The Teleputing Hotline The Worldwide Network Letter Volume 3 Number 99 -- December 18, 1990 215 Winter Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30317 FAX: 404-378-0794 Phone: 404-373-7634 MCI:409-8960 GEnie: nb.atl CompuServe: 76200,3025 SOVIET UPDATE CommStruct International of the U.S. signed a joint-venture to operate an analog cellular system in Byelorussia. Chairman James Lewis admitted a possible veto from the USSR central government is a risk. CommStruct builds cellular systems for others in the U.S., but has worked on its own overseas, as in Zaire. About 4,000 customers should be linked in Minsk by mid-year -- total capacity will be over 200,000. It now takes 10 years to get a phone in Minsk. In Moscow, the rapidly growing number of Caller ID devices has caused local exchanges to break down. Authorities are now discussing whether to prohibit the devices or to charge fees for their use. All such add-ons are produced locally by small enterprises. The price for a typical box displaying the number of the dialer has risen to 2000 roubles ($95.24). Soviet banks will soon be connected to the worldwide Interbank system. Only the Soviet central bank uses the service now. According to Erhard Starc, SWIFT U.S.S.R. coordinator, any Soviet bank having permission to do foreign transactions will gain access to SWIFT information services with the help of the Lanit Joint venture, which will provide equipment and services. Finally, Alcatel agreed with the Soviet Ministry of Communications to build a 250-kilometer fiber optic line in the Soviet Union. And Computer for You, a Bulgarian magazine, is offering its readers a free copy of a regularly updated antivirus package, writes Kirill Tchashchin for Newsbytes. SINGLE EUROPEAN MOBILE STANDARD IN 1991 GSM (Groupe Special Mobile) digital cellular will be launched in 22 countries starting next year, the European Commission said. Problems remain, notably the diversity of phones and market fragmentation. This requires a consistency of licensing and procedure, it argues. The Commission also underlined that GSM can be threatened by "restrictions by holders of intellectual property rights concerning software and components" of terminals. New GSM systems will run at 1800 Megahertz in order to create products that can be used other than as car phones, writes Eric Dauchy of Newsbytes. A study from DPA Consulting Group warned, however, that long-term GSM prospects depend on better marketing. France, Germany, Italy and Spain have analog cellular penetration rates of under 5 per 1,000, so the GSM launch may be delayed, writes Peter Jones for Newsbytes. HONG KONG UPDATE Hong Kong Telecom won rate hikes December 5. Basic line fees, including those for the Faxline 100 fax service, rose about 6%, but international tolls dropped, except to Taiwan. Meanwhile, Hong Kong Telecom's Datapak and Hutchison's INET packet networks were linked, so users of one can get services from the other, with permission. CABLE FIRM ENTERS UK PHONE MARKET British Telecom now faces competition for its local telephone revenues from a cable TV firm. United Artists Communications, which runs the nation's largest Cable TV service, has with U S West entered the local phone market south of London, and plans to expand throughout the UK. Long-distance calls are made through Mercury, BT's arch-rival in long distance. VIRUS UPDATE The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and City University of London found a new MS-DOS virus which infects the File Allocation Table of a disk and is only transferred via floppy disk. It's called the "Beijing" virus because of a message "Bloody! June 4, 1989" which it displays. Current versions of anti-viral programs don't detect it. Meanwhile, nearly 5,000 U.S. Army PCs have become infected with viruses. Officials are concerned about effects on Operation Desert Shield. Both the Jerusalem-B and "stoned" varieties were detected, mainly from computer games bought by troops in Saudi Arabia. SW BELL WINS A PIECE OF MEXICAN PHONE SYSTEM A group including Southwestern Bell won the bidding for the right to privitize the Mexican phone network, Telmex. The group, which also includes France Telecom -- the French national phone company -- and Grupo Carso of Mexico City, bid $1.76 billion for a 51% stake. (The rest will be sold on the open market.) Southwestern Bell will contribute $485.8 million for 5% of Telmex and has an option for 5% more. It won a waiver allowing it to handle long distance calls between Telmex and the U.S. Telmex employs 67,000 and is worth about $8 billion. But it takes months to get dial tones to business customers, and many businesses have taken to buying cellular lines in order to link to the outside. ONLINE FACTOIDS DTN of Omaha launched DTN Treasuries, which displays prices and yields for US Treasury securities during the U.S. trading day for $40 a month. HAYES will start defending its modem patents in court January 4. It charges 4 U.S. competitors with stealing crucial elements of its PC modem designs. HITACHI and NISSAN will cooperate on building auto electronics, including audio and video, telephones and navigation systems. Hitachi owns 51% of the 2.5 billion yen ($19 million) venture. NTT estimates Japan now has over 500,000 car phones, up from 239,000 at the end of 1989. INDONESIA will award the contract for launching its next satellite to China. Previously, Indonesia looked to the U.S. for such launches. MCCAW will soon provide seamless coverage from the Pacific Northwest to the whole of Canada. Such service should be available throughout the U.S. by late in 1991. MEAD integrated its Lexis and Nexis services, so law firms can be sold a single password and access either system. METRO SOFTWARE unveiled PC Artifax, a Hewlett-Packard Laserjet emulation package for PC fax cards. The UKP 99 package allows users of PC fax cards to "print" from their word processors to a disk file that can be transmitted by the fax card. MOTOROLA is going ahead with a chip plant in Sendai, Japan, but is angered by NTT's success in using delays in approving the Motorola Micro-Tac to design a lighter phone with help from NEC, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, and Matsushita. Still, Motorola will offer 20% lower calling rates than NTT in Tokyo next year, and its orders in Western Japan outpace supply 2 to 1. THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION launched "EFF News," an online newsletter dealing with electronic privacy, on the USENET network. CONTACT: CommStruct, James Lewis, +607-786-8724 Computer for You, Veselin Bonchev, +359 2 87-50-45 DPA Consulting Group, G A Garrard, +4471-828- 7744 DTN, Richard Piersol, +402-390-2328 Electronic Frontier Foundation, Michael Godwin, +617-864-0665 Hayes, Peggy Ballard, +404-449-8791 HK Telecom, +852 808 6470 McCaw Cellular, Bob Ratliffe, +206-828-8685 Mercury, Doug Walker, +071-528-2106 Metro Software, Matthew Murton, +0491-579857 Motorola, +708-397-5000 R.G.Software, Ray Glath, +602-423-8000 SWIFT, Spanowsky, +7 095 119-8804 Universal Cellular, Cliff Tompkins, +714-572-1000 U S West, Rebecca Herbst, +303-649-4676