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The Telecom Digest for May 19, 2010
Volume 29 : Issue 136 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
JitterBug? (AES)
Re: JitterBug? (Thad Floryan)
Re: JitterBug? (John Levine)
Five Years In, YouTube Is Now Streaming Two Billion Views Per Day (Monty Solomon)
Walk the walk and ..... (David Clayton)
Re: Does anyone know? (Joseph Singer)
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Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 15:01:36 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: JitterBug?
Message-ID: <siegman-1E8D5F.15013617052010@bmedcfsc-srv02.tufts.ad.tufts.edu>
Elderly relative visiting has cellphone slightly larger than standard
size (but not much), with large illuminated buttons and larger type on
the screen. Has no idea who his carrier is; says it's just "JitterBug"
that sends him his bills, and answers when he dials the operator. His
phone seems to work fine with our Verizon femtocell.
Anyone want to say what this is?
[I do realize: I can look it up on the web, and will do so. But, I just
wonder if anyone has any experience with this service, whatever it is,
and whether it's a good thing or not.]
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 13:57:53 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: JitterBug?
Message-ID: <4BF2FF51.7070706@thadlabs.com>
On 5/17/2010 3:01 PM, AES wrote:
> Elderly relative visiting has cellphone slightly larger than standard
> size (but not much), with large illuminated buttons and larger type on
> the screen. Has no idea who his carrier is; says it's just "JitterBug"
> that sends him his bills, and answers when he dials the operator. His
> phone seems to work fine with our Verizon femtocell.
>
> Anyone want to say what this is?
>
> [I do realize: I can look it up on the web, and will do so. But, I just
> wonder if anyone has any experience with this service, whatever it is,
> and whether it's a good thing or not.]
Visit http://jitterbug.com/ for info; they're on the Verizon network.
It appears to be a service catering to senior citizens with a good,
no nonsense phone that's easy to use.
Flipping through its manual, I found this factoid on page 30:
" April 3, 2009 is the 36th anniversary of the first public phone call made
on
" a portable cell phone. That call was placed by Martin Cooper who created
" JitterbugŪ with his wife, Arlene Harris, the founder of Jitterbug.
Date: 18 May 2010 16:18:11 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: JitterBug?
Message-ID: <20100518161811.11477.qmail@joyce.lan>
>Elderly relative visiting has cellphone slightly larger than standard
>size (but not much), with large illuminated buttons and larger type on
>the screen. Has no idea who his carrier is; says it's just "JitterBug"
>that sends him his bills, and answers when he dials the operator. His
>phone seems to work fine with our Verizon femtocell.
>
>Anyone want to say what this is?
It's what it looks like, an MVNO aimed at old people. The phone is
dual band CDMA which means the carrier is Verizon, and it has a
variety of features intended to be useful to people with limited
vision or mobility, e.g., large buttons and handset, simulated dial
tone, live operator, and an addon service that lets you call a nurse
for advice (really) as well as the usual stuff like bluetooth.
The prices are not bad, considering. $15 for 50 min/mon, $20 for 100
min/mo, $30 for 200 day/500 night, etc. No contract, it's month to
month, cancel whenever you want, resume service later if you want.
R's,
John
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 09:57:25 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Five Years In, YouTube Is Now Streaming Two Billion Views Per Day
Message-ID: <p06240818c81845784b46@[10.0.1.4]>
Five Years In, YouTube Is Now Streaming Two Billion Views Per Day
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/16/five-years-in-youtube-is-now-streaming-two-billion-videos-per-day/
YouTube has also compiled some stats and timelines as it reflects on
its first five years.
Here are the site's most current stats:
2 Billion views a day
3rd most visited website (Alexa)
Localized in 23 countries across 24 different languages
15 The average number of minutes people spend on the site each day
24 Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
45 Million home page impressions every day Update: YouTube has
clarified that this is the number of daily impressions in the US alone
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
100 Years of video scanned by copyright managent technology,
Content ID, every day
1700 Years it would take you to watch the hundreds of millions of
videos on YouTube
***** Moderator's Note *****
I'm not sure if this story is related to telecom as it exists today,
but it may be related to its future. AFAICT, we're going back to the
days when written communication was the only means of
telecommunications, just as when Western Union Messengers delivered
telegrams at all hours of day or night.
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 08:26:34 +1000
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject:Walk the walk and .....
Message-ID: <pan.2010.05.18.22.26.33.42466@myrealbox.com>
From
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/the-other-side/telemarketers-talk-themselves-sick-study-says/story-e6frfhk6-1225867819421
Telemarketers talk themselves sick, study says
* From: AAP
* May 17, 2010 3:15PM
TELEMARKETERS talk so much they've been making themselves sick, a new
study says.
Researchers have found a link between vocal health and overall health
among staff working in the pressure-cooker environment.
The findings could help the $13.7 billion industry find ways of improving
call centres to boost the health and productivity of the 220,000
telemarketers employed across Australia.
The study looked at the health of nearly 600 people working in 14 call
centres across the UK and Ireland.
Sickness levels among call centre staff were found to be abnormally high.
They worked in stressful environments with excessive background noise and
constant sales targets, the study says.
Longer shifts led to workers suffering strained and sore vocal chords,
which then impacted their overall health and performance.
In a period over six months, only 31 per cent of call centre staff in the
study had not taken time off work for a voice-related condition, the study
says.
Report author Dr Diane Hazlett, head of communication for the University
of Ulster, says the link between vocal health and overall wellbeing should
be taken seriously as an occupational health and safety issue for the
industry.
One factor contributing to the high rate of sick leave was the employees'
perception of their health.
"When someone had perhaps light strain in their voice it appeared as if
they felt they were getting a throat infection or they were getting a
cold,'' Dr Hazlett said.
"In a sense they overestimated the difficulties they were having to some
extent. This was much more likely to perpetuate them taking time off
work.''
The findings were presented at Speech Pathology Australia's national
conference held in Melbourne this week.
Dr Hazlett hopes the study can help call centres develop better training
for recruits, from using warm-up vocal exercises, limiting background
noise and encouraging staff to drink plenty of water.
Call centre staff under these conditions are then more likely to be happy,
she says, leading to fewer sick days and better results for the company.
While vocal programs have been developed for call centres in the past,
voice expert Jenny Oates of LaTrobe University says such initiatives are
not standard in the industry.
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 10:24:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Does anyone know?
Message-ID: <148397.31017.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Randall <rvh40@remove-this.insightbb.com> wrote:
> A buddy of mine has a mostly-defunct vending route. (Fifteen years
> ago he had 200 COCOTs; that business is entirely defunct now).
> The locations where he has his remaining vending machines have a
> cell phone number that's been his for a decade or more; it is AT&T,
> and he pays a monthly bill to keep his service and 250 "free"
> minutes with no roaming charges. (He is also an OTR trucker, so "no
> roaming charge" is important).
> Is there any way he can convert this from a monthly bill to a pre-
> paid plan AND KEEP THE SAME PHONE NUMBER?
I'm not sure what the COCOTs have to do with a cellphone number, but
here's what I know. At least for T-Mobile (which I have both prepaid
and monthly billed service) you can convert from monthly billed to
prepaid or vice versa. All you have to do is call regular customer
care and request that your account be converted from monthly billed to
prepaid. They'll even give you $5 credit when you switch from monthly
billed to prepaid. I'm told that the process to convert takes ~24
hours. Even if you're not with T-Mobile you can port your number over
to another service whether it's T-Mobile's "To Go" service, AT&T's
"GoPhone", Sprint or Virgin. Keeping in mind that you need to arrange
the port with the mobile operator you're going to and not from your
present mobile operator. These days ports from mobile operator to
mobile operator take hours rather than days since we've had number
portability now since November of 2003.
Do keep in mind when switching from monthly billed to prepaid that
prepaid more often than not does not roam on to other systems with the
exception that T-Mobile has a limited amount of roaming and TracFone
generally will roam on anything that uses the same technology as the
handset you have depending on whether you got a GSM TracFone (which
will work on both AT&T, T-Mobile and other non-national GSM networks)
while the CDMA TracFones will generally work with all CDMA networks
such as Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, etc. Most prepaids will let you make
domestic calls for just airtime, but you need to check to be sure.
I think though that if I was an LD trucker I'd want the surety that
I'd be able to call anywhere and for that I'd opt for at least the
minimum monthly billed plan.
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End of The Telecom Digest (6 messages)
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