Community Broadband

If you talk to the phone or cable company Community Broadband -- a city or town that operates their own internet and telephone services-- is an evil word. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, you would think public competition would be welcomed but sadly this is not the case.  Around the USA and the world, Community Broadband is becoming a big issue.

In many communities around the United States, limited internet access or low internet speeds has forced them to look at running their own fiber optics networks. They can provide internet and phone services just like any other city run services like water and garbage, it’s a standard utility. In most cases the incumbent Telecom -- AT&T or Verizon and the cable company -- Comcast or Time Warner have not welcomed the competition.





During the Bush years the FCC and the federal government backed a internet duopoly -- 2 company monopoly. In a blog post, Dan Jaspers said "This concreted our unique US duopoly: cable versus Telco, the two broadband choices that most Americans have today. In exchange for a truly competitive market, the US received promises of widespread deployment. And, to some degree this has worked. Unfettered by significant competition or price pressure, broadband in at least its most basic form can now be delivered to most homes in America, albeit at a comparatively high cost to the consumer."

This is in part why we have dropped to 15^th place for highest internet price and lowest speeds worldwide. Most places in the US get the internet, but when compared to Europe and Asia we lag behind. "In Asia and Europe, Gigabit services are becoming common, and the price paid by consumers per megabit is a tiny fraction of what we pay here at home." Dan Jasper.

This is what happened in Lafayette, LA. The city residents wanted to get better internet speeds but Cox Cable and AT&T said that their community was too small. They said that upgrades to their networks would happen in other places in the state first, and it would be years before they would get around to Lafayette.


So the city passed a bond and told the Lafayette City Power and Water Department to run fiber to all residents. In fact Lafayette City Power and Water Department was started more than 70 years ago because big power and water companies told the city that they were too small to bother with. The city would provide internet at speeds 10 times that of the cable company, telephone and TV services for a faction of the cost. Soon after, the Cox cable and AT&T fought back.

They sued the city to block the building of the network on the grounds that it was unfair for them to compete with a government provider.  Then they went to the state government to try to pass laws that would prohibit any city from providing phone or internet services in the whole state. This is not a new strategy. Telcos in more than 10 different states have tried to make it illegal for communities to run their own networks.

After 3 years of legal battles and a smear campaign, the networks started to be built last year. To no one’s surprise residents flocked to the new network from AT&T and Cox cable. To counter this AT&T and Cox cable there were forced to upgrade their networks and drop their prices.

Community Broadband is not new, here in the Bay Area San Bruno has operated its own cable company since the late ‘80s.  The city residents passed a bond to fund the building of the cable network after the large cable companies passed on building in the city or proposed high monthly fee to provide services. San Bruno Cable operates at a profit to the city budget and pays for all system upgrades.  They have expanded their services from just TV cable to now include internet and phone services.

In Europe they have a different view of Community Broadband. Back in 2008, the European Union ruled that a city's involvement in Community Broadband projects were legal, and that it did not interfere in the broadband market. Herman Wagter over at arstechnica.com has a great article on how Amsterdam is rolling out fiber to the whole city. 

"The city of Amsterdam has been involved for several years in building Citynet, a partnership between the city and two private investors to wire 40,000 Amsterdam buildings with fiber. And it's not just fiber, it's open access fiber—any ISP can sign up to use the infrastructure and deliver ultra-fast Internet access."

In Amsterdam the city runs fiber but doesn’t provide consumer services.  The network is open access-- any company may rent space to provide services to consumers. This has led to a very competitive market with a half dozen companies for resident to choose from.  Another side affect is the prices have been steadily following. In a city with highly packed apartments, small streets, canals and house boats—all these places need fiber run to them.


For more click on the video.

Telcom books

In writting this digital blog I have actually have been couple to read some physically books on the history of the internet and Telecom industry.

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

The best book on the history of AT&T and the US Telcom industry.  The book goes on to great depth on the history of the communication empires of telephone, radio, television, and now the internet. Not a light reading book, but if you like to know how many of the giant communication companies got their start, this is the book. How did AT&T go from one of many independent phone companies to the only one is the US?  How did Bell lab discover the transistor unix and help the arms race?

Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist

The $750 billion telecom bubble of the 1990's and 2000's was bigger then the dot.com bubble.  It invovled the WorldCom, Global Crossing, NorthPoint Communications, and others.  WorldCom and Global Crossing, was later found practicing illegal accounting practices to pump up profits for Wall Street. WorldCom's and Global Crossingstock price fell drastically when this information went public, and it eventually filed the third-largest and fourth corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. the crash put America back in the broadband race for years to come.

A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell

This book details the struggles that deaf people have trying to find  a way to communicate.  Since the invention of the telephone, communication technology has been leaving the hearing impaired behind.  The book tells the  story of  the battle between AT&T, the government and a small group of people who were striving to find a way to communicate with each other and with the hearing world. It describes the use of the first computer, computer modems and wireless mores code to form the first TTY systems-- Teletypewriter. It is ironic that Alexander Graham Bell was attempting to find a way to assist his own wife that was deaf when he developed the phone by chance, yet his invention became the bane of the deaf peoples' existence around the world.

Monkey Brains, Lasers, Microwaves and the Internet

In the Bay Area -- home of the Silicon Vally--there are not too many independent Internet service providers to choose from,but that could be changing, well at least for some lucky San Franciscans.

Monkey Brains is a San Francisco ISP that has been in business since 1998. Co founders Rudy Rucker and Alex Menendez started with a web hosting company that over the years has expanded to a business class internet provider. They have currently started offering residential internet services with a twist-- high speed wireless connections using lasers and microwaves. For more on the back store on Monkey Brains check out this video:

Using lasers and microwaves connections is not new, they have been around since the late 1970.  Mostly in dense urban environments, but due to high cost of equipment they have been mostly used for corporate use only. Monkey Brains use new lower cost equipment  to make it available to the general public. This approach offers alternative to running cables thought the city.

Here is how the system works.  Monkey Brains sets up a few microwave dishes and laser system on a roof top in a neighborhood. They run fiber to their new towers to provided the connection to the internet. Then they set up smaller microwaves and laser systems on the customer side. The system is line of sight -- there needs to be a clear line from one dish to another. This can be difficult in hilly San Fransisco, so the system is set up to act as a relay to other roof top system.

Now like an most things there is catch. Not all of San Fransisco is covered mostly around Mission, Bernal, Bayview, Castro, Noe, and SOMA. They are moving to deploy more systems to cover new neighborhoods but it's a slow process. Also there is a $250 fee for the setup but the rate is $35/month after that. I heard that in pilot neighborhoods, users can get up to 4 months of free service. Speeds are around 8Mbps to 20Mbps up and down, not as fast as cable but beats the hell out of DSL. Form looking at there Yelp page most customers that they serve are pertly dam satisfied. So if you live in one of these luck neighborhoods you should look at Monkey Brains.

American Censorship Day

11/16/11 is American Censorship Day. The day is sponsored by organizations and web companies that support free speech and open Internet that opposes two new bills in the US congress. These organizations include Electronic Freedom Foundation, Demand Progress, Fight For the Future, Participatory Politics Foundation, and Creative Commons. On the corporate side Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and Twiter also oppose theses proposed bills.

Two misleadingly named bills -- Protect IP Act (PIPA - S.968) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA – H.R.3261) have been currently introduced into Congress. If passed, the bills will do permanent damage to the Internet, commerce, and free speech in the US. If you don’t want to read these long bills, watch the four minute video that provides a quick summary of there impact.

The bills would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to deny access to users trying to access websites host copyrighted material -- movies, TV shows, software etc.  Most of the sites are internationally based, like the Swedish site ThePirateBay.org. So the bill would force the ISP to black hole a website from being accessed by users in the US.

The bill gives government the power to go to court and obtain an injunction against any foreign website on the grounds that they are hosting copyrighted material. The websites have a maximum of 5 days to “prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site.”, before the government cuts-off the website in the US.

The bill goes farther, by enabling the government the right to go after anyone who builds a tool that "circumvention or bypassing" the Internet block. In the government's ongoing campaign to seize Internet domain names -- taking over the web addresses of sites they believe contain infringing content; when they asked Web browser makers like Mozilla to remove access to these sorts of tools Mozilla refused. The new bill will ban such tools completely.

Search engines, don't escape the consequences either, they will have the duty to prevent the web sites in question “from being served as a direct hypertext link.” This means the website won't show up in a Google, Yahoo, or Bing search engines. Payment processors and ad networks would also be legally obligated to cut off the website.

To top it all off ISPs and payment processors -- PayPal and Visa, can simply block access to sites they think could be in volition with no notification to the site owners. As long as they believe the website is “dedicated to the theft of US property,” they can't be sued.

Here is a quote from James Allworth -- Harvard Business School, on what the bill will do for America.

"It contains provisions that will chill innovation. It contains provisions that will tinker with the fundamental fabric of the internet. It gives private corporations the power to censor. And best of all, it bypasses due legal process to do much of it."

You may think those who back such a broad law with the potential to abuse it  –Hollywood– Time Warner, Viacom, and Disney, among other media companies. Nobody unaffiliated with media companies stands to benefit from these bills; they don't extend their new powers to stop spam, virus, adware, or internet crimes. The bills were created for one reason alone: to protect the film, music and TV industries, I guess that’s what $91 million per year on lobbying gets you.

If you feel like I do please contact your representative, especially the ones co-sponsoring the bills and tell them to not pass these bills. Here is a list:

Howard L. Berman (D-CA)

Karen Bass (D-CA)

Lamar Smith (R-TX)

John Conyers (D-MI)

Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)

Adam B. Schiff (D-CA)

Tim Griffin (R-AR)

Elton Gallegly (R-CA)

Theodore E. Deutch (D-FL)

Steve Chabot (R-OH)

Dennis Ross (R-FL)

Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)

Lee Terry (R-NE)

Mel Watt (D-NC)

John Carter (R-TX)

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

Peter King (R-NY)

Mark E. Amodei (R-NV)

Tom Marino (R-PA)

Alan Nunnelee (R-MS)

John Barrow (D-GA)

Steve Scalise (R-LA)

Ben Ray Luján (D-NM)

William L. Owens (D-NY)

http://americancensorship.org/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/sopa-hollywood-finally-gets-chance-break-internet
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/house-takes-senates-bad-internet-censorship-bill-makes-it-worse.ars

Free Speech vs. Freedom to Communicate

Do you have the right to communicate? The constitution clearly states that Americans have the right to free speech and the right to assemble. Does that mean you have the right to use the internet and phone during a protest?  After reading several articles on the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring and other protests around the world, I start to see a disturbing double standard.


The US and many European countries are debating if they should have the power to cut phone and internet services, what opponents would consider "criminal behavior". While they support protesting and revolts in other countries--Libya, Egypt, and Syria, but not at home.

Almost all Western countries raised protest when the Egyptian government cut phone and internet service in the country, in a attempt to slow protests against the government. Shareholders of Vadophone even joined NGOs in shaming Vadophone-- the largest cellphone company in Europe, for shutting down during the Egyptian revolution. This shutdown was viewed as an assault on freedom of speech by protestors seeking more freedom.

Protestors in Eygpt used Twitter and other social networking sites to organize the protest.  This was considered so important that the US has set up the Senior State Department Officials on Internet Freedom Programs to promote access to the internet in oppressive countries. They even built an "internet in a box" app-- an app that encrypts the data sent by protestors and can wipe a phone clean of all data afterwards, to ensure that protestors could connect freely.

Fast forward to the London riots. Youth throughout London rioted after a series of disputed police shootings of a teen, after several large scale protests over university fees. Again protestors used Twitter, Google maps and Blackberry messenger to communicate.

Rioters used Blackberry messenger-- BBM servers to send messages to linkup and give updates on police attempts to stop them. Riots even setup Google maps with police movements and riot sites.  BBM was popular because all messages were encrypted and hard for police to track.

Many protestors gave their phones to friends or simply threw them away before they were arrested. This was an attempt to stop the police from reading messages and to protect other rioters -- in England even posting a message proposing that people set up a riot is a crime even if nothing happens.

The governments response to the use of technology was much different than in Egypt. The UK's Prime Minister and the police blamed social networking sites for helping the protestors and rioters organize. They called for a review of these services used during "violent riots", they even went so far as to state they should have the power to turn off these services during further riots. They stated this was necessary due to the need for law and order.

Here in the US, Bart shutdown cell phone and internet usage during protests over shootings by bart police over the past year. One of the reasons given by bart officals was that the public had a "constitutional right to safety" -- however there is no such right in the bill of rights. After a large amount of public pressure the BART Board of Directors promised a review of their cell phone service policy.

Although I believe the government should have the power and tools to ensure the safety of the general public, people have the right to communicate.  The government should not narrowly limit freedom of speech.

Unknow AT&T History Part 1

In light of the present AT&T and T-mobile merger I wanted to review some of the lesser known products of "Old Mama Bell."

When you think about a video phone most people think of the iPhone face time, Skype or  iChat. What most people don't know is the concept for the video phone has been around since before World War 2. 

The first video phone was built in Germany in the 1930's. The service had video telephone lines linked from Berlin to Nuremberg, Munich, and Hamburg. Terminals were integrated within public telephone booths and transmitted at the same resolution as the first German TV sets. The person on the other side of the call would go to a special post office video telephone booth in their respective cities. The service end at the beginning of World War 2.

In 1964, AT&T unveiled their "PicturePhone" at the New York Worlds Fair . Two years later they had a Telephone Pavilion in the Montreal World Fair. It was offered commercially in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.  PicturePhone booths were set up in New York's Grand Central Station and elsewhere and in select progressive companies.

The user would have to make a reservation at time slots for the cost of $16 per three minute call.  The high price for a call made from public booths greatly limited the appeal to the point that they were discontinued by 1968.

In less than 5 years the video phone was died. Bell labs-- AT&T research branch, spent a reported 500 million developing the tech behind it. What hurt the video phone was the cost of the device, each unit cost 1,500 --you can imagine how ludicrous of a price this was given that it was the mid 60's. This points to a wider flaw in AT&T, They have always been great visionary, but not the best in rolling out new tech to the general public. 


AT&T and Radio

 AT&T wanted to completely dominate the nation's system of broadcasting. The Telco's plan would make it almost impossible for broadcast license holders not affiliated with the carrier to operate.  The scheme was hatched in 1922 and abandoned by 1926.

On August 28, 1922, WEAF in New York City aired a  a ten-minute talk by a representative of a real estate company--this was the first radio commercial. The station charged $50 for it, and another in the evening for $100.

AT&T had other big ideas—a network of almost 40 radio stations strung together via the Telco's long distance lines. They would broadcast to local areas wirelessly and share content via AT&T's long routes. The company intended WEAF as the beginning of that experiment.

They tired unsuccessfully to push out competitors by first denying non-Bell System radio stations access to its long distance lines for shared projects, forcing other networks to experiment with inferior telegraph rather than telephone connections for their experiments. Then AT&T became more aggressive by suing a nearby competitor of WEAF, claiming that its broadcast operation infringed on the carrier's patents.

After government pressure and increased competition AT&T got out of the Radio business.

Beijing Set to Rollout city wide Free Public WiFi Network

Beijing will begin rolling out a new free WiFi service across the city at the end of the month. The “My Beijing” wireless network, is being built by three of the largest telecom companies in China. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, and will provide residents 2Mbps broadband WiFi to about 60 percent of Beijing. The system will eventually use 90,000 access points.

The new WiFi service will be free to use during the three year pilot program. At the end of the pilot program the government may change the model and begin charging individual or businesses users for access.

Like all things, is offer comes with a catch -- a big one. Users will have to submit their phone number in exchange for access. Privacy enthusiasts have pointed to the possibility of tracking users through their phone numbers.  Chinese government representatives have said that the numbers would only be used for "identity authentication" -- insinuating that tracing of individuals only for online activity might "endanger social security."

The Chinese government tightly regulates Internet access throughout the mainland. The government has recently clamped down on cafes, hotels, and other businesses offering public WiFi to its customers. The  government  in some cases requiring these businesses to install surveillance software to monitor Web users activity. There has even been the threat of fines or termination of their WiFi service for businesses who do not install the software.

High-minded privacy concerns aside, there's the very real danger of phones being bombarded with spam, not to mention what happens when the three year trial period expires -- users of the service could get stung with exorbitant costs to feed a public WiFi addiction.

The Fastes Internet on the Westcost for $70

Update 12/14/11
Sonic to bring fiber to SF!
Well to a lucky 2000 customers in the Sunset --hopefully I will be one of the.

“San Francisco is our fastest-growing market for copper delivered Fusion Broadband+Phone service today, so we are very excited to bring our Fiber-optic upgrade process to the city,” said Dane Jasper, CEO & Co-Founder of Sonic.net. “There is a huge demand in San Francisco for higher bandwidth services, and fiber is the only long-term way to meet this demand.”

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/12/prweb9036346.htm

Sonic.net, a local independent Internet Service Provider, is rolling out its new 1Gbps (1000Mbps) fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service, which includes both Internet and phone service for unheard of price of $70 a month. In comparison Comcast's offers a 105Mbps-- the fastest tire they offer,  for a whopping $200-- that's not including the modem fee and phone services. AT&T speeds don't even come close to Sonic.net services in price or speed. they top out at 6Mbps.

I have to be honest, I have been a customer of theirs for about two years, so I might be more excited about this news more than others. I would say that Sonic.net has been by far the best ISP I have ever had.  In the past two years I have seen two different price cuts on my monthly bill. That is unheard of with AT&T or Comcast which jacked up their prices year after year. Plus I get free future upgrade every couple of months like my own fax number, fax to email and email voice mail for free.

The company recently expanded into fiber, having secured the contract to manage Google's own 1Gbps fiber network that will connect 800+ faculty homes at Stanford University. The new fiber-to-the-home deployment is a trial and will reach about 700 homes in Sebastopol when complete. Sonic.net pulls fiber optic cable from their own head office all the way to the customers house.  This eliminates the need to rent space and old copper phone lines from AT&T.

They price their new services the same as their old DSL services. If the pilot in Sebastopol goes well, Sonic.net hopes to expand the service across the Bay Area.

Sonic.net has been around since 1994,  it was founded by Dane Jasper and Scott Doty, both worked on the computer network at Santa Rosa Junior College. After setting up the Junior College's frist internet service, they decided to start their own localized ISP.

They began with dial-up Linux shell access, and then they used conventional phone lines from Pacific Bell and 16.8kbps modems to provide internet access. Fortunately, they were able to avoid the resource problems that plagued many local ISP start ups during the "Internet Boom" and crash of the late 2000's.

In the last year, Sonic began offering bonded DSL service with speeds upwards of 40Mbps--which bundled with phone serves adds up to $70. Keep in mind this is double the curent maximum speed of AT&T DSL.

They accomplish this by renting 2 phone lines from AT&T and installing their own equipment in the phone company central office.  The 2 phone lines are bonded -- making them one circuit. Sonic then uses a DSL standard called ADSL2+, that allows for higher speeds then regular DSL. This gives them the ability to provide higher speeds at a lower price.

Jasper is unlike your typical US Internet CEO; he made clear that his company avoids purely manufactured limits as a way to make more revenue. "I believe that removing the artificial limits on speed, and including home phone with the product are both very exciting."



For more info about Sonic.net click on the video.

SFSU New Ultraslow Network

Have you noticed that recently logging into the SFSU network at school seems to take more than 10 minutes and excessive trials and errors while the network decides whether or not to accept your password or not?  The issues in not limited to one building as I learned on day, after trying to connect to the internet from 4 different lotions on campus. I decided to try and get to the bottom of why the wireless at San Francisco State is so dead slow this year.

 None of the websites run by SFSU mention any current network problems. After some difficult web searches, I found an outdated web page on sfsu.edu stating that in 2010 San Francisco State completed a network-wide upgrade.  The website stated that the upgrade was completed in June 2010 as part of the CSU Infrastructure Terminal Research Project (ITRP). 

The upgrade focused on new Cisco networking equipment to speed up wired network connections to desktop computers campus-wide.  It also involved upgrading the links between buildings and network distribution plans.  The website stated that the transition would be gradually rolled out over the 2010/2011 year to all buildings.  The website did not mention internet connection slowness issues or wireless problems just upgrades to the internal networks.

Ironically, I do remember them installing these ominous looking black boxes around campus last year, but I wasn’t aware of what they were for.  The boxes had fiber-optic cables and cat6 cables -- computer networking cables terminated in them but no other equipment. In addition, I found new wall plates in several class rooms with fiber-optic, cat6 and TV cable connectors.  None of them were live as I tried to use them a couple of times. When I asked sever people in the DAI lab no one knew what they were for. I also noticed that new wireless access points began popping up in many of the classrooms around campus but they were not activated.

In DAI lab Fine Art Building

Fine Arts building

After more research I stumbled upon a website run by the California State University system. The website was for the Network and Technology Alliance. The group is charged with advising the CSU chancellor with tech policy. In 2002 the group came up with standards for computer networks on all CSU campuses.   A review networking systems on all CSU campus revealed that our systems were outdated and didn’t follow the minimum standards of a modern computer network.   The working group came up with a plan that recommended a new round of infrastructure system upgrades and called it ITRP2 – ITRP1 was a similar project in 1994 that funded the first campus wide networks.

The program will cost $17 million to $22million a year for eight years and is in two phases. Phase one was from 2006/07 to 2009/10 and Phase two 2010/11 to 2013/14.  Total cost will between $136 million to $176 million. Details on what the money will be spent on is hard to find as most of the files on the Network and Technology Alliance website are password protected and only the overview for the project is viewable to the public.

Cisco Catalyst Switches like ones to be purchased

 

The good news is the CSU system is trying to modernize and standardize computers systems on the SFSU campus.

The bad news is since we are in the middle of a two phase project there is no telling when or if the network will improve. The issue also points out the lack of information and transparency at SFSU and the CSU system as a whole. They are so disconnected from their users they can’t even tell them why the problems are happing, if there are plans to address their concerns or are even if they are aware that the issue exists.

Current Network unlink in DAI lab and yes if you step on the cable the internet goes out for the whole lab

 The website for the project has not been updated in more than a year, so there is no way to tell how the budget struggle has affected the project. There is also no timeline to show if the project is on time or even if is still ongoing.

The other fact that I found disturbing was in the limited material I could find on the project it had no mention of internet connections at SFSU or any other campus in the system. The outline was focused on internal networks—between buildings and to users, with the ultimate goal to be able to hand additional internal network traffic and more users. Nothing in the report about how the new network would connect to the rest of the outside world,  the internet or what the speed of the internet will be for users. I fear that the CSU system will spend 170 million on a ultra fast network and still have ultra slow internet speeds.

The Box That inspired Steve Jobs

This past week the world lost a great leader and visionary in the tech industry with the passing of Steve Jobs. He and Apple Co Founder Steve Wozniak helped usher in the era of personal computers. Apple would later lead a cultural transformation in music, movies and mobile communications in the digital age. What is lesser known is what inspired the two Steve's to start  Apple, the Blue Box. To understand why a Blue Box was so important to the founding of Apple you need to take a look at the original computer hackers -- the phone phreak.

From the Times obit for Steve Jobs.

"The spark that ignited their partnership was provided by Wozniak’s mother. Mr. Wozniak had graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, when she sent him an article from the October 1971 issue of Esquire magazine. The article, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” by Ron Rosenbaum, detailed an underground hobbyist culture of young men known as phone phreaks who were illicitly exploring the nation’s phone system.

Mr. Wozniak shared the article with Mr. Jobs, and the two set out to track down an elusive figure identified in the article as Captain Crunch. The man had taken the name from his discovery that a whistle that came in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal was tuned to a frequency that made it possible to make free long-distance calls simply by blowing the whistle next to a phone handset.

The term Phreaking was used in the mid 60's to describe people who study, experimented, or explored telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. Back in the early 60's telephone networks were becoming computerized -- the live operators that manually placed calls when you dialed a number were being replaced with automatic computerized switches to complete calls. With the introduction of automatic switches, the general population began, for the first time, to interact with computing power on a large scale. Many individuals interested in computers and technology, were unable to further that interest and therefore turned to the only available option: the computer controlled telephone network.

A large percentage of early phone Phreaks were blind. Joe Engressia, a blind seventeen-year old was skilled with perfect pitch, and discovered that whistling the fourth E above middle C -- a frequency of 2600 Hz--would stop the phone's dial tone. He then founded he could activate phone switches and make calls using different tones. Using this info other people began to develop a rudimentary understanding of how phone networks worked. John Draper a former Air Force electronic technician, discovered through his friendship with Engressia that the free whistles in a Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes could also produced a 2600 Hz tone when blown (providing his nickname, "Captain Crunch").

Draper experimented further and built a a multi-frequency tone generator -- a blue box to gain easier entry into the AT&T system. It functioned by replicating the normal tones used to switch long distance calls and using them to route the user's own call. This bypassed the normal switching mechanism. The most common use of a blue box was to place free telephone calls. 

It took the two Steve's several weeks to find Captain Crunch but after some work they got him to come to the dorms  at UC Berkeley.  Based on information they gleaned from Draper they maded their own blue box "Mr. Wozniak and Mr. Jobs later collaborated on building and selling blue boxes, devices that were widely used for making free—and illegal—phone calls. They raised a total of $6,000 from the effort." On one occasion Wozniak dialed Vatican City and identified himself as Henry Kissinger and asked to speak to the Pope, sadly he was sleeping at the time. The next time they attempted to use it they were almost arrested by a police officer passing by the pay phone they were using.   The cop let them go thinking the blue box was a toy.