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privateline.v2n4
ELECTRONIC VERSION OF PRIVATE LINE NUMBER 7: JULY/AUGUST 1995
Tom Farley, Editor and Publisher privateline@delphi.com
Damien Thorn, Technical Editor damien @ prcomm.com
private line is published six times a year by Tom Farley.
Copyright (C) 1995 private line.
(916) 488-4231 VOICE (916) 978-0810 FAX
ISSN No.1077-3487
5150 Fair Oaks Blvd. #101-348, Carmichael, CA 95608 USA
Subscriptions are $27 a year for US addresses. It's $34 a year in
US funds to Canadian or Mexican residents. $44 overseas. A sample
of the current issue is $4.00. All copies mailed first class or
air mail.
Text of back issues are at the ETEXT archive at Michigan. Gopher
or ftp to:
etext.archive.umich.edu /pub/Zines/PrivateLine
Another useful URL is:
gopher://gopher.etext.org:70/11/Zines/PrivateLine
I EDITORIAL PAGE
II LETTERS
III UPDATES AND CORRECTIONS
Magazine List
Text of Cloning Regulation 47 C.F.R. 22.919
Misc. Stuff
IV. A QUICK AND DIRTY GUIDE TO EIA/TIA STANDARDS
V. CLASS OF SERVICE AND PAYPHONES
VI. THE PAYPHONE CORNER
VII. PAYPHONE STATISTICS
VIII. OUTSIDE PLANT, PART 1
IX. A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE TELECOM DIGEST
X. BOOK REVIEWS
Old Time Telephones
The Straight Scoop
ISDN: A User's Guide To Services, Applications and
Resources in California
XI. DEBIT CARDS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
XII. TELEPHONE REPAIR COLUMN
XIII. CAPTIONS TO THE OUTSIDE PLANT ARTICLE
I. EDITORIAL PAGE
The Second Year; A Price Increase?; Def Con III
Welcome to the July/August edition. private line is now a year
old. Things are looking up. Reader submitted articles and letters
are coming in and I am grateful for this. It takes pressure off me
to write every single word in every single issue. And it makes the
magazine more informative. This issue contains quite a bit of
information that did not originate with me: reader letters, a
subscriber written product review and a transcript of a speech
given by an expert on debit cards by an industry expert. Please
know that your contributions are always welcome and that article
writers get free subscriptions. The deadline for the
September/October issue is August 8th and October 8th for the
November/December. Try to get your submissions in well before dead
line.
The last year has been very instructive for me, in particular, the
last 6 months since newsstand distribution began with the
January/February issue. I had less than 12 subscribers at that
point and I was very nervous about printing up 750 copies. What
would happen? I could envision UPS trucks heading back to
Carmichael, filled to top with returned issues of private line.
And especially since Number 4 was on patents. A good issue, I
thought, but a bit dry. Who would buy it? 600 went to the magazine
racks. The first feedback came from the Tower chain. They sold 97
of the l 00 copies I had sent them. 85% of the total news copies
eventually sold. And all the extras that I had sold as well, in
fact, I've been forced to make up a photocopy version to sell as a
back issue. That patent issue found a home.
I'm now up to 102 subscribers with a newsstand circulation of
around l,000 copies. Current press run is 1,500. Newsstand copies,
back issue orders and subscriptions now equal the cost of
printing. This is good. So why the price increase? People liked
the increased page count last issue. So I'm staying with it.
Adding four pages, though, increases costs about 14%. Printing
costs go down as the number of copies produced goes up. But
increasing page count always drives the cost of each copy up. The
cover price has been now been increased by 12% to $4.50. Subs are
now $27.00. (Existing subscribers, however, will be allowed to
subscribe at the old rate for as long as they wish.) This increase
keeps me somewhat even, while I wait for bigger press runs that
will bring down per unit costs. I had hoped that advertising could
cover the costs of printing and not sales. Three or four pages of
the magazine could go into ads and that would pay the printing
bills. Sales would cover the other costs of production. But that's
not realistic for a number of reasons.
This current issue cost about $1800 to print. That's for 1500
copies. I'd need to charge $450 a page for four pages to cover
that. What advertiser would want that? You can buy a lot of ads in
Nuts and Volts for that price and reach 80,000 plus instead.
Besides, Nuts and Volts is set up for that sort of thing and they
do it well. I don't have enough time to write, let alone sell ad
space. So, the cover price will have to do more. I'll still
welcome any electronic related advertiser but I won't bother
looking for them right now. By the way, subscribers still get free
classifieds of 25 words or less. And ad rates are still $100 for a
full page, $50 for a half and $25 for a quarter. In addition, only
CONSUMERTRONICS pays me any money -- the other ads are favors or
bartered. Like Damien's ad. He answers my questions from time to
time so I run his ad. Dark Tangent has a cool convention so I run
an ad for him. DT didn't even know that I placed an ad for him
last issue. I just went ahead and did it. This is the way that a
lot of 'zines work.
Speaking of how things work, let me explain how distribution
and subscriptions work for a little magazine. Let's start with the
big picture. National distribution costs. A national distributor
like Fine Print, Desert Moon or the Tower chain take from 50% to
60% of a magazine's cover price. The printer takes $1.20. Distro
takes about $2.47. Leaves me with 83 cents for each copy sold. 15%
to 20% of the newsstand copies aren't sold. You don't get returns
anymore so you have to eat the printing and shipping costs on
those. Newsstand circulation is about 950 this issue. Do the math.
Remember, too, that the 83 cents I get is before expenses.
Subscription copies are different. No middleman to pay except
for the post office. $1.20 a copy to print and $1.01 to mail. This
is one reason, by the way, that the magazine can't get much bigger
-- the weight will push the postage up to $1.23 if I add another
four pages. In any case, this leaves me with $2.29 before expenses
on the 100 or so subscribers that I have. Money from subs goes to
paying the printer. There is no float or reserve or interest
accrued from these subscriptions. In fact, I was recently owed
$1700 by a major distributor. They did not pay me a dime for over
six months. I can't get interest on that either. Money goes out as
soon as it comes in.
I have nothing to apologize for by increasing the price.
Just wanted to explain. This magazine is about the honest exchange
of information. It should begin with me. Let me know if you are
interested in the back issues and I will price all that out. The
bottom line? I am very happy with what I am doing and the response
to the magazine has been very good. Breaking even on printing is a
good first step. The magazine is growing more slowly than I wanted
but I can work with that. What are the plans for the future? I'd
like to have a BBS that connects to the Internet. I'd post the
text of all the back issues as well as all the strange files I
find that I can't put in the magazines. Like FCC and patent files.
I'd ideally like to scan in all the articles and product
information I reference so that you could read further without
driving 60 miles to find, say, the Bell Laboratories Record.
Def Con III is coming to Las Vegas. Are you? It's on August
4th, 5th and 6th at the Tropicana Hotel. They're at (800) 468-9494
for reservations. Dark Tangent's number is (700) 826-4368; 2709
E. Madison #102, Seattle WA 98112. See you there!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
II LETTERS
Dear private line:
Just received my first issue of private line. Nice little
publication you have there. I think I shall be enjoying it very
much in the months ahead. A few comments, if I may. They regard
the note about the step by-step switch on page 44 of issue number
5. Rather than being "the" step-by-step switch, there are also
connectors, frequency selecting connectors, reverting call
connectors and toll selectors; the mechanical structure below the
relays being the common denominator construction. Actually the
switch shown is a line finder as evidenced by the single
horizontal wiper just below the ticket tag and the tenth level
overrun spring assembly in front of the A and C relays. Depending
on sub scriber activity, 10 to 20 line finders are mounted on a
"shelf". The shelf, along with other "shelves" are mounted on a
"bay" or common hardware framework which is 72" wide. The shelf is
actually the "bank" multiples at the bottom of the switch (they
don't show well in the photo) and the wiring. This is all factory
pre-wired and shipped as a unit. It is not unusual to see bays
with partially equipped shelves which allow for lower initial
capital investment and facilities to accommodate increased future
traffic activity. The can cover at the left of the photo contains
supervisory relays used for assigning the next finder to answer a
call for dial tone.
An interesting feature to me over the years has been that each
type of switching system (machine) has had its own distinct
characteristic sound signature. In a small rural office step-by-
step is characterized by intermittent bursts of staccato reports,
20 or more per second if line finders, several groups of 10 per
second as a call is dialed through, followed by silence broken
only by soft pulsing of interrupter relays and occasional clicking
of manually operated toll ringing relays as an operator in the
toll switchboard works a call. It also is interesting to listen to
call activity. There will be silence broken by switching of a
call. This invites a second call which immediately begets a third
call, followed by silence again. And so it goes, sporadic
outbursts followed by silence.
A crossbar office on the other hand is a different experience.
Listening to a working crossbar office is like being shaken up
inside a can of loose bolts. It actually can be deafening,
especially in the vicinity of the sender groups or the markers.
The crossbar aisles are less noisy, punctuated occasionally by
operation of trunk block connector relays at bay tops and
occasional soft "tink" sounds as cross-points release. However,
the granddaddy of all bedlam was created by a room full of
mechanical foreign area card translators, especially on Mothers'
Day! And a very different sound was heard by those privileged to
witness call-through tests of a No.4 Toll Crossbar machine. These
were tests performed by the installation departments on completion
of wiring a machine and prior to turning it over to the operating
company. Every number that could ever possibly be placed in the
machine was called using groups of call test "tea wagons". Any
call that failed to complete properly was traced out and corrected
immediately. Each tea wagon would present twenty simultaneous
calls to the senders. The re lay activity through the office, a
city block square in size, had a never to-be-forgotten sound that
was like an echo as trunk block relays operated in sequence
trailing away to more distant link frame aisles. There would be
silence while the tea wagons did their thinking. Then every call
would be simultaneously dropped with a gigantic "thud" and then
the whole sequence would repeat.
My favorite switching machine sound however was the panel
office. If ever there was a machine with (if it can be called
that), a "comfortable" sound, it was a panel office. To me, a
panel machine was a collection of simply delightful "clinking",
"whirring" and "squeak, squeak, squeak" noises. It was by far, the
quietest of all the machines. The only noisy areas, like crossbar,
were those near sender, marker and decoder bays. Unfortunately,
today's generation of central office technicians have never had
the privilege of hearing these old machines doing their thing.
It's a part of the art that has come and gone. I'm glad I was
privileged to have heard them.
With reference to your "Lost In Space" column, attached is a
recent copy of the Bell Labs News. In it are phone numbers and
points of contact. Hope it is of some help to you. On the back
cover you show views of the old "500 Sub Set". Mr. Bill Brander, a
retired close friend who lives not too far from here, did the
first die drawings for the 500 model when he worked at BTL in
Murray Hill NJ.
John W. Sponsler Hampton, NH
Thank you for the informative letter. I've added a few
illustrations and comments; I hope my explanation of a card
translator is accurate enough.
(Sidebars)
(The hardcopy magazine contains illustrations of both a card
translator and a tea wagon. The text of their captions are
as follows:
What is a Card Translator?
Large machines called card translators helped route long distance
calls before computer assisted switching. They were very complex
internally. Punch card technology was used, somewhat analogous to
a loom. Steel cards were covered with 118 holes, each enlarged a
certain amount to represent different area codes and prefixes.
Cards with foreign country codes contained the most information.
One translator mechanism might hold 1200 cards in a single stack.
A particular card was selected by shooting a light beam through
the stack and then lifting and dropping the cards with solenoids.
Read more by looking up 'Operation of the Card Translator" in the
March, 1955 Bell Laboratories Record.
Tea wagons are portable test equipment mounted on two wheels like
the one shown above. They are used in switching offices. Very old
models were made of wood and all tea wagons are specific to the
switch they service. The one above was used to test a No. 4 toll
cross bar.)
Dear private line,
Thank you for promptly mailing me my sample issue of private
line. I Number 51 Your cellular article gave me some lucid
insights into the system; as a novice to this technology, I was
waiting for such an article for a long time. Being originally from
Germany, the debit card article was in some ways interesting as
well. In the latest issue of 2600 you can find an article on
European debit cards that was reprinted from an older issue of
Hack-Tic. As you can clearly see, this system is close to being
utterly defeated the weak point of an EEPROM chip-based debit card
system is emulating the card with a little homemade device hooked
up to a notebook computer. In Germany, this was and is impossible
because the payphone completely swallows the card while you are
using the phone (ATM-style) Even running thin wires through the
steel latch does not work; if it does not completely close the
phone does not recognize the card (just thought you'd like to
know) I say-bring 'em on! We'll be well able to put the experience
we gained in Europe to work and try to emulate their measly cards
! Warm up the notebook and the soldering iron, I am sure we're
going to see some interesting stuff right here in the US shortly-
as greed drives the telcos to new inventions, we shouldn't lag be
hind.
However, did you notice that the address and 800 numbers for
both Public Communications and TeleCard World, as printed in the
back of number 5 are completely identical? I'll give it a shot and
see if I can parasite a sample copy for both publications out of
them. Overall I am impressed with private line; it is not as
novice as 2600 and Factsheet 5 made it look like. IMHO, it's a
magazine for phreaks. For me being a phreak by definition, this is
what I was waiting for. You'll see my order for a subscription and
back issues shortly. Keep up the good work!
Onkel Dittmeyer onkeld@planet.net
My readers are certainly a creative lot. I also worry about
them. Mr. Dittmeyer further informs me that he is interested in
the "exploration of switching systems, digital switches
themselves, PBX's and their de faults/backdoors, and programming
phreaking tools for the PC using Turbo Pascal, Assembler and C++.
" His program, 'BlueBEEP' is a blueboxing tool that he has made
available to the H/P community as public domain. (Now you know who
to thank.) The 1-800 number is indeed the same as both
publications are published by Multimedia. A free sub to Public
Communications is easy to get, however, a free one for TeleCard
World is not. I think they make most of their money from that
magazine. Sub scribe to Premier Telecard instead. It's worth $30 a
year if cards are your interest. I explore some of the chip card
possibilities Mr. Dittmeyer mentions on page 94.
Dear private line,
Your article on digital cellular was a good attempt at a high
level summary. Your carousel analogy is interesting. I would like
to see you ex tend it to Digital Speech Interpolation! However,
there are a few corrections and additions. I would like to point
out:
1. All TDMA phones can handle AMPS calls as well, not 'most'.
TDMA phones used for PCS ( 1.8-2.2 GHz) will not support analog,
and eventually some cellular TDMA phones may also be digital only.
2. E-TDMA has been trialed in Mobile, but is not in commercial
service. One other form of TDMA, that you allude to, is half-rate
coding (e.g. each of the six slots assigned to only one call, not
two slots as occurs with basic full-rate TDMA). E-TDMA gets about
a 10 times capacity increase due to a combination of half-rate
coding and digital speech interpolation. The reason why these
systems are not in commercial service is because most systems
don't need the capacity right now, and the reduced bandwidth
assigned to each conversation reduces voice quality. Improved
voice coding technology is expected to allow these systems to be
used commercially in a few years.
3. Digital Speech Interpolation (DSI) has nothing to do with
signal level, at least not in E-TDMA. You would be assigned a time
slot in either or both directions as long as there was voice to
transmit at all signal strengths.
4. I do not know of any CDMA digital systems that are in
commercial service. There may be some confusion in Los Angeles
because one of the carriers is a joint venture between McCaw (a
TDMA proponent) and AirTouch (a CDMA proponent). Their system is
TDMA, however.
Regards,
David Crowe, Cellular Networking Perspectives
71574.3157@compuserve.com ( 1-800-633-5514)
DSI or digital speech interpolation is a specialized form of
multiplexing. All conversations on all channels get digitized.
Just like TDMA or T-I. Half of your conversation, though, may be
spent in silence as you listen and pause to speak. Your voice
channel is still open, though, and still carrying data. Just not
very much. DSI fills in those silent periods with the conversation
of someone else. T-l and normal TDMA, by comparison, are
multiplexing schemes that assign each call a discrete, non-
volatile channel. DSI increases system capacity by maximizing the
use of each channel. Speech may sound clipped as a result. It's
not good for sending data. The analog predecessor of DSI was TASI:
Time Assigned Speech Interpolation, developed back in the 1950's.
It was used for trunks with a small number of circuits. Like cable
undersea between California and Hawaii. It's probably still being
used in some places.
That digital article was tough. It's difficult explaining a
subject to others when I am not completely sure of the topic
myself. Every non technical writer, though, faces this same
problem in explaining technology. I just hope that people can
learn as they go along and as each issue comes out. I'm convinced
that discussing an issue, even if it means going back and forth,
will result in a better grasp of the subject for those who do
follow it.
Dear private line,
I thought you might want a photostatic copy of the famous
(infamous) cover of the Boston Phone Book. A friend of mine sent
it to me; I can not believe almost 20 years have past. The phone
book was quickly recalled. I heard, but I have no facts, that the
artist was taken to court by Ma Bell but that Ma Bell lost the
case. Turn the picture right and left.
Maurice Onraet
P.O. Box 605
Newton, Pennsylvania 18940
Decorum and printing limitations prohibit Your Editor from
publishing the cover of the 1977-1978 North Boston Phone Book,
however, Mr. Onraet has agreed to send you a copy for three
dollars. Makes a nice conversation piece.
Dear private line,
Great magazine! I picked up my first sample at a bookstore
here in Cleveland. A section that would be interesting is one that
covers schematics for telephones, old supply catalogs from Western
Electric North Electric, Stromberg, Automatic Electric, etc. I
have several that I use to repair phones with but no one has a
complete selection. Thank you for your time and attention.
Charles Augustine
Cleveland, Ohio
Thank you for the subscription and the suggestion. I can
easily incorporate schematics within the context of a telephone
repair column. See page 111 for the start of this feature. I know
of no one who has a complete selection -- joining the Antique
Telephone Collector's Association seems to be the best bet at this
point. Their newsletter will point to dozens of resources. Anyone
up to publishing a book of schematics?
Best Message Left on The Answering Machine:
"Hey, Tom, this is Chris Thornton. When I sent you my fax [His
letter on page 62 in No.6] I didn't realize that the system would
send you all capital letters like I was shouting at you -- I
didn't mean it that way.
Damien Thorn was talking about The Source, well, there's a bio-
computer at UC Berkeley that handles security for the government
out that way. It's quite interesting. It supposed to be half human
and halt bio-chemical, that's what I understand. Sounds like it
threw a fit tantrum in Oklahoma. That's just a comeback to tell
you to check it out. They're using their people to cover it up
with that Tim McVeigh dude. You all have a good one and take care
of your self."
The private line haiku . . .
Dear private line,
I want to elevate myself to a higher plane of consciousness so I
am sending $4.00 for a sample.
Eric Camp
San Francisco
Dear Eric:
No consciousness raising going on here, unless you mean arming
yourself intellectually against the dreaded telco. That's
something private line can help you with. Okay, okay, here's my
stab at consciousness raising; this is now the official haiku of
my 'zine -- created just for you:
Cherry blossoms fall
I brush them off my mailbox
Inside -- private line!
Regards, Tom Farley
-------------------------------------------------------------
III UPDATES AND CORRECTIONS
More Magazines!
The telecom related magazine and newsletter list is out of
control. The following is in rough alphabetical order. GS means
that Greg Schumacher submitted the information. See the end of the
article for more details regarding the list:
---------------------------
A T& T Technology
AT&T Technology Room 3C-441 600 Mountain Ave. PO Box 636 Murray
Hill, NJ 07974-0636 $40 a year, $72 for 2 years, and $102for3.
(GS)
----------------------------
American Hacker
"Cable and Satellite --Television -- Technology "Gray Areas says
that they are "Carrying the baton passed on to them from their
predecessor Scrambling News." Sounds interesting but I haven't
been able to contact them before press time.
American Hacker 3494 Delaware Ave., Suite #111 Buffalo, NY
14217-0123
10 pages. $29.95 for 12 issues. Add $5.00 for Canada/Mexico and an
additional $20 for other countries.
----------------------------
The Antique Telephone Collectors Association Newsletter
The monthly publication of ATCA. It contains their organization's
news as well as interesting articles on the history of telephony.
It also has classified ads, some with pictures, from members
looking to buy and sell old phones, phone parts, books, phone
memorabilia and other collector items. Fascinating reading. The
newsletter comes free with your membership but you can get a
sample by writing to:
ATCA Ann Manning, Office Manager P.O. Box 94 Abilene, KS 67410
(913) 263-1757
The newsletter is monthly. Dues are $30 a year to U.S. members,
paid on a calendar basis. People joining mid year pay pro-rated
dues of $2.50 a year. There is a one time charge of $5.00 for new
members. please see page 110
------------------------------
Bell Labs News
Nicely done tabloid sized, 6 page newspaper that's published
biweekly. Closed subscriber list. Limited to employees of AT&T . I
got a copy from a subscriber but you may want to try the person
below:
Linda Crockett, Editor
Room 3C-420 A
AT&T Bell Laboratories
600 Mountain Avenue
P.O. Box 636
Murray Hill, NJ 07974-0636
(908) 582-4739
attmail!crockett
-----------------------------
The Bellcore Exchange
"The Bellcore Exchange provides timely insights into evolving
information technologies and issues that impact the participation
and success of Bellcore's clients in an increasingly diverse and
competitive marketplace."
Bellcore
Bellcore Exchange Circulation Manager
8 Corporate Place, Room 3A184B
Piscataway, NJ 08854-4156
1-800-521-2673
$35. Five issues a year (GS)
-------------------------
Communications Day
"A daily 2-page fax newsletter focusing on communication issues in
Australia and the world. E mail version available soon."
Decisive Publishing
P.O. Box 1200
Haymarket, NSW Australia
612.261.5436 Voice
612.261.5434 FAX
gly@decisive.com.au
(Grahame Lynch)
Daily. Annual cost: A$997
-----------------------------
Communication Systems Design
"Exclusively for design engineers building communications
equipment and systems. The content is all practical and hands on.
It is put out monthly and it is free to all engineers designing
the communication infrastructure."
Communication Systems
Design
Miller Freeman
600 Harrison St.
San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 905-2200
1-800 829-9832
(Editor's note -- great magazine!)
--------------------------
Crown Jewels of The Wire
"The only internationally circulated magazine devoted exclusively
to insulator collecting, telephone/telegraph history and related
collectibles." A directory of members is available.
Crown Jewels Of The Wire
Box 1003
St. Charles, IL 60174-1003
(708) 513-1544
U.S. /Canada Subscriptions:
First class: $25.00, with no directory, $29.00 with a directory.
Second class subs also available.
-------------------------
Mobile News
and Analysis
Newsletter. Reporting on cellular and wireless. "E-mail version
available soon."
Decisive Publishing
P.O. Box 1200
Haymarket, NSW Australia
612. 261. 5436 Voice
612.261.5434 FAX
gly@decisive.com.au
---------------------
Mobile Radio Technology
A monthly magazine dedicated to non-cellular radio communication
technologies including paging, SMR, 2 way, etc. The magazine has
very good technical coverage of these "traditional" radio
industries. Includes a lot of coverage of RF issues such as
antenna interference, simulcast systems, pager internals, bandpass
filters, cavities, splitters, etc. Oriented to the radio
technician and service folk, so explains a lot of the RF issues
without excessive math found in some microwave and RF design
magazines. May be useful for the ham operator, but does not cover
ham products or frequencies. Also only covers US radio.
Intertec Publishing
Corporation
PO Box 12937 Overland Park, KS 66282-2960
$30/yr. US & Canada, free to qualified subscribers, $40/yr.
surface mail, $105/yr. airmail int'l rates. (GS)
---------------------
Rolm Customer
A bi-monthly magazine for ROLM customers produced by ROLM/Siemens.
Definitely not a technical magazine. This marketing magazine
covers ROLM success stories and introduces new ROLM products and
technologies to their customer base. Worthwhile if you are
following the PBX vendors in terms of the new product directions
they are rolling out, or you are working on competing or
cooperating telephony products. Since this is a corporate
magazine, you obtain it by contacting your ROLM sales rep,
finding a copy and filling out a subscription card. ROLM can be
contacted at 4900 Old Ironsides Drive,
Santa Clara, CA 95054
408-492-6850 (GS)
---------------------------
Premier Telecard Magazine
"The first U.S. Telecard Magazine." A beautiful publication. I
think it caters more to the collector than to the corporate user,
however, it does cover every aspect of the telecard world. They're
nice people, too.
Premier Telecard Magazine
B.J.E. Graphics and Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 2297
Paso Robles, CA 93447
(805) 547-8500
$30 a year for six issues. Make checks to B.J.E. They offer a
variety of rates and promotions. Write for a free sample. They'll
send you a back issue and all the information you need.
----------------------
Telecoms Heritage Journal
Magazine of the Telecoms Heritage Group (UK), once or twice a
year. 48 or 96 pages. Members also receive an 8-page newsletter
four times a year. "Mainly for telephone collectors and
historians." A wonderful collection of arcane trivia and serious
research about telephone history and practice. 'Subscriber Loop
Signaling Systems' by Graeme Marett in Issue 24 , was to me, a
better introduction to the UK angle than anything Welch ever
wrote. That issue also had a history of UK telephone poles as well
as at least 20 other interesting articles. Apply for membership or
inquire to:
THG
Unit, Travellers Close
Welham Green, Herts.
AL9 7LE England
+44 1-707-287294
+44 1-707-287209 FAX
midshires@cix.compulink.co.uk
Membership is $25 for U.S. residents. Send international bank
order made out in pounds sterling or send $25 in US bills.
-------------------
Telecom History
The Journal of the Telephone History Institute. More great
information on early telephony. Stanley Swihart's lead article in
the first edition of Telecom History (1994-1) is entitled
'Earliest telephone service: The genesis and early development of
telephone exchange service.' It is a monumental piece of research,
worldwide in scope and running almost 90 full sized pages. With a
complete bibliography. Amazing.
The Telephone History Institute
Box 2818
Dublin, CA 94568-0818
(510) 829-2728
Published occasionally. Charter memberships are $25 for American
members. Write for more info.
Please Note: I can't list all the titles I am being told about. I
should have a new hardcopy list of telecom related magazines and
newsletters out by July 15th. Send me an S.A.S.E and $2.00 if you
want it. Thanks especially to:
Greg Schumacher, Director of Systems Engineering & Advanced
Research Priority Call Management, 226 Lowell St., MS A-2,
Wilmington, MA 01887 gregs@world.std.com
I didn't have space in Number 6 to give you the text of the
regulation prohibiting cloning. It was revised as of the first of
the year and is now found in 47 C.F.R. Section 22.919 and not
22.915. Anyway:
"Section 22.91 9 Electronic Serial Numbers.
The purpose of this new section is to deter cellular fraud by
requiring that the Electronic Serial Number (ESN) unique to each
cellular phone be factory set, inalterable, non-transferable, and
otherwise tamper-proof and free of fraudulent manipulation in the
field. This subject received substantial attention from commenters
and is discussed in the Report and Order.
22.91 9 Electronic Serial Numbers.
The Electronic Serial Number (ESN) is a 32 bit binary number that
uniquely identifies a cellular mobile transmitter to any cellular
system.
(a) Each mobile transmitter in service must have a unique ESN.
(b) The ESN host component must be permanently attached to a
main circuit board of the mobile transmitter and the integrity of
the unit's operating software must not be alterable. The ESN must
be isolated from fraudulent contact and tampering. If the ESN host
component does not contain other information, that component must
not be removable, and its electrical connections must not be
accessible. If the ESN host component contains other information,
the ESN must be encoded using one or more of the following
techniques:
( I ) Multiplication or division by a polynomial; (2) Cyclic
coding; (3) The spreading of ESN bits over various non sequential
memory locations.
(c) Cellular mobile equipment must be designed such that any
attempt to remove, tamper with, or change the ESN chip, its logic
system, or firmware originally programmed by the manufacturer will
render the mobile transmitter inoperative.
(d) The ESN must be factory set and must not be alterable,
transferable, removable or otherwise able to be manipulated in the
field. Cellular equipment must be designed such that any attempt
to remove, tamper with, or change the ESN chip, its logic system,
or firmware originally programmed by the manufacturer will render
the mobile transmitter inoperative.
Questions concerning this Public Notice should be addressed to
Steve Markendorff at 202-653-5560 or Andrew Nachby at 202-632-
6450."
The person who posted this to CompuServe is Robert Keller,
P.C., Federal Telecommunications Law, 4200 Wisconsin Ave NW #106-
261, Washington, DC 20016-2143. Or rjk@telcomlaw.com. The entire
file that he posted is very interesting as it contains the FCC's
comments on extension phones and how the new rule relates to them.
Altering an ESN to produce a clone is illegal, although some
companies maintain that they have the right to effectively clone a
phone through software. Less Buster mailed in an article on
cellular extensions written by Patricia Staino in the May
Teleconnect. I'll modify her example of "software cloning" a
little by describing the following: a company has 10 salespeople
with 10 phones and 10 ESNs but one phone number. The phones are
all kept off. The company pages a per son when they want them to
call the office for instructions. They only call in after getting
beeped. The company saves on 9 monthly flat charges but still pays
for all calls. You can read ads for these companies in the
classifieds of Nuts and Volts. The CTIA contends that such phones
are illegal but I 'm not sure they'll have much of a case with the
current law. There have been a number of raids in the southwest
lately, but they seem to deal with hardware based cloning.
Page 67 in the last issue was not my best writing. Too many
errors. I redid that page and sent subscribers a copy. Send me an
S.A.S.E. if you want the revised page. l had been doing my own
proofreading be fore. Not good. Little Sheeba will now help me
proof. And I will now delay each issue until I get the mistakes
out, rather than obeying my deadline and leaving the mistakes in.
In addition, the index was a bit of a mess. The next will be
better.
Thought that the "Internet Bridge" column last issue was a bit
irrelevant? The one that focused on Bell 829 Loopback Devices?
There may be far more of these left in service than we suspect. I
note that the current Jensen tool catalog features a tester called
the "Brown Box", more specifically known as a Model 91 Analog Test
Set. It does channel measurements of "any 2 or 4 wire voice grade
telephone line" and it can "activate Bell Telephone remote
loopback equipment." The Jensen catalogs are always nice. Call
(602) 968-6231 to get one.
I talked about PINs in the last issue but I said that I didn't
know how they got delivered as hookflash. David Crowe says that
IS-53 de scribes the actual process. The practice for the customer
seems very cumbersome. NYNEX requires that you 1) dial your
number, 2) press send, 3) wait for two rings, 4) enter your PIN
number and 5) press the send button again. It's my understanding
that an operator comes up on frequency to have you set a code if
you don't have a PIN number al ready. But wouldn't some
reprogramming of the phone be needed? It all sounds like a
nightmare and Crowe says that it might be cutting down on normal
calling volume and revenue because of the inconvenience. Want to
know more about plans and authentication? Here's the full quote
from David, "They are standardized in IS-53 Rev. A. True
authentication, as defined in IS-54, IS-91, IS-95 and IS-136, and
as supported by IS-41 Rev. B (plus TSB-51) and IS-41 Rev. C is
much more complex, but with less user involvement. The user starts
the process by entering a 26 digit key, and the phone then
generates a temporary key that is used for most operation. The
temporary key can be updated by the system, and the " A " key by
manual entry in the phone and in the Authentication Center.
Confused? Time to read the sidebar on this page and to get a free
sub from Cellular Business.
I was not able to get a copyright release for the Numismatic
News article that ImOkey sent in a while back. It's entitled
"Telephone Tokens: The forerunner of the phone card" and it
appeared in the January 10, 1995 issue. That's Volume 44, No. 2.
Let me mention three articles in the last few months that I
thought were very good. The first was Jack Rickard's "Editor' s
Notes: The Security Paradox" in April's Boardwatch. It brings some
reasoned, rational, and humorous thinking into the debate about
Mitnick. (1-800-993-6038 is the number for subs.) Another great
article was "Toll Fraud: Debunking Popular Myths" by Stan Tyo in
May's TeleProfessional. Tyo admits that disgruntled employees may
contribute to toll fraud. He also described how current employees
might be contributing. A very honest article. The MCI switch
technician, for example, who helped steal over $50,000,000 worth
of calls last December was certainly no outsider. MCI tried to
paint him as a hacker but that was just a cover for their failed
security. The guy was an MCI employee first. They had the means
and the methods to control his activities but they did not do so.
In the February 27, 1995 Bell Labs News, an article on security
mentioned hackers as a source of problems for business but they
also included corporate competitors, industrial espionage and
"problems caused by poorly administered systems and inadequate
employee awareness." Exactly. Toll fraud and abuse is a big
problem. But I'm not convinced that hackers are a big part of it.
Why do I mention all of this?
Mike Moss recently became a subscriber to private line. He's
a reporter with New York Newsday. (Two Park Avenue, NY, NY 10016)
He writes a great deal about phone fraud but it's not the kind you
might suspect. Most of his recent articles deal with long distance
companies who switch a customer's carrier without telling them.
Slamming. The subscriber often gets a huge bill after being
switched illegally to one of these high priced carriers. He
details how hard it is to get your bill fixed and the bureaucratic
nightmare that awaits most who are victimized. His articles remind
me of how much toll fraud is sponsored by industry types such as
Oncor and Sonic. Throw in telemarketing scams and the damage
caused is enormous. You have to look at the entire picture of
fraud and not just the lone hacker. Mitnick's real crime is
probably electronic vandalism and should be treated as such. But
individuals are always easier to target than corporations. A group
of hackers is a gang or a ring. A group of corporate thieves,
however, can call themselves a Board of Directors. I know that
sounds naive but that's really the way it is.
IV. THE PAYPHONE CORNER
Let's continue with some points that Onkel Dittmeyer raised in his
letter on page 94. I'm not comfortable discussing card technology
because it takes us away from telephony, however, telephone cards
will be a major part of public communications in the near future.
So, lets roll around in some terms and speculate. For purposes of
this article, I assume that you all have read "The Gold Card"
article in the Spring, I 995 2600.
First things first. A normal telephone calling card is one
issued by your local exchange carrier or a long distance company.
Like an AT&T calling card. These are really not part of our
discussion. Eric Stebel, managing editor of both TeleCard World
and Public Communications, now uses the term remote memory card to
identify a prepaid calling card. A remote memory card accesses a
distant switch by an 800 number to connect the call. The majority
of calling cards sold in America uses this technology. Talk and
toss. The phone does not require any intelligence or memory on the
part of the calling card. Just an 800 number and an access code.
The card itself could be plastic, steel, wood or paper. Anything
printed that contains the two numbers. Some simple remote memory
cards, though, may have a magnetic stripe used by a retailer to
activate the card once it's sold. Don't confuse this with a
magnetic stripe card that requires a payphone with a reader. Like
the ones that NYNEX uses. Those are true swipe reader phones .
By comparison, Stebel now refers to debit cards as phone-
based cards. This implies that a true debit card must contain some
intelligence or memory within the card itself. That could be a
magnetic or optical striped card which you swipe or a chip card
that you insert. In either case, the phone must be sufficiently
complex to accept such a card and then inter act with it.
Ameritech, NYNEX Bell South and US West have all run trials or
experimented with phone based cards. These are now all magnetic
stripe cards. Only International Telecom Incorporated (ITI) of
Alaska, a private payphone operator, has had any real, lengthy
experience with chip based cards. The trend in the next four or
five years, though is toward re mote memory cards/ pre-paid
calling cards.
You will notice, however, that David Stubbs of Teltrust used
the word debit card to refer to remote memory cards throughout the
length of his speech that begins on page 110. A debit card in
banking has usually referred to an instrument which transfers
funds automatically from your account to the account of someone
else. So, you have industry leaders using some these terms
interchangeably. The bottom line? Ask. Inquire. Write in and get
people to define their terms. There will be a built-in amount of
confusion until everybody gets on the same page.
Back to Dittmeyer's comments. Installing a magnetic reader
card phone has been fairly simple. Kits are made to retrofit an
existing COCOT with a normal DTMF keypad to one with a keypad and
a reader. A reader is attached underneath the keypad. This keypad
connects to the phone's circuit board with a ribbon cable. Put in
the card and pull it out. Altering the magnetic stripe alters the
balance on the card. No need for a laptop or wires hanging out of
a phone.
I understand, though, that most of the information is
encrypted in such a way that defeat is impractical; the methods
used by a NYNEX phone card parallel the sophisticated methods used
by a VISA card, a gas card or an ATM card. This is very
different from a phone that can read chip cards and magnetic
cards. These machines hold the card in place while it reads the in
formation The trend is not toward access to the card while this
happens -- Protel's new 100, 8505 and 8600 Series payphone all
seem to swallow the card completely, much like an ATM machine.
They've learned their lessons in Europe, in part, because they
are already there.
IV. QUICK AND DIRTY GUIDE TO THE RELEVANT EIA/TIA STANDARDS
(Prices are from Global)
I S-41: "Intersystem Operations" A patched together set of rules
designed to handle roamers: validation, hand-off from one system
to another, location tracking and so on. It's been revised many
times. It has not been implemented everywhere nor with equal
uniformity where it has been. Some carriers may comply and some
might not. There are at least five parts of IS-41, with each part
costing from $36.00 to $100.
IS-53: The features or services interim standard. Describes how
things like call forwarding, PIN numbers, calling name
identification, incoming call screening and law enforcement
intercepts should be handled. Revised many times and over laps
with IS-41 in some areas. $49
IS-54: TDMA. $227
IS-91: 800 MHz Analog Cellular. $126
IS-95: CDMA. $260
IS-136 Revision of IS-54 (U.S. Digital TDMA) $?
The electronics and telecom industry develops standards, interim
standards (IS) and telecommunications system bulletins (TSBs) for
many reasons. Chiefly uniformity. The Electronic Industry
Association and The Telecommunications Industry Association are
the chief players in developing cellular standards in the US. Even
after a decade, most of the cellular trade is still governed by
interim standards, many of which have undergone countless
revisions with no end in sight.
Global Engineering has the monopoly on publishing the EIA/TIA
standards. It's quite a racket. For them. The standards are
printed on plain paper with no covers. They are stapled once on
the top left corner and the documents are three hole punched. They
can be 50 pages or 500 pages long depending on the standard. Call
or write for a free catalog and price list. l find the catalog
helpful in deciphering all the acronyms. Global publishes for over
400 standard developing bodies!
Global Engineering
15 Inverness Way East
Englewood, CO 80112-5776
303-792-2181 or 800-854-7179
303-397-7935 (FAX)
V CLASS OF SERVICE AND PAYPHONES
We haven't discussed classes of services before. A business
line and a residential line may use the same kind of twisted pair
but they are treated differently by the telco. A residential line
usually gets an unlimited amount of calls for a flat rate while
business lines are charged on a per minute basis. Similarly, COCOT
lines and telco coin lines also get treated differently. COCOTs
are not controlled by the local exchange carrier but the payphone
operator must apply for a special class of service. The LEC keeps
track and tags each call from a COCOT with an identifying marker.
John Higdon points out that COCOTs are a special class of service
that provides the following:
1. 900/976 blocked;
2. Billed number screening (no collect or third party can be
billed to them);
3. LEC operator will complete no calls, or provide call assistance
to caller;
4. Show up as COCOT class of service on real-time ANI
applications;
5. Get special local rates from the LEC.
VI. THE PAYPHONE CORNER
Let's continue with some points that Onkel Dittmeyer raised in his
letter on page 94. I'm not comfortable discussing card technology
because it takes us away from telephony, however, telephone cards
will be a major part of public communications in the near future.
So, lets roll around in some terms and speculate. For purposes of
this article, I assume that you all have read "The Gold Card"
article in the Spring, I 995 2600. First things first. A normal
telephone calling card is one issued by your local exchange
carrier or a long distance company. Like an AT&T calling card.
These are really not part of our discussion. Eric Stebel, managing
editor of both TeleCard World and Public Communications, now uses
the term remote memory card to identify a prepaid calling card. A
remote memory card accesses a distant switch by an 800 to connect
a call. The majority of calling cards sold in America uses this
technology. Talk and toss. The phone does not require any
intelligence or memory on the part of the calling card. Just an
800 number and an access code. The card itself could be plastic,
steel, wood or paper. Anything printed that contains the two
numbers. Some simple remote memory cards, though, may have a
magnetic stripe used by a retailer to activate the card once it's
sold. Don't confuse this with a magnetic stripe card that requires
a payphone with a reader. Like the ones that NYNEX uses. Those are
true swipe reader phones .
By comparison, Stebel now refers to debit cards as phone-
based cards. This implies that a true debit card must contain some
intelligence or memory within the card itself. That could be a
magnetic or optical striped card which you swipe or a chip card
that you insert. In either case, the phone must be sufficiently
complex to accept such a card and then inter act with it.
Ameritech, NYNEX Bell South and US West have all run trials or
experimented with phone based cards. These are now all magnetic
stripe cards. Only International Telecom Incorporated (ITI) of
Alaska, a private payphone operator, has had any real, lengthy
experience with chip based cards. The trend in the next four or
five years, though is toward re mote memory cards/ pre-paid
calling cards.
You will notice, however, that David Stubbs of Teltrust used
the word debit card to refer to remote memory cards throughout the
length of his speech that begins on page 110. A debit card in
banking has usually referred to an instrument which transfers
funds automatically from your account to the account of someone
else. So, you have industry leaders using some these terms
interchangeably. The bottom line? Ask. Inquire. Write in and get
people to define their terms. There will be a built-in amount of
confusion until everybody gets on the same page. Back to
Dittmeyer's comments. Installing a magnetic reader card phone has
been fairly simple. Kits are made to retrofit an existing COCOT
with a normal DTMF keypad to one with a keypad and a reader. A
reader is attached underneath the keypad. This keypad connects to
the phone's circuit board with a ribbon cable. Put in the card and
pull it out. Altering the magnetic stripe alters the balance on
the card. No need for a laptop or wires hanging out of a phone. I
understand, though, that most of the in formation is encrypted in
such a way that defeat is impractical; the methods used by a NYNEX
phone card parallel the sophisticated methods used by a VISA card,
a gas card or an ATM card.
This is very different from a phone that can read chip cards
and magnetic cards. These machines hold the card in place while it
reads the in formation The trend is not toward access to the card
while this happens -- Protel's new 100, 8505 and 8600 Series
payphone all seem to swallow the card completely, much like an ATM
machine. They've learned their lessons in Europe, in part, because
they are already there. Stebel reports that "All of the major
payphone manufacturers in the United States are selling smart card
payphones to foreign countries. Some international payphone
companies are even selling smart card payphones to the RBOCs."
So, the payphone companies have learned their lessons and
are already learning more. Much of this ties into the standards
that The Gold Card article mentions. AFNOR. ISO. Who are these
groups and where can you read these standards? AFNOR stands for
Association Francaise de Normalisation (of course). Only ITI, as I
understand it, has used their standards with their cards. Let's
concentrate on the ISO. The ISO or International Standards
Organisation is a body composed of many nations. They try to get
together to settle on the ways that things work What does the ISO
itself say about standards?
"Standards are documented agreements containing technical
specifications or other precise criteria to be used consistently
as rules guidelines, or definitions of characteristics, to ensure
that materials, products, processes and services are fit for their
purpose. For example, the format of the credit cards, phone cards,
and " smart" cards that have become commonplace is derived from an
ISO International Standard. Adhering to the standard, which
defines such features as an optimal thickness (0,76 mm), means
that the cards can be used worldwide. International Standards thus
contribute to making life simpler, in creasing the reliability and
effectiveness of the goods and services we use. "
"What does an ISO standard look like? It can be anything from
a four-page document to a 1000-page tome, including twice the
weight of the standard itself in informative annexes. It may
specify the tasks that a certain range of equipment must be able
to perform, or describe in detail an apparatus and its safety
features. It may contain symbols, definitions, diagrams, codes,
test methods, etc." Okay, okay you say, so what are the ISO
standards regarding chip cards? It's not that simple. The ISO is
currently producing draft industry standards (DIS) that have not
been finalized. Here are the ones that seem to apply most to chip
cards:
1) ISO 9992- 1: 1990 Financial transaction cards -- Messages
between the integrated circuit card and the card accepting device
-- Part 1: Concepts and structures;
2) ISO 10202-1:1991 Financial transaction cards -- Security
architecture of financial transaction systems using integrated
circuit cards -- Part 1: Card life cycle;
3) ISO/DIS 10202-2 Financial transaction cards -- Security
architecture of financial transaction systems using integrated
circuit cards -- Part 2: Transaction process;
4) ISO/DIS 10202-3 Financial transaction cards -- Security ISO
architecture of financial transaction systems using integrated
circuit cards -- Part 3: Cryptographic key relationships;
5) ISO/DIS 10202-4 Financial transaction cards -- Security
architecture of financial transaction systems using integrated
circuit cards -- Part 4: Secure application modules;
6) ISO/DIS 10202-5 Financial transaction cards -- Security
architecture of financial transaction systems using integrated
circuit cards -- Part 5: Use of algorithms;
7) ISO 10202-6: 1994 Financial transaction cards -- Security
architecture of financial transaction systems using integrated
circuit cards -- Part 6: Cardholder verification. The ISO is
represented in America by the American National Standards
Institute. ANSI.
I asked for a price list on the above interim standards and for
their free brochure explaining the ISO but after a month and a
half they still haven't responded: American National Standards
Institute, l West 42nd Street, 13th floor New York, N.Y. 10036
(212) 642-4900. FAX is (212) 398-0023.
VII. PAYPHONE STATISTICS
-- Payphone Trivia Courtesy of
New York Newsday, Michael
Moss, Raymond James and Asso
ciates, Industry Analysts, John
Richard Associates and private
line magazine!--
(New York Newsday, Sunday, May
1 4, 1 995)
Number of payphones in the United
States: 2 million
Number of payphones in New York State
owned by NYNEX: 160,000
Number of payphones in New York State
owned by others: 40,000
Commission paid to site owner: Up to 50
percent of gross revenue
Money a pay phone can hold: $150 in
quarters, $250 in dimes
Cost to buy a payphone: $935 to $1,295
Average monthly income of payphone:
$250
Portion of payphone income from coins:
Two-thirds
Top Five Payphone Locations Nationwide:
Bars: 131,000
Grocery Stores: 116,000
Hotels and Motels: 80,000
Colleges: 60,000
Prisons: 50,000
VIII OUTSIDE PLANT, PART 1
Outside plant or OSP refers to telco-owned equipment and
facilities that are outside the main central office that serves
local customers. Cables, manholes, utility poles, equipment
cabinets and remote switching modules are all outside plant
facilities. Everything from the cable vault at the central office
to the demarcation point at your house or office. I'm doing two
things in this article: I) introducing the subject of outside
plant and 2) looking at buried facilities or buried plant. I'll
look at aerial plant and rural OSP in more detail in the next
issue. Let's look at the big picture first and then define outside
plant a little more. This quote is nearly fifty years old but it
still manages to put the entire public telephone switched network
(PTSN) into perspective:
"The term 'telephone plant' includes (I) the telephone ap
paratus and wiring at the subscribers' premises; (2) the central
office switching equipment (with the buildings that contain it)
for interconnecting subscribers' lines; and (3) the aerial and
underground wires and cables with their pole lines and con duits,
which connect the subscribers' stations with the central offices
and the latter with each other whether they be in the same city or
in different cities. This piant makes it possible, at the present
time, for any user of the telephone service to be connected
promptly with any other station of the telephone system, and to
converse easily, by electrical means, with the person called,
after the connection is established, regardless of distance. The
systems which enable this nation-wide service to be rendered are
necessarily complex and intricate and they in clude a multitude of
auxiliary devices and appurtenances.''l 11
Complex and intricate indeed. But the layout of outside plant
is fairly straightforward, even though the technology has been
getting more complex. Let's define outside plant more specifically
before showing how the different elements come together. Lee says
that "The outside plant of a telephone company encompasses all
telephone fa cilities from the main distributing frame (MDF) in
the central office to the protector at the customer's residence or
business location." Besides the many forms of buried and aerial
cable involved, Lee also maintains that OSP includes "electronic
carrier systems, microwave, or some form of subscriber or
concentrator arrangement.''l2l That's practically everything in
the local loop. There are some problems with that definition.
Remote switches confuse the outside plant definition somewhat.
They are tied to the main central office by trunks but they
generally provide their own dial tone and switching. They are part
of today's distributed switching, with a little central office
possible nearly every where. The remote 5ESS pictured on page 107
is an example. That switch is the termination for the entire local
loop distribution plant in its area. It has its own backup power
supply, ringing generator distribution frame and multiplexing
equipment. Among other things. Everything outside of this facility
is outside plant as well, but possibly not the switch itself.
That's because switching equipment has usually been considered the
province of central office plant, things within the building
proper.
But many remotes are housed in underground vaults. That makes
them buried plant. And that means outside plant to me. I'd argue
that out sidc plant includes any equipment or facilities that are
connected to a particular central office. That means remotes and
anything else that helps provide local service. Sound pedantic?
Not really. The last census I saw showed that there were 8 663
central offices in the United States but 10,584 remote
switches.(3) Seems like a good dcfinition is in order. Yet
industry itself does not agree on terms. The best selling telecom
dictionary today says that outside plant does nol include micro
wave towers, antennas and cable system repeaters. (4) This
directly contradicts Lee. And although he is no longer with us, I
think I will stick with his older but more authoritative opinion.
Now that we've somewhat defined what outside plant is, let us
look at how it is arranged. Again, the focus is on an urban
setting. I'll leave rural areas for the next issue. (Gives me an
excuse for a road trip.)
Lee mentions five kinds of plans for outside plant. But only
the serving area concept and the modified serving area concept
seem to be in favor. I'll let another expert describe it, " In
order to standardize the way loop distribution plants are set up
in the U.S. (and to prevent chaos) the Bell System created a
standard reference design. For urban and suburban areas, this plan
was called the Serving Areas Concept (SAC) plan. Basically, in the
SAC plan, each city is divided into one or more Wire Centers which
are each handled by a local central office switch. A typical WC
will handle 41,000 subscriber lines. Each WC is divided into about
10 or so Serving Areas (depending on the size and population of
the city), with an average size of 12 square miles . . . each
Serving Area may handle around 500 to 1,000 lines or more for
maybe 200 to 400 housing units, typically a tract of homes."
Feeder cable (F1) goes out to each serving area managed by the
central office. "This cable can contain from 600 to over 2,000
pairs, and often more than one physical F1 cable is needed to
service a single Serving Area (at an SAI). The F1 is almost always
located underground because the size, weight and number of feeders
makes it impossible to put them on normal telephone poles. Since
it is also impractical to use one single piece of cable, the F1
usually consists of several pieces of large, pressurized or
armored cable spliced together underground into a single
cable."[6]
One or more F1s terminate or are wired into the back of a
Serving Area Interface. This could be a small or large terminal
board or block. Local twisted pairs connect to the other side of
these boards and go out to the local neighborhood. The idealized
map presented on page 102 is just that: idealized. Where the SAI
is and how many of them are tied to a particular central office is
all dependent on population, the switch that exists at the C.O.,
the facilities available to the local telco, future plans and so
on. You can make a more realistic map yourself by noting the SAIs
in your neighborhood in relation to the end office that serves
you. In addition, F1 may first terminate at a multiplexer or a
pair gain facility like a SLC-96. These systems put many, many
conversations over a single pair of wires. That helps if, say, a
large apartment complex gets built in an already developed area.
The existing feeder cables and ducts may already be at capacity.
Multiplexing takes the analog traffic of the local loop and
digitizes it over the existing F1 cable. An SAI is usually nearby
to provide a connection to the local loop's twisted pairs. The SAI
is most commonly housed in the kind of cabinet shown on page 103.
There are smaller and larger cabinets, however, so it is often
tough to tell. But most have doors and those labeled with a
street address are almost certainly an SAI. Automatic Electric
cabinets often had simulated wood grain siding. (No, I'm not
kidding.) What then, are in the rest of the smaller green boxes
that dot the landscape?
Most of these are called pedestals and most of them don't
have doors. Most relate to buried plant and a neighborhood that
has its utilities underground. They serve as splice housings and
service terminals for buried drop wires to connect to the local
distribution cable. The most common "are the PC4, PC 6 and PC 12;
these are around 50" tall by 4", 6" or 12" respectively, and are
painted gray-green like SAI cabinets. These are the smallest
pedestals in the distribution plant and they don't have doors
(they look like waist-high square poles). [T]hese pedestal
closures are often used for other purposes, such as splicing
points in underground distribution, loading coil mounting, and
even used as temporary wire storage containers."[7] We've now
looked a bit at what is on the surface. What's down below?
Buried plant is an underground system. It depends on
conduits or ducts, manholes, cables, and vaults. Conduit or ducts
are simply empty pipes, often made of plastic or structural foam.
These are laid into trenches, filled or capped with concrete and
backfilled over. Spare conduits get put in at the same time. This
makes it possible to pull out an old cable or to put a new one in.
Directly plowing a cable into the earth is done only for buried
distribution cable or rural trunks. The F1 cable usually runs in
conduit all the way from the C.O. to the SAI. Cables are then
accessed and pulled from manholes or vaults. Many conduits have
become filled over the years, especially in downtown areas.
Happily, fiber optic cable recovers space in old, crowded
quarters. Conduits that were crowded with bulky copper cable are
now giving way to fiber optic cables that take far less space yet
provide far more capac ity. Much of what you'd see in a manhole
is represented in the photographs on page 105 albeit, in the more
spacious, well lit surroundings of the cable vault. In addi tion,
certain areas have concrete tunnels between manholes and not
conduit, with telephone cables racked to the sides of the tunnels.
Lee says that manholes should not be further than 750 feet apart.
I'm not sure if that works out in practive, however, I have noticed
something about the covers. There seems to be two types: the round
ones and the kind that have two hinged steel plates. The ones with
the steel plates seem easier to lift and they provide a bigger entrance.
But I see them only on sidewalks and not out in the middle of the
street. They must be limited to areas without traffic. The round,
iron manhole cover may be the only kind that stands up well to
40,000 pound trucks running over them all day.
I hope to look at aerial plant and rural OSP in more detail next
issue. I had hoped to include some photos of various oddities in
this issue but I wasn't able to get on the road to take black and white
photos of them. The nearest post-pay phones, for ex ample, that I
know are in Idaho. And I'm no longer certain that they can be
considered outside plant equiyment. In any case, l hope you enjoyed
this introduction to the subject and feel free to send me copies of any
interesting photographs that you may wish to share.
Notes:
[1.] Encyclopedia Britanica, Volume 21, (1946) 895
[2.] Lee, Frank. Outside Plant. Geneva, abc TeleTraining, Inc. (1987) 7 This
book is
getting pretty long in the tooth. Now revised by E.J. Leonard, this is one of
the first four
manuals that Lee wrote. It's illus trated with very limited pen and ink drawings
and some
charts. No photographs of any kind. Still, it's the only thing in print on OSP.
Available
through Telecom Books (1-800-LIBARY) or through abc TeleTraining, Inc., Box 537,
Geneva,111,60134 (312) 879-9000.
[3] Semi-annual Report on Telephone Trends in Telephone Service May 1994.
Industry
Analysis Division, Federal Communications Commission. Downloadable through their
BBS at (202) 418-0241 (BBS file name is TREND295.ZIP. "Copies may be purchased
by
calling International Transcription Services at (202) 857-3800."
[4 ]Newton, Harry. Ne~vton's Telecom Dictionary, 8th edition. New York City.
Flatiron
Publishing, Inc. (1995) 751 A very good, very idio syncratic telecom dictionary.
1170
pages. $24.95. Yes, it's worth it, despite my reservations about the publishers
themselves.
[5] Phucked Agent. "Outside Loop Distribution Plant." Legion of
Doom Technical Journal: File #8 of 12 (1987) I pulled this file
off the Internet about two years ago. A great read and about the
only resource available on the Internet about outside plant. Not
in print which is really too bad. The old LOD people could do
everyone a great service by putting their material into hardcopy.
I'll make room in private line if they want.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Kurtz, Edwin B. The Lineman's and Cableman's Handbook, 7th
edition. New York City. McGraw Hill (1986) 31-10. Not telco but
helpful.
Other:
Outside Plant Magazine does deal with OSP, of course, but they
have not been helpful to me at all. Still, it is a good magazine.
$30 a year. Practical Communications, Inc., Outside Plant
Magazine, P.O. Box 183, Cary, IL 60013.
Cabling Business Magazine does not deal with OSP as much as
Outside Plant but it is a very friendly magazine run by nice
people. Free subs. Cabling Business Magazine, P.O. Box 496177,
Garland, TX 754049-6177 (213) 328-1717.
-----------------------------------
THE INTERNET (Sidebar)
Getting on line? Check out these unmoderated groups. They're open
to all. Post to alt.test first to experiment if you are new to
USENET.
1) alt.2600
2) alt.dcom.telecom
3) alt.cellular-phone-tech
4) comp.dcom.telecom.tech
IX. A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE TELECOM DIGEST
Pat Townsend moderates a discussion group about telecommunications
on the Internet. Look for comp.dcom.telecom if you have USENET
access. He's been moderating this group for over ten years. People
submit hundreds of questions to the digest each week. Pat selects
which ones to post. He sometimes edits the question for clarity
and he often adds his own opinions. Replies to a question are not
automatically put up by Pat. He controls them as well. You have,
in effect, a kind of daily telecom newspaper under strict
editorial control. I do not subscribe to this group but I do look
it over from time to time.
Here's a list of topics selected at random to show what's
discussed:
134 Telematic Sculpture 4
135 National Information Infrastructure Course
136 Experience Switching Canadian Cellular Service?
137 NTI and Peer to Peer Connection
138 Question on ATT Pub 41450
139 Information Wanted on American Communication Services, Inc.
140 Caller-ID With Name From Centrex
141 TSPS Operator Boards
142 Cord Board Toll and Assistance
143 Least Cost Routing Question
144 CD Changer For Music on Hold (2 msgs)
145 ANI vs Caller-ID
146 History of TSPS/TOPS/OSPS
147 HumanNets and WorldNet - Are Earliest Posts Archived
Anywhere?
148 Johnny Mnemonic - Waste of Time, Money (2 msgs)
149 Information Wanted About Smart Cards
150 TCOM Assistant Professor (One Year, Ph.D.)
151 Merging Phone Company Test Boards
152 Multiplexer Software Control
Pat spends as much time writing and editing as any newspaper
or magazine writer. He's just doing it electronically. I think he
needs encouragement to put some of the ten years of the Telecom
Digest into hardcopy. He's contemplating a CD ROM but that would
cut out access for anyone without a computer and a CD drive. He
also needs contributions to continue the work of the digest:
TELECOM Digest
9457-D Niles Center Road
Skokie, IL 60076
X. BOOK REVIEWS
Old Time Telephones is a wonderful book about
telephones for collectors, repair people and just about
anyone who wonders how telephones work. You'll find
everything from the earliest history of telephony to a lengthy
discussion of modern touch tone phone circuitry. It's divided
into four parts. The first discusses the development of
components. It includes chapters on early developments and
the Bell patent, receivers, induction coils, magnetos, ringers,
switches and dials. The other major parts of the book are Telephone
Instruments, Electrical Circuits, and Restoration and Repair.
Each of these parts are as well detailed as the first. There's a
good appendix that describes basic electrical principals
(Myer holds a Ph.D. in physics), an excellent bibli ography and
a well done index.
Myer's approach is comprehensive. He comments, for example,
on a component's function as well as its evolution. Let me illustrate
this point. In the first part he explains that varistors protect a telephone
receiver from elec trical distrubances and that they reduce clicking
noises on the line that you might hear otherwise. He then writes in
a later chapter that, "Unfortunately for Western Electric, the No. 44
varistor could only be successfully made with copper oxide from a
mine in the Chilean Andes, and that ore was being rap idly depleted
(Michal 1960). Consequently, the Bell Laboratories developed a new
low voltage varistor out of silicon." Your editor approves of esoterica!
haven't seen this kind of detail since Fagen edited A History of
Engineering and Science in the Bell System: The Early Years.
I use this book for reference and for browsing. It keeps things straight.
Dozens of models, makes and manufacturers are described or mentioned.
ITT, Kellogg, Stromberg-Carlson, A.E. and Western Electric all made
different products at different times and this book does a great job of sorting
most of them out. It's a little light on Automatic Electric and foreign makes
like
Ericsson are generally not treated but what do you want? The 290
pages of details that it does have will make any telephone enthusiast happy.
Myer says that it took him more than five years to write this book and
I believe it. Here's a nice paragraph from his book to end this review:
"On January 1, 1984, the Western Electric Company, then older than
the telephone itself, ceased to exist (Hochheiser 1991, 143). On that
day of court ordered divestiture, the Bell System was broken into seven
regional operating companies (the Baby Bells) and a more compact
AT&T. AT&T retained the long-distance part of the business, its
venerable research organization (Bell Laboratories), and its manufacturing
operations (which could no longer have exclusive supply arrangements with
the operating companies). A newly cre ated AT&T Technologies, Inc. assumed
the corporate charter of Western Electric and continued making 500-type,
2500-type, and Trimline telephones under the AT&T Technologies label for
several years at plants in Indianapo lis and Shreveport. However, to become
competitive in the market, AT&T shifted residential telephone manufacturing
to the Far East, beginning in Hong Kong in late 1985, Singapore the following
year, and later in Bangkok and elsewhere. Thus ended U.S. production of
rugged electromechanical telephones, and though phones similar to the 500-type,
the 2500-type, the Princess, and the Trimline are still made to day, they are
products of the modern electronics age, rather than a bygone culture."
Old Time Telephones:Technology, Restoration and Repair
by Ralph O Myer
Published by TAB Books,
a division of McGraw Hill, Inc.,
Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17294-085t
1 -800-822-8158
(717)-794-2191
(717)-794-2103 FAX
ISBN No. 0-07-041817-9
(Paperback) 1995
$19.95 (U.S.)
----------------------------------------
The Straight Scoop is a ten page report on the 900 Pay-Per-
Call Industry. It looks at the problems and pitfalls you'll want
to avoid if you go into business as an IP or information provider.
In particular, it describes service bureaus and how to deal with
them. You'll be working with these people so you better educate
yourself. These service bureaus help set up your program, maintain
the switch, lease the necessary lines from the telco and do the
accounting. They charge hundreds of dollars for their work every
month, even if no calls come in for your number. Service bureaus
operate in an incredibly competitive, shark filled environment.
Each claims to have the best, most profitable program for you.
Each program has different terms and rates. What to do?
Ken Wells provides honest, realistic guidance in dealing with
these people. He also discusses advertising for your venture,
market research, resources and consultants who can help you
without hyping you. He also sells a list of 44 (!) questions to
ask your service bureau prospect for five dollars. My advice is to
get both the report and the list. At $15 total, I can predict that
this will be the least costly, most honest information that you
come across in setting up your project.
The Straight Scoop
Kenneth R. Wells
1-800-482-FACT (3228)
Visa, MC
The Straight Scoop
1142 Auahi Street, Suite 2014
Honolulu, Hawaii 96814
scoop@mailback.com
The report is $10 and the list of questions is $5.00. Ken is a
senior communications engineer for a U.S. contractor in the
Republic of the Marshall Islands.
------------------------------------
ISDN: A User's Guide to Services, Applications & Resources In
California, is this issue's freebie to write away for. It's 60
pages of information on the Integrated Services Digital Network --
the most talked about and most delayed telecommunication service
in the last 15 years. The best parts of this book are the hand
drawn graphics, lifted with permission from France Telecom, Inc.
and reworked by Pacific Telesis.
ISDN is a digital service provided by some phone companies.
It uses two conventional twisted pairs. You could set it up right
now if you had two phone lines and your local telco had a switch
equipped with ISDN capabilities. Pacific Bell, though, recommends
that you also have an additional line with a normal phone in case
of a power failure.
In any case, ISDN allows a digital connection from you to the
telephone company. It makes sense to put digital into the local
loop since nearly all traffic is digital between switches. This
allows a full digital connection from one end of the telephone
system to the other. Provided, of course, that the person on the
other end has or can get the same kind of ISDN connection that you
have. Voice and data or both can travel at the same time on the
same ISDN line. You can do video conferencing with one person
while sending a fax to someone else. You can also run a fast
Internet connection on this, although frame relay may be a better
choice.
ISDN is a particular kind of digital service, with its own
protocols and signaling requirements. It's being implemented in
various parts of the country in some form. Thus, it competes with
or complements other digital services such as switched 56, frame
relay, full T-1 and fractional T-1. The speed of the connection
most resembles fractional T-1, which has always been the least
expensive digital line if your telco provides it. Implementing
ISDN, though, may be the most difficult of all the services at
this point.
Pacific Bell's offering is a good place to start
understanding the terminology, procedures and possible
applications of ISDN. I keep it as a reference to look up things
like BRI, PRI, NT1 and so on. I may not need ISDN but it's
interesting to read about and to keep current on. The book is free
but you may have to flatter them if you are from out of state.
Note: Telecom Books puts out a nice catalog of, well, telecom
books. Newton's Telecom Dictionary is especially good. Write or
call for a free catalog: Telecom Books, 12 West 21 Street, New
York, NY 10010. 1-800 LIBRARY or 1-212-691-8215. Make sure your
book is in stock and follow up with phone calls if it does not
arrive within a week. By the way, except for that dictionary, I've
paid for all the books and reports I have reviewed.
ISDN: A User's Guides To Services, Applications & Resources In
California
Pacific Bell
Business Market Group
2600 Camino Ramon
San Ramon, CA 94583
(510) 823-7543
(510) 277-1808
XI. DEBIT CARDS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
David Stubbs of Teltrust gave a great talk about debit cards
at TeleCard World '95 in Los Angeles in March. I didn't go to
the convention but I did get a tape of his speech. His remarks
concentrate on pre-paid calling cards but he does mention optical
cards and magnetic cards in passing. Optical, magnetic and chip
cards all store value in the card itself. Remote memory cards,
however, store value in a remote database. Stubbs uses debit card
to refer to all pre-paid cards.
Remote memory cards are a big business getting bigger.
Please read this article even if you are not interested in cards;
I think you will become interested in them if you do. The
following is not a verbatim transcript, by the way. I did have to
add some words here and there to make the text flow more freely. I
would say, though, that 98% of his speech is unchanged. Remember,
too, that this talk was aimed squarely at trade people and not the
average phone user. It does not, for example, address the fraud
committed by certain debit card companies. Like giving you 58
seconds instead of 60 seconds for one minute of time. Or printing
up a million units worth of time but only buying 800,000 units,
hoping that not all of the cards get used up.
Good morning, my name is David Stubbs and as you can probably
tell straight away, I've got a rather funny accent. I come from an
area that is very much involved in the use of debit cards for
rather a long time. In fact, it's almost twenty years since it was
actually started. I am both an Englishman and a New Zealander and
both of these countries have major investments in debit cards.
Probably most of you have seen this - I've got here a 20 unit
British Telecom card. A unit in the UK is a period of time. If you
are talking in the London area you might get two minutes per unit,
if you are talking from London to the north of Scotland you might
get half a minute and if you talk to the United States you may get
three seconds per unit. I bought this card last week for two
pounds which is about $3.40. This thing has been around in the UK
I think for about 17 years.
I'm going to talk a little bit more about the fraud side of
things, not the side that we have been talking about like the
switches and the issuing of cards. More about a different sort of
area because I was an original frauder of these cards. It was
possible in the old days to coat the back of this card with
ladies' nail polish, be able to insert the card into a British
Telecom reader and get all the free calling you wanted. [Laughter]
That was before Landis and Gyr decided that perhaps they ought to
modify the machines so that people like me couldn't do it. But my
history as a hacker goes back a lot, lot further than that.
Do you remember the English telephone boxes, the red ones you
often see in the movies? In the old days they used to have these
lovely black telephones inside that used 'push-push' operation.
Put your money in and push to talk if your party answered. You
pressed 'A' if they did and if they didn't you pressed 'B' and
your money came falling out. Well, we as kids learned that if you
picked up the handset and you tapped out on the cradle, three taps
gave you a three, four taps gave you a four, and, in fact, you
used to be able to make free telephone calls. So, as kids about on
the West Side we used to call people for free all the time and
annoy them just for having use of the telephone system.
Well it's come a long way since then in the UK. You've got
two different systems. You've got a system like this which is
produced by British Telecom, with the payphones made by Landis and
Gyr. And then you have another system made by GPT which I think is
the one that is used by the Japanese and by the New Zealanders
where they actually store the value not in a strip across the
front of the card where it is optically burned out and scanned,
which is the little white line that you can see when you come up
later on, but in three magnetic stripes. It's actually a fairly
interesting algorithm that calculates how much is being used and
rewrites it to the card. The only place you'll buy those readers
from is GPT so there's a fair amount of security built into the
system by the fact those cards can only be read by certain
readers.
We don't face that problem, in fact, in the United States. We
have a different set of rules. We have allowed our debit cards to
be used absolutely everywhere. Here I have a sample of a debit
card that my company issues. Teltrust, by the way, started life
as a payphone operator. I think we hated the concept and the idea
of debit cards when they first came out because we thought
everybody would use our telephones without us making any revenue.
[People dial around a payphone owner and their profits with 800
numbers] I think we finally came to the realization that, okay, if
we help sell these cards we'll make revenue from both sides of it
coming and going. We've actually been playing now with debit
cards for two years; I think we're fairly serious now. We've
issued something like five million cards so far.
My question, by way of Rick's comments, is how many of the
250 to 500 million cards issued in the United States in 1995 will
actually be used? I don't know if you realize it but something on
the order of 85% to 90% of all debit cards issued are not going
to be used. [This is very high. I think he means that the card
will not be used up completely] A statement was made in December
at a conference I was at in Houston that less than 3% of the
population currently knows anything about what a debit card really
is. Bear in mind these large numbers are going to be .
associated with cards that are active but not being used. And that
is the hacker's dream.
It's finding out [for the hacker] who's been issuing these
cards. For instance, if a half million Kodak cards were given away
with a box of three rolls of film, and the number of those that
were used was minuscule, a hacker who gains access to your system
and gains access to those cards can absolutely make free with what
is your money. And so I think the control of those is very, very
important. Richard mentioned that activation is a great problem -
you have to be able to control the activation. I'm just making
these comments before I go into what I really wanted to talk
about.
Why were debit cards originally issued overseas? They were
issued because they were a way to give an economic calling method
to the casual caller. We're all very familiar with people going
out and using payphones; they're all over the place in this
country. I think there are estimated to be something like two and
a half to three million pay-phones available in the United States.
But we're paying a premium, though, with payphones because of
fraud.
If ever you go to one of the pay-phone shows and listen to
the people talk about fraud, you'll wonder why the heck people
ever go into the business. The destruction of payphones for
accessing the coins is the main reason why people are thinking of
changing [to cards]. I asked our payphone division head about what
he thought was the reason a payphone was broken into or stolen. He
said 95% of the people who break in are after the money. There may
be $2,000 worth of control boards and mechanisms and everything
else in the payphone but they're not interested. 95% of the
reasons you have problems is because of money; either they're
breaking into the money box or they're really hacked off with this
payphone because it swallowed their money and so they take the
handset and they bash the heck out of the payphone and break the
handset.
So, the people overseas learned their lessons fairly early on
with payphones. They were controlled by the national telephone
companies. [The Post or Postal Telephone & Telegraph companies
(PTTs)] I showed you a British Telecom card earlier on as an
example - they had to find a better method of a) stopping the
destruction of their payphones and b) giving the user a break. If
you don't have a problem with the payphone you bring down the
costs of service. That's one of the things that we are seeing as a
spin-off over here, because of the reduced amount of fraud that
there is using debit cards we're able to offer really low cost
calling. For example, typically we're seeing anything from the
independents who are producing debit cards, producing a debit card
that's giving you like 20, 24, 25 cents a minute in the United
States. If you go to our majors, the AT&T's, the MCI's and the
Sprints, they're charging a higher premium because
they are protecting their existing business which is calling
cards.
These then are the reasons why people did it: it was more
economic, there was less fraud, and there was less knocking of
the phones around. For instance, in New Zealand -I like to bring
this one up because I know this study fairly well there - they
have approximately 9,500 payphones in the country and 5,000 of
those are debit card only. They do not take anything other than
the debit card. They have placed those in the higher crime areas,
they've placed those in the remote areas of the countryside,
they've cut down considerably on the cost of servicing that
business.
The other thing we've got to do to be able to get more debit
cards in the United States is, in fact, to educate the general
public. As I've mentioned before, only 3% of the population really
knows what the heck we are doing. As we see the majors move more
into the debit card business you're going to see more and more
acceptance by the general public and therefore more and more usage
of those.
The key questions? [About fraud] I thought I'd take this
invitation to speak to you as a challenge to learn something more
about it. My background is more on the switch side of things; I
do know quite a lot about our switching facility although I am a
simple peddler in the field. My background is 25 years in
computers so I know quite a lot about hacking. I was mentioning
the hacking in the early days, it was fairly simple to do hacking
through systems and networks because most people didn't protect
them. A lot of the things we are going to learn over the next
couple of years in our industry is how to protect our switches
against this. But what we've got to look at are the vulnerable
areas, where the risks are, who has the liability and who pays for
the fraud. These are four very, very key questions that we need to
answer when looking at debit cards.
In particular, we need to look at the PINs, which we've
talked about, the physical cards, the actual cash that's being
paid over, the credit cards that are used, the time that is being
stolen and what I call the intellectual property rights of the
actual card itself. That's because one of the major areas that is
not being addressed by my two colleagues is the actual card. Rick
mentioned the card that was issued at the Democratic National
Convention. That card currently sells from $1500 to $2000. It's
just a simple piece of plastic. And here we have, as I've said
before, the typical piece of plastic that is issue by Teltrust.
[Shows debit card to audience again] And I, as a fairly
sophisticated computer user, wouldn't bother to actually hack into
your database. There's far, far more money to be made by simply
taking a 2400 dpi scanner, scanning in the front and back of that
card, pressing it through my PC and going to a very sophisticated
printer, which might cost me about $5,000 and physically
duplicating the card. And you say, "Why do that?" On the back you
notice the little sticker, it can either be a sticker or a scratch
off, I don't care which. I'll put either one on there. The thing
is, the value to that card is going to be associated with the fact
that that sticker or scratch off has not been removed. Or if it
was in a pouch, that the card has not been taken out of the pouch.
We're going to see cards in this country go up in value like crazy
as more and more people become aware of what they are and more and
more people collect them. The biggest fraud, I believe, is not
going to be the theft of time, I believe it is going to be the
duplication and copying of cards. All right? That's where the
money is going to be made.
Do you realize that the most valuable card in New Zealand at
the moment is one that shows Dunedin's railway station, a god
awful place, excuse my French, but I don't know why they put it on
a card. That card sells for $46,000 dollars now. And I was in New
Zealand last year and they held an auction for debit cards.
Telecom New Zealand is the major issuer of debit cards. It issued
25 cards of face value of $100 dollars each. The first 24 cards
were sold en block for $125,000. The last single card, number 25,
was sold for $25,000. It's just a piece of plastic. So bear with
me and see what's going to happen. So that's the thing that you
are going to have to control. The question is, how are you going
to control it?
There are two sets of numbers on the back of a card. There
happens to be a number hidden under here which is the
authorization number and there is a number over here which is the
control number. And Richard talked about the fact that you are
generating a card, getting them out to the general public's hands,
but as you pass through you've got various phases. And you've got
to control that all the way through. What we have recommended is
the use of a single control number on the back here. This is a
sequential number that is used - if someone buys 2,000 cards they
get number 1 to 2,000. You then should take those cards, if they
are going to be sold out and activated, and use a system like one
that Rick talked about. You should track who they've gone to, at
what time they went and where they've gone. Right? Then you have
the ability to check that there are only 2,000 of those. So, that
reduces the risk of someone straight copying the card compared to
one that has only an authorization number that I as a perspective
dealer in these cards would not want to scratch off. This control
number is trackable and you should know where it was and when it
was sold. This reduces and minimizes risk.
But it is something you've got to be vigilant about. I don't
know if you've been following the copyright law cases that have
been going on between the United States and China, which we have
finally resolved. They have now basically come to the realization
that intellectual property rights are vested and need to be
protected. You could go and get any book copied in Hong Kong,
Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and somewhere else and there was nothing
against anybody copying that and going out and selling an
identical product. We need to control this, we need to come up
with systems. Richard's got a very good system, being able to
track and do inventory on this but we have got be serious about
this. Number your cards, put control numbers on them and watch it.
Because that, I believe, is the biggest problem.
Who's going to be responsible if we go back to the problem of
time theft? That's one of the things that's not been talked about.
Who's got the liability and who's got to pay for it? That depends
on how you sell the card. If you as a card generator, sell the
card to a dealer then make sure he pays you. He, in turn will sell
it to somebody who is going to retail it and he makes sure that he
gets paid. The retailer wants to make sure he gets the cash before
he gives the card out. One of the things about retailing is that
you are dealing with human beings. We talked about a card swipe
system. You swipe the card through to activate it. A customer then
gives the clerk some money. You've got to make sure that you get
that cash. Fraud is associated, of course, with not getting cash
for a card that has been issued. So be aware of who is selling
your cards and where the money is going. And from my old murky
past, the rule was always to follow the money trail. That's the
biggest thing you've got to keep an eye on. Where, oh where, is
the cash going and who's blowing it and who's pocket is it going
in now? Be very much aware. Richard's control system will help you
with that but you have to be aware of the people you are dealing
with.
Okay, the activation at the switch which David talked about -
there are some wonderful things at the moment. One of the things
that I'm not sure David mentioned is about the trunk group coming
in. Make sure your switch can look at the physical telephone
number of the person endeavoring to activate that card at the
time. We talked about a card swipe. There are other systems where
a clerk actually phones in from the retail store to activate the
card. One of the things that you can check is that the phone
number line that is used to place that activation call is already
in the database in the switch to make sure that the two numbers
marry. little since it isn't on the card but there is still a
chance of fraud. I've talked about vending machines a little. I
think that we are ultimately going to see vending machines in
which you can put in your debit card and cash or a debit card and
a credit card and the machine will reload your debit card account.
I know because I built one a few years ago.
You see, all we're doing in this debit card business here in
the United States is remembering a physical number. I wrote out a
number on a piece of paper at a lecture I gave in Houston. I hung
it up and asked if anybody would give me fifty bucks for this
piece of paper. Nobody took it. There was actually $100 worth of
time on a debit card. All I was getting over was the point that
all we are selling is a number. What I am saying is that there is
risk, there is reward, there is liability, you have to define
who's got that, where they've got it and at what point does
somebody take over that. And be aware that with collector cards
there is a opportunity for people to copy these and make a lot of
money. And that is where I think the future is going to be.
Resources:
David Stubbs' company is Teltrust, Inc. at (801) 535-2000 or write
to: 221 North Charles Lindbergh Drive, Salt Lake City, Utah 84116.
Fax number is (801) 235-2080. I've never dealt with them. David
mentioned Richard Arend. His company is Macrologic, Inc., 1544
Elmira Street, Aurora, CO 80010. Their phone number is (303) 367-
8766 and their fax number is (303) 367-8786. Again, I've never
dealt with them.
Debit cards are covered extensively by TeleCard World and
Premier Telecard Magazine. Subs aren't free but samples are.
TeleCard tends to be more corporate while Premier seems to cater
more to the collector. My choice, if I had to subscribe to just
one, would be Premier. Check out page 110 for details on them.
You can get audio tapes of TeleCard World '95 through
Conference Copy, Inc. Their address is 8435 Route 739 Route 379,
Hawley, PA 18428. (717) 775-0580. Tapes are $12 apiece plus $2.00
shipping apiece. I bought TE1, 'Inventory and Fraud Control' and
TE4, 'Vending Machines and Smart Phone Technologies'. TE4 is a two
tape set and a bit of a snoozer. Yes, Your Editor spent $42.00
for three cassettes.
The most informative corporate information that I've seen on
debit cards comes from CPDI: Communications Product Development
Incorporated of Vancouver, Washington. Their information packet
goes into a great deal of detail about call blocking by ANI as
well as everything else It's a bit difficult to follow. Ask for
the Communicator at the same time. It's a little newsletter they
produce that is much more user-friendly and will help to explain
the rest of their material. Try CPDI, 915 Broadway Street, Suite
100, Vancouver, WA 98660. (206) 694-2977. A contact person might
be Kimberly A. Farmer.
XII. TELEPHONE REPAIR COLUMN
PRODUCT REVIEW:
Telephone Ringing Generator Board: RG12V/5RP. The board itself is
2 inches square. The mechanism is adjustable from 15 to 68 Hz,
costs $49.95 and is featured in the latest Hosfelt Electronics
Catalog. The part number is 56-374. Hosfelft is at 800-524-6464.
USES:
An interesting product was recently offered for sale which can
actually make your telephone bell ring. Not only can it be used to
test phone bells and do line simulations, but it can also activate
equipment that listen for phone bells such as modems, faxes, and
answering recording machines. It can also be used for inlercom
signaling or to provide a variable Hz output for electronic
experimentation. The variable Hz output could also be used to test
old rural farm-country phones which were set to ring at different
fre quencies (for several parties on a line). This product can be
useful in testing old phones for repair or new ones to see if they
ring properly. The product would be especially useful for folks
who lack a second line with which to call their first line from.
Most of all, of course, the product is an amazing and wonderful
toy which a person can enjoy playing with in order to have fun.
OPERATION:
Connect Ground and 12 Volt-ln leads to a 12 Volt DC Power Adapter.
Ground = black wire may be used.
12 Volts = red wire may be used.
Connect Outputs to Phone Set. (Either since it's AC)
One of the Outputs = red Ring wire of phoneset.
Other of the Outputs = green Tip wire of phoneset.
Touch a yellow wire between Enable and Ground to cause ringing.
Set Cycles Per Second to about 20 Hz where phone bell sounds
proper.
CYCLES PER SECOND ADJUSTMENT:
Although it is advertised as adjustable between 15 & 68 Hz; in
practice I find it to be adjustable between 5 & 4500 Hz when I
measure the output with a digital multimeter with frequency
feature. Telephones use 20Hz.
OUTPUT:
When set to 20Hz exactly (by digital multimeter reading), this
product puts out an alternating current of 150 volts and so the
positive portion of that which is located above the ground would
be 75 volts which is just per fect for Ringing phone bells. The
150 volts, by the way, is an unloaded voltage which instead reads
147 volts when a phone bell is connected.
In order to picture in your mind how there can be an
alternating current with a positive half located above the ground,
think for a moment of how your ordinary household current is 240
volts AC but has a positive portion above ground which is 120
volts and used in ordinary household wiring such as that leading
to your light bulbs. 240 volts is available between the hot
positive black and the hot negative red wires. But 120 volts is
available between either of those wires and the white ground wire.
TELCO'S BELL-RINGING POWER IS DIFFERENT:
The phone company sends out a pulsating positive direct current
of 75 volts root-mean-square measurement at 20 cycles per second
through the red Ring wire and receives the power back through the
green Tip wire (which is near ground) in the case of ordinary
normal private subscriber
lines. Remember that pulsating direct current stays on the plus
side of the ground when it pulsates up and down. In contrast,
alternating current wanders on both side of ground when it
pulsates between minus and plus. But phone bells usually don't
care whether they get pulsating direct or alternating current.
HAVE FUN WITH IT:
This unique product is a lot of fun, very useful and varied
in potential application. For further information, dial (800) 524-
6464 and ask for their free catalog and look up the product on
page 39.
Information Regarding Phone
Line Colors and Voltages
The green Tip wire is near ground. In that sense it is somewhat
related to the yellow ground wire which is an actual ground. The
red wing wire carries minus 50 volts when the phone is hung up or
on hook. The red Ring wire carries a minus twenty volts when the
phone is in use or off hook. This steady, direct current is used
for talking and listening. But when the phone bell is ringing,
there is superimposed upon the red Ring wire a positive 75 or 90
volt pulsating direct current at 20 cycles per second. So,
remember that the red Ring wire's current is negative for talking
but pulsating-positive for bell ringing. In both cases, the
current finds its ground in the green Tip wire. The Tip of the old
operator's plug was more positive than the Ring of the plug
because that which is near ground is more positive than a nega
tive direct talking current. This takes some thinking to get used
to because we so often think of ground as being the more negative.
But with telephone talking power, the more negative was the minus
fifty volts of the red Rinq wire.
Editor's Note: This article and its sidebar were submitted by a
sub scriber in Minnesota who wishes to remain anonymous. His
subscription has been extended by a year in retum for his review.
----------------------------------------------------------------
XIII. ETEXT NOTE: The following relate to the charts and the 30+
photographs contained in Number 7. Send me $5.00 and it will all
become clear :) 5150 Fair Oaks Blvd. #101-348, Carmichael, CA
95608. Thanks!
A single wire does not run from your house to the central office.
A connection is maintained, instead, by a collection of wires and
cable that are strung together. Let's take one common example.
We'll follow your phone line from your house to the nearest C.O.
This example combines aerial and buried plant. Let's assume that
you live in an older neighborhood in a medium sized town. The kind
with telephone cable running through the backyards on poles.
1. Telephone wiring inside your house first connects to the
telco's wire at the houseprotector or service terminal. This is
the demarcation point. Your wiring ends here and the telco's
wiring begins.
2. A drop wire containing one twisted pair goes to a pole closure,
an aerial terminal or ready access terminal Call it what you will,
this is the termination of the sub scriber's drop wire. Drop wires
may be 30 feet or 3,000 feet long. They contain one twisted pair
apiece.
3. The customer's twisted pair is connected to binding posts
within the enclosure. Depending on the enclosure, a wire
representing your twisted pair may now be connected to the aerial
cable servicing your neighborhood. This sort of enclosure is
inline with the aerial cable and may serve as a connecting or
splice point. Or, a wire from the back of the enclosure may run to
a splice case nearby. This marries that enclosure's wire with the
larger aerial cable that services your area.
4. This cable may contain 50 pairs or more. It's called
distribution cable or aerial cable or F2 for being the secondary
feeder cable. Several F2 cables may work their way back to the
nearest SAI.
5. These cables go underground via conduit before connecting to
the serving area interface. 6. The SAI. A big terminal block.
Those ubiquitous gray-green cabinets you see nearly everywhere. F2
cable pairs connect with F1 pairs at this point. F1 or main feeder
cables then go underground in conduit, usually to the nearest C.O.
or remote switching module. Or first to transmission equipment and
then to the central office.
1. The demarcation or demark point. A residential one. This one is
protected by fuses so it is considered a protected service
terminal. Note the cable near the rain gutter. It runs up to the
top of the roof to become an aerial drop wire. A 66 block is a
much larger protected service terminal installed at many
businesses, apartment complexes and other multi-unit buildings.
April's Blacklisted! 411 had a picture of a Western Electric 66 on
the cover. John Higdon notes that some GTE served residences have
a mulitplexer at this point.
2. An aerial drop wire goes to a telco's service terminal. Fooled
you, didn't l? Everyone's seen aerial drop wire so why show it?
This is actually open wire. It does the same thing as a drop wire
does. It brings a customer's tip and ring to a distribution point
in the form of bare copper wire instead of a cable with a twisted
pair of wires.
3. Pole mounted service terminal. They come in many shapes and
sizes. They all do the same job. They connect the drop wire to a
larger cable. A stub from the box goes to a splice case a few feet
away. Ready access enclosures, by comparison, terminate the drop
wire and splice into the larger F2 cable all at once.
4. A serving area interface? Possibly. Many pole mounted SAls do
look similar.
5. Typical aerial splice case.
6. A terminal block of some sort. Maybe an SAI. Or it could be
connecting the local drops to a larger distribution cable that in
turn runs to an SAI.
7. A modern SAI cabinet. Loosely called a connecting point or a
junction box or cross connect box by some. Hundreds of connections
possible at these binding posts. The back is mostly wired in, just
waiting for local pairs to come to it. These cabinets can be many
sizes. The inside of the frame usually tilts forward, providing
access to the other side.
8 . & 9. Still going. A car crashed into this cabinet. See the
spare duct for future cable? Underground cable comes in and goes
out. The SAI is the interface between the loops in the local
neighborhood (gathered up by F2 or distribution cable) and the
cable below the street which is F1. The main feeder goes to the
C.O.
10. Exterior. Handle is mounted flush with the door. Opens with a
normal can opener but it's a strange, pull out, turn halfway kind
of locking mechanism.
The Cable Vault
Here's where outside plant begins, even though it is within the
central office. See page 101. Harry Newton defines it thus, "Cable
Vault: Room under the main distribution frame in a central office
building. Cables from the subscribers lines come into the building
through the cable vault. From here they snake their way up to the
main distribution frame. The cable vault looks like a bad B-movie
portrayal of Hell, replete with thousands of dangerous black
snakes. Cable vaults are prime targets for the spontaneous
starting of fires. They should be protected with Halon gas, but
they usually aren't because some parts of the phone industry think
Halon is too expensive." C'mon, Harry! Lighten up. Maybe that's
the way it is in NYNEX country but the vault I saw was a picture
of orderliness and careful workmanship. Everything was in its
place, including a Halon fire suppression system. I can't imagine
an insurance company settling for anything less.
1. Exterior of typical C.O. But what's below ground?
2. Roof of the cable vault, with each cable neatly held to the
rack.
3. Far end of vault, where cables enter through conduit. Note the
extra conduit available.
4. Long view of the cable vault. A massive amount of cable but all
neatly racked up. Those large splice cases are better considered
as vault closures.
5. Close-up of the entry point to the vault. Each black cable
contains 2400 twisted pairs. Lighter colored housings contain
several fiber optic threads in a loose tube cable. Air pressure
hoses connect to the copper cable housings.
6. Splice case. Similar to what you'd see in a manhole.
7. Over-exposed photo of a NT fiber optic cabinet. This enclosure
is a Fiber Manager. It first arranges some of the fiber coming
into the vault before it heads upstairs to the distribution frame.
8. Pressure monitoring system for the pressure distribution
system. Very expensive equipment feeds dry air (3%) into the F1
copper cables at about 10 P.S.I. 24 hours a day. This helps keep
water out of the cables. There are two systems in this vault. One
takes over if the other fails.
9. Cutaway of a fiber optic "splice case".
Tom Farley
5150 Fair Oaks Blvd. #101-348
Carmichael, CA 95608
$5.00 for this issue. Comments and corrections welcome.
privateline@delphi.com