
them,
            since they are front vowels (as in word 'that'). Isn't it 
a pity
            that in English the word GHOTI can be pronounced like word 
FISH.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 00:12:41 PDT
From: kravitz@foxtail.com (Jody Kravitz)
Subject: Re: 1-800-CALL-INFO


I saw the first ad for 1-800-CALL-INFO last night on TV.  Just 75
cents/call, billed to the CALLING number.

I called today and bugged both Pacfic Bell's "business services"
office and MCI's "business services" office complaining about the
erosion of 800 services into a "you can't count on it to be free so
Hotels, Pay Phones, business PBX's, etc will have to block ALL calls
to 800 numbers" and that I went on to complain that this would reduce
the value of the 800 number I had planned on getting for my business.

Neither gave me a particularly good answer, so this evening I tried
some experiments.  Calling from a COCOT near my house that has in the
past worked remarkably "correctly", it allowed the call to go through.
But the operator requested "how do you want this call billed ?" and
insisted on a 3rd number billing or credit card (don't remember if she
asked for a telco credit card or just credit card).  I asked why she
asked for a billing method and was told I was on a "restricted line".
I explained what I was up to, thanked her, and told her that I had to
find out how to restrict my business lines.  I then went home and
tried the same experiment from my unlisted business number.  Call went
through without a problem.  I was prepared with a couple of really
hard to look up numbers for them.  With these searches I've determined
that 1) they don't get numbers for 30-60 days after the telco's
directory assistance gets them (by admission when asked), and 2) they
don't deal very well with "slightly out-of-area" requests (I specified
"in-or-near LA" for a company with a unique name which was actually
located in Anaheim).

I'm unimpressed with the service.  I'm wondering how to "restrict" my
phones. I'm also wondering if there are any interested parties in
politically high places who might like an earful (or a long fax) about
what I think about the degraded value of 800 service as a way to reach
businesses.

Comments?


Jody


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I went out yesterday afternoon and
tried it
also to see what payphones around here would do. I got through and got
the
request to provide billing information in the form of a credit card
number
or third party phone number. When I asked why there was a charge for a
call to an 800 number the answer I got was that the call itself is
free;
what I would be paying for was the information provided as a result.
This
is basically the answer all the information providers via 800 phrase
their
answer: carriage itself is indeed 'free' or reverse charged. You pay
for
the information we give you while chatting.   PAT]

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

Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 17:55:23 MST
From: Daryl Gibson <DRG@du1.byu.edu>

 
TELECOM Digest Editor queried:
 
> I wonder if MCI is using any sort of legitimate data-base from the
> local telcos or if they have strung together some sort of outdated
> cross-reference books where half the entries are out of date and a
> couple years old.
 
{The Wall Street Journal} indicates they are getting their information
from the Post Office, direct marketers, and credit card companies ...
 
 
Daryl
(801)378-2950      (801)489-6348
drg@du1.byu.edu    71171.2036@compuserve.com
 
------------------------------
 
From: bfbrown@teal.csn.org (Brian Brown)
Subject: Re: MCI's 1-800-CALL-INFO
Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc.
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 15:58:08 GMT
 
 
FYI, a LD carrier can provide two "information" digits in addition to
ANI via digital lines -- although, for some mysterious, unexplainable
reason (someone comment please), they must do this via MF, not DTMF.
The two-digit code for payphones is "27".  In fact, MCI can look at
the two ANI description digits before deciding to go off hook, and
simply not answer the call.  I would be interested to know what
happens when you call from a payphone.
 
Incidentally, the two MF digits make the ANI-DNIS string look like:
*AABBBCCCDDDD*EEEFFFF*, a total of 22 digits outpulsed!!!  Is it
possible that MF can outpulse faster than DTMF?  It seems strange that
MF is necessary for this service, but it definitely is.  You may be
able to get some employee at a carrier to agree to give you this info
via DTMF, but they will soon learn that they can't and apologize to
you.
 
One more thing -- these desription digits can also tell you when the
ANI represents a hotel, hospital, prison, cellular, business or
residential site, and who knows what else.
 
By the way, phone sex companies have been charging on 800 #'s for
quite a while.  Just like with 900 numbers, though, it's actually
pretty easy to get your bills for 900 or 800 numbers cleared by
protesting them.  And the companies who provide the billing for such
operations will put you on their "bad ANI" list, which they distribute
to the service providers, who are informed that anyone on that list
will not be billed, so don't give them any "services".
 
Please don't ask how I know all this.
 
 
BB
 
------------------------------
 
From: ganek@apollo.hp.com (Daniel E. Ganek)
Subject: Re: NANP Nightmare
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 14:25:25 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA
 
 
In article <telecom14.394.6@eecs.nwu.edu> vantek@sequoia.northcoast.
com (Van Hefner) writes:
 
> Boston Business Misses Phone Calls Due to Bungled Exchange
> Oct. 8 -- Lori Moretti lives to hear the phone ring. But since she
> recently moved her public relations firm to its new Boston locale 
near
> Fort Point Channel, the lines have been unusually quiet.
 
[ Story about a company losing business because of a new phobe 
exchange]
 
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: NYNEX cannot really be blamed because
> the proprietors of some private phone systems at large companies,
> universities, etc are klutzes. People wanted a telephone network 
where
> everyone did thier own thing, so that's what they got now over ten
> years ago. I used to work for a large department store downtown on a
> part time basis trying to straighten out the mess that predecessors
> had made of the Rolm PBX there. It was a mess!  There were lots of
 
[ etc. ]
 
Question: Why do private systems require such programming at all?
If I dial an unused exchange NYNEX tells me. Why don't private systems
just put the call thru and let the CO handle it??
 
 
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They rarely 'require' such programming 
and
can in fact be configured to just let everything past unchecked. The 
reason
this is not often done is because the owner of the private system has 
no
convenient method of collecting the charges from his users, so rather 
than
lose large amounts of money from users who would otherwise get a free 
ride
on his phone system, all sorts of obstacles are programmed into the 
switch
to make 'unauthorized' calls difficult or impossible to complete. 
Where
the problem comes in is that telco can't (usually) be counted on to 
refuse
to complete calls with toll charges attached. Usually whatever 
protection
the PBX has against fraud and misuse has to come as a result of the 
owner
installing it. Deciding which outgoing calls are going to result in
simply reaching a telco intercept and which are going to result in big 
$$
billed to the owner is difficult; thus the owner has to take on the
burden of sorting it all out.   PAT]
 
------------------------------
 
From: Joe_Haggerty <haggerty@nando.net>
Subject: Re: NANP Nightmare
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 11:42:21 EDT
Organization: News & Observer Public Access
 
 
I agree that it's the businesses that are "slow" with the new NXXs, or
sometimes they wait and only add new ones upon complaint. I was
recently at the IBM office in Raleigh, NC and attempted to dial a
local cellular number 919-801-xxxx. The calls went to a recording. The
local switchboard operator couldn't help, and they were not allowed to
connect me to an "outside" operator. But, they gave me the number of
the techie that handles their PABXs. It was a local tie line number;
this guy was somewhere in Texas. After explaining the problem to
someone with the right knowledge, he had it fixed in time for the next
break.
 
Also, I worked for a telco in Virginia in the early '70s, and one
night discovered that they had never put NPA 809 in their switch. No
one could direct dial to 809, but nobody ever complained (or their
complainets never reached the right people?)
 
 
Joe Haggerty, Wake Forest, NC 27587-5900
 
 
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was a small town in Wisconsin 
which
cut in a new exchange a few years ago which never made it into the 
tables
at Illinois Bell for close to two years afterward. Placing the call as
1 + ten digits always sent me to a local telco intercept as did 
dialing the
call 10-anything + 1 + ten digits.  But get this:  dialing through any
carrier's 800 number then out of their switch -- in effect bypassing 
the
local Illinois Bell network -- allowed the call to complete.  Like 
many
or perhaps all local telcos, IBT squats right there in the middle, 
watching
every digit dialed and rejecting the call out of hand when they can't
deal with it without bothering to ask the long distance carrier what 
to
do.  Telling repair service anything is like trying to bail out the 
ocean
with a bucket. I finally got someone at AT&T who understood the 
problem,
and got a call back from an AT&T guy in Denver, I think, who said he 
would
deal with it. When I asked him his position with the company, he said 
his
job was 'fighting with local telcos about stuff like this'.   PAT]
 
------------------------------
 
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 10:01:27 CDT
From: sorbrrse@wildcat.cig.mot.com (Russell E. Sorber)
Subject: Re: NYNEX to Stop Charging For Touch-Tone!
Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group
 
 
In article Wes Leatherrock writes:
 
> Quoting roy@mchip00.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith):
 
>> Am I the only person in the world who still doesn't have touch-
tone,
>> because I don't want to pay the extra $0.50/month, or whatever it 
is?
 
> According to which figures you want to use, between 20 and 25
> per cent of all telephones in the United States are still rotary 
dial.
 
The numbers also vary greatly by region of the US.  According to a
{Wall Street Journal} article about two months ago, NYNEX was far and
away the winner in terms of percentage of customers using rotary dial
(The story broke down the percent of rotary users by Baby Bell 
region).
I think the number quoted in the WSJ was more than 30% of existing
NYNEX customers using rotary, with about 10% of new subscribers
refusing to pay for touch-tone service.
 
Ameritech and the Illinois Commerce Commission also just announced a
deal that, among other things, would eliminate Ameritech's monthly
touch-tone surcharge for Illinois customers.
 
 
Russ Sorber
Software Contractor  -    Opinions are mine, Not Motorolas!
Motorola, Cellular Division   Arlington Hts., IL  (708) 632-4047
 
------------------------------
 
End of TELECOM Digest V14 #397
****************************
 
 

