The second day in a row, Israel attacks areas of Israel.
They in a way justify and bolster the position of Hezbollah.
More than 142,000 autoworkers in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada are off the job today.
We are no closer to a cure for the majority of people living with AIDS than we were 10 years ago.
Local residents say this river hasn't been the same since an oil spill here eight years ago.
Between 1990 and 1992, 140 taxi drivers and chauffeurs were slain on the job, making it...
Grebenica is a three- or four-square-kilometer area, about 15 minutes' walk outside of downtown Sarajevo.
It's made up of a collection...
We are not a police force. We are here to implement the military annex to the peace agreement, and that is...
For Pacifica Network News, I'm Bill Cohen in Columbus.
For Pacifica Network News, this is Sammy Lee Webster-Wook in Washington.
For Pacifica Network News, in Tabasco, Mexico, I'm Janice Rohde.
For Pacifica Network News, this is Glenn Reeder at the 11th International AIDS Conference in Vancouver.
And you are listening to the WBAI Evening News, heard Monday through Friday at 6 p.m.
And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI in New York, where it's 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night time for Off the Hook.
And yes, we found the theme.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off.
Good afternoon in the headlines, representatives of the Teamsters.
Put up myself while shaving Now I can't make the call
They couldn't get much worse But if I could, they would
From燃ưởng Building Be probable I'd best expect from Earth
I hope that's understood From燃ưởng Building Bees
Thank you.
And a very good evening to one and all.
This is Emanuel Goldstein over there as Fiber Optic.
How are you doing?
Over here.
Who is that guy that just popped in out of nowhere?
Which guy?
Says no union.
That guy.
Where's that guy coming from?
I don't know.
That's what happens when you leave things up, you know.
These weird people start popping in out of nowhere and messing up your show, which is not really all that cool.
So, anyway, it's good to have you back in the studio live.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Cut.
All right.
I don't know where they came from or who let them in, but that's, yes, that's a bit of fun there.
This is Off the Hook, the program about high technology and new developments in various things that are going on in the world of high technology, I guess is the best way to say that.
Now, we have something pretty major that happened this past week, and that was the FCC approved the Bell Atlantic takeover of 9X.
So, it's now official, folks.
There's no turning around now.
It's going to happen.
In fact, it's going to start happening next month.
No more 9X.
Goodbye, 9X.
9X will become Bell Atlantic.
In fact, last Friday, Bell Atlantic 9X Mobile was renamed Bell Atlantic Mobile.
Really?
It took out the 9X.
It took out the 9X completely.
That's sort of seen as a sign of what's to come.
Wow.
Bell Atlantic Mobile.
Bam.
Yeah.
In fact, they had these people parading down the streets of New Jersey with, like, the Bell Atlantic 9X flag with the 9X cut out from the middle of it, you know, and waving and sort of, you know, like Romanian demonstrators.
In fact, I saw on a bus today, this had nothing to do with Bell Atlantic 9X, mind you, but it's just kind of funny.
They have this picture of the Berlin Wall, right?
And it says, in the end, all tyrannies will fall, you know, as these people are tearing down the Berlin Wall.
It's an advertisement for RCN Cable, saying that those companies that put their customers on hold are destined to be toppled or something like that.
There's one with a picture of Lenin, too.
What's up with that?
I mean, these people are hearkening back to, you know, to Marxist times to sell a product.
I think it's kind of weird.
Well, I'm not exactly convinced about these alternate cable providers.
I was sort of excited by Liberty, and then they kind of disappeared.
Well, that was Liberty.
Liberty turned into RCN.
RCN is Liberty?
RCN took over Liberty.
Oh, okay.
I didn't know it was the same people.
Yeah, that's why there's no more Liberty.
I see.
Liberty's gone.
Liberty was bought and sold.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that's...
I saw an RCN, I guess, lineup of channels that they have.
Yeah.
And it's the only one I've ever seen anywhere that gets C-SPAN 3.
I don't know there was a thing.
There isn't a C-SPAN 3, but they're claiming to carry it anyway.
I don't know.
It's kind of weird.
Even my DSS dish does not get C-SPAN 3.
What does RCN stand for?
It's a communications network.
What?
Residential.
Residential communications network, according to Rebel.
They're a phone company, too.
They're a phone company, too, and they provide internet.
Yes.
So I hear.
But I don't want a single customer of theirs.
I don't either.
All right.
Nobody does.
That's...
It's kind of weird, though.
Oh, here's something.
I don't know if you've seen this.
You know FX, that network that nobody gets?
Sure, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, they advertise more than any other network that people do get.
And apparently, they've started rerunning the X-Files and NYPD Blue.
In fact, the X-Files are starting right now at this very moment in time.
On FX?
On FX, which nobody can get.
It's not even on DSS.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Apparently, Rupert Murdoch really got a lot of people annoyed at him.
So nobody's carrying it.
So the thing is, if you go down to 26th Street and 5th Avenue, they have speakers.
That's the headquarters of FX.
It's in New York City and nobody can get it.
They have speakers and TV sets there.
So you can go down there and actually watch it outside.
You can watch it in the street, yeah.
But they have speakers now, too, so you can listen.
Right.
That's the only place in New York City you can get this.
Maybe RCN carries it.
I'm not sure about that.
But you can't get it on DSS.
You can't get it on whatever cable company you want.
Manhattan Cable don't have it.
Yeah.
Did they?
Did they?
Queens has it?
Yeah.
I get it.
Yeah, but we're talking about Manhattan.
Manhattan don't get it.
We're talking about Manhattan here.
Yeah.
Queens is different.
Brooklyn is different.
But, yeah, that's kind of weird.
That's the only thing you can do there.
Okay, but getting back to the Bell Atlantic 9X thing, you know, what do you make of this?
What do you think is going to happen next?
I fear for my ISDN.
Do you really?
Do you think they're going to have those horrible rates?
If they start inflicting, imposing the New Jersey rates upon us.
Well, you know, the thing is, they have different rates for different states.
Right.
Even within the same R box, or whatever they call them now.
So, I don't think necessarily that the merger is going to mean that the rates are going to
change to exactly the same.
Possibly, but I'd be worried about any kind of rate restructuring at all.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, that really concerns me.
That's true.
It was funny.
A couple nights ago, I was in a grocery store, and there was this really happy-go-lucky 9X
ad on the radio.
A guy singing about ISDN.
You know, I heard that same ad.
Yeah.
I could not believe that something like that actually made it.
It was, it was, so, I couldn't believe it.
Yeah.
I thought I was in, like, another universe or something.
Yeah.
Well, Bell Atlantic's big thing is ADSL.
Yeah, right, which I wouldn't mind having.
They claim to be offering that as early as next year to residential customers.
Yeah.
So, that might actually, you know, help us deal with their ridiculous ISDN pricing.
Well, they better hurry up, or else I'm going to end up buying a T1.
Yeah.
The problem with ADSL, you need, don't you, don't you still have the same problem?
You need somebody to call who has ADSL or something?
Well, yeah, you do.
But I imagine if they offer it, more people will start, start providing it.
Yeah.
That's my understanding of it.
I don't know if that's such a great idea.
Just to provide scientific evidence, because it's always best to be scientific about these things,
we've heard all kinds of rumors and speculation as to just what's going to be happening with 9X.
And I figure, where better else to go than 9X themselves to find out what is going to happen to 9X, and when.
Okay?
So, let's get on the phone here.
Let's get ourselves a dial tone.
Okay?
And we're going to actually call live on the air.
This is not fake.
This is real.
We're going to call a 9X operator and ask them, what's up?
9X.
Can you help me?
Yes, hi.
I just heard that 9X has been taken over by another company.
Can you tell me how that's going to affect me?
Actually, sir, one second, please.
There are no plans for any changes at this time, so it should be business as usual.
There should be no changes whatsoever, at least not at this time.
Any changes would certainly be announced.
I see.
Do you know if the company's name is going to be changing?
At this point, sir, I don't think there's any plans for that.
I don't really know when anything...
Let me just see here for a second.
Actually, what you'd want to do is talk to the business office.
May I get you a directory assistance?
They'll provide a number free of charge, because I don't have any of that information.
Well, that's okay.
I was just a little curious.
Yeah.
My curiosity has been satisfied.
Thank you very much.
All right.
You're very welcome, sir.
Thank you.
I can't believe they actually tried to connect me to information.
They always try to do that.
They always try to charge you for something.
Unbelievable.
They're going to have to change that little blurb at the beginning.
I'm sorry, repeat that?
A little blurb right before she came on that said 9X.
Yeah, well, they're going to have to change it.
I think they're going to have to change it.
But according to her, there's no plans to change the name.
You see?
I think they're changing it.
I think she, you know, okay, but this is where the scientific part comes in, all right?
Because that's one.
Right.
All right.
Now, I found that, you know, you have to do this a few times in order to get, like, you
know, the scientific average going.
So let's get ourselves another dial tone and hope that we don't get the same operator,
which has happened to me.
Let's got the same operator three times in a row.
It was embarrassing for both of us.
9X.
Remember when it was New York Telephone?
9X.
Yep.
Are we all excited when they said 9X the first time?
Yeah.
Do you want me to help you?
Yes, hi.
I heard that 9X has been taken over by another company, and I was wondering how that would
affect me.
To my knowledge, it's not affecting anybody at all.
Oh, really?
Yes, sir.
Okay, there's no plans to change the company name or anything like that?
Well, we will soon be Bell Atlantic.
Uh-huh.
Okay, so it's going to be called Bell Atlantic.
Yes, sir.
All right, so I'll have to write my check to somebody else then.
No, not until we let you know.
When your bill comes in, if it's changed, then you'll know when it comes in.
I see.
But as far as I'm concerned right now, the bills are still going out as 9X.
Okay.
They haven't gone as far as that to change the name to everything.
Okay, you don't know when that's going to happen?
No, I'm sorry, I don't.
Okay.
All right, well, thanks for your help.
You're welcome.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Okay, they have someone who's more informative, didn't try to transfer me to directory
assistance where there's a, what, 45-cent charge just to, like, find out that they
don't know what's going on either, and they were pretty helpful overall, and they said
the name is going to change, which everybody knows the name is going to change.
So, now the tiebreaker.
Okay.
This is number three, and, of course, every time you do this, the odds of getting the
same operator increase.
So, it's a dangerous game, but someone's got to play it.
9X.
Hello?
Gordon?
Yes, hello.
I just heard that 9X has been taken over by another company, and I was wondering how
that will affect me.
Hello, sir.
Hold on to my supervisor.
Thank you.
Actually, scientifically, that makes sense.
There's one that says yes, one that says no, and one that says, that's my supervisor.
Okay.
Here we go.
What?
Hello?
Supervisor, Mr. Do you want me to help you?
Yes, hi.
I just heard that 9X has been taken over by another company.
I was wondering how that's going to affect me.
Bellatlantic.
Oh, Bellatlantic took over, huh?
Yes.
Okay, so what's this going to mean for me, or for anybody, for that matter?
You're going to still be, you'll still be getting service, sir.
Okay, that's good.
But will the company's name be changing, or will I have to write checks to somebody else?
Will the rates change?
Not until they've sent it to you in the bill.
I see.
And do you expect that to happen anytime soon?
That I don't know.
I'm going to be honest.
I don't know.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, that's an honest answer.
Right.
Thank you very much for your help.
You're welcome.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
And when you hear it from the supervisor, they don't know.
You know they don't know.
Yeah.
They're out of the loop.
That's the official position of 9X.
They don't know.
And that's probably why they've been taken over by Bellatlantic.
Okay.
So that's where we stand on that.
It's going to be exciting.
You know, all these new phone vans driving around.
Yeah.
We've got to change the paint job on the 2600 van yet again.
Unbelievable.
Well, okay.
So that's the week's most exciting news.
Another exciting thing on a personal level, I got my Omnipoint bill.
Yeah.
Oh, yes, I got my Omnipoint bill.
Yeah, you know, those chuckleheads, they told me that it was 25 cents around the clock
a minute, all right?
Oh, you should have known better than that.
It's actually 49 cents a minute, you know, practically the whole day.
Oh, it's 49 cents peak.
Peak from like 7 a.m. to 6 a.m. or something like that.
6 p.m., yeah.
Whatever it is.
No, 9 p.m., actually.
Oh, 9?
Yeah, yeah.
A lot of people get caught in that one.
They think, oh, it's 6 o'clock, I can make some calls, and they actually are in peak
hour.
Yeah, which I think is an outrageous price for something that's supposed to be cheaper than
cellular, because I don't think cellular is any more expensive than 49 cents a minute.
Oh, you're leaving out the small minor detail that you ate up all your 300 free minutes
pretty quickly.
Well, yeah, that's true as well, but, you know, part of the reason for that is because,
you know, 300 minutes are counted on incoming and outgoing, all right?
So, you know, somebody calls you and has all these, like, things to tell you, you know,
their time is going, too, if they're calling on one of those phones, and your time is going.
So it's like, you know, it goes pretty fast.
300 minutes is not all that much.
Well.
It really isn't.
In fact, I think it's Sprint or it's AT&T that offers 1,000 free minutes for like 50 bucks,
so it's really not, you know, an incredible deal.
And Bell South offers something along those lines, too, for cheaper.
But the thing is, they also charged $10 more than they were supposed to for this Pioneer
plan.
79?
No, 69.
I have a piece of paper that says 69.99 special offer thing.
69.99 is the advance plan.
Well, that's the one I want, then.
The one that's more, less money is the advance plan.
No, the Pioneer plan is 79.
No, they call it the Pioneer plan.
And you know what else?
They call it the Pioneer plan for new customers.
Oh, really?
Not for old customers, for new customers.
I never heard of that.
Yeah, I'll show you the piece of paper.
That's really confusing.
They were giving it out at like a county fair or something.
I think they made a major typo, because I know for a fact, since the beginning, it's
been 79.
Well, it's pretty clear here.
And in fact, you know, the person I spoke to on the phone made it clear that was the
number.
They made it clear it was 25 cents around the clock.
And the other thing, I signed up for this penny-a-minute weekend plan, which they signed
me up for, and they billed me for it.
The only thing they didn't do was apply it to the bill.
Oh.
So I'm paying for a plan, and I'm paying the 49 cents a minute or 25 cents a minute or whatever
rate applied for that period, not the penny-a-minute.
That I signed up for.
And plus, you know, according to them, there were only three dropped calls, and there were
many, many more than that, like, you know, in the range of dozens.
There's this whole section downtown, which I believe is still out.
St. Mark's?
Yeah, actually, I think some explanation of that is in order.
Yeah.
From what I can tell, it does not appear that there is anything wrong with Omnipoint's cell
site.
It would appear that the leased lines that go between the cell site and the base station
controller are oftentimes down, because I've had times when I've been within the vicinity
of the cell site around St. Mark's.
I've had a call go through, and the person can hear me, but I can't hear them.
Right.
And then I've had other times where I try to make a call, and nothing happens.
It says connecting.
Right.
And I get the little beep.
And you get a click in your ear.
Yeah.
And nothing.
Okay.
Let me explain.
In the St. Mark's area, which is basically between 2nd and 3rd Avenue on 8th Street,
St. Mark's, that's what will happen, invariably, I've found.
Yeah.
You'll make the phone call, and you won't hear anything, and they won't hear anything,
but the call will be made.
Yeah.
Now, lots and lots of other areas in the city, particularly around the Houston Street area,
I know because during the whole Beyond Hope conference, this was happening to me, they
can hear you, but you cannot hear them.
Right.
Now, you know, there's several problems here.
But the thing that I find most annoying is that this whole St. Mark's problem has been
around for over a month now.
Yeah.
And it hasn't been fixed.
Yeah.
I think, I mean, that's bad enough in and of itself, because I know that if I'm getting
near St. Mark's, I have to tell people, I have to call them back, or else I forget,
and then they vanish instantly, as soon as I get handed off to St. Mark's as I'm walking.
Yeah, you've got to run down the street really fast.
But I think the fault here probably rests on MFS.
MFS.
MFS is the owner of those lease lines.
And if they're listening, the geniuses at MFS and Telenet might want to take a look
at the lease lines that go to the Omnipoint cell site in the vicinity of St. Mark's.
Right.
Well, I mean, the thing is, though, you're using an Omnipoint phone.
I realize that.
Shouldn't Omnipoint be the ones that bear the ultimate responsibility?
Yeah.
Well, it's, yeah, it's their service.
Right.
But, I mean, it's not specifically their fault.
Well, it's kind of hard to report these things to them when it takes, like, an hour for them
to pick up the phone.
I really, yeah.
Has that been fixed?
I mean, I got a nice little letter from them saying.
I got a note from them, an SMS message on my phone, as I'm sure lots of other people
did saying that they're going to be working on their customer services system.
I don't know if it's, I haven't had a need to call them recently, so I don't know if
it's improved at all.
Well, let's find out.
All right.
We have a phone right here.
Okay.
And we're going to call, what, that, uh, 1-888-Omni-611?
That's right.
Okay.
O-M-N-I-6-1-1.
Let's see if they have that announcement saying that they have this unbelievably high call volume.
Welcome to Omnipoint.
We are currently experiencing unusually high call volume.
I guess it hasn't been fixed.
If you're going to activate your phone.
Yes.
Well, so that means they'll keep you on hold forever.
Now, it's not unusual anymore because it's been like this for a couple of months.
Every time you call them, they say that.
I mean, what I think we have here, we have a company that's, that's obviously doing quite
well market-wise.
You know, they're advertising all over the place, obviously getting a lot of customers.
They're getting more customers than they can handle.
Now, I, you know, the, the, the, the infrastructure is collapsing under the weight of all these new
companies, new, new customers.
Yeah.
I think the responsible thing to do here is to stop the marketing and wait until the infrastructure
catches up and they can like deal with all these new customers before they start, you
know, getting all these new people in who are going to become unsatisfied and begin speaking
out against it on the radio.
And I think that's, you know, that's, that's something I think any company should, should
follow.
You know, it's, I don't know.
It's, it's, it's very frustrating.
Another thing happened, and you might not be aware of this because not very many people
have, have need to use this, but if you use 9-1-1 on an Omnipoint phone.
Right.
After five minutes, it disconnects you because it doesn't supervise.
Right.
It's a free call.
And apparently it thinks that there's something wrong after five minutes without supervision.
Yeah.
There's no answer to supervision.
Not many 9-1-1 calls I realize last five minutes, but there are times when, when something
happens that needs, you know, a longer explanation.
And I happen to have heard of a case in this past week where just that thing happened and
it cut off after five minutes.
And it could have been really, really bad, but fortunately it wasn't.
That's something I think any company is susceptible to, but it's really, you know, a good idea to
test these things to make sure that that doesn't happen.
So that's my Omnipoint spiel for now, but boy, I was, I was pretty shocked by the bill.
It was about 600 bucks.
600 bucks.
Yeah, my, my, my, my most recent bill I think was about 200.
Uh-huh.
And I've been using it constantly.
Well, I was using it, not constantly, but a lot.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how it got that high.
Maybe, maybe my minutes last longer than anything.
I don't know.
I could use a plan that had more minutes or, you know, less.
Well, it was a 49 cents a minute thing that got me because they, you know, I had no idea
it was 49 cents a minute.
And, and they really don't know when they tell you these things.
They tell you things that are wrong.
I don't know who they have working for them, you know, in the customer relations business.
Well, have you, have you found yourself awake in the daytime more recently?
Um, after hope, yes.
I have been awake more in the daytime.
Well, there you go.
Yeah, but I haven't, this bill is for July.
Have you, were you awake more in the daytime in July?
No, no, I hardly was awake in the daytime at all.
Oh, yeah.
Well, then you should have been getting, uh, 25 cents a minute.
That's what I say.
Yeah.
That's what I say.
Okay, 212-279-3400.
I don't know who that was.
Uh, that's our phone number if you want to give us a call.
Uh, credit cards for the new millennium, Visa and MasterCard plan to soon lift restrictions
against banks issuing credit cards that expire in 2000 or later, saying they've nearly licked
the biggest software glitch of the millennium.
The two largest credit card companies imposed the restrictions last October after a technology
fluke caused computers to reject people's cars that expire after 1999.
Because of a bug afflicting companies worldwide, the vast majority of the software running on
mainframe computers translates dates in the year 2000 into dates in the year 1900.
Ingenious.
How many MasterCards were around in the year 1900?
Uh, zero.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know why that would confuse anybody.
The limits will be lifted started August, um, uh, I'm sorry, October 1st, and millions
of cardholders are expected to start getting the new Visa and MasterCards by early next
year.
Spokesmen for Visa and MasterCard said yesterday they had been aggressively working with banks
and retailers to modify their computers and other equipment to fix the problem.
The credit card companies said that nearly all the sites they tested now are equipped
to handle cards with later expiration dates.
But to be safe, MasterCard is suggesting that it's 23,000 financial institutions first test
cards regionally before, uh, beginning in October before they start wide-scale issuance.
I don't know, it just seems amazing to me that they didn't think about this when they
started making, you know, things, what, back in the 60s, 70s, you know, two-digit dates,
hello, you know, eventually we're going to reach 2,000.
I mean, I know we had Reagan in office and we pretty much thought we were all going to
die, but, you know, making 2,000 was a pretty good bet, and we made it, and, uh, you know,
three digits, you know, that would have helped.
Yeah, but you realize that the people that probably supervised those jobs in the 70s
were probably crotchety old farts that sat around saying, well, we're going to be long
dead when that comes around, it's not our problem.
And that's a good thing, too, because if they were still around, they'd have some things
to answer to in front of congressional subcommittees, I'll tell you.
Yep.
So, uh, that's, uh, wow.
I just wish I was around for these decisions that are made, you know, decisions about expanding
area codes, decisions about, you know, only two digits for years, things like that,
you know, decisions about, yeah, no one's going to ever need more than 640k memory, you
know, those kind of things.
I'd just like to have a little say in it.
Or 64 for that matter.
Is that what it was, 64?
I don't know, all these stupid limits that we can ever seem to get past.
So, uh, you know, speaking of credit cards, do you know American Express?
They claim that there's no credit limit, but there really is, because I reached it this
past couple of weeks, you know, buying things for the conference.
I'm not late.
I'm not late paying anything, you know?
I'm on time, no problems, but they turned off my card.
They turned it off because they were concerned that it was getting too high, you know?
And they won't turn it on again until I paid them some money.
Now, what kind of nonsense is this?
They say they have no credit limit, right?
Right.
And they didn't turn it off when you reach what they consider to be a credit limit.
It's just that they don't write it down, but, uh, they've obviously got something somewhere.
It's a concern limit.
But, yeah, that's what they call it, I guess.
Learning a lot.
You can learn a lot about credit card companies when you don't pay them, or when you pay them
late, or when you reach astronomical heights.
You know, you learn all these things that, uh, you never knew were possible.
Hear about this new browser, browser, rather, that's being pushed by Netscape.
They, uh, yesterday introduced a separate version of the popular Navigator browser, a version
that features push technology.
Do you know what push technology is?
Push technology?
Push technology.
Sends online information straight to users' desktops, saving them from having to search
for what they need.
I don't quite understand that.
I don't know what they mean by that.
It taps directly into the user's brain, apparently, and they don't have to actually hit any buttons.
The program had previously only been available as part of Netscape's communicator suite.
When did they start calling programs suites?
Suites.
Oh.
You know, I can never understand.
That's the most misused word I can think of.
You know, you have, like, a mail drop with, like, a little, like, tiny metallic box, and
that's a suite.
Suite, yeah.
You know?
I always thought a suite was, like, you know, this posh, you know, series of rooms that
all these people hung out and sipped champagne in and, you know, did all these things.
And got their mail.
Rich things.
And then mail is delivered once a day.
But, no, now a suite is a little tiny box, and it's also a program.
A bundle of programs enabling employees of large companies to work together over a computer
network.
Isn't that nice?
Oh, yeah.
Netscape is the leading maker of software for moving about the Internet.
That's Newsday's description of what Netscape is.
It's highly technical.
The leading maker of software for moving about the Internet.
Yeah, that's great.
That's Newsday there.
But Microsoft Corp. has been making inroads recently by including its rival program, Internet
Explorer, with other software for no extra charge.
A year ago, Netscape claimed 85% of the market.
Its current share is now only 70%.
Netscape also made an aggressive bid for the home and smaller business markets, announcing
partnerships with major computer manufacturers and Internet service providers.
Several companies, including IBM and Hewlett-Packard, will make Navigator 4.0 available to their
software customers.
In addition, Pacific Bell, Sprint, Earthlink, Deutsche Telekom, and other major Internet service
providers agree to distribute the Netscape software.
Netscape said it would charge $39 for the latest Navigator, but would not charge business
and education customers to use it at home.
Isn't that nice?
Oh, yeah.
Especially when you can get it for free on the net.
Oh, yeah.
I think that they're not going to do that.
I think that's the point.
Okay.
Something interesting in today's Times.
On page A9, I think it was.
Let me open this up here.
There's a big advertisement from AT&T.
What do they have to say?
They're actually responding to the 10321 people.
You know the 10321s?
The 10321 people.
They're the ones that say that they can save overall against AT&T's rates.
Right.
And AT&T actually responded to those upstarts, which makes me think that there must be something
to it.
Otherwise, they wouldn't respond to them.
Now, a lot of these 10XXX companies, they have these rates that there's always something
hidden in.
You know, there's always something that you don't see.
Like, you know, a $4 a month access charge.
You just dial 10XXX and there's like an extra charge.
Or there's a minimum, like a five-minute minimum when you're on the phone.
So every call is at least, you know, a dollar or something.
So 10321, I imagine, doesn't have those restrictions.
Does it say anything about them there as far as...
Nope, it doesn't say anything.
All it says is that they're comparing AT&T's one-rate international plan.
Uh-huh.
And I believe there's a charge for that.
Is there a little asterisk next to that?
Yeah, and it says a $3 monthly fee applies.
Yeah, which is not the case for 10321.
So they've already sort of gotten themselves a higher rate there just by saying that.
You know, it's kind of troubling.
The math isn't so simple.
No, it's not.
And I think they're just hoping that you will be.
A couple of things I brought with me, too.
We're going to take some phone calls.
212-279-3400.
Did you hear about this?
There's these companies out there that actually call themselves things like KTNT.
Letter K, letter T, letter N, letter T.
Say it.
K-t-nt.
No, say the letters.
Oh, K-t-nt.
Sounded like you said AT&T, didn't it?
That somebody on the phone, they'll think you're saying AT&T.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So this company, this company is based in Texas, and Kendale, Texas.
And they also have registered companies known as I Don't Care, anybody, and it doesn't matter.
That's when they ask you what long-distance company you want to use, and you say, I don't care.
You wind up with them.
Is that crazy or what?
So that's, you know, look this over.
That's what's going on in the world of long-distance.
A bunch of sleazebags operating out there.
Don't let anybody be your telco.
Exactly.
Also, this little postcard came to me from Sprint.
Now, this is something that is important because I think we may have guided people astray through no fault of ours.
You know, no fault of ours.
We were trying to get people nice, cheap rates for making phone calls.
And you've got to keep up with these things because they're always changing.
Now, we recommended Sprint and their phone card.
You know, dial 1-800-PHONE-CARD.
And it's 25 cents a minute, no surcharge from any place.
You know, that's a good deal compared to AT&T.
Right?
AT&T charges what?
It's like a buck surcharge every time you make a phone call or something?
A buck?
I don't know.
It's a lot.
It's a lot, I think.
Yeah.
It's more than, you know, a few pennies.
So, anyway, Sprint, 25 cents a minute, no surcharge from a payphone.
That's a good deal.
You'd use that, wouldn't you?
I guess.
Yeah.
Well, guess what?
They changed.
They sent me this little postcard saying, at Sprint, we are committed.
As soon as they say something like that, you know it's, like, bad news.
We are committed to keeping you completely informed about your account.
That's why we want you to know that as of August 1st, 1997, I got this, last week.
Yeah.
Okay.
Your Sprint Sense phone card rates are changing to 30 cents per minute.
Well, five cents more a minute.
Yeah.
That's a pretty hefty charge, I think.
And there'll be a 30 cent per call surcharge.
Unbelievable.
Now, think of what must have happened to this company to have to do such a radical price reconstructing.
You know, they must have really lost their shirts here by offering 25 cents a minute, no surcharge.
Now they have to suddenly scramble, raise the rates, you know, by like 20 percent and charge 30 cents per call on top of that.
I mean, I think we should be sending these people money just to help get them out of whatever financial state they're in.
It's obviously a real severe thing for them to do this.
I'd hate to think that they were just trying to get all these people to use their company and then quietly, quietly charge them a 30 cent surcharge and send them a little tiny postcard saying, by the way, we're going to do exactly what we said we didn't do before.
Because that was the whole point of this service.
They advertised it.
No surcharge.
You know, it was like that was the selling point.
You'll never trust Candace Bergen again.
Well, she's got a lot of explaining to do.
Yeah.
I'll say that.
So, yeah, we still are searching for, you know, cheap ways of making phone calls from pay phones.
Certainly not putting coins in.
That are legal.
That are legal, yes.
And there aren't that many left.
You know, there's a couple.
There's a few.
But Rebel, do you have something?
Yes.
What do you have?
Frontier Communications, they have a 950X.
They charge, I think, 10 cents.
Yes, but Rebel, they charge it to somebody else.
That's the problem.
No, no, no, no, no.
They have 950X.
Frontier has got to be the sleaziest company I think I've ever come across.
You know why?
I mean, I've been talking to these people, and they, you know, they basically charge all
these calls to other people, and they basically don't do anything to get them taken off.
They tell people to fax their bills to an always busy number, you know.
And I talked to New York Telephone, told investigations people about this, and they said Frontier has
got a really, really bad reputation.
Don't expect them to be around much longer.
So, is there anything you want to say about Frontier now?
I guess not.
Okay, so much for that.
There are other companies, though.
There is a company I've heard of.
I'll find out who they are specifically that charges 18 cents a minute.
They've got an 800 number.
The thing I don't like about a lot of these companies, they ask for your social security
number.
You don't have to give it to them.
You can give them any number you want.
It doesn't have to be your number.
There's no crime against doing that.
Okay, that's all we have here.
212-279-3400 is our phone number.
Let's go to the first line.
The first line will cooperate.
Okay, good evening.
You're on the air.
How are you doing?
Let me get the radio off.
Okay.
I hear you talking about all the problems with Omnipoint.
Yeah.
I've had the Sony, the Bell Atlantic Sony Digital CDMA for about two and a half months
now.
Okay.
And it's almost flawless.
Really?
Except for a little echo on the talk side.
You never hear anything but perfect connections on the receive side.
Did you say Sony?
Well, Bell Atlantic is offering it, right?
Yeah, it's Sony Qualcomm.
Okay.
It's the dual mode CDMA type of digital, whatever it is.
How often do you go to analog as opposed to digital?
Almost never in the city.
And then when you go to analog, like in Westchester, it's analog is analog.
Right.
It sounds crappy.
Yeah, yeah.
But the digital, I mean, I call forward from my office to the phone and conduct business
and then people hear me honking my horn and they're like, what's that?
Is there a car in your office?
And it's like, it's really amazing.
What kind of prices?
The phone is $199 and $150 if you trade in an old phone piece of junk.
Uh-huh.
And, you know, you can hand them an empty film canister.
As far as rates?
Oh, $35 a month is 60 minutes.
And, of course, you get incoming minute free, voicemail.
I mean, of course you get incoming.
We're not used to that here.
What do you get?
Oh, really?
Oh, you get first minute incoming free.
We don't get that.
Oh, okay.
And you get caller ID and you get 100 number memory.
And if you program it alphanumeric and the person calls in, it's almost just like you
have the name and number of caller ID because the name will pop up.
Okay, yeah.
I've seen that.
We have that.
Yeah.
Digital voicemail.
You know, like if you don't answer the phone, it kicks to your voicemail and then it has
a little indicator on the screen, the office screen telling you you have voicemail waiting.
Now, how expensive are actual phone calls?
Local.
I have the 60-minute plan and so I get 60 and the weekend's free, that's 5 cents a minute,
$5 a month thing.
And then I think I'm 59 cents a minute.
My boss has the, it's 95 bucks a month for 400 minutes and it's 39 cents a minute.
And I think it goes up to 350 for 1,000 minutes and then it's like 31 cents a minute.
Now, is that price per minute, is that peak or off-peak or both?
There's no off-peak.
Oh, really?
That's your per minute.
But the beautiful thing is, I use it really a lot on the weekends.
And if you call another Bell Atlantic person, it's free.
It's free totally?
Totally free, zero.
It's 5 cents a minute landline charge, which is a bunk.
It's not really free.
Omnipoint is 25 cents a minute, even if you call another Omnipoint phone.
And I hear the quality and the connection is not that great, at least from what you're saying.
Well, I haven't had great experience with it.
I mean, it's, you know, when it works, it works.
But when it doesn't work, you know, you sound like Darth Vader or you just drop out completely
or there's no service.
They said, well, the really cool thing is once you connect, it's sort of like a Nextel-like
connection sequence.
You get the time and date, alpha on the screen, and that means you're connected to two digital
sites.
So you're always in touch with two sites.
And I almost never have dropped calls.
I've talked from Atlantic City to almost Boston.
I've talked for hours at a time and never had a dropped call.
You mean even on a single call from Atlantic City to Boston?
Almost.
Boy, that must have been a serious call.
Yeah, but here's the, well, once you leave, let's see, the range is from Bangor, Maine
to like South Carolina to Pittsburgh.
That's like the home range.
The free range is New York and all of New Jersey, except for a couple of cities down south.
Well, what about the coverage area, though?
I mean, you know, the coverage area is made to South Carolina to Pittsburgh.
Well, you can't go out in Long Island, can you?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I've been to Montauk.
And your phone works?
Yeah.
It goes to analog in a lot of areas.
Okay.
It goes to analog, then.
Yeah.
That's probably what happens.
See, On The Point doesn't do that.
It just goes out completely.
Right.
Unless you're near a whiz.
Yeah, right.
Then it works.
But the other thing is, incoming calls on the weekend are totally free also.
Really?
So you call someone, and then they call you back.
And, you know, if they're in the city, it's a local call.
You have a 917 cell number.
Now, you see, if On The Point was offering things like that, I'd be a lot happier with
them, and I wouldn't be complaining all this.
But when you get, like, these huge bills, and they don't give you the first minute free,
they don't give you free contact between two Omnipoint phones, and they don't give you
free weekends or anything like that, you know, you have to wonder.
GSM's supposed to be the cheapest technology.
It's supposed to be a lot cheaper than cellular, and so far it just has not been.
Everybody that sees this phone wants it, which isn't bad because I get a $25 credit
on my call.
What kind of phone is it?
It's made by Sony.
Sony Qualcomm, which is made in San Diego.
Yeah.
And it looks like that little, you know that Panasonic 900 megahertz, little tiny one, about
the size of a Snickers bar?
It's a little bit bigger than that.
And the best is lithium-ion battery, 40-hour standby, 5-hour digital talk.
Really?
20-standby analog, 2-hours digital, I mean 2-hours analog talk, and a little 9-volt battery-sized
lithium-ion.
Well, that's, you know, that's dependent on your phone, obviously.
Well, there's only one right now.
There's only one phone that works?
Yeah, the Sony Qualcomm.
It's only one that's the dual mode.
Uh-huh.
CDMA or CMDA technology.
Right.
Which is also, I hear, very much like Nextel, in which everybody is talking on the same
frequency, and there's a little packet identifier that sorts you out.
Uh-huh.
So there's no, like, discrete frequencies, and it's frequency hops, so you can't snag it.
Sorry to some of you people out there.
Right.
You know what happens to me?
Like, several times it's happened.
Maybe about a dozen times in the month and a half I've had an Omnipoint phone.
Um, I call somebody, and I hear about five or ten seconds of a conversation before it
connects.
Now, has that...
Or someone else's?
Someone else's conversation.
They can't hear me, but I hear them.
I've never had that happen.
You've never had that happen.
Never.
I've had that happen on Nextel, but I've never had that happen on this.
It's pretty freaky, I'll say that.
I'd like to know if other people have had that happen.
Uh, almost invariably.
I think, you know, as far as I'm concerned, there's never been a case where they've been
able to hear me, but I've been able to hear them pretty clearly for about ten minutes.
There was that time when someone picked up the voicemail greeting, you know, and said,
Hi there!
And some...
Didn't you get some woman answers?
Yeah, some woman answering in a really sexy voice, and then it said, please enter your
password in the non-sexy voice.
And, you know, I called about a hundred times after that to find it again, but it was not
there, and it was something really weird with the connection.
Yeah, but I hear you lamenting the Omnipoint, and I know you like the stuff, and I know
you talk a lot.
The technology is really a lot of fun to play with.
I mean, you know, I can spend hours...
Oh, and you can access directly into the NAM and all those other really things that I'm
not really too up on, but you can punch in anything you want, E-I-N.
You can just access it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's...
Which I'm sure will, you know, make some people happy, but I just, you know, I just want
to use it.
Right.
And it sounds good, so, I don't know, give it a shot.
Well, I think maybe I'll try some other technologies and compare them.
Yeah, and the phone's pretty cool looking, too, so that helps.
Yeah.
That always helps, the cool factor.
All right, thanks for calling.
Sure, good luck.
Yeah, it's amazing.
You'll be walking around with, like, a million different types of phones and different technology
and things like that, and you'll need, like, some pretty heavy-duty finances to pay for
all these different kinds of phones.
Yeah, this is the...
That's the actual size of the phone?
No, it's...
It says actual size closed...
Oh, actual size closed two and a quarter inches by four inches.
Okay.
Yeah, that would be a little ridiculous.
You can actually, you can see it if you go to Qualcomm's website.
Uh-huh.
There's actually two models of the phone.
There's a PCS model that uses CDMA in 19 megahertz band, uh, 1900 megahertz band, sorry.
And there's, um, there's another model that uses CDMA in, uh, in the traditional cellular
band.
Uh-huh.
In, uh, around 800 megahertz.
And Qualcomm is spelled Q-U-A-L-C-O-M-M.
Right.
So, uh, check out their website.
I don't know, though, but, uh, if I had a choice, I would rather my call got dropped
flat out than have it dropped down to analog.
I don't know.
I mean, when you're on a cellular phone, I think you can sort of, uh, say, okay, it's
not the same as a landline, you know, and, and just put that in your head and say, okay,
I'm not going to discuss anything on a cell phone that's that sensitive.
Then again, landlines are not that secure either.
You shouldn't really talk about anything on a phone that's that sensitive because any phone
can be intercepted easily.
Yeah, but it's not only that.
It's like, okay, here's the choice.
If you knew that you were talking on a, on a fairly secure connection, a fairly secure
channel to someone, and then at some point in time you had a choice, you could either
have that call dropped completely or you could have it dropped down to analog and, you know,
subject to being cloned or eavesdropped.
Okay.
Does it tell you when it's dropping down to analog?
I mean, if you look, if you happen to look at the display on the phone, you could probably
see.
Well, it probably beeps or something.
And at that point you have the choice of dropping the call or not dropping the call.
You could be already cloned by that time.
Oh, come on.
That's, uh, you know.
It only takes a second to clone somebody.
Yeah.
But the thing is, you know, when you're talking to somebody and you just like lose the call,
that's pretty damn annoying.
It is.
Oh, I agree with you 100%.
You get 100%.
Pay again, and then they charge you for two phone calls.
But I'd be, I'd be twice as aggravated, maybe nine times as aggravated, if I got a phone
bill and then found out that I was cloned.
Well, yeah, except you're not liable for, for the calls that are made on a clone phone.
No, but, but it's, it's still.
It's kind of fun, too, to see how the clone thing works.
Well, it's the aggravation I'd have to go through to, to, you know, to have the phone
deactivated, have to get a new number.
That, that's, that's a lot of aggravation.
Well, yeah, I know.
I was, I went through that with Omnipoint.
I got five numbers in one day.
Well, that's, that's a whole nother story.
That was, that was, that was a lot of fun.
Okay, let's go on to, uh, next call.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Speak up, please.
Yeah, good evening, Emmanuel.
Good evening, Fiber.
Good evening.
I was just curious.
I turned in a little late.
Um, any word on how Pam is doing?
Uh, she's doing much better.
She's doing much better.
Good.
I hope everything works out for the best for her.
Yes.
And, uh, you know, great convention, great conference, guys.
Thanks for coming.
You did a fantastic job.
Uh, I know you really don't want to look forward to playing the next one, but, uh, if you guys
could kick it off anytime soon, start advertising, because you did a fantastic, fantastic job.
Well, thanks.
It's good, uh, good to know people had fun.
Take care, and, uh, good luck with the Omnipoint.
And, uh, Rebel, I'll be in contact with you.
It's Pyro.
Take care.
Okay.
Uh, he, he immediately developed a look of concern and panic, and he's heading for the
door.
All right.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
All right.
How long?
How you doing?
How long about, because I'm on a cell, too.
How long about what?
To wait.
Huh?
To wait online.
How long to wait online?
Yeah.
Okay.
This is kind of a cryptic thing.
Okay.
How long to wait?
What do you think, Farber?
How long to wait online?
My name is Robert Davis.
I'm a cellular dealer.
I don't want to mention where I'm from, because I am an agent for AT&T, and I can't, I'm talking
to you on one of their phones, and it's one of those dual modes as well, and it's the
worst, because they force us to push digital over analog, when analog has a better signal
in most cases.
Yeah, because the signal is easier to receive in most places.
Correct.
And the service is more prevalent.
Right.
In addition, they can, the system is allowed to, for example, let's say you have one person
out there in the street with a cell phone.
If they had digital phones, the system can handle three for every one analog, so that's
why they're making more money as well, and that's why they're pushing this digital when
it's not necessarily fully developed or fully deployed or does it work correctly.
The paging feature that they say is so great, you're lucky if you get one page.
Really?
You are so lucky.
Really?
It's that bad?
Yeah, and there's another system out there called Nextel, which nobody had brought up yet.
Nextel is an SMR type of a system, but they have a cellular system, which is not nationwide
yet, but it's in major cities, like it's in Florida, it's in New York, it's in California,
and it's in a lot of other areas, but that is a private network at this point.
It's not even a public system, I don't believe, but they are starting to sell cellular time
on it, and it is clearer than, I would say, it's as clear as a wire line, and that is
amazing, because the pricing on that is probably parallel to cellular, but the quality is far
so past.
And which company is that again?
Nextel.
That's Nextel.
What's the coverage in Nextel?
Yeah, what's the coverage?
Well, the coverage on the Nextel system is, you have Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Long Island, you go up into the Poconos, parts of Westchester, and you go down up into about
a little further past Atlantic City.
It is expanding, they are going into Philly, they do have Florida coverage, it's basically
wherever all the people are is where the coverage right now, and their coverage is expanding
and each city will overlap each other eventually where the nation will be covered.
It's not fully deployed, which is why it's not mass marketed, but they're using it primarily
for, let's say, a business that has two or three people that are constantly on the move
and they're always talking to each other.
You pay 12 cents per minute of inter-office time, and it's built in six-second increments,
which is phenomenal.
So if you're in your office and you have a secretary and you have your partner and you all have these
phones, you can click and talk to each other without dialing a number, instantly, like
a walkie-talkie, instantly.
And it's costing you, if you say, okay, Jim, call Jim at 555-1212, it costs you fractions
of a penny to tell that message instantly with 100% digital.
And regardless of whether you're in Florida or in New York or in California, for that matter,
it's the same cost.
You don't pay additional roaming fees, and it's still an instantaneous message.
Does it come out of a speaker, or does the phone ring?
You have a choice.
You have a choice of whether the phone will ring or you can talk like you're a walkie-talkie,
but the benefit is you have cellular built into the same piece of equipment.
You're saying you could have a walkie-talkie that goes between Florida and New York?
Correct.
And it's less than, it's 12 cents a minute built six seconds of time a pop.
And there's no initial minute charge?
No.
Each phone comes pre-canned with 250 minutes.
And let's say you've got two phones, like two people have it on one bill,
that gives you 500 minutes up front for 40 bucks.
And it doesn't matter who uses the minutes first.
One can use 400, the other can use 100, and it's still the same pricing.
So they do a lot of different things.
They're doing it very differently.
Did you say you work for AT&T?
No, we're an independent agent.
We've been in the cellular and paging business for about nine years now.
So are you pushing Nextel on people?
Nextel's prices aren't as competitive as everybody else,
where they're offering $9.99 for 15 minutes, you know, and all those crazy deals.
Right.
They're not looking for that market.
They're geared up for someone that wants to be able to talk,
is going to be, you know, a business person primarily within the area that their coverage is,
and they want a very, very clear signal where they're not going to lose calls and such.
I have another business where I'm on the cellular phone constantly,
and I can redial and recall people two, three, four times,
especially on Staten Island, which is where I'm from.
The coverage is horrible.
You cannot drive more than, like, three miles without losing your call.
And AT&T does not credit you for your dropped calls unless you call and request.
Right.
So we tell our customers every month when you get your AT&T bill,
you give them a call and say you want automatic drop call credit,
and every month people are getting $9, $10, $15, $30 credits.
Uh-huh.
Just for making a phone call and waiting on hold for 10 minutes.
Uh-huh.
How does that work?
They say they want automatic drop?
Automatic drop call credit.
And what does that come out to?
Is this a percentage?
The computer will look at what numbers you redialed within a certain amount of time.
Okay.
And it will come out to whatever the amount of the secondary third calls were,
whatever, because if you drop a call three or four times,
it will just continue to give you credit for that until it's completed.
I don't know the specifics of it,
but I know I spend about $300 a month on my cellular bill,
and I end up getting about $30, $35 back.
So it's about 10%.
Yeah.
I mean, and that's how bad the cellular network is,
when it switches from analog to digital.
And whenever you're in an analog signal,
I mean, granted, you're not getting your voice privacy,
but sometimes the call is actually better than digital.
As far as...
Digital is more of a corporate thing,
and they want to push it because they're making more money off it.
Right.
And they can have a higher system capacity.
Right now, you're hearing me fine.
I'm on Route 9 in Jersey,
where there are transmitters everywhere,
and the land is pretty flat.
In Manhattan, their digital signal is pretty good as well.
But when you go into the outer boroughs like Staten Island and Brooklyn and Queens,
it's horrible.
Horrible.
Okay.
Well, thanks for calling.
Thank you.
All right.
Bye.
Getting a lot of different services here that are being described.
Nextel.
I read about Nextel a while ago,
and the company was in trouble.
I don't know if I think they found some large investor
to bring them up out of the ashes.
But I'd be...
I mean, what he was saying about Nextel being a good service
as far as if you're going to stay in one place
and you're going to call people in other offices
and you're making business calls,
I mean, that might be all well and good,
but I would just pick up the phone and call them.
Yeah, you know, a lot of people forget about that.
I was using my Omnipoint phone today.
I was at the Smithhaven Mall.
Yeah.
And it was cool that that was the one part in Suffolk County
where it actually works.
I wanted to, you know, use the thing.
Right.
And, you know, what was I doing?
I was using the phone next to a pay phone.
I could have used a pay phone.
It would have been, you know, a fraction of the cost.
Yeah.
I just thought it was so cool to use the Omnipoint phone from,
you know, from out there.
Yeah, I mean, the reason why I bought a mobile phone
is to be mobile while I use the phone,
not to sit down in a chair
and talk to somebody in another office.
Well, of course, when people call you on that phone,
you know, what are you supposed to do?
I keep walking.
Well, no, but what if you're sitting in a chair already
and they call you, you know, that's...
Well, then you've got to get up.
Well, no, but the point is,
the point is, you know, it's not always mobile by choice.
You know, if they call you as if it's your home phone,
then you've got a problem.
Yeah.
Because people call you just to chat on these things
and they forget that you have to pay.
They might not be paying anything to call you,
but you have to pay to talk to them.
Well, I usually tell people,
call me back on my other phone or on my LAN phone or something.
Yeah, you know, I forwarded one of my lines
to my Omnipoint phone.
Right.
Because I was going to be away from where I usually am for a while,
so I decided to forward the line and take those calls, too.
Wouldn't you know, the very first call I get
comes from Newsday wanting me to subscribe.
Unbelievable.
The very first call.
You know, I have to pay for that.
I have to pay to hear Newsday give me a pitch
as to why I should subscribe to them.
Let me tell you, I pitched them something.
And they, I think they received that message loud and clear.
But, you know, a couple of interesting things as far as that goes.
You know you get caller ID, right?
Right.
But you also get, and this is really kind of weird,
you get, when you forward a call from another number,
it says forward before it gives you the number.
It knows that the call is being forwarded from another number.
And I guess that's a bit of information
that's sent in the caller ID spurt.
Yeah, it's actually, it's not,
it's the calling line, calling line progress.
Uh-huh.
You actually, and you also get it on outgoing calls, too.
In a lot of cases, not always.
But depending on the particular mobile switch
that your call is going through,
some of them actually give calling line status.
Like if I call you and the call is being forwarded,
it'll tell me.
Or if I, if, yeah, if I call you
and the call is being forwarded
and it's going to let me know on the screen,
it'll say forwarding activated.
Okay.
So, yeah, there's neat little features like that.
The other thing is that a lot of these companies
people are mentioning is that
none of these other services,
like AT&T or Sprint PCS,
none of them have any notion of a SIM card.
CDMA doesn't use anything resembling a SIM card.
Your phone is just, just as, as, uh, open to cloning.
It's that, it's, it's, it's obviously,
it's a bit more difficult to clone a CDMA phone
than it is to clone a regular analog or, or, or DMs.
Well, you know what I discovered at the conference?
It's pretty damn easy to pull out someone's SIM card
when they're not looking to replace it with yours.
Well, yeah, but it's, uh, it's easy to pick somebody's pocket, too.
Well, that's true, except it's just,
people don't expect you to do that.
Well, everybody's SIM card should be protected with a PIN.
That's true, most of them aren't.
Well, then that's their problem.
Yeah, yeah.
Then the, then the security's on you.
But, uh, but as far as cloning,
I mean, the most difficult phone to clone or eavesdrop,
as of yet, is a GSM phone.
And until it's otherwise,
I'm going to continue to recommend GSM,
uh, as, as, uh, people's number one choice.
You said most difficult to clone.
Does that mean it's possible to clone?
I'm not saying that, I'm, all I'm saying is,
okay, there was an article recently in Germany,
um, about, uh, what apparently seems to be an inside job
that may or may not have happened,
since the people who claimed to do it
could not verify what they did.
But, uh, they claim that using insider information,
somebody that they knew,
who worked for one of the particular GSM companies in Germany,
provided them with secret key information
that they used to, uh, program their own SIMs,
and, in essence, clone service.
Which, in theory, is possible.
But, um, so, I mean, then again,
you're talking about,
you had insider knowledge of what somebody's secret keys are.
If that's the case, and you have the proper equipment,
then, yes, it's possible to do that.
But as far as cloning over the airwaves,
like you can with analog cellular,
you can't do anything,
even resembling that with GSM,
unless, you know,
there's, there would have to be some
as-yet-to-be-discovered flaw
in the way the GSM protocols work,
which so far has not happened.
So that's why I say it remains to be
the most secure relative to the others,
relative to the other protocols.
The most secure until it's not.
Exactly.
But that's all anything is.
Right, exactly.
Another interesting thing,
we're going to have to close on this,
has to do with the passing of caller ID.
Initially, we reported that it was A&I
that was being passed along.
In actuality, what seems to be happening now
is that the Omnipoint switch
simply chooses to ignore
any privacy features that are sent.
In other words, if you star 6-7
before you call someone with an Omnipoint phone,
the Omnipoint switch will see your star 6-7,
but will simply say, you know,
I'm not going to, I'm going to ignore that.
And specifically the connection
to the voicemail system.
Right, after you connect to voicemail
as opposed to the person
actually answering the phone.
Yeah, the mobile switch does acknowledge
the privacy flag.
Right.
The voicemail system does not.
Now, here's what's interesting.
If you, you know, you could say,
okay, I know what all the Omnipoint exchanges are.
I know what the Omnipoint, you know,
917-XXX, you know, those are Omnipoint.
But if you take any phone number, any place,
and you forward to an Omnipoint switch from there,
your number will be passed along
regardless of whether or not you protect it.
And you won't know you're sending
to an Omnipoint switch
because you're calling a regular phone number,
which unbeknownst to you
is forwarding to an Omnipoint number.
So, uh...
That's handy.
It's handy for people
that are trying to trap people,
you know, with their phone numbers.
But, uh, it's not using A&I.
It's using caller ID.
And that also, you know,
it tells us something
about the way caller ID has passed.
You might, you know,
some people thought that star 6-7,
the number is not sent.
No, that's not true.
The number's sent.
It's still sent no matter what.
I've been saying that from the beginning.
Right.
Number's always sent.
This is proof.
This is actual proof.
Yeah.
You know, you can always
get someone's number.
Is there any way to not do that?
No.
Well, there are...
I'll be honest with you.
You can leave messages for people
without your number showing up
if you call the mail number,
which would be XXXMAIL...
IL, yeah.
...in the exchange of Omnipoint.
Yeah, if you call out
from your voicemail system,
it'll show up as an out-of-area.
Right.
It won't show a number.
But as far as calling in,
I guess, you know,
if you have operator assistance, maybe,
but I don't expect that to last.
Yeah, no, operator assistance would be good.
Calling through 950,
calling through one of your calling card numbers.
Right.
That would be safe as well.
It's dangerous.
I mean, a lot of people
are going to get caught up in this.
You know, people are going to get
conned into calling numbers
and their phone numbers
are going to show up
despite what they do to protect them.
Well, as I said
when we first discovered this,
I consider it a feature.
Uh-huh.
You consider it a feature,
but, you know,
someone in, like,
a battered wife shelter might not.
You know,
when they accidentally call a number
thinking that they're not sending it
and it winds up in the wrong hands.
Okay, then abusive husbands
should not be allowed
to buy Omnipoint phones.
Okay, there you go.
That's the solution for this week.
All right, we'll be back again next week
offering more, uh, uh,
enlightenment
in the age of new technology.
Until then,
this is Emanuel Goldstein
for Fiber Optic
and Off the Hook,
have a good night.
The telephone keeps ringing
So I ripped it off the wall
I cut myself while shaving
Now I can't make a cough
It couldn't get much worse
But if it could, they would
Bombilipon for the best
Expect the worst
I hope that's understood
Bombilipon for the truth
Now
the
Hi, I'm David Rothenberg.
Over the years, I've met some fascinating actors and writers,
but Scott Anthony...