33 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
Copyright © 2014 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.

The Telecom Digest for Sep 26, 2014
Volume 33 : Issue 168 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
Re: Mobile cellular [Anonymous] (Anonymous)
Verizon Said to Hire TAP Advisors for Tower Sale by Year End (Bill Horne)
AT&T, Verizon Don't Want Caps Included in Broadband Definitions (Bill Horne)
AT&T and Verizon: Data Caps On Home Internet Service Are Great For Everyone (Especially Us) (Bill Horne)
Verizon: Reps were wrong to say Trafford is keeping FiOS out (Bill Horne)

I have always been afraid of banks.  - Andrew Jackson

See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details.

Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 15:20:00 +0000 From: Anonymous <anonymous@telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Mobile cellular [Anonymous] Message-ID: <a20140925151500099@telecom-digest.org> Hi Bill, Good points on the mobile usage while driving, but unrealistic. I think it embraces the usual left-thinking assumption that another law will fix everything, and also curiously as such correlates nicely to 'gun control' legislation. Continually building boxes around generally law abiding people is not going to solve the problem, but many think so. It's the idiotic "but if it only saves ONE life" line of thinking. People intent on making phone calls while mobile will make them, regardless of the law. People intent on killing others with guns will do so, regardless of the law. It merely pinches all the folks in the middle with more compliance for little effect. Want to fix the problem? Hit them where it hurts: if someone kills someone while driving distracted, make it a 10 year felony, and enforce it. People will catch on. That's why drunk driving incidents are dropping..people are hit hard. And, from my law-enforcement career: I'm not familiar with Connecticut's law, but I'm sure it has an exception for law enforcement and/or general government mobile use of communications devices. With a lot of years in a uniform, I can unequivocally state there is no class in the academy, nor any OJT experiences that magically allow a LEO to safely operate communications equipment in a mobile environment any more than you or I. With today's MDTs, various radios, confusing talkgroup selections on trunked systems, LOJACK, video recorders, and more, it's a very distracted environment. Cops hit things all the time while distracted as such..it is just a smaller percentage of incidents purely by the number of cops. And ... There are not enough cops around, nor will property values and local taxes ever recover enough to hire them in quantities needed to play the enforcer for liberal 'feel good' legislation like this. There are not enough cops around to chase down real crime, let alone play Sherlock Holmes figuring out if you, in your passing car, are using a hands-free option on your mobile or not. At the very most, it will be what cops call an "extra sprinkles" (think ice cream cone) ticket ... just an add-on to something else if they get lucky. Would I be forever devastated if someone I loved was killed by a distracted driver? Yes. Will a lot of feel-good laws ever fix it? Nope. I know a lot of this will fall on deaf ears, due to your penchant for hating things "new" such as mobile communications, but try to look [at] it objectively. (Anonymous contributor) ***** Moderator's Note ***** My aversion to "new" things extends mostly to the way products that add nothing to the quality of my life are hyped as if they were the second coming. My aversion to "Smart" phones, if that's what the poster is refering to, extends to the ways that they are used by dumb people, as if the device were a talisman that would embue its user with business acumen, caution, and common sense. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 21:44:45 +0000 From: bill@horneQRM.net (Bill Horne) To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Verizon Said to Hire TAP Advisors for Tower Sale by Year End Message-ID: <E1XXGqD-0004bI-NY@telecom.xen.prgmr.com> By Scott Moritz and Alex Sherman Verizon Communications Inc. is pushing for a sale of its wireless network towers by year-end, according to people familiar with the situation, in a deal that may raise about $6 billion for spectrum purchases. Verizon, the biggest U.S. mobile-phone company, has hired TAP Advisors LLC, a New York boutique investment bank, to work on a tower sale and leasing agreement, two of the people said. The package would involve about 12,000 towers and could be announced within 30 to 60 days, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-23/verizon-said-to-hire-tap-advisors-for-tower-sale-by-end-of-year -or- http://goo.gl/SgjD2D
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 21:56:00 +0000 From: bill@horneQRM.net (Bill Horne) To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: AT&T, Verizon Don't Want Caps Included in Broadband Definitions Message-ID: <E1XXH16-0004bX-2z@telecom.xen.prgmr.com> by Karl Bode ISPs have already been whining quite a bit about the fact that the FCC wants to raise the current minimum definition of broadband from 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up -- to something ranging from 10 to 25 Mbps. Now AT&T and Verizon are whining about the possibility that the FCC would like to make sure bandwidth caps are considered when defining the quality of a broadband connection. Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica points to new filings from both companies with the FCC in which AT&T and Verizon offer up a fairly feeble defense of usage caps. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Verizon-Dont-Want-Caps-Included-in-Broadband-Definitions-130590 -or- http://goo.gl/88BAI1 Bill -- Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 21:40:58 +0000 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: AT&T and Verizon: Data Caps On Home Internet Service Are Great For Everyone (Especially Us) Message-ID: <E1XXGmY-0004b8-Ke@telecom.xen.prgmr.com> By Kate Cox September 24, 2014 Verizon and AT&T are big players (and getting bigger) in broadband landline service, but they seem to take a mobile phone mindset with them everywhere they go. Not only do they think that home broadband doesn.t need to be faster than your phone, but also now they.re saying that data caps on your home internet use are perfectly reasonable, too. Ars Technica points the way to the filings, which are part of an FCC look into broadband deployment across the United States. http://consumerist.com/2014/09/24/att-and-verizon-data-caps-on-home-internet-service-are-great-for-everyone-especially-us/ -or- http://goo.gl/lPqah7
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 21:50:54 +0000 From: bill@horneQRM.net (Bill Horne) To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Verizon: Reps were wrong to say Trafford is keeping FiOS out Message-ID: <E1XXGwA-0004bQ-C8@telecom.xen.prgmr.com> By Chris Foreman Verizon officials pledge to get to the bottom of why their employees erroneously have been saying that uncooperative local governments are the reason why FiOS cable TV service isn't available in Trafford (Pennsylvania) and other communities. Though Verizon representatives showed interest last year in expanding FiOS into Trafford, the company now is focused only on completing its network in the city of Pittsburgh by September 2015, a spokesman said. Rest at: http://triblive.com/neighborhoods/yourpenntrafford/yourpenntraffordmore/6845733-74/verizon-trafford-fios#ixzz3EMmRsQLz -or- http://goo.gl/KoLqt6

TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'.

TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit educational service offered to the Internet by Bill Horne.

The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne.
Contact information: Bill Horne
Telecom Digest
43 Deerfield Road
Sharon MA 02067-2301
339-364-8487
bill at horne dot net
Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom
Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom

This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Copyright © 2014 E. William Horne. All rights reserved.

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself. Thank you!

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization.

End of The Telecom Digest (5 messages)

Return to Archives ** Older Issues