Hi Elizabeth,

The first and obvious idea that comes to mind is simply to get an unlimited calling plan for the out-of-state phone. Then you have to check the economy of such a step. If that costs you $25 per month and you have on average two 15 minute calls per day coming from this remote phone to the local phone, that's about 900 minutes per month which would mean you are paying (assuming my atrocious math is right) 36¢ per minute which is terrible. If your remote phone called the local one for 9000 minute per month, then you're better off at 3.6¢ per minute.

If you don't really need a physical phone there, i.e. you just want the number but you don't ever use it for outgoing calls, you could reduce the monthly cost by switching the physical line to a Remote Call Forwarding number (RCF) which is essentially an inbound number with no phone that simply forwards all calls to another location all the time. You'd still have to get a cheap LD plan but the RCF idea might reduce your fixed costs.

Another idea would be to get rid of the remote landline as you did with the local one and make it a cellphone, also. If on the same carrier as the local one, you would pay nothing (mobile-to-mobile minutes are free with any carrier I know of) and might even reduce the monthly fixed cost at the remote location - if you're not there often, then get a basic plan for like $25/mo (be sure it has m-to-m!) and just be judicious about your use when you're there.

You could get rid of the remote landline and switch to a VoIP provider like Lingo or Vonage which has cheap long distance and lower monthly fees.

Finally, you could try Google Voice. This was originally called Grand Central. It's an account that provides you with a local phone number, voicemail, and other features and lets you have incoming calls to this number call various other phones simultaneously. You could give out the Google Voice number at the remote location to everyone and not use the actual landline number there. People would call your GV number and it would try you, for free, at both the remote and the local numbers and even a cell phone or work phone.  You could also invert this evil plan of mine and just have the remote phone forward all calls to your GV number in that town - if the GV number is within the local calling area (Zones 1 - 3) then each forwarded call would be free to the GV number which would then forward the call (again - a double hop, in essence) for free, to the local number.

The down side to the GV idea is that they're not letting just anyone sign up. It's "by invitation". I don't know what this entails. Drop them an email and see!

PBX systems can be extremely costly in that you have very stringent contractual obligations and are basically responsible for anything that happens whether you're at fault or not.  If anyone hacks into your system, you pay.  PBX systems have caused a lot of business owners a lot of money and grief.  There are other options and feel free to write Dr. Telecom on our site.

I forgot to say that the number when you call it says "number not in service"

Hi,

This question is really beyond this scope of this forum which is about telcommunications tools and services for consumers and the SMB market. Your question is a circuit design problem. I have to say that it sounds like you want me to do your work for you! Isn't that what you get paid for?

I'm not an EE but I see a few basic problems you need to address before you go to someone for help. First, you need to be clearer about what are you trying to do. Why would you want to cancel the mobile signal in a specific area? Do you mean you want to make it unavailable on a specific phone or you want to make it unavailable to all phones (jamming).

Second, the mobile signal received can't just come down the antenna, thru a capacitor and to an opamp to generate a signal - where's the tuner? The way you describe it, every bit of noise and every other radio signal in the world will hit the input of that opamp.

What's the opamp doing? Being a switch or being an amp? If the former, then feeding the current from it thru a cap to the 555 won't work - it's DC.

Thirdly, I don't think a 555 is the chip of choice. It's really just a timer. I don't have the specs on it but I'm sure it can't create a signal of high enough frequency to come close to the cellular bands. If used as a free-running oscillator (monstable multivibrator) it would just create a relatively low rate pulse train and, if you distorted it enough to make noise, it would make wideband noise that would effect everything nearby - not friendly!

I'm guessing English isn't your first language. Consider running this by a translator before you go to an electrical engineer for advice so she'll have a better idea what you need.

Good luck.

I contacted 3 VoIP ITSPs (Bandwidth.com. Broadvoice, and CentricVoice - companies providing dialtone via VoIP) about what the concerns are and how they secure their accounts and data streams and, of them, only CentricVoice's (http://www.centricvoice.com) DJ Belieny replied:

1) We don't encrypt anything at this level we do like everyone else. CPE hardware to support encryption is cost prohibitive for use in small to medium customers while if a large customer requires we can setup secure tunnels between their location and ours.

2) An attacker would not be able to brute force their way in basically because we follow a very unorthodox user/password scheme where our passwords are randomly generated based on a very specific seed for each sip agent and the username (extension) also have a very specific forming rule. Also every call has to be authenticated correctly before it's even accepted by our server farm, which helps prevent unauthorized calls and malicious SIP packets.

Another important part of our system is the revision and correction of security holes within our codebase, Asterisk applications and the Linux operating system itself.

Here's an article of common sense, saying "Don't Panic" and that IP Phone networks can be just as secure as traditional wirelines if done right. http://www.voip-news.com/feature/voip-security-common-sense-032608/ And this article, http://www.voip-news.com/feature/is-someone-listening-022208/, also from VoIP-News, summarizes how to secure.

So. it mostly boils down to 1) your own network's security 2) your account security and 3) whether you are using a VPN tunnel or a dedicated circuit (MPLS or Frame Relay or dedicated T-1) between the endpoints. The bottom line is, though, that for residential VoIP users, unless the datastream is already encrypted (a la Skype), someone can, conceivably yet unlikely, monitor your conversation. Until the ITSPs start building in encryption to the data or start allowing us users to connect to them with tunnels, there will always be some possibility of your call being monitored and even your account & password being sniffed.

I hope this helps.

Dear 'Nony,

I'll be glad to work up a summary of VoIP security issues. And, yes, as it stands, unencrypted VoIP can be intercepted like anything else going across the Internet. But you have to ask yourself an important question - are you worth their time? Thieves as well as non-malicious hackers have a limited amount of time to do what they do. They're going to spend their time hacking things that benefit them in some way. Certainly, it's possible that someone could stumble upon your VoIP traffic or your unsecured email traffic, etc., by chance, but there's a lot of traffic out there beside yours. Also, assuming you've no malware on your PC already that's sending copies of whatever you send to the Internet to some bad person someplace, you have to ask yourself where the typical hacker is going to get access to your data stream.

So, as I look into this I'd ask people who are considering using Voice Over IP for phone service not to discard it out of hand just because it's not encrypted.

Now the other aspect of VoIP security is whether someone can breach your equipment or network using VoIP. I'm reading about people hacking ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Providers) and hacking VoIP phones to give them access to the rest of the a network, not NECESSARILY to let them listen to your calls. I'm reading about Vishing - which is Phishing directed at voice communications - where people are tricked into calling VoIP numbers, or even PSTN phone numbers, that aren't what they seem and, in the process, they give up personal information. I think these are bigger issues than that of people monitoring your calls.

My involvement in telephony has been more in the arena of connectivity, switching, features, mobility, and less in security. You've got me thinking more deeply about this aspect of communications. I'm not willing to let hackers scare me away from BENEFICIAL new technology but I do want to know what steps you and I need to take to be reasonably secure - and that's the key because if users are so worried that they aren't willing to take a 1-in-a-million chance then they also won't ever cross the street for fear of getting mugged. But knowing HOW to cross the street, when to do so, what not to be wearing (like a huge rock on your finger, etc). means they're less likely a target.

One important thing to start off with is a good firewall for your home or business network. The typical consumer firewall doing Stateful Inspection isn't smart enough to watch for trickier, higher level intrusions and malware. If you want to keep your network, and thus your computers, more secure, consider one doing Unified Threat Management from companies like Watchguard, SonicWALL, Fortinet, Secure Computing, etc. And one thing you can do with a product like this, when connecting a VoIP phone from the outside to a business VoIP phone system, is to use a VPN tunnel to secure both your voice content from monitoring and the endpoints from hacking. But a VPN doesn't help you when connecting to ITSPs like Packet8 or Vonage.

BTW, I listened to 1/2 hour of the Zimmerman video and skimmed the rest. He's concerned about privacy, not hacking. His whole story is based on the classic man-in-the-middle attack but for someone to be there without our knowing it - to actually intercept the voice packets of our conversation - he has to plant malware on one or both of our computers so he can redirect the packets. It's not like he's cutting a phone line and sticking his equipment in the middle. It's just as possible for the hacker to intercept our email - not by physically being in between us but by compromising a computer somewhere in the packets' path. Thus, the onus is on all parties to be extra vigilant, to know what not to download, to have current anti-malware software, and to have a good firewall that's watching not only for incoming mischief but also for this amiss outgoing. It’s also on the ITSPs to protect their own networks AND watch their customers’ packets for signs of tampering. And, when packet-switched VoIP becomes sufficiently ubiquitous that the judges and prosecutors he used as examples are using VoIP because the current PSTN paradigm has gone the way of spark gap radio transmissions, people will be buying specialized VoIP phones with encryption like he proposes or with VPNs built in and dedicated for your carrier of choice. This is a real threat and it's not currently a big enough one to worry about. Yet.

So thanks for the good swift kick and I'll see what I can come up with and digest it for the casual reader. I’ll leave you with this succinct article on VoIP Security from voip-news.com: http://www.voip-news.com/feature/essential-guide-voip-security-033108 As I learn more so you will you.

Dr. T
http://www.ucan.org/internet_media/broadband_isps/ask_dr_telecom_the_com...

Hey Charles,

Not being one of the “younger audience” (compared to the average, anyway), I have to say that I’m kinda with you on the Social Networking. I don’t understand why anyone wants to let other people know what they’re doing at any given time, nor why others care. But, it’s obviously a generational thing and we sure had the same problem when I was young – my parents couldn’t understand why I needed an FM radio in my car or why we spent so much time on the phone. So, I won’t knock it, I’ll just say it ain’t for me.

See the current run of Doonesbury comics as Garry Trudeau has Roland Hedley Tweeting more than reporting: http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090302

First, Charles, there’s no reason why you have to do any of this Tweeting and posting from a smart phone. Being, All Thumbs myself, I only use my smartphone for occasional short emails. But it IS a good idea to have such a phone so you can tell how the web pages are going to render on a small screen (and don’t get me going on the lousy web browser included with my Treo).

Be careful of the Texting. Many plans don’t include text message minutes so you can get nickled and dimed (literally) to death. If you’re going to pay for Internet access anyway, just use email to send your posts, Tweets, whatever. A Gmail or Yahoo mail account won’t cost you anything.

If you ARE going to actually type from your smartphone, a great deal consider a USB keyboard that lets you type rather than “thumb”. Here’s an example:
http://www.freedominput.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

Internet from a cell phone can get expensive without warning. Your plan may have a limit over which you’ll be charged extra, but if you’re just sending text and viewing web pages, you should be OK. Some services let you track usage via their web site so you can see if you’re about to go over.

As for the future of this stuff, all I can say is that while I love technology, I’m not good at guessing human behavior. Example: around 2000 I bought Apple Computer stock at around $25 because I thought the new OS X operating system would really give Micro$oft Windows some competition. I sold the stock a year or so later for about what I paid for it. Meanwhile, I’d been hearing about this “iPod” thing. “Ha!”, I scoffed, “another MP3 player, as if there aren’t enough already. Who really needs one of these things?” iPods sent the stock price to well over a buck.

So, YES, Charles, you should get a smart phone, if for no other reason that it's convenient to be able to see how things look on a small screen and to be able to get email, directions, phone numbers, and crossword puzzle answers from anywhere.

With deregulation of the telecom industry under the auspices of "market competition", many companies merged. The result has been few company choices for consumers. In addition to these mergers like SBC-AT&T, Verizon-MCI, etc. the companies appear to have territories. There are lots of plan and technology choices, but the company names are basically the same depending on the area. There are areas in San Diego where customers have only one company choice with multiple package plan options from that company. If one uses one company for land line phones, another for wireless, another for Internet and another for TV, the cost is much higher per month than if one accepts a bundled package plan.

The answer to your question is you don't have much choice. Check to see what other company is in your area and compare the costs for phone and Internet bundled plans.

Consumers all over the country are asking where all of the increased taxes, fees and surcharges are going and their purpose. The answers are basically the same. The major telecom companies are allowed to add costs that go into their pockets. Another set of charges are federal and some fund the public purpose programs for low-income customers. We pay for the worthwhile E911 so it's funded.

For New York, please go to http://www.dps.state.ny.us/TelecomTaxesSurcharges.html to see a breakdown of these charges on your phone bill. In addition, you might want to call, write or email the NY Public Service Commission at Phone:
(518) 474-7080
Fax: (518) 474-0421

Mailing Address:

New York State Public Service Commission
Empire State Plaza
Agency Building 3
Albany, NY 12223-1350

Email Address: Web_Questions@dps.state.ny.us

Please look on the following link to see what is charged in NY and for what purpose: http://www.dps.state.ny.us/TelecomTaxesSurcharges.html

The MTA you specifically asked about is found in the link above under b - Rate or Range of Rates and states:

b. Rate or Range of Rates: State Sales Tax rate is 4%; county sales tax rates are capped at 3%, but counties can seek legislative approval for higher rates. City school taxes are allowable up to 3%. An additional 0.375% MTA Tax Surcharge applies in the New York Metropolitan area and may be bundled with the State or Local Sales Tax. Calls to entertainment and information services, such as those dialed using 500, 700, 800 or 900 telephone numbers, are taxed at an additional 5%.

The only way to determine the cheapest price is to compare. Usually the cheapest prices will be where you have bundled package plans with a carrier that include phone, Internet and other services with that company.

One site I found that shows cheap to high prices is http://www.dsl-availability.com/. A site that compares costs is http://www.dslshoppingguide.com/. You might want to see what your existing provider's next lowest price is as long as you have other services with AT&T.

When you either purchase a phone, sign up for service and pay a discounted price for a phone, or get a discount on a phone to renew with a company, you have a contractual amount of time to return that phone. You need to look at the contract where you purchased the equipment to determine the return time. T-Mobile's return time is 14 days. Each time you get a replacement phone, you have another 14 days. At some point, you might want to write a dispute letter to the company stating the problem and the reason you want out of your contract, if applicable. Another option is to file a small claims action after making sure your state does not honor any mandated arbitration.

The satellite and cable companies are not regulated unless they are part of a bundled phone plan, purchased as a package from the phone company. You may have received a tiny insert in one of your billing statements or even received a separate insert in one of the ads sent to customers to upgrade. Look at the contract you were issued and/or the terms and conditions on the company website. In addition, you could write a dispute letter to the company sent certified return receipt requested stating changes were made to your account that were not authorized by you. Make sure you are brief and specific to the issue and that you want a written response by a date certain. You can also go to the company website and contact the company by email. You will save the mailing costs and still have written documentation.