                      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 
