FCC doing it again...

[Michael Condict]

In article <31848 at news.Think.COM> barmar at think.com writes:
>In article <11721 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>or were you unaware that FCC tariffs require you to
>>notify the phone company when you attach a modem to the line?
>
>I thought the only thing you were required to give to the phone company
>when attaching a device to a phone line was the ringer equivalence number.
>And I think this requirement went away a few years ago, when owners were
>given possession of the lines within the building.  Now it's the phone
>company's responsibility to safeguard their lines against whatever the user
>might attach, and we don't have to tell them what we're doing.  Modem
>manuals used to include instructions to call the phone company, but the
>last modem I got didn't.

Surely you are not suggesting that it is legal for me to connect to
my telephone line one of the following:

	(1) A "device" consisting of a 0.1 ohm resistor (why pay the gas
	    or oil company for heat, when the phone company will heat your
	    house for free?).
	(2) A light bulb (why pay the electric company?).
	(3) A "60-baud modem" whose output is obtained by copying its input
	    (the 115V power line) onto the telephone line (that should
	    "light up the switchboard" as the expression goes :-).

Or is the phone company's equipment really smart enough to use current
limiters in both directions, so you can neither steal power, nor fry their
equipment with externally-generated power?
-- 
Michael Condict		condict at cs.vu.nl
Vrije University
Amsterdam