Aucbvax.2949 fa.telecom utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!telecom Fri Sep 4 21:45:30 1981 TELECOM Digest V1 #10 >From JSol@RUTGERS Fri Sep 4 21:38:30 1981 TELECOM AM Digest Saturday, 5 Sep 1981 Volume 1 : Issue 10 Today's Topics: The HART Line & Foreign Exchanges Interactive Speech Synthesis - Crossbar and TSPS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 Aug 1981 1222-PDT Subject: The Hart Line From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin) This message appeared in Human Nets Vol 4, #37; it really belongs in TELECOM as it is phone-oriented: Date: 27 Aug 1981 2022-PDT From: Lynn Gold Subject: Has anyone else heard anything about the Hart Line? It's a new phone service which has been out for a few weeks. How it works: 1) You call up toll-free (800) number (a list is given to all members; numbers vary from state to state). 2) After hearing a beep, you enter your 7-digit code 3) After hearing another beep, you then enter 1 + area code and number you want to dial My father got such a number, and after checking it out myself, I would like to share my findings: Advantages: 1) You pay a flat fee of $65. per month. There are no connect charges. 2) The service is new enough to not have hackers (yet). Even if someone DOES find out your number, you don't get billed for it. 3) You can use it anywhere in the continental United States. 4) You can use your Hart Line number 24 hours a day. 5) You can use your Hart Line number as frequently as you like. Disadvantages: 1) It is only supposed to be used by its owner and not family members of the owner, as is permitted by several other systems. [Note: I don't know if they actually can catch anyone who violates this without a great deal of difficulty, since it IS allowable for someone to use it from anywhere...] 2) Once phone hackers DO figure out how to crack this one, they probably will. 3) The quality of the connection provided is poor. Voices are sometimes barely audible. Data transmission would be impossible. 4) The connections only last 15 minutes, after which you and other party are suddenly disconnected with no warning. (Of course, as mentioned above, you CAN call again right away and resume your conversation...) 5) It is difficult to get onto the line. It seems to take anywhere from five to ten minutes just to get to the first tone, and sometimes there is a wait of over a minute after the second tone has been punched in. (Either they are inadequately set up or they are unusually popular.) The people I know who are using it are satisfied with it, since they tend to ring up huge long distance bills, rarely spend more than 15 minutes on the phone to anyone, and aren't interested in data trans- mission. --Lynn ------------------------------ Date: 3 Sep 1981 1039-PDT Subject: A bit more info on Hart Line From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin) The following information was spotted in the August issue of AUDIOMART, a little leaflet devoted to ads for hi-fi equipment, most of the trading of which depends on phone calls. I reproduce it exactly as given, and this is all I know: "A tip that Hart Industries offers a computer-controlled pooled WATS line service w/unlimited calling continental US from any phone for $100 fee + $65/month. Call (305)561-3754, check it out to see." Will Martin ------------------------------ Date: 4 Sep 81 15:42:50-EDT (Fri) From: Jcp.bmd70 at BRL Subject: "Foreign exchanges" In my area (Maryland), the telco offers a service called "foreign exchange connection", whereby you can have a phone in one area act as a phone on a non-local exchange. (Very popular for people living between Baltimore and DC, and wanting to call locally in both cities, etc). This isn't available from all CO's, just the newer ones (ESS, I think). They charge a fee per mile of distance from the foreign exchange per month. Could anyone tell me how this is done, and is the cost to the telco related to the distance involved? Also, is there a better way to do this? -Joe Pistritto- jcp.bmd70@brl ------------------------------ Date: 4 Sep 1981 14:29:12-PDT From: vax135!hpk at Berkeley >From vax135!hpk, Howard Katseff at Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ. Another interactive speech system can be found at 800 225-6261, 800 392-6215 (Massachusetts). This is the Fidelity Information Phone, which gives the latest information on their investment funds. A good fund number to try is 55 (five-five). The biggest problem with this system is that it is often down. When this happens, you get a message asking you to wait for somebody to help you. ------------------------------ Date: 4 Sep 1981 1530-PDT (Friday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Crossbar and TSPS, voice response The examples of Xbar<->TSPS interaction I mentioned (which were local L.A.) are now probably defunct. My friend at telco cannot even remember the prefixes anymore, though he does verify that these hacked up prefixes DID exist for awhile. As was stated by someone else, however, ATT frowns on that sort of thing, and they were early conversions to ESS. Oh well, sorry about that. Most of the operational dialup speech input systems use an (expensive) system from Verbex Systems (an Exxon affiliate), which used to be called Dialog, Inc. or some such. It can handle the spoken digits, yes, and no, with fair accuracy on a speaker independent basis. When I was originally doing research on this a couple of years ago, the only working system I knew of was for the State of Illinois communications system to allow state workers to access WATS lines and such (one of the project heads gave me a demo -- pretty nice, though Touch-Tone is far faster!) Currently, there is at least one Money Market Fund type operation that allows users to interrogate the computer for various prices via the same sort of equipment. --Lauren-- ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest ********************** ------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.