TELECOM Digest Thu, 9 Mar 00 23:51:00 EST Volume 20 : Issue 18
Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson
In Never-Bell Land, Phone Service Is Way Above Average (David Chessler)
Re: On the Internet, Your Bank is Not Your Friend (No Spam)
Re: The DLC Epidemic Spreads to the Northeast (Fred Goldstein)
Re: Persistent Mysterious Calls from Hell ... (Justa Lurker)
Is Iridium in or out? (Monty Solomon)
Re: Persistent Mysterious Calls from Hell ... (Clarence Dold)
Re: Cost of Wiretapping (Anonymous User)
Re: Telephone-Pole Battle: Steel Takes On Wood (John Hines)
Re: Communication Tower Being Built (Rich Osman)
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Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 21:12:59 -0500
From: David Chessler <chessler@usa.net>
Subject: In Never-Bell Land, Phone Service Is Way Above Average
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/richmond-phones.html
In Never-Bell Land, Phone Service Is Way Above Average, and Competitive
March 9, 2000
By JULIE FLAHERTY
RICHMOND, Mass. -- The hand-cranked phone boxes are long
gone. The party lines are, too. But the residents of tiny
Richmond, a former mining town in the Berkshires, still
dial the operator when they need the local news.
"Someone called to ask who picks up the trash," said Melissa Perdue, a
customer care specialist with the Richmond Telephone Company, the
local exchange. "We pretty much know everything about the town."
Richmond is in many ways not your typical phone company.
Its headquarters is a green-shuttered, white clapboard
house on Route 41, in far-western Massachusetts just shy of
the New York border. It has 13 employees, including a
one-man repair crew named Maurice. Its phone book listings
are 12 pages long, representing 1,168 residents and
businesses. And it has handled the calls here for 97 years.
Ethel Hanson, 82, has known no other phone company. Richmond
installed her first dial phone in the 1960's and, before that, ran her
parents' party line. "When I heard someone ring two long and two
short, I knew that was mine," she recalled.
As archaic as it may seem, more than 1,000 small, independent phone
companies like Richmond Telephone still do business, mostly in rural
areas of the nation. Each incumbent, as they are known in the
industry, handles as few as 60 access lines or as many as 50,000, and
altogether they serve nearly five million customers. Many are
family-run companies, dating to the early 1900's, that were never part
of the Ma Bell system, were never bought out by competitors and were
basically left to their own devices all these years.
Not that they have stayed in the dark ages of
telecommunication. Richmond Telephone's old magneto switchboard was
retired to a museum in Springfield, Mass., long ago, the president,
Lorinda Ackley-Mazur, is quick to point out. Like many other
independents, her company, with roughly 1,200 access lines, provides
services like call waiting and call answering, just like Bell
Atlantic, the dominant company in the Northeast, with nearly 44
million access lines. Richmond installed fiber optic cable in 1996,
and last year it began Richmond NetWorx, an Internet access
service. High-speed connections are also available.
"Plus we have excellent customer service," Ms. Ackley-Mazur said, a
contention that is hard to refute when a first name and a street are
usually all that any of the four customer-care specialists need to
find an account. One customer, Patrick Hanavan, said he stopped by the
Richmond Telephone offices to sign up for call answering and found the
service activated by the time he made the five-minute trip home.
Another praised the prompt repairs. "They don't tell you that you have
to wait when the phone gives out," said Tynia Harrington, 44, a cook
at a restaurant in nearby Lenox. "They'll get right on it."
The basic rate is just $12.50 a month, but calls outside the
five-square-mile Richmond service area and Pittsfield, the nearest
urban area, count as long distance. That does not bother
Ms. Harrington, who usually drops off her payment in person so she can
chat with the employees. "I can be late on a bill," she said. "I'll
say, 'Is two weeks O.K.?' And they'll say, 'That's fine.' "
Maurice Garofoli, 41, the company's sole repairman for the last 21
years, is so well known that customers often call him at home when
they have trouble. Having the only repair truck in town makes him
popular for other reasons, too.
"I change the light bulbs in the Town Hall, put the rope on the flag,"
he said good-naturedly.
Richmond Telephone was formed in 1903, when a group of town residents
paid $70 each to become shareholders. Back then, about 6,000 small
phone companies were started out of necessity, in areas around the
country that the Bell system had overlooked as unprofitable.
"They weren't in there to make money," said Martha Silver, a
spokeswoman for the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of
Small Telephone Companies, a Washington-based trade group.
"Many of them, 100 years ago, they were farmers. They were
in many ways pioneers." Eventually, through mergers and
consolidations, largely since 1950, the numbers dwindled.
Now, as phone service becomes an increasingly important
economic factor to even the most rural places, little
telephone companies that serve out-of-the-way communities
are finding themselves in demand by new business. A village
in Maine is now home to a credit card call center; a
Midwest farm town can employ dozens of residents as
telemarketers.
The town of Richmond, with its pastoral setting, has attracted its
share of business people, mostly telecommuters, and Richmond Telephone
is setting up more and more home offices. Last September, Mr. Hanavan,
33, forsook San Francisco for the quiet of a five-acre farm here, but
he still dials in to his employer in Seattle through dedicated fax,
modem and computer lines.
"Coming here I was a bit nervous," said Mr. Hanavan, the director of
East Coast sales for SpotTaxi.com, the Web site of Central Media Inc.,
an audio distributor. "Then Maurice came over and hooked me up. I'm
not missing a beat."
Richmond Telephone bills itself on the cover of its slim blue phone
book as "the small company with big connections," and Ms. Ackley-Mazur
says that is not an illusion of grandeur. In January, the company
burst out of its comfortable niche to offer local, long-distance and
Internet service to all of Berkshire County, a market of about 42,000
access lines, essentially putting itself head to head with Bell
Atlantic. For now, Richmond Telephone is leasing Bell Atlantic lines
and providing long-distance services in partnership with GFC
Communications of Albany.
The direct competition, said John H. Johnson, a spokesman for Bell
Atlantic, is "good for consumers and it represents growth in the
industry." It also serves another important purpose, as Bell Atlantic
needs to show that its market is open to competition as it awaits
federal approval to move into the long-distance market in
Massachusetts.
Rex G. Mitchell, an analyst for Banc of America Securities, said many
rural telephone companies, already set up to serve the more costly
low-population areas, are finding that they can branch out into
neighboring towns without much added expense. That is a result of the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed federal regulators to
push down the cost of leasing phone lines to jump-start competition.
Independents that do not grow seem headed for consolidation, he said,
as the swirl of acquisitions and mergers in the telecommunications
industry has affected the rural areas. The former Bell companies have
not shown much interest because arcane regulations make such
acquisitions too costly. But consolidators, companies that specialize
in acquiring telecommunications businesses in rural markets, have been
snapping up local access lines at $2,400 to $5,000 each.
Ms. Ackley-Mazur is aware of the big money involved. Two years ago,
when she was acting president and general manager for the Taconic
Telephone Corporation of nearby Chatham, N.Y., a concern her
grandfather founded in 1908, the company was acquired by MJD
Communications Inc. of Charlotte, N.C., a consolidator, for $67.5
million. Taconic had grown to have more than 24,000 access lines and
interests in cellular, wireless and cable. Divesting, she said, was
the most profitable move for Taconic's 240 shareholders.
Still, Ms. Silver, the trade group spokeswoman, said she expected most
small incumbents to retain their independence for some time; only
about 20 or 30 are sold each year, she said, usually when no one wants
to take the helm of the family business.
As for Richmond Telephone, Ms. Ackley-Mazur said she had made it clear
that she wanted to expand the company, not sell it. For one thing, she
likes keeping the business in the family, the way it has been since
her father, J. Benedict Ackley, bought it from the remaining 22
shareholders in 1961. He is still chairman and still regularly goes
over the books.
Despite her small-town surroundings, Ms. Ackley-Mazur is as
closed-lipped as the president of any private company. She would not
comment about the company's finances except to say that the
established telephone part of the business was profitable. She would
not even say what her father paid for the company 40 years ago. "I
know he borrowed the money from his mother," she said. "His father
wouldn't give it to him."
And yet another generation seems set in place. Ms. Ackley-Mazur's
daughter, Catherine Dullaghan, was also raised in the phone
business. She dropped off phone books at age 14 and flagged traffic
for the repair truck and installed cable during her college
breaks. Now 26 and a business school graduate, she manages marketing
and customer care.
"It really wasn't a decision for me," she said. "I just knew I was
going to be here."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
From: No Spam <be76@usa.net>
Subject: Re: On the Internet, Your Bank is Not Your Friend
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 12:37:45 +1000
Organization: Customer of Telstra Big Pond Direct
On 7 Mar 2000 09:52:03 GMT, murray@pa.dec.com (Hal Murray) wrote:
>> The same undeniably simple logic is behind a huge fight now brewing
>> between the already anachronistic banking industry and Internet
>> entrepreneurs who are trying to put more power in the hands of
>> consumers.
>> http://www.sfgate.com/technology/beat/
> Nice article. Thanks.
> Although technically possible, it will be difficult and costly for the
> banks to deploy systems that determine when online records are being
> requested by an actual customer or by a third-party website that has
> access to the customer's password.
> I have visions of smug bankers who have just hacked their router to
> black hole the evil third-party sites. How long do you think it will
> take for somebody to write an app that runs on your PC and gets the
> info from your bank and sends it to the third-party?
> Is that more or less secure?
True.
The product looks ok. I tried it with a few accounts and it work well.
The sync to a palm device looks good too.
This type of product has the ability to remove the need for accounting
programs like Quicken .... although I note it is one of their
'sponsors'.
Security of my data is always a concern in the back of my mind though.
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 22:11:50 -0500
From: Fred Goldstein <fgoldstein@wn.net>
Subject: Re: The DLC Epidemic Spreads to the Northeast
Lest the dead horse be beaten too much, I can perhaps contribute some
background to this thread. DLCs are not in and of themselves, bad things.
For instance, my house is 21 kilofeet from the CO, so I couldn't get ISDN
(18 kf loop limit) until I found somebody at New England Tel to admit to
the existence of a DLC only a few kilofeet away. Said engineer looked at
the crufty old wire plant on my block and ordered a new cable job to the
DLC. (He was a contractor, which accounted for his higher-than-NYNEX
standards.) Now I have ISDN. And if somebody could get into the manhole
(CEV), they could probably put in a DSLAM.
But as noted, there are two ways to do it. "Universal" mode means
back-to-back analog ports at the CO, putting an analog line into a CO
terminal. This breaks modems badly. (Not ISDN, though, or related
"switched digital" services.) It's the only way to do it on an analog
switch, of course, but those are all gone here. "Integrated" mode means
that there is a direct digital connection from the DLC into the CO, usually
T1 (E1 in Europe, of course).
There are two common standardized ways to do Integrated DLC in North
America. Telcordia spec TR-008 maps each channel of the T1 to an
analog line. There's no concentration; each T1 carries 24 lines from
CO to DLC. It's essentially the protocol that AT&T (WECo) used
between the SLC-96 remote and CO terminals, using bit-robbed signaling
similar to other 1980s channel banks. Telcordia's GR-303 is much
newer, having really come into its own within the last few years. It
provides for line concentration; a group of 2-20 T1s supports as many
as 2000 lines, with channels assigned on demand. ISDN-like signaling
and its own maintenance channel are required. It's very slick when it
works and has become the standard way for CLECs to access the remote
terminals they put in ILEC CO collocation rooms. (European equivalent
specs, totally different of course, are called V5.1 and V5.2
respectively.)
Universal needs a CO terminal (extra hardware) and analog line ports
(extra hardware), so it's hardly efficient. It works worse than
Integrated mode. So why is it the norm here in TheFormerNYNEXLand?
Some have speculated that it's intentional sabotage of modems. Maybe
to some extent, given how much Bell Titanic detests Internet dial-up,
but I think that's more of a bonus, icing on their cake as it were.
More realistically, GR-303 is quite expensive. Lucent and Nortel
charge big bucks for the software license ("right to use", or "RTU",
fee). They'd rather have you use proprietary remote terminals. Since
there are lots of old channel banks left around from the analog-switch
days, the universal-mode CO terminal is "free".
But the main reason, which I learned from a retired NYNEX executive,
is worse than that. Within the telco hierarchy, there are two very
distinct departments, one in charge of "inside plant" (ISP), the other
in charge of "outside plant" (OSP). The boundary is near the switch.
If there's a CO terminal for universal DLC, that's part of the OSP.
So if something breaks, they can pull off the jumper and see if the
switch or the DLC is broken. If it were integrated, there would be no
clear demarc between the departments, so they'd have to cooperate
rather than point fingers at each other. In telco corporate culture,
that's virtually unthinkable.
So your modem is broken because the manglers in Bell need a physical
break in their plant to mimic a hundred-year-old break in the org
chart.
From: /dev/null@.com (Justa Lurker)
Subject: Re: Persistent Mysterious Calls from Hell ...
Organization: Anonymous People
Reply-To: jlurker@bigfoot.com (Replies to DIGEST please)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 03:13:28 GMT
It was Thu, 09 Mar 2000 05:44:11 GMT, and wfp@ziplink.net (Bill
Phillips) wrote in comp.dcom.telecom:
> The number is 509-533-xxxx. 509 is eastern washington; I'm in a 509
> as well. But the 533 interchange isn't listed anywhere.
xxxx's added by me!
> From NNAG for December 1999.
509-533 SPOKANE
US WEST PNW BELL
End Office Code - Portable
Modified 03/17/00
5E SPKNWAKYDS0 v:06247 h:08180
Any chance of talking to your phone company's annoyance call bureau?
JL
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 21:17:36 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Is Iridium In or Out?
To avoid deportation to the Land of Dead Companies, Iridium is
scrambling for a green card. The satellite-phone company had crossed
its fingers that the necessary paperwork would come from "billionaire
investor" Craig McCaw, as the media likes to call him. But on Friday,
McCaw dumped Iridium.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,12623,00.html
From: Clarence Dold <dold@rahul.net>
Subject: Re: Persistent Mysterious Calls from Hell ...
Date: 10 Mar 2000 03:30:12 GMT
Organization: a2i network
Reply-To: dold@email.rahul.net
Bill Phillips <wfp@ziplink.net> wrote:
: The number is 509-533-1504. 509 is eastern washington; I'm in a 509
: as well. But the 533 interchange isn't listed anywhere.
That one shows up as at E 3rd and South Napa Streets, in Spokane,
according to http://www.mapquest.com online maps.
You might take a shot at calling 509-533-1500, just on a whim, if this
is an auto-dialer behind a PBX.
Clarence A Dold - dold@email.rahul.net
- Pope Valley & Napa CA.
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 04:15:04 +0100
From: Anonymous User <tonne@jengate.thur.de>
Subject: Re: Cost of Wiretapping
Organization: mail2news@nym.alias.net
> I think the US has regulations requiring telephone systems
> to have some automated mechanism for wiretaps.
CALEA, passed in 1996.
> Is there a good description of that system available on the web?
> What fraction of the current COs support it?
Any search engine on the Web will turn up numerous discriptions of
CALEA itself. I believe COs have flexibility on how they achieve
compliance to CALEA.
As to whether telcos 'support' it there are two answers: telcos
are now required by law to implement CALEA so there's no question
they will 'support' it in the legal sense. But as to whether telcos
'support' the idea behind it the answer is a universal No - not out
of any sense of consumer privacy merely the bottom line: telcos will
have to pay for the bulk of CALEA compliance out of their own pockets.
Excuse me, out of their customers' pockets, that being us consumers
of course.
> I assume there are supposed to be checks in the system to make
> sure that it's only used for legal taps. Is there any reason
> that I should believe those checks are good enough to keep
> hackers from tapping whatever they want?
Sure there are checks in the system. Just like there are checks in
place to make sure people with badges don't shove broomhandles up your
backside or pump you full of lead when you reach for a wallet.
> How much does that system cost? If I took the total cost of that
> system and put a pile of cash on the table in front of the FBI, would
> they spend it on a wiretapping system or something else? Is this just
> a sneaky way of taxing phone subscribers to support law enforcement?
It's not about revenue-generation, it's about power - our govt's
insatiable need for more power to control us citizens. Somewhen ago a
govt flunky was quoted as saying the feds want the ability to tap 10%
of the phone calls being made in the US at any given time. An
enquiring mind might ask, "Why?" Maybe Echelon isn't working as well
as it used to - more likely CALEA just makes the task of eavesdropping
much easier and cheaper. After all, why go to all the effort of
eavesdropping on communications when you can pass a law that makes
telcos squirt the data right to you no muss no fuss?
Steve
From: John Hines <jhines@enteract.com>
Subject: Re: Telephone-Pole Battle: Steel Takes On Wood
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 22:06:19 -0600
Organization: US Citizen, disabled with MS, speaking solely for myself.
Dick Aichinger <dickaich@my-deja.com> wrote:
> I believe the authors use of the term "telephone pole" was a generic
> representation of wood poles commonly seen along roads and along
> neighborhood backyards. I believe his reference and statistics
> represent the wood pole use for utilities in general.
I suspect it was the result of the old Bell system putting metal tags at
visible levels on any pole that they had equipment on. They were, and
in many cases, still are, all over the place, big highly visible warning
signs.
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 20:21:12 -0600
From: Rich Osman <Rich@Osman.com>
Organization: Paranoia was Overcome
Subject: Re: Communication Tower Being Built
It's heavily dependent on location. I've never seen a ground lease
run less than $1000/mo for the most remote rural locations (less that
this and the just buy the ground.) The most expensive urban *ground*
lease that I'm aware of is $15,000/mo and it's an anomaly. Most urban
sites are on existing buildings. Look for other towers, contact the
owners and see what they're getting. Check with the local water
district and see what they're getting for their water tanks (almost
all of them are cell sites these days.) Water tanks are usually more
expensive, because the cell companies invest less to use them.
One way to look at the price is to figure the cost of purchasing the
land, and figure the perpetual annuity value that you could buy for
that amount. This helps decide a starting point. Consider the impact
on your adjacent property value.
Don't forget that the improvements they make can confer a tax
liability to you in some jurisdictions.
Make sure that the agreement makes them accept all risk and liability,
particularly if it's tall enough to require paint or lights.
I'd also get them to set up some escrow method to cover the removal of
the tower, and establish a mechanism to terminate the lease at your
convenience.
Linda Harris <tamworth@voicenet.com> wrote:
> We have been approached by a communications company, who wish to put a
> cellular communications tower on our property.
> We meet all their requirements regarding site, elevation etc., They
> had done all their homework before they approached us, and they know
> its in a prime site. Its known throughout this district, that our area
> is a black spot for cellular phones. We would like to know, before we
> go any further, as to the payment for the lease offered by them. The
> lease is to run for over 50 years. Is there anyone who has had
> similar dealings with having towers put on their property, and could
> give us an Idea as to what they were given as payment. Its obvious
> that they offer you the very minimum as an opening offer. We are
> curious as to the "going" rate. We live in western PA.
> Yours Faithfully,
> Linda Harris
> e-mail address....Tamworth@voicenet.com
--
mailto:Rich@Osman.com http://www.rich.osman.com
Rich Osman; POB 93167; Southlake, TX 76092 (Near DFW Airport) ARS: WB0HUQ
If you receive something that says "Send this to everyone you know,"
PLEASE pretend you don't know me.
End of TELECOM Digest V20 #18
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