---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20190606224602.GA9728@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2019 22:46:02 +0000 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: CWAers Win Protections for Nevada and Alabama Call Center Jobs (This is from the CWA newsletter) Nevada CWAers across the country are mobilizing to protect call center jobs from offshoring, and thanks to the hard work of Nevada CWAers, call center legislation is now heading to Governor Steve Sisolak for a signature! AT&T's lobbyists fought hard against the Nevada bill, applying pressure on state legislators to try to weaken it, but the governor helped keep the bill from being watered down. The bill strengthens reporting requirements for companies that move more than 30% of their call center work out of Nevada, institutes a $5,000 per day penalty, and puts them on a bad actors list. Any company on that list is banned from receiving certain state funding and grants. ############################################### Alabama The Alabama bill to protect call center jobs, which contains strong notification requirements for companies that offshore 30% or more call volume at an Alabama call center, required repayment of unearned state benefits received to create call center jobs, and a five-year restriction on state benefits for employers who act in bad faith, was signed into law today! -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <qdfj9t$k21$1@dont-email.me> Date: 8 Jun 2019 01:06:49 -0500 From: "Dave Garland" <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> Subject: Re: Apple is building a major defense against spam calls into iOS 13 > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > Spam prevention is, and always be, an arms race. This capability will > slow down the callers for a few weeks, and then they'll pay for the > linked lists that show the phone numbers of your children, barber, > mechanic, minister or Rabbi, etc., etc. > > The solution to spam calls is the same one I've advocated for years: > answer the call, and do everything you can to waste the time of a real > human. Everything else is just talk, but the warm bodies have to be > paid with real money, and if even a small percentage of victims fought > back, the industry would be out of business inside a year. Indeed. If it's convenient, especially on what are obviously business calls, I press "1" to speak to an agent. As soon as they come on, I say "please hold" and hit the button to have my VoIP provider play them bad jazz until they go away. Wasting their time, that's what counts. Them asking "are you the business owner" definitely trips that behavior. ------------------------------ Message-ID: <285A46A0-5742-4BB7-950E-7B0EB3A3A797@roscom.com> Date: 7 Jun 2019 09:40:35 -0400 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: For 5G, AT&T and T-Mobile buy $1.8 billion worth of 24GHz spectrum across US Verizon, US Cellular, and Starry also bought plenty in FCC's 5G auctions. By Jon Brodkin AT&T and T-Mobile committed to spend nearly $1.8 billion, combined, on high-frequency spectrum for their 5G networks in a Federal Communi- cations Commission auction that sold airwave licenses covering the whole US. Verizon committed to spend $506 million in a separate 5G auction. AT&T's winning bids in the 24GHz auction totaled $982.5 million for 831 licenses in 383 Partial Economic Areas (PEAs). That should cover most of the US, as the FCC divides the country into 416 PEAs for purposes of the auction. This spectrum will be used for AT&T's real 5G network, not the 4G network that AT&T misleadingly calls "5G E." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/06/for-5g-att-and-t-mobile-buy-1-8-billion-worth-of-24ghz-spectrum-across-us/ ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Sun, 09 Jun 2019