TELECOM Digest Mon, 13 Mar 2000 22:59:00 EST Volume 20 : Issue 22
Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson
Re: CPP, ATM Surcharges (was F.C.C. Debates Changes to Cell (F. McClintic)
Re: In Never-Bell Land, Phone Service Is Way Above Average (Fred Goodwin), Two Flight Attendants Appeal Search of Home Computers (M Solomon)
Executive Order on Unlawful Conduct Using the Internet (Monty Solomon)
Re: Query on LNP (Al Varney)
Cyber Patrol Cracked; How to Get I-Gear's Secret List (Bennett)
Looking for ITSP to Terminate Calls (Aldevinas)
Re: Persistent Mysterious Calls (John Ledahl)
Could AOL Become The Ma Bell of New Millennium? (The Old Bear)
Caller SOMETIMES Pays on Phoenix Cell Phones (Chris N. Acuma)
Dot-coms Wary of Privacy Bills (Monty Solomon)
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Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 20:28:10 -0600
From: Fred McClintic <fmcclint@diemakers.com>
Subject: re: CPP, ATM Surcharges (was F.C.C. Debates Changes to Cell Phones)
On Sat, 11 Mar 2000 21:54:37 -0500, Stanley Cline <sc1@roamer1.org> wrote:
> Also, CPP numbers would likely be blocked from PBXs, payphones,
> hotels, other wireless carriers, customers of CLECs, long distance
> callers, etc. because of the uncertainty about what rates would be
> charged (and in the case of most CLECs and wireless carriers, lack of
> third-party billing arrangements), which would make them about as
> worthless as 976 numbers, which are all but dead in many cities.
The primary problem, and the reason that the existing proposals should
be totally scrapped is that PBX owners and others CAN'T block CPP
numbers! The FCC to-date has said no to any proposal that would give
cellular providers numbers which could be, by automated means,
determined to be such. Universities charge their students for phone
calls that they make through their PBXs. Companies bill back
departments for calls that they make via account codes or other
methods. All of these bill-back methods rely on Call Detail Records
produced by the PBX which are then ran though an accounting package
that costs the call. All of these packages rate the call based on the
local or LD rates charged by the carrier that the call was passed to,
and the rates that the owner of the PBX negotiated with the carrier.
With CPP, all of that pre-determination goes out the window and we're
back to going through the phone bill manually and hoping that we can
collect the money out of the caller (who, in the case of universities,
may well be a perpetually broke student who ran up a three or
four-figure phone bill talking to their girl/boyfriend who has a CPP
number). Various parties have supposedly brought up means of
*verbally* telling the caller that he is about to be charged extra,
but PBXs can't do voice recognition (yet?). As long as there is no
*automated* means of determining if we are going to be charged extra
for the call (and blocking accordingly), the CPP proposals should be
shot dead in the water.
Fred McClintic
From: Fred Goodwin <goodwin@tri.sbc.com>
Subject: Re: In Never-Bell Land, Phone Service Is Way Above Average
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:21:51 -0600
Michael Sullivan <avogadro@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
> Who pays the remaining 83%? WE DO. Companies like this are massively
> subsidized by those of us paying more per month for poorer service,
> through the universal service/high cost program, and through long-
> distance access charges. This company probably loads the vast majority
> of its costs onto long-distance users by gouging long-distance carriers
> for excessive carrier common line charges that are "justified" by the
> company's high costs -- costs resulting from providing gold-plated,
> overstaffed service.
Mike, as you've seen from the replies so far, it is not politically-correct
to criticize small, rural, or mom and pop telcos.
There's much truth to what you say -- as an auditor for an intrastate
toll pool, I saw the accounting and engineering records of many small
telcos. It is no secret that much of their funding comes from toll
pool disbursements (both intrastate and interstate -- in the form of
NECA). But it is also true that their operating costs are higher than
the big ILECs.
I think the readers of this list might be surprised to know that many
rural telcos converted 100% to digital switching long before the RBOCs
did (its easy when you have to replace a single switch; many RBOCs
continue to operate analog 1AESSs). Toll pool "settlements" had no
small part to do with those upgrades.
And of course, small telcos are net recipients from the toll pools,
whereas the RBOCs were net payers into the toll pools, meaning those
conversions were subsidized by RBOC ratepayers, as well as IXC access
fees (paid for by LD users).
List readers might also be surprised to know that the total ROR for
many of these small telcos far exceeds anything Mr. Kushnick
constantly harps about.
When a proposal was floated a decade ago to reduce subsidized REA loan
funding to small telcos, the howls could be heard to the halls of
Congress, and of course, the subsidized funding was essentially
preserved (60 Minutes even gave an example of how Vail, CO benefited
from such funding).
Under the REA's curious rules, "once funded, always funded" so that
even tho the Vail telco was later bought out by GTE, the Vail exchange
still qualifies for (and presumably receives) subsidized REA loans.
One wonders how much the taxpayers in the more rural parts of RBOC
territory are subsidizing the "poor" folk of Vail, CO?
Fred Goodwin, CMA
Associate Director -- Technology Program Management
SBC Technology Resources, Inc.
9505 Arboretum, 9th Floor, Austin, TX 78759
fgoodwin@tri.sbc.com
(512) 372-5921
(512) 372-5991 fax
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:20:36 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Two Flight Attendants Appeal Search of Their Home Computers
Published Friday, March 10, 2000
2 flight attendants appeal search of their home computers
Tony Kennedy / Star Tribune
A court-sanctioned search of computers owned by two Northwest Airlines
flight attendants was a company fishing expedition that violated the
workers' personal privacy, claims an appeal that seeks destruction of
the copied computer data.
Lawyers for flight attendants Kevin Griffin and Ted Reeve said in an
appeal filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul that the two
flight attendants should have been trusted to search their own
electronic records for material relevant to Northwest's lawsuit
against them. The suit alleges that Griffin, Reeve, 19 other
http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=81456213
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So many of these large companies seem
to feel all they have to do to get their way regards search and
seizure of the computers of individuals is to get a loud-mouthed
lawyer to go make a demand of a judge somewhere. I wonder if they
bothered to get search warrants and how they dealt with email which
belonged to others that happened to be stored on the computers in
question. PAT]
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:33:44 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Executive Order on Unlawful Conduct Using the Internet
Excerpt from
Prosecuting Crimes Facilitated by Computers and by the Internet
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/crimes.html
D. Executive Order on Unlawful Conduct Using the Internet
On March 9, 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno announced the release of
"The Electronic Frontier: the Challenge of Unlawful Conduct Involving
the Use of the Internet."
In August 1999, President Clinton established an interagency Working
Group on Unlawful Conduct on the Internet. Executive Order 13,133
directed the Working Group, under the leadership of the Attorney
General, to prepare a report with recommendations on:
--The extent to which existing federal laws provide a sufficient
basis for effective investigation and prosecution of unlawful conduct
that involves the use of the Internet;
--The extent to which new technology tools, capabilities, or legal
authorities may be required for effective investigation and prosecution
of unlawful conduct that involves the use of the Internet; and
--The potential for new or existing tools and capabilities to educate
and empower parents, teachers, and others to prevent or to minimize the
risks from unlawful conduct that involves the use of the Internet.
The report and its appendices can be found via the links below:
* The Electronic Frontier: the Challenge of Unlawful Conduct Involving the
Use of the Internet (March 9, 2000)
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/unlawful.htm
* Appendices to "The Electronic Frontier: the Challenge of Unlawful
Conduct Involving the Use of the Internet " (March 9, 2000)
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/append.htm
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Did anyone hear on the BBC today where
a couple of British politicians referred to Bill Clinton and Janet
Reno as 'a couple of liars'. What has never ceased to amaze me since
his election (the first time) were the large number of Silicon Valley
people who were tricked into voting for him. The internet was getting
along just fine before Clinton and Gore (the father of the internet to
hear Gore talk about it) got into office. PAT]
From: varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney)
Subject: Re: Query on LNP
Date: 13 Mar 2000 16:05:11 GMT
Organization: Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL
Reply-To: varney@lucent.com
In article <telecom20.14.7@telecom-digest.org>,
Krishnan PP <krishnan.pp@ushacomm.co.in> wrote:
> Question:
> How does LNP (Local Number Portability) work for the following cases :
> Intra LATA call
> Inter LATA call
> I want to know the details of the location of the portability database,
> the LRN etc.
First, it would be useful to understand what YOU mean by "the
portability database". Within a REGION, the following hierarchy
typically exists:
REGIONAL portability database (the NPAC)
|
|
V
Feeds multiple SMS databases (owned by large provider or 3rd party)
|
|
V
Each feeds multiple SCP databases (real-time query by CO/Tandem switches,
owned or leased or per-query charging)
There are six Regions in the USA, plus a Canadian "region".
There is NOTHING preventing SMS or SCP databases from supporting or
spanning multiple regions -- a service provider could have 1 SMS and 1
huge SCP connected to all the NPAC databases. Or the service provider
could lease/pay-per-query all SCP queries, and not own any SMSs or
SCPs.
In general, queries for intra-LATA calls are performed by the
"originating" switch in the LATA. Queries for inter-LATA calls are
made by the switch sending the call into the LATA (an IXC/INC switch).
Exceptions: Intra-LATA calls routed via IXC switch do not query
at the originating LEC switch -- the IXC switch does it.
Recent changes in NP requirements allow LEC switches to query for
some IXCs (based on agreements) when the call is intra-LATA. Also,
there is an option for LEC switches to query for selected inter-LATA
calls (say, those within the REGIONAL area) as a service to some IXCs.
Also, LECs will typically support doing queries for un-queried calls
from some IXCs. Typically, the LEC charges more for doing the query
than they do for allowing the IXC to query the LEC's SCPs.
In general, switches have no idea which SCPs will a specific query;
that's determined by SS7 Global Title routing information in STPs.
It's possible for queries of different destination numbers to route
to different SCPs. An IXC with a switch connected to LATAs in
multiple REGIONS might wish to have individual SCPs only have data
for one REGION or LATA, and thus need to support routing based on
destination NPA-NXX.
Information links:
Committee T1 requirements (TRQs) for NP:
<http://www.t1.org/html/trs.htm>
NeuStar (previously Lockheed Martin CIS), the NPAC operator (and also
the LNP Administrator, NANP Administrator, Number Pooling Administrator
and CO Code Administrator):
<http://www.npac.com>
<http://www.nanpa.com>
General North American portability/pooling site:
<http://www.ported.com>
Al Varney
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 09:37:17 -0600
From: bennett@peacefire.org
Subject: Cyber Patrol Cracked; How to Get I-Gear's Secret List
Reply-To: peacefire-press@iain.com
[sent to journalists on Peacefire's press list]
Good morning and welcome back to work :-) This actually happened over
the weekend, but the authors released their news on a Saturday
morning, not the best time of the week to get publicity:
Two programmers, Eddy L O Jansson and Matthew Skala, have decrypted the
list of sites blocked by Cyber Patrol and made their findings public:
http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/reveng/cp4/cp4break.html
This means that the entire list of 80,000 blocked sites is now public
information for the first time. And, unlike I-Gear, it is not
possible for Cyber Patrol to stop people from downloading their
encrypted blocked-site database. (The technical reason is that the
Cyber Patrol client does not send back any serial numbers when it
requests the list to download, so anyone can download the list without
having to use a serial number which Cyber Patrol could revoke.)
Cyber Patrol claims over ten million users, and their list of blocked
sites is their most closely guarded secret. Because the authors of
the report are located outside the U.S., the legal implications of
their work remain to be seen, but we are mirroring the Cyber Patrol
codebreaker on our site (within the U.S.) in defiance of whatever
legal threats may be made by Cyber Patrol's lawyers.
The instructions on the Web page above, describing how to get Cyber
Patrol's list and decrypt it, are somewhat convoluted. If you're
interested in getting a copy of the list before Cyber Patrol has a
chance to cover anything up, email us (bennett@peacefire.org and we'll
pass on the instructions that have worked for us so far.
HOW TO GET I-GEAR'S SECRET LIST FROM SYMANTEC
We have a link to Symantec's server that can be used to download the
encrypted list of sites blocked by I-Gear. However, we are not
publishing this on our Web site, since if we revealed the download
location for the list, Symantec could de-activate the serial number
and make the link unusable. (We are NOT refraining from publishing
the link as a result of any legal threats -- Symantec's legal team has
demanded, for example, that we also remove the codebreaking program
from our site as well, which we have not done.)
If you would like to get the link to download the list, please email
me and I can send you the link subject to a
non-disclosure/off-the-record/cross-your-heart/hope-to-die agreement
not to give it out to anyone. Several publications are covering our
exposure of I-Gear, and this secret file could give you the
journalistic "edge" :-)
Thanks,
Bennett
bennett@peacefire.org http://www.peacefire.org
(425) 649 9024
From: Aldevinas <asoft@takas.lt>
Subject: Looking for ITSP to Terminate Calls
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:22:31 +0200
I'm looking for ITSP to terminate calls in Russia and
Europe. Hardware: Computer Protocol Malaysia. If you are interested
drop me an email.
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 09:11:56 -0800
From: John Ledahl <ledahl1@llnl.gov>
Subject: Re: Persistent Mysterious Calls
In response to the mysterious calls, I have experienced a similar
pattern in Northern California. Our calls came frequently around 6-7
p.m. with other calls coming in the morning between 6-8 a.m. as well.
By calling your local police you can get a case number to give to the
local exchange company. The LEC then places a "trap" on you phone for
about two weeks. Once you report two calls from the same phone number,
the police follow through. Our calls were from a residence in
Dallas. Apparently, according to Pac Bell, a satellite company or
local cable company had crossed paths with the resident's line causing
automatic calls to my number. Ours wasn't the only number being
called. Once we identified the calling number via this process, the
calls stopped.
You have a right not to be harassed. I suggest you make a police complaint
and follow through as above. Good luck!
John Ledahl
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 20:49:40 -0500
From: The Old Bear <oldbear@arctos.com>
Subject: Could AOL Become The Ma Bell of New Millennium?
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal of March 13, 2000:
NEW YORK -- While no one was watching, America Online Inc. has quietly
become a force in the telephone business, piecing together a
formidable collection of technologies and products that could one day
make it the Ma Bell of the new millennium.
The company is hoping to place itself at the forefront of two
important communications trends: cheap phone calls routed through the
Internet and Web access via wireless phones. Many people believe the
company's text-chatting services will eventually add voice capability.
And through its pending purchase of Time Warner Inc., AOL stands to
acquire coveted cable lines that will let it offer a full range of
phone services, plus video on demand, in many areas.
A company spokeswoman says AOL isn't ready to talk about its Internet
telephony strategy. But in a recent speech, Steve Case, AOL's chief
executive, said, "People will have the equivalent of AOL phones."
Acquisitions are one key. Recently, AOL has been in talks to gain
control of Net2Phone Inc., a fast-growing Internet telephony start-up
in Hackensack, N.J., in which it already has a sizable stake. Though
that deal could still fall through, the two companies are already
working to let users of AOL's two text-chatting services, ICQ and AOL
Instant Messenger, make Internet phone calls to their online buddies
using Net2Phone. AOL's vast directory of Instant Messenger and ICQ
users could one day become something like an online phone book for
setting up calls, analysts believe.
AOL also owns just under a 10% stake in Talk.com Inc., a company in
Reston, Va., that sells AOL-branded traditional long-distance calling
to AOL's online-service subscribers. So far, Talk.com has signed up
1.5 million customers, most of them for the AOL service.
To capitalize on the explosive growth of wireless access to the
Internet, the company has teamed up with Nokia Corp., Motorola Inc. and
other big wireless players to develop services that will let cell-phone
users communicate with friends through mobile versions of AOL Instant
Messenger and e-mail.
In December, AOL acquired Tegic Communications, a small company whose
software makes it easier for users to punch out messages from
cell-phone keypads.
AOL has also established a wireless division headed by Dennis Patrick,
a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and a former
wireless-industry executive. AOL executives say they may even consider
offering an AOL-branded wireless service if they determine there's
consumer interest.
"I wouldn't rule anything out," says Bob Pittman, AOL's president.
To be sure, nobody is expecting Internet calls placed through computers
to replace traditional phone calls overnight. But many believe AOL and
others will increasingly skim telephone calls from traditional phone
companies as cut-rate online calls become more accessible.
And few doubt AOL's ability to crash the hugely profitable world of
telephone service. After all, AOL boasts 21 million customers and has
proven its ability to make complicated technologies simple for
consumers to use.
It used to be that companies needed thousands of miles of underground
networks to be a player in communications. But industry watchers
expect AOL to gain a foothold in the voice market by leveraging current
strengths, including consumer brand building, customer support and
billing expertise.
More important is AOL's enormous power in Internet communications,
including more than 100 million registered users who do online text
chatting, with its potential to add a voice-based service. "The
industry has realized in the last couple of months that the Internet
is a natural means for voice -- and AOL is part of that," says Tom
Evslin, chief executive officer of ITXC Corp., which sells Net
telephony services to companies at about three cents a minute.
"This is a very natural extension for AOL. They have the right
customers and they are the leader," says Mr. Evslin, who formerly
headed AT&T's Internet services.
All this puts AOL on a collision course with companies whose core
business is providing phone service, including AT&T Corp and regional
Baby Bells. MCI WorldCom is citing AOL's growth as a long-distance
company as a reason regulators should approve the company's merger with
Sprint Corp. Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other Internet players
are concluding they need to move into the phone business as well.
Many say AT&T, with its 65 million customers, is the only company that
can seriously challenge AOL's increasing clout. AT&T had hoped to cut
a deal with Time Warner to use its cable systems for phone service, to
no avail. Now that AOL is buying Time Warner, it's unclear what will
happen with that plan. Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin said in a recent
session with analysts that "a lot has changed in the past year."
Executives at AT&T say no deal between the companies will be struck
before AT&T completes its acquisition of MediaOne Group Inc.
Before the Time Warner acquisition was announced, there was bad blood
between AOL and AT&T. Last year, AOL's top executives escalated the
debate over opening access to cable lines owned by AT&T and other cable
companies. Despite speculation that the two companies would reach a
compromise, AT&T Chairman C. Michael Armstrong and AOL's Mr. Case at
times were barely on speaking terms.
Last week, Mr. Case said AOL was holding talks with AT&T about gaining
access to its cable networks, but he didn't disclose a timetable and
warned that it wasn't clear an agreement would be reached.
AT&T, for its part, insists that the interests of AOL and AT&T are more
closely aligned than they have been in some time. John Petrillo,
AT&T's top negotiator as its executive vice president of strategy and
business development, says AOL's communications ambitions could be what
finally forces a reckoning between the two giants.
Instant Messages Aren't Just for Chat
Yellow Freight System recently installed a slew of new toll-free lines
to talk to its customers. But the big Kansas trucking company isn't
using AT&T or Qwest, or any other telephone company. It's using
America Online.
Yellow Freight's customer-service agents now field inquiries from
customers asking for rate quotes and delivery times via AOL's Buddy
List. That's the same system that flirtatious teens use to send each
other fast-written messages via the Internet. Yellow Freight says
those instant messages, as they're known, are a natural complement to
its 800 number. "Millions and millions of people use this," Paul
Marshall, senior director of customer support, says of the AOL service.
"There's a whole other world out there."
Phone companies, watch out. Instant messages, or IMs, are making
inroads into corporate call centers and customer-support operations.
AOL, with more than 90 million instant-message users, dominates the
market. It has blocked some rivals -- including AT&T -- from plugging
into its IM system, sparking heated battles over the technology.
THE NEXT CHAPTER: buddy lists will morph into virtual phones, thanks to
evolving technology that beams voice conversations over the Net. Voice
calls will eventually become a standard feature of instant-messaging
software. When that happens, the companies that dominate instant
messages could become the Ma Bells of the new millennium.
This revolution has been a quiet one so far. AOL isn't pushing its
Buddy Lists to businesses directly. Instead, it teamed up with tiny
FaceTime Communications of Foster City, Calif. Lots of startups
provide small chat-room systems for customer service, but FaceTime
co-founder David Hsieh is betting that tapping into AOL's huge user
base will give him a crucial edge. "This is the telephone of the
Internet," Mr. Hsieh says. "And a person's buddy name is their phone
number."
Mr. Hsieh, 36 years old, started FaceTime in October 1997 after
shopping for a computer online. Unable to find the answer to a
question about laptop screens on Dell Computer's Web site, he wound up
logging off and calling Dell's toll-free number for the answer he
needed.
Figuring e-commerce sites would eventually need a better way to
communicate online with customers, Mr. Hsieh started to develop an
instant-chat system. But he concluded he was trying to re-invent the
wheel. So he struck a deal with AOL to tap into its IM network. In
January, FaceTime rolled out its system, dubbed BizBuddy.
To consumers, a BizBuddy conversation looks like AOL's Instant
Messenger system. In that system, an AOL member stores the online
nicknames for friends and family in a personalized list. The list
indicates when friends are online and lets a user begin a chat by
clicking the appropriate nickname. Users type messages and read
replies in a split-screen window.
With BizBuddy, businesses get an online nickname that AOL members can
add to their lists. This allows the company to route inquiries to
customers and set up pre-programmed responses.
Wingspan Investment Services, the online brokerage unit of Bank One,
urges customers to add its online nickname "WingspanInvest" to their
Buddy Lists. For now, Wingspan waits for customers to start the
dialogue. But Wingspan Investment President Terry Ransford thinks the
brokerage will eventually use BizBuddy to initiate conversations. For
instance, a chat window could be used to notify a customer that a
transaction was completed. "It's a very powerful tool," he says.
And it's likely to get more powerful. AOL's ICQ software, an upscale
instant-message system that operates separately from the AOL Buddy List
network, already supports some third-party Internet phone-call software.
An Internet-telephone company called Net2Phone has a deal to integrate
its software into the mainstream Buddy List service. "If you can
provide great voice, all of a sudden you have the next-generation
telephone network," says Mr. Hsieh of FaceTime. "I would be scared if
I were a phone company."
On the traditional phone system, any telephone can dial up another.
Not so in the world of instant messages. Last year, AOL clashed with
Microsoft over the software giant's MSN Messenger Service, an
instant-message system designed to let its users talk to AOL buddies.
AOL deployed one tactic after another to block the MSN software. In
November Microsoft said it would give up trying to tie into AOL.
Tribal Voice, a majority-owned unit of CMGI, makes an instant-message
service called PowWow designed to communicate with everyone. It even
works with AOL -- sort of. Tribal Voice says some PowWow users can
chat with AOL buddies, but those on AT&T's WorldNet service find
themselves blocked.
AOL, citing privacy and security concerns, says its policy is to block
all unauthorized use, regardless of Internet service. Tribal Voice,
AT&T, Microsoft and others recently complained about the practice to a
Senate hearing on the AOL-Time Warner merger. AOL says it's working
with partners like Novell and Lotus to spread instant messaging. It
is also discussing standards that would let anyone tap the AOL
network, but little progress has been made. Says David Gang, an AOL
senior vice president: "This is a complicated space."
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:35:00 MST
From: acuma@aztec.asu.edu (Chris N. Acuma)
Subject: Caller SOMETIMES Pays on Phoenix Cell Phones
When I first got this it was great. I only use it for when I first got
my 602 cell phone where the caller pay business and my customers don't
mind paying.
US West would eat the charges for calls it could not bill, such as
people calling me from out of the Phoenix area, and it let people call
me for free from US West pay phones in the Phoenix area (but it made
the COCOT pay phone pay my air time).
But US West got greedy. Now if US West can't bill the caller for the
air time they bill me.
Now if someone calls me from a Phoenix area us west pay phone makes me
pay the charges. (while COCOT pay phones get no such deal and the
caller does pay).
Now if someone calls from a long distance number US West can't force
to pay for the air time US West will make me pay for the air time.
As a result I'm cancelling my caller pays cell phone service due to
huge bills US West is sticking me when the caller can't pay. The
service should be renamed to US West will rip off the caller and if
US West can't rip off the caller they will rip off the cell phone
owner.
chris
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority.
It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the
people against the dangers of good intentions. They promise to be good
masters, but they mean to be masters." -- Noah Webster
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 21:05:11 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Dot-coms Wary of Privacy Bills
DoubleClick furor may push regulation drive
By Patrick Thibodeau
03/10/2000 Drugstore.com Inc. uses e-mail to inform customers of
prescription refills and new products. It's an important means of
customer contact. But Congress and the states are considering privacy
laws that could make that harder to do.
Five major Internet privacy bills are in Congress, and Internet
privacy bills will likely be considered in 44 states -- every state
with a legislative session this year. The bills may affect everything
from Web site design to the bottom line.
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/CWFlash/000310F5B6
End of TELECOM Digest V20 #22
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