DO NOT USE CINGULAR GO PHONE!! I had a lot of problems with GO Phone
and know another two people who are getting ripped off.
I bought the phone early June 2005. They told me no roaming charges
free long distance and I pay just 10 cent a minute and $1 on a day I
use the phone. So I bought it from my TX home. Then I visited to CA
and I could not use the phone. I tried calling my friend with cingular
plan who was sitting next to me. His phone rang but got disconnected
right after he answered. It said "check service status" even though
signal was very strong. I tried several times sine I pay nothing if I
call within cingular network. Guess what! They charged me $1.30 for
every try I made even though connection did not last one
second. Basically I could not use the phone the whole time i was
visiting there. It was so much trouble.
When I called customer service they are very rude. They told me I
could not use the phone anymore since my $25 balance was
depleted. They ignored the fact that the balance was depleted due to
overcharges and not bother looking into it the problem. I had to call
customer service several times (at least 5 times) hoping somebody will
notice the problem. I was told that technician will look into it and
call me back. And they never call me back!
Finally I called again and talked to supervisor directly (I had to beg
to talk to supervisor). I obtained detail billing and calculated total
charges which is not summing up to the balance I added. When I point
this out, she, who was in total denial about their problems, said it
was just a glitch in their system and agreed to make balance
adjustment. A glitch! A glitch that took away $25 balance was not
noticeable to several people in customer service department! Were they
just trained how to ignore their problem and how to make customers
miserable.
I cannot return the phone since it is over 30 days now so I am stuck
with the phone. They still not acknowledging the problem that I cannot
use the phone in CA even though I should be able to according to their
plan description. Be aware guys. If you are patient and can spend a
lot of time calling customer service to get your money back, you are
sure to lose your money with this Cingular plan.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You could have been telling my story. I
have _two_ Cingular phones; the one works okay with an _Independence,
KS_ 620-330 number. The other phone is a former AT&T (now Cingular
Prepaid phone I think it is called 'Free to Go'.) Both phones are the
older digital Nokia 5165 phones, the difference is only that one is
prepaid via AT&T, the other is a 'regular' cell phone. Starting Friday,
the prepaid phone quit fuctioning. It has a Wichita KS 316-841 number
on it, with, I might add, twenty dollars in credit. Cingular customer
service, which appears to be located in India these days, absolutely
insisted I could not have a prepaid wireless phone since they had no
wireless coverage in my area. They said "as soon as you get back in
the Wichita area, your phone will start working again." I asked them
if that was so, then (if the towers could not reach me) why wasn't
voice mail kicking in to take the messages? They just kept repeating
their stupid answer: because we have no service in your area. I
finally said 'being an ignorant ##*@ based in your native land
somewhere, you probably would not know much about our cell phones
here.' They had just a few minutes earlier taken a twenty five dollar
payment from my credit card. Those Cingular/AT&T/SBC customer service
reps are so incredibly stupid it is beyond my comprehension. I said
well, if you do not have service in my area, then please arrange to
refund the twenty dollars you just now took on my account. And
wouldn't you know it, the sweet dear little Indian lady who referred
to herself as 'employee ID 627' insisted 'we do not give any refunds
on prepaid service'. You will this time, I told her, Small Claims
Court here in Montgomery County is just four block down the street
from my house, and I do not have to sue you in California or Texas
or India or wherever, _I just sue your local resale agent here in
Independence_. Hopefully your superiors will screw up and not make
any response to the suit. She finally came up with a post office
box address (no phone nor fax nor email address available) for some
entity called 'Cingular Free to Go' in Anaheim Hills, CA and I fired
off a letter to them yesterday making demand for the return of my
money _or_ preferably, a working phone with my 316-841 number since
someone else told me the only service they will now initiate in
620 is GSM. I will tell you, if Ignorance was Bliss, then Cingular
customer service people would be the happiest in the world. PAT]
Path: telecom-digest.org!ptownson
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 19:02:35 -0400
From: Choreboy <choreboyREMOVE@localnet.com>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: DSL Speed
Message-ID: <telecom24.306.10@telecom-digest.org>
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 24, Issue 306, Message 10 of 13
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Dave Grebe wrote:
>>> I wonder how they're modulated.
>> Can any other reader answer this question?
> Quadrature modulation using many channels. Look here:
> http://www.alleged.com/info/dsl2/
> Dave Grebe
Wow! No wonder most people don't go into detail!
Here's a quote from the introduction:
"Although many system designers are competent and comfortable with DSP
and all things digital, they often find their understanding of analog
issues to be a bit rusty when it comes to implementing the physical
connection to and from the telephone line."
nmclain@annsgarden.com wrote:
> Choreboy <choreboyREMOVE@localnet.com> wrote:
>> A carrier vor V.90 must have some very precise modulation. It's
>> amazing that an 8kHz sampling can capture it well enough to be
>> useful.
> Frequently it can't, which is why your modem downgrades to a slower
> speed.
>>> All of these noise sources collectively impair the ability of the loop
>>> to carry DSL signals.
>> Local loop cables (trunk cables?) seem to deteriorate. Phone men seem
>> to look for available pairs when customers complain of noise. I
>> wonder if voltage from nearby lightning strikes might cause pinhole
>> damage to the insulation of twisted pairs, and over the years it gets
>> hard to find a good pair.
> Nearby lightning strikes likely would do a lot more than cause
> "pinhole damage." But you're right about telco cables deteriorating
> over time. Water intrusion can cause severe interference ("every time
> it rains, I get static on my telephone!").
I wonder if old cables have been analyzed to see why they went bad.
Lightning-related voltage spikes can damage semiconductors although
the damage may not be apparent. I wonder if that could happen to the
insulation on telephone conductors.
>> Load coils might be one reason a particular phone sounds distorted at
>> a particular location.
> I doubt that, but I guess it's possible.
If the capacitance were lumped, it and an inductor would form a tuned
tank. I suppose it's about the same with distributed capacitance.
The tank would have high impedance at one frequency and lower
impedance at higher or lower frequencies. The broadness of the curve
would depend on the resistance in the coil and maybe in the line. An
uneven frequency response could make it hard to recognize who's
calling or understand his words.
>> Across the street, a small trunk line (cable with lots of wire
>> pairs) comes from the aerial terminal down a couple of feet to a
>> fusebox on the utility pole. (I think the telco calls them something
>> besides fuses.) The drop cables come out of that box. Probably
>> just a junction box.
After lightning knocked out my phone service, a telco man opened the
box and replaced what he called a fuse. Those fuses have another name
I can't remember.
>>>> Think what would have happened if RG-59 hadn't been invented.
>>>> Everybody would have used RG-6, which looks nearly the same but
>>>> attenuates uhf much less. With better reception there would have
>>>> been more uhf stations and less demand for cable.
>>> As a former cable guy, I don't agree with that. Many UHF stations
>>> depended on cable TV systems to distribute their signals throughout
>>> their "specified zones" (which, back in the '60s and '70s, was a
>>> 35-mile radius around the city of license). This was particularly
>>> true in mountainous areas where cable T systems carried UHF signals
>>> to specified-zone communities that were beyond the reach of their
>>> transmitters.
>> With a bow-tie antenna, a good UHF amp, a rotator, and RG-6U, we could
>> receive so many channels that we weren't interested in cable.
> Well, obviously you don't live in a place like Mahanoy City
> Pennsylvania, Tuckerman Arkansas, or Astoria Oregon -- places where it
> simply isn't possible to get any station -- UHF or VHF -- off the air.
> Cable TV started in all three of those communities in 1948, and all
> three still claim to have been first.
> Neal McLain
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And don't forget Independence, KS where
> until cable came along (via Time Warner in the 1980's) our television
> reception consisted of TWO channels; channel 6 and channel 9, but only
> one of those two if you wanted a good picture. Most people had very
> _high_ antennas on their house if they wanted television, and they
> compromised by using a 'rotor' attached to their TV set to turn the
> rooftop antenna one way or the other. If they could not afford the
> rotor, then they left the antenna turned sort of in the middle and
> lived with that. We got one station from Tulsa, Oklahoma (80 miles
> almost straight south) and one station from Joplin, Missouri (90
> miles more or less straight east.) Around here, 'big city' (as in
> presence of television stations) means Wichita, KS which is 110 miles
> northwest, or Topeka KS which is about 150 miles straight north, and
> we could not get those stations very well at all in those days. PAT]
In 1956 I moved to Rutland VT, in a valley. We had three floors above
the basement, and the peak of our slate roof may have been forty feet
above the ground. On the peak was a mast with guy wires. There were
three antennae on the mast, one pointed to Burlington 70 miles away,
on to Albany 90 miles away, and one to Boston 160 miles away. Three
cables led from the antennae to a switch on the back of the TV.
The snow was bad all year. Community cable, with an antenna mast on a
nearby mountain, was discussed. A year or so later, Lucky 13 started
in Albany. In spite of the distance and the mountains, it came in
without snow. I heard no more about community cable.
I don't know how much it cost to operate a small UHF station, but in
Rutland I think it could have been started and operated much cheaper
than cable. The audience would probably have needed something besides
a loop on their TV, and I suppose advertising would have had to
support it.
shwekhaw (zaw@1stuniverse.com)