HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tp@jet.uk (Tarang K Patel)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: Caller ID
Date: 21 Jan 93 09:46:46 GMT
Distribution: uk
Organization: Joint European Torus

In <6531@mccuts.uts.mcc.ac.uk> zzatsjl@uts.mcc.ac.uk (Janusz Lukasiak) writes:


>I don't understand all these arguments about nuissance calls and quintuple
>glazing salesmen. Firstly, the first time round you wouldn't know who it is
>anyway. Secondly, if a persistent heavy breather or salesman doesn't take
>'get lost' (or equivalent) for an answer, he'll ring again. What do you do
>then - leave the phone ringing and ringing, and ringing again in 30 minutes?
>I'm not sure what sort of additional protection the knowledge of caller ID
>offers in such a situation.
 
 With call ID, as a result of digital networks, there is a device on the
 market which allows call barring. Mind you this wont be available in U.K for
 some 5 years, as Telecom companies like B.T and Mercury are in the business
 of fleecing its customers for as much time and money they can before offering
 a service beyond that offered by the 70's technology - yet having spent 
 millions in ad's promoting that 80's and 90's tech has been installed by them.

 Anyway before I get side tracked, the call barring system works quite simply:
 You have a number of well known 'quintuple glazing' telesales phone numbers,
 which you simply register from your phone hand set as numbers to be barred.
 Thus when any one of these numbers dial in to you all they receive is an
 engaged tone. While as far as your phone is concerned it is free to receive
 legitimate callers. I mean the idea is you wouldn't let a total stranger
 into your house, just because he asked himself in - so why allow a caller in !


 Have you ever wondered with all the hype about system X and/ or Y what has 
 really changed for the private Telephone user since say the 70's ---

     "Not an iota ....  "

 Stuff the B in T and let NTT, AT&T ad Pacific bell etc... come in and show
 B.T and Mercury how its done. :-)

  Tarang

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr Tarang Kumar Patel            |      snailmail : Jet Joint Undertaking,
Hunterskil ltd,                  |                  Abingdon,
Project House,                   |                  Oxfordshire OX14 3EA,
110/113 Tottenham Court Road,    |                  England.
London W1P 9HG                   |
                                 |      Email    : tp@jet.uk          
 { o'| `0 }                      |
    -~~-                         |      Tel      : (+44) (0235) 464533
     uu                          |      Fax      : (+44) (0235) 464766        
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Disclaimer: Please note that the above is a personal view and should not 
  be construed as an official comment from the JET project.
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
From: ian@unipalm.co.uk (Ian Phillipps)
Subject: Re: 144 (Chargecard) - can you speed it 
Organization: Unipalm Ltd., 216 Cambridge Science Park, Cambridge CB4 4WA, UK
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 12:29:13 GMT

mandarin@cix.compulink.co.uk (Richard Cox) writes:

>I am puzzled as to why you are using a Chargecard from home ?
>At over double the cost of directly dialled calls ?

Well, I'm not he, but I also have a chargecard number programmed into
my home phone. It's my employer's account, and is used when I'm on
PIPEX 24-hour support duty. I have to phone customers (who are in the
UK) and very occasionally UUnet and other international network peers
while my PIPEX-supplied phone line is in use connected to the
Internet. This happens sufficiently rarely that it's not worth PIPEX's
while renting me two lines, or paying the bills on my own line :-(

Ian
-- 
Ian Phillipps, Unipalm Ltd, 216 Science Park,		Phone +44 223 420002
Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 4WA, England.		Phax  +44 223 426868
PIPEX is a division of Unipalm Ltd. - phone 0223 424616.
From: mjh@dmu.ac.uk (Mike Howarth)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Teletext Servers
Date: 21 Jan 93 22:50:08 GMT
Distribution: uk
Organization: De Montfort University Milton Keynes, UK.

I have recently seen an article on providing Teletext across the Internet.
 This has sparked off some questions in my mind.  I am dealing with
implementation of a campus based Teletext system.  
Therefore, if anyone out there has any experience of teletext useage, and
particualrly wide area distribution of teletext I would be very pleased to
receive eMail.  I will summarize on this group.

Question : Is there a need for a uk.telecom.teletext group ??  Would this
be of any use ??  Please reply to me and if I see a decent number of
answers I will 'lobby' the appropriate people

OK - that's all for now - back to the grind of writing driver software for
the system :-( !!

regards
Mike.
Mike J. Howarth - SSG Manager
De Montfort University Milton Keynes ENGLAND
+44 908 695511 (Switch) +44 908 834945 (Direct/Voicemail) +44 908 834948 (Fax)
eMail as mjh@dmu.ac.uk (Internet et al) or mjh@uk.ac.dmu (JANET)

-- 
Mike J. Howarth - SSG Manager
De Montfort University Milton Keynes ENGLAND
+44 908 695511 (Switch) +44 908 834945 (Direct/Voicemail) +44 908 834948 (Fax)
eMail as mjh@dmu.ac.uk (Internet et al) or mjh@uk.ac.dmu (JANET)
From: jwp@aber.ac.uk (J W Perkins)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: caller ID
Date: 25 Jan 93 13:41:53 GMT
Organization: University of Wales, Aberystwyth

In article <memo.878861@cix.compulink.co.uk> mandarin@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
>woolleym@uhura.aston.ac.uk (M WOOLLEY) asks about Caller ID suppression:
>
>>>  Will this be available in the uk ???
>
>Yes, and the code here will be 141.  It is expected that there will be no
>charge made here for suppression of the caller ID on a per-call basis but
>it is unlikely to be made available on a permanent basis except in special
>cases.
>
The main reasons FOR caller-ID that I can think of are nuisance and obscene
calls, when the calling number can be furnished to the police, and cold-
calling sales-people who you can ring back when THEY are likely to be
watching their favourite television programme. Once a facility exist for the
caller to suppress the information - and both these type of caller would
surely make use of this - I fail to see the advantage of having caller-ID
on the 'phone for bona-fide callers, whose number you are likley to have 
anyway. Can someone enlighten me?

                                                            Jeremy Perkins
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
From: gtoal@pizzabox.demon.co.uk (Graham Toal)
Subject: Re: Itemised Bills
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 19:14:43 +0000

	It's almost certain BT already log in detail, and just generated the

One piece of evidence for this is (the few times we've heard about) when
people have been convicted of offenses that involved retrospectively tracing
their phonecalls.  One can assume hoaxed IRA bomb calls would be less than
10 units...

Of course, it's possible that they only log all calls from certain phones,
eg all coinboxes in the country.  But I find that doubtful.

G
From: marlow@sys.uea.ac.uk (Keith Marlow PG)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: Itemised Bills
Date: 26 Jan 93 14:00:57 GMT
Organization: UEA School of Information Systems, Norwich, UK.

nigelm@ohm.york.ac.uk (Nigel Metheringham) writes:

>>[...]

>I was rather impressed to find that Mercury use both sides of the
>paper for printing the itemised calls information (although both
>myself and my wife missed this originally and started looking for
>the missing sheet).  This of course halves the size of the requried
>rain forest!

  Neat idea that, do BT have plans to do that?  It seems that the BT bills
seem to be an exercise in over how many pages you can possibly spread what
usually amounts to about 15-20 lines of info... Also BT bills seem too
complex for what they are.

  As an aside the amount of 'flyer' post seems to gone up from all the
utility suppliers of late, I wouldn't mind so much if they sent it with a bill,
but just posting something which going to go straight into the bin seems a
big waste.

  Keith
--
Keith Marlow,              *  Phone Cyclone BBS on 0603 260973; 100Mb of
Information Systems P/G,   * downloads for Arc's & Beebs + associated fidonet
University of East Anglia, * echoes + all information on commercial radio +
Norwich. Norfolk NR4 7TJ   * + Acorn support area. Running on Archiboard s/w.
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
From: dec@alex.com (Doug Clinton)
Return-Path: <news@alex.com>
Subject: Re: Itemised Bills
Organization: Alex Technologies Ltd
Apparently-To: mail2news@demon.co.uk
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 14:45:43 +0000

In article <931325141322@ibm3090.bham.ac.uk>, TREHARAJ@ibm3090.bham.ac.uk writes:
|> ==============================================================================
|> Could anybody explain what modifications BT would need to carry out in
|> order to supply the residential customer with a fully itemised bill?
|> Why is it that Mercury can do so?

BT would almost certainly have to install a very large amount of extra
mass storage in order to log every all to provide fully itemised
bills. Mercury can manage it because they have far fewer customers
(probably one or two orders of magnitude) which means they do not have
to store as much data.

Regards,
Doug

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Clinton				Alex Technologies Ltd
dec@alex.com				CP House,
					97-107 Uxbridge Road,
+44 (0)81 566 2307			Ealing, London, W5 5TL
	    === PGP 2.1 public key available ===
---------------------------------------------------------------
From: ken@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Ken Johnson)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: Mercury portable phone network???
Date: 22 Jan 93 16:35:56 GMT
Followup-To: uk.telecom
Organization: William's Wonderful Wonky Widget Warehouse


In article <727560615snz@gilly.demon.co.uk> Alastair@gilly.demon.co.uk
writes:

#  They will be offering a mobile phone service [...] initially with a more
#  limited coverage inside the M25 for launch

A fat lot of good that will be to the rest of us. 

#  ...and rolling out from there to the Greater London area over the next
#  nine months. 

The WHOLE of the GREATER LONDON AREA? Well, that's all right then. 


-- 
Son, all the pretty, intelligent, healthy     #    I have discovered of this
young women are taken. It's a basic rule of   #    basic rule of the universe
the universe, and if you don't like it, go    #    a most remarkable proof,
somewhere else.        -- my dad  1906-1992   #    which this .signature is too
From: TREHARAJ@ibm3090.bham.ac.uk
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: Call charges
Date: 25 Jan 93 17:41:03 GMT
Organization: The University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
NNTP-Posting-Host: ibm3090.bham.ac.uk

==============================================================================
Doug Clinton writes:

>In article <931625141639@ibm3090.bham.ac.uk>, TREHARAJ@ibm3090.bham.ac.uk write:
|> ==============================================================================
|>
|> Is it true that when I make a call BT only charge for whole units and so I am
|> being overcharged for the vast majority of my calls?
>|>
>
>It is true that BT only charge for whole units regardless of how much
>of the unit you have used. It is not correct to say that BT are
>'overcharging' for your calls since this is how their charging
>structure is defined.
>
>Regards,
>Doug

If they _do_ take this into account when calculating their unit
costs, they must estimate the amount they make from these part units
and adjust the unit costs accordingly. It's a pretty dodgy way of
pricing services whatever they are doing, the fact they tell you how
their dodgy system works doesn't mean they are not overcharging.

Andy
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
From: woolleym@uhura.aston.ac.uk (M WOOLLEY)
Subject: Re: Teletext Servers
Organization: Aston University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL241235]
Distribution: uk
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 14:43:19 GMT

Mike Howarth (mjh@dmu.ac.uk) wrote:
: 
: Question : Is there a need for a uk.telecom.teletext group ??  Would this
: be of any use ??  Please reply to me and if I see a decent number of
: answers I will 'lobby' the appropriate people
: 
: Mike J. Howarth - SSG Manager
: De Montfort University Milton Keynes ENGLAND

There is a news group uk.teletext.news that I have on news groups list,
but i have never seen any new articles written to it. Whether anyone else 
follows this group I dont know. Perhaps every one else is like me, just keeping hold of it, just in case anything happens!

Mark.
--
***********************************************************************
* E-mail : WoolleyM@spock.aston.ac.uk * 69 Arden Road                 *
* Mark Woolley  Elec. Eng. Dept.      * Aston Birmingham B6 6AP  U.K. *
* Aston Uni. Birmingham England       * Tel :++ 44 21 515 2962        *
***********************************************************************
From: swssauby@susssys1.reading.ac.uk (Michael Saunby)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: caller ID
Date: 25 Jan 93 16:52:01 GMT
Organization: University of Reading

jwp@aber.ac.uk (J W Perkins) writes:

>In article <memo.878861@cix.compulink.co.uk> mandarin@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
>>woolleym@uhura.aston.ac.uk (M WOOLLEY) asks about Caller ID suppression:
>>
>>>>  Will this be available in the uk ???
>>
>>Yes, and the code here will be 141.  It is expected that there will be no
>>charge made here for suppression of the caller ID on a per-call basis but
>>it is unlikely to be made available on a permanent basis except in special
>>cases.
>>
>The main reasons FOR caller-ID that I can think of are nuisance and obscene
>calls, when the calling number can be furnished to the police, and cold-
>calling sales-people who you can ring back when THEY are likely to be
>watching their favourite television programme. Once a facility exist for the
>caller to suppress the information - and both these type of caller would
>surely make use of this - I fail to see the advantage of having caller-ID
>on the 'phone for bona-fide callers, whose number you are likley to have 
>anyway. Can someone enlighten me?

Lots of folk will only see reps by appointment and I guess these same
people will only take calls from callers who give their ID.

When caller ID is available I would certainly lift the handset and drop
it, I dont work for CID or Child Line or any of the many other organisations
who might take anonymous calls.  Would you open your door to a man wearing
a mask (and carrying a briefcase of course).

Cold sales people will always give their number, just pretend you are
interested but busy and say you'll call them when you've finished what
you are doing (around midnight :-) ).

>                                                            Jeremy Perkins 
-- 
	Michael Saunby (M.Saunby@reading.ac.uk) 
	Meteorology Dept, Reading University, UK
From: ken@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Ken Johnson)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: Mercury portable phone network???
Date: 25 Jan 93 14:59:53 GMT
Followup-To: uk.telecom
Distribution: uk
Organization: William's Wonderful Wonky Widget Warehouse


In article <C19oHI.6vJ@exnet.co.uk> dhd@exnet.co.uk (Damon) writes:

#  Didn't you know there's no intelligent life ouside the M25, Ken? 

No, but if you sing the verse I'll join in the chorus.


#  Consider the relative population inside the M25 and in the whole of
#  Scotland.  Consider the land area and terrain.  Now, Ken, *you* chose
#  which one you'd invest you paycheque on start-up comms technology for... 


Why, Scotland of course.  People are sparser on the ground and have a
greater need for telecomms.  Inside the M25 more or less anything you
want (except fresh air, peace, scenery and a decent haggis) can be had
just by reaching for it. 




-- 
Son, all the pretty, intelligent, healthy     #    I have discovered of this
young women are taken. It's a basic rule of   #    basic rule of the universe
the universe, and if you don't like it, go    #    a most remarkable proof,
somewhere else.        -- my dad  1906-1992   #    which this .signature is too
From: wdrdjh@thor.cf.ac.uk (Dr D J Harvey 92)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: Victorian exchange names (was Re: Guest has run up HUGE bill)
Date: 21 Jan 93 12:38:20 GMT
Distribution: uk
Organization: University of Wales College at Cardiff
X-Mailer: Cardiff Computing Maths PP Mail Open News Gateway

In article <1993Jan20.165108.10816@visionware.co.uk> chris@visionware.co.uk (Chris Davies) writes:
|My only slight quibble is that I've got two 1-unit calls in the section
|which itemises calls of more than 10 units...

Had you, by any chance, asked for ADC (using *40*) for these calls ?

Dave Harvey  
(harveydj@cardiff.ac.uk)  tel: +44 222 552588
Dept Radiology, University Hospital of Wales, Heath Park, Cardiff CF4 4XW, UK
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
From: Alastair@gilly.demon.co.uk (Alastair James Gilchrist)
Subject: Re: Mercury portable phone network??? 
Distribution: world
Organization: DIS(organised)
Reply-To: Alastair@gilly.demon.co.uk
X-Mailer: Simple NEWS 1.90 (ka9q DIS 1.19)
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 22:30:36 +0000

In article <JRG.93Jan21123538@oak48.doc.ic.ac.uk> jrg@doc.ic.ac.uk writes:

>In article <1993Jan20.123940.26865@unipalm.co.uk> keith@unipalm.co.uk (Keith
> Mitchell) writes:
>
>   This will be their PCN service, a sort of half-way house between CT2...
>   [rest deleted]
>
>Can anyone remember how many franchises there were in total? I seem to
>remember that two of the franchisees (?) merged and one may be up for
>grabs (BT et al might be trying for it, cos they weren't allowed one
>originally).
>
>James.
>
>--
>James Grinter, c/o Dept Of Computing, Imperial College, LONDON, SW7 2BZ.
>Aeval({227406,131304,719166,950732,993440,1364628,1491756,1868584,1235232,;
>2151480,2524368,2802876,2769312,2839886,3104325,1824},;
>{|x,y| QQout(chr((x%2048)/y)+chr(int((x/2048)/y))) })

Originally there were three PCN licences awarded, Unitel (a consortium of
US West, Thorn EMI and some others), Microtel (a consortium of British
Aerospace and others) and Mercury Personal Communications (consortium of 
Cable & Wireless, Motorola and others). Sorry I cannot remember all the 
original applicants, after all it was over three years ago.

As both Unitel and MPC chose Ericsson as their switch supplier they decided
to set up a joint company called PNA (short for parallel network architecture)
with the intention of sharing the huge capital costs of developing the
infrastructure. This was formed in 1991 I think. Last year a number of the
smaller shareholders were bought out by US West and MPC and now they share
the costs and control of the company (called Mercury Personal Communications)
on a 50/50 split.

I am a bit more hazy about Microtel's past but I know the Hong Kong company
Hutchison Wampoa bought a large stake in the operation. I believe that
British Aerospace are trying to sell their entire stake in the operation.
Rumour also has it that Hutchison are packaging up different parts of their
business to sell, but I stress this is only unsubstantiated rumour.

I think BT are precluded from buying into PCN (they would have done so by 
now if they were allowed), anyway through ownership of cellnet they are
allowed to set up a GSM system as an extension of their original mobile 
licence (cellnet that is).
From: malcolmr@sun.pcl.ac.uk (Malcolm Ray)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: Mercury portable phone network???
Date: 22 Jan 93 20:50:48 GMT
Organization: University of Westminster

In article <C19oHI.6vJ@exnet.co.uk> dhd@exnet.co.uk (Damon) writes:
  .
  .
  .
>Didn't you know there's no intelligent life ouside the M25, Ken?

The M25 itself is, of course, a boundary condition.  Those on it exhibit
*some* attributes of intelligence.
From: josephs@msen.com (Joseph Stroup)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Users Group
Date: 25 Jan 1993 01:59:10 -0500
Organization: Msen, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, Michigan
Distribution: uk
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.msen.com

Zmodem through PDP's ? I agree with Ed from Msen. There are
much better ways of doing things. Theres a new users group here
in the Ann Arbor area that you can join and do e-mail, news, ftp
and more....Why waste the time trying a hack. There are many good
sites to go to. Telnet & all the rest are a phone call away. There
is a real plus to being part of a users group. For info on the new
Network Users Group, Ltd = a Non Profit group and access, mail to...



              info@sally.joe.com
              
-- 
J. Stroup     Manager  Network Users Group, Ltd.
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
From: gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Subject: Re: Mercury portable phone network???
Reply-To: gdb15@cl.cam.ac.uk
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 18:52:35 GMT

In article <C19oHI.6vJ@exnet.co.uk> dhd@exnet.co.uk (Damon) writes:
>In article <8236@skye.ed.ac.uk> ken@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Ken Johnson) writes:
>>
>>In article <727560615snz@gilly.demon.co.uk> Alastair@gilly.demon.co.uk
>>writes:
>>
>>#  They will be offering a mobile phone service [...] initially with a more
>>#  limited coverage inside the M25 for launch
>>
>>A fat lot of good that will be to the rest of us. 
>>
>>#  ...and rolling out from there to the Greater London area over the next
>>#  nine months. 
>>
>>The WHOLE of the GREATER LONDON AREA? Well, that's all right then. 
>
>Didn't you know there's no intelligent life ouside the M25, Ken?  But
>then I guess you won't be able to understand me anyway since you're
>outside the M25.  B^>

Er, but you're all missing one thing... the whole of Greater London
is *inside* the M25.  How can the service roll out from a larger
area to a smaller one?
--
Guy Barry, University of Cambridge | Phone: +44 (0)223 334757 
Computer Laboratory                | Fax: +44 (0)223 334678
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street  | JANET: Guy.Barry@uk.ac.cam.cl 
Cambridge CB2 3QG, England, UK     | Internet: Guy.Barry@cl.cam.ac.uk
From: syngen@dir.ulcc.ac.uk (Syngen Brown LNT)
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
Subject: Re: Phone lines from cable operators
Date: 22 Jan 1993 15:24:38 GMT
Organization: London Network Team
Reply-To: s.brown@lon.ac.uk
NNTP-Posting-Host: dir.ulcc.ac.uk

In article <C13Mun.2F6@micromuse.co.uk> peter@micromuse.co.uk writes:
>
>Yes, but what about Westminster Cable TV then ?
>
>I asked about phone services, and the rather bored reply was something like:
>
>"We're owned by BT, so don't even bother trying to ask..."
>
>Well, there goes the idea of competition. How many other Cable TV co's
>are owned by BT (or at least a percentage) ?

It appears that Westminster Cable may be the sole one.  Aberdeen
Cable Services, Coventry Cable and Swindon Cable were previously
part-owned by BT.

-Syngen
-- 

Making hay while the sun shines,
and at midnight too!            
                                
Newsgroups: uk.telecom
From: graeme@fulcrum.co.uk (Graeme Hodgson)
Subject: Re: Caller ID
Organization: Fulcrum Communications
Distribution: uk
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 13:41:48 GMT

In article <1993Jan22.083445.7540@westminster.ac.uk> vassilis@westminster.ac.uk (Vassilis Konstantinou) writes:
>I thought that AT&T already owns a very big part of BT.

Bl**dy hell!  Is this true?!?!  Can anyone confirm this?!?  I do hope
not...


--
Hodj                                                              ~ ~
Email to graeme@fulcrum.co.uk     | "Well I still prefer woble    O O
 - whenever the mood takes you.   | and eenk" - Dave Budd          *
  The opinions expressed above are all my own work, honest.       \_/