Booking Amtrak tickets from overseas.
fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk
for a Trip from NYC to Chicago? I'm not sure of the exact date that
I'll be going yet.
Can I collect the ticket from a station when I get over there, or
would it have to be sent to me in England?
Will Amtrak accept payment by 'foreign' VISA cards? I know that using
British cards in shops over there sometimes causes problems as they
don't have photographs on them.
Robert Heller
>
> How long before I wish to travel am I likely to need to book a ticket
> for a Trip from NYC to Chicago? I'm not sure of the exact date that
> I'll be going yet.
The earlier the better. Generally the price will be lower when bought
more in advance. OTOH, waiting to the very last minute could result in
trying to book a seat on a sold out train. If you want a sleeper car
berth you will need more lead time than for coach (seat only), as
sleeper cars sell out faster. Depending on the train and time of year,
I'd say at least a week or two in advance for coach, maybe 2-4 weeks in
advance for sleeper car rooms. The Lake Shore Limited (the NYC <=>
Chicago train, #48/49) tends to be booked solid around the Christmas
holidays.
>
> Can I collect the ticket from a station when I get over there, or
> would it have to be sent to me in England?
Either. Unless booked well in advance, you may have to get your
ticket(s) at the station (eg if there isn't enough time to mail the
tickets). Amtrak has automatic ticket machines at many stations.
Certainly in NYC (Penn Station). Prepaid tickets can be had by
scanning the barcoded printout of the confirmation page when you bought
the ticket online with the scanner on the automatic ticket machine. I
don't know if the ticket machine needs to scan your credit/debit card
or not for a *prepaid* ticket (the automatic ticket machine can also
vend non-reserved tickets). Oh, there are also live ticket agents at
the larger statuions who can print your tickets once you present
suitable photo id and show them the reservation number on your printout
of the confirmation page. The automatic ticket machines are available
the whole time the station is open, but the live station people might
not be available the whole time (eg the counter might be unmaned at 3am
for example).
>
> Will Amtrak accept payment by 'foreign' VISA cards? I know that using
> British cards in shops over there sometimes causes problems as they
> don't have photographs on them.
If you buy the ticket online, Amtrak just needs the account number,
expriation date, and maybe the security code.
>
--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / hel...@deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments
HAL
<b73a3b01-7a1e-4edd...@y3g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
<fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk> wrote:
> Will Amtrak accept payment by 'foreign' VISA cards? I know that using
> British cards in shops over there sometimes causes problems as they
> don't have photographs on them.
You can use a Visa card from a British bank.
I don't know where you get the idea about photographs on the cards.
Most credit cards don't have photographs on them.
Clark F Morris
That's a change from last year when I tried buying tickets using my
American Visa card with a Canadian address (I'm a US citizen living in
Canada). The computer would not accept it. I found a way around the
problem but that wouldn't be available to furles. Check the cost of
using a travel agency.
Clark Morris
>>
James Robinson
> How long before I wish to travel am I likely to need to book a ticket
> for a Trip from NYC to Chicago? I'm not sure of the exact date that
> I'll be going yet.
As with airlines, ticket prices rise the closer you get to your travel
date. The prices rise faster if space on the train is in high demand.
Coach tickets can usually be purchased up to the date of travel, but
space can be sold out earlier on some routes around holidays. If you
want sleeping accommodation, space can be sold out much earlier than
coach seats, even though they are much more expensive.
Note that unlike in Europe, pretty well all tickets include reserved
space as part of the ticket price. The Northeast corridor is one
exception, where some trains have no reserved seats.
> Can I collect the ticket from a station when I get over there, or
> would it have to be sent to me in England?
There are automatic ticket kiosks in most stations. You can make
reservations and pay for your tickets on www.amtrak.com, and pick up your
tickets at the kiosks on or before the day of travel. When you make
reservations on www.amtrak.com, you will need to print out your
reservation page, which includes a barcode. You pass the barcode in
front of the scanner on the ticket kiosk, and your reservation will be
brought up on the display screen. Once you acknowledge it, the tickets
will be printed out.
You can also buy tickets through International Rail, who will mail you
the tickets in the UK ahead of time:
http://www.internationalrail.com/usa/point2point.aspx
> Will Amtrak accept payment by 'foreign' VISA cards? I know that using
> British cards in shops over there sometimes causes problems as they
> don't have photographs on them.
The credit card industry in the US is well behind the rest of the world
in terms of security features like imbedded microchips or photos. You
should have little problem using your card either on the Amtrak web site
or in shops.
Also check out The Man in Seat 61 web site for other suggestions.
fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk
> In article
> <b73a3b01-7a1e-4edd-ad30-dba317dec...@y3g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
A shop wouldn't accept my card; they said this was because it didn't
have a photo on it. I think this was K-Mart at Penn Station. I have
seen one American credit card which did have a photo on it, so I
assumed that they all did.
Jishnu Mukerji
All that you have to show them is a photo id like a Passport or a
Driver's License, and that should work just fine. Otherwise the shop
wouldhave difficulty accepting almost any US issued Credit Card, since
most do not have a photo on it.
HAL
<150f6543-f885-40ee...@k22g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
<fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk> wrote:
> A shop wouldn't accept my card; they said this was because it didn't
> have a photo on it. I think this was K-Mart at Penn Station. I have
> seen one American credit card which did have a photo on it, so I
> assumed that they all did.
Most American credit cards do not have a photo on them. None of mine
do. I bought something at that K Mart in Penn Station a couple of days
ago with a credit card. They do have you enter your zip code as some
kind of fraud check. I don't know what happens if you don't have a zip
code.
Stephen Sprunk
Do you, perhaps, mean "hologram" rather than "photograph"? Few US cards
have the latter, but all have the former; it's an anti-counterfeiting
mechanism.
S
--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
John Levine
>> British cards in shops over there sometimes causes problems as they
>> don't have photographs on them.
>
>The credit card industry in the US is well behind the rest of the world
>in terms of security features like imbedded microchips or photos. You
>should have little problem using your card either on the Amtrak web site
>or in shops.
The US credit card industry developed differently from the European
one. We had much cheaper phone service, which meant that for many
years we've done online validation of nearly all transactions. They
typically do a real-time validation of the address you provide against
the one on file for the card. Many US web sites are built with no
thought to the possibility that someone from another country would
want to buy something, but Amtrak's site does deal with foreign phone
numbers and addreses. My advice is simple: Buy the tickets. Either
it'll work or it won't. If if doesn't, you can try them by phone at
+1-800-872-7245. (Yes, you can call it from outside the US, although
you will pay the usual toll charges to the US.)
>Also check out The Man in Seat 61 web site for other suggestions.
Always a good idea when train travel is contemplated.
R's,
John
Nobody
Semi-OT, but that zip code business is a pain trying to buy gas by
paying "at the pump" with a Canadian credit card. The system
obviously won't accept our alpha-numeric codes.
You're forced to leave the card with the cashier --- pull the fuel --
then go back to pay and retrieve...
fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk
> Most American credit cards do not have a photo on them. None of mine
> do. I bought something at that K Mart in Penn Station a couple of days
> ago with a credit card. They do have you enter your zip code as some
> kind of fraud check. I don't know what happens if you don't have a zip
> code.
It was several years ago that I had a card refused, but I think that
was the shop.
Do your cards have smartcard chips in them yet, or are you still using
the mag stripe? Iver here it's all 'Chip & Pin' now, and has been for
some years. I first saw this in France, probably about 15 years ago
now; we got it later. Some shops here will not accept non 'Chip &
Pin' cards now. Many of the C&P terminals anso contain a mag stripe
reader, but if you try to put a C&P card through the stripe reader it
will tell you to insert the card into the chip reader. There is
pressure from the security industry to remove the stripe from cards,
as it is easy to copy, but it hasn't been vone yet.
My new debit card which arrived about a month ago still has the
stripe, plus the chip, but also has a contactless chip, like a PATH
Smartlink card, for small transactions of less than 15 pounds. This
does not require the user to enter the pin, but few shops use it yet.
I did try it once when I bought a snndwich in Pret, but I'm not sure
that I like the idea.
Jimmy
> The US credit card industry developed differently from the European
> one. We had much cheaper phone service, which meant that for many
> years we've done online validation of nearly all transactions. They
> typically do a real-time validation of the address you provide against
> the one on file for the card.
In my experience, all they check is the zip code, and they ignore the
rest of the address.
> If if doesn't, you can try them by phone at
> +1-800-872-7245. (Yes, you can call it from outside the US, although
> you will pay the usual toll charges to the US.)
Are you sure? Amtrak publishes a non-800 number for callers not in
the U.S. or Canada, 215-856-7953, at
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/Page/1241305460725/1237405732514
.
Wikipedia says callers from the U.K. can call U.S. 800 numbers, but I
don't think it works from every country.
James Robinson
> Semi-OT, but that zip code business is a pain trying to buy gas by
> paying "at the pump" with a Canadian credit card. The system
> obviously won't accept our alpha-numeric codes.
Some people have reported that they were able to pay at the pump by
entering numbers like 11111 or 12345. Others say that by using the numbers
only from a Canadian postal code, plus 00 on the end would also work, as
in: S3M 4L5, yielding 34500.
Jimmy
> Do your cards have smartcard chips in them yet, or are you still using
> the mag stripe?
Basically no. I've seen very few cards with chips, and I've never
seen a store with a chip reader. It's all magstripe.
A lot of big chain stores don't make you sign the receipt (or the
computer screen) for purchases under $25 or so. Automated machines,
like gas pumps and train ticket machines, don't ask for a signature,
though some make you type in your zip code.
Very occasionally I still come across stores that use the embossed
numbers to make a carbon copy. One small bus company even had a clerk
write down my card number on a paper form.
> My new debit card which arrived about a month ago still has the
> stripe, plus the chip, but also has a contactless chip, like a PATH
> Smartlink card, for small transactions of less than 15 pounds. This
> does not require the user to enter the pin, but few shops use it yet.
One of my cards has a PayPass RFID contactless chip, but I've never
used it.
Jimmy
Clark F Morris
wrote:
Neither of my 2 US credit cards, let alone my Canadian cards have
photos. Check to see if Amtrak is sticky about non-US addresses. For
all I know the problem I encountered may have been related to some
Department of Homeland Stupidity requirement.
Clark Morris
Stephen Sprunk
> John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
>> If if doesn't, you can try them by phone at +1-800-872-7245. (Yes,
>> you can call it from outside the US, although you will pay the usual
>> toll charges to the US.)
>
> Are you sure? Amtrak publishes a non-800 number for callers not in
> the U.S. or Canada, 215-856-7953, at
> http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/Page/1241305460725/1237405732514
> .
Being able to call US 1-800 numbers from overseas, at least as +1 800,
only started working a few years ago. Previously, overseas callers had
to dial +1 880, which would play a message informing them that only the
US portion of the call was toll-free before connecting them. However,
the growing complexity of this scheme as toll-free prefixes were added
(1-888 was dialed as +1 881, 1-877 as +1 882, 1-866 as +1 883), plus the
fact virtually nobody knew about it, led the industry to abandon the
"they're not real area codes" mantra and allow direct dialing from
overseas as if they were. Billing remains the same.
However, like the old scheme, the new scheme hasn't gotten much
publicity. Many folks with toll-free numbers don't realize they can now
be dialed as-is from outside the US, so they still publish a toll
number. Or maybe they just haven't updated that particular web page
since the change; it wasn't that long ago.
fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk
> Do you, perhaps, mean "hologram" rather than "photograph"? Few US cards
> have the latter, but all have the former; it's an anti-counterfeiting
> mechanism.
No, a small photograph of the cardholder, on the back I think,
probably a bit smaller than a postage stamp. They're used in a number
of countries, but not in the UK. There was pressure to include them
here a few years ago, but with so many transactions now 'Cardholder
not present' I'm not sure how much use they would be.
Our cards also have the hologram on them.
Stephen Sprunk
> On Nov 11, 2:19 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> Do you, perhaps, mean "hologram" rather than "photograph"? Few US
>> cards have the latter, but all have the former; it's an anti-
>
> No, a small photograph of the cardholder, on the back I think,
> probably a bit smaller than a postage stamp. They're used in a
> number of countries, but not in the UK.
That shouldn't be an issue at all in the US; I've only heard of one bank
(Citi) that even offers that, and it's optional. Requiring a photo of
the customer would slow down issuing cards and therefore letting them
rack up interest charges, fees, etc.
If the merchant wants a photo of the cardholder, which is rare in my
experience, they will ask for a driver's license--but any
government-issued photo ID (e.g. passport) should be accepted.
Robert Heller
>
> On 11 Nov 2010 13:13, Jimmy wrote:
> > John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
> >> If if doesn't, you can try them by phone at +1-800-872-7245. (Yes,
> >> you can call it from outside the US, although you will pay the usual
> >> toll charges to the US.)
> >
> > Are you sure? Amtrak publishes a non-800 number for callers not in
> > the U.S. or Canada, 215-856-7953, at
> > http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/Page/1241305460725/1237405732514
> > .
>
> Being able to call US 1-800 numbers from overseas, at least as +1 800,
> only started working a few years ago. Previously, overseas callers had
> to dial +1 880, which would play a message informing them that only the
> US portion of the call was toll-free before connecting them. However,
> the growing complexity of this scheme as toll-free prefixes were added
> (1-888 was dialed as +1 881, 1-877 as +1 882, 1-866 as +1 883), plus the
> fact virtually nobody knew about it, led the industry to abandon the
> "they're not real area codes" mantra and allow direct dialing from
> overseas as if they were. Billing remains the same.
Hmm... This sounds like the US phone system is continuing to work its
way to completely abandoning 'area codes' and simply going to 10-digit
phone numbers, with out any sort of 'area code' or 'exchange' prefix.
Yes, some ranges of phone numbers have 'special' meaning (eg 1-800, et.
al.), but only to affect billing or something.
>
> However, like the old scheme, the new scheme hasn't gotten much
> publicity. Many folks with toll-free numbers don't realize they can now
> be dialed as-is from outside the US, so they still publish a toll
> number. Or maybe they just haven't updated that particular web page
> since the change; it wasn't that long ago.
>
> S
>
--
John Levine
>> the mag stripe? �
>
>Basically no. I've seen very few cards with chips, and I've never
>seen a store with a chip reader. It's all magstripe.
Amex blue cards had an EMV chip for a while but don't any more. No
US bank issues CHIP+PIN cards, except see below.
>One of my cards has a PayPass RFID contactless chip, but I've never
>used it.
It's not an RFID chip, it's an EMV chip. The difference is important:
an RFID chip would broadcast what was on the mag stripe, but the chip
in contactless Paypass and the similar Visa payWave is the same kind
of chip as in a European CHIP+PIN card. Banks could do secure PIN
verification with them, but for whatever reason they don't. For small
value transactions, typically under $50, they do no verification at
all, above that it's the usual handwritten signature.
I also have a Paypass debit card, but I've never used it for a
contactless payment since at all the places where I could do that,
it's cheaper to use my conventional credit card.
R's,
John
John Levine
>rest of the address.
I used to write software for this stuff. Most of them also check the
house number in the address.
>>�If if doesn't, you can try them by phone at
>> +1-800-872-7245. (Yes, you can call it from outside the US, although
>> you will pay the usual toll charges to the US.)
>
>Are you sure?
Yes, I have a German VoIP phone that I used to check it.
> Amtrak publishes a non-800 number for callers not in
> the U.S. or Canada, 215-856-7953,
That may be handy for non-US callers whose phone systems "know" that
they can't call US 800 numbers.
R's,
John
Stephen Sprunk
> At Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:36:37 -0600 Stephen Sprunk <ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> Being able to call US 1-800 numbers from overseas, at least as +1 800,
>> only started working a few years ago. Previously, overseas callers had
>> to dial +1 880, which would play a message informing them that only the
>> US portion of the call was toll-free before connecting them. However,
>> the growing complexity of this scheme as toll-free prefixes were added
>> (1-888 was dialed as +1 881, 1-877 as +1 882, 1-866 as +1 883), plus the
>> fact virtually nobody knew about it, led the industry to abandon the
>> "they're not real area codes" mantra and allow direct dialing from
>> overseas as if they were. Billing remains the same.
>
> Hmm... This sounds like the US phone system is continuing to work its
> way to completely abandoning 'area codes' and simply going to 10-digit
> phone numbers, with out any sort of 'area code' or 'exchange' prefix.
Not at all. The code/exchange/line division is still alive and well,
and it's virtually impossible to remove it at this point. It's a
perfect example of the US screwing itself because we adopt new
technologies first but get locked into them while others learn from our
mistakes and then outpace us with improvements to our own ideas.
That's unfortunate, because if it weren't for the exchange/line
division, we wouldn't have needed so many new area codes in the mid-90s,
which cost the economy billions of dollars. N[01]X-NXX-XXXX allows 1.28
billion numbers; even the older N[01]X-NNX-XXXX allowed 1.02 billion
numbers, which should have been plenty for the ~350 million people in +1
countries.
NXX-NXX-XXXX allows 6.4 billion numbers, but due to well-known (in the
industry, at least) problems they're already working on the next change,
which will add a digit to the exchange, and the one after that, which
will add a digit to the code, eventually giving a total of 640 billion
numbers. That'll last at least another hundred years--we hope.
(For those not familiar with the notation, N means 2-9 and X means 0-9.)
> Yes, some ranges of phone numbers have 'special' meaning (eg 1-800, et.
> al.), but only to affect billing or something.
These are called "service codes" rather than "area codes", and they can
do a lot more than just affect billing. The important point is that,
eventually, every "virtual" phone number, i.e. one in a service code,
gets translated to a "real" phone number, i.e. one in an area code.
(You still can't call other service codes from overseas; only the
toll-free ones, e.g. 1-800, are accessible.)
Nobody
Er, that would seem to defeat the Whole Purpose of the "check".
Mebbe I'm dumb (no comments please), but I was under the impression
that the ZIP entry cross-checked the cardholder's address ZIP code as
a confirmation, and thus validity of the card?
Nobody
<ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>On 11 Nov 2010 13:13, Jimmy wrote:
>> John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
>>> If if doesn't, you can try them by phone at +1-800-872-7245. (Yes,
>>> you can call it from outside the US, although you will pay the usual
>>> toll charges to the US.)
>>
>> Are you sure? Amtrak publishes a non-800 number for callers not in
>> the U.S. or Canada, 215-856-7953, at
>> http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/Page/1241305460725/1237405732514
>> .
>
>Being able to call US 1-800 numbers from overseas, at least as +1 800,
>only started working a few years ago.
In my experience, 800-866-877-888 numbers are marketed to provide
toll-free access depending on the geographic area the "receiving"
number/party has chosen to cover.
The small company I slave my heart out at, limits its 800 coverage to
the Province of BC (AC's 250, 604 and 778), for example.
That situation presumably could be programmed for international
access.
A couple of decades ago, I recall the local major telco BC Tel (now
Telus) listed an 800 number as an international free access number
(prefixed by country code 1-) for overseas travellers to reverse
charge calls to their home numbers.
HAL
<bf76dc47-3334-4606...@h21g2000vbh.googlegroups.com>,
<fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk> wrote:
> Do your cards have smartcard chips in them yet, or are you still using
> the mag stripe? Iver here it's all 'Chip & Pin' now, and has been for
> some years. I first saw this in France, probably about 15 years ago
> now; we got it later. Some shops here will not accept non 'Chip &
> Pin' cards now. Many of the C&P terminals anso contain a mag stripe
> reader, but if you try to put a C&P card through the stripe reader it
> will tell you to insert the card into the chip reader. There is
> pressure from the security industry to remove the stripe from cards,
> as it is easy to copy, but it hasn't been vone yet.
>
> My new debit card which arrived about a month ago still has the
> stripe, plus the chip, but also has a contactless chip, like a PATH
> Smartlink card, for small transactions of less than 15 pounds. This
> does not require the user to enter the pin, but few shops use it yet.
> I did try it once when I bought a snndwich in Pret, but I'm not sure
> that I like the idea.
Chip and Pin is not used in the United States. The merchants would have
to buy new terminals. There is no incentive for merchants to buy new
terminals or card issuers to issue the cards because the main benefit
of chip and pin is shifting liability for disputed transactions to the
customers. In the United States they can't shift liability. The laws
put it on the card issuers, not the customers, or the merchants. No
reason for retailers to buy chip and pin terminals with no liability.
Chip and Pin by the way does not eliminate fraud. As usual the crafty
criminals figure out ways around it.
I have read some travelers from the US have encountered problems with
merchants not wanting to take their cards abroad because of no chip and
pin. I have not encountered such abroad in the last two years. A couple
of banks and credit cards will issue a chip and pin card for a fee as a
customer service.
Some cards in the US have the contactless chip. One of mine does. I
never have used it.
HAL
<c20242c9-508c-4dc4...@r31g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
Jimmy <JimmyG...@mailinator.com> wrote:
> Very occasionally I still come across stores that use the embossed
> numbers to make a carbon copy. One small bus company even had a clerk
> write down my card number on a paper form.
I believe that it became illegal to use those in June. I think all
transactions can only show the last four digits now.
Nobody
<ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>On 11 Nov 2010 13:13, Jimmy wrote:
>> John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
>>> If if doesn't, you can try them by phone at +1-800-872-7245. (Yes,
>>> you can call it from outside the US, although you will pay the usual
>>> toll charges to the US.)
>>
>> Are you sure? Amtrak publishes a non-800 number for callers not in
>> the U.S. or Canada, 215-856-7953, at
>> http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/Page/1241305460725/1237405732514
>> .
>
>Being able to call US 1-800 numbers from overseas, at least as +1 800,
>only started working a few years ago. Previously, overseas callers had
>to dial +1 880, which would play a message informing them that only the
>US portion of the call was toll-free before connecting them. However,
>the growing complexity of this scheme as toll-free prefixes were added
>(1-888 was dialed as +1 881, 1-877 as +1 882, 1-866 as +1 883), plus the
>fact virtually nobody knew about it, led the industry to abandon the
>"they're not real area codes" mantra and allow direct dialing from
>overseas as if they were. Billing remains the same.
Um, AC's 880, 881, 882 are listed as "paid" toll-free services, at
least AFAIK from the latest listing I can find. I don't see an 883.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/usphoneareacodesng.html
Glen Labah
Stephen Sprunk <ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> On 11 Nov 2010 14:55, fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk wrote:
> > On Nov 11, 2:19 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> >> Do you, perhaps, mean "hologram" rather than "photograph"? Few US
> >> cards have the latter, but all have the former; it's an anti-
> >> counterfeiting mechanism.
> >
> > No, a small photograph of the cardholder, on the back I think,
> > probably a bit smaller than a postage stamp. They're used in a
> > number of countries, but not in the UK.
>
> That shouldn't be an issue at all in the US; I've only heard of one bank
> (Citi) that even offers that, and it's optional. Requiring a photo of
> the customer would slow down issuing cards and therefore letting them
> rack up interest charges, fees, etc.
Bank of America made me get a card with a photo on it when I got a card
with them in 1996. They took the photo right there in the bank and
entered it into their computer system, and it went right onto the card
they gave met.
Of course, now each time they send me a new card, it has that same now
outdated photo on it.
At least it reminds me of what I looked like when I was 15 years younger.
But, today, I don't use their card. I got a better deal at the credit
union down the street. Unfortunately, their cards don't have photos on
them. There were certainly times when having the photo came in helpful
with the Bank of America card.
--
Please note this e-mail address is a pit of spam due to e-mail address
harvesters on Usenet. Response time to e-mail sent here is slow.
Calvin Henry-Cotnam
>
>If the merchant wants a photo of the cardholder, which is rare in my
>experience, they will ask for a driver's license--but any
>government-issued photo ID (e.g. passport) should be accepted.
I was wondering if the merchant simply wanted photo ID. Obviously, if the
credit card itself had a photo, that would be sufficient. I do have one
credit card where the issuer offers the ability to get a card with your
photo on it (no fee for this), though I haven't bothered to get one.
I have found in the past year it has become very common for me to be
asked for photo ID when using a credit card in an American store. It
continues to be quite rare here in Canada, though one computer retailer
does require it for purchases over $250.
--
Calvin Henry-Cotnam
"Unusual or extreme reactions to events caused by negligence
are imaginable, but not reasonably foreseeable"
- Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, May 2008
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: if replying by email, remove "remove." and ".invalid"
Stephen Sprunk
> On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:36:37 -0600, Stephen Sprunk
> <ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> Being able to call US 1-800 numbers from overseas, at least as +1 800,
>> only started working a few years ago. Previously, overseas callers had
>> to dial +1 880, which would play a message informing them that only the
>> US portion of the call was toll-free before connecting them. However,
>> the growing complexity of this scheme as toll-free prefixes were added
>> (1-888 was dialed as +1 881, 1-877 as +1 882, 1-866 as +1 883), plus the
>> fact virtually nobody knew about it, led the industry to abandon the
>> "they're not real area codes" mantra and allow direct dialing from
>> overseas as if they were. Billing remains the same.
>
> Um, AC's 880, 881, 882 are listed as "paid" toll-free services, at
> least AFAIK from the latest listing I can find. I don't see an 883.
>
> http://www.csgnetwork.com/usphoneareacodesng.html
Notice the "data is current as of 7/21/03".
Robert Bonomi
<fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk> wrote:
>On Nov 11, 1:49�am, HAL <H...@hal.invalid> wrote:
>> In article
>> <b73a3b01-7a1e-4edd-ad30-dba317dec...@y3g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
>>
>> <fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk> wrote:
>> > Will Amtrak accept payment by 'foreign' VISA cards? �I know that using
>> > British cards in shops over there sometimes causes problems as they
>> > don't have photographs on them.
>>
>> You can use a Visa card from a British bank.
>>
>> I don't know where you get the idea about photographs on the cards.
>> Most credit cards don't have photographs on them.
>
>A shop wouldn't accept my card; they said this was because it didn't
>have a photo on it. I think this was K-Mart at Penn Station. I have
>seen one American credit card which did have a photo on it, so I
>assumed that they all did.
I suspect the poster means the common "hologram" anti-counterfeiting image
on U.S. bank cards. as distinct from an actual 'photograph' of the card-
holder.
Robert Bonomi
U.S. bank credit-card 'address verification' compares *ONLY* numeric digits
in whatever is input against the numeric digits in the billing address for
the card-holder.
John Levine
>>only started working a few years ago. Previously, overseas callers had
>>to dial +1 880, which would play a message informing them that only the
>>US portion of the call was toll-free before connecting them. However,
>>the growing complexity of this scheme as toll-free prefixes were added
>>(1-888 was dialed as +1 881, 1-877 as +1 882, 1-866 as +1 883), plus the
>>fact virtually nobody knew about it, led the industry to abandon the
>>"they're not real area codes" mantra and allow direct dialing from
>>overseas as if they were. Billing remains the same.
>
>Um, AC's 880, 881, 882 are listed as "paid" toll-free services, at
>least AFAIK from the latest listing I can find. I don't see an 883.
As I understand it, the original idea was that +1-800-NXX-XXXX would
be toll free for an international caller, if the customer accepted
international calls, and +1-880-NXX-XXXX would call the same number,
but charge the caller the usual international rate.
This never got any traction, and the 880-882 area codes were reclaimed
in 2004 and are now reserved for toll free expansion:
http://www.nanpa.com/pdf/PL_331_v2.pdf
I can only guess at the reasons, but they would probably include the
complexity of arranging the (non-)billing, the cost to international
telcos of the +1-800 calls that were rejected if the customer didn't
accept charges, the fact that international rates have dropped to the
point where in many parts of Europe you routinely get local calling
plans that include the US, and the +800 international toll free
country code which is now the normal way to do out of country
toll-free calls.
Note followup-to, since this no longer has anything to do with
trains.
R's,
John
Robert Bonomi
Jimmy <JimmyG...@mailinator.com> wrote:
>John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
>> The US credit card industry developed differently from the European
>> one. We had much cheaper phone service, which meant that for many
>> years we've done online validation of nearly all transactions. They
>> typically do a real-time validation of the address you provide against
>> the one on file for the card.
>
>In my experience, all they check is the zip code, and they ignore the
>rest of the address.
The addresss 'verification check' takes address and zip code, two separate
fields. there are several return codes, from 'nothing matches' to 'both
fields' match. The merchant can decide what kind of a 'partial' match
they wish to accept. Of course, if they feed incomplete info to the
verification check, they can't get a 'full match'. :)
Nobody
<ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>On 11 Nov 2010 20:36, Nobody wrote:
>> On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:36:37 -0600, Stephen Sprunk
>> <ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>>> Being able to call US 1-800 numbers from overseas, at least as +1 800,
>>> only started working a few years ago. Previously, overseas callers had
>>> to dial +1 880, which would play a message informing them that only the
>>> US portion of the call was toll-free before connecting them. However,
>>> the growing complexity of this scheme as toll-free prefixes were added
>>> (1-888 was dialed as +1 881, 1-877 as +1 882, 1-866 as +1 883), plus the
>>> fact virtually nobody knew about it, led the industry to abandon the
>>> "they're not real area codes" mantra and allow direct dialing from
>>> overseas as if they were. Billing remains the same.
>>
>> Um, AC's 880, 881, 882 are listed as "paid" toll-free services, at
>> least AFAIK from the latest listing I can find. I don't see an 883.
>>
>> http://www.csgnetwork.com/usphoneareacodesng.html
>
>Notice the "data is current as of 7/21/03".
>
>S
Yeah <grin>... wasn't very bright that evening!
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> Not at all. The code/exchange/line division is still alive and well,
> and it's virtually impossible to remove it at this point. It's a
> perfect example of the US screwing itself because we adopt new
> technologies first but get locked into them while others learn from our
> mistakes and then outpace us with improvements to our own ideas.
One problem in the US is that phone numbers are wasted. They're
assigned in large blocks to competing carriers who don't need anywhere
near the numbers they get. At one time they got 10,000 (a whole
exchange) at a time, but I believe they get it in smaller blocks now.
However, the blocks are still large.
My town has about 25 exchanges assigned to it, though five would be
enough to give every resident and business a landline, fax, cell
phone, etc.
Indeed, some older uses of phone lines have stopped, and that should
free up some numbers. For instance, many people who once had a
separate phone line for a computer has replaced it with DSL
piggybacked on their main number. People who had second lines for
their kids replaced that with cell phones. Some people have no land
line at all anymore, solely using their cell phone. Small businesses
need only one line listed in the directory and all other trunks can be
non-listed but part of the hunt group.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> Some cards in the US have the contactless chip. One of mine does. I
> never have used it.
My card has the contactless-chip and it works at terminals at certain
retail chains like McDonald's or CVS drug stores. It is convenient
and very fast.
The NYC subway is experimenting with a commercial touch card, but I
think it's a debit card, not a credit card. That is, it's a normal
bank card that can be used anywhere, not a specially issued farecard.
How well it's working out I don't know.
One thing, IMHO, idiotic that NYC buses do is require the farecard to
be dipped in the fare box. This is slow, especially where there's
many passengers to board. Tokens in the "fishbowl" farebox was much
faster.
(Of course, PCC cars with their large front door area swallowed crowds
fast).
John Levine
>think it's a debit card, not a credit card. That is, it's a normal
>bank card that can be used anywhere, not a specially issued farecard.
>How well it's working out I don't know.
Right, it's regular contactless EMV debit cards with a Paypass or
Paywave logo. See http://www.ridenewyorknewjersey.com/
R's,
John
Glen Labah
<608993fc-3efd-43b8...@j33g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> Indeed, some older uses of phone lines have stopped, and that should
> free up some numbers. For instance, many people who once had a
> separate phone line for a computer has replaced it with DSL
> piggybacked on their main number. People who had second lines for
> their kids replaced that with cell phones. Some people have no land
> line at all anymore, solely using their cell phone. Small businesses
> need only one line listed in the directory and all other trunks can be
> non-listed but part of the hunt group.
Some of that really never made any sense to begin with anyway.
In Brasil, every mobile phone number starts with a 9. This extra digit
lets you know that it is a cell phone number, plus keeps mobile numbers
out of the regular exchange.
(It is particularly important there for people to know they are calling
a cell phone, as they work like long distance phone calls: the person
who makes the call pays for the call, rather than charging the person
who owns the cell phone for a call they didn't make.)
In large cities like São Paulo, they have accomodated the large number
of phone lines by simply adding an extra digit to the phone number.
Making 7 digit numbers into 8 digit numbers was fairly easy. I think in
most places existing phone numbers gat a 3 added to the front, while
various new numbers have other numbers in front (excpet 9, which is
reserved for cell phones).
Do you really need a nice, simple, memory easy 7 digit phone number for
a fax machine or a modem? Those could be 10 digit numbers easily, as
you either enter it into the machine once and save it in memory
(frequently called or faxed), or dial it while looking at sheet of paper
that has it listed on it (called or faxed once). Really, those are more
like IP addresses than phone numbers in terms of how they are used most
of the time. Giving those a dedicated area code or sub number (like the
cell phones in Brasil) would help keep 1 in the morning fax calls from
happing to residential voice lines, as well as free up more phone
numbers for actual phone conversations.
Stephen Sprunk
> On Nov 11, 5:41 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> Not at all. The code/exchange/line division is still alive and well,
>> and it's virtually impossible to remove it at this point. It's a
>> perfect example of the US screwing itself because we adopt new
>> technologies first but get locked into them while others learn from our
>> mistakes and then outpace us with improvements to our own ideas.
>
> One problem in the US is that phone numbers are wasted. They're
> assigned in large blocks to competing carriers who don't need anywhere
> near the numbers they get. At one time they got 10,000 (a whole
> exchange) at a time,
Yep; that's what caused the explosion of area codes in the late 1990s:
each new local carrier got its own block of 10,000 numbers for each
exchange they planned to serve, even if they didn't have a single
customer. That quickly burned through a supply of numbers that was,
prior to local competition, expected to last another 50 years, and the
only way to solve that at the time was to add new area codes (via either
splits or overlays--or both in some cities).
Many people at the time suggested it due to modems, pagers, etc., but
that could have _easily_ been absorbed in most areas without the need
for new area codes.
> but I believe they get it in smaller blocks now.
> However, the blocks are still large.
The FCC finally stepped in and mandated that new carriers would only get
blocks of 1,000 numbers, but the damage had already been done by that
point. The new area codes _would_ be needed eventually, and most of the
objections from customers were about _changing_ their numbers, not the
new area codes themselves, so they decided undoing all those
splits/overlays wasn't worth the bad press.
> My town has about 25 exchanges assigned to it, though five would be
> enough to give every resident and business a landline, fax, cell
> phone, etc.
That's not unusual. Even before 1995, it wasn't unusual for an exchange
to have two or three times as many prefixes as it seemed to need, for
various legitimate reasons (one discussed below). However, after 1995,
having ten-plus times as many as needed became the norm.
> Indeed, some older uses of phone lines have stopped, and that should
> free up some numbers. For instance, many people who once had a
> separate phone line for a computer has replaced it with DSL
> piggybacked on their main number. People who had second lines for
> their kids replaced that with cell phones.
That's overshadowed by the change from one or two lines per household to
one line per person, but the net increase in numbers assigned is fairly
modest.
> Some people have no land line at all anymore, solely using their cell
> phone.
Heck, my house (built in 2001) wasn't even _wired_ for a land line. The
guys who installed my DSL said that's the norm now, but thankfully they
were able to hijack the coax wiring. (I get my TV over DSL, so I didn't
need it for cable.)
> Small businesses need only one line listed in the directory and all
> other trunks can be non-listed but part of the hunt group.
In fact, carriers can now give a business multiple lines with the _same_
number; older equipment couldn't do that.
OTOH, it has become a lot more common for businesses to give every phone
a real number rather than requiring callers to go through a switchboard
to reach a particular extension. That means businesses which used to
only have one published number (and maybe ten actual trunk lines) may
now consume a block of 100 numbers.
(In most exchanges, the main carrier will reserve some number of
prefixes for such use, chopping them up into blocks of 100 or 1000
numbers each. When those blocks are returned, they're kept in reserve
for the next customer that needs a block that size.)
Stephen Sprunk
> Giving [faxes and modems] a dedicated area code or sub number (like the
> happing to residential voice lines, as well as free up more phone
> numbers for actual phone conversations.
It seems like that would be a good idea, but decades ago the FCC ruled
it was discriminatory and anti-competitive, and now it's too late to fix
it even if they were convinced otherwise.
Nobody
<ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
<severely snipped>
>> Small businesses need only one line listed in the directory and all
>> other trunks can be non-listed but part of the hunt group.
>
>In fact, carriers can now give a business multiple lines with the _same_
>number; older equipment couldn't do that.
>
>OTOH, it has become a lot more common for businesses to give every phone
>a real number rather than requiring callers to go through a switchboard
>to reach a particular extension. That means businesses which used to
>only have one published number (and maybe ten actual trunk lines) may
>now consume a block of 100 numbers.
Which roughly is a definition of a "centrex" system, isn't it?
Larry Sheldon
> On Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:19:21 -0600, Stephen Sprunk
> <ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>
> <severely snipped>
>
>>> Small businesses need only one line listed in the directory and all
>>> other trunks can be non-listed but part of the hunt group.
>>
>> In fact, carriers can now give a business multiple lines with the _same_
>> number; older equipment couldn't do that.
>>
>> OTOH, it has become a lot more common for businesses to give every phone
>> a real number rather than requiring callers to go through a switchboard
>> to reach a particular extension. That means businesses which used to
>> only have one published number (and maybe ten actual trunk lines) may
>> now consume a block of 100 numbers.
>
> Which roughly is a definition of a "centrex" system, isn't it?
I don't think so.
A PBX might have 100's of numbers. 100's even.
I would characterize "Centrex" as a PBX-like service implemented on
telephone company equipment on telephone company property.
I have not been associated with either for some years but half of 402
280 belonged to a local university, the other half to a lumber company.
The university part of it was implemented on two university owned
switches on university owned or leased property.
Calls to DID numbers were passed to the university switches on
unnumbered trunks (there were way fewer trunks than there were DID
numbers. Out going calls went out via a different trunk group or groups.
>> (In most exchanges, the main carrier will reserve some number of
>> prefixes for such use, chopping them up into blocks of 100 or 1000
>> numbers each. When those blocks are returned, they're kept in reserve
>> for the next customer that needs a block that size.)
--
Superfluity does not vitiate.
Stephen Sprunk
> On Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:19:21 -0600, Stephen Sprunk
> <ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> OTOH, it has become a lot more common for businesses to give every phone
>> a real number rather than requiring callers to go through a switchboard
>> to reach a particular extension. That means businesses which used to
>> only have one published number (and maybe ten actual trunk lines) may
>> now consume a block of 100 numbers.
>
> Which roughly is a definition of a "centrex" system, isn't it?
What I was describing above is a standard feature in modern PBX systems;
there is a small number of trunk lines from the carrier to the PBX,
which switches calls to a (much) larger number of phone extensions based
on the destination number signaled on the incoming trunk line.
Centrex™ is delivered as one analog line per extension plus a special
feature in the carrier's switch to enable dialing between "extensions"
without requiring a full phone number.
Which a customer chooses depends on whether they prefer to purchase and
maintain a PBX or pay a lot more each month for a greater number of
lines, i.e. capex vs. opex.
John Levine
>lets you know that it is a cell phone number, plus keeps mobile numbers
>out of the regular exchange.
>
>(It is particularly important there for people to know they are calling
>a cell phone, as they work like long distance phone calls: the person
>who makes the call pays for the call, rather than charging the person
>who owns the cell phone for a call they didn't make.)
Right, that's the caller pays system which is used outside North
America. Many people like it because incoming calls are "free", but
in fact the overall per-minute costs are much higher than in the
mobile pays model used in North America. Mobile users in North
America talk a lot more than they do anywhere else because it's so
much cheaper here. We can also port numbers back and forth between
mobile and landline phones, which is impossible elsewhere.
>In large cities like S�o Paulo, they have accomodated the large number
>of phone lines by simply adding an extra digit to the phone number.
>Making 7 digit numbers into 8 digit numbers was fairly easy.
The North American phone system uses a different signalling system
than other countries. (We invented ours first, and offered it to the
ITU which for whatever reason turned it down.) Making North American
phone numbers longer will be very hard, which is why it's not going
to happen for a long time.
Note followup-to, since this has nothing to do with trains.
R's,
John
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> >OTOH, it has become a lot more common for businesses to give every phone
> >a real number rather than requiring callers to go through a switchboard
> >to reach a particular extension. That means businesses which used to
> >only have one published number (and maybe ten actual trunk lines) may
> >now consume a block of 100 numbers.
>
> Which roughly is a definition of a "centrex" system, isn't it?
Yes. Direct inward dialing has become popular. It used to be only
for the largest of businesses, but now a business of any size can get
it. However, there are plenty of large organizations that have a PBX
with a single listed number, not a centrex.
As an aside, one of the original advtgs of Centrex was identifying
toll calls made by each extension, something not possible with
conventional PBXs at the time. In the old days, a large business did
not allow extensions to dial toll calls, but required everyone to go
through the company PBX operator who would fill out a toll ticket and
place the call, requesting 'time & charges' back from the Bell
operator. This obviously was labor intensive, and later became a
premium charge after DDD discounts went in.
Modern PBXs do all that tracking.
Not many jobs for a PBX operator these days. Almost everything they
did is automated.
Philip Nasadowski
<17083d92-e40f-4f65...@i32g2000pri.googlegroups.com>,
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> However, there are plenty of large organizations that have a PBX
> with a single listed number, not a centrex.
What's a PBX? :) Our 'PBX' at work is a little box that dumps the
incoming lines onto our internal office IP network. All the phones are
VOIP, plugged into the office net. One bonus? A sales guy of ours who
often works from home, plugs his phone into his home network. Call our
office, dial his extension, he picks up (or his ugly or his cute kid
does). Yes, the system finds his phone out there (or, I'm guessing his
phone finds the system) and they link up. Or, when we're going to be in
the back shop a long time, we can take our phones back there and plug
in. It finds us. It doesn't care where we're plugged in, just that we
are - if our phone can find the switch, then it can make/get calls.
With 100BaseT jacks becoming popular in homes now (my parents have 3 in
one room alone...), it's only time before this becomes *the* way phone
calls are made...
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> What's a PBX? :)
Historically, a "PBX" and "Centrex" were differentiated by Centrex
having direct inward dialing. A caller dialed your extension number
directly, ie if you were ext 2368, the caller dialed 555-2368. In a
PBX, the caller would dial 555-2000 and then ask the operator (or
nowadays punch it in himself) for ext 2368.
Centrex is a brand name for a Bell provided service, but it's often
generically used for direct inward dialing.
Today, most large companies and many smaller ones like direct inward
dialing, but there are a number of organizations which still prefer a
single listed number which requires outsiders to then dial an
extension or go through an operator.
The behind-the-scenes physical arrangements to provide services have
changed radically over the years, as well as the cost/benefit
tradeoffs.
In the old days the Bell System worked with a business to ensure the
business' customers were provided with the best quality telephone
service--no long waits for answer, no cutoffs, etc. PBX operators
were trained to provide good service. Sadly, all of that is lost
today. Callers end up in phone mail jail. There's no properly
trained attendant available to take special or urgent calls.
Returning to railroads, many railroads had sophisticated internal
telephone networks. I believe railroads, due to their nature, were a
special case where they were allowed to buy Bell equipment and
maintain it themselves. The Pennsy, had their own long distance
telephone network complete with test desks. As we know, today's
SPRINT originated out of a Southern Pacific telephone network.
But some smaller railroads had very basic networks, such as hand-
cranked ("local battery") lineside telephones well into the 1980s.
Actually, those phones worked pretty well over long distances and
lousy wire. Every phone had its own battery supply, but of course
that meant periodic maintenance.
James Robinson
> As we know, today's SPRINT originated out of a Southern Pacific
> telephone network.
Out of their microwave network, actually.
Stephen Sprunk
> In article
> <17083d92-e40f-4f65...@i32g2000pri.googlegroups.com>,
> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> However, there are plenty of large organizations that have a PBX
>> with a single listed number, not a centrex.
>
> What's a PBX? :)
A Private Branch eXchange (PBX) is any device which is capable of
switching calls between different internal extensions without sending
the call through the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
There is also the Key Telephone System (KTS), which are typically much
cheaper than full-featured PBXes, but in reality most devices marketed
as KTSes these days are actually limited-feature PBXes.
> Our 'PBX' at work is a little box that dumps the
> incoming lines onto our internal office IP network. All the phones are
> VOIP, plugged into the office net. One bonus? A sales guy of ours who
> often works from home, plugs his phone into his home network. Call our
> office, dial his extension, he picks up (or his ugly or his cute kid
> does). Yes, the system finds his phone out there (or, I'm guessing his
> phone finds the system) and they link up. Or, when we're going to be in
> the back shop a long time, we can take our phones back there and plug
> in. It finds us. It doesn't care where we're plugged in, just that we
> are - if our phone can find the switch, then it can make/get calls.
Yep; one can't even buy an old TDM-based PBX anymore, and it's getting
expensive to buy spare/expansion parts and maintenance contracts for old
ones. The entire industry has switched to VoIP over the last decade.
The scenario above is one reason why, but there are many others.
> With 100BaseT jacks becoming popular in homes now (my parents have 3 in
> one room alone...), it's only time before this becomes *the* way phone
> calls are made...
Many home DSL and cable services now deliver phone service over VoIP,
though they present a standard analog (POTS: Plain Old Telephone
Service) interface to the subscriber. Native VoIP phones are still too
expensive for most residential customers to accept, and they probably
will be for another decade.
Stephen Sprunk
You're thinking of Microwave Communications, Inc. (MCI).
The Southern Pacific Railroad Intelligent Network of Telecommunications
(SPRINT) Department never used microwave technology. In 1972, when
fiber optics started to become economically viable, they replaced the
copper wires along their ROW with fiber and had so much spare capacity
they decided to sell private line service, which was expanded to public
service in 1978. In response, other RRs invited AT&T to lay fiber in
return for getting a few strands for their own internal use, which is
why AT&T didn't have an all-digital network until much later. MCI
struck similar deals and quickly tore down their microwave towers.
This is why train derailments and bridge/tunnel fires are a major causes
of phone and data network disruptions in the US, though they pale in
comparison to backhoes digging along highways (where AT&T originally
laid all their copper, later upgraded to fiber as well).
Larry Sheldon
It actually predates microwaves by a bunch, I do believe.
Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications
--
Superfluity does not vitiate.
4
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> Many home DSL and cable services now deliver phone service over VoIP,
> though they present a standard analog (POTS: Plain Old Telephone
> Service) interface to the subscriber. Native VoIP phones are still too
> expensive for most residential customers to accept, and they probably
> will be for another decade.
Why are "native VOIP" phones so expensive? I would think they'd be
cheaper than a conventional telephone set + analog interface.
Jimmy
> Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:
> >In my experience, all they check is the zip code, and they ignore the
> >rest of the address.
>
> The addresss 'verification check' takes address and zip code, two separate
> fields. there are several return codes, from 'nothing matches' to 'both
> fields' match. The merchant can decide what kind of a 'partial' match
> they wish to accept. Of course, if they feed incomplete info to the
> verification check, they can't get a 'full match'. :)
How do they handle different spellings of the address line? For
example, Street versus St., N versus North, Apt versus #, etc.
Jimmy
Robert Heller
>
> On Nov 15, 12:18=A0pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>
> > Many home DSL and cable services now deliver phone service over VoIP,
> > though they present a standard analog (POTS: Plain Old Telephone
> > Service) interface to the subscriber. =A0Native VoIP phones are still too
> > expensive for most residential customers to accept, and they probably
> > will be for another decade.
>
> Why are "native VOIP" phones so expensive? I would think they'd be
> cheaper than a conventional telephone set + analog interface.
A "native VOIP" phone logically consists of a small (embeded) computer
with a sound card and a NIC complete with the software for a Tcp/Ip
stack and the code to handle voice encoding and decoding.
An analog phone is little more than a touch-tone sound generator and a
mic/speaker and a ring coil (well, yes there are fancy ones with dial
memory and speaker phone, etc.).
It is probably not so much that a "native VOIP" phone is really that
much more costly to produce, but a matter of volume production issues:
once production of "native VOIP" phones ramp up the price will go down.
Analog phone production is a common thing (thousands of models
available). Think about VCRs. The first VCR I bought was like $400.
The most recent VCR I bought was like $50. Maybe two decades between
these two purchases.
>
--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / hel...@deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments
Jimmy
> jimmyg...@mailinator.com wrote:
> >> If if doesn't, you can try them by phone at
> >> +1-800-872-7245. (Yes, you can call it from outside the US, although
> >> you will pay the usual toll charges to the US.)
>
> >Are you sure?
>
> Yes, I have a German VoIP phone that I used to check it.
That doesn't prove it works from everywhere. Was there an
announcement when this became universally possible?
If it is possible from anywhere, including mobile phones roaming
internationally, someone needs to tell AT&T, since http://www.att.com/wireless/contact-us/
still lists a non-800 number for international callers.
Jimmy
James Robinson
>
> James Robinson wrote:
>>
>> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>
>>> As we know, today's SPRINT originated out of a Southern Pacific
>>> telephone network.
>>
>> Out of their microwave network, actually.
>
> You're thinking of Microwave Communications, Inc. (MCI).
No I'm not.
> The Southern Pacific Railroad Intelligent Network of Telecommunications
> (SPRINT) Department never used microwave technology.
Oh, yes they did. The microwave network predated the installation of
fiber, and was used for internal communications and rail signaling
control. The excess capacity of the system was marketed, in competition
with MCI, for the transmission of faxes. The fax product was called
Speedfax, and it predated the Execunet II decision that allowed them to
also offer voice long distance services. Fiber installation coincided
with the start of the voice long distance offering.
As an aside, the name SPRINT actually wasn't short for anything when it
was adopted. SP held an internal competition to rename their
communcations company (SP Communcations Corp. or SPCC) to something more
appropriate for external marketing, and an employee suggested SPRINT as a
catchy name. All the various purported meanings for SPRINT, such as what
you wrote above, or Switched Private Internal Network, or Southern
Pacific Internal Communcations came later. They were an attempt to
force-fit an acronym to the name.
Larry Sheldon
Now that you mention it, that sounds familiar.
James Robinson
>
> James Robinson wrote:
>>
>> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>
>>> As we know, today's SPRINT originated out of a Southern Pacific
>>> telephone network.
>>
>> Out of their microwave network, actually.
>
> It actually predates microwaves by a bunch, I do believe.
Yes, the SP Communications Corporation, which is the forerunner of SPRINT,
dates back over 100 years. It maintained the SP communications network for
the railroad. However, the name SPRINT only became necessary when they
wanted to expand their commercial sales of excess communication capacity,
which was mainly microwave-based at the time. Hence why I believe that
network was the origin of SPRINT as a commercial venture, and not the
dilapidated copper wire network, which didn't have much marketability.
Larry Sheldon
Except that they had some pretty modern looking comm gear (dunno what it
was--data and telegraph would be my guess) on the ROW wire and cables.
The telephone company was still running fancy stuff on open wire (like
PGCUs) into the 70's.
Seems like the networks liked OW Program Circuit Units (audio for TV and
radio) better--less noisy that cable or radio.
Stephen Sprunk
A VoIP phone requires pretty much the same components as an analog phone
_plus_ a CPU, DSP, RAM, Flash, Ethernet, etc. The latter could only end
up cheaper than the former due to significantly larger volume, and we're
nowhere near that point yet.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> A VoIP phone requires pretty much the same components as an analog phone
> _plus_ a CPU, DSP, RAM, Flash, Ethernet, etc. The latter could only end
> up cheaper than the former due to significantly larger volume, and we're
> nowhere near that point yet.
That's a lot of hardware--practically a computer.
When people get telephone service via FIOS or their cable company--
independent of computer service--how is it being carried? For
instance, my neighbor now gets her phone from the cable company; she
has no computer.
As to PBXs, I wonder if there are any classic cord switchboards still
in regular PBX service (not historic or novelty display) in North
America. Finding parts is probably difficult plus the labor of having
an operator on duty during all hours the facility is operating*.
Telephone central offices still support rotary phones--if you plug in
a rotary phone in a regular direct phone line you should be able to
use it to make calls**. i wonder what percentage of calls placed
today are done by rotary dials. My guess between one and five
percent. Many people have an old rotary phone hard wired in their
home, or a rotary phone as a backup phone. Rotary phones keep working
even during power failures, unlike cordless phones, and are more
resistant to burnout from lightning strikes.
*A dial PBX could have some functionality without an operator, and
even a manual PBX could have limited functionality during off hours
via "night connections".
** I had one in my cube at work which I liked since the ringer was
distinct and it was a conversation piece.
Philip Nasadowski
<aedc8919-be60-4b43...@l17g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> > plus a CPU, DSP, RAM, Flash, Ethernet, etc. �The latter could only end
> That's a lot of hardware--practically a computer.
Two, if you count a CPU and DSP, though why you'd use a DSP I don't know.
> When people get telephone service via FIOS or their cable company--
> independent of computer service--how is it being carried? For
> instance, my neighbor now gets her phone from the cable company; she
> has no computer.
>
You have a box that plugs into the FIOS (or cable) and your phone line.
It works and feels like a 'normal' phone, though no rotary support.
> As to PBXs, I wonder if there are any classic cord switchboards still
> in regular PBX service (not historic or novelty display) in North
> America. Finding parts is probably difficult plus the labor of having
> an operator on duty during all hours the facility is operating*.
*shrug*
> Telephone central offices still support rotary phones--if you plug in
> a rotary phone in a regular direct phone line you should be able to
> use it to make calls**.
Most VOIP systems don't. Vonage, supposedly does.
> i wonder what percentage of calls placed
> today are done by rotary dials. My guess between one and five
> percent. Many people have an old rotary phone hard wired in their
> home, or a rotary phone as a backup phone. Rotary phones keep working
> even during power failures, unlike cordless phones, and are more
> resistant to burnout from lightning strikes.
TouchTone(tm) works just as well when the power's out. But it may not
light up if it's an old old Trimeline(tm). That's what those ubiquitous
Western Electric tan transformers were for. You know, the ones that
have a phone cable off of them, plugged in somewhere in the basement,
that nobody ever knows what they do.
Stephen Sprunk
> On Nov 19, 12:59 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> A VoIP phone requires pretty much the same components as an analog phone
>> _plus_ a CPU, DSP, RAM, Flash, Ethernet, etc. The latter could only end
>> up cheaper than the former due to significantly larger volume, and we're
>> nowhere near that point yet.
>
> That's a lot of hardware--practically a computer.
It's what's called an "embedded" computer, as opposed to a
"general-purpose" computer.
In fact, the former outnumber the latter by two or three orders of
magnitude. You probably own dozens without even realizing it.
> When people get telephone service via FIOS or their cable company--
> independent of computer service--how is it being carried? For
> instance, my neighbor now gets her phone from the cable company; she
> has no computer.
It's VoIP to the cable/DSL "modem" and POTS from there to the house
wiring. If you crack open the case on the "modem", you'll find an
embedded computer inside. Ditto for most other modern electronics
devices; the ability to have a "firmware update" is a dead giveaway.
Once you reach a certain level of complexity, it's cheaper to use a
general-purpose CPU with custom software than to design custom chips.
> As to PBXs, I wonder if there are any classic cord switchboards still
> in regular PBX service (not historic or novelty display) in North
> America. Finding parts is probably difficult plus the labor of having
> an operator on duty during all hours the facility is operating*.
I doubt it, for those reasons and others, but anything is possible.
> Telephone central offices still support rotary phones--if you plug in
> a rotary phone in a regular direct phone line you should be able to
> use it to make calls**. i wonder what percentage of calls placed
> today are done by rotary dials. My guess between one and five
> percent. Many people have an old rotary phone hard wired in their
> home, or a rotary phone as a backup phone. Rotary phones keep working
> even during power failures, unlike cordless phones, and are more
> resistant to burnout from lightning strikes.
I had several touch-tone phones that worked just fine during power
outages, and none ever had any problems with lightning storms--even when
a neighbor's house was directly hit.
A POTS line provides enough voltage to power small integrated circuits
(e.g. a basic touch-tone phone with redial and such) but not a full
embedded computer.
> ** I had one in my cube at work which I liked since the ringer was
> distinct and it was a conversation piece.
Many companies rolling out VoIP PBXes will put some POTS phones out
(often one per floor), on lines that completely bypass the PBX, to get
around various legal requirements or due to fears about reliability.
You'll often find them next to fax machines, sharing a line, since faxes
and VoIP don't mix well.
Larry Sheldon
> On 21 Nov 2010 21:20, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> As to PBXs, I wonder if there are any classic cord switchboards still
>> in regular PBX service (not historic or novelty display) in North
>> America. Finding parts is probably difficult plus the labor of having
>> an operator on duty during all hours the facility is operating*.
>
> I doubt it, for those reasons and others, but anything is possible.
They had "night connections" that were put up so incoming calls would be
answered if anybody was in the facility, and so selected stations could
get dial tone.
My favorite (a Stroweger-switch PABX) had a "Night Key" that made every
telephone ring on incoming calls, a person could pick up any phone, dial
a digit, get the next-up incomming call. I don't remember for sure, but
I expect everybody could get an outgoing line if one was available.
spsffan
Har! We had an outage of our regular phone system at work a couple of
months ago. The outage (I forget what caused it, but it took Verizon 3+
days to figure it out!) lasted several days. I am lucky enough to have a
fax machine with a dedicated line that does not go through the
switchboard in my office. But the (relatively new) machine has no
handset. So I brought my old rotary dial Automatic Electric desk model
in and set it on my desk.
I was able to call several customers, but was thwarted on some calls
when I got a voice mail system that required dialing a touch tone to get
past the recording.
So, I'm looking for a desk model touch tone WE or AE phone for cheap.
I've seen them in yard sales for $5 so I'm not paying $30 plus shipping
for one.
Jishnu Mukerji
> So, I'm looking for a desk model touch tone WE or AE phone for cheap.
> I've seen them in yard sales for $5 so I'm not paying $30 plus shipping
> for one.
I keep one around for use when everything else fails. It also happens to
be a freebie that I got from Bell Labs when I worked there way back when.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> > i wonder what percentage of calls placed
> > today are done by rotary dials. My guess between one and five
> > percent. Many people have an old rotary phone hard wired in their
> > home, or a rotary phone as a backup phone. Rotary phones keep working
> > even during power failures, unlike cordless phones, and are more
> > resistant to burnout from lightning strikes.
>
> TouchTone(tm) works just as well when the power's out. But it may not
> light up if it's an old old Trimeline(tm). That's what those ubiquitous
> Western Electric tan transformers were for. You know, the ones that
> have a phone cable off of them, plugged in somewhere in the basement,
> that nobody ever knows what they do.
A plain old Touch Tone phone will work in a power failure. But it
seems a great many people use cordless or feature phones at home that
require house power to work (unless they have an internal battery
backup).
FIOS and cable phone have battery backup, but only for a few hours,
and a long power failure may outlast the battery. Plain telephones
usually will keep working in a power failure as _traditional_
telephone company central offices have battery backup and a diesel
generator to keep the batteries charged for an extended power
failure. I don't know if modern central offices are built to the same
reliability standards of the past. (Competition can bring service
quality _down_ as well as up.)
Originally, Trimline and Princess sets had dial lights powered by a
tiny transformer plugged into the wall (the phone itself was powered
by the phone line). In later years such lights were powered by LEDs
off the phone line, eliminating the need for a battery and a service
call to replace burned out light bulbs.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> They had "night connections" that were put up so incoming calls would be
> answered if anybody was in the facility, and so selected stations could
> get dial tone.
On _manual_ PBXs, night connections were limited to only those few
extensions plugged in. All other extensions were unusable.
On _dial_ PBXs, extensions could still dial each other and an outside
line. However, incoming calls were limited depending on the
sophistication of the dial system of the PBX. On systems served by a
cord board, incoming calls were limited to a few selected extensions.
On systems served by a console, more sophisticated answering was
possible depending on the PABX. Our office had an old fashioned
ringer box that was used after hours. Anyone could answer an incoming
call by dialing a code, as you describe.
As an aside, one function of the PBX operator in the old days was to
act as a 'gatekeeper' to outside lines. Back in the days when long
distance calls cost serious money and local calls weren't that cheap
businesses did not want personal calls going out and wanted business
calls charged back to the calling office. On dial PBXs, many
extensions were restricted to either local calls only or internal
calls only; all toll calls had to go through the PBX attendant who
made out a chargeback ticket. One early stated advantage of Centrex
was that calls were charged back directly to the calling extension.
In those days an office building was liberally equipped with pay
phones for employees, customers, and contractors to make personal
calls. There was usually a bank of pay phones in the lobby, plus
phones on most floors.
Railroad stations of course had pay phones and many still do. (Some
have them to serve as a 911 help line in case a passenger needs
help.) I still see people use them on occasion. The biggest stations
had a Bell employee on duty in the pay phone center to assist callers;
Penna Station in NYC had that into the 1980s.
Regarding railroads, some railroads had sophisticated networks with
tie-trunks to interconnect various towns. For instance, a PRR
employee in Altoona could dial an access code and be connected to the
Philadelphia switchboard, or a switchboard of an intermediate town.
The PRR system was quite sophisticated.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> I was able to call several customers, but was thwarted on some calls
> when I got a voice mail system that required dialing a touch tone to get
> past the recording.
That was a final reason rotary phones disappeared. For instance, my
mother was perfectly happy with her old rotary phones but she found
calling businesses difficult as you describe.
> So, I'm looking for a desk model touch tone WE or AE phone for cheap.
> I've seen them in yard sales for $5 so I'm not paying $30 plus shipping
> for one.
Keep checking yard sales. You may not find a genuine WE/AE phone, but
probably can find a generic plain Touch Tone phone pretty cheap.
People are dumping them when they go cordless.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> I keep one around for use when everything else fails. It also happens to
> be a freebie that I got from Bell Labs when I worked there way back when.
I know someone who has a 1950 prototype used for the Media PA No. 5
crossbar test. It's a 302 set with two rows of buttons; the buttons
pluck reeds to generate the tone. Not compatible with today's TT
signals.
Some rotary offices allowed 20 pulses per second. Years ago, a friend
modified his phone dial and it worked fine at high speed. Major PBX
operators had fast dials, too. I think we were served by either No. 1
crossbar or panel.
In my early dial-up days I set the modem to shoot out 20 pps and it
worked fine.
Nobody
>On Nov 21, 11:03 pm, Larry Sheldon <lfshel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> They had "night connections" that were put up so incoming calls would be
>> answered if anybody was in the facility, and so selected stations could
>> get dial tone.
>
>On _manual_ PBXs, night connections were limited to only those few
>extensions plugged in. All other extensions were unusable.
>
>On _dial_ PBXs, extensions could still dial each other and an outside
>line. However, incoming calls were limited depending on the
>sophistication of the dial system of the PBX. On systems served by a
>cord board, incoming calls were limited to a few selected extensions.
>On systems served by a console, more sophisticated answering was
>possible depending on the PABX. Our office had an old fashioned
>ringer box that was used after hours. Anyone could answer an incoming
>call by dialing a code, as you describe.
And if a powercut killed the PABX switcher, in our office in the 80's,
one or two locals/extensions defaulted to being "outside" lines or
trunks.
Jishnu Mukerji
I worked on one of the first stored program digital PBXs with a real
operating system with managed address spaces (as opposed to a thread
dispatcher) in Bell Labs. It was quite an adventure. We used a very
small footprint real time OS in the controller as well as on individual
circuit boards.
One of the biggest pains was handling all the baroque trunk protocols
that existed back then, loop start, ground start and what not.
Glen Labah
spsffan <sps...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Har! We had an outage of our regular phone system at work a couple of
> months ago. The outage (I forget what caused it, but it took Verizon 3+
> days to figure it out!) lasted several days. I am lucky enough to have a
> fax machine with a dedicated line that does not go through the
> switchboard in my office. But the (relatively new) machine has no
> handset. So I brought my old rotary dial Automatic Electric desk model
> in and set it on my desk.
>
> I was able to call several customers, but was thwarted on some calls
> when I got a voice mail system that required dialing a touch tone to get
> past the recording.
>
> So, I'm looking for a desk model touch tone WE or AE phone for cheap.
> I've seen them in yard sales for $5 so I'm not paying $30 plus shipping
> for one.
Where our phone system (voice mail cards and a pile of other hardware)
connects to the outside world, there are simply a set of regular modular
phone jacks. When the power goes out for a long enough time, we can
still contact the outside world if we plug a regular phone into those
modular jacks, as they are just regular phone lines.
Problem is that someone threw out all our old phones, so now if the
power is off long enough you can't do much.
--
Please note this e-mail address is a pit of spam due to e-mail address
harvesters on Usenet. Response time to e-mail sent here is slow.
Jimmy
> Railroad stations of course had pay phones and many still do. (Some
> have them to serve as a 911 help line in case a passenger needs
> help.) I still see people use them on occasion.
In NYC, people use pay phones all the time.
The LIRR's new Atlantic Terminal (Brooklyn) headhouse has only 3 pay
phones. I needed to use one, but two were broken and someone was
using the third. A cop told me they were the only phones in the
station. Fortunately that was incorrect, since there are plenty of
phones on the platforms, and I was able to make the call and catch my
train.
The regional call I was making was supposed to cost 50 cents. The
phone asked me for 25 cents (which is what local calls still cost in
NYC), did some connecting to an internal number, gave me the money
back, and asked me for 50 cents. One of the broken phones ate the
initial quarter in the process. I was disappointed that a Verizon
phone would be as screwed up as a no-brand COCOT.
The LIRR area at Penn Station has dozens of phones, all over the
place, since it was renovated around 1990.
> The biggest stations
> had a Bell employee on duty in the pay phone center to assist callers;
> Penna Station in NYC had that into the 1980s.
Really? How long into the 1980s? I'm having trouble picturing a New
York Telephone employee standing around at a bank of phones helping
people make calls -- it seems like something out of the 1920s.
http://www.popcenter.org/library/crimeprevention/volume_06/02_bichler.pdf
is an article about the efforts to fight pay phone fraud at the Port
Authority Bus Terminal in the early 90s.
Criminals would hang around at phones which they "owned", and people
would pay them to place international calls using stolen credit cards
or hacked corporate PBXes. A friend of mine said this was very
common even at streetcorner phones, and the bus terminal was the
biggest hotspot -- people would head there from all over the city to
make cheap calls.
The phone companies didn't care, since they weren't financially
affected. The Port Authority reduced the problem by blocking access to
corporate 800 numbers that were being used mostly for illegal
purposes.
Jimmy
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> One of the biggest pains was handling all the baroque trunk protocols
> that existed back then, loop start, ground start and what not.
Don't they still use that stuff? If not, how do PBXs signal on-hook
and off-hook to the central office?
Historically, the development of new telephone switches required
backward compatibility with various existing signal protocols. For
instance, the No. 4 ESS toll switch had to provide for old style
"ONI"--operator number identification in the case the caller's ANI
(calling phone number) wasn't available. That is, the operator would
come on to ask for the caller's number and key it into the system. At
one time that was quite common before the function was automated..
A key component of early dial switches (eg the Panel System) was a
compatibility with manual switchboards of nearby exchanges. Callers
with dial would not need to know if the exchange they were calling was
dial or manual, they just dialed the number. For calls to manual
exchanges, a display on the operator's switchboard would light up
showing the desired number and the operator would complete the call.
One legacy component largely gone is party line service. In many
states it simply is not supported at all. In other states, it is
grandfathered in to existing customers only. Given the very low cost
savings of party line service (about $1/month), I wonder how many
subscribers in the US, if any, stlil have it today. Modern
transmission methods have replaced rural party lines so it is now cost-
effective to give almost everyone a private line. I don't know about
Canada.
(By way of comparison, a city two-party line in the 1960s cost about
$3.50/month vs. $5.50 for a regular line. The $2/mon savings
represented a substantial portion of the total bill, and $2 was worth
more in the 1960s than now. For people of modest means that was
significant. Rural party lines had a different rate structure. Some
rural lines had only two parties on it, some had four, but others had
more than four and required code ringing.)
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> > Railroad stations of course had pay phones and many still do. (Some
> > have them to serve as a 911 help line in case a passenger needs
> > help.) I still see people use them on occasion.
>
> In NYC, people use pay phones all the time.
An article in the NYT reported that NYC streetcorners have lots of pay
phones because it gives vendors a legitimate way to put up ads on the
phone kiosk. They make their money off the ads, not the phone
service. I don't recall seeing many people on the street in NYC using
pay phones, though I don't watch that carefully. Some people in the
train stations still do use them.
Some train/subway station phones have a shortcut to dial train
information marked on the instruction card (in tiny print).
A few buildings still have real phone booths, complete with the little
chair, table, light, and fan. The Yonkers train station had one some
years ago.
> The regional call I was making was supposed to cost 50 cents. The
> phone asked me for 25 cents (which is what local calls still cost in
> NYC), did some connecting to an internal number, gave me the money
> back, and asked me for 50 cents. One of the broken phones ate the
> initial quarter in the process. I was disappointed that a Verizon
> phone would be as screwed up as a no-brand COCOT.
Some phones in the train stations have yellow handsets with special
rates.
One thing nice about many NYC pay phones is that they still allow coin
long distance calls--many phones in other places no longer allow that
and force someone to use a calling card. The rate is 25c/minute, 4
minute minimum. I don't think that's bad at all. Some, but by no
means all, phones at NJ Transit stations have that service.
Unfortunately there are far fewer pay phones than they're used to be,
and sometimes calls can be very expensive. It's just easier to have a
cell phone these days.
> > The biggest stations
> > had a Bell employee on duty in the pay phone center to assist callers;
> > Penna Station in NYC had that into the 1980s.
>
> Really? How long into the 1980s? I'm having trouble picturing a New
> York Telephone employee standing around at a bank of phones helping
> people make calls -- it seems like something out of the 1920s.
I guess it was in the early 1980s. They had a desk for the
attendant. Back then they made change for people and they also
assisted in placing overseas calls. Whether the attendant at that
late date actually made connections I don't know. They also had a
large rack of telephone directories for many cities (another thing
that's going away, no more white pages).
In the days before Divesture the Bell System offered far more support
services for its customers.
> Criminals would hang around at phones which they "owned", and people
> would pay them to place international calls using stolen credit cards
> or hacked corporate PBXes. A friend of mine said this was very
> common even at streetcorner phones, and the bus terminal was the
> biggest hotspot -- people would head there from all over the city to
> make cheap calls.
>
> The phone companies didn't care, since they weren't financially
> affected. The Port Authority reduced the problem by blocking access to
> corporate 800 numbers that were being used mostly for illegal
> purposes.
One of things criminals would do would be to stand behind people and
watch and remember their calling card numbers as they made a call.
One change was adding a heavy shield around the tone pad on phones, an
item that remains today, and also educating callers to be careful.
The Port Authority Bus Terminal and the subways in the 1980s had
numerous problems with undesirable elements frequenting the terminal.
It took a long time to clean the place up. Efforts to remove
undesirables were blocked by social activists who filed lawsuits on
behalf of the undesirables and won them. I did not understand how
they won such cases, it would seem to me that there is no
Constitutional right for a person to throw their bodily wastes at
other people.
When transit agencies finally were successful in reducing the
population of undesirables everyday people felt safer and more
comfortable and ridership went up and vandalism went down.
Jimmy
> Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:
> > In NYC, people use pay phones all the time.
>
> An article in the NYT reported that NYC streetcorners have lots of pay
> phones because it gives vendors a legitimate way to put up ads on the
> phone kiosk. They make their money off the ads, not the phone
> service. I don't recall seeing many people on the street in NYC using
> pay phones, though I don't watch that carefully. Some people in the
> train stations still do use them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/nyregion/17phones.html
But I still see a lot of people using the phones.
Verizon tried to raise the price in NYC to 50 cents, but business
dropped off, so they lowered it again.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/07/nyregion/verizon-reverses-increase-at-some-pay-phones.html
.
The article says New Yorkers "have many other options", but doesn't
explicitly mention all the 25 cent phones owned by other companies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/nyregion/13payphone.html has a
profile of the people who used a busy phone near a Queens courthouse.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/12/nyregion/0213-met-payphone.html
shows which zip codes have the most and fewest phones. It also says
Atlantic Terminal has the busiest phone in the city. That's not
surprising -- with only 3 phones in the headhouse, there are going to
be a lot of calls per phone.
> > The regional call I was making was supposed to cost 50 cents. The
> > phone asked me for 25 cents (which is what local calls still cost in
> > NYC), did some connecting to an internal number, gave me the money
> > back, and asked me for 50 cents.
>
> Some phones in the train stations have yellow handsets with special
> rates.
Yup, 25 cents for a 30 second call anywhere in NYS outside NYC. But
those are in Penn Station, not Atlantic Terminal.
> Unfortunately there are far fewer pay phones than they're used to be,
> and sometimes calls can be very expensive. It's just easier to have a
> cell phone these days.
They're still easy to find in NYC. I believe they're in every subway
station, and many street corners, even in the outer boroughs.
Jimmy
Miles Bader
> A plain old Touch Tone phone will work in a power failure. But it
> seems a great many people use cordless or feature phones at home that
> require house power to work (unless they have an internal battery
> backup).
My phone is a "feature phone" (not my choice, my GF chose it...) and
requires a power adaptor for normal operation.
However, as I discovered when my power failed one night (a short in
the water heater), it will actually still work with only power from
the phone-line, though obviously with much reduced functionality!
[as it turned out, the main problem was that the "light-up keypad"
didn't work -- and I had no lights to see the dial (or the paper with
the number) by! I did manage to call the electric company's emergency
line, dialing very slowly, in the extremely dim light from a distant
window.]
I'd hope that any halfway-sensible design would behave similarly.
-Miles
--
`To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to,
all of life's problems' --Homer J. Simpson
Jishnu Mukerji
> On Nov 22, 7:47 pm, Jishnu Mukerji <jis...@nospam.verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> One of the biggest pains was handling all the baroque trunk protocols
>> that existed back then, loop start, ground start and what not.
>
> Don't they still use that stuff? If not, how do PBXs signal on-hook
> and off-hook to the central office?
Now they mostly use digital trunks, for a typical mid size PBX (the non
VOIP ones), one or more T1s, and the signaling is out of band using CSS7
or some such protocol. Of course I am sure there are still many legacy
trunks floating around specially in remote places, but possibly not for
long. Of course VOIP PBXs just get a direct digital IP connection, over
something like a DS-1 or some fiber. Heck you get enough bandwidth into
your closet on a FIOS fiber to run a hefty PBX off of it, if the
appropriate modem was installed.
I have been away from telephony for almost 20 years now, so don;t know
any details anymore.
Stephen Sprunk
> On Nov 22, 7:47 pm, Jishnu Mukerji <jis...@nospam.verizon.net> wrote:
>> One of the biggest pains was handling all the baroque trunk protocols
>> that existed back then, loop start, ground start and what not.
>
> Don't they still use that stuff? If not, how do PBXs signal on-hook
> and off-hook to the central office?
That stuff applies to analog trunks, which are pretty much limited to
key systems these days. They're relatively cheap, but they don't have
the features or capacity that most larger customers now expect.
Two or three decades ago, the standard trunk line for US PBXes was a
channelized AMI/SF T1 circuit using Robbed-Bit Signaling. About a
decade or so ago, PBX vendors stopped being so stupid about pricing and
most folks shifted to PRI circuits, which are electrically a B8ZS/ESF T1
but trade one of the 24 bearer channels for a signaling
channel--enabling lots of cool PBX features not available on plain T1
trunks.
(In comparison, an E1 has 32 channels; one is dedicated to maintaining
sync and one to signaling, which leaves 30 bearer channels with no need
to steal bits--or an entire bearer channel--for those functions.)
Nowadays, most folks have IP PBXes and are starting to look at a direct
VoIP connection (over a much larger--and cheaper--data circuit) to the
telco, getting rid of dedicated voice circuits. Many others with older
PBXes will install PRI-to-VoIP gateways that let them accomplish the
same thing, though they lose much of the capex and feature benefits.
Still, VoIP trunks are so much cheaper it's almost always a win on opex.
> Modern transmission methods have replaced rural party lines so it
> is now cost-effective to give almost everyone a private line.
Yep. Party lines came about due to the high cost of running an
individual copper pair to each customer all the way from the central
office (CO): putting multiple customers on a single pair allowed them to
spread out the capex and make enough profit to be worthwhile.
Today, though, no sane telco does that--even in urban or suburban areas.
They run a single fiber pair from to the CO to a Subscriber Line
Concentrator (SLC), and from there they can serve dozens to hundreds of
individual (and much shorter) copper lines. That brings the capital
costs way down, removing the motivation for party lines.
Over the last decade, the telcos have been busy reterminating existing
copper circuits on SLCs--partly to recover all that now-valuable copper
in the ground or on poles and partly to enable DSL service, the speed of
which depends on the length of the copper part of the circuit. (For
instance, I'm several miles from my CO, but the SLC is just down the
block, and my DSL line tested out at 58Mbit/s; the tech who installed it
said the speed drops 1Mbit/s for every hundred feet from the SLC--or CO
if you're not on an SLC.) If DSL is still "not available in your area",
it's because you're too far from the CO and they haven't gotten around
to putting your neighborhood on a SLC yet. Exchanges were originally
mapped out based on a maximum analog line length of 15kft from the CO
(usually centrally located within the exchange), which is about 30 times
as far as DSL can reach without SLCs.
(Verizon's FiOS isn't much different; they just use one small converter
per house rather than one large SLC per neighborhood, increasing capex
and reducing reliability. But it sounds great on paper!)
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> Today, though, no sane telco does that--even in urban or suburban areas.
> They run a single fiber pair from to the CO to a Subscriber Line
> Concentrator (SLC), and from there they can serve dozens to hundreds of
> individual (and much shorter) copper lines. That brings the capital
> costs way down, removing the motivation for party lines.
I wonder if party line service is offered anywhere today in the US or
Canada (beyond a few oddball outposts). What was formerly Mountain
Bell had quite a bit of it, but I presume by now they did as you
describe.
> . . . Exchanges were originally
> mapped out based on a maximum analog line length of 15kft from the CO
> (usually centrally located within the exchange), which is about 30 times
> as far as DSL can reach without SLCs.
15,000 feet is only about three miles and I think the range of my old
city exchanges was about a five mile radius, and this was mostly
underground cable, too.
I live 0.9 miles from the central office, and I wonder how I'm
connected--traditional copper or something modern. The junction boxes
in the neighborhood have the old style 1960s Bell Telephone logos on
them, not the newer 1970s logo.
> (Verizon's FiOS isn't much different; they just use one small converter
> per house rather than one large SLC per neighborhood, increasing capex
> and reducing reliability. But it sounds great on paper!)
Vz wanted to put it in here but our complex said no because their
external boxes were too ugly on the outside of the buildings and their
line work would be too disruptive. I don't know if that's true or
not, I suspect the complex was being foolish.
But a friend who has FIOS had a major power failure and lost phone
service after a few hours. I never had that problem with phone
service during a long power failure. We were lucky last year--we had
some nasty storms and some neighborhoods were out of power for several
days while we lost it only for about a half day. (Though being an all-
electric community hurts when power is out.)
Stephen Sprunk
> On Nov 23, 10:55 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> Today, though, no sane telco does that--even in urban or suburban areas.
>> They run a single fiber pair from to the CO to a Subscriber Line
>> Concentrator (SLC), and from there they can serve dozens to hundreds of
>> individual (and much shorter) copper lines. That brings the capital
>> costs way down, removing the motivation for party lines.
>
> I wonder if party line service is offered anywhere today in the US or
> Canada (beyond a few oddball outposts).
If it's in the state PUC tariffs, there is at least one customer in the
state that still has it. The telcos have wanted to withdraw those
tariffs for decades but can't as long as someone is still paying them.
Worse, as long as a tariff is still listed, they can't stop a new
customer from ordering that service. All they can do is jack up the
price (with the PUC's permission) until nobody wants it anymore.
> What was formerly Mountain Bell had quite a bit of it, but I presume by
> now they did as you describe.
In the urban and suburban areas, they're probably mostly done. In rural
areas, they're just getting started. Many rural co-ops don't have the
capital to convert existing lines even if it'd save them a lot of money
in the long run; that's why there's a lot of noise in the industry about
a broadband Universal Service Fund.
>> . . . Exchanges were originally mapped out based on a maximum analog
>> line length of 15kft from the CO (usually centrally located within the
>> exchange), which is about 30 times as far as DSL can reach without SLCs.
>
> 15,000 feet is only about three miles and I think the range of my old
> city exchanges was about a five mile radius, and this was mostly
> underground cable, too.
It varies by area; I've seen some with a 25kft maximum line length. The
problem with that is even POTS lines require a signal booster when they
get that long, which further degrades sound quality--and they completely
block ISDN or DSL signals. Ideally, the CO would be located in the most
populated part of the exchange and only a tiny number of folks out on
farms near the extremities would need boosters. Unfortunately, many of
those farms turned into housing developments and, before SLCs were
invented, the telco would have to put in thousands upon thousands of
boosters--and those people couldn't get DSL.
> I live 0.9 miles from the central office, and I wonder how I'm
> connected--traditional copper or something modern. The junction boxes
> in the neighborhood have the old style 1960s Bell Telephone logos on
> them, not the newer 1970s logo.
It's hard to say without knowing the area and hunting around for SLC
huts; they usually look quite similar to the huts you see near the base
of many mobile phone towers, except there is no tower for a SLC. (I've
seen a few designed to blend into their surroundings, but when you've
seen enough of them and know what to look for, you can still spot them
pretty easily.)
Up north, they often put SLCs in underground vaults, so you may not be
able to find them at all. If they used different signs to mark (older)
buried copper and (newer) buried fiber, then find where the signs change
from one to the other and look around for a suspiciously large patch of
concrete with the telco's logo stamped into it. If your area uses
aerial lines, you might be able to follow them back to the CO from your
home to see if you can spot a hut or vault along the way.
>> (Verizon's FiOS isn't much different; they just use one small converter
>> per house rather than one large SLC per neighborhood, increasing capex
>> and reducing reliability. But it sounds great on paper!)
>
> Vz wanted to put it in here but our complex said no because their
> external boxes were too ugly on the outside of the buildings and their
> line work would be too disruptive. I don't know if that's true or
> not, I suspect the complex was being foolish.
Interesting. The last few apartment complexes I lived in each had a
small SLC on-site (hidden in a wiring room) just to serve its residents.
Ditto for most of the office buildings I've been in. (Since I work in
telecom, I've seen a _lot_ of that stuff and notice it even when I'm not
working.) I assume Verizon has something similar.
> But a friend who has FIOS had a major power failure and lost phone
> service after a few hours. I never had that problem with phone
> service during a long power failure. We were lucky last year--we had
> some nasty storms and some neighborhoods were out of power for several
> days while we lost it only for about a half day. (Though being an all-
> electric community hurts when power is out.)
Yep, that's the major problem with FIOS: the batteries Verizon provides
don't last that long and there's no Plan C. They also don't have a
great service lifetime, and you'll never know they've failed until Plan
B doesn't work either. Either way, no phone service until your power is
back on.
OTOH, a SLC hut/vault will have more (and better-quality) batteries that
last much longer, in part because they're in a relatively protected
environment and in part because the telco tests and replaces them
regularly. And, unless prohibited by local fire code, they'll have a
backup generator and at least a day's worth of diesel--preferably four
days' worth if there's room. Where that's prohibited, there'll be
external connections for a generator to be hauled in, but if the power's
out that long, what are the odds your particular SLC--out of
thousands--will be important enough to get one of the few units
available, or that they'll be high enough on the priority list for
diesel deliveries considering all the hospitals, COs, office buildings,
etc. that will get it first--if the roads are even passable?
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> > I wonder if party line service is offered anywhere today in the US or
> > Canada (beyond a few oddball outposts).
>
> If it's in the state PUC tariffs, there is at least one customer in the
> state that still has it. The telcos have wanted to withdraw those
> tariffs for decades but can't as long as someone is still paying them.
> Worse, as long as a tariff is still listed, they can't stop a new
> customer from ordering that service. All they can do is jack up the
> price (with the PUC's permission) until nobody wants it anymore.
In several states it was handled this way:
1) Policy on party lines was changed so that only existing subscribers
would keep it, it would not be available to new customers.
2) A few years later the PUC discontinued it altogether. Subscribers
who had it got a letter announcing the discontinuance and were then
billed the private line rate. Also, those subscribers who needed
their telephone set modified to work on a private line had to do so at
their own expense*. So, yes, the telcos can and did cancel a tariff
that had existing subscribers to it.
*Bell party lines did something special (grounding and bias) to ring
only one party; they could have up to four parties with separate
numbers and unique ringing. "Each telephone bell, rather than being
connected across tip and ring as usual, was connected from one wire to
local ground". Independent company party lines used a different
approach (frequency).
> In the urban and suburban areas, they're probably mostly done. In rural
> areas, they're just getting started. Many rural co-ops don't have the
> capital to convert existing lines even if it'd save them a lot of money
> in the long run; that's why there's a lot of noise in the industry about
> a broadband Universal Service Fund.
Are there still "rural co-op" telephone service? I did some research
a while back and found most merged and were taken over by Independent
phone companies or became general communications suppliers, such as
cable and phone. It was worth investing in wiring upgrade since they
could then sell premium services and save a bundle on maintenance.
> >> (Verizon's FiOS isn't much different; they just use one small converter
> >> per house rather than one large SLC per neighborhood, increasing capex
> >> and reducing reliability. But it sounds great on paper!)
>
> > Vz wanted to put it in here but our complex said no because their
> > external boxes were too ugly on the outside of the buildings and their
> > line work would be too disruptive. I don't know if that's true or
> > not, I suspect the complex was being foolish.
>
> Interesting. The last few apartment complexes I lived in each had a
> small SLC on-site (hidden in a wiring room) just to serve its residents.
> Ditto for most of the office buildings I've been in. (Since I work in
> telecom, I've seen a _lot_ of that stuff and notice it even when I'm not
> working.) I assume Verizon has something similar.
Our place was built in 1969, so it used whatever technology in place
at the time. As I understand it, in that era terminal equipment was
still fairly expensive and for short distances plain copper was
cheaper.
In that era Bell used "concentrators" which was basically a remote
switch that allowed a large group of subscribers to share a small
group of trunks to the central office. This was based on the
assumption that not all subscribers would need service at the same
time. The Bell Labs history describes a fairly sophisticated piece of
equipment, though other writers say the system would lock people out
due to too few trunks for the lines served. Whether we were/are
served by such gear I don't know, probably not because we're so close
to the CO.
Paul
news:icjk5h$pef$1...@news.eternal-september.org:
> OTOH, a SLC hut/vault will have more (and better-quality)
> batteries that last much longer, in part because they're in a
> relatively protected environment and in part because the telco
> tests and replaces them regularly.
That was not the case with the SLC that serves me (right across the
street). We were lucky to get 1 or 2 minutes of service during a
power outage. When I had a line on the telco and one on the cable
co., the cable co. line would last at least an hour or so after the
telco line had failed. I hear the telco service has improved since
then, but I no longer have their service, so I could not say.
--
Paul
Glen Labah
<5b49cd72-52e6-4551...@s9g2000vby.googlegroups.com>,
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> Are there still "rural co-op" telephone service? I did some research
> a while back and found most merged and were taken over by Independent
> phone companies or became general communications suppliers, such as
> cable and phone.
This is the closest one to where I live
http://www.canbytel.com/
They may look and refer to itself on the web site as a "company" in
places, but if you look at the membership page
http://www.canbytel.com/about/patronage/
it talks of paying a membership fee to become part of the system.
Some years back the phone companies serving Portland were so offended at
their co-op's continued existence that they made it a long distance call
to call there. At least 12 years ago that went away and it is now a
local call from Portland.