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rDecember13, 2004

Cellular telephone numbers will be published for the first time in the new, coming wireless diretory. Kathleen Pierz (directory assistance consultant, internal link) say you'll be listed only if you sign up, telemarketers can't use the directory, and numbers won't be published on the net. She has a nice two page FAQ explaining the program here. (internal link to .pdf file)

Privacy concerns? This is an opt in list, but check the fine print in your cellular contract to make sure it doesn't automatically sign you up. Oh, and the Federal Do Not Call List applies to all numbers, wireless and otherwise. So you can have your number taken off at any time. Really paranoid? Use cash to buy pre-paid wireless air time and phones.

Need an expert on all things directory assistance? Visit Kathleen Pierz's website: http://www.pierzgroup.com/(external link)

December 12, 2004

Q. I have an old IMTS phone, you know, pre-cellular. (internal link to mobile telephone pages.) Where can I use it?

A. (From Geoff Fors) "Sorry, None of the present former Bell affiliates offer IMTS car phone service to the best of my knowledge. The service ended when the manufacturers ceased supporting the equipment, among other reasons. That being said, at least one former Bell IMTS system is still in use in Pennsylvania / New Jersey, run by Bob Green. I think the name of one of them is Schuylkill Mobile Fone. Any remaining IMTS systems are more or less hobby systems rather than going concerns."

"As of the late 1990's the Whidbey Island Telephone Co. was still offering IMTS service but you had to rent the equipment from them, and it was very expensive, something like $ 85 per month plus air time. A self extinguishing business, basically."

"The low band Bell MTS phone channels on the West Coast were sold at FCC auction about a year ago. They went for practically nothing. The purchasers are at the moment trying to figure out what to do with them." Geoff

December 10, 2004

Stress Test

"The photo below has two identical dolphins in it. It was used in a case study on stress level at St. Mary's Hospital."

"Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water. The dolphins are identical. A closely monitored, scientific study of a group revealed that in spite of the fact that the dolphins are identical, a person under stress would find differences in the two dolphins. If there are many differences found between both dolphins, it means that the person is experiencing a great amount of stress."

"Look at the photograph and, if you find more than one or two differences, you shouldconsider taking a vacation."

Click here for the photograph (internal link)

December 9, 2004

Don Kimberlin has previously challenged (internal link to .pdf file) the one hundred year old claim that Marconi first transmitted a wireless message across the Atlantic in 1901. He now has more information.

"I'm now able to add to the article in .pdf above that the Poldhu transmitting aerial could not have emitted anything above the medium waveband (specifically about 800 kHz); that 12/12/01 was the LOWEST, QUIETEST day of ionospheric activity in the entire 20th century; that what the Poldhu transmiter emitted was not the 'buzz-buzz-buzz' of spark transmitters as we know them, but rather just 'click-click-click' as lightning might do, plus there is an ideal propagation path for atmospherics from the South America lightning epicenter up to Newfoundland."

"Earlier iterations of this story have been published in Radio Guide and NARTE News (US). Those who did respond acted as though I had denied 'virgin birth.' It's that much a matter of 'you'd better believe' as taught in schools, even though there's no proof. The real story is that nobody, including Marconi, knew how that first message could have happened. Shortly after Marconi's claim, reporters asked Kennelly, Marconi's assistant, how it might have happened, and he told them that MAYBE it was due to a newly discovered ionized layer in the upper atmosphere -- only MAYBE, but it became taken as gospel by the teachers and has been taught and republished ever since, even though Marconi himself and a legion of others failed to duplicate the feat at the same frequency and with the same power output. Marconi finally did get a working link only after two later iterations that each decreased the frequency and increased the power, finally winding up on 30 kHz with 300 kW of power."

"I would invite anyone who really wants to correct history to republish my article and get some discussion underway!"

Don Kimberlin

December 6, 2004

Q. I'm a beginner in telecom and am having trouble finding work. I thought the field was growing.

A. Telecom is growing moderately but mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs, and cost cutting (often layoffs) are major reasons for that growth. So, like many aspects of information technology, you have growth without a commensurate rise in employment, indeed, employment may fall. Still, the people with the most motivation in any industry seem to have the best chance. I wish you well in your search. Good luck with the search, don't get discouraged. Regards, Tom Farley

I'm taking time off from web duties for at least a week. But I will continue to answer your e-mails. Please feel free to contact me through this page. (internal link).

An Important Contribution to Telecom History

Hello all,

One of my colleagues Finn Trosby has written a short history of the development of SMS. As is outlined in the article, he was actually involved in the development of the SMS standard. The discussion is perhaps somewhat technical at times, but it is interesting to get the perspective of one of those who was there:

http://www.telenor.com/telektronikk/volumes/pdf/3.2004/Page_187-194.pdf (external link)

The article comes from the 100th anniversary issue of a an English language Norwegian journal called Telektronikk. There are some interesting articles on the development of GSM and mobile communication. Håken Lie (one of the fellows that developed the Opera browser) has an article on the development of Mosaic etc. In addition, there are some historical articles describing what is one of the earliest wireless radio systems in the world. (designed to communicate with the Norwegian Cod fleet). http://www.telenor.com/telektronikk/volumes/front.php (external link) I hope that you enjoy it.

Dr. Rich Ling

November 15, 2004

More on Cell Phone TVs

Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines

Or when you think you're gonna die

Or did you long for the next distraction?

Alanis Morissette

Good article in MIT's Technology Review by Eric Brown about mobile television (external link). Texas Instruments and Qualcomm are both producing chipsets to enable television. Qualcomm has even partnered with another company to found the so called MediaFLO network to deliver content using push technology. Video gets sent to your phone when you're not using it, then you can retrieve what you want to see later. But push and every cache based method hasn't be well received on the internet and I don't see a reason why it should be here. TIVO uses push in a way but that is a high quality product. Will mobile users sit through hours old content that is jittery, slow framed, and often disconnected? Here's the concluding paragraph to the article:

"In short, don't be fooled by the mobile hype --cell phone users may move around a lot, but at the end of the day they still veg out at home or in a hotel room watching a nice big TV (or big laptop monitor). Which brings us back to the size question. Two-inch handheld TVs have gotten dramatically better in recent years, and the digital technology from Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and others is likely to be even better. Yet, even if the resolution and frame rate improve, size matters in the TV illusion. At two inches, details are still difficult to make out, and it's a hassle to have to sit and hold your TV in your hand. Even with a 3-inch screen (about the biggest that's feasible on a phone), people will watch it when the need arises, but it's less likely they'll be hypnotized. That may be good for our souls, but not so good for the TV business."

Qualcomm is said to have purchased in 2003 the rights to spectrum currently occupied by UHF-TV channel 55 throughout the entire nation. That may let their scheme succeed.

November 12, 2004

[Editor's note. The Bell System created the finest telephone system in the world, the envy of every nation. But it had its problems like every company and suffered from Dilbert Syndrome from time to time.]

More rememberances from Don Kimberlin

I landed in a really odd corner of the Bell System, in one of only three places they ever ran High Frequency or HF radio. To the vast majority of people in telcos then, "radio" meant terrestrial microwave, and there was little understanding of it.

As an example, perhaps because they had AT&T for the "control office" at Miami, Southern Bell had a Collins microwave with multichannel analog carrier installed between Miami and Ft.Lauderdale. Well, it crosstalked badly and got generally screwed up regularly with people cranking knobs on it. After a couple of years of screwing around with it, and continually having customers writing nasty letters to Southern Bell HQ. the Southern Bell "engineers" at their FL state HQ in Jacksonville,which specified the thing, got someone from Collins Radio to come to Miami. What they found was that over time, as SB had added more and more hardware and carrier to the thing, they had not ordered newer "roofing filters" on the microwave to adapt to the wider modulation needed with higher loading. Getting the proper filters into it cured all the problems in a flash -- after some years of terrible performance and upset customers.

In a similar instance, SB had a number of type ON carrier systems running the 160 miles or more from Miami to Jey West. They were awful - noisy and cross-talking and unstable when the hot Florida sun heated the black PVC clad aerial cable each day. After many years of complaint, we found out that:

1.) Bell Labs never intended the system to accommodate losses for more than 50 miles of cable;

2.) It had devices called "span pads" that effectively were passive equalizers for the aerial cable, but the only span pads ever made for it had been for 22 gauge cable, and the 160 miles of cable was 19 gauge.

Oops!

November 11, 2004

Follow on from Australia and the fourth grade

Dear Tom Farley

Thank tou for your reply and the links!! i found out who made it and when! iy was alexander graham bell 1876

thanks, Jeremey

Dear Jeremey,

I'm glad you found your answer. 1876 was an important year to the United States. The Wild West was still truly wild. In a lonely part of Montana that summer, George Custer and his men were slaughtered at the Little Big Horn. America turned 100 years old. And Budweiser beer was born. Can we give a big cheer for the year 1876?

November 10, 2004

AT&T owned a railroad?

From Don Kimberlin (internal link)

The day I started work at AT&T in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, my personal induction was by Henry G. Pettit, one of the nicest people I ever worked for. Henry had been a US Navy radioman on board a four-stack destroyer in WWI, and eventually wound up working at AT&T's east coast overseas HF radio operations, transferring to Florida when that site opened up a couple of decades later.

He exposed to me his personal opinion that Bell did "whatever it wanted," and got the government to rubber-stamp it, then telling the public it was "The Law" that required them to operate as they did.

I have found out that Henry was right.

At any rate, he told me that the Bell even "owned a railroad" at that date in 1962.

I later found out that Henry was correct. However, his was that typical employee doctrinaire sort of knowledge of a selected portion of the facts.

In later years, I found out that Illinois Bell at Chicago, in the monopolistic fashion of the early Bell (pre-1913 antitrust settlement) era, had purchased a "merchants' railway" that ran in tunnels under the buildings of downtown Chicago, ostensibly to deliver coal and merchandise among the center city buildings.

What the Bell historians had neglected to include in the story was that the railway had been built by a competing phone company, to evade the monopoly on placing telephone cables in the streets; a monopoly established by close Illinois Bell relations with the rather openly corrupt Chicago city government officials.

To close that gap on their monopoly, Illinois Bell got Western Electric to purchase the railway, and thus deny the potential competitors from using its tunnels for telephone cables.

And so the railway was "owned by AT&T" for some decades.

The twist came a half century or more later, when Western Electric, perhaps suffering from corporate senile dementia, sold the railway, which had been inoperative for some years.

However, the people who purchased it without Ma Bell recognizing them, was the Chicago Fiber Optic Corporation, the first of the many local fiber optic companies to emerge in the fiber era.

That once again gave a Bell competitor the selfsame tunnels to use to beat Ma Bell at her own game in Chicago.

The first market Chicago Fiber Optic found was to provide broadband connectivity between the various interstate Bell competitors at Chicago -- Sprint, MCI and such -- thus making Chicago perhaps the first major inland interchange point between Bell's interstate competitors.

I find that a rather interesting example of how corporations create, then lose, their competitive stance.

Don Kimberlin (internal link)

November 8, 2004

From Australia:

Dear Tom Fanley,

Name is jerermy, i am nine years old.I want to know about the telephones, like what is in it and how many types? Also anything else you know about the telephone?I am doing the telephone because we get to pick a topic for CLEF.It stands for child centerd learnig educational Framework

From jeremy

P.S i am in year four

I replied to Jeremy's e-mail. There are very few resources for children on the web. I do have some links to better ones on this page. (internal link) Howstuffworks.com (external link) is a little advanced and not always accurate, but worth checking for simple technology explanations.

From J.R. Snyder Jr. (internal link)

On the telecom front, I feel as if we've stepped into a time warp. We're back to former RBOC's wanting into cable TV; how reminiscent of the late 80's and early 90's. This time there's a twist: cable TV wants to get into wireless and VOIP.

The business news people are calling it the cable vs. telco wars. It seems to me that it's more like trucking vs. rail, two different forms of transit that serve different purposes. Sometimes I don't have the stomach to keep up with the current events, I'm still more interested in the history, although there is the thought that history repeats itself and that may be a lesson here.

I suspect that telcos are more talk than action and CATV is more active. What I don't like about any of this is that it's leading towards buying a package of services, which to me is actually less choice. In other words, the consumer will be in the position of if they only want wireless and not CATV or wireline or VOIP, they won't really be able to choose among wireless providers but buying a single service from a package provider at a premium price for one product. It's the trend where marketing forces demand consumers buy products in a lump. In other words, buy it all or a single piece that's overpriced. So what's the difference between marketers forcing a monopoly by the force of marketing or the government forcing a regulated monopoly? I don't pretend to have an answer, but just a question. I also hope that made sense. Any thoughts?

What if I like my Verizon Wireless service and my Comcast CATV but the separate cost is far more expensive than a package from either Verizon or Comcast, or Cox or SBC for that matter for all the services? Or I only want broadband and wireless and not CATV and VOIP? How about forcing satellite radio in the mix on me that I may never listen to?

ok...I'll stop rambling.

J.R.

November 6, 2004

Made some changes to page two of the Orwell article. (internal link) Many thanks to Philip Lees for his comments.

November 5, 2004

What was used before pre-paid calling cards?

Telephone tokens! This article by Christopher Batio appeared in the January 10, 1995 Numismatic Review. Good reading:

Telephone Tokens: The Forerunner of the Telephone Card

"Before there were telephone cards to collect and use, telephone tokens were a widespread medium of exchange for people wanting to talk with someone across the ocean or across the street."

"These brass nickel-sized tokens were once widely used in Europe, Japan, and South America, and are still used today in places such as Turkey, Hungary, and Israel."

Israeli phone tokens, showing a telephone dial on the front

(Article continues here --> internal link)

November 4, 2004

Q. Did any European digital cellular radio schemes exist before GSM? (internal link)

A. They did at least in development, I do not know if any were put into commercial use. The table below (internal link, click to enlarge) lists nine different digital services evaluated for GSM:

From the Oki Technical Review. Volume 127, July 1987. "History and Future of the Cellular System and Mobile Phone" Ryoji Kobayashi, p. 10.

November 3, 2004

Texas Instruments unveils a digital TV on a single chip made for mobiles. (external link, .pdf file -- 936K) With some creative thinking this may allow quality video to go mobile. At least from the content provider to you. How do you now get streaming video over low bandwidth cellular radio frequencies? You get it poorly, of course, since spectrum allocated for voice isn't adequate for video. But what if you used different frequencies? With this new TV tuner chip a mobile picks up digital television from a broadcaster's conventional antenna or from a satellite, using different frequencies than those used for voice. Get it? You make a call using regular cellular radio channels, but the TV gets fed on its own frequencies. Cool. Quality transmission is only one way, you can't communicate over broadcast television freqs, but let's see what happens. As I say, "One miracle at a time!"

From TI's press release"

TI puts digital TV on mobiles

Texas Instruments has announced development of the wireless industry's first digital TV on a single chip for mobile phones, code-named "Hollywood".

The chip will receive live digital TV broadcasts at 24 to 30 frames per second using new television infrastructure that is being developed for mobile phones, doing for mobiles what HDTV did for home TVs, TI explained.

"TI´s new Hollywood digital TV chip will combine the two biggest consumer electronics inventions of our time - the television and the cell phone," said Gilles Delfassy, TI senior v-p and general manager for TI's wireless terminals business unit. "One by one, the industry's most exciting consumer electronics are being integrated into wireless handsets, allowing consumers to get their news and entertainment whenever and wherever they want. With this new chip on the cell phone, users will enjoy digital, high-quality TV in real-time."

November 1, 2004

BPL, Today's Reading Assignment

BPL or broadband over power lines, permits net access anywhere an electrical outlet exists. Click here to read the FCC document (internal link) explaining and allowing this service. It's possible every hard corded electrical device in a house or office could be instantly networked over that building's electrical lines. With suitable software and chipsets your refrigerator could communicate with your television or your alarm system could talk to your garage door opener. Ubiquitous computing made real. Going further, with VOIP you could have a telephone outlet every place you plug in an appliance. Neat technology, if only the BPL industry can solve interference problems and develop products to work with the service. But it will happen.

New York Times illustration

October 31, 2004

I'm working the entire weekend, very long hours. I hope to get back to the notes Monday. I'm helping friends move out of their 20 acre horse ranch in Elk Grove. I used to help take care of it. There's a picture below of part of it.

On this special day, remember what Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." There, I've done it, I've used the word hobgoblin at privateline.com. Happy Halloween!

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