TELECOM ACCESS STANDARDS NEWSLETTER NO. 113 May 1999 CONTENTS 1. TELEPERMIT LABELLING AND PARALLEL IMPORTS 2. "SHOWSTOPPER" ASSESSMENT FOR CELLPHONES 3. TELEPERMIT RESTRICTIONS ON EARLY-TYPE DIGITAL CELLPHONES 4. TELEPAGER STANDARDS 5. PTC 200: CALL RELEASE RELAXATIONS 6. 0800 WORDNUMBERS AND KEYPAD LETTER LOCATIONS 7. WITHDRAWAL OF DECADIC SIGNALLING 8. NETWORK DEVELOPMENTS: ANSWER SUPERVISION 9. STAFF CHANGES 10. WE ARE MOVING AGAIN! RETURN TO MAIN INDEX 1. TELEPERMIT LABELLING AND PARALLEL IMPORTS Newsletter No. 112 dealt with some of the CPE market aspects resulting from changes in the Copyright Act 1994 and increased parallel importing. It is timely to remind Telepermit holders that one of the conditions of granting a Telepermit is that every product released to market shall have a Telepermit label affixed to it. I have had reports that some items are being offered for sale without Telepermit labels. Should a Telepermitted product have no label affixed, it is considered in exactly the same way as any other non-Telepermitted product. It does not have permission to be connected to the Telecom network and Telecom are not interested in sorting out any problems that relate from the use of that product. While the omission of a Telepermit label may not seem much of an issue to some suppliers, it is a clear breach of the general conditions of PTC 100, which the supplier undertook to comply with when making the Telepermit application. The Telepermit label offers the advantage of clearly differentiating the suppliers of CPE, because each importer has its own Telepermit number and label. Where there is any argument about the responsibility for servicing a product, the Telepermit label and number provided traceability back to the appropriate importer. This will help ease one of the most sensitive aspects of parallel importing - customer claims on the copyright holder to repair products which have been parallel imported (and which may be inherently non-compatible with the Telecom network, in any case). With no label affixed, the copyright holder has some defence against some claims. It is not good business to muddy the position by omitting labels on formally Telepermitted products, especially when many customers are looking for the label before they buy and the supplier has paid the costs of testing and Telepermitting the product concerned. 2. "SHOWSTOPPER" ASSESSMENT FOR CELLPHONES As I mentioned in Newsletter No. 112, there has been quite a lot of interest in the importation of refurbished second-hand cellphones, mainly for the pre-pay market, which is heavily focused on minimum first cost to the customer (and, no doubt, to the supplier). Telecom is anxious to avoid the use of any cellphones which have the potential to disrupt the network or interfere with other users. To help suppliers minimise the risk of such problems, we are offering a free "Showstopper" assessment service for those suppliers who are genuinely considering the importation of large quantities of refurbished cellphones. This service is available only to those suppliers who have done their basic "homework" and obtained information from the refurbisher on exactly what work they may have carried out and what, if any, changes have been made to hardware and software. This service is not available to "casual enquirers" wanting a free assessment of any product that comes to their notice. The tests are NOT a substitute for full Telepermit testing. This still has to be done at some later time. Also, it must be stressed that passing this initial assessment is no guarantee that the product will obtain a Telepermit. This can only be granted after a full evaluation and consideration of all the supporting technical information. The aim is a quick assessment of the product to see if there are any obvious features that would automatically preclude the issue of a Telepermit, hence the term "Showstopper". This service should help importers to avoid unnecessary commitments to overseas suppliers. Above all, of course, it helps Telecom to avoid service problems at the earliest opportunity. Suppliers wishing to take up this offer should contact Simon Cooke-Willis by telephone on either (04) 495 1573 or (025) 421 657, or by fax on (04) 472 8022. 3. TELEPERMIT RESTRICTIONS ON EARLY-TYPE DIGITAL CELLPHONES The first generation of digital cellphones to the US IS 54B specification used an early vocoder (voice encoder) which has sub-standard performance in relation to the current version. Telecom has been supporting both types of vocoder on its network, but this complicates network planning and we do not wish to have to support increased numbers of cellphones with what is now out-dated technology. Cellphone suppliers are advised that no further Telepermits will be granted for IS 54B cellphones after 31 December 1999. This does not restrict the suppliers of those IS 54B cellphone types already Telepermitted from continuing to offer them for sale, although it is expected that most have now been superseded by the later version in any case. The great majority of new D-AMPS cellphones are now made to the IS 136 specification, with a wider range of features along with the improved vocoder. All in all, it is not expected that the above restriction will have any significant impact on the cellphone market. With this change, the Telecom mobile network will continue to support IS 136 D-AMPS and IS 19 analogue AMPS cellphones. There is, as yet, no plan to phase out the old analogue cellphones by a particular date. There are still large (and increasing?) numbers in service although the number of new models submitted each year for Telepermit continues to drop. 4. TELEPAGER STANDARDS The preferred air interface protocol for telepagers using the Telecom Paging Network is now the FLEX(tm) system (FLEX is a trademark of Motorola, who originally developed the system). Telecom's paging network was enhanced to support the FLEX(tm) air interface during 1996/7. Support for FLEX(tm) pager equipment replaces the earlier POCSAG- protocol which dates back to the early 1980's, so it has served us well. In view of the need to concentrate resources on the later technology, I wish to formally advise the industry that we propose to no longer grant Telepermits to new designs of POCSAG pagers after 31 December 1999. This is expected to have little or no impact on the introduction of new pagers, virtually all of which have been FLEX(tm) compliant for some years, through widespread licensing by Motorola of the FLEX(tm) technology and 3rd party manufacture of FLEX(tm) compliant semiconductor components. 5. PTC 200: CALL RELEASE RELAXATIONS Another change to be incorporated into the next amendment to PTC 200 relates to clause 8.4, covering Call Release. The present wording of sub-clause (1) is that "All equipment which is capable of either automatically initiating and/or answering calls, shall release such calls (ref. clause 6.4 (3)) as follows:- (a) within 15 seconds in the event of carrier fail or lack of activity" This wording needs to be clarified as a result of the typical characteristics of modern modems. For example, should a modem not detect at V.90, it must train down to V.34, and this may take longer than 15 seconds to achieve. If the wording of the clause is taken literally, the call would have to be released after 15 seconds because one end has gone "silent". Needless to say, there is still plenty of activity while the modem is training down, although this is not necessarily line activity. Release timing tended to be critical mainly as a tariffing issue, as no one wants call charging to continue once the communication has failed. However, there have been significant reductions in national and international call charges over the past few years and, in any case, the majority of modem traffic probably consists of low cost calls from the customer to the internet (rather than customer to customer national calls, as in the past). As a result, the tariffing issue is not quite so sensitive now. Where effective modem to modem communication cannot be achieved within 15 seconds or situations arise where it is necessary to delay opening the loop to drop a call, we propose extending the release delay limit to 60 seconds. Each case should be justified by a brief explanation. The current release time of 15 seconds still applies in all other cases. 6. 0800 WORDNUMBERS AND KEYPAD LETTER LOCATIONS The ITU adopted the current alpha-numeric layout for telephone-type keypads in 1993, with agreed implementation by 1 April 1996. Telecom did not mandate the new layout (with "Q" on digit "7" and "Z" on digit "9") in Issue 2 of PTC 200, but strongly recommended its adoption by all CPE suppliers. Since that time, the use of "Wordnumbers" for 0800 and 0900 calls has expanded significantly and they are now widely used by other carriers, here and overseas. Almost all keypad-equipped CPE being submitted for Telepermit has the ITU standard layout and keypads with no letters or the earlier Australia/New Zealand layout with "Q" and "Z" on digit "1" are very rare. To avoid the risk of wrong numbers resulting from the use of Wordnumbers using "Q" or "Z", it is now proposed that Telecom will mandate the use of the new alpha to digit allocations after 31 December 1999. This specification change is essentially a procedural exercise, but suppliers should be aware that products with telephone-type keypads will need to have letters associated with the digits and have the correct allocations from next year onwards. 7. WITHDRAWAL OF DECADIC SIGNALLING Another matter to be "tidied up" in the next PTC 200 amendment is our "reverse decadic" (loop disconnect) signalling. For many years, the Telecom network has been virtually 100% DTMF capable and we have discouraged the use of decadic signalling on all new products. This has been supported by CPE suppliers, as they do not wish to face the costs of special low volume product modifications and DTMF is now, in any case, the universal standard. We have seen no Telepermit applications for reverse decadic CPE for some years. End-to-end customer signalling via DTMF is now widely-used for such services as Voice Messaging, Calling Card, customer-provided inter-active voice response (IVR) systems, answering machine operation, etc. Decadic signalling is totally unsuitable for such applications and a nuisance to users. Many such systems time out if no DTMF is received within a pre-set time and calls have to be diverted to operators, thus losing the benefit of these automated systems. PTC 200 warned that the network would no longer be able to support decadic signalling in the future and the new millennium is a good opportunity to drop this "legacy provision" for all new Telepermit applications. DTMF signalling will thus be mandatory for all new CPE products after 31 December 1999. 8. NETWORK DEVELOPMENTS: ANSWER SUPERVISION In Newsletter No. 112, I explained the changes in ringing performance resulting from Telecom's customer line provision technology moves from copper cable to derived systems of various types. Another possible change is the lack of answer reversals on some of these systems. The impact of this change is currently being considered, as some CPE, such as PABX systems and any associated call detail processors may be dependent on the continued availability of this supervisory signal. Industry comment on this issue is welcomed. 9. STAFF CHANGES Peter Wheeler, who has been with Access Standards almost from its inception, retired from Telecom on 7 May. As many readers will already know, Peter had a fall last July and had been off work for over 9 months. He returned to work for a few days each week in April, but decided that it was time to retire. Peter made a significant contribution to Access Standards over the long time he has been with us. His specialist areas are transmission and telephony and he had been doing most of the Telepermitting work for these products until his fall. Peter also made a big contribution to our PTC specifications over the years. We will miss Peter's presence in the group and wish him a long and happy retirement. On the other hand, readers should not be surprised if he pops up now and again, should we be able to make use of his expertise on a temporary contract basis. I am pleased to report that we have obtained the services of Paul Armstrong, another long-term associate, initially on a part-time basis. Paul has also had a long career as an engineer in the Post Office and Telecom. His most recent area of responsibility has been on network numbering, where he has been responsible for managing the numbering and access code allocations for Telecom and its competitors on a completely neutral basis. Paul had close involvement with the Numbering Deed recently approved by the Commerce Commission, under which an independent numbering administrator will be set up. As a result, Paul should now have increasing time available to work with Access Standards. Paul can be contacted by telephone on Peter's old number, (04) 498 9708, or on (04) 498 9717. 10. WE ARE MOVING AGAIN Early warning. It is planned that Access Standards will be moving to Level 7 of Hewlett Packard House at 186 - 190 Willis Street on or about 21 June. The P O Box number is expected to remain the same, but we have not yet been advised about telephone and fax numbers. DOUG BURRUS Manager Access Standards