33 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981Copyright © 2015 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.The Telecom Digest for Jul 4, 2015
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| What a pleasant lot of fellows they are. What a pity they have so little sense about politics. If they lived North the last one of them would be Republicans. |
| Chester A. Arthur |
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| Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 09:33:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: F.C.C. Chairman Sees No Need to Set Aside More Airwaves for Smaller Cell Carriers Message-ID: <B121989E-D2D2-4726-B816-D65AA700A6E5@roscom.com> F.C.C. Chairman Sees No Need to Set Aside More Airwaves for Smaller Cell Carriers Tom Wheeler, head of the Federal Communications Commission, says the agency is already doing enough to increase competition among wireless companies. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/business/media/fcc-chairman-sees-no-need-to-set-aside-more-airwaves-for-smaller-cell-carriers.html |
| Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 07:22:58 -0400 From: "Elmo P. Shagnasty" <elmop@nastydesigns.com> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Robocalls - the next level Message-ID: <elmop-645C0E.07225830062015@88-209-239-213.giganet.hu> In article <11930888.1435413442523.JavaMail.root@elwamui-huard.atl.sa.earthlink.net >, Michael Dunn <keleps26392@mypacks.net> wrote: > I simply don't understand all the concern expressed here. With all > the IMPORTANT things going on in a person's life (diet, disease, > lifestyle and longevity improvement, etc.) for the very life of me I > can't fathom this level of concern with such a simple thing. Agreed. This debate parallels that of hand-wringing liberal young women in the world today, who are so caught up in themselves that they consider a man asking them for a date for the second time to be "raping" them. "How dare you inconvenience me in the least little bit in a manner you couldn't possibly know of in advance!" It's like spam mail. As long as people DO respond positively and give these people what they want, they will continue to call. |
| Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 16:31:32 -0700 From: Don Y <anonymous@invalid.telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Robocalls - the next level Message-ID: <mmv8s2$lcn$1@speranza.aioe.org> On 6/30/2015 4:16 AM, Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote: > In article <mmpe4s$o37$1@speranza.aioe.org>, > Don Y <anonymous@invalid.telecom-digest.org> wrote: > >>> Mourn it, dump it, and move on with alternate means of communication. >> >> You still have the same authentication problem. How do you know >> that email you received is from the purported sender? How do you >> know the snail mail's origins? > > Common sense, plus existing good spam filters (that in my case are > somewhat crowd-sourced). So, you're relying on a mechanism to do your "attendant function". Why can't a mechanism be applied to phonecalls, as well? > Snail mail, btw, isn't an issue. It comes to my house, and I sit down > with it at my leisure. It doesn't throw itself in my face and force me > to dispose of it and/or make a decision about it on the sender's > schedule like a phone call does. Snail mail isn't at all equivalent to > a phone call in this regard, and is off the table for dicussion. Knock on front door? You won't even know who has knocked unless you get up and go to the door to check! The point is, there are lots of asynchronous, undesired interruptions that permeate our daily lives (I work at home so I don't have the "luxury" of being able to hide behind a receptionist or secretary for 40 hrs/week). > Notice how people--even smart people--are getting caught up in various > scams that come across on the phone nowadays? IRS, jury duty, > whatever--these scammers aren't using snail mail or email. They're > using the immediacy of the phone call to hit their marks. This is just > more evidence that it's time to acknowledge that th usefulness of the > telephone as we grew up with has passed, and that we need to move on to > alternate means of communication. If there are objections to the hurdle that an "automated attendant" places in the way of callers, imagine what sort of friction there is getting someone to use <your_comms_medium_of_choice>? None of my (older) relatives would ever think of emailing me. I suspect most of them don't have email addresses! Do I teach the others how to encrypt their correspondence to keep prying eyes from snooping it (e.g., gmail)? (Does that bring those correspondences to the attention of gummit folks wondering what they are hiding??) Do I tell my MD he can't call and leave a message but, instead, has to send personal health information (HIPPA) in plain text via email? Ditto dentist? > At the very least, start treating the phone like email. Anyway, it > has about the same amount of usefulness. Therefore, turn the ringer > off and go back to the days of voicemail. Quit thinking that just > because the phone rings, you must drop what you're doing and put all > of your attention to it. I've not answered a ringing phone (unless waiting for a return call from a doctor, etc.) in more than 25 years. We treat the phone as a device for MAKING calls, not RECEIVING them! Our ringer, here, has been off for 20+ years -- letting everything go directly to voice mail. Once a day, we'll spend a few minutes scanning sequentially (because an answering machine isn't any smarter than that!) through the recorded messages to see who we might want to call back. Something with more brains could eliminate the daily robocalls that tried to sell us the exact same crap the day before (we didn't respond yesterday, what makes them think we'll have decided to buy it today?) However, in some cases, there is an immediacy involved that can't be predicted (like my waiting for a return call from a Doctor who's called in an Rx). This approach fails in a big way in those cases. E.g., Saturday, a neighbor had to come to the front door to ask if I could repair/replace the battery in her vehicle. This is a bigger interruption than if she (could have) called -- as now I have to get dressed to greet her! |
| Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 19:40:40 -0700 (PDT) From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Robocalls - the next level Message-ID: <ca797199-2868-442a-a68a-ab51a43cc972@googlegroups.com> On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 1:03:06 AM UTC-5, Robert Bonomi wrote: > In article <mmimft$tu$1@dont-email.me> you write: [snip] > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > Please join me in welcoming back a long-time contributor to > the digest. Welcome back Robert! I'd like to bring up an old thread: do television stations include area codes in phone numbers in video advertising? In August 2009 I posted: > I guess it depends on the individual station's management. > In my experience, most stations do indeed care. Whereupon you posted: > VERY FEW stations https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.dcom.telecom/CiJj89l6KZg/F3Hj3ygc0RcJ Well I suppose you have some documentary evidence to back up your claim. But in my experience, most station care even more now than they did back in 1990. It's certainly the case here in the Houston DMA where I live: every ad, PSA, or news story that includes a phone number also includes an area code (or a toll-free code). It certainly seems logical that stations would do this: the Houston Metro area has four overlaid area codes and the surrounding counties (outside Houston Metro but inside the Houston DMA) have three more area codes. I can't imagine that any station in the Chicago area -- the land of (at least) ten area codes -- would omit the area code in advertising: 219, 224, 312, 331, 630, 708, 773, 779, 815, and 847. I see the same thing on outdoor advertising and vehicles. Driving around Houston and suburbs I occasionally see an obviously-very-old sign with a 7-D number, but I'd guess that in well over 99% of cases the full 10-D number is displayed. Neal McLain |
| Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2015 11:03:05 -0400 From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Robocalls - the next level Message-ID: <barmar-BF82F5.11030501072015@88-209-239-213.giganet.hu> In article <20150701144221.GA2334@telecom.csail.mit.edu>, Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 09:08:25AM -0400, Pete Cresswell wrote: > > > The way I see it these bottom feeders have undermined the utility of > > my phone to a considerable extent. > > I see it in a more severe light: those bottom feeders have undermined > my quiet enjoyment of my home and leisure time, and have presumed on > my middle-class status and social training by expecting me to be > courteous to strangers whom are trying to lie to me and con me. When I used to work in an office, it was just a minor annoyance: I would come home and delete a few robocalls from my answering machine. Now I work from home, and it rings several times a day. I let the machine get it, but it still interrupts me, and I have to listen to the beginning to determine if it's a real call that I should run over to the phone and answer (maybe once a week). -- Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** |
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