Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!spool.mu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bu.edu!telecom-request From: tcora@pica.army.mil (Tom Coradeschi) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: AT&T and Kuwait City Message-ID: Date: 6 Mar 91 20:51:25 GMT Sender: news@bu.edu.bu.edu Organization: Electric Armaments Div, US Army Armament RDE Center Lines: 56 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 184, Message 1 of 11 From the {Newark, NJ Star-Ledger}, Monday 4 Mar 91. AT&T beats shifting sands to open phone links. By KEVIN H. RICHARDSON Residents of Kuwait City can call the United States for the first time since shortly after the Iraqi invasion, despite terrain that sometimes seems to have a mind of its own. AT&T announced yesterday that it was able to begin providing lines for outgoing calls on Saturday, starting about 8:15 p.m. Kuwaiti time (12:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time). But the company said callers experienced an interruption in service about twelve hours later. After a thorough investigation, the company's technical experts determined the source of the problem. "The whole system was sitting on sand, and the sand shifted," explained spokesman James Lowell. The movement of the sand had resulted in a misalignment between the 22-foot satellite dish being used to send the calls and the Intelsat satellite onto which the calls were bounced before reaching the United States. It took AT&T engineers about 3 1/2 hours to realign and stabilize the satellite dish, which had been brought into the Kuwaiti capital from Saudi Arabia on Friday. The dish has been operative since then. Lowell said the equipment being used in Kuwait, which will transmit 120 calls simultaneously to the United States, is state of the art. The system, developed by AT&T's Bell Laboratories, is based on technology that allows more calls to be "squeezed" onto a single satellite beam, he said, which means that more calls can be made at the same time. "We're the only people in the world with this equipment, which is why the Kuwaiti government asked us to set this up," Lowell said. He said the AT&T system was equipped with its own generator. Kuwait City remained without electricity. Lowell said AT&T employees in Kuwait reported that since the service began hundreds of people have been standing in line for the phones, which are located in the Mishre district telephone exchange building. It is mostly Kuwaiti residents who have been using the service, although five of the lines are reserved for reporters. AT&T is charging $1.15 a minute for calls from Kuwait to the United States, plus a $3.25 service charge for collect calls or a $3.50 service charge far, calls made person to person.